Why is there such an emphasis placed on RPMs? i.e. 7200 versus 5400 versus 3600, etc: RPM is used as the metric regarding the performance of a hard drive. Yet, correct me if I'm wrong (as if I need to even say that:-]), is it not true that one RPM on one drive can represent a vastly different amount of data than one RPM on a different drive?
Absolutely there are, but regardless of the perceptions on Slashdot there is a general respect for the idea of IP rights. In China some reports claim that piracy is upwards of 98%: That is staggering. AutoCAD has 90%+ of the CAD market in China, a country of a billion people, yet strangely sales there are "negligable".
The rather xenophobic nature and sweeping generalizations of your statement will not be addressed other than noting they are logical fallacies.
Funny to see this shortly after reading about another, apparently xenophobic, story regarding how Microsoft won't sell the Xbox in China due to the rampant piracy.
You are entitled to your view of zero-sum economics
Wow, nice demonstration of totally missing the point that the advancement of China, India, et. all is beneficial to all.
I would merely like to see cogent arguments tendered in the debate rather than mere FUD.
Sounds more like you need to read before responding a little sooner. And using terms like "xenophobic" regarding widespread observations (i.e. Overwhelming piracy in China, confirmed by countless articles and papers) is rather tiring.
I agree, and I disagree.:-) I agree that many of these arrangements are basically a form of slave labour. Having said that there have been people crying the "we're going to hell with all our jobs leaving" mantra for many decades as the third-world industrializes, yet the US standard of living continues to edge upwards. While in the short term it might look like a job going overseas, that's putting $ in the hands of someone who often send it right back to buy American goods and products. That was the reason behind my comment about returning the favour: If the Chinese feel it's okay to pirate software and to act protectionist, then let the duties roll and let them reap what they sow. However if they're partners in prosperity then that's good for all.
On top of all of that the myth of overseas cheapness often slaps shortsighted CEOs in the ass: Hundreds of companies migrated to Mexico (again the prosperity of Mexico is good for all of North America), only to find that horrible education, low work productivity and ethics, horrible health care, widespread corruption and crime, etc, made it much MORE expensive, and they promptly moved back. I've read countless stories now about wonderous dreams of contracting software to Indian firms that have gone horribly awry. It's never as straightforward as "trying to beat down the working man" management types try to make it out to be.
I have no problem with China, India, or any other nation for that matter, taking part in the global economy (i.e. I'm not isolationalist), and if they produce great software then that's superb. Having said that I _DO_ have a problem with nations that steal jobs away from other countries without providing them: i.e. If Chinese only buy products from China, and they counterfeit all the software from the US, then I have a massive problem with that. Personally, given the counterfeiting nature of IP in China there is absolutely no way at this juncture that I would trust it as a nation to contract software development out to.
And my point is that people are much more tolerant of these nuances with the "official" Windows than they would be with a clone, but in any case I'd say that Windows 2000 with be a hell of a lot more Windows compatible than Lindows will be (will it even support DirectX?).
As far as that Office installation thing: That is a new thing that Microsoft does that DRIVES ME FU**ING NUTS->Even if you tell an application to install completely, every now and then it'll "install on demand" some feature that it didn't install. Personally I think it's a covert (and lame) copy protection thing, as Jimmy who installed Office XP from your CD suddenly finds himself stuck with a "Please insert your CD" barrier.
Whoa...speak for yourself. Firstly if you buy a DVD, generally it means you really like the movie (otherwise you'd just rent it), and as such usually you'll find behind the scenes, making of, info on the various actors, etc. superb. I'm not a big fan of the director's commentary tracks, but it is neat to switch to it for some perspective on how they did things. I would say that "trailers" are indeed the least interesting extra on DVDs, and I'd say that the studios agree.
The problem with anything like this is that even 99% compatibility isn't enough. Hell even 99.9% compatibility isn't enough. Even 100% compatibility with the slightest public perception of a compatibility isn't enough (non-Intel companies had this uphill battle for the longest time: If something crashes with your Intel chip, it's faulty software, but if something crashed with an AMD..well it must be incompatibilities in the AMD). WINE will never be better than marginally compatible, so it'll be a constant series of tiny little issues that crop up while running those Windows apps "natively" (which is why VMWare said to hell with it and took the much simpler route of emulating the underlying hardware). I would put good money that there is _ZERO_ chance of this having any market impact whatsoever for anyone other than "that's neato!" type people.
What's wrong with targeted banners? What if Joe's Crabshack at 4th and Broadway (dunno if they actually could intersect, but imagine) could advertise only to people within 500m of his location? The reality is that, used properly, this could reinvigorate the net and pump billions of local dollars into it.
Actually I'm Canadian. Anyways for China to really become powerful it will have to switch to a democratic government, and if China switches to a democratic position then it will almost certainly disintegrate as a union (that's one nice thing about an iron fist: It sure keeps people together).
Ah very good point indeed. Indeed to be honest if there was a way to get credible sounding streams with 64Kbps, then I'd use that as I feel a little guilty listening to DNA Lounge at 128Kbps. There is definitely a need for high quality, low bitrate solutions.
For sure it's a different scale, but it's the same premise: i.e. You're a internet broadcaster and you want to start streaming some media -> Unless you're an evangelist, you choose a format based upon the deployed base because it isn't reasonable to say "Come, listen to our music! Oh but download and install plug-in XYZ". You get away with that if the user who doesn't have it is the odd man out, but otherwise most users will just "change the channel".
But then, much like the low bitrate Windows Media format claims, it's irrelevant to a large percentage of the people who use MP3s. When I stream radio I do so always at 128Kbps stereo, or at absolutely worst 96Kbps stereo. It is there where the difference between ogg and mp3 would matter to me. For stored MP3s of course the minimum the vast majority of people touch is 128Kbps.
Sure that word works too. By "network effect" I'm referring to the fact that "everyone else uses MP3s, so I will too". It's the same premise that keeps Windows on top year after year: People want to use what their friends and family are using.
Lack of advertising? No one uses it because MP3 is entrenched, so the network effect is in play: To dethrone it you have to have demonstratable advantages that motivate people to adopt it, and honestly as of yet I haven't seen those advantages. The WMA format has the exact same dilemma, but even with claims that it's 2x better at a given bitrate (I'm not claiming that: Just what I've heard), the entrenchment of MP3 still makes people go "Bah...not worth it".
Bullying would be if the US set-up a military trade embargo around a country, however for the US to impose tariffs or to limit trade between THEMSELVES and another country isn't bullying whatsoever. It isn't every countries right to do business with the US, and the US has the right to revoke the ability any time they want. Don't like it? Sell your stuff somewhere else.
I find your comments about China and India odd: The US is _EASILY_ in the power position with both of those countries (although, as another poster mentioned, what WILL they do without $1.99 tupperware), and they are hardly power houses. Both are so economically disadvantaged anyways that a far more powerful example would be Germany or Italy, or something of that sort (i.e. population!=power).
Well you can extrapolate that out and say "Why don't we all just buy our own work PCs so we can have something really fast". Personally I think $800 for a chair (which contributes to a feeling of wellness, which contributes to productivity) is not a big deal when the person sitting in it is likely making about 100x that in a year (and the chair will last for at least several years). It just seems absurd to me that everyone uses Aerons as a demonstration of.COM excesses when it seems like a pretty small piece of the pie for something that can have a considerable impact on performance. It's odd that so many developers get jealous and we infight and cannibalize our own ranks, spiting.COM workers with game rooms or Aerons when such things are so TRIVIAL and IRRELEVANTLY INEXPENSIVE in the grand scope of a corporation. Hell the lawyer who proofreads the PR statements costs many magnitudes more than all of that combined for many organizations.
While all the attention is put on those chairs as some symbol of.COM excess, there were far worse excesses. Something as simple as unnecessary, extravagant travel by senior members. One unnecessary "business trip" by a CEO can be about a dozen ergo chairs. One CEO making $7,000,000 a year is quite a few thousand super duper chairs. I just find it odd that everyone jealously, it seems, focuses on those damn.COM workers with their Aerons when so much ridiculous excess happens daily in the corporate world.
Backwards compatability is the reason we're still using x86 processors today (and why Intel is so dominant): There have been dozens of technically superior CPUs that have come out over the years, always with the guise that with this compiler and this set of conditions it would be super mondo fast.
Both SCSI and IDE are communications mechanisms, with SCSI winning out as being more intelligent (due to a variety of factors). Having said that therefore it's merely a function of the circuitry stuck on the back of the drive: Why in the world would any drive manufacturer manufacture completely different drives for SCSI or IDE? Seriously, I personally have never looked at the stats, but that seems absurd: It seems brutally obvious that they'd just pull them off the end of the line and stick on the SCSI board, or the IDE board, of course sticking a 200% premium on the SCSI equipped version as a sucker tax.
I find it interesting that you mentioned "since 1998", and it is perhaps true given that condition: IDE has permeated the market, and the only area where SCSI still has a presence is high end servers, so given that it is possible that they only even both sticking SCSI boards on the 15,000RPM monsters anymore. However, I still disagree with your assertion that it's a "myth", as back in the day (when even desktops came with SCSI if you wanted "multitasking") every SCSI versus IDE review started off with a disclaimer that the drives were physically exactly the same, and only the communications mechanism differed.
One thing that I really question from the article is this statement: Daikatana and Deus Ex were finally released in 2000. Predictably, Daikatana was slammed while Deus Ex received many awards. Both made money for Eidos, but the walk-outs, firings, lawsuits and general bad blood doomed Ion Storm..
To say that I highly doubt that Diakatana "made money" is an understatement (note that "made money" means returned more money than it cost to produce. Eidos isn't sitting pretty if they dumped millions in and "made money" selling 20 copies).
No I'd say the game failed to be worthwhile far before that point. I remember running to grab the demo only to be awestruck at how uber crappy the graphics were compared to the competitors at the time, and was then being attacked by the killer fly and I believe a frog. The game just yelled "Cheap $4.99 bargain bin piece of crap".
Really, can't you imagine that it worked? The more successful of an implementation it has, the more transparent and the least interesting it really should be: HTTP & TCP/IP are standards, and whether it's a Liza or a big piece of ratcrap with some neural nets going in it, the goal of web standards is that it's absolutely, postively irrelevant.
They have no such right. Netsol (and friends) does a brutally trivial task, which is hosting a database that correlates root domain names with IP addresses (their job is basically running a single table database where people pay for row instances). If I pay them for 1,000,000 different correlations (which should cost shit all because it's so absurdly trivial) then they'd damn well better honor it regardless of what I do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is there such an emphasis placed on RPMs? i.e. 7200 versus 5400 versus 3600, etc: RPM is used as the metric regarding the performance of a hard drive. Yet, correct me if I'm wrong (as if I need to even say that :-]), is it not true that one RPM on one drive can represent a vastly different amount of data than one RPM on a different drive?
Every new Tom's Hardware article has garnered front page status for the past couple of months as well. Just an observation.
Absolutely there are, but regardless of the perceptions on Slashdot there is a general respect for the idea of IP rights. In China some reports claim that piracy is upwards of 98%: That is staggering. AutoCAD has 90%+ of the CAD market in China, a country of a billion people, yet strangely sales there are "negligable".
The rather xenophobic nature and sweeping generalizations of your statement will not be addressed other than noting they are logical fallacies.
Funny to see this shortly after reading about another, apparently xenophobic, story regarding how Microsoft won't sell the Xbox in China due to the rampant piracy.
You are entitled to your view of zero-sum economics
Wow, nice demonstration of totally missing the point that the advancement of China, India, et. all is beneficial to all.
I would merely like to see cogent arguments tendered in the debate rather than mere FUD.
Sounds more like you need to read before responding a little sooner. And using terms like "xenophobic" regarding widespread observations (i.e. Overwhelming piracy in China, confirmed by countless articles and papers) is rather tiring.
I agree, and I disagree. :-) I agree that many of these arrangements are basically a form of slave labour. Having said that there have been people crying the "we're going to hell with all our jobs leaving" mantra for many decades as the third-world industrializes, yet the US standard of living continues to edge upwards. While in the short term it might look like a job going overseas, that's putting $ in the hands of someone who often send it right back to buy American goods and products. That was the reason behind my comment about returning the favour: If the Chinese feel it's okay to pirate software and to act protectionist, then let the duties roll and let them reap what they sow. However if they're partners in prosperity then that's good for all.
On top of all of that the myth of overseas cheapness often slaps shortsighted CEOs in the ass: Hundreds of companies migrated to Mexico (again the prosperity of Mexico is good for all of North America), only to find that horrible education, low work productivity and ethics, horrible health care, widespread corruption and crime, etc, made it much MORE expensive, and they promptly moved back. I've read countless stories now about wonderous dreams of contracting software to Indian firms that have gone horribly awry. It's never as straightforward as "trying to beat down the working man" management types try to make it out to be.
I have no problem with China, India, or any other nation for that matter, taking part in the global economy (i.e. I'm not isolationalist), and if they produce great software then that's superb. Having said that I _DO_ have a problem with nations that steal jobs away from other countries without providing them: i.e. If Chinese only buy products from China, and they counterfeit all the software from the US, then I have a massive problem with that. Personally, given the counterfeiting nature of IP in China there is absolutely no way at this juncture that I would trust it as a nation to contract software development out to.
And my point is that people are much more tolerant of these nuances with the "official" Windows than they would be with a clone, but in any case I'd say that Windows 2000 with be a hell of a lot more Windows compatible than Lindows will be (will it even support DirectX?).
As far as that Office installation thing: That is a new thing that Microsoft does that DRIVES ME FU**ING NUTS->Even if you tell an application to install completely, every now and then it'll "install on demand" some feature that it didn't install. Personally I think it's a covert (and lame) copy protection thing, as Jimmy who installed Office XP from your CD suddenly finds himself stuck with a "Please insert your CD" barrier.
Whoa...speak for yourself. Firstly if you buy a DVD, generally it means you really like the movie (otherwise you'd just rent it), and as such usually you'll find behind the scenes, making of, info on the various actors, etc. superb. I'm not a big fan of the director's commentary tracks, but it is neat to switch to it for some perspective on how they did things. I would say that "trailers" are indeed the least interesting extra on DVDs, and I'd say that the studios agree.
The problem with anything like this is that even 99% compatibility isn't enough. Hell even 99.9% compatibility isn't enough. Even 100% compatibility with the slightest public perception of a compatibility isn't enough (non-Intel companies had this uphill battle for the longest time: If something crashes with your Intel chip, it's faulty software, but if something crashed with an AMD..well it must be incompatibilities in the AMD). WINE will never be better than marginally compatible, so it'll be a constant series of tiny little issues that crop up while running those Windows apps "natively" (which is why VMWare said to hell with it and took the much simpler route of emulating the underlying hardware). I would put good money that there is _ZERO_ chance of this having any market impact whatsoever for anyone other than "that's neato!" type people.
What's wrong with targeted banners? What if Joe's Crabshack at 4th and Broadway (dunno if they actually could intersect, but imagine) could advertise only to people within 500m of his location? The reality is that, used properly, this could reinvigorate the net and pump billions of local dollars into it.
Actually I'm Canadian. Anyways for China to really become powerful it will have to switch to a democratic government, and if China switches to a democratic position then it will almost certainly disintegrate as a union (that's one nice thing about an iron fist: It sure keeps people together).
Ah very good point indeed. Indeed to be honest if there was a way to get credible sounding streams with 64Kbps, then I'd use that as I feel a little guilty listening to DNA Lounge at 128Kbps. There is definitely a need for high quality, low bitrate solutions.
For sure it's a different scale, but it's the same premise: i.e. You're a internet broadcaster and you want to start streaming some media -> Unless you're an evangelist, you choose a format based upon the deployed base because it isn't reasonable to say "Come, listen to our music! Oh but download and install plug-in XYZ". You get away with that if the user who doesn't have it is the odd man out, but otherwise most users will just "change the channel".
But then, much like the low bitrate Windows Media format claims, it's irrelevant to a large percentage of the people who use MP3s. When I stream radio I do so always at 128Kbps stereo, or at absolutely worst 96Kbps stereo. It is there where the difference between ogg and mp3 would matter to me. For stored MP3s of course the minimum the vast majority of people touch is 128Kbps.
Sure that word works too. By "network effect" I'm referring to the fact that "everyone else uses MP3s, so I will too". It's the same premise that keeps Windows on top year after year: People want to use what their friends and family are using.
Lack of advertising? No one uses it because MP3 is entrenched, so the network effect is in play: To dethrone it you have to have demonstratable advantages that motivate people to adopt it, and honestly as of yet I haven't seen those advantages. The WMA format has the exact same dilemma, but even with claims that it's 2x better at a given bitrate (I'm not claiming that: Just what I've heard), the entrenchment of MP3 still makes people go "Bah...not worth it".
Bullying would be if the US set-up a military trade embargo around a country, however for the US to impose tariffs or to limit trade between THEMSELVES and another country isn't bullying whatsoever. It isn't every countries right to do business with the US, and the US has the right to revoke the ability any time they want. Don't like it? Sell your stuff somewhere else.
I find your comments about China and India odd: The US is _EASILY_ in the power position with both of those countries (although, as another poster mentioned, what WILL they do without $1.99 tupperware), and they are hardly power houses. Both are so economically disadvantaged anyways that a far more powerful example would be Germany or Italy, or something of that sort (i.e. population!=power).
Well you can extrapolate that out and say "Why don't we all just buy our own work PCs so we can have something really fast". Personally I think $800 for a chair (which contributes to a feeling of wellness, which contributes to productivity) is not a big deal when the person sitting in it is likely making about 100x that in a year (and the chair will last for at least several years). It just seems absurd to me that everyone uses Aerons as a demonstration of .COM excesses when it seems like a pretty small piece of the pie for something that can have a considerable impact on performance. It's odd that so many developers get jealous and we infight and cannibalize our own ranks, spiting .COM workers with game rooms or Aerons when such things are so TRIVIAL and IRRELEVANTLY INEXPENSIVE in the grand scope of a corporation. Hell the lawyer who proofreads the PR statements costs many magnitudes more than all of that combined for many organizations.
What? I'm not supposed to have a chair?
While all the attention is put on those chairs as some symbol of .COM excess, there were far worse excesses. Something as simple as unnecessary, extravagant travel by senior members. One unnecessary "business trip" by a CEO can be about a dozen ergo chairs. One CEO making $7,000,000 a year is quite a few thousand super duper chairs. I just find it odd that everyone jealously, it seems, focuses on those damn .COM workers with their Aerons when so much ridiculous excess happens daily in the corporate world.
Backwards compatability is the reason we're still using x86 processors today (and why Intel is so dominant): There have been dozens of technically superior CPUs that have come out over the years, always with the guise that with this compiler and this set of conditions it would be super mondo fast.
Both SCSI and IDE are communications mechanisms, with SCSI winning out as being more intelligent (due to a variety of factors). Having said that therefore it's merely a function of the circuitry stuck on the back of the drive: Why in the world would any drive manufacturer manufacture completely different drives for SCSI or IDE? Seriously, I personally have never looked at the stats, but that seems absurd: It seems brutally obvious that they'd just pull them off the end of the line and stick on the SCSI board, or the IDE board, of course sticking a 200% premium on the SCSI equipped version as a sucker tax.
I find it interesting that you mentioned "since 1998", and it is perhaps true given that condition: IDE has permeated the market, and the only area where SCSI still has a presence is high end servers, so given that it is possible that they only even both sticking SCSI boards on the 15,000RPM monsters anymore. However, I still disagree with your assertion that it's a "myth", as back in the day (when even desktops came with SCSI if you wanted "multitasking") every SCSI versus IDE review started off with a disclaimer that the drives were physically exactly the same, and only the communications mechanism differed.
One thing that I really question from the article is this statement: Daikatana and Deus Ex were finally released in 2000. Predictably, Daikatana was slammed while Deus Ex received many awards. Both made money for Eidos, but the walk-outs, firings, lawsuits and general bad blood doomed Ion Storm..
To say that I highly doubt that Diakatana "made money" is an understatement (note that "made money" means returned more money than it cost to produce. Eidos isn't sitting pretty if they dumped millions in and "made money" selling 20 copies).
No I'd say the game failed to be worthwhile far before that point. I remember running to grab the demo only to be awestruck at how uber crappy the graphics were compared to the competitors at the time, and was then being attacked by the killer fly and I believe a frog. The game just yelled "Cheap $4.99 bargain bin piece of crap".
Really, can't you imagine that it worked? The more successful of an implementation it has, the more transparent and the least interesting it really should be: HTTP & TCP/IP are standards, and whether it's a Liza or a big piece of ratcrap with some neural nets going in it, the goal of web standards is that it's absolutely, postively irrelevant.
They have no such right. Netsol (and friends) does a brutally trivial task, which is hosting a database that correlates root domain names with IP addresses (their job is basically running a single table database where people pay for row instances). If I pay them for 1,000,000 different correlations (which should cost shit all because it's so absurdly trivial) then they'd damn well better honor it regardless of what I do with it.