One thing I find interesting is the idea of an online harddrive offered by MS or Google as a pay service.
It can be done, and pretty cheaply for most users I think, anyone who doesn't use streamload for storage should really look into it. It's got a pretty novel payment method where you mostly pay for downloads unless your data is very unique. Even considering an encrypted HD Image, for 4.95/month you get 3000MB unique storage and 1000MB downloads. The service scales at very reasonable prices to the truly awesome. If monthly prices are too much (which for backup, it probably is) you can get nice yearly subscriptions starting at $45 I believe for the same 3000MB storage, and a total of 12000MB downloaded over the course of the year.
Now that I am done sounding like an advertisement, I just am saying that online HardDrive space has already been done, and done well. And I wouldn't want a totally one company solution anyway, just my fear of monopolies.
As to the bookmark sharing, there are many programs that provide that kind of feature, or how about just using something like TightVNC?
One Login for all sites? Has he ever tried Opera's Wand feature? Or Roboform(I think - kind of like OSS gator, no spyware?) Or even Keywallet?
Regardless that sounds like a major security flaw anyway, especially if it is network based, and not based on the local machine.
My point here is that many of these things he wants already exist. It may be nice to see them unified, but I really have no need of them shoved down my throat in an integrated manner. I much prefer modular anyway.
I think that is something in Opera design. I use Opera on WinXP, and it also can take some time to actually close the process, though the window closes instantly. It is a known "feature" for the Opera Process to hang around for several minutes before exiting.
I hang around the varius forums but don't remember just why they designed Opera this way, I think it had to do with writing RAM cache to disk, and to allow ultra fast restarts if you suddenly decide, oops, I didn't mean to close it.
Hmmm, I'm in NY, where you can't go into any town without seeing at least one, usually 3 lol. But I remember their site saying they have some in CA, specifically LA area, but I get the feeling there are not as many.
Well, I have to say, first, I only turn off my PC when the power fails or I have to move it(upgrade, going to college, etc).
Second, RAM up to a point does improve performance, at least for XP. However I think there are definate diminishing returns:
64MB: System sort of starts/runs
128MB: Ehh, can use notepad.
256MB: Normal usable but a little slow system.
512MB: Stable, about as fast as this system is going to go, good pricepoint. Not much swap used. Commit charge around 300MB.
1024MB: Percievingly the same as 512, Commit charge stays around 300MB, not much swap used.
So, I can't see I'm getting much out of the additional 512 I bought recently. However, I may just be misunderstanding XP's report of the use of RAM.
If I'm right in my understanding, and XP only ever is using about 300MB of my RAM, I'm going to make a 512MB RAM Drive, and store stuff there, IDK what exactly, but something!
I'm suprised you don't use HSBC in the US too, I do, and am very pleased with their service. They are VERY student friendly - don't go off the deep end at low balances and occasional overdrafts...
Plus they are very helpful with chargebacks even on debitcards - much easier than the local bank.
With free online bill pay... Just great service.
Well, from personal experiance with an AMD 1700+, if the CPU fan dies, the computer will freeze up. Generally this will result in a reboot by the user(at least in Windows). You will get about 5 min, and the machine will freeze totally again. Eventually someone will realize that something is fubar, and either call you, or turn it off till a tech gets there.
I replaced the CPU fan and continued on my way. There was no damage to the CPU.
My ASUS motherboards have a tempreture monitoring program for windows that can be used to shutdown the computer if the temp gets too high for either the CPU or entire board, or if a fan dies, or any combo you desire.
I can just see the lawsuits against the wireless router makers also. Things like where was the warning sticker, why didn't they make me have a license like with a gun or car if I could be responsible for this much trouble... etc...
Seriously, for anything else with this kind of possible liability, there is licensing, multiple warning labels and required training so that Joe Shmoe KNOWS the dangers. I think that opening that kind of regulation on wireless access points will be faught pretty hard by hardware makers.
I don't know what experiance you had, but I have to say that Opera has been one of the most responsive companies I have ever seen in terms of listening to it's users. I think that is a help and a hindrance.
As a help, they have numerous forums where you even as a free user get not only very knowledgable volunteers offering solutions and fixes, but responses from Customer Service reps and developers. They listen to the Users quite a bit and add requested features or change features usually within a few updates, for instance from 7.2 to 7.23 many things were fixed or changed due to user requests. I'm sure 7.51 will be out in a month or so to clean up the "new" interface and related bugs.
As a hindrance, I think their problem with the default interface is that their feedback comes mostly from Opera users in the preview and beta releases. So the people commenting on the design are used to the somewhat hetic designs of Opera UI. There were lots of complaints of the simplyfing of the UI in 7.5 on the Opera Forums, many asking how to get the "really horrible" UI of 7.23 back, and many dumbfounded that anyone found 7.5 default better. They are catering more to their customers than to new users.
Fortunately it is easy enough to fix. Just have 3 skin options in the default install, and let the user choose on first install.
Say minimalist(munin), I.E./Mozilla style(Traditional), Full Featured (current Opera Default). Have Traditional be the new default. The only other thing I would do is have the default home page be simpler, say not opera.com, but home.opera.com or something, where you have an almost AOL style page.
Say big boxes with - BUY, HELP/Forums, SKINS/UI.
3 choices and probably a bunch of ads on the page to help pay for the whole thing(no popups). So if you don't like the in program ads, one click to buy. You don't know how something works, and the program help is not sufficient? Easy access to the forums for help. Don't like any of the default skins? Right there for access to more skins, looks, UI's than I can possibly imagine.
There of course is no argument for Opera if you feel the software must be free.
That's why Linux and Mozilla are doing so well. At the other extreme is the Maciontosh system. Somewhere in the middle seems to be windows.
If you use windows, Opera might be great software, it comes down to whether you are willing to pay for something that does what it does better than the competition. Of course that is subjective also. I use Eudora, because I have bad experiances with Outlook(express). I use Opera becasue I had bad experiances with I.E. and Netscape(at the time 6 just came out). I use what works best for me. And that is what it comes down to.
It's obvious if you don't like the interface, don't use the software. If you do like the interface, you have to think about whether it is worth it to pay the $40 for the real deal, or to approximate it for free. Kind of like getting a pair of pants at Men's Warehouse, or buying them from Haband.
You know, I never really understood why so many think * and the kitchen sink should be included with everything. However, I can see ad blocking being part of a browser - the downside is it is a lot of work, so much so that it is probably equivilent to the browser itself. Also, ad's change every day, and to have to wait for a browser upgrade to add functionality to blocking seems to hurt the usiability of the browser. I happen to like having separate programs for one thing each, but I understand I am the minority. I personally think a good compromise would be bundling an ad blocker with Opera, with a install like the Java install, so it would all be configured right out of the box. I would ask for some deal where Opera could use Proxomitron with the JD5000 filters, that would certainly add value to the browser as a whole, while providing some financial reward to the hard working people who developed such gems.
I know I don't experiance the same web using Opera with Proxomitron as the people using IE, and I am much happier for it.
Microsoft didn't look at Longhorn and say what it would need, instead, they looked at the hardware that their inside information says will be there and are, very properly, designing to that spec.
And that's the problem. I mean, why not design to what you NEED for the software so that it works right, rather than either bloating it(most likely) to slow those machines to the same apparent speed as a P100 running Win95, or (unlikely but possible) cutting corners so it's less stable/complete/lacks promised features so it will run on computers at that time.
Granted, to an extent you do need to consider what is possible with hardware, but that shouldn't mean designing to the hardware over designing the software to do whatever it is supposed to do. I mean, what - are they going to have 3 flight sims, Halo, Duke Nukem Forever, and all 3 LOTR Extended editions as easter eggs in the OS? I can't figure out how they could possibly need 1TB, even WinXP only uses about 1.5GB. We're talking about an exponential increase in disk space for an OPERATING SYSTEM. At what point does an OS start preventing other programs from running just because it requires ALL resources to run itself? At that point it's useless.
Well, I have a hate relationship with ATi ever since they denied having ever produced a chipset or having made a hardware DVD decoder card that came with my comp in 1999 and they never made drivers for anything but Win98SE. So no XP. I called for help and they flat out denied making it when I had it in my hand. Since then, nVidia for me.
I honestly don't care about video card performance, I kept my 32mb TNT2 Ultra till this past December. I replaced it with an ASUS Videosuite card - GeForce 5600 128MB with video in/out Composite and S-Video. Great card, great(for me) performance - $175 new.
I really can't see having only a laptop. I know people who do that, but it would seem so limiting to me(as well as expensive). I wouldn't mind having a laptop for 3 things though. Taking notes in class, Keeping busy on road trips(where I am NOT driving), and help with running roleplaying games. That's about it really. Everything else I'd rather do with a far more powerful and expandable desktop where I don't have to worry about battery life.
You know, for the average home user, they probably don't care much(as long as nothing melts). They may not even notice. I honestly don't care too much either - though just for cool status(pun intended) I wouldn't mind it working, but I guess it doesn't exist for the XP 2800 on a nForce 2 board?
You know, it could be the chipset on the motherboard. Although I've never really had many crashes since WinXP(another thing, were you comparing different versions of windows? It would seem likely given the timespan you indicated), I can say that not all chipsets are equal. Via chipsets can be good or bad, especially depending on the drivers. The nForce set seems to be real stable for me, but slower for DMA HD-HD than my last Via one was(tech support blamed it on me not reinstalling win XP with the change(I did install the new drivers and removed the old ones) so it's a hit I'm willing to take as it rarely affects me.)
Ram can make a big difference too, as well as what other software you have installed. My biggest problem, believe it or not, is ASUS software. The hardware is great, but the video in from my ASUS video card driver seems to bluescreen XP about 40% of the time. I wrote to tech support - no help, even provided error message from the bluescreen - IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL IIRC.
Point is, make sure you're not using totally different vendors for your other hardware before assuming Intel is more stable than AMD. There are bad Intel chipsets as well as AMD chipsets(those not made by the CPU manufacturer). Also consider the other hardware on the system, and the drivers/software for using that hardware.
In the end - as you stated, one data point means nothing statistically, especially not in a controlled environment. Hope Intel keeps working good for you - I'm saving money for as good performance(sometimes better).
Hopefully(probably) AMD will by then have the 2nd generation Athlon FX chips out, a lead that may be hard to make up out of the gate for Intel. That means possibly an extra 10% or so performance boost over the Intel offering. Also, by then the FX-53s might be down out of the clouds a little for the average enthusiast to consider buying. That could give them a big leg up. If they keep working at staying ahead.
If by "marketing" you mean "bearing prices significantly lower."
Well... that is one marketing strategy, see Wal-Mart, Amazon.com etc...
However I think they have word of mouth pretty well tied down(well as good as any company gets in a competitive marketplace). I certainly don't recommend Intel to 99% of the people who ask me about building computers. Why? Price is the main point. The other point is with the 64/FX series AMD actually has comparable Intel processors beat in performance. The XP series is very comparable - so at that point it's like buying Marcal Toliet paper instead of Scott toliet paper. You get basically the same thing(for consumers - they don't care or understand hyperthreading vs memory controller onboard vs etc...) for 30% or more off.
when they ask sales people who are desperate to make a sale if there's any difference, the sales people (who are also AMD fanboys, when they're not being Mac fanboys) tell them no.
For the consumer(not techie) just what is the difference? The performance is very comparable. Remember a difference which makes no difference is no difference. For the average consumer this is true.
I think the issue is that we had this situation once before, in the early 80's. Guess what happened? The more open hardware became the standard for 95% of the world. So if wintel becomes too restrictive - in terms of hardware like the xbox, I'm certain china or AMD or some chip manufacturer will come out with the Wal-Mart generic PC with Linux or whatever, and guess what - being open and able to add new hardware from 10,000 different vendors will win the day again.
Software I can see trying to be restrictive, but people just will not accept their computer hardware becoming like X-box hardware, where you can't upgrade, you can't add any printer or scanner or sound card or whatever. The masses are pretty apathetic, but they have shown time and again that because of that they will ditch en masse a product that makes them care about what they get to use with it for one that doesn't make them care.
I honestly think that artists will have to go back to the Reniassinance method of patronage. And it worked great during that period - look at all the great art produced. Now, artists may not be megamillionaires, but they will be able to live - and I see no reason for government not to sponsor some artists to promote greater culture. It seems like something government ought to do. Private people can get together and sponsor other art works. Either as a community, or if you are rich, by yourself.
But, if it's all free why would anyone sponsor new works?
Well - people get bored with the same old stuff all the time. And what other people sponsor may never be just what I/our group want. There are many people who "sponsor" art, be it sculpture or whatnot. It's done today. Now these people are on the fringe of society right now sure - roleplayers who want character art drawn, or a custom minature made... but I really don't see why it couldn't spread.
The problem is for some reason, a huge percentage of the population thinks artists should not only get paid once, but many times a huge amount for one piece of work. I wish I was as lucky! The vast majority get paid either per unit produced or per unit of time worked(hour or year). Just like many employers would be struck speachless if you demanded to be paid over and over again for the first day of work you did for them, without doing any other work - consumers are beginning to feel the same way.
Yeah, but you get into problems with that. The whole reason ISP's get common carrier status is that they CAN'T block all P2P traffic. Sure they can block Kazaa, but what about filetopia? Port 443 and SSL encryption... how do you block that without blocking all secure online transactions? Sure consumers will use an ISP where they can't do online banking or order from Amazon... Sure they will.
Or let's say traffic analysis, well - freenet - there is already software out there to defeat this, and don't think more is not forthcoming.
How about secure VNC, or VPN's... will all ISP's block those also? Pretty soon, you've just removed all reasons to use the ISP anyway.
One thing, DVD-R blank disks run as low as $0.72 after shipping if you buy onilne and in bulk(well quantities of 100 - which I think is the amount that many people buy CD's in so compare same quantities).
Well, are we talking about used games, or pirate CD's? If they are used games, SUCK UP AND DEAL game developers. Yeah, that thing called first sale? If, however it's pirate CD's, well get law inforcement involved. Even in the pirate friendly slashdot, most people seem to be against pirating for profit.
You know, a funny thing about games. I seem to have horrible luck with getting games I buy to run. Tech support is nonexistant. The games I warez? They all work flawlessly. I have no idea if the pirated games are the versions with the bugs worked out, or if the crackers somehow fix some of the bugs... Maybe I just don't remember the warez's that didn't work out since I was out $0. But when I am out $50+ for a game that just doesn't work at all, and I can't return it, I just stop buying games. I'd spend my money better on the state lotto.
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Well, what exactly do I get out of SP2 anyway?
A roll-up of previous critical updates?
Got those via windows update.
Pop-Up Blocking in IE?
Already have pop-up blocking in Opera 7.51 with proxomitron.
XP firewall 2?
Already have Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 5.5. and plan on getting a router.
So why exactly do I want SP2 anyway, pirate or not?
One thing I find interesting is the idea of an online harddrive offered by MS or Google as a pay service.
It can be done, and pretty cheaply for most users I think, anyone who doesn't use streamload for storage should really look into it. It's got a pretty novel payment method where you mostly pay for downloads unless your data is very unique. Even considering an encrypted HD Image, for 4.95/month you get 3000MB unique storage and 1000MB downloads. The service scales at very reasonable prices to the truly awesome. If monthly prices are too much (which for backup, it probably is) you can get nice yearly subscriptions starting at $45 I believe for the same 3000MB storage, and a total of 12000MB downloaded over the course of the year.
Now that I am done sounding like an advertisement, I just am saying that online HardDrive space has already been done, and done well. And I wouldn't want a totally one company solution anyway, just my fear of monopolies.
As to the bookmark sharing, there are many programs that provide that kind of feature, or how about just using something like TightVNC?
One Login for all sites? Has he ever tried Opera's Wand feature? Or Roboform(I think - kind of like OSS gator, no spyware?) Or even Keywallet?
Regardless that sounds like a major security flaw anyway, especially if it is network based, and not based on the local machine.
My point here is that many of these things he wants already exist. It may be nice to see them unified, but I really have no need of them shoved down my throat in an integrated manner. I much prefer modular anyway.
I think that is something in Opera design. I use Opera on WinXP, and it also can take some time to actually close the process, though the window closes instantly. It is a known "feature" for the Opera Process to hang around for several minutes before exiting.
I hang around the varius forums but don't remember just why they designed Opera this way, I think it had to do with writing RAM cache to disk, and to allow ultra fast restarts if you suddenly decide, oops, I didn't mean to close it.
Hmmm, I'm in NY, where you can't go into any town without seeing at least one, usually 3 lol. But I remember their site saying they have some in CA, specifically LA area, but I get the feeling there are not as many.
Well, I have to say, first, I only turn off my PC when the power fails or I have to move it(upgrade, going to college, etc).
Second, RAM up to a point does improve performance, at least for XP. However I think there are definate diminishing returns:
64MB: System sort of starts/runs
128MB: Ehh, can use notepad.
256MB: Normal usable but a little slow system.
512MB: Stable, about as fast as this system is going to go, good pricepoint. Not much swap used. Commit charge around 300MB.
1024MB: Percievingly the same as 512, Commit charge stays around 300MB, not much swap used.
So, I can't see I'm getting much out of the additional 512 I bought recently. However, I may just be misunderstanding XP's report of the use of RAM.
If I'm right in my understanding, and XP only ever is using about 300MB of my RAM, I'm going to make a 512MB RAM Drive, and store stuff there, IDK what exactly, but something!
I'm suprised you don't use HSBC in the US too, I do, and am very pleased with their service. They are VERY student friendly - don't go off the deep end at low balances and occasional overdrafts...
Plus they are very helpful with chargebacks even on debitcards - much easier than the local bank. With free online bill pay... Just great service.
Well, from personal experiance with an AMD 1700+, if the CPU fan dies, the computer will freeze up. Generally this will result in a reboot by the user(at least in Windows). You will get about 5 min, and the machine will freeze totally again. Eventually someone will realize that something is fubar, and either call you, or turn it off till a tech gets there.
I replaced the CPU fan and continued on my way. There was no damage to the CPU.
My ASUS motherboards have a tempreture monitoring program for windows that can be used to shutdown the computer if the temp gets too high for either the CPU or entire board, or if a fan dies, or any combo you desire.
I can just see the lawsuits against the wireless router makers also. Things like where was the warning sticker, why didn't they make me have a license like with a gun or car if I could be responsible for this much trouble... etc...
Seriously, for anything else with this kind of possible liability, there is licensing, multiple warning labels and required training so that Joe Shmoe KNOWS the dangers. I think that opening that kind of regulation on wireless access points will be faught pretty hard by hardware makers.
I don't know what experiance you had, but I have to say that Opera has been one of the most responsive companies I have ever seen in terms of listening to it's users. I think that is a help and a hindrance.
As a help, they have numerous forums where you even as a free user get not only very knowledgable volunteers offering solutions and fixes, but responses from Customer Service reps and developers. They listen to the Users quite a bit and add requested features or change features usually within a few updates, for instance from 7.2 to 7.23 many things were fixed or changed due to user requests. I'm sure 7.51 will be out in a month or so to clean up the "new" interface and related bugs.
As a hindrance, I think their problem with the default interface is that their feedback comes mostly from Opera users in the preview and beta releases. So the people commenting on the design are used to the somewhat hetic designs of Opera UI. There were lots of complaints of the simplyfing of the UI in 7.5 on the Opera Forums, many asking how to get the "really horrible" UI of 7.23 back, and many dumbfounded that anyone found 7.5 default better. They are catering more to their customers than to new users.
Fortunately it is easy enough to fix. Just have 3 skin options in the default install, and let the user choose on first install.
Say minimalist(munin), I.E./Mozilla style(Traditional), Full Featured (current Opera Default). Have Traditional be the new default. The only other thing I would do is have the default home page be simpler, say not opera.com, but home.opera.com or something, where you have an almost AOL style page.
Say big boxes with - BUY, HELP/Forums, SKINS/UI.
3 choices and probably a bunch of ads on the page to help pay for the whole thing(no popups). So if you don't like the in program ads, one click to buy. You don't know how something works, and the program help is not sufficient? Easy access to the forums for help. Don't like any of the default skins? Right there for access to more skins, looks, UI's than I can possibly imagine.
There of course is no argument for Opera if you feel the software must be free.
That's why Linux and Mozilla are doing so well. At the other extreme is the Maciontosh system. Somewhere in the middle seems to be windows.
If you use windows, Opera might be great software, it comes down to whether you are willing to pay for something that does what it does better than the competition. Of course that is subjective also. I use Eudora, because I have bad experiances with Outlook(express). I use Opera becasue I had bad experiances with I.E. and Netscape(at the time 6 just came out). I use what works best for me. And that is what it comes down to.
It's obvious if you don't like the interface, don't use the software. If you do like the interface, you have to think about whether it is worth it to pay the $40 for the real deal, or to approximate it for free. Kind of like getting a pair of pants at Men's Warehouse, or buying them from Haband.
You know, I never really understood why so many think * and the kitchen sink should be included with everything. However, I can see ad blocking being part of a browser - the downside is it is a lot of work, so much so that it is probably equivilent to the browser itself. Also, ad's change every day, and to have to wait for a browser upgrade to add functionality to blocking seems to hurt the usiability of the browser. I happen to like having separate programs for one thing each, but I understand I am the minority. I personally think a good compromise would be bundling an ad blocker with Opera, with a install like the Java install, so it would all be configured right out of the box. I would ask for some deal where Opera could use Proxomitron with the JD5000 filters, that would certainly add value to the browser as a whole, while providing some financial reward to the hard working people who developed such gems.
I know I don't experiance the same web using Opera with Proxomitron as the people using IE, and I am much happier for it.
Microsoft didn't look at Longhorn and say what it would need, instead, they looked at the hardware that their inside information says will be there and are, very properly, designing to that spec.
And that's the problem. I mean, why not design to what you NEED for the software so that it works right, rather than either bloating it(most likely) to slow those machines to the same apparent speed as a P100 running Win95, or (unlikely but possible) cutting corners so it's less stable/complete/lacks promised features so it will run on computers at that time.
Granted, to an extent you do need to consider what is possible with hardware, but that shouldn't mean designing to the hardware over designing the software to do whatever it is supposed to do. I mean, what - are they going to have 3 flight sims, Halo, Duke Nukem Forever, and all 3 LOTR Extended editions as easter eggs in the OS? I can't figure out how they could possibly need 1TB, even WinXP only uses about 1.5GB. We're talking about an exponential increase in disk space for an OPERATING SYSTEM. At what point does an OS start preventing other programs from running just because it requires ALL resources to run itself? At that point it's useless.
I have a GeForce FX 5600 based card with dual DVI. Just FYI.
Well, I have a hate relationship with ATi ever since they denied having ever produced a chipset or having made a hardware DVD decoder card that came with my comp in 1999 and they never made drivers for anything but Win98SE. So no XP. I called for help and they flat out denied making it when I had it in my hand. Since then, nVidia for me.
I honestly don't care about video card performance, I kept my 32mb TNT2 Ultra till this past December. I replaced it with an ASUS Videosuite card - GeForce 5600 128MB with video in/out Composite and S-Video. Great card, great(for me) performance - $175 new.
I really can't see having only a laptop. I know people who do that, but it would seem so limiting to me(as well as expensive). I wouldn't mind having a laptop for 3 things though. Taking notes in class, Keeping busy on road trips(where I am NOT driving), and help with running roleplaying games. That's about it really. Everything else I'd rather do with a far more powerful and expandable desktop where I don't have to worry about battery life.
You know, for the average home user, they probably don't care much(as long as nothing melts). They may not even notice. I honestly don't care too much either - though just for cool status(pun intended) I wouldn't mind it working, but I guess it doesn't exist for the XP 2800 on a nForce 2 board?
You know, it could be the chipset on the motherboard. Although I've never really had many crashes since WinXP(another thing, were you comparing different versions of windows? It would seem likely given the timespan you indicated), I can say that not all chipsets are equal. Via chipsets can be good or bad, especially depending on the drivers. The nForce set seems to be real stable for me, but slower for DMA HD-HD than my last Via one was(tech support blamed it on me not reinstalling win XP with the change(I did install the new drivers and removed the old ones) so it's a hit I'm willing to take as it rarely affects me.)
Ram can make a big difference too, as well as what other software you have installed. My biggest problem, believe it or not, is ASUS software. The hardware is great, but the video in from my ASUS video card driver seems to bluescreen XP about 40% of the time. I wrote to tech support - no help, even provided error message from the bluescreen - IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL IIRC.
Point is, make sure you're not using totally different vendors for your other hardware before assuming Intel is more stable than AMD. There are bad Intel chipsets as well as AMD chipsets(those not made by the CPU manufacturer). Also consider the other hardware on the system, and the drivers/software for using that hardware.
In the end - as you stated, one data point means nothing statistically, especially not in a controlled environment. Hope Intel keeps working good for you - I'm saving money for as good performance(sometimes better).
Hopefully(probably) AMD will by then have the 2nd generation Athlon FX chips out, a lead that may be hard to make up out of the gate for Intel. That means possibly an extra 10% or so performance boost over the Intel offering. Also, by then the FX-53s might be down out of the clouds a little for the average enthusiast to consider buying. That could give them a big leg up. If they keep working at staying ahead.
If by "marketing" you mean "bearing prices significantly lower."
Well... that is one marketing strategy, see Wal-Mart, Amazon.com etc...
However I think they have word of mouth pretty well tied down(well as good as any company gets in a competitive marketplace). I certainly don't recommend Intel to 99% of the people who ask me about building computers. Why? Price is the main point. The other point is with the 64/FX series AMD actually has comparable Intel processors beat in performance. The XP series is very comparable - so at that point it's like buying Marcal Toliet paper instead of Scott toliet paper. You get basically the same thing(for consumers - they don't care or understand hyperthreading vs memory controller onboard vs etc...) for 30% or more off.
when they ask sales people who are desperate to make a sale if there's any difference, the sales people (who are also AMD fanboys, when they're not being Mac fanboys) tell them no.
For the consumer(not techie) just what is the difference? The performance is very comparable. Remember a difference which makes no difference is no difference. For the average consumer this is true.
I think the issue is that we had this situation once before, in the early 80's. Guess what happened? The more open hardware became the standard for 95% of the world. So if wintel becomes too restrictive - in terms of hardware like the xbox, I'm certain china or AMD or some chip manufacturer will come out with the Wal-Mart generic PC with Linux or whatever, and guess what - being open and able to add new hardware from 10,000 different vendors will win the day again.
Software I can see trying to be restrictive, but people just will not accept their computer hardware becoming like X-box hardware, where you can't upgrade, you can't add any printer or scanner or sound card or whatever. The masses are pretty apathetic, but they have shown time and again that because of that they will ditch en masse a product that makes them care about what they get to use with it for one that doesn't make them care.
I honestly think that artists will have to go back to the Reniassinance method of patronage. And it worked great during that period - look at all the great art produced. Now, artists may not be megamillionaires, but they will be able to live - and I see no reason for government not to sponsor some artists to promote greater culture. It seems like something government ought to do. Private people can get together and sponsor other art works. Either as a community, or if you are rich, by yourself.
But, if it's all free why would anyone sponsor new works?
Well - people get bored with the same old stuff all the time. And what other people sponsor may never be just what I/our group want. There are many people who "sponsor" art, be it sculpture or whatnot. It's done today. Now these people are on the fringe of society right now sure - roleplayers who want character art drawn, or a custom minature made... but I really don't see why it couldn't spread.
The problem is for some reason, a huge percentage of the population thinks artists should not only get paid once, but many times a huge amount for one piece of work. I wish I was as lucky! The vast majority get paid either per unit produced or per unit of time worked(hour or year). Just like many employers would be struck speachless if you demanded to be paid over and over again for the first day of work you did for them, without doing any other work - consumers are beginning to feel the same way.
Yeah, but you get into problems with that. The whole reason ISP's get common carrier status is that they CAN'T block all P2P traffic. Sure they can block Kazaa, but what about filetopia? Port 443 and SSL encryption... how do you block that without blocking all secure online transactions? Sure consumers will use an ISP where they can't do online banking or order from Amazon... Sure they will.
Or let's say traffic analysis, well - freenet - there is already software out there to defeat this, and don't think more is not forthcoming.
How about secure VNC, or VPN's... will all ISP's block those also? Pretty soon, you've just removed all reasons to use the ISP anyway.
One thing, DVD-R blank disks run as low as $0.72 after shipping if you buy onilne and in bulk(well quantities of 100 - which I think is the amount that many people buy CD's in so compare same quantities).
Well, are we talking about used games, or pirate CD's? If they are used games, SUCK UP AND DEAL game developers. Yeah, that thing called first sale? If, however it's pirate CD's, well get law inforcement involved. Even in the pirate friendly slashdot, most people seem to be against pirating for profit.
You know, a funny thing about games. I seem to have horrible luck with getting games I buy to run. Tech support is nonexistant. The games I warez? They all work flawlessly. I have no idea if the pirated games are the versions with the bugs worked out, or if the crackers somehow fix some of the bugs... Maybe I just don't remember the warez's that didn't work out since I was out $0. But when I am out $50+ for a game that just doesn't work at all, and I can't return it, I just stop buying games. I'd spend my money better on the state lotto.