Of course he is going to say this. He is an exec at Cray, what would he say "Oh yeah, our machines are good at HPC but of course you could build a Beowulf cluster fairly cheaply and efficiently and you wouldn't have to rely on us to do it."
Cray used to be a big name in computing but unfortunately for them, they are a relic now. They had their day and it hard to believe that they will be able to compete effectively against Beowulf clusters and Linux mainframes that IBM is pushing. With IBM's public love and more importantly, financial, affair with Linux at the high end, I wouldn't want to compete with them.
As the saying goes "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts". (From The Iliad for those thinking it is racist.) This act is a trojan horse for Microsoft. They donate their wonderful products to those poor, pitiful people in the Third World so we they get them hooked on their technological crack. Once they get them hooked, they can peddle the more expensive crack because now everbody is hooked and has to have it.
Fight it people. Linux is free now and in the future. Can't say the same thing about MS Windows
I agree with this article. Adding WMA to the iPod is ludicrous (as is Rob Glaser's plea to add other support....Real.....get real!). However, licensing the DRM to AAC that Apple uses would nothing but grow the iPod marketshare because no one could complain that the iTMS is the only place to buy music for the iPod.
However,.......based on Steve's stubborness and protectiveness of Apple, I am not going to hold my breath on this one. Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.
This move by Macromedia could be a big one because it would give a serious leg up on Adobe. For whatever reason, Adobe has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the Linux market. Where is Photoshop? Gimp is no Photoshop. It is good but no Photoshop. Photoshop on Linux alone would be monstrous, but why don't they do it? Who knows.
Anyway, if Macromedia really wanted to scoop Adobe, this is the one way to do it.
Someone like Dell will not go quietly into night. Even though his title is changing, nobody believes that he still won't have a profound influence over the company. It is his baby. THis will most likely be like Gates and MS. Sure, his title is different than what it used to be but he certainly still has a tremendous influence.
Without understanding all the physics here, I think there may be something to this. One of the reasons chemists are kind of intrigued with sonochemistry (chemistry facilitated by sound) is that ultrasound generates "bubbles" (for lack of a better word) where the local temperatures can reach into the thousands of degrees of Celsius. You can do some really amazing chemical syntheses using ultrasound all because of the extremely high local temperatures generated. The same idea extends to using microwave ovens for chemistry. You can do lots of reactions in a microwave because of the intense and neatly condensed amount of heat generated.
So, there may really be something to this. It would be great if it did work out.
This whole PR stunt reminds that they at least are following the major points of a giving a presentation. There are basically three steps to presenting to an audience.
1. Tell them what you are going to tell them 2. Tell them 3. Tell them what you told them
It appears that SCO is telling us what they are going to tell us about the lawsuit and now they have told us that they are going to tell us that they told us so.
is for SCO to sue SCO. They are not a tech company but they use Linux. (go check Netcraft....they have actually dabbled in BSD for a bit on www.sco.com)
because comparing Naptser to iTunes in the pay download market versus the pay stream market is moot. If you, Apple has a marketshare of 0 in the pay stream market. Basically, Apple says "so what" to that. I am happy with the ability to listen to radio streams and not rent music. Napster can increase their marketshare all they want in the pay stream business because in the end, I think that market will dry up after people realize "Hey, I am basically paying for selected radio."
Good luck Napster on that one because you are going to need after losing $15 million last year. Here's to hoping that you find many more suckers in the pay stream market.
I honestly have to believe that Napster's college program is overrated. Woo hoo, I am a college student and I get to stream songs but I can legally save them (sure there are ways to save the stream but let's save that discussion for another day.) So I stream one song and think it's pretty cool but damnit, I have to pay for it "again" and it will only be in the WMA format.
I say again because don't believe that I haven't in some direct or indirect way contributed monetarily to the ability to stream songs. What if I am a student on campus that doesn't want this service, is the university going to let me out of paying for it in some fashion? Or is this the new recreation activities fee that students have to pay for in addition to the one for the gym that most don't take advantage of?
If I remember correctly, Kip Thorne would have received a subscription to Playboy if he had won. Too bad for him that he didn't when. He could have done theoretical astrophysics and found out what Ms. March's turn-offs are.
I have always been annoyed at the telemarketing industry's arguments as to why they should be able to do this. They have always maintained that it was free speech. What they fail to realize is that it is free speech that I have to pay for! Sure, I would have a phone anyway, but basically they are wasting my money. If they want to market on the street corner, go right ahead because that truly is free speech (obviously within limits) but when you come into my home on the telephone line I am paying for, then it crosses the line and that is not free speech.
This leads me to another thought. I have always wondered why the telemarketing industry doesn't pay for people's phone lines in return for getting phone spam. ISP's do it, why not here?
I agree that Mozilla has come a long way but unfortunately, as long as there is a very large computer company in the Pacific northwest that shall remain nameless continues to more tightly integrate their nameless browser into the OS, Mozilla stands little chance overall. Sure, I love Mozilla on Linux and OS X but there are sooooooo many people that respond " Mo...what?" when I mention it to them.
Kudos to the Mozilla team for Firefox. It is pretty sweet. Let's hope that the nameless company in the Pacific northwest loses it grip on the browser market. Not likely, but we can always hope.
Secondly, the iPod is cool. Apple is cool. Is the iPod Mini cool?
I too think the iMini iPod is iCool! I want iOne iNow! Just iLower the iPrice to i$199 or lower Steve.
unfortunately taking a jab at the RIAA like this will do absolutely nothing. It will take more than a commercial make fun of them to make them stop this witch hunt.
As the RIAA responds "this is the way it is supposed to be" they will probably be filling out the next batch of legal filings accusing more senior citizens of stealing songs. The worst part of all this is that here they are making money off legal downloads while they attack people like rabid dogs trying to make more money.
One of my friends today told me about some spam she got. The subject line was Calypso Hypotenuse. She thought that was pretty cool if not completely random. Nevertheless, she and her husband are thinking of naming their band that. Sounds kind of cool for a band.....
Coming soon to a stage near you.....Calypso Hypotenuse!
You know when they will add Ogg Vorbis....when it supports DRM. I hate DRM as much as the next guy but until it does, then Apple won't touch it.
I would like to believe that Apple thinks the whole DRM is a joke but they play along because they wouldn't get any music company to support iTunes selling songs without it.
I like Ogg format but I am not going to hold my breath on this one.
One of the biggest gripes about the iPod has been the price (let's not get into the battery issue here). These mini-iPods will fill a void in the Apple lineup and compete with the lower end MP3 players. However, if they get these mini-iPods at a price point of around $120-150, they will crush the competition because of what the competition is selling pricewise.
I was in Best Buy recently and saw a Rio MP3 player with a whopping 128 MB for $109. If Apple gets a mini-iPod for about that price, who in their right mind will buy a Rio player for that price. The only potential drawback to the iPod is that it can't WMA files served up by MusicMatch, Napster and other crappy music services. Granted, if you are buying any iPod, you are probably not wasting your time with those sites anyway.
Here's to hoping to something good tomorrow at MacWorld. Please Steve, I want an affordable iPod!
Apple really got something good going here. We can argue all day about DRM and AAC sound-quality and how this format won't work on most players, but you really have to hand it to Apple. They were the pathsetters here.
Look at the people trying to follow in their path. BuyMusic.com?? This is probably the most pathetic attempt of all with their wacky buying schemes and crazy DRM. Even their commercials were dead-on rip-offs.
Now here comes MS and Wal-Mart to try their hand. Sure, they are going to sell songs through their shere retailing power (and monopoly in the case of MS) but do you think their store is going to be half as cool?
I am sure this is going to set off a flamewar about the problems with iTunes, but just give iTunes their due for once for their innovation. Everybody else is just trying to catch up and be half as cool. Who do you really want to buy songs from? iTunes with its coolness factor or from Wal-Mart where that stupid smiling face can show you around and shoot arrows at your song prices so that they go from 99 cents to 89 cents.
is that they are fishing expeditions. IANAPL (...patent lawyer) and I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of computer-related patents, but there is a fundamental flaw i the patenting world.
For example, as a chemist, I search the patent literature trying to find out what chemical reactions have been reported. It is a well-known fact that you have to take the chemical patent literature with a huge grain of salt (no pun intended!) because many times, the reaciton simply doesn't work the way it is reported to work. The chemical patent literature is not a peer-reviewed process like scientific journals are. It is significantly harder to get an article published in the chemical literature than to patent that material.
I guess what I am getting at, is that there is rampant patenting taking place with few significant things to show for it. Chemists patent anything and everything they can in the off-chance that someone will use it in an industrial process. They are just total fishing expeditions. I know that there will certainly be people out there to correct me with their own opinion, but in my opinion, it just points to a flawed patent system.
that everytime Darl is sitting on the john dropping a deuce (of course, we know that he is full of shit) and clogs up the toilet, he blames it on a DOP (denial of plumbing) attack by Linux users!
Yes, I know that you can get Windows in the major languagues but I wonder where does MS draw the line. For example, is there a Bengali version of Windows. I am guessing there is but the bigger picture is that Linux with its openness would allow anybody to localize the OS to their languauge. If somebody wanted to, you could make a Klingon or Elvish version of Linux. Why you would want to do that beyond the coolness factor is beyond me but the point is that you are pretty much a slave to MS in terms of localization.
You speak Xhosa or Bantu or some very minor language in a Third World country, do you think MS will cater to you. Most likely not. Linux can and will cater to you with a little bit of work. One more way to push Linux as a serious alternative to MS in developing countries.
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There is the new release of iStumbler. Works pretty well.
http://www.istumbler.net/
Of course he is going to say this. He is an exec at Cray, what would he say "Oh yeah, our machines are good at HPC but of course you could build a Beowulf cluster fairly cheaply and efficiently and you wouldn't have to rely on us to do it."
Cray used to be a big name in computing but unfortunately for them, they are a relic now. They had their day and it hard to believe that they will be able to compete effectively against Beowulf clusters and Linux mainframes that IBM is pushing. With IBM's public love and more importantly, financial, affair with Linux at the high end, I wouldn't want to compete with them.
As the saying goes "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts". (From The Iliad for those thinking it is racist.) This act is a trojan horse for Microsoft. They donate their wonderful products to those poor, pitiful people in the Third World so we they get them hooked on their technological crack. Once they get them hooked, they can peddle the more expensive crack because now everbody is hooked and has to have it.
Fight it people. Linux is free now and in the future. Can't say the same thing about MS Windows
I agree with this article. Adding WMA to the iPod is ludicrous (as is Rob Glaser's plea to add other support....Real.....get real!). However, licensing the DRM to AAC that Apple uses would nothing but grow the iPod marketshare because no one could complain that the iTMS is the only place to buy music for the iPod.
However,.......based on Steve's stubborness and protectiveness of Apple, I am not going to hold my breath on this one. Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.
Here's to hoping.....
This move by Macromedia could be a big one because it would give a serious leg up on Adobe. For whatever reason, Adobe has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the Linux market. Where is Photoshop? Gimp is no Photoshop. It is good but no Photoshop. Photoshop on Linux alone would be monstrous, but why don't they do it? Who knows.
Anyway, if Macromedia really wanted to scoop Adobe, this is the one way to do it.
Someone like Dell will not go quietly into night. Even though his title is changing, nobody believes that he still won't have a profound influence over the company. It is his baby. THis will most likely be like Gates and MS. Sure, his title is different than what it used to be but he certainly still has a tremendous influence.
Without understanding all the physics here, I think there may be something to this. One of the reasons chemists are kind of intrigued with sonochemistry (chemistry facilitated by sound) is that ultrasound generates "bubbles" (for lack of a better word) where the local temperatures can reach into the thousands of degrees of Celsius. You can do some really amazing chemical syntheses using ultrasound all because of the extremely high local temperatures generated. The same idea extends to using microwave ovens for chemistry. You can do lots of reactions in a microwave because of the intense and neatly condensed amount of heat generated.
So, there may really be something to this. It would be great if it did work out.
SCO "believes" that AutoZone violated its license with SCO by using shared libraries? Of course, the evidence SCO must have on that one is piled high.
However, I "believe" that SCO is the biggest bunch of dumbasses around. My evidence for that is really piled high.
This whole PR stunt reminds that they at least are following the major points of a giving a presentation. There are basically three steps to presenting to an audience.
1. Tell them what you are going to tell them
2. Tell them
3. Tell them what you told them
It appears that SCO is telling us what they are going to tell us about the lawsuit and now they have told us that they are going to tell us that they told us so.
is for SCO to sue SCO. They are not a tech company but they use Linux. (go check Netcraft....they have actually dabbled in BSD for a bit on www.sco.com)
because comparing Naptser to iTunes in the pay download market versus the pay stream market is moot. If you, Apple has a marketshare of 0 in the pay stream market. Basically, Apple says "so what" to that. I am happy with the ability to listen to radio streams and not rent music. Napster can increase their marketshare all they want in the pay stream business because in the end, I think that market will dry up after people realize "Hey, I am basically paying for selected radio."
Good luck Napster on that one because you are going to need after losing $15 million last year. Here's to hoping that you find many more suckers in the pay stream market.
I honestly have to believe that Napster's college program is overrated. Woo hoo, I am a college student and I get to stream songs but I can legally save them (sure there are ways to save the stream but let's save that discussion for another day.) So I stream one song and think it's pretty cool but damnit, I have to pay for it "again" and it will only be in the WMA format.
I say again because don't believe that I haven't in some direct or indirect way contributed monetarily to the ability to stream songs. What if I am a student on campus that doesn't want this service, is the university going to let me out of paying for it in some fashion? Or is this the new recreation activities fee that students have to pay for in addition to the one for the gym that most don't take advantage of?
Count me as not sold on the viability of Napster.
If I remember correctly, Kip Thorne would have received a subscription to Playboy if he had won. Too bad for him that he didn't when. He could have done theoretical astrophysics and found out what Ms. March's turn-offs are.
I have always been annoyed at the telemarketing industry's arguments as to why they should be able to do this. They have always maintained that it was free speech. What they fail to realize is that it is free speech that I have to pay for! Sure, I would have a phone anyway, but basically they are wasting my money. If they want to market on the street corner, go right ahead because that truly is free speech (obviously within limits) but when you come into my home on the telephone line I am paying for, then it crosses the line and that is not free speech.
This leads me to another thought. I have always wondered why the telemarketing industry doesn't pay for people's phone lines in return for getting phone spam. ISP's do it, why not here?
I agree that Mozilla has come a long way but unfortunately, as long as there is a very large computer company in the Pacific northwest that shall remain nameless continues to more tightly integrate their nameless browser into the OS, Mozilla stands little chance overall. Sure, I love Mozilla on Linux and OS X but there are sooooooo many people that respond " Mo...what?" when I mention it to them.
Kudos to the Mozilla team for Firefox. It is pretty sweet. Let's hope that the nameless company in the Pacific northwest loses it grip on the browser market. Not likely, but we can always hope.
Secondly, the iPod is cool. Apple is cool. Is the iPod Mini cool? I too think the iMini iPod is iCool! I want iOne iNow! Just iLower the iPrice to i$199 or lower Steve.
unfortunately taking a jab at the RIAA like this will do absolutely nothing. It will take more than a commercial make fun of them to make them stop this witch hunt.
As the RIAA responds "this is the way it is supposed to be" they will probably be filling out the next batch of legal filings accusing more senior citizens of stealing songs. The worst part of all this is that here they are making money off legal downloads while they attack people like rabid dogs trying to make more money.
One of my friends today told me about some spam she got. The subject line was Calypso Hypotenuse. She thought that was pretty cool if not completely random. Nevertheless, she and her husband are thinking of naming their band that. Sounds kind of cool for a band.....
Coming soon to a stage near you.....Calypso Hypotenuse!
You know when they will add Ogg Vorbis....when it supports DRM. I hate DRM as much as the next guy but until it does, then Apple won't touch it.
I would like to believe that Apple thinks the whole DRM is a joke but they play along because they wouldn't get any music company to support iTunes selling songs without it.
I like Ogg format but I am not going to hold my breath on this one.
it is not a problem, it is a feature!
One of the biggest gripes about the iPod has been the price (let's not get into the battery issue here). These mini-iPods will fill a void in the Apple lineup and compete with the lower end MP3 players. However, if they get these mini-iPods at a price point of around $120-150, they will crush the competition because of what the competition is selling pricewise.
I was in Best Buy recently and saw a Rio MP3 player with a whopping 128 MB for $109. If Apple gets a mini-iPod for about that price, who in their right mind will buy a Rio player for that price. The only potential drawback to the iPod is that it can't WMA files served up by MusicMatch, Napster and other crappy music services. Granted, if you are buying any iPod, you are probably not wasting your time with those sites anyway.
Here's to hoping to something good tomorrow at MacWorld. Please Steve, I want an affordable iPod!
Apple really got something good going here. We can argue all day about DRM and AAC sound-quality and how this format won't work on most players, but you really have to hand it to Apple. They were the pathsetters here.
Look at the people trying to follow in their path. BuyMusic.com?? This is probably the most pathetic attempt of all with their wacky buying schemes and crazy DRM. Even their commercials were dead-on rip-offs.
Now here comes MS and Wal-Mart to try their hand. Sure, they are going to sell songs through their shere retailing power (and monopoly in the case of MS) but do you think their store is going to be half as cool?
I am sure this is going to set off a flamewar about the problems with iTunes, but just give iTunes their due for once for their innovation. Everybody else is just trying to catch up and be half as cool. Who do you really want to buy songs from? iTunes with its coolness factor or from Wal-Mart where that stupid smiling face can show you around and shoot arrows at your song prices so that they go from 99 cents to 89 cents.
is that they are fishing expeditions. IANAPL (...patent lawyer) and I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of computer-related patents, but there is a fundamental flaw i the patenting world.
For example, as a chemist, I search the patent literature trying to find out what chemical reactions have been reported. It is a well-known fact that you have to take the chemical patent literature with a huge grain of salt (no pun intended!) because many times, the reaciton simply doesn't work the way it is reported to work. The chemical patent literature is not a peer-reviewed process like scientific journals are. It is significantly harder to get an article published in the chemical literature than to patent that material.
I guess what I am getting at, is that there is rampant patenting taking place with few significant things to show for it. Chemists patent anything and everything they can in the off-chance that someone will use it in an industrial process. They are just total fishing expeditions. I know that there will certainly be people out there to correct me with their own opinion, but in my opinion, it just points to a flawed patent system.
that everytime Darl is sitting on the john dropping a deuce (of course, we know that he is full of shit) and clogs up the toilet, he blames it on a DOP (denial of plumbing) attack by Linux users!
Press release to follow.....
Yes, I know that you can get Windows in the major languagues but I wonder where does MS draw the line. For example, is there a Bengali version of Windows. I am guessing there is but the bigger picture is that Linux with its openness would allow anybody to localize the OS to their languauge. If somebody wanted to, you could make a Klingon or Elvish version of Linux. Why you would want to do that beyond the coolness factor is beyond me but the point is that you are pretty much a slave to MS in terms of localization.
You speak Xhosa or Bantu or some very minor language in a Third World country, do you think MS will cater to you. Most likely not. Linux can and will cater to you with a little bit of work. One more way to push Linux as a serious alternative to MS in developing countries.