Since NDS fired him he's been consulting for two semiconductor companies and a manufacturer of dongle tokens, but he misses his life in electronic warfare. If NDS doesn't want him, he says he'd be happy to work for Nagrastar -- jumping sides once again.
"I could design a whole entire chip for them like I did for NDS," he says. "NDS thinks today that their technology is superior to everybody else's and it probably is, because they're 17 years ahead of Nagra technologically. But Nagra could catch up overnight if they used my services.
"I'm a very valuable asset as far as smart-card technology goes," he adds. "I know everything about (NDS) as far as their intellectual property models go."
Then again, its Wired magazine. They exist purely to create arrogant douchebags, dont they?
I have had varying experience with almost every major application released in the past decade and hands down Maya was the quickest to learn and most logically laid out. You just sorta work with it, and the interface is consistent across the board, which makes learning it alot easier. Plus the introduction of QWERT for Select, Transform, Rotate, Scale, Repeat last was simply brilliant and is now being copied by 3DS Max and Softimage. Ditto for the 3d manipulators for transforming/scaling/rotating on a give axis was simply brilliant and again, has been cloned by most other applications. Where it gets truly brilliant though is in having the same controls while in the UI, the timeline, the hypergraph, etc...
Blender is not intuitive, anything but. The iconic interface is confused and the interface is inconsistent. Of the various 3D apps I have had exposure to, only pre-XSI Softimage and Houdini are worse then Blender. Cinema 4D is brilliant for some things, as is Lightwave. Max is a nice app, but getting loaded down with blaot over the years. Again Maya is the best of the best IMHO, while straight modelers like Silo and Modo are pretty nice.
So, EDS folk: welcome to the company. Say goodbye to your sporks.
They can take my sporks, really they make a lousy spoon and an even worse fork. That said, they would have to pry the blates from my cold dead hands!
Well, considering the Dick Cheney had his house obscured... I suppose the answer is yes. Actually with Google maps the US government has a number of areas blacked out for security reasons.
1 - they are a minority goverment
2- in a legal system with a non confidence vote.
In other words, no matter what the Conservatives want to push down our throats, if atleast one of the other parties doesnt support it, it isnt going to happen. Not only that, but it could get the party bounced from power.
Imagine how much different the states would be right now if Bush had to work under similar rules? Then again, in Canada the Prime Minister really isnt near as powerful as the Presidents position (has become ).
[i]Seems more like they're taking their time on this one. More than likely, they'll wait long enough to include it as a default update push and once its ubiquitous on their platform THEN go ahead with changing across their sites. [/i]
Actually they are slowing rolling updates out. If you have Silverlight installed, you will get a pop up window asking if you would like to try out the new Silverlight version instead. I know for a fact Download Center has a Silverlight beta ( which btw, is much improved ) and I believe Live Search has one aswell... although, does anyone actually use Live Search?
Because Silverlight-based applications are cross-platform, they run in most modern Web browsers, including the following:
Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 Beta
Mozilla Firefox versions 1.5 and 2.0
Apple Safari version 2.0 and 3.0 Beta.
Currently it runs on Windows and Mac, with the Mono team apparently having a Silverlight port already up and running. Its not 100% cross platform, but its a hell of alot better then most previous Microsoft technologies. You have to keep in mind the technology is pretty young.
That applies to the origonal post, which frankly seems pretty trollish to start with. Silverlight is new and frankly 1.0 seemed more a proof of concept then an actual technology. All told, its been with us for less then a year. It is going to take MS time to get all their various pages ported over to silverlight... *IF* it even makes sense to do it at all. Just because something new and improved comes along, doesnt mean all that you already have needs to be re-written, something a great many programmers never seem to learn. That said, I already encounter alot of sites ( like Download Center ) that if you have Silverlight installed ask if you want to take part in the new version.
Instead, you should invest that money in your operating system, the APIs for your OS, the tools to make it easy to create applications for your OS. Make a serious real time OS. Unify your OSs. Architect them so that you can crank them out faster and safer. Make your driver model easy to understand and code for. DirectX seems to do good for you, but you had better keep up on it. The same is true of C#. Give these Java folks some stiff competition in language, libraries, and tools. Make the speed of your CLR rock. Make it vectorize, use the SIMD, automatically use multiple cores, etc.
This is kinda a silly mindset as you seem to think the limiting factor in all of the above is money. I highly doubt on any project within Microsoft, the limiting factor is ever budgetary. Throwing more money at something that is already sufficently funded has *ZERO* positive results and infact can cause a negative.
Frankly that is part of why MS was making such boneheaded deals... they have too much money and too much of a lock on their own markets. They need to expand into new areas, or die. This is why they are willing to lose 10 billion dollars on the Xbox and are willing to pay 32 billion for a washed out internet company. Well that, and Balmer is a fucking idiot.
No machinations, at least nothing subtle. Basically MS is walking from the deal because Yahoo threatened to do a long term alliance for search revenue with google, which would have completely ruined any possible value for Microsoft.
The audience for the letter wasnt Wang though, it was the shareholders. Lots of people in the Yahoo camp are pissed they didnt already accept the deal. Lots more are going to be pissed they turned down 33$ a share. Even more are going to be pissed when the stock price plummets on Monday, as its been going up on the assumption that the acquisition would happen. I wouldnt be suprised to see a single day 6 - 8 $ a share drop. That will lead to even more shareholder lawsuits and I don't doubt that in the near future Wang will be out on his ass, as his position was hanging by a thread already.
If this happens, MS could actually swoop back in and buy Yahoo for a discount ( see BEA/Oracle for example ) in the future. Otherwise Microsoft may have managed to damage a rival by causing such chaos and internal strife.
Personally as someone who holds MSFT shares and watched them drop 3$ the day this (horrible!!!) deal was announced, I say THANK GOD! My only prayer is that this is finally the thing that gets Balmer ousted. I can only pray.
Windows up till Windows Me was based around MS DOS, this is true.
That said, with the development of Win NT, they did a complete kernal re-write. Since NT 4, the MSDOS aspects of windows have been completely emulated.
Basically, everything you said became wrong after the release of Windows NT. Windows server versions since NT4 server are as multi thread/multi user friendly as any version of Unix.
those are wonderful proprietary tools I don't like using. Visual Studio was ok when I last used it (versions 4 and 5) and even.Net is quite powerful. I prefer open standards though, something that can't be locked down and something that I can extend myself. So I admit, I like Eclipse better, also it doesn't need Windows to run.
... what does and IDE have to do with open standards? Besides that, what is not open about Visual Studio in the first place? I suppose you can argue you don't have the source code to the IDE, but to 99.999% of developers, that wouldnt mean a damned thing. Otherwise, Visual Studio is remarkably open. Hell, I do Ruby and Python development along side C++ and C#. As to standards compliance, C++ is as compliant to the spec as it has ever been.
You dont like Eclipse better... you like Eclipse. By your own admission you havent used Visual studio in more then a decade ( Visual studio 97 ( version 5 ) was released in 1996... ). Dont write off a product you havent tried.
That number is complete bullshit unless there are some SERIOUSLY major flaws at the company, or they have some pretty obscure needs ( military level security protocols, triple redundancy on everything they do, etc... ) that bloat the support costs.
At the last company I worked, we were @ 750 desktops. Under our EA agreement CALS for XP + Office Pro + Exchange + Messenger + Sharepoint were under 1000$ per user. Actual desktop support was handled by two techs making 50K/year each, so I guess for 750 desktops would be 100,000 / 750, or say 133$ per user on average.
Beyond desktop licensing, the only other costs I can think of are about 20 Win2K3 server licenses ( for various reasons ) at about 1000$ a shot, various 5 SQL server per proc licenses at 5K a piece and then Exchange server... not sure the cost there, but it was minimal as we were on CAL based licensing. So, from a server side of things, that adds another 20,000 + 25,000 == 45,000 in server licensing, meaning 45,000/750 = 60$ per user.
So, we were looking at 1000$ + 133$ + 60$ or 1193$ per user for all servers, desktop software licensing and physical support!. Finally we had ( at our peak ) 4 net techs averaging say 60K annually and 2 dev/sql guys again around 60K per year. So even factoring IT staff into the equation into the formula adds 360,000K to the number, or 480$ per user.
All thats really missing from this equation is connectivity charges, physical server costs, backup, utilities like hydro, etc... which you are going to have to pay regardless to technology you go with... otherwise thats a pretty accurate budget for running a 750 user IT shop using Windows tech.
No where close to 12,000$, not even by a long shot.
Is that the pot calling the kettle black? If Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to steamroll their way to the front, I find it incredibly hypocritical of them to call someone else out on a counter.
True as that may be, it doesn't make their comment any less right. Just because IBM supports opensource doesn't by anymeans you should trust them more then Microsoft. Hell, in someways you should trust them less as they are directly involved in many projects and do have a definate agenda. Also, they do make a great deal of money from consulting so things like "ease of use" aren't exactly high on the agenda.
IBM has a pretty long history of doing some pretty terrible things, to the marketplace and their own employees. The fact they seem to be on your side is no reason at all to trust them.
I agree completely, the title is highly misleading. The cyclical nature of our industry does make me laugh though, its like every few years the balance of power between the network and the device shifts and WOW!!! a whole new way of computing!!! Repeat and rinse. How people fail to recognize its the same thing over and over, boggles my mind. Oddly though, the cell phone has basically been a thin client all along, and its only recently with Palms Treos, Windows smartphone, Apple iPhone's, etc... that things started trended towards thick clients again.
Lastly, atleast here in Canada, this idea is completely unrealistic anyways as the bottleneck is essentially the network not the device. A combination of high data charges, no flat rate billing plans and slow networks just doesn't mix well.
Its not just big corporate customers that want backward compatibility, its Mom & Pop that don't know shit about computers. To this day, people expect to be able to buy some Win95 shareware recipe application for 3.99$ in some bargain bin, take it home and run it without issues. For the most part, they can.
A ton of the "bloat" in Windows is in support of legacy applications and credit Microsoft in this regard... the fact that a new Vista install will still run most 20 year old DOS apps and 10 year old window apps is a pretty impressive feat. The same people that call for a rewrite or trim down of Windows will probrably be the first people to bitch and scream when backward compatibility is borked.
That said, with Microsoft announcing record profits a couple days ago... especially with todays economy, I highly doubt Vista can be called a 'dud'. Sounds more like another magazine hack with delusions of grandeur.
Thats a very console specific mindset. Horror video games have been around on the PC for a very long time. Games like Sanitarium, Phantasmagoria, Clive Barkers Undying, System Shock 1 and 2. Having recently played through the medical level of Bioshock, its very obvious to me which is scarier if done right. A few horror movies freaked me out and I have seen a ton. That said, the best horror video games ( like Bioshock ) had me absolutely wired.
It's easy to make a superficial comparison with other countries - particularly European - who have higher population densities. I'd like to see a study in which the figures for broadband access were weighted for density.
I don't disagree with you, however, your most apt comparison would probrably be Canada. A country with 1/10th the US population but more landmass by far and still a higher broadband penetration. Then again, part of that stems from last mile phone service being (previously )semi public. Now that Bell is a private company, we are starting to see more and more rural communities get the shaft. That said, the consumer can always opt to pay the last mile costs, unlike this article.
Outside that, this entire article is bunk. I moved to the country without looking in advance and *GASP* the infrastructure isn't as good. Well gee, boo hoo.
Via isnt as bad as they were and for a time being, were the best (only?) chipset choice if you went the AMD route. In 2001 or so, they acquired Cyrix and in 2006 they acquired Savage ( S3 ), the graphics company.
So... to answer your question... I havent a clue. That said, they have had a fair injection of new blood and fair success in the AMD chipset market, so I would think they are improved from what they used to be. Plus, IMHO both Intel and AMD seem to have hit a wall allowing space for Via to grab some marketshare.
Woz has this special ability, he is universally liked and respected. Apple fans worship him, while PC fans still respect him. Look at all the other big names in the industry, like Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Torvalds, Schwartz, etc... and there is always something you can find to dislike them for. Not Woz though, nobody dislikes him.
Its too bad he isnt more actively involved in the industry these days. Then again, thats probrably a good part of why he is so liked!
Wow lots of people in IT are serious fucking sucks. Grow a set man.
You are comparing IT to Coal Mining?!?!?! Eghads man.
More then anything, you probrably just have a bad job. Get a new one. I can tell you from all my experience working in various different markets ( Toronto, Dallas and Montreal ), in every case I was able to find a job that paid a good wage, with reasonable hours. Yes, I dont sit in a bean bag to do my work nor do I have free beer in the cooler. Yes, I cant go to work in torn jeans and a Slayer t-shirt. Thing is, guess what? Neither can 95% of all other professions. Get over it, or start your own company.
This is a problem with IT. So many people that flock to it are so malfunctioning in a social setting. The things they rail against, people in almost every other profession would laugh about. Or worse, that anti-social tendancy is exactly what leads to IT being put in a seperate sitting place and not included in normal activities.
In our case, atleast with XP/2000, we were a 2000 shop at the time, but OEMs shipped with XP. So, basically, we would get a computer in, clear it and install 2000 instead. Same deal here, just a generation later. Not really sure what the big deal is though, atleast in Canada, an XP license allowed you to downgrade to 2000, as an Office 2k3 license would permit you to install 2000 if you preferred.
You know, I have never once considered working at google. The free gourmet lunch thing... yeah, thats great. All of the perks and status attached, thats great too. Yet, at the end of the day, im really more interested in family time then I am work time. I work to live, not the other way around.
That said, give me a Natalie Portman clone and im in! Who needs family time when you have Natalie Portman?!?!
Slashdot Mirror
I mean...
Since NDS fired him he's been consulting for two semiconductor companies and a manufacturer of dongle tokens, but he misses his life in electronic warfare. If NDS doesn't want him, he says he'd be happy to work for Nagrastar -- jumping sides once again. "I could design a whole entire chip for them like I did for NDS," he says. "NDS thinks today that their technology is superior to everybody else's and it probably is, because they're 17 years ahead of Nagra technologically. But Nagra could catch up overnight if they used my services. "I'm a very valuable asset as far as smart-card technology goes," he adds. "I know everything about (NDS) as far as their intellectual property models go."
Then again, its Wired magazine. They exist purely to create arrogant douchebags, dont they?
I have had varying experience with almost every major application released in the past decade and hands down Maya was the quickest to learn and most logically laid out. You just sorta work with it, and the interface is consistent across the board, which makes learning it alot easier. Plus the introduction of QWERT for Select, Transform, Rotate, Scale, Repeat last was simply brilliant and is now being copied by 3DS Max and Softimage. Ditto for the 3d manipulators for transforming/scaling/rotating on a give axis was simply brilliant and again, has been cloned by most other applications. Where it gets truly brilliant though is in having the same controls while in the UI, the timeline, the hypergraph, etc...
Blender is not intuitive, anything but. The iconic interface is confused and the interface is inconsistent. Of the various 3D apps I have had exposure to, only pre-XSI Softimage and Houdini are worse then Blender. Cinema 4D is brilliant for some things, as is Lightwave. Max is a nice app, but getting loaded down with blaot over the years. Again Maya is the best of the best IMHO, while straight modelers like Silo and Modo are pretty nice.
So, EDS folk: welcome to the company. Say goodbye to your sporks. They can take my sporks, really they make a lousy spoon and an even worse fork. That said, they would have to pry the blates from my cold dead hands!
Can a country do this?
Well, considering the Dick Cheney had his house obscured... I suppose the answer is yes. Actually with Google maps the US government has a number of areas blacked out for security reasons.
Two key differences...
1 - they are a minority goverment
2- in a legal system with a non confidence vote.
In other words, no matter what the Conservatives want to push down our throats, if atleast one of the other parties doesnt support it, it isnt going to happen. Not only that, but it could get the party bounced from power.
Imagine how much different the states would be right now if Bush had to work under similar rules? Then again, in Canada the Prime Minister really isnt near as powerful as the Presidents position (has become ).
[i]Seems more like they're taking their time on this one. More than likely, they'll wait long enough to include it as a default update push and once its ubiquitous on their platform THEN go ahead with changing across their sites. [/i] Actually they are slowing rolling updates out. If you have Silverlight installed, you will get a pop up window asking if you would like to try out the new Silverlight version instead. I know for a fact Download Center has a Silverlight beta ( which btw, is much improved ) and I believe Live Search has one aswell... although, does anyone actually use Live Search?
Because Silverlight-based applications are cross-platform, they run in most modern Web browsers, including the following:
Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 Beta
Mozilla Firefox versions 1.5 and 2.0
Apple Safari version 2.0 and 3.0 Beta.
Currently it runs on Windows and Mac, with the Mono team apparently having a Silverlight port already up and running. Its not 100% cross platform, but its a hell of alot better then most previous Microsoft technologies. You have to keep in mind the technology is pretty young.
That applies to the origonal post, which frankly seems pretty trollish to start with. Silverlight is new and frankly 1.0 seemed more a proof of concept then an actual technology. All told, its been with us for less then a year. It is going to take MS time to get all their various pages ported over to silverlight... *IF* it even makes sense to do it at all. Just because something new and improved comes along, doesnt mean all that you already have needs to be re-written, something a great many programmers never seem to learn. That said, I already encounter alot of sites ( like Download Center ) that if you have Silverlight installed ask if you want to take part in the new version.
Instead, you should invest that money in your operating system, the APIs for your OS, the tools to make it easy to create applications for your OS. Make a serious real time OS. Unify your OSs. Architect them so that you can crank them out faster and safer. Make your driver model easy to understand and code for. DirectX seems to do good for you, but you had better keep up on it. The same is true of C#. Give these Java folks some stiff competition in language, libraries, and tools. Make the speed of your CLR rock. Make it vectorize, use the SIMD, automatically use multiple cores, etc.
This is kinda a silly mindset as you seem to think the limiting factor in all of the above is money. I highly doubt on any project within Microsoft, the limiting factor is ever budgetary. Throwing more money at something that is already sufficently funded has *ZERO* positive results and infact can cause a negative.
Frankly that is part of why MS was making such boneheaded deals... they have too much money and too much of a lock on their own markets. They need to expand into new areas, or die. This is why they are willing to lose 10 billion dollars on the Xbox and are willing to pay 32 billion for a washed out internet company. Well that, and Balmer is a fucking idiot.
No machinations, at least nothing subtle. Basically MS is walking from the deal because Yahoo threatened to do a long term alliance for search revenue with google, which would have completely ruined any possible value for Microsoft.
The audience for the letter wasnt Wang though, it was the shareholders. Lots of people in the Yahoo camp are pissed they didnt already accept the deal. Lots more are going to be pissed they turned down 33$ a share. Even more are going to be pissed when the stock price plummets on Monday, as its been going up on the assumption that the acquisition would happen. I wouldnt be suprised to see a single day 6 - 8 $ a share drop. That will lead to even more shareholder lawsuits and I don't doubt that in the near future Wang will be out on his ass, as his position was hanging by a thread already.
If this happens, MS could actually swoop back in and buy Yahoo for a discount ( see BEA/Oracle for example ) in the future. Otherwise Microsoft may have managed to damage a rival by causing such chaos and internal strife.
Personally as someone who holds MSFT shares and watched them drop 3$ the day this (horrible!!!) deal was announced, I say THANK GOD! My only prayer is that this is finally the thing that gets Balmer ousted. I can only pray.
You seem to be confused.
Windows up till Windows Me was based around MS DOS, this is true.
That said, with the development of Win NT, they did a complete kernal re-write. Since NT 4, the MSDOS aspects of windows have been completely emulated.
Basically, everything you said became wrong after the release of Windows NT. Windows server versions since NT4 server are as multi thread/multi user friendly as any version of Unix.
those are wonderful proprietary tools I don't like using. Visual Studio was ok when I last used it (versions 4 and 5) and even .Net is quite powerful. I prefer open standards though, something that can't be locked down and something that I can extend myself. So I admit, I like Eclipse better, also it doesn't need Windows to run.
... what does and IDE have to do with open standards? Besides that, what is not open about Visual Studio in the first place? I suppose you can argue you don't have the source code to the IDE, but to 99.999% of developers, that wouldnt mean a damned thing. Otherwise, Visual Studio is remarkably open. Hell, I do Ruby and Python development along side C++ and C#. As to standards compliance, C++ is as compliant to the spec as it has ever been.
You dont like Eclipse better... you like Eclipse. By your own admission you havent used Visual studio in more then a decade ( Visual studio 97 ( version 5 ) was released in 1996... ). Dont write off a product you havent tried.
That number is complete bullshit unless there are some SERIOUSLY major flaws at the company, or they have some pretty obscure needs ( military level security protocols, triple redundancy on everything they do, etc... ) that bloat the support costs.
At the last company I worked, we were @ 750 desktops. Under our EA agreement CALS for XP + Office Pro + Exchange + Messenger + Sharepoint were under 1000$ per user. Actual desktop support was handled by two techs making 50K/year each, so I guess for 750 desktops would be 100,000 / 750, or say 133$ per user on average.
Beyond desktop licensing, the only other costs I can think of are about 20 Win2K3 server licenses ( for various reasons ) at about 1000$ a shot, various 5 SQL server per proc licenses at 5K a piece and then Exchange server... not sure the cost there, but it was minimal as we were on CAL based licensing. So, from a server side of things, that adds another 20,000 + 25,000 == 45,000 in server licensing, meaning 45,000/750 = 60$ per user.
So, we were looking at 1000$ + 133$ + 60$ or 1193$ per user for all servers, desktop software licensing and physical support!. Finally we had ( at our peak ) 4 net techs averaging say 60K annually and 2 dev/sql guys again around 60K per year. So even factoring IT staff into the equation into the formula adds 360,000K to the number, or 480$ per user.
All thats really missing from this equation is connectivity charges, physical server costs, backup, utilities like hydro, etc... which you are going to have to pay regardless to technology you go with... otherwise thats a pretty accurate budget for running a 750 user IT shop using Windows tech.
No where close to 12,000$, not even by a long shot.
Is that the pot calling the kettle black? If Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to steamroll their way to the front, I find it incredibly hypocritical of them to call someone else out on a counter. True as that may be, it doesn't make their comment any less right. Just because IBM supports opensource doesn't by anymeans you should trust them more then Microsoft. Hell, in someways you should trust them less as they are directly involved in many projects and do have a definate agenda. Also, they do make a great deal of money from consulting so things like "ease of use" aren't exactly high on the agenda.
IBM has a pretty long history of doing some pretty terrible things, to the marketplace and their own employees. The fact they seem to be on your side is no reason at all to trust them.
I agree completely, the title is highly misleading. The cyclical nature of our industry does make me laugh though, its like every few years the balance of power between the network and the device shifts and WOW!!! a whole new way of computing!!! Repeat and rinse. How people fail to recognize its the same thing over and over, boggles my mind. Oddly though, the cell phone has basically been a thin client all along, and its only recently with Palms Treos, Windows smartphone, Apple iPhone's, etc... that things started trended towards thick clients again.
Lastly, atleast here in Canada, this idea is completely unrealistic anyways as the bottleneck is essentially the network not the device. A combination of high data charges, no flat rate billing plans and slow networks just doesn't mix well.
Its not just big corporate customers that want backward compatibility, its Mom & Pop that don't know shit about computers. To this day, people expect to be able to buy some Win95 shareware recipe application for 3.99$ in some bargain bin, take it home and run it without issues. For the most part, they can.
A ton of the "bloat" in Windows is in support of legacy applications and credit Microsoft in this regard... the fact that a new Vista install will still run most 20 year old DOS apps and 10 year old window apps is a pretty impressive feat. The same people that call for a rewrite or trim down of Windows will probrably be the first people to bitch and scream when backward compatibility is borked.
That said, with Microsoft announcing record profits a couple days ago... especially with todays economy, I highly doubt Vista can be called a 'dud'. Sounds more like another magazine hack with delusions of grandeur.
What you are missing is Microsoft started paying out annual dividends starting in........... 2004! Plus some fairly aggressive stock buyback.
Frankly, their cash reserves have dwindled because simply put, sitting on 60 billion worth of cash is just dumb.
The auto industry is a TERRIBLE example to cite, as automation ( among other things ) has shrunk headcounts massively.
For example, the UAW ( United Auto Workers union ) had 1.5 million members in 1970 and have about 0.5 million members now.
Do have a reference for this? How is penetration measured?
Here
It is measured broadband per 100 persons.
Country DSL Cable Fibre/LAN Other Total Rank Total Subscribers
Denmark 19.6 9.4 2.6 0.4 31.9 1 1 728 359
Netherlands 19.5 12.0 0.4 0.0 31.8 2 5 192 200
Iceland 28.8 0.0 0.2 0.6 29.7 3 87 738
Korea 11.4 10.7 7.0 0.0 29.1 4 14 042 728
Switzerland* 18.8 8.8 0.0 0.9 28.5 5 2 140 309
Norway 21.7 3.8 1.5 0.6 27.7 6 1 278 346
Finland 23.5 3.5 0.0 0.3 27.2 7 1 428 000
Sweden* 16.0 5.2 0.0 4.8 26.0 8 2 346 300
Canada 11.4 12.3 0.0 0.1 23.8 9 7 675 533
Belgium 14.0 8.4 0.0 0.1 22.5 10 2 353 956
United Kingdom 16.5 5.1 0.0 0.0 21.6 11 12 993 354
Luxembourg 18.2 2.2 0.0 0.0 20.4 12 93 214
France 19.1 1.1 0.0 0.0 20.3 13 12 699 000
Japan 11.1 2.8 6.2 0.0 20.2 14 25 755 080
United States 8.5 10.3 0.3 0.6 19.6 15 58 136 577
Australia* 15.0 3.3 0.0 1.0 19.2 16 3 939 288
Austria 10.6 6.4 0.0 0.3 17.3 17 1 427 986
Germany* 16.4 0.5 0.0 0.1 17.1 18 14 085 232
Thats a very console specific mindset. Horror video games have been around on the PC for a very long time. Games like Sanitarium, Phantasmagoria, Clive Barkers Undying, System Shock 1 and 2. Having recently played through the medical level of Bioshock, its very obvious to me which is scarier if done right. A few horror movies freaked me out and I have seen a ton. That said, the best horror video games ( like Bioshock ) had me absolutely wired.
It's easy to make a superficial comparison with other countries - particularly European - who have higher population densities. I'd like to see a study in which the figures for broadband access were weighted for density.
I don't disagree with you, however, your most apt comparison would probrably be Canada. A country with 1/10th the US population but more landmass by far and still a higher broadband penetration. Then again, part of that stems from last mile phone service being (previously )semi public. Now that Bell is a private company, we are starting to see more and more rural communities get the shaft. That said, the consumer can always opt to pay the last mile costs, unlike this article.
Outside that, this entire article is bunk. I moved to the country without looking in advance and *GASP* the infrastructure isn't as good. Well gee, boo hoo.
Via isnt as bad as they were and for a time being, were the best (only?) chipset choice if you went the AMD route. In 2001 or so, they acquired Cyrix and in 2006 they acquired Savage ( S3 ), the graphics company.
So... to answer your question... I havent a clue. That said, they have had a fair injection of new blood and fair success in the AMD chipset market, so I would think they are improved from what they used to be. Plus, IMHO both Intel and AMD seem to have hit a wall allowing space for Via to grab some marketshare.
Woz has this special ability, he is universally liked and respected. Apple fans worship him, while PC fans still respect him. Look at all the other big names in the industry, like Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Torvalds, Schwartz, etc... and there is always something you can find to dislike them for. Not Woz though, nobody dislikes him.
Its too bad he isnt more actively involved in the industry these days. Then again, thats probrably a good part of why he is so liked!
Wow lots of people in IT are serious fucking sucks. Grow a set man.
You are comparing IT to Coal Mining?!?!?! Eghads man.
More then anything, you probrably just have a bad job. Get a new one. I can tell you from all my experience working in various different markets ( Toronto, Dallas and Montreal ), in every case I was able to find a job that paid a good wage, with reasonable hours. Yes, I dont sit in a bean bag to do my work nor do I have free beer in the cooler. Yes, I cant go to work in torn jeans and a Slayer t-shirt. Thing is, guess what? Neither can 95% of all other professions. Get over it, or start your own company.
This is a problem with IT. So many people that flock to it are so malfunctioning in a social setting. The things they rail against, people in almost every other profession would laugh about. Or worse, that anti-social tendancy is exactly what leads to IT being put in a seperate sitting place and not included in normal activities.
In our case, atleast with XP/2000, we were a 2000 shop at the time, but OEMs shipped with XP. So, basically, we would get a computer in, clear it and install 2000 instead. Same deal here, just a generation later. Not really sure what the big deal is though, atleast in Canada, an XP license allowed you to downgrade to 2000, as an Office 2k3 license would permit you to install 2000 if you preferred.
You know, I have never once considered working at google. The free gourmet lunch thing... yeah, thats great. All of the perks and status attached, thats great too. Yet, at the end of the day, im really more interested in family time then I am work time. I work to live, not the other way around.
That said, give me a Natalie Portman clone and im in! Who needs family time when you have Natalie Portman?!?!