We whine when they delay and push back release dates of their OS over and over again but when they finally do come out with something "on time" (whatever that means) and it's not up to par we give them shit.
We don't whine when they delay their OS release. We point and laugh, because with each announcement of a delay, they also announce that they're dropping yet another feature that would make the release worthwhile. Look, very few of us here (not me) actually work for MS, so we don't know exactly what the problem is, but the point is that they can't seem to put anything together properly in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe they're too ambitious in their planning. Maybe they're planning to do more in a 2 year span then can be realistically executed in 2 years. On the other hand, maybe their planning is just fine, but their execution stinks.
However, I don't think the real problem is that "they can't win". They could win. If they released meaningful/useful updates in a reasonable timeframe, and the updates were relatively stable at release, they'd "win". They'd get a lot of credit from enough people (though there'll always be haters). It doesn't have to be some huge revolutionary product (and it isn't going to be anyway), but it just has to be stable and solid, work well, have clear benefits, and be coming soon.
As far as the Xbox360, I don't think any of us knows the scope and extent of these problems, but the system should be "up to par" on release. I'm saying this first as a consumer, that I don't want to buy any sub-par products that were pushed to market too soon, but also as some too-late advice for Microsoft (as though they'd listen to random slashdot posts). They seemed to have been hoping that getting to market early would put them in a better position to fight the PS3, but any advantage gained by being early is going to be diminished (if not removed, if not countered,) by the thing having a reputation for being sub-par on release. Hype is very important for game consoles, and if this turns out to be a big problem, they may find that it would've been better to wait.
A bit hostile, especially since I didn't complain. I was just pointing out that while we're talking about how Microsoft might start generating revenue by placing ads in their OS, Microsoft has already put ads in their default install, and has been doing so for several years. I actually think there current advertising isn't too bad, especially considering how few people apparently realize it's going on.
I don't know if it's common practice anymore, but both IE and Netscape used to charge for bookmark placement. What do you think the browser wars were about? Why do you think they fought over the market for a product they were giving away?
AFAIK, they were fighting over the default homepage, search engines, bookmarks.
If you think this is an insult to mankind, then you give mankind too much credit. The fact is, when something is inexpensive, people tend to automatically think it's cheap. Let's say you walk into a store, and someone has set out three pairs of shoes. One pair is $100, one is $70, and the third pair is $10. The look almost identical. You know what? Even if people can't really tell the difference, they'll assume the first pair is the best, and the third pair is going to fall apart within a month.
It's not so dumb if you think about it, in that if something is outside of what we expected, we assume there's something wrong. We don't expect a good pair of shoes to cost $10. If you were running a shoe company, and you could sell your shoes for $10 and still be profitable, you still won't want to-- and not just because you can increase you margins, but selling inexpensive shoes will actually hurt your sales. It's a well-documented phenomenon. Sometimes companies won't sell products for cheaper than a set price as to avoid the label of being "cheap".
Likewise with other things. If I go out to buy a PS2 game, and there's some game that I've heard nothing about and it goes straight to the bargain-bin, I'll probably assume it's not that great. I can tell you from experience that some great games go straight to the bargain-bin, but I'll still assume it. It's only natural, because in most cases, good games come out at ~$50.
I guess the question is, do we measure a company and its software by its base security, or by how quickly it responds to a discovered threat? I'm personally inclined to lean towards the second.
Both? I mean, yes, we should be forgiving of companies who have taken every reasonable step towards security when a flaw is found, so long as they patch it quickly. However, the process of securing your software shouldn't start at SP2. It should be ongoing during the development.
So I think the question is, was iTunes developed with some horrible security design to begin with, for which we should shake our fingers at Apple? Or is this a minor theoretical hack that will be fixed before there's an actual exploit anyway?
Not me. My desktop space and attention are valuable. If you want to take up space that should go to my apps and look at your ads for 5 years, you'd better be paying more than a couple hundred dollars.
The difference with Google ads is, they only show up when I'm looking for things. And I can get rid of them by closing my browser. I can live with that.
Seriously, though, what about all the ads that people see because MS makes MSN the default start page for IE? That MSN search is the default search? What about making WMP automatically open to Microsoft's media site? What about the bookmarks that come with IE? What about the products sold through the "Windows Catalogue"?
Are you telling me, with a straight face, that MS isn't already gathering revenue by the ads they deliver through their OS?
Re:*higher* signal-to-noise
on
Requiem for Usenet
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, yeah. Warez and porn groups might be a bit dodgy, but so are warez and porn sites, for that matter. I don't think web sites obsolete Usenet any more than they obsolete FTP sites or e-mail. They're different modes of accessing information, differently useful for accessing different sorts of information.
Most of the things you site seem to me to be design issues. Or, at least, they could very easily be. Yeah, there's no internal expandability in the Mini. Is that because they're crippling it, or just that there's no room anyway? The Mini's hard drives are slow-- is that a heat issue? A cheapness issue? Limiting the amount of memory-- sometimes that's a technological issue of the motherboard design as much as anything. What's the limit anyway on current models? Anything that you can't get at least 1GB into? So you're left with iBooks not supporting dual-head display capabilities. I could imagine that being a tech issue. Like maybe Apple didn't feel that they had enough RAM to do it as well as they'd like, so they dropped support. I don't really know, but I don't hear a lot of Mac users complaining that their machines are crippled, sucky, and feature-poor.
The thing is, even if you can import it, as soon as you actually listen to it, you create a copy under the Copyright Act (copying from the hard drive to RAM is creating a copy), and are in violation of the US copyright laws (assuming you are in the US).
Under that argument, listening to any MP3 is illegal. The relevant questions are: (some of them, anyway, since there are probably others)
Did the purchase take place in the US or Russia?
Is the purchase legal according to Russian law?
Is it legal to import music to the US which is purchased legally under Russian law?
Is there a legal distinction between importing physical media and transferring the file over the internet?
I've heard from lawyers that many of these issues aren't entirely clear, and that there's no obvious reason why it couldn't be argued in court that the answers are:
Russia
yes
yes
no
In that case, it would be entirely legal to use allofmp3.com. To look at it another way, what if you were traveling in Russia, and you went to a CD store and bought a CD (a totally legal purchase, let's say). Now, you shove that CD in your suitcase and come home to the States, where you rip the CD to MP3 format and listen to it in your iPod. Have you broken the law? AFAIK, the answer is no.
Without fear, people could still say, "Well... I could jump off the roof, but then I'd probably break a few bones, and that would hurt, and I don't like being hurt."...Fear is merely a mental shortcut. Instead of rationally arguing that doing something will lead to an unadvantageous situation, our brains merely automatically develop fears of the situation and we avoid it quasi-instinctually.
So fear is the mental shortcut that tells you that jumping off a roof is bad before you've had time to think it through? That's a fine description (though I think incomplete) and is enough for me to say we should be happy to have such a wonderful thing as fear. I'm all for mental shortcuts that let me do things and react without thinking them through. Like walking. I really like the fact that I can walk without working out the math and physics involved.
You miss, however, that there still is the issue of impetus. The part of the equation that says, "I don't like being hurt." Why not? There's something non-logical about it. It's what you like. What do we call the aversion to the anticipation of pain and/or being injured? I'd tend to call that fear.
It's not intelligence. No matter how intelligent you are, you'll never find a logical reason to not-jump off a roof. The reasons will always be fear, desire, or inertia: Fear of hurting yourself or dying, desire for something that you would lose by jumping, or inertia-- an utter lack of anything pushing you toward jumping.
Inertia, however, is going to be the least reliable. It's gone at your first bout of curiosity.
I think the people trying to "censor" blogs do have a legitimate point: you can bet that everyone who is campaigning for something will set up blogs, pretending to be independant, that sing their praises. That's harder to do with "real" publications because they cost money to set up and run, and their ownership is public record.
I guess this is just part of the price of free speech. I do wonder if there's a good interface for "moderating" blogs, so that, for example, if one is sponsored by Candidate X in a sneaky way, and someone finds out, it can appear beside the name of the blog.
I wonder if it's so different. What would happen if the New York Times took some sort of kickbacks from a candidate in return for a slanted "impartial" story? Would there be legal repercussions? Aren't campaigns already legally required to account for where their money is spent, and required to put some sort of disclaimer on any paid message (like "this message was paid for by..." whoever)?
I guess I think bloggers should be considered journalists, but maybe that's just because I don't understand why journalists should have any legal standing above other citizens. Why does some guy have greater rights to his freedom of speech, just because he happens to work for a large media corporation? Sounds pretty fishy. The rights described in the Constitution and amendments aren't supposed to be preserved for an elite few.
The bloggers are kind of like a return to that old model for print media in the U.S., I think, except way harder to buy out or run out of business, since most of them aren't even really in business. Biased indie papers are nothing new, and blogging is just the latest version of it. It was media then, it's media now.
Also, they have the potential for wide distribution. Some little indy paper in Montana couldn't expect to get readership in China, but a blogger can be read anywhere.
What I'm saying is that the killer game doesn't need to be there at launch, just in the first half of the console's lifespan. In any case, good software makes a console, not a single title.It's trickier than that, though. Consoles are expensive and they're loss-leaders, and it's a tight competition. Microsoft put a lot of effort into being first out of the gate, because Sony looks to have a more powerful system, and as much as anything else, these consoles need hype to bring players and developers. Microsoft needs to sell a whole bunch of games to make up for what they lose in console sales.
So the first half of the console's lifespan is a big deal. It could determine whether the thing is a hit or a flop. I'll tell you this: if they aren't a big success by the time Sony releases, and PS3 is as much better as the hype indicates, than MS is in trouble.
You're absolutely right. Better textures and higher resolutions just aren't enough. The question is, will developers be able to do anything cool with the extra power? How big and complex will Rockstar be able to make their city in the next-gen GTA, for example?
If they can use the power for improved *gameplay*, then it'll be worth something.
I didn't RTFA, but my first thought when reading the summary was, "The games aren't great, or the system isn't great?"
The thing is, I've played a little bit of an Xbox360 game or two, and they weren't too impressive. Basically, they looked like any other Xbox games, but with slightly better shapes and crisper textures. No big deal.
On the other hand, those are just the games. Who knows what'll be around in 6 months. These new systems may allow some clever developer to do something cool that wouldn't be possible on the last-generation systems. All in all, I'm sure it'll be an improvement. However, if you're expecting slightly improved graphics to make the games great, I think you're already in trouble.
Also... the big advantage of the mini is you're not bound to a specific keyboard and monitor.
Well, you aren't exactly bound to a specific keyboard/mouse/monitor with a notebook, either. You can always plug in.
In fact, that's my preference. I have a nice keyboard/mouse/monitor at home. 80% of the time, my powerbook sits plugged into those, but it's worth at least couple hundred extra to have the option of taking it on the road. Al least, for me it's worth it.
Still, I wouldn't expect there'd be *too much* time between the introduction of an Intel iBook and the Intel Powerbook. Maybe it just isn't practical for Apple to do it all at once, and maybe it makes some sense to put the iBooks first, but I'd expect the Powerbooks to come within a month or so after.
It's fraught with legal vagaries, yes, but I'm not sure it's blatant. IANAL, of course, but there's been some talk, and some people (including lawyers) have said that it isn't really addressed by law. For one thing, when you purchase something online, where does the purchase take place? If the purchase is in Russia, then it's a legal purchase. If you purchase a CD in Russia, and the purchase is legal, then I would assume you can transport it back to the US.
Of course, the real issue isn't really legality-- it's whether the record company will sue. If it's illegal and they sue, you're screwed, and if it's legal and they don't sue, you're fine. However, if it's legal and they sue, you're still screwed, and if it's illegal and they don't sue, you're still fine.
To date, I have no knowledge of anyone being sued for copyright infringement for simply having mp3s on their computers. It's always the sharing that gets you, partially because it's easier to find you if you're sharing, but also because it's easier to demonstrate you did something illegal-- copyrights were intended to deal with unauthorized distribution, not unauthorized viewing/reading/listening.
Ok, all that to say, it's not that clear. You pay your money, you take your chances.
Some record exec says he *thinks* Apple will introduce variable pricing, and suddenly all the news sites report that Apple will do it. The record companies have been after Apple to introduce variable pricing for some time. Is it any surprise that they think they'll get their way?
If Apple saves $200 in costs they are not going to pass it all along to the consumer. Their price points are very strategic.
Yes, there price points are strategic, and as their competitors' laptops are getting cheaper, Apple will need to respond. If they've retooled and their component prices have come down, so they can save ~$200 per laptop, they might very well pass a large portion of that on to consumers in order to boost sales. Also, no word on what the $800 will look like, so it doesn't sound that impossibly crazy to me.
Hogwash. What's the difference? They've put in some sort of auto-preview with their themes? "WYGIWYS" doesn't make any sense, and reeks of marketing-speak.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't whine when they delay their OS release. We point and laugh, because with each announcement of a delay, they also announce that they're dropping yet another feature that would make the release worthwhile. Look, very few of us here (not me) actually work for MS, so we don't know exactly what the problem is, but the point is that they can't seem to put anything together properly in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe they're too ambitious in their planning. Maybe they're planning to do more in a 2 year span then can be realistically executed in 2 years. On the other hand, maybe their planning is just fine, but their execution stinks.
However, I don't think the real problem is that "they can't win". They could win. If they released meaningful/useful updates in a reasonable timeframe, and the updates were relatively stable at release, they'd "win". They'd get a lot of credit from enough people (though there'll always be haters). It doesn't have to be some huge revolutionary product (and it isn't going to be anyway), but it just has to be stable and solid, work well, have clear benefits, and be coming soon.
As far as the Xbox360, I don't think any of us knows the scope and extent of these problems, but the system should be "up to par" on release. I'm saying this first as a consumer, that I don't want to buy any sub-par products that were pushed to market too soon, but also as some too-late advice for Microsoft (as though they'd listen to random slashdot posts). They seemed to have been hoping that getting to market early would put them in a better position to fight the PS3, but any advantage gained by being early is going to be diminished (if not removed, if not countered,) by the thing having a reputation for being sub-par on release. Hype is very important for game consoles, and if this turns out to be a big problem, they may find that it would've been better to wait.
A bit hostile, especially since I didn't complain. I was just pointing out that while we're talking about how Microsoft might start generating revenue by placing ads in their OS, Microsoft has already put ads in their default install, and has been doing so for several years. I actually think there current advertising isn't too bad, especially considering how few people apparently realize it's going on.
AFAIK, they were fighting over the default homepage, search engines, bookmarks.
It's not so dumb if you think about it, in that if something is outside of what we expected, we assume there's something wrong. We don't expect a good pair of shoes to cost $10. If you were running a shoe company, and you could sell your shoes for $10 and still be profitable, you still won't want to-- and not just because you can increase you margins, but selling inexpensive shoes will actually hurt your sales. It's a well-documented phenomenon. Sometimes companies won't sell products for cheaper than a set price as to avoid the label of being "cheap".
Likewise with other things. If I go out to buy a PS2 game, and there's some game that I've heard nothing about and it goes straight to the bargain-bin, I'll probably assume it's not that great. I can tell you from experience that some great games go straight to the bargain-bin, but I'll still assume it. It's only natural, because in most cases, good games come out at ~$50.
Both? I mean, yes, we should be forgiving of companies who have taken every reasonable step towards security when a flaw is found, so long as they patch it quickly. However, the process of securing your software shouldn't start at SP2. It should be ongoing during the development.
So I think the question is, was iTunes developed with some horrible security design to begin with, for which we should shake our fingers at Apple? Or is this a minor theoretical hack that will be fixed before there's an actual exploit anyway?
The difference with Google ads is, they only show up when I'm looking for things. And I can get rid of them by closing my browser. I can live with that.
Are you telling me, with a straight face, that MS isn't already gathering revenue by the ads they deliver through their OS?
Well, yeah. Warez and porn groups might be a bit dodgy, but so are warez and porn sites, for that matter. I don't think web sites obsolete Usenet any more than they obsolete FTP sites or e-mail. They're different modes of accessing information, differently useful for accessing different sorts of information.
Most of the things you site seem to me to be design issues. Or, at least, they could very easily be. Yeah, there's no internal expandability in the Mini. Is that because they're crippling it, or just that there's no room anyway? The Mini's hard drives are slow-- is that a heat issue? A cheapness issue? Limiting the amount of memory-- sometimes that's a technological issue of the motherboard design as much as anything. What's the limit anyway on current models? Anything that you can't get at least 1GB into? So you're left with iBooks not supporting dual-head display capabilities. I could imagine that being a tech issue. Like maybe Apple didn't feel that they had enough RAM to do it as well as they'd like, so they dropped support. I don't really know, but I don't hear a lot of Mac users complaining that their machines are crippled, sucky, and feature-poor.
Under that argument, listening to any MP3 is illegal. The relevant questions are: (some of them, anyway, since there are probably others)
I've heard from lawyers that many of these issues aren't entirely clear, and that there's no obvious reason why it couldn't be argued in court that the answers are:
In that case, it would be entirely legal to use allofmp3.com. To look at it another way, what if you were traveling in Russia, and you went to a CD store and bought a CD (a totally legal purchase, let's say). Now, you shove that CD in your suitcase and come home to the States, where you rip the CD to MP3 format and listen to it in your iPod. Have you broken the law? AFAIK, the answer is no.
So fear is the mental shortcut that tells you that jumping off a roof is bad before you've had time to think it through? That's a fine description (though I think incomplete) and is enough for me to say we should be happy to have such a wonderful thing as fear. I'm all for mental shortcuts that let me do things and react without thinking them through. Like walking. I really like the fact that I can walk without working out the math and physics involved.
You miss, however, that there still is the issue of impetus. The part of the equation that says, "I don't like being hurt." Why not? There's something non-logical about it. It's what you like. What do we call the aversion to the anticipation of pain and/or being injured? I'd tend to call that fear.
It's not intelligence. No matter how intelligent you are, you'll never find a logical reason to not-jump off a roof. The reasons will always be fear, desire, or inertia: Fear of hurting yourself or dying, desire for something that you would lose by jumping, or inertia-- an utter lack of anything pushing you toward jumping.
Inertia, however, is going to be the least reliable. It's gone at your first bout of curiosity.
I guess this is just part of the price of free speech. I do wonder if there's a good interface for "moderating" blogs, so that, for example, if one is sponsored by Candidate X in a sneaky way, and someone finds out, it can appear beside the name of the blog.
I wonder if it's so different. What would happen if the New York Times took some sort of kickbacks from a candidate in return for a slanted "impartial" story? Would there be legal repercussions? Aren't campaigns already legally required to account for where their money is spent, and required to put some sort of disclaimer on any paid message (like "this message was paid for by..." whoever)?
I guess I think bloggers should be considered journalists, but maybe that's just because I don't understand why journalists should have any legal standing above other citizens. Why does some guy have greater rights to his freedom of speech, just because he happens to work for a large media corporation? Sounds pretty fishy. The rights described in the Constitution and amendments aren't supposed to be preserved for an elite few.
Also, they have the potential for wide distribution. Some little indy paper in Montana couldn't expect to get readership in China, but a blogger can be read anywhere.
So the first half of the console's lifespan is a big deal. It could determine whether the thing is a hit or a flop. I'll tell you this: if they aren't a big success by the time Sony releases, and PS3 is as much better as the hype indicates, than MS is in trouble.
If they can use the power for improved *gameplay*, then it'll be worth something.
The thing is, I've played a little bit of an Xbox360 game or two, and they weren't too impressive. Basically, they looked like any other Xbox games, but with slightly better shapes and crisper textures. No big deal.
On the other hand, those are just the games. Who knows what'll be around in 6 months. These new systems may allow some clever developer to do something cool that wouldn't be possible on the last-generation systems. All in all, I'm sure it'll be an improvement. However, if you're expecting slightly improved graphics to make the games great, I think you're already in trouble.
Well, you aren't exactly bound to a specific keyboard/mouse/monitor with a notebook, either. You can always plug in.
In fact, that's my preference. I have a nice keyboard/mouse/monitor at home. 80% of the time, my powerbook sits plugged into those, but it's worth at least couple hundred extra to have the option of taking it on the road. Al least, for me it's worth it.
Still, I wouldn't expect there'd be *too much* time between the introduction of an Intel iBook and the Intel Powerbook. Maybe it just isn't practical for Apple to do it all at once, and maybe it makes some sense to put the iBooks first, but I'd expect the Powerbooks to come within a month or so after.
Why does anyone complain about anything? Why are you complaining about other people complaining?
Of course, the real issue isn't really legality-- it's whether the record company will sue. If it's illegal and they sue, you're screwed, and if it's legal and they don't sue, you're fine. However, if it's legal and they sue, you're still screwed, and if it's illegal and they don't sue, you're still fine.
To date, I have no knowledge of anyone being sued for copyright infringement for simply having mp3s on their computers. It's always the sharing that gets you, partially because it's easier to find you if you're sharing, but also because it's easier to demonstrate you did something illegal-- copyrights were intended to deal with unauthorized distribution, not unauthorized viewing/reading/listening.
Ok, all that to say, it's not that clear. You pay your money, you take your chances.
Some record exec says he *thinks* Apple will introduce variable pricing, and suddenly all the news sites report that Apple will do it. The record companies have been after Apple to introduce variable pricing for some time. Is it any surprise that they think they'll get their way?
Yes, there price points are strategic, and as their competitors' laptops are getting cheaper, Apple will need to respond. If they've retooled and their component prices have come down, so they can save ~$200 per laptop, they might very well pass a large portion of that on to consumers in order to boost sales. Also, no word on what the $800 will look like, so it doesn't sound that impossibly crazy to me.
Sure they will. I'll take a 15 incher right here.
Hogwash. What's the difference? They've put in some sort of auto-preview with their themes? "WYGIWYS" doesn't make any sense, and reeks of marketing-speak.