I don't know about you, but if I like an artist, I want to give them my money so they'll keep making music. You're telling them "This thing you worked so hard on is only worth fifty cents to me. This thing you made is worth as much as the stuff you get out of supermarket vending machines."
I'm not saying that even good musicians should be rich -- but you're being an incredibly cheap bastard to say that an artist should only get 45 cents in exchange for the right to listen to something they created whenever, wherever, and however you want, with no guarantee that their work won't end up on a P2P network.
The song may only be 3 minutes long, but that does not mean that the artist only spent 3 minutes creating it. I mean, you're talking below minimum wage, here, with your 45 cents business.
Say what you will about the quality of certain artists -- but if I'm willing to spend any money on an artist, I'm willing to spend a lot more than 50 cents, because I fucking respect what they do.
128k AAC is still better than 128k MP3, but how many people are going to believe that when most people assume that a 2ghz Pentium is faster than an AMD processor running at a lower clock speed?
Lots. Even if the target-audience cared about bitrates, they're still the ones who bought (say) a 1GHz iMac vs. a 2.5GHz Dell.
Second, who is going to pay 99ï½ for something they can get for free on Gnutella?
The people who have no idea what Gnutella is, or where to get it, or how to use it, but really want to hear that one song...
Sure, some people will pay for the convenience of downloading very simply from the iTunes Music Store.
I will not be one of those people.
Nor do you need to be for this to be successful.
I've been boycotting the music industry for almost three years now, and this doesn't look compelling to me. Anyone else agree?
I agree that for someone who has been boycotting the music industry for 3 years, that this wouldn't be too exciting. Oddly enough, a lot of people haven't been boycotting the music industry, and will be quite excited by the proposition of getting the "1 or 2 good songs" that they want.
... that he'd let them waste all that R&D and $$ on a project they won't ever use?
Not as much $$ as you might think. IIRC, NeXTStep (upon which the higher-level portions of MacOS are based) was ported to x86 back when Jobs was captain of that ship. The lower-level portions (FreeBSD/Darwin) are, of course, already ported as well.
Porting an OS to a different architecture is expensive. Maintaining a port is pretty cheap. It seems like a smart practice to keep all of your code portable, even if x86 will never be used. Eventually, should Apple ever move to a different architecture, or some future iteration of PPC, they'll have a much easier time of it.
Seeding machines to developers (to ensure that they are portable, or could be, presumably.) shouldn't cost much at all, given that the primary benefit of the x86 architecture is cost.
It's pretty well-accepted that there is a port in existence, but I wouldn't take it as a sign that Apple is planning to move to an architecture that's on it's way out.
In all, my experience has been very good with tablet pcs and I wonder when the open source community is going to think about developing such a product.
Perhaps when 'the open source community' becomes one of the largest software companies in the world with a 90% market share.
Or at the very least when 'the open source community' figures out a way to make 'open source hardware', and produce it in 'open source factories' with 'open source workers' using 'open source materials'.
Actually, you know, I asked the open source community, and he said "You know, I never thought of that. I'll get right on it."
If the open source community does not begin innovating instead of playing catchup to microsoft, it will never succeed.
Yeah, somebody brought that up at the last Linux shareholder's meeting down in Fairyland, but since everybody there was just there for the free beer, it didn't really take.
Here is something (the tablet pc) completely new that everyone I show asks "where do I sign to get one"?
Right on the line that says "I hereby bequeath my (left testicle, first born child, kidneys), that I may have expensive clipboa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Tablet PC"
But you have to recoop R+D.
I'll cut the sarcastic crap and just say : Bullshit. Microsoft doesn't have to recoup shit, they spend boatloads on R&D anyway, and the manufacturers know they have to make huge margins while the hype is still around. Pen-screens are expensive, but there's no technical reason they can't sell one for less than half of what they're going for now.
Where are the voice recognition and handwriting recognition in the open source community? Are there any efforts?
They're in line, after the unified GUI, the unified sound architecture, the a11y and i18n, and other things that users actually want and need. Also, what good are voice and handwriting interfaces to people who use the command line most of the time?
Well, no. Ninety-some percent of people will never switch from their default browser, better, worse, or indifferent. If you define 'better' as 'requires no effort to obtain', then your hypothesis becomes true. Otherwise it is not.
You'll note that I said 'If people stop using Camino...'
I'll grant you that fewer people will start using Camino, but that's because they won't find anything wrong with Safari.
Too put it another way, 90% of people won't be using Camino whether Safari existed or not, because IE would still be the default browser. Of the 10% that are willing/able to switch to another, they now have one more option. If they decide to stop using Camino (or iCab, or OmniWeb, or Mozilla) in favor of Safari, so be it.
I'll restate my hypothesis : If fewer people switch from the Safari (than they did when IE was default), it will because the Safari is better.
It's easy to pretend that this is just like Microsoft. Except that Apple isn't making Safari an integral and inseperable part of the OS. And they're actually listening to users instead of 'content' proviers. And including actual innovations. And it doesn't suck eggs.
Bust yourself to develop and demonstrate new UI and core technologies to have them lifted by a large for-profit computer maker?
Yes. And the best part is that you can lift them right back. Competition is healthy.
Granted the open source Camino is intended to create new work without profit, but at some point it will also lose the "profit" of public attention, and wither away, and cease to produce new things.
You seem to be saying that if nobody uses Camino, then Camino will not be used. Yes, indeed. If people stop using Caminio, it will be because they are using something better. This is a good thing, whether it is Safari or not.
At the least I'd like to see Safari give a nod to Chimera.
Like what? Giving it's lead developer a job? I think that's quite a nod. They also gave quite a nod to the KHTML team (to whom they owe much more), both in name, and in source.
People who have tried the service, expected to debut by the end of April, say it makes downloading and purchasing music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com. It allows users to buy and download songs to their computers with a single click and to transfer the music automatically to their portable MP3 players.
I remember joking with a friend about how Apple was the only company to license Amazon's "1-Click" (patent gripes go in another thread) -- as it's a rare person indeed who can afford to impulse-buy Apple products. But now it all makes sense.
I just know that this is what they were thinking when they licensed 1-Click. In Amazon's case, it it works because they sell everything, and it helps squash competitors. In Apple's case, it will work for completely different reasons -- because it will be cheap enough for impulse buying, nearly instant delivery, and if this deal works out, they'll be selling their own products (Universal Music), via their own products (Macs), to play on their own products (iTunes and the iPod).
I bet they'll find a way to tie it into Rendevous somehow, too. So that, perhaps, you'll be able to listen to music you purchased on one computer on another, whilst preserving the DRM which will most likely be included.
A mutually beneficial arrangement and (possibly) happy listeners.
Except...it is rediculously easy to capture/record any kind of streaming audio. Since we're talking about doing the distribution over the internet, too, it wouldn't be a huge difference in quality, either, whereas radio- vs. CD-quality is a big, big deal. (With the exception of lossless codecs.)
Record companies would never go for that without mad DRM, which would neither work, nor make happy listeners.
If we ignore price gouging for the moment, I think that keeping the distribution physical is best, because that's where there is money to be made, and where the highest quality is delivered to the consumer.
128kb/s sounds like ass. 256 is minimum for acceptable audio quality
Chris, you ignorant slut! Why the fuck would you be using CBR in the first place? Because you want your ears to tear themselves from your head in disgust and start gnawing on your tiny, tiny, nads?
and if you have a respectable monitoring system, you can hear artifacts on virtually any bitrate mp3.
You loathsome, corpulent, fool! Nobody with a respectable monitoring system would be listening to MP3s in the first place! To do such would be balderdash to the point of poppycockery!
The fact that something to disgustingly unamerican as the USA PATRIOT act was even passed to begin with doesn't give me a whole lot of faith that this move won't be well-recieved. The fact that a very influencial Senator is pushing for this years before the original act is scheduled to end makes it outright terrifying.
Of course, Creative's decision to disable the digital out on Audigies in certain circumstances (and their steadfast defense of that decision) means my setup wouldn't work, and pretty much guarantees that I won't be buying another Creative card when it's time to upgrade.
IIRC, the only time the digital out won't work is when playing DVD-Audio. Blame the DVD people, because that's what they mandate. You either disable the digital out, or can't support DVD-A at all.
Personally, I don't find this a problem, aside from it being a big piece of DRM bullshit, because I don't have a receiver that can decode 24-bit/96khz DVD-Audio, or for that matter, any discs to play.
I can understand objecting to the politics of DRM, but I don't think this is a technical problem that will get in anyone's way.
If you were truly gonna invest in a high bandwidth digital soundsystem, shouldn't the system be doing something like *firewire* sound?
It's called S/PDIF, or simply "Digital Out", and it's been on practically every sound card for the past three years. And it is exactly as you describe. The sound card does everything but the DAC, and you get a nice no-hiss signal. A $30 SoundBlaster Live! will do it, assuming you have a speaker system/reciever with a S/PDIF input.
Bah, I knew that line would get misinterpreted. I wasn't trying to imply that an artist objectively sucks if you only like a few of their songs.
What I meant was that if you only like one or two of an artists' songs, it doesn't behoove you to buy the album. Or, if you discovered this only after you bought the album, it should be a hint not to buy the next.
What I'm really saying is that I'm sick of people bitching about being "forced to buy" albums that they claim to know are mostly crap. If you bought the last four Foobar records and didn't like them very much, it should be a pretty clear sign that you aren't a big Foobar fan and shouldn't buy the fifth.
Which indicates there is something in it that stops the rest of us using it. This would further indicate either a closed format with codecs only for these two. Or DRM on top of something that exists.
I don't think it'd be quite as sinister as you seem to imply. My guess is that it would integrate with iTunes. This is Apple we're talking about. They'll want it to tie in seamlessly, and iTunes is probably due for an upgrade. I think they're more concerned with keeping the service in Apple-land than they are DRM (which they've had a good policy about in the past.) Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if it became part of.Mac.
Someone with more certainty should comment on this, but I would expect the audio to be regular MP3 unless the iPod's firmware can be easily upgraded to use AAC, which I think supports some kind of DRM. Again, I think Apple is more concerned with keeping such a service limited to Apple users than they are appeasing DRM-hungry record companies, but they may have to do just that.
Means I don't have to buy a whole album for one or two songs
I have to point this out to people all the time : If the artists you're listening to can only make one or two good songs, then they suck. It doesn't even matter who you're listening to -- if you only like trendy pop or underground hip-hop or whatever -- if you only like one or two of their songs, then they aren't worth buying.
You use your computer for at least 3-4 YEARS. You learn.
I R-E-A-L-L-Y don't want to wait 3-4 years before being able to perform basic file-management tasks. In fact, I wouldn't, I'd go use an environment that has paid attention to usability studies, and doesn't design only for it's current users.
Therefore the whole basis of these usability studies is that they're great for making gnome usable the first 15 minutes you sit down with it.. but that's it. Then you're out of the target market that benefits from them.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Making an interface more intuitive benefits everybody. The less time you have to spend wondering how to perform a task, or wondering if it's even possible, the better. I've found that the users that complain the most about the GUI sucking are the ones that are perfectly capable of configuring it in a way that they like, or using something else.
You want to do R-E-A-L usability studies? get 100+ people who use gnome NOW. Of all different levels of skills, just like distributed in the user community. Study them for at least 3 months. Thouroughly. Then make your decisions.
As if you could possibly find 100+ GNOME users that use even remotely similar configurations or applications! Or that many of them wouldn't be utterly counterintuitive to anybody but that user. And if you think that a lot of money goes into usability tests now, imagine the cost of studying hundreds of people for months at a time!
Any environment that emerged from what you're suggesting would be so configurable that it would be impossible to document, impossible to learn, and utterly useless to anybody but those very same users (who are perfectly capable of configuring things the way they like it *now*.) Not to mention the flamewars over which of the hundred menu styles should be the default.
They're not putting the hype behind the processor so much as the platform, especially with respect to battery life. The new chip is faster/more efficient, etc; but you're probably not going to find many of them outside of the whole "Centrino" platform, not only because of the technical advantages, but because Intel is offering OEMs some huge marketing dollars if they use the whole package. I think it's a win for the consumer.
The problem with auto-hiding menus (Personalized Menus, Smart Menus, whatever) is that they only work well in a few places. Poorly-organized menus, like program-launching menus, (Accessories, QuickTime, Office, Mozilla, etc) are well served by the self-organization, whereas menus that are already organized into some kind of intuitive grouping, like in a word processor (New, Open, Close | Save, Save As... | Print, Print Preview | Exit), see that order destroyed.
Slashdot Mirror
Give artist 45 cents
I think you mispelled "FUCK ARTIST IN THE ASS".
I don't know about you, but if I like an artist, I want to give them my money so they'll keep making music. You're telling them "This thing you worked so hard on is only worth fifty cents to me. This thing you made is worth as much as the stuff you get out of supermarket vending machines."
I'm not saying that even good musicians should be rich -- but you're being an incredibly cheap bastard to say that an artist should only get 45 cents in exchange for the right to listen to something they created whenever, wherever, and however you want, with no guarantee that their work won't end up on a P2P network.
The song may only be 3 minutes long, but that does not mean that the artist only spent 3 minutes creating it. I mean, you're talking below minimum wage, here, with your 45 cents business.
Say what you will about the quality of certain artists -- but if I'm willing to spend any money on an artist, I'm willing to spend a lot more than 50 cents, because I fucking respect what they do.
-dr.badass
Their marketing people now have two problems.
Apple? Marketing problems? Hello?
128k AAC is still better than 128k MP3, but how many people are going to believe that when most people assume that a 2ghz Pentium is faster than an AMD processor running at a lower clock speed?
Lots. Even if the target-audience cared about bitrates, they're still the ones who bought (say) a 1GHz iMac vs. a 2.5GHz Dell.
Second, who is going to pay 99ï½ for something they can get for free on Gnutella?
The people who have no idea what Gnutella is, or where to get it, or how to use it, but really want to hear that one song...
Sure, some people will pay for the convenience of downloading very simply from the iTunes Music Store.
I will not be one of those people.
Nor do you need to be for this to be successful.
I've been boycotting the music industry for almost three years now, and this doesn't look compelling to me. Anyone else agree?
I agree that for someone who has been boycotting the music industry for 3 years, that this wouldn't be too exciting. Oddly enough, a lot of people haven't been boycotting the music industry, and will be quite excited by the proposition of getting the "1 or 2 good songs" that they want.
-dr.badass
How long before someone comes out with an ACC to MP3 or ACC to OGG converter?
Approximately zero seconds. The new iPod's dock has a line-out.
(Insert Standard 'lossy-to-lossy' disclaimer here)
My Zaurus 5500 does all these things ... For $178
Where the hell do you shop, man?
The cheapest I've seen the thing is $350.
Does anyone else thing that piles could be used to implement BeOS-style live searches?
Arg! Damn that 'Post Anonymously' box, right next to the submit button. I'll never get that Karma bonus...
-dr.badass
... that he'd let them waste all that R&D and $$ on a project they won't ever use?
Not as much $$ as you might think. IIRC, NeXTStep (upon which the higher-level portions of MacOS are based) was ported to x86 back when Jobs was captain of that ship. The lower-level portions (FreeBSD/Darwin) are, of course, already ported as well.
Porting an OS to a different architecture is expensive. Maintaining a port is pretty cheap. It seems like a smart practice to keep all of your code portable, even if x86 will never be used. Eventually, should Apple ever move to a different architecture, or some future iteration of PPC, they'll have a much easier time of it.
Seeding machines to developers (to ensure that they are portable, or could be, presumably.) shouldn't cost much at all, given that the primary benefit of the x86 architecture is cost.
It's pretty well-accepted that there is a port in existence, but I wouldn't take it as a sign that Apple is planning to move to an architecture that's on it's way out.
In all, my experience has been very good with tablet pcs and I wonder when the open source community is going to think about developing such a product.
:
Perhaps when 'the open source community' becomes one of the largest software companies in the world with a 90% market share.
Or at the very least when 'the open source community' figures out a way to make 'open source hardware', and produce it in 'open source factories' with 'open source workers' using 'open source materials'.
Actually, you know, I asked the open source community, and he said "You know, I never thought of that. I'll get right on it."
If the open source community does not begin innovating instead of playing catchup to microsoft, it will never succeed.
Yeah, somebody brought that up at the last Linux shareholder's meeting down in Fairyland, but since everybody there was just there for the free beer, it didn't really take.
Here is something (the tablet pc) completely new that everyone I show asks "where do I sign to get one"?
Right on the line that says "I hereby bequeath my (left testicle, first born child, kidneys), that I may have expensive clipboa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Tablet PC"
But you have to recoop R+D.
I'll cut the sarcastic crap and just say : Bullshit. Microsoft doesn't have to recoup shit, they spend boatloads on R&D anyway, and the manufacturers know they have to make huge margins while the hype is still around. Pen-screens are expensive, but there's no technical reason they can't sell one for less than half of what they're going for now.
Where are the voice recognition and handwriting recognition in the open source community? Are there any efforts?
They're in line, after the unified GUI, the unified sound architecture, the a11y and i18n, and other things that users actually want and need. Also, what good are voice and handwriting interfaces to people who use the command line most of the time?
But, since you asked
Sphinx, open source (BSD-License) speech recognition.
XScribble,
uni-stroke character recognition for Linux on PDAs.
Are we going to let microsoft reinvent the pc while we sit back and simply say... ah... they'll pull it in a year.
Who is 'we'? If you're so threatened by Microsoft 'reinventing the pc', then why the hell did you buy one?
They may thorw millions into marketing though which they haven't yet.
Um...yeah. So, how do you get electricity in your cave?
Do your homework before advocating decisions for the open source community.
If you care so much, then why don't you do something about it?
-dr.badass
Well, no. Ninety-some percent of people will never switch from their default browser, better, worse, or indifferent. If you define 'better' as 'requires no effort to obtain', then your hypothesis becomes true. Otherwise it is not.
You'll note that I said 'If people stop using Camino...'
I'll grant you that fewer people will start using Camino, but that's because they won't find anything wrong with Safari.
Too put it another way, 90% of people won't be using Camino whether Safari existed or not, because IE would still be the default browser. Of the 10% that are willing/able to switch to another, they now have one more option. If they decide to stop using Camino (or iCab, or OmniWeb, or Mozilla) in favor of Safari, so be it.
I'll restate my hypothesis : If fewer people switch from the Safari (than they did when IE was default), it will because the Safari is better.
It's easy to pretend that this is just like Microsoft. Except that Apple isn't making Safari an integral and inseperable part of the OS. And they're actually listening to users instead of 'content' proviers. And including actual innovations. And it doesn't suck eggs.
-dr.badass
Bust yourself to develop and demonstrate new UI and core technologies to have them lifted by a large for-profit computer maker?
Yes. And the best part is that you can lift them right back. Competition is healthy.
Granted the open source Camino is intended to create new work without profit, but at some point it will also lose the "profit" of public attention, and wither away, and cease to produce new things.
You seem to be saying that if nobody uses Camino, then Camino will not be used. Yes, indeed. If people stop using Caminio, it will be because they are using something better. This is a good thing, whether it is Safari or not.
At the least I'd like to see Safari give a nod to Chimera.
Like what? Giving it's lead developer a job? I think that's quite a nod. They also gave quite a nod to the KHTML team (to whom they owe much more), both in name, and in source.
-dr.badass
People who have tried the service, expected to debut by the end of April, say it makes downloading and purchasing music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com. It allows users to buy and download songs to their computers with a single click and to transfer the music automatically to their portable MP3 players.
I remember joking with a friend about how Apple was the only company to license Amazon's "1-Click" (patent gripes go in another thread) -- as it's a rare person indeed who can afford to impulse-buy Apple products. But now it all makes sense.
I just know that this is what they were thinking when they licensed 1-Click. In Amazon's case, it it works because they sell everything, and it helps squash competitors. In Apple's case, it will work for completely different reasons -- because it will be cheap enough for impulse buying, nearly instant delivery, and if this deal works out, they'll be selling their own products (Universal Music), via their own products (Macs), to play on their own products (iTunes and the iPod).
I bet they'll find a way to tie it into Rendevous somehow, too. So that, perhaps, you'll be able to listen to music you purchased on one computer on another, whilst preserving the DRM which will most likely be included.
-dr.badass
A mutually beneficial arrangement and (possibly) happy listeners.
Except...it is rediculously easy to capture/record any kind of streaming audio. Since we're talking about doing the distribution over the internet, too, it wouldn't be a huge difference in quality, either, whereas radio- vs. CD-quality is a big, big deal. (With the exception of lossless codecs.)
Record companies would never go for that without mad DRM, which would neither work, nor make happy listeners.
If we ignore price gouging for the moment, I think that keeping the distribution physical is best, because that's where there is money to be made, and where the highest quality is delivered to the consumer.
128kb/s sounds like ass. 256 is minimum for acceptable audio quality
Chris, you ignorant slut! Why the fuck would you be using CBR in the first place? Because you want your ears to tear themselves from your head in disgust and start gnawing on your tiny, tiny, nads?
and if you have a respectable monitoring system, you can hear artifacts on virtually any bitrate mp3.
You loathsome, corpulent, fool! Nobody with a respectable monitoring system would be listening to MP3s in the first place! To do such would be balderdash to the point of poppycockery!
-The Good Doctor
The fact that something to disgustingly unamerican as the USA PATRIOT act was even passed to begin with doesn't give me a whole lot of faith that this move won't be well-recieved. The fact that a very influencial Senator is pushing for this years before the original act is scheduled to end makes it outright terrifying.
With the unfortunate exception of "yesterday".
Of course, Creative's decision to disable the digital out on Audigies in certain circumstances (and their steadfast defense of that decision) means my setup wouldn't work, and pretty much guarantees that I won't be buying another Creative card when it's time to upgrade.
IIRC, the only time the digital out won't work is when playing DVD-Audio. Blame the DVD people, because that's what they mandate. You either disable the digital out, or can't support DVD-A at all.
Personally, I don't find this a problem, aside from it being a big piece of DRM bullshit, because I don't have a receiver that can decode 24-bit/96khz DVD-Audio, or for that matter, any discs to play.
I can understand objecting to the politics of DRM, but I don't think this is a technical problem that will get in anyone's way.
It's called S/PDIF, or simply "Digital Out", and it's been on practically every sound card for the past three years. And it is exactly as you describe. The sound card does everything but the DAC, and you get a nice no-hiss signal. A $30 SoundBlaster Live! will do it, assuming you have a speaker system/reciever with a S/PDIF input.
Bah, I knew that line would get misinterpreted. I wasn't trying to imply that an artist objectively sucks if you only like a few of their songs.
What I meant was that if you only like one or two of an artists' songs, it doesn't behoove you to buy the album. Or, if you discovered this only after you bought the album, it should be a hint not to buy the next.
What I'm really saying is that I'm sick of people bitching about being "forced to buy" albums that they claim to know are mostly crap. If you bought the last four Foobar records and didn't like them very much, it should be a pretty clear sign that you aren't a big Foobar fan and shouldn't buy the fifth.
Which indicates there is something in it that stops the rest of us using it. This would further indicate either a closed format with codecs only for these two. Or DRM on top of something that exists.
.Mac.
I don't think it'd be quite as sinister as you seem to imply.
My guess is that it would integrate with iTunes. This is Apple we're talking about. They'll want it to tie in seamlessly, and iTunes is probably due for an upgrade. I think they're more concerned with keeping the service in Apple-land than they are DRM (which they've had a good policy about in the past.) Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if it became part of
Someone with more certainty should comment on this, but I would expect the audio to be regular MP3 unless the iPod's firmware can be easily upgraded to use AAC, which I think supports some kind of DRM. Again, I think Apple is more concerned with keeping such a service limited to Apple users than they are appeasing DRM-hungry record companies, but they may have to do just that.
Means I don't have to buy a whole album for one or two songs
I have to point this out to people all the time : If the artists you're listening to can only make one or two good songs, then they suck. It doesn't even matter who you're listening to -- if you only like trendy pop or underground hip-hop or whatever -- if you only like one or two of their songs, then they aren't worth buying.
You use your computer for at least 3-4 YEARS. You learn.
I R-E-A-L-L-Y don't want to wait 3-4 years before being able to perform basic file-management tasks. In fact, I wouldn't,
I'd go use an environment that has paid attention
to usability studies, and doesn't design only for
it's current users.
Therefore the whole basis of these usability studies is that they're great for making gnome usable the first 15 minutes you sit down with it.. but that's it. Then you're out of the target market that benefits from them.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Making an interface
more intuitive benefits everybody. The less time
you have to spend wondering how to perform a task,
or wondering if it's even possible, the better. I've found that the users that complain the most about the GUI sucking are the ones that are perfectly capable of configuring it in a way that they like, or using something else.
You want to do R-E-A-L usability studies? get 100+ people who use gnome NOW. Of all different levels of skills, just like distributed in the user community. Study them for at least 3 months. Thouroughly. Then make your decisions.
As if you could possibly find 100+ GNOME users that use even remotely similar configurations or applications! Or that many of them wouldn't be utterly counterintuitive to anybody but that user. And if you think that a lot of money goes into usability tests now, imagine the cost of studying hundreds of people for months at a time!
Any environment that emerged from what you're suggesting would be so configurable that it would be impossible to document, impossible to learn, and utterly useless to anybody but those very same users (who are perfectly capable of configuring things the way they like it *now*.) Not to mention the flamewars over which of the hundred menu styles should be the default.
-Fascist GNOME2.2 User
They're not putting the hype behind the processor so much as the platform, especially with respect to battery life. The new chip is faster/more efficient, etc; but you're probably not going to find many of them outside of the whole "Centrino" platform, not only because of the technical advantages, but because Intel is offering OEMs some huge marketing dollars if they use the whole package. I think it's a win for the consumer.
The problem with auto-hiding menus (Personalized Menus, Smart Menus, whatever) is that they only work well in a few places. Poorly-organized menus, like program-launching menus, (Accessories, QuickTime, Office, Mozilla, etc) are well served by the self-organization, whereas menus that are already organized into some kind of intuitive grouping, like in a word processor (New, Open, Close | Save, Save As... | Print, Print Preview | Exit), see that order destroyed.
It makes political, economic, and ecological sense :)
Not for the people in charge, and the oil companies they head.
(I forgot to take my anticynicism medication this morning, sorry.)
If you buy an x-box and run linux (for emulators/surfing the web/whatever), but don't buy 2-3 games, they lose money.
:) ]
Yes, but if you don't buy an x-box they lose more money.
[I doubt that I'm the only one pointing this out, but I can't be bothered to lower my threshold to check.