I can't believe that Microsoft is abusing the patent system.
You are right I can't believe that Microsoft would try to patent, copyright or even register words that have been around for a very long time, like "Office", "Word" or Windows"... ?
But who would see colour anyway? Is this another Windows thing?
Not everyone actually uses Microsoft Exchange so what may display correctly in MS Exchange may not display correctly in other mailers. After all it is rather pointless to spend that time composing an email with colours, fonts and pretty pictures when the person to whom you are sending can't see them.
And there is not a single real-world e-mail client I know that still can't do basic HTML. Where do you live? in the 80s?
We techies usually aren't so conservative. So why here?
You know that are some people that still use simple mailers such as alpine, mutt and even "mail" to name a few and they can do their job in many ways quicker and more efficiently than people who use other so called more sophisticated mailers. The problem is many people resort to using coloured fonts and pretty pictures and forget about how to actually use their language to communicate.
The author is entitled to his opinion but vmail is IMHO the best way to leave messages and if the person you are leaving vmail for is professional you will get an answer back fairly quickly. You only start to have problems when the person you are leaving the vmail for or getting email from does not quite naturally speak the same language as you or has a strong accent that is difficult for the parties to understand.
Vmail is just one of many communication methodologies, each one has advantages and disadvantages and choosing one or more that work well with the way you do business is very much a personal experience. What communication methods work well with one may not work well with others.
"Atari is committed to maximising the launch of the Ghostbusters videogame across Europe," offered Jim Wilson, VP of Worldwide Marketing for Atari.
I don't know if you can read that the release of Ghostbusters is European only and even if it was you can import the PS3 version to any country in the world since it will be region free. The only problem you would find is the language or localisation, so you would have to be particular from which country you import the game from. The PS2 release will be locked to regions (it always was) so you have to be careful here.
I imagine everyone in Europe will just download the PC version from the nearest Torrent tracker.
If they were going to pirate the game they would do it anyway no matter if the game was released across all platforms.
Besides that I hardly imagine Ghostbusters being an AAA title
I definitely agree with you on this, since I have found that most games based on a movie or TV series don't do all that well. Still you never know.
PS1 succeeded because of rampant piracy, then network effects. every man and his dog mod chipped his ps1, and bought a few legit games and downloaded a lot. Also legitimate game prices, ps1 games were a lot cheaper being on cds than their cartridge equivalent.
Err no! Rampant piracy would kill the PS1 since software houses would not make games for this console because they would not make any money. People chipped their PS1's so they could play imported or region locked games. Sure there was piracy but this was fairly small since CD burners and even the media in the the mid to late 1990's were not that cheap.
You are correct in that CD's were much cheaper than cartridges at the time but the CD could hold over 600MB compared to the Nintendo Cartridge of approx 30MB and many gaming houses made full use of that. In addition Sony in those days bent over backwards with supporting gaming houses unlike Nintendo who was quite arrogant and tried to dictate prices. Sounds familiar, when we fast forward to 2007 and the attitudes of Sony and Nintendo reversed.
If we look at the PS2 which everyone will have to admit was an incredible success. Sony made the decision to make the reader DVD (single and double) as well as having the ability to read CD's and PS1 games. If you looked at the price of a DVD burner and media it was an expensive exercise to pirate early PS2 games although it certainly could be done since the copy protection was cracked fairly early in the consoles life.
Even today with the PS3, pirating a PS3 game is not that easy and even if you could the price of the media is not cheap although it is certainly more robust then a DVD. Surprisingly you can actually buy BD burners for a lot less than US$200 and for those people who have a PC with a decent graphics card and 24" 1080p monitor (under US$250) you have a very nice entertainment centre although IMHO I would only rent BD movies rather then buy them (my sentiments with DVD as well) since I can rent BD at the same price of DVD's and I know BD's are going to be in much better condition than the equivalent DVD due to their protective surface.
I plan on getting it and am damned glad I have an NTSC XBox.
That's nice but what has that got to do with the article since there wasn't any mention of the US getting the Ghostbusters game exclusively. Having an Xbox (this is dead anyway) or Xbox360 NTSC or PAL will still require you waiting six months or more. I have said this many time before that having a HDTV sort of negates the NTSC or PAL formats unless you only have a SDTV and then why would you have a PS3 or an Xbox360? Of course the PS2 and the Wii (again at least another six months wait) is still either NTSC or PAL.
Cheaper would be to buy a mod chip and import the US version. (I'm not a big console user these days, but I assume this is still possible).
Why would you do this for the PS3 unless you want to pirate the game. All PS3 games are effectively region free and the only issue you would find is if you only had a standard Def TV but since the PS3 and the Xbox360 support High Def TV's there is no issue with importing PS3 games from anywhere in the world. Using a PS3 or Xbox360 on an SDTV IMHO is just a waste and in some cases the result is not that good.
Personally I don't mind waiting for a game since PS3 and Xbox games normally drop in price by 50% or more within 6 months although the same cannot be said for Nintendo AAA games (I am still waiting for the "Twilight Princess" to drop at least 50% for the Gamecube). If a game is mediocre or poor then no matter which console the games is for they tend to drop in price fairly quickly and the Wii is getting plenty of those.
Still the game that is being discussed is Ghostbusters which may do well although personally I don't think it will no matter what platform. From my own personal experience games based on movies or TV shows don't do all that well but in this case you never know.
Maybe you have no idea how hard it is to learn a song for a performance let alone the effort it requires to write an arrangement of a piece of a completely new song from scratch.
Writing a song can take anything from a few hours to weeks, however any songwriter does not work in a vacuum meaning they can take inspiration from anywhere including other songs or even commercial tunes. To take this one step further what is the difference between a commercial (ie. jungles) songwriter to what we can loosely call a mainstream songwriter? Answer there is very little difference.
This is not to say that some songs today aren't trivial although IMHO many are, however you need to also know who is the writer, where do they get their inspiration from and who is going to sing the lyrics or in some cases who or what band or orchestra is going to play the music. There are many people normally involved in the production and execution of a song and who is really to say who is the most deserving of receiving royalties from the sale of said song. In most cases it is the music company that get the lion's share although the singer may get some titbits while the rest get virtually nothing.
Today most people judge a song on who sings it not the backing musicians, technicians, infrastructure and sales people who do provide support which can go a long way to make a singer famous. Even the songwriter is normally ignored unless you are that extremely rare singer/songwriter. Overall it really is the record companies that mainly benefit from extended copyright not the people who put their heart and soul into the work.
Personally I never pay for music although I never pirate it, preferring to listen to it on the TV or radio which as far as I am concerned is my right. Of course I don't object to recording off the TV which is quite legal as well. Yes, record companies don't like people like myself since they don't make any money off me even though I don't do anything illegal. For people who want to pay for music via down loads such as iTunes then that is their prerogative and their money and I don't have any issues with that.
You mean Mario Galaxy, Wii Play (Duck Hunt+) and Metroid Prime 3? To be honest, I think Nintendo is the only one who has stuck to what they're good at: Making good games.
An example of Nintendo games I liked were Zelda 1 followed by Zelda 2 which was different and I liked it because of this, however Zelda 3 for the SNES was more along the same lines as Zelda 1 and although still enjoyable with better graphics I felt it lacked something. Zelda for the N64 was a change since it went to 3D graphics and I definitely liked it. Wind Waker for the Gamecube IMHO was sort of different again but those times sailing got very boring. I never got Zelda, Twilight Princess since the Gamecube was being phased out and what was annoying the game was only marginally dropped in price after a few years till it got to the stage I could not be bothered any more. I can just as easily apply what I said to games like Metroid as well.
As for Duck Hunt on the NES, great game for a few hours and ok for a party but after a short while it is embarrassing to even play. Mario and even Polkemon are not games I like so I won't comment. Is that making good games? Well IMHO no but many people will disagree with me.
So aren't they simply covering this under warranty because they have to?
All companies normally carry out testing and quality assurance on all products they manufacture. By using fairly simple and some not so simple statistical analysis a company can determine the reliability and thus possible failure rate of a product over time. Once an acceptable failure rate is determined then the potential failure and subsequent replacement or repair of a product is actually factored into the total cost of that product to the customer over the so called warranty period, which can be anything from 12 months (most of the world) to lifetime which could be something that is very difficult to destroy.
When you look at electronic components a 1% or less failure rate over the life of that product's warranty period is normally acceptable and can result in a profitable product for the company. Once failure rates go up within a warranty period the company can loose credibility and even make losses.
It is possible for the consumer to get what is called an extended warranty however you have to pay for this. It must be realised that no insurance company would offer an extended warranty if the product had more than 5% failure rate although this does depend on what the insurance company deems an acceptable failure rate over the extension period since the longer the extended period the greater the chance of failure. Over time all products will suffer 100% failure rate however all manufacturers try to make that time as long as possible since it makes for good business sense.
I have read that Microsoft considers 10% failure over a one year period is the industry standard. This is totally wrong, less than 1% (depends on the product and country) is acceptable and less than 0.1% is preferable since that will result in less returns and more profits for the company. Basically Microsoft has adopted their so called software standard of ship early and we will fix it later, however software is radically different to hardware and customers do notice this. What is amazing is that people put up with this in the US but if Microsoft doesn't get a handle on this quickly they are going to loose credibility if they have not already and this will hurt them badly.
Learning how to use Gimp verses PhotoShop, Firefox verses MS IE, Thunderbird or Evolution verses Outlook or Open Office verses MS Office however in the Corporate World it would be more beneficial learning how to use the basics of an Office software suite than learning how to use an image manipulation tool unless you job requires this and you would be in a very small minority. What you do at home is your business.
Actually you can get PhotoShop, MS Outlook (although I would say why) and MS Office to run on Linux if you wish. The only downside is you have to pay (cough) for these products while their Open Source equivalents cost nothing unless you want support. For that matter you can get all the Open Source products to run under MS Windows if you so wish and still pay nothing unless you want support.
I have seen corporate lock-in on Microsoft products which allows many companies and vendors to say there is no Linux equivalent. My answer to any vendors trying this is to say "Oh I guess your not interested in a few million dollars, I can go elsewhere". That is the type of freedom Linux distributions offer and many countries are now starting to realise this even if it means getting a better discount since Microsoft is offering fantastic deals to prevent Linux taking hold.
As for people training on Microsoft Office first. Once someone is trained on MS Office they can easily crossover to Open Office with little or no training and vice versa since the majority of people only used 5% to 20% what an Office suite is capable off. It is only the MS Office so called power user who are very much in the minority that cling stubbornly to MS Office and force this on all, which IMHO results in unnecessary corporate expenditure.
I must be noted that I am only talking about MS Office verses Open Office since both run on MS Windows. Since most PC's come already with MS Windows pre-installed Linux is more or less locked out, however MS Office costs while Open Office does not and the differences for most people are not that great hence many smaller firms can save considerable money by just installing Open Office on their MS Windows machines.
My attitude to "Oh it does not look like Windows" is depending if I fell sarcastic or not ask what version of Windows or failing that point to the door:)
I wouldn't be so sure. Right now, Windows XP is dominating the desktop, both in the home and in the corporate office.
I do agree with you. I work for a Fortune 500 company and we do have the option of using Linux however this is rather pointless since many of the corporate tools force you to use MS Win XP or even Vista. I don't really have much choice but to use Win XP on my corporate laptop although it is dual boot and I can do 95% of everything I am required to do on a Linux distribution but that last 5% forces you back to a Microsoft solution. At least my own personal laptop has Fedora 10 and at home I can do 100% of what I want to do using this particular Linux distribution. In fact any Linux distribution would suit my needs at home it is just Fedora suits my home and work needs.
As for MS Win XP I have no end of trouble with it even after a fresh install by our NT team although I could have easily installed it myself, it is just that I can now say that the issues I get are not my problem anymore. Most of the people I know have issues with MS Windows PC's but stoically put up with it, why? I think these people have just given up. What is even more amazing is my corporate laptop is newer, has better specs and is more expensive than my home laptop which as far as I am concerned is so much nicer to use.
As for piracy I pirate all my Linux applications legally:)
At work we recently ordered a Dell Precision Mobile Workstation (forget which exact model it is) with Red Hat Linux preinstalled. When we got it we found that it did not have the necessary drivers for the Ethernet port (wireless worked fine) or the audio output device. Going to Dell's and Red Hat's web site resulted in nothing.
Ah I see you problem, you brought a Dell:) We use HP workstations and blades and everything works with Redhat V4 and V5 as well as CentOS V5. I actually use Fedora 10 on my HP laptop and everything works including Wireless, sound and the inbuilt camera.
I blame Dell here for being to lazy to ensure quality of product. Techies may be the primary market for the product, but techies don't want to spend time fixing someone else's fuck-ups either.
You are dead right here, when a vendor sell a product everything should work. This is pure laziness which borders on the criminal. Actually most HP commercial hardware usually sips sans OS so you have to install your own which if you know what you are doing is quite quick and easy to do.
Selling linux to someone because it lowers cost will do nothing to increase the user base. Someone who has never used it has no idea what to do with it and once you tell them that they can't buy any apps at their local Wal-Mart, they panic and hand it to the first person that will give them their money back.
The problem with having Linux on the desktop is actually the person who uses Linux. Most people have the attitude of "It's not like Windows" and are not willing to learn something different. The only way this will change is when Government agencies mandate Linux for all their office machines and while this is actually happening with varying degrees of success in some countries Microsoft OS's dominate in major commercial hubs (read USA) so it is no wonder that Linux is in for a difficult time to get adopted on the desktop.
Actually many people buy an netbook thinking that this machine will have the same performance of a fully featured Laptop and are usually disappointed when it won't play latest Windows games or run more speciality (read pirated) software. Oh I am not talking about Linux netbooks I am talking about XP netbooks.
It is actually amazing the number of people who buy a laptop then complain bitterly when it wont do what a gaming rig will do. Now add Linux into the equation and unfortunately Linux will loose since it won't run the latest Windows games or some speciality (Windows only) software.
Here in Australia you can't get a netbook with Linux unless you go to a speciality store. Still if you are willing to use Google for a few minutes you can find those stores and save up to A$100 compared to the equivalent netbook in a department store running XP. This is not to say that XP is actually cheaper than Linux, I have seen speciality stores where the XP version of the netbook was the same price as the Linux version effectively making the cost of XP zero dollars and if you take into account some sort of virus protection and Open/Star Office this leads to the conclusion that Microsoft is subsidising heavily.
To me it looks like Microsoft is willing to loose or forgo money if it means it can prevent Linux form making any inroads into what it assumes is it's exclusive territory. Of course it has to be careful otherwise it may find itself coming under investigation since in many countries it is still classified as a monopolist.
I have not played the PS3 version of Siren. I think I was turned off by the original PS2 version which I found to be interesting in concept, the graphics excellent and quite different to other survival horror games, but I found the game boring after a while that I lost interest. While this is my perspective other people did like it which is fine by me.
As for a new Silent Hill well I liked the original game on the PS1 and some of the other PS2 releases but once you start to get lots of versions the franchise IMHO start to go downhill. This is not to say that all franchised games steadily go downhill there are some which may actually be much better than the original. Of course deciding if a game is good is up to the player, many players will love a particular franchise while others hate it.
Actually the article is quite interesting going as far as stating that cash strapped developers are also targeting the PS2 and the Wii rather than target the PS3 or the Xbox360 because these machines target the Hi-Def TV demographic. This never ceases to amaze me since the same companies will target PC's which have at least the display equivalent of 720p since the late 1990's so stating that Hi-Def is too expensive to code for is just a cop-out.
Still since I have a BC PS3 I may buy this game and enjoy the the unscaled game on my Hi-Def TV. Actually I find that many PS2 games do look even better played via a BC PS3 to a HDTV so much so that the game is much more fun to play, however I have always stated that a good game with good graphics is normally a good game, while a good game with excellent graphics is an above average game but a poor game with excellent graphics is a game that stinks.
In Australia were I live we can buy Linux netbooks quite easily if you know were to look, however most people don't and most upmarket stores only stock the Win XP models. From my personal perspective why would you buy a netbook from a department store that is AU$100 dearer than what I can get from smaller store.
If you look at this site (pdf file) you can see that the Windows version is exactly the same price as the Linux one - see below:
Asus EeePC 7" EEEPC 4G 701SD Linux+Open office "Black" "VIC ONLY" - $299
Asus EeePC 7" 701SD Linux + 4GB SD + Free USB Mouse "White" - $319
Asus EeePC 7" XP HOME + 4GB SD + Free USB Mouse" - $319
Looking at the zero difference between the Linux and XP Home eddition you could actually draw the conclusion that Win XP Home is worth exactly AU$0.00. What is even more interesting is even if you look at the 9" EeePC (AU$499) from the same shop which has Win XP, the Office Suite is actually Star Office so Open Source software still gets a plug even though Star Office is not exactly free unlike Open Office which is basically the same thing.
I think it would be relatively safe to say that Microsoft is quite willing to give away Win XP for free if it prevents people from considering Linux.
The problem with the netbooks is while they started off small and cheap they seem to be approaching the same price and size of a standard laptop which sort of negates the advantage of a netbook. I suppose this does make Microsoft happy.
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The Magic Wand has been around for years.
I can't believe that Microsoft is abusing the patent system.
You are right I can't believe that Microsoft would try to patent, copyright or even register words that have been around for a very long time, like "Office", "Word" or Windows" ... ?
:)
Err! never mind.
But who would see colour anyway? Is this another Windows thing?
Not everyone actually uses Microsoft Exchange so what may display correctly in MS Exchange may not display correctly in other mailers. After all it is rather pointless to spend that time composing an email with colours, fonts and pretty pictures when the person to whom you are sending can't see them.
And there is not a single real-world e-mail client I know that still can't do basic HTML. Where do you live? in the 80s? We techies usually aren't so conservative. So why here?
You know that are some people that still use simple mailers such as alpine, mutt and even "mail" to name a few and they can do their job in many ways quicker and more efficiently than people who use other so called more sophisticated mailers. The problem is many people resort to using coloured fonts and pretty pictures and forget about how to actually use their language to communicate.
It's things like color fonts in email that really put a smile on my face every day.
Dammit! I must be doing something wrong, how do I get my ASCII text to change colour? :)
The author is entitled to his opinion but vmail is IMHO the best way to leave messages and if the person you are leaving vmail for is professional you will get an answer back fairly quickly. You only start to have problems when the person you are leaving the vmail for or getting email from does not quite naturally speak the same language as you or has a strong accent that is difficult for the parties to understand.
Vmail is just one of many communication methodologies, each one has advantages and disadvantages and choosing one or more that work well with the way you do business is very much a personal experience. What communication methods work well with one may not work well with others.
"Atari is committed to maximising the launch of the Ghostbusters videogame across Europe," offered Jim Wilson, VP of Worldwide Marketing for Atari.
I don't know if you can read that the release of Ghostbusters is European only and even if it was you can import the PS3 version to any country in the world since it will be region free. The only problem you would find is the language or localisation, so you would have to be particular from which country you import the game from. The PS2 release will be locked to regions (it always was) so you have to be careful here.
I imagine everyone in Europe will just download the PC version from the nearest Torrent tracker.
If they were going to pirate the game they would do it anyway no matter if the game was released across all platforms.
Besides that I hardly imagine Ghostbusters being an AAA title
I definitely agree with you on this, since I have found that most games based on a movie or TV series don't do all that well. Still you never know.
PS1 succeeded because of rampant piracy, then network effects. every man and his dog mod chipped his ps1, and bought a few legit games and downloaded a lot. Also legitimate game prices, ps1 games were a lot cheaper being on cds than their cartridge equivalent.
Err no! Rampant piracy would kill the PS1 since software houses would not make games for this console because they would not make any money. People chipped their PS1's so they could play imported or region locked games. Sure there was piracy but this was fairly small since CD burners and even the media in the the mid to late 1990's were not that cheap.
You are correct in that CD's were much cheaper than cartridges at the time but the CD could hold over 600MB compared to the Nintendo Cartridge of approx 30MB and many gaming houses made full use of that. In addition Sony in those days bent over backwards with supporting gaming houses unlike Nintendo who was quite arrogant and tried to dictate prices. Sounds familiar, when we fast forward to 2007 and the attitudes of Sony and Nintendo reversed.
If we look at the PS2 which everyone will have to admit was an incredible success. Sony made the decision to make the reader DVD (single and double) as well as having the ability to read CD's and PS1 games. If you looked at the price of a DVD burner and media it was an expensive exercise to pirate early PS2 games although it certainly could be done since the copy protection was cracked fairly early in the consoles life.
Even today with the PS3, pirating a PS3 game is not that easy and even if you could the price of the media is not cheap although it is certainly more robust then a DVD. Surprisingly you can actually buy BD burners for a lot less than US$200 and for those people who have a PC with a decent graphics card and 24" 1080p monitor (under US$250) you have a very nice entertainment centre although IMHO I would only rent BD movies rather then buy them (my sentiments with DVD as well) since I can rent BD at the same price of DVD's and I know BD's are going to be in much better condition than the equivalent DVD due to their protective surface.
I plan on getting it and am damned glad I have an NTSC XBox.
That's nice but what has that got to do with the article since there wasn't any mention of the US getting the Ghostbusters game exclusively. Having an Xbox (this is dead anyway) or Xbox360 NTSC or PAL will still require you waiting six months or more. I have said this many time before that having a HDTV sort of negates the NTSC or PAL formats unless you only have a SDTV and then why would you have a PS3 or an Xbox360? Of course the PS2 and the Wii (again at least another six months wait) is still either NTSC or PAL.
Cheaper would be to buy a mod chip and import the US version. (I'm not a big console user these days, but I assume this is still possible).
Why would you do this for the PS3 unless you want to pirate the game. All PS3 games are effectively region free and the only issue you would find is if you only had a standard Def TV but since the PS3 and the Xbox360 support High Def TV's there is no issue with importing PS3 games from anywhere in the world. Using a PS3 or Xbox360 on an SDTV IMHO is just a waste and in some cases the result is not that good.
Personally I don't mind waiting for a game since PS3 and Xbox games normally drop in price by 50% or more within 6 months although the same cannot be said for Nintendo AAA games (I am still waiting for the "Twilight Princess" to drop at least 50% for the Gamecube). If a game is mediocre or poor then no matter which console the games is for they tend to drop in price fairly quickly and the Wii is getting plenty of those.
Still the game that is being discussed is Ghostbusters which may do well although personally I don't think it will no matter what platform. From my own personal experience games based on movies or TV shows don't do all that well but in this case you never know.
Maybe you have no idea how hard it is to learn a song for a performance let alone the effort it requires to write an arrangement of a piece of a completely new song from scratch.
Writing a song can take anything from a few hours to weeks, however any songwriter does not work in a vacuum meaning they can take inspiration from anywhere including other songs or even commercial tunes. To take this one step further what is the difference between a commercial (ie. jungles) songwriter to what we can loosely call a mainstream songwriter? Answer there is very little difference.
This is not to say that some songs today aren't trivial although IMHO many are, however you need to also know who is the writer, where do they get their inspiration from and who is going to sing the lyrics or in some cases who or what band or orchestra is going to play the music. There are many people normally involved in the production and execution of a song and who is really to say who is the most deserving of receiving royalties from the sale of said song. In most cases it is the music company that get the lion's share although the singer may get some titbits while the rest get virtually nothing.
Today most people judge a song on who sings it not the backing musicians, technicians, infrastructure and sales people who do provide support which can go a long way to make a singer famous. Even the songwriter is normally ignored unless you are that extremely rare singer/songwriter. Overall it really is the record companies that mainly benefit from extended copyright not the people who put their heart and soul into the work.
Personally I never pay for music although I never pirate it, preferring to listen to it on the TV or radio which as far as I am concerned is my right. Of course I don't object to recording off the TV which is quite legal as well. Yes, record companies don't like people like myself since they don't make any money off me even though I don't do anything illegal. For people who want to pay for music via down loads such as iTunes then that is their prerogative and their money and I don't have any issues with that.
You mean Mario Galaxy, Wii Play (Duck Hunt+) and Metroid Prime 3? To be honest, I think Nintendo is the only one who has stuck to what they're good at: Making good games.
An example of Nintendo games I liked were Zelda 1 followed by Zelda 2 which was different and I liked it because of this, however Zelda 3 for the SNES was more along the same lines as Zelda 1 and although still enjoyable with better graphics I felt it lacked something. Zelda for the N64 was a change since it went to 3D graphics and I definitely liked it. Wind Waker for the Gamecube IMHO was sort of different again but those times sailing got very boring. I never got Zelda, Twilight Princess since the Gamecube was being phased out and what was annoying the game was only marginally dropped in price after a few years till it got to the stage I could not be bothered any more. I can just as easily apply what I said to games like Metroid as well.
As for Duck Hunt on the NES, great game for a few hours and ok for a party but after a short while it is embarrassing to even play. Mario and even Polkemon are not games I like so I won't comment. Is that making good games? Well IMHO no but many people will disagree with me.
So aren't they simply covering this under warranty because they have to?
All companies normally carry out testing and quality assurance on all products they manufacture. By using fairly simple and some not so simple statistical analysis a company can determine the reliability and thus possible failure rate of a product over time. Once an acceptable failure rate is determined then the potential failure and subsequent replacement or repair of a product is actually factored into the total cost of that product to the customer over the so called warranty period, which can be anything from 12 months (most of the world) to lifetime which could be something that is very difficult to destroy.
When you look at electronic components a 1% or less failure rate over the life of that product's warranty period is normally acceptable and can result in a profitable product for the company. Once failure rates go up within a warranty period the company can loose credibility and even make losses.
It is possible for the consumer to get what is called an extended warranty however you have to pay for this. It must be realised that no insurance company would offer an extended warranty if the product had more than 5% failure rate although this does depend on what the insurance company deems an acceptable failure rate over the extension period since the longer the extended period the greater the chance of failure. Over time all products will suffer 100% failure rate however all manufacturers try to make that time as long as possible since it makes for good business sense.
I have read that Microsoft considers 10% failure over a one year period is the industry standard. This is totally wrong, less than 1% (depends on the product and country) is acceptable and less than 0.1% is preferable since that will result in less returns and more profits for the company. Basically Microsoft has adopted their so called software standard of ship early and we will fix it later, however software is radically different to hardware and customers do notice this. What is amazing is that people put up with this in the US but if Microsoft doesn't get a handle on this quickly they are going to loose credibility if they have not already and this will hurt them badly.
Learning how to use Gimp verses PhotoShop, Firefox verses MS IE, Thunderbird or Evolution verses Outlook or Open Office verses MS Office however in the Corporate World it would be more beneficial learning how to use the basics of an Office software suite than learning how to use an image manipulation tool unless you job requires this and you would be in a very small minority. What you do at home is your business.
Actually you can get PhotoShop, MS Outlook (although I would say why) and MS Office to run on Linux if you wish. The only downside is you have to pay (cough) for these products while their Open Source equivalents cost nothing unless you want support. For that matter you can get all the Open Source products to run under MS Windows if you so wish and still pay nothing unless you want support.
I have seen corporate lock-in on Microsoft products which allows many companies and vendors to say there is no Linux equivalent. My answer to any vendors trying this is to say "Oh I guess your not interested in a few million dollars, I can go elsewhere". That is the type of freedom Linux distributions offer and many countries are now starting to realise this even if it means getting a better discount since Microsoft is offering fantastic deals to prevent Linux taking hold.
As for people training on Microsoft Office first. Once someone is trained on MS Office they can easily crossover to Open Office with little or no training and vice versa since the majority of people only used 5% to 20% what an Office suite is capable off. It is only the MS Office so called power user who are very much in the minority that cling stubbornly to MS Office and force this on all, which IMHO results in unnecessary corporate expenditure.
:)
I must be noted that I am only talking about MS Office verses Open Office since both run on MS Windows. Since most PC's come already with MS Windows pre-installed Linux is more or less locked out, however MS Office costs while Open Office does not and the differences for most people are not that great hence many smaller firms can save considerable money by just installing Open Office on their MS Windows machines.
My attitude to "Oh it does not look like Windows" is depending if I fell sarcastic or not ask what version of Windows or failing that point to the door
What and have pictures of a fanatical Microsofty beating a cute penguin chick with the leg of a broken chair. Think of the penguins :)
I wouldn't be so sure. Right now, Windows XP is dominating the desktop, both in the home and in the corporate office.
I do agree with you. I work for a Fortune 500 company and we do have the option of using Linux however this is rather pointless since many of the corporate tools force you to use MS Win XP or even Vista. I don't really have much choice but to use Win XP on my corporate laptop although it is dual boot and I can do 95% of everything I am required to do on a Linux distribution but that last 5% forces you back to a Microsoft solution. At least my own personal laptop has Fedora 10 and at home I can do 100% of what I want to do using this particular Linux distribution. In fact any Linux distribution would suit my needs at home it is just Fedora suits my home and work needs.
:)
As for MS Win XP I have no end of trouble with it even after a fresh install by our NT team although I could have easily installed it myself, it is just that I can now say that the issues I get are not my problem anymore. Most of the people I know have issues with MS Windows PC's but stoically put up with it, why? I think these people have just given up. What is even more amazing is my corporate laptop is newer, has better specs and is more expensive than my home laptop which as far as I am concerned is so much nicer to use.
As for piracy I pirate all my Linux applications legally
Interface-wise, Windows is STILL playing catchup to where the Macintosh was 12 years ago.
Err no! Windows is still playing catchup to where Macs and even Unix GUI's were almost 25 years ago.
At work we recently ordered a Dell Precision Mobile Workstation (forget which exact model it is) with Red Hat Linux preinstalled. When we got it we found that it did not have the necessary drivers for the Ethernet port (wireless worked fine) or the audio output device. Going to Dell's and Red Hat's web site resulted in nothing.
Ah I see you problem, you brought a Dell :) We use HP workstations and blades and everything works with Redhat V4 and V5 as well as CentOS V5. I actually use Fedora 10 on my HP laptop and everything works including Wireless, sound and the inbuilt camera.
I blame Dell here for being to lazy to ensure quality of product. Techies may be the primary market for the product, but techies don't want to spend time fixing someone else's fuck-ups either.
You are dead right here, when a vendor sell a product everything should work. This is pure laziness which borders on the criminal. Actually most HP commercial hardware usually sips sans OS so you have to install your own which if you know what you are doing is quite quick and easy to do.
Selling linux to someone because it lowers cost will do nothing to increase the user base. Someone who has never used it has no idea what to do with it and once you tell them that they can't buy any apps at their local Wal-Mart, they panic and hand it to the first person that will give them their money back.
The problem with having Linux on the desktop is actually the person who uses Linux. Most people have the attitude of "It's not like Windows" and are not willing to learn something different. The only way this will change is when Government agencies mandate Linux for all their office machines and while this is actually happening with varying degrees of success in some countries Microsoft OS's dominate in major commercial hubs (read USA) so it is no wonder that Linux is in for a difficult time to get adopted on the desktop.
Actually many people buy an netbook thinking that this machine will have the same performance of a fully featured Laptop and are usually disappointed when it won't play latest Windows games or run more speciality (read pirated) software. Oh I am not talking about Linux netbooks I am talking about XP netbooks.
It is actually amazing the number of people who buy a laptop then complain bitterly when it wont do what a gaming rig will do. Now add Linux into the equation and unfortunately Linux will loose since it won't run the latest Windows games or some speciality (Windows only) software.
Here in Australia you can't get a netbook with Linux unless you go to a speciality store. Still if you are willing to use Google for a few minutes you can find those stores and save up to A$100 compared to the equivalent netbook in a department store running XP. This is not to say that XP is actually cheaper than Linux, I have seen speciality stores where the XP version of the netbook was the same price as the Linux version effectively making the cost of XP zero dollars and if you take into account some sort of virus protection and Open/Star Office this leads to the conclusion that Microsoft is subsidising heavily.
To me it looks like Microsoft is willing to loose or forgo money if it means it can prevent Linux form making any inroads into what it assumes is it's exclusive territory. Of course it has to be careful otherwise it may find itself coming under investigation since in many countries it is still classified as a monopolist.
which are worth $30/ea now.
Actually if you look at some of the prices of netbooks with XP HOME on against the same ones with Linux the price of XP drops to zero dollars or less.
I have not played the PS3 version of Siren. I think I was turned off by the original PS2 version which I found to be interesting in concept, the graphics excellent and quite different to other survival horror games, but I found the game boring after a while that I lost interest. While this is my perspective other people did like it which is fine by me.
As for a new Silent Hill well I liked the original game on the PS1 and some of the other PS2 releases but once you start to get lots of versions the franchise IMHO start to go downhill. This is not to say that all franchised games steadily go downhill there are some which may actually be much better than the original. Of course deciding if a game is good is up to the player, many players will love a particular franchise while others hate it.
Actually the article is quite interesting going as far as stating that cash strapped developers are also targeting the PS2 and the Wii rather than target the PS3 or the Xbox360 because these machines target the Hi-Def TV demographic. This never ceases to amaze me since the same companies will target PC's which have at least the display equivalent of 720p since the late 1990's so stating that Hi-Def is too expensive to code for is just a cop-out.
Still since I have a BC PS3 I may buy this game and enjoy the the unscaled game on my Hi-Def TV. Actually I find that many PS2 games do look even better played via a BC PS3 to a HDTV so much so that the game is much more fun to play, however I have always stated that a good game with good graphics is normally a good game, while a good game with excellent graphics is an above average game but a poor game with excellent graphics is a game that stinks.
Statistics are a fun think. 98.51% of all statistics are completely made up.
(including this one)
No that is not true 95% of my imaginary friends tell me that, the other 4% insist that it is true while the other 2% can't make up their mind :)
In Australia were I live we can buy Linux netbooks quite easily if you know were to look, however most people don't and most upmarket stores only stock the Win XP models. From my personal perspective why would you buy a netbook from a department store that is AU$100 dearer than what I can get from smaller store.
If you look at this site (pdf file) you can see that the Windows version is exactly the same price as the Linux one - see below:
Asus EeePC 7" EEEPC 4G 701SD Linux+Open office "Black" "VIC ONLY" - $299
Asus EeePC 7" 701SD Linux + 4GB SD + Free USB Mouse "White" - $319
Asus EeePC 7" XP HOME + 4GB SD + Free USB Mouse" - $319
Looking at the zero difference between the Linux and XP Home eddition you could actually draw the conclusion that Win XP Home is worth exactly AU$0.00. What is even more interesting is even if you look at the 9" EeePC (AU$499) from the same shop which has Win XP, the Office Suite is actually Star Office so Open Source software still gets a plug even though Star Office is not exactly free unlike Open Office which is basically the same thing.
I think it would be relatively safe to say that Microsoft is quite willing to give away Win XP for free if it prevents people from considering Linux.
The problem with the netbooks is while they started off small and cheap they seem to be approaching the same price and size of a standard laptop which sort of negates the advantage of a netbook. I suppose this does make Microsoft happy.
Note: At the time of writing AU$1.00 = US$0.7088.