Note that FreeBSD ZFS is *not* in FreeBSD core (and never will be?) precisely because of it this, last I checked.
It's not in the core... but it is in base. FreeBSD ships with full support for ZFS (since 7.0) and only requires zfs_enable="YES" in/etc/rc.conf.
If you are using FreeBSD in a device and don't want or cannot use ZFS, there are several settings (WITHOUT_ZFS, WITHOUT_CDDL, WITHOUT_OPENSOLARIS) and such that can be dropped into/etc/src.conf to omit these bits completely from your build.
Sources for ZFS and other bits of non-BSD licensed software (that may be redistributed) are found under src/contrib and src/sys/contrib, where they can be easily segregated from the "pure" BSD bits.
Since you obviously missed this, TFA is a advert for CoreAVC trying to sell you a magic pill for HD playback by changing the format. TFA doesn't claim no stutter, just less.
It's not quite the same to say it's 1080p just because it's 1920x1080 after you've lowered the quality down to substandard level, which is what they've done. More lossy means faster decoding, more so than the total dimension. For what it's worth, if you plan to re-encode your files anyway, you may as well shoot for the screens actual resolution instead of something roughly double the size of the viewable area. Oversized video has to be decoded, then scaled down for a second large performance hit.
TFA is still a garbage advert that's promising you something you can never have... 1080p on a less than 1080p screen.
This works for Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD...
Step 1. Install VLC.
Step 2. Done.
I use Hulu Desktop on my Aspire One under Ubuntu NBR, and there is no magic to it.
How did this shit make the main page?
Google
Search for any song online via Google and Lala brought a stream right to you. First listen is free, after that you have to pay. Why would Apple buy them? Considering most sane people use Google and Lala doesn't require something like iTunes, Lala was in a better position to bring music people want directly to them. This is just eliminating the competition before they got too big.
Can I get an Antitrust Amen?
I think you just made case and point as to why we have an electoral college. You just said that you know your preferred candidate will not win your state, so you would rather your state not be counted at all because this will benefit your preferred candidate.
This narrow minded idiocy is why the founding fathers had the foresight to know there general populace shouldn't be trusted to make these decisions alone. Because people like you refuse to understand that your neighbors opinions happen to be just as important as your own and seek to undermine them. It's not a perfect system, by far, but it helps prevent lunatics like your ilk from obtaining pitch fork wielding mob rule.
How is removing a candidate from a ballot (or a state from the whole process) any different from keeping voters out of the ballot boxes because of their predispositions for party preference? Shenanigans like this are part of the problem in the US election system. In essence, you are the problem by endorsing the tactic for your own gain.
Please burn your voter registration card. You obviously don't understand it, and you obviously don't deserve it.
The point is, you can go to any steak house, the price of steak is set to be meat + labor, so all are relatively the same. Cut out the labor cost by doing it at home, you save money... duh.
Buy a PC, take it to a shop for an upgrade, you get charged parts + labor, so all shops will be relatively the same. Buy the parts yourself and save the labor (if you can).
Buy an Apple, you pay parts + labor + hey-were-apple, and you get fucked. If you can do it yourself, you still pay parts + hey-were-apple and you save jack shit.
This is a no brainer though, the parts are the same as the PC. Use the PC part, save the hey-were-apple tax.
Harley-Davidson does the exact same thing BTW. Maybe even one better. They charge more for parts, more for service, underpowered from factory so than can offer you an overpriced tune up (called the "Harley Tax"), and if you do anything to the bike, they void your warranty. Still, the Yuppies buy them (and the official Harley "Screaming Eagle" parts) because Harley's make yuppies feel like real men. While real bikers say "fuck all that" and work on them themselves ( for less money and better results).
Microsoft already knows UNIX. They were responsible for the most widely used variant of the 80s. They sold it off to be rebranded as SCO UNIX when they shifted focus to Windows NT.
Because in 2008 we still have superstitious nitwits trying to tell us there is no easter bunny, but that we are going to burn in some cartoonish pit of flames for eternity if we don't accept that a two thousand year old zombie carpenter is the son of an equally absurd deity that crapped out the universe on a whim. And those same asshats will do anything to suppress, deny, or refute any evidence to the contrary, even when it makes sense and theirs does not.
In short, it's a pissing contest between logic and illogic for control of your brain, to get your ass in a pew, and make you pay 10% of you income to the man who screams like a lunatic for you on Sunday.
But more to the point, when you are just that dumb, you deserve to be made fun of. Physical evidence that slaps such idiocy in the face is the best opportunity to do so.
Well, I do live in Appalachia, and I am so poor I have to put 87 in my Porsche sometimes.
Maybe you should be a lot more specific about where in Appalachia, I live several hours outside one of those major metropolitan areas in Appalachia and personally know more than a few "independently wealthy" people. I know I can hop in my (very fast, very expensive to maintain) car and drive about an hour east to find people living in quaint little ghost towns, but if I keep on driving another 30 minutes, I am back in another well off city.
You are painting fine details with a very broad brush there, and even those details are wrong. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the poor and destitute in this area are mostly just the inept and lazy. They believe the same bullshit story about being poor by their geographic location and have too much "home town pride" to commute to the next town over or just moving away to where they could obtain a paying job. This isn't the 1930s, and the old excuses no longer apply. This area is developed significantly thanks to things like ARC and TVA and companies like Eastman who invested heavily here during the last century. But as much as you can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink. And though a few people here refuse to take advantage of the opportunities around them, to portray an entire region as such based on those backwoods jackasses is a grave injustice to the majority of us living a comfortable modern lifestyle.
The last time I met anyone so poor that they could not afford to feed themselves was about 15 years ago. The woman's husband had abandoned her. She refused to work because it was not a "woman's place" and claimed that if God wanted to her to have something, he would give it to her. I could insert a rant about religion here, but would rather point out how this woman found a way to martyr herself and paired in a comfortable excuse for stupid and lazy, then ran with it by her own volition. This mentality, this excuse, is rather rampant here but few take it to that extreme. Seems most people like modern conveniences, but the media is way more interested in the backwoods bumpkins.
Most people in America who are poor, are poor by choice. Working is hard, handouts are easy.
For more information about how poor everyone in America is, check out the website for the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It will paint the most accurate picture off these regions are.
You know, I recently made good on a promise that if they released Bloodrayne back in my store, I would buy both 1 & 2 since they come with the opposite PC game. About a month later, we had both.
I watched them, and the movies took me back to the low budget films of my youth and how much fun they were to watch. Then as a young adult, working with a low budget film company, how much fun they were to make.
I can appreciate that people don't like the way he is butchering licenses, but honestly, I have seen far worse films than his, and enjoyed them.
Bloodrayne was my introduction to Uwe Boll, and after all of the ruckus on/. about him, I had very low expectations. The film wasn't that bad. It was better than some of those b-flicks I like. Bloodrayne 2 lowered the bar substantially, but it was the same vein of steaming crap that some of us out there actually love.
I'm not saying the man is a genius, but he does have a place in the film world. Maybe instead of quitting, he should just give up direct video game adaptions and make derivative films instead. I would pay to see more so-bad-it's-good films from him.
And also, we really need to get back to hating the fucker's that made the Doom movie. It takes real effort to make something that bad, and defiantly piss off the fan base before you have even began shooting. (No, really, who did they think was coming to see this movie?) If we get them, it may serve as a "scared straight" program for the rest working on game-to-film adaptations.
It's a thing called ethics. Remember that word, because it means something everywhere but in the world of money.
But honestly, this is no different than when I call my phone company and they try to upsell me services I don't want or need. Or the credit card company that wants me to take unemployment insurance and credit monitoring services. The result from me (and people like me) will be the same, "I pay you enough already, shut the fuck up and leave me alone."
(Tip: When a credit card company offers you unemployment insurance, tell them "I am unemployed right now, so I can really use that. Sign me up!")
Then maybe you need to open you damned eyes and read quite a bit more.
Maybe you should go back to the 80s when Mr. Gore allowed his wife and her friends in the PMRC to have special senate hearings aimed at *BANNING* or censoring certain artists they deemed too explicit. Mr. Gore was more than willing to let his wife have her moraliztic diatribe at your expense, to attempt to restrict and control your freedom of choice.
Corporate State or Nanny State, this is what you are voting for.
You had me up until the whole liberal mods thing. Then you fell into the same american political lets-brand-each-other-with-words-and-confuse-their-meanings game that has played out ad nauseum, especially over the past two decades. So you know, liberal means "permissive", it's the same root as the word "liberty" which means freedom. The word conservative means to hold back, to restrict. Don't confuse american socialists for "liberals" because they want to take your freedoms away from you in the guise of a nanny state (this is called communism). The same thing applies to those right-wing wacko conservatives, only they want to take your freedom under the guise of national security and protecting corporate interests (this is called facism). Your founding fathers were "liberals" fighting the "conservative" interests of the British. If you are not a liberal, you are not a proper statesman.
If you are going to pick on the asshat who thinks american's don't have better things to do than kill "the browns" all day, don't become an asshat yourself and confuse freedom loving people with self-interested politicians. That's what they want you to do. Instead of a political buzzword like "liberal", try something more appropriately descriptive and accurate such as "pinky" or "nazi". Keep in mind, the racist fuckstick you just went off on categorized most of the world as "the browns" instead of making the distinction of "world hating religious zealots" and "genocide loving regional/global destabilizers". By mislabeling and rebranding american intentions, he turns the issue from a worldwide asshole shitstomp into a racially charged issue. This, like the "liberal" moniker, is a propagandist technique.
I am guessing it is because of their inability to prevent Abdullah from calling his "lover" during free nights and weekends. Note, I didn't say girlfriend.
But a point to consider is that the PS3 did force the high dollar crap on its customers which stagnated BR adoption and PS3 sales for a year. HD-DVD adoption was on the rise prior to Xmas due to falling player prices. During the Xmas buying spree, people bought the now-significantly-reduced PS3, and those PS3 owners are the ones buying the BR discs. Again, I will point out, my job is selling all of the above, I see the people come back through to buy the BR movies for the PS3 they bought the week before.
If MS had released a "HD" edition it would have been the "must have" much like the Elite is now. Customers would not be in the cold, because they could still buy the addon separately, just like you can turn an Arcade into an Elite with separate addons. And the 360 would not be tied to a failed technology, because the bundling would have ensured broad HD adoption, exactly as the PS3 has done for BR, a year and a half before the PS3 did it. It's not exclusively MS's fault, but when you take a stand to support a technology, you actually have to take a stand and support that technology. They did not.
I would like to know what math you use that says a $100 addon will cost 3 times more when fabricated and bundled with something en masse. Typically the economics work the other way. Anyway...
Still doesn't make it an x86 clone, and consoles are not the PC market. And if you get into processors in general, you have to look at ARM stuff which blows them all away. One way or another, the topic is a gross misunderstanding of the market.
It would have been trivial for them to have released an "Xbox 360 HD" edition that was bundled with it as soon as the talks broke down, and still commanding a significant market lead by the time it hit the shelves. One way or another, amazed as you will be, Microsoft dropped the ball here by not using the bundling tactic their competitor did.
Keep in mind, so far the biggest threat to HD/BR adoption has been that noone thinks it's worth it. But... if you already have it.. why not?
HD/BR players are too expensive to just watch movies with, 360/PS3 are too expensive for just gaming. But if you got the 1080p TV and get a PS3, then you get the best of "bleeding edge" hi-def gaming and can watch "bleeding edge" hi-def movies... win/win, sale!
Since we are talking about "PCs", I wont go into alternative processors. But to say that IBM and AMD are the only alternatives misses out on VIA who makes the C7 line. Further, it includes IBM who isn't a PC chip maker at all, PowerPC is not an x86 clone. As far as I know, since Apple dumped them, they now have a chip without a market. Meanwhile, VIA is seeing sales in the low cost and embedded markets, especially in sub-$500 laptops. And finally, Intel itself isn't doing too hot these days since the multicore mumbo jumbo isn't impressing Joe User that he should give up his newish 3Ghz box for a 2Ghz dual core.
So the winner is: Noone!
Well, maybe VIA since they actually sell boxes, but you probably wont be playing on a 1.5Ghz fanless with embedded graphics, so they don't count.
The thing is, if MSFT had included a HD-DVD player with the XBox 360, then HD would have had a significant head start (a couple of years). Everyone buying the 360 would effectively have had a free HD-DVD player with it and would already be watching movies on it. Instead, it was an expensive addon which left more people saying "Fuck that, I paid too much for this already. I got to pay how much for the WiFi adapter!!!"
Now people who did shell out for the cheaper 40GB PS3 are buying Blu-Ray discs because they already have the player.
I'm not saying that 400 million dollar payouts didn't influence the matter, but Microsoft's failure to bundle the player ensured that PS3+Blu-Ray would outpace HD-DVD players in sales.
Full disclosure: I own neither system, but I work in retail selling the damned things.
MS pushing copyright education (and the whole WGA thing) is somewhat ironic when you consider MS owes their monopoly almost entirely to piracy. And buy pushing this agenda, they actually are more at risk of pushing the install base to "get legal" with more economical alternatives (i.e. Linux).
Had MS not been the required platform for gaming through the 90s, users would have been less likely to become familiar and congregate around it. Since home users constantly needed the new whiz-bang DirectX or 32-bit OS support to keep gaming, and the shear ease by which your average person lost the OEM install disc, the number of pirated systems grew. When it came time for the hardware upgrade, they got another copy of Windows with the box, and then a year later, pirated another version of Windows over it to keep up with the new gaming features again. For every $5 lost OEM install (C'mon, who really goes out and buys a copy of Windows?), they made a few $50 sales of Age of Empires or Halo, or a $300 (never actually priced it) sale of Office. So MS owes perhaps the majority of its install base to pirate upgrades.
Had Vista not been such ass to deal with, almost certainly no one would be using XP today regardless of how awful it is. In one sense, it would just be a lot more logical for MS to declare Windows Home editions free for home use and keep that install base not looking over their shoulders and not learning about alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that FreeBSD ZFS is *not* in FreeBSD core (and never will be?) precisely because of it this, last I checked.
It's not in the core... but it is in base. FreeBSD ships with full support for ZFS (since 7.0) and only requires zfs_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf.
If you are using FreeBSD in a device and don't want or cannot use ZFS, there are several settings (WITHOUT_ZFS, WITHOUT_CDDL, WITHOUT_OPENSOLARIS) and such that can be dropped into /etc/src.conf to omit these bits completely from your build.
Sources for ZFS and other bits of non-BSD licensed software (that may be redistributed) are found under src/contrib and src/sys/contrib, where they can be easily segregated from the "pure" BSD bits.
Since you obviously missed this, TFA is a advert for CoreAVC trying to sell you a magic pill for HD playback by changing the format. TFA doesn't claim no stutter, just less. It's not quite the same to say it's 1080p just because it's 1920x1080 after you've lowered the quality down to substandard level, which is what they've done. More lossy means faster decoding, more so than the total dimension. For what it's worth, if you plan to re-encode your files anyway, you may as well shoot for the screens actual resolution instead of something roughly double the size of the viewable area. Oversized video has to be decoded, then scaled down for a second large performance hit. TFA is still a garbage advert that's promising you something you can never have... 1080p on a less than 1080p screen.
This works for Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD... Step 1. Install VLC. Step 2. Done. I use Hulu Desktop on my Aspire One under Ubuntu NBR, and there is no magic to it. How did this shit make the main page?
Google Search for any song online via Google and Lala brought a stream right to you. First listen is free, after that you have to pay. Why would Apple buy them? Considering most sane people use Google and Lala doesn't require something like iTunes, Lala was in a better position to bring music people want directly to them. This is just eliminating the competition before they got too big. Can I get an Antitrust Amen?
I think you just made case and point as to why we have an electoral college. You just said that you know your preferred candidate will not win your state, so you would rather your state not be counted at all because this will benefit your preferred candidate.
This narrow minded idiocy is why the founding fathers had the foresight to know there general populace shouldn't be trusted to make these decisions alone. Because people like you refuse to understand that your neighbors opinions happen to be just as important as your own and seek to undermine them. It's not a perfect system, by far, but it helps prevent lunatics like your ilk from obtaining pitch fork wielding mob rule.
How is removing a candidate from a ballot (or a state from the whole process) any different from keeping voters out of the ballot boxes because of their predispositions for party preference? Shenanigans like this are part of the problem in the US election system. In essence, you are the problem by endorsing the tactic for your own gain.
Please burn your voter registration card. You obviously don't understand it, and you obviously don't deserve it.
The point is, you can go to any steak house, the price of steak is set to be meat + labor, so all are relatively the same. Cut out the labor cost by doing it at home, you save money... duh. Buy a PC, take it to a shop for an upgrade, you get charged parts + labor, so all shops will be relatively the same. Buy the parts yourself and save the labor (if you can). Buy an Apple, you pay parts + labor + hey-were-apple, and you get fucked. If you can do it yourself, you still pay parts + hey-were-apple and you save jack shit. This is a no brainer though, the parts are the same as the PC. Use the PC part, save the hey-were-apple tax. Harley-Davidson does the exact same thing BTW. Maybe even one better. They charge more for parts, more for service, underpowered from factory so than can offer you an overpriced tune up (called the "Harley Tax"), and if you do anything to the bike, they void your warranty. Still, the Yuppies buy them (and the official Harley "Screaming Eagle" parts) because Harley's make yuppies feel like real men. While real bikers say "fuck all that" and work on them themselves ( for less money and better results).
A UNIX manual, of course!
Microsoft already knows UNIX. They were responsible for the most widely used variant of the 80s. They sold it off to be rebranded as SCO UNIX when they shifted focus to Windows NT.
Let me give you a bit of history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
Why can't we discuss this without religion?
Because in 2008 we still have superstitious nitwits trying to tell us there is no easter bunny, but that we are going to burn in some cartoonish pit of flames for eternity if we don't accept that a two thousand year old zombie carpenter is the son of an equally absurd deity that crapped out the universe on a whim. And those same asshats will do anything to suppress, deny, or refute any evidence to the contrary, even when it makes sense and theirs does not.
In short, it's a pissing contest between logic and illogic for control of your brain, to get your ass in a pew, and make you pay 10% of you income to the man who screams like a lunatic for you on Sunday.
But more to the point, when you are just that dumb, you deserve to be made fun of. Physical evidence that slaps such idiocy in the face is the best opportunity to do so.
Well, I do live in Appalachia, and I am so poor I have to put 87 in my Porsche sometimes.
Maybe you should be a lot more specific about where in Appalachia, I live several hours outside one of those major metropolitan areas in Appalachia and personally know more than a few "independently wealthy" people. I know I can hop in my (very fast, very expensive to maintain) car and drive about an hour east to find people living in quaint little ghost towns, but if I keep on driving another 30 minutes, I am back in another well off city.
You are painting fine details with a very broad brush there, and even those details are wrong. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the poor and destitute in this area are mostly just the inept and lazy. They believe the same bullshit story about being poor by their geographic location and have too much "home town pride" to commute to the next town over or just moving away to where they could obtain a paying job. This isn't the 1930s, and the old excuses no longer apply. This area is developed significantly thanks to things like ARC and TVA and companies like Eastman who invested heavily here during the last century. But as much as you can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink. And though a few people here refuse to take advantage of the opportunities around them, to portray an entire region as such based on those backwoods jackasses is a grave injustice to the majority of us living a comfortable modern lifestyle.
The last time I met anyone so poor that they could not afford to feed themselves was about 15 years ago. The woman's husband had abandoned her. She refused to work because it was not a "woman's place" and claimed that if God wanted to her to have something, he would give it to her. I could insert a rant about religion here, but would rather point out how this woman found a way to martyr herself and paired in a comfortable excuse for stupid and lazy, then ran with it by her own volition. This mentality, this excuse, is rather rampant here but few take it to that extreme. Seems most people like modern conveniences, but the media is way more interested in the backwoods bumpkins.
Most people in America who are poor, are poor by choice. Working is hard, handouts are easy.
For more information about how poor everyone in America is, check out the website for the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It will paint the most accurate picture off these regions are.
</soapbox>You know, I recently made good on a promise that if they released Bloodrayne back in my store, I would buy both 1 & 2 since they come with the opposite PC game. About a month later, we had both.
/. about him, I had very low expectations. The film wasn't that bad. It was better than some of those b-flicks I like. Bloodrayne 2 lowered the bar substantially, but it was the same vein of steaming crap that some of us out there actually love.
I watched them, and the movies took me back to the low budget films of my youth and how much fun they were to watch. Then as a young adult, working with a low budget film company, how much fun they were to make.
I can appreciate that people don't like the way he is butchering licenses, but honestly, I have seen far worse films than his, and enjoyed them.
Bloodrayne was my introduction to Uwe Boll, and after all of the ruckus on
I'm not saying the man is a genius, but he does have a place in the film world. Maybe instead of quitting, he should just give up direct video game adaptions and make derivative films instead. I would pay to see more so-bad-it's-good films from him.
And also, we really need to get back to hating the fucker's that made the Doom movie. It takes real effort to make something that bad, and defiantly piss off the fan base before you have even began shooting. (No, really, who did they think was coming to see this movie?) If we get them, it may serve as a "scared straight" program for the rest working on game-to-film adaptations.
Can *you* get a special senate hearing because you personally don't like something?
But if you were married to a senator who was willing to set that up for you, might be different.
It's a thing called ethics. Remember that word, because it means something everywhere but in the world of money.
But honestly, this is no different than when I call my phone company and they try to upsell me services I don't want or need. Or the credit card company that wants me to take unemployment insurance and credit monitoring services. The result from me (and people like me) will be the same, "I pay you enough already, shut the fuck up and leave me alone."
(Tip: When a credit card company offers you unemployment insurance, tell them "I am unemployed right now, so I can really use that. Sign me up!")
Then maybe you need to open you damned eyes and read quite a bit more.
Maybe you should go back to the 80s when Mr. Gore allowed his wife and her friends in the PMRC to have special senate hearings aimed at *BANNING* or censoring certain artists they deemed too explicit. Mr. Gore was more than willing to let his wife have her moraliztic diatribe at your expense, to attempt to restrict and control your freedom of choice.
Corporate State or Nanny State, this is what you are voting for.
You had me up until the whole liberal mods thing. Then you fell into the same american political lets-brand-each-other-with-words-and-confuse-their-meanings game that has played out ad nauseum, especially over the past two decades. So you know, liberal means "permissive", it's the same root as the word "liberty" which means freedom. The word conservative means to hold back, to restrict. Don't confuse american socialists for "liberals" because they want to take your freedoms away from you in the guise of a nanny state (this is called communism). The same thing applies to those right-wing wacko conservatives, only they want to take your freedom under the guise of national security and protecting corporate interests (this is called facism). Your founding fathers were "liberals" fighting the "conservative" interests of the British. If you are not a liberal, you are not a proper statesman.
If you are going to pick on the asshat who thinks american's don't have better things to do than kill "the browns" all day, don't become an asshat yourself and confuse freedom loving people with self-interested politicians. That's what they want you to do. Instead of a political buzzword like "liberal", try something more appropriately descriptive and accurate such as "pinky" or "nazi". Keep in mind, the racist fuckstick you just went off on categorized most of the world as "the browns" instead of making the distinction of "world hating religious zealots" and "genocide loving regional/global destabilizers". By mislabeling and rebranding american intentions, he turns the issue from a worldwide asshole shitstomp into a racially charged issue. This, like the "liberal" moniker, is a propagandist technique.
Now those damned pinko mods can mod you down.
I am guessing it is because of their inability to prevent Abdullah from calling his "lover" during free nights and weekends. Note, I didn't say girlfriend.
How dare you call us Slashbigots!
For this outrage, we will turn off your cellphone and cut off your head!
Admiral Ackbar!
But a point to consider is that the PS3 did force the high dollar crap on its customers which stagnated BR adoption and PS3 sales for a year. HD-DVD adoption was on the rise prior to Xmas due to falling player prices. During the Xmas buying spree, people bought the now-significantly-reduced PS3, and those PS3 owners are the ones buying the BR discs. Again, I will point out, my job is selling all of the above, I see the people come back through to buy the BR movies for the PS3 they bought the week before.
If MS had released a "HD" edition it would have been the "must have" much like the Elite is now. Customers would not be in the cold, because they could still buy the addon separately, just like you can turn an Arcade into an Elite with separate addons. And the 360 would not be tied to a failed technology, because the bundling would have ensured broad HD adoption, exactly as the PS3 has done for BR, a year and a half before the PS3 did it. It's not exclusively MS's fault, but when you take a stand to support a technology, you actually have to take a stand and support that technology. They did not.
I would like to know what math you use that says a $100 addon will cost 3 times more when fabricated and bundled with something en masse. Typically the economics work the other way. Anyway...
Still doesn't make it an x86 clone, and consoles are not the PC market. And if you get into processors in general, you have to look at ARM stuff which blows them all away. One way or another, the topic is a gross misunderstanding of the market.
It would have been trivial for them to have released an "Xbox 360 HD" edition that was bundled with it as soon as the talks broke down, and still commanding a significant market lead by the time it hit the shelves. One way or another, amazed as you will be, Microsoft dropped the ball here by not using the bundling tactic their competitor did.
Keep in mind, so far the biggest threat to HD/BR adoption has been that noone thinks it's worth it. But... if you already have it.. why not?
HD/BR players are too expensive to just watch movies with, 360/PS3 are too expensive for just gaming. But if you got the 1080p TV and get a PS3, then you get the best of "bleeding edge" hi-def gaming and can watch "bleeding edge" hi-def movies... win/win, sale!
Like I said, I do this for a living.
Since we are talking about "PCs", I wont go into alternative processors. But to say that IBM and AMD are the only alternatives misses out on VIA who makes the C7 line. Further, it includes IBM who isn't a PC chip maker at all, PowerPC is not an x86 clone. As far as I know, since Apple dumped them, they now have a chip without a market. Meanwhile, VIA is seeing sales in the low cost and embedded markets, especially in sub-$500 laptops. And finally, Intel itself isn't doing too hot these days since the multicore mumbo jumbo isn't impressing Joe User that he should give up his newish 3Ghz box for a 2Ghz dual core.
So the winner is: Noone!
Well, maybe VIA since they actually sell boxes, but you probably wont be playing on a 1.5Ghz fanless with embedded graphics, so they don't count.
The thing is, if MSFT had included a HD-DVD player with the XBox 360, then HD would have had a significant head start (a couple of years). Everyone buying the 360 would effectively have had a free HD-DVD player with it and would already be watching movies on it. Instead, it was an expensive addon which left more people saying "Fuck that, I paid too much for this already. I got to pay how much for the WiFi adapter!!!"
Now people who did shell out for the cheaper 40GB PS3 are buying Blu-Ray discs because they already have the player.
I'm not saying that 400 million dollar payouts didn't influence the matter, but Microsoft's failure to bundle the player ensured that PS3+Blu-Ray would outpace HD-DVD players in sales.
Full disclosure: I own neither system, but I work in retail selling the damned things.
He's just a little sore from having to post quickly between crashes.
"These are good days for Linux."
These are good days for Xorg, which isn't Linux. Everyone running X will benefit, not just Linux. Linux isn't the only non-Windows platform.
MS pushing copyright education (and the whole WGA thing) is somewhat ironic when you consider MS owes their monopoly almost entirely to piracy. And buy pushing this agenda, they actually are more at risk of pushing the install base to "get legal" with more economical alternatives (i.e. Linux).
Had MS not been the required platform for gaming through the 90s, users would have been less likely to become familiar and congregate around it. Since home users constantly needed the new whiz-bang DirectX or 32-bit OS support to keep gaming, and the shear ease by which your average person lost the OEM install disc, the number of pirated systems grew. When it came time for the hardware upgrade, they got another copy of Windows with the box, and then a year later, pirated another version of Windows over it to keep up with the new gaming features again. For every $5 lost OEM install (C'mon, who really goes out and buys a copy of Windows?), they made a few $50 sales of Age of Empires or Halo, or a $300 (never actually priced it) sale of Office. So MS owes perhaps the majority of its install base to pirate upgrades.
Had Vista not been such ass to deal with, almost certainly no one would be using XP today regardless of how awful it is. In one sense, it would just be a lot more logical for MS to declare Windows Home editions free for home use and keep that install base not looking over their shoulders and not learning about alternatives.
You are right, but I was leaving out the yuppies-must-buy-this-now hype since it hardly seemed relevant to the technical aspects.
Go ride your Segway, troll.