The extra "e" is for "electronic democracy" because Governor Dean raised so much money over the Internet.
ahem.
Okay, fine, I'm pretty sure I typed it wrong when I submitted the headline. I deserve all the mocking you can dish out. But for restitution, allow me to offer this appropriate Simpsons quote:
Homer: Look kids! I just got my party invitiations back from the printers. Lisa: [Reading the invitation.] "Come to Homer's BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB." Bart: What's that extra B for? Homer: That's a typo.
> While I regret the board and I have differences about how to > execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina said in > a statement.
Of course she respects the board's decision. As she told us last year:
> "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," > Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said > Wednesday. "We have to compete for jobs."'
> Hmm. I'd wondered why OS X still includes the same speech > synthesis engine as Mac OS 8. Do you know if there was a > time limitation on this agreement? It sounds really bad, and > Apple would do well to either drop it or replace it with > something a bit less dated (you can barely understand what > it's saying).
I think you nailed this on the head; apparently that's why the speech capabilities haven't been improved since 8.
I read the time limit was five years, which is why Apple is introducing the new spoken word interface for Tiger (due later this year).
> in their haste to hype a "Microsoft buys Apple" story, the press > often ignores three important facts
No kidding. That was some of the worst tech reporting I had seen at the time.
They also ignored that as part of the deal, Apple dropped their lawsuit against Microsoft for stealing QuickTime software code, Microsoft agreed to develop Office for the Mac for five years, and Apple agreed to not develop any new text-to-speech capabilities for the Mac (this one wasn't allowed to leak for a while).
I don't know how this information was kept secret -- both companies are publically owned (and I own shares of both, so I get their annual reports), so they should have had to disclose it.
> The whole concept of a brand is to make a lasting, favorable > on your customers and potential customers.
Actually, one way to to measure the value of a brand is to detemine how much people value people put on the "brand image," as illustrated by this equation:
Total product = physical product + brand image
So the value of brand, the brand equity, is equal to the price someone is willing to pay for the product minus the value of physical product.
So if Apple products seem "over priced" compared to the cost of good sold for the product, the extra price is associated with the brand.
Brands can have actually dollar values. For example, when a company purchases a second company with a strong brand, the price premium for that brand is called "goodwill" and can actually be called an asset on the purchasing company's books.
So if one considers that people aren't willing to pay 25% more for a Coke than for RC cola, then one could argue that the value of the Coke brand is less than it used to be.
> How did you get the 4th and 5th mouse buttons to work for > the Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth?
Since I used them for Expose, you can program them there. Go to Apple > System Preferences > Expose. At the bottom of the dialog box, there are three options, All windows, Application windows, and Desktop. I set those to Mouse Button 4, option+Mouse Button 4, and Mouse Button 5, respectively.
> So they learned an easy lesson: NEVER CLICK IT. Ever. They > don't touch that scroll wheel either for much the same reason > (they never tried, they had already learned not to touch the > other buttons). They have next to no idea what it's for. It's just > there.
> My parrents are quite smart (my mom has a PhD and my > father has many degrees and has been a CIO).
Agreed. It's not that they're not smart; oftentimes, it's that they don't care to learn it. My boss is like this. He's smart -- West Point grad, engineering degree, MBA, etc. And he doesn't quite grasp all the details about his computer. The reason is that he doesn't care enough about the computer to learn everything about it. He's a "mainstream user" when it comes to computers, so he's very pragmatic. "What will the computer allow me to do?" That question does not involve him learning much more than the basics. He thought it was cute that I could control my PowerBook using my cell phone using Bluetooth and Salling Clicker, but for him, the benefits weren't important enough for him to care. However, when he got his Blackberry, the benefits of a Bluetooth headset were obvious -- no fumbling for a corded head set. He was willing to put the effort into learning the buttons for the beneift.
My wife's like that too. She's easily smarter than me, but she doesn't care to learn about all the cool stuff she can do with her Mac.
So it's not that the user isn't intelligent enough to learn about the computer (and that second mouse button). It's that the user is pragmatic. If they can do everything they care to do with their computer and never touch the extra mouse buttons or whatever, then they're happy.
Apple has been very good lately about understanding this pragmatism. Many computer enthusiasts see a feature Apple introduces (like Dashboard, for example), and says, well conceptually that's similar to a virtual desktop. The difference is that Apple is structuring the feature so that pragmatic mainstream users can use it simply enough that the benefits significantly outweigh the efforts of learning how to use the feature (and remembering about it when you need it).
It's a hard concept for technology enthusiasts to understand, but it's an important one.
Me? I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth both at work and at home. I didn't have to install any drivers or anything. Just pair the mouse to my PowerBook (with built-in Bluetooth), and I'm done.
Mouse button 1 = regular click Mouse button 2 = contextual click Mouse button 3 = not used because it's too easy to scroll with the wheel when clicking, but it used to be mapped such that when I clicked it and scrolled, the Mac screen would either zoom in or zoom out (really nice Quartz Extreme feature) Mouse button 4 = Expose show all windows Mouse button 5 = Expose show desktop
My wife is the opposite. She prefers a single button mouse for her iMac and PowerBook. I bought her a multi-button mouse with scroll wheel for playing Jedi Academy. When she's done playing, she unplugs the multi-button mouse and plugs in her white Apple mouse.
Apple's got the right idea. Ship a single button mouse to make sure that developers don't start hiding things in the contextual menu, but support multiple button mice out of the box with no need for drivers. The scenario Gear Live describes is pretty common: "left click or right click?" On a Mac, that statement doesn't come up.
However, I'm sure some people will still complain about the single button mouse. Some people are just looking for nits to pick, and they're looking for excuses to deride Macs, though not necessarily reasons.
> Now someone is probably going to point out that they'll be > laughing when the fancy Mercedes key runs out of batteries > and leaves its owner stranded, but this isn't the case.
No, they'll be laughing when the said Mercedes' security system malfunctions and the car doors continuously unlock despite the fact that the owner locked them less than two minutes before. Then the alarm goes off repeatedly. And the Tele Aid system calls the Mercedes call center who then calls the owner to ask if anything's wrong.
It's hilarious when it happens for hours even after you waste your morning to drop the thing off at the dealer so they can figure out what's wrong. And you get real-time updates on how the repair is progressing, because you're still getting calls from the Mercedes call center because the alarm is still going off.
This happened to me years ago when I bought my first (and last) Mercedes, a brand new 2001 SLK320 (one of the cheaper models, but still a lot of money). The damn things are so overengineered, but they have the worst quality. So when something goes wrong, it manifests itself in a bizarre fashion and the dealer can't figure out how to fix it.
>The lawsuit is actually about the fact that MGM have a little > booklet image showing how you're missing information from > the sides if you watch Pan 'n' Scan films. This is actually > incorrect for most 1.85:1 films, as the 1.33:1 release isn't > really a Pan 'n' Scan.
You bring up an excellent point.
There is a difference between
1. Taking a regular movie, chopping off its sides so it's full screen [please give me a shiny star sticker for using the proper "its/it's" in the above sentence], and then panning and scanning to get all the action. Then letter-boxing that pan-and-scan to make it look like a normal wide screen aspect ratio. In this case, the width of the resulting abomination would be less than the original release, but the same as a pan-and-scan release.
2. Taking a regular movie which is intended to be letterboxed when shown in the theater (as you described in your post). When that cut is shown on TV, it must be pan and scanned to eliminate the stuff above and below the letterbox frame. One then applies the letterbox putting it on DVD. The Straight Dope has more on this.
I assumed that's what they did #1 when I read the slashdot story. The notice.pdf file isn't completely clear on this.
Wow! A $7.50 refund for a DVD you probably paid $20 for!
From the settlement:
The gravamen of Plaintiffs' Complaint is that certain representations on the label and package insert of MGM's widescreen DVDs are false and misleading because MGM's widescreen DVDs for films shot in the 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio
have the same image width as MGM's standard screen format DVDs.
MGM has denied and continues to deny that any portion of the packaging on the outside or inside of its widescreen DVDs is misleading. MGM has asserted and continues to assert many defenses to Plaintiffs' Complaint and expressly has denied and continues to deny any wrongdoing or liability whatsoever arising out of any of the conduct, acts or omissions alleged or that could have been alleged in the action.
Wait a minute. Why can't MGM answer a simple question -- did they letterbox a pan-and-scan cut of a movie and try to pass it off as a widescreen movie? Although technically they might be correct, this is a pretty blatant way to try to rip off consumers.
I heard of a certain light beer manufacturer who was responsible for this. The light beer they were selling actually had more calories than the regular beer. When they labelled it as "light," the product was actually just light in color.
In other news,
MGM agrees to pay an enhancement award to Plaintiff Warren Eallonardo in the amount of $7,500 and an enhancement award to Plaintiff Joseph Corey in the amount of $5,000
meanwhile
The law firms representing the Plaintiffs and the Settlement Class intend to apply to the Court for an award of attorneys' fees and for approval of reimbursement of out-of-pocket litigation costs not to exceed $2,700,000
Nothing says "America" like a big corporation trying to rip off its customers but denying wrongdoing, and a law firm who sues said corporation for millions but gives the original plaintiffs a couple thousand bucks. If we could somehow work this as a new verse into the Star Spangled Banner, I think we can consider this case done!
> Smart Folders in the Finder. I truly believe these will > revolutionise the way people manage files. I
Agreed. I think that the Smart Folders idea is sorely needed. One thing they keep showing in the demos is "recently viewed" (as opposed to recently created or recently modified). I hope I'm reading this functionality correctly, because that's a feature that's needed.
In iTunes we can find a song by when it was added or when it was last played. However, in Address Book we can only see a card that was recently added. However, it would be great to have a way to show me all the cards that I recently looked at. Or the files I opened recently (or frequently), but I didn't necessarily modify. These could be things like price lists or a reference document I'm always opening (but not necessarily changing).
> Mike has always been against us making the "buy similar > items" aspect of our product too prominent, because he didn't > want us to seem like a front-end to Amazon.
"Mike" is right. Before I looked into Delicious Monster a little more, I thought you were a front for Amazon-- perhaps some sort of Amazon-funded venture or something like that.
I think some aspects of the Amazon part are cool (particularly the fact that you can drag product URLs from Amazon's web site and import the item into the Library). However, some of it was a little too "in your face". For example, the Item menu has Amazon listed five times.
Don't me wrong -- Delicious Library is cool. Great job.
I haven't tried Tellico, but Delicious LIbrary looks to have a nicer interface. However, I was a little annoyed with all the ties to Amazon that Delicious Library has. Tellico seems to better about spreading the integration around (Amazon for books, IMDB for movies).
And at $40, I thought Delicious Library was a little steep. However, the article implies that they have sold a decent amount of copies (around 6,000 per month-- at least for the first month), which is more than I would have expected. So maybe the price isn't too bad.
> Don't you worry, as soon as they have serious money in the > bank, they'll feel compelled to set up shop in a regular office
Maybe. But I read on Think Secret that Delicious Monster was started by some guys who left the behemoth software conglomerate Omni Group:
Two former employees of developer The Omni Group have reportedly founded a new Mac OS X software company called Delicious Monster Software, and exciting products are in the works. The company was formed by Omni Group founder and former President Wil Shipley as well as interface designer Mike Matas, both of whom are said to have formed Omni's user interface team....
So it sounds like they left a small company to put together an even smaller company.
I admit, I just use their software. I know none of these guys and I've never worked for their companies, but it doesn't sound like either company is running to put on the white shirt and tie just yet.
> it generated $250,000 worth of sales in its first month
Wow, I must have contributed to some of that.
Delicious Library is cool, if a little bit slow. But it's still new, so that's not surprising. The attention to detail is really amazing. When you add artwork to a catalog item, the application adds a screen to the item image to make it look like it's in a DVD case, or the cover of a book. If you say it's a hard cover or soft cover book, the size of the book changes, too. I wrote a nearly pointless review of it for Gadget Madness.
Scanning in your books, DVDs, games, or whatever into the system is actually a kind of fun. It's one of those Mac OS X applications that when you show someone who doesn't have a Mac, they get that comically jealous look on their face.
> not a very solid release date and could perhaps mean > sometime this summer.
Foolish consumer! Here's how Marketing dates work.
Summer 2005 means this: Sept 20, 2005, technically the last day of summer.
1H2005 means this: on June 30, 2005 at 11:59 PM, a single person somewhere in Iowa will get a copy of Tiger. All other copies will be "on backorder" or "shipping" which will arrive in September.
He might even get a stuffed tiger doll with an Apple logo on it in lieu of a copy of the software package. "Oh, yeah, we shipped Tiger to our first customer."
Or, they might rename the local high school's marathon track to "10.4", and force that person to do laps on the track on Sept 20. "Oh yes. Our first customer is running 10.4. No doubt about it."
This reminds me of an urban legend at a company I worked for. We had to ship some equipment out to a customer to make revenue at the end of the quarter. The customer wanted to make sure we quality checked it first. So they had someone physically pick up the hardware cards and dash through the Quality department's lab before sending it to the loading dock. The salesperson was then able to say, with a straight face and minimal snickering, "We ran the hardware through Quality before we shipped it."
> That areligious people can be just as ethical or moral as the > most pious Christian is my proof. Jerry Falwell and Robert > Jones are the most obvious counter-proofs.
Absolutely. I didn't intend to imply that you can't have morality without religion, or that religious people are somehow more moral or ethical.
What I meant was that religion, like morality, ethics, and philosophy are not in the same category as science. Science explains the natural world: what, where, who, how. If you want to know the ultimate "why," well, that's best left up to philosophy and religion.
However, religion-- if practiced properly-- can provide a framework to help some people be more moral. If it's used incorrectly, all sorts of horrible things can happen, ranging from stickers being put on science textbooks to self-righteous fanatics waging war in the name of religion.
> "God's existence is a theory, not a fact" on your bibles
While I agree that Bible-thumping moderators shouldn't be modding down posts they don't agree with, I have to say that I disagree with the suggestion that with the sentiment above.
Religion and belief in God is a matter of faith that transcends fact. Part of this debate starts when ignorant religious people think that science is somehow against them. The fact is that science and religion are about two different things. Science is about fact, while religion is about ethics, morality, and other things that are supposed to elevate us.
One can't use science to "prove" religion any more than one can use religion to disprove science.
> but the ruling does not change the fact that evolutionary > theory is exactly that... a theory. So is Intelligent Design, > which is gaining creedance as an alternative theory.
Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory, while Evolution is*. You're using "theory" in two different senses in the same sentence. In fact, this is about as close to a logical fallacy as one can get outside of the wild. Gather 'round kids! I recommend you read this book for more insight.
Other examples you could have used with equal credibility are:
1. If you believe in the miracles of science, then you must believe in the miracles of the Bible.
2. Of course they didn't have electricity in the past. In order to have electricity you must have current, which means present day.
Switching to a different definition of the word mid sentence is not just disorienting, but silly.
"Theory" in the vernacular may mean "guess", but in scientific jargon it means roughly a battle-tested hypothesis that describes well-established facts.
I'm annoyed that the MSNBC article didn't make this more clear.
*I've also read some who suggest that Evolution is a fact, but Natural Selection is an example of a theory.
I downloaded TextWrangler because they said it was Mac OS X native (Cocoa, I presume), and they said it supported Services. So I expected that many text manipulation functions would be available as Services. That way, if I need to change all the text to UPPER CASE, or Title Case A Selection, I could go to Services > TextWrangler > blah blah blah. Thus, any application that supports Services could gain those text manipulation features (such as FileMaker Pro). However, the only things it added were Open File and New File with Selection.
Right now, I use something called WordService that does this, if it were tied in with a full featured text editor, I would use that.
> to declare how it had disarmed and allow complete, > unrestricted access to inspectors to verify that this had taken > place.
One problem is if you give an ultimatum to someone, they should have a reasonable belief that if they cooperate, you will live up to your end of the bargain.
One major problem I had was that Bush was asking Iraq to prove a negative-- prove they don't have WMDs any longer. Of course, even a school child knows that you can't prove you don't have something.
The problem is, Iraq let the weapons inspectors back in (remember, we pulled them out to begin with), and let them search. The weapons inspectors found nothing, but Bush kept taunting them. So Iraq lived up to their part of the bargain (they let the inspectors back in), but Bush went to war anyway.
One of Bush's biggest crimes is that his actions demeaned America so much that he actually made a murderous dictator the "good guy" in this situation!
Iraq's actions were worthy of continued sanctions and of the strategy of containment -- which we now know worked. Going to war against a third world, poverty stricken nation, and killing upwards of 150,000 Iraqi citizens plus more than 1000 U.S. soldiers was certainly not the only or best course of action.
Slashdot Mirror
> In article title: Not "Governer", "Governor"
The extra "e" is for "electronic democracy" because Governor Dean raised so much money over the Internet.
ahem.
Okay, fine, I'm pretty sure I typed it wrong when I submitted the headline. I deserve all the mocking you can dish out. But for restitution, allow me to offer this appropriate Simpsons quote:
Homer: Look kids! I just got my party invitiations back from the printers.
Lisa: [Reading the invitation.] "Come to Homer's BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB."
Bart: What's that extra B for?
Homer: That's a typo.
> While I regret the board and I have differences about how to
> execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina said in
> a statement.
Of course she respects the board's decision. As she told us last year:
> "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore,"
> Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said
> Wednesday. "We have to compete for jobs."'
Maybe they just outsourced the CEO job to India
> Hmm. I'd wondered why OS X still includes the same speech
> synthesis engine as Mac OS 8. Do you know if there was a
> time limitation on this agreement? It sounds really bad, and
> Apple would do well to either drop it or replace it with
> something a bit less dated (you can barely understand what
> it's saying).
I think you nailed this on the head; apparently that's why the speech capabilities haven't been improved since 8.
I read the time limit was five years, which is why Apple is introducing the new spoken word interface for Tiger (due later this year).
> in their haste to hype a "Microsoft buys Apple" story, the press
> often ignores three important facts
No kidding. That was some of the worst tech reporting I had seen at the time.
They also ignored that as part of the deal, Apple dropped their lawsuit against Microsoft for stealing QuickTime software code, Microsoft agreed to develop Office for the Mac for five years, and Apple agreed to not develop any new text-to-speech capabilities for the Mac (this one wasn't allowed to leak for a while).
I don't know how this information was kept secret -- both companies are publically owned (and I own shares of both, so I get their annual reports), so they should have had to disclose it.
> The whole concept of a brand is to make a lasting, favorable
> on your customers and potential customers.
Actually, one way to to measure the value of a brand is to detemine how much people value people put on the "brand image," as illustrated by this equation:
Total product = physical product + brand image
So the value of brand, the brand equity, is equal to the price someone is willing to pay for the product minus the value of physical product.
So if Apple products seem "over priced" compared to the cost of good sold for the product, the extra price is associated with the brand.
Brands can have actually dollar values. For example, when a company purchases a second company with a strong brand, the price premium for that brand is called "goodwill" and can actually be called an asset on the purchasing company's books.
So if one considers that people aren't willing to pay 25% more for a Coke than for RC cola, then one could argue that the value of the Coke brand is less than it used to be.
Just something to think about.
> Yeah, what's up with that? Today is Monday... Apple is
> supposed to do releases on Tuesday. Tomorrow is Tuesday.
It's because I bought my new PowerBook G4 13 days ago. If they waited until Tuesday to release it, I would have been slightly less disappointed.
> How did you get the 4th and 5th mouse buttons to work for
> the Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth?
Since I used them for Expose, you can program them there. Go to Apple > System Preferences > Expose. At the bottom of the dialog box, there are three options, All windows, Application windows, and Desktop. I set those to Mouse Button 4, option+Mouse Button 4, and Mouse Button 5, respectively.
> So they learned an easy lesson: NEVER CLICK IT. Ever. They
> don't touch that scroll wheel either for much the same reason
> (they never tried, they had already learned not to touch the
> other buttons). They have next to no idea what it's for. It's just
> there.
> My parrents are quite smart (my mom has a PhD and my
> father has many degrees and has been a CIO).
Agreed. It's not that they're not smart; oftentimes, it's that they don't care to learn it. My boss is like this. He's smart -- West Point grad, engineering degree, MBA, etc. And he doesn't quite grasp all the details about his computer. The reason is that he doesn't care enough about the computer to learn everything about it. He's a "mainstream user" when it comes to computers, so he's very pragmatic. "What will the computer allow me to do?" That question does not involve him learning much more than the basics. He thought it was cute that I could control my PowerBook using my cell phone using Bluetooth and Salling Clicker, but for him, the benefits weren't important enough for him to care. However, when he got his Blackberry, the benefits of a Bluetooth headset were obvious -- no fumbling for a corded head set. He was willing to put the effort into learning the buttons for the beneift.
My wife's like that too. She's easily smarter than me, but she doesn't care to learn about all the cool stuff she can do with her Mac.
So it's not that the user isn't intelligent enough to learn about the computer (and that second mouse button). It's that the user is pragmatic. If they can do everything they care to do with their computer and never touch the extra mouse buttons or whatever, then they're happy.
Apple has been very good lately about understanding this pragmatism. Many computer enthusiasts see a feature Apple introduces (like Dashboard, for example), and says, well conceptually that's similar to a virtual desktop. The difference is that Apple is structuring the feature so that pragmatic mainstream users can use it simply enough that the benefits significantly outweigh the efforts of learning how to use the feature (and remembering about it when you need it).
It's a hard concept for technology enthusiasts to understand, but it's an important one.
Me? I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth both at work and at home. I didn't have to install any drivers or anything. Just pair the mouse to my PowerBook (with built-in Bluetooth), and I'm done.
Mouse button 1 = regular click
Mouse button 2 = contextual click
Mouse button 3 = not used because it's too easy to scroll with the wheel when clicking, but it used to be mapped such that when I clicked it and scrolled, the Mac screen would either zoom in or zoom out (really nice Quartz Extreme feature)
Mouse button 4 = Expose show all windows
Mouse button 5 = Expose show desktop
My wife is the opposite. She prefers a single button mouse for her iMac and PowerBook. I bought her a multi-button mouse with scroll wheel for playing Jedi Academy. When she's done playing, she unplugs the multi-button mouse and plugs in her white Apple mouse.
Apple's got the right idea. Ship a single button mouse to make sure that developers don't start hiding things in the contextual menu, but support multiple button mice out of the box with no need for drivers. The scenario Gear Live describes is pretty common: "left click or right click?" On a Mac, that statement doesn't come up.
However, I'm sure some people will still complain about the single button mouse. Some people are just looking for nits to pick, and they're looking for excuses to deride Macs, though not necessarily reasons.
> Now someone is probably going to point out that they'll be
> laughing when the fancy Mercedes key runs out of batteries
> and leaves its owner stranded, but this isn't the case.
No, they'll be laughing when the said Mercedes' security system malfunctions and the car doors continuously unlock despite the fact that the owner locked them less than two minutes before. Then the alarm goes off repeatedly. And the Tele Aid system calls the Mercedes call center who then calls the owner to ask if anything's wrong.
It's hilarious when it happens for hours even after you waste your morning to drop the thing off at the dealer so they can figure out what's wrong. And you get real-time updates on how the repair is progressing, because you're still getting calls from the Mercedes call center because the alarm is still going off.
This happened to me years ago when I bought my first (and last) Mercedes, a brand new 2001 SLK320 (one of the cheaper models, but still a lot of money). The damn things are so overengineered, but they have the worst quality. So when something goes wrong, it manifests itself in a bizarre fashion and the dealer can't figure out how to fix it.
>The lawsuit is actually about the fact that MGM have a little
> booklet image showing how you're missing information from
> the sides if you watch Pan 'n' Scan films. This is actually
> incorrect for most 1.85:1 films, as the 1.33:1 release isn't
> really a Pan 'n' Scan.
You bring up an excellent point.
There is a difference between
1. Taking a regular movie, chopping off its sides so it's full screen [please give me a shiny star sticker for using the proper "its/it's" in the above sentence], and then panning and scanning to get all the action. Then letter-boxing that pan-and-scan to make it look like a normal wide screen aspect ratio. In this case, the width of the resulting abomination would be less than the original release, but the same as a pan-and-scan release.
2. Taking a regular movie which is intended to be letterboxed when shown in the theater (as you described in your post). When that cut is shown on TV, it must be pan and scanned to eliminate the stuff above and below the letterbox frame. One then applies the letterbox putting it on DVD. The Straight Dope has more on this.
I assumed that's what they did #1 when I read the slashdot story. The notice.pdf file isn't completely clear on this.
From the settlement:
Wait a minute. Why can't MGM answer a simple question -- did they letterbox a pan-and-scan cut of a movie and try to pass it off as a widescreen movie? Although technically they might be correct, this is a pretty blatant way to try to rip off consumers.
I heard of a certain light beer manufacturer who was responsible for this. The light beer they were selling actually had more calories than the regular beer. When they labelled it as "light," the product was actually just light in color.
In other news,
meanwhile
Nothing says "America" like a big corporation trying to rip off its customers but denying wrongdoing, and a law firm who sues said corporation for millions but gives the original plaintiffs a couple thousand bucks. If we could somehow work this as a new verse into the Star Spangled Banner, I think we can consider this case done!
> Smart Folders in the Finder. I truly believe these will
> revolutionise the way people manage files. I
Agreed. I think that the Smart Folders idea is sorely needed. One thing they keep showing in the demos is "recently viewed" (as opposed to recently created or recently modified). I hope I'm reading this functionality correctly, because that's a feature that's needed.
In iTunes we can find a song by when it was added or when it was last played. However, in Address Book we can only see a card that was recently added. However, it would be great to have a way to show me all the cards that I recently looked at. Or the files I opened recently (or frequently), but I didn't necessarily modify. These could be things like price lists or a reference document I'm always opening (but not necessarily changing).
> Mike has always been against us making the "buy similar
> items" aspect of our product too prominent, because he didn't
> want us to seem like a front-end to Amazon.
"Mike" is right. Before I looked into Delicious Monster a little more, I thought you were a front for Amazon-- perhaps some sort of Amazon-funded venture or something like that.
I think some aspects of the Amazon part are cool (particularly the fact that you can drag product URLs from Amazon's web site and import the item into the Library). However, some of it was a little too "in your face". For example, the Item menu has Amazon listed five times.
Don't me wrong -- Delicious Library is cool. Great job.
> How does it compare to tellico ?
I haven't tried Tellico, but Delicious LIbrary looks to have a nicer interface. However, I was a little annoyed with all the ties to Amazon that Delicious Library has. Tellico seems to better about spreading the integration around (Amazon for books, IMDB for movies).
And at $40, I thought Delicious Library was a little steep. However, the article implies that they have sold a decent amount of copies (around 6,000 per month-- at least for the first month), which is more than I would have expected. So maybe the price isn't too bad.
> Holy crap, if you're not astroturfing for these guys, I'm the
> queen of England...
Greetings, your majesty!
I don't know these guys, and I've never seen them in a coffee shop. I don't work in the software industry.
I paid full price for the software application over Christmas (to try to find some additional use for my iSight). So, no astroturfing here.
I mean, no astroturfing, your grace.
> bank, they'll feel compelled to set up shop in a regular office
Maybe. But I read on Think Secret that Delicious Monster was started by some guys who left the behemoth software conglomerate Omni Group:
So it sounds like they left a small company to put together an even smaller company.
I admit, I just use their software. I know none of these guys and I've never worked for their companies, but it doesn't sound like either company is running to put on the white shirt and tie just yet.
> it generated $250,000 worth of sales in its first month
Wow, I must have contributed to some of that.
Delicious Library is cool, if a little bit slow. But it's still new, so that's not surprising. The attention to detail is really amazing. When you add artwork to a catalog item, the application adds a screen to the item image to make it look like it's in a DVD case, or the cover of a book. If you say it's a hard cover or soft cover book, the size of the book changes, too. I wrote a nearly pointless review of it for Gadget Madness.
Scanning in your books, DVDs, games, or whatever into the system is actually a kind of fun. It's one of those Mac OS X applications that when you show someone who doesn't have a Mac, they get that comically jealous look on their face.
> not a very solid release date and could perhaps mean
> sometime this summer.
Foolish consumer! Here's how Marketing dates work.
Summer 2005 means this: Sept 20, 2005, technically the last day of summer.
1H2005 means this: on June 30, 2005 at 11:59 PM, a single person somewhere in Iowa will get a copy of Tiger. All other copies will be "on backorder" or "shipping" which will arrive in September.
He might even get a stuffed tiger doll with an Apple logo on it in lieu of a copy of the software package. "Oh, yeah, we shipped Tiger to our first customer."
Or, they might rename the local high school's marathon track to "10.4", and force that person to do laps on the track on Sept 20. "Oh yes. Our first customer is running 10.4. No doubt about it."
This reminds me of an urban legend at a company I worked for. We had to ship some equipment out to a customer to make revenue at the end of the quarter. The customer wanted to make sure we quality checked it first. So they had someone physically pick up the hardware cards and dash through the Quality department's lab before sending it to the loading dock. The salesperson was then able to say, with a straight face and minimal snickering, "We ran the hardware through Quality before we shipped it."
> 10^50 times BIGGER... ...anyone else seeing the Garden Gnomes from Hell?
>
Oh my God! This enormous Garden Gnome will devour us all! Ahhhh!
*jumps into water*
> That areligious people can be just as ethical or moral as the
> most pious Christian is my proof. Jerry Falwell and Robert
> Jones are the most obvious counter-proofs.
Absolutely. I didn't intend to imply that you can't have morality without religion, or that religious people are somehow more moral or ethical.
What I meant was that religion, like morality, ethics, and philosophy are not in the same category as science. Science explains the natural world: what, where, who, how. If you want to know the ultimate "why," well, that's best left up to philosophy and religion.
However, religion-- if practiced properly-- can provide a framework to help some people be more moral. If it's used incorrectly, all sorts of horrible things can happen, ranging from stickers being put on science textbooks to self-righteous fanatics waging war in the name of religion.
> "God's existence is a theory, not a fact" on your bibles
While I agree that Bible-thumping moderators shouldn't be modding down posts they don't agree with, I have to say that I disagree with the suggestion that with the sentiment above.
Religion and belief in God is a matter of faith that transcends fact. Part of this debate starts when ignorant religious people think that science is somehow against them. The fact is that science and religion are about two different things. Science is about fact, while religion is about ethics, morality, and other things that are supposed to elevate us.
One can't use science to "prove" religion any more than one can use religion to disprove science.
> but the ruling does not change the fact that evolutionary
> theory is exactly that... a theory. So is Intelligent Design,
> which is gaining creedance as an alternative theory.
Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory, while Evolution is*. You're using "theory" in two different senses in the same sentence. In fact, this is about as close to a logical fallacy as one can get outside of the wild. Gather 'round kids! I recommend you read this book for more insight.
Other examples you could have used with equal credibility are:
1. If you believe in the miracles of science, then you must believe in the miracles of the Bible.
2. Of course they didn't have electricity in the past. In order to have electricity you must have current, which means present day.
Switching to a different definition of the word mid sentence is not just disorienting, but silly.
"Theory" in the vernacular may mean "guess", but in scientific jargon it means roughly a battle-tested hypothesis that describes well-established facts.
I'm annoyed that the MSNBC article didn't make this more clear.
*I've also read some who suggest that Evolution is a fact, but Natural Selection is an example of a theory.
I downloaded TextWrangler because they said it was Mac OS X native (Cocoa, I presume), and they said it supported Services. So I expected that many text manipulation functions would be available as Services. That way, if I need to change all the text to UPPER CASE, or Title Case A Selection, I could go to Services > TextWrangler > blah blah blah. Thus, any application that supports Services could gain those text manipulation features (such as FileMaker Pro). However, the only things it added were Open File and New File with Selection.
Right now, I use something called WordService that does this, if it were tied in with a full featured text editor, I would use that.
> to declare how it had disarmed and allow complete,
> unrestricted access to inspectors to verify that this had taken
> place.
One problem is if you give an ultimatum to someone, they should have a reasonable belief that if they cooperate, you will live up to your end of the bargain.
One major problem I had was that Bush was asking Iraq to prove a negative-- prove they don't have WMDs any longer. Of course, even a school child knows that you can't prove you don't have something.
The problem is, Iraq let the weapons inspectors back in (remember, we pulled them out to begin with), and let them search. The weapons inspectors found nothing, but Bush kept taunting them. So Iraq lived up to their part of the bargain (they let the inspectors back in), but Bush went to war anyway.
One of Bush's biggest crimes is that his actions demeaned America so much that he actually made a murderous dictator the "good guy" in this situation!
Iraq's actions were worthy of continued sanctions and of the strategy of containment -- which we now know worked. Going to war against a third world, poverty stricken nation, and killing upwards of 150,000 Iraqi citizens plus more than 1000 U.S. soldiers was certainly not the only or best course of action.