Creative Labs has never produced high end equipment. If you remember back to the 1980s, the thing that allowed them to gain a foothold was their inclusion of FM synthesis at a reasonable price. The company branched into wavetable synthesis with a vengeance in the 1990s, using chipsets developed by California synthesizer company E-Mu Systems (also seen in cards by Turtle Beach and others). They eventually bought E-Mu for around $28m, primarily because of their ability to design/build high quality multichannel audio synthesis chips (stuff which can be done exceedingly well in software today).
Sadly, Creative's "professional" division (AKA E-Mu) didn't fare well after the purchase - their lineup of hardware samplers and synths floundered in the early 2000s due to the availability of quite credible software synthesizers. emu.com still produces a handful of "mid-range" professional sound cards that share the same core chipset as many of Creative's cheaper efforts. Unfortunately, they no longer have market advantage in that segment and the E-Mu name has been sullied by their association with Creative Labs (the "Sound Blaster legacy). That puts Creative in a tough spot because decent quality sound is now definitely a commodity product. They've already passed the point of including "silly" features - 7.1 SuperWOWHyperCool sound with 1024 voices of synth playback, etc. The highly profitable soundcard era is long gone and their mp3 player lineup is now being sold at cut rate prices at Wal-Mart. That can't be good for the bottom line.
Nope, suburbanization is only a symptom. Automobiles and poor diet are the root cause of the recent trend toward obesity. They work most effectively when combined for a quick trip through the drive-through of the local burger joint. The widespread adoption of automobiles following World War Two allowed developers to build large suburban housing tracts that would have been far to isolated if the population had to rely on lengthy trips by public transportation. Once people moved into suburbia, they were too isolated from traditional shopping streets in the heart of cities and towns. As a result, suburban shopping malls (most easily accessed by car) sprang up across North America. Those eventually devolved into the "big box" retail concept, in which it is often impractical to walk between shops in the same shopping center because of the mammoth parking lots.
I am James Grahame, Greg. I recopied my post because it fit the conversation and I hate it when people try to redirect traffic from/. to their own blog or site. But thanks for flagging me as a potential fiend.:)
Here's a bold prediction: The iPhone that Apple Inc. introduced yesterday won't be a runaway success. It will never sell tens of millions of units, nor is it intended to. In reality, it's a flagship product intended to define the high-end of Apple's new ultraportable media computer lineup. Let's face it, the classic iPod has reached the end of its natural life. Even the most recent fifth generation iPods are showing their age. The screen is small, the OS extremely limited. To make things worse, Apple's competition has been nipping at their heels with rapidly improving devices such as SanDisk's tiny Sansa flash players and the Creative Zen Vision:M.
The iPod line needed a reboot, and the iPhone was splashiest way to do it. In fact, this device is the logical evolution of the Newton MessagePad.
Think about it. Apple realized that boring contact lists, calendars and handwriting
recognition won't encourage the Unwashed Masses to adopt portable computers. People are far more
media-centric than that.
The rejuvenated iPod lineup will tempt you
with music, movies and games, while offering an addictive combination
of go-anywhere Wi-Fi browsing and email. And you can bet that Apple is
planning to open up third-party development as quickly as possible.
As for the iPhone device, the bleak reality is that it is slightly larger
than a 5G iPod. Too big to slip into the pocket of my jeans, which means it's too large to use as my everyday phone. My hard drive-equipped iPod usually lives in a messenger bag
on my shoulder or in a jacket pocket, simply because it's too bulky to
function as an "everywhere" communications accessory. I wouldn't be
willing to carry something as large or expensive as the iPhone with
me everywhere I go. I'd look like a dork with my calculator on a belt clip. Besides,
mobile phones are expensive enough to begin with and many people
(especially students) will balk at the idea of committing to a 2 year
$1000+ mobile voice/data/voicemail contract after shelling out $599 for the iPhone itself.
No, the real magic will happen when Apple releases a $299 version of
this device - the next generation iPod - that retains everything but
the GSM + EDGE phone technology. At that point, the iPod will be
perfectly positioned to become everyone's favorite teeny-tiny
ultraportable computer.
I read over the HD DVD list, and noticed something quite odd. One of their criteria for 'Tier 1' is that the film features "many examples of 3D." They're using '3D' to refer to CG special effects. This is only a useful way to judge and categorize films if you're looking for action-filled sequences to show off your new HD system to friends.
Correlation does not imply causation. All we can say is that "people who drink a bit of alcohol tend to live longer," not that alcohol prolongs their lives. It could be that these individuals take the time to socialize and de-stress, which causes them to live longer. Or perhaps there are financial factors at play: someone who can afford to drink three or four bottles of wine a week is not likely to be living in abject poverty. Of course, it could also be that anti-oxidant properties of the beverages have a positive effect as well.
This is thinly disguised link-bait from a site I've never heard of. Is there any special reason that it was deemed/. worthy, apart from the fact that their inclusion of Vista will incite a vicious troll war?
To make things even worse, each of the 10 "winners" appears on a separate page to pump up ad impressions.
I'm saddened by this news. I've used Eudora since the early 1990s, except for one very painful stretch in the early 2000s where it was "strongly suggested" that I use Outlook at work. My favorite feature is the lightning-fast search functionality (which makes me look brilliantly well organized when someone asks about an email conversation from several years ago). I can't say I was fond of the programs ad sponsored option, though. Having your email program pitch the DVD version of Bambi is really annoying.
In the end, the program got really expensive -- maintaining an annual subscription is a slight embarrassment when the accounting department calls me to query the need to "buy another copy of the same program").
My big concern with the new version of the program is that it will prove to be a dead-end fork of Thunderbird code. I'll know for sure the moment I try to search my old mail folders in the upcoming open-source version. If it takes longer than a second, the baby's going out with the bathwater.
The new Yahoo mail is based upon Oddpost, which was among the first "rich client" web applications developed. It's a rags to riches story, because the pair of guys who developed (Ethan Diamond now product director for Yahoo! Mail at Yahoo! and Iain Lamb) worked through the night at SF coffeeshops because they didn't have an office. Their early program was IE-centric and refused to run on any other browser, but this wasn't a severe limitation for many home users (although it caused me frustration at work). The software generated quite a bit of interest in the press, although at the time (early 2000s) they advertised it as offering only 50MB of storage (amusingly enough, there was nothing built into the program to check -- you could pack your mailbox insanely full).
The company stood out because their app looked like a "real" desktop app at a time when Hotmail was the ultimate web-based mail experience for most people. In the end, they leased a funky little office and managed to get funding to help the company grow. Their business model was simple (and probably not that effective) -- they sold low-cost annual subscriptions to individual users and offered a more expensive corporate package for companies that wanted to deploy the software on their own servers.
Many early users were saddened when their development seemed to go "dark" -- no more site updates, no more quirky news announcements. Many were certain that they were on the verge of closing down when a press release came out late on a Friday afternoon announcing that they'd been purchased by Yahoo! for a rumored $28m. It took a couple of years of hard work, but "Oddpost 2.0" has morphed into a much better email system than Yahoo! formerly had. It's definitely slanted at the casual user who's familiar with MS Outlook, but that's not such a bad thing. My biggest gripe is the non-standard shortcuts. Still, this is a fantastic rags to riches success story.
I like being able to share books with friends. I doubt that Sony's going to allow me to lend my book license to someone else, nor am I likely to find electronic books in a used bookstore. Libraries probably won't be allowed to offer them, either.
It's easier to just say "no" and rely on the old battery free paper versions. At least no one can deny that I "own" it if it's sitting on my bedside table.
Why is it that we eagerly participate in a mad rush to publicize every single product at every single Apple PR event? No one else *ever* gets that kind of coverage... Imagine Dell or Creative Labs having a similar impact. The cold, hard reality is that the company has its share of flops along with the home runs (like that odd iPod speaker thingy) and they're definitely not a cool and trendy ma & pa shop... yet we treat them like one. I know there stuff is cool, but it's not always the coolest. So why is it that we keep worshiping at the Idol of Jobs?
Oh, for the old times when six year-olds went out and got their hands dirty down in the coal mines. Not to mention the fun and frivolity of joining the navy as soon as one hits fourteen.:)
OpenOffice is overkill for the majority of casual home users, too. But that's secondary to the fact that inexperienced users want the comfort of a name brand. My mother is a case in point -- she was very careful to make sure that MS Word and Outlook were bundled with her little $349 Dell (and OpenOffice is not nearly as pervasive -- she'd have to call me every time she had a question because everyone in her over-60 crowd runs Office.)
The article states: "However, in the next technical refresh of the Office 2007 beta, users can set the ribbon to automatically minimise whenever it is not being used, effectively making the ribbon headings look like traditional menus." In other words, minimizing the ribbon is an optional change -- it hasn't been removed as the root post alludes.
I really hate the UI changes in each version of Office and wish there was a "classic" setting that causes a default skin to be displayed with everything in a standardized spot. Why? Because when my mother/sister/neighbour's cat purchases a new computer it inevitably comes with a new version of Office that has features senselessly 'hidden' in different spots. It causes no end of agony to help these poor users adapt. After all, most people need little more than a glorified typewriter with spell-checking. Microsoft should offer "Office Extrasimple Basic" for folks like these.
Of course, they'd market it in a way that encouraged people to upgrade "just in case they need the ability to do something powerful."
I shouldn't be surprised that this turnip didn't bother to back up his multimillion dollar screenplay. It seems that most people believe hard disks are infalliable, and those tiny spinning platters never suffer catastrophic failure. The guy should have opened a gmail account and emailed drafts to himself. It costs nothing, takes moments, and gives you a mindlessly simple way of archiving every edition of your work.
"Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this."
It can be hard to tell the difference between a lemming and a canary in the dark. Not that it really matters -- both will perish.
In many ways, IT is a global make-work project. We spend millions of hours re-re-recreating the wheel and building incredibly complex "vehicles" to perform previously unimagined tasks. It's rare that someone stops and asks questions like, "Does Slashdot make the world a better place?" or "would we be better off without iPods?"
Odd little article. It talks about "nuclear bombs," but fails to mention payload delivery vehicles. Surely the author doesn't imagine that pilots still jump into the Enola Gay for a cheery little bombing run? I've often suspected that the weak link in an arsenal of ICBMs is the launch vehicle. In all probibility, a great number of older missiles would mis-fire, because I can't imagine that a long-range rocket ages particularly gracefully.
The thing that worries me most about building a new nuclear device is that foreign governments will be very interested in its design. Nothing like spending billions of dollars on a design so that China (for instance) can manufacture a clone for a few hundred million a pop. And it's not really likely that The Axis of Evil (whomever they might be this decade...) really need six thousand of the things - a few hundred would be enough for the human race to do enough damage that the next alpha lifeform will be a giant cockroach.
1. at £209, wouldn't it make much more sense to purchase an office full of cheap Dells, which offer much more processing power as well as local storage? The only advantage I can see of this device is that it is very compact and wall-mounted... and that advantage is totally wiped out by having to have a bulky LCD panel, keyboard and mouse on each desk.
IOW, this is an interesting idea that will probably fail in all but a few niche applications - I wouldn't invest in the company.;)
~78% of the air we breath is nitrogen by volume, yet everyone seems to be fixated on squeezing oxygen out of rocks on the moon. Is this because nitrogen is easier to store and generate, or are people just overlooking it?
Why has no one mentioned incorporating these little machines into our own school systems? They're significantly cheaper than Win or Mac notebooks, and have no easily damaged moving parts. Some school districts are already loaning kids notebooks, but why not take it a step further and offer a standardized version of the this machine for everyone? It wouldn't take for MySpace/chat extensions to start springing up all over the place, so that kids could basically behave the same way they already do with their Windows boxes.
My bet is on SaskTel.:) I remember a lot of research into interactive TV in Regina in the mid-1990s. It'd be nice to see it actually come about (albeit with completely different technology).
I second Paul's comment. http://www.retrothing.com/ absolutely rocks. The site is a never-ending torrent of nifty gadgets from the past, mixed with a smattering of modern Retro stuff like hybrid Vespa scooters and reissues of PDP 8 computers.
I wonder what the side-effects of injecting acrylate and butadiene into a few million people would be. My suspicion is that there will be a low but non-zero reaction rate. And even 0.01% of 100,000,000 people adds up to a hundred thousand individuals sickened by a protective measure that might prove ineffectual. It also seems that there's a genetic factor at play with bird flu susceptibility - some infected families were hit harder as a group than others who caught the same illness at the same time and place.
If I try on my tinfoil hat for a moment, it seems that the only winner in a Tamiflu stockpiling situation will be the manufacturer. We can be almost certain that the "next big pandemic" will blind side us. That is, after all, the nature of pandemics. It'll be a mutated form of *something*, probably something quite benign.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, Creative's "professional" division (AKA E-Mu) didn't fare well after the purchase - their lineup of hardware samplers and synths floundered in the early 2000s due to the availability of quite credible software synthesizers. emu.com still produces a handful of "mid-range" professional sound cards that share the same core chipset as many of Creative's cheaper efforts. Unfortunately, they no longer have market advantage in that segment and the E-Mu name has been sullied by their association with Creative Labs (the "Sound Blaster legacy). That puts Creative in a tough spot because decent quality sound is now definitely a commodity product. They've already passed the point of including "silly" features - 7.1 SuperWOWHyperCool sound with 1024 voices of synth playback, etc. The highly profitable soundcard era is long gone and their mp3 player lineup is now being sold at cut rate prices at Wal-Mart. That can't be good for the bottom line.
How about starting by cutting short your surfing session and turning your computer off? ;)
Nope, suburbanization is only a symptom. Automobiles and poor diet are the root cause of the recent trend toward obesity. They work most effectively when combined for a quick trip through the drive-through of the local burger joint. The widespread adoption of automobiles following World War Two allowed developers to build large suburban housing tracts that would have been far to isolated if the population had to rely on lengthy trips by public transportation. Once people moved into suburbia, they were too isolated from traditional shopping streets in the heart of cities and towns. As a result, suburban shopping malls (most easily accessed by car) sprang up across North America. Those eventually devolved into the "big box" retail concept, in which it is often impractical to walk between shops in the same shopping center because of the mammoth parking lots.
I am James Grahame, Greg. I recopied my post because it fit the conversation and I hate it when people try to redirect traffic from /. to their own blog or site. But thanks for flagging me as a potential fiend. :)
The iPod line needed a reboot, and the iPhone was splashiest way to do it. In fact, this device is the logical evolution of the Newton MessagePad. Think about it. Apple realized that boring contact lists, calendars and handwriting recognition won't encourage the Unwashed Masses to adopt portable computers. People are far more media-centric than that.
The rejuvenated iPod lineup will tempt you with music, movies and games, while offering an addictive combination of go-anywhere Wi-Fi browsing and email. And you can bet that Apple is planning to open up third-party development as quickly as possible.
As for the iPhone device, the bleak reality is that it is slightly larger than a 5G iPod. Too big to slip into the pocket of my jeans, which means it's too large to use as my everyday phone. My hard drive-equipped iPod usually lives in a messenger bag on my shoulder or in a jacket pocket, simply because it's too bulky to function as an "everywhere" communications accessory. I wouldn't be willing to carry something as large or expensive as the iPhone with me everywhere I go. I'd look like a dork with my calculator on a belt clip. Besides, mobile phones are expensive enough to begin with and many people (especially students) will balk at the idea of committing to a 2 year $1000+ mobile voice/data/voicemail contract after shelling out $599 for the iPhone itself.
No, the real magic will happen when Apple releases a $299 version of this device - the next generation iPod - that retains everything but the GSM + EDGE phone technology. At that point, the iPod will be perfectly positioned to become everyone's favorite teeny-tiny ultraportable computer.
I read over the HD DVD list, and noticed something quite odd. One of their criteria for 'Tier 1' is that the film features "many examples of 3D." They're using '3D' to refer to CG special effects. This is only a useful way to judge and categorize films if you're looking for action-filled sequences to show off your new HD system to friends.
Correlation does not imply causation. All we can say is that "people who drink a bit of alcohol tend to live longer," not that alcohol prolongs their lives. It could be that these individuals take the time to socialize and de-stress, which causes them to live longer. Or perhaps there are financial factors at play: someone who can afford to drink three or four bottles of wine a week is not likely to be living in abject poverty. Of course, it could also be that anti-oxidant properties of the beverages have a positive effect as well.
This is thinly disguised link-bait from a site I've never heard of. Is there any special reason that it was deemed /. worthy, apart from the fact that their inclusion of Vista will incite a vicious troll war?
To make things even worse, each of the 10 "winners" appears on a separate page to pump up ad impressions.
In the end, the program got really expensive -- maintaining an annual subscription is a slight embarrassment when the accounting department calls me to query the need to "buy another copy of the same program").
My big concern with the new version of the program is that it will prove to be a dead-end fork of Thunderbird code. I'll know for sure the moment I try to search my old mail folders in the upcoming open-source version. If it takes longer than a second, the baby's going out with the bathwater.
The new Yahoo mail is based upon Oddpost, which was among the first "rich client" web applications developed. It's a rags to riches story, because the pair of guys who developed (Ethan Diamond now product director for Yahoo! Mail at Yahoo! and Iain Lamb) worked through the night at SF coffeeshops because they didn't have an office. Their early program was IE-centric and refused to run on any other browser, but this wasn't a severe limitation for many home users (although it caused me frustration at work). The software generated quite a bit of interest in the press, although at the time (early 2000s) they advertised it as offering only 50MB of storage (amusingly enough, there was nothing built into the program to check -- you could pack your mailbox insanely full).
The company stood out because their app looked like a "real" desktop app at a time when Hotmail was the ultimate web-based mail experience for most people. In the end, they leased a funky little office and managed to get funding to help the company grow. Their business model was simple (and probably not that effective) -- they sold low-cost annual subscriptions to individual users and offered a more expensive corporate package for companies that wanted to deploy the software on their own servers.
Many early users were saddened when their development seemed to go "dark" -- no more site updates, no more quirky news announcements. Many were certain that they were on the verge of closing down when a press release came out late on a Friday afternoon announcing that they'd been purchased by Yahoo! for a rumored $28m. It took a couple of years of hard work, but "Oddpost 2.0" has morphed into a much better email system than Yahoo! formerly had. It's definitely slanted at the casual user who's familiar with MS Outlook, but that's not such a bad thing. My biggest gripe is the non-standard shortcuts. Still, this is a fantastic rags to riches success story.
I like being able to share books with friends. I doubt that Sony's going to allow me to lend my book license to someone else, nor am I likely to find electronic books in a used bookstore. Libraries probably won't be allowed to offer them, either. It's easier to just say "no" and rely on the old battery free paper versions. At least no one can deny that I "own" it if it's sitting on my bedside table.
Why is it that we eagerly participate in a mad rush to publicize every single product at every single Apple PR event? No one else *ever* gets that kind of coverage... Imagine Dell or Creative Labs having a similar impact. The cold, hard reality is that the company has its share of flops along with the home runs (like that odd iPod speaker thingy) and they're definitely not a cool and trendy ma & pa shop... yet we treat them like one. I know there stuff is cool, but it's not always the coolest. So why is it that we keep worshiping at the Idol of Jobs?
Oh, for the old times when six year-olds went out and got their hands dirty down in the coal mines. Not to mention the fun and frivolity of joining the navy as soon as one hits fourteen. :)
OpenOffice is overkill for the majority of casual home users, too. But that's secondary to the fact that inexperienced users want the comfort of a name brand. My mother is a case in point -- she was very careful to make sure that MS Word and Outlook were bundled with her little $349 Dell (and OpenOffice is not nearly as pervasive -- she'd have to call me every time she had a question because everyone in her over-60 crowd runs Office.)
I really hate the UI changes in each version of Office and wish there was a "classic" setting that causes a default skin to be displayed with everything in a standardized spot. Why? Because when my mother/sister/neighbour's cat purchases a new computer it inevitably comes with a new version of Office that has features senselessly 'hidden' in different spots. It causes no end of agony to help these poor users adapt. After all, most people need little more than a glorified typewriter with spell-checking. Microsoft should offer "Office Extrasimple Basic" for folks like these.
Of course, they'd market it in a way that encouraged people to upgrade "just in case they need the ability to do something powerful."
I shouldn't be surprised that this turnip didn't bother to back up his multimillion dollar screenplay. It seems that most people believe hard disks are infalliable, and those tiny spinning platters never suffer catastrophic failure. The guy should have opened a gmail account and emailed drafts to himself. It costs nothing, takes moments, and gives you a mindlessly simple way of archiving every edition of your work.
It can be hard to tell the difference between a lemming and a canary in the dark. Not that it really matters -- both will perish.
In many ways, IT is a global make-work project. We spend millions of hours re-re-recreating the wheel and building incredibly complex "vehicles" to perform previously unimagined tasks. It's rare that someone stops and asks questions like, "Does Slashdot make the world a better place?" or "would we be better off without iPods?"
Errm... there wasn't anyone around to name the Earth anything a few hundred million years ago, unless you count the Vogons and the mice.
The thing that worries me most about building a new nuclear device is that foreign governments will be very interested in its design. Nothing like spending billions of dollars on a design so that China (for instance) can manufacture a clone for a few hundred million a pop. And it's not really likely that The Axis of Evil (whomever they might be this decade...) really need six thousand of the things - a few hundred would be enough for the human race to do enough damage that the next alpha lifeform will be a giant cockroach.
IOW, this is an interesting idea that will probably fail in all but a few niche applications - I wouldn't invest in the company. ;)
~78% of the air we breath is nitrogen by volume, yet everyone seems to be fixated on squeezing oxygen out of rocks on the moon. Is this because nitrogen is easier to store and generate, or are people just overlooking it?
Why has no one mentioned incorporating these little machines into our own school systems? They're significantly cheaper than Win or Mac notebooks, and have no easily damaged moving parts. Some school districts are already loaning kids notebooks, but why not take it a step further and offer a standardized version of the this machine for everyone? It wouldn't take for MySpace/chat extensions to start springing up all over the place, so that kids could basically behave the same way they already do with their Windows boxes.
My bet is on SaskTel. :) I remember a lot of research into interactive TV in Regina in the mid-1990s. It'd be nice to see it actually come about (albeit with completely different technology).
I second Paul's comment. http://www.retrothing.com/ absolutely rocks. The site is a never-ending torrent of nifty gadgets from the past, mixed with a smattering of modern Retro stuff like hybrid Vespa scooters and reissues of PDP 8 computers.
If I try on my tinfoil hat for a moment, it seems that the only winner in a Tamiflu stockpiling situation will be the manufacturer. We can be almost certain that the "next big pandemic" will blind side us. That is, after all, the nature of pandemics. It'll be a mutated form of *something*, probably something quite benign.