The anti-intellectualism shown here is disturbing. There are people here who've had bad encounters with Mensans, and go on to claim that "Having a high IQ doesn't make you a good person!" Well, Mensa agrees with you! They aren't the "good person club", they are the high (well, top 2%) IQ club. I also wonder how many people who mod up the anti-Mensa posts have actually knowingly met a representative sample of Mensans?
And all this talk that "IQ is useless" is bullocks. IQ is (an attempt to measure) a resource (just one of many), and if a person is emotionally capable of exploiting that resource for their betterment, then their IQ has helped.
To attempt a (somewhat) lame analogy, IQ is like voltage--it's potential. Your personality is like the electronic circuitry, and the current is whether or not you apply your IQ. If your voltage is too low to power the electronics, you can use effort and hard work to make up for it (just as you can use circuitry to increase the voltage beyond that of the power supply), but it's better (or at least, easier) if you already have the potential at hand.
That isn't to say that intelligence is all you need to be a totally kick-ass person, just that it can help.
IQ is just one of many dimensions of a person, and it's certainly useful, when taken in context, in evaluating, in some ways, a person.
Or put another way, any talk of IQ always seems to degrade to, "having a high IQ doesn't make you a good person," which immediately leads to, "IQ is useless!" Well, being a good person doesn't make you able to learn 5 languages, or advanced calculus, etc, but that doesn't make being a good person useless, does it? So why should it be the other way around?
Finally, I'd like to address the issue of, "IQ tests don't measure 'intelligence', they measure one's ability to solve an IQ test." That's mostly true, and important to keep in mind, but if the tests didn't work, you'd expect 'idiots' to score high sometimes, and 'geniuses' to score low sometimes, beyond any level of statistical usefulness. This is obviously not the case.
Unfortunately, we don't really understand the workings of the mind in enough detail to measure (or even define) 'intelligence' like we can measure and define a length, or mass. That doesn't make the ideas of 'intelligence' or 'IQ' useless, it just limits the certainty of the conclusions we can draw from them.
To the above all I can say is "Choice is never a negetive!!!!".
That's retarded. Why can't you choose between a Linux PC, a Windows PC, and a nuclear warhead? Duh. Obviously some choices are negative.
When you have a set of goals for a program, it's rational to limit your choices to those which best serve the goal.
Welcome to the world economy, this happens! Neither Intel or AMD have plants in Brazil (even if they did most profits would go to US) so what processor would you suggest?
Brazil can't chose to keep the processor money at home, but they can choose to not send their OS money to the US.
OK, this is hard to argue since you don't even bother trying to qualify it in anyway
I expect a certain level of intelligence in those I communicate with.
OK, I would say RTFA, but that isn't even required! The snipit I included shows this isn't true. If someone chooses to go with MS, THEY pay for it not the program.
Wrong. Neither snippet you included, nor the article itself, indicates the increased price would cover the cost of adding Windows as an option.
Aside: you quoted me incorrectly, I didn't write, "increase the cost of teh program".
Duh, anybody thinking anything is "free" today doesn't value their time, other people's time, or their sanity.
'Free' is a word with many meanings. One is that it costs no money, and that's exactly what these offers imply (although they certainly don't always work out that way).
I'm all for Linux (OSS), but a bit disturbed when when advocates of any technology try to advocate less choice. Why NOT give the people the option to have MS or OSS? Trying to force "free" or "open" software upon the people doesn't sound open or free to me!
I think the basic idea is that the program is intended to help the Brazilian people, and when looked at in that light, proprietary MS software can be seen as a negative for at least three reasons:
1. Money spent on MS software is wealth being sent from Brazil to the US. 2. F/OSS gives the people more freedom. 3. Licenses for MS software increase the cost of the program.
That's not to say there aren't arguments for including Windows as an option, just that it's logical to design a government program such that it encourages a better society.
I wonder how Job's will keynote this. Not a guy who likes to say 'I was wrong'
NeXT's mouse had two buttons.
I'm sure the introduction of the new mouse will be somewhat humorous (ie: "Hell finally froze over" (iTunes for Windows), Fast User Switching (Windows had something first), etc).
My suspicion is that the one-button mouse will remain default, and iBooks will keep the single button (although the PowerBooks may go two, at least as an option). Multi-button trackpads are really awful from a usability point of view.
Since Mac OS is designed to utilize, but not require, a two-button mouse, making it default would be a mistake (IMO).
Dipshit, you never explicitly stated exactly what you wanted from Apple. All you ever said were things like, "Apple could make a $150 flash player in 2004" and "If Magic Star could do it in 2002, Apple could do it in 2004", but whenever I tried to tie you down to specifics, you keep saying, "quit putting words in my mouth." It keeps changing with you.
You even stated Apple could have made a 512MB player in Jan '04 for less than $100. How am I supposed to refute a moving target?
Anyway, that's my issue here -- not the vocab, the missing content, poor organization, and lousy explanation.
I got the impression you were upset over the cryptic blogger terms. The submission, I agree, was poorly written, but poor article submissions are not limited to bloggers.
Clarity didn't require a google search, though. You could have just read the main link in the submission. It even explained about googlebombing and the bloggers' annoyance with "online casino" comment spams. (I've heard of posting without RTFA'ing, but to spend 10 minutes on google without checking TFA? That sure is something! heh)
Three steps is two steps too many. Apple is all about, 'it just works'.
You're not paying attention. I've suggested the 256M iPod Shuffle could have been sold for $150 in January 2004.
No, you never stated this. And you're retarded to think that it would have been $150. It would have been at least $200. And 256MB is just too little.
That's just software, the marginal cost of that is $0.00.
Again, you show your lack of intelligence. You still have to pay to create, support, and improve the software.
You know, I think the real problem here is that you have a crappy collection of songs in your iTunes playlist. If you have to hit "Next" more than a couple of times an hour you're having WAY too much trouble filling your playlist with good stuff.
No, I just don't want to listen to everything I have at the same time. Think about it--off of the heals of NIN's Closer, do you want to hear Elvis sing Heartbreak Hotel? Or on the heels of the Blue Danube Waltz, do you really want to hear Eminem, or George Carlin? Maybe, but maybe not.
That's why 256MB is too small. You just have low standards--you don't really mind the effort and don't really care about the limited space. You were served well by Magic Star (and Creative and Rio, etc). It wasn't until the iPod that mp3 players were mainstream--that's because the average consumer won't put up with the shit you will.
The thing is, slashdot isn't supposed to be the 'unwashed masses'. How many times do you have to read/hear "The rover spent the last 2 sols (a 'sol' is a Martian day, which is longer than the Earth day),..."?
It gets tedious hearing the same explanation over and over.
Oh, and one other thing, the terms discussed here are nothing like "variegated" -- that word has been in our vocabulary since Latin was common
Why does that make a difference? Isn't your point that the people reading it won't understand the word? Will a person understand the word just because it's been around for hundreds if not thousands of years?
These are terms related to a current 'hot topic' in the tech world. Slashdot is a site for nerds, being a nerd implies some level of competency with regards to current tech topics. If you're not interested in blogs, not knowing the terms isn't that big of a deal to you, if you are interested in blogs, you have to learn the terms--just like everything else in the world.
My point was that the article summary was vague, incomplete, and poorly written.
Your apparent point was that you hate blogs and their little blogger terms. If you intended to convey otherwise, then your post was "vague, incomplete, and poorly written."
We're not talking about picking the most obscure and fancy word (re: your "smart vs. brilliant" diversion) to show off your "word-a-day" vocabulary, we're talking about the everyday words of the bloggers.
I can't stand pretension, but I also can't stand dumbed-down babytalk. Agree the summary was poorly written, but not because it used the words, "googlebomb", "wikipedia" and "comment spam" (the last two really get me, those aren't obscure at all here on slashdot!).
Apple had to polish the 'autofill' function (your method is too cumbersome! but you have no standards, so you don't care). They also had to give it enough capacity, and it had to be cheap enough. Apple didn't have the necessary ingredients in Jan '04--in fact, no one did.
The issue isn't whether you think manual shuffle-syncing is sufficient, or whether you think 128MB is sufficient, or whether you think >$150 for a 256MB player is sufficient, it's whether Apple thinks it's sufficient--and they clearly don't.
That's why Apple didn't release one until MWSF'05. They didn't have all the pieces. You think they did, and you are wrong. It wouldn't have been an iPod-quality player, it would have been a Magic Star quality player.
What you wanted is for Apple to release a Magic Star iPod (256MB for, at best, $50 less than a 4GB mini, and that's if they could cut a sweet deal on flash mem). That's ludicrous.
And stop this bullshit about me putting words in your mouth. You still haven't stated exactly what you think Apple should have released at MWSF '04. Spell it out or shut up about it when I have to surmise from what you've written.
Give me: capacity and price, we'll assume the same form factor, and normal iPod fill mode (with Mac fan websites showing tips on how to use a 'Smart Playlist' to generate random mixes). When you consider price, remember MWSF is in January, so the prices are from Q4 '03.
How could they go after him? The software is open-source and its intentions are nothing less than noble. If Cohen was looking to *directly* make money on BitTorrent he wouldn't have released the source to it.
That's sort of the point. The 'mainstream' is just now catching on to a fact we've known here for years: that filesharing and p2p isn't simply a tool for 'criminals'.
And what? Put all those popcorn salesmen and ticket rippers out of their after-school jobs? Nope, at least not for now.
He doesn't even come close to implying that in your quote. He says that bittorrent might be just the thing that enables the studios to utilize the web.
How much business could the website be generating for her in the first place?
Irrelevant, the domain belongs to her, and she has legitimate rights to it given it's her name.
She should appeal, then settle. Go to the new suggested domain (milkacouture.fr) and have Kraft link her from Milka.fr with a brief note about the settlement.
Appeals (and the lawsuit initially as well) cost money. How many domains are stolen by the megacorps because the original domain holder don't have the money to even show up in court?
Why should she have to switch to milkacouture.fr? She chose milka.fr.
It would be one thing if she was pretending to be Kraft's Milka brand, or if she was utilizing a design style that would associate her site with theirs, but she's not.
I think the point he's trying to make is that not everyone will immediately know what comment spam is, unless they're from the blogging community.
How is that hard to surmise? "Comment spam"?
"I know what 'comments' are, and I know what 'spam' is. Now if only I could fathom what 'comment spam' is!"
I suspect he's just annoyed at terms that he's not used to. It's like a non-net user being irked and confused when first hearing, 'snail mail'.
He google'd, which is the equivalent of asking the 'net user after hearing 'snail mail' for the first time, "what do you mean by 'snail mail'?"
But instead of continuing with, "oh, I see. Haha," he complained the equivalent of, "I *hate* Internet users, with their own terms for things. Why not just say 'postal mail'?"
I sympathize with the effort involved when confronted with new words, but I reject the attitude of berating people for using different terms in different fields. What does he do if he reads about flowers and comes across the word 'variegated'? Complain, "why don't they just say multi-colored!"? Or does he look up the word, and find himself better off for it?
Yes, you need the iTunes shuffle capability, or something equivalent... I'm sorry that you never thought of doing that with the "3 flash players"
1. I did, and I didn't care much for it--I ended up with a 64MB card full of songs, only a few of which did I want to listen to.
2. It was a manual process. This is important because having to do it each time is annoying. Better to just have it be automatic.
Not understanding these two points shows you lack a fundamental understanding of Apple--it's little things like these that put their products ahead of the competition.
By the way, you keep saying Apple would have been stupid to release an iPod shuffle without "their implementation of 'shuffle' syncing".
And at the right price and with sufficient storage. You need all the features. Without any one of them the product isn't worthy of being an iPod.
Um, the iPod was already out when I bought it. For five times the price.
Um, that does not contradict, "The problems with your Magic Star player weren't apparent until the advent of the iPod." When you bought your Magic Stars, the iPod had shown the problems with it, duh.
You have low standards. You keep saying, "Magic Star made this player in '02, surely Apple could have made one too!" The problem is that Apple wouldn't let such a crappy player see the light of day.
Are you serious? 'Wikipedia' is referenced on slashdot multiple times a day, and makes it's way into submissions at least once a week. 'Googlebomb' is a bit more obscure, but has been covered in stories here before.
that's why I don't read blogs. Too often they are crypitc and snooty.
The same is often said of Slashdot in general. 'Open Source'? Kernel, GNU, 'lameness filter', ASCII, spyware, beowulf, troll, 'slashdotted', MD5 collision, anime, 1337, mersenne prime, SCO, quantum computer, DoS, etc, etc. You have to learn the vocabulary if you want to understand the conversation.
Once you hear certain terms repeatedly, they stop seeming so odd, but that requires that they be new to you for a while.
Bloggers, frustrated by poker sites posting spam in the comments
From the submission:
"Online poker", along with "Viagra", "mortgage" and "debt", are keywords heavily represented in comment spam
Hmm...
you continue: decided to fight back by displacing comment-spammer's rank in google searches
which itself aims to boost the Google ranking for a particular site and phrase
Granted, Slashdot submissions aren't paragons of writing, but the post already contains the info you criticize it for lacking.
That's why I said you had to have iTunes shuffle play for the shuffle to be usable.
The Shuffle isn't about choice, it's about chance.
Chance fails for small samples. That's why you need more capacity than just enough to hold that amount of time. The more songs you have, the more choice you have to hit 'next'.
Since you haven't had a chance to try the Magic Star player
Retard, I stated I already owned 3 flash players prior to the iPod. You've failed to point out why the Magic Star player is any better.
The standards and expectations for mp3 players took a quantum leap ahead with the original iPod. The problems with your Magic Star player weren't apparent until the advent of the iPod. Apple would have been stupid to release an iPod shuffle with less than 512MB and without their implementation of 'shuffle' syncing. Without both of those, you just have a crap Magic Star player.
Apple has to pay for R&D, support, advertising, etc, and so on. Magic Star has miniscule overhead. Apple also has to make a quality player. Magic Star doesn't.
Apple can't bring a $70 iPod to the market today, but you think they could have in Jan '04. That doesn't make any sense.
512MB is an absolute minimum for an iPod. Why? Because the iPod is about bringing your music with you. With 256MB (presumably Apple could make a 256MB shuffle for $75 if they wanted), you have room for four CD's. That's not enough choice for an iPod.
What you propose isn't an iPod, it's just a crap mp3 player, and Apple isn't in that market.
Huh? Did you watch Jobs' address in 2004? The high end was 256M and above, he must have used the figure a dozen times.
Yes, I did. And in 2004, 128/256 was high end, 32/64 low end. There were higher capacity players, but those were 'special edition, too expensive to consider a rational product' versions.
I'm no genius, and I was using iTunes with the Party Shuffle to load up my flash player long before the Shuffle was announced. It's not rocket science, honest.
What's not obvious is how to make this process non-shit. How many people were all, "WTF? No screen? Random mix?" They didn't get the point.
Again, if Apple had all the pieces in 2003, why didn't they release it then and take the whole mp3 market? It's because they didn't have the pieces.
Getting a product launched is expensive, and it sometimes takes a big name as well as a lot of money to get a product off the ground
Hrm. So much for the Apple $150 player in Q1 '04.
You're all over the place. One minute you are in '03, next you are in '04, once minute it's 128MB, next it's 256MB.
So why don't you stick to something specific? A flash iPod, 256MB, Jan '04, for how much, $150? Is that what you are 'livid' at Apple for not creating?
Two problems--price and capacity.
512MB would have been too expensive (flash prices at the time would have put that at about $250, might as well buy a mini!), and 512 is the minimum usable capacity, 1GB would have been around $350+! You have to remember to add the above "it's expensive to launch" issue into account.
You can bet Apple wanted to have a cheap flash iPod at the time, Jobs said so on more than on occasion. You can also be certain that the flash iPod project was underway at the time, so it's not like Apple just woke up on Jan of this year and there was an iPod shuffle out of thin air.
It wasn't until sometime during 2004 that the iPod shuffle became feasible, and it wasn't until sometime during 2004 that Apple finalized the product. That is not a coincidence.
Had they released the iPod shuffle you imagine, at the time and price that the technology at the time would have mandated, people would no longer see the iPod as something of quality, but instead as just 'nother cheap-o mp3 player.
This is why Apple could not do it, and why 'Magic Star' can (Magic Star has no worry about maintaining a brand).
I didn't say that Apple should have made an iPod shuffle in 2002. I said that this device was made in 2002, and that Apple should have been able to do it one better by January 2004.
There's a huge distinction you are missing--which is that Apple couldn't have done it. There's a reason 'cheap' flash players are made by companies called 'Magic Star'.
My player cost $69 in 2003. That's not "high end".
128MB was 'high end'.
512M holds 8 hours of music. That's a bigger playlist than any Clear Channel radio station has, and you can refill it every night.
Which is only good if your library is relatively small (say, 30 cd's or less, tops). My point about needing iTunes' shuffle mode is that in order for 512MB to not be unacceptable, you need a way to effortlessly pick 512MB of music.
If your flash player operates in disk mode, it takes two drags and two clicks to refill it with a new random set of songs.
If your flash player is an iPod shuffle, it takes no clicks and no drags. Your method requires too much user interaction. The 'shuffle' part of the iPod shuffle is really the breakthrough.
What I said was that Magic Star made it with 128M in 2002, and sold it for under $100. If they could make it with 128M and sell it for under $100 three years ago, then just the difference in flash memory prices would have let you make a 512M model for under $100 by 2004.
Impossible. Did Creative have a 512MB Muvo in Jan, '04, for $100? Did Rio have one? More apt, did they even have them in Jan. '05?
No.
The ones they had were more expensive, and less usable, even with their screens.
The other differences between the units are software. The marginal cost of software is $0.00.
So are you saying iTunes cost Apple nothing to create? (no, of course not), then don't leave out that cost.
Apple's margin on the shuffle is 40%. So they could have made it for under $100, sold it for around $150, and you're telling me that the market wasn't ready for a $150 flash player from Apple in 2004?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Why do you think the 'Magic Star' player didn't take off, if it was so good? If you hand a company a warehouse full of flash chips, an mp3 playing IC, and a small budget for engineering, design, and fabrication, they'll make those little shit players you are espousing.
Now, if Apple had released your player in '04, the market would have laughed at them, and they would have been universally panned, and the product would have been a failure. Apple had to do something which 'Magic Star' could not--make the player attractive and usable. To do so, you needed a minimum of 512mb flash, it needed to look good, you needed an iTunes jukebox with the shuffle feature (this isn't as obvious as you think), and you needed to be able to do it all for a price people will pay. Miss any one of those, and the iPod shuffle is a failure.
Do you really think Apple had all those pieces in 2003 (and hence a finished product ready for MWSF '04)? If not, your argument falls apart.
Having another open source OS is great, but if you think the two compete against each other you're wrong.
Sure they do. They compete for both users and developers. This sort of competition seems far more noble than the nature of competition in the corporate world, but it's still competition nonetheless.
Almost as if you started to build a garage, your neighbor saw you and wanted to RACE, and finish one before you did. ooooh, WHO CARES.
Yeah, I guess the XFree86 folks don't care that everyone's moving to Xorg. Or the GNOME folks wouldn't care if everyone but them ran KDE. I also recall the Firefox team taking out an ad in the NYT asking people to try Firefox.
People who have used Linux want something that THEY have worked on, THEY have started. SUN is getting into this to compete with companies that USE Linux, the people developing it usually don't care.
What do you mean by, 'People who have used Linux...'? You clearly don't mean everyone who has used Linux, because that's obviously false. In fact, very few people who use Linux actually contribute to it.
Which, of course, has nothing to do with whether or not Solaris competes with Linux.
Besides the point, usually two open source projects will BENEFIT from each other. Gnome, X, Mozilla, Konqueror as in with Apple, etc.
I'm certain they will benefit from each other. That doesn't mean they don't also compete.
You mean huge competition to Linux Distributors such as SuSE and RedHat.
No, I don't.
Solaris competes with Linux, Sun competes with the distributors (which one can call 'Linux' anyway, the same way you call all the oil companies 'big oil', or the TV and radio networks 'the media', so your point wouldn't be a correction anyway).
IMO the whole "Solaris has gone open source" is just too little too late.
How so? Sun's revenue last year was over $10bn, and their move to open sourcing Solaris, some impressive new features in Solaris 10, and their work on the Java Desktop as well as Project Looking Glass all show they are not standing still.
Sun's move to open source can only help them on the desktop. Java Desktop is really slick for the corporate environment. Project Looking Glass could really pay off big for them if they are able to refine it properly (think about OS X's aqua interface. 3d has a lot of potential on the desktop).
And if Sun manages to move Solaris to 100% open source, expect it to be *huge* competition to Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
The anti-intellectualism shown here is disturbing. There are people here who've had bad encounters with Mensans, and go on to claim that "Having a high IQ doesn't make you a good person!" Well, Mensa agrees with you! They aren't the "good person club", they are the high (well, top 2%) IQ club. I also wonder how many people who mod up the anti-Mensa posts have actually knowingly met a representative sample of Mensans?
And all this talk that "IQ is useless" is bullocks. IQ is (an attempt to measure) a resource (just one of many), and if a person is emotionally capable of exploiting that resource for their betterment, then their IQ has helped.
To attempt a (somewhat) lame analogy, IQ is like voltage--it's potential. Your personality is like the electronic circuitry, and the current is whether or not you apply your IQ. If your voltage is too low to power the electronics, you can use effort and hard work to make up for it (just as you can use circuitry to increase the voltage beyond that of the power supply), but it's better (or at least, easier) if you already have the potential at hand.
That isn't to say that intelligence is all you need to be a totally kick-ass person, just that it can help.
IQ is just one of many dimensions of a person, and it's certainly useful, when taken in context, in evaluating, in some ways, a person.
Or put another way, any talk of IQ always seems to degrade to, "having a high IQ doesn't make you a good person," which immediately leads to, "IQ is useless!" Well, being a good person doesn't make you able to learn 5 languages, or advanced calculus, etc, but that doesn't make being a good person useless, does it? So why should it be the other way around?
Finally, I'd like to address the issue of, "IQ tests don't measure 'intelligence', they measure one's ability to solve an IQ test." That's mostly true, and important to keep in mind, but if the tests didn't work, you'd expect 'idiots' to score high sometimes, and 'geniuses' to score low sometimes, beyond any level of statistical usefulness. This is obviously not the case.
Unfortunately, we don't really understand the workings of the mind in enough detail to measure (or even define) 'intelligence' like we can measure and define a length, or mass. That doesn't make the ideas of 'intelligence' or 'IQ' useless, it just limits the certainty of the conclusions we can draw from them.
To the above all I can say is "Choice is never a negetive!!!!".
That's retarded. Why can't you choose between a Linux PC, a Windows PC, and a nuclear warhead? Duh. Obviously some choices are negative.
When you have a set of goals for a program, it's rational to limit your choices to those which best serve the goal.
Welcome to the world economy, this happens! Neither Intel or AMD have plants in Brazil (even if they did most profits would go to US) so what processor would you suggest?
Brazil can't chose to keep the processor money at home, but they can choose to not send their OS money to the US.
OK, this is hard to argue since you don't even bother trying to qualify it in anyway
I expect a certain level of intelligence in those I communicate with.
OK, I would say RTFA, but that isn't even required! The snipit I included shows this isn't true. If someone chooses to go with MS, THEY pay for it not the program.
Wrong. Neither snippet you included, nor the article itself, indicates the increased price would cover the cost of adding Windows as an option.
Aside: you quoted me incorrectly, I didn't write, "increase the cost of teh program".
Duh, anybody thinking anything is "free" today doesn't value their time, other people's time, or their sanity.
'Free' is a word with many meanings. One is that it costs no money, and that's exactly what these offers imply (although they certainly don't always work out that way).
I'm all for Linux (OSS), but a bit disturbed when when advocates of any technology try to advocate less choice. Why NOT give the people the option to have MS or OSS? Trying to force "free" or "open" software upon the people doesn't sound open or free to me!
I think the basic idea is that the program is intended to help the Brazilian people, and when looked at in that light, proprietary MS software can be seen as a negative for at least three reasons:
1. Money spent on MS software is wealth being sent from Brazil to the US.
2. F/OSS gives the people more freedom.
3. Licenses for MS software increase the cost of the program.
That's not to say there aren't arguments for including Windows as an option, just that it's logical to design a government program such that it encourages a better society.
but hey, if i have low expectations, it cant be disappointed :).
To avoid confusion and accusations of plagiarism, you should identify the source of your motto.
I wonder how Job's will keynote this. Not a guy who likes to say 'I was wrong'
NeXT's mouse had two buttons.
I'm sure the introduction of the new mouse will be somewhat humorous (ie: "Hell finally froze over" (iTunes for Windows), Fast User Switching (Windows had something first), etc).
My suspicion is that the one-button mouse will remain default, and iBooks will keep the single button (although the PowerBooks may go two, at least as an option). Multi-button trackpads are really awful from a usability point of view.
Since Mac OS is designed to utilize, but not require, a two-button mouse, making it default would be a mistake (IMO).
Dipshit, you never explicitly stated exactly what you wanted from Apple. All you ever said were things like, "Apple could make a $150 flash player in 2004" and "If Magic Star could do it in 2002, Apple could do it in 2004", but whenever I tried to tie you down to specifics, you keep saying, "quit putting words in my mouth." It keeps changing with you.
You even stated Apple could have made a 512MB player in Jan '04 for less than $100. How am I supposed to refute a moving target?
Idiot.
Anyway, that's my issue here -- not the vocab, the missing content, poor organization, and lousy explanation.
I got the impression you were upset over the cryptic blogger terms. The submission, I agree, was poorly written, but poor article submissions are not limited to bloggers.
Clarity didn't require a google search, though. You could have just read the main link in the submission. It even explained about googlebombing and the bloggers' annoyance with "online casino" comment spams. (I've heard of posting without RTFA'ing, but to spend 10 minutes on google without checking TFA? That sure is something! heh)
Sorry, it goes like this:
Three steps is two steps too many. Apple is all about, 'it just works'.
You're not paying attention. I've suggested the 256M iPod Shuffle could have been sold for $150 in January 2004.
No, you never stated this. And you're retarded to think that it would have been $150. It would have been at least $200. And 256MB is just too little.
That's just software, the marginal cost of that is $0.00.
Again, you show your lack of intelligence. You still have to pay to create, support, and improve the software.
You know, I think the real problem here is that you have a crappy collection of songs in your iTunes playlist. If you have to hit "Next" more than a couple of times an hour you're having WAY too much trouble filling your playlist with good stuff.
No, I just don't want to listen to everything I have at the same time. Think about it--off of the heals of NIN's Closer, do you want to hear Elvis sing Heartbreak Hotel? Or on the heels of the Blue Danube Waltz, do you really want to hear Eminem, or George Carlin? Maybe, but maybe not.
That's why 256MB is too small. You just have low standards--you don't really mind the effort and don't really care about the limited space. You were served well by Magic Star (and Creative and Rio, etc). It wasn't until the iPod that mp3 players were mainstream--that's because the average consumer won't put up with the shit you will.
The thing is, slashdot isn't supposed to be the 'unwashed masses'. How many times do you have to read/hear "The rover spent the last 2 sols (a 'sol' is a Martian day, which is longer than the Earth day), ..."?
It gets tedious hearing the same explanation over and over.
Oh, and one other thing, the terms discussed here are nothing like "variegated" -- that word has been in our vocabulary since Latin was common
Why does that make a difference? Isn't your point that the people reading it won't understand the word? Will a person understand the word just because it's been around for hundreds if not thousands of years?
These are terms related to a current 'hot topic' in the tech world. Slashdot is a site for nerds, being a nerd implies some level of competency with regards to current tech topics. If you're not interested in blogs, not knowing the terms isn't that big of a deal to you, if you are interested in blogs, you have to learn the terms--just like everything else in the world.
My point was that the article summary was vague, incomplete, and poorly written.
Your apparent point was that you hate blogs and their little blogger terms. If you intended to convey otherwise, then your post was "vague, incomplete, and poorly written."
We're not talking about picking the most obscure and fancy word (re: your "smart vs. brilliant" diversion) to show off your "word-a-day" vocabulary, we're talking about the everyday words of the bloggers.
I can't stand pretension, but I also can't stand dumbed-down babytalk. Agree the summary was poorly written, but not because it used the words, "googlebomb", "wikipedia" and "comment spam" (the last two really get me, those aren't obscure at all here on slashdot!).
Not as manual as:
Apple had to polish the 'autofill' function (your method is too cumbersome! but you have no standards, so you don't care). They also had to give it enough capacity, and it had to be cheap enough. Apple didn't have the necessary ingredients in Jan '04--in fact, no one did.
The issue isn't whether you think manual shuffle-syncing is sufficient, or whether you think 128MB is sufficient, or whether you think >$150 for a 256MB player is sufficient, it's whether Apple thinks it's sufficient--and they clearly don't.
That's why Apple didn't release one until MWSF'05. They didn't have all the pieces. You think they did, and you are wrong. It wouldn't have been an iPod-quality player, it would have been a Magic Star quality player.
What you wanted is for Apple to release a Magic Star iPod (256MB for, at best, $50 less than a 4GB mini, and that's if they could cut a sweet deal on flash mem). That's ludicrous.
And stop this bullshit about me putting words in your mouth. You still haven't stated exactly what you think Apple should have released at MWSF '04. Spell it out or shut up about it when I have to surmise from what you've written.
Give me: capacity and price, we'll assume the same form factor, and normal iPod fill mode (with Mac fan websites showing tips on how to use a 'Smart Playlist' to generate random mixes). When you consider price, remember MWSF is in January, so the prices are from Q4 '03.
How could they go after him? The software is open-source and its intentions are nothing less than noble. If Cohen was looking to *directly* make money on BitTorrent he wouldn't have released the source to it.
That's sort of the point. The 'mainstream' is just now catching on to a fact we've known here for years: that filesharing and p2p isn't simply a tool for 'criminals'.
And what? Put all those popcorn salesmen and ticket rippers out of their after-school jobs? Nope, at least not for now.
He doesn't even come close to implying that in your quote. He says that bittorrent might be just the thing that enables the studios to utilize the web.
I think it is perhaps reasonable to expect people who read /. to be familiar with /. jargon. ('Open Source'? Kernel, GNU, 'lameness filter', etc)
/. to be familiar with blogger jargon.
Words become slashdot jargon by being posted on slashdot. Think about it.
It is probably not reasonable to expect readers of
"Comment spam" is extremely obvious.
"Googlebomb" has been covered here before.
"Wikipedia" is slashdot jargon.
Just because blogging is important to you doesn't mean any of us care much about it. sorry.
If it's not important to you, don't RTFA!
Like it or not, blogging is certainly a topic related to slashdot, and the terms used in the submission are basic terms.
If blogging is interesting to you, then it's up to you to put the effort into learning the language. If it's not, why read the article?
This seems very basic.
How much business could the website be generating for her in the first place?
Irrelevant, the domain belongs to her, and she has legitimate rights to it given it's her name.
She should appeal, then settle. Go to the new suggested domain (milkacouture.fr) and have Kraft link her from Milka.fr with a brief note about the settlement.
Appeals (and the lawsuit initially as well) cost money. How many domains are stolen by the megacorps because the original domain holder don't have the money to even show up in court?
Why should she have to switch to milkacouture.fr? She chose milka.fr.
It would be one thing if she was pretending to be Kraft's Milka brand, or if she was utilizing a design style that would associate her site with theirs, but she's not.
I think the point he's trying to make is that not everyone will immediately know what comment spam is, unless they're from the blogging community.
How is that hard to surmise? "Comment spam"?
"I know what 'comments' are, and I know what 'spam' is. Now if only I could fathom what 'comment spam' is!"
I suspect he's just annoyed at terms that he's not used to. It's like a non-net user being irked and confused when first hearing, 'snail mail'.
He google'd, which is the equivalent of asking the 'net user after hearing 'snail mail' for the first time, "what do you mean by 'snail mail'?"
But instead of continuing with, "oh, I see. Haha," he complained the equivalent of, "I *hate* Internet users, with their own terms for things. Why not just say 'postal mail'?"
I sympathize with the effort involved when confronted with new words, but I reject the attitude of berating people for using different terms in different fields. What does he do if he reads about flowers and comes across the word 'variegated'? Complain, "why don't they just say multi-colored!"? Or does he look up the word, and find himself better off for it?
Yes, you need the iTunes shuffle capability, or something equivalent ... I'm sorry that you never thought of doing that with the "3 flash players"
1. I did, and I didn't care much for it--I ended up with a 64MB card full of songs, only a few of which did I want to listen to.
2. It was a manual process. This is important because having to do it each time is annoying. Better to just have it be automatic.
Not understanding these two points shows you lack a fundamental understanding of Apple--it's little things like these that put their products ahead of the competition.
By the way, you keep saying Apple would have been stupid to release an iPod shuffle without "their implementation of 'shuffle' syncing".
And at the right price and with sufficient storage. You need all the features. Without any one of them the product isn't worthy of being an iPod.
Um, the iPod was already out when I bought it. For five times the price.
Um, that does not contradict, "The problems with your Magic Star player weren't apparent until the advent of the iPod." When you bought your Magic Stars, the iPod had shown the problems with it, duh.
You have low standards. You keep saying, "Magic Star made this player in '02, surely Apple could have made one too!" The problem is that Apple wouldn't let such a crappy player see the light of day.
that's why I don't read blogs. Too often they are crypitc and snooty.
The same is often said of Slashdot in general. 'Open Source'? Kernel, GNU, 'lameness filter', ASCII, spyware, beowulf, troll, 'slashdotted', MD5 collision, anime, 1337, mersenne prime, SCO, quantum computer, DoS, etc, etc. You have to learn the vocabulary if you want to understand the conversation.
Once you hear certain terms repeatedly, they stop seeming so odd, but that requires that they be new to you for a while.
Bloggers, frustrated by poker sites posting spam in the comments
From the submission:Hmm...
you continue: decided to fight back by displacing comment-spammer's rank in google searches Granted, Slashdot submissions aren't paragons of writing, but the post already contains the info you criticize it for lacking.
The iPod Mini already fails that test, for me.
That's why I said you had to have iTunes shuffle play for the shuffle to be usable.
The Shuffle isn't about choice, it's about chance.
Chance fails for small samples. That's why you need more capacity than just enough to hold that amount of time. The more songs you have, the more choice you have to hit 'next'.
Since you haven't had a chance to try the Magic Star player
Retard, I stated I already owned 3 flash players prior to the iPod. You've failed to point out why the Magic Star player is any better.
The standards and expectations for mp3 players took a quantum leap ahead with the original iPod. The problems with your Magic Star player weren't apparent until the advent of the iPod. Apple would have been stupid to release an iPod shuffle with less than 512MB and without their implementation of 'shuffle' syncing. Without both of those, you just have a crap Magic Star player.
Damn you are dense.
Apple has to pay for R&D, support, advertising, etc, and so on. Magic Star has miniscule overhead. Apple also has to make a quality player. Magic Star doesn't.
Apple can't bring a $70 iPod to the market today, but you think they could have in Jan '04. That doesn't make any sense.
512MB is an absolute minimum for an iPod. Why? Because the iPod is about bringing your music with you. With 256MB (presumably Apple could make a 256MB shuffle for $75 if they wanted), you have room for four CD's. That's not enough choice for an iPod.
What you propose isn't an iPod, it's just a crap mp3 player, and Apple isn't in that market.
Huh? Did you watch Jobs' address in 2004? The high end was 256M and above, he must have used the figure a dozen times.
Yes, I did. And in 2004, 128/256 was high end, 32/64 low end. There were higher capacity players, but those were 'special edition, too expensive to consider a rational product' versions.
I'm no genius, and I was using iTunes with the Party Shuffle to load up my flash player long before the Shuffle was announced. It's not rocket science, honest.
What's not obvious is how to make this process non-shit. How many people were all, "WTF? No screen? Random mix?" They didn't get the point.
Again, if Apple had all the pieces in 2003, why didn't they release it then and take the whole mp3 market? It's because they didn't have the pieces.
Getting a product launched is expensive, and it sometimes takes a big name as well as a lot of money to get a product off the ground
Hrm. So much for the Apple $150 player in Q1 '04.
You're all over the place. One minute you are in '03, next you are in '04, once minute it's 128MB, next it's 256MB.
So why don't you stick to something specific? A flash iPod, 256MB, Jan '04, for how much, $150? Is that what you are 'livid' at Apple for not creating?
Two problems--price and capacity.
512MB would have been too expensive (flash prices at the time would have put that at about $250, might as well buy a mini!), and 512 is the minimum usable capacity, 1GB would have been around $350+! You have to remember to add the above "it's expensive to launch" issue into account.
You can bet Apple wanted to have a cheap flash iPod at the time, Jobs said so on more than on occasion. You can also be certain that the flash iPod project was underway at the time, so it's not like Apple just woke up on Jan of this year and there was an iPod shuffle out of thin air.
It wasn't until sometime during 2004 that the iPod shuffle became feasible, and it wasn't until sometime during 2004 that Apple finalized the product. That is not a coincidence.
Had they released the iPod shuffle you imagine, at the time and price that the technology at the time would have mandated, people would no longer see the iPod as something of quality, but instead as just 'nother cheap-o mp3 player.
This is why Apple could not do it, and why 'Magic Star' can (Magic Star has no worry about maintaining a brand).
I didn't say that Apple should have made an iPod shuffle in 2002. I said that this device was made in 2002, and that Apple should have been able to do it one better by January 2004.
There's a huge distinction you are missing--which is that Apple couldn't have done it. There's a reason 'cheap' flash players are made by companies called 'Magic Star'.
My player cost $69 in 2003. That's not "high end".
128MB was 'high end'.
512M holds 8 hours of music. That's a bigger playlist than any Clear Channel radio station has, and you can refill it every night.
Which is only good if your library is relatively small (say, 30 cd's or less, tops). My point about needing iTunes' shuffle mode is that in order for 512MB to not be unacceptable, you need a way to effortlessly pick 512MB of music.
If your flash player operates in disk mode, it takes two drags and two clicks to refill it with a new random set of songs.
If your flash player is an iPod shuffle, it takes no clicks and no drags. Your method requires too much user interaction. The 'shuffle' part of the iPod shuffle is really the breakthrough.
What I said was that Magic Star made it with 128M in 2002, and sold it for under $100. If they could make it with 128M and sell it for under $100 three years ago, then just the difference in flash memory prices would have let you make a 512M model for under $100 by 2004.
Impossible. Did Creative have a 512MB Muvo in Jan, '04, for $100? Did Rio have one? More apt, did they even have them in Jan. '05?
No.
The ones they had were more expensive, and less usable, even with their screens.
The other differences between the units are software. The marginal cost of software is $0.00.
So are you saying iTunes cost Apple nothing to create? (no, of course not), then don't leave out that cost.
Apple's margin on the shuffle is 40%. So they could have made it for under $100, sold it for around $150, and you're telling me that the market wasn't ready for a $150 flash player from Apple in 2004?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Why do you think the 'Magic Star' player didn't take off, if it was so good? If you hand a company a warehouse full of flash chips, an mp3 playing IC, and a small budget for engineering, design, and fabrication, they'll make those little shit players you are espousing.
Now, if Apple had released your player in '04, the market would have laughed at them, and they would have been universally panned, and the product would have been a failure. Apple had to do something which 'Magic Star' could not--make the player attractive and usable. To do so, you needed a minimum of 512mb flash, it needed to look good, you needed an iTunes jukebox with the shuffle feature (this isn't as obvious as you think), and you needed to be able to do it all for a price people will pay. Miss any one of those, and the iPod shuffle is a failure.
Do you really think Apple had all those pieces in 2003 (and hence a finished product ready for MWSF '04)? If not, your argument falls apart.
'm no stock analyst, but the trend that leads up to Sun's peak (96-2000) is mirrored in the performance over the last 2 years..
And their stock is $4. Four. Not $40, like Apple (whose stock follows a similar trend, only theirs went up an octave..)
Here's the comparison between SUNW and AAPL:
SUNW v AAPL
Note that your description of Sun's chart is the same as for Apple's. You'll also note Sun's maket cap is over $15bn.
Sun is by no means on the brink of scrapping Solaris.
All you've done is shown that Apple is in better shape than Sun, which is something of an odd thing to do when comparing Solaris to Linux.
Having another open source OS is great, but if you think the two compete against each other you're wrong.
Sure they do. They compete for both users and developers. This sort of competition seems far more noble than the nature of competition in the corporate world, but it's still competition nonetheless.
Almost as if you started to build a garage, your neighbor saw you and wanted to RACE, and finish one before you did. ooooh, WHO CARES.
Yeah, I guess the XFree86 folks don't care that everyone's moving to Xorg. Or the GNOME folks wouldn't care if everyone but them ran KDE. I also recall the Firefox team taking out an ad in the NYT asking people to try Firefox.
People who have used Linux want something that THEY have worked on, THEY have started. SUN is getting into this to compete with companies that USE Linux, the people developing it usually don't care.
What do you mean by, 'People who have used Linux...'? You clearly don't mean everyone who has used Linux, because that's obviously false. In fact, very few people who use Linux actually contribute to it.
Which, of course, has nothing to do with whether or not Solaris competes with Linux.
Besides the point, usually two open source projects will BENEFIT from each other. Gnome, X, Mozilla, Konqueror as in with Apple, etc.
I'm certain they will benefit from each other. That doesn't mean they don't also compete.
You mean huge competition to Linux Distributors such as SuSE and RedHat.
No, I don't.
Solaris competes with Linux, Sun competes with the distributors (which one can call 'Linux' anyway, the same way you call all the oil companies 'big oil', or the TV and radio networks 'the media', so your point wouldn't be a correction anyway).
IMO the whole "Solaris has gone open source" is just too little too late.
How so? Sun's revenue last year was over $10bn, and their move to open sourcing Solaris, some impressive new features in Solaris 10, and their work on the Java Desktop as well as Project Looking Glass all show they are not standing still.
Sun's move to open source can only help them on the desktop. Java Desktop is really slick for the corporate environment. Project Looking Glass could really pay off big for them if they are able to refine it properly (think about OS X's aqua interface. 3d has a lot of potential on the desktop).
And if Sun manages to move Solaris to 100% open source, expect it to be *huge* competition to Linux.