After RTFA, I would just like to point out that Moore doesn't call iTunes or micropayments "a rip-off."
After mentioning the 99c US price for individual iTunes tracks, the interviewer tells Mr. Moore that the UK price is 79p. Mr Moore responds "you're being ripped off." The inference here is that 79p is not equal, given to the exchange rate of US Dollars to UK Pounds, to 99 cents.
This is one of many (growing) examples of the/. summaries being inaccurate, sensational, and combative. I expect this from the comments. In the summary, I expect at least the pretense of some sort of journalistic integrity.
i remember reading an article written by neal stephenson for wired in the late 90s. somewhere in it he addressed the issue of a 'fiber war' where nations and other actors would begin cutting undersea cables. it's an old article, but i remember some expert referring to it as 'mutually assured destruction'. (like nuclear war.) meaning that once a couple of cables are cut, it's so easy to cut more quickly, and pretty soon all the cables are cut relatively no time at all. an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind; or disconnected in this case.
details are scarce at this point, but i wonder if the the egypt cable was really an accident. or if it was, has it given some malefactors some ideas? could this turn into a way for political tensions to present themselves?
i remember reading an article written by neal stephenson for wired in the late 90s. somewhere in it he addressed the issue of a 'fiber war' where nations and other actors would begin cutting undersea cables. it's an old article, but i remember some expert referring to it as 'mutually assured destruction'. (like nuclear war.) meaning that once a couple of cables are cut, it's so easy to cut more quickly, and pretty soon all the cables are cut relatively no time at all. an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind; or disconnected in this case.
I guess my question to you is: if itunes is difficult to use and a stinker, what legit alternative have you used that's better? i'd like to give it a try.
A few responses:
1. yes, wireless could be a useful and interesting. but there are a lot of drawbacks: battery life, security, legal complications, and ease of use are all to be considered.
2. drm? (i'm assuming you're talking about the itunes store here, not the app.) yeah, drm sucks. simple as that. but we need to keep reminding each other that drm is imposed by the owners of the content, not the distributors. the record companies and movie studios, in this case, would not have signed on to the itunes store if there was no way to lock down the content. they're old school, they don't see new business models.
3. the owners of the content are also to blame for the inability to pull songs of the device easily. they want their content protected. you're only supposed (according to them) to own one copy of each album or song you own, if you have a portable music player, you inherently own two. the record companies originally wanted to DELETE songs from your computer when they were transferred to an ipod. (i'd like to cite that, but don't have the time) you're right about the re-naming of files within the structure of the ipods software, it sucks if you pull them out raw. however, there are programs that allow you to suck songs off an ipod with ease. they're not legal, technically, but they're out there.;)
as for your wish to be able to set a photo as a wallpaper, i don't quite understand the function of such a feature. when you're not using the screen to navigate through the UI, how much time do you spend looking at it? when i'm not choosing songs, the screen to my nano is in my pocket.
the article says he was an intern at Roberts Weaver Group when he designed the pen. also, a partnership in any firm is way, way past an internship. i did a quick search for this pen, with no real luck though. i guess we all have to keep guessing
This comment isn't really adding anything to the conversation, but that is exactly what I do. View Digg for the breaking news, view/. for the substance. Even since digg has implemented their digg/bury commenting system (which was an immense improvement) the substance of the comments are basically flamewar fodder and a place to post a link to a mirror, imho.
...For every 99 Apple gets from your credit card, 65 goes straight to the music label. Another quarter or so gets eaten up by distribution costs. At most, Jobs is left with a dime per track, so even $500 million in annual sales would add up to a paltry $50 million profit...
If you insist on making spurious claims about Apple, or any other company for that matter, don't try to disguise them as facts please, that's all we ask. They're certainly not the kings of interoperability, but I can't think of any OS/company that is. no, not even *nix.
Google's service is called Google Print ( print.google.com ) and it's intended to digitize ALL available printed works. Although currently they're only doing a select few libraries. Yahoo (and now MS it seems) is limiting it's project to digitizing works in the public domain, and works that have been authorized. So, they've both got projects in the works, albeit with different scopes and intents.
Right, they do. The problem is that you have to get two dozen other people to switch as well (translation: logistical nightmare), so you're all still in the same network, on the same service. If it's just me switching, then I lose the benefit of all that free airtime, and so do the people calling me.
I'm a mac user, and use Address Book, iCal, and iSync. I'm locked into verizon because my whole family is on it, and everyone likes the free airtime for in-network calling.
So I think: "Bluetooth! finally! I can sync my contacts and appointments via bluetooth." I figure, i'll write a little applescript that launches iSync whenever my phone connects. I'll always have all my information as current as possible. how cool. WRONG.You can't even sync your contacts and events with the phone via bluetooth. You have to use a usb cable. A USB CABLE. It's 2005, when I was a kid I though by now I was supposed to have a flying car and get my meals in pill form. I can't even transfer a little bit of data wirelessly? give me a break.
To be honest, it's partially my fault, it says right on apple's iSync page that the phone only syncs via USB. Should have gone there first. But there is a slew of other phones that can update with bluetooth, so it's not the software. Luckily, i was able to return the phone and get one that was equally a piece of junk, but at least it was a free piece of junk.
I realize i'm mostly just venting here, and it feels good. I hope this does become an issue, i hope the general verizon customer realizes how much they're being screwed over. I hope Verizon's attempt to stifle technology backfires big-time. I should probably do more than hope. I should leave verizon. I should probably hack the thing. I should hack the thing, find a verizon exec, and tell him into which orifice he can accept my new creation, then take a picture with the phone, and transfer it across the hacked bluetooth to my laptop, and show him what an asshole he is. </venting>
(Yeah, I'm pissed over it.)
P.S. I promise never again to post such a useless addition to a topic.
That is a myth. The QWERTY layout was NOT designed to slow typists down. It was designed to place the most commonly used keys the farthest apart. Keys on typewriters were linked directly to the arms which printed them on the page, so by placing commonly used ones far apart, they jammed less often. The fact that QWERTY tends to be slower than other methods is an unfortunate side-effect of this engineering.
it's not that the earth isn't curved everywhere...(Your sarcasm and lack of scope intrigue me though) it's just that it is more expensive to creat a larger network due to the loss of line-of-sight (due to the curvature of the earth) and also...signal quality can be degraded when passing through the atmosphere, which it doesn't have to do if it only bounces off one tower.
The truth is, cell phones are fairly widespread in the US. And we have all of the wireless internet, SMS, and whatnot that you speak of. The problems are ones of logistics, land area, cost (both consumer and developer), and yes the lack of the so called "standard" (which would have disadvantages as well as its advantages: i.e. halt in progressive development).
Also, I don't know if NexTEL is even known outside the US but it has a great advantage over regular wireless phones. Which is the digital two-way radio, which is a free phone to phone call without dialing any numbers (you basically use your phone as a walkie-talkie, but its use is unlimited and free) or using any airtime, no long distance(which is something we have a lot of in the US) no roaming. When the patent is up I'm sure it will be pretty widespread.
Personally, I know a few dozen people (including myself) that use their wireless phones as their only phone. But in the US we have excellent and very inexpensive landlines, and until wireless technology can compete in cost and performance, may people just won't bother with it.
hmmm...very concise statement you have made there, your point a was well thought out and delicately crafted piece of poetry. I think we can all see that your intellect and maturity are head and shoulders above the rest of us. Your mother must be proud.
It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Finland for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country. In the US, it takes many more of these installations to cover the distance. It's an issue of cost to the developer.
And yes I agree that a worldwide standard would be an ideal way to begin solving these problems. (kind of lofty though, isn't it? worldwide standards are merely pipe dreams. Imagine if someone had thought of creating a standard with power, and every device/appliance you had would work in any other country without converters and adapters. Or if everyone drove on the same side of the road,or if every CPU fit the same slot/socket, or if railways across the world were consistent in width and gauge. This would just never happen, everyone always thinks that their own method has it's advantages over the other options, and agreements on these matters are hard to come by. The world has a tough time agreeing with itself, and thus why we have war. ) the fact of the matter is that settling on a standard halts development to improve on what is already existing. If perhaps we had a worldwide standard, why would anyone bother to develop a newer, possibly better technology? Progress would grind to a halt and stagnate.
It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Japan for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country. In the US, it takes many more of these installations to cover the distance. (So whereas a handful of relays could cover the whole of Japan, it would require much higher numbers to provide the same wervice in the US) Also, in the US the curvature of the earth is an issue. A wireless call from New York to Seattle must go from the phone to the relay tower, to a satellite, to another relay tower, then to the recipients phone. In Japan, a wireless call doesn't necesarily have to leave the earth. A call could go from a phone to just one cell tower and back to the recipient's phone. So as you can see, the logistics of covering a large landmass create a multitude of problems.
If you did any research into the matter at all...you would have found that insects' perceptive capabilities are astronomically greater than our own. Flies (Diptera) of all sorts have been known to home in on one another from miles away. Furthmore, There is a species of Moth (Lepidoptera) that has been known to find a single distinct mate from over 40 miles away!
Slashdot Mirror
After RTFA, I would just like to point out that Moore doesn't call iTunes or micropayments "a rip-off."
After mentioning the 99c US price for individual iTunes tracks, the interviewer tells Mr. Moore that the UK price is 79p. Mr Moore responds "you're being ripped off." The inference here is that 79p is not equal, given to the exchange rate of US Dollars to UK Pounds, to 99 cents.
This is one of many (growing) examples of the /. summaries being inaccurate, sensational, and combative. I expect this from the comments. In the summary, I expect at least the pretense of some sort of journalistic integrity.
Sigh.
I thought that Girls Just Want to Have Sums.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_just_want_to_have_sums
i remember reading an article written by neal stephenson for wired in the late 90s. somewhere in it he addressed the issue of a 'fiber war' where nations and other actors would begin cutting undersea cables. it's an old article, but i remember some expert referring to it as 'mutually assured destruction'. (like nuclear war.) meaning that once a couple of cables are cut, it's so easy to cut more quickly, and pretty soon all the cables are cut relatively no time at all. an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind; or disconnected in this case.
i was just crawling google news and noticed that a 3rd cable had been cut off the coast of dubai.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSL0125034820080201
details are scarce at this point, but i wonder if the the egypt cable was really an accident. or if it was, has it given some malefactors some ideas? could this turn into a way for political tensions to present themselves?
i remember reading an article written by neal stephenson for wired in the late 90s. somewhere in it he addressed the issue of a 'fiber war' where nations and other actors would begin cutting undersea cables. it's an old article, but i remember some expert referring to it as 'mutually assured destruction'. (like nuclear war.) meaning that once a couple of cables are cut, it's so easy to cut more quickly, and pretty soon all the cables are cut relatively no time at all. an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind; or disconnected in this case.
"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither"
I guess my question to you is: if itunes is difficult to use and a stinker, what legit alternative have you used that's better? i'd like to give it a try.
;)
A few responses:
1. yes, wireless could be a useful and interesting. but there are a lot of drawbacks: battery life, security, legal complications, and ease of use are all to be considered.
2. drm? (i'm assuming you're talking about the itunes store here, not the app.) yeah, drm sucks. simple as that. but we need to keep reminding each other that drm is imposed by the owners of the content, not the distributors. the record companies and movie studios, in this case, would not have signed on to the itunes store if there was no way to lock down the content. they're old school, they don't see new business models.
3. the owners of the content are also to blame for the inability to pull songs of the device easily. they want their content protected. you're only supposed (according to them) to own one copy of each album or song you own, if you have a portable music player, you inherently own two. the record companies originally wanted to DELETE songs from your computer when they were transferred to an ipod. (i'd like to cite that, but don't have the time)
you're right about the re-naming of files within the structure of the ipods software, it sucks if you pull them out raw. however, there are programs that allow you to suck songs off an ipod with ease. they're not legal, technically, but they're out there.
as for your wish to be able to set a photo as a wallpaper, i don't quite understand the function of such a feature. when you're not using the screen to navigate through the UI, how much time do you spend looking at it? when i'm not choosing songs, the screen to my nano is in my pocket.
not that it changes the graph much, but let's at least use concise search criteria.
what it looks like when you search for apple computer, instead of just 'apple'
the article says he was an intern at Roberts Weaver Group when he designed the pen. also, a partnership in any firm is way, way past an internship. i did a quick search for this pen, with no real luck though. i guess we all have to keep guessing
This comment isn't really adding anything to the conversation, but that is exactly what I do. View Digg for the breaking news, view /. for the substance.
Even since digg has implemented their digg/bury commenting system (which was an immense improvement) the substance of the comments are basically flamewar fodder and a place to post a link to a mirror, imho.
I'm a little curious where you're getting these sales figures?
From this TIME article:
and this NARIP document. (Sorry, direct link to a PDF.)
If you insist on making spurious claims about Apple, or any other company for that matter, don't try to disguise them as facts please, that's all we ask. They're certainly not the kings of interoperability, but I can't think of any OS/company that is. no, not even *nix.
Google's service is called Google Print ( print.google.com ) and it's intended to digitize ALL available printed works. Although currently they're only doing a select few libraries.
Yahoo (and now MS it seems) is limiting it's project to digitizing works in the public domain, and works that have been authorized.
So, they've both got projects in the works, albeit with different scopes and intents.
just a heads up, *in case* you didn't know. But Java support for Cocoa will not be supported in the future.
0 7/11/1833252&from=rss
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/
I obviously don't know what your preference is, but I thought it might be useful to know.
Or, more recently, the Xbox blue-screen crash and the Windows Media Center failure at CES?
Right, they do. The problem is that you have to get two dozen other people to switch as well (translation: logistical nightmare), so you're all still in the same network, on the same service. If it's just me switching, then I lose the benefit of all that free airtime, and so do the people calling me.
I'm a mac user, and use Address Book, iCal, and iSync. I'm locked into verizon because my whole family is on it, and everyone likes the free airtime for in-network calling.
So I think: "Bluetooth! finally! I can sync my contacts and appointments via bluetooth." I figure, i'll write a little applescript that launches iSync whenever my phone connects. I'll always have all my information as current as possible. how cool.
WRONG.You can't even sync your contacts and events with the phone via bluetooth. You have to use a usb cable. A USB CABLE. It's 2005, when I was a kid I though by now I was supposed to have a flying car and get my meals in pill form. I can't even transfer a little bit of data wirelessly? give me a break.
To be honest, it's partially my fault, it says right on apple's iSync page that the phone only syncs via USB. Should have gone there first. But there is a slew of other phones that can update with bluetooth, so it's not the software.
Luckily, i was able to return the phone and get one that was equally a piece of junk, but at least it was a free piece of junk.
I realize i'm mostly just venting here, and it feels good. I hope this does become an issue, i hope the general verizon customer realizes how much they're being screwed over. I hope Verizon's attempt to stifle technology backfires big-time. I should probably do more than hope. I should leave verizon. I should probably hack the thing. I should hack the thing, find a verizon exec, and tell him into which orifice he can accept my new creation, then take a picture with the phone, and transfer it across the hacked bluetooth to my laptop, and show him what an asshole he is. </venting>
(Yeah, I'm pissed over it.)
P.S. I promise never again to post such a useless addition to a topic.
That is a myth. The QWERTY layout was NOT designed to slow typists down. It was designed to place the most commonly used keys the farthest apart. Keys on typewriters were linked directly to the arms which printed them on the page, so by placing commonly used ones far apart, they jammed less often.
The fact that QWERTY tends to be slower than other methods is an unfortunate side-effect of this engineering.
it's not that the earth isn't curved everywhere...(Your sarcasm and lack of scope intrigue me though) it's just that it is more expensive to creat a larger network due to the loss of line-of-sight (due to the curvature of the earth) and also...signal quality can be degraded when passing through the atmosphere, which it doesn't have to do if it only bounces off one tower.
The truth is, cell phones are fairly widespread in the US. And we have all of the wireless internet, SMS, and whatnot that you speak of. The problems are ones of logistics, land area, cost (both consumer and developer), and yes the lack of the so called "standard" (which would have disadvantages as well as its advantages: i.e. halt in progressive development).
Also, I don't know if NexTEL is even known outside the US but it has a great advantage over regular wireless phones. Which is the digital two-way radio, which is a free phone to phone call without dialing any numbers (you basically use your phone as a walkie-talkie, but its use is unlimited and free) or using any airtime, no long distance(which is something we have a lot of in the US) no roaming. When the patent is up I'm sure it will be pretty widespread.
Personally, I know a few dozen people (including myself) that use their wireless phones as their only phone. But in the US we have excellent and very inexpensive landlines, and until wireless technology can compete in cost and performance, may people just won't bother with it.
it's also nice that his/her sig is misspelled, nice touch, don't you think?
hmmm...very concise statement you have made there, your point a was well thought out and delicately crafted piece of poetry. I think we can all see that your intellect and maturity are head and shoulders above the rest of us. Your mother must be proud.
It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Finland for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country. In the US, it takes many more of these installations to cover the distance. It's an issue of cost to the developer. And yes I agree that a worldwide standard would be an ideal way to begin solving these problems. (kind of lofty though, isn't it? worldwide standards are merely pipe dreams. Imagine if someone had thought of creating a standard with power, and every device/appliance you had would work in any other country without converters and adapters. Or if everyone drove on the same side of the road,or if every CPU fit the same slot/socket, or if railways across the world were consistent in width and gauge. This would just never happen, everyone always thinks that their own method has it's advantages over the other options, and agreements on these matters are hard to come by. The world has a tough time agreeing with itself, and thus why we have war. ) the fact of the matter is that settling on a standard halts development to improve on what is already existing. If perhaps we had a worldwide standard, why would anyone bother to develop a newer, possibly better technology? Progress would grind to a halt and stagnate.
It has nothing to do with population density. It's about infrastructure. In a relatively small country, like Japan for instance, the amount of cell towers and communication relays is vastly reduced by the small size of the country. In the US, it takes many more of these installations to cover the distance. (So whereas a handful of relays could cover the whole of Japan, it would require much higher numbers to provide the same wervice in the US) Also, in the US the curvature of the earth is an issue. A wireless call from New York to Seattle must go from the phone to the relay tower, to a satellite, to another relay tower, then to the recipients phone. In Japan, a wireless call doesn't necesarily have to leave the earth. A call could go from a phone to just one cell tower and back to the recipient's phone. So as you can see, the logistics of covering a large landmass create a multitude of problems.
I suppose I should correct myself. WMP uses Gracenote which was formerly CDDB. My Bad.
Actually from what I have learned...WMP doesn't use CDDB, it uses some database Microsoft setup.
If you did any research into the matter at all...you would have found that insects' perceptive capabilities are astronomically greater than our own. Flies (Diptera) of all sorts have been known to home in on one another from miles away. Furthmore, There is a species of Moth (Lepidoptera) that has been known to find a single distinct mate from over 40 miles away!