In the end, if there were enough Apps to use on a browser, you could switch to Linux, or to any OS supporting a browser - OpenBeOS, BSD, whatever.
That's it in a nutshell. Despite all the other endeavors Microsoft engages in, without the monopoly rents they receive from Windows and Office, Microsoft is dead in the water. They know this, and are doing everything possible to extend the Windows monopoly to the Internet. Once the majority of their customers realize that the OS has become of secondary importance, they're screwed.
For them it's about leveraging their browser dominance until the browser is fully integrated into the OS with Longhorn. They're relying on the ol' FUD train to keep things going in the interim. All declarations of confidence aside, they know that there is more pressure on them than ever before. With a year or more before Longhorn's arrival, I expect to see Microsoft talking more and more about how wonderful the browsing experience will be in Longhorn, while painting Firefox et. al. as relics of a bygone era.
Before long I expect to hear Ballmer say something like, "People just don't understand that the rich browsing experience built into Longhorn is going to make the tired old standalone browsers look pathetic!"
... said the addict
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
don't multi-task because I HAVE to, but often because I WANT to.
Most of us probably feel that way, but the larger question is why do we want to multitask so much, and when we do multitask are we actually losing something in the process? Looking back on the time in my life before I became jacked in to the Net (my teens and early 20s), I realize that I spent a lot more time actually *thinking deeply* about things than I do now. These days I am aware of a broad range of interesting and useful information, and I consider myself fairly capable of filtering it well.
But even with filtering, the sheer mass of information moving through my consciousness is enough to keep me from sitting for any length of time and truly pondering something in detail. The times when I am able to unplug and think are the times I feel the most relaxed and at peace.
That's one reason some people cling to analog methods - they want to maintain a sense of cognitive equilibrium. Although I'm immersed in the Net almost every day, I prefer paper books to eBooks for the simple reason that I can detach from bits and pixels. Outdoor exercise does the same thing for me, and although I love my iPod, I don't use it when I'm out enjoying nature.
Why is it that the term "white trash" is an acceptible term when every other derogatory term for a particular group of people is considered rude and obnoxious?
I say this not to bag on vasqzr, because I use the term myself. But I've been thinking about it more and more lately.
You missed my point, which was that in comparing low-cost Wintel boxes to Macs, many people fail to take into account all of the things that those lower-end Wintel boxes don't include, but that come standard on a Mac (the iApps, longer-lasting hardware, etc.). So I thought it was funny that the shoe was on the other foot this time. It seems that with the tech press, if you're the leader, you get certain perks.
Also, you're not exactly accurate in your description of iPods coming without accessories. My 20Gb iPod came with a case, a dock, a remote, and a Firewire cable. These days all of the iPods ship with both Firewire and USB 2.0 cables, a remote, and a belt clip. The larger-capacity models include the dock as well. It's all here.
If the phone companies' approach to TV is anything like their approach to DSL, we're in for some exciting tales of boundless incompetence.
Let the hilarity begin!
It depends on which press you're talking about
on
The Media in 2014
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The medium is the message. Most Americans still get their news from television, the single worst medium for meticulous reporting of facts. Images speak far louder than words, and by its very nature television is a medium dominated by visuals that are edited for "visual impact" - so it should be no surprise that television news has become essentially infotainment.
There's still good journalism in America, but you have to read it, not watch it:
The New York Times is widely derided for having a "liberal bias," but there is still no paper in the US that covers as much of what is going on in the world today and presents as wide a range of intelligent and interesting commentary. The print edition is jam-packed with info, and while people complain about the fact that you have to register to get free news from NYT online, it's more than worth the money.;-)
The Christian Science Monitor, despite the name is a scrupulously independent voice. Their print version is formatted not to bring you every ounce of news, but to pick and choose stories of interest from around the world. CSM doesn't focus on immediacy, which is quite refreshing in the era of instant news stories without any meat.
The Wall Street Journal takes flak because it represents the voice of The Man, but if you recognize that the Journal's bias is in favor of the capitalist marketplace, it's an excellent source of information. The reporting is solid and the range of coverage is impressive.
Getting back to the theme of going beyond knee-jerk immediacy, there are several excellent weekly and monthly magazines available in the states. I'm partial to The Economist, which is not published in the States, and so provides much more coverage of the rest off the world. I happen to agree with most of their editorial bias, but I sometimes disagree with it. One of the nice things about the Economist is that they state their views in a way that allows you to separate the facts from their views.
I'm also partial to The Atlantic, a monthly magazine that explores a wide range of issues. Their coverage of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq has been superb for its depth, range of viewpoints, and clarity.
There are plenty of other great news sources in the United States. I merely listed some of my favorites. My point is that if you expect the television to provide you with serious news coverage, you'll continue to be disappointed. If you take the time to sift through a few print publications, you may be amazed at what's out there.
Expect a lot of this sort of hardball behavior to become the norm in the games industry, if it isn't already.
As we all now know, the games industry is huge - bigger than Hollywood. Well, look at how Hollywood studios have acted over the years, and recognize that the halcyon days of the games industry are gone. It's Big Business, and if you look at how games are marketed and distributed, it's a sophisticated moneymaking machine where creativity runs a distant second to pulling in big dough.
People complain about movies being derivative, formulaic, and obsessed with sequels. The movies have nothing on the games industry. It's becoming more and more risk-averse every day.
But the original question was what was the point of the FCC. It's sole justification is spectrum management. Otherwise, why have an FCC? Is the risk of dirty pictures on TV, restrictions on business practicess, or even public safety measures sufficiently dangerous that we need to address this at the Federal level?
So your argument and (likely) that of the prior poster is that while the FCC is involved in policing content, your opinion is that the policing of content is not something that is the purview of the Federal government.
I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with that sentiment, but given that the coverage of broadcast media extends beyond state lines, if the federal government doesn't address it, nothing that states or local government could do would really have any impact. So your argument essentially is that indecency, the business practices of broadcasters, and public safety issues related to broadcasting should not be dealt with by the federal government, and so should not be dealt with by government at all.
But the Constitution places limits on freedom of speech and behavior. The government watches out for anticompetitive measures in business, has broken up monopolists, and has forced certain industries to amend their behavior in the past.
You can't sell a magazine in 7-Eleven with bare breasts on the cover, so it is unsurprising that bare breasts on an NFL broadcast would be illegal as well. I'm not saying that I agree with a morality that allows wanton violence on TV but frowns on nakedness, but the United States has always been an intensely religious society. There are plenty of inherent contradictions in the zealousness with which we root out pornography while promoting violence, but there is nothing new about this in American society - it goes all the way back to our founding.
Suppose YOU found a hole in some NASA computer that allowed you to endanger a shuttle launch or mission.
This presupposes that rummaging around inside a NASA system is somehow a virtuous activity. You don't accidentally find security holes when you're downloading pictures from the most recent Mars Rover mission. I don't buy the notion that somehow if while you are probing the defenses of a US government computer system for your own reasons (curiosity, sense of achievement, whatever) and you find a vulnerability, that makes you a stand-up citizen.
It's extremely easy to see NASA and other government agencies as being filled with incompetents, but most people who have never worked in government don't understand the competing pressures operating in such an environment. Time is tight, money is tight, politics is involved, and in government you can't just use money as you please. It makes for a torturous decision making process and an environment in which change comes slowly and only after great effort.
Now imagine that you operate in such an environment, and on top of all that you have people constantly trying to crack your systems. If you're an IT person at NASA, you don't care what the motivation of these people is, because it is making your already difficult job just that much more painful. You don't have a crystal ball, you can't read into someone's mind to find out if they have the intention of exposing these holes for the good of NASA, or they are just trying to get free hard drive space or perhaps some information they can sell to someone.
Not all geeks believe that snooping around in government systems is ethical, let alone useful for the government agencies affected by such behavior. If someone came up to your house at night with infrared goggles, snooped in all the windows, tried all the locks, tried wiggling the bricks in your chimney and watched your front door to find out when you'd left, would you be so sanguine?
I was unclear on what the bounds of the FCC's mandate actually are, so I did some checking. According to the FCC:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.
The FCC has 16 bureaus and offices, including the Enforcement Bureau, which enforces the Communications Act. The Bureau sees its mission thusly: Through firm, fast, flexible and fair enforcement of the Communications Act and the FCC's rules, promote competition, protect consumers and foster efficient use of the spectrum while furthering public safety goals.
The FCC reports directly to Congress, and it seems Congress has given the FCC the responsibility of policing the airwaves on certain matters: t is a violation of federal law to broadcast obscene, profane or indecent programming. The prohibition is set forth at Title 18 United States Code, Section 1464 (18 U.S.C. 1464). Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission the responsibility for administratively enforcing 18 U.S.C. 1464. In doing so, the Commission may issue a warning, impose a monetary forfeiture or revoke a station license for the broadcast of obscene, profane or indecent material.
I'm not sure if this fits into the original mandate of the FCC, but since it was established as an agency that reports directly to Congress, and Congress gave it the power to watch out for indecency, it seems that the FCC is about more than spectrum management.
You can tell a great story in any form, books, TV, movies, or in a video game.
That begs the question of what constitutes a great story. If a "great story" is a story packed with action, I suppose a game and a book or movie are equivalent. The game probably holds the edge, because of its intrinsic interactivity.
But isn't there a difference between a video game, which generally provides at best a very shallow view of the human condition, and a great work of literature? To Kill a Mockingbird may not have made any impact on you, but it made a deep and lasting impact on me. The book dealt with human weaknesses like fear, prejudice, and malice. It made me think about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of hatred. It opened my eyes.
The Oscars are voted on, as are the Pulitzer prizes. But less generally-popular movies and books do win these prizes, because the people who are doing the judging are looking for works of art that do not simply serve as entertainment, but also fulfill some other artistic function. We may not agree with who won a given award, but with awards for art there are always metrics beyond simple popularity. Awards for artistic works are designed to highlight work that elevates the culture.
Do most video games elevate the culture? Perhaps the video game community needs to ask itself whether it truly is an art form, as many delude themselves into believing, or whether most games are simply immersive entertainment that at best contains no message and at worst conveys the message that maximizing your kill count is equivalent to heroism.
Consider what motivates people to come to Silicon Valley. First and foremost, people want to bring their ideas to market and become rich in the process. Or they at least want to work on someone else's project and become wealthy along the way. Silicon Valley is the most wealth-obsessed place I've ever been, in part because everyone thinks they actually have a shot at wealth.
In Silicon Valley, although there are tech giants, it's the startups that are critical to the system. Intel, Apple, et. al. are continuously spinning out employees who start their own ventures. The big players then gobble them up. The founders get rich, the big guys get richer, and everyone is happy. In a few cases the small fry actually make it to the big leagues on their own, but it's a tough road.
The road is made tougher by VCs, who in the late 1990s dumped staggering quantities of money in poor investments. Now they've reacted in typically sheep-like fashion, by only investing in operatiions that already have a product and are already consistently profitable. VCs only like to accept true risk if all of the other VCs are doing so (social networking sites, anyone?). They're a vast herd wandering the Valley, all of them looking for that last bit of untrammeled ground.
In order for solar power to work become even remotely attractive to Silicon Valley companies, it has to be something that will entice startups. Big companies will not take the risks. But most small companies won't do so in absence of VC money and more importantly in absence of a perceived unmet demand. Consumers simply are not clamoring for solar power, because the pain threshhold of petrolium isn't high enough.
If no small, nimble startups are formed around a particular market, in Silicon Valley that market is not likely to ever be formed. This equation might change if one of the larger players poured a lot of time and money into making solar products, but most of the large Silicon Valley companies are at the point in their lifecycle where they have become reliant on the small startups for high-risk innovation.
A region without this long-established pattern might have a better chance. But the only thing outside of computers that the Valley seems interested in right now is biotech, and that's only because all of the South San Francisco companies are taking the real risks in that market, and happen to be in close physical proximity to the Valley.
as you may have noticed, there are a lot of people on Slashdot who are into this stuff called Open Source software. Firefox is one of many browsers, but currently it also happens to the be the Mozilla-based browser with the most effort behind it. Since Mozilla is Open Source, and since Firefox is doing something that very rarely happens (stealing marketshare from Microsoft), people are quite excited about it.
Firefox is not necessarily ther best browser out there. But that's not really the point. Firefox is awakening people to the notion that there's something out there beyond Microsoft. Opera hasn't been able to do that successfully, but Firefox is getting all kinds of press, and more importantly, downloads. The more examples out there of Open Source software successfully taking on Microsoft, the better it is for Open Source in general.
There are other topics that get mentioned a lot on Slashdot. You may have noticed that stories about the so-called "Linux" operating system pop up frequently. This is also an Open Source project, and is fairly well-regarded by most Slashdotters.
Opera, while a spiffy li'l browser in some regards, is not an Open Source project, and it doesn't have as much momentum behind it, so it doesn't get much press on Slashdot. You don't hear much about Lisp or Smalltalk either. It doesn't mean that they're not great languages, it just means that most of the readers would rather talk about other things.
Why nobody has posted any stories about the last Raiders-Chiefs game is beyond me, though....
They'll keep applying more of said tactics, until Penn State publically withdraws this policy.
I don't know why I didn't think of that. It seems so obvious, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's how they'll actually respond. Of course, the only people who will hear about it or care about it will be folks like the Slashdot crowd (and the unfortunates at Penn State's IT department).
A few wealthy parents who haven't figured out how to raise their kids will use this service. Their kids will figure out ways to render it ineffective. The company will go out of business, or will turn to some other "clever" idea.
it just lacks the immediacy of online news sources.
IMO this is part of the reason so much online news and TV news sucks. There is immediacy, but no depth. News agencies fall over each other to get the scoop on a story, but when I live in California is it *really* worth knowing that scant details about some breaking story from Lithuania at 10:13 am when a much more detailed and informative story will be showing up in the NYT or the Post a few hours later?
I'd rather absorb news from a source that is checking facts, looking at all of the angles, providing relevant contextual information, and giving me a deeper understanding of the issues involved.
Or what does is say about society as a whole that killing is so much fun?
I would ask a slightly different question, which is this: What does it say about our society that it is so difficult for anyone to make money selling games that don't involve killing or exploitation? Is it that game designers can't think outside the violence paradigm, or that most attempts to do so make less money? Either way, The Sims and Myst are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Notice that I used the words, "superfluous Flash."
I like Flash. You can do amazing things with it. But it is not for everything. When you're working on a site with lots of content turnover, that has to be well-indexed by search engines, downloaded quickly, and can't rely on anything other than the browser, it's best not to rely on Flash for key things like navigation.
As someone who works primarily on content-heavy sites that are constantly in flux, I have found Flash to be more difficult to maintain than HTML. It is also still problematic for search engine spidering.
That said, Flash can be extremely effective in situations where data-driven multimedia presentation is a must. Visual explanations are a great place to use Flash. But as the primary tool for creating and maintaing sites, Flash doesn't fit the bill for most commercial sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Polyanna!
That's it in a nutshell. Despite all the other endeavors Microsoft engages in, without the monopoly rents they receive from Windows and Office, Microsoft is dead in the water. They know this, and are doing everything possible to extend the Windows monopoly to the Internet. Once the majority of their customers realize that the OS has become of secondary importance, they're screwed.
For them it's about leveraging their browser dominance until the browser is fully integrated into the OS with Longhorn. They're relying on the ol' FUD train to keep things going in the interim. All declarations of confidence aside, they know that there is more pressure on them than ever before. With a year or more before Longhorn's arrival, I expect to see Microsoft talking more and more about how wonderful the browsing experience will be in Longhorn, while painting Firefox et. al. as relics of a bygone era.
Before long I expect to hear Ballmer say something like, "People just don't understand that the rich browsing experience built into Longhorn is going to make the tired old standalone browsers look pathetic!"
Most of us probably feel that way, but the larger question is why do we want to multitask so much, and when we do multitask are we actually losing something in the process? Looking back on the time in my life before I became jacked in to the Net (my teens and early 20s), I realize that I spent a lot more time actually *thinking deeply* about things than I do now. These days I am aware of a broad range of interesting and useful information, and I consider myself fairly capable of filtering it well.
But even with filtering, the sheer mass of information moving through my consciousness is enough to keep me from sitting for any length of time and truly pondering something in detail. The times when I am able to unplug and think are the times I feel the most relaxed and at peace.
That's one reason some people cling to analog methods - they want to maintain a sense of cognitive equilibrium. Although I'm immersed in the Net almost every day, I prefer paper books to eBooks for the simple reason that I can detach from bits and pixels. Outdoor exercise does the same thing for me, and although I love my iPod, I don't use it when I'm out enjoying nature.
It's useful. You can look stuff up an' stuff: www.google.com.
I say this not to bag on vasqzr, because I use the term myself. But I've been thinking about it more and more lately.
You missed my point, which was that in comparing low-cost Wintel boxes to Macs, many people fail to take into account all of the things that those lower-end Wintel boxes don't include, but that come standard on a Mac (the iApps, longer-lasting hardware, etc.). So I thought it was funny that the shoe was on the other foot this time. It seems that with the tech press, if you're the leader, you get certain perks.
Also, you're not exactly accurate in your description of iPods coming without accessories. My 20Gb iPod came with a case, a dock, a remote, and a Firewire cable. These days all of the iPods ship with both Firewire and USB 2.0 cables, a remote, and a belt clip. The larger-capacity models include the dock as well. It's all here.
Let the hilarity begin!
There's still good journalism in America, but you have to read it, not watch it:
The New York Times is widely derided for having a "liberal bias," but there is still no paper in the US that covers as much of what is going on in the world today and presents as wide a range of intelligent and interesting commentary. The print edition is jam-packed with info, and while people complain about the fact that you have to register to get free news from NYT online, it's more than worth the money. ;-)
The Christian Science Monitor, despite the name is a scrupulously independent voice. Their print version is formatted not to bring you every ounce of news, but to pick and choose stories of interest from around the world. CSM doesn't focus on immediacy, which is quite refreshing in the era of instant news stories without any meat.
The Wall Street Journal takes flak because it represents the voice of The Man, but if you recognize that the Journal's bias is in favor of the capitalist marketplace, it's an excellent source of information. The reporting is solid and the range of coverage is impressive.
Getting back to the theme of going beyond knee-jerk immediacy, there are several excellent weekly and monthly magazines available in the states. I'm partial to The Economist, which is not published in the States, and so provides much more coverage of the rest off the world. I happen to agree with most of their editorial bias, but I sometimes disagree with it. One of the nice things about the Economist is that they state their views in a way that allows you to separate the facts from their views.
I'm also partial to The Atlantic, a monthly magazine that explores a wide range of issues. Their coverage of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq has been superb for its depth, range of viewpoints, and clarity.
There are plenty of other great news sources in the United States. I merely listed some of my favorites. My point is that if you expect the television to provide you with serious news coverage, you'll continue to be disappointed. If you take the time to sift through a few print publications, you may be amazed at what's out there.
Basic? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
As we all now know, the games industry is huge - bigger than Hollywood. Well, look at how Hollywood studios have acted over the years, and recognize that the halcyon days of the games industry are gone. It's Big Business, and if you look at how games are marketed and distributed, it's a sophisticated moneymaking machine where creativity runs a distant second to pulling in big dough.
People complain about movies being derivative, formulaic, and obsessed with sequels. The movies have nothing on the games industry. It's becoming more and more risk-averse every day.
So your argument and (likely) that of the prior poster is that while the FCC is involved in policing content, your opinion is that the policing of content is not something that is the purview of the Federal government.
I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with that sentiment, but given that the coverage of broadcast media extends beyond state lines, if the federal government doesn't address it, nothing that states or local government could do would really have any impact. So your argument essentially is that indecency, the business practices of broadcasters, and public safety issues related to broadcasting should not be dealt with by the federal government, and so should not be dealt with by government at all.
But the Constitution places limits on freedom of speech and behavior. The government watches out for anticompetitive measures in business, has broken up monopolists, and has forced certain industries to amend their behavior in the past.
You can't sell a magazine in 7-Eleven with bare breasts on the cover, so it is unsurprising that bare breasts on an NFL broadcast would be illegal as well. I'm not saying that I agree with a morality that allows wanton violence on TV but frowns on nakedness, but the United States has always been an intensely religious society. There are plenty of inherent contradictions in the zealousness with which we root out pornography while promoting violence, but there is nothing new about this in American society - it goes all the way back to our founding.
This presupposes that rummaging around inside a NASA system is somehow a virtuous activity. You don't accidentally find security holes when you're downloading pictures from the most recent Mars Rover mission. I don't buy the notion that somehow if while you are probing the defenses of a US government computer system for your own reasons (curiosity, sense of achievement, whatever) and you find a vulnerability, that makes you a stand-up citizen.
It's extremely easy to see NASA and other government agencies as being filled with incompetents, but most people who have never worked in government don't understand the competing pressures operating in such an environment. Time is tight, money is tight, politics is involved, and in government you can't just use money as you please. It makes for a torturous decision making process and an environment in which change comes slowly and only after great effort.
Now imagine that you operate in such an environment, and on top of all that you have people constantly trying to crack your systems. If you're an IT person at NASA, you don't care what the motivation of these people is, because it is making your already difficult job just that much more painful. You don't have a crystal ball, you can't read into someone's mind to find out if they have the intention of exposing these holes for the good of NASA, or they are just trying to get free hard drive space or perhaps some information they can sell to someone.
Not all geeks believe that snooping around in government systems is ethical, let alone useful for the government agencies affected by such behavior. If someone came up to your house at night with infrared goggles, snooped in all the windows, tried all the locks, tried wiggling the bricks in your chimney and watched your front door to find out when you'd left, would you be so sanguine?
I was unclear on what the bounds of the FCC's mandate actually are, so I did some checking. According to the FCC:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.
The FCC has 16 bureaus and offices, including the Enforcement Bureau, which enforces the Communications Act. The Bureau sees its mission thusly: Through firm, fast, flexible and fair enforcement of the Communications Act and the FCC's rules, promote competition, protect consumers and foster efficient use of the spectrum while furthering public safety goals.
The FCC reports directly to Congress, and it seems Congress has given the FCC the responsibility of policing the airwaves on certain matters: t is a violation of federal law to broadcast obscene, profane or indecent programming. The prohibition is set forth at Title 18 United States Code, Section 1464 (18 U.S.C. 1464). Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission the responsibility for administratively enforcing 18 U.S.C. 1464. In doing so, the Commission may issue a warning, impose a monetary forfeiture or revoke a station license for the broadcast of obscene, profane or indecent material.
I'm not sure if this fits into the original mandate of the FCC, but since it was established as an agency that reports directly to Congress, and Congress gave it the power to watch out for indecency, it seems that the FCC is about more than spectrum management.
That begs the question of what constitutes a great story. If a "great story" is a story packed with action, I suppose a game and a book or movie are equivalent. The game probably holds the edge, because of its intrinsic interactivity.
But isn't there a difference between a video game, which generally provides at best a very shallow view of the human condition, and a great work of literature? To Kill a Mockingbird may not have made any impact on you, but it made a deep and lasting impact on me. The book dealt with human weaknesses like fear, prejudice, and malice. It made me think about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of hatred. It opened my eyes.
The Oscars are voted on, as are the Pulitzer prizes. But less generally-popular movies and books do win these prizes, because the people who are doing the judging are looking for works of art that do not simply serve as entertainment, but also fulfill some other artistic function. We may not agree with who won a given award, but with awards for art there are always metrics beyond simple popularity. Awards for artistic works are designed to highlight work that elevates the culture.
Do most video games elevate the culture? Perhaps the video game community needs to ask itself whether it truly is an art form, as many delude themselves into believing, or whether most games are simply immersive entertainment that at best contains no message and at worst conveys the message that maximizing your kill count is equivalent to heroism.
In Silicon Valley, although there are tech giants, it's the startups that are critical to the system. Intel, Apple, et. al. are continuously spinning out employees who start their own ventures. The big players then gobble them up. The founders get rich, the big guys get richer, and everyone is happy. In a few cases the small fry actually make it to the big leagues on their own, but it's a tough road.
The road is made tougher by VCs, who in the late 1990s dumped staggering quantities of money in poor investments. Now they've reacted in typically sheep-like fashion, by only investing in operatiions that already have a product and are already consistently profitable. VCs only like to accept true risk if all of the other VCs are doing so (social networking sites, anyone?). They're a vast herd wandering the Valley, all of them looking for that last bit of untrammeled ground.
In order for solar power to work become even remotely attractive to Silicon Valley companies, it has to be something that will entice startups. Big companies will not take the risks. But most small companies won't do so in absence of VC money and more importantly in absence of a perceived unmet demand. Consumers simply are not clamoring for solar power, because the pain threshhold of petrolium isn't high enough.
If no small, nimble startups are formed around a particular market, in Silicon Valley that market is not likely to ever be formed. This equation might change if one of the larger players poured a lot of time and money into making solar products, but most of the large Silicon Valley companies are at the point in their lifecycle where they have become reliant on the small startups for high-risk innovation.
A region without this long-established pattern might have a better chance. But the only thing outside of computers that the Valley seems interested in right now is biotech, and that's only because all of the South San Francisco companies are taking the real risks in that market, and happen to be in close physical proximity to the Valley.
Firefox is not necessarily ther best browser out there. But that's not really the point. Firefox is awakening people to the notion that there's something out there beyond Microsoft. Opera hasn't been able to do that successfully, but Firefox is getting all kinds of press, and more importantly, downloads. The more examples out there of Open Source software successfully taking on Microsoft, the better it is for Open Source in general.
There are other topics that get mentioned a lot on Slashdot. You may have noticed that stories about the so-called "Linux" operating system pop up frequently. This is also an Open Source project, and is fairly well-regarded by most Slashdotters.
Opera, while a spiffy li'l browser in some regards, is not an Open Source project, and it doesn't have as much momentum behind it, so it doesn't get much press on Slashdot. You don't hear much about Lisp or Smalltalk either. It doesn't mean that they're not great languages, it just means that most of the readers would rather talk about other things.
Why nobody has posted any stories about the last Raiders-Chiefs game is beyond me, though... .
I don't know why I didn't think of that. It seems so obvious, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's how they'll actually respond. Of course, the only people who will hear about it or care about it will be folks like the Slashdot crowd (and the unfortunates at Penn State's IT department).
2) They'll sue
3) They'll go on a charm offensive
4) They'll spin the virtues of Longhorn
5) They'll talk about IE's innovative approach to browsing
Others...?
IMO this is part of the reason so much online news and TV news sucks. There is immediacy, but no depth. News agencies fall over each other to get the scoop on a story, but when I live in California is it *really* worth knowing that scant details about some breaking story from Lithuania at 10:13 am when a much more detailed and informative story will be showing up in the NYT or the Post a few hours later?
I'd rather absorb news from a source that is checking facts, looking at all of the angles, providing relevant contextual information, and giving me a deeper understanding of the issues involved.
I would ask a slightly different question, which is this: What does it say about our society that it is so difficult for anyone to make money selling games that don't involve killing or exploitation? Is it that game designers can't think outside the violence paradigm, or that most attempts to do so make less money? Either way, The Sims and Myst are the exceptions that prove the rule.
I like Flash. You can do amazing things with it. But it is not for everything. When you're working on a site with lots of content turnover, that has to be well-indexed by search engines, downloaded quickly, and can't rely on anything other than the browser, it's best not to rely on Flash for key things like navigation.
As someone who works primarily on content-heavy sites that are constantly in flux, I have found Flash to be more difficult to maintain than HTML. It is also still problematic for search engine spidering.
That said, Flash can be extremely effective in situations where data-driven multimedia presentation is a must. Visual explanations are a great place to use Flash. But as the primary tool for creating and maintaing sites, Flash doesn't fit the bill for most commercial sites.