First: the 'struggling games industry' is surpassing Hollywood as we speak. If it's 'struggling' then exactly what adjective would you apply to people in the Gulf Coast, or other countries?
Second: Used games are priced competitively. Don't whine about the prices here, because they can't raise the prices higher than retail and you don't have to sell them any old games. So those are two things that keep prices reasonable. And there are currently 4 different mass market offerings competing for used game prices: Blockbuster, Gamestop, EB and Mediaplay, never mind the local place, the online version of these stores (which are not always consistent), Amazon and Ebay.
In honesty, I only buy used. As long as the disc isn't scratched (they almost never are and return policies are generally excellent) it's the same exact product.
I don't mind that Wordpad, etc is included in Windows. I mind that they suck. They've updated the games folder more than any other section of Accessories, minus the Media player, for strategic reasons.
M$ bundles stuff to help themselves out, then lets things die when competitors are no longer around.
Like Outlook express, Wordpad, IE, the command shell, the address book and paint. None of these get updated except when M$ needs to defend itself. My beloved Wordpad doesn't have any option for doublespacing, and it's like 10 years now.
Now they're working on Windows Mail, IE7, Monad and a major revision of Office. And only because their profits are threatened. And because their most motivated employees were motivated to go somewhere else (Google) and actually work on cool stuff again.
The accessories folder tells M$'s business history and their current failure. What a mess.
What we all want is itunes for TV and movies, and a 1 tb. server with wireless access to our 1 mm. thick TV screen in our basement so that we can 'own' our movies/tv shows instead of 'renting' them, so our children can go, "What's this Mash thing? Is it about potatoes?"
Apple will probably just enter the cell phone market with an Iphone when the opportunity presents itself. I'm betting this is just a defensive move - since the relationship between Apple and Cingular/Motorola just can't be stable. Too many conflicting interests. So let Motorola handle this for now.
Apple needs to gain experience and market testing from this move, and then ditch their partners like M$ normally does. And I think if the Disney/ESPN phone service rollouts work well, Apple will have to consider an Ilife/ITunes leveraged phone service with their own hardware.
AOL is losing its customer base to broadband. Broadband is mostly distributed via cable, and the most popular service is RoadRunner. Roadrunner is a Time Warner service. Time Warner owns AOL. They're losing their money to themselves. Why don't they integrate? This is ridiculous.
My first system - a refurbished Pentium Thinkpad - came with about 11-12 floppies for installing Windows. But Office 4 took like 40 or so - and what good was Windows without that. Lord help you if one of them was corrupt and you found out about 44 minutes into installation. Then there were the 7 floppies to install dial-up networking and Netscape for the college. Guh.
Media Center PCs ARE this price. People still aren't buying them.
Wireless controllers are like remote controls you never have to share. And when the children and pets come, it's a lot easier to hide/move/keep out of reach.
I just don't think instant-on applies. My XP laptop wakes up nearly instantly, then the boot-up time for WCIII is no worse than GT4 - and GT4 takes longer with all the individual races to load. It's just a lot nicer to play laying back on the couch than using a dinner tray as a desk.
No one here like the current system - but this new system MUST be biased against normal citizens, too?
It's better to leave this out of the courts. They don't have the expertise, the resources - and, obviously you'd need MORE patent lawyers for an actual court case than for a patent office meeting. The administrative review is better than court review, not worse.
It's a publish/patent proof, which still protects the guy who can feed the world. Don't let the fact you hate this administration cloud you to the actual merits of an idea. They're just saying, we want to cut down on litigousness (or, I'm sorry, it's better to spend all out taxes on ridiculous years long cases?) and create a more verifiable proof. Like good scientists, you need to show proof, and the standard is now publicly published or patented. This is a good thing - it's too easy for someone to make stuff up in the digital age.
First to patent is the only rational means. You can't prove anything without documentation, and in the digital age, it's waaaaay to easy to fabricate these things. It's just like scientific proof- you must have an objective, verifiable source of evidence.
I think you're dead on, this is how they provide a value-add proposition, they need to archive and search. With the ever-increasing Gmail storage, this does make sense. Personally, I'm hoping they released GDS 2.0 separately (which looks just like an IM client without the IM) because Google Talk is going to be an online app. But who knows?
1. The core system looked a lot better when I thought any hdd could drop in. 2. If you can't drop any hdd in, you can't really play your old games, if they're saved to the X-1 hdd, right? So what do you do? Is it compatible with old memory cards? Do you now have to buy: X1 memory card, transfer to new hdd/new memory card? How do you transfer (perhaps a lot) of files when you upgrade from X2 to X2 hdds?
I think the point is that copies of the ispell dictionary and spam are repetitive, which are normally not included with search results. Why do you need more than one copy of an identical result?
had a huge IPO, let it go to their heads, lost focus, lost market share and failed to execute as well as M$. But they bought a lot of luxury cars and made a lot of money for a while. Of course, Apple was always more talented and more meaningful, but the comparison is still valid.
Apple had a near monopoly and is now an also-ran. They have a niche, luxury product in a commodity business. They make excellent products, I just recommended them to my sister-in-law, much simpler than being her sysadmin. Their Ipod is awesome.
But 'bumper profits' for Apple is still something M$ sneezes away every quarter. They're kind of like Ferrari, nice company, great products, small market share, modest but reliable profits, and a little innovation that mostly core fans care about. The Ipod's a different story, sure, but it's still in potential fad territory. We'll see.
But can we discuss this without getting modded to hell?
"all being unhappy with the government together (which is always funny, anarchists being anarchists together). "
Can we discuss anarchism? Were those awful G8 protestors really anarchists? How do they think this works? We have a global economy with roughly 3 bil people organized economically and politically, and it's going to be overthrown by some young guys who won't even work together? Isn't an anarchy movement an oxymoron?
Does everyone read, 'V for Vendetta' and then curse Bush as fascist and stop voting, using credit cards, buying manufactured stuff? Can someone younger than me explain this? I'm like 30 and took political science, and this has never made sense to me.
So what? TV networks make billions and everything they sell is free. This is like that, only with 2 big differences:
1. Google has perhaps loaded up on more talent in their field than any company since Edison. 2. They aren't actually breaking new ground yet. They're just executing an existing industry/strategy - online search funded by online ads - better than anyone else.
And difference #2 is good news for investors. They aren't a bolt of lightning like Netscape, they more or less earned their good fortune. Netscape = Apple, Google = M$.
I'm pretty confident they have a good idea of what to invest in, as M$'s attempt to catch up online continues into another decade...
->This advice is provided for entertainment purposes only-
No one cares because of the hard drive, but there's another way to look at this:
Their core demographic is the lan party boys who already have like 3 extra hard drives laying around, propping up their couch in the garage. They'll just purchase this, pop a hard drive in and buy a special wireless NFL controller. They already have a headset.
Slashdot Mirror
First: the 'struggling games industry' is surpassing Hollywood as we speak. If it's 'struggling' then exactly what adjective would you apply to people in the Gulf Coast, or other countries?
Second: Used games are priced competitively. Don't whine about the prices here, because they can't raise the prices higher than retail and you don't have to sell them any old games. So those are two things that keep prices reasonable. And there are currently 4 different mass market offerings competing for used game prices: Blockbuster, Gamestop, EB and Mediaplay, never mind the local place, the online version of these stores (which are not always consistent), Amazon and Ebay.
In honesty, I only buy used. As long as the disc isn't scratched (they almost never are and return policies are generally excellent) it's the same exact product.
I don't mind that Wordpad, etc is included in Windows. I mind that they suck. They've updated the games folder more than any other section of Accessories, minus the Media player, for strategic reasons.
M$ bundles stuff to help themselves out, then lets things die when competitors are no longer around.
Like Outlook express, Wordpad, IE, the command shell, the address book and paint. None of these get updated except when M$ needs to defend itself. My beloved Wordpad doesn't have any option for doublespacing, and it's like 10 years now.
Now they're working on Windows Mail, IE7, Monad and a major revision of Office. And only because their profits are threatened. And because their most motivated employees were motivated to go somewhere else (Google) and actually work on cool stuff again.
The accessories folder tells M$'s business history and their current failure. What a mess.
What we all want is itunes for TV and movies, and a 1 tb. server with wireless access to our 1 mm. thick TV screen in our basement so that we can 'own' our movies/tv shows instead of 'renting' them, so our children can go, "What's this Mash thing? Is it about potatoes?"
Have you any ideas/ambitions for wireless gaming? Can I have any optimism that an updated Colonization could debut in that sort of format?
Is this really relevant? You think left-leaning news orgs are more intelligent ... BECAUSE they are left-leaning? Well, "like it or not" I don't agree.
The BBC thing is a non-issue, who cares about feedback boards?
The verbal gaffe, who cares?
The Dvorak thing will be linked to again tomorrow - with more biting commentary, no doubt.
Everything is faster.
Apple will probably just enter the cell phone market with an Iphone when the opportunity presents itself. I'm betting this is just a defensive move - since the relationship between Apple and Cingular/Motorola just can't be stable. Too many conflicting interests. So let Motorola handle this for now.
Apple needs to gain experience and market testing from this move, and then ditch their partners like M$ normally does. And I think if the Disney/ESPN phone service rollouts work well, Apple will have to consider an Ilife/ITunes leveraged phone service with their own hardware.
AOL is losing its customer base to broadband. Broadband is mostly distributed via cable, and the most popular service is RoadRunner. Roadrunner is a Time Warner service. Time Warner owns AOL. They're losing their money to themselves. Why don't they integrate? This is ridiculous.
The aging process of Windows 95. How often to re-install it, just because of age?
My first system - a refurbished Pentium Thinkpad - came with about 11-12 floppies for installing Windows. But Office 4 took like 40 or so - and what good was Windows without that. Lord help you if one of them was corrupt and you found out about 44 minutes into installation. Then there were the 7 floppies to install dial-up networking and Netscape for the college. Guh.
And some other points:
Media Center PCs ARE this price. People still aren't buying them.
Wireless controllers are like remote controls you never have to share. And when the children and pets come, it's a lot easier to hide/move/keep out of reach.
I just don't think instant-on applies. My XP laptop wakes up nearly instantly, then the boot-up time for WCIII is no worse than GT4 - and GT4 takes longer with all the individual races to load. It's just a lot nicer to play laying back on the couch than using a dinner tray as a desk.
No one here like the current system - but this new system MUST be biased against normal citizens, too?
It's better to leave this out of the courts. They don't have the expertise, the resources - and, obviously you'd need MORE patent lawyers for an actual court case than for a patent office meeting. The administrative review is better than court review, not worse.
It's a publish/patent proof, which still protects the guy who can feed the world. Don't let the fact you hate this administration cloud you to the actual merits of an idea. They're just saying, we want to cut down on litigousness (or, I'm sorry, it's better to spend all out taxes on ridiculous years long cases?) and create a more verifiable proof. Like good scientists, you need to show proof, and the standard is now publicly published or patented. This is a good thing - it's too easy for someone to make stuff up in the digital age.
First to patent is the only rational means. You can't prove anything without documentation, and in the digital age, it's waaaaay to easy to fabricate these things. It's just like scientific proof- you must have an objective, verifiable source of evidence.
I think you're dead on, this is how they provide a value-add proposition, they need to archive and search. With the ever-increasing Gmail storage, this does make sense. Personally, I'm hoping they released GDS 2.0 separately (which looks just like an IM client without the IM) because Google Talk is going to be an online app. But who knows?
1. The core system looked a lot better when I thought any hdd could drop in.
2. If you can't drop any hdd in, you can't really play your old games, if they're saved to the X-1 hdd, right? So what do you do? Is it compatible with old memory cards? Do you now have to buy: X1 memory card, transfer to new hdd/new memory card? How do you transfer (perhaps a lot) of files when you upgrade from X2 to X2 hdds?
I think the point is that copies of the ispell dictionary and spam are repetitive, which are normally not included with search results. Why do you need more than one copy of an identical result?
Did Google really release an IM client without messaging built-in?
had a huge IPO, let it go to their heads, lost focus, lost market share and failed to execute as well as M$. But they bought a lot of luxury cars and made a lot of money for a while. Of course, Apple was always more talented and more meaningful, but the comparison is still valid.
Apple had a near monopoly and is now an also-ran. They have a niche, luxury product in a commodity business. They make excellent products, I just recommended them to my sister-in-law, much simpler than being her sysadmin. Their Ipod is awesome.
But 'bumper profits' for Apple is still something M$ sneezes away every quarter. They're kind of like Ferrari, nice company, great products, small market share, modest but reliable profits, and a little innovation that mostly core fans care about. The Ipod's a different story, sure, but it's still in potential fad territory. We'll see.
But now I've made another 'bad' comparison, eh?
But can we discuss this without getting modded to hell?
"all being unhappy with the government together (which is always funny, anarchists being anarchists together). "
Can we discuss anarchism? Were those awful G8 protestors really anarchists? How do they think this works? We have a global economy with roughly 3 bil people organized economically and politically, and it's going to be overthrown by some young guys who won't even work together? Isn't an anarchy movement an oxymoron?
Does everyone read, 'V for Vendetta' and then curse Bush as fascist and stop voting, using credit cards, buying manufactured stuff? Can someone younger than me explain this? I'm like 30 and took political science, and this has never made sense to me.
...Not that you're bitter or anything.
So what? TV networks make billions and everything they sell is free. This is like that, only with 2 big differences:
1. Google has perhaps loaded up on more talent in their field than any company since Edison.
2. They aren't actually breaking new ground yet. They're just executing an existing industry/strategy - online search funded by online ads - better than anyone else.
And difference #2 is good news for investors. They aren't a bolt of lightning like Netscape, they more or less earned their good fortune. Netscape = Apple, Google = M$.
I'm pretty confident they have a good idea of what to invest in, as M$'s attempt to catch up online continues into another decade...
->This advice is provided for entertainment purposes only-
But until they start carrying guns, I'm not worried. I say, bring 'em on.
If no lesser intellectual luminary than the Wikipedia states this, it must be obvious and true!
No, his daughter meant it's unstable when placed on a small entertainment center. It'll tip the shelf over.
And seriously, all I hear from the programmer guys around here is about Halo, Halo 2, etc. And Madden. They are the best-sellers.
No one cares because of the hard drive, but there's another way to look at this:
Their core demographic is the lan party boys who already have like 3 extra hard drives laying around, propping up their couch in the garage. They'll just purchase this, pop a hard drive in and buy a special wireless NFL controller. They already have a headset.