I'm not even a big video user but this is amazing stuff. From start to finish they've got everything almost anyone could want to make high end productions and the cost and hardware is stupidly cheap. Real time HD over FireWire on a $3000 computer? Just to get that to work is amazing, but to have a purpose built SAN to handle all the files, and it all works together with amazing fit and finish. I can't see anyone in the industry not going for this. Apple's been saying that having the hardware and the software let's them do all sorts of unique things, but this is the first time it's going to completely change a whole industry. Linux companies take note and make sure you've got a hardware side to your operations.
The reason you see so much outrage against voluntary services is that the web is a mass medium. When you have hundreds of thousands of unaware average consumers sign up for a compromising service, it's an approval for the company to require the service for ALL users in the future. It's the same with phone/cable/net bundles. Once you get a critical mass of people on board, companies can force the rest to adopt the same by either cancelling old services, or simply requiring all people to meet the new "standard". Unfortunately, your vote (your dollar) doesn't have meaningful sway in such a liquid environment. The wave of the masses can overrun your choice pretty easily because the only regulator is the market. Voluntary services used to be arbitrated quite well by individual choice, but the speed and ease of signing up, especially by accepting restrictions by default, makes the web an easy place for monopolistic companies to force their standards by stealth.
This is assuming that consumers will buy Micosoft DRM. Microsoft could theoretically blanket the globe with stores and players, but if their product isn't as desirable, it's all wasted effort. Apple already has the most lenient DRM and it's clear that Microsoft's will not be as free. Nobody will want to buy more expensive tracks that are locked down by the RIAA and don't play on the best player.
The iPod and iTunes also already play non-DRM files very well and it will be a long time before another company meets that standard. I think the pressure for Apple to license FairPlay or open up the iPod is far overestimated. They have the best product, will protect it, and it's what customers want now and for the foreseeable future. It's rare you get such a potent mix and such a great product this early.
Real is still a competitor. To increase iPod sales, the best is to more HP-style licensing. If another company is promoting your product that's way better than you giving them your tech and have them competing against you. Apple should just bundle iTunes with all the PC manufacturers and let them put their logo on the back of their iPod. Distributed manufacturing, all under the Apple brand.
If you don't like Microsoft now and are afraid of Linux's learning curve, but a Macintosh now, and "upgrade" to Linux when it's ready for your needs. The Mac has all the apps you're likely to need from Windows, and it's extremely well put together. The Unix underpinnings will introduce you to stability and more advanced free apps so that when Linux finally catches up, it will be an easy transition. Linux also runs marvellously on Apple hardware, since it's all nicely standardized.
I think you're missing the point here. Just because it's cheap to copy something doesn't mean the original had no value. In fact, the original usually costs a ton of money to make. In the case of artists from the past their work still had value, in some cases value well beyond the time they physically put into recording it. If there was only one pressing of Miles Davis Kind of Blue, or Led Zeppelin's first album, where would you be now? The industry largely exists to PRESERVE musical art for coming generations. If you take away the real product you're taking away the ORIGINALS (you had to copy an original CD at some point). In this transition period, not only will you NOT HAVE ANY OLD MUSIC, but because you've taken away the incentive to make something real, YOU WON'T HAVE ANY NEW ARTISTS. Your views might be fine in a utopia, or in 20 years when society has transitioned to all-digital but today it means THE DEATH OF THE INDUSTRY. It's laughable to think artists can support themselves by touring and selling CDs at shows alone. Even the cost of downloading off a personal web site is prohibitive for all but the smallest artist.
Music is a continuum. You can't just chop the body off and expect the head to keep living.
Whoa buddy, hold on there with the thinking that the whole world can and will make copies for a PITTANCE. The simple fact is that outside of the Slashdot bubble, most people like to buy REAL things. While CDs were a step back from LPs in terms of purchase-as-object, they still have shape, form and liner art. They also last at least twice as long as a CD-R and you have a master when your HD goes up in smoke. That's tangible value. One of the reasons we need real things around is that not all artists are still alive! How are you going to buy a CD from John Coltrane or Johnny Cash at their show if they're dead. Real things serve as tactile links when artists aren't around. Having a song on your iPod or your HD of some 30s blues singer is so far removed from what they actually are about. The idea that $15 or even $20 is too much for a piece of art made by a genius makes me laugh. Honestly, people think that great new artists will develop out out thin air if there's no support of their work. The RIAA may have made lots of condemnable moves but buying music is a form of democracy - only buy the CDs you like and the RIAA will make less you don't. If anything, it's the mass stupidity of people who want the Britney Spears album for $10 that has encouraged the production of so much crap and the piracy of such crap. Wake up, quality costs money. Money supports quality. It's a simple cycle, vote with your wallet.
The resonance of wood soaked in brine or sake may help a Stradivarius, but in a speaker cone the only two factors that make a good one are lightness and stiffness. Any kind of resonance introduces a sound of its own that isn't present in the recording. Hi-fi types refer to this as coloration. If the JVC guys have been working on wood cones for 20 years it's because it is relatively inert, strong and light, not because it adds a particular sonic character of its own. It's very hard to build something that has no negative effect due to its form, yet creates a large positive secondary effect - a basic law of nature and the fundamentals of engineering.
Let's imagine there was a Moderation system for OSS. You'd get a plain text tree of all the features of a program where people could insert their comments or suggestions. Then, other people could rate each comment and suggestion which would essentially bring up the most important changes. Over time, those that moderate most, or have the highest peer review marks move up the chain to have more weight behind their decisions. It would be a fluid method of keeping the best and brightest making the decisions, through a quasi democratic method. It would also be self regulating. If someone was getting too powerful or making bad decisions, the community would quickly reign them in through their collective power. This would be a structure that would work.
The only problem, which might not really exist, would be the willingness of the programmers to follow the mandate decided upon by the group. But, since the group is probably comprised of many programmers working on the project there would be at least some incentive to go along and support the decisions. It might even bring more notoriety in that programmers that accept challenges or menial tasks would be recognized in the suggestion forum by all members.
Computer platforms are successful because a lot of people see a reason to use them. When you get above say 5% of the population there's a snowball effect that brings innovation and infrastructure to further support the platform. It's fine for you to have the opinion that Linux is for the programmers, but that's going to mean it never hits critical mass. You can't have both. I'm of the mind that it's a more valiant direction to push Linux towards ubiquity so that it in the least forces private companies to improve their product, or at best gets everyone involved in the basic technology that guides our lives.
I agree with you that's been the case to this point. I'm simply advocating some kind of chain of command/structure so that it's possible to develop the incentives to continue doing all the things necessary. Without the structure you're right, it's a disparate mess of things that aren't likely to get done except by the very few who are very very motivated. I think there needs to be a new open source "currency" as the projects get large and the traditional incentives become more muted. Slashdot for example has a currency in the form of its moderation points. Perhaps an automated system can be made for open source projects too.
I've wanted to contribute myself, but I don't know if I'm a good enough coder to be enough help, and I wouldn't know where to start.
Not everyone is a coder and not everyone has the time to learn how and "fork" even a small project. In fact, I'd submit that within a year there will be almost no projects that are small enough for one person to substantially affect. In principle it's just a big waste of repeated effort for many individuals to be working on the same project in slightly different ways. The evolutionary cycle slows in proportion to the size of the project.
Perhaps there needs to be a democratic system where project managers are elected by registered programmers so that there is a way towards consensus. There simply has to be a figurehead or decision panel that can accept or deny feature requests or UI changes. Maybe this already exists in some projects, but I'll go so far as to extend the qualification to include "marketing types."
I think you've outlined the kind of thinking that's keeping people away. Programmers ultimately control what gets done or not done, but this also means that if they don't consistently make the right decisions, they are responsible for the failure of the project within the market. Programmers are generally not marketers, nor do they often understand the infrastructure needed to support a business. Open source may not BE a business, but it will shortly have to follow the same rules or it will never be accepted by the general public. There are simply rules and expectations on how you do things and in today's tightly organized society you can innovate within the rules, or you can fail. Until programmers realize that there is combined value in giving some control to different kinds of people, Linux will be in the "failing" category.
And, these people are not all closed-minded, my way or the highway types, they know what's best and they can reach compromises in the interest of the greater whole with even the most dogged programmer.
I don't think this needs to be debated. Linux exists and there are tons of programmers working on the projects for little or no money. Whether the number is currently smaller than in all the private companies is irrelevant, we already have a critical mass and there's no reason to think that number is going to decline. Linux is only getting more exciting, and there are only more programmers as time goes on. Put the two together and I think it's a no brainer that people are going to be involved. Besides, who outside of big software companies doesn't want the ideal of Linux to be realized?
I use OS X. I've always used a Mac because it is the best computing experience, but I BELIEVE in Linux. Linux has the potential to be cumulatively better than any computer operating system because it has potential input from far more skilled people.
The coding has been great, the apps are progressing with amazing pace and people are really using the software for real world problems.
The big problem to this point, as the two articles point out, is that there have been no skilled UI designers or branding managers involved in the development process. The reason is simple - these people get paid good dollars doing private work. They're also particular personality types - generalists who are also perfectionists, big egos with big personal goals. I will humbly say that I'm part of this group and offer the following as some perspective to the community.
I've wanted to be involved in Linux but it's closed to creative idea types. The incentive that drives these kind of people when money isn't involved is the ability to see ideas come to life and until recently, only hard core programmers could have this opportunity. The comparison to Apple is almost perfect. Steve Jobs runs the company. He is the vision and he makes sure everything fits in right down to the amount of shine on the OK buttons. He's not a dictator though, in fact he relishes the input from his team so that he "can make the best user experience there is." Steve Jobs isn't saying this because of some marketing spiel, he truly believes it.
The culture of Linux is fundamentally opposed to allowing one visionary take any kind of control (with the exception of Linus perhaps). There will never be a competing level of usability in Linux as a whole until the environment that can support the likes of Steve Jobs exists.
I think the one shining light of late, as many people are noticing, is the Mozilla project. Somehow there was a leap of faith and the project asked Steven Garrity to take hold of the branding. Already, we've seen some huge improvements because he thinks like a visionary. For me, the proof is obvious through his writings and what has already been accomplished. This is the first project that I've felt I could offer something to and I think that's an important milestone that must be noted by the community.
You have to attract more of these people. There has to be a level of respect and opportunity for idea people from within the programmer community. While many will say that it's up to programmers to determine the destiny of Linux, that will mean that Linux will never compete in the sphere that real branded companies exist in. The types of people with vision are not overlords, or politicians, or slavemasters. They're people who can focus energy in a common cause and accelerate acceptance and usability. In time Linux will have to accept some kind of central direction, or even more limited distros so that there is the opportunity for certain personalities to step forward. I hope this happens sooner than later because I've been waiting a long time for the promise of an inexpensive, open and powerful computer. Apple always strives for those goals, but only Linux can ultimately attain them.
This is a joke right? It's called "physical assault" when someone does something to your body against your will. There's about 2000 years of law to back it up. Even if each and every person was to consent, I imagine there's tons of civil liberties groups that would sue on behalf of the community. Seriously, the USA is getting sick and I hope this is made up.
Apart from the debate regarding switching one proprietary format for another, Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme is still the most lenient which is a good reason for people to support its wider use, especially in comparison to Microsoft's alternative.
While the iPod mini is obviously a success, if they'd just used the old form factor (which was plenty good for 90% of people) made colors, and stuck the old 5GB drive from a few years ago in it, they could have easily met demand and priced it at $150. Sure, cool is great, but the 5GB would have sold 5 million by now vs. whatever hundred thousand the Mini has done. In 6 months they could have brought out the Mini AND had the whole portable player market to themselves forever more.
Apple always innovates too fast for the market, can never fill demand, and eventually loses to the company that copies them and has the supply. I love 'em but they're stupid from a business perspective. They could have it all if they just slowed down a little bit.
Hey, I agree with you completely. The Linux UI is absolutely horrible. You're also right that merging two desktop environments is going to be a horrific job. But, overall, this is the first big decision the community has made that falls into some kind of "smart business" and I'm applauding that. Not to say this is a business, but just that there is a way certain things have to be done to be successful, and this decision is part of that. I think from here on out the big companies are going to have a large part in stewarding the Linux ship. Once they're all working on the same desktop, they can at least talk the same language about what it's going to do. Inevitably there will be some leaders (because companies are set up to bring leaders to the fore) and directly or indirectly they're going to make some big decisions that the disparate Linux crowd won't be able to make because they lack unified consensus.
That's a little isolationist. Obviously it takes a community to write something like a great desktop and it's somewhat irresponsible as a community which is providing software for a larger community not to think about the impact of their work. As much as Linux started as the hobbyist's OS, it's very quickly reaching the momentum where not only will individuals not be able to affect the whole character of the OS, it will be required that many people work together to move the OS in a planned direction. I think it's obvious that the closest goal of Linux is to be an alternative for the masses. From there, who knows...
As long as I never have to hear the names of 2 desktop environments when talking about Linux, I'm happy. Choice is great but having two pretty good environments instead of one great environment is not going to win any market share. Only in open source could the two top competitors work together. For this we should be thankful. I don't think there's much to stop Linux from taking down Windows if this is even remotely successful.
You might be right about those things but we're quickly adopting just about all the same cultural trends as the US. Our cities are going through the same transitions american ones did in the 70s/80s- sprawl and infiltration of the US big box stores. At the other end, thanks to satellite, everyone watches US TV which is definitely contributing to a cultural debasement. Even our long standing public broadcaster (CBC) is becoming more slick and shock-based. The legal system will probably follow suit. There really is no insulation between the countries anymore.
Most speaker drivers aren't nearly accurate enough to completely cancel out a particular sound or frequency. They're just too slow and have weird dispersion characteristics. About the only speaker that's ever been really good at it is the Quad electrostatic (any incarnation). They used to demo the accuracy of their speaker by playing a sine tone with one speaker out of phase and having a microscope attached to an oscilloscope. There was no sound at the listening point because the thin plastic drivers were so fast and directionally stable that even at distance they could maintain accuracy. Most people after hearing them will also think they sound as close to real sounds as possible for the same reason.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not even a big video user but this is amazing stuff. From start to finish they've got everything almost anyone could want to make high end productions and the cost and hardware is stupidly cheap. Real time HD over FireWire on a $3000 computer? Just to get that to work is amazing, but to have a purpose built SAN to handle all the files, and it all works together with amazing fit and finish. I can't see anyone in the industry not going for this. Apple's been saying that having the hardware and the software let's them do all sorts of unique things, but this is the first time it's going to completely change a whole industry. Linux companies take note and make sure you've got a hardware side to your operations.
The reason you see so much outrage against voluntary services is that the web is a mass medium. When you have hundreds of thousands of unaware average consumers sign up for a compromising service, it's an approval for the company to require the service for ALL users in the future. It's the same with phone/cable/net bundles. Once you get a critical mass of people on board, companies can force the rest to adopt the same by either cancelling old services, or simply requiring all people to meet the new "standard". Unfortunately, your vote (your dollar) doesn't have meaningful sway in such a liquid environment. The wave of the masses can overrun your choice pretty easily because the only regulator is the market. Voluntary services used to be arbitrated quite well by individual choice, but the speed and ease of signing up, especially by accepting restrictions by default, makes the web an easy place for monopolistic companies to force their standards by stealth.
This is assuming that consumers will buy Micosoft DRM. Microsoft could theoretically blanket the globe with stores and players, but if their product isn't as desirable, it's all wasted effort. Apple already has the most lenient DRM and it's clear that Microsoft's will not be as free. Nobody will want to buy more expensive tracks that are locked down by the RIAA and don't play on the best player.
The iPod and iTunes also already play non-DRM files very well and it will be a long time before another company meets that standard. I think the pressure for Apple to license FairPlay or open up the iPod is far overestimated. They have the best product, will protect it, and it's what customers want now and for the foreseeable future. It's rare you get such a potent mix and such a great product this early.
Real is still a competitor. To increase iPod sales, the best is to more HP-style licensing. If another company is promoting your product that's way better than you giving them your tech and have them competing against you. Apple should just bundle iTunes with all the PC manufacturers and let them put their logo on the back of their iPod. Distributed manufacturing, all under the Apple brand.
Maybe it's a really bad play on K9 as in your canine info retriever. Yeowch.
If you don't like Microsoft now and are afraid of Linux's learning curve, but a Macintosh now, and "upgrade" to Linux when it's ready for your needs. The Mac has all the apps you're likely to need from Windows, and it's extremely well put together. The Unix underpinnings will introduce you to stability and more advanced free apps so that when Linux finally catches up, it will be an easy transition. Linux also runs marvellously on Apple hardware, since it's all nicely standardized.
I think you're missing the point here. Just because it's cheap to copy something doesn't mean the original had no value. In fact, the original usually costs a ton of money to make. In the case of artists from the past their work still had value, in some cases value well beyond the time they physically put into recording it. If there was only one pressing of Miles Davis Kind of Blue, or Led Zeppelin's first album, where would you be now? The industry largely exists to PRESERVE musical art for coming generations. If you take away the real product you're taking away the ORIGINALS (you had to copy an original CD at some point). In this transition period, not only will you NOT HAVE ANY OLD MUSIC, but because you've taken away the incentive to make something real, YOU WON'T HAVE ANY NEW ARTISTS. Your views might be fine in a utopia, or in 20 years when society has transitioned to all-digital but today it means THE DEATH OF THE INDUSTRY. It's laughable to think artists can support themselves by touring and selling CDs at shows alone. Even the cost of downloading off a personal web site is prohibitive for all but the smallest artist.
Music is a continuum. You can't just chop the body off and expect the head to keep living.
Whoa buddy, hold on there with the thinking that the whole world can and will make copies for a PITTANCE. The simple fact is that outside of the Slashdot bubble, most people like to buy REAL things. While CDs were a step back from LPs in terms of purchase-as-object, they still have shape, form and liner art. They also last at least twice as long as a CD-R and you have a master when your HD goes up in smoke. That's tangible value. One of the reasons we need real things around is that not all artists are still alive! How are you going to buy a CD from John Coltrane or Johnny Cash at their show if they're dead. Real things serve as tactile links when artists aren't around. Having a song on your iPod or your HD of some 30s blues singer is so far removed from what they actually are about. The idea that $15 or even $20 is too much for a piece of art made by a genius makes me laugh. Honestly, people think that great new artists will develop out out thin air if there's no support of their work. The RIAA may have made lots of condemnable moves but buying music is a form of democracy - only buy the CDs you like and the RIAA will make less you don't. If anything, it's the mass stupidity of people who want the Britney Spears album for $10 that has encouraged the production of so much crap and the piracy of such crap. Wake up, quality costs money. Money supports quality. It's a simple cycle, vote with your wallet.
The resonance of wood soaked in brine or sake may help a Stradivarius, but in a speaker cone the only two factors that make a good one are lightness and stiffness. Any kind of resonance introduces a sound of its own that isn't present in the recording. Hi-fi types refer to this as coloration. If the JVC guys have been working on wood cones for 20 years it's because it is relatively inert, strong and light, not because it adds a particular sonic character of its own. It's very hard to build something that has no negative effect due to its form, yet creates a large positive secondary effect - a basic law of nature and the fundamentals of engineering.
Let's imagine there was a Moderation system for OSS. You'd get a plain text tree of all the features of a program where people could insert their comments or suggestions. Then, other people could rate each comment and suggestion which would essentially bring up the most important changes. Over time, those that moderate most, or have the highest peer review marks move up the chain to have more weight behind their decisions. It would be a fluid method of keeping the best and brightest making the decisions, through a quasi democratic method. It would also be self regulating. If someone was getting too powerful or making bad decisions, the community would quickly reign them in through their collective power. This would be a structure that would work.
The only problem, which might not really exist, would be the willingness of the programmers to follow the mandate decided upon by the group. But, since the group is probably comprised of many programmers working on the project there would be at least some incentive to go along and support the decisions. It might even bring more notoriety in that programmers that accept challenges or menial tasks would be recognized in the suggestion forum by all members.
Computer platforms are successful because a lot of people see a reason to use them. When you get above say 5% of the population there's a snowball effect that brings innovation and infrastructure to further support the platform. It's fine for you to have the opinion that Linux is for the programmers, but that's going to mean it never hits critical mass. You can't have both. I'm of the mind that it's a more valiant direction to push Linux towards ubiquity so that it in the least forces private companies to improve their product, or at best gets everyone involved in the basic technology that guides our lives.
I agree with you that's been the case to this point. I'm simply advocating some kind of chain of command/structure so that it's possible to develop the incentives to continue doing all the things necessary. Without the structure you're right, it's a disparate mess of things that aren't likely to get done except by the very few who are very very motivated. I think there needs to be a new open source "currency" as the projects get large and the traditional incentives become more muted. Slashdot for example has a currency in the form of its moderation points. Perhaps an automated system can be made for open source projects too.
You've just proven my point.
I've wanted to contribute myself, but I don't know if I'm a good enough coder to be enough help, and I wouldn't know where to start.
Not everyone is a coder and not everyone has the time to learn how and "fork" even a small project. In fact, I'd submit that within a year there will be almost no projects that are small enough for one person to substantially affect. In principle it's just a big waste of repeated effort for many individuals to be working on the same project in slightly different ways. The evolutionary cycle slows in proportion to the size of the project.
Perhaps there needs to be a democratic system where project managers are elected by registered programmers so that there is a way towards consensus. There simply has to be a figurehead or decision panel that can accept or deny feature requests or UI changes. Maybe this already exists in some projects, but I'll go so far as to extend the qualification to include "marketing types."
I think you've outlined the kind of thinking that's keeping people away. Programmers ultimately control what gets done or not done, but this also means that if they don't consistently make the right decisions, they are responsible for the failure of the project within the market. Programmers are generally not marketers, nor do they often understand the infrastructure needed to support a business. Open source may not BE a business, but it will shortly have to follow the same rules or it will never be accepted by the general public. There are simply rules and expectations on how you do things and in today's tightly organized society you can innovate within the rules, or you can fail. Until programmers realize that there is combined value in giving some control to different kinds of people, Linux will be in the "failing" category.
And, these people are not all closed-minded, my way or the highway types, they know what's best and they can reach compromises in the interest of the greater whole with even the most dogged programmer.
I don't think this needs to be debated. Linux exists and there are tons of programmers working on the projects for little or no money. Whether the number is currently smaller than in all the private companies is irrelevant, we already have a critical mass and there's no reason to think that number is going to decline. Linux is only getting more exciting, and there are only more programmers as time goes on. Put the two together and I think it's a no brainer that people are going to be involved. Besides, who outside of big software companies doesn't want the ideal of Linux to be realized?
I use OS X. I've always used a Mac because it is the best computing experience, but I BELIEVE in Linux. Linux has the potential to be cumulatively better than any computer operating system because it has potential input from far more skilled people.
The coding has been great, the apps are progressing with amazing pace and people are really using the software for real world problems.
The big problem to this point, as the two articles point out, is that there have been no skilled UI designers or branding managers involved in the development process. The reason is simple - these people get paid good dollars doing private work. They're also particular personality types - generalists who are also perfectionists, big egos with big personal goals. I will humbly say that I'm part of this group and offer the following as some perspective to the community.
I've wanted to be involved in Linux but it's closed to creative idea types. The incentive that drives these kind of people when money isn't involved is the ability to see ideas come to life and until recently, only hard core programmers could have this opportunity. The comparison to Apple is almost perfect. Steve Jobs runs the company. He is the vision and he makes sure everything fits in right down to the amount of shine on the OK buttons. He's not a dictator though, in fact he relishes the input from his team so that he "can make the best user experience there is." Steve Jobs isn't saying this because of some marketing spiel, he truly believes it.
The culture of Linux is fundamentally opposed to allowing one visionary take any kind of control (with the exception of Linus perhaps). There will never be a competing level of usability in Linux as a whole until the environment that can support the likes of Steve Jobs exists.
I think the one shining light of late, as many people are noticing, is the Mozilla project. Somehow there was a leap of faith and the project asked Steven Garrity to take hold of the branding. Already, we've seen some huge improvements because he thinks like a visionary. For me, the proof is obvious through his writings and what has already been accomplished. This is the first project that I've felt I could offer something to and I think that's an important milestone that must be noted by the community.
You have to attract more of these people. There has to be a level of respect and opportunity for idea people from within the programmer community. While many will say that it's up to programmers to determine the destiny of Linux, that will mean that Linux will never compete in the sphere that real branded companies exist in. The types of people with vision are not overlords, or politicians, or slavemasters. They're people who can focus energy in a common cause and accelerate acceptance and usability. In time Linux will have to accept some kind of central direction, or even more limited distros so that there is the opportunity for certain personalities to step forward. I hope this happens sooner than later because I've been waiting a long time for the promise of an inexpensive, open and powerful computer. Apple always strives for those goals, but only Linux can ultimately attain them.
This is a joke right? It's called "physical assault" when someone does something to your body against your will. There's about 2000 years of law to back it up. Even if each and every person was to consent, I imagine there's tons of civil liberties groups that would sue on behalf of the community. Seriously, the USA is getting sick and I hope this is made up.
I agree, but don't forget Sony. They have the tech, the marketing and the songs so should be able to theoretically outdo both.
Apart from the debate regarding switching one proprietary format for another, Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme is still the most lenient which is a good reason for people to support its wider use, especially in comparison to Microsoft's alternative.
While the iPod mini is obviously a success, if they'd just used the old form factor (which was plenty good for 90% of people) made colors, and stuck the old 5GB drive from a few years ago in it, they could have easily met demand and priced it at $150. Sure, cool is great, but the 5GB would have sold 5 million by now vs. whatever hundred thousand the Mini has done. In 6 months they could have brought out the Mini AND had the whole portable player market to themselves forever more.
Apple always innovates too fast for the market, can never fill demand, and eventually loses to the company that copies them and has the supply. I love 'em but they're stupid from a business perspective. They could have it all if they just slowed down a little bit.
Hey, I agree with you completely. The Linux UI is absolutely horrible. You're also right that merging two desktop environments is going to be a horrific job. But, overall, this is the first big decision the community has made that falls into some kind of "smart business" and I'm applauding that. Not to say this is a business, but just that there is a way certain things have to be done to be successful, and this decision is part of that. I think from here on out the big companies are going to have a large part in stewarding the Linux ship. Once they're all working on the same desktop, they can at least talk the same language about what it's going to do. Inevitably there will be some leaders (because companies are set up to bring leaders to the fore) and directly or indirectly they're going to make some big decisions that the disparate Linux crowd won't be able to make because they lack unified consensus.
That's a little isolationist. Obviously it takes a community to write something like a great desktop and it's somewhat irresponsible as a community which is providing software for a larger community not to think about the impact of their work. As much as Linux started as the hobbyist's OS, it's very quickly reaching the momentum where not only will individuals not be able to affect the whole character of the OS, it will be required that many people work together to move the OS in a planned direction. I think it's obvious that the closest goal of Linux is to be an alternative for the masses. From there, who knows...
As long as I never have to hear the names of 2 desktop environments when talking about Linux, I'm happy. Choice is great but having two pretty good environments instead of one great environment is not going to win any market share. Only in open source could the two top competitors work together. For this we should be thankful. I don't think there's much to stop Linux from taking down Windows if this is even remotely successful.
You might be right about those things but we're quickly adopting just about all the same cultural trends as the US. Our cities are going through the same transitions american ones did in the 70s/80s- sprawl and infiltration of the US big box stores. At the other end, thanks to satellite, everyone watches US TV which is definitely contributing to a cultural debasement. Even our long standing public broadcaster (CBC) is becoming more slick and shock-based. The legal system will probably follow suit. There really is no insulation between the countries anymore.
Most speaker drivers aren't nearly accurate enough to completely cancel out a particular sound or frequency. They're just too slow and have weird dispersion characteristics. About the only speaker that's ever been really good at it is the Quad electrostatic (any incarnation). They used to demo the accuracy of their speaker by playing a sine tone with one speaker out of phase and having a microscope attached to an oscilloscope. There was no sound at the listening point because the thin plastic drivers were so fast and directionally stable that even at distance they could maintain accuracy. Most people after hearing them will also think they sound as close to real sounds as possible for the same reason.