There is no "right out of the box and use it without learning".
Except for NippleOS.
Re:I once thought Altavista ruled the universe
on
Search Beyond Google
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree. At one time Altavista was the best, if somewhat hard to reach, search engine. The problem was that corporate owner Digital did not own the altavista.com domain. The fool that did got a ton of traffic and eventually sold out to Compaq (DEC's new parent) for $3.3 Million. [For what it's worth, I just used Google to verify that.]
They then squandered the good name they had with misguided strategies, who knows how many different ones, to follow in Yahoo's footsteps and go from Search Engine to Portal. How ironic, and sad for them, that Google became successful by doing what AltaVista used to do so well - blazing fast searches from a clean minimalist interface.
"The $15-to-stream-from-our-library thing is a really neat business proposition..."
I am torn on the idea myself. I do know that once I started buying songs from iTMS, after several months of thinking about it, I had to push myself away from the keyboard after 50 songs. It's downright addicting. The interface design is fantastic and really encourages jumping around through recommendation links. This leads to many, "Oh man, I love _____ (fill in song/album/artist)" moments. A quick click-charge-download later and it's yours.
On the other hand, while 30 second previews are nice, the unlimited streaming would offer more sampling which could lead to some nice discovery of music you never thought to listen to before. For now the album reviews on iTMS and the celebrity playlists are leading me to new stuff. I imagine that it will evolve like Amazon to keep doing more to point the customer toward his/her interests and lead to more purchases.
"... a corporation does not have to be a 'monopoly' in order to violate the Sherman Act.... It's restraint of trade that matters."
But wouldn't a company have to have significant, if not near dominant, market share to be considered restraining trade in this case? Disney is a corporate titan but has nowhere near the market share necessary to restrict consumer choice with a distribution technology.
"... this is the first step in trying to establish Microsoft's DRM as the de-facto standard prior to governmental requirement of DRM..."
Of course this is a significant step in establishing Microsoft's DRM as a "de-facto standard." I don't want that to come to pass, but a de-facto standard is not the same thing as a monopoly. The technology industry relies on de-facto standards. I do share your concern somewhat, but I don't see how Disney is anywhere near a violation of Sherman, nor is Microsoft doing anything wrong in promoting their technology with a partner.
"How long do you think it would take Disney to setup a Pixar knock-off?"
What's a "Pixar knockoff" though? It's not about the technology. Certainly Disney has access to the best technology and can build or replicate anything Pixar has (although Pixar did develop some great software - it's not all about the hardware rendering). It's really about the story telling. Disney built its reputation on storytelling. It helped that the animation was amazing, but as competition appeared in animated films things changed. Bigger gambles were taken, the talent pool was diluted, chief executives micromanaged, etc.
Disney has lost its way and has dramatically overspent on recent animated failures. Pixar, with the novelty of computer animation brought something new to the table and Disney benefited tremendously though a distribution deal that gave them the lion's share of profits. But Pixar's movies are great movies because they tell great stories with great characters. Disney CAN replicate that, but Eisner doesn't seem to have a great track record of enabling talent to flourish without corporate meddling.
"Operating Systems and Office Software. Out of 7 business units, Microsoft only makes a profit in 2 of them."
Good point. Two very profitable market segments to be sure. But what's more important than near-term profitability is market influence, especially when that market influence (or dominance) can lead to much higher profits in the future. Microsoft's success comes from leveraging previous successes. Dominating the desktop lead to winning in office suites and some parts of the enterprise backoffice structure. Being the OS used in the office translated to the consumer market.
While it's not profitable in the classic sense, Internet Explorer is perhaps a greater success for Microsoft. Controlling the user's internet experience gives an opening to succeed in new markets: streaming audio/video, search, etc.
I'm with you though that they fail to dominate most market segments they have targeted. It's just the the wins have been big and they are strategically placed to lead to more and bigger wins in the future. That makes people believe they win all the time, but it's not the case at all.
Thanks for the heads-up on the downloadable content.
Another angle on the format choice by Click and Clack is that their program, like many other popular NPR programs, is available on Audible.com for a fee. I imagine they chose a streaming format rather than downloadable MP3 to protect that revenue. "Shameless commerce" they might even call it.
"... they technically have a cash value of 1/20 cents..."
True. On paper coupons where you see that printed it refers specifically to the redemption value honored by the issuer. In other words you could not turn in x number of "$1.00 off" coupons to the manufacturer and redeem them for x dollars. Absent that legalese you probably could make the case for forcing them to give you that cash value in actual cash. At least that's probably why the "cash value" statement appears.
Now, as others are saying, something is worth what people are willing to pay. That $1.00 off coupon that you are not going to use has no material value to you but is worth some amount up to $1.00 to me if I am going to buy the promoted item. I could give you $0.50 and we'd both be getting something. The same would apply to these winning caps provided there is not some legal barrier to selling them. Certainly there is in some areas and you would invite trouble with a mass sale in the open on eBay. But a private, or much less public, sale between individuals would not invite scrutiny. Anyway, Pepsi and Apple both win if you drink enough to get to the point where you are contemplating what to do with your winnings.
Re:MyDoom? What's that?
on
SCO Offline
·
· Score: 1
Ok, I guess I'm a Troll. My point was that we don't all live in perpetual fear of being unwitting pawns in a zombie DDoS attack. Since I don't run Outlook under Windows I don't pay much attention to the media hype over these worms. I'm assuming it is more interesting to the Slashdot crowd because of the SCO angle. That said it does affect me if I can't get my email or view sites I want, but I am not otherwise personally concerned.
Re:What's the difference?
on
SCO Offline
·
· Score: 1
"What's the difference between writing a virus that targets sco.com and posting a link to sco.com in a slashdot story?"
Out of curiosity I tried to load the page the moment I saw this story posted (before any comments were up in fact). No dice. That's a little quick to be the Slashdot effect. And I doubt they took themselves offline preemptively. So something's happening. I have no desire to be part of the problem though so I'll leave them alone.
"all of you who have been reading Slashdot know that today MyDoom.A begins it's attack"
Actually I have been reading Slashdot and I have little idea what MyDoom does. Switching to a Mac has allowed me the pleasure of remaining virus/worm ignorant. It feels great. Of course I'll be pissed if I can't access my favorite websites (of which Microsoft.com and SCO.com are not two).
"A iPod is just the thing a modern metrosexual man would use while walking his poodle or checking his.Mac mail on his 17" iMac."
Um, since I just checked my iPod Mini backorder confirmation in my.Mac email on my 17" iMac, I guess it's time to buff my nails. Thanks for the reminder.
It took me a long time to realize that my nostalgia for old electronics is really based on memories of the fun times. The toys and games really were not that fun in retrospect. They were just all that was available. Fortunately I didn't spend too much money on eBay learning that lesson. It is fun to browse them and go down memory lane though.
"Napster savior Roxio"??? Huh? How is Roxio the savior of Napster? Because they bought the Napster name for (according to the article which I did read) "a song"? Nice save there. As a former user of the original Napster service (a moment of silence, please....), I am not impressed.
"What is so wonderful about iTunes? I don't want to use any program to transfer songs to my MP3 player. I want it to mount as an external drive so I can transfer any song, MP3 or otherwise, onto the player."
I'm not a heavy user of iTunes so I can't enumerate it's "wonderful" features, but I can address the issue of using it instead of manually dragging songs to a mounted drive. Maybe I am a freak for feeling this way, but I don't want anything to do with filesystems. I don't want to touch files, drag files, or otherwise manually manipulate files. I love opening iPhoto and having all my pictures there. I couldn't care less where or how they are physically stored. I just want to look at them, email them, or add them to my website. The program hides from me that which I do not want to deal with. I understand your, and others', desire for control, but many people (perhaps the majority of computer users) do not want to deal with dragging individual files onto a mounted drive. They (we) want playlists, synchronization, and integration with the iTunes Store. Your way works for you, but many people clearly like the way iTunes works.
"... G4s are far lower performance than most low end PCs sold today."
I hate to step into this type of argument, but the parent post said that, "Apple's prices are among the best in the industry if you match the same hardware and software." That's not the same as highest performance CPU. It means the totality of the package including the content creation software. I am not taking sides, but there is much more to a computer than performance benchmarks.
"The mean time between failure on most any IDE drive is a lot longer than 18 months."
True. Plus "mean time between failure" refers to operating time, not time of ownership. In the case of a hard drive it would be the cumulation of time the heads are moving, reading, and writing. Perhaps just minutes a day for average use. But MTBF is just an average and the previous poster could just have very bad luck. Or karma. Or be exaggerating.
I think there is a misunderstanding about the use of the word "unlimited" in the restrictions. You are allowed to "... export Products solely to a portable device..." which seems to mean a single portable device, in addition to the aforementioned three computers. The unlimited in "... such as a WMA-compliant MP3 player an unlimited number of times" refers to the transfers/synchronizations to said portable player.
I read it that way because of how the term unlimited is used in reference to the three personal computers: "You may play music an unlimited number of times on up to three (3) personal computers." Unlimited here means your music belongs to you and does not expire like with the monthly rental services. You download it, you keep it.
". . . the candidate with the $200 million is twice as likely to win as the candidate with $100 million."
More likely, I'll grant you that. But there is a point of diminishing returns where the voters are turned off by airwaves saturated with political attack ads. Extra money doesn't make as much of a difference beyond that point. It could also be a factor if voters cared about where that money came from. As a hypothetical, let's say candidate A gets $50 million each groups representing trial lawyers and oil companies ($100 million dollars from two big checks), while candidate B gets $50 million solely from individuals contributing $200 each. A has twice as much money as B, but don't you think that the voters would use the issue of where his money comes from in making their determination?
Of course it will never be that extreme, and attack ads are used because they are so effective. So my hypothetical candidate B might still lose. But I do think that it could be an issue. And that's my interest in what the Dean campaign is doing.
"Actually the Democrats have more money from large organizations such as unions and PACs than any other party. Truth be known the Republicans have more small donations."
The thing that impresses me about the Democratic party is their ability to own an idea. They do a remarkable job of simplifying an issue to use against the Republicans and making it stick. Newt Gingrich was blindsided by this when he couldn't/didn't stop the rhetoric that he wanted to cut school lunches. A simple, effective message repeated by every Democrat every time they spoke on any issue. The same thing is happening to George W. Bush on the issue about lying about Saddam being an "imminent" threat. Many, if not most, people believe he said that just because it is repeated so often.
If it's really Democrats that get more big-money donations then it is an abysmal failure by the Republican party that the opposite is believed by the voters.
"There's no proof here that the internet will somehow make legislation obsolete."
You make some very good points. In no way did I mean to imply that the 'net is going to make any legislation obsolete. What I do believe is that we are seeing some great examples of how enabling technologies, like the Internet, and social phenomena, like Meetup, are getting people more involved and bringing more small donors to politics.
McCain-Feingold is changing the political fundraising landscape at the high-end. New political interest groups and PACs are going to spend the vast amounts of "soft money" still involved and will operate outside of the restrictions on the political parties themselves.
Now we see a candidate bringing in big money from small donors. It's the combination of factors that enable Dean, and others as well, to do this that are so interesting. McCain-Feingold puts restrictions on the political parties themselves, but does not really stop the large soft money influence. We are seeing an example in the Dean campaign of a new way to compete with the old big-money political system.
I am not necessarily a big fan of Howard Dean, but I love what he is doing to political fundraising and grassroots organization. His campaign team's efforts have really reversed the equation and empowered the small-money donors to make a difference. I think it is much better for the American political system for a candidate to raise $100 from 2 million donors than $200 million from some very large donors and interest groups. It's bottom-up campaign finance reform. Once again a technological and social solution can do what convoluted legislation cannot.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no "right out of the box and use it without learning".
Except for NippleOS.
I agree. At one time Altavista was the best, if somewhat hard to reach, search engine. The problem was that corporate owner Digital did not own the altavista.com domain. The fool that did got a ton of traffic and eventually sold out to Compaq (DEC's new parent) for $3.3 Million. [For what it's worth, I just used Google to verify that.]
They then squandered the good name they had with misguided strategies, who knows how many different ones, to follow in Yahoo's footsteps and go from Search Engine to Portal. How ironic, and sad for them, that Google became successful by doing what AltaVista used to do so well - blazing fast searches from a clean minimalist interface.
"You want fair, go play soccer in a league that doesn't keep score. Oh sorry I meant Football."
Oh, you mean in a game where they don't score.
"The $15-to-stream-from-our-library thing is a really neat business proposition..."
I am torn on the idea myself. I do know that once I started buying songs from iTMS, after several months of thinking about it, I had to push myself away from the keyboard after 50 songs. It's downright addicting. The interface design is fantastic and really encourages jumping around through recommendation links. This leads to many, "Oh man, I love _____ (fill in song/album/artist)" moments. A quick click-charge-download later and it's yours.
On the other hand, while 30 second previews are nice, the unlimited streaming would offer more sampling which could lead to some nice discovery of music you never thought to listen to before. For now the album reviews on iTMS and the celebrity playlists are leading me to new stuff. I imagine that it will evolve like Amazon to keep doing more to point the customer toward his/her interests and lead to more purchases.
"Then I guess there is HP-POD, which could be pronounced "Hip-Pod"..."
Or perhaps they will use the "hip" naming conventions they use for other products and call it something like the h3845a Digital Audio Player.
"... a corporation does not have to be a 'monopoly' in order to violate the Sherman Act. ... It's restraint of trade that matters."
..."
But wouldn't a company have to have significant, if not near dominant, market share to be considered restraining trade in this case? Disney is a corporate titan but has nowhere near the market share necessary to restrict consumer choice with a distribution technology.
"... this is the first step in trying to establish Microsoft's DRM as the de-facto standard prior to governmental requirement of DRM
Of course this is a significant step in establishing Microsoft's DRM as a "de-facto standard." I don't want that to come to pass, but a de-facto standard is not the same thing as a monopoly. The technology industry relies on de-facto standards. I do share your concern somewhat, but I don't see how Disney is anywhere near a violation of Sherman, nor is Microsoft doing anything wrong in promoting their technology with a partner.
"How long do you think it would take Disney to setup a Pixar knock-off?"
What's a "Pixar knockoff" though? It's not about the technology. Certainly Disney has access to the best technology and can build or replicate anything Pixar has (although Pixar did develop some great software - it's not all about the hardware rendering). It's really about the story telling. Disney built its reputation on storytelling. It helped that the animation was amazing, but as competition appeared in animated films things changed. Bigger gambles were taken, the talent pool was diluted, chief executives micromanaged, etc.
Disney has lost its way and has dramatically overspent on recent animated failures. Pixar, with the novelty of computer animation brought something new to the table and Disney benefited tremendously though a distribution deal that gave them the lion's share of profits. But Pixar's movies are great movies because they tell great stories with great characters. Disney CAN replicate that, but Eisner doesn't seem to have a great track record of enabling talent to flourish without corporate meddling.
"Operating Systems and Office Software. Out of 7 business units, Microsoft only makes a profit in 2 of them."
Good point. Two very profitable market segments to be sure. But what's more important than near-term profitability is market influence, especially when that market influence (or dominance) can lead to much higher profits in the future. Microsoft's success comes from leveraging previous successes. Dominating the desktop lead to winning in office suites and some parts of the enterprise backoffice structure. Being the OS used in the office translated to the consumer market.
While it's not profitable in the classic sense, Internet Explorer is perhaps a greater success for Microsoft. Controlling the user's internet experience gives an opening to succeed in new markets: streaming audio/video, search, etc.
I'm with you though that they fail to dominate most market segments they have targeted. It's just the the wins have been big and they are strategically placed to lead to more and bigger wins in the future. That makes people believe they win all the time, but it's not the case at all.
Thanks for the heads-up on the downloadable content.
Another angle on the format choice by Click and Clack is that their program, like many other popular NPR programs, is available on Audible.com for a fee. I imagine they chose a streaming format rather than downloadable MP3 to protect that revenue. "Shameless commerce" they might even call it.
"... they technically have a cash value of 1/20 cents ..."
True. On paper coupons where you see that printed it refers specifically to the redemption value honored by the issuer. In other words you could not turn in x number of "$1.00 off" coupons to the manufacturer and redeem them for x dollars. Absent that legalese you probably could make the case for forcing them to give you that cash value in actual cash. At least that's probably why the "cash value" statement appears.
Now, as others are saying, something is worth what people are willing to pay. That $1.00 off coupon that you are not going to use has no material value to you but is worth some amount up to $1.00 to me if I am going to buy the promoted item. I could give you $0.50 and we'd both be getting something. The same would apply to these winning caps provided there is not some legal barrier to selling them. Certainly there is in some areas and you would invite trouble with a mass sale in the open on eBay. But a private, or much less public, sale between individuals would not invite scrutiny. Anyway, Pepsi and Apple both win if you drink enough to get to the point where you are contemplating what to do with your winnings.
Ok, I guess I'm a Troll. My point was that we don't all live in perpetual fear of being unwitting pawns in a zombie DDoS attack. Since I don't run Outlook under Windows I don't pay much attention to the media hype over these worms. I'm assuming it is more interesting to the Slashdot crowd because of the SCO angle. That said it does affect me if I can't get my email or view sites I want, but I am not otherwise personally concerned.
"What's the difference between writing a virus that targets sco.com and posting a link to sco.com in a slashdot story?"
Out of curiosity I tried to load the page the moment I saw this story posted (before any comments were up in fact). No dice. That's a little quick to be the Slashdot effect. And I doubt they took themselves offline preemptively. So something's happening. I have no desire to be part of the problem though so I'll leave them alone.
"all of you who have been reading Slashdot know that today MyDoom.A begins it's attack"
Actually I have been reading Slashdot and I have little idea what MyDoom does. Switching to a Mac has allowed me the pleasure of remaining virus/worm ignorant. It feels great. Of course I'll be pissed if I can't access my favorite websites (of which Microsoft.com and SCO.com are not two).
"A iPod is just the thing a modern metrosexual man would use while walking his poodle or checking his .Mac mail on his 17" iMac."
.Mac email on my 17" iMac, I guess it's time to buff my nails. Thanks for the reminder.
Um, since I just checked my iPod Mini backorder confirmation in my
It took me a long time to realize that my nostalgia for old electronics is really based on memories of the fun times. The toys and games really were not that fun in retrospect. They were just all that was available. Fortunately I didn't spend too much money on eBay learning that lesson. It is fun to browse them and go down memory lane though.
"Napster savior Roxio"??? Huh? How is Roxio the savior of Napster? Because they bought the Napster name for (according to the article which I did read) "a song"? Nice save there. As a former user of the original Napster service (a moment of silence, please....), I am not impressed.
"What is so wonderful about iTunes? I don't want to use any program to transfer songs to my MP3 player. I want it to mount as an external drive so I can transfer any song, MP3 or otherwise, onto the player."
I'm not a heavy user of iTunes so I can't enumerate it's "wonderful" features, but I can address the issue of using it instead of manually dragging songs to a mounted drive. Maybe I am a freak for feeling this way, but I don't want anything to do with filesystems. I don't want to touch files, drag files, or otherwise manually manipulate files. I love opening iPhoto and having all my pictures there. I couldn't care less where or how they are physically stored. I just want to look at them, email them, or add them to my website. The program hides from me that which I do not want to deal with. I understand your, and others', desire for control, but many people (perhaps the majority of computer users) do not want to deal with dragging individual files onto a mounted drive. They (we) want playlists, synchronization, and integration with the iTunes Store. Your way works for you, but many people clearly like the way iTunes works.
"... G4s are far lower performance than most low end PCs sold today."
I hate to step into this type of argument, but the parent post said that, "Apple's prices are among the best in the industry if you match the same hardware and software." That's not the same as highest performance CPU. It means the totality of the package including the content creation software. I am not taking sides, but there is much more to a computer than performance benchmarks.
"The mean time between failure on most any IDE drive is a lot longer than 18 months."
True. Plus "mean time between failure" refers to operating time, not time of ownership. In the case of a hard drive it would be the cumulation of time the heads are moving, reading, and writing. Perhaps just minutes a day for average use. But MTBF is just an average and the previous poster could just have very bad luck. Or karma. Or be exaggerating.
I think there is a misunderstanding about the use of the word "unlimited" in the restrictions. You are allowed to "... export Products solely to a portable device ..." which seems to mean a single portable device, in addition to the aforementioned three computers. The unlimited in "... such as a WMA-compliant MP3 player an unlimited number of times" refers to the transfers/synchronizations to said portable player.
I read it that way because of how the term unlimited is used in reference to the three personal computers: "You may play music an unlimited number of times on up to three (3) personal computers." Unlimited here means your music belongs to you and does not expire like with the monthly rental services. You download it, you keep it.
And if number of features were the only thing that mattered we would all be asking for Microsoft Word under the tree.
". . . the candidate with the $200 million is twice as likely to win as the candidate with $100 million."
More likely, I'll grant you that. But there is a point of diminishing returns where the voters are turned off by airwaves saturated with political attack ads. Extra money doesn't make as much of a difference beyond that point. It could also be a factor if voters cared about where that money came from. As a hypothetical, let's say candidate A gets $50 million each groups representing trial lawyers and oil companies ($100 million dollars from two big checks), while candidate B gets $50 million solely from individuals contributing $200 each. A has twice as much money as B, but don't you think that the voters would use the issue of where his money comes from in making their determination?
Of course it will never be that extreme, and attack ads are used because they are so effective. So my hypothetical candidate B might still lose. But I do think that it could be an issue. And that's my interest in what the Dean campaign is doing.
"Actually the Democrats have more money from large organizations such as unions and PACs than any other party. Truth be known the Republicans have more small donations."
The thing that impresses me about the Democratic party is their ability to own an idea. They do a remarkable job of simplifying an issue to use against the Republicans and making it stick. Newt Gingrich was blindsided by this when he couldn't/didn't stop the rhetoric that he wanted to cut school lunches. A simple, effective message repeated by every Democrat every time they spoke on any issue. The same thing is happening to George W. Bush on the issue about lying about Saddam being an "imminent" threat. Many, if not most, people believe he said that just because it is repeated so often.
If it's really Democrats that get more big-money donations then it is an abysmal failure by the Republican party that the opposite is believed by the voters.
"There's no proof here that the internet will somehow make legislation obsolete."
You make some very good points. In no way did I mean to imply that the 'net is going to make any legislation obsolete. What I do believe is that we are seeing some great examples of how enabling technologies, like the Internet, and social phenomena, like Meetup, are getting people more involved and bringing more small donors to politics.
McCain-Feingold is changing the political fundraising landscape at the high-end. New political interest groups and PACs are going to spend the vast amounts of "soft money" still involved and will operate outside of the restrictions on the political parties themselves.
Now we see a candidate bringing in big money from small donors. It's the combination of factors that enable Dean, and others as well, to do this that are so interesting. McCain-Feingold puts restrictions on the political parties themselves, but does not really stop the large soft money influence. We are seeing an example in the Dean campaign of a new way to compete with the old big-money political system.
I am not necessarily a big fan of Howard Dean, but I love what he is doing to political fundraising and grassroots organization. His campaign team's efforts have really reversed the equation and empowered the small-money donors to make a difference. I think it is much better for the American political system for a candidate to raise $100 from 2 million donors than $200 million from some very large donors and interest groups. It's bottom-up campaign finance reform. Once again a technological and social solution can do what convoluted legislation cannot.