This isn't an XOR problem, so who cares which is "more important", especially when the result for using Open Source is the same either way?
Well, if you're trying to persuade someone/a group of people to adopt OSS, and you don't have the information about each individual's motivating factors, understanding which are the more likely is useful, no?
Particularly if you're spending money on communication channels, remembering the old quote of Half my ad spend is wasted. I wish I knew which half.
Somehow I am a little doubtful, given that the article does not state which format the songs will be distributed in.
Music, Retail and Tech Leaders to Offer "slotMusic(TM)": High Quality, DRM-Free MP3 Music on microSD(TM) Cards
...assuming that MP3 is the actual format, rather than the generic 'digital music' sense that the media has often used. The Press Release does seem to support the format reading, though.
tbh, this is a way of bringing together the consumers' desire for digital convenience - including lack of DRM - with existing distribution channels. Which is no bad thing, all in all.
I am currently relocating to a new area as well, and actually tried to get crime stats on potential areas I'd be living in (thinking they may have already achieved that ability), they haven't got them yet, but I hope my wish list is not too far away.
If you're moving to the UK, then go take a look at these guys, who have bought CACI's ACORN geodemographic dataset, and combined with publically available datasets on education, crime etc, to produce a view on what that area is like.
Here in Birmingham... jams backed up across islands causing more jams which looped all the way around town to hold up the traffic in the original jam even more. We just need more roads.
2 points of information:
For non residents of the English Midlands: an Island is a roundabout.
Increasing transport capacity has been clearly proven to result in more traffic; it does not reduce congestion in anything other than the very short term. Predict and provide has been shown time and time again to be a failed model to avoiding jams (same for airport landing slots too, incidentally). If you want to avoid the gridlock, incentivise demand reduction.
To be more correct: Intraverts gain their energy from being alone. Being with other people takes effort.
Now, this is just a preference, so it can be overcome, but it takes effort and may not be accomplished as effectively as an Extravert (just like a right-hander writing with their left hand). Many Intraverts find it tiring, and requiring a period alone to re-energise.
IM/virtual communication can lower (but probably not remove) the effort required to communicate with others, particularly compared to the phone or being face to face with people.
As a pretty strong Intravert (yes, thanks for the MBTI introduction), I have to say that in many cases, the alternative to being IM'd is being *phoned* which is way more intrusive than IM. This does require that you've got your IM to *not* force itself to a foreground window on every new message, nor make an intrusive sound (my work machine has the sound off anyway).
I also find that when I need to talk to someone in an interactive way (but when time is not absolutely pressing), IM has a much lower stress barrier than phoning them, or (worse) going to see them.
I'd therefore posit that the availability of IM is often a positive thing for Intraverts, where it can substitute for the more intrusive phone and face to face media.
A while back, I was musing how far we have come. Our ancestors feared the elements, but in my house, they are at my command. I want it colder--it become colder. I want it hotter, it become hotter. I can raise and lower the humidity. I want water to flow, it flows. I want wind, I have wind.
Funnily enough, the Romans had a lot of that (if you were rich enough). But a few short centuries later, it was unimaginable to the people, even in the lands that had had it.
I wonder whether, in a future era of low fossil fuel availability, our descendents will similarly look at our ability to stand under a constant stream of hot water, at any time, in any season, with utter bafflement...
That unfortunately is the reason most quoted for using e-mail in the first place. Most upper management (and middle management) view e-mail not as a communication tool, but as a way to CYA. The phrase "Send it to me in an e-mail." is uttered far to often not because they need reminding or somehow didn't hear you just tell them that, but because they want it in writing.
You say that like it's A Bad Thing...
It's an *incredibly* useful way of finding out what was agreed and killing arguments stone dead - it's an automatically timestamped journal almost.
Also useful for contractual communications - "Please confirm receipt of the deliverables" when sending deliverables is needed to invoice.
Be genuinely interested in other people. Everyone has something interesting about them. Figure out what it is and then let them talk about it. Remember, whoever talks most in a conversation is generally going to think it was a good conversation.
More companies are deathly confounded by "let's get along" managers who believe teamwork and tolerance are more important than actual good work.
And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the Myers-Briggs 'T' personality preference in extremis. Score bonus points for not recognising that it's a preference, equally [generically] valid to its opposite 'F' preference.
Of course, the reality is that:
Teamwork and tolerance are generally important in a company of people to produce work together, particularly if you take the longer term view
T ('screw the people for results')to F ('screw the results for the people') is a continuum
The balance point of maximum effectiveness on the continuum will vary by context.
Setting the working environment's position on the continuum is a choice, not an inevitability (overcoming personality preferences of team-members)
I don't want to work for managers that don't get this
Or you could read the short version: MultiNational MegaCorp with a History of fair-use violating DRM enforcement and downright corporate shenanigans (rootkit, anyone?) releases DRM-free program more difficult to operate than the-clock-on-your-vcr and of actual negative value to end-customers.
Consensus seems to be that 6 months from now SonyBMG will issue an "I Told You So" press release claiming they went all out to allow DRM-free downloads and nobody wanted it.
Yep, they've got form in this. That's *exactly* how they lost the portable media player market to Apple. Young'uns here may not remember the degree to which Sony owned the space with the Walkman, but that's why Jobs has wanted Apple to be Sony since he came back - innovative; stylish; easy to use; ubiquitous.
But that's Sony in the old, consumer electronics focused days, before they were enslaved by their content arm.
Film cameras are still objectively "better" than digital cameras, when you consider contrast and colour-balance and all that.
I guarantee that if we compared the pics between a film camera and a digital SLR, you either wouldn't be able to distinguish between the two, or you'd pick the digital photos as being the better of the bunch.
To enlarge (ouch, sorry) on this a bit: there is more quality sensitivity in the *optics* and the *output method* than in the image capture method.
I use Canon EOS film and digital bodies with a range of lenses, plus a point and shoot for take-to-the-pub/allow-children-to-use convenience.
Now, if I compare the film prints from a consumer lab with the digital output, I know I'll have a whole bunch more detail in the digital images, even in JPEG. However, when I compare large-ish format (10x8s and up) hand prints I've made with care from b/w negs I've developed, film *just* edges it. I've not compared RAW output, mind.
If I compare those same prints with digital images taken with duff lenses (read: any non-SLR digicam), then all the megapixels in the world won't make the difference. But consumer advertising can't package improved lens quality into a nice feature headline (other than Sony's "Carl Zeiss Lens" which doesn't tell me a *great* deal), so no-one cares.
Most of his advice is utter bunk, and his though process is entirely disconnected from logic and reality.
...which presumably is how he got his doctorate, got all those Patents and put together all the academic publications. And if you're playing time served willy waving, then he had your ten years of experience over ten years ago.
Sounds like standard subjective kneejerkism to me, rather than a thought out critique of his methodology. Which, incidentally, only lightly depends on heuristics, and has a lot more to do with objective testing. But hey, you knew that because you've read more than his alertboxes. Oh, wait...
He somehow thinks that firearm suppliers should be held liable for the actions of firearm users. If this seems sane to you, consider applying it to computers or vehicles. (on the plus side, that kind of liability would put Microsoft out of business and solve all our traffic problems)
The difference being: if harm is caused where the product users use the product for designed purpose, in the designed manner. (See also tobacco companies, incidentally)
This would quite happily make arms companies liable for anti-personnel weaponry used by the non-military without touching the legitimate activities of the hunting population (unless they're using AK47s with CopKilla(tm) bullets).
Is for the richer countries to stop giving them access to easy credit, foreign aid and programs like this.
No, there's a place for foreign aid. Consider the history of 'developed' countries like the US and Canada, which were built up from virgin nature in a little less than two centuries. In both cases, large-scale development projects were underwritten almost completely by government. Railroads, the highway system and especially rural electrification were all heavily subsidised by the central government, with little or no thought of ever getting a direct return on the investment.
Actually, you're so close to a really telling point. It's not that the developing economies of the world don't get foreign aid - they do. It's that that aid comes with conditions that the recipient must not underwrite these kinds of projects, but open them to competition from global companies (ie give them to the companies of the donor countries, who will ensure that they produce a return, regardless of the local impact).
What would be easier would be if nobody had to forcibly monitor anything, but if they did happen to see someone downloading child porn, then report it.
Funny that - it's pretty much what the Bill appears to say. But don't let that get in the way of the hysteria.
Now that they've had a few iterations on Intel, all they'd have to do was next time they upgrade, keep the bottom option around at a cheaper price instead of ceasing to produce it. Voila, a low-end Mac. Identical to a high-end Mac someone bought a year or two ago.
2 reasons why they won't do this:
Brand.
Apple's brand is very much about value-add, not about price beating. Which is a smart way to go about it; in the hardware market, you will never maintain a sustainable advantage in performance or price, so do something Different (as it were). Keeping last year's model around erodes that brand value, part of which is the length of time your Mac is useful.
Inventory Simplicity.
The very very first thing (apart from killing the Newton) theSteve did when he returned to Apple was cut the huge product portfolio (the like of which Dell, Lenovo etc still have) into 4 core products: a pro and consumer model for desktop and laptop form factors. Consumer desktop? iMac. Pro laptop? Macbook Pro. Easy. (MacMini is an abberation) Within each of those, there's a simple Good/Better/Best spec (with some BTO around the fringe). This made a huge difference in Apple's bottom line as it simplified supply chain, and ensured that the inventory in sales channels turned around really quickly. Adding more machines to this would be a return of the bad old days.
I'm quite prepared to accept that the Zune may have on-target sales in the US (which goes to show not least that there's a real difference between PR Spin for the consumer market "It's an iPod killer!" and actual business objectives, which may only be to make a reasonable amount of cash, not be the world dominant device), but wonder whether that's the case for the much larger non-US market. Particularly the BRICs, who don't have so much of the incumbency factor and are expanding their consumer market like all crazy.
Caveat - anecdotal evidence coming up: I'm in the UK, and have never seen a Zune on the street, or promoted in a general consumer magazine (either on its own, or in the peripherals market, where it's *all* "Radios with iPod Docks") as more than a one-off or on TV, or spotlighted in-store except as part of the "Oh, yes, we do have non-iPod MP3 players I suppose" range. I'm currently working in a very high profile media company, very style conscious. A fair number of colleagues have gone out (actually, rushed out) and bought iPod Touches/iPhones, some going as far as a special US trip to do so. Ain't *nobody* even talking about Zune.
And in 7 years, I think I've only talked to 2 people who bought a Creative device, both of whom went simple features comparison shopping, and now have both replaced it with an iPod of various sorts.
His "war" with consumers, from his perspective, is that the music industry wasn't offering consumers what they wanted, so they went out and took it.
Which is pretty much bang on the money. Along with point (b) which is that he finally gets that suing consumers for doing that won't help sales.
But if you read the rest of his comments, the problem is he still isn't understanding just what it is that people want. He thinks that DRM-free music is just being used as a means to an end rather than being an end in itself. He thinks that if the record labels just give everybody music pre-made in the formats that they want, even if it comes saddled with DRM and even if consumers need to buy the same music over and over, that they will buy it as long as it's easy and convenient enough for them to get it.
Actually, he's right again in principle, but where he falls down is perhaps not understanding just quite how far he needs to go to get over that easy and convenient enough barrier for enough people. And I think he gets the economics better than you do in that you're an edge case. Not that that's wrong, but he doesn't need to go so far as to please everybody; just enough to be sufficiently profitable. There's a tipping point of levels of freedom/convenience (for they are the same thing) at which enough people are satisfied enough to spend the money.
This is what Apple also realised before the record industry, and got roughly correct - you can share iTMS tracks between enough computers and burn them to CD enough times for enough people's needs to sell enough tracks to make it worthwhile. Balance it right and only the edge case people will be dissatisfied. Those being somewhat congruent with the people who demand Ogg support on their iPods.
I should also point out that that balance level of course can move over time. So the iTMS deal of yesterday may not be convenient/free enough to strike the same balance tomorrow. And it may be that in the end, the destination point is universally available, entirely unrestricted formats. But that day is not here yet.
(Incidentally, I'd be a lot more interested in your opinion if you were demonstrably capable of using semantic markup such as the blockquote element...)
Whatever, if you're more interested in markup then content.
When you're holding forth about the medium, your displayed capability in using it forms part of the message. Especially where you're arguing a standards case.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you're trying to persuade someone/a group of people to adopt OSS, and you don't have the information about each individual's motivating factors, understanding which are the more likely is useful, no?
Particularly if you're spending money on communication channels, remembering the old quote of Half my ad spend is wasted. I wish I knew which half.
tbh, this is a way of bringing together the consumers' desire for digital convenience - including lack of DRM - with existing distribution channels. Which is no bad thing, all in all.
You're new here, aren't you? Either she goes, or we revoke your /. login.
More significantly, is there any reason not to use SSL for the whole webmail session?
If you're moving to the UK, then go take a look at these guys, who have bought CACI's ACORN geodemographic dataset, and combined with publically available datasets on education, crime etc, to produce a view on what that area is like.
Example (where I used to live)
Other than that, you're calling 1-800-CACI and asking for their geodemographic solutions.
2 points of information:
To be more correct: Intraverts gain their energy from being alone. Being with other people takes effort.
Now, this is just a preference, so it can be overcome, but it takes effort and may not be accomplished as effectively as an Extravert (just like a right-hander writing with their left hand). Many Intraverts find it tiring, and requiring a period alone to re-energise.
IM/virtual communication can lower (but probably not remove) the effort required to communicate with others, particularly compared to the phone or being face to face with people.
As a pretty strong Intravert (yes, thanks for the MBTI introduction), I have to say that in many cases, the alternative to being IM'd is being *phoned* which is way more intrusive than IM. This does require that you've got your IM to *not* force itself to a foreground window on every new message, nor make an intrusive sound (my work machine has the sound off anyway).
I also find that when I need to talk to someone in an interactive way (but when time is not absolutely pressing), IM has a much lower stress barrier than phoning them, or (worse) going to see them.
I'd therefore posit that the availability of IM is often a positive thing for Intraverts, where it can substitute for the more intrusive phone and face to face media.
Funnily enough, the Romans had a lot of that (if you were rich enough). But a few short centuries later, it was unimaginable to the people, even in the lands that had had it.
I wonder whether, in a future era of low fossil fuel availability, our descendents will similarly look at our ability to stand under a constant stream of hot water, at any time, in any season, with utter bafflement...
It's an *incredibly* useful way of finding out what was agreed and killing arguments stone dead - it's an automatically timestamped journal almost.
Also useful for contractual communications - "Please confirm receipt of the deliverables" when sending deliverables is needed to invoice.
Of course, the reality is that:
But that's Sony in the old, consumer electronics focused days, before they were enslaved by their content arm.
I use Canon EOS film and digital bodies with a range of lenses, plus a point and shoot for take-to-the-pub/allow-children-to-use convenience.
Now, if I compare the film prints from a consumer lab with the digital output, I know I'll have a whole bunch more detail in the digital images, even in JPEG. However, when I compare large-ish format (10x8s and up) hand prints I've made with care from b/w negs I've developed, film *just* edges it. I've not compared RAW output, mind.
If I compare those same prints with digital images taken with duff lenses (read: any non-SLR digicam), then all the megapixels in the world won't make the difference. But consumer advertising can't package improved lens quality into a nice feature headline (other than Sony's "Carl Zeiss Lens" which doesn't tell me a *great* deal), so no-one cares.
Sounds like standard subjective kneejerkism to me, rather than a thought out critique of his methodology. Which, incidentally, only lightly depends on heuristics, and has a lot more to do with objective testing. But hey, you knew that because you've read more than his alertboxes. Oh, wait...
This would quite happily make arms companies liable for anti-personnel weaponry used by the non-military without touching the legitimate activities of the hunting population (unless they're using AK47s with CopKilla(tm) bullets).
...ah, except for the Magic Roundabout in Hemel Hempstead, which is a large roundabout, encircled by a ring of mini roundabouts.
So you go round the mini roundabout clockwise, but then proceed round the main roundabout *anti*clockwise.
2 reasons why they won't do this:
Quick question Shark:
Is the NPD data US-specific?
I'm quite prepared to accept that the Zune may have on-target sales in the US (which goes to show not least that there's a real difference between PR Spin for the consumer market "It's an iPod killer!" and actual business objectives, which may only be to make a reasonable amount of cash, not be the world dominant device), but wonder whether that's the case for the much larger non-US market. Particularly the BRICs, who don't have so much of the incumbency factor and are expanding their consumer market like all crazy.
Caveat - anecdotal evidence coming up:
I'm in the UK, and have never seen a Zune on the street, or promoted in a general consumer magazine (either on its own, or in the peripherals market, where it's *all* "Radios with iPod Docks") as more than a one-off or on TV, or spotlighted in-store except as part of the "Oh, yes, we do have non-iPod MP3 players I suppose" range. I'm currently working in a very high profile media company, very style conscious. A fair number of colleagues have gone out (actually, rushed out) and bought iPod Touches/iPhones, some going as far as a special US trip to do so. Ain't *nobody* even talking about Zune.
And in 7 years, I think I've only talked to 2 people who bought a Creative device, both of whom went simple features comparison shopping, and now have both replaced it with an iPod of various sorts.
So, anyone with any solid UK sell-through data?
Which is pretty much bang on the money. Along with point (b) which is that he finally gets that suing consumers for doing that won't help sales.
Actually, he's right again in principle, but where he falls down is perhaps not understanding just quite how far he needs to go to get over that easy and convenient enough barrier for enough people. And I think he gets the economics better than you do in that you're an edge case. Not that that's wrong, but he doesn't need to go so far as to please everybody; just enough to be sufficiently profitable. There's a tipping point of levels of freedom/convenience (for they are the same thing) at which enough people are satisfied enough to spend the money.
This is what Apple also realised before the record industry, and got roughly correct - you can share iTMS tracks between enough computers and burn them to CD enough times for enough people's needs to sell enough tracks to make it worthwhile. Balance it right and only the edge case people will be dissatisfied. Those being somewhat congruent with the people who demand Ogg support on their iPods.
I should also point out that that balance level of course can move over time. So the iTMS deal of yesterday may not be convenient/free enough to strike the same balance tomorrow. And it may be that in the end, the destination point is universally available, entirely unrestricted formats. But that day is not here yet.
When you're holding forth about the medium, your displayed capability in using it forms part of the message. Especially where you're arguing a standards case.