Xbox was actually pretty good. With Nintendo going for the "people who don't like games" market and Sony going for the "people who have no lives and lots of money" market, Microsoft managed to take over the "people who just want to play a decent video game" market pretty well.
Their only problem is the nearly 100% failure rate (which is probably making them a lot of money).
The Zune is actually pretty nice. The problem is that you have to use the terrible Zune software. I find it annoying that I can't use it on Linux; my friends find it annoying that they can't use it with Windows Media Player.
Fff can't moderate since I posted, but thanks for posting this. I actually tried the demos in Firefox and they were pretty fast, I just assumed it was because I have a nice processor though.
Why we would want this? The real question is why Microsoft is the one doing this first. What's the point of a canvas tag if we have to go back to rendering everything on the CPU? I have a video card for a reason.
For Hulu to be better than torrents, all they need to do is:
- Stop the "you can only watch the last 2 episodes of this series" thing. I'm not going to start watching something at season 5 episode 13 (and if you can really get into a show at that point without knowing the story, then there probably isn't one).
- Take the ads out completely. $10/month is perfectly reasonable without ads. If they need to price it higher to make up for lost ad money, then they should still offer the choice: Something like $10/month with ads or $20/month without ads.
Microsoft most definitely has a monopoly under that condition- they can set a price higher than equilibrium because there is no true replacement good. That makes them a monopoly.
Except that there are better free alternatives. It's like if there was only one big company selling bottled water for $500 a bottle. Sure, they control the whole "overpriced water" market, but it doesn't matter because you can still go out and by your own water bottle for $5 and then fill it up as many times as you want for free (or nearly free).
Oh wait, that was supposed to be a car analogy wasn't it?:(
If you load them from Google, it's far less likely to impact loading times (since your browser will use the same cached script for every site that loads from the same place).
The problem is that there's only "secure with password" and "completely insecure" modes. Why isn't there a way to have encrypted anonymous access? It's obviously possible since people do it with SSL all the time.
It's to be expected that the Mac version of Steam would be slower than the Windows version, but not because Macs are slower. Games are generally heavily optimized in order to get decent frame rates, and those optimizations may be platform dependent. I expect that as time goes on, the different between the Mac and Windows version of games on Steam will become smaller.
More to the point, the person you were responding to was talking about hardware, as in "If you took that fastest Apple laptop vs the fastest non-Apple laptop and installed Windows on both, the Apple one would be faster." I doubt this is true anymore, but it's plausible that it was at some point.
As long as you've got decent compositing speed and pixel shaders for a few GUI effects, pretty much any ATI or nVidia GPU from the last few years is fast enough for a typical user.
Fixed that for you. Intel cards are fine for "normal" computer usage, but they still suck pretty bad at most games.
Heating up rivers does have an effect though. I'd guess they've looked into it already, but you can completely mess up ecosystems by messing with rivers.
Chrome uses less memory, and "feels" faster (at least to me). My guess is that XUL and the plugin interface take up more memory than Google's simpler versions. Does it make that much of a difference though? I rarely find myself on a computer with less than a GB of memory, and even if you have less, I think Firefox isn't actually using all 200 MB all the time (so it should be able to swap some of it out).
I agree with you, but sometimes I wish I could change things on my phone. What I really like is products that work perfectly when you get them, but let you make changes (along with the disclaimer: "If you change this, you might break something").
First "Grandma who checks her email once a day" should be getting the internet for $1.99 per month with a $50 install fee.
This is the problem. I think it makes sense that the people who use the most should pay the most, but the prices only go up, not down. So if you want a fast connection but only plan to download 1 GB of data per month, you still have to pay full price, but now the ISPs want to say "Well we'll keep charging everyone the same price as before, but now we'll charge certain people more". In other words, it costs more, but there's no benefit for consumers.
This is the only reason I'm interested in multi-core CPUs. "make" can be run in parallel quite well. Also, it's nice that when a program starts taking up 100% of a core, all of my other programs keep running like nothing happened.
I've found that for pretty much any program with a Mac version, the Windows version works perfectly in Wine. I'm guessing it's a side effect of not being able to make Windows-specific assumptions.
Slashdot Mirror
Xbox was actually pretty good. With Nintendo going for the "people who don't like games" market and Sony going for the "people who have no lives and lots of money" market, Microsoft managed to take over the "people who just want to play a decent video game" market pretty well. Their only problem is the nearly 100% failure rate (which is probably making them a lot of money).
at least Ballmer doesn't tell me I can't compile my code without forking him $100/yr
Of course, staying up to date with Visual Studio is going to cost you significantly more than that (unless you use the same version for 8 years).
The Zune is actually pretty nice. The problem is that you have to use the terrible Zune software. I find it annoying that I can't use it on Linux; my friends find it annoying that they can't use it with Windows Media Player.
I have a GPU for accelerating anything a GPU can accelerate (3D, 2D, physics, video decoding..).
Fff can't moderate since I posted, but thanks for posting this. I actually tried the demos in Firefox and they were pretty fast, I just assumed it was because I have a nice processor though.
Why we would want this? The real question is why Microsoft is the one doing this first. What's the point of a canvas tag if we have to go back to rendering everything on the CPU? I have a video card for a reason.
For Hulu to be better than torrents, all they need to do is:
- Stop the "you can only watch the last 2 episodes of this series" thing. I'm not going to start watching something at season 5 episode 13 (and if you can really get into a show at that point without knowing the story, then there probably isn't one).
- Take the ads out completely. $10/month is perfectly reasonable without ads. If they need to price it higher to make up for lost ad money, then they should still offer the choice: Something like $10/month with ads or $20/month without ads.
You're living in a fantasy world
Or maybe you're living in relationship-hell. Why date someone so insecure that you have to lie to them?
Microsoft most definitely has a monopoly under that condition- they can set a price higher than equilibrium because there is no true replacement good. That makes them a monopoly.
Except that there are better free alternatives. It's like if there was only one big company selling bottled water for $500 a bottle. Sure, they control the whole "overpriced water" market, but it doesn't matter because you can still go out and by your own water bottle for $5 and then fill it up as many times as you want for free (or nearly free). Oh wait, that was supposed to be a car analogy wasn't it? :(
If you load them from Google, it's far less likely to impact loading times (since your browser will use the same cached script for every site that loads from the same place).
My favorite part is how the license is conveniently not mentioned anywhere.
Clearly you should have run away and called the cops. Also, you're just as guilty as him for fighting back!
The problem is that there's only "secure with password" and "completely insecure" modes. Why isn't there a way to have encrypted anonymous access? It's obviously possible since people do it with SSL all the time.
$500? Where do you find such expensive desktops? It's not like you need a gaming machine for work, right? :p
It's to be expected that the Mac version of Steam would be slower than the Windows version, but not because Macs are slower. Games are generally heavily optimized in order to get decent frame rates, and those optimizations may be platform dependent. I expect that as time goes on, the different between the Mac and Windows version of games on Steam will become smaller.
More to the point, the person you were responding to was talking about hardware, as in "If you took that fastest Apple laptop vs the fastest non-Apple laptop and installed Windows on both, the Apple one would be faster." I doubt this is true anymore, but it's plausible that it was at some point.
How will I ever afford electronics if the people making them are paid 50 cents a day rather than 25 cents a day? :(
As long as you've got decent compositing speed and pixel shaders for a few GUI effects, pretty much any ATI or nVidia GPU from the last few years is fast enough for a typical user.
Fixed that for you. Intel cards are fine for "normal" computer usage, but they still suck pretty bad at most games.
Heating up rivers does have an effect though. I'd guess they've looked into it already, but you can completely mess up ecosystems by messing with rivers.
Chrome uses less memory, and "feels" faster (at least to me). My guess is that XUL and the plugin interface take up more memory than Google's simpler versions. Does it make that much of a difference though? I rarely find myself on a computer with less than a GB of memory, and even if you have less, I think Firefox isn't actually using all 200 MB all the time (so it should be able to swap some of it out).
There is no reason that Firefox with 5 tabs should be using over 300 MB of RAM without any Flash or PDF files open.
I don't think that's a memory leak, Firefox just constantly takes up around that much memory. It's related to its cache (and maybe plugins).
This is Slashdot, it's more likely that they're a Battlestar Galactica fan rather than a prude.
I agree with you, but sometimes I wish I could change things on my phone. What I really like is products that work perfectly when you get them, but let you make changes (along with the disclaimer: "If you change this, you might break something").
First "Grandma who checks her email once a day" should be getting the internet for $1.99 per month with a $50 install fee.
This is the problem. I think it makes sense that the people who use the most should pay the most, but the prices only go up, not down. So if you want a fast connection but only plan to download 1 GB of data per month, you still have to pay full price, but now the ISPs want to say "Well we'll keep charging everyone the same price as before, but now we'll charge certain people more". In other words, it costs more, but there's no benefit for consumers.
This is the only reason I'm interested in multi-core CPUs. "make" can be run in parallel quite well. Also, it's nice that when a program starts taking up 100% of a core, all of my other programs keep running like nothing happened.
I've found that for pretty much any program with a Mac version, the Windows version works perfectly in Wine. I'm guessing it's a side effect of not being able to make Windows-specific assumptions.