I don't think this is a clear cut case. The Apple store in Paris (if there is one, dunno) has different prices to the one in Oxford Street, London.
I can go to Paris, buy it for their price and take it here.
What they could NOT do is say: "but you are from London, so we will charge the London price".
It will be interesting to see how this works with electronic delivery.
Currently, I presume there is a single data center, with just different store fronts for different countries, which can easily be deemed illegal. (after a very, very long legal battle)
But I don't think that the rules can do anything about having a french store, in france, with french prices for the french and a UK one, in the UK, for UK customers only with UK prices.
If that were the case, then all bricks and mortar stores operating internationaly should carry the same prices for the same products everywhere and manufacturers/importers should sell to local shops for the same prices as everywhere else, which clearly, they don't.
If the EU rules against Apple on this one, there is a big chance Apple will then simply put data centres in each different country and make sure the French buy from their French site and the English from the English site.
Yeah, but they'd have less to complain about. Apple is the only company that regularly pisses their customers off like this and still has a cult following.
And what about all those people that "should have waited", that could have meant nobody buying any hardware the past 3 months, giving them one heck of a Q1-05.
Now these people will buy their hardware for the same price in Q2 and get Tiger for free! Apple would probably have made more, or the same amount, of money and pissed of far fewer folks by having a 50% version for customers who bought new hardware in, say, the past 6 months.
Erhm, I think you misread. If you bought it BEFORE April 12th, like these folks did, you don't get it for $10 but you pay full price. Only those buying between today and the release date get Tiger for 10 bucks.
The only reason (especialy listed) companies like this is for cashflow and not having it on the books.
In one year you can choose to spend, say, 1M on IT. Or you can spend 250K leasing it every year. That leaves 750K looking good on the books and can be used to invest in other money making opportunities.
The BBC is funded by "taxes", not advertisement. I put taxes in quotes because it is payable serperately from your other taxes.
The reason this is done is to make sure the BBC is independent. The goverment can't simply decide to cut funding, when they do not broadcast favorable propaganda.
The TV license is actualy quite inexpensive for most people; if they increased income tax by that much, nobody would notice. But it is only controversial because, without it you are breaking the law, just like you would be not paying any other taxes.
In return for that, we get uninterupted TV shows and probably the best, most honest and objective news reporting in the world and inspiring other broadcaster to do the same.
Americans tend to trust Fox, CNN or the networks instead. Would I swap places to save GBP120 a year? Hell no!
Too right, people always think they need the latest and greatest, especialy because it's a "server". Little do they know that for this kind of use (ie: file/print, even small database) for home/workgroup use you won't be able to tell the difference between, say, an old AMD K6-400 and 3Ghz Athlon 64.
How do you mean that it is hard to administer? Install, run, done. Scaling up to large databases is easy too. Granted, the default parameters are a bit conservative, but they are easy to change.
The comunity is large too and there are many books on the subject.
And as for tools, pgAdmin is all I need, and runs on various Unixes and Windows. Probably OS X as well.
If people don't care, then why should they use MySQL and not Postgres? By the time they start to care, they might apreciate, say, online backups without having to pay for 3rd party tools...
Well, I would like "my" box to do it bit more than just being NAS!:)
Like the server actualy keeping track of audio/video files (ie: acting as the iTunes library) being the brains behind the "iVision" and several other things.
I think you are forgetting about economies of scale here!
The "older pc" solution (like I have) is far from "the best" simply because my mom couldn't get it to work.
I think 3 or 4 5400 RPM drives (you really do not need more, video is 8mbit at most) and a, say, 300Mhz G3 CPU can be passively cooled if the case is designed well; at worst it would need 1 big, slow (no noise!) fan.
I can just imagine it, another small fanless box with 250GB to 1TB in disks and just enough CPU power to serve it up to the network and play internet gateway, maybe even run some print queues.
This time not only no monitor, but not even a video out; Rendezous makes it easily available to all computers in the house.
Add "iVision", a dumb MPEG4 playback box for next to your television (plays just audio too!), the HDTV downloads predicted by Robert X. Cringely and you have the home multimedia promise delivered.
While I don't care much about the reasons, just the fact, I would like to point out that the A320 and "400" versions of the 737 and 747 came out at the same time as the forward-thinking Airbus and the 777 came much later. This means Boeing could have at least standardized cockpits 17 years ago!
By now, few of the major airlines still have 400 versions in operations.
Hehe, at least you understood the tongue-in-cheek nature of my comment. The wink at the end should have been a dead givaway to anyone, but you should see some of the replies I got from others!:)
You'll be pleased to know the/. community is very protective of your girlfriend!
I am sorry, but I don't buy that. Give any company a monopoly and see what happens.
Apple says they don't run it for profit because, right now, they know they can't. But by the time they can, they will. You do the math:
An album on iTunes costs GBP8.99 and the same CD costs 8.99 at cd-wow.com. That physical CD costs a pound or so to make. Add another 50 pence to ship it.
You can't tell me that by the time economies of scale catch up with iTMS, that expensive work of adding the back catalog is done and only new releases are added that the cost of running the servers and bandwidth add up to 1.50 per download? It will be a fraction of that and the money starts rolling in.
Will do-good Apple then drop it's prices just to not make money anymore, like they said they wouldn't? Are you kidding, the share holders would lynch Steve Jobs at the next meeting!
What else is there to organizing than fixing artists, titles and genres?
Let's fix an album title, shall we?
iTunes: Click (optional) artist, click album, click one song, click edit, click select all, right click "get info", type name, OK.
MediaSource: Click (optional) artist, click album, right click select all, right click "edit album", type name, OK.
Thats 3 steps more for iTunes!
I'll give you the song ratings, that's very good and Creative just doesn't have it. Shame on them.
But don't give me any BS how iTunes is so much more intuitive in doing these things as they are virtualy the same. Heck, in some cases MediaSource IS more intuitive and faster.
Maybe it's just that iTunes looks prettier and, like in life, you spend more time on trying to get prettier people to do what you want them to and the same goes for software: "This doesn't LOOK good enough so I won't want to spend time with it." Who knows...
There is about zero difference in the interface on the player! Creative adds the "main menu" button, so you don't have to click "back" a couple of times and has seperate controls for the volume. For me, those are both plusses.
How do you mean ripping in MediaSource a hassle? Insert CD, hit "Rip Now". The hassle for your sister isn't in the software, it's in the fact that she doesn't spend days playing solitaire on her computer so she can do it in the background. It becomes a primary task that takes a lot of time, that is her hassle, not having iTunes has nothing to do with it.
I'd love to see you sync your entire 30GB collection onto your iPod mini!:)
Creative can do a 1:1 sync as well, it's what I use for my 30GB Zen NX.
You don't have to convince me that the iPod and iTunes are very good products, they are. They are not as infinitely superior to anything else as many like to believe.
Too bad they don't have price going for them anymore; when I bought my Zen NX, it was a cool 1/3 (or GBP100) cheaper than the iPod and had several - for me - more attractive features, so the choice was easy. Now, however, the price is about the same and Creative has dropped the fantastic Smart Volume feature. (auto gain, compressor, limitter; absolutely fantastic for noisy enviroments and varied playlists) So it would be a very close call for me now.
Problem is that boeing is introducing yet another completely new aircraft with very different maintainance requirements, operational differences and a new cockpit design.
This is OK if this is the first of a breed, but I doubt it is.
Ever since the Airbus 320, their range of aircraft have had many similarities which further reduce operational cost.
Flying a fleet of 737s, 777s and 747s is like having a company full Sun, x86 and Mac servers.
Flying A319/321/321s, 340s and 380s is like running the same system everywhere.
Airbus didn't bet the company on the A380, they bet it many years ago on the A320.
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I don't think this is a clear cut case. The Apple store in Paris (if there is one, dunno) has different prices to the one in Oxford Street, London.
I can go to Paris, buy it for their price and take it here.
What they could NOT do is say: "but you are from London, so we will charge the London price".
It will be interesting to see how this works with electronic delivery.
Currently, I presume there is a single data center, with just different store fronts for different countries, which can easily be deemed illegal. (after a very, very long legal battle)
But I don't think that the rules can do anything about having a french store, in france, with french prices for the french and a UK one, in the UK, for UK customers only with UK prices.
If that were the case, then all bricks and mortar stores operating internationaly should carry the same prices for the same products everywhere and manufacturers/importers should sell to local shops for the same prices as everywhere else, which clearly, they don't.
If the EU rules against Apple on this one, there is a big chance Apple will then simply put data centres in each different country and make sure the French buy from their French site and the English from the English site.
It was exactly like the 1991 gulf war, right up to the point where they didn't pack up and go home after they won!
Yeah, but they'd have less to complain about. Apple is the only company that regularly pisses their customers off like this and still has a cult following.
And what about all those people that "should have waited", that could have meant nobody buying any hardware the past 3 months, giving them one heck of a Q1-05.
Now these people will buy their hardware for the same price in Q2 and get Tiger for free! Apple would probably have made more, or the same amount, of money and pissed of far fewer folks by having a 50% version for customers who bought new hardware in, say, the past 6 months.
Erhm, I think you misread. If you bought it BEFORE April 12th, like these folks did, you don't get it for $10 but you pay full price. Only those buying between today and the release date get Tiger for 10 bucks.
How generous of Apple...
The only reason (especialy listed) companies like this is for cashflow and not having it on the books.
In one year you can choose to spend, say, 1M on IT. Or you can spend 250K leasing it every year. That leaves 750K looking good on the books and can be used to invest in other money making opportunities.
With one in about 50 flights blowing up, being "one of the few" would pretty much be a death warrant.
My guess is NASA knew the odds very well and that is why they have so many trained to fly it.
I'd fly it once if I knew the odds. Would I fly it 6 times a year? Hell no!
...other than the quality of content? It's no good being free if it's no good...
The BBC is funded by "taxes", not advertisement. I put taxes in quotes because it is payable serperately from your other taxes.
The reason this is done is to make sure the BBC is independent. The goverment can't simply decide to cut funding, when they do not broadcast favorable propaganda.
The TV license is actualy quite inexpensive for most people; if they increased income tax by that much, nobody would notice. But it is only controversial because, without it you are breaking the law, just like you would be not paying any other taxes.
In return for that, we get uninterupted TV shows and probably the best, most honest and objective news reporting in the world and inspiring other broadcaster to do the same.
Americans tend to trust Fox, CNN or the networks instead. Would I swap places to save GBP120 a year? Hell no!
Too right, people always think they need the latest and greatest, especialy because it's a "server". Little do they know that for this kind of use (ie: file/print, even small database) for home/workgroup use you won't be able to tell the difference between, say, an old AMD K6-400 and 3Ghz Athlon 64.
:)
Poor sods...
How do you mean that it is hard to administer? Install, run, done. Scaling up to large databases is easy too. Granted, the default parameters are a bit conservative, but they are easy to change.
The comunity is large too and there are many books on the subject.
And as for tools, pgAdmin is all I need, and runs on various Unixes and Windows. Probably OS X as well.
If people don't care, then why should they use MySQL and not Postgres? By the time they start to care, they might apreciate, say, online backups without having to pay for 3rd party tools...
Well, I would like "my" box to do it bit more than just being NAS! :)
Like the server actualy keeping track of audio/video files (ie: acting as the iTunes library) being the brains behind the "iVision" and several other things.
Why GB ethernet? Video runs slow, 8Mbit or less. Even broadcast HDTV is 11 or something close to that.
Don't waste money on things you do not need!
I think you are forgetting about economies of scale here!
The "older pc" solution (like I have) is far from "the best" simply because my mom couldn't get it to work.
I think 3 or 4 5400 RPM drives (you really do not need more, video is 8mbit at most) and a, say, 300Mhz G3 CPU can be passively cooled if the case is designed well; at worst it would need 1 big, slow (no noise!) fan.
Who'd use MySQL at all when there is a _really_ free alternative (BSD license) called Postgresql.
Now that it runs natively on Windows too, there is no reason to use MySQL anywhere anymore.
MySQL, you are the weakest referential integrity constraint, goodbye.
I can just imagine it, another small fanless box with 250GB to 1TB in disks and just enough CPU power to serve it up to the network and play internet gateway, maybe even run some print queues.
This time not only no monitor, but not even a video out; Rendezous makes it easily available to all computers in the house.
Add "iVision", a dumb MPEG4 playback box for next to your television (plays just audio too!), the HDTV downloads predicted by Robert X. Cringely and you have the home multimedia promise delivered.
While I don't care much about the reasons, just the fact, I would like to point out that the A320 and "400" versions of the 737 and 747 came out at the same time as the forward-thinking Airbus and the 777 came much later. This means Boeing could have at least standardized cockpits 17 years ago!
By now, few of the major airlines still have 400 versions in operations.
Hehe, at least you understood the tongue-in-cheek nature of my comment. The wink at the end should have been a dead givaway to anyone, but you should see some of the replies I got from others! :)
/. community is very protective of your girlfriend!
You'll be pleased to know the
Haha, did you read the reply made to my post by the original poster? At least he understood this was a tongue-in-cheek comment.
I am sorry, but who is the poor, dumb bastard here?
Eh? Did you read my posts? I LIKE the iPod and iTunes!
All I am saying is that the competition isn't quite as bad as many iPod worshippers like to believe.
I am sorry, but I don't buy that. Give any company a monopoly and see what happens.
Apple says they don't run it for profit because, right now, they know they can't. But by the time they can, they will. You do the math:
An album on iTunes costs GBP8.99 and the same CD costs 8.99 at cd-wow.com. That physical CD costs a pound or so to make. Add another 50 pence to ship it.
You can't tell me that by the time economies of scale catch up with iTMS, that expensive work of adding the back catalog is done and only new releases are added that the cost of running the servers and bandwidth add up to 1.50 per download? It will be a fraction of that and the money starts rolling in.
Will do-good Apple then drop it's prices just to not make money anymore, like they said they wouldn't? Are you kidding, the share holders would lynch Steve Jobs at the next meeting!
What else is there to organizing than fixing artists, titles and genres?
Let's fix an album title, shall we?
iTunes: Click (optional) artist, click album, click one song, click edit, click select all, right click "get info", type name, OK.
MediaSource: Click (optional) artist, click album, right click select all, right click "edit album", type name, OK.
Thats 3 steps more for iTunes!
I'll give you the song ratings, that's very good and Creative just doesn't have it. Shame on them.
But don't give me any BS how iTunes is so much more intuitive in doing these things as they are virtualy the same. Heck, in some cases MediaSource IS more intuitive and faster.
Maybe it's just that iTunes looks prettier and, like in life, you spend more time on trying to get prettier people to do what you want them to and the same goes for software: "This doesn't LOOK good enough so I won't want to spend time with it." Who knows...
There is about zero difference in the interface on the player! Creative adds the "main menu" button, so you don't have to click "back" a couple of times and has seperate controls for the volume. For me, those are both plusses.
How do you mean ripping in MediaSource a hassle? Insert CD, hit "Rip Now". The hassle for your sister isn't in the software, it's in the fact that she doesn't spend days playing solitaire on her computer so she can do it in the background. It becomes a primary task that takes a lot of time, that is her hassle, not having iTunes has nothing to do with it.
I'd love to see you sync your entire 30GB collection onto your iPod mini! :)
Creative can do a 1:1 sync as well, it's what I use for my 30GB Zen NX.
You don't have to convince me that the iPod and iTunes are very good products, they are. They are not as infinitely superior to anything else as many like to believe.
Too bad they don't have price going for them anymore; when I bought my Zen NX, it was a cool 1/3 (or GBP100) cheaper than the iPod and had several - for me - more attractive features, so the choice was easy. Now, however, the price is about the same and Creative has dropped the fantastic Smart Volume feature. (auto gain, compressor, limitter; absolutely fantastic for noisy enviroments and varied playlists) So it would be a very close call for me now.
Problem is that boeing is introducing yet another completely new aircraft with very different maintainance requirements, operational differences and a new cockpit design.
This is OK if this is the first of a breed, but I doubt it is.
Ever since the Airbus 320, their range of aircraft have had many similarities which further reduce operational cost.
Flying a fleet of 737s, 777s and 747s is like having a company full Sun, x86 and Mac servers.
Flying A319/321/321s, 340s and 380s is like running the same system everywhere.
Airbus didn't bet the company on the A380, they bet it many years ago on the A320.