Inflection Point (Is the new Microsoft XBox 360 a Dell-killer?)

PBS I, Cringeley ^ | May 12, 2005 | Robert X. Cringely

[Hank Rearden]

My Harley is carbureted and I memorize the route to my destination before leaving because there's no place to hook a map.

[SunkenCiv]

To quote the Beagle Bros: "wowzo".

"What message does this send to Microsoft's hardware OEM customers that make home computers? What is Microsoft saying to Dell, HP, Gateway, and others? For all the customer bullying we saw proof of in the Department of Justice's anti- trust case against Microsoft, one thing the kids in Redmond never did was propose to undercut their hardware OEMs by building a Microsoft PC. But now that's precisely what Gates has proposed, and it is coming in time for this Christmas."

Duh. Gates and company has wanted it all from the beginning. Any chance MS would lose the suit? No longer matters? No one knows.

"The second inflection point this week was made by Google with its Google Web Accelerator... The application itself isn't anything new. It is precisely like the Web Page Accelerator (WPA) application that was the key component of the old Starband satellite broadband service I used for awhile when I lived out in the wilds of Sonoma County. WPA was intended to overcome the inevitable latency of that 89,200 mile double round trip required to fetch any web page over the geosynchronous satellite connection. It did this by anticipating the user's next page request and delivering that in advance in a compressed form. For every Starband (and DirecWay) user, there is a proxy session at the satellite downlink location utilizing more computing power than the Starband or DirecWay user probably has on the desktop being served."

That sounds like a complementary capability to the 10.4.x search thingee.