Ok. I have checked further through the purchases we have.
Some *are* at 128 (Otis Reading - Remember Me as an example), and
those are the ones I checked. Many others are indeed higher.
Sadly emusic is a long way from an ideal mp3 service. I'm a member, and here is my feedback:
There is a limit choice. Dont expect to find hot new albums there. So far all my searches for artists I listen to regularly has been fruitless. On the plus side, I have downloaded artists I wouldn't have looked at before.
Music is 128kbps bitrate. They're basically delivering the absolute minimum quality that I, and many others, consider usable (yes, I know that's going to be very subjective - but all my music encoded from my CDs is at 256 or 320 - space isn't an issue so why not encode as high as possible).
I'm on the 30 songs per month for $10. Which sounds good at 33c each. However, I like to buy albums, which is extremely awkward as you have to carefully spread them across months and keep track of what you have got so far.
If you dont download 30 per month (or accidently skip a month when you are on the road, as I did) then the 33c per song jumps quickly.
The option to listen to a snippet of a song is lame. Deliver the whole song, or a good part of it. Not just 20 or so seconds. Sometimes I have listened to a snippet and not even got to the words.
There are some pluses - such as there being a downloader for linux (java based), the website being clean and simple to use, and the id3 tags being clean (artist, album, year, genre, BUT no cover).
Personally I think they should make a minor change to their business model. I pay $10 for 30 songs per month. Instead of limiting me to 30 songs, if I go over 30, immediately start another "month" (another 30 songs, another $10). That is, I can download as much as I like, and its about 33c each for each block of 30. With a min of $10 per month. If I commit to one of their higher plans, I can buy songs at a cheaper rate.
That would dramatically increase revenue as I am sure a lot of people like to buy albums, but keep hitting the 30 songs per month limit. They'd cycle "months" much more quickly. However it could reduce profit as people are less likely to fail to download their limit (Think: their best result is when I download nothing in a month).
Ok, not being able to install additional packages at installation is a big deal, but calling it a "security issue" is a little silly. No ports are listening on a default Ubuntu install. It doesn't need to be "secured".
No!
Not having to make choices at install time is EXACTLY the reason that ubuntu is good. After a couple of simple questions, you are up and running with a very well configured system with the best one of each type of app installed that most people want. You dont have a huge stack of apps installed that you dont need.
If that idea doesn't suit you, then I think you need a different distro. Dont go raining on ubuntu because its executing its plan well. (And by the way, that plan is exactly what the general population want/need).
[Note: I run linux at home (both home PC and MythTV). I usually run Xp at work, but switched to Ubuntu for 6 months, now to XP Tablet]
The first reponses are classic examples from the linux fraternity...
Got a problem? here's the source code. Now go away. I'll skip those.
Seamless Inteoperability
Open and share documents
Please be more specific: What documents? Share in what way?
Easy... I want to read and write docx and doc file properly.
For all their uglyness, they are pervasive.
When I ran ubuntu on my desktop, these were the biggest pain by far.
Avialability Of Core Apps
Photoshop (sorry, gimp doens't cut it yet)
Please be more specific: What does Photoshop Elements do that GIMPshop does not? Or which set of users are you thinking of who needs those features that are in Photoshop but not in Photoshop Elements?
Please be more specific: Doesn't a typical distribution of GNU/Linux come with several games?
You're joking, right?
(Sadly I think you're not)
If you want to see linux make headway, dont make it the users problem.
Its a BUSINESS challenge. We've got a *great* technology (Linux) - how can
we see broader adoption and more revenue. What do the *users* want (hint - its not to be reading through USB driver help sites wondering why the printer doesn't work).
I want to see linux improve, I want to see linux adoption increase.
For two reasons:
Linux will get a broader adoption driving more business, growth and better products.
Microsoft makes better products when they are under threat.
You need to ask yourself - what will make more of a difference to the users? Q: Is it performance? A: Nope. Performnce is arguably already very good. You might be able to wring another couple of percent, but thats not going to generate any excitement.
Q: is it reliability? A: Nope. Linux is reliable. Its stable. There are certainly actions we could take to meet needs in the high-end corporate/daa center world, but for greater adoption, thats not it.
Q: Is it hardware support? A: Yes! (well, thats a part).
Let me give you a hint. The groups we need to have onside are - the partners. They will sell it and install it and get it out there - the users. They will buy it. Both home and corporate.
And what to they want?
Here's my pick, and I'm sure there are a few others: SIMPLE hardware compatibility I want to plug my mobile phone in (without having to figure out multisync) I want to plug in my webcam I want to use ANY video card without having to look up some compatibility list
Seamless Inteoperability Open and share documents
Simple UI Ubuntu were the first to cotton on to this. Users don't want a complex menu structure with admin functions spread all over the place. This is the one area that I would say several Linux distros are really on the ball.
Avialability Of Core Apps Photoshop (sorry, gimp doens't cut it yet) Games
yeah, kinda like the 1-5 million hours for the MTBF of current hard drives. With estimated life of 1000 years.
Well, latest Seagates have MTBF of 1.2 million, which I make to be "only" 136 years...
But I take your point - these numbers are probably unreliable. Noone gets 136 years from an HDD.
However I suspect the SSD numbers may be less unreliable than the HDD ones, simply because of a lack of moving parts, and that the degradaton of flash write cycles is pretty well understood. I've actually tested a set of flash drives to failure (for a work project - we wanted to check the manufacturers numbers) and what we got were certainly within - and often far exceeded - manufacturers stated MTBF.
We also did some MTBF testing of our own equipment. Mostly it was putting a large number in an oven and taking it through a series of temperature cycles over a number of days - to simulate day/night/high load/low load with the devices at full load. After cycles representing years, we counted the number of failures (very very small) and got an MTBF figure "in excess of 300,000 hours". Its an inexact science with solid state electronics - probably more so with HDDs and moving parts.
My mythtv PVR uses the MII12000 (1.2GHz), which is rated at 20-30W. With HDD, DVD, encoder card etc, it draws 80W on start, and somewhere between 30-60W when running.
Take 10-20W off my figures by using their 1.5GHz ULV and you get potentially more processing power at less than 50W!
I know that VIA chips are pretty feeble (i.e. their 1.5GHz chip is probably closer to a 1GHz intel chip), but with an encoder card (dual actually) I can be recording two channels with the CPU at 10%. Given their mobos have mpeg decoders on board, I can add watching a DVD or TV for another 30-40% CPU time.
The only thing is ad-skipping and re-encoding are pretty slow.
Current flash technology has 1-5 million *write* cycles MTBF. All modern flash drives use write levelling to ensure writes are evenly spread across the device.
This article takes those numbers and using a hypothetical "write logger" app that continually writes, estimates an average life of 51 years.
The users of our apps are business professionals who are forced to use them, so they are are more tolerant of access times being a second or two slower than they could be.
Actually, being forced to use your app doesn't make them more tolerant of delays. It makes *you* more tolerant because your users can't go away. They still hate the delays.
If record companies want me to stop downloading music from P2P networks, they need to offer a better-quality product than that available for free. I can get all the 256kbps MP3s I want on P2P. The only way to make me even consider actually paying for a mere audio file (as opposed to a CD which has liner notes etc.) is to offer FLAC.
So lets see... you want them to offer a better product than you can steal for free before you will consider buying their product. (yeah I know... it's technically not theft, it's copyright violation, but the point stands)
At least there is some value in the second point. I should be getting a discount for downloading rather than forcing them to stamp DVD's, make a case, insert a liner blah blah, stock, ship, etc. And that's not happening yet.
Re:If you're worried about artificial limitations.
on
Best Non-Subscription DVR?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I can build one for ~ USD500 - 600. Admittedly without the gorgeous silverstone case. Not as cheap as a DVR, but no subscription. And much more functional.
I work at an s/w house focusing on the use of MS products. I run both Linux and windows
at work and at home, and have a myth box. So I think I can comment on both camps.
I dont think MS is doing as poorly as you think: check out here - especially the 5 year graph. A slow but steady climb for the last 5 years, with plenty of volatility.
FireFox is gaining ground at the expense of IE
Yep - in my neck of the woods the rate is 25% or more.
However IE has been stagnant for many years. But MS react very well
when under threat - which they haven't been for a while therefore they've
had few enemies worth focusing on. Now they have one - firefox.
So IE is now back on the menu and I think we'll see a lot of good features coming out.
So consider - if 90% of the world have something as good as (or near enough
to that it doesn't matter) as firefox on their desktop by default - will they
install FF? Dont underestimate the power of a monopoly. I predict
more IE releases and some tough competition for FF.
ODF is gaining ground at MS' expense
OOo is gaining ground at MS' expense
Well - both ODF and OOXML are a pile of doggy doo. One chap pointed
out that they're both thin wrappers around binary data.
This is the one place I think you have something - OOo is making
some inroads, helped strongly by the insane price that MS can charge
for office. Right now compatibility is the big stumbling block - a vast
majority of the world wants good looking.DOC files, and OOo only
does a (barely) passible job of reading and creating them. Expect MS to make that
even harder.
Dell is shipping Ubuntu systems at the expense of Vista
Dell is shipping XP systems at the expense of Vista
Lets put these in perspective:
MS sold 400,000 vita licenses per day. To put that in perspective:
8 weeks to beat Mac users
3 days to exceed Linux desktop users
4 days to exceed Mac sales
Now I'm the first to admit there's bound to be some channel stuffing
going on here, but those are pretty persuasive numbers.
Dell will undoubtedly move some Ubuntu licenses (my fav distro - the
only one that really understands what non-unix-geeks want.
(ducks for cover).
But remember this is Dell... so expect crap support and crapware. They
can make a windows install just aweful - imagine what they'll do for
ubuntu.
Zune is all but buried in the back pages of tech history
You forgot to also mention windows mobile. Unstable, slow,
and really just a bad idea because it was (and probably still is)
based on the '95 codebase.
Look - its hard to create a business as good as windows/office.
But some of their server products are damn good - look at windows server and
SQL Server (their data mining, reporting and analysis tools
are just awesome).
These stumbles are natural - apple had a few. Think: newton, Pink,
AUX, the Puck and Cube. Gorgeous, innovative flops.
I could go on... but lets just not count them out yet.
It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent
In theory, yes, maybe.
In practical, no. There are core areas to everyone's technology and those are what you need to focus on. In Vonage's case - their VoIP to POTS switching would at least have deserved a quick patent check. Its painful, but a few days work at most by a senior architect who understands their system.
I'm not defending the patent spagetti we have now - but it *is* possible to do a relatively quick patent check when you are setting up a business.
I suspect what has happened is that Vonage started putting together their service before patents really got as high profile and tangled as they are now. I would *bet* they knew about the patent issue at some point, and probably hoped it would go away.
My day to day calculator is an HP-14b 50th Anniversary Limited Edition!, with the waaayyy coooool SWAP key. Talk about turning it up to 11!
[joke] And it doesn't rely on that arse-backwards RPN crap either. HP did include an INPUT button to make engineers feel at home, although why engineers would want a calculator with: - time value of money - return on investment - inventory turnover rate is beyond me. [/joke]
(dons flame suit anyway because poking at beloved RPN is dangerous around here)
In New Zealand we used to have strict limits on bandwidth usage. 500MB, 1G, 2G, 5G and 10G plans were all that was available. Performance wasn't too bad - longer latency than the US but 200KB/s (bytes/s) downloads were common.
After much hue and cry over these limits, the dominant ISP (who also supplies bandwidth to many other ISPs and provides ADSL to the home for just about everyone) removed all limits.
Since then performance has gone down the toilet. I'm lucky to get 50KB/s in quiet times and 20KB/s during peak times.
So just a perspective that limits aren't always bad.
Not quite true. Album artwork is also not stored in ID3 by default.
However it turns out you can "convince" itunes to use
ID3 for artwork
with a clever trick
I'd like to amplify the comments about being an MP3 tag nazi (does that count as Godwinning??).
The beauty of spending all your time getting the MP3 tags right and the album art and lyrics *embedded* into the tags is that someday, guaranteed, you are going to have to move from one media organiser to another. Amarok wont always be the killer app and some other smart organiser will take its place.
If you're tag data is good, that switch will be trivial. If, like itunes, it stores some data in a DB rather than tags, you get locked in.
I've been through the patent process a few times (required as part of doing business now days). While they make a number of high profile mistakes, our patents have been (as far as I can tell) examined thoroughly. Some claims were denied, some admitted and one whole patent app rejected. They often asked for more information and did seem to do research in the field.
It took anywhere from 3 years to 4+ (still waiting on that one).
Their new moves are a significant downgrade, putting the onus on the inventor to provide due diligence, which they are not incented to do. In fact, quite the opposite.
They are simply handing responsibility to the courts.
In fact, they could save a few million dollars by simply
stamping *every* patent app, then let the oourts sort out
the real ones when litigation hits the fan.
Then Google introduced a weird, weirdly compelling system that lets you watch your Gmail allowance grow moment by moment. (At the moment, I have 2833.40496GB--waitaminnit, now it's 2833.40454GB.)
2833.40496 -> 2833.40454
Looks like he must have ticked off someone at google.
3000-5000 is the usual settlement, but it does go higher. Multiply that by 18000 served. Thats at least 54 mil, and possibly a *lot* more. Enough to keep a few lawyers busy, and to pay for the few cases they've lost.
There are two reasons why this, in theory, could be a problem, but in reality wont be.
a) Guaranteed writes for flash cells are now in the millions b) almost all (and possibly all) flash memory systems use write levelling technology to ensure the write load is spread.
We use them for small 24x7 computers doing UI and data capture work, and after several years the flash has yet to fail on any of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok. I have checked further through the purchases we have. Some *are* at 128 (Otis Reading - Remember Me as an example), and those are the ones I checked. Many others are indeed higher.
There are some pluses - such as there being a downloader for linux (java based), the website being clean and simple to use, and the id3 tags being clean (artist, album, year, genre, BUT no cover).
Personally I think they should make a minor change to their business model. I pay $10 for 30 songs per month. Instead of limiting me to 30 songs, if I go over 30, immediately start another "month" (another 30 songs, another $10). That is, I can download as much as I like, and its about 33c each for each block of 30. With a min of $10 per month. If I commit to one of their higher plans, I can buy songs at a cheaper rate.
That would dramatically increase revenue as I am sure a lot of people like to buy albums, but keep hitting the 30 songs per month limit. They'd cycle "months" much more quickly. However it could reduce profit as people are less likely to fail to download their limit (Think: their best result is when I download nothing in a month).
Anyway, just my $0.02c worth.
No!
Not having to make choices at install time is EXACTLY the reason that ubuntu is good. After a couple of simple questions, you are up and running with a very well configured system with the best one of each type of app installed that most people want. You dont have a huge stack of apps installed that you dont need.
If that idea doesn't suit you, then I think you need a different distro. Dont go raining on ubuntu because its executing its plan well. (And by the way, that plan is exactly what the general population want/need).
The first reponses are classic examples from the linux fraternity... Got a problem? here's the source code. Now go away. I'll skip those.
Easy... I want to read and write docx and doc file properly. For all their uglyness, they are pervasive. When I ran ubuntu on my desktop, these were the biggest pain by far.
See here You're joking, right? (Sadly I think you're not)If you want to see linux make headway, dont make it the users problem. Its a BUSINESS challenge. We've got a *great* technology (Linux) - how can we see broader adoption and more revenue. What do the *users* want (hint - its not to be reading through USB driver help sites wondering why the printer doesn't work).
I want to see linux improve, I want to see linux adoption increase. For two reasons:
- Linux will get a broader adoption driving more business, growth and better products.
- Microsoft makes better products when they are under threat.
Wins for everyone!That is completely the wrong approach.
You need to ask yourself - what will make more of a difference to the users?
Q: Is it performance?
A: Nope. Performnce is arguably already very good. You might be able to wring another couple of percent, but thats not going to generate any excitement.
Q: is it reliability?
A: Nope. Linux is reliable. Its stable. There are certainly actions we could take to meet needs in the high-end corporate/daa center world, but for greater adoption, thats not it.
Q: Is it hardware support?
A: Yes! (well, thats a part).
Let me give you a hint.
The groups we need to have onside are
- the partners. They will sell it and install it and get it out there
- the users. They will buy it. Both home and corporate.
And what to they want?
Here's my pick, and I'm sure there are a few others:
SIMPLE hardware compatibility
I want to plug my mobile phone in (without having to figure out multisync)
I want to plug in my webcam
I want to use ANY video card without having to look up some compatibility list
Seamless Inteoperability
Open and share documents
Simple UI
Ubuntu were the first to cotton on to this. Users don't want a complex menu structure with admin functions spread all over the place.
This is the one area that I would say several Linux distros are really on the ball.
Avialability Of Core Apps
Photoshop (sorry, gimp doens't cut it yet)
Games
and so on...
Well, latest Seagates have MTBF of 1.2 million, which I make to be "only" 136 years...
But I take your point - these numbers are probably unreliable.
Noone gets 136 years from an HDD.
However I suspect the SSD numbers may be less unreliable than the HDD ones,
simply because of a lack of moving parts, and that the degradaton
of flash write cycles is pretty well understood. I've actually
tested a set of flash drives to failure (for a work project - we wanted
to check the manufacturers numbers) and
what we got were certainly within - and often far exceeded - manufacturers
stated MTBF.
We also did some MTBF testing of our own equipment. Mostly it was
putting a large number in an oven and taking it through a series
of temperature cycles over a number of days - to simulate day/night/high load/low load
with the devices at full load. After cycles representing years, we counted the
number of failures (very very small) and got an MTBF figure
"in excess of 300,000 hours". Its an inexact science with solid state
electronics - probably more so with HDDs and moving parts.
My mythtv PVR uses the MII12000 (1.2GHz), which is rated at
20-30W. With HDD, DVD, encoder card etc, it draws 80W on start,
and somewhere between 30-60W when running.
Take 10-20W off my figures by using their 1.5GHz ULV
and you get potentially more processing power at less
than 50W!
I know that VIA chips are pretty feeble (i.e. their 1.5GHz
chip is probably closer to a 1GHz intel chip), but with an
encoder card (dual actually) I can be recording two
channels with the CPU at 10%. Given their mobos have
mpeg decoders on board, I can add watching a DVD or TV
for another 30-40% CPU time.
The only thing is ad-skipping and re-encoding are pretty
slow.
All modern flash drives use write levelling to ensure writes
are evenly spread across the device.
This article
takes those numbers and using a hypothetical "write logger" app that
continually writes, estimates an average life of 51 years.
MTron specs for their SSDs estimate:
So lets lay this one to rest. SSDs are worth it.
Actually, being forced to use your app doesn't make them more tolerant of delays. It makes *you* more tolerant because your users can't go away. They still hate the delays.
So lets see... you want them to offer a better product than you can steal for free
before you will consider buying their product.
(yeah I know... it's technically not theft, it's copyright violation, but the point stands)
At least there is some value in the second point. I should be getting a discount for downloading
rather than forcing them to stamp DVD's, make a case, insert a liner blah blah, stock,
ship, etc. And that's not happening yet.
Wrong.
I can build one for ~ USD500 - 600. Admittedly without the gorgeous silverstone case.
Not as cheap as a DVR, but no subscription. And much
more functional.
I dont think MS is doing as poorly as you think: check out here - especially the 5 year graph. A slow but steady climb for the last 5 years, with plenty of volatility.
Yep - in my neck of the woods the rate is 25% or more. However IE has been stagnant for many years. But MS react very well when under threat - which they haven't been for a while therefore they've had few enemies worth focusing on. Now they have one - firefox. So IE is now back on the menu and I think we'll see a lot of good features coming out.So consider - if 90% of the world have something as good as (or near enough to that it doesn't matter) as firefox on their desktop by default - will they install FF? Dont underestimate the power of a monopoly. I predict more IE releases and some tough competition for FF.
Well - both ODF and OOXML are a pile of doggy doo. One chap pointed out that they're both thin wrappers around binary data.This is the one place I think you have something - OOo is making some inroads, helped strongly by the insane price that MS can charge for office. Right now compatibility is the big stumbling block - a vast majority of the world wants good looking .DOC files, and OOo only
does a (barely) passible job of reading and creating them. Expect MS to make that
even harder.
Lets put these in perspective: MS sold 400,000 vita licenses per day. To put that in perspective: Now I'm the first to admit there's bound to be some channel stuffing going on here, but those are pretty persuasive numbers.Dell will undoubtedly move some Ubuntu licenses (my fav distro - the only one that really understands what non-unix-geeks want. (ducks for cover).
But remember this is Dell... so expect crap support and crapware. They can make a windows install just aweful - imagine what they'll do for ubuntu.
You forgot to also mention windows mobile. Unstable, slow, and really just a bad idea because it was (and probably still is) based on the '95 codebase.Look - its hard to create a business as good as windows/office. But some of their server products are damn good - look at windows server and SQL Server (their data mining, reporting and analysis tools are just awesome).
These stumbles are natural - apple had a few. Think: newton, Pink, AUX, the Puck and Cube. Gorgeous, innovative flops.
I could go on... but lets just not count them out yet.
Sometimes ignorance *is* good for you.
yes
In theory, yes, maybe.
In practical, no. There are core areas to everyone's technology and those
are what you need to focus on. In Vonage's case - their VoIP to POTS switching
would at least have deserved a quick patent check. Its painful, but a few days
work at most by a senior architect who understands their system.
I'm not defending the patent spagetti we have now - but it *is* possible to do
a relatively quick patent check when you are setting up a business.
I suspect what has happened is that Vonage started putting together their
service before patents really got as high profile and tangled as they are now.
I would *bet* they knew about the patent issue at some point, and probably
hoped it would go away.
My day to day calculator is an HP-14b
50th Anniversary Limited Edition!, with the waaayyy coooool SWAP key. Talk
about turning it up to 11!
[joke]
And it doesn't rely on that arse-backwards RPN crap either.
HP did include an INPUT button to make engineers feel at home, although why
engineers would want a calculator with:
- time value of money
- return on investment
- inventory turnover rate
is beyond me.
[/joke]
(dons flame suit anyway because poking at beloved RPN
is dangerous around here)
In New Zealand we used to have strict limits on bandwidth usage.
500MB, 1G, 2G, 5G and 10G plans were all that was available.
Performance wasn't too bad - longer latency than the US but
200KB/s (bytes/s) downloads were common.
After much hue and cry over these limits, the dominant ISP (who
also supplies bandwidth to many other ISPs and provides
ADSL to the home for just about everyone) removed all limits.
Since then performance has gone down the toilet. I'm lucky to get
50KB/s in quiet times and 20KB/s during peak times.
So just a perspective that limits aren't always bad.
Well you dont have to look at it anymore.
The servers a small puddle on the floor.
BTW: anyone got alt links to it?
Not quite true. Album artwork is also not stored in ID3 by default.
However it turns out you can "convince" itunes to use ID3 for artwork
with a clever trick
I'd like to amplify the comments about being an MP3 tag nazi
(does that count as Godwinning??).
The beauty of spending all your time getting the MP3 tags right and the
album art and lyrics *embedded* into the tags is that
someday, guaranteed, you are going to have to move
from one media organiser to another. Amarok wont always be
the killer app and some other smart organiser will take its place.
If you're tag data is good, that switch will be trivial. If, like
itunes, it stores some data in a DB rather than tags, you get locked in.
Tagrunner (commercial s/w) is my pick.
I've been through the patent process a few times
(required as part of doing business now days). While
they make a number of high profile mistakes, our patents
have been (as far as I can tell) examined thoroughly.
Some claims were denied, some admitted and one whole patent
app rejected. They often asked for more information
and did seem to do research in the field.
It took anywhere from 3 years to 4+ (still waiting on that
one).
Their new moves are a significant downgrade, putting the onus
on the inventor to provide due diligence, which they are
not incented to do. In fact, quite the opposite.
They are simply handing responsibility to the courts. In fact, they could save a few million dollars by simply stamping *every* patent app, then let the oourts sort out the real ones when litigation hits the fan.
Looks like he must have ticked off someone at google.
have to agree that "interesting" just isn't the right word.
Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"
Actually it sounds pretty profitable.
3000-5000 is the usual settlement, but it does go higher.
Multiply that by 18000 served.
Thats at least 54 mil, and possibly a *lot* more.
Enough to keep a few lawyers busy,
and to pay for the few cases they've lost.
There are two reasons why this, in theory, could be a problem, but in reality wont be.
a) Guaranteed writes for flash cells are now in the millions
b) almost all (and possibly all) flash memory systems use
write levelling technology to ensure the write load is spread.
We use them for small 24x7 computers doing UI and data capture
work, and after several years the flash has yet to fail on any of them.