Ok, so almost half a million subscribers of several types have dumped various kinds of pay TV.
That sounds like a lot, right? But, there are an estimated 115 million households in the US. (via us census)
So those half a million, comprised of geeks who have found another way, and households who just can't afford both cable *and* food, are approximately.3% (point three percent) of all US households.
> Will people just sigh and buy that PC with the Win8 turd on the drive anyway, because they still feel they have no other choice, or do they go ahead and move to a tablet.
Now, that's an interesting question. In the past, as you said, users just sucked it up and endured Windows because, for regular users, there wasn't anything else. There was always alternatives, but it took a true geek to exploit them.
These days, it's almost the opposite. The kind of things casual users do, can now be done on cheap appliances. And say what you will about the locked-down nature of appliances, they get the job for which they are intended done without a lot of maintenance work for the user. That's a HUGE advantage over the PC.
So, now we have a situation where, to regular users, an Apple or Android slate is *more* attractive than learning to care and feed a new Winders, and it's only the power users, the people who need more than what a slate can do, that'll continue with the PC.
And I'm not sure there's enough power users to make a significant dent in sales. Microsoft may have to seriously lower their expectations.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product
on
Windows 8 Is Ready
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· Score: 1
> Do they realize that shilling actually fosters more hatred of them?
I don't believe they think that deeply about it. "Shill online where geeks live" is just a managerial line item. Did we shill Slashdot? Check. Ok, move on to Wired.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product
on
Windows 8 Is Ready
·
· Score: 2
Ok, so, firstly, the guy up there that said "It's not Windows hatred per se, although that certainly is a healthy attitude." is my favorite person for this week.
But that said, am a little puzzled by your statement "Worked there, liked XP, hate 8, disgruntled about 7, don't even ask about Vista". I mean, "hate 8" I understand, "don't even ask about Vista" I wholeheartedly agree with, but what was disgruntling about 7? I had to upgrade to 7 from XP on one machine to add more memory, and was pleasantly surprised. (I'm still running XP on my other machines, of course, lacking any particular reason to spend the bucks to upgrade.) 7 didn't suck. There isn't a compelling reason to upgrade (except the memory thing) but it wasn't a horrible experience.
Not if the place is not sunny and by the beach. It's the locale, I think, as much as the business environment that keeps prices high. In theory, Phoenix would be better from a cost standpoint because enough people would not want to move there that it would keep the costs down. But it's still too damned hot.
You're *really* talking to the wrong person. I'm not just a hapless customer sitting in a trailer park with a broken computer. I've been all over India, and work regularly, in person, with people from that part of the world. My real name is one syllable (although I'm told it's a common dog's name in Japanese, a source of amusement I'm sure) and people who have never heard my native language can usually get it after two or three gos. I can pronounce foreign names better than most Americans, and even I am sometimes thrown for a loss.
But we're drifting from the point. The professionals I deal with can make themselves understood no matter where they're from. As a professional, that -- making myself understood -- is part of my job also. My issue is with helpdesk and first line personnel, and it's not even their fault -- the outsourcing business model predicates that first contact personnel must be dirt cheap, with no training whatsoever (because training leads them to quit for higher paying jobs) so the people answering the phone don't know how to communicate -- because they're very specifically not paid to do that. They're paid to be a voice on the other end of the call.
So, don't you dare making this a cultural issue. It is not. And as I pointed out way up there, a "peggy" is a "peggy" no matter which country they're from. Even mine.
Well, perhaps. I see it as different parts of the same struggle.
In one of the appendices, (I don't have my copy in front of me, so this is from memory), Tolkien outlines what part the dwarves of The Lonely Mountain played in the War of the Ring, and how this occupied much of Sauron's forces, an added distraction away from the effort to destroy the ring. There was also something about the last existing Ring of the dwarves playing a part, I think indirectly leading to Gandalf's chance meeting with Thorin, which kicked off the events of The Hobbit. It was all tightly interconnected.
Understood. On the other hand, I can't help but imagine it from the standpoint of the employees who have to deal with the collateral damage from their manager's decision to outsource. And there's no reason at all to believe that the pain is confined to American companies that outsource. If your company outsourced IT, it's probably gonna suck, regardless of your native language.
The solution of American companies outsourcing IT overseas is not for other countries to outsource here. That's like hammering your pinky so your thumb feels better in comparison.
It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly.
I think you missed the joke...
I'm living the joke. Yes, I'm well aware that the current trend is for foreigns to use names appropriate for the country they're supporting. Some don't, and conversations go more like:
"Hello this is Anantharaman, how may I be helping you today?"
"Well, Aratha..."
"Anantharaman."
"Umm, Anaratharam..."
"Anantharaman"
"I'm just gonna call you 'Fred', ok?"
The hardest part of a service call should not be communicating with the helpdesk.
Honestly there's a whole lot of the Tolkien universe left to go and I honestly don't mind them making movies out of it; however, I do wish that they wouldn't drag the Hobbit out so much, especially when there're stories such as the Silmarillion that would be incredibly amazing to see done.
Agreed, there's a lot of the Tolkien universe than most people know about. But I don't think the idea is to drag the novel The Hobbit out to three movies. I've read elsewhere that the intent is to dip into the LOTR appendices and cover the larger history leading up to Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit was a child's story told from Bilbo's point of view. I think Jackson has something larger in mind. Tolkien reportedly had something larger in mind, and had started to re-write the story partially contained in The Hobbit, but never finished it.
Unfortunately Jackson doesn't have rights to the Quest of Erebor -- that's owned by Tolkien's son Christopher, and he appears to be completely opposed to any film based on his father's work. So all they have is the rights that Tolkien sold when he was alive -- The Hobbit and LOTR. Fortunately, a lot of the earlier story is contained in the part at the end of LOTR that almost nobody read.
I think the main difference between this and Star Wars is that Jackson is not pulling the story out of his ass. At least, not all of it.
As to The Silmarillion.... I'm sorry, it put me to sleep. And I'm saying this from the standpoint of having read every word of LOTR several times, including the appendices. From a storytelling standpoint, it was more interesting to have a story set in the last days of that age, where heroic and villainous acts are overshadowed by the monstrous acts of an earlier time, and characters struggle amid the tired ruins of a world that contained characters so much larger than they.
Of course this get better when they call the support number and hear:
"Hello... I.T. support center. This is Joe-Bob, uh, I mean, uh, Pedro. How can I help ya'all?"
It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly. Outsourcing sucks not because it's foreign, but because the business model necessitates having unskilled labor manning the phones. This can happen anywhere.
We are getting off topic. I'm happy to stipulate that some people don't need conventional wired internet access at all. Either getting their access from city-supplied wireless, or tethered to their phone, or hotspot from the phone, or using a neighbor's unsecured wifi, or stealing from the McDonald's across the alley.
My original contention is that "most of us are going to have internet anyway, so whether it can be bundled with cable is immaterial". We could argue about whether "most" is accurate (I think it is) but that's not really the point -- the point is, whether wired internet can be bundled with cable, is not really a feature. If you don't use wired internet at all, that becomes even more true.
I personally don't "have to have" a smartphone. It's required for work and provided by my company. I work from home often, and the amount of data that has to transfer between my workstation at home and my place of business is too large to make smartphone tethering or hotspot practical. Or am *I* missing something?
Slashdot Mirror
" 'Windows 8 style UI!'
Come on, there has to be a better alternative....
This *is* Microsoft post-Gates we're talking about...
Truly, I hope you're right. My point is, this a small enough bump not to be stastically significant. Let's not get carried away.
It's a lot easier to write that as an anonymous coward, isn't it?
> In the meantime, I will continue to rent or buy DVD content that is not interrupted by ads.
At least for now.
Ok, so almost half a million subscribers of several types have dumped various kinds of pay TV.
That sounds like a lot, right? But, there are an estimated 115 million households in the US. (via us census)
So those half a million, comprised of geeks who have found another way, and households who just can't afford both cable *and* food, are approximately .3% (point three percent) of all US households.
So... slow news day?
> Will people just sigh and buy that PC with the Win8 turd on the drive anyway, because they still feel they have no other choice, or do they go ahead and move to a tablet.
Now, that's an interesting question. In the past, as you said, users just sucked it up and endured Windows because, for regular users, there wasn't anything else. There was always alternatives, but it took a true geek to exploit them.
These days, it's almost the opposite. The kind of things casual users do, can now be done on cheap appliances. And say what you will about the locked-down nature of appliances, they get the job for which they are intended done without a lot of maintenance work for the user. That's a HUGE advantage over the PC.
So, now we have a situation where, to regular users, an Apple or Android slate is *more* attractive than learning to care and feed a new Winders, and it's only the power users, the people who need more than what a slate can do, that'll continue with the PC.
And I'm not sure there's enough power users to make a significant dent in sales. Microsoft may have to seriously lower their expectations.
> Do they realize that shilling actually fosters more hatred of them?
I don't believe they think that deeply about it. "Shill online where geeks live" is just a managerial line item. Did we shill Slashdot? Check. Ok, move on to Wired.
Ok, so, firstly, the guy up there that said "It's not Windows hatred per se, although that certainly is a healthy attitude." is my favorite person for this week.
But that said, am a little puzzled by your statement "Worked there, liked XP, hate 8, disgruntled about 7, don't even ask about Vista". I mean, "hate 8" I understand, "don't even ask about Vista" I wholeheartedly agree with, but what was disgruntling about 7? I had to upgrade to 7 from XP on one machine to add more memory, and was pleasantly surprised. (I'm still running XP on my other machines, of course, lacking any particular reason to spend the bucks to upgrade.) 7 didn't suck. There isn't a compelling reason to upgrade (except the memory thing) but it wasn't a horrible experience.
Not if the place is not sunny and by the beach. It's the locale, I think, as much as the business environment that keeps prices high. In theory, Phoenix would be better from a cost standpoint because enough people would not want to move there that it would keep the costs down. But it's still too damned hot.
Pacifica is nice. But where I moved was still cheaper, and besides, I was getting tired of California politics.
Spring in Phoenix sucks; summers are flat-out intolerable.
Yep, spent ten years there, made a lot of money, had some great experiences.
And then, when I was ready to, like, buy a house, and live in a place where I'd actually want my kids to grow up, I moved to another state.
Give yourself time, you may find yourself feeling the same way.
Moving away from Silicon Valley -- Great!
Moving to Phoenix -- No damned way.
Can't we pick some place with a lower cost of living than the SF bay area (which shouldn't be hard) *and* isn't hot enough to barbecue small animals?
I moved *from* Phoenix. I visited there recently. It's still too damned hot.
You're *really* talking to the wrong person. I'm not just a hapless customer sitting in a trailer park with a broken computer. I've been all over India, and work regularly, in person, with people from that part of the world. My real name is one syllable (although I'm told it's a common dog's name in Japanese, a source of amusement I'm sure) and people who have never heard my native language can usually get it after two or three gos. I can pronounce foreign names better than most Americans, and even I am sometimes thrown for a loss.
But we're drifting from the point. The professionals I deal with can make themselves understood no matter where they're from. As a professional, that -- making myself understood -- is part of my job also. My issue is with helpdesk and first line personnel, and it's not even their fault -- the outsourcing business model predicates that first contact personnel must be dirt cheap, with no training whatsoever (because training leads them to quit for higher paying jobs) so the people answering the phone don't know how to communicate -- because they're very specifically not paid to do that. They're paid to be a voice on the other end of the call.
So, don't you dare making this a cultural issue. It is not. And as I pointed out way up there, a "peggy" is a "peggy" no matter which country they're from. Even mine.
Well, perhaps. I see it as different parts of the same struggle.
In one of the appendices, (I don't have my copy in front of me, so this is from memory), Tolkien outlines what part the dwarves of The Lonely Mountain played in the War of the Ring, and how this occupied much of Sauron's forces, an added distraction away from the effort to destroy the ring. There was also something about the last existing Ring of the dwarves playing a part, I think indirectly leading to Gandalf's chance meeting with Thorin, which kicked off the events of The Hobbit. It was all tightly interconnected.
Understood. On the other hand, I can't help but imagine it from the standpoint of the employees who have to deal with the collateral damage from their manager's decision to outsource. And there's no reason at all to believe that the pain is confined to American companies that outsource. If your company outsourced IT, it's probably gonna suck, regardless of your native language.
The solution of American companies outsourcing IT overseas is not for other countries to outsource here. That's like hammering your pinky so your thumb feels better in comparison.
It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly.
I think you missed the joke...
I'm living the joke. Yes, I'm well aware that the current trend is for foreigns to use names appropriate for the country they're supporting. Some don't, and conversations go more like:
"Hello this is Anantharaman, how may I be helping you today?"
"Well, Aratha..."
"Anantharaman."
"Umm, Anaratharam..."
"Anantharaman"
"I'm just gonna call you 'Fred', ok?"
The hardest part of a service call should not be communicating with the helpdesk.
Honestly there's a whole lot of the Tolkien universe left to go and I honestly don't mind them making movies out of it; however, I do wish that they wouldn't drag the Hobbit out so much, especially when there're stories such as the Silmarillion that would be incredibly amazing to see done.
Agreed, there's a lot of the Tolkien universe than most people know about. But I don't think the idea is to drag the novel The Hobbit out to three movies. I've read elsewhere that the intent is to dip into the LOTR appendices and cover the larger history leading up to Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit was a child's story told from Bilbo's point of view. I think Jackson has something larger in mind. Tolkien reportedly had something larger in mind, and had started to re-write the story partially contained in The Hobbit, but never finished it.
Unfortunately Jackson doesn't have rights to the Quest of Erebor -- that's owned by Tolkien's son Christopher, and he appears to be completely opposed to any film based on his father's work. So all they have is the rights that Tolkien sold when he was alive -- The Hobbit and LOTR. Fortunately, a lot of the earlier story is contained in the part at the end of LOTR that almost nobody read.
I think the main difference between this and Star Wars is that Jackson is not pulling the story out of his ass. At least, not all of it.
As to The Silmarillion.... I'm sorry, it put me to sleep. And I'm saying this from the standpoint of having read every word of LOTR several times, including the appendices. From a storytelling standpoint, it was more interesting to have a story set in the last days of that age, where heroic and villainous acts are overshadowed by the monstrous acts of an earlier time, and characters struggle amid the tired ruins of a world that contained characters so much larger than they.
Of course this get better when they call the support number and hear:
"Hello... I.T. support center. This is Joe-Bob, uh, I mean, uh, Pedro. How can I help ya'all?"
It's not the country. A "peggy" is a "peggy" if it's in Poland, India, Mexico or Ackerly. Outsourcing sucks not because it's foreign, but because the business model necessitates having unskilled labor manning the phones. This can happen anywhere.
That strikes me as the top 5 reasons not to outsource anywhere.
We are getting off topic. I'm happy to stipulate that some people don't need conventional wired internet access at all. Either getting their access from city-supplied wireless, or tethered to their phone, or hotspot from the phone, or using a neighbor's unsecured wifi, or stealing from the McDonald's across the alley.
My original contention is that "most of us are going to have internet anyway, so whether it can be bundled with cable is immaterial". We could argue about whether "most" is accurate (I think it is) but that's not really the point -- the point is, whether wired internet can be bundled with cable, is not really a feature. If you don't use wired internet at all, that becomes even more true.
I personally don't "have to have" a smartphone. It's required for work and provided by my company. I work from home often, and the amount of data that has to transfer between my workstation at home and my place of business is too large to make smartphone tethering or hotspot practical. Or am *I* missing something?
Ghost. I gettit. guffaw.
I'm sticking to Checkers.
She's 18, and now knows the combination. Seems to have worked out ok.
No solution is perfect. But issuing a safe (per TFA) that will open if dropped is inadequate by most standards.