RSS is more standard than email, so I can parse the data in a common format.
Which common format would that be? At last count there were 9 incompatable versions of RSS. And then there's Atom, which itself has a few incompatable versions floating out there in the wild.
And that's not counting the lack of content standards. Should they be full-text or excerpts? Should they include the author, the subject, the category? Should they contain full-size images? Should they contain enclosures? Should they contain style code? Should they contain ads? Everyone does it differently, and it's fucking infuriating.
I use the hell out of RSS, but it is by no means "standard".
I wonder why they didn't integrate it into the filesystem. That was one of the great things about BeOS, total integration. Everything, including queries was updated on-the-fly.
"Integrated" sounds cool, but it doesn't necessarily mean 'better'. In this case, they are able to achieve the same functionality (with regard to searches) without tying it to a specific filesystem.
Also, Spotlight queries are updated on-the-fly, as content & metadata importers are triggered on every open, save, etc.
Seeing as Apple now has the guy who wrote BeOS's filesystem working for them (probably on this project),
I'm really surprised they didn't move to a real database-type file system.
That would basically mean building a whole new filesystem. This is why Windows won't see this kind of functionality for another two or three years.
I think Apple played it safe by going with a different, but functionally equivalent approach with Spotlight, and wrapped it in a much more familiar interface.
Uh, speaking as a big fan of QuickSilver, I can say with certainty that it is not so complicated as to be out of reach of large companies. None of it's components are exceptionally difficult to create, and indeed the whole thing (save many of the optional modules) was written by one person.
QuickSilver isn't really comparable to Spotlight anyway. They seem the same at first glance, but the only real similarity is in it's use of incremental search, which isn't a new idea. They don't even use the same kind of incremental search.
Spotlight does content and metadata indexing, QuickSilver doesn't. QuickSilver can import non-file catalog entries (iTunes playlists, for example), while Spotlight returns only files as results. These are important differences. Neither is a replacement for the other.
Maybe, but most people are willing to pay a few hundred bucks for much less than what you're asking for, which is basically a fusion of two several-hundred-dollar devices. In fact, you have yourself.
I don't think you understand the term "Killer App".
Re:Regarding conciousness
on
Lysergically Yours
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think an important distinction many people don't make is between thoughts that occur during altered states and thoughts that occur when reflecting upon one's experience in altered states.
With almost any psychoactive drugs, thoughts will occur to you that "seemed like a good idea at the time". Alcohol might have you convinced that you want to take your pants off and dance on the bar. Pot might tell you that you really need some nachos. Cocaine will tell you that thing that will make your life better is some more cocaine. LSD might tell you that the floor is made of lava and you really need to go to connect with the universe by playing all of your records backwards. Amphetmines will tell you that everything you do is perfect and that food and sleep aren't really necessary. And they all tell you that you're being perfectly rational.
Any of these things might be perfectly good ideas, but far too many people forget that the drug is imposing it's own sort rationality on you, in the same way that dreams, as real as they seem, are never actually realistic.
As with dreams, however, there are real benefits to reflecting upon one's experiences with drugs. The very fact that these drugs are able to modify your senses in such profound ways tells you something about how unreliable and malleable your senses really are. The fact that they can effect your ability to reason can make you question how 'pure' your reasoning is without drugs.
The confusion comes from the fact that the card needed to support it has 2 separate DVI connectors, each supporting dual-link. So, to quell another concern, you only need one of these $600 cards to drive two displays.
Rock on. That's awesome. And it makes me wonder if iTunes 4.6 will do all it's streaming that way.
Also, I found this bit of the article you linked to interesting: f iTunes is playing back a digital multichannel file format like AC3 (Dolby Digital) or DTS, those bitstreams are wrapped in Apple's compression and encryption, and then decoded at the other end. In those cases, AirPort Express would end up streaming the raw AC3 or DTS stream via an optical cable to your home theater receiver for decoding.
Particularly because QuickTime doesn't support AC3 or DTS (without a third-party plugin that is) -- or rather, QuickTime 6.5 doesn't. I don't think it's too big a jump to say that QuickTime 7 will, and will be released at the WWDC.
Regarding "open source, plugins or thrid [sic] party". iTunes can play any audio that can be played in QuickTime, and QuickTime supports plug-ins. There is an open-source Ogg Vorbis plug-in, for example.
It's a pretty safe bet that AirTunes uses the same method of sharing that iTunes has had for a while now, which means that the audio decoding happens on the client side. So, even if you can play Vorbis in iTunes, the AirPort Express will not be able to play it.
(A friend of mine proposes some kind of on-the-fly transcoding to Apple's Lossless format, but I doubt seriously that that's how Apple has implemented it.)
However, I don't *want* to stream iTunes (AirTunes... whatever). I want to stream whatever would be coming out of my audio port. I want to sit on my couch, put in a DVD, and watch and hear a movie without wires everywhere.
iTunes/AirTunes streaming streams the compressed audio, not the decoded stream that goes to the speakers, which would take a too much bandwidth.
To do what you want would require recompressing the audio in realtime (while simultaneously decoding the DVD), which would only add to the inherent network latency. The sound would be way out of sync.
I can think of half a dozen tricks that could be used to work around this, but none is so elegant, simple, cheap, and available as a simple audio cable or FM transmitter (like the Griffin iTrip, etc.) Sometimes analog is better.
If iTunes sees it as an audio device, it's very likely the system sees it as an audio output device also, similar to how my USB headset shows up as an audio output device.
It doesn't work that way. It probably uses the same sharing function that iTunes has had since 4.1, except pushing instead of pulling. The compressed audio file is streamed, not the decoded audio (which would take tremendous bandwidth).
AllOfMP3 pays licensing fees to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, when then distributes the money to the artists
So, what do they do with the money they make from selling bootlegs? I've found a number of instances where they sell bootleg albums right along side the real albums. In some cases they even sell albums that aren't even by the artist they claim.
Long answer: No, that would be stupid. The point of the game of pricing is to get as many people as you can to pay as much as you can. iPods have been selling and selling and selling and will keep selling at $299 and up. If sales slow, it's usually about time for an upgrade to make the offer more attractive or, as a last resort in this situation, lower the price.
So basically, Apple will only lower the price when people stop buying iPods.
make a movie about climate change and all of a sudden we are at risk from "Abrupt Climate Change". The planets lasted this long already, I personally am not too concerned.
Abrupt climate change is a real danger...but not in the way portrayed by this movie. That's why the movie is so bad: it trivializes the real issue. People like yourself will just assume that the whole idea is bunk just because the movie version is.
It's like saying that computer security is bunk because of "Hackers" and "Swordfish" and "The Net".
I seem to remeber it being 2006 for a release, 2007 at latest.
The reason for the hyperbole is that the *original* announced release date was 2004. Then it became 2005...then 2006...then 2007 was "possible". While I'm sure they're working very hard on very new stuff (unlike XP), it doesn't change the fact that they announced wayyyyyyy early, a classic Microsoft tactic. After all, why switch away from a MS platform when they'll have New And Better features Real Soon Now?
Contrast with Linux distros with a 6-12 month cycle and few "really new" features, or Apple with a 9-18 month cycle and announcements only 3-6 months in advance.
Microsoft can say, basically, "In 2-3 years, we will be better than everything that's out now." And they're probably right. It's a kind of monopolistic complacency. They don't have to compete for marketshare, but they have to retain mindshare. I won't say that Linux distros or Apple can't compete on that level, but they certainly aren't.
Apple's way of keeping things secret until they're available is a great way to create rumor and spectacle and popularity among users, but it doesn't serve to make their platform attractive for long-term development.
Once it's on an ISO CD format, it's fair game. Just make a binary copy of that CD as many times as you want.
Sure, you can do the same thing with CDs made from iTunes, except you don't need to.
I consider it a point against WMA-based services that you need additional 3rd-party software to do something that iTunes has no problem with in the first place.
Really, going the Microsoft route for your DRMed music collection seems like the best answer to me, because you can then shop arround for the best price on single-track buys, and often find the hot songs for 79 or 88 cents.
Are you suggesting that people "shop around" for a difference of 10 to 20 cents?
Are you suggesting that people deal with half a dozen different music stores with different interfaces and different authorization schemes (dispite using the same format) and different per-track limitations so that they can save 10 cents on "hot songs"?
You wouldn't be so dismissive of the iTunes Music Store if you realized that it's so successful because people don't want to "shop around", they want to hear music". They would rather spend ten cents shopping than ten seconds.
Who says the price of legal music downloads is going up?
Uh, the record labels, if they so desire. But you seem to be implying that somehow WMA-format stores will be immune to this kind of price-hike, which is quite unlikely indeed.
Apple's PlayFair files only allow burning under limited circumstances, particularly that the same mix of songs can only be burned three times.
That's simply not true. What are these "limited circumstances" you speak of? And where do you get three times? Even Apple says ten is the limit for a given playlist, and IIRC, once you reach that limit you can just make a new, identical playlist. There is no per-track limit.
Microsoft's WMA format allows the DRM applier to set whether they want to allow 1 burn, 5 burns, any other number of burns, or infinite burning. Again, Microsoft's just the software provider, it's up to the store to make the deals for these things....
What this means in reality is that any two tracks even from the same store might have different limitations. If you make a mix with tracks A and B, with burn limits of 1 and 5, respectively, you won't be allowed to make two copies of that mix.
I got it from the fact that I had to click through six slow, slow, pages before I was 'done' signing up. True, you aren't required to use factual information or any information at all, but there's no reason to think that this is the case when presented with page after page of blanks. Even Yahoo! has the decency to put it all on one, maybe two, pages.
The account activation only takes 2 weeks because all you non-Mac users came and shat on the servers.
I don't know who you're referring to when you say "all you non-Mac users", given that I'm a Mac user.
As for shitting on the servers, I think you're referring to Spymac's inability to handle the demand brought on by their stupid PR move. Sure, I understand how hard it is to predict how bad the load from something like that will be, but it's Spymac's mistake, not the new users'.
As far as things not working, check the forums, they're working on it.
And obviously they're so busy working that they can't put a notice somewhere outside of the forums (like maybe in the Support section, or on the front page) that says "Hey, sorry, but half of the services we claim to offer don't work right now, but we're working on it.", so that I don't have to wade through half a million Mac vs. PC flamewars just to find out that I can't actually use the services I came there to use.
It's a community site, where people actually want to build something everyone can enjoy.
In my admittedly limited experience with the Spymac community, it seems like that something consists primarily of juvenile flamewars, "Me Too!!!" posts to boost one's activity score, and a dose of anti-Chinese racism.
The unofficial official word (that is, comments by Spymac employees in the forums) has been:
-New accounts take 2 weeks to activate. -We were "Shocked, shocked!" at all the new users since
we announced the 1GB email service. -WebDAV doesn't work. -POP3 doesn't work. -FTP works this week, maybe. -"Don't you want to buy hosting services from us?"
Of course, none of this is on the main page, in the support pages, or mentioned during the too-long signup process. I've never felt so ripped-off by a free service.
Slashdot Mirror
RSS is more standard than email, so I can parse the data in a common format.
Which common format would that be?
At last count there were 9 incompatable versions of RSS. And then there's Atom, which itself has a few incompatable versions floating out there in the wild.
And that's not counting the lack of content standards. Should they be full-text or excerpts? Should they include the author, the subject, the category? Should they contain full-size images? Should they contain enclosures? Should they contain style code? Should they contain ads? Everyone does it differently, and it's fucking infuriating.
I use the hell out of RSS, but it is by no means "standard".
Lame. That's not reassuring at all. I would be a lot happier if they said we WILL be adding increased Firefox support in the future.
I'm sure it will take Google a long time to figure out how to index a bunch of links in an HTML file. They're so bad about that...
I wonder why they didn't integrate it into the filesystem. That was one of the great things about BeOS, total integration. Everything, including queries was updated on-the-fly.
"Integrated" sounds cool, but it doesn't necessarily mean 'better'.
In this case, they are able to achieve the same functionality (with regard to searches) without tying it to a specific filesystem.
Also, Spotlight queries are updated on-the-fly, as content & metadata importers are triggered on every open, save, etc.
Seeing as Apple now has the guy who wrote BeOS's filesystem working for them (probably on this project),
Yup.
I'm really surprised they didn't move to a real database-type file system.
That would basically mean building a whole new filesystem. This is why Windows won't see this kind of functionality for another two or three years.
I think Apple played it safe by going with a different, but functionally equivalent approach with Spotlight, and wrapped it in a much more familiar interface.
Uh, speaking as a big fan of QuickSilver, I can say with certainty that it is not so complicated as to be out of reach of large companies. None of it's components are exceptionally difficult to create, and indeed the whole thing (save many of the optional modules) was written by one person.
QuickSilver isn't really comparable to Spotlight anyway. They seem the same at first glance, but the only real similarity is in it's use of incremental search, which isn't a new idea. They don't even use the same kind of incremental search.
Spotlight does content and metadata indexing, QuickSilver doesn't. QuickSilver can import non-file catalog entries (iTunes playlists, for example), while Spotlight returns only files as results. These are important differences. Neither is a replacement for the other.
Now that I'd pay a few hundred bucks for..
Maybe, but most people are willing to pay a few hundred bucks for much less than what you're asking for, which is basically a fusion of two several-hundred-dollar devices. In fact, you have yourself.
I don't think you understand the term "Killer App".
I think an important distinction many people don't make is between thoughts that occur during altered states and thoughts that occur when reflecting upon one's experience in altered states.
With almost any psychoactive drugs, thoughts will occur to you that "seemed like a good idea at the time". Alcohol might have you convinced that you want to take your pants off and dance on the bar. Pot might tell you that you really need some nachos. Cocaine will tell you that thing that will make your life better is some more cocaine. LSD might tell you that the floor is made of lava and you really need to go to connect with the universe by playing all of your records backwards. Amphetmines will tell you that everything you do is perfect and that food and sleep aren't really necessary. And they all tell you that you're being perfectly rational.
Any of these things might be perfectly good ideas, but far too many people forget that the drug is imposing it's own sort rationality on you, in the same way that dreams, as real as they seem, are never actually realistic.
As with dreams, however, there are real benefits to reflecting upon one's experiences with drugs. The very fact that these drugs are able to modify your senses in such profound ways tells you something about how unreliable and malleable your senses really are. The fact that they can effect your ability to reason can make you question how 'pure' your reasoning is without drugs.
The new display uses dual-link DVI.
The confusion comes from the fact that the card needed to support it has 2 separate DVI connectors, each supporting dual-link. So, to quell another concern, you only
need one of these $600 cards to drive two displays.
A think the appeal of the iMac lies in that it is small, easy to hook up(no rats nest), and has astehtic value.
You just listed three things that are not true about Linux.
Whatever happened to good, hard, honest work?
It got outsourced.
Rock on. That's awesome. And it makes me wonder if iTunes 4.6 will do all it's streaming that way.
Also, I found this bit of the article you linked to interesting:
f iTunes is playing back a digital multichannel file format like AC3 (Dolby Digital) or DTS, those bitstreams are wrapped in Apple's compression and encryption, and then decoded at the other end. In those cases, AirPort Express would end up streaming the raw AC3 or DTS stream via an optical cable to your home theater receiver for decoding.
Particularly because QuickTime doesn't support AC3 or DTS (without a third-party plugin that is) -- or rather, QuickTime 6.5 doesn't. I don't think it's too big a jump to say that QuickTime 7 will, and will be released at the WWDC.
Regarding "open source, plugins or thrid [sic] party". iTunes can play any audio that can be played in QuickTime, and QuickTime supports plug-ins. There is an open-source Ogg Vorbis plug-in, for example.
It's a pretty safe bet that AirTunes uses the same method of sharing that iTunes has had for a while now, which means that the audio decoding happens on the client side. So, even if you can play Vorbis in iTunes, the AirPort Express will not be able to play it.
(A friend of mine proposes some kind of on-the-fly transcoding to Apple's Lossless format, but I doubt seriously that that's how Apple has implemented it.)
However, I don't *want* to stream iTunes (AirTunes ... whatever). I want to stream whatever would be coming out of my audio port. I want to sit on my couch, put in a DVD, and watch and hear a movie without wires everywhere.
iTunes/AirTunes streaming streams the compressed audio, not the decoded stream that goes to the speakers, which would take a too much bandwidth.
To do what you want would require recompressing the audio in realtime (while simultaneously decoding the DVD), which would only add to the inherent network latency. The sound would be way out of sync.
I can think of half a dozen tricks that could be used to work around this, but none is so elegant, simple, cheap, and available as a simple audio cable or FM transmitter (like the Griffin iTrip, etc.) Sometimes analog is better.
If iTunes sees it as an audio device, it's very likely the system sees it as an audio output device also, similar to how my USB headset shows up as an audio output device.
It doesn't work that way. It probably uses the same sharing function that iTunes has had since 4.1, except pushing instead of pulling. The compressed audio file is streamed, not the decoded audio (which would take tremendous bandwidth).
AllOfMP3 pays licensing fees to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, when then distributes the money to the artists
So, what do they do with the money they make from selling bootlegs? I've found a number of instances where they sell bootleg albums right along side the real albums. In some cases they even sell albums that aren't even by the artist they claim.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No, that would be stupid. The point of the game of pricing is to get as many people as you can to pay as much as you can. iPods have been selling and selling and selling and will keep selling at $299 and up. If sales slow, it's usually about time for an upgrade to make the offer more attractive or, as a last resort in this situation, lower the price.
So basically, Apple will only lower the price when people stop buying iPods.
make a movie about climate change and all of a sudden we are at risk from "Abrupt Climate Change". The planets lasted this long already, I personally am not too concerned.
Abrupt climate change is a real danger...but not in the way portrayed by this movie. That's why the movie is so bad: it trivializes the real issue. People like yourself will just assume that the whole idea is bunk just because the movie version is.
It's like saying that computer security is bunk because of "Hackers" and "Swordfish" and "The Net".
It will be a great day when I see a dual 3ghz+ x86 machine running OS X ;-)
Why? Any speed advantage of the x86 would be utterly destroyed by the emulation.
Personally I rather have the AP test be questions about algorithms, ideas and concepts.
Algorithms? Ideas? Concepts?
None of those things were in my high school AP CS classes.
I seem to remeber it being 2006 for a release, 2007 at latest.
The reason for the hyperbole is that the *original* announced release date was 2004. Then it became 2005...then 2006...then 2007 was "possible". While I'm sure they're working very hard on very new stuff (unlike XP), it doesn't change the fact that they announced wayyyyyyy early, a classic Microsoft tactic. After all, why switch away from a MS platform when they'll have New And Better features Real Soon Now?
Contrast with Linux distros with a 6-12 month cycle and few "really new" features, or Apple with a 9-18 month cycle and announcements only 3-6 months in advance.
Microsoft can say, basically, "In 2-3 years, we will be better than everything that's out now." And they're probably right. It's a kind of monopolistic complacency. They don't have to compete for marketshare, but they have to retain mindshare. I won't say that Linux distros or Apple can't compete on that level, but they certainly aren't.
Apple's way of keeping things secret until they're available is a great way to create rumor and spectacle and popularity among users, but it doesn't serve to make their platform attractive for long-term development.
Do you realize what this means?
Yes, it means that I clicked "I Agree", bought an album for my girlfriend, ran it through PlayFair, and stopped worrying about the DRM entirely.
Once it's on an ISO CD format, it's fair game. Just make a binary copy of that CD as many times as you want.
Sure, you can do the same thing with CDs made from iTunes, except you don't need to.
I consider it a point against WMA-based services that you need additional 3rd-party software to do something that iTunes has no problem with in the first place.
Really, going the Microsoft route for your DRMed music collection seems like the best answer to me, because you can then shop arround for the best price on single-track buys, and often find the hot songs for 79 or 88 cents.
Are you suggesting that people "shop around" for a difference of 10 to 20 cents?
Are you suggesting that people deal with half a dozen different music stores with different interfaces and different authorization schemes (dispite using the same format) and different per-track limitations so that they can save 10 cents on "hot songs"?
You wouldn't be so dismissive of the iTunes Music Store if you realized that it's so successful because people don't want to "shop around", they want to hear music". They would rather spend ten cents shopping than ten seconds.
Who says the price of legal music downloads is going up?
Uh, the record labels, if they so desire. But you seem to be implying that somehow WMA-format stores will be immune to this kind of price-hike, which is quite unlikely indeed.
Apple's PlayFair files only allow burning under limited circumstances, particularly that the same mix of songs can only be burned three times.
That's simply not true. What are these "limited circumstances" you speak of? And where do you get three times? Even Apple says ten is the limit for a given playlist, and IIRC, once you reach that limit you can just make a new, identical playlist. There is no per-track limit.
Microsoft's WMA format allows the DRM applier to set whether they want to allow 1 burn, 5 burns, any other number of burns, or infinite burning. Again, Microsoft's just the software provider, it's up to the store to make the deals for these things....
What this means in reality is that any two tracks even from the same store might have different limitations. If you make a mix with tracks A and B, with burn limits of 1 and 5, respectively, you won't be allowed to make two copies of that mix.
Don't know where you got this 'six pages' thing..
I got it from the fact that I had to click through six slow, slow, pages before I was 'done' signing up. True, you aren't required to use factual information or any information at all, but there's no reason to think that this is the case when presented with page after page of blanks. Even Yahoo! has the decency to put it all on one, maybe two, pages.
The account activation only takes 2 weeks because all you non-Mac users came and shat on the servers.
I don't know who you're referring to when you say "all you non-Mac users", given that I'm a Mac user.
As for shitting on the servers, I think you're referring to Spymac's inability to handle the demand brought on by their stupid PR move. Sure, I understand how hard it is to predict how bad the load from something like that will be, but it's Spymac's mistake, not the new users'.
As far as things not working, check the forums, they're working on it.
And obviously they're so busy working that they can't put a notice somewhere outside of the forums (like maybe in the Support section, or on the front page) that says "Hey, sorry, but half of the services we claim to offer don't work right now, but we're working on it.", so that I don't have to wade through half a million Mac vs. PC flamewars just to find out that I can't actually use the services I came there to use.
It's a community site, where people actually want to build something everyone can enjoy.
In my admittedly limited experience with the Spymac community, it seems like that something consists primarily of juvenile flamewars, "Me Too!!!" posts to boost one's activity score, and a dose of anti-Chinese racism.
To each his own.
The unofficial official word (that is, comments by Spymac employees in the forums) has been :
-New accounts take 2 weeks to activate.
-We were "Shocked, shocked!" at all the new users since
we announced the 1GB email service.
-WebDAV doesn't work.
-POP3 doesn't work.
-FTP works this week, maybe.
-"Don't you want to buy hosting services from us?"
Of course, none of this is on the main page, in the
support pages, or mentioned during the too-long signup
process. I've never felt so ripped-off by a free service.