Well, the claim is that the chip they were testing wasn't a flagship chip like the Pentium EE. In other words, they were testing a chip that's supposed to debut a couple price points below (2.67 GHz clock) the top-clocked (2.93 GHz) Conroe EE.
The inference being that the new top Intel chip will totally kick the Pentium EE's butt. Or, if you like, that this chip offers the same or better performance than the Pentium EE at what will probably be something like $200-$300 less.
Of course, that's all speculation, but the fact remains that this is not the top Conroe chip that's ocasionally losing out to the fastest Intel currently offers.
I suppose not--it's the memory counts that threw me off. Still, given the cost differences I recall fairly recently between 256 and 512 cards, I have to figure 512 megs of the stuff costs more than $40. And even if that price difference was just a spot of gouging for the Latest and Greatest (which seems probable to me--the hardcore hobbyists with money are happy to shell out big), it still means that for this particular piece of latest and greatest, they're not taking the usual margin.
I guess it's just a price-point kind of thing. $600 is what top-of-the-line graphics cards cost, and that's that. An interesting glimpse into the marketing world. Or something.
The thing that I find interesting is that they've basically got two 7900 GTXes, which are still retailing for nearly $500 in a $600 package. High margins much?
Google is not close to being a monopoly. I had a few different numbers come up when I looked, but a good round consensus is about 45-50% of the search market.
That aside, the true legal definition of a monopoly is the ability to control prices without fear of competitors. If Google jumps their price per adview, they will lose significant ad revenue as it becomes more economically logical to go after the other fifty percent of search viewers and to persue other avenues of advertising.
Looking at it this way, it becomes somewhat fallacious to refer to the 'search market', because the entire economic reason to have market share as a search engine is to provide a portal for advertising. It's hard to separate the two.
To come at it from the consumer end, if Google jumps the 'price' paid for using their engine by upping the number and intrusiveness of ads, they will eventually get users moving away from their service, because it's way too easy to make the switch from one search engine to another.
That aside, there are also a couple different kinds of monopoly. In this case, if Google could be considered as a monopoly, it would be as an Efficiency Monopoly. This is because, again, it is spectacularly easy for a user to switch search engines, making for a very swift and decisive shift of market share to whichever product is considered superior. Unlike operating systems (your local LUG's claims aside), telecommunications services, or other such physical things, which move much more slowly, if at all.
It's impossible to maintain a coercive monopoly on search engines normally, because the only way to gain market share is to provide a product that is sufficiently superior that users will switch. If you somehow corner the entire market, and then cease to provide new value for consumers, someone will manage to get a couple million in venture capital together and toss out something that's better than yours, and then you've got a competitor again forcing you to provide good products. (I know, I know, I understate the difficulty of making a good search engine, but compared to most things, the barriers to entry in the search engine market are way low)
I said 'normally', though. 'Normally' is a level playing field where users have equal access to all the competing search engines. And this is the potential legal problem with MS having IE7 use MSN search by default (and it was the exact same legal problem with MS having Windows default to having IE installed during the old-time browser wars). By including the default search bar as their MSN search (or, the default browser as IE), Microsoft uses their market share in one product to provide easier access to their new product in another market. This creates a barrier to competition, because now it's significantly easier for users to go to MSN (or IE), and it's impossible for Google/Yahoo (or Netscape) to make the same move, since they do not have the same access to the far-and-away market-share leader in browsers (or Operating Systems).
My point, in the end, is that you can't create a consumer-harming monopoly in the search engine market without using anti-competative tactics to give yourself an unfair advantage, because it's too easy for your consumers to switch services, and it's too easy for new competators to arise. Making it so much easier for the consumer to stick with your product instead of switching is at the very least annoying (see the fun of migrating out of Outlook Express, argh), and anti-competative and illegal if you're using opportunities it is impossible for your opponents to duplicate to do it.
For starters, GPU boards are already pretty huge. I don't think there's physically room. Then there's the issue of heat--you'd be localizing even more heat to one card. Not good. Finally, in a pure marketing sense, I think it's easier to get people to buy a $400 GPU and then a $300 PPU than to drop $700 on a combo board.
Separate is better for the consumer, anyway--more consumer choice about which products to buy. But I think the real central issue to why the combo won't happen is the physical size and heat problems.
Yes, but I suppose that my point is that/your/ point was a rather obvious one with an equally obvious answer.
If using the optional TPM USB-key encryption scheme will have negative effects, then I should uncheck the option!
Which has thereby led me to wonder, unless I have missed your point entirely, why the unsuitability for backups particularly counts against the scheme. Simply uncheck the option and you have no difference in functionality from before. Meanwhile,
If you have a document that you only want accessable on one machine, then you now have that option.
To make the thing really useful, you'd have to be able to key the jumpdrive to perhaps two or three machines. That way you wouldn't risk machine failure, and you could use the drive as secure transport between, say, home and work.
...the key phrase in the bit of parent post you quoted is 'being able to'.
Your complaint is irrelevant and makes you look silly, because the proposed feature was specifically described as an option.
Ah yes, I recall this. My favorite one was where an artist (a skilled, clean artist, to refer to one of the other replies to this) had two websites. One where she posted personal art and presumably other things one might post on a personal site, one where she sold her skills for money. Comissions, prints, and suchlike.
The personal site had Pern fanart, the professional did not. But there was a link on the pro site to the personal site, and vice-versa. Considering the specific decision not to put the Pern fanart on the business site as advertisment of skill, I doubt the link was particularly prominent.
She got sued by our dear McCaffery, who demanded that she not only cease using the fanart as advertisment for her business, ie take it off the website, but demanded that the/original physical works/ be destroyed.
I'm not so sure. I have friends in England, and what I tend to hear is pretty universal revilement of BT as unreliable with terrible customer service and bad speed.
Oh man. Now I'm seeing this whole line of B-grade superheroes, stretching from horizon to horizon, their costumes as manifold and as eyesearing as the stars in the sky... and then they all start to dance. Augh.
o/~"We suck too much to be in the Juu-uuustice League..."o/~
It does sound like an issue already. The thing is, it sounds like it's already getting pretty silly.
Here's the thing, though. The 'DCverse' is going to have a wider draw than people who read a fair number of comics. I mean, it's Supes and Batman. Everybody knows them. But what a lot of them/don't/ know is how crowded the 'verse actually is, because for a fair number of people, their main experience with the characters is probably via movies or TV. So it will feel screwy to them. I'm just not sure you could really sell a game entirely based on the fact that Superman is an NPC. Then again...
How do you make it the 'DC' universe? In the case of Star Wars, there's lots of attendant setting stuff and other trappings to make it recognizable. But DC is a modern-era 'verse (for the most part). The thing that makes it recognizable is the characters, which leaves two possibilities: the canonical characters will have all sorts of story and stuff going on around them, making the PCs secondary, OR we have a case where the most powerful players are these giant Mary-Sues that go out and save Superman and fight The Joker etc etc. That screws with the feel of the 'verse by introducing characters that no one has ever heard of and making them the focus, in essence. This can be pulled off, if done carefully, but the kind of careful that makes it unlame involves novel-length work. And we're talking about MMO power players, here.
Also, hero density is going to be an issue. The DC 'verse has, what, a few dozen heroes on the entire bloody planet? Few enough that crossovers are a special event. Between the reduced world size necessetated by modern technology, and the increased player base, running into another hero is going to be about as common as seeing drunk frat boys in the beer aisle at 1 AM. The territory that a lone superhero normally encompases is really big; a whole city and the surrounding area. I suppose that instances can go a long way toward solving that, but you can't instance the whole world. Then it stops being MM. But if you've got a crossover every issue, then suddenly you've got CoH/CoV. I think what they're going to end up with is a CoH clone with copyrighted characters duct-taped on as bait.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a little bit worrying, but I liked NWN too much. I'll probably buy it, for I am weak.
The ad I got just below the article was for Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm not sure they were going for when they bought that ad...
DirectX! Apply directly to monopoly!
or..
DirectX! Apply directly to graphics card!
Well, the claim is that the chip they were testing wasn't a flagship chip like the Pentium EE. In other words, they were testing a chip that's supposed to debut a couple price points below (2.67 GHz clock) the top-clocked (2.93 GHz) Conroe EE.
The inference being that the new top Intel chip will totally kick the Pentium EE's butt. Or, if you like, that this chip offers the same or better performance than the Pentium EE at what will probably be something like $200-$300 less.
Of course, that's all speculation, but the fact remains that this is not the top Conroe chip that's ocasionally losing out to the fastest Intel currently offers.
I suppose not--it's the memory counts that threw me off. Still, given the cost differences I recall fairly recently between 256 and 512 cards, I have to figure 512 megs of the stuff costs more than $40. And even if that price difference was just a spot of gouging for the Latest and Greatest (which seems probable to me--the hardcore hobbyists with money are happy to shell out big), it still means that for this particular piece of latest and greatest, they're not taking the usual margin.
I guess it's just a price-point kind of thing. $600 is what top-of-the-line graphics cards cost, and that's that. An interesting glimpse into the marketing world. Or something.
The thing that I find interesting is that they've basically got two 7900 GTXes, which are still retailing for nearly $500 in a $600 package. High margins much?
Aw man, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw 'hydroxyl ion'. Figures I wouldn't be the only one.
And when networks provide free streaming content!
Google is not close to being a monopoly. I had a few different numbers come up when I looked, but a good round consensus is about 45-50% of the search market.
That aside, the true legal definition of a monopoly is the ability to control prices without fear of competitors. If Google jumps their price per adview, they will lose significant ad revenue as it becomes more economically logical to go after the other fifty percent of search viewers and to persue other avenues of advertising.
Looking at it this way, it becomes somewhat fallacious to refer to the 'search market', because the entire economic reason to have market share as a search engine is to provide a portal for advertising. It's hard to separate the two.
To come at it from the consumer end, if Google jumps the 'price' paid for using their engine by upping the number and intrusiveness of ads, they will eventually get users moving away from their service, because it's way too easy to make the switch from one search engine to another.
That aside, there are also a couple different kinds of monopoly. In this case, if Google could be considered as a monopoly, it would be as an Efficiency Monopoly. This is because, again, it is spectacularly easy for a user to switch search engines, making for a very swift and decisive shift of market share to whichever product is considered superior. Unlike operating systems (your local LUG's claims aside), telecommunications services, or other such physical things, which move much more slowly, if at all.
It's impossible to maintain a coercive monopoly on search engines normally, because the only way to gain market share is to provide a product that is sufficiently superior that users will switch. If you somehow corner the entire market, and then cease to provide new value for consumers, someone will manage to get a couple million in venture capital together and toss out something that's better than yours, and then you've got a competitor again forcing you to provide good products. (I know, I know, I understate the difficulty of making a good search engine, but compared to most things, the barriers to entry in the search engine market are way low) I said 'normally', though. 'Normally' is a level playing field where users have equal access to all the competing search engines. And this is the potential legal problem with MS having IE7 use MSN search by default (and it was the exact same legal problem with MS having Windows default to having IE installed during the old-time browser wars). By including the default search bar as their MSN search (or, the default browser as IE), Microsoft uses their market share in one product to provide easier access to their new product in another market. This creates a barrier to competition, because now it's significantly easier for users to go to MSN (or IE), and it's impossible for Google/Yahoo (or Netscape) to make the same move, since they do not have the same access to the far-and-away market-share leader in browsers (or Operating Systems).
My point, in the end, is that you can't create a consumer-harming monopoly in the search engine market without using anti-competative tactics to give yourself an unfair advantage, because it's too easy for your consumers to switch services, and it's too easy for new competators to arise. Making it so much easier for the consumer to stick with your product instead of switching is at the very least annoying (see the fun of migrating out of Outlook Express, argh), and anti-competative and illegal if you're using opportunities it is impossible for your opponents to duplicate to do it.
I think there's a couple reasons for not.
For starters, GPU boards are already pretty huge. I don't think there's physically room. Then there's the issue of heat--you'd be localizing even more heat to one card. Not good. Finally, in a pure marketing sense, I think it's easier to get people to buy a $400 GPU and then a $300 PPU than to drop $700 on a combo board.
Separate is better for the consumer, anyway--more consumer choice about which products to buy. But I think the real central issue to why the combo won't happen is the physical size and heat problems.
Which has thereby led me to wonder, unless I have missed your point entirely, why the unsuitability for backups particularly counts against the scheme. Simply uncheck the option and you have no difference in functionality from before. Meanwhile,
To make the thing really useful, you'd have to be able to key the jumpdrive to perhaps two or three machines. That way you wouldn't risk machine failure, and you could use the drive as secure transport between, say, home and work.
...the key phrase in the bit of parent post you quoted is 'being able to'. Your complaint is irrelevant and makes you look silly, because the proposed feature was specifically described as an option.
Ah yes, I recall this. My favorite one was where an artist (a skilled, clean artist, to refer to one of the other replies to this) had two websites. One where she posted personal art and presumably other things one might post on a personal site, one where she sold her skills for money. Comissions, prints, and suchlike.
/original physical works/ be destroyed.
The personal site had Pern fanart, the professional did not. But there was a link on the pro site to the personal site, and vice-versa. Considering the specific decision not to put the Pern fanart on the business site as advertisment of skill, I doubt the link was particularly prominent.
She got sued by our dear McCaffery, who demanded that she not only cease using the fanart as advertisment for her business, ie take it off the website, but demanded that the
Gotta love that psychobitch.
I'm not so sure. I have friends in England, and what I tend to hear is pretty universal revilement of BT as unreliable with terrible customer service and bad speed.
Oh man. Now I'm seeing this whole line of B-grade superheroes, stretching from horizon to horizon, their costumes as manifold and as eyesearing as the stars in the sky... and then they all start to dance. Augh.
o/~"We suck too much to be in the Juu-uuustice League..."o/~
It does sound like an issue already. The thing is, it sounds like it's already getting pretty silly.
/don't/ know is how crowded the 'verse actually is, because for a fair number of people, their main experience with the characters is probably via movies or TV. So it will feel screwy to them. I'm just not sure you could really sell a game entirely based on the fact that Superman is an NPC. Then again...
Here's the thing, though. The 'DCverse' is going to have a wider draw than people who read a fair number of comics. I mean, it's Supes and Batman. Everybody knows them. But what a lot of them
How do you make it the 'DC' universe? In the case of Star Wars, there's lots of attendant setting stuff and other trappings to make it recognizable. But DC is a modern-era 'verse (for the most part). The thing that makes it recognizable is the characters, which leaves two possibilities: the canonical characters will have all sorts of story and stuff going on around them, making the PCs secondary, OR we have a case where the most powerful players are these giant Mary-Sues that go out and save Superman and fight The Joker etc etc. That screws with the feel of the 'verse by introducing characters that no one has ever heard of and making them the focus, in essence. This can be pulled off, if done carefully, but the kind of careful that makes it unlame involves novel-length work. And we're talking about MMO power players, here. Also, hero density is going to be an issue. The DC 'verse has, what, a few dozen heroes on the entire bloody planet? Few enough that crossovers are a special event. Between the reduced world size necessetated by modern technology, and the increased player base, running into another hero is going to be about as common as seeing drunk frat boys in the beer aisle at 1 AM. The territory that a lone superhero normally encompases is really big; a whole city and the surrounding area. I suppose that instances can go a long way toward solving that, but you can't instance the whole world. Then it stops being MM. But if you've got a crossover every issue, then suddenly you've got CoH/CoV. I think what they're going to end up with is a CoH clone with copyrighted characters duct-taped on as bait.