Does anyone truly believe
that talking to a PC or a PDA is the panacea that
the hype tells us it is going to be?
Did you read the article? They're using speech for some specific instances. Was there some line that I missed in there that said, "Screw this stylus and display crap, let's just sell a big fat Mr. Microphone with a Dragonball processor in it!"? Can you point me to any article saying that voice recognition is a panacea?
Your problem seems to come from the fact that you couldn't do everything with your voice recognition system, so you got mad and tossed away the things that you said you did like about it. Well, I know that you know the world's not just black and white, and just because it's not good for everything doesn't automatically mean it's not good for anything.
People who think that a PDA
needs speech do not understand PDAs.
Well, I think I own enough PDAs to understand them, and I can definitely see a use for it. A couple of mine allow for recording dictation anyway, so it would be nice for it to be modified so that I could just tell it a name and a phone number and have it automatically put it in an addressbook instead of having to whip out the stylus, go to the addressbook app, etc. Sure, I might have to go back later and change the occasional name spelling, but any half-assed system should be able get all the digits correct.
Don't take the title of this post too seriously, I just like it, but I'm just trying to throw some other ideas out there rather than to flame you.
You'll just have to excuse those of us who would rather enjoy life (in this case, in the form of being able to conveniently view DVDs on our computers) than turn everything into some exhausting holy war. Like I said, I'll continue happily using my WinDVD 2000 player, and you can have fun with your little decss thingy.
Don't let me dissuade you from your war, though, you brave little soldier, you. If you ever win, I'll reap any benefits, too — but in the meantime, I'd rather watch my new Fight Club DVD.:)
Here we have a company trying to make $$$ off open source and Linux without giving anything back.
No, you don't. What money do you think they made from open source and Linux?
This is going to sound vindictive, but is there anything LEGAL we can do to hurt Intervideo, teach them a little lesson maybe?
That's because it is vindictive, not to mention without basis and just plain stupid. Did you ever consider that maybe they pulled the project because they don't want any business from zealots like you?
Of course, maybe they just didn't have the skills to make the player, and are too embarrassed to admit it.
Of course, I use their WinDVD 2000 player v2.2, and works great. Have fun with your little decss thingy, though.
The things you listed deal with ratings and popularity (where Microsoft also does well, but isn't what we're talking about), not respect and admiration. Try to keep up with the conversation, okay?
Ummm, you do realize that Microsoft is consistently named as one most respected and admired companies in the world, usually in the top 5, don't you? I mean, unless you work for General Electric, which beats Microsoft in a lot of those polls, you don't have too much room to talk. At least you're correct about the cash flow part. (On the other hand, if your post was a parody of Slashdot, and you were intentionally pretending to be lacking in the brains department, then Bravo!, and my apologies.)
The point is that a whole hell of a lot of people do care what he thinks, and that he's built up some serious credibility over the years from his contributions. Serious question here, not a flame, but why should anyone care what you think about it, compared to any other Joe Blow who hasn't contributed anything to the internet?
I agree with just about everything you said, I just want to put out a caution over the success of King's business model. I don't think that any conclusions can be drawn from the example.
It's Stephen King. We're talking about probably the most widely-read author since those guys penned the Old Testament. Because of the sheer number of people who read his books, if a small percentage of readers send in the money, he's still going to rake it in. It's incredibly more difficult for a smaller author to take the risk.
It's Stephen King. He's got tons of people who have been loyal readers for years and will happily plunk down money for his books without even knowing what they're about beforehand. It's a great position to be in, but it's not that common — for a debut author, it's going to be very hard (just as it is for dead-tree publishing, but the difference is that King's model doesn't account for a free library system where people can take a chance and check out a book for free).
I believe his rate for people paying for the downloads is around 80% (correct me if I'm wrong). That means one out of every five people isn't paying, which doesn't seem so hot to me. Plus, that number only accounts for the people who download the chapters from his site — the percentage would be even lower when you account for people who are getting the chapters elsewhere (this web page, for example).
King's book is entering into a very young eBook market. There really aren't all that many current books available to download, especially in comparison to all the music available for download. Right now, it's no big deal to pay a buck or three for the books that sound interesting, because there really aren't that many, so it's no big chunk out of your wallet. Look at one possible future a couple of years down the road when just about all books are available in an eBook (or PDF, or whatever) format. Now there are about 30 books that Joe Schmoe would love to check out, but that'll be a pretty pricey. Will he still play by the honor system and fork over the cash for all of them, or does he start to rationalize to himself that it's no big deal and that information wants to be free?
Again, I liked what you wrote, just wanted to point out that it's pretty hard to judge anything about the market from King's sales. I remember everyone in the eBook biz going ga-ga over how many people downloaded his short story a while back, but I didn't see what the big deal was. Show me an author doing respectable eBook sales (and revenue) who isn't Stephen King or Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, and then we'll talk.
P.S. Full disclosure: I bought that short story he sold on the internet a while back, the first installment of The Plant, and I plan on buying the second installment (I just downloaded it today, and I'll be paying later whether I like it or not — i was actually surprised at how much I liked the first installment).
P.P.S. If you go read the first installment of The Plant from the link I mentioned above, please do the right thing and go pay for it at www.stephenking.com.
I hear that argument so many times, that people don't want to steal the music, but it's too risky spending their money on an entire album that they haven't heard for the most part because the other songs might suck.
Let's say that the record companies make available all the songs on their albums, but at a low bitrate, like 96 Kbps. Not something you'd want to listen to very often on your stereo, but certainly of sufficient quality that you can tell whether or not you like the songs.
Now, and I'd like your complete honesty here:
How many people do you think would stop trading MP3s from CDs that they don't own. I think definitely fewer than 5% would stop the "illegal" trades, and it would probably be fewer than 1%. Agree, disagree?
Why should something have to be paid for multiple times when it was only produced once? Because it allows the costs to be shared among the people who are interested in it. That's why lots of people can see a movie for under 10 bucks instead of having to individually pay the millions of dollars that it cost to create it. Which specific items are you referring to when you say that they cost nothing to create? Time is money, after all.
Congrats to Petreley for his article, btw, it's probably the best article he's ever written and is what a lot of us have been saying for a long time: While there are a handful of principled people defending the likes of Napster, it's mostly people just wanting free stuff.
And nope, that's not my quote in the subject, I saw some other Slashdot poster using it for his sig. I'd credit him for it if I could, but I don't know who it was (whoops, IP violation?;-) ), but wanted to throw it out there because it's a great line.
That's the way I used to see it, that he was using self-promotion to spread his ideas, but I don't hold that belief anymore. I can't pinpoint a specific incident that changed things in my mind, but it was around the time when he first started doing some major grousing whenever people wouldn't refer to Linux as "GNU/Linux."The way it seems to me now is that he still wants to spread the idea of the FSF and GNU, but his reason behind it is because he's the public face of those entities — what journalist off the top of his or her head could name even one other person in the GNU Project or the FSF? Publicity for the FSF/GNU is publicity for RMS, and he's a bright enough guy to be very aware of that.
I'm not quite sure how you can say that he's never been about self-promotion. To me, his whole GNU/Linux crusade has been about himself. And I'm sorry, but I see no reason to give someone style points just for being consistent, when it's clear to a lot of people (not all, but many) that he's being an ass. ("Yeah, but he's consistently an ass!" ?) As a much better writer than me said:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Heh, you gotta forgive me, I just couldn't pass that up. I checked out my Wrox PHP book today, too, and can't argue with you too much — Jesus looks like he gets hammered every weekend, and the other dudes look like they've never even seen the sun.
I do like the pics on the front — it's different, and makes me relate to the guy (I can't remember any of their books with women on the cover) whose words you're reading, except for the dreaded Wrox books that have like 20 guys on the cover. It'd be cool if people referred to the Wrox books the same way they do with some O'Reilly books, like the Camel Book: You could have, say, the Buck-Toothed Book, the Bad Goatee Book, or the Intimidating Unibrow book.:)
The New Riders covers are kinda nice and subtle, too — the cover art I'm not all that fond of is Manning's series, with the people in unflattering period costumes that look like they were drawn in crayon. Not sure what's up with that...
Just a tip for people who frequently travel. [...]
Duly noted, but most people here rarely make it out of the basements in their parents' house, much less get on airplanes. Good tip, though, and yes I'm being serious — thanks!
How will they ever survive the loss of such an important person as you? Even if you don't like them, please reconsider: They've got families, too, and if Amazon folds — how can they not, after hearing that you are no longer a customer — they'll be kicked out onto the streets. Such a cruel, uncaring world...
Soon, if not already, Guido's planning to start work on Python 3000, which is going to be a complete rewrite of Python, which won't be backwards compatible with the 1.x series. Well, at least this is what the plan was according to a roadmap at python.org which I can no longer find, so I don't know if this is still the plan or when it's supposed to be released.
Then again, they might be reworking the name, because when I did a search for "Python 3000", it turns out that it's also the name of an auto security system from some Ohio outfit named "Auto Preservers.";)
Actually, as far as resources go, I've heard a few nasty tales lately about BeOpen's (PythonLabs's parent) financial and executive problems. I hope it's nothing that will affect Guido and the team, or that if it is, maybe ActiveState can step in and help, as I've always been impressed by their work. (Not that I'm rooting for ActiveState over BeOpen -- I'm happy with anyone that can give the Python team a good home.)
Just to clear up a couple of things from your otherwise good post, the unicode support and the new regular expression parser are already in 1.6. (And yeah, I like the new list comprehensions for 2.0, too.:) )
It does mean that there are apparently a few Slashdotters left willing to whistle by the graveyard and insist that all is right with this sinking ship. How quaint.:)
Sorry to all the fanboys, but your little golden boy Linus has officially been tarnished. Time to give up on this dog of a processor (everyone knows that you would have long ago if not for a certain kernel hacker working there) and beg Linus to come back to working on Linux full-time. Anyone who remembers all the tough talk back in January that the 2.4 kernel would be released before Win2K just might be wondering if Linus's moonlighting has anything to do with the fact that 2.4 still isn't here yet. Tick, tock...
Wow, didn't realize dissenting opinions got you so riled up. I can just about feel you drooling for killfiles to silence anyone who disagrees with you. Afraid to hear some truth and have your little world come crashing down around you? God DAMN, what a stupid sheep you are — good for laughs, though!:)
FWIW, it was the USFL suing the NFL, and the jury only awarded the USFL $1. It ended up being $3 because antitrust penalties are trebled, not because of multiple counts. Just clearing things up...
Yeah, I know who wrote what, that's why I said it'll just be blamed on the submitter, because it wasn't a Slashdot person who actually said it. The thing is, though, that Slashdot 1) sometimes edits the submissions, and 2) doesn't automatically post the submission of someone just because he was the first to submit it. In other words, Slashdot didn't need to reprint the original's submitter's lie — they just chose to. That's what I'm talking about.
It's called telling lies to try to disparage Microsoft. Welcome to Slashdot.
Ya know, since Slashdot is so fond of propagandizing to its readers that Microsoft is evil, why do they have such a hard time letting the truth speak for itself? (Of course, it'll just be blamed on the article submitter, but nobody's fooled.)
4. Are there any other programs that can use document Web bugs?
Yes. The Privacy Foundation has found examples of this image linking ability in Microsoft's Office Suite, such as in PowerPoint 2000 and Excel 2000. They have also been detected in Sun Microsystems' Star Office.
Slashdot Mirror
This is simply wrong, though a very common misconception by people who read about (but don't necessarily understand) quantum physics.
"[...] I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics," — Richard Feynman.
Cheers,
Ah yes - beat them in the courtroom, not the marketplace.
Gee Hemos, you guys don't seem to mind when it involves Microsoft. Thanks for shining a big ol' spotlight on that hypocrisy, though.
Cheers,
Does anyone truly believe that talking to a PC or a PDA is the panacea that the hype tells us it is going to be?
Did you read the article? They're using speech for some specific instances. Was there some line that I missed in there that said, "Screw this stylus and display crap, let's just sell a big fat Mr. Microphone with a Dragonball processor in it!"? Can you point me to any article saying that voice recognition is a panacea?
Your problem seems to come from the fact that you couldn't do everything with your voice recognition system, so you got mad and tossed away the things that you said you did like about it. Well, I know that you know the world's not just black and white, and just because it's not good for everything doesn't automatically mean it's not good for anything.
People who think that a PDA needs speech do not understand PDAs.
Well, I think I own enough PDAs to understand them, and I can definitely see a use for it. A couple of mine allow for recording dictation anyway, so it would be nice for it to be modified so that I could just tell it a name and a phone number and have it automatically put it in an addressbook instead of having to whip out the stylus, go to the addressbook app, etc. Sure, I might have to go back later and change the occasional name spelling, but any half-assed system should be able get all the digits correct.
Don't take the title of this post too seriously, I just like it, but I'm just trying to throw some other ideas out there rather than to flame you.
Cheers,
You'll just have to excuse those of us who would rather enjoy life (in this case, in the form of being able to conveniently view DVDs on our computers) than turn everything into some exhausting holy war. Like I said, I'll continue happily using my WinDVD 2000 player, and you can have fun with your little decss thingy.
Don't let me dissuade you from your war, though, you brave little soldier, you. If you ever win, I'll reap any benefits, too — but in the meantime, I'd rather watch my new Fight Club DVD. :)
Cheers,
Here we have a company trying to make $$$ off open source and Linux without giving anything back.
No, you don't. What money do you think they made from open source and Linux?
This is going to sound vindictive, but is there anything LEGAL we can do to hurt Intervideo, teach them a little lesson maybe?
That's because it is vindictive, not to mention without basis and just plain stupid. Did you ever consider that maybe they pulled the project because they don't want any business from zealots like you?
Of course, maybe they just didn't have the skills to make the player, and are too embarrassed to admit it.
Of course, I use their WinDVD 2000 player v2.2, and works great. Have fun with your little decss thingy, though.
Cheers,
The things you listed deal with ratings and popularity (where Microsoft also does well, but isn't what we're talking about), not respect and admiration. Try to keep up with the conversation, okay?
Cheers,
Ummm, you do realize that Microsoft is consistently named as one most respected and admired companies in the world, usually in the top 5, don't you? I mean, unless you work for General Electric, which beats Microsoft in a lot of those polls, you don't have too much room to talk. At least you're correct about the cash flow part. (On the other hand, if your post was a parody of Slashdot, and you were intentionally pretending to be lacking in the brains department, then Bravo!, and my apologies.)
Cheers,
The point is that a whole hell of a lot of people do care what he thinks, and that he's built up some serious credibility over the years from his contributions. Serious question here, not a flame, but why should anyone care what you think about it, compared to any other Joe Blow who hasn't contributed anything to the internet?
Cheers,
I agree with just about everything you said, I just want to put out a caution over the success of King's business model. I don't think that any conclusions can be drawn from the example.
Again, I liked what you wrote, just wanted to point out that it's pretty hard to judge anything about the market from King's sales. I remember everyone in the eBook biz going ga-ga over how many people downloaded his short story a while back, but I didn't see what the big deal was. Show me an author doing respectable eBook sales (and revenue) who isn't Stephen King or Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, and then we'll talk.
P.S. Full disclosure: I bought that short story he sold on the internet a while back, the first installment of The Plant, and I plan on buying the second installment (I just downloaded it today, and I'll be paying later whether I like it or not — i was actually surprised at how much I liked the first installment).
P.P.S. If you go read the first installment of The Plant from the link I mentioned above, please do the right thing and go pay for it at www.stephenking.com.
Cheers,
I hear that argument so many times, that people don't want to steal the music, but it's too risky spending their money on an entire album that they haven't heard for the most part because the other songs might suck.
Let's say that the record companies make available all the songs on their albums, but at a low bitrate, like 96 Kbps. Not something you'd want to listen to very often on your stereo, but certainly of sufficient quality that you can tell whether or not you like the songs.
Now, and I'd like your complete honesty here: How many people do you think would stop trading MP3s from CDs that they don't own. I think definitely fewer than 5% would stop the "illegal" trades, and it would probably be fewer than 1%. Agree, disagree?
Cheers,
Why should something have to be paid for multiple times when it was only produced once? Because it allows the costs to be shared among the people who are interested in it. That's why lots of people can see a movie for under 10 bucks instead of having to individually pay the millions of dollars that it cost to create it. Which specific items are you referring to when you say that they cost nothing to create? Time is money, after all.
Congrats to Petreley for his article, btw, it's probably the best article he's ever written and is what a lot of us have been saying for a long time: While there are a handful of principled people defending the likes of Napster, it's mostly people just wanting free stuff.
And nope, that's not my quote in the subject, I saw some other Slashdot poster using it for his sig. I'd credit him for it if I could, but I don't know who it was (whoops, IP violation? ;-) ), but wanted to throw it out there because it's a great line.
Cheers,
That's the way I used to see it, that he was using self-promotion to spread his ideas, but I don't hold that belief anymore. I can't pinpoint a specific incident that changed things in my mind, but it was around the time when he first started doing some major grousing whenever people wouldn't refer to Linux as "GNU/Linux."The way it seems to me now is that he still wants to spread the idea of the FSF and GNU, but his reason behind it is because he's the public face of those entities — what journalist off the top of his or her head could name even one other person in the GNU Project or the FSF? Publicity for the FSF/GNU is publicity for RMS, and he's a bright enough guy to be very aware of that.
Cheers,
I'm not quite sure how you can say that he's never been about self-promotion. To me, his whole GNU/Linux crusade has been about himself. And I'm sorry, but I see no reason to give someone style points just for being consistent, when it's clear to a lot of people (not all, but many) that he's being an ass. ("Yeah, but he's consistently an ass!" ?) As a much better writer than me said:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cheers,
Heh, you gotta forgive me, I just couldn't pass that up. I checked out my Wrox PHP book today, too, and can't argue with you too much — Jesus looks like he gets hammered every weekend, and the other dudes look like they've never even seen the sun.
I do like the pics on the front — it's different, and makes me relate to the guy (I can't remember any of their books with women on the cover) whose words you're reading, except for the dreaded Wrox books that have like 20 guys on the cover. It'd be cool if people referred to the Wrox books the same way they do with some O'Reilly books, like the Camel Book: You could have, say, the Buck-Toothed Book, the Bad Goatee Book, or the Intimidating Unibrow book. :)
The New Riders covers are kinda nice and subtle, too — the cover art I'm not all that fond of is Manning's series, with the people in unflattering period costumes that look like they were drawn in crayon. Not sure what's up with that...
Cheers,
Fleet Admiral Ackbar wrote:
Dude, you took the name of a fucking Star Wars character. Who are you trying to kid? :)
Cheers,
Just a tip for people who frequently travel. [...]
Duly noted, but most people here rarely make it out of the basements in their parents' house, much less get on airplanes. Good tip, though, and yes I'm being serious — thanks!
Cheers,
How will they ever survive the loss of such an important person as you? Even if you don't like them, please reconsider: They've got families, too, and if Amazon folds — how can they not, after hearing that you are no longer a customer — they'll be kicked out onto the streets. Such a cruel, uncaring world...
Cheers,
Soon, if not already, Guido's planning to start work on Python 3000, which is going to be a complete rewrite of Python, which won't be backwards compatible with the 1.x series. Well, at least this is what the plan was according to a roadmap at python.org which I can no longer find, so I don't know if this is still the plan or when it's supposed to be released.
Then again, they might be reworking the name, because when I did a search for "Python 3000", it turns out that it's also the name of an auto security system from some Ohio outfit named "Auto Preservers." ;)
Cheers,
Actually, as far as resources go, I've heard a few nasty tales lately about BeOpen's (PythonLabs's parent) financial and executive problems. I hope it's nothing that will affect Guido and the team, or that if it is, maybe ActiveState can step in and help, as I've always been impressed by their work. (Not that I'm rooting for ActiveState over BeOpen -- I'm happy with anyone that can give the Python team a good home.)
Just to clear up a couple of things from your otherwise good post, the unicode support and the new regular expression parser are already in 1.6. (And yeah, I like the new list comprehensions for 2.0, too. :) )
Cheers,
Sorry to all the fanboys, but your little golden boy Linus has officially been tarnished. Time to give up on this dog of a processor (everyone knows that you would have long ago if not for a certain kernel hacker working there) and beg Linus to come back to working on Linux full-time. Anyone who remembers all the tough talk back in January that the 2.4 kernel would be released before Win2K just might be wondering if Linus's moonlighting has anything to do with the fact that 2.4 still isn't here yet. Tick, tock...
Cheers,
Wow, didn't realize dissenting opinions got you so riled up. I can just about feel you drooling for killfiles to silence anyone who disagrees with you. Afraid to hear some truth and have your little world come crashing down around you? God DAMN, what a stupid sheep you are — good for laughs, though! :)
Cheers,
FWIW, it was the USFL suing the NFL, and the jury only awarded the USFL $1. It ended up being $3 because antitrust penalties are trebled, not because of multiple counts. Just clearing things up...
Cheers,
Yeah, I know who wrote what, that's why I said it'll just be blamed on the submitter, because it wasn't a Slashdot person who actually said it. The thing is, though, that Slashdot 1) sometimes edits the submissions, and 2) doesn't automatically post the submission of someone just because he was the first to submit it. In other words, Slashdot didn't need to reprint the original's submitter's lie — they just chose to. That's what I'm talking about.
Cheers,
It's called telling lies to try to disparage Microsoft. Welcome to Slashdot.
Ya know, since Slashdot is so fond of propagandizing to its readers that Microsoft is evil, why do they have such a hard time letting the truth speak for itself? (Of course, it'll just be blamed on the article submitter, but nobody's fooled.)
Cheers,
Star Office
Good point. From the Document Web Bugs FAQ:
HTH, HAND.
Cheers,