WWhile I agree with you that Intel certainly has wandered from the road to success in the marketplace recently, I do have to disagree with your statement,
"AMD - totally ignoring the desktop market."
I don't see that. All of AMD high end processors are nicely positioned to transition into the desktop market as software for these cores comes into existence. Their strategy distinctly places them in the drivers seat when it comes to the desktop market, and in a fashion that had ought to scare the pants off from the Intel engineering group. AMD has pulled an Intel on Intel.
I do also agree with you on another point though. Intel's new dual core is a miserable show of capability in my book. Why would anyone want to pay more than twice the price for the same performance as an existing single core processor? If anything, Intel seems to be making a case that dual cores are not cost effective and can't compete with the existing single core technology, which shows no signs of slowing down in it's progress. Intel's implementation is sloppy, poorly thought out and extremely inefficient. Why bother? I think they are afraid and felt they had to show something, despite the blatant shortcomings.
Buyer beware. These new intel dual cores are not what they seem. Read the reviews and tests and see for yourself.
It's people like you who think that way that ruin everything for everyone. If we started removing things that everyone had a reaction to, we would have to remove ALL food from school. For every type of food there is, we now have someone who will become deathly ill when they eat it. Grow up.
Whatever happened to natural selection anyways? Was it banned when I had my back turned?
Here is the exact filed text of the ten year licensing agreement you are refering to. Intel AMD cross licensing agreement Nowhere is there any legal languague in it that covers future developments. That would be a really stupid business move on anyone's part.
The real story here is what caused Intel to agree to a license agreement to begin with. They actually were caught with their pants down on this one. They had reverse engineered everything and attempted to move forward with their reverse engineered plans and AMD blew the whistle. Intel admitted their deed, to save on litigation that was obviously not in Intel's favor (based on their forced agreements with AMD in the past).
No AMD definately did this in a seperate agreement and were very happy to make it public. They just wanted the publicity out of Intel bringing up the rear for a change.
Agreed, but one additional point I need to make that you brought up. Intel has already lost their spot with Microsoft. Windows XP was written for the AMD processor, not the Intel cores. Microsoft actually had to go back and 'patch' their software to make it work properly with the current line of Intel processors. The new version of Windows, yet to be officially named, is also written around the AMD instruction set.
Thanks for naming the instruction sets that I mentioned. I could not remember the name. I believe that Intel spent enough money in the AMD store that AMD granted them the rights to name the instruction sets anyway they liked, as long as they did not change the functionality. That has to rub the Intel people the wrong way.
and you think that is better? Now instead of kill troll 15 times, I have to gues one of 5-10 different statements to accomplish the same thing? That doesn't sound better to me, but loathsomely more haineous. I relish using more than one of my senses in accomplishing a task. I do however agree that the comparison between GUI's and movies is severly inaccurate. A movie still only uses a couple of sense and interaction is out completely. How can you even think of comparing those things?
BEtter than me having to waste my weekends forever trying to fix problems on a half a dozen family machines. I enjoy my free time and don't like to do even more work for no good reason.
You are wrong about Dell's tech support though. They do not have any support based in India anymore. They ditched that failed attempt more than a year ago. It was all over the news, where were you? I, for one, strongly support any company who will move their jobs back to the US and admit failure. Kudos to Dell for that too.
Flash PIES are also difficult to stop for the average user. Most of your flash tracking will be much more accurate in terms of repeat visitor info and total time on the site tracking. Two very very important numbers. The other huge benefit to going in this direction is the cross platform advantage. Flash can be installed on nearly every platform out there. Makes your target audience much much larger than would otherwise be possible.
Personally, I think we will start seeing a huge amount of this type of tracking, as the paybacks for the snooper are huge when compared to tracking cookies.
Lose the zealot nature to your statements and they will carry much further. Read the article before you post and you won't look like a fool.
The article directly addresses the problem of Flash sites circumventing the use of cookies. Firefox is just as vulnerable to this intrusion as is IE and Opera and Netscape, etc, etc.
It is only a matter of time before exploits become more generic in nature, such as this. The days of platform targeting are going to start subsiding. This is much more 'worth the effort' as far as hacking goes becuase your target audience is so much larger. This won't be the last we see of platform inspecific system intrusions. (Yes I consider any information read or written from my machine, without my expressed consent an intrusion)
It doesn't change anything. He still makes up terms. Still makes comparisons to titles that aren't even close to being equivelant and he draws a conclusion without looking at the manufacturer's history and following, not to mention that this game is the latest release in a long line of extremely profitable and prolific series. Those are all points that underscore why this author's article is trash. He didn't do his homework.
I didn't misread anything. His point is that WOW won't survive. That's the point I am argueing. Are you trying to say the article is about something else? Is it not about WoW? Is it not reagarding it's immenent demise? I believe you are in error and had ought to return to the article to reread it. Were you at the right website?
It's more like a short term flop in my eyes. With this Dual core bearly beating a slightly fast clocked single core procesor in only a small handful of tests coupled with it's extremely high cost, it's dead before it even hits the streets. People are not going to spend 2 or 3 times the amount of cash for that kind of performance. It's just not going to happen.
I agree that the expectation is double the core, double the power. This test processor is dismal in that regard. I guess we will all have to wait until AMD releases their product results, so that Intel can see how it's supposed to be done.
Some people might see Intel leaving the processor market as a huge jump in conclusions. It's not really. The desktop processor market has not been among Intel's more profitable centers as of late. Even with their still huge marketshare numbers, they aren't making much money for their efforts in that arena. The Itantium represented a huge loss to them in terms of the amount of R&D, marketing and manufacturing that went into the product. Don't get me wrong, the Itanium is a fabulous processor, it's just that nobody wants it. It actually leaps a generation of processors and people are not willing to throw out their proven strategies, software and hardware to go in that direction. It's not that they lost their touch in making a great processor, it's that they lost touch with what the market is demanding. It's terribly hard to sell a product no one wants. That's where they really are.
As far as dell goes, I think they are great for their niche. I would never own one, but I would recommend them to my family members who need the great dell support when they do stupid things and bust the machine. That's Dell's only strength in my eyes. I much prefer the AMD chips, simply for their price points, if nothing else. That's going to be the new problem for Intel if they don't wake up soon. They could always get away with charging more for their processors than and equivalent AMD because people percieved that they were simply better. With that perception failing that pricing structure will either have to descend to or below AMD's, or they will see gtreatly decreased market share over then next 12 to 24 months.
I think Intel's decision to leave out extensions developed by AMD are going to kill to processor fairly quickly. Granted they bought the rights to them from AMD, but their must be some royalty type deal here, because Intel is only including a handful of them. That will make their processor increasingly incompatable with the already accepted AMD architecture. Why is Intel so grudging to admit they are behind? They are going to kill themselves with that attitude. A couple more processor iterations and failures like this, and I expect Intel to make moves to get out of the desktop processor market altogether.
I agree whole heartedly, WoW is not going to die falter or even dwindle as the author suggests. He apparently hasn't any fimiliarity with Blizzard on one hand, or with the genre on the other. He obvioulsy doesn't know that BattleNet servers at Blizzard are still up and running, after how many years? Now all of the sudden people are going to lose interest? I don't see any indicator that would cause me draw a conclusion that people are walking away from ANY blizzard product that they have purchased in the past. It just hasn't happened yet. So on that alone, the guy is obviously drawing straws.
I agree with your synopsis on his ridiculously ill matched comparison games. I thought that WoW was more of an RTS type of game than a 'slasher', (whatever that is supposed to be). Anyone who has to make up terms to describe what they are talking about, is in trouble to begin with. There are plenty of words, in use today, that can get your point across, why confuse everyone by making up even more new meaningless words to describe what you think? He obviously can't write, doesn't know the game he is lambasting, doesn't know the history of extreme customer loyalty on the part of Blizzard fans and doesn't know his game classifications. I pledge to buy every game that EBgames and/or EA Games lists on their website under the category of Slasher an give them away for free (safe bet, because their is not a Slasher genre). My arguement is not that Slasher doesn't mean something, but that it is not a Genre describing term and is improperly used in a comparision with regards to genres.
How the heck did this guy even get a job writing about this stuff?
I personally just did the same thing and went on a quest to find a reader I could carry with me. I was spending too much time locked in front of my PC reading books.
My criteria for a PDA was cost more than anything, so I will share the problems with going for the low price as opposed to usability. I shopped Ebay for my PDA and bid on many units before I got the one that I wanted at the price that I wanted. $100 was my limit and I met that with enough to spare to upgrade my unit.
I ended up purchasing the Compaq iPaq 3765 for $75. The battery was a bit weak, as it was the original, so I immediately replaced it with a much larger one for $25. It is a gourgeous unit, I have to admit. The screen is extremely legible even when sitting in that shaded corner of the airport lobby.
I am very happy with the units handling of most ebooks. It really only likes to use Microsoft's E-reader, I have however loaded Moby Reader and Acrobat Reader on their too. I have found however, that most DRM'ed ebooks will only work with the MS reader, forcing me to buy books only in that format. It's not true for all books, but most Adobe DRM'ed books will not work on a Pocket PC device. I found an article on MS Technical Support that states that Adobe's DRM scheme won't work on the MS Mobile OS/Pocket PC. The software loads, but DRM'ed books don't work.
In short, a Pocket PC is apparently going to lock you into the MS reader format for DRM'ed books. I cannot speak for a Palm OS PDA or any other readers. I haven't ever uesed them.
This is not an air 'powered' car as the article suggests. Did anyone think to question what actually runs the electric motor that compresses the air? Perhaps the large bank of batteries in the trunk? Wouldn't that be classifed as an electric car then, with an incredibly poor energy transfer system to the wheels.
"Why should I have to have parts of a web browser installed on my desktop environment in order to get the basic GUI to work?"
Because in an effort to not duplicate work and code, they chose to use the same code to run both environments. I don't see anything evil in that at all. Let MS say what they want, but you will break your retail MS OS install if you chose to uninstall IE from the add/remove control panel. Why? Simply, because it is uninstalling compenents that are also using by the base OS GUI. They are the same. The line is gray here and argueing over who is right or wrong is pointless. You can uninstall it, if you do it per very specific instructions that leave behind the pieces necessary for the rest of the OS. So what? Is that such a big evil? I would view it as much worse if they duplicated the coding because they were too stupid to figure out how to share it between the two environments. You are crying foul about a point that if they approached it differently, they would present an even worse case to you. The only thing that should have been done is a much better utility to share components and remove them only if they are no longer needed. I will conceed that the automatic uninstall is a faulty and needs to change. Otherwise, you are complaining about something where the alternatives are worse than the current situation.
Your supposition thaty you do not have the option to remove IE under the add/remove control panel is wrong. It is there and you can do it. You just have some detrimental outcomes due to the uninstall routine stupidly removing IE components that are also used by the OS (or you can say it removes OS components that are shared by IE, you can pick based on who you want to get mad at I guess). Either way, the arguement is pointless. Would you sue Chevy and force them to stop putting Delco radios in their cars becuase it closes so much of the market to other vendors? I don't see aftermarket vendors complaining too much about it. It is more detrimental to the consumer to remove the radio as a component than it is to the vendor(s) to leave them in. I don't think most people can install their own radio. Same thing with IE. Most people will use the item packaged with the base product. It doesn't make the preinstalled options evil, just don't use them if you don't want them. It won't hurt a thing to let it sit there idle.
I think everyone is jumping to conclusion in saying that this case could destroy the Beatmax precident. Personally, I do not see how making copies of legally owned material and passing them out freely to people you are not even aquainted with, could possibly be seen as anything close to fair use. A backup is one thing. A copy for yourself to use in a different format is fair in my book. Backups are fair. Since when is giving it away to others fair? It never has been, even under the Betamax precedent. An incompatable set of parallels are incorrectly drawn for this story.
You can't take an old version of someones code and then use that as an arguement as to why their current versions suck. Windows 2000 is a past version of MS's OS. Sure it is supported, but Quickbooks supports a couple of past versions to, however if you have trouble, you need to upgrade. It's the way all software works, including Linux. Perhaps we should start stating Linux's faults by using examples found in old versions of Distros. That would piss off Linux users too. Why? Because it's an unfair example based on old information.
Yea I can't uninstall IE on my DR DOS 6.0 machine either. Perhaps it's because I couldn't install it to begin with. I am writing Digital Research to complain. Does anyone know who I write to now?;)
You can go and uninstall IE on your machine any time you like. No one, however, has made the claim that your machine will be fully functional afterward, not even Microsoft. In fact they clearly state that the OS will use parts of the IE platform when it is installed. Those same parts will not be available to you if you happen to uninstall the browser. Never said it would be pretty. You do have the option. If you choose to rely on functions that are a part of the IE package in your OS and expect those to still be there, then perhaps you should ask the US Justice department to back off their judgement that MS has to deliniate the products in that fashion, by our own governments edict. You are suggesting that those features should be part of the OS. That is exactly what they were sued in court over and lost. You can't cry foul on both sides of the fence.
I agree. At what point do we call this knit picking. How many hours did it take for this person to find that they couldn't embed a video clip in a word document and then run it properly? This seems like a pretty obscure niche problem. Perhaps they will sue Linux manf's next because they can't do it their either.
You know, there should really be a law on the books that specifically says that all document editors have to be able to embed video in the documents and then play back, without any issues. I mean, these problems are simply destroying our society. You hear me?!
I see what you mean about book versus paper on lending, I hadn't considered that perspective. Too used to dealing with paper. I go through a lot of books. At least one novel length book each week. I have become accustomed to the share of the physical books, waiting and such. It would be nice to do otherwise. DRM however does not overcome that problem. To my knowledge, you cannot share a DRM'ed Ebook with anyone else. It is keyed specifically to your activation account on both MS reader and Adobe reader. You will be unable to open that ebook on any other reader than one that was activated under your account. I tried it and failed and then read the facts from both manufacturers. They both specifically state that. So DRM removes even more accessability to material than you had before.
I have hundreds of books in my home. All books that I have read and enjoyed and wished to keep a copy of to share with others over time. I cannot do that with a DRM'ed book. The other problem is that both of those readers also support expiration on the books. If you read the fine print on the ebooks you purchase, you will see that they will expire after a period of time and you will no longer be able to access the file. To me that is tantamount to the person who sold it to me, coming into my house two years later and taking back what they sold me.
I am not against DRM and I want to see eBooks take off more. But the current implemetation reeks of greed as the publishing house try to garner even more control over their products than they ever had in the past.
You are wrong there. I have direct experience here. The version of Adobe reader available for the Pocket PC does not support the new DRM managed ebooks for the PDA. You can install the reader, but you will be disappointed when you find that you cannot open your Adobe ebooks in the Adobe reader on your Pocket PC. Adobe actually has a note that states they do this on purpose because the Microsoft PDA platform does not conform to the Adode standards for DRM support. Hogwash in my book, but it is true.
As far as DRM making things more accessable? What planet do you live on anyway? It is not even an arguable point that DRM restricts rights. That's the whole point, to make it harder to copy, distribute and crack. There is no other point to DRM. What needs to happen here is for me to be able to share my purchase with myself and my friends a limited number of times, just as I do with other physical items that I purchase (and legally as I do now, as in the case of paper books). Otherwise the book publishing industry will find themselves aligned with the music industry, where they were not before, and hatch an environment where blantant theft is the rule instead of honest and legal sharing of resources. Common sense and a wee bit of knowledge of history needs to be applied to this problem, or it's going to get worse, and fast.
I think that your message, in a way, hits the nail on the head. Dumbing down a site so it fits in a cell phone browser seems, well, dumb to me. Text content can certainly be formatted via ccs to be handled on a cell or pda just fine, but what about other items? Many sites, such as ours, do not bloat themselves with flash and such, but do however include 'trinkets' that make the desktop browsing and information collection easier, more succinct to the products and or information being doled out. I don't consider that bloat or crap just for the sake of displaying crap. If I code a page so that clicking on the items changes the content of the rest of the page, that is delivering a more user friendly experience to the end user and may very well end up in a sale for me as opposed to my competitor.
An arguement can be made to suggest that my competitor may pick up business that I don't due to being able to browse their site on a cell phone, but I would challenge anyone to show me that a large enough percentage of cell phone users are purchasing products with their phones or even making a pyurchase decision based on the phone browsing experience. I think that is stooping a bit too low under the fence of believability. Perhaps if I were selling ringtones, then I would have to pay attention more, but then wouldn't you anyways as this is your target audience?
I think the point has to be that it isn't a particular page format or even a single direction that needs to be the rule here. The rule needs to be looser than that. Whatever drives sales for the product being sold is the correct design. The needs to the customers visiting the site is key. If I am selling high end graphics software or PC games, what is the point of dumbing down my site? I will probably lose sales to my competitor who has a flashy site to attract the people looking for flashy stuff and flashy games. It has got to be customer driven. Singling out a single direction all pages should take is like suggesting that all people have to settle on a single religion. It will never happen and it is the wrong tack to take.
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WWhile I agree with you that Intel certainly has wandered from the road to success in the marketplace recently, I do have to disagree with your statement,
"AMD - totally ignoring the desktop market."
I don't see that. All of AMD high end processors are nicely positioned to transition into the desktop market as software for these cores comes into existence. Their strategy distinctly places them in the drivers seat when it comes to the desktop market, and in a fashion that had ought to scare the pants off from the Intel engineering group. AMD has pulled an Intel on Intel.
I do also agree with you on another point though. Intel's new dual core is a miserable show of capability in my book. Why would anyone want to pay more than twice the price for the same performance as an existing single core processor? If anything, Intel seems to be making a case that dual cores are not cost effective and can't compete with the existing single core technology, which shows no signs of slowing down in it's progress. Intel's implementation is sloppy, poorly thought out and extremely inefficient. Why bother? I think they are afraid and felt they had to show something, despite the blatant shortcomings.
Buyer beware. These new intel dual cores are not what they seem. Read the reviews and tests and see for yourself.
It's people like you who think that way that ruin everything for everyone. If we started removing things that everyone had a reaction to, we would have to remove ALL food from school. For every type of food there is, we now have someone who will become deathly ill when they eat it. Grow up.
Whatever happened to natural selection anyways? Was it banned when I had my back turned?
" Because grandma can't remember 10.4, but she can remember..."
Now... was that Tigdows or was that Winger, I forget? hmmm.
Here is the exact filed text of the ten year licensing agreement you are refering to. Intel AMD cross licensing agreement Nowhere is there any legal languague in it that covers future developments. That would be a really stupid business move on anyone's part.
The real story here is what caused Intel to agree to a license agreement to begin with. They actually were caught with their pants down on this one. They had reverse engineered everything and attempted to move forward with their reverse engineered plans and AMD blew the whistle. Intel admitted their deed, to save on litigation that was obviously not in Intel's favor (based on their forced agreements with AMD in the past).
No AMD definately did this in a seperate agreement and were very happy to make it public. They just wanted the publicity out of Intel bringing up the rear for a change.
Agreed, but one additional point I need to make that you brought up. Intel has already lost their spot with Microsoft. Windows XP was written for the AMD processor, not the Intel cores. Microsoft actually had to go back and 'patch' their software to make it work properly with the current line of Intel processors. The new version of Windows, yet to be officially named, is also written around the AMD instruction set.
Thanks for naming the instruction sets that I mentioned. I could not remember the name. I believe that Intel spent enough money in the AMD store that AMD granted them the rights to name the instruction sets anyway they liked, as long as they did not change the functionality. That has to rub the Intel people the wrong way.
and you think that is better? Now instead of kill troll 15 times, I have to gues one of 5-10 different statements to accomplish the same thing? That doesn't sound better to me, but loathsomely more haineous. I relish using more than one of my senses in accomplishing a task. I do however agree that the comparison between GUI's and movies is severly inaccurate. A movie still only uses a couple of sense and interaction is out completely. How can you even think of comparing those things?
BEtter than me having to waste my weekends forever trying to fix problems on a half a dozen family machines. I enjoy my free time and don't like to do even more work for no good reason.
You are wrong about Dell's tech support though. They do not have any support based in India anymore. They ditched that failed attempt more than a year ago. It was all over the news, where were you? I, for one, strongly support any company who will move their jobs back to the US and admit failure. Kudos to Dell for that too.
Flash PIES are also difficult to stop for the average user. Most of your flash tracking will be much more accurate in terms of repeat visitor info and total time on the site tracking. Two very very important numbers. The other huge benefit to going in this direction is the cross platform advantage. Flash can be installed on nearly every platform out there. Makes your target audience much much larger than would otherwise be possible.
Personally, I think we will start seeing a huge amount of this type of tracking, as the paybacks for the snooper are huge when compared to tracking cookies.
Lose the zealot nature to your statements and they will carry much further. Read the article before you post and you won't look like a fool.
The article directly addresses the problem of Flash sites circumventing the use of cookies. Firefox is just as vulnerable to this intrusion as is IE and Opera and Netscape, etc, etc.
It is only a matter of time before exploits become more generic in nature, such as this. The days of platform targeting are going to start subsiding. This is much more 'worth the effort' as far as hacking goes becuase your target audience is so much larger. This won't be the last we see of platform inspecific system intrusions. (Yes I consider any information read or written from my machine, without my expressed consent an intrusion)
It doesn't change anything. He still makes up terms. Still makes comparisons to titles that aren't even close to being equivelant and he draws a conclusion without looking at the manufacturer's history and following, not to mention that this game is the latest release in a long line of extremely profitable and prolific series. Those are all points that underscore why this author's article is trash. He didn't do his homework.
I didn't misread anything. His point is that WOW won't survive. That's the point I am argueing. Are you trying to say the article is about something else? Is it not about WoW? Is it not reagarding it's immenent demise? I believe you are in error and had ought to return to the article to reread it. Were you at the right website?
It's more like a short term flop in my eyes. With this Dual core bearly beating a slightly fast clocked single core procesor in only a small handful of tests coupled with it's extremely high cost, it's dead before it even hits the streets. People are not going to spend 2 or 3 times the amount of cash for that kind of performance. It's just not going to happen.
I agree that the expectation is double the core, double the power. This test processor is dismal in that regard. I guess we will all have to wait until AMD releases their product results, so that Intel can see how it's supposed to be done.
Some people might see Intel leaving the processor market as a huge jump in conclusions. It's not really. The desktop processor market has not been among Intel's more profitable centers as of late. Even with their still huge marketshare numbers, they aren't making much money for their efforts in that arena. The Itantium represented a huge loss to them in terms of the amount of R&D, marketing and manufacturing that went into the product. Don't get me wrong, the Itanium is a fabulous processor, it's just that nobody wants it. It actually leaps a generation of processors and people are not willing to throw out their proven strategies, software and hardware to go in that direction. It's not that they lost their touch in making a great processor, it's that they lost touch with what the market is demanding. It's terribly hard to sell a product no one wants. That's where they really are.
As far as dell goes, I think they are great for their niche. I would never own one, but I would recommend them to my family members who need the great dell support when they do stupid things and bust the machine. That's Dell's only strength in my eyes. I much prefer the AMD chips, simply for their price points, if nothing else. That's going to be the new problem for Intel if they don't wake up soon. They could always get away with charging more for their processors than and equivalent AMD because people percieved that they were simply better. With that perception failing that pricing structure will either have to descend to or below AMD's, or they will see gtreatly decreased market share over then next 12 to 24 months.
I think Intel's decision to leave out extensions developed by AMD are going to kill to processor fairly quickly. Granted they bought the rights to them from AMD, but their must be some royalty type deal here, because Intel is only including a handful of them. That will make their processor increasingly incompatable with the already accepted AMD architecture. Why is Intel so grudging to admit they are behind? They are going to kill themselves with that attitude. A couple more processor iterations and failures like this, and I expect Intel to make moves to get out of the desktop processor market altogether.
I agree whole heartedly, WoW is not going to die falter or even dwindle as the author suggests. He apparently hasn't any fimiliarity with Blizzard on one hand, or with the genre on the other. He obvioulsy doesn't know that BattleNet servers at Blizzard are still up and running, after how many years? Now all of the sudden people are going to lose interest? I don't see any indicator that would cause me draw a conclusion that people are walking away from ANY blizzard product that they have purchased in the past. It just hasn't happened yet. So on that alone, the guy is obviously drawing straws.
I agree with your synopsis on his ridiculously ill matched comparison games. I thought that WoW was more of an RTS type of game than a 'slasher', (whatever that is supposed to be). Anyone who has to make up terms to describe what they are talking about, is in trouble to begin with. There are plenty of words, in use today, that can get your point across, why confuse everyone by making up even more new meaningless words to describe what you think? He obviously can't write, doesn't know the game he is lambasting, doesn't know the history of extreme customer loyalty on the part of Blizzard fans and doesn't know his game classifications. I pledge to buy every game that EBgames and/or EA Games lists on their website under the category of Slasher an give them away for free (safe bet, because their is not a Slasher genre). My arguement is not that Slasher doesn't mean something, but that it is not a Genre describing term and is improperly used in a comparision with regards to genres.
How the heck did this guy even get a job writing about this stuff?
I personally just did the same thing and went on a quest to find a reader I could carry with me. I was spending too much time locked in front of my PC reading books.
My criteria for a PDA was cost more than anything, so I will share the problems with going for the low price as opposed to usability. I shopped Ebay for my PDA and bid on many units before I got the one that I wanted at the price that I wanted. $100 was my limit and I met that with enough to spare to upgrade my unit.
I ended up purchasing the Compaq iPaq 3765 for $75. The battery was a bit weak, as it was the original, so I immediately replaced it with a much larger one for $25. It is a gourgeous unit, I have to admit. The screen is extremely legible even when sitting in that shaded corner of the airport lobby.
I am very happy with the units handling of most ebooks. It really only likes to use Microsoft's E-reader, I have however loaded Moby Reader and Acrobat Reader on their too. I have found however, that most DRM'ed ebooks will only work with the MS reader, forcing me to buy books only in that format. It's not true for all books, but most Adobe DRM'ed books will not work on a Pocket PC device. I found an article on MS Technical Support that states that Adobe's DRM scheme won't work on the MS Mobile OS/Pocket PC. The software loads, but DRM'ed books don't work.
In short, a Pocket PC is apparently going to lock you into the MS reader format for DRM'ed books. I cannot speak for a Palm OS PDA or any other readers. I haven't ever uesed them.
This is not an air 'powered' car as the article suggests. Did anyone think to question what actually runs the electric motor that compresses the air? Perhaps the large bank of batteries in the trunk? Wouldn't that be classifed as an electric car then, with an incredibly poor energy transfer system to the wheels.
"Why should I have to have parts of a web browser installed on my desktop environment in order to get the basic GUI to work?"
Because in an effort to not duplicate work and code, they chose to use the same code to run both environments. I don't see anything evil in that at all. Let MS say what they want, but you will break your retail MS OS install if you chose to uninstall IE from the add/remove control panel. Why? Simply, because it is uninstalling compenents that are also using by the base OS GUI. They are the same. The line is gray here and argueing over who is right or wrong is pointless. You can uninstall it, if you do it per very specific instructions that leave behind the pieces necessary for the rest of the OS. So what? Is that such a big evil? I would view it as much worse if they duplicated the coding because they were too stupid to figure out how to share it between the two environments. You are crying foul about a point that if they approached it differently, they would present an even worse case to you. The only thing that should have been done is a much better utility to share components and remove them only if they are no longer needed. I will conceed that the automatic uninstall is a faulty and needs to change. Otherwise, you are complaining about something where the alternatives are worse than the current situation.
Your supposition thaty you do not have the option to remove IE under the add/remove control panel is wrong. It is there and you can do it. You just have some detrimental outcomes due to the uninstall routine stupidly removing IE components that are also used by the OS (or you can say it removes OS components that are shared by IE, you can pick based on who you want to get mad at I guess). Either way, the arguement is pointless. Would you sue Chevy and force them to stop putting Delco radios in their cars becuase it closes so much of the market to other vendors? I don't see aftermarket vendors complaining too much about it. It is more detrimental to the consumer to remove the radio as a component than it is to the vendor(s) to leave them in. I don't think most people can install their own radio. Same thing with IE. Most people will use the item packaged with the base product. It doesn't make the preinstalled options evil, just don't use them if you don't want them. It won't hurt a thing to let it sit there idle.
Is it that time of the month already?
I think everyone is jumping to conclusion in saying that this case could destroy the Beatmax precident. Personally, I do not see how making copies of legally owned material and passing them out freely to people you are not even aquainted with, could possibly be seen as anything close to fair use. A backup is one thing. A copy for yourself to use in a different format is fair in my book. Backups are fair. Since when is giving it away to others fair? It never has been, even under the Betamax precedent. An incompatable set of parallels are incorrectly drawn for this story.
You can't take an old version of someones code and then use that as an arguement as to why their current versions suck. Windows 2000 is a past version of MS's OS. Sure it is supported, but Quickbooks supports a couple of past versions to, however if you have trouble, you need to upgrade. It's the way all software works, including Linux. Perhaps we should start stating Linux's faults by using examples found in old versions of Distros. That would piss off Linux users too. Why? Because it's an unfair example based on old information.
;)
Yea I can't uninstall IE on my DR DOS 6.0 machine either. Perhaps it's because I couldn't install it to begin with. I am writing Digital Research to complain. Does anyone know who I write to now?
You can go and uninstall IE on your machine any time you like. No one, however, has made the claim that your machine will be fully functional afterward, not even Microsoft. In fact they clearly state that the OS will use parts of the IE platform when it is installed. Those same parts will not be available to you if you happen to uninstall the browser. Never said it would be pretty. You do have the option. If you choose to rely on functions that are a part of the IE package in your OS and expect those to still be there, then perhaps you should ask the US Justice department to back off their judgement that MS has to deliniate the products in that fashion, by our own governments edict. You are suggesting that those features should be part of the OS. That is exactly what they were sued in court over and lost. You can't cry foul on both sides of the fence.
I agree. At what point do we call this knit picking. How many hours did it take for this person to find that they couldn't embed a video clip in a word document and then run it properly? This seems like a pretty obscure niche problem. Perhaps they will sue Linux manf's next because they can't do it their either.
You know, there should really be a law on the books that specifically says that all document editors have to be able to embed video in the documents and then play back, without any issues. I mean, these problems are simply destroying our society. You hear me?!
I see what you mean about book versus paper on lending, I hadn't considered that perspective. Too used to dealing with paper. I go through a lot of books. At least one novel length book each week. I have become accustomed to the share of the physical books, waiting and such. It would be nice to do otherwise. DRM however does not overcome that problem. To my knowledge, you cannot share a DRM'ed Ebook with anyone else. It is keyed specifically to your activation account on both MS reader and Adobe reader. You will be unable to open that ebook on any other reader than one that was activated under your account. I tried it and failed and then read the facts from both manufacturers. They both specifically state that. So DRM removes even more accessability to material than you had before.
I have hundreds of books in my home. All books that I have read and enjoyed and wished to keep a copy of to share with others over time. I cannot do that with a DRM'ed book. The other problem is that both of those readers also support expiration on the books. If you read the fine print on the ebooks you purchase, you will see that they will expire after a period of time and you will no longer be able to access the file. To me that is tantamount to the person who sold it to me, coming into my house two years later and taking back what they sold me.
I am not against DRM and I want to see eBooks take off more. But the current implemetation reeks of greed as the publishing house try to garner even more control over their products than they ever had in the past.
You are wrong there. I have direct experience here. The version of Adobe reader available for the Pocket PC does not support the new DRM managed ebooks for the PDA. You can install the reader, but you will be disappointed when you find that you cannot open your Adobe ebooks in the Adobe reader on your Pocket PC. Adobe actually has a note that states they do this on purpose because the Microsoft PDA platform does not conform to the Adode standards for DRM support. Hogwash in my book, but it is true.
As far as DRM making things more accessable? What planet do you live on anyway? It is not even an arguable point that DRM restricts rights. That's the whole point, to make it harder to copy, distribute and crack. There is no other point to DRM. What needs to happen here is for me to be able to share my purchase with myself and my friends a limited number of times, just as I do with other physical items that I purchase (and legally as I do now, as in the case of paper books). Otherwise the book publishing industry will find themselves aligned with the music industry, where they were not before, and hatch an environment where blantant theft is the rule instead of honest and legal sharing of resources. Common sense and a wee bit of knowledge of history needs to be applied to this problem, or it's going to get worse, and fast.
I think that your message, in a way, hits the nail on the head. Dumbing down a site so it fits in a cell phone browser seems, well, dumb to me. Text content can certainly be formatted via ccs to be handled on a cell or pda just fine, but what about other items? Many sites, such as ours, do not bloat themselves with flash and such, but do however include 'trinkets' that make the desktop browsing and information collection easier, more succinct to the products and or information being doled out. I don't consider that bloat or crap just for the sake of displaying crap. If I code a page so that clicking on the items changes the content of the rest of the page, that is delivering a more user friendly experience to the end user and may very well end up in a sale for me as opposed to my competitor.
An arguement can be made to suggest that my competitor may pick up business that I don't due to being able to browse their site on a cell phone, but I would challenge anyone to show me that a large enough percentage of cell phone users are purchasing products with their phones or even making a pyurchase decision based on the phone browsing experience. I think that is stooping a bit too low under the fence of believability. Perhaps if I were selling ringtones, then I would have to pay attention more, but then wouldn't you anyways as this is your target audience?
I think the point has to be that it isn't a particular page format or even a single direction that needs to be the rule here. The rule needs to be looser than that. Whatever drives sales for the product being sold is the correct design. The needs to the customers visiting the site is key. If I am selling high end graphics software or PC games, what is the point of dumbing down my site? I will probably lose sales to my competitor who has a flashy site to attract the people looking for flashy stuff and flashy games. It has got to be customer driven. Singling out a single direction all pages should take is like suggesting that all people have to settle on a single religion. It will never happen and it is the wrong tack to take.