To be fair, I do think I'm a bit out of touch, since I moved back to the US in 2007, coinciding with the iPhone launch, and my first (and only) "smart" phone being an iPhone...but I do work in an industry that caters to mobile platforms and Windows Phone is nowhere on any development lifecycle. I've generated millions of dollars of training for Android and iOS apps (defense contracting), but not $1 in Windows Phone. In fact, when our company was challenged to create the new de-facto military standard for smart phones, one of our devs did his proposal for Windows Phone (old version, don't remember which) and you couldn't even pinch or spread to zoom the map, when all other options could (not counting crappy Blackberry devices). What infantry grunt would want an easy, intuitive iPhone or Google Map powered Android device to zoom in and out on the map? (hint: all of them). Windows Fail...and that was recent history. Sure, they've fixed it, but this is a repeating pattern in my 30 years of technology training experience. Microsoft is consistently the last and worst to market. When they can't leverage their desktop monopoly, they got nothin'.
With that, however, the last time I went to an AT&T store for something for my iPhone service plan, I messed around with a Windows phone. I say I would definitely choose it over any Android phone. It was actually really nice, which should be Microsoft's number one priority from here on out if they ever want to recover lost ground.
(buy an iPhone and it still works great if you have a Mac)
Most iPhone users use their iPhones with Windows PC. Sure, they are great when you also have a Mac, but it seems a lot of people think they are great even if you are using a PC.
You ever notice that Apple commercials show users actually using the devices without the "simulated screen" disclaimer at the bottom? Very few companies do this, but Apple does it with every commercial. Sure, they may edit out lags and speed up connectivity, but the show the device being used like it is used in the wild. Other companies, well, they use "simulated screens" because their product sucks bad enough they are too afraid to show it to anybody.
No, I was definitely up to date during the Bush era. Perhaps there have been leaps since, but most people on here are vastly overstating the capabilities of voice recognition software used as an analysis tool.
And to the point that things can be stored permanently, accruing that much more unprocessed data makes it that less likely that your privacy will ever be violated.
And to your last point, it is not likely as it is illegal to use materials collected against US Persons. Of course, those of you not privy to FISA procedures have every reason to be skeptical.
Microsoft announced the successor to its popular Windows Phone 7 platform.
Perhaps I'm out of touch, and this isn't meant to be snarky, but that's an interesting definition of "popular". Honestly I've never seen a Windows 7 phone.
I apologize. I have to admit my own biases against rap/hip-hop/R&B have clouded my last statement. There are indeed several artists in that list from 1997 that are still relevant today.
What do you think urban, R&B, and country music is? They are all sub-genres of "pop" music.
And what I'm saying, is you have to look beyond the top 10 of a given year. The truly timeless stuff is found in the 10-100 range of a given year. And even more releav
You cite Debbie Boone, but not Carole King. I have a problem with that. Just checking 1997 I see Sugar Ray (dubiously not a 1 hit wonder, since they had a couple hits), but nothing timeless. I'm not even afforded the opportunity to pick a Debbie Boone over a more relevant Carole King from 1997, because they are mostly all irrelevant today. There are very few relevant artists on that 1997 list, and the ones that are (Clapton, Elton John, Madonna, et. al.) where relevant first in the 70s and 80s...which is kind of my point. Sheryl Crow is on there. That's about the only one I see from the 90s that is still relevant. And the reason she is relevant is because her smart brand of pop music is rooted in blues-oriented rock, which, is timeless, and a staple of he 60s, 70s, and 80s and mostly a lost art starting in the 90s.
First, they've said the same thing about voice recognition since my first computer in the early 80s. It still generally sucks, even in English, so you should be able to imagine how awful speech recognition software, written by a bunch of western computer scientists, would be at collecting street-level Urdu or Arabic. I'm a trained Arabic linguist and I can't understand street Arabic. I can talk to college professors, newscasters, and politicians all day. The street vendor guy selling bootleg CDs? The local cabbie? Not so much. Care to guess which version of Arabic the bad guys speak?
Second, voice recognition software (if it were ever capable of correctly transcribing human speech patterns) is pointless without analysis. No artificial intelligence is advanced enough to surpass even the most junior analyst's capability to decipher the voice recognition software's output. The voice recognition might be good for analyzing digital data patterns, but terrible at analyzing human elements such as speech and disposition. The ironic part is the more sophisticated the computers get, the more data they gather, the MORE humans are needed to weed through the data and the less time we can use humans for the skill they are actually good at (linguistics and deciphering human interactions).
There are audits, but they shrouded from the general public by FISA rules. There are enough people and diverging interests within FISA's domain to have enough checks and balances, in my opinion, having been subject to FISA's rules. Of course, that's not good enough for John Q. Public, but that's the nature of balancing transparency and secrecy.
That makes sense then. I'm very much a track-and-field, soccer, American football, and auto racing fan. That's the only reason I have cable (that, and other live cultural events, like music performances). If my sports friends spent more times with technology and less time on sports, maybe there'd be more reliable torrents available;-)
"More varied" does not equal "better". More to the point, I think you are overlooking the diversity of music back in the day, EVEN during the disco era. The Stones, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Elton Freakin' John...once you get past the smattering of BeeGees and Grease songs that littered the top of 1978 and 1979, there's a lot of great music in there. Hell, even the BeeGees stuff is good, zeitgeist-y disco sound aside.
Good for you if $5 a month suits your data needs, but that $360 a year gives you a hell of a lot more functionality. If you don't need it, good for you, but the question remains, why are you on a site like slashdot then?
Also, if you are fretting over $300 difference a year, perhaps talking about streaming music over mobile devices isn't quite your thread to be contributing? Maybe if you said, "why would I spend $360 a year for streaming music when I can spend $360 a year on physical media and own it", your comments would seem to fit the discussion. But it's like you are saying "why would I spend $360 on music when I don't like music." Seems sort of counter-productive to the thread.
And your sig makes it extra confusing. You aren't willing to pay $300 a year more than you pay now for a data plan, but you ARE willing to pay $900 a year for cable television? Weird, that.
And therein lies the problem. You still need human beings to pick through and analyze what those 100 teraflops have tagged. And as someone who did exactly that for 20 years, I can tell you that the government would have to increase staffing by 1,000,000 just to be able to do 1/1000th of what you are suggesting. The fact is, not only are less than 99% of calls ever made even recored, 95% of those are never reviewed because there aren't enough analysts, and computers aren't sophisticated enough to understand human language to any level of usable intelligence. Plus, voice recognition software sucks in English, let alone the dialects used by peasants in Afghanistan and Arabic speaking countries. Native speakers can't even get that stuff right, so your imaginary super computer has no chance.
To the iTunes point, I've never really purchased music there until iCloud. Before, I would , err, acquire music (or rip a copy of a cd I actually owned, or sometimes...err, many times, ripped friends copies of cd they owned) and have these huge hard drives full of "my" music. With iTunes now days, as long as Apple is in business, I have access to any song or app I've ever purchased on any device I own. Yeah, yeah, I know, as long as it has iTunes, but that's a decision I've freely made regardless of all you walled-garden lock-in conspiracy theorists out there. When I get a new machine at work, I log in to iTunes, hit the "purchased" tab and then pull down what I want. No need to backup ever again (unless Apple goes out of business, but I've been watching their stock lately...)
Something tells me if you have a phone and you use it to play music, then you already pay for a data plan to get your email and go on facebook. If you don't have a data plan on your (hopefully) smart phone, what are you doing on a site like this?
Well, if they are like most of us after we graduate from college, they'll get jobs at companies who have ubiquitous bandwidth and listen to Spotify all day long on the employers "data plan".
I never subscribed to this attitude of "it's too hard so I won't learn how". It's self-limiting and defeatist.
Actually, it's realistic. Why waste a bunch of time on something that isn't that important and has several, easier alternatives? If I just want my music to work, I don't want to have to earn a recording engineer degree or computer science degree in the process. Sure, it would be fun, but I got better things to do with my time. That's not defeatist at all, it's pragmatic.
Also, you'd be surprised at just how little "young listeners who have grown up with computers and networks" actually understand about computers and networks. (Says me, a 42 year old guy who trains 18-24 year olds in tech support). This is by design. They have grown up with devices and systems that don't require a deep understanding of the back end processes. They can, however, show their parents how to do cool stuff on the front end.
With iTunes and iCloud, convenience for owning music IS the same as streaming (if not more convenient), but I still prefer streaming since, well, it's free on Spotify.
Even better, Spotify non-premium is free. I stream it all day long at work, every day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, and I've never come up against whatever the cap is for not paying for the premium content.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, I do think I'm a bit out of touch, since I moved back to the US in 2007, coinciding with the iPhone launch, and my first (and only) "smart" phone being an iPhone...but I do work in an industry that caters to mobile platforms and Windows Phone is nowhere on any development lifecycle. I've generated millions of dollars of training for Android and iOS apps (defense contracting), but not $1 in Windows Phone. In fact, when our company was challenged to create the new de-facto military standard for smart phones, one of our devs did his proposal for Windows Phone (old version, don't remember which) and you couldn't even pinch or spread to zoom the map, when all other options could (not counting crappy Blackberry devices). What infantry grunt would want an easy, intuitive iPhone or Google Map powered Android device to zoom in and out on the map? (hint: all of them). Windows Fail...and that was recent history. Sure, they've fixed it, but this is a repeating pattern in my 30 years of technology training experience. Microsoft is consistently the last and worst to market. When they can't leverage their desktop monopoly, they got nothin'.
With that, however, the last time I went to an AT&T store for something for my iPhone service plan, I messed around with a Windows phone. I say I would definitely choose it over any Android phone. It was actually really nice, which should be Microsoft's number one priority from here on out if they ever want to recover lost ground.
(buy an iPhone and it still works great if you have a Mac)
Most iPhone users use their iPhones with Windows PC. Sure, they are great when you also have a Mac, but it seems a lot of people think they are great even if you are using a PC.
What kind of person cares what a telephone looks like...? I'm curious. I've met anybody in person who describes electronic gadgets as "ugly".
There's an entire era of competing iPod devices that failed for this very reason.
Google Creative Zen and select "images". Check out some of those early/mid-2000 models and tell me you wouldn't describe those as "ugly".
Too bad we didn't have something like the Internet come along in the mid 90s and make system incompatibilities irrelevant.
iOS 5 has been out for nine months now.
You ever notice that Apple commercials show users actually using the devices without the "simulated screen" disclaimer at the bottom? Very few companies do this, but Apple does it with every commercial. Sure, they may edit out lags and speed up connectivity, but the show the device being used like it is used in the wild. Other companies, well, they use "simulated screens" because their product sucks bad enough they are too afraid to show it to anybody.
Old like your vagina?
No, I was definitely up to date during the Bush era. Perhaps there have been leaps since, but most people on here are vastly overstating the capabilities of voice recognition software used as an analysis tool.
And to the point that things can be stored permanently, accruing that much more unprocessed data makes it that less likely that your privacy will ever be violated.
And to your last point, it is not likely as it is illegal to use materials collected against US Persons. Of course, those of you not privy to FISA procedures have every reason to be skeptical.
Microsoft announced the successor to its popular Windows Phone 7 platform.
Perhaps I'm out of touch, and this isn't meant to be snarky, but that's an interesting definition of "popular". Honestly I've never seen a Windows 7 phone.
I apologize. I have to admit my own biases against rap/hip-hop/R&B have clouded my last statement. There are indeed several artists in that list from 1997 that are still relevant today.
What do you think urban, R&B, and country music is? They are all sub-genres of "pop" music.
And what I'm saying, is you have to look beyond the top 10 of a given year. The truly timeless stuff is found in the 10-100 range of a given year. And even more releav
You cite Debbie Boone, but not Carole King. I have a problem with that. Just checking 1997 I see Sugar Ray (dubiously not a 1 hit wonder, since they had a couple hits), but nothing timeless. I'm not even afforded the opportunity to pick a Debbie Boone over a more relevant Carole King from 1997, because they are mostly all irrelevant today. There are very few relevant artists on that 1997 list, and the ones that are (Clapton, Elton John, Madonna, et. al.) where relevant first in the 70s and 80s...which is kind of my point. Sheryl Crow is on there. That's about the only one I see from the 90s that is still relevant. And the reason she is relevant is because her smart brand of pop music is rooted in blues-oriented rock, which, is timeless, and a staple of he 60s, 70s, and 80s and mostly a lost art starting in the 90s.
First, they've said the same thing about voice recognition since my first computer in the early 80s. It still generally sucks, even in English, so you should be able to imagine how awful speech recognition software, written by a bunch of western computer scientists, would be at collecting street-level Urdu or Arabic. I'm a trained Arabic linguist and I can't understand street Arabic. I can talk to college professors, newscasters, and politicians all day. The street vendor guy selling bootleg CDs? The local cabbie? Not so much. Care to guess which version of Arabic the bad guys speak?
Second, voice recognition software (if it were ever capable of correctly transcribing human speech patterns) is pointless without analysis. No artificial intelligence is advanced enough to surpass even the most junior analyst's capability to decipher the voice recognition software's output. The voice recognition might be good for analyzing digital data patterns, but terrible at analyzing human elements such as speech and disposition. The ironic part is the more sophisticated the computers get, the more data they gather, the MORE humans are needed to weed through the data and the less time we can use humans for the skill they are actually good at (linguistics and deciphering human interactions).
There are audits, but they shrouded from the general public by FISA rules. There are enough people and diverging interests within FISA's domain to have enough checks and balances, in my opinion, having been subject to FISA's rules. Of course, that's not good enough for John Q. Public, but that's the nature of balancing transparency and secrecy.
That makes sense then. I'm very much a track-and-field, soccer, American football, and auto racing fan. That's the only reason I have cable (that, and other live cultural events, like music performances). If my sports friends spent more times with technology and less time on sports, maybe there'd be more reliable torrents available ;-)
"More varied" does not equal "better". More to the point, I think you are overlooking the diversity of music back in the day, EVEN during the disco era. The Stones, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Elton Freakin' John...once you get past the smattering of BeeGees and Grease songs that littered the top of 1978 and 1979, there's a lot of great music in there. Hell, even the BeeGees stuff is good, zeitgeist-y disco sound aside.
Good for you if $5 a month suits your data needs, but that $360 a year gives you a hell of a lot more functionality. If you don't need it, good for you, but the question remains, why are you on a site like slashdot then?
Also, if you are fretting over $300 difference a year, perhaps talking about streaming music over mobile devices isn't quite your thread to be contributing? Maybe if you said, "why would I spend $360 a year for streaming music when I can spend $360 a year on physical media and own it", your comments would seem to fit the discussion. But it's like you are saying "why would I spend $360 on music when I don't like music." Seems sort of counter-productive to the thread.
And your sig makes it extra confusing. You aren't willing to pay $300 a year more than you pay now for a data plan, but you ARE willing to pay $900 a year for cable television? Weird, that.
And therein lies the problem. You still need human beings to pick through and analyze what those 100 teraflops have tagged. And as someone who did exactly that for 20 years, I can tell you that the government would have to increase staffing by 1,000,000 just to be able to do 1/1000th of what you are suggesting. The fact is, not only are less than 99% of calls ever made even recored, 95% of those are never reviewed because there aren't enough analysts, and computers aren't sophisticated enough to understand human language to any level of usable intelligence. Plus, voice recognition software sucks in English, let alone the dialects used by peasants in Afghanistan and Arabic speaking countries. Native speakers can't even get that stuff right, so your imaginary super computer has no chance.
To the iTunes point, I've never really purchased music there until iCloud. Before, I would , err, acquire music (or rip a copy of a cd I actually owned, or sometimes...err, many times, ripped friends copies of cd they owned) and have these huge hard drives full of "my" music. With iTunes now days, as long as Apple is in business, I have access to any song or app I've ever purchased on any device I own. Yeah, yeah, I know, as long as it has iTunes, but that's a decision I've freely made regardless of all you walled-garden lock-in conspiracy theorists out there. When I get a new machine at work, I log in to iTunes, hit the "purchased" tab and then pull down what I want. No need to backup ever again (unless Apple goes out of business, but I've been watching their stock lately...)
Something tells me if you have a phone and you use it to play music, then you already pay for a data plan to get your email and go on facebook. If you don't have a data plan on your (hopefully) smart phone, what are you doing on a site like this?
Well, if they are like most of us after we graduate from college, they'll get jobs at companies who have ubiquitous bandwidth and listen to Spotify all day long on the employers "data plan".
Plus the $360 per year that your cellular Internet access provider charges for a data plan, correct?
Wouldn't that be the same $360 per year that most of us are paying for our non-music data anyway?
I never subscribed to this attitude of "it's too hard so I won't learn how". It's self-limiting and defeatist.
Actually, it's realistic. Why waste a bunch of time on something that isn't that important and has several, easier alternatives? If I just want my music to work, I don't want to have to earn a recording engineer degree or computer science degree in the process. Sure, it would be fun, but I got better things to do with my time. That's not defeatist at all, it's pragmatic.
Also, you'd be surprised at just how little "young listeners who have grown up with computers and networks" actually understand about computers and networks. (Says me, a 42 year old guy who trains 18-24 year olds in tech support). This is by design. They have grown up with devices and systems that don't require a deep understanding of the back end processes. They can, however, show their parents how to do cool stuff on the front end.
With iTunes and iCloud, convenience for owning music IS the same as streaming (if not more convenient), but I still prefer streaming since, well, it's free on Spotify.
Even better, Spotify non-premium is free. I stream it all day long at work, every day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, and I've never come up against whatever the cap is for not paying for the premium content.
First of all, you said "Nickelback" and "good music" in the same sentence so your judgment is suspect to begin with ;-)
Other than that, nice post!