Microsoft just gave Linux, MacOS X, and the BSDs a nice, juicy marketing point. There's no need for the DOJ on this one. Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot by coming out and saying that their product simply isn't usable out of the box. If I were RedHat or Novell, I'd jump all over this. I can picture the ads now: "So I need to pay another $50 EVERY YEAR just to keep my computer from getting trashed by viruses? Thanks, but no thanks, Microsoft!"
You need a culture where experimentation is rewarded and failure is treated as a normal cost of experiments.
I agree. Silicon Valley is an obnoxious place. There are far too many cars, and far too many of them are "look at me" machines driven by obnoxious a-holes with massive egos. In some parts of the valley, it truly is suburbia gone mad. However, when startups in the valley hire, they don't look down on resumes with stints at Garden.com or Netscape. Actually, stints at companies that flamed out is usually seen as a good thing. You've hopefully learned from your experiences at companies that failed, and there is generally no implication that because the company failed, you failed.
I've sat in plenty of discussions where the hiring party and the hired were exchanging war stories about flame-outs they'd worked at. Learning from failure and not being afraid to take chances is definitely part of the Silicon Valley business culture, and even with rich people and nerds, if you don't have that willingness to accept risk, a startup culture would be very difficult to nurture.
TFA shows a letter from CMP, which mentions CMP's involvement with O'Reilly, but does not seem to be claiming to act on O'Reilly's behalf. "CMP hereby demands..." "CMP further demands..." but I see no demand from O'Reilly. This seems to be CMP acting to claim trademark on the term "Web 2.0" as it applies to their conferences, not a larger claim by O'Reilly and CMP for ownership of the term in all contexts.
Why is it always a scenario where you come to the rescue of the little poor guy?:-) That's hollywood, not the past 40 years of reality...not passing judgement, we've been at it for hundreds of years on this side of the pond.
That's obviously not the only scenario. The obvious contra-example is Vietnam. But what about peacekeeping operations like the UN mission in Bosnia? Most European and US military operations involve some form of peacemaking/peacekeeping. Making things more dangerous for soldiers involved in such missions for the sake of making a political point about Iraq seems callous to me.
And troop deaths mean a lot.
Especially to the troops who die. Your point seems to be that more soldiers (people) dying is a good thing. I understand your frustration with the Iraq operation. I was opposed to it before the US launched the invasion, and I still think it was a catastrophically stupid move. But I still think using robots to help save soldiers' lives is a good thing, and not using them so we'll have more casualties is unfairly placing more risk on soldiers, who after all, weren't the ones who voted Bush into office or rubber-stamped the invasion. That was the fault of American voters and their elected representatives.
The only thing that stops our armies invading any resource-rich country they desire is the marine deaths.
If South Korea were attacked by North Korea, and the US intervened, would America's use of mine-clearing robots be a good thing, or a bad thing? Whether you're talking about a "just" war or an "unjust" war, the soldier or marine on the ground just wants to stay alive. If robots can help him stay alive, that's a good thing - just like body armor, kevlar helmets, better military medicine, and so on.
If history has shown us anything, it is that humans will kill each other. The machinegun was going to end all wars. Dynamite was going to end all wars. The atom bomb was going to end all wars. Something tells me mine-clearing robots isn't going to make much of a difference one way or another in the grand calculation about whether we go to war or not. It will, however, make a whole lot of difference to the guys on the ground.
... but I don't think they took into account the fact that RMS doesn't like the Creative Commons. My guess is fans will avoid the video in droves for that reason alone.
The article misses an important point, I think. It speaks about the full spectrum of US involvement in Iraq as if it were all one affair. The invasion was successful in that American forces rapidly toppled the Iraqi government and defeated those Iraqi forces that presented resistence. That was a purely military operation, and the American technology that was designed for high-intensity conflict worked quite well.
However, at the conclusion of the invasion, American forces had to switch to peacemaking activity. American units in Iraq are part of a larger civil-military effort, and regardless of whether you feel the effort will succeed in the long run or not, it clearly hasn't succeeded yet. The invasion lasted 21 days. The peacemaking effort has lasted three years. According to the Army's own manual on low-intensity conflict, peacemaking operations run into trouble if they last too long:
The long-range goals of a peacemaking operation are often unclear; therefore, these operations are best terminated by prompt withdrawal after a settlement is reached, or by rapid transition to a peacekeeping operation (see Chapter 4) . Unless the peacemaking force has the necessary power, both military and political, to compel a lasting settlement, it may find itself attempting to govern in the face of opposition from both parties. Extrication from such a situation may be difficult and the force may leave the area having made the situation worse than it was before it intervened.
Low-intensity insurgency/counterinsurgency operations have always been markedly different than all-out war. Technology is not the force multiplier that it is in high-intensity operations. The most important factors in the success of counterinsurgency operations are political. Troops on the ground are constantly engaged in diplomacy, as the article demonstrated. But soldiers and marines do not conduct their negotiations in a vacuum. If the larger political context is not positive, soldiers confronting insurgents are fighting an uphill battle.
In Iraq, the locals know the physical environment. They know the cultural environment intimately. They know the individuals and organizations that influence a particular area. Regardless of sectarian schisms, they share a common religion. Technology gives occupiers no advantage in dealing with these advantages enjoyed by insurgents. Getting involved with the locals and making them feel comfortable often requires taking some risks in order to demonstrate good intentions. The American approach, which emphasizes technology and force protection above all else, may actually hinder the development of trust between locals and American forces.
The larger issue is that while Saddam placed his trust in generals who only gave him news he wanted to hear, the Secretary of Defense seemed to feel that American warfighting technology would win the war and somehow obviate the need for occupation of Iraq. As we have found out, the miscalculation was enormous.
So why aren't they suing every radio station in the country, and why haven't they been doing this for decades?
The last thing the RIAA wants is a level playing field, because if one existed, their leverage would disappear. With radio, they can still engage in payola practices. With XM and Sirius, they're dealing with entities that would rather control their own destinies, rather than suck on the RIAA's teat. It's not that XM and Sirius are digital, but that they are nation-wide and multi-channel. The RIAA can bully individual stations with impunity, and even the big guys like Clear Channel play along because they've essentially bought into the cartel. But XM and Sirius aren't part of the cartel, so the RIAA is giving them a shot across the bow. The message is: "Join the club, or we'll take you down."
Perhaps there were just too many dud rounds in salvo #1.
Ironically, this reminds me of Apple's efforts to go up against Windows in the 1990s. Lots of money spent on marketing that didn't work, lots of legal maneuvering to no avail. Windows had such a strong network effect that Apple had to fight not just one competitor, but an entire industry - the Windows market. As the linked article points out, Creative is up against the iPod market, not just Apple.
I don't know what their odds of success will be in the courtroom, and I seriously doubt that most of us really have a clue either. We talk as if we know all the facts, but we don't. We also don't know how well the attorneys for each side will present their cases. So we'll have to wait, probably for months or years, to see how it all pans out.
In the mean time, Apple and Creative will have to keep making new products and keep marketing them to the public. If Creative is relying on the lawsuit to give them success where the market hasn't, they'll probably be disappointed. Apple and Sun can attest to that. Some time next year, I suspect SCO will be singing the same tune as well.
...I'd like to see some kind of set standard, so I can listen to my music from any service on any player.
No DRM at all seems like a better set standard than one particular flavor of DRM, don't you think?
However, even if there were no DRM, there would still be competition between music providers. MP3 would be the standard format, but AAC, Ogg Vorbis, et al would be offered by different music stores. Basically, I don't know that it's possible to have one Holy Grail Music Format. The days of the phonograph and cassette tape are dead, because computer technology has opened up format competition.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I don't see how it can be put back in, except by settling on some sort of anti-competitive monopoly standard, which as we've seen with Windows, isn't such a good thing for competition or for consumers.
Is this really true? From what I can gather, Microsoft's brand isn't damaged much at all. Maybe it appears that way because of the skewed view we get here on/. but opinions aren't the same everywhere else.
(my point: let people voice their opinions if they think they're subpar general journalism or self biographies -- it's a friggin' discussion forum)
Uhh... I'm not sure how to respond to that. Original poster had an opinion that all blogs were crap. I responded with my own opinion that not all of 'em are crap. How is that not letting people voice their opinions? I must be missing something.
What we need is an itelligent judge that isn't afraid to intepret the law and who will stand up for the American citizens of this country.
We have a lot of intelligent, principled judges. What we need are intelligent, principled voters, rather than voters who cast their votes on the basis of who they think would be more fun at a BBQ.
Microsoft wants to compete with Yahoo, MySpace, et. al. as a user-generated content portal. Everyone and his donkey uses Word. If you're already using Word, even though it will support Blogger and other blog sites, I would be surprised if it weren't just a bit easier to use with Windows Live Spaces.
I think of this as somewhat analogous to the iPod/iTunes connection. Everyone has an iPod (yes, yes, I know not *everyone* has an iPod, and that a certain percentage of people just love Ogg Vorbis, but think Middle America here), so iTunes is a natural choice for music downloads. Everyone has Word, so blogging on Windows Live Spaces with the handy new "Blog it now!" feature is a natural choice.
Will it work? I doubt it. There are just too many already available tools that make blogging easy. Plus, Microsoft's brand has been so damaged that I'm not sure even Ma and Pa Kettle are going to jump over to Windows Live Spaces in droves.
I understand why you wouldn't want to read the "Why I like the color pink" blog, or the "I just took a dump" blog.
But you're bashing on an entire medium. Hell, even television has a lot of good content hidden among the chaff. When you discount blogging out of hand, you're lumping sites like Daring Fireball, The Technology Liberation Front and IP Democracy in with the navel-gazers.
Sure, there are a lot of useless blogs. There are also a lot of useless magazines and books. Personally I prefer a world where there are more mediums of expression, not fewer. Slashdot is an excellent example of this. It could easily be considered a group blog, filled with useless opinions, but it is obviously more than that. Get all your information and all of your opininions from Big Media if you want. I like having more options.
It may never come to pass, but if a union for IT workers is ever created, I'm thinking Marxist Hacker 42 is the obvious front-runner for union president.
Idunno, personally I don't really play any FPS that are like the others. This probably makes me a pretty terrible person to be answering this question, but maybe your assumption that all people who play FPSs play a bunch of redundant ones is wrong?
Actually, you did explain it quite well. I think it's one of those cases for me of not really enjoying FPSes, and therefore being unable to grok the nuances. It's like talking to someone who doesn't like science fiction. You explain to them that Battlefield Earth is total crap, but Battlestar Galactica fuggin' rocks, and all they hear is, "Blah, blah, blah, Battle... blah blah blah, Battle."
I think part of the reason there aren't more games that appeal to primarily female audiences (as opposed to crossover games like WoW or EverQuest) is that there simply aren't many female programmers. It's like asking me to work on a FPS title. Even if I had the skills necessary to work on the game, I'd suck, because I wouldn't be passionate about it.
If I were running a big computer gaming company, I would be putting maximum effort into attracting as many skilled female developers as possible, so my company could tap into the other 50% of the potential audience, which is in many ways being underserved. Yes, I know there are a helluva lot of female gamers now, particularly compared to a decade ago. Still, as The Sims has shown, there's vast untapped potential for games that appeal directly to girls and women.
... boys will "do the same stupid thing over and over again and be happy," (and I wince looking at my vast collection of first-person shooters).
Everyone seems to be leaving that comment alone. Personally I've never really understood the appeal of first-person shooters, because they all do seem to be the same thing. You run around killing things with different forms of projectile weapons. However, I know I'm definitely in the minority on this one, at least in Slashdot.
If you enjoy first-person shooters, do you think of the games as actually very different from each other, or is there something enjoyable about the repetition of them? Or is it something completely different that makes them so appealing?
File this one under: "Clueless person looking for insight," rather than "FPS hater baits Slashdotters."
There's no way in the world I'd voluntarily put an RFID implant under my skin. As others have pointed out, there are just too many downsides. However, there is one upside nobody has mentioned. The next time you go to a Shadowrun convention, you'll be afforded tremendous respect and deference. "That's the dude who is ACTUALLY CHIPPED!" they'll whisper, as they stride down the corridors of the Airport Hilton, black dusters swirling in the dry, vaguely stale air.
Incidentally, do you ever notice how you never see any studies calculating the exact amount of money the MPAA loses each year from making crappy, unoriginal, cookie-cutter movies; showing the movies in a medium where you have to spend gas money to get to the theater and then more than half the cost of a DVD to get in the theater door; and then once they have your money putting more effort into showing you more ads than they do the movie? That's a study I'd be curious to read.
That is a fuggin' great idea. I'd love to see a study like that. Perhaps something comparing the rate of return on art flicks vs. standard Hollywood fare. If the major studios put out 4x the movies in 2007, with the same aggregate budget they spent in 2006, covering a wider variety of themes targeted at a wider variety of audiences, they might make as much or more revenue.
The problem is that they bank on losing money on 4 out of every 5 movies, knowing that the fifth will be a blockbuster that will recoup all the money they threw down the toilet producing flicks like Battlefield Earth.
Fox news has risen to prominence because it is the singluar major news outlet that doesn't pander to leftist sympathies.
Or it could be that Americans want feel-good news. Good reporting digs up uncomfortable truths. After being barraged by many uncomfortable truths in the 60s and 70s, Americans ushered in the feel-good-about-America Reagan Era. Arguably it was America's collective desire to avoid complicated reality in favor of a more jingoistic and easily-digestible view of the world that led both to the rightward political turn of the last two decades, and the simultaneous rise of Fox News and breathless "as it happens" reportage devoid of context or depth.
You don't have to be a leftist to understand that America does actually make mistakes, but you do have to practice willful ignorance if you watch Fox and expect you're getting an unvarnished look at current events. As for the Washington Times, calling it "conservative-leaning" is like referring to the John Birch Society as "mildly conservative."
The most an information consumer can hope for is to be cognizant of the prejudices of the source. One can only hope that as the blogosphere and internet media evolves as an information source, the critical thinking skills of consumers experiences a similar evolution. Too many people believe what they are told and a free society will not long endure when so many of its citizens are damned fools.
Being cognizant of the prejudices of the source is vital. I definitely agree with you there. It's a pity that so many people still take most of their news from one TV network. TV is the most easily-manipulated, most infotainment-oriented, most passive news medium. I find it baffling that anyone could watch Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, or ABC, and think that they're being informed in anything but the most minimal fashion. Read one issue of the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the NY Times, and compare that to a week's worth of TV news viewing. The difference in the amount and quality of information received is staggering.
Sadly, I'm not sure that the blogosphere is much better than TV. Disinformation and spin can be passed through the blogosphere just as rapidly as via TV. When everyone's opinions are equal in weight, the opinions that fit our own predispositions and desires (as with feel-good Fox TV reporting) get amplified. Minority voices do get heard in the blogosphere, which is good. But ultimately we're still left with the fact that most of what we read on blogs is opinion, derived from primary sources in the mainstream media. If the MSM isn't doing its job and practicing good, in-depth journalism, bloggers can act as primary information gatherers, but it's not easy, particularly in places like war zones and Congressional office buildings.
My question for these people is: what will this new OS do for you that isn't true right now?
Apply this question to any OS release, be it from Microsoft, Linux, Apple, or someone else. Generally there are things that people come to expect in the new release. Sometimes it's better security. Sometimes it's better stability. Sometimes it's improved networking, better utilization of CPU resources, or something else.
For a long time now, Microsoft has been billing Vista as The Next Big Thing. As they promised in their March 21 road map update, "Windows Vista will deliver great value to businesses by seamlessly connecting people to information, enabling increased mobile and remote productivity, significantly reducing deployment and support costs, and providing a more secure and compliant desktop platform. For consumers, Windows Vista will bring clarity to the world of personal computing, enabling people to more safely and easily accomplish everyday tasks, instantly find what they want, enjoy the latest in entertainment, and stay connected at home or on the go."
Microsoft's credibility has been sliding for years now. Regular everyday people are starting to realize that Microsoft isn't the only game in town. Apple is coming on strong and getting increasingly aggressive in its marketing of the Mac. The Linux user base continues to grow.
Microsoft advocates used to be able to claim that no matter what the technical limitations of the company's products, it was always run very well. Products shipped on time. You could usually figure that even if it was mediocre now, whatever Microsoft product you were using would probably be better in a year, and markedly improved in two or three years. That's certainly not the case now, and continued inability to deliver makes Microsoft a less reliable vendor.
If you always figured Vista wouldn't amount to much, the delay obviously won't matter to you personally. You could probably measure the slide in Microsoft's influence by the increase in lack of concern over Vista delays.
As for analysts, it sure would be great to get paid to engage in the same sort of random speculation we all do on Slashdot anyway. Hell, for reliable predictions about the technology market, I'd pick any ten Slashdot readers over any ten analysts any day.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft just gave Linux, MacOS X, and the BSDs a nice, juicy marketing point. There's no need for the DOJ on this one. Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot by coming out and saying that their product simply isn't usable out of the box. If I were RedHat or Novell, I'd jump all over this. I can picture the ads now: "So I need to pay another $50 EVERY YEAR just to keep my computer from getting trashed by viruses? Thanks, but no thanks, Microsoft!"
Soon the customers realised that their Mac Experience was an exclusive experience, with no options outside the Mac World.
Wake up, Rip! Wake up! You've been asleep for 20 years!
It seems they regret the way this was handled
You need a culture where experimentation is rewarded and failure is treated as a normal cost of experiments.
I agree. Silicon Valley is an obnoxious place. There are far too many cars, and far too many of them are "look at me" machines driven by obnoxious a-holes with massive egos. In some parts of the valley, it truly is suburbia gone mad. However, when startups in the valley hire, they don't look down on resumes with stints at Garden.com or Netscape. Actually, stints at companies that flamed out is usually seen as a good thing. You've hopefully learned from your experiences at companies that failed, and there is generally no implication that because the company failed, you failed.
I've sat in plenty of discussions where the hiring party and the hired were exchanging war stories about flame-outs they'd worked at. Learning from failure and not being afraid to take chances is definitely part of the Silicon Valley business culture, and even with rich people and nerds, if you don't have that willingness to accept risk, a startup culture would be very difficult to nurture.
TFA shows a letter from CMP, which mentions CMP's involvement with O'Reilly, but does not seem to be claiming to act on O'Reilly's behalf. "CMP hereby demands..." "CMP further demands..." but I see no demand from O'Reilly. This seems to be CMP acting to claim trademark on the term "Web 2.0" as it applies to their conferences, not a larger claim by O'Reilly and CMP for ownership of the term in all contexts.
Why is it always a scenario where you come to the rescue of the little poor guy? :-) That's hollywood, not the past 40 years of reality...not passing judgement, we've been at it for hundreds of years on this side of the pond.
That's obviously not the only scenario. The obvious contra-example is Vietnam. But what about peacekeeping operations like the UN mission in Bosnia? Most European and US military operations involve some form of peacemaking/peacekeeping. Making things more dangerous for soldiers involved in such missions for the sake of making a political point about Iraq seems callous to me.
And troop deaths mean a lot.
Especially to the troops who die. Your point seems to be that more soldiers (people) dying is a good thing. I understand your frustration with the Iraq operation. I was opposed to it before the US launched the invasion, and I still think it was a catastrophically stupid move. But I still think using robots to help save soldiers' lives is a good thing, and not using them so we'll have more casualties is unfairly placing more risk on soldiers, who after all, weren't the ones who voted Bush into office or rubber-stamped the invasion. That was the fault of American voters and their elected representatives.
The only thing that stops our armies invading any resource-rich country they desire is the marine deaths.
If South Korea were attacked by North Korea, and the US intervened, would America's use of mine-clearing robots be a good thing, or a bad thing? Whether you're talking about a "just" war or an "unjust" war, the soldier or marine on the ground just wants to stay alive. If robots can help him stay alive, that's a good thing - just like body armor, kevlar helmets, better military medicine, and so on.
If history has shown us anything, it is that humans will kill each other. The machinegun was going to end all wars. Dynamite was going to end all wars. The atom bomb was going to end all wars. Something tells me mine-clearing robots isn't going to make much of a difference one way or another in the grand calculation about whether we go to war or not. It will, however, make a whole lot of difference to the guys on the ground.
... but I don't think they took into account the fact that RMS doesn't like the Creative Commons. My guess is fans will avoid the video in droves for that reason alone.
The article misses an important point, I think. It speaks about the full spectrum of US involvement in Iraq as if it were all one affair. The invasion was successful in that American forces rapidly toppled the Iraqi government and defeated those Iraqi forces that presented resistence. That was a purely military operation, and the American technology that was designed for high-intensity conflict worked quite well.
However, at the conclusion of the invasion, American forces had to switch to peacemaking activity. American units in Iraq are part of a larger civil-military effort, and regardless of whether you feel the effort will succeed in the long run or not, it clearly hasn't succeeded yet. The invasion lasted 21 days. The peacemaking effort has lasted three years. According to the Army's own manual on low-intensity conflict, peacemaking operations run into trouble if they last too long:Low-intensity insurgency/counterinsurgency operations have always been markedly different than all-out war. Technology is not the force multiplier that it is in high-intensity operations. The most important factors in the success of counterinsurgency operations are political. Troops on the ground are constantly engaged in diplomacy, as the article demonstrated. But soldiers and marines do not conduct their negotiations in a vacuum. If the larger political context is not positive, soldiers confronting insurgents are fighting an uphill battle.
In Iraq, the locals know the physical environment. They know the cultural environment intimately. They know the individuals and organizations that influence a particular area. Regardless of sectarian schisms, they share a common religion. Technology gives occupiers no advantage in dealing with these advantages enjoyed by insurgents. Getting involved with the locals and making them feel comfortable often requires taking some risks in order to demonstrate good intentions. The American approach, which emphasizes technology and force protection above all else, may actually hinder the development of trust between locals and American forces.
The larger issue is that while Saddam placed his trust in generals who only gave him news he wanted to hear, the Secretary of Defense seemed to feel that American warfighting technology would win the war and somehow obviate the need for occupation of Iraq. As we have found out, the miscalculation was enormous.
So why aren't they suing every radio station in the country, and why haven't they been doing this for decades?
The last thing the RIAA wants is a level playing field, because if one existed, their leverage would disappear. With radio, they can still engage in payola practices. With XM and Sirius, they're dealing with entities that would rather control their own destinies, rather than suck on the RIAA's teat. It's not that XM and Sirius are digital, but that they are nation-wide and multi-channel. The RIAA can bully individual stations with impunity, and even the big guys like Clear Channel play along because they've essentially bought into the cartel. But XM and Sirius aren't part of the cartel, so the RIAA is giving them a shot across the bow. The message is: "Join the club, or we'll take you down."
Perhaps there were just too many dud rounds in salvo #1.
Ironically, this reminds me of Apple's efforts to go up against Windows in the 1990s. Lots of money spent on marketing that didn't work, lots of legal maneuvering to no avail. Windows had such a strong network effect that Apple had to fight not just one competitor, but an entire industry - the Windows market. As the linked article points out, Creative is up against the iPod market, not just Apple.
I don't know what their odds of success will be in the courtroom, and I seriously doubt that most of us really have a clue either. We talk as if we know all the facts, but we don't. We also don't know how well the attorneys for each side will present their cases. So we'll have to wait, probably for months or years, to see how it all pans out.
In the mean time, Apple and Creative will have to keep making new products and keep marketing them to the public. If Creative is relying on the lawsuit to give them success where the market hasn't, they'll probably be disappointed. Apple and Sun can attest to that. Some time next year, I suspect SCO will be singing the same tune as well.
No DRM at all seems like a better set standard than one particular flavor of DRM, don't you think?
However, even if there were no DRM, there would still be competition between music providers. MP3 would be the standard format, but AAC, Ogg Vorbis, et al would be offered by different music stores. Basically, I don't know that it's possible to have one Holy Grail Music Format. The days of the phonograph and cassette tape are dead, because computer technology has opened up format competition.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I don't see how it can be put back in, except by settling on some sort of anti-competitive monopoly standard, which as we've seen with Windows, isn't such a good thing for competition or for consumers.
Is this really true? From what I can gather, Microsoft's brand isn't damaged much at all. Maybe it appears that way because of the skewed view we get here on /. but opinions aren't the same everywhere else.
No doubt, Slashdot isn't at all representative of society at large. However, it does seem Microsoft as a brand has been taking it in the shorts lately.
(my point: let people voice their opinions if they think they're subpar general journalism or self biographies -- it's a friggin' discussion forum)
Uhh... I'm not sure how to respond to that. Original poster had an opinion that all blogs were crap. I responded with my own opinion that not all of 'em are crap. How is that not letting people voice their opinions? I must be missing something.
What we need is an itelligent judge that isn't afraid to intepret the law and who will stand up for the American citizens of this country.
We have a lot of intelligent, principled judges. What we need are intelligent, principled voters, rather than voters who cast their votes on the basis of who they think would be more fun at a BBQ.
Microsoft wants to compete with Yahoo, MySpace, et. al. as a user-generated content portal. Everyone and his donkey uses Word. If you're already using Word, even though it will support Blogger and other blog sites, I would be surprised if it weren't just a bit easier to use with Windows Live Spaces.
I think of this as somewhat analogous to the iPod/iTunes connection. Everyone has an iPod (yes, yes, I know not *everyone* has an iPod, and that a certain percentage of people just love Ogg Vorbis, but think Middle America here), so iTunes is a natural choice for music downloads. Everyone has Word, so blogging on Windows Live Spaces with the handy new "Blog it now!" feature is a natural choice.
Will it work? I doubt it. There are just too many already available tools that make blogging easy. Plus, Microsoft's brand has been so damaged that I'm not sure even Ma and Pa Kettle are going to jump over to Windows Live Spaces in droves.
If you don't like blogs, don't read 'em.
I understand why you wouldn't want to read the "Why I like the color pink" blog, or the "I just took a dump" blog.
But you're bashing on an entire medium. Hell, even television has a lot of good content hidden among the chaff. When you discount blogging out of hand, you're lumping sites like Daring Fireball, The Technology Liberation Front and IP Democracy in with the navel-gazers.
Sure, there are a lot of useless blogs. There are also a lot of useless magazines and books. Personally I prefer a world where there are more mediums of expression, not fewer. Slashdot is an excellent example of this. It could easily be considered a group blog, filled with useless opinions, but it is obviously more than that. Get all your information and all of your opininions from Big Media if you want. I like having more options.
It may never come to pass, but if a union for IT workers is ever created, I'm thinking Marxist Hacker 42 is the obvious front-runner for union president.
Idunno, personally I don't really play any FPS that are like the others. This probably makes me a pretty terrible person to be answering this question, but maybe your assumption that all people who play FPSs play a bunch of redundant ones is wrong?
Actually, you did explain it quite well. I think it's one of those cases for me of not really enjoying FPSes, and therefore being unable to grok the nuances. It's like talking to someone who doesn't like science fiction. You explain to them that Battlefield Earth is total crap, but Battlestar Galactica fuggin' rocks, and all they hear is, "Blah, blah, blah, Battle... blah blah blah, Battle."
I think part of the reason there aren't more games that appeal to primarily female audiences (as opposed to crossover games like WoW or EverQuest) is that there simply aren't many female programmers. It's like asking me to work on a FPS title. Even if I had the skills necessary to work on the game, I'd suck, because I wouldn't be passionate about it.
If I were running a big computer gaming company, I would be putting maximum effort into attracting as many skilled female developers as possible, so my company could tap into the other 50% of the potential audience, which is in many ways being underserved. Yes, I know there are a helluva lot of female gamers now, particularly compared to a decade ago. Still, as The Sims has shown, there's vast untapped potential for games that appeal directly to girls and women.
Everyone seems to be leaving that comment alone. Personally I've never really understood the appeal of first-person shooters, because they all do seem to be the same thing. You run around killing things with different forms of projectile weapons. However, I know I'm definitely in the minority on this one, at least in Slashdot.
If you enjoy first-person shooters, do you think of the games as actually very different from each other, or is there something enjoyable about the repetition of them? Or is it something completely different that makes them so appealing?
File this one under: "Clueless person looking for insight," rather than "FPS hater baits Slashdotters."
But who is going to fund that study, and pay for it to be released to the masses?
That's what university scholarships and research grants are for! Get a creative grantwriter, and you can get funding for just about anything.
There's no way in the world I'd voluntarily put an RFID implant under my skin. As others have pointed out, there are just too many downsides. However, there is one upside nobody has mentioned. The next time you go to a Shadowrun convention, you'll be afforded tremendous respect and deference. "That's the dude who is ACTUALLY CHIPPED!" they'll whisper, as they stride down the corridors of the Airport Hilton, black dusters swirling in the dry, vaguely stale air.
Incidentally, do you ever notice how you never see any studies calculating the exact amount of money the MPAA loses each year from making crappy, unoriginal, cookie-cutter movies; showing the movies in a medium where you have to spend gas money to get to the theater and then more than half the cost of a DVD to get in the theater door; and then once they have your money putting more effort into showing you more ads than they do the movie? That's a study I'd be curious to read.
That is a fuggin' great idea. I'd love to see a study like that. Perhaps something comparing the rate of return on art flicks vs. standard Hollywood fare. If the major studios put out 4x the movies in 2007, with the same aggregate budget they spent in 2006, covering a wider variety of themes targeted at a wider variety of audiences, they might make as much or more revenue.
The problem is that they bank on losing money on 4 out of every 5 movies, knowing that the fifth will be a blockbuster that will recoup all the money they threw down the toilet producing flicks like Battlefield Earth.
Fox news has risen to prominence because it is the singluar major news outlet that doesn't pander to leftist sympathies.
Or it could be that Americans want feel-good news. Good reporting digs up uncomfortable truths. After being barraged by many uncomfortable truths in the 60s and 70s, Americans ushered in the feel-good-about-America Reagan Era. Arguably it was America's collective desire to avoid complicated reality in favor of a more jingoistic and easily-digestible view of the world that led both to the rightward political turn of the last two decades, and the simultaneous rise of Fox News and breathless "as it happens" reportage devoid of context or depth.
You don't have to be a leftist to understand that America does actually make mistakes, but you do have to practice willful ignorance if you watch Fox and expect you're getting an unvarnished look at current events. As for the Washington Times, calling it "conservative-leaning" is like referring to the John Birch Society as "mildly conservative."
The most an information consumer can hope for is to be cognizant of the prejudices of the source. One can only hope that as the blogosphere and internet media evolves as an information source, the critical thinking skills of consumers experiences a similar evolution. Too many people believe what they are told and a free society will not long endure when so many of its citizens are damned fools.
Being cognizant of the prejudices of the source is vital. I definitely agree with you there. It's a pity that so many people still take most of their news from one TV network. TV is the most easily-manipulated, most infotainment-oriented, most passive news medium. I find it baffling that anyone could watch Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, or ABC, and think that they're being informed in anything but the most minimal fashion. Read one issue of the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the NY Times, and compare that to a week's worth of TV news viewing. The difference in the amount and quality of information received is staggering.
Sadly, I'm not sure that the blogosphere is much better than TV. Disinformation and spin can be passed through the blogosphere just as rapidly as via TV. When everyone's opinions are equal in weight, the opinions that fit our own predispositions and desires (as with feel-good Fox TV reporting) get amplified. Minority voices do get heard in the blogosphere, which is good. But ultimately we're still left with the fact that most of what we read on blogs is opinion, derived from primary sources in the mainstream media. If the MSM isn't doing its job and practicing good, in-depth journalism, bloggers can act as primary information gatherers, but it's not easy, particularly in places like war zones and Congressional office buildings.
My question for these people is: what will this new OS do for you that isn't true right now?
Apply this question to any OS release, be it from Microsoft, Linux, Apple, or someone else. Generally there are things that people come to expect in the new release. Sometimes it's better security. Sometimes it's better stability. Sometimes it's improved networking, better utilization of CPU resources, or something else.
For a long time now, Microsoft has been billing Vista as The Next Big Thing. As they promised in their March 21 road map update, "Windows Vista will deliver great value to businesses by seamlessly connecting people to information, enabling increased mobile and remote productivity, significantly reducing deployment and support costs, and providing a more secure and compliant desktop platform. For consumers, Windows Vista will bring clarity to the world of personal computing, enabling people to more safely and easily accomplish everyday tasks, instantly find what they want, enjoy the latest in entertainment, and stay connected at home or on the go."
Microsoft's credibility has been sliding for years now. Regular everyday people are starting to realize that Microsoft isn't the only game in town. Apple is coming on strong and getting increasingly aggressive in its marketing of the Mac. The Linux user base continues to grow.
Microsoft advocates used to be able to claim that no matter what the technical limitations of the company's products, it was always run very well. Products shipped on time. You could usually figure that even if it was mediocre now, whatever Microsoft product you were using would probably be better in a year, and markedly improved in two or three years. That's certainly not the case now, and continued inability to deliver makes Microsoft a less reliable vendor.
If you always figured Vista wouldn't amount to much, the delay obviously won't matter to you personally. You could probably measure the slide in Microsoft's influence by the increase in lack of concern over Vista delays.
As for analysts, it sure would be great to get paid to engage in the same sort of random speculation we all do on Slashdot anyway. Hell, for reliable predictions about the technology market, I'd pick any ten Slashdot readers over any ten analysts any day.