I have, and love, a gen-2 Kindle. Use the 3G support all the time, but not for the general purpose browser.
I travel extensively (100,000 miles a year or so), and us the Kindle as my primary method of reading books (1-2 books a week on average). I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting in an airplane seat while they finish boarding the plane, and remembering that I'd like to read a particular book - or see someone carrying a book that I'd like to read - or see a review of a book in the in-flight magazine that I'd like to read - and I can jump on the Amazon store, purchase it, and have it downloaded in less than a minute. That's a big feature for me.
Admittedly, there are others that can get by without the 3G support, so it's great that they're offering both options.
There's another option entirely - we know the limitations and are OK with it.
I own a Kindle, and was well aware of the DRM restrictions before I bought it. Sure, there are lots of people who have plenty of perfectly legitimate gripes about the DRM, and it *will* restrict them from doing things that they want to do. So they don't purchase it... fine. No problem.
I like the Kindle, and the DRM doesn't prevent me from doing anything I want to do. I wanted an easy way to buy and carry books with me when I travel, and the Kindle does that for me. I don't tend to re-read books when I'm done with them, so if the Kindle service suddenly died, I wouldn't be too broken up about it. Sure there was the initial investment in the reader - but at least for me, the cost was reasonably trivial. I mean, I spend more on bar tabs in a month than I did on the Kindle. The fact that the books I purchase and read are a bit cheaper in electronic version, I've probably saved 25% of the cost of the reader in the few months I've owned it. After a year, it's a break even proposition if you're only looking at the total costs. But for that initial investment, I got the convenience of the reader and the opportunity to read a whole lot more than I would have otherwise. Win-win, in my book.
They're using Netcraft to prove their server count - which reports on IP addresses. Just because there are 50,000 IP addresses responding to port 80, doesn't mean they have 50,000 boxes. The shared hosting arrangements can easily have dozens and dozens of "servers" operating on the same physical box.
Yes, it's still impressive... but not as impressive as it would first appear.
I'm aware Shanghai isn't a country. The parent offered "Shanghai" as an entity with good rail. My point was that it's much easier to have a well-run, efficient, fast rail system when the scale is smaller.
Wait, were you talking about flying in the first example?
If you're getting anal probed for an hour, you're doing something wrong. I fly about 50k miles a year, and it's rare that I spend more than 10 minutes these days getting through security. On the occasions that I have to clear a major airport at the rush (try leaving Washington Dulles on a Thursday afternoon around 4:00pm), it might take 30-45 minutes. On the whole, however, my average security wait time is somewhere in the 15 minute range.
I'm not a huge fan of the security theater at the airports these days, but they've gotten their act together pretty well in most places to get you through quickly.
Europe doesn't have any one entity controlling their rail. Each country and/or cooperative group handles their own and does it well. You couldn't efficiently run an "Amtrak" kind of system that covered all of Europe.
In the heyday of rail travel in the United States, you actually had a pretty similar system. Lots of competing, regional rail systems that you could choose from depending on where you were and where you were going - just like you do in Europe today. Because each region is relatively autonomous, they can do their own region well and let someone else figure out how do the others.
Once you put one big mess of an organization in charge of trying to run it all, and making the profitable regions subsidize the unprofitable ones, the whole thing spirals out of control.
Assuming that your travel takes you within a 300 mile radius (I travel by air about 50,000 miles per year, mostly within the US and Canada, and very few of those trips are within 300 miles), *and* everywhere you want to go is served by the rail system to within 10 minutes of a subway or bus, sure. Unfortunately, even with this plan, that won't happen.
Your numbers are fairly compelling, for those 300 mile trips. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a well run, efficient, high-speed train system.
I live in the Dallas area. If I was going to, say, Houston - that's right inside your 300 mile radius. As I've done this trip a number of times, it looks something like this:
Drive to airport, park, shuttle to terminal, check-in, security : 60 minutes Wait for boarding: 30 minutes Taxi: 15 minutes Flight: 45 minutes Taxi: 15 minutes Deplane, get to rental car: 30 minutes
2:45
Estimate for rail: Drive to train station, park, check-in, security : 45 minutes Wait for boarding: 30 minutes Trip at 300mph: 60 minutes Unload, get to rental car: 15 minutes (I'm assuming that with a well run high speed train into Houston, rental car agencies would set up shop at/near the station just like they do at airports)
2:30
In other words, my expectation is that they'd be about the same. The rail experience would have to offer something that air-travel doesn't; cost, comfort, service, etc.
In this scenario, were the prices similar, I'd probably take the train. Better scenery, similar time, less stress, most likely more comfortable. I'd even take it if it were an hour longer given those factors (though it would have to be a cheaper option at that point).
The problem is, no one has yet be able to do a passenger rail system in the US that competes on cost with the airlines. Amtrak is very expensive, takes way too long, and is really (in my opinion) only an option on long trips for people who refuse to or cannot fly. With Amtrak as a comparison, the tickets would be twice as much and on-time half as much (which is saying something).
I'd bet that more than likely, they'll have one of the colored buttons map to a real chord... so while the chords may not go together to match the song, at least it'll be "musical".
Summary of article: "Our readers predicted these companies will fail. Our readers are idiots, all of these companies will be fine."
Exactly... my first thought when reading these was, "Should they really be contradicting their readership and alienating their subscribers?" I mean, I'm all for journalistic integrity, but when's the last time a publication had any?
By "dead", I meant that while yes, studios are no longer supporting it, it's still a viable format for me. The quality is good, works with the equipment I have, and I can get movies I want (older or not) cheaper than I could get the BluRay equivalents.
For example, I bought all three Bourne movies (which I like) in HD for a total of $30. Amazon shows a 3-pack of them in BluRay for $76.99. At that point, I've broken even with the cost of the player itself (I picked it up for around $40, if I remember correctly).
After that, the other movies I wanted in HD save me money versus purchasing them in BluRay.
I'm not sure where you're looking, but the Fry's near me still has a fairly large selection of HD movies. For me, I don't really care if I buy another HD movie. I've gotten the ones I wanted, and the overall combined cost (player plus movies) is significantly less than purchasing the same movies in BluRay (which I probably would have). So it was a good option for me.
I realize not everyone will agree - and that's ok. But it made financial sense in my case.
Since we don't know how many units are in use, it's hard to get an accurate idea of how many games per active console are sold.
Good point. The other issue is that Slashdot readership isn't really a representative sample of "typical" console owners (or typical anything, for that matter).
I'd lay money that most Slashdot readers with consoles own 10+ games on average per console. Personally, I know I fall into that group. But... most "non-tech" folks I know own 2-5 per console and that's enough.
Some of us play games instead of checking framerates and game engines.
RRoD - admitted problem. Microsoft replaces them, even way after warranty expires.
Disc scratching/destroying - never had an issue there. If you'd read up on that issue, it comes from people turning the console on axis while a disc is spinning. Um.... so?
The point you're missing is that I'm no MS fanboy. The 360 just happens to meet my needs in a game console. Sorry I'm not the l33t gam3r you are, but guess what? For most people, the 360 is more than they need in a console.
Why does 360 vs. PS3 have to be so venomous? There's room in the market for both. Hell, there's room in my house for both.
As for my nick, well... do yourself some research. I've had this nick/email for longer than the music player has been around. Probably longer than you've been alive from the sound of it.
Xbox 360 - mine did the RRoD after almost 3 years of fairly heavy use. Guess what? Microsoft replaced it no questions asked. I'm no Microsoft fan, but that was great customer service. When I bought my 360 originally, I was actually pretty anti-Microsoft (Linux, Mac, yadda yadda). But at the time, I considered it the best console for the money. It was good enough that even if Microsoft hadn't replaced it (and after 3 years, I didn't expect them to), I'd have bought another one anyway.
HD-DVD - just bought my HD-DVD add-on for my 360 about 2 weeks ago. Why? Player is dirt cheap, and there's still a ton of HD movies/TV shows out there. Since it's a "dead" format, most stores are clearing them out DIRT cheap. I picked up 10-15 HD movies the other day for an average of $8 each (brand new, not the used ones Blockbuster is selling). That's way more attractive to me than the $30 average price for the BlueRay stuff (which I also buy for my PS3).
Yeah, I know you're trolling, but take it from someone who owns all three major consoles (360, PS3, Wii) - the 360 is a great console (though I'm not thrilled with the new Dashboard look) and holds its own against the PS3 in every place it matters - performance, graphics, game selection, etc. Sure you can beat it up on tech specs these days, but I still probably play it 2:1 over the PS3.
That's a legitimate problem. At my regular bar, they have a book (produced by one of the beer distributors) that has photos and key identifiers of every potentially valid (i.e. not historical) driver's license for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. That covers most of the potential patrons of this particular neighborhood bar in suburban Texas.
One of my bartenders didn't even like to take U.S. passports, since he hadn't had any training on what a proper one looks like, etc. I gave him a pretty hard time about that, since often when I travel I use my passport for ID and not my driver's license (I try not to have them both on me at the same time, in case I'm mugged, etc).
Again, the big issue is that (at least in the U.S.) the bartender can go to jail for serving a minor or accepting bogus ID, and the establishment can lose their license. The rule of thumb at my regular bar is that if they can't swipe it through their ID check machine (which really just reads the mag stripe and spits out a name and birthdate), they don't accept it.
The effectiveness of the swipe-check notwithstanding, it's really not about checking age - it's about avoiding jail time. Sad, but that's what the legal system has pushed it into... don't try to do the right thing, do the thing that follows the letter of the law or even better transfers responsibility to someone else (in this case, the maker of the card reading machine).
Funny thing about the law - the bartender doesn't have to ask, and if the patron is of age, there's no penalty. If the bartender *does* ask, and the patron can't show valid ID, they can't serve the patron, regardless of their age.
How about the fact that the establishment had a clearly defined, universally enforced policy? He entered and requested service. Any private business is well within their rights to refuse service to anyone, as long as it is not on the basis of a protected class. Failure to show ID for a restricted substance doesn't qualify. Last I checked, it's still OK to discriminate against assholes. Which is unfortunate, since I generally fall into that category much of the time.
The thing you have to remember about bars carding you is that they could care less about minors drinking. The laws are put in place by those who care about it (for whatever reason). Bars care about losing their license to sell alcohol, and by extension, their ability to generate revenue.
Where I live (Texas), the arm of government that is responsible for regulating alcohol sales (TABC) routinely sends older looking people who aren't 21 (I've seen some - hell, some could pass for 40) to try and buy liquor. Serve them, and you can go to jail and your bar can lose its license. Not exactly the end of a good day.
The "We Card Everyone" policies are designed to protect the bartenders and the companies that employ them - the minors be damned.
I'm in an airport bar that has a very conspicuously posted sign "We ID All Guests". Ok, fair enough. I order my beer, bartender cards me, no sweat.
A few minutes later, a man older than me (I'd guess he was mid to late fifties) sits down and orders a drink. The bartender asks for his ID. He starts ranting and raving about how unreasonable this is, finally relents, and pulls out a badge case. He shows her his "Retired Placer County Sheriff's Dept" ID. She looks it over for a second, hands it back to him and says "I'm sorry, sir, I'll need to see something with your birthdate on it."
You could have fried an egg on this guy's forehead.
He did finally show his driver's license, finally got his drink, and *then* noticed the sign hanging behind the bar. He eventually sheepishly apologized, but the rest of us just sat and stared at the moron making a scene.
Slashdot Mirror
I have, and love, a gen-2 Kindle. Use the 3G support all the time, but not for the general purpose browser.
I travel extensively (100,000 miles a year or so), and us the Kindle as my primary method of reading books (1-2 books a week on average). I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting in an airplane seat while they finish boarding the plane, and remembering that I'd like to read a particular book - or see someone carrying a book that I'd like to read - or see a review of a book in the in-flight magazine that I'd like to read - and I can jump on the Amazon store, purchase it, and have it downloaded in less than a minute. That's a big feature for me.
Admittedly, there are others that can get by without the 3G support, so it's great that they're offering both options.
There's another option entirely - we know the limitations and are OK with it.
I own a Kindle, and was well aware of the DRM restrictions before I bought it. Sure, there are lots of people who have plenty of perfectly legitimate gripes about the DRM, and it *will* restrict them from doing things that they want to do. So they don't purchase it... fine. No problem.
I like the Kindle, and the DRM doesn't prevent me from doing anything I want to do. I wanted an easy way to buy and carry books with me when I travel, and the Kindle does that for me. I don't tend to re-read books when I'm done with them, so if the Kindle service suddenly died, I wouldn't be too broken up about it. Sure there was the initial investment in the reader - but at least for me, the cost was reasonably trivial. I mean, I spend more on bar tabs in a month than I did on the Kindle. The fact that the books I purchase and read are a bit cheaper in electronic version, I've probably saved 25% of the cost of the reader in the few months I've owned it. After a year, it's a break even proposition if you're only looking at the total costs. But for that initial investment, I got the convenience of the reader and the opportunity to read a whole lot more than I would have otherwise. Win-win, in my book.
I really think, at the moment, that there are, in reality, too many, you know, excessive, unnecessary, and redundant commas, typically, in this quote.
They're using Netcraft to prove their server count - which reports on IP addresses. Just because there are 50,000 IP addresses responding to port 80, doesn't mean they have 50,000 boxes. The shared hosting arrangements can easily have dozens and dozens of "servers" operating on the same physical box.
Yes, it's still impressive... but not as impressive as it would first appear.
Some vendors would beg to differ...
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/
I'm aware Shanghai isn't a country. The parent offered "Shanghai" as an entity with good rail. My point was that it's much easier to have a well-run, efficient, fast rail system when the scale is smaller.
Wait, were you talking about flying in the first example?
If you're getting anal probed for an hour, you're doing something wrong. I fly about 50k miles a year, and it's rare that I spend more than 10 minutes these days getting through security. On the occasions that I have to clear a major airport at the rush (try leaving Washington Dulles on a Thursday afternoon around 4:00pm), it might take 30-45 minutes. On the whole, however, my average security wait time is somewhere in the 15 minute range.
I'm not a huge fan of the security theater at the airports these days, but they've gotten their act together pretty well in most places to get you through quickly.
It's actually very clear....
Europe doesn't have any one entity controlling their rail. Each country and/or cooperative group handles their own and does it well. You couldn't efficiently run an "Amtrak" kind of system that covered all of Europe.
In the heyday of rail travel in the United States, you actually had a pretty similar system. Lots of competing, regional rail systems that you could choose from depending on where you were and where you were going - just like you do in Europe today. Because each region is relatively autonomous, they can do their own region well and let someone else figure out how do the others.
Once you put one big mess of an organization in charge of trying to run it all, and making the profitable regions subsidize the unprofitable ones, the whole thing spirals out of control.
Assuming that your travel takes you within a 300 mile radius (I travel by air about 50,000 miles per year, mostly within the US and Canada, and very few of those trips are within 300 miles), *and* everywhere you want to go is served by the rail system to within 10 minutes of a subway or bus, sure. Unfortunately, even with this plan, that won't happen.
Your numbers are fairly compelling, for those 300 mile trips. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a well run, efficient, high-speed train system.
I live in the Dallas area. If I was going to, say, Houston - that's right inside your 300 mile radius. As I've done this trip a number of times, it looks something like this:
Drive to airport, park, shuttle to terminal, check-in, security : 60 minutes
Wait for boarding: 30 minutes
Taxi: 15 minutes
Flight: 45 minutes
Taxi: 15 minutes
Deplane, get to rental car: 30 minutes
2:45
Estimate for rail:
Drive to train station, park, check-in, security : 45 minutes
Wait for boarding: 30 minutes
Trip at 300mph: 60 minutes
Unload, get to rental car: 15 minutes
(I'm assuming that with a well run high speed train into Houston, rental car agencies would set up shop at/near the station just like they do at airports)
2:30
In other words, my expectation is that they'd be about the same. The rail experience would have to offer something that air-travel doesn't; cost, comfort, service, etc.
In this scenario, were the prices similar, I'd probably take the train. Better scenery, similar time, less stress, most likely more comfortable. I'd even take it if it were an hour longer given those factors (though it would have to be a cheaper option at that point).
The problem is, no one has yet be able to do a passenger rail system in the US that competes on cost with the airlines. Amtrak is very expensive, takes way too long, and is really (in my opinion) only an option on long trips for people who refuse to or cannot fly. With Amtrak as a comparison, the tickets would be twice as much and on-time half as much (which is saying something).
Germany: 357,000 km^2
Japan: 377,000 km^2
Shanghai: 6340 km^2
United States: 9,826,630 km^2
Maglev speed: 300 mph
757 Economical Cruising speed: 530 mph
You figure it out.
I'd bet that more than likely, they'll have one of the colored buttons map to a real chord... so while the chords may not go together to match the song, at least it'll be "musical".
I'm pretty sure we demonstrated this technique back in Space Quest III...
Oh come on, I'm not the only one who remembers that game!
Interesting perspective... a [potentially] tongue-in-cheek analysis to absolve them of retribution from shareholders and advertisers...
Exactly... my first thought when reading these was, "Should they really be contradicting their readership and alienating their subscribers?" I mean, I'm all for journalistic integrity, but when's the last time a publication had any?
Holy crap, you actually got my point! You must be new here. *grin*
By "dead", I meant that while yes, studios are no longer supporting it, it's still a viable format for me. The quality is good, works with the equipment I have, and I can get movies I want (older or not) cheaper than I could get the BluRay equivalents.
For example, I bought all three Bourne movies (which I like) in HD for a total of $30. Amazon shows a 3-pack of them in BluRay for $76.99. At that point, I've broken even with the cost of the player itself (I picked it up for around $40, if I remember correctly).
After that, the other movies I wanted in HD save me money versus purchasing them in BluRay.
I'm not sure where you're looking, but the Fry's near me still has a fairly large selection of HD movies. For me, I don't really care if I buy another HD movie. I've gotten the ones I wanted, and the overall combined cost (player plus movies) is significantly less than purchasing the same movies in BluRay (which I probably would have). So it was a good option for me.
I realize not everyone will agree - and that's ok. But it made financial sense in my case.
Good point. The other issue is that Slashdot readership isn't really a representative sample of "typical" console owners (or typical anything, for that matter).
I'd lay money that most Slashdot readers with consoles own 10+ games on average per console. Personally, I know I fall into that group. But... most "non-tech" folks I know own 2-5 per console and that's enough.
Wow. Just... wow. Anonymous coward indeed.
Some of us play games instead of checking framerates and game engines.
RRoD - admitted problem. Microsoft replaces them, even way after warranty expires.
Disc scratching/destroying - never had an issue there. If you'd read up on that issue, it comes from people turning the console on axis while a disc is spinning. Um.... so?
The point you're missing is that I'm no MS fanboy. The 360 just happens to meet my needs in a game console. Sorry I'm not the l33t gam3r you are, but guess what? For most people, the 360 is more than they need in a console.
Why does 360 vs. PS3 have to be so venomous? There's room in the market for both. Hell, there's room in my house for both.
As for my nick, well... do yourself some research. I've had this nick/email for longer than the music player has been around. Probably longer than you've been alive from the sound of it.
I own 2 of the 3.
Xbox 360 - mine did the RRoD after almost 3 years of fairly heavy use. Guess what? Microsoft replaced it no questions asked. I'm no Microsoft fan, but that was great customer service. When I bought my 360 originally, I was actually pretty anti-Microsoft (Linux, Mac, yadda yadda). But at the time, I considered it the best console for the money. It was good enough that even if Microsoft hadn't replaced it (and after 3 years, I didn't expect them to), I'd have bought another one anyway.
HD-DVD - just bought my HD-DVD add-on for my 360 about 2 weeks ago. Why? Player is dirt cheap, and there's still a ton of HD movies/TV shows out there. Since it's a "dead" format, most stores are clearing them out DIRT cheap. I picked up 10-15 HD movies the other day for an average of $8 each (brand new, not the used ones Blockbuster is selling). That's way more attractive to me than the $30 average price for the BlueRay stuff (which I also buy for my PS3).
Yeah, I know you're trolling, but take it from someone who owns all three major consoles (360, PS3, Wii) - the 360 is a great console (though I'm not thrilled with the new Dashboard look) and holds its own against the PS3 in every place it matters - performance, graphics, game selection, etc. Sure you can beat it up on tech specs these days, but I still probably play it 2:1 over the PS3.
At first, I read that as "Save The New Kids Music Foundation", as in New Kids On The Block... I thought, "Even the RIAA can't be that cruel!"
How's that tin-foil hat fit?
That's a legitimate problem. At my regular bar, they have a book (produced by one of the beer distributors) that has photos and key identifiers of every potentially valid (i.e. not historical) driver's license for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. That covers most of the potential patrons of this particular neighborhood bar in suburban Texas.
One of my bartenders didn't even like to take U.S. passports, since he hadn't had any training on what a proper one looks like, etc. I gave him a pretty hard time about that, since often when I travel I use my passport for ID and not my driver's license (I try not to have them both on me at the same time, in case I'm mugged, etc).
Again, the big issue is that (at least in the U.S.) the bartender can go to jail for serving a minor or accepting bogus ID, and the establishment can lose their license. The rule of thumb at my regular bar is that if they can't swipe it through their ID check machine (which really just reads the mag stripe and spits out a name and birthdate), they don't accept it.
The effectiveness of the swipe-check notwithstanding, it's really not about checking age - it's about avoiding jail time. Sad, but that's what the legal system has pushed it into... don't try to do the right thing, do the thing that follows the letter of the law or even better transfers responsibility to someone else (in this case, the maker of the card reading machine).
Funny thing about the law - the bartender doesn't have to ask, and if the patron is of age, there's no penalty. If the bartender *does* ask, and the patron can't show valid ID, they can't serve the patron, regardless of their age.
How about the fact that the establishment had a clearly defined, universally enforced policy? He entered and requested service. Any private business is well within their rights to refuse service to anyone, as long as it is not on the basis of a protected class. Failure to show ID for a restricted substance doesn't qualify. Last I checked, it's still OK to discriminate against assholes. Which is unfortunate, since I generally fall into that category much of the time.
The thing you have to remember about bars carding you is that they could care less about minors drinking. The laws are put in place by those who care about it (for whatever reason). Bars care about losing their license to sell alcohol, and by extension, their ability to generate revenue.
Where I live (Texas), the arm of government that is responsible for regulating alcohol sales (TABC) routinely sends older looking people who aren't 21 (I've seen some - hell, some could pass for 40) to try and buy liquor. Serve them, and you can go to jail and your bar can lose its license. Not exactly the end of a good day.
The "We Card Everyone" policies are designed to protect the bartenders and the companies that employ them - the minors be damned.
Favorite "getting carded" story:
I'm in an airport bar that has a very conspicuously posted sign "We ID All Guests". Ok, fair enough. I order my beer, bartender cards me, no sweat.
A few minutes later, a man older than me (I'd guess he was mid to late fifties) sits down and orders a drink. The bartender asks for his ID. He starts ranting and raving about how unreasonable this is, finally relents, and pulls out a badge case. He shows her his "Retired Placer County Sheriff's Dept" ID. She looks it over for a second, hands it back to him and says "I'm sorry, sir, I'll need to see something with your birthdate on it."
You could have fried an egg on this guy's forehead.
He did finally show his driver's license, finally got his drink, and *then* noticed the sign hanging behind the bar. He eventually sheepishly apologized, but the rest of us just sat and stared at the moron making a scene.
You've never been to Manhattan, have you?