I, for one, am totally not interested in these newfangled media formats, and I'm yet to hear of anyone in my circles who is.
You aren't the market.
The market are the families who paid $290 million USD to see Goblet of Fire in theaters and want the theatrical experience at home.
RCA introduced color television in 1954. It took ten years for color to gain significant market share. Digital HDTV has reached that threshold in under five years.
The current DVD resolution works just fine, thanks.
Not on the 40 and 50 and 60 inch screen. Which costs less in real terms than what your dad or grandad paid for his first 21 inch color TV.
It would be GREAT if no OS had more than 10%, maybe 15% of the installed base.
Been there, done that.
This is the world of the eight bit micro. The Apple II. The TRS-80. The Atari, The Ti 99/4. The Commodore 64. The Sinclair. No compatability in hardware or software, No economies of scale in mass production and distribution.
Why pay over £250 for a version of MS office that you can only install on one machine, when you can get OO for free and install on as many machines as you wont, and it available for Windows and Linux?
I have yet to meet an end user who has paid retail list for a legit copy of MS Office. There are simply too many alternatives:
Office Home. Retail boxed. Installs on three PCs. $125-150 No academic ID required.
Those of you who aren't using it are missing a trick or two!
The problem is, most office workers have five to ten years of experience with the MS Office suite. They know the tricks that work for them and they know that their skills are marketable.
Anti-Trust sentiment in the states is notoriously short-lived.
Because of Microsoft's illegal coercion tactics toward OEMs in the 90s, superior products weren't allowed to compete, and Microsoft cheated to achieve 95+% market share.
Microsoft won the battle because the commodity PC running MSDOS and later Windows was adaptable and cheap. Everyone found a use for it.
Microsoft has actually held back computing by about five years, altering the course of history. We should be farther ahead in the experiences of using a desktop computer.
What we have --- and it is the Wintel platform that made it happen --- is the personal computer as an everyday office tool and household appliance.
The Windows PC has become as a common a fixture of the middle class home as the gas stove, central heating, the bath tub, the flush toilet, the radio and tv set.
North Americans and Europeans fail to understand how vastly popular RealPlayer is in Asia. There have been some reports of over 75% of Indian computer users using RealPlayer, since it has very good support for languages such as Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, and Hindi. It also has superb support for Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and other Asian languages
if any of these congresspeople were early adopters of HDTVs that didn't buy the current version of HDCP, and they find out that their $10,000 plasma TVs are worthless for modern HDCP / HD-DVD / BLU-RAY, they're going to be pretty pissed off
It is amusing to watch how arguments play out here.
Half the posters to Slashdot will say that DVD resolution is "good enough." The other half will predict a mass rebellion against downsampling HD to (Gasp! Choke! Wheeze!) 960x540 and ignore the 20 GB or so of other goodies that can be pressed onto that single Blu-Ray disc.
Every law passed by the State with the honest and sincere intention of being for the public good turns out *in practise* to be to the public harm, while hugely benefitting a very small number of people
I'll remember that the next time I quote from The Bill of Rights.
Letting me interact with a virtual Depp or Knightly is Not Interesting. A game needs More than That.
The Mask of Zorro and Pirates of the Carribbean brought back from the dead once popular film genres that have been dormant since the 1950s.
What Pirates brings to the table is a mix of action, comedy and black magic. I'll not complain if an on-line game has the dramatic twists and turns of the best theme park rides.
I would assume that it costs money and requires licensing and such to get a driver signed. Doesn't this qualify as a form of extortion and abuse of Microsoft's monopoly? By requiring signed drivers, they're effectively forcing everybody to pay them an "extortion fee" in order for other companies to be able to make hardware for users to run their systems.
Grow up.
No one is being "forced" to build hardware for 95% of the world's PC market. They are there because that is where the money is.
The cost of a signed driver will be barely visible as a line item on page 36. Insignificant compared to the other barriers to entry in this market : engineering, production, marketing and sales.
I hate the fact that I have to download patches frequently, which are massive files and I'm still on a dial-up so they can take hours.
Microsoft releases most patches on the second Tuesday of each month.
The patches are generally small (under 1 MB) and can be automatically downloaded in the background. Let the program do its job and install when you are ready.
It's Ubuntu, GIMP, etc. that seem like bad names to me. Not only do they have no relation to the software, but they aren't words.
The problem is that sometimes they are words: Gimp has a very specific meaning in English. Its usage here looks too much like what passes for Geek humor.
And this is different from Apple's naming scheme how? iTunes, iPod, iLife, etc.
The difference is that you can read and talk about Apple's programs without sounding like a pimple-faced nerd rehearsing Klingon speech for a Star Trek costume play.
As long as they keep giving their software stupid names by sticking a "microsoft" or a "i" on the front of it this software will never appeal to anyone but the Windows and Mac OS zealots (a.k.a. "Least Common Denominator" users).
99% of the market for an office suite. or general productivity apps of any description whatsoever.
I'm still waiting for the day when people en masse wise up and say, "Keep your stuff- I'm not interested,"
But don't hold your breath.
Disney finds an audience in every generation. Harry Potter made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen and the Harry Potter franchise alone is worth a billion dollars to Time-Warner.
If DRM becomes as oppressive as the big media players seem to want it to be, then it will drive people away from platforms requiring it
More likely, I think, is that almost everyone will simply load a disk. watch the movie and that will be the end of it. Their first and last enounter with DRM.
They will care if they have to jump through hoops to get the same out-of-the-box experience every time they boot into Linux.
Managed copy protection for backups, home media servers, low-res downloads to portable devices, etc., etc. may be a little more complicated.
But probably not much worse than if the content was unprotected.
No, but there are many others who do want media content from the major studios and know that content isn't going to be produced, rented, or sold without protection.
That is the trade-off and calling it fascist isn't going to change things much.
Reality is the $1700 projection TV.
Which families are not buying to watch a BT screener. What they want is the Netflix or Blockbuster HD rental, the latest from Pixar.
With all the extras available on the 50 GB Blu-Ray disc.
The PC in the home is becoming increasingly media-oriented. Apple understands this. Micosoft understands this. Linspire understands this.
The OEM Linux install --- which is the only way to sell Linux to home users --- must be able to play DRM'd media out of the box.
This won't be true forever. Companies that pride themselves on quality have given Wally World the heave-ho, choosing to create lasting quality goods instead of cheap crap.
Walmart has experimented with upscale boutiques. mini-stores. If the chain wants to compete at the high end, it has the resources to do so.
The mass market generates so much cash that Henry Ford and later GM could easily out-engineer and under-cut their high-priced competitors. It is a lesson that has been repeated time and time again.
Hmm..so would it not be an option to, as a community, look more and more at the option of 'Open Hardware' as well?
now all you need is a chinese oem willing to commit to production for the miniscule hobbyist market while his competiors sell millions of units each year to Rogers, Comcast, etc.
Americans have left the cities for the suburbs (and now the "ex"urbs) over the past 50 years.
The middle class began moving out of the cities as soon as soon as commuter rail service, steam and electric lines, made it feasible. 1880-1900.
Sears, Roebuck sold suburban kit homes out of a catalog from 1911 to 1933.
$700 for a summer cottage, $4400 for a substantial colonial style house, in 1927. Sears would finance construction at 6%, no money down. 300,000 were built and many survive.
Gas and rubber rationing in World War Two was essential to keep the suburban commuter, whether skilled labor or white-collar worker, on the road.
Slashdot Mirror
You aren't the market.
The market are the families who paid $290 million USD to see Goblet of Fire in theaters and want the theatrical experience at home.
RCA introduced color television in 1954. It took ten years for color to gain significant market share. Digital HDTV has reached that threshold in under five years.
The current DVD resolution works just fine, thanks.
Not on the 40 and 50 and 60 inch screen. Which costs less in real terms than what your dad or grandad paid for his first 21 inch color TV.
Big box retail is important to Roakstar and there is no one bigger in that market than Walmart.
Tell that to Rockstar, after GTA: San Andreas.
It is not good news when your product is pulled from the shelves at Walmart.
Been there, done that.
This is the world of the eight bit micro. The Apple II. The TRS-80. The Atari, The Ti 99/4. The Commodore 64. The Sinclair. No compatability in hardware or software, No economies of scale in mass production and distribution.
I have yet to meet an end user who has paid retail list for a legit copy of MS Office. There are simply too many alternatives:
Office Home. Retail boxed. Installs on three PCs. $125-150 No academic ID required.
Those of you who aren't using it are missing a trick or two!
The problem is, most office workers have five to ten years of experience with the MS Office suite. They know the tricks that work for them and they know that their skills are marketable.
When there are 95 PCs out there for every 5 Macs, which do you think will lose their value quicker?
This has a lot of investors worried. The tail wagging the dog.
Anti-Trust sentiment in the states is notoriously short-lived.
Because of Microsoft's illegal coercion tactics toward OEMs in the 90s, superior products weren't allowed to compete, and Microsoft cheated to achieve 95+% market share.
Microsoft won the battle because the commodity PC running MSDOS and later Windows was adaptable and cheap. Everyone found a use for it.
Microsoft has actually held back computing by about five years, altering the course of history. We should be farther ahead in the experiences of using a desktop computer.
What we have --- and it is the Wintel platform that made it happen --- is the personal computer as an everyday office tool and household appliance.
The Windows PC has become as a common a fixture of the middle class home as the gas stove, central heating, the bath tub, the flush toilet, the radio and tv set.
Nielson is interested in sites that draw the kind of numbers OSTG can only dream of.
an unexpected, and interesting response.
I would say everyone whose life isn't centered around Slashdot. Rhapsody. Real Arcade. Real Networks does rather well in its chosen markets:
RealNetworks, Google Shares Rise
It is amusing to watch how arguments play out here.
Half the posters to Slashdot will say that DVD resolution is "good enough." The other half will predict a mass rebellion against downsampling HD to (Gasp! Choke! Wheeze!) 960x540 and ignore the 20 GB or so of other goodies that can be pressed onto that single Blu-Ray disc.
I'll remember that the next time I quote from The Bill of Rights.
you want to keep that house, bring the wiring up to code
The Mask of Zorro and Pirates of the Carribbean brought back from the dead once popular film genres that have been dormant since the 1950s.
What Pirates brings to the table is a mix of action, comedy and black magic. I'll not complain if an on-line game has the dramatic twists and turns of the best theme park rides.
it probably will be a WoW Clone. With Boats
And this would be bad because...?
Grow up.
No one is being "forced" to build hardware for 95% of the world's PC market. They are there because that is where the money is.
The cost of a signed driver will be barely visible as a line item on page 36. Insignificant compared to the other barriers to entry in this market : engineering, production, marketing and sales.
Microsoft releases most patches on the second Tuesday of each month.
The patches are generally small (under 1 MB) and can be automatically downloaded in the background. Let the program do its job and install when you are ready.
The problem is that sometimes they are words: Gimp has a very specific meaning in English. Its usage here looks too much like what passes for Geek humor.
The difference is that you can read and talk about Apple's programs without sounding like a pimple-faced nerd rehearsing Klingon speech for a Star Trek costume play.
99% of the market for an office suite. or general productivity apps of any description whatsoever.
But don't hold your breath.
Disney finds an audience in every generation. Harry Potter made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen and the Harry Potter franchise alone is worth a billion dollars to Time-Warner.
If DRM becomes as oppressive as the big media players seem to want it to be, then it will drive people away from platforms requiring it
More likely, I think, is that almost everyone will simply load a disk. watch the movie and that will be the end of it. Their first and last enounter with DRM.
They will care if they have to jump through hoops to get the same out-of-the-box experience every time they boot into Linux.
Managed copy protection for backups, home media servers, low-res downloads to portable devices, etc., etc. may be a little more complicated.
But probably not much worse than if the content was unprotected.
No, but there are many others who do want media content from the major studios and know that content isn't going to be produced, rented, or sold without protection.
That is the trade-off and calling it fascist isn't going to change things much.
Reality is the $1700 projection TV.
Which families are not buying to watch a BT screener. What they want is the Netflix or Blockbuster HD rental, the latest from Pixar.
With all the extras available on the 50 GB Blu-Ray disc.
The PC in the home is becoming increasingly media-oriented. Apple understands this. Micosoft understands this. Linspire understands this.
The OEM Linux install --- which is the only way to sell Linux to home users --- must be able to play DRM'd media out of the box.
Walmart has experimented with upscale boutiques. mini-stores. If the chain wants to compete at the high end, it has the resources to do so.
The mass market generates so much cash that Henry Ford and later GM could easily out-engineer and under-cut their high-priced competitors. It is a lesson that has been repeated time and time again.
now all you need is a chinese oem willing to commit to production for the miniscule hobbyist market while his competiors sell millions of units each year to Rogers, Comcast, etc.
The middle class began moving out of the cities as soon as soon as commuter rail service, steam and electric lines, made it feasible. 1880-1900.
Sears, Roebuck sold suburban kit homes out of a catalog from 1911 to 1933.
$700 for a summer cottage, $4400 for a substantial colonial style house, in 1927. Sears would finance construction at 6%, no money down. 300,000 were built and many survive.
Gas and rubber rationing in World War Two was essential to keep the suburban commuter, whether skilled labor or white-collar worker, on the road.