As opposed to the OSS world, where naming is working overtime.
Tell me -- just from the names -- what the following programs do:
Since when were program names supposed to be nothing more than bland descriptions (cue "in Soviet Russia" joke...)? They're for branding for chrissake! It would be incredibly irritating if every program were named that way ("Do you have 'internet browser'"? "No, I have 'internet navigator'. Or maybe that was 'internet explorer'?")
Okay, so I'm exagerrating for laughs:). However, MS has run into some problems with trying to trademark its more generic product names (e.g. "Windows"), so there is some truth underlying the grandparent post's joke. It is just a joke, though. There are plenty of counterexamples. For instance, "Excel" is not the first word which comes to mind when I think of spreadsheets. Is it a pun on "x-cell"? Who knows?
You needed more catchphrases. Might I suggest "Pushing the Envelope While Thinking Outside the Box: The Paradigm Shifts of Zen and the Art of Tao Maintenance"?
I'm not sure if all of this is meant to be a joke (as one respondant has already suggested) but since you are being modded as Insightful I'm going to reply as though you were serious. This company is providing a service. To think of them as exploiting someone is a real misunderstanding of commerce. Do grocery stores exploit me because I have a biological need to eat? There are numerous reasons why some guy may need to find love and finds this Virtual Girlfriend thing to be a less-risky outlet.
I for one have a problem with that. Selling someone a "love substitute" or "relationship substitute" is not the same as selling them a watermelon or some other emotionally neutral widget. Selling something like that seems more akin to selling an addictive product like cigarettes. It can too easily lead to manipulation of the buyer, like when the cigarette makers start adding more nicotine. Perhaps the price of those virtual flowers and so on will go up as the buyer gets "closer" (as determined by some algorithm built into the software) to their virtual girlfriend. That's where the potential for exploitation lies -- the product may be designed to find the people who are likely to get addicted to this thing and then screw them over (making lots of money for the designers, of course).
I think you're misunderstanding what I meant - I'm not saying that NO software should be free - I'm saying that ALL software can't be free.
The post which started this thread said that the correct price for _most_ software is free. Note the word "most".
The problem here is that everyone keeps changing the subject. You did it, and I did too (sorry about that).
So okay, the entire software industry as it currently exists, which is what you're talking about, wouldn't exist if all software were free. But there could still be software, and even a software industry, if _most_ software were free. Aside from the reasons I mentioned, there's the fact that some companies are hardware companies (IBM and Apple, for example) and would do just fine giving away their software "for free". I don't know how much we paid for the software on the control systems for our Seimens MRI at work, but considering the high cost of the thing and the constant need for maintainence, I bet that Seimens could still make a profit without specifically charging for software.
Hate to be the part of the money-grubbing capitalist here, but money makes the world go 'round. If all software was free, why would anyone bother developing it?
They just feel like it? We are talking about humans here, not drones, right?
Writing software is part of their job? Lots of scientific software gets written like this. So do new research projects funded by big computer companies (e.g. Sun's Looking Glass).
Perhaps they expect to get their money from contract jobs (to customize said software) or support/installation money, or subscriptions (hey, it works for AV vendors...)
Or maybe they're writing the software to advertise themselves. Or as part of a college class.
The moral of this story is that people who say things like "money makes the world go 'round" have had their imaginations crippled by some simplified version of economic theory that they picked up somewhere.:)
That's how computer technology should be - I don't need to read a manual to work my other home entertainment devices and I don't see why computer technology should be any different.
I can think of a few counter-arguments to this:
1. When was the last time someone 0wn3d your TV or VCR? Okay, I know, that's a joke, but there is a point there -- very little harm can come to you or others from a poorly set-up TV or VCR. A poorly set-up wireless router can be used to anonymously (for the crook, not for you!) break into banking computers and the like. A computer can be taken over and used to distribute pr0n, DoS some other computer, store warez, etc. That's why you need to read more instructions -- because of the amount of harm which could be caused if you don't.
I for one wouldn't want to get anywhere near a car which claimed that anyone could "just use it without reading any instructions". The potential for harm if something goes wrong is too high, even if it's unlikely to happen. The same with computer technologies.
2. More complex systems require more complex instructions. Your computer is not just a "home entertainment device", plain and simple. If there were a different button on your computer (a la "Play") for everything you could do with it, every option in every program, then the keyboard would be bigger than your living room. A computer can do much more than just play a few movies, songs or video games, and that's why more instructions are needed to use it. If you want a simple "home entertainment device" to play games, movies, music or surf the web (video consoles, DVDs/VCRs, stereos, and web terminals a la WebTV, respectively), then go get one.
3. Adding a wifi router to an existing computer setup is more akin to adding a VCR to an existing TV setup. Ever noticed how some people can never get the TV-VCR wiring right (my Mom, for one)? It's the same when you add on to your existing computer setup. Even if individual technologies are simple, using them together isn't always so simple. Computers are almost always used with additional peripherals (printers, network devices, and so on). Thus the need for more detailed instructions.
I have to count picoseconds for the kind of stuff I do
Unless you are working with individual gates inside a chip, I doubt picoseconds really matters.
I think you're missing something. If the cabling adds a constant delay to any times this guy's measuring, then he can still measure times in picoseconds (assuming his timer is accurate enough, of course). The fact that network cabling would add nanoseconds to a recorded time is irrelevant. Just as long as it doesn't add a variable delay (I wouldn't recommend doing this timing through any sort of switch or router, for example).
Not that this guy is necessarily using ethernet for what he's doing. Note that he didn't actually say that -- he just said that you had to be close for the kind of stuff he does.
One possibility is that the guy's a physicist working with a particle detector. He's could be talking about detecting the exact timing of the decay of various particles. If these decays occur on the order of picoseconds, and his equipment can accurately keep time in picoseconds, then the fact that the cabling adds, say, 5ns to all of the measured times is no big deal. Just subtract 5ns from everything. That's good enough to get the relative times of all the measured events, e.g. the amount of time between the detection of emissions created by the initial collision (and thus presumably particle creation) and the decay of the various particles.
Form factor, looks, and 'coolness' are all decision factors. Cost is important, but not most important. The continued viability of Nike is an obvious example.
The kinds of people who are into things like "coolness" (e.g. kids) often get their money secondhand (e.g. from parents) who may be more value-oriented. Furthermore, mp3 players are more expensive than shoes and are less of a necessity (almost everyone needs shoes, though rarely a $150 pair). So I still think that money matters when it comes to mp3 jukeboxes. Maybe not that much (they are a luxury item, after all), but some.
As a side note, "coolness" is very much an advertising thing, and even tastes in look and form factor can be influenced by advertising. Like I said, I think advertising is ultimately why people buy iPods.
Eh, you caught me. I wrote this post in the six minutes before I needed to leave this morning. With ample time, I would've found more supporting evidence.
It's just that there have been a lot of stories on the iPod lately, and almost nobody seems to be doing their research on non-iPod players. Yet lots of posts which comment on non-iPod players get modded way up. You got up to +5 based in part on shoddy evidence. What can I say?
[big snip... the bit below adequately summarizes the rest]
And this second best product is physically larger, uses lousier interface software, is not as flexible with mass storage, and (with the release of the 4th gen iPods) has almost no battery or price advantage to fall back on.
Fair enough. Now for my retort.
Some of the points you made are valid, and some aren't. Those navigation issues you mentioned aren't a problem for me, though maybe that's because I'm using the latest firmware. Still, consider this: the "second best" product still has significantly more battery life (20hrs vs. 12), and a battery which should last longer than a year or so. It works with Windows-standard WMA files, and has one or two nice extra features (e.g. a built-in mic for voice recording). And it's still cheaper than the not-yet-released Gen4 iPod ($48 is nothing to sneeze at, and some people are more than happy give up 5Gb to save $100).
I still don't understand exactly why some people think the general populace is more into having a usb mass storage device than saving money (I sure wasn't -- I just wanted an mp3 player!) If nothing else, cost must have some effect on people's choices. I mean really, on SlashDot's _Apple_ site, of all places, people seem to assume that everyone shells out extra money for the "best" product. You guys should know that's not true since 90% of the world uses PCs, right?;) Even if the DJ is "second best", people buy second best to save money all the time. Not understanding that is just snootiness. This is of course why ranking products on an absolute scale (first, second, etc.) is silly.
See, this is the kind of well-researched and more balanced discussion which I'm _not_ seeing much of on Slashdot. Sometimes when a highly politicized topic comes up, you'll see some posts which are complete junk, but which espouse an opinion which is popular with a reasonably large group, which are modded way up. I get the feeling that iPod-related topics are in that category.
The thing is people point to bulkier, clumsier looking products and use the price of that to say the iPod is "overpriced" or something. The problem with that is the compact design comes at a price, and of course, a good package design comes at a price too.
No, the problem is that every single person who praises the iPod assumes that people will pay extra for the particular features which the iPod has.
For one thing, I was under the impression that when it comes to most products, cheapness rules, especially when even the cheaper products are fairly good (e.g. your choices are not just "high end" or "crap"). For example, I still think the Dell DJ has a great UI, looks good, and costs about $75 less than the comparable iPod (until recently, that is). Yes the iPod is smaller and has more features, but somebody needs to explain exactly why most people are willing to pay the extra $75 or so to get them. What need do they have which is not met by the DJ? Do so many people really not care about a 30% (or so) price difference? Do that many people really use ITMS?
For another thing, this doesn't explain why people aren't buying players with other features which the iPod doesn't have. Yes the iPod is neat, but why not buy the iRiver for (a bit) less? The iRiver may be a bit uglier (a matter of opinion), but it comes with a nice large inline LCD for the price. Why aren't people attracted to that particular feature? Who cares what the player itself looks like, it goes in your pocket (and the LCD looks cool)! The explanation most iPod owners seem to give for the popularity of the iPod is that it has just exactly the features which everyone wants, e.g. "people don't want inline LCDs, they want breakout!" or "people don't like blue, they like white!" or "People don't care about battery life, they want a click wheel!" I find these explanations unlikely. I do not find it unlikely that the iPod has the exact features which that particular iPod owner wanted (that's why they own one). I wouldn't be surprised if iPod owners were assuming that their personal preferences match those of the general public and using that to justify the iPod's popularity.
Of course, people do buy lots of iPods, so I could be completely wrong. Maybe the iPod is just right for most people. However, my goal has been to make a case for why it's not the _features of the iPod itself_ which are the reason why people are buying them. Comparison shopping does not turn up a clear winner in "bang for your buck". You can get a different set of features, often for less money, or a smaller set of features for much cheaper. So why does everyone pick the iPod? Is everyone really of one mind on this (cue "1984" commercial?) I say it's due to lack of comparison shopping: the iPod is all that most people know about, so that's what they buy.
So yes, success in marketing is the key, at least in my opinion.
For those of you who shelled out the big cash for this thing, what makes it so special? Why sets the iPod apart aside from slick marketing?
I have a theory that most people have only used one type of mp3 player (e.g. just an iPod). They buy whatever looks best at the time, and if it breaks, they buy another.
If I'm right, most of the commentary on the relative merits of various mp3 players is really worthless. The commentary tends to be the same every time: "whatever I bought is cool, and other stuff sucks." Probably more cognitive dissonance going on there than anything else:). I've complained before about how people talk about mp3 jukeboxes which they don't own and make factual mistakes about their capabilities. While everyone cites "reviews" to back up their opinion, I've seen lots of reviews which go every which way. There are zillions of them out there, and it's probably not too hard to find one which supports your pre-existing point of view:). Not to mention that many reviewers, even the ones at big-name publications, aren't necessarily all that accurate, e.g. they may have been given a half-hour to play with the device, or may be biased towards whatever device they used first (implicitly comparing everything else to it and inevietably finding other players wanting).
I think a better question would be this: what type of person would buy a certain type of mp3 jukebox? Who, for example, would buy a Rio Karma? They're ugly, that's for sure. But they're also small, relatively cheap, packed with features, and supposedly have a great UI. Perhaps a good player for someone who wants a relateively cheap mp3 jukebox and who doesn't care about looks, but isn't willing to sacrifice features?
The UI on the player is great. Read some of the review about what it takes just to play a signle song on, for example, the DJ. Assorted menu navigation plus three or four clicks on the choose button, which is located, IIRC, obscurely on the side. Now, it can take a lot of menu navigaion to play a PARTICULAR song on the ipod, but one can start the music playing by basically mashing the center button until they hear it.
This is completely wrong. I mean, seriously, it's factually wrong!
To play whatever's currently queued up on the DJ, you hit the "Play" button, which is at the bottom center of the front of the player (between the "fast forward" and "rewind" buttons). Simple, eh?
Yet again, these highly moderated posts which favorably compare the iPod to other mp3 players simply aren't well informed. I mean, the guy got the location of the "Play" button wrong! WTF? Is finding a picture of the DJ on the web and looking at it really that hard?
So, yes, once again it comes down to the interface. You can easily use it with one hand while driving, walking, whatever, and it's just fairly intuitive.
I hate comments like this. While the iPod's interface may well be good, a statement like the above implies that every other mp3 player is worse without actually presenting any evidence. Meanwhile, I still have this sneaking suspicion that most people have used at most one mp3 player for any length of time (e.g. they bought an iPod and stuck with it), so they don't really know other players except via reviews and such. In other words, few people are qualified to make such claims, yet the do get made an awful lot.
The reason I bring this up is that I do own another mp3 player (the Dell DJ) and I think the same thing can be said for it. The software looks like a clone of what's on the iPod. As for the buttons and scroll wheel, I can easily use them with one hand. In fact, I can hit every button with my thumb if I hold it in my left hand. Furthermore, a scroll wheel has to be more intuitive than a circular touchpad. I've actually used scroll wheels before (on a scroll wheel mouse) but circular touchpads are a new thing. Not to mention that rolling a scroll wheel up moves you up a menu and down moves you down. Compared to clockwise and counterclockwise, that _must_ be more intuitive! Plus none of the buttons serve double-duty -- they all do exactly one thing. So how is this interface worse than the iPod exactly?
Of course, I've never used an iPod, so I don't know for sure that there isn't some magic there.:) Still, I just have the sneaking suspicion that some of these comments are just summaries of the reviews which are out there. Who knows how much time those reviewers spent with the device, or what other factors might come into play (e.g. a bias towards whatever player they got used to first, because they're more familiar with it).
As far as I'm concerned, as a Linux user, I will dump my nVidia card and buy you a cartload of S3 cards the day you contribute a full-featured GPL driver to the Linux kernel, and GL stuff for X released under the GPL as well.
Normally I'd disregard this as the usual slashbot knee-jerk
Wanting your hardware to work with your software properly (not to mention out of the box!) is your idea of a "slashbot knee-jerk"?
Perhaps we're just got a cultural misunderstanding here. I'm guessing you've never had any problems with binary video drivers on Linux (for one reason or another). Anyway, when they work, they're awesome, but when they don't, they're a disaster. Anyone else have that nVidia driver problem which boiled down to the permissions on/usr/lib/tls being wrong? Unbelievably hard-to-diagnose problems can happen with those binary drivers.
Linux is designed to be open-source. Video drivers which are open source (and reasonably mature) generally "just work", presumably because they're designed in parallel with the kernel (e.g. 4K stack support is added early on and gets tested properly). That's what most people want -- they want their computer to just work. In the case of drivers on Linux, open sourcing them is the way to achieve that.
With this in mind, realize that calls to open source binary drivers do not necessarily represent open source evangelism or any such thing. They may just represent Linux users who want a better user experience. What's wrong with wanting that?
Whether or not open source drivers make sense from S3's point of view is an interesting issue, but probably not what the grandparent post had in mind.
This is probably not the safest bicycling accessory in existence. Trust me, when you're riding anywhere near traffic, being able to hear cars coming up from behind you is a good thing. Perhaps that's why they're not for sale just yet?
When I do programming, email, wordprocessing etc, my workfiles usually fits within what can be shipped over a 128 kbit line in resonable time.
Yeah, but they're talking about making any arbitrary file on your hard drive available, as though you were right in front of your computer. Technically that means that all of your email and documents (not to mention your pictures and mp3s) should be available all the time.
Besides, if you're mostly going to work with small files, why not just put them on a USB memory stick and carry them around with you?
Running VNC or X remotely? Why is this so revolutionary?
Do real work in VNC/X/Remote Desktop over a 128 kbs DSL and you know the answer to that.
Hmmm... let's think about this.
If your remote terminal has a 128kbps DSL connection, either VNC or this "virtual distributed hard drive" proposal will work badly.
If your home computer has a 128kbps connection and you're trying to access that remotely (with VNC or whatnot), that would suck. Of course, putting your data into one of these virtual distributed setups would also take forever, unless you have very little data and no unusual customizations to your system. Also, if you're at home and your hard drive is distributed all over the Internet and is accessible only via your 128kbps DSL link, that would also suck.
Overall, I think there's no way of making all your data available over the Internet which works well with a slow link. Much data and low bandwidth works badly by definition, irregardless of the specific access method used.:)
And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.
No, you don't. As long as a parent isn't harming their child, they have the innate right to raise him or her as they see fit.
The community does have the right to step in if the parent is hurting the child, like you said. They also have the right to step in if the child is hurting the community. E.g. if you teach your kids that throwing firecrackers at the neighbor's dog is okay, or that beating up other kids at school is okay, the community is bound to step in at some point.
Within those two boundaries there's a _lot_ of grey area. Yes, parents have a lot of rights, but so does everyone else.
I don't know many people who would want to trade in their iPod for a largely inferior product
Anyone who's been bitten by the battery bug.:)
Seriously, I own a Dell DJ. The iPod is smaller and has more features. Some of the extra features don't matter to me (AAC support, breakout game) and some do (works as a standard USB mass storage device). The UI of the two players is pretty similar, and touchpad vs. scroll wheel is a matter of taste (I prefer the scroll wheel myself).
But then there's the battery life. The DJ really does have twice the battery life, and the battery should last longer as well. That might just be enough to convert some people. My boss' iPod is down to about a 3-hour battery life after a year, and I know he's thinking of trading in for something else.
On a semi-related note, if you want to find out about non-iPod players, go to the manufacturer's web board. You'll learn a lot. In the case of the DJ, which as an owner of one I know something about, there are some plusses and minuses which are not in the early reviews. For example, you can now transfer both music and data off the DJ to your computer, and yes there is now an inline remote with an LCD. On the other hand, there have been some hard-drive problems (a "click-of-death"?) with the DJ which were bad enough that Dell went and got a new supplier for those drives. Good stuff to know if you're planning to buy, right? Remember, almost every review out there is out of date. Most players have more bugfixes or enhancements than those old reviews will mention.
No, thanks. I prefer my mail without random 24-48 hour delays and invisibly dropped messages. That's not how mail is "supposed to work."
You mean that's not how _e-mail_ is supposed to work. I'm pretty sure that's exactly how regular old _mail_ is supposed to work, and the postal service is doing a great job of implementing that system, thank you.
Sorry about the duped links but more fixes, less FUD please. Yes, evil empire blah blah blah, but how about we tell people how to fix the problem instead?
There are two problems here, the fact that people aren't patching IIS and the fact that IE has some unpatched exploits.
Fixing the former is what you're recommending, and yes that will "solve" the immediate problem. But it doesn't solve the real problem, namely that people can still get spyware injected onto their computer by viewing certain webpages with IE. Although the current situation involves cracked servers, why wouldn't (for example) companies start taking advantage of the IE bug to force visitors to view their ads, e.g. to install custom adware on people's systems? That's still a problem!
In other words, there's a more general issue here than just the server side problem. Both yourself and Lxy decided to focus on the server side aspect of the immediate problem. That's fine, but it isn't FUD to bring up the client side problem! In fact, quite to the contrary, the client side problem is almost certainly the worse one. There is no patch available and more PCs are affected. That's why pointing people to Mozilla, Opera, etc. (or telling them to disable active scripting in their Internet Zone) aren't FUD. All those posters are in fact helping people to solve the bigger problem: the client side problem.
I just have this feeling of eerie double standard when it comes to open source. Microsoft sends a cease and desist letter (which is corporate for 'would you kindly remove 'x'') and the mighty winds of geek fury are raised. An open source developer does functionally the same thing, and it is laid in the 'it was justified' category.
You (correctly) put the words "An open source developer" in that last sentence, not "An open source developer's lawyers". That's the difference. It's the difference between a request and a threat.
It's also why the word "functionally" is so deceptive. You can die of old age or by being beheaded, so they're "functionally" the same. Anyone other than me think that there's a difference between them anyway?:)
...a standard that doesn't have a lot of real-world support? I mean, if you go onto one of the p2p systems, you find that everything is still pretty much mp3. So there is some incentive there for Apple to provide mp3 support. Why would they want to promote an alternative standard that they aren't selling, though?
First, I really doubt that Apple cares what's going on in "one of the p2p systems", at least officially.:)
Second, at least two iPod competitors support ogg vorbis: the Rio Karma and the iRiver iHP (and the Samsung YH-920 is supposed to as well, but it's for sale yet). While the iPod is certainly dominant in the marketplace, that's no reason not to add more features. More to the point, saying "we're number one, let's stop innovating" is in the category of "famous last words", and I suspect that Apple is smart enough to know this. They might want to cover their bases in case the ogg vorbis format gains popularity. Or they might want to add support in case too many other players start supporting ogg vorbis and it begins to look like the iPod lacks something. It's better to be ahead of the curve in every way, you know?
Are these strong motivations for adding ogg vorbis support? Not really. On the other hand, consider the costs of adding ogg vorbis support. It's not patent-encumbered or controlled by a competitor (e.g. WMA), so from that angle there's not much to it. It's a matter of weighing a some R&D costs against making the list of features longer and that much more impressive. Also note that some related problems have already been solved, like the lack of a floating point processer (these folks have info). While Apple wouldn't use GPLed code directly (I assume), they can take advantage of the ideas and algorithms.
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to the OSS world, where naming is working overtime.
:). However, MS has run into some problems with trying to trademark its more generic product names (e.g. "Windows"), so there is some truth underlying the grandparent post's joke. It is just a joke, though. There are plenty of counterexamples. For instance, "Excel" is not the first word which comes to mind when I think of spreadsheets. Is it a pun on "x-cell"? Who knows?
Tell me -- just from the names -- what the following programs do:
Since when were program names supposed to be nothing more than bland descriptions (cue "in Soviet Russia" joke...)? They're for branding for chrissake! It would be incredibly irritating if every program were named that way ("Do you have 'internet browser'"? "No, I have 'internet navigator'. Or maybe that was 'internet explorer'?")
Okay, so I'm exagerrating for laughs
You needed more catchphrases. Might I suggest "Pushing the Envelope While Thinking Outside the Box: The Paradigm Shifts of Zen and the Art of Tao Maintenance"?
Dangit, that's the name of my blog!
I'm not sure if all of this is meant to be a joke (as one respondant has already suggested) but since you are being modded as Insightful I'm going to reply as though you were serious. This company is providing a service. To think of them as exploiting someone is a real misunderstanding of commerce. Do grocery stores exploit me because I have a biological need to eat? There are numerous reasons why some guy may need to find love and finds this Virtual Girlfriend thing to be a less-risky outlet.
I for one have a problem with that. Selling someone a "love substitute" or "relationship substitute" is not the same as selling them a watermelon or some other emotionally neutral widget. Selling something like that seems more akin to selling an addictive product like cigarettes. It can too easily lead to manipulation of the buyer, like when the cigarette makers start adding more nicotine. Perhaps the price of those virtual flowers and so on will go up as the buyer gets "closer" (as determined by some algorithm built into the software) to their virtual girlfriend. That's where the potential for exploitation lies -- the product may be designed to find the people who are likely to get addicted to this thing and then screw them over (making lots of money for the designers, of course).
I think you're misunderstanding what I meant - I'm not saying that NO software should be free - I'm saying that ALL software can't be free.
The post which started this thread said that the correct price for _most_ software is free. Note the word "most".
The problem here is that everyone keeps changing the subject. You did it, and I did too (sorry about that).
So okay, the entire software industry as it currently exists, which is what you're talking about, wouldn't exist if all software were free. But there could still be software, and even a software industry, if _most_ software were free. Aside from the reasons I mentioned, there's the fact that some companies are hardware companies (IBM and Apple, for example) and would do just fine giving away their software "for free". I don't know how much we paid for the software on the control systems for our Seimens MRI at work, but considering the high cost of the thing and the constant need for maintainence, I bet that Seimens could still make a profit without specifically charging for software.
Hate to be the part of the money-grubbing capitalist here, but money makes the world go 'round. If all software was free, why would anyone bother developing it?
:)
They just feel like it? We are talking about humans here, not drones, right?
Writing software is part of their job? Lots of scientific software gets written like this. So do new research projects funded by big computer companies (e.g. Sun's Looking Glass).
Perhaps they expect to get their money from contract jobs (to customize said software) or support/installation money, or subscriptions (hey, it works for AV vendors...)
Or maybe they're writing the software to advertise themselves. Or as part of a college class.
The moral of this story is that people who say things like "money makes the world go 'round" have had their imaginations crippled by some simplified version of economic theory that they picked up somewhere.
That's how computer technology should be - I don't need to read a manual to work my other home entertainment devices and I don't see why computer technology should be any different.
I can think of a few counter-arguments to this:
1. When was the last time someone 0wn3d your TV or VCR? Okay, I know, that's a joke, but there is a point there -- very little harm can come to you or others from a poorly set-up TV or VCR. A poorly set-up wireless router can be used to anonymously (for the crook, not for you!) break into banking computers and the like. A computer can be taken over and used to distribute pr0n, DoS some other computer, store warez, etc. That's why you need to read more instructions -- because of the amount of harm which could be caused if you don't.
I for one wouldn't want to get anywhere near a car which claimed that anyone could "just use it without reading any instructions". The potential for harm if something goes wrong is too high, even if it's unlikely to happen. The same with computer technologies.
2. More complex systems require more complex instructions. Your computer is not just a "home entertainment device", plain and simple. If there were a different button on your computer (a la "Play") for everything you could do with it, every option in every program, then the keyboard would be bigger than your living room. A computer can do much more than just play a few movies, songs or video games, and that's why more instructions are needed to use it. If you want a simple "home entertainment device" to play games, movies, music or surf the web (video consoles, DVDs/VCRs, stereos, and web terminals a la WebTV, respectively), then go get one.
3. Adding a wifi router to an existing computer setup is more akin to adding a VCR to an existing TV setup. Ever noticed how some people can never get the TV-VCR wiring right (my Mom, for one)? It's the same when you add on to your existing computer setup. Even if individual technologies are simple, using them together isn't always so simple. Computers are almost always used with additional peripherals (printers, network devices, and so on). Thus the need for more detailed instructions.
I have to count picoseconds for the kind of stuff I do
Unless you are working with individual gates inside a chip, I doubt picoseconds really matters.
I think you're missing something. If the cabling adds a constant delay to any times this guy's measuring, then he can still measure times in picoseconds (assuming his timer is accurate enough, of course). The fact that network cabling would add nanoseconds to a recorded time is irrelevant. Just as long as it doesn't add a variable delay (I wouldn't recommend doing this timing through any sort of switch or router, for example).
Not that this guy is necessarily using ethernet for what he's doing. Note that he didn't actually say that -- he just said that you had to be close for the kind of stuff he does.
One possibility is that the guy's a physicist working with a particle detector. He's could be talking about detecting the exact timing of the decay of various particles. If these decays occur on the order of picoseconds, and his equipment can accurately keep time in picoseconds, then the fact that the cabling adds, say, 5ns to all of the measured times is no big deal. Just subtract 5ns from everything. That's good enough to get the relative times of all the measured events, e.g. the amount of time between the detection of emissions created by the initial collision (and thus presumably particle creation) and the decay of the various particles.
You're completely wrong.
Form factor, looks, and 'coolness' are all decision factors. Cost is important, but not most important. The continued viability of Nike is an obvious example.
The kinds of people who are into things like "coolness" (e.g. kids) often get their money secondhand (e.g. from parents) who may be more value-oriented. Furthermore, mp3 players are more expensive than shoes and are less of a necessity (almost everyone needs shoes, though rarely a $150 pair). So I still think that money matters when it comes to mp3 jukeboxes. Maybe not that much (they are a luxury item, after all), but some.
As a side note, "coolness" is very much an advertising thing, and even tastes in look and form factor can be influenced by advertising. Like I said, I think advertising is ultimately why people buy iPods.
Eh, you caught me. I wrote this post in the six minutes before I needed to leave this morning. With ample time, I would've found more supporting evidence.
;) Even if the DJ is "second best", people buy second best to save money all the time. Not understanding that is just snootiness. This is of course why ranking products on an absolute scale (first, second, etc.) is silly.
It's just that there have been a lot of stories on the iPod lately, and almost nobody seems to be doing their research on non-iPod players. Yet lots of posts which comment on non-iPod players get modded way up. You got up to +5 based in part on shoddy evidence. What can I say?
[big snip... the bit below adequately summarizes the rest]
And this second best product is physically larger, uses lousier interface software, is not as flexible with mass storage, and (with the release of the 4th gen iPods) has almost no battery or price advantage to fall back on.
Fair enough. Now for my retort.
Some of the points you made are valid, and some aren't. Those navigation issues you mentioned aren't a problem for me, though maybe that's because I'm using the latest firmware. Still, consider this: the "second best" product still has significantly more battery life (20hrs vs. 12), and a battery which should last longer than a year or so. It works with Windows-standard WMA files, and has one or two nice extra features (e.g. a built-in mic for voice recording). And it's still cheaper than the not-yet-released Gen4 iPod ($48 is nothing to sneeze at, and some people are more than happy give up 5Gb to save $100).
I still don't understand exactly why some people think the general populace is more into having a usb mass storage device than saving money (I sure wasn't -- I just wanted an mp3 player!) If nothing else, cost must have some effect on people's choices. I mean really, on SlashDot's _Apple_ site, of all places, people seem to assume that everyone shells out extra money for the "best" product. You guys should know that's not true since 90% of the world uses PCs, right?
See, this is the kind of well-researched and more balanced discussion which I'm _not_ seeing much of on Slashdot. Sometimes when a highly politicized topic comes up, you'll see some posts which are complete junk, but which espouse an opinion which is popular with a reasonably large group, which are modded way up. I get the feeling that iPod-related topics are in that category.
The thing is people point to bulkier, clumsier looking products and use the price of that to say the iPod is "overpriced" or something. The problem with that is the compact design comes at a price, and of course, a good package design comes at a price too.
No, the problem is that every single person who praises the iPod assumes that people will pay extra for the particular features which the iPod has.
For one thing, I was under the impression that when it comes to most products, cheapness rules, especially when even the cheaper products are fairly good (e.g. your choices are not just "high end" or "crap"). For example, I still think the Dell DJ has a great UI, looks good, and costs about $75 less than the comparable iPod (until recently, that is). Yes the iPod is smaller and has more features, but somebody needs to explain exactly why most people are willing to pay the extra $75 or so to get them. What need do they have which is not met by the DJ? Do so many people really not care about a 30% (or so) price difference? Do that many people really use ITMS?
For another thing, this doesn't explain why people aren't buying players with other features which the iPod doesn't have. Yes the iPod is neat, but why not buy the iRiver for (a bit) less? The iRiver may be a bit uglier (a matter of opinion), but it comes with a nice large inline LCD for the price. Why aren't people attracted to that particular feature? Who cares what the player itself looks like, it goes in your pocket (and the LCD looks cool)! The explanation most iPod owners seem to give for the popularity of the iPod is that it has just exactly the features which everyone wants, e.g. "people don't want inline LCDs, they want breakout!" or "people don't like blue, they like white!" or "People don't care about battery life, they want a click wheel!" I find these explanations unlikely. I do not find it unlikely that the iPod has the exact features which that particular iPod owner wanted (that's why they own one). I wouldn't be surprised if iPod owners were assuming that their personal preferences match those of the general public and using that to justify the iPod's popularity.
Of course, people do buy lots of iPods, so I could be completely wrong. Maybe the iPod is just right for most people. However, my goal has been to make a case for why it's not the _features of the iPod itself_ which are the reason why people are buying them. Comparison shopping does not turn up a clear winner in "bang for your buck". You can get a different set of features, often for less money, or a smaller set of features for much cheaper. So why does everyone pick the iPod? Is everyone really of one mind on this (cue "1984" commercial?) I say it's due to lack of comparison shopping: the iPod is all that most people know about, so that's what they buy.
So yes, success in marketing is the key, at least in my opinion.
For those of you who shelled out the big cash for this thing, what makes it so special? Why sets the iPod apart aside from slick marketing?
:). I've complained before about how people talk about mp3 jukeboxes which they don't own and make factual mistakes about their capabilities. While everyone cites "reviews" to back up their opinion, I've seen lots of reviews which go every which way. There are zillions of them out there, and it's probably not too hard to find one which supports your pre-existing point of view :). Not to mention that many reviewers, even the ones at big-name publications, aren't necessarily all that accurate, e.g. they may have been given a half-hour to play with the device, or may be biased towards whatever device they used first (implicitly comparing everything else to it and inevietably finding other players wanting).
I have a theory that most people have only used one type of mp3 player (e.g. just an iPod). They buy whatever looks best at the time, and if it breaks, they buy another.
If I'm right, most of the commentary on the relative merits of various mp3 players is really worthless. The commentary tends to be the same every time: "whatever I bought is cool, and other stuff sucks." Probably more cognitive dissonance going on there than anything else
I think a better question would be this: what type of person would buy a certain type of mp3 jukebox? Who, for example, would buy a Rio Karma? They're ugly, that's for sure. But they're also small, relatively cheap, packed with features, and supposedly have a great UI. Perhaps a good player for someone who wants a relateively cheap mp3 jukebox and who doesn't care about looks, but isn't willing to sacrifice features?
The UI on the player is great. Read some of the review about what it takes just to play a signle song on, for example, the DJ. Assorted menu navigation plus three or four clicks on the choose button, which is located, IIRC, obscurely on the side. Now, it can take a lot of menu navigaion to play a PARTICULAR song on the ipod, but one can start the music playing by basically mashing the center button until they hear it.
This is completely wrong. I mean, seriously, it's factually wrong!
To play whatever's currently queued up on the DJ, you hit the "Play" button, which is at the bottom center of the front of the player (between the "fast forward" and "rewind" buttons). Simple, eh?
Yet again, these highly moderated posts which favorably compare the iPod to other mp3 players simply aren't well informed. I mean, the guy got the location of the "Play" button wrong! WTF? Is finding a picture of the DJ on the web and looking at it really that hard?
So, yes, once again it comes down to the interface. You can easily use it with one hand while driving, walking, whatever, and it's just fairly intuitive.
:) Still, I just have the sneaking suspicion that some of these comments are just summaries of the reviews which are out there. Who knows how much time those reviewers spent with the device, or what other factors might come into play (e.g. a bias towards whatever player they got used to first, because they're more familiar with it).
I hate comments like this. While the iPod's interface may well be good, a statement like the above implies that every other mp3 player is worse without actually presenting any evidence. Meanwhile, I still have this sneaking suspicion that most people have used at most one mp3 player for any length of time (e.g. they bought an iPod and stuck with it), so they don't really know other players except via reviews and such. In other words, few people are qualified to make such claims, yet the do get made an awful lot.
The reason I bring this up is that I do own another mp3 player (the Dell DJ) and I think the same thing can be said for it. The software looks like a clone of what's on the iPod. As for the buttons and scroll wheel, I can easily use them with one hand. In fact, I can hit every button with my thumb if I hold it in my left hand. Furthermore, a scroll wheel has to be more intuitive than a circular touchpad. I've actually used scroll wheels before (on a scroll wheel mouse) but circular touchpads are a new thing. Not to mention that rolling a scroll wheel up moves you up a menu and down moves you down. Compared to clockwise and counterclockwise, that _must_ be more intuitive! Plus none of the buttons serve double-duty -- they all do exactly one thing. So how is this interface worse than the iPod exactly?
Of course, I've never used an iPod, so I don't know for sure that there isn't some magic there.
Funny thing about the Tour de France though...automobile traffic is SO not an issue.
Yes, and thus riders on the Tour de France have those sunglasses. For the rest of us, traffic is an issue, and thus we don't have those sunglasses.
Sorry to basically repeat exactly what I said in my first post, but apparently some of the moderators didn't read it the first time.
As far as I'm concerned, as a Linux user, I will dump my nVidia card and buy you a cartload of S3 cards the day you contribute a full-featured GPL driver to the Linux kernel, and GL stuff for X released under the GPL as well.
/usr/lib/tls being wrong? Unbelievably hard-to-diagnose problems can happen with those binary drivers.
Normally I'd disregard this as the usual slashbot knee-jerk
Wanting your hardware to work with your software properly (not to mention out of the box!) is your idea of a "slashbot knee-jerk"?
Perhaps we're just got a cultural misunderstanding here. I'm guessing you've never had any problems with binary video drivers on Linux (for one reason or another). Anyway, when they work, they're awesome, but when they don't, they're a disaster. Anyone else have that nVidia driver problem which boiled down to the permissions on
Linux is designed to be open-source. Video drivers which are open source (and reasonably mature) generally "just work", presumably because they're designed in parallel with the kernel (e.g. 4K stack support is added early on and gets tested properly). That's what most people want -- they want their computer to just work. In the case of drivers on Linux, open sourcing them is the way to achieve that.
With this in mind, realize that calls to open source binary drivers do not necessarily represent open source evangelism or any such thing. They may just represent Linux users who want a better user experience. What's wrong with wanting that?
Whether or not open source drivers make sense from S3's point of view is an interesting issue, but probably not what the grandparent post had in mind.
This is probably not the safest bicycling accessory in existence. Trust me, when you're riding anywhere near traffic, being able to hear cars coming up from behind you is a good thing. Perhaps that's why they're not for sale just yet?
When I do programming, email, wordprocessing etc, my workfiles usually fits within what can be shipped over a 128 kbit line in resonable time.
Yeah, but they're talking about making any arbitrary file on your hard drive available, as though you were right in front of your computer. Technically that means that all of your email and documents (not to mention your pictures and mp3s) should be available all the time.
Besides, if you're mostly going to work with small files, why not just put them on a USB memory stick and carry them around with you?
Running VNC or X remotely? Why is this so revolutionary?
:)
Do real work in VNC/X/Remote Desktop over a 128 kbs DSL and you know the answer to that.
Hmmm... let's think about this.
If your remote terminal has a 128kbps DSL connection, either VNC or this "virtual distributed hard drive" proposal will work badly.
If your home computer has a 128kbps connection and you're trying to access that remotely (with VNC or whatnot), that would suck. Of course, putting your data into one of these virtual distributed setups would also take forever, unless you have very little data and no unusual customizations to your system. Also, if you're at home and your hard drive is distributed all over the Internet and is accessible only via your 128kbps DSL link, that would also suck.
Overall, I think there's no way of making all your data available over the Internet which works well with a slow link. Much data and low bandwidth works badly by definition, irregardless of the specific access method used.
And as a society, we do have the right to tell you how to raise your children.
No, you don't. As long as a parent isn't harming their child, they have the innate right to raise him or her as they see fit.
The community does have the right to step in if the parent is hurting the child, like you said. They also have the right to step in if the child is hurting the community. E.g. if you teach your kids that throwing firecrackers at the neighbor's dog is okay, or that beating up other kids at school is okay, the community is bound to step in at some point.
Within those two boundaries there's a _lot_ of grey area. Yes, parents have a lot of rights, but so does everyone else.
I don't know many people who would want to trade in their iPod for a largely inferior product
:)
Anyone who's been bitten by the battery bug.
Seriously, I own a Dell DJ. The iPod is smaller and has more features. Some of the extra features don't matter to me (AAC support, breakout game) and some do (works as a standard USB mass storage device). The UI of the two players is pretty similar, and touchpad vs. scroll wheel is a matter of taste (I prefer the scroll wheel myself).
But then there's the battery life. The DJ really does have twice the battery life, and the battery should last longer as well. That might just be enough to convert some people. My boss' iPod is down to about a 3-hour battery life after a year, and I know he's thinking of trading in for something else.
On a semi-related note, if you want to find out about non-iPod players, go to the manufacturer's web board. You'll learn a lot. In the case of the DJ, which as an owner of one I know something about, there are some plusses and minuses which are not in the early reviews. For example, you can now transfer both music and data off the DJ to your computer, and yes there is now an inline remote with an LCD. On the other hand, there have been some hard-drive problems (a "click-of-death"?) with the DJ which were bad enough that Dell went and got a new supplier for those drives. Good stuff to know if you're planning to buy, right? Remember, almost every review out there is out of date. Most players have more bugfixes or enhancements than those old reviews will mention.
No, thanks. I prefer my mail without random 24-48 hour delays and invisibly dropped messages. That's not how mail is "supposed to work."
You mean that's not how _e-mail_ is supposed to work. I'm pretty sure that's exactly how regular old _mail_ is supposed to work, and the postal service is doing a great job of implementing that system, thank you.
Sorry about the duped links but more fixes, less FUD please. Yes, evil empire blah blah blah, but how about we tell people how to fix the problem instead?
There are two problems here, the fact that people aren't patching IIS and the fact that IE has some unpatched exploits.
Fixing the former is what you're recommending, and yes that will "solve" the immediate problem. But it doesn't solve the real problem, namely that people can still get spyware injected onto their computer by viewing certain webpages with IE. Although the current situation involves cracked servers, why wouldn't (for example) companies start taking advantage of the IE bug to force visitors to view their ads, e.g. to install custom adware on people's systems? That's still a problem!
In other words, there's a more general issue here than just the server side problem. Both yourself and Lxy decided to focus on the server side aspect of the immediate problem. That's fine, but it isn't FUD to bring up the client side problem! In fact, quite to the contrary, the client side problem is almost certainly the worse one. There is no patch available and more PCs are affected. That's why pointing people to Mozilla, Opera, etc. (or telling them to disable active scripting in their Internet Zone) aren't FUD. All those posters are in fact helping people to solve the bigger problem: the client side problem.
I just have this feeling of eerie double standard when it comes to open source. Microsoft sends a cease and desist letter (which is corporate for 'would you kindly remove 'x'') and the mighty winds of geek fury are raised. An open source developer does functionally the same thing, and it is laid in the 'it was justified' category.
:)
You (correctly) put the words "An open source developer" in that last sentence, not "An open source developer's lawyers". That's the difference. It's the difference between a request and a threat.
It's also why the word "functionally" is so deceptive. You can die of old age or by being beheaded, so they're "functionally" the same. Anyone other than me think that there's a difference between them anyway?
...a standard that doesn't have a lot of real-world support? I mean, if you go onto one of the p2p systems, you find that everything is still pretty much mp3. So there is some incentive there for Apple to provide mp3 support. Why would they want to promote an alternative standard that they aren't selling, though?
:)
First, I really doubt that Apple cares what's going on in "one of the p2p systems", at least officially.
Second, at least two iPod competitors support ogg vorbis: the Rio Karma and the iRiver iHP (and the Samsung YH-920 is supposed to as well, but it's for sale yet). While the iPod is certainly dominant in the marketplace, that's no reason not to add more features. More to the point, saying "we're number one, let's stop innovating" is in the category of "famous last words", and I suspect that Apple is smart enough to know this. They might want to cover their bases in case the ogg vorbis format gains popularity. Or they might want to add support in case too many other players start supporting ogg vorbis and it begins to look like the iPod lacks something. It's better to be ahead of the curve in every way, you know?
Are these strong motivations for adding ogg vorbis support? Not really. On the other hand, consider the costs of adding ogg vorbis support. It's not patent-encumbered or controlled by a competitor (e.g. WMA), so from that angle there's not much to it. It's a matter of weighing a some R&D costs against making the list of features longer and that much more impressive. Also note that some related problems have already been solved, like the lack of a floating point processer (these folks have info). While Apple wouldn't use GPLed code directly (I assume), they can take advantage of the ideas and algorithms.
Is your web server behind the Linksys NAT? That would work around this "vulnerability."
No, it's not. There's nothing behind the router -- it's basically just used as an access point.