Well, sort of. People will generally drive worse the more they drink, but when does worse = poorly? (interesting note, though, studies looking at the effect of accident rates before and after lowering the legal limit from.10% to.08% found essentially no effect.)
I'm going to be preemptive here, the solution lies in education, training and responsibility, not prohibition.
Actually I think the solution is, just like with drunk driving, to use all four. Educate people to the dangers, hope they are responsible and choose to avoid the dangerous action, and use a punishment to enforce it.
I find it worse with the person in the car. A cellphone I can drop or tell them to hold on if traffic gets rough. With someone in the car you can't make them shut up or stop blocking your view.
Well, you can tell your local passenger to shut up just as easily as a cell phone partner. In addition, I would imagine that a passenger is going to be far more likely to notice that something is up (even children) than someone who is very physically distant. So while it is true that your passenger could conceivably continue to obliviously chatter away, I would submit that is rather rare. As for blocking your view, that is probably sort of true (though i doubt most accidents are due to passengers obstructing sight lines, if for no other reason than they are pretty much only able to get in the way of your view in one direction). You are often better off with no passengers, but that is often just not possible.
That's the problem with these types of studies. It's nice to compare the effects of cell phone use with the nominal "no distraction" case, but doesn't answer the right questions. At least this one compared it to drinking, which is a start. But has anyone compared other distractions (radio, passengers, kids, drinking coffee, etc.)?
Well it very clearly answers the question "do cell phones cause distracted driving accidents?" And frankly, that is an important question to answer. As for other distractions, yes, there is a very healthy research community focusing on the various issues you mention. Just to plug some stuff my dad's done, many states now implement passenger limits in their graduated driver's licensing programs for that exact reason. People, and young drivers in particular are less able to deal with the distractions of having a car load of their peers, and so limiting those situations is used as a public safety strategy. All your list of distractions, do play a part in increasing the dangers of getting into an accident.
People tend to use these studies to justify outlawing the use of cellphones in cars, but if they are comparable to other normal distractions then by the same argument those things (radio, passengers, kids) should be outlawed too. (Actually, there were attempts to outlaw car radios in the 20's and 30's in some places.)
The point with cell phones, that distinguishes it from other distractions is the level and type of distraction. A cell phone conversation is generally far more cognitively intrusive than listening to the radio. Additionally, a cell phone is capable of being used when all those other distractions are also in play, compounding the situation even more...so studying the effect of cell phones alone is a rather logical step. As for outlawing other distractions, sure...that would make driving generally safer. Realistically though, passengers & kids can't be eliminated (and as noted many times, passengers often are able to help in dangerous situations)...and radios have a small enough effect (probably due both to the limited nature of radio interaction, and the fact that we've learned how to deal with it better due to ubiquitousness).
What I find more impressive studies is the change in accident rates correlated to cellphone usage. In the last 10 years cellphone usage has skyrocketed and I've seen it reported several times that accident rates have actually dropped by 10% in that time.
Um, have you heard of confounding variables? Safer cars, safer roads, better drivers are all able to explain away the pseudo-statistic you cite. You are suggesting that a correlation of two *very* disparate statistics with a web of interactions and confounding variables is more impressive than a controlled study where a single dependent variable is manipulated? Really?
The main difference is that the other person is there in the car with you. This means that they are as aware of the surroudings as you are, and are able to react accordingly (ie by stopping talking when things get hairy, or shouting "HEY watch out for that truck!"). It also means you spend less cognitive effort trying to focus on them (ie when talking on a cell phone (handfree or not), you frequently are trying to picture them, where they are, what they are doing, how they are reacting, etc). All of this means you are paying less attention to the task of driving. My dad does a lot of studies on "distracted" driving, so I get to hear about this quite a bit.
There's this myth that cell phone drivers are dangerous only when they are holding (or dialing or answering) a phone. That is simply not true. Anything that actively takes your attention away from driving makes it more dangerous. SO Onstar, or any other kind of technology that makes telecommunications possible will have similar effects. It is unfortunate that most cell-phone car laws are written to encourage hands-free use, when that actually completely sidesteps the issue.
There is no such thing as the SS surplus (trust fund, whatever you want to call it) - it's just an accounting slight-of-hand used by the government to fudge the books.
the taxes you pay don't get invested until you retire, they get collected and then immediately get spent buying benifits for the current set of retirees.
Bzzt, wrong, thank you for playing.
If SS were truly only pure pay-as-you-go, that would be true. But it's not. The system was tuned to have a us pay a pretty major overpayment of taxes for the past 20+ years, such that the income is far greater than the outflows. This difference has then been ~invested in treasury notes. It basically means that the SSA has loaned the general fund money now, with the understanding that the treasury notes can be cashed in at some point in the future when the SSA needs the cash to pay out. This is pretty much exactly what happens when you buy a treasury bond...you are loaning the US Govt money, with the understanding that somewhere down the road you get that money back (+ interest). If the govt defaults on the bonds (either to you, or to the SSA, or to any of the asian countries that currently hold a huge amount treasury notes), then we are in a fiscal/political/international crisis the likes of which are barely imaginable.
Politicians have been spending the SS income rather than investing it for years now
Well, sort of. They have been borrowing it. The SS surplus is (by law i believe) invested in Treasury Notes. T-bills being on of the *safest* investments in the economic universe (if the US Gov't stops paying out on those, then you can rest assured we are in shit deep enough that SS is irrelevant), and the same thing that individuals, other countries, investment firms, and even Bush himself (to the tune of *at least* $5,000,000) invests in. There is this myth that come 2013 or 2018 comes around, and some of those t-bills need to be cashed in, that the Gov't won't pay. This is just outrageous, and historically false (SS has cashed in the past many times).
There are going to be more people collecting from SS when the baby boomers retire than there will be contributing to it.
The ratio of payee to retiree will decline when the baby-boomers retire, which is exactly why SS was revamped to run a huge surplus until then.
Politicians bought votes in years past by adjusting the cost of living based on wage inflation, versus the previous (more reasonable) way of calculating it based on regular inflation.
Not really, it was a reasonable choice, not a pandering to old folks choice. Wages increase faster than inflation does. That is why the standard of living increases with each generation. You can (in general) live better than your parents did, who lived better than your grandparents. This is life in the US, and has been for a long time. Pensions (including SS) are meant to replace a fixed proportion of you income (for SS it's, on average, ~40%). If you peg SS to inflation, you are decreasing that as time goes on, so the older you get, the poorer you get relative to the rest of the population. And note, that SS has been indexing against wages since the beginning, this isn't a new bit of old-voter pork.
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform. It's a broken system. You can either start to fix it, or you can try to prop it up until it completely collapses.
You've apparently drunk the kool-aid.
It is *not* a broken system. There is no crisis. According to 1. the SSA trustees, and 2. Bush's own CBO report, SS can meet all of it's obligations until either 2042 (1), or 2050-something (2). Even then, with no changes whatsoever, the benefits will be reduced by only 25% for a relatively short number of years. Keep in mind, these are *conservative* (fiscally, not idealogically) projections for nearly 40 years down the road. Using slightly less pessimistic projections (the SSA uses 3 scenarios, and in the recent past, the most optimistic has been closest to reality), SS is good through 75 years (which is as far out as the projections are made). Calling a possible scenario that is 30 years away a crisis stretches the term to flat-out dishonesty (not that this is unusual for the Bush administration).
What people don't get is that bush's private accounts proposal is flat-out, no-bones-about-it intended to be a step on the path to ending SS. Even calling it the 'ownership society' belies the point. SS is intended to be a collective, universal program...it doesn't work any other way. When you convert it to individual "ownership," you are dismantling it. Period. If that is what people would actually prefer, that is one thing, but trying to claim that you are doing the exact opposite ("saving social security") is wrong, and offensive, and decidedly undemocratic.
I really dont see what the problem is with using the X11 version of OpenOffice on Mac OS X.
Well, as long as you don't mind limiting the audience for OO.o to a rather small subset of OSX users.
X11 is the most widely avialable GUI system and is available on most OSs, and works perfectly fine.
Again, this is true only for a *very* small population of computer users.
The overall result would be a much better quality product on all operating systems.
Which pretty much no one would use.
Seriously, how many percent of windows users 1. have cygwin & X installed, or 2. would be willing to install them to use an office suite that is, at best, comparable to microsoft office? If the point is to make a good product that many people will use, you need to have either a native port, or else some feature that is just orders of magnitude better than microsoft office.
Take a look at the discovery channel. Is it really logical that random mutations will make a spider look EXACTLY like a species of ants, use EXACTLY the same pheromones to hunt them? Or how about this little worm which produces some kind of food that ants like? Or how about the orchid Mantis?
Symbiosis means SYNCHRONIZED evolution, and I don't think that random mutations can do that. Furthermore, HOW are these mutations produced?
Dude, you just don't get this whole natural selection thing do you? Ya know, how good traits are selected for...and the random noise is not?
Bullshit. When you see a person slacking on their job, are you supposed to 1. tell them to get the lead out, and do their job, or 2. start doing their job for them? If I, as say a taxi driver, see the garbage men only collecting 1/2 the garbage, should I just start packing my trunk with rotting produce? Or should I make a fuss and try and get people to *do their jobs* ? You seem to be suggesting that if Jon Stewart is upset with the level of journalistic discourse, that he *as a comedian* is supposed to personally fix it? Hell, perhaps that is exactly what he is doing by calling some of the offenders out in a very public way? Why do you think the proper course is for him to try and turn The Daily Show into real news show? Wouldn't the better solution be for the real news media to actually start doing a decent job of it?
As for people getting their news from The Daily Show... First it is an indictment of the news. When the popular news is so uninteresting/uninforming/partisan that people simply avoid watching it, that is, at least partly, the news organization's fault. Secondly, The Daily Show is actually quite informative, accurate, and perhaps most importantly, incisive. That aspect in particular seems missing from the news media at large. I mean, the show WON A PEABODY for chrissakes. Frankly, if I have the choice of an uninformed voter getting news from FoxNews or from The Daily Show, I would much prefer the latter. For all the complaint about its left-leanings, it tends to very accurate (while Fox with their right-right-right leanings has been documented to not be accurate). Thirdly, yes there *are* places to get decent news...they just require a lot of extra effort relative to flipping on CNN. That is the problem...those motivated enough will always be able to parse the crap and find the useful information, it is the vast majority that is not that concerns me. While one solution is to somehow, magically, instill that level of interest in the political journalism field in the populace, I'd rather the major news outlets start acting more like responsible news outlets and feed the masses a useful set of information.
here is what it will take for me to pay for music: 1) must host every song ever, available for immediate speedy download in more than a few different formats/bitrates 2) a query tool (genre, artist, date of release, lyrics, etc) at LEAST a simple search utility 3) when I select a song I want to see the list of "other people who selected this song also selected.."
thats it.. first site to implement these 3 features gets my money. I don't care what it costs.
Hm, would you like those to come with a naked supermodel listening partner, or would you prefer she have a whipped-cream bikini instead?
Seriously dude, if you are setting your sights that high (#1 by itself is im-freaking-possible), then you are not the target market.
iPod isn't number 1 because it is the best player -- it's clearly not -- not in battery life, choice of format, syncing, or price -- but because the marketing budget on that device is bigger than all the other devices combined.
I'm not sure you can say it's clearly not the best player, for the simple fact that best player means completely different things to different people. Just to illustrate that, which player is clearly the best?
To trot out the same old pony of ipod arguments, it's the complete package that makes it so appealing. Sure you can find one's that are smaller, cheaper, higher storage, possess more features, have decent design, better battery life, etc etc....but I have yet to see one that puts all of them together as well as an ipod. Apple certainly chose to make sacrifices in its design, but IMHO they chose the (so far) best set of choices.
As for the itunes/ipod lockin (aside from the fact that itunes seems pretty well designed, especially for someone espousing WMP10), ipods do *not* only work with itunes. You can get various third-party apps that sync (j river media center, ephpod, xplay) to it. You are only locked into itunes music store if your other store doesn't allow CD burning, or if you don't count real's whole helix situation.
A few points, 1. if 90% of people out there aren't listening to portable devices, then there are 90% of people who are potential consumers for a good portable device. 2. Sure the portable market is finite, just like pretty much every other market for anything is finite. I seriously doubt it is anywhere near saturation. The fact that players are selling as quickly as they are would seem to suggest there is plenty of demand still. 2.5. The younger crowd is likely going to be the major market, and they *do* care about portable music players. 3. Portability matters in the home -> office transition. I would hate to have to carry a brick to work, but i'd happily carry a postage stamp.
4. With regards to portable music in cars, there are various and sundry ways to do it, from a aux in jack, to a cassette adapter, to an fm transmitter, to buying an Alpine, to buying a BMW, to other adpaters. I agree CD players are far more ubiquitous, but playing a CD is just that, playing a CD. Using an ipod/nomad/whatever is inherently different.
Ok, let's see from the second review's "good" list:
1. Ripping - WMP will put metadata into ripped files. Just like itunes has done for a few years now...just like cdex has done for a few years now...etc etc.
2. Metadata editing - You can "easily" edit the metadata for single or multiple songs. Just like itunes has been able to do for years.
3. Mp3 ripping - WMP now will rip directly to mp3 (though apparently only at a few select rates). Just like itunes has been able to do for years.
4. Composer - WMP lets you make a playlist based on the artist. Just like itunes has been able to do for years.
5. Rating - WMP now has a five-star rating system. Just like itunes has had for years.
6. Auto playlists - WMP now has automatic playlists. Just like itunes has had for years.
7. Crossfading - WMP now has crossfading ability built in. Just like itunes has had for years.
8. Improved interface - WMP is now aesthetically appealing (debatable, as posts above detail). Just like itunes has been for years (well, i'd submit itunes is still better designed & prettier, but eye of the beholder, etc etc).
That list of Brand New Improvements sounds to me like a list of the bare essentials for a media library. I am seriously underwhelmed by the *new, improved* features listed there. Perhaps it's just that the reviewer hasn't actually ever used itunes, and thus all these are groundbreaking.
Actually, reading that first paragraph again the reviewer notes his bias:
I am a Windows Media Player junkie. Having used the program for a number of years I think it is quite simply a brilliant piece of software - a masterpiece developed by extremely talented engineers in so many ways. Even more spectacular is that it is free. Microsoft gives it away.
I guess you know what you're getting to begin with. I just wish he has spent a little time with itunes to get a feel for what should really be considered a Big Deal.
I'm sure WMP10 is an improvement on previous versions, and it certainly does have the benefit of being able to deal with videos...but my god, if that review doesn't amount to death through faint praise (look, the New Ford Behemoth, now with windshield wipers!!), I don't know what does.
Because people are still waiting weeks for the honor of paying $250 for a mini. If the demand is there, why on earth would Apple choose to lower the price?
also, since Google should be a 12(g) company -- they have to report to the SEC becuase they have over 500 shareholders in a class of stock and a super-bung-load of revenue
Is that the official SEC term? I could've sworn is was mega-bung-load of revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, sort of. People will generally drive worse the more they drink, but when does worse = poorly? (interesting note, though, studies looking at the effect of accident rates before and after lowering the legal limit from .10% to .08% found essentially no effect.)
I'm going to be preemptive here, the solution lies in education, training and responsibility, not prohibition.
Actually I think the solution is, just like with drunk driving, to use all four. Educate people to the dangers, hope they are responsible and choose to avoid the dangerous action, and use a punishment to enforce it.
-Ted
Well, you can tell your local passenger to shut up just as easily as a cell phone partner. In addition, I would imagine that a passenger is going to be far more likely to notice that something is up (even children) than someone who is very physically distant. So while it is true that your passenger could conceivably continue to obliviously chatter away, I would submit that is rather rare. As for blocking your view, that is probably sort of true (though i doubt most accidents are due to passengers obstructing sight lines, if for no other reason than they are pretty much only able to get in the way of your view in one direction). You are often better off with no passengers, but that is often just not possible.
That's the problem with these types of studies. It's nice to compare the effects of cell phone use with the nominal "no distraction" case, but doesn't answer the right questions. At least this one compared it to drinking, which is a start. But has anyone compared other distractions (radio, passengers, kids, drinking coffee, etc.)?
Well it very clearly answers the question "do cell phones cause distracted driving accidents?" And frankly, that is an important question to answer. As for other distractions, yes, there is a very healthy research community focusing on the various issues you mention. Just to plug some stuff my dad's done, many states now implement passenger limits in their graduated driver's licensing programs for that exact reason. People, and young drivers in particular are less able to deal with the distractions of having a car load of their peers, and so limiting those situations is used as a public safety strategy. All your list of distractions, do play a part in increasing the dangers of getting into an accident.
People tend to use these studies to justify outlawing the use of cellphones in cars, but if they are comparable to other normal distractions then by the same argument those things (radio, passengers, kids) should be outlawed too. (Actually, there were attempts to outlaw car radios in the 20's and 30's in some places.)
The point with cell phones, that distinguishes it from other distractions is the level and type of distraction. A cell phone conversation is generally far more cognitively intrusive than listening to the radio. Additionally, a cell phone is capable of being used when all those other distractions are also in play, compounding the situation even more...so studying the effect of cell phones alone is a rather logical step. As for outlawing other distractions, sure...that would make driving generally safer. Realistically though, passengers & kids can't be eliminated (and as noted many times, passengers often are able to help in dangerous situations)...and radios have a small enough effect (probably due both to the limited nature of radio interaction, and the fact that we've learned how to deal with it better due to ubiquitousness).
What I find more impressive studies is the change in accident rates correlated to cellphone usage. In the last 10 years cellphone usage has skyrocketed and I've seen it reported several times that accident rates have actually dropped by 10% in that time.
Um, have you heard of confounding variables? Safer cars, safer roads, better drivers are all able to explain away the pseudo-statistic you cite. You are suggesting that a correlation of two *very* disparate statistics with a web of interactions and confounding variables is more impressive than a controlled study where a single dependent variable is manipulated? Really?
-Ted
There's this myth that cell phone drivers are dangerous only when they are holding (or dialing or answering) a phone. That is simply not true. Anything that actively takes your attention away from driving makes it more dangerous. SO Onstar, or any other kind of technology that makes telecommunications possible will have similar effects. It is unfortunate that most cell-phone car laws are written to encourage hands-free use, when that actually completely sidesteps the issue.
-Ted
So glad mirrordot is able to mirror the "Problem in Database Connection" page.
-Ted
the taxes you pay don't get invested until you retire, they get collected and then immediately get spent buying benifits for the current set of retirees.
Bzzt, wrong, thank you for playing.
If SS were truly only pure pay-as-you-go, that would be true. But it's not. The system was tuned to have a us pay a pretty major overpayment of taxes for the past 20+ years, such that the income is far greater than the outflows. This difference has then been ~invested in treasury notes. It basically means that the SSA has loaned the general fund money now, with the understanding that the treasury notes can be cashed in at some point in the future when the SSA needs the cash to pay out. This is pretty much exactly what happens when you buy a treasury bond...you are loaning the US Govt money, with the understanding that somewhere down the road you get that money back (+ interest). If the govt defaults on the bonds (either to you, or to the SSA, or to any of the asian countries that currently hold a huge amount treasury notes), then we are in a fiscal/political/international crisis the likes of which are barely imaginable.
-Ted
Well, sort of. They have been borrowing it. The SS surplus is (by law i believe) invested in Treasury Notes. T-bills being on of the *safest* investments in the economic universe (if the US Gov't stops paying out on those, then you can rest assured we are in shit deep enough that SS is irrelevant), and the same thing that individuals, other countries, investment firms, and even Bush himself (to the tune of *at least* $5,000,000) invests in. There is this myth that come 2013 or 2018 comes around, and some of those t-bills need to be cashed in, that the Gov't won't pay. This is just outrageous, and historically false (SS has cashed in the past many times).
There are going to be more people collecting from SS when the baby boomers retire than there will be contributing to it.
False. Totally false.
The ratio of payee to retiree will decline when the baby-boomers retire, which is exactly why SS was revamped to run a huge surplus until then.
Politicians bought votes in years past by adjusting the cost of living based on wage inflation, versus the previous (more reasonable) way of calculating it based on regular inflation.
Not really, it was a reasonable choice, not a pandering to old folks choice. Wages increase faster than inflation does. That is why the standard of living increases with each generation. You can (in general) live better than your parents did, who lived better than your grandparents. This is life in the US, and has been for a long time. Pensions (including SS) are meant to replace a fixed proportion of you income (for SS it's, on average, ~40%). If you peg SS to inflation, you are decreasing that as time goes on, so the older you get, the poorer you get relative to the rest of the population. And note, that SS has been indexing against wages since the beginning, this isn't a new bit of old-voter pork.
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform. It's a broken system. You can either start to fix it, or you can try to prop it up until it completely collapses.
You've apparently drunk the kool-aid.
It is *not* a broken system. There is no crisis. According to 1. the SSA trustees, and 2. Bush's own CBO report, SS can meet all of it's obligations until either 2042 (1), or 2050-something (2). Even then, with no changes whatsoever, the benefits will be reduced by only 25% for a relatively short number of years. Keep in mind, these are *conservative* (fiscally, not idealogically) projections for nearly 40 years down the road. Using slightly less pessimistic projections (the SSA uses 3 scenarios, and in the recent past, the most optimistic has been closest to reality), SS is good through 75 years (which is as far out as the projections are made). Calling a possible scenario that is 30 years away a crisis stretches the term to flat-out dishonesty (not that this is unusual for the Bush administration).
What people don't get is that bush's private accounts proposal is flat-out, no-bones-about-it intended to be a step on the path to ending SS. Even calling it the 'ownership society' belies the point. SS is intended to be a collective, universal program...it doesn't work any other way. When you convert it to individual "ownership," you are dismantling it. Period. If that is what people would actually prefer, that is one thing, but trying to claim that you are doing the exact opposite ("saving social security") is wrong, and offensive, and decidedly undemocratic.
-Ted
Well, as long as you don't mind limiting the audience for OO.o to a rather small subset of OSX users.
X11 is the most widely avialable GUI system and is available on most OSs, and works perfectly fine.
Again, this is true only for a *very* small population of computer users.
The overall result would be a much better quality product on all operating systems.
Which pretty much no one would use.
Seriously, how many percent of windows users 1. have cygwin & X installed, or 2. would be willing to install them to use an office suite that is, at best, comparable to microsoft office? If the point is to make a good product that many people will use, you need to have either a native port, or else some feature that is just orders of magnitude better than microsoft office.
-Ted
Symbiosis means SYNCHRONIZED evolution, and I don't think that random mutations can do that. Furthermore, HOW are these mutations produced?
Dude, you just don't get this whole natural selection thing do you? Ya know, how good traits are selected for...and the random noise is not?
-Ted
Wait, if they're invisible, how can they be pink?
(;
-Ted
Been done.
-Ted
Really not that hard to find, check out some Aiwas.
-Ted
No it's the cheesemakers.
-Ted
Hm, I just know i've heard that name somewhere before.
-Ted
Sorta, but the new itunes does have a Join Tracks function when importing cds. Admittedly, not the ideal solution, but at least it's a solution.
-Ted
I think the current term is HD-BlueRay-STD. VD is so last century.
-Ted
As for people getting their news from The Daily Show... First it is an indictment of the news. When the popular news is so uninteresting/uninforming/partisan that people simply avoid watching it, that is, at least partly, the news organization's fault. Secondly, The Daily Show is actually quite informative, accurate, and perhaps most importantly, incisive. That aspect in particular seems missing from the news media at large. I mean, the show WON A PEABODY for chrissakes. Frankly, if I have the choice of an uninformed voter getting news from FoxNews or from The Daily Show, I would much prefer the latter. For all the complaint about its left-leanings, it tends to very accurate (while Fox with their right-right-right leanings has been documented to not be accurate). Thirdly, yes there *are* places to get decent news...they just require a lot of extra effort relative to flipping on CNN. That is the problem...those motivated enough will always be able to parse the crap and find the useful information, it is the vast majority that is not that concerns me. While one solution is to somehow, magically, instill that level of interest in the political journalism field in the populace, I'd rather the major news outlets start acting more like responsible news outlets and feed the masses a useful set of information.
-Ted
Seriously... on their front page.
-Ted
1) must host every song ever, available for immediate speedy download in more than a few different formats/bitrates
2) a query tool (genre, artist, date of release, lyrics, etc) at LEAST a simple search utility
3) when I select a song I want to see the list of "other people who selected this song also selected.."
thats it.. first site to implement these 3 features gets my money. I don't care what it costs.
Hm, would you like those to come with a naked supermodel listening partner, or would you prefer she have a whipped-cream bikini instead?
Seriously dude, if you are setting your sights that high (#1 by itself is im-freaking-possible), then you are not the target market.
-Ted
I'm not sure you can say it's clearly not the best player, for the simple fact that best player means completely different things to different people. Just to illustrate that, which player is clearly the best?
To trot out the same old pony of ipod arguments, it's the complete package that makes it so appealing. Sure you can find one's that are smaller, cheaper, higher storage, possess more features, have decent design, better battery life, etc etc....but I have yet to see one that puts all of them together as well as an ipod. Apple certainly chose to make sacrifices in its design, but IMHO they chose the (so far) best set of choices.
As for the itunes/ipod lockin (aside from the fact that itunes seems pretty well designed, especially for someone espousing WMP10), ipods do *not* only work with itunes. You can get various third-party apps that sync (j river media center, ephpod, xplay) to it. You are only locked into itunes music store if your other store doesn't allow CD burning, or if you don't count real's whole helix situation.
-Ted
1. if 90% of people out there aren't listening to portable devices, then there are 90% of people who are potential consumers for a good portable device.
2. Sure the portable market is finite, just like pretty much every other market for anything is finite. I seriously doubt it is anywhere near saturation. The fact that players are selling as quickly as they are would seem to suggest there is plenty of demand still.
2.5. The younger crowd is likely going to be the major market, and they *do* care about portable music players.
3. Portability matters in the home -> office transition. I would hate to have to carry a brick to work, but i'd happily carry a postage stamp.
4. With regards to portable music in cars, there are various and sundry ways to do it, from a aux in jack, to a cassette adapter, to an fm transmitter, to buying an Alpine, to buying a BMW, to other adpaters. I agree CD players are far more ubiquitous, but playing a CD is just that, playing a CD. Using an ipod/nomad/whatever is inherently different.
-Ted
-Ted
That list of Brand New Improvements sounds to me like a list of the bare essentials for a media library. I am seriously underwhelmed by the *new, improved* features listed there. Perhaps it's just that the reviewer hasn't actually ever used itunes, and thus all these are groundbreaking.
Actually, reading that first paragraph again the reviewer notes his bias:
I am a Windows Media Player junkie. Having used the program for a number of years I think it is quite simply a brilliant piece of software - a masterpiece developed by extremely talented engineers in so many ways. Even more spectacular is that it is free. Microsoft gives it away.
I guess you know what you're getting to begin with. I just wish he has spent a little time with itunes to get a feel for what should really be considered a Big Deal.
I'm sure WMP10 is an improvement on previous versions, and it certainly does have the benefit of being able to deal with videos...but my god, if that review doesn't amount to death through faint praise (look, the New Ford Behemoth, now with windshield wipers!!), I don't know what does.
-Ted
Because people are still waiting weeks for the honor of paying $250 for a mini. If the demand is there, why on earth would Apple choose to lower the price?
-Ted
And you use no goods made by corporations?
Looks like you need a good whack of the clue stick.
-Ted
Is that the official SEC term? I could've sworn is was mega-bung-load of revenue.
-Ted