If average person watches TV for 4 hours a day, that is 120 hours a month. With $60 a month to Comcast that means it 50c per hour of TV, with ads. If you consider that ads run anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes out of hour, lets say at average 20 minutes, you get about 80 minutes of TV for a dollar, which is subsidized by ads. I don't know how much Comcast pays to the content providers and how much ads will pay. But you are willing to pay at average 50c per TV show episode, while watching ads. So you are paying 4 times as much for no ads.
Now for the author of the article and for me, if you watch about 4 shows at average, that is 20 episodes a month at the $60 for Comcast this makes $3 per episode. I think that looking at it this way, iTunes pricing is a steal. Not counting the fact that there are off-season periods when you still pay subscription to Comcast, but don't pay anything on iTunes.
Most of the time I actively use the phone, I need pretty much three buttons on it. One to summon the phone book, two to scroll up and down and then I press the first button again to place the call. And sometimes I need one more button to hang up. Most of the time I use the cell phone, I use it passively to accept a call, I need one button for that, one to hang up. And I would not mind if it would be the same button.
As for the occasional SMS, 75% of them are selection from a template. But, of course, people will need the input device sometimes, but I say they will not need it so much that the touch display keyboard will be a problem. Those who need keyboard so much that would cause a problem for them do not constitute majority and they still do not need the keyboard most of the time anyway. How can you justify it to take 1/3 to 1/2 of space on the cell phone when it is not used even 1/9th of the time?
My prediction is that it will take Belkin, Griffin or ExtremeTech about 3 months to come up with a keyboard that plugs in the bottom in the iPod connector. If there will be a demand for the keyboard, there will be a keyboard. And if you will write emails, you just plug it in. No biggie. Why everyone makes such a big deal out of this? 90% of people will not need the keyboard, so it would be bad design to have it there permanently fixed.
I love the platform, but I saw few of the robots that my nephew built and every single one of them had a little problem, like not strong hand grip or bad walk, that programming them with some really difficult tasks was just pointless. They would reach breakpoint in a first third of anything remotely complex.
I wish there was a humanoid robot with all the sensors and the brick already built so we could just program it and know it will work and execute even a complex program without problems. That would really make it worth while and money.
You know this is a problem when dealing with Microsoft. You come into the process as objective person without prejudice to them and then you study the subject. If you study in a sufficient detail, you will become so enraged by what they are doing and that you are now hopelessly prejudiced against Microsoft. Look at the judge Jackson in the Microsoft trial. That is a person who's living depends on being objective and he got so pissed off by studying Microsoft practices that even he was not able to keep being perceived as impartial and so his ruling got thrown out by court of higher instance.
The most sad part is that Microsoft is abusing this by pointing to every such study as prejudiced and often rightly so. But what is the general public to do now? You either have experts that study the matter and become prejudiced or you have those with only superficial knowledge who can keep the illusion of objectivity but more often than not they do not know enough about the matter. Often to the point to believe studies paid by Microsoft as being a source of objective information. And if you want to keep the illusion of objectivity you need to cite those and it just seems wrong to me.
Sometimes you are just not supposed to be objective. Some topics do not invite that form of discussion. Is the Earth flat? I don't think anybody expects you to present the supporting opinion in equal length. Did holocaust happen? Again, not really a question in need of giving equal space to both sides. So why 'Is Microsoft crooked and do they intentionally cripple their product to harm consumer and competition?' needs any more discussion even after it was affirmed by Findings of Fact published by a federal judge? The matter of do they or don't they has long been settled. At this point the only question should be: "How exactly are they trying to cheat this time?"
It is all about OpenGL vs DirectX. As long as developers will opt for DirectX, the games are not going to be portable to Mac OS X and Linux. And if the trend ever reverses, we might have a chance. Anyway, most people just buy a game console and are done with it. But there is a ray of hope in the fact that these consoles start to use Linux and OpenGL to run/make games. So theoretically...
As one of the people you likely target I can tell you my reason. SourceForge is hardly the example of great project. It has been completely stagnant for over 3 years, adding no new significant features. It had quite large update just recently, which was mostly cosmetic in nature. There were no significant new changes since the project went closed source years ago. Who would want to work for a project that is in maintenance mode for the last 3+ years? Certainly not me. I could have three people work with me for six months to create a serious challenger to sf.net. So you are not even maintaining such a large lead for the maintenance mode to be justified. Simply, your self-image is slightly distorted.
You should not be kidding! For a $1 a day you can save a child from sure death. That means every $5000 could mean the difference between life and death for a human being. Let's say Microsoft takes in extra $2 billion a year thanks to abusing its monopoly position? That is 400,000 lives every year that could be saved with that money. So is that better or worse than a single murder?
I have the feeling that there are other things than Melinda that don't let Bill sleep at night and make him work so hard at his foundation.
It's like the US government reclassifying tomato as a vegetable so it can impose the import tarif on it. Governments always look for ways how to tax the hell out of you. Nothing new here. Move along.
I second this! The public transport in Sillicon Valley is absolutelly non-existent. Compare this with European cities. The average citizen of Czech Republic will use public transportation for 600 miles per year. In Prague, the capital city, it is even 2-3 times as much. Compare it to US, where it is under 50 miles. And if you want to compare Prague and Sillicon Valley on aesthetics, you would have to be crazy or vision impaired to side with Sillicon Valley. And I know, I lived in both for years.
On the other hand, why don't we put 100% tax on gasoline and put half in public transport and half in alternative energy research? The prices of gasoline would still be lower than in Europe and people would be more motivated to look for alternative sources of transportation. Bikes, public transport, hybrids, electric cars, smaller cars, just like in Europe.
Just like Europe was a sinking ship during WWII?
And just like Europe, the US only sent a handfull of troops all the while bitching it wasn't our problem? Oh wait...
And just like in WWII, US let British Empire bleed out all its money on the war and crumble to pieces, Europe now lets the American Empire bleed out all their money on this war and crumble to pieces.
It just shows that Europe is capable to learn from history...
Well, you don't see the attraction, but others might. I am from Eastern Europe and I don't see US any more free than China. In both it is impossible to live without breaking the law, if you get caught or if the government has reason to lock you up, you will be locked up. I have grown up in country where everyone knew not to poke the sleeping bear with a stick was a good idea, so I learned my essential skills early on. So from political perspective it is basically the same. From geographical perspective, I live in San Francisco. Compared to Beijing or Shanghai it is not even a city, it is a small underdeveloped town. It has no public transport and virtually no population density. Nothing is really happening there. And what is it with this no drinking outside, no drinking after 2am, no nothing crap? From the economical perspective, the cost of services in China is extremly low compared to California. The cost of real estate is also comparably way cheaper and if they plan to connect China at high speed in the next 5 years, well it is much more than you can expect from Comcast or AT&T here. Oh yeah, and all the things I am buying now are already manufactured in China, so I might as well save some on shipping:)
The largest hurdle for me is legal. It takes to US govt. for over 5 years now to get me a green card and the best projection is that it will take another 2-3 years. Meanwhile I am under threat of 10 days to leave the country if I lose my job. I cannot switch jobs or do anything really under such conditions. Buy a house? Forget it, even if I could afford it. Get a new car? Well, what if? Have kids? Just imagine your child was born, your wife is in hospital and you have 10 days to sell everything and leave the country. If China will offer an equivalent of green card at arrival and a decent salary to the scientists, they might not even look too hard.
But the main thing is, these days, nobody has to move. Most of the brains they need, they can employ over the internet from India, Eastern Europe or anywhere else in the world. I know I can do what I do from any place with a basic infrastructure (stable electricity, broadband connectivity).
This parent post is not really that insightful. First of all, you have ethernet and USB in iTV. So the wireless point is moot. If wireless does not work for you, pull a wire. Second, there is not going to be any delay, you will control iTV directly while sitting at your TV. You will control your Mac when sitting at your Mac. Why would you want to manage your TV from your Mac, which are likely going to be in different rooms is beyond my comprehension. I mean, not why you want to do it, that is obvious, but why would anybody else?
You should understand that the British economy is tightly connected with the US economy. If world would switch from USD to EUR as principal currency, the USD would go in tailspin, taking the US economy down under. With it the UK and rest of Europe would soon follow in decades long recession. It is unfortunatelly in the UK's best interest to keep the USD afloat, which means not joining Eurozone, helping to invade Iraq once it starts trading Oil in EUR and so on.
I have a tremendous respect for Tony Blair to realize this and take a leadership role, even though I despise the way the situation is handled internationally and the whole Iraq war doesn't sit well with me at all.
The one thing I am afraid of is that the story outline is usually just 20% of why Heinlein books were so great. He used the story and the environment it created for the characters to really present some new ideas and concepts and make the reader think about it. Heinlein books are often filled by strong ideas and concepts one appearing right after another, keeping your brain working all the time. I often found myself not remembering what the last 5 pages were about, because my mind run away with one of those ideas. He is so unlike other authors in this aspect. For most authors, the story outline would be enough for another writer to finish the book, since the main idea is usually also the only idea in the book and the rest is just sauce and random words and maybe nice story.
So I am really sceptical this would reach the quality of other Heinlein's books.
... is that it is closest to how our brain works. We need names for concepts in order to grasp them, describe them, use them in the thought process and exchange information about them. How can you talk about a player in skill based system? Either you place him in some type of stereotype or he will feel like a heap of different grain seeds. You can sort of grasp most of them and hold them in your palm, but never get quite the same handfull and always some fall between your fingers. When the communication gets complicated, the social aspect of the game suffers. That leads to the fact that most of the skill based games are promoting individualism and solo play, while the class based systems heavily promote group play.
But the most important distinction is that for the difficulty to grasp the concept of skill based game, it is hard to gain new players for your game.
Also, look at the real life. Do we say that some employee can do a bit of accounting, some direct marketing, little bit of sales and has extensive skills in drafting legal contracts? So how do you find a job for such person? How do you talk about him? How can you put him in a social context? Or do you just say he is a "Contract Lawyer" with some extra business skills? We simply tend to stereotype that is how our brain works.
The people making the content do not understand one basic principle: "You cannot get any money from people who have no money!"
You can make them used to an alternative form of content though, which will cause them to not become your customer when they will start making money. It is as simple as that. When I was a student, I went to library and read 3 books a week for free, I got my games and movies from friends and I didn't pay a cent for them. I didn't really have the money to pay. Now I am somewhat older and I've got a nice income stream. My own library now holds about 1000 books, third of which are books I once read in Library, third are books I read after I bought them and third are books I never even read yet. It is easier for me to buy a game than to spend time asking all my friends to get it. It is easier to get a DVD on Netflix than to steal it and I don't mind to pay.
Now just imagine I would get used to different content? If I never got used to watching movies, I might have just stick to books. If I never played a game, like some of my friends, I might look at it as a waste of time as they do and never buy one. I might not even get used to reading books and instead read just websites on the internet as many of my peers do. Oh did you notice I didn't mention music? Well, they never got to me with that content, I use my iPod for podcasts, sorry RIAA, your loss.
What the content producers need to learn is quite simple: "Get them young, get them for life."
I agree with this. It is really important the schools especially universities hire their staff in the student ranks. My university had Linux servers in all of their departments because their hired students as System Admins. I was one of those. But the important part is that not only we were in charge of the computers for the department, we were full employees of the university with a presence on the budget meetings of the department we worked for. And also we had a fund of stipend to hire students for IT support. It was not much, but a lot of the students wanted to do it, because they were interested in the technology.
So the net result was that we had Linux servers available to students as early 12/1995 and all workstations were dual boot Windows/Linux shortly after with our custom Slackware based distribution. But I was really lucky to get 3 Linux Kernel Hackers in my IT staff working for peanuts (stipend was less than a $1/hour) and many other smart guys. I think I can count at least 30 employees of RedHat and SuSE that I know of and that were working in IT support staff for me or my collegues at other departments at one moment or other.
This is such a poor argument. Why cannot we have at good internet access at least in the main areas? Why is Manhattan, New York not wired as Tokyo with 1Gbps optics? Why is Sillicon Valley way behind Sweden? It has nothing to do with population density or other such crap arguments. Nobody talks about wiring the whole US and every single person, just the major population areas would be enough for starters.
I will try to add to this. Orkut is so popular in Brazil that everyone else stopped using it. It is not even possible. You create a group for people from Prague, the capital of Czech Republic, way on a different continent, and 90% members somehow happen to be from Brazil. Now you create a group for alumni of the university in the same city. Guess what? Over half of the members are from Brazil again. I cannot say how many people asked Google for a simple feature: Show me everyone, except for from Brazil.
BTW I have nothing against Brazilians that are a great bunch and the girls are just gorgeous. They are just not really playing by the rules or leaving anything alone in Orkut. I mean, I have set my languages to English, German, Russian, Czech and Slovak. Do you see Portuguese there? Neither do I. So why would you write to me in Portuguese all the time? Heh?
Most computers sold by Dell do not live past 18 month mark with average non-technical user. At which time they have $0 resell value. Actually negative value, since you need to pay for recycling. After these 18 months and usually much sooner the only way out is a costly repair or what most people opt for, buying a new Dell.
After 18 months, the resell value of Mac is usually still very high, way over half the original price and the computer is still working fine even after twice as long for a non-technical user. Any way you slice it, this brings the value of Apple computers to more than twice the value of comparable Dell.
Apple is competing on price. You just need to remember: We aren't rich enough to be able to afford cheap things.
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If average person watches TV for 4 hours a day, that is 120 hours a month. With $60 a month to Comcast that means it 50c per hour of TV, with ads. If you consider that ads run anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes out of hour, lets say at average 20 minutes, you get about 80 minutes of TV for a dollar, which is subsidized by ads. I don't know how much Comcast pays to the content providers and how much ads will pay. But you are willing to pay at average 50c per TV show episode, while watching ads. So you are paying 4 times as much for no ads. Now for the author of the article and for me, if you watch about 4 shows at average, that is 20 episodes a month at the $60 for Comcast this makes $3 per episode. I think that looking at it this way, iTunes pricing is a steal. Not counting the fact that there are off-season periods when you still pay subscription to Comcast, but don't pay anything on iTunes.
Most of the time I actively use the phone, I need pretty much three buttons on it. One to summon the phone book, two to scroll up and down and then I press the first button again to place the call. And sometimes I need one more button to hang up. Most of the time I use the cell phone, I use it passively to accept a call, I need one button for that, one to hang up. And I would not mind if it would be the same button.
As for the occasional SMS, 75% of them are selection from a template. But, of course, people will need the input device sometimes, but I say they will not need it so much that the touch display keyboard will be a problem. Those who need keyboard so much that would cause a problem for them do not constitute majority and they still do not need the keyboard most of the time anyway. How can you justify it to take 1/3 to 1/2 of space on the cell phone when it is not used even 1/9th of the time?
My prediction is that it will take Belkin, Griffin or ExtremeTech about 3 months to come up with a keyboard that plugs in the bottom in the iPod connector. If there will be a demand for the keyboard, there will be a keyboard. And if you will write emails, you just plug it in. No biggie. Why everyone makes such a big deal out of this? 90% of people will not need the keyboard, so it would be bad design to have it there permanently fixed.
I love the platform, but I saw few of the robots that my nephew built and every single one of them had a little problem, like not strong hand grip or bad walk, that programming them with some really difficult tasks was just pointless. They would reach breakpoint in a first third of anything remotely complex.
I wish there was a humanoid robot with all the sensors and the brick already built so we could just program it and know it will work and execute even a complex program without problems. That would really make it worth while and money.
You know this is a problem when dealing with Microsoft. You come into the process as objective person without prejudice to them and then you study the subject. If you study in a sufficient detail, you will become so enraged by what they are doing and that you are now hopelessly prejudiced against Microsoft. Look at the judge Jackson in the Microsoft trial. That is a person who's living depends on being objective and he got so pissed off by studying Microsoft practices that even he was not able to keep being perceived as impartial and so his ruling got thrown out by court of higher instance.
The most sad part is that Microsoft is abusing this by pointing to every such study as prejudiced and often rightly so. But what is the general public to do now? You either have experts that study the matter and become prejudiced or you have those with only superficial knowledge who can keep the illusion of objectivity but more often than not they do not know enough about the matter. Often to the point to believe studies paid by Microsoft as being a source of objective information. And if you want to keep the illusion of objectivity you need to cite those and it just seems wrong to me.
Sometimes you are just not supposed to be objective. Some topics do not invite that form of discussion. Is the Earth flat? I don't think anybody expects you to present the supporting opinion in equal length. Did holocaust happen? Again, not really a question in need of giving equal space to both sides. So why 'Is Microsoft crooked and do they intentionally cripple their product to harm consumer and competition?' needs any more discussion even after it was affirmed by Findings of Fact published by a federal judge? The matter of do they or don't they has long been settled. At this point the only question should be: "How exactly are they trying to cheat this time?"
It is all about OpenGL vs DirectX. As long as developers will opt for DirectX, the games are not going to be portable to Mac OS X and Linux. And if the trend ever reverses, we might have a chance. Anyway, most people just buy a game console and are done with it. But there is a ray of hope in the fact that these consoles start to use Linux and OpenGL to run/make games. So theoretically...
As one of the people you likely target I can tell you my reason. SourceForge is hardly the example of great project. It has been completely stagnant for over 3 years, adding no new significant features. It had quite large update just recently, which was mostly cosmetic in nature. There were no significant new changes since the project went closed source years ago. Who would want to work for a project that is in maintenance mode for the last 3+ years? Certainly not me. I could have three people work with me for six months to create a serious challenger to sf.net. So you are not even maintaining such a large lead for the maintenance mode to be justified. Simply, your self-image is slightly distorted.
You should not be kidding! For a $1 a day you can save a child from sure death. That means every $5000 could mean the difference between life and death for a human being. Let's say Microsoft takes in extra $2 billion a year thanks to abusing its monopoly position? That is 400,000 lives every year that could be saved with that money. So is that better or worse than a single murder?
I have the feeling that there are other things than Melinda that don't let Bill sleep at night and make him work so hard at his foundation.
It's like the US government reclassifying tomato as a vegetable so it can impose the import tarif on it. Governments always look for ways how to tax the hell out of you. Nothing new here. Move along.
That is because they miss 'l' in 'Jaroslaw'
:)
'Jaroslaw 'sztywny' Rzeszotko'
Now, here, I fixed it for you.
On the other hand, why don't we put 100% tax on gasoline and put half in public transport and half in alternative energy research? The prices of gasoline would still be lower than in Europe and people would be more motivated to look for alternative sources of transportation. Bikes, public transport, hybrids, electric cars, smaller cars, just like in Europe.
And just like Europe, the US only sent a handfull of troops all the while bitching it wasn't our problem? Oh wait...
And just like in WWII, US let British Empire bleed out all its money on the war and crumble to pieces, Europe now lets the American Empire bleed out all their money on this war and crumble to pieces.
It just shows that Europe is capable to learn from history...
The largest hurdle for me is legal. It takes to US govt. for over 5 years now to get me a green card and the best projection is that it will take another 2-3 years. Meanwhile I am under threat of 10 days to leave the country if I lose my job. I cannot switch jobs or do anything really under such conditions. Buy a house? Forget it, even if I could afford it. Get a new car? Well, what if? Have kids? Just imagine your child was born, your wife is in hospital and you have 10 days to sell everything and leave the country. If China will offer an equivalent of green card at arrival and a decent salary to the scientists, they might not even look too hard.
But the main thing is, these days, nobody has to move. Most of the brains they need, they can employ over the internet from India, Eastern Europe or anywhere else in the world. I know I can do what I do from any place with a basic infrastructure (stable electricity, broadband connectivity).
This parent post is not really that insightful. First of all, you have ethernet and USB in iTV. So the wireless point is moot. If wireless does not work for you, pull a wire. Second, there is not going to be any delay, you will control iTV directly while sitting at your TV. You will control your Mac when sitting at your Mac. Why would you want to manage your TV from your Mac, which are likely going to be in different rooms is beyond my comprehension. I mean, not why you want to do it, that is obvious, but why would anybody else?
I have a tremendous respect for Tony Blair to realize this and take a leadership role, even though I despise the way the situation is handled internationally and the whole Iraq war doesn't sit well with me at all.
So I am really sceptical this would reach the quality of other Heinlein's books.
Also, look at the real life. Do we say that some employee can do a bit of accounting, some direct marketing, little bit of sales and has extensive skills in drafting legal contracts? So how do you find a job for such person? How do you talk about him? How can you put him in a social context? Or do you just say he is a "Contract Lawyer" with some extra business skills? We simply tend to stereotype that is how our brain works.
You can make them used to an alternative form of content though, which will cause them to not become your customer when they will start making money. It is as simple as that. When I was a student, I went to library and read 3 books a week for free, I got my games and movies from friends and I didn't pay a cent for them. I didn't really have the money to pay. Now I am somewhat older and I've got a nice income stream. My own library now holds about 1000 books, third of which are books I once read in Library, third are books I read after I bought them and third are books I never even read yet. It is easier for me to buy a game than to spend time asking all my friends to get it. It is easier to get a DVD on Netflix than to steal it and I don't mind to pay.
Now just imagine I would get used to different content? If I never got used to watching movies, I might have just stick to books. If I never played a game, like some of my friends, I might look at it as a waste of time as they do and never buy one. I might not even get used to reading books and instead read just websites on the internet as many of my peers do. Oh did you notice I didn't mention music? Well, they never got to me with that content, I use my iPod for podcasts, sorry RIAA, your loss.
What the content producers need to learn is quite simple: "Get them young, get them for life."
Check speakeasy.net, they should have coverage in Fairfield, CT. You won't be sorry you did.
So the net result was that we had Linux servers available to students as early 12/1995 and all workstations were dual boot Windows/Linux shortly after with our custom Slackware based distribution. But I was really lucky to get 3 Linux Kernel Hackers in my IT staff working for peanuts (stipend was less than a $1/hour) and many other smart guys. I think I can count at least 30 employees of RedHat and SuSE that I know of and that were working in IT support staff for me or my collegues at other departments at one moment or other.
This is such a poor argument. Why cannot we have at good internet access at least in the main areas? Why is Manhattan, New York not wired as Tokyo with 1Gbps optics? Why is Sillicon Valley way behind Sweden? It has nothing to do with population density or other such crap arguments. Nobody talks about wiring the whole US and every single person, just the major population areas would be enough for starters.
BTW I have nothing against Brazilians that are a great bunch and the girls are just gorgeous. They are just not really playing by the rules or leaving anything alone in Orkut. I mean, I have set my languages to English, German, Russian, Czech and Slovak. Do you see Portuguese there? Neither do I. So why would you write to me in Portuguese all the time? Heh?
After 18 months, the resell value of Mac is usually still very high, way over half the original price and the computer is still working fine even after twice as long for a non-technical user. Any way you slice it, this brings the value of Apple computers to more than twice the value of comparable Dell.
Apple is competing on price. You just need to remember: We aren't rich enough to be able to afford cheap things.
I like her name though. It is from Czech and means 'garlic toast'. She would get mine vote if I had one.
With half of the bettery life, all you listed up there is totally useless to me. I will never again buy a laptop with under 5h of batter life.