still view Linux as a strong desktop OS, but hate having to fight to get the latest software, hardware, or other common computer accessories working without a call to your other Linux buddies, you should get a kick out of this article.
OK, it might not make you switch, but note that this guy admits to using OS X for only 3 years or so, and he's gained quite an understanding of it.
Maybe you should try Linux again, has it been 3 years? I've had very few problems with the latest hardware and software. Now I do have an ibook laying around, its a nice machine and fink+osx is powerful, but I have yet to see a good reason to switch to OSX from Linux. Yes the gui is prettier and there are more solid desktop apps but strangly enough, I actually prefer XFCE 4 to more fully featured desktop enviroments.
Until the feds start looking at regulating or bringing some form of legal action against Microsoft. It seems that once the anti-trust heat died down, MS went back to the same monopolizing practices that got them in trouble in the first place, well really they didn't even stop during the trial. Granted they have a right to license FAT technology but why now?
Because they can!
When the original case was brought against MS, the were still very much a software company but looking at them now, Microsoft has become a conglomerate of sorts focusing on software, intellectual property, hardware, gaming, entertainment, internet service, and consulting. If Microsoft has their way, WMA will be the standard music format (every service besides apple) and their video codecs will be used for movies in and out of the theater.
So how long will it be till the justice department takes some real action? I'm assuming not in this administration, which has pandered to corporations more than any presidential administration in modern history. Bush has created a climate where anything goes for big business.
I would rather see AAC with proprietary DRM rather than all these music services using WMA with MS's DRM scheme. Really, any DRM scheme is not going to be an acceptable for a viable music service in the long run, unless it allows for seemless format shifting which totally kills the need for DRM in the first place. Granted for most CASUAL music listeners something like the ITMS DRM scheme is acceptable, but for people who buy a lot of music and care about sound quality none of the major services out there cater to audiophiles.
Now most people will start clammering about how the majority of music buyers can listen to 128kpbs aac, mp3, etc, but the people who spend a lot of money on stereo stuff are also the same people who buy the most music. The only pay music site I've seen that caters to audiophiles is livephish.com which offers NON DRMED audio downloads available as a low bitrate mp3 or for audiophile's lossless flac at a higher price. For a music service to truly reach all potential customers it needs to provide multiple quality levels for consumers with different needs.
Have you even used the karma? I've owned one for 3 weeks now, you can read my review here on/.. Yes, the initial firmware release was buggy, but with latest firmware, I've had no problems. I also remember that 2 years ago when I bought a 5GB ipod, the firmware was just as if not more problematic.
Bugs! Too many inconveniences made it feel like it was rushed to market without sufficient QA.
Although you may have had a bad experience or you may just be trolling, I've not had any of the experiences you've had so far after 2 weeks of heavy use.
The management software (a java version is available to run on any platform) is crappy
The windows software seems to be refreshing to me because it doesn't take a swiss army approach, instead it focuses on sync and organization. The nice thing about rio management software is the ability to have multiple sources without any bs. The java version works but it is certainly not full featured by any means and is not designed to be, remember they don't even advertise non-windows capabilities.
Nothing esepcially useful about ethernet connectivity
The whole point of the Ethernet sync is to be able to have your player hooked up to the dock in your home theater area and being able to sync it from a computer located somewhere else.
like a web server, ftp server, or smb.
I can transfer music or non-music files to my Karma from anywhere, why the fuck would I need ftp or smb?
The physical controls on the device suck.
I've found them to rival the ipod, I've owned both generations of Apple's player, they may not be to your liking but they certainly don't "suck."
It's also a little heavy. Ipod rules this comparison.
The rio karma actually weighs less.
So, I just got an ipod instead. Same price and features
The 20GB karma cost $100 less than the 20GB ipod and has support for OGG, FLAC, WMA, along with ethernet sync, and better accessories.
I set up a mirror since the last time/. linked to my site it died within 10mins due to my host provider putting a ridiculous amount of sites on one ancient sparc machine.
You will download lossless legal live music from Furthernet, which is a completely legal P2P network where users share performances from bands who allow taping.
I realize Wired has always run a fine line between journalism and fiction in the past, but in recent yeas the magazine has gotten so bad that I'm seriously thinking of not renewing my subscription. Also, I enjoy seeing the mac covered, which many other publications ignore, but Wired has gone insane with the mac-centric stories. Sorry but just because Apple is somehow involved does not make a story newsworthy.
...the letter to the Apache Software Foundation was never intended to be made public and said the conflict has been blown out of proportion."
If you don't want to make a letter public, don't send it from lawyer. Generally, most people would consider a letter from a law firm concerning ip violations or any topic to be a threat. Now if Jboss had a dev trying to resolve this matter directly, it probably wouldn't have been a blip on the radar.
With Redhat changing their EOL, business model, and offerings every 6 months, I have no interest in purchasing redhat products. I have a long rant about Redhat on my journal. I just setup a new server yesterday using a netinstall CD from debian and because Penn State has their own debian mirror, the install took less than 30 mins. The dual 3ghz xeon and debian's new beta installer helped speed things up too. If I need to get pay support for debian its available. I use to avoid debian because of the elitist culture and the distro's political association with the whole GNU/ controversy but Redhat is no longer a viable option as an inexpensive server os.
Who likes buying a DVD and having a movie that is exactly the same as it when first shown in a theatre? While extra scenes and goodies are fun, there is generally a good reason why scenes end up on the the cutting room floor. LOR has gone way overboard trying maximize revenue by marketing an insane amount of releases to their overloyal fans, but people here seem to eat it up.
For something more useful and gasp educational than providing a crappy streaming music service. Like for instance ssl/pop or maybe ubiquitous campus wifi.
It's a shame PSU couldn't figure out way to work with the cross-platform iTunes Music store.
Working with mac and windows is certianly not cross platform. I've never understood why itms needs to be platform dependant at all desides a play to play DRMED AAC files. You essentially browsing a web site .
So much for Apple being a socially responsible corporation, instead Apple has decided to partner with one the most irresponsible corporations known to man.
This is a great match, especially if Novell is looking to take on Redhat in the enterprise market why continuing Suse's traditional of having a great desktop distro. If Novell really spends a lot of $$ on this project and brands a distro as Novel Linux or Suse Linux by Novel, it be a lot easier to convince "the suits" to move to Linux when you have a company like Novell producing its own distro. As mentioned in other comments it will be interesting to see how the Suse/Ximian combination plays out since it is essentially KDE/Gnome.
.
Maybe I just starting to get old, but NPR is a good way to stay abreast of the latest news during my daily commute and provides some sanity, compared to TV news stations like FoxNews. As for commercial radio, besides to occasional classic rock channel, I've found that local college radio has the best offerings.
From all I've read, Apple makes very little from the selling of songs
If you consider all the promotion expenses, Apple has probably lost a lot of money when looking at the music service alone, but the ipod is a cash cow with a fat margin that makes up for ITMS. I'm sure way apple is looking at the ITMS in the short term is a way to sell ipods, in the long term it could be a hit, but the online music distribution industry is real young and inundated with failures.
Its really quite simple, developers tend to not understand basic principles of marketing, or in many cases understand that their names are obfuscated but want to keep with tradition of using obscure "geeky" project titles and acronyms. The best example is GNU, which hardly anyone can pronounce the first time anyway but then Stallman's insistence on using GNU/Linux. How many consumer products do you know with a / in their name? There is reason for tha to you know:) How many consumer products do you know of that use strage/recursive acronyms?
Now many people will argue that if you code an OSS project you can name it whatever the fuck you want. This is very true and it suits me just fine but developers should start to consider their potential user base before naming a good software product with a title that most people can't understand or at least partially derive from product name what it does. Here is just a small list of products with bad names:
OGG, OGG Vorbis, or whatever you want to call it
MP3 (is this video?)
GNOME
Kanyhting
GNU/Linux
Here are some names that are good or partially good:
Slashdot Mirror
OK, it might not make you switch, but note that this guy admits to using OS X for only 3 years or so, and he's gained quite an understanding of it.
Maybe you should try Linux again, has it been 3 years? I've had very few problems with the latest hardware and software. Now I do have an ibook laying around, its a nice machine and fink+osx is powerful, but I have yet to see a good reason to switch to OSX from Linux. Yes the gui is prettier and there are more solid desktop apps but strangly enough, I actually prefer XFCE 4 to more fully featured desktop enviroments.
Because they can!
When the original case was brought against MS, the were still very much a software company but looking at them now, Microsoft has become a conglomerate of sorts focusing on software, intellectual property, hardware, gaming, entertainment, internet service, and consulting. If Microsoft has their way, WMA will be the standard music format (every service besides apple) and their video codecs will be used for movies in and out of the theater.
So how long will it be till the justice department takes some real action? I'm assuming not in this administration, which has pandered to corporations more than any presidential administration in modern history. Bush has created a climate where anything goes for big business.
Now most people will start clammering about how the majority of music buyers can listen to 128kpbs aac, mp3, etc, but the people who spend a lot of money on stereo stuff are also the same people who buy the most music. The only pay music site I've seen that caters to audiophiles is livephish.com which offers NON DRMED audio downloads available as a low bitrate mp3 or for audiophile's lossless flac at a higher price. For a music service to truly reach all potential customers it needs to provide multiple quality levels for consumers with different needs.
Have you even used the karma? I've owned one for 3 weeks now, you can read my review here on /.. Yes, the initial firmware release was buggy, but with latest firmware, I've had no problems. I also remember that 2 years ago when I bought a 5GB ipod, the firmware was just as if not more problematic.
Although you may have had a bad experience or you may just be trolling, I've not had any of the experiences you've had so far after 2 weeks of heavy use. The management software (a java version is available to run on any platform) is crappy
The windows software seems to be refreshing to me because it doesn't take a swiss army approach, instead it focuses on sync and organization. The nice thing about rio management software is the ability to have multiple sources without any bs. The java version works but it is certainly not full featured by any means and is not designed to be, remember they don't even advertise non-windows capabilities.
Nothing esepcially useful about ethernet connectivity The whole point of the Ethernet sync is to be able to have your player hooked up to the dock in your home theater area and being able to sync it from a computer located somewhere else.
like a web server, ftp server, or smb.
I can transfer music or non-music files to my Karma from anywhere, why the fuck would I need ftp or smb?
The physical controls on the device suck. I've found them to rival the ipod, I've owned both generations of Apple's player, they may not be to your liking but they certainly don't "suck."
It's also a little heavy. Ipod rules this comparison.
The rio karma actually weighs less.
So, I just got an ipod instead. Same price and features
The 20GB karma cost $100 less than the 20GB ipod and has support for OGG, FLAC, WMA, along with ethernet sync, and better accessories.
I set up a mirror since the last time /. linked to my site it died within 10mins due to my host provider putting a ridiculous amount of sites on one ancient sparc machine.
nvidia drivers aready work with 2.6.
It works with windows 98, you just need to download the latest sun Java runtime enviroment at java.sun.com.
You will download lossless legal live music from Furthernet, which is a completely legal P2P network where users share performances from bands who allow taping.
I realize Wired has always run a fine line between journalism and fiction in the past, but in recent yeas the magazine has gotten so bad that I'm seriously thinking of not renewing my subscription. Also, I enjoy seeing the mac covered, which many other publications ignore, but Wired has gone insane with the mac-centric stories. Sorry but just because Apple is somehow involved does not make a story newsworthy.
If you don't want to make a letter public, don't send it from lawyer. Generally, most people would consider a letter from a law firm concerning ip violations or any topic to be a threat. Now if Jboss had a dev trying to resolve this matter directly, it probably wouldn't have been a blip on the radar.
With Redhat changing their EOL, business model, and offerings every 6 months, I have no interest in purchasing redhat products. I have a long rant about Redhat on my journal. I just setup a new server yesterday using a netinstall CD from debian and because Penn State has their own debian mirror, the install took less than 30 mins. The dual 3ghz xeon and debian's new beta installer helped speed things up too. If I need to get pay support for debian its available. I use to avoid debian because of the elitist culture and the distro's political association with the whole GNU/ controversy but Redhat is no longer a viable option as an inexpensive server os.
Who likes buying a DVD and having a movie that is exactly the same as it when first shown in a theatre? While extra scenes and goodies are fun, there is generally a good reason why scenes end up on the the cutting room floor. LOR has gone way overboard trying maximize revenue by marketing an insane amount of releases to their overloyal fans, but people here seem to eat it up.
For something more useful and gasp educational than providing a crappy streaming music service. Like for instance ssl/pop or maybe ubiquitous campus wifi.
Working with mac and windows is certianly not cross platform. I've never understood why itms needs to be platform dependant at all desides a play to play DRMED AAC files. You essentially browsing a web site .
I've seen wireless headsets all over the place. Toyota even has a Bluetooth enabled prius.
So much for Apple being a socially responsible corporation, instead Apple has decided to partner with one the most irresponsible corporations known to man.
This is a great match, especially if Novell is looking to take on Redhat in the enterprise market why continuing Suse's traditional of having a great desktop distro. If Novell really spends a lot of $$ on this project and brands a distro as Novel Linux or Suse Linux by Novel, it be a lot easier to convince "the suits" to move to Linux when you have a company like Novell producing its own distro. As mentioned in other comments it will be interesting to see how the Suse/Ximian combination plays out since it is essentially KDE/Gnome. .
Maybe I just starting to get old, but NPR is a good way to stay abreast of the latest news during my daily commute and provides some sanity, compared to TV news stations like FoxNews. As for commercial radio, besides to occasional classic rock channel, I've found that local college radio has the best offerings.
If you consider all the promotion expenses, Apple has probably lost a lot of money when looking at the music service alone, but the ipod is a cash cow with a fat margin that makes up for ITMS. I'm sure way apple is looking at the ITMS in the short term is a way to sell ipods, in the long term it could be a hit, but the online music distribution industry is real young and inundated with failures.
Now saying that Apple invented the gift certificate and the GUI?
Like any self respecting dealer would ship product through the USPS.
/. is the last place to seek advice about branding.
Now many people will argue that if you code an OSS project you can name it whatever the fuck you want. This is very true and it suits me just fine but developers should start to consider their potential user base before naming a good software product with a title that most people can't understand or at least partially derive from product name what it does. Here is just a small list of products with bad names:
Here are some names that are good or partially good: