The main point of the article is how Youtube is enabling a shift in how copyright holders deal with unauthorized content. They scan new videos for content matching that provided by content owners and split ad revenue with them. It's certainly less confrontational than DMCA takedown notices, but I imagine it's full of gray areas: what if the video I upload uses 15 seconds of a music video for commentary but is otherwise 9 minutes of my own contribution? Does Youtube still show more-than-usual ads and split the revenue with the artist?
Is there any way we can reliably well which videos have this revenue sharing? Some things are obvious - official music videos often have more ads and big "VEVO" logos everywhere. But how about these user-uploaded videos?
Agreed that the iTunes requirement is stupid. I've only used iTunes a few times, mostly to back up the ipad and update the software. But this requirement rules out using the ipad as a computer replacement for older users.
Regarding photo software, have you tried some of the other apps for getting and displaying photos? It's not my use, so I haven't tried them; but it looks like flickr has a decent app for one. Since I almost never connect my ipad via usb, I use Dropbox regularly to move content (mostly PDFs) around.
That video is really damning. Choppy scrolling before the flash video loads, and horrible framerate. By contrast, the ABC app on the ipad is quite robust and the hardware acceleration of video playback means that it is quite smooth.
That said, HTML5 isn't a panacea - if a Youtube video is HD, the ipad can only load the HD version of it, not the lower quality options available on the flash site. This means that if you have a slightly slower connection (say, 3Mbps or so), you'll get tons of buffering trying to play those videos. The dynamic bitrates of Netflix and ABC work great though. It's a little ironic that the Youtube app included with the ipad is relatively poor, though.
Personally, I hate flash. I use noscript to block it most of the time, and even on a Core 2 Duo running Linux the performance can be pretty choppy sometimes (thanks to a lack of hardware acceleration). Unfortunately, with Hulu trying to make money off the ipad (insanely priced relative to Netflix), we won't be seeing an HTML5 version of that site any time soon.
Unless there's something seriously wrong with this demonstration, though, it's clear that Flash support is not a strong bonus of going Android over iOS.
There's already several apps out there that turn the iPad into a networked wifi printer, or you can just use the OS X Print to PDF feature and sync the PDF over via any one of a number of mechanisms and apps (dropbox, iDisk, iTunes/iBooks, etc.)
Sure - I use Dropbox regularly and have no problem generating PDFs from the apps I care about. But the ipad really needs multitasking to enable wifi printer emulation all the time. The idea is to reduce the number of steps to get your documents to the ipad down to one: just print, and it's there.
Nice to know that there are apps to do the emulation part, now we just need multitasking. Done right it's easier than even the 20 seconds required to use Dropbox.
Actually, printing to the iPad is already dead simple (at least if you're on a Mac). Just drop an alias of the iTunes application in your ~/Library/PDF Services folder and name it "Print PDF to iPad". Then in the print dialog box, the PDF dropdown will have an entry to print to the iPad. It automatically creates the PDF and imports it to iTunes, ready to upload to your iPad the next time you sync.
No, the whole point is to eliminate itunes, an unnecessary and annoying intermediary (requiring a cable no less). This is about wifi-based printing.
Actually, from a ease-of-use perspective, printing to the ipad might actually be a really good idea. If you want a document from any application to be available for reading on the ipad, simply add a printer driver to the system that treats the ipad like a networked printer (and generates postscript or PDF versions of files). It's an interface that most computer users are familiar with, and it eliminates the need to worry about the file system or file transfer (especially via iTunes, ick).
I will still with Dropbox, but the premise of printing to the ipad actually makes a lot of sense to me.
I saw some of the original props at the Children's Muesum in Indianapolis several months ago, and close up, to be honest, they look like crap. You might not want to use the original movie props as your standard to aim for.
That doesn't surprise me. Yet there are some movie props which should have really intricate detail. I'd love to see some of the miniatures used in Lord of the Rings; perhaps without the camera effects they'd still seem underwhelming, but given the budget involved I think they have a better chance to impress.
One thing that does amaze me about this movie is the fact there there doesn't seem to be any real middle-ground. People either love it to the point of excess (which I'll admit- I do), or they hate it and call it self-indulgent garbage that ripped-off other movies.
I disagree. I think a lot of people (myself included) enjoyed watching the movie once in the theatre. Sure, the story was highly familiar from any number of places and even more predictable. It was pretty with nice special effects and a worthwhile imax/3D experience (though a little pricey compared to what I'm used to paying). I have no interest in paying much to see it again; I certainly won't buy the blu-ray disc, but somewhere down the line I may get it via Netflix.
A casual survey of people I know who watched the movie suggests that many are of my view; we aren't talking about the fanatical response where people went to see Titanic 5x in the theatre. It was an enjoyable action flick with really well done special effects that we'll see much more of in the next 10 years.
You want a truly love-or-hate movie? Try Lost in Translation, or Napoleon Dynamite.
Other cities, like CmdrTaco's nearby Ann Arbor are using positive reinforcement to encourage recycling. It offers "points" for recycling. "Points can be redeemed for rewards - such as discounts and offers -- from local and national businesses".
It will be interesting to see which approach works better in terms of improving recycling, though I suspect that Ann Arbor's recycling rate is already pretty high.
The article mentions internet router, file storage, and print server. Really? That's the best you can do?
A decent dd-wrt compatible router is pretty inexpensive, and will give you a few port switch and a decent set of wireless antennas. Most people aren't so constrained on space that they can't tuck one away somewhere. They often include the capability of handling USB hard drives as well for file or print sharing. Many printers these days have built in ethernet or wireless to handle their own print serving capability.
Devices of this size do have possibilities, but the article doesn't mention anything really interesting. Apple has had its airport express base station for a while, and while it's mostly an ordinary wireless N router, it does provide music sharing via airtunes which works well if you happen to use the Apple/iTunes ecosystem for music.
So what do you do with a tiny Linux box? mpd or a squeezebox client would provide music sharing (though you can get Logitech's own radio for $100-$150, and it comes complete with a screen and controls). It would either need a good quality sound chip on it (unlikely) or a decent USB sound card (added expense, though).
What would be really neat is if they had an HDMI port for a thin client. Maybe an install of Android and its browser to turn a smaller LCD monitor into a little internet browsing box in otherwise cramped spaces (e.g. kitchen). Or have something powered off 12V and use it as the basis for a car computer.
Even with the current offerings, I'm sure there are much more interesting ideas that people could come up with (probably involving more significant hacking) than a file or print server.
On a related note, does anyone know if the new WebKit browser on the now-$139 Kindle is any good?
We'll find out in a few weeks when they ship, but there's only so much you can do with modern eink screens. If I were getting a Kindle, though, I'd almost certainly spring the $50 for the 3G + wifi version if I had any thoughts of trying the browser. I don't find myself away from wifi too often, but when I do it would sometimes be convenient to look up a phone number or address or something very simple, and a free lifetime 3G web browser (even if it's painful) sounds pretty awesome.
The Nook, on the other hand, doesn't offer web browsing over 3G. So if I was getting one of those, I'd just get the wifi version; I'm told by someone who owns it that despite using the built-in LCD screen in the browser interface, it's quite painful to use.
When the ipad was first announced, many commentators predicted that there would be a deluge of Android-based competitors with more features (Flash!) for less money. Here we are almost seven months later and frankly, this article sums up the sorry state of competition. Most of the devices are unavailable and many don't even have firm release dates (others are late). The predictions about beating Apple's pricing fell through (e.g. the JooJoo is $499, though it's a larger and significantly different device).
Eventually we will have a nice selection of tablets, just like we now have a nice selection of smartphones. But you may have to wait a year or two for them; meanwhile, Apple will sell lots and lots of ipads, establishing a solid market for which developers will make lots of apps.
Frankly, if I was waiting for one of these competitors I'd be getting pretty frustrated. The Notion Ink Adam has been hyped up all over the place, and keeps getting pushed back. The currently available devices (like the one from KMart) get pretty horrible reviews; it's clear that trying to go too cheap on the tablets leads to some huge sacrifices in quality of the screen, for example.
What's interesting to me is that the major ereaders have responded to the ipad. Amazon and BN released apps for the ipad (Amazon on launch day!), while they both substantially dropped their ereader prices (responding to each other, too). They're carving out a niche - dedicated ereaders with eink screens getting down to the price points where people can buy them as gifts for each other in this coming holiday season. BN's nook actually runs Android, though it has to be jailbroken to make use of it.
i used to think this is true, but i don't anymore. My last two machines (laptop of 3 years and PC of you know what i've discovered? I still don't click ads!
This depends on the ad and the context. I normally avoid ads like the plague, but when searching Google for something (especially when I'm shopping), I'll often (a few times a month) click the advertisers. For one thing, I can be reasonably certain that the place I'm going to has the product for sale and use it as a starting point for price comparisons. My click through rate, even for Google, is probably still way below average; but I'm glad the ads support a free search engine.
American coffee shops closely follow the Starbucks model. To get table service you usually need a more food-oriented place, but ironically the quality of the coffee either suffers or is even more expensive (especially when you factor in the tip).
The U.S. in general has a very large segment of do-it-yourself dining, like fast food or its slightly more upscale cousins in the form of Noodles/Panera/Chipotle/etc.
Sometimes classes are outright outdated. I had a course around 1999 which was supposedly about computer programming. We spent the first few weeks with only lectures and an incredibly outdated textbook. The teacher (an otherwise okay math teacher) was clearly well behind the times. He lectured about microcomputers, minicomputers and had no idea that most servers by then were basically souped up versions of typical desktop computers.
The language was Pascal, which I suppose is a decent learning language, but we barely scratched the surface of programming ability. For a high-school level class, it was tediously outdated and slow. I truly hope that by now the instruction has moved along and kids are doing more interesting things. There were other interesting courses offered in things like graphic design, web design, etc. but the core programming class had neither much CS theory nor interesting applications. Worst, if you didn't know any better the content in the course would actually mislead you about the state of computing.
All subjects have the "boring basics". The key is the instructor; a good instructor can make the basics of a field really interesting. Unfortunately, being a good programming instructor is hard, and at the K-12 level it is really hard.
I'm not the GP, but this is full of misinformation.
I think you've got a typo there, last I checked, it's more like $100 cheaper.
Check again. The wifi Nook is $149, the wifi Kindle is $139. The 3G Nook is $199, the 3G Kindle is $189.
So what? No one uses epub. PDF, text, HTML - all supported by the Kindle, and all formats you'll actually encounter.
epub is the predominate standard outside of the Kindle world. Apple's new reader uses it, Stanza uses it, and the primary DRM-free ebook sources use it. The popularity of the Kindle means that they also tend to offer mobipocket versions now, though. Aside from the Kindle store, I know of no ebook source which provides mobipocket but not epub.
You're counting anything that can read epub, aren't you? Except you're leaving out the part where the Nook DRMs its books, making those apps useless for Nook content.
No. The B&N ereader app (about to be rebranded as the Nook app) is available for Android, ipad/iphone/ipod, blackberry, and Windows. I don't own a Nook, but I use both the Kindle app and B&N app on my ipad. Honestly, I prefer the BN app for most things. I was very tempted to buy a Nook, but the latest Kindle announcement convinced me to wait until B&N responds with either further price cuts or better software/hardware.
What I know about the Nook itself is based on reading reviews and talking with a friend who owns one. It's certainly not a perfect device but until the latest release of the Kindle (which won't be available until late August) it had a lot going for it. The newest Kindle finally adds wifi, which can (in principle) be useful for obtaining non-store ebooks without paying the wireless fee. I'm not sure whether you can, though; my understanding is that both the Kindle and the Nook hook up via USB for transfer of 3rd party files (mobipocket and epub, respectively).
One of the biggest things the Kindle has going for it is free 3G service with Wikipedia and web browsing. I'm told that it's a pretty painful experience to browse the web, but if you lack a smartphone with a dataplan and really need to check something quickly online, I imagine that it's worth the $50 one time premium. The smaller form factor better matches the Nook's length and width (while being significantly thinner). So the Kindle was and is superior in terms of software and the latest gen really helps catch up in terms of hardware.
For me, the Nook's greatest weakness is that they haven't fully implemented synchronizing page locations between all apps and devices. Until they do, I won't be buying one. My understanding is that the Kindle sync process is pretty good. The Nook software was also very, very weak until just recently. The software lagged behind otherwise pretty nice hardware (personally, I like the versatility of a touchscreen interface even at the expense of a little battery life; I can understand how others might feel different). The screen flips as of the latest firmware update are nearly on par with the Kindle 2, though the next Kindle beats the Kindle 2 by another 20%. The Nook has a browser, but I'm told it's a pain. It also has a SD slot for additional storage - useless for books (2G is a lot), but nice for storing music to listen to while reading. Until this latest gen the Kindle was both limited in storage and the ability to play music; but the latest gen still lacks an SD slot, so you're stuck with the 4G of space.
In the end, it sucks that if I want an eink reader I have to pick a DRM-filled ecosystem. My ipad lets me use all the major stores and choose from multiple readers, but it'd be nice to have a cheaper, lighter device for just reading to complement it. epub really is important in that it is the primary ebook standard; it alone is not a sufficient reason to pick BN over Amazon, though, since the popularity of the Kindle is encouraging sources (e.g. O'Reilly) to provide m
The design obviously requires at least 3 lane roads - two lanes for cars and small trucks where the bus goes, and one lane for taller vehicles. So many large cities are also old cities, with many narrow streets; certainly digging subway tunnels and establishing infrastructure is expensive, but employing this solution basically requires a pre-planned city with huge thoroughfares. The larger the street infrastructure, though, the less need you have for a bus that allows traffic to go underneath it.
All this is before a host of other concerns people have mentioned: turning requires huge intersections and, to reduce stopping, pre-specified traffic light timing. You also need significant above ground space to build the loading (and charging?) platforms shown.
Nonetheless, it's truly something very different for urban transportation. The fact that it's getting deployed means this isn't just some crazy idea but that we'll get to see how well it works.
You have overlooked one large difference: I can scare up a used piano on Craigslist for nothing, and still make it sound great with lots of training and a bit of tuning. (Seriously, a remarkable number of pianos are given away all the time). Acquiring all of these painstakingly recorded samples, the software to compose with them, and the hardware to translate them into actual music costs a great deal of money.
Actually, a nice piano sample can be had for $50 (about half that if you buy during a sale). Minimally, these samples can be played for free with Linuxsampler. There are free DAWs, but Reaper can be had for $60 and is truly excellent. Going all out with the software library and buying something like Logic Pro or Komplete will set you back $500, and will include thousands of high quality instruments.
The MIDI keyboards themselves range from cheap and portable for $100-200 to hammered-action full digital pianos. My Yamaha P-85 is hammered action and can be had now for $500. It comes with a perfectly respectable couple of pianos built in. In the end, you can get set up with hardware and software for well less than $500 and have many really nice instruments, or spend about a grand and have a truly great setup.
I really, really disagree that traditional pianos are in any way cheaper on average than digital ones. That used piano for "nothing" on Craigslist will either not sound particularly good, or will at require quite a bit of work in moving/tuning, etc. I love playing real pianos, but I have neither the money nor the space for a nice one at the moment.
Art is rapidly becoming more about using your credit card than using your hands. At the same time, the compensation for those with the ability to create it keeps shrinking, because of the ease with which the results can be duplicated and distributed.
Here you seem to be conflating music creation with music consumption. First of all, I really think the barriers to entry for music have fallen, not risen. Anyone with Garageband and a $100 MIDI keyboard can compose nice music, if they have the talent. As for compensation for those who create music or other art, supply and demand applies. If the barriers to entry and redistribution fall, then prices will likely fall too. Yet I see plenty of very small artists who make their living playing live in small venues and selling their CDs without a label; for many of us though, music/art/photography is a wonderful hobby, not necessarily a day job. These new digital tools make that both easier and more affordable.
Much of the move away from live instruments to computers (especially in things like TV soundtracks) is the result of modern computing, storage, and sampling. Rather than trying to simulate the sound of a piano, you can painstakingly sample each note at multiple velocities. Depending on the desired complexity, the samples easily reach into the gigabytes for a single instrument. Yet the end result is a digital piano that's incredibly realistic; recording a real piano live better than a good sample is becoming more and more difficult. A "live" piano in person will still sound better than most speaker setups, but for recorded music sampling is really impressive.
The line between traditional and electric, analog and digital continues to blur. Rather than an analog guitar amp, it's easy to have software with a number of digital amps to provide any number of sounds.
Overall I think the benefits vastly outweigh the loss of more traditional music playing. As TFS says, modern computing allows composers to have an incredible array of instruments at their disposal. It's easier and cheaper than ever to create really interesting music of all genres, making the key constraints the right ones - training, practice, and talent.
What did Amazon offer to get exclusivity for two years? My hunch is that Amazon agreed to heavily promote the books on its site, and wouldn't do so if they also went to BN and Apple.
Also, they apparently don't have the rights to decent looking book covers - the current covers are pretty ugly. Seriously - who thought it was a good idea to include quotations as cover art when it goes on devices like cell phones? Just the title and author in a decent font would do.
What kind of awful font is that filing made with? It looks close to, but not quite, Comic Sans (the t's are wrong, for one). It's hard to tell based on a rough scan just how crude it looks.
I remember the first time I saw a glossy screen on a laptop (it was an otherwise completely hideous Sony). Colors looked so vibrant, but you could tell that glare would be a real issue. Absent direct light sources, they really do look better to me.
Glare can be a real issue, though, which is one reason why there's a market for iPad anti-glare sheets. The iPad screen is glass, though, so glossy was the obvious choice. The glossy IPS screen is quite striking next to a TN matte laptop screen.
What really irks me though is the predominance of glossy plastic bezels. Walk into any computer store these days and you're bombarded with shiny black plastic on nearly every laptop, monitor, and TV. Here there is no functional advantage - it simply shows fingerprints more and even can distract from the screen itself. But it's the latest trend in computer/tv "fashion" (remember when silver plastic was in?). I gave in when shopping for an mid-sized TV, as Samsung (my preferred LCD manufacturer) had all glossy bezels. It's fine so long as I don't touch it, but a glossy HP laptop was a magnet for fingerprints.
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The main point of the article is how Youtube is enabling a shift in how copyright holders deal with unauthorized content. They scan new videos for content matching that provided by content owners and split ad revenue with them. It's certainly less confrontational than DMCA takedown notices, but I imagine it's full of gray areas: what if the video I upload uses 15 seconds of a music video for commentary but is otherwise 9 minutes of my own contribution? Does Youtube still show more-than-usual ads and split the revenue with the artist?
Is there any way we can reliably well which videos have this revenue sharing? Some things are obvious - official music videos often have more ads and big "VEVO" logos everywhere. But how about these user-uploaded videos?
Agreed that the iTunes requirement is stupid. I've only used iTunes a few times, mostly to back up the ipad and update the software. But this requirement rules out using the ipad as a computer replacement for older users.
Regarding photo software, have you tried some of the other apps for getting and displaying photos? It's not my use, so I haven't tried them; but it looks like flickr has a decent app for one. Since I almost never connect my ipad via usb, I use Dropbox regularly to move content (mostly PDFs) around.
That video is really damning. Choppy scrolling before the flash video loads, and horrible framerate. By contrast, the ABC app on the ipad is quite robust and the hardware acceleration of video playback means that it is quite smooth.
That said, HTML5 isn't a panacea - if a Youtube video is HD, the ipad can only load the HD version of it, not the lower quality options available on the flash site. This means that if you have a slightly slower connection (say, 3Mbps or so), you'll get tons of buffering trying to play those videos. The dynamic bitrates of Netflix and ABC work great though. It's a little ironic that the Youtube app included with the ipad is relatively poor, though.
Personally, I hate flash. I use noscript to block it most of the time, and even on a Core 2 Duo running Linux the performance can be pretty choppy sometimes (thanks to a lack of hardware acceleration). Unfortunately, with Hulu trying to make money off the ipad (insanely priced relative to Netflix), we won't be seeing an HTML5 version of that site any time soon.
Unless there's something seriously wrong with this demonstration, though, it's clear that Flash support is not a strong bonus of going Android over iOS.
Sure - I use Dropbox regularly and have no problem generating PDFs from the apps I care about. But the ipad really needs multitasking to enable wifi printer emulation all the time. The idea is to reduce the number of steps to get your documents to the ipad down to one: just print, and it's there.
Nice to know that there are apps to do the emulation part, now we just need multitasking. Done right it's easier than even the 20 seconds required to use Dropbox.
No, the whole point is to eliminate itunes, an unnecessary and annoying intermediary (requiring a cable no less). This is about wifi-based printing.
Actually, from a ease-of-use perspective, printing to the ipad might actually be a really good idea. If you want a document from any application to be available for reading on the ipad, simply add a printer driver to the system that treats the ipad like a networked printer (and generates postscript or PDF versions of files). It's an interface that most computer users are familiar with, and it eliminates the need to worry about the file system or file transfer (especially via iTunes, ick).
I will still with Dropbox, but the premise of printing to the ipad actually makes a lot of sense to me.
That doesn't surprise me. Yet there are some movie props which should have really intricate detail. I'd love to see some of the miniatures used in Lord of the Rings; perhaps without the camera effects they'd still seem underwhelming, but given the budget involved I think they have a better chance to impress.
I disagree. I think a lot of people (myself included) enjoyed watching the movie once in the theatre. Sure, the story was highly familiar from any number of places and even more predictable. It was pretty with nice special effects and a worthwhile imax/3D experience (though a little pricey compared to what I'm used to paying). I have no interest in paying much to see it again; I certainly won't buy the blu-ray disc, but somewhere down the line I may get it via Netflix.
A casual survey of people I know who watched the movie suggests that many are of my view; we aren't talking about the fanatical response where people went to see Titanic 5x in the theatre. It was an enjoyable action flick with really well done special effects that we'll see much more of in the next 10 years.
You want a truly love-or-hate movie? Try Lost in Translation, or Napoleon Dynamite.
Other cities, like CmdrTaco's nearby Ann Arbor are using positive reinforcement to encourage recycling. It offers "points" for recycling. "Points can be redeemed for rewards - such as discounts and offers -- from local and national businesses".
It will be interesting to see which approach works better in terms of improving recycling, though I suspect that Ann Arbor's recycling rate is already pretty high.
The article mentions internet router, file storage, and print server. Really? That's the best you can do?
A decent dd-wrt compatible router is pretty inexpensive, and will give you a few port switch and a decent set of wireless antennas. Most people aren't so constrained on space that they can't tuck one away somewhere. They often include the capability of handling USB hard drives as well for file or print sharing. Many printers these days have built in ethernet or wireless to handle their own print serving capability.
Devices of this size do have possibilities, but the article doesn't mention anything really interesting. Apple has had its airport express base station for a while, and while it's mostly an ordinary wireless N router, it does provide music sharing via airtunes which works well if you happen to use the Apple/iTunes ecosystem for music.
So what do you do with a tiny Linux box? mpd or a squeezebox client would provide music sharing (though you can get Logitech's own radio for $100-$150, and it comes complete with a screen and controls). It would either need a good quality sound chip on it (unlikely) or a decent USB sound card (added expense, though).
What would be really neat is if they had an HDMI port for a thin client. Maybe an install of Android and its browser to turn a smaller LCD monitor into a little internet browsing box in otherwise cramped spaces (e.g. kitchen). Or have something powered off 12V and use it as the basis for a car computer.
Even with the current offerings, I'm sure there are much more interesting ideas that people could come up with (probably involving more significant hacking) than a file or print server.
We'll find out in a few weeks when they ship, but there's only so much you can do with modern eink screens. If I were getting a Kindle, though, I'd almost certainly spring the $50 for the 3G + wifi version if I had any thoughts of trying the browser. I don't find myself away from wifi too often, but when I do it would sometimes be convenient to look up a phone number or address or something very simple, and a free lifetime 3G web browser (even if it's painful) sounds pretty awesome.
The Nook, on the other hand, doesn't offer web browsing over 3G. So if I was getting one of those, I'd just get the wifi version; I'm told by someone who owns it that despite using the built-in LCD screen in the browser interface, it's quite painful to use.
When the ipad was first announced, many commentators predicted that there would be a deluge of Android-based competitors with more features (Flash!) for less money. Here we are almost seven months later and frankly, this article sums up the sorry state of competition. Most of the devices are unavailable and many don't even have firm release dates (others are late). The predictions about beating Apple's pricing fell through (e.g. the JooJoo is $499, though it's a larger and significantly different device).
Eventually we will have a nice selection of tablets, just like we now have a nice selection of smartphones. But you may have to wait a year or two for them; meanwhile, Apple will sell lots and lots of ipads, establishing a solid market for which developers will make lots of apps.
Frankly, if I was waiting for one of these competitors I'd be getting pretty frustrated. The Notion Ink Adam has been hyped up all over the place, and keeps getting pushed back. The currently available devices (like the one from KMart) get pretty horrible reviews; it's clear that trying to go too cheap on the tablets leads to some huge sacrifices in quality of the screen, for example.
What's interesting to me is that the major ereaders have responded to the ipad. Amazon and BN released apps for the ipad (Amazon on launch day!), while they both substantially dropped their ereader prices (responding to each other, too). They're carving out a niche - dedicated ereaders with eink screens getting down to the price points where people can buy them as gifts for each other in this coming holiday season. BN's nook actually runs Android, though it has to be jailbroken to make use of it.
This depends on the ad and the context. I normally avoid ads like the plague, but when searching Google for something (especially when I'm shopping), I'll often (a few times a month) click the advertisers. For one thing, I can be reasonably certain that the place I'm going to has the product for sale and use it as a starting point for price comparisons. My click through rate, even for Google, is probably still way below average; but I'm glad the ads support a free search engine.
American coffee shops closely follow the Starbucks model. To get table service you usually need a more food-oriented place, but ironically the quality of the coffee either suffers or is even more expensive (especially when you factor in the tip).
The U.S. in general has a very large segment of do-it-yourself dining, like fast food or its slightly more upscale cousins in the form of Noodles/Panera/Chipotle/etc.
Sometimes classes are outright outdated. I had a course around 1999 which was supposedly about computer programming. We spent the first few weeks with only lectures and an incredibly outdated textbook. The teacher (an otherwise okay math teacher) was clearly well behind the times. He lectured about microcomputers, minicomputers and had no idea that most servers by then were basically souped up versions of typical desktop computers.
The language was Pascal, which I suppose is a decent learning language, but we barely scratched the surface of programming ability. For a high-school level class, it was tediously outdated and slow. I truly hope that by now the instruction has moved along and kids are doing more interesting things. There were other interesting courses offered in things like graphic design, web design, etc. but the core programming class had neither much CS theory nor interesting applications. Worst, if you didn't know any better the content in the course would actually mislead you about the state of computing.
All subjects have the "boring basics". The key is the instructor; a good instructor can make the basics of a field really interesting. Unfortunately, being a good programming instructor is hard, and at the K-12 level it is really hard.
Whoops. Careless with my blockquote tags, sorry about that.
I'm not the GP, but this is full of misinformation.
The design obviously requires at least 3 lane roads - two lanes for cars and small trucks where the bus goes, and one lane for taller vehicles. So many large cities are also old cities, with many narrow streets; certainly digging subway tunnels and establishing infrastructure is expensive, but employing this solution basically requires a pre-planned city with huge thoroughfares. The larger the street infrastructure, though, the less need you have for a bus that allows traffic to go underneath it.
All this is before a host of other concerns people have mentioned: turning requires huge intersections and, to reduce stopping, pre-specified traffic light timing. You also need significant above ground space to build the loading (and charging?) platforms shown.
Nonetheless, it's truly something very different for urban transportation. The fact that it's getting deployed means this isn't just some crazy idea but that we'll get to see how well it works.
Actually, a nice piano sample can be had for $50 (about half that if you buy during a sale). Minimally, these samples can be played for free with Linuxsampler. There are free DAWs, but Reaper can be had for $60 and is truly excellent. Going all out with the software library and buying something like Logic Pro or Komplete will set you back $500, and will include thousands of high quality instruments.
The MIDI keyboards themselves range from cheap and portable for $100-200 to hammered-action full digital pianos. My Yamaha P-85 is hammered action and can be had now for $500. It comes with a perfectly respectable couple of pianos built in. In the end, you can get set up with hardware and software for well less than $500 and have many really nice instruments, or spend about a grand and have a truly great setup.
I really, really disagree that traditional pianos are in any way cheaper on average than digital ones. That used piano for "nothing" on Craigslist will either not sound particularly good, or will at require quite a bit of work in moving/tuning, etc. I love playing real pianos, but I have neither the money nor the space for a nice one at the moment.
Here you seem to be conflating music creation with music consumption. First of all, I really think the barriers to entry for music have fallen, not risen. Anyone with Garageband and a $100 MIDI keyboard can compose nice music, if they have the talent. As for compensation for those who create music or other art, supply and demand applies. If the barriers to entry and redistribution fall, then prices will likely fall too. Yet I see plenty of very small artists who make their living playing live in small venues and selling their CDs without a label; for many of us though, music/art/photography is a wonderful hobby, not necessarily a day job. These new digital tools make that both easier and more affordable.
Much of the move away from live instruments to computers (especially in things like TV soundtracks) is the result of modern computing, storage, and sampling. Rather than trying to simulate the sound of a piano, you can painstakingly sample each note at multiple velocities. Depending on the desired complexity, the samples easily reach into the gigabytes for a single instrument. Yet the end result is a digital piano that's incredibly realistic; recording a real piano live better than a good sample is becoming more and more difficult. A "live" piano in person will still sound better than most speaker setups, but for recorded music sampling is really impressive.
The line between traditional and electric, analog and digital continues to blur. Rather than an analog guitar amp, it's easy to have software with a number of digital amps to provide any number of sounds.
Overall I think the benefits vastly outweigh the loss of more traditional music playing. As TFS says, modern computing allows composers to have an incredible array of instruments at their disposal. It's easier and cheaper than ever to create really interesting music of all genres, making the key constraints the right ones - training, practice, and talent.
Sure, but even the very simple covers that Apple uses for its free Gutenberg-derived books is more usable than what they've chosen for these books.
Yes, yes it does, actually (only a few thousand so far, though).
What did Amazon offer to get exclusivity for two years? My hunch is that Amazon agreed to heavily promote the books on its site, and wouldn't do so if they also went to BN and Apple.
Also, they apparently don't have the rights to decent looking book covers - the current covers are pretty ugly. Seriously - who thought it was a good idea to include quotations as cover art when it goes on devices like cell phones? Just the title and author in a decent font would do.
What kind of awful font is that filing made with? It looks close to, but not quite, Comic Sans (the t's are wrong, for one). It's hard to tell based on a rough scan just how crude it looks.
I remember the first time I saw a glossy screen on a laptop (it was an otherwise completely hideous Sony). Colors looked so vibrant, but you could tell that glare would be a real issue. Absent direct light sources, they really do look better to me.
Glare can be a real issue, though, which is one reason why there's a market for iPad anti-glare sheets. The iPad screen is glass, though, so glossy was the obvious choice. The glossy IPS screen is quite striking next to a TN matte laptop screen.
What really irks me though is the predominance of glossy plastic bezels. Walk into any computer store these days and you're bombarded with shiny black plastic on nearly every laptop, monitor, and TV. Here there is no functional advantage - it simply shows fingerprints more and even can distract from the screen itself. But it's the latest trend in computer/tv "fashion" (remember when silver plastic was in?). I gave in when shopping for an mid-sized TV, as Samsung (my preferred LCD manufacturer) had all glossy bezels. It's fine so long as I don't touch it, but a glossy HP laptop was a magnet for fingerprints.