Just because PureTracks has a sucky interface for it does not mean that Apple will.
I don't know, I spent the last twenty minutes trying to find one of these new, drm-free tracks on the iTunes store with no luck. Looked up artists that belong to EMI, but none of them seem to have any $1.30 songs for sale (as far as I can tell, the only way to determine what format it will be). I even tried searching by that price, but apparently searching for $1.30 breaks the music store. Oops, maybe Apple's interface does suck. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no way to search for these tracks... and I haven't even found any by looking at artists I know are on EMI. Can anyone point to an artist/album on itms that offers these new tracks for us iTMS-impaired people?
Wait, why are all of them 41 cent stamps? Are we in for yet another stamp rate increase, or do we already pay 41 cents a stamp (I thought it was 39)? I guess they needed another couple of cents per stamp to pay the licensing fees to get Star Wars characters on their stamps...
It seems that this "analysis" is rather over-dependent on Nessus. The article even points out that the tools used couldn't actually see any vulnerabilities (at least for the most up do date versions of the OSes), rather those listed were based on the "database" of vulnerabilities from Nessus. Seems like it would have been equally useful just to look in the Nessus database in the first place.
The imagecrash one doens't really do anything (firefox 2.0.0.3 under XP) - just brings up a blank screen (if you right click and select "view image" then it shows a photo of a stream in a forest).
The pop-up bomb is a bit annoying, though it didn't manage to use up all my memory - Thunderbird started giving off all sorts of errors and wouldn't open any more mail windows after ~940 megs was used up (out of 2 gigs). Still a pain in the ass, though.
Is that $0.02 cents per page or $0.02 dollars per page? I suppose "dollars" is a little less wrong than putting "cents" after it. You already said it was dollars - that's what the "$" at the beginning of the number is for. Either way you are being redundant.
Yeah, it sucks that all of the cellular services have basically decided that $40 is the minimum buy-in for a monthly plan. That's why I haven't upgraded my plan in years - I still pay $30 a month (plus their innumerable taxes and fees) for ~300 any-time minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, and no roaming nationwide (I don't know how common this is these days, but it was one of the first plans to offer it). I've had it for four or five years I think, and can't change because nobody offers a comparable plan at the same price (the $40 plans everyone offers are basically the same, with a few more any-time minutes, which I never use all of anyway).
I still can't believe they charge me $.10 for a text message (yeah yeah, I can buy unlimited text messaging for another $5 a month) when making calls is free - a text message has got to be a hell of a lot less data than even a very short phone call, and it doesn't even have to be transmitted in (near) real time. Weirdness.
What I find amusing is something like "Fearless" in the original chinese release was 16:9, but the american release was 4:3...ugh, I'd rather watch the chinese release with subs, than 4:3 with dubbing, personally.
Is there ever a time when you would prefer the dubbed version? Aaagh. Can't stand dubbing. Though it is true that the English subtitles on Chinese releases can be really awful - we rented Chinese Ghost Story the other night. Half way through it's like they fired the translator that actually knew English, and just started throwing random words together. Sort of interfered with the movie, but it still beats the hell out of some cheesy English dubbing - even the best dubbing invariably sounds (and looks) terrbile. The sound just doesn't match up with the movements on the screen. Painful.
It's weird - I know lots of people that complain about subtitles, but after I've watched a movie with subtitles I often don't even remember that it had them. They are pretty much transparent to me. On the other hand, dubbing totally ruins the suspension of disbelief necessary to get into a movie (or TV show, whatever), and tends to very negatively affect my impression of a movie. I'd hate to live somewhere like Germany, where they dub pretty much every big Hollywood release and it is difficult to find English-language movies with German subtitles. Just subtitle it, PLEASE! Can you imagine going to see Pan's Labyrinth (or, to stick with the German theme, Das Boot) in the theater and having all the actors spouting English? Blegh.
Water injection is aftermarket and usually not compensated for automatically.
Either the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII or the Subaru WRX STi actually required water injection to reach the peak horsepower figure they gave, they just didn't include that fact in advertising.
Hmm, come to think of it I think they were injecting water into the intercooler rather than the combustion chamber. Never mind.
This may be true for things like television, where they could depend on a certain lack of detail carrying through, but in cinema it is a little different. High-grade film shows pretty much the same amount of detail as HD projection (plus or minus, depending on who you talk to). For the cinema, HD (really the digital aspect, not the HD aspect) should if anything lower costs. For television, where far more detail will be apparent than previously (higher resolution and especially increasing abundance of large-screen televisions), it will likely require stronger attention to detail and commensurately higher production costs (that, or horror of horrors people will just get used to seeing what actors actually look like).
Is MCDonalds made a TurdBurger and nobody bought it, they'd soon cut it from the menu.
Oh, come on, man, the Arch Deluxe wasn't that bad. Ironically, I stopped going to McDonalds when they stopped selling the Arch Deluxe - it was the only thing on their menu that was worth getting. All of their other products were the same as every other fast-food burger joint, only not as good. I don't think I've set foot in a McDonalds in at least eight or ten years, so maybe things have changed (I seriously doubt it, though).
Dune 2 had at least as much of a plot as Warcraft. At any rate, I remember it better than I remember the plot from Warcraft. You play the Noble Atreides, the Evil Harkkonnen, or the Insidious Ordos, and try to take over the world. You pick which territory to invade (not that it actually mattered), and towards the later levels the emperor or whatever starts helping out your opponents (IIRC). Not great, but then I don't even remember anything about the plot in Warcraft.
Yeah, I played a hell of a lot more Dune 2 than I did Warcraft - who doesn't love running over Fremen with a harvester, or building rocket towers in the middle of the enemy base and watching the fun (yeah, the game had some issues)?
Dune 2 was a whole lot more significant than Warcraft, as it really broke open the genre (I'm sure it wasn't the first). Warcraft had a sense of humor, but other than that it had all been done before.
There's no reason to send the actual image data back and forth. It seems to me all you would need to do is send what is essentially an interpreter/display system to the user, which loads and displays whatever image/images they are working on in a browser and maybe includes some basic tools locally, then whenever they apply a filter or use some more complicated tool/process just send the instructions from the server to their workstation to carry it out. Sure, it might take a few seconds longer than if they had everything on their computer, but it would be a hell of a lot faster than trying to send the actual image data back and forth, even for relatively small images. If you ignore all the samples and help files, Photoshop CS2 is only ~100 megs total. Most of the filters/effects/etc. are only a few K.
This is totally and completely off topic, but since I was recently called on this in a Scrabble game...
According to the two dictionaries we checked (and google:define), "que" is not in fact a word in the English language. The word is either "cue" or "queue". Unfortunately for my score, I thought "que" was a perfectly acceptable American spelling of "queue".
But once you have actually given that $100 to the person, regardless of whether there was a contract, it is now the property of the person you gave it to and you can't just take it back whenever you feel like it, or demand $100 worth of services.
1. Compare Apple's software registration/installation process to Microsoft's. With OS X, you install and optionally provide your name, address, and phone number. Done. With Microsoft? Type in a lengthy product key that must be validated by Microsoft to activate your installation. Change enough hardware in your system, or dump it in favor of a new one, and you have to re-activate.
Sorry, but this really isn't a very good comparison. Apple only lets OS X run on their own hardware. You see that big, shiny silver or white thing in front of you with the fruit logo on it? That is your software key for OS X. Apple doesn't care where you got your copy of OS X, because they know that you at least paid for Apple hardware to run it. As soon as Apple lets OS X be installed on hardware from other companies with no key, then you can make this argument. Until that time, it is pure bullshit.
In our lab, we've got both. PCs run the instruments, the data generally gets stored on network servers (running some sort of Unix - it is shared with the whole department), and then we do most of our analysis/writing work on Macs (because my PI likes them, and none of the rest of us really care - though it helps that our department computer staff have a very strong Mac background and tend to push them, and my PI's son works for Apple). I also work on my Windows laptop when I'm not around lab, transferring stuff back and forth without problems. I wouldn't say this is a typical setup, but it is becoming more so - Macs and PCs really do work together pretty well, and if you can use one you can probably use the other without too much trouble. That said, in terms of the instrumentation side of things the scientific world is still very Windows-centric in my experience. Especially for the types of equipment we use, where the computer running it isn't really considered to be a separate entity (even if it says "Dell" on the side), it is just a component that comes with the equipment when you order it (or, as is the case with our latest computer, it came as part of a "software upgrade" for an instrument - the $1000 or so for the computer is small potatoes compared to the cost of the software and the rest of the hardware).
I wasn't suggesting that the brand had value, I was merely suggesting that their holdings are very valuable. I agree, no one cares whether the music they buy comes from Apple Corps or somebody else. However, the library of music (actually recordings) they own is still very valuable.
This isn't really a fair characterization of the "battle". Apple Corps existed long before Apple Computers. Apple Corps quite fairly wanted to make sure that this new computer company wasn't going to diminish the value of their name, and that they weren't going to try to compete in the same market (you only get those trademarks as long as you are willing to defend them). back in '80 ot whatever, they came to an agreement that Apple Inc would stay out of the music business. Well, technology marches on and by the end of the 80's computers are beginning inroads into the music industry. Apple Corps feels that Apple Inc is starting to encroach on their area of business, and the two again end up in court. The case is settled, with Apple Inc again agreeing they won't go into the content creation or distribution aspect of the music business. Then along comes iTunes, which is pretty clearly associated with selling music, if not exactly distributing it in the industry Label sense. Now, Apple Corps (from what I have read) had no objection whatsoever to iTunes; what they objected to was it being branded as Apple iTunes. iTunes is and was clearly associated with the music industry, and Apple Corps had a long-standing trademark on the Apple name within that industry. Unfortunately for Apple Corps, a judge decided that since iTunes isn't distributing music in the traditional sense (i.e., they don't sign artists to contracts for sole distribution of music) they aren't infringing the Apple trademark.
This isn't about one company throwing their weight around, nor is it about Apple Corps getting what's coming to them. It is just a story of one company that owns a trademark becoming alarmed that another company seemed to be moving into their area of business while using essentially the same trademarked name. The newer company argued (apparently successfully) that they were not in fact violating the trademark, but they were apparently worried enough about it to purchase the trademark from Apple Corps, and license it back to them at some unknown rate (I'd guess they aren't charging anything - maybe an exclusive deal to release Apple Corps' collection on iTunes).
As for all those that think the Apple Corps label has little value today... according to the Billboard Top 200, a brand new release from Apple Corps is currently at number 22, down from a peak of #4 (not to mention the 6 Beatles albums that have sold 10 million units or more). This is still an extremely valuable library, and I'm sure Apple Inc is eager to try and put a deal together to distribute their music through iTunes now that all the trademark stuff is finally over.
I found it sort of funny that Dell finally started offering computers with AMD chips around the time that Intel finally caught back up to AMD performance-wise. There were a good 2-3 years (at least) when AMD was the clear leader in terms of both price and performance when you couldn't get AMD from Dell. Now that Intel is back on top (at least in terms of performance), Dell has finally gotten around to offering AMD.
I'm not at all surprised to hear about the lawsuit - it seemed to me that the only reason Dell would be so slow to adopt the clear performance leader is if they were getting some special kickbacks from Intel (though I'd guessed it would just be in the form of really, really good discounts for Dell as opposed to actual cash payments from Intel).
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I don't know, I spent the last twenty minutes trying to find one of these new, drm-free tracks on the iTunes store with no luck. Looked up artists that belong to EMI, but none of them seem to have any $1.30 songs for sale (as far as I can tell, the only way to determine what format it will be). I even tried searching by that price, but apparently searching for $1.30 breaks the music store. Oops, maybe Apple's interface does suck. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no way to search for these tracks... and I haven't even found any by looking at artists I know are on EMI. Can anyone point to an artist/album on itms that offers these new tracks for us iTMS-impaired people?
No stamps "commemorating living people". However, living people can appear in stamps that are commemorating other events (such as movies).
Actually, the rule these days is probably "whatever sells".
Wait, why are all of them 41 cent stamps? Are we in for yet another stamp rate increase, or do we already pay 41 cents a stamp (I thought it was 39)? I guess they needed another couple of cents per stamp to pay the licensing fees to get Star Wars characters on their stamps...
It seems that this "analysis" is rather over-dependent on Nessus. The article even points out that the tools used couldn't actually see any vulnerabilities (at least for the most up do date versions of the OSes), rather those listed were based on the "database" of vulnerabilities from Nessus. Seems like it would have been equally useful just to look in the Nessus database in the first place.
The imagecrash one doens't really do anything (firefox 2.0.0.3 under XP) - just brings up a blank screen (if you right click and select "view image" then it shows a photo of a stream in a forest).
The pop-up bomb is a bit annoying, though it didn't manage to use up all my memory - Thunderbird started giving off all sorts of errors and wouldn't open any more mail windows after ~940 megs was used up (out of 2 gigs). Still a pain in the ass, though.
Yeah, it sucks that all of the cellular services have basically decided that $40 is the minimum buy-in for a monthly plan. That's why I haven't upgraded my plan in years - I still pay $30 a month (plus their innumerable taxes and fees) for ~300 any-time minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, and no roaming nationwide (I don't know how common this is these days, but it was one of the first plans to offer it). I've had it for four or five years I think, and can't change because nobody offers a comparable plan at the same price (the $40 plans everyone offers are basically the same, with a few more any-time minutes, which I never use all of anyway).
I still can't believe they charge me $.10 for a text message (yeah yeah, I can buy unlimited text messaging for another $5 a month) when making calls is free - a text message has got to be a hell of a lot less data than even a very short phone call, and it doesn't even have to be transmitted in (near) real time. Weirdness.
release was 4:3...ugh, I'd rather watch the chinese release with subs, than 4:3 with dubbing, personally.
Is there ever a time when you would prefer the dubbed version? Aaagh. Can't stand dubbing. Though it is true that the English subtitles on Chinese releases can be really awful - we rented Chinese Ghost Story the other night. Half way through it's like they fired the translator that actually knew English, and just started throwing random words together. Sort of interfered with the movie, but it still beats the hell out of some cheesy English dubbing - even the best dubbing invariably sounds (and looks) terrbile. The sound just doesn't match up with the movements on the screen. Painful.
It's weird - I know lots of people that complain about subtitles, but after I've watched a movie with subtitles I often don't even remember that it had them. They are pretty much transparent to me. On the other hand, dubbing totally ruins the suspension of disbelief necessary to get into a movie (or TV show, whatever), and tends to very negatively affect my impression of a movie. I'd hate to live somewhere like Germany, where they dub pretty much every big Hollywood release and it is difficult to find English-language movies with German subtitles. Just subtitle it, PLEASE! Can you imagine going to see Pan's Labyrinth (or, to stick with the German theme, Das Boot) in the theater and having all the actors spouting English? Blegh.
Water injection is aftermarket and usually not compensated for automatically.
Either the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII or the Subaru WRX STi actually required water injection to reach the peak horsepower figure they gave, they just didn't include that fact in advertising.
Hmm, come to think of it I think they were injecting water into the intercooler rather than the combustion chamber. Never mind.
This may be true for things like television, where they could depend on a certain lack of detail carrying through, but in cinema it is a little different. High-grade film shows pretty much the same amount of detail as HD projection (plus or minus, depending on who you talk to). For the cinema, HD (really the digital aspect, not the HD aspect) should if anything lower costs. For television, where far more detail will be apparent than previously (higher resolution and especially increasing abundance of large-screen televisions), it will likely require stronger attention to detail and commensurately higher production costs (that, or horror of horrors people will just get used to seeing what actors actually look like).
Oh, come on, man, the Arch Deluxe wasn't that bad. Ironically, I stopped going to McDonalds when they stopped selling the Arch Deluxe - it was the only thing on their menu that was worth getting. All of their other products were the same as every other fast-food burger joint, only not as good. I don't think I've set foot in a McDonalds in at least eight or ten years, so maybe things have changed (I seriously doubt it, though).
Dune 2 had at least as much of a plot as Warcraft. At any rate, I remember it better than I remember the plot from Warcraft. You play the Noble Atreides, the Evil Harkkonnen, or the Insidious Ordos, and try to take over the world. You pick which territory to invade (not that it actually mattered), and towards the later levels the emperor or whatever starts helping out your opponents (IIRC). Not great, but then I don't even remember anything about the plot in Warcraft.
Yeah, I played a hell of a lot more Dune 2 than I did Warcraft - who doesn't love running over Fremen with a harvester, or building rocket towers in the middle of the enemy base and watching the fun (yeah, the game had some issues)?
Dune 2 was a whole lot more significant than Warcraft, as it really broke open the genre (I'm sure it wasn't the first). Warcraft had a sense of humor, but other than that it had all been done before.
AI? For porn? You have seen porn before, right?
Obviously, the ideal shape for any space-bound inflatable structure is a sphere.
I think we all know what this means.
http://www.geocities.com/yank2010/SBCITY2.JPG
Oh shit, there goes the planet.
There's no reason to send the actual image data back and forth. It seems to me all you would need to do is send what is essentially an interpreter/display system to the user, which loads and displays whatever image/images they are working on in a browser and maybe includes some basic tools locally, then whenever they apply a filter or use some more complicated tool/process just send the instructions from the server to their workstation to carry it out. Sure, it might take a few seconds longer than if they had everything on their computer, but it would be a hell of a lot faster than trying to send the actual image data back and forth, even for relatively small images. If you ignore all the samples and help files, Photoshop CS2 is only ~100 megs total. Most of the filters/effects/etc. are only a few K.
Yup... they finally stopped making the packages out of lead when they noticed how much it was driving up their shipping costs.
This is totally and completely off topic, but since I was recently called on this in a Scrabble game...
According to the two dictionaries we checked (and google:define), "que" is not in fact a word in the English language. The word is either "cue" or "queue". Unfortunately for my score, I thought "que" was a perfectly acceptable American spelling of "queue".
But once you have actually given that $100 to the person, regardless of whether there was a contract, it is now the property of the person you gave it to and you can't just take it back whenever you feel like it, or demand $100 worth of services.
Sorry, but this really isn't a very good comparison. Apple only lets OS X run on their own hardware. You see that big, shiny silver or white thing in front of you with the fruit logo on it? That is your software key for OS X. Apple doesn't care where you got your copy of OS X, because they know that you at least paid for Apple hardware to run it. As soon as Apple lets OS X be installed on hardware from other companies with no key, then you can make this argument. Until that time, it is pure bullshit.
I hear this group keeps track pretty well...
In our lab, we've got both. PCs run the instruments, the data generally gets stored on network servers (running some sort of Unix - it is shared with the whole department), and then we do most of our analysis/writing work on Macs (because my PI likes them, and none of the rest of us really care - though it helps that our department computer staff have a very strong Mac background and tend to push them, and my PI's son works for Apple). I also work on my Windows laptop when I'm not around lab, transferring stuff back and forth without problems. I wouldn't say this is a typical setup, but it is becoming more so - Macs and PCs really do work together pretty well, and if you can use one you can probably use the other without too much trouble.
That said, in terms of the instrumentation side of things the scientific world is still very Windows-centric in my experience. Especially for the types of equipment we use, where the computer running it isn't really considered to be a separate entity (even if it says "Dell" on the side), it is just a component that comes with the equipment when you order it (or, as is the case with our latest computer, it came as part of a "software upgrade" for an instrument - the $1000 or so for the computer is small potatoes compared to the cost of the software and the rest of the hardware).
I wasn't suggesting that the brand had value, I was merely suggesting that their holdings are very valuable. I agree, no one cares whether the music they buy comes from Apple Corps or somebody else. However, the library of music (actually recordings) they own is still very valuable.
Not in Vista...
This isn't really a fair characterization of the "battle". Apple Corps existed long before Apple Computers. Apple Corps quite fairly wanted to make sure that this new computer company wasn't going to diminish the value of their name, and that they weren't going to try to compete in the same market (you only get those trademarks as long as you are willing to defend them). back in '80 ot whatever, they came to an agreement that Apple Inc would stay out of the music business. Well, technology marches on and by the end of the 80's computers are beginning inroads into the music industry. Apple Corps feels that Apple Inc is starting to encroach on their area of business, and the two again end up in court. The case is settled, with Apple Inc again agreeing they won't go into the content creation or distribution aspect of the music business. Then along comes iTunes, which is pretty clearly associated with selling music, if not exactly distributing it in the industry Label sense. Now, Apple Corps (from what I have read) had no objection whatsoever to iTunes; what they objected to was it being branded as Apple iTunes. iTunes is and was clearly associated with the music industry, and Apple Corps had a long-standing trademark on the Apple name within that industry. Unfortunately for Apple Corps, a judge decided that since iTunes isn't distributing music in the traditional sense (i.e., they don't sign artists to contracts for sole distribution of music) they aren't infringing the Apple trademark.
This isn't about one company throwing their weight around, nor is it about Apple Corps getting what's coming to them. It is just a story of one company that owns a trademark becoming alarmed that another company seemed to be moving into their area of business while using essentially the same trademarked name. The newer company argued (apparently successfully) that they were not in fact violating the trademark, but they were apparently worried enough about it to purchase the trademark from Apple Corps, and license it back to them at some unknown rate (I'd guess they aren't charging anything - maybe an exclusive deal to release Apple Corps' collection on iTunes).
As for all those that think the Apple Corps label has little value today... according to the Billboard Top 200, a brand new release from Apple Corps is currently at number 22, down from a peak of #4 (not to mention the 6 Beatles albums that have sold 10 million units or more). This is still an extremely valuable library, and I'm sure Apple Inc is eager to try and put a deal together to distribute their music through iTunes now that all the trademark stuff is finally over.
I found it sort of funny that Dell finally started offering computers with AMD chips around the time that Intel finally caught back up to AMD performance-wise. There were a good 2-3 years (at least) when AMD was the clear leader in terms of both price and performance when you couldn't get AMD from Dell. Now that Intel is back on top (at least in terms of performance), Dell has finally gotten around to offering AMD.
I'm not at all surprised to hear about the lawsuit - it seemed to me that the only reason Dell would be so slow to adopt the clear performance leader is if they were getting some special kickbacks from Intel (though I'd guessed it would just be in the form of really, really good discounts for Dell as opposed to actual cash payments from Intel).