I cannot believe anyone would dare mention Windows 98 or ME as actual releases of windows. The only one who would do such a thing would be one who never had use 98 or ME. In fact history tells us that MS produces a reasonable release of MS Windows every 5 years. Anything between those releases are either fixes or beta tests. The first version of MS windows around 1985, then MS Windows 3.0 in the early 90's, then MS Windows 95, then Windows XP. These were the releases that were adequate for the time, and as long as MS only released fixes everything was OK. What really killed MS was releasing the god awful beta packages in the late 90's. Given this history, Vista is released as expected, and given history, we expect it will be usable in a year and quite usable in 2-3 years.
You say it like it is funny, but if one looks at the past 6 years of so of increasing single issue authoritarian rule, one sees the damage caused by self centered interests. In both cases, we have vocal minorities so concerned with telling others what is right and wrong, that they elect incompentant and often otherwise immoral persons.
I first check amazon for all my music needs. Probably if I were buying an album I would go to itunes, since I burn albums to CD anyone, but singles I will bur from amazon, if available. Plus the fact that so many songs are $.89.
Itunes imports the music when the file is clicked, so that is not a problem. I anticipate iTunes sales to plummet, and the iPod to slowly lose market share as the coupling becomes much less. Another point is that, for me, the itunes store is much slower than the amazon store. The interface that amazon uses is one of the few truly useful flash applications.
I can only interpret the lack of digital sales as an implicit authorization for free digital downloads. While I am of the mind that no one is entitled to content that others produce, if the content is not available through standard distribution channels, in this case iTunes, then any rational person realizes that the content will become available through other channels. In the case of the Beatles, one assumes that most people who want their music has already bought one of the box sets, ripped it, and probably resold the set on Ebay. I can imagine a box set transversing the world spreading the music.
Obviously the right-holders of the beatles catalog would stand to make more money from digital sales than a box set that resold ad naseum, but in their generousity they have decided that enough money has been made, and the fans should not be milked for any more money.
In the case of Garth Brooks, one assumes that he is going to have mercy on us by limiting the availability of his collections. This is quite acceptable to most of us fans, as Reba and George are widely available.
It only seems strange to those that think the church(or the lord's house) exists to promote the values of the lord. If one accepts the mainstream belief that the church exists to promote business and push political agenda, then almost any video game makes sense. Of course we all know that Jesus was a great promoter of money changers in the church, and of the stonings of prostitutes, and definitely had every intention of overthrowing the earthly kinds and acend earthly throne. All the talk of loving you brothers, and honoring the father, and generally being nice to people and not being greedy were just shrewd diversions from his true intentions. I am probably in the minority when I think his beliefs speak for themselves and do not need any additional incentives.
Since you went through college, I assume you can work through text books. OTOH, a college textbook might be overkill since they are often written for completeness rather than practical application.
One alternative is to browse your bookstore for any math book. Just buy it and work the problems. I buy the Dover books. These books are classic texts that have been republished using quality binding at a very reasonable price. They are cheap enough that even going through a couple chapters makes it worth the money. A particularly interesting book is Famous Problems in Geometry.
For more recent texts, many people swear by the math books by Gelfand. These are algebra and trigonometry. Concise text, good problems, and complete.
if you ever think of moving beyond Calculus, look at Div, Grad, Curl, and all that. It is a really cool book. Thinking of more application of math, a physics book might be in order. You would get math practice in the context of real problems.
As far as the technology is concerned, there is no reason no reason not to utilize the web. The problem is the chaff, which is more common that they wheat. Mathworld has always worked for me. I don't necessarily trust other sites for more than problems sets or general solutions that can be verified elsewhere(it is so easy to make a mistake even in the most simple math, and if accuracy is not the primary goal, then the mistakes become rampant). There are also good tools for visualizing certain relations. For instance, Introduction to lines, Regular polygons, and trigonometry.
In a way you are right. What Apple does is leverage technology so it is not so complicated. I remember how easy it was on an apple ][ to burn an EEPROM, basically what we later called plug and play. The Apple/// was the beginning of a real memory footprint and the multiple OS personal computer, running Apple DOS, Pro DOS, and CP/M. The Lisa, and Mac, of course, introduced the WIMP interface to the average user, slashing the learning curve and simplifying many tasks(but not all, I still do many things using 25 year old technology).
What happens is that the technology that Apple uses and it's customers are willing to pay for soon becomes cheap enough for commodity manufacturers to make and commodity computer makers to use. For most computer manufacturers, they will till any features it their computer that is cheap, rather than trying to design a useful machine. This is why so many computer have 4 in 1 readers but no firewire port. In any case, Apple does not say ahead of this curve, for instance they didn't seem to anticipate that every computer would have a high performance dedicated graphics processor, one Apple greatest advantages for a long time.
They seemed to have learned the lesson with iPod, and are updating it often to stay ahead of cheap imitators. So while MS will come out with gratuitous wireless, Apple pushes the hard disk capacity. Hopefully the same will happen with iPhone. The phone people are coming out with competitive phones, and the google software, with no license requirements, and ad support, might allow the phones to be significantly cheaper than iPhone. but likely will not have the full features of iPhone. In any case, the fact that a google phone is inherently intrusive will mean that the market will likely be limited to those that would not get an iPhone as they would not afford it, which is why they choose the ad supported option.
Really, if the iPhone faces a risk from google, it is because Apple made a decision not to be consumer friendly on this product. All the consumer hostile press that Apple has taken may convince some users that risk posed by the google phone is not significantly greater than the risk posed by apple.
I was the biggest fan of all the sim stuff for the longest time. I had multiple versions of simcity, simfarm, the sims. That ended when they introduced the need to have the original CD available to run the game. I was used to having the game on my two computers, and play as I wanted to. I know this probably violated so license restrictions, but I don't care. I bought the game to enjoy, and that is the way I wanted to enjoy it. The fact that I paid for the game, and could not play it without keeping up with the CD, was intolerable. When the Sims came with the limitation, that was the last sims I bought. There are is much competition for my money, and if someone is more worried about the people who don't buy that the people who do, that is someone that I have no desire to deal with.
I know this is nothing new, but I have never understood it. A radio station licenses and pays for music that can be heard all over it's market by anyone who has a radio. The music is paid for. Anyone in that market may listen to it. Now, I understand that piping the music over phones is a grey area, as the music may then leave the market, and therefore have no problem with having to pay extra for hold music, but music from the radio at a business. It makes no sense. Most businesses would not use it anyway because of the ads, and those that do are not providing anything that customers would not have access to anyway.
There are very good reasons why no one takes the entertainment industry seriously, and why the entertainment industry has so much trouble stopping "piracy'. The industry has cried wolf for so long, that no sane person cares.
Not to disagree, but there are a few points to consider. First, no one is forcing anyone to purchase a ticket. One can generally go to the box office at the venue to get a ticket and save the charge. Second, there does not seem to be any evidence that anyone is ripping anyone off. Many shows get sold out, and those that don't probably have nothing to do with price. In fact, because third party resellers do so well, it indicates that prices at ticketmaster are not too high. if they were, the third party reseller would not be able to sell at a profit.
Finally, one has to remember what the purpose of a huge concert is. To make money. Nothing else. Everyone is in it to get rich. The venue has to be paid for the, the label has to be paid, and the band members have to pay back their advance, either trhough the ticket sales or the album sales generated, not to mention the huge amounts of money made of overpriced other cheap merchandise. No one cares who the tickets get sold to, as long as they get sold. if someone wants to buy a hundred tickets, all the better. The band and label get the money, and someone else takes the risk of being stuck with the tickets. Again, if the prices were too high, the tickets would not sell. Most large venues would be foolish not use a company like ticketmaster as they are very efficient at distrubting the thousands of tickets needed to support mainstream events.
As far as the RIAA is concerned, i don't know what this has to do with anything. But I will say this. If you don't want to pay the ticketmaster fee, then don't If you don't want to listen to RIAA music, then don't. Go to the little events that provide a evening of credible entertainment for $10-20. The money goes to the little guy, you are supporting local talent, and you are not getting ripped off by ticketmaster. Of course when one is not drooling over Ms. Spears, but instead Ms. Murphy, one is might be ostracized by ones peer group, but bieng a rebel comes at a cost.
I think it is a matter of support. When I worked in industry, and we put in a enterprise system, it wa made clear that there would be costs, and those costs were budgeted. When it was clear that the budgeted costs were low, more money was added until it worked. If something wasted a lot of time, it was fixed, as employee time had real and opportunity costs.
In the schools, it is so much different. So many of the costs are externalized, usually by making teachers and administrators work off the clock. Therefore so many task that should take a minute, often can take 10 times as much time. In another example, there may be a single person supporting hundreds of abused computes. And education is on of the last examples of web developers hiding behind arbitrary minimum requirements rather than resorting to rational design. In one example, only 50% of a 15" inch screen may be available for content, the rest used for branding and menus. Wy does a school district need branding on an internal web site?
The argument that there is no money for adequate tech is silly. There are dozens of people in any district that have no real work to do. All they do is walk around, observe, and send in redundant reports. Or conduct training on who to use a notebook. These people are well paid, and the money would be better used to improve tech. If a district has 1000 teachers, and a ill designed process wastes 10 minutes a day, that is on the order or a teacherweek a year. In the grand scheme of things, it is not that much, but when one figures that some of the things can be fixed in a day of development time, one wonders why they are not. One wonders why paying a person to walk around is more important than provides teachers extra minutes to teach.
if we accept your premis
oping that before long the practice of locking phones to specific networks gets outlawed
The you conclusion
Apple haven't done anything wrong.
while true for some limited view of wrong, does not follow from the premis.
I would say if apple has done nothing wrong, then laws regulated equipment and service providers are not necessarily needed. Like so many other things, if the market will bear a practice, then obviously people find value in the practice. For instance, cheap stores often have draconian rules to keep prices cheap, and people still find value in the store.
The lesson learned here is that Apple is increasingly less end use centric and more strategic partner centered. What this means is that I can no longer trust Apple to do what is best for me as an end user, and, as the systems are closed, can no longer buy the products with the same confidence. It is not so much a misunderstanding of the process, but a misunderstanding of the shift from Apple Computer, Inc to Apple, Inc. From a company that had a policy of not putting end user products at risk, by, for example, developing anti piracy technology that could diaable a users machine, to a company that would put end users at risk by not only developing but implementing such technology.
I tell you this has had an effect on me. I was on the verge of buying another mac, but now I do not know. The switch to intel and the added 'security' that entailed. The bricking of the iphone. Who knows what is next? Pretty machines are not enough. I need certainty that Apple will not one day disable my mac because I do not have a.mac account.
I see the Zune and iPod being pretty similar pretty soon. MS has huge amounts of money to burn, and Apple has a bad habit of losing their lead. The deciding issue may be the music store. This may mean that Apples decision to use relatively weak DRM for music will come back to haunt it.
For example, one thing that made the iPod great was the firewire bus. Firewire, unlike USB, can charge even if the computer does not mount the device. It was that I always charged the iPod on the computer, and it made sense to do a transfer at the same time. Now that we are stuck with USB, we might as well change over the wall socket, and do a wireless transfer. By taking firewire away, and not replacing it with wireless, Apple left a wide gaping hole in the wall for competitors.
How dare they introduce a better product so soon after the original was released. What about the dozens of early adopters that spent good money on the first generation Zune. I hope MS will give some sort of trade in to compensate those that were conned into buying the original, inferior, zune. It has not even been a year!
Frankly I think we are lucky that they did not change the DRM and force everyone to buy new tracks for the new player.
The customer is never wrong. From a competitive point of view, the only side that loses, at least long term, is the firm that forgets customer service. Another firm will step in a service the customer, and the arrogant firm will either have to adjust or die. If one finds an exception to this, then one most likely has misidentified the customer. For instance, the customer for TV is not necessarily the viewer.
What little success Apple has had over the past 30 years or so has been due to a focus on the customer. The failures have been mostly due to distractions by technology. For instance, up until the late 90's I could return any Apple I found defective for an exchange at the retailer. Such customer service died out for mot computer manufacturers long before that. I know can go to an Apple store and get my computer fixed. It may take a couple days, but it gets fixed. The OS is designed for my ease of use, not for the ease of use for the developer. This sounds bad but an application is developed and then used by perhaps thousands of people. Inefficiencies in use are therefore multiplied.
Here is what I have seen with the Apple release. A phone that is not end user centered, but is centered on the needs of the carrier and music industry. I must therefore assume that Apple is no longer an end user centered company, but a bussiness partner centered company. I often say that main reason not to buy any MS product is that MS has validation which increases the risk that the product may become useless. As an enduser, I need my product to work. There is enough problems with any computer without having intentional self destruct mechanisms built in. The fact that MS would build self destruct mechanisms into code proves that the device is a toy, and should not be used by any professional person. The same is true for printers that detect toner.
It scares me that Apple would disable a product. It means that I can no longer trust them. Up until now I was happy to pay apple for the products. For one, thing, unlike MS, I can get what I need without interrogation. I learned that lesson when I tried to set up an XP machine last spring and had to spend an hour verifying license before I could get updates. But now who knows if any Apple product will be safe. They are willing to destroy product to enforce their license. It is hardly worth the risk to me. Perhaps we can forgive on the iPhone, but if it happens again, the brand will be destroyed.
From personal experience, the lack of engineers has more to do with the lack of jobs for the average person than the lack of graduates. I know many engineers, and the ones that are not working as engineers are not doing so because there were no interesting jobs available to them. Even those that are employed tend to have seen the companies reduce the overall job picture, even in oil companies.
To digress, when I was a kid, I really thought that I would be working in energy or space. But then I realized that the money for these technologies is practically non existent compared to old technologies, technologies that are not only have few interesting problems to solve,but are dying. For example, we can subsidize ethanol to the point that we have surpluses and possible food issues, but we can't find enough money for solar. Even when interesting problems do exist, like nuclear, it does not appear that nuclear is ever going to be self reliant industry, rather depending on the dole, and probably requiring another huge consumer bailout.
So I am one of the many that are not developing new technologies, which is really no problem as companies are finding the labor they need at the price that they want. All those thing the parent criticize are necessary. We need to work in teams, we are more likely to succeed if we believe we can succeed, and one is more likely to work hard if the job has some tangible benefit, either intrinsic in the work or extrinsic due to pay or the like.
Back to the point, what is annoying is all of this crying over lack of 'local' talent, and blaming students or schools or culture. It is fact supply and demand. If a firm can recruit worldwide and hire the top 5% of the world population for the same amount that they used to hire the top 15% of the US population, then that logically means that those in the US not in the 5%, but in the 15%, that used to have a job, will not. As I said, supply and demand. And if one goes to a school that does not have the course so that ones GPA is good enough to get into the few colleges that generates the top 5% of engineers, then what is the point. Engineers, unlike athletes, have analytical minds, and will not be so easily seduced with the 1 in 10,000 chance to make it.
One reason why MS was able to take off as the cheap OS choice was because everything else was so expensive, or sold as a system rather than a part. On the microcomputer, Compaq broke IBMs hold, and IBM shot itself in the foot by allowing MS supply an OS. As time went on, people began using commodity parts to build thier own own IBM compatible PCs, and installing MS DOS, usually without a license, on these machines.
Some think that the market is right for this to happen again now that MS is the overpriced, bloated, arrogant OEM. It is going to be more difficult. For one thing, hardware manufacturers sell computer with MS Windows for not much more than one can build a machine. Second, the most likely reason MS Windows costs hundreds of dollars retail is too keep the large hardware manufacturers happy, so that people will buy machines rather than upgrade the OS. This is one of the many apparent quid pro quos between MS and the computer makers to support MS. Since naked PCs are taboo, MS wins.
Third, it is my hypothesis that MS Windows is made solely to support after sales income opportunities for MS and the partners. I seriously doubt that the computer sales generate any money for the like of HP and Dell, and that kickbacks from MS and other software manufacturers are the real profit centers. Such income opportunities are not so possible with linux machines, so these machines must be sold at market prices.
For throw away machines, then, such as are used in the office, MS is going to be a good value as long as Dell and HP are in the MS pocket. The same holds true for single computer homes. Linux is winning where it is a value, i.e. where many machines are running in one place, and there is value in uptime. The cheapest machins is not going to be linux simply becuase the cheapest machine is going to supported through ads, which is not Linux.
I think there is a bit of hyperbole in the article, but here is my take on Vista, and why MS should be ashamed of it.
For most of the life of MS Windows, the product has been a hack. It was intended to provide added functionality to MS DOS. As MS evolved Windows, MS bolted on more bloat to compete, for instance MS Windows for Networking. Therefore MS Windows worked not unlike those old jalopies with an air intake clamped on the hood, bad bondo job, and, in modern terms, a rear wing made from an old hockey stick.
All this was true until NT. This is the first time I was impressed with MS, and considered it more than a toy or cheap workhorse. The improvements continued through 2000, and I gave XP a lot of slack. MS did a good job producing a real OS, and the fact that it ran on cheap commodity kit made it a valuable product.
The product with MS Vista is that, as far as I can tell, it returns to the bad old day of hacking together a toy OS. I give it no slack. After the experience with XP, there is no reason why MS Vista should be of pre XP quality. To quote the parent, there is no excuse to produce an OS of the poor quality not seen in 10 years. The problem is not that MS broke every promise that would have made MS Vista a superior product. The problem is that MS has not even been able reach the level of respectable inferior product that made MS Windows 3.11 to 95 at least tolerable.
Many think that discrimination occurs because it is the one way to achieve an economic advantage. All discrimination requires is a clearly identifiable subgroup. To insure that the subgroups can be identified, laws against interracial breeding are put into effect, women have to dress like women, certain religions have to wear certain clothes. These works in all direction, for instance christians might clearly identify themselves as christians in the market place as it means that some will choose them because the are christian, rather than because the provide superior service or products.
I don't know where this law comes from. An effort to protect women from men who pretend to be women is certainly the press release explanation, but it seems more likely due to men who want freedom to harass women, and don't want to be in a situation where they accidently harass another man. In any case it is a daft rule, as all it will do is increase the percentage of female registrants. Anyone who wishes to play a women can get a women to pose as the registrant. Or perhaps just dress as a women. I can just imagine the resulting lawsuit the first time they say a women looks too much like a man and deny's membership.
If you have a machine that does not have firewire, it is my understanding that you will not run Tiger. For Leopard, there is an additional specific processor requirements. To my knowledge, this is the first time they required a minimum speed instead of excluding specific families or hardware categories.
This is kind of the confusing thing that can really cause customer nightmares. I would rather have them say that TiPB are not going to work, or that Al PB will work, or that only certain powermacs will work.
Really, I think this is about the Intel thing. I wonder how long it will be profitable to support the PowerPC chips.
When the iPhone first come out, one of the biggest complaints was that it was impossible to sell a phone in the market where most phones were free or near to free. Of course cell phones are not free, most people pay for them over time, usually paying $1.5k over a two year period. If one buys a phone with an upfont cost, this might add 20-30% to the price.
Many pundits also complained that the iPhone could not compete with the smart phones. Of course, the iPhone is not competing with the smart phone, but merely assuming that some people might be willing to pay more for a phone upfront if it provided a value. Such a market was made clear by the Razr.
Now pundits are saying that Apple is desperate and crazy because it lowers prices. It is true that Apple never has a sale, but this is a phone. Phones start expensive and then get cheap. It always happens. I don't have an iPhone. Being an early adopter was not worth the price. I was waiting for this price drop, and a relaxation to contract rules typical to ATT. The price drop is not like the price drop of a Mac or an iPod. With those devices, one is not contracted with a total costs that is at least $2K.
It really isn't. Like most people, he has to make defensible statements so that he can remained paid. If he had any real financial sense, he would be investing other peoples money instead of writing about where the money might be invested. if he any genuine financial sense, he would be investing his own money.
Like anyone else, he is just a working person. This statement is just made to imply that it was a honest mistake, based on a honest reading of the data, and he was not in fact paid off by anyone, even though we know that financial mags, just like fashion mags, are a slave to the industry that supports them.
This is not going to endanger his job. This is not going to change his readings. All is does is make him look like a reasonable person, so people will continue to believe the random thoughts of a magazine that regularly portrays soon to be convicted criminals as stand up guys.
If only more journalist tried to be experts in their fields, rather than flogging the current gossip.
I doubt that an arbitrary wireless plan in the US can be compared to an arbitrary wireless plan in Europe. For instance, the ATT plan allows free roaming around an approximately 3 million square mile area, as well as roll over minutes, and lots of free times. Saying that a UK plan does not offer such luxuries or that the US plan is cheaper makes no sense as the market features are not the same.
There is nothing special about a Mac or iPhone or iPod. The Mac provides me a great deal of value, so I buy it. The iPhone does not provide the value that the additional costs would warrant, so I won't buy one. I think people miss this simple point when they complain about the price drop of the iPhone. Current users effectively spent $2000 for the phone. This amount of money meant that the phone must have had some significant value to them, especially those that bought the first week. The $200 discount then represents a mere 10% discount, and 10% is an exceptional price to become an early adopter. I was not an early adopter my normal tolarance for contracted costs is about a third of what Apple and ATT wanted.
I hope we don't have to endure another year of moaning about the cost of the phone, or the cost of the plan, or the cost of early adoption. Those who have it find some value in it, and that is really all there is to it. Apple sells expensive machines, and those that need or want them buy them. Those that do not don't. If one needs or wants an iPhone, the costs will be worth it. Otherwise buy something else and apple will out the costs until it is low enough to attract the expected number of consumers.
Probably not. IBM provides solutions. The problem was that thier solutions were expensive. MS response was to allow businesses to buy cheap hardware, buy at the time not extravagantly priced OS, and then use whatever IT support one can afford. This allowed firms that previously could not afford an IT solution to have at least a facade of one. Of course reliability and effeciency was often much less, but of course so was cost.
Recall that Sun also tried this office competition, and tied it to a system that would allow firms to have predictable office application costs. It did not seem to work so well.
My suspicion is that firms like the flexibility that the MS solution provides. Computers will work well enough with almost no support(I have seen no MS shop staff support at adequate numbers to keep the machines running), and the support personal are usually semi-skilled so if they complain about over work, they are easily replaced. Combine this with the fact that the MS Office suite is often in a web of legal limitations, and I can't see that this IBM offering is any better than anyone else. Perhaps existing *nix users will gravitate toward the IBM name, but I doubt others will.
A similar thought crossed my mind, and supports the notion that financial people have no sense of purpose beyond the next payday, no sense of history that does not support their delusions.
What this article is talking about is treated the computer like a soft drink concession or chips. The most important thing in such a business is distribution, cost of ingredients, and perceived differentiation by huge advertising campaigns as your product is really any different than anyone else's. Indeed, as there is little cost of need for development, the primary costs are advertising. On the PC side of the computer business, such a strategy works. While the profits to the hardware manufacturers are very low, volume can generate enough revenue to support the excessive overhead. And, as Dell has learned, when the volume declines because someone else cuts a dollar off the cost of the machine, such excessive fixed overhead can de disastrous. Likewise, as most other computer makers know, volume and markup are the only things a retailer cares about, and if either is not there, the retailer is not even going to bother giving you valuable shelf space. This is why the iPod may have succeeded where the mac has not. It generates significant revenue for not very much shelf space. Retailers will support it, where they will not support the Mac.
Of course, any that knows history, know how disasterous applying the soda pop formula to Apple was. Unlike soda, there is a difference between an Apple and PC, just like there is a difference between a Linux PC and MS PC, and a Sun and Linux PC. Success comes from continuing to innovate so the differences remain and customer will be willing to pay for the perceived added value based on real differences. If no innovation occurs, the cheap imitators catch up, and the advantages are lost.
If apple did what the financial people wanted, Apple would be back to the days of early 90's, in which distribution was placed over quality and innovation, and Apple was on it's way to have not product of matter.
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I cannot believe anyone would dare mention Windows 98 or ME as actual releases of windows. The only one who would do such a thing would be one who never had use 98 or ME. In fact history tells us that MS produces a reasonable release of MS Windows every 5 years. Anything between those releases are either fixes or beta tests. The first version of MS windows around 1985, then MS Windows 3.0 in the early 90's, then MS Windows 95, then Windows XP. These were the releases that were adequate for the time, and as long as MS only released fixes everything was OK. What really killed MS was releasing the god awful beta packages in the late 90's. Given this history, Vista is released as expected, and given history, we expect it will be usable in a year and quite usable in 2-3 years.
You say it like it is funny, but if one looks at the past 6 years of so of increasing single issue authoritarian rule, one sees the damage caused by self centered interests. In both cases, we have vocal minorities so concerned with telling others what is right and wrong, that they elect incompentant and often otherwise immoral persons.
Itunes imports the music when the file is clicked, so that is not a problem. I anticipate iTunes sales to plummet, and the iPod to slowly lose market share as the coupling becomes much less. Another point is that, for me, the itunes store is much slower than the amazon store. The interface that amazon uses is one of the few truly useful flash applications.
Obviously the right-holders of the beatles catalog would stand to make more money from digital sales than a box set that resold ad naseum, but in their generousity they have decided that enough money has been made, and the fans should not be milked for any more money.
In the case of Garth Brooks, one assumes that he is going to have mercy on us by limiting the availability of his collections. This is quite acceptable to most of us fans, as Reba and George are widely available.
It only seems strange to those that think the church(or the lord's house) exists to promote the values of the lord. If one accepts the mainstream belief that the church exists to promote business and push political agenda, then almost any video game makes sense. Of course we all know that Jesus was a great promoter of money changers in the church, and of the stonings of prostitutes, and definitely had every intention of overthrowing the earthly kinds and acend earthly throne. All the talk of loving you brothers, and honoring the father, and generally being nice to people and not being greedy were just shrewd diversions from his true intentions. I am probably in the minority when I think his beliefs speak for themselves and do not need any additional incentives.
One alternative is to browse your bookstore for any math book. Just buy it and work the problems. I buy the Dover books. These books are classic texts that have been republished using quality binding at a very reasonable price. They are cheap enough that even going through a couple chapters makes it worth the money. A particularly interesting book is Famous Problems in Geometry.
For more recent texts, many people swear by the math books by Gelfand. These are algebra and trigonometry. Concise text, good problems, and complete.
if you ever think of moving beyond Calculus, look at Div, Grad, Curl, and all that. It is a really cool book. Thinking of more application of math, a physics book might be in order. You would get math practice in the context of real problems.
As far as the technology is concerned, there is no reason no reason not to utilize the web. The problem is the chaff, which is more common that they wheat. Mathworld has always worked for me. I don't necessarily trust other sites for more than problems sets or general solutions that can be verified elsewhere(it is so easy to make a mistake even in the most simple math, and if accuracy is not the primary goal, then the mistakes become rampant). There are also good tools for visualizing certain relations. For instance, Introduction to lines, Regular polygons, and trigonometry.
What happens is that the technology that Apple uses and it's customers are willing to pay for soon becomes cheap enough for commodity manufacturers to make and commodity computer makers to use. For most computer manufacturers, they will till any features it their computer that is cheap, rather than trying to design a useful machine. This is why so many computer have 4 in 1 readers but no firewire port. In any case, Apple does not say ahead of this curve, for instance they didn't seem to anticipate that every computer would have a high performance dedicated graphics processor, one Apple greatest advantages for a long time.
They seemed to have learned the lesson with iPod, and are updating it often to stay ahead of cheap imitators. So while MS will come out with gratuitous wireless, Apple pushes the hard disk capacity. Hopefully the same will happen with iPhone. The phone people are coming out with competitive phones, and the google software, with no license requirements, and ad support, might allow the phones to be significantly cheaper than iPhone. but likely will not have the full features of iPhone. In any case, the fact that a google phone is inherently intrusive will mean that the market will likely be limited to those that would not get an iPhone as they would not afford it, which is why they choose the ad supported option.
Really, if the iPhone faces a risk from google, it is because Apple made a decision not to be consumer friendly on this product. All the consumer hostile press that Apple has taken may convince some users that risk posed by the google phone is not significantly greater than the risk posed by apple.
I was the biggest fan of all the sim stuff for the longest time. I had multiple versions of simcity, simfarm, the sims. That ended when they introduced the need to have the original CD available to run the game. I was used to having the game on my two computers, and play as I wanted to. I know this probably violated so license restrictions, but I don't care. I bought the game to enjoy, and that is the way I wanted to enjoy it. The fact that I paid for the game, and could not play it without keeping up with the CD, was intolerable. When the Sims came with the limitation, that was the last sims I bought. There are is much competition for my money, and if someone is more worried about the people who don't buy that the people who do, that is someone that I have no desire to deal with.
There are very good reasons why no one takes the entertainment industry seriously, and why the entertainment industry has so much trouble stopping "piracy'. The industry has cried wolf for so long, that no sane person cares.
Finally, one has to remember what the purpose of a huge concert is. To make money. Nothing else. Everyone is in it to get rich. The venue has to be paid for the, the label has to be paid, and the band members have to pay back their advance, either trhough the ticket sales or the album sales generated, not to mention the huge amounts of money made of overpriced other cheap merchandise. No one cares who the tickets get sold to, as long as they get sold. if someone wants to buy a hundred tickets, all the better. The band and label get the money, and someone else takes the risk of being stuck with the tickets. Again, if the prices were too high, the tickets would not sell. Most large venues would be foolish not use a company like ticketmaster as they are very efficient at distrubting the thousands of tickets needed to support mainstream events.
As far as the RIAA is concerned, i don't know what this has to do with anything. But I will say this. If you don't want to pay the ticketmaster fee, then don't If you don't want to listen to RIAA music, then don't. Go to the little events that provide a evening of credible entertainment for $10-20. The money goes to the little guy, you are supporting local talent, and you are not getting ripped off by ticketmaster. Of course when one is not drooling over Ms. Spears, but instead Ms. Murphy, one is might be ostracized by ones peer group, but bieng a rebel comes at a cost.
In the schools, it is so much different. So many of the costs are externalized, usually by making teachers and administrators work off the clock. Therefore so many task that should take a minute, often can take 10 times as much time. In another example, there may be a single person supporting hundreds of abused computes. And education is on of the last examples of web developers hiding behind arbitrary minimum requirements rather than resorting to rational design. In one example, only 50% of a 15" inch screen may be available for content, the rest used for branding and menus. Wy does a school district need branding on an internal web site?
The argument that there is no money for adequate tech is silly. There are dozens of people in any district that have no real work to do. All they do is walk around, observe, and send in redundant reports. Or conduct training on who to use a notebook. These people are well paid, and the money would be better used to improve tech. If a district has 1000 teachers, and a ill designed process wastes 10 minutes a day, that is on the order or a teacherweek a year. In the grand scheme of things, it is not that much, but when one figures that some of the things can be fixed in a day of development time, one wonders why they are not. One wonders why paying a person to walk around is more important than provides teachers extra minutes to teach.
oping that before long the practice of locking phones to specific networks gets outlawed
The you conclusion
Apple haven't done anything wrong.
while true for some limited view of wrong, does not follow from the premis.
I would say if apple has done nothing wrong, then laws regulated equipment and service providers are not necessarily needed. Like so many other things, if the market will bear a practice, then obviously people find value in the practice. For instance, cheap stores often have draconian rules to keep prices cheap, and people still find value in the store.
The lesson learned here is that Apple is increasingly less end use centric and more strategic partner centered. What this means is that I can no longer trust Apple to do what is best for me as an end user, and, as the systems are closed, can no longer buy the products with the same confidence. It is not so much a misunderstanding of the process, but a misunderstanding of the shift from Apple Computer, Inc to Apple, Inc. From a company that had a policy of not putting end user products at risk, by, for example, developing anti piracy technology that could diaable a users machine, to a company that would put end users at risk by not only developing but implementing such technology.
I tell you this has had an effect on me. I was on the verge of buying another mac, but now I do not know. The switch to intel and the added 'security' that entailed. The bricking of the iphone. Who knows what is next? Pretty machines are not enough. I need certainty that Apple will not one day disable my mac because I do not have a .mac account.
For example, one thing that made the iPod great was the firewire bus. Firewire, unlike USB, can charge even if the computer does not mount the device. It was that I always charged the iPod on the computer, and it made sense to do a transfer at the same time. Now that we are stuck with USB, we might as well change over the wall socket, and do a wireless transfer. By taking firewire away, and not replacing it with wireless, Apple left a wide gaping hole in the wall for competitors.
Frankly I think we are lucky that they did not change the DRM and force everyone to buy new tracks for the new player.
What little success Apple has had over the past 30 years or so has been due to a focus on the customer. The failures have been mostly due to distractions by technology. For instance, up until the late 90's I could return any Apple I found defective for an exchange at the retailer. Such customer service died out for mot computer manufacturers long before that. I know can go to an Apple store and get my computer fixed. It may take a couple days, but it gets fixed. The OS is designed for my ease of use, not for the ease of use for the developer. This sounds bad but an application is developed and then used by perhaps thousands of people. Inefficiencies in use are therefore multiplied.
Here is what I have seen with the Apple release. A phone that is not end user centered, but is centered on the needs of the carrier and music industry. I must therefore assume that Apple is no longer an end user centered company, but a bussiness partner centered company. I often say that main reason not to buy any MS product is that MS has validation which increases the risk that the product may become useless. As an enduser, I need my product to work. There is enough problems with any computer without having intentional self destruct mechanisms built in. The fact that MS would build self destruct mechanisms into code proves that the device is a toy, and should not be used by any professional person. The same is true for printers that detect toner.
It scares me that Apple would disable a product. It means that I can no longer trust them. Up until now I was happy to pay apple for the products. For one, thing, unlike MS, I can get what I need without interrogation. I learned that lesson when I tried to set up an XP machine last spring and had to spend an hour verifying license before I could get updates. But now who knows if any Apple product will be safe. They are willing to destroy product to enforce their license. It is hardly worth the risk to me. Perhaps we can forgive on the iPhone, but if it happens again, the brand will be destroyed.
To digress, when I was a kid, I really thought that I would be working in energy or space. But then I realized that the money for these technologies is practically non existent compared to old technologies, technologies that are not only have few interesting problems to solve,but are dying. For example, we can subsidize ethanol to the point that we have surpluses and possible food issues, but we can't find enough money for solar. Even when interesting problems do exist, like nuclear, it does not appear that nuclear is ever going to be self reliant industry, rather depending on the dole, and probably requiring another huge consumer bailout.
So I am one of the many that are not developing new technologies, which is really no problem as companies are finding the labor they need at the price that they want. All those thing the parent criticize are necessary. We need to work in teams, we are more likely to succeed if we believe we can succeed, and one is more likely to work hard if the job has some tangible benefit, either intrinsic in the work or extrinsic due to pay or the like.
Back to the point, what is annoying is all of this crying over lack of 'local' talent, and blaming students or schools or culture. It is fact supply and demand. If a firm can recruit worldwide and hire the top 5% of the world population for the same amount that they used to hire the top 15% of the US population, then that logically means that those in the US not in the 5%, but in the 15%, that used to have a job, will not. As I said, supply and demand. And if one goes to a school that does not have the course so that ones GPA is good enough to get into the few colleges that generates the top 5% of engineers, then what is the point. Engineers, unlike athletes, have analytical minds, and will not be so easily seduced with the 1 in 10,000 chance to make it.
Some think that the market is right for this to happen again now that MS is the overpriced, bloated, arrogant OEM. It is going to be more difficult. For one thing, hardware manufacturers sell computer with MS Windows for not much more than one can build a machine. Second, the most likely reason MS Windows costs hundreds of dollars retail is too keep the large hardware manufacturers happy, so that people will buy machines rather than upgrade the OS. This is one of the many apparent quid pro quos between MS and the computer makers to support MS. Since naked PCs are taboo, MS wins.
Third, it is my hypothesis that MS Windows is made solely to support after sales income opportunities for MS and the partners. I seriously doubt that the computer sales generate any money for the like of HP and Dell, and that kickbacks from MS and other software manufacturers are the real profit centers. Such income opportunities are not so possible with linux machines, so these machines must be sold at market prices.
For throw away machines, then, such as are used in the office, MS is going to be a good value as long as Dell and HP are in the MS pocket. The same holds true for single computer homes. Linux is winning where it is a value, i.e. where many machines are running in one place, and there is value in uptime. The cheapest machins is not going to be linux simply becuase the cheapest machine is going to supported through ads, which is not Linux.
For most of the life of MS Windows, the product has been a hack. It was intended to provide added functionality to MS DOS. As MS evolved Windows, MS bolted on more bloat to compete, for instance MS Windows for Networking. Therefore MS Windows worked not unlike those old jalopies with an air intake clamped on the hood, bad bondo job, and, in modern terms, a rear wing made from an old hockey stick.
All this was true until NT. This is the first time I was impressed with MS, and considered it more than a toy or cheap workhorse. The improvements continued through 2000, and I gave XP a lot of slack. MS did a good job producing a real OS, and the fact that it ran on cheap commodity kit made it a valuable product.
The product with MS Vista is that, as far as I can tell, it returns to the bad old day of hacking together a toy OS. I give it no slack. After the experience with XP, there is no reason why MS Vista should be of pre XP quality. To quote the parent, there is no excuse to produce an OS of the poor quality not seen in 10 years. The problem is not that MS broke every promise that would have made MS Vista a superior product. The problem is that MS has not even been able reach the level of respectable inferior product that made MS Windows 3.11 to 95 at least tolerable.
I don't know where this law comes from. An effort to protect women from men who pretend to be women is certainly the press release explanation, but it seems more likely due to men who want freedom to harass women, and don't want to be in a situation where they accidently harass another man. In any case it is a daft rule, as all it will do is increase the percentage of female registrants. Anyone who wishes to play a women can get a women to pose as the registrant. Or perhaps just dress as a women. I can just imagine the resulting lawsuit the first time they say a women looks too much like a man and deny's membership.
This is kind of the confusing thing that can really cause customer nightmares. I would rather have them say that TiPB are not going to work, or that Al PB will work, or that only certain powermacs will work.
Really, I think this is about the Intel thing. I wonder how long it will be profitable to support the PowerPC chips.
Many pundits also complained that the iPhone could not compete with the smart phones. Of course, the iPhone is not competing with the smart phone, but merely assuming that some people might be willing to pay more for a phone upfront if it provided a value. Such a market was made clear by the Razr.
Now pundits are saying that Apple is desperate and crazy because it lowers prices. It is true that Apple never has a sale, but this is a phone. Phones start expensive and then get cheap. It always happens. I don't have an iPhone. Being an early adopter was not worth the price. I was waiting for this price drop, and a relaxation to contract rules typical to ATT. The price drop is not like the price drop of a Mac or an iPod. With those devices, one is not contracted with a total costs that is at least $2K.
Like anyone else, he is just a working person. This statement is just made to imply that it was a honest mistake, based on a honest reading of the data, and he was not in fact paid off by anyone, even though we know that financial mags, just like fashion mags, are a slave to the industry that supports them.
This is not going to endanger his job. This is not going to change his readings. All is does is make him look like a reasonable person, so people will continue to believe the random thoughts of a magazine that regularly portrays soon to be convicted criminals as stand up guys.
If only more journalist tried to be experts in their fields, rather than flogging the current gossip.
There is nothing special about a Mac or iPhone or iPod. The Mac provides me a great deal of value, so I buy it. The iPhone does not provide the value that the additional costs would warrant, so I won't buy one. I think people miss this simple point when they complain about the price drop of the iPhone. Current users effectively spent $2000 for the phone. This amount of money meant that the phone must have had some significant value to them, especially those that bought the first week. The $200 discount then represents a mere 10% discount, and 10% is an exceptional price to become an early adopter. I was not an early adopter my normal tolarance for contracted costs is about a third of what Apple and ATT wanted.
I hope we don't have to endure another year of moaning about the cost of the phone, or the cost of the plan, or the cost of early adoption. Those who have it find some value in it, and that is really all there is to it. Apple sells expensive machines, and those that need or want them buy them. Those that do not don't. If one needs or wants an iPhone, the costs will be worth it. Otherwise buy something else and apple will out the costs until it is low enough to attract the expected number of consumers.
Recall that Sun also tried this office competition, and tied it to a system that would allow firms to have predictable office application costs. It did not seem to work so well.
My suspicion is that firms like the flexibility that the MS solution provides. Computers will work well enough with almost no support(I have seen no MS shop staff support at adequate numbers to keep the machines running), and the support personal are usually semi-skilled so if they complain about over work, they are easily replaced. Combine this with the fact that the MS Office suite is often in a web of legal limitations, and I can't see that this IBM offering is any better than anyone else. Perhaps existing *nix users will gravitate toward the IBM name, but I doubt others will.
What this article is talking about is treated the computer like a soft drink concession or chips. The most important thing in such a business is distribution, cost of ingredients, and perceived differentiation by huge advertising campaigns as your product is really any different than anyone else's. Indeed, as there is little cost of need for development, the primary costs are advertising. On the PC side of the computer business, such a strategy works. While the profits to the hardware manufacturers are very low, volume can generate enough revenue to support the excessive overhead. And, as Dell has learned, when the volume declines because someone else cuts a dollar off the cost of the machine, such excessive fixed overhead can de disastrous. Likewise, as most other computer makers know, volume and markup are the only things a retailer cares about, and if either is not there, the retailer is not even going to bother giving you valuable shelf space. This is why the iPod may have succeeded where the mac has not. It generates significant revenue for not very much shelf space. Retailers will support it, where they will not support the Mac.
Of course, any that knows history, know how disasterous applying the soda pop formula to Apple was. Unlike soda, there is a difference between an Apple and PC, just like there is a difference between a Linux PC and MS PC, and a Sun and Linux PC. Success comes from continuing to innovate so the differences remain and customer will be willing to pay for the perceived added value based on real differences. If no innovation occurs, the cheap imitators catch up, and the advantages are lost.
If apple did what the financial people wanted, Apple would be back to the days of early 90's, in which distribution was placed over quality and innovation, and Apple was on it's way to have not product of matter.