Is it possible that TiVo has yet to tap some revenue sources. I don't know the legal side of things, but can't TiVo start selling "commercials" or spot ads or whatever?
They already give "Showcases" which probably cost someone some cash. They also allow commercials to have the "Thumbs Up" popup to easily record a new show.
Once a TiVo box knows your viewing habits, there's no limits to the kinds of adverting it can serve you --- and marketers would be far more interesting in paying TiVo to deliver an ad to a target audience.
I think it's far too early to start writing the epitaph on TiVo's gravestone.
I think your comment, although true, represents a very small portion of the "artistic community".
Most of the artists I know (albiet, not many) are certainly thrilled to create new music and paintings, but they still need to bring dinner to the table. And that, I think, is what he is talking about.
I'm all for getting rid of the big record labels and empowering artists to work independantly through the power of the internet, but that will never "bring dinner to the table" until DRM is effective.
The WMA client doesn't download anything. It directs you to a website where you can get information about the license. Legitimately, you would see the licence provider's information and their message. ie: Your license is expired, we couldn't authenticate you, RIAA ownz joo, etc.
In this case, the webpage that WMA loads up is filled with malicious software.
If you RTFA, you'd understand that Windows Media Player attemps to connect to the Internet when a file is played that it doesn't have a valid license for.
In theory, if you download an MP3 with DRM enabled, Windows Media Player will search your computer for the license. If it doesn't find it, it will go to the URL specified in the MP3. This is part of the DRM spec.
"Hackers" are just taking advantage of this, creating fake MP3s/MOVs and making those URLs go to junk-infested sites.
In WMP's defense, it *does* ask you first if you want to go out and hit the site for the DRM license. And once you get there, if you're running SP2 then security is no different than any other mailious website you may visit.
SP2 should block the popups, and give you a much more informative warning if the site tries to push software onto your computer.
Those are all good points, and the cost of the investment must be measured against the return (from employee efficiencies and collaboration).
One could also argue that email and internet access are unnecessary costs, and should be done away with in favor of postal mail, faxes, and phones.
However, I wouldn't go saying that you will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for just 200 employees. That's a typical/. comment.
I just reviewed a recent proposal for a school district with 4000 employees. The cost to run Exchange (multiple boxes, clients, administration, installation, backups, the whole gig) was just under $100,000. The company also wanted $5,000 per month for ongoing services. That does not include user Office licenses though.
Where I work, we have 50 employees who are all very heavy email users. One box does it all. We have one local admin guy who takes care of that box and all the other workstations. Works great.
I just picked up a $199 (after rebate) TiVo from Best Buy.. the 80 gig model. Add to the $199 the cost of lifetime subscription to TiVo's programming service ($299).
So yeah $500 is a lot for a glorified VCR... but I have to say that the damn thing is so easy to use it was worth it.
I set the thing up to my wireless network in minutes. Now I can stream MP3s onto it from my server. Photos too.
Sure you can piece your own together using MPEG decoder cards and free (or not) software, but you're gonna spend more time tinkering than you would watching TV. And if you include the price of your computer, you're gonna spend a lot more than the $500 that I did.
Not to mention the thing will never lock up, get a virus, or need to be reinstalled.
Well said, and you barely touched upon some of Outlooks other integration features and sharing capabilities.
Everyone claming that this is an "Outlook Killer" seems to have never used Outlook/Exchange in a business environment. Prior posters have already talked about calendar and contact sharing, so I won't go into that.
Realize also that Outlook integrates with every other MS program.
You can be viewing a Contact and immediately launch MapPoint to get directions.
You can use Word as your email editor for advanced formatting features.
You can use Project in conjuction with Exchange to send out emails about project status and new information. People can "check in" to the system and tell it what their progress is.
Copy and Pasting from any MS app (even Excel) into an Outlook email is seamless and darn-near perfect.
If you're working on a complex Word document and need a bunch of people to proof/edit, you can distribute it to everyone, they make their changes and send back, and Word will combine everything together into one doc with everyone's changes in different colors.
The list goes on and on and on. And until the Open Source community crawls out of their anti-corporate cave and starts to actually *use* these features, they will never be able to create a product that rivals Outlook/Exchange.
Meanwhile, MS is working on further enhancements to the Office Suite that tie in CRM software, accounting, and more. As a sales person, you'll be able to use Outlook to view your prospects and quotes. As an AP person, you'll be able to view pending invoices and pay them. All this tied into the overall system.
Basically, for anything to be a "killer" of Outlook, it's got to be a killer for the whole Office Suite.
In that case, you'll be happy to know that starting with Office 2003 a user (or admin) can change the default Save Format by going to Tools, Options, Save, and looking at the bottom.
You could also coach your clients to choose File, Save As, File Type, and "XML" if you really wanted to.:)
With InfoPath's native format being XML, you can bet that it won't take too many more versions until other MS files do the same thing.
Wow. Please try crawling out from your rock and take a look at the last two versions of MS Office.
Both 2002 and 2003 have been totally integrated on XML formats and supported it back and forth. Every program imports/exports to XML. Excel can pull data from XML documents like Access from an SQL server. Even FrontPage can edit XML data nativly.
The new Infopath program uses XML as its native file format.
Microsoft has done everything *but* refuse to adopt XML.
MS also has supported RSS. Take a look at their website news articles (the Expert Zone, for example).
I looked on the site but couldn't find the list. Care to post the URL?
I would suspect, admittedly without looking at the list yet, that the majority of these "broken" applications are the same ones that were "broken" when SP2 came out for XP because of the default firewall settings.
I heard that unplugging your 'puter from the internets also "breaks" thems programs, too.
I haven't RTFKB (knowledge base) yet, but in past history, that's exactly what Microsoft has done.
Service Packs have been nothing more than a collection of minor upgrades and patches that have been released here and there.
Granted, a few major changes might come into the mix... such as the new Firewall for XP SP2.. but can you really expect Microsoft to develop upgrades for the potentially thousands of different "versions" of an OS if users only choose to install a fraction of the patches?
Service Packs help to bring everyone onto the same version, with a quick and easy way to communicate what version things are running at.
I'm not at all thrilled with the 3D games nearly as much as I was with the 2D stuff.
I want the old classics back, with better sound and graphics and more levels.
The other day I was itching to play a classic side-scroller like R-Type or Gradius and couldn't find one.
And, while listening to a bunch of MP3 remixes (www.ocremix.org) I came across tunes from Mega Man 2. What a great game!! Then they go and ruin it by adding all sorts of crazy new stuff that just muck with the original formula.
Wasn't the whole point of the IE lawsuit that IE shouldn't have been tied into Windows? And that there is no reason why the browser should be tied in so tightly?
And now Novell is saying that the reason WP failed is because it couldn't tie it into the browser?
I don't remember what it was like back in the mid 90s, but today computers are NOT shipped with Word or Office by default.
My girlfriend's computer (a Sony VAIO) came with WordPerfect for free. To upgrade to MS Works (bleh) was an extra $50. To upgrade to Office was like $200.
The laptop I just bought from Dell did not come with Office for free. I had to pay extra for it. And it is the Latitude (business) line, not the Inspirion (home).
Schools teach students how to use Office because that is what businesses use. It is not because MS gives them discounted software. What good would a class in WordPerfect be for a 12th grader? Might as well teach them AmiPro or StarOffice.
For what it's worth, I was a die-hard WP user when 4.2 was around, and even a little bit when 5.0 and 5.1 was new. This was in my senior year of high school.
The computer lab at school had MS Word on it - the "brand new" version which I think was 2.0. It sucked big time and I refused to use it.
Sometime later, I think when Windows/Office 95 came out, I ran across Word again and used it to make a quick document. WYSIWYG was new to me, and I actually liked using it.
Also at that time, WP came out with 6.0 which was horrendous. It was slow, uninteresting to look at, hard to use, bulky, and had too many bugs to deal with.
Needless to say, soon after I switched from being a WP snob to a Word snob.
If you wanted to go that route with "extreme" precaution... just run Windows under a virtual machine.
Microsoft makes (aquired) a great VM software that lets you run instances just like anything else. Perfect for development. Or in your case, web surfing.:)
That's because there aren't a gazillion programs integrated into Firefox. Systems that integrate into IE were created because users, programmers, or businesses wanted/needed them. Not just because Microsoft wanted to dominate the market.
Integrating programs like Word, MapPoint, or languages like.NET into IE allows users a common interface into programs that need Web access. And, it gives programmers a great deal of flexibility and expandability, without having to learn anything foreign.
And, I'm pretty certain that if you upgrade FF you'll likely break a few extensions that weren't upgraded along with it.
The only real advantage of a catch-all, like you said, is to catch mistyped emails which were intended for you but wouldn't normally reach you.
Your ISP should allow you to set up a number (usually unlimited) of free aliases for your email account.
So, if you are joe@domain.com, you could create a number of aliases that redirect email to your mail account, transparent to the sender:
joesmith@domain.com
jsmith@domain.com
joes@domain.com
joe.smith@domain.com
j.smith@domain.com
etc
As someone else suggested, it's also useful to sign up with websites with "personalized" emails based on their name... like signing up with NYTimes as nytimes@yourdomain.com. Then, alias that new address back to your name.. and turn it off if they start spamming you.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it possible that TiVo has yet to tap some revenue sources. I don't know the legal side of things, but can't TiVo start selling "commercials" or spot ads or whatever?
They already give "Showcases" which probably cost someone some cash. They also allow commercials to have the "Thumbs Up" popup to easily record a new show.
Once a TiVo box knows your viewing habits, there's no limits to the kinds of adverting it can serve you --- and marketers would be far more interesting in paying TiVo to deliver an ad to a target audience.
I think it's far too early to start writing the epitaph on TiVo's gravestone.
I think your comment, although true, represents a very small portion of the "artistic community".
Most of the artists I know (albiet, not many) are certainly thrilled to create new music and paintings, but they still need to bring dinner to the table. And that, I think, is what he is talking about.
I'm all for getting rid of the big record labels and empowering artists to work independantly through the power of the internet, but that will never "bring dinner to the table" until DRM is effective.
> He's actually kind of right. IN a comunist/socialist systme, the people own the code. (Since the people own everything.)
/. right?
I thought, in Communist Russia, the code owned the people!?
This is still
You're probably right. I'm using "MP3" in a generic sense.... kind of like calling something a "xerox copy" when it's really a photocopy.
The WMA client doesn't download anything. It directs you to a website where you can get information about the license. Legitimately, you would see the licence provider's information and their message. ie: Your license is expired, we couldn't authenticate you, RIAA ownz joo, etc.
In this case, the webpage that WMA loads up is filled with malicious software.
If you RTFA, you'd understand that Windows Media Player attemps to connect to the Internet when a file is played that it doesn't have a valid license for.
In theory, if you download an MP3 with DRM enabled, Windows Media Player will search your computer for the license. If it doesn't find it, it will go to the URL specified in the MP3. This is part of the DRM spec.
"Hackers" are just taking advantage of this, creating fake MP3s/MOVs and making those URLs go to junk-infested sites.
In WMP's defense, it *does* ask you first if you want to go out and hit the site for the DRM license. And once you get there, if you're running SP2 then security is no different than any other mailious website you may visit.
SP2 should block the popups, and give you a much more informative warning if the site tries to push software onto your computer.
I think you're confusing the word "greater" with "higher".
An 11% *greater* TCO would mean that the TCO is 11% greater, or better, or in this case: lower.
An 11% *higher* TCO would most definitely be a Bad Thing.
If we were playing golf and I scored "greater" than you did, the general assumption is that I had a lower score.
Though I agree, "lower" would have been far less confusing.
Those are all good points, and the cost of the investment must be measured against the return (from employee efficiencies and collaboration).
/. comment.
One could also argue that email and internet access are unnecessary costs, and should be done away with in favor of postal mail, faxes, and phones.
However, I wouldn't go saying that you will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for just 200 employees. That's a typical
I just reviewed a recent proposal for a school district with 4000 employees. The cost to run Exchange (multiple boxes, clients, administration, installation, backups, the whole gig) was just under $100,000. The company also wanted $5,000 per month for ongoing services. That does not include user Office licenses though.
Where I work, we have 50 employees who are all very heavy email users. One box does it all. We have one local admin guy who takes care of that box and all the other workstations. Works great.
I just picked up a $199 (after rebate) TiVo from Best Buy.. the 80 gig model. Add to the $199 the cost of lifetime subscription to TiVo's programming service ($299).
So yeah $500 is a lot for a glorified VCR... but I have to say that the damn thing is so easy to use it was worth it.
I set the thing up to my wireless network in minutes. Now I can stream MP3s onto it from my server. Photos too.
Sure you can piece your own together using MPEG decoder cards and free (or not) software, but you're gonna spend more time tinkering than you would watching TV. And if you include the price of your computer, you're gonna spend a lot more than the $500 that I did.
Not to mention the thing will never lock up, get a virus, or need to be reinstalled.
Well said, and you barely touched upon some of Outlooks other integration features and sharing capabilities.
Everyone claming that this is an "Outlook Killer" seems to have never used Outlook/Exchange in a business environment. Prior posters have already talked about calendar and contact sharing, so I won't go into that.
Realize also that Outlook integrates with every other MS program.
You can be viewing a Contact and immediately launch MapPoint to get directions.
You can use Word as your email editor for advanced formatting features.
You can use Project in conjuction with Exchange to send out emails about project status and new information. People can "check in" to the system and tell it what their progress is.
Copy and Pasting from any MS app (even Excel) into an Outlook email is seamless and darn-near perfect.
If you're working on a complex Word document and need a bunch of people to proof/edit, you can distribute it to everyone, they make their changes and send back, and Word will combine everything together into one doc with everyone's changes in different colors.
The list goes on and on and on. And until the Open Source community crawls out of their anti-corporate cave and starts to actually *use* these features, they will never be able to create a product that rivals Outlook/Exchange.
Meanwhile, MS is working on further enhancements to the Office Suite that tie in CRM software, accounting, and more. As a sales person, you'll be able to use Outlook to view your prospects and quotes. As an AP person, you'll be able to view pending invoices and pay them. All this tied into the overall system.
Basically, for anything to be a "killer" of Outlook, it's got to be a killer for the whole Office Suite.
In that case, you'll be happy to know that starting with Office 2003 a user (or admin) can change the default Save Format by going to Tools, Options, Save, and looking at the bottom.
:)
You could also coach your clients to choose File, Save As, File Type, and "XML" if you really wanted to.
With InfoPath's native format being XML, you can bet that it won't take too many more versions until other MS files do the same thing.
Wow. Please try crawling out from your rock and take a look at the last two versions of MS Office.
Both 2002 and 2003 have been totally integrated on XML formats and supported it back and forth. Every program imports/exports to XML. Excel can pull data from XML documents like Access from an SQL server. Even FrontPage can edit XML data nativly.
The new Infopath program uses XML as its native file format.
Microsoft has done everything *but* refuse to adopt XML.
MS also has supported RSS. Take a look at their website news articles (the Expert Zone, for example).
I looked on the site but couldn't find the list. Care to post the URL?
I would suspect, admittedly without looking at the list yet, that the majority of these "broken" applications are the same ones that were "broken" when SP2 came out for XP because of the default firewall settings.
I heard that unplugging your 'puter from the internets also "breaks" thems programs, too.
> PCs exist to run the applications. no one cares about a PC that can run the OS perfectly if it can't run useful apps.
Funny, that's exactly what Windows users have been saying about Macs and *nix since the beginning of time.
Never heard it used against Windows though. Mod +1 Paradox
I haven't RTFKB (knowledge base) yet, but in past history, that's exactly what Microsoft has done.
Service Packs have been nothing more than a collection of minor upgrades and patches that have been released here and there.
Granted, a few major changes might come into the mix... such as the new Firewall for XP SP2.. but can you really expect Microsoft to develop upgrades for the potentially thousands of different "versions" of an OS if users only choose to install a fraction of the patches?
Service Packs help to bring everyone onto the same version, with a quick and easy way to communicate what version things are running at.
I have to agree with you 100% and then some.
I'm not at all thrilled with the 3D games nearly as much as I was with the 2D stuff.
I want the old classics back, with better sound and graphics and more levels.
The other day I was itching to play a classic side-scroller like R-Type or Gradius and couldn't find one.
And, while listening to a bunch of MP3 remixes (www.ocremix.org) I came across tunes from Mega Man 2. What a great game!! Then they go and ruin it by adding all sorts of crazy new stuff that just muck with the original formula.
*sigh*
Wasn't the whole point of the IE lawsuit that IE shouldn't have been tied into Windows? And that there is no reason why the browser should be tied in so tightly?
And now Novell is saying that the reason WP failed is because it couldn't tie it into the browser?
I don't remember what it was like back in the mid 90s, but today computers are NOT shipped with Word or Office by default.
My girlfriend's computer (a Sony VAIO) came with WordPerfect for free. To upgrade to MS Works (bleh) was an extra $50. To upgrade to Office was like $200.
The laptop I just bought from Dell did not come with Office for free. I had to pay extra for it. And it is the Latitude (business) line, not the Inspirion (home).
Schools teach students how to use Office because that is what businesses use. It is not because MS gives them discounted software. What good would a class in WordPerfect be for a 12th grader? Might as well teach them AmiPro or StarOffice.
For what it's worth, I was a die-hard WP user when 4.2 was around, and even a little bit when 5.0 and 5.1 was new. This was in my senior year of high school.
The computer lab at school had MS Word on it - the "brand new" version which I think was 2.0. It sucked big time and I refused to use it.
Sometime later, I think when Windows/Office 95 came out, I ran across Word again and used it to make a quick document. WYSIWYG was new to me, and I actually liked using it.
Also at that time, WP came out with 6.0 which was horrendous. It was slow, uninteresting to look at, hard to use, bulky, and had too many bugs to deal with.
Needless to say, soon after I switched from being a WP snob to a Word snob.
Once again, you (and me, and everyone on /.) represent 1% of 1% of the rest of the world.
Every computer I've ever seen has all your default favorites still there.
Just like the default Quick Launch (that damned Desktop link, Outlook Express, etc).
Just like every program known to man each in their own Start Menu folder.
Just like the dozen Tray icons that install themselves which you and I always remove or hide (Quick Time, Real, AV, Security Center, etc).
Windows has had native virtual desktop support, I believe since Windows 2000.
The trick is simply to download the Power Toy that enables it, freely available off Microsoft's website.
The only downside is that it supports a max of 4 desktops. But it does work rather smoothly.
If you wanted to go that route with "extreme" precaution... just run Windows under a virtual machine.
:)
Microsoft makes (aquired) a great VM software that lets you run instances just like anything else. Perfect for development. Or in your case, web surfing.
That's because there aren't a gazillion programs integrated into Firefox. Systems that integrate into IE were created because users, programmers, or businesses wanted/needed them. Not just because Microsoft wanted to dominate the market.
.NET into IE allows users a common interface into programs that need Web access. And, it gives programmers a great deal of flexibility and expandability, without having to learn anything foreign.
Integrating programs like Word, MapPoint, or languages like
And, I'm pretty certain that if you upgrade FF you'll likely break a few extensions that weren't upgraded along with it.
> Everyone's favorite, the paperclip.
Hello! It looks like you're picking a lock! Would you like my help?
The only real advantage of a catch-all, like you said, is to catch mistyped emails which were intended for you but wouldn't normally reach you.
Your ISP should allow you to set up a number (usually unlimited) of free aliases for your email account.
So, if you are joe@domain.com, you could create a number of aliases that redirect email to your mail account, transparent to the sender:
joesmith@domain.com
jsmith@domain.com
joes@domain.com
joe.smith@domain.com
j.smith@domain.com
etc
As someone else suggested, it's also useful to sign up with websites with "personalized" emails based on their name... like signing up with NYTimes as nytimes@yourdomain.com. Then, alias that new address back to your name.. and turn it off if they start spamming you.