sudo apt-get install build-essentials. go eat some turkey and have some fun with the womenly background and in just a few minutes you should have a perfectly viable build system.
Your quote proves they aren't confused, but that you are the one confused.
"lacks Exchange support" does not equate to "lacks Exchange-like business utility support". Exchange is a well established office management software (and mail utility) with a built in client/server protocol that allows multiple users of Exchange to collaborate and share information.
Whereas GNOME's Evolution is simply an email client, contact manager, calendaring software. This means it doesn't communicate with Exchange (data server Exchange, not client Exchange). Now, whether or not this should be considered a flaw, this is something it cannot do, and thus, is a drawback of the product as seen by ZDNet. I believe Novel actually has a piece of software they purchased a while back that allows Evolution to communicate with Exchange, but even so, it's probably years behind Exchange itself, which may be another drawback of having it.
To be honest, I don't believe there is an opensource drop in replacement for Exchange yet. Again, I'm not sure that this is a bad thing and that people simply need to kick the habit (I don't believe the integration does anything for my productivity, as I've learned through my palm pilot over the years), but this is assuredly something the Open Source world lacks.
I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, and I hate to sound like a troll, but. When you have to write an article about why your operating system matters, you've kind of set yourself up as looking like you don't matter at all, and are simply trying to advertise.
Slackware to me has always been a niche distro; to those people who really love Linux, the people who want to control every aspect of their machines, fine tune things, etc. The Gentoo of years past.
These days, we're starting to see distros like ye olde Slackware and Debian go the way of the pasture because there are so many projects now which have taken the original spirit of the older operating system, and have grown it. Take Ubuntu as an example; Ubuntu is everything that's good about Debian, and then some. And while Debian continues to exist and produce, it's slowly growing towards the irrelevant as stability and security is considered over practicality and the availability of new software.
This is also where Gentoo excels; it takes the original ideas of Slackware, but gives them a centralized way of downloading, compiling and installing the software packages. Add this with a lot of polish and you see why Slackware is slipping into irrelevance as well.
While Linux is all about choice, more people are making the right choices and going with newer distros simply because they are getting better, faster, and have more communities available to help them. And as more distros hop on a more standardized layout and functionality, I believe Linux is getting closer to being an accepted operating system.
Ogg Vorbis, Png, and Odt benefit everyone, even the people who have never used any of these three formats. Ogg Vorbis benefits everyone because it stops Thomson from taking any legal action against the free Lame mp3 encoder and XMMS mp3 playback library; Thomson knows that if they have their lawyers even look at the Lame web page, the entire Open Source community will perform a mass exodus to the Ogg format.
I believe you put too much faith in Ogg. There are too many other devices that are not Ogg compatible that will prohibit it from ever getting much deeper into the market than it is now. Also, with people in the Industry moving towards AAC as the next generation fires up, I see even less presence for Ogg.
Secondly, Thomson knows better than to approach LAME. LAME isn't a corporation; there isn't one entity to sue. There are hundreds, if not thousands. It would be analogous to trying to sue Linux; sure, you can sue every single developer who ever worked on a certain part of the Kernel, but you've wasted so much resources just investigating who all contributed that by the time you've sued everyone involved and realized that most of the coders are just making enough to scrape by, not to mention the negative press weighed on your company for suing so many individuals.. it's an all around losing situation.
The MP3 format is now an agnostic format. As much as Thomson would like to collect on LAME, it's simply not possible to do in an economically feasable way. Better to just keep collecting from those who will pay, and keep doing good science that lets things like Mpeg Layer III come into existance.
Nah, this is very much a pre-emptive move. Not enough users have flocked to OO.o to make a true dent in Office sales, but with Massachutes chiming in, a state that tends to be on the leading edge when it comes to technology, they definitely don't want to give OO.o any impetus to keep their ball rolling.
Opening their format is no-change move for them; it costs nothing to open it, and it makes them look better to mass media, governments and schools. They also can retain patents over the format, thus effectively shutting out whoever they want in the process. Just because something is an "open" standard, doesn't mean it's free to use.
Lastly, OO.o has the functionality needed to beat Microsoft, but it's missing a lot in usability and a whole lot more in performance. I wish someone would grab up the OASIS spec and design a whole new office package around it.. something like what Apple is doing with their new office suite. Good luck with getting the ball rolling on that project though. The Halo effect of a few Open Source projects tends to make people forget that there is a whole lot of other, lower quality software out there that needs a lot of work.
I think the real question here is "What is a speed grade". Not that I don't believe you, it just tends that when people start making up terms they don't really have any clue of what's going on, and a benchmark tool isn't going to really help you there.
It's not a bad idea to benchmark your machine as soon as you build it, but at the same time it's often a waste; most people aren't in need of every scrap of performance their computer will put out. "Oh but that one frame per second while gaming is critical"; unless your machine's running at 2 frames a second now, I don't think you're going to notice too much of a difference.
They don't use the same components, but damned if they aren't similar. It's very possible that both systems get updated, though, as Apple starts with the bottom consumer line and moves their way up. It makes more sense to do it this way as they can gauge user reaction to the change quicker to the "iPod generation", whereas keeping the Pro generation a little behind will give them more time to assure there are no major catastrophies lurking ahead with FCP and their new market buster Aperture.
I fully expect the iBook and Mac mini to be first, then the iMac (this area seems a bit lacking; perhaps a new mid-level Mac to compete better with Dell?), then the PowerBook and PowerMac to finish out the transition by Mid-06.
Truthfully, I'm not sure Adobe will ever be ready. They've made their opinion quite clear as of recent that they couldn't care less about the direction Apple is moving, so I dunno if they're even going to waste their time becoming ready. Though, a good chunk of their money anymore comes from Photoshop, I wouldn't be surprised to see them pulling some wine-variation and just making the Windows version run on Mac (if they care that much).
Apple has also made their position quite clear that they don't care which direction Adobe is going, and if Adobe stops making tools for their systems, they'll simply pick up the pieces and start off in their own direction (Note: Final Cut Pro, Aperture [though not a direct competitor, I'm sure it peaked a few eyebrows over at Adobe], etc).
Intel-"Ready": All binaries (libraries, applications, frameworks, drivers, kernel) are set up to run on either PPC or Intel archtectures.
This means the software is "Intel-Ready", just as your computer might come "Internet-ready"; it has all the software installed and configured for any number of different internet connections, but it is up to you to choose which one to use.
The only issue I see is dust-busting the system to remove all the cruft you don't need; Fat binaries are a waste of space if you're not flipping back and forth between archetechures, so the sooner someone comes out with a fat-binary stripper, the better.
"enough". Apple's been silently distrubiting updates as fat-binaries. It's very likely you won't notice, or even care for that matter, but I'm sure in a few [weeks/months/years] someone will have a binary stripper to remove the unnessicary part of the Universal Binary.
I think Apple just gave mid summer as an estimate to give the developers of 3rd party applications more time, as well as themselves if they needed it. Now they've figured out that the developers were quick to transition, everyone's bitting at the chops, and delaying it any longer seems to be a bad idea. Can't wait to get my hands on one.
Give it time. Remember, graphics co-processors entered the game quite a bit after their general processing counterparts.
Just as desktop CPUs are leaving the era of High heat, High power, balls to the wall performance busting, GPUs are entering it. I'm sure when people start to realize their 1GHz graphics card has a cooler bigger than their old P4s solid 400g piece of aluminum and a fan louder than a trainwreck the industry will come to its senses.
And maybe, just maybe I can get a nice, quiet, low power, high performance box.
LN2 isn't really a cheat; it's pretty accessible through common channels, and even commercial nitrogen cooling is available. Also, if you do a quick Google, you can find screenshots of a 7GHz nitrogen cooled P4. Kinda validates the platform, even if they couldn't ship it due to power constraints.
GPUs on the otherhand aren't anywhere near overclockable so this is quite the hack.
You are fucking retarded. eBay is basically playing Bank with Verisign Payment Processing / PayPal. They don't give a damn where the money comes from, and to a lesser degree, where it goes. They just process the payments and take their cut in the profits. It really isn't as big a deal as you make it sound like; there are a million other banks out there who do this exact same thing. Just because you own the bank doesn't mean you control the purchases that the company banking with you makes. But good attempt at a troll.
They'd be retarded. First of all, the root domain ".com" doesn't matter that much; anyone who's got a big-name.com has bought rights to it for years and years to come, and if another country tried to distrupt them, those companies would go bonkers on that country.
Secondly, Other countries already have their version of ".com", though many believe that we should follow their lead as well (.co.uk,.co.fr; why not replace.com with.co.us?).
Who the hell modded this up? Ebay bought a very, very small part of Verisign, the part that did payment processing. No big deal. Verisign still controlls the.com,.net root servers, and that's all this article is about. Period.
Your post also indicates that you are a highly technical individual in a job that requires you to be in almost constant contact with technology. People like you and I are not general consumers; we tend to be gadget freaks and will buy the newest gadget just because it's cool, new, etc.
On the other hand, iPods are sold to everyone. Anyone can pick up an iPod, figure out its interface in a number of minutes (if it takes that long), and be well on their way to using the device. With a PDA, you pick it up, and you start playing with the applications. "Okay, these apps are great, but I don't see anything that I can't live without, or that would replace my current system."
So while I'm glad your iPaq is good for you (and it's funny; all 3 people who've responded to me have had iPaqs), I'm willing to bet if you handed it over to your mother she'd smile, and it'd be relegated to a desk drawer to live out the rest of its life.
Because they're mainly features to sell the device.
Picture messaging is gimmicky, but some people actually find it useful. And since it's still a telephony/communications tool, it makes sense to embed it into a cellphone. Video games, never understood it myself, but some people enjoy playing the games on the diminutive screen, in waiting rooms, elevators, etc. Text messaging; again, it's very inline with what a cellphone's intended purpose is to be - to help people communicate while on the move. Instead of having to communicate verbally, you can write the message and send it, thus avoiding distburbing classes, and talking about subjects you otherwise wouldn't be able to verbally.
I think the matra should be "The Spirit of the Device". What is the devices intended purpose? How can we make that purpose better, how can we expand upon the product with similar purposes to broaden its use for people who otherwise wouldn't buy our product? (on that note; I've seen deaf people use cellphones. Text Messaging is a definite boon). In the case of a PDA, the spirit just isn't there; a PDA is a catchall device. In a lot of minds, "a solution looking for a problem". If you can find a use for it, you'd buy it, but many simply can't find a use for it. Hell, I recieved a PDA as a re-gift from a friend; "I can't figure out how to use and even if I did I doubt I'd be able to find a use for it".
PDAs might be cool toys, they do a lot that a PC can do, and you can carry it in your pocket. Pretty cool eh? But when it comes down to it, what does the device actually do? Hard to define; it can do calendars, it can do media playback, it can do telephony, it can do internet-related tasks. But on the overall, it's a very obscure device.
With the iPod, it's pretty clear what it does. It plays music. Now, it does do other things; it can watch movies, it can view pictures, it can broadcast music on an FM frequency, it can offload pictures from your digital camera, it can record class notes, it can keep your address book, notes, song lyrics. But these things are bonuses; the iPod's intention is to be the best damned music player on the market, and it nails that motive.
Now, don't think I hate PDAs; I love palm, I own a Treo 600 and a Palm m130 personally, but I almost never use them anymore. I have found that I'm distracted by a device that does too much, and isn't particularly good at anything that it's supposed to do. When I'm writing notes, I find a pencil and a piece of paper faster. When I'm trying to make a call, the Treo is ackward to hold and often lacks reception compared to my Nokia. And when I'm trying to browse forums, I find the screen's resolution prohibitive and just go and find a dumb terminal somewhere.
Give the PDA something to do, and you'll see people who need it to do that purpose, buy it. Instead of bundling everything and the kitchen sink, give it a very simple task, and expand upon the device in a way that's non-destructive to the device's original intent.
Even if you dropped the price to $0.10/song, online music sales are more profittable. Why? Because 1) you don't have to distribute media, 2) you don't have to have the infrastructure to generate that media, 3) you don't have to have the infrastructure to transport that media, and lastly, 4) every song distributed after the bandwidth cost, server maintainance, etc. is factored in, is pure profit. With a digital model, you can spend a few million a year keeping your servers running (bandwidth, power, etc), and eliminate that fixed cost of having to burn a disk to distribute. Also, since users are only buying the songs they want, they're happier, and more likely to come back to you to buy again.
The want for the rise of the cost of a single song is mainly to do with Apple. Apple's profits have skyrocketed, mainly as iPod sales have given the company a leg to stand on again. Since the iPod is only a music player (heh), the music companies want a slice of the profits made on it, and they'll give a reason like "the iPod promotes piracy with its massive harddrive sizes". Whether or not its true, they're using it to try to manipulate Apple.
Digitally distributed music is also less expensive to buy and own than traditional optical music. In my CD collection, my songs have an average of 12 songs (rounded up). 12 *.99 = $11.88, which is cheaper than the $13-20 dollars they'll try to extort from you at Best Buy. Of course, some will argue "well you have to back up digitally purchased songs, so you have to factor in that cost"; well, you should be backing up your media anyways, so you should add that cost to both the CD from the store and the CD online.
In just about every way, digital media makes sense. Of course, people will still want the real deal, and that's good for them, they can keep paying the RIAA's overinflated prices. Me, I'll stick with iTunes.
If you want an iPod to play music, buy a shuffle. If you want a little more space, and perhaps care to look at photos, or need to offload your digital camera while on the road, buy a Nano. If you want to listen to music, perhaps need to offload pictures and look at pictures, and have the occasional want to watch music videos, the news from last night, or a TV show you might have missed in a series, buy a full-sized iPod.
iPods play music. That's their mission and reason for existing. But, by adding on other features that are common to the wants of users and generally related to music (the only images I've ever viewed on my iPod, for example, are album art), or audio in general now that the iPod has a built in voice recorder, which is almost entirely overlooked by people who are looking at buying the new iPod.
Apple is LOSING MY MONEY because of content resolution.
They are? I was unaware it cost them anything to start selling video content. I was under the impression that the studios that are selling the content are profit sharing, and thus, Apple and Disney/Pixar/(random music video production company) are actually making money, even if they aren't living up to your content resolution standard (as if they really care).
Hell, most music videos are a total moneypit; they're advertisements for CDs and usually have no real worth as content outside of that. That's why channels like MTV usually polute them with all kinds of advertising gore (including the saddest turn around time on commercials I've ever seen; watch two music vidoes, go to 5 minutes of commercials). They used to be giving them away, for free, in iTunesMS, but someone wised up and saw it a great way to get money and help launch a video platform for a content revolution.
If you want a high-res version, go buy a DVD. If you want a medium resolution copy, sold at an absurdly low cost ($2 bucks for a TV show? Hell, start selling Law and Order and you've got a loyal customer in me), buy it. They're not "losing" any money, simply not recouping all of the possible money from the venture, but you know, when you branch out in the business world, you don't want to devote your entire infrastructure to a product and cross your fingers and hope it works. You test the market, and this is exactly what Apple is doing.
Keep in mind Apple has a lot of legal water to wade through here, they've got Holywood to talk to, they've got everything stacked against them, and yet, you think they're going to sell their product at a loss?? Please.
The Remote is a disappointment. It's basically a Shuffle with a menu button. Doesn't have the touch-sensitive wheel that makes navigating through long lists of songs such a pleasure. Of course, I haven't tried it with Front Row yet, but I'm not really looking forward to it due to the clunkiness of the design.
I hope you were drunk when you posted this, though being it's 4pm here, that'd be not such a good thing. What is a remote's #1 function? To control things, remotely. This remote successfully clears that barrier, and it looks good to boot. By not being a television set, it didn't need to include a scroll wheel to scroll through channels, or number buttons to get direct access to a channel. Instead, it's elegant, simple, and doesn't require a brain surgeon to program and use the thing. For once, a company stops trying to create a universal remote.
The only disappointing thing for me is its size. If it were smaller, I could put it on my keychain and turn off and on my computer and movies as I'm coming in from work. But, then again, this would go against a lot of things Apple stands for, and I can understand why they didn't go this route (especially people driving cars that already have keychain dongles, garage door dongles, flashlights, and whatever other keyhooks they might have).
A remote control doesn't need a touch sensitive wheel; that's un-nessicary cost, especially for a default menu that has 4 options, for DVDs that usually have 4 option menus, etc.
I find it hilarious personally. Symantec has done everything in their power to discredit the Apple Macintosh platform (even though it still releases products for it), banking on Microsoft's popularity, and now, Microsoft turns their back on Symantec and starts with their own internal virus protection (simply because their operating system is over-ran by viruses and they truely need it).
Now that Symantec's business is challenged, NOW they come out whining and crying that Microsoft is playing bully, when really Microsoft's just trying to save what's left of their shambled reputation. Symantec really should have seen it coming.
I think this should fall under the "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" category, personally. Whoever wins, I'll be happy.
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sudo apt-get install build-essentials. go eat some turkey and have some fun with the womenly background and in just a few minutes you should have a perfectly viable build system.
Your quote proves they aren't confused, but that you are the one confused.
"lacks Exchange support" does not equate to "lacks Exchange-like business utility support". Exchange is a well established office management software (and mail utility) with a built in client/server protocol that allows multiple users of Exchange to collaborate and share information.
Whereas GNOME's Evolution is simply an email client, contact manager, calendaring software. This means it doesn't communicate with Exchange (data server Exchange, not client Exchange). Now, whether or not this should be considered a flaw, this is something it cannot do, and thus, is a drawback of the product as seen by ZDNet. I believe Novel actually has a piece of software they purchased a while back that allows Evolution to communicate with Exchange, but even so, it's probably years behind Exchange itself, which may be another drawback of having it.
To be honest, I don't believe there is an opensource drop in replacement for Exchange yet. Again, I'm not sure that this is a bad thing and that people simply need to kick the habit (I don't believe the integration does anything for my productivity, as I've learned through my palm pilot over the years), but this is assuredly something the Open Source world lacks.
I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, and I hate to sound like a troll, but. When you have to write an article about why your operating system matters, you've kind of set yourself up as looking like you don't matter at all, and are simply trying to advertise.
Slackware to me has always been a niche distro; to those people who really love Linux, the people who want to control every aspect of their machines, fine tune things, etc. The Gentoo of years past.
These days, we're starting to see distros like ye olde Slackware and Debian go the way of the pasture because there are so many projects now which have taken the original spirit of the older operating system, and have grown it. Take Ubuntu as an example; Ubuntu is everything that's good about Debian, and then some. And while Debian continues to exist and produce, it's slowly growing towards the irrelevant as stability and security is considered over practicality and the availability of new software.
This is also where Gentoo excels; it takes the original ideas of Slackware, but gives them a centralized way of downloading, compiling and installing the software packages. Add this with a lot of polish and you see why Slackware is slipping into irrelevance as well.
While Linux is all about choice, more people are making the right choices and going with newer distros simply because they are getting better, faster, and have more communities available to help them. And as more distros hop on a more standardized layout and functionality, I believe Linux is getting closer to being an accepted operating system.
Ogg Vorbis, Png, and Odt benefit everyone, even the people who have never used any of these three formats. Ogg Vorbis benefits everyone because it stops Thomson from taking any legal action against the free Lame mp3 encoder and XMMS mp3 playback library; Thomson knows that if they have their lawyers even look at the Lame web page, the entire Open Source community will perform a mass exodus to the Ogg format.
I believe you put too much faith in Ogg. There are too many other devices that are not Ogg compatible that will prohibit it from ever getting much deeper into the market than it is now. Also, with people in the Industry moving towards AAC as the next generation fires up, I see even less presence for Ogg.
Secondly, Thomson knows better than to approach LAME. LAME isn't a corporation; there isn't one entity to sue. There are hundreds, if not thousands. It would be analogous to trying to sue Linux; sure, you can sue every single developer who ever worked on a certain part of the Kernel, but you've wasted so much resources just investigating who all contributed that by the time you've sued everyone involved and realized that most of the coders are just making enough to scrape by, not to mention the negative press weighed on your company for suing so many individuals.. it's an all around losing situation.
The MP3 format is now an agnostic format. As much as Thomson would like to collect on LAME, it's simply not possible to do in an economically feasable way. Better to just keep collecting from those who will pay, and keep doing good science that lets things like Mpeg Layer III come into existance.
Nah, this is very much a pre-emptive move. Not enough users have flocked to OO.o to make a true dent in Office sales, but with Massachutes chiming in, a state that tends to be on the leading edge when it comes to technology, they definitely don't want to give OO.o any impetus to keep their ball rolling.
Opening their format is no-change move for them; it costs nothing to open it, and it makes them look better to mass media, governments and schools. They also can retain patents over the format, thus effectively shutting out whoever they want in the process. Just because something is an "open" standard, doesn't mean it's free to use.
Lastly, OO.o has the functionality needed to beat Microsoft, but it's missing a lot in usability and a whole lot more in performance. I wish someone would grab up the OASIS spec and design a whole new office package around it.. something like what Apple is doing with their new office suite. Good luck with getting the ball rolling on that project though. The Halo effect of a few Open Source projects tends to make people forget that there is a whole lot of other, lower quality software out there that needs a lot of work.
I think the real question here is "What is a speed grade". Not that I don't believe you, it just tends that when people start making up terms they don't really have any clue of what's going on, and a benchmark tool isn't going to really help you there.
It's not a bad idea to benchmark your machine as soon as you build it, but at the same time it's often a waste; most people aren't in need of every scrap of performance their computer will put out. "Oh but that one frame per second while gaming is critical"; unless your machine's running at 2 frames a second now, I don't think you're going to notice too much of a difference.
Ahh the youth of the computer generation.
They don't use the same components, but damned if they aren't similar. It's very possible that both systems get updated, though, as Apple starts with the bottom consumer line and moves their way up. It makes more sense to do it this way as they can gauge user reaction to the change quicker to the "iPod generation", whereas keeping the Pro generation a little behind will give them more time to assure there are no major catastrophies lurking ahead with FCP and their new market buster Aperture.
I fully expect the iBook and Mac mini to be first, then the iMac (this area seems a bit lacking; perhaps a new mid-level Mac to compete better with Dell?), then the PowerBook and PowerMac to finish out the transition by Mid-06.
Truthfully, I'm not sure Adobe will ever be ready. They've made their opinion quite clear as of recent that they couldn't care less about the direction Apple is moving, so I dunno if they're even going to waste their time becoming ready. Though, a good chunk of their money anymore comes from Photoshop, I wouldn't be surprised to see them pulling some wine-variation and just making the Windows version run on Mac (if they care that much).
Apple has also made their position quite clear that they don't care which direction Adobe is going, and if Adobe stops making tools for their systems, they'll simply pick up the pieces and start off in their own direction (Note: Final Cut Pro, Aperture [though not a direct competitor, I'm sure it peaked a few eyebrows over at Adobe], etc).
Intel-"Ready": All binaries (libraries, applications, frameworks, drivers, kernel) are set up to run on either PPC or Intel archtectures.
This means the software is "Intel-Ready", just as your computer might come "Internet-ready"; it has all the software installed and configured for any number of different internet connections, but it is up to you to choose which one to use.
The only issue I see is dust-busting the system to remove all the cruft you don't need; Fat binaries are a waste of space if you're not flipping back and forth between archetechures, so the sooner someone comes out with a fat-binary stripper, the better.
"enough". Apple's been silently distrubiting updates as fat-binaries. It's very likely you won't notice, or even care for that matter, but I'm sure in a few [weeks/months/years] someone will have a binary stripper to remove the unnessicary part of the Universal Binary.
I think Apple just gave mid summer as an estimate to give the developers of 3rd party applications more time, as well as themselves if they needed it. Now they've figured out that the developers were quick to transition, everyone's bitting at the chops, and delaying it any longer seems to be a bad idea. Can't wait to get my hands on one.
hmm funny, the last step is Acceptance. Too bad it seems Microsoft skipped the "bargaining" step.
Give it time. Remember, graphics co-processors entered the game quite a bit after their general processing counterparts.
Just as desktop CPUs are leaving the era of High heat, High power, balls to the wall performance busting, GPUs are entering it. I'm sure when people start to realize their 1GHz graphics card has a cooler bigger than their old P4s solid 400g piece of aluminum and a fan louder than a trainwreck the industry will come to its senses.
And maybe, just maybe I can get a nice, quiet, low power, high performance box.
LN2 isn't really a cheat; it's pretty accessible through common channels, and even commercial nitrogen cooling is available. Also, if you do a quick Google, you can find screenshots of a 7GHz nitrogen cooled P4. Kinda validates the platform, even if they couldn't ship it due to power constraints.
GPUs on the otherhand aren't anywhere near overclockable so this is quite the hack.
You are fucking retarded. eBay is basically playing Bank with Verisign Payment Processing / PayPal. They don't give a damn where the money comes from, and to a lesser degree, where it goes. They just process the payments and take their cut in the profits. It really isn't as big a deal as you make it sound like; there are a million other banks out there who do this exact same thing. Just because you own the bank doesn't mean you control the purchases that the company banking with you makes. But good attempt at a troll.
They'd be retarded. First of all, the root domain ".com" doesn't matter that much; anyone who's got a big-name .com has bought rights to it for years and years to come, and if another country tried to distrupt them, those companies would go bonkers on that country.
.co.fr; why not replace .com with .co.us?).
Secondly, Other countries already have their version of ".com", though many believe that we should follow their lead as well (.co.uk,
Who the hell modded this up? Ebay bought a very, very small part of Verisign, the part that did payment processing. No big deal. Verisign still controlls the .com, .net root servers, and that's all this article is about. Period.
Article goes on about NEXT >>
Showing off his awesome NEXT >>
Mini ITX NEXT >>
Computer NEXT >>
Your post also indicates that you are a highly technical individual in a job that requires you to be in almost constant contact with technology. People like you and I are not general consumers; we tend to be gadget freaks and will buy the newest gadget just because it's cool, new, etc.
On the other hand, iPods are sold to everyone. Anyone can pick up an iPod, figure out its interface in a number of minutes (if it takes that long), and be well on their way to using the device. With a PDA, you pick it up, and you start playing with the applications. "Okay, these apps are great, but I don't see anything that I can't live without, or that would replace my current system."
So while I'm glad your iPaq is good for you (and it's funny; all 3 people who've responded to me have had iPaqs), I'm willing to bet if you handed it over to your mother she'd smile, and it'd be relegated to a desk drawer to live out the rest of its life.
Because they're mainly features to sell the device.
Picture messaging is gimmicky, but some people actually find it useful. And since it's still a telephony/communications tool, it makes sense to embed it into a cellphone. Video games, never understood it myself, but some people enjoy playing the games on the diminutive screen, in waiting rooms, elevators, etc. Text messaging; again, it's very inline with what a cellphone's intended purpose is to be - to help people communicate while on the move. Instead of having to communicate verbally, you can write the message and send it, thus avoiding distburbing classes, and talking about subjects you otherwise wouldn't be able to verbally.
I think the matra should be "The Spirit of the Device". What is the devices intended purpose? How can we make that purpose better, how can we expand upon the product with similar purposes to broaden its use for people who otherwise wouldn't buy our product? (on that note; I've seen deaf people use cellphones. Text Messaging is a definite boon). In the case of a PDA, the spirit just isn't there; a PDA is a catchall device. In a lot of minds, "a solution looking for a problem". If you can find a use for it, you'd buy it, but many simply can't find a use for it. Hell, I recieved a PDA as a re-gift from a friend; "I can't figure out how to use and even if I did I doubt I'd be able to find a use for it".
Device Flexibility: bingo.
PDAs might be cool toys, they do a lot that a PC can do, and you can carry it in your pocket. Pretty cool eh? But when it comes down to it, what does the device actually do? Hard to define; it can do calendars, it can do media playback, it can do telephony, it can do internet-related tasks. But on the overall, it's a very obscure device.
With the iPod, it's pretty clear what it does. It plays music. Now, it does do other things; it can watch movies, it can view pictures, it can broadcast music on an FM frequency, it can offload pictures from your digital camera, it can record class notes, it can keep your address book, notes, song lyrics. But these things are bonuses; the iPod's intention is to be the best damned music player on the market, and it nails that motive.
Now, don't think I hate PDAs; I love palm, I own a Treo 600 and a Palm m130 personally, but I almost never use them anymore. I have found that I'm distracted by a device that does too much, and isn't particularly good at anything that it's supposed to do. When I'm writing notes, I find a pencil and a piece of paper faster. When I'm trying to make a call, the Treo is ackward to hold and often lacks reception compared to my Nokia. And when I'm trying to browse forums, I find the screen's resolution prohibitive and just go and find a dumb terminal somewhere.
Give the PDA something to do, and you'll see people who need it to do that purpose, buy it. Instead of bundling everything and the kitchen sink, give it a very simple task, and expand upon the device in a way that's non-destructive to the device's original intent.
Even if you dropped the price to $0.10/song, online music sales are more profittable. Why? Because 1) you don't have to distribute media, 2) you don't have to have the infrastructure to generate that media, 3) you don't have to have the infrastructure to transport that media, and lastly, 4) every song distributed after the bandwidth cost, server maintainance, etc. is factored in, is pure profit. With a digital model, you can spend a few million a year keeping your servers running (bandwidth, power, etc), and eliminate that fixed cost of having to burn a disk to distribute. Also, since users are only buying the songs they want, they're happier, and more likely to come back to you to buy again.
.99 = $11.88, which is cheaper than the $13-20 dollars they'll try to extort from you at Best Buy. Of course, some will argue "well you have to back up digitally purchased songs, so you have to factor in that cost"; well, you should be backing up your media anyways, so you should add that cost to both the CD from the store and the CD online.
The want for the rise of the cost of a single song is mainly to do with Apple. Apple's profits have skyrocketed, mainly as iPod sales have given the company a leg to stand on again. Since the iPod is only a music player (heh), the music companies want a slice of the profits made on it, and they'll give a reason like "the iPod promotes piracy with its massive harddrive sizes". Whether or not its true, they're using it to try to manipulate Apple.
Digitally distributed music is also less expensive to buy and own than traditional optical music. In my CD collection, my songs have an average of 12 songs (rounded up). 12 *
In just about every way, digital media makes sense. Of course, people will still want the real deal, and that's good for them, they can keep paying the RIAA's overinflated prices. Me, I'll stick with iTunes.
If you want an iPod to play music, buy a shuffle. If you want a little more space, and perhaps care to look at photos, or need to offload your digital camera while on the road, buy a Nano. If you want to listen to music, perhaps need to offload pictures and look at pictures, and have the occasional want to watch music videos, the news from last night, or a TV show you might have missed in a series, buy a full-sized iPod.
iPods play music. That's their mission and reason for existing. But, by adding on other features that are common to the wants of users and generally related to music (the only images I've ever viewed on my iPod, for example, are album art), or audio in general now that the iPod has a built in voice recorder, which is almost entirely overlooked by people who are looking at buying the new iPod.
Apple is LOSING MY MONEY because of content resolution.
They are? I was unaware it cost them anything to start selling video content. I was under the impression that the studios that are selling the content are profit sharing, and thus, Apple and Disney/Pixar/(random music video production company) are actually making money, even if they aren't living up to your content resolution standard (as if they really care).
Hell, most music videos are a total moneypit; they're advertisements for CDs and usually have no real worth as content outside of that. That's why channels like MTV usually polute them with all kinds of advertising gore (including the saddest turn around time on commercials I've ever seen; watch two music vidoes, go to 5 minutes of commercials). They used to be giving them away, for free, in iTunesMS, but someone wised up and saw it a great way to get money and help launch a video platform for a content revolution.
If you want a high-res version, go buy a DVD. If you want a medium resolution copy, sold at an absurdly low cost ($2 bucks for a TV show? Hell, start selling Law and Order and you've got a loyal customer in me), buy it. They're not "losing" any money, simply not recouping all of the possible money from the venture, but you know, when you branch out in the business world, you don't want to devote your entire infrastructure to a product and cross your fingers and hope it works. You test the market, and this is exactly what Apple is doing.
Keep in mind Apple has a lot of legal water to wade through here, they've got Holywood to talk to, they've got everything stacked against them, and yet, you think they're going to sell their product at a loss?? Please.
The Remote is a disappointment. It's basically a Shuffle with a menu button. Doesn't have the touch-sensitive wheel that makes navigating through long lists of songs such a pleasure. Of course, I haven't tried it with Front Row yet, but I'm not really looking forward to it due to the clunkiness of the design.
I hope you were drunk when you posted this, though being it's 4pm here, that'd be not such a good thing. What is a remote's #1 function? To control things, remotely. This remote successfully clears that barrier, and it looks good to boot. By not being a television set, it didn't need to include a scroll wheel to scroll through channels, or number buttons to get direct access to a channel. Instead, it's elegant, simple, and doesn't require a brain surgeon to program and use the thing. For once, a company stops trying to create a universal remote.
The only disappointing thing for me is its size. If it were smaller, I could put it on my keychain and turn off and on my computer and movies as I'm coming in from work. But, then again, this would go against a lot of things Apple stands for, and I can understand why they didn't go this route (especially people driving cars that already have keychain dongles, garage door dongles, flashlights, and whatever other keyhooks they might have).
A remote control doesn't need a touch sensitive wheel; that's un-nessicary cost, especially for a default menu that has 4 options, for DVDs that usually have 4 option menus, etc.
I find it hilarious personally. Symantec has done everything in their power to discredit the Apple Macintosh platform (even though it still releases products for it), banking on Microsoft's popularity, and now, Microsoft turns their back on Symantec and starts with their own internal virus protection (simply because their operating system is over-ran by viruses and they truely need it).
Now that Symantec's business is challenged, NOW they come out whining and crying that Microsoft is playing bully, when really Microsoft's just trying to save what's left of their shambled reputation. Symantec really should have seen it coming.
I think this should fall under the "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" category, personally. Whoever wins, I'll be happy.