Think about it: Blockbuster (or whatever store) would NEVER be out of stock of a movie that you want to see.
No more lists, no more waiting, no more "guaraneed or it's free". Just get your sh*t when, how and where you want it.
Downloading is most convenient of all, though not the most cost-effective. DVD rental is cheaper, but things can be out of stock. Case in point: I got hooked on "Lost". Downloaded the first couple of episodes from season one last Xmas after getting my iPod video. Watched them and then went on to rent the DVDs for most of the rest of the season. Watched a DVD-worth every few days. Burned through most of season one in a couple of weeks. Went in to get disk 6, the final disk... NOT THERE. Oh, I was jonesing.
Because of the cost ($4.00 for four episodes vs $2.00 per episode), I figured I could just wait. But no. Not there the next night or the next. Finally, I broke down and bought the last few episodes over iTunes.
Now imagine if I could have rented those via file download for the same $4.00 as I could have had the DVD rental, just by bringing my 'pod into the store? Then it wouldn't even matter if I had a computer at home. Pretty sweet idea, I think. Cringely's right; not everyone has broadband, and not everyone wants to keep lists of movies they want to see. This would be an efficient way to handle a big chunk of the market that's not being addressed.
I met someone not too long ago who ran a SPAM outfit, and he boasted that he was 100% CAN-SPAM compliant, because he always gave his recipients an option to be exempted from future SPAMs. Apparently, the first contact can't be considered a SPAM, according to the law.
So guess what? This guy had hundreds of domains, officially different companies which would act as agents for his clients, so that he (the spammer) could use the same mailing list over and over and over, because it wasn't "him" that was using it; it was his clients.
So basically, CAN-SPAM is really SWISS-CHEESE. There are so many holes in it that any idiot can figure out a way to avoid being penalized.
Unfortunately, there are no holes in the laws protecting these guys from great bodily harm...
I would probably still be using my C64 if it hadn't gotten stolen in 1989, when it was 6 years old. Can you imagine anyone stealing a 6-year-old computer these days? Crazy!
So my progression looked something like this:
C64 >> Amiga 500 (upgraded to 3MB, with a 2MB external RAM disk!) >> Mac Quadra 650 >> Power Mac 7500 (eventually upgraded the CPU from, IIRC 75MHz to 100MHz) >> PMG3 >> PMG4 eventually upgraded from single 867 to dual 1600s.
And that's where I stand today!
I can't upgrade to Intel, because if I do, I'll lose Classic mode, and I'll never be able to run Armor Alley again!
I wouldn't have said anything, but you did it twice, so I figure it's not a typo. "Weary" = "tired". "Wary" = "aware", with a sense of "cautious". Very different meaning.
3. Wipe out a core part of thousands of hosting provider's business.
Or... let thousands of hosting providers outsource that core part of their business. Maybe they'll even pay ISP's a percentage of revenue earned by their customers for hosting email service there. It is possible that they could change the entire industry without being evil.
Of course, it's also possible that you're right. I guess it's going to be a case of "news at eleven".
Here's something you may disagree with, but I think...
...you're reading it wrong. It's not and adverb, it's an adjective. It's not describing how you're thinking, it's describing what you can do with an Apple product, who you can be with an Apple product.
What do you want to do with your life? It's up to you! Think big! Think bold! Think red, white and...green!
We've all heard some of these phrases: "No, you're thinking too small!!" And similar stuff with other parts of speech: "I'm thinking: a beach, a drink with an umbrella in it, and you, wearing practically nothing." Is it perfect grammar? NO! But think meaning! We all understand that stuff.
So why did Apple choose "think different"? It's part of the heritage. Think 1984. Think Super Bowl 18, and the famous commercial. You can either be the same--one of those faceless corporate goons who go along with the crowd--or you can be different. Did Feinman wear a blue suit and march in a line? Einstein? Earhart? Ali? Ghandi? No. They were different.
Who do you want to be? How do you want to be remembered? Think genius. Think lyrical. Think contradictions. Think amazing.
Think different.
I would consider myself somewhat of a grammar nazi; if you don't believe me, ask my wife. I lament the fact that so many people don't know the difference between their, there and they're. If someone says he looses his dog all the time, I assume that he means that he lets the dog off the leash, not that he can't keep track of the darn animal. And I have shed tears--actual tears--over the loss of the subjunctive case in the English language. If it weren't for the subjunctive case, I would have said, "If it wasn't for the subjunctive case," and it wouldn't have sounded nearly as nice.
But that having been said, I believe it's all about the expression. If you know the rules and you bend them just a bit, you can turn a phrase of immense meaning and subtlety which just wouldn't be possible if you were constantly worrying about standard phrase and sentence construction. If you're not willing to play with the language, you would never have the brilliance of Shelley or Shakespeare, Joyce or Burgess, Stipe or Franti, nor would you ever have new language or dialect.
Let's say you are a powerful media industry association which controls the flow of money and property within your industry. All providers creating content must go through you in order to reach the outside world.
Let's say a company, let's call it Orange, makes a media machine called the iSeed which is initially scorned by certain geek web sites, but suddenly becomes the darling of the music consumer world. By selling the iSeed, which runs on content created by this association's media producers, Orange is making fistfulls of money.
As it turns out, Orange has opened up a new market for people to purchase industry content, and they are moving towards their billionth sale, but you, the industry association mogul feel that you are not maximizing your profits. Is it ethical to charge more for the latest drivel just because your payola scams have it playing on every teenie-bopper radio station and TV show, causing it to be temporarily popular?
I think that the time for sender-postage-paid email has come. It's the only solution that has any significant chance of really killing SPAM. Make it cheap enough so that poor people can still send email, and so that businesses don't bring down the hammer on employees sending personal email, but make it expensive enough that a SPAMmer can't send out a million emails without feeling the pinch.
Poorly paraphrased... It was cigarettes instead of music...
BART: Fat Tony, is the music on these iPods stolen?
FAT TONY: Bart, Bart, Bart... If your family were hungry, and you took a loaf of bread to give to them, would that be stealing?
B: I guess not...
FT: Well, let's say you had a really big family, so you took a truckload of bread. Would that be stealing?
B: Well, no...
FT: Let's say they don't like bread; they like music. And instead of giving it to them, you sold it to them at a price that was practically giving it away. Would that be stealing?
B: Hell no!
FT: Good boy!
Please forgive any inaccuracies; I haven't seen this episode in several years, but it seemed apropos...
Crap... Wildcards are a problem, too...
on
Gmail Mis.delivered?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I was wondering why I get so much spam. My email address is *.*@gmail.com.
For anyone who didn't get what I meant, I was actually referring to the MPAA, which is responsible for motion pictures. Thanks to Bacchus for pointing this out!
If I were Steve Jobs, that exact feature is what I would announce this Tuesday. Imagine if iTunes could rip your DVDs automatically, and apply Fairplay to the rips so that you could share with 1 or 2 other computers. If anyone could get the RIAA to agree to that, SJ could.
Of course, the only way to make this work would be to increase fees to rental agencies like NetFlix and Blockbuster. Less people would be buying movies, so that's how the RIAA would have to make back their money. The good news is that NF and BB would still make out like bandits without raising rental fees because there would be such a huge jump in rentals once average Joe Mouseclick could rip a movie to his iPod.
And with some level of sharing allowed, it would absolutely kill the illegal sales channel Why would someone invest in time, equipment and distribution systems to pirate movies when they can't even sell them for as much as a rental goes for because people can so easily "borrow" movies from each other over the net?
Maybe I'm an idealist, but I think it's crazy enough it just might work.
> Fortunately, such a law would basically make nanotechnology illegal.
> How? In a few seconds, you could amass more wealth than the average person
> would have in 100 lifetimes (by harnessing the sun's output).
That's one of the strangest arguments I've ever heard. My concept wouldn't make nanotechnology illegal. My point is that unscrupulous greed should be illegal. If we can safely harness enough energy to last a person 100 lifetimes (or 100 people a lifetime), that's great. It should be shared.
Of course, this may not be sustainable; if everyone put up their nano-sun-scoop on our own sol, it might throw a significant shadow on the Earth, or on other areas of the Sun's influence which we do not even understand. Again, nanotechnology shouldn't be illegal, but maybe some applications should be if their effects are either destructive or not understood. But the applications which are legal should not be used for the benefit of the few.
Technical breakthroughs open as many doors to problems as they do to solutions; blind faith in technology is not the answer, because a technology is only as good as the people who use it. Laws, morals, ethics and society in general exist for a reason. They won't be obsolete until everyone in the world is willing to put the needs of others before their own a significant amount of the time. And that will be... well, you tell me.
At one time, his total paper wealth was up closer to $80B, though those times have changed post 2001.
I think it's great that he's doing what he's doing: helping to rid the world of disease and hunger are great things and should not be discounted.
However, it should not be ignored that a fairly significant amount of the foundatoin's donations to schools are indeed tied to MS purchases or MS-related purchases which are indeed self-serving and will help to make him richer.
Additionally, it should not be ignored that this money came from our pockets, either directly through the purchase of MS products, or indirectly through the purchase of products produced by companies which rely on MS products to conduct business, which is basically all of them.
So you and me are the ones paying for this. I don't know what y'all think about "tax and spend" government policies, but essentially what we're saying when we congratulate Bill on his great charity, we are saying that it's OK to overcharge us and the companies we patronize, become enormously wealthy, and then decide how to spend our money. It's essentially a tax-and-spend system.
And with regards to the percentages people keep bringing up, the question is really moot. I don't care if it's 60%, 70% or 95%. If he is personally worth $40B, then that means that 1% is $400 million, more than enough for anyone to live on for the rest of their lives, and even the following generations.
In other words, even if he gave up 99% of his wealth--and he's only talking about doing 90% by the time he dies--to charity, that means far less to me from a generosity standpoint than the minimum-wage-earner who gives a few bucks a week to the church for a meal program for the homeless.
From a results standpoint, obviously the billions make a huge difference. However, I'm not sure that the world wouldn't be a better place if there weren't some law that made it impossible for one person to amass more wealth in a few years than the average person would in 100 lifetimes.
> So, AJAX has Javascript in it, but is not javascript. My computer plays games but that doesn't make it a gaming machine.
Actually, if it can run games (you're the one who actually plays them), it's arguably a gaming machine. If you use it to crunch numbers, it is a number crunching machine. Your computer can be many things, based on what you use it for.
A better argument, semantically speaking, would have been, "My computer runs game software, but that does not make it a game."
But I know what you meant. I'm just tired and argumentative and probably shouldn't post this...
Just because they're free doesn't mean that competition isn't a good thing. Perhaps their focus on sound--as opposed to the broader range on WmC--will make this a more useful site for some people. I don't know, but I assume that you would never say, "Why don't Chrysler and Mercedes get together? They both make cars!"
Oh, wait...
Anyway, that having been said, thanks for the link; I didn't know about WmC!
Slashdot Mirror
No more lists, no more waiting, no more "guaraneed or it's free". Just get your sh*t when, how and where you want it.
Downloading is most convenient of all, though not the most cost-effective. DVD rental is cheaper, but things can be out of stock. Case in point: I got hooked on "Lost". Downloaded the first couple of episodes from season one last Xmas after getting my iPod video. Watched them and then went on to rent the DVDs for most of the rest of the season. Watched a DVD-worth every few days. Burned through most of season one in a couple of weeks. Went in to get disk 6, the final disk... NOT THERE. Oh, I was jonesing.
Because of the cost ($4.00 for four episodes vs $2.00 per episode), I figured I could just wait. But no. Not there the next night or the next. Finally, I broke down and bought the last few episodes over iTunes.
Now imagine if I could have rented those via file download for the same $4.00 as I could have had the DVD rental, just by bringing my 'pod into the store? Then it wouldn't even matter if I had a computer at home. Pretty sweet idea, I think. Cringely's right; not everyone has broadband, and not everyone wants to keep lists of movies they want to see. This would be an efficient way to handle a big chunk of the market that's not being addressed.
And the hardware will be called the aPod!
So guess what? This guy had hundreds of domains, officially different companies which would act as agents for his clients, so that he (the spammer) could use the same mailing list over and over and over, because it wasn't "him" that was using it; it was his clients.
So basically, CAN-SPAM is really SWISS-CHEESE. There are so many holes in it that any idiot can figure out a way to avoid being penalized.
Unfortunately, there are no holes in the laws protecting these guys from great bodily harm...
So my progression looked something like this:
C64 >> Amiga 500 (upgraded to 3MB, with a 2MB external RAM disk!) >> Mac Quadra 650 >> Power Mac 7500 (eventually upgraded the CPU from, IIRC 75MHz to 100MHz) >> PMG3 >> PMG4 eventually upgraded from single 867 to dual 1600s.
And that's where I stand today!
I can't upgrade to Intel, because if I do, I'll lose Classic mode, and I'll never be able to run Armor Alley again!
Or... let thousands of hosting providers outsource that core part of their business. Maybe they'll even pay ISP's a percentage of revenue earned by their customers for hosting email service there. It is possible that they could change the entire industry without being evil.
Of course, it's also possible that you're right. I guess it's going to be a case of "news at eleven".
Don't hate me; I just think that Sun has made some *questionable* decisions since I bought their stock :-(
What do you want to do with your life? It's up to you! Think big! Think bold! Think red, white and...green!
We've all heard some of these phrases: "No, you're thinking too small!!" And similar stuff with other parts of speech: "I'm thinking: a beach, a drink with an umbrella in it, and you, wearing practically nothing." Is it perfect grammar? NO! But think meaning! We all understand that stuff.
So why did Apple choose "think different"? It's part of the heritage. Think 1984. Think Super Bowl 18, and the famous commercial. You can either be the same--one of those faceless corporate goons who go along with the crowd--or you can be different. Did Feinman wear a blue suit and march in a line? Einstein? Earhart? Ali? Ghandi? No. They were different.
Who do you want to be? How do you want to be remembered? Think genius. Think lyrical. Think contradictions. Think amazing.
Think different.
I would consider myself somewhat of a grammar nazi; if you don't believe me, ask my wife. I lament the fact that so many people don't know the difference between their, there and they're. If someone says he looses his dog all the time, I assume that he means that he lets the dog off the leash, not that he can't keep track of the darn animal. And I have shed tears--actual tears--over the loss of the subjunctive case in the English language. If it weren't for the subjunctive case, I would have said, "If it wasn't for the subjunctive case," and it wouldn't have sounded nearly as nice.
But that having been said, I believe it's all about the expression. If you know the rules and you bend them just a bit, you can turn a phrase of immense meaning and subtlety which just wouldn't be possible if you were constantly worrying about standard phrase and sentence construction. If you're not willing to play with the language, you would never have the brilliance of Shelley or Shakespeare, Joyce or Burgess, Stipe or Franti, nor would you ever have new language or dialect.
Let's say you are a powerful media industry association which controls the flow of money and property within your industry. All providers creating content must go through you in order to reach the outside world.
Let's say a company, let's call it Orange, makes a media machine called the iSeed which is initially scorned by certain geek web sites, but suddenly becomes the darling of the music consumer world. By selling the iSeed, which runs on content created by this association's media producers, Orange is making fistfulls of money.
As it turns out, Orange has opened up a new market for people to purchase industry content, and they are moving towards their billionth sale, but you, the industry association mogul feel that you are not maximizing your profits. Is it ethical to charge more for the latest drivel just because your payola scams have it playing on every teenie-bopper radio station and TV show, causing it to be temporarily popular?
I think that the time for sender-postage-paid email has come. It's the only solution that has any significant chance of really killing SPAM. Make it cheap enough so that poor people can still send email, and so that businesses don't bring down the hammer on employees sending personal email, but make it expensive enough that a SPAMmer can't send out a million emails without feeling the pinch.
Free email is dead; long live free email!
- Raid on Bungeling Bay
- Mission Impossible
- Jumpman
- Infocom games
And from a little later in the game, Armor Alley, which I still play in classic mode on my Mac...BART: Fat Tony, is the music on these iPods stolen?
FAT TONY: Bart, Bart, Bart... If your family were hungry, and you took a loaf of bread to give to them, would that be stealing?
B: I guess not...
FT: Well, let's say you had a really big family, so you took a truckload of bread. Would that be stealing?
B: Well, no...
FT: Let's say they don't like bread; they like music. And instead of giving it to them, you sold it to them at a price that was practically giving it away. Would that be stealing?
B: Hell no!
FT: Good boy!
Please forgive any inaccuracies; I haven't seen this episode in several years, but it seemed apropos...
For anyone who didn't get what I meant, I was actually referring to the MPAA, which is responsible for motion pictures. Thanks to Bacchus for pointing this out!
Of course, the only way to make this work would be to increase fees to rental agencies like NetFlix and Blockbuster. Less people would be buying movies, so that's how the RIAA would have to make back their money. The good news is that NF and BB would still make out like bandits without raising rental fees because there would be such a huge jump in rentals once average Joe Mouseclick could rip a movie to his iPod.
And with some level of sharing allowed, it would absolutely kill the illegal sales channel Why would someone invest in time, equipment and distribution systems to pirate movies when they can't even sell them for as much as a rental goes for because people can so easily "borrow" movies from each other over the net?
Maybe I'm an idealist, but I think it's crazy enough it just might work.
Yeah, but imagine a beowolf cluster of them!
> How? In a few seconds, you could amass more wealth than the average person
> would have in 100 lifetimes (by harnessing the sun's output).
That's one of the strangest arguments I've ever heard. My concept wouldn't make nanotechnology illegal. My point is that unscrupulous greed should be illegal. If we can safely harness enough energy to last a person 100 lifetimes (or 100 people a lifetime), that's great. It should be shared.
Of course, this may not be sustainable; if everyone put up their nano-sun-scoop on our own sol, it might throw a significant shadow on the Earth, or on other areas of the Sun's influence which we do not even understand. Again, nanotechnology shouldn't be illegal, but maybe some applications should be if their effects are either destructive or not understood. But the applications which are legal should not be used for the benefit of the few.
Technical breakthroughs open as many doors to problems as they do to solutions; blind faith in technology is not the answer, because a technology is only as good as the people who use it. Laws, morals, ethics and society in general exist for a reason. They won't be obsolete until everyone in the world is willing to put the needs of others before their own a significant amount of the time. And that will be... well, you tell me.
I think it's great that he's doing what he's doing: helping to rid the world of disease and hunger are great things and should not be discounted.
However, it should not be ignored that a fairly significant amount of the foundatoin's donations to schools are indeed tied to MS purchases or MS-related purchases which are indeed self-serving and will help to make him richer.
Additionally, it should not be ignored that this money came from our pockets, either directly through the purchase of MS products, or indirectly through the purchase of products produced by companies which rely on MS products to conduct business, which is basically all of them.
So you and me are the ones paying for this. I don't know what y'all think about "tax and spend" government policies, but essentially what we're saying when we congratulate Bill on his great charity, we are saying that it's OK to overcharge us and the companies we patronize, become enormously wealthy, and then decide how to spend our money. It's essentially a tax-and-spend system.
And with regards to the percentages people keep bringing up, the question is really moot. I don't care if it's 60%, 70% or 95%. If he is personally worth $40B, then that means that 1% is $400 million, more than enough for anyone to live on for the rest of their lives, and even the following generations.
In other words, even if he gave up 99% of his wealth--and he's only talking about doing 90% by the time he dies--to charity, that means far less to me from a generosity standpoint than the minimum-wage-earner who gives a few bucks a week to the church for a meal program for the homeless.
From a results standpoint, obviously the billions make a huge difference. However, I'm not sure that the world wouldn't be a better place if there weren't some law that made it impossible for one person to amass more wealth in a few years than the average person would in 100 lifetimes.
That's not how you spell A-P-P-L-E!
Actually, if it can run games (you're the one who actually plays them), it's arguably a gaming machine. If you use it to crunch numbers, it is a number crunching machine. Your computer can be many things, based on what you use it for.
A better argument, semantically speaking, would have been, "My computer runs game software, but that does not make it a game."
But I know what you meant. I'm just tired and argumentative and probably shouldn't post this...
Oh, wait...
Anyway, that having been said, thanks for the link; I didn't know about WmC!
My Sega Genesis still works great!