I agree. The article had a flavor of marketing spin to it. Instead of coming out and describing what it really is, they make it sound like users are going to suddenly be able to upgrade their PCs to do awesome new things.
This might be a decent option for some government and school organizations. Local governments still tend to have Win 95 running on 400mhz machines. If this can get them to a point where their PC can run a little better, I guess it is a good thing.
Quoted from the article, I beleive the following is the definition of thin-client. It sounds a little beefier than a strict thin-client, but any time you are running "most other programs from a central server" it's pretty close.
Still in the early stages of development, Eiger will run a bare-bones set of programs directly from the desktop. The list will include the Internet Explorer browser, Windows Media Center, a firewall and antivirus software.
Most other programs, however, will run off a central server.
They aren't really making a faster version of XP for old machines. They are making old machines into dumb terminals that run things off a central server. It will look like XP in terms of interface, but isn't anything close.
My guess is that this won't work especially well with older apps anyway. That central server would also have be orders of magnitude faster if you want to allow multiple people the ability to run their apps at the same time.
What you might see is a situation in which small offices could either upgrade each machine for $500 and get way better performance, or purchase some high end server for tens of thousands of dollars and still be limited by the junk machines you have around. Also, any PC that old has to be near the end of it's life anyway. Any money you might save by converting these PCs will probably be lost when you have to replace all of the parts over the next year.
Who knows they may very well use a cartridge , which would be great.
Do you work for a storage company or something? They are the only ones that would want to cause people to rent facilities to store their old data...
I don't know about you guys, but even CD cases tick me off. All of my CDs are in paper sleeves in a couple of trays. If we got to the point where I need something the size of a hard drive to hold the same amount of data as a hard drive, I might consider just using a hard drive. Also, adding mechanical components to anything optical is making it 10^100000 times more likely that your data will get ruined by the time you need it again.
Re:and everyone is still using floppies : )
on
Blu-Ray DVDs Hit 100 GB
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Maybe this is a dumb question, but if the surface gets scratched, wouldn't it prevent all layers from being read correctly? I guess if there was an offset on the layers, you could create some kind of raid structure on the disc. Chances are that if each layer is offset by 180 degrees, the scratch wouldn't harm both copies, but at that point I wonder if you would be sacrificing performance to the point where the disc is too slow to use anyway. If it had to scan the disc, decide if the data was readable, if not find the other copy, and the use that, it might not work too well. Also, writing your data would take twice as long. They already say it will take over an hour to write an entire disc but if you only need to write smaller files on it, each file will take twice as long.
100gb is nice and all, but if you can't rely on these for more than backup due to their fragility why not just go RAID 1 and get some extra read performance at the same time?
These are nice for movies, but DVDs scratch badly as it is. I don't want something even less durable.
You could still use cookies based on the sign on. Instead of getting the sign-on data from the user typing it, you would be getting it from the token and perhaps looking it up on the backend. It makes it easier for the user, and is about the same amount of programming for you. You can still set and delete cookies accordingly.
Decentralized servers are no less secure than if you had a database table of your user authentication information for your application. With SSO, you actually don't need to know the password since it has already been handled. All you need back is the user ID and that they have been authenticated. If you choose to set one of these servers up, it isn't like people are going to start using your server to store their Online Banking information. They will be using your server only to access sites that you run.
On the flip side, if you choose to latch onto someone else's server for authentication, all you will be doing is specifying that you allow anyone authenticated by that server to access your site. You wouldn't even have as much knowledge of those users as you would if you ran your own security.
For the most part SSO is only really usefull within a small environment. Very rarely do I see a need to allow people to access more than one application with the same sign on. Something like passport is nice for the general user, but why would I want the overhead of something like that for my own applications? I'd rather have more control over things. That sort of makes this new product interesting to me, but on the other hand, most of my applications have distinct user sets anyway.
Netscape creates a clone of Firefox after everyone has already switched. Why would anyone drop Firefox and go back to a browser that has been garbage for years?
Also, unless Netscape is planning on converting all of the excellent plug-ins available for Firefox, they are way behind the 8 ball. Firefox has grown past the original browser when you consider the plug-ins.
The only thing it seems that Netscape has done is out perform IE for a while. Until IE releases their next version, Netscape might be a little better. When IE comes out, I'm sure Windows Update will conveniently remove Firefox and Netscape for you so you don't have to do it yourself.
Interesting that this story came out today also. According to that link, software piracy has not increased in certain areas.
Also, note the main people backing this. Microsoft and Adobe. I would guess that Photoshop is probably one of the most pirated pieces out there. It is arguably the best product for image work, but has a price that prevents any average user from purchasing it.
They create a situation that milks corporate users for as much money as they can get, but alienates home users to the point where they can't afford the product. The same could be said of many MS products. Look at Visual Studio.net. Corporations will shell out $500/license for their developers, but most of those developers would also like a copy at home for use. How many of those people do you honestly think purchased the software? I bet most of them either took the disc home, or downloaded it.
In other words, these guys are crying about money they lost because of piracy, but that isn't accurate. What is happening is that they are essentially breaking even. Instead of allowing more home users to purchase their software, and get volume based profits, they jacked their prices to get price based profits. The corporations that use their software are fronting the bill for home pirates. Changing the sales price of their software would almost definitely shift the weight off corporations, and potentially even create more profit for the companies by reducing piracy.
They will have to pry Google from my cold, dead hands.
I don't understand what Ballmer is trying to say. He is essentially trying to say that over the next 5 years Microsoft is going to continue to improve their search engine, but Google is just going to sit back and high-five each other about a job well done.
Already, Google has some of the best seach products, not even strictly related to their web searches. The Google Mini is already one of the best solutions to index even Office documents. Maybe Microsoft should at least try to beat Google when indexing their own document types before claiming victory.
How can this possibly work with Blockbuster or Netflix? The cost of shipping their clerk to your house with the DVD will be too high for them to make a profit. Have you seen how fat those movie store guys can get?
On the other hand, I already have a huge idea to market. Synthetic fingers. You can pirate DVDs for free, but charge the users $100 to purchase the rubber finger that unlocks the movies.
Fuel efficiency/passenger is only valid when you have the seats filled. When they make huge planes like this, they will be banking on the fact that they can fill the seats.
I think Boeing's philosopy is that it is cheaper to fly smaller jets on more routes and fill them every time, than to have half filled planes.
Even though that airbus might have a better fuel efficiency, it is going to cost a lot to fill that bad boy up. If they fly that thing half loaded, they might lose so much money on a trip, it will take 5 more full flights just to break even.
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I only have 2 friends, and one doesn't know the alphabet... You must be quite the party animal to have 500,000 friends.
This might be a decent option for some government and school organizations. Local governments still tend to have Win 95 running on 400mhz machines. If this can get them to a point where their PC can run a little better, I guess it is a good thing.
I can see the side of the box now.
Requirements:
Quoted from the article, I beleive the following is the definition of thin-client. It sounds a little beefier than a strict thin-client, but any time you are running "most other programs from a central server" it's pretty close.
Still in the early stages of development, Eiger will run a bare-bones set of programs directly from the desktop. The list will include the Internet Explorer browser, Windows Media Center, a firewall and antivirus software.
Most other programs, however, will run off a central server.
They aren't really making a faster version of XP for old machines. They are making old machines into dumb terminals that run things off a central server. It will look like XP in terms of interface, but isn't anything close.
My guess is that this won't work especially well with older apps anyway. That central server would also have be orders of magnitude faster if you want to allow multiple people the ability to run their apps at the same time.
What you might see is a situation in which small offices could either upgrade each machine for $500 and get way better performance, or purchase some high end server for tens of thousands of dollars and still be limited by the junk machines you have around. Also, any PC that old has to be near the end of it's life anyway. Any money you might save by converting these PCs will probably be lost when you have to replace all of the parts over the next year.
Who knows they may very well use a cartridge , which would be great.
Do you work for a storage company or something? They are the only ones that would want to cause people to rent facilities to store their old data...
I don't know about you guys, but even CD cases tick me off. All of my CDs are in paper sleeves in a couple of trays. If we got to the point where I need something the size of a hard drive to hold the same amount of data as a hard drive, I might consider just using a hard drive. Also, adding mechanical components to anything optical is making it 10^100000 times more likely that your data will get ruined by the time you need it again.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but if the surface gets scratched, wouldn't it prevent all layers from being read correctly? I guess if there was an offset on the layers, you could create some kind of raid structure on the disc. Chances are that if each layer is offset by 180 degrees, the scratch wouldn't harm both copies, but at that point I wonder if you would be sacrificing performance to the point where the disc is too slow to use anyway. If it had to scan the disc, decide if the data was readable, if not find the other copy, and the use that, it might not work too well. Also, writing your data would take twice as long. They already say it will take over an hour to write an entire disc but if you only need to write smaller files on it, each file will take twice as long.
100gb is nice and all, but if you can't rely on these for more than backup due to their fragility why not just go RAID 1 and get some extra read performance at the same time?
These are nice for movies, but DVDs scratch badly as it is. I don't want something even less durable.
You could still use cookies based on the sign on. Instead of getting the sign-on data from the user typing it, you would be getting it from the token and perhaps looking it up on the backend. It makes it easier for the user, and is about the same amount of programming for you. You can still set and delete cookies accordingly.
Decentralized servers are no less secure than if you had a database table of your user authentication information for your application. With SSO, you actually don't need to know the password since it has already been handled. All you need back is the user ID and that they have been authenticated. If you choose to set one of these servers up, it isn't like people are going to start using your server to store their Online Banking information. They will be using your server only to access sites that you run.
On the flip side, if you choose to latch onto someone else's server for authentication, all you will be doing is specifying that you allow anyone authenticated by that server to access your site. You wouldn't even have as much knowledge of those users as you would if you ran your own security.
For the most part SSO is only really usefull within a small environment. Very rarely do I see a need to allow people to access more than one application with the same sign on. Something like passport is nice for the general user, but why would I want the overhead of something like that for my own applications? I'd rather have more control over things. That sort of makes this new product interesting to me, but on the other hand, most of my applications have distinct user sets anyway.
Netscape creates a clone of Firefox after everyone has already switched. Why would anyone drop Firefox and go back to a browser that has been garbage for years?
Also, unless Netscape is planning on converting all of the excellent plug-ins available for Firefox, they are way behind the 8 ball. Firefox has grown past the original browser when you consider the plug-ins.
The only thing it seems that Netscape has done is out perform IE for a while. Until IE releases their next version, Netscape might be a little better. When IE comes out, I'm sure Windows Update will conveniently remove Firefox and Netscape for you so you don't have to do it yourself.
Interesting that this story came out today also. According to that link, software piracy has not increased in certain areas. Also, note the main people backing this. Microsoft and Adobe. I would guess that Photoshop is probably one of the most pirated pieces out there. It is arguably the best product for image work, but has a price that prevents any average user from purchasing it.
They create a situation that milks corporate users for as much money as they can get, but alienates home users to the point where they can't afford the product. The same could be said of many MS products. Look at Visual Studio.net. Corporations will shell out $500/license for their developers, but most of those developers would also like a copy at home for use. How many of those people do you honestly think purchased the software? I bet most of them either took the disc home, or downloaded it.
In other words, these guys are crying about money they lost because of piracy, but that isn't accurate. What is happening is that they are essentially breaking even. Instead of allowing more home users to purchase their software, and get volume based profits, they jacked their prices to get price based profits. The corporations that use their software are fronting the bill for home pirates. Changing the sales price of their software would almost definitely shift the weight off corporations, and potentially even create more profit for the companies by reducing piracy.
They will have to pry Google from my cold, dead hands.
I don't understand what Ballmer is trying to say. He is essentially trying to say that over the next 5 years Microsoft is going to continue to improve their search engine, but Google is just going to sit back and high-five each other about a job well done.
Already, Google has some of the best seach products, not even strictly related to their web searches. The Google Mini is already one of the best solutions to index even Office documents. Maybe Microsoft should at least try to beat Google when indexing their own document types before claiming victory.
How can this possibly work with Blockbuster or Netflix? The cost of shipping their clerk to your house with the DVD will be too high for them to make a profit. Have you seen how fat those movie store guys can get? On the other hand, I already have a huge idea to market. Synthetic fingers. You can pirate DVDs for free, but charge the users $100 to purchase the rubber finger that unlocks the movies.
Fuel efficiency/passenger is only valid when you have the seats filled. When they make huge planes like this, they will be banking on the fact that they can fill the seats.
I think Boeing's philosopy is that it is cheaper to fly smaller jets on more routes and fill them every time, than to have half filled planes.
Even though that airbus might have a better fuel efficiency, it is going to cost a lot to fill that bad boy up. If they fly that thing half loaded, they might lose so much money on a trip, it will take 5 more full flights just to break even.
I wonder if when you reach max level, you get to be the governor of the largest region in the game.