... I agree. AOL has by far outlasted its beginnings, and this only because of the "first web generation" (cough) educated to its (double cough) teachings (flashing gif, banner banner. Please click where you normally shouldn't have to click to continue so that you can look at this nice ad first).
In today's market world, when a company (holding) wants to rid itself of its less profitable ventures, it must first isolate it and make it independant from its "parent" inter-financial network. If someone is gaff enough to take the (dangling) bait, great, but if not, it becomes an investment apart, becomes less (investor) interesting, wilts and dies.
We've seen this story countless times over the past few decades, with only the logo that changes.
Dum dum da-dum, I think the first post on this subject was on the ball - but perhaps that kind gent neglected to say that those who opt for watching a fuzzy copy on their little monitor instead of paying to see the movie probably couldn't afford to anyways.
Quality quality quality and quality, how those whining of piracy forget. Nothing beats the real mcCoy, and those who can afford it most often have it. Enough of the Multimedia giants calling "all the money we could have made"... losses.
C'mon guys, come clean with your shareholders and tell them that you're sorry for oversaturating the market with your prefab productions (cough) tailored for what you thought the market was. Then make something nice, not too expensive, and if it's actally good we'll be good little laddies and go to buy "the good copy" if we can.
It doesn't really matter what the latest FUD or the IT journalists say. Sure they'll slow the flow towrd reason with propaganda and "hottest thing" (respectively) articles, but what counts most in the end is what works. People "aren't aware" that most of the world's servers are running on *NIX, it's because it works. And those really making it work will continue. End of story.
It's the trumpeters and things that don't work that get noticed first - and not coincidentally.
I see you on the doubtful good-to-evil switcharoo. That transformation could have been a story enough for two movies, but Lucas decided to pack it all into one, making it come across as... hokey.
I also disliked Lucas' attempt to "explain" why the Jedi's were "good" and the sith "bad" - most of our fascination with the "Force" was exactly its vagueness, that it left so much open to our imagination. The Sith episode made being a jedi sound somehing along the lines of a... Fransican communist - a dogma which if actually applied would make any sort of self-development impossible. This also wasn't great for the film's "hokey factor".
Yet unfortunately, if there will be a VII-IX, I think it will be a tale about the Force itself. If it is as badly written as the "first" three, get ready for some extreme hokiness.
There was a "winger" line in the Sith episode not much connected to anything - Yoda telling Kenobi "Study much you must"... in short he tells Kenobi that his old master has "come back" because he found a way to immortality...
It doesn't smell bad, just kind of funny. If there will be a "next three" it could be there. Plausibly.
Google to disappear in only five years? Yeah, when Pavarotti sings "Banana Phone".
The Bush adminsistration has taught a lot of lessons over these last years: "Suggest" a lie so outragous no-one can possibly believe it, and wait for the media to repeat it often enough that people do.
This sort of tactic is typical of somone at once very studied in human behaviour and very worried about his own position. Honest companies who work to make good products and enjoy a certain success because of it may be wary of things underhanded, but they'll never see the need to make statements like that.
I said 1988 and no, it wasn't an "Apple" store... it was... something "outlet" - ?
I don't think Canada's "behind the times" - I'd always been using a computer for graphics since computing began. Now please pass me that kindling; I have to stoke the generator.
If laws were people's opinions we probably wouldn't even be able to breathe without breaking one.
128k is a limit I proposed (it could very well be less) as an example of where to draw the line between piracy and... radio listening. Any attempt to impose any form of 'behaviour regulation' or reaping any 'compensation' whatsoever is will end up being either or unfair or downright undemocratic if the perpetrator hasn't a clear idea that a) what he's doing is wrong and b) where the line is between right and wrong.
I use 128k as a limit equal to... let's say listining to a song on the radio with dj comments and commercial breaks.
If they continue to try "regulation measures" without stating exacltly what law is being broken, people won't think they're breaking the law as long as the question is up in the air, and they'll always find a way around them.
If the record labels would let people make music instead of trying to dupe teens into buying their in-house crap, I don't think they'd be whining so much today.
Seriously, reading that Apple hasn't opened a store in Canada before now almost literally knocked me on my ass. Well, it would have if I wasn't sitting on it already.
I do remember having to go to NY to buy my Mac IIfx, but that was in... 1988? Jeez. Has Apple even offered any explanation why they've been so frigid with the Great White North?
Yes, that tax exists in Canada and here in France as well. But the money goes to... some vague music industry organisation. I want to archive my digital photos, or make a backup of my system, and the music industry gets money? Um, right.
It's the quality of the music (as in bitrate) that should be the dividing line between misdimeanor or... nothing. As far as I'm concerned having a 128k mp3 of a song you didn't buy isn't piracy. Having 480kb VBR is. Burning it and selling it, worse. Clear, non?
I wrote a lengthy rant about it here before. it's in my journal if you like, I'll spare you my getting "into" it all over again.
I don't really see the point of this article - and it certainly doesn't cover many "flops". What about the Quadra? The early Performas?
Perhaps it's not a flop, but I have one of Apple's "non-Jobs" jobbies, the LC630 - as a hobby. Apple thought that model would fly because of its TV features, but this didn't turn out to be the main reason it sold.
BTW, today my LC has a "real" 68040 processor, an 8gb hd and a CD burner - and serves as my TV : )
...MS doesn't have to spend any money on bug-finding - they are so famous and awe-inspiring that people will pay them money to find their bugs. People being their customers I mean.
If on one hand you sell an inefficient product that opens a body to disease and on the other the antidote, all you risk, (outside of your looking like an arrogant and dishonest charletan), is taking twice your customer's money.
But this isn't where they're going to lose.
Recipe: Crunchy Keyboard Caramel Serves: One revenge-deserving fool
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1/4 cup butter (if keyboard will later be subject to intense licking)
Tools:
Conserves skillet
wooden spoon
one glass of ice-cold water
Heat sugar and lemon juice at medium temperature until caramel forms. Continue heating, stirring constantly, until mixture becomes thick enough to coat spoon. Lower temperature and continue heating until mixture further thickens. Stir from time to time. To test caramel consistancy, let fall a drop into the glass of ice water - if the caramel forms a hard string that will snap if stressed, it is at the correct "hard crack" stage. If you intend to add butter, let cool slightly then mix in.
Slather generous amount of mixture evenly across keyboard with spatula or wooden spoon. For a better presentation, before the mixture cools, use sponge dampened with warm water to remove enough off the top to expose the keys.
Let cool. Serve gift-wrapped or framed, or leave in front of computer for an optimal "Surprise!" factor.
I spoke too soon in my earlier post - thank you for your reply.
I see completely what you are saying - that our genes risk relaying defective gibberish that can only be held in check by means of medication. If you put that together with the "body sells" of what I wrote earlier, we are in for a scary scenario if things aren't regulated soon.
Personally I've always put ethical questions second to fact, so if you'll excuse me I'll do the same here.
I'm not one for regulation of anything, but I am one for deciding what is harmful to our bodies in a physical sense and taking preventive measures against it. To clarify "harmful," I mean "an action by one object directed at another that would reduce that second object to a state lesser than its 'normal' state". Deciding what "normal" is are what our laws are for - but to this day there are no laws (to my knowledge) that, after a general consensus (of knowledgeable parties), spell out what a "normal" gene is. Thus the pharmaceutical companies today conduct their research almost unchecked. Yes I know that implementation of their discoveries is another matter, but...
Take for example the "Terminator" gene made by the "Delta and Pine" company, an invention and patenting process backed by the USDA - this strain of seed they invented lacked the ability to reproduce itself, thus obliging a farmer year after year to return to a company to buy his grain instead of reserving part of his crop for next year's seeding as he usually would... at the time of the story, around 1997, some spoke out against the pure greed motivation of the venture, but none against reducing a plant's "normal" DNA makeup to a lesser state.
I gave this problem a lot of thought, but none about where to post it - which is why it's on the bottom of the pile. Oh well. Liver and Loin, the butcher said.
I've given this subject a lot of thought. I'm persuaded that once we have mastered our biological makeup (and there we're getting pretty close already) our attention will turn to that which makes us different from any other species here on Earth - our minds.
I think already we should be much further towards that goal than we actually are - but here's the thing:
There's no money in it for anyone.
What sells today? Things that make us (physically) thinner, things that will "fix" our (physical) problems (dirt, disease, chronic halitosis), things that make us (physically) move faster (think transport), things that will make us (physically, biologically) more attractive (for reproduction purposes), and all that with the highest profit margin possible. But what sells best for our minds? Only things that blow it away or make you ignore it altogether.
I actually see a reverse trend to evolution - everything you see on (M)TV these days is a propagation of "non-thought" as a positive ideal. "Leave the thinking to others - they will tell you what "ails" you, as only they have the cure." "They" being... you know. (Grabbing tinfoil hat)
As animals, like all animals above mono-cellular, we are but digestive tracts with tools enough to live long enough to reproduce ourselves, and it's only the size and number of appendages that differ. As humans, using the added tool that is our mind, I think there is much we must change in what we know and teach others about what we are before we can progress to any "next step in evolution".
As it stands, death, disease and mindless ideals are making too many people rich these days. It's for this that, other than "new comforts" that can be sold to us, I don't see a "step forward" coming any time too soon.
There's something profoundly wrong with the idea that ideas can be property. Every time I want to go to the supermarket I don't get out my sketchpad and re-invent the wheel and the combustion motor - a car is ideas built on ideas built on generations of ideas!
What can protected is the material product that results from an idea - and that only against 'product cloning'. If you want to be the first in the game you have to be the first and you have to use your lead to remain the best if you want to stay there. So the market should be.
Which makes MS's attitude not only belligerant, but cowardly.
My god, now they've really overstepped the line. Stealing is one thing, but accusing vague and unnamed "others" of stealing in an attempt to hide the fact that they themselves are thieves is another. Double trouble on boil and bubble, trying to endoctrinate the ignorant that they are the "nice guys" and everyone else are the baddies.
Wait, there was this guy and his buddies who used much the same tactics to wreak havoc and reap benefits... what was his name? Shrub? Hedge? Anyhow, many are learning from his lessons it seems.
I can tell almost the same story but if my client insists that I use his in-house equipment and it turns out to be windows I could just say "You want me to work, right?". Personally I couldn't care less as it's he who's paying by the hour for the extra hassle of getting a decent PDF ready for the printer.
As for the "everyone's using it so it must be good" argument, a t-shirt comes to mind, rather a t-shirt answer to a t-shirt: "865,000 Baptists can be wrong".
Slashdot Mirror
... I agree. AOL has by far outlasted its beginnings, and this only because of the "first web generation" (cough) educated to its (double cough) teachings (flashing gif, banner banner. Please click where you normally shouldn't have to click to continue so that you can look at this nice ad first).
In today's market world, when a company (holding) wants to rid itself of its less profitable ventures, it must first isolate it and make it independant from its "parent" inter-financial network. If someone is gaff enough to take the (dangling) bait, great, but if not, it becomes an investment apart, becomes less (investor) interesting, wilts and dies.
We've seen this story countless times over the past few decades, with only the logo that changes.
...and hum, don't forget a certain zealot monk and the Alexandria Libraries. Phwoosh crackle crackle.
Dum dum da-dum, I think the first post on this subject was on the ball - but perhaps that kind gent neglected to say that those who opt for watching a fuzzy copy on their little monitor instead of paying to see the movie probably couldn't afford to anyways.
Quality quality quality and quality, how those whining of piracy forget. Nothing beats the real mcCoy, and those who can afford it most often have it. Enough of the Multimedia giants calling "all the money we could have made "... losses.
C'mon guys, come clean with your shareholders and tell them that you're sorry for oversaturating the market with your prefab productions (cough) tailored for what you thought the market was. Then make something nice, not too expensive, and if it's actally good we'll be good little laddies and go to buy "the good copy" if we can.
It doesn't really matter what the latest FUD or the IT journalists say. Sure they'll slow the flow towrd reason with propaganda and "hottest thing" (respectively) articles, but what counts most in the end is what works. People "aren't aware" that most of the world's servers are running on *NIX, it's because it works. And those really making it work will continue. End of story.
It's the trumpeters and things that don't work that get noticed first - and not coincidentally.
I see you on the doubtful good-to-evil switcharoo. That transformation could have been a story enough for two movies, but Lucas decided to pack it all into one, making it come across as... hokey.
I also disliked Lucas' attempt to "explain" why the Jedi's were "good" and the sith "bad" - most of our fascination with the "Force" was exactly its vagueness, that it left so much open to our imagination. The Sith episode made being a jedi sound somehing along the lines of a... Fransican communist - a dogma which if actually applied would make any sort of self-development impossible. This also wasn't great for the film's "hokey factor".
Yet unfortunately, if there will be a VII-IX, I think it will be a tale about the Force itself. If it is as badly written as the "first" three, get ready for some extreme hokiness.
There was a "winger" line in the Sith episode not much connected to anything - Yoda telling Kenobi "Study much you must"... in short he tells Kenobi that his old master has "come back" because he found a way to immortality...
It doesn't smell bad, just kind of funny. If there will be a "next three" it could be there. Plausibly.
Google to disappear in only five years? Yeah, when Pavarotti sings "Banana Phone".
The Bush adminsistration has taught a lot of lessons over these last years: "Suggest" a lie so outragous no-one can possibly believe it, and wait for the media to repeat it often enough that people do.
This sort of tactic is typical of somone at once very studied in human behaviour and very worried about his own position. Honest companies who work to make good products and enjoy a certain success because of it may be wary of things underhanded, but they'll never see the need to make statements like that.
It will be nice being able to test your web pages with just one browser.
I said 1988 and no, it wasn't an "Apple" store... it was... something "outlet" - ?
I don't think Canada's "behind the times" - I'd always been using a computer for graphics since computing began. Now please pass me that kindling; I have to stoke the generator.
If laws were people's opinions we probably wouldn't even be able to breathe without breaking one.
128k is a limit I proposed (it could very well be less) as an example of where to draw the line between piracy and... radio listening. Any attempt to impose any form of 'behaviour regulation' or reaping any 'compensation' whatsoever is will end up being either or unfair or downright undemocratic if the perpetrator hasn't a clear idea that a) what he's doing is wrong and b) where the line is between right and wrong.
I use 128k as a limit equal to... let's say listining to a song on the radio with dj comments and commercial breaks.
If they continue to try "regulation measures" without stating exacltly what law is being broken, people won't think they're breaking the law as long as the question is up in the air, and they'll always find a way around them.
If the record labels would let people make music instead of trying to dupe teens into buying their in-house crap, I don't think they'd be whining so much today.
Apple, eh. Microsoft? Take off, hoser.
Seriously, reading that Apple hasn't opened a store in Canada before now almost literally knocked me on my ass. Well, it would have if I wasn't sitting on it already.
I do remember having to go to NY to buy my Mac IIfx, but that was in... 1988? Jeez. Has Apple even offered any explanation why they've been so frigid with the Great White North?
Yes, that tax exists in Canada and here in France as well. But the money goes to... some vague music industry organisation. I want to archive my digital photos, or make a backup of my system, and the music industry gets money? Um, right. It's the quality of the music (as in bitrate) that should be the dividing line between misdimeanor or... nothing. As far as I'm concerned having a 128k mp3 of a song you didn't buy isn't piracy. Having 480kb VBR is. Burning it and selling it, worse. Clear, non? I wrote a lengthy rant about it here before. it's in my journal if you like, I'll spare you my getting "into" it all over again.
I don't really see the point of this article - and it certainly doesn't cover many "flops". What about the Quadra? The early Performas?
Perhaps it's not a flop, but I have one of Apple's "non-Jobs" jobbies, the LC630 - as a hobby. Apple thought that model would fly because of its TV features, but this didn't turn out to be the main reason it sold.
BTW, today my LC has a "real" 68040 processor, an 8gb hd and a CD burner - and serves as my TV : )
...MS doesn't have to spend any money on bug-finding - they are so famous and awe-inspiring that people will pay them money to find their bugs. People being their customers I mean.
If on one hand you sell an inefficient product that opens a body to disease and on the other the antidote, all you risk, (outside of your looking like an arrogant and dishonest charletan), is taking twice your customer's money. But this isn't where they're going to lose.
Serves: One revenge-deserving fool
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup butter (if keyboard will later be subject to intense licking)
Tools:
Conserves skillet
wooden spoon
one glass of ice-cold water
Heat sugar and lemon juice at medium temperature until caramel forms. Continue heating, stirring constantly, until mixture becomes thick enough to coat spoon. Lower temperature and continue heating until mixture further thickens. Stir from time to time. To test caramel consistancy, let fall a drop into the glass of ice water - if the caramel forms a hard string that will snap if stressed, it is at the correct "hard crack" stage. If you intend to add butter, let cool slightly then mix in.
Slather generous amount of mixture evenly across keyboard with spatula or wooden spoon. For a better presentation, before the mixture cools, use sponge dampened with warm water to remove enough off the top to expose the keys.
Let cool. Serve gift-wrapped or framed, or leave in front of computer for an optimal "Surprise!" factor.
I spoke too soon in my earlier post - thank you for your reply.
I see completely what you are saying - that our genes risk relaying defective gibberish that can only be held in check by means of medication. If you put that together with the "body sells" of what I wrote earlier, we are in for a scary scenario if things aren't regulated soon.
Personally I've always put ethical questions second to fact, so if you'll excuse me I'll do the same here.
I'm not one for regulation of anything, but I am one for deciding what is harmful to our bodies in a physical sense and taking preventive measures against it. To clarify "harmful," I mean "an action by one object directed at another that would reduce that second object to a state lesser than its 'normal' state". Deciding what "normal" is are what our laws are for - but to this day there are no laws (to my knowledge) that, after a general consensus (of knowledgeable parties), spell out what a "normal" gene is. Thus the pharmaceutical companies today conduct their research almost unchecked. Yes I know that implementation of their discoveries is another matter, but...
Take for example the "Terminator" gene made by the "Delta and Pine" company, an invention and patenting process backed by the USDA - this strain of seed they invented lacked the ability to reproduce itself, thus obliging a farmer year after year to return to a company to buy his grain instead of reserving part of his crop for next year's seeding as he usually would... at the time of the story, around 1997, some spoke out against the pure greed motivation of the venture, but none against reducing a plant's "normal" DNA makeup to a lesser state.
I gave this problem a lot of thought, but none about where to post it - which is why it's on the bottom of the pile. Oh well. Liver and Loin, the butcher said.
I've given this subject a lot of thought. I'm persuaded that once we have mastered our biological makeup (and there we're getting pretty close already) our attention will turn to that which makes us different from any other species here on Earth - our minds.
I think already we should be much further towards that goal than we actually are - but here's the thing:
There's no money in it for anyone.
What sells today? Things that make us (physically) thinner, things that will "fix" our (physical) problems (dirt, disease, chronic halitosis), things that make us (physically) move faster (think transport), things that will make us (physically, biologically) more attractive (for reproduction purposes), and all that with the highest profit margin possible. But what sells best for our minds? Only things that blow it away or make you ignore it altogether.
I actually see a reverse trend to evolution - everything you see on (M)TV these days is a propagation of "non-thought" as a positive ideal. "Leave the thinking to others - they will tell you what "ails" you, as only they have the cure." "They" being... you know. (Grabbing tinfoil hat)
As animals, like all animals above mono-cellular, we are but digestive tracts with tools enough to live long enough to reproduce ourselves, and it's only the size and number of appendages that differ. As humans, using the added tool that is our mind, I think there is much we must change in what we know and teach others about what we are before we can progress to any "next step in evolution".
As it stands, death, disease and mindless ideals are making too many people rich these days. It's for this that, other than "new comforts" that can be sold to us, I don't see a "step forward" coming any time too soon.
There's something profoundly wrong with the idea that ideas can be property. Every time I want to go to the supermarket I don't get out my sketchpad and re-invent the wheel and the combustion motor - a car is ideas built on ideas built on generations of ideas!
What can protected is the material product that results from an idea - and that only against 'product cloning'. If you want to be the first in the game you have to be the first and you have to use your lead to remain the best if you want to stay there. So the market should be.
Which makes MS's attitude not only belligerant, but cowardly.
My god, now they've really overstepped the line. Stealing is one thing, but accusing vague and unnamed "others" of stealing in an attempt to hide the fact that they themselves are thieves is another. Double trouble on boil and bubble, trying to endoctrinate the ignorant that they are the "nice guys" and everyone else are the baddies.
Wait, there was this guy and his buddies who used much the same tactics to wreak havoc and reap benefits... what was his name? Shrub? Hedge? Anyhow, many are learning from his lessons it seems.
I can tell almost the same story but if my client insists that I use his in-house equipment and it turns out to be windows I could just say "You want me to work, right?". Personally I couldn't care less as it's he who's paying by the hour for the extra hassle of getting a decent PDF ready for the printer.
As for the "everyone's using it so it must be good" argument, a t-shirt comes to mind, rather a t-shirt answer to a t-shirt:
"865,000 Baptists can be wrong".
...did rap even exist then? Maybe he invented it.
...haha "heard"
...thank you. Never thought to look for it until I hard it was over...