Monopolies are not inherently bad. In fact, it's conceivable, under the proper circumstances, that a monopoly could actually yield good things for both the company involved and its customers. When a company doesn't have to worry so much about competition and can focus its energies on improving whatever it does, that benefits everyone. But it's a two-edged sword.
It's the abuse of monopoly power that is illegal and to be frowned upon. A Google monopoly would be fine. A Microsoft monopoly would be fine. However, when either of those begin to use that power to push everyone around and gain more and more power, then it becomes destructive and needs to be addressed.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the single most hilarious, passionate, insane and insightful liberal site around: Bartcop. This is the only site on the Web that makes me laugh, makes me mad, makes me stop to think, makes me want to get up and rip the living shit out of the people who screw it up for the rest of us--all at the same time. The site looks like a first-year HTML student project, but don't let that fool you. It's substance over style, baby. And while it's not technically a blog, it's presented in a very blog-like manner so IMO, that counts (and hey it was around before blogs were all the rage, so there!) Try it for a while, especially if you're fed up with Bush and his greedy cronies as well as spineless Democrats (or pink tutu Democrats as Bartcop identifies them.)
Let me see if I can get this straight. When it's a bona fide open source project, Microsoft's FUD dept. and their apologists will claim that many eyeballs viewing the source code doesn't make a piece of software any more secure than closed source, proprietary software. However, when it's a Microsoft product having some of its source pried open just slightly for viewing by a select few, then it's considered a way to make it more secure.
I believe this is called having one's cake and trying to eat it too.
The student film != the theatrical release. He did THX-1138 as a student film prior to the theatrical version. If he had done SW as a student film too we'd probably see that on there as well.
You're entitled to an opinion about it of course, but don't go screaming hypocrisy for no reason.
How do you feel about the Star Wars universe becoming a total corporate playtoy?
It must gall Lucas no end to be perhaps the most successful, fuck-you-corporate-assholes-I'm-doing-it-my-way filmmakers in history and to have legions of pissy fanboys accuse him of being a sell-out. Go read about the making of the SW films, about how he dealt with corporate studios, basically gave them and the overindulgent actor's unions the finger.
You'll find out that you are a bigger corporate playtoy than George Lucas ever was.
What's even worse is that Tolkien did a poor job of making his edits fit the tone of the book, exactly what people gripe about Lucas failing to do with his changes (although it looks like he's smoothed some of that out with the DVD, the redoing of the CG Jabba for example.) If you read The Hobbit, you can't help but notice that Riddles chapter takes on a sudden and noticeable shift in the tone of the writing. It switched gears somewhat awkwardly from what sounds like a children's book to a very dark and grim chapter, just like it was part of LOTR.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with artists doing this kind of thing. I would ding Lucas a bit for refusing to release the original versions as well, if not just for the historical value, but as others have pointed out, those are readily available from other sources, both legal and otherwise.
Perhaps what might redeem Lucas in the eyes of the SW community would be a lifting of the copyrights on the originals maybe a year or so after the DVDs have come out. You know, Lucas could give his blessing for P2P networks to exchange copies of the originals, for fans to burn their own DVDs of those, etc.
I can't imagine he'd be able to do that with all the legal entanglements it likely involves, but it would be a very cool move.
FREAKIN' FANTASTIC! When I saw the 97 SE of IV, I was very disappointed in that scene. The CG wasn't up to the task of rendering Jabba and he looked a little too much like a refugee from an id game or something. Now, it's totally believable. Amazing. I was of the opinion that the scene should be scrapped, but it's beautiful now.
Return of the Jedi: How many millions did we make on action figures? Maybe we should toss some more stuff in there for the kids. Why did I ever look up to that Solo character? [...] Maybe add some Ewoks.
Christ, the cynicism from you "Star Wars fans" is just overwhelming sometimes. If I got anything out of my enjoyment of the Star Wars films, it was that being cynical doesn't get you anywhere.
Lucas explained the Ewoks and it had nothing to do with marketing to children. He stated around the time of Jedi's release that in the back story, there is a segment where Wookies outsmart the early imperial forces on their home planet and he had this great vision of them carrying out low-tech but clever attacks against these high-tech mechanized threats from the newly-forming Empire. He didn't think he'd ever get a chance to film that and thought Jedi's Endor scenes would be a good chance to introduce some characters and situations where that could happen. He wanted them to be Wookie-like so his solution was to shrink the Wookies and turn them into another race: the Ewoks.
As it turns out, we're likely going to get to see his Wookie battle against the Empire in the next film. Of course, people like you will find every reason in the world to claim that it sucks and you'll rush home to throw on something by the Cure so you can nurse your injured childhood. The rest of us whose sphincter muscles still function normally will have a blast, enjoying it the same way we enjoyed the originals, warts and all.
People who are busy cursing Lucas for his supposed pretense that "the film is never finished" should look to other artists. For example, JRR Tolkien went back and rewrote parts of The Hobbit to fit The Lord of the Rings. Originally, the ring wasn't intended to be anything special beyond a plot device to help Bilbo get through various dangers later in the story. Tolkien had to go back and rewrite and edit parts of the original version of The Hobbit so it made sense in the context of LOTR.
Would anyone at this stage still argue that the original version of The Hobbit was the only real version, was the superior version and that Tolkien screwed everything up by changing it? After all, that's the version the original readers of the epic fell in love with, right?
Yep, I'm aware of MM's history, which is why I wrote: "MusicMatch who has no substantial track record to really speak of..."
They've been around, but what they've managed to do compared to iTunes/iPod has really been nothing to brag about, especially when you consider the lead they had (similar in a sense to Real which is why Real's recent attempt to gang-hump iTunes is sort of embarrassing for them, IMO.) That was what I was getting at.
The blind continue to lead the blind
on
Yahoo! Buys Musicmatch
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I admit I'm an Apple fanatic, but the attempts I've seen thus far at competing with iTunes has been almost funny to watch (almost funny--except I know there are lots of people behind these efforts doing a sincere job.) I can't even begin to imagine how anyone is going to compete, even MS who lacks the iPod factor here. I just hope Apple doesn't get cocky about it because someone somewhere will figure out an angle on it at some point.
But anyway, Yahoo, who has no track record in this regard is buying MusicMatch who has no substantial track record to really speak of. Here's my predictions:
Netscape will by this then they will be bought out by Real who will be bought out by SCO who will be bought out by Wal-Mart who will then dump the whole music thing because the RIAA won't sell tracks for 38 cents.
I'm sure I'll get modded as a troll, but there really is a real message here, but first let me get this out of my system...
Just shut the fuck up. Please? They're movies, for fuck's sake. Some of us enjoy them and would like to continue doing so without you and your gloomy band of whiners coming along to piss in the pool. I love the original movies too. I've watched them more times than I can count and can recite my favorite lines, but it's not my religion. I cannot relate to you whiners who consider these films to be some cornerstone of your existence. I wish you would all just fuck off and stop spazzing out every time the words Star Wars flash in front of your face.
There... much better. Now on with the comment.
They were part of my childhood too, but I had lots and lots of other great things in my childhood that had nothing to do with Lucasfilm Ltd. so even if Lucas decided to replace the characters in films with Looney Tunes animations, it wouldn't really make that big a dent in my life. If Lucas wants to futz around with the originals to make them his ultimate vision, then more power to him. Yeah, it sucks a little because it drills a little hole in that precious bag of nostalgia that we carry around, but in the end, is it really that big a deal?
Seriously? Did you really feel the need to scream rape of your childhood like that?
Get over it. Quick. And please stop drawing attention to yourself every time you feel your precious youth has been violated by a fucking movie. It gets tiresome REAL quick.
One would like to believe the American public is that lucid thinking to come to such a conclusion. However, given how much else Bush has fucked up while maintaining the steadfast support of just under half the populace, I find it hard to believe that this will make any difference. American politics appears to have become something of a sport, and a lot of the public seem to defend their side based more on emotional attachment rather than reason and logic.
If you bother to point out to a lot of these right-winger that we just wasted an untold amount of resources invading a sovereign nation against the will of most of the planet only to discover that our "intelligence" about them was dead-wrong and that we could have been working on real threats like N. Korea instead, they will simply shrug it off and offer up the platitude du jour and accuse you of supporting Saddam Hussein or whatever. We knew N. Korea was pursuing this because they basically said it outright, but we went after Iraq instead. Who knows why, but I wish like hell we could reach the 48% of America who, for whatever reason, still support this.
We won't reach them. Now most of them will likely go off on the line of thinking that we need a "strong leader" like Bush to stand up to the N. Koreans blah blah blah....
Bear in mind, people, that directors (even Lucas) get pressure to alter their films, change things, remove things, cut corners, etc. At least give Lucas's new versions a chance before denouncing them outright. It appears to me that lots of things have been changed just to improve what he originally intended and only a few changes to tweak the films to make them line up with the prequels. I see lots worth being excited about, little worth whining about.
I'm especially thrilled that they took the time to color correct the damn Rancor scene in Jedi. It never looked right that Luke's shading was a noticeable lighter value than the Rancor's. It looked like an actor moving around in front of a movie screen. Judging from the stills on the site above, it looks perfect.
As if anything could stop all the whining at this point, the article states that most of the changes are minor and cosmetic in nature. And this:
Overall, the expected changes on the DVDs aren't as dramatic as those for the Special Editions in 1997, says Scott Chitwood, one of the co-founders of TheForce.Net, a Star Wars fan/news site. "I think a few of the changes will only make sense after Episode III," he says.
Hopefully this is true, but not because I'm one of those purist Star Wars fans, but rather I'd love to hear an end to the incessant whining sound coming from some of you.
BTW, I think Hayden Christensen at the end of Jedi makes a ton of sense and is an excellent decision on the part of Lucas. It will really wrap up the continuity of the entire series of films in a simple and effective way.
Disagree with me? Probably. Do I care? Probably not.
Sorry to sound like an old curmedgeon, but speaking as someone whose teenage years nearly revolved around Atari games...
I wish someone with a heart (and a lot of cash) would buy the rights to all those Atari games and release them to the public domain where they belong, IMO. There are few cultural reference points for those of us in our 30s as powerful as the video games of the 1980s. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that they influenced many of us deeply, many of us who went on to pursue careers in computing precisely because we were so amazed by these cheesy little games. In a sense, many people posting here played a role (no matter how small or large) in the direction that computing and video games have gone and the continued cultural impact of them. After a while, you get the real sense that these games should rightly belong to everyone. I don't view them as products anymore, but rather a piece of history (history is defined partly in terms of how we got where we are now, right?) It seems morally wrong for Atari and a lot of companies from that time to continue milking these old games (and our nostalgia) for whatever few bucks they can get out of it.
I've never been able to relate to complaining about eye-candy. I don't see it as a gratuitous part of the user experience, not even for admins. But it needs to be done right. A couple of points to consider before complaining or writing it off as unimportant:
First, as long as you take the approach that Apple took with Aqua and Quartz in offloading the graphic work to the graphics card, then who cares? It barely affects CPU load and you get a better looking interface. It's just putting unused potential to work.
Second, why would you want to look at an ugly interface? Car makers put a lot of work into what you see when you're sitting in the driver's seat, right? Steering wheel, seats, dashboard... they've all been carefully designed for looks just like the outside of the car? Those of you complaining about UI eye-candy: do you also look for totally stripped down cars too? There is something to be said for aesthetics. Unless you're a robot, it affects you.
Third, some "eye-candy" can actually serve a purpose. For example: the "slurping" effect in OS X that so many people complain about actually acts as a visual cue, almost like a moving arrow, to show you exactly where your window is minimizing to. I never lose track of minimized windows in OS X, but I do it all the time on Windows. (Of course, it helps that OS X also has the added "eye-candy" of showing a minimized version of the window itself in the dock.)
Just a few things to consider. I don't think eye-candy is the Great Satan it's often made out to be and it's good to see X keeping pace.
I have a theory as to why there has been so many delays: Microsoft is no longer interested in being a good software company, making their money off the production of good and useful software, and hasn't been for some time. Seriously. Look at what they've done in the last ten years or so. Does it look like they've concentrated more on software or in becoming a media and services company?
MSN
Competing with Google for Web searching
MSNBC
Their upcoming iTunes-type store and iPod-wannabe
MS media center
XBox
Trial attempts at subscriber model software
Discontinuation of Explorer
Lackluster updates to XP
Attempst to discontinue older, widely used OSs like NT
Pushing their media players and format into other arenas (CDs, film, etc.)
Now, contrast to Apple, a much smaller company with fewer resources, fewer customers, and look what they've managed to pull off in the last 3-4 years. There is no reasonable excuse for MS dragging their feet with Windows beyond a genuine lack of interest in going much further with the product. I know it sounds crazy, but what other reason could there be? At least, that's what it looks like to me. I think they desperately want to succeed in some other area besides software, want to move away from their core products. In pursuing that, they've let the software end of their business lag badly.
First, I think these iMac pics are probably fakes. Just a gut instinct as a long-time Mac user. It doesn't really look much like an Apple design. I could be wrong, but only if they're striking out in some tangential direction.
Well, Apple has recently made a relatively quiet product announcement with Airport Extreme so if I were to put 2 and 2 together, the result would be a dockable iMac, a machine where some of the components are in a base station (optical drive for one, some ports, etc.) and the screen actually rests in the base where is recharges when it's in desktop mode and can be picked up and walked around with and used like a tablet using the technology they've begun to explore with Airport Extreme.
Sounds far-fetched, but take a second look at the sketches for the "tablet" which appears to have an dock-connector similar to the iPod's on one edge. Maybe this isn't a tablet per se but the screen for the iMac G5.
My theory may be completely off-the-mark, but just following the threads of Apple's recent products, I'm lead to consider this sort of possibility.
Does it take a freakin' rocket scientist to figure out that any time your software does something automatically, especially if it's something dealing with the network/Internet, you should think very carefully about how necessary the feature is? That is, consider whether it should even be there at all. It seems that a lot of security issues could be stopped if developers and software companies would just let the user decide when and (most importantly) if at all a piece of software does something automatically. At the very least, there should be a way to turn the feature off and the developer should ship with the feature disabled by default.
I thought the UK's judgment against Apple for claiming that the G5 was the world's fastest PC was silly and (despite being ardently anti-Microsoft) I think this is silly as well.
I mean, best of luck to the British for trying their best to keep advertisers honest. It's really the right attitude to have, but before pouring this much resources into this issue why not step back and think: it's freakin' advertising, fer fuck's sake! What do you expect? Hype and exaggeration are the bread-and-butter of marketing. They need to get your attention in a 20-second spot or a half-page ad or whatever. If they don't use half-naked women, they're going to make claims that cause you to do a double-take (although I think the half-naked women in computing ads concept has not yet been fully explored... hint, hint, Apple and Microsoft!)
If you're really so thick-headed that you need someone else to point this out to you, that Linux may not be more expensive because a competitor's ad claims it, or that the G5 may not necessarily be the world's fastest PC, then you've got much bigger personal issues to deal with.
I wish you hadn't posted anonyously because I'd mark you "friend." You've summed up a lot of what I've been saying repeatedly to the whiners since Episode 1 came out. I went into the theater expecting only to be taken back to the world I'd known and loved when I was a kid and the movie delivered better than I expected. The lightsaber battle of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan against Darth Maul was intense and felt epic and dangerous the way the fights between Luke and Vader did in the originals. It was a revelation to see the "swamp Jedi" finally in his real surroundings as part of the coucil, to see the inner workings of the Jedi, to see how bogged down and ineffectual the Republic had become that we'd heard so much about, to see a slightly uppity Obi-Wan Kenobi having that fateful argument with Yoda about continuing Anakin's training, and the quaint coincidence of R2 coming from Luke's mother's home planet and 3PO coming from Luke's father's home planet.
In short, I was blown away--here it all was, the fabled backstory I had always imagined in a vague sort of way. Yes, the film was flawed; it ran a tad long, was a little chatty at points and could have benefitted from a little less Jar-Jar, but I've never been able to relate to the nonstop whining.
Here's a way to do this without installing any software. True, it may not be as easy to use, but it works.
In iTunes, you can change the default location that iTunes stores your music library. Set it to be ~/Sites/mymusic/ (or whatever you want to call it) as your music library folder in iTunes. Make sure iTunes preferences is set to copy new mp3s into your library. Then, turn on music streaming in iTunes. Finally, turn on Apache (one click in the sharing preferences.)
There you go. iTunes automatically copies and organizes new music on your machine into your Sites folder to make what basically amounts to a web site available to others on your network. People on your network can stream your music if they want via iTunes, and if they like it, they fire up their browser, go to your machine (http://1.2.3.4, by default it shows you the available folders as links) and dig down to find their download.
Easy. Why install software to do this kind of thing when the tool are already sitting there waiting to be used?
Slashdot Mirror
It's the abuse of monopoly power that is illegal and to be frowned upon. A Google monopoly would be fine. A Microsoft monopoly would be fine. However, when either of those begin to use that power to push everyone around and gain more and more power, then it becomes destructive and needs to be addressed.
Does that answer your question?
You'll wonder how you got along before.
And oh yeah... watch for Shirley. :^)
I believe this is called having one's cake and trying to eat it too.
You're entitled to an opinion about it of course, but don't go screaming hypocrisy for no reason.
It must gall Lucas no end to be perhaps the most successful, fuck-you-corporate-assholes-I'm-doing-it-my-way filmmakers in history and to have legions of pissy fanboys accuse him of being a sell-out. Go read about the making of the SW films, about how he dealt with corporate studios, basically gave them and the overindulgent actor's unions the finger.
You'll find out that you are a bigger corporate playtoy than George Lucas ever was.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with artists doing this kind of thing. I would ding Lucas a bit for refusing to release the original versions as well, if not just for the historical value, but as others have pointed out, those are readily available from other sources, both legal and otherwise.
Perhaps what might redeem Lucas in the eyes of the SW community would be a lifting of the copyrights on the originals maybe a year or so after the DVDs have come out. You know, Lucas could give his blessing for P2P networks to exchange copies of the originals, for fans to burn their own DVDs of those, etc.
I can't imagine he'd be able to do that with all the legal entanglements it likely involves, but it would be a very cool move.
Christ, the cynicism from you "Star Wars fans" is just overwhelming sometimes. If I got anything out of my enjoyment of the Star Wars films, it was that being cynical doesn't get you anywhere.
Lucas explained the Ewoks and it had nothing to do with marketing to children. He stated around the time of Jedi's release that in the back story, there is a segment where Wookies outsmart the early imperial forces on their home planet and he had this great vision of them carrying out low-tech but clever attacks against these high-tech mechanized threats from the newly-forming Empire. He didn't think he'd ever get a chance to film that and thought Jedi's Endor scenes would be a good chance to introduce some characters and situations where that could happen. He wanted them to be Wookie-like so his solution was to shrink the Wookies and turn them into another race: the Ewoks.
As it turns out, we're likely going to get to see his Wookie battle against the Empire in the next film. Of course, people like you will find every reason in the world to claim that it sucks and you'll rush home to throw on something by the Cure so you can nurse your injured childhood. The rest of us whose sphincter muscles still function normally will have a blast, enjoying it the same way we enjoyed the originals, warts and all.
Would anyone at this stage still argue that the original version of The Hobbit was the only real version, was the superior version and that Tolkien screwed everything up by changing it? After all, that's the version the original readers of the epic fell in love with, right?
They've been around, but what they've managed to do compared to iTunes/iPod has really been nothing to brag about, especially when you consider the lead they had (similar in a sense to Real which is why Real's recent attempt to gang-hump iTunes is sort of embarrassing for them, IMO.) That was what I was getting at.
But anyway, Yahoo, who has no track record in this regard is buying MusicMatch who has no substantial track record to really speak of. Here's my predictions:
Netscape will by this then they will be bought out by Real who will be bought out by SCO who will be bought out by Wal-Mart who will then dump the whole music thing because the RIAA won't sell tracks for 38 cents.
I love how we all just overreact and start making Lucas out to be the evil villain here by assuming everything he says or does must be wrong.
Just shut the fuck up. Please? They're movies, for fuck's sake. Some of us enjoy them and would like to continue doing so without you and your gloomy band of whiners coming along to piss in the pool. I love the original movies too. I've watched them more times than I can count and can recite my favorite lines, but it's not my religion. I cannot relate to you whiners who consider these films to be some cornerstone of your existence. I wish you would all just fuck off and stop spazzing out every time the words Star Wars flash in front of your face.
There... much better. Now on with the comment.
They were part of my childhood too, but I had lots and lots of other great things in my childhood that had nothing to do with Lucasfilm Ltd. so even if Lucas decided to replace the characters in films with Looney Tunes animations, it wouldn't really make that big a dent in my life. If Lucas wants to futz around with the originals to make them his ultimate vision, then more power to him. Yeah, it sucks a little because it drills a little hole in that precious bag of nostalgia that we carry around, but in the end, is it really that big a deal?
Seriously? Did you really feel the need to scream rape of your childhood like that?
Get over it. Quick. And please stop drawing attention to yourself every time you feel your precious youth has been violated by a fucking movie. It gets tiresome REAL quick.
If you bother to point out to a lot of these right-winger that we just wasted an untold amount of resources invading a sovereign nation against the will of most of the planet only to discover that our "intelligence" about them was dead-wrong and that we could have been working on real threats like N. Korea instead, they will simply shrug it off and offer up the platitude du jour and accuse you of supporting Saddam Hussein or whatever. We knew N. Korea was pursuing this because they basically said it outright, but we went after Iraq instead. Who knows why, but I wish like hell we could reach the 48% of America who, for whatever reason, still support this.
We won't reach them. Now most of them will likely go off on the line of thinking that we need a "strong leader" like Bush to stand up to the N. Koreans blah blah blah....
Bear in mind, people, that directors (even Lucas) get pressure to alter their films, change things, remove things, cut corners, etc. At least give Lucas's new versions a chance before denouncing them outright. It appears to me that lots of things have been changed just to improve what he originally intended and only a few changes to tweak the films to make them line up with the prequels. I see lots worth being excited about, little worth whining about.
I'm especially thrilled that they took the time to color correct the damn Rancor scene in Jedi. It never looked right that Luke's shading was a noticeable lighter value than the Rancor's. It looked like an actor moving around in front of a movie screen. Judging from the stills on the site above, it looks perfect.
Overall, the expected changes on the DVDs aren't as dramatic as those for the Special Editions in 1997, says Scott Chitwood, one of the co-founders of TheForce.Net, a Star Wars fan/news site. "I think a few of the changes will only make sense after Episode III," he says.
Hopefully this is true, but not because I'm one of those purist Star Wars fans, but rather I'd love to hear an end to the incessant whining sound coming from some of you.
BTW, I think Hayden Christensen at the end of Jedi makes a ton of sense and is an excellent decision on the part of Lucas. It will really wrap up the continuity of the entire series of films in a simple and effective way.
Disagree with me? Probably. Do I care? Probably not.
I wish someone with a heart (and a lot of cash) would buy the rights to all those Atari games and release them to the public domain where they belong, IMO. There are few cultural reference points for those of us in our 30s as powerful as the video games of the 1980s. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that they influenced many of us deeply, many of us who went on to pursue careers in computing precisely because we were so amazed by these cheesy little games. In a sense, many people posting here played a role (no matter how small or large) in the direction that computing and video games have gone and the continued cultural impact of them. After a while, you get the real sense that these games should rightly belong to everyone. I don't view them as products anymore, but rather a piece of history (history is defined partly in terms of how we got where we are now, right?) It seems morally wrong for Atari and a lot of companies from that time to continue milking these old games (and our nostalgia) for whatever few bucks they can get out of it.
First, as long as you take the approach that Apple took with Aqua and Quartz in offloading the graphic work to the graphics card, then who cares? It barely affects CPU load and you get a better looking interface. It's just putting unused potential to work.
Second, why would you want to look at an ugly interface? Car makers put a lot of work into what you see when you're sitting in the driver's seat, right? Steering wheel, seats, dashboard... they've all been carefully designed for looks just like the outside of the car? Those of you complaining about UI eye-candy: do you also look for totally stripped down cars too? There is something to be said for aesthetics. Unless you're a robot, it affects you.
Third, some "eye-candy" can actually serve a purpose. For example: the "slurping" effect in OS X that so many people complain about actually acts as a visual cue, almost like a moving arrow, to show you exactly where your window is minimizing to. I never lose track of minimized windows in OS X, but I do it all the time on Windows. (Of course, it helps that OS X also has the added "eye-candy" of showing a minimized version of the window itself in the dock.)
Just a few things to consider. I don't think eye-candy is the Great Satan it's often made out to be and it's good to see X keeping pace.
MSN
Competing with Google for Web searching
MSNBC
Their upcoming iTunes-type store and iPod-wannabe
MS media center
XBox
Trial attempts at subscriber model software
Discontinuation of Explorer
Lackluster updates to XP
Attempst to discontinue older, widely used OSs like NT
Pushing their media players and format into other arenas (CDs, film, etc.)
Now, contrast to Apple, a much smaller company with fewer resources, fewer customers, and look what they've managed to pull off in the last 3-4 years. There is no reasonable excuse for MS dragging their feet with Windows beyond a genuine lack of interest in going much further with the product. I know it sounds crazy, but what other reason could there be? At least, that's what it looks like to me. I think they desperately want to succeed in some other area besides software, want to move away from their core products. In pursuing that, they've let the software end of their business lag badly.
First, I think these iMac pics are probably fakes. Just a gut instinct as a long-time Mac user. It doesn't really look much like an Apple design. I could be wrong, but only if they're striking out in some tangential direction.
Second, look at another Mac-related tidbit that made the rounds of the rumor sites just recently. It hints of a tablet Mac which is strange because the market is weak and Jobs has already gone on record saying that PDAs are not a market Apple is interested in (and possibly by extension, tablets as well?)
So what does that leave us with?
Well, Apple has recently made a relatively quiet product announcement with Airport Extreme so if I were to put 2 and 2 together, the result would be a dockable iMac, a machine where some of the components are in a base station (optical drive for one, some ports, etc.) and the screen actually rests in the base where is recharges when it's in desktop mode and can be picked up and walked around with and used like a tablet using the technology they've begun to explore with Airport Extreme.
Sounds far-fetched, but take a second look at the sketches for the "tablet" which appears to have an dock-connector similar to the iPod's on one edge. Maybe this isn't a tablet per se but the screen for the iMac G5.
My theory may be completely off-the-mark, but just following the threads of Apple's recent products, I'm lead to consider this sort of possibility.
I mean, best of luck to the British for trying their best to keep advertisers honest. It's really the right attitude to have, but before pouring this much resources into this issue why not step back and think: it's freakin' advertising, fer fuck's sake! What do you expect? Hype and exaggeration are the bread-and-butter of marketing. They need to get your attention in a 20-second spot or a half-page ad or whatever. If they don't use half-naked women, they're going to make claims that cause you to do a double-take (although I think the half-naked women in computing ads concept has not yet been fully explored... hint, hint, Apple and Microsoft!)
If you're really so thick-headed that you need someone else to point this out to you, that Linux may not be more expensive because a competitor's ad claims it, or that the G5 may not necessarily be the world's fastest PC, then you've got much bigger personal issues to deal with.
8:35 AM: Morning stretches and exercise.
8:55 AM: Pray for forgiveness for being a subhuman piece of filth, hoping to save already-rotten soul from the deepest pits of Hell.
9:00 AM: Shower.
...etc.
In iTunes, you can change the default location that iTunes stores your music library. Set it to be ~/Sites/mymusic/ (or whatever you want to call it) as your music library folder in iTunes. Make sure iTunes preferences is set to copy new mp3s into your library. Then, turn on music streaming in iTunes. Finally, turn on Apache (one click in the sharing preferences.)
There you go. iTunes automatically copies and organizes new music on your machine into your Sites folder to make what basically amounts to a web site available to others on your network. People on your network can stream your music if they want via iTunes, and if they like it, they fire up their browser, go to your machine (http://1.2.3.4, by default it shows you the available folders as links) and dig down to find their download.
Easy. Why install software to do this kind of thing when the tool are already sitting there waiting to be used?