In the past, firmware was usually on a flash chip onboard the device. Often it was still loaded from there into the device's ram by the driver (I know, I've written drivers that did just that). There's no significant difference between loading the firmware from a flash chip and loading it from disk, except that you don't have to pay for a flash chip.
The only real issue here is vendors who try to restrict distribution of the firmware with open drivers. Otherwise, this is how it has always been, except instead of firmware being loaded from a flash chip, it's loaded from the disk drive by the driver. This is by far the more sensible way to handle it, and removes a redundant component from hardware.
There's no reason for us to be yelling at each other. However, I stand by my statement that I get jumped on by fanatics whenever I make a negative comment about Apple here; regardless of whether you're one or not. A lot of people *do* form an emotional attachment to the Church of Jobs, and lash out at "heathens".
DivX support is a major issue for me. I'd be unlikely to use video features much, or at all, on a player that didn't support it. From my perspective, there's no reason to include video support if it won't play divx.
What makes iPods useless to me, though, is the ham-fisted attempts to modify my behaviour, by "locking" an iPod to a specific iTunes instance. 90% of the music I get introduced to is from friends grabbing my player and dropping stuff on it. Not being able to plug it into any random machine to copy music onto and off of makes the iPod largely useless in it's primary function to me.
The lack of DivX support feels like the same thing to me. There's no technical reason not to include it, in fact it's quite the opposite. H.264 is a horrible format for portable video, it's a huge processor hog, and thus it sucks back the battery power, while a divx decoder sips conservatively. The only sane reason I can think of for not supporting DivX is to mollify the copyright cartel.
On the Russian side, it sounds like much of that activity is from commercial satellite launches. Useful, but not all that interesting. On the American side, a big chunk is pointless, outdated shuttle launches. Some of those will be useful, such as fixing the Hubble, but most will just be the make work project that is the IIS.
It is very much apparent from the rapid response to a simple query about options other than the iPod, that the Church of Jobs members do care very much that someone would dare to get something other than an iPod. I've said nothing about the relative intelligence of Apple's customers. All I've done is point out that there are options which are better for me. I don't have any beef against Apple. I'm just not particularly impressed by their products. The rabid and fanatical response of the fashionistas speaks for itself.
The Zen is just as simple, if not more so, than an iPod. Creative designed the interface the iPod uses. mp3, aac, wav, aiff, audible and apple lossless is a pretty anaemic list of supported formats, most players will support more. On the video side, it's important to note that the iPod Video does not support the most common file format: divx. H.264 is a nice, but it isn't very good for portable players. It's advantage is higher quality in smaller files, but it does this at the cost of greater processing requirements, which translates into more battery draw. Given that video capable portable players have storage to spare, divx is clearly the better choice. Further, any video downloaded from torrent sites is likely to be divx, and thus unusable on iPods.
As for ease of use, how do I easily go to a friends place to swap music with an iPod? Don't scream pirate at me; private copying has always been legal in Canada.
The iPod owns the market because of good marketing. Period. Apple would have to majorly screw up at this point to lose that. If an iPod meets your needs best, fine, that's nice. Have fun. But there's no need for a religious crusade against people who's needs are better met by other things.
My Zen is slightly thicker, but otherwise the same size as an iPod. It fits in my pocket, and that's all that matters from my perspective. 60GB is more than enough for me, so more isn't really much of a selling feature (again, to me. If it is to you, wonderful). The LCD on the Zen is much nicer for watching videos on, though not in the sunshine. However, if I'm out and about in the sunshine, I'll have other things I'll want to look at. It's a trade off, which works out in favour of the Zen for me.
I don't personally like iTunes very much, and have no intention of buying music from a DRM service, so that has no effect to me. I *do* bring my media player over to friends places to share music. This is perfectly legal in Canada, where I live, and I don't particularly like the idea of Apple trying to force American laws on me. I know it's possible to get at the music files in other ways, but why would I want to put up with that hassle if I don't have to?
h.264 certainly will give a smaller file size for similar quality, but it's also much more processor intensive to decode, and would eat the battery much faster. Further, why go to the trouble of re-encoding things to some esoteric format, when I've already got lots of stuff in divx that I can just throw on the device and use? And why would I want to keep two archive copies, one for the PMP and one for the DVD player?
There's also the fact that the Zen can output at 640x480 to an external display.
It isn't a dependable format. If I pack away a collection of iTunes encrypted music for 15 years, will I still be able to play it? Doubtful. Add to the fact that it locks me into one manufacturer if I want to listen to music I've purchased without cracking it, and it doesn't seem a very good deal to me. What if Apple starts producing things you don't like? Or someone else produces things you like much better? Lack of iTunes support in competing products isn't a deficiency in them, it's a deficiency in iTunes.
Also, I'm not American, and it's not illegal for me to pirate my music (and arguably not my video), so I really don't have any reason to put up with DRM in the first place.
The convergence of PDA, mp3 player, snapshot camera and cell phone is an emerging market. There's much to say for having one digital device, instead of juggling half a dozen of them, and that's ignoring the synergistic benefits. Easy stupid ring tones, obviously, but what else? Recording phone conversations? Built in answering service? Smart call prioritization? Wireless VoIP?
Can Apple do it? Probably not. While Apple is often around at technological emergence, if someone else doesn't show them the way, it flops. Apple's successful products are almost exclusively prettied up versions of someone else's idea. They don't blaze trails, they pave them, and put up a toll booth.
Re:Cell providers are the problem, not the phone
on
Inside Apple's iPhone
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· Score: 0
Right, that'll end well when you continue using the same bit of spectrum.
The real problem with cell phones...
on
Inside Apple's iPhone
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Is that all the service providers want to wall you off in their own little managed garden.
For obvious reasons, Apple isn't likely to solve this problem.
We're still calling it an iPhone. Cisco is trying to trick Apple lovers into buying their crap, and any judge with a brain would rule that way. No, no judge will ever let Apple lay claim to the lower case "i", any more than they'd let anyone else claim eGarbage. They should have come up with a more unique trademark.
Or, maybe someone else would have come along and done it. Someone who wouldn't bother even considering it now, because they have to deal with your corrupt local government.
Slashdot Mirror
In the past, firmware was usually on a flash chip onboard the device. Often it was still loaded from there into the device's ram by the driver (I know, I've written drivers that did just that). There's no significant difference between loading the firmware from a flash chip and loading it from disk, except that you don't have to pay for a flash chip.
The only real issue here is vendors who try to restrict distribution of the firmware with open drivers. Otherwise, this is how it has always been, except instead of firmware being loaded from a flash chip, it's loaded from the disk drive by the driver. This is by far the more sensible way to handle it, and removes a redundant component from hardware.
Rather, I imagine the proxies are used for censorship.
There's no reason for us to be yelling at each other. However, I stand by my statement that I get jumped on by fanatics whenever I make a negative comment about Apple here; regardless of whether you're one or not. A lot of people *do* form an emotional attachment to the Church of Jobs, and lash out at "heathens".
DivX support is a major issue for me. I'd be unlikely to use video features much, or at all, on a player that didn't support it. From my perspective, there's no reason to include video support if it won't play divx.
What makes iPods useless to me, though, is the ham-fisted attempts to modify my behaviour, by "locking" an iPod to a specific iTunes instance. 90% of the music I get introduced to is from friends grabbing my player and dropping stuff on it. Not being able to plug it into any random machine to copy music onto and off of makes the iPod largely useless in it's primary function to me.
The lack of DivX support feels like the same thing to me. There's no technical reason not to include it, in fact it's quite the opposite. H.264 is a horrible format for portable video, it's a huge processor hog, and thus it sucks back the battery power, while a divx decoder sips conservatively. The only sane reason I can think of for not supporting DivX is to mollify the copyright cartel.
At least the bluetooth hands free part. You can't easily ban something if you can't see it.
It's what they do.
On the Russian side, it sounds like much of that activity is from commercial satellite launches. Useful, but not all that interesting. On the American side, a big chunk is pointless, outdated shuttle launches. Some of those will be useful, such as fixing the Hubble, but most will just be the make work project that is the IIS.
It is very much apparent from the rapid response to a simple query about options other than the iPod, that the Church of Jobs members do care very much that someone would dare to get something other than an iPod. I've said nothing about the relative intelligence of Apple's customers. All I've done is point out that there are options which are better for me. I don't have any beef against Apple. I'm just not particularly impressed by their products. The rabid and fanatical response of the fashionistas speaks for itself.
The Zen is just as simple, if not more so, than an iPod. Creative designed the interface the iPod uses. mp3, aac, wav, aiff, audible and apple lossless is a pretty anaemic list of supported formats, most players will support more. On the video side, it's important to note that the iPod Video does not support the most common file format: divx. H.264 is a nice, but it isn't very good for portable players. It's advantage is higher quality in smaller files, but it does this at the cost of greater processing requirements, which translates into more battery draw. Given that video capable portable players have storage to spare, divx is clearly the better choice. Further, any video downloaded from torrent sites is likely to be divx, and thus unusable on iPods.
As for ease of use, how do I easily go to a friends place to swap music with an iPod? Don't scream pirate at me; private copying has always been legal in Canada.
The iPod owns the market because of good marketing. Period. Apple would have to majorly screw up at this point to lose that. If an iPod meets your needs best, fine, that's nice. Have fun. But there's no need for a religious crusade against people who's needs are better met by other things.
My Zen is slightly thicker, but otherwise the same size as an iPod. It fits in my pocket, and that's all that matters from my perspective. 60GB is more than enough for me, so more isn't really much of a selling feature (again, to me. If it is to you, wonderful). The LCD on the Zen is much nicer for watching videos on, though not in the sunshine. However, if I'm out and about in the sunshine, I'll have other things I'll want to look at. It's a trade off, which works out in favour of the Zen for me.
I don't personally like iTunes very much, and have no intention of buying music from a DRM service, so that has no effect to me. I *do* bring my media player over to friends places to share music. This is perfectly legal in Canada, where I live, and I don't particularly like the idea of Apple trying to force American laws on me. I know it's possible to get at the music files in other ways, but why would I want to put up with that hassle if I don't have to?
h.264 certainly will give a smaller file size for similar quality, but it's also much more processor intensive to decode, and would eat the battery much faster. Further, why go to the trouble of re-encoding things to some esoteric format, when I've already got lots of stuff in divx that I can just throw on the device and use? And why would I want to keep two archive copies, one for the PMP and one for the DVD player?
There's also the fact that the Zen can output at 640x480 to an external display.
It isn't a dependable format. If I pack away a collection of iTunes encrypted music for 15 years, will I still be able to play it? Doubtful. Add to the fact that it locks me into one manufacturer if I want to listen to music I've purchased without cracking it, and it doesn't seem a very good deal to me. What if Apple starts producing things you don't like? Or someone else produces things you like much better? Lack of iTunes support in competing products isn't a deficiency in them, it's a deficiency in iTunes.
Also, I'm not American, and it's not illegal for me to pirate my music (and arguably not my video), so I really don't have any reason to put up with DRM in the first place.
The Zen Vision:M plays the same files I'd play on my computer, or burn and play on my dvd player.
I don't want to have to re-encode everything I download, though.
Normal people don't involve themselves emotionally with a consumer product. Get over it.
How well he sleeps at night, helping to sue single mothers, the elderly, children, and the grieving families of dead people.
Creative's products are better. Especially if you want to play videos in a format people actually use (divx).
The convergence of PDA, mp3 player, snapshot camera and cell phone is an emerging market. There's much to say for having one digital device, instead of juggling half a dozen of them, and that's ignoring the synergistic benefits. Easy stupid ring tones, obviously, but what else? Recording phone conversations? Built in answering service? Smart call prioritization? Wireless VoIP?
Can Apple do it? Probably not. While Apple is often around at technological emergence, if someone else doesn't show them the way, it flops. Apple's successful products are almost exclusively prettied up versions of someone else's idea. They don't blaze trails, they pave them, and put up a toll booth.
Right, that'll end well when you continue using the same bit of spectrum.
Is that all the service providers want to wall you off in their own little managed garden.
For obvious reasons, Apple isn't likely to solve this problem.
Was it almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee?
Don't you remember the late 90's? There was eThis and iThat all over the fucking place.
You mean those things we replaced with cell phones?
Call me when they're willing to license it on flexible terms, like every other OS vendor in that field. Or any other field, for that matter.
Or, maybe someone else would have come along and done it. Someone who wouldn't bother even considering it now, because they have to deal with your corrupt local government.
Has never actually dealt with local politics.