The thing is Sony gets a lot of support in Japan for these formats. It's like Americans buying American cars. They're probably more than a little blinded by the success at home and need a central power structure who can look outward and realize the future lies in open standards for the whole world, packaged in the nicest possible way. They can take a lesson from Apple.
The key is not so much the device as what you put on it. Sure, Apple is going to sell videos and probably movies at some point. The screen is not really the limitation it's made out to be, Apple can design a good one. Most importantly, Apple is going to let people VidCast, which is the equivalent of open source TV. It will start with music videos from small bands/labels, but anybody can fire up iMovie and make a 5 minute video. They will just add an Export option which pre-formats it for PodCasting. No one uses the iRiver for video because iRiver doesn't offer all this nicely packaged content. Apple proved it with music and they'll do the same with video. They're becoming a broadcaster.
If we can get launch costs down (the best way to do that short of a miracle breakthrough is frequent launches) and a *productive* human outpost that is capable of 'living off the land', we'll get amazing robots assembled in space that don't have these severe mass limitations we get down here. If you can assemble your rocket engine from lunar materials, of course you can build a whiz-bang robot explorer.
This is a joke right? It's hard enough to create a "productive" human outpost on Earth. I dare you to take 1 acre of barren desert land with nearly no natural resources and try to live there indefinitely with only what you can bring on your back. That's pretty much the ratio of how much stuff you can take with you into space. On top of all that, you have to MAKE your own oxygen, water, electricity etc. and deal with your waste. Every way you look at it, it's a gigantic net loss in energy and productivity.
Thank god Microsoft has finally given me some eye candy. Those standard menus that have been used are too boring with everything lined up in list form. I want a whole bunch of differently sized buttons, in a range of bright colors, so that I can personalize my writing experience. I want to be able to have buttons for every little thing and for the whole set of buttons to change based on context. Word processing needs more excitement!
I take your point, but the reality is that most markets come to be dominated by 1 player which is so large that it stifles all competition. That's just the way unbridled capitalism works. There are exceptions of course, especially in high tech where the barriers to entry are lesser and your success can rely on innovation more. I'm with you though, there should be safeguards to encourage if not outright require at least 2 main players in every market to keep competition alive and give choice to the consumer.
Acquisitions like this generally mean that competition is already dead and also usually, that the market has reached capacity. The bigger company sees it as more cost effective to just buy the customers of the other instead of trying to innovate and steal them. Especially in the case where there are no more customers to make, a company HAS to begin buying out competitors.
Oil offers a magnitude more energy than the next best alternative and you fail to realize that oil is required to create the alternatives. You have to build power plants, build alternative fuel cars, build hydro-electric damns. The energy to do all that has to come from somewhere FIRST before you can even begin to build something new.
A concise outline of the relevant problems can be found here:
If you ever read any of the annual reports of insurance companies, they will plainly state that certain areas are becoming liability-heavy. To them, paying out a lot of money due to more regular floods/hurricanes is bad for business so they're going to be the first to confirm that the problem really is as bad as people think. They might try to screw you for the smallest settlement, but they're more than happy to jump straight to the point about reality in their statements because it really does affect their bottom line.
The population can grow as long as there is energy available to support it. Energy, and oil specifically allows us to insulate ourselves from nature's forces by building habitat, artificially increasing food production etc. Whether it is safe isn't even part of the equation.
When we no longer have the means to protect ourselves (i.e. oil runs out), then Nature will be far more punishing than a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake. Just imagine other cities in the state of New Orleans because there is no electricity, water, gas or food production. All of those comforts are entirely dependent on a shrinking supply of oil.
Ya, just like they did with SACD. All their DVD players and DVD dream systems were being made with SACD to give the format a foot in the door. The bottom line is that nobody wants SACD because nobody has a great stereo and nobody cares enough to notice a difference. It's the same with Blu-ray. 90% of people don't own a TV that is going to show a difference and they don't want to re-buy their recently bought DVD collection. Even those with nice HDTVs largely don't want any more. The market for Blu-ray or HD-DVD is probably 1% this year and maybe 5% next year. In other words, complete failure awaits.
The big difference with the high res audio formats is that you can buy a universal player that plays all current formats for under $100 already. It doesn't really matter what format you choose because the hardware obstacle doesn't exist. As to which format is better, that's a matter of personal opinion and the capability of your sound system... With video, they haven't even gotten over the hardware incompatibility problem.
DRM is here, but the problems are just starting
on
Sun Spearheads Open DRM
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· Score: 4, Insightful
We already have a number of DRM schemes and consumers are adopting them without too much fuss. Unfortunately, we're still in the early adopting phase which means there hasn't been enough time for things to go wrong for individual users. No massive loss of music/movie collections due to hard drive failure or ending a subscription. No incompatibilities between Gen 1 and Gen 2 hardware devices (and interfaces). The industry is betting that they can just slip this stuff through as fast as possible so that when all the nasty stuff goes down, users won't remember DRM-free media or will no longer have a choice.
As I see it, an OpenDRM is worse than regular DRM and should be resisted as strongly as any other DRM. It will only make it easier to for everyone to push DRM because of the common platform. At least there's the chance that competing DRMs will piss off enough people to ALL fail, or that the competition alone will force less restrictive models (a la Apple vs. Microsoft currently).
I don't know why there are so many sliders. As many pointed out, the efficiency of the closed door is horrendous and the propensity to break is very high.
All they really need is two overlapping vertical sliders on either side (as on pocked french doors) and one horizontal on the top which moves up and down. People are pretty much rectangular anyway and no one wants to walk through an opening that has their head so close to the boundaries.
Companies and the market in general require that you don't care about anything but the bottom line. By definition this will mean that you will have to subvert or erase any "human" characteristics such as compassion, fairness, generosity etc. in order to make the most money. Don't hate the player, hate the game:-) Seriously, amongst the top execs, I bet the incidence of genuinely honest good guys is next to zero. It is simply too difficult to work against the flow of the whole system, even if you're naturally like that.
I don't think "not knowing" is a valid excuse. I'd much rather give the benefit of the doubt to them being important and commit to preserving them just in case, in the least to protect our own selfish interests.
If something from a Crocodile can teach us how to cure AIDS in humans, what about all the endangered or extinct species? Maybe this will bring some more attention to the fact that we NEED other species around to learn from and co-habitate with. It would really suck if we killed off some kind of plant that was going to hold the key to solving a horrible disease of the future.
In Canada, the CRTC collects money for public performance of music recordings. This is generally for record stations to pay royalties to Canadian artists every time one of their songs is played to support home grown artists. Unfortunately the practice changed recently to include any business or person playing music which could be heard by an arbitrary amount of people. Collections officers were simply walking into businesses, restaurants, etc. and asking for a cheque to "compensate" artists. I remember there even being a story about it on Slashdot. It was ironic that we could be charged for playing music in our record store, even though we were actively trying to sell CDs by Canadian artists, thus supporting the industry.
I use Mac OS. I love Apple hardware. OS X does everything I need or want with perhaps the exception of IE compatibility or some Windows apps. Apple going to Intel will provide 100% of the features and service that Apple customers have always wanted. But, under no circumstance do I want OS X or Apple to have to deal with regular PC hardware. It will just dilute their efforts and my ability to enjoy the platform. If the user base grows to around 10% from going with Intel, that's great too, more support and more quality apps. But, I have no interest in it running on Joe Blow's PC because that's when the compatibility, viruses and Malware start to show up. Apple will run smoother with a smaller focussed market share. More than 10% and I don't think they'll be able to keep it together.
I'm in agreement here. If anyone can see the algorithms, then it's going to be pretty easy to manipulate the results and ruing the efficiency. Perhaps this will be the first example of the limits of OSS due to the necessity for secrecy.
As an audiophile and someone who sells equipment and music to audiophiles, I can vouch that this is EXACTLY what they want. If it had a hi-fi company's name on it, or better yet, Apple's name on it, it would be very successful. If it can provide better than CD quality sound in the future, it will be even better. I think Apple should just buy this company, modify the look and feel a little and mass produce it for $500. That's on par with the iPod itself...
Many recent Macs were fanless and the sleep function in the hardware combined with OS X is wonderful. My 4 year old TiBook 400Mhz still runs at an acceptable speed with all the newest programs. It's quiet, cool and uses little energy.
It seems possible to me that simpler organisms may be able to cross-breed easier. Perhaps at an early stage of evolution a simple bug which happened to hibernate in a cocoon bred with a simple bug that had wings. Perhaps this is a one in a billion chance, or that the first offspring only had tiny wings or had a short transformation phase, but perhaps over millions of years, through other mutations, butterflies developed as we know them today.
It seems impossible that one single organism could spontaneously develop a cocooning stage and wings at the same through a mutation. I don't see how that organism, over the course of it's very short lifespan could adapt to such a radical change, survive and then procreate successfully.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is Sony gets a lot of support in Japan for these formats. It's like Americans buying American cars. They're probably more than a little blinded by the success at home and need a central power structure who can look outward and realize the future lies in open standards for the whole world, packaged in the nicest possible way. They can take a lesson from Apple.
The key is not so much the device as what you put on it. Sure, Apple is going to sell videos and probably movies at some point. The screen is not really the limitation it's made out to be, Apple can design a good one. Most importantly, Apple is going to let people VidCast, which is the equivalent of open source TV. It will start with music videos from small bands/labels, but anybody can fire up iMovie and make a 5 minute video. They will just add an Export option which pre-formats it for PodCasting. No one uses the iRiver for video because iRiver doesn't offer all this nicely packaged content. Apple proved it with music and they'll do the same with video. They're becoming a broadcaster.
If we can get launch costs down (the best way to do that short of a miracle breakthrough is frequent launches) and a *productive* human outpost that is capable of 'living off the land', we'll get amazing robots assembled in space that don't have these severe mass limitations we get down here. If you can assemble your rocket engine from lunar materials, of course you can build a whiz-bang robot explorer.
This is a joke right? It's hard enough to create a "productive" human outpost on Earth. I dare you to take 1 acre of barren desert land with nearly no natural resources and try to live there indefinitely with only what you can bring on your back. That's pretty much the ratio of how much stuff you can take with you into space. On top of all that, you have to MAKE your own oxygen, water, electricity etc. and deal with your waste. Every way you look at it, it's a gigantic net loss in energy and productivity.
Thank god Microsoft has finally given me some eye candy. Those standard menus that have been used are too boring with everything lined up in list form. I want a whole bunch of differently sized buttons, in a range of bright colors, so that I can personalize my writing experience. I want to be able to have buttons for every little thing and for the whole set of buttons to change based on context. Word processing needs more excitement!
I take your point, but the reality is that most markets come to be dominated by 1 player which is so large that it stifles all competition. That's just the way unbridled capitalism works. There are exceptions of course, especially in high tech where the barriers to entry are lesser and your success can rely on innovation more. I'm with you though, there should be safeguards to encourage if not outright require at least 2 main players in every market to keep competition alive and give choice to the consumer.
Acquisitions like this generally mean that competition is already dead and also usually, that the market has reached capacity. The bigger company sees it as more cost effective to just buy the customers of the other instead of trying to innovate and steal them. Especially in the case where there are no more customers to make, a company HAS to begin buying out competitors.
Oil offers a magnitude more energy than the next best alternative and you fail to realize that oil is required to create the alternatives. You have to build power plants, build alternative fuel cars, build hydro-electric damns. The energy to do all that has to come from somewhere FIRST before you can even begin to build something new.
A concise outline of the relevant problems can be found here:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Wow, there's a feasible response. Build shelter for 6 billion people underground!
If you ever read any of the annual reports of insurance companies, they will plainly state that certain areas are becoming liability-heavy. To them, paying out a lot of money due to more regular floods/hurricanes is bad for business so they're going to be the first to confirm that the problem really is as bad as people think. They might try to screw you for the smallest settlement, but they're more than happy to jump straight to the point about reality in their statements because it really does affect their bottom line.
The population can grow as long as there is energy available to support it. Energy, and oil specifically allows us to insulate ourselves from nature's forces by building habitat, artificially increasing food production etc. Whether it is safe isn't even part of the equation.
When we no longer have the means to protect ourselves (i.e. oil runs out), then Nature will be far more punishing than a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake. Just imagine other cities in the state of New Orleans because there is no electricity, water, gas or food production. All of those comforts are entirely dependent on a shrinking supply of oil.
Ya, just like they did with SACD. All their DVD players and DVD dream systems were being made with SACD to give the format a foot in the door. The bottom line is that nobody wants SACD because nobody has a great stereo and nobody cares enough to notice a difference. It's the same with Blu-ray. 90% of people don't own a TV that is going to show a difference and they don't want to re-buy their recently bought DVD collection. Even those with nice HDTVs largely don't want any more. The market for Blu-ray or HD-DVD is probably 1% this year and maybe 5% next year. In other words, complete failure awaits.
The big difference with the high res audio formats is that you can buy a universal player that plays all current formats for under $100 already. It doesn't really matter what format you choose because the hardware obstacle doesn't exist. As to which format is better, that's a matter of personal opinion and the capability of your sound system... With video, they haven't even gotten over the hardware incompatibility problem.
We already have a number of DRM schemes and consumers are adopting them without too much fuss. Unfortunately, we're still in the early adopting phase which means there hasn't been enough time for things to go wrong for individual users. No massive loss of music/movie collections due to hard drive failure or ending a subscription. No incompatibilities between Gen 1 and Gen 2 hardware devices (and interfaces). The industry is betting that they can just slip this stuff through as fast as possible so that when all the nasty stuff goes down, users won't remember DRM-free media or will no longer have a choice.
As I see it, an OpenDRM is worse than regular DRM and should be resisted as strongly as any other DRM. It will only make it easier to for everyone to push DRM because of the common platform. At least there's the chance that competing DRMs will piss off enough people to ALL fail, or that the competition alone will force less restrictive models (a la Apple vs. Microsoft currently).
I don't know why there are so many sliders. As many pointed out, the efficiency of the closed door is horrendous and the propensity to break is very high.
All they really need is two overlapping vertical sliders on either side (as on pocked french doors) and one horizontal on the top which moves up and down. People are pretty much rectangular anyway and no one wants to walk through an opening that has their head so close to the boundaries.
I agree entirely.
Companies and the market in general require that you don't care about anything but the bottom line. By definition this will mean that you will have to subvert or erase any "human" characteristics such as compassion, fairness, generosity etc. in order to make the most money. Don't hate the player, hate the game :-) Seriously, amongst the top execs, I bet the incidence of genuinely honest good guys is next to zero. It is simply too difficult to work against the flow of the whole system, even if you're naturally like that.
I don't think "not knowing" is a valid excuse. I'd much rather give the benefit of the doubt to them being important and commit to preserving them just in case, in the least to protect our own selfish interests.
If something from a Crocodile can teach us how to cure AIDS in humans, what about all the endangered or extinct species? Maybe this will bring some more attention to the fact that we NEED other species around to learn from and co-habitate with. It would really suck if we killed off some kind of plant that was going to hold the key to solving a horrible disease of the future.
In Canada, the CRTC collects money for public performance of music recordings. This is generally for record stations to pay royalties to Canadian artists every time one of their songs is played to support home grown artists. Unfortunately the practice changed recently to include any business or person playing music which could be heard by an arbitrary amount of people. Collections officers were simply walking into businesses, restaurants, etc. and asking for a cheque to "compensate" artists. I remember there even being a story about it on Slashdot. It was ironic that we could be charged for playing music in our record store, even though we were actively trying to sell CDs by Canadian artists, thus supporting the industry.
You can run Windows at full speed on the same box, just in case you need the odd Windows-only program.
I use Mac OS. I love Apple hardware. OS X does everything I need or want with perhaps the exception of IE compatibility or some Windows apps. Apple going to Intel will provide 100% of the features and service that Apple customers have always wanted. But, under no circumstance do I want OS X or Apple to have to deal with regular PC hardware. It will just dilute their efforts and my ability to enjoy the platform. If the user base grows to around 10% from going with Intel, that's great too, more support and more quality apps. But, I have no interest in it running on Joe Blow's PC because that's when the compatibility, viruses and Malware start to show up. Apple will run smoother with a smaller focussed market share. More than 10% and I don't think they'll be able to keep it together.
I'm in agreement here. If anyone can see the algorithms, then it's going to be pretty easy to manipulate the results and ruing the efficiency. Perhaps this will be the first example of the limits of OSS due to the necessity for secrecy.
As an audiophile and someone who sells equipment and music to audiophiles, I can vouch that this is EXACTLY what they want. If it had a hi-fi company's name on it, or better yet, Apple's name on it, it would be very successful. If it can provide better than CD quality sound in the future, it will be even better. I think Apple should just buy this company, modify the look and feel a little and mass produce it for $500. That's on par with the iPod itself...
Many recent Macs were fanless and the sleep function in the hardware combined with OS X is wonderful. My 4 year old TiBook 400Mhz still runs at an acceptable speed with all the newest programs. It's quiet, cool and uses little energy.
It seems possible to me that simpler organisms may be able to cross-breed easier. Perhaps at an early stage of evolution a simple bug which happened to hibernate in a cocoon bred with a simple bug that had wings. Perhaps this is a one in a billion chance, or that the first offspring only had tiny wings or had a short transformation phase, but perhaps over millions of years, through other mutations, butterflies developed as we know them today.
It seems impossible that one single organism could spontaneously develop a cocooning stage and wings at the same through a mutation. I don't see how that organism, over the course of it's very short lifespan could adapt to such a radical change, survive and then procreate successfully.