I'm not talking about developers, I'm talking about artists who wouldn't know the first thing about programming and are unfamiliar with the term "source code." A developer's idea of a good interface may differ greatly with the opinion of a UI designer or artist. One of the reasons why Apple has been successful with interface design is they hired lots of creative non-technical people. There plenty of "Starving artists" out there who could make great contributions to OSS but don't know anything about coding/cvs/dev lists.
I have 5 computers in my office right now with four different windowing environments: KDE, Gnome, WindowsXP, and OSX. There is really not much difference between all of them. The difference between OSX and Windows in minimal when it comes to window environment. Mac OSX is designed so that anyone who is familiar to windows can buy a Mac and not have to learn how to use a computer all over again. Some things are different, but they are essentially the same. The window movement buttons are on the other side and in a different order. There is no second mouse button, you have to command+click the object.
The fact is, any window environment must be similar to windows or users will get confused. New entrants must cater to the existing standard. Try building a new car with a different interface or maybe publish a book that reads up -> down. These items will fail. Look at the new BMW 7 series, all they did was add a dial that has extra functionality instead of a normal automatic shifter. Even though the traditional pedal acceleration and stop system remained. many buyers were completely put off by the idea.
Keeping Linux like windows is a good idea, getting rid of point and click makes no sense right now, but that doesn't mean in can't be done. With Linux people can write all types of crazy interfaces and environments, test them on a wide scale, and receive feedback. Apple and Microsoft can't afford to research 100 different window managers, but with Linux this is possible. The only problem with Linux is the developers, usually make decisions on the UI and look and feel. There needs to be a system in place where artists can make significant contributions to the DESIGN of open source software.
When half-life came out, I preordered TF2 for its "scheduled" release date of November 22 1998. I received an e-mail from EB.com 2 months later notifying me that TF2 was removed.
As someone who has listened to and taped phish over the years, this is fantastic news. Phataudio.org was orginally a jamband MP3 site way back in the day before bandwidth costs got too high and P2P came out.
Other artists should take note that all Phish did was listen to the needs of their community! The Shn format is not very popular, but amongst the taping community it is thanks to etree.org. It will be very interesting to see how this service affects their live taping policy. Phish's live taping policy is much more restrictive than most because they do not offer soundboard patches. Tapers are forced to use expensive mic and preamp rigs ($5000+) if they want to get anything close to soundboard sound. Live concert taping with microphones is part art, part science, and there are quite a few people who take it way too seriously. The other major restriction of the Phish taping policy is once they release an album of a concert, that concert cannot be distributed online. I would imagine this service will not qualify as an "album."
The next big step for this service will be the distribution of the Phish archives, Phish has recorded every concert from about 1990 on, possibly even earlier. Most of the recordings are multitrack DAT with audience mics to capture the crowd sounds. I would imagine the Grateful Dead will seek to duplicate this model if it is successful. A few years from now we might have every Grateful Dead and Phish show online, remastered SBD recordings. Today is a happy day for jamband fans. A little message to the authors of the "Phish sucks" posts, stick to Creed.
What about Public Key Crpto? Without public key crypto, E-business would be a very risky venture not to mention hundreds of other technologies that rely of public key.
Maybe if the goverment whent through with such a plan , ordinary people would start to use heavy duty encryption and offshore anonymizing proxies for web browsing. This would probably render this plan useless untill Bush & Ashcroft make encryption illegal.
When building a mac you loose a lot of the benefits of constructing your own PC: Vast array of components to choose from, low cost, and configurations you can't get from standard pc makers. You also loose one of the main benefits of choosing an Apple system, excellent support and replacement policies.
The processor costs $700! For the price of the processor alone, anyone can build a complete Athlon XP2400+ nforce2 system.
Doesnt matter what the information is, as long as the NDA states not to release it, it is covered and legally binding.
Yes, but the enforceability of NDA's was not the subject of the parent posts, it was the fact this information is insignificant so the court case is not worth the bad PR it will bring to Apple. Apple's imagine amongst its sometimes blind followers is much more important that teaching some low level contractor a lesson which will not prevent people from leaking.
Irrelivant. It doesn't matter what your competitors do with the leaked information. That makes as much difference as defending the willful violation of someone's copyright by saying that you didn't make any money doing it.
Well so any information that is not publicly known in a corporation is a trade secret? Using that mentality Apple can sue if an employee discloses whether or not Steve Jobs wears boxers or briefs.
Sonicblue has a history of trying to add cool features to unrefined products. The title is misleading since 802.11b requires an additional purchase. Last month I decided to get a PVR. Sonicblue's replay tv 5000 had some real cool features, but the interface sucked. Interface is extremly important in consumer applications such as a cell phone or PVR. I ended up getting a tivo after i learned that you can use usb ethernet adaptors with the series 2. Anyway, my point is sonicblue has a history of sticking some cool features in a completely unrefined product.
Sonicblue's DVD player will be able to connect to networks via an Ethernet connection. Consumers will be able to purchase 802.11b PC cards to connect the player to a PC using wireless networking
A secret formula, method, or device that gives one an advantage over competitors.
So how would releasing specs on a site that is dedicated to "rumors" help the competition? The action is probably a violation of the employee's contract, but a list of specs is certainly not a trade secret.
Are gateway and dell (I'm guessing they would be considered Apple competitors) going to change their strategic plans because of a list of specs given on an Apple rumor site? Probably not, I doubt that really care about Apple as a competitor, besides using their designs.
So even if Apple does win this lawsuit, I really doubt this will send a message to other employees contemplating sending specs. This along with Apple's other attempts to vehemently defend their "Trade secrets" and "trademarks" will backfire as usual. Apple should learn to use the role of underdog to boost its "nice guy" image instead of pushing legal actions that even MS wouldn't stoop to. Instead of attempting to rely on the unveiling of secret products at trade shows. Maybe they should try a different strategy?
We just did an article about the RIAA's mendacity with statistics
IANAET (I am not an English teacher) but I believe the use of mendacity is incorrect. You should either drop the "'s" from RIAA so it reads "RIAA mendacity" or you could use the form "the mendacity of the RIAA." A better idea would be to use a more common word, since the goal of communication is to get your point across, not impress people with uncommon words. If you can't use a "fancy word" correctly, drop it.
EA dominates the sports game market. The best thing about successful sports games is that consumers want to purchase the latest release every year in order to get the latest stats. Nobody complains about having to buy a new version of madden every year, I'm sure M$ is jealous. So every year EA tweaks the previous release, updates the graphics, and puts in the new rosters. So its not like they have to do a complete rewrite for the next version of madden.
Another aspect of sports games is that they are very capital intensive due to licensing and the amount of statistical data. This prevents any small upstart from coming out with a noteworthy competitor.
Loyalty amongst sports game fans is another factor, people who have played madden for the last 10 years are not going to switch to NFL2K3. EA has made the wise decision to release their sports games for just about every platform. One other plus for the sports game genre is that it appeals to the growing market of older gamers.
To avoid any misinformation, Chris Roberts was the mind behind Wing Commander, not Lord British. The wing commander series was way ahead of its time. I remember begging my parents back in 1990 for an 8 meg upgrade for my Compaq 286 in order to get enough "expanded memory" to play wing commander. It was really the event that got me interested in the nuts and bolts of computers. Back then you had to play around with config.sys and autoexec.bat files in order to play memory intensive dos games. BTW, that 8 meg upgrade cost $700.
This is true! My goofy neighbor bought Quake III for Linux at the dollar store only to discover that the game did not run on windows. When he asked me why laptop looked all funny, I said it ran Linux. Subsequently, he gave me the game, but he lost the tin. I was amazed that any retail outlet carried Linux games, let alone the dollar store.
"Rocket" Rick Belluzzo is also the man responsible for SGI's disastrous attempt to drop IRIX and MIPS in favour of x86 workstations running Windows NT. He also dropped the uber-groovy SGI cube logo for the lame "sgi". His "reward" for almost destroying a competitor was a cushy job at Microsoft.
The dynamics of the corporate structure is such that one person cannot make major decisions without concensus or at least approval of the board of directors. One man can not bring down a company or make a decision without the approval of and participation of others.
That is only 4 years away! Why would anyone want to pay at least $200 + $250 subscription for a total of $450 on something that the NTSC tuner can't be replaced in??
Well as someone who just bought one of these outdated Tivo Series 2, I went ahead and purchased the lifetime subscription. All you need to do is go over to Ebay and search for "tivo lifetime." You will see a bunch of series 1 tivos going for $300 to $500. So a couple of years from now, selling my tivo for $300 seems like a good deal to me. Plus, I usually don't keep hardware for more than a 2 years with the exception of my TV. I don't think anyone is worried about HDTV considering 1/2 of the United States was suppose to have it by now, yet I don't get any HDTV feeds unless I get directv which my landlord will not allow. Even then, its only a few channels.
I've donated money to the EFF in the past and a few other electronic charities, but I've never considered donating to the FSF. Does the FSF support projects that refuse to call their project GNU/Projectname? I guess what I'm trying to say, is giving money to FSF an endorsement of Stallman's views? Does the FSF give money to KDE or other programs that are in competition with FSF projects? The irony of the matter is that I would have donated to the FSF long ago if it wasn't for Stallman's extremism, but I guess the FSF wouldn't exist without Stallman's original vision.
Well 10 years ago having anything but Apple in academia was frowned upon. Apple lost its educational stronghold partly due to windows advances, but mismanagement was probably more to blame. Anyhow, I don't see how this is news no matter what the platform, with the exception of Linux.
Would this be newsworthy if it wasn't an iBook? It seems that/. has joined Wired in the practice of publishing articles that are not newsworthy as long as Macs are involved. Would this be news if they were giving away Dell's? If they were giving away free M$ software this would be a warning article but since it is Apple, the university can push Apple's platform by giving away free hardware and software without the tiniest bit of dissent on/.. If MS made a laptop and this university gave away MS laptops preloaded with windowsXP, people would be screaming that the world is going to end.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not talking about developers, I'm talking about artists who wouldn't know the first thing about programming and are unfamiliar with the term "source code." A developer's idea of a good interface may differ greatly with the opinion of a UI designer or artist. One of the reasons why Apple has been successful with interface design is they hired lots of creative non-technical people. There plenty of "Starving artists" out there who could make great contributions to OSS but don't know anything about coding/cvs/dev lists.
The fact is, any window environment must be similar to windows or users will get confused. New entrants must cater to the existing standard. Try building a new car with a different interface or maybe publish a book that reads up -> down. These items will fail. Look at the new BMW 7 series, all they did was add a dial that has extra functionality instead of a normal automatic shifter. Even though the traditional pedal acceleration and stop system remained. many buyers were completely put off by the idea.
Keeping Linux like windows is a good idea, getting rid of point and click makes no sense right now, but that doesn't mean in can't be done. With Linux people can write all types of crazy interfaces and environments, test them on a wide scale, and receive feedback. Apple and Microsoft can't afford to research 100 different window managers, but with Linux this is possible. The only problem with Linux is the developers, usually make decisions on the UI and look and feel. There needs to be a system in place where artists can make significant contributions to the DESIGN of open source software.
When half-life came out, I preordered TF2 for its "scheduled" release date of November 22 1998. I received an e-mail from EB.com 2 months later notifying me that TF2 was removed.
FYI: Page plays the keyboards. Paul runs the board and records the shows.
Other artists should take note that all Phish did was listen to the needs of their community! The Shn format is not very popular, but amongst the taping community it is thanks to etree.org. It will be very interesting to see how this service affects their live taping policy. Phish's live taping policy is much more restrictive than most because they do not offer soundboard patches. Tapers are forced to use expensive mic and preamp rigs ($5000+) if they want to get anything close to soundboard sound. Live concert taping with microphones is part art, part science, and there are quite a few people who take it way too seriously. The other major restriction of the Phish taping policy is once they release an album of a concert, that concert cannot be distributed online. I would imagine this service will not qualify as an "album."
The next big step for this service will be the distribution of the Phish archives, Phish has recorded every concert from about 1990 on, possibly even earlier. Most of the recordings are multitrack DAT with audience mics to capture the crowd sounds. I would imagine the Grateful Dead will seek to duplicate this model if it is successful. A few years from now we might have every Grateful Dead and Phish show online, remastered SBD recordings. Today is a happy day for jamband fans. A little message to the authors of the "Phish sucks" posts, stick to Creed.
What about Public Key Crpto? Without public key crypto, E-business would be a very risky venture not to mention hundreds of other technologies that rely of public key.
Maybe if the goverment whent through with such a plan , ordinary people would start to use heavy duty encryption and offshore anonymizing proxies for web browsing. This would probably render this plan useless untill Bush & Ashcroft make encryption illegal.
The processor costs $700! For the price of the processor alone, anyone can build a complete Athlon XP2400+ nforce2 system.
Yes, but the enforceability of NDA's was not the subject of the parent posts, it was the fact this information is insignificant so the court case is not worth the bad PR it will bring to Apple. Apple's imagine amongst its sometimes blind followers is much more important that teaching some low level contractor a lesson which will not prevent people from leaking.
Amazon has just patented the "folder!"
Well so any information that is not publicly known in a corporation is a trade secret? Using that mentality Apple can sue if an employee discloses whether or not Steve Jobs wears boxers or briefs.
Sonicblue has a history of trying to add cool features to unrefined products. The title is misleading since 802.11b requires an additional purchase. Last month I decided to get a PVR. Sonicblue's replay tv 5000 had some real cool features, but the interface sucked. Interface is extremly important in consumer applications such as a cell phone or PVR. I ended up getting a tivo after i learned that you can use usb ethernet adaptors with the series 2. Anyway, my point is sonicblue has a history of sticking some cool features in a completely unrefined product.
Sonicblue's DVD player will be able to connect to networks via an Ethernet connection. Consumers will be able to purchase 802.11b PC cards to connect the player to a PC using wireless networking
A secret formula, method, or device that gives one an advantage over competitors.
So how would releasing specs on a site that is dedicated to "rumors" help the competition? The action is probably a violation of the employee's contract, but a list of specs is certainly not a trade secret.
Are gateway and dell (I'm guessing they would be considered Apple competitors) going to change their strategic plans because of a list of specs given on an Apple rumor site? Probably not, I doubt that really care about Apple as a competitor, besides using their designs.
So even if Apple does win this lawsuit, I really doubt this will send a message to other employees contemplating sending specs. This along with Apple's other attempts to vehemently defend their "Trade secrets" and "trademarks" will backfire as usual. Apple should learn to use the role of underdog to boost its "nice guy" image instead of pushing legal actions that even MS wouldn't stoop to. Instead of attempting to rely on the unveiling of secret products at trade shows. Maybe they should try a different strategy?
Since when is quicktime non-proprietary?
IANAET (I am not an English teacher) but I believe the use of mendacity is incorrect. You should either drop the "'s" from RIAA so it reads "RIAA mendacity" or you could use the form "the mendacity of the RIAA." A better idea would be to use a more common word, since the goal of communication is to get your point across, not impress people with uncommon words. If you can't use a "fancy word" correctly, drop it.
Another aspect of sports games is that they are very capital intensive due to licensing and the amount of statistical data. This prevents any small upstart from coming out with a noteworthy competitor.
Loyalty amongst sports game fans is another factor, people who have played madden for the last 10 years are not going to switch to NFL2K3. EA has made the wise decision to release their sports games for just about every platform. One other plus for the sports game genre is that it appeals to the growing market of older gamers.
To avoid any misinformation, Chris Roberts was the mind behind Wing Commander, not Lord British. The wing commander series was way ahead of its time. I remember begging my parents back in 1990 for an 8 meg upgrade for my Compaq 286 in order to get enough "expanded memory" to play wing commander. It was really the event that got me interested in the nuts and bolts of computers. Back then you had to play around with config.sys and autoexec.bat files in order to play memory intensive dos games. BTW, that 8 meg upgrade cost $700.
This is true! My goofy neighbor bought Quake III for Linux at the dollar store only to discover that the game did not run on windows. When he asked me why laptop looked all funny, I said it ran Linux. Subsequently, he gave me the game, but he lost the tin. I was amazed that any retail outlet carried Linux games, let alone the dollar store.
The dynamics of the corporate structure is such that one person cannot make major decisions without concensus or at least approval of the board of directors. One man can not bring down a company or make a decision without the approval of and participation of others.
Well as someone who just bought one of these outdated Tivo Series 2, I went ahead and purchased the lifetime subscription. All you need to do is go over to Ebay and search for "tivo lifetime." You will see a bunch of series 1 tivos going for $300 to $500. So a couple of years from now, selling my tivo for $300 seems like a good deal to me. Plus, I usually don't keep hardware for more than a 2 years with the exception of my TV. I don't think anyone is worried about HDTV considering 1/2 of the United States was suppose to have it by now, yet I don't get any HDTV feeds unless I get directv which my landlord will not allow. Even then, its only a few channels.
Bannerblind has kept me banner free with no problems for a few months now.
I've donated money to the EFF in the past and a few other electronic charities, but I've never considered donating to the FSF. Does the FSF support projects that refuse to call their project GNU/Projectname? I guess what I'm trying to say, is giving money to FSF an endorsement of Stallman's views? Does the FSF give money to KDE or other programs that are in competition with FSF projects? The irony of the matter is that I would have donated to the FSF long ago if it wasn't for Stallman's extremism, but I guess the FSF wouldn't exist without Stallman's original vision.
Well 10 years ago having anything but Apple in academia was frowned upon. Apple lost its educational stronghold partly due to windows advances, but mismanagement was probably more to blame. Anyhow, I don't see how this is news no matter what the platform, with the exception of Linux.
Would this be newsworthy if it wasn't an iBook? It seems that /. has joined Wired in the practice of publishing articles that are not newsworthy as long as Macs are involved. Would this be news if they were giving away Dell's? If they were giving away free M$ software this would be a warning article but since it is Apple, the university can push Apple's platform by giving away free hardware and software without the tiniest bit of dissent on /.. If MS made a laptop and this university gave away MS laptops preloaded with windowsXP, people would be screaming that the world is going to end.