I'm not going to check the website since I don't want anything to be spoiled.
Lots of people have joked about spoilers in this thread and a few people have brought it up seriously. I just wonder why anyone actually cares about spoilers in episode three of a six-part series when you've already seen episodes 1, 2 and 4-6. I mean sure, some of the specifics are unknown previous to this, but we all know Anakin becomes Vader, we all know Obi-Wan and Yoda run off and hide, we all know Luke and Leia get split up at birth and their mother dies (or we think she dies), etc. So what if we find out now that Count Dooku gets decapitated? Who really cares? This movie is not about that, and you already know everything you need to know about the main plot.
I actually found the plot/timeline synopsis pretty interesting to read - probably more interesting than the movie itself will be, if only to see the sequence of events and the filled-in gaps, even if I already knew pretty much all of the major plot points.
The good companies innovate, the bad ones copy success. Guess which one is more likely to succeed. Innovation is a risky business.
On a slightly related note, has there been a good business project management set-up in relation to the development of games? From everything I've seen and read about, the development seems so hodge-podge, it's remarkable any games succeed.
Your two statements are both complementary and contradictory. There are two facets to the game industry - independent developers, and developers either under contract to a publisher or owned by one. Independent developers are often the ones credited with being "innovative" (though in my experience in the industry, they're no more or less innovative than developers under contract or the publishers themselves), but they also often float along without direction, developing games when they feel like it based on an arbitrary set of criteria. Occasionally, great games come out of this sort of model. More often, you end up with complete garbage - the kinds of games that get 15-50% reviews in PC Gamer Magazine, which seems to be the bulk of their reviews these days... (and generally, those are deserved scores.)
So indie developing is haphazard, yes. But Black Isle wasn't an indie developer; they were presumably doled out projects, and given set deadlines and guidelines by Interplay. Apparently, they didn't take too well to this, as they lost $20 million this year alone. Well, that's not very fair - I suppose they had some licensing issues, and there could be other reasons for their losing money, but there's this whole "blame the publisher" thing going on out there that I don't think is very fair either. This is a business, and Black Isle wasn't making money for the business right now. If they were an indie that burned through that kind of cash they'd be just as out of business right now.
Anyway, publisher-sponsored development is not at all haphazard. Yes, many publishers stick with established franchises and genres, but all of them have a certain percentage of development set aside for new games. That percentage varies per publisher. New games at publishers like these are guided along by experienced veterans of the process - which doesn't guarantee success, but it at least (generally) guarantees a certain level of competence and polish to a new game from a large publisher. (Pikmin and Animal Crossing are two examples of this on the console side - Rise of Nations and MS Train Simulator would be examples on the PC side.)
PC and console game development is a bit different in that console game development is almost all publisher sponsored, contracted, or owned. That is honestly one of the reasons why the console game industry is in better shape than the PC game industry, and I will never for a second believe anyone that says there are fewer innovative games on consoles than on PC. Anyone who says that does not know anything about the console game industry or the games available today. (Don't mistake what's on the best-seller lists for the entire catalog of what's out there - consumers determine best-seller lists, but publishers know it's in their best long-term interests to develop new franchises even if they don't succeed short-term.)
I remember getting a check in the mail because Nintendo had to pay off a class action suit for price fixing for doing the same thing. Nintendo didn't have a monopoly on game consoles at the time.
I'm not sure where you live, but maybe this is what you're referring to, in which case you'll note that they colluded with seven European distributors to keep prices artificially inflated. That's probably the important part, because it's the distributors that actually set the wholesale price. If you can prove that a company makes a product for X dollars, sells it to a distributor for X dollars plus one, and then colludes with that distributor (or group of distributors) to sell it to retailers for X dollars plus, say, one hundred, that would be illegal. The collusion is what's important.
If, however, your company simply sells a product direct to retailers for X dollars, then I don't see how you're fixing the price on anything. You're simply telling people "this is what this product costs", and who is anyone to argue? You don't know the wholesale price on iPods - it could be $296 for a model that has a $299 MSRP, direct from Apple, with a $299 MAP to match the MSRP, and these are obviously not loss leaders (and not being able to advertise a loss leader pretty much defeats the purpose of a loss leader anyway). I would imagine this is how Nintendo gets away with setting prices now, and Sony and MS no doubt do the same on their game consoles.
Of course, IANAL, but the Nintendo thing is something I followed pretty closely at the time.
Recent upgrades to Kazaa clients (2.5 and higher) make them less tolerant with outdated or non official clients such as Kazaa Lite K++. Kazaa Lite is based on a version prior to 2.5, therefore a current supernode will not accept its shares.
Ah, so here we have the reason why the RIAA continues to believe use in P2P services is declining. They're using Sharman's Kazaa client!
Seriously, I'm using K-Lite and I've noticed virtually no change in anything. Could it be that K-Lite users are so numerous that the K-Lite network is now the "defacto" Kazaa network? Is anyone actually running a 2.5 Spyware-enhanced Kazaa client here? How well is it working, and how many users/files do you see on at any given time? How are the search results?
It's my understanding that with the Fasttrack network, the users themselves function as servers - so if everyone's running K-Lite and everyone's happy with it, there's really no effective way for Sharman to lock them out. It will probably inhibit growth in the K-Lite network (now that you have to run stock Kazaa first to find and get it... though I imagine some people still will), but it will more likely kill the real Fasttrack network as people find out how little content is accessible via the stock client.
What's Sharman's thinking here? It seems like they're trying to do pretty much exactly what the RIAA is doing, trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
For what it's worth, I've been watching my box set of the original series while stuck on a business trip. I'm hoping the new series will be good, but even if isn't, well... they're different series, and I'll judge them on their own merits, not how they relate to each other.
Well, I will judge them based on how they relate to each other. The fact is both series are called "Battlestar Galactica" and if this new mini-series' producers wanted to do a different sort of story they could have called it something else. As it is, it seems they're just trying to cash in on a well-known name, and the series should be judged as such.
When you use the title of a well-known series/movie/whatever, I expect either a remake or a continuation. I don't think that's unreasonable - these amount to brand names, and what SciFi is trying to do is equivalent to New Coke. I don't think anyone would have complained about New Coke either if it was called, I don't know, Wild Mountain Cola or Mister Smith's Fabulous Cola or something. I mean the public would not be comparing it to real Coke (except in a generic and non-specific "this is not my favorite cola" sort of way), because nobody's trying to pass it off as Coke.
These people, though, are trying to pass this off as Battlestar Galactica. As such, it should be judged as Battlestar Galactica, not some sort of standalone series, because it's not a standalone series, whatever the producers try to say to subdue the fans. I mean what's next, an Indiana Jones movie where Indy is a woman and the setting is 21st century Tokyo? Part of the criteria of any franchise entry is how well it adheres to the narrative that's already been established. And on that basis, without even having seen it but based on what we all already know, this alleged version of Battlestar Galactica obviously fails miserably. It will have to be absolutely amazing in every other way to redeem itself at all, but it will never be considered "great" simply because it is a poorly interpreted imitation of its own namesake.
Sprint is a very advanced service compared with Cingular -- lots more options, better email coverage, better customer service...
Except that it doesn't work a lot of the time. Sprint offers a lot of features at inflated prices that you'd be a fool to pay, but they can barely get their most basic services (call connections, call quality, voicemail) working properly most of the time.
A lot of this varies by area so YMMV, but I made the exact opposite switch you did - Sprint to Cingular - and I couldn't be happier. I'm saving buckets of money and getting better service - virtually no dropped calls, a less noticeable digital delay, and noticeably less static even when signal strength is low. I also never have a problem accessing my voicemail, which is a problem with Sprint at least 50% of the time. "Advanced service" is in the eye of the beholder, I guess - it doesn't matter to me how advanced a service is if it doesn't mean good call quality along with basic services that work properly. Not to mention that you're going to be stuck on their old CDMA network unless you pony up for a 3G phone and 3G service, which means big bucks in the end. Sprint nickel-and-dimes you to death with various $5 and $10 fees here and there, until you look at your bill and realize you're paying $150 a month base! Even their most basic plan, with no options, costs more than Cingular's or other carriers'.
A lot of people get taken in by Sprint's sexy features, but you see how many people on this thread are expressing their desire to dump them at the first possible chance. There are reasons for this.
Ok, back on topic so I don't burn through all of my karma by jacking the thread and turning it into a brand flame war. I switched before portability even came into effect. I honestly didn't care, and in fact purposely give out my cel phone number to so few people that it's actually been less trouble than not to keep switching my number every few years (somehow, telemarketers have always gotten my cel phone number eventually, and the number of calls grows exponentially like a virus over time - gee, I wonder why it hasn't happened yet since I switched away from Sprint?).
I think, honestly, that the portability rule is more hype than anything - people who want to switch will switch regardless, and I don't think there's a large number of people out there so tied to their phone number that they've just been waiting for this rule to take effect. If anything, there's a larger issue at work here that I think has a greater effect on keeping people tied down. But if you're really, truly unhappy with a carrier as I was, you'll switch regardless of anything. I could have bought a brand new $300 phone already with the money I've saved going from Sprint to Cingular, and I'm getting better service in the bargain.
This has been known for quite a while, and to be honest it doesn't change that much. SCO will simply claim they had no idea where this code originated for at the time and so never sanctioned its official distribution. Their entire case is ridiculous, however it would be ridiculous even if they hadn't ever distributed linux or contributed to the kernel.
I'll dig up the old standby: RTFA. Better yet, RTFPTLTFTA, otherwise known as "read the f'ing post that links to the f'ing article", as it pretty well spells out the difference between what Groklaw discovered and what's been "known for quite a while" - namely that SCO willfully and knowingly not only distributed but also contributed to specific features of the kernel that they specifically claimed never to have touched in their legal filings. As far as I know, this is completely new - and it's not just an allegation, it's proved in the linked article.
In other words, they both modified and distributed the specific code they are claiming to now have been stolen from them and they did it under the GPL. This code did not get "misappropriated" from SCO's Unix into Linux, this code was put into Linux by SCO. This is huge.
IANAL, but it would seem to me that this blows pretty much their entire case out of the water in one fell swoop. This renders any contractual issues (the basis of their case against IBM) moot and leaves them only one fallback - that the GPL is invalid and is trumped by their own copyright. Of course, this is something they've also been saying now for a few months (not since the beginning of their case, though - I think they probably realized their case against IBM was flimsy at best a while back), but to say this news is "old" or doesn't affect their legal standing seems to be a misunderstanding of the facts.
If these are facts (and it seems Groklaw has done their homework to me), then SCO will get laughed out of court on day one. They did something, they lied about it, then they filed a lawsuit based on that lie... and now they've been caught.
....are always the ones to solve the major problems
Proof?
If a 45 year old college professor solved it, would this be news?
I think it's pretty well-known that among mathematicians, the older you get, the less likely you are to do anything really important. In other words it's not really "funny" that a college kid would solve this; it's pretty much the norm.
There's a PBS documentary about John Nash that I recently saw where this is talked about a bit; the commentators liken mathematicians to ballerinas, and Nash himself said he felt his best years were behind him at age 30 (and not because of his mental illness - in fact, his mental illness may have in part been due to the stress he was feeling). It's on DVD if you want to look for it - A Brilliant Madness was the title, I believe.
In fact, you're in luck - I just Google'd it for you and there's a web site here that includes a transcript of the program.
I for one don't feel obligated to donate to a charity just to make a bunch of morons with half-baked theories feel better about my state of mind. Besides, it wouldn't help anyway. People will believe what they want to.
Right, because it's far better to feed their (and your) cynicism than it is to make a few sick kids happy for a few days out of their lives.
I'm seeing far too much jaded bitterness in many of these comments here. Regardless of why they're doing it (and who are you to judge?), this is something to help kids feel better as they're stuck in the hospital. How stupid is it to say "I'm not going to buy anything for these kids, because it won't change the minds of the press!"? I mean really. Get a little perspective. Even if it was an outright publicity ploy by PA (and you'd have to really be a bitter old man to believe that), who cares? The kids you're buying these games for sure don't.
Spend $8 and get them a Lego set, I mean Jesus H. Christ. You don't need to go nuts. If you do one good thing this year, isn't it worth spending the equivalent of a couple of value meals at McDonald's?
My point is, let's not lose sight of what this is really about here. The point is what PA are doing, not why they are doing it.
For instance, he includes 'hobby' computers such as the Altair, but excludes the Apple I and his ranking of the Compaq portable PC at number one ahead of the Altair, Apple I and II, Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Interestingly, the author also skips other significant platforms entirely, such as the Amiga and Atari computers
I'm going to play devil's advocate to the prevailing sentiment here a little bit. I'm old enough to remember well the days of the C64, Vic-20, Apple I and II and later the Amiga and Atari XL and ST line (and the straight numbered PC's before them). I remember the industry well in those days, and hell, we had two Atari 520ST's and one Atari 1040ST in my house (I also owned an Apple II and had many friends who owned C64's as well as at least one that owned an Amiga 500).
But the Atari line specifically were not particularly popular computers and they did not have a particularly profound effect on the industry as a whole. Worse, Atari's PC's dropped in popularity pretty linearly with each successive release - the Atari 400 and 800 were fairly major players at first, but as the XL/XE line and then the ST's took over, Atari's influence waned further and further. The ST's did have some nice sound hardware (and were popular with audio professionals) that may have influenced what would eventually become standard in some PC's but otherwise they were basically ignored by average consumers as well as businesses.
The Amiga was ahead of its time - and probably should be on a list like this - but again, it all depends on your criteria. Commercially, the Amiga was a collossal failure that directly contributed to the downfall of Commodore Computers. There are arguments you could make in favor of having it on a top ten list like this, but you'd have to have a pretty loose criteria to include a computer family like the Amiga on the same list as the IBM 5150 - the 5150 being the direct grandfather of about 90% of the world's PC's today, almost 25 years after it was introduced. The Amiga, while still having a cult following, is not even in the same universe in terms of influence or popularity.
As for the Apple I, I don't think even Wozniak and Jobs would really argue it belongs on this sort of list. Only several hundred were made and while it was an important PC to the Apple company just in terms of being their first released product, as a computer taken on its own merits it was not at all important. I mean it's about like arguing Orson Welles' first home movie in high school is as important as Citizen Kane - it frankly and simply is not. Same goes for the Apple Lisa (the largely experimental precursor to the Mac that shares less with the Mac platform than many people seem to believe).
So I don't know; lists like these are pretty much intended to provoke debate through their commissions and omissions (in fact, the writer even says "Of course, there will be grousing with the choices here, and certainly with the order, but that's what makes lists fun"), and there may be different PC's that should or should not be here, but I can see his reasons for not including many of the PC's listed in the article submission.
It seems to me like what this writer did was look at each loose "era" of personal computing - the hobbyist era, the "wild west" era when there were a large variety of low-cost and popular PC options, and the post-IBM PC era when most consumer PC's became largely based on the 5150 design. He then included 3 or 4 PC's from each era on his list, and these all happen to be basically the most popular or important PC's of each era (with one or two exceptions). That's really as good a criteria as any, I think.
IANAL, but AFAIK you cannot trademark common English words. The example I've always seen is that you cannot trademark the word "orange", but you could trademark a unique phrase containing the word "orange". The Fedora Project homepage linked from the parent article seems to have the *word* "Fedora" trademarked, which I can't see would be possible (and in fact, it's not listed as a registered trademark, just a trademark - so there's no government sanctioning of their trademark).
I'm not sure I blame Red Hat for this one. A fedora is a fedora, just like an orange is an orange. You can't trademark it. If two companies are using the same word for their software projects, too bad. Protest those who put the word in the Oxford dictionary, maybe... but I don't think there's any real legal claim here.
"b) Why is she using apt and synaptic? They don't even come with Fedora."
Where does she say she is? She says in one spot that using them "wouldn't have helped in this situation", which is true in that case (the Flash install), but they *would* have helped her with most of her other problems. Or at least helped her avoid them.
And yes, apt comes with Fedora, and Synaptic has already been adapted for it. It works fine - see my last post.
Oh, and I'm running Flash fine on my Fedora - carried over from my RH9 install, but I imagine everything is where it's expected to be in that case.
I've been having better luck than most with Fedora, it seems, and have in fact gotten more to work with it than any other distro I've tried so far (two separate Mandrake installs both broke beyond the point of repair for me, and Red Hat 8 and 9 both worked fairly well but not quite as well as Fedora). Honestly, when I see people whining about dependencies as in the linked article, I wonder why the hell they're insisting on living in the stone ages as they are. One of the major new features of Fedora is that up2date now supports apt and yum (yes, both), and I have no idea why you wouldn't use *at least* up2date, and preferably something even better.
Personally, I use Synaptic with apt, which is something a lot of people don't even seem to realize works on Fedora (at least judging by the reaction on the #fedora irc channel the other day when I mentioned it). As happy as I've been with it I wouldn't use anything else, including Fedora's own "add/remove" function. If something's not listed in Synaptic, it ain't gonna work. If it is listed, it will (or at least, there's no real reason it wouldn't). Simple as that. Click the package and install it - no dependency problems, no worries.
I honestly think for Linux to get beyond niche status people are going to need to quit having to worry about stuff like tarballs and dependencies. The fact is you *don't* have to worry about this stuff, so why would you *choose* to worry about it and give yourself all sorts of unnecessary headaches in the process? I have had zero problems installing anything on Fedora so far, and have no complaints about performance.
I will say Fedora is missing support for some key packages, including Wine (the one I really would like to run and can't). But I didn't go wasting my time downloading it and trying to install it - it's not in my Synaptic list, so I just don't bother. I will keep looking for it there, though, and I know it'll show up eventually. It's about time Linux users started using their time more wisely, and modern dependency resolvers/downloaders/installers like apt-get and yum will help you avoid almost all of the problems listed in the original article here (which are problems you'd face on almost every distribution, depending on what packages you try to install).
Cell phones are the battleground where Linux will defeat Microsoft for world domination in the OS war. When executives who buy Linux-based phones note how reliable the OS is on their phone, it's a short mental leap to see it's reliability on the internet, servers, phone systems, and eventually the growing server and desktop.
Then they'll have absolutely no interest in this, right? No business executive could possibly have a use for a phone that can sync directly with their Windows programs and includes pocket versions of Outlook, IE and Windows Media Player...
I'm not saying you're wrong (well, yes I am), but you're incredibly naive if you think Linux is going to come in and sweep across cellular phone land. There are plenty of reasons why someone would choose a Windows-based phone over a Linux-based phone and a lot of those reasons have to do with what people are running on their desktop. (I also think the phone in the parent article is ugly as sin, but that's just me.)
Myself, I don't give a crap what OS runs on my phone as long as my call quality and signal strength is good. That's still my measure of any phone (and it always will be).
Not that it's not a big deal, just not as big a deal as the poster says.
I would call it "not a big deal" in an absolute sense. CD singles are a miniscule market right now and if anything, all this is going to do is confirm to the music execs the fact that it's pointless to even bother releasing them. The record labels have been trying to do away with CD singles completely for years, but public pressure (though not necessarily sales), not to mention pressure from within the industry itself (it's a measure of a song's success how well its single sells) has forced the labels to continue to produce a format that doesn't sell well at all.
I'm getting a little sick of seeing articles on Slashdot where the submitter him/herself didn't apparently RTFA and/or has no knowledge of the background to his/her story. Song downloads surpass CD single sales? Yeah, I'll bet they surpass 7" vinyl and cassingle sales too. And probably karaoke laserdiscs and 8 track tapes. Big whoop.
Not that I don't want these services to succeed. This just isn't something worth celebrating over.
At what point do we stop calling these things "iPod wannabes" and start simple calling them MP3 players? (Or, if you want to get technical, hard drive-based MP3 players.) I mean it's been a while since hard drive based players have become popular and the iPod is far from the only one. Why do we not call IBM-compatible PC's "IBM PC wannabes"? Or portable CD players "discman wannabes"?
I just think everybody's way past the point of trying to copy Apple. Apart from being square-ish, there's very little that I can see in almost any of the current crop of drive-based players that resembles an iPod. People always complain about things like "it's not as small as iPod!", "it doesn't have the buttons on the front like iPod!", "it's not white like iPod!" Well, maybe that's because it's not an iPod and it's not trying to be an iPod! It's an MP3 player, and it's different than iPod.
Myself, the important things in one of these are price vs. size, stability, openness, and ease of use. I don't care how much like the iPod it is; in fact, the iPod has significant problems (DRM, stability issues, high price, past quality control problems) that preclude me from buying one. If it syncs fast and easily, if it doesn't skip or otherwise flake out while playing, if it plays a variety of formats without DRM and if it's cheap for the amount of space it has, then it seems like a good deal to me. I don't know if this thing fits that criteria (its use of MusicMatch for syncing seems to rule out a good interface, so that's disappointing), but I'm not measuring anything vs. the iPod. People need to use their own criteria; if you want an iPod, just buy a damn iPod.
Heck, you don't even have to give Apple any information at ALL to download the app. Just click the download button. How refreshing is that? For once, a company that doesn't require you to tell them all sorts of personal crap and fill out a survey just to download a free or try before you buy app.
Of course, who knows what info iTunes is sending Apple on its own? By default, iTunes installs a service called "iTuneshelper.exe" that runs as a TSR even when iTunes is closed. I'm sorry, but not being the sort to trust companies that are admittedly in league with the RIAA, this makes me a little bit paranoid (even though all my MP3's are ripped from legally purchased CD's). This service goes away if you uncheck "connect to the Internet when needed", but why is this checked by default to begin with? There is a separate checkbox for "update iTunes automatically", so what else is iTunes doing when connected to the net? (btw, the music store works whether or not "connect to the internet when needed" is checked - so it has nothing to do with that.)
iTunes also installs two other services that are useless for most people running Windows - iPodservice.exe and gearsec.exe. It does this without permission as well, and these can only be turned off by disabling the services themselves, not within iTunes. Neither of these is required in any sense for running iTunes itself.
All in all, I'm about as pleased with iTunes as I am with Windows Media Player from a privacy/permissions standpoint. Which is to say not much.
Ease of use always boils down to what you're used to, and that's it.
Wow. With a ridiculous statement like that I can't tell whether you're a Windows user or a Linux user. Let me spell it out for you though: there are interfaces that are naturally easier to use than others.
Bullshit. While you can't tell if your quote is from a Windows or Linux user, I sure can tell that your quote is from a Mac user, because it's the Apple company line. Trouble is, in terms of computers, it's not true.
Explain to me, for example, how having the window buttons at the top left is more intuitive than putting them at the top right. Or how not having a maximize button is more intuitive than having one. Or how only having one mouse button is more intuitive than having two.
The fact is all modern computing interfaces are non-intuitive outside of the context of using a PC. Even the Mac. There is no real-world equivalent to the function of "minimize window" for example (and no hardwired human instinct towards it either), which is something that appears on both the Mac and PC. There is no equivalent to dragging a mouse around. There is no equivalent to typing on a keyboard. These are all things you need to learn in order to use any computer, and once you've learned them it's very hard to un-learn them or to learn to do things in a different way.
This is why the important thing is interface consistency, not interface intuitiveness. If everything works the same way all the time, you're able to develop an expectation of how things are going to work; I mean that just follows. Macs have a reputation for being more "intuitive" probably because Apple has historically exercised some pretty tight quality control over the consistency of the interface in Mac applications - even third party applications. Windows, on the other hand, can be pretty chaotic - though there are still accepted standards.
iTunes plain and simply breaks many of those accepted Windows interface standards - even things many non-standard apps still adhere to (like including a maximize button). So, iTunes is not as easy to use as it could be for a Windows user because it is not consistent with the Windows interface. There's nothing more "naturally easy to use" about iTunes than about WMP9 or Winamp or anything else. It's all a question of how closely the application adheres to the expectations of those that use it.
Heres a fun one for Windows people - try rightclicking on that funky "browse" or "burn CD" context button. Go ahead, see what happens.
Same as left-clicking. Guess they just forgot to do anything context-sensitive with the right mouse button on this.
A weirder right-click issue is the music store. Right-click on it and the only option is to "eject disc". Coupled with the other interface issues mentioned here, I really expected more from Apple - a company that normally prides itself on this stuff. This has the feel of a rushed product without enough beta testing. And we're still all finding interface oddness; I'm sure there's more I haven't seen.
iTunes uses around 40 MB of RAM on my WinXP SP1 machine, with no music files in my library and nothing playing. Add in the iPod driver and the iTunesHelper app that it runs in the background, and you've probably got around ~60MB of RAM usage on average. Winamp uses 8-10 megs in comparison.
Winamp 3 uses more than that, and also tends to pin the CPU at 100% for no good reason that I can see. Winamp 2 is better but does not offer anywhere close to the same functionality as either iTunes or Winamp 3 (some of this functionality is useless for a lot of people, so I'm not saying this automatically makes iTunes a better product).
Resizing the iTunes window is insanely slow - 100% CPU usage, and it takes a quarter to half second just for the screen to update while resizing the window.
I noticed this too, on two quite powerful machines to boot - one an Athlon XP 2600+ w/ GeForce 4 Ti4200, one a P4-2.6 w/ Radeon 9800 Pro. These are the kinds of machines that can run Unreal II with frame rates in the 100's, and yet just dragging the corner of the iTunes window is choppy as hell. No excuse for this. It's like they're just not using hardware acceleration at all.
iTunes adds a simple but useful system tray icon that lets you change tracks and turn shuffle/repeat on and off. Good feature, I'm glad they didn't leave it out.
Oh, this is a major pet peeve of mine about both iTunes and QuickTime. I reserve my system tray for truly essential TSR's (it's called the system tray for a reason, if you ask me) and don't want it cluttered up with a lot of junk. So of course, the first thing iTunes does is install a tray icon for itself and one for QuickTime, all without asking me. It's trivial to remove the QuickTime icon (not sure how to remove the iTunes one when it's running), but I need to do it every single time this program gets upgraded, which seems to be quite a lot.
You can't resize the iTunes window unless you grab the bottom-left corner. I've never liked this aspect of Mac GUIs at all, but I'm sure there are some people who do like it.
This drives me nuts, especially considering the previously mentioned bad performance when resizing the window. For a company so focused on interface consistency, you would think they would at least try to be compliant with Windows interface standards. All Windows apps have a maximize button. I mentioned this to a Mac guy I know and he was like "oh well, no big deal". I'm sure if someone wrote a Mac program with the window buttons on the top right instead of the top left, this same guy would be up in arms.
The odd thing about it is there is a un-maximize button that serves no purpose without a maximize button (this is the same button on Windows, for those that don't know - it changes states depending on the state the window is in). It has the effect of slightly resizing the window in an unpredictable way. The whole thing is just not well thought out.
The parent article mentioned something about the iTunes music store being the thing that's getting all the attention on Windows. I totally disagree with this. I know a lot of people who have downloaded this software and I've been reading about it elsewhere on the net; most PC owners seem to have little interest in the music store but are instead interested in it as an MP3 player. I don't think any of the MP3 players on Windows are very satisfying, so we're always looking for something better.
The store is out for a lot of PC people right off the bat because of the AAC format. My portable player won't play that format and I'm not about to buy an iPod just to be iTunes-compliant. Add to that the limited selection of songs (nothing I searched for turned up anything), the high price for some of the songs ($2.98 for the Sarah MacLachlan single linked from the homepage!), the DRM... I mean I think the music store is honestly a non-starter for PC users. They may double their sales now that the
Nausicaa is pretty much Princess Mononoke actually - the story and characters are somewhat similar,
I honestly believe people who think this about these two films have utterly missed the point of Nausicaa. (You're not the only one - it seems a common view, especially among westerners I know who have seen both films.) Look at the time Nausicaa was made. Look at what was going on in the world at that time. Miyazaki has always made films that are allegories to issues he considers important now (though they also have timeless messages too - it's just that those timeless messages are always extremely apropos of the moment).
Nausicaa is an anti-war film - specifically, an anti-nuclear war film (Miyazaki himself has said the Cold War at that time deeply affected him, and he felt the Japanese public was not paying enough attention to it). Princess Mononoke is a film about man living in harmony with nature. They are two very different messages, though I suppose if you really stretch, you can connect them.
You know, with the amount of responses I always see to this sort of thing on Slashdot in favor of buckling spring mechanisms, I am absolutely amazed that none of the major manufacturers still makes a keyboard like this. No, I wouldn't expect it to be as popular as a regular cheap rubber dome keyboard in the same product line, and I wouldn't expect it to be as cheap either. But come on, there clearly seem to be enough people out there to support such a product.
Many of us seem to still be using our old IBM or Northgate keyboards because that's all we've seen that satisfies us. This seems to me to be a fairly large untapped market. How do these manufacturers know that buckling spring keyboards are no longer profitable? At the time they stopped making them, prices were dropping like a stone and there was little notice among consumers of what actually made a quality keyboard. Now, it seems like that's changed, and there's at least a segment of the public willing to pay extra for a decent board. If IBM started making them again, or even Logitech or MS, and promoted the product specifically as a quality, heavy duty keyboard with mechanical key switches (or however they want to say it), I'd sure as heck take notice and I'll bet a lot of others would too.
Actually, I think McBride is too small a fish for the SEC to get their panties in a knot over. Couple that with the fact that he's fighting those "Linux hippies" that the *IAA are so incensed with,
I'm not sure why people here seem to think the SEC and states' attorneys general (like good old Eliot Spitzer here in NY) will not get involved here. SCO is not fighting "Linux hippies", SCO is fighting IBM, one of the largest companies in the world, one of the Dow 30, #9 on the Fortune 500. You think any self-respecting regulator is going to allow one of the drivers of our economy to be bullied by a crap little company like SCO through fraudulent means? You're right - nobody in government cares about SCO, but they sure as hell care about IBM.
If it takes one of Spitzer's independent probes to prod the SEC along, great. Once small-time investors get screwed (as will happen once SCO's stock tanks), and IBM starts complaining to the government that they've been wrongly accused and have the court documents to back that assertion up (in the form of either a victory by IBM or capitulation by SCO that we're all sure is coming), then I fully expect to see things happen.
The worse that could happen is that they fold, maybe less of a loss to these guys than you think..
No, the "worst" that can happen is they get busted for running a pump and dump scheme by the SEC. Not to mention corporate fraud, insider trading and god knows what else; I'm sure there are a variety of charges that could be leveled if it turns out they were intentionally misleading investors for personal gain. This is serious stuff; this is not just slap on the wrist territory. We're talking some real prison time here.
If these allegations by SCO do all turn out to be completely false (as is likely), and it does turn out that SCO knew it (50/50 - I think it's just as likely they're just totally clueless), then the SEC will have to get involved in order to send a message to the rest of the corporate world that this sort of thing cannot be tolerated. If SCO execs actually succeed in taking a failing company and turning it into a personal gain for them through fraud, there will be no end to these sorts of actions by other executives at other failing companies in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not going to check the website since I don't want anything to be spoiled.
Lots of people have joked about spoilers in this thread and a few people have brought it up seriously. I just wonder why anyone actually cares about spoilers in episode three of a six-part series when you've already seen episodes 1, 2 and 4-6. I mean sure, some of the specifics are unknown previous to this, but we all know Anakin becomes Vader, we all know Obi-Wan and Yoda run off and hide, we all know Luke and Leia get split up at birth and their mother dies (or we think she dies), etc. So what if we find out now that Count Dooku gets decapitated? Who really cares? This movie is not about that, and you already know everything you need to know about the main plot.
I actually found the plot/timeline synopsis pretty interesting to read - probably more interesting than the movie itself will be, if only to see the sequence of events and the filled-in gaps, even if I already knew pretty much all of the major plot points.
The good companies innovate, the bad ones copy success. Guess which one is more likely to succeed. Innovation is a risky business.
On a slightly related note, has there been a good business project management set-up in relation to the development of games? From everything I've seen and read about, the development seems so hodge-podge, it's remarkable any games succeed.
Your two statements are both complementary and contradictory. There are two facets to the game industry - independent developers, and developers either under contract to a publisher or owned by one. Independent developers are often the ones credited with being "innovative" (though in my experience in the industry, they're no more or less innovative than developers under contract or the publishers themselves), but they also often float along without direction, developing games when they feel like it based on an arbitrary set of criteria. Occasionally, great games come out of this sort of model. More often, you end up with complete garbage - the kinds of games that get 15-50% reviews in PC Gamer Magazine, which seems to be the bulk of their reviews these days... (and generally, those are deserved scores.)
So indie developing is haphazard, yes. But Black Isle wasn't an indie developer; they were presumably doled out projects, and given set deadlines and guidelines by Interplay. Apparently, they didn't take too well to this, as they lost $20 million this year alone. Well, that's not very fair - I suppose they had some licensing issues, and there could be other reasons for their losing money, but there's this whole "blame the publisher" thing going on out there that I don't think is very fair either. This is a business, and Black Isle wasn't making money for the business right now. If they were an indie that burned through that kind of cash they'd be just as out of business right now.
Anyway, publisher-sponsored development is not at all haphazard. Yes, many publishers stick with established franchises and genres, but all of them have a certain percentage of development set aside for new games. That percentage varies per publisher. New games at publishers like these are guided along by experienced veterans of the process - which doesn't guarantee success, but it at least (generally) guarantees a certain level of competence and polish to a new game from a large publisher. (Pikmin and Animal Crossing are two examples of this on the console side - Rise of Nations and MS Train Simulator would be examples on the PC side.)
PC and console game development is a bit different in that console game development is almost all publisher sponsored, contracted, or owned. That is honestly one of the reasons why the console game industry is in better shape than the PC game industry, and I will never for a second believe anyone that says there are fewer innovative games on consoles than on PC. Anyone who says that does not know anything about the console game industry or the games available today. (Don't mistake what's on the best-seller lists for the entire catalog of what's out there - consumers determine best-seller lists, but publishers know it's in their best long-term interests to develop new franchises even if they don't succeed short-term.)
I remember getting a check in the mail because Nintendo had to pay off a class action suit for price fixing for doing the same thing. Nintendo didn't have a monopoly on game consoles at the time.
I'm not sure where you live, but maybe this is what you're referring to, in which case you'll note that they colluded with seven European distributors to keep prices artificially inflated. That's probably the important part, because it's the distributors that actually set the wholesale price. If you can prove that a company makes a product for X dollars, sells it to a distributor for X dollars plus one, and then colludes with that distributor (or group of distributors) to sell it to retailers for X dollars plus, say, one hundred, that would be illegal. The collusion is what's important.
If, however, your company simply sells a product direct to retailers for X dollars, then I don't see how you're fixing the price on anything. You're simply telling people "this is what this product costs", and who is anyone to argue? You don't know the wholesale price on iPods - it could be $296 for a model that has a $299 MSRP, direct from Apple, with a $299 MAP to match the MSRP, and these are obviously not loss leaders (and not being able to advertise a loss leader pretty much defeats the purpose of a loss leader anyway). I would imagine this is how Nintendo gets away with setting prices now, and Sony and MS no doubt do the same on their game consoles.
Of course, IANAL, but the Nintendo thing is something I followed pretty closely at the time.
Recent upgrades to Kazaa clients (2.5 and higher) make them less tolerant with outdated or non official clients such as Kazaa Lite K++. Kazaa Lite is based on a version prior to 2.5, therefore a current supernode will not accept its shares.
Ah, so here we have the reason why the RIAA continues to believe use in P2P services is declining. They're using Sharman's Kazaa client!
Seriously, I'm using K-Lite and I've noticed virtually no change in anything. Could it be that K-Lite users are so numerous that the K-Lite network is now the "defacto" Kazaa network? Is anyone actually running a 2.5 Spyware-enhanced Kazaa client here? How well is it working, and how many users/files do you see on at any given time? How are the search results?
It's my understanding that with the Fasttrack network, the users themselves function as servers - so if everyone's running K-Lite and everyone's happy with it, there's really no effective way for Sharman to lock them out. It will probably inhibit growth in the K-Lite network (now that you have to run stock Kazaa first to find and get it... though I imagine some people still will), but it will more likely kill the real Fasttrack network as people find out how little content is accessible via the stock client.
What's Sharman's thinking here? It seems like they're trying to do pretty much exactly what the RIAA is doing, trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
For what it's worth, I've been watching my box set of the original series while stuck on a business trip. I'm hoping the new series will be good, but even if isn't, well... they're different series, and I'll judge them on their own merits, not how they relate to each other.
Well, I will judge them based on how they relate to each other. The fact is both series are called "Battlestar Galactica" and if this new mini-series' producers wanted to do a different sort of story they could have called it something else. As it is, it seems they're just trying to cash in on a well-known name, and the series should be judged as such.
When you use the title of a well-known series/movie/whatever, I expect either a remake or a continuation. I don't think that's unreasonable - these amount to brand names, and what SciFi is trying to do is equivalent to New Coke. I don't think anyone would have complained about New Coke either if it was called, I don't know, Wild Mountain Cola or Mister Smith's Fabulous Cola or something. I mean the public would not be comparing it to real Coke (except in a generic and non-specific "this is not my favorite cola" sort of way), because nobody's trying to pass it off as Coke.
These people, though, are trying to pass this off as Battlestar Galactica. As such, it should be judged as Battlestar Galactica, not some sort of standalone series, because it's not a standalone series, whatever the producers try to say to subdue the fans. I mean what's next, an Indiana Jones movie where Indy is a woman and the setting is 21st century Tokyo? Part of the criteria of any franchise entry is how well it adheres to the narrative that's already been established. And on that basis, without even having seen it but based on what we all already know, this alleged version of Battlestar Galactica obviously fails miserably. It will have to be absolutely amazing in every other way to redeem itself at all, but it will never be considered "great" simply because it is a poorly interpreted imitation of its own namesake.
Sprint is a very advanced service compared with Cingular -- lots more options, better email coverage, better customer service...
Except that it doesn't work a lot of the time. Sprint offers a lot of features at inflated prices that you'd be a fool to pay, but they can barely get their most basic services (call connections, call quality, voicemail) working properly most of the time.
A lot of this varies by area so YMMV, but I made the exact opposite switch you did - Sprint to Cingular - and I couldn't be happier. I'm saving buckets of money and getting better service - virtually no dropped calls, a less noticeable digital delay, and noticeably less static even when signal strength is low. I also never have a problem accessing my voicemail, which is a problem with Sprint at least 50% of the time. "Advanced service" is in the eye of the beholder, I guess - it doesn't matter to me how advanced a service is if it doesn't mean good call quality along with basic services that work properly. Not to mention that you're going to be stuck on their old CDMA network unless you pony up for a 3G phone and 3G service, which means big bucks in the end. Sprint nickel-and-dimes you to death with various $5 and $10 fees here and there, until you look at your bill and realize you're paying $150 a month base! Even their most basic plan, with no options, costs more than Cingular's or other carriers'.
A lot of people get taken in by Sprint's sexy features, but you see how many people on this thread are expressing their desire to dump them at the first possible chance. There are reasons for this.
Ok, back on topic so I don't burn through all of my karma by jacking the thread and turning it into a brand flame war. I switched before portability even came into effect. I honestly didn't care, and in fact purposely give out my cel phone number to so few people that it's actually been less trouble than not to keep switching my number every few years (somehow, telemarketers have always gotten my cel phone number eventually, and the number of calls grows exponentially like a virus over time - gee, I wonder why it hasn't happened yet since I switched away from Sprint?).
I think, honestly, that the portability rule is more hype than anything - people who want to switch will switch regardless, and I don't think there's a large number of people out there so tied to their phone number that they've just been waiting for this rule to take effect. If anything, there's a larger issue at work here that I think has a greater effect on keeping people tied down. But if you're really, truly unhappy with a carrier as I was, you'll switch regardless of anything. I could have bought a brand new $300 phone already with the money I've saved going from Sprint to Cingular, and I'm getting better service in the bargain.
This has been known for quite a while, and to be honest it doesn't change that much. SCO will simply claim they had no idea where this code originated for at the time and so never sanctioned its official distribution. Their entire case is ridiculous, however it would be ridiculous even if they hadn't ever distributed linux or contributed to the kernel.
I'll dig up the old standby: RTFA. Better yet, RTFPTLTFTA, otherwise known as "read the f'ing post that links to the f'ing article", as it pretty well spells out the difference between what Groklaw discovered and what's been "known for quite a while" - namely that SCO willfully and knowingly not only distributed but also contributed to specific features of the kernel that they specifically claimed never to have touched in their legal filings. As far as I know, this is completely new - and it's not just an allegation, it's proved in the linked article.
In other words, they both modified and distributed the specific code they are claiming to now have been stolen from them and they did it under the GPL. This code did not get "misappropriated" from SCO's Unix into Linux, this code was put into Linux by SCO. This is huge.
IANAL, but it would seem to me that this blows pretty much their entire case out of the water in one fell swoop. This renders any contractual issues (the basis of their case against IBM) moot and leaves them only one fallback - that the GPL is invalid and is trumped by their own copyright. Of course, this is something they've also been saying now for a few months (not since the beginning of their case, though - I think they probably realized their case against IBM was flimsy at best a while back), but to say this news is "old" or doesn't affect their legal standing seems to be a misunderstanding of the facts.
If these are facts (and it seems Groklaw has done their homework to me), then SCO will get laughed out of court on day one. They did something, they lied about it, then they filed a lawsuit based on that lie... and now they've been caught.
Proof?
If a 45 year old college professor solved it, would this be news?
I think it's pretty well-known that among mathematicians, the older you get, the less likely you are to do anything really important. In other words it's not really "funny" that a college kid would solve this; it's pretty much the norm.
There's a PBS documentary about John Nash that I recently saw where this is talked about a bit; the commentators liken mathematicians to ballerinas, and Nash himself said he felt his best years were behind him at age 30 (and not because of his mental illness - in fact, his mental illness may have in part been due to the stress he was feeling). It's on DVD if you want to look for it - A Brilliant Madness was the title, I believe.
In fact, you're in luck - I just Google'd it for you and there's a web site here that includes a transcript of the program.
I for one don't feel obligated to donate to a charity just to make a bunch of morons with half-baked theories feel better about my state of mind. Besides, it wouldn't help anyway. People will believe what they want to.
Right, because it's far better to feed their (and your) cynicism than it is to make a few sick kids happy for a few days out of their lives.
I'm seeing far too much jaded bitterness in many of these comments here. Regardless of why they're doing it (and who are you to judge?), this is something to help kids feel better as they're stuck in the hospital. How stupid is it to say "I'm not going to buy anything for these kids, because it won't change the minds of the press!"? I mean really. Get a little perspective. Even if it was an outright publicity ploy by PA (and you'd have to really be a bitter old man to believe that), who cares? The kids you're buying these games for sure don't.
Spend $8 and get them a Lego set, I mean Jesus H. Christ. You don't need to go nuts. If you do one good thing this year, isn't it worth spending the equivalent of a couple of value meals at McDonald's?
My point is, let's not lose sight of what this is really about here. The point is what PA are doing, not why they are doing it.
For instance, he includes 'hobby' computers such as the Altair, but excludes the Apple I and his ranking of the Compaq portable PC at number one ahead of the Altair, Apple I and II, Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Interestingly, the author also skips other significant platforms entirely, such as the Amiga and Atari computers
I'm going to play devil's advocate to the prevailing sentiment here a little bit. I'm old enough to remember well the days of the C64, Vic-20, Apple I and II and later the Amiga and Atari XL and ST line (and the straight numbered PC's before them). I remember the industry well in those days, and hell, we had two Atari 520ST's and one Atari 1040ST in my house (I also owned an Apple II and had many friends who owned C64's as well as at least one that owned an Amiga 500).
But the Atari line specifically were not particularly popular computers and they did not have a particularly profound effect on the industry as a whole. Worse, Atari's PC's dropped in popularity pretty linearly with each successive release - the Atari 400 and 800 were fairly major players at first, but as the XL/XE line and then the ST's took over, Atari's influence waned further and further. The ST's did have some nice sound hardware (and were popular with audio professionals) that may have influenced what would eventually become standard in some PC's but otherwise they were basically ignored by average consumers as well as businesses.
The Amiga was ahead of its time - and probably should be on a list like this - but again, it all depends on your criteria. Commercially, the Amiga was a collossal failure that directly contributed to the downfall of Commodore Computers. There are arguments you could make in favor of having it on a top ten list like this, but you'd have to have a pretty loose criteria to include a computer family like the Amiga on the same list as the IBM 5150 - the 5150 being the direct grandfather of about 90% of the world's PC's today, almost 25 years after it was introduced. The Amiga, while still having a cult following, is not even in the same universe in terms of influence or popularity.
As for the Apple I, I don't think even Wozniak and Jobs would really argue it belongs on this sort of list. Only several hundred were made and while it was an important PC to the Apple company just in terms of being their first released product, as a computer taken on its own merits it was not at all important. I mean it's about like arguing Orson Welles' first home movie in high school is as important as Citizen Kane - it frankly and simply is not. Same goes for the Apple Lisa (the largely experimental precursor to the Mac that shares less with the Mac platform than many people seem to believe).
So I don't know; lists like these are pretty much intended to provoke debate through their commissions and omissions (in fact, the writer even says "Of course, there will be grousing with the choices here, and certainly with the order, but that's what makes lists fun"), and there may be different PC's that should or should not be here, but I can see his reasons for not including many of the PC's listed in the article submission.
It seems to me like what this writer did was look at each loose "era" of personal computing - the hobbyist era, the "wild west" era when there were a large variety of low-cost and popular PC options, and the post-IBM PC era when most consumer PC's became largely based on the 5150 design. He then included 3 or 4 PC's from each era on his list, and these all happen to be basically the most popular or important PC's of each era (with one or two exceptions). That's really as good a criteria as any, I think.
IANAL, but AFAIK you cannot trademark common English words. The example I've always seen is that you cannot trademark the word "orange", but you could trademark a unique phrase containing the word "orange". The Fedora Project homepage linked from the parent article seems to have the *word* "Fedora" trademarked, which I can't see would be possible (and in fact, it's not listed as a registered trademark, just a trademark - so there's no government sanctioning of their trademark).
I'm not sure I blame Red Hat for this one. A fedora is a fedora, just like an orange is an orange. You can't trademark it. If two companies are using the same word for their software projects, too bad. Protest those who put the word in the Oxford dictionary, maybe... but I don't think there's any real legal claim here.
And I'll close by reminding you again, IANAL.
"b) Why is she using apt and synaptic? They don't even come with Fedora."
Where does she say she is? She says in one spot that using them "wouldn't have helped in this situation", which is true in that case (the Flash install), but they *would* have helped her with most of her other problems. Or at least helped her avoid them.
And yes, apt comes with Fedora, and Synaptic has already been adapted for it. It works fine - see my last post.
Oh, and I'm running Flash fine on my Fedora - carried over from my RH9 install, but I imagine everything is where it's expected to be in that case.
I've been having better luck than most with Fedora, it seems, and have in fact gotten more to work with it than any other distro I've tried so far (two separate Mandrake installs both broke beyond the point of repair for me, and Red Hat 8 and 9 both worked fairly well but not quite as well as Fedora). Honestly, when I see people whining about dependencies as in the linked article, I wonder why the hell they're insisting on living in the stone ages as they are. One of the major new features of Fedora is that up2date now supports apt and yum (yes, both), and I have no idea why you wouldn't use *at least* up2date, and preferably something even better.
Personally, I use Synaptic with apt, which is something a lot of people don't even seem to realize works on Fedora (at least judging by the reaction on the #fedora irc channel the other day when I mentioned it). As happy as I've been with it I wouldn't use anything else, including Fedora's own "add/remove" function. If something's not listed in Synaptic, it ain't gonna work. If it is listed, it will (or at least, there's no real reason it wouldn't). Simple as that. Click the package and install it - no dependency problems, no worries.
I honestly think for Linux to get beyond niche status people are going to need to quit having to worry about stuff like tarballs and dependencies. The fact is you *don't* have to worry about this stuff, so why would you *choose* to worry about it and give yourself all sorts of unnecessary headaches in the process? I have had zero problems installing anything on Fedora so far, and have no complaints about performance.
I will say Fedora is missing support for some key packages, including Wine (the one I really would like to run and can't). But I didn't go wasting my time downloading it and trying to install it - it's not in my Synaptic list, so I just don't bother. I will keep looking for it there, though, and I know it'll show up eventually. It's about time Linux users started using their time more wisely, and modern dependency resolvers/downloaders/installers like apt-get and yum will help you avoid almost all of the problems listed in the original article here (which are problems you'd face on almost every distribution, depending on what packages you try to install).
Cell phones are the battleground where Linux will defeat Microsoft for world domination in the OS war. When executives who buy Linux-based phones note how reliable the OS is on their phone, it's a short mental leap to see it's reliability on the internet, servers, phone systems, and eventually the growing server and desktop.
Then they'll have absolutely no interest in this, right? No business executive could possibly have a use for a phone that can sync directly with their Windows programs and includes pocket versions of Outlook, IE and Windows Media Player...
I'm not saying you're wrong (well, yes I am), but you're incredibly naive if you think Linux is going to come in and sweep across cellular phone land. There are plenty of reasons why someone would choose a Windows-based phone over a Linux-based phone and a lot of those reasons have to do with what people are running on their desktop. (I also think the phone in the parent article is ugly as sin, but that's just me.)
Myself, I don't give a crap what OS runs on my phone as long as my call quality and signal strength is good. That's still my measure of any phone (and it always will be).
Not that it's not a big deal, just not as big a deal as the poster says.
I would call it "not a big deal" in an absolute sense. CD singles are a miniscule market right now and if anything, all this is going to do is confirm to the music execs the fact that it's pointless to even bother releasing them. The record labels have been trying to do away with CD singles completely for years, but public pressure (though not necessarily sales), not to mention pressure from within the industry itself (it's a measure of a song's success how well its single sells) has forced the labels to continue to produce a format that doesn't sell well at all.
I'm getting a little sick of seeing articles on Slashdot where the submitter him/herself didn't apparently RTFA and/or has no knowledge of the background to his/her story. Song downloads surpass CD single sales? Yeah, I'll bet they surpass 7" vinyl and cassingle sales too. And probably karaoke laserdiscs and 8 track tapes. Big whoop.
Not that I don't want these services to succeed. This just isn't something worth celebrating over.
At what point do we stop calling these things "iPod wannabes" and start simple calling them MP3 players? (Or, if you want to get technical, hard drive-based MP3 players.) I mean it's been a while since hard drive based players have become popular and the iPod is far from the only one. Why do we not call IBM-compatible PC's "IBM PC wannabes"? Or portable CD players "discman wannabes"?
I just think everybody's way past the point of trying to copy Apple. Apart from being square-ish, there's very little that I can see in almost any of the current crop of drive-based players that resembles an iPod. People always complain about things like "it's not as small as iPod!", "it doesn't have the buttons on the front like iPod!", "it's not white like iPod!" Well, maybe that's because it's not an iPod and it's not trying to be an iPod! It's an MP3 player, and it's different than iPod.
Myself, the important things in one of these are price vs. size, stability, openness, and ease of use. I don't care how much like the iPod it is; in fact, the iPod has significant problems (DRM, stability issues, high price, past quality control problems) that preclude me from buying one. If it syncs fast and easily, if it doesn't skip or otherwise flake out while playing, if it plays a variety of formats without DRM and if it's cheap for the amount of space it has, then it seems like a good deal to me. I don't know if this thing fits that criteria (its use of MusicMatch for syncing seems to rule out a good interface, so that's disappointing), but I'm not measuring anything vs. the iPod. People need to use their own criteria; if you want an iPod, just buy a damn iPod.
Heck, you don't even have to give Apple any information at ALL to download the app. Just click the download button. How refreshing is that? For once, a company that doesn't require you to tell them all sorts of personal crap and fill out a survey just to download a free or try before you buy app.
Of course, who knows what info iTunes is sending Apple on its own? By default, iTunes installs a service called "iTuneshelper.exe" that runs as a TSR even when iTunes is closed. I'm sorry, but not being the sort to trust companies that are admittedly in league with the RIAA, this makes me a little bit paranoid (even though all my MP3's are ripped from legally purchased CD's). This service goes away if you uncheck "connect to the Internet when needed", but why is this checked by default to begin with? There is a separate checkbox for "update iTunes automatically", so what else is iTunes doing when connected to the net? (btw, the music store works whether or not "connect to the internet when needed" is checked - so it has nothing to do with that.)
iTunes also installs two other services that are useless for most people running Windows - iPodservice.exe and gearsec.exe. It does this without permission as well, and these can only be turned off by disabling the services themselves, not within iTunes. Neither of these is required in any sense for running iTunes itself.
All in all, I'm about as pleased with iTunes as I am with Windows Media Player from a privacy/permissions standpoint. Which is to say not much.
Ease of use always boils down to what you're used to, and that's it.
Wow. With a ridiculous statement like that I can't tell whether you're a Windows user or a Linux user. Let me spell it out for you though: there are interfaces that are naturally easier to use than others.
Bullshit. While you can't tell if your quote is from a Windows or Linux user, I sure can tell that your quote is from a Mac user, because it's the Apple company line. Trouble is, in terms of computers, it's not true.
Explain to me, for example, how having the window buttons at the top left is more intuitive than putting them at the top right. Or how not having a maximize button is more intuitive than having one. Or how only having one mouse button is more intuitive than having two.
The fact is all modern computing interfaces are non-intuitive outside of the context of using a PC. Even the Mac. There is no real-world equivalent to the function of "minimize window" for example (and no hardwired human instinct towards it either), which is something that appears on both the Mac and PC. There is no equivalent to dragging a mouse around. There is no equivalent to typing on a keyboard. These are all things you need to learn in order to use any computer, and once you've learned them it's very hard to un-learn them or to learn to do things in a different way.
This is why the important thing is interface consistency, not interface intuitiveness. If everything works the same way all the time, you're able to develop an expectation of how things are going to work; I mean that just follows. Macs have a reputation for being more "intuitive" probably because Apple has historically exercised some pretty tight quality control over the consistency of the interface in Mac applications - even third party applications. Windows, on the other hand, can be pretty chaotic - though there are still accepted standards.
iTunes plain and simply breaks many of those accepted Windows interface standards - even things many non-standard apps still adhere to (like including a maximize button). So, iTunes is not as easy to use as it could be for a Windows user because it is not consistent with the Windows interface. There's nothing more "naturally easy to use" about iTunes than about WMP9 or Winamp or anything else. It's all a question of how closely the application adheres to the expectations of those that use it.
It needs some fixes, and I'd personally like an option to completely disable the store
Grrr - just discovered there is one under preferences. *And* there's a system tray icon checkbox. Still, this should be disabled by default.
Heres a fun one for Windows people - try rightclicking on that funky "browse" or "burn CD" context button. Go ahead, see what happens.
Same as left-clicking. Guess they just forgot to do anything context-sensitive with the right mouse button on this.
A weirder right-click issue is the music store. Right-click on it and the only option is to "eject disc". Coupled with the other interface issues mentioned here, I really expected more from Apple - a company that normally prides itself on this stuff. This has the feel of a rushed product without enough beta testing. And we're still all finding interface oddness; I'm sure there's more I haven't seen.
iTunes uses around 40 MB of RAM on my WinXP SP1 machine, with no music files in my library and nothing playing. Add in the iPod driver and the iTunesHelper app that it runs in the background, and you've probably got around ~60MB of RAM usage on average. Winamp uses 8-10 megs in comparison.
Winamp 3 uses more than that, and also tends to pin the CPU at 100% for no good reason that I can see. Winamp 2 is better but does not offer anywhere close to the same functionality as either iTunes or Winamp 3 (some of this functionality is useless for a lot of people, so I'm not saying this automatically makes iTunes a better product).
Resizing the iTunes window is insanely slow - 100% CPU usage, and it takes a quarter to half second just for the screen to update while resizing the window.
I noticed this too, on two quite powerful machines to boot - one an Athlon XP 2600+ w/ GeForce 4 Ti4200, one a P4-2.6 w/ Radeon 9800 Pro. These are the kinds of machines that can run Unreal II with frame rates in the 100's, and yet just dragging the corner of the iTunes window is choppy as hell. No excuse for this. It's like they're just not using hardware acceleration at all.
iTunes adds a simple but useful system tray icon that lets you change tracks and turn shuffle/repeat on and off. Good feature, I'm glad they didn't leave it out.
Oh, this is a major pet peeve of mine about both iTunes and QuickTime. I reserve my system tray for truly essential TSR's (it's called the system tray for a reason, if you ask me) and don't want it cluttered up with a lot of junk. So of course, the first thing iTunes does is install a tray icon for itself and one for QuickTime, all without asking me. It's trivial to remove the QuickTime icon (not sure how to remove the iTunes one when it's running), but I need to do it every single time this program gets upgraded, which seems to be quite a lot.
You can't resize the iTunes window unless you grab the bottom-left corner. I've never liked this aspect of Mac GUIs at all, but I'm sure there are some people who do like it.
This drives me nuts, especially considering the previously mentioned bad performance when resizing the window. For a company so focused on interface consistency, you would think they would at least try to be compliant with Windows interface standards. All Windows apps have a maximize button. I mentioned this to a Mac guy I know and he was like "oh well, no big deal". I'm sure if someone wrote a Mac program with the window buttons on the top right instead of the top left, this same guy would be up in arms.
The odd thing about it is there is a un-maximize button that serves no purpose without a maximize button (this is the same button on Windows, for those that don't know - it changes states depending on the state the window is in). It has the effect of slightly resizing the window in an unpredictable way. The whole thing is just not well thought out.
The parent article mentioned something about the iTunes music store being the thing that's getting all the attention on Windows. I totally disagree with this. I know a lot of people who have downloaded this software and I've been reading about it elsewhere on the net; most PC owners seem to have little interest in the music store but are instead interested in it as an MP3 player. I don't think any of the MP3 players on Windows are very satisfying, so we're always looking for something better.
The store is out for a lot of PC people right off the bat because of the AAC format. My portable player won't play that format and I'm not about to buy an iPod just to be iTunes-compliant. Add to that the limited selection of songs (nothing I searched for turned up anything), the high price for some of the songs ($2.98 for the Sarah MacLachlan single linked from the homepage!), the DRM... I mean I think the music store is honestly a non-starter for PC users. They may double their sales now that the
Nausicaa is pretty much Princess Mononoke actually - the story and characters are somewhat similar,
I honestly believe people who think this about these two films have utterly missed the point of Nausicaa. (You're not the only one - it seems a common view, especially among westerners I know who have seen both films.) Look at the time Nausicaa was made. Look at what was going on in the world at that time. Miyazaki has always made films that are allegories to issues he considers important now (though they also have timeless messages too - it's just that those timeless messages are always extremely apropos of the moment).
Nausicaa is an anti-war film - specifically, an anti-nuclear war film (Miyazaki himself has said the Cold War at that time deeply affected him, and he felt the Japanese public was not paying enough attention to it). Princess Mononoke is a film about man living in harmony with nature. They are two very different messages, though I suppose if you really stretch, you can connect them.
You know, with the amount of responses I always see to this sort of thing on Slashdot in favor of buckling spring mechanisms, I am absolutely amazed that none of the major manufacturers still makes a keyboard like this. No, I wouldn't expect it to be as popular as a regular cheap rubber dome keyboard in the same product line, and I wouldn't expect it to be as cheap either. But come on, there clearly seem to be enough people out there to support such a product.
Many of us seem to still be using our old IBM or Northgate keyboards because that's all we've seen that satisfies us. This seems to me to be a fairly large untapped market. How do these manufacturers know that buckling spring keyboards are no longer profitable? At the time they stopped making them, prices were dropping like a stone and there was little notice among consumers of what actually made a quality keyboard. Now, it seems like that's changed, and there's at least a segment of the public willing to pay extra for a decent board. If IBM started making them again, or even Logitech or MS, and promoted the product specifically as a quality, heavy duty keyboard with mechanical key switches (or however they want to say it), I'd sure as heck take notice and I'll bet a lot of others would too.
Actually, I think McBride is too small a fish for the SEC to get their panties in a knot over. Couple that with the fact that he's fighting those "Linux hippies" that the *IAA are so incensed with,
I'm not sure why people here seem to think the SEC and states' attorneys general (like good old Eliot Spitzer here in NY) will not get involved here. SCO is not fighting "Linux hippies", SCO is fighting IBM, one of the largest companies in the world, one of the Dow 30, #9 on the Fortune 500. You think any self-respecting regulator is going to allow one of the drivers of our economy to be bullied by a crap little company like SCO through fraudulent means? You're right - nobody in government cares about SCO, but they sure as hell care about IBM.
If it takes one of Spitzer's independent probes to prod the SEC along, great. Once small-time investors get screwed (as will happen once SCO's stock tanks), and IBM starts complaining to the government that they've been wrongly accused and have the court documents to back that assertion up (in the form of either a victory by IBM or capitulation by SCO that we're all sure is coming), then I fully expect to see things happen.
The worse that could happen is that they fold, maybe less of a loss to these guys than you think..
No, the "worst" that can happen is they get busted for running a pump and dump scheme by the SEC. Not to mention corporate fraud, insider trading and god knows what else; I'm sure there are a variety of charges that could be leveled if it turns out they were intentionally misleading investors for personal gain. This is serious stuff; this is not just slap on the wrist territory. We're talking some real prison time here.
If these allegations by SCO do all turn out to be completely false (as is likely), and it does turn out that SCO knew it (50/50 - I think it's just as likely they're just totally clueless), then the SEC will have to get involved in order to send a message to the rest of the corporate world that this sort of thing cannot be tolerated. If SCO execs actually succeed in taking a failing company and turning it into a personal gain for them through fraud, there will be no end to these sorts of actions by other executives at other failing companies in the future.