I first saw the iPod while Christmas shopping last year. If it had windows support I would have impulse bought it on the spot. As always Apple kicks ass at physical design. The iPod is definitely sexy.
This spring I had my discman stolen so it was time to buy an MP3 player. I took a serious look at the iPod, at the time it was as follows: 5GB for $400 and 10GB for $500. Plus firewire adaptor plus the software for the filesystem.
$500+ for an MP3 player? Not Bloody Likely. I don't care how sexy the iPod is, it isn't worth that much.
I decided on the Archos Jukebox 10GB model. It is not perfect but I'm real happy. The physical design is big and garish. I can't stand the rubber baby buggy bumpers. I would have paid $50 for mobile phone battery technology. The menu interface could be better. It took me a while to figure out.
People have been debating the interfaces. I am on the road continously and have my Windows 2000 StinkPad with me. It comes with USB and not Firewire. Firewire is extra cost, hastle and another PCMCIA card to carry and not lose. (I have 4+ with me) I don't particularly care about speed, USB is plenty fast for the amount of transfering I do. I still haven't filled all of my 10GBs.
Somebody made the comment that Apple not selling a Windows compatible would encourage people to buy Apple computers. Get Real! Anyone looking at an MP3 player probably has a computer and I would be real surprised to find out that someone would spend $1000 to make a $400 MP3 player work.
Bottom line: iPod is sexy as can be, Archos Jukebox could be better but bang for $$ the iPod doesn't stack up to the Archos.
What kind of car are you driving? one that costs $100k or one that breaks down all the time. In Canadian prices, my car including capital cost and repairs runs me 0.05/km, gas costs me 0.05/km and insurance is about 0.04/km. $0.14/km. That is around US$0.15/mile. Granted I'm driving a Honda but still. The corporate mileage cost is around 0.30/mi and I know I can turn a huge profit on that.
Umm, it is fairly common in Canada (I'm here) too. PHB is Pointy Haired Boss, the character in Dilbert. PHB is the personnification of all that is stupid and evil in management.
The cost of an employee's time doesn't stop at his paycheck. There was server downtime involved. There are also other non-salary costs in keeping employees: benefits, the employer's contribution to Social Security, office space, etc.
The number that I understand to be generally acceptable is that an employee costs twice what s/he is paid. So an employee that grosses $50k/yr costs the company $100k/yr when all the overhead, taxes and crap is figured in.
I don't really see why there are country domains in a place where geography means so little. Other than governments, (which generally have a 1 to 1 relationship with countries) what is the benefit of having country codes in a domain name? It may make some sense to put country codes under the.gov TLD as SLDs (Second Level Domains). (e.g. us.gov, tv.gov, etc.)
Hindsight is 20/20. When the TLDs were implemented the internet hardly existed. There was no concept of how revolutionary this would be. The borders were (are?) still meaningful.
You think geography means so little but it does indeed have meaning. From a marketing point of view, companies big and small still want to often want to address a regional group of people. I heard in an interview that McDonalds Canada doesn't want to waste its advertising budget by spending on things that largely targets Americans. In a way this makes a lot of sense (it is also short-sighted.)
The geographic TLDs could have been used much more wisely than they are. Anybody care to tell me why we have gmcanada.com when http://gm.ca would make much more sense? General Motors isn't the only guilty party for doing stupid things like this. I don't know if the problem was that GM didn't think of http://gm.ca? Or the more likely case that I've heard horror stories about, the Canadian registrar and how slow they are. Looking at their application form I can imagine the horror stories are true.
Geographic top level domains were and are a smart idea for organizing the domain system. You might think they were more useful had Internic been a little more intelligent and found a way to get customers to implement hierarchical domain names. That's what this system was meant for but instead in 90% of cases we have a flat dumb structure. www.variable.com. It could have been so much more useful, and we could have avoided much of the cybersquatting issues if Internic had been a little more clever.
There seems nothing which makes it impossible to embed a signal in some predetermined sort of noise which is computationally extremly difficult to extract without the proper key (i.e. it resembles noise very very closely).
It sounds like you are looking for something like spread spectrum technology. In terms of transmission via radio, traditionally we use narrowband methods. FM 102.1 has a big bunch of energy that is easily visible around 102.1 MHz. Even if you encrypt it you know something is there.
Spread spectrum disperses the signal across a larger bandwidth so unless you know where to look, it appears that there is only background noise. It appears there is no data at all. The receiver needs a code that matches the transmitter so the receiver can know where to find the transmitted signal.
This is the technology that is used in CDMA - Code division multiple access. The method that Qualcomm uses for PCS. There are a lot of interesting advantages that this method has over TDMA and FDMA (Time, Frequency).
There is one fatal flaw in this arguement. All your references are about broadcasting over the airwaves. I think that this is an invalid analogy because the airwaves are extremely finite in terms of available resources. The internet is quasi-infinite. There is room on the internet for everyone to have their say.
I'm a ham as well, I don't see how there is any comparison to the internet. Ham radio is regulated because it is aloted a very small portion of the radio spectrum. If there were not controls it would be just like CB.
I'm trying to figure out the timing of answers, I'm used to the contest publishing results showing the time/penalty when a problem was accepted. It can be interesting to note which problems were easy, how many minutes it took to get the first problem solved etc. Does anyone have a link to the full competition results?
Also, is the 20 minute penalty per wrong submission new? I don't remember seeing this before? Ryan rjshook@uwaterloo.ca:) PS POETS is spelled like that, Piss on everything tomorrow's Saturday
I think the basic point here is that O'Reilly is wrong when he states that Patents are meant to promote the common welfare, the idea being that certain ideas won't be developed without government providing a degree of protection. That's not the idea behind patents.
Umm, NO, O'Reilly got it right. Why should I put all the R&D work into something and let my competitors get it for free? Look at the drug industry where the length of a patent is a hot issue.
You have to jump through a tonne of hoops in order to get a drug approved. Developing a new drug is a huge investment. If generic drug companies could start making the generic on Day 1, there is no way I could recoup my investment and then I probably would invest my money elsewhere and the drug would never be developed.
Having a window where I can recoup my investment is critical to me wanting to invest the time, effort and $ to develop a new drug. It would be societies loss if nobody had the incentive to develop the newest drug treatment.
Now it is a different ballgame when patents are misused and trivial things get patented, but originally it was for good reason.
Second - this was an interim injunction without foundation in law or jurisidiction. It is ABSURD to suggest that ANY American judge has jurisdiction to make a mandatory order in respect of an activity carried on in another country.
It is not so absurd when the activity being carried on in another country is by an American. William R. Craig Consulting owns the iCraveTV domain name. William R. Craig Consulting appears to be registered in Pittsburgh. Last time I knew Pittsburgh is in PA.:)
"key Court battle" was merely an ex parte injunction, made without even an appearance filed on behalf of ICrave
Due to matters relating to his divorce, Mr. Craig would be arrested as soon as he stepped foot in PA. Hence he did not appear in person. Instead he gave a deposition in Ontario on Thursday.
End result: Our LLB friend had better do a little more research into the specifics of the case before slamming the CNET reporter.
For those who think simple rebroadcasting of content available over the airwaves in Canada is legal for anybody, show me the section of the CRTC's laws that make it so.
Actually it is covered by the C anadian Copyright Act. S ection 31 covers Retransmission. This is half out of the jurisdiction of the CRTC. I say half because they have influence over the Broadcasting Act.
Retransmission of local signals (2) It is not an infringement of copyright to communicate to the public by telecommunication any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work if (a) the communication is a retransmission of a local or distant signal; (b) the retransmission is lawful under the Broadcasting Act; (c) the signal is retransmitted simultaneously and in its entirety, except as otherwise required or permitted by or under the laws of Canada; and (d) in the case of the retransmission of a distant signal, the retransmitter has paid any royalties, and complied with any terms and conditions, fixed under this Act.
The Globe and Mail has a number of articles on iCraveTV that give a better explanation of the court date and give a thorough background on Mr. Craig.
The information I have read is conflicting over whether this is a Canadian company or a company based out of Pittsburgh.
Checking with NSI it looks like their domain is registered in Pittsburgh.
Registrant:
WILLIAM R. CRAIG CONSULTING (ICRAVETV-DOM) 904 Beaver St SEWICKLEY, PA 15143 US
Domain Name: ICRAVETV.COM
Administrative Contact: REGISTRAR, DOMAIN (DR13484) dom@ACEMAIL.COM 416 410 6245X33 (FAX) 416 410 6245 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: WILLIAM R. CRAIG CONSULTING (WR948-ORG) no.valid.email@WORLDNIC.NET 412 741 8139 Billing Contact: WILLIAM R. CRAIG CONSULTING (WR948-ORG) no.valid.email@WORLDNIC.NET 412 741 8139
Record last updated on 24-Nov-1999. Record created on 26-Oct-1999. Database last updated on 29-Jan-2000 01:24:44 EST.
I was kind of hoping (like many others) that this would set a precendent to avoid this kind of crap in the future
Oh come on now, Remember what drives the corporate world. Stock Price Occasionally one attempts to increase stock price through law suit. In this case the law suit resulted in the stock price falling 75% to below it's IPO value. What better precedent could you ask for. What board of directors would tolerate the stock price plummeting. I'm surprised heads haven't yet rolled at eToys.
EMI was the last of the big independent labels, and it will be sad to see it subsumed into AOL/TW.
What? EMI independent? Give me a break. They have a huge illustrious history. They had/have the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You know the dog and the grammophone? That is called His Master's Voice. It is the logo for EMI in everywhere but North America where RCA held the trademark. His Master's Voice is nicely abbreviated HMV, an international record chain. EMI can hardly be called independent.
I seriously question whether a company that calls describes itself as a group can be considered small.
Forget the fact that EMI is being merged into AOL and Time. Even if Warner was on its own this merger is still big news. Here were the big 6 music labels:
Universal
Sony
BMG
EMI
Warner
Polygram
But Universal bought Polygram and it looks like we have EMI/Warner leaving only these:
Universal (Canadian)
BMG (German)
Warner/EMI (US/UK)
Sony (Japanese)
The music industry keeps getting smaller and smaller. Together these 4 control over 90% of the music industry.
Practicly everything under wintel has been designed with a cutsie little 'properties' dialogue in mind. Most of the time under unix the system and tools are vastly more configurable.
Yes and no. For Win32, all the simple things are designed for property dialogs but they are just a cute front end for the registry. Granted the registry is by no means for the faint of heart but at least everything that counts in in one place. In the registry Win32 gives you the same frightening control what UNIX does.
even engineering equations can be patented and often are. in aircraft construction, even the curves that describe the shape of wings are patented and protected by copyright
You need to differentiate between a specific application and a general concept. Patent protection is not afforded for Bernoulli's equations that describe lift. However specific implementations to create a specific type of airfoil would be eligible for patent.
From the Canadian Patent Act, 27(8) states: (8) No patent shall be granted for any mere scientific principle or abstract theorem. Bernoulli's equations would likely be considered a mere scientific principle, so in and of themselves are not patentable (forgetting they are more than 20 years old).
So is this a mere scientific principle or abstract theorem or is it more than that? One poster stated that the patent is for a specific VLSI implementation. If so then great, he deserves a patent for his piece of silicon, but he doesn't deserve a patent to prevent others from implementing the idea in another piece of silicon in a different way.
Here at the University of Waterloo (Canada) I think they have found the right solution.
The whole piracy policing issue is complex and the kinks are still being figured out, hence this is probably not the best base for creating rules.
If the problem is bandwidth put in limits on bandwidth. It can't be that hard technically because my school manages to do it. People on ResNet have a quota for the term. If bandwidth overload is the problem then this is the proper solution. Messing with Address/Port blocking is just asking for people to develop workarounds. A simple bandwidth quota system is far simpler.
It's also interesting to note that UW has a comprehensive statement to govern the use of computing and network resources.
The quotas are 2500MB for a term with a max of 150Mb per day. All I know is that I'm glad I'm off campus with ADSL because my usage for two days is 1.1GB. Gotta love iCraveTV when you don't have cable.
Of course, if MS started losing money, the stock would plummet and people would tut-tut that such practises just don't pay, but so long as they continue paying, brokers and institutional investors are more than happy to wink at them for it.
I remember one quote, I think it was from Microsoft's CFO on how to watch for MS (or any other company) getting into financial trouble. The guy stated that you should look for significant changes in accounting practices. So if you ever notice that MS makes a big change in how they keep their books, run.
I think you need to figure out which comes first, the horse or the cart.
The press release in question is basically a statement of intent. The CRTC does not want to pursue the power to regulate entities on the internet. Right now the internet is essentially unregulated by the Canadian government.
The Broadcasting Act is currently law and so without question overrules any statements of intent from the CRTC. Currently Law vs. Desire (or lack of) to create new law. Current Law wins.
Hence the internet does fall in the catchall of the Broadcasting act and even if the CRTC does not want to create new rules to govern the internet, ones that already exist must be followed (or rescinded by parliament).
You're right, Toronto is the capital of Ontario. Which makes me all the more confused when you said 647 did not belong to Toronto and pointed to NANPA when NANPA listed 647 as belonging to Ontario.
It is incorrect to compare the license agreement on a DVD or the trailer to a move to broadcast television. The broadcaster makes a contractual agreement with the producers that cannot be compared to your contract for buying/renting a movie. Additionally the broadcaster has a contractual agreement with the FCC/CRTC.
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I first saw the iPod while Christmas shopping last year. If it had windows support I would have impulse bought it on the spot. As always Apple kicks ass at physical design. The iPod is definitely sexy.
This spring I had my discman stolen so it was time to buy an MP3 player. I took a serious look at the iPod, at the time it was as follows: 5GB for $400 and 10GB for $500. Plus firewire adaptor plus the software for the filesystem.
$500+ for an MP3 player? Not Bloody Likely. I don't care how sexy the iPod is, it isn't worth that much.
I decided on the Archos Jukebox 10GB model. It is not perfect but I'm real happy. The physical design is big and garish. I can't stand the rubber baby buggy bumpers. I would have paid $50 for mobile phone battery technology. The menu interface could be better. It took me a while to figure out.
People have been debating the interfaces. I am on the road continously and have my Windows 2000 StinkPad with me. It comes with USB and not Firewire. Firewire is extra cost, hastle and another PCMCIA card to carry and not lose. (I have 4+ with me) I don't particularly care about speed, USB is plenty fast for the amount of transfering I do. I still haven't filled all of my 10GBs.
Somebody made the comment that Apple not selling a Windows compatible would encourage people to buy Apple computers. Get Real! Anyone looking at an MP3 player probably has a computer and I would be real surprised to find out that someone would spend $1000 to make a $400 MP3 player work.
Bottom line: iPod is sexy as can be, Archos Jukebox could be better but bang for $$ the iPod doesn't stack up to the Archos.
What kind of car are you driving? one that costs $100k or one that breaks down all the time. In Canadian prices, my car including capital cost and repairs runs me 0.05/km, gas costs me 0.05/km and insurance is about 0.04/km. $0.14/km. That is around US$0.15/mile. Granted I'm driving a Honda but still. The corporate mileage cost is around 0.30/mi and I know I can turn a huge profit on that.
Statistically speaking, the more living you do, the higher the likelyhood of you dying.
Umm, it is fairly common in Canada (I'm here) too. PHB is Pointy Haired Boss, the character in Dilbert. PHB is the personnification of all that is stupid and evil in management.
The team from Winnipeg would not have been saying 'aye'. They would have been saying 'eh?'.
Get it right eh?
The number that I understand to be generally acceptable is that an employee costs twice what s/he is paid. So an employee that grosses $50k/yr costs the company $100k/yr when all the overhead, taxes and crap is figured in.
Hindsight is 20/20. When the TLDs were implemented the internet hardly existed. There was no concept of how revolutionary this would be. The borders were (are?) still meaningful.
You think geography means so little but it does indeed have meaning. From a marketing point of view, companies big and small still want to often want to address a regional group of people. I heard in an interview that McDonalds Canada doesn't want to waste its advertising budget by spending on things that largely targets Americans. In a way this makes a lot of sense (it is also short-sighted.)
The geographic TLDs could have been used much more wisely than they are. Anybody care to tell me why we have gmcanada.com when http://gm.ca would make much more sense? General Motors isn't the only guilty party for doing stupid things like this. I don't know if the problem was that GM didn't think of http://gm.ca? Or the more likely case that I've heard horror stories about, the Canadian registrar and how slow they are. Looking at their application form I can imagine the horror stories are true.
Geographic top level domains were and are a smart idea for organizing the domain system. You might think they were more useful had Internic been a little more intelligent and found a way to get customers to implement hierarchical domain names. That's what this system was meant for but instead in 90% of cases we have a flat dumb structure. www.variable.com. It could have been so much more useful, and we could have avoided much of the cybersquatting issues if Internic had been a little more clever.
It sounds like you are looking for something like spread spectrum technology. In terms of transmission via radio, traditionally we use narrowband methods. FM 102.1 has a big bunch of energy that is easily visible around 102.1 MHz. Even if you encrypt it you know something is there.
Spread spectrum disperses the signal across a larger bandwidth so unless you know where to look, it appears that there is only background noise. It appears there is no data at all. The receiver needs a code that matches the transmitter so the receiver can know where to find the transmitted signal.
This is the technology that is used in CDMA - Code division multiple access. The method that Qualcomm uses for PCS. There are a lot of interesting advantages that this method has over TDMA and FDMA (Time, Frequency).
I'm a ham as well, I don't see how there is any comparison to the internet. Ham radio is regulated because it is aloted a very small portion of the radio spectrum. If there were not controls it would be just like CB.
I'm trying to figure out the timing of answers, I'm used to the contest publishing results showing the time/penalty when a problem was accepted. It can be interesting to note which problems were easy, how many minutes it took to get the first problem solved etc. Does anyone have a link to the full competition results?
:)
Also, is the 20 minute penalty per wrong submission new? I don't remember seeing this before?
Ryan
rjshook@uwaterloo.ca
PS POETS is spelled like that, Piss on everything tomorrow's Saturday
But remember the B team has beat the A team at the regionals! 1997 I think?
Umm, NO, O'Reilly got it right. Why should I put all the R&D work into something and let my competitors get it for free? Look at the drug industry where the length of a patent is a hot issue.
You have to jump through a tonne of hoops in order to get a drug approved. Developing a new drug is a huge investment. If generic drug companies could start making the generic on Day 1, there is no way I could recoup my investment and then I probably would invest my money elsewhere and the drug would never be developed.
Having a window where I can recoup my investment is critical to me wanting to invest the time, effort and $ to develop a new drug. It would be societies loss if nobody had the incentive to develop the newest drug treatment.
Now it is a different ballgame when patents are misused and trivial things get patented, but originally it was for good reason.
What drug had the reporter been smoking when he wrote this? Does anyone else find this hard to believe?
It is not so absurd when the activity being carried on in another country is by an American. William R. Craig Consulting owns the iCraveTV domain name. William R. Craig Consulting appears to be registered in Pittsburgh. Last time I knew Pittsburgh is in PA. :)
"key Court battle" was merely an ex parte injunction, made without even an appearance filed on behalf of ICrave
Due to matters relating to his divorce, Mr. Craig would be arrested as soon as he stepped foot in PA. Hence he did not appear in person. Instead he gave a deposition in Ontario on Thursday.
End result: Our LLB friend had better do a little more research into the specifics of the case before slamming the CNET reporter.
Actually it is covered by the C anadian Copyright Act. S ection 31 covers Retransmission. This is half out of the jurisdiction of the CRTC. I say half because they have influence over the Broadcasting Act.
The Globe and Mail has a number of articles on iCraveTV that give a better explanation of the court date and give a thorough background on Mr. Craig.
The information I have read is conflicting over whether this is a Canadian company or a company based out of Pittsburgh.
Checking with NSI it looks like their domain is registered in Pittsburgh.
Oh come on now, Remember what drives the corporate world. Stock Price Occasionally one attempts to increase stock price through law suit. In this case the law suit resulted in the stock price falling 75% to below it's IPO value. What better precedent could you ask for. What board of directors would tolerate the stock price plummeting. I'm surprised heads haven't yet rolled at eToys.
What? EMI independent? Give me a break. They have a huge illustrious history. They had/have the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You know the dog and the grammophone? That is called His Master's Voice. It is the logo for EMI in everywhere but North America where RCA held the trademark. His Master's Voice is nicely abbreviated HMV, an international record chain. EMI can hardly be called independent.
I seriously question whether a company that calls describes itself as a group can be considered small.
But Universal bought Polygram and it looks like we have EMI/Warner leaving only these:
The music industry keeps getting smaller and smaller. Together these 4 control over 90% of the music industry.
Yes and no. For Win32, all the simple things are designed for property dialogs but they are just a cute front end for the registry. Granted the registry is by no means for the faint of heart but at least everything that counts in in one place. In the registry Win32 gives you the same frightening control what UNIX does.
If only it was better documented {sigh}.
You need to differentiate between a specific application and a general concept. Patent protection is not afforded for Bernoulli's equations that describe lift. However specific implementations to create a specific type of airfoil would be eligible for patent.
From the Canadian Patent Act, 27(8) states:
(8) No patent shall be granted for any mere scientific principle or abstract theorem.
Bernoulli's equations would likely be considered a mere scientific principle, so in and of themselves are not patentable (forgetting they are more than 20 years old).
So is this a mere scientific principle or abstract theorem or is it more than that? One poster stated that the patent is for a specific VLSI implementation. If so then great, he deserves a patent for his piece of silicon, but he doesn't deserve a patent to prevent others from implementing the idea in another piece of silicon in a different way.
The whole piracy policing issue is complex and the kinks are still being figured out, hence this is probably not the best base for creating rules.
If the problem is bandwidth put in limits on bandwidth. It can't be that hard technically because my school manages to do it. People on ResNet have a quota for the term. If bandwidth overload is the problem then this is the proper solution. Messing with Address/Port blocking is just asking for people to develop workarounds. A simple bandwidth quota system is far simpler.
It's also interesting to note that UW has a comprehensive statement to govern the use of computing and network resources.
The quotas are 2500MB for a term with a max of 150Mb per day. All I know is that I'm glad I'm off campus with ADSL because my usage for two days is 1.1GB. Gotta love iCraveTV when you don't have cable.
I remember one quote, I think it was from Microsoft's CFO on how to watch for MS (or any other company) getting into financial trouble. The guy stated that you should look for significant changes in accounting practices. So if you ever notice that MS makes a big change in how they keep their books, run.
The press release in question is basically a statement of intent. The CRTC does not want to pursue the power to regulate entities on the internet. Right now the internet is essentially unregulated by the Canadian government.
The Broadcasting Act is currently law and so without question overrules any statements of intent from the CRTC.
Currently Law vs. Desire (or lack of) to create new law. Current Law wins.
Hence the internet does fall in the catchall of the Broadcasting act and even if the CRTC does not want to create new rules to govern the internet, ones that already exist must be followed (or rescinded by parliament).
You're right, Toronto is the capital of Ontario. Which makes me all the more confused when you said 647 did not belong to Toronto and pointed to NANPA when NANPA listed 647 as belonging to Ontario.
It is incorrect to compare the license agreement on a DVD or the trailer to a move to broadcast television. The broadcaster makes a contractual agreement with the producers that cannot be compared to your contract for buying/renting a movie. Additionally the broadcaster has a contractual agreement with the FCC/CRTC.