"Something like Word doesn't, and is less vulnerable to downtime on my home computer, along with being faster and more secure."
People do not understand security, so that point is completely moot. It certainly is faster, but it is only a matter of time until web apps are fast enough. People don't care if Word loads twice as fast as Google Doc if Google Doc loads in a second. That will happen. Also, web apps are less vulnerable to user error, i.e. forgetting to bring that important document to work.
"You're right, users want the best. But, if you ever think web apps will give an equal experience to desktop apps, you're deluding yourself."
People don't care about the best, I never said that. People want something that does the job and is good enough. It is only a matter of time until web apps does the job well enough.
"Adding more overhead means it'll always be slower. Remember that web apps, for things that don't need an internet connection, do the same thing as having a slower version of the application combined with some kind of online storage. Unless they can provide some kind of service that desktop apps can't, then they'll never win out."
1. Having online storage is a feature, not a bug. Having access to it from everywhere is a major advantage. 2. Web apps require far less maintnance from the user.
"Because, my experiences tell me, beyond email and flash games, people still want their software to be desktop-based and not web-based."
People want their software to work and do what they ask of it. They don't care whether it is desktop-based or web-based. Currently web based software can't provide the same level of responsiveness and functionality as desktop apps, but there is only a matter of time until web apps are good enough for that purpose as well.
And you're missing the big picture. Facebook is fast becoming as important as Word for many home users.
Most comments here now remind me of the whole "no wifi, less space than a nomad, lame"-comment about the iPod when it came out. These comments are completely missing the point.
The current problem is that our desktop is built up around the idea of local applications and that is all the current desktops are designed to handle. But nowadays people are using less and less local applications and more and more web applications (whether you like it or not), and all of these run in a separate layer through the web browser. At some point, if we aren't already there, many people will not use a single local application on their computer apart from their web browser.
At that point, the whole distinction between the web browser and the operating system becomes completely irrelevant and we approach stage where windows is just a collection of device drivers (quote Netscape, mid nineties?).
Currently, the operating system does a lot of great stuff for us with regards to the local applications, and it really needs to start doing the same with regards to web applications and the first step is to make web applications first class citizens on the desktop.
Finally, complain all you want about the privacy and security issues with web applications. Well founded as they may be, they will not change the fact that people are flocking to web applications.
Active Desktop was a bit lame and MS seemed to have no real concept of where they were going with it.It was also well before the age of "web applications" as opposed to web sites. Just because there may be similarities with that old concept doesn't make this stupid.
Many other posters have stated that ISBNs and prices are not something the Coop can protect.
However, the Coop is probably in their right to refuse access to anyone they want. It is not a public right to use any given shop since the shop itself is private property.
As far as I can remember, Intel released open-source drivers but not specifications freely available to all. They may very well have released specifications under an NDA, but that does not help the legion of FOSS programmers to write a better driver than Intel could.
"I would imagine that iTunes is great for the casual user that doesn't need nor want much MANUAL control over their music library, but for more advanced users the non-standard UI (on Windows) and strange "simplified" ways of doing simple things make it near useless."
I'm sorry, but this is yet again the fallacy of the "advanced user" which is used just to make those users feel superiour. You might as well use "anal retentive" user and say that iTunes is useless for those "anal retentive" users that are set in their mindset about music applications and don't care to get used to a different way.
I'm not even saying that iTunes is superiour, but it is clearly not "near useless". It is simply "different", and it is completely understandable if someone doesn't like it. I do, however, object to you making your own opinion more important by labelling yourself an "advanced user".
"For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels."
Basically when uploading you give youtube a transferrable license to display and distribute your work. Viacom's segment showing this work, however, did not come with any license to distribute. So if YouTube gave Viacom permission to use the content, Viacom had the right to do so, but the original author had no right to use the Viacom segment, except maybe as 'fair use' citation.
But Youtubes terms also include: "You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service."
This seems a bit ambiguous to me, but could mean that any user of YouTube are allowed to redistribute the content.
"Nokia's high-end products have always been head and shoulders above the rest."
And still rather crap. I've got a Nokia Symbian phone with all the features I could ever want; a 3.2 megapixel camera with a decent point and shoot lens, video chat, 3G, radio, mp3-player, PDF reader, video player, web browser, blue tooth, irda, etc. etc.
But it is still shit. Every single feature feels like loosely connected applications rather than a part of an integrated whole. Every feature is just a little bit awkward, making the whole experience much less enjoyable than it could be.
"There is no doubt in my mind that Apple are the proverbial Rolls Royce of desktop computing, however I'm not too sure of their credentials in the global mobile telephony market - I just don't believe they "get it"."
If ignoring much of the conventional wisdom in phone market is not "getting it", then I'm all for it. The mobile phones have been around for ages now and they are still nowhere near as good as they could be. I'm not saying that the iPhone is in any way perfect (but I don't know, I haven't tried it) but it seems to me that the phone industry really needed the shake-up that the iPhone seems to be creating. Besides, give Apple a couple of generations before judging them on their mobile phone efforts.
"If you leave something where anyone can take it, without trespassing on your property (breaking in to your house, or computer), then there is no reason for someone to be arrested for taking or using it."
So if you leave your laptop on the table in a coffee shop while you go to buy your coffee it should be ok for people to take it? What about if you just turn away for a second?
How much time do you have to look away for it being ok for someone to take it?
MP3 vs AAC 256kbp vs. 256kbp "censored" vs. "non-censored" 94 cents vs #1.29
For those who care about the "clean" tracks, it's still 3 of 4. 1. How can you claim 256 kbp vs. 256 kbp to be a victory for Walmart? It is equal. 2. MP3 vs. AAC is only a victory for Walmart if your particular player doesn't support AAC. There is hardly any players out there that doesn't these days and AAC is usually considered to provide better quality for a given bitrate. This could just as easily be called a victory for Apple. 3. $1.29 is for single DRM-free tracks on iTunes. Albums still cost $9.99, the same as DRM encumbered albums. Walmarts seems to cost around $9.22-9.44 looking at the picture from arstechnica. The price for albums is approximately 6-8% rather than 37% higher at iTunes. *
I agree, it is competitive and in many cases better. But it isn't as favourable compared to iTunes as you suggest.
* Note that Apple deducts the price of the singles you have already bought from an album when purchasing the full album, which could save you.
"Not the way capitalism really operates, the idealistic way American (and possibly other) children are tought to think capitalism operates in middle school."
This sounds an awful lot like brain washing to me. Yes, we teach children simplified versions of things all the time, but this is both blatantly false and also directly in the interest of the rich and powerful.
Aren't you just reiterating what the parent already said? The American people seems to be particularly prone to being easily caught up with the looks and "stature" of a candidate and not concerned enough with their policies.
Any country that can elect Margaret Thatcher isn't that concerned with looks (Not that I agree with most of her policies, but she stood for what the british public wanted at the time).
"Read these eye witness accounts reported by the BBC and decide for your self."
You really haven't been paying attention have you? Notice that both of these articles are from the first day of the shooting, where the media was full of misinformation. Both of the articles you list are full of "facts" that are now heavily disputed and is completely at odds with the findings of the independent police complaints commission.
1. De Menezes was wearing a light denim jacket. 2. He was given no warning that an innocent man could understand. From the IPCC commissioner: "There is no action he could have consciously taken that would have saved him". 3. De Menezes passed through the barrier normally using his pre-paid Oyster card. He did not run or jump the barrier as some eyewitnesses had claimed.
"Stop buying the crap. My TV remote takes an AA. Any AA. If your phone-du-jour doesn't, tough bounce. Demand better. Every dollar is a vote."
AA batteries or even AAA batteries for that matter are far too large to work in most mobile phones without putting very large design restrictions on the shape of the phone, so no phone uses them (at least no mainstream phones), because hardly anyone would buy such a phone.
How can you vote with your dollar if there is NO alternative available? The alternative would be not having a mobile phone, which these days would seriously impact on your social life.
What is needed is a new battery standard suitable for mobile phones. It has to be almost flat, but can be fairly wide and tall.
"They are not going to ever really support Linux well. If that's not clear after 12 years of the above cycle, then you haven't been paying attention."
Normally I would agree, but you might be interested to hear that ATI has new owners and it is possible that these new owners will enforce a change in policy.
Now, even if such a change in policy is shouted from every rooftop I wouldn't recommend that any Linux user buys ATI/AMD graphics products until there is actual working drivers for them, but it isn't fair to assume that ATI/AMD will always be as bad as ATI was on their own.
Well, you could have bothered to RTFA. People's perception is important because it may be (and the study suggests) that it is people's perception that causes illness.
They tested on both people's perception and symptoms such as sweaty skin and high blood pressure.
They found that people with these symptoms felt unwell regardless of whether the mast was off or not and that they generally had no idea whether the mast was on or off. If they were truly ill from signal sensitivity they should be able to tell whether the mast was on or off depending on their general feeling of well-being.
The effects were, however, real. Thus it seems like a classic case of placebo, but the "Mast sanity" campaign group obviously refuses to acknowledge that this may be psychological effects.
Unfortunately there may be loads of laws around which may seem daft to you as an individual, but are actually there for very sound reasons. And human beings are completely reliant on taking many things at face value 'because you are told', otherwise you would never get anywhere. Thus, unless you understand a law, you should definitely abide by it. Civil disobedience can in my humble opinion only be justified if you DO understand a law and happen to find the law morally unacceptable.
"Seriously..all these people complain about wind turbines blocking the view of their million-dollar ocean cottages get no sympathy from me."
What about the people that have ocean cottages that do not cost a million dollars? Would you have sympathy for them? Norway is large enough per inhabitant that it is entirely possible to get ocean view property for a decent sum of money in many parts of Norway. I'd be slightly pissed off if I had invested all of my savings in a lovely little ocean front family house just for it to be blocked by massive wind turbines.
And no, ocean views are not just a 'luxury' if you have grown up in a fishing village in Norway. I currently live landlocked, and once I move away from here I never, ever want to live away from the ocean again.
"Altruism triggers pleasure centers like a drug or sex, which means that we do altruistic acts for ourselves, not for others"
No, it means that altruistic acts are encouraged by our very nature. It does not mean that our only reasons for altruistic acts are selfish. Whether there is such a thing as true altruism or truly selfless acts is a debate as old as the debate about free will. Both of these issues are still firmly planted in the area of philosophy rather than science.
Not the most features, but the ones that are there are well done. Apple is not going after the people that love smart phones, so for most of the Slashdot crowd it is probably a dud, they are going after the people that could do with many of the features of smart phones but hate the ones that already exist.
So, this is all about bringing the features of smart phones to the people that previously would never buy a smart phone due to their clunky nature. By all accounts it is going to be a storming success.
Personally I like the feature set of the iPhone, except the lack of 3G, and I could never justify the cost of it. Do I want it? Hell yes, but I'm going to have to wait for a while. This is obviously part of the Apple plan: 1. Release a sexy phone that lots of people want 2. Make it initially very expensive, so that it becomes a luxury status item. 3. Wait until it is firmly established as THE status item, then start slowly release new versions at cheaper prices making loads of people buy it because they still view it as a status symbol even though everyone can now afford to buy one.
"so what if it doesn't survive a boot, just reprogram it with your hacked code every boot"
Which makes it no worse than any other hack, virus or worm. You can already take complete control over the computer without resorting to microcode.
If it had been permanent and survived reboots, then a complete format and reinstall would not remove the hack. That would have been scary indeed, but luckily that is not the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether Sun or NetApp started this is a point of heavy contention. They both claim to be the victim and they both claim the other party started it.
"The way I see it, is if iTunes provided DRM free music in several formats, they could instantly improve their marketshare by about 20%"
If it was DRM free, quite likely. A different format is much more pointless given that almost all digital music players support AAC these days.
DRM-free AAC files can be played pretty much anywhere, Apple's DRM-encumbered AAC files can not.
"Something like Word doesn't, and is less vulnerable to downtime on my home computer, along with being faster and more secure."
People do not understand security, so that point is completely moot. It certainly is faster, but it is only a matter of time until web apps are fast enough. People don't care if Word loads twice as fast as Google Doc if Google Doc loads in a second. That will happen. Also, web apps are less vulnerable to user error, i.e. forgetting to bring that important document to work.
"You're right, users want the best. But, if you ever think web apps will give an equal experience to desktop apps, you're deluding yourself."
People don't care about the best, I never said that. People want something that does the job and is good enough. It is only a matter of time until web apps does the job well enough.
"Adding more overhead means it'll always be slower. Remember that web apps, for things that don't need an internet connection, do the same thing as having a slower version of the application combined with some kind of online storage. Unless they can provide some kind of service that desktop apps can't, then they'll never win out."
1. Having online storage is a feature, not a bug. Having access to it from everywhere is a major advantage.
2. Web apps require far less maintnance from the user.
"Because, my experiences tell me, beyond email and flash games, people still want their software to be desktop-based and not web-based."
People want their software to work and do what they ask of it. They don't care whether it is desktop-based or web-based. Currently web based software can't provide the same level of responsiveness and functionality as desktop apps, but there is only a matter of time until web apps are good enough for that purpose as well.
And you're missing the big picture. Facebook is fast becoming as important as Word for many home users.
Most comments here now remind me of the whole "no wifi, less space than a nomad, lame"-comment about the iPod when it came out. These comments are completely missing the point.
The current problem is that our desktop is built up around the idea of local applications and that is all the current desktops are designed to handle. But nowadays people are using less and less local applications and more and more web applications (whether you like it or not), and all of these run in a separate layer through the web browser. At some point, if we aren't already there, many people will not use a single local application on their computer apart from their web browser.
At that point, the whole distinction between the web browser and the operating system becomes completely irrelevant and we approach stage where windows is just a collection of device drivers (quote Netscape, mid nineties?).
Currently, the operating system does a lot of great stuff for us with regards to the local applications, and it really needs to start doing the same with regards to web applications and the first step is to make web applications first class citizens on the desktop.
Finally, complain all you want about the privacy and security issues with web applications. Well founded as they may be, they will not change the fact that people are flocking to web applications.
Active Desktop was a bit lame and MS seemed to have no real concept of where they were going with it.It was also well before the age of "web applications" as opposed to web sites. Just because there may be similarities with that old concept doesn't make this stupid.
Many other posters have stated that ISBNs and prices are not something the Coop can protect.
However, the Coop is probably in their right to refuse access to anyone they want. It is not a public right to use any given shop since the shop itself is private property.
It is obviously bad publicity.
As far as I can remember, Intel released open-source drivers but not specifications freely available to all. They may very well have released specifications under an NDA, but that does not help the legion of FOSS programmers to write a better driver than Intel could.
"I would imagine that iTunes is great for the casual user that doesn't need nor want much MANUAL control over their music library, but for more advanced users the non-standard UI (on Windows) and strange "simplified" ways of doing simple things make it near useless."
I'm sorry, but this is yet again the fallacy of the "advanced user" which is used just to make those users feel superiour. You might as well use "anal retentive" user and say that iTunes is useless for those "anal retentive" users that are set in their mindset about music applications and don't care to get used to a different way.
I'm not even saying that iTunes is superiour, but it is clearly not "near useless". It is simply "different", and it is completely understandable if someone doesn't like it. I do, however, object to you making your own opinion more important by labelling yourself an "advanced user".
No, IANAL, but from the YouTube Terms of service (point 6C):
"For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels."
Basically when uploading you give youtube a transferrable license to display and distribute your work. Viacom's segment showing this work, however, did not come with any license to distribute. So if YouTube gave Viacom permission to use the content, Viacom had the right to do so, but the original author had no right to use the Viacom segment, except maybe as 'fair use' citation.
But Youtubes terms also include:
"You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service."
This seems a bit ambiguous to me, but could mean that any user of YouTube are allowed to redistribute the content.
"Nokia's high-end products have always been head and shoulders above the rest."
And still rather crap. I've got a Nokia Symbian phone with all the features I could ever want; a 3.2 megapixel camera with a decent point and shoot lens, video chat, 3G, radio, mp3-player, PDF reader, video player, web browser, blue tooth, irda, etc. etc.
But it is still shit. Every single feature feels like loosely connected applications rather than a part of an integrated whole. Every feature is just a little bit awkward, making the whole experience much less enjoyable than it could be.
"There is no doubt in my mind that Apple are the proverbial Rolls Royce of desktop computing, however I'm not too sure of their credentials in the global mobile telephony market - I just don't believe they "get it"."
If ignoring much of the conventional wisdom in phone market is not "getting it", then I'm all for it. The mobile phones have been around for ages now and they are still nowhere near as good as they could be. I'm not saying that the iPhone is in any way perfect (but I don't know, I haven't tried it) but it seems to me that the phone industry really needed the shake-up that the iPhone seems to be creating. Besides, give Apple a couple of generations before judging them on their mobile phone efforts.
"If you leave something where anyone can take it, without trespassing on your property (breaking in to your house, or computer), then there is no reason for someone to be arrested for taking or using it."
So if you leave your laptop on the table in a coffee shop while you go to buy your coffee it should be ok for people to take it? What about if you just turn away for a second?
How much time do you have to look away for it being ok for someone to take it?
256kbp vs. 256kbp
"censored" vs. "non-censored"
94 cents vs #1.29
For those who care about the "clean" tracks, it's still 3 of 4. 1. How can you claim 256 kbp vs. 256 kbp to be a victory for Walmart? It is equal.
2. MP3 vs. AAC is only a victory for Walmart if your particular player doesn't support AAC. There is hardly any players out there that doesn't these days and AAC is usually considered to provide better quality for a given bitrate. This could just as easily be called a victory for Apple.
3. $1.29 is for single DRM-free tracks on iTunes. Albums still cost $9.99, the same as DRM encumbered albums. Walmarts seems to cost around $9.22-9.44 looking at the picture from arstechnica. The price for albums is approximately 6-8% rather than 37% higher at iTunes. *
I agree, it is competitive and in many cases better. But it isn't as favourable compared to iTunes as you suggest.
* Note that Apple deducts the price of the singles you have already bought from an album when purchasing the full album, which could save you.
"Not the way capitalism really operates, the idealistic way American (and possibly other) children are tought to think capitalism operates in middle school."
This sounds an awful lot like brain washing to me. Yes, we teach children simplified versions of things all the time, but this is both blatantly false and also directly in the interest of the rich and powerful.
Aren't you just reiterating what the parent already said? The American people seems to be particularly prone to being easily caught up with the looks and "stature" of a candidate and not concerned enough with their policies.
Any country that can elect Margaret Thatcher isn't that concerned with looks (Not that I agree with most of her policies, but she stood for what the british public wanted at the time).
"Read these eye witness accounts reported by the BBC and decide for your self."
You really haven't been paying attention have you? Notice that both of these articles are from the first day of the shooting, where the media was full of misinformation. Both of the articles you list are full of "facts" that are now heavily disputed and is completely at odds with the findings of the independent police complaints commission.
See the Wikipedia article or this article in the Torygraph.
1. De Menezes was wearing a light denim jacket.
2. He was given no warning that an innocent man could understand. From the IPCC commissioner: "There is no action he could have consciously taken that would have saved him".
3. De Menezes passed through the barrier normally using his pre-paid Oyster card. He did not run or jump the barrier as some eyewitnesses had claimed.
"Stop buying the crap. My TV remote takes an AA. Any AA. If your phone-du-jour doesn't, tough bounce. Demand better. Every dollar is a vote."
AA batteries or even AAA batteries for that matter are far too large to work in most mobile phones without putting very large design restrictions on the shape of the phone, so no phone uses them (at least no mainstream phones), because hardly anyone would buy such a phone.
How can you vote with your dollar if there is NO alternative available? The alternative would be not having a mobile phone, which these days would seriously impact on your social life.
What is needed is a new battery standard suitable for mobile phones. It has to be almost flat, but can be fairly wide and tall.
"They are not going to ever really support Linux well. If that's not clear after 12 years of the above cycle, then you haven't been paying attention."
Normally I would agree, but you might be interested to hear that ATI has new owners and it is possible that these new owners will enforce a change in policy.
Now, even if such a change in policy is shouted from every rooftop I wouldn't recommend that any Linux user buys ATI/AMD graphics products until there is actual working drivers for them, but it isn't fair to assume that ATI/AMD will always be as bad as ATI was on their own.
Well, you could have bothered to RTFA. People's perception is important because it may be (and the study suggests) that it is people's perception that causes illness.
They tested on both people's perception and symptoms such as sweaty skin and high blood pressure.
They found that people with these symptoms felt unwell regardless of whether the mast was off or not and that they generally had no idea whether the mast was on or off. If they were truly ill from signal sensitivity they should be able to tell whether the mast was on or off depending on their general feeling of well-being.
The effects were, however, real. Thus it seems like a classic case of placebo, but the "Mast sanity" campaign group obviously refuses to acknowledge that this may be psychological effects.
Unfortunately there may be loads of laws around which may seem daft to you as an individual, but are actually there for very sound reasons. And human beings are completely reliant on taking many things at face value 'because you are told', otherwise you would never get anywhere. Thus, unless you understand a law, you should definitely abide by it.
Civil disobedience can in my humble opinion only be justified if you DO understand a law and happen to find the law morally unacceptable.
Fluendo currently sells MPEG2, MPEG4, Dolby AC3 and Windows Media codecs legally. They also give you the MP3 codec free of charge.
If you want peace of mind and avoid being a criminal in countries with silly laws, then these may be something for you.
"Seriously..all these people complain about wind turbines blocking the view of their million-dollar ocean cottages get no sympathy from me."
What about the people that have ocean cottages that do not cost a million dollars? Would you have sympathy for them? Norway is large enough per inhabitant that it is entirely possible to get ocean view property for a decent sum of money in many parts of Norway. I'd be slightly pissed off if I had invested all of my savings in a lovely little ocean front family house just for it to be blocked by massive wind turbines.
And no, ocean views are not just a 'luxury' if you have grown up in a fishing village in Norway. I currently live landlocked, and once I move away from here I never, ever want to live away from the ocean again.
"Altruism triggers pleasure centers like a drug or sex, which means that we do altruistic acts for ourselves, not for others"
No, it means that altruistic acts are encouraged by our very nature. It does not mean that our only reasons for altruistic acts are selfish. Whether there is such a thing as true altruism or truly selfless acts is a debate as old as the debate about free will. Both of these issues are still firmly planted in the area of philosophy rather than science.
"Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"
It wouldn't fly, most people would have been worried about how many have gone there before them, particularly after the whole jail sentence.
Not the most features, but the ones that are there are well done. Apple is not going after the people that love smart phones, so for most of the Slashdot crowd it is probably a dud, they are going after the people that could do with many of the features of smart phones but hate the ones that already exist.
So, this is all about bringing the features of smart phones to the people that previously would never buy a smart phone due to their clunky nature. By all accounts it is going to be a storming success.
Personally I like the feature set of the iPhone, except the lack of 3G, and I could never justify the cost of it. Do I want it? Hell yes, but I'm going to have to wait for a while. This is obviously part of the Apple plan:
1. Release a sexy phone that lots of people want
2. Make it initially very expensive, so that it becomes a luxury status item.
3. Wait until it is firmly established as THE status item, then start slowly release new versions at cheaper prices making loads of people buy it because they still view it as a status symbol even though everyone can now afford to buy one.
Exactly the same plan as with the iPod.
"so what if it doesn't survive a boot, just reprogram it with your hacked code every boot"
Which makes it no worse than any other hack, virus or worm. You can already take complete control over the computer without resorting to microcode.
If it had been permanent and survived reboots, then a complete format and reinstall would not remove the hack. That would have been scary indeed, but luckily that is not the case.