Plain and simple....Windows is not elegant. They have made simple tasks (like setting up network settings) way too difficult. Installing software takes restarts way too often. The system doesn't provide good feedback when something is occurring.
Then, there is the problem of virii and lost time due to system downtime. I should state that I do use Windows, but only for testing, and for when I have to use something Web-based that's not standards-compliant (like the brain-dead Plesk server admin tool).
The problem is, Microsoft doesn't have elegance in them, so it won't improve.
Same with iSync, it's free and works with a lot of things out of the box. But you get more if you buy their.Mac service. It would be nice to have great software for free that does everything we want it to, but it's perfectly legitimate for Apple to recoup their development costs for those programs by using them to sell more stuff.
I love the Mac platform, since I use it every day. In my spare time, I have even started a Mac games listing site that's run out of my own pocket.
However, with iSync, I can't even sync my stuff between my laptop and desktop without subscribing to.Mac. That's just ridiculous..Mac should be there to make things easy over the Internet (you know, publishing your photos, etc.) But to put in a needless block on the software to get me to sign up for a service that I don't need is disgusting to me.
Note that in Panther, Apple has also removed the "Internet" System control panel, so you have to launch Safari in order to tell the operating system that you *don't* want to use Safari as the default browser (how logical). And, they didn't even bother to tell people how to do that! That's pretty Microsoftian, in my opinion.
I love Apple's products. I choose to do my development work on them. But you've got to call them jerks when they do something jerk-worthy, just like you've got to praise them when they do something great (like FireWire, or zeroconf, or OS X, or Powerbooks...etc. and so on).
The death (or...lack of birth) os CHRP was as much to do with Apple as anyone else. See, the idea was that the Mac would have been the biggest OS for the platform, and it was going to be the logical evolution of Apple's somewhat closed cloning requirements, at the time.
But, when Steve Jobs came back, he killed Mac cloning and, by extension, the CHRP platform. I still believe it could have evolved as a credible competitor to the Wintel architecture (MS even had NT ported to the architecture, but they, too yanked support before it could get out of the gate).
... 95% of the population is scientifically illiterate...Unfortunately science education is not mandatory like english and basic math are.
I think you're making statements about things you haven't studied. Science was certainly required at my high school (and junior high school). And they were both public. And you got that statistic from where, exactly? Your ass?
I thought part of the scientific method was actually doing research before you make ridiculous claims? But hey, that's just my understanding. I could be wrong.
I just wanted to quickly say, that though I have not used the T226, but I don't think it's worth jumping all over Ericcson here. Sure, the T226 may be a P.O.S., but I don't think they would tell you it is the logical upgrade path for the T68. That'd be the T610/T616.
It appears to be AT&T who decided the T226 was an "upgrade" for T68 users, not Ericcson.
Well, let me first state some basic things on which my conclusions:
(1) I don't believe people care about anyone other than their own friends and family. I think everyone likes to say publicly that they care about other people, but as long as evil nasty shit is happening to Someone Else, Somewhere Else, everybody's generally OK with it.
(2) If a population has enough $$$, they don't care about anything else (i.e., the government can do whatever it wants).
(3) The old saying you can't have beauty without ugliness, or happiness without sadness. Yin-yang...you need balance in order to have definition.
Now, my point.
I don't understand why anyone is the least bit surprised about any of this. Power wants to remain in power. Simple as that. It doesn't matter whether it's Republican, or Democrat, or Socialist, or Fascist. And, when the U.S. public doesn't give a shit (because, economy notwithstanding, most of us still have enough money to, like, go to movies and shit), the people in power can do anything they want. So why wouldn't they try?
I think that we are seeing the symptoms of the post-Cold War world. Simply put, there is no longer a strong foil for American culture. No yin to our yang. When the Soviet Union was a reasonably powerful country...the best way for American powermongers to stay in power was to hold up virtues like freedom, liberty, privacy, etc., because it made us look better than them.
But, now that there is no longer anyone we need to look better than...liberty and privacy, things which just get in the way of power, can now be jettisoned.
Unless China rises up as an enemy of the USA, or something, I expect to see a trend toward more and more powergrabs, the destruction of the few democratic principles this country was founded on in the first place, and a move toward totaliarianism.
Excuse my French, but why the fuck doesn't anyone ever talk about the economy?
It seems to me that the RIAA's sales drop also seems to coincide with the dot-com bubble burst, the Terror attacks, and the lack of sunsequent economic resurgence.
I know that, as a resident in New York, freelance work has shriveled up -- if I hadn't had personally satisfied past clients who wanted to work with me again, I would have had to move. Quite frankly, we just don't have money to piss away on CDs right now, even if we didn't want to boycott the assholes at the RIAA.
I just want one reporter to, like, ask them why they think the economy has not had a deleterious effect on their business?
All this bullshit about MP#s being an ad for CDs, and so forth is just that: bullshit, IMO.
Two things are going on: (1) the economy sucks; (2) CDs are becoming obsolete.
Maybe this is "evil" of me, but it seems to me when you have to come to a point where you just say, "Fuck the rules".
When we (Americans) attempted to secede from the British empire, did we "play by the rules"? No, we told the British to go fuck themselves, and hid behind trees and picked them off like target practice because they were marching down the middle of the road in bright red coats like dumbasses. In short, they were playing by the *old* rules, and if we had chosen to play their way, we would have gotten our asses kicked.
It seems to me the surest way to lose a battle is to allow your *enemy* to call the shots. And, the RIAA has publicly declared us as their enemy. And don't talk to me about the poor artists...any artist can now self-distribute; because they choose to (paraphrasing from American Beauty) "sell [their] souls and work for Satan just because it's more convenient that way", it's not my problem.
So, I respectfully submit that we should just stop purchasing CDs, plain and simple. And we should stream whatever the hell we want. And we should trade whatever the hell we want. Let's organize a worldwide open source project which creates a P2P file sharing / music organization system specifically designed to trade RIAA-endorsed music for FREE, but has a pay structure for independents.
They can't put us all in jail, and if it's a war they want, let's give it to them. In short, let's prove them right. Make some musicians broke, if that's what it takes. They're part of the problem, anyway, for signing these idiotic contracts in the first place. (If they were truly "artists", they'd realize a bohemian lifestyle is sometimes worth some freedom, just like painters and sculptors and the rest of us.) And then, after enough macaroni and cheese, Sellout Artist X will fucking sign with an alternative organization who gives a shit about artists' needs instead of an organization which was designed, from top to bottom, to rape their every orifice, milk their last breath and throw away their corpse when they're done.
Sure, it'll take a while for the economy to shift, but I've just decided that I'm never going to buy another RIAA-endorsed CD again, unless it's used. In short, I will only buy in ways that prevent royalties from going to them.
It's simple, really: fuck the RIAA. All they are doing is making me *want* to intentionally pirate their music.
Man, when you actually cause your fans to start plotting ways to intentionally fuck you, your PR people and lawyers are really screwing with your future prospects at profitability. (I was a huge music fiend when I was young, and wanted to work in radio, until I found out what a shitty business it is.) Now, I think I like Microsoft more than the RIAA. That's saying a LOT.
So, to end my insane rant, can someone on this board enlighten me as to WHY we should play by the rules?
Well, I have a pretty good handle on what games are available for the Mac, since I run the Mac Game Database.
Obviously, the Mac market is way smaller than the Windows market. Yeah, there are probably 10-20 times the sheer number of games on the PC as on the Mac. However, most games that people actually play are extremely well represented (AvP, WCIII, AoEII, CivIII, RtCW, etc.).
Furthermore, the Mac has a vibrant shareware community that turns out some quality stuff.
The only exception to the above is sports games, which basically don't exist. But for all other genres, there's quite a good selection.
The point of this now rantish response is to say that 0.1% of these gee whiz tech demos are going to turn into products. Just because Steve Jobs is on stage doesn't mean it isn't vapor ware. The point is to make you think "just how many streets ahead Apple are" and make you also think "This is all stuff that should exist under Windows, but doesn't." Guess what, it doesn't exist on a Mac either. Senior Jobs just got one of his engineers to make a BlueTooth cellphone that could talk with his address book thingy. I doubt Nokia is going to.
Ummm...why does this get posted as "informative" when it's just "flamebait"?
Did you even watch the f*cking demo, you idiot?
The cell phone was made by Sony/Ericsson. I know this because Sony's boring "I sorta speak English" guy went on and on about it from his little index cards. The "technology demo" you refer to was a demonstration of a product that is currently in beta. It will be a free download in September. It is called "iSync". The caller ID feature happens automatically via Bluetooth, using the system-wide Address Book.
Please refrain from making stupid comments about things you didn't even watch.
They're saying they have only 1 million people using it.
If you;re going to quote numbers, at least look them up. Phil Schiller said today that Apple estimates 2.5 million OS X users right now, and they are hoping for 5 million by the end of the year. That's a big difference.
Since Apple estimates its total user base at 25 million, that'd be 10% mac user penetration already. Not too shabby, since it was basically unusable until 10.1.
Still, it's going to require a hardware update fro most Mac users, and unfortunately the economy sucks...
The Newton was Sculley's baby. Sculley had a hand in ousting Jobs the first time. Killing the Newton was like some huge triumph for him personally; I bet he was whacking off the whole time.
Jobs is a great innovator, but he's got a tremendously poor track record when it comes to logic. Of course, that's why he comes up with a groundbreaking product every once in a while, but it's also why he managed to miss the PDA market bubble, even though when he took over Apple, he was sitting on the only serious competitor in the market.
In retrospect, maybe it was a good thing, since the PDA market tanked. But I will always believe it was a decision based more on his ego than anything else.
Umm, have you been listening to the radio recently? Moby's single We Are All Made Of Stars is getting lots of airplay in mainstream radio stations. It's currently #19 on the Billboard Dance/Club list, and the album is at #35 on the Billboard top albums list.
Umm...do you know how they compile these charts? I would think that when the chart is called "Dance/Club Play", you'd get a hint, but since that doesn't seem to be enough of an indicator, I'll quote from the Billboard Web site:
Compiled from a national sample of dance club playlists. Titles with the greatest club play increases this week have italicized numbers on gold backgrounds for current position. Catalog number is for vinyl maxi-single, or CD maxi-single if vinyl is unavailable.
And the Top 200 Albums chart:
Compiled from a national sample of retail store sales reports collected, compiled, and provided by Nielsen SoundScan.
Neither list includes radio airplay in its methods of listing. Therefore, whether Moby is in heavy rotation on Pop radio has nothing to do with these successes.
I agree with the other poster who says Moby's a more "alternative" artist. If you're getting more club play than radio airplay, you can't be considered a mainstream artist.
Secondly, if you bother looking at charts (I used to follow them very closely), you'll realize that an album that's only been out 5 weeks is high on the charts simply because it's new. In other words, most of those sales are probably coming from fans of "Play".
Anyway, I bring this up because I wasn't even aware Moby had a release, either, except that I saw him and Gwen Stefani in some shitty video together. He's trying to make "salable" music now, rather than "good" music, and that's going to hurt your sales eventually.
I for one hope this is happening, because the browser situation is (IMO) the most disappointing thing about OS X. As a professional Web developer, it drives me crazy, because I love OS X in almost every other way.
I have seven browsers installed on my Titanium, and I basically use one until it pisses me off, and then switch to another. My current favorite is Netscape 7 PR 1, but it pisses me off now and then, too.
OmniWeb is nice, and a cool idea, but these guys are crazy for trying to keep up with HTML/CSS/ECMEScript, and so on, in their own rendering engine. Every once in a while, it'll just hang, and it has problems with complex sites. But, it looks the best.
iCab is the fastest browser I've used, interface-wise, but it suffers from many of the same problems as OmniWeb. In short, it's cute, and is a great browser -- for about three years ago.
Similarly, Opera's Mac OS X effort is cute, but it's essentially a second-rate browser. It seems to display things quickly, but certainly doesn't live up to its claims of being the fastest. Besides, its font display and Java/ECMAScript support leave a whole hell of a lot to be desired.
Then there's IE. I have to use IE when Mozilla botches a download (yeah, happens frequently). IE also has superior printing (which they debuted on the Mac OS 8 version, a couple of years ago). However, it's the slowest at displaying pages; the Tasman engine is basically a piece of garbage, and I don't have the patience to spend my days looking at spinning beach balls.
Finally, we have Mozilla and Netscape 7. Netscape 7, on my system, actually feels more responsive than Mozilla 1. Mozilla 1 is the most unstable browser of any of them; it will crash on occasionm and certain commands, like "load into new tab" will just not work at certain times. The XUL framework, while interesting for other reasons, is just stupid. It makes Moz/NS not behave like a Mac application. It doesn't display OS-standard UI widgets, doesn't properly launch your preferred email program, and so on.
I've been arguing in online forums for months that what Apple needs to do is just take Gecko and put it in a Cocoa framework. That's what Chimera is. Chimera is awfully promising, but for me, it's not really usable yet; lacks way too many features. Still, I have it on my machine as demo-ware, and check it out every so often. If Apple is doing either of: (1) expand on Chimera and make it feature complete; or (2) wrapping Gecko in a Cocoa framework themselves, then it makes me very, very happy. I'd like to see a solid browser supported on the level of iTunes et al.
I read somewhere that something like 1% of cable internet users eat 90% of the bandwith used, and Optus cable is doing something about it. And this whole slashdot discussion is largely that 1% complaining.
I'm not going to argue the numbers. Whether they are what you say, or way off what you say is immaterial; I have no doubt you're exactly right that {small}% of broadband users eat up {large}% of total Internet traffic. Obviously, my girlfriend who is on a modem can't possibly eat up as much bandwidth as I can on my cable modem.
But, though I can agree with that assessment, I think a better restating of your sentence is: "Optus, which controls 100% of the available satellite transmission capacity for the country of Australia, and is an effective monopoly player in most of the country for telecom and Internet access, rolled out an unlimited service plan in order to steal consumers from the few places they did have competition (Telstra, which has to lease satellite space from them). They then realized they could better control costs once they had a captive audience. So Optus is doing something about it; they are restructuring their offerings because they know most people will just stay with their service anyway, since they effectively have no choice."
That's just shitty, IMO.
Start apache on port 8080 to circumvent your ISP blocking incoming port 80.
I'm on RoadRunner cable, which is the only choice for cable modems here in New York City (where I am at least). The user agreement states that they will simply deny you service if they discover you are hosting things. I can and have done it temporarily, but it's not hard from their end to spot heavy outgoing traffic and just turn you off.
Gee, the last time I checked, they were affiliated with the one of the largest providers of content in the world. Were I to host a...say...news site, I'd be a direct competitor of theirs.
So, I ask you, does the language in that user agreement have more to do with the bandwidth they don't want to host, or the fact they don't want competition for their content distribution?
I think it's a very blurry area.
In any case the Optus thing affects consumers, but PTP is an awfully popular consumer app, and it's something that the big companies want to block for more reasons than bandwidth. All of this is why I don't believe for a second it's straight bandwidth costs that are stimulating these sorts of policies.
It is short-sighted, but complain when the Next Big Thing actually arrives. We have 2.4 GHz Pentium IV's, and I'm 'chugging' along on my 500 MHz Celeron, and the most processor intensive operation I do (aside from dnetc, but that doesn't count) is run mplayer, which eats 25% CPU.
Great, so you don't do much with your computer. If I merely capture some video from my DV camera and compress for Web playback (i.e., take a home movie and show to my friends), my computer is at 100% CPU utilization, and the compression takes a goddamned long time (it shouldn't). There's plenty of room for speed improvements. And that's to say nothing of gaming. Pretty much any game will max either your CPU or video (pick one). I'm talking consumer applications here; not futzing around at command lines writing code, which I also do, but which requires a computer made in 1985.
I have no idea why you selected 2022 as the year we will need more than 3 GB a month. 3 GB is nothing! I've downloaded that inside of a week before. Hell, a few movie trailers and some game demos will get you there pretty fast, not to mention casual surfing.
While the Internet is an entertainment medium, it differs from traditional devices by the method of transport...
Thanks for the primer on how the Internet works, but you're missing the point. I was discussing it from the consumer perspective, not the business perspective. From the consumer perepective, I don't care how they do what they have to do. If they could give me a bajillion terabyte per second connection for $20 a month, I would be more than happy.
My point was, whether IP networks are an efficient mode of transport for television or whatever, compared to broadcast, it doesn't matter, because that's one of the things it's going to be used for. And they have to get used to it.
Furthermore, just like Cable TV fragmented the television market (the networks are getting smaller and smaller auiences all the time), Internet distribution of viewable media will fragment the market even further, and this changes the economies of scale.
In other words, there will never, ever be 4,000,000 people listening to your online radio station. The only reason that happens at all is because there are so few stations, and people have to listen to something....so they do.
When there are a hundred thousand online stations for you to choose from, you will be able to choose "traditional sumatran folk music", with 15 other people, and the listening communities inside a given genre will be much smaller. In short, there will be different metrics for success.
This also means there will be different metrics for usage patterns, and different metrics for creating business models. The slowdown in the technology industry is, in my opinion, largely due to the fact that technology companies are operating under old economy business models rather than new economy business models (in short, they hemmorrhage way too much money and hire way too many people).
I agree with what someone said in another thread on this topic: these decisions are partly motivated by money, yes, but they are also motivated by a desire to maintain the status quo. These companies want to limit broadcasting, file sharing, etc., as much as they want to limit costs.
And, as a consumer, that's why it irks me. If I thought they would go out of business without a limited pricing structure, I would agree with you. But money is not the only operative concern here.
In truth, your post is coherent and logical, but let me play devil's advocate:
And it's also true that regular users don't need anymore than 3Gb per month.
I've heard I don't know how many times that "xxxx is enough for the average user" in computer-speak, and every time it's short-sighted. It may be enough given usage patterns right now, but as soon as video is distributed on the network, all software is distributed that way, and as soon as The Next Big Thing (tm) comes along, your point becomes moot. Believe me, 3GB a month will seem like a pittance sooner than you think.
Computers in general aren't even 1 1,000,000th as powerful as they need to be. Look at the latest greatest game, look at how beautiful the 3D is, and then look out your window and realize how truly shitty it looks and you get the idea. We will need more computing horsepower for graphics and AI and everything else, and we will definitely need more bandwidth than 3 lousy GB per month.
Perhaps it's time for ISPs to charge per megabyte?
Well, it makes business sense, pure and simple. If I want to download the 500 MB Lineage installer, and that alone takes one sixth of my monthly allotment, then it ought to be my problem, right? Wrong. The problem is, the Internet is as much an entertainment medium as anything else, and it's competing with technologies that are not pay-as-you-go, like television and so forth. I think the public will demand unlimited access, if given a choice. The first time they get a bill for $1000 in a month, they'll be looking elsewhere.
Of course, the industry coould just collude and force per-download pricing, but it's ridiculous.
As a consumer, I'm already pissed off that my cable company won't allow me to broadcast. It's their way of keeping distribution in the hands of the few; a way to maintain the status quo. Yes, I understand the reasons why they don't want to host my pr0n and wArEz, but I'm being selfish here; this is about what I want.
I for one will always seek out unlimited pricing if possible.
It's not NASA that wants to keep us out of space. Who funds and owns NASA? (Jeopardy! theme...)
The @#$%ing government wants to keep us out of space. NASA has to do whatever the government says, because they will lose their funding in an instant.
The Air Force (or "Space Force", as someone else here mentioned) is who wants us out of space, just like they bought all the damned land in Nevada and kicked people out of their homes. They want us out so they can do all the experimenting they want with no one knowing.
It's the only place left a sleazy Washington Post reporter can't get to!
Sorry everyone, but it's just so patently obvious that the U.S. military would have far more reasons to prevent space tourism than NASA.
I really want a brain implant, too. (Yeah, and I suppose the wheelchair-bound can walk, too -- and have brain implants at the same time!).
But then I thought about the DMCA, and how I'll get in argument with my friends, as usual. We'll see an 80 year-old Anthony Edwards, of ER fame, on the screen and we'll try to figure out what crappy '80s movie he was in, and it'll rack our brains, and then up will pop a message from AOLTimeWarnerMicrosoftDisneySonyCBS Inc. that will say, "If you'd like to remember the movie Anthony Edwards starred in in the late '80s, we can provide the answer for 25 cents. It will automatically be deducted from your credit card."
I'll try to remember the answer, but finally, in desperation to beat my friends to the punch, I'll grudgingly pay the 25 cents to remember the answer, but just as the credit card is authorizing, my friend will yell out, "Revenge of the Nerds!"
But it'll be too late to cancel my thought order! And meanwhile, in my brain, I'll hear, "We have noted in our records that you couldn't recall the film 'Revenge of the Nerds', which is the intellectual property of AOLTimeWarnerMicrosoftDisneySonyCBS Inc. In the future, if you think about 'Revenge of the Nerds', be advised that you will be charged 25 cents. Thank you and have a lovely day."
This isn't about public law (i.e., through the government); it's about the laws of Capitalism.
What I mean is that you are exactly right, you can write some code, and you can choose to either copyright it or release it into the public domain, but programmers aren't generally a bunch who have to make their living by having other people act as money-making agents for us.
Writers, musicians and artists traditionally do have to relinquish their public rights to copyright in order to get what they really want: to actually make money off what they do.
When I first went online, I was immediately (like in 5 minutes) struck by the ability one had to finally self-publish. But until we find a way for the dollars to find their way to the creator's hand without passing through a filter, creative people will still be duty-bound to these bloodsucking capitalist assholes in the publishing, recording and gallery business.
Anyway, I think that's sort of along the lines with what the poster meant; the laws of Capitalism are definitely being challenged by the Internet. And I think it's a good thing.
But the Canadians come down to the USA for all their supplies. (And those of us from Maine can deal with snow just fine, thanks.)
We'll just preempt this whole thing by closing our outlet store strip malls; the Quebecois won't know what to do without their Eddie Bauer and Nike and Polo Ralph Lauren, and in their delirious state, they won't be able to contribute their precious poutine.
And honestly, having traveled extensively all across Canada and the USA by car, I can tell you one thing: Both of our countries are world leaders in slackjawed yokel redneck culture; that's a wash (but we've probably got yours outnumbered).
I could give you a tip: take a hint from Mars Attacks! and invade us with your music. Don't underestimate the power of Loverboy on the brain...
Seriously, have you ever been to the Maine coast in the summer? It's fucking bilingual. Can't you Canucks tan and shop on the coast of the Hudson Bay or something?
secondly, i really hope it's possible to burn region-free DVDs. i don't want region coding infecting the movies i create.
Well, this is not a definitive answer, but I watched the keynote, and Mr. Jobs was very careful to say that you can "watch your DVD on any of the 10 million consumer-grade DVD players in the United States". I don't know if that limiter was intentional or not.
However, the professional version can surely encode DVDs in any format.
This is all based on technology Apple acquired from Astarte several months ago, BTW. (And iMusic is based on technology acquired from Casady & Greene and Radialogic merged into one.)
Yeah, I thought it was incredible that they ignored two of the largest genres of games: Sports and "Parlor Games".
If you add up all the competing titles, the card games, board games and so forth outsell any other genre by far.
As for sports, I think it's just astounding that they'd ignore the entire category when so many strides have been made in AI and graphics.
And both Doom and Quake? Come on, that's just lazy. It's the same damn game. "Run around and shoot stuff."
Furthermore, I'd have to include The Sims. Maybe they didn't because this is a list of the most "influential", and it hasn't had time to influence much yet, but it's sure as hell going to influence game AI.
Slashdot Mirror
Plain and simple....Windows is not elegant. They have made simple tasks (like setting up network settings) way too difficult. Installing software takes restarts way too often. The system doesn't provide good feedback when something is occurring.
Then, there is the problem of virii and lost time due to system downtime. I should state that I do use Windows, but only for testing, and for when I have to use something Web-based that's not standards-compliant (like the brain-dead Plesk server admin tool).
The problem is, Microsoft doesn't have elegance in them, so it won't improve.
Since when has MTV played a music video?
Maybe M2 would be better...
I love the Mac platform, since I use it every day. In my spare time, I have even started a Mac games listing site that's run out of my own pocket.
However, with iSync, I can't even sync my stuff between my laptop and desktop without subscribing to .Mac. That's just ridiculous. .Mac should be there to make things easy over the Internet (you know, publishing your photos, etc.) But to put in a needless block on the software to get me to sign up for a service that I don't need is disgusting to me.
Note that in Panther, Apple has also removed the "Internet" System control panel, so you have to launch Safari in order to tell the operating system that you *don't* want to use Safari as the default browser (how logical). And, they didn't even bother to tell people how to do that! That's pretty Microsoftian, in my opinion.
I love Apple's products. I choose to do my development work on them. But you've got to call them jerks when they do something jerk-worthy, just like you've got to praise them when they do something great (like FireWire, or zeroconf, or OS X, or Powerbooks...etc. and so on).
The death (or...lack of birth) os CHRP was as much to do with Apple as anyone else. See, the idea was that the Mac would have been the biggest OS for the platform, and it was going to be the logical evolution of Apple's somewhat closed cloning requirements, at the time.
But, when Steve Jobs came back, he killed Mac cloning and, by extension, the CHRP platform. I still believe it could have evolved as a credible competitor to the Wintel architecture (MS even had NT ported to the architecture, but they, too yanked support before it could get out of the gate).
I think you're making statements about things you haven't studied. Science was certainly required at my high school (and junior high school). And they were both public. And you got that statistic from where, exactly? Your ass?
I thought part of the scientific method was actually doing research before you make ridiculous claims? But hey, that's just my understanding. I could be wrong.
I just wanted to quickly say, that though I have not used the T226, but I don't think it's worth jumping all over Ericcson here. Sure, the T226 may be a P.O.S., but I don't think they would tell you it is the logical upgrade path for the T68. That'd be the T610/T616.
It appears to be AT&T who decided the T226 was an "upgrade" for T68 users, not Ericcson.
I just wanted to point out: I think you put "ass" where you should have put "shit".
At least that's whay my Chicago Manual of Style says...
Well, let me first state some basic things on which my conclusions:
(1) I don't believe people care about anyone other than their own friends and family. I think everyone likes to say publicly that they care about other people, but as long as evil nasty shit is happening to Someone Else, Somewhere Else, everybody's generally OK with it.
(2) If a population has enough $$$, they don't care about anything else (i.e., the government can do whatever it wants).
(3) The old saying you can't have beauty without ugliness, or happiness without sadness. Yin-yang...you need balance in order to have definition.
Now, my point.
I don't understand why anyone is the least bit surprised about any of this. Power wants to remain in power. Simple as that. It doesn't matter whether it's Republican, or Democrat, or Socialist, or Fascist. And, when the U.S. public doesn't give a shit (because, economy notwithstanding, most of us still have enough money to, like, go to movies and shit), the people in power can do anything they want. So why wouldn't they try?
I think that we are seeing the symptoms of the post-Cold War world. Simply put, there is no longer a strong foil for American culture. No yin to our yang. When the Soviet Union was a reasonably powerful country...the best way for American powermongers to stay in power was to hold up virtues like freedom, liberty, privacy, etc., because it made us look better than them.
But, now that there is no longer anyone we need to look better than...liberty and privacy, things which just get in the way of power, can now be jettisoned.
Unless China rises up as an enemy of the USA, or something, I expect to see a trend toward more and more powergrabs, the destruction of the few democratic principles this country was founded on in the first place, and a move toward totaliarianism.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong. But, I doubt it.
Excuse my French, but why the fuck doesn't anyone ever talk about the economy?
It seems to me that the RIAA's sales drop also seems to coincide with the dot-com bubble burst, the Terror attacks, and the lack of sunsequent economic resurgence.
I know that, as a resident in New York, freelance work has shriveled up -- if I hadn't had personally satisfied past clients who wanted to work with me again, I would have had to move. Quite frankly, we just don't have money to piss away on CDs right now, even if we didn't want to boycott the assholes at the RIAA.
I just want one reporter to, like, ask them why they think the economy has not had a deleterious effect on their business?
All this bullshit about MP#s being an ad for CDs, and so forth is just that: bullshit, IMO.
Two things are going on: (1) the economy sucks; (2) CDs are becoming obsolete.
Either way, the RIAA has no argument.
Maybe this is "evil" of me, but it seems to me when you have to come to a point where you just say, "Fuck the rules".
When we (Americans) attempted to secede from the British empire, did we "play by the rules"? No, we told the British to go fuck themselves, and hid behind trees and picked them off like target practice because they were marching down the middle of the road in bright red coats like dumbasses. In short, they were playing by the *old* rules, and if we had chosen to play their way, we would have gotten our asses kicked.
It seems to me the surest way to lose a battle is to allow your *enemy* to call the shots. And, the RIAA has publicly declared us as their enemy. And don't talk to me about the poor artists...any artist can now self-distribute; because they choose to (paraphrasing from American Beauty) "sell [their] souls and work for Satan just because it's more convenient that way", it's not my problem.
So, I respectfully submit that we should just stop purchasing CDs, plain and simple. And we should stream whatever the hell we want. And we should trade whatever the hell we want. Let's organize a worldwide open source project which creates a P2P file sharing / music organization system specifically designed to trade RIAA-endorsed music for FREE, but has a pay structure for independents.
They can't put us all in jail, and if it's a war they want, let's give it to them. In short, let's prove them right. Make some musicians broke, if that's what it takes. They're part of the problem, anyway, for signing these idiotic contracts in the first place. (If they were truly "artists", they'd realize a bohemian lifestyle is sometimes worth some freedom, just like painters and sculptors and the rest of us.) And then, after enough macaroni and cheese, Sellout Artist X will fucking sign with an alternative organization who gives a shit about artists' needs instead of an organization which was designed, from top to bottom, to rape their every orifice, milk their last breath and throw away their corpse when they're done.
Sure, it'll take a while for the economy to shift, but I've just decided that I'm never going to buy another RIAA-endorsed CD again, unless it's used. In short, I will only buy in ways that prevent royalties from going to them.
It's simple, really: fuck the RIAA. All they are doing is making me *want* to intentionally pirate their music.
Man, when you actually cause your fans to start plotting ways to intentionally fuck you, your PR people and lawyers are really screwing with your future prospects at profitability. (I was a huge music fiend when I was young, and wanted to work in radio, until I found out what a shitty business it is.) Now, I think I like Microsoft more than the RIAA. That's saying a LOT.
So, to end my insane rant, can someone on this board enlighten me as to WHY we should play by the rules?
Well, I have a pretty good handle on what games are available for the Mac, since I run the Mac Game Database.
Obviously, the Mac market is way smaller than the Windows market. Yeah, there are probably 10-20 times the sheer number of games on the PC as on the Mac. However, most games that people actually play are extremely well represented (AvP, WCIII, AoEII, CivIII, RtCW, etc.).
Furthermore, the Mac has a vibrant shareware community that turns out some quality stuff.
The only exception to the above is sports games, which basically don't exist. But for all other genres, there's quite a good selection.
The point of this now rantish response is to say that 0.1% of these gee whiz tech demos are going to turn into products. Just because Steve Jobs is on stage doesn't mean it isn't vapor ware. The point is to make you think "just how many streets ahead Apple are" and make you also think "This is all stuff that should exist under Windows, but doesn't." Guess what, it doesn't exist on a Mac either. Senior Jobs just got one of his engineers to make a BlueTooth cellphone that could talk with his address book thingy. I doubt Nokia is going to.
Ummm...why does this get posted as "informative" when it's just "flamebait"?
Did you even watch the f*cking demo, you idiot?
The cell phone was made by Sony/Ericsson. I know this because Sony's boring "I sorta speak English" guy went on and on about it from his little index cards. The "technology demo" you refer to was a demonstration of a product that is currently in beta. It will be a free download in September. It is called "iSync". The caller ID feature happens automatically via Bluetooth, using the system-wide Address Book.
Please refrain from making stupid comments about things you didn't even watch.
They're saying they have only 1 million people using it.
If you;re going to quote numbers, at least look them up. Phil Schiller said today that Apple estimates 2.5 million OS X users right now, and they are hoping for 5 million by the end of the year. That's a big difference.
Since Apple estimates its total user base at 25 million, that'd be 10% mac user penetration already. Not too shabby, since it was basically unusable until 10.1.
Still, it's going to require a hardware update fro
most Mac users, and unfortunately the economy sucks...
It's a dick thing with Steve.
The Newton was Sculley's baby. Sculley had a hand in ousting Jobs the first time. Killing the Newton was like some huge triumph for him personally; I bet he was whacking off the whole time.
Jobs is a great innovator, but he's got a tremendously poor track record when it comes to logic. Of course, that's why he comes up with a groundbreaking product every once in a while, but it's also why he managed to miss the PDA market bubble, even though when he took over Apple, he was sitting on the only serious competitor in the market.
In retrospect, maybe it was a good thing, since the PDA market tanked. But I will always believe it was a decision based more on his ego than anything else.
Umm...do you know how they compile these charts? I would think that when the chart is called "Dance/Club Play", you'd get a hint, but since that doesn't seem to be enough of an indicator, I'll quote from the Billboard Web site:
And the Top 200 Albums chart:
Neither list includes radio airplay in its methods of listing. Therefore, whether Moby is in heavy rotation on Pop radio has nothing to do with these successes.
I agree with the other poster who says Moby's a more "alternative" artist. If you're getting more club play than radio airplay, you can't be considered a mainstream artist.
Secondly, if you bother looking at charts (I used to follow them very closely), you'll realize that an album that's only been out 5 weeks is high on the charts simply because it's new. In other words, most of those sales are probably coming from fans of "Play".
Anyway, I bring this up because I wasn't even aware Moby had a release, either, except that I saw him and Gwen Stefani in some shitty video together. He's trying to make "salable" music now, rather than "good" music, and that's going to hurt your sales eventually.
I for one hope this is happening, because the browser situation is (IMO) the most disappointing thing about OS X. As a professional Web developer, it drives me crazy, because I love OS X in almost every other way.
I have seven browsers installed on my Titanium, and I basically use one until it pisses me off, and then switch to another. My current favorite is Netscape 7 PR 1, but it pisses me off now and then, too.
OmniWeb is nice, and a cool idea, but these guys are crazy for trying to keep up with HTML/CSS/ECMEScript, and so on, in their own rendering engine. Every once in a while, it'll just hang, and it has problems with complex sites. But, it looks the best.
iCab is the fastest browser I've used, interface-wise, but it suffers from many of the same problems as OmniWeb. In short, it's cute, and is a great browser -- for about three years ago.
Similarly, Opera's Mac OS X effort is cute, but it's essentially a second-rate browser. It seems to display things quickly, but certainly doesn't live up to its claims of being the fastest. Besides, its font display and Java/ECMAScript support leave a whole hell of a lot to be desired.
Then there's IE. I have to use IE when Mozilla botches a download (yeah, happens frequently). IE also has superior printing (which they debuted on the Mac OS 8 version, a couple of years ago). However, it's the slowest at displaying pages; the Tasman engine is basically a piece of garbage, and I don't have the patience to spend my days looking at spinning beach balls.
Finally, we have Mozilla and Netscape 7. Netscape 7, on my system, actually feels more responsive than Mozilla 1. Mozilla 1 is the most unstable browser of any of them; it will crash on occasionm and certain commands, like "load into new tab" will just not work at certain times. The XUL framework, while interesting for other reasons, is just stupid. It makes Moz/NS not behave like a Mac application. It doesn't display OS-standard UI widgets, doesn't properly launch your preferred email program, and so on.
I've been arguing in online forums for months that what Apple needs to do is just take Gecko and put it in a Cocoa framework. That's what Chimera is. Chimera is awfully promising, but for me, it's not really usable yet; lacks way too many features. Still, I have it on my machine as demo-ware, and check it out every so often. If Apple is doing either of: (1) expand on Chimera and make it feature complete; or (2) wrapping Gecko in a Cocoa framework themselves, then it makes me very, very happy. I'd like to see a solid browser supported on the level of iTunes et al.
I read somewhere that something like 1% of cable internet users eat 90% of the bandwith used, and Optus cable is doing something about it. And this whole slashdot discussion is largely that 1% complaining.
I'm not going to argue the numbers. Whether they are what you say, or way off what you say is immaterial; I have no doubt you're exactly right that {small}% of broadband users eat up {large}% of total Internet traffic. Obviously, my girlfriend who is on a modem can't possibly eat up as much bandwidth as I can on my cable modem.
But, though I can agree with that assessment, I think a better restating of your sentence is: "Optus, which controls 100% of the available satellite transmission capacity for the country of Australia, and is an effective monopoly player in most of the country for telecom and Internet access, rolled out an unlimited service plan in order to steal consumers from the few places they did have competition (Telstra, which has to lease satellite space from them). They then realized they could better control costs once they had a captive audience. So Optus is doing something about it; they are restructuring their offerings because they know most people will just stay with their service anyway, since they effectively have no choice."
That's just shitty, IMO.
Start apache on port 8080 to circumvent your ISP blocking incoming port 80.
I'm on RoadRunner cable, which is the only choice for cable modems here in New York City (where I am at least). The user agreement states that they will simply deny you service if they discover you are hosting things. I can and have done it temporarily, but it's not hard from their end to spot heavy outgoing traffic and just turn you off.
Gee, the last time I checked, they were affiliated with the one of the largest providers of content in the world. Were I to host a...say...news site, I'd be a direct competitor of theirs.
So, I ask you, does the language in that user agreement have more to do with the bandwidth they don't want to host, or the fact they don't want competition for their content distribution?
I think it's a very blurry area.
In any case the Optus thing affects consumers, but PTP is an awfully popular consumer app, and it's something that the big companies want to block for more reasons than bandwidth. All of this is why I don't believe for a second it's straight bandwidth costs that are stimulating these sorts of policies.
It is short-sighted, but complain when the Next Big Thing actually arrives. We have 2.4 GHz Pentium IV's, and I'm 'chugging' along on my 500 MHz Celeron, and the most processor intensive operation I do (aside from dnetc, but that doesn't count) is run mplayer, which eats 25% CPU.
Great, so you don't do much with your computer. If I merely capture some video from my DV camera and compress for Web playback (i.e., take a home movie and show to my friends), my computer is at 100% CPU utilization, and the compression takes a goddamned long time (it shouldn't). There's plenty of room for speed improvements. And that's to say nothing of gaming. Pretty much any game will max either your CPU or video (pick one). I'm talking consumer applications here; not futzing around at command lines writing code, which I also do, but which requires a computer made in 1985.
I have no idea why you selected 2022 as the year we will need more than 3 GB a month. 3 GB is nothing! I've downloaded that inside of a week before. Hell, a few movie trailers and some game demos will get you there pretty fast, not to mention casual surfing.
While the Internet is an entertainment medium, it differs from traditional devices by the method of transport...
Thanks for the primer on how the Internet works, but you're missing the point. I was discussing it from the consumer perspective, not the business perspective. From the consumer perepective, I don't care how they do what they have to do. If they could give me a bajillion terabyte per second connection for $20 a month, I would be more than happy.
My point was, whether IP networks are an efficient mode of transport for television or whatever, compared to broadcast, it doesn't matter, because that's one of the things it's going to be used for. And they have to get used to it.
Furthermore, just like Cable TV fragmented the television market (the networks are getting smaller and smaller auiences all the time), Internet distribution of viewable media will fragment the market even further, and this changes the economies of scale.
In other words, there will never, ever be 4,000,000 people listening to your online radio station. The only reason that happens at all is because there are so few stations, and people have to listen to something....so they do.
When there are a hundred thousand online stations for you to choose from, you will be able to choose "traditional sumatran folk music", with 15 other people, and the listening communities inside a given genre will be much smaller. In short, there will be different metrics for success.
This also means there will be different metrics for usage patterns, and different metrics for creating business models. The slowdown in the technology industry is, in my opinion, largely due to the fact that technology companies are operating under old economy business models rather than new economy business models (in short, they hemmorrhage way too much money and hire way too many people).
I agree with what someone said in another thread on this topic: these decisions are partly motivated by money, yes, but they are also motivated by a desire to maintain the status quo. These companies want to limit broadcasting, file sharing, etc., as much as they want to limit costs.
And, as a consumer, that's why it irks me. If I thought they would go out of business without a limited pricing structure, I would agree with you. But money is not the only operative concern here.
In truth, your post is coherent and logical, but let me play devil's advocate:
I've heard I don't know how many times that "xxxx is enough for the average user" in computer-speak, and every time it's short-sighted. It may be enough given usage patterns right now, but as soon as video is distributed on the network, all software is distributed that way, and as soon as The Next Big Thing (tm) comes along, your point becomes moot. Believe me, 3GB a month will seem like a pittance sooner than you think.
Computers in general aren't even 1 1,000,000th as powerful as they need to be. Look at the latest greatest game, look at how beautiful the 3D is, and then look out your window and realize how truly shitty it looks and you get the idea. We will need more computing horsepower for graphics and AI and everything else, and we will definitely need more bandwidth than 3 lousy GB per month.
Well, it makes business sense, pure and simple. If I want to download the 500 MB Lineage installer, and that alone takes one sixth of my monthly allotment, then it ought to be my problem, right? Wrong. The problem is, the Internet is as much an entertainment medium as anything else, and it's competing with technologies that are not pay-as-you-go, like television and so forth. I think the public will demand unlimited access, if given a choice. The first time they get a bill for $1000 in a month, they'll be looking elsewhere.
Of course, the industry coould just collude and force per-download pricing, but it's ridiculous.
As a consumer, I'm already pissed off that my cable company won't allow me to broadcast. It's their way of keeping distribution in the hands of the few; a way to maintain the status quo. Yes, I understand the reasons why they don't want to host my pr0n and wArEz, but I'm being selfish here; this is about what I want.
I for one will always seek out unlimited pricing if possible.
What the hell is everyone here smoking?
It's not NASA that wants to keep us out of space. Who funds and owns NASA? (Jeopardy! theme...)
The @#$%ing government wants to keep us out of space. NASA has to do whatever the government says, because they will lose their funding in an instant.
The Air Force (or "Space Force", as someone else here mentioned) is who wants us out of space, just like they bought all the damned land in Nevada and kicked people out of their homes. They want us out so they can do all the experimenting they want with no one knowing.
It's the only place left a sleazy Washington Post reporter can't get to!
Sorry everyone, but it's just so patently obvious that the U.S. military would have far more reasons to prevent space tourism than NASA.
I really want a brain implant, too. (Yeah, and I suppose the wheelchair-bound can walk, too -- and have brain implants at the same time!).
But then I thought about the DMCA, and how I'll get in argument with my friends, as usual. We'll see an 80 year-old Anthony Edwards, of ER fame, on the screen and we'll try to figure out what crappy '80s movie he was in, and it'll rack our brains, and then up will pop a message from AOLTimeWarnerMicrosoftDisneySonyCBS Inc. that will say, "If you'd like to remember the movie Anthony Edwards starred in in the late '80s, we can provide the answer for 25 cents. It will automatically be deducted from your credit card."
I'll try to remember the answer, but finally, in desperation to beat my friends to the punch, I'll grudgingly pay the 25 cents to remember the answer, but just as the credit card is authorizing, my friend will yell out, "Revenge of the Nerds!"
But it'll be too late to cancel my thought order! And meanwhile, in my brain, I'll hear, "We have noted in our records that you couldn't recall the film 'Revenge of the Nerds', which is the intellectual property of AOLTimeWarnerMicrosoftDisneySonyCBS Inc. In the future, if you think about 'Revenge of the Nerds', be advised that you will be charged 25 cents. Thank you and have a lovely day."
This isn't about public law (i.e., through the government); it's about the laws of Capitalism.
What I mean is that you are exactly right, you can write some code, and you can choose to either copyright it or release it into the public domain, but programmers aren't generally a bunch who have to make their living by having other people act as money-making agents for us.
Writers, musicians and artists traditionally do have to relinquish their public rights to copyright in order to get what they really want: to actually make money off what they do.
When I first went online, I was immediately (like in 5 minutes) struck by the ability one had to finally self-publish. But until we find a way for the dollars to find their way to the creator's hand without passing through a filter, creative people will still be duty-bound to these bloodsucking capitalist assholes in the publishing, recording and gallery business.
Anyway, I think that's sort of along the lines with what the poster meant; the laws of Capitalism are definitely being challenged by the Internet. And I think it's a good thing.
But the Canadians come down to the USA for all their supplies. (And those of us from Maine can deal with snow just fine, thanks.)
We'll just preempt this whole thing by closing our outlet store strip malls; the Quebecois won't know what to do without their Eddie Bauer and Nike and Polo Ralph Lauren, and in their delirious state, they won't be able to contribute their precious poutine.
And honestly, having traveled extensively all across Canada and the USA by car, I can tell you one thing: Both of our countries are world leaders in slackjawed yokel redneck culture; that's a wash (but we've probably got yours outnumbered).
I could give you a tip: take a hint from Mars Attacks! and invade us with your music. Don't underestimate the power of Loverboy on the brain...
Seriously, have you ever been to the Maine coast in the summer? It's fucking bilingual. Can't you Canucks tan and shop on the coast of the Hudson Bay or something?
secondly, i really hope it's possible to burn region-free DVDs. i don't want region coding infecting the movies i create.
Well, this is not a definitive answer, but I watched the keynote, and Mr. Jobs was very careful to say that you can "watch your DVD on any of the 10 million consumer-grade DVD players in the United States". I don't know if that limiter was intentional or not.
However, the professional version can surely encode DVDs in any format.
This is all based on technology Apple acquired from Astarte several months ago, BTW. (And iMusic is based on technology acquired from Casady & Greene and Radialogic merged into one.)
Yeah, I thought it was incredible that they ignored two of the largest genres of games: Sports and "Parlor Games".
If you add up all the competing titles, the card games, board games and so forth outsell any other genre by far.
As for sports, I think it's just astounding that they'd ignore the entire category when so many strides have been made in AI and graphics.
And both Doom and Quake? Come on, that's just lazy. It's the same damn game. "Run around and shoot stuff."
Furthermore, I'd have to include The Sims. Maybe they didn't because this is a list of the most "influential", and it hasn't had time to influence much yet, but it's sure as hell going to influence game AI.