Which side are you arguing? Newspaper is dead. They still exist, but readership and influence - and with them, profits - have been declining for decades. The last statement any industry wants to hear is "good news, you're all set for the growth and dynamism of the newspaper industry."
Remember, in each of those situations the company in question is going out on a limb for you.
Forking out $400 for an XBox 360 is going out on a limb. When I fork out $400 and get nothing (but a broken XBox) for 2 months, Microsoft is witholding money that is rightfully mine. All of this is going on the assumption that I eventually pay my bills and Microsoft eventually delivers a working product. If you can't see the symmetry of the situation, it just shows how indoctrinated you are.
The manufacturer should be responsible for fixing the problem, not paying damages and legal fees.
That's what I want to happen when I bounce a check:
"Oops, sorry, it was an accident. Here, I'll cut you another one."
Or when I return a rented movie late:
"Ooops. sorry, it was an accident. Here's you movie, no harm, foul?"
Or when I miss a credit card payment:
"Oops, sorry, it was an accident. Here's the money. You won't fine me or anything, will you?"
Man, I only wish I could slap companies with fines every time they screw me out of some time and inconvenience. Of course in the real world it only works the other way 'round.
The government is planning on using taxpayer revenue that it forces citizens to give them to create a competitor to the phone company. Thats not exactly free market economics.
If the citizens don't want the service, they can elect different people who will comply to their will. Which is more than you can say for a telephone monopoly - outside of government control (which you oppose), monopolies are completely unaccountable.
You do realise its an AMD Opteron, not a Sparc in this model?
Isn't the Opteron processor actually a lot faster?
Wake up when I can get a Niagra-based workstation for a few grand. make -j 32, mmmm. But somehow I have a feeling they'll cost a fortune so I'll never get one. Anyways I need some FLOPS with my IOPS. Perhaps the perfect workstation of 2006 will be a $100K Niagra box with a $300 PS3 math coprocessor:)
A healthy market depends on freedom. Businesses that do not serve their customers fail. Government regulation prevents those failures, thus insulating businesses from the real repercussions of their choices.
Not necessarily. And since you haven't offered any rationale or statistics in support of your opinion, I won't bother digging up any to refute it.
At least you could explain how the telecom study in question does not contradict your view, or is how the study is flawed.
What OS a person starts out with when young will have ZERO impact on what OS they stay with.... OS'es are more like a tool, like a hammer.
Not at all. Do you give a child Legos in the hopes they'll still be playing with them as adults? Of course not, but it builds a different way of looking at things. It's not whether kids will use the exact same OS as an adult. It's whether they grow up thinking of the computer as a "product" - a black box that does certain things - or appreciating this powerful, complicated thing that has endless possibilities.
To you the computer is just a certain tool, like a hammer as you say. To me the computer is more like a milling machine; it can make hammers, but for that matter a hammer isn't even nearly the most interesting thing it can make.
Even guiding kids into computer science isn't really the point, the point is that kids should be around constructive learning environments where stuff can be taken apart and put back together - be it economics, politics, chemistry, or computers. Heck, forget the kids for a moment, that's the kind of environment interesting adults enjoy.
LHow many consumers are this organized to send in a rebate not earlier than six months after purchase, and not later than seven months? Well, lucky for me, I am. I've made a note on iCal.
We shall see... don't count your chickens yet my friend!
Wait 'till you get rejected 8 months from now for not having that UPC, and have to convince somebody at a rebate center to give you $200, especially since they probably don't speak English and have no discretion to help you out anyways.
My favorite is when there are two rebates on one item, and both require the original UPC. Or one says "not valid with any other offer" even though the advertised price included both.
1) Breakage. But this reason has been in steady decline and is increasingly unjustifiable. While it used to be that only 40% of rebates were turned in, that number has been steadily climbing for the past ten years
Says who? Do you have a link? The rebate fulfillment rate is the one hard piece of information this article could have provided that would have been really interesting to me, and speaks volumes more than some ad-guy spin. But no, he couldn't or didn't report it.
Frontrow might be a nice program, but a software package alone is clearly not enough.
If these applications (music, pictures, movies) make it into the livingroom, it won't be on an iMac, but integrated with the TV and stereo.
The question is, what content distribution network, and what end-user hardware, will make an application like frontrow successful?
Makes sense. It was the statement "The Series 2 TiVo, the most commonly sold TiVo today, is not open" which lead me to believe that the series 2 TiVo is not open.
I see. I was thrown off by the OReilly book Tivo Hacks which states:
Note: Not all TiVos are the same. The original TiVo, the Series 1, is the most hackable TiVo out there; it's a box thrown together with commodity parts and the TiVo code is running on open hardware. The Series 2 TiVo, the most commonly sold TiVo today, is not open. You won't see hacks in this book that involve modifying Series 2 software.
You really cannnot compare the two. TiVo is a special-purpose, locked down consumer device. A livingroom PC can do that, plus serve music to your stereo, play games, web surf (with wireless mouse/keyboard), fileserve, and whatever else gets dreamed up next month (mine is also a webserver, email server, and network gateway with QoS so VOIP works fine no matter what).
So maybe I am agreeing with you that TiVo is better if you don't have a castoff computer handy and don't want your PVR to do anything else. But serving up music and playing games seem like very mainstream applications to me. What are most of you doing, manually loading and unloading CDs?
The second DAP was the Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia, introduced in September 1998. The Rio was a big success during the Christmas 1998 season as sales significantly exceeded expectations, spurring interest and investment in digital music. The Recording Industry Association of America soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios and digital audio players were ruled legal devices.
Diamond stood up to the lawsuit and won. Now even the RIAA is cashing in on that market through iTunes and similar services.
It might be risky for TiVo to be customer oriented, but how risky is the alternative?
That said, I doubt very many consumers will use this very often.
And why would consumers watch ads on TiVo, unless the consumers get paid?
Perhaps TiVo should let customers work off their subscription fee by watching some ads and taking a survey each month (all through their remote control). That would be a pretty cheap feedback channel for advertisers.
The article is actually talking about high-bandwidth services such as streaming media and voice over IP... services that BellSouth themselves could offer and feel that their infrastructure should give priority to BellSouth first
and this is a good thing how?
They don't seem to be talking about simple websites at all..
So? I don't see why you think that makes it better. All the important innovation is in new markets: video on demand, voice over ip, application service providers... allowing ISPs to hinder all competitors will not be good for consumers.
You can't just go and patch everything. Regression testing? Making sure all the changes work as needed without impacting other subsystems.
Good point, but undermined by the fact that this particular bug was discovered six months ago!
Anyways, I wouldn't worry too much about Microsoft getting flak. They're making more money than they can spend and will continue to do so. People see these bugs as a fact of life like the common cold (and it bears mention on Slashdot that no competitor has demonstrated otherwise).
Slashdot Mirror
Which side are you arguing? Newspaper is dead. They still exist, but readership and influence - and with them, profits - have been declining for decades. The last statement any industry wants to hear is "good news, you're all set for the growth and dynamism of the newspaper industry."
"Oops, sorry, it was an accident. Here, I'll cut you another one."
Or when I return a rented movie late:
"Ooops. sorry, it was an accident. Here's you movie, no harm, foul?"
Or when I miss a credit card payment:
"Oops, sorry, it was an accident. Here's the money. You won't fine me or anything, will you?"
Man, I only wish I could slap companies with fines every time they screw me out of some time and inconvenience. Of course in the real world it only works the other way 'round.
You have to admit, sharing a phone bill with roomates was a pain in the butt.
I din't mean the Opteron was faster than Niagra, only than current UltraSparc chips. Niagra sounds really cool to me, at least for integer stuff.
Wake up when I can get a Niagra-based workstation for a few grand. make -j 32, mmmm. But somehow I have a feeling they'll cost a fortune so I'll never get one. Anyways I need some FLOPS with my IOPS. Perhaps the perfect workstation of 2006 will be a $100K Niagra box with a $300 PS3 math coprocessor :)
At least you could explain how the telecom study in question does not contradict your view, or is how the study is flawed.
To you the computer is just a certain tool, like a hammer as you say. To me the computer is more like a milling machine; it can make hammers, but for that matter a hammer isn't even nearly the most interesting thing it can make.
Even guiding kids into computer science isn't really the point, the point is that kids should be around constructive learning environments where stuff can be taken apart and put back together - be it economics, politics, chemistry, or computers. Heck, forget the kids for a moment, that's the kind of environment interesting adults enjoy.
Wait 'till you get rejected 8 months from now for not having that UPC, and have to convince somebody at a rebate center to give you $200, especially since they probably don't speak English and have no discretion to help you out anyways.
My favorite is when there are two rebates on one item, and both require the original UPC. Or one says "not valid with any other offer" even though the advertised price included both.
Frontrow might be a nice program, but a software package alone is clearly not enough. If these applications (music, pictures, movies) make it into the livingroom, it won't be on an iMac, but integrated with the TV and stereo. The question is, what content distribution network, and what end-user hardware, will make an application like frontrow successful?
Makes sense. It was the statement "The Series 2 TiVo, the most commonly sold TiVo today, is not open" which lead me to believe that the series 2 TiVo is not open.
So maybe I am agreeing with you that TiVo is better if you don't have a castoff computer handy and don't want your PVR to do anything else. But serving up music and playing games seem like very mainstream applications to me. What are most of you doing, manually loading and unloading CDs?
Remember what happened with mp3 players?
Diamond stood up to the lawsuit and won. Now even the RIAA is cashing in on that market through iTunes and similar services.It might be risky for TiVo to be customer oriented, but how risky is the alternative?
Perhaps TiVo should let customers work off their subscription fee by watching some ads and taking a survey each month (all through their remote control). That would be a pretty cheap feedback channel for advertisers.
And unlike some companies, they can't even switch over to a subscription model to keep us on the treadmill :)
Anyways, I wouldn't worry too much about Microsoft getting flak. They're making more money than they can spend and will continue to do so. People see these bugs as a fact of life like the common cold (and it bears mention on Slashdot that no competitor has demonstrated otherwise).