The problem is of course, is there ANYTHING productive left for US and other western societies to do, that they can compete in? It increasingly appears not.
I was about to say "idiot managers and government clock-punchers", but they are ubiquitous.
Oddly enough, America does a darn good job of automotive manufacturing and engineering. Honda and Toyota are expanding their North American operations because they get good quality work out of us folks here in Flyover, USA. The problem with American business is American government and American managers.
Methinks this is different. I wonder if Apple is working on a deal with Wal-Mart so that people can buy iTS giftcards at Wal-Mart. Or maybe Apple has another studio or two lined up and WallyWorld has decided that, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Whatever one things of Wal-Mart, they aren't run by idiots. If the on-line distribution of video is going to happen in the future, and surely it is, it would be in their best interest to get in on the ground floor with the best (ie most proven, most popular, and most profitable) of the companies doing this.
Then again, maybe there is something brewing with another of Apples products: maybe computers or iPods, which I've heard they still make.
I don't. MS has decided to go with the Zune option to kill the iPod. The reason is that the business model they tried with Plays For Sure didn't work and shows absolutely no sign of working. Granted, this approach worked before with their dominating the Operating System: have multiple hardware vendors locked in to MS' software, let them compete against each other on price, and consumers will come over because the price is so low. To an extent, their XBox product takes some of the same approach.
This hasn't worked for music for a couple reasons: first, MP3 players are much cheaper than computers, particularly when you look at the price-indexed-to-wages of MP3 players in the early 2000s vs computers in the 1980s, so that cost is less of a factor.
Second, MS can't piggyback on businesses. Back in the day [TM], a lot of people bought Windows machines because "that's what I have at work" so it allowed them to work from home if needed and it made for fewer problems transferring work from Home to Work and vice versa. Well, no business is going to provide their employees with the tools to solve music listening problems like they would with, say, sharing project doumentation amongst different groups. So that factor, which was a great asset for DOS and Windows, is nullified.
Third, Apple has a great solution for Windows people in iTunes./.-ers may argue, but for non-techies, iTunes is easy to use, simple to understand, and gives them everything they need for free. The DRM on purchased songs is fairly light, to the point where most people won't even notice it. Purchasing is easy. Ripping to MP3/MP4 is easy. Burning a CD is easy. Synching to your iPod is easy. The iPod is easy to use and understand. Heck, even Smart Playlists are easy to use with iTunes. None of MS' software even came close, and still doesn't, from what I've seen. Apple gives you a solution with a good easy-to-use player (iPod), and easy-to-use application for management of your music (iTunes), and an easy-to-use way to purchase, not rent, songs and albums without a lot of confusing pricing structure (iTMS/iTS).
Fourth, the iPod is one great device. Other competing devices may beat it on this feature or that feature, but overall the iPod is sweet. It's relatively small and looks sleek and cool. The interface is darn easy to use. They've hit the sweet spots on the size/price/feature set, so if you want a tiny stripped-down model (shuffle), a great small model (mini/nano), or larger powerful device (iPod), you've got it right there.
Given this and other factors, the Plays For Sure approach can't work. Apple, as is sometimes pointed out, is neither a Hardware nor Software company, but rather a Solutions company. And for portable media player, particularly music media, the iPod/iTunes/iT(M)S solution can't be beat. And lest we forget, while a good number of people will never be interested in photography or video, or rather have at most limited interest, practically everyone likes music and can listen to it while driving, working, working out, reading, etc. Apple's complete music solution package is pretty darn good. If MS is going to beat Apple at this game, they have to do something different (and their usual business model wasn't going to work) or try to beat Apple at their own game. Thus, they have to offer a complete solution (and vertical integration suits MS just fine), so the sooner they can get lock-in and kill off competing MP3 players, the better.
To put it another way, Apple and Microsoft could very easily produce a modern *-lite version of their respective OSes and sell them to people with older or not maxed out hardware and probably keep a high percentage of the population happy with just that. However that will not help Apple (or MS's hardware partners) sell new machines that most people don't really need, so it will not happen.
Well, Apple has, sorta; it's called OS X. We have OS X.3.9 running on an original blue iMac. It's no speed demon, I'll grant you, but it runs fine for e-mail, light surfing (like pbskids) and the kids' games.
X.4.whatever is running on my 1-st generation G4 iMac (aka the Lampshade) and again, it runs fine but it's no speed demon. It's certainly good enough to host a Neverwinter Nights multiplayer game, though again, it's no speed demon.
Newer versions of an OS will always run better on the latest and greatest (no surprise there), but Apple has done a pretty darn good job on getting OS X to scale downward, in my experience.
Now, our quad G5 tower, that baby rawks. And yes, we now use it to host NWN on Family Game Night.
In spite of your Folk Implosion-inspired name, bite us royally.
Sincerely,
Johann Sebastian Bach
Richard Wagner
Johannes Brahms
Ludwig van Beethoven
Joseph Haydn
The entire Strauss family
Klaus Meine and the rest of the guys from Scorpions
Jackson had the correct solution to the problem, but no the DOJ had to roll over...
And Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson put them in that position by going to the press with his comments, giving a sufficient impression of bias that he queered the case against MS and put the DOJ in a corner. If he'd been able to keep his mouth shut, the case wouldn't have gotten to the DOJ.
Then again, this is a fine tradition in the field. How many times has an explanation of a problem included the phrase "and then some ass of a judge..."
This really took off with The New Deal, actually. Back then, the lobbyists were professional do-gooders and charity-beggars who were eager for their place at the trough and saw a government pension as preferable to having to deal with the expectations and egos of the less intelligent children of the wealthy (who, often, were the financial backers of charities back then). I suspect this had always been around, even Lincoln had to deal with it, but FDR allowed it to go from cottage industry to major economic factor practically overnight.
H.L. Mencken, always a good voice for dissent, wrote some profiles of the people that became major power players under The New Deal. Mencken was many things, not all of them comfortable to modern sensibilities, but empiricist was one of them. Check some of his writings on it, such as the collection compiled by Alistair Cook, for some things they don't teach you in history class.
Ah yes, better to stay out of the US, where lawyers are amoking a bit, than in China, where the worse that can happen is being run over by an armored personnel carrier.
Yeah, if only DRM didn't retrict the use of backed up files.
What are you talking about? I had a hard drive fail on an (old) computer just the other week. I restored my data files from a backup once I had the new drive in, formatted, OS installed, etc. Some of those are songs purchased from iTunes, and they worked fine in iTunes and on my iPod (once I'd re-authorized the computer in iTunes for the iTM?S songs).
For your failure to grasp facts in the face of empirical evidence, you are hereby sentenced to ten minutes of listening to John Madden broadcast a Packers game. (Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre,...)
Okay, a little reality check. I know it is popular to decry the drug companies, but I think these reactions are largely emotional and, as with all emotional reactions, a bit off-base. Until very recently I was working for a company that did medical and pharmaceutical publishing and I'd like to add some insight.
While at my previous job, a big drug company introduced into the market a drug to fight sepsis, infections in the blood stream. And if you think about it, that is one tough disease to fight, because it is spread all through the body. This big drug company created the drug, one that is definitely a benefit to people suffering from sepsis, after twenty years and at the cost of nearly one billion dollars. A lot of very intelligent, very educated people were involved in developing this drug: chemists, doctors, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, their IT and corporate support staff, etc etc etc. Those people are highly trained, highly educated, and are exactly the kind of people you want to be happy and well-compensated. (Remember, the USSR paid its doctors like it paid its factory workers, and the stories of communist state healthcare were horrific.)
Now, surely an organization that spends that type of money and other resources to develop something that is very useful for society deserves to try to make money on it, right? I myself have no problem with it. I will grant you that the medicine to fight sepsis is expensive, but if not for all that effort, it wouldn't exist. And as I told my father, "If you think a drug is too expensive, consider the price you'd pay if you went without it."
Back in "the good old days", we are told, healthcare wasn't as expensive. This is not quite true. First, a lot of it was company-sponsored and was a HUGE drag on American corporations' bottom line as time progressed. The costs were there, but they were well-hidden. And even then, a lot of people went broke on health-related costs. For another thing, healthcare wasn't as effective back then and people died younger. Injuries that, at one time, might have required amputation or even resulted in death can now be treated to allow people to return to productive lives, or even to practice law. One example: I had a knee injury about 20 years ago, and I was told there was a >>50% chance I'd never walk again. Today that same injury can almost be treated with outpatient surgery. So the cost to repair the injury, when the effectiveness of the process is taken into account, is probably less.
The biggest cost in private healthcare in America is, surprise, insurance, which is caused by, surprise, lawsuit-happy Americans. Overall, the biggest cause of the rising cost is increasing government involvement. A friend's wife is a lawyer for one the big hospitals here in town. One night we were talking shop and she mentioned that the hospital makes maybe $3 on every $100... and that it was dropping. That is not a good EBITA. I asked her why and she said that it was medicare and medicaid. If a procedure happens and there is a problem between patient, hospital, and insurance company, it can usually get resolved within a month, maybe two. Not always, but usually, and we never notice this 99% of the time. It's not a perfect system, granted, but what is?
Now, when the issue involves the government, the government will question everything, delay, demand, and often have to be taken to court to settle the most routine of issues. And as more and more people have gotten onto government healthcare, their administrative costs have skyrocketed. I can well believe it; when I was a youngster, my doctor's nurse also functioned as receptionist and did his paperwork. Have you seen how many people are doing paperwork today for each actual healthcare person? Most of that is government-related. Think about it: insurance companies have a good incentive to decrease paperwork, because it means more profit, while government agencies have a good incentive to increase paperwork, because it means they can get more t
... plus the added jobs in the alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, prostitution sectors, not to mention handguns, rope for nooses, natural gas production soars to meet the demand of unlit stoves,...
Would a new version of Aperture be big enough to qualify as a 'special' event? It would be of interest to photo pros, but hardly anyone else.
Given that we are talking about a big trade show for photography professionals, I'd say that it is potentially a special event for those at the trade show.
Why did I expect any better from wacko religious hate-mongers?
1) I am not wacko. I consider politics, like religion, to be the playground of the small-minded and those who want wealth and power without the risk or merit.
2) I am agnostic and distrust religion and religion-like "think", like socialism and causes.
3) Hate monger? Where did I hate on that?
Look, both name-brand political parties have a history of corruption, but generally speaking, the most corrupt have been big-city Democrat machines: Chicago, Kansas City, DC, etc etc etc. That joke is an old, old joke about the original Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, one that my dyed-in-the-union-made-wool straight-ticket-voting Democrat grandfather thought was funny as hell. Lighten up, Francis.
Slashdot Mirror
I was about to say "idiot managers and government clock-punchers", but they are ubiquitous.
Oddly enough, America does a darn good job of automotive manufacturing and engineering. Honda and Toyota are expanding their North American operations because they get good quality work out of us folks here in Flyover, USA. The problem with American business is American government and American managers.
Whatever one things of Wal-Mart, they aren't run by idiots. If the on-line distribution of video is going to happen in the future, and surely it is, it would be in their best interest to get in on the ground floor with the best (ie most proven, most popular, and most profitable) of the companies doing this.
Then again, maybe there is something brewing with another of Apples products: maybe computers or iPods, which I've heard they still make.
I don't. MS has decided to go with the Zune option to kill the iPod. The reason is that the business model they tried with Plays For Sure didn't work and shows absolutely no sign of working. Granted, this approach worked before with their dominating the Operating System: have multiple hardware vendors locked in to MS' software, let them compete against each other on price, and consumers will come over because the price is so low. To an extent, their XBox product takes some of the same approach.
This hasn't worked for music for a couple reasons: first, MP3 players are much cheaper than computers, particularly when you look at the price-indexed-to-wages of MP3 players in the early 2000s vs computers in the 1980s, so that cost is less of a factor.
Second, MS can't piggyback on businesses. Back in the day [TM], a lot of people bought Windows machines because "that's what I have at work" so it allowed them to work from home if needed and it made for fewer problems transferring work from Home to Work and vice versa. Well, no business is going to provide their employees with the tools to solve music listening problems like they would with, say, sharing project doumentation amongst different groups. So that factor, which was a great asset for DOS and Windows, is nullified.
Third, Apple has a great solution for Windows people in iTunes. /.-ers may argue, but for non-techies, iTunes is easy to use, simple to understand, and gives them everything they need for free. The DRM on purchased songs is fairly light, to the point where most people won't even notice it. Purchasing is easy. Ripping to MP3/MP4 is easy. Burning a CD is easy. Synching to your iPod is easy. The iPod is easy to use and understand. Heck, even Smart Playlists are easy to use with iTunes. None of MS' software even came close, and still doesn't, from what I've seen. Apple gives you a solution with a good easy-to-use player (iPod), and easy-to-use application for management of your music (iTunes), and an easy-to-use way to purchase, not rent, songs and albums without a lot of confusing pricing structure (iTMS/iTS).
Fourth, the iPod is one great device. Other competing devices may beat it on this feature or that feature, but overall the iPod is sweet. It's relatively small and looks sleek and cool. The interface is darn easy to use. They've hit the sweet spots on the size/price/feature set, so if you want a tiny stripped-down model (shuffle), a great small model (mini/nano), or larger powerful device (iPod), you've got it right there.
Given this and other factors, the Plays For Sure approach can't work. Apple, as is sometimes pointed out, is neither a Hardware nor Software company, but rather a Solutions company. And for portable media player, particularly music media, the iPod/iTunes/iT(M)S solution can't be beat. And lest we forget, while a good number of people will never be interested in photography or video, or rather have at most limited interest, practically everyone likes music and can listen to it while driving, working, working out, reading, etc. Apple's complete music solution package is pretty darn good. If MS is going to beat Apple at this game, they have to do something different (and their usual business model wasn't going to work) or try to beat Apple at their own game. Thus, they have to offer a complete solution (and vertical integration suits MS just fine), so the sooner they can get lock-in and kill off competing MP3 players, the better.
Yeah, people who use stereotypes are all alike.
Well, Apple has, sorta; it's called OS X. We have OS X.3.9 running on an original blue iMac. It's no speed demon, I'll grant you, but it runs fine for e-mail, light surfing (like pbskids) and the kids' games.
X.4.whatever is running on my 1-st generation G4 iMac (aka the Lampshade) and again, it runs fine but it's no speed demon. It's certainly good enough to host a Neverwinter Nights multiplayer game, though again, it's no speed demon.
Newer versions of an OS will always run better on the latest and greatest (no surprise there), but Apple has done a pretty darn good job on getting OS X to scale downward, in my experience.
Now, our quad G5 tower, that baby rawks. And yes, we now use it to host NWN on Family Game Night.
So the more things change, ...
To quote Tom Carnagie, voice of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, "Theeeeyyyyy'rrre waving it off."
"It's a sick world and I'm a happy guy." - Larry Reeb
If you really want odd looks, try buying a pack of condoms and a gallon of Gatorade when you're in a heck of a hurry.
Dear natural1,
In spite of your Folk Implosion-inspired name, bite us royally.
Sincerely,
Johann Sebastian Bach
Richard Wagner
Johannes Brahms
Ludwig van Beethoven
Joseph Haydn
The entire Strauss family
Klaus Meine and the rest of the guys from Scorpions
(Okay, some of those are Austrian, but still, ...)
I still say it looks like Al Gore.
And Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson put them in that position by going to the press with his comments, giving a sufficient impression of bias that he queered the case against MS and put the DOJ in a corner. If he'd been able to keep his mouth shut, the case wouldn't have gotten to the DOJ.
Then again, this is a fine tradition in the field. How many times has an explanation of a problem included the phrase "and then some ass of a judge ..."
H.L. Mencken, always a good voice for dissent, wrote some profiles of the people that became major power players under The New Deal. Mencken was many things, not all of them comfortable to modern sensibilities, but empiricist was one of them. Check some of his writings on it, such as the collection compiled by Alistair Cook, for some things they don't teach you in history class.
I am no fan of lawyers, but criminy, ...
What are you talking about? I had a hard drive fail on an (old) computer just the other week. I restored my data files from a backup once I had the new drive in, formatted, OS installed, etc. Some of those are songs purchased from iTunes, and they worked fine in iTunes and on my iPod (once I'd re-authorized the computer in iTunes for the iTM?S songs).
For your failure to grasp facts in the face of empirical evidence, you are hereby sentenced to ten minutes of listening to John Madden broadcast a Packers game. (Brett Favre, Brett Favre, Brett Favre, ...)
Hear hear! As P.J. O'Rourke put it, seriousness is stupidity sent to college.
While at my previous job, a big drug company introduced into the market a drug to fight sepsis, infections in the blood stream. And if you think about it, that is one tough disease to fight, because it is spread all through the body. This big drug company created the drug, one that is definitely a benefit to people suffering from sepsis, after twenty years and at the cost of nearly one billion dollars. A lot of very intelligent, very educated people were involved in developing this drug: chemists, doctors, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, their IT and corporate support staff, etc etc etc. Those people are highly trained, highly educated, and are exactly the kind of people you want to be happy and well-compensated. (Remember, the USSR paid its doctors like it paid its factory workers, and the stories of communist state healthcare were horrific.)
Now, surely an organization that spends that type of money and other resources to develop something that is very useful for society deserves to try to make money on it, right? I myself have no problem with it. I will grant you that the medicine to fight sepsis is expensive, but if not for all that effort, it wouldn't exist. And as I told my father, "If you think a drug is too expensive, consider the price you'd pay if you went without it."
Back in "the good old days", we are told, healthcare wasn't as expensive. This is not quite true. First, a lot of it was company-sponsored and was a HUGE drag on American corporations' bottom line as time progressed. The costs were there, but they were well-hidden. And even then, a lot of people went broke on health-related costs. For another thing, healthcare wasn't as effective back then and people died younger. Injuries that, at one time, might have required amputation or even resulted in death can now be treated to allow people to return to productive lives, or even to practice law. One example: I had a knee injury about 20 years ago, and I was told there was a >>50% chance I'd never walk again. Today that same injury can almost be treated with outpatient surgery. So the cost to repair the injury, when the effectiveness of the process is taken into account, is probably less.
The biggest cost in private healthcare in America is, surprise, insurance, which is caused by, surprise, lawsuit-happy Americans. Overall, the biggest cause of the rising cost is increasing government involvement. A friend's wife is a lawyer for one the big hospitals here in town. One night we were talking shop and she mentioned that the hospital makes maybe $3 on every $100 ... and that it was dropping. That is not a good EBITA. I asked her why and she said that it was medicare and medicaid. If a procedure happens and there is a problem between patient, hospital, and insurance company, it can usually get resolved within a month, maybe two. Not always, but usually, and we never notice this 99% of the time. It's not a perfect system, granted, but what is?
Now, when the issue involves the government, the government will question everything, delay, demand, and often have to be taken to court to settle the most routine of issues. And as more and more people have gotten onto government healthcare, their administrative costs have skyrocketed. I can well believe it; when I was a youngster, my doctor's nurse also functioned as receptionist and did his paperwork. Have you seen how many people are doing paperwork today for each actual healthcare person? Most of that is government-related. Think about it: insurance companies have a good incentive to decrease paperwork, because it means more profit, while government agencies have a good incentive to increase paperwork, because it means they can get more t
Given that we are talking about a big trade show for photography professionals, I'd say that it is potentially a special event for those at the trade show.
Only if Fearlesss Leader says to keel moose and squirrel.
1) I am not wacko. I consider politics, like religion, to be the playground of the small-minded and those who want wealth and power without the risk or merit.
2) I am agnostic and distrust religion and religion-like "think", like socialism and causes.
3) Hate monger? Where did I hate on that?
Look, both name-brand political parties have a history of corruption, but generally speaking, the most corrupt have been big-city Democrat machines: Chicago, Kansas City, DC, etc etc etc. That joke is an old, old joke about the original Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, one that my dyed-in-the-union-made-wool straight-ticket-voting Democrat grandfather thought was funny as hell. Lighten up, Francis.
The Democrats don't outsource that, they do it in-house.
Why did the Democrat enter the cemetary?
To thank his voters.
Or, rather, would be better than doing "The Silmarillion".
They wouldn't dare, not when we control David Hasselhoff. The Germans would go on another rampage, and this time, we wouldn't want to stop them.