On the other hand they didn't have much choice. Imagine the loss of confidence they would have faced if they had proceeded as planned. I don't know anyone who has ever purchased music there, but I'm hoping that most of them will claim their DRM-less copy. There isn't a valid reason why we should give up rights we had in the days of physical copies - even the lower price is just a compensation for the lack of case and media we used to buy in stores...
Two things which might prevent the development you described:
First of all $40 in the '90's are not $40 as of today.
Secondly it's not like the manufacturing cost gets cheaper just because time passes. If you start building them the way they used to be you have to take way higher energy and material costs into account (even in China it's not like electricity is so much cheaper that you will make a bargain). You could use newer technology and put them on smaller dies, but that would cost you as well. There is a reason why we don't build very old designs anymore - the benefits of newer designs outreach the cost savings we have from sticking to what we used before...
I'm neither a product engineer, but I highly doubt that there is any way to produce anything resembling a laptop below around $90. Just add up the cost for raw materials and then think about the per unit cost of manufacturing the final good. For example look at CPUs: Regarding energy consumption and engine costs it's not so much difference if you build a high end chip or something very low-level. I'm not saying that they feature the same per-unit cost, but they are pretty close. The big difference is that the high-end chip must pay for all the research put into it. Just in case Intel decided to release 386 again they wouldn't be much cheaper than $30. If that doesn't convince you look at the casing: We are not talking about $1 per unit. It's more likely that you will pay around 3 just for the most basic design.
And if you are still in doubt: Take a look at the RAM prices. This industry currently has to cope with negative margins in many areas, which means that you are paying less than it costs them to produce it. Still I couldn't find anyone selling 256 megs for less than $5.
The computer I bought in 1993 might feature a market price below $10, but that doesn't mean that the production costs were anywhere near that line.
I agree with you - the puzzles are simply better integrated with the game, and are offered as a challenge to get more of the story/points/powers, rather than being roadblocks that must be passed. Think KOTOR, where the puzzles enhance the gameplay, vs something like Myst, where solving the puzzles enable futher gameplay.
Kotor really seems to be one of the finest examples in the last years. You had the Diablo "level-up-addiction" combined with lots of story and many puzzles to solve. And since you were the one deciding how it all ends it was even fun to play twice. Whenever one element got boring the others made up for it. IMO that's the way to go with all the enhanced graphics and UI. The only problem is that the market for such games is quite small. But on the other hand it was just as small back in the old days, so you can't really talk about a decline. It's just that so many new genres have appeared and the industry itself is much bigger.
On a side note: Would anyone buy a game today which had almost 1/3 covered with this menu:
GIVE PICKUP USE OPEN LOOKAT PUSH CLOSE TALK TO PULL
Makes one feel like an idiot if some site starts to require impossible Captchas. Rapidshare for example had one where you were supposed to only write the letters featuring a cat (other letters had a dog). I had to enable some zoom feature of my DE to get a closer look but still the dogs and cats looked like some screen-dirt to me. Never managed to solve this one properly.
Looks like I'm not the only one not smart enough - they replaced this CAPTCHA with some "Happy Hour" mode, which didn't require any form.
I can't speak for other countries, but the US telcos won't force you to have POTS service to get DSL. When I left Verizon, this was just happening (almost 5 years ago), and the skuttlebutt was the other telcos were either already doing it or in the process thereof.
I guess the reason for this is the high availability of cable in the US. The cable companies do not have as much incentive to bundle it compared to traditional telcos. And if you can get cable without a phone, the competitors have to make similar offers in order to stay competitive. The bundling I talked about mostly happens in countries which have a very high share of DSL. For example Germany: 63% DSL, 27% Dialup. The remaining 10% consist of cable, satellite and more exotic forms of access.
You will have a phone number assigned to the line, but Verizon would not tell you the number. (I'm pretty sure it is the same with other telcos, but can't say for sure.) It is a local number with no other services installed.
DSL works over two lines of copper like the POTS. From the networks point of view it is still a phone line. Most likely they don't even use a branch of DSL which utilizes the unused POTS or ISDN frequencies (actually I'm not aware of any variation of DSL going below 3.4kHz, which is POTS, but some utilize ISDN frequencies).
a flat rate system like SMS just isn't going to cut it
Exactly the reason why they offer flat rate services. The more people have data-plans, the less it makes sense to charge for individual SMS'. In the end they will charge 5 bucks for unlimited SMS if you want it or not, because otherwise they would lose that source of revenue while data plans get cheaper and cheaper.
Btw: For the same reason the telcos of many countries refuse to sell you DSL without a telephone line. Voip could fill the void completely and it would be even possible to implement a free system on a global scale, but it would hurt those providing access to voip services and for that reason they won't let you use it exclusively (or at least let you pay for what they don't earn the traditional way). And if you are paying for it anyways there is less incentive to switch to free alternatives.
I love flat rates in general, but sometimes they are just designed to keep the status quo. In the end everything gets cheaper in regards to what we pay per minute, but the bill at the end of the month still is as high as 8 years ago.
Just look at how many households still have a fax machine and you will realize how much pricing is preventing a real step forward.
You could also tell them: If I show you my code, you have to sign a NDA priorly. Doubt that this would work, but it would give an interesting twist to this game.
I don't work in this field anymore, but if I really had to present some code, I would come up with something which is way too abstract and complicated, so nobody could ever trace it to a particular job or company. I've got this really silly printer enumeration function I wrote for a company years ago. To be honest I fail to understand it nowadays. Ok, my skills won't impress anyone who is really into this, but I'm sure any serious programmer has written something which is so unspecific (but genius), that it can be presented even though it might break agreements one had with a former employer.
Well, our accent simply sucks. But in the end it doesn't matter so much. Regardless of what your native tongue is people will always hear that you are not a native speaker. Sometimes I reach the level that people can't pin me down to a specific country and then I'm really satisfied, because I know that I'll never really sound like a native and if I manage I'll just sound like a guy from the BBC announcing the news (which would make me even more suspicious). After I became aware of Schwartzeneggers accent I started to focus on vocabulary (a beginner can't distinguish accents between Arnold and a native)
And since you brought up French: How many French do you know who speak German without a noticeable accent? It might sound cooler to talk German with a French accent, but it doesn't mean they are any better at it. In my circle they all have a strong accent - even those who have lived here for over 30 years leave out the letter "h" or "sing along" every sentence. Only one girl mastered German within 6 months, but she is a genius - I'm sure you could drop her off in Finland or the Basque region and she would hold lectures within a couple of weeks. She's just the exception to the rule.
Exactly what I said. English is as romance as German meaning that both languages are from an entirely different tree. Whoever modded parent informative didn't spend so much time reading the comment.
I didn't hear it - I just know because there are only 2 genders and there is a rather short list of exceptions. Correct me if the list is significantly longer than for Spanish nouns.
In German on the other hand there is no rule at all and there is an additional gender (neuter). You just can't tell if "Kind" (kid) is male, female or neuter (hence resulting in "der", "die" or "das" "Kind". And then you also have to know how to decline it because most words change at least in Genitive in an irregular fashion. Harder doesn't mean better or more sophisticated, but you can't tell me that French is more of a headache than German for students.
Yes, I totally agree that German helps in many countries in the former USSR. But I wouldn't learn German for the "eastern block" - in that case Russian would be a better choice (still considering that the original question came from a native English speaker and his intention was to learn a language which might give him new job opportunities).
Last year I managed to buy bread and cigarettes in east-Poland with a mix of German and rudimentary Polish. It worked fine but I wouldn't bet that anyone would employ me just because I fit the job and I speak German.
Just a little note: English is just a Romance as German. I'd say that German is less alien to English than all the other languages you have mentioned. We have lots of words in common and we even have an accent which incorporates parts of the English language (which is called "platt").
Nevertheless I agree that French among others is still easier to learn because the grammar is more consistent and there are less exceptions. It's also easier because the word itself reveals its gender and there are only two to keep in mind...
If you're looking at the EU, learn spanish, italian, german, french, or russian.
I totally like to see more people learning German, but from a career point-of-view I can't recommend it. I know lots of people from England or the US who live in Germany and get along with English at work and in private. I also know some people who really tried to practice their German in Germany and most of them complained that everyone in stores switches to English when they hear an English accent.
Pick French or Spanish or if you really like difficult languages take a look at Russian. Those 3 have the advantage that they work in lots of countries so you have many of options. German on the other hand is only beneficial in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and most people speak English anyways...
On a personal note I'm thinking of learning another language just for the fun of it. I speak German, English, Spanish and a little bit of Russian and Chinese (as well as two dead languages you don't want to hear about). Since I do some business in Poland it would be a natural choice, but I have also considered Turkish or Portuguese. Learning languages is hard, but it's so much fun when you covered the basics and start to do simple conversation. In most countries (apart from Germany) people also pay respect for the effort.
Even with HD content one would have to deliberately break the limit. Let's assume youtube would implement full HD based on H.264 aka MPEG-4 AVC. I don't have any material on my computer but a quick look here tells me that 3 minutes require about 360 MB, so you get about 250 minutes for 30 GB, which is a little more than 4 hours.
But even if someone watches youtube for more than 4 hours in a row it wouldn't matter, because TFA mentions that it only affects upload, so one would have to upload 2.8 movies of average length a day.
BTW: Bluray supports MPEG-2 exactly for the reason that it wastes so much space. Otherwise people would start to wonder why we need 50 GB optical discs for HD videos...
Of course I haven't met them - otherwise I wouldn't wonder about it;)
Seriously: Around 30 people might not be representative at all, but not a single republican in 30 not perfectly random people is still kind of odd if you consider election results in recent years. I also asked some other people in Europe and they all had a similar impression. I'm not saying that there are no republicans in Europe, that would be silly. But I'm sure that they are significantly under-represented compared to their significance at home.
And before someone starts nagging about how pro-democrat I am: It's really just an observation I made. I don't care so much about political parties in the US in general. Apart from foreign policy (which affects us) I don't have much opinion.
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
It could also be argued that the real beauty of this (from the vendor's perspective) is the low probability that anyone who can't watch TV will send the box in and wait for more than a week for the repairs/replacement. It's far more likely that the entire household panics and someone is send to the next shop to buy a new box. If I was the vendor I wouldn't even bother to hire technicians for repairs - just replace the few damaged ones that make it back.
This is almost like a victimless crime, but legal. I like the idea;)
I base this on my father, an American, who stoutly refuses to travel anywhere requiring a passport, simply because it's "not America"
It always fascinated me that there are no US citizens in Europe who favor the republicans (at least in the last 8 years I haven't encountered a single one, but I only met around 30), which lead me to two theories: Either the republicans "don't make it" that far or some simply lie because they want to avoid endless discussions. Your comment supports my first theory, but in the end I guess both are valid to a certain extend.
Haven't seen any phone featuring this deliberately. I think it would be also kind of neat to have a plugin for xing or plaxo, which simply updates your contact's numbers whenever they change it, so you don't even have to think about this.
I'd also appreciate a provider field also fed by an online service. Over here people can take their mobile numbers with them when switching providers. Sometimes I'm calling someone with the same operator code in the assumption that I'm using the 1000 minutes I can talk for free calling people on the same mobile network. Of course I could ask whenever I'm calling, but it would be way more convenient to know before I dial...
Can't offer any smart solution to the problem. However, I remember that back in ~2000 cnet had an article about the issue which argued that the lower barrier in obtaining such material should result in lower penalties, because it has become far more likely to obtain such material accidentally. It's just way too easy to stumble across questionable material on the net and sometimes people don't even know that it is on their hdd. Very different times compared to the situation when applicable laws were created.
Wouldn't remember it was cnet if it wasn't so much out of their usual scope. However, I think the author had a very valid point. And if someone knows how to get this article I'd highly appreciate it - couldn't find it in recent years...
In general I totally agree that they should do something to spread FF's acknowledgement - if everyone knew about FF + all the great plugins (like Adblock) I'm sure IE would have a hard time outside of companies. But I doubt that an appeal to download the newest.0 release will affect anyone but those who already know about it.
Instead I'd like to see some short clips highlighting the areas in which FF performs significantly better than IE. Add some humor and competition in the process and you might reach people who thought that IE is another word for internet. I'm sure there is much more to gain compared to a competition for nerds to waste the most bandwidth.
My guess it that it's either restricted to those who really need to know or the articles are only open to those having proper authorization. Either way they will try to improve communication while keeping certified material on a need to know base. They are following the wiki model, but they will not disclose ultra-secret information to the general staff. If they implement ACL's they'll only state the obvious information on the lowest level. If you are on the top you might look up Bin Laden's current location if it was known;)
It's not so hard to implement a system which hides sections of a wiki article based on the user's authorization...
I also found the assertion of the GP hilarious. Do you interpret this graph as showing Microsoft's impending doom? If you do, you need glasses.
Makes me wonder why they didn't include BSD for reference. But all kidding aside it's the first variant of Windows taking over this slowly*. Vista sales are slightly higher than the number of new PC's sold since Vista's release and that doesn't include the people who deliberately downgrade after purchasing a new computer. Kind of moot argument if you are talking about a company which highly encourages every manufacturer to include the newest version as part of the contracts they have.
Win2000 and XP on the other hand beat their predecessors within a couple of month after their initial release. And I'm too lazy to look it up after reading parent's source.
To be fair MS is performing quite well despite all the wrong decisions they made. We won't see them fall over the next decade**. But Vista is not going to help them and it was a long time ago it was easier for competitors to tackle MS' core market..
*I don't know about ME, on the other hand 2000 and XP came shortly after.
**Ok, think of any other company which sits on 254 billion equity and has no debt. Plus they don't pay dividends. Compare that to GM for example and calculate how many years it would take before they run out of money;)
Yes, it was quite late yesterday and I left it out because I simply didn't remember. Anyways, mine was a SX. I still remember the mainboard had some slot or socket for an additional co-processor (which in turn was a fully functional DX). I guess this concept was mostly developed by marketing...
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On the other hand they didn't have much choice. Imagine the loss of confidence they would have faced if they had proceeded as planned. I don't know anyone who has ever purchased music there, but I'm hoping that most of them will claim their DRM-less copy. There isn't a valid reason why we should give up rights we had in the days of physical copies - even the lower price is just a compensation for the lack of case and media we used to buy in stores...
Two things which might prevent the development you described:
First of all $40 in the '90's are not $40 as of today.
Secondly it's not like the manufacturing cost gets cheaper just because time passes. If you start building them the way they used to be you have to take way higher energy and material costs into account (even in China it's not like electricity is so much cheaper that you will make a bargain). You could use newer technology and put them on smaller dies, but that would cost you as well. There is a reason why we don't build very old designs anymore - the benefits of newer designs outreach the cost savings we have from sticking to what we used before...
I'm neither a product engineer, but I highly doubt that there is any way to produce anything resembling a laptop below around $90. Just add up the cost for raw materials and then think about the per unit cost of manufacturing the final good. For example look at CPUs: Regarding energy consumption and engine costs it's not so much difference if you build a high end chip or something very low-level. I'm not saying that they feature the same per-unit cost, but they are pretty close. The big difference is that the high-end chip must pay for all the research put into it. Just in case Intel decided to release 386 again they wouldn't be much cheaper than $30. If that doesn't convince you look at the casing: We are not talking about $1 per unit. It's more likely that you will pay around 3 just for the most basic design.
And if you are still in doubt: Take a look at the RAM prices. This industry currently has to cope with negative margins in many areas, which means that you are paying less than it costs them to produce it. Still I couldn't find anyone selling 256 megs for less than $5.
The computer I bought in 1993 might feature a market price below $10, but that doesn't mean that the production costs were anywhere near that line.
Kotor really seems to be one of the finest examples in the last years. You had the Diablo "level-up-addiction" combined with lots of story and many puzzles to solve. And since you were the one deciding how it all ends it was even fun to play twice. Whenever one element got boring the others made up for it. IMO that's the way to go with all the enhanced graphics and UI. The only problem is that the market for such games is quite small. But on the other hand it was just as small back in the old days, so you can't really talk about a decline. It's just that so many new genres have appeared and the industry itself is much bigger.
:)
On a side note: Would anyone buy a game today which had almost 1/3 covered with this menu:
GIVE PICKUP USE
OPEN LOOKAT PUSH
CLOSE TALK TO PULL
I thought so
To be honest it's mostly music in encrypted rar files. Over here it's not even illegal as long as you only share it with *real* friends.
Makes one feel like an idiot if some site starts to require impossible Captchas. Rapidshare for example had one where you were supposed to only write the letters featuring a cat (other letters had a dog). I had to enable some zoom feature of my DE to get a closer look but still the dogs and cats looked like some screen-dirt to me. Never managed to solve this one properly.
Looks like I'm not the only one not smart enough - they replaced this CAPTCHA with some "Happy Hour" mode, which didn't require any form.
I guess the reason for this is the high availability of cable in the US. The cable companies do not have as much incentive to bundle it compared to traditional telcos. And if you can get cable without a phone, the competitors have to make similar offers in order to stay competitive. The bundling I talked about mostly happens in countries which have a very high share of DSL. For example Germany: 63% DSL, 27% Dialup. The remaining 10% consist of cable, satellite and more exotic forms of access.
DSL works over two lines of copper like the POTS. From the networks point of view it is still a phone line. Most likely they don't even use a branch of DSL which utilizes the unused POTS or ISDN frequencies (actually I'm not aware of any variation of DSL going below 3.4kHz, which is POTS, but some utilize ISDN frequencies).
Exactly the reason why they offer flat rate services. The more people have data-plans, the less it makes sense to charge for individual SMS'. In the end they will charge 5 bucks for unlimited SMS if you want it or not, because otherwise they would lose that source of revenue while data plans get cheaper and cheaper.
Btw: For the same reason the telcos of many countries refuse to sell you DSL without a telephone line. Voip could fill the void completely and it would be even possible to implement a free system on a global scale, but it would hurt those providing access to voip services and for that reason they won't let you use it exclusively (or at least let you pay for what they don't earn the traditional way). And if you are paying for it anyways there is less incentive to switch to free alternatives.
I love flat rates in general, but sometimes they are just designed to keep the status quo. In the end everything gets cheaper in regards to what we pay per minute, but the bill at the end of the month still is as high as 8 years ago.
Just look at how many households still have a fax machine and you will realize how much pricing is preventing a real step forward.
You could also tell them: If I show you my code, you have to sign a NDA priorly. Doubt that this would work, but it would give an interesting twist to this game.
I don't work in this field anymore, but if I really had to present some code, I would come up with something which is way too abstract and complicated, so nobody could ever trace it to a particular job or company. I've got this really silly printer enumeration function I wrote for a company years ago. To be honest I fail to understand it nowadays. Ok, my skills won't impress anyone who is really into this, but I'm sure any serious programmer has written something which is so unspecific (but genius), that it can be presented even though it might break agreements one had with a former employer.
Well, our accent simply sucks. But in the end it doesn't matter so much. Regardless of what your native tongue is people will always hear that you are not a native speaker. Sometimes I reach the level that people can't pin me down to a specific country and then I'm really satisfied, because I know that I'll never really sound like a native and if I manage I'll just sound like a guy from the BBC announcing the news (which would make me even more suspicious). After I became aware of Schwartzeneggers accent I started to focus on vocabulary (a beginner can't distinguish accents between Arnold and a native)
And since you brought up French: How many French do you know who speak German without a noticeable accent? It might sound cooler to talk German with a French accent, but it doesn't mean they are any better at it. In my circle they all have a strong accent - even those who have lived here for over 30 years leave out the letter "h" or "sing along" every sentence. Only one girl mastered German within 6 months, but she is a genius - I'm sure you could drop her off in Finland or the Basque region and she would hold lectures within a couple of weeks. She's just the exception to the rule.
Exactly what I said. English is as romance as German meaning that both languages are from an entirely different tree. Whoever modded parent informative didn't spend so much time reading the comment.
I didn't hear it - I just know because there are only 2 genders and there is a rather short list of exceptions. Correct me if the list is significantly longer than for Spanish nouns.
In German on the other hand there is no rule at all and there is an additional gender (neuter). You just can't tell if "Kind" (kid) is male, female or neuter (hence resulting in "der", "die" or "das" "Kind". And then you also have to know how to decline it because most words change at least in Genitive in an irregular fashion. Harder doesn't mean better or more sophisticated, but you can't tell me that French is more of a headache than German for students.
Yes, I totally agree that German helps in many countries in the former USSR. But I wouldn't learn German for the "eastern block" - in that case Russian would be a better choice (still considering that the original question came from a native English speaker and his intention was to learn a language which might give him new job opportunities).
Last year I managed to buy bread and cigarettes in east-Poland with a mix of German and rudimentary Polish. It worked fine but I wouldn't bet that anyone would employ me just because I fit the job and I speak German.
Just a little note: English is just a Romance as German. I'd say that German is less alien to English than all the other languages you have mentioned. We have lots of words in common and we even have an accent which incorporates parts of the English language (which is called "platt").
Nevertheless I agree that French among others is still easier to learn because the grammar is more consistent and there are less exceptions. It's also easier because the word itself reveals its gender and there are only two to keep in mind...
I totally like to see more people learning German, but from a career point-of-view I can't recommend it. I know lots of people from England or the US who live in Germany and get along with English at work and in private. I also know some people who really tried to practice their German in Germany and most of them complained that everyone in stores switches to English when they hear an English accent.
Pick French or Spanish or if you really like difficult languages take a look at Russian. Those 3 have the advantage that they work in lots of countries so you have many of options. German on the other hand is only beneficial in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and most people speak English anyways...
On a personal note I'm thinking of learning another language just for the fun of it. I speak German, English, Spanish and a little bit of Russian and Chinese (as well as two dead languages you don't want to hear about). Since I do some business in Poland it would be a natural choice, but I have also considered Turkish or Portuguese. Learning languages is hard, but it's so much fun when you covered the basics and start to do simple conversation. In most countries (apart from Germany) people also pay respect for the effort.
Even with HD content one would have to deliberately break the limit. Let's assume youtube would implement full HD based on H.264 aka MPEG-4 AVC. I don't have any material on my computer but a quick look here tells me that 3 minutes require about 360 MB, so you get about 250 minutes for 30 GB, which is a little more than 4 hours.
But even if someone watches youtube for more than 4 hours in a row it wouldn't matter, because TFA mentions that it only affects upload, so one would have to upload 2.8 movies of average length a day.
BTW: Bluray supports MPEG-2 exactly for the reason that it wastes so much space. Otherwise people would start to wonder why we need 50 GB optical discs for HD videos...
Of course I haven't met them - otherwise I wouldn't wonder about it ;)
Seriously: Around 30 people might not be representative at all, but not a single republican in 30 not perfectly random people is still kind of odd if you consider election results in recent years. I also asked some other people in Europe and they all had a similar impression. I'm not saying that there are no republicans in Europe, that would be silly. But I'm sure that they are significantly under-represented compared to their significance at home.
And before someone starts nagging about how pro-democrat I am: It's really just an observation I made. I don't care so much about political parties in the US in general. Apart from foreign policy (which affects us) I don't have much opinion.
It could also be argued that the real beauty of this (from the vendor's perspective) is the low probability that anyone who can't watch TV will send the box in and wait for more than a week for the repairs/replacement. It's far more likely that the entire household panics and someone is send to the next shop to buy a new box. If I was the vendor I wouldn't even bother to hire technicians for repairs - just replace the few damaged ones that make it back.
;)
This is almost like a victimless crime, but legal. I like the idea
It always fascinated me that there are no US citizens in Europe who favor the republicans (at least in the last 8 years I haven't encountered a single one, but I only met around 30), which lead me to two theories: Either the republicans "don't make it" that far or some simply lie because they want to avoid endless discussions. Your comment supports my first theory, but in the end I guess both are valid to a certain extend.
Haven't seen any phone featuring this deliberately. I think it would be also kind of neat to have a plugin for xing or plaxo, which simply updates your contact's numbers whenever they change it, so you don't even have to think about this.
I'd also appreciate a provider field also fed by an online service. Over here people can take their mobile numbers with them when switching providers. Sometimes I'm calling someone with the same operator code in the assumption that I'm using the 1000 minutes I can talk for free calling people on the same mobile network. Of course I could ask whenever I'm calling, but it would be way more convenient to know before I dial...
Can't offer any smart solution to the problem. However, I remember that back in ~2000 cnet had an article about the issue which argued that the lower barrier in obtaining such material should result in lower penalties, because it has become far more likely to obtain such material accidentally. It's just way too easy to stumble across questionable material on the net and sometimes people don't even know that it is on their hdd. Very different times compared to the situation when applicable laws were created.
Wouldn't remember it was cnet if it wasn't so much out of their usual scope. However, I think the author had a very valid point. And if someone knows how to get this article I'd highly appreciate it - couldn't find it in recent years...
In general I totally agree that they should do something to spread FF's acknowledgement - if everyone knew about FF + all the great plugins (like Adblock) I'm sure IE would have a hard time outside of companies. But I doubt that an appeal to download the newest .0 release will affect anyone but those who already know about it.
Instead I'd like to see some short clips highlighting the areas in which FF performs significantly better than IE. Add some humor and competition in the process and you might reach people who thought that IE is another word for internet. I'm sure there is much more to gain compared to a competition for nerds to waste the most bandwidth.
My guess it that it's either restricted to those who really need to know or the articles are only open to those having proper authorization. Either way they will try to improve communication while keeping certified material on a need to know base. They are following the wiki model, but they will not disclose ultra-secret information to the general staff. If they implement ACL's they'll only state the obvious information on the lowest level. If you are on the top you might look up Bin Laden's current location if it was known ;)
It's not so hard to implement a system which hides sections of a wiki article based on the user's authorization...
Win2000 and XP on the other hand beat their predecessors within a couple of month after their initial release. And I'm too lazy to look it up after reading parent's source.
To be fair MS is performing quite well despite all the wrong decisions they made. We won't see them fall over the next decade**. But Vista is not going to help them and it was a long time ago it was easier for competitors to tackle MS' core market.
*I don't know about ME, on the other hand 2000 and XP came shortly after.
**Ok, think of any other company which sits on 254 billion equity and has no debt. Plus they don't pay dividends. Compare that to GM for example and calculate how many years it would take before they run out of money
Yes, it was quite late yesterday and I left it out because I simply didn't remember. Anyways, mine was a SX. I still remember the mainboard had some slot or socket for an additional co-processor (which in turn was a fully functional DX). I guess this concept was mostly developed by marketing...