I'm wondering a few things though: does you 5 year old niece use sections, macros, table of contents, or any advanced aspect to Word? I doubt it somehow, which suggests to me that they don't use advanced features.
I'm wondering a few things though: did you just answer your own question? This suggests to me that there might be something circular about your logic.
Well yes, the purpose of the advertising company is to drive people to the advertiser's services. What I was making fun of was the over-the-top way it was presented as "you are the product!!111oneone11one!" It reminds me a bit of Soyent Green. The self-righteous tone it was delivered with did not help - as if this was something that we did not know, and had to be revealed to lesser beings by the superior intelligence of Phroggy.
It's true that the role of advertising is to get people to visit the advertiser's site and hopefully buy the products being sold. It's hardly as sinister Phroggy makes it out to be, though. The users aren't literally being packaged up and sold on store shelves. They are simply being directed to the advertiser's site.
You make the mistake of assuming that the users are the customers, rather than the product being sold.
Oh no! How creepy and dystopian. It's like I'm in the Matrix, and I'm being used as a human battery! Thank you, Phroggy, for opening my eyes to that which I have been so ignorant of all my life! It's like you have amazing powers to see the real truth.
On the topic of slimy apple, I also got a piece of spam from them the day after xmas with the title "Wasn't under the tree? Get it now from the Apple Store"
You wouldn't have gotten that email unless you opted-in to receive Apple's emails. Therefore, it's not spam.
You're doing something wrong, as you only need to give Software Update your password once when installing multiple system updates. Unless you have an incredibly slow internet connection, perhaps, and it takes so long to download the updates that the authentication expires?
That's the key benefit of treating an mp3 like a hard drive. You can drag & drop things
and use a simple interface and use concepts and skills that should date to the back to
the first few days when you started using computers in general.
That's not what the typical consumer wants, though.
Yes, just dragging files to my Archos directory beats the snot out of iTunes for usability.
How is that easier than having it just sync automatically when I plug it in?
In the MP3 player's case, they waited for the industry to grow 'big enough' then sold a unique-enough player with total subservience to the media conglomerates and backed it up with extreme amounts of advertising.
Revisionist history.
When the iPod was first released, Apple had just been running a "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign that encouraged people to rip their CDs in iTunes. The industry was very threatened by this idea, and wanted to sue Apple. There was no subservience going on there. The music industry hated the iPod, and saw it as a device that encouraged piracy. There was no "iTunes Store" back then.
Also, when the iPod was released, there was almost no mass-market advertising at all. It mostly relied on word-of-mouth from Apple enthusiasts for sales. The "Extreme amounts of advertising" didn't happen until the iPod was already fairly popular.
Really, as with most Apple products, the only innovation to speak of was the advertising.
Not true. The iPod was very successful before Apple started running widespread advertising. It was mostly successful initially based on word of mouth.
And you forget that the other MP3 players of the era were either massive bricks with laptop-sized hard drives, or flash-based players with a storage capacity measured in megabytes. The iPod was the first with a capacity in gigabytes, that was also small and light enough to be practical. Furthermore, it has Firewire, allowing speedy transfer of files, while the other players had USB 1.1, which could take hours to transfer your music. Then there was the user interface, which was light years ahead of the rest of the market.
If you think the iPod was not innovative, then you're just ignorant of technology/and/or history.
MP3 players were "just another tech" until P2P filesharing brought millions upon millions of MP3 encoded songs into the picture, which is the only reason there was ever a market for the iPod to dominate. Very few people want to take the time to rip enough CDs to justify the expense of an iPod, or even to avoid the inconvenience of carrying a CD player and some CDs around, a fact that is as true now as it was in 1997 when the first portable MP3 players were sold.
This is completely untrue. Looks like you have forgotten the history. The iPod wasn't successful because of P2P filesharing, but rather because it (well, iTunes) made the process of ripping CDs and transferring them so simple. In those days, someone not tech-savvy would not find the process of ripping discs to be appealing, with the clunky and confusing software that was around at the time. But iTunes/iPod made it so painless, that even your computer-phobic mother could do it. There's a huge number of iPod users out there who have never used a P2P application.
As I noted above, the only innovation or revolution to speak of here is the advertising.
You just keep telling yourself that, and live in willful ignorance. This is the reason that so few in the tech industry are able to achieve such successes, they fail to understand what really happened, and fall back on their comfortable delusions. Yes, everybody is just stupid and fell prey to advertising, not like you who are too smart to fall for that. Anybody else's success is irrational, and you don't succeed because you are too smart for the masses.
Honestly, what's better: colorful plastics and designs that have never been seen before, or the computing industry's current Henry Ford-esque quest to prove that "[the customer] can have any color they want, as long as it's black"?
Honestly, I'll take either over the previous paradigm: beige everywhere. What the hell was up with the computer industry and beige, anyway? Some kind of obsession with 1970s office interiors?
Young people are much more likely to be out of touch with current events and much more in touch with technology.
If by "technology" you mean "brand names" and "social networks." I think actual knowledge of technology (i.e how things work) is actually declining in the young population.
EBook readers. This is the dawning of the year of the EBook or not but they are everywhere.
If by "everywhere" you mean "a small number of people in North America own eBook readers, but hardly anyone else does."
The Kodak Zi8. It is a better HD camcorder than the Flip and at under $200 is a bargain. Now anybody can shoot HD at 1080p.
What's the point in shooting 1080p if you do it through lousy optics in terrible lighting conditions? As always, consumer video and photography will remain awful, regardless of the technology.
Correction - they wanted a Nokia, when Nokia had a strong brand name allure, and strong product offerings. That's not the case anymore.
You can't argue with that.
I just did.
Especially while not seeing strengths typical in Nokia product which are more important to most of the planet than "nice software".
Again, wrong. A user-friendly interface is generally the most important thing in a phone for users (other than low price).
Insanely great battery time and reception, sturdiness, low price, features;)
You can get that almost anywhere these days, no need to buy a Nokia.
)...even good UI
You're having a laugh. Don't Nokia phones still run Symbian? My last Nokia phone did, and that is one miserable OS and interface.
iPhone or Android don't even want to target majority of the market.
And why does this matter? There are plenty of other companies to target the rest of the market. Nokia is left catering to an increasingly commodified market with razor-thin margins. It's not a great place to be in as a business - hence their fear of iPhone/Android. They tried doing smartphones in an attempt to compete, and failed.
When the US and Canada start to see that taking down sites at the drop of a hat is very harmful to their hosting businesses, then maybe they will do something about it.
Now there are around 4.6 billion, and rising rapidly (in which Nokia is a dominating force). All of them sooner or later will want to have new mobile phone of course.
But why would those people specifically want a Nokia? There's very little that differentiates Nokia from other brands - so those customers might choose to switch to a cheaper Chinese knock-off. If they don't go for the cheap Chinese knock-off, they probably want something with nice software, like an iPhone or Android model.
Nokia is the only hugely profitable cellphone manufacturer (other are out of the market, struggling, or cellphones aren't their main product;
And how long do you think that's going to last? It's only a matter of time before Nokia is in the same boat. This is the reason that the industry is so desperate to emulate Apple. They need a new business model, and Apple has found one.
I think you're missing the point. If "expressing yourself" means clothing, that's the 13-year-old mentality. Most (well, many) adults can express themselves quite effectively with their words, and don't need costumes.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm wondering a few things though: does you 5 year old niece use sections, macros, table of contents, or any advanced aspect to Word? I doubt it somehow, which suggests to me that they don't use advanced features.
I'm wondering a few things though: did you just answer your own question? This suggests to me that there might be something circular about your logic.
It's true that the role of advertising is to get people to visit the advertiser's site and hopefully buy the products being sold. It's hardly as sinister Phroggy makes it out to be, though. The users aren't literally being packaged up and sold on store shelves. They are simply being directed to the advertiser's site.
Uhhh, woosh?
You make the mistake of assuming that the users are the customers, rather than the product being sold.
Oh no! How creepy and dystopian. It's like I'm in the Matrix, and I'm being used as a human battery! Thank you, Phroggy, for opening my eyes to that which I have been so ignorant of all my life! It's like you have amazing powers to see the real truth.
On the topic of slimy apple, I also got a piece of spam from them the day after xmas with the title "Wasn't under the tree? Get it now from the Apple Store"
You wouldn't have gotten that email unless you opted-in to receive Apple's emails. Therefore, it's not spam.
Can anyone really deny this was the decade of Microsoft?
What does that even mean? Is it anything like "The Summer of George"?
You're doing something wrong, as you only need to give Software Update your password once when installing multiple system updates. Unless you have an incredibly slow internet connection, perhaps, and it takes so long to download the updates that the authentication expires?
That's the key benefit of treating an mp3 like a hard drive. You can drag & drop things and use a simple interface and use concepts and skills that should date to the back to the first few days when you started using computers in general.
That's not what the typical consumer wants, though.
Yes, just dragging files to my Archos directory beats the snot out of iTunes for usability.
How is that easier than having it just sync automatically when I plug it in?
In the MP3 player's case, they waited for the industry to grow 'big enough' then sold a unique-enough player with total subservience to the media conglomerates and backed it up with extreme amounts of advertising.
Revisionist history.
When the iPod was first released, Apple had just been running a "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign that encouraged people to rip their CDs in iTunes. The industry was very threatened by this idea, and wanted to sue Apple. There was no subservience going on there. The music industry hated the iPod, and saw it as a device that encouraged piracy. There was no "iTunes Store" back then.
Also, when the iPod was released, there was almost no mass-market advertising at all. It mostly relied on word-of-mouth from Apple enthusiasts for sales. The "Extreme amounts of advertising" didn't happen until the iPod was already fairly popular.
Really, as with most Apple products, the only innovation to speak of was the advertising.
Not true. The iPod was very successful before Apple started running widespread advertising. It was mostly successful initially based on word of mouth.
And you forget that the other MP3 players of the era were either massive bricks with laptop-sized hard drives, or flash-based players with a storage capacity measured in megabytes. The iPod was the first with a capacity in gigabytes, that was also small and light enough to be practical. Furthermore, it has Firewire, allowing speedy transfer of files, while the other players had USB 1.1, which could take hours to transfer your music. Then there was the user interface, which was light years ahead of the rest of the market.
If you think the iPod was not innovative, then you're just ignorant of technology/and/or history.
MP3 players were "just another tech" until P2P filesharing brought millions upon millions of MP3 encoded songs into the picture, which is the only reason there was ever a market for the iPod to dominate. Very few people want to take the time to rip enough CDs to justify the expense of an iPod, or even to avoid the inconvenience of carrying a CD player and some CDs around, a fact that is as true now as it was in 1997 when the first portable MP3 players were sold.
This is completely untrue. Looks like you have forgotten the history. The iPod wasn't successful because of P2P filesharing, but rather because it (well, iTunes) made the process of ripping CDs and transferring them so simple. In those days, someone not tech-savvy would not find the process of ripping discs to be appealing, with the clunky and confusing software that was around at the time. But iTunes/iPod made it so painless, that even your computer-phobic mother could do it. There's a huge number of iPod users out there who have never used a P2P application.
As I noted above, the only innovation or revolution to speak of here is the advertising.
You just keep telling yourself that, and live in willful ignorance. This is the reason that so few in the tech industry are able to achieve such successes, they fail to understand what really happened, and fall back on their comfortable delusions. Yes, everybody is just stupid and fell prey to advertising, not like you who are too smart to fall for that. Anybody else's success is irrational, and you don't succeed because you are too smart for the masses.
Honestly, what's better: colorful plastics and designs that have never been seen before, or the computing industry's current Henry Ford-esque quest to prove that "[the customer] can have any color they want, as long as it's black"?
Honestly, I'll take either over the previous paradigm: beige everywhere. What the hell was up with the computer industry and beige, anyway? Some kind of obsession with 1970s office interiors?
Young people are much more likely to be out of touch with current events and much more in touch with technology.
If by "technology" you mean "brand names" and "social networks." I think actual knowledge of technology (i.e how things work) is actually declining in the young population.
That was over 10 years ago, not in the last 12 months.
EBook readers. This is the dawning of the year of the EBook or not but they are everywhere.
If by "everywhere" you mean "a small number of people in North America own eBook readers, but hardly anyone else does."
The Kodak Zi8. It is a better HD camcorder than the Flip and at under $200 is a bargain. Now anybody can shoot HD at 1080p.
What's the point in shooting 1080p if you do it through lousy optics in terrible lighting conditions? As always, consumer video and photography will remain awful, regardless of the technology.
But the rest of us are more interested in what 95% of the market are buying, not niche players like Apple.
Talk about "News at Eleven"! What an amazing insight you have!
They want a Nokia.
Correction - they wanted a Nokia, when Nokia had a strong brand name allure, and strong product offerings. That's not the case anymore.
You can't argue with that.
I just did.
Especially while not seeing strengths typical in Nokia product which are more important to most of the planet than "nice software".
Again, wrong. A user-friendly interface is generally the most important thing in a phone for users (other than low price).
Insanely great battery time and reception, sturdiness, low price, features ;)
You can get that almost anywhere these days, no need to buy a Nokia.
)...even good UI
You're having a laugh. Don't Nokia phones still run Symbian? My last Nokia phone did, and that is one miserable OS and interface.
iPhone or Android don't even want to target majority of the market.
And why does this matter? There are plenty of other companies to target the rest of the market. Nokia is left catering to an increasingly commodified market with razor-thin margins. It's not a great place to be in as a business - hence their fear of iPhone/Android. They tried doing smartphones in an attempt to compete, and failed.
In the USA, I have never once witnessed a significant decrease of the size and power of the federal government during my entire lifetime. Ever.
That's because the military-industrial complex has also been increasing in size. Did you not read/comprehend the post that you replied to?
Wouldn't it be easier just to put the server deep underground? A satellite in orbit would be trivial for a government to take down.
When the US and Canada start to see that taking down sites at the drop of a hat is very harmful to their hosting businesses, then maybe they will do something about it.
Invade said countries?
i'm sure there's some pre-ordained term for this from the Elders of the Internet
Yes. We call it "Robert" (pronounced "Wobbert").
It seems obvious that their profit margins would be higher if they are not paying royalties on all the patents they are using.
That doesn't make any sense. Nokia doesn't pay for the patents it owns, so how could the difference in profit margin be about patents?
Now there are around 4.6 billion, and rising rapidly (in which Nokia is a dominating force). All of them sooner or later will want to have new mobile phone of course.
But why would those people specifically want a Nokia? There's very little that differentiates Nokia from other brands - so those customers might choose to switch to a cheaper Chinese knock-off. If they don't go for the cheap Chinese knock-off, they probably want something with nice software, like an iPhone or Android model.
Nokia is the only hugely profitable cellphone manufacturer (other are out of the market, struggling, or cellphones aren't their main product;
And how long do you think that's going to last? It's only a matter of time before Nokia is in the same boat. This is the reason that the industry is so desperate to emulate Apple. They need a new business model, and Apple has found one.
I think you're missing the point. If "expressing yourself" means clothing, that's the 13-year-old mentality. Most (well, many) adults can express themselves quite effectively with their words, and don't need costumes.
We spend all our time in the field crouched under desks and showing our ass cracks anyway, right?
I think you might be doing it wrong.