What does it matter whether Microsoft offers DRM-free WMA or not?
Their market share is negligable.
The question is... what DRM-free format will Rhapsody pick? One that's compatible with the iPod out of the box, or one that requires them to keep updating the Harmony kludge that they created to play their DRM-encumbered files on the iPod?
In Windows Vista, autorun is not a danger. Not any more than browsing a web site, anyhow. It asks you before it lets you do anything.
And this has been proven time and time again NOT to be sufficient protection. In my job as a system and network administrator, I have time and time again had people come to me and tell me that they accidentally approved one of these annoying dialogs AGAIN and now their computer was acting funny. When you have to approve some action repeatedly as part of the normal use of your computer, then approving that action and any other dialog similar to the one that you acknowledge to approve that action become reflex.
On the other hand, I have never had the same person come to me twice and say "I downloaded a file to my desktop and opened it AGAIN and now my computer is acting funny".
Because there's no automatic stimulus-response loop created by downloading a file and then, at a later time, at your own convenience, opening it.
Therefore, when a computer system seems to require the use of an approval dialog, that should be taken as a sign that the user interface may need to be modified to make the dialog irerelevant.
Whether that is "running an activeX object on visiting a web site" or "running an autoloaded applicaction when plugging in an unknown memory stick".
And why should MS allow others to interoperate with their email or other protocols?
Because they have a monopoly.
Before MS, IBM ruled the computing world, with numerous other incompatible operating systems such as DEC/TOPS, DEC/VAX, Univac OS/1100, HP RTOS, etc thrown into the mix.
In other words, nobody had a monopoly on system software... not even IBM, who had several operating systems and application platforms. And interfaces and protocols were publicly available to a degree that seems amazingly open now, no matter how much we griped about foot-dragging back then.
None of these OS's were interoperable, nor could mail even be easily exchanged between them.
Despite the fact that the hardware and I/O devices used incompatible character sets, word sizes, and mathematical operations there were an enormous number of common tools that allowed systems to interoperate, communicate, share data and email. The Internet that we're using to communicate right now is one result of that process.
IBM ruled both the hardware and software market back then, in a way that MS today doesn't even come close. Yet no one forced them to open up their protocols (although the US government did try, and lost).
IBM had nowhere near the monopoly on software and hardware that MS does, and when IBM attempted to prevent plug-compatible hardware manufacturers and software developers from interoperating with them they were rebuffed.
When you can hardly *get* a PC without Vista even if you try, and people *are* trying to get PCs without Vista... it seems like the demand for new PCs is despite Vista... not because of it.
Look, I just Do Not Play 3d computer games. The best computer games in the world leave me cold, I love watching the kids playing them, but the controls are just too damn hard, and the games are designed by people who think taking advantage of the sucky controllers is a reasonable way to make higher "levels" harder.
Half an hour of Wii's Tennis game and OH MY GOD, I MUST HAVE THIS GAME. NOW. I haven't been able to play tennis for real since I injured my knee, but...
* It gave me the kind of workout I used to get from playing tennis. * Waving the wand around as if it was a racquet Just Worked. * Playing my usual agressive net game Just Worked. * It took me 5 minutes to get a Mii that looked like me.
Damn, how long is it going to be hard to get a Wii? Even the sucky name doesn't spoil it.
Microsoft: if I didn't already know that you guys wouldn't Get A Clue if you did a Clue Mating Dance in the middle of Clue Mating Season covered in Clue Pheromones I'd be jumping up and doun making a monkey of myself yelling at you in the hope that you'd Get A Clue.
What part of Europe are you living in? Commodore 64s in the mid '90s?
(and what does the Amiga have to do with anything? The next-generation successor to the Commodore 64 was the Atari ST... the Amiga was produced by the Atari 800 team)
Regardless of the answer, the subject isn't "50 most popular tech products", it's "50 best tech products". Where "best" is a measure of quality or priority... and (as in the VisiCalc versus 1-2-3) they apparently consider that quality has precedence over priority.
The Commodore 64 was neither the first nor the best.
I wasn't in Europe, I was in Australia and the US. In Australia the effective marketing was Dick Smith's, and in the US the C=64 was a latecomer to a crowded field and was only able to hang on through the price wars because Tramiel was willing to lose money to buy market share. I mean, it didn't even show up until "the computer age" was already well under way.
Kid, the Commodore 64 was not dramatically cheaper than its contemporary 8-bit peers... there were dozens of comparable machines in the same price range, and lower-end products for less. Sinclair, Atari, Radio Shack, and even Commodore itself had cheaper products than the C=64.
It wasn't "the spearhead" of anything. It wasn't even the spearhead of Commodore's efforts in the market: they already had the PET and the Vic-20. It was also not "$200", it was over $500 when it was released. It didn't drop down to $200 for a couple of years and it took less than a year for Atari to matched Commodore's price point - without losing money on every sale. And need I remind you that Jack Tramiel's price war ended... after he was forced to leave Commodore, and after his quixotic lawsuits against his old company... driving both Commodore and Atari out of business?
Yes, the IBM-PC and Apple Lisa were more expensive, but they weren't on my list. The only product in that list that was still over "the $1000 barrier" by the time of the 8-bit price wars was the Apple II... the "over $1000" market had moved to 16 bits by then.
(only half joking - the only cost to sticking with Windows 2000 for me is that I can't use Bluetooth, and I had to reinstall when I upgraded to a dual-core system because of an AMD driver issue... and I'm pretty sure XP or Vista's Big Brother code would have balked at motherboard upgrades more often than 2000 has...)
If you're too fucking stupid to realise that your shitbox $500 pc won't run the most advanced software on the market
What does "the most advanced software on the market" have to do with this topic?
I mean, my shitbox $500 pc runs the most advanced software on the market just fine. Not that I've upgraded my old mini to Tiger yet, I'm waiting to see what Leopard has to offer.
It wasn't best at anything, and it wasn't first at anything, it wasn't particularly distinguished in any way, it was just popular because it was slightly cheaper than the competition.
You might as well complain that there's no Dell products in the list.
There's only two products in that list released before 1980, and they're both products that would have still been interesting to teenagers in 1980. It looks like none of the people having anything to do with this list were aware of anything that happened before then.
Slashdot Mirror
What does it matter whether Microsoft offers DRM-free WMA or not?
Their market share is negligable.
The question is... what DRM-free format will Rhapsody pick? One that's compatible with the iPod out of the box, or one that requires them to keep updating the Harmony kludge that they created to play their DRM-encumbered files on the iPod?
In Windows Vista, autorun is not a danger. Not any more than browsing a web site, anyhow. It asks you before it lets you do anything.
And this has been proven time and time again NOT to be sufficient protection. In my job as a system and network administrator, I have time and time again had people come to me and tell me that they accidentally approved one of these annoying dialogs AGAIN and now their computer was acting funny. When you have to approve some action repeatedly as part of the normal use of your computer, then approving that action and any other dialog similar to the one that you acknowledge to approve that action become reflex.
On the other hand, I have never had the same person come to me twice and say "I downloaded a file to my desktop and opened it AGAIN and now my computer is acting funny".
Because there's no automatic stimulus-response loop created by downloading a file and then, at a later time, at your own convenience, opening it.
Therefore, when a computer system seems to require the use of an approval dialog, that should be taken as a sign that the user interface may need to be modified to make the dialog irerelevant.
Whether that is "running an activeX object on visiting a web site" or "running an autoloaded applicaction when plugging in an unknown memory stick".
You want to really stretch your brain...
...
Ask yourself, what would Nintendo do if they could build a game machine incorporating a 3d printer?
Custom trophies from virtual games.
3d avatars like the "Mii" that you can actually hold.
And why should MS allow others to interoperate with their email or other protocols?
Because they have a monopoly.
Before MS, IBM ruled the computing world, with numerous other incompatible operating systems such as DEC/TOPS, DEC/VAX, Univac OS/1100, HP RTOS, etc thrown into the mix.
In other words, nobody had a monopoly on system software... not even IBM, who had several operating systems and application platforms. And interfaces and protocols were publicly available to a degree that seems amazingly open now, no matter how much we griped about foot-dragging back then.
None of these OS's were interoperable, nor could mail even be easily exchanged between them.
Despite the fact that the hardware and I/O devices used incompatible character sets, word sizes, and mathematical operations there were an enormous number of common tools that allowed systems to interoperate, communicate, share data and email. The Internet that we're using to communicate right now is one result of that process.
IBM ruled both the hardware and software market back then, in a way that MS today doesn't even come close. Yet no one forced them to open up their protocols (although the US government did try, and lost).
IBM had nowhere near the monopoly on software and hardware that MS does, and when IBM attempted to prevent plug-compatible hardware manufacturers and software developers from interoperating with them they were rebuffed.
When you can hardly *get* a PC without Vista even if you try, and people *are* trying to get PCs without Vista... it seems like the demand for new PCs is despite Vista... not because of it.
Look, I just Do Not Play 3d computer games. The best computer games in the world leave me cold, I love watching the kids playing them, but the controls are just too damn hard, and the games are designed by people who think taking advantage of the sucky controllers is a reasonable way to make higher "levels" harder.
Half an hour of Wii's Tennis game and OH MY GOD, I MUST HAVE THIS GAME. NOW. I haven't been able to play tennis for real since I injured my knee, but...
* It gave me the kind of workout I used to get from playing tennis.
* Waving the wand around as if it was a racquet Just Worked.
* Playing my usual agressive net game Just Worked.
* It took me 5 minutes to get a Mii that looked like me.
Damn, how long is it going to be hard to get a Wii? Even the sucky name doesn't spoil it.
Microsoft: if I didn't already know that you guys wouldn't Get A Clue if you did a Clue Mating Dance in the middle of Clue Mating Season covered in Clue Pheromones I'd be jumping up and doun making a monkey of myself yelling at you in the hope that you'd Get A Clue.
What part of Europe are you living in? Commodore 64s in the mid '90s?
(and what does the Amiga have to do with anything? The next-generation successor to the Commodore 64 was the Atari ST... the Amiga was produced by the Atari 800 team)
Regardless of the answer, the subject isn't "50 most popular tech products", it's "50 best tech products". Where "best" is a measure of quality or priority... and (as in the VisiCalc versus 1-2-3) they apparently consider that quality has precedence over priority.
The Commodore 64 was neither the first nor the best.
Since it's 10.4 only, it almost certainly uses Spotlight.
Ironic, since it's the 10.3 users who really need it... if you have Spotlight already it seems pretty marginal.
I wasn't in Europe, I was in Australia and the US. In Australia the effective marketing was Dick Smith's, and in the US the C=64 was a latecomer to a crowded field and was only able to hang on through the price wars because Tramiel was willing to lose money to buy market share. I mean, it didn't even show up until "the computer age" was already well under way.
Kid, the Commodore 64 was not dramatically cheaper than its contemporary 8-bit peers... there were dozens of comparable machines in the same price range, and lower-end products for less. Sinclair, Atari, Radio Shack, and even Commodore itself had cheaper products than the C=64.
It wasn't "the spearhead" of anything. It wasn't even the spearhead of Commodore's efforts in the market: they already had the PET and the Vic-20. It was also not "$200", it was over $500 when it was released. It didn't drop down to $200 for a couple of years and it took less than a year for Atari to matched Commodore's price point - without losing money on every sale. And need I remind you that Jack Tramiel's price war ended... after he was forced to leave Commodore, and after his quixotic lawsuits against his old company... driving both Commodore and Atari out of business?
Yes, the IBM-PC and Apple Lisa were more expensive, but they weren't on my list. The only product in that list that was still over "the $1000 barrier" by the time of the 8-bit price wars was the Apple II... the "over $1000" market had moved to 16 bits by then.
That would be Windows 2000, then?
(only half joking - the only cost to sticking with Windows 2000 for me is that I can't use Bluetooth, and I had to reinstall when I upgraded to a dual-core system because of an AMD driver issue... and I'm pretty sure XP or Vista's Big Brother code would have balked at motherboard upgrades more often than 2000 has...)
From TFA: "Anybody who purchased a PC that had the Windows Vista Capable logo got the core experience of Windows Vista"
What would that be? Even more annoying pop-ups and lower performance than they got from XP?
If you're too fucking stupid to realise that your shitbox $500 pc won't run the most advanced software on the market
What does "the most advanced software on the market" have to do with this topic?
I mean, my shitbox $500 pc runs the most advanced software on the market just fine. Not that I've upgraded my old mini to Tiger yet, I'm waiting to see what Leopard has to offer.
commodore 64 was the first widespread used gimmick that can be called a computer, which everyone were able to buy.
Commodore 64 - 1982
Apple-][ - 1977
TRS-80 - 1977
Atari 800 - 1979
Commodore Vic-20 - 1980
Sinclair ZX-80 - 1980
Commodore PET - 1977
BBC-Micro - 1981
By 1982 Apple was showing off the Lisa, the IBM-PC was taking off like a rocket, and basically every other 8-bit product line was well-established.
Not the first, not the best, just a little bit cheaper.
Wired is slashdot on dead trees.
You get to decide which suffers by the comparison.
Commodore 64?
It wasn't best at anything, and it wasn't first at anything, it wasn't particularly distinguished in any way, it was just popular because it was slightly cheaper than the competition.
You might as well complain that there's no Dell products in the list.
Is PC Magazine more impressed by chrome than by what's under the hood?
"Yes."
PC World, not "PC Magazine". We're talking "Wired for dull people".
RTFA, this is a lower level than that.
Um, Churla, RTFI.
That interview was from back when the iTunes Music Store opened.
Say what?
There's only two products in that list released before 1980, and they're both products that would have still been interesting to teenagers in 1980. It looks like none of the people having anything to do with this list were aware of anything that happened before then.
IF they completely clobber the DRM, then I suspect they'll end up with DRM-free 128k and DRM-free 256k tracks at 0.99 and 1.29 respectively.
"Developers! Developers! Developers!"
ANDF is so last century. They'll jump straight to the .NET framework with Blood# (since they have to track sharps anyway).
My cynicism goes to 11.