If, like a reguluar PC, you could by the Mini 'un-encumbered' with Mac OS X, or if Mac OS X didn't have a full featured UNIX sub-system and two fantastic portage packages etc.. then maybe, just maybe these articles would only irritate me a little. I can see the point that Linux has MythTV and that is a wonderful product, but thats not news either. Its not that I don't see the point, I climb mountains for fun, "Because its there" is my raison d'etre. The fact is that installing Linux on Mac is so easy so as to bearly make a blip on my geek radar. I thought this was "News for nerds - stuff that matters". The fact a mac mini can load and run linux is simply not news. Call me when its running Windows XP PPC or somebodies grandmother managed to get Micorsoft Office running on Darwine without looking at source code or configuration files.
As a recent grad (4 years ago) this article totally panders to my own self worth. But I think there is a lot of truth in there.
The fact is that employers are given very few clues as to a graduates ability except their university degree and that translates very poorly to real world worth as the same grade from one university is simply not equivalent to the same grade from the same university for the previous year never mind across different univeristies (degrees are awarded on a bell curve for the class for that year not attainment). Consitancy for a particular institution is dependant on its ability to attract quality students. This problem is confounded by the UK governments target to get 50% of schooleavers in to universities (it's a bit like trying to get 60% people to have a reading age that is above the mean national average). But this is rarely known by HR clerks who are paid to sift CVs so that the people who make the hiring decisions only see the good CVs.
I graduated from Nottingham University with a 2:2, but was only able to get a 'graduate' job after I had setup my own company and proved my skills at my own expense. My company wasn't purchased as such, I was just made an offer I couldn't refuse. I still believe I wouldn't have gotten my current job if I hadn't have been a graduate, but I also think that it wasn't half as important to them as demonstrating a genuine work ethic and a large degree of business acumen (none of which can be tested on paper). If you are in a UK university at the moment I would heavily recommend that you start you own company NOW. Its much easier to make 'pocket money' than working in a bar and you have the added advantage of getting something that will really make your CV shine, the ability to put your education at the bottom of your CV.
Having said that - if you can't figure out a way to make money and you are predicting a 2:2 you might as well practice flipping burgers and pulling pints:-) Macky Ds are always hiring!
I would LMAO if Apple 'leaked' a copy of tiger that ran on this baby. This would make a fantastic xserve farm machine, especially at the loss-leader prices these will inevitably ship for.
Does this post fall into the "imaging a beowulf cluster..." catergory?
Damn right! That exactly how it should work. We should have more faith in our society when it comes to pervasion of the creative arts. Please don't read this as being overly liberal, or communist, I'm not honest. But doesn't anybody else feel that the extreme wealth that is created by copyright law for actors and singers is a little weird? Especially when you concider who it is that gets wealthy, very rarely does true talent get rewarded, its far more to do with image. Here's how I see it working:
If you are talented and people genuinely love your product they will give you money, because most people are honest. They will pay to go to the cinema to see your films, they will pay to go to your concerts. Bittorent has converted DivX and MP3 into FREE advertising for these genuine life experiences.
If you arn't talented, but you are pretty, people will use listening to your music and watching your films as excuses to buy things with your face on them - fan worship. Your percieved product (music / film) is just advertising and should be Free
If you arn't talented and you arn't pretty then you should really look to get another job. If you love your art continue to create it and give it away, because with any luck that art will bring genuine happiness to the heart of that person and that is the best reward you are EVER going to get. Hell, you might even be able to generate a small fan base in local bars and theatres - do NOT give up your day job, society does not owe you a living. Remember, it is not you who decides what your product is worth it is the market.
But then as Free OSS software advocates we all knew that already. They only people who suffer here are the distributors, but only if they are lazy. A good distributor who understand their market will always be able to sell a good product - see point 3.
In the Keynote where Steve Jobs talked about the iPods dominance and introduced the iPod photo he made some very interesting points as to why they would never support video on the iPod:
People don't store or watch TV or DVD on their computers, they store music and photos.
People don't consume video in the same way as they do music. (You may watch a good film twice, but you'll listen to your favourite tracks daily for the rest of your life).
At the time I agreed with him, but then a few million people, discovered Bittorrent and now use their computesr like TiVOs.
I still agree that I don't consume films like I consume music, but I would love to be able to watch a 30 minute show in my lunch hour, or on the train to work, or whilst I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get out of the changing room.
I see very few reasons why Apple's DRM system couldn't be transposed for TV:
Watch the program as often as I liked
Put on as many of my own iVids as I liked.
Burn it to as many DVDs as I liked
Only watch it from 5, centrally registered, computers
Delete it, you've lost it and you have to buy it again
I also think the current price is fair, 79p (99c) an episode, £12 for a season, is perfectly fair for ad free television that I will likely watch once and then delete a month or so later withou watching it again (just like video tape).
Movies are an experience for me. I like to watch them in cinemas, or at home on a big screen tv with huge surround sound I really can't see me sacrificing the emersion aspect of film for the sake of being able to watch it on the move, and if I do, I'll watch it on my laptop not my iVid (the screens bigger and its got a huge harddisk). I would love to be able to download a new feature on the day of release, but to be honest, 2-4GB (H.264) is still a lot of harddisk space (I have hundreds of DVDs) and thats before we go HDTV. TV I want now. I'll watch it on my laptop until a iVid is released.
I hope this is pitched as a SOHO solution. I also hope it fails. Trying to bolt a phone menu system on to POTS is like trying to bolt a security system on to Windows. Sure you can do it, but you shouldn't - it just makes the user experience dismal and worries consumers. It's bad enough that they charge you to keep you on hold, never mind charge you to put you through to the right dept. Our tech team uses an Asterix system to put you through to the right dept. There are 4 of them in the there and they all answer the phone regardless of what button you press... WTF?
What's next? SOHO phone support outsourcing software? - Enter your script, provide a national rate number and some friendly will instantly start annoying your customers with broken english and massive phone lag too!
I think the interesting point that this article raises is that Microsoft is no longer able to bully its competition. Back in the days of the web browser wars and even the GUI wars Microsoft was able to win because it could either undercut, buy out, or out lawyer any corporation on the planet. In the absense of innovation and an active monopoly these appear to be Microsofts only weapons and they are all neutured by OSS. You can't undercut or buy-out free software, and the global nature of OSS seems to give lawyers the willies. There is only one thing left for them to try and thats patents, and I don't anybody really wants to open that can of worms, even M$... but they will.
Just as Microsoft needs an Apple, I think OSS needs a Microsoft (if only to keep it on its toes) so I don't want to see M$ die completely just reduce its market share to a healthy 30-50%. But I'd also like to see them release some decent products. I can't remember the last time I saw some Microsoft software and thought "Hey thats cool!". They've got the resources what's stopping them?
So when the time came to buy a computer, she looked at the advertisements
I think this is what people really need to learn in schools at the moment: how advertisment and modern media work. People are told by the media that they should be busy all the time so they are, which means they have to trust advertisments and the media more. Which means that the advertisments work because people don't have the time or resources to discern for themselves what they actually need. So the advertising companies give the media companies more money.
I'm not saying that this system is inheritantly wrong, or evil, but I think people need to be more aware of how they are being manipulated and the tools (english and math and social skills) to grab back some of their consumer power.
the school programmes are written by asking companies what they want from people that have a certain diploma
This trend really worries me too. I hate that education is becoming training. How can you train people who arn't educated? UK companies are complaining to government that children are stupid. I fear that the truth is that they are being forced to spend more on training and want the government to fill the gap. As this happens Universities are complaining that the students they recieve are poorly educated. At the same time the UK is producing less professionals than ever before. Is it anywonder that as a nation we are rapidly loosing jobs that require a good education: engineering, software, manufacturing, to countries like India where education is so highly valued?
Having read that back it looks like a bit of a rant. However, I'd be really interested to see if anyone else agrees with me
Genuinely teaching kids how to use information communication technologies and not Microsoft Office is one of my pet peeves. A kid that is taught the fundamentals of GUI and CLI use and is exposed to several different implemetations is going to be significantly better off as with any luck they'll absorb the concept of usage metaphores.
Rather than teaching a child how to use Outlook to send emails, I'd rather they were taught how emails fit in to their toolkit of applications. When to send an email not a letter, when to send an email not make a phone call, not: Press Start, Program files, Outlook Express compose new email. If nothing else it future proofs their knowledge.
What kids need is as much exposure to different technologies as is possible and genuine disscusion on when that technology is appropriate, that means using proprietary and OSS solutions.
The problem here is making sure that the teachers understand this and the curriculum reflects this. The scary thing is even IT professionals don't seem to understand.
I can't decide if I like Tiger or not. having splashed out for a family pack, for my iMac G5 (1GB RAM), my Al PowerBook G4 (512MB RAM), my parents Al PowerBook 17" (256MB RAM) and mother-in-law's mini (512MB RAM) I can't say that I've seen anything about it that I would recommend. If anything it feels slower than panther. Spotlight is useful and I played with it for a bit, but its way too slow to be as world changing as we had been promised. I was really looking forward to Automator, but the few times I though it would be useful it wasn't (although I haven't given up yet). Dashboard widgets are an interesting addition, but at a substantial memory cost - I don't feel it on the G5, but the G4s I've got access to you seem to have a choice - Dashboard or Fast User switching... fast user switching is more useful to me.
My hope is that these new technologies expected Quartz 2D Extereme to be turned on and that once its stable, I'll get the "it just feels snappier" experience that we mac users have come to expect from an upgrade. At the moment this feels more like Win2k to XP.
To keep this pro apple, its not all bad. There are two technologies that I wouldn't give back: Safari RSS and QuickTime 7, both of which feel positively super charged. But I wouldn't describe them as "worth the ticket price alone", especially as you can now get QT7 for panther.
This update can't come soon enough. Lets hope it unlocks the true tiger within!
Like most Apple technologies, Bonjour/Rendezvous kicks ass on Mac OS X because of its ubiquity on the platform. You get the odd suprise, like high end laser printers supporting it, but the only time I've ever really seen it supported and used effectivly is between two macs. IMHO, the only reason the technology is even remotely effective is that you get the 'it just works' user experience 'out of the box'. The problem with this current distribution plan seems to be that if you can download and install the software, you probably don't need it as ZeroConf is only a bonus if you don't understand networking. To be truely effective it needs to be available as standard on the platform. It would be great if it appeared in SP3.
It strikes me that the internet is like street performance. You make a noise. If people like the noise you should provide a simple system for people to provide a small sum of money.
Surely this is the business model that should be adopted by the arts on the internet. People already earn a living busking, and thats just performing on a busy high street, with the internet there is the potential to busk to the world.
Accountants may hate this model, but with the huge variety of GDPs and age ranges that have access to the internet it appears the fairest
Just to be clear Busking is an English word for street performer (not sure if our American friends use it).
I can tell you one thing it won't survive: Government agencies mandating something else for electronic document exchanges.
It's not that I dissagree with you. I have no doubt that if anything can force microsoft to adopt the new standard it will be government, not consumer power, but I think the stumbling block will remain education.
I'm currently outsourced to a government agency handling tax returns. We demand that attachments to returns are sent as PDFs. What tends to happen is that people panic. They see that word/excel cannot export to pdf so they choose the closest alternative - rtf. Our system tells them that the document has to be a pdf, so they change the extention and submit that and then file a complaint when their return gets 'lost your stupid system'.
So sure, Microsoft may add an export feature for the new standard, it might even work, but until people actually understand what a file format standard is and what it actually means to export, its not going to make much of a difference. (Except for Joe Tech who will spend the remainder of his working life explaining to people why they have to 'save as' now)
What does this mean for open source? If this standard is taken seriously by cash cows ie. governments and mega corps. How will open source position itself to take advantage? I've used OOo but didn't really get it. I could see no advantage, as a MS Office licence holder, to switch, if anything it reaffirmed my choice to buy M$ (shudder). The same wasn't true of Apple's Pages. It made me instantly more productive for certain tasks and means that for the majority of my Word Processing needs I've dropped word entirely. I guess my point is that some of you guys (and both the girls) (I'll help if you'll let me) need to get together and make a better office suite. It has be easier to use, faster to load, pretty and free. It doesn't have to be portable as long as it can read and write the standard docs. In fact, it would probably be better if it wasn't, in my humble experience user interfaces to not translate because of the subtle differences in metaphores between platforms. It could even be, shock horror, a web app! (Google, if you're reading this please contact me for details of where to send the cheque:) ).
Everybody (/. readers not included) uses MS Office. Why? Because it is a 'standard'. OK, its a lousy standard. In fact, its more of a moving target than a standard, but the trick is that nobody knows this.
Sure they know that sometimes when they put their file on a floppy disk and put that in the post to send to their collegue half way across the office that sometimes it looks a bit different to how it looked on their computer, but then thats how computers are!?!
People don't know what word processor is unless its Word. They are taught it in school. They are taught in college and they are taught it in night classes. Its what employers want to see on CVs. People freek when they see PDFs. People freak when they see RTFs! Why? Because on windows they don't have a blue 'W' on them that lets them know its a word processing docuement.
The.doc is here for the long haul. It has survived every attempt by microsoft to improve it. It has survived some glaring security holes and it will continue to do this because consumers are not offered an alternative that they understand and that remains word compatible.
The University of Nottingham has been working for years on MASSIVE which is designed explicitly for this purpose. Prof. Benton and Dr. Greenhal have been working on this for years. Last time I experienced it the graphics were more 1980s VR than Doom 3, but you were able to manipulate the environment collaborativly (I built a house with 10 other people) in real time, use it as a meeting space with full audio and very low lag. Not sure about the licensing, you would have to ask them.
I ordered my iMac in September and it arrived in October. I wasn't the first, but I wasn't far off. OK, it may be 7-8 months since the line has been introduced, but isn't that statement a little 'glass-half-empty'?
I've had a Smart Pure for the last 14 months and I absolutely love it. £20 fills it up and I get a good 300 miles out of it.
It is incredibly comfortable (I've had two 240 pound guys in it and still had pleanty of space), accelerates like a rocket (up to 35 mph;) ), cuts through traffic like a hot knife through butter and I've never had problems finding a parking space.
Its only problem is aerodynamics. If you go much over 70mph even the slightest cross wind can blow you over the road. This is especially scary when it is raining, windy and you are on a motorway passing lorries. I live in England so these situations are a daily occurance - who wants to live forever!
When I was in the states I really missed my smart car. They would eat up the traffic New York and Philly and on the highways with a 60mph speed limit and 60mpg you just couldn't go wrong.
My only suprise is that Apple arn't marketing it. It really is the car for the rest of us.
Why split it by geography? Apple prides itself on using unicode (almost throughout).
Having access to the whole site and being able to search for any artist, in any country in any language - with clean or explicit lyrics. Not thats a service thats (almost) worth 0.79 a song!
Well what a relief. I've been looking forward to getting iTunes in the UK since I bought my PowerBook 7 months a go. I thought today was going to be expensive but as the store is pretty much empty Apple are going to save me some cash - wait is that the reality distortion field at work again.
Come on Apple. Sort it out and give us access to all the music!
Slashdot Mirror
If, like a reguluar PC, you could by the Mini 'un-encumbered' with Mac OS X, or if Mac OS X didn't have a full featured UNIX sub-system and two fantastic portage packages etc.. then maybe, just maybe these articles would only irritate me a little. I can see the point that Linux has MythTV and that is a wonderful product, but thats not news either. Its not that I don't see the point, I climb mountains for fun, "Because its there" is my raison d'etre. The fact is that installing Linux on Mac is so easy so as to bearly make a blip on my geek radar. I thought this was "News for nerds - stuff that matters". The fact a mac mini can load and run linux is simply not news. Call me when its running Windows XP PPC or somebodies grandmother managed to get Micorsoft Office running on Darwine without looking at source code or configuration files.
As a recent grad (4 years ago) this article totally panders to my own self worth. But I think there is a lot of truth in there.
The fact is that employers are given very few clues as to a graduates ability except their university degree and that translates very poorly to real world worth as the same grade from one university is simply not equivalent to the same grade from the same university for the previous year never mind across different univeristies (degrees are awarded on a bell curve for the class for that year not attainment). Consitancy for a particular institution is dependant on its ability to attract quality students. This problem is confounded by the UK governments target to get 50% of schooleavers in to universities (it's a bit like trying to get 60% people to have a reading age that is above the mean national average). But this is rarely known by HR clerks who are paid to sift CVs so that the people who make the hiring decisions only see the good CVs.
I graduated from Nottingham University with a 2:2, but was only able to get a 'graduate' job after I had setup my own company and proved my skills at my own expense. My company wasn't purchased as such, I was just made an offer I couldn't refuse. I still believe I wouldn't have gotten my current job if I hadn't have been a graduate, but I also think that it wasn't half as important to them as demonstrating a genuine work ethic and a large degree of business acumen (none of which can be tested on paper). If you are in a UK university at the moment I would heavily recommend that you start you own company NOW. Its much easier to make 'pocket money' than working in a bar and you have the added advantage of getting something that will really make your CV shine, the ability to put your education at the bottom of your CV.
Having said that - if you can't figure out a way to make money and you are predicting a 2:2 you might as well practice flipping burgers and pulling pints :-) Macky Ds are always hiring!
I would LMAO if Apple 'leaked' a copy of tiger that ran on this baby. This would make a fantastic xserve farm machine, especially at the loss-leader prices these will inevitably ship for. Does this post fall into the "imaging a beowulf cluster..." catergory?
- If you are talented and people genuinely love your product they will give you money, because most people are honest. They will pay to go to the cinema to see your films, they will pay to go to your concerts. Bittorent has converted DivX and MP3 into FREE advertising for these genuine life experiences.
- If you arn't talented, but you are pretty, people will use listening to your music and watching your films as excuses to buy things with your face on them - fan worship. Your percieved product (music / film) is just advertising and should be Free
- If you arn't talented and you arn't pretty then you should really look to get another job. If you love your art continue to create it and give it away, because with any luck that art will bring genuine happiness to the heart of that person and that is the best reward you are EVER going to get. Hell, you might even be able to generate a small fan base in local bars and theatres - do NOT give up your day job, society does not owe you a living. Remember, it is not you who decides what your product is worth it is the market.
But then as Free OSS software advocates we all knew that already. They only people who suffer here are the distributors, but only if they are lazy. A good distributor who understand their market will always be able to sell a good product - see point 3.At the time I agreed with him, but then a few million people, discovered Bittorrent and now use their computesr like TiVOs.
I still agree that I don't consume films like I consume music, but I would love to be able to watch a 30 minute show in my lunch hour, or on the train to work, or whilst I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get out of the changing room.
I see very few reasons why Apple's DRM system couldn't be transposed for TV:
- Watch the program as often as I liked
- Put on as many of my own iVids as I liked.
- Burn it to as many DVDs as I liked
- Only watch it from 5, centrally registered, computers
- Delete it, you've lost it and you have to buy it again
I also think the current price is fair, 79p (99c) an episode, £12 for a season, is perfectly fair for ad free television that I will likely watch once and then delete a month or so later withou watching it again (just like video tape).Movies are an experience for me. I like to watch them in cinemas, or at home on a big screen tv with huge surround sound I really can't see me sacrificing the emersion aspect of film for the sake of being able to watch it on the move, and if I do, I'll watch it on my laptop not my iVid (the screens bigger and its got a huge harddisk). I would love to be able to download a new feature on the day of release, but to be honest, 2-4GB (H.264) is still a lot of harddisk space (I have hundreds of DVDs) and thats before we go HDTV. TV I want now. I'll watch it on my laptop until a iVid is released.
I hope this is pitched as a SOHO solution. I also hope it fails. Trying to bolt a phone menu system on to POTS is like trying to bolt a security system on to Windows. Sure you can do it, but you shouldn't - it just makes the user experience dismal and worries consumers. It's bad enough that they charge you to keep you on hold, never mind charge you to put you through to the right dept. Our tech team uses an Asterix system to put you through to the right dept. There are 4 of them in the there and they all answer the phone regardless of what button you press... WTF?
What's next? SOHO phone support outsourcing software? - Enter your script, provide a national rate number and some friendly will instantly start annoying your customers with broken english and massive phone lag too!
I think the interesting point that this article raises is that Microsoft is no longer able to bully its competition. Back in the days of the web browser wars and even the GUI wars Microsoft was able to win because it could either undercut, buy out, or out lawyer any corporation on the planet. In the absense of innovation and an active monopoly these appear to be Microsofts only weapons and they are all neutured by OSS. You can't undercut or buy-out free software, and the global nature of OSS seems to give lawyers the willies. There is only one thing left for them to try and thats patents, and I don't anybody really wants to open that can of worms, even M$... but they will.
Just as Microsoft needs an Apple, I think OSS needs a Microsoft (if only to keep it on its toes) so I don't want to see M$ die completely just reduce its market share to a healthy 30-50%. But I'd also like to see them release some decent products. I can't remember the last time I saw some Microsoft software and thought "Hey thats cool!". They've got the resources what's stopping them?
I think this is what people really need to learn in schools at the moment: how advertisment and modern media work. People are told by the media that they should be busy all the time so they are, which means they have to trust advertisments and the media more. Which means that the advertisments work because people don't have the time or resources to discern for themselves what they actually need. So the advertising companies give the media companies more money.
I'm not saying that this system is inheritantly wrong, or evil, but I think people need to be more aware of how they are being manipulated and the tools (english and math and social skills) to grab back some of their consumer power.
the school programmes are written by asking companies what they want from people that have a certain diplomaThis trend really worries me too. I hate that education is becoming training. How can you train people who arn't educated? UK companies are complaining to government that children are stupid. I fear that the truth is that they are being forced to spend more on training and want the government to fill the gap. As this happens Universities are complaining that the students they recieve are poorly educated. At the same time the UK is producing less professionals than ever before. Is it anywonder that as a nation we are rapidly loosing jobs that require a good education: engineering, software, manufacturing, to countries like India where education is so highly valued?
Having read that back it looks like a bit of a rant. However, I'd be really interested to see if anyone else agrees with me
Genuinely teaching kids how to use information communication technologies and not Microsoft Office is one of my pet peeves. A kid that is taught the fundamentals of GUI and CLI use and is exposed to several different implemetations is going to be significantly better off as with any luck they'll absorb the concept of usage metaphores.
Rather than teaching a child how to use Outlook to send emails, I'd rather they were taught how emails fit in to their toolkit of applications. When to send an email not a letter, when to send an email not make a phone call, not: Press Start, Program files, Outlook Express compose new email. If nothing else it future proofs their knowledge.
What kids need is as much exposure to different technologies as is possible and genuine disscusion on when that technology is appropriate, that means using proprietary and OSS solutions.
The problem here is making sure that the teachers understand this and the curriculum reflects this. The scary thing is even IT professionals don't seem to understand.
I can't decide if I like Tiger or not. having splashed out for a family pack, for my iMac G5 (1GB RAM), my Al PowerBook G4 (512MB RAM), my parents Al PowerBook 17" (256MB RAM) and mother-in-law's mini (512MB RAM) I can't say that I've seen anything about it that I would recommend. If anything it feels slower than panther. Spotlight is useful and I played with it for a bit, but its way too slow to be as world changing as we had been promised. I was really looking forward to Automator, but the few times I though it would be useful it wasn't (although I haven't given up yet). Dashboard widgets are an interesting addition, but at a substantial memory cost - I don't feel it on the G5, but the G4s I've got access to you seem to have a choice - Dashboard or Fast User switching... fast user switching is more useful to me.
My hope is that these new technologies expected Quartz 2D Extereme to be turned on and that once its stable, I'll get the "it just feels snappier" experience that we mac users have come to expect from an upgrade. At the moment this feels more like Win2k to XP.
To keep this pro apple, its not all bad. There are two technologies that I wouldn't give back: Safari RSS and QuickTime 7, both of which feel positively super charged. But I wouldn't describe them as "worth the ticket price alone", especially as you can now get QT7 for panther.
This update can't come soon enough. Lets hope it unlocks the true tiger within!
The Emperors new code?
Like most Apple technologies, Bonjour/Rendezvous kicks ass on Mac OS X because of its ubiquity on the platform. You get the odd suprise, like high end laser printers supporting it, but the only time I've ever really seen it supported and used effectivly is between two macs. IMHO, the only reason the technology is even remotely effective is that you get the 'it just works' user experience 'out of the box'. The problem with this current distribution plan seems to be that if you can download and install the software, you probably don't need it as ZeroConf is only a bonus if you don't understand networking. To be truely effective it needs to be available as standard on the platform. It would be great if it appeared in SP3.
It strikes me that the internet is like street performance. You make a noise. If people like the noise you should provide a simple system for people to provide a small sum of money.
Surely this is the business model that should be adopted by the arts on the internet. People already earn a living busking, and thats just performing on a busy high street, with the internet there is the potential to busk to the world.
Accountants may hate this model, but with the huge variety of GDPs and age ranges that have access to the internet it appears the fairest
Just to be clear Busking is an English word for street performer (not sure if our American friends use it).
It's not that I dissagree with you. I have no doubt that if anything can force microsoft to adopt the new standard it will be government, not consumer power, but I think the stumbling block will remain education.
I'm currently outsourced to a government agency handling tax returns. We demand that attachments to returns are sent as PDFs. What tends to happen is that people panic. They see that word/excel cannot export to pdf so they choose the closest alternative - rtf. Our system tells them that the document has to be a pdf, so they change the extention and submit that and then file a complaint when their return gets 'lost your stupid system'.
So sure, Microsoft may add an export feature for the new standard, it might even work, but until people actually understand what a file format standard is and what it actually means to export, its not going to make much of a difference. (Except for Joe Tech who will spend the remainder of his working life explaining to people why they have to 'save as' now)
What does this mean for open source? If this standard is taken seriously by cash cows ie. governments and mega corps. How will open source position itself to take advantage? I've used OOo but didn't really get it. I could see no advantage, as a MS Office licence holder, to switch, if anything it reaffirmed my choice to buy M$ (shudder). The same wasn't true of Apple's Pages. It made me instantly more productive for certain tasks and means that for the majority of my Word Processing needs I've dropped word entirely. I guess my point is that some of you guys (and both the girls) (I'll help if you'll let me) need to get together and make a better office suite. It has be easier to use, faster to load, pretty and free. It doesn't have to be portable as long as it can read and write the standard docs. In fact, it would probably be better if it wasn't, in my humble experience user interfaces to not translate because of the subtle differences in metaphores between platforms. It could even be, shock horror, a web app! (Google, if you're reading this please contact me for details of where to send the cheque :) ).
Everybody (/. readers not included) uses MS Office. Why? Because it is a 'standard'. OK, its a lousy standard. In fact, its more of a moving target than a standard, but the trick is that nobody knows this.
Sure they know that sometimes when they put their file on a floppy disk and put that in the post to send to their collegue half way across the office that sometimes it looks a bit different to how it looked on their computer, but then thats how computers are!?!
People don't know what word processor is unless its Word. They are taught it in school. They are taught in college and they are taught it in night classes. Its what employers want to see on CVs. People freek when they see PDFs. People freak when they see RTFs! Why? Because on windows they don't have a blue 'W' on them that lets them know its a word processing docuement.
The .doc is here for the long haul. It has survived every attempt by microsoft to improve it. It has survived some glaring security holes and it will continue to do this because consumers are not offered an alternative that they understand and that remains word compatible.
The University of Nottingham has been working for years on MASSIVE which is designed explicitly for this purpose. Prof. Benton and Dr. Greenhal have been working on this for years. Last time I experienced it the graphics were more 1980s VR than Doom 3, but you were able to manipulate the environment collaborativly (I built a house with 10 other people) in real time, use it as a meeting space with full audio and very low lag. Not sure about the licensing, you would have to ask them.
I ordered my iMac in September and it arrived in October. I wasn't the first, but I wasn't far off. OK, it may be 7-8 months since the line has been introduced, but isn't that statement a little 'glass-half-empty'?
I've had a Smart Pure for the last 14 months and I absolutely love it. £20 fills it up and I get a good 300 miles out of it. It is incredibly comfortable (I've had two 240 pound guys in it and still had pleanty of space), accelerates like a rocket (up to 35 mph ;) ), cuts through traffic like a hot knife through butter and I've never had problems finding a parking space.
Its only problem is aerodynamics. If you go much over 70mph even the slightest cross wind can blow you over the road. This is especially scary when it is raining, windy and you are on a motorway passing lorries. I live in England so these situations are a daily occurance - who wants to live forever!
When I was in the states I really missed my smart car. They would eat up the traffic New York and Philly and on the highways with a 60mph speed limit and 60mpg you just couldn't go wrong.
My only suprise is that Apple arn't marketing it. It really is the car for the rest of us.
I'm not sure how easy this is to set up on linux or windows, but I use my bluetooth headset on OS X.
OK - so you can't dial from it but set up was a breeze, I don't get echo problems any more and I can walk freely around the office.
I'm sure this will be seen in Brussels as another reason why the UK should sell its soul to the Euro.
Why split it by geography? Apple prides itself on using unicode (almost throughout). Having access to the whole site and being able to search for any artist, in any country in any language - with clean or explicit lyrics. Not thats a service thats (almost) worth 0.79 a song!
Well what a relief. I've been looking forward to getting iTunes in the UK since I bought my PowerBook 7 months a go. I thought today was going to be expensive but as the store is pretty much empty Apple are going to save me some cash - wait is that the reality distortion field at work again.
Come on Apple. Sort it out and give us access to all the music!