...playing a piano near the beginning of the movie "Short Circuit"?
Cool product, but of course it won't be of much use to the disabled until they figure out how to directly replace the missing hand/arm with this one. The article says "it will have a hand and arm on a moving base, with remote control and camera systems, so the user can guide the robot through simple tasks" -- but speaking only for my (fully limbed) self, that's not what I'd want. I'd want something that can be used like my old arm, not floating around on rollers like some cybernetic Thing.
Remember how silly disposable cameras once seemed? "When they first came out, most people thought, 'Ah, why would I want a disposable camera? That changed rather quickly" when consumers discovered new uses for them, said Michaels.
Yes, but I could always buy disposable cameras for around $10 (US), and today can buy cheap non-flash ones for around $6. That's easy to justify. Sixty minutes of air time for $40 isn't quite as easy to throw away. That $10 target is a big psychological barrier for consumers when the word "disposable" is involved.
AT&T can get me $0.05 per minute for state-to-state long distance, twice that for in-state long distance. My non-disposable cell phone gets me 2000 minutes per month for around $100, or $0.20 per minute. If I'm buying a disposable phone, I'd like to pay no more than $0.30-$0.40 per minute, or about $10 for half an hour. For that kind of money, I'd happily send one with my daughter to summer camp, or even take it on vacation myself.
Bottom line: $40 is too much. $20 is managable. $10 is ideal, and if they could hit that dollar amount customers would beat a path to their door.
Shouldn't the company care about its customers' vision?
Some columnist recently pointed out that Apple achieved in one stroke everything MS is trying to achieve with.NET, by announcing iCal and iSync last week at MacWorld. Those two programs allow users of Mac OS X Jaguar to connect their PDAs, cell phones and desktop PIM software to a single database and publish them on the Internet, connect with the calendars of others, and resolve conflicts between the two.
In other words, while Microsoft spent two years talking about Web services and technologies, Apple quietly went about actually building them into a program its users will want to use. MS has been announcing and releasing software for other people to build these Web applications, but Apple decided to lead by example instead.
No doubt the next release of Windows will include similar features, and of course they'll be more widely used than Apple's. But just think what might be happening right now if Microsoft had spent as much time creating Web applications for Windows XP as they did promoting them.
If a person could synchronize their PocketPC to their MSN account and Outlook at the same time, then reconcile with all their coworkers' calendars and documents, without having to do anything more than press a button, Microsoft wouldn't need subscriptions to sell the next version of Office or Windows. Instead they settled for getting halfway there so that they could sell more copies of Exchange Server and keep PocketPCs as expensive as humanly possible.
Okay, let me be clear from the beginning: I'm not a Linux user. I've only got so much computer hardware, and most of it is old Macintoshes with puny hard drives. I now have Mac OS X on my newest machine, and if I ever get the urge to start tinkering with UNIX goodies that's where I'll begin.
So I don't own, or use, Linux. But I've resolved to make Mandrake my distro when and if I decide to give it a try.
Not just because Mandrake's got a nearly-current PPC distro to go with their Intel-compatible ones, although that was what got their name to me in the first place. It's because they're packed with features, lots of options, both GNOME and K desktops, and an easy installation. If I were to put a Linux machine in front of my wife or daughter, it would be this one.
And now they've got v9.0 coming out the door. Nice. I know that you can't do everything with Linux that you can with a current Mac or PC; everyone knows that. But it looks like Mandrake covers all the essential bases -- internet, office, customizability, multimedia. I could give a family member this distro and they'd be able to do just about everything they needed.
If there's any Linux that's ready for the consumers, it's this one. Mandrake deserves to be known as the hardest-working distro development company as far as sheer user-friendliness is concerned. I'm glad it's free, but they're clearly worth the money.
I like my TV, for one reason: it lets me watch movies I rent and own. I don't like broadcast television, because it's saturated with commercials and the selection just isn't there and the quality is spotty and I have to stick to someone else's schedule (I can't afford a TiVo). Plus my wife and daughter like their soaps.
So I keep the TV, got a good pickup antenna for network broadcasts, and refuse to pay for cable. Yeah, there are shows on Sci-Fi and Cartoon Network I wish I could catch, but when it's a big deal I ask a friend or family member to tape 'em for me. And they generally do. And if they don't, I wait until I can buy or rent the DVD and watch the whole thing without commercials (or download them off of KaZaA while I'm waiting, if it's really that important me).
Bottom line: I'd rather spend $40/month on two DVDs I really like and want to own, than on cable television piping hours upon hours of useless junk into my household.
Every e-commerce Web site I can think of requires writing data to the server based on user-entered data using the Web site itself. If I want the site to store my credit card number, or even an account profile with my shipping address, the Web server needs to be able to write to a hard drive somewhere.
Now, the sites that are the greatest/most significant targets for hackers are the ones that store personal data on the site's users, credit card data being the most valuable. So this hard drive would be useless for the servers that need it most.
Besides, even if the above weren't the case -- for instance, a banking site that (for some reason) only allowed you to read your account data, not make any transactions online -- does read-only really prevent hacking? All it means is that the hackers can't make changes to the server data; it doesn't mean that they can't steal passwords to access that data. So this might be good for the companies that use it, but it also gives a false sense of security by providing no additional protection to me, the user.
Obviously, I'm going to clarify that. "Cowboy Bebop" is popular with a lot of Americans who otherwise dislike anime as a whole. Most anime shows are genre-driven -- fantasy, giant fighting robots, ninja/samurai, schoolkids, hentai, what have you -- but "Bebop" isn't so easily categorized. It's science fiction, yes, but it's not about the spaceships and technology. And there's no robot suits anywhere to be found.
The story is about the bounty hunters, "cowboys," who constantly wander the solar system in search of their next paycheck. They're pretty good at it, but they're generally nice people who keep their friends, which means they give up paychecks from time to time. I'm halfway through the DVDs, but I'd say about 90% of their jobs (the ones seen on the show, anyways) end up profitless. So you keep rooting for them to come out ahead when they almost never do.
It's not that violent a show, really -- at least not compared to, say "NYPD Blue". Compared to "The Simpsons" or "Pokemon", yes, it's occasionally violent and sexy and bloody, but the characters aren't violent or sexaholic by nature. And, of course, they all have a Mysterious Past that's uncovered a bit at a time.
If you don't like anime/animation, then you don't like it, and that's all there is to it. If you're willing to open your mind a bit to it, and watch a few episodes of the series (unedited on DVD is nice), you'll see a good bunch of stories and some very interesting and likeable characters.
My hope is that in the future -- distant future perhaps -- your computer will only need one wired communication technology. It will provide power on the connector like USB and FireWire, so it can power small peripheral devices. It will use IP packets like Ethernet, so it provides your wide-area communications for things like email and Web browsing, but it will also use Zeroconf IP so that connecting local devices is as easy as USB or FireWire is today.
End result: advertising is about to get a lot more annoying.
If you thought gratuitous Flash animations on the Web were obnoxious, you just wait until the marketing industry sees what they can do with these things.
I mean, forget about blink tags. We'll be able to blink the side of an entire public bus.
Use Google, silly
on
Ogg Vorbis 1.0
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Goodie #1: Ogg Vorbis QuickTime Component This allows the user to play Ogg files in most QuickTime applications. As for iTunes support, this will soon be available. At the moment, iTunes doesn't use the standard QuickTime protocol, so it doesn't automatically take advantage of the component. Bad Apple! Not following your own standards!
A quick search turns up several iTunes plug-ins for visualizations, but not for audio codecs. I don't think the new iTunes 3 changes this. Developing plug-ins for iPod would be a whole 'nother ball o' wax. So I think you're out of luck.
Basically, a recipe is like an open source app that nobody's willing to muck with
Dear Mr. Brown:
Our law firm represents Emiril Lagasse and his associated restaurants. It has come to our attention that several of the recipes you employ in your book "I'm Just Here for the Food" may infringe on the recipes copyrighted by our client and his enterprise.
These recipes, while not explicitly identical to Mr. Lagasse's, are similar enough to clearly be derivative works. It is our assertion that your recipes are in violation of our client's copyrights as well as his trademark on "hot and spicy Louisiana cookin'".
We require that you pull your book from publication immediately, and submit a deposition regarding the origins of your recipes. We intend to file suit immediately for damages resulting from loss of profits due to your theft of our clients' recipes to the sum of not less than $2,000,000 (two million dollars) plus fifty percent of all profits from your book.
Sincerely, The Law Firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe
My ISP charges $20.00 a month for a 5MB mailox and 50MB of FTP space. Apple is providing more than that for $100.00 a year. That's half off for me - for more space.
Yes, but the one thing that.Mac doesn't include is dialup (or broadband) access of any kind. If Apple had struck some kind of deal to package an Earthlink or AOL dialup and include it in the.Mac package, I might be sold. But you'll still be paying $20/month for your ISP, $240/year, and then paying Apple an additional $100/year for their storage and email account.
This is the problem for me. For $100/year, I want to be able to kick my current dialup account out the window. An extra $9/month isn't much to ask, but it is when my ISP already provides email and storage, the two features that are most important to me.
You're screwing over a project that's trying to provide a free OS. It's definitely wrong in one way or another.
Look at it this way: Where in the license will it say that I'm required to keep the advertisements in the code? (Nowhere, because it's open source.) Therefore I'm entirely within my rights to remove it. If that's inconvenient for some development company, them's the breaks -- they should have used their own code without an open source license if they wanted to prevent it.
I'd say it's less ethical to give me a software product and deny me the right to change it after I own it. (And if it's free software, then merely installing it on my hardware means that I own it -- ownership does not require payment.)
And besides, there are a few hundred projects out there that are providing me a free OS already, Linux being only one of the more popular ones. They do just fine without advertising. Why should I feel guilty for "screwing over" the one company that would, when the software license clearly gives me the legal and ethical right to do so?
Naturally, if you are a bit capable with C/C++, you could freely recompile the OSS project and remove the ad splash screen - but how ethical that would be?
Entirely ethical, I should think. You gave me the code and the open-source license to modify it as I see fit, didn't you?
The ad would show *only once*, during the load of the OS or graphics desktop environment
They'll have to engineer the OS to crash or reboot on a daily basis if they want to make any money, then. Even my Win2K desktop gets rebooted less than once a month, and that's (almost) always because I installed something essential to the system.
how many home-ish users really need a multi-user system?
Anyone who shares their computer with family or friends on a regular basis. I myself enjoy a Mac OS X computer with separate accounts for each member of my family; they can create documents, download files, and so forth without stepping on each other's desktops or making major changes to the system (without my permission). My wife can litter the desktop with text documents, my kids can add their own browser bookmarks, they can download and rip whatever music they like -- it doesn't get in anyone else's way.
Really, multi-user systems might not have been all that important in the "old days" of personal computing. But now that a $699 off-the-shelf box and a cable modem is enough to become a vulnerable server on the Internet, multi-user setups are essential for basic security, with the added benefit of keeping everyone's virtual space personalized and distinct from everyone else's.
Quite a good ruse, roping college students in to write piracy software for peanuts. Of course it's something they really believe in, I remember when I was at college and wanted to get everything for free.
Especially since the students never realized the company was getting them nearly for free. Is that integrity, or irony?
Slashdot Mirror
...playing a piano near the beginning of the movie "Short Circuit"?
Cool product, but of course it won't be of much use to the disabled until they figure out how to directly replace the missing hand/arm with this one. The article says "it will have a hand and arm on a moving base, with remote control and camera systems, so the user can guide the robot through simple tasks" -- but speaking only for my (fully limbed) self, that's not what I'd want. I'd want something that can be used like my old arm, not floating around on rollers like some cybernetic Thing.
"...everyday tasks are not really what the disabled need help with anymore. I just want one to play with :-)"
...I don't think that was the intended meaning.
Remember how silly disposable cameras once seemed? "When they first came out, most people thought, 'Ah, why would I want a disposable camera? That changed rather quickly" when consumers discovered new uses for them, said Michaels.
Yes, but I could always buy disposable cameras for around $10 (US), and today can buy cheap non-flash ones for around $6. That's easy to justify. Sixty minutes of air time for $40 isn't quite as easy to throw away. That $10 target is a big psychological barrier for consumers when the word "disposable" is involved.
AT&T can get me $0.05 per minute for state-to-state long distance, twice that for in-state long distance. My non-disposable cell phone gets me 2000 minutes per month for around $100, or $0.20 per minute. If I'm buying a disposable phone, I'd like to pay no more than $0.30-$0.40 per minute, or about $10 for half an hour. For that kind of money, I'd happily send one with my daughter to summer camp, or even take it on vacation myself.
Bottom line: $40 is too much. $20 is managable. $10 is ideal, and if they could hit that dollar amount customers would beat a path to their door.
then an authority said "don't do that". so he won't.
Well, it wasn't a government authority, it was a capitalist one. Which I suppose says more about his convictions than we'd like to know.
I can see how M$ would be threatened.
I do appreciate your writing about Microsoft. When you spell Microsoft "M$", though, this is what I picture.
Shouldn't the company care about its customers' vision?
.NET, by announcing iCal and iSync last week at MacWorld. Those two programs allow users of Mac OS X Jaguar to connect their PDAs, cell phones and desktop PIM software to a single database and publish them on the Internet, connect with the calendars of others, and resolve conflicts between the two.
Some columnist recently pointed out that Apple achieved in one stroke everything MS is trying to achieve with
In other words, while Microsoft spent two years talking about Web services and technologies, Apple quietly went about actually building them into a program its users will want to use. MS has been announcing and releasing software for other people to build these Web applications, but Apple decided to lead by example instead.
No doubt the next release of Windows will include similar features, and of course they'll be more widely used than Apple's. But just think what might be happening right now if Microsoft had spent as much time creating Web applications for Windows XP as they did promoting them.
If a person could synchronize their PocketPC to their MSN account and Outlook at the same time, then reconcile with all their coworkers' calendars and documents, without having to do anything more than press a button, Microsoft wouldn't need subscriptions to sell the next version of Office or Windows. Instead they settled for getting halfway there so that they could sell more copies of Exchange Server and keep PocketPCs as expensive as humanly possible.
Okay, let me be clear from the beginning: I'm not a Linux user. I've only got so much computer hardware, and most of it is old Macintoshes with puny hard drives. I now have Mac OS X on my newest machine, and if I ever get the urge to start tinkering with UNIX goodies that's where I'll begin.
So I don't own, or use, Linux. But I've resolved to make Mandrake my distro when and if I decide to give it a try.
Not just because Mandrake's got a nearly-current PPC distro to go with their Intel-compatible ones, although that was what got their name to me in the first place. It's because they're packed with features, lots of options, both GNOME and K desktops, and an easy installation. If I were to put a Linux machine in front of my wife or daughter, it would be this one.
And now they've got v9.0 coming out the door. Nice. I know that you can't do everything with Linux that you can with a current Mac or PC; everyone knows that. But it looks like Mandrake covers all the essential bases -- internet, office, customizability, multimedia. I could give a family member this distro and they'd be able to do just about everything they needed.
If there's any Linux that's ready for the consumers, it's this one. Mandrake deserves to be known as the hardest-working distro development company as far as sheer user-friendliness is concerned. I'm glad it's free, but they're clearly worth the money.
How do you argue with this kind of rhetoric, especially when it's being spread directly by government officials to corporate leaders?
Three words: Y2K.
I like my TV, for one reason: it lets me watch movies I rent and own. I don't like broadcast television, because it's saturated with commercials and the selection just isn't there and the quality is spotty and I have to stick to someone else's schedule (I can't afford a TiVo). Plus my wife and daughter like their soaps.
So I keep the TV, got a good pickup antenna for network broadcasts, and refuse to pay for cable. Yeah, there are shows on Sci-Fi and Cartoon Network I wish I could catch, but when it's a big deal I ask a friend or family member to tape 'em for me. And they generally do. And if they don't, I wait until I can buy or rent the DVD and watch the whole thing without commercials (or download them off of KaZaA while I'm waiting, if it's really that important me).
Bottom line: I'd rather spend $40/month on two DVDs I really like and want to own, than on cable television piping hours upon hours of useless junk into my household.
Every e-commerce Web site I can think of requires writing data to the server based on user-entered data using the Web site itself. If I want the site to store my credit card number, or even an account profile with my shipping address, the Web server needs to be able to write to a hard drive somewhere.
Now, the sites that are the greatest/most significant targets for hackers are the ones that store personal data on the site's users, credit card data being the most valuable. So this hard drive would be useless for the servers that need it most.
Besides, even if the above weren't the case -- for instance, a banking site that (for some reason) only allowed you to read your account data, not make any transactions online -- does read-only really prevent hacking? All it means is that the hackers can't make changes to the server data; it doesn't mean that they can't steal passwords to access that data. So this might be good for the companies that use it, but it also gives a false sense of security by providing no additional protection to me, the user.
...it's not like anime.
Obviously, I'm going to clarify that. "Cowboy Bebop" is popular with a lot of Americans who otherwise dislike anime as a whole. Most anime shows are genre-driven -- fantasy, giant fighting robots, ninja/samurai, schoolkids, hentai, what have you -- but "Bebop" isn't so easily categorized. It's science fiction, yes, but it's not about the spaceships and technology. And there's no robot suits anywhere to be found.
The story is about the bounty hunters, "cowboys," who constantly wander the solar system in search of their next paycheck. They're pretty good at it, but they're generally nice people who keep their friends, which means they give up paychecks from time to time. I'm halfway through the DVDs, but I'd say about 90% of their jobs (the ones seen on the show, anyways) end up profitless. So you keep rooting for them to come out ahead when they almost never do.
It's not that violent a show, really -- at least not compared to, say "NYPD Blue". Compared to "The Simpsons" or "Pokemon", yes, it's occasionally violent and sexy and bloody, but the characters aren't violent or sexaholic by nature. And, of course, they all have a Mysterious Past that's uncovered a bit at a time.
If you don't like anime/animation, then you don't like it, and that's all there is to it. If you're willing to open your mind a bit to it, and watch a few episodes of the series (unedited on DVD is nice), you'll see a good bunch of stories and some very interesting and likeable characters.
Nothing in the article suggests that this display is transparent.
Good, 'cause it'd be awfully hard to see what's displayed on it that way.
End result: advertising is about to get a lot more annoying.
If you thought gratuitous Flash animations on the Web were obnoxious, you just wait until the marketing industry sees what they can do with these things.
I mean, forget about blink tags. We'll be able to blink the side of an entire public bus.
from (http://www.nouturn.com/goodies/):
Goodie #1: Ogg Vorbis QuickTime Component
This allows the user to play Ogg files in most QuickTime applications. As for iTunes support, this will soon be available. At the moment, iTunes doesn't use the standard QuickTime protocol, so it doesn't automatically take advantage of the component. Bad Apple! Not following your own standards!
A quick search turns up several iTunes plug-ins for visualizations, but not for audio codecs. I don't think the new iTunes 3 changes this. Developing plug-ins for iPod would be a whole 'nother ball o' wax. So I think you're out of luck.
Basically, a recipe is like an open source app that nobody's willing to muck with
Dear Mr. Brown:
Our law firm represents Emiril Lagasse and his associated restaurants. It has come to our attention that several of the recipes you employ in your book "I'm Just Here for the Food" may infringe on the recipes copyrighted by our client and his enterprise.
These recipes, while not explicitly identical to Mr. Lagasse's, are similar enough to clearly be derivative works. It is our assertion that your recipes are in violation of our client's copyrights as well as his trademark on "hot and spicy Louisiana cookin'".
We require that you pull your book from publication immediately, and submit a deposition regarding the origins of your recipes. We intend to file suit immediately for damages resulting from loss of profits due to your theft of our clients' recipes to the sum of not less than $2,000,000 (two million dollars) plus fifty percent of all profits from your book.
Sincerely,
The Law Firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe
Cc: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, Legal Department
This ambush of the digitial imaging industry will probably stand as the worst public relations nightmare a company can inflict upon itself.
Rather like the Unisys LZW (GIF) patent fiasco from, when was it, 1994? Or the more recent Fraunhofer MP3-compression patent enforcement?
Either the company will cave in, or the software developers will, and we'll all move on to a different JPEG compression technology. Same as before.
I still insist that the ultimate device would be an iPod with a screen that runs the full length of the device
If the screen's that large, where are you going to put the controls?
You don't want an iPod with palm/phone, you want a palm/phone with an MP3 player. Go talk to Sony.
My ISP charges $20.00 a month for a 5MB mailox and 50MB of FTP space. Apple is providing more than that for $100.00 a year. That's half off for me - for more space.
.Mac doesn't include is dialup (or broadband) access of any kind. If Apple had struck some kind of deal to package an Earthlink or AOL dialup and include it in the .Mac package, I might be sold. But you'll still be paying $20/month for your ISP, $240/year, and then paying Apple an additional $100/year for their storage and email account.
Yes, but the one thing that
This is the problem for me. For $100/year, I want to be able to kick my current dialup account out the window. An extra $9/month isn't much to ask, but it is when my ISP already provides email and storage, the two features that are most important to me.
News.com has an article of their own about this very thing.
You're screwing over a project that's trying to provide a free OS. It's definitely wrong in one way or another.
Look at it this way: Where in the license will it say that I'm required to keep the advertisements in the code? (Nowhere, because it's open source.) Therefore I'm entirely within my rights to remove it. If that's inconvenient for some development company, them's the breaks -- they should have used their own code without an open source license if they wanted to prevent it.
I'd say it's less ethical to give me a software product and deny me the right to change it after I own it. (And if it's free software, then merely installing it on my hardware means that I own it -- ownership does not require payment.)
And besides, there are a few hundred projects out there that are providing me a free OS already, Linux being only one of the more popular ones. They do just fine without advertising. Why should I feel guilty for "screwing over" the one company that would, when the software license clearly gives me the legal and ethical right to do so?
Naturally, if you are a bit capable with C/C++, you could freely recompile the OSS project and remove the ad splash screen - but how ethical that would be?
Entirely ethical, I should think. You gave me the code and the open-source license to modify it as I see fit, didn't you?
The ad would show *only once*, during the load of the OS or graphics desktop environment
They'll have to engineer the OS to crash or reboot on a daily basis if they want to make any money, then. Even my Win2K desktop gets rebooted less than once a month, and that's (almost) always because I installed something essential to the system.
how many home-ish users really need a multi-user system?
Anyone who shares their computer with family or friends on a regular basis. I myself enjoy a Mac OS X computer with separate accounts for each member of my family; they can create documents, download files, and so forth without stepping on each other's desktops or making major changes to the system (without my permission). My wife can litter the desktop with text documents, my kids can add their own browser bookmarks, they can download and rip whatever music they like -- it doesn't get in anyone else's way.
Really, multi-user systems might not have been all that important in the "old days" of personal computing. But now that a $699 off-the-shelf box and a cable modem is enough to become a vulnerable server on the Internet, multi-user setups are essential for basic security, with the added benefit of keeping everyone's virtual space personalized and distinct from everyone else's.
Quite a good ruse, roping college students in to write piracy software for peanuts. Of course it's something they really believe in, I remember when I was at college and wanted to get everything for free.
Especially since the students never realized the company was getting them nearly for free. Is that integrity, or irony?