While I admit it might be nice to see statistics during the game, it just doesn't make practical sense to me for a number of reasons. and before you get on my case, I'm not purporting to represent everyone, so can the flame wars for now.
1. Most people at baseball games sit in plastic seats and drink beer, coke, hot dogs, etc. this does not seem like an ideal place for an expensive laptop.
2. I would not feel comfortable leaving my computer at my seat while I go to the bathroom or to get more nachos, nor would I want to lug it around with me everywhere I go.
3. If you go to the game I think it's logical to presume that you have some interest in actually watching the game live, and sitting with a laptop on your knees takes you away from the game. And when the hitter scores a three-run homer and the entire section stands up to cheer....you can't
4. Many stadiums (obviously not SBC Park) have instituted new rules about what is allowed in the stadium after te NYC terrorist attacks, so this may become more of an issue.
Bottom line...if you want to watch baseball and look up stats at the same time, it makes so much more sense to do it at home with a TV and a computer -- or just a computer if you watch games online. One of the reasons I go to the game is to get away from the internet and technology and enjoy a fun evening. Maybe they should look into installing wifi hotspots in movie theatres so people can look up actor and actress information during their favorite flick...
so the idea is that you get mp3s of the songs for cheap without having the discs themselves? is it just me or does this sound a lot like Apple's iTunes Music Store? Of course at iTMS you can't get an entire cd for $1.50, but it's 100% bona-fide legal without the risk of getting raided by the RIAA.
one small note....many times i find that a cd, or a particular song on a cd grows on me with each listen. of course, this is not as true with your standard pop-crap, where you hear it once and you don't need to hear it again to further appreciate it, but i can't count how many times i've bought cds and heard some 'mediocre' tracks that have grown to be some of my all-time favorites.
for me, like many others, most of the cds I buy I do so because I want the entire album. i'm not a mainstream-pop junkie who only listens to top 40, and i find that if i hear a song that i do like on top 40 radio, many times i'll buy the cd and discover some hidden gems that never get any airtime. sure there are some crappy songs, but that's a risk i'm willing to take, and again i don't buy every cd that comes out so i'm not faced with 3-5 "really crappy"songs per cd. that number is usually around 1-2, if that.
as far as the cost, i think the price is right iff the songs are delivered in a cd-quality format (which it looks like is the case) i have a fair number of albums that exist only on mp3, but i wouldn't burn an audio cd for a friend with converted mp3 tracks....i want the best quality i can find. and i surely would not goto the store and pay $15 for a cd where all the tracks are mp3s. this service is providing the songs only (no art, or cases, as previously mentioned) so the songs had better be of great quality. of course, this also raises the downloading question, where a high-fidelity track will take SIGNIFICANTLY longer to download than a small mp3....which is part of the reason the mp3 craze has abounded....people are willing to wait for the downloads, even on dialup. but what about a 50mb song on a modem connection? even on a modest broadband service delivering data at (true) 50k/sec, that's going to take awhile
let's not forget that to get songs onto an ipod you need a computer, and to get them back off the ipod and onto the computer again (or another computer, as in perhaps, a work computer or laptop) all you need to do is copy the mp3 or aiff files to the ipod's hard disk (from the finder, not itunes). sure you can't listen to the tracks when they're stored in 'hard disk' mode, but with up to 20gb of storage, i'd imagine for someone taking music to work or (god forbid!) trading music with someone else via an ipod/macintosh connection, this 'firewire disk mode' would work ok.
but that being said, it is the message on apple's part that is to be respected. it's not impossible to do, but apple didn't make it too easy, and let's not forget the little sticker that comes on all new ipods "don't steal music.":-)
Anyone heard of Rendezvous by Apple? This is basically an autoconfig network app that can (and is) used as a p2p communication tool and does not require an internet connection! Are you in the room with 2 wifi-enabled computers who want to chat, or share files but have no internet? Simple, just open ichat and turn on rendezvous. If you do want to communicate over the internet, ichat (although it does utilize the AIM subscriber base) is your tool. Want to communicate with people on the internet and on a computer network? That's ok too. And what about wirelessly and automatically connecting to that printer down the hall from the meeting room? Yeah, rendezvous can do that too. It's by no means perfect, but it's already available and it's open source too.
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While I admit it might be nice to see statistics during the game, it just doesn't make practical sense to me for a number of reasons. and before you get on my case, I'm not purporting to represent everyone, so can the flame wars for now.
1. Most people at baseball games sit in plastic seats and drink beer, coke, hot dogs, etc. this does not seem like an ideal place for an expensive laptop.
2. I would not feel comfortable leaving my computer at my seat while I go to the bathroom or to get more nachos, nor would I want to lug it around with me everywhere I go.
3. If you go to the game I think it's logical to presume that you have some interest in actually watching the game live, and sitting with a laptop on your knees takes you away from the game. And when the hitter scores a three-run homer and the entire section stands up to cheer....you can't
4. Many stadiums (obviously not SBC Park) have instituted new rules about what is allowed in the stadium after te NYC terrorist attacks, so this may become more of an issue.
Bottom line...if you want to watch baseball and look up stats at the same time, it makes so much more sense to do it at home with a TV and a computer -- or just a computer if you watch games online. One of the reasons I go to the game is to get away from the internet and technology and enjoy a fun evening. Maybe they should look into installing wifi hotspots in movie theatres so people can look up actor and actress information during their favorite flick...
so the idea is that you get mp3s of the songs for cheap without having the discs themselves? is it just me or does this sound a lot like Apple's iTunes Music Store? Of course at iTMS you can't get an entire cd for $1.50, but it's 100% bona-fide legal without the risk of getting raided by the RIAA.
one small note....many times i find that a cd, or a particular song on a cd grows on me with each listen. of course, this is not as true with your standard pop-crap, where you hear it once and you don't need to hear it again to further appreciate it, but i can't count how many times i've bought cds and heard some 'mediocre' tracks that have grown to be some of my all-time favorites.
for me, like many others, most of the cds I buy I do so because I want the entire album. i'm not a mainstream-pop junkie who only listens to top 40, and i find that if i hear a song that i do like on top 40 radio, many times i'll buy the cd and discover some hidden gems that never get any airtime. sure there are some crappy songs, but that's a risk i'm willing to take, and again i don't buy every cd that comes out so i'm not faced with 3-5 "really crappy"songs per cd. that number is usually around 1-2, if that.
as far as the cost, i think the price is right iff the songs are delivered in a cd-quality format (which it looks like is the case) i have a fair number of albums that exist only on mp3, but i wouldn't burn an audio cd for a friend with converted mp3 tracks....i want the best quality i can find. and i surely would not goto the store and pay $15 for a cd where all the tracks are mp3s. this service is providing the songs only (no art, or cases, as previously mentioned) so the songs had better be of great quality. of course, this also raises the downloading question, where a high-fidelity track will take SIGNIFICANTLY longer to download than a small mp3....which is part of the reason the mp3 craze has abounded....people are willing to wait for the downloads, even on dialup. but what about a 50mb song on a modem connection? even on a modest broadband service delivering data at (true) 50k/sec, that's going to take awhile
let's not forget that to get songs onto an ipod you need a computer, and to get them back off the ipod and onto the computer again (or another computer, as in perhaps, a work computer or laptop) all you need to do is copy the mp3 or aiff files to the ipod's hard disk (from the finder, not itunes). sure you can't listen to the tracks when they're stored in 'hard disk' mode, but with up to 20gb of storage, i'd imagine for someone taking music to work or (god forbid!) trading music with someone else via an ipod/macintosh connection, this 'firewire disk mode' would work ok.
:-)
but that being said, it is the message on apple's part that is to be respected. it's not impossible to do, but apple didn't make it too easy, and let's not forget the little sticker that comes on all new ipods "don't steal music."
Here's an an article about it. Or learn about it from the horse's mouth.