I have not seen anything here about the immense commercial power of the ITMS. I think that needs mention. It goes a long way explaining the 1M downloads.
Having downloaded ITMS / win, i, for some reason checked out the ITMS for the first time. Take a look at the front page, browse around a little...
Next think i know, i was busy downloading Herbie Hancock's Playlist for the low price of $10.99 - 70 full minutes of music, with Herbie's explanations of why the songs were meaningful to him. With album covers. Burnt on a CD and gave to my girlfriend.
Today, in response to some slashdot comments, i checked around there again... searching for a place where artists could sign up to publish their songs. However, once there, i got distracted quickly and just narrowly avoided buying more songs...
This thing is super-addictive! Just 99c per song, your login info plus credit card already conveniently stored - this is the first time on the internet that a commercial good is literally just one click away.
Click on a song, and you got it! Instant gratification. No waiting for FedEx packets... No entering credit card numbers... No delay. And just 99c. Why not check something out for under a dollar? Never, anywhere, has it been that easy to spend a dollar. And that is very, very clever.
80 cents to the record companies who have done essentially NOTHING
evil as the (big) record companies are, they do something: promotion.
if you are an artist, and you have the choice between making 100% profit on the 500 CDs you sell to friends and at live concerts on the one hand, and making 10% profit on 1M+ CDs sold because of heavy promotion - which would you choose?
This sounds convincing - but it's circular logic, like Math. It is based on assumptions that cannot be proven right or wrong. Therefore the entire argument cannot proven right or wrong. However, i can show it's _unlikely_ to be true.
Assumptions: - It is possible to make a recording of the entire human brain. As long as we do not know how the brain works, or what makes consciousness [which is probably the thing you are interested most in preserving] that is a bold assertion, to put it mildly. We don't know, and until somebody successfully does the backup-recovery you describe we won't. Simple as that. - The brain is the only part of the body that remembers. Ask any physical therapist about kinetic memory to see that this is simply not true.
Religions have had answers for all questions that arise around this topic for thousands of years. The great religion of science is no exception - it just tends to produce a multitude of theories.
You may believe in that. Just like a buddhist believes in being reborn - and therefore probably doesn't care as much about the brain-backup-plan. he is reborn anyways so he doesn't have the problem of dying in the first place.
Counterintuitive? I find it just as intuitive as Heaven and Hell, and Rebirth:)
PS: the evil business mind: sell people a complete backup of their brains, using sophisticated MR technology to capture the neuronal state of every single neuron in the brain. As soon as the write-back technology and cloning become available, we can then bring them back to live. Oh, somebody already thought of that. Damn!
Re:This is really missing the point
on
Death of the PDA?
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· Score: 1
Full ACK.
Plus this: I need a phone. I am carrying it around anyways. If it comes with an address book, calendar and an alarm, all the better. In fact, my Nokia had all this 5 years ago.
As for the "old-style" PDAs, i feel they are only interesting when heavily networked (Blackberry is a low-tech example that nevertheless is extremely useful). I mean... would you buy a PC without modem or ethernet? See.
Active X came out as a response to Java (Applets).
In the beginning, Sun thought that Java Applets were some sort of silver bullet. Netscape + Java could completely replace the desktop and render M$ obsolete. All Java development at Sun at the time was focused on applets - server use was an also-ran back then.
M$ believed this, too. As a response, they came out with their own "executable code embedded in HTML pages" - Active X. AX was better because it had access to the whole system - no sandbox. AX was a lot worse because it had access to the whole system.
The rest is history.
If i had to venture a guess regarding the future: Applets go away because they have been bogged down by poor specifications / poor implementations / M$ resistance (ok - maybe this has already happened). And AX goes away because it's one big gaping security hole that can not be patched - almost by definition.
ahem... turning off username/password in URLs does not break authentication.
that feature is: - dangerous - unneccessary (just authenticate in a dialog / with cookies - no big deal at all)
i can easily live without it.
programmers talk about fashion *cringe*
on
Software Fashion
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· Score: 1
the whole fashion-comparison... geeks talking about gucci and models... that does not bode well.
but ok, i was willing to give it a try... until i found this gem:
Unless an outfit is being worn by a supermodel, it is generally the 'classic' or 'timeless' looks that fare better.
i think the authors by this statement prove convincingly that they have no clue whatsoever about fashion. or even just "clothes".
so what we have is, at best, a metaphor that really didn't work. there is no such thing as tried and proven fashion. it does not neccessarily follow that the same is true for software - rather, i would say the two are unrelated enough to start over - look for a new metaphor.
Re:LOL, Struts is right on target.
on
Software Fashion
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· Score: 1
>>Using modular design leads to more complex code, its a fact of life.
scratch that sentence.
modular design was, is, and will be used to reduce complexity. as in "lots of small parts are easier to control than one huge beast that tries to do everything".
using the article's terminology, the principle of "divide and conquer" is a classic of programming. old and true.
Just a tip if JB doesn't work for you: use Eclipse. it works. even on my tiBook 667/512M. IMHO it's better than JB or NetBeans (ugh)... and free and open source, too.
Well.. some think video games are bigger than movies, amongst others U.S. News and bill gates [articles from end of 2002].
A particular quote from the U.S. News piece: Last year, U.S. retail sales of video games exceeded Hollywood box office revenue for the first time, and this year sales are on track to pass $10 billion.
note that they _do_ compare US sales with US sales, although they conveniently forget video revenue / tv rights / merchandise for movies.
I think we need more data to determine who is right. $10Bn is impressive in any case though.
The music industry, due to their own incompetence and lack of creativity, is unable to provide people with what they want - easy, reasonably priced access to music.
Instead of seeing this as it is and doing something about it, the music industry has entered a self-destructive pattern of denial and blame. The RIAA's arguments are akin to the emperor's new clothes: Nothing at all, backed by enormous power.
But, in the long run, all the power in the world cannot keep alive the network of lies, distortions, and lawsuits. We are in a transitory period.
Sooner or later, a service or company will emerge that will give us what we want. For me, a $5-download-album@256k music service would be sufficient (sorry, no 95% profit margins). Easy. Convenient. Good quality. Give $2,50 to the artists, divide the rest among the distributors. Doesn't sound hard, does it?
George Ziemann asks what we can do: The answer is: Nothing. All we have to do is sit back and wait for them to collapse. And share files with friends in the meantime.
seems like 20 or so old 1x speed CD writers would suffice to create 20 CDs right at the end of the concert;)... use 20 24x recorders and churn out 20 every 5 mintues...
How many times have you been sitting on your train or in an airport or whatever and said to yourself, "Gee, I wish I could look at my own collection of photographs right now?" Zero.
last year? about three zillion. [travelling / digicam / showing others].
the point: digital photo storage on iPod is _the_ solution to CF card shortage. the entire so-called prosumer market will want one.
current phones have something like 128x160 pixel screens... so you can be very cheap-ass with the data rate. seems like you could do a lot less than 256k...
hey.. all of a sudden, stamp-sized video starts to make sense..;)
CDMA is owned by Qualcomm. GSM is a semi-open standard, not controlled by anyone, and not protected by patents.
duh!
in europe, the standards are mandated by buerocrats. but even they are smart enough to choose an open standard over a proprietary one.
as for technical superiority: i own two phones, one for the US, one for everywhere else on the world. that says it all, doesn't it? one reason WCDMA doesn't take off is that people are perfectly happy with GSM. it works, thank you. and if it were not for the US [and japan], it would work world wide.
if you think about this for 2 seconds, you end up with nothing but hyped air. let's see:
1 - sharing 811b networks: cool, but an old hat. has been happening for years. no need to talk about that one.
2 - backbone-less internet. packets are transmitted without the help of a central carrier, from 811b to 811b, passed on until they reach the destination. the lilys and ponds scheme.
this would be a revolutionary concept, and put a lot of telcos out of business. the reason why it doesn't work it that it ends at the city borders. there are not enough people/wireless networks in any of the following: outside major cities in the US, oceans, mountain ranges, etc.
note to nicholas: not all people live in metropolitan areas, and not all metropolitan areas are right next to other metropolitan areas.
A would-be thieve would watch you in the supermarket, picking up a bottle of Coke, put it back because you do prefer Mountain Dew after all. He picks up that bottle by the neck, pays for it with cash. From there on he could plunder your credit card.
actually... all u need to do is sweep fingerprints off the cars in the parking lot. very, very easy.
the problem with fingerprints is: they are everywhere and impossible to guard.
dialog: ridiculous acting: bad story: ok action: good gc/sfx: awesome
don't take it seriously and it's quite enjoyable.
tip: it helps to stare at natalie portmans during the ultra-cheesy attempts at love story. i am all for love stories, but the ones in ep2 qualify as truly bad b-movie any time.
Slashdot Mirror
I have not seen anything here about the immense commercial power of the ITMS. I think that needs mention. It goes a long way explaining the 1M downloads.
Having downloaded ITMS / win, i, for some reason checked out the ITMS for the first time. Take a look at the front page, browse around a little...
Next think i know, i was busy downloading Herbie Hancock's Playlist for the low price of $10.99 - 70 full minutes of music, with Herbie's explanations of why the songs were meaningful to him. With album covers. Burnt on a CD and gave to my girlfriend.
Today, in response to some slashdot comments, i checked around there again... searching for a place where artists could sign up to publish their songs. However, once there, i got distracted quickly and just narrowly avoided buying more songs...
This thing is super-addictive! Just 99c per song, your login info plus credit card already conveniently stored - this is the first time on the internet that a commercial good is literally just one click away.
Click on a song, and you got it! Instant gratification. No waiting for FedEx packets... No entering credit card numbers... No delay. And just 99c. Why not check something out for under a dollar? Never, anywhere, has it been that easy to spend a dollar. And that is very, very clever.
80 cents to the record companies who have done essentially NOTHING
evil as the (big) record companies are, they do something: promotion.
if you are an artist, and you have the choice between making 100% profit on the 500 CDs you sell to friends and at live concerts on the one hand, and making 10% profit on 1M+ CDs sold because of heavy promotion - which would you choose?
shift-maximize does a "center and default size" thing.
it's a little weird... i love itunes / win but they should follow the UI guidelines, crappy as they may be.
Very true, file system can be a big factor.
...and that the mac implementation of FAT sucks ;)
I recently did a mac system backup on a FAT formatted drive. it took about 8 hours.
next day i reformatted the exact same drive with HFS+ and did the same thing - it was done in under 20 minutes - more than 10x faster.
this goes to show that the file system can make a _huge_ difference.
This sounds convincing - but it's circular logic, like Math. It is based on assumptions that cannot be proven right or wrong. Therefore the entire argument cannot proven right or wrong. However, i can show it's _unlikely_ to be true.
:)
Assumptions:
- It is possible to make a recording of the entire human brain. As long as we do not know how the brain works, or what makes consciousness [which is probably the thing you are interested most in preserving] that is a bold assertion, to put it mildly.
We don't know, and until somebody successfully does the backup-recovery you describe we won't. Simple as that.
- The brain is the only part of the body that remembers. Ask any physical therapist about kinetic memory to see that this is simply not true.
Religions have had answers for all questions that arise around this topic for thousands of years. The great religion of science is no exception - it just tends to produce a multitude of theories.
You may believe in that. Just like a buddhist believes in being reborn - and therefore probably doesn't care as much about the brain-backup-plan. he is reborn anyways so he doesn't have the problem of dying in the first place.
Counterintuitive? I find it just as intuitive as Heaven and Hell, and Rebirth
PS: the evil business mind: sell people a complete backup of their brains, using sophisticated MR technology to capture the neuronal state of every single neuron in the brain. As soon as the write-back technology and cloning become available, we can then bring them back to live. Oh, somebody already thought of that. Damn!
Full ACK.
Plus this: I need a phone. I am carrying it around anyways. If it comes with an address book, calendar and an alarm, all the better. In fact, my Nokia had all this 5 years ago.
As for the "old-style" PDAs, i feel they are only interesting when heavily networked (Blackberry is a low-tech example that nevertheless is extremely useful). I mean... would you buy a PC without modem or ethernet? See.
it follows that they recouped their original investment after 8 months and start _really_ saving.
:)
and that seems to be so obvious even Arkansas got it
A little history on Active X:
Active X came out as a response to Java (Applets).
In the beginning, Sun thought that Java Applets were some sort of silver bullet. Netscape + Java could completely replace the desktop and render M$ obsolete. All Java development at Sun at the time was focused on applets - server use was an also-ran back then.
M$ believed this, too. As a response, they came out with their own "executable code embedded in HTML pages" - Active X.
AX was better because it had access to the whole system - no sandbox. AX was a lot worse because it had access to the whole system.
The rest is history.
If i had to venture a guess regarding the future: Applets go away because they have been bogged down by poor specifications / poor implementations / M$ resistance (ok - maybe this has already happened). And AX goes away because it's one big gaping security hole that can not be patched - almost by definition.
ahem... turning off username/password in URLs does not break authentication.
that feature is:
- dangerous
- unneccessary (just authenticate in a dialog / with cookies - no big deal at all)
i can easily live without it.
the whole fashion-comparison... geeks talking about gucci and models... that does not bode well.
but ok, i was willing to give it a try... until i found this gem:
Unless an outfit is being worn by a supermodel, it is generally the 'classic' or 'timeless' looks that fare better.
i think the authors by this statement prove convincingly that they have no clue whatsoever about fashion. or even just "clothes".
so what we have is, at best, a metaphor that really didn't work. there is no such thing as tried and proven fashion. it does not neccessarily follow that the same is true for software - rather, i would say the two are unrelated enough to start over - look for a new metaphor.
>>Using modular design leads to more complex code, its a fact of life.
scratch that sentence.
modular design was, is, and will be used to reduce complexity. as in "lots of small parts are easier to control than one huge beast that tries to do everything".
using the article's terminology, the principle of "divide and conquer" is a classic of programming. old and true.
Just a tip if JB doesn't work for you: use Eclipse. it works. even on my tiBook 667/512M.
IMHO it's better than JB or NetBeans (ugh)... and free and open source, too.
Well.. some think video games are bigger than movies, amongst others U.S. News and bill gates [articles from end of 2002].
A particular quote from the U.S. News piece:
Last year, U.S. retail sales of video games exceeded Hollywood box office revenue for the first time, and this year sales are on track to pass $10 billion.
note that they _do_ compare US sales with US sales, although they conveniently forget video revenue / tv rights / merchandise for movies.
I think we need more data to determine who is right. $10Bn is impressive in any case though.
The music industry, due to their own incompetence and lack of creativity, is unable to provide people with what they want - easy, reasonably priced access to music.
Instead of seeing this as it is and doing something about it, the music industry has entered a self-destructive pattern of denial and blame. The RIAA's arguments are akin to the emperor's new clothes: Nothing at all, backed by enormous power.
But, in the long run, all the power in the world cannot keep alive the network of lies, distortions, and lawsuits. We are in a transitory period.
Sooner or later, a service or company will emerge that will give us what we want. For me, a $5-download-album@256k music service would be sufficient (sorry, no 95% profit margins). Easy. Convenient. Good quality. Give $2,50 to the artists, divide the rest among the distributors. Doesn't sound hard, does it?
George Ziemann asks what we can do: The answer is: Nothing. All we have to do is sit back and wait for them to collapse. And share files with friends in the meantime.
seems like 20 or so old 1x speed CD writers would suffice to create 20 CDs right at the end of the concert ;) ... use 20 24x recorders and churn out 20 every 5 mintues...
How many times have you been sitting on your train or in an airport or whatever and said to yourself, "Gee, I wish I could look at my own collection of photographs right now?" Zero.
last year? about three zillion. [travelling / digicam / showing others].
the point: digital photo storage on iPod is _the_ solution to CF card shortage. the entire so-called prosumer market will want one.
real news would be the opposite:
'17" iMac production unchanged after 1 year!!'
i mean, seriously, what did you expect? apple will revise it's iMac line. surprise!
current phones have something like 128x160 pixel screens... so you can be very cheap-ass with the data rate.
;)
seems like you could do a lot less than 256k...
hey.. all of a sudden, stamp-sized video starts to make sense..
one word comes to mind... overclocking! buy a cheap ibook and OC it to 1GHz...
the word: OPEN
CDMA is owned by Qualcomm. GSM is a semi-open standard, not controlled by anyone, and not protected by patents.
duh!
in europe, the standards are mandated by buerocrats. but even they are smart enough to choose an open standard over a proprietary one.
as for technical superiority: i own two phones, one for the US, one for everywhere else on the world. that says it all, doesn't it? one reason WCDMA doesn't take off is that people are perfectly happy with GSM. it works, thank you. and if it were not for the US [and japan], it would work world wide.
this is a better link
duh! satellite crap on one end, ethernet on the other... problem solved. cuts down support costs by 90% (i would bet)
if you think about this for 2 seconds, you end up with nothing but hyped air. let's see:
1 - sharing 811b networks: cool, but an old hat. has been happening for years. no need to talk about that one.
2 - backbone-less internet. packets are transmitted without the help of a central carrier, from 811b to 811b, passed on until they reach the destination. the lilys and ponds scheme.
this would be a revolutionary concept, and put a lot of telcos out of business. the reason why it doesn't work it that it ends at the city borders. there are not enough people/wireless networks in any of the following: outside major cities in the US, oceans, mountain ranges, etc.
note to nicholas: not all people live in metropolitan areas, and not all metropolitan areas are right next to other metropolitan areas.
.. sez heise. according to the article, it's supposed to be compatible to motorola's "Book E" spec for the G5 (MPC8540).
A would-be thieve would watch you in the supermarket, picking up a bottle of Coke, put it back because you do prefer Mountain Dew after all. He picks up that bottle by the neck, pays for it with cash. From there on he could plunder your credit card.
actually... all u need to do is sweep fingerprints off the cars in the parking lot. very, very easy.
the problem with fingerprints is: they are everywhere and impossible to guard.
dialog: ridiculous
acting: bad
story: ok
action: good
gc/sfx: awesome
don't take it seriously and it's quite enjoyable.
tip: it helps to stare at natalie portmans during the ultra-cheesy attempts at love story. i am all for love stories, but the ones in ep2 qualify as truly bad b-movie any time.