Apple simply bought them all. IT would be akin to to you or I going to every supermarket in town and buying all the ice cream to keep others from enjoying it. Whether or not some exclusive deal as involved -- I don't know, but I doubt it.
Other companies might want them, but after apple gets it's share, there simply isn't enough left over to base any sort of product line on them.
This would be an ipod killer. It has battery life that would make ipod users drool -- 14 hours if theres alot of hard drive access. However one reviewer tested his out of the box and got 20+ hours on the first charge.
It's cheaper than the ipod, it's got all the functions that the 3rd generation ipod has and it's got controls which, while perhaps a bit short of the ipod, are still excellent.
In other words, it's everything ipod is plus a bit more and it's cheaper. Unfortunately for Dell, they cluelessly cripppled it with some Bad DRM. Plus this bad boy directly into your system as a USB hard drive and transfer your mp3 files to it and then watch in confusion as it completely refuses to play them. All songs have to be transfered via music match to the player before it will play them -- a setup similar to the one that the RCA lyra has used in the past.
It's really sad too, becuase before Dell cluelessly added DRM to this player, it was definately an ipod killer in every respect.
On a slighty off-topic side note. Let's talk about why there haven't been any ipod killers yet. I know this will be unpopular, but the reason no has put out a better player is because Apple has been using anti-competetive practices -- the kind of stuff we'd boo Microsoft for if they were the ones doing it.
How you ask? Simple. They've monopolized access to 1.8 inch hard drives. The other manufactureres of mp3 players aren't still using 2.5 inch drives because they're idiots and think consumers want a big clunky mp3 player, but because they simply can't get thier hands on anything else.
Until just recently, the only company making 1.8 drives was Toshiba -- and Apple had a strangle hold on their supply. They bought pretty much all of them.
Well, finally we have a second company making them, hitach (which is what the dell player uses)so now other companies can *finally* start to make players which are the same size and form factor as the ipod.
So to say that MP3 hardware manufacturers just don't "get it" is unfair. They haven't even had a chance to compete with the ipod until now. Hopefully now that the playing ground is a bit more leveled we'll finally start to see some real competition for the ipod.
P.S. Way to go slashdot! My post is ninety-five percent text, but you refuse to post it until I use "fewer 'junk' characters". Wow, it's a sad day when proper punctuation sets off the lameness filter.
1.8 ghz processors, 80 gig hard drives, 256 megs of ram for less than 300 bucks. Not really a better deal than some emachines POS I could buy, and yet I can't help but think: "Man I'd like to get one of those and run linux on it."
Except that I've read this story on reputable news sites that do fact checking, so I actually have facts here.
What the press release says its that DURING THE SAME PERIOD 1 million songs were downloaded. It does not say 1 million songs were downloaded by WINDOWS users, because that wouldn't be true (and yet this is CLEARLY The claim slashdot has made).
So clearly I'm right my main point -- making you....uhm..what's the word...wrong.
Moreover, my third point comes from another story -- I believe the one at news.com. Please feel free to check it if you don't believe me.
The only point that is open for contention is the time frame. The press release does seem to say that one million songs were downloaded in 3.5 days -- which may be true. If I am wrong on that, that would still leave me with 2 out of 3 legitimate points. Better than you, and better than slashdot.
What apple reported, if anyone had bothered to read the actual press release, was that the total week's song downloads (from all versions of the software, windows and mac alike) had exceeded 1 million songs during the week the windows version was released. This being a rise over the NORMAL weekly sales of 500,000 to 600,000.
In other words, itunes has sold 400,000 songs more than a normal week during the week that the windows version of itunes was released.
So, let's see what slashdot got wrong:
1) It wasn't a milllion windows song downloads, it was a million total downloads.
2) It wasn't over 3.5 days, it was over the course of a week.
3) There's no word yet on what percent of that million was actually windows song downloads.
Come on guys, if you want make-believe that you're real journalists, at least do a bit of basic fact checking before publishing blatantly wrong information.
Look at these memos! These guys are amatures at subverting the laws of the land and trying to usurp democracy. They didn't even CC all communication to their lawyer -- now how are they gonna claim attourney-client privelaged communcation if these memos ever make it to court?
At least microsoft and all the big-time corporate crooks are a little better at it. . .
Is that not what I said? The indictment claims that part of his "hacking" was "spoofing" the return address of the emails.
If the spoofing part is not part of the charge, why even mention it there? It's either poorly written or saying that faking the return address was illegal.
If that, in and of itself, can constitute a crime then pretty much every spammer ever is guilty of the same thing -- just spread about amongst different people. Instead of one company incuring all the "financial damage" of bounced emails, it's many thousands with the "damage" spread around.
Still . . . I have to believe that there is something more to this story than is posted here. If the hacking charge truly comes from simply lying in the "From:" portion of an email, then I will have lost all faith in humanity.
And of couse, the punishment is obviously completely absurd. I'm torn about what to do with this guy myself. Clearly what he did constitutes a DOS attack of sorts, and yet what he did is essentially no different than what every spammer does everyday. IANAL, but if this case is sucessfully prosucuted, wouldn't that give precedent for prosecuting every spammer out there?
When a game gets delayed, the distributors are the first to hear about it. Once the distributors know, their customers, or at least their big ones are the second to know. If you had gone to any Gamestop or EB store in the past month and a half and asked what the release date for Half Life 2 was, they would have checked thier computer system and told you right out "It's April 2004." I know, because I work in such a store -- and was quite dissapointed when I checked one day and discovered it had been pushed back.
These dates are not random guesses, I've seen "official" street dates listed as the release dates for games in our computer system while the game companies say "there is no release date". It never fails, 2-3 weeks later, the game company will announce the street date as the date in our computer system thats been there for weeks.
For instance, I remember the release date for Warcraft 3 was pegged exactly in our computer system for about a month before Blizzard officially announced that day as the release day. Meanwhile, the entire month, Blizzard kept insisting publicly that there "was no release date".
In other words, I can tell you this from previous experience: If our computer systems said April 2004 over a month ago (and it did) that was NOT just a guess, that was based on information coming (albeit indirectly) from Valve.
So, long story short, Valve is lying. They had decided on the April 2004 release date long before any source code was made public. This just provides an easy excuse to be late.
OK LOOK. My fault FOR saying Ounces. When I said ounces, I meant FLUID ounces, but let's just be clear. The new ice cream containers say "half gallon (1.75 liters)".
They've removed.25 liters from the container, yet they still call it a half gallon.
Go here: http://www.azcentral.com/news/1119icecream.html
No. That's my point. Trust me, a half-gallon of ice cream is less -- by VOLUME by WEIGHT or however you want to measure it -- NOW than it was a year ago. Manufacturers just decided to put less in there (a couple of the big ones) instead of raising the prices. But they still claim it to be a "half gallon" container -- when clearly it is no longer truly a half-gallon.
I mean, who decided you could do this? My 120 gig drive is really only 112 gigs. If I sold gasoline for 1.29 a gallon, then put a little footnoot on my sign that said "*Gallon is used to mean 32 oz" you better believe I'd be sued. You can't just redefine things like that -- its deceptive. How many people buy 120 gig hard drivers not realizing they're really only getting 112 gigabytes?
Also, as a side note if anyone else is looking to sue someone, ice cream manufacturers recently reduced the amount of ice cream in their half-gallon containers rather than raise the cost. Despite the fact that thye no longer actually contain a half gallon, they are still clearly labelled "half gallon" on the containers (Though the ounces are properly listed, and anyone who knows how many ounces there are in a gallon knows they're being shortchanged).
Deceptive marketting practices make baby jesus cry. . .
White hat hackers don't actually break into anyone elses systems. They discover exploits on their own boxes, and they report them for the benefit of others. They might notify a company that they are vulnerable to a particular exploit, but they never actually exploit that security hole without permission first (in order to demonstrate that flaw).
This guy, at best, is a grey hat. If he was reading private memos or anything along those lines on the NYT system, then he probably does in fact deserve to get busted (Note: He deserves to get busted, not jail time. The laws against hacking are entirely too punative. There is no financial damage to speak of in this situation. Too often companies will report the cost of patching their system as the financial damage -- as if the money they spent fixing the hole was somehow the fault of the person who pointed the hole out).
Actually, the Japanese could use teletypes to send messages. They just sent them as romanji. In fact, since they were charged by the word, Japanese buisnesses would send messages wherein each word was actually an entire sentence (Japanese is more or less written like this anyways, and the operators couldn't tell the difference). So actually the Japanese could send teletype messages at bargain prices.:)
I dislike the notion of being watched, categorized, and monitored everywhere I go. At this point, facial recognition systems have proven to be relatively inaccurate, and thus they have failed to gain widespread acceptance.
Proposals for facial recognition systems continue to be shot down because of their inaccuracy, but why does it have to be their inaccuracy that is the sticky point. Shouldn't the fact that they constitute a massive invasion of privacy be all the argument we need?
If we continue to use the "accuracy" argument over and over, then what happens when a system that is proven to be fully accurate comes out?
Facial Recognition Systems aren't a bad idea becuase they're inaccurate, they're simply a bad idea -- and that is what we should focus on.
Yeah, I download my mp3's from the fasttrack network. And yeah, my hashes probably match many of those on other people's systems. But you know what? I own the cd's for them anyways.
You know why I didn't just encode them myself?
Because its *FASTER*. I can download the mp3 in literally seconds as opposed to the minutes it takes to encode them. Does the RIAA really think they can make a legal distinction between encoding songs off of cd's I own, and downloading songs off the internet that are from cd's that I own?
If that's not fair use, I'll eat my hat. . . My tasty, delicious hat. . .
Also, what if I paid for it, but I run a cracked version of it anyways? The software in question is probably some sort of app, so it probably doesn't have cd-checking. But in general, alot of people run cracked software simply because its more conveinant.
If I want to run cracked software that I've paid for on my system, then it's not of their buisness.
Come on now, how can any internet service be "private" and public at the same time? It's one or the other.
This isn't a case of someone "walking into your home unannounced". This is like someone leaving the door to their house wide-open with a sign saying "Come on in, but only if you're wearing a purple hat".
Regardless, its Microsoft's right to try to limit people to use its own client (its their legal right anyways, that doesn't make it right). It's also my right to create my own client that emulates the MSN client and tricks their servers into thinking it is one. As far as I know, there is no law anywhere that gives them the right to restrict my access to their system based on what client I'm using. If Microsoft wants to do that (and apparently they do) they'll have to try to do it via technical measures -- which are likely to be circumvented eventually anyways.
You can make a case for Microsoft's actions to be legal -- I doubt they could be considered "anti-competetive" (despite the fact that it does completely exclude linux users). But you really cannot make a good case for them to be "reasonable" which seems to me what you're trying to do. ..
Does anyone use the codec from divx.com anymore? If so, now is as good a time as any to stop. Get FFDSHOW. It does a MUCH better job decoding divx/xvid files and its actaully free. ..
Its by far way more compatible with files made by different encoders too. . . Not to mention how it plows through bad frames with ease.
Oh come on now, let's be realistic. There are very few things driving the PC market aside from games. For all word-processing/desktop/internet usages, any pc made in the last 5 years can perform just as well as a new one. So unless a person is buying their first PC, chances are they are buying a new system in order to keep up with the latest games.
I suppose there area few other areas that demand higher end systems (video/graphics work for instance). But Grandma Sue doesn't need to upgrade her 3 year old compaq for a new top-of-the-line system just to send email.
Don't even get me started on consoles. . . Inferior resolutions and incredibly limited multiplayer options, (x-box live is crap) and lack of updates/support only make them suitable for casual gamers.
I'd estimate that a very clear majority of people replacing their old systems are doing so for gaming reasons. If, for some reason, they truly just felt they needed a better system for destkop applications, I doubt many of them are gonna spend 3000 dollars on a g5 or even 1000 on an imac when they could get a fine system for under 500.
As for the advantages offered by OSX? They are minimal. Surely its slightly easier to use and offers slightly fewer headaches than either windows or linux, but neither of those things will be of any concern to a power user. Microsoft (admittedly by copying others) has put together an offering than even good-old Grandma Sue can navigate without too many problems.
Believe or not, I've found the lack of software options (being that not as much software is developed for Macintosh systems) causes me FAR more headaches than sorting through a tangled registry ever did. ..
I really have nothing against Macs, I just don't think they're relevant anymore. ..
Well by your defination of Dead, virtually nothing is "dead". No matter how ancient of a system you dredge up, you'll find *somebody* using it *somewhere*. Technology doesn't die like an animal, all at once, but slowly as it breaks down and is replaced by something else.
By dead, I simply mean Apple, in the personal computing arena, can never really dig itself out of the hole its in now. I stand by my original claim: For the cost of an apple system, any apple system, you can always get a PC for less money that will outperform it.
I suppose if you disagree with that statement, then that is the core source of our disagrement. I have seen the G5's benchmarks, and they are impressive, but only when compared to a G4. The doctored benchmarks apple released just don't hold up in real world tests against intel-based systems with much higher clock speeds and lower costs.
I don't know about you, but if I'm gonna buy a luxory car, I expect it to out perform a non-luxory car.
Failing to own property means that you are no longer subject to the protection of various privacy laws -- That you're medical history and other private information can be revealed to law enforcement at anytime without just cause or a warrant?
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how such a system, unless its completely voluntary, could possibly be legal. Moreover, it seems like a gigantic waste of taxpayer dollars. And to think, Republicans accuse democrats of frivelous spending. . .
There was nothing clumsy in my usage (which is the proper NOUN form of use) of language in that quote. If you scanned the entire comment, I suppose you might find a grammatical error or two; but hey, nobody's perfect.
The fact that you feel compelled to attack the way my comment was written as opposed to the content of the message itself shows just how weak your arguments are.
Your problem is that you can't seem to seperate Apple the company from the computers they make. My position from the very first comment has been that apple the company is doing JUST FINE. They've had massive successes (well-deserved I might add) with both the i-pod and i-tunes -- and, thanks to a small, but dedicated, group of individuals, they continue to cling on in the PC market. It is not Apple (the company) that is at the bottom of the heap.
But that does not change the fact that the Apple computing platform is used by an ever-shrinking minority of PC users (despite apple's propagandistic commercials trying to convince people to switch). If you do not like my relativistic usage of the term "dead" (BTW, who says dead can't be used relatively?), then you at least have to admit that the platform is in decline (a slow one).
I have no doubt that Apple as a company will live on, nor that do I doubt that they make systems which in many ways are superior to those of the x86 ilk. Nonetheless, the fact remains that slowly but surely they are losing ground in a PC market which they once completely dominated.
P.S. Since it seems clear, given your standardized form-letter type response that you didn't really read my initial comments before responding, I have no reason to expect that I'm not wasting my time by typing this response. But should you happen to glaze over this comment and notice this request, please give it proper consideration: Please read my comment before responding. Thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple simply bought them all. IT would be akin to to you or I going to every supermarket in town and buying all the ice cream to keep others from enjoying it. Whether or not some exclusive deal as involved -- I don't know, but I doubt it.
Other companies might want them, but after apple gets it's share, there simply isn't enough left over to base any sort of product line on them.
This would be an ipod killer. It has battery life that would make ipod users drool -- 14 hours if theres alot of hard drive access. However one reviewer tested his out of the box and got 20+ hours on the first charge.
It's cheaper than the ipod, it's got all the functions that the 3rd generation ipod has and it's got controls which, while perhaps a bit short of the ipod, are still excellent.
In other words, it's everything ipod is plus a bit more and it's cheaper. Unfortunately for Dell, they cluelessly cripppled it with some Bad DRM. Plus this bad boy directly into your system as a USB hard drive and transfer your mp3 files to it and then watch in confusion as it completely refuses to play them. All songs have to be transfered via music match to the player before it will play them -- a setup similar to the one that the RCA lyra has used in the past.
It's really sad too, becuase before Dell cluelessly added DRM to this player, it was definately an ipod killer in every respect.
On a slighty off-topic side note. Let's talk about why there haven't been any ipod killers yet. I know this will be unpopular, but the reason no has put out a better player is because Apple has been using anti-competetive practices -- the kind of stuff we'd boo Microsoft for if they were the ones doing it.
How you ask? Simple. They've monopolized access to 1.8 inch hard drives. The other manufactureres of mp3 players aren't still using 2.5 inch drives because they're idiots and think consumers want a big clunky mp3 player, but because they simply can't get thier hands on anything else.
Until just recently, the only company making 1.8 drives was Toshiba -- and Apple had a strangle hold on their supply. They bought pretty much all of them.
Well, finally we have a second company making them, hitach (which is what the dell player uses)so now other companies can *finally* start to make players which are the same size and form factor as the ipod.
So to say that MP3 hardware manufacturers just don't "get it" is unfair. They haven't even had a chance to compete with the ipod until now. Hopefully now that the playing ground is a bit more leveled we'll finally start to see some real competition for the ipod.
P.S. Way to go slashdot! My post is ninety-five percent text, but you refuse to post it until I use "fewer 'junk' characters". Wow, it's a sad day when proper punctuation sets off the lameness filter.
1.8 ghz processors, 80 gig hard drives, 256 megs of ram for less than 300 bucks. Not really a better deal than some emachines POS I could buy, and yet I can't help but think: "Man I'd like to get one of those and run linux on it."
I guess I just like to stick it to the man. . .
Except that I've read this story on reputable news sites that do fact checking, so I actually have facts here.
What the press release says its that DURING THE SAME PERIOD 1 million songs were downloaded. It does not say 1 million songs were downloaded by WINDOWS users, because that wouldn't be true (and yet this is CLEARLY The claim slashdot has made).
So clearly I'm right my main point -- making you....uhm..what's the word...wrong.
Moreover, my third point comes from another story -- I believe the one at news.com. Please feel free to check it if you don't believe me.
The only point that is open for contention is the time frame. The press release does seem to say that one million songs were downloaded in 3.5 days -- which may be true. If I am wrong on that, that would still leave me with 2 out of 3 legitimate points. Better than you, and better than slashdot.
See? I'm less wrongerer....
What apple reported, if anyone had bothered to read the actual press release, was that the total week's song downloads (from all versions of the software, windows and mac alike) had exceeded 1 million songs during the week the windows version was released. This being a rise over the NORMAL weekly sales of 500,000 to 600,000.
In other words, itunes has sold 400,000 songs more than a normal week during the week that the windows version of itunes was released.
So, let's see what slashdot got wrong:
1) It wasn't a milllion windows song downloads, it was a million total downloads.
2) It wasn't over 3.5 days, it was over the course of a week.
3) There's no word yet on what percent of that million was actually windows song downloads.
Come on guys, if you want make-believe that you're real journalists, at least do a bit of basic fact checking before publishing blatantly wrong information.
Look at these memos! These guys are amatures at subverting the laws of the land and trying to usurp democracy. They didn't even CC all communication to their lawyer -- now how are they gonna claim attourney-client privelaged communcation if these memos ever make it to court?
At least microsoft and all the big-time corporate crooks are a little better at it. . .
Is that not what I said? The indictment claims that part of his "hacking" was "spoofing" the return address of the emails.
If the spoofing part is not part of the charge, why even mention it there? It's either poorly written or saying that faking the return address was illegal.
If that, in and of itself, can constitute a crime then pretty much every spammer ever is guilty of the same thing -- just spread about amongst different people. Instead of one company incuring all the "financial damage" of bounced emails, it's many thousands with the "damage" spread around.
Still . . . I have to believe that there is something more to this story than is posted here. If the hacking charge truly comes from simply lying in the "From:" portion of an email, then I will have lost all faith in humanity.
And of couse, the punishment is obviously completely absurd. I'm torn about what to do with this guy myself. Clearly what he did constitutes a DOS attack of sorts, and yet what he did is essentially no different than what every spammer does everyday. IANAL, but if this case is sucessfully prosucuted, wouldn't that give precedent for prosecuting every spammer out there?
When a game gets delayed, the distributors are the first to hear about it. Once the distributors know, their customers, or at least their big ones are the second to know. If you had gone to any Gamestop or EB store in the past month and a half and asked what the release date for Half Life 2 was, they would have checked thier computer system and told you right out "It's April 2004." I know, because I work in such a store -- and was quite dissapointed when I checked one day and discovered it had been pushed back.
These dates are not random guesses, I've seen "official" street dates listed as the release dates for games in our computer system while the game companies say "there is no release date". It never fails, 2-3 weeks later, the game company will announce the street date as the date in our computer system thats been there for weeks.
For instance, I remember the release date for Warcraft 3 was pegged exactly in our computer system for about a month before Blizzard officially announced that day as the release day. Meanwhile, the entire month, Blizzard kept insisting publicly that there "was no release date".
In other words, I can tell you this from previous experience: If our computer systems said April 2004 over a month ago (and it did) that was NOT just a guess, that was based on information coming (albeit indirectly) from Valve.
So, long story short, Valve is lying. They had decided on the April 2004 release date long before any source code was made public. This just provides an easy excuse to be late.
OK LOOK. My fault FOR saying Ounces. When I said ounces, I meant FLUID ounces, but let's just be clear. The new ice cream containers say "half gallon (1.75 liters)".
.25 liters from the container, yet they still call it a half gallon.
They've removed
Go here: http://www.azcentral.com/news/1119icecream.html
For background information. . .
No. That's my point. Trust me, a half-gallon of ice cream is less -- by VOLUME by WEIGHT or however you want to measure it -- NOW than it was a year ago. Manufacturers just decided to put less in there (a couple of the big ones) instead of raising the prices. But they still claim it to be a "half gallon" container -- when clearly it is no longer truly a half-gallon.
I mean, who decided you could do this? My 120 gig drive is really only 112 gigs. If I sold gasoline for 1.29 a gallon, then put a little footnoot on my sign that said "*Gallon is used to mean 32 oz" you better believe I'd be sued. You can't just redefine things like that -- its deceptive. How many people buy 120 gig hard drivers not realizing they're really only getting 112 gigabytes?
Also, as a side note if anyone else is looking to sue someone, ice cream manufacturers recently reduced the amount of ice cream in their half-gallon containers rather than raise the cost. Despite the fact that thye no longer actually contain a half gallon, they are still clearly labelled "half gallon" on the containers (Though the ounces are properly listed, and anyone who knows how many ounces there are in a gallon knows they're being shortchanged).
Deceptive marketting practices make baby jesus cry. . .
White hat hackers don't actually break into anyone elses systems. They discover exploits on their own boxes, and they report them for the benefit of others. They might notify a company that they are vulnerable to a particular exploit, but they never actually exploit that security hole without permission first (in order to demonstrate that flaw).
This guy, at best, is a grey hat. If he was reading private memos or anything along those lines on the NYT system, then he probably does in fact deserve to get busted (Note: He deserves to get busted, not jail time. The laws against hacking are entirely too punative. There is no financial damage to speak of in this situation. Too often companies will report the cost of patching their system as the financial damage -- as if the money they spent fixing the hole was somehow the fault of the person who pointed the hole out).
Actually, the Japanese could use teletypes to send messages. They just sent them as romanji. In fact, since they were charged by the word, Japanese buisnesses would send messages wherein each word was actually an entire sentence (Japanese is more or less written like this anyways, and the operators couldn't tell the difference). So actually the Japanese could send teletype messages at bargain prices. :)
I dislike the notion of being watched, categorized, and monitored everywhere I go. At this point, facial recognition systems have proven to be relatively inaccurate, and thus they have failed to gain widespread acceptance.
Proposals for facial recognition systems continue to be shot down because of their inaccuracy, but why does it have to be their inaccuracy that is the sticky point. Shouldn't the fact that they constitute a massive invasion of privacy be all the argument we need?
If we continue to use the "accuracy" argument over and over, then what happens when a system that is proven to be fully accurate comes out?
Facial Recognition Systems aren't a bad idea becuase they're inaccurate, they're simply a bad idea -- and that is what we should focus on.
Yeah, I download my mp3's from the fasttrack network. And yeah, my hashes probably match many of those on other people's systems. But you know what? I own the cd's for them anyways.
You know why I didn't just encode them myself?
Because its *FASTER*. I can download the mp3 in literally seconds as opposed to the minutes it takes to encode them. Does the RIAA really think they can make a legal distinction between encoding songs off of cd's I own, and downloading songs off the internet that are from cd's that I own?
If that's not fair use, I'll eat my hat. . . My tasty, delicious hat. . .
Also, what if I paid for it, but I run a cracked version of it anyways? The software in question is probably some sort of app, so it probably doesn't have cd-checking. But in general, alot of people run cracked software simply because its more conveinant.
If I want to run cracked software that I've paid for on my system, then it's not of their buisness.
Come on now, how can any internet service be "private" and public at the same time? It's one or the other.
.
This isn't a case of someone "walking into your home unannounced". This is like someone leaving the door to their house wide-open with a sign saying "Come on in, but only if you're wearing a purple hat".
Regardless, its Microsoft's right to try to limit people to use its own client (its their legal right anyways, that doesn't make it right). It's also my right to create my own client that emulates the MSN client and tricks their servers into thinking it is one. As far as I know, there is no law anywhere that gives them the right to restrict my access to their system based on what client I'm using. If Microsoft wants to do that (and apparently they do) they'll have to try to do it via technical measures -- which are likely to be circumvented eventually anyways.
You can make a case for Microsoft's actions to be legal -- I doubt they could be considered "anti-competetive" (despite the fact that it does completely exclude linux users). But you really cannot make a good case for them to be "reasonable" which seems to me what you're trying to do. .
Honestly. . .
.
Does anyone use the codec from divx.com anymore? If so, now is as good a time as any to stop. Get FFDSHOW. It does a MUCH better job decoding divx/xvid files and its actaully free. .
Its by far way more compatible with files made by different encoders too. . . Not to mention how it plows through bad frames with ease.
Oops. . . I'm so used to not being able to use REAL html. . . Oh well. . .
[i]50 billion yen per year (that's over 400 billion $US)[/i]
OMFG. The economy has collapsed! It's 8 dollars to the yen! It would take 2400 dollars just to buy a copy of Sunday Shounen jump!
Oh come on now, let's be realistic. There are very few things driving the PC market aside from games. For all word-processing/desktop/internet usages, any pc made in the last 5 years can perform just as well as a new one. So unless a person is buying their first PC, chances are they are buying a new system in order to keep up with the latest games.
.
.
I suppose there area few other areas that demand higher end systems (video/graphics work for instance). But Grandma Sue doesn't need to upgrade her 3 year old compaq for a new top-of-the-line system just to send email.
Don't even get me started on consoles. . . Inferior resolutions and incredibly limited multiplayer options, (x-box live is crap) and lack of updates/support only make them suitable for casual gamers.
I'd estimate that a very clear majority of people replacing their old systems are doing so for gaming reasons. If, for some reason, they truly just felt they needed a better system for destkop applications, I doubt many of them are gonna spend 3000 dollars on a g5 or even 1000 on an imac when they could get a fine system for under 500.
As for the advantages offered by OSX? They are minimal. Surely its slightly easier to use and offers slightly fewer headaches than either windows or linux, but neither of those things will be of any concern to a power user. Microsoft (admittedly by copying others) has put together an offering than even good-old Grandma Sue can navigate without too many problems.
Believe or not, I've found the lack of software options (being that not as much software is developed for Macintosh systems) causes me FAR more headaches than sorting through a tangled registry ever did. .
I really have nothing against Macs, I just don't think they're relevant anymore. .
Well by your defination of Dead, virtually nothing is "dead". No matter how ancient of a system you dredge up, you'll find *somebody* using it *somewhere*. Technology doesn't die like an animal, all at once, but slowly as it breaks down and is replaced by something else.
By dead, I simply mean Apple, in the personal computing arena, can never really dig itself out of the hole its in now. I stand by my original claim: For the cost of an apple system, any apple system, you can always get a PC for less money that will outperform it.
I suppose if you disagree with that statement, then that is the core source of our disagrement. I have seen the G5's benchmarks, and they are impressive, but only when compared to a G4. The doctored benchmarks apple released just don't hold up in real world tests against intel-based systems with much higher clock speeds and lower costs.
I don't know about you, but if I'm gonna buy a luxory car, I expect it to out perform a non-luxory car.
Failing to own property means that you are no longer subject to the protection of various privacy laws -- That you're medical history and other private information can be revealed to law enforcement at anytime without just cause or a warrant?
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how such a system, unless its completely voluntary, could possibly be legal. Moreover, it seems like a gigantic waste of taxpayer dollars. And to think, Republicans accuse democrats of frivelous spending. . .
There was nothing clumsy in my usage (which is the proper NOUN form of use) of language in that quote. If you scanned the entire comment, I suppose you might find a grammatical error or two; but hey, nobody's perfect.
The fact that you feel compelled to attack the way my comment was written as opposed to the content of the message itself shows just how weak your arguments are.
Your problem is that you can't seem to seperate Apple the company from the computers they make. My position from the very first comment has been that apple the company is doing JUST FINE. They've had massive successes (well-deserved I might add) with both the i-pod and i-tunes -- and, thanks to a small, but dedicated, group of individuals, they continue to cling on in the PC market. It is not Apple (the company) that is at the bottom of the heap.
But that does not change the fact that the Apple computing platform is used by an ever-shrinking minority of PC users (despite apple's propagandistic commercials trying to convince people to switch). If you do not like my relativistic usage of the term "dead" (BTW, who says dead can't be used relatively?), then you at least have to admit that the platform is in decline (a slow one).
I have no doubt that Apple as a company will live on, nor that do I doubt that they make systems which in many ways are superior to those of the x86 ilk. Nonetheless, the fact remains that slowly but surely they are losing ground in a PC market which they once completely dominated.
P.S. Since it seems clear, given your standardized form-letter type response that you didn't really read my initial comments before responding, I have no reason to expect that I'm not wasting my time by typing this response. But should you happen to glaze over this comment and notice this request, please give it proper consideration: Please read my comment before responding. Thank you.