Like everything in life, the way to have good patents that are fair is to have good and fair patent experts who review each case. I agree with the parent, at least with prior art there is some benefit to the small inventor, but ideally you just need somebody who isn't a moron approving or rejecting the patents.
Cell phones are one of the worst designed consumer electronics out there. Of anything, I wish Apple would choose to do a phone next, providing they can make a little money on it.
I saw a demo system at our local Future Shop. It was set up a Toshiba display so I don't think anybody at FS was allowed to mess with it. I presume the quality was as good as it should be. The screen was about 32" so pretty small compared to what the typical buyer would use. Overall the picture quality was only slightly better than a good up-sampled DVD. There was a little less blocking but overall I didn't find the colour, detail or sharpness any better. If the discs and players were the same price as with DVD then it would be worth considering but at this point I think it's going to be a really tough sell.
- Apple needs some healthy competition in this domain
Competition is a strong word. Other than Final Cut Pro, what does Apple offer that competes? Adobe has a monopoly on graphics software. There already is NO competition.
- Even though I am a Mac user, having a competitor in the PC domain also helps Apple keep on their toes
I don't think they would be any less on their toes if Adobe didn't exist. They'd probably love the room to innovate and make money. If they bought Adobe this would largely have the same effect. I can't imagine them screwing too much with Adobe's corporate structure since it's very ingrained and profitable.
- Adobe bought Macromedia, so in this field Apple would near a potential monopoly.
Again, Adobe already has the monopoly. What difference does it make to the market if you exchange the word Adobe for Apple? It's still a monopoly.
Apple's best bet at world domination would be to buy Adobe and stop making the Windows versions of the programs like they did with Logic. Then all the companies would buy Macs, perhaps run their current software through Boot Camb and then upgrade to the Apple versions at the next revision.
The new Citroen Stop & Start is a great example of innovative energy efficiency in a normal car. Whenever you press the brake it kills the engine and then starts it within 400 ms when you release it. So, you're sitting in traffic for 30 minutes and you save 30 minutes of gasoline. It's only 15% more efficient than a regular car but it requires NO compromise from the driver in terms of performance or features- no fancy, legacy or expensive technology. Something like this should be mandatory in all new cars.
It's also a low-energy medium. You can answer messages when they come in or wait until you're ready and format the messages however you want. Most collaboration systems require a lot of user focus either to respond in real time or to satisfy strict interface requirements. E-mail allows people to communicate in their own way, not the way of the application.
I actually think it's pretty amazing that they got ANYBODY to release movies on the PSP format. With DVD and downloads knocking on our door what chance would it have of success. The only way I could have seen it working would be to use mini-DVDs so they could be played in the PSP via a caddy and a normal player with lower resolution. Of course that would mean using the DVD spec for the game data (in permanent caddies) but that probably would have worked.
As a record store owner and the webmaster for RecordStoreReview.com I have a pretty good read on where things are going. This gradual decline in physical sales is about to reach the tipping point where the distribution model crumbles and downloads increase exponentially. It might not happen in 2006 but 2007 is very likely. At the store level, there just isn't sustainable profit from physical sales.
I actually really enjoyed the 1000 word summary of the book/story. I found it informative, entertaining and newsworthy. I don't feel the need to read the entire book anymore.
Employers should have no connection with the health system and neither should individuals. The best system, one that is practised in Canada, Cuba, almost all of Europe and tons of other countries is a government supplied, universal health care. Everybody gets good service and everybody pays equally according to their means. It's about basic human dignity and support of your fellow man. As soon as money gets involved it's survival of the richest.
I notice the same types of electrical devices but I have chocked it up more to the sound they produce than the electrical signal. My monitor, my DSL box, computer etc. all have a particular high frequency sound that I find irritating. When I turn them off, I'm definitely happier. In a busy office all the equipment creates quite a bit of noise pollution.
We use the Audio Technica ATH-M30 for our record store's listening stations. 3 years of constant use and abuse and they're still working great. You can find them for $60 or so. I have tried tons of headphones but these are the most durable (and sound excellent).
I think newspapers have completely changed with the times and as a result they have shallow articles targeted at young idiots. The result is that the entire demographic that actually wants to read newspapers has been turned off. The newspaper I want today is the one we had 40 years ago. Well-researched news and human interest stories about local and international topics. Enough meat so that you can consider yourself informed and have a discussion with another person. Even the NYT reads like the USA Today.
If newspapers just provided the service they were good at and didn't try to chase the technological trends there would be plenty of people to read them.
The site doesn't work with Safari or Internet Explorer for OS X and is painfully slow and cumbersome in FireFox. I couldn't see any area which was better than Google let alone better.
Increasing energy production is only going to accelerate the destruction of the earth because it will simply mean people can buy more, create more, destroy more and throw out more. Do you honestly believe there's any chance people will cut down on using the cheapest, most powerful resource on earth (oil) just because they now also have electricity as an option? Even if the US or part of the world made a concerted effort to switch over, developing nations would quickly buy up and use all the fossil fuels that were saved.
The ONLY way to slow climate change is to slow growth. Painful but unavoidable.
I can't see why any company would want to put out a free fix for something that they make a lot of money selling. What's to stop someone from just writing the same code for Windows and killing all their sales of the Firewire unit? Look at it this way, what reasons do they have not to sue you? Kindness?
If something is "only" occurring in 3 of 6,000,000,000 cases it can still be alarming. The very fact that our current state is so unique in the history of the world is the essence of it being alarming. Just think of if there were 6,000,000,000 viruses and 5,999,999,997 were not harmful to humans but the other 3 mutated and became so deadly as to kill off the whole human race. Those statistically insignificant 3 are still alarmingly important because of their contribution to the outcome.
The quality of most movie sound is atrocious. Sometime, turn off the TV and just listen to the sound. You will be shocked at how badly the voices are recorded and how discordant the panning and background effects are.
If another format ever comes along to usurp AAC, you can bet that Apple will make some kind of automatic re-encoder to "import" your old music. Even if it is slightly lossly, most people won't care at all. More likely however, is that whatever codec is used next will not be lossy so you will end up with a perfect copy of your AAC, same as if you were converting it to AIFF/WAV.
Having more time to build alternative energy structure sounds like a good idea but it can also be very bad. Because the crisis is postponed, people are much less likely to change enough to actually avert the crisis. It's kind of like going to the casino and always playing a small bet. You might win big at some point but the house odds are against you and you'll statistically lose everything. If you just bet everything the first play you are at better odds of succeeding. I think we have to throw all our money and resources at alternative energy this year to be able to have any chance of replacing oil in time.
I don't know. How different is this from Amazon recommending items based on what I've recently viewed? I never "asked" the site to remember everything. I'm not even sure there's a way to opt out of this except for deleting cookies and even that may not work for things I've added to my Wish List. I guess maybe it's a little too far to be looking at the music you listen to that didn't come from Apple, but you can go further and say that if you're using Apple's free iTunes software to play that music you opted in. Long story short, you can use another jukebox and they told you what they were doing.
When will these idiots learn? You fake demos! At worst you have 2 or 3 computers/devices running simultaneously so you can switch to another when the first doesn't work.
After fucking up PPC so bad, Stevesy just wanted to give Moto one last chance because he's a nice guy. They asked him for iTunes on their phone and now they're bitter because the Steve doesn't want to ever talk to them again. Classic inferiority complex.
Watching the moon is no doubt useful, but to prepare for protecting astronauts against meteor strikes? That seems like a waste of time. I doubt there will be colonies on the moon in the next 100 years and even then, the cost of building a structure that can withstand the force of 70KG of TNT seems unreasonable. If we do live on the moon, it will be a bare bones outpost and the people that go there will be cowboys with little concern for death.
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Like everything in life, the way to have good patents that are fair is to have good and fair patent experts who review each case. I agree with the parent, at least with prior art there is some benefit to the small inventor, but ideally you just need somebody who isn't a moron approving or rejecting the patents.
Cell phones are one of the worst designed consumer electronics out there. Of anything, I wish Apple would choose to do a phone next, providing they can make a little money on it.
I saw a demo system at our local Future Shop. It was set up a Toshiba display so I don't think anybody at FS was allowed to mess with it. I presume the quality was as good as it should be. The screen was about 32" so pretty small compared to what the typical buyer would use. Overall the picture quality was only slightly better than a good up-sampled DVD. There was a little less blocking but overall I didn't find the colour, detail or sharpness any better. If the discs and players were the same price as with DVD then it would be worth considering but at this point I think it's going to be a really tough sell.
- Apple needs some healthy competition in this domain
Competition is a strong word. Other than Final Cut Pro, what does Apple offer that competes? Adobe has a monopoly on graphics software. There already is NO competition.
- Even though I am a Mac user, having a competitor in the PC domain also helps Apple keep on their toes
I don't think they would be any less on their toes if Adobe didn't exist. They'd probably love the room to innovate and make money. If they bought Adobe this would largely have the same effect. I can't imagine them screwing too much with Adobe's corporate structure since it's very ingrained and profitable.
- Adobe bought Macromedia, so in this field Apple would near a potential monopoly.
Again, Adobe already has the monopoly. What difference does it make to the market if you exchange the word Adobe for Apple? It's still a monopoly.
Apple's best bet at world domination would be to buy Adobe and stop making the Windows versions of the programs like they did with Logic. Then all the companies would buy Macs, perhaps run their current software through Boot Camb and then upgrade to the Apple versions at the next revision.
The new Citroen Stop & Start is a great example of innovative energy efficiency in a normal car. Whenever you press the brake it kills the engine and then starts it within 400 ms when you release it. So, you're sitting in traffic for 30 minutes and you save 30 minutes of gasoline. It's only 15% more efficient than a regular car but it requires NO compromise from the driver in terms of performance or features- no fancy, legacy or expensive technology. Something like this should be mandatory in all new cars.
It's also a low-energy medium. You can answer messages when they come in or wait until you're ready and format the messages however you want. Most collaboration systems require a lot of user focus either to respond in real time or to satisfy strict interface requirements. E-mail allows people to communicate in their own way, not the way of the application.
I actually think it's pretty amazing that they got ANYBODY to release movies on the PSP format. With DVD and downloads knocking on our door what chance would it have of success. The only way I could have seen it working would be to use mini-DVDs so they could be played in the PSP via a caddy and a normal player with lower resolution. Of course that would mean using the DVD spec for the game data (in permanent caddies) but that probably would have worked.
As a record store owner and the webmaster for RecordStoreReview.com I have a pretty good read on where things are going. This gradual decline in physical sales is about to reach the tipping point where the distribution model crumbles and downloads increase exponentially. It might not happen in 2006 but 2007 is very likely. At the store level, there just isn't sustainable profit from physical sales.
I actually really enjoyed the 1000 word summary of the book/story. I found it informative, entertaining and newsworthy. I don't feel the need to read the entire book anymore.
Employers should have no connection with the health system and neither should individuals. The best system, one that is practised in Canada, Cuba, almost all of Europe and tons of other countries is a government supplied, universal health care. Everybody gets good service and everybody pays equally according to their means. It's about basic human dignity and support of your fellow man. As soon as money gets involved it's survival of the richest.
I notice the same types of electrical devices but I have chocked it up more to the sound they produce than the electrical signal. My monitor, my DSL box, computer etc. all have a particular high frequency sound that I find irritating. When I turn them off, I'm definitely happier. In a busy office all the equipment creates quite a bit of noise pollution.
We use the Audio Technica ATH-M30 for our record store's listening stations. 3 years of constant use and abuse and they're still working great. You can find them for $60 or so. I have tried tons of headphones but these are the most durable (and sound excellent).
I think newspapers have completely changed with the times and as a result they have shallow articles targeted at young idiots. The result is that the entire demographic that actually wants to read newspapers has been turned off. The newspaper I want today is the one we had 40 years ago. Well-researched news and human interest stories about local and international topics. Enough meat so that you can consider yourself informed and have a discussion with another person. Even the NYT reads like the USA Today.
If newspapers just provided the service they were good at and didn't try to chase the technological trends there would be plenty of people to read them.
The site doesn't work with Safari or Internet Explorer for OS X and is painfully slow and cumbersome in FireFox. I couldn't see any area which was better than Google let alone better.
Increasing energy production is only going to accelerate the destruction of the earth because it will simply mean people can buy more, create more, destroy more and throw out more. Do you honestly believe there's any chance people will cut down on using the cheapest, most powerful resource on earth (oil) just because they now also have electricity as an option? Even if the US or part of the world made a concerted effort to switch over, developing nations would quickly buy up and use all the fossil fuels that were saved.
The ONLY way to slow climate change is to slow growth. Painful but unavoidable.
I can't see why any company would want to put out a free fix for something that they make a lot of money selling. What's to stop someone from just writing the same code for Windows and killing all their sales of the Firewire unit? Look at it this way, what reasons do they have not to sue you? Kindness?
If something is "only" occurring in 3 of 6,000,000,000 cases it can still be alarming. The very fact that our current state is so unique in the history of the world is the essence of it being alarming. Just think of if there were 6,000,000,000 viruses and 5,999,999,997 were not harmful to humans but the other 3 mutated and became so deadly as to kill off the whole human race. Those statistically insignificant 3 are still alarmingly important because of their contribution to the outcome.
The quality of most movie sound is atrocious. Sometime, turn off the TV and just listen to the sound. You will be shocked at how badly the voices are recorded and how discordant the panning and background effects are.
If another format ever comes along to usurp AAC, you can bet that Apple will make some kind of automatic re-encoder to "import" your old music. Even if it is slightly lossly, most people won't care at all. More likely however, is that whatever codec is used next will not be lossy so you will end up with a perfect copy of your AAC, same as if you were converting it to AIFF/WAV.
Having more time to build alternative energy structure sounds like a good idea but it can also be very bad. Because the crisis is postponed, people are much less likely to change enough to actually avert the crisis. It's kind of like going to the casino and always playing a small bet. You might win big at some point but the house odds are against you and you'll statistically lose everything. If you just bet everything the first play you are at better odds of succeeding. I think we have to throw all our money and resources at alternative energy this year to be able to have any chance of replacing oil in time.
Have you heard about the Microsoft Seed Bank?
I don't know. How different is this from Amazon recommending items based on what I've recently viewed? I never "asked" the site to remember everything. I'm not even sure there's a way to opt out of this except for deleting cookies and even that may not work for things I've added to my Wish List. I guess maybe it's a little too far to be looking at the music you listen to that didn't come from Apple, but you can go further and say that if you're using Apple's free iTunes software to play that music you opted in. Long story short, you can use another jukebox and they told you what they were doing.
When will these idiots learn? You fake demos! At worst you have 2 or 3 computers/devices running simultaneously so you can switch to another when the first doesn't work.
After fucking up PPC so bad, Stevesy just wanted to give Moto one last chance because he's a nice guy. They asked him for iTunes on their phone and now they're bitter because the Steve doesn't want to ever talk to them again. Classic inferiority complex.
Watching the moon is no doubt useful, but to prepare for protecting astronauts against meteor strikes? That seems like a waste of time. I doubt there will be colonies on the moon in the next 100 years and even then, the cost of building a structure that can withstand the force of 70KG of TNT seems unreasonable. If we do live on the moon, it will be a bare bones outpost and the people that go there will be cowboys with little concern for death.