It's not the general sentiment, that's just the posts selected by the biased moderators. It's not a free speech system like Slashdot.
I for one posted a devastating criticism of Microsoft to that website but it was censored by the BBC. Probably because they didn't want to upset MS. It's a shame because it makes it look like people actually like Microsoft.
Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just repeating the facts read elsewhere: itunes uses some sort of hashing system to put the fiels on the ipod in an efficient way. Third-party programmes can't do that.
This is YET ANOTHER reason why you shouldn't buy an ipod instead of cheaper, more functional alternatives.
Why is he a coward? I think that being a coward would be someone who is scared of being searched, someone who wants terrorists to be able to bomb up whoever they want because they can't be searched.
How on earth did you get modded up to 5 without actually saying anything?
1. No, the itunes has a special way of doing it which makes it faster. I.e. your ipod is effectively reduced in functionality unless you use Apple's software. This is a disgrace.
2. USB ports are no use when I'm over the hills somewhere, but spare batteries in my pocket are.
The third-party software doesn't put the files on the ipod as efficiently. This means that unless you use itunes, your ipod won't work as quickly, and the battery will run out faster. Apple are effectively using their monopoly in one market to try to dominate another. This is Microsoft tactics.
If another 20g makes a significant difference to your weight then you must be from Ethiopia, in which case you can't afford an mp3 player so it's a non-issue.
Call me crazy - but doesn't Apple dominate market share for BOTH hard drive AND flash based players?
The market for mp3 players is still very much in its infancy. Just as the first computers were expensive and owned only by the rich, mp3 players are expensive yuppie toys. Yuppies are obsessed with image and care so much about fitting in that they're a marketer's dream, and Apple are the kings of style over substance.
When the market matures, the ipod will go the same way as the mac: at the expensive end of the market, selling purely on image to a few rich people, whilst the PC (or in this case dell) makes all the cash catering to the 90%.
Only a very small minority actually like dodgy retro-60s designs, probably fashion designers and graphic artists who wear sandals and live in Notting Hill. The other 99% doesn't give a damn about the appearance of something as insignificant as a pocket-dwelling electronic device. The only reason people buy ipods is marketing. And we all know how easily Slashdotters fall for marketing and PR.
It's clever of Dell to cater to the majority who care about price, although it's also clever of Apple to manage to tap into the 'rich but dumb' sort of yuppies who buy expensive things they don't need because of appearance and marketing.
How is this any less newsworthy than the countless ipod articles? You can bet that if it was Apple and not Dell, there would have been fifteen articles today already. This story is at least some small evidence that Slashdot hasn't been bought by Apple.
I don't know, maybe they're ogling it based on HOW GOOD IT IS, rather than how it looks.
It's ironic that a community of largely unaesthetically-pleasing, overweight geeks who don't care about their appearance are so obsessed with the appearance of small plastic electronic devices that spend their life hidden away in someone's pocket.
Didn't people criticise Windows XP for being just a flash interface with little actual improvements over 2k?
But I suppose when APPLE do something, it's obviously the best. Seriously, Slashdot criticise the mainstream for people sheep, then blindly follow everything their favourite brands do.
Wow, you must be a midget or a 2 year old. My pocket is 18cm x 13cm, the size of the device is meaningless. I don't think I can even feel something that weighs 40g in my pocket. Perhaps you have some sort of wasting disease, but for the rest of us it could weight 200g and it wouldn't matter. Jesus, people these days are so soft...
What use is USB if you're in the middle of nowhere? With a battery you just take it out and put another one in. Good luck doing that with an ipod.
Here's what counts: price functionality batteries
Here's what doesn't count: appearance (unless you wear transparent trousers and are incredibly vain) size weight a funny circle thing corporate branding
Unfortuanately, it's FM only, so pretty useless really. You miss all the football.
Another advantage of this thing is that you don't have to use Apple's obnoxious software or some obscure plugin just to move files to it. Probably just drag and drop from any file manager. There's no reason it should be any more complicated.
Looks OK to me, looks no more ugly than a small pocket radio or a USB stick. What are you expecting it to look like? I didn't realise geeks were so superficial.
Especially for a product which spends 99% OF ITS LIFE IN YOUR POCKET!
I think Apple is right though. Most of the time I don't care about the song order and playing on Random keeps things interesting.
What? They FORCE you to play the songs in random order, and that's a good thing? If Microsoft had done something like this you can guarantee the whole of Slashdot would be dancing up and down screaming about how useless it is! But because it's Apple, they can get away with anything???
Pardon me but I'm more interested in functionality and price than blind, sheep-like brand-loyalty and white paint.
You overestimate how much of the market is sandal-wearing, coffee-drinking left-wing trendies who thing the ipod makes them look 'cool'. Most people don't really give a shit, most people won't want to spend such huge amounts of money on an mp3 player, most people hate white headphones. Stop making marketing conclusions based on what you see on Slashdot or in Starbucks.
The number of people who wear mp3 players around their necks is insignificant, Dell is wise in not aiming for a loud-mouthed minority but instead the silent majority. I don't know whether Apple or Dell has the biggest marketing budget, but I think that will be the decider.
Hasn't the shuffle been obsoleted by the nano anyway? I can't keep track of all these non-descriptive ipod names.
I'm sorry to break the 'feelgood' circle-jerk, but this 'mindshare' only exists on Slashdot. Come into the real world, and most people just use Google because it's force of habit. Like typing in 'slashdot.org' in the browser first thing in the morning even though you know there's going to be nothing of interest, it's just routine.
It is VERY easy to take a search-engine's market share, it's a simple as typing a different address in the browser or changing the homepage. It's nowhere near as entrenched as an operating system, and MS still buried OS/2. Imagine what they can do to a company which could disappear entirely with a click of a mouse. I'm afraid constant fellating from Slashdot won't keep a company successful.
Microsoft needs a whole new mindset if they want to compete in this market
No they don't, they just need a higher market share and more effective advertising. Once they get a high enough percentage of the market, all they need to do is bring in an advertising system that's more favourable to the advertisers, and they'll 'fucking kill' Google as all the advertisers jump ship. Remember that Google's entire business model relies on advertising, the search engine is just a way to show adverts.
Once Google's profits go down, the stock bubble bursts, and the rest of us who actually LEARNT from the dot-com era can stand back, put on the sunglasses, and watch as they crash and burn in a giant $80 billion inferno.
1. Whose computer has a sysadmin? I know I can't even afford a cleaner, let alone someone to live in my hous and fix my computer when it goes wrong. What world do you live in?
2. A backup's no good if you've changed your data since then.
3. Not many people like fiddling with commands all the time, nor do they even know how to do so. We're not all super-nerds who know crontab and tar. Come back to the real world.
4. How can you trust a backup if the data may have been altered BEFORE you made the backup?
5. Where do you put the backup? I don't know of any home computers with tape drives, are we supposed to write all our data to a DVD every day? The only option is to copy a.tgz to another directory, but a user only has permissions in his own directory so if it's wiped then the backup is wiped as well.
Ideally, the user's home directories will be set to non-execute so that crap they download won't destroy their data
Just when I thought I'd already seen the stupidest post on Slashdot... Is anyone else amused by how ridiculously uninformed some of the comments are on here?
I think before you get a Slashdot account you should at least have to past a test on basic understanding of reality.
You're assuming that Google give a shit about other people, and that they give a shit about the law.
Google have BILLIONS of dollars. They're above the law. They routinely break copyright law every single day. This 'print' program is a clear breach of copyright. But why would Google have to ask permission like us lowly law-abiding people would have to?
They're loaded. They can afford to win any lawsuit by hiring all the best lawyers and forcing their opponents into submission, whether they're right or wrong. Anyone else doing this would be sued into oblivion by the book equivalent of the RIAA, but Google are so rich and powerful they're untouchable.
I'm betting this is just the tip of the iceberg. Google is turning into the next Microsoft.
You never know, this new MS Office interface might be a BETTER interface, rather than the poor OO interface. It's not the fact that it's different, it's whether it's good or bad.
In other words, if you don't like the price of something, take it illegally instead. It's not your fault for breaking the law, it's someone else's fault for pricing it wrong. After all, Slashdot posters have a god-given right to DEMAND how anyone else does business.
I believe in the free market. If you don't like the price of something, don't buy it. I think that Premiership football clubs charge too much for tickets. But I don't climb over the gate and sneak into the stadium, I just don't go. Simple, no?
This has been modded +2 funny and I don't understand it so this is obviously some sort of Slashdot in-joke, I don't get it. What are magic wishes? What is funny about this post?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the general sentiment, that's just the posts selected by the biased moderators. It's not a free speech system like Slashdot.
I for one posted a devastating criticism of Microsoft to that website but it was censored by the BBC. Probably because they didn't want to upset MS. It's a shame because it makes it look like people actually like Microsoft.
Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just repeating the facts read elsewhere: itunes uses some sort of hashing system to put the fiels on the ipod in an efficient way. Third-party programmes can't do that.
This is YET ANOTHER reason why you shouldn't buy an ipod instead of cheaper, more functional alternatives.
Why is he a coward? I think that being a coward would be someone who is scared of being searched, someone who wants terrorists to be able to bomb up whoever they want because they can't be searched.
How on earth did you get modded up to 5 without actually saying anything?
What? Google didn't invent clusters! They didn't invent Linux! They didn't invent Linux-based clusters!
Christ almighty, the Google bosses could slice a loaf of bread and the Slashsheep would be congratulating them for 'innovating' sliced bread!!!!!!!!!
When will the madness end?
1. No, the itunes has a special way of doing it which makes it faster. I.e. your ipod is effectively reduced in functionality unless you use Apple's software. This is a disgrace.
2. USB ports are no use when I'm over the hills somewhere, but spare batteries in my pocket are.
The third-party software doesn't put the files on the ipod as efficiently. This means that unless you use itunes, your ipod won't work as quickly, and the battery will run out faster. Apple are effectively using their monopoly in one market to try to dominate another. This is Microsoft tactics.
People pay $8 for a bland stale sandwich? I'm in the wrong business!
Jesus, and people on Slashdot moan about low wages! I suppose this is the same crowd who pay $5 for a brew from Starbuck's.
If another 20g makes a significant difference to your weight then you must be from Ethiopia, in which case you can't afford an mp3 player so it's a non-issue.
Call me crazy - but doesn't Apple dominate market share for BOTH hard drive AND flash based players?
The market for mp3 players is still very much in its infancy. Just as the first computers were expensive and owned only by the rich, mp3 players are expensive yuppie toys. Yuppies are obsessed with image and care so much about fitting in that they're a marketer's dream, and Apple are the kings of style over substance.
When the market matures, the ipod will go the same way as the mac: at the expensive end of the market, selling purely on image to a few rich people, whilst the PC (or in this case dell) makes all the cash catering to the 90%.
Only a very small minority actually like dodgy retro-60s designs, probably fashion designers and graphic artists who wear sandals and live in Notting Hill. The other 99% doesn't give a damn about the appearance of something as insignificant as a pocket-dwelling electronic device. The only reason people buy ipods is marketing. And we all know how easily Slashdotters fall for marketing and PR.
It's clever of Dell to cater to the majority who care about price, although it's also clever of Apple to manage to tap into the 'rich but dumb' sort of yuppies who buy expensive things they don't need because of appearance and marketing.
How is this any less newsworthy than the countless ipod articles? You can bet that if it was Apple and not Dell, there would have been fifteen articles today already. This story is at least some small evidence that Slashdot hasn't been bought by Apple.
I don't know, maybe they're ogling it based on HOW GOOD IT IS, rather than how it looks.
It's ironic that a community of largely unaesthetically-pleasing, overweight geeks who don't care about their appearance are so obsessed with the appearance of small plastic electronic devices that spend their life hidden away in someone's pocket.
Didn't people criticise Windows XP for being just a flash interface with little actual improvements over 2k?
But I suppose when APPLE do something, it's obviously the best. Seriously, Slashdot criticise the mainstream for people sheep, then blindly follow everything their favourite brands do.
Wow, you must be a midget or a 2 year old. My pocket is 18cm x 13cm, the size of the device is meaningless. I don't think I can even feel something that weighs 40g in my pocket. Perhaps you have some sort of wasting disease, but for the rest of us it could weight 200g and it wouldn't matter. Jesus, people these days are so soft...
What use is USB if you're in the middle of nowhere? With a battery you just take it out and put another one in. Good luck doing that with an ipod.
Here's what counts:
price
functionality
batteries
Here's what doesn't count:
appearance (unless you wear transparent trousers and are incredibly vain)
size
weight
a funny circle thing
corporate branding
hallelujah! a radio!
Unfortuanately, it's FM only, so pretty useless really. You miss all the football.
Another advantage of this thing is that you don't have to use Apple's obnoxious software or some obscure plugin just to move files to it. Probably just drag and drop from any file manager. There's no reason it should be any more complicated.
Looks OK to me, looks no more ugly than a small pocket radio or a USB stick. What are you expecting it to look like? I didn't realise geeks were so superficial.
Especially for a product which spends 99% OF ITS LIFE IN YOUR POCKET!
I think Apple is right though. Most of the time I don't care about the song order and playing on Random keeps things interesting.
What? They FORCE you to play the songs in random order, and that's a good thing? If Microsoft had done something like this you can guarantee the whole of Slashdot would be dancing up and down screaming about how useless it is! But because it's Apple, they can get away with anything???
Pardon me but I'm more interested in functionality and price than blind, sheep-like brand-loyalty and white paint.
Of course, there's just the small problem of them blowing up and not actually reaching space. Solar sail anyone?
I'd rather get something into space on a shuttle than on a submarine ICBM.
You overestimate how much of the market is sandal-wearing, coffee-drinking left-wing trendies who thing the ipod makes them look 'cool'. Most people don't really give a shit, most people won't want to spend such huge amounts of money on an mp3 player, most people hate white headphones. Stop making marketing conclusions based on what you see on Slashdot or in Starbucks.
The number of people who wear mp3 players around their necks is insignificant, Dell is wise in not aiming for a loud-mouthed minority but instead the silent majority. I don't know whether Apple or Dell has the biggest marketing budget, but I think that will be the decider.
Hasn't the shuffle been obsoleted by the nano anyway? I can't keep track of all these non-descriptive ipod names.
I'm sorry to break the 'feelgood' circle-jerk, but this 'mindshare' only exists on Slashdot. Come into the real world, and most people just use Google because it's force of habit. Like typing in 'slashdot.org' in the browser first thing in the morning even though you know there's going to be nothing of interest, it's just routine.
It is VERY easy to take a search-engine's market share, it's a simple as typing a different address in the browser or changing the homepage. It's nowhere near as entrenched as an operating system, and MS still buried OS/2. Imagine what they can do to a company which could disappear entirely with a click of a mouse. I'm afraid constant fellating from Slashdot won't keep a company successful.
Microsoft needs a whole new mindset if they want to compete in this market
No they don't, they just need a higher market share and more effective advertising. Once they get a high enough percentage of the market, all they need to do is bring in an advertising system that's more favourable to the advertisers, and they'll 'fucking kill' Google as all the advertisers jump ship. Remember that Google's entire business model relies on advertising, the search engine is just a way to show adverts.
Once Google's profits go down, the stock bubble bursts, and the rest of us who actually LEARNT from the dot-com era can stand back, put on the sunglasses, and watch as they crash and burn in a giant $80 billion inferno.
Unfortuanately, Open Office doesn't have a decent relational database, and a database doesn't give you the same simple, easy access to your data.
1. Whose computer has a sysadmin? I know I can't even afford a cleaner, let alone someone to live in my hous and fix my computer when it goes wrong. What world do you live in?
.tgz to another directory, but a user only has permissions in his own directory so if it's wiped then the backup is wiped as well.
2. A backup's no good if you've changed your data since then.
3. Not many people like fiddling with commands all the time, nor do they even know how to do so. We're not all super-nerds who know crontab and tar. Come back to the real world.
4. How can you trust a backup if the data may have been altered BEFORE you made the backup?
5. Where do you put the backup? I don't know of any home computers with tape drives, are we supposed to write all our data to a DVD every day? The only option is to copy a
Ideally, the user's home directories will be set to non-execute so that crap they download won't destroy their data
What world do you live in?
Just when I thought I'd already seen the stupidest post on Slashdot... Is anyone else amused by how ridiculously uninformed some of the comments are on here?
I think before you get a Slashdot account you should at least have to past a test on basic understanding of reality.
You're assuming that Google give a shit about other people, and that they give a shit about the law.
Google have BILLIONS of dollars. They're above the law. They routinely break copyright law every single day. This 'print' program is a clear breach of copyright. But why would Google have to ask permission like us lowly law-abiding people would have to?
They're loaded. They can afford to win any lawsuit by hiring all the best lawyers and forcing their opponents into submission, whether they're right or wrong. Anyone else doing this would be sued into oblivion by the book equivalent of the RIAA, but Google are so rich and powerful they're untouchable.
I'm betting this is just the tip of the iceberg. Google is turning into the next Microsoft.
You never know, this new MS Office interface might be a BETTER interface, rather than the poor OO interface. It's not the fact that it's different, it's whether it's good or bad.
In other words, if you don't like the price of something, take it illegally instead. It's not your fault for breaking the law, it's someone else's fault for pricing it wrong. After all, Slashdot posters have a god-given right to DEMAND how anyone else does business.
I believe in the free market. If you don't like the price of something, don't buy it. I think that Premiership football clubs charge too much for tickets. But I don't climb over the gate and sneak into the stadium, I just don't go. Simple, no?
This has been modded +2 funny and I don't understand it so this is obviously some sort of Slashdot in-joke, I don't get it. What are magic wishes? What is funny about this post?
What is surf and turf? What is fast pass?