A lot of games get released for consoles with noticable periodic slowdown - the classic example is the Metal Slug series.
Also, in Crazy Taxi, try hitting the ramp into the lightly wooded park area, just as you leave the beach-side road. The frame rate always drops dramatically, both on Dreamcast and on the coin-op. It always seems odd, since the rest of the game is silky smooth.
I sometimes think back to what I used to take to University with me, and chuckle. My parents used to drive me 4 hours, then help me carry a carful of stuff 11 storeys of stairs to my tower block room:
Boombox, turntable, 3 boxes of vinyl, desktop PC (486 SX25!), monitor... and that's before cookware and clothes and books.
Today, I'd go for a moderately powered laptop (to keep the price down) and a set of powered speakers. A few GB of MP3s replace all of that junk I felt compelled to heave around the country.
The books and clothes and cookware, you'll still have to manage.
I'm confused about your desire for a tablet. Keyboards are rather useful.
First off, I've never used MacOS X, so someone will have to tell me if there are significant UI difference since System 7.
At university, we worked with both Solaris boxes and Macs. Most assignments could be completed under Solaris, but occasionally a lecturer would specify a Mac tool (one wrote his own Scheme interpreter for Mac, on which he required our coursework to run; one would ask for coursework in the form of Hypercard stacks).
The feeling I most associate with working on the Macs is powerlessness. I'd got used to working on a system where (to steal a Perl-ism) there was more than one way to do any particular task. System 7 was quite the opposite. YOU worked the Mac way, rather than the OS working your way.
I always felt I was fighting against the Mac, rather than controlling it.
On Solaris, even as a non-priveledged user, I felt in control. I could mould my environment to my needs. When I got my own PC, put Slackware on it (several dozen floppies downloaded in a college lab) and became root on my own UNIX-like system, I knew I'd found a platform that I could be comfortable with.
Incidentally, iTunes for Windows reinforces all my prejudices about what Macs are like. iTunes expects you to work in a certain way, and it's up to you to mould yourself to iTunes, not vice versa.
So *if* I used MacOS, I guess I wouldn't feel guilty... just fenced in and a bit miserable.
OTOH, I appreciate you can now open terminals and compile all your well-loved freeware on MacOS X, and maybe I could get comfortable in an environment such as that... but if you're going to do that, what's Mac giving you that you didn't have with Linux?
(why struggle to simulate a human voice when you could just have a robotic/alien voice)
As a sound artist, I can answer that: There's no challenge in that.... but a talented musician could make this technology create fantastic sounds that are neither quite human, nor unmusical in the way a naive application of the technology would be.
I'm rather enjoying the "Sarasara yukigeshiki" demo.
Not where I live, it doesn't. 1 gallon = 8 pints (4 quarts) here in the US.
Mea culpa. Typo.
Incidentally, 1 gallon = 8 pints everywhere, except that a UK pint != a US pint, and (obviously) a UK gallon != a UK gallon.
Incidentally my B&C and I went to a brewpub in the States once, and because we were driving, considered their half gallon take-out deal.. but Imperial illiterate Brits that we were, we had to ask how many pints that was. The waiter had to think about it, and eventuallyu worked it out via quarts "Hmm, well, a quart is two pints, and there are four quarts in a gallon, so half a gallon is 2 quarts and..."
Oh, and I don't see why pints of beer should change, they happen to be just the right drinkable size. Which would you rather do - go to the pub and ask for a pint of beer, or go to the pub and ask for 0.568 litres of beer?
I agree: a litre of beer in one glass is too much (although the Germans seem to manage), and a half litre is too little.
I remember a news item about a landlord who went metric for a short while (sort of a reverse "Metric Martyr") -- he posted the volumes of "a swift" and "a half" (working from memory) at the bar, and explained the deal to anyone who asked for a pint...... weights and measures shut him down in little time.
I can live with people insisting on using Imperial measures.
What bugs me is when they then only halfway use the Imperial paradigm.
Case in point: when the iPod Mini was announced, I went to the web page to check out the specs. 2" x 3.6". Not having any intuitive feel for what that might mean, I wandered around the office trying to borrow a ruler, and once I'd found one, started to draw an iPod-sized square on a piece of scrap paper.
A 2" line across the bottom was easy. Then I set about drawing the vertical. 3", then another 6 gradations... oh, wait a minute, each inch is subdivided into 16ths. Tricky. Grab calculator.
So please, either use mm, or go the whole hog and state 3 inches and (10/16)".
What do you think would be the biggest hurdle in the US conversion to the metric system? I, at first, thought it would be automobile manufacturing/repair, but all auto shops already have to deal with foreign cars already with metric parts. My vote now would have to be for gas pumps and speed limits. I think it would take people a long time to adjust to liters and kilometers per hour.
I remember when UK pumps went to litres. From the consumer's point of view at least, it was a breeze: who looks at the volume anyway -- I always just watch the price display... and it doesn't take long to get used to a price per litre when comparing.
UK speed limits and road sign distances are still in miles, and will probably stay that way. The only problem I have with that is GPS setups where you only choose between Imperial and Metric -- where what I want is Miles for long distances and metres for short distances...
Seriously. Metric is base 10, Imperial units are base 12.
Some of them are, some of them are not. 1 pound = 16 oz 1 stone = 14 pounds 1 foot = 12 inches 1 yard = 3 feet 1 US pint = 16 US fl oz 1 UK pint = 20 UK fl oz 1 Gallon = 1 pint
You're deluded if you think this mess has any value beyond familiarity (and, being unfamiliar with it, I had to look up all those conversions with Google Calculator...)
Maybe you'd like to go back to Imperial coinage too? 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, two shillings to the florin, 2 shillings and sixpence to the half crown...
When the internal security policy arrive to
arrest terrorist suspect Mr. Buttle - himself
an innocent citizen wrongly fingered due to a
mechanical problem in a computer system - the
Department of Works who come in after them to
clean up the mess have brought along the wrong
size repair kit to fix the hole in the floor
that they drilled to facilitate a surprise
entrance.
JILL: There must be some mistake... Mr. Buttle's harmless...
BILL: We don't make mistakes.
(So saying, he drops the manhole cover, which is faced with same material as the floor, over the hole in the floor. To his surprise it drops neatly through the floor into the flat below.)
CHARLIE: Bloody typical, they've gone back to
metric without telling us.
If I put a beige box next to my TV and say to my relatives, "this is the remote that runs the computer/TV" they are going to say, "look, can I just watch TV in your bedroom? American Idol is coming on."
It just doesn't seem like booting your beige box to watch TV will make my relatives happy...
No no no no no!
Just because the box under the TV happens to be a PC, doesn't mean it should look or feel like a PC. Put all thoughts of a normal Windows or Linux desktop, or even a Linux command line out of your head.
After setup, a MythTV box will typically boot straight into MythTV, and present you with a full-screen interface, which you control with the remote. You wouldn't boot it up to watch TV, you'd leave it turned on 24/7, just like a Tivo (yeah, a TiVo has standby mode, but even when it's "off" the kernel is still running)
How much would the temperature need to rise to melt the CO2? I don't really care a whole lot about bacteria that may be on Mars, I'd like it to be more inhabitable. Drop some of our own bacteria there to produce enough greenhouse gas to heat it enough to melt the CO2 ice - heating it even more. If something could be found/engineered that would survive, it would grow rapidly (think algae bloom). I know, we don't have enough information about the chemistry of Mars to do this yet, but when do we stop worrying about martian bacteria and start doing something else? Or are we doing that analysis now, but hyping the life and water aspects to keep the public interested?
This reminds me of an IMAX movie I saw. I forget the name, "conquest of space" or something scarily conquistadorial like that -- narrated by Leonard Nimmoy. Padding out the (excellent) real life IMAX footage of the Space Shuttle in flight, was a lot of CGI footage, including stuff about terraforming other planets.
In "time lapse" speed, it showed bombs set off on the surface to modify the temperature and chemical composition of the atmosphere, then showed how seeding the planet with algae would kick off an ecosystem. Before our very eyes the dusty surface of the planet bloomed into a lush eden, with grass, trees, wild animals, lakes, rivers and seas. Then Spock told us how after a few years the planet would be ready to colonise, and the animation showed buildings going up, and in no time, the entire surface was covered in buildings and roads, airports, with nary a blade of grass in sight.
Way to go, we've broken our planet, let's make another one habitable, so we can break that as well.
Maybe you should start ordering from Canadian stores.
You'd better believe it. When I last visited Canada I had to buy an extra suitcase for all the DVDs, CDs, and the Gamecube I bought... and I know a few Canadian games shops that ship to the UK: including shipping, video games from Canada still work out way cheaper than buying at home, and they usually get released earlier too.
If you're physically visiting Canada, you can queue up, show your passport and receipts, and get all your Canadian sales tax refunded. Nice:)
Huh? As someone living in the UK, my last few bargain purchases have been from Amazon.com US. I just went to Amazon.com and sure enough, they still offer me international shipping to the UK. Did you simply assume that Amazon.com US had refused to ship stuff internationally?
Interesting. They certainly refused to ship to the UK for a period. Maybe a change of policy?
In a regular week with no cash spent on toys, I probably pay about $200 on sales taxes, my wages are even better, with upward of $700 getting taken off my wages every week.
that's close to $1000 a week I pay the government, I'm really curious as to what the fuck the government does with all that money.
You're very welcome to your views on tax, but know that it's completely off topic. High CD prices have nothing to do with tax and everything to do with price-fixing.
CD-Wow's prices included VAT -- they did the importing themselves, and it was above board.
If you order directly from abroad, you stand a chance of customs inspecting your incoming shipments and charging you UK VAT on them -- and usually it will STILL work out cheaper than buying in the UK.
If you care to take a look, the government's budget is there for you to examine. I believe at present we're spending more than we raise in tax.
If the cost of shipping around the world doesn't offset the price charged, then I see no reason why any organization should be allowed to demand a price change. Surely the cost of shipping that CD isn't small. Under the "globalization" of the economy, if you can't produce it locally for a reasonable price, people will import it.
Why is it that only corporations are supposed to benefit from globalization?
The argument (which I am merely repeating, not endorsing) is this:
The price of a CD is nothing to do with manufacture. Your money pays for all sorts of things, and a big chunk of that is marketing. TV, radio and press adverts in the UK are paid for by the UK record company, not a global body. Radio "pushers", TV appearances, freebies to reviewers, launch parties, etc. etc. etc. are all paid for by the local record company.
So if you hear a record on the radio in the UK, then buy the CD on import from Hong Kong, the Hong Kong record company benefits from the UK record company's marketing spend.
The argument continues that prices are set to suit the local market, and marketing spending is set accordingly.
So, if you're the BPI -- an organisation whos *remit* is to look after the interests of the British Phonographic Industry -- it's clear that imports are not fair, and toys should be thrown from prams.
The same argument is trotted out to justify game and DVD territory lockout, staggered movie releases, etc. etc.
---
A few other points:
(1) UK buyers used to get cheap (to us) CDs from the US Amazon site. That stopped when amazon.co.uk hit the scene, and Amazon US started refusing to ship overseas.
(2) Big name shops like Virgin Megastore, HMV etc. routinely sell import CDs in the UK, but the BPI have no problem with this because they are usually special editions, boxed sets, rarities etc. sold at a premium (20,30,$100,higher). It's when imports of the *same* product are cheaper that they start to complain
CD-Wow's business model was to sell CDs to the UK market. A typical price for a chart CD in the UK is 15.. 12 if you shop around, 10 if you get one of the special offers from a discount shop such as (my favourite) Fopp.
CD-Wow was able to undercut these prices to (typically) 8, by importing from Hong Kong or mainland Europe, depending on the product.
The BPI have alleged that importing from outside the EU is illegal, and decided to prosecute CD-Wow.
CD-Wow decided to settle out of court, despite maintaining that they were in the right. This is not unusual: small companies can't afford months or years in court. Their agreement was to cease importing from Hong Kong, and only import from the EU.
My understanding is that their agreement with the BPI is *not* to hike prices by 2 -- their agreement is to only import from the EU, and CD-Wow have stated that this will increase their costs by 2, which will be passed on to the customer.
I think this could hurt CD-Wow quite badly. At 8, this was the cheapest place a Brit could get new CDs (i.e. recent releases). There's a bricks and mortar music shop on my local high street where I can buy the very latest releases for 10, and have luxuries like browsing the packaging, having the product immediately, eyeing up the hot shop assistant, etc.
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Not everything in the software world needs a GUI. Only end-user applications do. In the broad scheme of things, that's a pretty thin slice.
The OP only used GUI APIs as an example. He went on to cite sound APIs, data structure APIs, yada yada yada.
I'm no great fan of Java, but I do like the way that there is One True API for most things I might want to do.
A lot of games get released for consoles with noticable periodic slowdown - the classic example is the Metal Slug series.
Also, in Crazy Taxi, try hitting the ramp into the lightly wooded park area, just as you leave the beach-side road. The frame rate always drops dramatically, both on Dreamcast and on the coin-op. It always seems odd, since the rest of the game is silky smooth.
This could have easily been done with any other author/book/etc. Lord of the Flies IMO would have been more fitting
Theorising, somewhat, but if this software was designed for IRC, it expects input roughly in the form "Name of speaker: words spoken".
Hence it needs plays rather than novels.
The patents are only prohibitive if you charge for your software, is that correct?
No it's not correct.
The owner of the patent tells you what you can and can't do, regardless of whether or not you ask for payment.
I sometimes think back to what I used to take to University with me, and chuckle. My parents used to drive me 4 hours, then help me carry a carful of stuff 11 storeys of stairs to my tower block room:
Boombox, turntable, 3 boxes of vinyl, desktop PC (486 SX25!), monitor... and that's before cookware and clothes and books.
Today, I'd go for a moderately powered laptop (to keep the price down) and a set of powered speakers. A few GB of MP3s replace all of that junk I felt compelled to heave around the country.
The books and clothes and cookware, you'll still have to manage.
I'm confused about your desire for a tablet. Keyboards are rather useful.
Sign up for a ton of Hotmail accounts
Or use DodgeIt.com -- free email, no signup, no security... great for registration forms etc.
First off, I've never used MacOS X, so someone will have to tell me if there are significant UI difference since System 7.
At university, we worked with both Solaris boxes and Macs. Most assignments could be completed under Solaris, but occasionally a lecturer would specify a Mac tool (one wrote his own Scheme interpreter for Mac, on which he required our coursework to run; one would ask for coursework in the form of Hypercard stacks).
The feeling I most associate with working on the Macs is powerlessness. I'd got used to working on a system where (to steal a Perl-ism) there was more than one way to do any particular task. System 7 was quite the opposite. YOU worked the Mac way, rather than the OS working your way.
I always felt I was fighting against the Mac, rather than controlling it.
On Solaris, even as a non-priveledged user, I felt in control. I could mould my environment to my needs. When I got my own PC, put Slackware on it (several dozen floppies downloaded in a college lab) and became root on my own UNIX-like system, I knew I'd found a platform that I could be comfortable with.
Incidentally, iTunes for Windows reinforces all my prejudices about what Macs are like. iTunes expects you to work in a certain way, and it's up to you to mould yourself to iTunes, not vice versa.
So *if* I used MacOS, I guess I wouldn't feel guilty... just fenced in and a bit miserable.
OTOH, I appreciate you can now open terminals and compile all your well-loved freeware on MacOS X, and maybe I could get comfortable in an environment such as that... but if you're going to do that, what's Mac giving you that you didn't have with Linux?
Did the US never get to enjoy the Reliant Robin?
(why struggle to simulate a human voice when you could just have a robotic/alien voice)
... but a talented musician could make this technology create fantastic sounds that are neither quite human, nor unmusical in the way a naive application of the technology would be.
As a sound artist, I can answer that: There's no challenge in that.
I'm rather enjoying the "Sarasara yukigeshiki" demo.
Not where I live, it doesn't. 1 gallon = 8 pints (4 quarts) here in the US.
Mea culpa. Typo.
Incidentally, 1 gallon = 8 pints everywhere, except that a UK pint != a US pint, and (obviously) a UK gallon != a UK gallon.
Incidentally my B&C and I went to a brewpub in the States once, and because we were driving, considered their half gallon take-out deal.. but Imperial illiterate Brits that we were, we had to ask how many pints that was. The waiter had to think about it, and eventuallyu worked it out via quarts "Hmm, well, a quart is two pints, and there are four quarts in a gallon, so half a gallon is 2 quarts and..."
Lucky we had Dr. Seuss to help us out...
Oh, and I don't see why pints of beer should change, they happen to be just the right drinkable size. Which would you rather do - go to the pub and ask for a pint of beer, or go to the pub and ask for 0.568 litres of beer?
... weights and measures shut him down in little time.
I agree: a litre of beer in one glass is too much (although the Germans seem to manage), and a half litre is too little.
I remember a news item about a landlord who went metric for a short while (sort of a reverse "Metric Martyr") -- he posted the volumes of "a swift" and "a half" (working from memory) at the bar, and explained the deal to anyone who asked for a pint...
I can live with people insisting on using Imperial measures.
What bugs me is when they then only halfway use the Imperial paradigm.
Case in point: when the iPod Mini was announced, I went to the web page to check out the specs. 2" x 3.6". Not having any intuitive feel for what that might mean, I wandered around the office trying to borrow a ruler, and once I'd found one, started to draw an iPod-sized square on a piece of scrap paper.
A 2" line across the bottom was easy. Then I set about drawing the vertical. 3", then another 6 gradations... oh, wait a minute, each inch is subdivided into 16ths. Tricky. Grab calculator.
So please, either use mm, or go the whole hog and state 3 inches and (10/16)".
What do you think would be the biggest hurdle in the US conversion to the metric system? I, at first, thought it would be automobile manufacturing/repair, but all auto shops already have to deal with foreign cars already with metric parts. My vote now would have to be for gas pumps and speed limits. I think it would take people a long time to adjust to liters and kilometers per hour.
I remember when UK pumps went to litres. From the consumer's point of view at least, it was a breeze: who looks at the volume anyway -- I always just watch the price display... and it doesn't take long to get used to a price per litre when comparing.
UK speed limits and road sign distances are still in miles, and will probably stay that way. The only problem I have with that is GPS setups where you only choose between Imperial and Metric -- where what I want is Miles for long distances and metres for short distances...
Seriously. Metric is base 10, Imperial units are base 12.
Some of them are, some of them are not.
1 pound = 16 oz
1 stone = 14 pounds
1 foot = 12 inches
1 yard = 3 feet
1 US pint = 16 US fl oz
1 UK pint = 20 UK fl oz
1 Gallon = 1 pint
You're deluded if you think this mess has any value beyond familiarity (and, being unfamiliar with it, I had to look up all those conversions with Google Calculator...)
Maybe you'd like to go back to Imperial coinage too? 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, two shillings to the florin, 2 shillings and sixpence to the half crown...
Obligatory Pulp Fiction quote:
... Mr. Buttle's harmless...
More apt Brazil quote:
nabbed from here...
When the internal security policy arrive to
arrest terrorist suspect Mr. Buttle - himself
an innocent citizen wrongly fingered due to a
mechanical problem in a computer system - the
Department of Works who come in after them to
clean up the mess have brought along the wrong
size repair kit to fix the hole in the floor
that they drilled to facilitate a surprise
entrance.
JILL: There must be some mistake
BILL: We don't make mistakes.
(So saying, he drops the manhole cover, which is
faced with same material as the floor, over the
hole in the floor. To his surprise it drops
neatly through the floor into the flat below.)
CHARLIE: Bloody typical, they've gone back to
metric without telling us.
If I put a beige box next to my TV and say to my relatives, "this is the remote that runs the computer/TV" they are going to say, "look, can I just watch TV in your bedroom? American Idol is coming on."
It just doesn't seem like booting your beige box to watch TV will make my relatives happy...
No no no no no!
Just because the box under the TV happens to be a PC, doesn't mean it should look or feel like a PC. Put all thoughts of a normal Windows or Linux desktop, or even a Linux command line out of your head.
After setup, a MythTV box will typically boot straight into MythTV, and present you with a full-screen interface, which you control with the remote. You wouldn't boot it up to watch TV, you'd leave it turned on 24/7, just like a Tivo (yeah, a TiVo has standby mode, but even when it's "off" the kernel is still running)
How much would the temperature need to rise to melt the CO2? I don't really care a whole lot about bacteria that may be on Mars, I'd like it to be more inhabitable. Drop some of our own bacteria there to produce enough greenhouse gas to heat it enough to melt the CO2 ice - heating it even more. If something could be found/engineered that would survive, it would grow rapidly (think algae bloom). I know, we don't have enough information about the chemistry of Mars to do this yet, but when do we stop worrying about martian bacteria and start doing something else? Or are we doing that analysis now, but hyping the life and water aspects to keep the public interested?
This reminds me of an IMAX movie I saw. I forget the name, "conquest of space" or something scarily conquistadorial like that -- narrated by Leonard Nimmoy. Padding out the (excellent) real life IMAX footage of the Space Shuttle in flight, was a lot of CGI footage, including stuff about terraforming other planets.
In "time lapse" speed, it showed bombs set off on the surface to modify the temperature and chemical composition of the atmosphere, then showed how seeding the planet with algae would kick off an ecosystem. Before our very eyes the dusty surface of the planet bloomed into a lush eden, with grass, trees, wild animals, lakes, rivers and seas. Then Spock told us how after a few years the planet would be ready to colonise, and the animation showed buildings going up, and in no time, the entire surface was covered in buildings and roads, airports, with nary a blade of grass in sight.
Way to go, we've broken our planet, let's make another one habitable, so we can break that as well.
Maybe you should start ordering from Canadian stores.
:)
You'd better believe it. When I last visited Canada I had to buy an extra suitcase for all the DVDs, CDs, and the Gamecube I bought... and I know a few Canadian games shops that ship to the UK: including shipping, video games from Canada still work out way cheaper than buying at home, and they usually get released earlier too.
If you're physically visiting Canada, you can queue up, show your passport and receipts, and get all your Canadian sales tax refunded. Nice
Huh? As someone living in the UK, my last few bargain purchases have been from Amazon.com US. I just went to Amazon.com and sure enough, they still offer me international shipping to the UK. Did you simply assume that Amazon.com US had refused to ship stuff internationally?
Interesting. They certainly refused to ship to the UK for a period. Maybe a change of policy?
In a regular week with no cash spent on toys, I probably pay about $200 on sales taxes, my wages are even better, with upward of $700 getting taken off my wages every week.
that's close to $1000 a week I pay the government, I'm really curious as to what the fuck the government does with all that money.
You're very welcome to your views on tax, but know that it's completely off topic. High CD prices have nothing to do with tax and everything to do with price-fixing.
CD-Wow's prices included VAT -- they did the importing themselves, and it was above board.
If you order directly from abroad, you stand a chance of customs inspecting your incoming shipments and charging you UK VAT on them -- and usually it will STILL work out cheaper than buying in the UK.
If you care to take a look, the government's budget is there for you to examine. I believe at present we're spending more than we raise in tax.
If the cost of shipping around the world doesn't offset the price charged, then I see no reason why any organization should be allowed to demand a price change. Surely the cost of shipping that CD isn't small. Under the "globalization" of the economy, if you can't produce it locally for a reasonable price, people will import it.
Why is it that only corporations are supposed to benefit from globalization?
The argument (which I am merely repeating, not endorsing) is this:
The price of a CD is nothing to do with manufacture. Your money pays for all sorts of things, and a big chunk of that is marketing. TV, radio and press adverts in the UK are paid for by the UK record company, not a global body. Radio "pushers", TV appearances, freebies to reviewers, launch parties, etc. etc. etc. are all paid for by the local record company.
So if you hear a record on the radio in the UK, then buy the CD on import from Hong Kong, the Hong Kong record company benefits from the UK record company's marketing spend.
The argument continues that prices are set to suit the local market, and marketing spending is set accordingly.
So, if you're the BPI -- an organisation whos *remit* is to look after the interests of the British Phonographic Industry -- it's clear that imports are not fair, and toys should be thrown from prams.
The same argument is trotted out to justify game and DVD territory lockout, staggered movie releases, etc. etc.
---
A few other points:
(1) UK buyers used to get cheap (to us) CDs from the US Amazon site. That stopped when amazon.co.uk hit the scene, and Amazon US started refusing to ship overseas.
(2) Big name shops like Virgin Megastore, HMV etc. routinely sell import CDs in the UK, but the BPI have no problem with this because they are usually special editions, boxed sets, rarities etc. sold at a premium (20,30,$100,higher). It's when imports of the *same* product are cheaper that they start to complain
CD-Wow's business model was to sell CDs to the UK market. A typical price for a chart CD in the UK is 15.. 12 if you shop around, 10 if you get one of the special offers from a discount shop such as (my favourite) Fopp.
CD-Wow was able to undercut these prices to (typically) 8, by importing from Hong Kong or mainland Europe, depending on the product.
The BPI have alleged that importing from outside the EU is illegal, and decided to prosecute CD-Wow.
CD-Wow decided to settle out of court, despite maintaining that they were in the right. This is not unusual: small companies can't afford months or years in court. Their agreement was to cease importing from Hong Kong, and only import from the EU.
My understanding is that their agreement with the BPI is *not* to hike prices by 2 -- their agreement is to only import from the EU, and CD-Wow have stated that this will increase their costs by 2, which will be passed on to the customer.
I think this could hurt CD-Wow quite badly. At 8, this was the cheapest place a Brit could get new CDs (i.e. recent releases). There's a bricks and mortar music shop on my local high street where I can buy the very latest releases for 10, and have luxuries like browsing the packaging, having the product immediately, eyeing up the hot shop assistant, etc.
Erm, sorry about that last bit.
You're comparing Apples with... oh wait.
Anyhow, when Apple Computer was named, Apple Music's lawyers agreed to let them use the name as long as they didn't enter the music business.
This is why Apple's system beep replacement (when sound hardware became capable of more than a beep) is called "Sosumi".
I don't know what the legal situation is now that iTMS exists.
My 7 year old Sharp minidisc player has one...
Sorry, best image I could find...
It is used to navigate menus and select tracks, just like the iPod one, too.
I never fail to be amazed at how often companies try to copy Apple's design only to produce a product that looks similar but is noticably uglier.
It's entirely subjective. WFIW I think this is marginally nicer looking than an original iPod.