Okay, major pet peeve time. It's called the "Internet", not "the web".
I don't care how much people use "the web" incorrectly- it doesn't make it right, and you should call them on it (politely). "The web" refers purely to web pages and sites. Not email, AIM, FTP, IRC, etc.
The vehicle's design is not really street-safe - this will be a problem as more efficient, lighter cars share the road with Hummers.
Not true, and this seems to be the universal opinion here. Indy cars are designed to take crashes into solid walls at 200MPH. To roll and cartwheel for a quarter mile. Etc. They weigh under 1,000lb. including the engine- much less without it. Rent or buy "Super Speedway"- aside from being one of the coolest IMAX DVDs ever(IMAX camera on a specially prepared indy car driven by Mario Andretti- freakin awesome), they discuss safety and how the car is designed to collapse just enough.
Survivability consists ONLY of keeping the driver from experiencing too high an impact. That means:
Collapsable, energy absorbing cells
A stiffer structure inside that to prevent intrusion into the driver
Sorry, but it's clear these teams have no idea what they're doing (they're basically using the same excuses the US auto industry did at first- oh, safety would cost too much, we don't know how, it would weigh too much, etc), and their vehicles are not safe enough for public roads. They can hold their little competitions on private roads (universities have plenty of these) until they make vehicles that have reasonable safety measures to protect the driver.
The new products will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products
Yup, but the box will say "4X FASTER! Also speeds up 802.11b and g networks!" Consumers will think, "hey, it'll speed up my 802.11b network by 4x! Yeah!"
Corporations need to learn to write clear, concise blurbs for their packaging, so customers don't feel ripped off or mislead (and never buy their products again as a result).
What he doesn't understand is that the Airport *does not even play the original AAC file*. It is converted to Apple Lossless in iTunes before the stream is sent down.
From my post:
(simplifying here, calm down nitpickers)
Why hello, Sean "Nitpicker" Adams. I didn't mention the format conversion because it is pointless. Apple put the encryption in to keep the music industry happy, because otherwise, copyrighted works would be there for the taking with no encryption.
So what's going over the air is simply a losseslly compressed representation of what's coming right out the s/pdif port IN THE CLEAR.
Hey, can your neighbor snoop your S/PDIF port and record off it? No? Thought so. Can some guy with a cantenna a mile away sniff your S/PDIF port? No?
Hey, does S/PDIF contain copyright management technology? Yup, it does, and most S/PDIF devices will refuse to record a stream with the copyright flag set- so even if your neighbor snuck into your house and plugged in to that S/PDIF port with their gear- unless it was pro equipment, they could listen but not record.
Funny how Linux from Walmart which itself is a large corporation may help fight the software giant Microsoft is. How ironic where the revolution comes from.
How ironic that the same people who preached that quantity != quality, and that linux was better despite less marketshare, are now hooting about how they've surpassed Apple's marketshare. Why does it matter? I thought it wasn't important...
How ironic that the same people who have moaned and bitched about monopolies are now making jokes about an ultimate goal of "world domination".
I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses Linux. I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses Macs. I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses Windows. I want to live in a world where people are not locked into one platform, and are free to choose the tool that suits them best. My only objection to MS, really, was their strong-arm tactics to keep Linux, BSD, etc from even getting their foot in the door with PC manufacturers. There has been quite a bit of progress in that department ("secure" PC collusion between MS and BIOS companies notwithstanding) which is why the Linux-specific server vendors are now struggling; there's no market for them, because you can buy a Gateway, Dell, HP, or IBM certified to run at least one distribution of Linux, complete with hardware tools for monitoring and whatnot.
Anyway, back on topic, I never really understood why Apple felt the need to encrypt it in the first place.
It is encrypted because otherwise you're transmitting copyrighted works over a medium easily sniffed. The AAC file you bought from iTunes, which can't be played on anything but the system you authorized it for (simplifying here, calm down nitpickers) would be transmitted unencrypted to the Airport Express. It would be an excellent way to decrypt your files and do whatever you want with them- all you would need would be a second machine with a wireless card, or probably even just running a sniffer locally on the system doing the transmitting.
This is blatantly obvious and I'm not sure why the poster was modded up 5, Insightful- time to start meta-moderating again as it seems mods are getting lazy. Folks, if you've got mod points, check out some of the non-front page stories- they NEED the mod attention. I'm so sick of people just knee-jerk moderating, especially to posts which have ALREADY been modded up- and then people like me who eventually get mod points have to come along and mod something "overrated" to knock it down (only to be undone by some moron 5 seconds later who doesn't look at the comment's previous moderations).
but getting rid of the bit that keeps the money coming in while you sort the problems out?
Raises capital- ie money you can use to invest or buy things to make more money.
Someone no doubt sat down and figured out how much money Napster could potentially make, and how much Toast etc would make.
It could be that profits are leveling off (since OS X supports CD/DVD burning decently, that wouldn't be surprising) and so the company is taking a chance. Selling off their existing products gives them a lump of cash to use for working on Napster- something like, say, a stupid Superbowl commercial.
I remember the good ol' days of the internet when it was a playtoy for scientists and computer people.
...and nobody used it to conduct business, especially financial matters.
Now we have the government telling me what I can and can't delete.
The government has always told certain categories of businesses that certain things must be saved. My friend who is a private, fee-based financial planner/advisor, has to keep all emails and a call log (don't remember with notes or not) when it concerns a client.
I used to work with a guy who knew ingres; MIT's technology licensing office used it, and it ran on a dec alphaserver running..openVMS. He had guaranteed job security, pretty much.
Too bad the head of the TLO office was a real bitch, but at least never around- she was also some bigwig at a bio research "organization" (read, somebody's tax shelter).
Some fun stuff used to happen though- I sat next to the woman who handled royalty checks to the professors and stuff. One professor "lost" a +$100,000 check. After harassing the crap out of her(screaming, threats of legal action because she couldn't get a new check to him IMMEDIATELY) over the phone, he called back with his tail between his legs- the new tenant at his OLD APARTMENT found it tucked into a MAGAZINE on his coffee table.
She turned to me and said "if you had just gotten a check worth over $100,000, what would you do with it?" "Run my ass right down to the bank as fast as I could and cash it." "Exactly! Not, say, 'tuck into magazine and leave magazine on my coffee table and then forget about it and move apartments'". She then made a disparaging but very amusing comment about "rocket scientists"...
If you'd be a little more informed, you'd know from talking with Apple engineers (lite I do at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference) that Jobs actually has a say in everything.
Did you just seriously imply that you need to "talk to developers at WWDC" like you do(nice horn tootin' by the way) to know Jobs micromanages? It's probably his most infamous personality quirk, aside from his massive ego, aka the Steve Reality Distortion Field.
You missed my point entirely. The original Jobs Fanboy said "ohmygosh, because, without Steve, we wouldn't have had..."
Which is absurd, and ignores the fact that even if Jobs pushes his nose into everything, at the end of the day, 98% of the work was done by other people. I can't stand it when people attribute the end product entirely to CEOs...
Simple as this... no Steve Jobs... no Apple computers... no iMac, iCal, iPod, iBook
Hate to break it to you, but here's sorta how it works.
Jobs says "let's make an MP3 player better than anything else out there", or someone suggests it, and Jobs says "OK, let's look into it".
One person sees what "anything else" has. Another sees what people might be willing to pay. Another runs some numbers on what it might cost to build. Another works on a little concept art based on what the engineers think is reasonable in terms of size etc.
Then everyone comes back and presents their stuff- not necessarily to Steve, maybe someone under him, who then brings it to him. Jobs says "hey, looks like we can do this and make money off it. Let's whip up some prototypes", etc.
Jobs was informed, prior to surgery, that there were no user serviceable parts within his pancreas but he could have his pancreas refurbished/rebuilt for a reasonable fee.
Not quite- his warranty covers everything, except that little bit of his pancreas.
(I discovered a few weeks ago that the little flippy part of my power adapter..duck-something is what the guy at the store called it... is not covered by warranty, supposedly. Probably because they break like crazy. 3-goddam-thousand-dollar laptop and they want to charge me $20 for the little flippy power plug bit).
Reuven points out that the all-in-one social network sites LinkedIn, Orkut and Ryze aren't particularly useful, but he says they're "all scratching the surface of something new and interesting."
Bull. There's nothing older; a friend invited me to join friendster, and my first comment to her was:
"Jesus Christ, it's high school, all over again."
It's an electronic popularity contest, with a little bit of recruitment thrown in. Most of us sit on the sidelines and watch as the really popular people amass a huge collection of friends.
Not surprisingly, a huge number of these young 20-somethings were from NYC, and almost all of them were exactly the type I can't stand- drunk-every-night clubbers. My personal favorite was some rich-bitch french girl who was almost completely naked in all of her shots on some beach. Her profile was truly a piece of work. Example: "Things I enjoy: Not having to work. Ever."
Friendster attracts the biggest concentration of intellectual-stuck-ups, prisses, and vanity-obsessed people I've seen in my life. Given Orkut is higher profile and more exclusive, I would imagine it's even worse.
After all, they created a really nifty device that bests the iPod in two important areas (battery life, size)
Uh...with the new iPod, there's much less of a difference. The iPod also weighs so little and is so small, it fits in a pocket just fine. The old ones were too big, but Apple hit it right with the 3rd/4th gen models. I don't see a need to make it smaller, sorry. If anything, the iPod is good hand-sized.
Reading about how the iPod is inferior because it weighs more and has "only" 12 hours of battery life is insane; Sony's figures drop quite a bit if you play "higher bitrate" files, which you'll invariably have to do because ATRAC3 blows goats. Why didn't he test battery life at a bitrate that showed(in his judgement) no degradation from the original Mp3 file? I'd be willing to bet it's the same, or worse, than an iPod.
Reading Mossberg's comments about how the iPod Mini is inferior because it has much less capacity misses the point- the iPod mini wasn't designed to compete with devices like the Sony player. It was designed to compete with all the high end solid-state-memory players, and it's done so nicely. I hate it when "technology writers" can't recognize distinct markets; it'd be like an auto reviewer comparing a corvette to a pickup truck. "The corvette sucks because it has no cargo capacity"...
Nevermind that both the Mini and the iPod cost LESS than the Sony by at least $100...
...for me was not so much the graphics as the soundtrack.
Agreed, and I'm glad they listed the group(or individual), Cargo Cult- but it would have been nice to know what specific (two?) song(s) were used. Invariably I find that I love whatever they used for piece X, but when I listen to the whole album, the rest is not even remotely my taste. Ironically, the stuff used for soundtracks and such is usually when the artist does something "different".
And they're pretty lame pictures, at that. One is of a guy holding something AWAY from the camera that looks like it might be a box. Or a piece of cardboard. We have no idea. Another pic shows a picture of a hill, with a GIANT red hand-drawn arrow pointing to where the phone is. Picture #3 is the boot screen for the phone, courtesy T-Mobile. Then we get a blurry pic of the linksys bluetooth adapter with a giant cable coming off it...and last but not least...a picture of the bluetooth-raped cellphone..so traumatized, it has switched itself off.
I just read the link in your signature, The Apple Product Cycle. Fantastic, good job!
It is great, which is why it's there- but it's not mine, much as I would love to take credit for it. I guess I should probably make a note of that if there's enough room...
And in other google news you're not likely to see here on slash, the CFO of google is being investigated by the SEC. Seems his old employer, SkillSoft/SmartForce, had to restate...uh...3 and a half years of financial figures...something that earned them the loosing side of a $30M class action lawsuit.
The suit said SmartForce officers and directors, including Drummond, ''acted knowingly or in such a reckless manner as to constitute a fraud and deceit" upon shareholders. Drummond, as chief financial officer, had been responsible for SmartForce's financial reports.
the micro chip companies are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a single commodity gadget, the phone.
Free country, free market, free economy. If you don't like the heat- get out of the kitchen. Nobody's forcing you to sell low-margin products, and they have nobody to blame but themselves if they're only making stuff for cell phones. It's not like they woke up one morning and said "oh my gosh, someone changed our product lineup to be just stuff for cellphones!" Furthermore, I don't really believe it- plenty of semiconductor companies make stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with cell phones.
If it -is- true, who's to say this shakeup is a bad thing? That's the wonderful thing about a competitive market- if a company can't make a profit on a device, they won't make it. If there are too many companies making a widget, the price will go low and only the strong companies will survive.
The fantastic thing is that if the strong companies start to suck, well- a market forms for an competitor because there will be something to differentiate their product. Not only that, but if it's better- they can price it higher, and (gasp!) make more money!
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, major pet peeve time. It's called the "Internet", not "the web".
I don't care how much people use "the web" incorrectly- it doesn't make it right, and you should call them on it (politely). "The web" refers purely to web pages and sites. Not email, AIM, FTP, IRC, etc.
Not true, and this seems to be the universal opinion here. Indy cars are designed to take crashes into solid walls at 200MPH. To roll and cartwheel for a quarter mile. Etc. They weigh under 1,000lb. including the engine- much less without it. Rent or buy "Super Speedway"- aside from being one of the coolest IMAX DVDs ever(IMAX camera on a specially prepared indy car driven by Mario Andretti- freakin awesome), they discuss safety and how the car is designed to collapse just enough.
Survivability consists ONLY of keeping the driver from experiencing too high an impact. That means:
Sorry, but it's clear these teams have no idea what they're doing (they're basically using the same excuses the US auto industry did at first- oh, safety would cost too much, we don't know how, it would weigh too much, etc), and their vehicles are not safe enough for public roads. They can hold their little competitions on private roads (universities have plenty of these) until they make vehicles that have reasonable safety measures to protect the driver.
Yup, but the box will say "4X FASTER! Also speeds up 802.11b and g networks!" Consumers will think, "hey, it'll speed up my 802.11b network by 4x! Yeah!"
Corporations need to learn to write clear, concise blurbs for their packaging, so customers don't feel ripped off or mislead (and never buy their products again as a result).
From my post:
(simplifying here, calm down nitpickers)
Why hello, Sean "Nitpicker" Adams. I didn't mention the format conversion because it is pointless. Apple put the encryption in to keep the music industry happy, because otherwise, copyrighted works would be there for the taking with no encryption.
So what's going over the air is simply a losseslly compressed representation of what's coming right out the s/pdif port IN THE CLEAR.
Hey, can your neighbor snoop your S/PDIF port and record off it? No? Thought so. Can some guy with a cantenna a mile away sniff your S/PDIF port? No?
Hey, does S/PDIF contain copyright management technology? Yup, it does, and most S/PDIF devices will refuse to record a stream with the copyright flag set- so even if your neighbor snuck into your house and plugged in to that S/PDIF port with their gear- unless it was pro equipment, they could listen but not record.
So, why don't you....STFU?
How ironic that the same people who preached that quantity != quality, and that linux was better despite less marketshare, are now hooting about how they've surpassed Apple's marketshare. Why does it matter? I thought it wasn't important...
How ironic that the same people who have moaned and bitched about monopolies are now making jokes about an ultimate goal of "world domination".
I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses Linux. I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses Macs. I don't want to live in a world where everyone uses Windows. I want to live in a world where people are not locked into one platform, and are free to choose the tool that suits them best. My only objection to MS, really, was their strong-arm tactics to keep Linux, BSD, etc from even getting their foot in the door with PC manufacturers. There has been quite a bit of progress in that department ("secure" PC collusion between MS and BIOS companies notwithstanding) which is why the Linux-specific server vendors are now struggling; there's no market for them, because you can buy a Gateway, Dell, HP, or IBM certified to run at least one distribution of Linux, complete with hardware tools for monitoring and whatnot.
It is encrypted because otherwise you're transmitting copyrighted works over a medium easily sniffed. The AAC file you bought from iTunes, which can't be played on anything but the system you authorized it for (simplifying here, calm down nitpickers) would be transmitted unencrypted to the Airport Express. It would be an excellent way to decrypt your files and do whatever you want with them- all you would need would be a second machine with a wireless card, or probably even just running a sniffer locally on the system doing the transmitting.
This is blatantly obvious and I'm not sure why the poster was modded up 5, Insightful- time to start meta-moderating again as it seems mods are getting lazy. Folks, if you've got mod points, check out some of the non-front page stories- they NEED the mod attention. I'm so sick of people just knee-jerk moderating, especially to posts which have ALREADY been modded up- and then people like me who eventually get mod points have to come along and mod something "overrated" to knock it down (only to be undone by some moron 5 seconds later who doesn't look at the comment's previous moderations).
Raises capital- ie money you can use to invest or buy things to make more money.
Someone no doubt sat down and figured out how much money Napster could potentially make, and how much Toast etc would make.
It could be that profits are leveling off (since OS X supports CD/DVD burning decently, that wouldn't be surprising) and so the company is taking a chance. Selling off their existing products gives them a lump of cash to use for working on Napster- something like, say, a stupid Superbowl commercial.
...and nobody used it to conduct business, especially financial matters.
Now we have the government telling me what I can and can't delete.
The government has always told certain categories of businesses that certain things must be saved. My friend who is a private, fee-based financial planner/advisor, has to keep all emails and a call log (don't remember with notes or not) when it concerns a client.
You misspelled "goddesses". I agree, we need more of those hot, kissing ambassador models.
Say, these guys?
Go on. Try a search. Watch actual results come up, instead of thousands of affiliate sites.
I used to work with a guy who knew ingres; MIT's technology licensing office used it, and it ran on a dec alphaserver running..openVMS. He had guaranteed job security, pretty much.
Too bad the head of the TLO office was a real bitch, but at least never around- she was also some bigwig at a bio research "organization" (read, somebody's tax shelter).
Some fun stuff used to happen though- I sat next to the woman who handled royalty checks to the professors and stuff. One professor "lost" a +$100,000 check. After harassing the crap out of her(screaming, threats of legal action because she couldn't get a new check to him IMMEDIATELY) over the phone, he called back with his tail between his legs- the new tenant at his OLD APARTMENT found it tucked into a MAGAZINE on his coffee table.
She turned to me and said "if you had just gotten a check worth over $100,000, what would you do with it?" "Run my ass right down to the bank as fast as I could and cash it." "Exactly! Not, say, 'tuck into magazine and leave magazine on my coffee table and then forget about it and move apartments'". She then made a disparaging but very amusing comment about "rocket scientists"...
Did you just seriously imply that you need to "talk to developers at WWDC" like you do(nice horn tootin' by the way) to know Jobs micromanages? It's probably his most infamous personality quirk, aside from his massive ego, aka the Steve Reality Distortion Field.
You missed my point entirely. The original Jobs Fanboy said "ohmygosh, because, without Steve, we wouldn't have had..."
Which is absurd, and ignores the fact that even if Jobs pushes his nose into everything, at the end of the day, 98% of the work was done by other people. I can't stand it when people attribute the end product entirely to CEOs...
Hate to break it to you, but here's sorta how it works.
Jobs says "let's make an MP3 player better than anything else out there", or someone suggests it, and Jobs says "OK, let's look into it".
One person sees what "anything else" has. Another sees what people might be willing to pay. Another runs some numbers on what it might cost to build. Another works on a little concept art based on what the engineers think is reasonable in terms of size etc.
Then everyone comes back and presents their stuff- not necessarily to Steve, maybe someone under him, who then brings it to him. Jobs says "hey, looks like we can do this and make money off it. Let's whip up some prototypes", etc.
Thus dispelling rumors circulating for days (on MacOSRumors et al) that Steve was:
....and of course, various other unsubstantiated rumors not worth mentioning (everyone figured out the bionic legs were bogus right away).
Not quite- his warranty covers everything, except that little bit of his pancreas.
(I discovered a few weeks ago that the little flippy part of my power adapter..duck-something is what the guy at the store called it... is not covered by warranty, supposedly. Probably because they break like crazy. 3-goddam-thousand-dollar laptop and they want to charge me $20 for the little flippy power plug bit).
Bull. There's nothing older; a friend invited me to join friendster, and my first comment to her was:
"Jesus Christ, it's high school, all over again."
It's an electronic popularity contest, with a little bit of recruitment thrown in. Most of us sit on the sidelines and watch as the really popular people amass a huge collection of friends.
Not surprisingly, a huge number of these young 20-somethings were from NYC, and almost all of them were exactly the type I can't stand- drunk-every-night clubbers. My personal favorite was some rich-bitch french girl who was almost completely naked in all of her shots on some beach. Her profile was truly a piece of work. Example: "Things I enjoy: Not having to work. Ever."
Friendster attracts the biggest concentration of intellectual-stuck-ups, prisses, and vanity-obsessed people I've seen in my life. Given Orkut is higher profile and more exclusive, I would imagine it's even worse.
Uh...with the new iPod, there's much less of a difference. The iPod also weighs so little and is so small, it fits in a pocket just fine. The old ones were too big, but Apple hit it right with the 3rd/4th gen models. I don't see a need to make it smaller, sorry. If anything, the iPod is good hand-sized.
Reading about how the iPod is inferior because it weighs more and has "only" 12 hours of battery life is insane; Sony's figures drop quite a bit if you play "higher bitrate" files, which you'll invariably have to do because ATRAC3 blows goats. Why didn't he test battery life at a bitrate that showed(in his judgement) no degradation from the original Mp3 file? I'd be willing to bet it's the same, or worse, than an iPod.
Reading Mossberg's comments about how the iPod Mini is inferior because it has much less capacity misses the point- the iPod mini wasn't designed to compete with devices like the Sony player. It was designed to compete with all the high end solid-state-memory players, and it's done so nicely. I hate it when "technology writers" can't recognize distinct markets; it'd be like an auto reviewer comparing a corvette to a pickup truck. "The corvette sucks because it has no cargo capacity"...
Nevermind that both the Mini and the iPod cost LESS than the Sony by at least $100...
...and they are Entry and (when the insane sports announcer comes on) Dilemma.
Both are off Alchemy.
I only wish the guy got his levels right, there is quite a bit of clipping...or the encode wasn't done very well.
Agreed, and I'm glad they listed the group(or individual), Cargo Cult- but it would have been nice to know what specific (two?) song(s) were used. Invariably I find that I love whatever they used for piece X, but when I listen to the whole album, the rest is not even remotely my taste. Ironically, the stuff used for soundtracks and such is usually when the artist does something "different".
Currently downloading song 2 of about 20...
Apparently promote their online store...
And they're pretty lame pictures, at that. One is of a guy holding something AWAY from the camera that looks like it might be a box. Or a piece of cardboard. We have no idea. Another pic shows a picture of a hill, with a GIANT red hand-drawn arrow pointing to where the phone is. Picture #3 is the boot screen for the phone, courtesy T-Mobile. Then we get a blurry pic of the linksys bluetooth adapter with a giant cable coming off it...and last but not least...a picture of the bluetooth-raped cellphone..so traumatized, it has switched itself off.
Cute the Visene guy- "Wooooooow".
It is great, which is why it's there- but it's not mine, much as I would love to take credit for it. I guess I should probably make a note of that if there's enough room...
Oops, had that wrong. Drummond is "vice president for corporate development, secretary, and general counsel" for Google.
And in other google news you're not likely to see here on slash, the CFO of google is being investigated by the SEC. Seems his old employer, SkillSoft/SmartForce, had to restate...uh...3 and a half years of financial figures...something that earned them the loosing side of a $30M class action lawsuit.
Meet the new boss- same as the old boss.
the micro chip companies are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a single commodity gadget, the phone.
Free country, free market, free economy. If you don't like the heat- get out of the kitchen. Nobody's forcing you to sell low-margin products, and they have nobody to blame but themselves if they're only making stuff for cell phones. It's not like they woke up one morning and said "oh my gosh, someone changed our product lineup to be just stuff for cellphones!" Furthermore, I don't really believe it- plenty of semiconductor companies make stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with cell phones.
If it -is- true, who's to say this shakeup is a bad thing? That's the wonderful thing about a competitive market- if a company can't make a profit on a device, they won't make it. If there are too many companies making a widget, the price will go low and only the strong companies will survive.
The fantastic thing is that if the strong companies start to suck, well- a market forms for an competitor because there will be something to differentiate their product. Not only that, but if it's better- they can price it higher, and (gasp!) make more money!