For instance... the 'free' Limp Bizket tour. Alana Morrisete (or is it Cherly Crow?) getting stock, etc. The people already made it, so why give them a ton of money?
Actually it was Napster that sponsored the Limp Bizkit tour. Alanis Morissettte did get quite a bit of MP3.com stock though, can't recall what exactly she did for the company.
As stated above, this is not how "bricks and mortar stores" do it. Amazon is charging different people different prices for identical items within a short time span. To compare to a b&m store, say Kroger charges me $5.49 for a 12-pack of Bud and charges you (who is in line right behind me) $6.99 for an identical 12-pack of Bud. Is this right? Are you a happy customer? How pissed are you when you get to the parking lot and find out that you paid $1.50 more for your beer?
It's not so much that the price is based on which browser you're using, but rather on the fact that the user in this example had used IE to purchase before (thus had an Amazon cookie) and hadn't used Netscape for purchases (no Amazon cookie). Most likely had he used Netscape before for purchases and not IE, his price would have been lower when he checked in IE since Amazon thought he was a new customer.
The real kicker with the Tivo and its lack of ethernet is that it is actually making a dial-up connection with UUNET for it's nightly calls, meaning it is actually just making a PPP connection to the Internet to download the guide data.
Does anyone know if they are just going to rip the digital MPEG data directly from the DVB multiplex and store it?
The DirecTV version of the TiVo, which will be released in the US this fall, will not contain an MPEG encoder but will save the digital stream from the satellite to hard drive. I'd expect the Sky version to be similar.
How truly sad it is to see that American culture has gotten to this point. How many hours of programming do you think it took just to make sure that Joe Bloe doesn't miss the next episode of Star Trek Voyager?
Yeah, it's pretty rough to find Star Trek Voyager in your onscreen guide and press a single button to record it every week. Perhaps this would take you "hours" to do, but for most people that are familiar with how to use a ReplayTV/Tivo it would take seconds.
TiVo's Hollywood Investors are not going to like this one bit.
Why would they care one way or the other? Their "Hollywood Investors" certainly aren't making money from hardware sales. If anything, the more people that upgrade their small 14-hour units to 50+ hour units, the more people that have available space for Hollywood's ads and movie trailers, things that are planned in the near future for the larger-capacity units. The only people I could see having a problem with these hacked units would be the hardware makers themselves, Philips and Sony. But since they're getting percentages of subscription money from Tivo, the bulk of their revenue flow isn't dependent on hardware sales.
At only $299 for the 14hour and $399 for the 30 hour, it's hard to build one for that price....if not impossible
Actually Circuit City is offering the 14-hour Philips model for $199 after $100 rebate. And many online vendors are selling the 30-hour version for under $350. A 20-hour version should hit the market in the next month or so to fill the low-end market(thus the beginning of 14-hour clearances), and a 60-hour version should be out sometime this fall for around $699. Adding a 30 gig hard drive to the 14-hour and 30-hour units adds 38 hours, so that would easily be the most cost-effective route to the high-end. Keep in mind that these hours are based on the highest-compression levels, you sacrifice storage space when you use higher-quality recording.
Perhaps you should get your facts straight. PepsiCo spun off their restaurant business in 1997, which became TRICON Global Restaurants, Inc. PepsiCo holds a very considerable amount of stock in TRICON. Here's a PepsiCo press release released when the spin-off was approved.
Didn't see this mentioned in the press release, but this was reported by C|Net yesterday. It's a "Screen Phone" that will run RedHat and uses Bluetooth to communicate with its basestation, has a speakerphone, touch screen, web browser with Java support, and email client. In other words, a web pad with telephone features. Another picture on Ericsson's site. Pretty cool looking, no pricing mentioned and is supposed to hit the market later this year.
Looks like Andover bought it from the squatter that previously held it, unless he was a kind soul that handed it over for free. I seem to remember the previous owner had a simple page with a link to Slashdot.org and some other misc stuff, and it definitely wasn't registered to either Andover, Malda, or any of his crew until recently.
Registrant: Andover.net (SLASHDOT6-DOM) 50 Nagog Park Aston, MA 01720 US
Domain Name: SLASHDOT.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: DNS Technical Support (DT1415-ORG) dns_tech@ANDOVER.NET Andover.Net 50 Nagog Park Acton, MA 01720 US (978) 635-5300 Fax- (978) 635-5326 Billing Contact: DNS Billing (DB2055-ORG) dns_billing@ANDOVER.NET Andover.Net 50 Nagog Park Acton, MA 01720 US (978) 635-5300 Fax- (978) 635-5326
Record last updated on 11-Apr-2000. Record expires on 11-Apr-2001. Record created on 11-Apr-2000. Database last updated on 16-Jul-2000 11:02:23 EDT.
Obviously if this verdict holds up through the appeal process, this will be the end of the my.mp3.com service. What types of do-it-yourself alternatives are there? Obviously we have Nullsoft's Shoutcast service, but that isn't really a viable alternative to the my.mp3.com service in that you can only really "tune in" to your pre-defined playlist and can't manually select the tracks to stream from a remote location (without using some sort of VNC remote control software). I'd really like to see something with a web interface that allowed you to set up a server on your home computer, for instance, which would serve up a list of available mp3 tracks, and you select a track of group of tracks from a browser in your office, and stream the mp3s in that way. Anyone know of anything like this that wouldn't require me to become a perl guru?
Open, click "sign on", walk away for 5 minutes, then minimize: instant, free, short-term ISP....and 5 months and hundreds of phone calls to AOL billing later, the charges finally stopped appearing on your credit card.
Blockbuster's days are numbered. All they really are is a (very bursty) bandwidth provider. Once there's a way to get movies downloaded directly into homes, the entire video rental industry will disappear. And it won't take very long.
Oh, you mean like Pay-per-view? PPV has been around for quite some time, and Blockbuster's business seems to be doing quite well, thank you. Besides, there are millions of people that don't even have cable TV, let alone a computer with a high-bandwidth connection, that do have VCR's that are quite happy with renting a VHS tape from the local video store.
The past 2 months haven't been bad, but in the past 6-8 months there has been quite a rise in the amount of spam sent to my Sprint PCS phone. Apparently the spammers have found an easy way to target a very large group of phones for the same provider without having to target individual numbers. Sprint PCS email addresses are simply xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com, where the x's are your phone number with area code. Fortunately Sprint does have some filtering tools at their management web page as it's not possible to filter at the handset, but the tools are somewhat limited. It's also possible to get rid of email messaging entirely on your account, but obviously there are legit uses for it.
BetaNews had posted a link last night to a Netscape site where N6 Preview 1 could be downloaded, but Netscape caught wind of it and pulled the files. Oddly, BetaNews also deleted the discussion of N6 (not exactly what I look for in a discussion site). Based on reviews by some people who managed to grab it before it was pulled, the download is 16 megs and is akin to a Netscape-branded nightly Mozilla build with a spell checker and Netscape-branded AIM built in.
Erm wait... MS is just a big whiner with enough money to get any creative lawyer to make anything possible. OJ did it... why can't the worlds Most Valuable Company do it?
Unlike the OJ trial, the outcome of this case won't be in the hands of some clueless jury that was handpicked by the defense team, but rather a judge with at least 3/4 of a clue will render a verdict.
It's not to say that The Sixth Sense was a bad movie, (it was a GREAT movie!) it's just that the way the ending is written, you can't really watch it more the once. It's like a murder mystery -- you allready know the butler did it, so what's the point?
If anything, the ending of The Sixth Sense actually *encourages* you to go see the movie again so that you can actually see what clues you missed and if the entire movie was accurate in leading to the end. The megabucks the Sixth Sense has earned are coming from repeat viewers. They just made another $1 million a couple of weeks ago and had no advertising going on. I agree that American Beauty deserved their award, but The Sixth Sense was a close second in my book.
Last week during the I-Opener hype, I came across a link to a liquidator that was selling an I-Opener type device made by Planar, who apparently specializes in compact, mobile computing for the medical care market. They have specs for their newer Clean Screen devices that show that these are already what we're wishing the I-Opener was. HiTechCafe was selling an older version for $259, I believe it was a 12.1" screen and a slower CPU than the current models. Unfortunately, they're sold out now and I didn't look into the specs good enough at the time to learn just what they were selling. I sure am kicking myself now as I imagine the new units are quite pricey. Anyways, these devices are mostly just a stop-gap until Crusoe webpads and the like hit the market later this year.
To be fair, DirecTV also has their own DirecTiVo coming out this summer, and from what I've read you'll be able to choose between using the DirecTV guide or the TiVo guide for recordings. Remember, both DTV and Dish sell their systems as a loss-leader. So they're both able to sell an integrated TiVo/receiver unit for just about the same price as a standalone TiVo without much loss, and it's just another way to tie you to their service. And in case you didn't know, DirecTV bought USSB last year, all DirecTV programming now comes from one source.
Technically the FCC still *is* screwing us with their local programming laws. Despite some improvements in the last year, the law is still leaving millions of DBS viewers without local programming over their dish. It isn't feasible for the DBS carriers to offer local programming to smaller cities. People that live in these cities aren't legally able to receive out-of-market programming from DirecTV or Dish unless they get permission from their local broadcasters. So in order to receive the networks over your dish, you either have to live in one of the top 20-30 TV markets, or live so far out in the sticks that you can't get any reception via antennae.
Was this just a cute way of saying the TiVo queries the coax input or does one have to hook the phone up into the box as well?
Yes, you do have to have a phone line hooked up to the box. This is how the unit downloads the program guide. Supposedly this happens in the middle of the night, and it will autmatically drop the call if you pick up a handset to use the phone. It would be nice if the integrated Dish/TiVo receiver could just use the Dish guide since it's already available, and you could just skip the phone calls.
You missed Windows 98 Second Edition (aka, Windows 95 Fourth Edition), which was released in 1999. And if I remember correctly, the gap in 1997 was not intentional, but rather was caused by their inability to combine the NT/9x OS into a single platform, something they're still trying to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it was Napster that sponsored the Limp Bizkit tour. Alanis Morissettte did get quite a bit of MP3.com stock though, can't recall what exactly she did for the company.
As stated above, this is not how "bricks and mortar stores" do it. Amazon is charging different people different prices for identical items within a short time span. To compare to a b&m store, say Kroger charges me $5.49 for a 12-pack of Bud and charges you (who is in line right behind me) $6.99 for an identical 12-pack of Bud. Is this right? Are you a happy customer? How pissed are you when you get to the parking lot and find out that you paid $1.50 more for your beer?
It's not so much that the price is based on which browser you're using, but rather on the fact that the user in this example had used IE to purchase before (thus had an Amazon cookie) and hadn't used Netscape for purchases (no Amazon cookie). Most likely had he used Netscape before for purchases and not IE, his price would have been lower when he checked in IE since Amazon thought he was a new customer.
Amazon's practice is completely different though since they're charging different customers different prices for the *exact same* item.
The real kicker with the Tivo and its lack of ethernet is that it is actually making a dial-up connection with UUNET for it's nightly calls, meaning it is actually just making a PPP connection to the Internet to download the guide data.
The DirecTV version of the TiVo, which will be released in the US this fall, will not contain an MPEG encoder but will save the digital stream from the satellite to hard drive. I'd expect the Sky version to be similar.
Yeah, it's pretty rough to find Star Trek Voyager in your onscreen guide and press a single button to record it every week. Perhaps this would take you "hours" to do, but for most people that are familiar with how to use a ReplayTV/Tivo it would take seconds.
Why would they care one way or the other? Their "Hollywood Investors" certainly aren't making money from hardware sales. If anything, the more people that upgrade their small 14-hour units to 50+ hour units, the more people that have available space for Hollywood's ads and movie trailers, things that are planned in the near future for the larger-capacity units. The only people I could see having a problem with these hacked units would be the hardware makers themselves, Philips and Sony. But since they're getting percentages of subscription money from Tivo, the bulk of their revenue flow isn't dependent on hardware sales.
Actually Circuit City is offering the 14-hour Philips model for $199 after $100 rebate. And many online vendors are selling the 30-hour version for under $350. A 20-hour version should hit the market in the next month or so to fill the low-end market(thus the beginning of 14-hour clearances), and a 60-hour version should be out sometime this fall for around $699. Adding a 30 gig hard drive to the 14-hour and 30-hour units adds 38 hours, so that would easily be the most cost-effective route to the high-end. Keep in mind that these hours are based on the highest-compression levels, you sacrifice storage space when you use higher-quality recording.
Perhaps you should get your facts straight. PepsiCo spun off their restaurant business in 1997, which became TRICON Global Restaurants, Inc. PepsiCo holds a very considerable amount of stock in TRICON. Here's a PepsiCo press release released when the spin-off was approved.
Didn't see this mentioned in the press release, but this was reported by C|Net yesterday. It's a "Screen Phone" that will run RedHat and uses Bluetooth to communicate with its basestation, has a speakerphone, touch screen, web browser with Java support, and email client. In other words, a web pad with telephone features. Another picture on Ericsson's site. Pretty cool looking, no pricing mentioned and is supposed to hit the market later this year.
Looks like Andover bought it from the squatter that previously held it, unless he was a kind soul that handed it over for free. I seem to remember the previous owner had a simple page with a link to Slashdot.org and some other misc stuff, and it definitely wasn't registered to either Andover, Malda, or any of his crew until recently.
Registrant:
Andover.net (SLASHDOT6-DOM)
50 Nagog Park
Aston, MA 01720
US
Domain Name: SLASHDOT.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS Technical Support (DT1415-ORG) dns_tech@ANDOVER.NET
Andover.Net
50 Nagog Park
Acton, MA 01720
US
(978) 635-5300
Fax- (978) 635-5326
Billing Contact:
DNS Billing (DB2055-ORG) dns_billing@ANDOVER.NET
Andover.Net
50 Nagog Park
Acton, MA 01720
US
(978) 635-5300
Fax- (978) 635-5326
Record last updated on 11-Apr-2000.
Record expires on 11-Apr-2001.
Record created on 11-Apr-2000.
Database last updated on 16-Jul-2000 11:02:23 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.ANDOVER.NET 209.207.224.196
NS2.ANDOVER.NET 209.207.224.197
Of course not, he is .God
Obviously if this verdict holds up through the appeal process, this will be the end of the my.mp3.com service. What types of do-it-yourself alternatives are there? Obviously we have Nullsoft's Shoutcast service, but that isn't really a viable alternative to the my.mp3.com service in that you can only really "tune in" to your pre-defined playlist and can't manually select the tracks to stream from a remote location (without using some sort of VNC remote control software). I'd really like to see something with a web interface that allowed you to set up a server on your home computer, for instance, which would serve up a list of available mp3 tracks, and you select a track of group of tracks from a browser in your office, and stream the mp3s in that way. Anyone know of anything like this that wouldn't require me to become a perl guru?
Open, click "sign on", walk away for 5 minutes, then minimize: instant, free, short-term ISP. ...and 5 months and hundreds of phone calls to AOL billing later, the charges finally stopped appearing on your credit card.
Oh, you mean like Pay-per-view? PPV has been around for quite some time, and Blockbuster's business seems to be doing quite well, thank you. Besides, there are millions of people that don't even have cable TV, let alone a computer with a high-bandwidth connection, that do have VCR's that are quite happy with renting a VHS tape from the local video store.
The past 2 months haven't been bad, but in the past 6-8 months there has been quite a rise in the amount of spam sent to my Sprint PCS phone. Apparently the spammers have found an easy way to target a very large group of phones for the same provider without having to target individual numbers. Sprint PCS email addresses are simply xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com, where the x's are your phone number with area code. Fortunately Sprint does have some filtering tools at their management web page as it's not possible to filter at the handset, but the tools are somewhat limited. It's also possible to get rid of email messaging entirely on your account, but obviously there are legit uses for it.
BetaNews had posted a link last night to a Netscape site where N6 Preview 1 could be downloaded, but Netscape caught wind of it and pulled the files. Oddly, BetaNews also deleted the discussion of N6 (not exactly what I look for in a discussion site). Based on reviews by some people who managed to grab it before it was pulled, the download is 16 megs and is akin to a Netscape-branded nightly Mozilla build with a spell checker and Netscape-branded AIM built in.
Unlike the OJ trial, the outcome of this case won't be in the hands of some clueless jury that was handpicked by the defense team, but rather a judge with at least 3/4 of a clue will render a verdict.
If anything, the ending of The Sixth Sense actually *encourages* you to go see the movie again so that you can actually see what clues you missed and if the entire movie was accurate in leading to the end. The megabucks the Sixth Sense has earned are coming from repeat viewers. They just made another $1 million a couple of weeks ago and had no advertising going on. I agree that American Beauty deserved their award, but The Sixth Sense was a close second in my book.
Last week during the I-Opener hype, I came across a link to a liquidator that was selling an I-Opener type device made by Planar, who apparently specializes in compact, mobile computing for the medical care market. They have specs for their newer Clean Screen devices that show that these are already what we're wishing the I-Opener was. HiTechCafe was selling an older version for $259, I believe it was a 12.1" screen and a slower CPU than the current models. Unfortunately, they're sold out now and I didn't look into the specs good enough at the time to learn just what they were selling. I sure am kicking myself now as I imagine the new units are quite pricey. Anyways, these devices are mostly just a stop-gap until Crusoe webpads and the like hit the market later this year.
To be fair, DirecTV also has their own DirecTiVo coming out this summer, and from what I've read you'll be able to choose between using the DirecTV guide or the TiVo guide for recordings. Remember, both DTV and Dish sell their systems as a loss-leader. So they're both able to sell an integrated TiVo/receiver unit for just about the same price as a standalone TiVo without much loss, and it's just another way to tie you to their service. And in case you didn't know, DirecTV bought USSB last year, all DirecTV programming now comes from one source.
Technically the FCC still *is* screwing us with their local programming laws. Despite some improvements in the last year, the law is still leaving millions of DBS viewers without local programming over their dish. It isn't feasible for the DBS carriers to offer local programming to smaller cities. People that live in these cities aren't legally able to receive out-of-market programming from DirecTV or Dish unless they get permission from their local broadcasters. So in order to receive the networks over your dish, you either have to live in one of the top 20-30 TV markets, or live so far out in the sticks that you can't get any reception via antennae.
Yes, you do have to have a phone line hooked up to the box. This is how the unit downloads the program guide. Supposedly this happens in the middle of the night, and it will autmatically drop the call if you pick up a handset to use the phone. It would be nice if the integrated Dish/TiVo receiver could just use the Dish guide since it's already available, and you could just skip the phone calls.
You missed Windows 98 Second Edition (aka, Windows 95 Fourth Edition), which was released in 1999. And if I remember correctly, the gap in 1997 was not intentional, but rather was caused by their inability to combine the NT/9x OS into a single platform, something they're still trying to do.