Whoops. I didn't realize Archos made anything small; the only Archos things I've seen were quite sizable, and the UI drove me nuts on them. I recently got to play with a clickwheel iPod (mine is a 3G model) and was very impressed; they got rid of the few irritations I had, like the fact that buttons activate either way too easy or not at all on occasion, and replaced it with nice positive feedback for button activation.
I don't really use the ratings thing, as I have a pretty good idea of how much I like any given song (and yes, I do have a lot of them, by anyone's measure).
Note one more thing: the gMini 400 has a 20 GB hard drive for a retail of $400. The iPod 20GB retails at $299, so it has price over the Archos as well as UI.
4.2 x 2.4 x 0.7 (gMini) 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.57 (iPod 20 GB; the 40GB is 0.7 thick)
The iPod remains slightly smaller and thinner at the same hard drive size, though it is NOT a big difference by any means.
Actually, I've found that you need to leave the city by around 6 AM to get out before the traffic starts; I reverse-commute, so I do in fact do those times roughly. Traffic still sucks.
Best times for a reverse-commute in Chicago, at least on the north/northwest side? Out of the city by 6:15AM, head back in by 3:15PM. Except on Fridays, when you're pretty much just plain screwed.
Please. Your commute is not what I was talking about; 53 is nothing. I do 30 miles, Wicker Park to Deer Park. It genuinely is that bad. You get the "good" part of 90.
I could do it in a stick, sure. But why should I? I prefer not to have to deal with "clutch engage, wait 2 seconds, clutch disengage, repeat ad infinitum" on those days when I'm dumb enough not to take mass transit, at least until Kruesi screws me and I can't do mass transit anymore (give him time, he will).
I'm not saying it's not doable; I'm saying that for most people, it isn't worth it. There's always a few zealots, but most of us acknowledge that sticks are no fun in traffic.
iTunes *is* nice software for doing library management, at least for me. A combination of iTunes (to do management/transfer to the iPod), CDEX to do tagging on extraction, and Tag 'n' Rename to do retagging of poorly tagged files is what I use.
I used to live in Detroit. Detroit traffic ain't shit. You move, for one thing, almost continually. Maybe not fast, and right now with all the ugly-ass construction going down its worse, but when the highways are in their normal (not all ripped up at the same time, just one at a time) state Detroit traffic is really pretty good. This is coming from someone who used to do 30 miles right through the heart of the 275/96/14/696 interchange when they had the whole damn thing ripped apart.
Come to Chicago, do 30 miles each way out here, and THEN tell me you want to deal with a stick.
You guys only get hit with 5%? Last GM program I worked on, we got told "If you can't make your product $10 cheaper per unit" (which was about 25%) "we'll give the contract away."
The Big 3 are definitely, definitely evil in this regard.
You fall into the familiar trap of assuming that your experience translates to the general world. I have a custom built piece of hardware designed to make a certain type of sound; does that mean everyone does? Further, I have a car. I've gone to the trouble of refitting my car audio system; this doesn't mean that the majority, or even that a significant percentage of people, have done so.
How do I know this? I know this because I'm friends with a lot of gamers, and almost none of them run Linux. Further, I know this because the general statistics back me (where are the Linux game translaters? If 60% of the market is Linux then there's a lot of money there). The only bullshit is in seeing yourself in everyone. It's nice that you like to play games under Linux, but you are by no means the rule.
Oh, as to your argument regarding the likelihood of Linux users buying higher end gear - uh-huh. Except for the number of Linux users who heavily re-use old gear and the fact that the people who want the high-end video cards are GAMERS, who are significantly less likely to run Linux.
It makes perfect sense to cater to your market; but the market for video card makers is NOT Linux.
Re:Better drivers and licensing please
on
Linux GPU Performance
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· Score: 2, Informative
No, he was right.
There is a market. ATI has sold X cards. These cards, hardware wise, can be used identically on Linux or Windows, its only software thats needed to adapt to the system. If 90% of those cards went to Windows users and 10% went to Linux users, here is why the Linux driver is more expensive per unit sold.
Let's assume driver development costs a fixed number per OS, Y. Let's assume that its equal for Linux and Windows. Thus, every driver ATI develops costs them Y out of their profits.
The cost-per-card for Windows driver Y/(0.9X). The cost for Linux drivers, similarly, is Y/(0.1X). 0.9X > 0.1X unless X is zero. So, unless ATI sells NO cards at all, its cheaper to develop for the majority of the market-share. I.E. Windows.
Considering that desktop market share for Linux is around 3%, and Windows comes in around 90%, its significantly more expensive to support Linux than Windows, even if you assume that the ratio of ATI Linux users to Windows users is probably a little bit better (a large portion of those Windows users have cheapie integrated Intel graphics).
Personally, I *loathe* snap. I sometimes don't want to place things right next to each other; sometimes I want overlap, or to leave a bit of dead space, but not much. Snap fucks that up. It annoys me a lot more in Photoshop, where someday I will learn the way to turn it off, but it annoys me just as much with window placement.
Or he could actually enjoy his job and be working on meaningful work. I know its shocking, but some of us do get to do that, even working for large corporations. There's bullshit everywhere, but it doesn't have to affect you if you don't let it.
After doing a bit more digging, Money and USA Today are reporting market cap based on publicly traded Class A shares, while Reuters includes the Class B shares as well. Ironically, the 35 billion market cap just makes my point stronger.
And yeah, I don't think anyone's going to see MS-type growth from Google; the kinds of companies that you get that from are the ones where no one realizes how big they're going to get.
Interesting; money.cnn lists Google's market cap at 4.45 billion, while Reuters has it at 36 billion. LA Times, USA Today have it at 4.5 billion as well. If you don't believe me, check it yourself - I may be wrong, but it was an honest mistake. There are different numbers for shares out at each site, as well. I have no idea what's causing the disparity; if you find out, please do tell me.
GM only makes nothing on cars (not trucks, not SUVs) when the customer takes the incentives. However, if they take the incentives, they have to finance through GMAC. Either way, GM gets the cash; don't believe the lie that they make no money, I work with those guys and they squeeze every penny they can from suppliers in order to maximize their profit. It's a low margin business, at least for cars, but the margin is positive.
Pensions are a problem, but honestly, some of that aging UAW population is starting to die, and with the number of factory jobs GM has moved abroad the replacement rate is a lot lower than the removal rate. Pensions are a problem GM just needs to surmount once; they won't be nearly as large in the future.
GM is slightly, slightly undervalued, I think. Google is considerably overvalued; at 5 billion, at 30 billion.
GM has existing physical product. If nothing else, they have stocks of currently built cars and raw materials that could be sold.
GM owns considerably more IP than Google does.
GM's brand is certainly better known than Google's, though not as respected, and probably is worth roughly the same amount.
That isn't even getting into GM's real estate business or their financial services business, which is actually more profitable right now than their car business.
GM has roughly $200 BILLION in yearly sales. Roughly $4 billion in yearly net profit. Google has roughly $3 billion a year in sales, and roughly $1.25 billion a year in profit (must be nice, not having a manufacturing cost.)
It isn't their worth to you; its their worth, period. GM has ridiculous amounts of tangible assets; Google, though they have assets (IP and name, mostly, as well as their client list) don't have enough to justify their over-inflated market cap.
Just remember these two numbers: 132.5 to 7.8. That's Google's price/sales ratio and GM's. Think about that ratio.
1900 employees, as in the number of employees Google has, not 1990 employees, as in employed on the date of, which was your interpretation... and would make no sense.
2004-1990 does equal 14, so you can subtract, but it's obvious you can't read.
The monopoly powers aren't granted to a few corporations; they're granted to the inventor. This can be anyone; patents are granted to individuals regularly. The reason most of them these days are granted to corporations and universities and other large entities is because a lot of research requires more support structure than individual inventors generally have.
Anyway, the point isn't to prevent the loss of knowledge. The point is to encourage the fastest possible spread of knowledge, at the price of sometimes slightly retarding the speed of the exploitation of that knowledge.
If I put work into developing something novel, I have no objection to you knowing how that something works; I just object to you taking my research and making money on it. As such, a patent system requiring open publication in exchange for a monopoly on exploitation yields exactly the desired result - everyone gains in knowledge, while the originator gains financially from their creation of new knowledge.
Don't get me wrong. There are abuses (the willful damages thing, for one, and terms are unrealistic in modern environments, algorithms should not be patentable, etc.), but the system as a whole is an effective means of producing the desired result.
Next.
I don't trust government either, but the thing is - without a government, you have anarchy. Except, anarchy will inevitably de/evolve into despotism, as those with power use it to control other people. In a republican/democratic form of government, this is still true - government uses power to control other people. However, government has voluntarily relinquished control of that power to the people it controls; I have more influence in a republican state than I would be likely to have in a anarchistic/despotic state.
Concentration of power is a risk, and I don't like it. However, better to concentrate that power in a structure that at least pretends to yield control of that power to the governed, than to trust in human nature to do the same. In a anarchistic society, a single person willing to use their power to control other people can trump anyone with less power, whether or not they're willing to resist, unless someone with greater power steps in to prevent it. In republican society, this is still true, but there's a known entity with, essentially, the greatest power - the government. The structures of the government are what I have to trust in, since they're better than humans - the structures that say that I can sue a corporation and win, or even sue the government and win.
I don't trust the government, I just trust it more than I can trust the mass of humanity.
I stand on the shoulders of giants who came before me. Why do I read 20 year old patents? Because the bleeding edge 20 years ago is, in my field, often very applicable, and even when it isn't directly applicable often gives me a direction to work from, a base to start from. Obviously, I work with significantly smarter people than you. As to the public knowledge argument - I work in a specialized field. Some of the patents are not public knowledge, and its quite useful to have read them. I read journal articles for the same reason; to have an understanding of what's gone before in order to better be able to extend the public field of knowledge.
You're contradicting yourself - if you can own knowledge, then you can lose knowledge. And yes - if an idea is come up with, it *is* possible that it will never be redicovered if it is lost. Unlikely? Sure. But possible.
I want a government to provide a reasonable set of common strictures for life, yes. I don't have enough faith in humans to trust them to act decently in the absence of a government. You obviously think differently. Human history would tend to support my view more than yours.
You're a typical Slashdotter - completely anti-IP, anti-government without a single bit of thought as to the values of the things you claim to despise.
Wireless is a shared medium, so that 360 Mbps is divided by the number of users. The point is that it becomes possible to support more users in a given amount of bandwidth at a reasonable speed, not that a single user could get a (generally unnecessary) higher max speed.
Who says these "experiments" were ever tried? The ELF/VLF systems have significant communication uses; the money was spent on them for that purpose, not for some hypothetical, very possibly never conducted, "experiment".
Re:Don't confuse me with a conspiracy theorist whe
on
Navy ELF to Be Scrapped
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· Score: 1, Troll
That's all well and good, except this is a lot more in line with shutting down excess air bases than it is with "shutting down" non-lethal weapons research. The ELF system is very much a Cold War relic, and like other Cold War relics (DEW system, excess missile and air bases) the military is slowly decommissioning it.
There's no reason to believe the technology is being scrapped; however, there is every reason to believe the facilities are being decommissioned. Somewhere, just in case, I'm sure the Navy will maintain documentation and maybe even surplus equipment, but the radio towers are being taken down. Thinking the Navy is trying to hide an actively pursued ELF program is like thinking they're stockpiling 286s - sure, it could be true, but they have no reason to do such a thing when newer technology exists and is as or more effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops. I didn't realize Archos made anything small; the only Archos things I've seen were quite sizable, and the UI drove me nuts on them. I recently got to play with a clickwheel iPod (mine is a 3G model) and was very impressed; they got rid of the few irritations I had, like the fact that buttons activate either way too easy or not at all on occasion, and replaced it with nice positive feedback for button activation.
I don't really use the ratings thing, as I have a pretty good idea of how much I like any given song (and yes, I do have a lot of them, by anyone's measure).
Note one more thing: the gMini 400 has a 20 GB hard drive for a retail of $400. The iPod 20GB retails at $299, so it has price over the Archos as well as UI.
4.2 x 2.4 x 0.7 (gMini)
4.1 x 2.4 x 0.57 (iPod 20 GB; the 40GB is 0.7 thick)
The iPod remains slightly smaller and thinner at the same hard drive size, though it is NOT a big difference by any means.
Actually, I've found that you need to leave the city by around 6 AM to get out before the traffic starts; I reverse-commute, so I do in fact do those times roughly. Traffic still sucks.
Best times for a reverse-commute in Chicago, at least on the north/northwest side? Out of the city by 6:15AM, head back in by 3:15PM. Except on Fridays, when you're pretty much just plain screwed.
Please. Your commute is not what I was talking about; 53 is nothing. I do 30 miles, Wicker Park to Deer Park. It genuinely is that bad. You get the "good" part of 90.
I could do it in a stick, sure. But why should I? I prefer not to have to deal with "clutch engage, wait 2 seconds, clutch disengage, repeat ad infinitum" on those days when I'm dumb enough not to take mass transit, at least until Kruesi screws me and I can't do mass transit anymore (give him time, he will).
I'm not saying it's not doable; I'm saying that for most people, it isn't worth it. There's always a few zealots, but most of us acknowledge that sticks are no fun in traffic.
UI and size, iPod wins.
iTunes *is* nice software for doing library management, at least for me. A combination of iTunes (to do management/transfer to the iPod), CDEX to do tagging on extraction, and Tag 'n' Rename to do retagging of poorly tagged files is what I use.
But basically, UI and size.
I don't run into runaway lanes a lot.
I would hope no one runs into runaway lanes a lot.
I used to live in Detroit. Detroit traffic ain't shit. You move, for one thing, almost continually. Maybe not fast, and right now with all the ugly-ass construction going down its worse, but when the highways are in their normal (not all ripped up at the same time, just one at a time) state Detroit traffic is really pretty good. This is coming from someone who used to do 30 miles right through the heart of the 275/96/14/696 interchange when they had the whole damn thing ripped apart.
Come to Chicago, do 30 miles each way out here, and THEN tell me you want to deal with a stick.
You guys only get hit with 5%? Last GM program I worked on, we got told "If you can't make your product $10 cheaper per unit" (which was about 25%) "we'll give the contract away."
The Big 3 are definitely, definitely evil in this regard.
You fall into the familiar trap of assuming that your experience translates to the general world. I have a custom built piece of hardware designed to make a certain type of sound; does that mean everyone does? Further, I have a car. I've gone to the trouble of refitting my car audio system; this doesn't mean that the majority, or even that a significant percentage of people, have done so.
How do I know this? I know this because I'm friends with a lot of gamers, and almost none of them run Linux. Further, I know this because the general statistics back me (where are the Linux game translaters? If 60% of the market is Linux then there's a lot of money there). The only bullshit is in seeing yourself in everyone. It's nice that you like to play games under Linux, but you are by no means the rule.
.reltiH a ton ,inilossuM a ylno m'I yltnerappA
If you're SCO, it's pronounced "Sues".
Oh, as to your argument regarding the likelihood of Linux users buying higher end gear - uh-huh. Except for the number of Linux users who heavily re-use old gear and the fact that the people who want the high-end video cards are GAMERS, who are significantly less likely to run Linux.
It makes perfect sense to cater to your market; but the market for video card makers is NOT Linux.
No, he was right.
There is a market. ATI has sold X cards. These cards, hardware wise, can be used identically on Linux or Windows, its only software thats needed to adapt to the system. If 90% of those cards went to Windows users and 10% went to Linux users, here is why the Linux driver is more expensive per unit sold.
Let's assume driver development costs a fixed number per OS, Y. Let's assume that its equal for Linux and Windows. Thus, every driver ATI develops costs them Y out of their profits.
The cost-per-card for Windows driver Y/(0.9X). The cost for Linux drivers, similarly, is Y/(0.1X). 0.9X > 0.1X unless X is zero. So, unless ATI sells NO cards at all, its cheaper to develop for the majority of the market-share. I.E. Windows.
Considering that desktop market share for Linux is around 3%, and Windows comes in around 90%, its significantly more expensive to support Linux than Windows, even if you assume that the ratio of ATI Linux users to Windows users is probably a little bit better (a large portion of those Windows users have cheapie integrated Intel graphics).
.rettamitan, ton rettamitna.
Personally, I *loathe* snap. I sometimes don't want to place things right next to each other; sometimes I want overlap, or to leave a bit of dead space, but not much. Snap fucks that up. It annoys me a lot more in Photoshop, where someday I will learn the way to turn it off, but it annoys me just as much with window placement.
Just one of those little things.
Or he could actually enjoy his job and be working on meaningful work. I know its shocking, but some of us do get to do that, even working for large corporations. There's bullshit everywhere, but it doesn't have to affect you if you don't let it.
After doing a bit more digging, Money and USA Today are reporting market cap based on publicly traded Class A shares, while Reuters includes the Class B shares as well. Ironically, the 35 billion market cap just makes my point stronger.
And yeah, I don't think anyone's going to see MS-type growth from Google; the kinds of companies that you get that from are the ones where no one realizes how big they're going to get.
Interesting; money.cnn lists Google's market cap at 4.45 billion, while Reuters has it at 36 billion. LA Times, USA Today have it at 4.5 billion as well. If you don't believe me, check it yourself - I may be wrong, but it was an honest mistake. There are different numbers for shares out at each site, as well. I have no idea what's causing the disparity; if you find out, please do tell me.
GM only makes nothing on cars (not trucks, not SUVs) when the customer takes the incentives. However, if they take the incentives, they have to finance through GMAC. Either way, GM gets the cash; don't believe the lie that they make no money, I work with those guys and they squeeze every penny they can from suppliers in order to maximize their profit. It's a low margin business, at least for cars, but the margin is positive.
Pensions are a problem, but honestly, some of that aging UAW population is starting to die, and with the number of factory jobs GM has moved abroad the replacement rate is a lot lower than the removal rate. Pensions are a problem GM just needs to surmount once; they won't be nearly as large in the future.
GM is slightly, slightly undervalued, I think. Google is considerably overvalued; at 5 billion, at 30 billion.
GM owns a shitload of real estate.
GM has existing physical product. If nothing else, they have stocks of currently built cars and raw materials that could be sold.
GM owns considerably more IP than Google does.
GM's brand is certainly better known than Google's, though not as respected, and probably is worth roughly the same amount.
That isn't even getting into GM's real estate business or their financial services business, which is actually more profitable right now than their car business.
GM has roughly $200 BILLION in yearly sales. Roughly $4 billion in yearly net profit. Google has roughly $3 billion a year in sales, and roughly $1.25 billion a year in profit (must be nice, not having a manufacturing cost.)
It isn't their worth to you; its their worth, period. GM has ridiculous amounts of tangible assets; Google, though they have assets (IP and name, mostly, as well as their client list) don't have enough to justify their over-inflated market cap.
Just remember these two numbers: 132.5 to 7.8. That's Google's price/sales ratio and GM's. Think about that ratio.
Google's market cap: about 5 billion.
GM's market cap: about 25 billion.
Anyone out there *really* think Google is worth 20% of GM?
1900 employees, as in the number of employees Google has, not 1990 employees, as in employed on the date of, which was your interpretation... and would make no sense.
2004-1990 does equal 14, so you can subtract, but it's obvious you can't read.
The monopoly powers aren't granted to a few corporations; they're granted to the inventor. This can be anyone; patents are granted to individuals regularly. The reason most of them these days are granted to corporations and universities and other large entities is because a lot of research requires more support structure than individual inventors generally have.
Anyway, the point isn't to prevent the loss of knowledge. The point is to encourage the fastest possible spread of knowledge, at the price of sometimes slightly retarding the speed of the exploitation of that knowledge.
If I put work into developing something novel, I have no objection to you knowing how that something works; I just object to you taking my research and making money on it. As such, a patent system requiring open publication in exchange for a monopoly on exploitation yields exactly the desired result - everyone gains in knowledge, while the originator gains financially from their creation of new knowledge.
Don't get me wrong. There are abuses (the willful damages thing, for one, and terms are unrealistic in modern environments, algorithms should not be patentable, etc.), but the system as a whole is an effective means of producing the desired result.
Next.
I don't trust government either, but the thing is - without a government, you have anarchy. Except, anarchy will inevitably de/evolve into despotism, as those with power use it to control other people. In a republican/democratic form of government, this is still true - government uses power to control other people. However, government has voluntarily relinquished control of that power to the people it controls; I have more influence in a republican state than I would be likely to have in a anarchistic/despotic state.
Concentration of power is a risk, and I don't like it. However, better to concentrate that power in a structure that at least pretends to yield control of that power to the governed, than to trust in human nature to do the same. In a anarchistic society, a single person willing to use their power to control other people can trump anyone with less power, whether or not they're willing to resist, unless someone with greater power steps in to prevent it. In republican society, this is still true, but there's a known entity with, essentially, the greatest power - the government. The structures of the government are what I have to trust in, since they're better than humans - the structures that say that I can sue a corporation and win, or even sue the government and win.
I don't trust the government, I just trust it more than I can trust the mass of humanity.
I stand on the shoulders of giants who came before me. Why do I read 20 year old patents? Because the bleeding edge 20 years ago is, in my field, often very applicable, and even when it isn't directly applicable often gives me a direction to work from, a base to start from. Obviously, I work with significantly smarter people than you. As to the public knowledge argument - I work in a specialized field. Some of the patents are not public knowledge, and its quite useful to have read them. I read journal articles for the same reason; to have an understanding of what's gone before in order to better be able to extend the public field of knowledge.
You're contradicting yourself - if you can own knowledge, then you can lose knowledge. And yes - if an idea is come up with, it *is* possible that it will never be redicovered if it is lost. Unlikely? Sure. But possible.
I want a government to provide a reasonable set of common strictures for life, yes. I don't have enough faith in humans to trust them to act decently in the absence of a government. You obviously think differently. Human history would tend to support my view more than yours.
You're a typical Slashdotter - completely anti-IP, anti-government without a single bit of thought as to the values of the things you claim to despise.
Wireless is a shared medium, so that 360 Mbps is divided by the number of users. The point is that it becomes possible to support more users in a given amount of bandwidth at a reasonable speed, not that a single user could get a (generally unnecessary) higher max speed.
Who says these "experiments" were ever tried? The ELF/VLF systems have significant communication uses; the money was spent on them for that purpose, not for some hypothetical, very possibly never conducted, "experiment".
That's all well and good, except this is a lot more in line with shutting down excess air bases than it is with "shutting down" non-lethal weapons research. The ELF system is very much a Cold War relic, and like other Cold War relics (DEW system, excess missile and air bases) the military is slowly decommissioning it.
There's no reason to believe the technology is being scrapped; however, there is every reason to believe the facilities are being decommissioned. Somewhere, just in case, I'm sure the Navy will maintain documentation and maybe even surplus equipment, but the radio towers are being taken down. Thinking the Navy is trying to hide an actively pursued ELF program is like thinking they're stockpiling 286s - sure, it could be true, but they have no reason to do such a thing when newer technology exists and is as or more effective.