I agree in principle, however.... The difference here IMO is that Micron et al did us all a favor by forcing RDRAM out of the market sooner rather than later. It was already higher priced before the collusion, and it only survived as long as it did due to Intel's backing. Just
My point is many are willing to turn a blind eye if they feel it benefited the industry and/or consumers in the long run.
Thanks for that. Learn something new every day.:) Is this sort of thing hard prove in an court of law without an outright admission (like in this case)?
Oops, I think I AM wrong.:) I just did a little reading, and from what I can tell, competitors aren't supposed to do this, no matter the circustances. Is there a lawyer in the house?
First, IANAL. Second, if some would RTFA, they would realize the price fixing here involved LOWERING prices.
Historically, to my knowledge, accusations of price fixing have normally been made when separate parties agree to not compete and keep prices at a certain level. Here we have SOME competitors ecouraging each other to lower their prices below that of a common enemy, possibly at a loss in order to make better profits down the road. Laws against price fixing are meant to encourage competition, and IMO this is competitive behavior.
Am I wrong?
While I see the need to be wary when a major supplier could be potentially be comprimised (a good intelligence agency SHOULD be paranoid), I sense a knee-jerk xenophobic reaction here. In my limited experience with PCs at gov't agencies, they were all imaged by the local IT admins and nothing preloaded remained from the manufacturer. Any sort of spying tools would have to be in the hardware (or BIOS?).
Anyone naive enough to think we can just "Buy Amuricun" (sic) obviously doesn't understand the PC market.
Just my opinion.:)
I don't disagree that extra "eye candy" can get excessive and unwanted (Active Desktop comes to mind), but my overall point was that consumers and not OS companies were the driving force behind them. Consumers in general want a pretty personalized interface, and if one company offers a prettier one in an acceptable price range they tend to go for it over the competition. MS-DOS users saw what their Apple using friends had and starting demanding more, enter Windows et al.
Of course their gonna complain when its not as fast as the old system that did a 10th of what the new one does, but thats human nature. However, try and explain the technical issues to the average user I encounter on a daily basis an what they hear is "the flux capicitor can't sustain the quantum matrix" or something like that:) .
I remember people arguing against GUIs for the same reasons argued in the article (unnecessary fluff, excess system demands, etc). Its all a matter of where the user draws the line between form and function, IMHO.
For the frugal, I thought I'd include the specs my own "silent" PVR. This is also a great if you want to recycle any old hardware.
PIII 933Mhz CPU
2 x 256MB PC133 DIMMs
TNT2 32MB video card
Hauppauge PVR-150 with remote
20GB HDD for OS and Applications
100GB HDD for videos
The only fan is in the mini-ATX power supply directly over the CPU, and its undetectable from a few feet away. While it will never win a race, it does fine running GBPVR on top of Win XP. The captured video is just as good quality as when I had the PVR card in my P4 system. At some point I'll replace the video card, as it does have issues with OSD text. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with it.
Same here. I built built a PVR around a hauppauge 150 and at first went the MythTV route. After futzing around trying to get the remote to work as it should, I tried Windows and GBPVR. First off, Hauppauge's windows drivers just seemed more mature and stable, IMO. Second, the remote just worked. Linux/Myth zealots, flame me if you wish;)
Oops, if I sounded snippy, I didn't mean too. BTW, liked the article. It'll come in handy the next time someone wants to load the "latest greatest" piece of bloat onto a website.:)
For those unable to RTFA due to it being slashdotted, the gist is that Simplicity sells over flashy design.
On that subject, am I the only one who detests flash animation? In my experience, it can be difficult sometimes to convince a website owner they may want to keep it simple when their competitors have a bunch of pomp and flash all over. Such sites annoy the h*ll out of me when I just want some information.
I'm not normally one to defend Bill Gates, but in this case its I feel I need to. For those who remember the Seinfeld episode, poor people don't want Muffin Stumps.
Whats the point of having a "PC" if it can't perform to the level an average user would expect. Tell you what, I'm gonna create car for the poor. The catch is, to make it cheap enough it only goes 20mph (yes I'm in the state:) ) and runs on urine. Guess you'll be drinking a LOT of water.
IANAL, but sometime back I did some research on the subject of jamming, specifically to jam rogue wifi access points. I actually got an email back from the FCC, basically stating that active jamming or radio waves is illegal for civilian use. From what I found out, only police forces and other gov't agencies can use ACTIVE jamming. I found no laws or regulations against PASSIVE jamming. Anybody know more?
Getting a user (i.e. non-techie) not use even a "user friendly" distro requires some amount of instruction. People resist change, especially if they feel what they have meets their needs. And even today, not everything in Linux can be done from a pretty GUI.
Try imagining talking your mother-in-law through installing an RPM, or Term or installing an NDIS Wrapper? Or explain to her why she can't run the game or other software she got as a gift. That is why my mom-in-law has a pretty little XP machine at home. Cause I don't feel like drivin' 4 hours to fix it. Don't get me wrong, shes great, but there are limits.;)
I think this is a matter of the individual "not seeing the forest for the trees", as the trite little saying goes.
From my own subjective point-of-view working around a bunch of salesmen, I have a number of veteran salesmen who feel they were better off with a paper-based Customer follow-up system. This is actually true for some as they had been doing it for decades and had fine tuned their paper system to a exact science. What this doesn't take into account is the time it takes to train a new employee to do the same, especially with the rate at which salesmen are hired and fired. The employer also sees a benefit from being able to better monitor what is going on and having more control over customer contacts. The tin-foil-hat types can scream 1984 if they like, but this is important to a business for knowing where to best apply its efforts and resources.
Its all a matter of perspective, so one has to look at the whole thing. My two cents.
When apple dumped IBM they basically tossed out what made them unique! Now you can build their product on your own by order a Dell and installing openBSD.
IMHO, neither CPU nor OS defines an Apple. Apple to me has always been about appearance and simplicity and "it just works". Did Apple loose its identity when they dropped Motorola CPUs, or OS9, or OS8, etc? I seem to remember the same concerns when the first PowerPC macs came out. If I have the time, I can probably find old news articles foretelling the end of Apple due to clone PowerPCs.
Its always been about the Apple Experience and the feeling of being part of something special and different from the norm. IMHO;)
Personally, I like the keyspan device better. All you need is the one device connecting the usb devices to the network. You don't have to have a dongle for each laptop or desktop trying to access it. With the Belkin device the current unknown factor is just how secure the wireless connection is. For the Keyspan device, its as secure as you make your wifi connection. You also don't have ANOTHER dongle hanging off the backup of your laptop, waiting to be snapped off by accident. Last but not least, it is NOT made by Belkin:)
Just my opinion.
Should this be modded as Funny or Insightful?:) Either way I would have to agree.
Being an IT professional married to a journalist/writer, I can see where the author could gain a contempt for his peers' lack of concern for scientific accuracy. IMHO, his article seems to argue that those in the Humanities have some grudge against the scientific community, perhaps their high school physics teacher (thats just my personal guess:) ). Fortunately for my marriage, I've come to understand that many people do not care for the finer scientific details, and there is no way to make them. I'll admit that journalists often drastically misinterpret or over-simplify things (USA Today for example), but I hardly think its malicious.
I do feel that simplied "science" articles can serve a good purposes. It keeps in the public conciousness that advances can and are being made, much the same way that good PR is important to NASA if it wants continued funding.
If you want accurate scientific reporting, read one of the journals. Just don't complain because Aunt Clara's eyes glaze over on page one.
OK, I read the article and the responses on/. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere in the acticle was there an accusation that "alternative" browsers are bad or evil. The gist I got was about law enforcement agencies learning to deal with what is a new challenge to them. Granted, they are a bit behind the times, but is this anything new or suprising. And some people see in this an effort by "the man" to promote IE use. I'll admit I had a similar knee-jerk reaction, but I got over it and tried to look at it objectively.
So please, put away your tin foil hats. Nothing to see here, please move along.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree in principle, however.... The difference here IMO is that Micron et al did us all a favor by forcing RDRAM out of the market sooner rather than later. It was already higher priced before the collusion, and it only survived as long as it did due to Intel's backing. Just
My point is many are willing to turn a blind eye if they feel it benefited the industry and/or consumers in the long run.
Thanks for that. Learn something new every day. :) Is this sort of thing hard prove in an court of law without an outright admission (like in this case)?
Oops, I think I AM wrong. :) I just did a little reading, and from what I can tell, competitors aren't supposed to do this, no matter the circustances. Is there a lawyer in the house?
First, IANAL. Second, if some would RTFA, they would realize the price fixing here involved LOWERING prices. Historically, to my knowledge, accusations of price fixing have normally been made when separate parties agree to not compete and keep prices at a certain level. Here we have SOME competitors ecouraging each other to lower their prices below that of a common enemy, possibly at a loss in order to make better profits down the road. Laws against price fixing are meant to encourage competition, and IMO this is competitive behavior. Am I wrong?
So I guess instead of tarballs, we could have furballs.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
While I see the need to be wary when a major supplier could be potentially be comprimised (a good intelligence agency SHOULD be paranoid), I sense a knee-jerk xenophobic reaction here. In my limited experience with PCs at gov't agencies, they were all imaged by the local IT admins and nothing preloaded remained from the manufacturer. Any sort of spying tools would have to be in the hardware (or BIOS?).
:)
Anyone naive enough to think we can just "Buy Amuricun" (sic) obviously doesn't understand the PC market. Just my opinion.
I don't disagree that extra "eye candy" can get excessive and unwanted (Active Desktop comes to mind), but my overall point was that consumers and not OS companies were the driving force behind them. Consumers in general want a pretty personalized interface, and if one company offers a prettier one in an acceptable price range they tend to go for it over the competition. MS-DOS users saw what their Apple using friends had and starting demanding more, enter Windows et al.
:) .
Of course their gonna complain when its not as fast as the old system that did a 10th of what the new one does, but thats human nature. However, try and explain the technical issues to the average user I encounter on a daily basis an what they hear is "the flux capicitor can't sustain the quantum matrix" or something like that
I remember people arguing against GUIs for the same reasons argued in the article (unnecessary fluff, excess system demands, etc). Its all a matter of where the user draws the line between form and function, IMHO.
From the article;
;)
Why is the OS industry obsessed with providing richer, processor intensive graphical effects ?
Because the average user who doesn't give a damn about processes and other things we obsess about ask for them. Plain and simple, market demand.
For the frugal, I thought I'd include the specs my own "silent" PVR. This is also a great if you want to recycle any old hardware.
PIII 933Mhz CPU
2 x 256MB PC133 DIMMs
TNT2 32MB video card
Hauppauge PVR-150 with remote
20GB HDD for OS and Applications
100GB HDD for videos
The only fan is in the mini-ATX power supply directly over the CPU, and its undetectable from a few feet away. While it will never win a race, it does fine running GBPVR on top of Win XP. The captured video is just as good quality as when I had the PVR card in my P4 system. At some point I'll replace the video card, as it does have issues with OSD text. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with it.
Same here. I built built a PVR around a hauppauge 150 and at first went the MythTV route. After futzing around trying to get the remote to work as it should, I tried Windows and GBPVR. First off, Hauppauge's windows drivers just seemed more mature and stable, IMO. Second, the remote just worked. Linux/Myth zealots, flame me if you wish ;)
Oops, if I sounded snippy, I didn't mean too. BTW, liked the article. It'll come in handy the next time someone wants to load the "latest greatest" piece of bloat onto a website. :)
I should add that resizing the text works in Firefox, but not IE.
Since this is an article on web design, I feel its worth point out two things about the referenced article;
;)
1 - ads with audio are damned annoying and almost always a bad thing in my opinion.
2 - IMHO, news sites and blogs should ALWAYS allow the user to use the "text size" menu option for those with bad eyesite.
Flame ON!
For those unable to RTFA due to it being slashdotted, the gist is that Simplicity sells over flashy design.
On that subject, am I the only one who detests flash animation? In my experience, it can be difficult sometimes to convince a website owner they may want to keep it simple when their competitors have a bunch of pomp and flash all over. Such sites annoy the h*ll out of me when I just want some information.
I'm not normally one to defend Bill Gates, but in this case its I feel I need to. For those who remember the Seinfeld episode, poor people don't want Muffin Stumps.
e _id=170 for an explanation.
:) ) and runs on urine. Guess you'll be drinking a LOT of water.
see http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minut
Whats the point of having a "PC" if it can't perform to the level an average user would expect. Tell you what, I'm gonna create car for the poor. The catch is, to make it cheap enough it only goes 20mph (yes I'm in the state
My point is if this is no more legal than installing OS X on a white box PC, then what is the point? I know, I know, because you can.
Any armchair lawyers wanna give a crack at this?
As Brian Griffin said "Yes, yes it does" ;)
IANAL, but sometime back I did some research on the subject of jamming, specifically to jam rogue wifi access points. I actually got an email back from the FCC, basically stating that active jamming or radio waves is illegal for civilian use. From what I found out, only police forces and other gov't agencies can use ACTIVE jamming. I found no laws or regulations against PASSIVE jamming. Anybody know more?
Getting a user (i.e. non-techie) not use even a "user friendly" distro requires some amount of instruction. People resist change, especially if they feel what they have meets their needs. And even today, not everything in Linux can be done from a pretty GUI. Try imagining talking your mother-in-law through installing an RPM, or Term or installing an NDIS Wrapper? Or explain to her why she can't run the game or other software she got as a gift. That is why my mom-in-law has a pretty little XP machine at home. Cause I don't feel like drivin' 4 hours to fix it. Don't get me wrong, shes great, but there are limits. ;)
I think this is a matter of the individual "not seeing the forest for the trees", as the trite little saying goes. From my own subjective point-of-view working around a bunch of salesmen, I have a number of veteran salesmen who feel they were better off with a paper-based Customer follow-up system. This is actually true for some as they had been doing it for decades and had fine tuned their paper system to a exact science. What this doesn't take into account is the time it takes to train a new employee to do the same, especially with the rate at which salesmen are hired and fired. The employer also sees a benefit from being able to better monitor what is going on and having more control over customer contacts. The tin-foil-hat types can scream 1984 if they like, but this is important to a business for knowing where to best apply its efforts and resources. Its all a matter of perspective, so one has to look at the whole thing. My two cents.
Personally, I like the keyspan device better. All you need is the one device connecting the usb devices to the network. You don't have to have a dongle for each laptop or desktop trying to access it. With the Belkin device the current unknown factor is just how secure the wireless connection is. For the Keyspan device, its as secure as you make your wifi connection. You also don't have ANOTHER dongle hanging off the backup of your laptop, waiting to be snapped off by accident. Last but not least, it is NOT made by Belkin :)
Just my opinion.
I think this is a good point. So many people are primed now to jump and say SONY IS SCR3W3D that they're not looking at the facts objectively.
Can one enforce a copyright on a product where it isn't even legal? I assume nothing with US copyright law.
Any coders out there wish to enlighten us on how exact the DVD Jon code is used?
Should this be modded as Funny or Insightful? :) Either way I would have to agree.
:) ). Fortunately for my marriage, I've come to understand that many people do not care for the finer scientific details, and there is no way to make them. I'll admit that journalists often drastically misinterpret or over-simplify things (USA Today for example), but I hardly think its malicious.
Being an IT professional married to a journalist/writer, I can see where the author could gain a contempt for his peers' lack of concern for scientific accuracy. IMHO, his article seems to argue that those in the Humanities have some grudge against the scientific community, perhaps their high school physics teacher (thats just my personal guess
I do feel that simplied "science" articles can serve a good purposes. It keeps in the public conciousness that advances can and are being made, much the same way that good PR is important to NASA if it wants continued funding.
If you want accurate scientific reporting, read one of the journals. Just don't complain because Aunt Clara's eyes glaze over on page one.
OK, I read the article and the responses on /. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere in the acticle was there an accusation that "alternative" browsers are bad or evil. The gist I got was about law enforcement agencies learning to deal with what is a new challenge to them. Granted, they are a bit behind the times, but is this anything new or suprising. And some people see in this an effort by "the man" to promote IE use. I'll admit I had a similar knee-jerk reaction, but I got over it and tried to look at it objectively.
So please, put away your tin foil hats. Nothing to see here, please move along.