The whack job moniker if the key element. There are many people in this world just looking for a reason to commit random violence. The normal laws keep most of these crazy people in check, but there are loopholes. For instance, I know people who carry a gun at all times in hopes that they may run across somebody robbing a store or mugging a pedestrian or screaming at an old person, so they will then have an excuse to shoot and kill that person. Without judging concealed gun laws, or self defense law, or the like, I have to think that someone who speaks of finding an excuse to kill a person, even when that person may be construed as no longer worthy of living, as not totally be in possession of all his or her marbles. It seems that well adjusted people know that they will have some level of remorse if they have to kill another person, and so don't walk around looking for excuses to so do.
So, there is little need to judge Megans law on this basis. The damage it may or may not do is not killing of a person on the list. I am sure that daily harassment collectively if far beyond murder. Rather this alleged murderer is simply a persistent threat to society, and there is no reason not to believe that such a person will kill again if given the excuse.
Frankly, Apple support is sketchy. I know that plugins can be gotten, but since Apple is supposed to be a media machine, I don't see why they can't ship media players that support all format(I would be happy to exclude MS proprietary formats). In fact for video, I find quicktime more than useless. I tend to use VLC. The DVD player on 10.5 is much improved, but the inability to take screen shots again pushes me to VLC.
As an Apple customer, I am always made aware that Apple knows on which side the bread is buttered, and though traditionally that knowledge has benefited the end user, those benefits have eroded significantly over the past 3 years or so.
In the good old days, the computer store was the only place to find computer related merchandise, and the only place to get help. Now most stores have basic computer parts, not to mention newegg, amazon, et al.
The thing is that even in this heavily competitive environment, computer stores still make it. Why does CompUSA not? I think like so many stores, they are customer hostile, and yet do not have low prices to compensate. It is one thing to be accosted at best buy by insane managers, or at Wal Mart by the inmates, who want to frisk you on the way in and do a full body search on the way out. People will endure such humiliation for a good price. OTOH, CompUSA believes that the welcoming corral at the entrance is such a customer service amenity that they have nothing to compensate for.
Combine this with the locations, which in my experience are not prime, as they share parking with bigger stores, and staff which have always been nearly non existent, and one has a simple story of another retail outlet that simply could not provide sufficient levels of customer service, at sufficiently low cost, to stay competitive.
The MS strategy is to be in a position to receive a licensing fee on every computer on the planet. In this way thier revenue will grow as long as rate of computer purchases grows. It is quite irrelevant whether the computer uses any MS product. They feel they deserve a fee. It is the basis of their business. Look at the MS strategy on *nix. *Nix does not run MS products, so their are any number of machines that MS will not receive their cut on. To combat this they have push the "naked pc buyer are pirates" mythology, the "SCO owns Unix" mythology, and more recently the "*nix steal our technology" mythology. This is a result of the more subtle approaches being ineffective, so they are forced to directly ask for what they really want. A cut of every PC sale.
So what does this have to do with OLPC? The OLPC is one of the few machines that cannot, for all intents and purposes, run MS products. Therefore they cannot force anyone to install MS Windows on it under the assumption that they buying the OLPC to pirate MS Windows. MS will have difficulty including the OLPC in the site license fees, as the OLPC will not run the licensed software.
It is my opinion that MS views each OLPC as long term lost revenue. It is like an worker who upon losing his or her job to a lower paid competitor complains that the other worker is taking food out the mouths of the family. Using the standard logic that corporate uses to justify long prison sentences against pirates, I suspect they will put a value on the lost long term revenue, say $100, multiply by the number of OLPC sold, say 10 million, and claim that the OLPC is costing the a billion a year in revenue, all the problems of the tech industry is caused by the OLPC, the OLPC steals MS tech, and laws should be past prohibiting the sale of the OLPC.
For music, the ITMS provides extremely good long term value. Burn the music onto a CD, and one has the ability to play the music for as long as CD players exist. Reimport the music to another computer, and one has the ability to play the music for as long as the computer holds out. Of course Amazon is now the first choice with unencumbered music for the same price.
OTOH, ITMS has never provided a good value for videos, does not compete with free, and I have spent relatively little money there. The videos can only be played on Apple devices, and they are subject to Apples whims relating to licensing. At least theoretically, user may find that they can no longer play content, and this is possible in the short term, not long term. There is almost no advantage of the ITMS video and buying a DVD and then downloading a copy for free. Therefore, I see this more of an Apple issue rather than an industry wide conspiracy.
Recall that Apple DRM may have been supported by the music industry, but it also benefitted Apple greatly in locking in the iPod. Likewise, Video DRM will likely be supported by the industry, but will primarily help Apple control the living room. If the video industry were smart, they would follow the music industry and not allow Apple or MS to control their distribution
I mentioned this in the last Zune story. Zune was not the top selling MP3 by Amazon, but was, combining all Zune sales, the top MP3 player sold through Amazon by Beach Camera. For Zunes sold through Amazon, it was beat out by not only Apple, but also Sansdisk.
Based on the Amazon sales rank, there is not indication that Zune has become a market leader, even at deeply discounted prices. All evidence suggests, in fact, that Zune is in at most third place. The reason for this, I believe, is that MP3 players, unlike video games and computer, are not marked up hugely and therefore there is little room to maneuver, unless one wants to take a huge loss. On computers, MS outsources the loss to the sheep OEMs, on the xBox, they are taking a loss, but probably not as much as people think, and they can make it up in video games sales. There is little means for them to dump MP3 players on the market without taking a real long term loss that they can't make up by other means. Therefore the long method of dumping product to drive competitors out of the market is not feasible in the MP3 market. MS must build a genuinely superior product.
create a the worst fucking show on the planet based on cock sucking uncle fuckers that fuck their own uncles all day instead of boring show based on mowing the lawn or driving to work
I have had 10.5 running on one machine since it came out, and on my main machine for a week. There are problems. The computers sometimes won't wake up from sleep, X!! is toast on both machines, I can't get scplugin to work, because I can't get X!! up, OO.org does not work(fortunately most stuff in Tex, and TexShop is slow, but works, under 10.5), among a number of annoyances.
However, 10.5 is a month old. Vists was released to the commercial market over a year ago. My production window machines, many which were installed in July, were bought with MS Windows XP, not vista. The machine I aquired this summer came with Windows XP. No one in my sector is even thinking of buying any machine with Vista, even a year after of release.
I think the problem is that the pent up demand caused a rapid adoption cycle for 10.5. Users, like me, abandoned their better sense and moved to it too quickly, amplifying the normal problem. !0.4 was really getting dated, and the machines getting bogged down. Even the best machine can use a good reformat every couple years. At the end of the day, if 10.5 sucks this badly in a year, or is not about to be replaced with 10.6, then the comparison with MS Vista will be apt. Otherwise, this is the normal product cycle. Wait six months to a year to use a new product in production machines, and be happy that one has a new toy to play with for machines that can be risked with new software.
Those who spend all their time 'networking' and those who have friends. If you the later, then I don't know if facebook the like are even a big issue. One will use it communiicate with the larger group of friends, but how many of those will be at work? Most people pretty quickly learn not to contaminate the place one has to be at everyday with excessive personal relationships.
For the former, it is not an issue either. Everyone is their friend, and everyone is included. It is all about earning opportunities.
We talk about the kids facebook profile as a liability when they try to find jobs...
What about a record of every email they sent in college. Every threat to a competing lover, every breakup, every plan to falsify grades.
The nice thing about email on a schools server is that the mail is presumably gone when the student leaves college. OTOH, google promises to keep a copy of everything ever created on it's server.
I think small laptops are a good idea, and I have had small laptops off and on since the mid 80's. OTOH, I have never paid $3200. I know the cost is the flash drive, but really. For lightweight purposes, I have my 12" powerbook. It cost about a third of what sony wants. My first laptop was a TRS model 100. It cost around $1000 in todays dollars. Even the newton was only $1000.
I am not saying that sony could make it cheaper, but the price point for these types of machines seems to be around $1000. While I really like the idea of tiny machine like this, I like the idea at about half the price. it is reported that the flash drive will cost an extra $500, so $1500 is the price.
This is a good lesson for students to learn. It keeps them from growing up into whiny adults. Nothing in life is free. Everything has a cost. Every choice has a opportunity cost of all those things that cannot now be pursued. And someone has to bear those real and opportunity costs. For students, because we want people to be educated, society bears much of the cost. An elite student can have society bear the cost for his or her entire life, doing little more in return that thinking of occasionally interesting tidbits.
This is why, I believe, it is so difficult for students to understand that there are some things they will be expected to bear the full costs of, either directly or indirectly. Credit cards, textbooks, even bandwidth. Facebook is just another example. it exists to make a profit, and you, the student, is the entity that is being monetized. A personal choice to use facebook, even in the light that the opportunity costs of not using faceook are monumental, is also a choice to comply with the rules set up by the for profit entity that controls face book. Nothing is life is free. if we choose to drive a car, we can't complain that it dangerous and expensive. We choose to live in the suburbs, where it is cheaper, we can't complain that gas is expensive. If we are in the IT field and owe our livihood to MS, we must do as MS says.
If one does not like the scheme, opt out. But remember that greed, on the part of the consumer and supplier, will lead to ever more insidious schemes. Recall pop up advertising, and flash advertising, and interstitial. All caused by consumers who did not want to pay for content, suppliers that were not satisfied with branding but wanted instant results, and intermediaries who wanted a bigger cut for doing very little.
Except that for huge operations like amazon, they set the expectations prior to the customer receiving the goods or services. This is the basic philosophy of a big firm. There is supposed to be less risk than if one deals with a small shop. In the case of Amazon, the ads, or a friend, or a next door neighbor, may have lead me to expect free shipping in less than a week. If I order a few things from them over some long period of time, and each item takes longer than my expectations, I may decide not to use them anymore. I may also warn others from using them.
A big shop like amazon require customers, and requires many customers. It is not a small shop that survive on a few regular customers. It certainly survives on seasonal buyers, buyers who want predictability. One recalls Kmart, which did a good job providing a minimal level of service, but did not provide a suitable minimal level of service. One also thinks of wal mart, which provides an excellent minimal level of service, but cannot seem to provide a level of service so that people who actually spend money will shop there. Old customers expect what they are getting and occasional freebies. New customers expect something more than everyone else is offering. Occasional customers are often splurging for something special, i.e higher profit items, or perhaps buying cheap items for the second home, which might lead to future sales if the service is good enough.
If you do not ship my stuff, I will not order from you again. It is that simple. It is also classic retail discrimination. A market has an identifiable class of customers. The market uniformly gives them inferiro service or prices with respect to other customer not of that class. Under ideal circumstances, this group of customers could go to a competing operation and get better service, but since the entire market is in collusion, or the market is controlled by a monopoly, there is no where else to go.
For years I ddi not order from amazon because I would receive packages in a couple week where all my friends would get packages in days. It could very well have to do with the prosperity of the zip code. I now do quite a bit of business with Amazon, but it has been cut back due to the number of packages that are taking 2 and 3 days longer to deliver than they should. A retailer always should treat steady customers better than the occasional customer. But that treatment has to do with extras, like free shipping upgrades, not standard service like meeting stated delivery schedules.
Amazon obviously is doing this because they cannot meet stated guarantees for all customers. If this is the case, they should reduce those expectations, not make false claims about what they can and cannot do.
One way to interpret this is not conscientiousness but interactions. If one particle interacts with another, then the state of both particles are changed. one particle we might use to predict what the other particle going to do, and the other particle is kind enough to follow the prediction. For instance, in the double slit experiment, once we use particles to predict that another particle will go through a particular slit, those particles are kind enough to behave that way. However, if we do not use any particle that could be used to make such a prediction, the particles behave in such a way to follow the predictions of the interaction with the slit. I don't even know that we have to observe it. It seems to me that I have read about some complex experiment where the information was created, destroyed, in many permutations, and really weird stuff happned. This stuff really makes my head hurt. But at the heart is it about particles interacting and the interactions changing what happens. It is pretty obvious, really. It is just we don't think of those changes at such a small level.
To bring the levels together, for instance, we can look at Hawkings radiation. Some that the universe permeate with zero energy pairs popping in and out exsistence, but they live for so short of a time that they have no time to interact, with anything. Or at least that is supposed to be what happens, unless a black hole is next to it, and the a pair is split, and we create energy.
In a way, I believe we have known about all this for a long time. We have known that anything is going to cause entropy to increase. Any interaction causes the entropy to increase. There is nothing we can do about it. We can bring the entropy down of part of a system, but the entropy of the surrounding environment will increase by much more than the decrease observed in the subsystem. This is one of those things that tells us we will never have energy too cheap to meter. The odds are stacked against us. if the universe is destroyed, it will be caused by our simple living of our highly organized, low entropy, lives. Anything outside of that is small potatoes. Information thermodynamics also makes my head hurt. That was really a silly story to post on weekend when, at least in the US, we are supposed to be relaxing not having hurting heads.
First, the sales rank is fishy. The brown zune offered here at $180, by beach camera, has a higher rank than the black zune, at #26 and $140, sold by amazon. I have done business with beach camera, and they seem to be a reasonable shop, but I would not rule out some manipulation on their part. OTOH, this may represent all the Zunes they sell, some as low as $40. This would make the ranking deceptive as the other MP# players, such as sansdisk, are listed seperately while the Zune would appear to be listed in aggregate.
Second, the fact that MS holds a top position of the MP3 line for the same reason it holds aq top position in the PC OS and of gaming market. it is a very affordable product, unlike Apple products. Recall that the Xbox is priced at the costs of the parts. It is likely the zune is as well.
The reason that the Zune seems to be a failure is that even at these low prices, it is not selling better. It really appears that the top ranking of the Amazon list is an artifact of the way Amazon records the Zune sales from beach camera, not that any individual model sells better than the other MP3 players. The 80GB ipod classic is #14. The Sansdisk is #19, 20 and 25. The Zune is #26. Should not MS be able to sell an 80GB model for $50 more than an 8GB sansdisk?
It look like the answer is no. MS did a radical redesign of the Zune because it was a failure. MS does not do original work well, and it does not have to. I makes plenty of money rebranding current design, making it less expensive, and selling the resulting product. There is nothing wrong with this. It is just that MS has to sell alot of them to make a profit. MS also depends on monitizing customers through ads and aftermarket sales, so it has to have a lot of customers. It also cannot depend on licensing fees for Zune products and the music store, as Apple does. Therefore MS is a unique game in the music player business, and it is not playing the game well.
I was thinking the same thing. Return of the Jedi was tolerable as a concluding story. It was not wonderful, it was not ground breaking, it was crucial. It was neccesary only in that we wished the cycled to be completed.
We also wished the overarching trilogy, the fall of the republic, the defeat of the empire, and what's next? The fall of the republic? At one time we thought it would be keen to have nine movies. Now we see that three were really sufficient, as the backstory was as relevant as the Adventures of Superboy, or, to more forgiving, Smalltown. We are really on interested in the heroes as they are now, and only want to see the backstory in flashbacks. The backstory does make money, but it offers only marginal entertainment as compared to the prime adventures of the hero. It sad to reach fame by 23.
OTOH, I believe is it better to look at the two trilogies as completely separate entities, for completely separate times, with only incidental connections. With Episode 1 we had the tweens, something that did not exist in Star Wars. It was ok for luke to be older. With episode 1 we had freely available technology that could cheaply be abused, something we did not have in star wars. At the time of star wars, we had Eight is Enough. Now we have the graphic imagery of 2^33 versions of CSI.
In any case, jumping the shark is a bit harsh. When fonzie jumped the shark, a year or two after star wars, it was try and milk a bit more revenue out a show that was out of story and out of relevance. It was like trying to spin off the 80's show from the 70's show. As bad as Star Wars 1-3 is, at least it was an honest attempt, rather than just a half ass revenue opportunity, which much of the other star wars stuff in fact is.
Here is the scenario. We generally want to be able to defend ourselves using what ever means necessary, but there are some means hat are so dangerous that we cannot actually let the normal chain of command control the use of such weapons. This inevitable means that such weapons become less reliable, less likely to be used, and less of a threat. Sure it is one thing to insure a weapon cannot be used against a friendly, but it is quite another to say that we must protect it from those who are fully authorized to use them. If you think about it, we don't even take that much care to insure friendly weapons do not fall into terrorist hands. If we have a weapon, don't keep it from being used. If we can't use it, then don't have, at least not in huge numbers. This does not even bring into account the reliability of certain components(not theoretical, but the actually reliability of manufactured items).
Which is just to say that the US nuclear weapon program is one of the greatest examples of pork in history. The pork potion of the program was initiated in response to questionable analysis by the CIA, and lead to such events as the Iran-Contra drug running scandals. It is important to note that up to the point of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA was reporting that Union was stable, strong, and an imminent threat. The 2.2 trillion 1980's dollar spent, along with an equal amount spent by the political successor of that administration, should be the envy of any tax and spend democrat, and has surely lead to a total deficit that will likely be at least 75% of GDP by the end of 2008.
Which is a good point. As much as we might want the gas economy to end, and as much as we want the subsidies to end, the reality is that most of us need gas. Many people can't afford $5 a gallon. The nice thing is that subsidies are becoming enough of problem, and technology is at a point, where we might get some innovative solutions.
History tells us that we become dependent on products, and that dependency creates innovation. The spice road was the source of much death, lead to the occupation of America by the europeans, and to the current situation in which we can get spice without bloodshed. in the first oil crisis, people risked their lives to hunt whales, and the sellers of the oil were rolling in the money, until it ended.
We are now at a point where we might be able to able to do better than oil, at least in cars. It would be nice to not finally end the pollution. Try driving behind an SUV that does not properly clean up after itself. It is like standing next to 100 smokers, and one does even get the chance to have sex with any of them. It would be nice to localize the production of possible pollutants to those that will clean it up. it would be nice to have another impetus to have local solar collectors in areas where it makes sense.
Right now we at another node in a cycle. We got rid of lead in gas. We have convinced most people to be as courteous with their exhaust and not unnecessarily pollute the environment, just like most people know not to throw coffee cups out the window onto the road or median. Now we look at moving to even more efficient use of the precious resource, with an eye toward minimal impact.
So go to project gutenberg. Not well format, but readable.
One aspect of this I have not seen exploited is at the high school level, probably because a phone is not seen as a tool like a laptop. But look, nearly every book one reads in high school is on project gutenberg, or could be put there. If not, a local license could be bought for the library. If every student has an iphone, then there are no more book shortages. Does the phone and the touch work like an regular iPod in that it can mount as a disk? If so, this solve a problem of kids needing a USB drive. Every kid will have the phone everday.
Kids need to not have distractions during class. Kids need to pay attention to what is going on in the halls during class. Phones and ipod are distractions and can be a danger in the hall. But we must teach kids to use tools wisely, and that means letting them have them. Apple need not double the size, to make it like a paperback, but if Apple did make it 4X6, it would make a nifty reader.
bad analysis, bad results
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Open Source Math
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This seems to fall under the realm of researchers using tools they do not understand. Black box science does not work. As has been mentioned, the results cannot be shown to be valid.
A recall a few recent incidents in which papers had to be retracted because the machine did not do what the researchers thought it did. I have personal experience in which the spectroscopy generated by the computer did not reflect reality. If the researcher does not know how to use a tool, then he or she does not know when that tool is being misused.
I am not sure something like mathematica is the issue. Wolfram seems to use standard standard well known algorithm. Almost every academic institution has a license, so, given the data, any number of people can rerun the analysis. Likewise the algorithms can be tested with simpler data sets to understand how they work and breakdown. I would be more worried about homegrown software.
There really is no real difference between these types of communications, only opportunity costs. Bandwidth with now cheap so there is no longer any reason to not have useless drivel eat up a few parts of a percent of the transmissions. The same for computer.
Look at the telephone. Telephone time is now so cheap that people spend the entire day with a receiver on their ear chatting. It is any worse that the one telephone in the house? Not really, only in opportunity costs that one could be doing something else, perhaps more valuable.
If one has to pay for communication, then one thinks about what one has to say. if one is not paying, then just talks. So what is happening is simply that the kids are not having to do what many very older people were trained to do, which is not to tie up a line for too long. It is now a non issue. Everyone in the house has at least one phone. Everyone in the house has a computer. The resources are not scarce, so there is no need to ration them. As long as resources remain plentiful, there is no problem.
1.) It's boxed sales. The people who upgrade via boxed sales are the ones who aren't going to wait to get new hardware to upgrade the OS. These people are likely to be the early adopters who will buy within the first week
I wonder how many people own more than one mac. I know many people that own two or more.
The thing with a mac is that the economics do not lend themselves to buying a new machine for an OS. The machine is going to cost no less that $600, while the OS is going to cost no more than $200. The machine, if was not a low end consumer model, will last for five years, at least. Therefore it makes every sense to upgrade a machine, perhaps with more memory, for 1-2 upgrades of the OS. Due to Apple pricing, it is very economical for older, semi-retired machines, to get upgrades.
Therefore here is my analysis. The sales were of early adopters or owners of multiple machines that wanted to try the OS. It has almost no bearing on future sales, as my feeling is that Apple sales are not ties as tightly to the release of an OS, but to the release of hardware. Apple wants to sell hardware, and is not being controlled by an external software entity. The expenditure of $120 for an OS is not going to stop someone from paying $2000 for a new computer.
Although the post is largely correct, one cannot ignore the fact that sometimes a genuinely mentally disturbed person does get into power. This person might be willing to kill thousands of people simply to pursue a personal power agenda. Such a person might kill thousands of people just to make a few more dollars. Such a person might wipe out a large fraction of humanity just to rise to power. Such things are not done by sane persons. A leader might be willing to allow all his or her people to live on the verge of death, but when a persons is willing to kill many people just to satisfy some personal goals, that person is either labeled insane or put in jail. The fact that such a person does a thing as a leader should make no difference.
So the situation that we find ourselves in it often not simple war mongering, or profiteering, but serial killing by insane leaders. Oversimplifying it allows such insane leaders to continue thier rampage.
Since you bring it up, and I am feeling pedantic, this is exactly a trojan is. A trojan, as in The Trojan Horse, is an object that a defending entity voluntarily brings behind the defenses and then allows to act as a free agent, due to the fact that by convention the object poses no threat. In the original story, the Trojans brought a the gift horse into the city walls after what they believed was the end of a long war. If the Greeks had been honest, the horse would have been no threat horse was a threat as the Greeks would have left as statement of good riddance. Unfortunately for the Trojans the Greeks were not honest, and the horse was in fact a trick. Through the trickery, the Greeks were able to break otherwise impenetrable defenses, and massacre the trojans.
Therefore, in the strictest sense, the HD is a trojan. No one believes, unlike an email, that the HD is dangerous. There are no defenses set up to guard against it. If someone were to put a truly dangerous trojan on a HD, like a password sniffer, the majority of us would be none the wiser.
Slashdot Mirror
So, there is little need to judge Megans law on this basis. The damage it may or may not do is not killing of a person on the list. I am sure that daily harassment collectively if far beyond murder. Rather this alleged murderer is simply a persistent threat to society, and there is no reason not to believe that such a person will kill again if given the excuse.
As an Apple customer, I am always made aware that Apple knows on which side the bread is buttered, and though traditionally that knowledge has benefited the end user, those benefits have eroded significantly over the past 3 years or so.
The thing is that even in this heavily competitive environment, computer stores still make it. Why does CompUSA not? I think like so many stores, they are customer hostile, and yet do not have low prices to compensate. It is one thing to be accosted at best buy by insane managers, or at Wal Mart by the inmates, who want to frisk you on the way in and do a full body search on the way out. People will endure such humiliation for a good price. OTOH, CompUSA believes that the welcoming corral at the entrance is such a customer service amenity that they have nothing to compensate for.
Combine this with the locations, which in my experience are not prime, as they share parking with bigger stores, and staff which have always been nearly non existent, and one has a simple story of another retail outlet that simply could not provide sufficient levels of customer service, at sufficiently low cost, to stay competitive.
So what does this have to do with OLPC? The OLPC is one of the few machines that cannot, for all intents and purposes, run MS products. Therefore they cannot force anyone to install MS Windows on it under the assumption that they buying the OLPC to pirate MS Windows. MS will have difficulty including the OLPC in the site license fees, as the OLPC will not run the licensed software.
It is my opinion that MS views each OLPC as long term lost revenue. It is like an worker who upon losing his or her job to a lower paid competitor complains that the other worker is taking food out the mouths of the family. Using the standard logic that corporate uses to justify long prison sentences against pirates, I suspect they will put a value on the lost long term revenue, say $100, multiply by the number of OLPC sold, say 10 million, and claim that the OLPC is costing the a billion a year in revenue, all the problems of the tech industry is caused by the OLPC, the OLPC steals MS tech, and laws should be past prohibiting the sale of the OLPC.
OTOH, ITMS has never provided a good value for videos, does not compete with free, and I have spent relatively little money there. The videos can only be played on Apple devices, and they are subject to Apples whims relating to licensing. At least theoretically, user may find that they can no longer play content, and this is possible in the short term, not long term. There is almost no advantage of the ITMS video and buying a DVD and then downloading a copy for free. Therefore, I see this more of an Apple issue rather than an industry wide conspiracy.
Recall that Apple DRM may have been supported by the music industry, but it also benefitted Apple greatly in locking in the iPod. Likewise, Video DRM will likely be supported by the industry, but will primarily help Apple control the living room. If the video industry were smart, they would follow the music industry and not allow Apple or MS to control their distribution
Based on the Amazon sales rank, there is not indication that Zune has become a market leader, even at deeply discounted prices. All evidence suggests, in fact, that Zune is in at most third place. The reason for this, I believe, is that MP3 players, unlike video games and computer, are not marked up hugely and therefore there is little room to maneuver, unless one wants to take a huge loss. On computers, MS outsources the loss to the sheep OEMs, on the xBox, they are taking a loss, but probably not as much as people think, and they can make it up in video games sales. There is little means for them to dump MP3 players on the market without taking a real long term loss that they can't make up by other means. Therefore the long method of dumping product to drive competitors out of the market is not feasible in the MP3 market. MS must build a genuinely superior product.
However, 10.5 is a month old. Vists was released to the commercial market over a year ago. My production window machines, many which were installed in July, were bought with MS Windows XP, not vista. The machine I aquired this summer came with Windows XP. No one in my sector is even thinking of buying any machine with Vista, even a year after of release.
I think the problem is that the pent up demand caused a rapid adoption cycle for 10.5. Users, like me, abandoned their better sense and moved to it too quickly, amplifying the normal problem. !0.4 was really getting dated, and the machines getting bogged down. Even the best machine can use a good reformat every couple years. At the end of the day, if 10.5 sucks this badly in a year, or is not about to be replaced with 10.6, then the comparison with MS Vista will be apt. Otherwise, this is the normal product cycle. Wait six months to a year to use a new product in production machines, and be happy that one has a new toy to play with for machines that can be risked with new software.
For the former, it is not an issue either. Everyone is their friend, and everyone is included. It is all about earning opportunities.
What about a record of every email they sent in college. Every threat to a competing lover, every breakup, every plan to falsify grades.
The nice thing about email on a schools server is that the mail is presumably gone when the student leaves college. OTOH, google promises to keep a copy of everything ever created on it's server.
I am not saying that sony could make it cheaper, but the price point for these types of machines seems to be around $1000. While I really like the idea of tiny machine like this, I like the idea at about half the price. it is reported that the flash drive will cost an extra $500, so $1500 is the price.
This is why, I believe, it is so difficult for students to understand that there are some things they will be expected to bear the full costs of, either directly or indirectly. Credit cards, textbooks, even bandwidth. Facebook is just another example. it exists to make a profit, and you, the student, is the entity that is being monetized. A personal choice to use facebook, even in the light that the opportunity costs of not using faceook are monumental, is also a choice to comply with the rules set up by the for profit entity that controls face book. Nothing is life is free. if we choose to drive a car, we can't complain that it dangerous and expensive. We choose to live in the suburbs, where it is cheaper, we can't complain that gas is expensive. If we are in the IT field and owe our livihood to MS, we must do as MS says.
If one does not like the scheme, opt out. But remember that greed, on the part of the consumer and supplier, will lead to ever more insidious schemes. Recall pop up advertising, and flash advertising, and interstitial. All caused by consumers who did not want to pay for content, suppliers that were not satisfied with branding but wanted instant results, and intermediaries who wanted a bigger cut for doing very little.
A big shop like amazon require customers, and requires many customers. It is not a small shop that survive on a few regular customers. It certainly survives on seasonal buyers, buyers who want predictability. One recalls Kmart, which did a good job providing a minimal level of service, but did not provide a suitable minimal level of service. One also thinks of wal mart, which provides an excellent minimal level of service, but cannot seem to provide a level of service so that people who actually spend money will shop there. Old customers expect what they are getting and occasional freebies. New customers expect something more than everyone else is offering. Occasional customers are often splurging for something special, i.e higher profit items, or perhaps buying cheap items for the second home, which might lead to future sales if the service is good enough.
For years I ddi not order from amazon because I would receive packages in a couple week where all my friends would get packages in days. It could very well have to do with the prosperity of the zip code. I now do quite a bit of business with Amazon, but it has been cut back due to the number of packages that are taking 2 and 3 days longer to deliver than they should. A retailer always should treat steady customers better than the occasional customer. But that treatment has to do with extras, like free shipping upgrades, not standard service like meeting stated delivery schedules.
Amazon obviously is doing this because they cannot meet stated guarantees for all customers. If this is the case, they should reduce those expectations, not make false claims about what they can and cannot do.
To bring the levels together, for instance, we can look at Hawkings radiation. Some that the universe permeate with zero energy pairs popping in and out exsistence, but they live for so short of a time that they have no time to interact, with anything. Or at least that is supposed to be what happens, unless a black hole is next to it, and the a pair is split, and we create energy.
In a way, I believe we have known about all this for a long time. We have known that anything is going to cause entropy to increase. Any interaction causes the entropy to increase. There is nothing we can do about it. We can bring the entropy down of part of a system, but the entropy of the surrounding environment will increase by much more than the decrease observed in the subsystem. This is one of those things that tells us we will never have energy too cheap to meter. The odds are stacked against us. if the universe is destroyed, it will be caused by our simple living of our highly organized, low entropy, lives. Anything outside of that is small potatoes. Information thermodynamics also makes my head hurt. That was really a silly story to post on weekend when, at least in the US, we are supposed to be relaxing not having hurting heads.
Second, the fact that MS holds a top position of the MP3 line for the same reason it holds aq top position in the PC OS and of gaming market. it is a very affordable product, unlike Apple products. Recall that the Xbox is priced at the costs of the parts. It is likely the zune is as well.
The reason that the Zune seems to be a failure is that even at these low prices, it is not selling better. It really appears that the top ranking of the Amazon list is an artifact of the way Amazon records the Zune sales from beach camera, not that any individual model sells better than the other MP3 players. The 80GB ipod classic is #14. The Sansdisk is #19, 20 and 25. The Zune is #26. Should not MS be able to sell an 80GB model for $50 more than an 8GB sansdisk?
It look like the answer is no. MS did a radical redesign of the Zune because it was a failure. MS does not do original work well, and it does not have to. I makes plenty of money rebranding current design, making it less expensive, and selling the resulting product. There is nothing wrong with this. It is just that MS has to sell alot of them to make a profit. MS also depends on monitizing customers through ads and aftermarket sales, so it has to have a lot of customers. It also cannot depend on licensing fees for Zune products and the music store, as Apple does. Therefore MS is a unique game in the music player business, and it is not playing the game well.
We also wished the overarching trilogy, the fall of the republic, the defeat of the empire, and what's next? The fall of the republic? At one time we thought it would be keen to have nine movies. Now we see that three were really sufficient, as the backstory was as relevant as the Adventures of Superboy, or, to more forgiving, Smalltown. We are really on interested in the heroes as they are now, and only want to see the backstory in flashbacks. The backstory does make money, but it offers only marginal entertainment as compared to the prime adventures of the hero. It sad to reach fame by 23.
OTOH, I believe is it better to look at the two trilogies as completely separate entities, for completely separate times, with only incidental connections. With Episode 1 we had the tweens, something that did not exist in Star Wars. It was ok for luke to be older. With episode 1 we had freely available technology that could cheaply be abused, something we did not have in star wars. At the time of star wars, we had Eight is Enough. Now we have the graphic imagery of 2^33 versions of CSI.
In any case, jumping the shark is a bit harsh. When fonzie jumped the shark, a year or two after star wars, it was try and milk a bit more revenue out a show that was out of story and out of relevance. It was like trying to spin off the 80's show from the 70's show. As bad as Star Wars 1-3 is, at least it was an honest attempt, rather than just a half ass revenue opportunity, which much of the other star wars stuff in fact is.
Which is just to say that the US nuclear weapon program is one of the greatest examples of pork in history. The pork potion of the program was initiated in response to questionable analysis by the CIA, and lead to such events as the Iran-Contra drug running scandals. It is important to note that up to the point of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA was reporting that Union was stable, strong, and an imminent threat. The 2.2 trillion 1980's dollar spent, along with an equal amount spent by the political successor of that administration, should be the envy of any tax and spend democrat, and has surely lead to a total deficit that will likely be at least 75% of GDP by the end of 2008.
History tells us that we become dependent on products, and that dependency creates innovation. The spice road was the source of much death, lead to the occupation of America by the europeans, and to the current situation in which we can get spice without bloodshed. in the first oil crisis, people risked their lives to hunt whales, and the sellers of the oil were rolling in the money, until it ended.
We are now at a point where we might be able to able to do better than oil, at least in cars. It would be nice to not finally end the pollution. Try driving behind an SUV that does not properly clean up after itself. It is like standing next to 100 smokers, and one does even get the chance to have sex with any of them. It would be nice to localize the production of possible pollutants to those that will clean it up. it would be nice to have another impetus to have local solar collectors in areas where it makes sense.
Right now we at another node in a cycle. We got rid of lead in gas. We have convinced most people to be as courteous with their exhaust and not unnecessarily pollute the environment, just like most people know not to throw coffee cups out the window onto the road or median. Now we look at moving to even more efficient use of the precious resource, with an eye toward minimal impact.
One aspect of this I have not seen exploited is at the high school level, probably because a phone is not seen as a tool like a laptop. But look, nearly every book one reads in high school is on project gutenberg, or could be put there. If not, a local license could be bought for the library. If every student has an iphone, then there are no more book shortages. Does the phone and the touch work like an regular iPod in that it can mount as a disk? If so, this solve a problem of kids needing a USB drive. Every kid will have the phone everday.
Kids need to not have distractions during class. Kids need to pay attention to what is going on in the halls during class. Phones and ipod are distractions and can be a danger in the hall. But we must teach kids to use tools wisely, and that means letting them have them. Apple need not double the size, to make it like a paperback, but if Apple did make it 4X6, it would make a nifty reader.
A recall a few recent incidents in which papers had to be retracted because the machine did not do what the researchers thought it did. I have personal experience in which the spectroscopy generated by the computer did not reflect reality. If the researcher does not know how to use a tool, then he or she does not know when that tool is being misused.
I am not sure something like mathematica is the issue. Wolfram seems to use standard standard well known algorithm. Almost every academic institution has a license, so, given the data, any number of people can rerun the analysis. Likewise the algorithms can be tested with simpler data sets to understand how they work and breakdown. I would be more worried about homegrown software.
Look at the telephone. Telephone time is now so cheap that people spend the entire day with a receiver on their ear chatting. It is any worse that the one telephone in the house? Not really, only in opportunity costs that one could be doing something else, perhaps more valuable.
If one has to pay for communication, then one thinks about what one has to say. if one is not paying, then just talks. So what is happening is simply that the kids are not having to do what many very older people were trained to do, which is not to tie up a line for too long. It is now a non issue. Everyone in the house has at least one phone. Everyone in the house has a computer. The resources are not scarce, so there is no need to ration them. As long as resources remain plentiful, there is no problem.
I wonder how many people own more than one mac. I know many people that own two or more.
The thing with a mac is that the economics do not lend themselves to buying a new machine for an OS. The machine is going to cost no less that $600, while the OS is going to cost no more than $200. The machine, if was not a low end consumer model, will last for five years, at least. Therefore it makes every sense to upgrade a machine, perhaps with more memory, for 1-2 upgrades of the OS. Due to Apple pricing, it is very economical for older, semi-retired machines, to get upgrades.
Therefore here is my analysis. The sales were of early adopters or owners of multiple machines that wanted to try the OS. It has almost no bearing on future sales, as my feeling is that Apple sales are not ties as tightly to the release of an OS, but to the release of hardware. Apple wants to sell hardware, and is not being controlled by an external software entity. The expenditure of $120 for an OS is not going to stop someone from paying $2000 for a new computer.
So the situation that we find ourselves in it often not simple war mongering, or profiteering, but serial killing by insane leaders. Oversimplifying it allows such insane leaders to continue thier rampage.
Therefore, in the strictest sense, the HD is a trojan. No one believes, unlike an email, that the HD is dangerous. There are no defenses set up to guard against it. If someone were to put a truly dangerous trojan on a HD, like a password sniffer, the majority of us would be none the wiser.
To quote from The Tick, episode 0113, read a book