Why is everyone getting all het up about this? MSN say there are some problems with Google. Fine, if that's what they think then let them fix it and we'll see if they were right.
Plus everyone seemed to miss this bit of the article:
You can't really hold Google responsible for these blind spots. Each of them is just a reflection of the way the Web has been organized by the millions who have contributed to its structure. But the existence of Googleholes suggests an important caveat to the Google-as-oracle rhetoric: Google may be the closest thing going to a vision of the "group mind," but that mind is shaped by the interests and habits of the people who create hypertext links. A group mind decides that Apple Computer is more relevant than the apples that you eat, but that group doesn't speak for everybody.
Which is a fair enough point. Sometimes what I'm looking for is not what Google thinks I'm looking for and I have to tailor my searches somewhat.
But if MS included an option to ignore certain sites (such as shopping, blogs etc.etc) then I'd take a look.
The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon. "
Or perhaps, in French, 'le ban' is translated as, "it would be nice if you didn't do this"...
Well sort of. They're enforcing the change for all government documents, publications and web sites - not the general public or businesses.
The best way a government can get a new word accepted by the public is to practise what they preach.
So, just say 7 hours. Unless of course sustained usage drains the battery faster.
Either way that's pretty good since my iPaq can now barely run for 45 minutes without a charge
You're compairing the battery life of a brand new device with a PDA you've had for how long? Over 6 months? Hell, you're compairing the marketing spin from Sony about it's battery life against something a little more real world.
I think it's more an issue of 9 out of 10 people don't know there's a better browser out there, so they use what comes with their computer.
Personally I'd say it's more like 9 out of 10 people are perfectly happy with what they have and don't want to move away from something they're comfortable with.
Which is exactly the same as saying 9 out of 10 people don't want Mozilla.
(after all, if they did want an alternative, they'd have downloaded it - which is what we all did)
1. Low quality and / or fixed format files. MP3 has a large market penetration and LAME is a great codec for 99% of the material, but I'd like to be able to download FLAC, WAV, OGG, or something else. Preferably a clean open lossless standard i.e. FLAC
Whilst I have no doubt that other file format would be a good thing, don't forget that by supporting OGG and FLAC you're really only going after the small percentage of users that would use this format (compared to MP3).
I know this is a terrible thing to say on here given that many people on Slashdot use these formats, but Slashdot isn't indicative of the general public and you have to balance the effort and cost involved in providing these features with the money you're going to make by doing so.
By all means put them in, but first start with MP3, run a few polls (target the top 20% of users) and if there is a large enough requirement go for the other formats. Someone saying "go with FLAC" on a different website is not much use if they don't actually use the service and might not ever intend so. You need to listen to the opinions of actual users.
You don't want to get into a situation where you have spent time and money developing a solution to provide alternative formats only to find that 7 people actually use it.
Of course, you could easily claim that by taking this approach you're not helping the rise of alternative formats - and you'd be right. But it all depends on whether you are prepared to sink extra money in to support your ideal. If you are, then do it. If you aren't - stick with the tried and true.
At least with the latter, once the concept has shown to work (and you have made money) then you can use that to work on the other formats and cope with the monetary loss if it isn't as popular as you'd hoped it would be.
Re:A lot of folks are missing the point completely
on
All The Rave
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's the income that is theft/stolen (revenue) not the music/cds/files.
Actually, it's the potential income that is stolen.
The problem is that it's very difficult to prove that had a user not been able to download the song, that they would have gone out and bought it.
30 Million users is no joke... When an Internet commerce site starts getting complaints that AOL users can't navigate their site, or buy their wares, they're going to clean up that spaghetti web code quickly.
Of course, not all will be using Windows and not all will be interested in purchasing goods but lets just take the figures for Europe, Asia/Pacific and America which is 560.82 million.
Assume that 90% of people use Windows and IE (which probably isn't too far off).
Therefore in total, the 30 million users that will be using AOL's Mozilla browser will be the ones standing out from a pool of 504.738 million. Put another way, for every 1 complaining AOL'er there will be 16 content people.
Whether this a big enough dent is up to the reader to decide.
FWIW, Opera has a special version of their browser, with the ability to render the usual webduhsigners fixed width websites on small screens. Check out Opera's Small-Screen Rendering.
If you don't use Opera, then you can use some CSS to achieve pretty much the same.
When will slashdot stop linking to articles that require a registration?
When will slashdot consider implementing caching for pages that, by linking to, they manage to take off the internet?
Sure, the 2nd question has been answered in the FAQ. Except it was written three years ago and Google manages this just fine. Maybe time for a second look?
On the topic of site updates, has anyone noticed that 90% of the links on http://slashdot.org/code.shtml don't work any more?
Hell the link to an Avantgo version of Slashdot points to a website which has been broken for over 2 years.
I assume you mean Xbox? You must come from some other planet where "3rd best selling out of 3" equates to "leader in the field".
I read a while back (not sure where) that in Europe the XBox was 2nd best selling console after the Playstation (obviously). I can't talk for the US or Asia but I would assume the Gamecube is strong in the latter and the XBox a bit of a non-starter.
In fact, in the UK, retailers are dropping prices so drastically in an attempt to get rid of them. Both Argos and Dixon's (two big retailers) have announced the desire to get rid of their stock and not refresh it.
Funnily enough, Argos was discounting it's Gamecube so much that it was actually cheaper to purchase it and a copy of Metroid Prime than it was to pick up the Nintendo official bundle.
... the majority of people (ie. non Slashdot crowd) who will buy a PDA don't give a flying toss about what the underlying operating system is.
For them:
It must do all the general PIM stuff well
It must be stable
It must be feature rich
It must support whatever media they currently use (MMC, SD etc.etc)
It must sync with their computer (note they say "computer" when they generally mean "windows").
The fact that it's Linux based is not going to be a major selling point. When your data is on MC and CF cards, thats a major selling point.
A story: One of my co-workers asked me what I thought about the up and coming Linux based Motorola phone. My comment was that the fact it was running Linux makes absolutely no difference. If Motorola implement the same horribly awkward , difficult to use and ugly interface that they have then nothing will have really changed.
The underlying OS is largely irrelevant, it's what runs on top that makes all the difference.
The main problem with.Net is that it ties you to a specific OS which makes it a pain from a business economics point of view
The main problem with Office and Exchange is that they also tie you to a specific OS. Yet they seem to have done rather well.
I'm sure.Net has many failings, but only being tied to one OS' is probably not the vast majority of companies lists. There are plenty of places out there that are happily MS-centric.
I wonder how many fans will be excited about being sued? Even if J.K. has a full right to do so, suing your fanbase isn't the smartest or most polite thing to do.
So what do you propose they do? Stand back and let people piss all over your copyright because they're just fans?
Just because they are doesn't mean they're immune to general laws.
If they're that much of a fan, they'll buy it when the official translation comes out... along with the mug, hat, special edition fluffy toy... etc. etc.
Tell them the only difference between what they did and "filesharing" is that the RIAA bribed a bunch of politicians to declare the digital version is illegal and that the tape version is explicitly legal.
... and they'll tell you that when you tape a song off the radio, no third party can get your IP, find out your home address from your ISP and then attempt to sue you.
For example: you know how your flip phone has that single line of text for caller ID or whatever on the outside? What if it had a whole screen, and you could see the person's picture when the called.
This has already been done. See the Nokia 7650, Nokia 3650 and Sagem MY X-6 for three examples.
How about if it were a viewfinder for a now-smaller ELF like camera? It is clunky moving an open phone around to take pictures.
Look out for the Samsung P400. It doesn't use OLED technology but the entire display rotates around so you can close it with the screen outwards. Good for taking photos without the phone being open.
Today's keyboards aren't what they used to be, no sir!
Indeed. Today's keyboards can be picked up for less than a fiver. Try picking one up for that price back in the "old days".
There are plenty of good keyboards out there, but because the PC market is often dictated by price, you see more of the cheap ones than you do anything else.
Then you arent tied to Microsoft for your updates/licenses/applications/privacy/etc.. You can do as you please.. Its called 'freedom'..
Unless you're a seasoned Linux (on a PDA) programmer with masses of free time and energy - which rules out 99% of people on the planet - you're going to be tied to someone somewhere for your updates/licenses/applications/privacy/etc..
Otherwise being able to do "what you please" is pretty much a pipe dream.
Because MS has shown that it isn't unlike a drug dealer: the first one is always free. Just wait until the industry is hooked and a hopeless addict and then jack the prices up to rediculous levels.
And this is different from every other company and market in what way?
I have a IBM thinkpad with a winmodem running debian, never had any problems with it. Heck I've even got the infrared port running.
How did you manage it? I've got a Thinkpad T21 (I think, could be a T25) and Redhat 9 and it completely fails to find the modem. I don't care too much about IR but getting net access would mean I don't have to keep shifting into Win2k to download something.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never seen the attraction of assigning an IP to your left testicle, but whatever turns you on I suppose.
Plus everyone seemed to miss this bit of the article:
You can't really hold Google responsible for these blind spots. Each of them is just a reflection of the way the Web has been organized by the millions who have contributed to its structure. But the existence of Googleholes suggests an important caveat to the Google-as-oracle rhetoric: Google may be the closest thing going to a vision of the "group mind," but that mind is shaped by the interests and habits of the people who create hypertext links. A group mind decides that Apple Computer is more relevant than the apples that you eat, but that group doesn't speak for everybody.
Which is a fair enough point. Sometimes what I'm looking for is not what Google thinks I'm looking for and I have to tailor my searches somewhat.
But if MS included an option to ignore certain sites (such as shopping, blogs etc.etc) then I'd take a look.
Or perhaps, in French, 'le ban' is translated as, "it would be nice if you didn't do this"...
Well sort of. They're enforcing the change for all government documents, publications and web sites - not the general public or businesses.
The best way a government can get a new word accepted by the public is to practise what they preach.
Hardly.
However, what I said is still true, though unfair, sure.
Marketing spin will always win out on real world facts. Look at Sony's battery claims for other Clié's and then how long they really last.
Calm yourself, maybe?
Hardly.
Either way that's pretty good since my iPaq can now barely run for 45 minutes without a charge
You're compairing the battery life of a brand new device with a PDA you've had for how long? Over 6 months? Hell, you're compairing the marketing spin from Sony about it's battery life against something a little more real world.
Tad unfair maybe?
This would be assuming that you're making something that can sit underneath the television so it would have to be:
- Small
- Quiet (no, make that very quiet)
- Remote control
- Big HD
- Fast enough processor
- Good enough video card
- Enough memory
So what did you use? Would you use the same again? How much did it cost you? Was what you used powerful enough?Personally I'd say it's more like 9 out of 10 people are perfectly happy with what they have and don't want to move away from something they're comfortable with.
Which is exactly the same as saying 9 out of 10 people don't want Mozilla.
(after all, if they did want an alternative, they'd have downloaded it - which is what we all did)
Whilst I have no doubt that other file format would be a good thing, don't forget that by supporting OGG and FLAC you're really only going after the small percentage of users that would use this format (compared to MP3).
I know this is a terrible thing to say on here given that many people on Slashdot use these formats, but Slashdot isn't indicative of the general public and you have to balance the effort and cost involved in providing these features with the money you're going to make by doing so.
By all means put them in, but first start with MP3, run a few polls (target the top 20% of users) and if there is a large enough requirement go for the other formats. Someone saying "go with FLAC" on a different website is not much use if they don't actually use the service and might not ever intend so. You need to listen to the opinions of actual users.
You don't want to get into a situation where you have spent time and money developing a solution to provide alternative formats only to find that 7 people actually use it.
Of course, you could easily claim that by taking this approach you're not helping the rise of alternative formats - and you'd be right. But it all depends on whether you are prepared to sink extra money in to support your ideal. If you are, then do it. If you aren't - stick with the tried and true.
At least with the latter, once the concept has shown to work (and you have made money) then you can use that to work on the other formats and cope with the monetary loss if it isn't as popular as you'd hoped it would be.
Actually, it's the potential income that is stolen.
The problem is that it's very difficult to prove that had a user not been able to download the song, that they would have gone out and bought it.
The total number of world users of the internet was 605.60 million in 2002. (source: Nua Internet: How many users online)
Of course, not all will be using Windows and not all will be interested in purchasing goods but lets just take the figures for Europe, Asia/Pacific and America which is 560.82 million.
Assume that 90% of people use Windows and IE (which probably isn't too far off).
Therefore in total, the 30 million users that will be using AOL's Mozilla browser will be the ones standing out from a pool of 504.738 million. Put another way, for every 1 complaining AOL'er there will be 16 content people.
Whether this a big enough dent is up to the reader to decide.
If you don't use Opera, then you can use some CSS to achieve pretty much the same.
- When will slashdot stop linking to articles that require a registration?
- When will slashdot consider implementing caching for pages that, by linking to, they manage to take off the internet?
Sure, the 2nd question has been answered in the FAQ. Except it was written three years ago and Google manages this just fine. Maybe time for a second look?On the topic of site updates, has anyone noticed that 90% of the links on http://slashdot.org/code.shtml don't work any more?
Hell the link to an Avantgo version of Slashdot points to a website which has been broken for over 2 years.
I read a while back (not sure where) that in Europe the XBox was 2nd best selling console after the Playstation (obviously). I can't talk for the US or Asia but I would assume the Gamecube is strong in the latter and the XBox a bit of a non-starter.
In fact, in the UK, retailers are dropping prices so drastically in an attempt to get rid of them. Both Argos and Dixon's (two big retailers) have announced the desire to get rid of their stock and not refresh it.
Funnily enough, Argos was discounting it's Gamecube so much that it was actually cheaper to purchase it and a copy of Metroid Prime than it was to pick up the Nintendo official bundle.
Never underestimate the vocalness of a businessman with a lot of spare cash or a company willing to spend money on him.
From what I've seen, that seems to be how the PocketPC pushed Palm out as the PDA of choice in a large number of UK based companies I've worked in.
For them:
- It must do all the general PIM stuff well
- It must be stable
- It must be feature rich
- It must support whatever media they currently use (MMC, SD etc.etc)
- It must sync with their computer (note they say "computer" when they generally mean "windows").
The fact that it's Linux based is not going to be a major selling point. When your data is on MC and CF cards, thats a major selling point.A story: One of my co-workers asked me what I thought about the up and coming Linux based Motorola phone. My comment was that the fact it was running Linux makes absolutely no difference. If Motorola implement the same horribly awkward , difficult to use and ugly interface that they have then nothing will have really changed.
The underlying OS is largely irrelevant, it's what runs on top that makes all the difference.
The main problem with Office and Exchange is that they also tie you to a specific OS. Yet they seem to have done rather well.
I'm sure .Net has many failings, but only being tied to one OS' is probably not the vast majority of companies lists. There are plenty of places out there that are happily MS-centric.
So what do you propose they do? Stand back and let people piss all over your copyright because they're just fans?
Just because they are doesn't mean they're immune to general laws.
If they're that much of a fan, they'll buy it when the official translation comes out ... along with the mug, hat, special edition fluffy toy ... etc. etc.
http://www.mpeg-4.philips.com.
Windows and PPC only I'm afriad.
I work with SMIL files on a download platform and the biggest problem is the poor implementation by the manufacturers.
So far, the only phones that use SMIL's correctly are the SonyEricsson T68i, T610, P800 and the SAGEM MY X-6. Other SMIL capable phones either:
- Pop up a message "unknown format"
- Show you only the first frame
- Force you to manually advance through each frame by pressing a button (all Nokia's do this)
SMIL's will only get popular if the handset manufacturers can implement it correctly - and so far, they haven't.This has already been done. See the Nokia 7650, Nokia 3650 and Sagem MY X-6 for three examples.
How about if it were a viewfinder for a now-smaller ELF like camera? It is clunky moving an open phone around to take pictures.
Look out for the Samsung P400. It doesn't use OLED technology but the entire display rotates around so you can close it with the screen outwards. Good for taking photos without the phone being open.
Indeed. Today's keyboards can be picked up for less than a fiver. Try picking one up for that price back in the "old days".
There are plenty of good keyboards out there, but because the PC market is often dictated by price, you see more of the cheap ones than you do anything else.
Unless you're a seasoned Linux (on a PDA) programmer with masses of free time and energy - which rules out 99% of people on the planet - you're going to be tied to someone somewhere for your updates/licenses/applications/privacy/etc..
Otherwise being able to do "what you please" is pretty much a pipe dream.
And this is different from every other company and market in what way?
How did you manage it? I've got a Thinkpad T21 (I think, could be a T25) and Redhat 9 and it completely fails to find the modem. I don't care too much about IR but getting net access would mean I don't have to keep shifting into Win2k to download something.