I think you foreigners may not understand the rage, the hate, and the loathing that a significant number of us feel for our (tongue firmly in cheek) Glorious Leader and for all the morons who voted for him. (Though a lot more for the very smart criminals who actually "won" him the election).
If Bush had to run again today, there's no way he could beat Kerry. He probably couldn't even beat Hillary Clinton, and she seems to be nearly as polarizing a figure as he is, almost universally hated by the Republicans... Hopefully, the Republicans will lose enough seats in the midterm elections that their power will be broken, and we can start to (slowly) repair the massive amounts of damage Dubya has done to our country, and to the world.
Well, I've been using XCode for some time now, and not had the problems you're describing. I run it on a next-to-last generation AlBook (1.67GHz G4 with 1GB of RAM), and at least for pure Java projects, its text editing is just fine, it jumps to methods and classes at perfectly reasonable speeds, and the only persistent problems I've had with it is an odd tendency to lose track of how far it should be indented in large files, and a lack of support for the Expression... dialog for debugging Java projects.
So...I dunno what you're doing wrong, or what I'm doing right, but I find XCode to be more than adequate to my needs, and your experience is not universal.
If William of Ockham were here he would point out the obvious conclusion: The monitoring on your UPS doesn't work.
But that's not the obvious conclusion. If you look at a certain spot for an hour, and don't see anything happen there, is the "most obvious" conclusion that your eyes are faulty, or that...nothing happened there?
Nope. Wrong. Changing from Fire, Fire 2, Fire 3 to Fire, Fira, Firaga doesn't count as being a new magic system. Your mage will always be weilding Fire, Ice, and Bolt against enemies. It may be called something else (Fire, Blizzard, Thunder), but it's the same thing. It's always Cure to heal and Esuna to cure. (?!) Same magic system, every single game.
Same spell names != same magic system.
I will grant that the basic makeup of the magic systems are all pretty much the same--they are all element-based, with, generally, attack, healing, and support magic. But I would challenge you to find a system of magic that is primarily combat-based that can't be classified into those three categories...and the number of elements varies from three to about a dozen, depending on which Final Fantasy game you look at.
Also, what I was primarily referring to was the method by which spells are learned, for which see skill system below.
Combat system is essentially always identical. On your turn, attack. No variety there. Some characters have special moves, but that's hardly innovation.
Hmm...sounds like you just described every turn-based battle system in existence. Y'know, if you get general enough, everything is the same, and there's nothing new under the sun. We may as well all give up; every game requires you to look at a screen while entering a series of commands by hitting buttons or moving pointing devices. Worse yet, every game is made up of patterns of 1s and 0s on some kind of removable storage!
It's true that the ATB system remained more or less the same from FFIV through FFIX, but they did change some things in FFX, and from what I understand, even more so in FFXI (though I've not played it).
Skill systems are all essentially identical. You fight monsters, and then your character gains some form of points (renaming them doesn't count as innovation), and with enough, they "level up" and their stats increase. Yeah, really innovative there.
Again, you're so general, you could be describing AD&D or just about any other traditional RPG.
And as a matter of fact, you're way off base here. The methods of gaining skills have changed quite a bit from one Final Fantasy to another. In the early ones, you had to buy spells from shops. In FFIV, all skills were learned just as you describe, as the characters leveled up. In FFVI, skills were specialized, but spells came from Espers. In FFVII, everything was learned by equipping the right Materia. In FFX, you learned skills by moving a token around what looks like a giant game board and activating the right spheres!
Need I go on?
Seriously, anyone who thinks the Final Fantasy games aren't all cookie-cutter copies of each other needs to get their head examined. Stand back away from your fanboy-ism and look at them objectively. They're all the same.
I would say that anyone who thinks the Final Fantasy games are all cookie-cutter copies needs their head examined...or needs to actually look around a little, and see that the similarities they are seeing are really inherent to the genre as we know it. Sure, it might be neat to see some RPGs that break completely from the genre norms, and do some wild and crazy things--but it's much, much harder to be sure of making it fun and enjoyable if you do away with levels and command-based combat altogether. Maybe with the Wii controller, you'll be able to do some amazing and new things to make combat different. Maybe someone can come up with some super-cool and innovative way of measuring character advancement without using levels and experience points, but that's not necessary to make a the gameplay fresh and interesting.
Oh, and I'd rather be a fanboy enjoying the latest partially-recycled Final Fantasy than a cynical curmudgeon grumbling in his porch rocking chair about how there's no real innovation these days, and nothing's worth even bothering with, because it can't possibly be any fun...
Or, more to the point, played more than one? There are certain elements that bind them together, sure (chocobos, basic battle concepts, some guy named Cid who likes technology/airships), but each numbered Final Fantasy game is completely different from the preceding ones--new characters, new stories, whole new world, largely different magic/skill/whatever systems (FF X-2 and the FF VII Compilation aren't really "numbered FF games").
Just because they all bear the same name doesn't mean there's more than that linking them. Some people think that's a bad thing; personally, I like every FF game I've played, the similarities and the differences.
I think you're misunderstanding just what "self-awareness" means. It's not just "awareness of certain properties of the body"--it's "awareness of the self as distinct from the rest of the world." What you're describing is simply environmental awareness--which is necessary for a robot capable of following the high-level instructions like the ones you mentioned, but is worlds away from true self-awareness.
I think that if you actually took the time to understand the environmentalist movement, and environmentalists specifically, you'd find that very few of them just take what their "leaders" say at face-value. By and large, they're a well-educated bunch who are against things because they really believe they're bad for the environment in one way or another, not because they're sheep who follow some rich leader.
Just because the opposition to environmental groups (big business, largely) is out for profit, that doesn't mean that such groups are themselves. And just because the opposition would like to believe that it's so, that doesn't make it so.
So would you agree the opposite is true? That you got a good job right out of college working for a good company doesn't mean that's the way the whole world is?
Absolutely; I'll be the first to admit that I was lucky to get this so quickly.
But cubicledrone seems hellbent on insisting that no one in the world *actually* gets to keep a job longer than 6 months. If he weren't such a total jerk, I would feel sorry for him, but his attitude does not inspire sympathy.
I just thought I'd provide a counterexample, that's all.
Hi, my name is Dan, and I'm a programmer and sysadmin.
Right out of college, I got myself hired by an insurance company--yeah, laugh, it's not exactly what I wanted, either. But y'know what? It's been nearly 2 years, I'm making $40k, I've got great health insurance, and they still need me--in fact, they need me even more now that they know what I can do for them. I've seen a bunch of people leave this company--a couple were fired for incompetence, a few left for greener pastures, and one or 2 retired--and I've seen several more hired, but it's not like there's massive turnover here.
I suspect that, while your experience is far from typical, it's more typical of large companies. The company I work for has less than 100 employees, and I speak with the owner/CEO on a regular basis. He likes me. I think he likes all his employees, as a matter of fact, or at least manages to make it look very much like he does; he's a very personable guy, for all that he's a lawyer.
So your experience, while it may not be unique, is also far from ubiquitous. Maybe you need to move, or maybe you need to change your expectations, or maybe you just need to not be such a cynical jerk. No one wants to hire a cynical jerk, and if they find out that they have, they're much more likely to fire you after 6 months.
The real lesson? Just because you've had bad experiences doesn't mean that's the way the whole world is. Learn not to generalize from yourself to the world, because I hate to break it to you, but the world ain't you, dude.
So because you cannot measure its usefulness, management is useless?
You must be one of the bad programmers, then.
Listen, I'm not fond of management as a class either, but a good manager (of which there are more than a few, though not nearly enough) can find ways to get groups of people working together much better and more efficiently. The problem, as you have so eloquently stated, is that it's nearly impossible to judge management by an objective standard, so there's really no way to tell if someone's going to be a good manager or not before you hire them.
It's largely a talent, which, like art, can be honed, but is hard to instill without a lot of hard work. And that's assuming that the person you're trying to instill it in realizes they don't have it in the first place, which most don't.
No. Only the company with a monopoly is barred from bundling.
Why? That seems hardly fair?
Huh? Are you just stupid? They have a MONOPOLY. That is what's "not fair."
Was it fair when they used their clout to force OEMs to bundle only their Office suite and media player?
Was it fair when they poured money into Internet Explorer like water, just to kill Netscape, then stopped developing it for years because they had no competition?
That's why we have anti-trust laws: to deal with people who act unfairly and abuse their position in the market to stifle competition.
You can decide, by choosing the ISP you want to purchase service from.
Really?
I mean, technically, yeah, I have a choice of ISPs...I can choose Adelphia for cable, or Verizon for DSL, or NetZero, or AOL, or any of dozens of smaller dialup providers...I could probably choose satellite if I didn't live in an apartment (can't put up a dish without the landlord's approval) surrounded by trees. So basically, if I want any kind of reasonable speeds, I have 2 choices.
But what if the services I really want fast access to are on Comcast? Or somewhere out in California? Or on the other side of the planet? What if both Verizon and Adelphia decide to be really stingy with the bandwidth they provide to outside services? By your model, I'm then forced to either use whatever they want to give me, or put up with artificially reduced bandwidth to the services I actually want to use--purely so that Verizon or Adelphia can try to wring a few extra bucks out of me (or out of the services who are willing to pay their extortion fees).
No. In the end, we have just 2 choices: network neutrality, or completely changing the fundamental nature of the Internet, to hand all power to the ISP.
I think if they don't do something, they'll be in trouble.
Ummm...why? Because you think that they're "technologically inferior"?
Apple's doing better than they've ever been doing before, OS X is a great OS, and their products, both computer and non, are selling incredibly well for a "beleaguered" company. The age of the language an OS is written in has no bearing on the quality of the OS--it's just another meaningless number to throw around to try to prove the superiority of one OS over another.
Or, is blatent liberalism (I'm sorry progressivism) to be confined to public radio where we the American public must foot the bill because people don't really want to hear what they have to say?
I think you're seriously missing the point here.
If public radio is a bastion of liberalism because they can't get ad dollars, that would suggest to me that it is exactly what the people want to hear...just not what the corporations want to hear (or not what they want us to hear, if you prefer).
And even aside from that, your premise is flawed: my local NPR station has plenty of corporate sponsors, it's just that instead of having their own loud, obnoxious ads blare at you every five minutes, the calm NPR announcer reads their names and slogans at the end of each segment.
"Liberal" radio is listener-supported by choice, because it allows them to be independent.
That's true, but the rich, powerful religious idealogues would have no power if it weren't for the poverty-stricken masses willing to believe them and throw away what little they have in pursuit of what their (particular perversion of whichever) religion promises.
Yeah, and I know that one of those days I'll be to exhausted or angry and a kick to the head will be in order to teach basics of politeness to one of these a*******
*sigh* If only more people would do that once in a while, we'd probably have a much more polite society. A kick to the head can do wonders for negative reinforcement...
Did I mention I like your.sig?:-)
Why thank you:-) I figured that since I found it through your sig (back when it said, "Back in beta, too many new features"), putting it in mine might let even more people see it, and join, and have lots of fun:-D
Well, naturally for the phone to learn to be polite by your standards and mine, it has to be taught by someone who shares those standards. Teaching stupid technology to be polite only works as well as the people teaching it.
If you want to teach stupid people to be polite...I think you've got a much, much longer wait ahead of you.;-)
My point was that it is the aesthetics of the iPod (including its excellent interface design, which I consider as falling under aesthetics), as well as the "cool factor" of owning one (which is somewhat circular, I realize) that made them the most popular--not any backroom deals or strongarm tactics.
After reading some posts here, I think the idea is that there's a tight integration of iTunes and the iPod. The only real way to buy music legally online (for the vast majority of music) is through iTunes. IIRC music from iTunes will only play on iPod music players. Sure you can burn it to CD, and then re-rip to mp3, but I think that's really missing the point. The vast majority of consumers just aren't going to go through all that hassle
You can buy music online from other music stores--Rhapsody, Napster, etc (I don't know all of them, 'cause I don't listen to mainstream music, but they're there).
You can play iTMS music on any Mac or Windows computer (I think they've got iTunes running on Linux under Crossover Office, but I'm not sure), as well as on any iPod.
You can also burn it to CD to listen to it on any ordinary CD player.
There are also programs available to strip the DRM, but, as you note, most people aren't going to bother.
The only reason that there's seen to be a problem here is that the iPod is the most popular digital music player, by a long way. If it held only, say, 35% of the market, with (for example) the Nomad taking another 30% and the other players splitting the remaining 35%, no one would be complaining about this. The iPod has become most popular purely through marketing and good design, not through any shady underhanded deals, like telling OEMs they won't be getting any more iPods if they sell other music players. Apple has leveraged nothing but its aesthetics (and a certain amount of cool-factor) to gain this spot in the market.
Which is still only a monopoly if you define the "market" to be the iTunes Music Store.
...convincing a court that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market.
How does that even make sense?
If the lawyers somehow succeed in this, every company will be a monopoly!
Ford will have a monopoly on Ford trucks!
Dell will have a monopoly on Dell computers!
Whirlpool will have a monopoly on Whirlpool refrigerators!
...and so on, ad even more nauseam.
In all seriousness, can anyone with some kind of legal background give us *some* idea of how a judge could even consider this? (Cpt. Kangarooski, maybe?)
Slashdot Mirror
I think you foreigners may not understand the rage, the hate, and the loathing that a significant number of us feel for our (tongue firmly in cheek) Glorious Leader and for all the morons who voted for him. (Though a lot more for the very smart criminals who actually "won" him the election).
If Bush had to run again today, there's no way he could beat Kerry. He probably couldn't even beat Hillary Clinton, and she seems to be nearly as polarizing a figure as he is, almost universally hated by the Republicans... Hopefully, the Republicans will lose enough seats in the midterm elections that their power will be broken, and we can start to (slowly) repair the massive amounts of damage Dubya has done to our country, and to the world.
Dan Aris
Well, I've been using XCode for some time now, and not had the problems you're describing. I run it on a next-to-last generation AlBook (1.67GHz G4 with 1GB of RAM), and at least for pure Java projects, its text editing is just fine, it jumps to methods and classes at perfectly reasonable speeds, and the only persistent problems I've had with it is an odd tendency to lose track of how far it should be indented in large files, and a lack of support for the Expression... dialog for debugging Java projects.
So...I dunno what you're doing wrong, or what I'm doing right, but I find XCode to be more than adequate to my needs, and your experience is not universal.
Dan Aris
If William of Ockham were here he would point out the obvious conclusion: The monitoring on your UPS doesn't work.
But that's not the obvious conclusion. If you look at a certain spot for an hour, and don't see anything happen there, is the "most obvious" conclusion that your eyes are faulty, or that...nothing happened there?
Dan Aris
Nope. Wrong. Changing from Fire, Fire 2, Fire 3 to Fire, Fira, Firaga doesn't count as being a new magic system. Your mage will always be weilding Fire, Ice, and Bolt against enemies. It may be called something else (Fire, Blizzard, Thunder), but it's the same thing. It's always Cure to heal and Esuna to cure. (?!) Same magic system, every single game.
Same spell names != same magic system.
I will grant that the basic makeup of the magic systems are all pretty much the same--they are all element-based, with, generally, attack, healing, and support magic. But I would challenge you to find a system of magic that is primarily combat-based that can't be classified into those three categories...and the number of elements varies from three to about a dozen, depending on which Final Fantasy game you look at.
Also, what I was primarily referring to was the method by which spells are learned, for which see skill system below.
Combat system is essentially always identical. On your turn, attack. No variety there. Some characters have special moves, but that's hardly innovation.
Hmm...sounds like you just described every turn-based battle system in existence. Y'know, if you get general enough, everything is the same, and there's nothing new under the sun. We may as well all give up; every game requires you to look at a screen while entering a series of commands by hitting buttons or moving pointing devices. Worse yet, every game is made up of patterns of 1s and 0s on some kind of removable storage!
It's true that the ATB system remained more or less the same from FFIV through FFIX, but they did change some things in FFX, and from what I understand, even more so in FFXI (though I've not played it).
Skill systems are all essentially identical. You fight monsters, and then your character gains some form of points (renaming them doesn't count as innovation), and with enough, they "level up" and their stats increase. Yeah, really innovative there.
Again, you're so general, you could be describing AD&D or just about any other traditional RPG.
And as a matter of fact, you're way off base here. The methods of gaining skills have changed quite a bit from one Final Fantasy to another. In the early ones, you had to buy spells from shops. In FFIV, all skills were learned just as you describe, as the characters leveled up. In FFVI, skills were specialized, but spells came from Espers. In FFVII, everything was learned by equipping the right Materia. In FFX, you learned skills by moving a token around what looks like a giant game board and activating the right spheres!
Need I go on?
Seriously, anyone who thinks the Final Fantasy games aren't all cookie-cutter copies of each other needs to get their head examined. Stand back away from your fanboy-ism and look at them objectively. They're all the same.
I would say that anyone who thinks the Final Fantasy games are all cookie-cutter copies needs their head examined...or needs to actually look around a little, and see that the similarities they are seeing are really inherent to the genre as we know it. Sure, it might be neat to see some RPGs that break completely from the genre norms, and do some wild and crazy things--but it's much, much harder to be sure of making it fun and enjoyable if you do away with levels and command-based combat altogether. Maybe with the Wii controller, you'll be able to do some amazing and new things to make combat different. Maybe someone can come up with some super-cool and innovative way of measuring character advancement without using levels and experience points, but that's not necessary to make a the gameplay fresh and interesting.
Oh, and I'd rather be a fanboy enjoying the latest partially-recycled Final Fantasy than a cynical curmudgeon grumbling in his porch rocking chair about how there's no real innovation these days, and nothing's worth even bothering with, because it can't possibly be any fun...
Dan Aris
Or, more to the point, played more than one? There are certain elements that bind them together, sure (chocobos, basic battle concepts, some guy named Cid who likes technology/airships), but each numbered Final Fantasy game is completely different from the preceding ones--new characters, new stories, whole new world, largely different magic/skill/whatever systems (FF X-2 and the FF VII Compilation aren't really "numbered FF games").
Just because they all bear the same name doesn't mean there's more than that linking them. Some people think that's a bad thing; personally, I like every FF game I've played, the similarities and the differences.
Dan Aris
I think you're misunderstanding just what "self-awareness" means. It's not just "awareness of certain properties of the body"--it's "awareness of the self as distinct from the rest of the world." What you're describing is simply environmental awareness--which is necessary for a robot capable of following the high-level instructions like the ones you mentioned, but is worlds away from true self-awareness.
Dan Aris
That way we can make sure that they aren't up to no good.
Ah, you know them politicians...they ain't never up to no good!
;-)
Dan Aris
The only way I'd run one of these is as a thin server client.
Did you even read the title of the story? That's what it's designed for!
Dan Aris
I think that if you actually took the time to understand the environmentalist movement, and environmentalists specifically, you'd find that very few of them just take what their "leaders" say at face-value. By and large, they're a well-educated bunch who are against things because they really believe they're bad for the environment in one way or another, not because they're sheep who follow some rich leader.
Just because the opposition to environmental groups (big business, largely) is out for profit, that doesn't mean that such groups are themselves. And just because the opposition would like to believe that it's so, that doesn't make it so.
Dan Aris
So would you agree the opposite is true? That you got a good job right out of college working for a good company doesn't mean that's the way the whole world is?
Absolutely; I'll be the first to admit that I was lucky to get this so quickly.
But cubicledrone seems hellbent on insisting that no one in the world *actually* gets to keep a job longer than 6 months. If he weren't such a total jerk, I would feel sorry for him, but his attitude does not inspire sympathy.
I just thought I'd provide a counterexample, that's all.
Dan Aris
Hi, my name is Dan, and I'm a programmer and sysadmin.
Right out of college, I got myself hired by an insurance company--yeah, laugh, it's not exactly what I wanted, either. But y'know what? It's been nearly 2 years, I'm making $40k, I've got great health insurance, and they still need me--in fact, they need me even more now that they know what I can do for them. I've seen a bunch of people leave this company--a couple were fired for incompetence, a few left for greener pastures, and one or 2 retired--and I've seen several more hired, but it's not like there's massive turnover here.
I suspect that, while your experience is far from typical, it's more typical of large companies. The company I work for has less than 100 employees, and I speak with the owner/CEO on a regular basis. He likes me. I think he likes all his employees, as a matter of fact, or at least manages to make it look very much like he does; he's a very personable guy, for all that he's a lawyer.
So your experience, while it may not be unique, is also far from ubiquitous. Maybe you need to move, or maybe you need to change your expectations, or maybe you just need to not be such a cynical jerk. No one wants to hire a cynical jerk, and if they find out that they have, they're much more likely to fire you after 6 months.
The real lesson? Just because you've had bad experiences doesn't mean that's the way the whole world is. Learn not to generalize from yourself to the world, because I hate to break it to you, but the world ain't you, dude.
Dan Aris
So because you cannot measure its usefulness, management is useless?
You must be one of the bad programmers, then.
Listen, I'm not fond of management as a class either, but a good manager (of which there are more than a few, though not nearly enough) can find ways to get groups of people working together much better and more efficiently. The problem, as you have so eloquently stated, is that it's nearly impossible to judge management by an objective standard, so there's really no way to tell if someone's going to be a good manager or not before you hire them.
It's largely a talent, which, like art, can be honed, but is hard to instill without a lot of hard work. And that's assuming that the person you're trying to instill it in realizes they don't have it in the first place, which most don't.
Dan Aris
Why? That seems hardly fair?
Huh? Are you just stupid? They have a MONOPOLY. That is what's "not fair."
Was it fair when they used their clout to force OEMs to bundle only their Office suite and media player?
Was it fair when they poured money into Internet Explorer like water, just to kill Netscape, then stopped developing it for years because they had no competition?
That's why we have anti-trust laws: to deal with people who act unfairly and abuse their position in the market to stifle competition.
Dan Aris
You can decide, by choosing the ISP you want to purchase service from.
Really?
I mean, technically, yeah, I have a choice of ISPs...I can choose Adelphia for cable, or Verizon for DSL, or NetZero, or AOL, or any of dozens of smaller dialup providers...I could probably choose satellite if I didn't live in an apartment (can't put up a dish without the landlord's approval) surrounded by trees. So basically, if I want any kind of reasonable speeds, I have 2 choices.
But what if the services I really want fast access to are on Comcast? Or somewhere out in California? Or on the other side of the planet? What if both Verizon and Adelphia decide to be really stingy with the bandwidth they provide to outside services? By your model, I'm then forced to either use whatever they want to give me, or put up with artificially reduced bandwidth to the services I actually want to use--purely so that Verizon or Adelphia can try to wring a few extra bucks out of me (or out of the services who are willing to pay their extortion fees).
No. In the end, we have just 2 choices: network neutrality, or completely changing the fundamental nature of the Internet, to hand all power to the ISP.
Dan Aris
And after all we've done for.... Nah, I can't even act surprised.
Sounds like just more of the same from Microsoft to me...
Dan Aris
not even sure if the iPod has a remote
It does.
so you'd have to remove it from your pocket/whatever each time you do actually need to change something.
You don't.
Dan Aris
I think if they don't do something, they'll be in trouble.
Ummm...why? Because you think that they're "technologically inferior"?
Apple's doing better than they've ever been doing before, OS X is a great OS, and their products, both computer and non, are selling incredibly well for a "beleaguered" company. The age of the language an OS is written in has no bearing on the quality of the OS--it's just another meaningless number to throw around to try to prove the superiority of one OS over another.
So...why on earth would they be in trouble?
Dan Aris
I think you may misunderstand just what the "nuclear option" means (not to mention how to spell "filibuster").
In short, it means not just overriding a filibuster, but doing away FOREVER with the option to filibuster the approval of judicial nominees.
Dan Aris
Or, is blatent liberalism (I'm sorry progressivism) to be confined to public radio where we the American public must foot the bill because people don't really want to hear what they have to say?
I think you're seriously missing the point here.
If public radio is a bastion of liberalism because they can't get ad dollars, that would suggest to me that it is exactly what the people want to hear...just not what the corporations want to hear (or not what they want us to hear, if you prefer).
And even aside from that, your premise is flawed: my local NPR station has plenty of corporate sponsors, it's just that instead of having their own loud, obnoxious ads blare at you every five minutes, the calm NPR announcer reads their names and slogans at the end of each segment.
"Liberal" radio is listener-supported by choice, because it allows them to be independent.
Dan Aris
That's true, but the rich, powerful religious idealogues would have no power if it weren't for the poverty-stricken masses willing to believe them and throw away what little they have in pursuit of what their (particular perversion of whichever) religion promises.
Dan Aris
Yeah, and I know that one of those days I'll be to exhausted or angry and a kick to the head will be in order to teach basics of politeness to one of these a*******
*sigh* If only more people would do that once in a while, we'd probably have a much more polite society. A kick to the head can do wonders for negative reinforcement...
Did I mention I like your .sig? :-)
Why thank you :-) I figured that since I found it through your sig (back when it said, "Back in beta, too many new features"), putting it in mine might let even more people see it, and join, and have lots of fun :-D
Dan Aris
Well, naturally for the phone to learn to be polite by your standards and mine, it has to be taught by someone who shares those standards. Teaching stupid technology to be polite only works as well as the people teaching it.
If you want to teach stupid people to be polite...I think you've got a much, much longer wait ahead of you. ;-)
Dan Aris
My point was that it is the aesthetics of the iPod (including its excellent interface design, which I consider as falling under aesthetics), as well as the "cool factor" of owning one (which is somewhat circular, I realize) that made them the most popular--not any backroom deals or strongarm tactics.
Dan Aris
After reading some posts here, I think the idea is that there's a tight integration of iTunes and the iPod. The only real way to buy music legally online (for the vast majority of music) is through iTunes. IIRC music from iTunes will only play on iPod music players. Sure you can burn it to CD, and then re-rip to mp3, but I think that's really missing the point. The vast majority of consumers just aren't going to go through all that hassle
The only reason that there's seen to be a problem here is that the iPod is the most popular digital music player, by a long way. If it held only, say, 35% of the market, with (for example) the Nomad taking another 30% and the other players splitting the remaining 35%, no one would be complaining about this. The iPod has become most popular purely through marketing and good design, not through any shady underhanded deals, like telling OEMs they won't be getting any more iPods if they sell other music players. Apple has leveraged nothing but its aesthetics (and a certain amount of cool-factor) to gain this spot in the market.
Which is still only a monopoly if you define the "market" to be the iTunes Music Store.
Dan Aris
How does that even make sense?
If the lawyers somehow succeed in this, every company will be a monopoly!
Ford will have a monopoly on Ford trucks!
Dell will have a monopoly on Dell computers!
Whirlpool will have a monopoly on Whirlpool refrigerators!
...and so on, ad even more nauseam.
In all seriousness, can anyone with some kind of legal background give us *some* idea of how a judge could even consider this? (Cpt. Kangarooski, maybe?)
Dan Aris