1. Most businesses are not "upgrading" because it causes more problems than it solves and doesn't really fix anything that needed fixing - they are either stabilizing on WinXP until 2010 or are jumping ship to Linux (a small fraction).
2. Consumers are not "upgrading" or even buying WinVista because it is a resource hog (memory, graphics, drivers not available), and is unsuitable for laptops especially - consumers are switching to laptops fairly quickly in fact. Some of them (a small fraction, but growing) are switching to Linux, BSD, or MacOS.
3. Educational and non-profit sectors are not getting WinVista for all the above reasons, but most of them are switching to Linux, as they can't afford the cost-per-seat for WinVista, especially when you add the 1-2 GB RAM, video card, and processor requirements.
So, does this mean no one is switching to WinVista? No. It means fewer are doing so, most are delaying, and a few are giving up on MSFT and jumping ship entirely.
Myself included.
Once MSFT revisits its decisions regarding Office and Mac support levels, this may change.
I suggest that having the same agency, especially a Red Bushie one, be the watchdog, is akin to outsourcing the farmers security to the wolves, asking them to guard the henhouse.
Good point. I tend not to let trolls argue when I know what the facts are.
Now, to show I'm a good sport, I will promise to actually buy FF XIII when it comes out on the Wii, since I know you like the game producer (Square Enix, right?), and to show my support of them.
I will also promise to buy a PS3 in 2009 when I buy a 40 or more inch HDTV (with proper HDMI cables), as most of America will do at that time. I'll be glad to pay $225 for the PS3 then, and $300 for the HDTV, while you most likely have shelled out more than $600 for just the base PS3 and controllers.
You can come to my place and we'll play FF XIII and I am sure you'll p0wn me, cause I'm not that great a game player. I remember how I used to get ganged up on when I was a game designer, as everyone assumed I was a hotshot game player, but I just didn't have the time or the interest to play them all that much.
And, to show how nice I am, I'll pay for pizza and hard cider or wine (or even beer, but it has to be Danish beer, or some NZ Double Brown, or maybe Henry's Private Reserve), assuming you're old enough for the alcoholic refreshments.
Just look me up in 2009 - I'm just up the street from the Caffe Ladro in Fremont, five blocks west of the Fremont Troll, in Seattle.
Now, can you go back to reading the other articles that are now on the main slashdot page, that show what reality actually is?
Not if investers are smart. Duopolies are the next best thing to having a monopoly, meaning it has fat profit margins.
We call that an oligopoly, actually. A duopoly is just a form of it. The market can exist with one monopoly, an oligopoly with competitors who do not compete (either thru blatant signals, established contracts, territorial agreements, or price fixing), an oligopoly with minor competition (what has existed for many years with Wintel and AMD since the fall of Motorola's dominance), a mixed market (usually little regulation, almost as efficient as a properly regulated competitive market), a competitive market (regulated), or a hyper-capitalistic market (which usually crashes and players don't survive long, and thus is less efficient in practice).
But investors, as a class, are not smart. They tend to have a hard time selling on loss, and overbuy on profit. This is why ETF funds should do better than most directed funds, and why mutual index funds outperform almost all investors.
While it is true that they are in a world of hurt right now, they have taken concrete actions that should deliver another round of highly profitable quarters, and their new quad core processors and power consumption ratings should result in their usage in a lot of boxen.
That plus the breakdown of the MSFT monopoly and the Wintel dictatorship (disclosure - I have owned MSFT before, and own I think 400 shares of Intel) with the low cost push and power push for PCs and laptops using processor chips, should mean they will return to profit in short order.
The market always projects 4-6 months ahead, except in Japan and Europe where it tends to project 6-18 months ahead.
Dude, I read print editions and I have something like three computers with six browsers. One is a Mac Mini with Firefox and that Mac browser. One is a WinXP box with Firefox and Opera (where I get my home email) and IE (not that I use it). One is my work WinXP PC with Firefox and IE.
Unlike you, I have multiple computers. Plus, I read, cover to cover, the print edition of the Wall Street Journal, and on days when I eat out at lunch I scarf the print editions of the Seattle Times and Seattle PI and most other days I read them online. Plus I read Yahoo on the My Yahoo site for news.
So, I know I read it - multiple times. You on the other hand refuse to believe that FF XIII is ALREADY BEING PORTED to OTHER CONSOLES, in addition to the FACT that FF V is already ported to the Nintendo DS.
While I will admit that my ex-wife works for xBox, I visit news sources for all the gaming platforms, and personally only own one xBox, a PS, a PS2, a GC, a Wii, and some GameBoys (color, special editions, French language games).
I probably have more PS2 titles than I have Wii titles, and much more of either than I have any xBox titles.
I used to own Sony shares until just after E3, when I realized they had made a very bad series of decisions. And I have in the past owned MSFT stock.
However, I'm not biased about market trends - it was my first college degree after all (Sales and Marketing), and I work in Medical Genetics Research on the Bioinformatics side. I can see thru the fluff.
There have been a number of announcements, in various gaming news sources, as well as on Nintendo web sites, that indicate that FF V being ported to the DS is just the beginning, and that FF 13 is being ported to multiple platforms, specifically the Wii and the xBox360.
Thanks, I always misremember my acronyms. JDAM is also called SLAM and SDLM I think.
The original units cost the amount I said. They improved them, added better release and logistics control, but they used to be cheaper.
Surprisingly, the payload bomb is usually around $500 bought in quantity, but it can range up to $2000 per bomb, and some of the bunker busters are way more expensive.
The JDAM (etc) addons have different pricings depending on usage and payload. I can't recall all the details.
But, it was the biggest ROI for military hardware, and made it so we didn't spend $250,000 to $1.5 million per bomb (cruise missiles or LRCSW actually have very tiny explosive payloads) but drove the cost down more than a factor of ten, and suddenly B2 stealth and the stealth fighters could drop cheap bomb raids for very little money (other than pilot, payload, maintenance, and air fuel).
Another semi-important improvement was AFE (air fuel explosives), but we've had those for a long time in other service branches.
Roast and toast!
Shake and bake!
I remember seeing my first Viper mine clearing units back in the Voodoo attachment, in the mid-1980s, actually. So those are pre-pre-pre-Gulf War and don't count. Same with pop up anti-tank man-portables that do a drop kill. Been around forever.
I refer you to the NPD data on March game sales figures, which show the Wii expansion widening, and PS3 growing even slower than before - on Reuters and AP wire services.
You google the link. Also reported in Thursday's Seattle PI from those feeds.
Motorstorm (already out) Metal Gear Solid 4 Killzone Heavenly Sword FF13 (despite recent headlines, 13 and 13vs are still PS3 exclusive for now) Lair Afrika LittleBigPlanet Home
Other than Heavenly Sword and FF13 (which will be ported, they announced it), I don't sense any anticipation to speak of for the rest of that list.
The FCC is mandating digital TV, not High Definition TV. I saw a cheap SDTV (14" CRT, digital, 480i) at a local big box store for $125. That meets the FCC's mandate and will allow you to watch all over-the-air programming, it just down-converts HD to SD.
While you are technically correct, the reality is that consumers are perceiving this as a mandate for HDTV.
Remember, only one-third of people who have HDTV are actually using HDMI cables to get more than 480p. So they have fancy boxen that can crank out 720p or 1080i or even 1080p and they have not hooked up the cables (or even bought them sometimes) to actually get full HDTV transmission.
Again, I will be buying a 1080p 40 inch (or 42 inch) HDTV for about $300 to $500 in 2009 (or at the latest, at the President's Day sale in 2010, 2/19). You can pay $2500 or $2000 or even (bargain) $1500 for that now - or you can join the mass wave of HDTV 720p and 1080p purchasers in 2009.
Never underestimate the power of the consumer. Doesn't matter if they're right. What they do makes markets. Just ask Sony...
Maybe at Amazon, but page B1 of the Wall Street Journal (expensive subscription required, I get it in print) says that the xBox360 is eating the shorts off of the PS3 in the US market, and the Wii is beating the PS3 by a long margin.
Amazon may not be where most people buy gaming consoles.
Actually, even the tech pages at the Wall Street Journal admit that most people shouldn't buy HD-DVD or Blu-Ray yet, as it will be at least a year before anyone really has a need for either, and noone can predict what will happen. But you're correct about HDTV - demand won't really kick in until 2009, when everyone will start buying them (since they won't sell non-HDTV-capable sets in the US after that). That's when a nice 40 inch HDTV with full 1080p will go for $300 to $500. No sense jumping in until then - which makes the whole PS3 Blu-Ray setup a waste.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember seeing very few DOS 4.0 installs, and just a couple of DOS 4.01 (which was more stable).
But wasn't this around the time of the memory manager wars?
Why, we could even load them with Ubuntu ...
1. Most businesses are not "upgrading" because it causes more problems than it solves and doesn't really fix anything that needed fixing - they are either stabilizing on WinXP until 2010 or are jumping ship to Linux (a small fraction).
2. Consumers are not "upgrading" or even buying WinVista because it is a resource hog (memory, graphics, drivers not available), and is unsuitable for laptops especially - consumers are switching to laptops fairly quickly in fact. Some of them (a small fraction, but growing) are switching to Linux, BSD, or MacOS.
3. Educational and non-profit sectors are not getting WinVista for all the above reasons, but most of them are switching to Linux, as they can't afford the cost-per-seat for WinVista, especially when you add the 1-2 GB RAM, video card, and processor requirements.
So, does this mean no one is switching to WinVista? No. It means fewer are doing so, most are delaying, and a few are giving up on MSFT and jumping ship entirely.
Myself included.
Once MSFT revisits its decisions regarding Office and Mac support levels, this may change.
I suggest that having the same agency, especially a Red Bushie one, be the watchdog, is akin to outsourcing the farmers security to the wolves, asking them to guard the henhouse.
After hours trading nowadays is usually hedge funds trying to place puts and calls or fill them.
...
I wouldn't worry.
Not that I'm selling my (lower) Intel shares any time soon, mind you
Good point. I tend not to let trolls argue when I know what the facts are.
Now, to show I'm a good sport, I will promise to actually buy FF XIII when it comes out on the Wii, since I know you like the game producer (Square Enix, right?), and to show my support of them.
I will also promise to buy a PS3 in 2009 when I buy a 40 or more inch HDTV (with proper HDMI cables), as most of America will do at that time. I'll be glad to pay $225 for the PS3 then, and $300 for the HDTV, while you most likely have shelled out more than $600 for just the base PS3 and controllers.
You can come to my place and we'll play FF XIII and I am sure you'll p0wn me, cause I'm not that great a game player. I remember how I used to get ganged up on when I was a game designer, as everyone assumed I was a hotshot game player, but I just didn't have the time or the interest to play them all that much.
And, to show how nice I am, I'll pay for pizza and hard cider or wine (or even beer, but it has to be Danish beer, or some NZ Double Brown, or maybe Henry's Private Reserve), assuming you're old enough for the alcoholic refreshments.
Just look me up in 2009 - I'm just up the street from the Caffe Ladro in Fremont, five blocks west of the Fremont Troll, in Seattle.
Now, can you go back to reading the other articles that are now on the main slashdot page, that show what reality actually is?
I recycle them after the day.
Don't you?
Not if investers are smart. Duopolies are the next best thing to having a monopoly, meaning it has fat profit margins.
We call that an oligopoly, actually. A duopoly is just a form of it. The market can exist with one monopoly, an oligopoly with competitors who do not compete (either thru blatant signals, established contracts, territorial agreements, or price fixing), an oligopoly with minor competition (what has existed for many years with Wintel and AMD since the fall of Motorola's dominance), a mixed market (usually little regulation, almost as efficient as a properly regulated competitive market), a competitive market (regulated), or a hyper-capitalistic market (which usually crashes and players don't survive long, and thus is less efficient in practice).
But investors, as a class, are not smart. They tend to have a hard time selling on loss, and overbuy on profit. This is why ETF funds should do better than most directed funds, and why mutual index funds outperform almost all investors.
While it is true that they are in a world of hurt right now, they have taken concrete actions that should deliver another round of highly profitable quarters, and their new quad core processors and power consumption ratings should result in their usage in a lot of boxen.
That plus the breakdown of the MSFT monopoly and the Wintel dictatorship (disclosure - I have owned MSFT before, and own I think 400 shares of Intel) with the low cost push and power push for PCs and laptops using processor chips, should mean they will return to profit in short order.
The market always projects 4-6 months ahead, except in Japan and Europe where it tends to project 6-18 months ahead.
No, because you asked me to do your homework for you.
News flash, the world does not revolve around you.
Second news flash, the price cuts will happen, and are already in place on the street in Tokyo in the retail district.
Third news flash, those gullible enough not to read between the lines of PR spin are doomed to continual disappointment.
Here endeth the lesson.
Let me guess, you work for the AG's office, right?
Dude, I read print editions and I have something like three computers with six browsers. One is a Mac Mini with Firefox and that Mac browser. One is a WinXP box with Firefox and Opera (where I get my home email) and IE (not that I use it). One is my work WinXP PC with Firefox and IE.
Unlike you, I have multiple computers. Plus, I read, cover to cover, the print edition of the Wall Street Journal, and on days when I eat out at lunch I scarf the print editions of the Seattle Times and Seattle PI and most other days I read them online. Plus I read Yahoo on the My Yahoo site for news.
So, I know I read it - multiple times. You on the other hand refuse to believe that FF XIII is ALREADY BEING PORTED to OTHER CONSOLES, in addition to the FACT that FF V is already ported to the Nintendo DS.
Yet everyone knows this is true.
Do your own searches.
While I will admit that my ex-wife works for xBox, I visit news sources for all the gaming platforms, and personally only own one xBox, a PS, a PS2, a GC, a Wii, and some GameBoys (color, special editions, French language games).
I probably have more PS2 titles than I have Wii titles, and much more of either than I have any xBox titles.
I used to own Sony shares until just after E3, when I realized they had made a very bad series of decisions. And I have in the past owned MSFT stock.
However, I'm not biased about market trends - it was my first college degree after all (Sales and Marketing), and I work in Medical Genetics Research on the Bioinformatics side. I can see thru the fluff.
There have been a number of announcements, in various gaming news sources, as well as on Nintendo web sites, that indicate that FF V being ported to the DS is just the beginning, and that FF 13 is being ported to multiple platforms, specifically the Wii and the xBox360.
No, actually, it's Nintendogs. According to my investor's email from Nintendo.
Thanks, I always misremember my acronyms. JDAM is also called SLAM and SDLM I think.
The original units cost the amount I said. They improved them, added better release and logistics control, but they used to be cheaper.
Surprisingly, the payload bomb is usually around $500 bought in quantity, but it can range up to $2000 per bomb, and some of the bunker busters are way more expensive.
The JDAM (etc) addons have different pricings depending on usage and payload. I can't recall all the details.
But, it was the biggest ROI for military hardware, and made it so we didn't spend $250,000 to $1.5 million per bomb (cruise missiles or LRCSW actually have very tiny explosive payloads) but drove the cost down more than a factor of ten, and suddenly B2 stealth and the stealth fighters could drop cheap bomb raids for very little money (other than pilot, payload, maintenance, and air fuel).
Another semi-important improvement was AFE (air fuel explosives), but we've had those for a long time in other service branches.
Roast and toast!
Shake and bake!
I remember seeing my first Viper mine clearing units back in the Voodoo attachment, in the mid-1980s, actually. So those are pre-pre-pre-Gulf War and don't count. Same with pop up anti-tank man-portables that do a drop kill. Been around forever.
I refer you to the NPD data on March game sales figures, which show the Wii expansion widening, and PS3 growing even slower than before - on Reuters and AP wire services.
You google the link. Also reported in Thursday's Seattle PI from those feeds.
No, he searched for them.
He never clicked on the links.
It was someone else that did that, his invisible friend Henry the Rabbit.
I checked, it's February sales data. Which means it's probably a lot worse.
Sorry, that was my reaction. I'm not saying that Home or LittleBigPlanet might not be ok, but I really haven't heard much buzzwise.
When you pry my DSL and Cable Modem feeds from my cold dead Seattle hands!
This means war!
Motorstorm (already out)
Metal Gear Solid 4
Killzone
Heavenly Sword
FF13 (despite recent headlines, 13 and 13vs are still PS3 exclusive for now)
Lair
Afrika
LittleBigPlanet
Home
Other than Heavenly Sword and FF13 (which will be ported, they announced it), I don't sense any anticipation to speak of for the rest of that list.
Going to be a cold winter at Sony HQ.
The FCC is mandating digital TV, not High Definition TV. I saw a cheap SDTV (14" CRT, digital, 480i) at a local big box store for $125. That meets the FCC's mandate and will allow you to watch all over-the-air programming, it just down-converts HD to SD.
...
While you are technically correct, the reality is that consumers are perceiving this as a mandate for HDTV.
Remember, only one-third of people who have HDTV are actually using HDMI cables to get more than 480p. So they have fancy boxen that can crank out 720p or 1080i or even 1080p and they have not hooked up the cables (or even bought them sometimes) to actually get full HDTV transmission.
Again, I will be buying a 1080p 40 inch (or 42 inch) HDTV for about $300 to $500 in 2009 (or at the latest, at the President's Day sale in 2010, 2/19). You can pay $2500 or $2000 or even (bargain) $1500 for that now - or you can join the mass wave of HDTV 720p and 1080p purchasers in 2009.
Never underestimate the power of the consumer. Doesn't matter if they're right. What they do makes markets. Just ask Sony
Maybe at Amazon, but page B1 of the Wall Street Journal (expensive subscription required, I get it in print) says that the xBox360 is eating the shorts off of the PS3 in the US market, and the Wii is beating the PS3 by a long margin.
Amazon may not be where most people buy gaming consoles.
Wait for demand for Blu-Ray drives?
Is there any demand, whatsoever?
Hell - demand for HDTVs isn't even all that high.
Actually, even the tech pages at the Wall Street Journal admit that most people shouldn't buy HD-DVD or Blu-Ray yet, as it will be at least a year before anyone really has a need for either, and noone can predict what will happen. But you're correct about HDTV - demand won't really kick in until 2009, when everyone will start buying them (since they won't sell non-HDTV-capable sets in the US after that). That's when a nice 40 inch HDTV with full 1080p will go for $300 to $500. No sense jumping in until then - which makes the whole PS3 Blu-Ray setup a waste.