Exactly - I think Linux is out of reach for really some considerable time. The best bet is to get everyone to use FireFox for web browsing and OpenOffice for document processing (usually won't work well, but hopefully OOo will be good enough to use by 2.0).
Then we can bring in Linux - the transition would be really simple - web browsing and office; the two biggest used parts of computing for most users (email is usually done via webmail for most school students; are taken card of.
I think using MS's own 'lockin' tactics against them is by far the quickest method to getting Linux on the desktop.
Yes, but the computer industry in the US and Europe is slowing. MS gets most of it's money from upgrades (either from direct upgrades or most likley, computer builders buying new PCs and bundling OEM versions of windows with it).
To be honest, Linux really hasn't dented Microsoft's profits or growth *yet*, in the desktop space. Maybe it's had a small impact in the server space but nothing drastic. Over the next 5-10 years we will see Linux really doing MS harm now Linux is also maturing.
You'll actually find that most businesses now have stupidly high CPUs (2.4GHz-3.2GHz) because that's all on the market.
A friend which works at a small company building and servicing PCs for businesses said their lowest model they sell is a 2400+ Athlon/512MB/60GB HDD and Geforce 4MX (the motherboards don't have integrated graphics). They are also dropping 60GB HDDs soon because they are getting really hard to source in quantity - 80GB are only 5 UKP more.
Will Fiber stand the test of time like copper has... copper has been on the go for over 100 years. Copper is now being used over 1000 times it's specification when it was designed (3kHz back then, way over 5MHz for VSDL etc).
To acheive the same result with fiber it would have to run at 622Gbps. Before you laugh, in 100 years we will probably be downloading the latest 'holographic DVD' off suprnova.org which will be 1PB;).
I disagree. The Quake 3 engine looked terrible for anything but really fast paced action shooters, but it turned out to be an awesome, true to life and worked great on all hardware (unlike many engines which are very hit and miss).
I mean look at Call of Duty - that is based on Quake3, and it looks and plays fantastically well...
I agree. I am totally like you - I do prefer a good RTS or FPS on the PC to a console arcadey-FPS. However, it's such a pain in the ass to keep your PC running well. Constantly having to upgrade and also the pace is getting faster and faster with not even top-end machines being able to max out _current_ games (FarCry for example - even top of the range Athlon64 and 9800 Pro machines have problems at high resolution).
Also, when you get your PC it's bloody hard to keep it running well, software wise. Process count soon spirals out of control. Not only that, with install times getting into double numbers of minutes, it's really hard to just crack out a older game in your library and just having a blast on that, whereas on a console you can just bang the disk in.
It's actually true as well... if you ever see 'Walking Tall', it has the whole room TOTALLY shot to peices, apart from one LCD display. lollerskates or what!
So what? LCD will become the CRT-style display in the future - OLED will then take the place of what a LCD display was like when everyone had TFTs, a luxury. Then the prices will start coming down until they have replaced LCDs and the next wave of technology will start.
My god, I love capitalism.
One intresting side of this 'Fire and Motion' is that films look more and more outdated even quicker. Before, it took 5-10 years for your average film to look really outdated when it came to computers, now it's taking much less than 5. Look at the stupid films in the late 90s with their CRT displays;).
No, sadly you don't have a clue about how the real world works. I used to work for a insurance broker doing general computer support work, and they now exclusively use an ActiveX control for all of their insurance work that will only run on IE.
They will never be able to switch over to Mozilla now (at least until they rewrote it as XUL or something, but that's unlikley). The amount of effort that was put into transfer the masses of data over to this new system is incredible. They can't just drop it all, sadly...
No sorry, you are totally wrong. If you look at how someones handles a mouse for the first time, the first problem is controlling it. It takes a good week or two of practice before you are quite good at using the thing to move from one side to another without undershooting and stuff
The mice buttons are really easy. Left for everything, right for special. If you tell them that they don't have any problems. Personally, I think Apple screwed up on that one. Also, scroll mice are so much better for newbies. Most newbies just hit the little down arrow loads of times (then realize you can click in empty space or drag the bar up and down). With a scroll mouse it's just a lot easier - your hand movements directly do what you want them to do on screen. No clicking or dragging, either.
I'm sure he hasn't based his purchase on just the experience of using OSX. I, too, had only used it once or twice by the time I bought my iBook. He will have read all of the 'unix based', 'stable as a rock' stuff aswell.
It actually too me longer to stop flamebaiting the Mac after OS9 and before than Win2k/XP after 95/98. OS9, imo, was far, far worse than shitty 95/98. It was plain fugly, and ontop of that it crashed way more than 95 or 98 ever did and had the world's worst memory management.
I see. Maybe large swades of the database are still being compiled/uploaded?
Anyway, it's going to be interesting at least to see how MS will scale this. It's having problems with less than a billion pages in the index and a very few amount of users on it, compared to google with its near 5 billion and millions of concurrent users.
iTunes is the best feature for me - you will see how great it is when you use musicmatch or some other competitor... it's chock full of features and just works damn well.
It's really slow. It's probably because of the SlashDotting but I think they are going to hit major problems scaling ASP.net and IIS to the size of Google (100k servers).
The results themselves are quite good, actually. I'm not sure what is going on with 'Linux' etc but they are far better than the current search MSN site that I am pained to see when 'new users' press the search button on IE.
I'm sure they actually don't know who is sending the spam. They are probably just blocking 25 ports and not routing it out onto the internet.
Comcast probably has hundred-gigabit connections to the internet - do you know how much it would cost to inspect all those packets in real time and record IP addresses? A lot more than you probably think.
Not only that, comcast is a horrible network. They have had multiple takeovers of smaller cable customers, most of which they haven't integrated into a unified network (if they even have one).
Then you are talking about $20/customer for all the admin work - multiple phone calls, tracking them in a database, looking up their IPs throughout etc etc.
Well the program that breaks most often is the good ol' WinXP BSOD loop; that is crashing at startup to BSOD, rebooting, loading windows and crash again. Ad naseum.
This usually requires a fresh install of windows.
Also, I don't really use a lot of software. I'm a PHP developer so I use mainly a text editor of some sort, a FTP client, FireFox and a few games. It's not that hard to keep it secure, as most vendors don't release bad patches.
But Real does seem to be making some effort with the Helix community.
We could soon see Ogg being installed (as both a directshow filter and in RealPlayer itself) on a large amount of computers. I also know that most games now use ogg for sound effects, but I'm not so sure if they install it as a directshow filter (this allows other apps to use it). If they do, then we may already have 25% of the home computer market using ogg.
BTW: this method of stealth installation is going to be how OS software takes hold, imo.
I never use Windows Update anymore. I have far more problems from the patches they give (BSODs, broken drivers, broken programs) than the security that they may give.
A NAT router and FireFox/Safari provides all the security I have needed without stupid MS patches.
Well actually this is not going to solve anything. It means that the IE useragent monopoly will stay, web devs will not see any differernce and therefore won't care about it.
Run with your normal useragent and send emails to broken sites. Get them fixed for good...
Not true... Xbox sales patterns in Europe (a market twice or even three times as big as Japan if you count the new eastern euro. countries in) are very similar to N. America. So really, worldwdie Xbox > Gamecube and getting further and further away.
Japan is becoming an increasinly marginilized market with it being very expensive to translate to and from. Microsoft really doesn't care about it anymore so they are concentrating on markets they are far more sucessful on.
Every time new versions of programs are written without API compatibility, they usually die off very quickly - Netscape 6, Wordperfect and I'm sure there are loads more examples.
Compatibility is the basis of MS. Being able to upgrade flawlessly when it comes to program compatibilty has never really been a great problem for MS. However, with all this compatibility they are risking security and now that they have lost some compatibility, they are not really gaining anything by adding more support.
Linux now looks more appealing to all customers - they will start to see why open source is better.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly - I think Linux is out of reach for really some considerable time. The best bet is to get everyone to use FireFox for web browsing and OpenOffice for document processing (usually won't work well, but hopefully OOo will be good enough to use by 2.0).
Then we can bring in Linux - the transition would be really simple - web browsing and office; the two biggest used parts of computing for most users (email is usually done via webmail for most school students; are taken card of.
I think using MS's own 'lockin' tactics against them is by far the quickest method to getting Linux on the desktop.
Yes, but the computer industry in the US and Europe is slowing. MS gets most of it's money from upgrades (either from direct upgrades or most likley, computer builders buying new PCs and bundling OEM versions of windows with it).
To be honest, Linux really hasn't dented Microsoft's profits or growth *yet*, in the desktop space. Maybe it's had a small impact in the server space but nothing drastic. Over the next 5-10 years we will see Linux really doing MS harm now Linux is also maturing.
$3000?! The max I'd spend on a computer these days would be $1000 and that would get you a totally kickass (albeit 32bit) system
You could easily get a computer to play this at medium for $500, or less...
You'll actually find that most businesses now have stupidly high CPUs (2.4GHz-3.2GHz) because that's all on the market.
A friend which works at a small company building and servicing PCs for businesses said their lowest model they sell is a 2400+ Athlon/512MB/60GB HDD and Geforce 4MX (the motherboards don't have integrated graphics). They are also dropping 60GB HDDs soon because they are getting really hard to source in quantity - 80GB are only 5 UKP more.
This is actually a really, really good point.
;).
Will Fiber stand the test of time like copper has... copper has been on the go for over 100 years. Copper is now being used over 1000 times it's specification when it was designed (3kHz back then, way over 5MHz for VSDL etc).
To acheive the same result with fiber it would have to run at 622Gbps. Before you laugh, in 100 years we will probably be downloading the latest 'holographic DVD' off suprnova.org which will be 1PB
I disagree. The Quake 3 engine looked terrible for anything but really fast paced action shooters, but it turned out to be an awesome, true to life and worked great on all hardware (unlike many engines which are very hit and miss).
I mean look at Call of Duty - that is based on Quake3, and it looks and plays fantastically well...
I agree. I am totally like you - I do prefer a good RTS or FPS on the PC to a console arcadey-FPS. However, it's such a pain in the ass to keep your PC running well. Constantly having to upgrade and also the pace is getting faster and faster with not even top-end machines being able to max out _current_ games (FarCry for example - even top of the range Athlon64 and 9800 Pro machines have problems at high resolution).
Also, when you get your PC it's bloody hard to keep it running well, software wise. Process count soon spirals out of control. Not only that, with install times getting into double numbers of minutes, it's really hard to just crack out a older game in your library and just having a blast on that, whereas on a console you can just bang the disk in.
It's actually true as well... if you ever see 'Walking Tall', it has the whole room TOTALLY shot to peices, apart from one LCD display. lollerskates or what!
So what? LCD will become the CRT-style display in the future - OLED will then take the place of what a LCD display was like when everyone had TFTs, a luxury. Then the prices will start coming down until they have replaced LCDs and the next wave of technology will start.
;).
My god, I love capitalism.
One intresting side of this 'Fire and Motion' is that films look more and more outdated even quicker. Before, it took 5-10 years for your average film to look really outdated when it came to computers, now it's taking much less than 5. Look at the stupid films in the late 90s with their CRT displays
No, sadly you don't have a clue about how the real world works. I used to work for a insurance broker doing general computer support work, and they now exclusively use an ActiveX control for all of their insurance work that will only run on IE.
They will never be able to switch over to Mozilla now (at least until they rewrote it as XUL or something, but that's unlikley). The amount of effort that was put into transfer the masses of data over to this new system is incredible. They can't just drop it all, sadly...
No sorry, you are totally wrong. If you look at how someones handles a mouse for the first time, the first problem is controlling it. It takes a good week or two of practice before you are quite good at using the thing to move from one side to another without undershooting and stuff
The mice buttons are really easy. Left for everything, right for special. If you tell them that they don't have any problems. Personally, I think Apple screwed up on that one. Also, scroll mice are so much better for newbies. Most newbies just hit the little down arrow loads of times (then realize you can click in empty space or drag the bar up and down). With a scroll mouse it's just a lot easier - your hand movements directly do what you want them to do on screen. No clicking or dragging, either.
Romania and Bulgaria (possibly Turkey aswell) are candidates for the next step in enlarging the EU.
After this, it's purely opt-in for the UK and other EU countries to block countries' citizens from entering. Most won't, though.
I'm sure he hasn't based his purchase on just the experience of using OSX. I, too, had only used it once or twice by the time I bought my iBook. He will have read all of the 'unix based', 'stable as a rock' stuff aswell.
It actually too me longer to stop flamebaiting the Mac after OS9 and before than Win2k/XP after 95/98. OS9, imo, was far, far worse than shitty 95/98. It was plain fugly, and ontop of that it crashed way more than 95 or 98 ever did and had the world's worst memory management.
Thank god there is OSX.
Yes and it's also missing all the important places in Europe :).
I see. Maybe large swades of the database are still being compiled/uploaded?
Anyway, it's going to be interesting at least to see how MS will scale this. It's having problems with less than a billion pages in the index and a very few amount of users on it, compared to google with its near 5 billion and millions of concurrent users.
iTunes is the best feature for me - you will see how great it is when you use musicmatch or some other competitor... it's chock full of features and just works damn well.
It's really slow. It's probably because of the SlashDotting but I think they are going to hit major problems scaling ASP.net and IIS to the size of Google (100k servers).
The results themselves are quite good, actually. I'm not sure what is going on with 'Linux' etc but they are far better than the current search MSN site that I am pained to see when 'new users' press the search button on IE.
I'm sure they actually don't know who is sending the spam. They are probably just blocking 25 ports and not routing it out onto the internet.
Comcast probably has hundred-gigabit connections to the internet - do you know how much it would cost to inspect all those packets in real time and record IP addresses? A lot more than you probably think.
Not only that, comcast is a horrible network. They have had multiple takeovers of smaller cable customers, most of which they haven't integrated into a unified network (if they even have one).
Then you are talking about $20/customer for all the admin work - multiple phone calls, tracking them in a database, looking up their IPs throughout etc etc.
It's much easier to just ignore the problem
Sorry, I meant I used FireFox on my WinXP machine and Safari on my iBook :).
Well the program that breaks most often is the good ol' WinXP BSOD loop; that is crashing at startup to BSOD, rebooting, loading windows and crash again. Ad naseum. This usually requires a fresh install of windows. Also, I don't really use a lot of software. I'm a PHP developer so I use mainly a text editor of some sort, a FTP client, FireFox and a few games. It's not that hard to keep it secure, as most vendors don't release bad patches.
But Real does seem to be making some effort with the Helix community.
We could soon see Ogg being installed (as both a directshow filter and in RealPlayer itself) on a large amount of computers. I also know that most games now use ogg for sound effects, but I'm not so sure if they install it as a directshow filter (this allows other apps to use it). If they do, then we may already have 25% of the home computer market using ogg.
BTW: this method of stealth installation is going to be how OS software takes hold, imo.
I never use Windows Update anymore. I have far more problems from the patches they give (BSODs, broken drivers, broken programs) than the security that they may give.
A NAT router and FireFox/Safari provides all the security I have needed without stupid MS patches.
Well actually this is not going to solve anything. It means that the IE useragent monopoly will stay, web devs will not see any differernce and therefore won't care about it.
Run with your normal useragent and send emails to broken sites. Get them fixed for good...
Not true... Xbox sales patterns in Europe (a market twice or even three times as big as Japan if you count the new eastern euro. countries in) are very similar to N. America. So really, worldwdie Xbox > Gamecube and getting further and further away.
Japan is becoming an increasinly marginilized market with it being very expensive to translate to and from. Microsoft really doesn't care about it anymore so they are concentrating on markets they are far more sucessful on.
History dictates that this is not true.
Every time new versions of programs are written without API compatibility, they usually die off very quickly - Netscape 6, Wordperfect and I'm sure there are loads more examples.
Compatibility is the basis of MS. Being able to upgrade flawlessly when it comes to program compatibilty has never really been a great problem for MS. However, with all this compatibility they are risking security and now that they have lost some compatibility, they are not really gaining anything by adding more support.
Linux now looks more appealing to all customers - they will start to see why open source is better.