One issue with the original PDA, and grew as the PDA became more powerful, was the idea that it would not run MS Office. At this point, most business people who would use the PDA knew nothing but MS Office, with automagically formated test and close file specification. All I heard was the PDA was not appropriate because it would not run MS Word.
I had no problem using my PDA for writing. I would enter it as plain text, and then format it in MS Word when I got the big computer. The PDA was to keep contacts and appointments, and jot down drafts. I saw no one complaining that theri franklin planner was inadequate because it did not include a typewriter. Same thing.
I suspect the problem with the iPhone is that it is not going to fit in with the MS workcylce, specifically exchange. Of course blackberry is not a problem because I believe it does have an exchange component. Apple, OTOH, is just uses standard protocols, and does nothing special. Therefore, when the executives get their iPhones, which they will, it is conceivable that at some point MS will have to open up exchange. This means the MS should be scared because the iPhone is the thin end of the wedge. MS lucked out that the there were enough hacks to maintain the monopoly with the PDA threat, but they may not be so lucky with the phones. Just look at what the iPod is doing to the precious WMP formats.
The order is interesting. I was recently looking into buying a MS OS, and discovered that the most expensive thing out there is MS Win 2K. From previous experience, this would be my preferred choice, and the price indicates the demand for it is high, so I guess it is everyone else first choice as well. In the end I will buy XP because it is cheapest, and with MS the point is to get the cheapest solution.
OTOH, I would certainly put MS Windows 95 above MS Windows 98. MS WIndows 95 was seriously the first MS GUI OS that really worked, and I used MS products since early MS DOS. 95 proved what could be done when MS made and effort. I would also put NT4 above any version of XP because the problem with NT was not the stability, but the support for consumer needs. I had NT running on all sorts of machines, including development, and never had any problem, or the nag problems of XP.
XP is very good, and I suspect that Vista exaggerates the negative points of XP rather than continues the improvements. NT simply worked, something that is sorely lacking in most of MS products.
This is what I was thinking. It seems to me that companies have not been "selling printers" for a long time. For one thing, printers are a one time sale. The money is not made on the printer sales, any more than Xerox makes money off the copier sale. The money is made on service and consumables. So the machine is sold at cost in hopes of making the money back later. What is happening now, though, is that knock off products are becoming so good, and the markup on the "genuine" product are becoming so obscene, that except for really high printers, it makes no sense to buy the "genuine" product. So I buy real Xerox toner, but not real Samsung. Of course, the companies can try to use government regulation to force consumers to buy their non competitive products, but that is back firing as well.
Ah, but the post office scales up in anticipation of the tax event. Surprising, seeing how it is a inefficient government agency and TurboTax is a part of the agile hight tech private sector. Went to the post office last night, they had IRS form pickups on the major arteries to the post office, as well as frequent pickups at all post office mail boxes. I was around there after 8 and the lines were not bad at all.
The turbotax thing was most likely a business decision. Buying the extra connectivity and servers was likely simply deemed to be not cost effective. Unlike the IRS and Post Office, turbotax is not going to get angry calls from legislators who are looking for any excuse to cut the budget.
You now, there is a level of civility that does not exist anymore. I don't know if it is just because are more self centered, or if consumerism simply makes people think thye deserve luxuries, even if they can't afford it. I am told during the depression the crime rate was not exceedingly high, as people knew how to live on what they had, and most would help a person in real need. What I do know is that I grew up in marginal urban neighborhood, and stuff did not get stolen. We could leave stuff on the porch, and seldom would anything go missing. Most people seemed to understand the basic of civilized existance that if something is not yours, don't take it. We did not have to chain anything up. No one said, hey, by not securing your stuff, you are telling me that you are prepared to give it away. Recently, I have had people tell me that they had every right to take other people stuff because it was sufficiently secured. For instance, a purse might be in a drawer, but the drawer unlocked. These people believe they have right to rummage through the draw and take whatever they wish.
I don't know where I stand on the open AP issue, but I know I wouldn't want to be is position where I using the same logic as a car thief who believed that they had a right to steal unalarmed car because, after all, if the person did not want the car stolen they should have put in an alarm.
I now use VLC as a substitute for everything, even as a DVD player. All commercial players, WMP, Quicktime, Realplayer are suspect. They all have the ability to take over the computer and launch other apps, at least the browser. I know the integration can be helpful, but we are not in the 1980's. I do know how to open an application on my own.
It not help to accept the site cookies. Much of the tracking may be done with third party cookies, and browsers are increasingly able to manage these third party cookies automatically. Therefore all the 2o7, doubleclick and the like are never allowed on the computer.
It seems to me that one of the advantages that google has is that they are a first party sites, and therefore likely have more valid cookies out in the wild. That is also on of the disadvantages of the doubleclick deal. Doubleclick is less trusted than even google, so I certainly plan to limit my google cookies.
According to the article at The Register, Skype is one of the services that will be OK. Any service with servers in the US will be gon. Therefore, the VoIP will be a non US enterprise, with all related jobs existed offshore.
The irony continues because the one of the also rans was for Flash. All the ads I saw were in flash. I don't have flash enabled, therefore the web server got all the extra hits, but never loaded an ad. Obviously the magazine cannot take it's own advice. One wonders why one would trust a magazine that recommends one thing and then does the exact opposite. It is like the stock tips mags. If you stock tips are so good, why don't you make your money by investing rather than selling a magazine. It would seem if your core competency was in fact investing, that is what you would do.
OTOH, I think the consistent misuse of flash has made it much less of a valuable platform for what I would consider legitimate purposes. I never understood why macromedia made the decision to cater flash to the push advertising crowd rather the creative crowd. I suppose they make more money that way.
As a result of that decision, though, I tend to not visit sites that rely heavily on flash. For instance, I still us Yahoo finance instead of Google finance. Due to historical reasons, flash used to crash my browser often, I did not install flash for the longest time, and now only do so in conjunction with blocker software. This of course reduces the ad revenue of the web sites I visit, as I use very weak ad blocking software, but never see the flash ads. I see most of the static image ads, and all the text ads.
I had hoped that the Adobe acquisition might mean that Flash might become a better citizen, for instance including an option of load and run flash only with user consent, much like we can still do with images and gif animation. Instead we still see Flash used as an advertising and porn delivery system, which is profitable, but hardly consistent with the Adobe's core business.
Another example of good technology, bad delivery. Like the laser disk.
I buy a number of DVDs and have noticed over the past year there are certain troubles playing them on a computer. The DVDs are new, and I have tried them on different computer. The problem appears to involve decoding certain area. I see no scratches.
I was wondering if this was a method to depreciate the value of the DVD and force people to upgrade to the new formats. I myself look at this as another indication that they are not seriously interested in selling content and wish for consumers to find over avenues of acquiring the movies. I mean even why we try follow the rules we still get ripped off.
/. is doing a public service by helping spread the word of the requirements for virtualization. After all, we would not want someone breaking the law by accidently running the wrong version of MS Windows? And where else are they going to learn this? Is it on the retail packages? Is it at the top of the Amazon product page? You think retailers are going to risk losing a sale by informing people of this? Remember, the best way to limit crime is prevention. If/. prevents a single user from accidently engaging in criminal behavior, then I say dupe away!
In addition, look how much we are going to save MS. By publicizing a fact that is not well publicized, we are helping MS keep it's support costs down. Just think of how many people are happily going to pay the $100 for MS Vista, because that is how much Bill said you had to pay, go Home, open the package, and on reading the EULA on install, discover they cannot legally run the Software! They realize, like, OMG, I am a criminal, what am I to do. In a panic they go back to the retailer and try to exchange MS Vista. They cannot, because it has been open. More Panic. Dread, nervous sweats, have to to avoid the cops. Call MS, spend an half on hold, on the MS dime, then 15 minutes with a support personnel, more MS money. Nothing they can do. You should have known better. You get the premium version of vista, but what to do with the home version? Well, you are already starting the life of crime, so why not continue and try to sell the other copy on Ebay. You might get away with it. And then maybe the truly heinous crime of selling the OEM copy of XP. That is in great demand.
MS Vista, the gateway to criminal tendencies. All prevented by/. dupes. Thank your favorite deity or whatever.
Here is the clear difference between the Parent and Imus. The parent did not say 'dear rutget team' and then start insulting them, calling them names, and wishing them ill. No, the parent engaged in teh accepted behavior of attacking a celebrity that has been provided to us for such purposes. And the rant was overall looking at the issues and not just flinging slurs. This is good.
I wonder if the post attacking the team is going to get moderated up. I hope not.
First, I do support the right of entertainers to engage in language and activities of questionable value. Musicians,comedians, actors, Matt & Trey, etc, all engage in protected speech.
Given that, even though this was a so-called white-on-black thing, I do not think the issue is particularly racial. And I do not think, in the end, Imus was fired for racist remarks, or that the indignation was primarily a result of the racist nature of those remarks. I believe what got Imus fired, and what was shown by the constant repetitions of the clip, and his failed apologies, was that he was fundamentally uncouth and uncivilized, and while such things are entertaining for a while, such uncivilized behavior is often only tolerated for a while.
Let me explain what I mean. It is quite accepted now to make fun of celebrities. We can call a big screen actress a ho, we can say the president couldn't find his office without an aides help, we can say the NBA is bunch of drug laden deadweights. All that is acceptable because these are highly paid highly trained professionals. Their job is to, in some respect, entertain us, and part of that entertainment is being the butt of sometimes very demeaning jokes. Whether we accept it as right or wrong, that is reality.
OTOH, the Rutgers team are not highly paid professionals. They are kids. Many play ball to get an education. They are protected. We don't allow bully's to attack our kids, no matter what. If a person tried to murder a kid who accidently wandered around at night, we would not say, oh well, the kid should not have been out so we will let the kid be murdered, we still protect the kid as best we can. If a young women got up on stage and did something silly, in a dress that was cut too low, and way to short, few of us would tolerate anyone on the radio saying that she looked like she was ready to service the entire theater. It is just not civilized. We tolerate bully's but expect them to pick on celebrities their own size. Not be so cowardly that they need to pick on people who cannot defend themselves.
It seems to me that this is also what happened to prosecutor in the Duke case. He thought he was prosecuting a professional athletic team. He wasn't. He was prosecuting some kids who made a mistake, and hoped to make his name known by attacking them. Like Imus, It was only a matte of class and race in that he was using those factors to further his career. It was true that these kids in their delusions, like so many other student athletes, thought they were pros, and though they could handle being treated like the pros, but that was clearly not true. They were kids, doing what kids do. They should not have been treated like some mutli million dollar athlete who is paid to know better. As a result, the prosecutor's career might be at an end. Like Imus this is how it should be. Because next time it will be the paparazzi sneaking into the girls locker room of the high school, claiming that their pics are protected speech.
One last thing. Your last line illustrates why most rap music and comedies are so much less offensive. In general, the lyrics are telling a story of hurt, or are directed at a specific, equal, and known adversary. They are seldom directed at a random specific person. I know of no rap song that attacks a college athletic team. I know of no rap song that says, hey, you Mary, who I just picked out the phone book, is bitch because you won't sleep with me. About as bad as it gets is the denigration of the person we see in the street, which is bad, but at least names are not named.
Not that the purpose is to justify, just to say that I fully support uncivilized person being removed from the public grandstand. Imus may, if he wishes, stand in Manhattan apartment, with his windows open, and scream down to the street all the insults he wishes. Though i do imagine that his neighbors will sue him for uncivilized behavior.
Wikipedia is not an unreasonable source of information, and it tends to be somewhat reliable. I will often use it as a starting point. Which is the way an encyclopedia should be used, if such a thing is to be used at all. As a beginning to research, to get an idea of what is known, and what is accepted.
But all to often at all levels, students go to the encyclopedia as the primary source of research, which is wrong at any level about primary school. And although Wikipedia is reliable, in general, the instant edits means that there is no way to insure that it is reliable at a given instant in time. For instance, if one is researching bears, some prankster might go in and say that bears live on the feces of other animals, and then all the gullible people in the class will copy the fact and believe it. Not a good situation. As bad as the Britannica might be, at least the errors are known and static.
It is much better to simply not allow students to use Wikipedia, and give then access to an encyclopedia that is more reliable. I would fully support Wikipedia to engage an editorial board that revised all changes and created a more static version and made that available in situation where instant edits might present some sort of problem.
I must take issue with the 100% efficiency. Efficiency, as I know it, is a ability to convert stored energy into useful work. I know of no engine, artificial or natural, that can do this with 100%, which is of course prohibited by the known laws of thermodynamics. In particular, I have seen photosynthesis calculation that set the efficiency of photosynthesis as low at 3%. Even in the simplistic case, it appears that 50-70% of the energy in the process of photosynthesis.
And just to add my thanks to those people who are sworn to uphold the law, and not jut trying to look cool, here is the story of the sheriff who wrote himself a ticket, and his collegues that think he is bonkers.
cool sheriff
My concern is that they had to unexpectedly pull developers off one project to work on another. This to me indicates significant problems in the iPhone, and potentail problem in Leopard due to lack of proper attention.
We can look to the past to see what happned in a similar situation. The OMP was introduced 1993 and followed by the messagepad. It was a good machine, but even more so than the original Mac, was rushed to market and had significant issues. Through the 90's Apple tried to make it work, until Steve killed it.
During this time period, Mac System, a mature OS that worked very well. Version 7.0 was going to 7.5, and was king. OTOH, MS Windows 95, the first acceptable MS GUI OS was also coming, and Apple clearly needed to significantly upgrade the OS. Instead, we got System 8 and 9, which were great, but in many was not a competitor to NT. As it was, it took the redirection of resources, and the integration of NeXtT to save Apple.
I see a very similar situation approaching. Mac OS X is going to be, for all intents and purposes, where System 7 was back in the Mid 90's. MS has pulled itself together quite nicely with MS Vista. I find it very interesting that Apple is willing to pull developer off the Leopard project to work on iPhone, especially when history indicates that OS X is going to need a major overhall no later than the next release. History also tells us, with Apple DOS, Pro DOS, System, etc that Apple hangs onto an OS longer than such a nible innovator perhaps should.
I wonder if this is not another indication that Apple, Inc, neé Apple Computer, Inc, is going to move from a computer company, supplying Macs, to a consumer electronics company in which the computer is going away. When Apple makes all their money from iPods and televisions, will it be cost prohibitive for Apple to develop the next generation OS to compete with MS? This begs the question of what will I buy if I want a computer? Or will the computer we now know be an anachronism, like the old time radio floor cabinets, replaced with an appliance?
reagan: sorry, the president went insane and can't remember anything about selling drugs to supply terrorist with weapons.
Bush I: sorry,. we were just following orders.
Clinton: It depends what the meaning of is is, and I didn't inhale, and we eventually found the papers we misplaced
Bush II: Is has been 20 years since I supported terrorist by buying illegal drugs, I believe that Hussein had WMDs, and the emails have been deleted anyway.
MS gets thing right when they are willing to be in some way innovative, and not just copy a concept in a attempt to extend the monopoly. Take Excel for instance. A wonderful product, very useful, very innovative. It was derivative, as all things are, but was right from day one. Compare this with Acess, which was never right.
With MS Windows, until NT and the radical redesign, Windows was terrible. The best thing that could be said about it was it worked and it was cheap. XP does get many things right, but XP is not really MS Windows. We will see about MS Vista.
And don't even try to talk about IE.
The XBox success is that it is a cheap product that works acceptably, just like most of MS products. Not great, not right, but a reasonable value. Zune needs to be marketed the same way. Unfortunately, such marketing may not lead to long term profit growth.
OTOH, google is desperately trying to show that it offers an original and innovative product, and does in fact owe it profit to stealing and repacking the content of others. The lifting of code sort of indicates that the case is the former and not the later, and may tend to have an impact in cases where Google is claiming it need not make royalty payments.
I see no reason why Apple should care. Most people are not going to hack a TV computer instead of purchasing an iMac. Such as thing, as is true for *nix and MS OS, only saves money if your time is worth nothing.
Instead I see the people doing this as people who like to hack macs and have an open licensee on their 5 pack. In this case I think apple would be happy. They sell a machine that otherwise would not be sold, and cost them nothing in support as they will not support that application.
Apple has done good job positioning their computers. An mac mini, fully decked out, is more expensive than iMac, os the only people who will buy it are the people who need to replace a white box. An iMac is cheap, but essentially underpowered so people who want or need the power will buy a Mac pro. The apple TV is cheap, but clearly not a loss leader.
It is easy to blame the person that is not willing to pay for your product. I could, for instance, spend all my time growing perfect peaches, and then selling them for $5 each to support myself. When nobody bought the peaches, I could then put a sign up saying "to all of you who go elsewhere and buy peaches, you are responsible for me not having a new car. Shame on you!" Of course this would be silly.
Two of my favorite record store closed down about 10 or 15 years ago. Long before downloading. The local stuff was cheap. The major stuff was expensive, and sold at a very low profit, because the labels required such a high wholesale price. It could not make it because the majors did not support small shops. The cool place to shop for records closed down recently, but I seldom shopped there because it was too cool for me. It closed for a variety of reasons, one was probably sales. We have one more store that survives by selling paraphernalia and coffee.
The point of the article is that at every stage. the music industry has appeared to choose short term profit over long term growth. Radio, MTV, the internet. How many of us actually bought a album of a band we never heard of. I am sure most of us sold the music first, and then maybe bought it later. So why are the labels fighting against this tried and true advertising method? There is a cost of sale in every market. I recall when they killed the single. They said that singles sales cut into album sales. So what happened? No one heard the music, so no one bought the album.
Looking back to my college days, any record was swapped quite a lot. If you are referring to tower records, there was more than one record bought there that was illegally distributed. I wonder if the labels and the record store let costs get so out of control that they could no longer support themselves on the existing sales. More than likely, it was the same thing that happened with my happy small record store so many years ago. The labels and distributors got so greedy and gave all the attention to the big, inefficient, stores while letting the small, personalized, stores go out business.
Is it any wonder why the only place to find music is at big box stores? And is it any wonder that now those stores are not selling it. Those stores don't care about music, they care about sales per square foot of floor space. If CDs aren't selling, it is because the labels did not support the retail outlets that actually cared about selling the product. The download thing is just a diversion. After all, I might go to a music store if I know the owner, just as I do for hardware or food. Buy why would I choose a big box, or even a little box store, over downloading or Amazon?
MS last best hope for the Zune is to promote it as a continuously updated Top 40 player. Always have the music that your friends are listening to.
The only problem is that I don't see how they could make more than $100, even on a two year contract. which is half the retail cost. I suppose if they are willing to lose money on the Xbox, then they can do the same thing on the Zune.
BTW, when I checked on google, it appeared no one has paid for the sponsored on the keyword zune, just the side ads. It is interesting that for ipod, apple has paid a sponsorship. It is also interesting that MS has done so for Vista. But not Zune.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I will stop. Just don't throw a chair at me.
I had no problem using my PDA for writing. I would enter it as plain text, and then format it in MS Word when I got the big computer. The PDA was to keep contacts and appointments, and jot down drafts. I saw no one complaining that theri franklin planner was inadequate because it did not include a typewriter. Same thing.
I suspect the problem with the iPhone is that it is not going to fit in with the MS workcylce, specifically exchange. Of course blackberry is not a problem because I believe it does have an exchange component. Apple, OTOH, is just uses standard protocols, and does nothing special. Therefore, when the executives get their iPhones, which they will, it is conceivable that at some point MS will have to open up exchange. This means the MS should be scared because the iPhone is the thin end of the wedge. MS lucked out that the there were enough hacks to maintain the monopoly with the PDA threat, but they may not be so lucky with the phones. Just look at what the iPod is doing to the precious WMP formats.
OTOH, I would certainly put MS Windows 95 above MS Windows 98. MS WIndows 95 was seriously the first MS GUI OS that really worked, and I used MS products since early MS DOS. 95 proved what could be done when MS made and effort. I would also put NT4 above any version of XP because the problem with NT was not the stability, but the support for consumer needs. I had NT running on all sorts of machines, including development, and never had any problem, or the nag problems of XP.
XP is very good, and I suspect that Vista exaggerates the negative points of XP rather than continues the improvements. NT simply worked, something that is sorely lacking in most of MS products.
This is what I was thinking. It seems to me that companies have not been "selling printers" for a long time. For one thing, printers are a one time sale. The money is not made on the printer sales, any more than Xerox makes money off the copier sale. The money is made on service and consumables. So the machine is sold at cost in hopes of making the money back later. What is happening now, though, is that knock off products are becoming so good, and the markup on the "genuine" product are becoming so obscene, that except for really high printers, it makes no sense to buy the "genuine" product. So I buy real Xerox toner, but not real Samsung. Of course, the companies can try to use government regulation to force consumers to buy their non competitive products, but that is back firing as well.
The turbotax thing was most likely a business decision. Buying the extra connectivity and servers was likely simply deemed to be not cost effective. Unlike the IRS and Post Office, turbotax is not going to get angry calls from legislators who are looking for any excuse to cut the budget.
I don't know where I stand on the open AP issue, but I know I wouldn't want to be is position where I using the same logic as a car thief who believed that they had a right to steal unalarmed car because, after all, if the person did not want the car stolen they should have put in an alarm.
I now use VLC as a substitute for everything, even as a DVD player. All commercial players, WMP, Quicktime, Realplayer are suspect. They all have the ability to take over the computer and launch other apps, at least the browser. I know the integration can be helpful, but we are not in the 1980's. I do know how to open an application on my own.
It seems to me that one of the advantages that google has is that they are a first party sites, and therefore likely have more valid cookies out in the wild. That is also on of the disadvantages of the doubleclick deal. Doubleclick is less trusted than even google, so I certainly plan to limit my google cookies.
According to the article at The Register, Skype is one of the services that will be OK. Any service with servers in the US will be gon. Therefore, the VoIP will be a non US enterprise, with all related jobs existed offshore.
The irony continues because the one of the also rans was for Flash. All the ads I saw were in flash. I don't have flash enabled, therefore the web server got all the extra hits, but never loaded an ad. Obviously the magazine cannot take it's own advice. One wonders why one would trust a magazine that recommends one thing and then does the exact opposite. It is like the stock tips mags. If you stock tips are so good, why don't you make your money by investing rather than selling a magazine. It would seem if your core competency was in fact investing, that is what you would do.
As a result of that decision, though, I tend to not visit sites that rely heavily on flash. For instance, I still us Yahoo finance instead of Google finance. Due to historical reasons, flash used to crash my browser often, I did not install flash for the longest time, and now only do so in conjunction with blocker software. This of course reduces the ad revenue of the web sites I visit, as I use very weak ad blocking software, but never see the flash ads. I see most of the static image ads, and all the text ads.
I had hoped that the Adobe acquisition might mean that Flash might become a better citizen, for instance including an option of load and run flash only with user consent, much like we can still do with images and gif animation. Instead we still see Flash used as an advertising and porn delivery system, which is profitable, but hardly consistent with the Adobe's core business.
Another example of good technology, bad delivery. Like the laser disk.
I was wondering if this was a method to depreciate the value of the DVD and force people to upgrade to the new formats. I myself look at this as another indication that they are not seriously interested in selling content and wish for consumers to find over avenues of acquiring the movies. I mean even why we try follow the rules we still get ripped off.
In addition, look how much we are going to save MS. By publicizing a fact that is not well publicized, we are helping MS keep it's support costs down. Just think of how many people are happily going to pay the $100 for MS Vista, because that is how much Bill said you had to pay, go Home, open the package, and on reading the EULA on install, discover they cannot legally run the Software! They realize, like, OMG, I am a criminal, what am I to do. In a panic they go back to the retailer and try to exchange MS Vista. They cannot, because it has been open. More Panic. Dread, nervous sweats, have to to avoid the cops. Call MS, spend an half on hold, on the MS dime, then 15 minutes with a support personnel, more MS money. Nothing they can do. You should have known better. You get the premium version of vista, but what to do with the home version? Well, you are already starting the life of crime, so why not continue and try to sell the other copy on Ebay. You might get away with it. And then maybe the truly heinous crime of selling the OEM copy of XP. That is in great demand.
MS Vista, the gateway to criminal tendencies. All prevented by /. dupes. Thank your favorite deity or whatever.
I wonder if the post attacking the team is going to get moderated up. I hope not.
Given that, even though this was a so-called white-on-black thing, I do not think the issue is particularly racial. And I do not think, in the end, Imus was fired for racist remarks, or that the indignation was primarily a result of the racist nature of those remarks. I believe what got Imus fired, and what was shown by the constant repetitions of the clip, and his failed apologies, was that he was fundamentally uncouth and uncivilized, and while such things are entertaining for a while, such uncivilized behavior is often only tolerated for a while.
Let me explain what I mean. It is quite accepted now to make fun of celebrities. We can call a big screen actress a ho, we can say the president couldn't find his office without an aides help, we can say the NBA is bunch of drug laden deadweights. All that is acceptable because these are highly paid highly trained professionals. Their job is to, in some respect, entertain us, and part of that entertainment is being the butt of sometimes very demeaning jokes. Whether we accept it as right or wrong, that is reality.
OTOH, the Rutgers team are not highly paid professionals. They are kids. Many play ball to get an education. They are protected. We don't allow bully's to attack our kids, no matter what. If a person tried to murder a kid who accidently wandered around at night, we would not say, oh well, the kid should not have been out so we will let the kid be murdered, we still protect the kid as best we can. If a young women got up on stage and did something silly, in a dress that was cut too low, and way to short, few of us would tolerate anyone on the radio saying that she looked like she was ready to service the entire theater. It is just not civilized. We tolerate bully's but expect them to pick on celebrities their own size. Not be so cowardly that they need to pick on people who cannot defend themselves.
It seems to me that this is also what happened to prosecutor in the Duke case. He thought he was prosecuting a professional athletic team. He wasn't. He was prosecuting some kids who made a mistake, and hoped to make his name known by attacking them. Like Imus, It was only a matte of class and race in that he was using those factors to further his career. It was true that these kids in their delusions, like so many other student athletes, thought they were pros, and though they could handle being treated like the pros, but that was clearly not true. They were kids, doing what kids do. They should not have been treated like some mutli million dollar athlete who is paid to know better. As a result, the prosecutor's career might be at an end. Like Imus this is how it should be. Because next time it will be the paparazzi sneaking into the girls locker room of the high school, claiming that their pics are protected speech.
One last thing. Your last line illustrates why most rap music and comedies are so much less offensive. In general, the lyrics are telling a story of hurt, or are directed at a specific, equal, and known adversary. They are seldom directed at a random specific person. I know of no rap song that attacks a college athletic team. I know of no rap song that says, hey, you Mary, who I just picked out the phone book, is bitch because you won't sleep with me. About as bad as it gets is the denigration of the person we see in the street, which is bad, but at least names are not named.
Not that the purpose is to justify, just to say that I fully support uncivilized person being removed from the public grandstand. Imus may, if he wishes, stand in Manhattan apartment, with his windows open, and scream down to the street all the insults he wishes. Though i do imagine that his neighbors will sue him for uncivilized behavior.
But all to often at all levels, students go to the encyclopedia as the primary source of research, which is wrong at any level about primary school. And although Wikipedia is reliable, in general, the instant edits means that there is no way to insure that it is reliable at a given instant in time. For instance, if one is researching bears, some prankster might go in and say that bears live on the feces of other animals, and then all the gullible people in the class will copy the fact and believe it. Not a good situation. As bad as the Britannica might be, at least the errors are known and static.
It is much better to simply not allow students to use Wikipedia, and give then access to an encyclopedia that is more reliable. I would fully support Wikipedia to engage an editorial board that revised all changes and created a more static version and made that available in situation where instant edits might present some sort of problem.
I must take issue with the 100% efficiency. Efficiency, as I know it, is a ability to convert stored energy into useful work. I know of no engine, artificial or natural, that can do this with 100%, which is of course prohibited by the known laws of thermodynamics. In particular, I have seen photosynthesis calculation that set the efficiency of photosynthesis as low at 3%. Even in the simplistic case, it appears that 50-70% of the energy in the process of photosynthesis.
And just to add my thanks to those people who are sworn to uphold the law, and not jut trying to look cool, here is the story of the sheriff who wrote himself a ticket, and his collegues that think he is bonkers. cool sheriff
We can look to the past to see what happned in a similar situation. The OMP was introduced 1993 and followed by the messagepad. It was a good machine, but even more so than the original Mac, was rushed to market and had significant issues. Through the 90's Apple tried to make it work, until Steve killed it.
During this time period, Mac System, a mature OS that worked very well. Version 7.0 was going to 7.5, and was king. OTOH, MS Windows 95, the first acceptable MS GUI OS was also coming, and Apple clearly needed to significantly upgrade the OS. Instead, we got System 8 and 9, which were great, but in many was not a competitor to NT. As it was, it took the redirection of resources, and the integration of NeXtT to save Apple.
I see a very similar situation approaching. Mac OS X is going to be, for all intents and purposes, where System 7 was back in the Mid 90's. MS has pulled itself together quite nicely with MS Vista. I find it very interesting that Apple is willing to pull developer off the Leopard project to work on iPhone, especially when history indicates that OS X is going to need a major overhall no later than the next release. History also tells us, with Apple DOS, Pro DOS, System, etc that Apple hangs onto an OS longer than such a nible innovator perhaps should.
I wonder if this is not another indication that Apple, Inc, neé Apple Computer, Inc, is going to move from a computer company, supplying Macs, to a consumer electronics company in which the computer is going away. When Apple makes all their money from iPods and televisions, will it be cost prohibitive for Apple to develop the next generation OS to compete with MS? This begs the question of what will I buy if I want a computer? Or will the computer we now know be an anachronism, like the old time radio floor cabinets, replaced with an appliance?
Bush I: sorry,. we were just following orders.
Clinton: It depends what the meaning of is is, and I didn't inhale, and we eventually found the papers we misplaced
Bush II: Is has been 20 years since I supported terrorist by buying illegal drugs, I believe that Hussein had WMDs, and the emails have been deleted anyway.
With MS Windows, until NT and the radical redesign, Windows was terrible. The best thing that could be said about it was it worked and it was cheap. XP does get many things right, but XP is not really MS Windows. We will see about MS Vista.
And don't even try to talk about IE.
The XBox success is that it is a cheap product that works acceptably, just like most of MS products. Not great, not right, but a reasonable value. Zune needs to be marketed the same way. Unfortunately, such marketing may not lead to long term profit growth.
OTOH, google is desperately trying to show that it offers an original and innovative product, and does in fact owe it profit to stealing and repacking the content of others. The lifting of code sort of indicates that the case is the former and not the later, and may tend to have an impact in cases where Google is claiming it need not make royalty payments.
Instead I see the people doing this as people who like to hack macs and have an open licensee on their 5 pack. In this case I think apple would be happy. They sell a machine that otherwise would not be sold, and cost them nothing in support as they will not support that application.
Apple has done good job positioning their computers. An mac mini, fully decked out, is more expensive than iMac, os the only people who will buy it are the people who need to replace a white box. An iMac is cheap, but essentially underpowered so people who want or need the power will buy a Mac pro. The apple TV is cheap, but clearly not a loss leader.
Two of my favorite record store closed down about 10 or 15 years ago. Long before downloading. The local stuff was cheap. The major stuff was expensive, and sold at a very low profit, because the labels required such a high wholesale price. It could not make it because the majors did not support small shops. The cool place to shop for records closed down recently, but I seldom shopped there because it was too cool for me. It closed for a variety of reasons, one was probably sales. We have one more store that survives by selling paraphernalia and coffee.
The point of the article is that at every stage. the music industry has appeared to choose short term profit over long term growth. Radio, MTV, the internet. How many of us actually bought a album of a band we never heard of. I am sure most of us sold the music first, and then maybe bought it later. So why are the labels fighting against this tried and true advertising method? There is a cost of sale in every market. I recall when they killed the single. They said that singles sales cut into album sales. So what happened? No one heard the music, so no one bought the album.
Looking back to my college days, any record was swapped quite a lot. If you are referring to tower records, there was more than one record bought there that was illegally distributed. I wonder if the labels and the record store let costs get so out of control that they could no longer support themselves on the existing sales. More than likely, it was the same thing that happened with my happy small record store so many years ago. The labels and distributors got so greedy and gave all the attention to the big, inefficient, stores while letting the small, personalized, stores go out business.
Is it any wonder why the only place to find music is at big box stores? And is it any wonder that now those stores are not selling it. Those stores don't care about music, they care about sales per square foot of floor space. If CDs aren't selling, it is because the labels did not support the retail outlets that actually cared about selling the product. The download thing is just a diversion. After all, I might go to a music store if I know the owner, just as I do for hardware or food. Buy why would I choose a big box, or even a little box store, over downloading or Amazon?
The only problem is that I don't see how they could make more than $100, even on a two year contract. which is half the retail cost. I suppose if they are willing to lose money on the Xbox, then they can do the same thing on the Zune.
BTW, when I checked on google, it appeared no one has paid for the sponsored on the keyword zune, just the side ads. It is interesting that for ipod, apple has paid a sponsorship. It is also interesting that MS has done so for Vista. But not Zune.