Re:Trying to answer the question that was asked...
on
How Cheap Can A PC Be?
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· Score: 1
Yeah, 10 years was a stretch, but I do have a scanned newspaper clipping from 1989 (15 years ago) advertising a Tandy 386, 20mhz, 2mb ram, capable of running Dos 3.3, MS OS/2, and SCO Xenix, for $8499, monitor and mouse not included.
Re:Trying to answer the question that was asked...
on
How Cheap Can A PC Be?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Could we break $100? Sure, follow the curve of hardware prices over the past 10 years... Starting at upwards of $7000-8000 for a home PC, which then dropped to $4k-5k a few years later, which then went to $2-3k not long after, to the magic $1k, and now to sub $500. Hardware is getting cheaper and faster, no doubts there. The problem is it will eventually level off. Hardware is getting cheaper because manufacturing processes have improved dramatically, in efficiency and design. Machines can be relatively easily retooled to produce the next increment of CPU, hard drive platers are increasing density (while the rest of the housing and electronics remains essentially the same), memory is still floating in that non-fixed prize zone (but still relatively affordable compared to a few years ago). Yes, costs are going down. Will costs dip below a certain point? No. Despite how much you refine your manufacturing processes, you will always have to pay for power/electricity to run your machines, workers to run the machines, not to mention the designers and architects of the components themselves.
Yes, software has upfront costs, with the planning, development, marketing, etc. However, once it's developed and in a useable form, the cost of replication and distribution is very small. Couple of dollars for CD pressing and packaging. And of course patching (which in Microsoft's case seems to be a bigger problem than the plague, but whether that cost should be passed on to the consumer after a certain point of excess is another question). Doesn't hardware have the same upfront costs? Doesn't someone have to design the motherboard/cpu/hard drive/whatever? Doesn't someone have to design the machines to manufacture said components? Don't the raw materials and processing/refining cost something? Heck, if I pay $100 for a hard drive, I have something worth $100 in my hand to hold. If I pay $450 for a copy of MS Office, all I have in my hand is a 50 cent disc and some numbers/letters. Yes, I know the software has value when I sit down and type with it, but tangible property will always have more physical value than intellectual property, simply because there's a physical representation of the money spent.
Anyone who thinks physical computing items will be a suppliment to intellectual property, and not vice-versa (particularly if it's in your interest to wish so, or it's in your line of work to think so), has lost touch with the reality of the industry, despite what financial weight they have to throw around to see it happen.
You're probably thinking of the Ibot wheelchair, which debuted before the Segway, but still invented by Dean Kamen and DEKA. Same/Similar technology, but differant company. The Centaur is a concept thrown out by Segway engineers which they thought would be fun to build. It's more of a "hey this might be cool" kind of thing they built for the heck of it, they have no plans to market/manufacture these things. The Ibot on the other hand, is a product that will be marketed eventually.
I managed to get to the documentation page by refreshing rapidly. The manual is avaliable online, and hosted on a differant server. It's a 1.7 mb download, but includes screenshots and information.
My point was that for all it's inefficiencies, it's nice to see an automobile capable of feeding itself. I know it's impossible to obtain enough power to electrolyze enough hydrogen to run forever (barring a small nuclear reactor), but at least it's capable of refueling itself, even if only to a limited degree. I rue the day cars come with mobile fuel refineries to turn oil into gasoline using solar energy.
If I'm not mistaken, internal combustion engines are far more practical for automobiles than electric motors (given efficiencies, torque/speed curves, etc, although I'm not entirely sure how hydrogen engines compare to gasoline on this front), but it's interesting to see electric energy applied towards generating fuel for combustion, rather than electromechanical motion. My question then becomes, how much hydrogen can be produced using the amount of power stored in batteries in current hybrid/electric cars?
The article also mentions if the hydrogen tanks are charged from an external source, it can go as far as a conventional vehicle. The big deal here is it's capable of producing it's own hydrogen/fuel, even if only a little bit at a time. If fuel stations were set up to use larger solar arrays than would fit on a car, or even power from the grid, much more fuel could be produced. If I'm not mistaken, the byproduct of hydrogen combustion is water, so assuming a closed system, it would theoretically have the capability/raw material to run for a good long time. So long as there's a source of electricity (solar, battery, generator on bike pedals), there's the potential to refuel itself. Imagine running out of gas, where all you have to do is wait a bit for the sun to do it's thing, or unpack a stationary bike and pedal for a while until you have enough hydrogen to get on your way. Or how about using an alternator to continuously generate power as the vehicle is moving? It still wouldn't be a whole lot of hydrogen generated, but heck, I don't see mobile oil refineries happening any time soon to generate gasoline on the fly.
Herein lies the catch, and the bullshit. Typically with adware/spyware/crapware installed, popups are self-spawning. You close one, some little javascript tells another to open. Eventually more than one will open. The result is layer upon layer of popups in slightly different places, where by double clicking one X in frustration will pass the second click to the popup conveniently placed directly under the first ad's close button, thereby "accepting" their EULA and installing whatever crapware they're peddling.
This ignores the issue of popups using javascript to disable the toolbars and window frame, simulating the titlebar as part of the ad itself, where by clicking the X, you click the ad, again accepting whatever sadistic eula is printed at the bottom, and allowing whatever crap to install itself.
Yes, many times the installation does boil down to some user clicking the "yes" button when prompted with a Windows systemesque popup claiming "you are infected with spyware, click yes to clean your computer." But others it's the clever placement and deceptive contents of an ad which throws even experienced and savvy users off their block, and once one crapware is in place, it's not long before it invites it's friends over for a party and your computer chokes itself beyond reasonable use.
Oftentimes the bullshit isn't in the software itself, but in the removal mechanism. If I notice a piece of software eating up my system resources, generating popups, sending an unreasonable amount of outbound traffic, first thing I want to do is head to the Add/Remove programs control panel, click "remove" and be done with it. I don't want to click Yes and No 4 times questioning why I want to uninstall, I don't want to enter randomly generated keys to uninstall, I don't want to hunt for registry keys and hidden files to manually uninstall, and I sure as hell don't want shit to reinstall upon reboot.
Any software to the contrary is in violation of my personal space within my computer, and should be liable for whatever time or money I spend removing it from my computer. EULAs be damned, if I install an application claiming to display weather, that's all I expect it to do. If I notice 4 or 5 other applications installed along with it, whose installations weren't made obvious to me at the time of the original app's installation (no, fine print EULAs are not obvious notification), the publisher of the original application should be held liable.
Disclaimer: I run linux at home, but work for a small computer repair shop. Roughly 90% of the jobs we do are cleaning spyware. Just today I ran into a little bugger that replaced a built in winsock DLL with it's own mangled version, where it would generate popups and install AdDestroyer and Wintools on boot if an internet connection was present (Windows 98). Yes, the registry was cleared of ALL startup entries, the system.ini was thoroughly inspected, and all startup folders were empty. Task managed showed nothing but Explorer and Systray running. Yet so long as there was an internet connection, within 10 minutes, HijackThis would report wintools and addestroyer set to run on bootup, with the respective programs present in the program files folder, despite having been deleted from safe mode command prompt only via deltree.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I think that's bullshit. Bullshit for me to have to clean it over and over, and bullshit for the customer to have to pay for that cleaning over and over. (while good for business, I'm morally opposed.) There should be hefty fines/prison terms/death penalties handed out to software vendors who do not provide proper uninstallation procedures, or valid contact information upon installation of their software.
Why is it that comments negatively portraying a company are always modded up around here? There's two sides to every coin.
I've had an Archos Jukebox Recorder 10 for well over 5 years now, and haven't had any problems with it. I still get +/- 5 hours of continuous play out of the original NiMH rechargable batteries that came with the unit. I've taken it apart a few times (mostly to use it as an external USB enclosure to try salvaging files from a dead laptop drives), and never had any problems with shoddy solder joints or breaking anything putting the batteries back in. It's been a very solid unit, and survived many falls and trips around town in my backpack, all with the original IBM travelstar hard drive.
I'm tired of seeing all the "my thing broke so this company sucks" comments here, and felt like chipping in my positive experience with this particular product.
You're absolutely right, Microsoft does not lock-in customers by including IE, but most users are of the "use what's there" mentality, and aren't interested in much else. I've worked in a computer shop for 3 years, and from my experience I can say John Doe's biggest problem is simple and intentional ignorance to what else is happening in terms of OS/browser competition, nor is it his business to know. All he knows is he buys a computer to browse the 'net, check his email, and pay his solitaire. He doesn't know by using IE he's vulnerable to viruses, spyware. All he knows is a month after buying his shiney new computer, it's running slow with an excess of pop-ups. After I clean up all machines now, I install Firefox. There is a surprising number of people who don't understand what a "browser" is- when I tell people to use Firefox to browse the Internet, they ask if they should run it once a week, or if it's comperable to "that norton thing." Once they see it, all they know is to "click the orange and blue picture instead of the big blue E."
So no, Microsoft doesn't physically put a padlock on their software to prevent alternatives, but the common/casual user likes to make use of what's there, oblivious to what an alternative is, nevermind what the alternatives are.
I know this is a little late, but I didn't get a chance to read the responses to my post until tonight.
Look what Microsoft is doing with the Xbox- selling the hardware at a loss to try to push their way to market dominance with games. What's to say they won't come out with an MP3 player (or WMA player, whatever), and sell it for below cost (say 50$ for 20 gigs), just to inch their way into the downloadable tunes market?
I'll say that I agree, but want to explain a few things. I went to a private school from kindergarden to 5th grade, then moved, and attended a public middle school and a public high school. The contrast is astounding. I went from a school with no more than 20-23 students per grade level (and as a result, per class), to a school with over 150 kids per grade level (27-30 per class). In the private school, there was plenty of 1 on 1 attention, and generally students progressed at their own pace, and the teacher satisfactorily tended to each student's needs. In the public schools, generally the entire class pace is determined by the slowest student. The teacher will stop and explain a point in the lesson until everyone understands (much to the combined irritation/relief of the quicker students- irritation because of the repetition of hearing a point well understood the first time, and relief of an easy as cake class). Every teacher deals with this in a different way though- some will physically hold up the entire class, while the better teachers will politely request the student come in for a study hall or after school to better understand (naturally, not all students take up the option).
Fundamentally, I think the problems are such:
1) Teachers- Arguably underpaid, but don't fall into the "more money == better teachers" dichotomy. Yes, some will feel better teaching for more money, but others will see it as an opportunity to make more while slacking off. A great teacher will teach regardless of how much they get paid. I personally know many teachers who teach stictly because they love to- not because they need the money to survive (some have relatively wealthy spouses). Of course, that's not to say others don't need the money, but it really comes down to whether your enjoy what you do or not, but that applies to any profession, not just education. The underappreciated feeling may be a problem, but I've had quite a few teachers say if even one student comes up and thanks them after class for a good lesson, they feel great.
2) Parents- Too few, and too many. In my district, the problem is not that no one is involved, the problem is that those who are involved have a strict outlook on how things should be. There are always a core group of 10 or 12 parents at board of ed meetings dictating how they want things to be. Since the board hears no other voices, they try to implement (keyword try, doesn't always work) what this core group wants- often conflicting with what other parents want. Hence the problem- in a student collective geared at treating everyone equal (political correctness aside), you can never please everyone. Parents of art students will always want more money put into art classes, while parents of music students will want more money in music classes, or pick a class at random where students with highly vocal parents are actively involved by choice. Point being you will always have differing opinions on how things should be, and rarely will the conflict result in the best course of action for the students.
3) Students- perhaps the only variable which can never be accurately predicted. Every student is an individual- requires individual attention, has special needs, learns in a different way. The current expectation of public education is a "one size fits all" approach. A teacher is given a class of 20-something students (on average), and the expectation is all 20-something of those students walk out with something in their head, preferably the same something. As I said in my opening comment- teachers deal with this in differing ways- some stick to the one size fits all matra, holding up the whole class while one student tries to grasp the concept of factoring a quadratic equation (while the other students doodle in a notebook, chat with each other, throw pencils at the cieling, etc). Other teachers will take the one-on-one approach, and try to keep a balance between the quicker and slower students. This is where the whole "no child left behind" a
Isn't that the truth. I was putting gas in my car one day when a rather ditzy looking girl pulls up yapping on her phone. She hangs up, but immediately asks me why she can't use her phone while filling up. I mentioned something about high power antennas igniting the gas (whether or not it's actually true), and she responds with "oh well, that's stupid. they should fix gas so it won't do that."
Are people these days really so reliant on cell phones that they can't put them down for 5 minutes to fill up their gas tank or order food, or watch a movie, or drive down the freeway, or take a flight? I have a cell phone, but it only gets used once or twice a day, for no more than 5 minutes at a time. Makes me wonder how people survived 10 years ago, or even before the widespread growth of cell phone usage. Sad really.
Theoretically it won't take long to get a foothold. Internet Explorer isn't the most widely used browser because it is "the best," but because it came bundled with Windows- it's already there for people to use. The same may happen with this, if either 1) it's bundled with the retail/OEM versions of XP with Service Pack 2, or 2) with Automatic Update (and install) conveniently turned on by default on most XP SP2 machines, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it pop up out of seemingly no where. Imagine all those people who use Internet Explorer "because it's there" suddenly see a "buy legal music online from Microsoft!" icon suddenly appear on the desktop. Why hassle downloading and installing iTunes, when it's already there?
I usually try to distance myself from the tinfoil hat crowd, but given Microsoft's history of "success" in the desktop software market, it wouldn't at all surprise me to see this hapen.
I'd guess the big reason for bundling is the price of HP's PCs. People usually have a set budget when they go out to buy a computer. When buying from Apple, people know they'll be spending around or over $1,000 for a decent machine, which for most people wouldn't leave much left over for accessories. If you set a budget of $1,000, and you come accross the $499 HP PC, you have $501 left over from what you originally planned on spending, so why not bundle in a cute little useful accessory? You'll still be under your budget, but feel like you're getting much more. It's easier to make a bundle when working with cheaper goods- more people would be more likely to take up the offer.
If I had mod points, and comments could go higher than +5, I'd mod this up. I completely agree, that is how government should be. This particular day in age though, I fear it's too late, and much of the evils mentioned have already come true.
The problem is these corporations are made up of people. These people tend to be selfish, overbearing individuals who care for nothing more than short term profits and purchasing their 4th Mercedes SUV, despite the conditions of their fellow man. To further the problem, these people have used their fortune and power to influence government to protect their personal/corporate interests, on the basis of acquisition of wealth (via the farce of consumers hurting their business through illicit means, or in the case of this article, protecting their ever-so-precious IP).
Essentially, these corporate overlords have convinced the government that they are the threatened party, and that the commonfolk are the threat to their (both the corporate overlord and politician) respective positions, in a "I'll pick the fleas out of your hair if you scratch my back" type of bargain.
So the problem is, yes, economy exists to benefit the people, not the other way around. But the corporate suits have government convinced that they are the people, and anyone otherwise is a flea in the way of progress. I do agree 100% with everything you say, but I think the dark days of government are already here, between these types of noncompete agreements and bohemeths like the RIAA, SCO, and Disney throwing their weight around when thes of government are already here, between these types of noncompete agreements and bohemeths like the RIAA, SCO, and Disney throwing their weight around when they don't get theiy don't get their way, like Sauron with the Ring of Power, destroying anything in the path of conquest and profit. And yet, the more wealthy and powerful they grow, the more they'll crave, ad infinitum.
I'd say it has until a more widely accepted, nicer looking, easier to use, better sounding alternative is designed. Given the general acceptance of physical music playback formats (phonograph -> 8-track -> cassette -> CD -> mp3/ogg/aac/(insert favorite codec here) -> ??), and the mainstream life of each format (between 5 and 15 years) and the time it takes to develop a better method of playback, I'd say it's difficult to say when we're going to see the end days of mp3 players. The iPod has only been around for about 3-4 years. I'd say there are still plenty of days left for iPods and other such easy to use, non crippled mp3 players. And until one is designed that bests the iPod, I think it will remain the undisputed champion of this particular market.
Yes, and this "better preparation" is coming in the form of XP SP2. However, as a result, a number of the "broken" sites on the Internet will no longer function in IE either, as security features already present in Firefox are added to IE.
From what I've read so far, the compatibility of Internet Explorer will most likely drop down to or even a bit lower than that of Firefox, come service pack 2.
Most strange place must have been backstage during a production of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya." Oddly enough the play is set in Soviet Russia, so I got a chuckle out of all the jokes on Slashdot that night.
Last I heard/saw, the 6800 still needed 2 molex connectors, and took up two expansion slots, sounded like a jet engine, and required a minimum 400 watt power supply. The ATI card uses much quieter cooling, requires one slot, and one power connector. For a machine that's on 24 hours a day in the same room I sleep in, noise is a big factor. If I needed the caliber performance of the latest/greatest card, and had an extra 400 to spend on a video card who's price will most likely be half that in 6-8 months, the extra $100 would be worth it, when factors other than an extra 3-5 fps come into play.
That's not to say I don't respect Nvidia, I swapped out a Radeon 9700 pro for a GF4 Ti4200 in this box, because the linux drivers from Nvidia gave me slightly better performance and much more stability in most of the OpenGL apps I'm running.
Which brings up another question- how will the native linux version of Doom III compare to it's windows counterpart?
What is the odds this is a ploy by Microsoft to "dirty" more programmers by introducing their code to a wider base. Then, when the next killer app for linux shows up, Microsoft shows up with a lawsuit claiming infringing code ala SCO.
Then again, how many MVPs write open source software to begin with...
While I have no love for Lindows, and certainly less for Microsoft, the settlement does seem like the most logical thing to do, in a purely business sense. Lindows/Linspire is struggling to make a name for itself in the Windows -> Linux market, and certainly needs money to sustain it's business. Now, with a case like this one here, is it more profitable to accept the settlement over a relatively trivial issue (read: not directly affecting business), or continue a legal battle with one of the largest, richset corporations in the world.
On the one hand, they make some quick cash to help their business grow. On the other, they fight against a company with enough money and legal resources to continue a trial for decades. It only makes sense that they take a profit over a loss, considering the legal fees involved with an extended trial.
My school's TV station (and bunches of other TV stations rebroadcasting news clips) get around this by blotting out the logo in the corner. If the content is freely distributable, the broadcaster can't do a thing as long as their logo is not visible, especially if a network broadcast is the only viable way to obtain publicly avaliable content (e.g. speeches, breaking news events, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, 10 years was a stretch, but I do have a scanned newspaper clipping from 1989 (15 years ago) advertising a Tandy 386, 20mhz, 2mb ram, capable of running Dos 3.3, MS OS/2, and SCO Xenix, for $8499, monitor and mouse not included.
Could we break $100? Sure, follow the curve of hardware prices over the past 10 years... Starting at upwards of $7000-8000 for a home PC, which then dropped to $4k-5k a few years later, which then went to $2-3k not long after, to the magic $1k, and now to sub $500. Hardware is getting cheaper and faster, no doubts there. The problem is it will eventually level off. Hardware is getting cheaper because manufacturing processes have improved dramatically, in efficiency and design. Machines can be relatively easily retooled to produce the next increment of CPU, hard drive platers are increasing density (while the rest of the housing and electronics remains essentially the same), memory is still floating in that non-fixed prize zone (but still relatively affordable compared to a few years ago). Yes, costs are going down. Will costs dip below a certain point? No. Despite how much you refine your manufacturing processes, you will always have to pay for power/electricity to run your machines, workers to run the machines, not to mention the designers and architects of the components themselves.
Yes, software has upfront costs, with the planning, development, marketing, etc. However, once it's developed and in a useable form, the cost of replication and distribution is very small. Couple of dollars for CD pressing and packaging. And of course patching (which in Microsoft's case seems to be a bigger problem than the plague, but whether that cost should be passed on to the consumer after a certain point of excess is another question). Doesn't hardware have the same upfront costs? Doesn't someone have to design the motherboard/cpu/hard drive/whatever? Doesn't someone have to design the machines to manufacture said components? Don't the raw materials and processing/refining cost something? Heck, if I pay $100 for a hard drive, I have something worth $100 in my hand to hold. If I pay $450 for a copy of MS Office, all I have in my hand is a 50 cent disc and some numbers/letters. Yes, I know the software has value when I sit down and type with it, but tangible property will always have more physical value than intellectual property, simply because there's a physical representation of the money spent.
Anyone who thinks physical computing items will be a suppliment to intellectual property, and not vice-versa (particularly if it's in your interest to wish so, or it's in your line of work to think so), has lost touch with the reality of the industry, despite what financial weight they have to throw around to see it happen.
You're probably thinking of the Ibot wheelchair, which debuted before the Segway, but still invented by Dean Kamen and DEKA. Same/Similar technology, but differant company. The Centaur is a concept thrown out by Segway engineers which they thought would be fun to build. It's more of a "hey this might be cool" kind of thing they built for the heck of it, they have no plans to market/manufacture these things. The Ibot on the other hand, is a product that will be marketed eventually.
I managed to get to the documentation page by refreshing rapidly. The manual is avaliable online, and hosted on a differant server. It's a 1.7 mb download, but includes screenshots and information.
.doc
Manual avaliable here:
http://www.vx30.com/documents/CherryOS.pdf
or as a
http://www.vx30.com/documents/CherryOS.doc
How about momentum and gravity going down a hill?
My point was that for all it's inefficiencies, it's nice to see an automobile capable of feeding itself. I know it's impossible to obtain enough power to electrolyze enough hydrogen to run forever (barring a small nuclear reactor), but at least it's capable of refueling itself, even if only to a limited degree. I rue the day cars come with mobile fuel refineries to turn oil into gasoline using solar energy.
If I'm not mistaken, internal combustion engines are far more practical for automobiles than electric motors (given efficiencies, torque/speed curves, etc, although I'm not entirely sure how hydrogen engines compare to gasoline on this front), but it's interesting to see electric energy applied towards generating fuel for combustion, rather than electromechanical motion. My question then becomes, how much hydrogen can be produced using the amount of power stored in batteries in current hybrid/electric cars?
The article also mentions if the hydrogen tanks are charged from an external source, it can go as far as a conventional vehicle. The big deal here is it's capable of producing it's own hydrogen/fuel, even if only a little bit at a time. If fuel stations were set up to use larger solar arrays than would fit on a car, or even power from the grid, much more fuel could be produced. If I'm not mistaken, the byproduct of hydrogen combustion is water, so assuming a closed system, it would theoretically have the capability/raw material to run for a good long time. So long as there's a source of electricity (solar, battery, generator on bike pedals), there's the potential to refuel itself. Imagine running out of gas, where all you have to do is wait a bit for the sun to do it's thing, or unpack a stationary bike and pedal for a while until you have enough hydrogen to get on your way. Or how about using an alternator to continuously generate power as the vehicle is moving? It still wouldn't be a whole lot of hydrogen generated, but heck, I don't see mobile oil refineries happening any time soon to generate gasoline on the fly.
Herein lies the catch, and the bullshit. Typically with adware/spyware/crapware installed, popups are self-spawning. You close one, some little javascript tells another to open. Eventually more than one will open. The result is layer upon layer of popups in slightly different places, where by double clicking one X in frustration will pass the second click to the popup conveniently placed directly under the first ad's close button, thereby "accepting" their EULA and installing whatever crapware they're peddling.
This ignores the issue of popups using javascript to disable the toolbars and window frame, simulating the titlebar as part of the ad itself, where by clicking the X, you click the ad, again accepting whatever sadistic eula is printed at the bottom, and allowing whatever crap to install itself.
Yes, many times the installation does boil down to some user clicking the "yes" button when prompted with a Windows systemesque popup claiming "you are infected with spyware, click yes to clean your computer." But others it's the clever placement and deceptive contents of an ad which throws even experienced and savvy users off their block, and once one crapware is in place, it's not long before it invites it's friends over for a party and your computer chokes itself beyond reasonable use.
Oftentimes the bullshit isn't in the software itself, but in the removal mechanism. If I notice a piece of software eating up my system resources, generating popups, sending an unreasonable amount of outbound traffic, first thing I want to do is head to the Add/Remove programs control panel, click "remove" and be done with it. I don't want to click Yes and No 4 times questioning why I want to uninstall, I don't want to enter randomly generated keys to uninstall, I don't want to hunt for registry keys and hidden files to manually uninstall, and I sure as hell don't want shit to reinstall upon reboot.
Any software to the contrary is in violation of my personal space within my computer, and should be liable for whatever time or money I spend removing it from my computer. EULAs be damned, if I install an application claiming to display weather, that's all I expect it to do. If I notice 4 or 5 other applications installed along with it, whose installations weren't made obvious to me at the time of the original app's installation (no, fine print EULAs are not obvious notification), the publisher of the original application should be held liable.
Disclaimer: I run linux at home, but work for a small computer repair shop. Roughly 90% of the jobs we do are cleaning spyware. Just today I ran into a little bugger that replaced a built in winsock DLL with it's own mangled version, where it would generate popups and install AdDestroyer and Wintools on boot if an internet connection was present (Windows 98). Yes, the registry was cleared of ALL startup entries, the system.ini was thoroughly inspected, and all startup folders were empty. Task managed showed nothing but Explorer and Systray running. Yet so long as there was an internet connection, within 10 minutes, HijackThis would report wintools and addestroyer set to run on bootup, with the respective programs present in the program files folder, despite having been deleted from safe mode command prompt only via deltree.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I think that's bullshit. Bullshit for me to have to clean it over and over, and bullshit for the customer to have to pay for that cleaning over and over. (while good for business, I'm morally opposed.) There should be hefty fines/prison terms/death penalties handed out to software vendors who do not provide proper uninstallation procedures, or valid contact information upon installation of their software.
Why is it that comments negatively portraying a company are always modded up around here? There's two sides to every coin.
I've had an Archos Jukebox Recorder 10 for well over 5 years now, and haven't had any problems with it. I still get +/- 5 hours of continuous play out of the original NiMH rechargable batteries that came with the unit. I've taken it apart a few times (mostly to use it as an external USB enclosure to try salvaging files from a dead laptop drives), and never had any problems with shoddy solder joints or breaking anything putting the batteries back in. It's been a very solid unit, and survived many falls and trips around town in my backpack, all with the original IBM travelstar hard drive.
I'm tired of seeing all the "my thing broke so this company sucks" comments here, and felt like chipping in my positive experience with this particular product.
You're absolutely right, Microsoft does not lock-in customers by including IE, but most users are of the "use what's there" mentality, and aren't interested in much else. I've worked in a computer shop for 3 years, and from my experience I can say John Doe's biggest problem is simple and intentional ignorance to what else is happening in terms of OS/browser competition, nor is it his business to know. All he knows is he buys a computer to browse the 'net, check his email, and pay his solitaire. He doesn't know by using IE he's vulnerable to viruses, spyware. All he knows is a month after buying his shiney new computer, it's running slow with an excess of pop-ups. After I clean up all machines now, I install Firefox. There is a surprising number of people who don't understand what a "browser" is- when I tell people to use Firefox to browse the Internet, they ask if they should run it once a week, or if it's comperable to "that norton thing." Once they see it, all they know is to "click the orange and blue picture instead of the big blue E."
So no, Microsoft doesn't physically put a padlock on their software to prevent alternatives, but the common/casual user likes to make use of what's there, oblivious to what an alternative is, nevermind what the alternatives are.
I know this is a little late, but I didn't get a chance to read the responses to my post until tonight.
Look what Microsoft is doing with the Xbox- selling the hardware at a loss to try to push their way to market dominance with games. What's to say they won't come out with an MP3 player (or WMA player, whatever), and sell it for below cost (say 50$ for 20 gigs), just to inch their way into the downloadable tunes market?
I'll say that I agree, but want to explain a few things. I went to a private school from kindergarden to 5th grade, then moved, and attended a public middle school and a public high school. The contrast is astounding. I went from a school with no more than 20-23 students per grade level (and as a result, per class), to a school with over 150 kids per grade level (27-30 per class). In the private school, there was plenty of 1 on 1 attention, and generally students progressed at their own pace, and the teacher satisfactorily tended to each student's needs. In the public schools, generally the entire class pace is determined by the slowest student. The teacher will stop and explain a point in the lesson until everyone understands (much to the combined irritation/relief of the quicker students- irritation because of the repetition of hearing a point well understood the first time, and relief of an easy as cake class). Every teacher deals with this in a different way though- some will physically hold up the entire class, while the better teachers will politely request the student come in for a study hall or after school to better understand (naturally, not all students take up the option).
Fundamentally, I think the problems are such:
1) Teachers- Arguably underpaid, but don't fall into the "more money == better teachers" dichotomy. Yes, some will feel better teaching for more money, but others will see it as an opportunity to make more while slacking off. A great teacher will teach regardless of how much they get paid. I personally know many teachers who teach stictly because they love to- not because they need the money to survive (some have relatively wealthy spouses). Of course, that's not to say others don't need the money, but it really comes down to whether your enjoy what you do or not, but that applies to any profession, not just education. The underappreciated feeling may be a problem, but I've had quite a few teachers say if even one student comes up and thanks them after class for a good lesson, they feel great.
2) Parents- Too few, and too many. In my district, the problem is not that no one is involved, the problem is that those who are involved have a strict outlook on how things should be. There are always a core group of 10 or 12 parents at board of ed meetings dictating how they want things to be. Since the board hears no other voices, they try to implement (keyword try, doesn't always work) what this core group wants- often conflicting with what other parents want. Hence the problem- in a student collective geared at treating everyone equal (political correctness aside), you can never please everyone. Parents of art students will always want more money put into art classes, while parents of music students will want more money in music classes, or pick a class at random where students with highly vocal parents are actively involved by choice. Point being you will always have differing opinions on how things should be, and rarely will the conflict result in the best course of action for the students.
3) Students- perhaps the only variable which can never be accurately predicted. Every student is an individual- requires individual attention, has special needs, learns in a different way. The current expectation of public education is a "one size fits all" approach. A teacher is given a class of 20-something students (on average), and the expectation is all 20-something of those students walk out with something in their head, preferably the same something. As I said in my opening comment- teachers deal with this in differing ways- some stick to the one size fits all matra, holding up the whole class while one student tries to grasp the concept of factoring a quadratic equation (while the other students doodle in a notebook, chat with each other, throw pencils at the cieling, etc). Other teachers will take the one-on-one approach, and try to keep a balance between the quicker and slower students. This is where the whole "no child left behind" a
Isn't that the truth. I was putting gas in my car one day when a rather ditzy looking girl pulls up yapping on her phone. She hangs up, but immediately asks me why she can't use her phone while filling up. I mentioned something about high power antennas igniting the gas (whether or not it's actually true), and she responds with "oh well, that's stupid. they should fix gas so it won't do that."
Are people these days really so reliant on cell phones that they can't put them down for 5 minutes to fill up their gas tank or order food, or watch a movie, or drive down the freeway, or take a flight? I have a cell phone, but it only gets used once or twice a day, for no more than 5 minutes at a time. Makes me wonder how people survived 10 years ago, or even before the widespread growth of cell phone usage. Sad really.
Theoretically it won't take long to get a foothold. Internet Explorer isn't the most widely used browser because it is "the best," but because it came bundled with Windows- it's already there for people to use. The same may happen with this, if either 1) it's bundled with the retail/OEM versions of XP with Service Pack 2, or 2) with Automatic Update (and install) conveniently turned on by default on most XP SP2 machines, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it pop up out of seemingly no where. Imagine all those people who use Internet Explorer "because it's there" suddenly see a "buy legal music online from Microsoft!" icon suddenly appear on the desktop. Why hassle downloading and installing iTunes, when it's already there?
I usually try to distance myself from the tinfoil hat crowd, but given Microsoft's history of "success" in the desktop software market, it wouldn't at all surprise me to see this hapen.
I'd guess the big reason for bundling is the price of HP's PCs. People usually have a set budget when they go out to buy a computer. When buying from Apple, people know they'll be spending around or over $1,000 for a decent machine, which for most people wouldn't leave much left over for accessories. If you set a budget of $1,000, and you come accross the $499 HP PC, you have $501 left over from what you originally planned on spending, so why not bundle in a cute little useful accessory? You'll still be under your budget, but feel like you're getting much more. It's easier to make a bundle when working with cheaper goods- more people would be more likely to take up the offer.
If I had mod points, and comments could go higher than +5, I'd mod this up. I completely agree, that is how government should be. This particular day in age though, I fear it's too late, and much of the evils mentioned have already come true.
The problem is these corporations are made up of people. These people tend to be selfish, overbearing individuals who care for nothing more than short term profits and purchasing their 4th Mercedes SUV, despite the conditions of their fellow man. To further the problem, these people have used their fortune and power to influence government to protect their personal/corporate interests, on the basis of acquisition of wealth (via the farce of consumers hurting their business through illicit means, or in the case of this article, protecting their ever-so-precious IP).
Essentially, these corporate overlords have convinced the government that they are the threatened party, and that the commonfolk are the threat to their (both the corporate overlord and politician) respective positions, in a "I'll pick the fleas out of your hair if you scratch my back" type of bargain.
So the problem is, yes, economy exists to benefit the people, not the other way around. But the corporate suits have government convinced that they are the people, and anyone otherwise is a flea in the way of progress. I do agree 100% with everything you say, but I think the dark days of government are already here, between these types of noncompete agreements and bohemeths like the RIAA, SCO, and Disney throwing their weight around when thes of government are already here, between these types of noncompete agreements and bohemeths like the RIAA, SCO, and Disney throwing their weight around when they don't get theiy don't get their way, like Sauron with the Ring of Power, destroying anything in the path of conquest and profit. And yet, the more wealthy and powerful they grow, the more they'll crave, ad infinitum.
Imagine a Slashdot topic full of Beowulf cluster comments!
I'd say it has until a more widely accepted, nicer looking, easier to use, better sounding alternative is designed. Given the general acceptance of physical music playback formats (phonograph -> 8-track -> cassette -> CD -> mp3/ogg/aac/(insert favorite codec here) -> ??), and the mainstream life of each format (between 5 and 15 years) and the time it takes to develop a better method of playback, I'd say it's difficult to say when we're going to see the end days of mp3 players. The iPod has only been around for about 3-4 years. I'd say there are still plenty of days left for iPods and other such easy to use, non crippled mp3 players. And until one is designed that bests the iPod, I think it will remain the undisputed champion of this particular market.
Better preparation for security is.
Yes, and this "better preparation" is coming in the form of XP SP2. However, as a result, a number of the "broken" sites on the Internet will no longer function in IE either, as security features already present in Firefox are added to IE.
From what I've read so far, the compatibility of Internet Explorer will most likely drop down to or even a bit lower than that of Firefox, come service pack 2.
Most strange place must have been backstage during a production of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya." Oddly enough the play is set in Soviet Russia, so I got a chuckle out of all the jokes on Slashdot that night.
Last I heard/saw, the 6800 still needed 2 molex connectors, and took up two expansion slots, sounded like a jet engine, and required a minimum 400 watt power supply. The ATI card uses much quieter cooling, requires one slot, and one power connector. For a machine that's on 24 hours a day in the same room I sleep in, noise is a big factor. If I needed the caliber performance of the latest/greatest card, and had an extra 400 to spend on a video card who's price will most likely be half that in 6-8 months, the extra $100 would be worth it, when factors other than an extra 3-5 fps come into play.
That's not to say I don't respect Nvidia, I swapped out a Radeon 9700 pro for a GF4 Ti4200 in this box, because the linux drivers from Nvidia gave me slightly better performance and much more stability in most of the OpenGL apps I'm running.
Which brings up another question- how will the native linux version of Doom III compare to it's windows counterpart?
Or more to the point... "It's a trap!!"
What is the odds this is a ploy by Microsoft to "dirty" more programmers by introducing their code to a wider base. Then, when the next killer app for linux shows up, Microsoft shows up with a lawsuit claiming infringing code ala SCO.
Then again, how many MVPs write open source software to begin with...
While I have no love for Lindows, and certainly less for Microsoft, the settlement does seem like the most logical thing to do, in a purely business sense. Lindows/Linspire is struggling to make a name for itself in the Windows -> Linux market, and certainly needs money to sustain it's business. Now, with a case like this one here, is it more profitable to accept the settlement over a relatively trivial issue (read: not directly affecting business), or continue a legal battle with one of the largest, richset corporations in the world.
On the one hand, they make some quick cash to help their business grow. On the other, they fight against a company with enough money and legal resources to continue a trial for decades. It only makes sense that they take a profit over a loss, considering the legal fees involved with an extended trial.
Wow, never thought I'd have to use a Google cache for Slashdot!!
My school's TV station (and bunches of other TV stations rebroadcasting news clips) get around this by blotting out the logo in the corner. If the content is freely distributable, the broadcaster can't do a thing as long as their logo is not visible, especially if a network broadcast is the only viable way to obtain publicly avaliable content (e.g. speeches, breaking news events, etc.)