I was under the impression they dropped Thunderbird support because they're developing the next release of Eudora as open source.
Believe me, I hate Eudora and use Thunderbird every day, but I can see why they wouldn't want to support two email clients. Then again, they are still developing a Java client and it's not as if they have don't have any spare cash as this article seems to imply.
I think they just want to let everyone know that they're not responsible for Gundam. At least the email sent to Gundam. Google already has a lucrative deal with them to use their web based email apps. Damned ZAFT.
I think this development is very telling, but its just a symptom not just of BluRay's failure, but the whole market for higher definition optical media.
I'm an Aussie but I've lived nearly my whole life in Singapore where electronic gadgets are not just a nice thing to have, they're almost status symbols, like most parts of affluent Asia I assume. When DVDs came along everyone was scrambling to get the latest devices, televisions and movie releases on the new format, but here we are in 2007 and only a handful of retailers here even know what BluRay and HDDVD players are, let alone sell them. In SINGAGPORE, one of the high tech capitals of the world. It's mind boggling.
So this Kmart in the United States story doesn't really surprise me. What I'm interested to know though is the overall market for high definition optical media not just "us" versus "them" Betamax style. Do many of you in the States own such players? Do you have many movies? Have you really paid much attention to it? Is it as bleak in your part of the world as it is in ours?
I think price is just one of many factors relating to slow adoption, and it's not the primary one.
Clearly these dinosaurs weren't running millions of years ago and because they were hunting in packs... they were running 6000 years ago from great floods and packs of creationists. Even I didn't need to RTFA to know that.
I remember when people were infuriated at first with the idea of Windows XP Product Activation and said that as long as everyone "voted with their wallets" and didn't buy XP Microsoft would be forced to change. We all know what a load of good that did.
The problem with the logic that consumers in these circumstances can make a drastic impact on a supplier by "voting with their wallets" is that it's next to impossible to reach the critical mass needed to make such an impact. People on the whole are apathetic, don't know about the issues and don't research the products they purchase, especially for software like games.
I think it will be far more likely that growing and increasingly vocal consumer frustration will cause a change in these ridiculous copy protection schemes, not people "voting with their wallets". But even with this scenario I'm still skeptical because again it assumes that companies actually care enough about their customers to listen to their cries for sanity and to take their needs into consideration.
I moved over to FreeBSD + KDE and Mac OS X quite a while ago now but I still have Windows 2000 on one desktop and in a VM on my MacBook Pro for apps that won't play with WINE. I find it funny that people are saying that there's nothing Windows Vista does better or new compared to XP that would make them upgrade, I still think that about 2000 versus XP.
I haven't really played around with Vista that much but what little experience I've had with it made me crige just because it's so friggen verbose (and that's even ignoring Cancel/Allow). In KDE and OS X when you click on the battery icon it tells you how much charge you have in percent and hours. On Vista it shows an icon, the battery's serial number, why would I need or want that?
For the sake of my friends' (who run XP) sanity, I hope they don't back port such "features". It would be useful if they back ported the black tacky glossy start menu and taskbar though. That really has the potential to vastly improve productivity.
We've had free citywide WiFi in Singapore for over 2 years.
It's not difficult, in fact I'd say red tape is far more of a barrier than the technology itself.
How does this affect their Windows Live Space garbage? If Microsoft really did take an interest could we see the same predicament we see Yahoo in with their "360" and "Mash" offerings?
That said, I don't think this really matters. It's like 5% being bought by Google, more of a political move than anything of substance for users. Unless Ballmer starts throwing chairs at people who joined the "Micro$soft is teh evil!!!1!!1111!" groups.
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I was under the impression they dropped Thunderbird support because they're developing the next release of Eudora as open source.
Believe me, I hate Eudora and use Thunderbird every day, but I can see why they wouldn't want to support two email clients. Then again, they are still developing a Java client and it's not as if they have don't have any spare cash as this article seems to imply.
I think they just want to let everyone know that they're not responsible for Gundam. At least the email sent to Gundam. Google already has a lucrative deal with them to use their web based email apps. Damned ZAFT.
I think this development is very telling, but its just a symptom not just of BluRay's failure, but the whole market for higher definition optical media.
I'm an Aussie but I've lived nearly my whole life in Singapore where electronic gadgets are not just a nice thing to have, they're almost status symbols, like most parts of affluent Asia I assume. When DVDs came along everyone was scrambling to get the latest devices, televisions and movie releases on the new format, but here we are in 2007 and only a handful of retailers here even know what BluRay and HDDVD players are, let alone sell them. In SINGAGPORE, one of the high tech capitals of the world. It's mind boggling.
So this Kmart in the United States story doesn't really surprise me. What I'm interested to know though is the overall market for high definition optical media not just "us" versus "them" Betamax style. Do many of you in the States own such players? Do you have many movies? Have you really paid much attention to it? Is it as bleak in your part of the world as it is in ours?
I think price is just one of many factors relating to slow adoption, and it's not the primary one.
Clearly these dinosaurs weren't running millions of years ago and because they were hunting in packs... they were running 6000 years ago from great floods and packs of creationists. Even I didn't need to RTFA to know that.
I remember when people were infuriated at first with the idea of Windows XP Product Activation and said that as long as everyone "voted with their wallets" and didn't buy XP Microsoft would be forced to change. We all know what a load of good that did.
The problem with the logic that consumers in these circumstances can make a drastic impact on a supplier by "voting with their wallets" is that it's next to impossible to reach the critical mass needed to make such an impact. People on the whole are apathetic, don't know about the issues and don't research the products they purchase, especially for software like games.
I think it will be far more likely that growing and increasingly vocal consumer frustration will cause a change in these ridiculous copy protection schemes, not people "voting with their wallets". But even with this scenario I'm still skeptical because again it assumes that companies actually care enough about their customers to listen to their cries for sanity and to take their needs into consideration.
I moved over to FreeBSD + KDE and Mac OS X quite a while ago now but I still have Windows 2000 on one desktop and in a VM on my MacBook Pro for apps that won't play with WINE. I find it funny that people are saying that there's nothing Windows Vista does better or new compared to XP that would make them upgrade, I still think that about 2000 versus XP.
I haven't really played around with Vista that much but what little experience I've had with it made me crige just because it's so friggen verbose (and that's even ignoring Cancel/Allow). In KDE and OS X when you click on the battery icon it tells you how much charge you have in percent and hours. On Vista it shows an icon, the battery's serial number, why would I need or want that?
For the sake of my friends' (who run XP) sanity, I hope they don't back port such "features". It would be useful if they back ported the black tacky glossy start menu and taskbar though. That really has the potential to vastly improve productivity.
We've had free citywide WiFi in Singapore for over 2 years. It's not difficult, in fact I'd say red tape is far more of a barrier than the technology itself.
Why the hell would the need to do that? The Zune and Vista are selling great.
How does this affect their Windows Live Space garbage? If Microsoft really did take an interest could we see the same predicament we see Yahoo in with their "360" and "Mash" offerings? That said, I don't think this really matters. It's like 5% being bought by Google, more of a political move than anything of substance for users. Unless Ballmer starts throwing chairs at people who joined the "Micro$soft is teh evil!!!1!!1111!" groups.