When the PS2 was first released it was a loss leader for Sony too..
There's a difference between a loss-leader and an all out loss. From everything I've heard, Microsoft didn't make anything on the original xbox and now it's starting out $126/unit in the hole on the new xbox. This is just an interesting experiment on how much it will cost to buy the console market. Microsoft is once again late to the show.
It would make sense only if AMD and Cray improved the tech in a way that would make the Opteron better suited to the server market as well, such as by improving the scalability of the technology.
Correct, but it would be perfectly reasonable to project that a company that is pushing the processor to the limits of it's performance, like somebody manufacturing supercomputers, would find areas for overall improvement of the chip.
Should they have audible announcements running in a continuous loop in the entrance? Should they hire greeters to look for blind or illiterate-looking customers coming in? Should they just forget it and keep it a secret that they have these?
Seems to me it would be reasonable to assume that blind or illiterate people would know to ask for a braille or picture menu. It's not like most of these people just lost their eyesight or forgot how to read yesterday. Putting up a sign is mostly just saying "Yay, look at us, we are politically correct" and a complete waste of money.
I suppose you are correct - but I guess it just seems like a desparate way to make a quick buck. As others have posted, AIM is a big deal and AIM users are sought after by both Google and Microsoft - which makes sense. Just seems to me it's not a long term money maker for sure and by the time both companies are merged it may not be a money maker at all.
I spent most of my life without cable. I have "basic cable" now only because I can't get over-the-air channels with an antenna in my apartment.
I may be biased as well. Where I live we are about 50 miles from the nearest network broadcast, so the signal is sucky. Cable or satellite is about the only way to get an acceptable signal, so everyone pays for TV. Perhaps if you live closer to the transmitters the signal is good enough that you don't need cable. I would say it's a fair bet that there is a significant market share that has cable/sat from the fact that ABC/Disney is going to move Monday Night Football, and American institution for nearly 30 years, to ESPN - a channel that requires cable/sat.
Well, for one thing, having enough living space is a basic human need.
The example I brought up wasn't about a basic human need. What's happening here is people are buying 3,500 square foot houses that are crap rather than buying the 2,500 square foot house that's well built. Why, because it's bigger and bigger is better. A 2,500 square foot house is adequate for most families of four or less.
The average American has a huge number of things to pay for that are more important than getting that extra few square feet of screen space.
The average American has a credit card. We are addicted to Entertainment. I've known plenty of people that didn't have a decent couch to sit on but had the biggest TV and loudest stereo money could buy. We all have plenty of things to pay for, but that doesn't mean we don't get the luxury items we want.
Fair enough, although I think you missed something. With having to pay my cable company $50/month for broadband, why would I subscribe to AOL. It made sense back in the modem days since they didn't cost any, or much, more than anyone else, but now...
The real question is, if their business model is so bad, why are Google and Microsoft even interested? What's the point? This model obviously only worked in the dial-up age when you had a captive audience (I remember my first internet experiences with AOL. I'm not sure there was another ISP in town). These days there is no way you are going to get that kind of user lock-in. What benefit is purchasing AOL going to bring to either of these companies?
But the FCC has laid out a roadmap for ceasing NTSC broadcasts. Which means that sooner or later, NTSC TVs will not be sold any longer.
I anticipate this will be longer rather than sooner. I don't know what the numbers are, but I would imagine that cable/satellite TV viewers are a significant portion, if not a majorty of US TV consumers. Their ability to use their current sets is not going to change. I don't believe either DirectTV or DishNetwork have the bandwidth yet to broadcast an HD signal for all channels, and I can't see the majority of people getting too worked up over HD until most of their programming is available in that format.
mall CRT HDTVs (and I don't consider 36" to be small) are not exorbitantly priced anymore, for a "lesser brand". And these small ones are the bulk of what the price-over-quality people are buying.
I will trust you in your statement concerning pricing small HD vs NTSC models, I haven't looke lately. OTOH, I don't agree that the price-over-quality people are only interested in small TVs. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all. The vast majority of Americans are 'price-over-quality people' at least to an extent. You can see it everywhere. Where I live people pay for houses primarily on square footage, not on quality of construction, materials or anything else. The biggest house they can get for the money is what they will buy. Why would these same people think differently when purchasing a TV?
But soon it will be to the point where retailers can just stop selling NTSC (before it becomes to devalued by HD), and the people who look at price before quality won't even notice anything has happened, because the prices will all stay just about the same. My post was just saying I don't think it will take more than a couple years for this to begin.
Thing is, NTSC is already devalued by HD. On top of that CRT is devalued by LCD. Just a few years ago a 27" TV NTSC CRT was $500-$600. Now you can buy one for $150. When I was in high school having a big screen projection was a huge deal, now you can buy one for $800. Everyone wants a flat screen HD TV and CRT prices have fallen as a result. Eventually retailers will stop selling NTSC, but like I said before, HD isn't going to directly effect most cable and satellite customers, so there will be a market for NTSC models, as long as they are cheaper. Once HD models get competitive then NTSC will go away. Likewise, as soon as LCD is as cheap as CRT, CRT will dissappear. I don't know how soon this will happen, I don't see it happening in the next couple of years, but who would have thought DVDs would take over the market as quickly as they did.
the vast majority of people who own TVs don't really care that much if their TV is from RCA, as long it works.
Wouldn't the same reasoning go for HDTV and NTSC? Do you think the majority of people who own TVs care if it's HD or not? We just bought my father a new TV for his birthday. It was big - I think 36", NTSC and it was under $400. It wasn't a Sony, maybe an RCA or Toshiba, can't remember right now, but it was probably half the price or less than a comperable HD model. He has satellite, so the HD isn't an issue for him.
Actually, what we need are relatively big (27"-36"), cheap HD CRTs, and much cheaper plasma/lcd/flat screen models. I still have a CRT for my PC because of the price issues.
...how many of the huge number of failed Mars missions could have been saved by people. The answer is almost none.
What about the little rover getting stuck in the sand? I bet a person could have helped with that one. They should have sent somebody along just to follow it around.
If you look at the PDA market, they are finally getting a return on their Windows CE investment after a late start there.
Yes, an area I forgot. Difference between the PDA market and the areas I mentioned (console gaming, personal and small business accounting and Internet search/advertisement) is that the PDA market is, at best, stagnant. I don't think Palm is just reeling from the competition. I think Palm's market dried up to an extent. The low end crowd for the market, which I imagine is most of us, bought PDAs a few years ago and are either still using them or got bored with the fad. Microsoft jumped in on the higher end units with pretty colors, higher resolution, more memory, etc.. and bought that market out from under Palm. If Palm had better management, had increased the quality of palmos and created a good low end product they might actually have stayed on top. Bottom line is Microsoft bought that market because it was for sale. The other markets it's trying to tap into aren't.
Nobody can know everything, and the fact that potential opportunities passed by one group of people is just how the world works. I think about this so I can't think about that. Part of being a great businessman is accepting that you missed the party at its very outset, and get in early enough. Gates and Microsoft have been astoundingly successful at that.
Microsoft has been 'missing the party' for about 15 years now. They were late to the Internet party, they were late to the console gaming party, now they are late to the Google party. It's not like Microsoft has ever been what I would call innovative, but their game of catch-up hasn't been working as well for them as it used to. To effectively catch the competition you have to come out with a product that is better or cheaper. Microsoft did this with Microsoft Office and they eventually did it again with Internet Explorer. Now they are trying to do it with the XBox, MSN, Money, SQL Server 2005 and any number of other apps and so far their success has been limited, especially based on the amount of money they've spent.
That said, I am actually glad that Microsoft wants to go after the online advertising market. The more potential advertising venues there are the lower advertising prices will go and the easier it will be for the average guy, like me, to drive traffic to his website. I think what Google has done for online advertising is AMAZING. It's easier and cheaper to get qualified leads through relatively unobtrusive text ads than probably at any other point in history. Hopefully a little competition will enable Google to stick to their 'do no evil' policy and not gouge everyone for their search ads.
Stupid question: is it possible (with the current kernel architecture) to have them run in userspace?
I don't believe so. Seems like I've read some discussions about that, but I don't think there is a way to do it. Thing is, hardware companies can release binary kernel modules as long as they are compiled for the kernel you happen to be using. Many of the major distributions have set kernels that modules can be compiled for (Red Hat, Linspire), so it's not like a hardware manufacturer can't release a closed source driver module, it just may not work for users that are compiling their own kernel. I really don't think that having to release an open source driver is the obstacle for most hardware vendors providing drivers. If there were a large enough market demand for their drivers they would find a way around the problem. That market demand isn't there, so it doesn't really matter how a driver is created, hardware manufacturers aren't going to spend the resources to develop it.
You might blame the distro, but it's really the kernel at fault here. Recompiling the kernel to support a driver is NOT something that a user should have to do.
How is the kernel at fault? The kernel is what it is. Anyone that's used Linux for a while, which you appearantly have, knows you have to either download a driver specifically compiled for your kernel or compile your own. The fact that there is a compatibility problem with the nvidia driver could be construed as a kernel, or at least driver module developer problem, but how can you complain about the ability to compile your own driver? I don't know about your particular situation, but a user doesn't generally HAVE TO compile their own drivers. There are distributions out there with excellent driver and module support, don't like compiling your own drivers, use one of those.
Windows does not require you to recompile your kernel to install drivers.
Not only does Windows not require it, compiling your own kernel in Windows isn't even an option. If you want binary drivers and no options for customization, Windows may be the OS for you.
Just to play the devil's advocate - yes. That is, if you want the average Joe Blow to start even thinking about Linux instead of Windows.
Your statement has been the subject of several discussions here lately. If you are asking if "I" want the average Joe Blow to start using Linux, the answer is "I don't care". I belive the Linux is an excellent operating system that is stable, robust and powerful. I think average Joe Blow should use it for those reasons. Do I care if he does use it? As long as he doesn't call me to clean up his spyware and viruses, or at least doesn't get pissed when I charge him to clean it up, I'm fine with Mr. Blow using any OS he wants.
Thing is, if the Linux development community starts making compromises that jeopordize the security and stablility of the OS just to intice ol' Joe to use Linux we haven't gained anything. All of the reasons to use Linux go away and we haven't progressed. Linux has gained market share due to it's quality, stability and performance. Linux will continue to improve and continue gain market share because of these reasons. Eventually a free market should change to embrace a better product. There is no reason to compromise just for short term acceptance gains.
However it isn't right to demand that the US give up their DNS systems. The "but everyone uses it" argument isn't compelling. Everyone uses Google too, that doesn't mean that they should be forced to give themselves up to the UN.
Exactly, if the EU wasn't a bunch of damn commies we wouldn't be having this discussion!
but there are a whole mess of hardware vendors out there that just won't release open source versions of their drivers.
Sure they will, when they have to so they can remain competitive. Until that time we should support vendors that do provide open source versions of their drivers.
Yeah, I can see concerns about stability, but at least there would BE drivers for half the hardware out there.
Do your really believe that the answer is to trade stability for convenience? As the parent said, we would be right back to where Windows is. As more and more of these type of issues come up I think the Linux kernel developers need to stand resolutely on their principals and provide a quality product even at the sacrifice of some usability. It makes no sense at all to trade long term quality of the kernel for a short term solution to the current driver problem. As for the question of who can be 'in the kernel source', anyone can. Anything that gets included in the official stable branch of the kernel will be reviewed by many memebers of the kernel development team. So far I have had excellent success with the official Linux kernels and don't see any reason this will change if they stick with their current methodologies.
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When the PS2 was first released it was a loss leader for Sony too..
There's a difference between a loss-leader and an all out loss. From everything I've heard, Microsoft didn't make anything on the original xbox and now it's starting out $126/unit in the hole on the new xbox. This is just an interesting experiment on how much it will cost to buy the console market. Microsoft is once again late to the show.
Stupid Internet.
It would make sense only if AMD and Cray improved the tech in a way that would make the Opteron better suited to the server market as well, such as by improving the scalability of the technology.
Correct, but it would be perfectly reasonable to project that a company that is pushing the processor to the limits of it's performance, like somebody manufacturing supercomputers, would find areas for overall improvement of the chip.
Should they have audible announcements running in a continuous loop in the entrance? Should they hire greeters to look for blind or illiterate-looking customers coming in? Should they just forget it and keep it a secret that they have these?
Seems to me it would be reasonable to assume that blind or illiterate people would know to ask for a braille or picture menu. It's not like most of these people just lost their eyesight or forgot how to read yesterday. Putting up a sign is mostly just saying "Yay, look at us, we are politically correct" and a complete waste of money.
I suppose you are correct - but I guess it just seems like a desparate way to make a quick buck. As others have posted, AIM is a big deal and AIM users are sought after by both Google and Microsoft - which makes sense. Just seems to me it's not a long term money maker for sure and by the time both companies are merged it may not be a money maker at all.
I spent most of my life without cable. I have "basic cable" now only because I can't get over-the-air channels with an antenna in my apartment.
I may be biased as well. Where I live we are about 50 miles from the nearest network broadcast, so the signal is sucky. Cable or satellite is about the only way to get an acceptable signal, so everyone pays for TV. Perhaps if you live closer to the transmitters the signal is good enough that you don't need cable. I would say it's a fair bet that there is a significant market share that has cable/sat from the fact that ABC/Disney is going to move Monday Night Football, and American institution for nearly 30 years, to ESPN - a channel that requires cable/sat.
Well, for one thing, having enough living space is a basic human need.
The example I brought up wasn't about a basic human need. What's happening here is people are buying 3,500 square foot houses that are crap rather than buying the 2,500 square foot house that's well built. Why, because it's bigger and bigger is better. A 2,500 square foot house is adequate for most families of four or less.
The average American has a huge number of things to pay for that are more important than getting that extra few square feet of screen space.
The average American has a credit card. We are addicted to Entertainment. I've known plenty of people that didn't have a decent couch to sit on but had the biggest TV and loudest stereo money could buy. We all have plenty of things to pay for, but that doesn't mean we don't get the luxury items we want.
Fair enough, although I think you missed something. With having to pay my cable company $50/month for broadband, why would I subscribe to AOL. It made sense back in the modem days since they didn't cost any, or much, more than anyone else, but now...
The real question is, if their business model is so bad, why are Google and Microsoft even interested? What's the point? This model obviously only worked in the dial-up age when you had a captive audience (I remember my first internet experiences with AOL. I'm not sure there was another ISP in town). These days there is no way you are going to get that kind of user lock-in. What benefit is purchasing AOL going to bring to either of these companies?
No doubt, they should list it on Ebay!
But the FCC has laid out a roadmap for ceasing NTSC broadcasts. Which means that sooner or later, NTSC TVs will not be sold any longer.
I anticipate this will be longer rather than sooner. I don't know what the numbers are, but I would imagine that cable/satellite TV viewers are a significant portion, if not a majorty of US TV consumers. Their ability to use their current sets is not going to change. I don't believe either DirectTV or DishNetwork have the bandwidth yet to broadcast an HD signal for all channels, and I can't see the majority of people getting too worked up over HD until most of their programming is available in that format.
mall CRT HDTVs (and I don't consider 36" to be small) are not exorbitantly priced anymore, for a "lesser brand". And these small ones are the bulk of what the price-over-quality people are buying.
I will trust you in your statement concerning pricing small HD vs NTSC models, I haven't looke lately. OTOH, I don't agree that the price-over-quality people are only interested in small TVs. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all. The vast majority of Americans are 'price-over-quality people' at least to an extent. You can see it everywhere. Where I live people pay for houses primarily on square footage, not on quality of construction, materials or anything else. The biggest house they can get for the money is what they will buy. Why would these same people think differently when purchasing a TV?
But soon it will be to the point where retailers can just stop selling NTSC (before it becomes to devalued by HD), and the people who look at price before quality won't even notice anything has happened, because the prices will all stay just about the same. My post was just saying I don't think it will take more than a couple years for this to begin.
Thing is, NTSC is already devalued by HD. On top of that CRT is devalued by LCD. Just a few years ago a 27" TV NTSC CRT was $500-$600. Now you can buy one for $150. When I was in high school having a big screen projection was a huge deal, now you can buy one for $800. Everyone wants a flat screen HD TV and CRT prices have fallen as a result. Eventually retailers will stop selling NTSC, but like I said before, HD isn't going to directly effect most cable and satellite customers, so there will be a market for NTSC models, as long as they are cheaper. Once HD models get competitive then NTSC will go away. Likewise, as soon as LCD is as cheap as CRT, CRT will dissappear. I don't know how soon this will happen, I don't see it happening in the next couple of years, but who would have thought DVDs would take over the market as quickly as they did.
the vast majority of people who own TVs don't really care that much if their TV is from RCA, as long it works.
Wouldn't the same reasoning go for HDTV and NTSC? Do you think the majority of people who own TVs care if it's HD or not? We just bought my father a new TV for his birthday. It was big - I think 36", NTSC and it was under $400. It wasn't a Sony, maybe an RCA or Toshiba, can't remember right now, but it was probably half the price or less than a comperable HD model. He has satellite, so the HD isn't an issue for him.
Actually, what we need are relatively big (27"-36"), cheap HD CRTs, and much cheaper plasma/lcd/flat screen models. I still have a CRT for my PC because of the price issues.
The wording of this protocol, however, does not prohibit lasers that temporarily dazzle a foe.
So what are they going to do? Use it to broadcast holograms of Jessica Simpson naked?
Yes, but does it run on Linux?
...how many of the huge number of failed Mars missions could have been saved by people. The answer is almost none.
What about the little rover getting stuck in the sand? I bet a person could have helped with that one. They should have sent somebody along just to follow it around.
If you look at the PDA market, they are finally getting a return on their Windows CE investment after a late start there.
Yes, an area I forgot. Difference between the PDA market and the areas I mentioned (console gaming, personal and small business accounting and Internet search/advertisement) is that the PDA market is, at best, stagnant. I don't think Palm is just reeling from the competition. I think Palm's market dried up to an extent. The low end crowd for the market, which I imagine is most of us, bought PDAs a few years ago and are either still using them or got bored with the fad. Microsoft jumped in on the higher end units with pretty colors, higher resolution, more memory, etc.. and bought that market out from under Palm. If Palm had better management, had increased the quality of palmos and created a good low end product they might actually have stayed on top. Bottom line is Microsoft bought that market because it was for sale. The other markets it's trying to tap into aren't.
You should delete Google's cookie and search again. It would be interesting to see if you recieved different results.
Nobody can know everything, and the fact that potential opportunities passed by one group of people is just how the world works. I think about this so I can't think about that. Part of being a great businessman is accepting that you missed the party at its very outset, and get in early enough. Gates and Microsoft have been astoundingly successful at that.
Microsoft has been 'missing the party' for about 15 years now. They were late to the Internet party, they were late to the console gaming party, now they are late to the Google party. It's not like Microsoft has ever been what I would call innovative, but their game of catch-up hasn't been working as well for them as it used to. To effectively catch the competition you have to come out with a product that is better or cheaper. Microsoft did this with Microsoft Office and they eventually did it again with Internet Explorer. Now they are trying to do it with the XBox, MSN, Money, SQL Server 2005 and any number of other apps and so far their success has been limited, especially based on the amount of money they've spent.
That said, I am actually glad that Microsoft wants to go after the online advertising market. The more potential advertising venues there are the lower advertising prices will go and the easier it will be for the average guy, like me, to drive traffic to his website. I think what Google has done for online advertising is AMAZING. It's easier and cheaper to get qualified leads through relatively unobtrusive text ads than probably at any other point in history. Hopefully a little competition will enable Google to stick to their 'do no evil' policy and not gouge everyone for their search ads.
Stupid question: is it possible (with the current kernel architecture) to have them run in userspace?
I don't believe so. Seems like I've read some discussions about that, but I don't think there is a way to do it. Thing is, hardware companies can release binary kernel modules as long as they are compiled for the kernel you happen to be using. Many of the major distributions have set kernels that modules can be compiled for (Red Hat, Linspire), so it's not like a hardware manufacturer can't release a closed source driver module, it just may not work for users that are compiling their own kernel. I really don't think that having to release an open source driver is the obstacle for most hardware vendors providing drivers. If there were a large enough market demand for their drivers they would find a way around the problem. That market demand isn't there, so it doesn't really matter how a driver is created, hardware manufacturers aren't going to spend the resources to develop it.
You might blame the distro, but it's really the kernel at fault here. Recompiling the kernel to support a driver is NOT something that a user should have to do.
How is the kernel at fault? The kernel is what it is. Anyone that's used Linux for a while, which you appearantly have, knows you have to either download a driver specifically compiled for your kernel or compile your own. The fact that there is a compatibility problem with the nvidia driver could be construed as a kernel, or at least driver module developer problem, but how can you complain about the ability to compile your own driver? I don't know about your particular situation, but a user doesn't generally HAVE TO compile their own drivers. There are distributions out there with excellent driver and module support, don't like compiling your own drivers, use one of those.
Windows does not require you to recompile your kernel to install drivers.
Not only does Windows not require it, compiling your own kernel in Windows isn't even an option. If you want binary drivers and no options for customization, Windows may be the OS for you.
Just to play the devil's advocate - yes. That is, if you want the average Joe Blow to start even thinking about Linux instead of Windows.
Your statement has been the subject of several discussions here lately. If you are asking if "I" want the average Joe Blow to start using Linux, the answer is "I don't care". I belive the Linux is an excellent operating system that is stable, robust and powerful. I think average Joe Blow should use it for those reasons. Do I care if he does use it? As long as he doesn't call me to clean up his spyware and viruses, or at least doesn't get pissed when I charge him to clean it up, I'm fine with Mr. Blow using any OS he wants.
Thing is, if the Linux development community starts making compromises that jeopordize the security and stablility of the OS just to intice ol' Joe to use Linux we haven't gained anything. All of the reasons to use Linux go away and we haven't progressed. Linux has gained market share due to it's quality, stability and performance. Linux will continue to improve and continue gain market share because of these reasons. Eventually a free market should change to embrace a better product. There is no reason to compromise just for short term acceptance gains.
However it isn't right to demand that the US give up their DNS systems. The "but everyone uses it" argument isn't compelling. Everyone uses Google too, that doesn't mean that they should be forced to give themselves up to the UN.
Exactly, if the EU wasn't a bunch of damn commies we wouldn't be having this discussion!
but there are a whole mess of hardware vendors out there that just won't release open source versions of their drivers.
Sure they will, when they have to so they can remain competitive. Until that time we should support vendors that do provide open source versions of their drivers.
Yeah, I can see concerns about stability, but at least there would BE drivers for half the hardware out there.
Do your really believe that the answer is to trade stability for convenience? As the parent said, we would be right back to where Windows is. As more and more of these type of issues come up I think the Linux kernel developers need to stand resolutely on their principals and provide a quality product even at the sacrifice of some usability. It makes no sense at all to trade long term quality of the kernel for a short term solution to the current driver problem. As for the question of who can be 'in the kernel source', anyone can. Anything that gets included in the official stable branch of the kernel will be reviewed by many memebers of the kernel development team. So far I have had excellent success with the official Linux kernels and don't see any reason this will change if they stick with their current methodologies.
...think what the report said is that the beach received more sunlight than it usually would.
So are windmills contributing to global warming?
Not to mention definately and defiantly
At that price I'll take two, they're small.
If they're not using exercise equipment at home where they could do this, they're at a gym which almost definitely has TV's already.
Which would be a HUGE market for a mount that would allow you to watch content from your video iPod rather than the drivel that's on TV at the moment.