Some day, when the works have gone into the public domain, there may be writers who successfully turn their hand into finishing the pieces from Tolkien's mythology. Sadly, most of us will not live to see that day.
I have never understood this Geek obsession with derivative works.
We do not need more of Middle Earth. We need writers of talent who have faith in their own creative vision.
While the Linux users are off using apt-get to download all their packages, Windows users have to return to the store to buy their Anti-virus software, Office packages, games etc.
WalMart markets AOL Dial-Up Essentials to its senior, rural and small town customers who can't afford or can't get broadband service.
The gPc shipped without a working modem.
It was sold without a link to a matching printer.
There wasn't a hint in the adds that additional free software was available online, much less how to download it. Linspire has been telling people for years that this is not the way to market the "alternative OS."
Walmart is the world's largest retailer - notorious for playing hardball with its suppliers. The chain has tried time and time again to make OEM Linux mass market only to come up empty.
For over twenty-five years the retailer and direct seller have cried all the way to the bank selling the MSDOS and Windows PC.
The Windows PC at retail is solidly middle class.
Buyers price PCs like appliances and in overwhelming numbers they chose the mid-line product.
67 cents of every new dollar spent on PC software goes to MS Office. Games like GTA and Bioshock are worth more than pocket change. The Vista PC isn't shelved far from the digital camera, the HDTV and the XBox 360.
More importantly though, part of the money you're paying to replace Vista with Ubuntu goes to Microsoft, which allows them to further their monopoly. Do you really feel good about doing that?
You won't be replacing Vista, you will be dual-booting, You will be buying a machine with extended service and support. You will getting OEM Windows and Linux for the price of a single pair of ink jet cartridges.
You can be playing iTunes. Fallout. System Shock 2.
Don't Walmart bring products in and out all the time, I fail to see the "omg linux failure" here..
I have yet to see anyone post actual numbers for gPC sales through Walmart - a "sell out" tells me nothing if I don't know how many items you had for sale.
But this wouldn't be the first time, or the second, that OEM Linux has tanked at Walmart. Walmart has tried every incarnation of OEM Linux known to man and not one has gone the distance.
The failure of the $200 PC at Walmart is telling.
It is another black mark for the "web appliance." It suggests that the low-income buyer can't afford a PC at any price - or that they are paying garage sale prices for the older but still capable Windows PC.
It suggests that the middle class buyer, the non-technical user, doesn't trust the bottom-feeder - and let's be clear about this, it is Linux and not Vista Basic that is identified with the deep-discount no-name PC.
The PC with the Linux distro unfamiliar even to the Geek.
The PC tha ships without a functional modem. The PC that is sold without a matching printer.
If you develop for the XBox 360 you get the PC market as a bonus - and vice-versa. If you are in the big leagues you get a say in the evolution of DX10 hardware and software.
After ten years, there is a still a market for the boxed set of Half-Life 1 There is no incentive for the gamer to migrate to Linux if any game he has ever owned can play under XP and Vista with a minimum of tweaking.
The high end video card becomes the entry level card in two or three years. It will have a mature set of drivers. Gaming on a budget is perfectly feasible even under Vista.
Amazingly enough, Microsoft has been known to lie about some things.
Microsoft's numbers are given microscopic examination by the financial press and countless others. The Geek who pretends otherwise is just kidding himself.
That which may be trivial today could end up being very important in the long run. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one single painting in his lifetime, as he simply wasn't very popular.
If Van Gogh hasn't found his audience, who will write an article for as pop-oriented a resource as the Wikipedia?
Who will read it? Who will link to it?
What keeps it from being buried beneath tens of thousands of fawning essays written by friends of second, third, and fourth rate talents?
The Wikipedia's resources however large aren't limitless. How do you introduce a visual artist without including scans of his work for display at resolutions that won't reduce it to a postage stamp?
It went something like this: GM was the Biggest of the Big. Had a market share greater than all other automobile manufactures combined.
60% of Microsoft's revenues now come from outside the U.S.
Microsoft has been reporting 15% growth in revenues the U.S., 20 to 30% growth abroad each quarter. This isn't the picture of a company on the way down, it is the picture of a company on the way up.
Microsoft's strength in Europe is astonishing given the entrenched resistance, the take-no-prisoners mood of the EU bureaucracy.
Linux with a 0.65% market share. In the W3Schools OS Platform Stats Linux has seen 1% growth in four years, Vista 7% growth in one year.
The test suite is at best a snapshot of performance at a particular moment in time. It is rarely as objective a measure of the user's experience as its proponents claim.
You mean to tell me that the RIAA are NOT the only ones who launch big music careers?
Somebody better tell them quick, surely this means the end of their business model?
You do have some notion of how big and rich the video game industry has become? How many in the industry have a working relationship with the owners of the major labels?
It may surprise people to recall that it was Star Trek of all things which, after the Mobile Phone, made a big point to announce that Replicators (seen first here with media, and coming in 20 years with mainstream custom-form solids) would seriously thrash economic theory.
You want to understand the impact of replicators?
Ralph Williams' short story from 1958 "Business As Usual, During Alterations" throws buckets of cold water on the whole idea.
In Williams' world anyone can copy an Eames chair, the Calder mobile, but only one man can design it and only one shop can produce the master. In Williams' world, intellect and creativity remains scarce and valuable.
the Internet has to be taken out of the hands of the anarchists, the libertarians, and the State, and handed back to self-policing communities of experts.
and just how do you propose to make a state surrender its own interests and that of its prime constituencies to outside "communities" answerable to no one but themselves?
Back in the 19th Century, the most a legislator could do was maybe bring some funding back for a new post office, roads, or at most a military installation. Government, especially at the federal level, did little else.
You have just described a government that is wholly absorbed in building a national infrastructure.
If your constituents lived on the Atlantic or Gulf coasts, the Great Lakes, they wanted a lighthouse, a customs station, a ship canal. "Internal improvements" as they called it in those days.
This was never a penny-ante operation.
The federal government was employing 14,000 postal workers as early as 1841.
most people don't need them or will buy them except hardcore hi-def enthusiasts.
The fundamental difference between then and now is that the HD buyer begins with a substantial investment in HD video and multichannel digital audio.
He has practical large screen - wide screen - home projection. He has his choice of display technologies.
He can spend as much or as little as he chooses on theater sound.
If he choses the upscale HT receiver, HD radio, satelite radio, Internet radio, PC and iPod integration are likely to be part of the standard package.
The complete digital environment for home entertainment.
He has his choice of three video game consoles, none of which pump out less than 480p video. It's likely his HDTV can accept PC inputs directly and do its own upscaling of DVD video.
There is no intelligible reason to think why he shouldn't be upgrading to the mass market Profile 2 Blu-Ray player when it becomes available.
He won't be paying a premium for the Blu-Ray rental of 10,000 BC from Netflix. He won't need the Blu Ray drive or PS3 to access online content.
It's extremely difficult to take over a country where everything is decentralized and/or chaotic. You might inflict damage on one spot, but all the others just keep cooking along.
Russia falls to Lenin. The Third Republic to Hitler. China to Mao.
In the nineteeth century, how many enfeebled regimes in Asia and Africa fell without a whimper to the imperalist European?
In the twentieth, to the bandit, the warlord, the tinpot dictator of the banana republic?
You are lucky enough to live in a society that at least allows for the possibility of you having some choice as to what is done with your ideas
In the past the artist had a patron: The church. The state. The merchant prince. The patron's one rule is that the art he commissions remains unique. You do not embarrass Nero by building a knock-off of his golden house.
You should ask yourself why you want to be paid forever for something you do once.
Because it is something no one else has ever done - perhaps no one else could ever do. Harper Lee has written one novel. But that novel is To Kill A Mockingbird.
So if you happen to simultaneously invent something with someone who beats you to the patent office by 20 minutes, you're happy paying him for his intellectual property that you clearly stole (telepathically)?
It isn't a question of theft.
It is question of how society assigns rights and interests.
You snooze, you lose.
Elisha Gray filed his telephone patents three hours after Bell.
Gray - no innocent - was an electrical engineer with millions of dollars worth of patents in his name.
But it was Gray in the audience and Bell on stage when the telephone was demonstrated at the Centennial Fair in Philadelphia in June of 1876.
Gray standing next to the Emperor of Brazil who makes headlines when he shouts "My God, it talks!" Gray who drops out of the game and assigns his interests to Western Union.
Slashdot Mirror
I have never understood this Geek obsession with derivative works.
We do not need more of Middle Earth. We need writers of talent who have faith in their own creative vision.
WalMart markets AOL Dial-Up Essentials to its senior, rural and small town customers who can't afford or can't get broadband service.
The gPc shipped without a working modem. It was sold without a link to a matching printer.
There wasn't a hint in the adds that additional free software was available online, much less how to download it. Linspire has been telling people for years that this is not the way to market the "alternative OS."
You seem willing enough to peddle them here.
Walmart is the world's largest retailer - notorious for playing hardball with its suppliers. The chain has tried time and time again to make OEM Linux mass market only to come up empty.
For over twenty-five years the retailer and direct seller have cried all the way to the bank selling the MSDOS and Windows PC.
The Windows PC at retail is solidly middle class.
Buyers price PCs like appliances and in overwhelming numbers they chose the mid-line product.
67 cents of every new dollar spent on PC software goes to MS Office. Games like GTA and Bioshock are worth more than pocket change. The Vista PC isn't shelved far from the digital camera, the HDTV and the XBox 360.
You won't be replacing Vista, you will be dual-booting, You will be buying a machine with extended service and support. You will getting OEM Windows and Linux for the price of a single pair of ink jet cartridges.
You can be playing iTunes. Fallout. System Shock 2.
I have yet to see anyone post actual numbers for gPC sales through Walmart - a "sell out" tells me nothing if I don't know how many items you had for sale.
But this wouldn't be the first time, or the second, that OEM Linux has tanked at Walmart. Walmart has tried every incarnation of OEM Linux known to man and not one has gone the distance.
The failure of the $200 PC at Walmart is telling.
It is another black mark for the "web appliance." It suggests that the low-income buyer can't afford a PC at any price - or that they are paying garage sale prices for the older but still capable Windows PC.
It suggests that the middle class buyer, the non-technical user, doesn't trust the bottom-feeder - and let's be clear about this, it is Linux and not Vista Basic that is identified with the deep-discount no-name PC.
The PC with the Linux distro unfamiliar even to the Geek.
The PC tha ships without a functional modem. The PC that is sold without a matching printer.
Is this a trick question?
Net Applications gives Linux 0.65% of the market. In line with the Intel exec.
Operating System Market Share for February, 2008 W3Schools is more charitable. But in their stats Linux has shown 1% growth in four years, Vista 7% growth in one. OS Platform Stats
If you develop for the XBox 360 you get the PC market as a bonus - and vice-versa. If you are in the big leagues you get a say in the evolution of DX10 hardware and software.
After ten years, there is a still a market for the boxed set of Half-Life 1 There is no incentive for the gamer to migrate to Linux if any game he has ever owned can play under XP and Vista with a minimum of tweaking.
The high end video card becomes the entry level card in two or three years. It will have a mature set of drivers. Gaming on a budget is perfectly feasible even under Vista.
Microsoft's numbers are given microscopic examination by the financial press and countless others. The Geek who pretends otherwise is just kidding himself.
If Van Gogh hasn't found his audience, who will write an article for as pop-oriented a resource as the Wikipedia?
Who will read it? Who will link to it?
What keeps it from being buried beneath tens of thousands of fawning essays written by friends of second, third, and fourth rate talents?
The Wikipedia's resources however large aren't limitless. How do you introduce a visual artist without including scans of his work for display at resolutions that won't reduce it to a postage stamp?
60% of Microsoft's revenues now come from outside the U.S.
Microsoft has been reporting 15% growth in revenues the U.S., 20 to 30% growth abroad each quarter. This isn't the picture of a company on the way down, it is the picture of a company on the way up.
Microsoft's strength in Europe is astonishing given the entrenched resistance, the take-no-prisoners mood of the EU bureaucracy.
Operating System Market Share for February, 2008
Linux with a 0.65% market share.
In the W3Schools OS Platform Stats Linux has seen 1% growth in four years, Vista 7% growth in one year.
The test suite is at best a snapshot of performance at a particular moment in time. It is rarely as objective a measure of the user's experience as its proponents claim.
The Lost World - Jurassic Park
Medal of Honor
Secret Weapons Over Normandy
Call of Duty
Michael Giacchino
Somebody better tell them quick, surely this means the end of their business model?
You do have some notion of how big and rich the video game industry has become? How many in the industry have a working relationship with the owners of the major labels?
How about giving kdawson a weekend off?
You want to understand the impact of replicators?
Ralph Williams' short story from 1958 "Business As Usual, During Alterations" throws buckets of cold water on the whole idea.
In Williams' world anyone can copy an Eames chair, the Calder mobile, but only one man can design it and only one shop can produce the master. In Williams' world, intellect and creativity remains scarce and valuable.
Meaning you might have to put some effort into creating original content for the web instead of just posting - or plagiarizing - the work of others?
It interests me how the Geek lusts to rip off Steamboat Willie. While the real artist moves on and produces a Ratatouille.
porn exploits new technologies. it invests in nothing.
and just how do you propose to make a state surrender its own interests and that of its prime constituencies to outside "communities" answerable to no one but themselves?
YouTube criticised for gang rape video
Rape Video Posted on YouTube Not Removed for 3 Months
You have just described a government that is wholly absorbed in building a national infrastructure.
If your constituents lived on the Atlantic or Gulf coasts, the Great Lakes, they wanted a lighthouse, a customs station, a ship canal. "Internal improvements" as they called it in those days.
This was never a penny-ante operation.
The federal government was employing 14,000 postal workers as early as 1841.
What made the government grow
The successful Geek boycott seems to belong in the same Fantasyland where "Microsoft is dying" and "This is the Year of Linux on the desktop."
The fundamental difference between then and now is that the HD buyer begins with a substantial investment in HD video and multichannel digital audio.
He has practical large screen - wide screen - home projection. He has his choice of display technologies.
He can spend as much or as little as he chooses on theater sound.
If he choses the upscale HT receiver, HD radio, satelite radio, Internet radio, PC and iPod integration are likely to be part of the standard package.
The complete digital environment for home entertainment.
He has his choice of three video game consoles, none of which pump out less than 480p video. It's likely his HDTV can accept PC inputs directly and do its own upscaling of DVD video.
There is no intelligible reason to think why he shouldn't be upgrading to the mass market Profile 2 Blu-Ray player when it becomes available.
He won't be paying a premium for the Blu-Ray rental of 10,000 BC from Netflix. He won't need the Blu Ray drive or PS3 to access online content.
Russia falls to Lenin. The Third Republic to Hitler. China to Mao.
In the nineteeth century, how many enfeebled regimes in Asia and Africa fell without a whimper to the imperalist European?
In the twentieth, to the bandit, the warlord, the tinpot dictator of the banana republic?
The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 pretty much settled the question of how the new federal government would respond to an armed insurrection.
A Tax on Whiskey? Never!, Little Rock Boils Over
Gainful employment, a shower, a suit and a tie.
In the past the artist had a patron: The church. The state. The merchant prince. The patron's one rule is that the art he commissions remains unique. You do not embarrass Nero by building a knock-off of his golden house.
You should ask yourself why you want to be paid forever for something you do once.
Because it is something no one else has ever done - perhaps no one else could ever do. Harper Lee has written one novel. But that novel is To Kill A Mockingbird.
It isn't a question of theft.
It is question of how society assigns rights and interests.
You snooze, you lose.
Elisha Gray filed his telephone patents three hours after Bell.
Gray - no innocent - was an electrical engineer with millions of dollars worth of patents in his name.
But it was Gray in the audience and Bell on stage when the telephone was demonstrated at the Centennial Fair in Philadelphia in June of 1876.
Gray standing next to the Emperor of Brazil who makes headlines when he shouts "My God, it talks!" Gray who drops out of the game and assigns his interests to Western Union.