Sounds a lot like Sony is testing the waters in China, to see if it might be possible to make some money over there, and also because they don't want to lose mind share to Nintendo who announced they are going to sell a special GameCube in China. (Article does not state how it is special, but it's certainly harder to copy the smaller GameCube discs than the regular-sized PS2 discs.) Both companies could very easily pull out after a year if things are not profitable.
I think the bigger story is that Sony is going to try and work with Chinese software developers. Right now, you write a game in China, and you're not going to make any money. You'll probably end up in the hole and living in a cardboard box. I don't know how successful Nintendo and Sony can be, but if they can start to reverse the selfishness of Chinese people then that would be great.
Hm, I should have read the article before replying to this other person who did not read the article. Because what I just said is basically what the article says. Silly me.
I mean, doesn't it seem odd that the Two-Towers extended version, which has 4 DVDs and cost millions to make, costs roughly the same as new release music CDs? What happened to the free-market system of America? Where is that cost coming from? There's no way they could spend the same amount of money on making a CD as a full-length feature film DVD. Is there?
The "value" of something is not dependent solely on the cost of raw materials and labor. This is more obvious with scarce goods, such as artwork.
However, it also carries over into categories of goods, such as "DVD movies". In what way was the product in this category of good conceived of? How costly was the marketing? How difficult was it to find the raw materials required? How expensive was it to produce the final product? Who foot the bill for up-front costs? What level of risk was involved in this investment?
For example, assume it costs exactly the same amount to produce a music album X of 60 minutes as it does to produce a movie Y of 2 hours. But what if it cost producer of X $5M to find the artist and musicians who worked well with him? And it only cost producer of Y $25k to find the script, director, cast, and crew? These costs are not directly related to the specific album or movie, since they are spread across the entire business operations.
It all comes down to a return on investment, risk, and what the market will bear. You may find it odd for a CD to cost $20. Others may not. If sales drop, you hire people like economists to figure out how to fix that. If demand exceeds supply, perhaps you raise prices, regardless of the actual cost.
Another example in the categories of goods model: right now I'm in the market for some speakers. They can get pretty expensive. Do I actually think that $10,000 speaker cost 50x as much to make as the $200 speaker?
Apple's.Mac service does this saving of user settings/preferences and stuff like that via the web through WebDAV. And.Mac is prior art since this patent was filed Dec. 17, 2002, at which time.Mac was already operational.
I don't know exactly when the iSync capable features were added to.Mac, but the address book and bookmarks is also there. You could also publish iCal calendars.
One, the displaced workers are usually not as well educated, and they are going to be pretty desparate after a couple years competing with Indian PHD's working for 5k/year. So these displaced workers are going to be CHEAP.
And therein lies the rub. All those uneducated people making $30k/yr. right now are not going to be happy about switching to a job that pays $10k/yr. because their skills are no longer valuable and their knowledge is worthless. People won't accept the fact that they are no longer as "valuable" as before, even if it is true.
You're always told to never stop learning, keep your skills up-to-date, and to keep growing. Well, people who don't do this are the problem. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer, a political scientist, or a grocery clerk.
According to video game critics, subjects of the recent video game phobia research study are now acting as if they are in the game, whenever their phobia surfaces.
"Arachnophobic people have begun to carry shotguns around, to take care of spiders," said Officer Montoya. "Yeah," continued Office Bullock, "and those crazy people afraid of heights are now jumping off buildings when they don't feel like taking the stairs."
The mother of one boy, formerly claustrophic, is suing the creators of Unreal Tournament, because her son decided to crawl into a ventilation duct and attempted to break through a fan with a crowbar. The boy was seriously injured when the fan did not disintegrate after two swings of the crowbar.
True, but in Windows, you can drag the data and hold it over a taskbar button, and that app will become active. So drag and drop still works with maximized windows.
That is less intuitive that just dragging to where you want something to go. Like one text selection in one application to somewhere in a body of text in another application. Or photos in iPhoto to clips in iMovie.
Plus, I can never get drag-and-drop to do what I want it to do in Windows. It always does something unexpected with the content, document, or whatever I am dragging. The destination doesn't seem to be aware of what it is receiving unless you tell it.
The details of the CS301 are supposed to be given at Microprocessor Forum 2003, this week. I think this would indicate a little more substance to the chip. Especially since ClearSpeed wil have to defend their claims to experts in the industry.
From reading the articles, it seems it is indeed designed to be a math coprocessor.
ClearSpeed is saying that it can run as a coprocessor, but also standalone. From their press release:
"The CS301 can serve either as a co-processor alongside an Intel or AMD CPU within a high performance workstation, blade server or cluster configuration, or as a standalone processor for embedded DSP applications like radar pulse compression or image processing."
First of all, I hardly think figuring out that the CD autorun installs some software that bonks up your CD-ROM drive support in Windows is any sort of research. It's not like there's an award-winning publication in the works here.
But, since the record companies already knew about this workaround (and also admitted it on CNN), a lawsuit against John Halderman might feasibly open one against BMG. And it would make this workaround headline news.
By forgetting about the entire incident, lots of people are going to know how to get around this by holding down shift, but at the same time a lot of people aren't going to find out about it. Seems to me that since the industry already knew about the workaround, SunnComm might still be able to sell their solution despite some public knowledge of a workaround.
It also makes the average/.er start to forget about the entire incident. If you're mad, you're more likely to bad mouth a company or product. If it's old news, then you're more likely to forward the trailer for LotR.
If you purchased any new Mac after Oct. 8 you are entitled to a $20 upgrade. If you purchased any new G5 (any date) the same applies. Visit the Mac OS X Up-To-Date page for the application an further details.
The $20 covers shipping and handling of the retail box.
The potential cost to schools themselves from this program is $25/laptop/year, but I wonder if the people in charge of choosing the provider are considering the cost to schools based on administration, as mentioned by the story submitter. The small reports I found don't mention this, and most likely the decision as to what sort of administration to employ is a school or district decision, not a state one.
If anyone with influence on the Michigan board deciding this is reading/., I hope they will show to the board some reports on TCO over the life of the laptops (Mac OS X versus Windows XP) and possibly other features some ambitious schools might want to make use of (Mac OS X Server versus Windows 2003 Server).
Michigan needs to look at more than just the bid price.
Just imagine how much in royalties this guy could have made if he had developed that nowadays with our patent frenzy attitude!
I'm pretty sure the implementation executed by Ctrl-Alt-Del is covered in IBM patent #4,768,149, filed in August 1985. This patent describes the basic intentions and implementation of the original Ctrl-Alt-Del keystroke.
Send Adobe feedback on their new product activation scheme. I am someone who uses a single copy of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign on multiple machines. I have probably purchased a few thousand to several thousand dollars worth of software from Adobe over the years.
I do this because I am the only one using those many machines, and except for very rare occasions, only one copy is running at any given time (seeing as how I only have two hands and one head). Product activation preventing me from working under this setup, or preventing me from reinstalling for any reason, is likely to make me think twice about upgrading my software.
One of the new software features provided by the Creative Suite is Version Cue. The article (for those who didn't read it) implies a sort of groupware for graphic designers. I certainly think that's something new and exciting.
I've been using Photoshop for a long time and while I haven't had a need or desire to upgrade every single time, the current version has many useful, productive, time- and money-saving features that are not available in the old versions. It sounds a lot like you are not Adobe's target customer, which is why you don't see any need for further product improvement. But Adobe is adding features that its customers are asking for.
Obveously he's trying to say the work he did in the EE labs at Berkeley was simple stuff not that he is some sort of brain...
This is the correct interpretation of my comment. The introductory EE43 lab (which many people take, not just those in the EE or CS programs) had you build a tutebot using legos, a breadboard, and stuff like motors and wheels. When it hit a wall, it was to turn back up, turn, and go straight again. Given the wiring diagram and lego blueprints, a monkey could do it.
EE40, which is the I guess "harder" or "for-EE/CS students" version of EE42/43 had you build a similar bot but using a programmable logic chip instead of mechanical logic. Also not very difficult, though it did require more intelligence than arranging wires.
I'm sure some psychiatrist can argue those other posters were simply projecting their own inadequacies onto another.;P
Robot hacker Trevor Blackwell explains how to build your own Segway-style balancing scooter. He says it's not that hard (but he already knows how to build walking robots).
In related news, NASA engineers explain how to build your own space shuttle. They say it's not that hard.
(Seriously though, the instructions given on Trevor Blackwell's site for building your home-brewed Segway are not much more complicated than what I did in EE labs at Berkeley.)
Um, actually, if everyone waits, there'll be nobody to play the guinea pigs.
Interestingly enough, the 10.2.8 update did not break anything on my 1996 Beige G3/300. The only issue I encountered was a rearrangement of which monitor was identified as my primary monitor.
This did not particularly surprise me because I happen to know the Beige G3 considers the internal Rage II chip as the primary display adapter. Booting into single-user mode will dump me onto the Rage II monitor; the little hash progress circle also shows up on that monitor.
I run three monitors off the Rage II chip and a Radeon 9000: 23" HD Cinema Display, Sony Multiscan 500PS, Sony Multiscan G500.
Anyhow, here's the real spin here: Apple fucked up, and now they're going to pay.
The article states that their online music service will be available in time for the holiday season. However, there are now reports that Apple has moved up their Windows iTunes Music Store release date from the holiday season/end-of-year to mid-October. So, although Dell is going to provide an alternative, it looks like Apple is going to be the first-mover on Windows as well (you can't count BuyMusic.com since it's broken).
Plus, Apple is developing a Windows application, much like how Real wants to leverage their Jukebox. An online store will be less polished, perform worse, and require web-based interaction. We already know how great iTunes is from a user perspective. A stand-alone web site can't match the experience.
I can understand why Apple decided to release their service as a Mac-only affair for the first couple of months, but I absolutely can't agree with it.
No one else seems to have mentioned this in the other replies, but Steve Jobs has publicly stated that you're not going to make a ton of money off the sale of music (at least at this point) because the 66% cut given to the labels makes the profit margin very small given the people and infrastructure required to run the operation. But yes, the tons of money might be possible given economies of scale once you move into the Windows market. The argument as to why this didn't happen has been made by other people regarding iTunes for Mac OS only.
The other important point is that Apple is currently using the iTunes Music Store to dramatically boost sales of their iPods. Also something Steve Jobs has publicly stated. Sales of iPods did indeed increase dramatically after the iTunes Music Store launch. So in addition to building the infrastructure, business model, and systems which would let them eventually move from a small scale operation to a large scale operation (i.e. testing small before going big) and make money at that point, they are using the store to make money now, but through iPod sales.
The marketing industry vehemently opposes the law, saying that it will only restrict actions by legitimate marketers and not the rouges who send the most offensive spam.
Just because you are a "legitimate" (i.e. not hiding) marketer does not mean sending unsolicited mail is not spam. There is no restriction here on so-called legitimate marketers except that they can no longer spam--this is the point of the bill. They can still use opt-in, which is solicited and not spam.
Now everyone will only have to deal with spam in ICQ, AIM, NewsGroups, MSN, Popup software, Spyware software, and Net Sends.
It is a lot easier and less damaging to enforce non-anonymous-receipt-only of messages when using those other technologies. (Well, except usenet, since that is essentially one big inbox.)
Email (and usenet) is the one technology where switching to "opt-in" receipt only could seriously reduce the value of the technology.
Which is why software monoculture is bad. The existence of competing implementations is always a good thing whether it's OpenSSH vs. GNU lsh or something else. That way not everything is compromised in one swoop once a new security flaw is discovered.
Exactly! This is why I run all the competing implementions on the same box, at the same time. No matter what, my box won't be compromised in one swoop when a new security flaw is detected. If only other people realized this more often.
Well, this goes to prove that Microsoft's claims in court that Windows was so tightly integrated into a single monolithic system are false. Obviously if the system is still functional enough to provide the frameworks needed to run ATM software and a modern user-interface, after being stripped down, then the same is certainly possible for mainstream use. In fact, it's likely that the reason it is stripped down is because superfluous features are a risk. Internet access and DirectX can also be seen as superfluous features.
Of course, this comes after the fact. So maybe you could argue Windows has been re-architectured since the legal trouble, but I doubt anyone with a knowledge of complicated software engineering and familiarity with Microsoft's code bases could say that under oath.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if the parent poster is trying to be serious or a troll. What would Adolph Hitler post on piracy if he were alive today?
Sounds a lot like Sony is testing the waters in China, to see if it might be possible to make some money over there, and also because they don't want to lose mind share to Nintendo who announced they are going to sell a special GameCube in China. (Article does not state how it is special, but it's certainly harder to copy the smaller GameCube discs than the regular-sized PS2 discs.) Both companies could very easily pull out after a year if things are not profitable.
I think the bigger story is that Sony is going to try and work with Chinese software developers. Right now, you write a game in China, and you're not going to make any money. You'll probably end up in the hole and living in a cardboard box. I don't know how successful Nintendo and Sony can be, but if they can start to reverse the selfishness of Chinese people then that would be great.
Hm, I should have read the article before replying to this other person who did not read the article. Because what I just said is basically what the article says. Silly me.
I mean, doesn't it seem odd that the Two-Towers extended version, which has 4 DVDs and cost millions to make, costs roughly the same as new release music CDs? What happened to the free-market system of America? Where is that cost coming from? There's no way they could spend the same amount of money on making a CD as a full-length feature film DVD. Is there?
The "value" of something is not dependent solely on the cost of raw materials and labor. This is more obvious with scarce goods, such as artwork.
However, it also carries over into categories of goods, such as "DVD movies". In what way was the product in this category of good conceived of? How costly was the marketing? How difficult was it to find the raw materials required? How expensive was it to produce the final product? Who foot the bill for up-front costs? What level of risk was involved in this investment?
For example, assume it costs exactly the same amount to produce a music album X of 60 minutes as it does to produce a movie Y of 2 hours. But what if it cost producer of X $5M to find the artist and musicians who worked well with him? And it only cost producer of Y $25k to find the script, director, cast, and crew? These costs are not directly related to the specific album or movie, since they are spread across the entire business operations.
It all comes down to a return on investment, risk, and what the market will bear. You may find it odd for a CD to cost $20. Others may not. If sales drop, you hire people like economists to figure out how to fix that. If demand exceeds supply, perhaps you raise prices, regardless of the actual cost.
Another example in the categories of goods model: right now I'm in the market for some speakers. They can get pretty expensive. Do I actually think that $10,000 speaker cost 50x as much to make as the $200 speaker?
Apple's .Mac service does this saving of user settings/preferences and stuff like that via the web through WebDAV. And .Mac is prior art since this patent was filed Dec. 17, 2002, at which time .Mac was already operational.
.Mac, but the address book and bookmarks is also there. You could also publish iCal calendars.
I don't know exactly when the iSync capable features were added to
One, the displaced workers are usually not as well educated, and they are going to be pretty desparate after a couple years competing with Indian PHD's working for 5k/year. So these displaced workers are going to be CHEAP.
And therein lies the rub. All those uneducated people making $30k/yr. right now are not going to be happy about switching to a job that pays $10k/yr. because their skills are no longer valuable and their knowledge is worthless. People won't accept the fact that they are no longer as "valuable" as before, even if it is true.
You're always told to never stop learning, keep your skills up-to-date, and to keep growing. Well, people who don't do this are the problem. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer, a political scientist, or a grocery clerk.
According to video game critics, subjects of the recent video game phobia research study are now acting as if they are in the game, whenever their phobia surfaces.
"Arachnophobic people have begun to carry shotguns around, to take care of spiders," said Officer Montoya. "Yeah," continued Office Bullock, "and those crazy people afraid of heights are now jumping off buildings when they don't feel like taking the stairs."
The mother of one boy, formerly claustrophic, is suing the creators of Unreal Tournament, because her son decided to crawl into a ventilation duct and attempted to break through a fan with a crowbar. The boy was seriously injured when the fan did not disintegrate after two swings of the crowbar.
True, but in Windows, you can drag the data and hold it over a taskbar button, and that app will become active. So drag and drop still works with maximized windows.
That is less intuitive that just dragging to where you want something to go. Like one text selection in one application to somewhere in a body of text in another application. Or photos in iPhoto to clips in iMovie.
Plus, I can never get drag-and-drop to do what I want it to do in Windows. It always does something unexpected with the content, document, or whatever I am dragging. The destination doesn't seem to be aware of what it is receiving unless you tell it.
The details of the CS301 are supposed to be given at Microprocessor Forum 2003, this week. I think this would indicate a little more substance to the chip. Especially since ClearSpeed wil have to defend their claims to experts in the industry.
From reading the articles, it seems it is indeed designed to be a math coprocessor.
ClearSpeed is saying that it can run as a coprocessor, but also standalone. From their press release:
"The CS301 can serve either as a co-processor alongside an Intel or AMD CPU within a high performance workstation, blade server or cluster configuration, or as a standalone processor for embedded DSP applications like radar pulse compression or image processing."
First of all, I hardly think figuring out that the CD autorun installs some software that bonks up your CD-ROM drive support in Windows is any sort of research. It's not like there's an award-winning publication in the works here.
/.er start to forget about the entire incident. If you're mad, you're more likely to bad mouth a company or product. If it's old news, then you're more likely to forward the trailer for LotR.
But, since the record companies already knew about this workaround (and also admitted it on CNN), a lawsuit against John Halderman might feasibly open one against BMG. And it would make this workaround headline news.
By forgetting about the entire incident, lots of people are going to know how to get around this by holding down shift, but at the same time a lot of people aren't going to find out about it. Seems to me that since the industry already knew about the workaround, SunnComm might still be able to sell their solution despite some public knowledge of a workaround.
It also makes the average
If you purchased any new Mac after Oct. 8 you are entitled to a $20 upgrade. If you purchased any new G5 (any date) the same applies. Visit the Mac OS X Up-To-Date page for the application an further details.
The $20 covers shipping and handling of the retail box.
The potential cost to schools themselves from this program is $25/laptop/year, but I wonder if the people in charge of choosing the provider are considering the cost to schools based on administration, as mentioned by the story submitter. The small reports I found don't mention this, and most likely the decision as to what sort of administration to employ is a school or district decision, not a state one.
/., I hope they will show to the board some reports on TCO over the life of the laptops (Mac OS X versus Windows XP) and possibly other features some ambitious schools might want to make use of (Mac OS X Server versus Windows 2003 Server).
If anyone with influence on the Michigan board deciding this is reading
Michigan needs to look at more than just the bid price.
Just imagine how much in royalties this guy could have made if he had developed that nowadays with our patent frenzy attitude!
I'm pretty sure the implementation executed by Ctrl-Alt-Del is covered in IBM patent #4,768,149, filed in August 1985. This patent describes the basic intentions and implementation of the original Ctrl-Alt-Del keystroke.
Send Adobe feedback on their new product activation scheme. I am someone who uses a single copy of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign on multiple machines. I have probably purchased a few thousand to several thousand dollars worth of software from Adobe over the years.
I do this because I am the only one using those many machines, and except for very rare occasions, only one copy is running at any given time (seeing as how I only have two hands and one head). Product activation preventing me from working under this setup, or preventing me from reinstalling for any reason, is likely to make me think twice about upgrading my software.
Photoshop as a tool is completely mature.
One of the new software features provided by the Creative Suite is Version Cue. The article (for those who didn't read it) implies a sort of groupware for graphic designers. I certainly think that's something new and exciting.
I've been using Photoshop for a long time and while I haven't had a need or desire to upgrade every single time, the current version has many useful, productive, time- and money-saving features that are not available in the old versions. It sounds a lot like you are not Adobe's target customer, which is why you don't see any need for further product improvement. But Adobe is adding features that its customers are asking for.
Obveously he's trying to say the work he did in the EE labs at Berkeley was simple stuff not that he is some sort of brain...
;P
This is the correct interpretation of my comment. The introductory EE43 lab (which many people take, not just those in the EE or CS programs) had you build a tutebot using legos, a breadboard, and stuff like motors and wheels. When it hit a wall, it was to turn back up, turn, and go straight again. Given the wiring diagram and lego blueprints, a monkey could do it.
EE40, which is the I guess "harder" or "for-EE/CS students" version of EE42/43 had you build a similar bot but using a programmable logic chip instead of mechanical logic. Also not very difficult, though it did require more intelligence than arranging wires.
I'm sure some psychiatrist can argue those other posters were simply projecting their own inadequacies onto another.
Robot hacker Trevor Blackwell explains how to build your own Segway-style balancing scooter. He says it's not that hard (but he already knows how to build walking robots).
In related news, NASA engineers explain how to build your own space shuttle. They say it's not that hard.
(Seriously though, the instructions given on Trevor Blackwell's site for building your home-brewed Segway are not much more complicated than what I did in EE labs at Berkeley.)
Um, actually, if everyone waits, there'll be nobody to play the guinea pigs.
Interestingly enough, the 10.2.8 update did not break anything on my 1996 Beige G3/300. The only issue I encountered was a rearrangement of which monitor was identified as my primary monitor.
This did not particularly surprise me because I happen to know the Beige G3 considers the internal Rage II chip as the primary display adapter. Booting into single-user mode will dump me onto the Rage II monitor; the little hash progress circle also shows up on that monitor.
I run three monitors off the Rage II chip and a Radeon 9000: 23" HD Cinema Display, Sony Multiscan 500PS, Sony Multiscan G500.
Anyhow, here's the real spin here: Apple fucked up, and now they're going to pay.
The article states that their online music service will be available in time for the holiday season. However, there are now reports that Apple has moved up their Windows iTunes Music Store release date from the holiday season/end-of-year to mid-October. So, although Dell is going to provide an alternative, it looks like Apple is going to be the first-mover on Windows as well (you can't count BuyMusic.com since it's broken).
Plus, Apple is developing a Windows application, much like how Real wants to leverage their Jukebox. An online store will be less polished, perform worse, and require web-based interaction. We already know how great iTunes is from a user perspective. A stand-alone web site can't match the experience.
I can understand why Apple decided to release their service as a Mac-only affair for the first couple of months, but I absolutely can't agree with it.
No one else seems to have mentioned this in the other replies, but Steve Jobs has publicly stated that you're not going to make a ton of money off the sale of music (at least at this point) because the 66% cut given to the labels makes the profit margin very small given the people and infrastructure required to run the operation. But yes, the tons of money might be possible given economies of scale once you move into the Windows market. The argument as to why this didn't happen has been made by other people regarding iTunes for Mac OS only.
The other important point is that Apple is currently using the iTunes Music Store to dramatically boost sales of their iPods. Also something Steve Jobs has publicly stated. Sales of iPods did indeed increase dramatically after the iTunes Music Store launch. So in addition to building the infrastructure, business model, and systems which would let them eventually move from a small scale operation to a large scale operation (i.e. testing small before going big) and make money at that point, they are using the store to make money now, but through iPod sales.
The marketing industry vehemently opposes the law, saying that it will only restrict actions by legitimate marketers and not the rouges who send the most offensive spam.
Just because you are a "legitimate" (i.e. not hiding) marketer does not mean sending unsolicited mail is not spam. There is no restriction here on so-called legitimate marketers except that they can no longer spam--this is the point of the bill. They can still use opt-in, which is solicited and not spam.
Now everyone will only have to deal with spam in ICQ, AIM, NewsGroups, MSN, Popup software, Spyware software, and Net Sends.
It is a lot easier and less damaging to enforce non-anonymous-receipt-only of messages when using those other technologies. (Well, except usenet, since that is essentially one big inbox.)
Email (and usenet) is the one technology where switching to "opt-in" receipt only could seriously reduce the value of the technology.
Which is why software monoculture is bad. The existence of competing implementations is always a good thing whether it's OpenSSH vs. GNU lsh or something else. That way not everything is compromised in one swoop once a new security flaw is discovered.
Exactly! This is why I run all the competing implementions on the same box, at the same time. No matter what, my box won't be compromised in one swoop when a new security flaw is detected. If only other people realized this more often.
Well, this goes to prove that Microsoft's claims in court that Windows was so tightly integrated into a single monolithic system are false. Obviously if the system is still functional enough to provide the frameworks needed to run ATM software and a modern user-interface, after being stripped down, then the same is certainly possible for mainstream use. In fact, it's likely that the reason it is stripped down is because superfluous features are a risk. Internet access and DirectX can also be seen as superfluous features.
Of course, this comes after the fact. So maybe you could argue Windows has been re-architectured since the legal trouble, but I doubt anyone with a knowledge of complicated software engineering and familiarity with Microsoft's code bases could say that under oath.