Cannot check this right now, but wouldn't it be possible to write a Windows executable that writes to the HOSTS file? The file is at a known location, and couldn't you add a line to redirect msn.com and yahoo.com to your own site?
Well, that's how the things usually work in the embedded world from the startof the industry. In the embedded programming you do need to customize the purchased packages occasionally, as you switch to different architectures, different chips within the same architectures and so on.
So you buy a software product (TCP/IP stack, or some drivers), and they usually come with the royalty-free source. You cannot resell the product, but you can embed the product in your own system and resell that. The source belongs to the original manufacturer and is free for you to tinker with.
That's kinda the way the things always were in the embedded world, too many people are confusing the GPL and GNU ideology with the concept of having sources on additional CD with the product you purchased.
How successful os the Real Movies partnership with Starz? I am a paid subscriber, and so far the service has been pretty impressive - I can download a 100 movies at any point, and 25 new ones are added each week. Are there any future plans for the Starz/Real partnership?
Will you offer the movies that currently play in movie theaters for additional fees? Will you offer the movies that just came out on DVDs?
Will you promote independent movies and if I work for an independent studio, how can we strike a partnership with Real Networks to distribute the content to your subscribers in some affordable way?
My Dell Axim X5 doesn't have enough guts to do full length movies, but worked for short video clips, pictures, MP3, wireless connectivity, GPS and what not.
I mean, how many movies do you have to watch on that thing to justify $500 spent?
are you going to lug 6 lbs of laptops everywhere? are you going to deal with the fact laptop is much "bulkier" when you watch a movie on the screen since you still need the keyboard to go somewhere?
Ultralight laptops will cost more, but not much more. We have that formfactor in the laptop form already. On the other hand if I (and millions other Americans) do have a laptop, there's even less incentives to buy a PMC. The ROI is simply not there.
$100 hot seller - sorry, that makes absolutely no sense at all
I know, but the whole product makes about as much sense as a car that can only turn one way, but not the other. It's half the price of the regular car and eats just as much gas but can only turn right. Limited market, limited appeal, absolutely no reason for anyone to want one.
If $100 is not good, then for $500 I want WiFi connectivity, back-end download portal with somefree content (real movies, not trailers and promotional crap) and wireless radio streaming. Mind you that a $600 laptop will do that (except the movie part would have to be Suprnova), so if you take away my keyboard, please put back something else.
So it has a color screen, sound volume control, all sorts of DRM support and costs almost $500? And I have no keyboard, no networking, no generic applications, it's just like a portable DVD player, but there's no DVD slot, just digital link?
Well, for $600 I can get this low-end laptop running Windows XP Home with wireless networking, 40 gig drive and DVD slot, which is capable of doing so much more, which pretty much includes all the options available in PMC.
For $300 the PMC might be interesting. For $100 it would be a hot seller. But $500? Give me a break.
Unless the caller ID shows someone I know, I just dont pick up. If it's a useful call and they leave a message, I will call them right back. Otherwise my answering machine kicks in.
When Windows 98 came out, PC magazine or some other Ziff Davis publication ran a pretty good guide Assemble Win98 for free where they basically gave pointers to different place on Microsoft Web site, where one could download the enhancement incorporated into 98. Naturally the core files were not there, but new version of IE, ActiveDesktop and other technologies were all available through a separate download. Of course, no such thing as automatic WindowsUpdate back then, so few customers knew or cared to snith around microsoft.com/downloads.
The result? Win98 became the best-selling OS ever, as most of the people pretty much thought paying $80-90 for an OS that was going to last them 3 years or so would be no big deal.
So new MediumHorn with proper marketing and few pizzazz added will be just as welcome as Win98.
This is not really comparable to the utility described and is not supposed to teach you discipline, but here's some prank software for Windows. Advanced Clippy is the best-sounding one.
It's legal in Russia only, since Russia copied the US copyright system and allowed compulsory licenses requiring minimal fees to the labels, and basically anyone can set up a music shop. US at some point abandoned that system due to heavy lobbying ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H need to optimize its legislature.
Thus any CD sold in Russia usually has "For sale in Russia" label on it, since technically the music is not licensed to be distributed outside of the market. Once the service becomes popular (mp3search.ru is another one), RIAA will raise hell.
There's a BusinessWeek article today advising the Linux community and those in product development to drop GPL and release under BSDesque licenses in order to stay more business-friendly.
Mascot with large scissors: Oink! Oink! I'm Oinky the Run Around With Scissors Pig! Oinky says it's fun to run around with scissors! Cartman: But I thought you WEREN'T supposed to run around with scissors. Worm: That's why he's on the Island of Misfit Mascots.
From a user standpoint, you're right. As long as the product works, one could care less about the current market conditions and business environments. There's certainly little incentive to see the company go under, but as long as they stay afloat, few people will lose sleep over percentage points from the latest IDC report.
From the business standpoint, sometimes it's all that matters. Hence the sayings "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" (later change that to Microsoft) in corporate environment. With my employer, for example, I am free to purchase the best tool for the job, but for any supplier that doesn't provide a good second source there's that long Lack of Second Source form where you have to provide the explanations and really convince the accounting it's the only way to go.
Do they ever ask for the Second Source form if you've just purchased a Cisco router? Never. Will you be asked for it if you buy a Mac? Definitely. Hence buying Apple does not usually fly past any corporate purchase with sensible budgets (we're talking tens and hundreds of desktops here), and Apple is left to serve the niche market that it created.
Well, on a large scale year-over-year would it differ much? Apple sales spike when a new product comes out, but that generally happens once a year with their computer line.
Apple's shipments, in fact, increased from 452K boxes to 495K, but the market grew at a rate of 10.9%, while Apple grew at the rate 9.3%, so officially they lost market share.
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Right on. I also didn't see any possibility of hopping and running the link in industrial noisy environment.
Well you wouldn't want to accidentally buy one of those debit-card-sized modems, would you?
Cannot check this right now, but wouldn't it be possible to write a Windows executable that writes to the HOSTS file? The file is at a known location, and couldn't you add a line to redirect msn.com and yahoo.com to your own site?
Seems like a fairly simple exploit.
Well, that's how the things usually work in the embedded world from the startof the industry. In the embedded programming you do need to customize the purchased packages occasionally, as you switch to different architectures, different chips within the same architectures and so on.
So you buy a software product (TCP/IP stack, or some drivers), and they usually come with the royalty-free source. You cannot resell the product, but you can embed the product in your own system and resell that. The source belongs to the original manufacturer and is free for you to tinker with.
That's kinda the way the things always were in the embedded world, too many people are confusing the GPL and GNU ideology with the concept of having sources on additional CD with the product you purchased.
How successful os the Real Movies partnership with Starz? I am a paid subscriber, and so far the service has been pretty impressive - I can download a 100 movies at any point, and 25 new ones are added each week. Are there any future plans for the Starz/Real partnership?
Will you offer the movies that currently play in movie theaters for additional fees? Will you offer the movies that just came out on DVDs?
Will you promote independent movies and if I work for an independent studio, how can we strike a partnership with Real Networks to distribute the content to your subscribers in some affordable way?
Well, it's 128 MB RAM, has XP Home version, and this is the first time I heard of ECS brand.
Other than that an Athlon, a wireless card, and a 40 gig make it a pretty good everyday pc.
Averatec 3120V
Of course if one prefers to watch movies on 4'' screen, then PMC is the perfect match.
My Dell Axim X5 doesn't have enough guts to do full length movies, but worked for short video clips, pictures, MP3, wireless connectivity, GPS and what not.
I mean, how many movies do you have to watch on that thing to justify $500 spent?
are you going to lug 6 lbs of laptops everywhere? are you going to deal with the fact laptop is much "bulkier" when you watch a movie on the screen since you still need the keyboard to go somewhere?
Ultralight laptops will cost more, but not much more. We have that formfactor in the laptop form already. On the other hand if I (and millions other Americans) do have a laptop, there's even less incentives to buy a PMC. The ROI is simply not there.
$100 hot seller - sorry, that makes absolutely no sense at all
I know, but the whole product makes about as much sense as a car that can only turn one way, but not the other. It's half the price of the regular car and eats just as much gas but can only turn right. Limited market, limited appeal, absolutely no reason for anyone to want one.
If $100 is not good, then for $500 I want WiFi connectivity, back-end download portal with somefree content (real movies, not trailers and promotional crap) and wireless radio streaming. Mind you that a $600 laptop will do that (except the movie part would have to be Suprnova), so if you take away my keyboard, please put back something else.
So it has a color screen, sound volume control, all sorts of DRM support and costs almost $500? And I have no keyboard, no networking, no generic applications, it's just like a portable DVD player, but there's no DVD slot, just digital link?
Well, for $600 I can get this low-end laptop running Windows XP Home with wireless networking, 40 gig drive and DVD slot, which is capable of doing so much more, which pretty much includes all the options available in PMC.
For $300 the PMC might be interesting. For $100 it would be a hot seller. But $500? Give me a break.
Unless the caller ID shows someone I know, I just dont pick up. If it's a useful call and they leave a message, I will call them right back. Otherwise my answering machine kicks in.
When Windows 98 came out, PC magazine or some other Ziff Davis publication ran a pretty good guide Assemble Win98 for free where they basically gave pointers to different place on Microsoft Web site, where one could download the enhancement incorporated into 98. Naturally the core files were not there, but new version of IE, ActiveDesktop and other technologies were all available through a separate download. Of course, no such thing as automatic WindowsUpdate back then, so few customers knew or cared to snith around microsoft.com/downloads.
The result? Win98 became the best-selling OS ever, as most of the people pretty much thought paying $80-90 for an OS that was going to last them 3 years or so would be no big deal.
So new MediumHorn with proper marketing and few pizzazz added will be just as welcome as Win98.
This is not really comparable to the utility described and is not supposed to teach you discipline, but here's some prank software for Windows. Advanced Clippy is the best-sounding one.
Hopefully MSN will pick up where Google left off and provide free unbiased stats.
Ford is dumping the online ordering system they bought from Oracle, quoting high integration costs and the fact that the old system just worked better.
It's legal in Russia only, since Russia copied the US copyright system and allowed compulsory licenses requiring minimal fees to the labels, and basically anyone can set up a music shop. US at some point abandoned that system due to heavy lobbying ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H need to optimize its legislature.
Thus any CD sold in Russia usually has "For sale in Russia" label on it, since technically the music is not licensed to be distributed outside of the market. Once the service becomes popular (mp3search.ru is another one), RIAA will raise hell.
The SACD? What's wrong with flying the band/singer in to play at your house? SACD is for cheapskates!
There's a BusinessWeek article today advising the Linux community and those in product development to drop GPL and release under BSDesque licenses in order to stay more business-friendly.
Internet accelerator
Bandwidth optimizer
Password manager (Gator, the industry standard)
HotBar
and many other goodies you would have never got off some open source site.
The banner urging you to install the latest Internet optimizer or a totally free peer-to-peer app is so much more convincing.
From a user standpoint, you're right. As long as the product works, one could care less about the current market conditions and business environments. There's certainly little incentive to see the company go under, but as long as they stay afloat, few people will lose sleep over percentage points from the latest IDC report.
From the business standpoint, sometimes it's all that matters. Hence the sayings "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" (later change that to Microsoft) in corporate environment. With my employer, for example, I am free to purchase the best tool for the job, but for any supplier that doesn't provide a good second source there's that long Lack of Second Source form where you have to provide the explanations and really convince the accounting it's the only way to go.
Do they ever ask for the Second Source form if you've just purchased a Cisco router? Never. Will you be asked for it if you buy a Mac? Definitely. Hence buying Apple does not usually fly past any corporate purchase with sensible budgets (we're talking tens and hundreds of desktops here), and Apple is left to serve the niche market that it created.
Well, on a large scale year-over-year would it differ much? Apple sales spike when a new product comes out, but that generally happens once a year with their computer line.
In Q2 2004 Apple's market share was at 3.7%, while in Q2 2003 Apple was at 3.8%.
Apple's shipments, in fact, increased from 452K boxes to 495K, but the market grew at a rate of 10.9%, while Apple grew at the rate 9.3%, so officially they lost market share.
No one ever insults anyone on Slashdot!