Lenovo may have taken over the Thinkpad business from IBM, but the quality of the laptops continues to be the same. Lenovo (and IBM too), ensured that their large corporate customers continue to stick by the brand, and thats where the large sales volumes and bulk contracts come from. If there is a drop in sales to individual customers, its probably because the other laptops aren't "bland, boring machines" like Thinkpads, from a visual perspective as well as from a features perspective.
I know my company is still sticking to Thinkpads.. for the time being atleast.
MP3 as a format is not going to die out very quickly. The main reason is that many individuals already have vast libraries of their music in MP3 format. The fact that new/store music is not MP3 has only a minimal effect, as most people who keep compressed/digital music are getting a majority of their new music via pirated sources (a.k.a torrents, Gnutella etc).
Disclaimer: There are some people who exclusively "purchase" compressed music and don't just get it "from the net". However, they are in a minority today, and will be for some time to come.
There are also many like me who purchase CDs and immediate rip them to the computer for listening, while keeping the CDs safely tucked away. For most of us, the preferred format is MP3, the only reason being wide compatibility.
Its rumoured that Opera for Windows Mobile for Pocket PC is under development.
However.. in the meantime, they are beta-testing Opera as a Java midlet with TV2 in Norway. Look on the internet, and you can find a way to get a beta copy to try it out. It worked as well on my Sony Ericsson K700i as it did on my Pocket PC XDA IIs. It does javascript, and gmail works in standard mode (no need to switch to basic html).
There were [meaningful] MP3 player sales before the iPod? Really? Where? Who had them?
Yes. Asia. Infact, you'd be surprised to know that Apple dominates the markets only in the US and certain European countries like the UK (well, assuming they dont mind being called European).
Most parts of Asia, which has a very sizeable market for MP3 players havent even heard of Apple's iPod range of players. The ones that sell the most are still the various unbranded Chinese/Taiwanese and branded Korean players. Here in India, where I live, the iPods are very very rare (Disclaimer: I have an iPod and my brother has an iPod Shuffle).
The number one reason for the same.. is price. Apple sells an iPod Shuffle 512MB for, officially Rs. 7100. Unofficially, its sold for Rs. 4500. Most other MP3 players of 512MB capacity sell between Rs. 1800 and Rs. 2500. And most of them have a screen and FM radio built in. Thats a big difference.
The fact of the matter is, Apple does not dominate the global market for MP3 players, and there was a big market for MP3 players even before the iPod.
They essentially took ethernet, and shoved it into the air. 802.11 uses collision detection, just as ethernet does.
AFAIK, 802.11 uses collision avoidance, rather than collision detection.
So rather than, "Oops.. the packets bumped again", its more like "Is the air free now? Can the packet move? Not yet? No problem.. I'll wait"
That was one of the major changes made when they essentially "took ethernet".
Well, it may not pay off much in the short run.. but Apple may be hoping that as they grow and market-share improves, the discounts increase.
Although, Intel will be only too happy to give them a decent discount in the short-term. It increases their revenues, and helps them beat AMD in the brand game.
In the not so distant past....we had reports of a lady in India threatening to sell/release private medical information on US citizens if she wasn't paid some $$'s.
Not to be picky, but that was a Pakistani lady, not Indian (SFGate)
Also, if I recall correctly, the media that reported the lady's version of the story also said that she had been cheated out of her promised payment from a Texas based (American) firm, which led to her frustration (don't have the link handy).
$500 nets you a machine that runs OS X, if you haven't been paying attention.
Sure. $500 does give you a nice little Mac Mini etc. But how about if you compare the performance of that machine with an equivalent PC you can buy for that price? Its not going to add up.
I am a Mac user. And by jove, I could have been much richer were I using PCs. But I decided that I would pay the extra price for the Mac. It was worth it.
Its just that simple fact. Taking the price/performance ratio into account, PCs are generally slightly cheaper. Macs demand a slight premium, and they deserve it.
It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies.
This is a very important statement. The US govt may have their eye on all the networks, but given the nature of the Internet, as well as the PSTN to some extent, they just cant do it themselves. It has to be strong collaboration with private firms, whose technology may well be better than theirs, as well as all the big service providers.
Since the MS solution is based on TerraServer, they will probably not have any international imagery. For those who don't know, MS-Sponsored Terraserver http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ sold off the entire collection, while retaining the US specific imagery.
Strangely enough, even Google's images for Asia are quite limited. Is this due to a lack of public domain satellite images, or just not enough demand for them to put it up?
True, that does make sense if one occasionally / rarely watches India movies (non-Indians).
For us Indians, its just a natural, inseparable part of a movie.. infact if there's a songless movie, it makes news that the producer/director have attempted an "offbeat" movie !
India's LARGEST private Bank, ICICI http://www.icicibank.com/ still has tiny niggling problems with Firefox (mostly works).
Until recently, the online (stock) trading portal of the bank, ICICI Direct http://www.icicidirect.com/ did not work at all with Firefox. Looks like someone complained, and it started working.
The payment gateway of ICICI http://www.payseal.com/, which is what many online payment websites in India use has given me a few prematurely aborted transactions.
NOTE: This is not a rant against ICICI (they are a comparatively lovely bank). But it just goes to show that even major banks (yes, its BIG) are simply assuming most customers use Internet Explorer.
From the TFAs, it seems clear that both the Azureus and BitTorrent clients are using the same methodology (DHT/Kad).
That of course doesn't mean that they will be compatible with each other. Otherwise that may lead to a major fragmentation of the torrent(ing?) community. There are plenty of people who want the simplicity of BitTorrent (as well as the fact that it is the "default" client). People like me however, need more features/power.
I guess we just have to wait and watch if any interop problems are discovered.
There are radio shows where the RJ practically reads out the newspaper article. Not to mention the radio station's "teaser" comments about the next day's newspaper headline, or a dedicated column in the newspaper providing a prelude to a TV show at night.
A personal peeve is when one of the radio stations decided to promote a movie, with the RJs giving it fantastic reviews, completely omitting the fact that the movie was produced by the company owning the radio station.
Thats not the best way to measure usage/visibility.
Given that the stats you mentioned are more or less close to real-world numbers, one ignores how many hours in a day we are talking about.
I may use my cellphone for 5 mins in an hour, but I would use it all during the working day, i.e. 10 hours. OTOH, I use my iPod for 30 mins of an hour, but rarely for more than any one hour of the day.
That gives me 50 mins of cellphone usage, and 30 mins of iPod usage.
Rough calculations, may be rather personalized, but I still think iPods aren't that ubiquitious. Infact in India, where I live, dozens of people have MP3 players, but a scarce fraction have iPods, probably less than 1 percent.
I believe some DRM schemes intend for the key to be downloaded/applied at the time of transfer from a computer to the portable player. Of course, this probably won't allow time-based playback limitations to be effectively enforced.
Most of the prevalent DRM schemes are really intended for downloading media via the Internet onto a computer, so there is an implicit assumption of having a computer intermediary capable of enforcing (certain) DRM restrictions.
If you want to listen to music on the go without getting a computer involved, the music companies probably want you to buy a CD!
Ditto here. As someone who enjoyed EP1 and EP2 to quite an extent, it pains me to see Slashdotters (and some others) to criticize the two movies to such an extent.
Perhaps its the fact that the Slashdot crowd doesn't like the multitude of VHS/DVD/LaserDisc releases of EP4-6 that causes them to hate EP1 and EP2 ? Or is it vice-versa?
EP2 had a bit too much romance for my taste, and the screenplay did leave me a little confused during the first few minutes.. but at the end of it.. both were enjoyable movies, with plenty of action, CG and fast paced drama.
One cannot compare them to the sequels, simply because masterpieces are rarely repeated.
And what is it with people hating Jar Jar Binks so much? I thought he was out of place, but he provided the little element of humour that is absolutely necessary in today's movies.
Umm. I wouldn't quite praise OS/2 warp so easily. I was running 3.0 and 4.0 (and tried Warp Connect too).. and I can honestly say that it sucked in terms of stability. I used it for several months, and I shut it down only once. Reason : It crashed every other time.
So while I respect IBM for working on OS/2 Warp and providing a worthy competitor to Windows, it certainly wasn't better than Windows.
You probably should rethink whether you really want to filter out mail from rediffmail. Its used by a large number of Indians, and sooner or later.. some genuine mails will be lost (if they aren't being lost already). Rediffmail is almost as popular as hotmail/yahoo in India (well.. almost).
In my view, data loss of any kind, including email is a rather serious problem.
I beg to disagree.. When properly encoded, SVCD's leave DivX FAR behind. I have SVCDs that I can honestly say look nothing different from DVDs.
Just because 4 > 2, doesn't mean that all MPEG4 is better than MPEG2 (in quality alone, not in quality/size ration). I will agree that I have also seen a few high quality DivX files, but they are not always flawless.
And VCD's are badmouthed just because in the pirate world, they're rarely encoded at high quality of motion-precision from a high-quality source. They're actually pretty good, and definitely better than the "average" DivX file floating around in IRC (not to say that VCD is better than DivX.. it isn't).
Slashdot Mirror
I know my company is still sticking to Thinkpads.. for the time being atleast.
MP3 as a format is not going to die out very quickly. The main reason is that many individuals already have vast libraries of their music in MP3 format. The fact that new/store music is not MP3 has only a minimal effect, as most people who keep compressed/digital music are getting a majority of their new music via pirated sources (a.k.a torrents, Gnutella etc).
There are also many like me who purchase CDs and immediate rip them to the computer for listening, while keeping the CDs safely tucked away. For most of us, the preferred format is MP3, the only reason being wide compatibility.
MP3 WILL die as a format, just not anytime soon.
However.. in the meantime, they are beta-testing Opera as a Java midlet with TV2 in Norway. Look on the internet, and you can find a way to get a beta copy to try it out. It worked as well on my Sony Ericsson K700i as it did on my Pocket PC XDA IIs. It does javascript, and gmail works in standard mode (no need to switch to basic html).
Yes. Asia. Infact, you'd be surprised to know that Apple dominates the markets only in the US and certain European countries like the UK (well, assuming they dont mind being called European).
Most parts of Asia, which has a very sizeable market for MP3 players havent even heard of Apple's iPod range of players. The ones that sell the most are still the various unbranded Chinese/Taiwanese and branded Korean players. Here in India, where I live, the iPods are very very rare (Disclaimer: I have an iPod and my brother has an iPod Shuffle).
The number one reason for the same.. is price. Apple sells an iPod Shuffle 512MB for, officially Rs. 7100. Unofficially, its sold for Rs. 4500. Most other MP3 players of 512MB capacity sell between Rs. 1800 and Rs. 2500. And most of them have a screen and FM radio built in. Thats a big difference.
The fact of the matter is, Apple does not dominate the global market for MP3 players, and there was a big market for MP3 players even before the iPod.
That was one of the major changes made when they essentially "took ethernet".
Although, Intel will be only too happy to give them a decent discount in the short-term. It increases their revenues, and helps them beat AMD in the brand game.
Also, if I recall correctly, the media that reported the lady's version of the story also said that she had been cheated out of her promised payment from a Texas based (American) firm, which led to her frustration (don't have the link handy).
Sure. $500 does give you a nice little Mac Mini etc. But how about if you compare the performance of that machine with an equivalent PC you can buy for that price? Its not going to add up.
I am a Mac user. And by jove, I could have been much richer were I using PCs. But I decided that I would pay the extra price for the Mac. It was worth it.
Its just that simple fact. Taking the price/performance ratio into account, PCs are generally slightly cheaper. Macs demand a slight premium, and they deserve it.
The international Terraserver http://www.terraserver.com/ is a pay service, unfortunately.
Strangely enough, even Google's images for Asia are quite limited. Is this due to a lack of public domain satellite images, or just not enough demand for them to put it up?
I thought we were talking about the Saudi ambassador to the US, not Tony Blair *ducks from British*
In Hindi, Bandar means Monkey. Is that what the nickname refers to? Or am I missing something?
And heaven forbid, if you hadn't read the original, you'll find a link to the original, go through it and then come back to the dupe.
Or is that just me ;-) ?
For us Indians, its just a natural, inseparable part of a movie.. infact if there's a songless movie, it makes news that the producer/director have attempted an "offbeat" movie !
Well, its sort of required, given that most movies are almost 3 hours long.
Until recently, the online (stock) trading portal of the bank, ICICI Direct http://www.icicidirect.com/ did not work at all with Firefox. Looks like someone complained, and it started working.
The payment gateway of ICICI http://www.payseal.com/, which is what many online payment websites in India use has given me a few prematurely aborted transactions.
NOTE: This is not a rant against ICICI (they are a comparatively lovely bank). But it just goes to show that even major banks (yes, its BIG) are simply assuming most customers use Internet Explorer.
That of course doesn't mean that they will be compatible with each other. Otherwise that may lead to a major fragmentation of the torrent(ing?) community. There are plenty of people who want the simplicity of BitTorrent (as well as the fact that it is the "default" client). People like me however, need more features/power.
I guess we just have to wait and watch if any interop problems are discovered.
In Mumbai, India, there are atleast two firms which own both a newpaper http://www.timesofindia.com/ http://www.mid-day.com/ as well as a radio station http://www.radiomirchi.com/ http://www.go925fm.com/ (one of them owns a TV channel http://www.zoomtelevision.com/ and web portal http://www.indiatimes.com/ too).
There are radio shows where the RJ practically reads out the newspaper article. Not to mention the radio station's "teaser" comments about the next day's newspaper headline, or a dedicated column in the newspaper providing a prelude to a TV show at night.
A personal peeve is when one of the radio stations decided to promote a movie, with the RJs giving it fantastic reviews, completely omitting the fact that the movie was produced by the company owning the radio station.
I may use my cellphone for 5 mins in an hour, but I would use it all during the working day, i.e. 10 hours. OTOH, I use my iPod for 30 mins of an hour, but rarely for more than any one hour of the day.
That gives me 50 mins of cellphone usage, and 30 mins of iPod usage.
Rough calculations, may be rather personalized, but I still think iPods aren't that ubiquitious. Infact in India, where I live, dozens of people have MP3 players, but a scarce fraction have iPods, probably less than 1 percent.
Most of the prevalent DRM schemes are really intended for downloading media via the Internet onto a computer, so there is an implicit assumption of having a computer intermediary capable of enforcing (certain) DRM restrictions.
If you want to listen to music on the go without getting a computer involved, the music companies probably want you to buy a CD!
Perhaps its the fact that the Slashdot crowd doesn't like the multitude of VHS/DVD/LaserDisc releases of EP4-6 that causes them to hate EP1 and EP2 ? Or is it vice-versa?
EP2 had a bit too much romance for my taste, and the screenplay did leave me a little confused during the first few minutes.. but at the end of it.. both were enjoyable movies, with plenty of action, CG and fast paced drama.
One cannot compare them to the sequels, simply because masterpieces are rarely repeated.
And what is it with people hating Jar Jar Binks so much? I thought he was out of place, but he provided the little element of humour that is absolutely necessary in today's movies.
My two ${INSERT_CURRENCY_DENOMINATION}
Umm. I wouldn't quite praise OS/2 warp so easily. I was running 3.0 and 4.0 (and tried Warp Connect too).. and I can honestly say that it sucked in terms of stability.
I used it for several months, and I shut it down only once. Reason : It crashed every other time.
So while I respect IBM for working on OS/2 Warp and providing a worthy competitor to Windows, it certainly wasn't better than Windows.
You probably should rethink whether you really want to filter out mail from rediffmail. Its used by a large number of Indians, and sooner or later.. some genuine mails will be lost (if they aren't being lost already). Rediffmail is almost as popular as hotmail/yahoo in India (well.. almost).
In my view, data loss of any kind, including email is a rather serious problem.
I beg to disagree.. When properly encoded, SVCD's leave DivX FAR behind. I have SVCDs that I can honestly say look nothing different from DVDs. Just because 4 > 2, doesn't mean that all MPEG4 is better than MPEG2 (in quality alone, not in quality/size ration). I will agree that I have also seen a few high quality DivX files, but they are not always flawless. And VCD's are badmouthed just because in the pirate world, they're rarely encoded at high quality of motion-precision from a high-quality source. They're actually pretty good, and definitely better than the "average" DivX file floating around in IRC (not to say that VCD is better than DivX.. it isn't).