Cause you are very much confusing someone who consciously chose to be in the spotlight for their own ego-boosting and enjoyment - and someone who was been a victim of "sexual assault".
I'm not the troll here and my comment obviously hit a nerve with you. I believe I was clear enough on the point I was trying to make: Nir Rosen's tweets about Lara Logan vs seeing a woman who was brutally attacked. Seeing Steve Jobs hogging the spotlight vs seeing a sick man dying of cancer. My point, both people deserve privacy even if they are "celebrities".
You forfeit your privacy rights when you sign that "rich AND famous" contract.
And a part of your human rights goes down the drain when you turn yourself into a brand.
You don't get to be in the spotlight and not take in some heat from the lights.
Really? I guess you have no problem when people want to know more about what happened to Lara Logan after her sexually assault in Egypt, because you know she's a public figure, rich AND famous. Disgusting! From my perspective both of them are people FIRST and public figures second, they deserve privacy at times like this. Comments like this just sound like sour grapes to me.
No it's not absurd. They are competing for the same demographic, casual gamers. Rather than getting caught up in the full-body skeletal, 100,000 degrees of freedom sales talk the real question is: Is there a library of great games that make it worth paying $150? Right not IMO the answer is no. Getting caught up with the technical aspects of the Kinect (yes they are impressive) doesn't matter for most people. Historical examples prove that having the most powerful hardware doesn't matter: DS vs PSP, winner: DS, PS2 vs Xbox vs Gamecube, winner: PS2, on and on. It's been said before, powerful hardware doesn't sell systems, a library of great games sell systems.
Now tablets, that's a different story. They saw that coming, something like ten years ago? Off and on they tried VERY hard to make that market work. There they had vision, but no execution - and that I think is mostly the problem, Microsoft still can have vision but they have (for whatever reason) a ton of problems executing.
Vision without execution is meaningless, hence the Steve Jobs mantra "Real artists ship". To me it's the combination of vision, execution, timing, marketing and luck that creates a successful product.
But I'm sure you disagree, Nintendo has its fans apparently. I guess the only way we'll know is in 5 years time. I'll come back here to gloat when Nintendo is the Palm of 2015 looking for someone to buy them.
In other news Michael Dell states that Apple Computer should be shut down and the money should be given back to the shareholders. Off the record he was heard to say "Microsoft owns the desktop what else is there that Apple can do?"
Speaking of smugness... *ahem* I find this fascinating, especially the part about making LCD screens easier for reading and watching video while increasing battery life. When she mentions that the increases to battery life will start coming next year it makes me wonder if Apple is working with Pixel Qi on their rumored Mac Tablet.
I disagree. I've watched movies today that I loved as a kid and thought to myself "What was I thinking". Star Wars is one of those movies that I can still watch today and enjoy because it had a great story and great characters. The prequels were beautiful dreck with no soul. They will not be remembered because of the weak characters and story, it has nothing to do with the "wow" factor. I can remember watching Episode 1 thinking "wow" this movie looks beautiful and "wow" this story is horrible.
The point people are trying to make is that aside from the picture quality that you can only detect with a $2000-3000 new television there is really no compelling reason to invest in Blu-ray. Prime example that has been used time and time again take a regular CRT 17" television, compare DVD to VHS. There is a noticeable difference in content and quality, extras, subtitles, etc.. Now do the same with DVD to Blu-Ray aside from a better picture on a expensive tv there really isn't that drastic of a difference. Also just because it's in the PS3 doesn't mean that it will take off either. Look at the PSP the UMD format was supposed to usher in a new portable movie format. Oops. People weren't willing to buy another copy of the same movie just because it played on the PSP. I think the same will happen with Blu-Ray why should I pay $29.99 for a movie when I can get the DVD for $15.99 that looks almost as good even on a HDTV.
I definitely agree that passion is important, but being passionate about something isn't enough. You need to have the skills/intelligence to back up that passion. I'm always cautious about these "new economy"/"the internet will change everything" idea's that come around every so often. To me it seems like business fads that seem insightful at the time, but in hindsight everybody smacks their head and says "What were we thinking."
Extremely off topic but one quote that interested me from the Pippin article.
"Costing US$599 on launch, and touted as a cheap computer, the system, in reality, was commonly identified as a video-game console. As such, its price was considered too expensive in comparison to its contemporaries."
Seems like Sony hasn't learned the hard lesson that Apple had to with the Pippin. PS3 = $599 and just recently Sony has been touting the high system price as cheap for a personal computer. History repeats itself.
MS Office is 50% off with any new Mac purchase. This is for people who are considering picking up a new Mac after this Intel announcement. Valid until the end of January 2006.
Looking as technology moves from the desktop to the appliance I see MS having a LOT of problems in the future. It's not that they don't have smart people in the company, it's that they need a new company mindset. So far they've not doing that well. In the appliance space people DON'T want everything and the kitchen sink. For appliances, Less is More!! Contrast this with the idea of Windows, a huge monolith of intertwined programs where more programs are added on like garbage getting dumped into a landfill.
Apple definitely understands this idea on a corporate level, not just a individual level. Look at all of it's products very elegant and consumer friendly. Nintendo is another company I see understanding this idea very well. Look at the new revolution controller.
Despite its branding as simply "version 10" of the Mac OS, it has a history largely independent of the earlier Mac OS releases. It is based on the Mach kernel and the BSD implementation of Unix, which were incorporated into NEXTSTEP, the object-oriented operating system developed by Steve Jobs's NeXT company after he was forced from Apple in 1985. Meanwhile, Apple attempted to create a "next generation" operating system of its own (see Taligent and Copland), but with little success. Eventually, NeXT's OS--by then called OPENSTEP--was selected to form the basis for Apple's next OS, and the company purchased NeXT outright. Jobs was rehired, and later returned to the leadership of the company, shepherding the transformation of the programmer-friendly OPENSTEP into a system that would be welcomed by Apple's primary market of home users and creative professionals, as a project known as Rhapsody. After some missteps which threatened the loyalty of independent developers to Mac OS, and changes of strategy to ease the transition from Mac OS 9 to the new system, Rhapsody evolved into Mac OS X.
I'd say that Steve Jobs WAS right in predicting the future. Many elements of Mac OS X are derived from the operating system developed at NeXT. Supposedly the next version of Windows takes many cues from the current Mac OS X.
Well I look at it like they did this for a few reasons.
1) For people who already bought an XBox 360 and cannot wait for MS to "fix the problem"
2) It's a cool thing to do.
3) Third parties can see that watercooling an XBox 360 is possible and will release kits that people can use.
But yes in a perfect world MS should fix the problem, it's not 100% guaranteed that they will though. Power to the people.
You can "create" a formula about anything. It would not be too hard to look at the American presidents and presidental election loosers.
Yep it's already been done and proven wrong.:) My rule for entertainment is that formulas get stale and old really quickly. They may work for a short while but in the long term they don't hold people's attention. People aren't like computers, plugging in a formula won't work everytime. The law of diminishing returns says so.;)
There was an attempt to rewrite the Mozilla project in all Java at one time called Jazilla. I think the original focus of the project changed over time, why reinvent the wheel. Here is the main page of the current Jazilla project
Additionally, Doug Stanhope has also signed on with Sirius. . . he's appeared on Stern numerous times and there has already been communication between the two about working together creatively.
Interesting, Doug Stanhope doing a similar thing that Jim Norton has been doing on Opie & Anthony for years now. Looking forward to hearing if he brings anything to the table.
3 million new subscribers to Stern isn't unlikely. . . we're talking about a syndicated talk radio host who pioneered the format and has a rabid following.
True but we'll have to see when Stern moves over. He could possibly bring in 3 million. But many people listen to Stern because all you need is a FM radio. When you pay $12/month for a service that you once got for free you expect much more. We'll see if he's up for the task or if he does the same show he does now.
he's still a guy who gets a ton of listeners and does wield a significant amount of influence.
Agreed that he does have a ton of listeners, and does have a large influence.
Stern's numbers not being so hot - that has a lot to do with the FCC's chilling effect on all radio broadcasting
I definitely don't agree about the FCC. I think it's an excuse and cop out by Stern. Instead of putting on an entertaining show he complains about the FCC. Look at Seinfeld (the TV show) and Brian Regan they prove that you can be very entertaining w/o being dirty.
If a large enough percentage of them do, Sirius stands poised to take the lead in the satellite market share race. Maybe a monster one.
Sorry I think that Siruis made 2 mistakes with Howard Stern.
1) No one is worth $500 million dollars.
2) Howard Stern alone will not save Sirius.
Sirius is a company that is making some SERIOUS (yuk yuk) mistakes. Paying millions of dollars for celebrity names Martha, Slim Shady, Tony Hawk. Each of these people are great in their respective fields, but as talk radio hosts they have no experience. Siruis is just using their names to attract subscribers. Will this strategy pay off? As of now it isn't since XM has 3 times the subscribers of Sirius. We'll have to see in the future though.
The key to success will be diversity, RADIO diversity. People will want to subscribe to XM or Sirius for what they have to offer in terms of different types of programming. If Howard Stern is the only big name radio personality on Siruis people will ask why should I pay money for ONLY Howard Stern. I would pick up XM because of it's diversity (Nascar and NFL on Sirius do not interest me) and if I'm in the mood for Talk Radio I will listed to Opie and Anthony.
"XM has to do something to stay competitive with Sirius to stay on the map."
They already have something competitive, Opie and Anthony on XM High Voltage. (Remember them from 102.7 WNEW NY about 2 years ago). IMO a MUCH funnier smarter and more entertaining show than Howard. Unfortunately XM marketing has been dropping the ball on promoting them.
Your right on some points but I look at it a bit differently.
Yes the brand does matter in the beginning of the consoles lifetime, especially with Sony and the PS2's backwards compatibility. People would buy a PS2 JUST to prepare for the next generation of games and be able to play PS1 games. Did they complain because of the lack of PS2 games? Of course, but did they still buy PS2's yes. Why? Because of the brand name people knew that Sony would eventually deliver on the games, which they did. If Sony did not deliver the games they would not be #1. Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto all games that helped push the Sony brand to deliver on it's promise to release quality games.
Nintendo was in a similar position during the SNES/N64 transition era, but made several critical errors (No CD's only carts, loss of 3rd party support). But the main reason that Nintendo lost first place was because of the games. People put trust in the Nintendo brand that they would deliver enough quality games in an adequate timeframe and they failed. Games were sparse, delayed and people started to look elsewhere towards Sony and the Playstation.
So yes in a sense you are correct it is the brand, BUT it is not directly the brand that people are buying. It is the trust that the brand will deliver enough quality games on the system in a timely manner.
1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
3. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.
4. Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock or a USB cable extender (sold separately).
Slashdot Mirror
Cause you are very much confusing someone who consciously chose to be in the spotlight for their own ego-boosting and enjoyment - and someone who was been a victim of "sexual assault".
I'm not the troll here and my comment obviously hit a nerve with you. I believe I was clear enough on the point I was trying to make: Nir Rosen's tweets about Lara Logan vs seeing a woman who was brutally attacked. Seeing Steve Jobs hogging the spotlight vs seeing a sick man dying of cancer. My point, both people deserve privacy even if they are "celebrities".
You forfeit your privacy rights when you sign that "rich AND famous" contract. And a part of your human rights goes down the drain when you turn yourself into a brand. You don't get to be in the spotlight and not take in some heat from the lights.
Really? I guess you have no problem when people want to know more about what happened to Lara Logan after her sexually assault in Egypt, because you know she's a public figure, rich AND famous. Disgusting! From my perspective both of them are people FIRST and public figures second, they deserve privacy at times like this. Comments like this just sound like sour grapes to me.
Comparing the wii to the Kinect is absurd.
No it's not absurd. They are competing for the same demographic, casual gamers. Rather than getting caught up in the full-body skeletal, 100,000 degrees of freedom sales talk the real question is: Is there a library of great games that make it worth paying $150? Right not IMO the answer is no. Getting caught up with the technical aspects of the Kinect (yes they are impressive) doesn't matter for most people. Historical examples prove that having the most powerful hardware doesn't matter: DS vs PSP, winner: DS, PS2 vs Xbox vs Gamecube, winner: PS2, on and on. It's been said before, powerful hardware doesn't sell systems, a library of great games sell systems.
Now tablets, that's a different story. They saw that coming, something like ten years ago? Off and on they tried VERY hard to make that market work. There they had vision, but no execution - and that I think is mostly the problem, Microsoft still can have vision but they have (for whatever reason) a ton of problems executing.
Vision without execution is meaningless, hence the Steve Jobs mantra "Real artists ship". To me it's the combination of vision, execution, timing, marketing and luck that creates a successful product.
But I'm sure you disagree, Nintendo has its fans apparently. I guess the only way we'll know is in 5 years time. I'll come back here to gloat when Nintendo is the Palm of 2015 looking for someone to buy them.
In other news Michael Dell states that Apple Computer should be shut down and the money should be given back to the shareholders. Off the record he was heard to say "Microsoft owns the desktop what else is there that Apple can do?"
Speaking of smugness ... *ahem* I find this fascinating, especially the part about making LCD screens easier for reading and watching video while increasing battery life. When she mentions that the increases to battery life will start coming next year it makes me wonder if Apple is working with Pixel Qi on their rumored Mac Tablet.
I disagree. I've watched movies today that I loved as a kid and thought to myself "What was I thinking". Star Wars is one of those movies that I can still watch today and enjoy because it had a great story and great characters. The prequels were beautiful dreck with no soul. They will not be remembered because of the weak characters and story, it has nothing to do with the "wow" factor. I can remember watching Episode 1 thinking "wow" this movie looks beautiful and "wow" this story is horrible.
The point people are trying to make is that aside from the picture quality that you can only detect with a $2000-3000 new television there is really no compelling reason to invest in Blu-ray. Prime example that has been used time and time again take a regular CRT 17" television, compare DVD to VHS. There is a noticeable difference in content and quality, extras, subtitles, etc.. Now do the same with DVD to Blu-Ray aside from a better picture on a expensive tv there really isn't that drastic of a difference. Also just because it's in the PS3 doesn't mean that it will take off either. Look at the PSP the UMD format was supposed to usher in a new portable movie format. Oops. People weren't willing to buy another copy of the same movie just because it played on the PSP. I think the same will happen with Blu-Ray why should I pay $29.99 for a movie when I can get the DVD for $15.99 that looks almost as good even on a HDTV.
I definitely agree that passion is important, but being passionate about something isn't enough. You need to have the skills/intelligence to back up that passion. I'm always cautious about these "new economy"/"the internet will change everything" idea's that come around every so often. To me it seems like business fads that seem insightful at the time, but in hindsight everybody smacks their head and says "What were we thinking."
Extremely off topic but one quote that interested me from the Pippin article.
"Costing US$599 on launch, and touted as a cheap computer, the system, in reality, was commonly identified as a video-game console. As such, its price was considered too expensive in comparison to its contemporaries."
Seems like Sony hasn't learned the hard lesson that Apple had to with the Pippin. PS3 = $599 and just recently Sony has been touting the high system price as cheap for a personal computer. History repeats itself.
Check out the E3 video. http://wii.nintendo.com/home.html and click on the Fresh Experiences Tab to see the video they presented. It's awesome!!
MS Office is 50% off with any new Mac purchase. This is for people who are considering picking up a new Mac after this Intel announcement. Valid until the end of January 2006.
o mo_popup_con.html
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/officepr
For someone who rants about Steve Jobs being arrogant, it's the first word that comes to my mind when reading your post.
Looking as technology moves from the desktop to the appliance I see MS having a LOT of problems in the future. It's not that they don't have smart people in the company, it's that they need a new company mindset. So far they've not doing that well. In the appliance space people DON'T want everything and the kitchen sink. For appliances, Less is More!! Contrast this with the idea of Windows, a huge monolith of intertwined programs where more programs are added on like garbage getting dumped into a landfill.
Apple definitely understands this idea on a corporate level, not just a individual level. Look at all of it's products very elegant and consumer friendly. Nintendo is another company I see understanding this idea very well. Look at the new revolution controller.
Excellent post. A good article as well.
Why smart people defend bad ideas:
http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay40.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
Despite its branding as simply "version 10" of the Mac OS, it has a history largely independent of the earlier Mac OS releases. It is based on the Mach kernel and the BSD implementation of Unix, which were incorporated into NEXTSTEP, the object-oriented operating system developed by Steve Jobs's NeXT company after he was forced from Apple in 1985. Meanwhile, Apple attempted to create a "next generation" operating system of its own (see Taligent and Copland), but with little success. Eventually, NeXT's OS--by then called OPENSTEP--was selected to form the basis for Apple's next OS, and the company purchased NeXT outright. Jobs was rehired, and later returned to the leadership of the company, shepherding the transformation of the programmer-friendly OPENSTEP into a system that would be welcomed by Apple's primary market of home users and creative professionals, as a project known as Rhapsody. After some missteps which threatened the loyalty of independent developers to Mac OS, and changes of strategy to ease the transition from Mac OS 9 to the new system, Rhapsody evolved into Mac OS X.
I'd say that Steve Jobs WAS right in predicting the future. Many elements of Mac OS X are derived from the operating system developed at NeXT. Supposedly the next version of Windows takes many cues from the current Mac OS X.
Well I look at it like they did this for a few reasons.
1) For people who already bought an XBox 360 and cannot wait for MS to "fix the problem"
2) It's a cool thing to do.
3) Third parties can see that watercooling an XBox 360 is possible and will release kits that people can use.
But yes in a perfect world MS should fix the problem, it's not 100% guaranteed that they will though. Power to the people.
Check out GameRankings.com It's RottenTomatoes for video games. Here is the Dungeon Siege II Review
You can "create" a formula about anything. It would not be too hard to look at the American presidents and presidental election loosers.
:) My rule for entertainment is that formulas get stale and old really quickly. They may work for a short while but in the long term they don't hold people's attention. People aren't like computers, plugging in a formula won't work everytime. The law of diminishing returns says so. ;)
Yep it's already been done and proven wrong.
There was an attempt to rewrite the Mozilla project in all Java at one time called Jazilla. I think the original focus of the project changed over time, why reinvent the wheel. Here is the main page of the current Jazilla project
Additionally, Doug Stanhope has also signed on with Sirius. . . he's appeared on Stern numerous times and there has already been communication between the two about working together creatively.
Interesting, Doug Stanhope doing a similar thing that Jim Norton has been doing on Opie & Anthony for years now. Looking forward to hearing if he brings anything to the table.
3 million new subscribers to Stern isn't unlikely. . . we're talking about a syndicated talk radio host who pioneered the format and has a rabid following.
True but we'll have to see when Stern moves over. He could possibly bring in 3 million. But many people listen to Stern because all you need is a FM radio. When you pay $12/month for a service that you once got for free you expect much more. We'll see if he's up for the task or if he does the same show he does now.
he's still a guy who gets a ton of listeners and does wield a significant amount of influence.
Agreed that he does have a ton of listeners, and does have a large influence.
Stern's numbers not being so hot - that has a lot to do with the FCC's chilling effect on all radio broadcasting
I definitely don't agree about the FCC. I think it's an excuse and cop out by Stern. Instead of putting on an entertaining show he complains about the FCC. Look at Seinfeld (the TV show) and Brian Regan they prove that you can be very entertaining w/o being dirty.
If a large enough percentage of them do, Sirius stands poised to take the lead in the satellite market share race. Maybe a monster one.
Sorry I think that Siruis made 2 mistakes with Howard Stern. 1) No one is worth $500 million dollars. 2) Howard Stern alone will not save Sirius.
Sirius is a company that is making some SERIOUS (yuk yuk) mistakes. Paying millions of dollars for celebrity names Martha, Slim Shady, Tony Hawk. Each of these people are great in their respective fields, but as talk radio hosts they have no experience. Siruis is just using their names to attract subscribers. Will this strategy pay off? As of now it isn't since XM has 3 times the subscribers of Sirius. We'll have to see in the future though.
The key to success will be diversity, RADIO diversity. People will want to subscribe to XM or Sirius for what they have to offer in terms of different types of programming. If Howard Stern is the only big name radio personality on Siruis people will ask why should I pay money for ONLY Howard Stern. I would pick up XM because of it's diversity (Nascar and NFL on Sirius do not interest me) and if I'm in the mood for Talk Radio I will listed to Opie and Anthony.
Ohh and one more thing Howard Stern isn't doing as well as people think.
"XM has to do something to stay competitive with Sirius to stay on the map."
They already have something competitive, Opie and Anthony on XM High Voltage. (Remember them from 102.7 WNEW NY about 2 years ago). IMO a MUCH funnier smarter and more entertaining show than Howard. Unfortunately XM marketing has been dropping the ball on promoting them.
Your right on some points but I look at it a bit differently.
Yes the brand does matter in the beginning of the consoles lifetime, especially with Sony and the PS2's backwards compatibility. People would buy a PS2 JUST to prepare for the next generation of games and be able to play PS1 games. Did they complain because of the lack of PS2 games? Of course, but did they still buy PS2's yes. Why? Because of the brand name people knew that Sony would eventually deliver on the games, which they did. If Sony did not deliver the games they would not be #1. Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto all games that helped push the Sony brand to deliver on it's promise to release quality games.
Nintendo was in a similar position during the SNES/N64 transition era, but made several critical errors (No CD's only carts, loss of 3rd party support). But the main reason that Nintendo lost first place was because of the games. People put trust in the Nintendo brand that they would deliver enough quality games in an adequate timeframe and they failed. Games were sparse, delayed and people started to look elsewhere towards Sony and the Playstation.
So yes in a sense you are correct it is the brand, BUT it is not directly the brand that people are buying. It is the trust that the brand will deliver enough quality games on the system in a timely manner.
Anyone see the IPod Shuffle small print. LOL.
1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
3. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.
4. Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock or a USB cable extender (sold separately).