You know that slashdot is starting to fall pray to the inanity of mainstream media when this utterly meaningless piece actually makes it past the moderators.
Pence can say whatever he wants. Absent the requisite resources--i.e., MONEY, FUNDING, APPROPRIATIONS, etc.--NASA cannot do squat. Hence, by "by any means possible" Pence apparently means "without any additional funding" because he certainly didn't say that the US government intends to fund such a mission.
This is the sort of bullsh*t with which the Trump administration covers up their attempts to kill all of NASA's environmental missions, like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.
Maybe scientists and engineers are politically naive, after all.
Really disappointed, guys.
I cancelled Netflix last year. I cancelled Amazon Prime last month. I did that because our local video store, Salzer's in Ventura, CA, is a superb video store with English and foreign titles that not many streaming services have. I pay $60 a year to access the PBS archives through my digital devices, and I have a large credit balance with iTunes for software and digital movie rentals. This arrangement allows me to find movie gems at my video store, get the best news and documentary through PBS and get all of the frivolous Hollywood stuff through iTunes. I no longer waste time scrolling through endless screens of stupid movies that some dickhead "suggests" to me.
Support your local indie video store. Salzer's in Ventura. Cinefile in West LA. Please put up the names of your local killer video stores. Algorithms have yet to better good taste.
Of all the Netflix suggestions, I must confess that the Dead Snow movies and Look Who's Back were truly excellent.
Thanks. Yeah, I was too lazy to rtfa. Perhaps such hoaxes should become routine inirder to keep the editorial staff on edge as a quality control measure, but that would make publishing even more expensive.
Another factor may be that FB pissed so many people off by abusing their privacy that they deleted Messenger altogether. I did, anyway.
Come on, people. Invite your friends for a gathering or accept another friend or family member's invitation. A messenger greeting blast has about as much impact and is about as memorable as a highway billboard encountered at 80 miles per hour. Do something meaningful.
The article and just about everyone in the comments here seem to miss the economic point: pricing power. Apple is not the only one exercising its pricing power. When the new mini was introduced, I searched to find Windows machines with the same form factor and power, and the closest things to the mini, the Asus mini PCs, are about the same price. The same goes for Dell and HP laptops. The giants are exercising their pricing power. And, they need to do so in order to deliver higher profits with lower sales. As the article shows, people are waiting longer to upgrade their phones.
The article is misleading in one regard. Apple's products tend to be cutting edge in their first generation. Comparing these prices to the prices of the average device achieves nothing. The more meaningful comparison is with devices in the same class. Clearly, prices for Samsung's and Google's flagship phones are keeping pace with Apple's because of, yes, pricing power. There isn't enough competition at the top.
Do quantitative measures exist for labeling someone an influencer? Oprah's book club certainly moves books, other daytime hosts can move a lot of product with their endorsement, but the so called "influencers" are more like commissioned sales people. After all, they are just using the "social" media to find paying customers and collecting a commission. I'm not convinced that the term "influencer" is merited here. They're not really changing someone's mind about any particular topic the way Oprah and, alas, Hannity can. They are selling stuff, moving product, liquidating inventory, shilling junk, etc. They are social media salespeople. There is no distinction between them and people on QVC and Home Shopping Channels. Let's call them what they are. Influencer my a__.
"subpar experience"? This is total BS, a figment of someone's imagination. What is a "par" experience? This article is so stupid that it is better evidence for the fact that either Russian or Google trolls are gaming the slashdot system than it is for any measure of the relative merits of technology manufacturers.
Apple only cares about money. Very true. If you think Samsung, Facebook, Amazon and and Google care any less for money, you're more gullible than those who believe Trump tweets.
I just sold a broken iPhone SE on Ebay for $50. How much would I get for a broken Samsung Galaxy S7? Apple is killing every phone manufacturer on margins AND taking a smaller hit on sales. The AppleWatch is the standard bearer for wearable devices. Clearly, nobody is paying the premium for Apple products because they like "subpar" experiences. This article is utter drivel.
And, yes, I'm only half joking when I imply that Russia and Google both hate Apple. In reality, Russia, CIA, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft all hate Apple because Apple's emphasis on privacy makes it difficult for all of them to pry into the users' lives and to manipulate them.
Defend Google and Facebook all you want, but in truth, you have no idea how they're using your data and how they're manipulating you. That is not a fair bargain.
And exactly when did Google's garbage UI become an above par experience?
In my experience, it's always been the women who don't want it. Naturally, I hate using them, but it has always been my girlfriend who has chosen to throw caution in to the wind.
In the interest of full disclosure, I've been an IGOR user for about a decade, and I have worked for the company as a consultant.
IGOR is a fantastic tool. Will it do everything? Just about. Its programmability makes it nearly infinitely flexible.
But, for me, the two features that make me shudder at the thought of dispensing with IGOR are the support and OS interoperability.
IGOR Pro is perhaps the best supported and best documented piece of software on the planet. (Yes, I have contributed a minor amount to said documentation.) The company stands behind the program completely, and the user community usually offers solutions to anyone's problem within minutes. And, the documentation is simply phenomenal: the comprehensive and highly linked pdf version of the manual ships with the software is also installed as a searchable, highly organized database that can be navigated many ways.
Then, of course, is the bonus that everyone gets with their purchase of IGOR: you get Mac and Windows versions as part of your purchase. (I've been told the Windows version runs well on Linux under Crossover.)
And, oh yeah, the cost is a fraction of Matlab's or LabView's.
No, it's not entirely a scam. The companies that process these rebates have gotten much better at organizing the process. One can now check the status of the rebate online. For example, I bought a refurbished laser printer for $90 in January, and I sent in the rebate form for my $20. In April, I checked the status, and I found out that it had been rejected because THEY had made a mistake. So, I read their rules, and I noticed that I had recourse. So, I sent in my form again.
Low and behold, they approved it! Not for $20, but for $50! So, my $90 printer (which works GREAT!) finally cost me a mere $40 (including tax, delivery, and all).
So, maybe it's not a scam. Maybe it's incompetence on their part. They have to make up for mistakes that favor people like me by screwing others?
I looked at the screenshots, and what strikes me is that WiMP is emulating iTunes. This comes as no surprise, but it is surprising that nobody else here at/. has mentioned it.
It's M$ doing business as usual: imitating successful models poorly.
That's it. People who don't own one will never see the full range of features that makes Apple superior to anything out there. I am hardly a geek, but after I learned that I can set up my computer to be a web server/ftp server/print server and give myself shell access just by checking a box, I tossed my Windows machine.
Zero configuration, everything works, and if you really want the unix stuff, you get fink and the entire Unix world is available to you.
But, yeah, the coolness factor is there for me, still. The ultimate coolness factor, however, is the pure usability of the whole system. I have not done any maintenance since I bought my Powerbook 3 years ago. I just install programs and use them. Two OS upgrades later, the system works flawlessly, without my performing any maintenance at all. Now, THAT is cool.
Was it not obvious that political debate in the US abandoned reality about a decade ago? CNN offers nothing constructive. Fox "News" unabashedly gets people riled up with lies. Bush never talks about the actual numbers of the budget, or any quantitative assessment of the Iraqi conflict. He only talks about doing God's "work" against "terror".
There is a good reason why Europeans are laughing at us Americans. We are disconnected from reality and disconnected from the rest of the world. We have been reduced to a pile of primitive emotions by a system that doesn't want anyone to think. We don't need brain patterns to know this.
It's interesting that none of the movie industry people quoted in the article says that the savings associated with digital screening will be passed on to the consumers of the crappy movies. Rather, they hope that the savings will offset the losses of the turkeys. Well, in the long run, this might be the RIAA saga with CDs: charging people too much might make them want to wait and steal the movie instead.
It would be nice not to have to cough up $10 for a crappy movie anymore. Doing that is bad enough. Knowing that by wasting $10 and 2 hours of one's life one may actually be subsidizing crappy movies even more, one may be inclined to, well, not participate in the bargain. This is not my situation. I barely see two movies a year, but the larger moviegoing audience might not feel quite the same way.
This is exactly it. The market has opted for this latter option because it is the only way to get the latest doo-dads.
The crucial question that Bill Thompson evades is whether a product liability scheme can ever be implemented at all. Software vendors can always blame bugs in the operating system, and the writers of the OS can reciprocate. Pinpointing the fault to a single event that is entirely the fault of one party or another would be difficult. Software is always executed in the context of the OS, which is in turn running on hardware manufactured by many different manufacturers, and the hardware has firmware from yet another firm. So, where it all went wrong is rather difficult to determine in a court of law.
This is very different from suing General Motors, which presumably tests each complete product to death before selling it. This model might make companies like Dell and Apple, which test and sell the complete product, more liable than others, but even then one cannot really sue Apple or Dell because a third-party software that one downloaded and installed made things go wrong.
In fact, these licenses may simply reflect the reality of the software development world: the hardware, the operating systems and the applications have become so complex that proving fault in court may well be impossible.
This is M$ at work. M$ can always afford purchasing the opinions of spineless writers. This is a perfect example.
What has Linux given us? If you look at how clustering has revolutionized theoretical physics and chemistry, you start seeing the tip of the iceberg. Windows is nowhere near this capacity. At least, nobody writes clustering sofware for Windows. You can offer your own reason why.
Oh, yeah, Google runs Linux and *nix. OS software is the straw hat that Microsoft likes to attack. If they succeed, in making OSS seem evil, then they can extend their propaganda to Google. "Google is evil because they run OSS!"
How dim do you have to be to take pleasure at seeing Windows offer silly graphics and cheap sound effects while it connects a new device? I rather like the fact that my devices are ready instantly on my Mac, without fanfare or cheap thrills.
But, really, the main reason I chucked Windows for good was that I was tired of configuring stuff on Windows. For f*&k's sake, I can give myself shell access to my mac just by checking a box. As far as I know, this is not even possible on Windows.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Macs are cheaper than comparables Windows machines. And, frankly, having a computer that requires zero configuration and works flawlessly is more than worth the trivial extra cost. Or, none, if you believe the WSJ and other surveys.
It would have been nice if this guy had taken note of the fact that Windows hosting is more expensive and less reliable than *nix hosting. So, Windows has given us, well, nothing.
Microsoft can buy favorable opinions. Slashdot has no obligation to disseminate them, however. Editors should exercise better judgment.
Of course, I was not entirely innocent in posting this article. Eric Heller is a friend of my Ph.D. adviser, and he is also a very famous scientist (he famously formulted the "semi-classical approach to spectroscopy", see p. 368). He is a big advocate of visualization precisely because it can make getting the point across more easily. My claim to "fame" in visualization can be seen here and here. (Obviously, I like Igor Pro.) In the case of my own work, I like to think that the contrast in the nice 3-D surfaces shows the viewer that something important is going on (energy transfer). The meat of the argument comes from taking the slices of the pictures and doing curve fitting, and fitting the results to established theories, but people can read on for that stuff. it is awfully nice to get the point across in one or two pictures.
If you ever have the pleasure of attending a Heller talk, you will see how he uses the nice pics as an overview of the results, and proceeds to dig deeply. And, that's actually the point. The picture should get a valid physical picture across. It is difficult to suffer a presentation in which the speaker is offering fancy animation after animation, none of which represents any real concept or any real treatment of the statistics behind the process being described.
The question is whether the absolutely fantastic hardware and software tools that are available to scientists are being put to good use to get a fair, realistic picture across to the readers.
Fair enough. But, this could be Apple's economic gamble. They are betting that people don't want to rent songs. I happen to agree because I, for one, will have absolutely no part of such a bargain. I'm moving all over the world, and although bandwidth is easy to come by, I prefer to take my entire collection with me wherever I go. And, if I want to "rent" music, I can always podcast an online radio station or something.
At any rate, Apple was smart enough to get WAY ahead of the curve, and they are managing to stay ahead (it's true, you can watch music videos through iTMS now, and a movie service cannot be far away). It's easy, it's reliable, it works, and it is growing in capability and capacity. I am not promoting these things because I own Apple stock. I own Apple stock because Apple is doing these things. I honestly don't think the other guys are trying hard enough.
Well, it's true, and not true. It's true that they blocked out Real, but, for example, if you buy mp3s from emusic.com, you would not be blocked. Or from allofmp3.com, for that matter. So, really, they are not enforcing control over the music that can be bought as much as they are enforcing control over the interface.
I'm half playing devil's advocate here, but in a court of law, Apple would probably make this kind of an argument, and they would probably make it stick because people are free to encode their CDs and buy mp3s from other sources, and companies do not need to hijack Apple's technology in order to sell music.
You have to admit that it's not as if any of the other parties in this--MS, Sony, EMI, etc.--are interested in competition. They are pissed that the monopoly is not theirs. That's why they won't challenge Apple on the monopoly grounds. If they do, they will not be able to establish their own. And, you can quibble with Apple as much as you want, but it will not change the fact that the competition is not interested in competing with Apple, or competing at all. So, at the very least, you have to admit that Apple's success is as much due to a lack of balls (to challenge Apple in court) as it is Apple's wonderful and easy to use system. (Yes, I got an Apple and and iPod precisely because they are so easy to use.)
Legally speaking, however, Apple hasn't done anything yet to merit legal action. No predatory pricing, no overt action to bankrupt a competitor. (Remember when MS bankrupted Netscape by giving its browser away for free?)
If the competition has any brains, they will try to devise a standard for buying digital music. They will then have leverage against Apple, who will obviously oppose standards for such transactions. Of course, everyone wants to impose their own standards, so they will never challenge Apple on the only ground on which they can challenge it. MS wants to extend its monopoly. They can't accuse Apple of anything that might come back and bite them in the ass.
An open standard for digital music transactions is desperately needed. Greed prevents the big players from agreeing upon one. Maybe the FOSS community should start one.
You have to wonder if the record industry would rather have wma as the industry standard or any of the other open standards. For the artists and the record industry, this has to be the dilemma. If you use an open standard, your product might be easier to steal, but if you stick with a proprietary standard, the licensing fees will eat into your profits.
Of course, record labels are going to change no matter what happens, because digital distribution is the way of the future. The question is what will consumers want. I like iTunes/iPod because it is flexible. It manages and synchronizes several formats that I like. Arguments that Apple's system is a rigid one are valid, but in reality is remains the most flexible system of them all.
You answered your own question. Apple is making a killing. If they are making so much money, and nobody is smart enough to compete, then why license it?
You can rest assured that if the Yahoo! scheme (which blows, if you ask me) makes a dent in Apple's market share, Apple will immediately license its scheme. Then, if that doesn't work, Apple will probably enable iPods to play wma files. This way Yahoo! subscribers will still make money for Apple.
People forget these things all too quickly. First, in the marketplace, you only play ball with people who can play ball. Apple has no peers right now in the marketplace. Therefore, it will not cooperate with anyone. It doesn't have to. Second, the entire iTunes/iPod scheme is flexible. With software updates you can make the two manage almost any format.
Apple is not wedded to the present model, but it WILL milk it for all it can, and right now the milk flowin'.
Slashdot Mirror
You know that slashdot is starting to fall pray to the inanity of mainstream media when this utterly meaningless piece actually makes it past the moderators. Pence can say whatever he wants. Absent the requisite resources--i.e., MONEY, FUNDING, APPROPRIATIONS, etc.--NASA cannot do squat. Hence, by "by any means possible" Pence apparently means "without any additional funding" because he certainly didn't say that the US government intends to fund such a mission. This is the sort of bullsh*t with which the Trump administration covers up their attempts to kill all of NASA's environmental missions, like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. Maybe scientists and engineers are politically naive, after all. Really disappointed, guys.
I cancelled Netflix last year. I cancelled Amazon Prime last month. I did that because our local video store, Salzer's in Ventura, CA, is a superb video store with English and foreign titles that not many streaming services have. I pay $60 a year to access the PBS archives through my digital devices, and I have a large credit balance with iTunes for software and digital movie rentals. This arrangement allows me to find movie gems at my video store, get the best news and documentary through PBS and get all of the frivolous Hollywood stuff through iTunes. I no longer waste time scrolling through endless screens of stupid movies that some dickhead "suggests" to me. Support your local indie video store. Salzer's in Ventura. Cinefile in West LA. Please put up the names of your local killer video stores. Algorithms have yet to better good taste. Of all the Netflix suggestions, I must confess that the Dead Snow movies and Look Who's Back were truly excellent.
Thanks. Yeah, I was too lazy to rtfa. Perhaps such hoaxes should become routine inirder to keep the editorial staff on edge as a quality control measure, but that would make publishing even more expensive.
I wonder what Boghossian hoped to accomplish beyond Sokal. Read about Sokal's hoax from 1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I dare you. Of what significant consequence could this story possibly be?
Another factor may be that FB pissed so many people off by abusing their privacy that they deleted Messenger altogether. I did, anyway. Come on, people. Invite your friends for a gathering or accept another friend or family member's invitation. A messenger greeting blast has about as much impact and is about as memorable as a highway billboard encountered at 80 miles per hour. Do something meaningful.
The article and just about everyone in the comments here seem to miss the economic point: pricing power. Apple is not the only one exercising its pricing power. When the new mini was introduced, I searched to find Windows machines with the same form factor and power, and the closest things to the mini, the Asus mini PCs, are about the same price. The same goes for Dell and HP laptops. The giants are exercising their pricing power. And, they need to do so in order to deliver higher profits with lower sales. As the article shows, people are waiting longer to upgrade their phones. The article is misleading in one regard. Apple's products tend to be cutting edge in their first generation. Comparing these prices to the prices of the average device achieves nothing. The more meaningful comparison is with devices in the same class. Clearly, prices for Samsung's and Google's flagship phones are keeping pace with Apple's because of, yes, pricing power. There isn't enough competition at the top.
Do quantitative measures exist for labeling someone an influencer? Oprah's book club certainly moves books, other daytime hosts can move a lot of product with their endorsement, but the so called "influencers" are more like commissioned sales people. After all, they are just using the "social" media to find paying customers and collecting a commission. I'm not convinced that the term "influencer" is merited here. They're not really changing someone's mind about any particular topic the way Oprah and, alas, Hannity can. They are selling stuff, moving product, liquidating inventory, shilling junk, etc. They are social media salespeople. There is no distinction between them and people on QVC and Home Shopping Channels. Let's call them what they are. Influencer my a__.
"subpar experience"? This is total BS, a figment of someone's imagination. What is a "par" experience? This article is so stupid that it is better evidence for the fact that either Russian or Google trolls are gaming the slashdot system than it is for any measure of the relative merits of technology manufacturers. Apple only cares about money. Very true. If you think Samsung, Facebook, Amazon and and Google care any less for money, you're more gullible than those who believe Trump tweets. I just sold a broken iPhone SE on Ebay for $50. How much would I get for a broken Samsung Galaxy S7? Apple is killing every phone manufacturer on margins AND taking a smaller hit on sales. The AppleWatch is the standard bearer for wearable devices. Clearly, nobody is paying the premium for Apple products because they like "subpar" experiences. This article is utter drivel. And, yes, I'm only half joking when I imply that Russia and Google both hate Apple. In reality, Russia, CIA, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft all hate Apple because Apple's emphasis on privacy makes it difficult for all of them to pry into the users' lives and to manipulate them. Defend Google and Facebook all you want, but in truth, you have no idea how they're using your data and how they're manipulating you. That is not a fair bargain. And exactly when did Google's garbage UI become an above par experience?
In my experience, it's always been the women who don't want it. Naturally, I hate using them, but it has always been my girlfriend who has chosen to throw caution in to the wind.
In the interest of full disclosure, I've been an IGOR user for about a decade, and I have worked for the company as a consultant.
IGOR is a fantastic tool. Will it do everything? Just about. Its programmability makes it nearly infinitely flexible.
But, for me, the two features that make me shudder at the thought of dispensing with IGOR are the support and OS interoperability.
IGOR Pro is perhaps the best supported and best documented piece of software on the planet. (Yes, I have contributed a minor amount to said documentation.) The company stands behind the program completely, and the user community usually offers solutions to anyone's problem within minutes. And, the documentation is simply phenomenal: the comprehensive and highly linked pdf version of the manual ships with the software is also installed as a searchable, highly organized database that can be navigated many ways.
Then, of course, is the bonus that everyone gets with their purchase of IGOR: you get Mac and Windows versions as part of your purchase. (I've been told the Windows version runs well on Linux under Crossover.)
And, oh yeah, the cost is a fraction of Matlab's or LabView's.
No, it's not entirely a scam. The companies that process these rebates have gotten much better at organizing the process. One can now check the status of the rebate online. For example, I bought a refurbished laser printer for $90 in January, and I sent in the rebate form for my $20. In April, I checked the status, and I found out that it had been rejected because THEY had made a mistake. So, I read their rules, and I noticed that I had recourse. So, I sent in my form again.
Low and behold, they approved it! Not for $20, but for $50! So, my $90 printer (which works GREAT!) finally cost me a mere $40 (including tax, delivery, and all).
So, maybe it's not a scam. Maybe it's incompetence on their part. They have to make up for mistakes that favor people like me by screwing others?
I looked at the screenshots, and what strikes me is that WiMP is emulating iTunes. This comes as no surprise, but it is surprising that nobody else here at /. has mentioned it.
It's M$ doing business as usual: imitating successful models poorly.
That's it. People who don't own one will never see the full range of features that makes Apple superior to anything out there. I am hardly a geek, but after I learned that I can set up my computer to be a web server/ftp server/print server and give myself shell access just by checking a box, I tossed my Windows machine.
Zero configuration, everything works, and if you really want the unix stuff, you get fink and the entire Unix world is available to you.
But, yeah, the coolness factor is there for me, still. The ultimate coolness factor, however, is the pure usability of the whole system. I have not done any maintenance since I bought my Powerbook 3 years ago. I just install programs and use them. Two OS upgrades later, the system works flawlessly, without my performing any maintenance at all. Now, THAT is cool.
Was it not obvious that political debate in the US abandoned reality about a decade ago? CNN offers nothing constructive. Fox "News" unabashedly gets people riled up with lies. Bush never talks about the actual numbers of the budget, or any quantitative assessment of the Iraqi conflict. He only talks about doing God's "work" against "terror".
There is a good reason why Europeans are laughing at us Americans. We are disconnected from reality and disconnected from the rest of the world. We have been reduced to a pile of primitive emotions by a system that doesn't want anyone to think. We don't need brain patterns to know this.
It's interesting that none of the movie industry people quoted in the article says that the savings associated with digital screening will be passed on to the consumers of the crappy movies. Rather, they hope that the savings will offset the losses of the turkeys. Well, in the long run, this might be the RIAA saga with CDs: charging people too much might make them want to wait and steal the movie instead.
It would be nice not to have to cough up $10 for a crappy movie anymore. Doing that is bad enough. Knowing that by wasting $10 and 2 hours of one's life one may actually be subsidizing crappy movies even more, one may be inclined to, well, not participate in the bargain. This is not my situation. I barely see two movies a year, but the larger moviegoing audience might not feel quite the same way.
This is exactly it. The market has opted for this latter option because it is the only way to get the latest doo-dads.
The crucial question that Bill Thompson evades is whether a product liability scheme can ever be implemented at all. Software vendors can always blame bugs in the operating system, and the writers of the OS can reciprocate. Pinpointing the fault to a single event that is entirely the fault of one party or another would be difficult. Software is always executed in the context of the OS, which is in turn running on hardware manufactured by many different manufacturers, and the hardware has firmware from yet another firm. So, where it all went wrong is rather difficult to determine in a court of law.
This is very different from suing General Motors, which presumably tests each complete product to death before selling it. This model might make companies like Dell and Apple, which test and sell the complete product, more liable than others, but even then one cannot really sue Apple or Dell because a third-party software that one downloaded and installed made things go wrong.
In fact, these licenses may simply reflect the reality of the software development world: the hardware, the operating systems and the applications have become so complex that proving fault in court may well be impossible.
This is M$ at work. M$ can always afford purchasing the opinions of spineless writers. This is a perfect example. What has Linux given us? If you look at how clustering has revolutionized theoretical physics and chemistry, you start seeing the tip of the iceberg. Windows is nowhere near this capacity. At least, nobody writes clustering sofware for Windows. You can offer your own reason why. Oh, yeah, Google runs Linux and *nix. OS software is the straw hat that Microsoft likes to attack. If they succeed, in making OSS seem evil, then they can extend their propaganda to Google. "Google is evil because they run OSS!" How dim do you have to be to take pleasure at seeing Windows offer silly graphics and cheap sound effects while it connects a new device? I rather like the fact that my devices are ready instantly on my Mac, without fanfare or cheap thrills. But, really, the main reason I chucked Windows for good was that I was tired of configuring stuff on Windows. For f*&k's sake, I can give myself shell access to my mac just by checking a box. As far as I know, this is not even possible on Windows. According to the Wall Street Journal, Macs are cheaper than comparables Windows machines. And, frankly, having a computer that requires zero configuration and works flawlessly is more than worth the trivial extra cost. Or, none, if you believe the WSJ and other surveys. It would have been nice if this guy had taken note of the fact that Windows hosting is more expensive and less reliable than *nix hosting. So, Windows has given us, well, nothing. Microsoft can buy favorable opinions. Slashdot has no obligation to disseminate them, however. Editors should exercise better judgment.
Their own statistics show that there is a 33.33% chance that this study is wrong. How can they be more than 67% sure?
Of course, I was not entirely innocent in posting this article. Eric Heller is a friend of my Ph.D. adviser, and he is also a very famous scientist (he famously formulted the "semi-classical approach to spectroscopy", see p. 368). He is a big advocate of visualization precisely because it can make getting the point across more easily. My claim to "fame" in visualization can be seen here and here. (Obviously, I like Igor Pro.) In the case of my own work, I like to think that the contrast in the nice 3-D surfaces shows the viewer that something important is going on (energy transfer). The meat of the argument comes from taking the slices of the pictures and doing curve fitting, and fitting the results to established theories, but people can read on for that stuff. it is awfully nice to get the point across in one or two pictures.
If you ever have the pleasure of attending a Heller talk, you will see how he uses the nice pics as an overview of the results, and proceeds to dig deeply. And, that's actually the point. The picture should get a valid physical picture across. It is difficult to suffer a presentation in which the speaker is offering fancy animation after animation, none of which represents any real concept or any real treatment of the statistics behind the process being described.
The question is whether the absolutely fantastic hardware and software tools that are available to scientists are being put to good use to get a fair, realistic picture across to the readers.
Fair enough. But, this could be Apple's economic gamble. They are betting that people don't want to rent songs. I happen to agree because I, for one, will have absolutely no part of such a bargain. I'm moving all over the world, and although bandwidth is easy to come by, I prefer to take my entire collection with me wherever I go. And, if I want to "rent" music, I can always podcast an online radio station or something.
At any rate, Apple was smart enough to get WAY ahead of the curve, and they are managing to stay ahead (it's true, you can watch music videos through iTMS now, and a movie service cannot be far away). It's easy, it's reliable, it works, and it is growing in capability and capacity. I am not promoting these things because I own Apple stock. I own Apple stock because Apple is doing these things. I honestly don't think the other guys are trying hard enough.
Well, it's true, and not true. It's true that they blocked out Real, but, for example, if you buy mp3s from emusic.com, you would not be blocked. Or from allofmp3.com, for that matter. So, really, they are not enforcing control over the music that can be bought as much as they are enforcing control over the interface.
I'm half playing devil's advocate here, but in a court of law, Apple would probably make this kind of an argument, and they would probably make it stick because people are free to encode their CDs and buy mp3s from other sources, and companies do not need to hijack Apple's technology in order to sell music.
You have to admit that it's not as if any of the other parties in this--MS, Sony, EMI, etc.--are interested in competition. They are pissed that the monopoly is not theirs. That's why they won't challenge Apple on the monopoly grounds. If they do, they will not be able to establish their own. And, you can quibble with Apple as much as you want, but it will not change the fact that the competition is not interested in competing with Apple, or competing at all. So, at the very least, you have to admit that Apple's success is as much due to a lack of balls (to challenge Apple in court) as it is Apple's wonderful and easy to use system. (Yes, I got an Apple and and iPod precisely because they are so easy to use.)
Your point is well taken.
Legally speaking, however, Apple hasn't done anything yet to merit legal action. No predatory pricing, no overt action to bankrupt a competitor. (Remember when MS bankrupted Netscape by giving its browser away for free?)
If the competition has any brains, they will try to devise a standard for buying digital music. They will then have leverage against Apple, who will obviously oppose standards for such transactions. Of course, everyone wants to impose their own standards, so they will never challenge Apple on the only ground on which they can challenge it. MS wants to extend its monopoly. They can't accuse Apple of anything that might come back and bite them in the ass.
An open standard for digital music transactions is desperately needed. Greed prevents the big players from agreeing upon one. Maybe the FOSS community should start one.
You have to wonder if the record industry would rather have wma as the industry standard or any of the other open standards. For the artists and the record industry, this has to be the dilemma. If you use an open standard, your product might be easier to steal, but if you stick with a proprietary standard, the licensing fees will eat into your profits.
Of course, record labels are going to change no matter what happens, because digital distribution is the way of the future. The question is what will consumers want. I like iTunes/iPod because it is flexible. It manages and synchronizes several formats that I like. Arguments that Apple's system is a rigid one are valid, but in reality is remains the most flexible system of them all.
You answered your own question. Apple is making a killing. If they are making so much money, and nobody is smart enough to compete, then why license it?
You can rest assured that if the Yahoo! scheme (which blows, if you ask me) makes a dent in Apple's market share, Apple will immediately license its scheme. Then, if that doesn't work, Apple will probably enable iPods to play wma files. This way Yahoo! subscribers will still make money for Apple.
People forget these things all too quickly. First, in the marketplace, you only play ball with people who can play ball. Apple has no peers right now in the marketplace. Therefore, it will not cooperate with anyone. It doesn't have to. Second, the entire iTunes/iPod scheme is flexible. With software updates you can make the two manage almost any format.
Apple is not wedded to the present model, but it WILL milk it for all it can, and right now the milk flowin'.