Sensory features include a vision color system that enables Robosapien V2 to recognize objects and skin tones; he can wave when he sees you and reach out to shake your hand.
Yeah, but only if you are naked.
And then watch out for recognition error. (That's NOT a hand!)
1)It's a study of only 115 cases of falling cats.
2)Both cats that fall and die immediately and cats the fall and do not appear hurt are never brought into the cats. (bias toward higher heights, most likely)
3)The relevant statistic regard dead cats is based on a whopping sample of 11 cats! (Obviously, they need to drop more cats off balconies to validate their results. Get a grant!)
For the first 25 years of my life, I had horrible insomnia. I can vividly remember numerous nights watching the numbers change on my alarm clock from maybe 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. Eventually, I would get about an hour of sleep, but it was really, really horrible.
But the odd thing is that then I took a new job overseas and in a totally new environment. For the first time in my life, I went to sleep within a half hour of going to bed and woke up every morning feeling relatively refreshed.
When I came back State-side, however, I started having insomnia again. This started to make me think that I just slept better when I was overseas.
But after a while I figured out that my insomnia was really about not being very happy about my life and being in a state of perpetual stress. Being overseas was somehow more exciting and less real, so I was coping better.
Since then, however, I've taken control of my environment a bit more. I've found jobs that I like and also cut myself some more slack. Combined with regular exercise, I sleep much better now and much happier with life in general.
So, perhaps there is hope. For me, the mental switch of "feeling empowered" in life made all the difference. But ironically, all the changes actually had to happen more in my head than it did in the outside world. And that's a hard thing to figure out how to do. Good luck!
On a idealogical level, I probably feel the same way as you do.
However, having bought several tunes from ITMS just to satisfy the need to hear "that" song, I can tell you that I have never once hit that wall where the DRM stops me from doing something I want to do.
For actual users, as opposed to the ideologues, DRM often just fades away as something irrelevant.
Maybe I have finally achieved middle-class, apathetic bourgeoise-hood, but I am more upset to pay $2.50 for a very unfancy cup of black coffee -- even though I have no ideological objections to marketing pricing.
The whole duplication thing is kludge, which is why I don't like it. I use folders as a means of filtering information -- it is a cognitive lense. But duplicating a message is more of a physical act than a cognitive concept.
Moreover, it just doesn't make sense to have duplicate information. What happens when I want to delete a message that has been cloned into several folders? Or maybe add or delete something from it? That's why the virtual folder idea is useful. I love having folders that say "Today's Mail", "Yesterday's Mail," and "This Week's Mail."
When I switched my primary machine from XP to OSX, I loved OSX, except for not having a suitable email client. Exceptfor security problems, I loved using Outlook with the Nelson Email Organizer (NEO). NEO added virtual folders and really changed the way I worked. I could file things under "To Do" and also under "Project1", etc. Of course, the security problems with Outlook were impossible to ignore.
Right now, I'm running Evolution at work on a Dell laptop, but it still seems pretty buggy and unpolished. Whenever I get around to getting X working on my Mac, though, I'll probably switch from Entourage. (The MailApp lacks calendaring and Entourage implements it poorly.)
The other thing that I want to point out here is that this is where the Apple business model has the opportunity to shine:
By controlling both the hardware and the operating system, Apple is better positioned to create a "lifestyle product." No one really talks about the performance characteristics of watches anymore. Paying more than $20 for a watch these days rarely ever buys you more functionality. But it does buy you some intangible associations and affiliations. (It's shallow, perhaps, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter or we won't pay for it.)
As computing power becomes both more commoditized and more ubiqitous, buying technology brands will be less a guarantee of performance or quality, and more an act of self identity and association.
Hmmmn. I don't know if you are trying to sarcastic, but I don't know anyone that is not unfamiliar with a limited budget or "working eyes."
I won't argue that some people will buy a Mac because they find them more functional. But what I am saying is that Apple is changing the way people purchase computers. Probably 99% of the computer market right now purchases on performance perceptions. But people are gradually beginning to see their computer purchases as "lifestyle purchases"--things that define them as a person
For the slashdot crowd, buying linux/UNIX/MIPS/whatever already is a lifestyle purchase, perhaps. But for most people, it is not. This is what I meant by saying that the slashdot crowd is different.
You can't walk into a bar and say, "My box runs Linux," and expect to get a date. But you can slap down your keys to a BMW, pick up your beer with a Rolex on your arm or JUST MAYBE mention you just bought an ipod to use with your i-mac and start a conversation. This is a major change in the marketing of computer equipment!
Hasn't anyone else noticed that girls like Macs? I have a Dell laptop running linux and Powerbook running OSX. Guess which one I take to the coffeeshop? Guess which one starts more conversations? And none of these people probably know much about operating systems.
When girls start talking to me because of my laptop --this is when I know that BRAND MATTERS.
I don't quite understand the author's conclusion that Novell offers the best protection.
Novell offers legal protection, but Red Hat is basically offering the ability to carry on operations without worrying about the lawsuit. I understand that legal liability is important, but the real threat is not having a solution that you are legally able to use. To me, this reduces the real uncertainty in the situation. Novell's users might not have to worry about the legal fees, but what do they do with their business until they find a new OS solution?
Re:Macintosh needs to go back to the future.
on
Apple Delays New iMac
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The slashdot crowd is a bit too geeky for Apple's target audience.
The bulk of Apple's customers are not buying utility with a Mac. They are defining themselves through choosing the Apple brand: "I'm cool because my computer is made of brushed aluminum."
Apple has done a great job of making technology become a personal differentiator for MAINSTREAM markets.
It is more likely a problem engineering/production.
Two issues here: 1) Clearing the retail channels of old inventory, and 2) Start the clock ticking on the consumer decision making process (e.g. there is a lag between when a consumer becomes aware of a product and when he/she is ready to make the purchase).
To clear the sales channels, you wouldn't really want to announce a new product because people will just decide to wait for the new product. Possibly, announcing the delay will get some consumers frustrated enough to buy an old model, but according to the article, it was an internal schedule, not a public schedule, that is running behind.
To start the clock on the decision process, you need to actually hype the new product and get people excited about buying it. In this case, they don't reveal anything about the new product, so it is hard to think about buying something you don't know. (But maybe Apple users are just crazy that way....)
The irony is, if this is an announcement of a misstep, the announcement itself is further hurting Apple's business. Apple's got great marketing and product design, but its business processes really need some work.
I wouldn't think so.
The intruder would just keep the jello in his pocket until he was ready to foil the scanner.
Moreover, 98.6 is mean body temperature. Not only does it range from person to person, but from body part to body part.
The problem with all these systems is that they still relies on a static digitization of something that can be attacked at another level. It is not hard to spoof the hardware.
Was it on slashdot that I was reading about security cameras that analyzed a person's gait? I think would be harder to fool. (Just don't show up drunk.)
What if your body can only process so much food into energy and your body's unchecked muscle growth starts competing with, for example, brain development?
While I wouldn't deny the existence of a DOWNSIDE to this kind of muscle growth, readers are probably overestimating the UPSIDE.
Think about it, the major human evolutionary advantage was the brain, not the brawn. Being stronger can lead to incremental advantages, but more intelligence was "evolutionary" because it was more unique.
Little known fact:
The average slashdotter's brain burns energy at 30%+ their basal metabolic rate. Hence, the need for Mountain Dew and Cheeto supplements....
Microsoft Starts its "Get The Facts" Campaign
So I sat with about 150 other "technical decision makers" in a very plush hotel in Holborn while representatives from Microsoft tried their best to convince me that I should not be considering moving to Linux. To run the discussion Microsoft had employed a fake-tan horror who had clearly escaped from daytime TV. He was by turns chummy and condescending. However being a reasonable man I will not hold Microsoft responsible for his failings.
First up was Phillip Dawson who leads Linux research for analysts Meta Group. He quoted heavily from a Meta analysis which shows that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for linux and windows is comparable. This study has been widely reported in IT press but I can't for the life of me find a link to the original. He made some interesting points about where the datacentre is going to be in a few years. His basic thrust was that everyone is moving from proprietary Unix with its expensive platforms to Windows or Linux on x86 platforms and that it this hardware move, rather than linux versus windows, that will drive all the cost savings. Dawson believes that in a few years the only place we will see proprietary Unix is in very large enterprise databases.
After a promising start, Dawson then got into the territory of why Windows makes more sense for enterprises than Linux. He introduced what was to become a running theme for seminar, Linux is not free. It turns out that the TCO statements made earlier were based on the licensing costs of SuSE professional and Red Hat Enterprise versus Windows. They had refused to consider that people might run a business on something that they could download free from the Internet. Later in the Q and A session Dawson got quite aggravated when people pointed out to him that many Linux-based businesses run quite happily on free linux (this was shouted by the scruffy-looking Debian hackers in the back). I can only assume that businesses that are brave enough to save thousands of pounds per unit by moving away from expensive hardware platforms are meant not to care that they can save another couple of hundred pounds on Microsoft licence fees. Later in the presentation he said "Don't compare to the free downloads. They are not free". Precisely what he meant by this escapes me.
One area the Meta study didn't look at was Linux on the desktop. Phil claimed that linux was not ready for the desktop because it lacked administrative tools. He was carrying on in a similar vein when he said "Management tools on Linux are nearly as good as a DOS prompt".
Nick Barley, business and Marketing Director for Microsoft UK took to the stage to baffle us with market-speak. There was lots of talk about strategy and leveraging which I didn't follow. He talked a bit about Microsoft's shared-source program and tried his hardest to make it sound like open-source, mainly by refusing to say Open-source and talking about shared-source instead. Continuing in Phillip Dawson's footsteps he repeated the mantra "Linux is not free" several times. Although he was at his best when talking about business models amongst Linux distributors claiming that "Linux is moving to the same model that Microsoft has been using".
My absolute favourite part of the talk was when Barley started to extol the virtues of Windows because everything in it was made by one manufacturer. A fair point which would have been well taken had he not gone on to draw an idiotic analogy. He asked us to imagine an aeroplane where different components were made by different companies. Apparently he's never heard of Airbus.
Next up was Nick McGrath head of platform strategy for Microsoft UK. The main bulk of his talk was taken up by a demonstration of a document sharing system based on Microsoft Sharepoint. Very boring for those of us running heterogeneous systems that Sharepoint will not run on. McGrath was much more technically clued up than Barley, and seemed to be aware that the audience was not entirely on his side. He made mention of the Forrester report that claimed more vulnera
If D&M are going to continue the Replay line, they would be crazy not honor Rio's lifetime subscriptions. Subscribers are assets.
Not only do you get a chance to upgrade them to next model, the eyeballs themselves must have some value. Marketing departments are constantly trying to develop channels like these subscriptions, and they are willing to pay for them.
It costs big $$$ to develop the guide data, but costs very little to distribute it more widely to these lifetime subscribers. By not honoring the agreement, it will cost them a lot in goodwill.
Of course, I can see them maybe offering lifetime subscribers a year or two of free service and then maybe making them pay, too. But it seems like there is an advantage of not making these people feel cheated. Cheated customers never return and they complain a lot (LOUDLY!).
The data on the page is messed up and the article it refers to sucks/is erroneous/whatever.
And the URL does say "PCpreferred.html" in it.
BUT just for kicks, I looked at the referring page "http://www.adobe.com/motion/", which uses this set up for the link:
"Prefer a PC for DV?"
See what an industry expert has to say about PC vs. Mac for digital video editing.
So, you're all reading a bit too much into this. It was a question, not a statement. And it never says anything about announcing an official Adobe position. That's what press releases are for....
I wonder if this is the new, technology-enhance democracy. Where the free flow of information and ideas occurs as grafitti on hacked sites....
Do hackers even vote?
I am not sure that I would buy one now at current prices, but I bought a 20 hour Tivo last summer on clearance at Target for $130. I then spent $120 on a 60 gig harddrive (cheaper now)and just upgraded last spring to the lifetime subscription for $200.
Unfortunately, however, last week my Tivo got sick and doesn't work. I am pretty sure the hard drive bit it, and the folks at Western Digital have a replacement in the mail for me as we speak.
But I tell you, the last week and a half of Tivo-less television is driving me crazy. I keep trying to pause live tv, fast forward through commercials, etc. And I can't believe how much junk I have gotten used to filtering out.
I bought Tivo because I thought it would help me make better use of my time. In reality, however, I realize that I watch more television because Tivo gives me more choices of what/how I want to watch.
Without Tivo, television just doesn't hold my attention any more. I realize now more than ever how much normal television is a waste of my time.
Granted, I am using "liberal arts" as a term that includes the social sciences. But the term shrinks to an un-useful scope when you start dissecting it. Political science can be very scientific, as can philosophy, linguistics and other fields included in "liberal arts."
As for my Comcast remarks, I canceled because the price that I will bear for high speed internet is about $40-$50 a month, which is lower than what they want to provide services for. Fine.
But I admit that I am punishing them for what I feel is a coercive marketing tactic. Or rather, I am voting my displeasure at being squeezed. First, they are taking advantage of a monopoly on cable services in my area. Second, cable television and cable modem service were offered separately at first and both operate with very comfortable profit margins. Now, they say that if you don't sign up for both, we are going to increase our profit margin on one to 80 percent? How abused I feel by the company directly ties in to how satisfied I am with the product.
I'm not sure. Academic circles tend to be more liberal than the general populace. I imagine that this also plays out at higher degree levels because they have spent more time around universities.
But Ayn Rand objectivism still seems to have a pretty big audience among a lot of the dot.com uber capitalists.
Then again, maybe it is an outgrowth of competitive Type-A personalities that they think competition is always beneficial. I am a bit sick of hearing evolution/natural selection analogies in business and economics.
It really depends on at what level you are trying maximize at. And a lot of the so-called Asian Tiger economies (although suffering through a downturn) have shown that coordinated industry does work better than open competition in some circumstances.
It is funny how many engineers and scientists tend to be libertarian, free-market types. There is this tendency to have supreme faith in the existence of "natural laws."
But economics, psychologists and other liberal arts types realize that human beings defy "nature" all the time. People who study economics essentially study the cases where economics don't work! Psychologists study why people are not rational/utility maximizers.
As far as the broadband/telecom connection goes, did anyone else read this article in Business Week?
It talks about how broadband providers are keeping prices artificially high because they would rather deal with slower adoption rates at higher margins than faster adoption at lower margins because THEY KNOW EVERYONE WILL ADOPT BROADBAND EVENTUALLY and they can force us to pay more. Cable broadband profit margins are about 50 percent now.
Makes you realize how much companies like Comcast can prevent high-speed adoption and screw over the telecoms in the process.
(I canceled my Comcast modem and television service last week. Originally, I just wanted to get rid of the television service, but they told me that if I did, they were going to jack up my cable modem price by $15. I told them to cancel everything.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but only if you are naked.
And then watch out for recognition error. (That's NOT a hand!)
1)It's a study of only 115 cases of falling cats. 2)Both cats that fall and die immediately and cats the fall and do not appear hurt are never brought into the cats. (bias toward higher heights, most likely)
3)The relevant statistic regard dead cats is based on a whopping sample of 11 cats! (Obviously, they need to drop more cats off balconies to validate their results. Get a grant!)
But the odd thing is that then I took a new job overseas and in a totally new environment. For the first time in my life, I went to sleep within a half hour of going to bed and woke up every morning feeling relatively refreshed.
When I came back State-side, however, I started having insomnia again. This started to make me think that I just slept better when I was overseas.
But after a while I figured out that my insomnia was really about not being very happy about my life and being in a state of perpetual stress. Being overseas was somehow more exciting and less real, so I was coping better.
Since then, however, I've taken control of my environment a bit more. I've found jobs that I like and also cut myself some more slack. Combined with regular exercise, I sleep much better now and much happier with life in general.
So, perhaps there is hope. For me, the mental switch of "feeling empowered" in life made all the difference. But ironically, all the changes actually had to happen more in my head than it did in the outside world. And that's a hard thing to figure out how to do. Good luck!
It's a 2x2 matrix decision making model, so you can take 1) No red pill/no blue pill, 2) Red pill only, 3)Blue pill only, or 4) Red and blue pill.
However, having bought several tunes from ITMS just to satisfy the need to hear "that" song, I can tell you that I have never once hit that wall where the DRM stops me from doing something I want to do.
For actual users, as opposed to the ideologues, DRM often just fades away as something irrelevant.
Maybe I have finally achieved middle-class, apathetic bourgeoise-hood, but I am more upset to pay $2.50 for a very unfancy cup of black coffee -- even though I have no ideological objections to marketing pricing.
Moreover, it just doesn't make sense to have duplicate information. What happens when I want to delete a message that has been cloned into several folders? Or maybe add or delete something from it? That's why the virtual folder idea is useful. I love having folders that say "Today's Mail", "Yesterday's Mail," and "This Week's Mail."
When I switched my primary machine from XP to OSX, I loved OSX, except for not having a suitable email client. Exceptfor security problems, I loved using Outlook with the Nelson Email Organizer (NEO). NEO added virtual folders and really changed the way I worked. I could file things under "To Do" and also under "Project1", etc. Of course, the security problems with Outlook were impossible to ignore.
Right now, I'm running Evolution at work on a Dell laptop, but it still seems pretty buggy and unpolished. Whenever I get around to getting X working on my Mac, though, I'll probably switch from Entourage. (The MailApp lacks calendaring and Entourage implements it poorly.)
By controlling both the hardware and the operating system, Apple is better positioned to create a "lifestyle product." No one really talks about the performance characteristics of watches anymore. Paying more than $20 for a watch these days rarely ever buys you more functionality. But it does buy you some intangible associations and affiliations. (It's shallow, perhaps, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter or we won't pay for it.)
As computing power becomes both more commoditized and more ubiqitous, buying technology brands will be less a guarantee of performance or quality, and more an act of self identity and association.
I won't argue that some people will buy a Mac because they find them more functional. But what I am saying is that Apple is changing the way people purchase computers. Probably 99% of the computer market right now purchases on performance perceptions. But people are gradually beginning to see their computer purchases as "lifestyle purchases"--things that define them as a person
For the slashdot crowd, buying linux/UNIX/MIPS/whatever already is a lifestyle purchase, perhaps. But for most people, it is not. This is what I meant by saying that the slashdot crowd is different.
You can't walk into a bar and say, "My box runs Linux," and expect to get a date. But you can slap down your keys to a BMW, pick up your beer with a Rolex on your arm or JUST MAYBE mention you just bought an ipod to use with your i-mac and start a conversation. This is a major change in the marketing of computer equipment!
Hasn't anyone else noticed that girls like Macs? I have a Dell laptop running linux and Powerbook running OSX. Guess which one I take to the coffeeshop? Guess which one starts more conversations? And none of these people probably know much about operating systems.
When girls start talking to me because of my laptop --this is when I know that BRAND MATTERS.
Novell offers legal protection, but Red Hat is basically offering the ability to carry on operations without worrying about the lawsuit. I understand that legal liability is important, but the real threat is not having a solution that you are legally able to use. To me, this reduces the real uncertainty in the situation. Novell's users might not have to worry about the legal fees, but what do they do with their business until they find a new OS solution?
The bulk of Apple's customers are not buying utility with a Mac. They are defining themselves through choosing the Apple brand: "I'm cool because my computer is made of brushed aluminum."
Apple has done a great job of making technology become a personal differentiator for MAINSTREAM markets.
Two issues here: 1) Clearing the retail channels of old inventory, and 2) Start the clock ticking on the consumer decision making process (e.g. there is a lag between when a consumer becomes aware of a product and when he/she is ready to make the purchase).
To clear the sales channels, you wouldn't really want to announce a new product because people will just decide to wait for the new product. Possibly, announcing the delay will get some consumers frustrated enough to buy an old model, but according to the article, it was an internal schedule, not a public schedule, that is running behind.
To start the clock on the decision process, you need to actually hype the new product and get people excited about buying it. In this case, they don't reveal anything about the new product, so it is hard to think about buying something you don't know. (But maybe Apple users are just crazy that way....)
The irony is, if this is an announcement of a misstep, the announcement itself is further hurting Apple's business. Apple's got great marketing and product design, but its business processes really need some work.
Zdnet
I wouldn't think so. The intruder would just keep the jello in his pocket until he was ready to foil the scanner. Moreover, 98.6 is mean body temperature. Not only does it range from person to person, but from body part to body part. The problem with all these systems is that they still relies on a static digitization of something that can be attacked at another level. It is not hard to spoof the hardware. Was it on slashdot that I was reading about security cameras that analyzed a person's gait? I think would be harder to fool. (Just don't show up drunk.)
What if your body can only process so much food into energy and your body's unchecked muscle growth starts competing with, for example, brain development?
While I wouldn't deny the existence of a DOWNSIDE to this kind of muscle growth, readers are probably overestimating the UPSIDE. Think about it, the major human evolutionary advantage was the brain, not the brawn. Being stronger can lead to incremental advantages, but more intelligence was "evolutionary" because it was more unique.
Little known fact: The average slashdotter's brain burns energy at 30%+ their basal metabolic rate. Hence, the need for Mountain Dew and Cheeto supplements....
Microsoft Starts its "Get The Facts" Campaign So I sat with about 150 other "technical decision makers" in a very plush hotel in Holborn while representatives from Microsoft tried their best to convince me that I should not be considering moving to Linux. To run the discussion Microsoft had employed a fake-tan horror who had clearly escaped from daytime TV. He was by turns chummy and condescending. However being a reasonable man I will not hold Microsoft responsible for his failings. First up was Phillip Dawson who leads Linux research for analysts Meta Group. He quoted heavily from a Meta analysis which shows that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for linux and windows is comparable. This study has been widely reported in IT press but I can't for the life of me find a link to the original. He made some interesting points about where the datacentre is going to be in a few years. His basic thrust was that everyone is moving from proprietary Unix with its expensive platforms to Windows or Linux on x86 platforms and that it this hardware move, rather than linux versus windows, that will drive all the cost savings. Dawson believes that in a few years the only place we will see proprietary Unix is in very large enterprise databases. After a promising start, Dawson then got into the territory of why Windows makes more sense for enterprises than Linux. He introduced what was to become a running theme for seminar, Linux is not free. It turns out that the TCO statements made earlier were based on the licensing costs of SuSE professional and Red Hat Enterprise versus Windows. They had refused to consider that people might run a business on something that they could download free from the Internet. Later in the Q and A session Dawson got quite aggravated when people pointed out to him that many Linux-based businesses run quite happily on free linux (this was shouted by the scruffy-looking Debian hackers in the back). I can only assume that businesses that are brave enough to save thousands of pounds per unit by moving away from expensive hardware platforms are meant not to care that they can save another couple of hundred pounds on Microsoft licence fees. Later in the presentation he said "Don't compare to the free downloads. They are not free". Precisely what he meant by this escapes me. One area the Meta study didn't look at was Linux on the desktop. Phil claimed that linux was not ready for the desktop because it lacked administrative tools. He was carrying on in a similar vein when he said "Management tools on Linux are nearly as good as a DOS prompt". Nick Barley, business and Marketing Director for Microsoft UK took to the stage to baffle us with market-speak. There was lots of talk about strategy and leveraging which I didn't follow. He talked a bit about Microsoft's shared-source program and tried his hardest to make it sound like open-source, mainly by refusing to say Open-source and talking about shared-source instead. Continuing in Phillip Dawson's footsteps he repeated the mantra "Linux is not free" several times. Although he was at his best when talking about business models amongst Linux distributors claiming that "Linux is moving to the same model that Microsoft has been using". My absolute favourite part of the talk was when Barley started to extol the virtues of Windows because everything in it was made by one manufacturer. A fair point which would have been well taken had he not gone on to draw an idiotic analogy. He asked us to imagine an aeroplane where different components were made by different companies. Apparently he's never heard of Airbus. Next up was Nick McGrath head of platform strategy for Microsoft UK. The main bulk of his talk was taken up by a demonstration of a document sharing system based on Microsoft Sharepoint. Very boring for those of us running heterogeneous systems that Sharepoint will not run on. McGrath was much more technically clued up than Barley, and seemed to be aware that the audience was not entirely on his side. He made mention of the Forrester report that claimed more vulnera
You could just circumvent their DRM and vote with THEIR wallet. ;-)
If D&M are going to continue the Replay line, they would be crazy not honor Rio's lifetime subscriptions. Subscribers are assets.
Not only do you get a chance to upgrade them to next model, the eyeballs themselves must have some value. Marketing departments are constantly trying to develop channels like these subscriptions, and they are willing to pay for them.
It costs big $$$ to develop the guide data, but costs very little to distribute it more widely to these lifetime subscribers. By not honoring the agreement, it will cost them a lot in goodwill.
Of course, I can see them maybe offering lifetime subscribers a year or two of free service and then maybe making them pay, too. But it seems like there is an advantage of not making these people feel cheated. Cheated customers never return and they complain a lot (LOUDLY!).
(I'm glad I am a happy Tivo user.)
The data on the page is messed up and the article it refers to sucks/is erroneous/whatever. And the URL does say "PCpreferred.html" in it. BUT just for kicks, I looked at the referring page "http://www.adobe.com/motion/", which uses this set up for the link:
"Prefer a PC for DV?"
See what an industry expert has to say about PC vs. Mac for digital video editing.
So, you're all reading a bit too much into this. It was a question, not a statement. And it never says anything about announcing an official Adobe position. That's what press releases are for....
(Resume reading less deeply now.)
I wonder if this is the new, technology-enhance democracy. Where the free flow of information and ideas occurs as grafitti on hacked sites.... Do hackers even vote?
I am not sure that I would buy one now at current prices, but I bought a 20 hour Tivo last summer on clearance at Target for $130. I then spent $120 on a 60 gig harddrive (cheaper now)and just upgraded last spring to the lifetime subscription for $200.
Unfortunately, however, last week my Tivo got sick and doesn't work. I am pretty sure the hard drive bit it, and the folks at Western Digital have a replacement in the mail for me as we speak.
But I tell you, the last week and a half of Tivo-less television is driving me crazy. I keep trying to pause live tv, fast forward through commercials, etc. And I can't believe how much junk I have gotten used to filtering out.
I bought Tivo because I thought it would help me make better use of my time. In reality, however, I realize that I watch more television because Tivo gives me more choices of what/how I want to watch.
Without Tivo, television just doesn't hold my attention any more. I realize now more than ever how much normal television is a waste of my time.
Granted, I am using "liberal arts" as a term that includes the social sciences. But the term shrinks to an un-useful scope when you start dissecting it. Political science can be very scientific, as can philosophy, linguistics and other fields included in "liberal arts." As for my Comcast remarks, I canceled because the price that I will bear for high speed internet is about $40-$50 a month, which is lower than what they want to provide services for. Fine. But I admit that I am punishing them for what I feel is a coercive marketing tactic. Or rather, I am voting my displeasure at being squeezed. First, they are taking advantage of a monopoly on cable services in my area. Second, cable television and cable modem service were offered separately at first and both operate with very comfortable profit margins. Now, they say that if you don't sign up for both, we are going to increase our profit margin on one to 80 percent? How abused I feel by the company directly ties in to how satisfied I am with the product.
But Ayn Rand objectivism still seems to have a pretty big audience among a lot of the dot.com uber capitalists. Then again, maybe it is an outgrowth of competitive Type-A personalities that they think competition is always beneficial. I am a bit sick of hearing evolution/natural selection analogies in business and economics.
It really depends on at what level you are trying maximize at. And a lot of the so-called Asian Tiger economies (although suffering through a downturn) have shown that coordinated industry does work better than open competition in some circumstances.
But economics, psychologists and other liberal arts types realize that human beings defy "nature" all the time. People who study economics essentially study the cases where economics don't work! Psychologists study why people are not rational/utility maximizers.
As far as the broadband/telecom connection goes, did anyone else read this article in Business Week?
It talks about how broadband providers are keeping prices artificially high because they would rather deal with slower adoption rates at higher margins than faster adoption at lower margins because THEY KNOW EVERYONE WILL ADOPT BROADBAND EVENTUALLY and they can force us to pay more. Cable broadband profit margins are about 50 percent now.
Makes you realize how much companies like Comcast can prevent high-speed adoption and screw over the telecoms in the process.
(I canceled my Comcast modem and television service last week. Originally, I just wanted to get rid of the television service, but they told me that if I did, they were going to jack up my cable modem price by $15. I told them to cancel everything.)