I don't remember what show it was, but a scene went something like this:
Guy: "Honey, I want to break up." Girl: "No." Guy: "? What do you mean 'no?' " Girl: "I'm not allowing it." Guy: "Okay.. I guess we're not breaking up then..."
ID3 tags are one things... iTunes keeps all sorts of useful meta-data itself such as number of times played, last played, added to the library etc..
iTunes doesn't do instant search on those fields. We're talking about instant search here -- did it come first from Nullsoft or Apple first? I have a feeling that Nullsoft might have been the true innovator since their MP3 player is one of the oldest, and iTunes's instant search feature could have been Apple copying WinAmp, or part of SoundJam already, before Apple could have added any potential "innovation." (SoundJam being the product Apple bought and modified to make iTunes.)
I don't have a Windows box around, but one can test this by going to WinAmp Heaven to obtain an older ver. of WinAmp, go to its playlist, and press F3 key to get the instant search dialog box.
And I think it's a good idea that people are buying cases. My mini has a dent in it once it took a fall in a restaurant. Now I carry around a dented $230 (after student discount) player. I used to own a deluxe version of Rio Volt, which meant that an FM capability was added on to it, but I ended up never using it. There are the types of people who never use FM in a portable player, and for them, the non-FM-edness of iPods work fine.
I have been reading here on slashdot since a few days ago mentions of java virus(es), but I haven't actually read anyone mention of such a virus's name or what it does. Could somebody expand on this? Are these viruses applets that take advantage of a security hole in a browser's JVM [Sun's or MS's]? Are people finding plain malware or do they actually replicate by infecting executables?
OOPS! Sorry for being stupid, I misread your post the first time ("move TO the search field", I see now.) It's Cmd-Option-f. However when viewing PDF files in Preview, it's Cmd-f.
off topic question: how do you move to the search field in Finder with keyboard shortcut?
This is a half-keyboard-shortcut solution: drag it with your mouse while pressing down on the command key (the one with the apple logo) beforehand. Or you can right click (ctrl-click) the toolbar, and choose "Customize Toolbar..."
Macs have already had fast desktop search since OS X first debuted, in a way. My guess is that the HFS+ format used for the boot drive helps speed up searching even on a slow hd drive. In my experience, searching for a file has been incredibly faster on OS X than on Win 2k. Safari, iTunes, and Finder already include the search bar UI in the upper right.
I don't think who came up with what idea first is really important here, since with increasing computational power, searching could only get faster and more practical - it was an inevitability that searching would become a more important part of the desktop user experience. However right now OS X is winning the race over Windows, IMHO. WinAmp has included find-as-you-type since early versions. Now iTunes, Mozilla, Finder, and Firefox have it.
lol: did you bother to go past the first link? Just shows your closed mindedness.
Dude, there are thousands of posts made on a daily basis, with thousands of links posted. I'm not sure how you can read anything out of the fact that nobody wastes their time by reading every link.
Suppose Apple is paying companies/organizations A, B, C,.... and Z a bunch of money. What the geniuses over at Down Hill Battle are saying is that Apple's cut is n cents per song because Apple pays G a certain amount, and 99 cents minus that amount is n cents. That's a pretty stupid calculation, and it's manipulation of information; an exaggeration to make their argument sound more meaningful than it actually is. It's designed to mislead readers into thinking that Apple earns about a 40% margin because the money isn't going to RIAA.
BWJones originally said "The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing."
To which you quote and reply "Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin."
And in your post, you pretty explicitly state that you think money not going to RIAA == Profit for Apple.
The 35% was an estimate based on the article that I linked to. It's an estimate just like all the other numbers being tossed around here.
I can say that they are definately not being charged 35%
According to your source that you trust, this seems to be true. According to Down Hill Battle, at least. They report that credit card companies are getting zero cents per transaction. They say the RIAA are getting an X cents cut (partially going to the artists) and Apple is getting a Y cents cut, and X + Y =.99 cents, so cc companies are getting zero, because neither Apple nor RIAA are a credit card company.
Actually, there was a/. article about this exact topic a long time ago. The article that slashdot was linking to said Apple barely profits, if not loses, with single song purchases, while they earn more with whole album purchases because they are being charged per transaction by the cc companies.
But I guess my argument stands no chance if it disagrees with you, especially when you're citing such reputable sources such as Down Hill Battle, the hallmark of unbiased articles.
Okay, let's have a look at DownHillBattle.org's statistics
Apple: 35c Record label: 53c Artist: 11c Total: 99c
Now, this is highly inaccurate because it grossly underestimates Apple's actual "cut." More accurately, it is:
Apple: 64c Credit card companies: 35c Total: 99c
You see, downhillbattle.org totally missed the credit card companies! If apple is charging 99c per song, and Credit card companies are getting 35% of the "cut," then obviously Apple is getting a 65% "cut".
Either way, DownHillBattle.org got it right by saying Apple takes a huge cut. Other sites (e.g.) that grossly exaggerate by saying Apple gets next to nothing are the sites that should be viewed with a large grain of salt. Thanks to the honest, non-biased reporting of the ilks of DownHillBattle, eventually all the BS can be eliminated from this Earth!
I found out there's a catch with both YM and GM: a single mail has a size limit of 10 MB incoming or outgoing, and file transfers can be slow. While there were hacks such as GmailFS, that can't beat the speed and reliability of flash drives. Web mail has been a good alternative for floppies for awhile, but the increase to 1GB doesn't help that much, and most people will probably not come close to filling it all up.
Yahoo! Briefcase is free and seems to allow files larger than 10 MB (without splitting it ofcourse). By the way these services show how awful Apple's.mac account iDisk offer is in comparison.
The fiber optics will probably block UV since they tend to be made out of glass. At least I hope they block it, since I know people who are literally allergic to that stuff.
It might be pointed out that one of the chief negatives against the entire iPod line is that it possess lower audio quality than competing manufacturers.
This is the first time reading someone being concerned over the iPods' audio quality. I've read reports on the contrary, where audiophiles could not find problems with it. I wonder what the Consumer Reports report had to say, which the web page author refers to.
What I don't get is why in the world any company wouldn't say something like "Yes, we're aware of those websites and in fact take their concerns into consideration", even if they don't really mean it. They just write those people off as "Never gonna be customers so skrew it: those people are stupid", but apparently don't realize that those people used to be customers, and other current customers will eventually leave them as well.
No, I don't think that's the case. They're saying that they take their concerns into consideration, so just call their people who can directly help the customers. If customers did that, then PayPal can keep track of complaints, ask the customers for more information, directly give suggestions, and keep track of whether or not the problem was resolved. On third-party sites you might get vague anonymous posts about some problem that was caused by an issue that was already resolved, but no body can know that because the poster didn't bother to explain what the cause of the problem was, and the poster didn't write down his/her contact information down so PayPal can't assist them. People who go to PayPalSucks.com aren't looking to have their problems solved, or to communicate with PayPal. That's why they are going to PayPalSucks.com instead of PayPal's support network. The site owner's reason for beginning the website seemed very vague - he could have simply been an idiot harrassing customer service for all we know.
On the other hand, the existance of sites where complaints against companies can be posted and publicised are very valuable to consumers. I don't consider these sites that I've seen so far as "hate" sites - most of these sites just want to provide the general public with a feel for a company's track record.
In comparison to PayPal's response, I was appalled by All State Insurance's response. They just went for negative attacks against third-party complaint sites as opposed to showing respect for an individual's right to free speech, or providing us with an idea of how ASI manages complaints. It seems like the site owner's complaint against ASI will continue to be ignored.
Even if you have more money, that doesn't mean you'll be more likely to buy more stuff. Higher sales tax would raise costs, and in turn motivate consumers to put their money in savings instead of spending them. Lower consumer spending then hurts the econnomy.
Replacing the income tax with a sales tax would makes people less willing/able to buy things, which would mean less income for the corporations that sell those things. Given the amount of influence corporations have on the US government, the chances of such a reform passing seem slim.
High sales tax would hurt everyone trying to sell something, Higher cost, less purchase incentive, lower profits, lower wages, and the whole economy goes downhill. Then everyone loses. I don't think being against high sales tax has anything specifically to do with corporate influence on capitol hill.
I thought you couldn't "steal" something if you were just making a copy of it?
Don't try to pretend like you've never heard a counter-argument to that. What's your point? Telling the world that you're in denial of the existance of people who can think P2P piracy is theft, and at the same time can also think plagiarism of GPL'ed code is theft? Plagiarism is stealing other people's work is theft, albeit a different kind from piracy. There's no mystery here. I'm not sure how you're trying to connect these two.
From the screenshot, it looks like they've combined the stop and reload button into one, which is bad design. This is usually a bad idea because when I press a browser's stop button, the browser can be too busy loading the page to stop, and it only reacts to the mouse click after the page has loaded, at which point the stop button has become a reload button. Instead of stopping a page load, it reloads it. That's like having a volume down button sometimes become volume up.
Slashdot Mirror
Google web accelerator privacy policy page perhaps you meant to say something else.
I don't remember what show it was, but a scene went something like this:
Guy: "Honey, I want to break up."
Girl: "No."
Guy: "? What do you mean 'no?' "
Girl: "I'm not allowing it."
Guy: "Okay.. I guess we're not breaking up then..."
Maybe it was Seinfeld?
If you don't like the RIAA, just buy CDs from non-RIAA labels.
Slashdot maybe?
= 10328774
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=122872&cid
ID3 tags are one things... iTunes keeps all sorts of useful meta-data itself such as number of times played, last played, added to the library etc..
iTunes doesn't do instant search on those fields. We're talking about instant search here -- did it come first from Nullsoft or Apple first? I have a feeling that Nullsoft might have been the true innovator since their MP3 player is one of the oldest, and iTunes's instant search feature could have been Apple copying WinAmp, or part of SoundJam already, before Apple could have added any potential "innovation." (SoundJam being the product Apple bought and modified to make iTunes.)
I don't have a Windows box around, but one can test this by going to WinAmp Heaven to obtain an older ver. of WinAmp, go to its playlist, and press F3 key to get the instant search dialog box.
The slashdot summary doesn't mention CDDL, so I obviously read the article.
The CDDL was mentioned on an earlier slashdot article: Sun's Schwartz Attacks GPL.
The gist of what he had to say: "GPL sucks! CDDL rulez!"
And I think it's a good idea that people are buying cases. My mini has a dent in it once it took a fall in a restaurant. Now I carry around a dented $230 (after student discount) player. I used to own a deluxe version of Rio Volt, which meant that an FM capability was added on to it, but I ended up never using it. There are the types of people who never use FM in a portable player, and for them, the non-FM-edness of iPods work fine.
How do I check for existing bug reports to prevent duplicate postng?
I have been reading here on slashdot since a few days ago mentions of java virus(es), but I haven't actually read anyone mention of such a virus's name or what it does. Could somebody expand on this? Are these viruses applets that take advantage of a security hole in a browser's JVM [Sun's or MS's]? Are people finding plain malware or do they actually replicate by infecting executables?
OOPS! Sorry for being stupid, I misread your post the first time ("move TO the search field", I see now.) It's Cmd-Option-f. However when viewing PDF files in Preview, it's Cmd-f.
off topic question: how do you move to the search field in Finder with keyboard shortcut?
This is a half-keyboard-shortcut solution: drag it with your mouse while pressing down on the command key (the one with the apple logo) beforehand. Or you can right click (ctrl-click) the toolbar, and choose "Customize Toolbar..."
Macs have already had fast desktop search since OS X first debuted, in a way. My guess is that the HFS+ format used for the boot drive helps speed up searching even on a slow hd drive. In my experience, searching for a file has been incredibly faster on OS X than on Win 2k. Safari, iTunes, and Finder already include the search bar UI in the upper right.
I don't think who came up with what idea first is really important here, since with increasing computational power, searching could only get faster and more practical - it was an inevitability that searching would become a more important part of the desktop user experience. However right now OS X is winning the race over Windows, IMHO. WinAmp has included find-as-you-type since early versions. Now iTunes, Mozilla, Finder, and Firefox have it.
lol: did you bother to go past the first link? Just shows your closed mindedness.
.... and Z a bunch of money. What the geniuses over at Down Hill Battle are saying is that Apple's cut is n cents per song because Apple pays G a certain amount, and 99 cents minus that amount is n cents. That's a pretty stupid calculation, and it's manipulation of information; an exaggeration to make their argument sound more meaningful than it actually is. It's designed to mislead readers into thinking that Apple earns about a 40% margin because the money isn't going to RIAA.
Dude, there are thousands of posts made on a daily basis, with thousands of links posted. I'm not sure how you can read anything out of the fact that nobody wastes their time by reading every link.
Suppose Apple is paying companies/organizations A, B, C,
BWJones originally said "The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing."
To which you quote and reply "Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin."
And in your post, you pretty explicitly state that you think money not going to RIAA == Profit for Apple.
The 35% was an estimate based on the article that I linked to. It's an estimate just like all the other numbers being tossed around here.
.99 cents, so cc companies are getting zero, because neither Apple nor RIAA are a credit card company.
/. article about this exact topic a long time ago. The article that slashdot was linking to said Apple barely profits, if not loses, with single song purchases, while they earn more with whole album purchases because they are being charged per transaction by the cc companies.
I can say that they are definately not being charged 35%
According to your source that you trust, this seems to be true. According to Down Hill Battle, at least. They report that credit card companies are getting zero cents per transaction. They say the RIAA are getting an X cents cut (partially going to the artists) and Apple is getting a Y cents cut, and X + Y =
Actually, there was a
But I guess my argument stands no chance if it disagrees with you, especially when you're citing such reputable sources such as Down Hill Battle, the hallmark of unbiased articles.
Okay, let's have a look at DownHillBattle.org's statistics
Apple: 35c
Record label: 53c
Artist: 11c
Total: 99c
Now, this is highly inaccurate because it grossly underestimates Apple's actual "cut." More accurately, it is:
Apple: 64c
Credit card companies: 35c
Total: 99c
You see, downhillbattle.org totally missed the credit card companies! If apple is charging 99c per song, and Credit card companies are getting 35% of the "cut," then obviously Apple is getting a 65% "cut".
Either way, DownHillBattle.org got it right by saying Apple takes a huge cut. Other sites (e.g.) that grossly exaggerate by saying Apple gets next to nothing are the sites that should be viewed with a large grain of salt. Thanks to the honest, non-biased reporting of the ilks of DownHillBattle, eventually all the BS can be eliminated from this Earth!
I found out there's a catch with both YM and GM: a single mail has a size limit of 10 MB incoming or outgoing, and file transfers can be slow. While there were hacks such as GmailFS, that can't beat the speed and reliability of flash drives. Web mail has been a good alternative for floppies for awhile, but the increase to 1GB doesn't help that much, and most people will probably not come close to filling it all up.
.mac account iDisk offer is in comparison.
Yahoo! Briefcase is free and seems to allow files larger than 10 MB (without splitting it ofcourse). By the way these services show how awful Apple's
The fiber optics will probably block UV since they tend to be made out of glass. At least I hope they block it, since I know people who are literally allergic to that stuff.
It might be pointed out that one of the chief negatives against the entire iPod line is that it possess lower audio quality than competing manufacturers.
This is the first time reading someone being concerned over the iPods' audio quality. I've read reports on the contrary, where audiophiles could not find problems with it. I wonder what the Consumer Reports report had to say, which the web page author refers to.
What I don't get is why in the world any company wouldn't say something like "Yes, we're aware of those websites and in fact take their concerns into consideration", even if they don't really mean it. They just write those people off as "Never gonna be customers so skrew it: those people are stupid", but apparently don't realize that those people used to be customers, and other current customers will eventually leave them as well.
No, I don't think that's the case. They're saying that they take their concerns into consideration, so just call their people who can directly help the customers. If customers did that, then PayPal can keep track of complaints, ask the customers for more information, directly give suggestions, and keep track of whether or not the problem was resolved. On third-party sites you might get vague anonymous posts about some problem that was caused by an issue that was already resolved, but no body can know that because the poster didn't bother to explain what the cause of the problem was, and the poster didn't write down his/her contact information down so PayPal can't assist them. People who go to PayPalSucks.com aren't looking to have their problems solved, or to communicate with PayPal. That's why they are going to PayPalSucks.com instead of PayPal's support network. The site owner's reason for beginning the website seemed very vague - he could have simply been an idiot harrassing customer service for all we know.
On the other hand, the existance of sites where complaints against companies can be posted and publicised are very valuable to consumers. I don't consider these sites that I've seen so far as "hate" sites - most of these sites just want to provide the general public with a feel for a company's track record.
In comparison to PayPal's response, I was appalled by All State Insurance's response. They just went for negative attacks against third-party complaint sites as opposed to showing respect for an individual's right to free speech, or providing us with an idea of how ASI manages complaints. It seems like the site owner's complaint against ASI will continue to be ignored.
Even if you have more money, that doesn't mean you'll be more likely to buy more stuff. Higher sales tax would raise costs, and in turn motivate consumers to put their money in savings instead of spending them. Lower consumer spending then hurts the econnomy.
Replacing the income tax with a sales tax would makes people less willing/able to buy things, which would mean less income for the corporations that sell those things. Given the amount of influence corporations have on the US government, the chances of such a reform passing seem slim.
High sales tax would hurt everyone trying to sell something, Higher cost, less purchase incentive, lower profits, lower wages, and the whole economy goes downhill. Then everyone loses. I don't think being against high sales tax has anything specifically to do with corporate influence on capitol hill.
I thought you couldn't "steal" something if you were just making a copy of it?
Don't try to pretend like you've never heard a counter-argument to that. What's your point? Telling the world that you're in denial of the existance of people who can think P2P piracy is theft, and at the same time can also think plagiarism of GPL'ed code is theft? Plagiarism is stealing other people's work is theft, albeit a different kind from piracy. There's no mystery here. I'm not sure how you're trying to connect these two.
than the thinkpad pointing device? (the small red joystick between "G,H,B" keys)
Similarly, how is this better than a trackpad?
Third party apps usually exist for trackpads that allow the cursor to keep cruising once your finger hits the trackpad edge.
The reviewer seemed to have difficulties with the rollerbar even after using it for a week.
From the screenshot, it looks like they've combined the stop and reload button into one, which is bad design. This is usually a bad idea because when I press a browser's stop button, the browser can be too busy loading the page to stop, and it only reacts to the mouse click after the page has loaded, at which point the stop button has become a reload button. Instead of stopping a page load, it reloads it. That's like having a volume down button sometimes become volume up.