Spend less time focusing on the (custom) configuration tools, which frankly *most* users (at least in the desktop market space) should be able to take for granted.
Red Hat almost got it with Bluecurve.
The focus should be on the real day-to-day user stuff. And if its just too hard making a unique distro with strong enough selling points that you have to resort to slight-of-hand tricks with your configuration GUI...
Well, maybe this just isn't the right business.
Fooling yourself into sacrificing usability for marketability is a fools game and after the end user gets wise or tired of playing the game everyone loses.
Look at the desktop market today and tell me how wasting developer hours tweaking incomplete, incompatible configuration tools has helped? I've been using Linux a long time now, not just as a server, and I believe the only thing holding it out of the mainstream marketplace is kludge and the patchwork collection of configuration GUI's is a shining example of this.
Do you think my WIFE cares that Suse developer YAST? Or does she just want to get work done like she can with OSX or Windows?
Could it be better? Sure. But once you learn the basic syntax (and it IS basic) you can to a lot. I use IIS and Apache regularly in production. There are things that are easier in one and things that are easier in the other. But I wouldn't call either easier and by any means.
And *don't* even get me started on Exchange vs. Sendmail/Postfix/etc. I used to actually think Sendmail was tough and now I find myself lamenting the good old days when Sendmail was all I had to worry about!
All the rest of your points I tend to agree with.
And YES, Apache could be made simpler to configure. In fact because the configuration is so simple for most common things I think the fact that no-one has really made a serious attempt is probably related to the fear that no-one who actually uses it would use such a tool (Webmin doesn't count, it doesn't work most of the time and doesn't really like Apache2).
I would however like to SPANK the maintainers of most all popular distro's for fscking with the layout of the HTTPD configuration files. That gets a bit old...fast. Debian's my favorite, but I'm using RHEL4.
Its not actually accurate to say "in Linux, you have an app to configure the screen, another to configure the network, etc. etc.".
I mean its partially true, but its actually even more frustrating then that.
In Red Hat you have system-config*, which is a whole mess of applets to configure A or B. Thats messy. In Suse you have YAST, which last time I looked...well kind of sucked. You certainly couldn't do everything you'd need to from there (although like most of the configuration tool's I'll mention it did something very well). Mandriva you've got DrakeConf. Its the closest thing to a working Control Center I've seen, but still your left with some very fundamental features either missing or seriously lacking (to the point, IMHO, of basically not working).
Why all these distributions insist on focusing their efforts on rebuilding the same functionality baffles me. I mean I "get" the want to be unique thing. Don't want to copy thing. But basic functionality like configuration isn't the right place to show off you 'own product' in favor of standardizing and making a single product thats simply better for the customer.
The control panel style is fine because it allows flexibility for Suse to add custom Active Directory integration applets for their enterprise edition. But all these tools are really one of the best examples of what Linux vendors consistently (insistently) do wrong.
At the end of the day I don't care who founded the project I use to do basic configuration. I just care that it works without having to do a lot of extra fucking around.
Today no-one provides that and I bet idiotic egos will keep it that way for a long while into the future.
They've been in the game longer then just about anyone. Changed hands about half a dozen times and still offer fair (I pay $19.95 for 90 tracks a month, DRM free and mine to keep, play, etc forever). While I appreciate sites like Bleep they are somewhat limited in their scope (which can be a good thing) and E/M's cataloge is big enough that I end up finding a lot of music I wouldn't have found otherwise. For the big bands allofmp3.com is still a pretty good bet (not so much my thing, but good to fall back on) and they have a nice new iTunes-like (Windows) application that makes finding and buying music dangerously easy. Of course if your a 'believer' you can't fail to mention Magnatune for being probably the most moralistically upstanding label/service going. But their catalog hurts, probably proportionally.
I'll still fall back on iTune's if I have to, but the trouble of the DRM and their pricing make them my last choice. I'd love to see Last.fm do something other then partner with amazon.com. I'm too impatient to order music I just fell in love with when 90% of the time I don't have to.
I'm so sick of hearing about this. EVERY major services provider that wants to do business in a foreign market had sure as HELL respect said goverments rules.
America has laws, so do a lot of other countries. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't make them any less valid.
If ANYONE is the bad guy in this picture is the western journalists trying to pretend that we have any right to tell the Chinese government what is or isn't acceptable. As you said, its up to the people of China.
Just because the drug laws in the Netherlands are a little loose doesn't mean I can open up a "Smart" shop next to the local Wallmart. Sometime you simple have to revise your business plan.
So I always felt sort of like I had a system like this (only generally I don't build playlists on the fly because I've got it programmed for listeners). But I do like the idea of having the ability to listen to my music from any browser (most of us work at a computer now anyway) and the off-site back up is a great benifit.
If they throw shared playlists or any kind of relational system into the mix it could be a pretty neat system.
But personally I've got over 15 thousand mp3's (yep, most of them are paid for) and I've already got my own off-site hardware. Still, interesting to see.
Same idea, multiplatform (yes, Linux), open and more mature. I'm not trying to knock Pandora, but LastFM (who is an off-shoot of the Audioscrobbler project formerly reported here) has a much, much larger database of well known and extremely hard to find music. Along with artist decriptions, previews and amazon links to buy its a nicely designed, decently planned out service (although I'd prefer if they sold the tracks themselves or partnered emusic.com style, but hey, I'm impatient like that).
I spend a good deal of time finding new music there. And yes, it has a "type the name of a band you like here" feature. Only with LastFM when I type Ms. John Soda it finds something (hey, their on Morr records).
That "attacks" started long before we had broadband DSL/Cable accounts. Trojans, viruses, worms, unpatched systems, cross-site scripting, irc monkeys, you name it.
Its not like you log onto your shiney new broadband account and there are all these new dangers. They were there all along. They've been there since before most of us even used the internet.
For starters there are a number of flavors of DSL. PPPOE is a favorite here in the states because it comes with the same "benefits" to for your service provider (dynamic ip assignment is a big money saver) that good-old-fashioned dial-up accounts offer. Some companies in their every loving cheapness will treat your DSL account almost exactly like your existing dial-up accounts. You'll log on to your broadband account and log off.
But realistically your friend is just talking trash. Are there increased threats associated with "always on" internet connections? Sure. But the solutions are generally pretty simple and they should already be being applied to your dial-up based account anyway. A) firewall B) virus scan C) adware blocker D) patch.
If you follow all those basic rules you should be fine. The studies that are likely to have got your friend so excited about generally apply to worms and unpatched systems with unnecessary (and improperly or unconfigured) services enabled.
A little common sense really goes a long way. Broadband isn't intrinsically dangerous. Leaving your computer connected night and day without doing a thing to protect yourself is plain stupid.
As an aside, if your so paranoid (I'm not trying to insult you, some people just are and I think thats fine) that you prefer the extra security of not being connected there is nowhere in your TOS that says you can't disable your connection/unplug it when ever you want.
Effectively the only difference is you'll be able to view pages/read email at reasonable speeds like the rest of us, sans the amazingly annoying modem connection noise.
I always thought it would be funny to get one of those medical alert bracelets that reads "in case of stroke please administer PCP". But then being old, disoriented and in the thrall of a medical emergency might not be the ideal time for your first, mind-altering experience. Heh.
Honestly, one thing that gets me is people getting angry because of a users level of knowlege. Its one thing if you're a computer professional.
Not everyone is interested or has the right temperment for computers. Just like not everyone is good at music, math, mechanics, art, accounting, medicine.
Thats why we have specialists. I'm not going to perform surgery on myself, I'm going to pay for someone else to do it. I love music but I let the musicians to the work.
Just because someone has to sit behind a computer doesn't mean computer enthusiasts should expect anything more of them.
I can see where your coming from. We use Oracle on our database already. Thats got a pretty hefty price tag, especially as you scale up. We are weening ourselves OFF of sun hardware after about 6 years of it. Of course the punchline is the new Opteron systems look great.
But at the end of the day keeping our tech budget low means making compromises, sometimes the right ones, sometimes the wrong ones. The less closed-source software we are locked into the better. After all, the point is being profitable and we've been tied to one or two (or more) products already that didn't really do much good for us in reality (Coldfusion, MS Sql) compared to open alternatives.
Anyhow, long and short of it is I agree. Where their appropriate and both companies have produced (and continue to) excellent (although expensive) products.
Right now I just don't see the need for yet another development platform, much less a closed one. Not in my budget any time in the near future anyway.
No? Why would I be interested in another.NET lock-in project. Open would be news, but this just sounds like more crap to tag onto my tech budget that could be done with any number of existing technologies.
I didn't know that about the HDTV. That said the way things work, with driver support being what it is and any changes thrown into the mix I'll have to wait to see what kind of CPU utilization turns up when I can get my hands on one.
At $169.98 the price point is much better then last time I looked. Like I said in my post, I'm a believer. But a Tivo is looking incrementally more attractive. I've got to solve the fan-noise issues, sound quality issue and CPU utilization or the project really is just an over-priced geek toy. Which my wife has very little patience for.:)
But I think things that get missed a lot are (in no particular order) A: noise. These things are noisy, my wife HATES that. CDROM's, hard drives, CPU fans, box intake/outtake, vibration, etc. B: quality, I've built my system based on a 64 bit Athlon 3000+ with a Hauppauge WinTV tuner, and Sound Blaster Live! card and a gig of memory. Watching 'live' TV at decent quality can take the CPU to 20-15% idle. That means skips and such. I know I could replace my TV tuner with a Hauppauge 150 (dual tuners, hardware based encoding, etc) but that leave HDTV unaddressed (I had to explain to my wife that we couldn't get digital cable because that great HTPC box I'd built wouldn't support it. C: sound quality. YMMV, maybe it's my setup. Maybe its cross-talk. Maybe its alsa configuration (alsa is a bitch). Thats my project this weekend. D: support. MythTV is a wonderful project. I love it (don't get the wrong idea because I've said all this other stuff, my hats off). But the development has slowed (understandably, the developer is employed and probably likes to eat and stuff) and things that set it appart from something like...say Tivo (ie working commercial skip) don't work quite as well as they used to. E: inconsistencies. Why does my tv view use different hot-keys then the DVD viewer? F: PITA. You know, I work on computers all day. Linux systems for a commercial company. I get to see all sorts of things go right, and wrong. Keeping a functional MythTV setup can be just as challenging. Updates (OS or otherwise) can break things. Setting mysteriously being lost. All those little things that make my wife think I'm a nut for spending so much money and time for a geeky toy that makes more noise then she likes.
That rant probably about covers it. To be fair there are tons of things I love about it or I'd be using a cheaper and simpler Tivo. The video manager with the IMDB lookup and the cover grabs is sweet. Music management is pretty nice too, although I'd like a nicer (read more money) sound card and speaker setup to use that and even then my wife would probably rather NOT turn on the TV to listen to tunes (GOOM!). DVD rip and archiving is nice (although I still tend to vobcopy, but its there and a nice touch). RSS feed, web-browsing, email checking, weather lookup, voip functionality. There sure is a lot there.
But at the end of the day its an expensive habit (can't wait to try to find a HDTV tuner with hardware based encoding that also works under Linux) that really takes someone pretty patient to use it.
I fit that description and hope to see things continue to improve (or at least Isaac stay happy, healthy and employeed). If you'll excuse me now I've got some Stargate to watch. Commercial (crosses fingers) free.
They did add that download app, but ages ago now. Getting it working requires installing a proxy and some other weird configuration, but it still works.
That said, you can change your preferences: goto 'Your Account'>'Change Download Manager'>'Disable eMusic Download Manager'. Its still a good service.
If you've been using it as long as I have I'd guess the big deal you refer to was when they went from all you can download at a fixed (low) price to a allotment/subscription services (I think its 40/65/90 downloads with prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.95).
I do an internet radio program so I actually use the service a lot still. Good selection of music if you're needs aren't todays top 10 billboard (thats what allofmp3.com is for right?:).
More of a call to developers who might be interested. I don't see anything wrong with that. Especially on such an ambition and potentially important project. They also had planned a Windows pre-release in December that appears to have been pushed back a bit. Altogether I think it makes for a legitimate post.
Don't get so hung up on looks. Its a browswer, look at the url-bar. Seems to me they've pushed the apple thing for a number of reasons, but there is no lock-in with the look or style of the thing. Its not even in *any* form of release at this point and it sounds to me like he's trying to generate some buzz, maybe get some developer support. I hope he does because if you look past the immediate iTunes comparisons you'll see it so much more really. He thanks Apple for showing what good design can look like, but he makes it clear (if you read the site) that this project can be so much more then just an iTune's clone.
Its kind of easy to get caught up with the iTunes comparisons. But if you look hard you'll see a url-bar. Its a browser/rss feed-reader with integrated music play/download/management features. Its a damn slick idea. If you read a little bit more about it (either the CNET article or on the songbird site itself) you'll see they've got some great plans to take advantage of the Mozilla code end of things, custom music stores, easy web-based integration for individuals/start-ups/stores.
The project is ambitious. But if it succeeds, it could change the face of the web, at least the music portion of it in a way that's really benificial to us all (musicians included).
Amarok is a great project, but its approach is a a single platform media player/manager. This is a media outlet/portal, with management thrown in for excellent measure.
Of course it may never happen, or it could flop. According to the website we'll all have at least a year to wait before we can declare it anything other then an interesting project. My hat's off to them.
These are prerelease screens everyones getting so hopped up about. Who are any of us to say what the later incarnations are to look like? It looks to me like he's driving the point home that while he respects iTunes innovation he feels like they've chosen lock-in over broader useablity. Understandably, but we; the users; end up losing. He's got a lot of attention with the stunt, but by no means does he A) sound like a stupid person B) is the interface tied to being iTunes-like. It makes sense to me to be a perfect jump-point but as they mention on their website this is by no means a release. Not even a beta and with the final product at least a year off I'm sure a lot will change, even if Apple sic's it lawyers on them.:)
Sounds like he's got some experience aside from the mouth-piecing. Your's is pure Slashdot quality speculation/nay-saying. Forgive me for not being as impressed.
We need something like this and they have something of a background. I wish them the best and I'll hold my judgement until I can noodle around with it.
Another serious piece of software coming out of the OSS community and something really needed, probably more then most people thought (myself included). I use all the services they include in their pre-release screens. A lot. I can't see how this wouldn't be a win-win. Even if Apple gets sore about it.
Emusic has worked to maintain a Linux client, but its been getting pretty rough. This is a great resource that will make purchasing music simpler. Isn't that what everybody wants anyway? Labels win, artists win, users win. Only my pocket book feels any real pain, and thats pain I'd happily live with.:)
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We are moving over to Scalix at least on some of our servers. I don't dislike Exchange for its features, just its screwed up backend.
Spend less time focusing on the (custom) configuration tools, which frankly *most* users (at least in the desktop market space) should be able to take for granted.
Red Hat almost got it with Bluecurve.
The focus should be on the real day-to-day user stuff. And if its just too hard making a unique distro with strong enough selling points that you have to resort to slight-of-hand tricks with your configuration GUI...
Well, maybe this just isn't the right business.
Fooling yourself into sacrificing usability for marketability is a fools game and after the end user gets wise or tired of playing the game everyone loses.
Look at the desktop market today and tell me how wasting developer hours tweaking incomplete, incompatible configuration tools has helped? I've been using Linux a long time now, not just as a server, and I believe the only thing holding it out of the mainstream marketplace is kludge and the patchwork collection of configuration GUI's is a shining example of this.
Do you think my WIFE cares that Suse developer YAST? Or does she just want to get work done like she can with OSX or Windows?
Could it be better? Sure. But once you learn the basic syntax (and it IS basic) you can to a lot. I use IIS and Apache regularly in production. There are things that are easier in one and things that are easier in the other. But I wouldn't call either easier and by any means.
And *don't* even get me started on Exchange vs. Sendmail/Postfix/etc. I used to actually think Sendmail was tough and now I find myself lamenting the good old days when Sendmail was all I had to worry about!
All the rest of your points I tend to agree with.
And YES, Apache could be made simpler to configure. In fact because the configuration is so simple for most common things I think the fact that no-one has really made a serious attempt is probably related to the fear that no-one who actually uses it would use such a tool (Webmin doesn't count, it doesn't work most of the time and doesn't really like Apache2).
I would however like to SPANK the maintainers of most all popular distro's for fscking with the layout of the HTTPD configuration files. That gets a bit old...fast. Debian's my favorite, but I'm using RHEL4.
Meh.
Its not actually accurate to say "in Linux, you have an app to configure the screen, another to configure the network, etc. etc.".
I mean its partially true, but its actually even more frustrating then that.
In Red Hat you have system-config*, which is a whole mess of applets to configure A or B. Thats messy. In Suse you have YAST, which last time I looked...well kind of sucked. You certainly couldn't do everything you'd need to from there (although like most of the configuration tool's I'll mention it did something very well). Mandriva you've got DrakeConf. Its the closest thing to a working Control Center I've seen, but still your left with some very fundamental features either missing or seriously lacking (to the point, IMHO, of basically not working).
Why all these distributions insist on focusing their efforts on rebuilding the same functionality baffles me. I mean I "get" the want to be unique thing. Don't want to copy thing. But basic functionality like configuration isn't the right place to show off you 'own product' in favor of standardizing and making a single product thats simply better for the customer.
The control panel style is fine because it allows flexibility for Suse to add custom Active Directory integration applets for their enterprise edition. But all these tools are really one of the best examples of what Linux vendors consistently (insistently) do wrong.
At the end of the day I don't care who founded the project I use to do basic configuration. I just care that it works without having to do a lot of extra fucking around.
Today no-one provides that and I bet idiotic egos will keep it that way for a long while into the future.
At least we've got Webmin...
You must be new to the Gnome project.
:)
They've been in the game longer then just about anyone. Changed hands about half a dozen times and still offer fair (I pay $19.95 for 90 tracks a month, DRM free and mine to keep, play, etc forever). While I appreciate sites like Bleep they are somewhat limited in their scope (which can be a good thing) and E/M's cataloge is big enough that I end up finding a lot of music I wouldn't have found otherwise. For the big bands allofmp3.com is still a pretty good bet (not so much my thing, but good to fall back on) and they have a nice new iTunes-like (Windows) application that makes finding and buying music dangerously easy. Of course if your a 'believer' you can't fail to mention Magnatune for being probably the most moralistically upstanding label/service going. But their catalog hurts, probably proportionally.
I'll still fall back on iTune's if I have to, but the trouble of the DRM and their pricing make them my last choice. I'd love to see Last.fm do something other then partner with amazon.com. I'm too impatient to order music I just fell in love with when 90% of the time I don't have to.
I'm so sick of hearing about this. EVERY major services provider that wants to do business in a foreign market had sure as HELL respect said goverments rules.
America has laws, so do a lot of other countries. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't make them any less valid.
If ANYONE is the bad guy in this picture is the western journalists trying to pretend that we have any right to tell the Chinese government what is or isn't acceptable. As you said, its up to the people of China.
Just because the drug laws in the Netherlands are a little loose doesn't mean I can open up a "Smart" shop next to the local Wallmart. Sometime you simple have to revise your business plan.
Big.Fucking.Deal.
So I always felt sort of like I had a system like this (only generally I don't build playlists on the fly because I've got it programmed for listeners). But I do like the idea of having the ability to listen to my music from any browser (most of us work at a computer now anyway) and the off-site back up is a great benifit.
If they throw shared playlists or any kind of relational system into the mix it could be a pretty neat system.
But personally I've got over 15 thousand mp3's (yep, most of them are paid for) and I've already got my own off-site hardware. Still, interesting to see.
Same idea, multiplatform (yes, Linux), open and more mature. I'm not trying to knock Pandora, but LastFM (who is an off-shoot of the Audioscrobbler project formerly reported here) has a much, much larger database of well known and extremely hard to find music. Along with artist decriptions, previews and amazon links to buy its a nicely designed, decently planned out service (although I'd prefer if they sold the tracks themselves or partnered emusic.com style, but hey, I'm impatient like that).
I spend a good deal of time finding new music there. And yes, it has a "type the name of a band you like here" feature. Only with LastFM when I type Ms. John Soda it finds something (hey, their on Morr records).
That "attacks" started long before we had broadband DSL/Cable accounts. Trojans, viruses, worms, unpatched systems, cross-site scripting, irc monkeys, you name it.
Its not like you log onto your shiney new broadband account and there are all these new dangers. They were there all along. They've been there since before most of us even used the internet.
Who here remembers Whack-a-Mole? The Ping of Death? Teardrops?
The good old days when using a 2400 baud modem you could end irc flame-war with a good-old-fashioned Smurf attack.
For starters there are a number of flavors of DSL. PPPOE is a favorite here in the states because it comes with the same "benefits" to for your service provider (dynamic ip assignment is a big money saver) that good-old-fashioned dial-up accounts offer. Some companies in their every loving cheapness will treat your DSL account almost exactly like your existing dial-up accounts. You'll log on to your broadband account and log off.
:)
But realistically your friend is just talking trash. Are there increased threats associated with "always on" internet connections? Sure. But the solutions are generally pretty simple and they should already be being applied to your dial-up based account anyway. A) firewall B) virus scan C) adware blocker D) patch.
If you follow all those basic rules you should be fine. The studies that are likely to have got your friend so excited about generally apply to worms and unpatched systems with unnecessary (and improperly or unconfigured) services enabled.
A little common sense really goes a long way. Broadband isn't intrinsically dangerous. Leaving your computer connected night and day without doing a thing to protect yourself is plain stupid.
As an aside, if your so paranoid (I'm not trying to insult you, some people just are and I think thats fine) that you prefer the extra security of not being connected there is nowhere in your TOS that says you can't disable your connection/unplug it when ever you want.
Effectively the only difference is you'll be able to view pages/read email at reasonable speeds like the rest of us, sans the amazingly annoying modem connection noise.
Oh, and welcome to the 21 century!
I always thought it would be funny to get one of those medical alert bracelets that reads "in case of stroke please administer PCP". But then being old, disoriented and in the thrall of a medical emergency might not be the ideal time for your first, mind-altering experience. Heh.
Honestly, one thing that gets me is people getting angry because of a users level of knowlege. Its one thing if you're a computer professional.
:)
Not everyone is interested or has the right temperment for computers. Just like not everyone is good at music, math, mechanics, art, accounting, medicine.
Thats why we have specialists. I'm not going to perform surgery on myself, I'm going to pay for someone else to do it. I love music but I let the musicians to the work.
Just because someone has to sit behind a computer doesn't mean computer enthusiasts should expect anything more of them.
Besides, how am I supposed to make a living?
I can see where your coming from. We use Oracle on our database already. Thats got a pretty hefty price tag, especially as you scale up. We are weening ourselves OFF of sun hardware after about 6 years of it. Of course the punchline is the new Opteron systems look great.
But at the end of the day keeping our tech budget low means making compromises, sometimes the right ones, sometimes the wrong ones. The less closed-source software we are locked into the better. After all, the point is being profitable and we've been tied to one or two (or more) products already that didn't really do much good for us in reality (Coldfusion, MS Sql) compared to open alternatives.
Anyhow, long and short of it is I agree. Where their appropriate and both companies have produced (and continue to) excellent (although expensive) products.
Right now I just don't see the need for yet another development platform, much less a closed one. Not in my budget any time in the near future anyway.
No? Why would I be interested in another .NET lock-in project. Open would be news, but this just sounds like more crap to tag onto my tech budget that could be done with any number of existing technologies.
I didn't know that about the HDTV. That said the way things work, with driver support being what it is and any changes thrown into the mix I'll have to wait to see what kind of CPU utilization turns up when I can get my hands on one.
:)
At $169.98 the price point is much better then last time I looked. Like I said in my post, I'm a believer. But a Tivo is looking incrementally more attractive. I've got to solve the fan-noise issues, sound quality issue and CPU utilization or the project really is just an over-priced geek toy. Which my wife has very little patience for.
Thanks for the info.
But I think things that get missed a lot are (in no particular order) A: noise. These things are noisy, my wife HATES that. CDROM's, hard drives, CPU fans, box intake/outtake, vibration, etc. B: quality, I've built my system based on a 64 bit Athlon 3000+ with a Hauppauge WinTV tuner, and Sound Blaster Live! card and a gig of memory. Watching 'live' TV at decent quality can take the CPU to 20-15% idle. That means skips and such. I know I could replace my TV tuner with a Hauppauge 150 (dual tuners, hardware based encoding, etc) but that leave HDTV unaddressed (I had to explain to my wife that we couldn't get digital cable because that great HTPC box I'd built wouldn't support it. C: sound quality. YMMV, maybe it's my setup. Maybe its cross-talk. Maybe its alsa configuration (alsa is a bitch). Thats my project this weekend. D: support. MythTV is a wonderful project. I love it (don't get the wrong idea because I've said all this other stuff, my hats off). But the development has slowed (understandably, the developer is employed and probably likes to eat and stuff) and things that set it appart from something like...say Tivo (ie working commercial skip) don't work quite as well as they used to. E: inconsistencies. Why does my tv view use different hot-keys then the DVD viewer? F: PITA. You know, I work on computers all day. Linux systems for a commercial company. I get to see all sorts of things go right, and wrong. Keeping a functional MythTV setup can be just as challenging. Updates (OS or otherwise) can break things. Setting mysteriously being lost. All those little things that make my wife think I'm a nut for spending so much money and time for a geeky toy that makes more noise then she likes.
That rant probably about covers it. To be fair there are tons of things I love about it or I'd be using a cheaper and simpler Tivo. The video manager with the IMDB lookup and the cover grabs is sweet. Music management is pretty nice too, although I'd like a nicer (read more money) sound card and speaker setup to use that and even then my wife would probably rather NOT turn on the TV to listen to tunes (GOOM!). DVD rip and archiving is nice (although I still tend to vobcopy, but its there and a nice touch). RSS feed, web-browsing, email checking, weather lookup, voip functionality. There sure is a lot there.
But at the end of the day its an expensive habit (can't wait to try to find a HDTV tuner with hardware based encoding that also works under Linux) that really takes someone pretty patient to use it.
I fit that description and hope to see things continue to improve (or at least Isaac stay happy, healthy and employeed). If you'll excuse me now I've got some Stargate to watch. Commercial (crosses fingers) free.
And explains why Americans and Australians are so similar (of course we got all those giddy religous people with our criminals). Meh.
They did add that download app, but ages ago now. Getting it working requires installing a proxy and some other weird configuration, but it still works.
:).
That said, you can change your preferences: goto 'Your Account'>'Change Download Manager'>'Disable eMusic Download Manager'. Its still a good service.
If you've been using it as long as I have I'd guess the big deal you refer to was when they went from all you can download at a fixed (low) price to a allotment/subscription services (I think its 40/65/90 downloads with prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.95).
I do an internet radio program so I actually use the service a lot still. Good selection of music if you're needs aren't todays top 10 billboard (thats what allofmp3.com is for right?
More of a call to developers who might be interested. I don't see anything wrong with that. Especially on such an ambition and potentially important project. They also had planned a Windows pre-release in December that appears to have been pushed back a bit. Altogether I think it makes for a legitimate post.
Don't get so hung up on looks. Its a browswer, look at the url-bar. Seems to me they've pushed the apple thing for a number of reasons, but there is no lock-in with the look or style of the thing. Its not even in *any* form of release at this point and it sounds to me like he's trying to generate some buzz, maybe get some developer support. I hope he does because if you look past the immediate iTunes comparisons you'll see it so much more really. He thanks Apple for showing what good design can look like, but he makes it clear (if you read the site) that this project can be so much more then just an iTune's clone.
:)
Anyhow, its early yet.
Its kind of easy to get caught up with the iTunes comparisons. But if you look hard you'll see a url-bar. Its a browser/rss feed-reader with integrated music play/download/management features. Its a damn slick idea. If you read a little bit more about it (either the CNET article or on the songbird site itself) you'll see they've got some great plans to take advantage of the Mozilla code end of things, custom music stores, easy web-based integration for individuals/start-ups/stores.
The project is ambitious. But if it succeeds, it could change the face of the web, at least the music portion of it in a way that's really benificial to us all (musicians included).
Amarok is a great project, but its approach is a a single platform media player/manager. This is a media outlet/portal, with management thrown in for excellent measure.
Of course it may never happen, or it could flop. According to the website we'll all have at least a year to wait before we can declare it anything other then an interesting project. My hat's off to them.
These are prerelease screens everyones getting so hopped up about. Who are any of us to say what the later incarnations are to look like? It looks to me like he's driving the point home that while he respects iTunes innovation he feels like they've chosen lock-in over broader useablity. Understandably, but we; the users; end up losing. He's got a lot of attention with the stunt, but by no means does he A) sound like a stupid person B) is the interface tied to being iTunes-like. It makes sense to me to be a perfect jump-point but as they mention on their website this is by no means a release. Not even a beta and with the final product at least a year off I'm sure a lot will change, even if Apple sic's it lawyers on them. :)
Sounds like he's got some experience aside from the mouth-piecing. Your's is pure Slashdot quality speculation/nay-saying. Forgive me for not being as impressed. We need something like this and they have something of a background. I wish them the best and I'll hold my judgement until I can noodle around with it.
Another serious piece of software coming out of the OSS community and something really needed, probably more then most people thought (myself included). I use all the services they include in their pre-release screens. A lot. I can't see how this wouldn't be a win-win. Even if Apple gets sore about it. Emusic has worked to maintain a Linux client, but its been getting pretty rough. This is a great resource that will make purchasing music simpler. Isn't that what everybody wants anyway? Labels win, artists win, users win. Only my pocket book feels any real pain, and thats pain I'd happily live with. :)