Huh, I've never experienced this. Now I admit I don't have a music library (I just stream internet radio stations) but I do have probably about 300 videos in total. For DVDs I've ripped I use the MyMovies plug-in (not the developer just a huge fan). Which downloads the cover-art, full movie info like movie summary, actors, directors, etc and that is always instantanous. I assume you are talking about just using the media center's default media tools though. Even then I've never had a freeze. Again, I don't do music but from my experince with video I assume your talking about something similar to when you browse videos it tries to create a thumb-nail type view of each video in the area you are currently browsing. Creating those thumb-nails can take some time depending on the number of files in the current location, but I've never noticed any freezing associated with this. Be default it will just show a "dummy" icon for the video with its name and while the thumb-nails are being loaded you can still scroll around, select and play any video (you don't need to wait for the thumb-nails), go back, etc or whatever you want to do.
Not sure if this is at all what you are talking about, but if you care to post more details I may be able to help you with this. Worst case, it would probably be a matter of breaking up your collection by genre or somethign so there isn't thousands and thousands of files all in the same folder though from my experience that shouldn't cause an issue like you describe either (though I do have a fairly decent machine running the media center software).
I personally disagree and think the 360 model is much better (though I can understand how others could disagree). Personally I don't want a stand-alone PVR. Let me explain my setup and what I see as the benefits. I have a headless server in my office which runs MS Media Center. I then have a 360, original XBox, or media center extender connected to each TV in the house and networked. With this setup every TV in the house has the same functionality (except some don't have local game playing ability with just the MCExtneders) and interface. All share central storage (my server has almost 1 TB of space) so I don't have to worry about some little 20 GB disk getting filled up after just a few shows are recorded. PVR functionality does us non-trivial amounts of CPU and disk access, but since this is all being done on my central server I doesn't effect anything else meaning I can still play games, etc anywhere in the house at the same time I'm recording a show. I can stream previously recorded shows from my server to anywhere in the world (like to my office at work if I'm bored and want to watch last nights Colbert Report). Also, from anywhere in the world I can control the PVR functionality so if I'm on vacation and realized I forgot to record something I just jump on the web and tell my server to record it. All my DVDs (almost 100) are all ripped to my server and available at the push of a button from any TV in the house (not limited to what certain box it was originally ripped to). Streaming internet radio and TV available at the push of a button from any TV in the house. There is also a media center plug-in for my home automation software, so full house control (arm the security system, dim the lights, etc, etc) is all controllable from any TV in the house.
I could go on and on and one, but the point is MS already offers today what IMO is a far superiour system than what we are talking about Sony maybe might one day think about doing.
Yes and child-porn is blocked, and MS doesn't advertise Linux on its website, and Redhat doesn't have links to the US womens soccer team on its website, and the website for Kraft foods doesn't have a link to the al-jazeera site!
Guess what! Just because you choose not to create a link on your site to someone elses site doesn't mean you have a "censor's mentality".
Re:Has the survey been credible in the past?
on
Apache down, IIS up
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· Score: 1
Well, you just have to read the charts. It shows that as of March 2006 that survey the survey had Apache looking great (actually it still is), but from March 2006 on there has a very noticable shift. So any survey before March '06 was credible and any survey after isn't (as they obviously became MS shills on that date). Of course if in the future the survey looks positive for Apache again, it will again be credible.
Why would you do that for ANY beta OS? It is beta after all. So unless you want to install on some spare PC you don't use, just do like everyone else and toss it on a VM. Never a good idea to replace an existing OS which you rely on for your work with a beta no matter who makes the OS. Try it out yes, but don't throw away an existing and reliable OS you can depend on so you can try one you hope that works. There is plenty of free VM software out there (heck even from MS now). Wiping you day-to-day PC you rely on to play with a beta OS is dumber than never doing backups IMO.
And that was just the first few months. Its now 500 million games. If we play it safe and say an average of 4 players per game and 1/2 hour per game. I'd guess that pretty conservative (or at least realistic) but that would then be 1 billion hours of game play or 500,000 person years. Probably could have cured cancer with that much time/effort, but oh well Halo is more fun.
Yeah and they even make it optional in case you don't give a crap about the next-gen DVD crap and save money in case you don't. I HATE them! Give me what you want me to have make me pay whatever you want. I hate choices!!!!!
Aren't there any areas we should stay away from _even_ if they would help us cure diseases?
Of course there are. You just have to look at the risk vs reward. I'm not a doctor, but presumably this would have a lot of potential benefits. After that, you have to look at the risks. There are certainly a lot of risks here. They had better at least beef up security as there are certainly plenty of "pro-life" people who would love to kill anyone doing this type of work. I never did understand that whole thing. One side is soo upset that the other side is doing what they consider "killing" someone for the "greater good" and are soo upset by that, that they decide THEY must kill someone for the "greater good". Damn people are stupid!
Now I've just read a little of TFA, but my first impression is to agree with the GP. Lawyers are a bit different than accountants. Lawyers only have a responsibility to inform people of a clients wrong-doing if they know of it before hand. This situtation seems a bit more like this (I know all analogies such but bear with me):
Say you kill someone, but you want to plead not guilty but tell your lawyer all what happended. Then your lawyer goes on Larry King and tells the world that he thinks what you did was wrong and if you would have asked him first he would have told you not to kill anyone.
I think I'd be looking for a new lawyer and my previous laywer should be dis-bared. Again, I've just skimmed a few posting so maybe I'm missing something.
Exactly, this is Sony (home of the emotion engine). They are a just a few months from relese. This is the time-frame when they tell you how thier product will replace the PC, be fater than the top super computers, will clean your house for you, etc, etc, etc. Only after they have built up enough unfounded hype around the product will they want to release the disappointing actual specs and benchmarks.
Sorry, my mention of the Axis of evil comment was meant to be an answer to this:
What do you think would happen if it was reported that his press secretary called Iran's leader a "f..king towelhead"?
Though not EXACTLY the same thing, it is very much on point and what happened? Well, it is considered by many as one of his greatest speeches. Now that could well be because its one of the few without the glaring use of made-up words more than based on content, but it is considered one of this best speeches by many nonetheless. Anyway, it was simply a retort to your initial question not a statement on its correctness (in terms of content or how it came about).
Now you could possibly make the case that the "moron" statement hurt the economy (not sure that I buy it but the case could be made). However, there can also be a case made that GWB's "evil" comments (and others like it) are at least partially responsible for Iran's recent push for nuclear technology (hey the biggest baddest kid on the block looks like he is going to attack you and you'll try to find some leverage to protect yourself). There can be consequences for any statement, that in itself doesn't effect a persons right to say them (though it may effect if they should say them).
As far as he didn't have the right to say it... well of course there are times when not ALL speach is free and IANAL, but I sure cannot think of any laws that would be broken by calling someone (even a world leader) a moron. So I guess it comes down to your definition of "right". I think of it in the "we hold these rights to be self-evident" way (sorry American historical reference but hopefully understandable to others). In that way, he certainly has the "right" to say it. If you are using "right" in some "he doesn't have the right to do it if he may in some way get in trouble or there may be consquences" way, then I guess that would be correct also, but thats not at least in my opinion the true meaning of a "right".
Hold up! So if you accept a government job, are you forced to sign away your right to free speech? Of course he has the right to say it. There may be a political price to pay, but at least it wasn't libel where there could be a criminal offense. He just stated a fact.
BTW, why don't elected officals have to take some sort of standardized test and have those reported to the electorate? Hell, everyone from prospective college students to prospective NFL athletes have to because people assume thier basic intelligence could be relevent to thier suitablity for a given task. Why in the hell aren't politicians given such a thing?
Ahhh! Thats a VERY good point! I hadn't thought of that. Not proud to say it, but I've more than once pirated a program because I only needed it to do a little job and didn't want to pay $$$ for it. I think I'd still like to own and run locally the stuff I use everyday, but your idea I find VERY appealing for those cases where I don't (as long as they don't try the crap the telcos do with a minimum 1 year sign-up, etc).
Agreed. I mean I understand the model, just I'd (as a rule) rather own the software. I understand the subscription model and am often annoyed by those who cry about "why do I have to keep playing". If you choose a product being served to you (like the softare as a service thing) then the company serving you that product has on-going costs associated with providing it. The ONLY equitable method to charge for this is some type of subscription model. I mean what are the other choices?
Anyway, I do understand and in fact even do use one "software as a service" service. Heck, they just make sense in some areas. I'm just not quite so sure about other areas like office apps, etc. But again, for some people I'm sure that model will be perfect. Personally, I'm not crazy about it in many cases (what happens in case of internet failure, etc, etc, etc) but think its gerat the options are out there.
No real difference and I think both are fine. You want to pay $x per song and own it forever, you can. You want to pay $x per month for unlimited use (but stops when you stop paying), you can. Choice is good.
That said I personally like the software as a service model less than the music model. At least with the music you are constantly getting new material for the monthly price where software is (more or less) just paying for the exact same thing again and again. But thats just me and even in those cases depending on the monthly cost to "rent" vs the cost to "buy" it could still be a good deal. Anyway, I'm always glad to see more choices even it I don't happen to like one of them. Someone else might really like the other choice for some reason and I'm glad its available to them.
"Templates" such as a call from overseas followed by a flurry of domestic calls are used to identify leads, which are forwarded to the FBI for investigation.
Good thing soccer (you know, the other football)isn't more popular in the states. Can you imagine the number of suspected terrorists that would be found this summer during the World Cup. I don't even know if there is a color available on the Homeland Security color chart to signify that level of terrorist activity!
Well that a really bad analogy (and geography) and many have pointed out many reasons why, but a couple things I haven't seen mentioned yet.
and you couldn't find the guys who were stealing the chocolate out of the stores (although you could probably find them if you asked the newspaper guys), what would you do?
You'd question the newspaper, make sure you got the info needed to get the theives and make sure ads like that stopped appearing. Aka: kill the torrent site.
First, in the case of torrents there is no secret information about who is doing it. Every IP address seeding or downloading via a torrented file are publicly viewable. No need to even bother the "newspaper".
They didn't "question the newspaper" they shut it down (at least for now).
"make sure ads like that stopped appearing" OK, if we want to run a society based on what arbitrary people think is the right thing to do in a given case then that would be fine. However, if you perfer living in a place that is governed by some set of laws you'd better make sure there is a law on the books saying that posting such ads is illegal. If not, I think your computer should be siezed for writing REALLY bad analogies on/. Sure no law would back me up on that, but it sure "feels" like the right thing to do so lets just do it.
I agree we'll have to wait and see, but one thing worth noting in order to meet Blu-ray's specs the coating must be less than.1mm think. That is quite a lot thinner than current optical disks (current disks can use at least.6mm I think but may be remembering that incorrectly). So while the new coating certainly does sound impressive from what I've read, the thinness of the coating mandated by Blu-ray makes we a bit skeptical (like you) as to how much real improvement it will cause. Now, this new coating on older DVD technology (which allows a thicker coating) certainly has some promise to offer a somewhat reliable alternative to tape backups. Though I certainly won't be an early adapter as a company I contracted for years ago spent over 1/2 million on a fancy automated robotic optical disk archival system which started to have fairly common errors after around 5 years so am very skeptical. I know this new coating and other new technology could solve the problems (the problems I mention were around 8 years ago), seeing that much money spent on a "guarenteed" solution and see it fail so horribly really makes me extra skeptical.
Is it good for consumers if it means that players and media are removed from the market?
Ya gotta remember media would ever possibly be removed from the market if DRM was removed. As much as Apple would like you believe otherwise, this proposed law has nothing to do with removing DRM. It simply wants DRM to at least be interoperable so if you buy a device your media will play on it. Now as for players.... well removing proprietary players sounds good to me.
WARNING!!!! Above is a good example of why you should never take stock tips from the internet! Lets just take a look at a couple of my favorite nuggets;-)
Keep in mind that Google's fundamentals include a 65 price to earnings ratio, the improvement of which has exceeded their market cap's growth........Even more impressive, GOOG's earnings-per-share is almost five times that of MSFT's
OK, first about the P/E ratio. The above makes it sound like a high P/E ratio is a quality you should look for in attractive investments. DON'T DO THAT!!!!! The P/E ratio is basically how much you have to pay for $1 in earnings. Its price per share over earnings per share. So a high P/E means your paying more for each $1 in earnings. The next confusing part is about Goggle's earnings-per-share being almost 5x's what MS has. While that is true, it is completly meaningless by itself. To put it in perspective Google's earnings-per-share (eps) IS just over 4.5x MS's (eps). However, since Google's stock price is over 16x what MS's is you are paying over 16x the price to earn 4.5x more per share.
I am not here to make any recommendations on any stock, but the above is just complete non-sense. A stock with a high P/E ratio could be a great investment (as could a stock with a low P/E). The thing to remember a high P/E ratio generally relates to higher risk. The higher the the P/E ratio the higher expectations the market has for the stock. Now its easy to see that and think "well if the market has that high of expectations, it must be a good investment!" but you must remember (as the P/E ratio points out) those expectations are already factored into the stocks current price. So for the stock to raise, the company has to surpass those already high expectations. However, if the company has completely amazing results but still don't quite match expectations then the stock will dip (or fall).
Another MAJOR thing to consider when looking at any stock in the internet search sector is the expectations (and thus current stock price and P/E ratio) aren't completly based on "who will win" type questions between Google, MS, Yahoo, etc. A large portion of those expectations for each company is based on the forcasted growth of the entire sector. The forcasts are really amazing and that points for good times for companies in that sector but again introduces risk for an investment in any company in that sector. I forget the exact numbers but just for an example lets say its forcasted that spending on on-line advertising has 10x todays number being spent annually by 2010. Now lets say Google wipes everyone else off the board and is the lone on-line ad provider by 2008. Now thats great news, but if in the interm the forcasted growth for the sector just isn't meeting expectations you could still see a drop in Googles price because expecations as a whole aren't being met.
OK the sample scenerio is a bit ridiculous, but it does hopefully show the complexity of the market and the types of things which must be considered in contrast of the original posters wacked out ideas about the market;-)
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Huh, I've never experienced this. Now I admit I don't have a music library (I just stream internet radio stations) but I do have probably about 300 videos in total. For DVDs I've ripped I use the MyMovies plug-in (not the developer just a huge fan). Which downloads the cover-art, full movie info like movie summary, actors, directors, etc and that is always instantanous. I assume you are talking about just using the media center's default media tools though. Even then I've never had a freeze. Again, I don't do music but from my experince with video I assume your talking about something similar to when you browse videos it tries to create a thumb-nail type view of each video in the area you are currently browsing. Creating those thumb-nails can take some time depending on the number of files in the current location, but I've never noticed any freezing associated with this. Be default it will just show a "dummy" icon for the video with its name and while the thumb-nails are being loaded you can still scroll around, select and play any video (you don't need to wait for the thumb-nails), go back, etc or whatever you want to do.
Not sure if this is at all what you are talking about, but if you care to post more details I may be able to help you with this. Worst case, it would probably be a matter of breaking up your collection by genre or somethign so there isn't thousands and thousands of files all in the same folder though from my experience that shouldn't cause an issue like you describe either (though I do have a fairly decent machine running the media center software).
I personally disagree and think the 360 model is much better (though I can understand how others could disagree). Personally I don't want a stand-alone PVR. Let me explain my setup and what I see as the benefits. I have a headless server in my office which runs MS Media Center. I then have a 360, original XBox, or media center extender connected to each TV in the house and networked. With this setup every TV in the house has the same functionality (except some don't have local game playing ability with just the MCExtneders) and interface. All share central storage (my server has almost 1 TB of space) so I don't have to worry about some little 20 GB disk getting filled up after just a few shows are recorded. PVR functionality does us non-trivial amounts of CPU and disk access, but since this is all being done on my central server I doesn't effect anything else meaning I can still play games, etc anywhere in the house at the same time I'm recording a show. I can stream previously recorded shows from my server to anywhere in the world (like to my office at work if I'm bored and want to watch last nights Colbert Report). Also, from anywhere in the world I can control the PVR functionality so if I'm on vacation and realized I forgot to record something I just jump on the web and tell my server to record it. All my DVDs (almost 100) are all ripped to my server and available at the push of a button from any TV in the house (not limited to what certain box it was originally ripped to). Streaming internet radio and TV available at the push of a button from any TV in the house. There is also a media center plug-in for my home automation software, so full house control (arm the security system, dim the lights, etc, etc) is all controllable from any TV in the house.
I could go on and on and one, but the point is MS already offers today what IMO is a far superiour system than what we are talking about Sony maybe might one day think about doing.
Yes and child-porn is blocked, and MS doesn't advertise Linux on its website, and Redhat doesn't have links to the US womens soccer team on its website, and the website for Kraft foods doesn't have a link to the al-jazeera site!
Guess what! Just because you choose not to create a link on your site to someone elses site doesn't mean you have a "censor's mentality".
Well, you just have to read the charts. It shows that as of March 2006 that survey the survey had Apache looking great (actually it still is), but from March 2006 on there has a very noticable shift. So any survey before March '06 was credible and any survey after isn't (as they obviously became MS shills on that date). Of course if in the future the survey looks positive for Apache again, it will again be credible.
cost of re-imaging my system
Why would you do that for ANY beta OS? It is beta after all. So unless you want to install on some spare PC you don't use, just do like everyone else and toss it on a VM. Never a good idea to replace an existing OS which you rely on for your work with a beta no matter who makes the OS. Try it out yes, but don't throw away an existing and reliable OS you can depend on so you can try one you hope that works. There is plenty of free VM software out there (heck even from MS now). Wiping you day-to-day PC you rely on to play with a beta OS is dumber than never doing backups IMO.
And that was just the first few months. Its now 500 million games. If we play it safe and say an average of 4 players per game and 1/2 hour per game. I'd guess that pretty conservative (or at least realistic) but that would then be 1 billion hours of game play or 500,000 person years. Probably could have cured cancer with that much time/effort, but oh well Halo is more fun.
You mean a documentary of a game trailer only promotes the game, its graphics, its music, and its game engine? Say it isn't so!
Yeah and they even make it optional in case you don't give a crap about the next-gen DVD crap and save money in case you don't. I HATE them! Give me what you want me to have make me pay whatever you want. I hate choices!!!!!
but it's still patently obvious that Laura DiDio is a Microsoft shill.
Naw, that so last year. Apparently she's switched sides and is now an evil Unix shill. Damn those Unix shills!!!!
Aren't there any areas we should stay away from _even_ if they would help us cure diseases?
Of course there are. You just have to look at the risk vs reward. I'm not a doctor, but presumably this would have a lot of potential benefits. After that, you have to look at the risks. There are certainly a lot of risks here. They had better at least beef up security as there are certainly plenty of "pro-life" people who would love to kill anyone doing this type of work. I never did understand that whole thing. One side is soo upset that the other side is doing what they consider "killing" someone for the "greater good" and are soo upset by that, that they decide THEY must kill someone for the "greater good". Damn people are stupid!
Now I've just read a little of TFA, but my first impression is to agree with the GP. Lawyers are a bit different than accountants. Lawyers only have a responsibility to inform people of a clients wrong-doing if they know of it before hand. This situtation seems a bit more like this (I know all analogies such but bear with me):
Say you kill someone, but you want to plead not guilty but tell your lawyer all what happended. Then your lawyer goes on Larry King and tells the world that he thinks what you did was wrong and if you would have asked him first he would have told you not to kill anyone.
I think I'd be looking for a new lawyer and my previous laywer should be dis-bared. Again, I've just skimmed a few posting so maybe I'm missing something.
Exactly, this is Sony (home of the emotion engine). They are a just a few months from relese. This is the time-frame when they tell you how thier product will replace the PC, be fater than the top super computers, will clean your house for you, etc, etc, etc. Only after they have built up enough unfounded hype around the product will they want to release the disappointing actual specs and benchmarks.
Sorry, my mention of the Axis of evil comment was meant to be an answer to this:
What do you think would happen if it was reported that his press secretary called Iran's leader a "f..king towelhead"?
Though not EXACTLY the same thing, it is very much on point and what happened? Well, it is considered by many as one of his greatest speeches. Now that could well be because its one of the few without the glaring use of made-up words more than based on content, but it is considered one of this best speeches by many nonetheless. Anyway, it was simply a retort to your initial question not a statement on its correctness (in terms of content or how it came about).
Now you could possibly make the case that the "moron" statement hurt the economy (not sure that I buy it but the case could be made). However, there can also be a case made that GWB's "evil" comments (and others like it) are at least partially responsible for Iran's recent push for nuclear technology (hey the biggest baddest kid on the block looks like he is going to attack you and you'll try to find some leverage to protect yourself). There can be consequences for any statement, that in itself doesn't effect a persons right to say them (though it may effect if they should say them).
Sorry! I know preview first. Luckily though spelling and basic HTML aren't part of the Binet tests or I to could very easily be a moron ;-)
First - "George Bush is a f..king moron" is an opinion, not a fact.
OK you are correct, I shouldn't have said fact but it could certainly be considered more than an opinion. How about we call it a "possibly correct diagnosis"? "Moron" is a valid (though no longer a widely embraced) psychological term. It is one of the steps on the Binet Scale. The Binet tests were developed as a quick and easy way to compare the functionaly level of peoples intelligence. The tests were based on questions of increasing difficulty, this test measured such things as attention, memory, and verbal skills. You cannot tell me GWB would score too high on that test. Remebmer there are entire volumes of books dedicated to his issues with verbal skills.
As far as he didn't have the right to say it... well of course there are times when not ALL speach is free and IANAL, but I sure cannot think of any laws that would be broken by calling someone (even a world leader) a moron. So I guess it comes down to your definition of "right". I think of it in the "we hold these rights to be self-evident" way (sorry American historical reference but hopefully understandable to others). In that way, he certainly has the "right" to say it. If you are using "right" in some "he doesn't have the right to do it if he may in some way get in trouble or there may be consquences" way, then I guess that would be correct also, but thats not at least in my opinion the true meaning of a "right".
BTW, lets not forget that the guy he called a moron had just recently called three entire countries "evil".
Hold up! So if you accept a government job, are you forced to sign away your right to free speech? Of course he has the right to say it. There may be a political price to pay, but at least it wasn't libel where there could be a criminal offense. He just stated a fact.
BTW, why don't elected officals have to take some sort of standardized test and have those reported to the electorate? Hell, everyone from prospective college students to prospective NFL athletes have to because people assume thier basic intelligence could be relevent to thier suitablity for a given task. Why in the hell aren't politicians given such a thing?
Ahhh! Thats a VERY good point! I hadn't thought of that. Not proud to say it, but I've more than once pirated a program because I only needed it to do a little job and didn't want to pay $$$ for it. I think I'd still like to own and run locally the stuff I use everyday, but your idea I find VERY appealing for those cases where I don't (as long as they don't try the crap the telcos do with a minimum 1 year sign-up, etc).
Agreed. I mean I understand the model, just I'd (as a rule) rather own the software. I understand the subscription model and am often annoyed by those who cry about "why do I have to keep playing". If you choose a product being served to you (like the softare as a service thing) then the company serving you that product has on-going costs associated with providing it. The ONLY equitable method to charge for this is some type of subscription model. I mean what are the other choices?
Anyway, I do understand and in fact even do use one "software as a service" service. Heck, they just make sense in some areas. I'm just not quite so sure about other areas like office apps, etc. But again, for some people I'm sure that model will be perfect. Personally, I'm not crazy about it in many cases (what happens in case of internet failure, etc, etc, etc) but think its gerat the options are out there.
No real difference and I think both are fine. You want to pay $x per song and own it forever, you can. You want to pay $x per month for unlimited use (but stops when you stop paying), you can. Choice is good.
That said I personally like the software as a service model less than the music model. At least with the music you are constantly getting new material for the monthly price where software is (more or less) just paying for the exact same thing again and again. But thats just me and even in those cases depending on the monthly cost to "rent" vs the cost to "buy" it could still be a good deal. Anyway, I'm always glad to see more choices even it I don't happen to like one of them. Someone else might really like the other choice for some reason and I'm glad its available to them.
"Templates" such as a call from overseas followed by a flurry of domestic calls are used to identify leads, which are forwarded to the FBI for investigation.
Good thing soccer (you know, the other football)isn't more popular in the states. Can you imagine the number of suspected terrorists that would be found this summer during the World Cup. I don't even know if there is a color available on the Homeland Security color chart to signify that level of terrorist activity!
Well that a really bad analogy (and geography) and many have pointed out many reasons why, but a couple things I haven't seen mentioned yet.
/. Sure no law would back me up on that, but it sure "feels" like the right thing to do so lets just do it.
and you couldn't find the guys who were stealing the chocolate out of the stores (although you could probably find them if you asked the newspaper guys), what would you do?
You'd question the newspaper, make sure you got the info needed to get the theives and make sure ads like that stopped appearing. Aka: kill the torrent site.
First, in the case of torrents there is no secret information about who is doing it. Every IP address seeding or downloading via a torrented file are publicly viewable. No need to even bother the "newspaper".
They didn't "question the newspaper" they shut it down (at least for now).
"make sure ads like that stopped appearing" OK, if we want to run a society based on what arbitrary people think is the right thing to do in a given case then that would be fine. However, if you perfer living in a place that is governed by some set of laws you'd better make sure there is a law on the books saying that posting such ads is illegal. If not, I think your computer should be siezed for writing REALLY bad analogies on
I agree we'll have to wait and see, but one thing worth noting in order to meet Blu-ray's specs the coating must be less than .1mm think. That is quite a lot thinner than current optical disks (current disks can use at least .6mm I think but may be remembering that incorrectly). So while the new coating certainly does sound impressive from what I've read, the thinness of the coating mandated by Blu-ray makes we a bit skeptical (like you) as to how much real improvement it will cause. Now, this new coating on older DVD technology (which allows a thicker coating) certainly has some promise to offer a somewhat reliable alternative to tape backups. Though I certainly won't be an early adapter as a company I contracted for years ago spent over 1/2 million on a fancy automated robotic optical disk archival system which started to have fairly common errors after around 5 years so am very skeptical. I know this new coating and other new technology could solve the problems (the problems I mention were around 8 years ago), seeing that much money spent on a "guarenteed" solution and see it fail so horribly really makes me extra skeptical.
Is it good for consumers if it means that players and media are removed from the market?
Ya gotta remember media would ever possibly be removed from the market if DRM was removed. As much as Apple would like you believe otherwise, this proposed law has nothing to do with removing DRM. It simply wants DRM to at least be interoperable so if you buy a device your media will play on it. Now as for players.... well removing proprietary players sounds good to me.
WARNING!!!! Above is a good example of why you should never take stock tips from the internet! Lets just take a look at a couple of my favorite nuggets ;-)
;-)
Keep in mind that Google's fundamentals include a 65 price to earnings ratio, the improvement of which has exceeded their market cap's growth........Even more impressive, GOOG's earnings-per-share is almost five times that of MSFT's
OK, first about the P/E ratio. The above makes it sound like a high P/E ratio is a quality you should look for in attractive investments. DON'T DO THAT!!!!! The P/E ratio is basically how much you have to pay for $1 in earnings. Its price per share over earnings per share. So a high P/E means your paying more for each $1 in earnings. The next confusing part is about Goggle's earnings-per-share being almost 5x's what MS has. While that is true, it is completly meaningless by itself. To put it in perspective Google's earnings-per-share (eps) IS just over 4.5x MS's (eps). However, since Google's stock price is over 16x what MS's is you are paying over 16x the price to earn 4.5x more per share.
I am not here to make any recommendations on any stock, but the above is just complete non-sense. A stock with a high P/E ratio could be a great investment (as could a stock with a low P/E). The thing to remember a high P/E ratio generally relates to higher risk. The higher the the P/E ratio the higher expectations the market has for the stock. Now its easy to see that and think "well if the market has that high of expectations, it must be a good investment!" but you must remember (as the P/E ratio points out) those expectations are already factored into the stocks current price. So for the stock to raise, the company has to surpass those already high expectations. However, if the company has completely amazing results but still don't quite match expectations then the stock will dip (or fall).
Another MAJOR thing to consider when looking at any stock in the internet search sector is the expectations (and thus current stock price and P/E ratio) aren't completly based on "who will win" type questions between Google, MS, Yahoo, etc. A large portion of those expectations for each company is based on the forcasted growth of the entire sector. The forcasts are really amazing and that points for good times for companies in that sector but again introduces risk for an investment in any company in that sector. I forget the exact numbers but just for an example lets say its forcasted that spending on on-line advertising has 10x todays number being spent annually by 2010. Now lets say Google wipes everyone else off the board and is the lone on-line ad provider by 2008. Now thats great news, but if in the interm the forcasted growth for the sector just isn't meeting expectations you could still see a drop in Googles price because expecations as a whole aren't being met.
OK the sample scenerio is a bit ridiculous, but it does hopefully show the complexity of the market and the types of things which must be considered in contrast of the original posters wacked out ideas about the market