I have a 5 GB iPod (first generation) and I use smart playlists exclusively. I have:
- 1 GB of my newest music (so I can listen to the new CD that I just RIPped). - 1 GB of my highest rated music. - 1 GB of my most played music. - 1 GB of randomly selected music (to keep things interesting; if I play it a lot, it lands in the 'most played music' list.) - All of my purchased music (if I paid for it, I probably want to be able to listen to it) - All of my 'checked' Audible books. (After I finish a book, I uncheck it, so it's archived on my computer but removed from my iPod).
I have about 30 GB of music, and this works great for me.
Yeah, it would be nice to be able to vote online."
It's worse than that. Online voting is open to massive abuses that are prevented in current elections simply due to the fact that voting takes place in a monitored location.
So if you're going to 'hack' an election now, you'd need to do whatever you're going to do in a polling station, while the polls are open, which means that you'd be doing it in front of a bunch of poll workers, other voters, etc.
"One big stumbling block to wide-spread acceptance for online voting is the possiblity for disrupting an election by launching a DDOS attack against the voting servers."
Not really -- no voting system that I know of has the central tabulation systems connected to the internet. Votes are collected either by physically collecting them to the central facility (e.g. punch cards) or by sending the tallies over the phone (either by voice, FAX, or data calls).
So the only DDOS attack that you could launch would be a physical world one, such as setting yourself up with a high powered rifle and a good line of sight on the entrance to the building.:-)
It's stunning to me that the head of a company that sells election systems would even imagine this sort of partisan politics. You'd think that the guys selling a system to run elections would try to be above even the appearance of impropriety, because anything else is terrible for their business, because the more they take _any_ political position the more they'd risk offending a large percentage of their customers.
It won't be in place by this November, because most states require systems to be certified a year before the election. What the Open Voting Consortium is shooting for is to get funding so that in 2005 the system can be certified by companies that are in the business of selling election systems, for use in 2006 elections.
Re:Modest proposal: Run it on Diebold's hardware?
on
Open Voting at OSCON
·
· Score: 1
"I had heard that they do have provision for adding one of their own printers."
Supposedly they all have a printer inside them. This is because the HAVA law reuires that they print out a record of the votes. Strangely, they decided that it was sufficient to print a total when the polls close, and not a continuous record of votes cast, so there's no way to prove that the total printed is correct, and thus no value in printing it.
Re:This is the perfect market open source
on
Open Voting at OSCON
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"voting software requires very limited runs, and typically needs to recover its cost on its first sale. There's no need to make revenue on a per copy basis. There is probably only going to be a single customer who will have precise demands. If it was closed source, the amount of work would be the same, and the amount and so that you could charge would be the same."
I agree with this point. I'll also point out that the _real_ value that a voting system vendor provides isn't the software system, it's the complete service. The states don't need someone to provide them software -- the states need someone to provide a complete solution, from training election workers to providing on-site technical support. Compared to the cost of providing tech support to thousands of polling locations, manufacturing and shipping hundreds of thousands of voting machines, getting your product certified in each state, etc., the cost of the software development should be fairly minor.
The article implies a small good point about a weakness of Linux, and ignores a HUGE point that isn't a weakness of Linux, but an advantage that Windows has in the current marketplace.
The valid point that the article makes is that Linux' support for sound is relatively weak. Not only isn't there a good depth of drivers, but the whole area of desktop audio support has historically been unimportant (Linux is used more often on servers, where audio doesn't matter, and in embedded applications, where you only need to support one, pre-build configuration). So audio under Linux is coming together nicely, but it's not as mature as Windows, MacOS, etc.
The huge point that the author misses is that he's lost perspective on solving the problem. It's fairly obvious that Linux doesn't have the depth of driver support that Windows has, because it's (in business terms) impossible to ship a card without Windows drivers, while only a few vendors support Linux officially, or even work with outside engineers to allow them to support their hardware under Linux. And rather than fight that he could have solved the problem by buying a mainstream $20 sound card.
It may be simply impossible to get the chipset to work under Linux; it may well be that the vendor of the on-board audio chipset on the "Intel" motherboard he's using won't allow Linux drivers to be written because they keep the API proprietary.
I'm a little amazed that he spend a huge amount of time trying to "work through" the problem instead of quickly "solving" the problem by buying a cheap sound card that's supported by Linux. It's not like it's a major investment of money, and would have saved a lot of time.
Perhaps his goal wasn't to get his sound working, but to prove that he couldn't get it working under Linux?
"You don't see any rich kids blowing themselves up to kill innocents that they have never met yet hate passionately"
While you'd intuitively think that this would be the case, the terrorists that we've caught tend to be well educated, well travelled people that really, really hate us. Sure, the poor "street rats" may hate us as well, but they don't have the resources or training to cause us trouble. It takes an education to build bombs that work properly, etc.
This is a really sweet car mod, but what I really want is to be able to buy an in-dash car stereo into which I can dock the iPod and use the stereo's controls.
Alpine has announced one that's close, but it has the iPod on an external cable. I'd rather not deal with the iPod and cable floating around inside the car.
apt-get is indeed a wonderful thing, and I use and love it, but it's really more of a server/admin tool than an end user tool. To install an application using apt-get the user has to: - know the magic command line incatation to install the app. This includes know its exact name. - watch while hundreds of lines of scary text scroll by. - if there's a mysterious error, ask a sysadmin to debug it. - wonder where the application installed, or how to run it.
Me, I know the incantations for the app's I used most, and where to find the names of new app's, like knowing what's going on where, and can usually find installed app's because I know where to go digging. And I love being able to rapidly upgrade a whole farm of servers to a known software level using a single command.
But when my mom (who's an artist, and a compulsive computer user) installs an app, she wants to drag it from the CD into Applications, then double click on it. Or _perhaps_ run an installer, though those make her nervous because they do unpredictable things to her computer.
apt-get could form the basis for a really great application installer (for free app's), but it's not properly packaged yet.
"Usually, when I think of computers, I think of something highly technological, characterized by cool, sleek designs... wood is more natrual, thus being the exact opposite."
In terms of imagery, I agree, but isn't it cool to combine apparent opposites? You have to love the beautiful woodwork that went into some of these cases.
"Though it is great for matching furniture, I would never buy one of these, because in my mind, nature and technology just don't mix."
I would. Imagine that you've got a nice looking living room or office with quality wooden furniture. Wouldn't a generic beige metal box with a generic beige CRT look terrible? Wouldn't a nice matching wooden CPU case and flat panel look nicer?
I see people argue "who cares what a computer looks like" and it mystifies me. If you're willing to spend $1K on a beautiful desk instead of $29.95 on a card table, or $500 on a suit instead of $50 on T-shirt and jeans, because it looks better, how is it different spending more money on a computer to make it look nicer?
Tastes differ, I guess. And that's a good thing...
I certainly agree with the parent's point that open sourcing the software isn't a magic bullet, and that the policies and procedures are critical.
The way I'd phrase it is that voting is a system componsed of hardware, software, people and procedures. Flaws in any aspect of the system can compromise it. You could have perfect software, but have procedures that (for example) allow election workers manipulate the results before they're collected. That's why things like auditing still critical.
That being said, open sourcing the software gives much more confidence in that aspect of the system.
Ooh, I forgot to mention that the ST ran STadel, an awesome room-based BBS system. Every 'room' had a topic, and could have files, messages, etc. Much, much cooler than the typical command-line BBS's.
Citadel's had this amazing networking scheme where BBS's could route messages between them so that (like Fido) you could send email (slowly) cross-country with only a series of local phone calls (i.e. free). But it was about a billion times easier to set up, as you simple created a shared room and configured what other BBS' to call to share it.
I just found http://uncensored.citadel.org/citadel/citanews/new s8706.txt, which recorded the first international Citadel network message, back in 1987.
And check this out, my BBS is in an old listing. How cool.
Name: Bladerunner BBS -- Waltham, Mass. USA Dial: (617) 891-7338 Sysop: Laird Popkin (laird@think.com) Comm Settings: 8-N-1 Baud: 300 - 2400 + PEP (Trailblazer Plus) Info Updated: 14-Sep-1991 Notes: Connected to the Citadel and usenet networks (as
blade.via.mind.org). The BBS runs STadel (a Citadel variant)
on an Atari ST.
Topics discussed: Role Playing Games, GURPS, Warhammer,
AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Hero/Champions, as well as assorted
Fantasy and SF and computer-related topics. There are
also a number of online games, and discussions of SF,
various computers, and whatever other topics arise.
There are no online time limits or upload/download rations.
Wow, this brings back memories. I ran a BBS for years, Bladerunner BBS. It started out running on an Osborne Executive (2400 BPS! 2 double-sided quad density drives!) and then was upgraded to an Atari ST (20 MB SCSI HD, 19,200 BPS Telebit Trailblazer!). The amusing thing was that the CPU in the Trailblazer was much faster than the ST itself.
One thing I really miss from those days is the sense of community, and the games. I ran a number of games on my BBS, and it was always a lot of fun watching people interact. Unlike modern online games, anyone could write a test-oriented BBS game if they knew a little BASIC, so there were all sorts of cool games. I remember in particular a drag racing game where you could race, earn money, buy upgrades, and compete against other drivers (i.e. other players on the same BBS). The integration of the game into real-time was fascinating -- most BBS games let you make a limited number of moves a day, so people would play a single session of a game for _weeks_. And there were tons of cool timing tricks, like dialing into the BBS at 11:30 so that you'd have the last move before midnight and then the first game after midnight, which could give you a nice advantage (and leave you vulnerable as everyone else moves after you).
Hey, thanks for the excuse for the flashback. Fun days!
"The problem with this idea is how big to make the chunks: too big and you need to download a big chunk before you can verify. Too small and the list of hashes itself takes too long to download... I think the solution should be to use hash trees"
This sounds clever, but the percentages don't work. Sure, a.torrent file might be 8K for a TV show, or 150K for an entire season of a TV show (to use two.torrent files that I have handy). Yes, those files are large, but let's keep it in perspective: the 8K file lets you download a 175 MB video file, and the 150K torrent lets you download 180 episodes of a TV show, totaling around 10 GB. So the torrent file is between 0.0015% and 0.005% of the total file size transferred (based on the two cases I looked at). So it hardly makes sense to make the protocol more complex in order to optimize that 0.005% of the bandwidth transferred.
This looks like a great geek toy, but aside from that who on earth would buy this thing? It's $699, and huge. If all you need is a PDA, you can get much, much nicer machines from Sony, Palm, or even (dare I mention it) WinCE licensees.
I ran into a similar situation with Apple, and writing a polite letter to sj@apple.com resulted in getting the situation cleared up. My advice is to do your homework, document everything objectively, and to clearly state what you want the company to do for you.
Having worked in customer support, I can assure you that too many letters consist of someone venting without saying what their problem is, or how we can help them. Most CSR's just want to know how they can solve your problem, within the limits of what they're authorized to do.
"usually a press release is used verbatim because the journalist is on a tight deadline and didn't have time to write the article"
Well, I don't think that Computer Shopper counts as a newspaper.:-) Seriously, though, no reputable newspaper reprints a press release as if it were a real article. They may take the press release and use it as the basis of a story (e.g. Microsoft's Xbox game console will be $30 cheaper starting Tuesday), but they'll usually call around for their own quotes, and add some analysis. For example, the "'At this lower mass market price point, we're opening up this great system to an even broader audience of people who can experience Xbox for the first time,' Mitch Koch, corporate vice president of worldwide retail sales for Microsoft, said in a statement" is probably straight from the press release (i.e. written by Microsoft's PR people), but everything else in the article, such as the analyst saying that the price drop isn't enough, and the speculation that Sony will drop the price of the PS2 in April, is reporting provided by CNET.
The article was pretty interesting, but I didn't follow how the author made the leap from saying that there was a particular _coorelation_ between the p2p download data and the CD sales data and saying that p2p downloads had a particular _effect_ on CD sales. In particular, in a real experiment you do the same thing repeatedly, with one "control variable" changed, and that tells you how the control variable affects the other variables. But there's no way to do that with real world music sales, because you can't sell the same album twice at the same time, once with p2p file sharing and once with no p2p file sharing. There's not even a way to compare two different albums, once with p2p file sharing and once without. So I don't see how they could "prove" cause and effect.
That being said, there was a bunch of complex mathematical modeling. Did anyone follow it enough to say whether they figured out how to perform an experiment without a control?
"I thought that AAC was already well on its way to becoming ubiquitous"
Yes, Apple's very successful selling music online. But since all of their competitors are effectively forced to use WMA (except Sony and Real, who have their own formats) they're turning the landscape to "Apple vs. everyone." It'd be much better strategically for Apple to license their DRM technology to some other online stored, the way they licensed their iPod hardware to HP, because it would have the same effect. Instead of "Apple vs. everyone" which Analysts translates to "Apple replays he 90's" while it's "Apple and it's licensees vs. MS and it's licensees" translates to "two opposing teams, and Apple's tech is better".
This isn't journalism, this is a press release -- professional marketing people _always_ write quotes for people to "say" because they know what they want said. I don't know how many times marketing people have written quotes to attribute to me. They review it with the person they're "quoting" to make sure that it's OK, of course. So all we're seeing here is normal press release editing -- the marketing person comes up with something gushing and a rough idea of who ought to "say" it, and in the editing process it turns into an actual person saying something more reasonable. So while it's a certainly a bit embarassing seeing internal comments released to the public, there's nothing shocking or incriminating here.
Slashdot Mirror
That's up to the counties -- the HAVA funding that's driving all of this is available until 2006.
I have a 5 GB iPod (first generation) and I use smart playlists exclusively. I have:
- 1 GB of my newest music (so I can listen to the new CD that I just RIPped).
- 1 GB of my highest rated music.
- 1 GB of my most played music.
- 1 GB of randomly selected music (to keep things interesting; if I play it a lot, it lands in the 'most played music' list.)
- All of my purchased music (if I paid for it, I probably want to be able to listen to it)
- All of my 'checked' Audible books. (After I finish a book, I uncheck it, so it's archived on my computer but removed from my iPod).
I have about 30 GB of music, and this works great for me.
Yeah, it would be nice to be able to vote online."
It's worse than that. Online voting is open to massive abuses that are prevented in current elections simply due to the fact that voting takes place in a monitored location.
So if you're going to 'hack' an election now, you'd need to do whatever you're going to do in a polling station, while the polls are open, which means that you'd be doing it in front of a bunch of poll workers, other voters, etc.
"One big stumbling block to wide-spread acceptance for online voting is the possiblity for disrupting an election by launching a DDOS attack against the voting servers."
:-)
Not really -- no voting system that I know of has the central tabulation systems connected to the internet. Votes are collected either by physically collecting them to the central facility (e.g. punch cards) or by sending the tallies over the phone (either by voice, FAX, or data calls).
So the only DDOS attack that you could launch would be a physical world one, such as setting yourself up with a high powered rifle and a good line of sight on the entrance to the building.
It's stunning to me that the head of a company that sells election systems would even imagine this sort of partisan politics. You'd think that the guys selling a system to run elections would try to be above even the appearance of impropriety, because anything else is terrible for their business, because the more they take _any_ political position the more they'd risk offending a large percentage of their customers.
It won't be in place by this November, because most states require systems to be certified a year before the election. What the Open Voting Consortium is shooting for is to get funding so that in 2005 the system can be certified by companies that are in the business of selling election systems, for use in 2006 elections.
"I had heard that they do have provision for adding one of their own printers."
Supposedly they all have a printer inside them. This is because the HAVA law reuires that they print out a record of the votes. Strangely, they decided that it was sufficient to print a total when the polls close, and not a continuous record of votes cast, so there's no way to prove that the total printed is correct, and thus no value in printing it.
"voting software requires very limited runs, and typically needs to recover its cost on its first sale. There's no need to make revenue on a per copy basis. There is probably only going to be a single customer who will have precise demands. If it was closed source, the amount of work would be the same, and the amount and so that you could charge would be the same."
I agree with this point. I'll also point out that the _real_ value that a voting system vendor provides isn't the software system, it's the complete service. The states don't need someone to provide them software -- the states need someone to provide a complete solution, from training election workers to providing on-site technical support. Compared to the cost of providing tech support to thousands of polling locations, manufacturing and shipping hundreds of thousands of voting machines, getting your product certified in each state, etc., the cost of the software development should be fairly minor.
"Surely this is a perfect use of the market to determine price."
Combine this with RFID tags. Imagine...
Me: Walking up to meter.
Meter: Hey, you've got a date with you, and it's Friday night. I bet I could charge double for this spot!
The article implies a small good point about a weakness of Linux, and ignores a HUGE point that isn't a weakness of Linux, but an advantage that Windows has in the current marketplace.
The valid point that the article makes is that Linux' support for sound is relatively weak. Not only isn't there a good depth of drivers, but the whole area of desktop audio support has historically been unimportant (Linux is used more often on servers, where audio doesn't matter, and in embedded applications, where you only need to support one, pre-build configuration). So audio under Linux is coming together nicely, but it's not as mature as Windows, MacOS, etc.
The huge point that the author misses is that he's lost perspective on solving the problem. It's fairly obvious that Linux doesn't have the depth of driver support that Windows has, because it's (in business terms) impossible to ship a card without Windows drivers, while only a few vendors support Linux officially, or even work with outside engineers to allow them to support their hardware under Linux. And rather than fight that he could have solved the problem by buying a mainstream $20 sound card.
It may be simply impossible to get the chipset to work under Linux; it may well be that the vendor of the on-board audio chipset on the "Intel" motherboard he's using won't allow Linux drivers to be written because they keep the API proprietary.
I'm a little amazed that he spend a huge amount of time trying to "work through" the problem instead of quickly "solving" the problem by buying a cheap sound card that's supported by Linux. It's not like it's a major investment of money, and would have saved a lot of time.
Perhaps his goal wasn't to get his sound working, but to prove that he couldn't get it working under Linux?
"You don't see any rich kids blowing themselves up to kill innocents that they have never met yet hate passionately"
While you'd intuitively think that this would be the case, the terrorists that we've caught tend to be well educated, well travelled people that really, really hate us. Sure, the poor "street rats" may hate us as well, but they don't have the resources or training to cause us trouble. It takes an education to build bombs that work properly, etc.
This is a really sweet car mod, but what I really want is to be able to buy an in-dash car stereo into which I can dock the iPod and use the stereo's controls.
Alpine has announced one that's close, but it has the iPod on an external cable. I'd rather not deal with the iPod and cable floating around inside the car.
apt-get is indeed a wonderful thing, and I use and love it, but it's really more of a server/admin tool than an end user tool. To install an application using apt-get the user has to:
- know the magic command line incatation to install the app. This includes know its exact name.
- watch while hundreds of lines of scary text scroll by.
- if there's a mysterious error, ask a sysadmin to debug it.
- wonder where the application installed, or how to run it.
Me, I know the incantations for the app's I used most, and where to find the names of new app's, like knowing what's going on where, and can usually find installed app's because I know where to go digging. And I love being able to rapidly upgrade a whole farm of servers to a known software level using a single command.
But when my mom (who's an artist, and a compulsive computer user) installs an app, she wants to drag it from the CD into Applications, then double click on it. Or _perhaps_ run an installer, though those make her nervous because they do unpredictable things to her computer.
apt-get could form the basis for a really great application installer (for free app's), but it's not properly packaged yet.
"Usually, when I think of computers, I think of something highly technological, characterized by cool, sleek designs ... wood is more natrual, thus being the exact opposite."
In terms of imagery, I agree, but isn't it cool to combine apparent opposites? You have to love the beautiful woodwork that went into some of these cases.
"Though it is great for matching furniture, I would never buy one of these, because in my mind, nature and technology just don't mix."
I would. Imagine that you've got a nice looking living room or office with quality wooden furniture. Wouldn't a generic beige metal box with a generic beige CRT look terrible? Wouldn't a nice matching wooden CPU case and flat panel look nicer?
I see people argue "who cares what a computer looks like" and it mystifies me. If you're willing to spend $1K on a beautiful desk instead of $29.95 on a card table, or $500 on a suit instead of $50 on T-shirt and jeans, because it looks better, how is it different spending more money on a computer to make it look nicer?
Tastes differ, I guess. And that's a good thing...
I certainly agree with the parent's point that open sourcing the software isn't a magic bullet, and that the policies and procedures are critical.
The way I'd phrase it is that voting is a system componsed of hardware, software, people and procedures. Flaws in any aspect of the system can compromise it. You could have perfect software, but have procedures that (for example) allow election workers manipulate the results before they're collected. That's why things like auditing still critical.
That being said, open sourcing the software gives much more confidence in that aspect of the system.
Ooh, I forgot to mention that the ST ran STadel, an awesome room-based BBS system. Every 'room' had a topic, and could have files, messages, etc. Much, much cooler than the typical command-line BBS's.
w s8706.txt, which recorded the first international Citadel network message, back in 1987.
Citadel's had this amazing networking scheme where BBS's could route messages between them so that (like Fido) you could send email (slowly) cross-country with only a series of local phone calls (i.e. free). But it was about a billion times easier to set up, as you simple created a shared room and configured what other BBS' to call to share it.
I just found http://uncensored.citadel.org/citadel/citanews/ne
And check this out, my BBS is in an old listing. How cool.
Name: Bladerunner BBS -- Waltham, Mass. USA
Dial: (617) 891-7338
Sysop: Laird Popkin (laird@think.com)
Comm Settings: 8-N-1
Baud: 300 - 2400 + PEP (Trailblazer Plus)
Info Updated: 14-Sep-1991
Notes: Connected to the Citadel and usenet networks (as
blade.via.mind.org). The BBS runs STadel (a Citadel variant)
on an Atari ST.
Topics discussed: Role Playing Games, GURPS, Warhammer,
AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Hero/Champions, as well as assorted
Fantasy and SF and computer-related topics. There are
also a number of online games, and discussions of SF,
various computers, and whatever other topics arise.
There are no online time limits or upload/download rations.
Ah, that was fun!
Wow, this brings back memories. I ran a BBS for years, Bladerunner BBS. It started out running on an Osborne Executive (2400 BPS! 2 double-sided quad density drives!) and then was upgraded to an Atari ST (20 MB SCSI HD, 19,200 BPS Telebit Trailblazer!). The amusing thing was that the CPU in the Trailblazer was much faster than the ST itself.
One thing I really miss from those days is the sense of community, and the games. I ran a number of games on my BBS, and it was always a lot of fun watching people interact. Unlike modern online games, anyone could write a test-oriented BBS game if they knew a little BASIC, so there were all sorts of cool games. I remember in particular a drag racing game where you could race, earn money, buy upgrades, and compete against other drivers (i.e. other players on the same BBS). The integration of the game into real-time was fascinating -- most BBS games let you make a limited number of moves a day, so people would play a single session of a game for _weeks_. And there were tons of cool timing tricks, like dialing into the BBS at 11:30 so that you'd have the last move before midnight and then the first game after midnight, which could give you a nice advantage (and leave you vulnerable as everyone else moves after you).
Hey, thanks for the excuse for the flashback. Fun days!
"The problem with this idea is how big to make the chunks: too big and you need to download a big chunk before you can verify. Too small and the list of hashes itself takes too long to download ... I think the solution should be to use hash trees"
.torrent file might be 8K for a TV show, or 150K for an entire season of a TV show (to use two .torrent files that I have handy). Yes, those files are large, but let's keep it in perspective: the 8K file lets you download a 175 MB video file, and the 150K torrent lets you download 180 episodes of a TV show, totaling around 10 GB. So the torrent file is between 0.0015% and 0.005% of the total file size transferred (based on the two cases I looked at). So it hardly makes sense to make the protocol more complex in order to optimize that 0.005% of the bandwidth transferred.
This sounds clever, but the percentages don't work. Sure, a
This looks like a great geek toy, but aside from that who on earth would buy this thing? It's $699, and huge. If all you need is a PDA, you can get much, much nicer machines from Sony, Palm, or even (dare I mention it) WinCE licensees.
I ran into a similar situation with Apple, and writing a polite letter to sj@apple.com resulted in getting the situation cleared up. My advice is to do your homework, document everything objectively, and to clearly state what you want the company to do for you.
Having worked in customer support, I can assure you that too many letters consist of someone venting without saying what their problem is, or how we can help them. Most CSR's just want to know how they can solve your problem, within the limits of what they're authorized to do.
"usually a press release is used verbatim because the journalist is on a tight deadline and didn't have time to write the article"
:-) Seriously, though, no reputable newspaper reprints a press release as if it were a real article. They may take the press release and use it as the basis of a story (e.g. Microsoft's Xbox game console will be $30 cheaper starting Tuesday), but they'll usually call around for their own quotes, and add some analysis. For example, the "'At this lower mass market price point, we're opening up this great system to an even broader audience of people who can experience Xbox for the first time,' Mitch Koch, corporate vice president of worldwide retail sales for Microsoft, said in a statement" is probably straight from the press release (i.e. written by Microsoft's PR people), but everything else in the article, such as the analyst saying that the price drop isn't enough, and the speculation that Sony will drop the price of the PS2 in April, is reporting provided by CNET.
Well, I don't think that Computer Shopper counts as a newspaper.
The article was pretty interesting, but I didn't follow how the author made the leap from saying that there was a particular _coorelation_ between the p2p download data and the CD sales data and saying that p2p downloads had a particular _effect_ on CD sales. In particular, in a real experiment you do the same thing repeatedly, with one "control variable" changed, and that tells you how the control variable affects the other variables. But there's no way to do that with real world music sales, because you can't sell the same album twice at the same time, once with p2p file sharing and once with no p2p file sharing. There's not even a way to compare two different albums, once with p2p file sharing and once without. So I don't see how they could "prove" cause and effect.
That being said, there was a bunch of complex mathematical modeling. Did anyone follow it enough to say whether they figured out how to perform an experiment without a control?
"a press release is journalism. They often end up printed verbatim in the newspaper."
Then what the newspaper is doing isn't journalism, it's advertising.
"I thought that AAC was already well on its way to becoming ubiquitous"
Yes, Apple's very successful selling music online. But since all of their competitors are effectively forced to use WMA (except Sony and Real, who have their own formats) they're turning the landscape to "Apple vs. everyone." It'd be much better strategically for Apple to license their DRM technology to some other online stored, the way they licensed their iPod hardware to HP, because it would have the same effect. Instead of "Apple vs. everyone" which Analysts translates to "Apple replays he 90's" while it's "Apple and it's licensees vs. MS and it's licensees" translates to "two opposing teams, and Apple's tech is better".
This isn't journalism, this is a press release -- professional marketing people _always_ write quotes for people to "say" because they know what they want said. I don't know how many times marketing people have written quotes to attribute to me. They review it with the person they're "quoting" to make sure that it's OK, of course. So all we're seeing here is normal press release editing -- the marketing person comes up with something gushing and a rough idea of who ought to "say" it, and in the editing process it turns into an actual person saying something more reasonable. So while it's a certainly a bit embarassing seeing internal comments released to the public, there's nothing shocking or incriminating here.