Open source has made some inroads into broadcasting, but not many. For the most part anything in a radio station will run on Windows or a more proprietary system.
The starting point is usually sound recording and editing. Unfortunately the available Open Source products are still a fair distance from matching the functionality of say Adobe Audition or Pro Tools. Still though do check out Audacity for a simple editor which can handle many tasks.
Beyond editing there have been a few people in Canada who have developed Linux based audio logging systems, and stations in many places who catalog music using Open Source software.
Automation is still the land of proprietary software, although Scott Studios has been working on packages that run over Linux.
"But computer sophisticates say it reflects a willful ignorance of basic computer skills that goes well beyond virus etiquette. At a time when more than two-thirds of American adults use the Internet, they say, such carelessness is no longer excusable, particularly when it messes things up for everyone else."
Where does user inexperience end and bad design begin? Is it reasonable to say that inspecting file attachments for possible viruses is a "basic computer skill"? Especially when the return address is likely a person who you know and trust, possibly even your handy computer guru?
Trashing users is not really productive. Unless they live and breathe computers they are not going to keep up on every new variation of probelms, and shouldn't be expected to.
What we want ordinary users to do is maintain a reasonable level of security. Mostly that means running a decent virus checker and being prudent about attachments.
Telling people to never open attachments is just plain pointless - everyone on e-mail uses file attachments, and people are not going stop sending photos and jokes. It's reasonable for a user to see an attachment from a close friend, and again, even from their most trusted computer guru and assume that because it made it past Norton or AVG it must be OK to click it.
One of the biggest obstacles to making average users into safe computing people is the tech arrogance that leads to either calling them idiots, or to baffling them with reams of information that overwhelms instead of educating.
If you feel superior because of your immense knowledge of computing security, you should sit down by my mother-in-law, and see what she can do with her collection of $5000 computerized sewing machines. Her knowledge and skills far outstrip yours.
Although admittedly at 69 years old she's pretty darned good with a PC as well.
It strikes me that losing the hardware BIOS will almost certainly lead to some kind of DRM scheme - probably hardware related - that can't be bypassed by something like a boot floppy.
In fact, I really can't believe that DRM won't be built into whatever replaces the BIOS chip.
We had DirecTV while in Virginia, and Bell ExpressVu up here in Canada. In broad terms there really is no difference - lots of channels with nothing worth watching.
If you have very specific needs, study the channel lineups from each provider to make sure that you're not missing something. Also, if you feel a need for local channels, you may be limited to cable.
Yes, in heavy snow or rain you can lose the satelite signal, but then I've never had a cable provider that didn't also lose service from time to time. Try to mount your dish where it can be reached with a broom if you live in a snow prone region.
Two more thoughts:
If you move frequently it is easy to pull down and re-install a dish at your new house. Sat coordinates can be found in a number of places on-line.
My other suggestion, recently implemented here, is to take only the basic cable or Satellite service, and instead sign up for netflix or a similar DVD service. You'll get better selection than satellite or cable for movies, plus you're able to rent most popular series as a package and avoid the hassle of trying to see them when they air on the networks.
A number of people have pointed to the cost of non-salary benefits like health insurance. For comparison, here is what Cognizant, an off-shore IT outsourcing company lists as benefits packages for American and Indian employees. There is a notable difference.
Here's what GE Global Research offers in benefit packages to American , Indian and Chinese employees. Again, you can see that there are significant savings in benefit costs.
If you have lawyer experienced in employment law you should do fine. It's astonishing how quickly things can change when the letter comes from him or her instead of you.
This is a good example of why every employee should keep close records of the hours they work, and keep them off-site. It's a hassle, but in a situation like this having a written record can make all the difference.
In the end of it, this is what Free Trade is about: people.
Nonsense. Free Trade is about profit and nothing else. It is about allowing the free movement of goods and capital between countries so that corporate entities can maximize the returns to their investors.
As we have seen time and again, the free traders haven't the slightest interest in the well being of their own employees, much less the population of the country in which they operate.
Sadly in twenty or thirty years time North America will have lost most of it's manufacturing capacity. That's when countries like China or India will suddenly find themselves able to squeeze the US for every last nickle by jacking up the prices on items that can no longer be produced here.
Basically - all we need to do is this. We have a trusted institution like a bank or your local government office issue a digital ID to everyone who wishes to participate... purely voluntary.
1) Banks and government as "trusted"? This sounds like a wonderful way for both of them track every e-mail you send with no problem.
2) "Voluntary" will rapidly become mandatory.
No, for e-mail to remain useful and to ensure that those who need it can have privacy it is important that we develop technology that block the spammers while not further infringing on the privacy of users.
Unless of course the preceding message was a troll.
If your hours of tape are something that has to be transcribed accurately, don't waste your time trying to do it with a computer.
A person who does transcription for a living will do it faster, probably cheaper, and will be able to handle all of the quirks of human speech that will gum up the works of a voice to text program.
There are still places where a machine cannot match the quality of a real live person.
The only way to bind all software by U.S. export controls is to prevent foreign developers from creating software. "Perhaps SCO believes that only U.S. developers have the 'right' to develop software," OSAIA's Black said. "They should understand that it is a big world, and developers outside the U.S. have helped make the tech industry what it is today."
Remember when encryption came to browsers, and you had to certify that you were in the U.S. before you could download Netscape?
I'm thinking that there must be a fair number of software companies that are watching the U.S. government today and are thinking that similar export restrictions could once again become a significant problem.
I can see a day - say after Al Quaida manages an actual attack via the Internet - when Dick Cheney's mob makes it illegal to sell American software to Foreigners.
Perhaps some forward looking companies are moving significant parts of their programming offshore just to avoid this possibility.
As in "American software? No this is INDIAN software, so the American export rules don't apply!".
I think that the writer is looking for something that will allow them to reasonably securely be sure that the person in the other end is in fact who they say they are. I don't believe that IM can provide this level of authentication
My immediate thought is that perhaps what's needed is not a technological solution, but one that relies on personal knowledge of other participants. "Your mother's maiden name" is probably too obvious, but "the name of the stripper that we saw last Friday" would work.
Let me re-phrase. If I enter the name of a product of some sort into Google - say "sony minidisc MZE10" - I don't get useful information, I get literally dozens of links to stores trying to sell me one.
Or, if it's an older model, dozens of links to stores that used to stock it, but now don't have it.
I suppose I assumed that if the same half dozen on-line merchants come up again and again no matter what product I'm trying to research, then they are paying for placement.
In other words, for many things the highest ranking pages in Google are retail advertising, not sites that offer technical information or background that could enhance your purchase decision.
Google has reached the point where you either have to know all of the tricks to phrasing your queries, or get buried alive in shopping sites. For many things it's fast becoming more trouble that it's worth.
What are you talking about? Google never shows more than TWO ads at the top of the results, and they are pure text.
Not to nit pick, but a search for "water cooler" brings up FOUR "Product Search" links at the top:
Product Search: water cooler - $74.95 - BigNetStore Sunbeam Combo Water Cooler - $79.00 - Wal-Mart Hot and Cold Water Cooler with Built-In Refrigerator - $139.99 - Target Try Froogle: Search for water cooler and other products
This escalating war will probably continue for awhile yet, but the fundamental question remains.
How do we, the Internet using population, pay for it?
Pop-ups are very annoying, which is why Mozilla is set to block them. Spam is very annoying, which is why my ISP blocks most of that.
The seemingly endless paid listings at the top of Google are useless AND annoying, which is why I'm looking for other search engines. (Hmmm or maybe a Google plug-in that would block the junk listings and leave the legitimate content??)
Still, at the end of the day, how do all of these websites and services get paid for? You need only look at on-line newspapers to realize that every day more of them are placing the bulk of their content behind a gate that requires at least registration, and often a paid subscription.
Gawd - I can't recall the last time that a Slashdot discussion has so little of value in the follow up posts.
Surely anyone in the tech business should be considering why the 50% of the population without testicles is treated so shabbily. I mean, even car dealers eventually figured that one out and ditched the "little woman" attitudes.
I take great pride in watching my wife in big box electronic stores, dealing with sales drones who obviously know significantly less than she does. And it's not because she's a super tech geek (sure, she can upgrade gear but mostly she just wants every new toy and gadget), it's because so many of those guys don't have friggin' clue and make their living by bullshitting the customer.
Think about it - if the retail electronics culture consistently insults female customers, it's likely that the same attitudes show up at the corporate level. How about we survey a few dozen female execs and see how often they've walked away from million dollar tech purchases because the sales guys treated them like Barbie.
Don't get me wrong, I think light-use-DRM is fair (e.g. iTunes Music Store)... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Apple had double digit marketshare by 2010.
I honestly wouldn't surprised if Apple hardware had the same DRM as PC hardware by 2010. They've already nailed their users with the iTunes DRM, and I can see no reason why they won't continue down that road.
If nothing else, companies like Adobe, who are getting positivelynuts about fighting "pirates" will force them into it.
The University will be paying (probably a lot) to this company to check student papers for plagiarism. So how does the University measure whether it gets value for it's dollar?
Obviously it will look at the number of students who are reported to have plagiarized. If no students turn up as cheating, then either the company's scan doesn't work, or the University's students are so honest that there is no reason to pay for the service.
In either case, the company reviewing the papers has a pretty strong incentive to adjust their software to generate more positives. "Gee, well, we're just trying to err on the side of caution. It wouldn't be fair to the Good Students to let someone through who might be cheating!"
I'd even wager that the company in question has already projected that a certain number of papers will be rejected each year. What happens if they miss that agreed upon quota?
Sorry, but under these circumstances it seems unreasonable to suggest that some 19 year old student can successfully defend themselves against a large corporation that has already been endorsed by the University.
I fail to see anything in Garage Band that hasn't been around in all manner of sound recording apps for ages. Ho Hum.
It will allow dozens or hundreds of people to inflict home made tunes, packed with beats right out of a shopping mall organist, on unsuspecting friends and neighbours.
Oh well - it's a better than Karaoke.... since they're doing it at home and listening to it on their iPods, it won't interrupt my drinking!
"HD" Radio (formerly known as IBOC, or In Band on Channel), is an inferior technology which many have found less than awe inspiring. It's adoption in the U.S. is the result of politics and money, not technological superiority.
One reviewer above described IBOC thus: "Let's start with audio quality. It's my opinion that the current 96kb/s codec is incapable of reproducing even a simple male voice without generating objectionable artifacts. It gets worse with music. On the classical cut the strings were thin and harsh. For those of you who are broadcasting contemporary formats, the codec removes sibilance unnaturally, changes the timber of symbols and makes back up vocals strident. This is not CD-quality by a long shot. In fact, during my listening test I found that our station's plain old analog signal sounded better than the 96kb/s codec."
At the same time that the U.S. has locked themselves into IBOC, the rest of the world has been moving ahead with Eureka 147 DAB, a purely Digital technology without the legacy concerns. Fifty countries and counting, with DAB building steadily, especially in Europe.
The real question which bears some discussion is where and how people will be buying hardware in the future. For a long time Dell or Gateway could count on business because of their reputations. Those reputations seem to slipping.
If a couple of large companies aren't holding a large share of the market, who will? It's not likely to be the local computer store, which is less than welcoming to mom and pop. Judging by the lack of ongoing success thus far, companies like Wal-Mart or Sears won't be selling branded machines in any volume (and wouldn't want the support headaches anyhow).
I believe that there is a spot in the market right now for something new.
The problem with buying from retail outlets is that you get a one size fits all machine which usually isn't quite what you need or want. Maybe we'll see something along a Dell model, but aimed at non-business purchasers. On-line or phone sales, but allowing customers to customize the system for say music use, or gaming, or to downgrade for someone who just does e-mail and word processing.
Install the apps or games or features that the customer wants, and ignore the ones that they don't. Maybe offer a shiny branded Linux box that will do everything that the WinXp boxes do, but a bit cheaper.
There is a market of people who just want to buy a box that works, and who don't necessarily want all the extra gobbledy gook that retail systems include. If you can add quality customer service you can probably even charge a premium.
Remember, Dell's market wasn't built on price, it was built on a reputation for quality, for building the system that you needed (optional iupgrades tec), and for having top notch support.
Slashdot Mirror
Open source has made some inroads into broadcasting, but not many. For the most part anything in a radio station will run on Windows or a more proprietary system.
The starting point is usually sound recording and editing. Unfortunately the available Open Source products are still a fair distance from matching the functionality of say Adobe Audition or Pro Tools. Still though do check out Audacity for a simple editor which can handle many tasks.
Beyond editing there have been a few people in Canada who have developed Linux based audio logging systems, and stations in many places who catalog music using Open Source software.
Automation is still the land of proprietary software, although Scott Studios has been working on packages that run over Linux.
A good source for information (assuming you're a community radio station) is the member e-mail list for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters or either of the radio-tech or pub-tech mailing lists for broadcast engineers.
Finally, you might want to hook up with the Prometheus Radio Project, the leaders in community LPFM. Ask for Pete Tridish.
"But computer sophisticates say it reflects a willful ignorance of basic computer skills that goes well beyond virus etiquette. At a time when more than two-thirds of American adults use the Internet, they say, such carelessness is no longer excusable, particularly when it messes things up for everyone else."
Where does user inexperience end and bad design begin? Is it reasonable to say that inspecting file attachments for possible viruses is a "basic computer skill"? Especially when the return address is likely a person who you know and trust, possibly even your handy computer guru?
Trashing users is not really productive. Unless they live and breathe computers they are not going to keep up on every new variation of probelms, and shouldn't be expected to.
What we want ordinary users to do is maintain a reasonable level of security. Mostly that means running a decent virus checker and being prudent about attachments.
Telling people to never open attachments is just plain pointless - everyone on e-mail uses file attachments, and people are not going stop sending photos and jokes. It's reasonable for a user to see an attachment from a close friend, and again, even from their most trusted computer guru and assume that because it made it past Norton or AVG it must be OK to click it.
One of the biggest obstacles to making average users into safe computing people is the tech arrogance that leads to either calling them idiots, or to baffling them with reams of information that overwhelms instead of educating.
If you feel superior because of your immense knowledge of computing security, you should sit down by my mother-in-law, and see what she can do with her collection of $5000 computerized sewing machines. Her knowledge and skills far outstrip yours.
Although admittedly at 69 years old she's pretty darned good with a PC as well.
It strikes me that losing the hardware BIOS will almost certainly lead to some kind of DRM scheme - probably hardware related - that can't be bypassed by something like a boot floppy.
In fact, I really can't believe that DRM won't be built into whatever replaces the BIOS chip.
Course maybe I'm i'm just paranoid...
We had DirecTV while in Virginia, and Bell ExpressVu up here in Canada. In broad terms there really is no difference - lots of channels with nothing worth watching.
If you have very specific needs, study the channel lineups from each provider to make sure that you're not missing something. Also, if you feel a need for local channels, you may be limited to cable.
Yes, in heavy snow or rain you can lose the satelite signal, but then I've never had a cable provider that didn't also lose service from time to time. Try to mount your dish where it can be reached with a broom if you live in a snow prone region.
Two more thoughts:
If you move frequently it is easy to pull down and re-install a dish at your new house. Sat coordinates can be found in a number of places on-line.
My other suggestion, recently implemented here, is to take only the basic cable or Satellite service, and instead sign up for netflix or a similar DVD service. You'll get better selection than satellite or cable for movies, plus you're able to rent most popular series as a package and avoid the hassle of trying to see them when they air on the networks.
A number of people have pointed to the cost of non-salary benefits like health insurance. For comparison, here is what Cognizant, an off-shore IT outsourcing company lists as benefits packages for American and Indian employees. There is a notable difference.
Here's what GE Global Research offers in benefit packages to American , Indian and Chinese employees. Again, you can see that there are significant savings in benefit costs.
If you have lawyer experienced in employment law you should do fine. It's astonishing how quickly things can change when the letter comes from him or her instead of you.
This is a good example of why every employee should keep close records of the hours they work, and keep them off-site. It's a hassle, but in a situation like this having a written record can make all the difference.
In the end of it, this is what Free Trade is about: people.
Nonsense. Free Trade is about profit and nothing else. It is about allowing the free movement of goods and capital between countries so that corporate entities can maximize the returns to their investors.
As we have seen time and again, the free traders haven't the slightest interest in the well being of their own employees, much less the population of the country in which they operate.
Sadly in twenty or thirty years time North America will have lost most of it's manufacturing capacity. That's when countries like China or India will suddenly find themselves able to squeeze the US for every last nickle by jacking up the prices on items that can no longer be produced here.
I'm presuming that any government computer infrastructure has been destroyed, and that they will be more or less starting from scratch.
Am I correct in assuming that Microsoft is in there big time locking down contracts to rebuild government computing sytems?
Nobody in the hiring process cares!
Please, please do not fax an 8x10 photo of yourself!
Basically - all we need to do is this. We have a trusted institution like a bank or your local government office issue a digital ID to everyone who wishes to participate... purely voluntary.
1) Banks and government as "trusted"? This sounds like a wonderful way for both of them track every e-mail you send with no problem.
2) "Voluntary" will rapidly become mandatory.
No, for e-mail to remain useful and to ensure that those who need it can have privacy it is important that we develop technology that block the spammers while not further infringing on the privacy of users.
Unless of course the preceding message was a troll.
If your hours of tape are something that has to be transcribed accurately, don't waste your time trying to do it with a computer.
A person who does transcription for a living will do it faster, probably cheaper, and will be able to handle all of the quirks of human speech that will gum up the works of a voice to text program.
There are still places where a machine cannot match the quality of a real live person.
The problem is that your television and your Super-8 use different number of frames per second. (c. 30 vs 24)
Consequently getting a good copy to tape is not easy. Before video, TV stations used a telecine machine, which coverted 16mm film to video.
Finding someone to do it with 8mm is even tougher since the number of people filming on the format has stabilized at oh a couple thousand.
One resource to start with though is here or here or here.
The only way to bind all software by U.S. export controls is to prevent foreign developers from creating software. "Perhaps SCO believes that only U.S. developers have the 'right' to develop software," OSAIA's Black said. "They should understand that it is a big world, and developers outside the U.S. have helped make the tech industry what it is today."
Remember when encryption came to browsers, and you had to certify that you were in the U.S. before you could download Netscape?
I'm thinking that there must be a fair number of software companies that are watching the U.S. government today and are thinking that similar export restrictions could once again become a significant problem.
I can see a day - say after Al Quaida manages an actual attack via the Internet - when Dick Cheney's mob makes it illegal to sell American software to Foreigners.
Perhaps some forward looking companies are moving significant parts of their programming offshore just to avoid this possibility.
As in "American software? No this is INDIAN software, so the American export rules don't apply!".
Undoubtedly the RIAA will say that you, as the person who has the account with the ISP, are responsible for whatever data is transmitted.
And most likely that claim would stick, unless you chose to rat out your room mates.
I think that the writer is looking for something that will allow them to reasonably securely be sure that the person in the other end is in fact who they say they are. I don't believe that IM can provide this level of authentication
My immediate thought is that perhaps what's needed is not a technological solution, but one that relies on personal knowledge of other participants. "Your mother's maiden name" is probably too obvious, but "the name of the stripper that we saw last Friday" would work.
Let me re-phrase. If I enter the name of a product of some sort into Google - say "sony minidisc MZE10" - I don't get useful information, I get literally dozens of links to stores trying to sell me one.
Or, if it's an older model, dozens of links to stores that used to stock it, but now don't have it.
I suppose I assumed that if the same half dozen on-line merchants come up again and again no matter what product I'm trying to research, then they are paying for placement.
In other words, for many things the highest ranking pages in Google are retail advertising, not sites that offer technical information or background that could enhance your purchase decision.
Google has reached the point where you either have to know all of the tricks to phrasing your queries, or get buried alive in shopping sites. For many things it's fast becoming more trouble that it's worth.
What are you talking about? Google never shows more than TWO ads at the top of the results, and they are pure text.
Not to nit pick, but a search for "water cooler" brings up FOUR "Product Search" links at the top:
Product Search: water cooler - $74.95 - BigNetStore
Sunbeam Combo Water Cooler - $79.00 - Wal-Mart
Hot and Cold Water Cooler with Built-In Refrigerator - $139.99 - Target
Try Froogle: Search for water cooler and other products
And SEVEN sponsored links to the right.
All die hard PC users (and probably most Linux users as well) can read...
...and supply their own punchline.
The finer details of what's possible (like option-dragging in Preview) are kept from the average user simply in order to avoid confusion.
This escalating war will probably continue for awhile yet, but the fundamental question remains.
How do we, the Internet using population, pay for it?
Pop-ups are very annoying, which is why Mozilla is set to block them. Spam is very annoying, which is why my ISP blocks most of that.
The seemingly endless paid listings at the top of Google are useless AND annoying, which is why I'm looking for other search engines. (Hmmm or maybe a Google plug-in that would block the junk listings and leave the legitimate content??)
Still, at the end of the day, how do all of these websites and services get paid for? You need only look at on-line newspapers to realize that every day more of them are placing the bulk of their content behind a gate that requires at least registration, and often a paid subscription.
Check out this Sample Size Calculator.
In a nutshell, for 150,000,000 you need a sample of about a 1000 people to get a representative result.
Gawd - I can't recall the last time that a Slashdot discussion has so little of value in the follow up posts.
Surely anyone in the tech business should be considering why the 50% of the population without testicles is treated so shabbily. I mean, even car dealers eventually figured that one out and ditched the "little woman" attitudes.
I take great pride in watching my wife in big box electronic stores, dealing with sales drones who obviously know significantly less than she does. And it's not because she's a super tech geek (sure, she can upgrade gear but mostly she just wants every new toy and gadget), it's because so many of those guys don't have friggin' clue and make their living by bullshitting the customer.
Think about it - if the retail electronics culture consistently insults female customers, it's likely that the same attitudes show up at the corporate level. How about we survey a few dozen female execs and see how often they've walked away from million dollar tech purchases because the sales guys treated them like Barbie.
Don't get me wrong, I think light-use-DRM is fair (e.g. iTunes Music Store) ... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Apple had double digit marketshare by 2010.
I honestly wouldn't surprised if Apple hardware had the same DRM as PC hardware by 2010. They've already nailed their users with the iTunes DRM, and I can see no reason why they won't continue down that road.
If nothing else, companies like Adobe, who are getting positively nuts about fighting "pirates" will force them into it.
The University will be paying (probably a lot) to this company to check student papers for plagiarism. So how does the University measure whether it gets value for it's dollar?
Obviously it will look at the number of students who are reported to have plagiarized. If no students turn up as cheating, then either the company's scan doesn't work, or the University's students are so honest that there is no reason to pay for the service.
In either case, the company reviewing the papers has a pretty strong incentive to adjust their software to generate more positives. "Gee, well, we're just trying to err on the side of caution. It wouldn't be fair to the Good Students to let someone through who might be cheating!"
I'd even wager that the company in question has already projected that a certain number of papers will be rejected each year. What happens if they miss that agreed upon quota?
Sorry, but under these circumstances it seems unreasonable to suggest that some 19 year old student can successfully defend themselves against a large corporation that has already been endorsed by the University.
I fail to see anything in Garage Band that hasn't been around in all manner of sound recording apps for ages. Ho Hum.
It will allow dozens or hundreds of people to inflict home made tunes, packed with beats right out of a shopping mall organist, on unsuspecting friends and neighbours.
Oh well - it's a better than Karaoke.... since they're doing it at home and listening to it on their iPods, it won't interrupt my drinking!
"HD" Radio (formerly known as IBOC, or In Band on Channel), is an inferior technology which many have found less than awe inspiring. It's adoption in the U.S. is the result of politics and money, not technological superiority.
One reviewer above described IBOC thus: "Let's start with audio quality. It's my opinion that the current 96kb/s codec is incapable of reproducing even a simple male voice without generating objectionable artifacts. It gets worse with music. On the classical cut the strings were thin and harsh. For those of you who are broadcasting contemporary formats, the codec removes sibilance unnaturally, changes the timber of symbols and makes back up vocals strident. This is not CD-quality by a long shot. In fact, during my listening test I found that our station's plain old analog signal sounded better than the 96kb/s codec."
At the same time that the U.S. has locked themselves into IBOC, the rest of the world has been moving ahead with Eureka 147 DAB, a purely Digital technology without the legacy concerns. Fifty countries and counting, with DAB building steadily, especially in Europe.
The real question which bears some discussion is where and how people will be buying hardware in the future. For a long time Dell or Gateway could count on business because of their reputations. Those reputations seem to slipping.
If a couple of large companies aren't holding a large share of the market, who will? It's not likely to be the local computer store, which is less than welcoming to mom and pop. Judging by the lack of ongoing success thus far, companies like Wal-Mart or Sears won't be selling branded machines in any volume (and wouldn't want the support headaches anyhow).
I believe that there is a spot in the market right now for something new.
The problem with buying from retail outlets is that you get a one size fits all machine which usually isn't quite what you need or want. Maybe we'll see something along a Dell model, but aimed at non-business purchasers. On-line or phone sales, but allowing customers to customize the system for say music use, or gaming, or to downgrade for someone who just does e-mail and word processing.
Install the apps or games or features that the customer wants, and ignore the ones that they don't. Maybe offer a shiny branded Linux box that will do everything that the WinXp boxes do, but a bit cheaper.
There is a market of people who just want to buy a box that works, and who don't necessarily want all the extra gobbledy gook that retail systems include. If you can add quality customer service you can probably even charge a premium.
Remember, Dell's market wasn't built on price, it was built on a reputation for quality, for building the system that you needed (optional iupgrades tec), and for having top notch support.