iPods are not cool anymore, they're too common, chavs have them... that's enough of a downer on the coolness factor itself... in fact, the very word iPod is being used as a generic to describe all small form factor portable music players... the only way to have a "cool" iPod these days is to have hacked it to run Linux And yet, the iPod still outsells the "buy me, it's uncool to have an iPod" players more than ten times.
The 22 per ipod is the mean - often the most useful and the one that is frequently implies with the more ambiguous word "average" however in this case its the most useless.
The mode usually requires wider boundries than single elements to be useful (eg 0, 1-5, 6-10, etc) but I would tend to say that the mode or perhaps the median would be the more useful average when tailoring a service to your main user base.
Despite these figures not being announced you can bet that apple have them and almost certainly use them internally - they probably just dont sound as good to the average non mathematical person Oooh, I'm willing to bet the mode is 0 (unless you use something like 1-1000 songs as the second category). And the median is probably going to be lower than 22 too.
That's a half-good point, and I'm gonna tip my hat (half way) and give you half of a "touche'" for it.
But it still isn't quite the same situation. When we used cassette tapes, we could play them in any cassette player we wanted, regardless of who manufactured it. A cassette was a cassette was a cassette.. Unless your tape was Type II, III or IV and the player was fixed to play Type I. Or if the heads were misaligned. Or if you used a different noise reduction...
The average slashdotter is not the average consumer. What you just described is WAY too complicated for say, my sister. So is any music player but an iPod. Now there is the real lock in.
What's the cost of a physical CD? let me tell you, since I have managed some commercial releases:
Indie artists who get stuff replicated in 1000 CD batches from OasisCd or Diskmakers pay about $1.70 per CD. These are PRESSED, retail-ready, in standard jewel cases, in color, with barcodes, spine labels and all the trimmings, shipped to your doorstep. Just as a reference, can you tell us the price for producing on cassettes?
Funny (not as in ha ha) because as I recall back in 1983 the record companies acknowledging that CDs *were* expensive but that the price would come down as the number of CD sales went up.
They were still saying that in 1991-1992 when record stores were knocking vinyl down to 80% to 90% off to clear space for CDs. While albums on Compact Cassettes were still slightly cheaper than CDs. Now think about how much it costs to build something like a cassette and how lonbg it takes to get the music on it - compared to a CD.
Apple are in a dominant position in this market now. If they want to start selling DRM free music, they surely can demand it of the labels themselves - why are they whining to us? Yeah, if Apple wanted to sell non-DRMed music, they could just move to Russia and do so. Say, are there any other signs of insanity in your family?
Oooh, maybe because "parvenu74" claimed in his submission title something that isn't in the article? Nah, nobody on Slashdot would do that, nor not actually RTFA himself. Well, maybe not bother to understand it...
You're right, parvenu74 did make an assertion in the submission title that does not actually appear in the article. And maybe parvenu74 didn't actually read the article or maybe s/he did and didn't understand it. I can not speak to that. But I did read the article and I believe I understood the article. One paragraph that stands out is;
Apple stands to benefit greatly by keeping the FairPlay DRM system up and running. The lock-in afforded by FairPlay creates an Apple ecosystem that essentially ties the iPod to iTunes and to Apple, at least for commercial transactions. Someone has even launched an antitrust suit against Apple over this, though the suit's specific claims are rather broad.
Now, maybe I'm missing something but that statement gives a very strong impression that, no, Apple would not sell DRM free music. A bit further down we get this little tidbit;
Yeah, you are missing that over 90% of the music on iPods don't come from the iTS. You wishing for something to be true based on a sentence in an article doesn't make it so. Hell, if Apple sold non-DRMed music, they could sell to people who have a non-iPod portable music player. Pretend THAT sentence stood in the article.
If Apple opens its DRM, that walled-garden experience could be degraded as customers migrate to other stores with lower prices but more technical problems. This creates a scenario in which we [Arstechnica] think Apple can work its influence to keep DRM alive and well in the face of labels showing doubts--and we're not at all sure that the labels' doubts are that strong. Oooh, if Arstechnica believes that Apple could force the labels to make other stores only sell DRMed music, then it must be true. I mean they've never been wrong, have they?
Again, I must be missing something because again I'm left with the impression that Apple likes their DRM served up with fava beans and a nice chianti.
But the part I really like is;
And Apple's toehold in the movie and TV business is rapidly becoming a beachhead. The only way to bypass Apple and still reach the massive iPod demographic is to throw open the digital gates and begin offering content in open MP3 and MPEG-4 formats that can still be played on Apple's devices--but losing control this way is just as scary to content owners as losing control to Apple. Ahh, so Apple is forcing people to use DRM because they would actually have to not use DRM to not use DRM. Yeah, that makes sense.
And if there's anything we know, it's that the content owners and Apple really like to be in control. Having actually RTFA I think it's quite fair to summarize it as "Apple is DRM's Biggest Backer".
Yeah, the RIAA is absolutely opposed to DRM, it's all Apple's fault. You certainly convinced yourself.
Jesus Christ, if Apple suddenly dissappeared, do you actually believe so would DRM?
Oooh, maybe because "parvenu74" claimed in his submission title something that isn't in the article? Nah, nobody on Slashdot would do that, nor not actually RTFA himself. Well, maybe not bother to understand it...
It means what we knew already. Apple will blame anyone but themselves and try to spin it so that they don't look bad. For example, iTunes doesn't work on Vista at the moment and might cause data corruption on the iPod. Does Apple apologise to their customers for not having a Vista version of their software yet? No, they take jabs at Microsoft for breaking compatibility, instead. As if we hadn't expect, the Apple haters come out of the woodwork, and blame Apple for the RIAA, the war in Iraq and that Zune doesn't work on Vista.
Only months after suffering a horrible terrorist attack, the Spaniards elected a leftist terrorist appeaser who immediately pulled all Spanish troops out of Afghanistan AND Iraq. Europeans are cowards, trolls, and will have to pull the huge planks out of their eyes before pointing at the speck in a Yankee's. Only months after suffering a horrible terrorist attack, the Spaniards kicked out the government who had lied to them about who the terrorists were. Gee, looks like they are smarter than you after all.
Reminds me of the German Scientologist that found asylum in the USA for persecution in Germany - by presenting as evidence letters from companies that she couldn't get a job because she was a member of Scientology. But for some reason the judge wasn't bothered that they were all written in English. I'll pretend he wasn't able to check that they were all written by Scientologists.
What's the difference? Age? Number of followers? Is Christianity or Islam or whatever somehow more "believable"? Something like asking thousands of dollars for the religious scriptures?
...and a stupid defendant for going on the run. I find his claim of fearing for his life just as unfounded as the "threats" used to convict him; It's not like there are huge scientology gangs in prisons. It takes far less Scientologists in prison than there are to kill a man.
I see the point you are trying to make, but Christians don't have the power to damn someone to Hell. Usually it is said that God will damn you, or something like that. It is more of a warning, as it is not within their control. It is similar to someone telling you that if you lie in the middle of the freeway, you are likely to get hit by a car. They aren't threatening you with a car, but warning you of the car's coming. Whether you believe in what the Christians are saying or not isn't relevant, just that the message they are bringing isn't a threat. Oh so it's more something like: "If you don't stop posting here, somebody (who I have no control over) is going to kill you and your family!"
I hate sports as much as the next dork but seriously, if you were a network executive and you had to choose between a guaranteed ratings grabber like FOOTBALL!! or a moderately successful science fiction cartoon which way would you go? If I were a network executive, I wouldn't expect any program I run whenever football isn't available to do as well as football or any other show with a consistent time slot.
So.. MS came up with File, Edit, View and Help... while Apple came up with the GUI and the DESKTOP.
No, that'd be Xerox. Actually, they were the first to implement it. The basics of the WIMP concept were first proposed by Doug Engelbart.
This isn't something I ever thought I'd have to point out in a Slashdot discussion. Apple makes great stuff, but most of their "innovations" come from elsewhere. They just do a great job at implementing them.
Errm, now go and compare the Mac GUI with the GUI Jobs saw at Xerox - and tell me why they are so different. Now tell me why the stuff that's different is not innovative. And while we are at it - does Gates actually claim they came up with " File, Edit, View and Help" - because that was in Windows 1.0? Is he really that demented that he can't remember he rushed out non-working demos of Windows after Jobs invited him to become an application writer for the Mac?
If it were just gov't research, you'd have a point, but:
In addition, if a climate skeptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defense Fund)
Call me when the oil industry becomes a charitable organisation that " promotes environmental quality and sustainable development by supporting efforts to eliminate waste, harness the power of the market, and create a restorative economy".
These guys and organised trolls in name of professional developer houses could be one of the worst ones IT industry ever seen. Yeah, they are real security "experts"
This is not the first time that the MoAB team has had its fun at the expense of users. Those who tried to call not yet released advisories by guessing their file names were treated to extremely disgusting pornographic images. When heise Security reported on the matter and refused to retract its criticism, calling the action "childish", LMH accused Heise of being into "illegal, dishonest, malicious" activities.
He apparently just failed to understand that a German version of the English report had been published hours beforehand and obviously misunderstood the activities of heise readers as a denial-of-service and brute-force attack by the editors. The time frame of the log files published starts after the publication of the German report, and no address is from heise. A polite request to correct the published statements received no reaction.
Just because ExxonMobil paid someone, does not mean the arguments the scientist made are not valid, although they might as well be; same goes for the people who worked at the IPCC report. Let's stick to the actual arguments and data, instead of making cheap ad hominem attacks. Well, you'll be glad to hear (relieving you of the burden to RTFA) that the scientists did not take the the money from Exxon, and simply failed to argue against the report. You may now go back to blaming it on payments by an elusive cabal of international enviroterrorists out to destroy the American Way of Life (TM).
In case you missed it, this is about Exxon trying to buy an opinion, not simply paying for scientific work.
Listen, your chart shows that around 1050 the number of sun-spots has been lower than at almost any other time for that last 1150 years - yet at the same time the temperature has been higher than at any time in the last 750 years apart from the last 50. And if you further look at the time around 1050, you'll see that the sun-spot number minimum comes after the temperature minimum.
Sorry, lack of correlation does not prove causation. And you might as well admit that if this chart came from Mann et all and tried to prove man-made Global Warming, you'ld be up in arms for exactly those reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
The 22 per ipod is the mean - often the most useful and the one that is frequently implies with the more ambiguous word "average" however in this case its the most useless.
The mode usually requires wider boundries than single elements to be useful (eg 0, 1-5, 6-10, etc) but I would tend to say that the mode or perhaps the median would be the more useful average when tailoring a service to your main user base.
Despite these figures not being announced you can bet that apple have them and almost certainly use them internally - they probably just dont sound as good to the average non mathematical person Oooh, I'm willing to bet the mode is 0 (unless you use something like 1-1000 songs as the second category). And the median is probably going to be lower than 22 too.
But it still isn't quite the same situation. When we used cassette tapes, we could play them in any cassette player we wanted, regardless of who manufactured it. A cassette was a cassette was a cassette.
Indie artists who get stuff replicated in 1000 CD batches from OasisCd or Diskmakers pay about $1.70 per CD. These are PRESSED, retail-ready, in standard jewel cases, in color, with barcodes, spine labels and all the trimmings, shipped to your doorstep.
Just as a reference, can you tell us the price for producing on cassettes?
You're right, parvenu74 did make an assertion in the submission title that does not actually appear in the article. And maybe parvenu74 didn't actually read the article or maybe s/he did and didn't understand it. I can not speak to that. But I did read the article and I believe I understood the article. One paragraph that stands out is;
Apple stands to benefit greatly by keeping the FairPlay DRM system up and running. The lock-in afforded by FairPlay creates an Apple ecosystem that essentially ties the iPod to iTunes and to Apple, at least for commercial transactions. Someone has even launched an antitrust suit against Apple over this, though the suit's specific claims are rather broad.Now, maybe I'm missing something but that statement gives a very strong impression that, no, Apple would not sell DRM free music. A bit further down we get this little tidbit;
Yeah, you are missing that over 90% of the music on iPods don't come from the iTS. You wishing for something to be true based on a sentence in an article doesn't make it so. Hell, if Apple sold non-DRMed music, they could sell to people who have a non-iPod portable music player. Pretend THAT sentence stood in the article. If Apple opens its DRM, that walled-garden experience could be degraded as customers migrate to other stores with lower prices but more technical problems. This creates a scenario in which we [Arstechnica] think Apple can work its influence to keep DRM alive and well in the face of labels showing doubts--and we're not at all sure that the labels' doubts are that strong. Oooh, if Arstechnica believes that Apple could force the labels to make other stores only sell DRMed music, then it must be true. I mean they've never been wrong, have they?Again, I must be missing something because again I'm left with the impression that Apple likes their DRM served up with fava beans and a nice chianti.
But the part I really like is;
And Apple's toehold in the movie and TV business is rapidly becoming a beachhead. The only way to bypass Apple and still reach the massive iPod demographic is to throw open the digital gates and begin offering content in open MP3 and MPEG-4 formats that can still be played on Apple's devices--but losing control this way is just as scary to content owners as losing control to Apple. Ahh, so Apple is forcing people to use DRM because they would actually have to not use DRM to not use DRM. Yeah, that makes sense.And if there's anything we know, it's that the content owners and Apple really like to be in control. Having actually RTFA I think it's quite fair to summarize it as "Apple is DRM's Biggest Backer".
Yeah, the RIAA is absolutely opposed to DRM, it's all Apple's fault. You certainly convinced yourself.Jesus Christ, if Apple suddenly dissappeared, do you actually believe so would DRM?
Oh, I don't know, maybe it has something to do with http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/12/ 1349218 Apple being DRM's biggest backer?
Oooh, maybe because "parvenu74" claimed in his submission title something that isn't in the article? Nah, nobody on Slashdot would do that, nor not actually RTFA himself. Well, maybe not bother to understand it...Yeah, but your car could just be hosed down and put on a used-car lot instead of the junk yard.
Which is good for the heirs, but bad for the economy.Reminds me of the German Scientologist that found asylum in the USA for persecution in Germany - by presenting as evidence letters from companies that she couldn't get a job because she was a member of Scientology. But for some reason the judge wasn't bothered that they were all written in English. I'll pretend he wasn't able to check that they were all written by Scientologists.
...and a stupid defendant for going on the run. I find his claim of fearing for his life just as unfounded as the "threats" used to convict him; It's not like there are huge scientology gangs in prisons. It takes far less Scientologists in prison than there are to kill a man.No, that'd be Xerox. Actually, they were the first to implement it. The basics of the WIMP concept were first proposed by Doug Engelbart.
This isn't something I ever thought I'd have to point out in a Slashdot discussion. Apple makes great stuff, but most of their "innovations" come from elsewhere. They just do a great job at implementing them.
Errm, now go and compare the Mac GUI with the GUI Jobs saw at Xerox - and tell me why they are so different. Now tell me why the stuff that's different is not innovative. And while we are at it - does Gates actually claim they came up with " File, Edit, View and Help" - because that was in Windows 1.0? Is he really that demented that he can't remember he rushed out non-working demos of Windows after Jobs invited him to become an application writer for the Mac?I can assure you that is not the case. I consider myself a Linux user above all else. So you can't be arrogant because you use Linux?
In case you missed it, this is about Exxon trying to buy an opinion, not simply paying for scientific work.
PS: only buy American tin foil for your hats!
Sorry, lack of correlation does not prove causation. And you might as well admit that if this chart came from Mann et all and tried to prove man-made Global Warming, you'ld be up in arms for exactly those reasons.