The Zune has no more DRM than does the iPod*, and you guys orgasm over the very mention of the word "iPod". Hypocrisy at its finest.
* Save your breath regarding the Zune DRM'ing wifi-shared tracks, since iPod doesn't have wifi-sharing to begin with. And if MS didn't DRM wifi-shared tracks, it's be open season for pirates, and you guys *know* that. That would be death to the subscription model (Zune's store supports both purchases and subscriptions).
Re:Microsoft is thrilled by this news
on
Zune DRM Cracked
·
· Score: 1
Actually, it might even increase sales, which all goes to show how DRM isn't good for hardware sales.
So you pirated the software and expect Microsoft to give a damn about your complaints? You're not even a legit customer. Your complaints carry zero weight.
Unless of course your Office 2007 trial edition has expired and won't save documents anymore. (At that point your documents are somewhat 'trapped'. And that's what the article is warning against.)
Bullshit. You can simply install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, which will allow you to use older versions of office to load/save OOXML files. So you can use the older version of Office to load any OOXML files you saved with the Office 2007 trial and save them in the old binary format.
Slashdot loses more and more credibility every day with this nonsense.
Don't get me wrong, I think programmers should get paid for their work if they want and they're certainly free to charge whatever they want, but how much are we paying of "polish?"
Well, in the case of iPhone, "polish" is about $400. iPhones feature set is comparable to a $200 device (more or less), but peopla are paying $600 for it in droves due to the polish. "Polish" is why people pay to use photoshop rather than using GIMP for free. It's why people pay to use MS Office 2k7 rather than use OO.o for free. Etc, etc, etc...
Exactly. And the fact that Microsoft has continued to be allowed to bundle a web browser should be evidence enough of that. But too many slashdotters are living in a world of make-believe and/or groklaw.
I listent to the MSFT conference call regarding this. They indidcated that for the first year or so, the defect rate wasn't that high, but really increased in recent months as units that were over a year old began failing. This increased the need for fixes, but more importantly, gave them a larger data set with which to work with to try to find reasons for the problem. They say they've identified numerous causes for the problem and have made fixes to address those, so that units manufactured from now on should be much more reliable.
You're missing out on some great stuff if you only indulge in individual songs over complete albums. Go listen to Abbey Road, which some consider the best Beatles album. It has three great singles, but much of the other songs consist of what you'd consider to be insignificant filler garbage (things like Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, etc), and there's no way those songs would ever be released in a world without albums as they are unable to stand on their own. But when taken together and listened to in one sitting it's almost like you're listening to an opera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Road_(album)
You really want a world without even the possibility of such albums? Who cares if some albums are garbage sans one song? Do we eliminate all albums, even the great ones, to achieve a world where every song must be "hit" material in order to be released? We did have a world like that before the rise of the album, when the likes of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anderews Sisters, Nat King Cole thrived. And they did put out great individual songs. But the album is the higher form of art; some use it to achieve greatness that wouldn't be possible within the confining limits of the "single", while others use it to peddle actual filler. The existence of great albums are worth the existence filler albums, IMO.
But what do you define as "filler"? Simply stuff that wasn't "good" enough to be released as a single? There are many many songs that wouldn't "stand on their own" because they don't fit the "single" criteria (i.e. immediate mass appeal) but are great songs nonetheless.
And even so-called "filler" - I've bought albums that had songs that I initially dismissed as filler, but over time grew to like them more than the singles themselves. Your scenario eliminates such songs and such possibilities. Eliminating formulaic crap is one thing, eliminating any and all songs that wouldn't stand on their own as singles is going way too far.
Extending the warranty is great, but how about actually fixing the problem? Supposedly the problem is that the heat isn't disipated properly, which leads to internal parts being warped (ever so slightly), which severs/loosens connections. It's time to fix the damn problem! Move to 65nm chips (which I hear produce less heat). I really want an Xbox360, but I don't have time to put up with a broken unit, even with a 3-year warranty. Fix the problem, get the defect rate down to ~5%, and I'm in!:)
I'll be very sad to see albums go away and we are left with a bunch of singles. Albums are like a complete work, singles are merely chapters. Would anyone really prefer a world without albums like Sgt. Pepper, What's Goin' On, It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Electric LadyLand, Dark Side of The Moon, Kind of Blue, Purple Rain, etc, to be replaced by a bunch of singles?
Besides that, I've found that if a single prompts me to listen to the corresponding album, I grow to like the entire album (I know many here say that albums only have one or two good songs, and then filler garbage, but I've not found that to be the case at all; no album that I've ever bought has been like that).
I really don't understand those that celebrate the demise of albums.
WMF/EMF is a well-known format. WINE fully implements it (even the bugs!).
And there are plenty of converters to other formats. For example, for years, Apple used their version of WMF, the PICT format, and many apps over the years contain code to faithfully convert between the two. And there are third-party libraries that do such conversions. There's nothing wrong with WMF/EMF.
Reading your list, XP already does all of that except for (10 - downloading games info for the Games Explorer) and (7 - Network Activity Icon (and while XP doesn't do this, my DSL modem does, so no biggie)).
This is nothing but yet another example of slashdot FUD/groupthink.
Since when did Google start doing other party's PR for pay? What, did a Googleite's 20% project evolve into a PR division for hire? Or is doing 3rd-party PR one of a Googleite PhD's bright idea? Seems strange.
Your definition of "wrong methodology" is "any methodology that shows MS in good light". Here's the real deal: In the 90's your battle cry against windows was "stability". That is largely no longer an issue since Win9x was retired. Since then, your battle cry became "security", and you're fighting tooth and nail to preserve that. Slowly but surely, MS is improving in that regard; you guys don't want to admit it, are scared to death of the possibility, and indeed, don't want MS software to be secure at all. Because then your only battle cry will be "Free!! (as in beer)", which you know won't impress the public much.
At least be honest about YOUR motivations regarding MS security claims/reality.
Let's be honest here. No matter what study was produced using no matter what methodology, if it showed that Microsoft was improving you guys would rush to debunk the study or dig up some site that does the debunking for you. RMS himself could declare that Microsoft was improving security, and you guys would rip him to shreds. The point of the OP of this subthread is that the debunking report is just as biased as the MS report, and I've seen zero evidence that that isn't the case. I'll go further: the comments to this entire thread are 100x more biased than the MS reports. It's not like you guys are being objective with your analyses either, so get off your high horse.
If many people are analysing code, you will find more bugs. If you don't review your code (or for example, don't have peer review - which closed and open source often lacks.) Then no bugs at all will be discovered.
Agreed. A better follow-up study would be to present users with four sets of results, two of which are clearly inferior by any objective measure*, label the inferior results with "Google" and "Yahoo" and see if the users still pick "Google" and/or "Yahoo" as being the best.
* "clearly inferior by any objective measure" doesn't mean that the results are horrible, just clearly inferior. (Although one could also do a study where the results are indeed horrible, lable the horrible with "Google" and see what the users pick as the best.)
My guess is that he's running them in too hot an environment. Maybe due to poor ventilation/air-flow. Xbox 360's are sadly less tolerant of enclosed spaces, hot rooms, etc.
"Next time some blogger makes a fuss about not being treated like "real" journalists just point them to the Cringley/McKraken articles."
What for? As an example of what is NOT a "jourlanlist"? (I refer to Cringley). It's not like Cringley is a "journalist" either. His "article" read like it was written by a nine-year old.
I guess it means you have no problem with a company literally slogging through your data, mining it for info so as to target ads and do who knows what else with it.
Which is why MySpace sucks, actually. When visiting a page, you never know how much utter garbage will be downloaded before the page is finished loading.:(
Maybe he didn't mention "Do no evil" because when he got to Google he saw that it's an empty slogan used for bullshit PR. Make your slogan, "Do no evil", and not only to you proclaim your own self-righteousness, but you imply that all of your competitors ARE evil. Wow, soo clever. Must've taken 50 of Google's 1000 PhDs to come up with that one.
Show me someone that constantly says, "I'm not a racist", and I'll show you a racist. Show me someone that constantly says, "I'm not evil",...
Slashdot Mirror
The Zune has no more DRM than does the iPod*, and you guys orgasm over the very mention of the word "iPod". Hypocrisy at its finest.
* Save your breath regarding the Zune DRM'ing wifi-shared tracks, since iPod doesn't have wifi-sharing to begin with. And if MS didn't DRM wifi-shared tracks, it's be open season for pirates, and you guys *know* that. That would be death to the subscription model (Zune's store supports both purchases and subscriptions).
iPod says, "Hi".
So you pirated the software and expect Microsoft to give a damn about your complaints? You're not even a legit customer. Your complaints carry zero weight.
Unless of course your Office 2007 trial edition has expired and won't save documents anymore. (At that point your documents are somewhat 'trapped'. And that's what the article is warning against.)
Bullshit. You can simply install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, which will allow you to use older versions of office to load/save OOXML files. So you can use the older version of Office to load any OOXML files you saved with the Office 2007 trial and save them in the old binary format.
Slashdot loses more and more credibility every day with this nonsense.
You do realize that we're talking about the relatively small software shop known as Stardock, right?
Well, in the case of iPhone, "polish" is about $400. iPhones feature set is comparable to a $200 device (more or less), but peopla are paying $600 for it in droves due to the polish. "Polish" is why people pay to use photoshop rather than using GIMP for free. It's why people pay to use MS Office 2k7 rather than use OO.o for free. Etc, etc, etc...
Exactly.
And the fact that Microsoft has continued to be allowed to bundle a web browser should be evidence enough of that. But too many slashdotters are living in a world of make-believe and/or groklaw.
I listent to the MSFT conference call regarding this. They indidcated that for the first year or so, the defect rate wasn't that high, but really increased in recent months as units that were over a year old began failing. This increased the need for fixes, but more importantly, gave them a larger data set with which to work with to try to find reasons for the problem. They say they've identified numerous causes for the problem and have made fixes to address those, so that units manufactured from now on should be much more reliable.
:)
Peter Moore's Open Letter says the same thing (but with less detail).
I'll wait until Sept. If it looks like newer units are more reliable, then I'll make the jump, because the game library is too good to be ignored.
You're missing out on some great stuff if you only indulge in individual songs over complete albums. Go listen to Abbey Road, which some consider the best Beatles album. It has three great singles, but much of the other songs consist of what you'd consider to be insignificant filler garbage (things like Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, etc), and there's no way those songs would ever be released in a world without albums as they are unable to stand on their own. But when taken together and listened to in one sitting it's almost like you're listening to an opera.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Road_(album)
You really want a world without even the possibility of such albums? Who cares if some albums are garbage sans one song? Do we eliminate all albums, even the great ones, to achieve a world where every song must be "hit" material in order to be released? We did have a world like that before the rise of the album, when the likes of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anderews Sisters, Nat King Cole thrived. And they did put out great individual songs. But the album is the higher form of art; some use it to achieve greatness that wouldn't be possible within the confining limits of the "single", while others use it to peddle actual filler. The existence of great albums are worth the existence filler albums, IMO.
But what do you define as "filler"? Simply stuff that wasn't "good" enough to be released as a single? There are many many songs that wouldn't "stand on their own" because they don't fit the "single" criteria (i.e. immediate mass appeal) but are great songs nonetheless.
And even so-called "filler" - I've bought albums that had songs that I initially dismissed as filler, but over time grew to like them more than the singles themselves. Your scenario eliminates such songs and such possibilities. Eliminating formulaic crap is one thing, eliminating any and all songs that wouldn't stand on their own as singles is going way too far.
Extending the warranty is great, but how about actually fixing the problem? :)
Supposedly the problem is that the heat isn't disipated properly, which leads to internal parts being warped (ever so slightly), which severs/loosens connections. It's time to fix the damn problem! Move to 65nm chips (which I hear produce less heat). I really want an Xbox360, but I don't have time to put up with a broken unit, even with a 3-year warranty. Fix the problem, get the defect rate down to ~5%, and I'm in!
I'll be very sad to see albums go away and we are left with a bunch of singles. Albums are like a complete work, singles are merely chapters. Would anyone really prefer a world without albums like Sgt. Pepper, What's Goin' On, It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Electric LadyLand, Dark Side of The Moon, Kind of Blue, Purple Rain, etc, to be replaced by a bunch of singles?
Besides that, I've found that if a single prompts me to listen to the corresponding album, I grow to like the entire album (I know many here say that albums only have one or two good songs, and then filler garbage, but I've not found that to be the case at all; no album that I've ever bought has been like that).
I really don't understand those that celebrate the demise of albums.
WMF/EMF is a well-known format. WINE fully implements it (even the bugs!).
And there are plenty of converters to other formats. For example, for years, Apple used their version of WMF, the PICT format, and many apps over the years contain code to faithfully convert between the two. And there are third-party libraries that do such conversions. There's nothing wrong with WMF/EMF.
Reading your list, XP already does all of that except for (10 - downloading games info for the Games Explorer) and (7 - Network Activity Icon (and while XP doesn't do this, my DSL modem does, so no biggie)).
This is nothing but yet another example of slashdot FUD/groupthink.
Since when did Google start doing other party's PR for pay? What, did a Googleite's 20% project evolve into a PR division for hire? Or is doing 3rd-party PR one of a Googleite PhD's bright idea? Seems strange.
Your definition of "wrong methodology" is "any methodology that shows MS in good light".
Here's the real deal: In the 90's your battle cry against windows was "stability". That is largely no longer an issue since Win9x was retired. Since then, your battle cry became "security", and you're fighting tooth and nail to preserve that. Slowly but surely, MS is improving in that regard; you guys don't want to admit it, are scared to death of the possibility, and indeed, don't want MS software to be secure at all. Because then your only battle cry will be "Free!! (as in beer)", which you know won't impress the public much.
At least be honest about YOUR motivations regarding MS security claims/reality.
Oh please.
Let's be honest here. No matter what study was produced using no matter what methodology, if it showed that Microsoft was improving you guys would rush to debunk the study or dig up some site that does the debunking for you. RMS himself could declare that Microsoft was improving security, and you guys would rip him to shreds. The point of the OP of this subthread is that the debunking report is just as biased as the MS report, and I've seen zero evidence that that isn't the case. I'll go further: the comments to this entire thread are 100x more biased than the MS reports. It's not like you guys are being objective with your analyses either, so get off your high horse.
Fixed that for you.
Agreed.
A better follow-up study would be to present users with four sets of results, two of which are clearly inferior by any objective measure*, label the inferior results with "Google" and "Yahoo" and see if the users still pick "Google" and/or "Yahoo" as being the best.
* "clearly inferior by any objective measure" doesn't mean that the results are horrible, just clearly inferior. (Although one could also do a study where the results are indeed horrible, lable the horrible with "Google" and see what the users pick as the best.)
My guess is that he's running them in too hot an environment. Maybe due to poor ventilation/air-flow.
Xbox 360's are sadly less tolerant of enclosed spaces, hot rooms, etc.
"Next time some blogger makes a fuss about not being treated like "real" journalists just point them to the Cringley/McKraken articles."
What for? As an example of what is NOT a "jourlanlist"? (I refer to Cringley). It's not like Cringley is a "journalist" either. His "article" read like it was written by a nine-year old.
I guess it means you have no problem with a company literally slogging through your data, mining it for info so as to target ads and do who knows what else with it.
Which is why MySpace sucks, actually. When visiting a page, you never know how much utter garbage will be downloaded before the page is finished loading. :(
"I have learned that Microsoft almost always has a financial motive or incentive behind its actions."
OMG, how old are you, twelve?
You think your hero Google doesn't have finantial motives for its actions? Do you still believe in Santa too?
Wow. Welcome to the real world, pal.
Maybe he didn't mention "Do no evil" because when he got to Google he saw that it's an empty slogan used for bullshit PR.
...
Make your slogan, "Do no evil", and not only to you proclaim your own self-righteousness, but you imply that all of your competitors ARE evil. Wow, soo clever. Must've taken 50 of Google's 1000 PhDs to come up with that one.
Show me someone that constantly says, "I'm not a racist", and I'll show you a racist.
Show me someone that constantly says, "I'm not evil",