Google's infrastructure is top notch, but don't expect to try and launch the next Web 2.0 app this way. If you use Google's App Engine, your only course is independent or being bought by Google - because you'd have to rewrite so much of your app to migrate to other infrastructure. From google's page on the Google App Engine:
Google App Engine applications are implemented using the Python programming language. The runtime environment includes the full Python language and most of the Python standard library.
Although Python is currently the only language supported by Google App Engine, we look forward to supporting more languages in the future.
At the moment, only Python is supported. Judging by Google's strong faith in Java (i.e. Android) (ps. which i approve of), one can only assume that they will eventually add support for Java and most likely other languages as well. I think you are reaching when you say that "you'd have to rewrite so much of your app to migrate to another infrastructure." Besides, i highly doubt anyone is considering putting a massive, mission critical, real-time, flight booking system onto Google's App Engine and thus dont forsee complete application rewrites being necessary and/or very burdensome.
Say you create a successful app that really starts to take off. Are you stuck with google because the DB API will require massive rework if you want to migrate to another vendor. Which is what the Data Access Object (DAO) design pattern is for. Decoupling your application's business logic from the persistence tier is incredibly easy.
if you have a java application and want the menu bar to appear at the top of the desktop (like all other OS X apps), then simply invoke the jvm/java app and pass the following system property as a JVM arg:
Another one of those top-10 articles broken up into 7 web pages with 3 paragraphs each and flooded with useless advertisements & buzzwords like SOA on demand, Oracle Fusion Middleware and "Storage Utopias"...heres the summary:
They migrate quickly from habitat to habitat.
Selective amnesia
Excessive preening
A pugilistic stance
Sketchy evolution.
Dropping names.
Bad references.
then a sublist....
Behaviors observers should note when the CIO has settled in his new habitat.
They eat their young.
Young and old flee the CIO's flock.
They use the same hunting and gathering strategies regardless of their environment.
Brown-nosing.
Excessive hibernation.
Intimidation
They play favorites with vendors.
They act like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
They show their teeth and their claws.
hey don't finish what they start.
and then there is a sublist within that second main list (in case you werent confused yet):
MORE SIGNS OF BAD CIOS
They overpromise and underdeliver.
They can't sum up their IT strategy into an elevator speech, nor can they articulate the company's vision.
They don't take ownership of critical issues, nor do they demonstrate accountability for problems, but they're quick to take credit for successes.
They can't motivate their staff and don't pay attention to building teams inside the IT group. They can't attract and retain IT staff.
Instead of working on projects that make meaningful contributions to the company's bottom line, they focus either on projects that will look good on their résumés or on sucking up to executives by giving them Blackberrys and new laptops with wireless Internet connections.
They overemphasize project management to the point where 90 percent of the timeline for projects is given over to planning and only 10 percent to implementation.
They view project management as a waste of time.
They can't prioritize projects.
They give staff responsibility for projects but no authority, direction or support. When the individual and the project fail, they publicly berate the individual.
They espouse a different management practice every month.
It depends a lot on the type of product you have developed. I also created a financial software application (Data Loader) to support a data service offered by Standard & Poor's. I originally tried open sourcing the thing and realized it was such a niche product, that no one would really have any interest in helping out and that it would be easier and faster for me to add features and guide the product without external intervention. Additionally, the user-base would never exceed 10-20 people i dont think.
If your product will attract a lot of attention and be of use to lots of people, then it may be more advantageous to open source. My main problem with open sourcing an application is as follows. Lets say your application could save a company 10 000 dollars a year (which is roughly what mine does). If you open source the project, there may be enough incentive for a company to simply take the code and adapt/customize it themselves without paying you a dime. If you left it closed source, they would be more inclined to pay you a licensing fee than to go without the product since its saving them a good deal.
So id say you need to compare how inclined potential clients would be to simply take the code and run versus the possibility of garnering attention from having an open source product and selling services/support for the product (which would only happen if it reaches a large user-base).
google is going to attack the telecom industry much like it has successfully wrestled away power from all the other sectors it has targetted. and it will probably use the same strategy.
internet search used to be dominated by yahoo, microsoft and aol. google stepped in to offer a better, faster, simpler and cleaner solution.
email used to be dominated by yahoo and hotmail. google stepped in to offer massive amounts of storage space, aesthetics and ease-of-use.
access to global imaging was essentially non-existant for the typical person. google stepped in and brought google maps/earth with street level routing and images, and made it fun.
google's latest release in the mobile operating system market displays their plan to undermine Microsoft's existing Windows Mobile while MS sits on its butt not innovating. Sun/Java's new mobile platform has had no advertising, and the rest of the market is too busy competing between nokia/symbian, ericsson and the rest (i.e. motorola, etc). google's strategy, once again, involves bringing a new, better product to market and providing massive incentives to use it (in this case, being free and open).
their plans for the wireless spectrum can't be much different. a fiber backbone with wireless internet cloaking major cities, additional infrastructure for their mobile phone system which may eventually branch out to include massively subsidized Google-branded phones and internet devices....with the aspirations to entirely undermine the existing telecos and crappy mobile phone technology that is available in the US now.
Try running NT 4.0 these days... Won't get you very far. That's the future of Windows XP. They are going to drop it like a hot potato.
With a mentality like that, don't be surprised when general users and IT departments decide to drop Microsoft like a hot potato. It's only a matter of time. Microsoft is riding on the success they amassed during the past 10 years. The wave has got to hit the shore somewhere....
Microsoft's general "security policy" in Windows Vista is that you now have to click two times rather than once to do anything administrator-like.
Timmy helping grandma install Skype -Screen fade. grandma: "ZOMG WHATS HAPPENING??" -Did you REALLY initiate this Installation by clicking on the setup.exe file? -timmy: "Go ahead grandma, its Ok to click yes a second time." -timmy leaves, 1 week later, leet hax04 remotely deploys gnarly worm onto grandma's computer. -Screen fade. grandma: "ZOMG WHATS HAPPENING??" -Did you REALLY initiate this Installation by clicking on the setup.exe file? -grandma: "timmy said to click Yes a second time.."
Given that the only popular Java application on Mac OS X, Azureus, is universally regarded as being slow, bloated, and ugly, I'd say the GP's impression is not at all outdated.
Azureus is the only popular Java app on OS X???....so you mean Eclipse, NetBeans, LimeWire, and JEdit are not popular? I think u meant to say that Swing sucks...not Java.
With regards to the lack of an official Java 1.6 on OS X... What im wondering is how many of the people griping about this actually develop applications that leverage the features in Java 1.6 or how many of you require Java 1.6 to run an already existing Java application?
The major features introduced by Java 1.5 such as generics, annotations, and AOP, are not even popular yet. How many developers even know what AOP is? Ok from that subset, how many of them design new applications that leverage cross-cutting behaviour? Ok since there are a few of you left, let's move to Java 1.6...we've now got runtime hot-patching at the class level (not just at the class loader level! woohoo)....so those of you with personal satellites with "always-on" software can now update ur buggy classes on the fly....additionally, we can embed Ruby and Groovy script languages inside of our java application and run them directly from within the JVM. Im sure IBM is quickly porting all their applications to take advantage of that feature.
i still havent heard one real convincing argument as to why java 1.6 is so important to have RIGHT NOW. aside from being able to test your existing applications with java 1.6, i highly doubt anyone functionally necessitates the new features (and no, "because its cool to access your java objects from within ruby" is not a valid argument). if industrial companies like Mercedes are telling companies like IBM that they still arent ready to move away from 1.4.2, why on earth are basic computer users in a rush to jump to 1.6/1.7 ??
Sounds like stupid college students working at Best Buy getting a monthly prize for signing people up for MSN. Doesn't sound like a giant corporate scam.
As a previous employee at Circuit City, I can attest that this sort of thing is generally encouraged by store managers. Most of the time employees of these sorts of stores (Best Buy and CC) no longer make commision on sales of extended warranties and the ilk (they did in the past) but they are still strongly pushed to get people to sign up for these crappy deals. Now, you may never be directly told "get X people to sign up each month or you will be fired", but you will definitely notice when your hours get cut or your manager starts breathing down your neck each time you're talking to a customer.
I disagree with your comment about this not being a "giant corporate scam". The top execs at companies like CC and BestBuy are the ones that design, implement and sign the contracts that enable these worthless "offers." They do so strictly because of money and they in turn push their demands down onto regional managers which then breath down the store manager's throats. Its one big chain reaction of pressure to sell what isn't needed and in the end the customer suffers. The employees that push this crap don't give a shit if the person actually needs it or not.
I remember some of my buddies laughing about how they tricked old grandmas into buying all sorts of useless, overpriced peripherals for digital cameras. Their managers loved it cuz it helped them reach their sales target (and in turn get bigger bonuses).
Its a huge scam. The companies involved know it, the employees of the companies know it...and finally, now, the customers are starting to know it as well.
ps. i simply installed stereos in peoples cars so i never had to deal with managers' bullshit, thank god..but it was quite sad watching it go down.
i dont understand how your ability to randomly list off 5 different technologies which are designed to solve totally different problems earned you +5 insightful.
Netbeans pales in comparison to Eclipse in terms of performance and expandability. Its almost impossible to tailor their build.xml files because they include so much generated crap (particularly if you are developing GUI applications). i dont really know textmate so i can't comment on that
im guessing you were joking when you suggested ruby as an alternative to java. granted. ruby has its advantages, but when it comes to stability, portability, strong type checking, etc java blows ruby out of the water. you can rant all you want about the internet-community website you made using ruby but let me know how it goes when you need to build a real-world, business-critical application that supports distributed database transactions, web services/process orchestration, thread safety, asynchronous messaging, etc. its not just coincidence that java is supported so strongly by IBM, Oracle, HP, BEA, JBoss (now RedHat), etc.
i agree with you that cvs is outdated but eclipse supports svn via the subclipse plugin. git is a total joke. i watched Linus' presentation at google where he presented Git and called everyone idiots for using anything else. i was actually inspired to replace svn with git after watching the video and went to the website to check it out. after downloading git,i realized i had to compile everything myself (which i didnt have time or interest in doing), the documentation and other support-documents online were essentially non-existent, and the fact that neither netbeans nor eclipse (which i both use) had any form of support for git, led me to quickly forget it. besides, git's strong point is really for distributed application development. something which i cant really see a ruby project requiring.
the only people that complain about java are ones who have never bothered to learn it past the simple hello world application. take away.NET (which is hardly portable) and you only have ONE platform-independant language which is specifically targetted at enterprise-level development : Java. The massive improvements that the JVM has undergone, the Hotspot technology (which yields awesome performance) and support for generics, embedded scripting languages, annotations and AOP nullify the traditional arguments that java is slow or antiquated. get used to it...java isnt going anywhere and its certainly not going to be replaced by ruby, ever.
there is no way this company is going to be able to profit from this hack. there is no way to authenticate, validate or restrict the unlocking process.
as soon as this thing gets out in the open, there will be no stopping street-corner mobile phone stores from just downloading the hack rather than buying it in these "500 license" bundles.
well if you had read my post _clearly_, you would have realized i said "WEB DEVELOPERS". alas, it seems all windows operating systems have higher and higher hardware requirements. it would be ridiculous of me to expect my powerbook g4 to run anything created after 2006. silly users.
for the record, yes, i think javascript and flash are pretty much crap. and no, i dont believe either of them belong on a page designed for "mobile" devices. As for hardware requirements, you would think that whichever idiots designed the CNN mobile page would have designed the site to work on both "older" hardware as well as on my 2 month old HTC Artemis. apparently it doesnt run on either
its not a well-kept secret that web designers are some of the laziest people around. CSS has existed for ages but most developers still have no clue how to use it properly. Content goes in HTML pages, design markup goes in CSS. On a mobile device, we want content, not flashy graphics. i think most people with mobile devices would agree on that. Sorry if i offended your l337 php/javascript/ajax/xhtml/css/web2.0 coding hax0r skillz.
On my Windows Mobile 6 phone, i generally try to download the "wap" versions of pages, especially when using the costly GPRS; like you mentioned, the slashdot.org/palm version or www.cnn.com/mobile...
unfortunately, CNN recently decided that their mobile page deserved an "upgrade" and now requires java script and Flash 8. This is particularly moronic, since Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile doesnt support Flash8 and its java script support is also excrutiatingly slow.
it seems web developers just dont give a shit anymore about quality code, lean pages and performance. they just assume everyone is running the latest, greatest browser with cookies, java script, Flash, a JRE, bloat bloat bloat. i dont want to think about what its like for a person using lynx or anyone with a visual disability now with this whole "web 2.0" garbage.
if my letter is that bad...ur counter arguments are even worse.
Like many people on/. you seem to believe costs determine price. This is not the case. The justification is that people are willing to pay twice as much for a CD.
the problem is people ARENT willing to pay twice as much any more. hence everyone downloading music. peoples value of a song has degraded so much, most people arent even willing to pay one dollar for a song. the only reason anyone put up w it before was because broadband/p2p/mp3 players were NOT ubiquitous.
The RIAA doesn't get a percentage of iTunes sales, the labels do.
excuse me for not being 100% semantically correct. the RIAA is a blanket name for the collective labels.ill correct my letter to say "to be split at your discretion between the respective label and Apple". happy?
While customers certainly have a right to insist on a price before purchasing, insisting on dividing the revenue up amongst parties seems beyond what customers normally insist upon. Fifty percent to the artists seems beyond excessive. Labels assume a lot of risk and costs as far as bribing DJs to get it on the air, and such. Apple has a massive marketing machine. Most musicians are the least important cog. I'd rather have 2% of a much larger pie than have the 10 people who heard of my music d/l it off my site for a buck a song.
u sound just like one of the record label board of directors. theres a big problem in the way people like you think. the artists could easily exist without the record labels...the record labels would cease to exist without the musicians. i believe the artists are not getting what they deserve. if the government boosted income tax to 90%, would you sit around and argue "the government sets the tax levels, therefore ill just sit back and assume whatever they are doing is correct?" and how does apple have a "massive marketing machine?" i havent seen a single tv commercial, billboard sign, or radio advertisement dedicated to the itunes music store.
If you are in Germany, why would the RIAA care. Yes you are American. And?
i dont understand your logic here. if i am in germany when i buy a britney spears album produced by jive (owned by sony bmg)...where does the money go? does it just dissappear into thin air or go to some random german agency?? allofmp3 was in russia; the RIAA sure seemed to care about them...
Why would any part of this be believed? It's not like anything beyond the usual has happened in the past few weeks. Likely, you have been downloading music for a long time, and are claiming a recent start to increase your moral position.
i said i generally condemned downloading music. yes i downloaded songs occassionally but only in the following situations:
1. the song is not available on itunes
2. the song is some random techno remix that doesnt exist on any easily purchasable cd
3. my friend wants to show me a song
4. if i would never buy the song even if the option to download it didnt exist
5. the song is on a CD that i have at home in america
6. for deciding if its worth investing in the entire CD from that artist/band
and no, the fact that i downloaded music never stopped me from buying it. it happened many times where i downloaded a song, loved it, then went and bought the cd to have a high quality version of the entire album.
what are you?? an RIAA member-label shareholder?!?!
The unfortunate thing is that your letter will never reach their eyes. These guys have people working to filter what passes their way... with salaries in the six and seven figures, their time is too valuable to waste with small-timers like most of us here.
which is why i plan on sending copies directly to the CEOs or any other major entity in the organizations. how difficult can it be to find out some high-profile guys address?
i think losing any customer matters. at least thats how any CEO with a brain should think.
ive bought at least 200 CDs.
lets average 1 CD at $15 (ive paid both more and less for many of them)
minimum spent on CDs, 15 * 200 = $3000
and considering ~$3000 is what the settlement letters are asking from most of the victims, id say the RIAA douche bags do indeed care about an amount as minimal as $3000. multiply that by the number of other disgruntled customers like myself...and u get a net sum on par with the number of out of court settlements they are winning. so yes, i think as a whole, they will care..
i posted this letter in the last story on/. regarding the RIAA but i did it a bit late (3 or 4 days after the story appeared on/.) so i dont think anyone got to read it.
below ive appended the letter which i am sending to the RIAA.
additionally, this recent story about the University of Kansas has inspired me to write letters to the other universities that have indeed forwarded the letters to the students -- regarding my decision to rule out all of them as places to do a PhD.
i highly encourage all of you to send similar letters. its time people start doing something about this rather than just complaining about it on internet forums.
--------
Dear Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner,
I would like to inform you of my recent decision to stop purchasing music produced by your record labels.
In the past, I was a strong supporter of the music industry, music artists and the Compact Disc technology. I regularly purchased CD albums for several reasons. First, I consider myself an audiophile and enjoy the quality of music offered by the Compact Disc format. Second, I collect music and have over 200 CDs. I often re-listen to an album many years after buying it. Third, I believe music artists should be rewarded for their hard work and skill. With respect to my favorite bands (Tool, the Cardigans and Garbage) I also believe it provides incentive for them to continue producing music. It was because of these three reasons that I generally opposed and condemned the idea of downloading music illegally. I considered myself to be, what many refer to as, the music industry's ideal customer.
In the past few weeks, this all changed; and since your companies' prosperity in the music industry is entirely enabled by persons like myself, I would like to tell you why.
I have grown tired of reading about the endless lawsuits and out-of-court settlement letters spewed from your companies' legal departments. I am a 25-year-old American student pursuing an MSc in Germany and find your methodology for dealing with students at American universities revolting and offensive. I also believe your companies' business model is flawed, rigid and destined to fail. Your inability to adapt to a high-quality digital distribution model (without DRM) will quickly undermine your revenue stream. There is no justification for a music CD to cost almost twice the price of a DVD movie; especially when one compares the production costs of the two.
Today, when I walked into the local music store, I took a look at the price of a new CD release, considered buying it, then decided to go home and illegally download it instead. I will continue to act accordingly until the RIAA changes its attitude, business model and pricing scheme.
This letter would not be justly sent without an offer to regain me as a customer. I therefore propose that you A) offer all music through iTunes DRM-free and with the option to download the files in a "lossless" format and B) reduce song prices to $0.50 per song with 50% of that going directly to the artist and the other 50% to be split at your discretion between the RIAA and Apple. Should you agree to said proposal, I will happily purchase your music again on a frequent basis and actively campaign for the RIAA amongst my social networks and on Slashdot.org.
I would like to inform you of my recent decision to stop purchasing music produced by your record labels.
In the past, I was a strong supporter of the music industry, music artists and the Compact Disc technology. I regularly purchased CD albums for several reasons. First, I consider myself an audiophile and enjoy the quality of music offered by the Compact Disc format. Second, I collect music and often relisten to an album many years after buying it. Third, I believe music artists should be rewarded for their hard work and skill. With respect to my favorite bands (Tool, the Cardigans and Garbage) I also believe it provides incentive for them to continue producing music. It was because of these three reasons that I generally opposed and condemned the idea of downloading music illegally. I considered myself to be, what many refer to as, the music industry's ideal customer.
In the past few weeks, this all changed; and since your companies' prosperity in the music industry is entirely enabled by persons like myself, I would like to tell you why.
I have grown tired of reading about the endless lawsuits and out-of-court settlement letters spewed from your companies' legal departments. I am a 25 year old American student pursuing an MSc in Germany and find your methodology for dealing with students at American universities revolting and offensive. I also believe your companies' business model is flawed, rigid and destined to fail. Your inability to adapt to a high-quality digital distribution model (without DRM) will quickly undermine your revenue stream. There is no justification for a music CD to cost almost twice the price of a DVD movie; especially when one compares the production costs of the two.
Today, when I walked into the local music store, I took a look at the price of a new CD release, considered buying it, then decided to go home and illegally download it instead. I will continue to act accordingly until the RIAA changes its attitude, business model and pricing scheme.
This letter would not be justly sent without an offer to regain me as a customer. I therefore propose that you A) offer all music through iTunes DRM-free and with the option to download the files in a "lossless" format and B) reduce song prices to $0.25 per song with 50% of that going directly to the artist and the other 50% to be split at your discretion between the RIAA and Apple. Should you agree to said proposal, I will hapily purchase your music again on a frequent basis and actively campaign for the RIAA amongst my social networks and on Slashdot.org.
Question: Are people sharing music by beaming songs from Zune to Zune? Do you have any way to gauge that?
Bach: People are sharing. When your installed base is a million, the benefits of sharing, frankly, aren't as wide as we hope to see in the future. One of the challenges for us is continuing to build on the install base.
Sharing is a tip of the iceberg of what you can do in the social nature of music, and what you can do when you have a device that you can connect when you're at a Starbucks, when you're at work, when you're at home. That really, over time, will change things, for Zune and for consumers.
You would think that the engineers behind the Zune would have realized that the concept of sharing (i.e. squirting) music via Zunes is fundamentally in contradiction to everything that their music suppliers (the RIAA) stand for and would ultimately result in total failure.
The zune was doomed from the beginning thanks to: a plethora of crappy DRM technology (aka Digital Consumer Enablement lol?), recursively crippling software and a total lack of popular interest (cant find article to story where Circuit City employee advises customer against buying Zune).
Come on Bach...come onnnnnnnnn. take a hint and buy some round wheels for your bandwagon before you try to get everyone to jump on it
This is not about giving people no options. It is about giving *artists* no option. People are attached to their favorite artists and will follow them wherever they go.
The parent makes a very good point. The masses will never congregate to stop buying music that is backed by the RIAA due to the fact that if a band has signed with an RIAA company, then there is no alternative way to get that band's music. If you want that band's music but hate the RIAA, there is no way around forking cash over to the RIAA as well. I dont have a say in who produces Tool's music.... and honestly i dont give a shit, im gonna buy their albums regardless.
This is why the salvation of the music industry does not lie in the hands of the consumer but rather it is up to the music bands and musicians to assemble and combat the oppressive RIAA. Ideally what is needed is a group of mega artists (say U2, Rolling Stones, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Jay Z, The Dixie Chicks, etc) to round up a few billion $ and say "ok, we'll create a low-profit production agency that will market and produce bands' music...the bands/musicians get 80% of the profit, and the other 20% goes back to the production agency." This would circumvent the RIAA entirely and accomplish the much desired revolution that the music industry direly needs. The musicians are the ones who allow this crap to happen and they are the ones who have the power to change it.... We just want good music at an aforedable price with a model that rewards the musician for bestowing us with the music we love to hear.
Slashdot Mirror
sorry but you are wrong.
if you have a java application and want the menu bar to appear at the top of the desktop (like all other OS X apps), then simply invoke the jvm/java app and pass the following system property as a JVM arg:
-Dcom.apple.macos.useScreenMenuBar=true
as described here
its not that complicated....
then a sublist....
Behaviors observers should note when the CIO has settled in his new habitat.
and then there is a sublist within that second main list (in case you werent confused yet):
MORE SIGNS OF BAD CIOS
It depends a lot on the type of product you have developed. I also created a financial software application (Data Loader) to support a data service offered by Standard & Poor's. I originally tried open sourcing the thing and realized it was such a niche product, that no one would really have any interest in helping out and that it would be easier and faster for me to add features and guide the product without external intervention. Additionally, the user-base would never exceed 10-20 people i dont think.
If your product will attract a lot of attention and be of use to lots of people, then it may be more advantageous to open source. My main problem with open sourcing an application is as follows. Lets say your application could save a company 10 000 dollars a year (which is roughly what mine does). If you open source the project, there may be enough incentive for a company to simply take the code and adapt/customize it themselves without paying you a dime. If you left it closed source, they would be more inclined to pay you a licensing fee than to go without the product since its saving them a good deal.
So id say you need to compare how inclined potential clients would be to simply take the code and run versus the possibility of garnering attention from having an open source product and selling services/support for the product (which would only happen if it reaches a large user-base).
google is going to attack the telecom industry much like it has successfully wrestled away power from all the other sectors it has targetted. and it will probably use the same strategy.
internet search used to be dominated by yahoo, microsoft and aol. google stepped in to offer a better, faster, simpler and cleaner solution.
email used to be dominated by yahoo and hotmail. google stepped in to offer massive amounts of storage space, aesthetics and ease-of-use.
access to global imaging was essentially non-existant for the typical person. google stepped in and brought google maps/earth with street level routing and images, and made it fun.
google's latest release in the mobile operating system market displays their plan to undermine Microsoft's existing Windows Mobile while MS sits on its butt not innovating. Sun/Java's new mobile platform has had no advertising, and the rest of the market is too busy competing between nokia/symbian, ericsson and the rest (i.e. motorola, etc). google's strategy, once again, involves bringing a new, better product to market and providing massive incentives to use it (in this case, being free and open).
their plans for the wireless spectrum can't be much different. a fiber backbone with wireless internet cloaking major cities, additional infrastructure for their mobile phone system which may eventually branch out to include massively subsidized Google-branded phones and internet devices....with the aspirations to entirely undermine the existing telecos and crappy mobile phone technology that is available in the US now.
With a mentality like that, don't be surprised when general users and IT departments decide to drop Microsoft like a hot potato. It's only a matter of time. Microsoft is riding on the success they amassed during the past 10 years. The wave has got to hit the shore somewhere....
Microsoft's general "security policy" in Windows Vista is that you now have to click two times rather than once to do anything administrator-like.
Timmy helping grandma install Skype
-Screen fade. grandma: "ZOMG WHATS HAPPENING??"
-Did you REALLY initiate this Installation by clicking on the setup.exe file?
-timmy: "Go ahead grandma, its Ok to click yes a second time."
-timmy leaves, 1 week later, leet hax04 remotely deploys gnarly worm onto grandma's computer.
-Screen fade. grandma: "ZOMG WHATS HAPPENING??"
-Did you REALLY initiate this Installation by clicking on the setup.exe file?
-grandma: "timmy said to click Yes a second time.."
Windows Vista security at its finest.
Azureus is the only popular Java app on OS X???....so you mean Eclipse, NetBeans, LimeWire, and JEdit are not popular?
I think u meant to say that Swing sucks...not Java.
With regards to the lack of an official Java 1.6 on OS X...
What im wondering is how many of the people griping about this actually develop applications that leverage the features in Java 1.6 or how many of you require Java 1.6 to run an already existing Java application?
The major features introduced by Java 1.5 such as generics, annotations, and AOP, are not even popular yet. How many developers even know what AOP is? Ok from that subset, how many of them design new applications that leverage cross-cutting behaviour? Ok since there are a few of you left, let's move to Java 1.6...we've now got runtime hot-patching at the class level (not just at the class loader level! woohoo)....so those of you with personal satellites with "always-on" software can now update ur buggy classes on the fly....additionally, we can embed Ruby and Groovy script languages inside of our java application and run them directly from within the JVM. Im sure IBM is quickly porting all their applications to take advantage of that feature.
i still havent heard one real convincing argument as to why java 1.6 is so important to have RIGHT NOW. aside from being able to test your existing applications with java 1.6, i highly doubt anyone functionally necessitates the new features (and no, "because its cool to access your java objects from within ruby" is not a valid argument). if industrial companies like Mercedes are telling companies like IBM that they still arent ready to move away from 1.4.2, why on earth are basic computer users in a rush to jump to 1.6/1.7 ??
As a previous employee at Circuit City, I can attest that this sort of thing is generally encouraged by store managers. Most of the time employees of these sorts of stores (Best Buy and CC) no longer make commision on sales of extended warranties and the ilk (they did in the past) but they are still strongly pushed to get people to sign up for these crappy deals. Now, you may never be directly told "get X people to sign up each month or you will be fired", but you will definitely notice when your hours get cut or your manager starts breathing down your neck each time you're talking to a customer.
I disagree with your comment about this not being a "giant corporate scam". The top execs at companies like CC and BestBuy are the ones that design, implement and sign the contracts that enable these worthless "offers." They do so strictly because of money and they in turn push their demands down onto regional managers which then breath down the store manager's throats. Its one big chain reaction of pressure to sell what isn't needed and in the end the customer suffers. The employees that push this crap don't give a shit if the person actually needs it or not.
I remember some of my buddies laughing about how they tricked old grandmas into buying all sorts of useless, overpriced peripherals for digital cameras. Their managers loved it cuz it helped them reach their sales target (and in turn get bigger bonuses).
Its a huge scam. The companies involved know it, the employees of the companies know it...and finally, now, the customers are starting to know it as well.
ps. i simply installed stereos in peoples cars so i never had to deal with managers' bullshit, thank god..but it was quite sad watching it go down.
the only people that complain about java are ones who have never bothered to learn it past the simple hello world application. take away
i think my shirt sums up the past few days pretty nicely.
there is no way this company is going to be able to profit from this hack. there is no way to authenticate, validate or restrict the unlocking process.
as soon as this thing gets out in the open, there will be no stopping street-corner mobile phone stores from just downloading the hack rather than buying it in these "500 license" bundles.
well if you had read my post _clearly_, you would have realized i said "WEB DEVELOPERS". alas, it seems all windows operating systems have higher and higher hardware requirements. it would be ridiculous of me to expect my powerbook g4 to run anything created after 2006. silly users.
for the record, yes, i think javascript and flash are pretty much crap. and no, i dont believe either of them belong on a page designed for "mobile" devices. As for hardware requirements, you would think that whichever idiots designed the CNN mobile page would have designed the site to work on both "older" hardware as well as on my 2 month old HTC Artemis. apparently it doesnt run on either
its not a well-kept secret that web designers are some of the laziest people around. CSS has existed for ages but most developers still have no clue how to use it properly. Content goes in HTML pages, design markup goes in CSS. On a mobile device, we want content, not flashy graphics. i think most people with mobile devices would agree on that. Sorry if i offended your l337 php/javascript/ajax/xhtml/css/web2.0 coding hax0r skillz.
On my Windows Mobile 6 phone, i generally try to download the "wap" versions of pages, especially when using the costly GPRS; like you mentioned, the slashdot.org/palm version or www.cnn.com/mobile...
unfortunately, CNN recently decided that their mobile page deserved an "upgrade" and now requires java script and Flash 8.
This is particularly moronic, since Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile doesnt support Flash8 and its java script support is also excrutiatingly slow.
it seems web developers just dont give a shit anymore about quality code, lean pages and performance. they just assume everyone is running the latest, greatest browser with cookies, java script, Flash, a JRE, bloat bloat bloat. i dont want to think about what its like for a person using lynx or anyone with a visual disability now with this whole "web 2.0" garbage.
the problem is people ARENT willing to pay twice as much any more. hence everyone downloading music. peoples value of a song has degraded so much, most people arent even willing to pay one dollar for a song. the only reason anyone put up w it before was because broadband/p2p/mp3 players were NOT ubiquitous.
excuse me for not being 100% semantically correct. the RIAA is a blanket name for the collective labels.ill correct my letter to say "to be split at your discretion between the respective label and Apple". happy?
u sound just like one of the record label board of directors. theres a big problem in the way people like you think. the artists could easily exist without the record labels...the record labels would cease to exist without the musicians. i believe the artists are not getting what they deserve. if the government boosted income tax to 90%, would you sit around and argue "the government sets the tax levels, therefore ill just sit back and assume whatever they are doing is correct?" and how does apple have a "massive marketing machine?" i havent seen a single tv commercial, billboard sign, or radio advertisement dedicated to the itunes music store.
i dont understand your logic here. if i am in germany when i buy a britney spears album produced by jive (owned by sony bmg)...where does the money go? does it just dissappear into thin air or go to some random german agency?? allofmp3 was in russia; the RIAA sure seemed to care about them...
i said i generally condemned downloading music. yes i downloaded songs occassionally but only in the following situations:
1. the song is not available on itunes
2. the song is some random techno remix that doesnt exist on any easily purchasable cd
3. my friend wants to show me a song
4. if i would never buy the song even if the option to download it didnt exist
5. the song is on a CD that i have at home in america
6. for deciding if its worth investing in the entire CD from that artist/band
and no, the fact that i downloaded music never stopped me from buying it. it happened many times where i downloaded a song, loved it, then went and bought the cd to have a high quality version of the entire album.
what are you?? an RIAA member-label shareholder?!?!
so ur trying to tell me that these CEOs have personal assistants at their private homes filtering all their personal mail??
which is why i plan on sending copies directly to the CEOs or any other major entity in the organizations. how difficult can it be to find out some high-profile guys address?
i think losing any customer matters. at least thats how any CEO with a brain should think.
ive bought at least 200 CDs.
lets average 1 CD at $15 (ive paid both more and less for many of them)
minimum spent on CDs, 15 * 200 = $3000
and considering ~$3000 is what the settlement letters are asking from most of the victims, id say the RIAA douche bags do indeed care about an amount as minimal as $3000. multiply that by the number of other disgruntled customers like myself...and u get a net sum on par with the number of out of court settlements they are winning. so yes, i think as a whole, they will care..
i posted this letter in the last story on /. regarding the RIAA but i did it a bit late (3 or 4 days after the story appeared on /.) so i dont think anyone got to read it.
below ive appended the letter which i am sending to the RIAA.
additionally, this recent story about the University of Kansas has inspired me to write letters to the other universities that have indeed forwarded the letters to the students -- regarding my decision to rule out all of them as places to do a PhD.
i highly encourage all of you to send similar letters. its time people start doing something about this rather than just complaining about it on internet forums.
--------
Dear Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner,
I would like to inform you of my recent decision to stop purchasing music produced by your record labels.
In the past, I was a strong supporter of the music industry, music artists and the Compact Disc technology. I regularly purchased CD albums for several reasons. First, I consider myself an audiophile and enjoy the quality of music offered by the Compact Disc format. Second, I collect music and have over 200 CDs. I often re-listen to an album many years after buying it. Third, I believe music artists should be rewarded for their hard work and skill. With respect to my favorite bands (Tool, the Cardigans and Garbage) I also believe it provides incentive for them to continue producing music. It was because of these three reasons that I generally opposed and condemned the idea of downloading music illegally. I considered myself to be, what many refer to as, the music industry's ideal customer.
In the past few weeks, this all changed; and since your companies' prosperity in the music industry is entirely enabled by persons like myself, I would like to tell you why.
I have grown tired of reading about the endless lawsuits and out-of-court settlement letters spewed from your companies' legal departments. I am a 25-year-old American student pursuing an MSc in Germany and find your methodology for dealing with students at American universities revolting and offensive. I also believe your companies' business model is flawed, rigid and destined to fail. Your inability to adapt to a high-quality digital distribution model (without DRM) will quickly undermine your revenue stream. There is no justification for a music CD to cost almost twice the price of a DVD movie; especially when one compares the production costs of the two.
Today, when I walked into the local music store, I took a look at the price of a new CD release, considered buying it, then decided to go home and illegally download it instead. I will continue to act accordingly until the RIAA changes its attitude, business model and pricing scheme.
This letter would not be justly sent without an offer to regain me as a customer. I therefore propose that you A) offer all music through iTunes DRM-free and with the option to download the files in a "lossless" format and B) reduce song prices to $0.50 per song with 50% of that going directly to the artist and the other 50% to be split at your discretion between the RIAA and Apple. Should you agree to said proposal, I will happily purchase your music again on a frequent basis and actively campaign for the RIAA amongst my social networks and on Slashdot.org.
Sincerely,
Benjamin P
Dear Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner,
I would like to inform you of my recent decision to stop purchasing music produced by your record labels.
In the past, I was a strong supporter of the music industry, music artists and the Compact Disc technology. I regularly purchased CD albums for several reasons. First, I consider myself an audiophile and enjoy the quality of music offered by the Compact Disc format. Second, I collect music and often relisten to an album many years after buying it. Third, I believe music artists should be rewarded for their hard work and skill. With respect to my favorite bands (Tool, the Cardigans and Garbage) I also believe it provides
incentive for them to continue producing music. It was because of these three reasons that I generally opposed and condemned the idea of downloading music illegally. I considered myself to be, what many refer to as, the music industry's ideal customer.
In the past few weeks, this all changed; and since your companies' prosperity in the music industry is entirely enabled by persons like myself, I would like to tell you why.
I have grown tired of reading about the endless lawsuits and out-of-court settlement letters spewed from your companies' legal departments. I am a 25 year old American student pursuing an MSc in Germany and find your methodology for dealing with students at American universities revolting and offensive. I also believe your companies' business model is flawed, rigid and destined to fail. Your inability to adapt to a high-quality digital distribution model (without DRM) will quickly undermine your revenue stream. There is no justification for a music CD to cost almost twice the price of a DVD movie; especially when one compares the production costs of the two.
Today, when I walked into the local music store, I took a look at the price of a new CD release, considered buying it, then decided to go home and illegally download it instead. I will continue to act accordingly until the RIAA changes its attitude, business model and pricing scheme.
This letter would not be justly sent without an offer to regain me as a customer. I therefore propose that you A) offer all music through iTunes DRM-free and with the option to download the files in a "lossless" format and B) reduce song prices to $0.25 per song with 50% of that going directly to the artist and the other 50% to be split at your discretion between the RIAA and Apple. Should you agree to said proposal, I will hapily purchase your music again on a frequent basis and actively campaign for the RIAA amongst my social networks and on Slashdot.org.
Sincerely,
Benjamin P
SaveTheInternet.com
"a bunch of bullshit like peter piper parallely picked a pied of peppers"
:-)
so that we can avoid reading random crap that may not interest us
PS. notice how Bach himself admits to the "social nature of music". lol
You would think that the engineers behind the Zune would have realized that the concept of sharing (i.e. squirting) music via Zunes is fundamentally in contradiction to everything that their music suppliers (the RIAA) stand for and would ultimately result in total failure.
The zune was doomed from the beginning thanks to: a plethora of crappy DRM technology (aka Digital Consumer Enablement lol?), recursively crippling software and a total lack of popular interest (cant find article to story where Circuit City employee advises customer against buying Zune).
Come on Bach...come onnnnnnnnn. take a hint and buy some round wheels for your bandwagon before you try to get everyone to jump on it
The parent makes a very good point. The masses will never congregate to stop buying music that is backed by the RIAA due to the fact that if a band has signed with an RIAA company, then there is no alternative way to get that band's music. If you want that band's music but hate the RIAA, there is no way around forking cash over to the RIAA as well. I dont have a say in who produces Tool's music.... and honestly i dont give a shit, im gonna buy their albums regardless.
This is why the salvation of the music industry does not lie in the hands of the consumer but rather it is up to the music bands and musicians to assemble and combat the oppressive RIAA. Ideally what is needed is a group of mega artists (say U2, Rolling Stones, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Jay Z, The Dixie Chicks, etc) to round up a few billion $ and say "ok, we'll create a low-profit production agency that will market and produce bands' music...the bands/musicians get 80% of the profit, and the other 20% goes back to the production agency." This would circumvent the RIAA entirely and accomplish the much desired revolution that the music industry direly needs. The musicians are the ones who allow this crap to happen and they are the ones who have the power to change it.... We just want good music at an aforedable price with a model that rewards the musician for bestowing us with the music we love to hear.