iRiver, most likely. It was the H320, 30Gb, FM tuner, Color scren, mp3/wma/ogg support. You might be able to find one still, I love mine, and it runs RockBox, which is awesome.
And just like most Linux advocates, you just don't get it.
The iPod was not about its features, or its interface, or its design, or its marketing, it was ALL of those things understood and executed simultaneously by a company and a person who Just Got It.
It really makes me laugh when people say "This product has everything this one had and is $100 cheaper, why wasn't it more successful?" The fact is, it wasn't, that's the hard truth, and it's your job to figure out why. I'll give you a hint: it's not one thing, or two things, or even five things. You have to understand your product and your users on a much higher level than features and price.
So then think, gee, Linux is free and Windows and MacOS are hundreds of dollars, and they all offer exactly the same features... and take a hint. There's something wrong with Linux, and it's not just one thing. It's the whole philosophy that software is just its features and nothing more. Once you Get It, then you can talk about Marketing It.
Here's a start: Linux needs to tuck the command line under the carpet. Blasphemy! [Runs and hides]
But seriously, if you disagree with that, then Linux will never see widespread adoption, and your mentality is the reason.
No one else will read this but the author above, so I just wanted to say thanks for writing such a perfect response to this misleading post.
"Simplicity is out, complexity is in" is such a huge loaded statement that it can't possibly be correct in any way...
Someone has to say it, so I might as well... Nintendo isn't forgetting the NES/SNES/N64/Gamecube when releasing their next-gen, they're embracing them all. Somehow I think that's a better business strategy, for the very reason this article points out-- there were some great games for older consoles! Fun > Graphics.
Preface: Yes, I know they're not open source. Guess what? I don't care! It's great software!
I highly reccomend Confluence as a Wiki for software development. Aside from being just about the perfect Wiki for any purpose, it's got great syntax highlighting and plugins for development. Not sure if it would let you edit directly from the web, but seriously, reconsider that requirement. I doubt anyone would actually use that anyway. It does have JUnit test reports built in too, so it's even better if you're using Java. It also integrates tightly with their bugtracking software JIRA, which is also amazing if you don't have a good bugtracker yet. But even if you're just using confluence for docs and specs, it's definitely the best Wiki out there for that.
Other than that, there's always everything else ^^^ that has already been said... Good luck!
Exactly! Users aren't anything we can change, they're our measure of how well we're doing! Any excuses they have should be listened to. If we give excuses back, not only are we alienating them, but we're also failing to improve on their behalf, both equally bad.
"The customer is always right" is true. Anyone who thinks otherwise won't have customers anymore.
With a user's desktop, they don't look at specific features as much as the whole experience. It's a flaw that's been with Linux (and its various desktops) for a while now, and is just beginning to get better: feature-based instead of user-based design.
Honestly, we all know Linux has all the capabilities (and then some) of Windows and OSX, but still everyone insists on asking, "gee, why isn't everybody and their mother switching? It's FREE for god's sake!!" So why isn't everyone switching?
I think it's just not better yet. By that I mean that "whole experience" thing has to be better than all the rest (because we know everything else works). This is why this is one of the better articles I've read about this—it actually says this in so many words. Linux is improving the user experience on all fronts (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc. etc) and it's on its way to possibly becoming better than the competition, and then it will start to get attention. As it stands, it has no chance, and we sure as heck can't blame that on the users. If anything, it's our fault for ignoring good usability for so long. Fortunately things are improving, and once it reaches that breaking point, where it offers a consistent and pleasing user experience from end to end, it could actually have a place on more of the worlds' desktops.
Oh you haaaaaad to bring up the turntable. I have one, I use it extensively, and Ameoba has one of the greatest vinyl selections known to man. I didn't mention it because I thought I wouldn't need to. I thought everyone knew CD's were simply better than compressed audio.
Yes, now I'm making the point about the quality difference between an iTunes AAC+Fairplay (you haaaaad to put the Fairplay in it) and a CD. If your ears can't hear the difference between a 128Kbps AAC and a CD, then I pity you. I really do. AACs sound decent, but with good sound equipment, they're hideous. You get all sorts of high-end noise and muddled bass... I don't like the format, frankly.
A CD, on the other hand, is only limited by the nyquist frequency of the 44.1KHz sample rate (22 KHz is the max frequency) and the sample resolution of 16 bits, which gives you a dynamic range of 2^16 (65536) discreet levels per sample. I'll admit, discreet levels is the bad part, but the truth is, mathematically, the signal all evens out to be the same as the analog source up to the nyquist, and more bits per sample gives you a wider dynamic range and higher resolution, which is higher quality.
Regardless of what happens on that level, the fact is, we're comparing 16-bit PCM to 16-bit MPEG-4. There's no argument, one has bits that the other removes to save space, and you can hear it. That is what I mean by lossless, and I can't believe that people gave me flac for it. No pun intended.
All compared to a CD. If you can't hear the difference between mp3 and CD, the difference between a CD and its analog source will be moot to you, so stop complaining.
I was going to say in my original comment that they have an even higher quality format than CDs too -- Vinyl. The stores in Berkely have more vinyl than I've ever seen in my life. Thought against saying that though.
Do some research. CD's are actually quite lossless mathematically up to frequencies at half of the sample rate. The signal is exactly the same as the one that came in when encoded at a high enough sample rate to catch the highest frequencies. The 16 bits on a CD is certainly a limiting factor, but there are ways around that as well, and you've GOT to be kidding me if you think any MP3, vorbis, or ATRAC is in any way more lossless than straight up digital at the same sample rate and size. Regardless of how you think of it, they remove frequencies from the original to compress it. No way around it. PCM may compress the bits, but they're all there.
Now, whether or not you could actually achieve a higher sample rate and sample depth with the same bit rate with a frequency-based encoding is another story. And probably your point, in which case I apologize.
I'm a UC Berkeley student, and I'll say now that I'm not interested for exactly this reason. Sorry, but I'll stick with CDs if I'm going to buy music.
Berkeley has some of the greatest music stores in the nation. They offer an amazing variety of music (including Pink Floyd) in full lossless audio and no DRM. Until the same is true for an online store, there really is no substitute. I'll take Ameoba over iTunes any day.
In the interest of including my voice in one of the most active/. discussions in recent memory...
It all comes down to this: Regardless of what you think, or how confident you are about yourself, or how much you think your writing doesn't matter, or how much you don't care about it, or how the language changes over time, people KNOW you by the way you write. It's one of the most revealing ways to really get into a person's mind and see who they are without even meeting them. Even if you disagree with that, everyone will do it to you, so if you want to be seen as intelligent, interesting, or knowledgable about whatever you're talking about, then you have to write well. Anyone who says otherwise is just making excuses.
It's even more important on the web -- the only thing people have to go off of is your writing. It tells them who you are, so make it be you, or you will be how you write to the world. Learn to accept it, and learn to write. No excuses.
Separating them might be nice, true, but I thank Google for every time I've found exactly what I was looking for on a blog, especially when it was something really obscure that needed a human opinion, like a stupid setting in Windows I'm looking for, or some review of a concert that I missed. Blogs are information too; often better information than you can get anywhere else. I think what you're really angry at are "those stupid parked domain search sites", which are a little different. Just a bit.
Imagine having to make yourself heard in the cacophony of spam blogs.
It's pretty easy actually. Write about something other than ****FREE SOFTWARE NOW FOR A GOOD PRICE WINXP WIN2K WIN98 FREE FREE FREE**** and I think you have a pretty good chance of people actually reading your material.
But go ahead, keep on not providing actual content, I'm sure that's a great way to get readers.
Okay, great, so 90% of it is crap. It's a given, call it whatever you want. My personal favorite is the "long tail effect".
Built into blogs is a way to tell the crap from the good stuff -- they're linked together intelligently by people who can tell crap apart, and the people who don't write crap don't link to crap. So find one good blog, and you've found a hundred or more good ones just three levels deep in links. Go one more level, and there are a thousand. It's exponential. And chances are, most of them will be of the same calibur as the root blog, with that chance decreasing slightly as you follow deeper links.
So who cares if there's spam. It's not the same with blogs as with email -- the spam is intelligently filtered automatically, just by the normal process of each writer.
Now, if only Google could figure out a good algorithm to track it. It wouldn't be that hard. Just rate a few blogs by hand with a content value and a link value, and automatically give all their ancestors (pages they link to) a rating of (the parent site's rating)-[(number of levels deep)*(some adjustment factor)] where the adjustment factor is somewhere around maybe.75 so that links lose value the further away from the parent they are. It could be tweaked, but I think it'd work.
Okay, great, a statistic. All of us are going, "now wait just one minute there..." and using our inane skills of deduction to whittle away all of its importance (like you can do with any statistic).
So yeah, of course we know better, and this has a good chance of not being anywhere near accurate. So what? The rest of the dumb (er, non-nerd) public believes these statistics, at least on a subconsious level, especially the politicians! Let them believe that piracy is going down, that the paying markets are taking hold, that their business model is working. Maybe they'll stop worrying so much and actually focus on what's important, like making good music. Chances are their profits will keep on not going down. And when they ask how this happens even with all that piracy? Ehhhhhhh... it's magic. Here's some statistics. Good dog.
No, 6 Million Theartres X 9 Million Theatres = 54 Trillion Theatres Squared....
Unless of course a "Theartre" is some currency with an exchange rate of 857,142 to the Dollar, in which case I apologize for insulting your homeland, and send my condolences to your 9 million theatres making only seven dollars per movie.
Microsoft's MSN is now sponsoring American Mensa events, featuring Mensa questions on the MSN homepage, and Mensa will put MSN's search on their new homepage in exchange for allowing Microsoft founder and CEO Bill Gates into their organization.
When asked of this peculiar action, Mr. Gates told reporters: "I tried the tests and the puzzles and stuff, but I couldn't really figure them out. Then I realized that I was the richest man in the world and I didn't have to deal with this crap."
Gates also spoke of creating a new organization tangential to Mensa, the Pecunia Society. "It has only one requirement -- just have more money than 99.998% of the world's population!"
(I know I'm basically replying to Steve Jobs, but I might as well)
I think that the problem with the music industry is that they failed to release a sufficiently higher quality format before (or during) the digital revolution. They trained the public to want convenience over quality. It started with the CD -- people were reluctant to switch from vinyl because they knew that going to digital was a step down in fidelity. And they were right -- if you've ever heard an audiophile recording on LP, there's no denying that there's more there than you could ever fit on a CD. But the mainstream public got sold on CDs as more convenient, more reliable, and with a lower noise floor. It was a different kind of quality, and it trained us to forget about fidelity. If the industry had embraced DVD-audio or even SACDs as the "new standard" in audio media, then the public might have reversed their downhill slide and gone back to loving high fidelity music. But instead, we're still stuck with the "CDs are more convenient than LPs or cassettes" and that mentality led in a straight line to "mp3s are even more convenient than CDs!" Same deal. If SACD or DVD-Audio were the standard, people would listen to an mp3 and say, "what is this crap??" Unfortunately for the industry, they trained us to ignore fidelity a long time ago, and now they're feeling the repercussions.
Oh yeah, well I know and love Cygwin, but you can't exactly go up to anyone's system and say "okay, now open up a Cygwin terminal...... Oh, what's that, you have no idea what I'm talking about because it doesn't come with Windows and isn't attached to Internet Explorer?"
I manage a dorm network with 44 computers, mine is the only one with cygwin installed, I guarantee it. So it's nice to go up to a Mac, open a terminal, and have it be useful.
Just the other day I was fixing a friend's mac, and while I hadn't used OSX all that much, I do use linux, so I asked him, "okay, open up a terminal" because I knew it was possible, and it was so nice to be able to use (just about) everything I could in linux. It's definately something I wish Windows had...
Agree wholeheartedly with this. I have a patagonia bag that's about 4 years old (one of the first ones they made with a laptop slot), and I use it every single day, and I have for the last 4 years. It's incredibly durable, it's never worn out, and the laptop fits perfectly and safely. I forsee using it for at least another four years, probably more.
The extra price isn't just about the enviro stuff; it's for quality, hands down, the best on the market.
Like I said way up the line, it all depends on how many systems the library needs. If they need 10, then the initial cost of a sunray system is just not worth it; yes, building them would take time, and maintaining them would need some extra work, but these things can be managed. I'm sure I could get someone to build a library 10 moderate systems like that with everything ready to go for a decent price. Heck, I'd do it for him.
My point was that the comparison of the sunrays to the PCs was not fair in the least.
And if you want them to be managable, there are thin-client solutions not from sun and not expensive, where you can buy one server box and lots of harddriveless old PCs with supported network cards, mice, keyboards, and displays and make a cheaper solution that's as easy to manage as the exorbitant sunrays.
To answer your question, yes, I understand the cost of maintenance. But the grandparent didn't understand the difference between a superworkstation and a thin client, and was giving an unfair comparison, so I had to say something.
As someone else already noted, PNG and JPEG cannot compare in their use or compression. JPEG's advantage has always been its ability to compress photographic (non computer generated, generally) images down to fractions of their bitmapped size. PNG is a lot like GIF in its design (to my knowledge and experience). It compresses certain things well, but JPEG is still the master of photographs, which is why this could affect the web slightly. There isn't yet a widespread open JPEG-like standard -- maybe there needs to be. Until then, I'm going to continue to use JPEGs because, well, I think this will all blow over just like every other ludicrous software patent we've seen.
Slashdot Mirror
iRiver, most likely. It was the H320, 30Gb, FM tuner, Color scren, mp3/wma/ogg support. You might be able to find one still, I love mine, and it runs RockBox, which is awesome.
And just like most Linux advocates, you just don't get it.
The iPod was not about its features, or its interface, or its design, or its marketing, it was ALL of those things understood and executed simultaneously by a company and a person who Just Got It.
It really makes me laugh when people say "This product has everything this one had and is $100 cheaper, why wasn't it more successful?" The fact is, it wasn't, that's the hard truth, and it's your job to figure out why. I'll give you a hint: it's not one thing, or two things, or even five things. You have to understand your product and your users on a much higher level than features and price.
So then think, gee, Linux is free and Windows and MacOS are hundreds of dollars, and they all offer exactly the same features... and take a hint. There's something wrong with Linux, and it's not just one thing. It's the whole philosophy that software is just its features and nothing more. Once you Get It, then you can talk about Marketing It.
Here's a start: Linux needs to tuck the command line under the carpet. Blasphemy! [Runs and hides]
But seriously, if you disagree with that, then Linux will never see widespread adoption, and your mentality is the reason.
No one else will read this but the author above, so I just wanted to say thanks for writing such a perfect response to this misleading post. "Simplicity is out, complexity is in" is such a huge loaded statement that it can't possibly be correct in any way...
Someone has to say it, so I might as well... Nintendo isn't forgetting the NES/SNES/N64/Gamecube when releasing their next-gen, they're embracing them all. Somehow I think that's a better business strategy, for the very reason this article points out-- there were some great games for older consoles! Fun > Graphics.
Preface: Yes, I know they're not open source. Guess what? I don't care! It's great software!
I highly reccomend Confluence as a Wiki for software development. Aside from being just about the perfect Wiki for any purpose, it's got great syntax highlighting and plugins for development. Not sure if it would let you edit directly from the web, but seriously, reconsider that requirement. I doubt anyone would actually use that anyway. It does have JUnit test reports built in too, so it's even better if you're using Java. It also integrates tightly with their bugtracking software JIRA, which is also amazing if you don't have a good bugtracker yet. But even if you're just using confluence for docs and specs, it's definitely the best Wiki out there for that.
Other than that, there's always everything else ^^^ that has already been said... Good luck!
Exactly! Users aren't anything we can change, they're our measure of how well we're doing! Any excuses they have should be listened to. If we give excuses back, not only are we alienating them, but we're also failing to improve on their behalf, both equally bad.
"The customer is always right" is true. Anyone who thinks otherwise won't have customers anymore.
With a user's desktop, they don't look at specific features as much as the whole experience. It's a flaw that's been with Linux (and its various desktops) for a while now, and is just beginning to get better: feature-based instead of user-based design.
Honestly, we all know Linux has all the capabilities (and then some) of Windows and OSX, but still everyone insists on asking, "gee, why isn't everybody and their mother switching? It's FREE for god's sake!!" So why isn't everyone switching?
I think it's just not better yet. By that I mean that "whole experience" thing has to be better than all the rest (because we know everything else works). This is why this is one of the better articles I've read about this—it actually says this in so many words. Linux is improving the user experience on all fronts (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc. etc) and it's on its way to possibly becoming better than the competition, and then it will start to get attention. As it stands, it has no chance, and we sure as heck can't blame that on the users. If anything, it's our fault for ignoring good usability for so long. Fortunately things are improving, and once it reaches that breaking point, where it offers a consistent and pleasing user experience from end to end, it could actually have a place on more of the worlds' desktops.
I can vouch for that. I have the exact same thing happen to me. It's great.
And to the grandparent, I do live a block from Ameoba, and yes, I am broke.
Oh you haaaaaad to bring up the turntable. I have one, I use it extensively, and Ameoba has one of the greatest vinyl selections known to man. I didn't mention it because I thought I wouldn't need to. I thought everyone knew CD's were simply better than compressed audio.
Yes, now I'm making the point about the quality difference between an iTunes AAC+Fairplay (you haaaaad to put the Fairplay in it) and a CD. If your ears can't hear the difference between a 128Kbps AAC and a CD, then I pity you. I really do. AACs sound decent, but with good sound equipment, they're hideous. You get all sorts of high-end noise and muddled bass... I don't like the format, frankly.
A CD, on the other hand, is only limited by the nyquist frequency of the 44.1KHz sample rate (22 KHz is the max frequency) and the sample resolution of 16 bits, which gives you a dynamic range of 2^16 (65536) discreet levels per sample. I'll admit, discreet levels is the bad part, but the truth is, mathematically, the signal all evens out to be the same as the analog source up to the nyquist, and more bits per sample gives you a wider dynamic range and higher resolution, which is higher quality.
Regardless of what happens on that level, the fact is, we're comparing 16-bit PCM to 16-bit MPEG-4. There's no argument, one has bits that the other removes to save space, and you can hear it. That is what I mean by lossless, and I can't believe that people gave me flac for it. No pun intended.
All compared to a CD. If you can't hear the difference between mp3 and CD, the difference between a CD and its analog source will be moot to you, so stop complaining.
I was going to say in my original comment that they have an even higher quality format than CDs too -- Vinyl. The stores in Berkely have more vinyl than I've ever seen in my life. Thought against saying that though.
Do some research. CD's are actually quite lossless mathematically up to frequencies at half of the sample rate. The signal is exactly the same as the one that came in when encoded at a high enough sample rate to catch the highest frequencies. The 16 bits on a CD is certainly a limiting factor, but there are ways around that as well, and you've GOT to be kidding me if you think any MP3, vorbis, or ATRAC is in any way more lossless than straight up digital at the same sample rate and size. Regardless of how you think of it, they remove frequencies from the original to compress it. No way around it. PCM may compress the bits, but they're all there.
Now, whether or not you could actually achieve a higher sample rate and sample depth with the same bit rate with a frequency-based encoding is another story. And probably your point, in which case I apologize.
I'm a UC Berkeley student, and I'll say now that I'm not interested for exactly this reason. Sorry, but I'll stick with CDs if I'm going to buy music.
Berkeley has some of the greatest music stores in the nation. They offer an amazing variety of music (including Pink Floyd) in full lossless audio and no DRM. Until the same is true for an online store, there really is no substitute. I'll take Ameoba over iTunes any day.
In the interest of including my voice in one of the most active /. discussions in recent memory...
It all comes down to this: Regardless of what you think, or how confident you are about yourself, or how much you think your writing doesn't matter, or how much you don't care about it, or how the language changes over time, people KNOW you by the way you write. It's one of the most revealing ways to really get into a person's mind and see who they are without even meeting them. Even if you disagree with that, everyone will do it to you, so if you want to be seen as intelligent, interesting, or knowledgable about whatever you're talking about, then you have to write well. Anyone who says otherwise is just making excuses.
It's even more important on the web -- the only thing people have to go off of is your writing. It tells them who you are, so make it be you, or you will be how you write to the world. Learn to accept it, and learn to write. No excuses.
Separating them might be nice, true, but I thank Google for every time I've found exactly what I was looking for on a blog, especially when it was something really obscure that needed a human opinion, like a stupid setting in Windows I'm looking for, or some review of a concert that I missed. Blogs are information too; often better information than you can get anywhere else. I think what you're really angry at are "those stupid parked domain search sites", which are a little different. Just a bit.
It's pretty easy actually. Write about something other than ****FREE SOFTWARE NOW FOR A GOOD PRICE WINXP WIN2K WIN98 FREE FREE FREE**** and I think you have a pretty good chance of people actually reading your material.
But go ahead, keep on not providing actual content, I'm sure that's a great way to get readers.
Okay, great, so 90% of it is crap. It's a given, call it whatever you want. My personal favorite is the "long tail effect".
Built into blogs is a way to tell the crap from the good stuff -- they're linked together intelligently by people who can tell crap apart, and the people who don't write crap don't link to crap. So find one good blog, and you've found a hundred or more good ones just three levels deep in links. Go one more level, and there are a thousand. It's exponential. And chances are, most of them will be of the same calibur as the root blog, with that chance decreasing slightly as you follow deeper links.
So who cares if there's spam. It's not the same with blogs as with email -- the spam is intelligently filtered automatically, just by the normal process of each writer.
Now, if only Google could figure out a good algorithm to track it. It wouldn't be that hard. Just rate a few blogs by hand with a content value and a link value, and automatically give all their ancestors (pages they link to) a rating of (the parent site's rating)-[(number of levels deep)*(some adjustment factor)] where the adjustment factor is somewhere around maybe .75 so that links lose value the further away from the parent they are. It could be tweaked, but I think it'd work.
Okay, great, a statistic. All of us are going, "now wait just one minute there..." and using our inane skills of deduction to whittle away all of its importance (like you can do with any statistic).
So yeah, of course we know better, and this has a good chance of not being anywhere near accurate. So what? The rest of the dumb (er, non-nerd) public believes these statistics, at least on a subconsious level, especially the politicians! Let them believe that piracy is going down, that the paying markets are taking hold, that their business model is working. Maybe they'll stop worrying so much and actually focus on what's important, like making good music. Chances are their profits will keep on not going down. And when they ask how this happens even with all that piracy? Ehhhhhhh... it's magic. Here's some statistics. Good dog.
No, 6 Million Theartres X 9 Million Theatres = 54 Trillion Theatres Squared....
Unless of course a "Theartre" is some currency with an exchange rate of 857,142 to the Dollar, in which case I apologize for insulting your homeland, and send my condolences to your 9 million theatres making only seven dollars per movie.
Microsoft's MSN is now sponsoring American Mensa events, featuring Mensa questions on the MSN homepage, and Mensa will put MSN's search on their new homepage in exchange for allowing Microsoft founder and CEO Bill Gates into their organization.
When asked of this peculiar action, Mr. Gates told reporters: "I tried the tests and the puzzles and stuff, but I couldn't really figure them out. Then I realized that I was the richest man in the world and I didn't have to deal with this crap."
Gates also spoke of creating a new organization tangential to Mensa, the Pecunia Society. "It has only one requirement -- just have more money than 99.998% of the world's population!"
(I know I'm basically replying to Steve Jobs, but I might as well)
I think that the problem with the music industry is that they failed to release a sufficiently higher quality format before (or during) the digital revolution. They trained the public to want convenience over quality. It started with the CD -- people were reluctant to switch from vinyl because they knew that going to digital was a step down in fidelity. And they were right -- if you've ever heard an audiophile recording on LP, there's no denying that there's more there than you could ever fit on a CD. But the mainstream public got sold on CDs as more convenient, more reliable, and with a lower noise floor. It was a different kind of quality, and it trained us to forget about fidelity. If the industry had embraced DVD-audio or even SACDs as the "new standard" in audio media, then the public might have reversed their downhill slide and gone back to loving high fidelity music. But instead, we're still stuck with the "CDs are more convenient than LPs or cassettes" and that mentality led in a straight line to "mp3s are even more convenient than CDs!" Same deal. If SACD or DVD-Audio were the standard, people would listen to an mp3 and say, "what is this crap??" Unfortunately for the industry, they trained us to ignore fidelity a long time ago, and now they're feeling the repercussions.
Oh yeah, well I know and love Cygwin, but you can't exactly go up to anyone's system and say "okay, now open up a Cygwin terminal... ... Oh, what's that, you have no idea what I'm talking about because it doesn't come with Windows and isn't attached to Internet Explorer?"
I manage a dorm network with 44 computers, mine is the only one with cygwin installed, I guarantee it. So it's nice to go up to a Mac, open a terminal, and have it be useful.
Just the other day I was fixing a friend's mac, and while I hadn't used OSX all that much, I do use linux, so I asked him, "okay, open up a terminal" because I knew it was possible, and it was so nice to be able to use (just about) everything I could in linux. It's definately something I wish Windows had...
Agree wholeheartedly with this. I have a patagonia bag that's about 4 years old (one of the first ones they made with a laptop slot), and I use it every single day, and I have for the last 4 years. It's incredibly durable, it's never worn out, and the laptop fits perfectly and safely. I forsee using it for at least another four years, probably more.
The extra price isn't just about the enviro stuff; it's for quality, hands down, the best on the market.
Like I said way up the line, it all depends on how many systems the library needs. If they need 10, then the initial cost of a sunray system is just not worth it; yes, building them would take time, and maintaining them would need some extra work, but these things can be managed. I'm sure I could get someone to build a library 10 moderate systems like that with everything ready to go for a decent price. Heck, I'd do it for him.
My point was that the comparison of the sunrays to the PCs was not fair in the least.
And if you want them to be managable, there are thin-client solutions not from sun and not expensive, where you can buy one server box and lots of harddriveless old PCs with supported network cards, mice, keyboards, and displays and make a cheaper solution that's as easy to manage as the exorbitant sunrays.
To answer your question, yes, I understand the cost of maintenance. But the grandparent didn't understand the difference between a superworkstation and a thin client, and was giving an unfair comparison, so I had to say something.
As someone else already noted, PNG and JPEG cannot compare in their use or compression. JPEG's advantage has always been its ability to compress photographic (non computer generated, generally) images down to fractions of their bitmapped size. PNG is a lot like GIF in its design (to my knowledge and experience). It compresses certain things well, but JPEG is still the master of photographs, which is why this could affect the web slightly. There isn't yet a widespread open JPEG-like standard -- maybe there needs to be. Until then, I'm going to continue to use JPEGs because, well, I think this will all blow over just like every other ludicrous software patent we've seen.