This doesn't seem to have been a particularly well-handled, or deeply-sincere, attempt by Microsoft... so what were they really doing?
Screwing up. Microsoft has a history of big failures, and the bigger the company gets, the bigger the failures. Putting Uncle Fester in charge certainly hasn't helped. One of these days the board will realize that the Xbox team is the only one left with a fucking clue and put them in charge.
The original article does NOT claim that Brazil pays 20.1% of its income to Microsoft, it only states that the âoeCost of Business Licenses as % of GNI per capitaâoe is 20.1%. Only a complete moron would read that as 20.1% of Brazilâ(TM)s income going to Microsoft.
Furthermore, the OP claims that the linked article is a study; it is NOT a study, it is a blog post. It has not been fact-checked or reviewed by editors or peers, and could be a complete load of BS.
Getting out of IT was the best thing I ever did. Itâ(TM)s been a long time since somebody expected me to do the impossible on half the necessary budget and then canceled the project and laid off half the people I know. I donâ(TM)t really miss it much.
I have a PS3. In a good month I can find two new Blu-Ray releases worth watching, maybe one will be worth buying. If Sony really wants Blu-Ray to sell, it needs to focus on getting some good films out there, and stop wasting resources on back-catalog garbage like the recent anniversary edition of the disastrously horrible Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
With my Comcast service there are a few really gorgeous channels: the local TV affiliates and HBO. Everything else can get downright gross. But no FIOS for my neighborhood...yet!
I'm pretty sure the record companies would be able to sell CDs a lot less if they just sold music by talented musicians and songwriters instead of propping up a bunch of photogenic morons with overpriced producers.
That's not as true as it should be. Last week I purchased Unreal Tournament for my Playstation 3. To access some of the game, I had to update the operating system on my PS3. Tomorrow I'll have to install a patch for the game itself. My Wii needs updates now and then, too. If consoles start to get much more like PCs, we'll see spammers creating zombie supercomputers by hacking Folding@Home-enabled PS3s and using them to blast out gobs of spam while stealing our Playstation store credit card numbers. And I'm just waiting for a new PS3 game to require some update that breaks my old games, just like PC video drivers.
What is the point of an efficient car having a top speed of 100 MPH? How many places in the world is it even legal to drive that fast--much less safe? Does anyone else find that requirement a bit silly?
If we wanted better uptime we could have it. We would just have to pay more for, and look at, a whole lot of redundant systems. Personally, I'm happier to keep paying less and only have one power line coming into my house, with the nearest plant many miles away. The same goes for cable and telephone service. And my cellular service does work about 99.9% of the time.
Movie projectors are mechanical. Even if something breaks and new parts can't be found, new ones can be made. But what happens when video codec support gets lost over time? When new software simply will not play really old movies, but old software won't run on the current operating systems, old operating systems won't run on new hardware, all the old hardware is broken and the information needed to rebuild them was lost when some manufacturer went bankrupt and had it's headquarters demolished?
The simple solution is just to only store video in lossless formats, and have teams of technicians constantly format-shifting films to new formats, check them for flaws, and repeat. That's going to get pricey. A lot pricier than just keeping films in temperature-controlled vaults.
I am currently in my senior year at a small college. When I started, we had a web-based email system that barely worked, set up by an IT staff that had all been fired, and the new IT staff didn't have time to use it. So everyone forwarded college email to another account and ignored the campus email system. By the time the IT staff was able to get a new system running, nobody cared. For a while the school disable forwarding to get students to use the system, but that just resulted in students and faculty ignoring their email entirely. Now the school just collects email addresses every semester with registration paperwork, and includes email addresses in class rosters. Our email system is in place, but is only used by a few members of the faculty.
Clearly the author of that Forbes article hasn't tried reading too many of the books on Google books. While there are some really nicely formatted ebooks on there, most of the collection consists of horrendous scans of esoterica only useful to researchers with a tolerance for photographs that may be blurry, noisy, or shot at funny angles.
I personally have not been a fan of Steam since it launched. The DRM is too heavy-handed. Why the hell would I pay that much money for a game so I can get screwed by a DRM system that has done nothing to hamper piracy of the games in question?
If some real investigative journalism were going on, the article would be titled "How Sony and Universal plan to lobby Congress to force hardware makers to pay the record companies for a crappy music subscription service that consumers don't want."
I second that motion. For me the only remotely interesting games that will release on the PS3 are first--person shooters--and I could get more of those by purchasing an XBox 360.
Of course, that still doesn't affect my needs for backward compatibility, because I already own a PS2 and would not likely sell it if I did have a PS3.
Now if Sony would offer a $300 PS3 with no Blu-Ray drive and a few decent games...
Well, for starters Apple stayed on PPC too long. Game companies weren't going to optimize code for two CPU platforms, so that meant they could all get comfy programming for DirectX--especially Direct3D. Now that Apple has x86, it lacks the API game programmers are used to working with, meaning that to write code for Apple a game company has to spend a lot of extra programming money. That's not something most companies are going to do given how much smaller Apple's market share is than Microsoft's.
Then there's Apple's tendency to overcharge for crappy, outdated video hardware, meaning that Apple gamers are always lagging behind PC gamers, so that game designers have to keep that in mind and design for two different user experiences.
If Apple wants to bring the game companies over, it has to do two things: first, get a solid, first part DirectX compatibility layer of some sort into OS X. Something much better than CIDER, which has performance, rendering, and stability issues. Second, Apple has to give up a little of it's high profit margins and start shipping systems with better video chips. Those crappy intel GMA950 chips Apple is so enamored with don't even support all of the shaders the GUI needs--no 3D game programmer can be expected to take that seriously!
Isn't the whole point of the firehose to keep garbage like this from getting posted?
Or is this just the editors really reaching for a crazy anti-Microsoft rant? Maybe Vista is just so bad that people aren't even using it enough to write complaints and security screeds for/. to link to.
So a bloated, buggy, convoluted office suite that the developers have trouble giving away has 35 more developers to give it an even more massive memory footprint, slower loading times, and additional menu options. And it's going to be branded after a product that's been precariously balanced to keep the other foot out of the grave for a decade.
This is going to be a brilliant success. I'm sure it will be even better than when Sun bought Stardivision and opened the code and nobody but open-source nerds even noticed. Everything is gonna change now. I bet people will be chomping at the bit to give up the software they've spent years getting comfortable with to grab Lotus Symphony by the horns.
Here in DC Comcast doesn't keep any secrets: there's a range of analog channels, a range of digital channels, a range of HD channels, and so on. They're more than happy to let the customer which is which.
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This doesn't seem to have been a particularly well-handled, or deeply-sincere, attempt by Microsoft... so what were they really doing?
Screwing up. Microsoft has a history of big failures, and the bigger the company gets, the bigger the failures. Putting Uncle Fester in charge certainly hasn't helped. One of these days the board will realize that the Xbox team is the only one left with a fucking clue and put them in charge.The original article does NOT claim that Brazil pays 20.1% of its income to Microsoft, it only states that the âoeCost of Business Licenses as % of GNI per capitaâoe is 20.1%. Only a complete moron would read that as 20.1% of Brazilâ(TM)s income going to Microsoft.
Furthermore, the OP claims that the linked article is a study; it is NOT a study, it is a blog post. It has not been fact-checked or reviewed by editors or peers, and could be a complete load of BS.
Getting out of IT was the best thing I ever did. Itâ(TM)s been a long time since somebody expected me to do the impossible on half the necessary budget and then canceled the project and laid off half the people I know. I donâ(TM)t really miss it much.
I have a PS3. In a good month I can find two new Blu-Ray releases worth watching, maybe one will be worth buying. If Sony really wants Blu-Ray to sell, it needs to focus on getting some good films out there, and stop wasting resources on back-catalog garbage like the recent anniversary edition of the disastrously horrible Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
With my Comcast service there are a few really gorgeous channels: the local TV affiliates and HBO. Everything else can get downright gross. But no FIOS for my neighborhood...yet!
What happens if an escaping convict accidentally wanders into the collider, gains super powers, and tries to take over the world?
I'm pretty sure the record companies would be able to sell CDs a lot less if they just sold music by talented musicians and songwriters instead of propping up a bunch of photogenic morons with overpriced producers.
That's not as true as it should be. Last week I purchased Unreal Tournament for my Playstation 3. To access some of the game, I had to update the operating system on my PS3. Tomorrow I'll have to install a patch for the game itself. My Wii needs updates now and then, too. If consoles start to get much more like PCs, we'll see spammers creating zombie supercomputers by hacking Folding@Home-enabled PS3s and using them to blast out gobs of spam while stealing our Playstation store credit card numbers. And I'm just waiting for a new PS3 game to require some update that breaks my old games, just like PC video drivers.
What is the point of an efficient car having a top speed of 100 MPH? How many places in the world is it even legal to drive that fast--much less safe? Does anyone else find that requirement a bit silly?
If we wanted better uptime we could have it. We would just have to pay more for, and look at, a whole lot of redundant systems. Personally, I'm happier to keep paying less and only have one power line coming into my house, with the nearest plant many miles away. The same goes for cable and telephone service. And my cellular service does work about 99.9% of the time.
When I was still a full-time SA, all of our laptops would at least go to sleep when not used for a given period, and after an hour, would power down.
There's a reason I keep Heavy Metal on my iPod.
Movie projectors are mechanical. Even if something breaks and new parts can't be found, new ones can be made. But what happens when video codec support gets lost over time? When new software simply will not play really old movies, but old software won't run on the current operating systems, old operating systems won't run on new hardware, all the old hardware is broken and the information needed to rebuild them was lost when some manufacturer went bankrupt and had it's headquarters demolished?
The simple solution is just to only store video in lossless formats, and have teams of technicians constantly format-shifting films to new formats, check them for flaws, and repeat. That's going to get pricey. A lot pricier than just keeping films in temperature-controlled vaults.
I am currently in my senior year at a small college. When I started, we had a web-based email system that barely worked, set up by an IT staff that had all been fired, and the new IT staff didn't have time to use it. So everyone forwarded college email to another account and ignored the campus email system. By the time the IT staff was able to get a new system running, nobody cared. For a while the school disable forwarding to get students to use the system, but that just resulted in students and faculty ignoring their email entirely. Now the school just collects email addresses every semester with registration paperwork, and includes email addresses in class rosters. Our email system is in place, but is only used by a few members of the faculty.
Tasers are torture--time for cops to go back to the old methods of non-lethal deterrence: bludgeoning, beating, and chemical mace.
How much RAM did the Firefox 3 box have free after leaving it running a few hours?
Clearly the author of that Forbes article hasn't tried reading too many of the books on Google books. While there are some really nicely formatted ebooks on there, most of the collection consists of horrendous scans of esoterica only useful to researchers with a tolerance for photographs that may be blurry, noisy, or shot at funny angles.
I personally have not been a fan of Steam since it launched. The DRM is too heavy-handed. Why the hell would I pay that much money for a game so I can get screwed by a DRM system that has done nothing to hamper piracy of the games in question?
If some real investigative journalism were going on, the article would be titled "How Sony and Universal plan to lobby Congress to force hardware makers to pay the record companies for a crappy music subscription service that consumers don't want."
I second that motion. For me the only remotely interesting games that will release on the PS3 are first--person shooters--and I could get more of those by purchasing an XBox 360.
Of course, that still doesn't affect my needs for backward compatibility, because I already own a PS2 and would not likely sell it if I did have a PS3.
Now if Sony would offer a $300 PS3 with no Blu-Ray drive and a few decent games...
What specifically is holding them back?
Well, for starters Apple stayed on PPC too long. Game companies weren't going to optimize code for two CPU platforms, so that meant they could all get comfy programming for DirectX--especially Direct3D. Now that Apple has x86, it lacks the API game programmers are used to working with, meaning that to write code for Apple a game company has to spend a lot of extra programming money. That's not something most companies are going to do given how much smaller Apple's market share is than Microsoft's.
Then there's Apple's tendency to overcharge for crappy, outdated video hardware, meaning that Apple gamers are always lagging behind PC gamers, so that game designers have to keep that in mind and design for two different user experiences.
If Apple wants to bring the game companies over, it has to do two things: first, get a solid, first part DirectX compatibility layer of some sort into OS X. Something much better than CIDER, which has performance, rendering, and stability issues. Second, Apple has to give up a little of it's high profit margins and start shipping systems with better video chips. Those crappy intel GMA950 chips Apple is so enamored with don't even support all of the shaders the GUI needs--no 3D game programmer can be expected to take that seriously!
Isn't the whole point of the firehose to keep garbage like this from getting posted?
/. to link to.
Or is this just the editors really reaching for a crazy anti-Microsoft rant? Maybe Vista is just so bad that people aren't even using it enough to write complaints and security screeds for
Well, at least now we know why the CIA finally abandoned waterboarding as a torture technique.
So a bloated, buggy, convoluted office suite that the developers have trouble giving away has 35 more developers to give it an even more massive memory footprint, slower loading times, and additional menu options. And it's going to be branded after a product that's been precariously balanced to keep the other foot out of the grave for a decade.
This is going to be a brilliant success. I'm sure it will be even better than when Sun bought Stardivision and opened the code and nobody but open-source nerds even noticed. Everything is gonna change now. I bet people will be chomping at the bit to give up the software they've spent years getting comfortable with to grab Lotus Symphony by the horns.
Here in DC Comcast doesn't keep any secrets: there's a range of analog channels, a range of digital channels, a range of HD channels, and so on. They're more than happy to let the customer which is which.