Wow, no wonder you have to take out a mortgage on the popcorn. Back, er, in my day, it was 60/40 for the movie theater, or maybe 50/50 for a "sure hit."
Of course, a spectacle or event movie didn't cost $200 million or more, and there wasn't a $50 million ad campaign to get you to see it. You looked in the paper, see, and read the reviews or talked to Cousin Artie, and he said it was good, so that was fine.
It's way beyond inflation. In the '50s, I was seeing Saturday kids' matinees at the FOX in New Orleans -- which is now a tangled mess, I guess -- for 15 cents. During the week, it was 50 cents or so. Now, I think, if it were regular inflation here -- like a loaf of bread -- the price would now be about $4.00. Come to think of it, I think the movies would be better if they had to make them with that admission price in mind.
Now, that's a good idea. A chief engineer, or at least a senior one, from a very secure OS. But it's a real mistake to put some Gassee type in there to make pronouncements. Just find and fix the holes. That privilege escalation thing that was the only real news in the bogus CNET article, for instance.
So, nobody COULD break in in 38 hours, let alone 30 minutes, and now what do our Mac haters say? Well, if it would have been for MONEY, then they could have broken in. Yeah, right.
I am surprised, though, that they cut the test short and nobody complained. It was supposed to last until Friday. I suppose the bandwidth and the attempted DDos attacks might have made the network people a bit edgy.
I'll tell Steve to put you on the list of people we won't allow to buy an Apple product. That should hold you.
This is how it goes: Apple's had a stunning series of, well, victories. The switch to Intel, the video iPods, the contract with Disney and the deal with all the studios -- this has been major, hopeful announcements, on top of the amazing sales of iPods and the rise in market share -- and I think that people are expecting world-beaters every time Jobs hits the stage. Well, it doesn't happen. This January's MacWorld saw iLife 06, a solid advance, and the intel iMac and MacBook Pro. Cool, but the designs didn't change. Yes, they work with the new processors. It's a time of transition, and I think they're concentrating on nuts and bolts. Now, the new Mac mini looks like the old one, but faster. (By the way, the only Mac faster than the Intel iMac is the Quad, get it? These new machines do nothing much stylistically, but they're FAST. (Oh, and nobody's booted Windows from them yet, either.)
So this time, the underwhelming, and maybe ill-advised iPod Hi-Fi, is less than a hit. Did Apple "promise" all the fancy stuff that ThinkSecret, and Apple Insider, said they would announce? No. But it's proof that Apple excites curiosity about their next move. There were so many guesses out there -- video iPod with full screen video and touchscreen controller? Didn't happen. New iBooks that weigh about two pounds, etc.? No. Media box that wirelessly downloads movies from Mars? None of them either. Just an old Mac mini with an intel chip and a speaker that's not bad in the lows, but kind of sucks in the treble. No wonder Apple tries to shut down rumor sites: it's publicity with a mind of its own. THEY created the specific buzz, Apple didn't.
So people feel disappointed, and those who don't wish Apple all that well say, "Aha! Just as I said! They suck!" And the negative stories begin. Same process happens in celebrity stories: Oh, Angelina's crazy, she sleeps with her brother and sucks men's blood. Oh, wait, she's adopting babies and is living with a cute guy: Angelina is wonderful! It's a cycle. You tell the story going up, and then you tell the story going down. None of it's actually true, one way or another. Gore was liked in his early years in the Clinton years: he was the sensible reformer in the press, actually cutting down the size of the bureaucracy. And then, there were never those sex rumors about him. But when he ran for prez, the dogs were unleashed. He was a liar (they had to change what he said to make it sound like he lied, but no matter.) He hired a female consultant to tell him how to be a man! He lies about what he did! He lied about "Love Story!" He says he "invented" the internet! He's crazy!
None of it's true. This is what they call a "meme," a story line. It doesn't have to be true. Yeah, sure, Apple over-hyped an event where all they promised was "some fun products." The rumor sites went crazy. Apple didn't say a word. So then they get blamed because these products aren't as cool as the last five world-changing products they brought out. Sure. Want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?
No, iTunes and the iPod are the opposite of the razor model, I think. They don't give away the iPod so you'll buy lots of tunes, but the opposite. I'm sure Jobs would sell the tunes as low as the labels and the costs of the servers and bandwidth allowed, even to taking a slight loss. The point is to sell 12 million iPods in a quarter. The tunes? Well, it gets people in the door.
My long boring monologue about the razors/blades thing was a warning to every retailer who tries it -- like the inkjet people: the point is to sell ink.
I've gone through dual, and then triple blades. I forget how many they're trying to sell now. But each time the companies introduce a new format, you need different blades, and only that brand. You can't carry that on forever. Eventually, when a couple of weeks' worth is $10-$12, they've just made it more economical to use an electric. I'd still prefer a good razor, but the marketing is just too much.
Apple's been able to keep developing the razor (iPod) to a higher and higher level. The blades (songs) remain, and in fact, a lot of them are ripped (and taken from the net), so Apple's a lot more interested in iPods than Gillette is in razors.
rather than a CNET editor's overinflated idea of him or herself, let's expand more on the razor phenom.
To whit: I don't know how many of you remember the first stainless steel razor. It was called the Wilkinson, it came from England, and because it was stainless, I could use it for maybe two weeks per. Okay, my beard was lighter back then, too. It was great, and it put Gilette Blue Blades out of business. Within a decade, the razor wars began. The trick they played: giving away the razor, and selling you the blades. The Blue Blades were maybe.25 a pack. The Wilkinsons were around a dollar.
Then there were two blades. They cut closer, but they don't last as long. Price of a package: four or five bucks when introduced. Now, they're up to FIVE, and going. But now, with five blades, I know it only works the way it's supposed to for two or three days, and a pack is over ten bucks!
All of this made me do something I always said I never would: I bought an electric razor. Sure, it was about 50 bucks, but it's good for two, three years. Oil it and replace the blade about once a year.
The razor companies need to learn a new trick when keeping their free razor in blades costs more than an electric that doesn't need perpetual refilling.
There's a lesson in there for all corporations, including Apple, and the stupid tech tabloid, CNET.
If true, this would be the end of Apple, and maybe Disney, too. This is why they shouldn't let business writers have computers.
For Jobs to go along with this, he'd have to be as dumb as Steve Case. Whatever happened to Steve Case? And that AOL-Time/Warner thing was a real winner. Everything it touches turns to crap. If only they'd let Ted Turner buy back CNN, it might be watchable again.
There's only one class of humans I'm really against: MBAs. Someone should exile them to some impoverished island somewhere, where they could play with Excel until they starve to death.
Yet Another iPod Killer. It looks good enough, though you can't see any "innovative" things about it, whatever they are. Looks like a Soviet nano. A little thick, a lot of bumpy ridges. But the real killer is this: Who needs a subscription store? With music that stops playing when you stop paying? What difference does it make which store you go to, when they all have the same music? The iTunes Music Store is bigger than the others, and you can find more obscure cuts on it than elsewhere.
I would love it if all devices could connect. I would love it if there was no copy protection, and if it cost.50 a track. But until then, I've never seen another player that comes anywhere near the iPod.
They have to denigrate Apple because it's not Windows. It's not Linux It's not some imagined future system, which will be holographic sound and video that can be two-way on your tiny earpiece camera phone.
My cuts on my iPod will last as long as I do, in all likelihood. When we have the 45Mbps Internet, I'm sure we'll be sucking up uncompressed holographic sound with n+1 channels and a signal to noise ratio of 3000 to 1. And those old stereo CD rips will sound like hell, too.
No, wait a minute. My favorite numbers on my iPod are Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet tracks recorded very lo-fi in the '20s. Maybe it ain't the encoding, it's the groove. Oh, yeah, I also like this crummy mono recording in the late '40s of "Opera in Vout," by Slim and Slam, featuring the very mellow, very groovy, Groove Juice Special. You've got to listen to good music. Recording standards have been improving all the time. Which do you like? The encoding, or the musicians? I'll take the musicians.
You've got lots of locations. Okay. You pay rent on all those locations. They're huge, meant for carrying a vast inventory, which is now able to fit on three or four xServes. You want Jobs to buy cash registers in every neighborhood? Don't be nuts.
This is crazy conspiracy logic, born on the grassy knoll. They're switching to Windows because the Switch campaign didn't work? If Apple give up its OS, it ceases to exist. Tell you what: if they ever do this, I'd buy two cheap Dells to run Linux and Windows on, and put my G5 in a glass case. Why pay the premium, why struggle with fewer options for almost every project, if you don't love the OS?
They will be using WMA with Windows DMA on a subscription basis, and you will lose you music when you stop paying. Wow, these services are doing very well elsewhere, why not at Amazon? Wait. They're not doing well, are they? What's different here? Oh, an Amazon player. Well, okay. Now, these non-iPod players, they're getting an ever-increasing piece of the-- oh, they're shrinking, aren't they? Could it be because their retail model sucks?
In the file of hoary old rumors, put this one: Apple has a subscription service all ready to go at the flip of a switch, as soon as it makes any inroads. Put that, as long as feudalism doesn't return and we don't have to give a tithe of our crops, and our virgins, to the Baron, subscription services suck.
How many music players are there? Thank you. Does Apple make it impossible to use them? Thank you. How many online music stores are there? Thank you. Does Apple make it impossible for any of those other stores to hook up with them? Thank you, and remember, Vote early and Vote often.
Oh, I forgot one thing: does Apple make it impossible for Windows users to use an iPod, or iTunes? No?
Case closed.
Not religion itself. Sadly, that's the intellectual and moral idiocy which has pervaded our times, and worst of all, our politics. And not just in America, but also in the Middle East. I'm sure Osama thinks evolution is a crock, too.
If science can be defeated, though, my little brethren, there goes democracy. Where did the clergy ever establish anything like it? They are opposed to democracy. Clergy goes towards, at best, an Enlightened Despotism.
It's really repellant to see how many have been educated in the way of Jesus living in the time of the dinosaurs, or whatever, have infiltrated Slashdot.
Prove there are electrons, twits. Show me a picture of them.
And whose flunky are you? And why do you think that Wikipedia is the place to put partisan charges? Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia. If you want to enter that into Meehan's article, I hope you're a real crusader for truth, and exposing all the Veterans of 1994 who also pledged term limits, and have since decided otherwise.
For myself, I think that term limits is the dumbest sack of crap idea ever espoused. If I elect somebody to Congress and he's good, I want him to be reelected unless he screws up or somebody else better comes along. If he's a dumb clod, I will work for his defeat. I don't want some arbitrary rule protecting the electorate from getting familiar with the people it votes for.
And you can bet you paid more taxes than Bush; but that somehow isn't significant?
Every wonder why the taxes on the middle class and below are getting worse, while the tax cuts for for the wealthy are rising faster than the flood waters of Katrina? Let's see, Bush and Kerry have investments. The capital gains taxes are lowered and lowered again. Did Kerry do that? The highest marginal tax rate is lowered. Do you get to even pay into that anyway?
Kerry voted against all or most of these cuts. They went through anyway. Was he supposed to keep paying at the rates that would have applied had the tax cuts not gone through?
There are many, many things that are good about Wikipedia, but this isn't one of them. Articles on contemporary politics because monkey islands of excrement-throwing chimps. I'm not familiar with Rep. Meehan. If he was stupid enough to make the "term limits" declaration, I'm sorry for him, because that was one of the most stupidest causes in American politics. I'm glad it's dead, and I'm glad so many of its proponents, mostly Republican but apparently Mr. Meehan too, have changed their minds about it. If somebody's good at their job, why shouldn't they stay, as long as they win the next election? If they're bad, let's hope the opponent bounces them off to the ranch or the real estate business.
Tell me, just before the election, why shouldn't his office be very careful about what's written about him anywhere? One guy got accused of being a party to the Kennedy assassination.
There are many different levels of trust with Wikipedia. Many topics are treated extraordinarily well, but those that are close to a modern political fault line become useless. I recall when the "feminism" page got hijacked by some very determined anti-feminists, and reading it was like reading a polemic against feminism. Well, that's not an encyclopedia article, that's a tract you nail to the church door. The ideal article about anything contentious is spare, factual, and makes note when the subject is controversial. The Swift Boat episode led to another food fight. This is an instance, and there are a few of them, when the cooperative spirit of the Wiki has become polluted.
If some people want to make political stands for or against Meehan, there are lots of places to do it. Wikipedia shouldn't be one.
Of course, those who think Google should hand over tons of identifying information to the government will point to this and say, you obey the Chinese government's wishes, but you appeal a U.S. subpoena, and the only answer is, yes. We have a system where individual rights matter, and a company, or an individual, can appeal to the courts for relief from what is an intrusive request. Google is undoubtedly left in China with the choice of leaving China or censoring their searches. They have made their choice out of these two options, at the mercy of a dictatorial government. Each choice is fraught with risk and compromise. You can attempt to do no evil, but actually doing no evil is impossible. That's called the Human Condition. They should keep their slogan as a reminder of their fundamental mission -- but they're not going to keep it perfectly. I think, for instance, I'm pretty truthful, but I've definitely told some lies. "Tell No Lies" is a good motto, because it's a great goal.
Whatever. It's out of date, I'm sure, but I haven't tuned in a music station for years. Haven't you heard of iPods?
What I'm sayin' is, that FM spectrum would better be used as municipal Wi-Fi.
To the poster who said that online sales don't matter, don't talk so fast. A recent study said the iTunes Music Store is the number 7 retailer of music in the United States, right behind Best Buy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/22/itunes_us_ retail_top_ten/
It's approaching a billion tunes sold, the library is growing every day.
And this was before the 14 million new iPods in this first quarter got factored into it.
Online sales definitely matter now, and in five years, who knows?
So little time.
1. Apple could not have opened the iTunes Music Store without the consent of the music labels, which Jobs had the ability to cajole into releasing their music in digital form to begin with -- and that wouldn't have happened without DRM. Don't like it, but that's true. The alternative business model was Napster, which the courts had just driven out of business.
2. All the other players have to do is license FairPlay. No, whines Real, Apple has to sit still while its DRM gets cracked. How long would that piddling little company last if they did that to Microsoft, I wonder? Two minutes?
3. If you go to an anti-Mac site like the various pay-for-play video download sites, you can't do it with a Mac. In the Help sections, they always have the same message. "Until Apple sharies its DRM," and then, paradoxically, "Windows DRM has not been cracked."
4. I'd love it if all DRM was abolished, and the Apple Store sold most tracks for about a quarter. Music would return as a cultural, not just a business, force. But the people who determine that are the music labels, not Apple.
Just one idea that seems, at the moment, to make sense. You're a music company, now. You sell CDs. You advertise them on the radio by passing out major bucks to corrupt DJs and so on. This works? For teenyboppers. Thus the boy bands, the Britneys, all of that. Hey, it's smokin' when you're 14. But it doesn't work with core music buyers. So what to do? Simple. Sponsor sharing networks. Pay people if they recommend things that get downloaded a lot. Give them download credits for uploading. Get into commercial deals with websites, and pay for their servers, give away prizes, all that stuff. It'll be a whole lot cheaper than KISS-FM, that's for sure. Now, if it's legal, why buy? Simple. Check out what's on pirate boards: nada. Three or four hundred albums and their songs, all current with teens and young adults. But servers cost money. A catalog costs money. Quality costs either bandwidth or straight money. Hardware, software and music companies should all take a piece of establishing the "music promo" environment, and get money back in hardware, software and music sales. The Hit Parade is dead. Top 40 radio is dead. Pirate Bay? Not dead.
What a bunch of FUD. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Don't have one, do you?
I've never experienced a skip while I've had three iPods, by the way. If you're really paranoid, buy a nano. It's flash memory.
You really want one, don't you?
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, no wonder you have to take out a mortgage on the popcorn. Back, er, in my day, it was 60/40 for the movie theater, or maybe 50/50 for a "sure hit." Of course, a spectacle or event movie didn't cost $200 million or more, and there wasn't a $50 million ad campaign to get you to see it. You looked in the paper, see, and read the reviews or talked to Cousin Artie, and he said it was good, so that was fine. It's way beyond inflation. In the '50s, I was seeing Saturday kids' matinees at the FOX in New Orleans -- which is now a tangled mess, I guess -- for 15 cents. During the week, it was 50 cents or so. Now, I think, if it were regular inflation here -- like a loaf of bread -- the price would now be about $4.00. Come to think of it, I think the movies would be better if they had to make them with that admission price in mind.
Now, that's a good idea. A chief engineer, or at least a senior one, from a very secure OS. But it's a real mistake to put some Gassee type in there to make pronouncements. Just find and fix the holes. That privilege escalation thing that was the only real news in the bogus CNET article, for instance.
So, nobody COULD break in in 38 hours, let alone 30 minutes, and now what do our Mac haters say? Well, if it would have been for MONEY, then they could have broken in. Yeah, right. I am surprised, though, that they cut the test short and nobody complained. It was supposed to last until Friday. I suppose the bandwidth and the attempted DDos attacks might have made the network people a bit edgy.
I'll tell Steve to put you on the list of people we won't allow to buy an Apple product. That should hold you. This is how it goes: Apple's had a stunning series of, well, victories. The switch to Intel, the video iPods, the contract with Disney and the deal with all the studios -- this has been major, hopeful announcements, on top of the amazing sales of iPods and the rise in market share -- and I think that people are expecting world-beaters every time Jobs hits the stage. Well, it doesn't happen. This January's MacWorld saw iLife 06, a solid advance, and the intel iMac and MacBook Pro. Cool, but the designs didn't change. Yes, they work with the new processors. It's a time of transition, and I think they're concentrating on nuts and bolts. Now, the new Mac mini looks like the old one, but faster. (By the way, the only Mac faster than the Intel iMac is the Quad, get it? These new machines do nothing much stylistically, but they're FAST. (Oh, and nobody's booted Windows from them yet, either.) So this time, the underwhelming, and maybe ill-advised iPod Hi-Fi, is less than a hit. Did Apple "promise" all the fancy stuff that ThinkSecret, and Apple Insider, said they would announce? No. But it's proof that Apple excites curiosity about their next move. There were so many guesses out there -- video iPod with full screen video and touchscreen controller? Didn't happen. New iBooks that weigh about two pounds, etc.? No. Media box that wirelessly downloads movies from Mars? None of them either. Just an old Mac mini with an intel chip and a speaker that's not bad in the lows, but kind of sucks in the treble. No wonder Apple tries to shut down rumor sites: it's publicity with a mind of its own. THEY created the specific buzz, Apple didn't. So people feel disappointed, and those who don't wish Apple all that well say, "Aha! Just as I said! They suck!" And the negative stories begin. Same process happens in celebrity stories: Oh, Angelina's crazy, she sleeps with her brother and sucks men's blood. Oh, wait, she's adopting babies and is living with a cute guy: Angelina is wonderful! It's a cycle. You tell the story going up, and then you tell the story going down. None of it's actually true, one way or another. Gore was liked in his early years in the Clinton years: he was the sensible reformer in the press, actually cutting down the size of the bureaucracy. And then, there were never those sex rumors about him. But when he ran for prez, the dogs were unleashed. He was a liar (they had to change what he said to make it sound like he lied, but no matter.) He hired a female consultant to tell him how to be a man! He lies about what he did! He lied about "Love Story!" He says he "invented" the internet! He's crazy! None of it's true. This is what they call a "meme," a story line. It doesn't have to be true. Yeah, sure, Apple over-hyped an event where all they promised was "some fun products." The rumor sites went crazy. Apple didn't say a word. So then they get blamed because these products aren't as cool as the last five world-changing products they brought out. Sure. Want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?
No, iTunes and the iPod are the opposite of the razor model, I think. They don't give away the iPod so you'll buy lots of tunes, but the opposite. I'm sure Jobs would sell the tunes as low as the labels and the costs of the servers and bandwidth allowed, even to taking a slight loss. The point is to sell 12 million iPods in a quarter. The tunes? Well, it gets people in the door. My long boring monologue about the razors/blades thing was a warning to every retailer who tries it -- like the inkjet people: the point is to sell ink. I've gone through dual, and then triple blades. I forget how many they're trying to sell now. But each time the companies introduce a new format, you need different blades, and only that brand. You can't carry that on forever. Eventually, when a couple of weeks' worth is $10-$12, they've just made it more economical to use an electric. I'd still prefer a good razor, but the marketing is just too much. Apple's been able to keep developing the razor (iPod) to a higher and higher level. The blades (songs) remain, and in fact, a lot of them are ripped (and taken from the net), so Apple's a lot more interested in iPods than Gillette is in razors.
rather than a CNET editor's overinflated idea of him or herself, let's expand more on the razor phenom. To whit: I don't know how many of you remember the first stainless steel razor. It was called the Wilkinson, it came from England, and because it was stainless, I could use it for maybe two weeks per. Okay, my beard was lighter back then, too. It was great, and it put Gilette Blue Blades out of business. Within a decade, the razor wars began. The trick they played: giving away the razor, and selling you the blades. The Blue Blades were maybe .25 a pack. The Wilkinsons were around a dollar.
Then there were two blades. They cut closer, but they don't last as long. Price of a package: four or five bucks when introduced. Now, they're up to FIVE, and going. But now, with five blades, I know it only works the way it's supposed to for two or three days, and a pack is over ten bucks!
All of this made me do something I always said I never would: I bought an electric razor. Sure, it was about 50 bucks, but it's good for two, three years. Oil it and replace the blade about once a year.
The razor companies need to learn a new trick when keeping their free razor in blades costs more than an electric that doesn't need perpetual refilling.
There's a lesson in there for all corporations, including Apple, and the stupid tech tabloid, CNET.
If true, this would be the end of Apple, and maybe Disney, too. This is why they shouldn't let business writers have computers. For Jobs to go along with this, he'd have to be as dumb as Steve Case. Whatever happened to Steve Case? And that AOL-Time/Warner thing was a real winner. Everything it touches turns to crap. If only they'd let Ted Turner buy back CNN, it might be watchable again. There's only one class of humans I'm really against: MBAs. Someone should exile them to some impoverished island somewhere, where they could play with Excel until they starve to death.
Yet Another iPod Killer. It looks good enough, though you can't see any "innovative" things about it, whatever they are. Looks like a Soviet nano. A little thick, a lot of bumpy ridges. But the real killer is this: Who needs a subscription store? With music that stops playing when you stop paying? What difference does it make which store you go to, when they all have the same music? The iTunes Music Store is bigger than the others, and you can find more obscure cuts on it than elsewhere. I would love it if all devices could connect. I would love it if there was no copy protection, and if it cost .50 a track. But until then, I've never seen another player that comes anywhere near the iPod.
Gee, worried about "market share" and "being ripped off." Sounds like good ol' capitalism to me.
They have to denigrate Apple because it's not Windows. It's not Linux It's not some imagined future system, which will be holographic sound and video that can be two-way on your tiny earpiece camera phone. My cuts on my iPod will last as long as I do, in all likelihood. When we have the 45Mbps Internet, I'm sure we'll be sucking up uncompressed holographic sound with n+1 channels and a signal to noise ratio of 3000 to 1. And those old stereo CD rips will sound like hell, too. No, wait a minute. My favorite numbers on my iPod are Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet tracks recorded very lo-fi in the '20s. Maybe it ain't the encoding, it's the groove. Oh, yeah, I also like this crummy mono recording in the late '40s of "Opera in Vout," by Slim and Slam, featuring the very mellow, very groovy, Groove Juice Special. You've got to listen to good music. Recording standards have been improving all the time. Which do you like? The encoding, or the musicians? I'll take the musicians.
You've got lots of locations. Okay. You pay rent on all those locations. They're huge, meant for carrying a vast inventory, which is now able to fit on three or four xServes. You want Jobs to buy cash registers in every neighborhood? Don't be nuts.
This is crazy conspiracy logic, born on the grassy knoll. They're switching to Windows because the Switch campaign didn't work? If Apple give up its OS, it ceases to exist. Tell you what: if they ever do this, I'd buy two cheap Dells to run Linux and Windows on, and put my G5 in a glass case. Why pay the premium, why struggle with fewer options for almost every project, if you don't love the OS?
They will be using WMA with Windows DMA on a subscription basis, and you will lose you music when you stop paying. Wow, these services are doing very well elsewhere, why not at Amazon? Wait. They're not doing well, are they? What's different here? Oh, an Amazon player. Well, okay. Now, these non-iPod players, they're getting an ever-increasing piece of the-- oh, they're shrinking, aren't they? Could it be because their retail model sucks? In the file of hoary old rumors, put this one: Apple has a subscription service all ready to go at the flip of a switch, as soon as it makes any inroads. Put that, as long as feudalism doesn't return and we don't have to give a tithe of our crops, and our virgins, to the Baron, subscription services suck.
How many music players are there? Thank you. Does Apple make it impossible to use them? Thank you. How many online music stores are there? Thank you. Does Apple make it impossible for any of those other stores to hook up with them? Thank you, and remember, Vote early and Vote often. Oh, I forgot one thing: does Apple make it impossible for Windows users to use an iPod, or iTunes? No? Case closed.
Not religion itself. Sadly, that's the intellectual and moral idiocy which has pervaded our times, and worst of all, our politics. And not just in America, but also in the Middle East. I'm sure Osama thinks evolution is a crock, too. If science can be defeated, though, my little brethren, there goes democracy. Where did the clergy ever establish anything like it? They are opposed to democracy. Clergy goes towards, at best, an Enlightened Despotism. It's really repellant to see how many have been educated in the way of Jesus living in the time of the dinosaurs, or whatever, have infiltrated Slashdot. Prove there are electrons, twits. Show me a picture of them.
And whose flunky are you? And why do you think that Wikipedia is the place to put partisan charges? Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia. If you want to enter that into Meehan's article, I hope you're a real crusader for truth, and exposing all the Veterans of 1994 who also pledged term limits, and have since decided otherwise. For myself, I think that term limits is the dumbest sack of crap idea ever espoused. If I elect somebody to Congress and he's good, I want him to be reelected unless he screws up or somebody else better comes along. If he's a dumb clod, I will work for his defeat. I don't want some arbitrary rule protecting the electorate from getting familiar with the people it votes for.
And you can bet you paid more taxes than Bush; but that somehow isn't significant? Every wonder why the taxes on the middle class and below are getting worse, while the tax cuts for for the wealthy are rising faster than the flood waters of Katrina? Let's see, Bush and Kerry have investments. The capital gains taxes are lowered and lowered again. Did Kerry do that? The highest marginal tax rate is lowered. Do you get to even pay into that anyway? Kerry voted against all or most of these cuts. They went through anyway. Was he supposed to keep paying at the rates that would have applied had the tax cuts not gone through?
There are many, many things that are good about Wikipedia, but this isn't one of them. Articles on contemporary politics because monkey islands of excrement-throwing chimps. I'm not familiar with Rep. Meehan. If he was stupid enough to make the "term limits" declaration, I'm sorry for him, because that was one of the most stupidest causes in American politics. I'm glad it's dead, and I'm glad so many of its proponents, mostly Republican but apparently Mr. Meehan too, have changed their minds about it. If somebody's good at their job, why shouldn't they stay, as long as they win the next election? If they're bad, let's hope the opponent bounces them off to the ranch or the real estate business. Tell me, just before the election, why shouldn't his office be very careful about what's written about him anywhere? One guy got accused of being a party to the Kennedy assassination. There are many different levels of trust with Wikipedia. Many topics are treated extraordinarily well, but those that are close to a modern political fault line become useless. I recall when the "feminism" page got hijacked by some very determined anti-feminists, and reading it was like reading a polemic against feminism. Well, that's not an encyclopedia article, that's a tract you nail to the church door. The ideal article about anything contentious is spare, factual, and makes note when the subject is controversial. The Swift Boat episode led to another food fight. This is an instance, and there are a few of them, when the cooperative spirit of the Wiki has become polluted. If some people want to make political stands for or against Meehan, there are lots of places to do it. Wikipedia shouldn't be one.
Of course, those who think Google should hand over tons of identifying information to the government will point to this and say, you obey the Chinese government's wishes, but you appeal a U.S. subpoena, and the only answer is, yes. We have a system where individual rights matter, and a company, or an individual, can appeal to the courts for relief from what is an intrusive request. Google is undoubtedly left in China with the choice of leaving China or censoring their searches. They have made their choice out of these two options, at the mercy of a dictatorial government. Each choice is fraught with risk and compromise. You can attempt to do no evil, but actually doing no evil is impossible. That's called the Human Condition. They should keep their slogan as a reminder of their fundamental mission -- but they're not going to keep it perfectly. I think, for instance, I'm pretty truthful, but I've definitely told some lies. "Tell No Lies" is a good motto, because it's a great goal.
Whatever. It's out of date, I'm sure, but I haven't tuned in a music station for years. Haven't you heard of iPods? What I'm sayin' is, that FM spectrum would better be used as municipal Wi-Fi.
To the poster who said that online sales don't matter, don't talk so fast. A recent study said the iTunes Music Store is the number 7 retailer of music in the United States, right behind Best Buy. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/22/itunes_us_ retail_top_ten/
It's approaching a billion tunes sold, the library is growing every day.
And this was before the 14 million new iPods in this first quarter got factored into it.
Online sales definitely matter now, and in five years, who knows?
So little time. 1. Apple could not have opened the iTunes Music Store without the consent of the music labels, which Jobs had the ability to cajole into releasing their music in digital form to begin with -- and that wouldn't have happened without DRM. Don't like it, but that's true. The alternative business model was Napster, which the courts had just driven out of business. 2. All the other players have to do is license FairPlay. No, whines Real, Apple has to sit still while its DRM gets cracked. How long would that piddling little company last if they did that to Microsoft, I wonder? Two minutes? 3. If you go to an anti-Mac site like the various pay-for-play video download sites, you can't do it with a Mac. In the Help sections, they always have the same message. "Until Apple sharies its DRM," and then, paradoxically, "Windows DRM has not been cracked." 4. I'd love it if all DRM was abolished, and the Apple Store sold most tracks for about a quarter. Music would return as a cultural, not just a business, force. But the people who determine that are the music labels, not Apple.
Just one idea that seems, at the moment, to make sense. You're a music company, now. You sell CDs. You advertise them on the radio by passing out major bucks to corrupt DJs and so on. This works? For teenyboppers. Thus the boy bands, the Britneys, all of that. Hey, it's smokin' when you're 14. But it doesn't work with core music buyers. So what to do? Simple. Sponsor sharing networks. Pay people if they recommend things that get downloaded a lot. Give them download credits for uploading. Get into commercial deals with websites, and pay for their servers, give away prizes, all that stuff. It'll be a whole lot cheaper than KISS-FM, that's for sure. Now, if it's legal, why buy? Simple. Check out what's on pirate boards: nada. Three or four hundred albums and their songs, all current with teens and young adults. But servers cost money. A catalog costs money. Quality costs either bandwidth or straight money. Hardware, software and music companies should all take a piece of establishing the "music promo" environment, and get money back in hardware, software and music sales. The Hit Parade is dead. Top 40 radio is dead. Pirate Bay? Not dead.
He was, in fact, a pontificating Mac owner.
What a bunch of FUD. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Don't have one, do you? I've never experienced a skip while I've had three iPods, by the way. If you're really paranoid, buy a nano. It's flash memory. You really want one, don't you?