Well, even if I had 100 albums (i don't, I have less, you don't need tons of music when your music is good) i could still easily listen to that many songs. I have a 30 minute trip to work, so that's an hour a day. Which ends up being an hour a day. That's 12, 5 minute songs. Which over 5 days is 60 songs. Plus maybe an hour each night, is another 84 songs. Bringing it up to 144 songs. Mind you, i'm not really listening, listening, but it's on in the background, and i'm hearing it. Unless you mean i "Only" listen to one song from each album each week. To which I say "at least" one song from every album "at least" once each week.
On the other hand, a lot of businesses like to look at the bottom line. If using exchange server costs you $5000 for server and server software, plus $50,000 a year for a sysadmin, plus $100 a seat for outlook, then the offsite, no admin, no server, no software $50 per seat solution starts to look really nice. It starts to look even nicer if it's $0 per seat.
The difference is, is that you're paying salesforce.com, and there's probably some kind of confidentiality agreement that goes along with it. The free services on the other hand seem to have lots of issues that I wouldn't want to get involved with.
It's really hard to compare the price of DVDs and CDs. On one hand, I listen to at least 1 song from each of my cd's at least once a week, some albums I listen to every week. So I get a lot out of them. DVDs on the other hand, I may watch once a month (for movies anyway), and often only once or twice a year. Some movies i've bought and only watched once or twice, but since it's cheaper than renting it 3 times, I've decided to buy it. So, although music is much cheaper for them to produce, it's worth a lot more to me, and yet they still charge less than DVDs. DVDs aren't really that expensive considering how much you pay for a theatre ticket, or how much you pay to rent them.
While netflix may have been the first to implement it, or patent it, I can assure you they weren't the first ones to think of it. I thought of it when DVDs first came out, way before netflix was popular. I'm sure lots of others thought of it too. It's not that hard of an idea to come up with.
However, I used to use Zip.ca (canadian netflix) but ended up quitting because movies that they said they send out didn't end up in my mail box. Mind you they never held me responsible, or made me pay for the movie, but it often took over 3 weeks for them to clear up that spot in my account. Also, in their terms of service, it said they could hold me responsible and charge me for a movie which got lost in the mail or "stolen" as they call it. I quit because they refused to admit that sometimes movies just get lost in the mail, or put in the wrong mail box. Now I just use a small local movie rental shop that rents out 3 movies for $5 for 5 days. Mind you that's just on older movies, but I couldn't get new releases on zip.ca anyway. I had to wait at least a couple of months. New releases are $5 at the place I rent them. But at least I don't have to worry about getting charged for a movie that was never in my possession.
I know that there's a lot of people who want to run out and buy the Wii. However, there's a lot of people who think it's just too weird. Your GF can't wait to get one. My GF on the other hand, thinks it's kind of stupid. She had enough trouble getting used to analog sticks, and still has tons of trouble playing anything that's in 3D. No Mario Sunshine for her. Too disorienting. She'd rather have sidescrollers and overhead games like bomberman (The original, Or multiplayer on Bomberman Generations). As much as there is a following, there's a lot of people who won't buy it simply because it's weird, and don't want to have to relearn another controller. However, if it's a easy to use as they have been saying, and can let people try it out, then I think the Wii will be very successful. The biggest trick will be getting people to try it out. Most of the demo units from other consoles (XBox, PS2, GC, and XBox 360) that are in stores are usually turned off, as retailers don't want teenagers using their store as a free arcade.
Does anybody else think it's funny that movie rental stores sell DVDR's, by the spindle? It's almost as funny as selling CDR's at the music store, except that if you're going to copy the CD for a friend, you'd probably just rip it to MP3. However, with DVDs, due to the amount of storage required, and the fact that you want to watch them on TV, most people just burn them to a DVDR. Isn't it kind of odd that they would sell a product that allows you to illegally copy their product? Could a rental store get in trouble for giving out a free 25 spindle with every 25th movie you rent?
However Windows XP was release on October 25, 2001, which means it's coming up on it's 5th birthday. Windows 2000 on the other hand, was released on December 12, 1999. So it's under 2 years older than Windows XP. I definitely see a problem here, especially because iTunes runs on Windows 2000 (SP4). If i was somebody who bought windows 2000, i'd be very much not wanting to upgrade to XP, which is pretty much the same operating system with a flashy skin, and hogs more resources.
The dual core and 256 MB of video RAM does seem a little steep. I currently watch lots of quicktime trailers at 1080p, and haven't noticed any dropped frames with an AMD 3200+ and an ATI x550 (128 mb). I don't even see how dual core would come into it. I highly doubt that the number of cores will make a difference if you're just running a single process to display the video.
It really depends on the shoe. My sandals smell much more than my shoes, yet, there is lots of room for the sweat to evaporate. However, I wear socks with my shoes, so the shoes don't absorb the sweat, the socks do, and the socks get washed. So, what really makes your feet stink is not cleaning them, or something that is in contact with them for days or weeks on end. Try going barefoot for a couple weeks, without taking a shower or washing your feet, and let me know how good they smell.
Which reminds me. Every time I walk in to MusicWorld, it seems like half the store is dedicated to DVDs. Granted some of those are music video DVDs, so it's still over 50% music, but it's not really just music anymore.
This is going to be the biggest problem with movie downloads. If you can't burn them to DVD and watch them on your home theatre, or at least download a DVD quality movie, then I seriously doubt that people will be willing to pay full price (or even close to it) for the movies. If they made the movies $2, but they were 320x240, and you could only watch them on your computer, then that would be fine. It would be great to check out movies that I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy. Later if I wanted the movie, I would buy a physical copy. However, paying full price for something that takes 5 hours to download, and won't play on my home theatre is just stupid.
I highly doubt that most American, or people even could compute a square root without a calculator. I don't even think they teach that stuff in school anymore.
But do you hook up you dvd player to the HDMI port? or the new HD-DVD player you will be buying in a year. Or maybe you will get digital cable with HDMI support and hook that up. Or how about hooking up your PS3 to that HDMI port. Or maybe you could switch back and forth for every device you want to have hooked up. The thing is, is that although your tv may have HDMI, it probably only has 1 port. Which of the 4 devices that could be using it do you hook up to HDMI. It's the same way it was back when TVs only shipped with a single RCA connector. Most people decided to leave their VCR and game system hooked up over Coax, and hook up the new dvd player to the single RCA connection.
I don't think that online lossless downloads will take off anymore than DVD quality video downloads. The problem is, is that high speed is only as cheap as it is, because 90% of the people on it only use 3% of the available capacity. If everybody on high speed internet started downloading a 300 MB CD (losslessly compressed) everyday, or downloading a 4.7 GB DVD every week, then would either quickly see our bandwidth go out the window, with all the extra traffic, or see the internet providers start charging twice as much in order to keep the demand in check with supply.
It might depend on what you consider spam. I get email from nintendo about upcoming products, that I signed up for because I want to get it. Mind you, somebody who registered their GC and didn't read everything, may be getting the messages without really realizing that they signed up for them. They may also not be savvy enough to look for an unsubscribe link. For ther person who's getting this email, and doesn't want to, they see it as spam. For me, it's perfectly legitimate mail.
Lisa: But you have recruiting ads on TV. Why do you need subliminal messages?
Smash: It's a three-pronged attack. Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal.
Lisa: Superliminal?
Smash: I'll show you. [opens the window, and shouts at Lenny and Carl, who are standing on the corner] Hey, you! Join the Navy!
Carl: Uh, yeah, all right.
Lenny: I'm in.
What's really interesting is that when I was on prepaid cell phone service, I didn't have to pay for the system access fee. Mind you, they charged me 33 cents a minute, but I didn't pay it. 6.95 gets you 21 minutes at the rate they were charging. If you are a casual cell phone user and don't make long calls, only calls when necessary, you might be better off with prepaid cell service. However, this was about 3 years ago. I'm current on a plan, which ends up costing me $50 a month.
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It's not "Why didn't I think of that", it's "I thought of that years ago". There is a difference.
Well, even if I had 100 albums (i don't, I have less, you don't need tons of music when your music is good) i could still easily listen to that many songs. I have a 30 minute trip to work, so that's an hour a day. Which ends up being an hour a day. That's 12, 5 minute songs. Which over 5 days is 60 songs. Plus maybe an hour each night, is another 84 songs. Bringing it up to 144 songs. Mind you, i'm not really listening, listening, but it's on in the background, and i'm hearing it. Unless you mean i "Only" listen to one song from each album each week. To which I say "at least" one song from every album "at least" once each week.
On the other hand, a lot of businesses like to look at the bottom line. If using exchange server costs you $5000 for server and server software, plus $50,000 a year for a sysadmin, plus $100 a seat for outlook, then the offsite, no admin, no server, no software $50 per seat solution starts to look really nice. It starts to look even nicer if it's $0 per seat.
The difference is, is that you're paying salesforce.com, and there's probably some kind of confidentiality agreement that goes along with it. The free services on the other hand seem to have lots of issues that I wouldn't want to get involved with.
It's really hard to compare the price of DVDs and CDs. On one hand, I listen to at least 1 song from each of my cd's at least once a week, some albums I listen to every week. So I get a lot out of them. DVDs on the other hand, I may watch once a month (for movies anyway), and often only once or twice a year. Some movies i've bought and only watched once or twice, but since it's cheaper than renting it 3 times, I've decided to buy it. So, although music is much cheaper for them to produce, it's worth a lot more to me, and yet they still charge less than DVDs. DVDs aren't really that expensive considering how much you pay for a theatre ticket, or how much you pay to rent them.
While netflix may have been the first to implement it, or patent it, I can assure you they weren't the first ones to think of it. I thought of it when DVDs first came out, way before netflix was popular. I'm sure lots of others thought of it too. It's not that hard of an idea to come up with.
However, I used to use Zip.ca (canadian netflix) but ended up quitting because movies that they said they send out didn't end up in my mail box. Mind you they never held me responsible, or made me pay for the movie, but it often took over 3 weeks for them to clear up that spot in my account. Also, in their terms of service, it said they could hold me responsible and charge me for a movie which got lost in the mail or "stolen" as they call it. I quit because they refused to admit that sometimes movies just get lost in the mail, or put in the wrong mail box. Now I just use a small local movie rental shop that rents out 3 movies for $5 for 5 days. Mind you that's just on older movies, but I couldn't get new releases on zip.ca anyway. I had to wait at least a couple of months. New releases are $5 at the place I rent them. But at least I don't have to worry about getting charged for a movie that was never in my possession.
I know that there's a lot of people who want to run out and buy the Wii. However, there's a lot of people who think it's just too weird. Your GF can't wait to get one. My GF on the other hand, thinks it's kind of stupid. She had enough trouble getting used to analog sticks, and still has tons of trouble playing anything that's in 3D. No Mario Sunshine for her. Too disorienting. She'd rather have sidescrollers and overhead games like bomberman (The original, Or multiplayer on Bomberman Generations). As much as there is a following, there's a lot of people who won't buy it simply because it's weird, and don't want to have to relearn another controller. However, if it's a easy to use as they have been saying, and can let people try it out, then I think the Wii will be very successful. The biggest trick will be getting people to try it out. Most of the demo units from other consoles (XBox, PS2, GC, and XBox 360) that are in stores are usually turned off, as retailers don't want teenagers using their store as a free arcade.
Does anybody else think it's funny that movie rental stores sell DVDR's, by the spindle? It's almost as funny as selling CDR's at the music store, except that if you're going to copy the CD for a friend, you'd probably just rip it to MP3. However, with DVDs, due to the amount of storage required, and the fact that you want to watch them on TV, most people just burn them to a DVDR. Isn't it kind of odd that they would sell a product that allows you to illegally copy their product? Could a rental store get in trouble for giving out a free 25 spindle with every 25th movie you rent?
However Windows XP was release on October 25, 2001, which means it's coming up on it's 5th birthday. Windows 2000 on the other hand, was released on December 12, 1999. So it's under 2 years older than Windows XP. I definitely see a problem here, especially because iTunes runs on Windows 2000 (SP4). If i was somebody who bought windows 2000, i'd be very much not wanting to upgrade to XP, which is pretty much the same operating system with a flashy skin, and hogs more resources.
Of course Linux supports DRM. And right in the kernel no less. :P
The dual core and 256 MB of video RAM does seem a little steep. I currently watch lots of quicktime trailers at 1080p, and haven't noticed any dropped frames with an AMD 3200+ and an ATI x550 (128 mb). I don't even see how dual core would come into it. I highly doubt that the number of cores will make a difference if you're just running a single process to display the video.
Is anybody really willing to pay $59.99 for duckhunt? I don't care how good the graphics are.
Since when is Opera open source?
It really depends on the shoe. My sandals smell much more than my shoes, yet, there is lots of room for the sweat to evaporate. However, I wear socks with my shoes, so the shoes don't absorb the sweat, the socks do, and the socks get washed. So, what really makes your feet stink is not cleaning them, or something that is in contact with them for days or weeks on end. Try going barefoot for a couple weeks, without taking a shower or washing your feet, and let me know how good they smell.
Which reminds me. Every time I walk in to MusicWorld, it seems like half the store is dedicated to DVDs. Granted some of those are music video DVDs, so it's still over 50% music, but it's not really just music anymore.
This is going to be the biggest problem with movie downloads. If you can't burn them to DVD and watch them on your home theatre, or at least download a DVD quality movie, then I seriously doubt that people will be willing to pay full price (or even close to it) for the movies. If they made the movies $2, but they were 320x240, and you could only watch them on your computer, then that would be fine. It would be great to check out movies that I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy. Later if I wanted the movie, I would buy a physical copy. However, paying full price for something that takes 5 hours to download, and won't play on my home theatre is just stupid.
Although, when you're playing games like Go it might be a good idea to have more intellingent AI, so that computers can beat the mediocre players.
I highly doubt that most American, or people even could compute a square root without a calculator. I don't even think they teach that stuff in school anymore.
But do you hook up you dvd player to the HDMI port? or the new HD-DVD player you will be buying in a year. Or maybe you will get digital cable with HDMI support and hook that up. Or how about hooking up your PS3 to that HDMI port. Or maybe you could switch back and forth for every device you want to have hooked up. The thing is, is that although your tv may have HDMI, it probably only has 1 port. Which of the 4 devices that could be using it do you hook up to HDMI. It's the same way it was back when TVs only shipped with a single RCA connector. Most people decided to leave their VCR and game system hooked up over Coax, and hook up the new dvd player to the single RCA connection.
I don't think that online lossless downloads will take off anymore than DVD quality video downloads. The problem is, is that high speed is only as cheap as it is, because 90% of the people on it only use 3% of the available capacity. If everybody on high speed internet started downloading a 300 MB CD (losslessly compressed) everyday, or downloading a 4.7 GB DVD every week, then would either quickly see our bandwidth go out the window, with all the extra traffic, or see the internet providers start charging twice as much in order to keep the demand in check with supply.
It might depend on what you consider spam. I get email from nintendo about upcoming products, that I signed up for because I want to get it. Mind you, somebody who registered their GC and didn't read everything, may be getting the messages without really realizing that they signed up for them. They may also not be savvy enough to look for an unsubscribe link. For ther person who's getting this email, and doesn't want to, they see it as spam. For me, it's perfectly legitimate mail.
Lisa: But you have recruiting ads on TV. Why do you need subliminal messages?
Smash: It's a three-pronged attack. Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal.
Lisa: Superliminal?
Smash: I'll show you. [opens the window, and shouts at Lenny and Carl, who are standing on the corner] Hey, you! Join the Navy! Carl: Uh, yeah, all right.
Lenny: I'm in.
Does this remind anybody else of ColdFusion? (the language)
What's really interesting is that when I was on prepaid cell phone service, I didn't have to pay for the system access fee. Mind you, they charged me 33 cents a minute, but I didn't pay it. 6.95 gets you 21 minutes at the rate they were charging. If you are a casual cell phone user and don't make long calls, only calls when necessary, you might be better off with prepaid cell service. However, this was about 3 years ago. I'm current on a plan, which ends up costing me $50 a month.