I think we have to add "home users" to the list now, too. MS is too entrenched in the office, but an awful lot of people around here (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as well as my online contacts) are replacing their ageing XP boxes with Macs of some sort.
... the iPod isn't that advanced, and the interface isn't that incredible.
But that's the funny thing. Compare the iPod's UI to the Sansa or something; the iPod isn't that advanced and the interface isn't that incredible, but it's better than the competition.
I used a Rio Karma for a few years; great device, but a pain in the butt at times, mostly due to their proprietary software for copying files or music to the device. I also wanted something a bit smaller without moving parts, since I'm mostly listening to audiobooks and podcasts while commuting these days.
Grabbed a Sansa e270 (a 6GB Flash-based player, with a microSD slot)... the thing is supposed to just mount as a USB mass storage device. Which it did, sometimes. How sad can your firmware be if you can't get that basic functionality right 100% of the time? Inside, the UI was terrible, and the device somehow only supported two (count 'em) volume settings. Even the original Rio PMP-300 I had featured a normal volume control.
Tried one of the new iPod Nanos at the Apple store and the simplicity of the UI was just perfect. And it works properly with my XP boxes and my iBook. It's my second-favourite gadget ever (my Nintendo DS Lite is still number one).
It was obviously meant to kick their design/marketing teams in the ass and make them stop sucking, but apparently nobody was paying attention (probably fooling around with their Blackberries during the meeting).
I think they tricked you; I'm using messenger at work with my work email address, and at home with the same email address I've had for seven years or whatever. In both cases, it's MS's public servers, not a private one.
A few months ago I helped someone sign in to Messenger and the process for signing up with an existing email address was somewhat hidden and non-trivial compared to the huge flashing banners ordering you to use a Hotmail account. I may have had to Google for an old sign-up page that still works, I can't remember exactly.
Co[HV] runs just peachy with BootCamp, even on the meagre GMA950 integrated video on the low-end machines. Once Parallels and/or VMWare get hardware 3D acceleration worked out, it'll be awesome.
I'm hoping the move to NCSoft will add some QA/testing muscle to the development team. The Co[HV] client has always been a bit iffy on ATI video cards (pretty sure that's a potential market of more than 20 million) and it really doesn't run well on Vista (another large potential market).
I'd really like to see them add a Mac client; porting to another platform always flushes out bugs, and adding one full-time Mac developer wouldn't impact their revenue very much.
So, in 175 years or so, 100% of the population of the United States will be on this secret list. I wonder if they'll have a process for getting off the list by then.
If Cryptic would port (or let someone port, yes I'm volunteering) the City of Heroes/City of Villains client to OS X, I could scrap my BootCamp plans for when I get a new laptop.
Come on, guys, it'll flush out bugs in your code, and I promise not to laugh at your source control system!
This is true, but Obsidian basically did the same thing with Neverwinter Nights 2. I pre-ordered because it seemed like a slam-dunk (and hey, it'd be better than KoToR2 because they would've learned their lessons, and didn't have Lucasarts rushing the thing out), but no.
Horrible performance, loads of bugs, Plot Driven Doors, pointless quests, etc. Which is a shame, because the start of KoToR2 was absolutely awesome, they've got some writing talent in there somewhere.
Not buying Mask of the Betrayer, I think I've given up on PC gaming completely except for my City of Heroes addiction.
Outlook 2007 is filled with fail because, instead of using Internet Explorer 7 as its HTML renderer, they wrote their own. Which implements a subset of HTML 4.01 and CSS 1. That's right folks, it implements parts of the web standards from 1999.
Yes, HTML email is bad form, but some people (such as myself) are "forced" to produce HTML newsletters, and TPTB really like these things to be readable by folks running the de-facto business email client.
If I had my way, I'd mail out a link to the newsletter (hey, it's available online anyway), or even a PDF version... at least then you're guaranteed that it'll look the same on everyone's machine.
Yeah, I'm starting to think I should switch over to Mail.app. But... extensions... And setting up all of my mail filters again is going to be obnoxious.
Thunderbird seems to handle IMAP better than Mail.app, too, which is really annoying. Like, folders don't refresh properly, for example.
Hmm, I just checked my iBook, and the only TB extensions I'm using are Display Mail User Agent (adds an icon indicating the sender's mail client), Growl Notifications (IIRC there's some sort of hackery that lets Mail.app use Growl), and MessageFaces (displays XFaces and Gravatar icons if the sender has one)...
So you're saying that every teenager in the world should be locked up for stealing orgasms via masturbation?
Madness!
Besides, it's not copyright infringement, it's patent infringement on my U.S. Patent for a Method and Apparatus for Manual Stimulation of the Genitals Leading to Orgasm. Pay up, kids.
Re:Woud be better if not constrained
on
ZOMG New Zunes
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· Score: 1
Note that the ridiculously rich bastard is too cheap to buy his old uncle a Zune. What a dick.
Re:Draw your own conclusions...
on
ZOMG New Zunes
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· Score: 1
Mine's filled with CDs I ripped myself from my own CDs (and a couple episodes of Firefly, also ripped myself from my own DVDs) and free audio from the likes of Escape Pod, Pseudo Pod and Podiobooks.com.
Despite Sony's recent assertion that I'm somehow "stealing" the music that I rip from the CDs I own, I'm Canadian, so I don't expect to be hauled off for extraordinary rendition by the RIAA. Maybe I'll go legally download some music to see if I should bother investing in any new CDs this month!
Re: Who buys Zunes any way?
on
ZOMG New Zunes
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· Score: 1
In general, I presume/. folks prefer the iRiver devices, since they support Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (as does the Rio Karma I've got... RIP, Rio). IIRC they're also supported by open source firmware replacements.
My new favourite is the new iPod Nano. The UI is soooo slick and sensible, it syncs nicely with my laptop (a long-in-the-tooth iBook), it's really light yet sturdy, and the wee screen is quite good for watching video, which surprised me. I've been using it to listen to podcasts/audio books while commuting, and watching Firefly while I work out. This is my second favourite tech gadget ever (the first being my Nintendo DS).
Before that, I tried a Sansa e270, which was a piece of crap. It had two (count 'em!) volume settings (WTF), the UI and controls were really clunky, and it only sometimes mounted properly as a USB mass storage device, which is its only interface. WTF, how do you screw up presenting a Flash device as a USB mass storage device?
Before that, I was using the aforementioned Rio Karma, a 20GB hard drive-based player from just before Rio was bought and summarily executed. Despite being dropped several times, it's still working great, I just wanted to move to a smaller device without moving parts. Also, it uses proprietary transfer software instead of just being a mass storage device, which was a bit annoying.
My brilliant MMO idea is Pokemon. Make an online Pokemon game for the DS and Wii, and a Java-based client for computers. Everyone plays on the same servers, and your platform is entire irrelevant. Allow offline play and local area play (you lose the Internet players, and anything that needs to be on the servers, but you can still move around the area, interact with NPCs, battle random monsters, etc.).
My Rio Karma doesn't present itself as a USB mass storage device, you have to use a not-that-great Java app (served from the Karma's web browser) to upload files. There's a Rio Karma FUSE filesystem, but I haven't ported it to Mac OS X yet.
The Sansa e270 I (briefly) tried presented as a mass storage device, but they screwed even that up... getting it to mount on a Mac was rather iffy. How do you mess that up, even the $0.50 USB 2.0 chipsets in cheap external drive enclosures work properly. Then again, this was the MP3 player with two (count 'em) volume settings.
So, you're saying this is another HD-related bait-and-switch, and that all other Blu-Ray players are going to be "obsolete" when the standard changes?
That sort of crap has been keeping me far, far away from HD TVs and tuners for ages. It seems every year or two the standards and demands of the media dinosaurs make the existing hardware useless, or require another expensive adaptor of some sort (new tuner, new cables, whatever).
Guess I'll add another few years to my "ignore this HD stuff" plan so things can settle down. Again ('cause tuners/TVs/etc. seem to be standardizing).
Actually, the article isn't about allowing iPod/iPhone/Mac clones, it's about letting third parties provide software and media for the iPod and iPhone. Licensing the DRM so other stores can sell iPod-capable audio and video, so customers can choose. Opening the iPhone so you can choose your own cellular carrier and run third party applications on it, and so you don't have to re-buy your music 2-3 times to use it as a ringtone.
I agree with the essay, but then again, I'm a Canadian, and we can't get iPhones up here because Rogers already sells other phones with similar functionality, and they'll want to push out all their inventory before they "introduce" the iPhone whenever it's convenient for them. That's ridiculous, I'm sure Telus or Bell would be more than happy to allow customers to use their networks (assuming they've got GSM-capable networks, I'm pretty clueless about cellular) and sell them iPhone hardware.
Lock-in is stupid for so very many reasons, but lock-in preventing you from using any of a number of basically identical service providers is extremely stupid.
That's not how MBAs think though. If their numbers dropped for a month because of the price reduction (while the advertising ramps up and before the wave of new customers comes in), they'd have a fit.
Still wondering where I sign up for this class-action suit; we've got two phones, and have been paying this "support the monopoly" fee for 7-10 years now.
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I think we have to add "home users" to the list now, too. MS is too entrenched in the office, but an awful lot of people around here (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as well as my online contacts) are replacing their ageing XP boxes with Macs of some sort.
But that's the funny thing. Compare the iPod's UI to the Sansa or something; the iPod isn't that advanced and the interface isn't that incredible, but it's better than the competition.
I used a Rio Karma for a few years; great device, but a pain in the butt at times, mostly due to their proprietary software for copying files or music to the device. I also wanted something a bit smaller without moving parts, since I'm mostly listening to audiobooks and podcasts while commuting these days.
Grabbed a Sansa e270 (a 6GB Flash-based player, with a microSD slot)... the thing is supposed to just mount as a USB mass storage device. Which it did, sometimes. How sad can your firmware be if you can't get that basic functionality right 100% of the time? Inside, the UI was terrible, and the device somehow only supported two (count 'em) volume settings. Even the original Rio PMP-300 I had featured a normal volume control.
Tried one of the new iPod Nanos at the Apple store and the simplicity of the UI was just perfect. And it works properly with my XP boxes and my iBook. It's my second-favourite gadget ever (my Nintendo DS Lite is still number one).
It was obviously meant to kick their design/marketing teams in the ass and make them stop sucking, but apparently nobody was paying attention (probably fooling around with their Blackberries during the meeting).
I think they tricked you; I'm using messenger at work with my work email address, and at home with the same email address I've had for seven years or whatever. In both cases, it's MS's public servers, not a private one.
A few months ago I helped someone sign in to Messenger and the process for signing up with an existing email address was somewhat hidden and non-trivial compared to the huge flashing banners ordering you to use a Hotmail account. I may have had to Google for an old sign-up page that still works, I can't remember exactly.
What the heck... Halifax had such a huge problem with people stealing squirrels from parks that they needed to pass a law making it illegal?!
Co[HV] runs just peachy with BootCamp, even on the meagre GMA950 integrated video on the low-end machines. Once Parallels and/or VMWare get hardware 3D acceleration worked out, it'll be awesome.
I'm hoping the move to NCSoft will add some QA/testing muscle to the development team. The Co[HV] client has always been a bit iffy on ATI video cards (pretty sure that's a potential market of more than 20 million) and it really doesn't run well on Vista (another large potential market).
I'd really like to see them add a Mac client; porting to another platform always flushes out bugs, and adding one full-time Mac developer wouldn't impact their revenue very much.
I doubt "liaisons with staff members" would be a fireable offence at MS, Gates married one of his subordinates a number of years back.
Maybe he just stopped showing up for work. "I wouldn't say I've been missing work..."
He probably bought an iPod.
So, in 175 years or so, 100% of the population of the United States will be on this secret list. I wonder if they'll have a process for getting off the list by then.
The airlines are going to be pissed.
If Cryptic would port (or let someone port, yes I'm volunteering) the City of Heroes/City of Villains client to OS X, I could scrap my BootCamp plans for when I get a new laptop.
Come on, guys, it'll flush out bugs in your code, and I promise not to laugh at your source control system!
This is true, but Obsidian basically did the same thing with Neverwinter Nights 2. I pre-ordered because it seemed like a slam-dunk (and hey, it'd be better than KoToR2 because they would've learned their lessons, and didn't have Lucasarts rushing the thing out), but no.
Horrible performance, loads of bugs, Plot Driven Doors, pointless quests, etc. Which is a shame, because the start of KoToR2 was absolutely awesome, they've got some writing talent in there somewhere.
Not buying Mask of the Betrayer, I think I've given up on PC gaming completely except for my City of Heroes addiction.
Outlook 2007 is filled with fail because, instead of using Internet Explorer 7 as its HTML renderer, they wrote their own. Which implements a subset of HTML 4.01 and CSS 1. That's right folks, it implements parts of the web standards from 1999.
Yes, HTML email is bad form, but some people (such as myself) are "forced" to produce HTML newsletters, and TPTB really like these things to be readable by folks running the de-facto business email client.
If I had my way, I'd mail out a link to the newsletter (hey, it's available online anyway), or even a PDF version... at least then you're guaranteed that it'll look the same on everyone's machine.
Yeah, I'm starting to think I should switch over to Mail.app. But... extensions... And setting up all of my mail filters again is going to be obnoxious.
Thunderbird seems to handle IMAP better than Mail.app, too, which is really annoying. Like, folders don't refresh properly, for example.
Hmm, I just checked my iBook, and the only TB extensions I'm using are Display Mail User Agent (adds an icon indicating the sender's mail client), Growl Notifications (IIRC there's some sort of hackery that lets Mail.app use Growl), and MessageFaces (displays XFaces and Gravatar icons if the sender has one)...
So you're saying that every teenager in the world should be locked up for stealing orgasms via masturbation?
Madness!
Besides, it's not copyright infringement, it's patent infringement on my U.S. Patent for a Method and Apparatus for Manual Stimulation of the Genitals Leading to Orgasm. Pay up, kids.
Note that the ridiculously rich bastard is too cheap to buy his old uncle a Zune. What a dick.
Mine's filled with CDs I ripped myself from my own CDs (and a couple episodes of Firefly, also ripped myself from my own DVDs) and free audio from the likes of Escape Pod, Pseudo Pod and Podiobooks.com.
Despite Sony's recent assertion that I'm somehow "stealing" the music that I rip from the CDs I own, I'm Canadian, so I don't expect to be hauled off for extraordinary rendition by the RIAA. Maybe I'll go legally download some music to see if I should bother investing in any new CDs this month!
In general, I presume /. folks prefer the iRiver devices, since they support Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (as does the Rio Karma I've got... RIP, Rio). IIRC they're also supported by open source firmware replacements.
My new favourite is the new iPod Nano. The UI is soooo slick and sensible, it syncs nicely with my laptop (a long-in-the-tooth iBook), it's really light yet sturdy, and the wee screen is quite good for watching video, which surprised me. I've been using it to listen to podcasts/audio books while commuting, and watching Firefly while I work out. This is my second favourite tech gadget ever (the first being my Nintendo DS).
Before that, I tried a Sansa e270, which was a piece of crap. It had two (count 'em!) volume settings (WTF), the UI and controls were really clunky, and it only sometimes mounted properly as a USB mass storage device, which is its only interface. WTF, how do you screw up presenting a Flash device as a USB mass storage device?
Before that, I was using the aforementioned Rio Karma, a 20GB hard drive-based player from just before Rio was bought and summarily executed. Despite being dropped several times, it's still working great, I just wanted to move to a smaller device without moving parts. Also, it uses proprietary transfer software instead of just being a mass storage device, which was a bit annoying.
I hope it's like Populous 2 instead of like that awful 3D Populous a few years back.
There's Age of Empires III, too, isn't there? Some RTS like that, IIRC.
My brilliant MMO idea is Pokemon. Make an online Pokemon game for the DS and Wii, and a Java-based client for computers. Everyone plays on the same servers, and your platform is entire irrelevant. Allow offline play and local area play (you lose the Internet players, and anything that needs to be on the servers, but you can still move around the area, interact with NPCs, battle random monsters, etc.).
This would sell a billion copies.
You've spelled "Lobbyists" strangely there.
My Rio Karma doesn't present itself as a USB mass storage device, you have to use a not-that-great Java app (served from the Karma's web browser) to upload files. There's a Rio Karma FUSE filesystem, but I haven't ported it to Mac OS X yet.
The Sansa e270 I (briefly) tried presented as a mass storage device, but they screwed even that up... getting it to mount on a Mac was rather iffy. How do you mess that up, even the $0.50 USB 2.0 chipsets in cheap external drive enclosures work properly. Then again, this was the MP3 player with two (count 'em) volume settings.
So, you're saying this is another HD-related bait-and-switch, and that all other Blu-Ray players are going to be "obsolete" when the standard changes?
That sort of crap has been keeping me far, far away from HD TVs and tuners for ages. It seems every year or two the standards and demands of the media dinosaurs make the existing hardware useless, or require another expensive adaptor of some sort (new tuner, new cables, whatever).
Guess I'll add another few years to my "ignore this HD stuff" plan so things can settle down. Again ('cause tuners/TVs/etc. seem to be standardizing).
Actually, the article isn't about allowing iPod/iPhone/Mac clones, it's about letting third parties provide software and media for the iPod and iPhone. Licensing the DRM so other stores can sell iPod-capable audio and video, so customers can choose. Opening the iPhone so you can choose your own cellular carrier and run third party applications on it, and so you don't have to re-buy your music 2-3 times to use it as a ringtone.
I agree with the essay, but then again, I'm a Canadian, and we can't get iPhones up here because Rogers already sells other phones with similar functionality, and they'll want to push out all their inventory before they "introduce" the iPhone whenever it's convenient for them. That's ridiculous, I'm sure Telus or Bell would be more than happy to allow customers to use their networks (assuming they've got GSM-capable networks, I'm pretty clueless about cellular) and sell them iPhone hardware.
Lock-in is stupid for so very many reasons, but lock-in preventing you from using any of a number of basically identical service providers is extremely stupid.
Welcome to the secret No Fly List, sucker!
I've said too much...
OH SHI~
That's not how MBAs think though. If their numbers dropped for a month because of the price reduction (while the advertising ramps up and before the wave of new customers comes in), they'd have a fit.
Still wondering where I sign up for this class-action suit; we've got two phones, and have been paying this "support the monopoly" fee for 7-10 years now.