"'Oh - and of course I tested the milk you still have inside me, and that's OK to drink. Just don't buy any more until I say so.'"
I liked your example up until this point. Its fine for an appliance to search for related information that would be relevant to its function and convey that to me, but I sure as hell don't want my appliance going about testing my milk unless I set it to do so, nor do I want an appliance that tells me what I can and can't do with it (ie. buy more milk).
Now, I realize thats not the way you may have meant it, but unfortunately, that is the power many companies would like to have and have already made attempts at.
Imagine your future computer saying "I have taken the liberty of checking all your music files for the appropriate licenses and have reported the pirated ones to the RIAA."
Exactly, this is why it will not be as big as people think, at least not the current way things are going.
Every company out there is trying to move over to a per use/subscription model, and guess what, people don't WANT it.
They're stuck with it though because that's all there is.
Unfortunately for the companies, people don't have that kind of money to continously spend on things. I mean, they add up...and suddenly you're paying several hundred a month for products you should only have to pay a one time fee for.
"After all, we teleported a photon years ago; why haven't we done anything significantly larger? (Maybe because it's impossible?"
Lots of things were thought to be scientifically impossible years ago, but thank god we didn't stop researching them or we'd never have proved people wrong.
"You just have to REMEMBER the ip instead of depending on the computer to look it up for you;)."
Yeah, or you know, there's this ancient technology that was used before computers called a "pen" which would let you copy your memory to a disc of "paper" so you could backup your memory.
Gah, can't believe I forgot to format that. Just goes to show what wasting away your entire day on Orkut does to you. Damn Orkut not needing html tags!
1.Spam the hell out of people
2.Get media attention by being sued by big mail provider
3.Promise to never do it again and spread the word to others
4.Get companies/schools to pay you to come in and speak about the evils of spamming.
5.PROFIT!!!
This brings up an interesting question. Lets say it had been a dialer. Lets say it racks up a large amount of charges on your bill while draining your minutes. Would the cell phone companies refund your money/minutes? Would you have to do it through the credit card company by doing a chargeback?
So everybody and their brother has a music service these days. Obviously Apple is one of the better ones, but thats still a lot of competition, and a lot of marketing dollars that are going into stealing that competition from Apple.
So I'm curious as to what sorts of predictions people have for when the market gets completely saturated with music services. Particularly with ones like OD2's which is a generic music store that they sell to lots of people which leads to a lot of the same stuff with different branding.
Will we start seeing buyouts? Which ones do you think will go out of business?
Actually...while I agree they don't get it in terms of the quality of their package they sell...I will say that they "get it" in terms of business model.
You see, they don't really have to worry so much about competing head to head with the best in the industry in terms of quality of service simply because they are aiming for companies who just want to jump on the bandwagon, and are willing to pay a lot of money for it.
I'm sure this is infinitely more profitable for them than if their business model involved using their own music service to sell music.
Remember, the people who got rich during the goldrush were the people selling shovels.
I am in no way associated with Apple, and I don't really care whether you believe me or not.
I'm not spreading FUD, I'm making an observation on the current state of the industry.
So now, since you seem to think OD2 is far less restrictive than Apple's service...I shall give you a point by point break down of why it is indeed more restrictive.
OD2's policy on burning:
"CD burning refers to the process of creating an audio CD from the downloaded media file on your PC. Most of the music can be 'burned' to a CD. CD 'Burn' allowances for each track are determined by the Rights Holders (Record Labels). The media player uses the license associated with each track to check that a particular track can be 'burned' to a CD. "
Funny, I seem to remember that with Apple you can have unlimited burns.
Next on the list is the fact that with OD2's package, the license holder has the chance to limit the number of listens per song, and while they say it is typically done with free songs, it is still more restrictive than Apple who has no such thing. Here's a quote from their terms:
"For some downloads, the Rights Holder (Record Label) may have set up some restrictions. Usually these are only set for free downloads. Our product details page will tell you how many plays you are allowed. "
Next of course is the fact that you can only listen to them in WMA. Now, to be fair, Apple DL's are in AAC format, but you can convert those, and to be honest, I don't know if the WMP9 DRM prevents you from converting or not, but I would assume it does.
And you are also required to listen to them in WMP9, but this is not LESS restrictive than Apple, as Apple requires you to listen to AAC in iTunes, so I'd say its just as restrictive.
Oh...almost forgot, in their terms regarding why they don't support Macs?
"Currently the Windows Media Player for the MAC does not support Microsoft DRM Version 7. DRM version 7 is the minimum security setting required by the majority of our Record Labels."
Last I checked, iTunes was available for Windows as well.
Now, I did not do this point by point analysis to because I work for Apple or anything else imagined by you, oh great anonymous one, I merely did it to show exactly why you were completely wrong in your statement.
I've been doing a lot of work related research into UK/European online music services, and from what I've seen so far, OD2's basic package that they give to people (like MyCokeMusic) is a horrible restrictive service.
This new service package sounds interesting, but honestly, all it seems like to me is an extended preview that you pay for.
Granted its only 1P, but their ultimate goal is to get people to buy the whole song...and this sounds like kind of a scummy way to do it.
Unfortunately, this may be the only way they are ABLE to do it because I'm sure they have to pay the labels for the streaming rights to the song, so they couldn't just offer up a whole preview for free.
I'm curious though, can anybody spot any difference between the sites that use OD2's main product other than the brand name/images/colorscheme slapped onto the webpages?
As far as I know they all use the same catalogue, same terms, and same price, so I can't see how they are differentiated at all other than by Brand.
"EverQuest II is one of the most beautiful games in development... Every square inch begs to be explored"
Right, maybe when you first start playing, but eventually you figure out where you need to run, and you don't even bother exploring every inch, because there's nothing worth looking for there. Your goal is to get from Town A to Zone B and camp so you can continue the level grind.
I'm sorry, but I'm extremely jaded from EQ. At least with Ultima Online you could wander around and forage for herbs, and find random wildlife, and harvest natural resources from *gasp* nature.
This is all without mentioning the fact that now people are able to host their own UO servers.
When EQ 2 comes out, they could make a LOT of money selling a dev kit for letting people make their own worlds/servers. They could even sell server space. But no...of course not, that would never happen.
Your point about cockpits is completely true. I'm surprised they haven't adapted a camera system to the bottom of the craft which would display on a screen in the cockpit (maybe they have actually, I don't know).
Another example is how in Battlefield: 1942, NOBODY and I mean NOBODY flies with the cockpit on if they know how to turn it off.
I fancy myself a pretty good pilot in that game, but its amazing how much you start to suck when the server has cockpit mode locked.
Now, of course what would make this be less drastic would be if you had the ability to mouselook inside the cockpit 360 degrees around you and 180 above you, because obviously in a real plane cockpit, you can look around and aren't stuck with a fixed forward view or a toggled back view.
There's really something to be said for smoothly mouselooking around a cockpit versus toggling views with the joystick hat.
Hi, I'm Joe Consumer. This RFID stuff sounds really cool, and could allow me to do some pretty neat things inside my house, like put tags on things I lose easily, or monitor how much of something I have left, even tell me where people are in the house.
Unfortunately, what I really need to do all this is a kit with say...50 RFID chips with an adhesive backing, scanners that I can place around the house to track them/count them, and software for my Windows computer which lets me easily monitor/setup this whole system.
I would be willing to pay $$$ to anybody who could make this possible.
*end Joe Consumer*
Ok, the whole point of that little letter was to show that there would be a large demand for these if it was dumbed down enough for Joe Consumer. It needs simple software to set up the RFID chips and manage/monitor them, and the chips and scanners need to be positioned as simple appliances that are simple to install wherever you need it around the house.
If something like this exists, please tell me where to find it, if not, for the love of god would someone who knows this technology please make it? You'd make a killing.
Also, for those of you who want to see some examples of some quality (and not so quality) raytracing work, a lot of it down in POV Ray, check out the Internet Ray Tracing Competition over at www.irtc.org.
You'e just described one of the arguments for censorship on the internet in regards to things like posting bomb building instructions. Do you believe censorship on the internet is a good thing?
Perhaps I need to clarify further. When people use software, often times they use it through a front end which takes care of the complex parts. I am not saying that I want people to be tinkering around with every single little detail of the stuff (although if they feel qualified they should be able to at their own risk), but if there were some sort of front end that could handle the complex tasks, and let people customize biotech to their needs with no risk (similar to selecting something from a drop down menu) this would be a great boon to society.
Now, obviously what I'm talking about is REALLY far down the road, but ultimately thats where I hope we arrive.
Slashdot Mirror
I liked your example up until this point. Its fine for an appliance to search for related information that would be relevant to its function and convey that to me, but I sure as hell don't want my appliance going about testing my milk unless I set it to do so, nor do I want an appliance that tells me what I can and can't do with it (ie. buy more milk).
Now, I realize thats not the way you may have meant it, but unfortunately, that is the power many companies would like to have and have already made attempts at.
Imagine your future computer saying "I have taken the liberty of checking all your music files for the appropriate licenses and have reported the pirated ones to the RIAA."
No thanks.
Every company out there is trying to move over to a per use/subscription model, and guess what, people don't WANT it.
They're stuck with it though because that's all there is.
Unfortunately for the companies, people don't have that kind of money to continously spend on things. I mean, they add up...and suddenly you're paying several hundred a month for products you should only have to pay a one time fee for.
Their greed will get them in the end.
Lots of things were thought to be scientifically impossible years ago, but thank god we didn't stop researching them or we'd never have proved people wrong.
Or at the very least spell checking.
Oh wait, that's cuz its running Windows Quantum Edition.
Yeah, or you know, there's this ancient technology that was used before computers called a "pen" which would let you copy your memory to a disc of "paper" so you could backup your memory.
Funniest. Rant. Ever.
What legal recourse would there be?
In this case we're dealing with the online music service industry, and the limited number of resources would be the consumers.
So I'm curious as to what sorts of predictions people have for when the market gets completely saturated with music services. Particularly with ones like OD2's which is a generic music store that they sell to lots of people which leads to a lot of the same stuff with different branding.
Will we start seeing buyouts? Which ones do you think will go out of business?
You see, they don't really have to worry so much about competing head to head with the best in the industry in terms of quality of service simply because they are aiming for companies who just want to jump on the bandwagon, and are willing to pay a lot of money for it.
I'm sure this is infinitely more profitable for them than if their business model involved using their own music service to sell music.
Remember, the people who got rich during the goldrush were the people selling shovels.
I'm not spreading FUD, I'm making an observation on the current state of the industry.
So now, since you seem to think OD2 is far less restrictive than Apple's service...I shall give you a point by point break down of why it is indeed more restrictive. OD2's policy on burning:
"CD burning refers to the process of creating an audio CD from the downloaded media file on your PC. Most of the music can be 'burned' to a CD. CD 'Burn' allowances for each track are determined by the Rights Holders (Record Labels). The media player uses the license associated with each track to check that a particular track can be 'burned' to a CD. "
Funny, I seem to remember that with Apple you can have unlimited burns.
Next on the list is the fact that with OD2's package, the license holder has the chance to limit the number of listens per song, and while they say it is typically done with free songs, it is still more restrictive than Apple who has no such thing. Here's a quote from their terms:
"For some downloads, the Rights Holder (Record Label) may have set up some restrictions. Usually these are only set for free downloads. Our product details page will tell you how many plays you are allowed. "
Next of course is the fact that you can only listen to them in WMA. Now, to be fair, Apple DL's are in AAC format, but you can convert those, and to be honest, I don't know if the WMP9 DRM prevents you from converting or not, but I would assume it does.
And you are also required to listen to them in WMP9, but this is not LESS restrictive than Apple, as Apple requires you to listen to AAC in iTunes, so I'd say its just as restrictive.
Oh...almost forgot, in their terms regarding why they don't support Macs?
"Currently the Windows Media Player for the MAC does not support Microsoft DRM Version 7. DRM version 7 is the minimum security setting required by the majority of our Record Labels."
Last I checked, iTunes was available for Windows as well.
Now, I did not do this point by point analysis to because I work for Apple or anything else imagined by you, oh great anonymous one, I merely did it to show exactly why you were completely wrong in your statement.
Crawl back to your hole.
This new service package sounds interesting, but honestly, all it seems like to me is an extended preview that you pay for.
Granted its only 1P, but their ultimate goal is to get people to buy the whole song...and this sounds like kind of a scummy way to do it.
Unfortunately, this may be the only way they are ABLE to do it because I'm sure they have to pay the labels for the streaming rights to the song, so they couldn't just offer up a whole preview for free.
I'm curious though, can anybody spot any difference between the sites that use OD2's main product other than the brand name/images/colorscheme slapped onto the webpages?
As far as I know they all use the same catalogue, same terms, and same price, so I can't see how they are differentiated at all other than by Brand.
Right, maybe when you first start playing, but eventually you figure out where you need to run, and you don't even bother exploring every inch, because there's nothing worth looking for there. Your goal is to get from Town A to Zone B and camp so you can continue the level grind.
I'm sorry, but I'm extremely jaded from EQ. At least with Ultima Online you could wander around and forage for herbs, and find random wildlife, and harvest natural resources from *gasp* nature.
This is all without mentioning the fact that now people are able to host their own UO servers.
When EQ 2 comes out, they could make a LOT of money selling a dev kit for letting people make their own worlds/servers. They could even sell server space. But no...of course not, that would never happen.
Another example is how in Battlefield: 1942, NOBODY and I mean NOBODY flies with the cockpit on if they know how to turn it off.
I fancy myself a pretty good pilot in that game, but its amazing how much you start to suck when the server has cockpit mode locked.
Now, of course what would make this be less drastic would be if you had the ability to mouselook inside the cockpit 360 degrees around you and 180 above you, because obviously in a real plane cockpit, you can look around and aren't stuck with a fixed forward view or a toggled back view.
There's really something to be said for smoothly mouselooking around a cockpit versus toggling views with the joystick hat.
Unfortunately, what I really need to do all this is a kit with say...50 RFID chips with an adhesive backing, scanners that I can place around the house to track them/count them, and software for my Windows computer which lets me easily monitor/setup this whole system.
I would be willing to pay $$$ to anybody who could make this possible.
*end Joe Consumer*
Ok, the whole point of that little letter was to show that there would be a large demand for these if it was dumbed down enough for Joe Consumer. It needs simple software to set up the RFID chips and manage/monitor them, and the chips and scanners need to be positioned as simple appliances that are simple to install wherever you need it around the house.
If something like this exists, please tell me where to find it, if not, for the love of god would someone who knows this technology please make it? You'd make a killing.
As does the cost of medicine and hospital visits.
Now, obviously what I'm talking about is REALLY far down the road, but ultimately thats where I hope we arrive.