While Apple bashing is always fun, let us remember that Apple is not the only FoxConn client. So while you may revel in this negative publicity of APPLE, would you be as thrilled to hear that your Xbox 360, your PS3, your Wii, and your Kindle are also built at those same FoxConn factories? Whatever dirt is uncovered will not only tarnish the fruit company but also plenty of other tech titans from HP to Microsoft.
So does your umbrage only extend to Apple Inc? My guess is that you will not be metering your indignation equally.
THe only thing I'd add to this festival of Apple hate is that when the iPhone was first released, it was Samsung who sued first and wanted to ban the sale of the iPhone. I'm not going to pick sides, but if you really believe that Samsung or any Tech company is some open platform and free software angel that only exists to protect your privacy and sense of entitlement and not resort to dirty tricks then you are a very naive person.
Yes, the patent system is a mess. Yes, companies abuse the system. Yes, customers suffer because of the actions of these companies. BUT; if you think only the companies you have a personal bias against are guilty of these actions, then you are mistaken and are also a pawn.
If you want the system to change than you have to boycott it all.
And if you are not prepared to drop all of your commercially sourced tech hardware and software then this talk of "action" is futile.
Can someone clarify WHAT the Fire is....I thought it was a media device designed specifically to channel Amazon content, and not a fully featured tablet, hence the low price point. Isn't it unreasonable to expect so much for a 199 dollar price?
Meh: You spend enough time reading message boards and trolls quickly become background noise. Maybe back in the early 90's a troll might have gotten a rise out of me, but by now I've read every ad hominem attack, meaningless rant, cheap shot, and overly provocative post that could possibly be authored.
Frankly, if you really want to shock me or just really piss me off, present a truly cogent, fact based, and utterly logical point of view. It's the stuff that I can't easily dismiss as the ravings of an ass-hat that gets under my skin.
I'd be tempted to wait at least till RIM releases their "playbook". The CEO has been making some pretty big claims about the superiority of their new tablet and it might be worth the wait.
Not to mention Nokia and Motorola both want a piece of the tablet pie and both have clearly stated they believe the ipad is inferior to their offerings. So given that 3 major vendors have significant announcements forthcoming, it seems like smart money to at least wait till summer.
Good luck with your purchase.
Personally, I think everyone is being misdirected. It would seem, from a shareholder view, that MSFT loses a lot more money to piracy than to either Linux and Apple, at least going by the data provided by MSFT. So, in terms of bang for the buck, MSFT would be better off spending dollars on tightening its DRM or creating a new way to secure and consistently monetize its intellectual property. Certainly, that would be detrimental to users, but in this economy, it might be easier to try to clamp down on piracy than to having to go slog it out in the marketplace. I doubt MSFT will want to relinquish their current price points in order to try and entice a few customers who are used to "free" or relatively free software.
No, I think they're more likely to put the squeeze on non payers and pirates than on the Linux set.
I was an early adopter and had bought one of the first RIo's. It was expensive, poorly built, had a cruddy UI, and could hold at most 15 songs at 128 K. But it was small and allowed me to have music while mountain biking. My cousin, a sales manager for a domestic high end audio company back then told me that the MP3 player to wait for would be from SONY. After all, Sony was a world leader in audio and personal electronics. They had invented the walkman. They had years of acclaimed industrial design, a mature sales and distribution network, high customer awareness, efficient marketing, and even owned a record label that would certainly facilitate a media sales conduit. So what happened?
When we talk about the Zune's inability to gain market traction, I believe there are lessons to be learned from Sony. If a world leader in portable audio electronics can't make a dent, then there might be more to this than some "cool" factor or "apple sucks" reasoning.
Frankly, a big box recipe may not work for discretionary items in a down economy. Your average circuit city is at least 30,000 sq. ft. That square footage needs to be heated,cooled, lit, stocked, insured and staffed. The real estate values of the stores have surely taken a hit just as our residential values have tanked. Even worse, many circuit city's are in less than desirable areas, or expanded heavily into newer space in the volatile exurbs (many of these areas are hit by heavy foreclosure) . Add to that, most of the customer visits are for smaller ticket items; dvds, memory cards, etc. While these may have a good margin built in, you have to move a LOT of them to cover your nut. Big ticket items are heavily advertised and many times have really LOW retailer margin. All those cheap home computers leave little profit for the OEM let alone the retailer. Add to that, no viable house brand for circuit city (a house brand can really help pad your margin since more of the revenue can be retained), and you have a really hard time making bank. Throw in an inexperienced and unknowledgeable staff and you have a failing business. The number to watch is the sales per square foot of retail space.
Conversely, Apple stores are much smaller than their big box brethren. The average Apple store is about 1/5 the size, and usually in a very high traffic and high profile locations. Obviously their brand IS THE house band, so all extra revenue is gravy. All of their products have a healthy margin built in for both retailer and OEM. Add a dedicated staff and very smart merchandising and you have retail success. For the record, Apple Stores average $3000 of sales per sq ft. That exceeds Best Buy and Circuit City easily and even leaves luxury goods retailers like Tiffany's in the dust.
Not every market needs a big box solution.
Without judging the man accused or the authorities (I don't have enough information), I would point out that many people could be inadvertently affected by this. I used to have a house with a pool, and the chemicals necessary to keep it sanitary can be quite dangerous if misused or improperly stored. Some of the pool chemicals include; Sodium Dichloro-isocyanurate, Sodium Bisulfate, Trichlro Isocyanruate, Muriatic Acid or Hydrochloric Acid, Lithium Hypochlorite, Aluminum Sulfate etc.
Indeed, some of these chemicals can be used to make drugs, explosives, or other "bad" concoctions. So, does every pool owner need to watch for BATF agents performing a no-knock raid?
The other thing is if you have a large pool, than you WILL have gallon jugs of these chemicals, so quantity alone cannot be a standard for liability.
Amazing, in ten years MSFT has gone from being a monopoly with its 90% OS market share, to becoming irrelevant with its 90% OS market share. I really love the new math.
MSFT pays per Zune manufactured to "Universal/NBC as a bribe/fee. Now, Uni/NBC wants MSFT to monitor/censor content that sits on customers Zunes. Exactly how does the customer fare in this unholy money sucking corporate sandwich?
I found this article to be amusing because it challenges a belief that I had about linux users; that being their ability to provide for themselves. For all this talk all about "open" and collaborative work, you'd imagine there'd be a huge community for home brewed games and entertainment titles. All of my "nix" friends boast about their "freedom" and lack of "closed systems" and constantly deride my choice of OS (OSX), but it seems their self proclaimed reliance and independence has also given them a dearth of gaming titles.
My advice: roll your own and quit bitching!
Actually, there have been plenty of large engineering projects: the construction of Denver International Airport, the New York aqueduct project, the BART, the Hoover Dam Bridge, the new Bay Bridge, the Big Dig, the multitude of retractable roof domed stadiums, the NY subway expansion, Yucca Mountain Repository, the F-22 Raptor, the Stealth bomber....
What it comes down is this: there are only so many dams, bridges, highway systems you can build in one country. Most of our marquee projects happened a while ago. Now its more of a story about retrofits, repairs, and expansions of existing structures, which can actually be more challenging in terms of engineering than starting from scratch.
Within the next 25 years, the US will see at least 2 new international airports, numerous expansions of mass transit projects, the construction of an oil pipeline, the construction of tidal generators, huge solar and wind farms, expansion of I 70 through the Rocky Mountains (w/ talk of a high speed mountain monorail), as well as numerous dykes, levies, seawalls....
What we need is more engineering students.
The entire debate relies on the idea that the government can be "trusted" with the practice of data mining and electronics surveillance and phone/networking tapping. A wide net traps many fishes and you have to insure the motives are always pure.
Unfortunately, some of the "targets" for surveillance under the "patriot act" included a group of Quakers. See: http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/house_nsabrief_docs_012006.html
For the record, Quakers are against all war and violence. There hasn't been any answers as to what "threat" they presented.
The X300 has a 2.0 GHZ core 2 duo...is that the standard processor or is that the top of the line option?
My concern is that the airbook seems to be handicapped in terms of its processor. Graphicswise - is the intel 3100 integrated gpu any good? And what is the lenovo packing graphics wise?
I'd be curious to see what the carbon footprint of physical media actually is. Between the packaging, the actual hard media, and the shipping costs CD/s and DVDs can come off as being really UNgreen. Having a virtual replacement should be lauded not litigated into a pine box. Big media needs to move into the 21st century.
RIAA's out of court comments aside, is this not something that could be cited in a future case? I mean, RIAA did prevail in the case, all testimony is kept on record, and unless the verdict is overturned, the lawyers comments will be a future quotable. I am dubious of RIAA's intentions and it is not out of this realm to imagine some exploratory litigation.
If you had 128K Mac in 1984, you could have played Klondike; the first solitaire game for the Mac, and that would predate Mr. Goldberg's patent by over ten years.
"On another subject, it's also interesting that earlier this year Steve Jobs was whining how he wanted to sell DRM-free music, but "they" wouldn't let him. Well, Steve, Amazon is doing it. Why aren't you? Or were we really getting yet another Apple lie, and the whole point really has been all along to sell people music that could only work on iPods?"
Whoa there Mr. Innuendo and inaccuracy....Apple cannot just start selling a catalog of DRM free music because they want to...they HAVE TO HAVE THE LABELS APPROVAL! So, instead of once again blaming Apple for everything from DRM to Global Warming, try fact some fact-checking.
In addition, there are at least 26 different online services that are iPod compatible. Yes, the iPod is such a walled garden.
People believe anything.
Lawyers do not send official documents via email. Lawyers need a paper trail.
Large companies don't negotiate until NDA's are signed. That is not the exception, that is the rule.
Lawyers follow steps; lawsuit before settlement, settlement before verdict or trial.
Besides, it's a satire site...with you know...satire.
Actually, there are quite a few parallels, with VHS vs Beta essentially being SONY vs JVC/Phillips. Indeed, while Beta offered better quality, it was outflanked by an aggressive JVC who pushed hard to get studio adoption. Back then, it was the porn industry who really helped give VHS the edge, as SONY wanted nothing to do with the nascent home porn market.
Nowadays, the porn industry has been aggressive in adopting HD-DVD and not Blu-Ray - once again Sony's prudish views will cost them the market.
Where porn goes - the movie industry will follow.
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While Apple bashing is always fun, let us remember that Apple is not the only FoxConn client. So while you may revel in this negative publicity of APPLE, would you be as thrilled to hear that your Xbox 360, your PS3, your Wii, and your Kindle are also built at those same FoxConn factories? Whatever dirt is uncovered will not only tarnish the fruit company but also plenty of other tech titans from HP to Microsoft. So does your umbrage only extend to Apple Inc? My guess is that you will not be metering your indignation equally.
THe only thing I'd add to this festival of Apple hate is that when the iPhone was first released, it was Samsung who sued first and wanted to ban the sale of the iPhone. I'm not going to pick sides, but if you really believe that Samsung or any Tech company is some open platform and free software angel that only exists to protect your privacy and sense of entitlement and not resort to dirty tricks then you are a very naive person. Yes, the patent system is a mess. Yes, companies abuse the system. Yes, customers suffer because of the actions of these companies. BUT; if you think only the companies you have a personal bias against are guilty of these actions, then you are mistaken and are also a pawn. If you want the system to change than you have to boycott it all. And if you are not prepared to drop all of your commercially sourced tech hardware and software then this talk of "action" is futile.
Can someone clarify WHAT the Fire is....I thought it was a media device designed specifically to channel Amazon content, and not a fully featured tablet, hence the low price point. Isn't it unreasonable to expect so much for a 199 dollar price?
Meh: You spend enough time reading message boards and trolls quickly become background noise. Maybe back in the early 90's a troll might have gotten a rise out of me, but by now I've read every ad hominem attack, meaningless rant, cheap shot, and overly provocative post that could possibly be authored. Frankly, if you really want to shock me or just really piss me off, present a truly cogent, fact based, and utterly logical point of view. It's the stuff that I can't easily dismiss as the ravings of an ass-hat that gets under my skin.
I'd be tempted to wait at least till RIM releases their "playbook". The CEO has been making some pretty big claims about the superiority of their new tablet and it might be worth the wait. Not to mention Nokia and Motorola both want a piece of the tablet pie and both have clearly stated they believe the ipad is inferior to their offerings. So given that 3 major vendors have significant announcements forthcoming, it seems like smart money to at least wait till summer. Good luck with your purchase.
Well this gives new meaning to the phrase "to contemplate one's navel."
Personally, I think everyone is being misdirected. It would seem, from a shareholder view, that MSFT loses a lot more money to piracy than to either Linux and Apple, at least going by the data provided by MSFT. So, in terms of bang for the buck, MSFT would be better off spending dollars on tightening its DRM or creating a new way to secure and consistently monetize its intellectual property. Certainly, that would be detrimental to users, but in this economy, it might be easier to try to clamp down on piracy than to having to go slog it out in the marketplace. I doubt MSFT will want to relinquish their current price points in order to try and entice a few customers who are used to "free" or relatively free software. No, I think they're more likely to put the squeeze on non payers and pirates than on the Linux set.
SAMMY570 SAID : "All this means is that NO, MS can't just go and download the SDK and code happily for the iPhone ever after. It must first go out and shell out (a lot of) cash for some Apple PC it didn't want in the first place." Weirdly enough, MSFT had no trouble with buying a boatload of MACS when they were developing for the XBOX360. http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/23/even-microsoft-wants-g5s/ or http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8096/Xbox-360-Development-Kit-Spotted/ or http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/308/1030308/xbox-2--sdk-released-on-cool-apple-power-mac-g5s
I was an early adopter and had bought one of the first RIo's. It was expensive, poorly built, had a cruddy UI, and could hold at most 15 songs at 128 K. But it was small and allowed me to have music while mountain biking. My cousin, a sales manager for a domestic high end audio company back then told me that the MP3 player to wait for would be from SONY. After all, Sony was a world leader in audio and personal electronics. They had invented the walkman. They had years of acclaimed industrial design, a mature sales and distribution network, high customer awareness, efficient marketing, and even owned a record label that would certainly facilitate a media sales conduit. So what happened? When we talk about the Zune's inability to gain market traction, I believe there are lessons to be learned from Sony. If a world leader in portable audio electronics can't make a dent, then there might be more to this than some "cool" factor or "apple sucks" reasoning.
Frankly, a big box recipe may not work for discretionary items in a down economy. Your average circuit city is at least 30,000 sq. ft. That square footage needs to be heated,cooled, lit, stocked, insured and staffed. The real estate values of the stores have surely taken a hit just as our residential values have tanked. Even worse, many circuit city's are in less than desirable areas, or expanded heavily into newer space in the volatile exurbs (many of these areas are hit by heavy foreclosure) . Add to that, most of the customer visits are for smaller ticket items; dvds, memory cards, etc. While these may have a good margin built in, you have to move a LOT of them to cover your nut. Big ticket items are heavily advertised and many times have really LOW retailer margin. All those cheap home computers leave little profit for the OEM let alone the retailer. Add to that, no viable house brand for circuit city (a house brand can really help pad your margin since more of the revenue can be retained), and you have a really hard time making bank. Throw in an inexperienced and unknowledgeable staff and you have a failing business. The number to watch is the sales per square foot of retail space. Conversely, Apple stores are much smaller than their big box brethren. The average Apple store is about 1/5 the size, and usually in a very high traffic and high profile locations. Obviously their brand IS THE house band, so all extra revenue is gravy. All of their products have a healthy margin built in for both retailer and OEM. Add a dedicated staff and very smart merchandising and you have retail success. For the record, Apple Stores average $3000 of sales per sq ft. That exceeds Best Buy and Circuit City easily and even leaves luxury goods retailers like Tiffany's in the dust. Not every market needs a big box solution.
Without judging the man accused or the authorities (I don't have enough information), I would point out that many people could be inadvertently affected by this. I used to have a house with a pool, and the chemicals necessary to keep it sanitary can be quite dangerous if misused or improperly stored. Some of the pool chemicals include; Sodium Dichloro-isocyanurate, Sodium Bisulfate, Trichlro Isocyanruate, Muriatic Acid or Hydrochloric Acid, Lithium Hypochlorite, Aluminum Sulfate etc. Indeed, some of these chemicals can be used to make drugs, explosives, or other "bad" concoctions. So, does every pool owner need to watch for BATF agents performing a no-knock raid? The other thing is if you have a large pool, than you WILL have gallon jugs of these chemicals, so quantity alone cannot be a standard for liability.
Amazing, in ten years MSFT has gone from being a monopoly with its 90% OS market share, to becoming irrelevant with its 90% OS market share. I really love the new math.
MSFT pays per Zune manufactured to "Universal/NBC as a bribe/fee. Now, Uni/NBC wants MSFT to monitor/censor content that sits on customers Zunes. Exactly how does the customer fare in this unholy money sucking corporate sandwich?
Anyone want to take bets on when the 1st class action lawsuit will be filed due to this? I'll take April 30th 2008.
I found this article to be amusing because it challenges a belief that I had about linux users; that being their ability to provide for themselves. For all this talk all about "open" and collaborative work, you'd imagine there'd be a huge community for home brewed games and entertainment titles. All of my "nix" friends boast about their "freedom" and lack of "closed systems" and constantly deride my choice of OS (OSX), but it seems their self proclaimed reliance and independence has also given them a dearth of gaming titles. My advice: roll your own and quit bitching!
Actually, there have been plenty of large engineering projects: the construction of Denver International Airport, the New York aqueduct project, the BART, the Hoover Dam Bridge, the new Bay Bridge, the Big Dig, the multitude of retractable roof domed stadiums, the NY subway expansion, Yucca Mountain Repository, the F-22 Raptor, the Stealth bomber.... What it comes down is this: there are only so many dams, bridges, highway systems you can build in one country. Most of our marquee projects happened a while ago. Now its more of a story about retrofits, repairs, and expansions of existing structures, which can actually be more challenging in terms of engineering than starting from scratch. Within the next 25 years, the US will see at least 2 new international airports, numerous expansions of mass transit projects, the construction of an oil pipeline, the construction of tidal generators, huge solar and wind farms, expansion of I 70 through the Rocky Mountains (w/ talk of a high speed mountain monorail), as well as numerous dykes, levies, seawalls.... What we need is more engineering students.
The NPD group, owners of the not-quite-as-popular-as-they-had-hoped HD-DVD format should remove their tinfoil hats, the party is over.
The entire debate relies on the idea that the government can be "trusted" with the practice of data mining and electronics surveillance and phone/networking tapping. A wide net traps many fishes and you have to insure the motives are always pure. Unfortunately, some of the "targets" for surveillance under the "patriot act" included a group of Quakers. See: http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/house_nsabrief_docs_012006.html For the record, Quakers are against all war and violence. There hasn't been any answers as to what "threat" they presented.
The X300 has a 2.0 GHZ core 2 duo...is that the standard processor or is that the top of the line option? My concern is that the airbook seems to be handicapped in terms of its processor. Graphicswise - is the intel 3100 integrated gpu any good? And what is the lenovo packing graphics wise?
I'd be curious to see what the carbon footprint of physical media actually is. Between the packaging, the actual hard media, and the shipping costs CD/s and DVDs can come off as being really UNgreen. Having a virtual replacement should be lauded not litigated into a pine box. Big media needs to move into the 21st century.
RIAA's out of court comments aside, is this not something that could be cited in a future case? I mean, RIAA did prevail in the case, all testimony is kept on record, and unless the verdict is overturned, the lawyers comments will be a future quotable. I am dubious of RIAA's intentions and it is not out of this realm to imagine some exploratory litigation.
If you had 128K Mac in 1984, you could have played Klondike; the first solitaire game for the Mac, and that would predate Mr. Goldberg's patent by over ten years.
"On another subject, it's also interesting that earlier this year Steve Jobs was whining how he wanted to sell DRM-free music, but "they" wouldn't let him. Well, Steve, Amazon is doing it. Why aren't you? Or were we really getting yet another Apple lie, and the whole point really has been all along to sell people music that could only work on iPods?" Whoa there Mr. Innuendo and inaccuracy....Apple cannot just start selling a catalog of DRM free music because they want to...they HAVE TO HAVE THE LABELS APPROVAL! So, instead of once again blaming Apple for everything from DRM to Global Warming, try fact some fact-checking. In addition, there are at least 26 different online services that are iPod compatible. Yes, the iPod is such a walled garden.
People believe anything. Lawyers do not send official documents via email. Lawyers need a paper trail. Large companies don't negotiate until NDA's are signed. That is not the exception, that is the rule. Lawyers follow steps; lawsuit before settlement, settlement before verdict or trial. Besides, it's a satire site...with you know...satire.
Actually, there are quite a few parallels, with VHS vs Beta essentially being SONY vs JVC/Phillips. Indeed, while Beta offered better quality, it was outflanked by an aggressive JVC who pushed hard to get studio adoption. Back then, it was the porn industry who really helped give VHS the edge, as SONY wanted nothing to do with the nascent home porn market. Nowadays, the porn industry has been aggressive in adopting HD-DVD and not Blu-Ray - once again Sony's prudish views will cost them the market. Where porn goes - the movie industry will follow.