Cable and Satellite have demonstrated that people want more channels, and it will be tough arguing that 30 over-the-air channels is not in the public's and in the broadcasters' interest, despite the interest of those with $3000 TVs. And Americans in general will choose quantity over quality every time.
While this is a commom perception it is not entirely true. I have digital cable and regularly watch only twenty of the 100+ channels. Most people I know are similar. And how often have you heard '500 channels and nothing on' comments.
The cable companies add channels not because viewers want then but because they make money from carrying them.
And the switch from albums to CD, and the current transition from VHS to DVD shows that Americans will choose quality.
Another thing - Analog TV will not go dark in 2006. The sets/converter boxes aren't being mass-marketed now and it's almost 2002. Your congressman will listen to the little old ladys on social security that worry about their TVs being turned off. I'd even be surprised if it goes dark by 2016.
Part of the deal giving the OTA stations free spectrum for HDTV was that they give up the spectrum they are currently using. There are plenty of companies that want that spectrum and are willing to pay plenty of money to get it. Think PCS auctions.
Congress is much more likely to listen to businesses, especially ones with lots of money, then to any number of non-voting non-contributing non-tax paying little old ladies. And the FCC has stated, via the very business friendly Chairman Powell, that the transition will happen.
The propietary hardware will always hold me back from a mac. I like having the ability to install any OS on my machine.
Nice nonsequitur.
And what machine runs "any OS"?
My TiBook has MacOS X.x, MacOS 9.x, Darwin, Windows 98 (via VPC).
If I wanted to I could install various distros of Linux (PPC and, with VPC, x86), but with OSX's Unix underpinings I don't need to.
I'm currently running VPC v4.x. If I were to get a copy of VPC 3.x I could load Solaris and BeOS (support was removed with version 4). But I've no need for them.
A quick check at Emulation.net shows a variety of emulators. I counted 34, plus emulators for game consoles, calculators, and handheld devices.
I have no idea if those emulators are useful. The only one I've used is the PalmOS emulator.
Even with this there are plenty of OS's that I can't run. MPE/iX and OS400 are two that I've worked with in recently.
Please tell me what machine can run any OS, and where I can purchase one. Theoretical Turing Machines don't count.
There is a difference between certain and expected behavior. You expect that your kids will choose ice cream and you will most likely be correct.
Yet you do not know that they will. For example, using the standard cardboard box, stick, and string trap your kids may be attempting to catch a rabbit. Then they may choose the lettuce.
So what it comes down to is that you do not have prior knowledge of the outcome, you have an expectation of the outcome.
If you did have prior knowledge of the outcome then that outcome is already decided. That is, it is predetermined. That is what predetermined means.
So your claim, "that prior knowledge of the outcome, doesn't mean that the outcome is determined in a way that can't be changed" is erroneous.
You can have free will or you can have prior knowledge. You cannot have both.
God does not have a hand in evil acts. He allows evil to occur so that we can make our own choices between right and wrong. The Bible states this clearly.
Perhaps you are familiar with the story of Noah? You know the guy with the ark?
Now I consider mass murder an evil act.
I suspect you do as well.
So here is a question for you, what happened to all people that weren't on the ark?
They were murdered. Drowned each and every one of them.
Or consider the story of Passover. Where first born sons born into the wrong religion were murdered while they slept.
Or how about Sodom and Gomorrah (spell?). Bang everybody's dead.
If this god is so great, why couldn't he figure out a more humane way to achieve his ends?
... but I have in no way determined this for them.
You have misunderstood the problem.
If determinism is true, nothing you can do will effect the outcome. Nothing anyone can do will change the outcome. That's what it means to be determined.
The head of the Red Cross stepped down because of a disagreement over how the Liberty Fund was created and run. It seems there was a question about the need for a separate fund.
This was compounded by the media hysteria of the Red Cross having the audacity to realize that they had received more money then immediately needed and the good sense to but the excess away for future needs.
When the board of directors didn't support her she resigned.
I thought the whole thing was absurd. I gave money to the Red Cross because they have the know how and the ability to deal with these kinds of crises. I had no problem with how it was handled.
I was thinking in a similar vein last night. There is a program on NPR called Echoes that plays ambient music. It is on in my area 11 PM to 1 AM. I don't get to listen as often as I'd like.
The shows are available on the web but in RealAudio format. I would welcome a mechanism to download them to my iPod and listen during the day. A ReplayTV for radio.
This was discussed back in the 60's and or 70's when the Club of Rome published Limits to Growth. This was a book that dealt with the finiteness of the earth's resources.
But when the view was expanded to include the rest of the solar system the limits effective disappeared. Now it is still non-trivial to gain access to these resources but it is within our technological capabilities.
That said it is vitally important that we protect and preserve the environment. These goals are not at odds with each other and I believe both can be achieved.
I currently commute between NJ and CA. I had been carrying a CD player and ~ 20 CDs.
I now carry an iPod.
The differences are quite noticable. Size does matter. And I love the larger selection. I admit it, I'm lazy and didn't swap out the CDs often enough and found myself listening to the same things over and over.
And as other posters have noted, it is perfect for walking, running, biking, and the like.
It is also perfect for waiting rooms in doctors offices, train stations, airports, etc.
It is a comparable change from my first to second cellphones. My first cellphone was a Motorola Digital Personal Communicator my current is a StarTac. While both are hand helds and both can fit into a pocket only the
StarTac leaves room in the pocket for other stuff. I used to leave my cellphone in my car or in my briefcase. Now I carry the cellphone everywhere (some might argue that this is not an improvement:-).
Both the CD player and iPod are portable. But the size of the iPod makes carrying music much more convient. And as with the phone, I find myself carrying my iPod with me most of the time.
The site is/.'d, so I could not check the specs. Nor could I see who this camera was intended for.
While this doesn't make sense for a consumer grade camera today, it might make sense for a pro grade camera for use by reporters in the field.
Consider some one in Afganistan with one of these. No need to take a laptop, and thus one less gadget to lug around. Just send the video directly from the camera.
But if this is intended as a consumer product, then I agree with you. It makes little sense.
A very strange thing happened on Wednesday, November 14th. At 11:00 am Pacific Time, hewlett-packard announced that they had decided to discontinue sales and support of the hp e3000 platform. Winston Prather, General Manager, hp e3000 Business, made the announcement with Jim Murphy, General Manager, hp Server Support at his side. [bold added]
The thing is, I'm typing this at 9:49 AM Pacific time.
This particular unit has a CDR. Which I am sure will lead to a call to HP from the RIAA's laywers.
But a number of the home stereo component digital music players do not.
And while many computer users are in the habit of making regular backups, I expect most are not. Visit any office building. Ask the people with computers on their desks how often they back them up. Count the blank stares...
Yes I know, there may be network backups. But for most computer users backing up is not something they do or even think about doing.
Now consider the home audio market. How many people backup their CDs, albums, tapes? Very, very few. (It isn't 0%, I actually know some people that do. They use the original as a reference copy and make a working copy to play.)
Now throw in the fact that the RIAA considers it illegal to make a copy of a music file.
The point that I am perhaps laboring to make is that once digital music becomes mainstream, most people will not back up their music. Most won't even recognize it as something to consider.
And this will result in support nightmares... "What do you mean my music is ALL GONE!!!" And blaming the customer, "... you should have made a backup..." is rarely a good marketing strategy.
As KFury points out, a good DRMS would solve this problem. "Sure thing Steve, we can download all of your licensed titles over night...". But it will be quite awhile before we see such an enlightened attitude from the RIAA et. al.
One of the goodpoints of digital rights management, for all its bad points, is that this future will probably be more along the lines of: You pay money to buy rights to listen to such-and-such. If you lose it in a hard disk crash (if they even let you keep a static version) you still own the rights and can download it again.
There are ways to make DRM work for both the producer and the consumer. Any DRMS that allows me to use a file that I have purchased on any machine and in any format I want, even when I do not own the machine, would be acceptable to me.
Alas, the content companies don't seem to share my view. As another poster has pointed out, the RIAA, MPAA et al seem focused on a pay per play future.
And I could see the situation where my digital music player dies and istead of honoring my license to music on the now dead system, I an forced to repurchase said music since it will now keyed to a different machine.
It's sad really. There are a number a technologies I'd love to be using right now, HDTV, DVDA/SACD, DAT, digital music, 'DVD VCRs', that but for the greed of the content companies are essentially on hold.
Steve Jobs and the folks at Baen Books get it. Piracy is a behavioral not technelogical problem.
checkyoulater writes:
"And, what happens when the hard drive fails? Will HP replace all the music that I didn't backup? They expect us to backup 40 gigs of music on cdr's? "
To which KFury responds:
Dude, you ripped them from CDs. They're your backup.
I don't know if KFury meant his reply tongue in cheek, but it is essentially true today, as most people have their music collection on CDs.
But some day music will be distributed in downloadable form in a fashion that most people will get their music via downloads and not on physical media.
As hard drive capacities grow and prices shrink, how will al this music be backed up?
If you transfer an MP3 to the iPod with the purpose of playing it through the headphones, ala a playback device, you can not recopy that MP3 file back to the computer.
Q. I have a computer at home and one at work. Can I update my iPod
music collection from more than one Mac? ... To transfer music between your
computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop
songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
To transfer music between your
computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop
songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
Q. I have a computer at home and one at work. Can I update my iPod music collection from more than one Mac?
A. Yes. When you first connect iPod with your Mac, iPod will recognize it as your primary
computer. In the future, it will automatically update your music on iPod to match the music
library on that computer without prompting.
When you connect iPod to a different Mac, iPod
asks for permission before updating your music to synchronize with this computer.[Is this what you were looking for?]
If you choose to automatically update your iPod music from another computer, the music
already on your iPod is replaced to match the music library on the second computer, and
this system is now recognized by iPod as your primary computer. Because synchronization
occurs only one way, from your Mac to your iPod, your music collection cannot be auto-matically
updated between your two computers using iPod.
To transfer music between your
computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop
songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.[Or is this?]
I'm not really sure what you are asking for but it would appear that you can manually tell it to sync, in which case the computer you are syncing with becomes the primary computer. And it replaces the music already on the iPod.
So if you are asking to be able to sync from two machines the answer is no. But the manual mode will allow you to copy music to and from the iPod from multiple computers.
Steve M
Re:Apple reminds me more of Commodore every day
on
Apple releases iPod
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
I hope it's a sexy new laptop which runs Windows and OS X.
I've already got one. A TiBook (aka PowerBook G4).
I run Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, Windows 98, and Unix.
And it is great at attracting flight attendants.
Steve M
Cable and Satellite have demonstrated that people want more channels, and it will be tough arguing that 30 over-the-air channels is not in the public's and in the broadcasters' interest, despite the interest of those with $3000 TVs. And Americans in general will choose quantity over quality every time.
While this is a commom perception it is not entirely true. I have digital cable and regularly watch only twenty of the 100+ channels. Most people I know are similar. And how often have you heard '500 channels and nothing on' comments.
The cable companies add channels not because viewers want then but because they make money from carrying them.
And the switch from albums to CD, and the current transition from VHS to DVD shows that Americans will choose quality.
Another thing - Analog TV will not go dark in 2006. The sets/converter boxes aren't being mass-marketed now and it's almost 2002. Your congressman will listen to the little old ladys on social security that worry about their TVs being turned off. I'd even be surprised if it goes dark by 2016.
Part of the deal giving the OTA stations free spectrum for HDTV was that they give up the spectrum they are currently using. There are plenty of companies that want that spectrum and are willing to pay plenty of money to get it. Think PCS auctions.
Congress is much more likely to listen to businesses, especially ones with lots of money, then to any number of non-voting non-contributing non-tax paying little old ladies. And the FCC has stated, via the very business friendly Chairman Powell, that the transition will happen.
Steve M
P.S. I don't feel that Digital Cable is worth the money since I already own TiVo.
While there are many reasons while digital cable isn't worth the money, what does having a Tivo have to do with it?
Steve M
The propietary hardware will always hold me back from a mac. I like having the ability to install any OS on my machine.
Nice nonsequitur.
And what machine runs "any OS"?
My TiBook has MacOS X.x, MacOS 9.x, Darwin, Windows 98 (via VPC).
If I wanted to I could install various distros of Linux (PPC and, with VPC, x86), but with OSX's Unix underpinings I don't need to.
I'm currently running VPC v4.x. If I were to get a copy of VPC 3.x I could load Solaris and BeOS (support was removed with version 4). But I've no need for them.
A quick check at Emulation.net shows a variety of emulators. I counted 34, plus emulators for game consoles, calculators, and handheld devices.
I have no idea if those emulators are useful. The only one I've used is the PalmOS emulator.
Even with this there are plenty of OS's that I can't run. MPE/iX and OS400 are two that I've worked with in recently.
Please tell me what machine can run any OS, and where I can purchase one. Theoretical Turing Machines don't count.
Steve M
We need a new moderation catagory.
Steve M
You people disgust me!
We all try very hard. Thanks for noticing.
And thanks for the chuckle.
Steve M
There is a difference between certain and expected behavior. You expect that your kids will choose ice cream and you will most likely be correct.
Yet you do not know that they will. For example, using the standard cardboard box, stick, and string trap your kids may be attempting to catch a rabbit. Then they may choose the lettuce.
So what it comes down to is that you do not have prior knowledge of the outcome, you have an expectation of the outcome.
If you did have prior knowledge of the outcome then that outcome is already decided. That is, it is predetermined. That is what predetermined means.
So your claim, "that prior knowledge of the outcome, doesn't mean that the outcome is determined in a way that can't be changed" is erroneous.
You can have free will or you can have prior knowledge. You cannot have both.
Steve M
Philips Pronto. A programable touch screen remote.
Steve M
God does not have a hand in evil acts. He allows evil to occur so that we can make our own choices between right and wrong. The Bible states this clearly.
Perhaps you are familiar with the story of Noah? You know the guy with the ark?
Now I consider mass murder an evil act. I suspect you do as well.
So here is a question for you, what happened to all people that weren't on the ark?
They were murdered. Drowned each and every one of them.
Or consider the story of Passover. Where first born sons born into the wrong religion were murdered while they slept.
Or how about Sodom and Gomorrah (spell?). Bang everybody's dead.
If this god is so great, why couldn't he figure out a more humane way to achieve his ends?
Steve M
You have misunderstood the problem.
If determinism is true, nothing you can do will effect the outcome. Nothing anyone can do will change the outcome. That's what it means to be determined.
Steve M
The head of the Red Cross stepped down because of a disagreement over how the Liberty Fund was created and run. It seems there was a question about the need for a separate fund.
This was compounded by the media hysteria of the Red Cross having the audacity to realize that they had received more money then immediately needed and the good sense to but the excess away for future needs.
When the board of directors didn't support her she resigned.
I thought the whole thing was absurd. I gave money to the Red Cross because they have the know how and the ability to deal with these kinds of crises. I had no problem with how it was handled.
Steve M
Keep in mind that many of the people who produced the content for this aren't getting paid a cent for their work on the CD.
These people were never paid?
Or these people got paid for their work, and National Geographic, who paid for the work, contiues to use what they paid for.
I have never understood the argument that if I put something in a different format is all the sudden something new.
Steve M
I was thinking in a similar vein last night. There is a program on NPR called Echoes that plays ambient music. It is on in my area 11 PM to 1 AM. I don't get to listen as often as I'd like.
The shows are available on the web but in RealAudio format. I would welcome a mechanism to download them to my iPod and listen during the day. A ReplayTV for radio.
Steve M
The planet is finite.
However, it is not clear that the universe is.
This was discussed back in the 60's and or 70's when the Club of Rome published Limits to Growth. This was a book that dealt with the finiteness of the earth's resources.
But when the view was expanded to include the rest of the solar system the limits effective disappeared. Now it is still non-trivial to gain access to these resources but it is within our technological capabilities.
That said it is vitally important that we protect and preserve the environment. These goals are not at odds with each other and I believe both can be achieved.
Steve M
I currently commute between NJ and CA. I had been carrying a CD player and ~ 20 CDs.
I now carry an iPod.
The differences are quite noticable. Size does matter. And I love the larger selection. I admit it, I'm lazy and didn't swap out the CDs often enough and found myself listening to the same things over and over.
And as other posters have noted, it is perfect for walking, running, biking, and the like.
It is also perfect for waiting rooms in doctors offices, train stations, airports, etc.
It is a comparable change from my first to second cellphones. My first cellphone was a Motorola Digital Personal Communicator my current is a StarTac. While both are hand helds and both can fit into a pocket only the StarTac leaves room in the pocket for other stuff. I used to leave my cellphone in my car or in my briefcase. Now I carry the cellphone everywhere (some might argue that this is not an improvement :-).
Both the CD player and iPod are portable. But the size of the iPod makes carrying music much more convient. And as with the phone, I find myself carrying my iPod with me most of the time.
Steve M
And email? On a video camera?
The site is /.'d, so I could not check the specs. Nor could I see who this camera was intended for.
While this doesn't make sense for a consumer grade camera today, it might make sense for a pro grade camera for use by reporters in the field.
Consider some one in Afganistan with one of these. No need to take a laptop, and thus one less gadget to lug around. Just send the video directly from the camera.
But if this is intended as a consumer product, then I agree with you. It makes little sense.
Steve M
From the CSL page:
A very strange thing happened on Wednesday, November 14th. At 11:00 am Pacific Time, hewlett-packard announced that they had decided to discontinue sales and support of the hp e3000 platform. Winston Prather, General Manager, hp e3000 Business, made the announcement with Jim Murphy, General Manager, hp Server Support at his side. [bold added]
The thing is, I'm typing this at 9:49 AM Pacific time.
Curious.
Steve M
From one potential immortal to another, I'm not dead yet!
Steve M
This particular unit has a CDR. Which I am sure will lead to a call to HP from the RIAA's laywers.
But a number of the home stereo component digital music players do not.
And while many computer users are in the habit of making regular backups, I expect most are not. Visit any office building. Ask the people with computers on their desks how often they back them up. Count the blank stares...
Yes I know, there may be network backups. But for most computer users backing up is not something they do or even think about doing.
Now consider the home audio market. How many people backup their CDs, albums, tapes? Very, very few. (It isn't 0%, I actually know some people that do. They use the original as a reference copy and make a working copy to play.)
Now throw in the fact that the RIAA considers it illegal to make a copy of a music file.
The point that I am perhaps laboring to make is that once digital music becomes mainstream, most people will not back up their music. Most won't even recognize it as something to consider.
And this will result in support nightmares ... "What do you mean my music is ALL GONE!!!" And blaming the customer, "... you should have made a backup ..." is rarely a good marketing strategy.
As KFury points out, a good DRMS would solve this problem. "Sure thing Steve, we can download all of your licensed titles over night ...". But it will be quite awhile before we see such an enlightened attitude from the RIAA et. al.
Steve M
One of the goodpoints of digital rights management, for all its bad points, is that this future will probably be more along the lines of: You pay money to buy rights to listen to such-and-such. If you lose it in a hard disk crash (if they even let you keep a static version) you still own the rights and can download it again.
There are ways to make DRM work for both the producer and the consumer. Any DRMS that allows me to use a file that I have purchased on any machine and in any format I want, even when I do not own the machine, would be acceptable to me.
Alas, the content companies don't seem to share my view. As another poster has pointed out, the RIAA, MPAA et al seem focused on a pay per play future.
And I could see the situation where my digital music player dies and istead of honoring my license to music on the now dead system, I an forced to repurchase said music since it will now keyed to a different machine.
It's sad really. There are a number a technologies I'd love to be using right now, HDTV, DVDA/SACD, DAT, digital music, 'DVD VCRs', that but for the greed of the content companies are essentially on hold.
Steve Jobs and the folks at Baen Books get it. Piracy is a behavioral not technelogical problem.
Sigh.
Steve M
checkyoulater writes: "And, what happens when the hard drive fails? Will HP replace all the music that I didn't backup? They expect us to backup 40 gigs of music on cdr's? "
To which KFury responds: Dude, you ripped them from CDs. They're your backup.
I don't know if KFury meant his reply tongue in cheek, but it is essentially true today, as most people have their music collection on CDs.
But some day music will be distributed in downloadable form in a fashion that most people will get their music via downloads and not on physical media.
As hard drive capacities grow and prices shrink, how will al this music be backed up?
Steve M
If you transfer an MP3 to the iPod with the purpose of playing it through the headphones, ala a playback device, you can not recopy that MP3 file back to the computer.
From the Apple faq
Q. I have a computer at home and one at work. Can I update my iPod music collection from more than one Mac?
...
To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
Steve M
Basically, the iPod can either play or transport files.
It can do both at the same time.
Files put into the player via iTunes synch cannot be removed back onto a computer...
Bzzt ... Yes they can. From the Apple faq
To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
Steve M
Of course, this would be even better if you could manually tell it to sync, ...
From the Apple iPod faq:
Q. I have a computer at home and one at work. Can I update my iPod music collection from more than one Mac?
A. Yes. When you first connect iPod with your Mac, iPod will recognize it as your primary computer. In the future, it will automatically update your music on iPod to match the music library on that computer without prompting.
When you connect iPod to a different Mac, iPod asks for permission before updating your music to synchronize with this computer.[Is this what you were looking for?]
If you choose to automatically update your iPod music from another computer, the music already on your iPod is replaced to match the music library on the second computer, and this system is now recognized by iPod as your primary computer. Because synchronization occurs only one way, from your Mac to your iPod, your music collection cannot be auto-matically updated between your two computers using iPod.
To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.[Or is this?]
I'm not really sure what you are asking for but it would appear that you can manually tell it to sync, in which case the computer you are syncing with becomes the primary computer. And it replaces the music already on the iPod.
So if you are asking to be able to sync from two machines the answer is no. But the manual mode will allow you to copy music to and from the iPod from multiple computers.
Steve M
Both Aplle and ...
For 'Aplle' read 'Apple'.
Steve M