True but anecdotally, I know of no one with a Zune player and I know a few more than 10 people (yes, some have creative players and even iRiver) - I am not in the US though.
NPD statistics are mainly US only and does not include some major retailers within the US (Costco and WalMart are two that I know of and I am unsure if NPD has access to Apple store sales figures which would skew their statistics on this particular comparison - this says it does, but he is contradicted on that page and hasn't confirmed either way and I would be loathe to use that site as proof they do, just from the "perceived bias" angle without corroboration) not casting aspertions at NPD, I'm sure they would love to have access to the other retailers statistics as well but it doen't and I don't kow of a source that might be better (just because there might not be better statistics available does not make NPD statistics accurate).
Also, given enough anecdotal evidence (just thought it sounded like an interesting idea, tongue-in-cheek) to the contrary.. IMO it is worth being as cautious with anecdotal AND "statistical" evidence - especially when large amounts of marketing dollars are being thrown around at "spin doctors" (AKA professional distorters IMO) and brand religions are involved.
Just to let you know, I have neither - I use my mobile to play my music with, a bit bulkier but it saves me money and it means one less item to lose (I lose things a lot).
Thanks for that, I didn't realise OS X can run on X86, found a site with the patch and I'll give it a go - just curious, I've got a spare HD - do you know if the 3rd party applications play nicely?
How so? I know it's fixed, but just because someone uses the OS doesn't mean they know it's fixed - IT staff tend to look after patches and hot fixes, upgrades etc... most people (at least the more competent ones) just switch them on, log on and do their work (I have a workstation at the office with Vista on it, IMO it has some nice things and some annoying things that I hope they'll fix BTW).
To each their own I say, for me....
I've just purchased a new notebook (from an auction, 2 by mistake but, that's life - it sucks sometimes, the silver lining is the other notebook can be a dedicated Debian setup - unstable and yes "Bleeding Edge" is mentioned below) it has Vista Business installed. The first thing I will do is get rid of Vista and put XP on it, not because Vista is crappy, it has some nice features, but because XP would work better on the hardware, (AMD TURION 64 1.6 GHz 1 gig RAM) take up less space on the hard drive and also save me from working out how to disable a lot of the new "features" - no I do not think warning me I'm about to install something every time I am about to install something was well thought out.
When I go through the issues I have with Vista, it boils down to things that do not have to be there at all, some of them are:
DRM - a setup that seems to use a lot of resources, if a company wants to go down that path at least make it inobtrusive and not crippling.
Licensing (I am utterly bewildered by how Microsoft licensing works).
Enhanced Security. They have put in some good work in this area and then put things in that... well they are very frustrating it is a real pain installing anything - windows signed, user permissions - yes it is a good idea to limit an ordinary user (which can be done with XP) but compared to the OS X and Linux/Unix way, it is frustrating.
Drivers, yes I know that the driver situation is improving but this makes the whole thing feel like Bleeding Edge software rather than Leading Edge (note: with Deb Unstable I get a lot of benefit productivity wise with using unstable i.e. I'm not running it for Compiz/Beryl type features, not so with Vista)
What am I getting that improves my "productivity"? The features that work well would mainly be aimed at home users that would not know how to configure XP to do similar things and to protect them from themselves (this is a big plus for the joe-prons) I do not think business is interested in Aero, neither am I, nice to have if it doesn't get in the way but unfortunately at the moment it does.
This is what Microsoft believes will help my productivity the network backup could have been handy (why can't I pick what I want backed up?) bummer.....
Could this also lead to a method of sending signals (sight, sound etc) to the brain?
Blind people "seeing", the deaf "hearing"... TFA was a bit light, I thought that the brain cells would "move away" from electrodes ( this article is about neural "extension cords" to overcome the problem, the other way I have heard about was "The Berlin Brain Interface" a YouTube clip of it in action.
I've thought about that sort of thing... unfortunately it would require a lot of work, use up a lot of energy and cause massive bottle-necks moving cars underground. It is a good idea for small stretches but impractical (imagine a tunnel from Sydney to Perth.... or NY to LA for our more US-centric thinkers or Paris to Baghdad for the Euro minded) for long stretches. The use of the air means no traffic jams as it effectively gives a multi-layered road system for no outlay. The down-side would be it would require a lot more energy to go from point A to point B (and a lot harder to use the drive-through). A better (IMO) idea would be to move houses underground and have small grids of underground roads, downside is lighting (although there are ways to reflect light into multiple rooms), venting of pollutants (mainly from the underground road grids) and sewage... Upside is less energy to heat and cool the house, much larger recreational areas plus possible landing strips in each neighbourhood which would make the flying cars a bit more practical.
That's a strange perspective, if I give my phone number to a business, I am giving it to that business to enable THAT business to contact me, not for them to on-sell my details to whoever pays. For them to do such a thing without your permission would be unethical. For a government to secretly intercept transmitions of it's people (not even targeted) would be IMO a breach of trust (why secret if it is above board? so that bad guys don't know?) Talk of carnivore et al has been going on for a few years now, I would be surprised if anyone of significance would fall for it... a lot of money spent, little benefit, and lying to the people by omission.
A president running around the world, shutting down whole cities out of fear for his own safety, threatening to bring "Freedom and Democracy" to countries (even democratic countries) while busily overriding the freedoms of his own country.
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
An unfortunate flow on for U.S.ians is their legal system seems to have lost connection with justice and outcomes now appear to be based on wealth, whatever rights your (in my opinion well thought out) constitution gives you can be overridden by money.
Hi, Just wondering if PulseAudio plays nicely with Audacity these days, I have a pc set up for Audio manipulation/editing/music composition stuff that I was going to upgrade (setting up a 64 bit box at last!), thought I might have a look at the offerings of "the dark side" (rpm based systems - I use Debian) oops....is that term a Microsoft TM?
It was also, almost certainly a mistake. Compare to most copyright infringement, which is almost always willful.
Perhaps you should ponder on this:
"Never attribute to malice that which is easily attributed to stupidity," and all that jazz.
I'm sure you can reconcile it..... one way or another.
BM3
6 * $AU169(XP home) + 6 * $AU899 (Office Pro - we do have 6 people that use presentation and databases...) Antivirus + Spyware removal... + hardware Replace every 2 years = Microsoft. It is their product, they charge what the market will bear - they are in the business of making money.
I believe WMP would do the job for me as well but I do not intend paying that much money to set up the computers at home.
Linux does the job for us, it would do it a LOT better if we had open standards, you could still use your prefered Windows 2000 as well. I believe it is in Microsoft's interests to keep things incompatible and it obviously has worked well in terms of profits - however, it is not in my interests, nor I believe, in the interest of the general public and it is SUPPOSED to be the Governments duty to look after the interests of the "people", not the lobby groups.
Incidentally, if they succeed in stopping reverse-engineering, how many people would there be that would be excluded from "innovating".
Then again, I suppose they would only be the poor... what have they got to offer? Not money, that's for sure.
Give me your hungry, your poor.... I'll make sure they're priced out of the market
Slashdot Mirror
This is still old but Three years after the event.
True but anecdotally, I know of no one with a Zune player and I know a few more than 10 people (yes, some have creative players and even iRiver) - I am not in the US though.
NPD statistics are mainly US only and does not include some major retailers within the US (Costco and WalMart are two that I know of and I am unsure if NPD has access to Apple store sales figures which would skew their statistics on this particular comparison - this says it does, but he is contradicted on that page and hasn't confirmed either way and I would be loathe to use that site as proof they do, just from the "perceived bias" angle without corroboration) not casting aspertions at NPD, I'm sure they would love to have access to the other retailers statistics as well but it doen't and I don't kow of a source that might be better (just because there might not be better statistics available does not make NPD statistics accurate).
Also, given enough anecdotal evidence (just thought it sounded like an interesting idea, tongue-in-cheek) to the contrary.. IMO it is worth being as cautious with anecdotal AND "statistical" evidence - especially when large amounts of marketing dollars are being thrown around at "spin doctors" (AKA professional distorters IMO) and brand religions are involved.
Just to let you know, I have neither - I use my mobile to play my music with, a bit bulkier but it saves me money and it means one less item to lose (I lose things a lot).
Thanks for that, I didn't realise OS X can run on X86, found a site with the patch and I'll give it a go - just curious, I've got a spare HD - do you know if the 3rd party applications play nicely?
How so? I know it's fixed, but just because someone uses the OS doesn't mean they know it's fixed - IT staff tend to look after patches and hot fixes, upgrades etc... most people (at least the more competent ones) just switch them on, log on and do their work (I have a workstation at the office with Vista on it, IMO it has some nice things and some annoying things that I hope they'll fix BTW).
To each their own I say, for me....
I've just purchased a new notebook (from an auction, 2 by mistake but, that's life - it sucks sometimes, the silver lining is the other notebook can be a dedicated Debian setup - unstable and yes "Bleeding Edge" is mentioned below) it has Vista Business installed. The first thing I will do is get rid of Vista and put XP on it, not because Vista is crappy, it has some nice features, but because XP would work better on the hardware, (AMD TURION 64 1.6 GHz 1 gig RAM) take up less space on the hard drive and also save me from working out how to disable a lot of the new "features" - no I do not think warning me I'm about to install something every time I am about to install something was well thought out.
When I go through the issues I have with Vista, it boils down to things that do not have to be there at all, some of them are:
DRM - a setup that seems to use a lot of resources, if a company wants to go down that path at least make it inobtrusive and not crippling.
Licensing (I am utterly bewildered by how Microsoft licensing works).
Enhanced Security. They have put in some good work in this area and then put things in that... well they are very frustrating it is a real pain installing anything - windows signed, user permissions - yes it is a good idea to limit an ordinary user (which can be done with XP) but compared to the OS X and Linux/Unix way, it is frustrating.
Drivers, yes I know that the driver situation is improving but this makes the whole thing feel like Bleeding Edge software rather than Leading Edge (note: with Deb Unstable I get a lot of benefit productivity wise with using unstable i.e. I'm not running it for Compiz/Beryl type features, not so with Vista)
What am I getting that improves my "productivity"? The features that work well would mainly be aimed at home users that would not know how to configure XP to do similar things and to protect them from themselves (this is a big plus for the joe-prons) I do not think business is interested in Aero, neither am I, nice to have if it doesn't get in the way but unfortunately at the moment it does.
This is what Microsoft believes will help my productivity the network backup could have been handy (why can't I pick what I want backed up?) bummer.....
was aimed at less intelligent life forms than cockroaches but I hear the robots refused to associate with the lawyers and politicians.
Nope, The Magic Dragon. I'm chasing it RIGHT NOW!
Could this also lead to a method of sending signals (sight, sound etc) to the brain?
Blind people "seeing", the deaf "hearing"... TFA was a bit light, I thought that the brain cells would "move away" from electrodes ( this article is about neural "extension cords" to overcome the problem, the other way I have heard about was "The Berlin Brain Interface" a YouTube clip of it in action.
I've thought about that sort of thing... unfortunately it would require a lot of work, use up a lot of energy and cause massive bottle-necks moving cars underground. It is a good idea for small stretches but impractical (imagine a tunnel from Sydney to Perth.... or NY to LA for our more US-centric thinkers or Paris to Baghdad for the Euro minded) for long stretches. The use of the air means no traffic jams as it effectively gives a multi-layered road system for no outlay. The down-side would be it would require a lot more energy to go from point A to point B (and a lot harder to use the drive-through). A better (IMO) idea would be to move houses underground and have small grids of underground roads, downside is lighting (although there are ways to reflect light into multiple rooms), venting of pollutants (mainly from the underground road grids) and sewage... Upside is less energy to heat and cool the house, much larger recreational areas plus possible landing strips in each neighbourhood which would make the flying cars a bit more practical.
Would the police get some too?
How often have YOU forgotten where your mobile phone was?
Turns out old dogs can learn new tricks
It's also reassuring to know the stuff growing out of my ears these days are just axons growing toward the light and not ear hair.
That's a strange perspective, if I give my phone number to a business, I am giving it to that business to enable THAT business to contact me, not for them to on-sell my details to whoever pays. For them to do such a thing without your permission would be unethical. For a government to secretly intercept transmitions of it's people (not even targeted) would be IMO a breach of trust (why secret if it is above board? so that bad guys don't know?) Talk of carnivore et al has been going on for a few years now, I would be surprised if anyone of significance would fall for it... a lot of money spent, little benefit, and lying to the people by omission.
A president running around the world, shutting down whole cities out of fear for his own safety, threatening to bring "Freedom and Democracy" to countries (even democratic countries) while busily overriding the freedoms of his own country.
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
An unfortunate flow on for U.S.ians is their legal system seems to have lost connection with justice and outcomes now appear to be based on wealth, whatever rights your (in my opinion well thought out) constitution gives you can be overridden by money.
Hi, Just wondering if PulseAudio plays nicely with Audacity these days, I have a pc set up for Audio manipulation/editing/music composition stuff that I was going to upgrade (setting up a 64 bit box at last!), thought I might have a look at the offerings of "the dark side" (rpm based systems - I use Debian) oops....is that term a Microsoft TM?
They also don't seem to have taken into account some monkeys drop all thought as a method of resolution. Obviously better equipped for survival.
Yes, "I think he's dissing us, NUKE THA MUTHA FUKKA!" seems to be the standard attitude of Americans...
has there been a bit of inbreeding going on over there lately?
BM#
It was also, almost certainly a mistake. Compare to most copyright infringement, which is almost always willful.
Perhaps you should ponder on this:
"Never attribute to malice that which is easily attributed to stupidity," and all that jazz.
I'm sure you can reconcile it..... one way or another.
BM3
And I thought it was the american embargo that took Cuba into poverty...
Nonsense, why, if the USA had an embargo put on it for 40 odd years it would be positively flourishing.
regards, BM3
spelling correction required - they wuv YouTube -
Regards, BM3
6 * $AU169(XP home) + 6 * $AU899 (Office Pro - we do have 6 people that use presentation and databases...) Antivirus + Spyware removal... + hardware Replace every 2 years = Microsoft. It is their product, they charge what the market will bear - they are in the business of making money.
I believe WMP would do the job for me as well but I do not intend paying that much money to set up the computers at home.
Linux does the job for us, it would do it a LOT better if we had open standards, you could still use your prefered Windows 2000 as well. I believe it is in Microsoft's interests to keep things incompatible and it obviously has worked well in terms of profits - however, it is not in my interests, nor I believe, in the interest of the general public and it is SUPPOSED to be the Governments duty to look after the interests of the "people", not the lobby groups.
Incidentally, if they succeed in stopping reverse-engineering, how many people would there be that would be excluded from "innovating".
Then again, I suppose they would only be the poor... what have they got to offer? Not money, that's for sure.
Give me your hungry, your poor.... I'll make sure they're priced out of the market
I didn't know that.... maybe you could lend me the half you're not using....