"you do remember the Circuit City DivX debacle, don't you?"
I do. I think what buggered them was the need to open an account, and the fact it was annoying to have a different format. And a lack of wholesale support from the major studios.
But I think a system which PHYSICALLY stops you watching a disk, doesn't involve registration, and just kinda happens without you noticing for a year in the hire shops is FAR more likely to succeed.
You don't need different hardware, software, or anything to watch a physically degrading DVD. This alone, fo me, makes them a more attractive option to the studios.
For the Video hire shops this is great news. You log onto blockbuster.com, pick a disk - they mail you a 5, or even a 2 view, degradable disk. You never have to return it. They just buy enough to ship em out - they're disposable! Immediately removes half of the man-hours required to handle the media! THATS the back door these little fuckers will enter by!
The entire point of DVD region encoding is to restrict the availability of these products to allow the producer to sell where they want, for the price they want.
It hasn't worked. It broke. Damn!
This may give them an out. Just start to release to the new standard gradually - dual release (with extra 'extras') to start, then early release, then exclusive release. DVD players are cheap - a lot of people on this site would upgrade if a 20 DVD Star Wars set came out in the new format - you think Bill couldn't persuad George?? "HOW many zeros???"
I don't think this is the format that will do it - but in the next 2 or 3 years a new DVD format will come along with WAY tougher restrictions.
Actually. I think 10-view DVDs will be the next big thing from the studios. They'll sell those babies for $5-10 and you'll only be able to play them 10 times (they put a film on the disk which goes opaque in the laser). Then its useless. They'll push them through rental shops to start with.
Whats really happenning here is an attempt to convince the general public that software is real. That borrowing your neighbours windows 98 CD to upgrade is theft. That YOU WILL BE CAUGHT.
The story wouldn't get out if they raided every house in a quiet end of some rich neighbourhood and caught half a dozen folk running Office 2000 without a licence, some pr0n and a bit of hash in the greenhouse.
No. They raid a bunch of 'cocky low life degenerate geeks' across the globe. Bigger headlines.
As many have posted, the losses are not real, (in fact I would imagine there are Gains to MS in students using warez of the expensive server kit as it reduces the cost of admins on the market when they leave college), but they wish to create the perception that its real.
And remember - its not just Bill that loses out if you steal Windows - the taxman misses his cut aswell!
In todays world the driving force of the global economy is the human brain. Thoughts occur, and are solidified into products.
The quicker you solidify your thoughts into products the more likely you are to achieve a state of temporary monopoly.
The more novel your thought, the more likely you are to achieve a state of temporary monopoly.
Free Software is simply a collection of solidified thoughts which the originating individuals decided not to sell, but to give.
This will never change the fundamentals of a temporary monopoly driven economy. It may take the cost away from certain areas. Communication gets cheaper every day - travel was expensive, then telegrams were cheaper, then telephone calls were cheaper, now email is cheaper, in most cases its free. This in no way changed the capitalist nature of society - it simply oiled the wheels.
Linux does the same thing. I can start up a small software company with a PC and Free Software, or with a PC and MS software. The first way is cheaper, therefore more likely to happen - if the Free Software is as good, or better, than the MS I am also more likely to succeed.
If Dell could start with $1000 (which he did) back in the day the next 'big thing' could be starting today with a second hand PC and Linux - total cost $500. Capitalism rocks.
Sorry if this is off topic - but I've got WAAAYY too much Karma - its no fun anymore;-)
Don't you love Google? This item took some decent reseach, holds genuine interest for many of us, is presented in a light format with no banner ads and is actually interesting.
If only Google could take over the WWW as well as usenet we'd all be better off!
Wind power is getting more viable as a power source every day. Small turbines are popping up throughout Scotland on remote farms, and near remote villages. Even the large power companies are building these, in order to avoid dragging costly power lines across long distances to relatively small groups of users.
New turbines with outer cowlings to focus the wind through the turbine generate up to 40% more power size for size, and at wind speeds as low as 2 metres per second (5 is the normal cut off). See This New Scientist Special Report.
When I buy my 10 acres I'm going to stick a couple of these babies on 'high field' with the goats!
A guy called John Wamsley (google search) set up a reserve in Oz to protect Australian species from Cats, Dogs, Toads etc... that had been imported.
He got put in jail. Why? He killed all the Cats, Dogs and Toads on his land. This is against the law as its 'cruel'. The law has since softened - but technically it is still against the law to protect native species to the detriment of introduced ones.
He has been succesful in setting u a number of reserves though - everywhere he has killed Cats the native marsupials etc have thrived. Often coming back from just a few hundred specimens to many thousands.
He sells shares in his reserves to people, to fund purchasing of more land, and maintenence of the existing land. From memory he aims to have 10% of australia set aside as native only reserves within 10 years.
This project should happen in Africa - not Austalia. Its not as if African land is expensive. I'm sure old megabucks Bill Gates could buy the Congo and ship out everything that threatens the wildlife if he wanted to. Those gorillas are so cool!
T3 - Arnie fancies the pants of John Connor
T3 - John Connor tries to kill Arnie
T3 - John Connor tries to save Arnie
T3 - John Connor tries to get over his affection for Arnie so he can start spawning the next generation of global saviours (a lot of supranos style therapist scenes here!)
T3 - Just a bunch of darkness, explotions, and a whole ARMY of those metal shape shifting dudes for 2 and a half hours until Arnie wins
These phones cause the Police in the UK a significant headache as any 'crim' worth his wonga will have 3 or 4 of these, on different networks, at any one time and will simply throw them away after a couple of months.
You can buy a contractless SIM for £20UK here which you plug into any phone. Your first phone is just £100UK - nothing!
It really is amazing the length some sites will go to to get you to stop using them. If you visit Lycos or Yahoo with IE you get Pizza Hut pizzas flying around the screen more often than not.
At work I don't notice them, but at home on my cruddy 56kbps they cause a significant slow down - the result? Google gets even MORE of my traffic.
No - your boss has no right to make you play party games.
The last time a boss of mine tried that I resigned. She threatened me with the amazing line 'I'll make your fecking life hell next week if you don't get into that sumo suit!'.
I told her I would rather watch the girls dancing in the corner and drink some more whisky, sumo wasn't really my thing, I didn't have the ass for it.
I think I suggested that she did have the ass for it... I'm unsure. (she didn't, she had a nice ass... I hope I didn't say anything nasty about her ass)
She threatened again, suggesting I wasn't much of a team player if I didn't put on a few bits of rubber and try to bash john from accounts out of the ring.
I told her I'd happily leave her precious team on Monday if she would just shut the hell up for 10 minutes and go annoy someone else. She didn't. I did.
I'm sure she thought her promotion hung on getting all the 'computer guys' into those damn sumo suits before her boss left. god!
I must say I find the accussation that Global Warming is over discussed, hyped, etc... bemusing. To me FOOTBALL is overhyped, CELEBRITY is overhyped, the WEATHER is overhyped- each of these are covered in every news bulletin in the world, every day.
Until people generally have the scientific background to understand these issues there should be more not less discussion in the media. Atmospheric effects of mans activities are poorly understood, so two main points of view are adopted - 'how can little old us effect something so big???' and 'don't piss in the bath'.
The greenhouse effect (the ability for certain atmospheric gases to trap more heat than others - leading to an overall warmer planet) is a scientific fact. Whether the effect is increasing or not is currently being debated - with the vast majority saying yes, it is.
The Mars results are interesting because they demonstrate that even without life, let alone industrial level life, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can change year on year.
What it does not, cannot, tell us is wether this is a cyclical or progressive change. Thats the same as here on earth. The earth is warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
I'm a 'don't piss in the bath' person myself.
Great Virus Game!!!
on
Binary Watch
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This is cool. Sending virii to each others watches! It'd work like this:
I set up my virus to give the message 'all your squares are belong to torus' and walk about with my watch blasting that out in IR. Any other watch I pass gets infected with the virus!
Then everytime a watch links to a base unit it puts all its messages (along with where they are geographically) into a website.
I can call up 'all your squares are belong to torus' and see how far its spread.
I walk past someone on a street in London who flies off to Tokyo and goes dancing allnight - soon most of Japan is infected with 'all your squares are belong to torus'. How cool a game is that! I'd play!
The best locations to get your virus to would be Antrctica and the ISS I'd have thought. Oh, and Manchester.
Actually in a weird way this keeps me away from everquest
Me too. If I want 'human interaction' I'll skip on over to the pub, or visit my family, or take my lady out for a meal - I won't sit and play a damn computer game!
/. is about killing your 15 minute breaks at work without having to talk to the dildos in the office - its not about human interaction - alhtough oddly there are community aspects to it. But these are similar to being part of the deaf, or blind community - you share a fundamental but you wouldn't necessarily want to shag any of your fellow members.
On a slight tangent, whenever driving games start getting too deep, adding plot elements, building complex season results to access courses, etc... I get bored and visit google with the old 'Toca cheat code' search. I don't have time to build up all that stuff - I just want to pretent I'm a big mean racing driver from time to time. I can be bothered to persevere with a manual shift - because thats more fun - but bugger forming a relationship with my manager!
I would agree that the announcement of new products is beginning to swap/. a little too much. Milestone releases like the iPod need to be main stories here to allow us to discuss them, but the second, third, fourth and fifth follow up clone are of little interest to most of us.
This is worse in the PDA department, where seemingly every week we have a couple of new machines out, with the usual 'will it run linux' story. Little of the discussion is to do with function, mainly its to do with the sexiness of the product.
Everyone knows that more women will consider sleeping with you if you run MacOS than any windows or linux flavour. They think your a 'middle seat' kind of guy by default, and you probably wash every day. So the iPod most likely has the same effect. So more of us want one!
Lets have an experiment. All the single guys with iPods, and all the single guys with a similar device go out on Friday night and try to get laid. You have to wear your iPod / other at all times. We count the %age for each group to get a women into bed / a toilet cubicle in a club / car. My bet is iPod wins by a mile!
Tip - Let the ladies touch the iPod - it feels sooo nice they'll get shivers! They'll confuse these feelings with feelings of attraction to you! A guaranteed result!
Just make sure if you take them home that you warn your Mom not to wait up for you! That could scupper everything. Oh - and don't forget to get those party hats!
Indeed. The advantages a flat panel can offer are twofold: Depth, and Weight.
For most iMac users the Weight issue is irrelevent, as its a static desktop machine. That leaves, Depth, or Footprint.
Why go half way - this thing would have to be an inch and a half thick, at worst, to be a serious advantage. Then I could hang it on my wall - or to the ceiling above my bed! Or put it in my camper.
But those are all niches currently being served, to the seriously dedicated, by the iBook.
"but I remember thinking that was a good idea when the product first came onto the market"
Meybe its just me - but haven't we all been waiting for this to happen since we were able to hold a remote??
I remember talking about this at school in the 80s. How cool it would be if your TV recorded EVERYTHING and let you watch yesterdays TV if nothing is on tongiht, or watch something that was on 20 minutes ago, or whatever.
We also used to think a 2 wheel drive motorbike would be cool! And skateboards with self righting mechanisms, and tennis balls that didn't go all fluffy, then bald, when you played on tarmac. And a two way mirror device into the female changing rooms! And the ability to freeze time so you could walk around drawing penisses on everyones forehead while they were frozen. Should I patent those IDEAS now? I could retire on the proceeds of the everlasting tennis ball!
TRUE: The VIRGIN empire (record, airlines, trains, etc) started when Richard Branson sold manky old rugs from the street out the front of his parents home!
Of course - that's less impressive when you realise his parents home was worth about 6 Million Quid! But still...
"Kids, on the other hand, overdrive any machine you give them, and that's without games contributing to the fray. "
When I was at school we had BBC Bs and Sinclair Spectrums. The rich kids had BBCs at home, us working class kids had Spectrums, and the poor kids just didn't have a computer at home. From memory a spectrum cost about a years pocket money!
On the whole the rich kids were crap with computers, but they were all too busy watching their dads satellite porn, and about 50% of us with spectrums could write BASIC programs to do stuff like draw spider patterns, calculate the stats from the football on a sunday morning. Actually, one of our best programs was an early version of HotOrNot where we rated all the girls in the senior classes out of 10 for Spots, Tits, and Legs. Should ahve patented it! Damn!
Anyway - all kids should have computers. BUT - Office software is not enough. These machines should all have as many development platforms as possible on them. Even with shitty spectrum BASIC we learned a lot of programming technique, that GOTO was just stupid, and that this was... fun!
Yep - I concur and wish I'd listed it. Of the 6 sites we've tried these 5 have found them to be among the most popular sections (in terms of the %age of users to visit >1nce a month).
They can also be a good generator of novel content!
Re:Fast CPUs might be bad.
on
CPU Wars
·
· Score: 1
On a tangent, but hopefully not off the topic!, has anyone else been telling their 'we want to get on the internet' family and friends to buy OLD PCs?
I've pointed people at PII machines in the 400-700MHz range. These can be picked up for about 250-300UKP and do everything most people need. If they need a faster machine in a couple of years they can buy a 1.6GHz machine for about the same money most likely.
The alternative that PC world is putting forward costs significantly more, for minimal noticable additional performance. 750-900UKP is the price point the retailers seem to have picked for a Xmas PC for the family. For this you get:
-- AMD 1600XP Processor
-- 256Mb DDR Ram
-- 80Gb Hard Drive
-- DVD & CD Rewriter
-- 64Mb F3 200 Titanium Graphics
-- 56K Modem
-- Windows XP Home Edition
-- Lotus Smartsuite
-- 17" Monitor (15.7" viewable screen)
Barring the CD cutter all you are getting for your additional 500UKP is a greater excess of speed, HD, etc...
For the average family PC yu really don't need the speed.
Nobody wants to join a site just so the site owner can retire to six mansions.
I think this is incorrect, it applies perfectly to most/. readers, but to the business community and the majority of the consumer community the opposite is true. On the whole if someone provides us with a product we enjoy we want them to receive appropriate rewards.
Everyone that buys PlayBoy knows Hugh has FIFTY bloody mansions - it doesn't stop them paying out their money. If/. went pay per view next month no one would subscribe.
But if a genuinely value added unique 'mainstream' site with a user base as loyal and wealthy as/.s went PPV I'd bet they'd retain a good %age of readers and turn a good profit.
I've been involved in setting up business forums charging upwards of 500 sterling per month for membership which are doing well against 'free' competition with very similar features. It's all about perceived value.
Thats the problem - this has broken down because there is SUCH a sea of sites out there that the chance of me 'catching' a good site is minimal.
If you look at sites as virii - I 'caught'/. about a year and a half ago when I was pointed at it by a geeky chum to see some piece of new about a new CPU. I've probably pointed a couple of people at it, they caught it too./. is highly contageous, and easily transmitted.
The problem is that the chances of me 'catching' another site is minimised because there are too many sites to visit - so I don't come in contact with the VAST majority of them. There might be a great site dealing with stuff I'm really into that I just never come across because its insulated by a sea of crapola!
Slashdot Mirror
"you do remember the Circuit City DivX debacle, don't you?"
I do. I think what buggered them was the need to open an account, and the fact it was annoying to have a different format. And a lack of wholesale support from the major studios.
But I think a system which PHYSICALLY stops you watching a disk, doesn't involve registration, and just kinda happens without you noticing for a year in the hire shops is FAR more likely to succeed.
You don't need different hardware, software, or anything to watch a physically degrading DVD. This alone, fo me, makes them a more attractive option to the studios.
For the Video hire shops this is great news. You log onto blockbuster.com, pick a disk - they mail you a 5, or even a 2 view, degradable disk. You never have to return it. They just buy enough to ship em out - they're disposable! Immediately removes half of the man-hours required to handle the media! THATS the back door these little fuckers will enter by!
The entire point of DVD region encoding is to restrict the availability of these products to allow the producer to sell where they want, for the price they want.
It hasn't worked. It broke. Damn!
This may give them an out. Just start to release to the new standard gradually - dual release (with extra 'extras') to start, then early release, then exclusive release. DVD players are cheap - a lot of people on this site would upgrade if a 20 DVD Star Wars set came out in the new format - you think Bill couldn't persuad George?? "HOW many zeros???"
I don't think this is the format that will do it - but in the next 2 or 3 years a new DVD format will come along with WAY tougher restrictions.
Actually. I think 10-view DVDs will be the next big thing from the studios. They'll sell those babies for $5-10 and you'll only be able to play them 10 times (they put a film on the disk which goes opaque in the laser). Then its useless. They'll push them through rental shops to start with.
Would the cache-less version of your proposed BI be the "Athlon BI-curious"
ho ho ho
Whats really happenning here is an attempt to convince the general public that software is real. That borrowing your neighbours windows 98 CD to upgrade is theft. That YOU WILL BE CAUGHT.
The story wouldn't get out if they raided every house in a quiet end of some rich neighbourhood and caught half a dozen folk running Office 2000 without a licence, some pr0n and a bit of hash in the greenhouse.
No. They raid a bunch of 'cocky low life degenerate geeks' across the globe. Bigger headlines.
As many have posted, the losses are not real, (in fact I would imagine there are Gains to MS in students using warez of the expensive server kit as it reduces the cost of admins on the market when they leave college), but they wish to create the perception that its real.
And remember - its not just Bill that loses out if you steal Windows - the taxman misses his cut aswell!
In todays world the driving force of the global economy is the human brain. Thoughts occur, and are solidified into products.
;-)
The quicker you solidify your thoughts into products the more likely you are to achieve a state of temporary monopoly.
The more novel your thought, the more likely you are to achieve a state of temporary monopoly.
Free Software is simply a collection of solidified thoughts which the originating individuals decided not to sell, but to give.
This will never change the fundamentals of a temporary monopoly driven economy. It may take the cost away from certain areas. Communication gets cheaper every day - travel was expensive, then telegrams were cheaper, then telephone calls were cheaper, now email is cheaper, in most cases its free. This in no way changed the capitalist nature of society - it simply oiled the wheels.
Linux does the same thing. I can start up a small software company with a PC and Free Software, or with a PC and MS software. The first way is cheaper, therefore more likely to happen - if the Free Software is as good, or better, than the MS I am also more likely to succeed.
If Dell could start with $1000 (which he did) back in the day the next 'big thing' could be starting today with a second hand PC and Linux - total cost $500. Capitalism rocks.
Sorry if this is off topic - but I've got WAAAYY too much Karma - its no fun anymore
Don't you love Google? This item took some decent reseach, holds genuine interest for many of us, is presented in a light format with no banner ads and is actually interesting.
If only Google could take over the WWW as well as usenet we'd all be better off!
Wind power is getting more viable as a power source every day. Small turbines are popping up throughout Scotland on remote farms, and near remote villages. Even the large power companies are building these, in order to avoid dragging costly power lines across long distances to relatively small groups of users.
New turbines with outer cowlings to focus the wind through the turbine generate up to 40% more power size for size, and at wind speeds as low as 2 metres per second (5 is the normal cut off). See This New Scientist Special Report.
When I buy my 10 acres I'm going to stick a couple of these babies on 'high field' with the goats!
A guy called John Wamsley (google search) set up a reserve in Oz to protect Australian species from Cats, Dogs, Toads etc... that had been imported.
He got put in jail. Why? He killed all the Cats, Dogs and Toads on his land. This is against the law as its 'cruel'. The law has since softened - but technically it is still against the law to protect native species to the detriment of introduced ones.
He has been succesful in setting u a number of reserves though - everywhere he has killed Cats the native marsupials etc have thrived. Often coming back from just a few hundred specimens to many thousands.
He sells shares in his reserves to people, to fund purchasing of more land, and maintenence of the existing land. From memory he aims to have 10% of australia set aside as native only reserves within 10 years.
This project should happen in Africa - not Austalia. Its not as if African land is expensive. I'm sure old megabucks Bill Gates could buy the Congo and ship out everything that threatens the wildlife if he wanted to. Those gorillas are so cool!
T3 - Arnie fancies the pants of John Connor
T3 - John Connor tries to kill Arnie
T3 - John Connor tries to save Arnie
T3 - John Connor tries to get over his affection for Arnie so he can start spawning the next generation of global saviours (a lot of supranos style therapist scenes here!)
T3 - Just a bunch of darkness, explotions, and a whole ARMY of those metal shape shifting dudes for 2 and a half hours until Arnie wins
These phones cause the Police in the UK a significant headache as any 'crim' worth his wonga will have 3 or 4 of these, on different networks, at any one time and will simply throw them away after a couple of months.
You can buy a contractless SIM for £20UK here which you plug into any phone. Your first phone is just £100UK - nothing!
It really is amazing the length some sites will go to to get you to stop using them. If you visit Lycos or Yahoo with IE you get Pizza Hut pizzas flying around the screen more often than not.
At work I don't notice them, but at home on my cruddy 56kbps they cause a significant slow down - the result? Google gets even MORE of my traffic.
No - your boss has no right to make you play party games.
The last time a boss of mine tried that I resigned. She threatened me with the amazing line 'I'll make your fecking life hell next week if you don't get into that sumo suit!'.
I told her I would rather watch the girls dancing in the corner and drink some more whisky, sumo wasn't really my thing, I didn't have the ass for it.
I think I suggested that she did have the ass for it... I'm unsure. (she didn't, she had a nice ass... I hope I didn't say anything nasty about her ass)
She threatened again, suggesting I wasn't much of a team player if I didn't put on a few bits of rubber and try to bash john from accounts out of the ring.
I told her I'd happily leave her precious team on Monday if she would just shut the hell up for 10 minutes and go annoy someone else. She didn't. I did.
I'm sure she thought her promotion hung on getting all the 'computer guys' into those damn sumo suits before her boss left. god!
recently overhyped global warming debate ?
I must say I find the accussation that Global Warming is over discussed, hyped, etc... bemusing. To me FOOTBALL is overhyped, CELEBRITY is overhyped, the WEATHER is overhyped- each of these are covered in every news bulletin in the world, every day.
Until people generally have the scientific background to understand these issues there should be more not less discussion in the media. Atmospheric effects of mans activities are poorly understood, so two main points of view are adopted - 'how can little old us effect something so big???' and 'don't piss in the bath'.
The greenhouse effect (the ability for certain atmospheric gases to trap more heat than others - leading to an overall warmer planet) is a scientific fact. Whether the effect is increasing or not is currently being debated - with the vast majority saying yes, it is.
The Mars results are interesting because they demonstrate that even without life, let alone industrial level life, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can change year on year.
What it does not, cannot, tell us is wether this is a cyclical or progressive change. Thats the same as here on earth. The earth is warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
I'm a 'don't piss in the bath' person myself.
This is cool. Sending virii to each others watches! It'd work like this:
I set up my virus to give the message 'all your squares are belong to torus' and walk about with my watch blasting that out in IR. Any other watch I pass gets infected with the virus!
Then everytime a watch links to a base unit it puts all its messages (along with where they are geographically) into a website.
I can call up 'all your squares are belong to torus' and see how far its spread.
I walk past someone on a street in London who flies off to Tokyo and goes dancing allnight - soon most of Japan is infected with 'all your squares are belong to torus'. How cool a game is that! I'd play!
The best locations to get your virus to would be Antrctica and the ISS I'd have thought. Oh, and Manchester.
Actually in a weird way this keeps me away from everquest
Me too. If I want 'human interaction' I'll skip on over to the pub, or visit my family, or take my lady out for a meal - I won't sit and play a damn computer game!
/. is about killing your 15 minute breaks at work without having to talk to the dildos in the office - its not about human interaction - alhtough oddly there are community aspects to it. But these are similar to being part of the deaf, or blind community - you share a fundamental but you wouldn't necessarily want to shag any of your fellow members.
On a slight tangent, whenever driving games start getting too deep, adding plot elements, building complex season results to access courses, etc... I get bored and visit google with the old 'Toca cheat code' search. I don't have time to build up all that stuff - I just want to pretent I'm a big mean racing driver from time to time. I can be bothered to persevere with a manual shift - because thats more fun - but bugger forming a relationship with my manager!
One reason.
Style.
You've either got it...
I would agree that the announcement of new products is beginning to swap /. a little too much. Milestone releases like the iPod need to be main stories here to allow us to discuss them, but the second, third, fourth and fifth follow up clone are of little interest to most of us.
This is worse in the PDA department, where seemingly every week we have a couple of new machines out, with the usual 'will it run linux' story. Little of the discussion is to do with function, mainly its to do with the sexiness of the product.
Everyone knows that more women will consider sleeping with you if you run MacOS than any windows or linux flavour. They think your a 'middle seat' kind of guy by default, and you probably wash every day. So the iPod most likely has the same effect. So more of us want one!
Lets have an experiment. All the single guys with iPods, and all the single guys with a similar device go out on Friday night and try to get laid. You have to wear your iPod / other at all times. We count the %age for each group to get a women into bed / a toilet cubicle in a club / car. My bet is iPod wins by a mile!
Tip - Let the ladies touch the iPod - it feels sooo nice they'll get shivers! They'll confuse these feelings with feelings of attraction to you! A guaranteed result!
Just make sure if you take them home that you warn your Mom not to wait up for you! That could scupper everything. Oh - and don't forget to get those party hats!
Indeed. The advantages a flat panel can offer are twofold: Depth, and Weight.
For most iMac users the Weight issue is irrelevent, as its a static desktop machine. That leaves, Depth, or Footprint.
Why go half way - this thing would have to be an inch and a half thick, at worst, to be a serious advantage. Then I could hang it on my wall - or to the ceiling above my bed! Or put it in my camper.
But those are all niches currently being served, to the seriously dedicated, by the iBook.
Nah... I don't want one!
"but I remember thinking that was a good idea when the product first came onto the market"
Meybe its just me - but haven't we all been waiting for this to happen since we were able to hold a remote??
I remember talking about this at school in the 80s. How cool it would be if your TV recorded EVERYTHING and let you watch yesterdays TV if nothing is on tongiht, or watch something that was on 20 minutes ago, or whatever.
We also used to think a 2 wheel drive motorbike would be cool! And skateboards with self righting mechanisms, and tennis balls that didn't go all fluffy, then bald, when you played on tarmac. And a two way mirror device into the female changing rooms! And the ability to freeze time so you could walk around drawing penisses on everyones forehead while they were frozen. Should I patent those IDEAS now? I could retire on the proceeds of the everlasting tennis ball!
TRUE: The VIRGIN empire (record, airlines, trains, etc) started when Richard Branson sold manky old rugs from the street out the front of his parents home!
Of course - that's less impressive when you realise his parents home was worth about 6 Million Quid! But still...
"Kids, on the other hand, overdrive any machine you give them, and that's without games contributing to the fray. "
... fun!
When I was at school we had BBC Bs and Sinclair Spectrums. The rich kids had BBCs at home, us working class kids had Spectrums, and the poor kids just didn't have a computer at home. From memory a spectrum cost about a years pocket money!
On the whole the rich kids were crap with computers, but they were all too busy watching their dads satellite porn, and about 50% of us with spectrums could write BASIC programs to do stuff like draw spider patterns, calculate the stats from the football on a sunday morning. Actually, one of our best programs was an early version of HotOrNot where we rated all the girls in the senior classes out of 10 for Spots, Tits, and Legs. Should ahve patented it! Damn!
Anyway - all kids should have computers. BUT - Office software is not enough. These machines should all have as many development platforms as possible on them. Even with shitty spectrum BASIC we learned a lot of programming technique, that GOTO was just stupid, and that this was
Yep - I concur and wish I'd listed it. Of the 6 sites we've tried these 5 have found them to be among the most popular sections (in terms of the %age of users to visit >1nce a month).
They can also be a good generator of novel content!
On a tangent, but hopefully not off the topic!, has anyone else been telling their 'we want to get on the internet' family and friends to buy OLD PCs?
I've pointed people at PII machines in the 400-700MHz range. These can be picked up for about 250-300UKP and do everything most people need. If they need a faster machine in a couple of years they can buy a 1.6GHz machine for about the same money most likely.
The alternative that PC world is putting forward costs significantly more, for minimal noticable additional performance. 750-900UKP is the price point the retailers seem to have picked for a Xmas PC for the family. For this you get:
-- AMD 1600XP Processor
-- 256Mb DDR Ram
-- 80Gb Hard Drive
-- DVD & CD Rewriter
-- 64Mb F3 200 Titanium Graphics
-- 56K Modem
-- Windows XP Home Edition
-- Lotus Smartsuite
-- 17" Monitor (15.7" viewable screen)
Barring the CD cutter all you are getting for your additional 500UKP is a greater excess of speed, HD, etc...
For the average family PC yu really don't need the speed.
Nobody wants to join a site just so the site owner can retire to six mansions.
/. readers, but to the business community and the majority of the consumer community the opposite is true. On the whole if someone provides us with a product we enjoy we want them to receive appropriate rewards.
/. went pay per view next month no one would subscribe.
/.s went PPV I'd bet they'd retain a good %age of readers and turn a good profit.
I think this is incorrect, it applies perfectly to most
Everyone that buys PlayBoy knows Hugh has FIFTY bloody mansions - it doesn't stop them paying out their money. If
But if a genuinely value added unique 'mainstream' site with a user base as loyal and wealthy as
I've been involved in setting up business forums charging upwards of 500 sterling per month for membership which are doing well against 'free' competition with very similar features. It's all about perceived value.
Thats the problem - this has broken down because there is SUCH a sea of sites out there that the chance of me 'catching' a good site is minimal.
/. about a year and a half ago when I was pointed at it by a geeky chum to see some piece of new about a new CPU. I've probably pointed a couple of people at it, they caught it too. /. is highly contageous, and easily transmitted.
If you look at sites as virii - I 'caught'
The problem is that the chances of me 'catching' another site is minimised because there are too many sites to visit - so I don't come in contact with the VAST majority of them. There might be a great site dealing with stuff I'm really into that I just never come across because its insulated by a sea of crapola!
If you look at the material on the paper version of this site in the paper version of THIS site there are some good insights into the difficulty of finding your market for a niche product - and the possible rewards.