Maybe microsoft is trying to put out the best product it can without having to one-up other companies?
In all seriousness, perhaps they should wait until apple is forced to open up their drm scheme so that they can compete in the installed market. Everyone knows that ipods have a life span of anywhere between 6 months and 2 years before either being dropped, over used, or just used (anyone remember the battery issue?). If microsoft could come out with a cheaper substitute that worked with itunes, they'd probably replace people's 3rd or 4th ipod.
Gah! My grandpa was a civil engineer and after he passed, we went through his personal belongings, among them was a non-working hp-35 final model (i realize this now from the pictures on a link in the original article).
Had i realized that it was such a landmark calculator, i would have stowed it away for tinkering later, instead i thought it was like the ti-36 of a previous era and its either in the trash or in a box in the back of a storage locker.
Web apps are fun and all... Until my comcast tech decides to flip my interweb switch to OFF for 5 hours.
Then i'm glad i don't rely on ajax apps or anything to get work done. While corporate customers enjoy a level of reliability that the average home user doesn't even dream of, being chained to the internet, yes, being chained to hotspots or cell towers for mobile internet is a drawback that the average user can't consider.
While php and perl are great, people like to think they're somewhat self reliant, and relying on outside sources is good every so often, you don't hire consultants to do payroll for you.
The web apps are like consultants, you bring them in for activities that is too expensive to implement and are only needed for on demand, but you don't have them do mundane activities that you could hire someone full time and not lose money on.
let me say first: I love xp, i
That being said, what? "There's no point building [it] if nobody really wants it" modified quote. Without even leaving the gaming paradigm, only the hardware/console one. Let me list the following: Games Explorer, DX10 vista exclusivity.
Since when did microsoft care what people wanted? They make something and decide that people want it. Sounds like they can't figure out how to wiggle in between patents and make a license free motion controller or were told where they could put their motion tracker circuits by a few key devs.
When creative sued id to include eax in doom 3, some convoluted something or other, i don't know of anybody who used eax instead of the original doom3 sound engine. So the whole "use my products or i'll sue" thing didn't really work out.
Especially since vista nerfed eax like there's no tomorrow.
I wanna see that lawsuit, where creative sues microsoft to make eax work, but alas, no suit, only workarounds.
not contact the aclu, although that would be a good step 2, I'd hire an attorney because until they're hired, its not client/attorney privilege. Taking the letter to a lawyer that you haven't hired without any signatures is akin to flashing the letter to random people and hoping its not a breach of the gag order.
I'd hire an attorney and take the letter to him. Its questionable legal practice and a non-approved letter (no judge, no warrant, no due process), is only worth the paper and ink, nothing more.
They may see your non-cooperation and go through proper channels, but that's what the attorney is hired for. I'd reply that it'd be bad business practice to breach client information, but would happily cooperate with the courts if funneled through proper channels.
Name, rank, and serial number. All you gotta give.
Doesn't belkin have some 802.11 pre-N devices out there? Are owners of those devices doomed to a life of security via obscurity?
Although i think that making wireless g implicitly (or giving the appearance of this) compatible with b was one of the greatest moves to allow for adoption of new tech. I know that the b/g compatibility is probably nearing speed and range limits (or ran right into them), but i'm also disappointed that you'll have to get combo compatibility with combo cards.
That sounds familiar, water is only 11% hydrogen by weight, but nobody seems to have cared about that when they wanted to use water as a base fuel for cold fusion.
Also in the news, Sony reiterates that it has won the high def dvd wars. The head PR Had the amazon.com stats page open and had this to say "LOOK! LOOK! SEE! WE ARE AUSOM!!!" as he pointed to casino royale.
However, i can understand the need for a fully searchable sms archive and address book (oh goodness! how will i ever find out which girls sent me a message "u r a qt"!?), and i also understand google's impulse to get a phone into the market before microsoft, I'd prefer to let them do what they do best - Create really nifty and usable online apps that cease to work when you can't get online. I don't use vonage for my phone line because i can't fathom my voice communications being dependent on my online connectivity and not the other way around. I've seen dsl not work but still be able to take/make calls, but never vice versa. So, unless the gphone works on mobile carriers (good) and internet access through that way, I'm not sure it'll do very well.
For the record: Competing with iphone = good. Competing with vonage? Redundant and i'm not sure how google can improve an internet phone in any useful way unless they roll out a phone over internet service to compete on a full scale.
Why would the cable/phone companies be worried about television signals?
Last i checked, TCP was a 2 way communication for every message. Every packet is sent and gets an acknowledgment or some message if not received (like only go 13 out of 15 packets). Also, last i checked, my computer doesn't currently have the equipment to transmit television signal over a mile. So, how are those packets going to be sent back? Cable? Phone line? Unless google finds a way to deliver the internet via a non tcp/ip format or puts a 1.21 gigawatt antenna in every home, the whole error checking feature of tcp/ip is going to keep a bit of fat for the phone/cable companies.
Here on the east coast, we don't have fry's electronics. Where i'm at, the nearest circuit city is in the next city, the best buy usually has like 3 video cards, 1 sub-par motherboard, and approximately 23 hojillion music cd's, dvd's, and washing machines.
For all its shortcomings, when my hard drive failed, i went to compusa to get back up and running the same day, when the 9700pro didn't offer an oem, compusa ran a special that was cheaper than the internet in general (same price + shipping). With a corporate buyer, they beat the other big box stores in both volume pricing and responsive service (usually 2-3 account reps on staff in the one by work).
Reasons why i'll miss it aside, I've gotta say that compusa is failing for a reason. The corporate office treats its parts, employees, and customers as commodities. Refunds are a pain if its open box (like a laptop keeps overheating, you gotta take it in 3 times, and the 4th time it fails you get a refund), the repairs are shoddy and if its dll hell, rather than find and replace the dll or do some other moderately advanced repair, they'll charge you 200 bucks for a reinstall of windows, provided you still have the disks. The employees will rarely be honest or knowledgeable about if a product is in stock, and most likely will say yes just to get your hopes up and you in the door.
I've also heard stories where the cashiers are told to cheat the sales people out of commissions for big computer sales, where they'll "forget" to punch in a 3 digit code that signifies bonus to the sales rep. No wonder you get minimum help for minimum wage.
Gets out of bed, goes to the fridge, pulls out a soda and pours a coffee, then sits at the computer for 12-20 hours stopping only to walk to the door to receive food deliveries, go to the fridge to get another soda, and to the bathroom to remedy the situation that the previous two types of activities has caused?
Aero was an overhaul of the interface designed to sell copies due to the "wow" factor. I don't think that pretty widgets were meant to be a productivity booster, and any article that says that you can be productive on a mac for more than the generic things and like 2-3 specialized apps has a built in bias.
I'm still of the opinion that vista is a productivity booster only for the RIAA/MPAA and microsoft's stock.
I'd let the competitors build it and lease it from them. Why invest the capital in a network meant to keep the lines open for your customers when if you didn't, your competitor would have to invest the same capital, get an EU notice and then proceed to force them to let you lease the lines from them?
Who needs a subliminal jackpot flash that may or may not be proven to work when you have a 20' light up sign tallying the payout of the casino hovering a few feet above the slot machine trenches? Who needs a momentary flash when the payout trays are engineered so they ring extra loud and clear during a win that the entire casino floor can hear it?
Who needs subliminal advertising when the shortcut to riches is so ingrained into the psyche that this mere promise was enough to supply a city with excess revenue for over half a century before they decided to change gears into an entertainment destination?
I do, however, welcome our subliminal jackpot bearing one armed robotic masters/bandits.
5% This upstart stands a chance and gains market/mind share
25% They get bought up by a google competitor like msn or yahoo
20% They get bought up by google itself
50% The slashdot posts about this upstart will cause an increase in popularity and then bring their main servers to its knees trying to keep up with all the revenue free hits.
My other prediction? Apple rolls out an ad service called iPimp, hires Al gore and claims it invented the internet advertisement, the internet, and the advertisement.
Consoles probably obey different rules than handhelds. I think that a year of downtime could be fatal for a console (sega anyone?). I also think that the most important rule is that in handhelds, nintendo rules (this has been nearly the unquestioned rule since tetris shipped with the gameboy). However, in consoles, the one that gets the most games wins. Its a self feeding cycle, the console that gets the most games, gets the most devs, who then make more games. With handhelds, while people were waiting for the ds to find it stride, they were fiddling with ipods and playing a nibbles clone on their cell phones.
Instead of buying a wii, I'm going to probably take the popular route of buying the xbox360 (not a fanboy of any system, really!), because of 3 reasons. Its affordable (bye sony), it's got the library i want, and its on the shelves (bye nintendo). Keep in mind, the last system i bought besides a ds lite was a sega dreamcast in 01 because it was 50 bucks and emulators were coming out so i could retire the nes without retiring its library.
Can they update the article to give a brief blurb on what ruby is? Or is it something that has become so commonplace in the past 2 weeks that i'm a doof for not knowing?
Cause i read this and immediately thought of the chick who premiered with ati's r9x00 series video cards.
The reason y2k was such a letdown was because everybody took heed of the media hype and patched their stuff. If there had been no hype before, there might have been the problems that the hype was warning about. (or not, sensationalism is sensationalism)
Its like you're driving along and there's a huge backup for miles because of an accident in the middle of the road after a bend. Now this huge backup may have slowed you down and made you aware that there was a problem. If it was just you and the wreck, you may have plowed into it if you weren't paying attention.
Same thing with this hype. We should tolerate the hype because the heightened coverage will get bosses talking to programmers about fixing the software, and it'll turn out to be nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe microsoft is trying to put out the best product it can without having to one-up other companies?
In all seriousness, perhaps they should wait until apple is forced to open up their drm scheme so that they can compete in the installed market. Everyone knows that ipods have a life span of anywhere between 6 months and 2 years before either being dropped, over used, or just used (anyone remember the battery issue?). If microsoft could come out with a cheaper substitute that worked with itunes, they'd probably replace people's 3rd or 4th ipod.
Gah! My grandpa was a civil engineer and after he passed, we went through his personal belongings, among them was a non-working hp-35 final model (i realize this now from the pictures on a link in the original article).
Had i realized that it was such a landmark calculator, i would have stowed it away for tinkering later, instead i thought it was like the ti-36 of a previous era and its either in the trash or in a box in the back of a storage locker.
Web apps are fun and all... Until my comcast tech decides to flip my interweb switch to OFF for 5 hours.
Then i'm glad i don't rely on ajax apps or anything to get work done. While corporate customers enjoy a level of reliability that the average home user doesn't even dream of, being chained to the internet, yes, being chained to hotspots or cell towers for mobile internet is a drawback that the average user can't consider.
While php and perl are great, people like to think they're somewhat self reliant, and relying on outside sources is good every so often, you don't hire consultants to do payroll for you.
The web apps are like consultants, you bring them in for activities that is too expensive to implement and are only needed for on demand, but you don't have them do mundane activities that you could hire someone full time and not lose money on.
So if games will be the new mtv, how long until geeks can get cheap laughs by saying "Thats like guitar hero 8 playing MUSIC"?
let me say first: I love xp, i
That being said, what? "There's no point building [it] if nobody really wants it" modified quote. Without even leaving the gaming paradigm, only the hardware/console one. Let me list the following: Games Explorer, DX10 vista exclusivity.
Since when did microsoft care what people wanted? They make something and decide that people want it. Sounds like they can't figure out how to wiggle in between patents and make a license free motion controller or were told where they could put their motion tracker circuits by a few key devs.
But... i'll respond anyway...
When creative sued id to include eax in doom 3, some convoluted something or other, i don't know of anybody who used eax instead of the original doom3 sound engine. So the whole "use my products or i'll sue" thing didn't really work out.
Especially since vista nerfed eax like there's no tomorrow.
I wanna see that lawsuit, where creative sues microsoft to make eax work, but alas, no suit, only workarounds.
not contact the aclu, although that would be a good step 2, I'd hire an attorney because until they're hired, its not client/attorney privilege. Taking the letter to a lawyer that you haven't hired without any signatures is akin to flashing the letter to random people and hoping its not a breach of the gag order.
I'd hire an attorney and take the letter to him. Its questionable legal practice and a non-approved letter (no judge, no warrant, no due process), is only worth the paper and ink, nothing more.
They may see your non-cooperation and go through proper channels, but that's what the attorney is hired for. I'd reply that it'd be bad business practice to breach client information, but would happily cooperate with the courts if funneled through proper channels.
Name, rank, and serial number. All you gotta give.
i have the following code copyrighted, get out your wallets and pay up or i will sue!
If (x){
Now that you have seen my copyrighted code, anyone who uses the above code in their programs must pay me a nickel!!!
Hold on, I just got a whisper from my patent lawyer, apparently some firm has trademarked the bracket ({) and my copyright is invalid. Carry on.
Doesn't belkin have some 802.11 pre-N devices out there? Are owners of those devices doomed to a life of security via obscurity?
Although i think that making wireless g implicitly (or giving the appearance of this) compatible with b was one of the greatest moves to allow for adoption of new tech. I know that the b/g compatibility is probably nearing speed and range limits (or ran right into them), but i'm also disappointed that you'll have to get combo compatibility with combo cards.
9% hydrogen by weight?
That sounds familiar, water is only 11% hydrogen by weight, but nobody seems to have cared about that when they wanted to use water as a base fuel for cold fusion.
Also in the news, Sony reiterates that it has won the high def dvd wars. The head PR Had the amazon.com stats page open and had this to say "LOOK! LOOK! SEE! WE ARE AUSOM!!!" as he pointed to casino royale.
Hooray for gPhone!!!
I wonder who has that trademark?
However, i can understand the need for a fully searchable sms archive and address book (oh goodness! how will i ever find out which girls sent me a message "u r a qt"!?), and i also understand google's impulse to get a phone into the market before microsoft, I'd prefer to let them do what they do best - Create really nifty and usable online apps that cease to work when you can't get online. I don't use vonage for my phone line because i can't fathom my voice communications being dependent on my online connectivity and not the other way around. I've seen dsl not work but still be able to take/make calls, but never vice versa. So, unless the gphone works on mobile carriers (good) and internet access through that way, I'm not sure it'll do very well.
For the record: Competing with iphone = good. Competing with vonage? Redundant and i'm not sure how google can improve an internet phone in any useful way unless they roll out a phone over internet service to compete on a full scale.
Why would the cable/phone companies be worried about television signals?
Last i checked, TCP was a 2 way communication for every message. Every packet is sent and gets an acknowledgment or some message if not received (like only go 13 out of 15 packets). Also, last i checked, my computer doesn't currently have the equipment to transmit television signal over a mile. So, how are those packets going to be sent back? Cable? Phone line? Unless google finds a way to deliver the internet via a non tcp/ip format or puts a 1.21 gigawatt antenna in every home, the whole error checking feature of tcp/ip is going to keep a bit of fat for the phone/cable companies.
Here on the east coast, we don't have fry's electronics. Where i'm at, the nearest circuit city is in the next city, the best buy usually has like 3 video cards, 1 sub-par motherboard, and approximately 23 hojillion music cd's, dvd's, and washing machines.
For all its shortcomings, when my hard drive failed, i went to compusa to get back up and running the same day, when the 9700pro didn't offer an oem, compusa ran a special that was cheaper than the internet in general (same price + shipping). With a corporate buyer, they beat the other big box stores in both volume pricing and responsive service (usually 2-3 account reps on staff in the one by work).
Reasons why i'll miss it aside, I've gotta say that compusa is failing for a reason. The corporate office treats its parts, employees, and customers as commodities. Refunds are a pain if its open box (like a laptop keeps overheating, you gotta take it in 3 times, and the 4th time it fails you get a refund), the repairs are shoddy and if its dll hell, rather than find and replace the dll or do some other moderately advanced repair, they'll charge you 200 bucks for a reinstall of windows, provided you still have the disks. The employees will rarely be honest or knowledgeable about if a product is in stock, and most likely will say yes just to get your hopes up and you in the door.
I've also heard stories where the cashiers are told to cheat the sales people out of commissions for big computer sales, where they'll "forget" to punch in a 3 digit code that signifies bonus to the sales rep. No wonder you get minimum help for minimum wage.
Hmm, so, it walks like we do?
Gets out of bed, goes to the fridge, pulls out a soda and pours a coffee, then sits at the computer for 12-20 hours stopping only to walk to the door to receive food deliveries, go to the fridge to get another soda, and to the bathroom to remedy the situation that the previous two types of activities has caused?
Aero was an overhaul of the interface designed to sell copies due to the "wow" factor. I don't think that pretty widgets were meant to be a productivity booster, and any article that says that you can be productive on a mac for more than the generic things and like 2-3 specialized apps has a built in bias.
I'm still of the opinion that vista is a productivity booster only for the RIAA/MPAA and microsoft's stock.
I'd let the competitors build it and lease it from them. Why invest the capital in a network meant to keep the lines open for your customers when if you didn't, your competitor would have to invest the same capital, get an EU notice and then proceed to force them to let you lease the lines from them?
Who needs a subliminal jackpot flash that may or may not be proven to work when you have a 20' light up sign tallying the payout of the casino hovering a few feet above the slot machine trenches? Who needs a momentary flash when the payout trays are engineered so they ring extra loud and clear during a win that the entire casino floor can hear it?
Who needs subliminal advertising when the shortcut to riches is so ingrained into the psyche that this mere promise was enough to supply a city with excess revenue for over half a century before they decided to change gears into an entertainment destination?
I do, however, welcome our subliminal jackpot bearing one armed robotic masters/bandits.
"or what has changed since the first article was written?"
Vista's release and a massive advertising campaign/increase in revinue for microsoft partners?
5% This upstart stands a chance and gains market/mind share
25% They get bought up by a google competitor like msn or yahoo
20% They get bought up by google itself
50% The slashdot posts about this upstart will cause an increase in popularity and then bring their main servers to its knees trying to keep up with all the revenue free hits.
My other prediction? Apple rolls out an ad service called iPimp, hires Al gore and claims it invented the internet advertisement, the internet, and the advertisement.
Consoles probably obey different rules than handhelds. I think that a year of downtime could be fatal for a console (sega anyone?). I also think that the most important rule is that in handhelds, nintendo rules (this has been nearly the unquestioned rule since tetris shipped with the gameboy). However, in consoles, the one that gets the most games wins. Its a self feeding cycle, the console that gets the most games, gets the most devs, who then make more games. With handhelds, while people were waiting for the ds to find it stride, they were fiddling with ipods and playing a nibbles clone on their cell phones.
Instead of buying a wii, I'm going to probably take the popular route of buying the xbox360 (not a fanboy of any system, really!), because of 3 reasons. Its affordable (bye sony), it's got the library i want, and its on the shelves (bye nintendo). Keep in mind, the last system i bought besides a ds lite was a sega dreamcast in 01 because it was 50 bucks and emulators were coming out so i could retire the nes without retiring its library.
Can they update the article to give a brief blurb on what ruby is? Or is it something that has become so commonplace in the past 2 weeks that i'm a doof for not knowing?
Cause i read this and immediately thought of the chick who premiered with ati's r9x00 series video cards.
The reason y2k was such a letdown was because everybody took heed of the media hype and patched their stuff. If there had been no hype before, there might have been the problems that the hype was warning about. (or not, sensationalism is sensationalism)
Its like you're driving along and there's a huge backup for miles because of an accident in the middle of the road after a bend. Now this huge backup may have slowed you down and made you aware that there was a problem. If it was just you and the wreck, you may have plowed into it if you weren't paying attention.
Same thing with this hype. We should tolerate the hype because the heightened coverage will get bosses talking to programmers about fixing the software, and it'll turn out to be nothing.
So, when is itunes going to be drm free? With all of jobs' crusading against drm, you'd think he would start within his own company.