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I, Cringely On A Momentous Week
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 13, 2005 05:18 PM
from the warping-space-and-time dept.
from the warping-space-and-time dept.
rocketjam writes "Robert X. Cringley offers his take on three recent high-tech occurrences, saying they add up to an 'inflection point' that will change the landscape of the personal computer, video game, and electronic entertainment businesses forever. He briefly points out that Bill Gates' revelation that the next-gen XBox will offer music and movie playing capabilities as well as web-surfing will put MS into direct competition with its hardware OEM customers. He also touches on Yahoo's new music service and Apple's rumored movie download service. The meat of the article though is his take on the significance of Google's Web Accelerator. He says, 'If surfing can be doubled in speed for nothing, of course nearly everyone will go for it', the upshot of which is that AOL, MSN and Earthlink lose their relevancy. From this point more speculation on the implications of Google's success in this endeavor ensues."
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Gasp! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gasp! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
ooOO (Score:4, Insightful)
but we still need the "pundit deduction" in force here.
I do wonder about the xBox 360 though... can you say, "PC?"
Re:ooOO (Score:3)
XBOX 360 != PC. Just like XBOX != PC. That's like calling a man a woman because they're not biologically dissimilar and they can do pretty much the same work.
Re:ooOO (Score:5, Funny)
That makes the Xbox 360 a girly-box?
Me confused.
Parent
Re:ooOO (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ooOO (Score:3, Funny)
More on XBOX 360. (Score:4, Interesting)
I work at Microsoft as do several of my friends. A couple work on the XBOX 360 and told me something over beer that really struck me as great marketting. Microsoft has purposely designed this box to be easy to break and mod-chip. The reason? Sales. They can go to game design houses and say "We sold X million units. You should design for us." and they will. Very much as in how they don't care much about the home pirate as they know it gives them mindshare.
I'm not breaking an NDA here as I'm not actually on the dev team.
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously, if XBox Live is more attractive, people will do the opposite of what you're describing: they'll be hesitant to mod their Xboxes, because then they won't be able to access Live. That is, unless Microsoft stops caring a
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:3, Interesting)
MS sells lots of XBOXs because they can be mod'd
They tell game makers "We sold X units."
Game makers make more games based on that
MS says "We have Y games for XBOX 360!"
People buy more XBOX 360s.
Mod chips can easily be turned off for XBOX Live play.
Microsoft has all the various mod chips in their R&D lab. They know how they work and they're leaving loopholes for the mod chip makers in the future product. They don't care if the game companies have 30% of their games pirated,
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
My man, you forget one very important thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not breaking an NDA here as I'm not actually on the dev team.
Well, but MS still hates you: modded xboxes will presumably also play warez games, so the game design houses now won't be convinced that easily that the plattform already has a hole in it...
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:4, Interesting)
The main reason I modded my xbox was just for that reason, and I think I'm accurate in saying that my xbox has spent more than 20 times as much time running XBMC (for streaming video from my PC for the most part) than it has spent running games.
If this is built in to the 360, then that cuts out a big reason for many people to mod it, which to me seems like good business sense. I'm just curious how comparable the two are.
Parent
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but you are a Microsoft employee, so you probably *are* breaking a general (perhaps even implied) NDA. Company employees generally are *not* at liberty to discuss unannounced stuff publicly, whether they're directly involved or not.
For example, I can't tell you about a number of projects being developed by my company, and I'm not involved with any of them, either. (Not that you'd care about them, of course)
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats, you broke my bullshit detector.
First, if you work for someplace with an NDA, it covers any nondisclosure information unless they're totally incompetant... so even if you overheard someone while getting coffee, you're probably still breaking NDA. In fact, you could be breaking NDA even if it's not true.
Second, the revenue stream for a console is its games. Weak or no copy protection scares developers. The Xbox 360 will probably be sold at a huge loss, so there's no profit from just selling consoles. Is mindshare worth that much?
Third, even if you're telling the truth on both counts, I wouldn't be bragging about this. It makes the 360 reek even more of Dreamcast: out early, no protection, big hype... big flop.
Parent
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:3, Funny)
> I work at Microsoft as do several of my friends...
Oh, I'm terribly sorry!
Simon
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:3, Interesting)
At the same time, I'm not sure I believe the grandparent poster...
Re:More on XBOX 360. (Score:4, Insightful)
The obvious statement about banning comes from the fact that modded Xboxs can run hacks which can lead to cheating. However the PC suffers from this problem anyway and the PC game companies provide things such as Punkbuster to block out cheaters.
I'd love to believe what you are saying and I'd love to see homebrew development on Xbox 360 - but it doesn't seem to jive with the current Xbox mod situation.
Parent
The Mysterious Future (Score:4, Insightful)
And, once Microsoft begins to gradually dominate that market, their positions might become similar to that of a Wal-Mart supplier. Their business models will change as they begin to provide manufacturing services for Microsoft.
As Seen On TV is in trouble.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:As Seen On TV is in trouble.... (Score:5, Funny)
He said he was too.
So we have that in common.
Parent
Re:As Seen On TV is in trouble.... (Score:5, Funny)
--CTRL - BREAK --
Phew. Got out of that one...
Parent
Damn you Robert X. Cringely!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Stop Robert! Stop for the sake of my pocketbook and my sanity!!!
Speaking as an OEM (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, this just reinforces my opinions of late of the complete end of sales with Microsoft products. If a "partner" decides to go into direct competition, then they cease to be a valid partner. Linux is gaining mindshare and market share. Windows has become the product every wants to get rid of but is afraid they can't.
Hence forth a new business model for any OEM is to offer Linux training and products. Free of charge or very low cost. Let's show MS that they can't piss on the army of people who help put them where they are by even supporting their crap. If it wasn't for places like mine all over the US, how would MS get their stuff repaired? You know full well they won't work with someone over the phone to resolve issues. That will just take more value away from their products. And of course the huge OEMs answer is always "use the restore CD" and fail to mention that data will be lost.
no no no (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, it is technically impossible for Google to pre-render Flash and pass it on to you. Flash isn't "server-side" -- it's done by your computer, which needs to be fat enough to run it.
Third, Yahoo's music service is priced well, but they're still misleading. They say "1 million songs" for $6.99/month, but that's to have them streamed to you, not downloaded. You can only download a handfull of tracks per month. Booo!
Fourth, why didn't Cringley (or anyone for that matter) ask if/when Google will try to buy Yahoo?
Lastly, no mention of Flickr? I think Google messed up when they let that puppy slip through their fingers and be purchased by Yahoo. Picasa? Puh-lease-a.
"Inflection point"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Man, I really wish that Cringely, as a supposed pundit to the geek masses, would not contribute to distorting into sensationalist manager-ese technobabble a phrase that already has a precise mathematical meaning [wikipedia.org].
Interesting in theory... (Score:3, Interesting)
At that point, you'll buy your PC from Google, use Google as your ISP, surf an Internet that is really the Google cache,
(A) Right about here the DOJ decides to take action...
be fed ads and sold content from Google servers. Its a GoogleWorld that requires no AOL, no Microsoft, no Intel, no HP or Dell -- only Google, cable companies, telephone companies, users, and of course advertisers and web page producers.
Doubtful because of (A).
It's surprising to me that he didn't mention the comment of the week; that from Gates about mobile phone making iPods obsolete. It was an important observation, since it is already happening. My phone serves as an MP3 player already. While it doesn't have the capacity of the iPod (yet), who cares... It has an antenna, has considerably more functionality, and I Always-Have-It-With-Me(TM)
Re:Interesting in theory... (Score:3, Insightful)
Xbox replacing low end PC market? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Xbox replacing low end PC market? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can ALREADY buy a capable PC from Dell for $299... what makes you think the Xbox 360 price point will be $300??? Most guesses I've seen are closer to $500. Plus the accessories (e.g. 802.11 adapter) will be more expensive because it is a closed architecture. So while
His powers of prognostication astound (Score:5, Funny)
Cringely is impressed that Google is offering a web accelerator service, something AOL has done for years; that the XBox will play music and video, something the playstations 1 and 2 did, respectively; that Yahoo is unveiling a service almost identical to the Napster service that appeared in the wake of the iTunes Music Store; and that Apple may, at some unspecified point in the future be releasing a product.
Well, that's all well and good. But I think the really important thing for the tech market is, will Gore or Bush win the election? Because Cringely doesn't weigh in on that at all.
Re:His powers of prognostication astound (Score:3, Insightful)
Well something to think about - AOL grew out of their own network, which sucked but they had full control over, into an interweb gateway (which they still suck at) but google has done it simply as a side effect of having built the required infrastructure they use to do other tasks very very well. With a small effort they've nearly moved into another market and further solidified their status as valua
lots of noise, not much here (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, he seems to have missed the fact that Google Accelerator has already failed and is being withdrawn. The world is not going to redesign their web pages so that GETs have no side effect.
A couple of weeks ago, he waved his hands and explained that airline scheduling is just like network scheduling and you can speed up the net by eliminating the hubs and running traffic directly from one host to another. Then he waved his hands again and said that hubs are servers.
Last December after the tsunami, he told us how to build a warning system that could be deployed by putting a networked PC "on every populated beach a month from now." Never mind that third-world populated beaches usually don't have electricity, much less an internet connection.
Last July he designed a scheme to compress video for broadcast by encoding only what the retina was focusing on. But it would work only if every person receiving the broadcast always pointed their retinas to the same place as everyone else.
Cringely is at his best when describing a funky experiment that he's actually done, like when he was one of the first to put a WiFi antenna in a Pringles can. But his blue-sky predictions just don't fly anymore.
GWA will not change the world, Cringe (Score:4, Interesting)
Er, maybe not. For a start, the GWA doesn't "double" surfing speed. Second, with current bandwidth, I doubt most people would notice or care much about "double" text-loading speeds (GWA doesn't get that sort of compression on images, MP3s, etc, obviously). Third, it's not complex technology. People have been developing (and using) this crap for ages. It's not as if Google have cracked cheap, in-your-house nuclear fusion.
Web Accelerator is no big news, folks (Score:5, Informative)
http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html#bas
Revolutionary, it is not.
rendering flash? (Score:3, Insightful)
wtf is this guy talking about? How is google going to render my flash? what a dumbass.
Speaking of inflection points, (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Microsoft is finally playing someone else's game. The surprise is that it's Apple, like always. Colour me astonished.
3. Google accelerator. So noone is bothered by privacy concerns about an Internet-sized cache? Never saw that coming.
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a really, really, really, really good reason for Google to go through this "Heroic" effort. In fact, it is almost sickeningly self serving. Googles accelerator will allow them to capture the click stream of every participating user. That is, google will know where you are going, what you are reading, and how long you are reading it for. That is, they will have an entire stream of data to more accurately return search results and target ads. This will also help their page rank system be more "accurate".
This isn't a technology play as Cringely supposes - IBM's not doing this becuase umm, wait they don't do that sort of thing - MS isn't doing it becuase they don't really have a need for the data. Google is "catching" up to companies like double click and poindexter at the moment. Their plan will ultimately give them way more data than any other ad server out there. Online advertising is about data, the more data you have about a user, the larger a profile they can build about you. In google's case they can make their targeted ad offerings far more relevent which will equal $$$.
Why Google Web Accelerator? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you index URLs? Simple: you start someplace and spider out from there.
What if people are going directly to unlinked, or unindexable pages?
Well heck, you stick something in the way so you see everyplace they go.
Simple. GWA is just a way for Google to get a lead on the "dark web," just like the google toolbar. From your point of view, it speeds stuff up somewhat. That's it!
Competes with PC? I think not! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:3.2 GHz PowerPC Xbox? Has APPLE heard of that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Erm. Couple of things:
1.) Microsoft is almost definitely losing money on these units. That would be a dumb business move for Apple.
2.) It's not clear, today, whether or not those processors could do the general computing jobs they'd need to on desktop machines. I'm going to be honest, I don't know much about this. I j
Re:3.2 GHz PowerPC Xbox? Has APPLE heard of that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it is already clear that they are NOT PowerPC cores. The hardware specifications state that they are BASED on PowerPC, so you can't assume identical clock-for-clock performance. Most likely the hardware in the XBOX360 will be much more powerful than anything below high-end Macs (that will be 2x2.7 at that time, if
Re:3.2 GHz PowerPC Xbox? Has APPLE heard of that? (Score:5, Informative)
First, it's a multi-core 3.2GHz PowerPC based cell controller not a PowerPC CPU in the classical sense. Sony also has abandoned the CPU design in favor of multi-cell design for PS3. Second, the later something is designed, the newer it's components can be. Third, it's may not be up to Apple. Apple has always been at the mercy of its suppliers. Motorola could not provide enough G4 chips for the PowerMac a few years ago. Hence, they dumped Motorola when they decided to develop the G5. When IBM comes out with a 3GHz PowerPC CPU that Apple can use and Apple doesn't use it, then you might have a point.
Parent
Re:3.2 GHz PowerPC Xbox? Has APPLE heard of that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kick the dog or kick the bucket? (Score:3)
It is a really funny ending to the piece though.
It is intended to sum up rather pointless, reaction-getting behaviour. I think.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the more prized members of my collection is a CompuMate. It's a keyboard that plugs into an Atari 2600, making the machine into a computer with a usable BASIC.
For over 20 years, every damn console has tried to say, "Look, it's also a computer!" And every single time, it's an utter flop. No one will use a console to do what a computer does, because the console invariably is a substandard personal computer.
Seriously, how many times have we seen this? The CompuMate, the Intellivision Computer Adaptor, the Coleco Adam, the FamiCom, the Sega Channel
No gaming console will ever threaten personal computers in any area except gaming (and even that's arguable). I don't know that I've ever seen a single business lesson which has been so forcibly resisted by one generation of companies after another.
Parent
Re:If wishes were horses... (Score:3, Insightful)
this is how much it actually speeds up ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Without Google Web Accelerator: 1.9 hrs
With Google Web Accelerator: 1.5 hrs
that is for a european user with a pIV 2.4 and 1 gig ram on a 3mbit dsl line.
i case you're asking yourself "how are the numbers calculated": Performance statistics are estimated by testing a percentage of requested pages.