Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy?
Um, who ever said they ever were a good guy in this matter? They never licensed their technology to outside companies, it took people kicking and screaming for them to even allow third party hardware before the 1990's. Try finding a non-Apple printer for a Mac before 1990 - doesn't exist. Apple has always protected their financials (see: iPhone and Verizon deal) and their IP/Technology. It's not a bad thing, it's just how they've always done business. You could argue that the reason the PC gained such a market share over Apple is because IBM didn't engage in litigation as much and allowed the third party market to flourish. Ironically, it's that loose control over the PC that's allowed it to gain the nasty reputation for the Wild West that is has now and that Apple capitalizes on with its newer commercials.
I guess YMMV, but I've never had a problem with Verizon and minutes. The IN network is great because my entire family has Verizon (parents, uncles/aunts, whatever) so if I call anyone it's basically included in the base $40 I pay for service. I have no idea how you got your bill up to $680, but that had to be a lot of talk time. Was this before or after IN existed? In fact, if you were paying $180 before, that means you had $500 in extra charges at $.40 a minute so you had an extra 1250 minutes or so on your bill. That's practically a second month right there.
I'm not saying it's your fault, but 3050 minutes is a huge amount of minutes. I guess they could have cut the bill in half but there's no way I'd blame it on the customer service person if they thought they could help and have their bosses in billing override them. It happens all the time. Blame billing, not the call center guy making $10 an hour.
I think you're talking about the present and I'm talking about 2 years from now which I thought these analysts were refering to. So right now, Sony is kind of bleeding developers in that current exclusive titles are going to other consoles as well, but in the future they won't have any more to bleed because the developers would have chosen the other console already...they'll be at rock bottom and the only place to go is up.
Well, I won't argue with you over what you thought you said, but it read to me like you were saying that Sony was going to bleed developers to the Wii and the 360, which is quite odd when you consider that Conventional Wisdom (TM) says that the Wii and the 360 are winning the console war at the moment. In two years Sony will have fixed their manufacture problems. I doubt they would have gone this route if they didn't think they'd be able to.
Obviously you have no experience in the financial world whatsoever - a company the size of Sony, Apple, Nintendo, or Microsoft never has any idea of it's current financial position - it only has quarterly data that's put together a month or two after the fact at best - and since most companies have a funny fiscal year for tax purposes (my company starts it's new year on December 1st), you can never rely on this year's data as it's usually incomplete at best. If you want annual sales, you have to use the previous year's data that is complete - it's too early for 2006 data so you use 2005.
Developers move like the wind - the system that makes money attracts them. Right now the Wii looks like it's doing well, and so does the 360. But that's not to say that in 2 years it will be the same. If the install base catches up, a game development business isn't a fanboy and will go along with whatever system makes them the most money, regardless of what their developers think. If the PS2 was so hard to develop for, how did it win the last generation? Because it had the largest install base and guaranteed the largest return.
Bidding on the 20GB on Ebay dropped off first as well - why would buy the 20GB when for $100 more you get a 60GB with the wireless, card readers, and the extra disk space? A lot of the early adopters probably had a PSP as well, which really doesn't talk to the 20GB at all. So all in all, while this is something to note, I doubt you'll see this in the US any time soon.
What he missed is the biggest reason to oppose net neutrality legislation... any legislation is another step to the government fully regulating and controling the Internet.
I'm so glad the Libertarians showed up today. I was starting to miss them.
When are you guys going to start handing out Guns for Tots again?
Yes, window manager is wrong, desktop environment is right, however XFCE is pretty cohesive and a great alternative to GNOME. I haven't used it in a while because I've been using E17 but I think the stability of XFCE is something to take into account. It's a great alternative for those who hate the bloat of GNOME and KDE but like the flexibility to use a great theme framework like GTK. Combined with multiple taskbars now you really have a powerful desktop in a fast framework. Kudos to XFCE.
Umm, I believe RIAA has less of a beef with the DRM and more of a beef with the lack of royalty payments. As this analysis from last spring points out, Sirius did the same thing before XM and now they have to pay royalties for each song that gets downloaded.
Yes, but here NBC is the distributor. XM is not a distributor, it's a radio broadcaster. Your analogy would be as if Sony made a CD Burner to record BMG CD's, which they do and people don't argue with. In this case, XM has no ownership over the music it's broadcasting.
I'm not saying that this is a legitimate argument, I'm just pointing out the differences.
I bought this charger about two years ago and I love it. The batteries last forever and the charger is perfect - very small, portable (charge in your car's lighter) and fast - I use the slow charge mode and it takes about 4 hours. Even better, it has trickle charge so the batteries aren't overcharged but will remain at full power. It's worth the $50 investment (with 4 batteries!), trust me. I was redeemed even further when I saw that HP has moved to using MAHA Batteries as well for their rechargeable AA battery solution.
Possibly, but poll numbers before the ad were in Ford's favor. After, they were in Corker's. So you do the math on how many people it unconciously swayed. That said, I didn't really like Ford as a Democrat anyways. He was way to conservative for my taste. Of course, now he works for the DLC I think, so I don't think we've heard the last of him.
Imagine if that $53,000,000 had been distributed among the employees as a company-wide bonus.
Goldman handed out $16.5 billion in total compensation to 22,000 employees worldwide. I'm pretty sure that while no one would turn down an extra $2400 (about $1500 after taxes), it's not going to matter much to them either way.
Honestly, when it comes to console sales I don't think price has that much of an impact on early adopters
You are crazy. On the one hand, you frequently attack the PS3 for its high price and then on the other you say that price doesn't matter. Everyone got sticker shock in May when the PS3 prices came out and immediately everyone said I'm going the Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii route. You can't have it both ways.
That's why he's pulling legislation like this out again. His state went primarily to the democrats last election (two house races, which was completely unexpected). So previously red new hampshire is now more indigo. Doesn't help that the state Republican party had a few problems in the 2004 election with the phone jamming scandal, which pissed the voters off a lot. So Sununu is currently the conventional wisdom's most vulnerable senator in the upcoming 2008 election. Both parties know this so I have a feeling his election is going to be not only closely watched but heavily contested. Anything he can do to put him in a good light with the voters will probably be done.
On a side note, the guy who was the mastermind behind the phone scandal, Terry Nelson, was also the mastermind behind the Harold Ford ad ("Call Me") which probably caused Ford to lose the election and is now the campaign manager for John McCain.
The deadline has already been extended twice; companies were initially supposed to have been compliant by July 1, 2005.
If the initial deadline was 2005, the rule must be at least a year or two older than that. So obviously consumer electronics companies had plenty of time to get their hardware ready in anticipation. Plus, I noticed that your link is out of stock on Amazon, so it can't be too widely available yet.
Not to mention that the Graphics card inside the 360 is an ATI card, and I think their support of DirectX is much better than their support for OpenGL. Although their drivers are always just horrible.
He added, "I've been pulling for Microsoft..." - I never thought I'd see a sentence start from Carmack with that.
Actually, he's been on Microsoft's side ever since Quake in 1996 or so. David Kushner's book, Masters of Doom talks just a little about their partnership. After Doom II's major success, Microsoft saw the chance to push id to support it's Windows platform. The original Quake was released for DOS, but later a WinQuake version was released that worked using everything from DirectX except Direct3D. Carmack has released for Windows first ever since.
Carmack isn't necessarily tied to a specific platform or operating system, but he never was anti-Microsoft. He was more of a Free Software advocate than anything else.
Well, to get really technical I didn't quote it that way, I interpreted it that way, but you're correct. I just thought it was funny to point to it as one of the year's biggest tech launches when it was only January 10th. Who knows, nuclear fusion, teleportation, cheap commercial space flight, and feasible Gungan-like underwater habitats might be announced this year. Or Duke Nukem Forever might go gold. You just can't call it this early.
PC's got everything you need to run Linux in a useful manner - keyboard, mouse, and peripherals like printers
And the PS3 has USB ports exposed to Linux, so as long as you have USB devices you can basically use the PS3 like a PC- as long as the drivers are compiled as part of the kernel. You can even do SVideo out the back to a monitor if you wish, I believe.
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Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy?
Um, who ever said they ever were a good guy in this matter? They never licensed their technology to outside companies, it took people kicking and screaming for them to even allow third party hardware before the 1990's. Try finding a non-Apple printer for a Mac before 1990 - doesn't exist. Apple has always protected their financials (see: iPhone and Verizon deal) and their IP/Technology. It's not a bad thing, it's just how they've always done business. You could argue that the reason the PC gained such a market share over Apple is because IBM didn't engage in litigation as much and allowed the third party market to flourish. Ironically, it's that loose control over the PC that's allowed it to gain the nasty reputation for the Wild West that is has now and that Apple capitalizes on with its newer commercials.
I guess YMMV, but I've never had a problem with Verizon and minutes. The IN network is great because my entire family has Verizon (parents, uncles/aunts, whatever) so if I call anyone it's basically included in the base $40 I pay for service. I have no idea how you got your bill up to $680, but that had to be a lot of talk time. Was this before or after IN existed? In fact, if you were paying $180 before, that means you had $500 in extra charges at $.40 a minute so you had an extra 1250 minutes or so on your bill. That's practically a second month right there.
I'm not saying it's your fault, but 3050 minutes is a huge amount of minutes. I guess they could have cut the bill in half but there's no way I'd blame it on the customer service person if they thought they could help and have their bosses in billing override them. It happens all the time. Blame billing, not the call center guy making $10 an hour.
I think you're talking about the present and I'm talking about 2 years from now which I thought these analysts were refering to. So right now, Sony is kind of bleeding developers in that current exclusive titles are going to other consoles as well, but in the future they won't have any more to bleed because the developers would have chosen the other console already...they'll be at rock bottom and the only place to go is up.
Well, I won't argue with you over what you thought you said, but it read to me like you were saying that Sony was going to bleed developers to the Wii and the 360, which is quite odd when you consider that Conventional Wisdom (TM) says that the Wii and the 360 are winning the console war at the moment. In two years Sony will have fixed their manufacture problems. I doubt they would have gone this route if they didn't think they'd be able to.
Obviously you have no experience in the financial world whatsoever - a company the size of Sony, Apple, Nintendo, or Microsoft never has any idea of it's current financial position - it only has quarterly data that's put together a month or two after the fact at best - and since most companies have a funny fiscal year for tax purposes (my company starts it's new year on December 1st), you can never rely on this year's data as it's usually incomplete at best. If you want annual sales, you have to use the previous year's data that is complete - it's too early for 2006 data so you use 2005.
Get a clue.
Developers move like the wind - the system that makes money attracts them. Right now the Wii looks like it's doing well, and so does the 360. But that's not to say that in 2 years it will be the same. If the install base catches up, a game development business isn't a fanboy and will go along with whatever system makes them the most money, regardless of what their developers think. If the PS2 was so hard to develop for, how did it win the last generation? Because it had the largest install base and guaranteed the largest return.
What's funny is that your post is actually informative and yet this guy got all your mod points for what is huge hyperbole.
Ahh, the mystery that is the Slashdot mod pool.
Bidding on the 20GB on Ebay dropped off first as well - why would buy the 20GB when for $100 more you get a 60GB with the wireless, card readers, and the extra disk space? A lot of the early adopters probably had a PSP as well, which really doesn't talk to the 20GB at all. So all in all, while this is something to note, I doubt you'll see this in the US any time soon.
What he missed is the biggest reason to oppose net neutrality legislation ... any legislation is another step to the government fully regulating and controling the Internet.
I'm so glad the Libertarians showed up today. I was starting to miss them.
When are you guys going to start handing out Guns for Tots again?
Yes, window manager is wrong, desktop environment is right, however XFCE is pretty cohesive and a great alternative to GNOME. I haven't used it in a while because I've been using E17 but I think the stability of XFCE is something to take into account. It's a great alternative for those who hate the bloat of GNOME and KDE but like the flexibility to use a great theme framework like GTK. Combined with multiple taskbars now you really have a powerful desktop in a fast framework. Kudos to XFCE.
Umm, I believe RIAA has less of a beef with the DRM and more of a beef with the lack of royalty payments. As this analysis from last spring points out, Sirius did the same thing before XM and now they have to pay royalties for each song that gets downloaded.
How about GE? They own NBC and make VCRs.
Yes, but here NBC is the distributor. XM is not a distributor, it's a radio broadcaster. Your analogy would be as if Sony made a CD Burner to record BMG CD's, which they do and people don't argue with. In this case, XM has no ownership over the music it's broadcasting.
I'm not saying that this is a legitimate argument, I'm just pointing out the differences.
A choice between freedom and non-freedom is an illusiory one.
Dick Stallman, is that you?
I bought this charger about two years ago and I love it. The batteries last forever and the charger is perfect - very small, portable (charge in your car's lighter) and fast - I use the slow charge mode and it takes about 4 hours. Even better, it has trickle charge so the batteries aren't overcharged but will remain at full power. It's worth the $50 investment (with 4 batteries!), trust me. I was redeemed even further when I saw that HP has moved to using MAHA Batteries as well for their rechargeable AA battery solution.
Possibly, but poll numbers before the ad were in Ford's favor. After, they were in Corker's. So you do the math on how many people it unconciously swayed. That said, I didn't really like Ford as a Democrat anyways. He was way to conservative for my taste. Of course, now he works for the DLC I think, so I don't think we've heard the last of him.
Actually, the company doesn't employ janitors. They have a contract with a janitorial firm. Most fortune 100 companies do.
Imagine if that $53,000,000 had been distributed among the employees as a company-wide bonus.
Goldman handed out $16.5 billion in total compensation to 22,000 employees worldwide. I'm pretty sure that while no one would turn down an extra $2400 (about $1500 after taxes), it's not going to matter much to them either way.
Honestly, when it comes to console sales I don't think price has that much of an impact on early adopters
You are crazy. On the one hand, you frequently attack the PS3 for its high price and then on the other you say that price doesn't matter. Everyone got sticker shock in May when the PS3 prices came out and immediately everyone said I'm going the Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii route. You can't have it both ways.
That's why he's pulling legislation like this out again. His state went primarily to the democrats last election (two house races, which was completely unexpected). So previously red new hampshire is now more indigo. Doesn't help that the state Republican party had a few problems in the 2004 election with the phone jamming scandal, which pissed the voters off a lot. So Sununu is currently the conventional wisdom's most vulnerable senator in the upcoming 2008 election. Both parties know this so I have a feeling his election is going to be not only closely watched but heavily contested. Anything he can do to put him in a good light with the voters will probably be done.
On a side note, the guy who was the mastermind behind the phone scandal, Terry Nelson, was also the mastermind behind the Harold Ford ad ("Call Me") which probably caused Ford to lose the election and is now the campaign manager for John McCain.
Are you sure you're getting charged for the Cable Modem? I have TWC and they aren't charging me, or at least they don't itemize it.
From TFA:
The deadline has already been extended twice; companies were initially supposed to have been compliant by July 1, 2005.
If the initial deadline was 2005, the rule must be at least a year or two older than that. So obviously consumer electronics companies had plenty of time to get their hardware ready in anticipation. Plus, I noticed that your link is out of stock on Amazon, so it can't be too widely available yet.
Not to mention that the Graphics card inside the 360 is an ATI card, and I think their support of DirectX is much better than their support for OpenGL. Although their drivers are always just horrible.
He added, "I've been pulling for Microsoft..." - I never thought I'd see a sentence start from Carmack with that.
Actually, he's been on Microsoft's side ever since Quake in 1996 or so. David Kushner's book, Masters of Doom talks just a little about their partnership. After Doom II's major success, Microsoft saw the chance to push id to support it's Windows platform. The original Quake was released for DOS, but later a WinQuake version was released that worked using everything from DirectX except Direct3D. Carmack has released for Windows first ever since.
Carmack isn't necessarily tied to a specific platform or operating system, but he never was anti-Microsoft. He was more of a Free Software advocate than anything else.
Well, to get really technical I didn't quote it that way, I interpreted it that way, but you're correct. I just thought it was funny to point to it as one of the year's biggest tech launches when it was only January 10th. Who knows, nuclear fusion, teleportation, cheap commercial space flight, and feasible Gungan-like underwater habitats might be announced this year. Or Duke Nukem Forever might go gold. You just can't call it this early.
PC's got everything you need to run Linux in a useful manner - keyboard, mouse, and peripherals like printers
And the PS3 has USB ports exposed to Linux, so as long as you have USB devices you can basically use the PS3 like a PC- as long as the drivers are compiled as part of the kernel. You can even do SVideo out the back to a monitor if you wish, I believe.