Out of interest, do you know that it is coprright infringement which has affected your income? Could the continual rise and maturity of FOSS in the past 5 years also have affected the purchasing of licenses for your software? Has a 'big name' come in and marketed a competing product?
It sounds as though this might be an issue of causation vs. correlation. Unfortunately it's probably impossible for you to know all of the possible causes and the actual change they created, so it's very hard to tell whether you lost $400,000 to infringement or whether you lost $50,000 to infringement and $350,000 to free software.
The prefix 'sub' simply means 'below' or 'less than'. It's not a quantifiable value AFAIK - you can call an unsatisfactory piece of work 'substandard' (below the standard you expect) and you can call a $498 laptop a sub-$1000000 laptop if you want, but generally marketers tend to say 'sub $500' to make it sound like a substantial amount less than that price, even when the extra $2 makes no real difference.
The PS3 is going to use Blu-ray for its games, so I'd strongly assume that it'll also play Blu-ray movies but not HD-DVDs. Bear in mind the fact that ~70%* of households with 13-25 year olds have a PS2 and will probably upgrade to a PS3 within a year of release (hell, if it's anything like the PSP it'll bring in more sales than that with 'wow' factor alone - I hate to say it about a DRM encrusted and hideously expensive console, but the PSP is a damn good piece of kit).
You're going to have a huge number of people with a Blu-ray device in their house almost by default wheras HD-DVD, even with the best marketing in the world, requires the person to actually go out and buy a HD-DVD device on its own merits. I honestly don't know which way this will swing - it seems to me that HD-DVD has better marketing potential and more powerful backing, but Blu-ray might just worm its way in unnoticed on the back of the PS3.
*Statistic from the consortium for inventing plausible statistics
Now all I need are stylish speakers (the Apple Pro speakers are not such good quality (I don't like the soundsticks by the way)) and I have a really really nice audio setup that everyone envies.
Have you considered Blueroom Minipod speakers? They aren't cheap, but they can be had brand new for a fair amount under the RRP from eBay suppliers.
As another poster has mentioned, getting the name out there is always good, but another effect is further boosting the credibility of OSS. Even the pointiest-haired of bosses can see that the NY Times is big and respected - "if that's the kind of thing those open-whatever hippies are associated with, maybe theres something in it after all..."
Very true (unfortunately), however getting people onto this base still requires shooting up in a standard rocket/shuttle and will do until the Earth-connected elevator is built. The costs of these launches will demand that anyone being sent justifies their weight with a tangible benefit on the moon, and I'd say lunar mining, space elevator operation and similar tasks require a certain measure of intelligence. Actually flying in current orbital tech requires a fair bit of training too, which should provide a decent idiot filter.
Re:Complacency? Probably not in this case...
on
Firefox News Roundup
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· Score: 1
Interesting point, but if that's their thinking then I believe they misunderstand why tabs are good in a browser but not in an Office suite.
Non-savvy users don't understand the concept of programs (or they don't instinctively think in terms of them, depending on their skill level) they just see 'that letter', 'that budget' and 'that picture' all on their computer in that little bar at the bottom of the screen. Most users, however, can see the difference between 'Website A' and 'Website B' as well as the pages within that website, even if they don't conciously think of it like that. To them it's like the pages within one magazine and the pages within another - they want them all nicely stuck together in volumes, not all in one and not all strewn across the desk. Two sites, with 5 pages on each arrange much better as 2 windows with 5 tabs than as 10 windows all on top of each other.
Word documents open with all the pages in one window, as do PDFs and there are never usability complaints that the pages don't layer up in separate windows. It makes sense to organise the pages from different sites (or even different searches, different subjects etc.) into container windows too.
I'm a Mac user and personally I prefer Firefox overall, and bearing in mind that I love most Apple software that's saying something.
Most things that people would commend about Safari are not features you're missing out on anyway - it's the integration of Safari compared to the lack thereof in Firefox. The most notable things I've seen are the scrolling in Firefox which is jerky and eats processor while Safari gently and smoothly accelerates down the page, and the absolutely excellent autocomplete in Safari compared to which Firefox feels somewhat lacking.
The two browsers are otherwise pretty well matched in terms of features, but to be honest I simply prefer Firefox although I will admit that having always used it on both Windows and Linux I may not have given Safari a fair chance. There appears to be an Aqua-ifying procedure planned for 1.1 which should fix many of the 'unintegration' gripes of Mac users.
To be fair, games average at £30 over here (RRP normally £35 or £40, but the stores have to be competetive) whereas cinema tickets are £3-£6, so Harry Potter may well be more popular really, but few people are going to see it 5 times. Not saying it's better or anything, but the statistics can prove anything.
On a related note, WTF is up with UK game prices? I paid £32.99 inc. delivery for Halo 2 standard edition (it hasn't arrived yet, our launch day is the 11th) but Amazon US has it for $45.95 (£24.74) and I'm sure I could find it for even less with a bit of searching. What's the justification? It's just as bad with PC games too, so it can't be down to the different TV systems.
A simple question to voters of any preference: do you trust the voting machines to A) count your vote correctly and B) resist tampering until the end of day printout?
It just looks to me that with their documented flaws the machines simply cannot be counted on. I'm in the UK, so is the 'close up view' you've got making things look any better than I'm thinking?
Same here, although even stranger is that I get the same behaviour as you when doing a ctrl+click -> 'Open in New Tab', but when using option+click to open in a new tab it goes to Google.
That's a little harsh - the grandparent wasn't saying that Google shouldn't do this, simply that they could have better used their time to make a more useful product since an OS integrated version of the same thing is coming soon.
I'm a Mac user, and on one hand I quite agree that this competition is good for us - Google's program is good and motivates Spotlight to be better, and Dashboard vs Konfabulator promises to force innovation from both sides. OTOH though, Google, Apple and Pixoria are all excellent software makers and if each focused on things that weren't being done by the others it would be an overall gain in the quantity of useful software without much of a quality hit since these people all have a history of doing things well much of the time, competition or none.
I don't really know what the optimum balance would be here, but I don't think that Google have quite hit it - I just feel that they're misdirecting their time on things that are already being done well by Apple, just as Apple are wasting their time on things that are already being done well by Pixoria.
Purely from looking on newegg.com I've just priced up an Athlon 1.3, 128MB, 40GB machine for ~$150. I only chose those components because they were the cheapest in stock; a Duron 800 and a 20GB drive would be quite adequate - do a bit of shopping around and work in bulk discounts and I'm sure it's possible.
I wonder if Griffin would consider starting building keyboards with integrated knobs, alongside or in place of numeric keypads?
Y'know what'd be better - Apple putting the (presumably patented, since we haven't seen it on anyone else's hardware) iPod scroll wheel into a keyboard or even on a standalone USB panel. As several have said, it's more usable than anything else because you can scroll long lists without repeatedly removing your finger. Physically grasping and moving a Griffin Powermate involves reconfiguring the way you're moving your hands and they can't be continuously spun as easily as the iPod wheel.
The Apple mouse continues to live without a scroll wheel though, which is, IMO, a much needed addition (FYI, I was under the opinion that moving from the 5 buttons of my Razer Boomslang to the 1 button Apple mouse would never work, and I've got them both hooked in now - I never use the Razer and the only bit I miss is the scrollwheel. All the other functions can be achieved more quickly with one hand hitting hotkeys on the keyboard as I click). I really miss a useful scrolling tool on my mac, and a nice little touchwheel on the edge of the keyboard would be quick, simple and fluid to use while I'm typing.
Everything on my drive is 128 bit AES encrypted on the fly when I use it - you and your knoppix CD can take your best shot. It's not the fault of the Knoppix people that your data is insecure enough to be read by anyone with a boot disk.
I'd be suprised if they draw a judge with the technical expertise to differentiate between P2P and Client-Server if they were to write up something overturning these ideas.
As an illustration (using a public domain file as an example here): if all Mozilla mirrors were to go down just as Firefox 1.0 final was released, but I managed to get a copy onto eDonkey, I would be running a computer uploading to many people who wanted the file but not downloading from anyone. Am I still transferring peer to peer or am I now classed as a server due to the fact I am a central hub for many people who happen to be accesing my machine through software originally designed as P2P?
I'm sure that in the eyes of the law it would be very difficult to prove the difference between a peer and a server - vague wording seems to be the norm here...
Wasn't there an article yesterday about space-based weapons? There's not nearly so much matter up there, and if they're really thinking ahead it could be intended for combat which is outside the atmosphere, since maintaining an antimatter containment field (and I can't believe I just said 'antimatter containment field in a serious sentence) through reentry is what is generally known as fucking insane.
I present to you the Antimatter Calculator - it actually releases less energy than I would have thought since an entire kilo is slightly less powerful than the most powerful nuke ever detonated (although still a helluva lot of power, ~40 kilotons/gram)
Yes, it's already here in mobile phones and it's already been used to cripple a perfectly good handset's bluetooth stack meaning images can only be sent over the cell network at an extortionate data rate rather than being beamed straight across the gap between two bluetooth phones. I think I'll take my chances on the viruses thanks. BTW, I'm running some nice open source apps on my P900 which I doubt would've been created if they needed signing (maybe why I can get apps for my SE P900 but I never could for my T610) - hell, even Opera Mobile Browser came up with an 'unsigned code' warning when I installed it, but I can click 'install anyway' on the Symbian model and I'm quite happy with that - there's no override on the T610.
I believe that they were referring not to the megapixelage, but to the fact that the CCD is a true 35mm sensor rather than the APS style ones used in most other DSLRs.
I'm in the UK and it's really worrying how few rights we have. There are cameras everywhere, the police have the right to stop and search you if they have a suspicion that you're carrying "controlled drugs, offensive weapon or firearms, a sharp article or carrying stolen goods", if they do arrest you that automatically then gives them the right to search your home without a warrant if they choose and unlike you guys over the pond we can be put away for 5 years just for carrying a defensive weapon. It's worrying the slide that you guys are going down, but we're already half way down too and I'm sure many British slashdotters would agree that something needs to be done about the legal system. The one redeeming factor is that the law is rarely enforced to its full extent - on paper we have very few rights (on the surface at least it looks to be only our drug laws that are more sane than yours) but in practise it's not quite so bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Out of interest, do you know that it is coprright infringement which has affected your income? Could the continual rise and maturity of FOSS in the past 5 years also have affected the purchasing of licenses for your software? Has a 'big name' come in and marketed a competing product?
It sounds as though this might be an issue of causation vs. correlation. Unfortunately it's probably impossible for you to know all of the possible causes and the actual change they created, so it's very hard to tell whether you lost $400,000 to infringement or whether you lost $50,000 to infringement and $350,000 to free software.
The prefix 'sub' simply means 'below' or 'less than'. It's not a quantifiable value AFAIK - you can call an unsatisfactory piece of work 'substandard' (below the standard you expect) and you can call a $498 laptop a sub-$1000000 laptop if you want, but generally marketers tend to say 'sub $500' to make it sound like a substantial amount less than that price, even when the extra $2 makes no real difference.
The PS3 is going to use Blu-ray for its games, so I'd strongly assume that it'll also play Blu-ray movies but not HD-DVDs. Bear in mind the fact that ~70%* of households with 13-25 year olds have a PS2 and will probably upgrade to a PS3 within a year of release (hell, if it's anything like the PSP it'll bring in more sales than that with 'wow' factor alone - I hate to say it about a DRM encrusted and hideously expensive console, but the PSP is a damn good piece of kit).
You're going to have a huge number of people with a Blu-ray device in their house almost by default wheras HD-DVD, even with the best marketing in the world, requires the person to actually go out and buy a HD-DVD device on its own merits. I honestly don't know which way this will swing - it seems to me that HD-DVD has better marketing potential and more powerful backing, but Blu-ray might just worm its way in unnoticed on the back of the PS3.
*Statistic from the consortium for inventing plausible statistics
Now all I need are stylish speakers (the Apple Pro speakers are not such good quality (I don't like the soundsticks by the way)) and I have a really really nice audio setup that everyone envies.
Have you considered Blueroom Minipod speakers? They aren't cheap, but they can be had brand new for a fair amount under the RRP from eBay suppliers.
As another poster has mentioned, getting the name out there is always good, but another effect is further boosting the credibility of OSS. Even the pointiest-haired of bosses can see that the NY Times is big and respected - "if that's the kind of thing those open-whatever hippies are associated with, maybe theres something in it after all..."
Very true (unfortunately), however getting people onto this base still requires shooting up in a standard rocket/shuttle and will do until the Earth-connected elevator is built. The costs of these launches will demand that anyone being sent justifies their weight with a tangible benefit on the moon, and I'd say lunar mining, space elevator operation and similar tasks require a certain measure of intelligence. Actually flying in current orbital tech requires a fair bit of training too, which should provide a decent idiot filter.
Interesting point, but if that's their thinking then I believe they misunderstand why tabs are good in a browser but not in an Office suite.
Non-savvy users don't understand the concept of programs (or they don't instinctively think in terms of them, depending on their skill level) they just see 'that letter', 'that budget' and 'that picture' all on their computer in that little bar at the bottom of the screen. Most users, however, can see the difference between 'Website A' and 'Website B' as well as the pages within that website, even if they don't conciously think of it like that. To them it's like the pages within one magazine and the pages within another - they want them all nicely stuck together in volumes, not all in one and not all strewn across the desk. Two sites, with 5 pages on each arrange much better as 2 windows with 5 tabs than as 10 windows all on top of each other.
Word documents open with all the pages in one window, as do PDFs and there are never usability complaints that the pages don't layer up in separate windows. It makes sense to organise the pages from different sites (or even different searches, different subjects etc.) into container windows too.
I'm a Mac user and personally I prefer Firefox overall, and bearing in mind that I love most Apple software that's saying something.
Most things that people would commend about Safari are not features you're missing out on anyway - it's the integration of Safari compared to the lack thereof in Firefox. The most notable things I've seen are the scrolling in Firefox which is jerky and eats processor while Safari gently and smoothly accelerates down the page, and the absolutely excellent autocomplete in Safari compared to which Firefox feels somewhat lacking.
The two browsers are otherwise pretty well matched in terms of features, but to be honest I simply prefer Firefox although I will admit that having always used it on both Windows and Linux I may not have given Safari a fair chance. There appears to be an Aqua-ifying procedure planned for 1.1 which should fix many of the 'unintegration' gripes of Mac users.
To be fair, games average at £30 over here (RRP normally £35 or £40, but the stores have to be competetive) whereas cinema tickets are £3-£6, so Harry Potter may well be more popular really, but few people are going to see it 5 times. Not saying it's better or anything, but the statistics can prove anything.
On a related note, WTF is up with UK game prices? I paid £32.99 inc. delivery for Halo 2 standard edition (it hasn't arrived yet, our launch day is the 11th) but Amazon US has it for $45.95 (£24.74) and I'm sure I could find it for even less with a bit of searching. What's the justification? It's just as bad with PC games too, so it can't be down to the different TV systems.
http://www.mirrordot.com/
A simple question to voters of any preference: do you trust the voting machines to
A) count your vote correctly and
B) resist tampering until the end of day printout?
It just looks to me that with their documented flaws the machines simply cannot be counted on. I'm in the UK, so is the 'close up view' you've got making things look any better than I'm thinking?
Same here, although even stranger is that I get the same behaviour as you when doing a ctrl+click -> 'Open in New Tab', but when using option+click to open in a new tab it goes to Google.
That's a little harsh - the grandparent wasn't saying that Google shouldn't do this, simply that they could have better used their time to make a more useful product since an OS integrated version of the same thing is coming soon.
I'm a Mac user, and on one hand I quite agree that this competition is good for us - Google's program is good and motivates Spotlight to be better, and Dashboard vs Konfabulator promises to force innovation from both sides. OTOH though, Google, Apple and Pixoria are all excellent software makers and if each focused on things that weren't being done by the others it would be an overall gain in the quantity of useful software without much of a quality hit since these people all have a history of doing things well much of the time, competition or none.
I don't really know what the optimum balance would be here, but I don't think that Google have quite hit it - I just feel that they're misdirecting their time on things that are already being done well by Apple, just as Apple are wasting their time on things that are already being done well by Pixoria.
That price was including a $10 POS case with a pre-fitted 350W PSU (also from newegg).
Purely from looking on newegg.com I've just priced up an Athlon 1.3, 128MB, 40GB machine for ~$150. I only chose those components because they were the cheapest in stock; a Duron 800 and a 20GB drive would be quite adequate - do a bit of shopping around and work in bulk discounts and I'm sure it's possible.
I wonder if Griffin would consider starting building keyboards with integrated knobs, alongside or in place of numeric keypads?
Y'know what'd be better - Apple putting the (presumably patented, since we haven't seen it on anyone else's hardware) iPod scroll wheel into a keyboard or even on a standalone USB panel. As several have said, it's more usable than anything else because you can scroll long lists without repeatedly removing your finger. Physically grasping and moving a Griffin Powermate involves reconfiguring the way you're moving your hands and they can't be continuously spun as easily as the iPod wheel.
The Apple mouse continues to live without a scroll wheel though, which is, IMO, a much needed addition (FYI, I was under the opinion that moving from the 5 buttons of my Razer Boomslang to the 1 button Apple mouse would never work, and I've got them both hooked in now - I never use the Razer and the only bit I miss is the scrollwheel. All the other functions can be achieved more quickly with one hand hitting hotkeys on the keyboard as I click). I really miss a useful scrolling tool on my mac, and a nice little touchwheel on the edge of the keyboard would be quick, simple and fluid to use while I'm typing.
Everything on my drive is 128 bit AES encrypted on the fly when I use it - you and your knoppix CD can take your best shot. It's not the fault of the Knoppix people that your data is insecure enough to be read by anyone with a boot disk.
I'd be suprised if they draw a judge with the technical expertise to differentiate between P2P and Client-Server if they were to write up something overturning these ideas.
As an illustration (using a public domain file as an example here): if all Mozilla mirrors were to go down just as Firefox 1.0 final was released, but I managed to get a copy onto eDonkey, I would be running a computer uploading to many people who wanted the file but not downloading from anyone. Am I still transferring peer to peer or am I now classed as a server due to the fact I am a central hub for many people who happen to be accesing my machine through software originally designed as P2P?
I'm sure that in the eyes of the law it would be very difficult to prove the difference between a peer and a server - vague wording seems to be the norm here...
You just need to shop around a bit - Villain Supply is currently offering $450,000,000/litre ;-)
Wasn't there an article yesterday about space-based weapons? There's not nearly so much matter up there, and if they're really thinking ahead it could be intended for combat which is outside the atmosphere, since maintaining an antimatter containment field (and I can't believe I just said 'antimatter containment field in a serious sentence) through reentry is what is generally known as fucking insane.
I present to you the Antimatter Calculator - it actually releases less energy than I would have thought since an entire kilo is slightly less powerful than the most powerful nuke ever detonated (although still a helluva lot of power, ~40 kilotons/gram)
Yes, it's already here in mobile phones and it's already been used to cripple a perfectly good handset's bluetooth stack meaning images can only be sent over the cell network at an extortionate data rate rather than being beamed straight across the gap between two bluetooth phones. I think I'll take my chances on the viruses thanks. BTW, I'm running some nice open source apps on my P900 which I doubt would've been created if they needed signing (maybe why I can get apps for my SE P900 but I never could for my T610) - hell, even Opera Mobile Browser came up with an 'unsigned code' warning when I installed it, but I can click 'install anyway' on the Symbian model and I'm quite happy with that - there's no override on the T610.
I believe that they were referring not to the megapixelage, but to the fact that the CCD is a true 35mm sensor rather than the APS style ones used in most other DSLRs.
I'm in the UK and it's really worrying how few rights we have. There are cameras everywhere, the police have the right to stop and search you if they have a suspicion that you're carrying "controlled drugs, offensive weapon or firearms, a sharp article or carrying stolen goods", if they do arrest you that automatically then gives them the right to search your home without a warrant if they choose and unlike you guys over the pond we can be put away for 5 years just for carrying a defensive weapon. It's worrying the slide that you guys are going down, but we're already half way down too and I'm sure many British slashdotters would agree that something needs to be done about the legal system. The one redeeming factor is that the law is rarely enforced to its full extent - on paper we have very few rights (on the surface at least it looks to be only our drug laws that are more sane than yours) but in practise it's not quite so bad.
Doesn't nanotube memory promise to greatly expand storage capacities, thus freeing up space for porn?