It's not about the cost. Carmack talked about it in one QuakeCon keynote. It's much, much simpler to render two views on one screen than trying to use two physical screens.
Could you please explain how this proves that file sharing is hurting them?
Firstly, you'd need to define exactly what you mean by "growth". Amount of revenue, profits, people employed? None of those imply that the growth should be equal to the number of CD sales. For example, the profits might well be increasing by 10%, while the CD sales increase by 5%. All this means is that the industry has been able to increase their profit margins. Not that piracy is hurting them.
In fact, the logical conclusion to draw from your data (if it is correct) would be that the music industry is finding alternative revenue streams apart from CD sales to drive its growth. Either that or they're cutting their costs or increasing the price.
To get a more accurate picture, you should look at the development of the CD sales over time, and preferably compare it with the development of the customer base. If you see that the sales growth is going down as file sharing increases, you might postulate that file sharing is hurting the industry. But of course that would not prove it, there could be other reasons for it, such as the fact that most of the "music" sold these days is utter crap.
I emailed them about the problem, and they seem to have fixed it.
This is the email I received from them:
Hello, Thank you for Contacting MSN Search Customer Support about the search results found when searching for "XFree86". The MSN Search team was notified of the incorrect search results and has now corrected the search query in the MSN Search database. We appreciate your bringing this to our attention. It is due to the input from users such as yourself that we've made such improvements as:...
So, whether you like Microsoft or not, or whether their search technology is inferior or not, they did do a good job in correcting the problem.
There is infact a formal (as in based on axioms) field of mathematics (or systems analysis) that consentrates on problems such as "picking the best family game". It's often called 'decision making and problem solving'. Without knowing the details of this particular case, it's impossible to tell exactly how good their analysis is, but let's speculate.
First of all, many posters have had problems with the criteria, such as the "fun factor" or "stimulation", claiming that these are not well defined. However, the article only gives the names of the criteria, not their definitions. It could very well be that in the analysis the criteria have been well defined. For example, "fun factor" could be defined as the percentage of time that a test group of players smile or laugh, or the test group could be asked to directly rate the different games relative to each other on how fun they are. Of course, you can't go into a store and rate another game using their analysis framework without knowing the definitions.
The real question marks pop up when looking at the formula. The weighting seems to be badly flawed. First of all, I'm not aware of a formal weighting method that would produce negative weights as the case is with the "Argumentative factor". I'm fairly sure that this goes against the axioms of decision making. The correct way to define the weight would be to make it positive and define the criterion value function in such a way that the least prefered outcome gets a value of 0 and the most prefered outcome gets a value 1 on; they seem to have done the complete opposite.
Further more, the weights do not add up to 1, no matter how you handle the negative weight. Technically this is not invalid, but it casts a real doubt on the method they've used to weight the criteria, as all formal weighting methods are normalized to produce 1 (or 100 or some other nice number) as the total sum of the weights. One could guess that the weights were determined by pulling numbers out of a hat, without understanding what's going on.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't base my Christmas shopping on this formula;P
-Sunny, taking an exam on Decision Making and Problem Solving next week.
I'd just like to point out that Apple hasn't aquired anything except the right to sell the content (for a 3 year period according to the article). Unlike the record companies, Apple does not own the copyrights to the songs they sell. It's simply a reseller deal, they buy the songs at wholesale price and then sell them on to customers. So I really don't see any reason for Apple to care more about the "everlasting copyright power" than the music store around the corner does.
I believe that the sole reason for porting iTunes is so that they can get the iTunes Music Store for Windows users.
The whole point of the iTunes Music Store is that Apple has control of the whole process: You buy the music from Apple with iTunes, load it up to your iPod or burn it to a CD using iTunes. That's what makes it special from the numerous websites selling music downloads.
Apple already has iPod for Windows, but it ships with a 3rd party jukebox software. iTunes for Windows is the missing piece which will enable Apple to create a similar music purchasing experience for Windows users as it has for Mac users.
That's only my opinion, but I can't think of any other reason for Apple to create a free piece of software for Windows.
No, it is America that tossed the UN into the dustbin. America went to the Security Council to prosecute Iraq for having WMDs and seeking justification to use force againt Iraq. The SC agreed that Iraq must be disarmed, but did not see the use of force justified in this case. Instead they ordered inspections to make sure Iraq did not posses any forbidden weapons.
Well the prosecutor, US, was not happy with that, so they simply decided to ignore the ruling and pass their own judgement. And in doing so made the UN irrelevant. I can't fathom how the US can call it self a justice state, when they blatantly ingnore the ruling of the highest authority in international justice. Just imagine if in a criminal court the prosecutor was not happy with the jury having dismissed the charges and went ahead and executed the defendant anyway. Is that justice?
Bush had made up his mind to attack Iraq long before he ever went to the UN to seek approval. I don't need to remind you that we had put inspectors in Iraq, they we doing their job, Iraq was dismentaling missiles the inspectors had said were illegal and Iraq was all the time delivering new information about its weapons programs to the inspectors. Granted this was largely due to the pressure put on Iraq by the US forces, but that doesn't change that fact that the system was working and there is absolutely no justification for the use of military force at the momen as France, Germany, Russia, China and others have pointed out. America at the same time ignored all the positive results coming from Iraq and failed to give the World any credible evidence to back up their own claims that Iraq possesses WMDs.
Most people, myself included, agree that Saddam is a cruel dictator, but the way US has gone about this 'trial' is completely against every shred of international law. Maybe this just highlights Bush's total lack of knowledge and experience about international politics.
the new Nokia 3650 (came on sale here two days ago). I just bought one and I must say it's the nicest phone I've used. It comes with all features of the T610 (minus DRM) and then some. The most important features in my opinion of the 3650 that T610 lacks are: more memory (3.4MB internal memory + memory card, mine came with 16MB card, vs. 2MB of T610), bigger screen (176x208 vs. T610's 128x160) and video capture. Also the 3650 looks nicer than the T610 IMHO. On the other hand T610 is smaller and lighter at least on paper, although I have to say that the 3650 is by no means "heavy".
Other than that there are many similarities between the phones. Both are tri-band, run the Symbian OS, both have a camera, bluetooth, infrared, Java, e-mail etc.etc.
Of course these are just my opinions, but you should at least check out the 3650 if you're considering the T610.
It's obvious from the site that English is not the author's first language. Therefore I don't believe that he meant 'fatal consequences' as in 'this will kill you', but rather more in the sense of 'serious consequences'. There are other similar mishaps in his writing as well.
Just a small reminder for all you Americans there that not everyone is a native English speaker, and that their text should not be interpreted word-by-word.
There's a recent case in Finland where a large, partly state owned, telecoms company got into big financial trouble. Some time later a rather long, anonymously written, essay was published on the web. Judging by the detail in the essay it must've been written by someone who was in, or had strong links to, the company's board. This essay detailed accusations of mismanagement and abuse by the board of directors and the president. This was a very big deal in the media and government investigations into the company's practices were launced based on the essay's accusations.
The point is that the company has now publicly announced that it will sue the writer of the essay if his/her identity is found out. It's not too difficult to imagine similar situation happening in the USA for example (Anonymous confessions of an Enron executive?) Before the web it would've been much more difficult to get this information widely available without being persecuted, and the Freenet project will make it even easier to publish this kind of information anonymously.
Of course this might be a rare case compared to all the warez/kiddie porn/etc floating around the web, but that's the thing with free speech: If you want to have a right to free speech, then you have to put up with others having the same right.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not about the cost. Carmack talked about it in one QuakeCon keynote. It's much, much simpler to render two views on one screen than trying to use two physical screens.
Could you please explain how this proves that file sharing is hurting them?
Firstly, you'd need to define exactly what you mean by "growth". Amount of revenue, profits, people employed? None of those imply that the growth should be equal to the number of CD sales. For example, the profits might well be increasing by 10%, while the CD sales increase by 5%. All this means is that the industry has been able to increase their profit margins. Not that piracy is hurting them.
In fact, the logical conclusion to draw from your data (if it is correct) would be that the music industry is finding alternative revenue streams apart from CD sales to drive its growth. Either that or they're cutting their costs or increasing the price.
To get a more accurate picture, you should look at the development of the CD sales over time, and preferably compare it with the development of the customer base. If you see that the sales growth is going down as file sharing increases, you might postulate that file sharing is hurting the industry. But of course that would not prove it, there could be other reasons for it, such as the fact that most of the "music" sold these days is utter crap.
-Sunny
This is the email I received from them:
So, whether you like Microsoft or not, or whether their search technology is inferior or not, they did do a good job in correcting the problem.
-Teemu
There is infact a formal (as in based on axioms) field of mathematics (or systems analysis) that consentrates on problems such as "picking the best family game". It's often called 'decision making and problem solving'. Without knowing the details of this particular case, it's impossible to tell exactly how good their analysis is, but let's speculate.
First of all, many posters have had problems with the criteria, such as the "fun factor" or "stimulation", claiming that these are not well defined. However, the article only gives the names of the criteria, not their definitions. It could very well be that in the analysis the criteria have been well defined. For example, "fun factor" could be defined as the percentage of time that a test group of players smile or laugh, or the test group could be asked to directly rate the different games relative to each other on how fun they are. Of course, you can't go into a store and rate another game using their analysis framework without knowing the definitions.
The real question marks pop up when looking at the formula. The weighting seems to be badly flawed. First of all, I'm not aware of a formal weighting method that would produce negative weights as the case is with the "Argumentative factor". I'm fairly sure that this goes against the axioms of decision making. The correct way to define the weight would be to make it positive and define the criterion value function in such a way that the least prefered outcome gets a value of 0 and the most prefered outcome gets a value 1 on; they seem to have done the complete opposite.
Further more, the weights do not add up to 1, no matter how you handle the negative weight. Technically this is not invalid, but it casts a real doubt on the method they've used to weight the criteria, as all formal weighting methods are normalized to produce 1 (or 100 or some other nice number) as the total sum of the weights. One could guess that the weights were determined by pulling numbers out of a hat, without understanding what's going on.
So in conclusion, I wouldn't base my Christmas shopping on this formula;P
-Sunny, taking an exam on Decision Making and Problem Solving next week.
I'd just like to point out that Apple hasn't aquired anything except the right to sell the content (for a 3 year period according to the article). Unlike the record companies, Apple does not own the copyrights to the songs they sell. It's simply a reseller deal, they buy the songs at wholesale price and then sell them on to customers. So I really don't see any reason for Apple to care more about the "everlasting copyright power" than the music store around the corner does.
I believe that the sole reason for porting iTunes is so that they can get the iTunes Music Store for Windows users.
The whole point of the iTunes Music Store is that Apple has control of the whole process: You buy the music from Apple with iTunes, load it up to your iPod or burn it to a CD using iTunes. That's what makes it special from the numerous websites selling music downloads.
Apple already has iPod for Windows, but it ships with a 3rd party jukebox software. iTunes for Windows is the missing piece which will enable Apple to create a similar music purchasing experience for Windows users as it has for Mac users.
That's only my opinion, but I can't think of any other reason for Apple to create a free piece of software for Windows.
No, it is America that tossed the UN into the dustbin. America went to the Security Council to prosecute Iraq for having WMDs and seeking justification to use force againt Iraq. The SC agreed that Iraq must be disarmed, but did not see the use of force justified in this case. Instead they ordered inspections to make sure Iraq did not posses any forbidden weapons.
Well the prosecutor, US, was not happy with that, so they simply decided to ignore the ruling and pass their own judgement. And in doing so made the UN irrelevant. I can't fathom how the US can call it self a justice state, when they blatantly ingnore the ruling of the highest authority in international justice. Just imagine if in a criminal court the prosecutor was not happy with the jury having dismissed the charges and went ahead and executed the defendant anyway. Is that justice?
Bush had made up his mind to attack Iraq long before he ever went to the UN to seek approval. I don't need to remind you that we had put inspectors in Iraq, they we doing their job, Iraq was dismentaling missiles the inspectors had said were illegal and Iraq was all the time delivering new information about its weapons programs to the inspectors. Granted this was largely due to the pressure put on Iraq by the US forces, but that doesn't change that fact that the system was working and there is absolutely no justification for the use of military force at the momen as France, Germany, Russia, China and others have pointed out. America at the same time ignored all the positive results coming from Iraq and failed to give the World any credible evidence to back up their own claims that Iraq possesses WMDs.
Most people, myself included, agree that Saddam is a cruel dictator, but the way US has gone about this 'trial' is completely against every shred of international law. Maybe this just highlights Bush's total lack of knowledge and experience about international politics.
the new Nokia 3650 (came on sale here two days ago). I just bought one and I must say it's the nicest phone I've used. It comes with all features of the T610 (minus DRM) and then some. The most important features in my opinion of the 3650 that T610 lacks are: more memory (3.4MB internal memory + memory card, mine came with 16MB card, vs. 2MB of T610), bigger screen (176x208 vs. T610's 128x160) and video capture. Also the 3650 looks nicer than the T610 IMHO. On the other hand T610 is smaller and lighter at least on paper, although I have to say that the 3650 is by no means "heavy".
Other than that there are many similarities between the phones. Both are tri-band, run the Symbian OS, both have a camera, bluetooth, infrared, Java, e-mail etc.etc.
Of course these are just my opinions, but you should at least check out the 3650 if you're considering the T610.
It's obvious from the site that English is not the author's first language. Therefore I don't believe that he meant 'fatal consequences' as in 'this will kill you', but rather more in the sense of 'serious consequences'. There are other similar mishaps in his writing as well.
Just a small reminder for all you Americans there that not everyone is a native English speaker, and that their text should not be interpreted word-by-word.
I'm not a native English speaker either.
There's a recent case in Finland where a large, partly state owned, telecoms company got into big financial trouble. Some time later a rather long, anonymously written, essay was published on the web. Judging by the detail in the essay it must've been written by someone who was in, or had strong links to, the company's board. This essay detailed accusations of mismanagement and abuse by the board of directors and the president. This was a very big deal in the media and government investigations into the company's practices were launced based on the essay's accusations.
The point is that the company has now publicly announced that it will sue the writer of the essay if his/her identity is found out. It's not too difficult to imagine similar situation happening in the USA for example (Anonymous confessions of an Enron executive?) Before the web it would've been much more difficult to get this information widely available without being persecuted, and the Freenet project will make it even easier to publish this kind of information anonymously.
Of course this might be a rare case compared to all the warez/kiddie porn/etc floating around the web, but that's the thing with free speech: If you want to have a right to free speech, then you have to put up with others having the same right.