The main problem I see with this product? No DVD drive. What's that all about? For a product that's aiming for the mobile video market, how can you ignore DVD support?
Three words re DVD drives: cost, size, and weight. Okay, that's four words. But you get my point.
Also, IMHO, the designers are planning you carrying multiple GB flash drives, which are now available for $99 US. I really think that DVDs are on their way out.
Having an open plattform a nice way to attract developers and establish a nice collection of applications.
The Pepper Pad is an open platform. It is eminently hackable. There is also a forum. And there is also a command line. Please search TFA for "forum". The first thing that they probably need is help to make the thing NOT run in root.
No, it's not a new device. I reviewed this product now because of the hype around Origami. For those of us who don't like DRM, and do like open source, I wanted to talk about the Pepper Pad in comparison to Origami. IIRC, none of the reviews that you cite in your post were written at a time when Origami had been announced. That's what's new. The context.
Get rid of all the buttons and use a proper virtual keyboard on a touch sensitive screen.
You are right about the thumbpad keyboard. The keys are rubbery and gummy, and they kind of roll under your fingers. It's annoying. BUT. Consider the alternatives. Unfortunately, the alternatives are not good. You suggested a touch keyboard, but IMHO, that would be even worse than the rubbery, slippery thumbkeys. From having used the Pepper Pad to write much of TFA, I can tell you that you will need a light USB keyboard if you want to do any serious writing at all.
However, the Pepper Pad is not a notebook computer. A notebook computer can be a serious production machine. The Pepper Pad is a toy. It's fun to play with. The touch screen is really quite fun. So the Pepper Pad is really only for watching video, writing a few short emails or URLs or Google searches, and that's it.
The reason that I reviewed it at this time is because of all the hype around Origami. Do we really want people to get sucked into another Microsoft DRM'd device? (Origami). You can bet that Microsoft and its partners are going to spend billions to push the Origami. Origami is not on the market yet, but I will bet dollars to donuts that it is going to suck compared with the Pepper Pad. And one of the things that Origami is going to feature is... a touch screen keyboard. Ick. Slow. Frustrating. You CAN'T touch type with a touch screen keypad, but I actually WAS able to touch type with the rubbery, annoying little Pepper Pad keys!! It wasn't fast or easy, but it was possible.
One question though - how do you hold these things safely? You know, like Laptops not being recommended for use in your lap? Laptops (or notebooks, whatever), will sit fine on a table, these things don't look like they would. I noticed a small stand on the back of the image but - I dunno - it seems more like a device I'd want to hold rather than have it set up on a table or desk - sort of kills the portability aspect for me.
Holding this thing is one of the design improvements that the designers probably should look at for the next version. If you take a look at my video on the referenced article, you will see that I am holding it by the sides, sort of like you would hold a frisbee. The more I worked with this Pepper Pad, the more I was convinced that it was primarily for playing back a few videos at a time on short plane rides, and for surfing the web in airports. And one of the reasons for it is exactly what you are pointing out -- holding onto the thing is a bit cumbersome. But once you set it down on the stand, it all makes sense: it's a portable touch screen. It's an MP3 player with a very large view screen. It's an iPod on steroids. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's... wait, I almost got off track there.
Seriously though, yeah holding it is a problem. But with the short battery life, you aren't really going to be holding it for long anyway. If you get one of these puppies, you are going to be elbowing your way to the power outlet in the airport, so that you can surf for a few minutes, and then you are going to be using it in the airplane to watch video.
Also, think of what life will be like when Eyespot grows up. You will be editing video with these things, and then emailing the short video clips around to your family and friends. So you will get an email in the airport with a video file as an attachment. You will download it from your gmail account. You will move a few sequences around here and there with Eyespot using the Pepper Pad touch screen, and then send it back to whomever sent it to you. It's a toy.
The author of this "review" uses some of the worst analogies I have ever seen. Flee in terror after reading the following example:
People who write from glass houses should not throw stones. Flee in terror? If you are going to mock a guy for "juvenile journalism" you need to use better cliches yourself.
...is therefore subject to many of the same analyses that have been applied to out-of-court utterances. I am a lawyer, and so I have a bit of an informed opinion on this subject. First, everyone should know that the implications of an email will vary tremendously from case to case. So much of the discussion on this topic here on/. will be of limited use to the readers in any individual case, except by way of background information. If you have a legal issue involving an email, you really should either do your own legal research to develop an opinion as to that email's impact in your own case, or pay an attorney to do the research. Sorry if that sounds stupidly obvious.
A signature generally is defined in Anglo-American jurisprudence as a mark made with an intent to authenticate. So some of the issues that come up with regard to email is the intent of the author in the instance of every individual email; what constitutes a "mark" under each state's (province, territory, etc); and maybe the permanence of the form (is an email sufficiently "permanent" to be a medium that can be "marked"? Answer: probably yes, in every US state, I am guessing). I do know that in California, where I practice law, emails are admitted into evidence all the time, subject to various different limitations, such as a statement against interest exception to the hearsay rule, etc. Most trial judges are concerned about one thing: the trustworthiness of an out-of-court statement. From a practical standpoint, it is common for a witness who is being grilled by the proferring attorney to acknowledge in deposition, or before the deposition in interrogatories (written questions, requiring sworn written answers) that the particular email was, in fact, authored by the deponent (the person whose depsosition is being taken). Therefore, long before trial, most lawyers and most witnesses will know, from a practical standpoint, whether the email is authentic, and that gives them a pretty good idea whether or not the judge will admit the particular email into evidence. In fact, in California, we have a discovery tool called a "Request for Admissions" and most lawyers will routinely send the other attorney a "Request for Admissions" asking the other party to acknowledge the that the subject email is, in fact, authentic before a deposition is taken, unless, of course, there are strategic or tactical reasons for not wanting to allow the deponent and his / her attorney to see the document in question before the deposition. More info than you wanted, I know.
Bottom line: emails are routinely admitted into evidence, although many judges will also exclude emails from evidence for the same reason that they would exclude other out-of-court utterances. It really depends of the facts of the case, and the purpose for which the out-of-court statement is being offered.
As to whether an email can offer evidence of the terms of a contract, the answer is yes, of course. A contract is just an agreement that the court will enforce. The question is not whether an email signature can form a contract. The question is, was there a meeting of the minds of the parties sufficient to form a contract, and if so, what were the terms of the contract. From another practical level, most contracts now have what is referred to as "merger" clauses, meaning that most contracts have a clause in them that says that "this contract is the entirety of the agreement between the parties, no evidence extrinsic to the four corners of this document will be admitted into evidence for the purpose of establishing the terms of the contract between the parties" or words to that effect. Lawyers often don't want people modifying a contract later on, which is why they include such merger clauses to begin with.
Again, here's a summary:
Can an email form part of a contract? Answer: yes, so long as there is no merger clause prohibiting such modification of the contract with a preceeding or subsequent writing, and so long as the ju
I have dealt with both Michael Robertson and Kevin Carmony personally. I find them both likeable, pleasant, intelligent, honest and articulate. I personally don't understand much of the disdain for Linspire or Robertson or Carmony. Of course, no one is really a saint, and no one can be liked by everyone. But my personal experience with these guys is that they are decent, and most important to me personally, they do care about freedom in cyberspace.
Most people who have heard of Linspire are members of the Linux community already. Many of them are code wizards who have not tried Linspire recently, IMHO. I have enormous respect and gratitude for code wizards, because as a simple end user myself, I call upon code wizards all the time to help me with a CLI command here and there. So I most certainly am not knocking code wizards. But IMHO, code wizards can sometimes forget how hard it is for simple end users to do stuff with the CLI.
Remember BeOS it went into the grave for this very reason. No larger distributor would touch it because MS threatened to remove any discount if they did. Wow that is freedom of the market in action!
hmmm..is that why I can get almost every commercial linux distro available alongside windows in Best buy, Microcenter, (insert your local computer store here)?
hi kz45,
No, you can't get almost every commercial Linux distro in most computer stores. Check out the videos that I took while in the CompUSA store, for example. They offer ONLY two commercial Linux distros: Linspire and SuSE. Mepis Linux is not there, nor is Xandros Linux. The videos are found on page two of my article here: http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=652 1&page=2
That link will take you to page two of the RA, and scroll down to the bottom to see the videos and to play them.
Not only are there only a few packages of Linux available, but they are on the bottom at the end of the row. The lighting is so dark down there, that it is difficult to see those boxes. Placement is everything in retail. Your point is not well made.
Mainstream news media do this all the time, and I'll bet you don't question it.
A bet you would lose.
Okay, that's good. I'm glad to hear that. Because in journalism schools, it is known that most people ignore the "on condition of anonymity" and just accept the statement on face value. Most people trust the media. Whether people SHOULD trust the media to the extent that they do is an entirely different subject. If if you are one of the few who do generally distrust information given on the condition of anonymity, you are in a small minority. Studies show that even people who distrust the anonymous statement will forget which parts of the story were conditioned on anonymity, and will blur it together with the rest of the story, and will act on the news as if it were true.
So I commend you for questioning the practice, even if it is my story that you are questioning. A skeptical readership improves the news.
hi phorest,
Looks like the value never shifted.
According to Amazon's ratings, the two top-selling books for Linux and MS-XP have the following ratings: snip...
No, you misunderstood my point. The value is shifting away from the OS by itself to easier ways to ACQUIRE the OS. In the cases that you cited above, only the Linux book comes with a copy of the OS. The Windows book does not contain a copy of the OS. In his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," Christensen writes that consumers historically move through an identifiable bying pattern. As the innovation is new, they buy on the basis of functionality. As the functionality improves, they buy from competing vendors on the basis of reliability. When the products or services become relatively equal in reliability, the buyers then move to consideration of ease of acquisition and use. IMHO, the value of buying an OS is moving from mere reliability to ease of acquisition. If an OS is contained in a DVD or CD on the front of a magazine or the back of a book, that is pretty convenient. That's what I meant by saying that the value has shifted.
People pick on MS for some things that are simply good business practices.
I somewhat agree with you, and somewhat disagree with you. US law permits monopolies, as long as those monopolists don't abuse their monopoly to maintain their monopolistic position. The problem with Microsoft's conduct is that it is abusive for a monopolist to threaten downstream vendors to maintain Microsoft's monopoly.
So I agree that Microsoft of course wants to guard their distribution chain. That is rational conduct. But abusing their monopolistic position is a violation of anti-trust law. The difference is what tactics they use to protect their distribution chain. IMHO, threatening downstream vendors is not legal if you have a monopoly.
While I do know that Microsoft has forged some exclusive deals with PC manufacturers, I don't feel that thats the main reason why people arn't adopting Linux.
The main point of my article is that retail makes very small profit margins, and they need to carefully watch each product line they carry. The FLOSS boxes sold pretty well, but unfortunately I couldn't get info on what those stores' margins were. The point is that more expensive boxes like Apples probably have a higher margin, which is why they were given more space in the Micro Center store.
If you read the article closely, you will see that the source spoke to me on condition of anonymity. The source is someone who works in retail tech, and knows whereof he / she speaks.
Crediting your information (in the article) to "... a Mad Penguin (tm) source who spoke on condition of anonymity." gives it no authority.
Mainstream news media do this all the time, and I'll bet you don't question it. The news media would loose its ability to challenge the powerful without anonymous informants. In this particular case, I spoke with a limited number of sources, and the source wanted to know who else was quoted in the article before speaking. The source was concerned that even a reference to his or her industry, in the context of the article, would have provided enough information to identify him / her. That's how afraid people are of Microsoft in this industry. The profit margins are so thin and people in retail are so vulnerable that a change in just tenths of a percent in revenue can destroy careers. My source was not willing to risk his / her career over a magazine article and demanded absolute anonymity.
I had the choice to publish and give my readers the statement, or not publish, and give Microsoft essentially the power of a censor over this aspect of the story. I chose the latter. Of course, you, as the reader, are the ultimate judge of credibility. I accept whatever judgment you pass. That is your perogative. But do please consider the fact that few people in the tech press really challenge Microsoft, because if they do, they will lose access. Microsoft controls the tech press through self-censorship in many instances.
Sorry, anonymous source=anonymous coward for the purposes of evaluating credibility. I simply won't believe uncorroborated statements based on anonymous hearsay.
Mainstream news media do this all the time, and I'll bet you don't question it. The news media would loose its ability to challenge the powerful without anonymous informants.
That is not what Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen has written on the topic. He said that RCA also sold desktop radios. Don't forget, small radios are only as recent as the 60s, and at that time they were considered "cheap Japanese crap."
The idea is not that any reasonable person would expect a retail outlet to sell a product like Linux for religious reasons. The purpose of the article was to document the mechanics behind the way that this market leader (Microsoft) jealously guards its distribution chain. And they do. Guard it jealously.
Microsoft guards its distribution chain jealously, and punishes those business partners who stray into carrying FOSS products.
And the source for this little gem is what? Do you suppose the DOJ would be interested if it were true?
If you read the article closely, you will see that the source spoke to me on condition of anonymity. The source is someone who works in retail tech, and knows whereof he / she speaks.
The point is that people are so afraid of the ramifications of giving quotes like this that they won't speak except on condition of anonymity. Face it, Microsoft is a bullying monopoly that abuses its market control to this day.
Oh, and as to the DOJ that you are supposing will take action, would that be the same DOJ that settled the prior anti-trust case against Microsoft with a slap on the wrist?
Hi xxxJonBoyxxx,
I didn't miss the point of free being the F in FOSS. To the contrary. The point is that FOSS will grow in disruptive channels such as LUGs, magazines, books, etc. That is why I video'd the Borders Store. Look at all of those books, many of which have distros in them. The value has shifted, as Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen has said, from the operating system, to the ease of acquisition of installing and customizing your OS exactly the way that you want to do so. There will be many paths to this greater level of customization. Big box retail will only be one path, and it probably won't be the dominant path, IMHO.
Hi Slash Veteran,
You are right. Linux is not doing well in retail right now. That is the point of my article. There is growth, but it is slow. Please read the article more closely. The point of the article is that big box retail is a sustaining channel for Microsoft. Linux and FOSS are growing in what Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen calls "disruptive channels."
For example, when Sony first came out with transistor radios, which were disruptive of RCA's big desktop radios, none of RCA's channel partners would carry Sony's transistor radio "toys for teenagers", which were considered by RCA's best customers, adults who wanted high sound quality, to be crap. Instead, Macy's picked up the transistors, and Sony grew its distribution chain from there. RCA is now a shadow of its former self, because it couldn't figure out how to get transistors into its "best products". Microsoft can't figure out how to monetize the production of open source code, and THAT is the key nature of the challenge that Microsoft is facing. THAT is the point of my story. The distribution channels are changing. This story just documents one key little step in the the change, as Microsoft's distribution channels slowly take on the disruptive products from open source challengers.
...we could be next. Larry Lessig makes the point of saying that stuff like this and SCO is only the tip of the iceberg. We need patent reform. Larry Lessig urges people to spend say the equivalent of what you would spend supporting the copyright cartel on a monthly basis by giving to the org of your choice to fight this kind of stuff. So if your Comcast bill is $75.00, maybe you could squeeze out that much for the EFF.org, etc.
...that adoption will be slow. According to Bhaskar Chakravorti, a smart person who wrote a smart book called the "Slow Pace of Fast Change", new innovations (like Linux and Vista) take a while to get adopted by the broad mass of people. Smaller-sized buyers and sellers tend to hang back to see if the new innovation is going to be a success; third party vendors do the same; until significant buyers and sellers adopt the new technology, thereby pulling others along with them. Bhaskar called it "demi-Moore's" law because the rate of adoption of new innovations usually product performance because everyone is hanging back waiting to see what other will do. So it's called "demi" Moore's law because the rate of adoption is twice as long as (demi) the rate of innovation.
Oddly, Microsoft might now be in the same shoes as vendors and orgs of open source software: how to get people to adopt the new technoloby? OpenOffice.org LOOKS more like Office XP than will Microsoft Office 12. Vista will have compatibility problems with legacy apps and legacy formats.
Meanwhile, open source projects and vendors have been busting ass to make their code more standand, more compatible, more browsable and more easy to use. This could get exciting.
Oboe doesn't have these problems with sync limits
on
Songbird Flies Today
·
· Score: 1
"The summary is like this: You can manage your iPod from as many iTunes installations as your want. But in order to do this, you have to disable synchronization from Preferences window."
Okay, that is one of the limitations that I was talking about in my original post. With Oboe, you don't have that problem. You sync by song name and album and artist. If you have duplicates of those songs, you will be alerted to that fact, and given the change to change the medata. But the sync still happens.
"So they chose the obvious solution: sync works with a single copy iTunes, however you can upload songs from as many PCs as you want if you disable sync."
With Oboe, you can also sync DOWN to as many PCs as you want, except that at some point, if you were to illegally share your password, MP3tunes would cut you off for two reasons: They don't want to share music illegally; they don't want to get sued; and they lose money if people share accounts, because each sharing user is a lost sale.
Slashdot Mirror
hi LordLucLes,
The main problem I see with this product? No DVD drive. What's that all about? For a product that's aiming for the mobile video market, how can you ignore DVD support?
Three words re DVD drives: cost, size, and weight. Okay, that's four words. But you get my point.
Also, IMHO, the designers are planning you carrying multiple GB flash drives, which are now available for $99 US. I really think that DVDs are on their way out.
Hi wertarbyte,
Having an open plattform a nice way to attract developers and establish a nice collection of applications.
The Pepper Pad is an open platform. It is eminently hackable. There is also a forum. And there is also a command line. Please search TFA for "forum". The first thing that they probably need is help to make the thing NOT run in root.
Hi SwiftKick,
This is not a new device
No, it's not a new device. I reviewed this product now because of the hype around Origami. For those of us who don't like DRM, and do like open source, I wanted to talk about the Pepper Pad in comparison to Origami. IIRC, none of the reviews that you cite in your post were written at a time when Origami had been announced. That's what's new. The context.
hi geoff lane,
... a touch screen keyboard. Ick. Slow. Frustrating. You CAN'T touch type with a touch screen keypad, but I actually WAS able to touch type with the rubbery, annoying little Pepper Pad keys!! It wasn't fast or easy, but it was possible.
Get rid of all the buttons and use a proper virtual keyboard on a touch sensitive screen.
You are right about the thumbpad keyboard. The keys are rubbery and gummy, and they kind of roll under your fingers. It's annoying. BUT. Consider the alternatives. Unfortunately, the alternatives are not good. You suggested a touch keyboard, but IMHO, that would be even worse than the rubbery, slippery thumbkeys. From having used the Pepper Pad to write much of TFA, I can tell you that you will need a light USB keyboard if you want to do any serious writing at all.
However, the Pepper Pad is not a notebook computer. A notebook computer can be a serious production machine. The Pepper Pad is a toy. It's fun to play with. The touch screen is really quite fun. So the Pepper Pad is really only for watching video, writing a few short emails or URLs or Google searches, and that's it.
The reason that I reviewed it at this time is because of all the hype around Origami. Do we really want people to get sucked into another Microsoft DRM'd device? (Origami). You can bet that Microsoft and its partners are going to spend billions to push the Origami. Origami is not on the market yet, but I will bet dollars to donuts that it is going to suck compared with the Pepper Pad. And one of the things that Origami is going to feature is
hi datafr0g,
... wait, I almost got off track there.
One question though - how do you hold these things safely? You know, like Laptops not being recommended for use in your lap? Laptops (or notebooks, whatever), will sit fine on a table, these things don't look like they would. I noticed a small stand on the back of the image but - I dunno - it seems more like a device I'd want to hold rather than have it set up on a table or desk - sort of kills the portability aspect for me.
Holding this thing is one of the design improvements that the designers probably should look at for the next version. If you take a look at my video on the referenced article, you will see that I am holding it by the sides, sort of like you would hold a frisbee. The more I worked with this Pepper Pad, the more I was convinced that it was primarily for playing back a few videos at a time on short plane rides, and for surfing the web in airports. And one of the reasons for it is exactly what you are pointing out -- holding onto the thing is a bit cumbersome. But once you set it down on the stand, it all makes sense: it's a portable touch screen. It's an MP3 player with a very large view screen. It's an iPod on steroids. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's
Seriously though, yeah holding it is a problem. But with the short battery life, you aren't really going to be holding it for long anyway. If you get one of these puppies, you are going to be elbowing your way to the power outlet in the airport, so that you can surf for a few minutes, and then you are going to be using it in the airplane to watch video.
Also, think of what life will be like when Eyespot grows up. You will be editing video with these things, and then emailing the short video clips around to your family and friends. So you will get an email in the airport with a video file as an attachment. You will download it from your gmail account. You will move a few sequences around here and there with Eyespot using the Pepper Pad touch screen, and then send it back to whomever sent it to you. It's a toy.
The author of this "review" uses some of the worst analogies I have ever seen. Flee in terror after reading the following example:
People who write from glass houses should not throw stones. Flee in terror? If you are going to mock a guy for "juvenile journalism" you need to use better cliches yourself.
...is therefore subject to many of the same analyses that have been applied to out-of-court utterances. I am a lawyer, and so I have a bit of an informed opinion on this subject. First, everyone should know that the implications of an email will vary tremendously from case to case. So much of the discussion on this topic here on /. will be of limited use to the readers in any individual case, except by way of background information. If you have a legal issue involving an email, you really should either do your own legal research to develop an opinion as to that email's impact in your own case, or pay an attorney to do the research. Sorry if that sounds stupidly obvious.
A signature generally is defined in Anglo-American jurisprudence as a mark made with an intent to authenticate. So some of the issues that come up with regard to email is the intent of the author in the instance of every individual email; what constitutes a "mark" under each state's (province, territory, etc); and maybe the permanence of the form (is an email sufficiently "permanent" to be a medium that can be "marked"? Answer: probably yes, in every US state, I am guessing). I do know that in California, where I practice law, emails are admitted into evidence all the time, subject to various different limitations, such as a statement against interest exception to the hearsay rule, etc. Most trial judges are concerned about one thing: the trustworthiness of an out-of-court statement. From a practical standpoint, it is common for a witness who is being grilled by the proferring attorney to acknowledge in deposition, or before the deposition in interrogatories (written questions, requiring sworn written answers) that the particular email was, in fact, authored by the deponent (the person whose depsosition is being taken). Therefore, long before trial, most lawyers and most witnesses will know, from a practical standpoint, whether the email is authentic, and that gives them a pretty good idea whether or not the judge will admit the particular email into evidence. In fact, in California, we have a discovery tool called a "Request for Admissions" and most lawyers will routinely send the other attorney a "Request for Admissions" asking the other party to acknowledge the that the subject email is, in fact, authentic before a deposition is taken, unless, of course, there are strategic or tactical reasons for not wanting to allow the deponent and his / her attorney to see the document in question before the deposition. More info than you wanted, I know.
Bottom line: emails are routinely admitted into evidence, although many judges will also exclude emails from evidence for the same reason that they would exclude other out-of-court utterances. It really depends of the facts of the case, and the purpose for which the out-of-court statement is being offered.
As to whether an email can offer evidence of the terms of a contract, the answer is yes, of course. A contract is just an agreement that the court will enforce. The question is not whether an email signature can form a contract. The question is, was there a meeting of the minds of the parties sufficient to form a contract, and if so, what were the terms of the contract. From another practical level, most contracts now have what is referred to as "merger" clauses, meaning that most contracts have a clause in them that says that "this contract is the entirety of the agreement between the parties, no evidence extrinsic to the four corners of this document will be admitted into evidence for the purpose of establishing the terms of the contract between the parties" or words to that effect. Lawyers often don't want people modifying a contract later on, which is why they include such merger clauses to begin with.
Again, here's a summary:
Can an email form part of a contract? Answer: yes, so long as there is no merger clause prohibiting such modification of the contract with a preceeding or subsequent writing, and so long as the ju
I have dealt with both Michael Robertson and Kevin Carmony personally. I find them both likeable, pleasant, intelligent, honest and articulate. I personally don't understand much of the disdain for Linspire or Robertson or Carmony. Of course, no one is really a saint, and no one can be liked by everyone. But my personal experience with these guys is that they are decent, and most important to me personally, they do care about freedom in cyberspace.
Most people who have heard of Linspire are members of the Linux community already. Many of them are code wizards who have not tried Linspire recently, IMHO. I have enormous respect and gratitude for code wizards, because as a simple end user myself, I call upon code wizards all the time to help me with a CLI command here and there. So I most certainly am not knocking code wizards. But IMHO, code wizards can sometimes forget how hard it is for simple end users to do stuff with the CLI.
So IMHO, yes there are myths about Linspire.
Remember BeOS it went into the grave for this very reason. No larger distributor would touch it because MS threatened to remove any discount if they did. Wow that is freedom of the market in action! hmmm..is that why I can get almost every commercial linux distro available alongside windows in Best buy, Microcenter, (insert your local computer store here)?
2 1&page=2
hi kz45, No, you can't get almost every commercial Linux distro in most computer stores. Check out the videos that I took while in the CompUSA store, for example. They offer ONLY two commercial Linux distros: Linspire and SuSE. Mepis Linux is not there, nor is Xandros Linux. The videos are found on page two of my article here: http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=65
That link will take you to page two of the RA, and scroll down to the bottom to see the videos and to play them.
Not only are there only a few packages of Linux available, but they are on the bottom at the end of the row. The lighting is so dark down there, that it is difficult to see those boxes. Placement is everything in retail. Your point is not well made.
Mainstream news media do this all the time, and I'll bet you don't question it.
A bet you would lose.
Okay, that's good. I'm glad to hear that. Because in journalism schools, it is known that most people ignore the "on condition of anonymity" and just accept the statement on face value. Most people trust the media. Whether people SHOULD trust the media to the extent that they do is an entirely different subject. If if you are one of the few who do generally distrust information given on the condition of anonymity, you are in a small minority. Studies show that even people who distrust the anonymous statement will forget which parts of the story were conditioned on anonymity, and will blur it together with the rest of the story, and will act on the news as if it were true.
So I commend you for questioning the practice, even if it is my story that you are questioning. A skeptical readership improves the news.
hi, You can order boxes easily from the Internet. Try www.sub300.com in the US. Another idea is Linux Certified. Or just google "Linux PCs."
hi phorest, Looks like the value never shifted. According to Amazon's ratings, the two top-selling books for Linux and MS-XP have the following ratings: snip...
No, you misunderstood my point. The value is shifting away from the OS by itself to easier ways to ACQUIRE the OS. In the cases that you cited above, only the Linux book comes with a copy of the OS. The Windows book does not contain a copy of the OS. In his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," Christensen writes that consumers historically move through an identifiable bying pattern. As the innovation is new, they buy on the basis of functionality. As the functionality improves, they buy from competing vendors on the basis of reliability. When the products or services become relatively equal in reliability, the buyers then move to consideration of ease of acquisition and use. IMHO, the value of buying an OS is moving from mere reliability to ease of acquisition. If an OS is contained in a DVD or CD on the front of a magazine or the back of a book, that is pretty convenient. That's what I meant by saying that the value has shifted.
Hi Machina Fortuno,
People pick on MS for some things that are simply good business practices.
I somewhat agree with you, and somewhat disagree with you. US law permits monopolies, as long as those monopolists don't abuse their monopoly to maintain their monopolistic position. The problem with Microsoft's conduct is that it is abusive for a monopolist to threaten downstream vendors to maintain Microsoft's monopoly.
So I agree that Microsoft of course wants to guard their distribution chain. That is rational conduct. But abusing their monopolistic position is a violation of anti-trust law. The difference is what tactics they use to protect their distribution chain. IMHO, threatening downstream vendors is not legal if you have a monopoly.
While I do know that Microsoft has forged some exclusive deals with PC manufacturers, I don't feel that thats the main reason why people arn't adopting Linux.
The main point of my article is that retail makes very small profit margins, and they need to carefully watch each product line they carry. The FLOSS boxes sold pretty well, but unfortunately I couldn't get info on what those stores' margins were. The point is that more expensive boxes like Apples probably have a higher margin, which is why they were given more space in the Micro Center store.
If you read the article closely, you will see that the source spoke to me on condition of anonymity. The source is someone who works in retail tech, and knows whereof he / she speaks. Crediting your information (in the article) to " ... a Mad Penguin (tm) source who spoke on condition of anonymity." gives it no authority.
Mainstream news media do this all the time, and I'll bet you don't question it. The news media would loose its ability to challenge the powerful without anonymous informants. In this particular case, I spoke with a limited number of sources, and the source wanted to know who else was quoted in the article before speaking. The source was concerned that even a reference to his or her industry, in the context of the article, would have provided enough information to identify him / her. That's how afraid people are of Microsoft in this industry. The profit margins are so thin and people in retail are so vulnerable that a change in just tenths of a percent in revenue can destroy careers. My source was not willing to risk his / her career over a magazine article and demanded absolute anonymity.
I had the choice to publish and give my readers the statement, or not publish, and give Microsoft essentially the power of a censor over this aspect of the story. I chose the latter. Of course, you, as the reader, are the ultimate judge of credibility. I accept whatever judgment you pass. That is your perogative. But do please consider the fact that few people in the tech press really challenge Microsoft, because if they do, they will lose access. Microsoft controls the tech press through self-censorship in many instances.
Sorry, anonymous source=anonymous coward for the purposes of evaluating credibility. I simply won't believe uncorroborated statements based on anonymous hearsay.
Mainstream news media do this all the time, and I'll bet you don't question it. The news media would loose its ability to challenge the powerful without anonymous informants.
That is not what Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen has written on the topic. He said that RCA also sold desktop radios. Don't forget, small radios are only as recent as the 60s, and at that time they were considered "cheap Japanese crap."
The idea is not that any reasonable person would expect a retail outlet to sell a product like Linux for religious reasons. The purpose of the article was to document the mechanics behind the way that this market leader (Microsoft) jealously guards its distribution chain. And they do. Guard it jealously.
Microsoft guards its distribution chain jealously, and punishes those business partners who stray into carrying FOSS products.
And the source for this little gem is what? Do you suppose the DOJ would be interested if it were true?
If you read the article closely, you will see that the source spoke to me on condition of anonymity. The source is someone who works in retail tech, and knows whereof he / she speaks.
The point is that people are so afraid of the ramifications of giving quotes like this that they won't speak except on condition of anonymity. Face it, Microsoft is a bullying monopoly that abuses its market control to this day.
Oh, and as to the DOJ that you are supposing will take action, would that be the same DOJ that settled the prior anti-trust case against Microsoft with a slap on the wrist?
Hi xxxJonBoyxxx, I didn't miss the point of free being the F in FOSS. To the contrary. The point is that FOSS will grow in disruptive channels such as LUGs, magazines, books, etc. That is why I video'd the Borders Store. Look at all of those books, many of which have distros in them. The value has shifted, as Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen has said, from the operating system, to the ease of acquisition of installing and customizing your OS exactly the way that you want to do so. There will be many paths to this greater level of customization. Big box retail will only be one path, and it probably won't be the dominant path, IMHO.
Hi Slash Veteran, You are right. Linux is not doing well in retail right now. That is the point of my article. There is growth, but it is slow. Please read the article more closely. The point of the article is that big box retail is a sustaining channel for Microsoft. Linux and FOSS are growing in what Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen calls "disruptive channels."
For example, when Sony first came out with transistor radios, which were disruptive of RCA's big desktop radios, none of RCA's channel partners would carry Sony's transistor radio "toys for teenagers", which were considered by RCA's best customers, adults who wanted high sound quality, to be crap. Instead, Macy's picked up the transistors, and Sony grew its distribution chain from there. RCA is now a shadow of its former self, because it couldn't figure out how to get transistors into its "best products". Microsoft can't figure out how to monetize the production of open source code, and THAT is the key nature of the challenge that Microsoft is facing. THAT is the point of my story. The distribution channels are changing. This story just documents one key little step in the the change, as Microsoft's distribution channels slowly take on the disruptive products from open source challengers.
...we could be next. Larry Lessig makes the point of saying that stuff like this and SCO is only the tip of the iceberg. We need patent reform. Larry Lessig urges people to spend say the equivalent of what you would spend supporting the copyright cartel on a monthly basis by giving to the org of your choice to fight this kind of stuff. So if your Comcast bill is $75.00, maybe you could squeeze out that much for the EFF.org, etc.
...that adoption will be slow. According to Bhaskar Chakravorti, a smart person who wrote a smart book called the "Slow Pace of Fast Change", new innovations (like Linux and Vista) take a while to get adopted by the broad mass of people. Smaller-sized buyers and sellers tend to hang back to see if the new innovation is going to be a success; third party vendors do the same; until significant buyers and sellers adopt the new technology, thereby pulling others along with them. Bhaskar called it "demi-Moore's" law because the rate of adoption of new innovations usually product performance because everyone is hanging back waiting to see what other will do. So it's called "demi" Moore's law because the rate of adoption is twice as long as (demi) the rate of innovation.
Here's the link for Bhaskar's book: http://www.slowpacefastchange.com/
Oddly, Microsoft might now be in the same shoes as vendors and orgs of open source software: how to get people to adopt the new technoloby? OpenOffice.org LOOKS more like Office XP than will Microsoft Office 12. Vista will have compatibility problems with legacy apps and legacy formats.
Meanwhile, open source projects and vendors have been busting ass to make their code more standand, more compatible, more browsable and more easy to use. This could get exciting.
"The summary is like this: You can manage your iPod from as many iTunes installations as your want. But in order to do this, you have to disable synchronization from Preferences window."
Okay, that is one of the limitations that I was talking about in my original post. With Oboe, you don't have that problem. You sync by song name and album and artist. If you have duplicates of those songs, you will be alerted to that fact, and given the change to change the medata. But the sync still happens.
"So they chose the obvious solution: sync works with a single copy iTunes, however you can upload songs from as many PCs as you want if you disable sync."
With Oboe, you can also sync DOWN to as many PCs as you want, except that at some point, if you were to illegally share your password, MP3tunes would cut you off for two reasons: They don't want to share music illegally; they don't want to get sued; and they lose money if people share accounts, because each sharing user is a lost sale.