In the scenario you mention, people might notice a difference... but last I saw, you downloaded stuff using your computer, and used the iTunes software to move things back and forth, just like any other ipod.
Actually, if you RTFA you'll see that Microsoft is blaming many of the problems not on the users, but on the software developers. If an application is triggering a lot of UAC events then that application is probably doing something wrong (like writting registry keys to the wrong branch) and the offending code need to be rewritten.
If/when enough developers do so, they'll remove one of the major constraints against running as an ordinary user and not as an administrator.
Google has paid advertising, and people still try to game the natural search system. Adding paid placement to digg means that some people will buy placement... and everyone else will still try to game the system.
Actually, I read somewhere that about a quarter of all of the artists on iTMS were independent, or signed with "independent" labels that handle negotiations with Apple for them.
If you'd have RTFA you would have seen that they covered this point pretty well. But if you want to do it on a per-category basis that will cut our meeting a lot shorter, as WM only stocks about 40,000 different types of items.
"NOTHING about the individual case; we're just plain hard to predict..."
Don't care. While the individual case can't be modeled the group case can be. Plus a WM can price a DVD at one price in LA and another in SF, seen the trend, reverse it next week, see what happens then and adjust the price in all of the stores accordingly. Do variations of the above for 1,900 stores nationwide. See what happens when you advertise price A vs. price B and seel how many are sold. Do variations of the above for 1,900 stores nationwide. Compare against the entire history of every DVD you've ever sold. Correlate against box-office receipts. Find out that I'll sell more copies at $14.95 and make 5% more than if I sell each copy at $14.99.
Do the same thing for 140,000 other products. Rinse. Repeat.
"people do indeed communicate and discuss the prices / merits of their purchases"
Indeed. When was the last time you and your friends discussed the fact that baked beans are $1.23 at store A and $1.25 at store B, while the dial soap was $1.45 vs $1.42?
"Stores that do this well find that they can reduce the number of SKUs they stock and make even more by only stocking the items with the highest markup / fastest turnover."
They're smarter than that. By your logic my grocery store would only sell sugar water. They don't. And they understand long-tail economics and price elasticity and loss-leaders much, much better than you do.
"Nobody likes to be manipulated."
True. However, if you're selling your house or car (and all other things equal) you probably want the most money you can get for it. If you're on the other side, you want that house or car for the fewest number of your hard earned dollars as possible. Your employer would probably like to get the same work done for less, you, OTOH, would like to do the same work for more money, benefits, vacation days, whatever.
Some people will pay more for convenience, others will drive ten miles out of their way for bargins. Some people think Apples are more than worth the price, while others think that anyone who buys anything other than the cheapest beige box on the shelf is nuts. Horrses for courses.
As long as all of these variables are in play prices will be adjusted and raised and lowered and fought over... and in some cases, manipulated.
The next big step is video. Real-time rendering and support systems to make cutting your own home movie (or business product demo) as easy as it is now to do an iPhoto album. As-fast-as-you-can-transfer-it down-rezzing of movies and TV shows to your iphone or ipod. Multi-way video conferencing aka iChat. Video is a ton-and-a-half a data, and an 8-core Mac Pro still can't do everything it needs to do in real time.
Besides, I'm not going to be happy until we Star Trek voice recognition and "secretary-level" AI. "Computer, contact Bill and see if he's free for lunch. If so, ask if the Robin at 11:30 is good."
"Yes Michael. Also, you wanted me to remind you about getting a present for Jenny's birthday. Would you like to see what I've found?"
"They completely fail to mention that the vast majority of applications running on those processors don't even use the 4 available scheduling resources in each core."
Yes, but that's primarily because most of those resources are specialized. One or two of those are integer paths, one's a branch system, another is floating point, and so on. If the current code block doesn't include any of those specialized instructions, then those particular execution paths sit there unused.
From my perspective Fitts' law worked well when the screen size was 9". In today's world of multiple monitors and 30" screens (and even multiple 30" screens), I'd have to say the premise is outdated, as that menu bar is often a long ways away from the currently active window.
Further, while hitting the menu may be faster when it's on the edge, once you've done so you now need to travel the same distance back to your work area, which ISN'T on an edge.
All in all, I'd say today's interfaces need in-place, contextual application menus. Personally, I'd modify the system so the very first item in any right-click popup menu is a flyout containing the main application menus. Make it an option if need be, but I think it would make multiple/large screens easier to use.
I'd also automatically clone the menubar on any multiple monitor setup.
There's a difference between precision and accuracy. I can say that there's definitely a 99.984723% chance the sun will not come up tomorrow, a statement that's precise but not accurate.
You're not debating with the fanatics who're producing the material. You're presenting your counter-claims and viewpoints to the OTHER people who might be listening to them.
Besides, where is the line drawn? When you allow the government to "censor films and literature deemed by the government to be supportive of terrorism", does that mean the DVDs used as an example? Or does that also include any news story that mentions any weaknesses in any industry, port, airline, or in safety procedues? Any news story critical of the military or armed forces? Any book or website that in any way, discusses anything that conceivably (or inconceivably) could be used as a weapon?
Is disagreeing with your government's stance on terrorism "supportive of terrorism"?
Is all of our news subject to redaction by official goverment goons?
Make 'em $1,000 each. That will cut down on speculators and at the same time clear out a bunch of people who use the.com domain space for purposes other than which it was intended. (Your family home page should NOT be a.com address.)
No leasing, no tasting, and price a.com domain somewhere from $100 to $1,000 a year to register and maintain. No automated renewals. Registrants need to have a valid address and email address, and be validated similar to what occurs when you try to get a SSL certificate.
And no squating. If you sitting on that domain name primarily to offer it for sale then it returns to the pool. No parking. No ad/link farms. If you have address.com and you went out of business then you went out of business. Sorry.
This is why we have Flickr, and Digg, and all of those other "mispelled" domain names. All single words are used up. All three and four and most five letter acronyms are gone. Double-word combinations are getting there. Common words with i or my are few and far between.
A friend tried to get a.org domain for an open-source project, only to find some company squatting on it, and offering to sell it for $3K. Shouldn't be legal. Names are a finite public resource and, when, no longer needed or abandoned, should be returned to the pool to be reregistered and reused.
"...have even forbidden my 11 year old son to buy CD's and instead come to me if he wants a song. I pick it up with what ever the current download method is. The draconian ways in which the media industry is treating your customers is also rubbing off on their artists. I consider any young band that signs up with a large label as bad and stupid as the record company they go with."
Of course, many new bands are signing up with indie labels that function more as cooperatives than "old school" labels and ensure that they get a signficant portion, if not the lions share, of the profits from singles and album sales. Glad you're training your kid that it's okay to rip them off too.
Slashdot Mirror
"You know, iTunes..."
In the scenario you mention, people might notice a difference... but last I saw, you downloaded stuff using your computer, and used the iTunes software to move things back and forth, just like any other ipod.
And it also has WiFi.
Actually, if you RTFA you'll see that Microsoft is blaming many of the problems not on the users, but on the software developers. If an application is triggering a lot of UAC events then that application is probably doing something wrong (like writting registry keys to the wrong branch) and the offending code need to be rewritten.
If/when enough developers do so, they'll remove one of the major constraints against running as an ordinary user and not as an administrator.
"Unfortunately, it's listed as EDGE, and not 3G. Santa Barbara goes to 3G in June, so the iPhone becomes somewhat obsolete..."
Can you still check your email, and faster than using, say, a crackberry? Still send text messages? Still check movie showtimes on Google?
For Pete's sake, it's not like you're going to run a torrent server on the thing.
Both you and Balmer are 100% correct. The iPhone will be a failure. You do not want one. Tell all your friends they don't want one either.
(Of course, keep in mind that I'll do anything to shorten the lines come June... ) (grin)
Be sure to post "recent" photos on which users can vote, otherwise people will vote on the entire pool, including photos left there three years ago.
Google has paid advertising, and people still try to game the natural search system. Adding paid placement to digg means that some people will buy placement... and everyone else will still try to game the system.
Actually, I read somewhere that about a quarter of all of the artists on iTMS were independent, or signed with "independent" labels that handle negotiations with Apple for them.
Buy a Dell desktop-replacement notebook. It's weighs as much as a tank too...
If you'd have RTFA you would have seen that they covered this point pretty well. But if you want to do it on a per-category basis that will cut our meeting a lot shorter, as WM only stocks about 40,000 different types of items.
"NOTHING about the individual case; we're just plain hard to predict..."
Don't care. While the individual case can't be modeled the group case can be. Plus a WM can price a DVD at one price in LA and another in SF, seen the trend, reverse it next week, see what happens then and adjust the price in all of the stores accordingly. Do variations of the above for 1,900 stores nationwide. See what happens when you advertise price A vs. price B and seel how many are sold. Do variations of the above for 1,900 stores nationwide. Compare against the entire history of every DVD you've ever sold. Correlate against box-office receipts. Find out that I'll sell more copies at $14.95 and make 5% more than if I sell each copy at $14.99.
Do the same thing for 140,000 other products. Rinse. Repeat.
"people do indeed communicate and discuss the prices / merits of their purchases"
Indeed. When was the last time you and your friends discussed the fact that baked beans are $1.23 at store A and $1.25 at store B, while the dial soap was $1.45 vs $1.42?
"Stores that do this well find that they can reduce the number of SKUs they stock and make even more by only stocking the items with the highest markup / fastest turnover."
They're smarter than that. By your logic my grocery store would only sell sugar water. They don't. And they understand long-tail economics and price elasticity and loss-leaders much, much better than you do.
"Nobody likes to be manipulated."
True. However, if you're selling your house or car (and all other things equal) you probably want the most money you can get for it. If you're on the other side, you want that house or car for the fewest number of your hard earned dollars as possible. Your employer would probably like to get the same work done for less, you, OTOH, would like to do the same work for more money, benefits, vacation days, whatever.
Some people will pay more for convenience, others will drive ten miles out of their way for bargins. Some people think Apples are more than worth the price, while others think that anyone who buys anything other than the cheapest beige box on the shelf is nuts. Horrses for courses.
As long as all of these variables are in play prices will be adjusted and raised and lowered and fought over... and in some cases, manipulated.
Yeah, let's have a stockholders meeting for WalMart. We can sit down and determine the price for each one of the 142,000 items a SuperCenter stocks.
The next big step is video. Real-time rendering and support systems to make cutting your own home movie (or business product demo) as easy as it is now to do an iPhoto album. As-fast-as-you-can-transfer-it down-rezzing of movies and TV shows to your iphone or ipod. Multi-way video conferencing aka iChat. Video is a ton-and-a-half a data, and an 8-core Mac Pro still can't do everything it needs to do in real time.
Besides, I'm not going to be happy until we Star Trek voice recognition and "secretary-level" AI. "Computer, contact Bill and see if he's free for lunch. If so, ask if the Robin at 11:30 is good."
"Yes Michael. Also, you wanted me to remind you about getting a present for Jenny's birthday. Would you like to see what I've found?"
"They completely fail to mention that the vast majority of applications running on those processors don't even use the 4 available scheduling resources in each core."
Yes, but that's primarily because most of those resources are specialized. One or two of those are integer paths, one's a branch system, another is floating point, and so on. If the current code block doesn't include any of those specialized instructions, then those particular execution paths sit there unused.
How about a nice game of chess?
Check out Zoomracks, which presented information as filecards, but for all but the frontmost card only showed the first line in a tabbed arrangement.
From my perspective Fitts' law worked well when the screen size was 9". In today's world of multiple monitors and 30" screens (and even multiple 30" screens), I'd have to say the premise is outdated, as that menu bar is often a long ways away from the currently active window.
Further, while hitting the menu may be faster when it's on the edge, once you've done so you now need to travel the same distance back to your work area, which ISN'T on an edge.
All in all, I'd say today's interfaces need in-place, contextual application menus. Personally, I'd modify the system so the very first item in any right-click popup menu is a flyout containing the main application menus. Make it an option if need be, but I think it would make multiple/large screens easier to use.
I'd also automatically clone the menubar on any multiple monitor setup.
There's a difference between precision and accuracy. I can say that there's definitely a 99.984723% chance the sun will not come up tomorrow, a statement that's precise but not accurate.
"... it's endemic with most of the distros today. Eye candy wins out over usability and reliability."
Like Vista?
(Come on modders, that bashed both ways at once! Should be worth extra credit.) (grin)
At any rate, I'm sure that the first service pack for Feisty will be out soon...
Of course, if they don't support RealID, what happens, say, when you fly to New York on business and now try to fly back?
And now, my young Padawan learner, what happens to the hull after it's stopped enough of them???
"I want to watch Die Hard as an example of how to take over a building with a small special ops team?"
Tip: Never keep all of your detonators in one place.
You're not debating with the fanatics who're producing the material. You're presenting your counter-claims and viewpoints to the OTHER people who might be listening to them.
Besides, where is the line drawn? When you allow the government to "censor films and literature deemed by the government to be supportive of terrorism", does that mean the DVDs used as an example? Or does that also include any news story that mentions any weaknesses in any industry, port, airline, or in safety procedues? Any news story critical of the military or armed forces? Any book or website that in any way, discusses anything that conceivably (or inconceivably) could be used as a weapon?
Is disagreeing with your government's stance on terrorism "supportive of terrorism"?
Is all of our news subject to redaction by official goverment goons?
Sorry, but censorship is not "appropriate".
Make 'em $1,000 each. That will cut down on speculators and at the same time clear out a bunch of people who use the .com domain space for purposes other than which it was intended. (Your family home page should NOT be a .com address.)
No leasing, no tasting, and price a .com domain somewhere from $100 to $1,000 a year to register and maintain. No automated renewals. Registrants need to have a valid address and email address, and be validated similar to what occurs when you try to get a SSL certificate.
.org domain for an open-source project, only to find some company squatting on it, and offering to sell it for $3K. Shouldn't be legal. Names are a finite public resource and, when, no longer needed or abandoned, should be returned to the pool to be reregistered and reused.
And no squating. If you sitting on that domain name primarily to offer it for sale then it returns to the pool. No parking. No ad/link farms. If you have address.com and you went out of business then you went out of business. Sorry.
This is why we have Flickr, and Digg, and all of those other "mispelled" domain names. All single words are used up. All three and four and most five letter acronyms are gone. Double-word combinations are getting there. Common words with i or my are few and far between.
A friend tried to get a
"...have even forbidden my 11 year old son to buy CD's and instead come to me if he wants a song. I pick it up with what ever the current download method is. The draconian ways in which the media industry is treating your customers is also rubbing off on their artists. I consider any young band that signs up with a large label as bad and stupid as the record company they go with."
Of course, many new bands are signing up with indie labels that function more as cooperatives than "old school" labels and ensure that they get a signficant portion, if not the lions share, of the profits from singles and album sales. Glad you're training your kid that it's okay to rip them off too.