[gameprogrammer] Re: yawvlff(yet another windows versus linux flame fest, yawn) Re: Re: OTP: deleting porn

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:08:38 -0500, "Bob Pendleton" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
said:
> On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 14:20, Neil Griffiths wrote:
> > 
> > BP> My take on the whole thing? People like what they are used to. Windows
> > BP> will stay popular in the US for many years. The rest of the world is
> > BP> another question. As the cost of computers keeps going down the price of
> > BP> the OS becomes a larger and larger portion of the cost. That means that
> > BP> by the time 50% of the people on earth can afford a computer the OS will
> > BP> have to drop in price to only a few dollars, or be free. Microsoft can
> > BP> not afford to give away its OS, so most of the world will learn Linux as
> > BP> their first, and only, OS.
> > 
> > This viewpoint doesn't take into account broadband and the fact that
> > it's very likely that storage, as well as your OS, will be remotely
> > stored. In this case, you won't own the OS but will rent it... A crazy
> > world, but do you really think that this is wrong?
> > 
> > I don't like it - it even scares me from a big brother POV - but it
> > looks like this is the way computing is going.
> 
> Not a chance in hell. I spent a lot of time (years) working on business
> plans for exactly that business model for a $50 billion telecom company.
> To do what you describe you have to provide enormous bandwidth from the
> server to the home and be willing to upgrade it almost continuously. It
> costs the telecom comapany orders of magnitude more export the desktop
> over broadband than it does for you to buy a computer.
> 
> It looks good on paper until you try to factor in games and video. I
> have done lab trials of running games on remote servers on a fiber (OC3)
> network, and it didn't work. 
> 
> The economics are all wrong. The telecom infrastructure costs to much
> and the ROI (especially the rate of return) is unsustainable.

... especially in the developing world which is where the majority of
growth in hardware and software markets will come from.  A stable phone
line is an expensive enough commodity in Africa or China or parts of
India - it's highly unlikely that anyone's going to be laying FTTH
(fibre to the home) in these places.  Computers have to come _first_ to
make it worthwhile for someone to set up broadband infrastructure, and
to use these machines an OS is needed.

I would assume that the most common systems in (for instance) country
China would become either a variant of Linux, or a pirated copy of
Windows.  But as Microsoft cracks down further on piracy, free software
becomes more and more attractive, to those with little cash.

Dave.
-- 
  Dave Slutzkin
  Melbourne, Australia
  daveslutzkin@xxxxxxxxxxx



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