Actually, they are probably musicians, it's the sound recording industry that will probably be the main market for this box...
...although I will concede that Frank Zappa did record an entire album of standing in front of a microwave screaming "Faster, Faster!".
Bandwidth solves this problem soon?
on
Homogenized Music
·
· Score: 5, Informative
i think the problem here is one of bandwidth... here in the UK, we have a small number of large indepedent radio networks, as well as regional stations that are currently peddling almost exactly the same type of music as each other, all going for the least offensive (to the average listener) and most bland music 'product' that they can find, in order to maximise advertising revenue - a 'one size fits all' system.
However, I can't see that this will last for long, as soon as any of the following technolgies reach the average consumer household: Net radio, Stand alone recievers for audio-only channels over satellite, digital radio (we are a long way ahead of the US in this field, I believe, as the BBC have pushed the technology) and increased spectrum avaialbilty due to theproposed switch off of terrestrial analogue TV transmitters (which the UK governement are keen on as they stand to rake a fortune in from selling the bandwidth off).
When any (or all) of the above technolnogies are mature, then it will be possible to deliver cost-effective radio to much smaller markets (with tightly targetted adverts), so the constant search for the lowest common denominator will no longer be the best way to maximise advertising revenue, providing a wide spectrum of choice will be more cost effective.
Well, you would either say "5600 oggs" or more likely "5600 songs". If a technology is good enough it becomes transparent enough to ignore, in the way that no-one would say 'do you want to sit on the couch and watch a VHS tape tonight'
Oh, and you picked the worst possible example with Lego, the plural of lego is lego, and the correct thing to say actually is "Lego bricks" (or just plain "bricks" if the context is obvious).
Oddly enough I've only encountered this mistake when talking to Americans about lego, everyone else seems to get it right... then again Americans don't seem to know the difference between cinemas and theatres and have mangled the pronounciation of 'Aluminium' so badly that the derivative word 'Aluminiuming' is impossible for them to say, so I guess they can't really be trusted with custodianship of the English language!
Would further cuts really give more market share?
on
Console Pricing Economics
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I think we are approaching a price level where the average game players will be able to afford 2, or even all 3 of the current consoles.
A price cut that makes a console affordable as a 2nd or 3rd machine will not guarantee the same level of games purchases the manufacturers are counting on... for example if the Xbox fell to half it's current price (as some are suggesting, I would buy it as a third machine, but I would probably only buy 1 Xbox game for every 3 or 4 that I bought for the PS2 and GC.
Ever since the launch in Britain, the Game Cube has been priced at 129 UKP, which is about 188 USD.
Given the historical trend of consoles costing more here in Britain than in the US, I think this is more of a price re-alignment than a cut.
Less widely reported, but of interest to people looking for a cheap gaming experience, Sony dropped the UK price of the PSOne to 49 UKP, did something similar happen in the US?
Actually, from my experience with them, most of those 79 staff are employed to ring up people like me and repeatedly try to peddle their dumb idea, no matter how many times I told them where they could stick it.
I have had exactly the same scripted cold-call telephone conversation with these idiots twice within an hour. Any company that behaves like that deserves to crash and burn imho.
Careful, you are now legally prohibited by the DMCA from creating any countermeasures to software protection, so you had better get some contraceptives right away or you could end up going to jail.
There is 'negotiation'. I cross out all the terms I don't agree with, and the click to agree to what is left, just as I would do with a written contract.
This is of course legally fairly questionable, but only as questionable as the whole EULA concept of 'you know that thing you just bought? well you didn't actually buy it...'
Don't forget that Apple has a history of producing very, very good CRTs (presumably because they are so tightly linked to the graphic design community, and have complete hardware control in the one comapay/box).
I would not be at all surprised if this screen is miles better than the low end 17" screens you would usually find in education computers.
From the form factor, I expect this machine shares a lot of components with the Apple flat screen 17" crt (the last apple crt model). I'm using one right now, and I sit in front of it at least 8 hours a day set at 1280x1024 reslution with no problems. Turning it down a few resolution notches (and therefore boosting the refresh rate) doesn't make it noticeably less flickery to me.
The change from the original name "On Digital" to ITV Digital is another example of the latest UK management fad, If you have a bad product, your staff are stupid and lazy, and your managment couldn't be trusted to run a bath let alone a company, simply change the name and everything will be fine!
Examples: Andersen Consulting is now "Accenture" The Post Office is now "Consignia"
If this tactic fails, simply rename again!
Example: Mobile phone company Mercury became "121" and is now "T-mobile"
My analogue cable TV service has been "Encom","Bell Cable Media","Cable & Wireless" and is currently "ntl". Draw your own conclusions.
when after 184 comments, and no-one has even considered the possiblity that getting AOL to fix the problems for TW and everyone else's benefit might have been a better solution.
We don't have many rights here in the UK, but among the few we have is the right to be considered 'innocent until proven guilty'. That's why we don't pay a levy on blank media here, because we are innocent of piracy until a court proves otherwise.
It's probably one of those things that big companies do, where marketing says there's a demand for linux, so they do it, then IP says they need to restrict it, and no-one ever quite twigs that the end product is useless. This reminds me of the 'Yaroze' mini-development kit for the original playstation, it was so hobbled (both in access to features and in terms of who owned the code you make with it) as to be pointless
Don't forget that Apple has 2 alternatives... Carbon (in it's transparent form, this is a very 'apple-esque' solution... better in almost evety way, but horribly expansive) and Aqua (cool, transparent, but rather unstable for real-world applications)
Architect "...are the stairs, and this is where the wi..."
Programmer "NO! NO! I will not have windows installed!"
Re:P2P is viable but can be tricky
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 2
The trouble with planetarion's move from living off advertising revenue to p2p is that they are failing to attract new customers - the user base used to grow each round, but it dropped from 315,000 accounts when free in round 4 to 55,000 last round (5), and while sign-ups for the new round 6 are still underway, it may be down to 15,000. The game is still viable at this level, but if it dwindles they mave be unable to keep their 4 full-time staff members, and serve an absurd number of pages, maintain an irc network, etc.
They are allowing a limited number of people to play for free this round, but the free accounts can only progress to a certain level, then they can pay to continue past the sort of level you might expect to reach after 2-3 weeks play.
I believe this is a great way to work p2p, free client software (not really applicable to planetarion because it's entirely browser based, but you get the idea), then P2continue
Just imagine if this were possible! We could just put the screens in our living rooms, and people could broadcast all kinds of entertainment to us! It would be a sort of Radio but with moving pictures!
Ah, we can but dream of a time when such marvels might be possible!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they are probably musicians, it's the sound recording industry that will probably be the main market for this box...
...although I will concede that Frank Zappa did record an entire album of standing in front of a microwave screaming "Faster, Faster!".
i think the problem here is one of bandwidth... here in the UK, we have a small number of large indepedent radio networks, as well as regional stations that are currently peddling almost exactly the same type of music as each other, all going for the least offensive (to the average listener) and most bland music 'product' that they can find, in order to maximise advertising revenue - a 'one size fits all' system.
However, I can't see that this will last for long, as soon as any of the following technolgies reach the average consumer household: Net radio, Stand alone recievers for audio-only channels over satellite, digital radio (we are a long way ahead of the US in this field, I believe, as the BBC have pushed the technology) and increased spectrum avaialbilty due to theproposed switch off of terrestrial analogue TV transmitters (which the UK governement are keen on as they stand to rake a fortune in from selling the bandwidth off).
When any (or all) of the above technolnogies are mature, then it will be possible to deliver cost-effective radio to much smaller markets (with tightly targetted adverts), so the constant search for the lowest common denominator will no longer be the best way to maximise advertising revenue, providing a wide spectrum of choice will be more cost effective.
Well, you would either say "5600 oggs" or more likely "5600 songs". If a technology is good enough it becomes transparent enough to ignore, in the way that no-one would say 'do you want to sit on the couch and watch a VHS tape tonight'
Oh, and you picked the worst possible example with Lego, the plural of lego is lego, and the correct thing to say actually is "Lego bricks" (or just plain "bricks" if the context is obvious).
Oddly enough I've only encountered this mistake when talking to Americans about lego, everyone else seems to get it right... then again Americans don't seem to know the difference between cinemas and theatres and have mangled the pronounciation of 'Aluminium' so badly that the derivative word 'Aluminiuming' is impossible for them to say, so I guess they can't really be trusted with custodianship of the English language!
I think we are approaching a price level where the average game players will be able to afford 2, or even all 3 of the current consoles.
A price cut that makes a console affordable as a 2nd or 3rd machine will not guarantee the same level of games purchases the manufacturers are counting on... for example if the Xbox fell to half it's current price (as some are suggesting, I would buy it as a third machine, but I would probably only buy 1 Xbox game for every 3 or 4 that I bought for the PS2 and GC.
Ever since the launch in Britain, the Game Cube has been priced at 129 UKP, which is about 188 USD.
Given the historical trend of consoles costing more here in Britain than in the US, I think this is more of a price re-alignment than a cut.
Less widely reported, but of interest to people looking for a cheap gaming experience, Sony dropped the UK price of the PSOne to 49 UKP, did something similar happen in the US?
Actually, from my experience with them, most of those 79 staff are employed to ring up people like me and repeatedly try to peddle their dumb idea, no matter how many times I told them where they could stick it.
I have had exactly the same scripted cold-call telephone conversation with these idiots twice within an hour. Any company that behaves like that deserves to crash and burn imho.
Careful, you are now legally prohibited by the DMCA from creating any countermeasures to software protection, so you had better get some contraceptives right away or you could end up going to jail.
I wonder how well simply saying "My software didn't have a sticker on it" would fare in court.
I guess anyone trying to enforce a shrink-wrap agreement would have a very tricky 'burden of proof' placed back on them?
There is 'negotiation'. I cross out all the terms I don't agree with, and the click to agree to what is left, just as I would do with a written contract.
This is of course legally fairly questionable, but only as questionable as the whole EULA concept of 'you know that thing you just bought? well you didn't actually buy it...'
Don't forget that Apple has a history of producing very, very good CRTs (presumably because they are so tightly linked to the graphic design community, and have complete hardware control in the one comapay/box).
I would not be at all surprised if this screen is miles better than the low end 17" screens you would usually find in education computers.
From the form factor, I expect this machine shares a lot of components with the Apple flat screen 17" crt (the last apple crt model). I'm using one right now, and I sit in front of it at least 8 hours a day set at 1280x1024 reslution with no problems. Turning it down a few resolution notches (and therefore boosting the refresh rate) doesn't make it noticeably less flickery to me.
The change from the original name "On Digital" to ITV Digital is another example of the latest UK management fad, If you have a bad product, your staff are stupid and lazy, and your managment couldn't be trusted to run a bath let alone a company, simply change the name and everything will be fine!
Examples:
Andersen Consulting is now "Accenture"
The Post Office is now "Consignia"
If this tactic fails, simply rename again!
Example:
Mobile phone company Mercury became "121" and is now "T-mobile"
My analogue cable TV service has been "Encom","Bell Cable Media","Cable & Wireless" and is currently "ntl". Draw your own conclusions.
"Remember, we live in the 20th century."
I think you are somewhat lagged?
when after 184 comments, and no-one has even considered the possiblity that getting AOL to fix the problems for TW and everyone else's benefit might have been a better solution.
The phrase 'not bother optimising anything' springs to mind.
Steak! Mmmmm....
We don't have many rights here in the UK, but among the few we have is the right to be considered 'innocent until proven guilty'. That's why we don't pay a levy on blank media here, because we are innocent of piracy until a court proves otherwise.
the police were tired of criminals giving us the slip, and wanted to get their own back?
"bizzare custom coprocessing unit in their 12MHz processors"
umm, I think you're mixing up your Amiga fanatics with your Mac fanatics here?
Actually, it will be available in plain text (1 CD) and in word format (417 CD set)
It's probably one of those things that big companies do, where marketing says there's a demand for linux, so they do it, then IP says they need to restrict it, and no-one ever quite twigs that the end product is useless. This reminds me of the 'Yaroze' mini-development kit for the original playstation, it was so hobbled (both in access to features and in terms of who owned the code you make with it) as to be pointless
we could call it 'orientated object programming' :-)
Don't forget that Apple has 2 alternatives... Carbon (in it's transparent form, this is a very 'apple-esque' solution... better in almost evety way, but horribly expansive) and Aqua (cool, transparent, but rather unstable for real-world applications)
Architect "...are the stairs, and this is where the wi..."
Programmer "NO! NO! I will not have windows installed!"
The trouble with planetarion's move from living off advertising revenue to p2p is that they are failing to attract new customers - the user base used to grow each round, but it dropped from 315,000 accounts when free in round 4 to 55,000 last round (5), and while sign-ups for the new round 6 are still underway, it may be down to 15,000. The game is still viable at this level, but if it dwindles they mave be unable to keep their 4 full-time staff members, and serve an absurd number of pages, maintain an irc network, etc.
They are allowing a limited number of people to play for free this round, but the free accounts can only progress to a certain level, then they can pay to continue past the sort of level you might expect to reach after 2-3 weeks play.
I believe this is a great way to work p2p, free client software (not really applicable to planetarion because it's entirely browser based, but you get the idea), then P2continue
Yi-He Quan lives on!
Can video be sent wirelessly?
Just imagine if this were possible! We could just put the screens in our living rooms, and people could broadcast all kinds of entertainment to us! It would be a sort of Radio but with moving pictures!
Ah, we can but dream of a time when such marvels might be possible!