That's bullshit. He made a HUGE overstatement. It's great that he realized the potential of networking technology all those years ago and supported it, but no way in hell did he have any relation to it's success.
The internet came to be because of the blood sweat and tears of the folks in Los Alomos, the military, the inventers of the microchip at Intel and all the legions of software developers who brought great software like Email, IRC, Mosaic, gopher, finger and hell even all the amateur work of people crapping out HTML pages like they were crack to a crackwhore.
The internet came to be because of the collective effort of millions of people across the world. Anybody who claims anything but a small role in this process should be labeled a fool for saying so.
I don't write this because I dislike Al Gore, I write this because it does a disservice to all the people who poured millions of man hours of work into building this awesome technology we have today and never get an ounce of credit for it.
I've got a USB sound card. It's called the Soundblaster Extigy and it's a piece of crap. It skips, pops, and whirs all the time while playing audio. It does the same thing while RECORDING audio, and what really sucks is it does the same thing while playing back that audio so you get double the pops, whistles, cracks and whirs.
Windows XP system, fresh install, updated drivers for everything.
No, USB sound cards are definitely *NOT* the way to go and once again have me questioning why I should ever buy a Creative Labs product again....
We're going through a hiring phase where I work right now. We're searching for good programmers. You know what? We're still NOT finding any. In fact, if anything things are WORSE this time around.
Our theory is that it's because the market has been flooded with shitty wannabe programmers, and we're just having a hard time filtering the real programmers from the dreck. Or it could be that the real programmers are the ones who are still working?
Either way, there's a lot of people out there who CALL themselves programmers but aren't. Until they get a clue our industry will continue to be in the shitter.
I want to add a few things more while I'm thinking about it. I don't think my original post went far enough.
The last thing in the world I would want MY tax money spent on is to support sketchy video game companies for products I might not necessarily agree with (yes I do play and enjoy Vice City) or products which are most likely going to fail and suck (9/10 games are absolutely pathetic in my experience).
Government money should be used to guarantee that ALL markets remain competitive (not just the video game market). That does not mean subsidizing dreck, that mean preventing monopolies. Government money should be used to provide education benefits to our children. Government money should be used to provide health care for our people. Government money should be used to provide infrastrucutre and public services. Government money should be used to provide protection and safety from those who would do you harm.
Government money should NOT be used for pork and that's exactly what this request is. You want your government to do something usefull for your industry? How about asking them to provide regulations that guarantee worker safety. How about asking them to enforce regulations that provide appropriate vacation time, or guarantee that programmers only work 40/hours a week when they're paid for 40/hours a week.
We have enough pork bullshit going on in our governments as it is. This is what government money SHOULD be spent on.
I lament the small business as well (in all industries), but government financial support is the worse idea possible. Things change, times change, and most especially business changes. It's the belly of the beast out there. The best thing we can hope for is that competition stays alive and the government prevents any one company from taking over the entire market. As long as competition reigns supreme, the market will thrive and that's all that really matters.
I doubt anybody is going to build a 64-bit machine for hosting a Counterstrike server. That would be stupid. What they are going to do, however, is build a 64-bit machine for hosting a LOT of services (and possibly multiple Counterstrike servers).
But that's not really where these CPUs are going to have the most impact. They'll be great for databases and the like, but for gamers the 64-bit CPUs are going to really kick into gear as backends for all the upcoming MMORPGs. That extra address space can go along way when you're hosting servers that contain 1000's of people. And for games like Neverwinter Nights? Well, you just never know what might happen...:)
Why would IBM *buy* SCO? If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS" under the GPL? Couldn't anyone? What would burn the top brass at SCO if after this lawsuit (clearly aimed at them just trying to cash in), someone took their distro and made it successful.
Yeah, that works great for Caldera Linux (or United Linux or I can't tie my own shoe Linux or whatever the hell they want to call it today). Problem, it doesn't do squat for SCO Unix which is a completely seperate closed source product.
I have a Line 6 Guitar Port and all I have to say is that it is absolutely FANTASTIC! For $150 you get 6 classic guitar amps + effects + cabinets emulated 100% digital straight into your recording software and it sounds great.
Now, of course, you can ALWAYS get a better sound in a recording studio with the real equipment, but you are going to spend $1000's of dollars doing so.
I wish I had had this thing before I bought my Mesa Boogied DC5 a few years ago. I absolutely hated that guitar amp! If I had had a Line 6 Guitar port, I could have experimented with amps and effects and determined long ago that I should have bought a Marshal amp. I know you can try them out at the store (and you still should), but the hours you can spend with the Guitar Port narrowing down the list of possible candidates is worth it.
Digital music technology has come a long way (and boy is it getting cheap). If you haven't checked some of this stuff out (especially the Line 6 brand hardware) you're really doing yourself a disservice as a musician.
That's pretty funny. Especially if you consider the amount of hits that get chalked up to actual real "Windows". You know, the kind that are made out of GLASS (though I suppose you could argue that both are made out of Silicon).
People do like talking about Linux on the internet though. I would think that is the reason why. Everything having anything to do with Linux's history is probably on the internet somewhere. For Microsoft, if it hasn't been printed up in a paper it's probably hidden behind closed doors somewhere in Seattle or long since vanished into the perpetual bit bucket.
You are very right. EA has a history of only support it's internal sports division. Except for that division, the rest of their history has been a joke: Buy a company, bleed it dry, close it down and let all the innovative product ideas and franchises rot.
This includes: Bullfrog and their Magic Carpet Series Origin and their Ultima and Wing Commander series Janes and their entire line of simulators Westwood and their C&C and Dune series
Notice, those four companies (amongst others) have released some of the most important and critically acclaimed titles in the history of Computing. Their all dead now, and you have Electronic Arts to thank.
The only good thing about all this is EA are morons and let most of the key talent leave to start new game companies. The good people are still out there making games, it's just sad that they no longer have access to the properties that made them successfull (and us quite happy gamers).
No kidding. It's the same thing. This isn't news at all.
And you know what else? If you're worried about it... get a dog. Nothing like a minimum of 3 trips outside to walk the dog to get you off your ass and moving around a bit (at least for those who live in the city).
This is the same company that called me repeatedly the weekend of Jan 17-20. They called me from an area code listed in Phoenix. Every time the phone rang, I answered, heard a beep and then was immediatley hung up on. Everytime I tried to call that number back, I was told the line was "disconnected."
Sometime Tuesday morning while I was at work I received the call again. I answered, as usual, and *FINALLY* somebody answered. Lo and behold it was SBC Ameritech trying to sell me DSL service because DirecTV was shutting down.
Well, you know what? I'm already in the process of signing up with Speakeasy (a quality company that cares about it's customers). Needless to say I tore the guy a new one. I will *NEVER* buy any service from that company again. This is just one of MANY bad experiences I have had with them over the years.
And did I mention all of this took place over my CELL phone?
Ameritech *IS* a bad company. I have years worth of experience behind me as proof. I used to work for an ISP, I've tried to setup homemade DSL at home using an OPX line, and of course I have had my land based phone lines through them in the past. Every single damn experience has been an absolutely *NIGHTMARE* (including getting my stupid land phone installed because the jackass who lived in the apartment before me had a $500 bill he didn't pay and they wanted ME to pay for it!!).
SBC? SBC is no better. Don't let the name change fool you. They're still the same greedy monopolistic assholes they ever were.
I know a guy from college who worked at a *LIBRARY*. He was about 22 years old and had well over a thousand CDs.
I have well over 500 cds myself. I *WOULD* have more if they didn't cost so much. Back in the day when they used to cost $10 I made a trip to the store every week to purchase CDs.
Now a days, I make almost 8 times what I used to make. Maybe I'm getting cheaper in my old age (probably true), maybe new music sucks (it does but there is still a lot of stuff I like), but I can't justify $20+ for a CD I don't even know if I'll like. Were that not the case, I know I would have more. Most of my friends are the same. Between us we've got 1000's of CDs lying around our homes and apartments.
It's not impossible, in fact, in my experience it's quite likely.
IANAL, but it seems to me that a distinction ought to be made between a Nike rep. expressing his opinion, truthful or not, at, say, an interview or a press conference, and Nike taking out an ad in the New York Times and lying about their business practices. It seems to me that the former should be protected under the first amendment as what the linked article calls a "political" statement, but the latter, a paid advertisement, is clearly commercial speech and that it is proper to expect it to meet higher scrutiny.
Well that's the point of this case, to determine just where exactly the line is to be drawn.
Frankly, though, right now it's bullshit. Companies can claim free speach protection, yet organizations such as the EFF and Unions can't. That's a large part of what makes it so messed up. If we WERE going to give corporations free speach protection across the board, we SHOULD give ALL groups of people/organizations the same protections and we don't.
The criticism that Open Source is always copying is highly unfair. It is unfair because Open Source is in many ways still catching up to closed source. Many of the tools are growing stronger, but are still lagging a little bit behind. Once that gap is filled I expect the Open Source community will boldly go on to create new and innovative features. Until then... Well, there are only so many hours in a day.
It's not only unfair, it's absolutely untrue... Anybody who thinks projects such as Apache Cocoon or Jakarta Struts aren't innovative firmly either have their heads up their asses or don't know innovation when they see it. There are plenty of projects in the open source community that are incredibly innovative if you open your eyes and look (does Source Forge ring a bell?).
Stop buying into corporate rhetoric. It's companies like Microsoft and SUN who want you to think there is no innovation happening in the open source community, but there is and they know it and they are scared of it (Jboss anybody?).
As far as I can remember I have not personally bought an item from Amazon since they were given the 1-click patent (actually, I technically think I started my boycott when they actually sued B&N over it).
I've also promoted alternative online retailers such as Buy.com and Fatbrain.com (now B&N) to my coworkers and friends every chance I had. On numerous occasions, this has resulted in at least hundreds of dollars in book purchases that would have otherwise gone to Amazon.com for work going to Fat Brain.
CDNow used to be my #1 stop for CDs. I frequently chose it over all other online retailers, local CD shops, and the big stores such as Best Buy. Quite frankly, they were the ONLY place that always had stocks of the kind of music I listen to which is unfortunately frequently difficult to find in America. The other day, they more or less switched over to Amazon.com with the CDNow logo stapled up front. I will never make another purchase from them again.
I can only hope others are doing the same. For all his talk about wanting to improve the patent system, Jeff Bezos is one of the prime examples of what is wrong with it and he is doing NOTHING to improve it, he is only covering his ass at the expense of others.
No kidding. Square did Einhander. Now that was a great game, but the Final Fantasy series is like a broken record (and a bad one at that). All pretty graphics, no gameplay.
Hell, the last Final Fantasy (what was it, 10 or 11? I don't even know anymore) was basically a 12 hour animated movie. In fact, the only gameplay I remember at all was that stupid sports game and one REALLY long path through the mountains where you actually got to FIGHT stuff. Too bad the combat hasn't really changed since Final Fantasy 2 and that only served to bore me further.
I hate being a PC bigot, but man, if you want a good RPG Squaresoft isn't the company, Bioware is. I'm scared to see what Squaresoft is going to do with the Enix franchises.
Will it? StarOffice isn't a replacement for MS Office by any means. Seriously, even the word processor isn't feature-competitive, nor performance-competitive, with Word, let alone Excel, Visio, Powerpoint, etc. All they are is cheaper up-front compared with Word's list price, and if you're buying several hundred seats or getting it bundled you won't be paying that anyway.
If AbiWord, Open Office, Star Office, Word Perfect, and any other Office Suite package (KOffice?) settle on a standard common XML format, it IS going to be big.
All it takes is one *single* library to convert Microsoft.DOC to this format, and EVERYTHING benefits.
And then the CMS solutions start using it, and then Microsoft has to upgrade Office so that Office can read these files, then you suddenly do have a viable alternative.
Will it happen? Beats me. If the standard is good, simple, easy to understand and all the other office suites implement it then yes I think it has a very good chance of having a big impact. If everybody bickers about it, nobody implements it, or the standard sucks (look at RDF) then Microsoft will eat our lunch.
1. Until ALL games run under Linux without much difficulty, I simply don't have any choice here. Nearly all the Xbox and PS/2 games in the world don't hold up to a single quality PC game.
2. I work at a Microsoft only shop. It's sad, it's infuriating, and I have little choice. To VPN into work, connect to source safe, upload code to the servers, run terminal services, connect to SQL Server 2000 (Microsoft's only GOOD non-gaming product) I have to use windows.
Tom's Hardware has to produce some of the most ridiculously overblown and long winded product reviews on the internet.
I understand why some people like that. I don't.
Some people blame it on the ridiculous notion that "Gen-X has a short attention span." I don't know who came up with that, but they're clearly not paying attention to the amount of effort our generation (or our society for that matter) actually puts into things.
That being said, it's not the length that makes something interesting, it's the content. Tom's articles generally have good content, but they suffer (like many other websites) from the inability of getting to the point.
So, in the interest of brevity: STOP BEING SO LONG WINDED AND GET TO THE POINT! I'll read a long article, if it's interesting, but just another Pentium 4 chip review is by no means a Charles Dickens novel, nor should it be treated as such.
Good God, TechTV is the most god awfull horrible piece of rubbish on the airwaves right now. Yes, they play Thunderbirds (but the popups seriously detract from the quality of the show) and Max Headroom occasionally, but you could get those elsewhere. Everything else on that channel is crap.
True SlashDot geeks are watching the Discovery network channels, National Geographic, and the History channel any chance they can get.
I don't know about your metrocard system, but they introduced faircards on the CTA a couple of years ago, and in typical buearocracy fashion, it rips off the consumer in a number of sublte ways. First, there is no way to take fractions of a fair from several cards onto one, and not even a way to get a newly issued card from the fraction and additional cash. The cards expire in a year, so if you just keep adding 10 bucks to your card you might find it has expired with 8.80 still on it. There is no way to get change or refund from a card, and change machines in the stations are often empty or malfunctioning.
You must be doing something wrong... I've been using the same virtual CTA card for three years now. Just keep putting it into the machine and adding money. The machine WILL spit out a new card eventually (my current card is set to expire Feb 01 2004, and I've *NEVER* requested a new one since I moved here 3.5 years ago).
This isn't even close to a book review. He does nothing but glower over how great Mozilla is (which we all agree on), but says nothing about the quality or content of the actual book.
The book itself *IS* good (at least that which I have read so far). You'd never be able to tell from this review though....
Slashdot Mirror
That's bullshit. He made a HUGE overstatement. It's great that he realized the potential of networking technology all those years ago and supported it, but no way in hell did he have any relation to it's success.
The internet came to be because of the blood sweat and tears of the folks in Los Alomos, the military, the inventers of the microchip at Intel and all the legions of software developers who brought great software like Email, IRC, Mosaic, gopher, finger and hell even all the amateur work of people crapping out HTML pages like they were crack to a crackwhore.
The internet came to be because of the collective effort of millions of people across the world. Anybody who claims anything but a small role in this process should be labeled a fool for saying so.
I don't write this because I dislike Al Gore, I write this because it does a disservice to all the people who poured millions of man hours of work into building this awesome technology we have today and never get an ounce of credit for it.
Bryan
In C# at least:
Really doesn't seem that difficult to me. BryanI've got a USB sound card. It's called the Soundblaster Extigy and it's a piece of crap. It skips, pops, and whirs all the time while playing audio. It does the same thing while RECORDING audio, and what really sucks is it does the same thing while playing back that audio so you get double the pops, whistles, cracks and whirs.
Windows XP system, fresh install, updated drivers for everything.
No, USB sound cards are definitely *NOT* the way to go and once again have me questioning why I should ever buy a Creative Labs product again....
Bryan
We're going through a hiring phase where I work right now. We're searching for good programmers. You know what? We're still NOT finding any. In fact, if anything things are WORSE this time around.
Our theory is that it's because the market has been flooded with shitty wannabe programmers, and we're just having a hard time filtering the real programmers from the dreck. Or it could be that the real programmers are the ones who are still working?
Either way, there's a lot of people out there who CALL themselves programmers but aren't. Until they get a clue our industry will continue to be in the shitter.
I want to add a few things more while I'm thinking about it. I don't think my original post went far enough.
The last thing in the world I would want MY tax money spent on is to support sketchy video game companies for products I might not necessarily agree with (yes I do play and enjoy Vice City) or products which are most likely going to fail and suck (9/10 games are absolutely pathetic in my experience).
Government money should be used to guarantee that ALL markets remain competitive (not just the video game market). That does not mean subsidizing dreck, that mean preventing monopolies. Government money should be used to provide education benefits to our children. Government money should be used to provide health care for our people. Government money should be used to provide infrastrucutre and public services. Government money should be used to provide protection and safety from those who would do you harm.
Government money should NOT be used for pork and that's exactly what this request is. You want your government to do something usefull for your industry? How about asking them to provide regulations that guarantee worker safety. How about asking them to enforce regulations that provide appropriate vacation time, or guarantee that programmers only work 40/hours a week when they're paid for 40/hours a week.
We have enough pork bullshit going on in our governments as it is. This is what government money SHOULD be spent on.
Bryan
I lament the small business as well (in all industries), but government financial support is the worse idea possible. Things change, times change, and most especially business changes. It's the belly of the beast out there. The best thing we can hope for is that competition stays alive and the government prevents any one company from taking over the entire market. As long as competition reigns supreme, the market will thrive and that's all that really matters.
I doubt anybody is going to build a 64-bit machine for hosting a Counterstrike server. That would be stupid. What they are going to do, however, is build a 64-bit machine for hosting a LOT of services (and possibly multiple Counterstrike servers).
:)
But that's not really where these CPUs are going to have the most impact. They'll be great for databases and the like, but for gamers the 64-bit CPUs are going to really kick into gear as backends for all the upcoming MMORPGs. That extra address space can go along way when you're hosting servers that contain 1000's of people. And for games like Neverwinter Nights? Well, you just never know what might happen...
Bryan
Why would IBM *buy* SCO? If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS" under the GPL? Couldn't anyone? What would burn the top brass at SCO if after this lawsuit (clearly aimed at them just trying to cash in), someone took their distro and made it successful.
Yeah, that works great for Caldera Linux (or United Linux or I can't tie my own shoe Linux or whatever the hell they want to call it today). Problem, it doesn't do squat for SCO Unix which is a completely seperate closed source product.
I have a Line 6 Guitar Port and all I have to say is that it is absolutely FANTASTIC! For $150 you get 6 classic guitar amps + effects + cabinets emulated 100% digital straight into your recording software and it sounds great.
Now, of course, you can ALWAYS get a better sound in a recording studio with the real equipment, but you are going to spend $1000's of dollars doing so.
I wish I had had this thing before I bought my Mesa Boogied DC5 a few years ago. I absolutely hated that guitar amp! If I had had a Line 6 Guitar port, I could have experimented with amps and effects and determined long ago that I should have bought a Marshal amp. I know you can try them out at the store (and you still should), but the hours you can spend with the Guitar Port narrowing down the list of possible candidates is worth it.
Digital music technology has come a long way (and boy is it getting cheap). If you haven't checked some of this stuff out (especially the Line 6 brand hardware) you're really doing yourself a disservice as a musician.
Bryan
That's pretty funny. Especially if you consider the amount of hits that get chalked up to actual real "Windows". You know, the kind that are made out of GLASS (though I suppose you could argue that both are made out of Silicon).
People do like talking about Linux on the internet though. I would think that is the reason why. Everything having anything to do with Linux's history is probably on the internet somewhere. For Microsoft, if it hasn't been printed up in a paper it's probably hidden behind closed doors somewhere in Seattle or long since vanished into the perpetual bit bucket.
You are very right. EA has a history of only support it's internal sports division. Except for that division, the rest of their history has been a joke: Buy a company, bleed it dry, close it down and let all the innovative product ideas and franchises rot.
This includes:
Bullfrog and their Magic Carpet Series
Origin and their Ultima and Wing Commander series
Janes and their entire line of simulators
Westwood and their C&C and Dune series
Notice, those four companies (amongst others) have released some of the most important and critically acclaimed titles in the history of Computing. Their all dead now, and you have Electronic Arts to thank.
The only good thing about all this is EA are morons and let most of the key talent leave to start new game companies. The good people are still out there making games, it's just sad that they no longer have access to the properties that made them successfull (and us quite happy gamers).
No kidding. It's the same thing. This isn't news at all.
And you know what else? If you're worried about it... get a dog. Nothing like a minimum of 3 trips outside to walk the dog to get you off your ass and moving around a bit (at least for those who live in the city).
This is the same company that called me repeatedly the weekend of Jan 17-20. They called me from an area code listed in Phoenix. Every time the phone rang, I answered, heard a beep and then was immediatley hung up on. Everytime I tried to call that number back, I was told the line was "disconnected."
Sometime Tuesday morning while I was at work I received the call again. I answered, as usual, and *FINALLY* somebody answered. Lo and behold it was SBC Ameritech trying to sell me DSL service because DirecTV was shutting down.
Well, you know what? I'm already in the process of signing up with Speakeasy (a quality company that cares about it's customers). Needless to say I tore the guy a new one. I will *NEVER* buy any service from that company again. This is just one of MANY bad experiences I have had with them over the years.
And did I mention all of this took place over my CELL phone?
Ameritech *IS* a bad company. I have years worth of experience behind me as proof. I used to work for an ISP, I've tried to setup homemade DSL at home using an OPX line, and of course I have had my land based phone lines through them in the past. Every single damn experience has been an absolutely *NIGHTMARE* (including getting my stupid land phone installed because the jackass who lived in the apartment before me had a $500 bill he didn't pay and they wanted ME to pay for it!!).
SBC? SBC is no better. Don't let the name change fool you. They're still the same greedy monopolistic assholes they ever were.
They ARE the bad guys.
I know a guy from college who worked at a *LIBRARY*. He was about 22 years old and had well over a thousand CDs.
I have well over 500 cds myself. I *WOULD* have more if they didn't cost so much. Back in the day when they used to cost $10 I made a trip to the store every week to purchase CDs.
Now a days, I make almost 8 times what I used to make. Maybe I'm getting cheaper in my old age (probably true), maybe new music sucks (it does but there is still a lot of stuff I like), but I can't justify $20+ for a CD I don't even know if I'll like. Were that not the case, I know I would have more. Most of my friends are the same. Between us we've got 1000's of CDs lying around our homes and apartments.
It's not impossible, in fact, in my experience it's quite likely.
Well that's the point of this case, to determine just where exactly the line is to be drawn.
Frankly, though, right now it's bullshit. Companies can claim free speach protection, yet organizations such as the EFF and Unions can't. That's a large part of what makes it so messed up. If we WERE going to give corporations free speach protection across the board, we SHOULD give ALL groups of people/organizations the same protections and we don't.
It's not only unfair, it's absolutely untrue... Anybody who thinks projects such as Apache Cocoon or Jakarta Struts aren't innovative firmly either have their heads up their asses or don't know innovation when they see it. There are plenty of projects in the open source community that are incredibly innovative if you open your eyes and look (does Source Forge ring a bell?).
Stop buying into corporate rhetoric. It's companies like Microsoft and SUN who want you to think there is no innovation happening in the open source community, but there is and they know it and they are scared of it (Jboss anybody?).
Bryan
As far as I can remember I have not personally bought an item from Amazon since they were given the 1-click patent (actually, I technically think I started my boycott when they actually sued B&N over it).
I've also promoted alternative online retailers such as Buy.com and Fatbrain.com (now B&N) to my coworkers and friends every chance I had. On numerous occasions, this has resulted in at least hundreds of dollars in book purchases that would have otherwise gone to Amazon.com for work going to Fat Brain.
CDNow used to be my #1 stop for CDs. I frequently chose it over all other online retailers, local CD shops, and the big stores such as Best Buy. Quite frankly, they were the ONLY place that always had stocks of the kind of music I listen to which is unfortunately frequently difficult to find in America. The other day, they more or less switched over to Amazon.com with the CDNow logo stapled up front. I will never make another purchase from them again.
I can only hope others are doing the same. For all his talk about wanting to improve the patent system, Jeff Bezos is one of the prime examples of what is wrong with it and he is doing NOTHING to improve it, he is only covering his ass at the expense of others.
Bryan
No kidding. Square did Einhander. Now that was a great game, but the Final Fantasy series is like a broken record (and a bad one at that). All pretty graphics, no gameplay.
Hell, the last Final Fantasy (what was it, 10 or 11? I don't even know anymore) was basically a 12 hour animated movie. In fact, the only gameplay I remember at all was that stupid sports game and one REALLY long path through the mountains where you actually got to FIGHT stuff. Too bad the combat hasn't really changed since Final Fantasy 2 and that only served to bore me further.
I hate being a PC bigot, but man, if you want a good RPG Squaresoft isn't the company, Bioware is. I'm scared to see what Squaresoft is going to do with the Enix franchises.
If AbiWord, Open Office, Star Office, Word Perfect, and any other Office Suite package (KOffice?) settle on a standard common XML format, it IS going to be big.
All it takes is one *single* library to convert Microsoft
And then the CMS solutions start using it, and then Microsoft has to upgrade Office so that Office can read these files, then you suddenly do have a viable alternative.
Will it happen? Beats me. If the standard is good, simple, easy to understand and all the other office suites implement it then yes I think it has a very good chance of having a big impact. If everybody bickers about it, nobody implements it, or the standard sucks (look at RDF) then Microsoft will eat our lunch.
1. Games
2. Work
1. Until ALL games run under Linux without much difficulty, I simply don't have any choice here. Nearly all the Xbox and PS/2 games in the world don't hold up to a single quality PC game.
2. I work at a Microsoft only shop. It's sad, it's infuriating, and I have little choice. To VPN into work, connect to source safe, upload code to the servers, run terminal services, connect to SQL Server 2000 (Microsoft's only GOOD non-gaming product) I have to use windows.
Tom's Hardware has to produce some of the most ridiculously overblown and long winded product reviews on the internet.
I understand why some people like that. I don't.
Some people blame it on the ridiculous notion that "Gen-X has a short attention span." I don't know who came up with that, but they're clearly not paying attention to the amount of effort our generation (or our society for that matter) actually puts into things.
That being said, it's not the length that makes something interesting, it's the content. Tom's articles generally have good content, but they suffer (like many other websites) from the inability of getting to the point.
So, in the interest of brevity: STOP BEING SO LONG WINDED AND GET TO THE POINT! I'll read a long article, if it's interesting, but just another Pentium 4 chip review is by no means a Charles Dickens novel, nor should it be treated as such.
Sheash.
Bryan
Good God, TechTV is the most god awfull horrible piece of rubbish on the airwaves right now. Yes, they play Thunderbirds (but the popups seriously detract from the quality of the show) and Max Headroom occasionally, but you could get those elsewhere. Everything else on that channel is crap.
True SlashDot geeks are watching the Discovery network channels, National Geographic, and the History channel any chance they can get.
You must be doing something wrong... I've been using the same virtual CTA card for three years now. Just keep putting it into the machine and adding money. The machine WILL spit out a new card eventually (my current card is set to expire Feb 01 2004, and I've *NEVER* requested a new one since I moved here 3.5 years ago).
Bryan
This isn't even close to a book review. He does nothing but glower over how great Mozilla is (which we all agree on), but says nothing about the quality or content of the actual book.
The book itself *IS* good (at least that which I have read so far). You'd never be able to tell from this review though....
You clearly don't live in an apartment with 100% wooden floors and a puppy terrier.