Ummm... and where did you get that information? According to my comrades formerly working for UltimateTV, they went to MSTV, not XBox.
BTW, UltimateTV had dismal selling numbers. Sold less than 100,000 units in spite of the massive marketing push. It was a decent product, but "Tivo" had too much mindshare. Remains to be seen if that market will exist at all in the future.
I am sure the open source community sees nothing wrong with this? If AOL puts millions of dollars into anything, it will be proprietary and they will own all the rights. Amazes me how so many of the so called open source supports simply don't see that they would be merely changing one monopoly for another.
Yeah, just like AOL made Mozilla closed source and proprietary after putting millions in development costs into that.
Is it worth it to have AOL ship a kazillion Linux cds to mopes around the world, even if the Linux on those CDs is philosophically different from what we have now?
I wish folks would get it out of their head that AOL is going to ship CDs to the public at large that install Linux on their Windows PCs. Can you imagine the support costs when users tried to switch? All the complaints when their copies of Deer Hunter from Walmart "don't run on their computer no more"?
No matter how low your opinion of AOLTW might be, they aren't THAT stupid.
There are business reasons for this: RHAT is close to profitability already, think what they could do with AOLTW marketing and resources. High growth potential.
Plus, take a shot at undermining their biggest rival (Microsoft) by selling a competitive OS for cheap or free. Sort of like the Sun/Star Office strategy.
AOL could incorporate Linux into devices, which is a big focus of their AOL Anywhere strategy which moves access off the PC and out of Microsoft's control. They would use it in set-top boxes to counter XBox and Microsoft's new eHome line of products. They might even bundle AOL software into Red Hat distributions and give free Linux support to AOL users.
There are some pretty clever, strategic things AOL could do with Red Hat. No I don't work for either company, but I think it's a pretty brilliant move. Think outside the box a little, folks.
Pop3 is more popular, but IMAP is more useful when you are accessing your mail from multiple places because it keeps the mail and state on the server. For instance, read half your new mail from one machine, leave, log in from another machine later, and your inbox will look just like it did when you left off (+ new messages).
IMAP is very nice for reading your same email from home and work without "leave new messages on server" setting hacks and the like.
They should have seen this coming from miles away, esp after the XBox was announced. It's not like Microsoft hasn't competed with its former partners time and time again.
The rise of the XBox will only contribute to the decline of PC gamers who feel the need to buy cutting-edge home PCs for the latest game.
It's going to be bittersweet watching all the PC manufacturers who set up the Microsoft monopoly get a spanking from it as it turns its warchest on their markets.
This is sad news, but I was waiting to hear it once it was made public that AOL was laying off workers.
As a Mozilla fan, I'm really curious how many Netscape/Mozilla contributors got the axe. Is this an isolated thing, or is the project in jeopardy? Can anyone with this info contribute it here, even anonymously?
Didn't MS get a black eye over this before? What has changed to make them think they can get away with it this time?
I don't know. Maybe Microsoft is banking on the fact that Joe Schmoe has no memory. But it's a ballsy move, considering how eerily similar today's story is to this one about Microsoft fake grassroots campaigns, also exposed by the L.A. Times three years ago:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/h tm l98/pr_041098.html
John Carmack is simply telling the truth. Look at the gaming market. How many Windows games do you see? How many Mac games? How many Linux games?
Forget all of those. Consoles are where's it at now. I say this as an avid gamer of 10+ years who used to play the hardware rat race with all the others. Every year a new $300 video card, constantly upgrading processors, memory, sounds cards. Who needs it.
I'm totally sold on consoles now, and I'm addicted to my PS2. The only thing that PC games really shine at these days is better video resolution, but at what cost? (Used to be networking, but the consoles are catching up there.)
Judging by all the dying PC game companies, the slowdown in PC-only titles, and the lack of innovation there, I think the PC gaming market is becoming irrelevant.
So I don't really care if I can't play games on my Mac or Linux box. I don't play them any more on my Windows box, either.
Actually, your posted article is just a commentary which mentions the actual events in passing. Here's two better links:
First, a Seattle Times story from 1998 about how Microsoft tried to fake a grass roots campaign to lobby against the DOJ action.
(Ahhh... blatant media manipulation. Kinda makes you feel warm and fuzzy now that Microsoft is invested in news agencies like MSNBC and working on partnerships with Rupert Murdoch and Fox.)
Second, an AP story from last year about how former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed was lobbying citizens to write to Bush on behalf of Microsoft. Not a media effort, per se, but it does show a pattern of drumming up fake support and not changing its company policies.
Yeah, good fucking luck. Maybe you didn't notice, but both Microsoft and the Open Sores kiddies make a browser for Macs. And IE kicks the living shit out of Netscape/Mozilla on that platform.
Oh please, not by a long shot. Mozilla 0.9.2 on OS X might take a little longer to start up, but it's a MUCH better browsing experience than the IE 5.1 previews. IE might have useless auction managers and the like, but Mozilla bests it on features that actually matter, like image blocking. And on my 400 MHz G4, Mozilla outperforms IE by a wide margin. IE 5.1 has to be the slowest browser I've ever used.
...is that you completely buy into the Microsoft marketing hype without any critical thought. Don't you remember, with the advent of NT years ago, Microsoft was supposed to own everything by now?
"Microsoft is not, as the new administration has made abundantly clear, about to be broken up."
Really? I follow this case closely, and I've never seen the administration say that. It's not only a political dead-end, but they don't have control. It's in the courts. And the states AGs will pursue no matter what the feds decide.
Even if they aren't broken up, they still face a strong possibility of other remedies. It will be very difficult for them to be exonarated.
"Anaylists believe it will soon return to 20 percent revenue growth..."
Again, not what I read, and I read a lot. Most stories I see project single digit growth, at best. Some of their divisions have had declining revenue.
"The company is also launching a mind-boggling series of sweeping and expensive new initiatives:"
Keywords here: mind-boggling, as in "consumers are generally unfamiliar with any of them" and "expensive", as in "how do we (MS) maintain expected profit growths when we're spending billions on new products, our money-makers are slowing, and the PC industry is now predicted to show its first annual sales decline?"
".Net... the company's wedge into Web services."
.Net isn't even released yet, and it's already facing competition from the other big players (IBM, Sun, Oracle). Also, it's not entirely clear the MS will be able to lock people into their own web services due to the fairly open nature of that market.
"XBox... huge leap... three times more powerful... Microsoft says it plans to spend $500 million on advertising."
First off, that's wrong. MS is spending $500 million on _marketing_, of which the bulk of that will be spent on non-advertising sources like wooing developers. Do you think Sony and Nintendo spend nothing? It's only an interesting amount b/c it's coming from Microsoft.
Also, it's the games that count. XBox will face fierce competition, and speaking as a hardcore gamer, I see no buzz about XBox around at all, other than that cooked up by ZDNet.
"Small Business Software..."
Microsoft just made a whole score of new enemies who are going to be more than happy to put up a fight.
"Stinger... for cellphones..."
Who cares? Who wants to write apps for specifically for Stinger phones when Java is already becoming the lingua franca? Many, many millions of phones are shipping with Java, and according to Nokia's president, they alone will ship 100 million of those in only a year or two.
"UltimateTV"
Only works with satellites, thus limiting its adoption, and a massive money drain on the company, just like WebTV...
Most of the rest of your points are just as ridiculous, but I've got more important things to do -- hey, I'm off to develop software that competes with MS! -- to waste any more time responding. I'm sure the other Slashdotters will pick up the slack.
So John, quit pushing this defeatist idea of Microsoft inevitability.
Agreed, under OS X I think Mozilla is a much better choice.
I'm running Mac Mozilla nightlies on an OS X G4 400 MHz and I find that Mozilla (in Classic) is faster than IE 5.1 (Carbon). Scrolling in IE is jerky and live resizing and refreshing are painful. It doesn't look like the MacIE team has made any improvements since 5.0 came out long ago. The only place IE bests Mozilla is (very slightly) in startup time.
If Mozilla would get mouse wheel scrolling working under OS X I wouldn't need IE any more at all.
You can record MP3s up to 320 Kbps in the Plus version of RealJukebox. Just because you can't do this in the free version doesn't mean you can't do it at all.
And you know why they aren't? Because they've already got a system out there to sell, and they don't want to kill sales of it! Microsoft has no such worry.
I would disagree with you there. I think the rise of the latest generation of game consoles is one of the biggest factors killing the home PC market. And that translates into fewer sales of Windows.
As a former PC game junkie, I just gave up on the whole thing after years of $1-2K PC upgrades, hundreds of dollars on new video cards, etc. I can spend $300 and get cutting edge stuff from a new console. And the games these days are damn good, and many are direct ports of PC games.
Home PC sales are shriveling, and with them the PC game market. It seems to be dying a slow death with all the canceled titles and failing or converting PC game companies.
Microsoft's entry into the console market is purely defensive, becaues people aren't buying new 1GHZ machines (and copies of Windows) to play PC games, and they sure don't need to upgrade for the newest versions of Quicken or Office.
Re:PS2, what's the rush?
on
XBox Tidbits
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· Score: 1
I haven't seen a great game yet.
Then you probably haven't checked out SSX from Electronic Arts. That game is incredible, and even the people who watch it being played get an adrenaline rush.
Even with just the basic download, it still took about a full minute to load up.
The first time Mozilla / Netscape starts up after installation it has to go through a lengthy component registration process. Unfortunately, the only feedback it gives the user during this process is the static splash screen. So the user has no idea that it's going through a one-time registration.
On the Mac, at least for a while, the splash screen showed a text string at the bottom of the screen that changed and showed that the components were being registered.
Unfortunately, this was never implemented on other platforms, and users almost certainly get frustrated thinking that it's always going to be this slow to start up. I hope the Mozilla team reevaluates the bug calling for this feedback...
Is there a moderately objective site that explains what browsers are and aren't compliant with what? I've read all the assertions here that Mozilla is "the most standards compliant". I've read that IE 5 on the Mac is the most compliant. iCab and Konqueror are touted as compliant. I'd be interested in seeing a thorough review.
I don't think it specifically covers IE 5 on Mac or Konquereror, but I've always found Rich in Style to be a great resource for testing compliance and documenting the state of browsers.
> As a side note, anyone that thinks Open Office currently is feature comparable with MS Office is either kidding themselves or has never used Star Office for non-trivial documents. The same goes for Office compatibility. That said, I do have hope that Open Office will get there, someday.
No offense but, why is that so important? I think there's a lot more to be said for being stable, fast, and cheap. I'm still using a version of Office 95, but I'm not even using half of its functionality. I can't believe Joe Consumer can figure out most of these features anyway. He probably just wants to turn them off (Die, paperclip!)
Sure, there will be power users who desparately need every whiz-bang Office feature crammed in there in the last two versions.
But does Mom really need "improved table drawing","intelligent multilingual support", "collaborative sharing", or any of the other buzzwords on the MS Word site? Does she really need to expend the time wading through all these features?
Getting a free version of Star Office bundled with consumer PCs could be a big boon if it could reliably read and write Office formats. It sure might bring Office prices down...
By the time this beast is ever expected to be released, there's going to be plenty of software around to prove that Linux _is_ viable. I'd argue we're already there. This would never work as a FUD vehicle.
On the other hand, the very rumor that Microsoft is porting its apps to Linux gives the OS an immediate boost in credibility. It doesn't matter if no one buys these apps -- this extinguishes the tired "it'll never run mainstream apps like MS Office" refrain.
Now if Intuit would get off its sorry butt and port Quicken, that would pretty much round out the picture.
Re:What's happening with Java support under Linux?
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Mozilla M17 Is Out
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· Score: 1
For a good summary of the Java Plug-In support status under Linux, check out the bug report here which has lengthy comments from the Sun engineer who owns it.
You might have to wait until M18 or M19. Last I heard, the Sun's Linux JDK 1.3 was supposed to finalize in October.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm... and where did you get that information? According to my comrades formerly working for UltimateTV, they went to MSTV, not XBox.
BTW, UltimateTV had dismal selling numbers. Sold less than 100,000 units in spite of the massive marketing push. It was a decent product, but "Tivo" had too much mindshare. Remains to be seen if that market will exist at all in the future.
I am sure the open source community sees nothing wrong with this? If AOL puts millions of dollars into anything, it will be proprietary and they will own all the rights. Amazes me how so many of the so called open source supports simply don't see that they would be merely changing one monopoly for another.
Yeah, just like AOL made Mozilla closed source and proprietary after putting millions in development costs into that.
Oh wait, never mind.
I'm anxious to start using a galeon-ish OS X browser as soon as I hear about one.
It appears that one is just on its way -- Chimera
Is it worth it to have AOL ship a kazillion Linux cds to mopes around the world, even if the Linux on those CDs is philosophically different from what we have now?
I wish folks would get it out of their head that AOL is going to ship CDs to the public at large that install Linux on their Windows PCs. Can you imagine the support costs when users tried to switch? All the complaints when their copies of Deer Hunter from Walmart "don't run on their computer no more"?
No matter how low your opinion of AOLTW might be, they aren't THAT stupid.
There are business reasons for this: RHAT is close to profitability already, think what they could do with AOLTW marketing and resources. High growth potential.
Plus, take a shot at undermining their biggest rival (Microsoft) by selling a competitive OS for cheap or free. Sort of like the Sun/Star Office strategy.
AOL could incorporate Linux into devices, which is a big focus of their AOL Anywhere strategy which moves access off the PC and out of Microsoft's control. They would use it in set-top boxes to counter XBox and Microsoft's new eHome line of products. They might even bundle AOL software into Red Hat distributions and give free Linux support to AOL users.
There are some pretty clever, strategic things AOL could do with Red Hat. No I don't work for either company, but I think it's a pretty brilliant move. Think outside the box a little, folks.
I think "MSUSA" has a better ring to it!
Pop3 is more popular, but IMAP is more useful when you are accessing your mail from multiple places because it keeps the mail and state on the server. For instance, read half your new mail from one machine, leave, log in from another machine later, and your inbox will look just like it did when you left off (+ new messages).
IMAP is very nice for reading your same email from home and work without "leave new messages on server" setting hacks and the like.
PC manufacturers == suckers.
They should have seen this coming from miles away, esp after the XBox was announced. It's not like Microsoft hasn't competed with its former partners time and time again.
The rise of the XBox will only contribute to the decline of PC gamers who feel the need to buy cutting-edge home PCs for the latest game.
It's going to be bittersweet watching all the PC manufacturers who set up the Microsoft monopoly get a spanking from it as it turns its warchest on their markets.
Bet Linux is looking more and more attractive...
This is sad news, but I was waiting to hear it once it was made public that AOL was laying off workers.
As a Mozilla fan, I'm really curious how many Netscape/Mozilla contributors got the axe. Is this an isolated thing, or is the project in jeopardy? Can anyone with this info contribute it here, even anonymously?
> Linux faces a bleak future... ["The sky is falling", etc.]
Now we _finally_ know what Microsoft's Linux analysts are doing to keep busy!
Didn't MS get a black eye over this before? What has changed to make them think they can get away with it this time?
h tm l98/pr_041098.html
I don't know. Maybe Microsoft is banking on the fact that Joe Schmoe has no memory. But it's a ballsy move, considering how eerily similar today's story is to this one about Microsoft fake grassroots campaigns, also exposed by the L.A. Times three years ago:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/
John Carmack is simply telling the truth. Look at the gaming market. How many Windows games do you see? How many Mac games? How many Linux games?
Forget all of those. Consoles are where's it at now. I say this as an avid gamer of 10+ years who used to play the hardware rat race with all the others. Every year a new $300 video card, constantly upgrading processors, memory, sounds cards. Who needs it.
I'm totally sold on consoles now, and I'm addicted to my PS2. The only thing that PC games really shine at these days is better video resolution, but at what cost? (Used to be networking, but the consoles are catching up there.)
Judging by all the dying PC game companies, the slowdown in PC-only titles, and the lack of innovation there, I think the PC gaming market is becoming irrelevant.
So I don't really care if I can't play games on my Mac or Linux box. I don't play them any more on my Windows box, either.
Actually, your posted article is just a commentary which mentions the actual events in passing. Here's two better links:
First, a Seattle Times story from 1998 about how Microsoft tried to fake a grass roots campaign to lobby against the DOJ action.
(Ahhh... blatant media manipulation. Kinda makes you feel warm and fuzzy now that Microsoft is invested in news agencies like MSNBC and working on partnerships with Rupert Murdoch and Fox.)
Second, an AP story from last year about how former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed was lobbying citizens to write to Bush on behalf of Microsoft. Not a media effort, per se, but it does show a pattern of drumming up fake support and not changing its company policies.
Yeah, good fucking luck. Maybe you didn't notice, but both Microsoft and the Open Sores kiddies make a browser for Macs. And IE kicks the living shit out of Netscape/Mozilla on that platform.
Oh please, not by a long shot. Mozilla 0.9.2 on OS X might take a little longer to start up, but it's a MUCH better browsing experience than the IE 5.1 previews. IE might have useless auction managers and the like, but Mozilla bests it on features that actually matter, like image blocking. And on my 400 MHz G4, Mozilla outperforms IE by a wide margin. IE 5.1 has to be the slowest browser I've ever used.
Zico doesn't know very much.
...is that you completely buy into the Microsoft marketing hype without any critical thought. Don't you remember, with the advent of NT years ago, Microsoft was supposed to own everything by now?
"Microsoft is not, as the new administration has made abundantly clear, about to be broken up."
Really? I follow this case closely, and I've never seen the administration say that. It's not only a political dead-end, but they don't have control. It's in the courts. And the states AGs will pursue no matter what the feds decide.
Even if they aren't broken up, they still face a strong possibility of other remedies. It will be very difficult for them to be exonarated.
"Anaylists believe it will soon return to 20 percent revenue growth..."
Again, not what I read, and I read a lot. Most stories I see project single digit growth, at best. Some of their divisions have had declining revenue.
"The company is also launching a mind-boggling series of sweeping and expensive new initiatives:"
Keywords here: mind-boggling, as in "consumers are generally unfamiliar with any of them" and "expensive", as in "how do we (MS) maintain expected profit growths when we're spending billions on new products, our money-makers are slowing, and the PC industry is now predicted to show its first annual sales decline?"
".Net... the company's wedge into Web services."
.Net isn't even released yet, and it's already facing competition from the other big players (IBM, Sun, Oracle). Also, it's not entirely clear the MS will be able to lock people into their own web services due to the fairly open nature of that market.
"XBox... huge leap... three times more powerful... Microsoft says it plans to spend $500 million on advertising."
First off, that's wrong. MS is spending $500 million on _marketing_, of which the bulk of that will be spent on non-advertising sources like wooing developers. Do you think Sony and Nintendo spend nothing? It's only an interesting amount b/c it's coming from Microsoft.
Also, it's the games that count. XBox will face fierce competition, and speaking as a hardcore gamer, I see no buzz about XBox around at all, other than that cooked up by ZDNet.
"Small Business Software..."
Microsoft just made a whole score of new enemies who are going to be more than happy to put up a fight.
"Stinger... for cellphones..."
Who cares? Who wants to write apps for specifically for Stinger phones when Java is already becoming the lingua franca? Many, many millions of phones are shipping with Java, and according to Nokia's president, they alone will ship 100 million of those in only a year or two.
"UltimateTV"
Only works with satellites, thus limiting its adoption, and a massive money drain on the company, just like WebTV...
Most of the rest of your points are just as ridiculous, but I've got more important things to do -- hey, I'm off to develop software that competes with MS! -- to waste any more time responding. I'm sure the other Slashdotters will pick up the slack.
So John, quit pushing this defeatist idea of Microsoft inevitability.
Agreed, under OS X I think Mozilla is a much better choice.
I'm running Mac Mozilla nightlies on an OS X G4 400 MHz and I find that Mozilla (in Classic) is faster than IE 5.1 (Carbon). Scrolling in IE is jerky and live resizing and refreshing are painful. It doesn't look like the MacIE team has made any improvements since 5.0 came out long ago. The only place IE bests Mozilla is (very slightly) in startup time.
If Mozilla would get mouse wheel scrolling working under OS X I wouldn't need IE any more at all.
UltimateTV is a join venture of MS and TiVo.
Like hell. UltimateTV is Microsoft's competitor of TiVo. TiVo is partnered with AOL, not Microsoft.
You can record MP3s up to 320 Kbps in the Plus version of RealJukebox. Just because you can't do this in the free version doesn't mean you can't do it at all.
And you know why they aren't? Because they've already got a system out there to sell, and they don't want to kill sales of it! Microsoft has no such worry.
I would disagree with you there. I think the rise of the latest generation of game consoles is one of the biggest factors killing the home PC market. And that translates into fewer sales of Windows.
As a former PC game junkie, I just gave up on the whole thing after years of $1-2K PC upgrades, hundreds of dollars on new video cards, etc. I can spend $300 and get cutting edge stuff from a new console. And the games these days are damn good, and many are direct ports of PC games.
Home PC sales are shriveling, and with them the PC game market. It seems to be dying a slow death with all the canceled titles and failing or converting PC game companies.
Microsoft's entry into the console market is purely defensive, becaues people aren't buying new 1GHZ machines (and copies of Windows) to play PC games, and they sure don't need to upgrade for the newest versions of Quicken or Office.
I haven't seen a great game yet.
Then you probably haven't checked out SSX from Electronic Arts. That game is incredible, and even the people who watch it being played get an adrenaline rush.
Maybe you should look a little harder.
Why not employ a removable hard drive system? Better yet, just install Windows 2000 and be done with it.
Cost. I don't want want to buy a removable hard drive, and I don't want to pay Microsoft for a copy of Windows 2000.
How hard is that to understand?
Even with just the basic download, it still took about a full minute to load up.
The first time Mozilla / Netscape starts up after installation it has to go through a lengthy component registration process. Unfortunately, the only feedback it gives the user during this process is the static splash screen. So the user has no idea that it's going through a one-time registration.
On the Mac, at least for a while, the splash screen showed a text string at the bottom of the screen that changed and showed that the components were being registered.
Unfortunately, this was never implemented on other platforms, and users almost certainly get frustrated thinking that it's always going to be this slow to start up. I hope the Mozilla team reevaluates the bug calling for this feedback...
Is there a moderately objective site that explains what browsers are and aren't compliant with what? I've read all the assertions here that Mozilla is "the most standards compliant". I've read that IE 5 on the Mac is the most compliant. iCab and Konqueror are touted as compliant. I'd be interested in seeing a thorough review.
I don't think it specifically covers IE 5 on Mac or Konquereror, but I've always found Rich in Style to be a great resource for testing compliance and documenting the state of browsers.
> As a side note, anyone that thinks Open Office currently is feature comparable with MS Office is either kidding themselves or has never used Star Office for non-trivial documents. The same goes for Office compatibility. That said, I do have hope that Open Office will get there, someday.
No offense but, why is that so important? I think there's a lot more to be said for being stable, fast, and cheap. I'm still using a version of Office 95, but I'm not even using half of its functionality. I can't believe Joe Consumer can figure out most of these features anyway. He probably just wants to turn them off (Die, paperclip!)
Sure, there will be power users who desparately need every whiz-bang Office feature crammed in there in the last two versions.
But does Mom really need "improved table drawing","intelligent multilingual support", "collaborative sharing", or any of the other buzzwords on the MS Word site? Does she really need to expend the time wading through all these features?
Getting a free version of Star Office bundled with consumer PCs could be a big boon if it could reliably read and write Office formats. It sure might bring Office prices down...
Naw, I don't buy it.
By the time this beast is ever expected to be released, there's going to be plenty of software around to prove that Linux _is_ viable. I'd argue we're already there. This would never work as a FUD vehicle.
On the other hand, the very rumor that Microsoft is porting its apps to Linux gives the OS an immediate boost in credibility. It doesn't matter if no one buys these apps -- this extinguishes the tired "it'll never run mainstream apps like MS Office" refrain.
Now if Intuit would get off its sorry butt and port Quicken, that would pretty much round out the picture.
For a good summary of the Java Plug-In support status under Linux, check out the bug report here which has lengthy comments from the Sun engineer who owns it.
You might have to wait until M18 or M19. Last I heard, the Sun's Linux JDK 1.3 was supposed to finalize in October.