Why are you surprised at the bigotry here on/. ? Just look at the E3 thread posted a few hours ago.
.
Male-dominant sexism, and the rejection of anything 'different,' seems to be actively encouraged in the gaming industry, the customers of which I suspect make up a large part of the/. audience.
... even more so than some of the egregiously bigoted comments I've been reading on this thread.
.
A few years ago I was looking for genealogy software. One of my requirements was the need to handle a F-F marriage with kids in the family.
Fortunately, The Master Genealogist was up to the task. Amazingly, there were few choices that met an important requirement that I had.
The looming retirement of Windows XP won't stem the dramatic drop in PC sales this year, but it may help bolster Microsoft's revenue, analysts said today.
Although experts expect some business laggards to buy new hardware as they try to replace the 12-year-old XP before it's retired in April 2014, the quantities won't be enough to move the PC shipment needle to the positive side of the meter.
"Replacements for Windows XP won't be enough to offset the declines on the consumer side," said David Daoud, an analyst with IDC.
I have gone from 8 computers running Windows back in the Windows 2000 days, to two computers running Windows and four computers running FreeBSD and two computer running OpenBSD. The Windows computers are all notebook clients, while the BSD boxes are the servers. I've stayed with Windows for clients because I have not seen any real desktop alternative available. Ubuntu was a fore-runner, but that distribution has since gone bad. I am using BSD's for the servers because, well, they just work.
It always amazes me how many people actually think that the Xbox is a highly profitable endeavor for Microsoft. While it has turned profitable recently, the Entertainment & Devices Division (where XBox is accounted for) is only mildly profitable. Nowhere near the profit rate of Microsoft's enterprise and desktop cash-cows. It is a stretch to call the Xbox a fiscal "success", at best one could now say it is not "money-losing". It is highly unlikely that Microsoft could expand the revenues and margins of EDD into a company-sustaining business.
Enterprise computing is very profitable for Microsoft, not so much their gaming division.
.
That said...
Microsoft has everything to worry about,.
Unless and until Mr. Ballmer is removed from CEO, Microsoft will never know how to compete in a profitable manner without having the benefit of a dominant, monopolistic marketshare to leverage.
Yeah, maybe it's time to shut Apple down and give the money back to the shareholders. [with pointer to sarcasm reference]
You misunderstood what I said. When a company is at its peak, most think it will continue to perform at the same level. In Apple's case, that means very significant growth per year, a growth rate that is very unlikely for Apple to maintain. Apple's "market-changing" products seem to be fewer and farther in-between of late.
.
In May 2003, Apple's stock was around 8, it recently peaked at nearly 100 times that price.
Do you really think that Apple's stock price will increase another 100-fold over the next ten years? Do you really think that Apple can maintain the same growth rate over the next ten years?
Hence my comment that Apple's best days are behind it.
Apple used to be a lot more reticent regarding future products. The fact that Mr. Cook is talking/hinting about future products is confirmation that Apple knows its best days are behind it. Mr. Cook is trying, unsuccessfully it appears, to regenerate the buzz around Apple.
... the collection of data helps after the fact, i.e., once someone is caught. The additional data allows a more solid case to be built, and makes it easier to find co-conspirators.
What benefit does this give to me now, at this moment? Probably little if any.
.
On the other hand, it would be really nice if the Firefox developers fixed their proxy issues, and fixed the javascript engine choking on sites.
The problem with the testerone-induced rapid development cycle is that it apparently leads to a lot of bravado (we're better than Chrome") and little ongoing maintenance of browsing issues.
Since Mozilla has embaked upon the quick-turnaround development cycle for FireFox, the browser has become less and less useful for my needs.
.
More and more websites have stopped working properly.
More and more plug-ins have stopped working.
Since version 18, http proxying has become very problematic, to the point that it is no longer a working function of Firefox.
So I will ask a question that I have asked previously, what is the benefit to me of the accelerated Firefox development cycle if there are more problems introduced than resolved?
It appears that their current software strategy requires Apple Engineers to hand-hold developers at the developer conferences. While this is great for those who are able to buy tickets for the developer conferences, it scales poorly.
.
For anyone who depends upon Apple for monetary gain (stockholders, developers, etc.), the inability of Apple to properly accommodate the developers who want or need to attend the developer conferences should be a major red flag.
...That's not enough. What will happen is that every company and their brother will require carte blanch opt in in order to do any transaction with them....
Thanks.
Good point.
.
It reminds me of the clauses in many current consumer "agreements" that force the consumer to [typically corporate-friendly and anti-consumer] binding arbitration and force the consume to give up the right to legal process.
... I'd rather Facebook put up a dashboard that shows how much they have been violating my privacy. I'd like to see a Facebook dashboard that is customized for me that shows, among other things:
.
- what data nuggets have been collected about me over the past 24 hours, week, month
- what third party entities my data has been shared with
I am sure that this community can suggest other items that would be useful on a Facebook Privacy Dashboard.
In the background, I cannot shake the thought that Facebook is putting up this energy consumption dashboard for the purpose to divert attention away from Facebook's ongoing privacy issues.
Slashdot Mirror
. /. audience.
Male-dominant sexism, and the rejection of anything 'different,' seems to be actively encouraged in the gaming industry, the customers of which I suspect make up a large part of the
.
A few years ago I was looking for genealogy software. One of my requirements was the need to handle a F-F marriage with kids in the family. Fortunately, The Master Genealogist was up to the task. Amazingly, there were few choices that met an important requirement that I had.
.
The looming retirement of Windows XP won't stem the dramatic drop in PC sales this year, but it may help bolster Microsoft's revenue, analysts said today. Although experts expect some business laggards to buy new hardware as they try to replace the 12-year-old XP before it's retired in April 2014, the quantities won't be enough to move the PC shipment needle to the positive side of the meter. "Replacements for Windows XP won't be enough to offset the declines on the consumer side," said David Daoud, an analyst with IDC.
I have gone from 8 computers running Windows back in the Windows 2000 days, to two computers running Windows and four computers running FreeBSD and two computer running OpenBSD. The Windows computers are all notebook clients, while the BSD boxes are the servers. I've stayed with Windows for clients because I have not seen any real desktop alternative available. Ubuntu was a fore-runner, but that distribution has since gone bad. I am using BSD's for the servers because, well, they just work.
a hypothetical company that makes >1billion profit in a year is not "sustaining".
As I mentioned, those profit levels are new to EDD. The Xbox had been a loss-leader for Microsoft, only recently becoming profitable.
Except that the Xbox div loses tons of money.
It always amazes me how many people actually think that the Xbox is a highly profitable endeavor for Microsoft. While it has turned profitable recently, the Entertainment & Devices Division (where XBox is accounted for) is only mildly profitable. Nowhere near the profit rate of Microsoft's enterprise and desktop cash-cows. It is a stretch to call the Xbox a fiscal "success", at best one could now say it is not "money-losing". It is highly unlikely that Microsoft could expand the revenues and margins of EDD into a company-sustaining business.
.
That said...
Microsoft has everything to worry about,.
Unless and until Mr. Ballmer is removed from CEO, Microsoft will never know how to compete in a profitable manner without having the benefit of a dominant, monopolistic marketshare to leverage.
Wikipedia entry on sports: ...
If you are trying to justify your assertion by quoting Wikipedia entries, you've lost the debate before you even started.
All sports are a game no matter how you try and word it.
But all games are not a sport, no matter how you try to justify it.
What most of us wanted back was the Start menu, not just the Start button. Microsoft still doesn't get it:
Yup. We also want to know that Microsoft won't continue to act stupidly and once again remove the Start Menu in the future.
Yeah, maybe it's time to shut Apple down and give the money back to the shareholders. [with pointer to sarcasm reference]
You misunderstood what I said. When a company is at its peak, most think it will continue to perform at the same level. In Apple's case, that means very significant growth per year, a growth rate that is very unlikely for Apple to maintain. Apple's "market-changing" products seem to be fewer and farther in-between of late.
.
In May 2003, Apple's stock was around 8, it recently peaked at nearly 100 times that price.
Do you really think that Apple's stock price will increase another 100-fold over the next ten years? Do you really think that Apple can maintain the same growth rate over the next ten years?
Hence my comment that Apple's best days are behind it.
Apple used to be a lot more reticent regarding future products. The fact that Mr. Cook is talking/hinting about future products is confirmation that Apple knows its best days are behind it. Mr. Cook is trying, unsuccessfully it appears, to regenerate the buzz around Apple.
... The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet....
It it is not working yet, it has not been built.
Why in the world is everyone so fascinated about this little tiny person?
Maybe that phrase needs to be updated a bit. In more ways than one.
...Mr. McAfee provided some extraordinarily entertaining and frank answers...
Entertaining? Yes, in a watching a train wreck type of manner.
.
Frank? Unknown. It is difficult to ascertain the truthiness of his answers.
But my original question still stands, why is everyone wasting so much time on this person?
... the collection of data helps after the fact, i.e., once someone is caught. The additional data allows a more solid case to be built, and makes it easier to find co-conspirators.
.
On the other hand, it would be really nice if the Firefox developers fixed their proxy issues, and fixed the javascript engine choking on sites.
The problem with the testerone-induced rapid development cycle is that it apparently leads to a lot of bravado (we're better than Chrome") and little ongoing maintenance of browsing issues.
.
More and more websites have stopped working properly.
More and more plug-ins have stopped working.
Since version 18, http proxying has become very problematic, to the point that it is no longer a working function of Firefox.
So I will ask a question that I have asked previously, what is the benefit to me of the accelerated Firefox development cycle if there are more problems introduced than resolved?
If NBC had posted its pilots online, would we have been spared 'Animal Practice'?
Probably not. But I suspect we definitely would have been spared 1600 Penn. Geesh, what a disaster that show was.
.
For anyone who depends upon Apple for monetary gain (stockholders, developers, etc.), the inability of Apple to properly accommodate the developers who want or need to attend the developer conferences should be a major red flag.
...That's not enough. What will happen is that every company and their brother will require carte blanch opt in in order to do any transaction with them. ...
Thanks. Good point.
.
It reminds me of the clauses in many current consumer "agreements" that force the consumer to [typically corporate-friendly and anti-consumer] binding arbitration and force the consume to give up the right to legal process.
.
It is as if the companies are saying, "we stole all this data from our customers, and it would be too expensive to allow them to have it back."
.
- what data nuggets have been collected about me over the past 24 hours, week, month
- what third party entities my data has been shared with
I am sure that this community can suggest other items that would be useful on a Facebook Privacy Dashboard.
In the background, I cannot shake the thought that Facebook is putting up this energy consumption dashboard for the purpose to divert attention away from Facebook's ongoing privacy issues.
.
Talk about the irony of narcissism.