Cringely writes: "Skype threatens only incumbent FIXED phone service, not mobile service. Skype causes headaches for Verizon, but not for Verizon Wireless"
Wrong. Big cities start talking about Wifi wireless coverage across the entire city. Why would you spend your precious cellphone minutes in a Wifi enabled city, if your friends have Skype too?
We know that 119 applicants hacked into the system -- and we know their names [...]
Any applicant found to have done so will not be admitted to this school
To me, the only logical reasoning to make such a decision is that none of these 119 was initialy admitted.
- Harvard most probably decides the final list of accepted peoples at the end only. They want to make sure no better candidate would show up before the end. Since the letters were ready 1 month ahead, it looks much more like a list of rejected people.
- if all people were initially rejected, it is not difficult to make such a decision, and to pretend to be harsch against non ethical people at a time it is a popular topic for business schools.
- if some people were initially accepted, that would hurt Harvard to let good candidates go to Stanford or elsewhere.
- finally, based on the Reuters news article, it is not said that the 119 were not accepted because of entering the system.
Kim Clark's reasoning is most probably business based, pragmatic, and not ethical or computer technology based. All the 119 were initially rejected, that's the only business explanation I can see.
side note: deals are "signed" or "announced" at the Paris show, but they are usually agreed before the show.
All big manufacturers like to say "we signed that many deals" during the show, even though it was all agreed beforehand.
Let's not mix the issues. Because this company is lying about their product, and does not know how to make them user-friendly, does not mean that DRM is bad.
DRM itself is good. It enables studios to have less fear to distribute their movies online and keep gaining revenues out of them.
And sitributing online means that studios can save money on delivery costs by distributing their movies online. In the price you pay for buying or renting a DVD, you pay for the sales guy behind the counter, the monthly rent of the shop, the plastic piece of the DVD, the time people spend chosing which and how many they will put in each store, etc etc.
All this does not add value to me.
Also, distributing online gives more choice to the consumer, the movie is never sold out, you don't pay late fees, you don't have to move your butt back to the shop. Also, it makes the startup distribution costs lower, enbling smaller studios to aslo distribute less mainstream movies.
Without DRM, forget about all this, it will never happen.
Like many new technologies, the very first trials are not very user friendly at first, then it gets better.
No, the main problem of this technology is that it is in the process of being controlled by only 1 company in the world, and this company will take an unfair share of the pie. Very small per unit at first, but just enough to make billions selling overpriced operating systems.
Still arguing IE vs FireFox? The field is changing, and for once, MSFT is changing faster than anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Cringely writes:
"Skype threatens only incumbent FIXED phone service, not mobile service. Skype causes headaches for Verizon, but not for Verizon Wireless"
Wrong. Big cities start talking about Wifi wireless coverage across the entire city. Why would you spend your precious cellphone minutes in a Wifi enabled city, if your friends have Skype too?
We know that 119 applicants hacked into the system -- and we know their names [...]
Any applicant found to have done so will not be admitted to this school
To me, the only logical reasoning to make such a decision is that none of these 119 was initialy admitted.
- Harvard most probably decides the final list of accepted peoples at the end only. They want to make sure no better candidate would show up before the end. Since the letters were ready 1 month ahead, it looks much more like a list of rejected people.
- if all people were initially rejected, it is not difficult to make such a decision, and to pretend to be harsch against non ethical people at a time it is a popular topic for business schools.
- if some people were initially accepted, that would hurt Harvard to let good candidates go to Stanford or elsewhere.
- finally, based on the Reuters news article, it is not said that the 119 were not accepted because of entering the system.
Kim Clark's reasoning is most probably business based, pragmatic, and not ethical or computer technology based. All the 119 were initially rejected, that's the only business explanation I can see.
side note: deals are "signed" or "announced" at the Paris show, but they are usually agreed before the show. All big manufacturers like to say "we signed that many deals" during the show, even though it was all agreed beforehand.
Let's not mix the issues. Because this company is lying about their product, and does not know how to make them user-friendly, does not mean that DRM is bad.
DRM itself is good. It enables studios to have less fear to distribute their movies online and keep gaining revenues out of them.
And sitributing online means that studios can save money on delivery costs by distributing their movies online. In the price you pay for buying or renting a DVD, you pay for the sales guy behind the counter, the monthly rent of the shop, the plastic piece of the DVD, the time people spend chosing which and how many they will put in each store, etc etc.
All this does not add value to me.
Also, distributing online gives more choice to the consumer, the movie is never sold out, you don't pay late fees, you don't have to move your butt back to the shop. Also, it makes the startup distribution costs lower, enbling smaller studios to aslo distribute less mainstream movies.
Without DRM, forget about all this, it will never happen.
Like many new technologies, the very first trials are not very user friendly at first, then it gets better.
No, the main problem of this technology is that it is in the process of being controlled by only 1 company in the world, and this company will take an unfair share of the pie. Very small per unit at first, but just enough to make billions selling overpriced operating systems.
Still arguing IE vs FireFox? The field is changing, and for once, MSFT is changing faster than anyone else.