At work, where I am forced to use Windows and IE, if you make a mistake on the address bar, you go to the Error/MSN search page, rather than a blank page like on another browser. Typing into the Google bar avoids the Big Brother Microsoft aspect of that, and gets you one click away from your site on Google.
Or people are just lazy. That ".com" can take a lot out of you.
Does anyone really believe, given how the major labels are not happy with the $0.99/song and $9.99/album model at iTMS, that if Yahoo succeeds they would allow that sort of pricing to continue? They let it exist in an effort to try to get some leverage against Jobs/iTMS.
The model of the major corporate record label controlling the music business is a dead idea....the content just isn't that great anymore, anyone can buy reasonably decent equipment cheaply enough to record their own album (or find someone who can), and the real threshold to entering the marketplace (the labels) is lost if you can market direct to the public. Since all of the production costs get charged back to the artist, it is no wonder why many artists have home studios.
The labels are trapped in their own 1950s era business model. The ones that survive will be the ones that can adapt to the technology....RIAA lawsuits and DRM-ed CDs are "running scared" approaches that avoid them having to deal with the real issue that they are not able to compete on the strength of their content.
For an entertaining look at the music industry, check out the Mixerman Diaries over at the prosoundweb forums. A lot is probably fictional, but the dysfunction has a true ring to it.
Skraut, I think you (and the other posters who came up with this) have it exactly right. The sick MBA M$ bastard that came up with that idea will probably get a big bonus for that idea. F*** the end-user who is running their own product .
Then the only *NIX alternative is OSS, and we know from their extensive and helpful educationa-, er, marketing material how BAD that is.
Thank you for your comments. I prefer to do my searching on Medline (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), and my comment was about the metabolic effects of junk food. I think you mistook my comments for a sweeping generalization,..I study the molecular biology of nutrition, and I don't have a stake in either camp.
My point was, however, simple sugars drive an increase total caloric intake, period. From an evolutionary metabolic perspective, this makes sense...to promote a seasonal weight gain when fruits were available, before the winter "starving time."
Glycemic index is linked in Asia as well, and you are right, the absolute number of calories is key (i.e., fat).
Eur J Clin Nutr. 2004 Nov;58(11):1472-8.
Correlation between dietary glycemic index and cardiovascular disease risk factors among Japanese women.
Amano Y, Kawakubo K, Lee JS, Tang AC, Sugiyama M, Mori K.
RESULT: The GI food list made for the current study calculated for 91% of carbohydrate intakes measured. The mean dietary GI was 64+/-6, and the mean dietary GL was 150+/-37. Individuals in the highest tertile of GI consumed more carbohydrate, mostly from white rice (P0.001), and less fat (P0.01). Individuals in all three groups by tertile of GL showed similar tendencies. In the lowest GI tertile, the highest concentration of HDL-cholesterol and lowest concentration of triacylglycerol and immunoreactive insulin were observed (P0.01). In the lowest GL tertile, the highest concentration of HDL-cholesterol and the lowest concentration of triacylglycerol were observed (P0.05). CONCLUSION: Calculated dietary GI and GL were positively associated with CVD risk factors among the Japanese women who consumed white rice as a staple food.
There was an interesting study done with overweight kids in a metabolic unit that says a lot about how we eat and what it is doing to us. They split the kids into two groups, fed them all exactly the same amount of fat, carbohydrates, and protein during regular meals, but let them eat whatever they wanted between meals (and recorded it).
The difference between the two groups was high vs. low glycemic index....in other words, one group got carbohydrates that were absorbed fast (think prepared foods, instant oatmeal, etc.) and the other good complex carbohydrates (e.g. steel cut oats). Remember, the absolute composition of the diet was otherwise the same.
The kids that ate the simple sugars ate 500 - 600 more calories a day between meals, since the simple sugars induce a "stress response" and induced the urge to eat prior to the next meal. Those unhealthy snacks prime susceptible kids to eat more, and 500 calories/day in 7 days (3500 cal) is another pound of fat.
In Australia, they have the glycemic index on food labels. Our kids could benefit from that here.
If you think about FIrefox, it is a consumer-driven entity...driven by the features that we users actually want in a browser. If you don't like it, write a plug-in or get involved in development. If you don't, so be it.
MS has had little historical reason to implement features that consumers want if their commercial users buying web software packages from them side lobbied for them. Popups could have gone away a long time before they did in the IE release cycles if MS wasn't working both sides of the fence or was concerned more about the user experience. Wonder why there are no IE plug-ins (and won't be until the market forces it)?
Go Firefox! At least it is keeping the game interesting.
Depends on your faculty.
The the two raging Mac OS X debates in our institution now are the potential security vulnerabilities in Tiger because (1) the Spotlight search technology is always on, without a simple way to turn it off and (2) at boot, typing the correct command allows the user to not only boot into, but remain in SU mode in Tiger for the duration of the session without having to activate the root account. As a result, there are faculty members looking for hacks to disable these, and these are guys who know the difference between ports and pudenda.
I have two computers on my desk--the PC that the hospital requires me to use to access patient-related records and the OS X PB G4 Mac that I do all of my Molecular Biology research on--so I face this issue every day. Both computers have MS Office, their own respective Email accounts/programs, etc. The Mac gets used >95% of the time when there is a choice--why? Because it takes me less effort to do the same thing, I can run open source mol biol software (some wonderful, some buggy), and if something breaks, it is easy to look under the hood and find why/where it crashed.
These discussions on/. are pretty pointless, as are the "why doesn't OS X run on my TigerDirect-assembled X86 PC." Don't buy an Apple if you don't need/like/want one--but recognize that they are a hardware+software company--that's why when they get it right, it works well.
One lost day of productivity for me is less than the price differential than comparable X86 vs. Mac machines, making the overall equation better for the Apple. Even Oracle uses them:
Slashdot Mirror
At work, where I am forced to use Windows and IE, if you make a mistake on the address bar, you go to the Error/MSN search page, rather than a blank page like on another browser. Typing into the Google bar avoids the Big Brother Microsoft aspect of that, and gets you one click away from your site on Google.
Or people are just lazy. That ".com" can take a lot out of you.
The model of the major corporate record label controlling the music business is a dead idea....the content just isn't that great anymore, anyone can buy reasonably decent equipment cheaply enough to record their own album (or find someone who can), and the real threshold to entering the marketplace (the labels) is lost if you can market direct to the public. Since all of the production costs get charged back to the artist, it is no wonder why many artists have home studios.
The labels are trapped in their own 1950s era business model. The ones that survive will be the ones that can adapt to the technology....RIAA lawsuits and DRM-ed CDs are "running scared" approaches that avoid them having to deal with the real issue that they are not able to compete on the strength of their content.
For an entertaining look at the music industry, check out the Mixerman Diaries over at the prosoundweb forums. A lot is probably fictional, but the dysfunction has a true ring to it.
"Equipment Compatibility:
1. I have an Apple Macintosh computer. Will the disc work on my MAC?
Yes. This disc will behave like a traditional CD in a Mac."
Apparently, it just works!
Then the only *NIX alternative is OSS, and we know from their extensive and helpful educationa-, er, marketing material how BAD that is.
From news.netcraft.com, whatever that is....http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/06/18 /lax_security_cited_in_massive_credit_card_data_th eft.html/
Six replies and already slashdotted....must have been hosted on a Newton as well....
My point was, however, simple sugars drive an increase total caloric intake, period. From an evolutionary metabolic perspective, this makes sense...to promote a seasonal weight gain when fruits were available, before the winter "starving time."
Glycemic index is linked in Asia as well, and you are right, the absolute number of calories is key (i.e., fat).
Eur J Clin Nutr. 2004 Nov;58(11):1472-8.
Correlation between dietary glycemic index and cardiovascular disease risk factors among Japanese women.
Amano Y, Kawakubo K, Lee JS, Tang AC, Sugiyama M, Mori K.
RESULT: The GI food list made for the current study calculated for 91% of carbohydrate intakes measured. The mean dietary GI was 64+/-6, and the mean dietary GL was 150+/-37. Individuals in the highest tertile of GI consumed more carbohydrate, mostly from white rice (P0.001), and less fat (P0.01). Individuals in all three groups by tertile of GL showed similar tendencies. In the lowest GI tertile, the highest concentration of HDL-cholesterol and lowest concentration of triacylglycerol and immunoreactive insulin were observed (P0.01). In the lowest GL tertile, the highest concentration of HDL-cholesterol and the lowest concentration of triacylglycerol were observed (P0.05). CONCLUSION: Calculated dietary GI and GL were positively associated with CVD risk factors among the Japanese women who consumed white rice as a staple food.
The difference between the two groups was high vs. low glycemic index....in other words, one group got carbohydrates that were absorbed fast (think prepared foods, instant oatmeal, etc.) and the other good complex carbohydrates (e.g. steel cut oats). Remember, the absolute composition of the diet was otherwise the same.
The kids that ate the simple sugars ate 500 - 600 more calories a day between meals, since the simple sugars induce a "stress response" and induced the urge to eat prior to the next meal. Those unhealthy snacks prime susceptible kids to eat more, and 500 calories/day in 7 days (3500 cal) is another pound of fat.
In Australia, they have the glycemic index on food labels. Our kids could benefit from that here.
Is it just me, or is the obvious response:
"I've seen you with your pants off......that's no pleasuring device, it's just a microkernel!"
If you think about FIrefox, it is a consumer-driven entity...driven by the features that we users actually want in a browser. If you don't like it, write a plug-in or get involved in development. If you don't, so be it. MS has had little historical reason to implement features that consumers want if their commercial users buying web software packages from them side lobbied for them. Popups could have gone away a long time before they did in the IE release cycles if MS wasn't working both sides of the fence or was concerned more about the user experience. Wonder why there are no IE plug-ins (and won't be until the market forces it)? Go Firefox! At least it is keeping the game interesting.
Depends on your faculty. The the two raging Mac OS X debates in our institution now are the potential security vulnerabilities in Tiger because (1) the Spotlight search technology is always on, without a simple way to turn it off and (2) at boot, typing the correct command allows the user to not only boot into, but remain in SU mode in Tiger for the duration of the session without having to activate the root account. As a result, there are faculty members looking for hacks to disable these, and these are guys who know the difference between ports and pudenda.
Uh..............the Bash terminal is the default when you click on the Terminal icon (since Panther).