I think he was saying, in the opposite direction. With the PS3 and XBox, Sony and Microsoft are leveraging what is essentially a game console to establish a foothold in general entertainment (movies and music). The poster was suggesting that Apple, on the other hand, could leverage what is supposed to be a general entertainment system (the iTV, which will play music and movies), in order to gain a foothold in the game-console market.
I'm not sure it would work, but I'm pretty sure that's what he means by "opposite".
On the other hand, they could put "casual" games on the iTV from the start. By "casual", I mean exactly the sort of games they're putting on the iPod right now: Tetris, Bejeweled, Pac-Man, etc. It would be a minor selling-point but be a sort of foot-in-the-door.
Really, Apple is in a good position to do this gradually. The first thing would be establish the iTV with these casual games. Meanwhile, they should be trying to get game developers to port more of their games to OSX, with simultaneous launches with the other platforms. Then they could release a decent bluetooth gaming controller (or maybe license the technology from Nintendo for the Wii-mote?) Finally, they could release a specialized iTV to run connect to this controller and play these games.
It wouldn't be so far different from what Microsoft has done. What's the Xbox, really? A computer running a modified version of Windows. It plays games which are not very different from Windows games (from what I've been lead to believe). There's no reason why Apple couldn't do the same thing-- release a specialized Mac that runs a specialized version of OSX, aimed at gaming. The difference might be that you could also take those games to your regular Macintosh and play them there, too (I wish Microsoft had done that, and made it so Xbox games could run on your PC).
Yes, this was largely my point. Contrary to the implication of the name "Windows Genuine Advantage", Microsoft's anti-piracy measures offer me no advantage. What they're doing is making life harder on legitimate customers in what I find to be an unreasonable fashion. It would be comparable to a butcher knocking on your door every day and demanding to inspect your refrigerator in order to make sure you don't have any meat that he hasn't certified. Why should it be my responsibility to constantly re-prove to Microsoft that I've paid them for a product?
Everyone is getting value, but Google is a business, and when it comes to business, the real issue is money. Where is Google getting its money, that's the question. Once you know that, you know where their business interests lie.
For example, my company buys office supplies from staples. That doesn't mean our core business is buying office supplies. The owners want to keep the employees happy because you can't function without employees, but that doesn't make the core business "employee-pleasing". If you want to know what our company is really about, you look at our income. What is it we get paid for?
Same thing with Google. What do they get paid for? Ad placement. Therefore their customers are advertisers. Everything else is a cost of business.
I'm not knocking the individuals working for Microsoft, it's just that there comes a point in the lifespan of a company where it's past its prime?
I think this statement is a little misleading, depending on what you mean by "its prime". Possibly, there comes a point in the life-span of a company where it's original business model no longer works, or when it becomes too bloated. Lots of things happen, but under good management, a company can shift, retool, and stay successful. Nintendo didn't always make its money off of video games and IBM wasn't always making its money from eCommerce consulting. Neither are as dominating in their respective fields as they once were, but neither company is failing.
But I think you're correct in your first statement, "money can't buy brains". More to the point, throwing money at the problem is rarely an effective solution. Calling it from the sidelines, I'd say that Microsoft has no shortage of resources, including the resource of intelligent people. The problem does seem to be cultural and managerial. It seems to me that the biggest difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Microsoft is suffering from a lack of vision and focus.
As it is, it looks less like research and more like unfettered spending to find "yet another" way to dominate.
Or more to the point, my complaint with Microsoft over the last few years is that they seem to have been spending more money on figuring out how to restrict my use of their products, and not very much money on figuring out how to make my life easier.
Now, maybe it's just me, personally, but I'm a home user and an IT professional. I use computers a lot for various things, and Windows seems to be getting harder to deal with. If I have to call Microsoft over another activation problem, I'm going to want to kill someone.... actually the truth is I've past that point a while ago.
Maybe it's just because Microsoft is servicing someone other than me. Maybe there's someone out there who's pleased as punch at the changes in Vista and Office 2007. I honestly think MS hit their peak in 2000, and things have just gotten more frustrating since then. Keep It Simple, Stupid. My needs aren't that unusual or complicated, but Microsoft doesn't seem to be making a lot of headway. Security. Stability. Easy imaging. Effective backups. Compatibility and interoperability. The ability to manage the ever-increasing mail stores. Transparency into what the computer is actually doing so that it can be manipulated more easily for any purpose.
For christ's sake, if you're going to pay so much for "innovation", try to tackle some of the fundamental problems with modern computing, instead of gimmicky wireless sharing for MP3 players, new copy-protection schemes, and snazzy graphics for FreeCell.
Re:ROI leading to burnout - so true
on
Understanding Burnout
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If I am working on something where I see great results that positively impact my company's clients, I feel great... even if I'm working 80 hour weeks. If I am doing something that I view as trivial or unnecessary (but cannot get out of doing it), I quickly feel burned out within a few weeks.
... and we wonder why our kids hate school and aren't doing well.
Re:Are we sure it comes from work?
on
Understanding Burnout
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I realized at some point that work wasn't really quite exactly the problem, but more like work-habits. While I was working at one job that was fairly high-stress, I was feeling close to burnt out. But I realized that the problem was that I was procrastinating on some of my projects, and I started feeling better when I tackled those problems instead of putting them off. Sometimes pushing through can be somewhat therapeutic.
But then I also realized that working through it wasn't quite enough. I started limiting myself to 8 hour workdays unless there was an emergency, making sure I used my vacation time and took my lunch break, and making a habit of taking lunch outside of the office. Getting outside every now and then helped a lot. I also found that it didn't really have as much of an adverse result on my productivity, because I was more productive when I was rested and happy.
So the problem wasn't the work itself, but the fact that I wasn't putting limits on my work. Without limits, the work overran the rest of my life. I would work through lunch and stay for 12 hour work-days even when it wasn't absolutely necessary, which put lessened my outside-of-work time, which made me unhappy, which made those twelve-hour work-days less productive.
No, I think the GP had it right. You're saying that Google couldn't exist without its users, which is true enough. It's also true that Dell couldn't exist without computers.
If you want to know what the business model is, follow the money. We don't pay Google when we use their services. Who pays Google? People wanting to place advertising. What are they paying Google for? Your attention.
So, just like in the broadcast TV business model, viewers are not the customers being served. Viewers are the products being sold. Google is selling quality consumer eye-ball time to advertisers. That's the business they're in.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. You're right, when you're in the consumer-eye-ball business, it's good for business to show the eyeballs what they want to see. If you don't do that, you won't stay in business.
At the same time, you shouldn't have any illusions about what is going on. TV networks could have the best show ever, and it could be something that would attract loads of viewers and make viewers happy. However, if for some reason they couldn't sell advertising time for that show, it wouldn't air. They might sell a DVD, but it would not make it onto broadcast TV.
No, but "the Internet" isn't a product. Google has a near-monopoly on web searches, and it is (allegedly) leveraging that monopoly to gain a competitive advantage in other industries that also happen to be web-based.
Tell me something about Google's "monopoly" on searches that prevents me, the searcher, from using a different search engine. Tell me some way in which Google's "monopoly" on searches prevents me, as a company, from placing ads through other services.
When you talk about Google leveraging their "monopoly". How is Google making it difficult for me to not-use their services, or to use competing services.
What you're complaining about would be comparable to DishTV having ads for DishTV on channels delivered via DishTV. If you hated DishTV so much that their commercials would bother you, then why are you using their service? Likewise, if you have a problem with seeing references to Google's services, why the hell are you going to Google for your web searches? It's not as though you have no alternative. The *only* reason Google has managed to stay on top is that they've done a much better job than anyone else.
Yeah, but also I notice that you're talking about poor people in the US, whereas the headline implies we're talking about the world. I wonder how many of those "poor" people in the US are in the top 2% of people in the world. I live in NYC where someone making $30k a year might be considered "poor". It's certainly hard to live on that, and I can't imagine trying to raise a family in this city on so little. However, I read recently that a salary of $30k puts you in the top couple percent worldwide.
As someone who owns an HDTV and has little debt, I'm wondering if I'm in the top 2%. I'm not exactly what I would call "rich", but I guess if you set me against starving kids in Africa...
A simple search would turn up the answer. It basically means there's no warning, and no time to prepare. The exploit's existence is made public the same day as the flaw's existence.
The truth is most students who go to college do so because they want to be employable with decent salaries after they get their deploma.
Assuming that's the case, then we should be investing in trade schools for these students, because that's what they're looking for. Many American universities do seem to be heading in the direction of becoming huge, vaguely connected trade schools with semi-professional sport leagues attached, and I guess that's fine, but let's call a spade a spade. Job training is not the same as higher education.
The real problem, in my mind, is not with the system itself, but with the disconnect between expectations and reality. If we want vocational schools, then we should focus on building vocational schools and calling them vocational schools, but making them high-quality vocational schools. If we're going to make claims about a higher liberal education, then a vocational school doesn't really fit the bill. Sometimes when you're presented with two targets, aiming at both means you don't hit either.
He didn't claim that Gates stole the worlds riches. The statement was in the form of a generalized saying. As with many such statements, it's obviously a purposeful exaggeration of the situation intended to make a point: A person shouldn't be thought to be generous for giving away a portion of an ill-gotten fortune. At best, it's partial (not full) atonement for bad behavior.
In my experience, you can do it with standards, or you can make it look like the client wants it to look like, which requires at least two sets of scripts for the diferent browsers
It requires two sets of scripts to get it to look a certain way? What kinds of scripts are these, that are controlling the "look" of the web page, and why are you writing two?
Then you run into things like ActiveX maps and OWC objects and give up on it working in anything other then IE.
Sounds like a good reason not to use ActiveX or OWC.
If you notice, I didn't claim otherwise. I would, in fact, lean towards it being a statement that's generally true, but I just wasn't feeling ambitious enough right at the moment of writing my post where I wanted to make such an bold claim about all governments everywhere ever.
Maybe a government could be constructed that wasn't very corrupt. Maybe such a government exists somewhere, or has existed at some time. I don't know. I'm not trying to be specifically ant-Republican, in the last few years, EU has tried to stand against Microsoft and the US government hasn't. I'm not versed enough on the situation to blame anyone in particular for this, but in my opinion it's a bad thing. I'm generally not in favor of "big government" particularly because of inefficiencies and corruption, but I believe that anti-trust regulation is necessary in some cases.
The model corporation for leftists? It seems to me that they might have been considered a triumph of capitalism and the free market before all these anti-trust issues. Now they're a perfect case for people who want government intervention in the market.
The unfortunate thing is that, whenever the current US government gets into managing things, they seem to go wherever the money is. Lobbyists have too much influence, and they're good at what they do, so whoever is paying the most for lobbyists is likely to come out on top. Therefore, government intervention tends to take the form of things like the DMCA instead of meaningful anti-trust actions.
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You. Did I just blow your mind?
I think he was saying, in the opposite direction. With the PS3 and XBox, Sony and Microsoft are leveraging what is essentially a game console to establish a foothold in general entertainment (movies and music). The poster was suggesting that Apple, on the other hand, could leverage what is supposed to be a general entertainment system (the iTV, which will play music and movies), in order to gain a foothold in the game-console market.
I'm not sure it would work, but I'm pretty sure that's what he means by "opposite".
On the other hand, they could put "casual" games on the iTV from the start. By "casual", I mean exactly the sort of games they're putting on the iPod right now: Tetris, Bejeweled, Pac-Man, etc. It would be a minor selling-point but be a sort of foot-in-the-door.
Really, Apple is in a good position to do this gradually. The first thing would be establish the iTV with these casual games. Meanwhile, they should be trying to get game developers to port more of their games to OSX, with simultaneous launches with the other platforms. Then they could release a decent bluetooth gaming controller (or maybe license the technology from Nintendo for the Wii-mote?) Finally, they could release a specialized iTV to run connect to this controller and play these games.
It wouldn't be so far different from what Microsoft has done. What's the Xbox, really? A computer running a modified version of Windows. It plays games which are not very different from Windows games (from what I've been lead to believe). There's no reason why Apple couldn't do the same thing-- release a specialized Mac that runs a specialized version of OSX, aimed at gaming. The difference might be that you could also take those games to your regular Macintosh and play them there, too (I wish Microsoft had done that, and made it so Xbox games could run on your PC).
What makes me think they don't? Using and supporting their products.
Yes, this was largely my point. Contrary to the implication of the name "Windows Genuine Advantage", Microsoft's anti-piracy measures offer me no advantage. What they're doing is making life harder on legitimate customers in what I find to be an unreasonable fashion. It would be comparable to a butcher knocking on your door every day and demanding to inspect your refrigerator in order to make sure you don't have any meat that he hasn't certified. Why should it be my responsibility to constantly re-prove to Microsoft that I've paid them for a product?
Everyone is getting value, but Google is a business, and when it comes to business, the real issue is money. Where is Google getting its money, that's the question. Once you know that, you know where their business interests lie.
For example, my company buys office supplies from staples. That doesn't mean our core business is buying office supplies. The owners want to keep the employees happy because you can't function without employees, but that doesn't make the core business "employee-pleasing". If you want to know what our company is really about, you look at our income. What is it we get paid for?
Same thing with Google. What do they get paid for? Ad placement. Therefore their customers are advertisers. Everything else is a cost of business.
I'm not knocking the individuals working for Microsoft, it's just that there comes a point in the lifespan of a company where it's past its prime?
I think this statement is a little misleading, depending on what you mean by "its prime". Possibly, there comes a point in the life-span of a company where it's original business model no longer works, or when it becomes too bloated. Lots of things happen, but under good management, a company can shift, retool, and stay successful. Nintendo didn't always make its money off of video games and IBM wasn't always making its money from eCommerce consulting. Neither are as dominating in their respective fields as they once were, but neither company is failing.
But I think you're correct in your first statement, "money can't buy brains". More to the point, throwing money at the problem is rarely an effective solution. Calling it from the sidelines, I'd say that Microsoft has no shortage of resources, including the resource of intelligent people. The problem does seem to be cultural and managerial. It seems to me that the biggest difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Microsoft is suffering from a lack of vision and focus.
As it is, it looks less like research and more like unfettered spending to find "yet another" way to dominate.
Or more to the point, my complaint with Microsoft over the last few years is that they seem to have been spending more money on figuring out how to restrict my use of their products, and not very much money on figuring out how to make my life easier.
Now, maybe it's just me, personally, but I'm a home user and an IT professional. I use computers a lot for various things, and Windows seems to be getting harder to deal with. If I have to call Microsoft over another activation problem, I'm going to want to kill someone.... actually the truth is I've past that point a while ago.
Maybe it's just because Microsoft is servicing someone other than me. Maybe there's someone out there who's pleased as punch at the changes in Vista and Office 2007. I honestly think MS hit their peak in 2000, and things have just gotten more frustrating since then. Keep It Simple, Stupid. My needs aren't that unusual or complicated, but Microsoft doesn't seem to be making a lot of headway. Security. Stability. Easy imaging. Effective backups. Compatibility and interoperability. The ability to manage the ever-increasing mail stores. Transparency into what the computer is actually doing so that it can be manipulated more easily for any purpose.
For christ's sake, if you're going to pay so much for "innovation", try to tackle some of the fundamental problems with modern computing, instead of gimmicky wireless sharing for MP3 players, new copy-protection schemes, and snazzy graphics for FreeCell.
If I am working on something where I see great results that positively impact my company's clients, I feel great ... even if I'm working 80 hour weeks. If I am doing something that I view as trivial or unnecessary (but cannot get out of doing it), I quickly feel burned out within a few weeks.
... and we wonder why our kids hate school and aren't doing well.
I realized at some point that work wasn't really quite exactly the problem, but more like work-habits. While I was working at one job that was fairly high-stress, I was feeling close to burnt out. But I realized that the problem was that I was procrastinating on some of my projects, and I started feeling better when I tackled those problems instead of putting them off. Sometimes pushing through can be somewhat therapeutic.
But then I also realized that working through it wasn't quite enough. I started limiting myself to 8 hour workdays unless there was an emergency, making sure I used my vacation time and took my lunch break, and making a habit of taking lunch outside of the office. Getting outside every now and then helped a lot. I also found that it didn't really have as much of an adverse result on my productivity, because I was more productive when I was rested and happy.
So the problem wasn't the work itself, but the fact that I wasn't putting limits on my work. Without limits, the work overran the rest of my life. I would work through lunch and stay for 12 hour work-days even when it wasn't absolutely necessary, which put lessened my outside-of-work time, which made me unhappy, which made those twelve-hour work-days less productive.
No, I think the GP had it right. You're saying that Google couldn't exist without its users, which is true enough. It's also true that Dell couldn't exist without computers.
If you want to know what the business model is, follow the money. We don't pay Google when we use their services. Who pays Google? People wanting to place advertising. What are they paying Google for? Your attention.
So, just like in the broadcast TV business model, viewers are not the customers being served. Viewers are the products being sold. Google is selling quality consumer eye-ball time to advertisers. That's the business they're in.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. You're right, when you're in the consumer-eye-ball business, it's good for business to show the eyeballs what they want to see. If you don't do that, you won't stay in business.
At the same time, you shouldn't have any illusions about what is going on. TV networks could have the best show ever, and it could be something that would attract loads of viewers and make viewers happy. However, if for some reason they couldn't sell advertising time for that show, it wouldn't air. They might sell a DVD, but it would not make it onto broadcast TV.
Tell me something about Google's "monopoly" on searches that prevents me, the searcher, from using a different search engine. Tell me some way in which Google's "monopoly" on searches prevents me, as a company, from placing ads through other services.
When you talk about Google leveraging their "monopoly". How is Google making it difficult for me to not-use their services, or to use competing services.
What you're complaining about would be comparable to DishTV having ads for DishTV on channels delivered via DishTV. If you hated DishTV so much that their commercials would bother you, then why are you using their service? Likewise, if you have a problem with seeing references to Google's services, why the hell are you going to Google for your web searches? It's not as though you have no alternative. The *only* reason Google has managed to stay on top is that they've done a much better job than anyone else.
Yeah, but also I notice that you're talking about poor people in the US, whereas the headline implies we're talking about the world. I wonder how many of those "poor" people in the US are in the top 2% of people in the world. I live in NYC where someone making $30k a year might be considered "poor". It's certainly hard to live on that, and I can't imagine trying to raise a family in this city on so little. However, I read recently that a salary of $30k puts you in the top couple percent worldwide.
As someone who owns an HDTV and has little debt, I'm wondering if I'm in the top 2%. I'm not exactly what I would call "rich", but I guess if you set me against starving kids in Africa...
A simple search would turn up the answer. It basically means there's no warning, and no time to prepare. The exploit's existence is made public the same day as the flaw's existence.
I have two words for you: As long as you PowerPoint, you're all set.
No.
The truth is most students who go to college do so because they want to be employable with decent salaries after they get their deploma.
Assuming that's the case, then we should be investing in trade schools for these students, because that's what they're looking for. Many American universities do seem to be heading in the direction of becoming huge, vaguely connected trade schools with semi-professional sport leagues attached, and I guess that's fine, but let's call a spade a spade. Job training is not the same as higher education.
The real problem, in my mind, is not with the system itself, but with the disconnect between expectations and reality. If we want vocational schools, then we should focus on building vocational schools and calling them vocational schools, but making them high-quality vocational schools. If we're going to make claims about a higher liberal education, then a vocational school doesn't really fit the bill. Sometimes when you're presented with two targets, aiming at both means you don't hit either.
Also, doing "something to help improve the quality of Indian education" will cost money, which means the labor isn't so cheap.
He didn't claim that Gates stole the worlds riches. The statement was in the form of a generalized saying. As with many such statements, it's obviously a purposeful exaggeration of the situation intended to make a point: A person shouldn't be thought to be generous for giving away a portion of an ill-gotten fortune. At best, it's partial (not full) atonement for bad behavior.
They could just as well build their own distro...
... or more to the point, they can fork off from their current version and use that as a starting point for their own distro.
Part of the problem is that oil has other uses besides as an energy source. It's also used to make plastics, for example.
In my experience, you can do it with standards, or you can make it look like the client wants it to look like, which requires at least two sets of scripts for the diferent browsers
It requires two sets of scripts to get it to look a certain way? What kinds of scripts are these, that are controlling the "look" of the web page, and why are you writing two?
Then you run into things like ActiveX maps and OWC objects and give up on it working in anything other then IE.
Sounds like a good reason not to use ActiveX or OWC.
If you notice, I didn't claim otherwise. I would, in fact, lean towards it being a statement that's generally true, but I just wasn't feeling ambitious enough right at the moment of writing my post where I wanted to make such an bold claim about all governments everywhere ever.
Maybe a government could be constructed that wasn't very corrupt. Maybe such a government exists somewhere, or has existed at some time. I don't know. I'm not trying to be specifically ant-Republican, in the last few years, EU has tried to stand against Microsoft and the US government hasn't. I'm not versed enough on the situation to blame anyone in particular for this, but in my opinion it's a bad thing. I'm generally not in favor of "big government" particularly because of inefficiencies and corruption, but I believe that anti-trust regulation is necessary in some cases.
The model corporation for leftists? It seems to me that they might have been considered a triumph of capitalism and the free market before all these anti-trust issues. Now they're a perfect case for people who want government intervention in the market.
The unfortunate thing is that, whenever the current US government gets into managing things, they seem to go wherever the money is. Lobbyists have too much influence, and they're good at what they do, so whoever is paying the most for lobbyists is likely to come out on top. Therefore, government intervention tends to take the form of things like the DMCA instead of meaningful anti-trust actions.
I think that might have been a rhetorical question.