Printer companies are not in the business of making printers. They are in the business of selling ink. While it may be cheaper to buy a new printer, most people will not because when it comes to computers they want something that will 1) last and 2) be familiar to them. A new printer every few months means cables, installing software, and moving things around on what's probably a very crowded desk.
There's a reason why inkjet printers can be had for usually less than $50 and a decent laser printer (where the toner isn't a half-cartridge) will run you a few hundred bucks: inkjet printers eat ink like the dickens, but my HP LaserJet's still kicking after eight months and three or four reams of printing.
The New York Times reported this morning that industry executives were informed Sunday of Apple's decision to switch from IBM and Motorola to Intel for chips -- and the article specifically says "Intel processors for [...] Macintosh computers" -- and that there are obvious and reliable indicators that Apple will in fact announce this today.
The article cites reports by CNET News.com on Friday of the planned announcement and the Wall Street Journal's earlier article that Apple and IBM were in negotiations (neither party commented on the latter article).
Analysts interviewed for the NYT article said that Apple is "increasingly alarmed by IBM's failure to deliver" a cooler-running G5; the company currently uses the older G4 processor made by Freescale Semiconductor, which spun off from Motorola last year. The article makes it appear that a switch by Apple would be balanced by the earlier decision by Microsoft to switch to IBM for its XBox 360 video game system processors.
IBM's Apple processor production represents less than 2 percent of chip production at their largest production facility, but Apple gets about 50 percent of their processors from IBM; the rest come from Freescale, which makes the cooler-running processors for the Mac Mini and the iBook and Powerbook lines of notebooks. IBM's "technology group" accounts for less than 3 percent of revenue and 2 percent of pretax income this year, according to an analyst interviewed in the article, indicating that the company would not be hurt by Apple's switch to Intel. IBM barely breaks even manufacturing Apple processors, according to industry analysts.
The company began using IBM and Motorola chips in 1991 to "counter Microsoft and Intel," but -- as we all know -- Apple owns a rather small share of the computing market. This may change, however, with rumors that Apple programmers have been working on a project known as "Marklar," an Intel-compatible version of the Macintosh operating system possibly dating back to Steve Jobs' Next Inc., the company which Jobs left Apple for before selling the company to Apple and returning to his former employer. If true, this could mean that Apple is trying to give Microsoft a run for its money again by targeting their users directly, rather than by selling MP3 players.
I know most of the "used-car salesmen will spray us with this!" posts are mostly joking... but I think it's worth keeping in mind that it would be illegal to force someone to injest/inhale such a chemical. I mean, secretely giving your customers all kinds of drugs, in order to make them give up their money more easily, is clearly illegal.
You must be on Oxycotin, because I completely trust my local neighbourhood used-car salesman.
Maybe because it's not as user-friendly, you'd have difficulty walking into CrapUSA or Worst Buy trying to find a PC with Linux preinstalled, and there's no 1-800-LNX-HELP phone support/warranty contract?
Windows is successful because every consumer-brand computer sold in a retail outlet or major online site (*cough*Dell*cough*) has Windows preinstalled; you literally turn it on and 5-10 minutes later it's ready to go. The general public knows about Macs, and they too can be purchased in a retail outlet with the OS preinstalled and, I assume, pretty much ready to go out of the box (haven't owned a Mac in years).
We are a lazy, instant-gratification-loving society. If it doesn't work out of the box it's a piece of crap and not worth our time.
An AOL rep called me with an offer to sign up (for full disclosure, I signed up to get an unrelated freebie and promptly called 24 hours later to cancel). They touted their software's ability to automatically check up on my computer every two weeks and clean it. I told them that I'm head of an IT department and I can damn well keep my own computers clean.
Just based on that call, AOL sounds like Symantec, Big Brother style; I give you permission to snoop around and *hope* that you take off only what's bad. AOL doesn't know what they're supposed to be anymore, and their base business model won't succeed now that people understand that AOL != Internet (if only we could get those people to understand that IE != Internet). People know now that gullible is, in fact, in the dictionary, and there's no real reason to pay AOL for their craptastic "services".
Sorry AOL, but looks like you're going the way of Enron and CherryOS.
Say something's wrong with the card and in my infinite wisdom I decide to take a screwdriver to it, pry it open, and fix it. Will it try to defend itself like other hardware?
an effective way to stop assassins topping off high profile people is not to give them glorious media write ups
Point raised in the movie "The Interpreter," except that you don't even have to kill someone to get attention. One of the African leaders (don't recall what country) said that if this person is even attempted to be killed in a public place, it would be a huge publicity boost to both parties.
So why would they take the time to add it to the XBox 360?
Because Microsoft is trying to beat Sony to market, and it's in SE's best interest to get a new console version of Final Fantasy XI to market, especially in the US, as soon as possible. I imagine part of it is hopefully piggybacking on the success of Halo and Halo 2, two popular *online* games. Perhaps a free trial of FFXI with the XBox 360 version of Halo 2, since the user is already exposed to online games?
I think the bigger reason for FFXI on the Xbox 360 is that Sony's idea of putting a HD in the PS2 flopped badly and Square Enix needs a new platform to keep the game going on the console. FFXI is the only game that requires it, and SOCOM only uses it for faster load times.
Now that Sony stopped making the old (large) PS2s there aren't any expansion slots for the hard drive in the new (slim) PS2s. Old equipment can fail, and when an old PS2 with a hard drive dies, the only way to keep using it is buy a refurbished large PS2, which are becoming harder and harder to find. A lot of North American players may use the computer, but in Japan they have more console players, and this allows them to keep playing. I honestly think this is the only reason Square Enix is working with Microsoft, to preserve a software title and their only current means of online game revenue in North America for the forseeable future.
Wasn't a variant of one of the more publicised viruses a few years back designed to remove the older form of that virus? If that's correct, then all we need are more helpful hackers in the world.
as opposed to whatever sorting scheme that's being used right now in Firefox 1.0.x
Sorting scheme? What sorting scheme?
Seriously, they have to come up with a more logical way of doing it. Alpha sort or most recently accessed, but the method they have now truly brings into question the definition of "scheme".
I wasn't aware of a derivative for Red Hat enterprise-level products, so I stuck with the last free distro I found on linuxiso.org. I've used RH on and off for a few years so I'm more familiar with it. Since this was my first foray into Linux for servers, I installed what I knew -- which is why I started off with Windows rather than *nix.
Would Fedora make a better small- to medium-scale server or is there a better-suited distro (Linux or other variants, like BSD)?
Similar situation here. IIS was so easy to use because everything was set up (too easy, because the first time I installed W2K server I didn't have antivirus or a soft firewall installed before plugging Ethernet in and it got a cold x.x). I quickly switched to Apache, but getting a YaBB forum (Perl/CGI) working a few months later was a PITA. Installing Apache and ActivePerl was a PITA, and it caused problems when I moved the site to a hosting company's Apache server because of MS's blatant case insensitivity. PHP, MySQL, and ImageMagick gave me more of a headache when trying to install them on a Windows Apache server.
Now I'm trying to learn RHL9 because MS doesn't have anything useful in the web server department. Nothing. I'll run Microsoft OSes, but never again will I try to do the things I did on a Microsoft OS.
I'd have to halfway disagree and halfway agree with your statement.
The "shoe bomber" was not stopped by airport security -- he was restrained by passengers on the plane who realised he was a threat and were not going to sit idle and, as you put it, "do nothing during a hijack and die."
At the same time, airport security turns away people in possession of dangerous materials. Notice I didn't say dangerous people or terrorists, merely people in possession of dangerous materials. They keep the stupid people who call themselves "terrorists" from getting on the plane in the first place. An idiot who brings fireworks and a Zippo on a plane may have no intentions of doing anything with it, but if someone else on board takes it for malicious purposes...well, you can see where I'm going, and that's a whole can of worms.
Is airport security taking away liberty and frightening people? Not quite -- it keeps stupid people from doing stupid things, but at the same time it's useless against a smart, determined individual.
How one can say Intel (or AMD, should they at some point fall behind for that matter) is in trouble is beyond me. Both companies have been around for a very long time and cemented themselves rather firmly in the proc market. Intel will always have the general consumer market because consumers continue to associate computers with companies like Microsoft, Google, and Intel. Ask the average person on the street whether they've heard of AMD and they'll probably ignore you. Why? From what I've seen in the past couple of years AMD has always been ahead of Intel, and that means they'll draw the geekier customers who want to OC by merely drawing a line between two circuits (!) and have the latest, greatest, most expensive, stomp-on-everything equipment.
Just like there's been a solid user base for Apple -- mostly graphics folks -- that kept the company afloat during its dark years, AMD has the geeks, and Intel has their name embedded in most consumers' heads. Intel is not in trouble, and even if AMD gets overtaken, it too will never be in trouble.
Or should I mention that Google AdSense terms prohibited AdSense customers from discussing, in public or private, their experience/satisfaction with AdSense?
As an AdSense customer I never understood the purpose of this in the terms of service.
...what, you were expecting me to say something else? Because I'm going to violate the ToS of Everyone's Favourite Company...
Now, think about how many windows you have open right now. Think about how many windows a power user may have open. Think about how much memory that can burn to give all those windows their own space.
Ten windows open on my desktop right now (Outlook, 3 Firefox, 4 Windows Explorer, IE, and Notepad) is the least of my concerns.
This stupid memory leak in Firefox can drive my system into the ground quicker than delegating invididual slots of memory to each window. It has the potential to fill up what remains of my physical memory and more (by 50-150 MB).
The only rights who are being trampled upon here are the artists and the labels who have broadcast them to the world.
Except I've yet to hear or see of any artists -- the folks who are using their talent, their creativity, or a combination of the two, excluding computer-adjusted vocal talent -- seeing the bulk of that money, compared to the labels, who are doing nothing more than providing artists with a distribution model that is no longer necessary to succeed in this day and age.
I would disagree that an ISP who forces a customer to deal with the problem would be "likely to lose customers in a hurry."
Giving users the scary reality of viruses, malware, and other malicious code should motivate most to get the problem under control. The rest won't do anything about it, regardless of the risks or actions taken by ISPs, so they shouldn't be considered an issue.
I'd be willing to bet money the timing of both this release and the previous was carefully planned to mollify some states public service utilities or some bill being reviewed in Congress.
Q1 numbers are expected to be a few cents higher than this time last year; Q2 year-over-year is expected to be lower but only by a cent. Almost all of their competitors aren't doing well if you look at their earnings estimates, so perhaps VZ is trying to separate themselves from the rest of the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically what the parent and grandparent said.
Printer companies are not in the business of making printers. They are in the business of selling ink. While it may be cheaper to buy a new printer, most people will not because when it comes to computers they want something that will 1) last and 2) be familiar to them. A new printer every few months means cables, installing software, and moving things around on what's probably a very crowded desk.
There's a reason why inkjet printers can be had for usually less than $50 and a decent laser printer (where the toner isn't a half-cartridge) will run you a few hundred bucks: inkjet printers eat ink like the dickens, but my HP LaserJet's still kicking after eight months and three or four reams of printing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/technology/06app le.html
The New York Times reported this morning that industry executives were informed Sunday of Apple's decision to switch from IBM and Motorola to Intel for chips -- and the article specifically says "Intel processors for [...] Macintosh computers" -- and that there are obvious and reliable indicators that Apple will in fact announce this today.
The article cites reports by CNET News.com on Friday of the planned announcement and the Wall Street Journal's earlier article that Apple and IBM were in negotiations (neither party commented on the latter article).
Analysts interviewed for the NYT article said that Apple is "increasingly alarmed by IBM's failure to deliver" a cooler-running G5; the company currently uses the older G4 processor made by Freescale Semiconductor, which spun off from Motorola last year. The article makes it appear that a switch by Apple would be balanced by the earlier decision by Microsoft to switch to IBM for its XBox 360 video game system processors.
IBM's Apple processor production represents less than 2 percent of chip production at their largest production facility, but Apple gets about 50 percent of their processors from IBM; the rest come from Freescale, which makes the cooler-running processors for the Mac Mini and the iBook and Powerbook lines of notebooks. IBM's "technology group" accounts for less than 3 percent of revenue and 2 percent of pretax income this year, according to an analyst interviewed in the article, indicating that the company would not be hurt by Apple's switch to Intel. IBM barely breaks even manufacturing Apple processors, according to industry analysts.
The company began using IBM and Motorola chips in 1991 to "counter Microsoft and Intel," but -- as we all know -- Apple owns a rather small share of the computing market. This may change, however, with rumors that Apple programmers have been working on a project known as "Marklar," an Intel-compatible version of the Macintosh operating system possibly dating back to Steve Jobs' Next Inc., the company which Jobs left Apple for before selling the company to Apple and returning to his former employer. If true, this could mean that Apple is trying to give Microsoft a run for its money again by targeting their users directly, rather than by selling MP3 players.
I know most of the "used-car salesmen will spray us with this!" posts are mostly joking... but I think it's worth keeping in mind that it would be illegal to force someone to injest/inhale such a chemical. I mean, secretely giving your customers all kinds of drugs, in order to make them give up their money more easily, is clearly illegal.
You must be on Oxycotin, because I completely trust my local neighbourhood used-car salesman.
"MPAA began to strike back"
That caught my attention. Will the future of the broadcast flag be told in the form of Star Wars?
A New Hope
The MPAA Strikes Back
Return of the Broadcast Flag
Why not Linux?
Maybe because it's not as user-friendly, you'd have difficulty walking into CrapUSA or Worst Buy trying to find a PC with Linux preinstalled, and there's no 1-800-LNX-HELP phone support/warranty contract?
Windows is successful because every consumer-brand computer sold in a retail outlet or major online site (*cough*Dell*cough*) has Windows preinstalled; you literally turn it on and 5-10 minutes later it's ready to go. The general public knows about Macs, and they too can be purchased in a retail outlet with the OS preinstalled and, I assume, pretty much ready to go out of the box (haven't owned a Mac in years).
We are a lazy, instant-gratification-loving society. If it doesn't work out of the box it's a piece of crap and not worth our time.
An AOL rep called me with an offer to sign up (for full disclosure, I signed up to get an unrelated freebie and promptly called 24 hours later to cancel). They touted their software's ability to automatically check up on my computer every two weeks and clean it. I told them that I'm head of an IT department and I can damn well keep my own computers clean.
Just based on that call, AOL sounds like Symantec, Big Brother style; I give you permission to snoop around and *hope* that you take off only what's bad. AOL doesn't know what they're supposed to be anymore, and their base business model won't succeed now that people understand that AOL != Internet (if only we could get those people to understand that IE != Internet). People know now that gullible is, in fact, in the dictionary, and there's no real reason to pay AOL for their craptastic "services".
Sorry AOL, but looks like you're going the way of Enron and CherryOS.
Say something's wrong with the card and in my infinite wisdom I decide to take a screwdriver to it, pry it open, and fix it. Will it try to defend itself like other hardware?
an effective way to stop assassins topping off high profile people is not to give them glorious media write ups
Point raised in the movie "The Interpreter," except that you don't even have to kill someone to get attention. One of the African leaders (don't recall what country) said that if this person is even attempted to be killed in a public place, it would be a huge publicity boost to both parties.
So why would they take the time to add it to the XBox 360?
Because Microsoft is trying to beat Sony to market, and it's in SE's best interest to get a new console version of Final Fantasy XI to market, especially in the US, as soon as possible. I imagine part of it is hopefully piggybacking on the success of Halo and Halo 2, two popular *online* games. Perhaps a free trial of FFXI with the XBox 360 version of Halo 2, since the user is already exposed to online games?
I think the bigger reason for FFXI on the Xbox 360 is that Sony's idea of putting a HD in the PS2 flopped badly and Square Enix needs a new platform to keep the game going on the console. FFXI is the only game that requires it, and SOCOM only uses it for faster load times.
Now that Sony stopped making the old (large) PS2s there aren't any expansion slots for the hard drive in the new (slim) PS2s. Old equipment can fail, and when an old PS2 with a hard drive dies, the only way to keep using it is buy a refurbished large PS2, which are becoming harder and harder to find. A lot of North American players may use the computer, but in Japan they have more console players, and this allows them to keep playing. I honestly think this is the only reason Square Enix is working with Microsoft, to preserve a software title and their only current means of online game revenue in North America for the forseeable future.
Next target to censor:
Slashdot
Wasn't a variant of one of the more publicised viruses a few years back designed to remove the older form of that virus? If that's correct, then all we need are more helpful hackers in the world.
as opposed to whatever sorting scheme that's being used right now in Firefox 1.0.x
Sorting scheme? What sorting scheme?
Seriously, they have to come up with a more logical way of doing it. Alpha sort or most recently accessed, but the method they have now truly brings into question the definition of "scheme".
I wasn't aware of a derivative for Red Hat enterprise-level products, so I stuck with the last free distro I found on linuxiso.org. I've used RH on and off for a few years so I'm more familiar with it. Since this was my first foray into Linux for servers, I installed what I knew -- which is why I started off with Windows rather than *nix.
Would Fedora make a better small- to medium-scale server or is there a better-suited distro (Linux or other variants, like BSD)?
Similar situation here. IIS was so easy to use because everything was set up (too easy, because the first time I installed W2K server I didn't have antivirus or a soft firewall installed before plugging Ethernet in and it got a cold x.x). I quickly switched to Apache, but getting a YaBB forum (Perl/CGI) working a few months later was a PITA. Installing Apache and ActivePerl was a PITA, and it caused problems when I moved the site to a hosting company's Apache server because of MS's blatant case insensitivity. PHP, MySQL, and ImageMagick gave me more of a headache when trying to install them on a Windows Apache server.
Now I'm trying to learn RHL9 because MS doesn't have anything useful in the web server department. Nothing. I'll run Microsoft OSes, but never again will I try to do the things I did on a Microsoft OS.
I'd have to halfway disagree and halfway agree with your statement.
The "shoe bomber" was not stopped by airport security -- he was restrained by passengers on the plane who realised he was a threat and were not going to sit idle and, as you put it, "do nothing during a hijack and die."
At the same time, airport security turns away people in possession of dangerous materials. Notice I didn't say dangerous people or terrorists, merely people in possession of dangerous materials. They keep the stupid people who call themselves "terrorists" from getting on the plane in the first place. An idiot who brings fireworks and a Zippo on a plane may have no intentions of doing anything with it, but if someone else on board takes it for malicious purposes...well, you can see where I'm going, and that's a whole can of worms.
Is airport security taking away liberty and frightening people? Not quite -- it keeps stupid people from doing stupid things, but at the same time it's useless against a smart, determined individual.
My money says...
They're going to add MS activation into this.
How one can say Intel (or AMD, should they at some point fall behind for that matter) is in trouble is beyond me. Both companies have been around for a very long time and cemented themselves rather firmly in the proc market. Intel will always have the general consumer market because consumers continue to associate computers with companies like Microsoft, Google, and Intel. Ask the average person on the street whether they've heard of AMD and they'll probably ignore you. Why? From what I've seen in the past couple of years AMD has always been ahead of Intel, and that means they'll draw the geekier customers who want to OC by merely drawing a line between two circuits (!) and have the latest, greatest, most expensive, stomp-on-everything equipment.
Just like there's been a solid user base for Apple -- mostly graphics folks -- that kept the company afloat during its dark years, AMD has the geeks, and Intel has their name embedded in most consumers' heads. Intel is not in trouble, and even if AMD gets overtaken, it too will never be in trouble.
Or should I mention that Google AdSense terms prohibited AdSense customers from discussing, in public or private, their experience/satisfaction with AdSense?
...what, you were expecting me to say something else? Because I'm going to violate the ToS of Everyone's Favourite Company...
As an AdSense customer I never understood the purpose of this in the terms of service.
Now, think about how many windows you have open right now. Think about how many windows a power user may have open. Think about how much memory that can burn to give all those windows their own space.
Ten windows open on my desktop right now (Outlook, 3 Firefox, 4 Windows Explorer, IE, and Notepad) is the least of my concerns.
This stupid memory leak in Firefox can drive my system into the ground quicker than delegating invididual slots of memory to each window. It has the potential to fill up what remains of my physical memory and more (by 50-150 MB).
The only rights who are being trampled upon here are the artists and the labels who have broadcast them to the world.
Except I've yet to hear or see of any artists -- the folks who are using their talent, their creativity, or a combination of the two, excluding computer-adjusted vocal talent -- seeing the bulk of that money, compared to the labels, who are doing nothing more than providing artists with a distribution model that is no longer necessary to succeed in this day and age.
If they locked down raw sockets and made it available only to administrators or root users, that would solve it.
Because no one runs as administrator on Windows.
Next we'll have a patch making ActiveX run in a sandbox.
When I saw this story in the Slashdot drop-down in Firefox, the first thing my mind saw was Longhorn Beta is Disappearing.
Too bad it isn't. I'd pay Copperfield or some other magician to do it, too.
I would disagree that an ISP who forces a customer to deal with the problem would be "likely to lose customers in a hurry."
Giving users the scary reality of viruses, malware, and other malicious code should motivate most to get the problem under control. The rest won't do anything about it, regardless of the risks or actions taken by ISPs, so they shouldn't be considered an issue.
I'd be willing to bet money the timing of both this release and the previous was carefully planned to mollify some states public service utilities or some bill being reviewed in Congress.
I'd be more willing to bet it has to do with earnings -- they release numbers for Q1 2005 (1/05-3/05) on April 27th.
Q1 numbers are expected to be a few cents higher than this time last year; Q2 year-over-year is expected to be lower but only by a cent. Almost all of their competitors aren't doing well if you look at their earnings estimates, so perhaps VZ is trying to separate themselves from the rest of the industry.