Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video both do OK because they both rent and sell content that will play in the same devices. (DVD Players or VCR's)
If they both had started up today and insisted on selling movies that each required different hardware players I.E. -- Blockbuster decides to bring back the BETA format tapes (AAC) and Hollywood Video decides to go with laser discs (WMA) -- and the consumers all have VCR's (MP3)....would anybody be surprised when they did nothing but confuse and piss off the customers?
I understand that up to "4 billion" people have purchased Ipods, and that market pretty much has to be listened to....So Yahoo! comes up with a service that supplies WMA's that cannot be decoded on the defacto hardware base? Hu...Hell I am not an Ipod guy, and I have 3 or 4 "generic" MP3 players that can also do WMA.....But not the DRM-WMA.
It is fine to let the software format help define the hardware format when the market is new....But after becoming entrached over a 5 or 6 year period it seems ludicrous to push a software format that will not play on the millions of devices already purchased and in use in the market place.
"The way the PocketPC devices are built they are not meant to be always connected to a network and if you did you would likely only get about 4-6 hours battery life. When you compare that to > one week for a RIM device there is no comparison."
Damn -- if I could get 4-6 hours of battery life from a PPC connected to WLAN then that would be a miracle. I have taken various Pocket PC devices (we test lot's of them at work) with me to the park while I let the kids play (and I will surf the net or stream shoutcast)-- And I have yet to have a PPC battery last longer than my kids energy to go down slides or climb rock walls. (Usually after 2 hours or less of use with a steady network connection the battery has had all that it can take.....and this is with commercial PDA's with the extended batteries. Your average Dell Axim or Ipaq is lucky to make it on to the network and through the box scores without draining itself down to 25%.)
" Word, Excel, etc...that's all well and good. But can I run my favorite software from the FSF on this new OS? Me thinkist not."
Many companies have tried PDA's that could run your favorite FSF on.....For some reason the 20 people that purchased them was not enough to keep the hardware companies in business. (Or at least in business in the US. IE - Sharp, or the countless other PDA's using linux in the PDA boneyard)
I will not address each of those issues, but I also have wondered about how weak and helpless the Jedi are portrayed. I think our expectations of the power of the Jedi were setup by the "Superman" like portrayal of Vader in the original trilogy. With the onset of the prequels, we imagined a whole bunch of Jedi "Supermen" that were impervious to destruction.
However, faced with the fact that he would have to wipeout thousands of these "good" supermen with only a hadful of "bad" supermen in the original trilogy in order to explain the lack of jedi in parts 4-6....I think Lucas painted himself in a corner that has proven hard to paint himself out of.
Most people complain about Jar-Jar, Flying Toad Yoda, Pod Races, etc....My biggest hangup with the prequels is the weakness and retardation of the jedi.
And again if Lucas had not made Vadar so superhuman in the original trilogy, then mnaybe our expectations of Jedi really being only akin to "mortal man" would have been easier to swallow.
I was bored this morning so I decided to check into the facts of this. I am no lawyer or financial expert, but if this even exists -- it looks more like a loan than an investment.
When TPM came out and I was able to take my child age 6 to see the show (I was 6 when I first saw Star Wars with my father.)
And you know what -- When she fell in love with Jar-Jar, and had to have the Jar-Jar Shirt, the Jar-Jar action figure, the Jar-Jar Bowl and Plate set with matching fork and spoon....I understood things a whole lot better than most of the people who where "original star wars" fans that despised TPM....
Well George I got it. You were giving to my kids the same thing you gave to me. (My Dad thought C3-PO and Chewbacca were strange role models...)
What sucks is that most of you "fanboys" did not "get it". You wanted TPM to be Star Wars mixed with Blade Runner and The Matrix. You wanted George to cater to the original fans after 20+ years of hard liven'. George catered to the same crowd he did before.....Just you were no longer in it.
This is why the PDA market is struggling to gain any sort of foothold in corporate America.
10east decides to go with a "linux" solution for the new push towards the "mobile workforce" inititives in the railroad industry. (A big push and a big market).
Much time and money is spent in developing the software for these "Specialized" devices.
Software and Hardware is rolled out -- everyone is happy.
Hardware company stops providing and supporting devices in the American Market.
How does solutions provider keep machines fixed up and replacement machines at the ready?
This problem is not unique to Sharp and Linux on the PDA. How many companies have tried to roll out applications for PDA's (Ipaq, HP, Dell, and countless other companies that no longer build PDA's) that are no longer supported after their 6 month lifespan.
Spare parts no longer available after a year. No firmware updates. No Support.
Yet companies are trying to roll out multi million dollar software solutions and getting stabbed in the back and abandoned by the hardware people that "load up the wagons" and leave town in less than a year.
So -- is the fact that 10east is getting into the hardware re-sell business a success story? No -- it is the failure of Sharp to have any BALLS!
" Ogg Ogg Ogg Ogg Ogg... How many times do you have to say it for frig'n sake?!!!"
I don't think the CPU on most of these devices can handle OGG. Why is it that everything from my toaster to can opener can decode mp3's....But it takes machines found mostly on the space shuttle or data center to decode OGG's?
Don't let the everyday joe's know that their wireless connections are open to the world, or else I won't have any way to surf the Interweb on my laptop when I take my kids to the park.
Yes it does. People have abused the power of the popup, so all popups are bad by extension. The only true way to get rid of the 95% bad popups is to eliminate popups. A small price to pay.
I love xfce myself. I don't mind gnome at home or for hobby type stuff...But I load up XFCE by default on all of the machines at work or in the data center.
The only thing keeping everything from being locked down and DRM'd to the upmost level is the fact that the media (dvd's, cd's) has to play on the host devices that were manufactured and purchased before the electronic lockdown boom.
It's not a matter of what we will accept or not accept. The publishers would in a second lock down everything if they could do so, and still support the millions of legacy host devices that are the thin line providing us with the last vestages of perceived "fair use" rights for the consumer.
This is all represented best when I as a paying customer to a movie along with 100+ other paying customers ($9 no less) are forced to sit through a 2 minute sob fest/condemming/accusing public service announcment talking about how movie piracy hurts the little guy.....further delaying our ability as paying customers to enjoy the movie we had just paid to watch.
Point 1: You work for a contracting company. They farm you out, assign you as a contractor to a third party. If you have problems with benefits or such -- take it up with you employer not the company your employer is taking a check from and the company you provide service to.
Point 2: Refer to point 1.
I have many contractors who have no desire to become employees. Yet my company is scared to let us keep these people because of stupid lawsuits like this one.
Back in my day A hack was technical accomplishment of upmost geekdom -- that could not be easily reproduced without the possibility of electronic destruction of thousands of dollars and the possibility of bodily injury.
Nowdays all these apple fanboys can tie a piece of string to some streamlined apple hardware....and it is considered a hack of remarkable accomplishments.
95% of the "iHacks" would have been laughed off of the internet 3 or 4 years ago when people were really hacking stuff.
Leave it to the same company that found a way to get beta testers to pay them for the chance to find bugs in their software, and then to find away to build even a stronger company making millions on offering "preferred" (read $$$) customers security patch notification a few days before the general public....
And now the tri-fecta -- The Government will get notification and patches even quicker. How would it be to have enough power and knowledge to make billions of dollars on your own security holes?
If I am going to code something for free, it is most likely going to be a feature that I personally want for my own good. Sure I will pass it on because it is the nature of OSS. Occasionally I may stroke my ego by throwing someone else a bone.
It was a windy day and I had a stack of papers that I wanted to sit down on the bench next to me....There were no rocks in site.
I made an awesome discovery. It just hit me. I could use my iPod layed at just the right angle on top of those papers to keep them from blowing away.
I had done it -- I had invented the first paper weight that could also play music. How did we all survive before iPods. This damn swiss army knife in my back pocket seems so useless now.
No...She and the others are just proof that it is possible to sell millions of CD's in an age where (supposedly) nobody is buying any CD's, but only downloading them for free.
Looking at the top 50 sellers every week, and the number of units moved, saying that "everyone" is stilling music is about as convincing as walking into a weight watchers prospect seminar and convincing me that they are all starving to death.
Slashdot Mirror
Why won't this work:
Different formats that require different players.
Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video both do OK because they both rent and sell content that will play in the same devices. (DVD Players or VCR's)
If they both had started up today and insisted on selling movies that each required different hardware players I.E. -- Blockbuster decides to bring back the BETA format tapes (AAC) and Hollywood Video decides to go with laser discs (WMA) -- and the consumers all have VCR's (MP3)....would anybody be surprised when they did nothing but confuse and piss off the customers?
I understand that up to "4 billion" people have purchased Ipods, and that market pretty much has to be listened to....So Yahoo! comes up with a service that supplies WMA's that cannot be decoded on the defacto hardware base? Hu...Hell I am not an Ipod guy, and I have 3 or 4 "generic" MP3 players that can also do WMA.....But not the DRM-WMA.
It is fine to let the software format help define the hardware format when the market is new....But after becoming entrached over a 5 or 6 year period it seems ludicrous to push a software format that will not play on the millions of devices already purchased and in use in the market place.
Stupid.
"The way the PocketPC devices are built they are not meant to be always connected to a network and if you did you would likely only get about 4-6 hours battery life. When you compare that to > one week for a RIM device there is no comparison."
Damn -- if I could get 4-6 hours of battery life from a PPC connected to WLAN then that would be a miracle. I have taken various Pocket PC devices (we test lot's of them at work) with me to the park while I let the kids play (and I will surf the net or stream shoutcast)-- And I have yet to have a PPC battery last longer than my kids energy to go down slides or climb rock walls. (Usually after 2 hours or less of use with a steady network connection the battery has had all that it can take.....and this is with commercial PDA's with the extended batteries. Your average Dell Axim or Ipaq is lucky to make it on to the network and through the box scores without draining itself down to 25%.)
" Word, Excel, etc...that's all well and good. But can I run my favorite software from the FSF on this new OS? Me thinkist not."
Many companies have tried PDA's that could run your favorite FSF on.....For some reason the 20 people that purchased them was not enough to keep the hardware companies in business. (Or at least in business in the US. IE - Sharp, or the countless other PDA's using linux in the PDA boneyard)
I will not address each of those issues, but I also have wondered about how weak and helpless the Jedi are portrayed. I think our expectations of the power of the Jedi were setup by the "Superman" like portrayal of Vader in the original trilogy. With the onset of the prequels, we imagined a whole bunch of Jedi "Supermen" that were impervious to destruction.
However, faced with the fact that he would have to wipeout thousands of these "good" supermen with only a hadful of "bad" supermen in the original trilogy in order to explain the lack of jedi in parts 4-6....I think Lucas painted himself in a corner that has proven hard to paint himself out of.
Most people complain about Jar-Jar, Flying Toad Yoda, Pod Races, etc....My biggest hangup with the prequels is the weakness and retardation of the jedi.
And again if Lucas had not made Vadar so superhuman in the original trilogy, then mnaybe our expectations of Jedi really being only akin to "mortal man" would have been easier to swallow.
I was bored this morning so I decided to check into the facts of this. I am no lawyer or financial expert, but if this even exists -- it looks more like a loan than an investment.
Now these "ladykillers" are going to have to pack their router and network cables in dry ice.
Perfect perception and post!! Kudos to you.
When TPM came out and I was able to take my child age 6 to see the show (I was 6 when I first saw Star Wars with my father.)
And you know what -- When she fell in love with Jar-Jar, and had to have the Jar-Jar Shirt, the Jar-Jar action figure, the Jar-Jar Bowl and Plate set with matching fork and spoon....I understood things a whole lot better than most of the people who where "original star wars" fans that despised TPM....
Well George I got it. You were giving to my kids the same thing you gave to me. (My Dad thought C3-PO and Chewbacca were strange role models...)
What sucks is that most of you "fanboys" did not "get it". You wanted TPM to be Star Wars mixed with Blade Runner and The Matrix. You wanted George to cater to the original fans after 20+ years of hard liven'. George catered to the same crowd he did before.....Just you were no longer in it.
Perfect. That is why mp3 is my choice.
It is the hardware manufacturers fault!
This is why the PDA market is struggling to gain any sort of foothold in corporate America.
10east decides to go with a "linux" solution for the new push towards the "mobile workforce" inititives in
the railroad industry. (A big push and a big market).
Much time and money is spent in developing the software for these "Specialized" devices.
Software and Hardware is rolled out -- everyone is happy.
Hardware company stops providing and supporting devices in the American Market.
How does solutions provider keep machines fixed up and replacement machines at the ready?
This problem is not unique to Sharp and Linux on the PDA. How many companies have tried to
roll out applications for PDA's (Ipaq, HP, Dell, and countless other companies that no longer
build PDA's) that are no longer supported after their 6 month lifespan.
Spare parts no longer available after a year. No firmware updates. No Support.
Yet companies are trying to roll out multi million dollar software solutions and
getting stabbed in the back and abandoned by the hardware people that "load up the
wagons" and leave town in less than a year.
So -- is the fact that 10east is getting into the hardware re-sell business a success story? No -- it is the failure of Sharp to have any BALLS!
Posting this story on /. is like posting a story about the joys of a hot dog eating contest in a vegan forum.
" Ogg Ogg Ogg Ogg Ogg ... How many times do you have to say it for frig'n sake?!!!"
I don't think the CPU on most of these devices can handle OGG. Why is it that everything from my toaster to can opener can decode mp3's....But it takes machines found mostly on the space shuttle or data center to decode OGG's?
Wonder how much RAM we will need to find out just how good it works?
Don't let the everyday joe's know that their wireless connections are open to the world, or else I won't have any way to surf the Interweb on my laptop when I take my kids to the park.
You forgot the 4th guy, he gets coffee.
Yes it does. People have abused the power of the popup, so all popups are bad by extension. The only true way to get rid of the 95% bad popups is to eliminate popups. A small price to pay.
How many early adopters must die because of such crazyness.
I lost an uncle in the Beta Wars.
My dad lost his site and the use of his left arm in the Laser Disc campaigns.
And yet, the brave are marching out again to an expensive and certain death in the HDTV campaigns.
And meanwhile the rich get richer.
(Harry Potter + Smallville) * A whole cast of Wesley Crushers = Failure.
I love xfce myself. I don't mind gnome at home or for hobby type stuff...But I load up XFCE by default on all of the machines at work or in the data center.
The only thing keeping everything from being locked down and DRM'd to the upmost level is the fact that the media (dvd's, cd's) has to play on the host devices that were manufactured and purchased before the electronic lockdown boom.
It's not a matter of what we will accept or not accept. The publishers would in a second lock down everything if they could do so, and still support the millions of legacy host devices that are the thin line providing us with the last vestages of perceived "fair use" rights for the consumer.
This is all represented best when I as a paying customer to a movie along with 100+ other paying customers ($9 no less) are forced to sit through a 2 minute sob fest/condemming/accusing public service announcment talking about how movie piracy hurts the little guy.....further delaying our ability as paying customers to enjoy the movie we had just paid to watch.
This only hurts contractors in the long run.
Point 1: You work for a contracting company. They farm you out, assign you as a contractor to a third party. If you have problems with benefits or such -- take it up with you employer not the company your employer is taking a check from and the company you provide service to.
Point 2: Refer to point 1.
I have many contractors who have no desire to become employees. Yet my company is scared to let us keep these people because of stupid lawsuits like this one.
Back in my day A hack was technical accomplishment of upmost geekdom -- that could not be easily reproduced without the possibility of electronic destruction of thousands of dollars and the possibility of bodily injury.
Nowdays all these apple fanboys can tie a piece of string to some streamlined apple hardware....and it is considered a hack of remarkable accomplishments.
95% of the "iHacks" would have been laughed off of the internet 3 or 4 years ago when people were really hacking stuff.
Leave it to the same company that found a way to get beta testers to pay them for the chance to find bugs in their software, and then to find away to build even a stronger company making millions on offering "preferred" (read $$$) customers security patch notification a few days before the general public....
And now the tri-fecta -- The Government will get notification and patches even quicker. How would it be to have enough power and knowledge to make billions of dollars on your own security holes?
If I am going to code something for free, it is most likely going to be a feature that I personally want for my own good. Sure I will pass it on because it is the nature of OSS. Occasionally I may stroke my ego by throwing someone else a bone.
What is so wrong with that?
It was a windy day and I had a stack of papers that I wanted to sit down on the bench next to me....There were no rocks in site.
I made an awesome discovery. It just hit me. I could use my iPod layed at just the right angle on top of those papers to keep them from blowing away.
I had done it -- I had invented the first paper weight that could also play music. How did we all survive before iPods. This damn swiss army knife in my back pocket seems so useless now.
No...She and the others are just proof that it is possible to sell millions of CD's in an age where (supposedly) nobody is buying any CD's, but only downloading them for free.
Looking at the top 50 sellers every week, and the number of units moved, saying that "everyone" is stilling music is about as convincing as walking into a weight watchers prospect seminar and convincing me that they are all starving to death.