From my perspective the product I want is HD transfers of the videos...
Big artist videos can be more expensive per-minute than feature films, but stores like ITMS sell poor replications - quality wise (source -> product) its an even bigger drop than the lossy music compression of the stores..
720p, 5.1 video downloads would be a great way to enjoy artists who's visual side is as, or more, important than their music...
But the point is how many of those accounts were ones given away free (I was given two pro accounts to pass onto friends). The the majority of users not on pro accounts (thats a flat out guess, could be wrong), and then the majority of those pro accounts possibly being received and extended for free, whats the churn rate going to be when the year subs start ending?
I'm a huge, huge fan of flickr, but when discussing recently with a friend she proposed it was a move back to the 'takeover' (Yahoo in this case) model of business success...
My gut still tells me there is an element of stopping people trading entire collections over firewire, but your suggestions totally cover the tech side of things:)
That sounds good on the face of it (limiting it to a technical issue rather than industry pressure) but when using rebuild_db my Shuffle can handle any audio file copied into the visable file system, *without* renaming it.
I want to believe you I just need to be more convinced:)
True, and it's worth pointing out that the file names
are not mangled to make it harder to copy them. They are mangled because they become unique identifiers. This is so that when you change the ID3 information, iTunes knows which files to replace, thus avoiding duplicates.
If that is the case, why aren't the same rules applied to the music file library iTunes maintains on one's computer's hard disk? The hard disk library shows human readable files structures are possible, I'd presume these aren't applied on the iPod to appease the music industry.
I'd agree with you there, I'm guilty of linking words with only an internal description of where they're going and the whole thing falls apart when the link destination is weak.
Personally, my favourite format for linking descriptions of words, which I see slowly gaining pace, is just hrefing the last letter, like so: anaptotic.
I'd really appreciate opinions on how right/wrong/established/crazy that is...
They had a special team in their R&D center in Scotts Valley design that product, and then after it was done, they laid off most of the people in that project team and outsourced them to a less-experienced team in Singapore.
Considering, "The worldwide corporate headquarters is located in Singapore" (Creative's Corporate Site) you can't really call it outsourcing (unless they outsourced management as well).
4) Mobile phone screens are pretty poor and small - whats the point of having beautiful lense/photos when most camera screens only have tens of thousands of pixels (I know you can sync photos with your PC but I guess most users don't).
Although the Korean retail business is miniture in comparison to Japan's (page 13 of this document), you've got to consider things like the ring-back, or caller-tune market (explained here and here) which have quickly grown into a $100 million market, showing that if you move in tune with technology you can make profits...
The police are right in saying West Midlands criminals are targeting specific groups.
As a Birmingham student in halls of residence, both my next door neighbours, and then their neighbours, have all been broken into. One of the guys on the end had his room hit but he didn't have the notebook they were looking for so they left.
I guess you could be it as some sort of social equilibrium in practice - students with so much near to areas of high unemployment, but what *really* pisses me off is when international students are (again intentionally) targeted - these are going to be important people who never want to come back to this city or country again. I guess the muggers aren't thinking of the global future but they really do a lot of unbalencing harm as well...
I can see that Live Boot CD's are a solution to so many problems
Also consider tech like NetBoot solutions to these problems (with the advantage of having single images on hard drives to alter rather than dozens of CDs)...
I can't help but agree with the iPod mini - this sounds like a good product with a bad pricing strategy, much like the great but overpriced Cube of yesteryear.
If you are talking of pricing stratergy, consider this..
Why bother giving it a lower price if they can't supply them? All they'd get would be grief from customers they couldn't supply. A staggered international release suggests a low production output (low on required parts, plus presumably most resources are aimed at iPod Big).
Just like the original iPod, as part availablility rises and COG (cost-of-goods) drops, the price will fall and more people will by them.
While people like to think Apple are crazy, I think it is just a case of simple economics.
And it certainly isn't the first time early tech-adopters have been blasted:/
The difference is that as time goes by, the horrible crap fades and the truly great stuff stays.
Its much the same with foreign movies. I'm often amazed at how consistantly good the French and Asian movies I watch are, but remember that only the best make it to my country - if I lived in the home country I'd probably drown in the rubbish they don't export...
What really pisses me off is that this second coming phenomenon has been used too often by labour to pass unpopular bills. When something proves massively unpopular, yield to public pressure and withdraw it, sleep on it for a while till people forget and then slip it when they hardly notice and public momentum has faded.
For my favourite recent example of that behaviour, check out this article ("The Incredible Shrinking Consultation") (linked from this one).
(This could be totally wrong, someone please correct me if I am, but I believe)...
If you read the shoutcast user forums, there was a flurry of activity a while ago when AOL bought into Winamp/Shoutcast.
To promote the technology AOL offered free bandwidth, worth tens of thousands of dollars yearly, to the most popular stations (hence most of the Shoutcast top ten originating from AOL IPs).
If they were to offer me a few T3s I would certainly take them, but it dulls all the 'alternative' claims a bit:/ Again, soeone please chime in if I have my wires crossed...
They must already have solved the bandwidth problem.
.
As much as I dig SomaFM, you should remember that if you check their main stream source it is 205.188.209.193, which if you WHOIS is AOL-TimeWarner, who most/.'s would probably have an issue with...
I have hundreds and hundreds of CD's stacked up everywhere, and its becoming slower to find something small from those cd's than find and download it from the net.
On the same theme, although I assume it doesn't explain most music downloading, I find myself file sharing instead of hunting for a specific CD (in our house we probably have nearly a thousand).
Me (listening to radio) : "Woah, what was that song?"
Dad : "Otis Reading, from the Blue album. We've got it somewhere."
Me : Somewhere? (Opens iBook, hits Gnutella)...
Slashdot Mirror
The British Government makes a shady tech sourcing decision?
There have already been a bunch - for example, Accenture acts as a 'Premium Partner' supporting the London bid then lands a contract for the back office systems.
From my perspective the product I want is HD transfers of the videos... Big artist videos can be more expensive per-minute than feature films, but stores like ITMS sell poor replications - quality wise (source -> product) its an even bigger drop than the lossy music compression of the stores.. 720p, 5.1 video downloads would be a great way to enjoy artists who's visual side is as, or more, important than their music...
Interesting, thanks for the link.. Hope you get modded back up to where you should be...
But the point is how many of those accounts were ones given away free (I was given two pro accounts to pass onto friends). The the majority of users not on pro accounts (thats a flat out guess, could be wrong), and then the majority of those pro accounts possibly being received and extended for free, whats the churn rate going to be when the year subs start ending?
I'm a huge, huge fan of flickr, but when discussing recently with a friend she proposed it was a move back to the 'takeover' (Yahoo in this case) model of business success...
The auto-focus could be a little smarter, the video function isn't too hot but in daylight I'm more than happy with it.
Check out my k750i shots here...
That was one complete answer!
:)
My gut still tells me there is an element of stopping people trading entire collections over firewire, but your suggestions totally cover the tech side of things
I want to believe you I just need to be more convinced :)
If that is the case, why aren't the same rules applied to the music file library iTunes maintains on one's computer's hard disk? The hard disk library shows human readable files structures are possible, I'd presume these aren't applied on the iPod to appease the music industry.
The were featured on Engadget a while ago...
Personally, my favourite format for linking descriptions of words, which I see slowly gaining pace, is just hrefing the last letter, like so: anaptotic.
I'd really appreciate opinions on how right/wrong/established/crazy that is...
Considering, "The worldwide corporate headquarters is located in Singapore" (Creative's Corporate Site) you can't really call it outsourcing (unless they outsourced management as well).
I think you are forgetting:
4) Mobile phone screens are pretty poor and small - whats the point of having beautiful lense/photos when most camera screens only have tens of thousands of pixels (I know you can sync photos with your PC but I guess most users don't).
Although the Korean retail business is miniture in comparison to Japan's (page 13 of this document), you've got to consider things like the ring-back, or caller-tune market (explained here and here) which have quickly grown into a $100 million market, showing that if you move in tune with technology you can make profits...
Personally I've taken the most complicated middle road and put a Mod Chip in my XBox, installed the GPL Xbox Media Centre and stuck it on my mixed system home network, so it can now play an crazy number of media formats.
The police are right in saying West Midlands criminals are targeting specific groups.
As a Birmingham student in halls of residence, both my next door neighbours, and then their neighbours, have all been broken into. One of the guys on the end had his room hit but he didn't have the notebook they were looking for so they left.
I guess you could be it as some sort of social equilibrium in practice - students with so much near to areas of high unemployment, but what *really* pisses me off is when international students are (again intentionally) targeted - these are going to be important people who never want to come back to this city or country again. I guess the muggers aren't thinking of the global future but they really do a lot of unbalencing harm as well...
Why bother giving it a lower price if they can't supply them? All they'd get would be grief from customers they couldn't supply. A staggered international release suggests a low production output (low on required parts, plus presumably most resources are aimed at iPod Big).
Just like the original iPod, as part availablility rises and COG (cost-of-goods) drops, the price will fall and more people will by them.
While people like to think Apple are crazy, I think it is just a case of simple economics.
And it certainly isn't the first time early tech-adopters have been blasted :/
The Sony Ericsson P800...
Is that...
1,000,000,000,000 bits per second
or
2^40 bits per second?
Theres a whole bunch of bits per second difference there...
If you read the shoutcast user forums, there was a flurry of activity a while ago when AOL bought into Winamp/Shoutcast.
To promote the technology AOL offered free bandwidth, worth tens of thousands of dollars yearly, to the most popular stations (hence most of the Shoutcast top ten originating from AOL IPs).
If they were to offer me a few T3s I would certainly take them, but it dulls all the 'alternative' claims a bit :/ Again, soeone please chime in if I have my wires crossed...
I'd recommend Overplay - A company which provides online services to unsigned bands. Their charts can be quite interesting...
On the same theme, although I assume it doesn't explain most music downloading, I find myself file sharing instead of hunting for a specific CD (in our house we probably have nearly a thousand).
Me (listening to radio) : "Woah, what was that song?"
Dad : "Otis Reading, from the Blue album. We've got it somewhere."
Me : Somewhere? (Opens iBook, hits Gnutella)...