You couldn't sell them as 9700's, but you could sell them as modified 9500's that run at 9700 speeds.
The problem, as everyone is pointing out, is that this is a very tricky hack, and that there's a very good chance that the 9500 you buy will not be physically capable of the hack. For the entrepreneur, that means that every 9500 worked on that doesn't result in a speed increase will have to be resold for well *below* cost, since it may be damaged and is no longer under warranty. Secondly, you have to figure out how many failed attempts you will have before you have a successful one (let's say the ratio is 5 to 1); and probably one of those 5 is totally unusable and unresellable. Now we can figure out your profit per "good" card. Add up the cost of your losses on the 5 bad cards, and add that amount to the cost of the one "good" card you are selling (which, BTW, you have to sell for a good discount below the 9700's price). Assuming you made a profit at that point, you then have to divide your profit by the total amount of hours you have invested in both modifying AND selling all of the cards.
By comparison, what's your opportunity cost? That is, what is the highest compensation alternatives you are giving up to spend time on this project (selling linux systems on eBay, delivering pizzas, etc.), and which is the better time investment?
Selling hacks and sophisticated hardware upgrades on eBay really only makes sense when the profit potential is significant enough for you to absorb all of the losses of failed attempts (not in this case, because the 9700 effectively sets a price cap on the project).
Most people I see playing online shoot-em-ups are too busy fragging their opponents to bother taking their hands from the cursor keys (or whatever they use for direction and fire) to use the keyboard; that would reduce their kill rate.
I've noticed that the foul language in online games is directly proportional to the pace of the game. As an example, Sony makes an online tank game called Tanarus that has several variations, some faster than others. In the slower game there's some expletives, but not a lot. In the faster game, the language is unbelieveable, because, while the pace is alot faster, it's still a tank game and therefore allows for typed messages between melees while your tank is cruising away or you're respawning in your base.
The reason we don't see worse language in Q3A, I believe, is that there simply isn't enough time to talk AND play.
Look at it another way... Apple may benefit simply by virtue of having multiple browsers on the market.
For the longest time, Netscape owned the browser market, and set the standards. That was OK for Apple, except that the Mac version of Navigator lagged behind the Windows version, particularly with Java implementation. Then MS came along, and there was a "standards battle" between IE and Navigator; MS was so determined to win that they even wrote a better version of IE for Mac than for Windows. IE has emerged on top and, true to form, MS is now trying to move the standards to favor IE on Windows with things like ActiveX controls. Netscape/Mozilla has been and continues to be holding their own, without assistance from Apple. Apple's support of KHTML instantly puts a new rendering engine on millions of computers and lessens MS's grip on the web (albeit slightly), because IE for Mac will not be the default browser anymore on Macs (I'm assuming).
The best thing that could happen right now in the browser wars is not for Apple to jump into the IE/Mozilla fray, but to stir a rivalry between two open source browsers, KHTML and Mozilla. Get these to browsers to compete on features, and put MS back into the position of being a follower rather than a leader.
Apple was probably enticed by the fact that it is a smaller codebase, and thus giving Apple more "ownership" (in the creative sense) of the project.
Mozilla is a lot more mature, feature-wise, and Apple was probably looking for a clean slate. They just want a stripped-down rendering engine, and the interface is all theirs.
That was my first thought. If this is on the level, then anti-virus software should be catching it.
After all the anti-virus attacks of the last few years, consumers and businesses alike have dumped a ton of money into anti-virus software. I find it hard to believe that a worm could get 95% penetration in this group.
These hackers are just looking for some recognition, that's all.
By re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo can shutdown ROM piracy by claiming that the games are actively on the market.
Actually, they're already doing that with their E-Cards for GBA. The 2-D, 16-bit games, anyway.
Perhaps they're thinking that the cartridge system of the Nintendo 64 is preferable to the CD system of the GameCube, because it's a lot harder to duplicate a cartridge.
I think MOO came out in 1992, but was predated by a similar Mac game, "Spaceward Ho!".
Interestingly, Delta Tao chose to release upgrades to the Ho and not completely redesigned games. I believe they just released the latest version of the Ho a month or two ago.
It has popup blocking, but not tabs. That's surprising, because the tabbed browsing feature is more useful in OS X than in any other OS supported by Mozilla because of OS X's lack of a true taskbar.
Also missing is image management to block banner ads. Understandable, though, that a commercial product by a major tech vendor wouldn't include that feature. They don't want to cleanse the internet of all advertising.
And there's no messagebar at the bottom of the window, so when you mouse over a link, you can't see where it leads to without clicking on it. Very annoying.
All-in-all, not bad for a first beta release, though aside from some cool boomark management features, is missing a lot of features that the rest of us take for granted. Apple has their work cut out for them if they are serious about making this browser a contender.
However, it begs the question of why Apple is spending money on Safari in the first place. It's not like Internet Explorer is the only browser for the Mac; there's a bunch of great stuff out there like OmniWeb, Mozilla, Netscape, Chimera, iCab, Opera, and who knows what else.
Is the long-range plan to integrate Safari as tightly with OS X as IE is with Windows? They've got a LONG long road to cover before THAT happens.
Or maybe it's not that grand; maybe Jobs just wants a browser that has tight integration with the the iApps.
Obviously this isn't the tv's fault, wtf were the parents doing? You can't blame everyone and everything else. What happened to watching your kids, knowing what their doing?
What, you think parents have the ability to raise children in sensory-deprivation tanks, and only selectively expose kids to experiences of their choosing?
Sorry, the world never has and never will work that way.
Society-at-large also has to take responsibility, for what they produce, make available, and market to children. A parent can only do so much.
Most parents are not keeping up with the advances in gaming, 3D rendering, and the like. When most parents see a Violence rating on a game box, they probably think in terms of movies, where such things are doled out sparingly; you don't see two straight hours of Hale Berry's breasts or Ah-nold slicing out eyeballs.
Games are different. They push the envelope. They bathe the player in blood and expose him/her to graphic images for several days at a time.
Sure, parents bear some blame for not keeping up. But as an IT person, even *I* don't feel like I'm keeping up with everything that's going on.
And of course, there's always situations that parents have no control over, like their kids going to someone else's house to play games, or kids grabbing warez off the newsgroups.
Personally, I enjoy a good first-person as much as the next guy, but I also have no problem recognizing that the game industry is oftentimes reckless and irresponsible. Children still make up a significant portion of the gaming market, and game designers know that games with mature themes will be a hit with kids.
Actually, there was a kid in the news not too long ago who decided to try a bunch of wrestling moves he'd seen on TV on the little girl next door, and ended up killing her.
Not intentionally, but the kid thought he was being funny.
Granted, I don't think the kid had a lot going on upstairs. But, that may be a better argument against violence in TV and games and such. Here we had someone who lacked the self-restraint and discipline, and acted out in a way he had been programmed to. Most of us see all of this violence and we pack it down and deal with it. But we have watched it, absorbed it, and it has influenced us.
well for one thing, Moore left out drug prohibition, a law that has raised crime by as much as 25% since it was enacted in the 1930's.
Come on... I laugh at these silly notions that legalizing drugs is somehow going to magically remove crime from society. It misses the fundamental reason that crime exists in the first place -- greed.
Legalize drugs and criminals will find other ways to pillage society in order to get what they want.
Well, two points. One, QuarkXPress for Windows has been available for a long time, so it's not necessarily the software that is holding people back from switching.
Secondly, Mac users, particularly in the creative arts, tend to be fiercely loyal to their platform, so having to abandon QXP doesn't mean an automatic switch to Windows.
In fact, it seems like most people who use QXP love the program but hate the company. They're feeling jerked around by Quark, but can't switch because InDesign doesn't have enough market penetration yet. If the printer you send all of your work to doesn't have InDesign yet, then you probably aren't going to use it either; the flipside is that, if the printer isn't receiving InDesign files, then they aren't going to buy a copy, so there's a very real chicken-and-egg problem.
It has hurt Apple in the short-run; in the long-run, it may strengthen Apple. As the article pointed out, Quark's failure to deliver has done more for InDesign sales than anyone in Adobe's marketing department, and Apple, themselves, jumped into the fray by giving away InDesign with new systems in a promotion last year.
It's bad for Apple to be hostage to one company, and especially one as inept as Quark. Giving InDesign equal parity in the marketplace with QXP is one of the best things that can happen for Apple, and may even be good for Quark. Quark was a LOT more responsive in the early 90's when they were competing with PageMaker. Once PageMaker was vanquished, Quark lost their drive to update and innovate.
Switching to PC is not an easy answer, either. For most Creative departments, they have huge libraries of Mac-only fonts that have to be converted or repurchased, not to mention investments in other supporting software like Photoshop, Illustrator, and whatnot.
Sounds to me like some bean counter high-up was just looking for an excuse to convert to PC.
Just last night, I was thinking about the train wreck that is Star Trek: Nemesis, and thinking, "Ya know, somebody ought to write a different finale for the cast and crew of TNG that would truly do them justice."
Nemesis was far too tame, and far too stale. If I want Wrath of Khan, I'll watch Wrath of Khan.
How many times have we seen the Enterprise run right up to the brink of oblivion, only to save the day and turn everything back to normal in time for the next episode? I think I would have written something that resulted not only in the destruction of the Enterprise, but also the deaths of most (if not all) of the crew in a heroic, personal struggle.
Maybe in a few years one of these fan groups will do TNG justice.
As an alternative explanation for those statistics, let me point out that people who started out rich are likely to remain rich. Before asking how many of those billionaires finished college, you should ask how many were born into this world as billionaires, or at least multi-millionaires:)
I don't think it's about the money, but the attitude. People who's parents were successful have had that success modeled for them all of their lives, and when they set career goals for themselves, probably are more optimistic and more willing to take risks than people who grew up in a house where Dad was a middle manager or some other career employee.
My dad was an entrepreneur, quite successful in fact (not outrageously successful, but we lived comfortably). I made some mistakes in my transition to adulthood, like dropping out of college and kicking around for a few years. When I finally snapped out of it and "grew up," I realized that I didn't want to be some middle manager all my life, I wanted to accomplish much more. So I went back to college, got my degree, went to grad school, and will be wrapping up this year. I aspire to do at least as well for my family as my dad did for his.
That's a tall order, but I will feel better having attempted it and lost than not having tried at all.
This doesn't solve the underlying problem of the spam clogging up the mailserver, but it does mean I don't have to deal with it.
Do you trust it, though? When it flags incoming messages as spam and moves it to the trash (or the Junk Mail folder), do you feel secure enough that you can routinely trash them without scanning the subject lines?
No matter how good, client-level filtering is not a solution. All it takes is for one Really Important Email to get flagged and deleted to lose confidence in the system.
Switching to plain text is not the issue. Confirmation is a minor point to spammers, because the cost of sending emails to inactive addresses is negligible. So why inconvenience yourself by switching to text-only email? That's a lot of trouble for so little effect. If you hate HTML emails (as most of the respondents seem to), then that's something else entirely different. I don't hate HTML emails and I don't want to sacrifice HTML functionality. To me, that's killing a fly with an elephant gun.
My workaround is much simpler; I always select spam email as a block in my email client (because 99% are easy to spot without opening), and delete them without previewing.
Of course, the other means of verification for the spammer is the absence of a bounce-back message. A little less reliable, but as I say, I don't think the problem is that huge for the spammer.
Regarding the use of aliases on the internet, I concur; I have several email addresses set up for just that purpose. But guess what. Those aliases still receive the spam! So, you haven't really solved the problem, you've just moved it to an account which you check less frequently.
Ultimately, the SMTP server model needs to be rethought from the ground up.
People spam because it's dirt-cheap. If spammers had to pay 10 an email, you'd better believe they'd be a heck of a lot more cautious about who they send to.
And a "Stop Buying Spam Products" is doomed to fail, anyway, because it's a numbers game. If 1 person out of every 100 people spammed buys something, then it's probably an outrageously successful campaign.
The fact is, you may be throwing out 50 spam emails a day, but if you see a subject line that speaks to an immediate need, you're probably going to stop, read it, and consider a purchase.
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You couldn't sell them as 9700's, but you could sell them as modified 9500's that run at 9700 speeds.
The problem, as everyone is pointing out, is that this is a very tricky hack, and that there's a very good chance that the 9500 you buy will not be physically capable of the hack. For the entrepreneur, that means that every 9500 worked on that doesn't result in a speed increase will have to be resold for well *below* cost, since it may be damaged and is no longer under warranty. Secondly, you have to figure out how many failed attempts you will have before you have a successful one (let's say the ratio is 5 to 1); and probably one of those 5 is totally unusable and unresellable. Now we can figure out your profit per "good" card. Add up the cost of your losses on the 5 bad cards, and add that amount to the cost of the one "good" card you are selling (which, BTW, you have to sell for a good discount below the 9700's price). Assuming you made a profit at that point, you then have to divide your profit by the total amount of hours you have invested in both modifying AND selling all of the cards.
By comparison, what's your opportunity cost? That is, what is the highest compensation alternatives you are giving up to spend time on this project (selling linux systems on eBay, delivering pizzas, etc.), and which is the better time investment?
Selling hacks and sophisticated hardware upgrades on eBay really only makes sense when the profit potential is significant enough for you to absorb all of the losses of failed attempts (not in this case, because the 9700 effectively sets a price cap on the project).
Most people I see playing online shoot-em-ups are too busy fragging their opponents to bother taking their hands from the cursor keys (or whatever they use for direction and fire) to use the keyboard; that would reduce their kill rate.
I've noticed that the foul language in online games is directly proportional to the pace of the game. As an example, Sony makes an online tank game called Tanarus that has several variations, some faster than others. In the slower game there's some expletives, but not a lot. In the faster game, the language is unbelieveable, because, while the pace is alot faster, it's still a tank game and therefore allows for typed messages between melees while your tank is cruising away or you're respawning in your base.
The reason we don't see worse language in Q3A, I believe, is that there simply isn't enough time to talk AND play.
Look at it another way... Apple may benefit simply by virtue of having multiple browsers on the market.
For the longest time, Netscape owned the browser market, and set the standards. That was OK for Apple, except that the Mac version of Navigator lagged behind the Windows version, particularly with Java implementation. Then MS came along, and there was a "standards battle" between IE and Navigator; MS was so determined to win that they even wrote a better version of IE for Mac than for Windows. IE has emerged on top and, true to form, MS is now trying to move the standards to favor IE on Windows with things like ActiveX controls. Netscape/Mozilla has been and continues to be holding their own, without assistance from Apple. Apple's support of KHTML instantly puts a new rendering engine on millions of computers and lessens MS's grip on the web (albeit slightly), because IE for Mac will not be the default browser anymore on Macs (I'm assuming).
The best thing that could happen right now in the browser wars is not for Apple to jump into the IE/Mozilla fray, but to stir a rivalry between two open source browsers, KHTML and Mozilla. Get these to browsers to compete on features, and put MS back into the position of being a follower rather than a leader.
Apple was probably enticed by the fact that it is a smaller codebase, and thus giving Apple more "ownership" (in the creative sense) of the project.
Mozilla is a lot more mature, feature-wise, and Apple was probably looking for a clean slate. They just want a stripped-down rendering engine, and the interface is all theirs.
That was my first thought. If this is on the level, then anti-virus software should be catching it.
After all the anti-virus attacks of the last few years, consumers and businesses alike have dumped a ton of money into anti-virus software. I find it hard to believe that a worm could get 95% penetration in this group.
These hackers are just looking for some recognition, that's all.
They should be eaten, with maybe a glass of wine and a slice of cheese on top.
By re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo can shutdown ROM piracy by claiming that the games are actively on the market.
Actually, they're already doing that with their E-Cards for GBA. The 2-D, 16-bit games, anyway.
Perhaps they're thinking that the cartridge system of the Nintendo 64 is preferable to the CD system of the GameCube, because it's a lot harder to duplicate a cartridge.
I think MOO came out in 1992, but was predated by a similar Mac game, "Spaceward Ho!".
Interestingly, Delta Tao chose to release upgrades to the Ho and not completely redesigned games. I believe they just released the latest version of the Ho a month or two ago.
Try using VDMSound. It helps with both memory and sound issues on these old DOS games. It's a "must-have" utility for retro-gaming.
Just last week I used it to play MOO on my Win2k box.
It has popup blocking, but not tabs. That's surprising, because the tabbed browsing feature is more useful in OS X than in any other OS supported by Mozilla because of OS X's lack of a true taskbar.
Also missing is image management to block banner ads. Understandable, though, that a commercial product by a major tech vendor wouldn't include that feature. They don't want to cleanse the internet of all advertising.
And there's no messagebar at the bottom of the window, so when you mouse over a link, you can't see where it leads to without clicking on it. Very annoying.
All-in-all, not bad for a first beta release, though aside from some cool boomark management features, is missing a lot of features that the rest of us take for granted. Apple has their work cut out for them if they are serious about making this browser a contender.
However, it begs the question of why Apple is spending money on Safari in the first place. It's not like Internet Explorer is the only browser for the Mac; there's a bunch of great stuff out there like OmniWeb, Mozilla, Netscape, Chimera, iCab, Opera, and who knows what else.
Is the long-range plan to integrate Safari as tightly with OS X as IE is with Windows? They've got a LONG long road to cover before THAT happens.
Or maybe it's not that grand; maybe Jobs just wants a browser that has tight integration with the the iApps.
Time will tell.
Uhh... by my count, there were only 3 Macworld keynotes in 2002.
And here I thought only Microsoft tested their products three times before they shipped.
'tho, to be fair, it seems to me that Moore's Law has lasted a lot longer then the throng of people who keep predicting its death.
I just saw a throng pass away last week!
Obviously this isn't the tv's fault, wtf were the parents doing? You can't blame everyone and everything else. What happened to watching your kids, knowing what their doing?
What, you think parents have the ability to raise children in sensory-deprivation tanks, and only selectively expose kids to experiences of their choosing?
Sorry, the world never has and never will work that way.
Society-at-large also has to take responsibility, for what they produce, make available, and market to children. A parent can only do so much.
Most parents are not keeping up with the advances in gaming, 3D rendering, and the like. When most parents see a Violence rating on a game box, they probably think in terms of movies, where such things are doled out sparingly; you don't see two straight hours of Hale Berry's breasts or Ah-nold slicing out eyeballs.
Games are different. They push the envelope. They bathe the player in blood and expose him/her to graphic images for several days at a time.
Sure, parents bear some blame for not keeping up. But as an IT person, even *I* don't feel like I'm keeping up with everything that's going on.
And of course, there's always situations that parents have no control over, like their kids going to someone else's house to play games, or kids grabbing warez off the newsgroups.
Personally, I enjoy a good first-person as much as the next guy, but I also have no problem recognizing that the game industry is oftentimes reckless and irresponsible. Children still make up a significant portion of the gaming market, and game designers know that games with mature themes will be a hit with kids.
Actually, there was a kid in the news not too long ago who decided to try a bunch of wrestling moves he'd seen on TV on the little girl next door, and ended up killing her.
Not intentionally, but the kid thought he was being funny.
Granted, I don't think the kid had a lot going on upstairs. But, that may be a better argument against violence in TV and games and such. Here we had someone who lacked the self-restraint and discipline, and acted out in a way he had been programmed to. Most of us see all of this violence and we pack it down and deal with it. But we have watched it, absorbed it, and it has influenced us.
well for one thing, Moore left out drug prohibition, a law that has raised crime by as much as 25% since it was enacted in the 1930's.
Come on... I laugh at these silly notions that legalizing drugs is somehow going to magically remove crime from society. It misses the fundamental reason that crime exists in the first place -- greed.
Legalize drugs and criminals will find other ways to pillage society in order to get what they want.
Well, two points. One, QuarkXPress for Windows has been available for a long time, so it's not necessarily the software that is holding people back from switching.
Secondly, Mac users, particularly in the creative arts, tend to be fiercely loyal to their platform, so having to abandon QXP doesn't mean an automatic switch to Windows.
In fact, it seems like most people who use QXP love the program but hate the company. They're feeling jerked around by Quark, but can't switch because InDesign doesn't have enough market penetration yet. If the printer you send all of your work to doesn't have InDesign yet, then you probably aren't going to use it either; the flipside is that, if the printer isn't receiving InDesign files, then they aren't going to buy a copy, so there's a very real chicken-and-egg problem.
It has hurt Apple in the short-run; in the long-run, it may strengthen Apple. As the article pointed out, Quark's failure to deliver has done more for InDesign sales than anyone in Adobe's marketing department, and Apple, themselves, jumped into the fray by giving away InDesign with new systems in a promotion last year.
It's bad for Apple to be hostage to one company, and especially one as inept as Quark. Giving InDesign equal parity in the marketplace with QXP is one of the best things that can happen for Apple, and may even be good for Quark. Quark was a LOT more responsive in the early 90's when they were competing with PageMaker. Once PageMaker was vanquished, Quark lost their drive to update and innovate.
Switching to PC is not an easy answer, either. For most Creative departments, they have huge libraries of Mac-only fonts that have to be converted or repurchased, not to mention investments in other supporting software like Photoshop, Illustrator, and whatnot.
Sounds to me like some bean counter high-up was just looking for an excuse to convert to PC.
It would be nice to have Duke Nukem Forever to play while the production department is waiting for QuarkXPress for OS X...
Just last night, I was thinking about the train wreck that is Star Trek: Nemesis, and thinking, "Ya know, somebody ought to write a different finale for the cast and crew of TNG that would truly do them justice."
Nemesis was far too tame, and far too stale. If I want Wrath of Khan, I'll watch Wrath of Khan.
How many times have we seen the Enterprise run right up to the brink of oblivion, only to save the day and turn everything back to normal in time for the next episode? I think I would have written something that resulted not only in the destruction of the Enterprise, but also the deaths of most (if not all) of the crew in a heroic, personal struggle.
Maybe in a few years one of these fan groups will do TNG justice.
As an alternative explanation for those statistics, let me point out that people who started out rich are likely to remain rich. Before asking how many of those billionaires finished college, you should ask how many were born into this world as billionaires, or at least multi-millionaires :)
I don't think it's about the money, but the attitude. People who's parents were successful have had that success modeled for them all of their lives, and when they set career goals for themselves, probably are more optimistic and more willing to take risks than people who grew up in a house where Dad was a middle manager or some other career employee.
My dad was an entrepreneur, quite successful in fact (not outrageously successful, but we lived comfortably). I made some mistakes in my transition to adulthood, like dropping out of college and kicking around for a few years. When I finally snapped out of it and "grew up," I realized that I didn't want to be some middle manager all my life, I wanted to accomplish much more. So I went back to college, got my degree, went to grad school, and will be wrapping up this year. I aspire to do at least as well for my family as my dad did for his.
That's a tall order, but I will feel better having attempted it and lost than not having tried at all.
This doesn't solve the underlying problem of the spam clogging up the mailserver, but it does mean I don't have to deal with it.
Do you trust it, though? When it flags incoming messages as spam and moves it to the trash (or the Junk Mail folder), do you feel secure enough that you can routinely trash them without scanning the subject lines?
No matter how good, client-level filtering is not a solution. All it takes is for one Really Important Email to get flagged and deleted to lose confidence in the system.
Switching to plain text is not the issue. Confirmation is a minor point to spammers, because the cost of sending emails to inactive addresses is negligible. So why inconvenience yourself by switching to text-only email? That's a lot of trouble for so little effect. If you hate HTML emails (as most of the respondents seem to), then that's something else entirely different. I don't hate HTML emails and I don't want to sacrifice HTML functionality. To me, that's killing a fly with an elephant gun.
My workaround is much simpler; I always select spam email as a block in my email client (because 99% are easy to spot without opening), and delete them without previewing.
Of course, the other means of verification for the spammer is the absence of a bounce-back message. A little less reliable, but as I say, I don't think the problem is that huge for the spammer.
Regarding the use of aliases on the internet, I concur; I have several email addresses set up for just that purpose. But guess what. Those aliases still receive the spam! So, you haven't really solved the problem, you've just moved it to an account which you check less frequently.
Ultimately, the SMTP server model needs to be rethought from the ground up.
People spam because it's dirt-cheap. If spammers had to pay 10 an email, you'd better believe they'd be a heck of a lot more cautious about who they send to.
And a "Stop Buying Spam Products" is doomed to fail, anyway, because it's a numbers game. If 1 person out of every 100 people spammed buys something, then it's probably an outrageously successful campaign.
The fact is, you may be throwing out 50 spam emails a day, but if you see a subject line that speaks to an immediate need, you're probably going to stop, read it, and consider a purchase.