Well I think you should look up the specs for your TV before posting something like this next time. Even if you are one of the people that currently own an HDTV set ( despite the mind blowing lack of programming )your TV still runs at a much lower resolution than the one that you use for playing games on your PC (at least in your case). However your TV set is setup so that the difference is not as noticeable as it would be on your computer monitor. Plus last I checked noone really watches TV 15" away from the screen;)
All that said I couldn't care less if Revolution will cost less than PS3 and xbox360. The games are shit and there is no hdd. Oh yeah and not to forget the weirdest controller ever made. What else could they have going against them...
yeah first of all the PS2 was banned from being sold in Iraq because of an embargo and not some stupid idea that they could be used for missle guidance systems. What you might have read in a dumb yellow press publication is nother story.
and that would be bad for the consumer how? I am sorry but I couldn't care less for walmart if they are not giving me a good deal and the same goes for pretty much any other store. Or maybe it is the great atmosphere and the customer service that would make me pay more... ( not that I have had any problems with the customer service at my Walmart )... still it's all about the cheese...
have you actually seen how much xbox360 retails for? I looked at the walmart catalog and couldn't find a single NONBUNDLE version of xbox360. The bundles are WAY more expensive than the MSRP of $400. This is expected though when a single game cost between $50 and $70. So my point is that at the current prices I highly doubt that MS will build up enough momentum so that they can afford to cut down the price in half and still be making any profit.
But then again xbox never sold for a profit either so who knows... it's good to be the undisputed king of software...
There may be quite a few similarities betweeen xbox360 and dreamcast however the same would apply to any 2 products if you look hard enough. The bottom line is that while Dreamcast tried to be an inovator there is absolutelly not a single inovative bone in xbox360.
1. The CPU idea was largelly borrowed from IBM/the cell team. 2. GPU is nothing ground breaking.... samo pretty much applies to the rest of the hardware as well (oh and I really hope that MS paid Logitech for the "borrowed" design of the controller )
3. XBOX Live only build on top of the existing online playing experiences which are borrowed from pc online games. 4. DVD-9 is just plain old and I really think that MS should have pushed for HD-DVD. After all someone said that MS will do everything possible to make xbox360 a success.
On the other had Dreamcast while a failior did try to break new ground. The modem is a really stupid idea when you think about it today but it was quite a thing back then. The media while not that great is unique to Sega and they did move away from the cartriges that every thing else was using at the time. The controller is very much like nothing else ( good or bad... )and the appearance of the console is pretty unique too. Heck even the logo has it's personality. As far as xbox360 goes, frankly, I don't know what to think of a stupid design like that. It looks like someone accidentally came up with it and it actually doesn't look like any logo at all ( this is not a good thing and I am not talking about the X logo on the controller ).
So the bottom line is that I really don't see how exactly xbox360 is viewed as dreamcast 2.0. As far as the destiny of xbox360 goes and I am not so sure that it would be so much more successful than the original. After all the only part of the market that MS really has a chance of capturing are the owners of Nintendo. Come to think about it, I don't think that more of ~40% of the Nintendo owners are going to go for an xbox360. There are good 20% that will wait for Revolution ( it's called company loyalty and MS should really learn that ) and the other 40% are much more likelly to get a ps3 because of the game titles and the fact that the game orientation is much closer to that of nintendo than MS. The biggest problem that I have with xbox360 and MS is that treat the console market just like they treat the PC one and those are 2 very different ball fields. All that said I do own an XBOX ( with XBMC and all that jazz ) and I'm proud of it. However, this time arround I am thinking of getting a ps3 ( after all it's all about the games and NOT the hardware when you are talking about a console ).
What the article fails to realiza is that in other countries people pay WAY too much for telephone hence they are hard pressed to opt for broadband access where you have a flat monthly fee. Plus broadband at arround 200kbps is hardly considered broadband by most people in America...
reality check...
There is no way to customize windows to do anything that it was not designed to do. So in that respect Linux and any other open source OS is superior. However, Linux is generally a pain to deal with and finding support personel is hard and costs more than the Windows counterparts. For a small fish like Tommy.com it might not be worth the extra time and money to maintain a *nix but they can serioulsy go to hell with comments like that. Plus a perfume maker has really no right to criticize software. ( ok he is a CEO but still...)
I can't believe this. Slashdot readers always have to whine about something. You know guys noone makes you use anything. If you want to you can even write things down on paper. That way a *scratch* won't wipe anythign else and meanwhile the world will keep moving forward. Oh yeah and as far as the click-of-death is concerned, you are an idiot dude. The new patents concern DVDs and NOT zip disks and hence your post is absolutely irrelevant.
I think this technology is great becasue it finds new uses for technology that is currently available. The DVDs that are in use today can be adaped to this new technology very easily and very very cost efficiently unlike blue ray and HD DVDs. The only concern is that Iomega does not have very much industry sayso and they are probably shooting too far ahead in the future. Today there are very few uses for huge single use disks like the ones proposed but I am sure this will change. Only it most likely wouldn't be Iomega that brings nano technology to the DVD world. And I really really hate companies that live off of patents. Thompson anyone? (well Thompson did a lot of r&d but patenting mpeg is really gay if you ask me)
It is amazing how many people still believe that PPC is vastly superior to x86. (and yes it is x86 and NOT 386). What exactly do you think a PPC can do that an x86 cannot? It is not that hard imagining Mac switching over to silicon provided from Intel. The IBM CPUs cost them a bundle and plus Intel has the capacity to produce huge amounts of CPUs while IBM doesn't. Also IBM being so huge and going in so many directions does nothing to promote the CPUs that they make. On the other hand Intel does a great deal of advertising and this will help Mac a lot. Not to mention that an x86 compatible MacOS X will brings a boat load of new customerts for Apple and probably double the value of their shares if not even tripple them. So moving over to x86 especially now that x86 is moving towards multiple core CPUs is a great idea and I am all the way behind Apple if this turns out to be more than a rumor. Hey I'll be one of the first to buy the x86 version of MacOS X.
Steve my brother... no one uses your crappy brouser even if it is superior than google. Reason why is that MS sux my balls every day. No on a more serois note there is no way that google is a one hit wonder or that google will vanish in 5 years. The company is making crazy profits and unlike another giat that Balmer seems to work for, google still provides the world with inovations and improvements though the face of google rarely changes. Plus gmail is both hands down the best webmail there is. Also google has enough brain power in their house to even create a new OS (like a lot of people have rummored). So suck me balls Bellmer
Starter edition is targeted towards developing countrise and computers with lows specs. Plus MS is not making newarly the money that they hoped for on starter edition. So wellome to Microfag and if you plan on doing any hacks you should know that this is equivalent to getting an illegal version only you pay for this one and it is highly stripped down. So it's your choise but if you don't have money for Windows XP there is alwas linux and it may actually work better on your aging machine.
This is the worst design that I have ever seen. Maybe the people at MS shoud pull their heads out of their behinds and look at the thing before they release it. The original xbox was huge and ugly but at least it was very easily distinguishable. This thing looks like a modified Dell computer. And if MS hired people from Dell to design this thing they are idiots since everyone knows that Dell is about the ugliest thing one can get. As far as this going well with mini Mac I compleatelly disagree. MiniMac's design is WAY better than this. Plus miniMac features a slot drive and these idiots are still saving 50c and using a tray one. Yeah tray drives last longer and blah blah blah but this thing still is the worst designed console up to date. Oh yeah and all that hardware won't do a thing for it cause it's still driven by a modified Direct3d environment. MS should have asked themselves how come Sony can pull the same performance out of the 10year old PS2 as MS can out of the 3 year old Xbox. All I have to say is that my next console will deffinitely be a Sony one. At least I'll get to play online for free...
Seriously man if you are such a newb and are going to ask a really really dumb question use something else other than Slashdot. Plus how did this crap end up on the front page? There are hardly ANY mobos that are ALL-IN-ONE. Having an onboard video card is rare and the reason for that is that people don't want those unless you have like an SFF pc or say a mini-ATX factor. In those cases the less clutter you have the better and build in stuf is actually good. There isn't a single mobo out there that does not have a build in sound card of some sort and most have a build in nic. With the quality of the onboard nics today and the fact that chipsets like nforce (>2) have a dedicated channel for your nic you must be nuts to go with a pci solution. Also codecs like Azalia improve greatly the build in souncard and for most users it would be all that they need. I don't ever use it because I like things that can do high quality 24bit sound and I also like AMD. However, the mobos that are really high quality incude a nice soundcard too. (sort of) As far as things like build in USB and firewire ports go, the more the merrier so bring it on. Other than that there really isn't much that is build on. Oh yeah disk controllers like SATA and raids are also very welcome. After all when it comes to controllers like that I would much rather have more than enough than less that enough. PCI ATA and SATA controllers are a real pain and by no means easier to use or better than what comes on a moddern mobo. If you go for a mobo that has very few features you are most likelly buying pure crap and noone that I have ever met wants that. Trust me go for the extra stuff and stop bitching. It will be worth the extra $5-10 in the long run.
Don't you hate slashdot when stuff starts repeating or REALLY old news get pitched as new stuff? And then you wonder why people don't really respect slashdot...
What is all this that people have started to talk about dual core g5? There is NO dual core g5 and most likelly won't be one for a long time. So get this in your thick skulls and stop complaining. A dual g5 is damn fast computer and you don't really need a dual dual-core g5. Plus who says that Apple should follow the same route that all the x86 companies are following? When have they ever done that? So all the people that are trying so damn hard to convince everybody that Apple is better than Intel or AMD should just give up. Apple alwasy pulls ahead and then let Intel and AMD catch up and even get better so why would this be any different?
I was wondering what happend of all the idiots that were barelly passing the computer science classes in my college years but I guess they got jobs at MS. This is by far the most user UNFRIENDLY interface that I have seen. Do those idiots at MS think that people really like the XP look? Cause I know of countless users that want nothing other than the way Windows "used to look". Also the control pannel looks rediculous. It is like they wrote down a list of the worst design decisions ever maid by KDE, Gnome, and MacOS X and put all of them together in Longhorn. Well this gives me one more reason to just pretend that Longhorn was never released only MS will never let me live in my dream world. After all unless I upgrade they don't get any money.
If they are still complaining that there is too much piracy after a product like Longhorn they are compleare assho***. Longhorn needs a miracle to be still on top of things at release time. After all MS is giving over 1-1/2 years head start to Apple and all the OSS projects. Oh yeah and plus by the time Longhorn comes out the whole hardware in most computers would be compleatelly different from design time. How's that 1gb of ram sound now?
Macromedia is not doing as well as they should however they do have technology that fits very well in the Adobe sceme of things. While it is possible that MS would have bought Macromedia it is unlikelly since it really won't bring anything to MS. As a matter of fact Macromedia does not fit well at all with MS. The fact that they produce cross platform and cross brouser technology goes very much against the exclusivity that MS like to use. You can't even access the windows update site unless you run IE on windows. So in that aspect Macromedia does not fit in with MS at all. However, latelly Adobe has started supporting multiple OSes and porting Acrobat to linux and mac os so fast is probably only the first step. Plus Macromedia's technologies will allow Adobe to expand even more. So I really don't think that the reason for the purchase was fear of direct MS compotition. Sure enought no company wants to go head to head against MS but this doesn't seem to be the case with Adobe. All this just looks like the right oportunity came up and they went for it. Plus conspiracy theories are really not that cool.
I hope there isn't any one out there that still believes that users drive anything in OSS projects. There are very very few projects out there where the developers ask some of the users for design ideas and features that they would like to see incorporated. The rule in OSS is that the developers drive the software and that users usually have no say what happens. Now this is different from closed source corporate environment in the way that there you have managers making decissions and de people that end up writing the software usually do not have a say in what happens. It is not really as grim as this but you get the picture.
It is try that at it's current stage linux has no chance of even putting a dent in the windows world and Microsoft knows that. They don't even have to run any of the anti linux campains because the linux world does that itself.
IMHO the linux world need an ideology chech and certain parts of linux and the projects that go in most distributions need new leaders and a new direction. It is about time to stop accepting mediocre programers just because they know one of the better developes in the team. Also the linux community needs to start educating the world and especially the corporate world of the benefits of OSS and how OSS can help them. This might actually lead to slight restructuring of licences so that they are more clear and easier to integrate in the existing environment. This does not mean easier to keep code hidden at all. Also people have to stop this dumb arguing about linux is better than windows because the bottom line is that it is not and never had been. Linux does however have the potential to be better than windows one day and the linux community needs leaders that are willing to drive it there. Linux seems to be all about patching things and getting things done the fast and dirty way and maybe patch them or rewrite them later. Well all this does is create problems down the line and also waste time. It is about time that there is a group of people whose only purpose is to make sure that the submited code is good and works. Kinda like the testers depts in just about any software company that deals with closed source. It is ridiculous to depend on the actual user to report bugs in the code. If they wanted to do that those users would actually be developers. Yeah testing is never fun but if linux is ever going to move away from the hoby status that it has then there really need to be a little bit more profesional environment. There are a lot of good things that the linux community can learn from large scale corporate businesses and it is about time that they turn this whole thing arround. If you don't know how to write good code I really don't care who you know but you are not going to be developing my OS. You can't complain about not having any control over Windows when there are bug reports about faulty pci code in the kernel that has been outstanding for over an year and noone seems to care about it.
Also it is about time that linux developers decide to support as many devices as thet possibly can get their hands on and not only the ones that they use. After all if you are going to aleanate the hardware manufacturers and you have no way of convincing them to write a driver for linux it is up to YOU as a kernel developer to do that. There are manu companies that wii provide you with sample hardware for testing and even more users out there that will sign up to be testers. Plus that way you won't have Joe who just finished his 2nd year of college writing carppy software and believing that he is the next Linus Torvald. It is time for the OSS community to unite in the name of a common goal rather than create thousands of APIs and thousands of duplicate software. Linux and the OSS community arround it has the chance to create something that no company has ever done but until that community startes acting like one and stops forking projects for dumb reasons that potential will never be realized even partially.
It is just a damn shame that in over 10 years there is not a single distribution that has even reached the level of OS X which exists for under 5 (plus whever it took before). Mac OS X is a living proof of the superiority of the corporate system over the hoby driver one surrounding linux. And as far as Novell goes unless they take over most major projects out there I really don't see how they can succeed.
Novell's linux distribution is oriented exactly towads mid to lage companies. However the distribution is not in it's prime stage yet but in about a year there would be a viable option for mid to large companies to try. Unlike Windows NLD is designed for the corporate world and nothing but the corporate world. Also right now there isn't a single mid to large company in the US that does not use at least one Novell produt. Novell know that very well and they would have never devoted tons of money and developers to the new OS (for them) if there wasn't well over 50% for success. So give it some time and you will see a lot of larger companies switching over to linux. There are different reason for different markets though. You can't even think of pitching linux to a large company with the promice of saving some money. Those companies hate changes and uncertanty because it causes them to loose lots of money on the stock market. (i.e. less investors and less potential for growth) However for many of those companies switching from a flacky windows to a rock solid novell is a very good option and this is ecavtly the way that Microsoft and Novell are known in those circles.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I think you should look up the specs for your TV before posting something like this next time. Even if you are one of the people that currently own an HDTV set ( despite the mind blowing lack of programming )your TV still runs at a much lower resolution than the one that you use for playing games on your PC (at least in your case). However your TV set is setup so that the difference is not as noticeable as it would be on your computer monitor. Plus last I checked noone really watches TV 15" away from the screen ;)
All that said I couldn't care less if Revolution will cost less than PS3 and xbox360. The games are shit and there is no hdd. Oh yeah and not to forget the weirdest controller ever made. What else could they have going against them ...
yeah first of all the PS2 was banned from being sold in Iraq because of an embargo and not some stupid idea that they could be used for missle guidance systems. What you might have read in a dumb yellow press publication is nother story.
and that would be bad for the consumer how? I am sorry but I couldn't care less for walmart if they are not giving me a good deal and the same goes for pretty much any other store. Or maybe it is the great atmosphere and the customer service that would make me pay more ... ( not that I have had any problems with the customer service at my Walmart ) ... still it's all about the cheese ...
have you actually seen how much xbox360 retails for? I looked at the walmart catalog and couldn't find a single NONBUNDLE version of xbox360. The bundles are WAY more expensive than the MSRP of $400. This is expected though when a single game cost between $50 and $70. So my point is that at the current prices I highly doubt that MS will build up enough momentum so that they can afford to cut down the price in half and still be making any profit. But then again xbox never sold for a profit either so who knows ... it's good to be the undisputed king of software...
There may be quite a few similarities betweeen xbox360 and dreamcast however the same would apply to any 2 products if you look hard enough. The bottom line is that while Dreamcast tried to be an inovator there is absolutelly not a single inovative bone in xbox360.
.... samo pretty much applies to the rest of the hardware as well (oh and I really hope that MS paid Logitech for the "borrowed" design of the controller )
... )and the appearance of the console is pretty unique too. Heck even the logo has it's personality. As far as xbox360 goes, frankly, I don't know what to think of a stupid design like that. It looks like someone accidentally came up with it and it actually doesn't look like any logo at all ( this is not a good thing and I am not talking about the X logo on the controller ).
1. The CPU idea was largelly borrowed from IBM/the cell team.
2. GPU is nothing ground breaking
3. XBOX Live only build on top of the existing online playing experiences which are borrowed from pc online games.
4. DVD-9 is just plain old and I really think that MS should have pushed for HD-DVD. After all someone said that MS will do everything possible to make xbox360 a success.
On the other had Dreamcast while a failior did try to break new ground. The modem is a really stupid idea when you think about it today but it was quite a thing back then. The media while not that great is unique to Sega and they did move away from the cartriges that every thing else was using at the time. The controller is very much like nothing else ( good or bad
So the bottom line is that I really don't see how exactly xbox360 is viewed as dreamcast 2.0. As far as the destiny of xbox360 goes and I am not so sure that it would be so much more successful than the original. After all the only part of the market that MS really has a chance of capturing are the owners of Nintendo. Come to think about it, I don't think that more of ~40% of the Nintendo owners are going to go for an xbox360. There are good 20% that will wait for Revolution ( it's called company loyalty and MS should really learn that ) and the other 40% are much more likelly to get a ps3 because of the game titles and the fact that the game orientation is much closer to that of nintendo than MS. The biggest problem that I have with xbox360 and MS is that treat the console market just like they treat the PC one and those are 2 very different ball fields. All that said I do own an XBOX ( with XBMC and all that jazz ) and I'm proud of it. However, this time arround I am thinking of getting a ps3 ( after all it's all about the games and NOT the hardware when you are talking about a console ).
What the article fails to realiza is that in other countries people pay WAY too much for telephone hence they are hard pressed to opt for broadband access where you have a flat monthly fee. Plus broadband at arround 200kbps is hardly considered broadband by most people in America...
so just because you are scared that an indian guy might operate on you I have to drive 700 miles to get a surgery from a better doctor?
anybody else that STILL doesn't know about this?
reality check ...
There is no way to customize windows to do anything that it was not designed to do. So in that respect Linux and any other open source OS is superior. However, Linux is generally a pain to deal with and finding support personel is hard and costs more than the Windows counterparts. For a small fish like Tommy.com it might not be worth the extra time and money to maintain a *nix but they can serioulsy go to hell with comments like that. Plus a perfume maker has really no right to criticize software. ( ok he is a CEO but still ...)
I can't believe this. Slashdot readers always have to whine about something. You know guys noone makes you use anything. If you want to you can even write things down on paper. That way a *scratch* won't wipe anythign else and meanwhile the world will keep moving forward. Oh yeah and as far as the click-of-death is concerned, you are an idiot dude. The new patents concern DVDs and NOT zip disks and hence your post is absolutely irrelevant.
I think this technology is great becasue it finds new uses for technology that is currently available. The DVDs that are in use today can be adaped to this new technology very easily and very very cost efficiently unlike blue ray and HD DVDs. The only concern is that Iomega does not have very much industry sayso and they are probably shooting too far ahead in the future. Today there are very few uses for huge single use disks like the ones proposed but I am sure this will change. Only it most likely wouldn't be Iomega that brings nano technology to the DVD world. And I really really hate companies that live off of patents. Thompson anyone? (well Thompson did a lot of r&d but patenting mpeg is really gay if you ask me)
It is amazing how many people still believe that PPC is vastly superior to x86. (and yes it is x86 and NOT 386). What exactly do you think a PPC can do that an x86 cannot? It is not that hard imagining Mac switching over to silicon provided from Intel. The IBM CPUs cost them a bundle and plus Intel has the capacity to produce huge amounts of CPUs while IBM doesn't. Also IBM being so huge and going in so many directions does nothing to promote the CPUs that they make. On the other hand Intel does a great deal of advertising and this will help Mac a lot. Not to mention that an x86 compatible MacOS X will brings a boat load of new customerts for Apple and probably double the value of their shares if not even tripple them. So moving over to x86 especially now that x86 is moving towards multiple core CPUs is a great idea and I am all the way behind Apple if this turns out to be more than a rumor. Hey I'll be one of the first to buy the x86 version of MacOS X.
Steve my brother ... no one uses your crappy brouser even if it is superior than google. Reason why is that MS sux my balls every day. No on a more serois note there is no way that google is a one hit wonder or that google will vanish in 5 years. The company is making crazy profits and unlike another giat that Balmer seems to work for, google still provides the world with inovations and improvements though the face of google rarely changes. Plus gmail is both hands down the best webmail there is. Also google has enough brain power in their house to even create a new OS (like a lot of people have rummored). So suck me balls Bellmer
Starter edition is targeted towards developing countrise and computers with lows specs. Plus MS is not making newarly the money that they hoped for on starter edition. So wellome to Microfag and if you plan on doing any hacks you should know that this is equivalent to getting an illegal version only you pay for this one and it is highly stripped down. So it's your choise but if you don't have money for Windows XP there is alwas linux and it may actually work better on your aging machine.
This is the worst design that I have ever seen. Maybe the people at MS shoud pull their heads out of their behinds and look at the thing before they release it. The original xbox was huge and ugly but at least it was very easily distinguishable. This thing looks like a modified Dell computer. And if MS hired people from Dell to design this thing they are idiots since everyone knows that Dell is about the ugliest thing one can get. As far as this going well with mini Mac I compleatelly disagree. MiniMac's design is WAY better than this. Plus miniMac features a slot drive and these idiots are still saving 50c and using a tray one. Yeah tray drives last longer and blah blah blah but this thing still is the worst designed console up to date. Oh yeah and all that hardware won't do a thing for it cause it's still driven by a modified Direct3d environment. MS should have asked themselves how come Sony can pull the same performance out of the 10year old PS2 as MS can out of the 3 year old Xbox. All I have to say is that my next console will deffinitely be a Sony one. At least I'll get to play online for free ...
Seriously man if you are such a newb and are going to ask a really really dumb question use something else other than Slashdot. Plus how did this crap end up on the front page? There are hardly ANY mobos that are ALL-IN-ONE. Having an onboard video card is rare and the reason for that is that people don't want those unless you have like an SFF pc or say a mini-ATX factor. In those cases the less clutter you have the better and build in stuf is actually good. There isn't a single mobo out there that does not have a build in sound card of some sort and most have a build in nic. With the quality of the onboard nics today and the fact that chipsets like nforce (>2) have a dedicated channel for your nic you must be nuts to go with a pci solution. Also codecs like Azalia improve greatly the build in souncard and for most users it would be all that they need. I don't ever use it because I like things that can do high quality 24bit sound and I also like AMD. However, the mobos that are really high quality incude a nice soundcard too. (sort of) As far as things like build in USB and firewire ports go, the more the merrier so bring it on. Other than that there really isn't much that is build on. Oh yeah disk controllers like SATA and raids are also very welcome. After all when it comes to controllers like that I would much rather have more than enough than less that enough. PCI ATA and SATA controllers are a real pain and by no means easier to use or better than what comes on a moddern mobo. If you go for a mobo that has very few features you are most likelly buying pure crap and noone that I have ever met wants that. Trust me go for the extra stuff and stop bitching. It will be worth the extra $5-10 in the long run.
Q: How do lightsabers work? A: Imagination ... lots of it ...
Don't you hate slashdot when stuff starts repeating or REALLY old news get pitched as new stuff? And then you wonder why people don't really respect slashdot ...
Soooo, how much money did that guy get paid to find MS another excuse not to fix their buggy OS?
I've got a comment about the actions of the multimedia moguls but it's really unprintable. So no comment ...
What is all this that people have started to talk about dual core g5? There is NO dual core g5 and most likelly won't be one for a long time. So get this in your thick skulls and stop complaining. A dual g5 is damn fast computer and you don't really need a dual dual-core g5. Plus who says that Apple should follow the same route that all the x86 companies are following? When have they ever done that? So all the people that are trying so damn hard to convince everybody that Apple is better than Intel or AMD should just give up. Apple alwasy pulls ahead and then let Intel and AMD catch up and even get better so why would this be any different?
I was wondering what happend of all the idiots that were barelly passing the computer science classes in my college years but I guess they got jobs at MS. This is by far the most user UNFRIENDLY interface that I have seen. Do those idiots at MS think that people really like the XP look? Cause I know of countless users that want nothing other than the way Windows "used to look". Also the control pannel looks rediculous. It is like they wrote down a list of the worst design decisions ever maid by KDE, Gnome, and MacOS X and put all of them together in Longhorn. Well this gives me one more reason to just pretend that Longhorn was never released only MS will never let me live in my dream world. After all unless I upgrade they don't get any money.
If they are still complaining that there is too much piracy after a product like Longhorn they are compleare assho***. Longhorn needs a miracle to be still on top of things at release time. After all MS is giving over 1-1/2 years head start to Apple and all the OSS projects. Oh yeah and plus by the time Longhorn comes out the whole hardware in most computers would be compleatelly different from design time. How's that 1gb of ram sound now?
Macromedia is not doing as well as they should however they do have technology that fits very well in the Adobe sceme of things. While it is possible that MS would have bought Macromedia it is unlikelly since it really won't bring anything to MS. As a matter of fact Macromedia does not fit well at all with MS. The fact that they produce cross platform and cross brouser technology goes very much against the exclusivity that MS like to use. You can't even access the windows update site unless you run IE on windows. So in that aspect Macromedia does not fit in with MS at all. However, latelly Adobe has started supporting multiple OSes and porting Acrobat to linux and mac os so fast is probably only the first step. Plus Macromedia's technologies will allow Adobe to expand even more. So I really don't think that the reason for the purchase was fear of direct MS compotition. Sure enought no company wants to go head to head against MS but this doesn't seem to be the case with Adobe. All this just looks like the right oportunity came up and they went for it. Plus conspiracy theories are really not that cool.
I hope there isn't any one out there that still believes that users drive anything in OSS projects. There are very very few projects out there where the developers ask some of the users for design ideas and features that they would like to see incorporated. The rule in OSS is that the developers drive the software and that users usually have no say what happens. Now this is different from closed source corporate environment in the way that there you have managers making decissions and de people that end up writing the software usually do not have a say in what happens. It is not really as grim as this but you get the picture.
It is try that at it's current stage linux has no chance of even putting a dent in the windows world and Microsoft knows that. They don't even have to run any of the anti linux campains because the linux world does that itself. IMHO the linux world need an ideology chech and certain parts of linux and the projects that go in most distributions need new leaders and a new direction. It is about time to stop accepting mediocre programers just because they know one of the better developes in the team. Also the linux community needs to start educating the world and especially the corporate world of the benefits of OSS and how OSS can help them. This might actually lead to slight restructuring of licences so that they are more clear and easier to integrate in the existing environment. This does not mean easier to keep code hidden at all. Also people have to stop this dumb arguing about linux is better than windows because the bottom line is that it is not and never had been. Linux does however have the potential to be better than windows one day and the linux community needs leaders that are willing to drive it there. Linux seems to be all about patching things and getting things done the fast and dirty way and maybe patch them or rewrite them later. Well all this does is create problems down the line and also waste time. It is about time that there is a group of people whose only purpose is to make sure that the submited code is good and works. Kinda like the testers depts in just about any software company that deals with closed source. It is ridiculous to depend on the actual user to report bugs in the code. If they wanted to do that those users would actually be developers. Yeah testing is never fun but if linux is ever going to move away from the hoby status that it has then there really need to be a little bit more profesional environment. There are a lot of good things that the linux community can learn from large scale corporate businesses and it is about time that they turn this whole thing arround. If you don't know how to write good code I really don't care who you know but you are not going to be developing my OS. You can't complain about not having any control over Windows when there are bug reports about faulty pci code in the kernel that has been outstanding for over an year and noone seems to care about it. Also it is about time that linux developers decide to support as many devices as thet possibly can get their hands on and not only the ones that they use. After all if you are going to aleanate the hardware manufacturers and you have no way of convincing them to write a driver for linux it is up to YOU as a kernel developer to do that. There are manu companies that wii provide you with sample hardware for testing and even more users out there that will sign up to be testers. Plus that way you won't have Joe who just finished his 2nd year of college writing carppy software and believing that he is the next Linus Torvald. It is time for the OSS community to unite in the name of a common goal rather than create thousands of APIs and thousands of duplicate software. Linux and the OSS community arround it has the chance to create something that no company has ever done but until that community startes acting like one and stops forking projects for dumb reasons that potential will never be realized even partially. It is just a damn shame that in over 10 years there is not a single distribution that has even reached the level of OS X which exists for under 5 (plus whever it took before). Mac OS X is a living proof of the superiority of the corporate system over the hoby driver one surrounding linux. And as far as Novell goes unless they take over most major projects out there I really don't see how they can succeed.
Novell's linux distribution is oriented exactly towads mid to lage companies. However the distribution is not in it's prime stage yet but in about a year there would be a viable option for mid to large companies to try. Unlike Windows NLD is designed for the corporate world and nothing but the corporate world. Also right now there isn't a single mid to large company in the US that does not use at least one Novell produt. Novell know that very well and they would have never devoted tons of money and developers to the new OS (for them) if there wasn't well over 50% for success. So give it some time and you will see a lot of larger companies switching over to linux. There are different reason for different markets though. You can't even think of pitching linux to a large company with the promice of saving some money. Those companies hate changes and uncertanty because it causes them to loose lots of money on the stock market. (i.e. less investors and less potential for growth) However for many of those companies switching from a flacky windows to a rock solid novell is a very good option and this is ecavtly the way that Microsoft and Novell are known in those circles.