I don't like the idea of the goverment provided telecom services. Too many privacy issues there. I like the idea of the "wall" that separates the private telecom industry from the goverment, specifically law enforcement. Enough abuses already exist with the wall in place, image what would happen if suddenly the goverment ran the show and didn't need to pass laws or go to court to get the information it was looking for, all in the name of "national security", of course.
More open source software means more companies have a greater potential to make money since they have the source code to make applications run in a way that is tailored to them. That opportunity existing means that more companies would take advantage of it and that my friend means more jobs for programmers.
Exactly! I'm living a real world example. The company I work for re-sells an accounting package tailored to the construction industry. We sell, train and do support for the product and we also work as an integrator developing client specific add-ons software that works with the product. The product itself was fairly good when it was introduced in the late 90's and there was a real boom during the run up to 2000 when companies dumped their legacy systems to move to Y2K compliant, Windows based software. As a result the vendor who created it kept being bought out by other larger and larger companies and resources kept being redirected from development until all that was left of the development staff was a couple of programmers kept on for maintenance purposes and it became clear the focus was riding the maintenance base for as long as possible on not on continued product development.
Basically no serious new development was happening or had happened for several years and the resellers were finding it harder and harder to make new sales. My company had a bit of sway since we were and still are consistently the best reseller in the country. We shifted from a sales and training operation to a support and consulting operation. Because the database back end was MS SQL Server we were and still are able to develop our own applications that could integrate with the base accounting package and we could work with third party companies to integrate their software with the base accounting package and as a result we were still able to sell the accounting software by showcasing all of the additional functionality brought about by the additional packages we had created and/or integrated. We were able to offer features above and beyond what most other software packages offered, even if the base accounting package was a bit cumbersome and out dated.
Almost two years ago a private equity firm bought out what had become the publicly traded company that owned the software in question and after deciding that there was more revenue to be made from the accounting package they put some competent managers in place. During our first meeting with them we showed them all of the software that we had developed in house and demonstrated all of the third party packages that we had integrated and told them that they were crazy not to open source the product to resellers so that we could extend the functionality of the package. We told them that as part of the license they could insist that we make any changes available to them so that they could include anything that was good in their original source code base to improve the program and increase sales revenue.
They were legitimately concerned about having to provide support for code they didn't write if a reseller who made changes went out of business but we explained to them that we would only make changes at a clients request and that we would be very upfront with the client and let them know that any changes we made wouldn't be supported by the original vendor, only by the us, and that we would work hand in hand with the development staff to make sure that any changes we made were understood by the development staff and that we'd work with them to integrate the changes into their code base to make it a part of the original package. After going over everything with their legal department the vendor in question finally agreed to try a pilot program with us and it's been a huge success! Within a year they opened to source code to all resellers with a development staff who had been resellers for three or more years.
Even though the software that we sell isn't the best package out their in terms of user interface, it's come a long
RTFA people. An IM that contained child porn was sent via Yahoo from this guy's IP address. It was reported, the authorities obtained the IP address used to send the IM and obtained a search warrant for this guy's house. Authorities discovered a stack of CD's that contained child porn when they searched his residence.
I don't see the problem here. If someone was using his open WAP to send the IM authorities wouldn't have discovered child porn when they searched his house and/or computer and there would be no prosecution. The guy was on physical possession of the material in question.
An open WiFi network can't be used as an argument against probable cause. It makes perfect sense to me. If illegal activity is occurring from a particular IP you can't even know if there was a WAP involved, let alone if it was open or not, at the time the crime took place. You need a search warrant to further investigate. Sure you couldcheck for an open WAP without a warrant, but all that would tell you is if there is an open or closed WAP there now, not if one was in place or was secured or not when the activity in question took place. To make that determination you'd need more information but at that point you do have probable cause for a search warrant.
If that means they *eventually* make an iPod killer, so be it. The market needs more competing products, not less.
There will never be an iPod killer. What you'll see is the iPod's market share steadily eaten away by a large number of other players. The iPod was a once in a decade phenomena like the Walkman before it. There's was and still is a lot of hype surrounding the iPod and it is a great product but other players have caught up in terms of functionality and are able to compete on price. What currently still gives the iPod the edge is the integration with the iTMS.
Given the recent announcement that EMI will be offering DRM free music and Steve Job's statement that more than half of the music in the iTMS will be DRM free by the end of the year (suggesting that more deals are imminent), I'd argue that it is much more likely that people will begin buying DRM free music that they can use with the player of their choice and that will slowly but surely eat away at the iPod's market share as people chose to replace their iPods with lower cost alternatives without worrying about losing their investment in the music they've already purchased from the iTMS.
That scenario is a lot easier to envision than some company producing the next big thing and having consumers dumping their iPods in droves for it. What is there really left for a portable mp3 player to do? Current iPods let you watch videos, listen to music, play games, store photo's and contact and the list goes on. I think the iPhone may be more popular than some people think but the concept will take a while to catch on and that's if Apple can deliver on it's promises. I'd love to have my phone and iPod in a single device that also gives me easy access to the web and e-mail. The price and the fact that it's currently tied to a single wireless provider are what will hold it back. Although both of those things will probably change in the future.
If i was a betting man I'd say the 2nd or 3rd generation iPhone will be the closest thing that comes to an iPod killer provided Apple can increase the storage space, reduce the price and offer versions of the phone that can work with additional providers.
Here, here! Finally some sanity! The climate has been changing since Earths inception. Do humans have an affect on our climate? Yes we do, but the climate went through extreme cycles of change long before humans existed. Now that we're here we may be contributing to the change, but who is to say that's a bad or unnatural thing? Given Earths history the idea the climate should suddenly stay the same would be the unnatural thing. Climate change is only a problem if the effects would be disastrous for humanity and the science is anything but clear on that at this time.
There are plenty of easy ways to sell reductions in CO2 emissions. Our dependence on foreign sources of energy comes to mind. If we can put a man on the moon in 10 years, don't tell me that if we put our minds to it we can't be energy independent, or damn close to it, in 20. If we'd spend half of the time, energy and treasure on achieving energy independence over the last 25 years as we've spent shooting ourselves in the foot in the Middle East we'd probably be pretty close by now. What a waste.
Don't you understand man? You wanting to get out of Michigan as fast as you can, which has been the trend for highly educated students coming out of Michigan Universities, is a big reason for why Michigan is going down the tubes. If you really care about our state, you would stay and do your part in trying to bring back economic prosperity to the region.
You're wrong. Michigan is experiencing a single state recession and the Governor's solution is to raise taxes on an already overburdened population. Michigan should be cutting spending and lowering taxes in a bid to retain those of us who are contributing to the tax base instead of reaching into our wallets and trying to take more. Michigan has to compete with 49 other states in addition to countries the world over. When will the Governor realize this and take steps to make Michigan a more attractive place to do business instead of raising taxes and making an already bad economic situation worse? Nobody has an obligation to stay in Michigan, especially when it's being mismanaged in such a horrendous fashion.
The Michigan Congressional Delegation is also to blame. For every dollar Michigan residents send to the federal government the State of Michigan receives about $0.85 cents back in return. It's a crime that Michigan is a donor state given our current economic situation. Especially when there is every indication that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Our Congressmen and Senators should be on the floor of their respective Houses of Congress every day that Congress is in session making an issue of this situation! Why would anybody expect residents with the means to stay in this state when their elected representatives continue to show such a failure of leadership?
TW, I'm not an apple fanboy. My entire music collection is now in MP3 and I'm not looking forward to re-ripping my music.
Why would you have to? Any portable music player that matters already supports MP3's and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It's not a one or the other proposition. Most people have ripped their music to MP3, therefore hardware players will support MP3's for the foreseeable future. If the majority of online sales happen in AAC format, which is sure to happen if Apple can convince more labels to drop the DRM since it's already the market leader, then hardware manufacturers will simply add support for AAC in addition to what's already available.
AAC isn't everywhere yet, I'll agree. However, if Apple actually moves it's entire catalog to unprotected AAC files, it seems to me quite reasonable that the vast majority of players released from that point forward will support AAC, considering Apple's dominance in the online music sales market.
Exactly! Apple owns the online music market and if it starts selling music without DRM in AAC format than any portable music player manufacturer with a brain will quickly add support for AAC's to give themselves a shot at increasing their own market share.
If Steve Jobs really has deals with other labels in the works as he indicated in the Apple press release announcing the EMI deal (in which he's quoted as saying he expects over half of the music on iTunes to be available without DRM by the end of this year) then hardware manufacturers would be crazy not to support AAC.
Most consumers do not have HD TV's and most consumers have more than one TV in their home therefore it will be a very long time before either HD movie format matters as even when the majority of consumers own at least one HD TV, both formats will be worthless when watched on the other TV's in the home. Discuss.
Does anyone know if these songs will be watermarked with your AppleID?
Apple already sort of does this for their DRM'd content. AAC's have these things called Atoms which are used to store information about the file. Apple currently adds an Atom that stores the Apple ID of the user who buys a protected track. Programs, such as JHymn, that removed Apple's DRM from purchased content had options to remove these Atoms from the unlocked files. I would imagine that Apple would continue this practice with the non-DRM'd content. It makes perfect sense from their perspective. The Atoms in question can be removed from the files fairly easily if you know what you're doing, but it's an obscure enough thing that the average ITMS user won't do it (because they probably won't know they are there in the first place). It's not quite a watermark, but it accomplishes essentially the same thing and Apple is already doing it so from their prospective, why not continue?
You do realize that a CD with 15 tracks, at $1.29 a track is going to end up costing you almost $20. That means that some CDs will cost almost TWICE that of their CD counterpart if bought off Amazon. For new CDs that debut at the $15-$20 price point I guess that's fine, but otherwise what a freaking rip off.
First, in most cases I want a track or two, not the entire CD, so paying $1.29 a track for the few tracks I want is still a savings. Second, the store will offer the higher bitrate, non-DRMed version of the entire album at the same price that is currently being charged for the lower bitrate DRM'd version in an effort to increase album sales. So it's a win / win.
Because iTunes had DRM, and I don't do DRM, my choice of player did not include the iTunes format. Now that they don't have DRM, I still can't shop there. My player is MP3/non-DRM-WMA. I wonder how long it will be before they move to more popular formats.
As others have pointed out, there are plenty of players out there other than the iPod that support AAC and you can bet your ass that the number of players that support AAC in the future will skyrocket after this announcement.
let them be a relic of the past, if they dont get along well with what the current day extensions if "68' revolution" that they have so happily joined, brings.
This is excellent news! I love that they are offering the option to upgrade any previously purchased songs to the 256 kbps DRM free version for 30 cents a track. I plan on upgrading all of my tracks as soon as they are available. While I think that $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release [apple.com]:
"We are going to give iTunes customers a choice--the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year."
This is excellent news! I love that they are offering the option to upgrade any previously purchased songs to the 256 kbps DRM free version for 30 cents a track. I plan upgrading all of my tracks as soon as they are available. While I think that $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release:
"We are going to give iTunes customers a choice--the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year."
i personally have no urge to buy their hardware, i build my own thank you, but i wouldnt mind giving OS X a go. in fact, i would absolutely love it if after apple did this OS X took majority desktop market share. if the top desktop was unix-based, it would make multi-platform compatibility so much easier.
Don't hold your breath. You are exactly the kind of customer Apple wants to avoid. Apple makes it's money on hardware. The software and the user experience it provides are there to allow Apple to sell the hardware.
By controlling both the hardware and the OS Apple can deliver a superior end user experience and reduce it's support costs. That results is happier customers which results in a better company image. By opening up their OS to non-Apple hardware they'd make significantly slimmer margins and although their volume would increase, the the end user experience would undoubtedly suffer due to the loss of control over the hardware and their support costs would increase.
There certainly would be a benefit to those users who want to run OS X on cheap hardware, but where is the benefit to Apple?
I would think it's a win / win for all involved. Those who want to get to adult content would have an easier time finding it and by the same token those who want to filter it out would have time doing that as well. Where is the downside?
His comments are off base. What he's saying might be true if we were talking about a less expensive iPhone that was being given away either for free (or for a relatively small amount) with a contract but that's just not the case. These phones will cost you $499 or $599 depending on the model. Nobody who pays that amount will do so knowing the next version is in the pipe and will be released in a few months.
Wake me up when you can copy and paste between applications as you can in Windows or on the Mac. Until issues like that are fixed, KDE will continue to be a second class citizen when it comes to Desktop environments.
A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said.
That comment says it all right there. This has nothing to do with technology innovation and everything to do with the members of the World Economic Forum and their collective opinion of the current US administration.
No phone has a chance of replacing my iPod completely unless it has a UI that's as easy to use as the iPod and has enough storage so I can take my entire collection with me. The iPhone looks like a cool product and since I already use Cingular and will be in the market for a new phone soon I'll pick one up but it won't be replacing my iPod until it can hold as much content as my present iPod can.
He also argues that putting the onus of spotting infringement onto the content providers represents an undue burden on them.
Oh please. You want an easy solution. Setup a website where users can create an account, provide contact information and then search the web and/or P2P networks to report instances of copyright violation. When a particular instance has been reported a certain number of times have a real person check the link to determine if a violation has occurred and then take appropriate action. Reward the volunteers who are reporting the violation with points for those instances where a verified violation has occurred and after a certain number of points are accrued reward users with a free DVD or CD from the catalog.
The amount of money that the RIAA and MPAA would save if they implemented this kind of system would more than offset the free DVD's or CD's they would be giving away if their own figures on losses due to piracy are real.
With the Internet, you've got a whole army of users who can be the watchdogs for you. All you've got to do is give them an incentive and have a verification system in place to weed out fake entries.
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I don't like the idea of the goverment provided telecom services. Too many privacy issues there. I like the idea of the "wall" that separates the private telecom industry from the goverment, specifically law enforcement. Enough abuses already exist with the wall in place, image what would happen if suddenly the goverment ran the show and didn't need to pass laws or go to court to get the information it was looking for, all in the name of "national security", of course.
Exactly! I'm living a real world example. The company I work for re-sells an accounting package tailored to the construction industry. We sell, train and do support for the product and we also work as an integrator developing client specific add-ons software that works with the product. The product itself was fairly good when it was introduced in the late 90's and there was a real boom during the run up to 2000 when companies dumped their legacy systems to move to Y2K compliant, Windows based software. As a result the vendor who created it kept being bought out by other larger and larger companies and resources kept being redirected from development until all that was left of the development staff was a couple of programmers kept on for maintenance purposes and it became clear the focus was riding the maintenance base for as long as possible on not on continued product development.
Basically no serious new development was happening or had happened for several years and the resellers were finding it harder and harder to make new sales. My company had a bit of sway since we were and still are consistently the best reseller in the country. We shifted from a sales and training operation to a support and consulting operation. Because the database back end was MS SQL Server we were and still are able to develop our own applications that could integrate with the base accounting package and we could work with third party companies to integrate their software with the base accounting package and as a result we were still able to sell the accounting software by showcasing all of the additional functionality brought about by the additional packages we had created and/or integrated. We were able to offer features above and beyond what most other software packages offered, even if the base accounting package was a bit cumbersome and out dated.
Almost two years ago a private equity firm bought out what had become the publicly traded company that owned the software in question and after deciding that there was more revenue to be made from the accounting package they put some competent managers in place. During our first meeting with them we showed them all of the software that we had developed in house and demonstrated all of the third party packages that we had integrated and told them that they were crazy not to open source the product to resellers so that we could extend the functionality of the package. We told them that as part of the license they could insist that we make any changes available to them so that they could include anything that was good in their original source code base to improve the program and increase sales revenue.
They were legitimately concerned about having to provide support for code they didn't write if a reseller who made changes went out of business but we explained to them that we would only make changes at a clients request and that we would be very upfront with the client and let them know that any changes we made wouldn't be supported by the original vendor, only by the us, and that we would work hand in hand with the development staff to make sure that any changes we made were understood by the development staff and that we'd work with them to integrate the changes into their code base to make it a part of the original package. After going over everything with their legal department the vendor in question finally agreed to try a pilot program with us and it's been a huge success! Within a year they opened to source code to all resellers with a development staff who had been resellers for three or more years.
Even though the software that we sell isn't the best package out their in terms of user interface, it's come a long
RTFA people. An IM that contained child porn was sent via Yahoo from this guy's IP address. It was reported, the authorities obtained the IP address used to send the IM and obtained a search warrant for this guy's house. Authorities discovered a stack of CD's that contained child porn when they searched his residence.
I don't see the problem here. If someone was using his open WAP to send the IM authorities wouldn't have discovered child porn when they searched his house and/or computer and there would be no prosecution. The guy was on physical possession of the material in question.
An open WiFi network can't be used as an argument against probable cause. It makes perfect sense to me. If illegal activity is occurring from a particular IP you can't even know if there was a WAP involved, let alone if it was open or not, at the time the crime took place. You need a search warrant to further investigate. Sure you couldcheck for an open WAP without a warrant, but all that would tell you is if there is an open or closed WAP there now, not if one was in place or was secured or not when the activity in question took place. To make that determination you'd need more information but at that point you do have probable cause for a search warrant.
There will never be an iPod killer. What you'll see is the iPod's market share steadily eaten away by a large number of other players. The iPod was a once in a decade phenomena like the Walkman before it. There's was and still is a lot of hype surrounding the iPod and it is a great product but other players have caught up in terms of functionality and are able to compete on price. What currently still gives the iPod the edge is the integration with the iTMS.
Given the recent announcement that EMI will be offering DRM free music and Steve Job's statement that more than half of the music in the iTMS will be DRM free by the end of the year (suggesting that more deals are imminent), I'd argue that it is much more likely that people will begin buying DRM free music that they can use with the player of their choice and that will slowly but surely eat away at the iPod's market share as people chose to replace their iPods with lower cost alternatives without worrying about losing their investment in the music they've already purchased from the iTMS.
That scenario is a lot easier to envision than some company producing the next big thing and having consumers dumping their iPods in droves for it. What is there really left for a portable mp3 player to do? Current iPods let you watch videos, listen to music, play games, store photo's and contact and the list goes on. I think the iPhone may be more popular than some people think but the concept will take a while to catch on and that's if Apple can deliver on it's promises. I'd love to have my phone and iPod in a single device that also gives me easy access to the web and e-mail. The price and the fact that it's currently tied to a single wireless provider are what will hold it back. Although both of those things will probably change in the future.
If i was a betting man I'd say the 2nd or 3rd generation iPhone will be the closest thing that comes to an iPod killer provided Apple can increase the storage space, reduce the price and offer versions of the phone that can work with additional providers.
Here's a novel idea: Read the fine print before you sign on the dotted line.
Here, here! Finally some sanity! The climate has been changing since Earths inception. Do humans have an affect on our climate? Yes we do, but the climate went through extreme cycles of change long before humans existed. Now that we're here we may be contributing to the change, but who is to say that's a bad or unnatural thing? Given Earths history the idea the climate should suddenly stay the same would be the unnatural thing. Climate change is only a problem if the effects would be disastrous for humanity and the science is anything but clear on that at this time.
There are plenty of easy ways to sell reductions in CO2 emissions. Our dependence on foreign sources of energy comes to mind. If we can put a man on the moon in 10 years, don't tell me that if we put our minds to it we can't be energy independent, or damn close to it, in 20. If we'd spend half of the time, energy and treasure on achieving energy independence over the last 25 years as we've spent shooting ourselves in the foot in the Middle East we'd probably be pretty close by now. What a waste.
You're wrong. Michigan is experiencing a single state recession and the Governor's solution is to raise taxes on an already overburdened population. Michigan should be cutting spending and lowering taxes in a bid to retain those of us who are contributing to the tax base instead of reaching into our wallets and trying to take more. Michigan has to compete with 49 other states in addition to countries the world over. When will the Governor realize this and take steps to make Michigan a more attractive place to do business instead of raising taxes and making an already bad economic situation worse? Nobody has an obligation to stay in Michigan, especially when it's being mismanaged in such a horrendous fashion.
The Michigan Congressional Delegation is also to blame. For every dollar Michigan residents send to the federal government the State of Michigan receives about $0.85 cents back in return. It's a crime that Michigan is a donor state given our current economic situation. Especially when there is every indication that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Our Congressmen and Senators should be on the floor of their respective Houses of Congress every day that Congress is in session making an issue of this situation! Why would anybody expect residents with the means to stay in this state when their elected representatives continue to show such a failure of leadership?
Why would you have to? Any portable music player that matters already supports MP3's and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It's not a one or the other proposition. Most people have ripped their music to MP3, therefore hardware players will support MP3's for the foreseeable future. If the majority of online sales happen in AAC format, which is sure to happen if Apple can convince more labels to drop the DRM since it's already the market leader, then hardware manufacturers will simply add support for AAC in addition to what's already available.
Exactly! Apple owns the online music market and if it starts selling music without DRM in AAC format than any portable music player manufacturer with a brain will quickly add support for AAC's to give themselves a shot at increasing their own market share.
If Steve Jobs really has deals with other labels in the works as he indicated in the Apple press release announcing the EMI deal (in which he's quoted as saying he expects over half of the music on iTunes to be available without DRM by the end of this year) then hardware manufacturers would be crazy not to support AAC.
Most consumers do not have HD TV's and most consumers have more than one TV in their home therefore it will be a very long time before either HD movie format matters as even when the majority of consumers own at least one HD TV, both formats will be worthless when watched on the other TV's in the home. Discuss.
"Web 2.0" is a buzzword used by those in the media who do not have a background in and/or an understanding of technology. Discuss ....
Apple already sort of does this for their DRM'd content. AAC's have these things called Atoms which are used to store information about the file. Apple currently adds an Atom that stores the Apple ID of the user who buys a protected track. Programs, such as JHymn, that removed Apple's DRM from purchased content had options to remove these Atoms from the unlocked files. I would imagine that Apple would continue this practice with the non-DRM'd content. It makes perfect sense from their perspective. The Atoms in question can be removed from the files fairly easily if you know what you're doing, but it's an obscure enough thing that the average ITMS user won't do it (because they probably won't know they are there in the first place). It's not quite a watermark, but it accomplishes essentially the same thing and Apple is already doing it so from their prospective, why not continue?
First, in most cases I want a track or two, not the entire CD, so paying $1.29 a track for the few tracks I want is still a savings. Second, the store will offer the higher bitrate, non-DRMed version of the entire album at the same price that is currently being charged for the lower bitrate DRM'd version in an effort to increase album sales. So it's a win / win.
As others have pointed out, there are plenty of players out there other than the iPod that support AAC and you can bet your ass that the number of players that support AAC in the future will skyrocket after this announcement.
Go easy on them man. As we all know Paul may need a future source of revenue.
This is excellent news! I love that they are offering the option to upgrade any previously purchased songs to the 256 kbps DRM free version for 30 cents a track. I plan on upgrading all of my tracks as soon as they are available. While I think that $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release [apple.com]:
This is excellent news! I love that they are offering the option to upgrade any previously purchased songs to the 256 kbps DRM free version for 30 cents a track. I plan upgrading all of my tracks as soon as they are available. While I think that $1.29 is a little bit high for a track without DRM (I'd like to see them for the same price as the version with DRM), it's reasonable enough for me. You get twice the quality and no DRM for 30 cents more a track.
It also appears as if deals with other studios are imminent. From the press release:
Don't hold your breath. You are exactly the kind of customer Apple wants to avoid. Apple makes it's money on hardware. The software and the user experience it provides are there to allow Apple to sell the hardware.
By controlling both the hardware and the OS Apple can deliver a superior end user experience and reduce it's support costs. That results is happier customers which results in a better company image. By opening up their OS to non-Apple hardware they'd make significantly slimmer margins and although their volume would increase, the the end user experience would undoubtedly suffer due to the loss of control over the hardware and their support costs would increase.
There certainly would be a benefit to those users who want to run OS X on cheap hardware, but where is the benefit to Apple?
I would think it's a win / win for all involved. Those who want to get to adult content would have an easier time finding it and by the same token those who want to filter it out would have time doing that as well. Where is the downside?
His comments are off base. What he's saying might be true if we were talking about a less expensive iPhone that was being given away either for free (or for a relatively small amount) with a contract but that's just not the case. These phones will cost you $499 or $599 depending on the model. Nobody who pays that amount will do so knowing the next version is in the pipe and will be released in a few months.
Wake me up when you can copy and paste between applications as you can in Windows or on the Mac. Until issues like that are fixed, KDE will continue to be a second class citizen when it comes to Desktop environments.
From the article:
That comment says it all right there. This has nothing to do with technology innovation and everything to do with the members of the World Economic Forum and their collective opinion of the current US administration.
No phone has a chance of replacing my iPod completely unless it has a UI that's as easy to use as the iPod and has enough storage so I can take my entire collection with me. The iPhone looks like a cool product and since I already use Cingular and will be in the market for a new phone soon I'll pick one up but it won't be replacing my iPod until it can hold as much content as my present iPod can.
From the summary:
Oh please. You want an easy solution. Setup a website where users can create an account, provide contact information and then search the web and/or P2P networks to report instances of copyright violation. When a particular instance has been reported a certain number of times have a real person check the link to determine if a violation has occurred and then take appropriate action. Reward the volunteers who are reporting the violation with points for those instances where a verified violation has occurred and after a certain number of points are accrued reward users with a free DVD or CD from the catalog.
The amount of money that the RIAA and MPAA would save if they implemented this kind of system would more than offset the free DVD's or CD's they would be giving away if their own figures on losses due to piracy are real.
With the Internet, you've got a whole army of users who can be the watchdogs for you. All you've got to do is give them an incentive and have a verification system in place to weed out fake entries.