No! Whatever we do, we can not let such a piece of software exist! The creation of a singularity in software would make black hole that could destroy all life on this planet as we know it!
Or, barring that, open up a whole to an alternate dimension where the N-Gage doesn't make you look like you've got a metal taco sticking out the side of your head.
I don't claim to be any kind of guru of, well, anything, but I've been working with GNU/Linux for a good 5 years now, setting up servers (Samba, Apache, etc).
About 18 months ago, I got a Powerbook, and while I still like Linux on the server end, man oh man, do I like OS X - for exactly the reasons that Mr. Turner brings up.
Simply put: it works.
I plug in a device - and it works. No compiling, no fiddling with conf files - works. I put in a game, and without once having to find Mesa drivers for X Windows and figure out why I can get video in Quake III but no sound - wait, not I get sound but no video, let me try another sound card and figure out of the chipset is the right kind - AGGGHHH!
The greatest strength of Open Source is its ability to evolve and grow and fill in gaps. It's truly software evolution - species of software fill in evolutionary needs, and the ones that work best (or are the luckiest in support/notice) get to grow.
The problem with Open Source, as Mr. Turner observes, is in some ways that same community. How many truly clear, concise, "idiot proof" manuals are written when we need to understand why some piece of Open Source (OS) software isn't acting the way you want? A cry for help will often be answered - all too often by "RTFM", though there are times when a more useful answer is given.
Probably the best thing that can happen for OS is the continued interest by businesses who want things for thier clients - like easier to use desktop operating systems (like OS X), or better office suites that can be used by secretaries (like Open Office) or administrative tools that can help configure the multitude of options easily and quickly (like what I hope Novell will do with their Suse merger).
I think that there will always be the dynamic Mr. Turner talks about - which isn't always a bad thing, but I hope the dialectic of Open Source and Business Needs helps to create a better hybrid software animal more suited to survive the wilds of the computer world.
Between Mario and Luigi, Fire Emblem, Prince of Persia, Jak II, Final Fantasy X-2, on and on - there's just too many good things for the holiday season. Metal Arms just got the bad end of the release timing.
I think this is why Linux is doing as well as it is. Does it have huge show stopping bugs that have to be rooted out, waited for the next patch, worried over for major security problems? Oh, once in a blue moon (literally), but not as often as Windows.
Linus can take things on the time schedule as he sees. He is beholding to no one but his peers, so his goal is not to make Linux updates "timely", but to make them "right".
MS has shareholders. Shareholders want "quarterlies" whether the product is "right" or not - and that influences the release schedule.
Of course, I guess you can take the concept of "When it's done" too far - look at Duke Nukem Forever....
There are many people - business, but especially programmers, who love Linus for what he's done. And why has he done it? Because he loves what he does, and it's created something wonderful, as much art as it is productive.
There are people who love Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, to be sure - my dad is a huge supporter of Microsoft, and was set to give an address at a recent function. He and I were talking about this, and he made a comment about how he was going to have to bring up security somehow without making "the overseers" look bad. He did this tongue in cheek - but it was evident he didn't "like" the guys he works with, he does it for a business reason.
Look at the almost cult-like following of Steve Jobs. Granted, Bill Gates has more money. Steve Ellison has more money. Ross Perot? More money. But if you look at the differences in people in history who were "loved" rather than just "respected", it's kind of funny how history remembers them.
You wonder if in 100 years from now, people will remember Linus as "the innovator who gave us Linux" so on and so forth, and Bill Gates as "Oh, yeah - the rich guy. He was the Rockerfeller of the late 20th century".
Just some random thoughts - take them as you like.
Should be interesting. After all, Novell could argue simply that "Since we are buying a GNU/Linux company, and GNU means 'Gnu's Not Unix', blah, blah, blah".
The burden of proof should (notice the "should", because the law may say different) be on SCO to prove that Linux *is* UNIX.
If it is according to the law, then there could be problems. If it is not, then Novell's scott free.
I've been calling for this for years, and predicting that a day might come when it may happen.
Now, let's take it a step further.
I'd love to see a service where we could buy old CD-ROM games - mainly Console games. How about a service that holds the ISO images online, and you can buy a physical copy of the media for $20 apiece? If Sega came out with their own Sega-CD emulator and Saturn emulator for OS X/Windows (and yes, Linux - and please, no discussions on the capabilities of those emulators, we know how hard it would be to emulate a Sega Saturn system with PC technology, this is all hypothetical).
Imagine buying Panzer Dragoon RPG for $20-$40 online, have it delivered to your house, and you could play it instead of paying $150+ on eBay? And that $150 doesn't go to Sega - but if they sold old games this way, they could see money. Then people could decide "Hm - spend 3 days trying to download the ISO through Kazaa - or spend $20 to get an authentic CD?" Burn the manuals in PDF and ship those, and the only paper to print is the reciept and the mailing slip.
I could see this extended to old Playstation games even. There's a lot of money here, and while manufacturers still want you to buy the "new" stuff, I'd argue that by using this ISO based system with an emulator they could have a higher profit margin.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong - but it's a vision I'd love to see someday.
While the PS2 unlockable (original Prince of Persia) is a big draw for me, I'm curious to know what the PC version will have for extras - both PoP1 and PoP2? Nothing at all?
This is a game I expect to be ported to OS X in time (a good chunk of Ubisoft's titles are making it that way these days - thanks, Aspyr!), and what's on the PC version will decide if I get the PS2 or wait for the PC/possible OS X version.
iTunes Music Count: 400,000 "songs" + 5,000 Audio Books (some abridged, many unabridged)
Napster: 500,000 "songs"
So far, I'll say they're pretty much even, as I'm not sure what the difference is. (Though neither has the Beatles, and that's the last music I need to be in online purchasible format before my set of "stuff I truly know I want and haven't purchased yet" is pretty much complete.)
Been there, done that. I was in a small apartment fire - nobody was hurt, we had plenty of warning thanks to the smoke alarm, and all just walked out, turned around - and waited for the fire department.
Later on the news? "Residents were fleeing in terror!" according to the anchorman. 5 seconds later there I was on TV being quoted:
"Yeah, we just heard the alarm, woke up, and went downstairs."
It seems as though most of the lawsuits regarding online publication, comments, and so on is the difference between "personal comments" and "news publication."
I may be wrong, but I believe that the fine line between "libel" and "opinion" lies in who's talking, and what they're talking about. If the Local Sunday Times states for a fact that one week ago I was spotted by 100 people dancing naked in a local fountain, and no such event occurred, then I could be sue for libel.
However, if some guy down the street told that to his neighbor - I don't believe I have a leg to stand on. Even if he was on TV and say "Yeah, he was out there doing that", and the news said "Well, that's what Mr. Jones has said", I'm still not sure I could sue either for libel (unless the news organization stated that for a fact - odds are, they'd use the statement "allegedly dancing naked in a fountain."
So what is a blog, or a newsgroup posting then? To most people here, they are "comments", "opinions", things that you take with a grain of salt. You don't take them as fact.
Of course, some online articles are meant to be fact - Salon, perhaps even a gaming site like Blues News could if they knowingly published false information.
But I think Mr. Luskin made a mistake in the difference between "some guy who's got an opinion who happens to write it down for others to read" and "a true news organization." My hope is that the courts rule that blogs, newsgroups, and other "commentary" style online posting are just that - some person expressing their viewpoints on something, perhaps in a sarcastic tone, but not held up to the same standards as a true "news" publication.
Now, if I can just figure out which Fox News is...
Of course, this is all just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Actually, I was thinking along the lines of a Roosevelt or John F Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln - people that were forward thinkers, and hardly dictators.
About the same time, fuel efficiency jumped from 10 miles per gallon to 25.
For the last 30 years, nothing has changed for fuel efficiency (a little here and there, but let's face it, not on a huge scale).
Why? No economic incentive. But if another fuel crisis occured, you can bet that Necessity would mother quite a few inventions to increase fuel efficiency. Especially when car makers find they can make more money doing so.
And that's what it's all about: money. Cars won't be more fuel efficient, people won't buy more car efficient cars until they have a pocketbook reason to. Right now, even though gas is expensive, it's still "cheap" compared to what it should be for inflation's sake.
The problem with humanity in general, except in rare occasions when a truly forward thinking person comes into power, is that they usually won't do anything until "it's just about too late."
So yes, oil dependance for the world is a problem. It's allowed a single section of the world to weild incredible economic power over others, and has allowed a group of religious extremists more money than they really deserve. Saudi Arabians (not the entire country, mind you - just folks with way too much money on their hands) exporting schools to Afganistan with a branch of extreme Islam that pretty much hates, well, everybody, Iran putting a gigantic bounty of Salman Rushdie's head because he wrote a book he didn't like:
"We will make the proper decision about the increase of the bounty at the right time and considering the circumstances," the Iranian Jumhouri Islami newspaper quoted Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, head of the 15th Khordad foundation, as saying.
"Thank God we have the necessary finance to pay for the bounty," he said. (Brief on Iran No 839.
So here's what I see happening:
Now:
United States: Oil good!
World: Oil good, pollution bad!
United States: Fuck you, Kyoto Treaty!
OPEC: Ka-Ching!
50 years from now:
United States: Oil good!
OPEC: Damn - we're running out. Oil now $50 a barrel!
United States: Fuck oil! Hydrogen and ethenol - good!
OPEC: Damn.
Religious Extremists Groups: Anybody got change for a rocket launcher? Anybody?
Rest of the World: Damn it - now where are we going to get fuel from?
Iowa Corn Farmers: Ka-Ching!
It's a simplistic view, I admit - but I figure nothing will be done on a US national scale, let alone a global one, until there is A Problem With Oil Supplies.
Which, I'm guessing at around 50 years. Perhaps by then we'll have fusion systems or some other cool way of gathering energy. Until then, nobody really wants to do anything because it will cost too much money.
And in the end, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
Linux based device that lets you purchase the songs, and you can use them on any other like devices through the mini-disk - or, as the article says, any other "normal" entertainment system. (Or just mini-disk accepting ones, or can you burn to CD? Details are lacking on that regard.)
Charges $2 per song file - a bit much, but if its DRM free I could go for that.
The biggest question is of course the format. Is this a lossy format, so we're losing some quality, and when we burn it to a mini-disk it puts it in "normal" music mode (much like the iTunes store can burn AAC/MP3 files to a standard Audio CD), or some lossless format - probably the former, as the latter would require tons of storage space.
Lots of questions, but based on the statements of the article, it actually sounds fairly non-DRM friendly. Might be worth a checkout.
Microsoft's idea of "choice" is a button on the side that reads "Buy Music Online". Even if you tell the system "I prefer another browser to yours", or "I prefer another media player to yours", you get sent to the "Microsoft Music Store".
No way to override that unless you manually start up a separate program to begin with. Looks like you can't just delete that little button from the OS.
Imagine the phone call when some irate customer calls Apple and says "I clicked this Buy Music Button on my computer and I can't play it with this iTunes thing! What kind of scam are you pulling!"
Ah, yes - Microsoft, that bastion of choice and freedom! (Well, as long as you choose a Microsoft solution, of course.)
The operative word was "rip files in MP3 format that work with all other MP3 players".
It was not "buy songs from the iTunes store that work with all other MP3 players".
Please recheck statements. You do have a valid complaint (yes, MP4 files bought off the iTunes store work for nothing but iTunes software and the iPod), but ripped CD's into MP3/AIFF/WAV files should work with most MP3 players that support those formats.
From what I've observed, the dot-com bubble was "we'll have content, and people will pay us advertising!"
As I've seen from the web comic market (sluggy.com, Megatokyo, Penny-Arcade, etc), the idea has changed:
We have a product, and the content is the advertising.
They make money selling books, T-shirts, posters, and the like.
Apple is using the iTunes store to sell two things: iPods, and Macintoshes.
The iTunes store probably breaks even, or perhaps even at a loss. But as long as someone says "Gee, here's this free app - I guess I can buy this $300 - $500 music device to use it, since it's so easy", Apple just made their money.
I'm curious to see what will happen if Apple can get those iPod costs down - cheaper hard drives and such. If they can get the production down to $100 an iPod, and have a range ($100 for 5 Gig, $500 for 40 Gig, etc), they will make a killing in the MP3 player market.
For now, they seem to be doing well - a 183% increase in iPod sales over last year tells us that they're doing something right.
The more I think about it, the more clever it seems.
So you can get iTunes for free. Ho-friggin-ray. And you can rip MP3's to your hearts content, so they work with *all* MP3 players.
Wait - Windows Media Player rips to WMA by default. Oh, it does MP3's, but you have to pay more to get it to work better than crap.
Ok, so what. Yeah, it's a good app.
And it lets you burn CD's - music and data, right from the playlist.
For free.
And all the other machines in the house - they can stream off that, so I just put all my MP3's on one box, put iTunes on the other computers, and stream from there.
Ok, that is kind of cool. Check out the online store. You know, I've only wanted to buy 1 song off this album. Cool - I just did. Only cost $1 - that's not too bad.
And I can burn it to a music CD, or put it on 2 more machines.
Then comes the fall. You know, I wanted to get an MP3 player anyway. For some insane reason (you had an additional $300), you get an iPod.
Don't need a Mac, and it works just fine with your Windows and iTunes.
But hold on - turns out you can use this iPod thing with digital camera and upload the pictures to the iPod, and from there to the computer. Oh, but you need a Mac for that.
You know, what do I use my computer for? Email, a few games - huh, that Aspyr company is porting over the ones I really like anyway -
Man, and this other stuff comes free with a Mac - a movie editor, a browser that blocks popup ads by default, there's less virus problems -
Hm....
Now, I don't think everybody will consider gong to the Mac just because of the iTunes store.
But having "hip 20-to-30-somethings" tell us how switching to the Mac is "the bomb" really didn't work.
So Steve Jobs is changing tactics: Go ahead, take a bite of this apple. It's free! It will just give you knowledge! Or, barring that, a pretty kick ass music player!
Next thing people know, they realize that they've been living naked under Windows for a long time, and start to make themselves aprons from leaves.
In this case, by plucking them from the Apple tree.
I'm curious to see what will happen from here. Remember: Apple doesn't need to dominate the market. It already makes a profit with its products now, and it happy to do so.
This will just give it the chance to make more profit - and maybe show people what they've been missing along the way.
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
But does it fix "No One Lives Forever 2" yet? I still can't play that game under 10.3 yet.
Porting from DirectX to OS X seems to be on the rise (notice the increased speed that Aspyr has displayed in their porting).
Granted, I'm not a MMRPG fan by any means, but I've heard good things about Asheron's Call.
No! Whatever we do, we can not let such a piece of software exist! The creation of a singularity in software would make black hole that could destroy all life on this planet as we know it!
Or, barring that, open up a whole to an alternate dimension where the N-Gage doesn't make you look like you've got a metal taco sticking out the side of your head.
I don't claim to be any kind of guru of, well, anything, but I've been working with GNU/Linux for a good 5 years now, setting up servers (Samba, Apache, etc).
About 18 months ago, I got a Powerbook, and while I still like Linux on the server end, man oh man, do I like OS X - for exactly the reasons that Mr. Turner brings up.
Simply put: it works.
I plug in a device - and it works. No compiling, no fiddling with conf files - works. I put in a game, and without once having to find Mesa drivers for X Windows and figure out why I can get video in Quake III but no sound - wait, not I get sound but no video, let me try another sound card and figure out of the chipset is the right kind - AGGGHHH!
The greatest strength of Open Source is its ability to evolve and grow and fill in gaps. It's truly software evolution - species of software fill in evolutionary needs, and the ones that work best (or are the luckiest in support/notice) get to grow.
The problem with Open Source, as Mr. Turner observes, is in some ways that same community. How many truly clear, concise, "idiot proof" manuals are written when we need to understand why some piece of Open Source (OS) software isn't acting the way you want? A cry for help will often be answered - all too often by "RTFM", though there are times when a more useful answer is given.
Probably the best thing that can happen for OS is the continued interest by businesses who want things for thier clients - like easier to use desktop operating systems (like OS X), or better office suites that can be used by secretaries (like Open Office) or administrative tools that can help configure the multitude of options easily and quickly (like what I hope Novell will do with their Suse merger).
I think that there will always be the dynamic Mr. Turner talks about - which isn't always a bad thing, but I hope the dialectic of Open Source and Business Needs helps to create a better hybrid software animal more suited to survive the wilds of the computer world.
Just my opinion, of course - I might be wrong.
Between Mario and Luigi, Fire Emblem, Prince of Persia, Jak II, Final Fantasy X-2, on and on - there's just too many good things for the holiday season. Metal Arms just got the bad end of the release timing.
I think this is why Linux is doing as well as it is. Does it have huge show stopping bugs that have to be rooted out, waited for the next patch, worried over for major security problems? Oh, once in a blue moon (literally), but not as often as Windows.
Linus can take things on the time schedule as he sees. He is beholding to no one but his peers, so his goal is not to make Linux updates "timely", but to make them "right".
MS has shareholders. Shareholders want "quarterlies" whether the product is "right" or not - and that influences the release schedule.
Of course, I guess you can take the concept of "When it's done" too far - look at Duke Nukem Forever....
I guess that's what it comes down to.
There are many people - business, but especially programmers, who love Linus for what he's done. And why has he done it? Because he loves what he does, and it's created something wonderful, as much art as it is productive.
There are people who love Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, to be sure - my dad is a huge supporter of Microsoft, and was set to give an address at a recent function. He and I were talking about this, and he made a comment about how he was going to have to bring up security somehow without making "the overseers" look bad. He did this tongue in cheek - but it was evident he didn't "like" the guys he works with, he does it for a business reason.
Look at the almost cult-like following of Steve Jobs. Granted, Bill Gates has more money. Steve Ellison has more money. Ross Perot? More money. But if you look at the differences in people in history who were "loved" rather than just "respected", it's kind of funny how history remembers them.
You wonder if in 100 years from now, people will remember Linus as "the innovator who gave us Linux" so on and so forth, and Bill Gates as "Oh, yeah - the rich guy. He was the Rockerfeller of the late 20th century".
Just some random thoughts - take them as you like.
Should be interesting. After all, Novell could argue simply that "Since we are buying a GNU/Linux company, and GNU means 'Gnu's Not Unix', blah, blah, blah".
The burden of proof should (notice the "should", because the law may say different) be on SCO to prove that Linux *is* UNIX.
If it is according to the law, then there could be problems. If it is not, then Novell's scott free.
Just my $0.02.
I've been calling for this for years, and predicting that a day might come when it may happen.
Now, let's take it a step further.
I'd love to see a service where we could buy old CD-ROM games - mainly Console games. How about a service that holds the ISO images online, and you can buy a physical copy of the media for $20 apiece? If Sega came out with their own Sega-CD emulator and Saturn emulator for OS X/Windows (and yes, Linux - and please, no discussions on the capabilities of those emulators, we know how hard it would be to emulate a Sega Saturn system with PC technology, this is all hypothetical).
Imagine buying Panzer Dragoon RPG for $20-$40 online, have it delivered to your house, and you could play it instead of paying $150+ on eBay? And that $150 doesn't go to Sega - but if they sold old games this way, they could see money. Then people could decide "Hm - spend 3 days trying to download the ISO through Kazaa - or spend $20 to get an authentic CD?" Burn the manuals in PDF and ship those, and the only paper to print is the reciept and the mailing slip.
I could see this extended to old Playstation games even. There's a lot of money here, and while manufacturers still want you to buy the "new" stuff, I'd argue that by using this ISO based system with an emulator they could have a higher profit margin.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong - but it's a vision I'd love to see someday.
While the PS2 unlockable (original Prince of Persia) is a big draw for me, I'm curious to know what the PC version will have for extras - both PoP1 and PoP2? Nothing at all?
This is a game I expect to be ported to OS X in time (a good chunk of Ubisoft's titles are making it that way these days - thanks, Aspyr!), and what's on the PC version will decide if I get the PS2 or wait for the PC/possible OS X version.
Just to let you know:
iTunes Music Count: 400,000 "songs" + 5,000 Audio Books (some abridged, many unabridged)
Napster: 500,000 "songs"
So far, I'll say they're pretty much even, as I'm not sure what the difference is. (Though neither has the Beatles, and that's the last music I need to be in online purchasible format before my set of "stuff I truly know I want and haven't purchased yet" is pretty much complete.)
I do hope that you're planning on including both the "old" and the "new" versions of the original trilogy.
Why, you ask? For one simple reason, and I'm going to type this very, very slowly to make sure you don't mess this up:
Han shoots Guido first.
Ah! No, I don't want to hear how Han isn't a bad man. Shut it, George - you made some good movies, but I don't want to hear it.
"Yes, I bet you have." BLAM! That's it - one shot. Deal with it.
And if you plan on including any new scenes, I will pound you. I don't want to see this:
Jar-Jar: No, it'sa not true! Messa is you father!
Chewbacca: Aaaarrrghhhghg!
Don't make us get the South Park kids to protect your own movies from yourself.
Been there, done that. I was in a small apartment fire - nobody was hurt, we had plenty of warning thanks to the smoke alarm, and all just walked out, turned around - and waited for the fire department.
Later on the news? "Residents were fleeing in terror!" according to the anchorman. 5 seconds later there I was on TV being quoted:
"Yeah, we just heard the alarm, woke up, and went downstairs."
Hm.... Somebody stretched things a bit.
It seems as though most of the lawsuits regarding online publication, comments, and so on is the difference between "personal comments" and "news publication."
I may be wrong, but I believe that the fine line between "libel" and "opinion" lies in who's talking, and what they're talking about. If the Local Sunday Times states for a fact that one week ago I was spotted by 100 people dancing naked in a local fountain, and no such event occurred, then I could be sue for libel.
However, if some guy down the street told that to his neighbor - I don't believe I have a leg to stand on. Even if he was on TV and say "Yeah, he was out there doing that", and the news said "Well, that's what Mr. Jones has said", I'm still not sure I could sue either for libel (unless the news organization stated that for a fact - odds are, they'd use the statement "allegedly dancing naked in a fountain."
So what is a blog, or a newsgroup posting then? To most people here, they are "comments", "opinions", things that you take with a grain of salt. You don't take them as fact.
Of course, some online articles are meant to be fact - Salon, perhaps even a gaming site like Blues News could if they knowingly published false information.
But I think Mr. Luskin made a mistake in the difference between "some guy who's got an opinion who happens to write it down for others to read" and "a true news organization." My hope is that the courts rule that blogs, newsgroups, and other "commentary" style online posting are just that - some person expressing their viewpoints on something, perhaps in a sarcastic tone, but not held up to the same standards as a true "news" publication.
Now, if I can just figure out which Fox News is...
Of course, this is all just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Actually, I was thinking along the lines of a Roosevelt or John F Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln - people that were forward thinkers, and hardly dictators.
My apologies if there was a miscommunication.
My bad, let me expand:
;).
It's expensive to *me* - I live in Southern California, drive a car that gets 31 MPG, and I think it's expensive since I'm a cheap ass bastard
Back in the 1970's - the fuel shortage.
About the same time, fuel efficiency jumped from 10 miles per gallon to 25.
For the last 30 years, nothing has changed for fuel efficiency (a little here and there, but let's face it, not on a huge scale).
Why? No economic incentive. But if another fuel crisis occured, you can bet that Necessity would mother quite a few inventions to increase fuel efficiency. Especially when car makers find they can make more money doing so.
And that's what it's all about: money. Cars won't be more fuel efficient, people won't buy more car efficient cars until they have a pocketbook reason to. Right now, even though gas is expensive, it's still "cheap" compared to what it should be for inflation's sake.
So yes, oil dependance for the world is a problem. It's allowed a single section of the world to weild incredible economic power over others, and has allowed a group of religious extremists more money than they really deserve. Saudi Arabians (not the entire country, mind you - just folks with way too much money on their hands) exporting schools to Afganistan with a branch of extreme Islam that pretty much hates, well, everybody, Iran putting a gigantic bounty of Salman Rushdie's head because he wrote a book he didn't like:
So here's what I see happening:
Now:
50 years from now:
It's a simplistic view, I admit - but I figure nothing will be done on a US national scale, let alone a global one, until there is A Problem With Oil Supplies.
Which, I'm guessing at around 50 years. Perhaps by then we'll have fusion systems or some other cool way of gathering energy. Until then, nobody really wants to do anything because it will cost too much money.
And in the end, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
"Were" international.
Now? I honestly have no clue - so I'd say "current" Napster and current iTunes/Musicmatch are all on the same footing that way.
Though I read that Apple is working on Canada.
I Might like this.
Linux based device that lets you purchase the songs, and you can use them on any other like devices through the mini-disk - or, as the article says, any other "normal" entertainment system. (Or just mini-disk accepting ones, or can you burn to CD? Details are lacking on that regard.)
Charges $2 per song file - a bit much, but if its DRM free I could go for that.
The biggest question is of course the format. Is this a lossy format, so we're losing some quality, and when we burn it to a mini-disk it puts it in "normal" music mode (much like the iTunes store can burn AAC/MP3 files to a standard Audio CD), or some lossless format - probably the former, as the latter would require tons of storage space.
Lots of questions, but based on the statements of the article, it actually sounds fairly non-DRM friendly. Might be worth a checkout.
Gives new meaning to the term "Northern Lights".
Is that Microsoft is already being checked up on for their upcoming music service:
f t/index.html.
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2003/10/20/microso
Microsoft's idea of "choice" is a button on the side that reads "Buy Music Online". Even if you tell the system "I prefer another browser to yours", or "I prefer another media player to yours", you get sent to the "Microsoft Music Store".
No way to override that unless you manually start up a separate program to begin with. Looks like you can't just delete that little button from the OS.
Imagine the phone call when some irate customer calls Apple and says "I clicked this Buy Music Button on my computer and I can't play it with this iTunes thing! What kind of scam are you pulling!"
Ah, yes - Microsoft, that bastion of choice and freedom! (Well, as long as you choose a Microsoft solution, of course.)
The operative word was "rip files in MP3 format that work with all other MP3 players".
It was not "buy songs from the iTunes store that work with all other MP3 players".
Please recheck statements. You do have a valid complaint (yes, MP4 files bought off the iTunes store work for nothing but iTunes software and the iPod), but ripped CD's into MP3/AIFF/WAV files should work with most MP3 players that support those formats.
Don't forget - that's the point.
From what I've observed, the dot-com bubble was "we'll have content, and people will pay us advertising!"
As I've seen from the web comic market (sluggy.com, Megatokyo, Penny-Arcade, etc), the idea has changed:
We have a product, and the content is the advertising.
They make money selling books, T-shirts, posters, and the like.
Apple is using the iTunes store to sell two things: iPods, and Macintoshes.
The iTunes store probably breaks even, or perhaps even at a loss. But as long as someone says "Gee, here's this free app - I guess I can buy this $300 - $500 music device to use it, since it's so easy", Apple just made their money.
I'm curious to see what will happen if Apple can get those iPod costs down - cheaper hard drives and such. If they can get the production down to $100 an iPod, and have a range ($100 for 5 Gig, $500 for 40 Gig, etc), they will make a killing in the MP3 player market.
For now, they seem to be doing well - a 183% increase in iPod sales over last year tells us that they're doing something right.
The more I think about it, the more clever it seems.
So you can get iTunes for free. Ho-friggin-ray. And you can rip MP3's to your hearts content, so they work with *all* MP3 players.
Wait - Windows Media Player rips to WMA by default. Oh, it does MP3's, but you have to pay more to get it to work better than crap.
Ok, so what. Yeah, it's a good app.
And it lets you burn CD's - music and data, right from the playlist.
For free.
And all the other machines in the house - they can stream off that, so I just put all my MP3's on one box, put iTunes on the other computers, and stream from there.
Ok, that is kind of cool. Check out the online store. You know, I've only wanted to buy 1 song off this album. Cool - I just did. Only cost $1 - that's not too bad.
And I can burn it to a music CD, or put it on 2 more machines.
Then comes the fall. You know, I wanted to get an MP3 player anyway. For some insane reason (you had an additional $300), you get an iPod.
Don't need a Mac, and it works just fine with your Windows and iTunes.
But hold on - turns out you can use this iPod thing with digital camera and upload the pictures to the iPod, and from there to the computer. Oh, but you need a Mac for that.
You know, what do I use my computer for? Email, a few games - huh, that Aspyr company is porting over the ones I really like anyway -
Man, and this other stuff comes free with a Mac - a movie editor, a browser that blocks popup ads by default, there's less virus problems -
Hm....
Now, I don't think everybody will consider gong to the Mac just because of the iTunes store.
But having "hip 20-to-30-somethings" tell us how switching to the Mac is "the bomb" really didn't work.
So Steve Jobs is changing tactics: Go ahead, take a bite of this apple. It's free! It will just give you knowledge! Or, barring that, a pretty kick ass music player!
Next thing people know, they realize that they've been living naked under Windows for a long time, and start to make themselves aprons from leaves.
In this case, by plucking them from the Apple tree.
I'm curious to see what will happen from here. Remember: Apple doesn't need to dominate the market. It already makes a profit with its products now, and it happy to do so.
This will just give it the chance to make more profit - and maybe show people what they've been missing along the way.
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.