He might not be the most trustworthy guy in the world, or not impartial at all, but he's got an opinion, and at least he's making people AWARE of certain things, and more importantly, critically thinking for themselves.
Then you might want to read Michael Moore's response.
The Truth: Lockheed Martin is the largest weapons-maker in the world. The Littleton facility has been manufacturing missiles, missile components, and other weapons systems for almost half a century. In the 50s, workers at the Littleton facility constructed the first Titan intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to unleash a nuclear warhead on the Soviet Union; in the mid-80s, they were partially assembling MX missiles, instruments for the minuteman ICBM, a space laser weapon called Zenith Star, and a Star Wars program known as Brilliant Pebbles.
In the full, unedited interview I did with the Lockheed spokesman, he told me that Lockheed started building nuclear missiles in Littleton and "played a role in the development of Peacekeeper MX Missiles."
As for what's currently manufactured in Littleton, McCollum told me, "They (the rockets sitting behind him) carry mainly very large national security satellites, some we can't talk about." (see him say it here)
Oh look there's more
The Truth: Heston took his NRA show to Denver and did and said exactly what we recounted. From the end of my narration setting up Heston's speech in Denver, with my words, "a big pro-gun rally," every word out of Charlton Heston's mouth was uttered right there in Denver, just 10 days after the Columbine tragedy. But don't take my word - read the transcript of his whole speech. Heston devotes the entire speech to challenging the Denver mayor and mocking the mayor's pleas that the NRA "don't come here." Far from deliberately editing the film to make Heston look worse, I chose to leave most of this out and not make Heston look as evil as he actually was.
Why are these gun nuts upset that their brave NRA leader's words are in my film? You'd think they would be proud of the things he said. Except, when intercut with the words of a grieving father (whose son died at Columbine and happened to be speaking in a protest that same weekend Heston was at the convention center), suddenly Charlton Heston doesn't look so good does he? Especially to the people of Denver (and, the following year, to the people of Flint) who were still in shock over the tragedies when Heston showed up.
As for the clip preceding the Denver speech, when Heston proclaims "from my cold dead hands," this appears as Heston is being introduced in narration. It is Heston's most well-recognized NRA image - hoisting the rifle overhead as he makes his proclamation, as he has done at virtually every political appearance on behalf of the NRA (before and since Columbine). I have merely re-broadcast an image supplied to us by a Denver TV station, an image which the NRA has itself crafted for the media, or, as one article put it, "the mantra of dedicated gun owners" which they "wear on T-shirts, stamp it on the outside of envelopes, e-mail it on the Internet and sometimes shout it over the phone.". Are they now embarrassed by this sick, repulsive image and the words that accompany it?
If you believe them that is. Quoted from the eweek article:
The problem is tied to the interaction of DRAM from several manufacturers and several chip sets, all designed by Intel Corp. The flaw, which could result in system lockups, is being solved through a comprehensive recall that could affect up to 900,000 of HP's notebooks, a company representative said.
Although HP classified the problem as one that will affect the notebook PC industry as a whole, it appears that the company is the only one currently taking action. A representative from Dell Computer Corp. said that the company was "looking into it."
Quoted from the HP site:
During normal ongoing notebook testing, HP has identified a design flaw in certain industry-standard memory modules supplied by third parties that were shipped with some HP and Compaq notebooks and in memory accessories for these notebooks. Under certain conditions, these memory modules can cause the notebook to experience blue screens, intermittent lockups, or memory data corruption.
As much as I hate HP, kudos to them for having the balls to do this, if this really *is* an industrywide problem. HP is the only place I've really noticed mentioning this though.
Actually, Netscape 6.0 was based off of M18, which promptly became the 0.6 branch after that. So, no, it wasn't really anywhere near 1.0. It was a marketing-driven release more than anything. Mozilla was clearly not ready at that point.
So, by actual timeline, Phoenix was used for less than a year, while Firebird was used for nearly a year, and Firefox is indefinite. Firebird did only comprise two releases, it just so happens that those two releases took a damn long time.
In case it wasn't obvious to everybody else, the latest ffx release is 0.9 RC. Meaning release candidate. Meaning not yet final bits.
The RC *is* major feature complete, but (as evident with the new theme and extension work) is still needing a fair bit of work before release. 0.9 final is expected in July, 1.0 final is expected in September (at which point I'm more than happy to shove it on everybody and anybody:) ) See the Roadmap for details.
In a build I downloaded today, I even noticed that the profile importer now finally gives you the option of which profile to import from (eg IE, Netscape 4, Mozilla 1.x, etc) before actually doing the dirty work. That wasn't present in 0.9rc IIRC.
In other words, I'd wait a little bit longer before pushing 0.9RC on your friends and family. This one's for the testing folks. Of course, anything pre-1.0 is really meant for testing, but this one more so:)
The problem with the market right now is that it's shifting. Standard PDA models are actually falling out of favor, as the current future is really in the convergence market. PDAs and cell phones are increasingly finding themselves in overlapping regions, and consumers are looking to cut down on the number of devices they carry. As it is right now, I personally carry a Palm Vx and my cell phone with me quite often, and it would be amazing if I could only carry one item.
Handspring realized this quite a while ago, and now the fruits of their efforts can be realized in the Treo 600. While not a perfect product, it is probably the best convergence device out there. It runs Palm OS5, but has incredibly strong telephony functions. A lot of people simply love theirs (I'm looking to get one when Verizon certifies it for use on the network, and when my contract expires).
Handspring is now a unit of PalmOne, which does mean that even if the market moves out from under PalmOne, they'll be able to react as necessary. PalmSource also renamed OS5 to Garnet (targeted for less powerhungry cell phones) and OS6 is Cobalt (for the power PDA users).
Symbian enjoys a nice presence with Nokia and S/E phones as well. It might be worth noting with the availability of Palm Garnet and Sony's exit from the PDA space, there remains an unlikely possibility for Sony to continue working with Palm.
The PDA space isn't completely done yet though. Just like any other market, it's probably waiting for its next "killer app." Some other poster mentioned how much the Zire21 sucks. Well yeah, if you're a/. reader it sucks. But if you're a soccer mom, it might be just right. The fact that it's priced at $99 and is one of the best selling PDAs of all time probably shows how untapped this market remains to be.
Personally, I think PDAs would be able to last a lot longer if Bluetooth was deployed more widely. Think of it: the integration of a PDAphone but the power of having two separate devices. It's quite promising, but the cell phone makers and network providers probably aren't going for it, as it means slightly lower profits. With convergence devices, you have to get them from your provider and instead of buying a $50 phone w/BT you're buying a $200-300 PDAphone with a gimmicky camera and other things. More money for them. Of course there remains the two devices issue, but it would just offer different markets.
Considering the REAL big money in this game is from licensing the engine, I doubt it.
I once heard somewhere that a majority of id's revenue comes from licensing the engine, not the actual game itself. Somewhat explains why not everyone is always enthralled with the gameplay, but the Q3A engine is still in use today by a whole lot of games (call of duty, BF1942, RTCW, the list goes on). Heck, HL1's engine can be traced to Quake 1 and Quake 2.
ARRESTS MADE IN RELATION TO HALF-LIFE 2 THEFT
Online Community Tracks Down Hackers
June, 10 2004 - Arrests have been made in several countries related to the break-in to Valve's network, theft of the Half-Life 2 source code, and release of the source code on the Internet.
"Within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved," said Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime."
Thousands of tips were received related to the criminal activities, with a core group of people who were able to analyze and backtrack from these clues. Subsequent to these individuals being identified, Valve has been working with various national authorities to prepare cases against those involved, leading to these arrests.
"It was very uplifting to see how the community rallied and tracked these people down. Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community," added Mr. Newell.
Taken out of context...
on
Spam as Poetry
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I saw this in my spam, and couldn't help but save it. It's only one line though, the rest of the "poem" wasn't all that interesting.
There's more to this than one realizes. DVDs are almost the sole indicator to the distributor of how much demand there is for a TV show. Ever wonder how/why Family Guy is being brought back? It's because the DVD sales of that show were phenomenal. All those sales said to Fox "maybe this show actually *is* popular."
If you like Futurama enough to want to see it come back, then buying the DVD is basically the only way to prove to Fox that it's worth it. It tells them a) you love the show and b) you love the show enough to spend good money on it. That last one is probably the more important bit.
Personally, I think the slightly geekier audience of Futurama vs Family guy didn't help its dvd sales; geeks are probably more willing to search out for Bittorrents/kazaa/emule/gnutella of a show, while the mass market is content with dvds.
Team Fortress II? Is this a different game than the one I know of?
IIRC TFC was a remake of a mod done for an earlier version of quake, but TF2 is a game on its own. It'll be done on the Valve Source engine, whenever that's released (a whole different discussion altogether). That makes sense, because they're Valve games...
Palm OS will do most of what you're asking for. There isn't much in the way of antialiasing, but palm PDAs do have really high resolution nowadays.
If you're looking for bargain bin, I would say Tungsten E would cut it. SD card expansion for fitting more books, MP3s, and even Oggs. Doubles as a great PDA on its own, and $149-199 to boot.
The tungsten T3 is even better, but right now it's a bit pricey. Its main advantage over the E is that it uses a virtual graffiti area, so you can use the entire screen length when extended to read books. Also has a landscape mode in apps that support it. It's pretty expensive right now, but that should start falling once Palmone introduces its new spring models.
Both models are rechargeable, syncs up with Linux and OS X without much difficulty (I'm told, never done it myself). PalmReader reads its own formats in addition to DOCs (not.DOCs, though Documents to Go can do that too). Acrobat Reader available, etc etc. No Microsoft reader, for obvious reasons.
Well, since nvidia is a chip manufacturer and never sells directly to consumers, I find it unlikely that you have a line to their tech support.
Also, you might want to take a ride on the cluetrain as of late. Generally accepted consensus within the gaming community is that the Catalyst driversets from ATI are quite excellent nowadays, and the Rage 128/original Radeon days are long gone. Being a Mac user, you would've also missed all the rampant cheating nvidia committed during the Geforce FX series with their drivers:)
Granted, it seems nvidia's trying to start with a clean slate this round, but your anecdote isn't completely accurate.
I'll take the above poster at his word, as I have never attempted to run ATI drivers on my mobile radeon 9000; I just use the default "radeon" driver from XF86 4.3.
But, ATI does provide a method for you to provide feedback. As everyone in OSS already knows, I'm sure, is that (good) bug reports are the very least you can contribute to improving a product:)
I'm even going to be so nice as to provide a link so you don't have to hunt it down (even though it's in the release notes): ATI.com Linux Driver Feedback
If they are to be believed, they read all feedback they get, even if they never respond to any of them. Also be aware that ATI's linux driver team isn't exactly massive, so these things take time.
Remember though, these are cards designed primarily for gamers, and in that case, PS2.0 is only just starting to come to fruition, and PS3.0 in games is still a little ways off before being important. And in any case, PS2.0 and 2.0b (the new profile supporting the X800s) have more than enough visual quality to satisfy any gamer. At the moment PS3.0 is a marketing check list and a feature lying in potential. As far as a gamer should be concerned, PS3.0 just presents supposed speed increases.
It does sound like you'll want PS3.0 for your needs, and in that case, nothing should be stopping you from getting a 6800 to meet your demands (aside from being unavailable at the moment).
I haven't read the article (duh), but from what I remember, XAML wasn't a complete overhaul of HTML. XAML was more like a way of using XML to design your user interfaces, integrated completely into Windows. It's not designed to work with anything but Longhorn.
XUL (pronounced "zool") is Mozilla's XML-based User interface Language that lets you build feature-rich cross platform applications that can run connected or disconnected from the Internet. These applications are easily customized with alternative text, graphics and layout so they can be readily branded or localized for various markets. Web developers already familiar with Dynamic HTML (DHTML) will learn XUL quickly and can start building applications right away.
Obviously, Mozilla's focus is on "cross platform," whereas Microsoft would much rather just focus on the one.
Those of you on OS X might be pleased to know that Firefox is available for that platform, and even features a pretty damn good theme that looks native to Aqua (see here http://kmgerich.com/archive/000049.html). What's more, is this same theme is now availble for Thunderbird on OS X (nightlies so far) (http://kmgerich.com/archive/000056.html).
And even though there hasn't been any press about it recently, Camino development has started to pick up again, which actually *is* a native OS X implementation of Gecko. Try a nightly to see where it's been going recently. Look for Camino 0.8 later this summer.
All of these options are great if you're not a fan of brushed metal (I don't prefer it in a browser).
Not directed at the parent, who is probably aware of all this, but some might be inclined to think that Mozilla had left OS X after Safari, which is not so.
Personally, I disagree with Apple on this one, but I can understand their position. If this was typical American copyright law, it would seem to me that PlayFair is nothing more than another method of fair use for the home user, just like burning to CD would be as well.
However, it also seems that when you buy the song from Apple, you are basically agreeing to their contract by giving them your money. So, while you might not be breaking copyright law, you probably still can't do this because you're breaking your contract with Apple (note: I have not read the itunes terms of use). That won't stop me from continuing to use this stuff though:)
In either case Apple will probably be able to win because it's got a chunk of change to back it up.
I'll be honest, I used to hate Real, but now that they seem to be making a genuine effort of reforming, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It seems that when it came to the worst of Real, I never had to deal with it that much. However, a partnership with RealNetworks just doesn't make much sense from Apple's standpoint.
Apple currently has the #1 slot, in both mp3 hardware and music store terms, not to mention mindshare. This is going very well for them. Kudos:)
Real, on the other hand, has more of a mishmash of options. They have their music store in RP10, but it's not promoted very well, and most people probably won't think of it when buying music online anyway. They do offer their subscription service, Rhapsody (which IMO is much better than napster premium), and last I heard was doing quite well for itself, but it's also in a different market from ITMS (subscription vs. individual files). I would not be surprised if rhapsody was the #2 service.
But this "deal" doesn't concern rhapsody. It concerns their music stores, where Apple doesn't have much impetus for sharing right now. Technically, it shouldn't be too hard, as RP10's music service is just 192kbps AAC with a Helix DRM wrapper instead of FairPlay. But, what incentive is there for Apple to join with Real? Quicktime's approach to streaming is quite different from that of Real's, so that isn't it. There's no access to a vast new user base, those users probably already heard of, know of, and installed itunes anyway. In fact, the only incentive for Apple I can see is just another way for users to buy songs from Apple (using RP10 instead of iTunes) and another marketing push for the ipod to those same users.
What does Real get out of it? They get the huge advantage of saying "tapped into the #1 music store" and the potential to access a huge new user base just by saying "try our service, compatible with ipod!"
I wish RealNetworks the best of luck in their effort to improve their product and adding more value. RP10 is already a good first step (developing a good positive trend and keeping it up will help). For them, it certainly couldn't hurt to ask (though they should've dropped the accusatory tone). But for Apple, this deal just isn't balanced for it to be worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
Nitpick: the guy's name was boise, not boies.
He might not be the most trustworthy guy in the world, or not impartial at all, but he's got an opinion, and at least he's making people AWARE of certain things, and more importantly, critically thinking for themselves.
Actually, Netscape 6.0 was based off of M18, which promptly became the 0.6 branch after that. So, no, it wasn't really anywhere near 1.0. It was a marketing-driven release more than anything. Mozilla was clearly not ready at that point.
I didn't think jwz was an exec. He seemed like just another code monkey to me, although I could very well be wrong.
Well, noting the fact that Mozilla Firebird was used for the 0.6 release, some dates might be appropriate. From the roadmap:
Phoenix 0.1-Firebird 0.6 release 9/23/2002-5/16/2003
Firebird 0.6-Firefox 0.8 5/16/2003-2/9/2004
Firefox 0.8-present 2/9/2004-???
So, by actual timeline, Phoenix was used for less than a year, while Firebird was used for nearly a year, and Firefox is indefinite. Firebird did only comprise two releases, it just so happens that those two releases took a damn long time.
The RC *is* major feature complete, but (as evident with the new theme and extension work) is still needing a fair bit of work before release. 0.9 final is expected in July, 1.0 final is expected in September (at which point I'm more than happy to shove it on everybody and anybody :) ) See the Roadmap for details.
In a build I downloaded today, I even noticed that the profile importer now finally gives you the option of which profile to import from (eg IE, Netscape 4, Mozilla 1.x, etc) before actually doing the dirty work. That wasn't present in 0.9rc IIRC.
In other words, I'd wait a little bit longer before pushing 0.9RC on your friends and family. This one's for the testing folks. Of course, anything pre-1.0 is really meant for testing, but this one more so :)
The problem with the market right now is that it's shifting. Standard PDA models are actually falling out of favor, as the current future is really in the convergence market. PDAs and cell phones are increasingly finding themselves in overlapping regions, and consumers are looking to cut down on the number of devices they carry. As it is right now, I personally carry a Palm Vx and my cell phone with me quite often, and it would be amazing if I could only carry one item.
/. reader it sucks. But if you're a soccer mom, it might be just right. The fact that it's priced at $99 and is one of the best selling PDAs of all time probably shows how untapped this market remains to be.
Handspring realized this quite a while ago, and now the fruits of their efforts can be realized in the Treo 600. While not a perfect product, it is probably the best convergence device out there. It runs Palm OS5, but has incredibly strong telephony functions. A lot of people simply love theirs (I'm looking to get one when Verizon certifies it for use on the network, and when my contract expires).
Handspring is now a unit of PalmOne, which does mean that even if the market moves out from under PalmOne, they'll be able to react as necessary. PalmSource also renamed OS5 to Garnet (targeted for less powerhungry cell phones) and OS6 is Cobalt (for the power PDA users).
Symbian enjoys a nice presence with Nokia and S/E phones as well. It might be worth noting with the availability of Palm Garnet and Sony's exit from the PDA space, there remains an unlikely possibility for Sony to continue working with Palm.
The PDA space isn't completely done yet though. Just like any other market, it's probably waiting for its next "killer app." Some other poster mentioned how much the Zire21 sucks. Well yeah, if you're a
Personally, I think PDAs would be able to last a lot longer if Bluetooth was deployed more widely. Think of it: the integration of a PDAphone but the power of having two separate devices. It's quite promising, but the cell phone makers and network providers probably aren't going for it, as it means slightly lower profits. With convergence devices, you have to get them from your provider and instead of buying a $50 phone w/BT you're buying a $200-300 PDAphone with a gimmicky camera and other things. More money for them. Of course there remains the two devices issue, but it would just offer different markets.
Considering the REAL big money in this game is from licensing the engine, I doubt it. I once heard somewhere that a majority of id's revenue comes from licensing the engine, not the actual game itself. Somewhat explains why not everyone is always enthralled with the gameplay, but the Q3A engine is still in use today by a whole lot of games (call of duty, BF1942, RTCW, the list goes on). Heck, HL1's engine can be traced to Quake 1 and Quake 2.
If you like Futurama enough to want to see it come back, then buying the DVD is basically the only way to prove to Fox that it's worth it. It tells them a) you love the show and b) you love the show enough to spend good money on it. That last one is probably the more important bit.
Personally, I think the slightly geekier audience of Futurama vs Family guy didn't help its dvd sales; geeks are probably more willing to search out for Bittorrents/kazaa/emule/gnutella of a show, while the mass market is content with dvds.
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
Not to mention the republicans did the same thing under Clinton. Not exactly angelic behavior on either side.
IIRC TFC was a remake of a mod done for an earlier version of quake, but TF2 is a game on its own. It'll be done on the Valve Source engine, whenever that's released (a whole different discussion altogether). That makes sense, because they're Valve games...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these the same royalties that they snuck past JEDEC?
Seems pretty sneaky for them to try and do something really shady and then sue everyone for it.
Palm OS will do most of what you're asking for. There isn't much in the way of antialiasing, but palm PDAs do have really high resolution nowadays.
.DOCs, though Documents to Go can do that too). Acrobat Reader available, etc etc. No Microsoft reader, for obvious reasons.
If you're looking for bargain bin, I would say Tungsten E would cut it. SD card expansion for fitting more books, MP3s, and even Oggs. Doubles as a great PDA on its own, and $149-199 to boot.
The tungsten T3 is even better, but right now it's a bit pricey. Its main advantage over the E is that it uses a virtual graffiti area, so you can use the entire screen length when extended to read books. Also has a landscape mode in apps that support it. It's pretty expensive right now, but that should start falling once Palmone introduces its new spring models.
Both models are rechargeable, syncs up with Linux and OS X without much difficulty (I'm told, never done it myself).
PalmReader reads its own formats in addition to DOCs (not
Well, since nvidia is a chip manufacturer and never sells directly to consumers, I find it unlikely that you have a line to their tech support.
:)
Also, you might want to take a ride on the cluetrain as of late. Generally accepted consensus within the gaming community is that the Catalyst driversets from ATI are quite excellent nowadays, and the Rage 128/original Radeon days are long gone. Being a Mac user, you would've also missed all the rampant cheating nvidia committed during the Geforce FX series with their drivers
Granted, it seems nvidia's trying to start with a clean slate this round, but your anecdote isn't completely accurate.
But, ATI does provide a method for you to provide feedback. As everyone in OSS already knows, I'm sure, is that (good) bug reports are the very least you can contribute to improving a product :)
I'm even going to be so nice as to provide a link so you don't have to hunt it down (even though it's in the release notes): ATI.com Linux Driver Feedback
If they are to be believed, they read all feedback they get, even if they never respond to any of them. Also be aware that ATI's linux driver team isn't exactly massive, so these things take time.
Remember though, these are cards designed primarily for gamers, and in that case, PS2.0 is only just starting to come to fruition, and PS3.0 in games is still a little ways off before being important. And in any case, PS2.0 and 2.0b (the new profile supporting the X800s) have more than enough visual quality to satisfy any gamer. At the moment PS3.0 is a marketing check list and a feature lying in potential. As far as a gamer should be concerned, PS3.0 just presents supposed speed increases.
It does sound like you'll want PS3.0 for your needs, and in that case, nothing should be stopping you from getting a 6800 to meet your demands (aside from being unavailable at the moment).
Does that technology sound familiar? Oh right, it does!
Obviously, Mozilla's focus is on "cross platform," whereas Microsoft would much rather just focus on the one.Those of you on OS X might be pleased to know that Firefox is available for that platform, and even features a pretty damn good theme that looks native to Aqua (see here http://kmgerich.com/archive/000049.html). What's more, is this same theme is now availble for Thunderbird on OS X (nightlies so far) (http://kmgerich.com/archive/000056.html).
And even though there hasn't been any press about it recently, Camino development has started to pick up again, which actually *is* a native OS X implementation of Gecko. Try a nightly to see where it's been going recently. Look for Camino 0.8 later this summer.
All of these options are great if you're not a fan of brushed metal (I don't prefer it in a browser).
Not directed at the parent, who is probably aware of all this, but some might be inclined to think that Mozilla had left OS X after Safari, which is not so.
Personally, I disagree with Apple on this one, but I can understand their position. If this was typical American copyright law, it would seem to me that PlayFair is nothing more than another method of fair use for the home user, just like burning to CD would be as well.
:)
However, it also seems that when you buy the song from Apple, you are basically agreeing to their contract by giving them your money. So, while you might not be breaking copyright law, you probably still can't do this because you're breaking your contract with Apple (note: I have not read the itunes terms of use). That won't stop me from continuing to use this stuff though
In either case Apple will probably be able to win because it's got a chunk of change to back it up.
I'll be honest, I used to hate Real, but now that they seem to be making a genuine effort of reforming, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It seems that when it came to the worst of Real, I never had to deal with it that much. However, a partnership with RealNetworks just doesn't make much sense from Apple's standpoint.
:)
Apple currently has the #1 slot, in both mp3 hardware and music store terms, not to mention mindshare. This is going very well for them. Kudos
Real, on the other hand, has more of a mishmash of options. They have their music store in RP10, but it's not promoted very well, and most people probably won't think of it when buying music online anyway. They do offer their subscription service, Rhapsody (which IMO is much better than napster premium), and last I heard was doing quite well for itself, but it's also in a different market from ITMS (subscription vs. individual files). I would not be surprised if rhapsody was the #2 service.
But this "deal" doesn't concern rhapsody. It concerns their music stores, where Apple doesn't have much impetus for sharing right now. Technically, it shouldn't be too hard, as RP10's music service is just 192kbps AAC with a Helix DRM wrapper instead of FairPlay. But, what incentive is there for Apple to join with Real? Quicktime's approach to streaming is quite different from that of Real's, so that isn't it. There's no access to a vast new user base, those users probably already heard of, know of, and installed itunes anyway. In fact, the only incentive for Apple I can see is just another way for users to buy songs from Apple (using RP10 instead of iTunes) and another marketing push for the ipod to those same users.
What does Real get out of it? They get the huge advantage of saying "tapped into the #1 music store" and the potential to access a huge new user base just by saying "try our service, compatible with ipod!"
I wish RealNetworks the best of luck in their effort to improve their product and adding more value. RP10 is already a good first step (developing a good positive trend and keeping it up will help). For them, it certainly couldn't hurt to ask (though they should've dropped the accusatory tone). But for Apple, this deal just isn't balanced for it to be worth it.