Different design goals means different design outcomes. I wasn't talking about the iPod interface at all, I was explaining why/how the iPod gets it's 12 hour battery life and performance.
Since you don't care about the battery life or performance, then the design artifacts necessary to achieve those two goals actually become impediments to your adoption.
See, I only use rechargeable AAs; so the act of charging a AA vs charging an iPod is negligible, so rechargin an iPod every day (if I listen to it for 10 hours) or every week (if I listen to it for an hour a day) doesn't hurt me. I also have a cell phone I charge every week, so that habit is already there. I actually like that I can listen to my iPod for 10 hours at a time, so that's useful to me.
The other design artifact of a proprietary battery is size... but if you are happy with a RioVolt SP250, then size is obviously not an issue for you, either.
My iPod fits in my pocket, lasts the entire drive from here to the bay area (5 hours), and also happens to have 25 minutes of skip protection for free because of it's design. Those things are valuable to me, as well as the ability to access all my favorite songs without swapping disks (about 3.4gb right now, which would translate to 6 CDs to your 12. Man, you've got twice as much music as me! Your collection wouldn't even FIT on an iPod mini!).
The fact that the iPod sells well may mean nothing to you, but you still have to accept the fact that it is true and that you can't separate it's success from it's marketing, design, and functionality.
So you have brains, whoohoo. Doesn't that mean you understand that you should do what you are good at (choosing songs to play, rating songs you like, deleting songs you don't) and that you let the computer do what it's good at (organizing, sorting, storing, categorizing, indexing, and compiling the songs)?
The proprietary software interface does two things that make the iPod so successful: It creates an index of all your songs and playlists to increase performance and to increase battery life.
This index is stored in ram so that when you browse genres, artists, ID3 tags, playlists, and albums, the hard disk is never hit. That makes it super fast, efficient, and reduces the amount the hard drive ever spins up.
Does that mean, because you have a brain, that you want to compile the index yourself? Or that the iPod should tax it's resources (battery and CPU) doing so?
Another thing about iTunes (and it's proprietary interface) is that if you so wish you CAN create your own directory structure for all your albums, CDs, artists, etc. Then all iTunes does is upload (and don't you know, since the iPod is mounted as a firewire mass storage device, it uploads it as a straight file transfer) the songs and the index. Nothing else.
But maybe you already knew that? Because that's pretty direct, to me. Plug in the iPod, wait one minute, unplug the iPod.
It may take a decade to surface, but I think it's self correcting: See Microsoft, Apple, and Linux.
If Google really does have such a rich source of revenue, it makes lots of sense for a competitor to come up and try to take it from them. So the richer they get, the more likely someone will come to challenge them.
Linux is of course slightly different because it wasn't born of profit, but born of the desire for a better product than Windows. Apple is a mix of both. We'll see what happens in the next 10 years and if my optimism is warranted.
The number one MP3 player happens to use proprietary batteries, therefore validating the concept that proprietary batteries aren't bad. People DO buy them iPods after all. That and the batteries are servicable and replaceable!
The iPod already has one of the most intuitive and time tested interfaces.
And the iPod uses a proprietary software interface to sort and upload music. That has NOT stopped it's adoption, so again this shows that users don't care. At least, not enough users care. You may, but not the rest of the world who buys iPods.
So you acknowledge that third party voters are important?
The problem is that neither Kerry nor Bush really want my vote (the one who says, "Smaller government, therefore less deficit/debt, therefore more paycheck!" wins my vote).
Just because my candidate isn't electable doesn't mean my vote is thrown away; nor anyone else's.
Any vote not with a Dem or Rep gets noted because that's a vote the losing party should (and if they are smart, will) court, this time, next time, and forever.
If Kerry loses because enough people vote third, then the Democratic party will pay attention to us in the next election. If Bush loses because enough people vote third, then the Republican party will pay attention to us next time too.
Either way, our votes ARE important. Otherwise that entire Florida/Gore/Bush thing would never have happened.
I can't say I disagree. I would be scared if we had a Libertarian Congress, Judiciary, and President... but I honestly don't think that would or could happen because not enough of the population IS Libertarian. Realistically our president should reflect our Congress because both happen to be elected by the people.
So I vote for the one that reflects my attitudes the most, even if I'm scared of their policies because I'm sure that my view would be moderated by the majority view.
As a Libertarian I don't want our country to be isolationist, but I do want our country to spend less on government, and let me keep more of my paycheck!
I want to CHANGE things. The only way to change things is to do something different.
If we kept doing the same things every four years (vote for the lesser evil) then we should never expect the situation to get better.
Here are the reasons NOT to vote for the lesser evil. I'm 27 now. I will get a chance to vote (and change things) every four years. If I live to 100 (not unlikely), that's 18 more elections. 18 chances to change something in my lifetime.
Every election that comes around, I try to convince more people to vote their conscience. It can only go up, because as it stands most people vote for the lesser evil. If only 50% of the population vote, and only 26% are needed to elect a president, then it only takes me convincing one out of four people to radically change the process, if those people also go out and try to induce change.
It ONLY takes 25% of the population to permanently change the institution. That's because only 50% vote right now. If even 10% voted their conscience, that would mean Democratic and Republican candidates would have to fight, and differentiate, to win.
And a last question for you: Since when has voting for a lesser evil actually done any GOOD? Here's counter cynicism for you: We are screwed regardless of whether Kerry or Bush wins. With that stipulation, then, it doesn't MATTER if Bush OR Kerry wins. If that is true, and voting third party allows Bush OR Kerry (it doesn't matter which), at least you've registered your vote.
If instead you vote for Bush or Kerry, you are only propogating the institution.
My logic only works if you acknowledge that we are screwed regardless if Bush or Kerry win, and as such voting for either is actually useless.
So why not vote independent then and let the responsibility of screwing up the country fall on someone who didn't vote their conscience? At least you will have voted responsibly.
Especially if both of them are the same (I think so!). Vote Libertarian or Green or whatever you think would do a better job as president. Keep in mind any president would be moderated by a cabinet, a House and Senate, and a judiciary, and as such there's only so much damage a president can do, and only so much change he can affect.
Your iMac G5 has two fans. Not much space left for additional cooling, really, without interfering with the current cooling setup.
Your PowerMac G5 has nine fans. Again, not much space left for additional cooling without interfering.
And get this, the PowerMac G5 already uses a liquid cooling setup. The only possible additional mod is to hook the current setup to a resevoir and radiator on the outside of the case, as the inside already has a radiator per CPU and something like a 120mm fan per CPU.
Your logic is, "Skipping the publishers is a bad thing, as they fund the new games."
But the whole point of skipping the publishers is to get enough money so the developers can "fund the new games". And when you get to that point, WHY do we, as gamers, or developers, need or want publishers?
Easy. The president represents the STATES. United States.
The State is supposed to represent and protect you.
If we go to some form of popular vote, that means the power of the states have actually been taken away, and given to the President, in the sense that the President only has to care about big cities: the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, etc.
Right now he has to court the 'swing states', but with popular vote, he'd court 'swing cities'. It changes the balance of power. The Founding Fathers had a two tier system in mind: Federal power and State power, and over the past 200 years Federal power has been growing at the expense of State power, and by proxy personal power since a person has MUCH more pull in a local situation than a global situation.
It only takes one favorite song from one favorite album to be perceptibly different from the 'lossless' copy for someone to switch... and then as copies in the newer format accumulate, eventually you have an entire collection in something other than mp3.
I had a handful of songs with cymbals and bells that sounded horrible in MP3 unless I was running at 224+ kbps... until I found out that they didn't sound horrible at all in AAC at 160kbps... and over the course of the past three years my entire collection is nearly all converted to AAC. That, and purchasing a 5gb iPod necessitated the conversion of 8gb of music into a lower kbps... and now I have 13gb of music ^^;
So an iPod is INSURANCE. If you have a $3,000 CD collection (say half used, half new, $8 for used, $16 for new, $24 for two CDs, then $3k is 250 CDs, if there is 50 minutes of music per CD and you rip at 1mb/minute, that's 12500mb or 12.5gb of music) a $400 iPod is CHEAP insurance vs getting CDs scratched, lost, or stolen.
If you have a $6,000 CD collection, then you have 25gb of music. If you rip at higher than 128kbps, but say 224kbps, then a $6k CD collection will take approximately 50gb!
So iPods really do make sense if you've been buying 2 CDs a month for the past 10 years (that's 24 a year, 240 total).
You know, iTunes doesn't erase the contents of the hard drive, only the special hidden music folders.
So if the albums were stored on a disk image, say a CD, or multiple CDs, or something, on the drive, they wouldn't get erased unless the user erased them.
And then when they get mounted by the OS, iTunes should be able to recognize them as CDs. Which means that iTunes can also import them. Even if they are mounted as disk images, iTunes can still import them into the library.
So technically there's nothing stopping: Disk image containing all the songs on the drive (but not in the music folder) Said disk image automounted when the iPod is plugged in Said songs on said disk image imported by iTunes automatically (or prompted to at least) Said library created by iTunes is automatically (unless told otherwise) synched to the iPod
The only spoiler is that people want to vote for someone other than Bush or Kerry, and I think that's great. If more people voted their conscience and voted for what was better, we wouldn't even have to choose between Bush or Kerry! It would be Badnarik vs Nader vs Kerry vs Bush vs anyone else qualified to run.
No living being deserves to be treated like a simple chemical sensor; but everyone born with asthma already is. Heck, everyone in LA is too.
The issue is whether we are talking ethics or effectiveness. A guppy is very effective. Is a guppy chemical sensor also ethical?
How about monitoring fish already present in existing waterways? What if those fish were stocked? Wired/Tagged?
Unfortunately that this is even an issue means we screwed up because the water is already potentially dirty. The best fix then is to clean up the water, and avoid the whole issue, right?
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Different design goals means different design outcomes. I wasn't talking about the iPod interface at all, I was explaining why/how the iPod gets it's 12 hour battery life and performance.
Since you don't care about the battery life or performance, then the design artifacts necessary to achieve those two goals actually become impediments to your adoption.
See, I only use rechargeable AAs; so the act of charging a AA vs charging an iPod is negligible, so rechargin an iPod every day (if I listen to it for 10 hours) or every week (if I listen to it for an hour a day) doesn't hurt me. I also have a cell phone I charge every week, so that habit is already there. I actually like that I can listen to my iPod for 10 hours at a time, so that's useful to me.
The other design artifact of a proprietary battery is size... but if you are happy with a RioVolt SP250, then size is obviously not an issue for you, either.
My iPod fits in my pocket, lasts the entire drive from here to the bay area (5 hours), and also happens to have 25 minutes of skip protection for free because of it's design. Those things are valuable to me, as well as the ability to access all my favorite songs without swapping disks (about 3.4gb right now, which would translate to 6 CDs to your 12. Man, you've got twice as much music as me! Your collection wouldn't even FIT on an iPod mini!).
The fact that the iPod sells well may mean nothing to you, but you still have to accept the fact that it is true and that you can't separate it's success from it's marketing, design, and functionality.
So you have brains, whoohoo. Doesn't that mean you understand that you should do what you are good at (choosing songs to play, rating songs you like, deleting songs you don't) and that you let the computer do what it's good at (organizing, sorting, storing, categorizing, indexing, and compiling the songs)?
The proprietary software interface does two things that make the iPod so successful:
It creates an index of all your songs and playlists to increase performance and to increase battery life.
This index is stored in ram so that when you browse genres, artists, ID3 tags, playlists, and albums, the hard disk is never hit. That makes it super fast, efficient, and reduces the amount the hard drive ever spins up.
Does that mean, because you have a brain, that you want to compile the index yourself? Or that the iPod should tax it's resources (battery and CPU) doing so?
Another thing about iTunes (and it's proprietary interface) is that if you so wish you CAN create your own directory structure for all your albums, CDs, artists, etc. Then all iTunes does is upload (and don't you know, since the iPod is mounted as a firewire mass storage device, it uploads it as a straight file transfer) the songs and the index. Nothing else.
But maybe you already knew that? Because that's pretty direct, to me. Plug in the iPod, wait one minute, unplug the iPod.
It may take a decade to surface, but I think it's self correcting: See Microsoft, Apple, and Linux.
If Google really does have such a rich source of revenue, it makes lots of sense for a competitor to come up and try to take it from them. So the richer they get, the more likely someone will come to challenge them.
Linux is of course slightly different because it wasn't born of profit, but born of the desire for a better product than Windows. Apple is a mix of both. We'll see what happens in the next 10 years and if my optimism is warranted.
The number one MP3 player happens to use proprietary batteries, therefore validating the concept that proprietary batteries aren't bad. People DO buy them iPods after all. That and the batteries are servicable and replaceable!
The iPod already has one of the most intuitive and time tested interfaces.
And the iPod uses a proprietary software interface to sort and upload music. That has NOT stopped it's adoption, so again this shows that users don't care. At least, not enough users care. You may, but not the rest of the world who buys iPods.
It's very unfortunate for you.
So you acknowledge that third party voters are important?
The problem is that neither Kerry nor Bush really want my vote (the one who says, "Smaller government, therefore less deficit/debt, therefore more paycheck!" wins my vote).
Just because my candidate isn't electable doesn't mean my vote is thrown away; nor anyone else's.
Any vote not with a Dem or Rep gets noted because that's a vote the losing party should (and if they are smart, will) court, this time, next time, and forever.
If Kerry loses because enough people vote third, then the Democratic party will pay attention to us in the next election. If Bush loses because enough people vote third, then the Republican party will pay attention to us next time too.
Either way, our votes ARE important. Otherwise that entire Florida/Gore/Bush thing would never have happened.
I can't say I disagree. I would be scared if we had a Libertarian Congress, Judiciary, and President... but I honestly don't think that would or could happen because not enough of the population IS Libertarian. Realistically our president should reflect our Congress because both happen to be elected by the people.
So I vote for the one that reflects my attitudes the most, even if I'm scared of their policies because I'm sure that my view would be moderated by the majority view.
As a Libertarian I don't want our country to be isolationist, but I do want our country to spend less on government, and let me keep more of my paycheck!
Kerry isn't sufficiently good enough to make a difference to me. My tax dollars will STILL be wasted under Kerry.
I want to CHANGE things. The only way to change things is to do something different.
If we kept doing the same things every four years (vote for the lesser evil) then we should never expect the situation to get better.
Here are the reasons NOT to vote for the lesser evil.
I'm 27 now. I will get a chance to vote (and change things) every four years. If I live to 100 (not unlikely), that's 18 more elections. 18 chances to change something in my lifetime.
Every election that comes around, I try to convince more people to vote their conscience. It can only go up, because as it stands most people vote for the lesser evil. If only 50% of the population vote, and only 26% are needed to elect a president, then it only takes me convincing one out of four people to radically change the process, if those people also go out and try to induce change.
It ONLY takes 25% of the population to permanently change the institution. That's because only 50% vote right now. If even 10% voted their conscience, that would mean Democratic and Republican candidates would have to fight, and differentiate, to win.
And a last question for you: Since when has voting for a lesser evil actually done any GOOD? Here's counter cynicism for you:
We are screwed regardless of whether Kerry or Bush wins. With that stipulation, then, it doesn't MATTER if Bush OR Kerry wins. If that is true, and voting third party allows Bush OR Kerry (it doesn't matter which), at least you've registered your vote.
If instead you vote for Bush or Kerry, you are only propogating the institution.
My logic only works if you acknowledge that we are screwed regardless if Bush or Kerry win, and as such voting for either is actually useless.
So why not vote independent then and let the responsibility of screwing up the country fall on someone who didn't vote their conscience? At least you will have voted responsibly.
Especially if both of them are the same (I think so!). Vote Libertarian or Green or whatever you think would do a better job as president. Keep in mind any president would be moderated by a cabinet, a House and Senate, and a judiciary, and as such there's only so much damage a president can do, and only so much change he can affect.
Oh, and I found this. What's interesting is that this mod is to make the Mac even quieter, and not more performant.
Your iMac G5 has two fans. Not much space left for additional cooling, really, without interfering with the current cooling setup.
Your PowerMac G5 has nine fans. Again, not much space left for additional cooling without interfering.
And get this, the PowerMac G5 already uses a liquid cooling setup. The only possible additional mod is to hook the current setup to a resevoir and radiator on the outside of the case, as the inside already has a radiator per CPU and something like a 120mm fan per CPU.
Your logic is, "Skipping the publishers is a bad thing, as they fund the new games."
But the whole point of skipping the publishers is to get enough money so the developers can "fund the new games". And when you get to that point, WHY do we, as gamers, or developers, need or want publishers?
Easy. The president represents the STATES. United States.
The State is supposed to represent and protect you.
If we go to some form of popular vote, that means the power of the states have actually been taken away, and given to the President, in the sense that the President only has to care about big cities: the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, etc.
Right now he has to court the 'swing states', but with popular vote, he'd court 'swing cities'. It changes the balance of power. The Founding Fathers had a two tier system in mind: Federal power and State power, and over the past 200 years Federal power has been growing at the expense of State power, and by proxy personal power since a person has MUCH more pull in a local situation than a global situation.
It only takes one favorite song from one favorite album to be perceptibly different from the 'lossless' copy for someone to switch... and then as copies in the newer format accumulate, eventually you have an entire collection in something other than mp3.
I had a handful of songs with cymbals and bells that sounded horrible in MP3 unless I was running at 224+ kbps... until I found out that they didn't sound horrible at all in AAC at 160kbps... and over the course of the past three years my entire collection is nearly all converted to AAC. That, and purchasing a 5gb iPod necessitated the conversion of 8gb of music into a lower kbps... and now I have 13gb of music ^^;
Like a CD?
Or a backup?
What's wrong with two copies?
Alternatively, Apple COULD just bundle a CD containing all the songs as AACs.
Why couldn't the disk image be full of Fairplay encoded songs that iTunes would import JUST like a song it downloads off the internet from the iTMS?
Except instead of downloading off the internet, it would download off the CD, and upload the proper codes to the iTMS?
If each iPod has unique Fairplay associated copy of U2's songs, does that qualify for 'custom'?
So an iPod is INSURANCE.
If you have a $3,000 CD collection (say half used, half new, $8 for used, $16 for new, $24 for two CDs, then $3k is 250 CDs, if there is 50 minutes of music per CD and you rip at 1mb/minute, that's 12500mb or 12.5gb of music) a $400 iPod is CHEAP insurance vs getting CDs scratched, lost, or stolen.
If you have a $6,000 CD collection, then you have 25gb of music. If you rip at higher than 128kbps, but say 224kbps, then a $6k CD collection will take approximately 50gb!
So iPods really do make sense if you've been buying 2 CDs a month for the past 10 years (that's 24 a year, 240 total).
You know, iTunes doesn't erase the contents of the hard drive, only the special hidden music folders.
So if the albums were stored on a disk image, say a CD, or multiple CDs, or something, on the drive, they wouldn't get erased unless the user erased them.
And then when they get mounted by the OS, iTunes should be able to recognize them as CDs. Which means that iTunes can also import them. Even if they are mounted as disk images, iTunes can still import them into the library.
So technically there's nothing stopping:
Disk image containing all the songs on the drive (but not in the music folder)
Said disk image automounted when the iPod is plugged in
Said songs on said disk image imported by iTunes automatically (or prompted to at least)
Said library created by iTunes is automatically (unless told otherwise) synched to the iPod
The Apple iPod has user replaceable batteries!
:)
Google it, if you don't believe me
What do you mean?
The only spoiler is that people want to vote for someone other than Bush or Kerry, and I think that's great. If more people voted their conscience and voted for what was better, we wouldn't even have to choose between Bush or Kerry! It would be Badnarik vs Nader vs Kerry vs Bush vs anyone else qualified to run.
Better, cooler
A smaller or cheaper device doesn't kill the iPod because the iPod isn't successful because it's small and cheap.
No living being deserves to be treated like a simple chemical sensor; but everyone born with asthma already is. Heck, everyone in LA is too.
The issue is whether we are talking ethics or effectiveness. A guppy is very effective. Is a guppy chemical sensor also ethical?
How about monitoring fish already present in existing waterways?
What if those fish were stocked?
Wired/Tagged?
Unfortunately that this is even an issue means we screwed up because the water is already potentially dirty. The best fix then is to clean up the water, and avoid the whole issue, right?
What do you think guppies are, if not chemical sensors?