I've been a big buyer of prerecorded 'media' for over 35 years. I have two or three hundred vinyl LPs, several dozen 45's, a hundred or so audio cassettes, and roughly 60 prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. They are jammed in my closet with a couple hundred VHS tapes, 450 CDs, and 500-odd DVDs. From this day forward I will never spend a another dime on content that I can't use the way I please.
Easy for you to say; you've already bought everything!
Just kidding.
Seriously, good luck with that. I'm sure, like when Homer Simpson told Moe that he wouldn't buy any more "Flaming Moe's", Apple and others will be able to hear your "You just lost yourself a customer!" declaration over their excited, yelling customers and ringing cash registers.
...with every day that passes it becomes more and more obvious that the greedy bastards who run these media companies prefer to treat me (and all their customers) like criminals
You know how just about every department store puts a don't-steal-me tag on the clothes that has to be removed before you can wear it? They're treating you like a potential criminal, too. Just something to think about before you boycott an industry that takes irritating measures to keep their stuff from getting stolen.
For what it's worth, although I avoid buying CDs that aren't real red book Compact Disc (I want to rip my music with no limits), I have no problems with Apple's DRM.
> He did not lie when he said "I don't recall ever owning a droid" as far as we know.
Agreed. As we can tell, Obi-Wan often speaks in a way that his words can be interpreted to mean two different things. He said he didn't recall owning any droids, not, "I have no idea who these droids are." His statement was true, but it also mislead Luke to think that Obi Wan didn't know the droids at all. Obi-Wan also does this when he describes what happened to Luke's father.
Obi Wan's response is natural. He's been a hermit for 20 years after Darth Vader hunted down all the Jedi, and he's used to being coy about his identity. Advertising who he was was not in his best interest.
Personally, I thought this Slate article was a little silly. It seems almost to be a parody of film criticism. I believe that Episodes I-VI are good movies (with the exception of about half of VI), but not because they're "post modern". David Begor's article does a much better job of describing Lucas' three major themes: the circular nature of violence, duality of good/evil, and the nature of redemption.
> 'Till they have the Daily Show or the News Hour available for download, I'm not really > interested.
I've bought a few music videos, but the TV shows are uninteresting right now.
The Daily Show doesn't make much sense on DVD, since there are so many episodes, and they're rather timely. However, if I could buy selected episodes of The Daily Show and the new Colbert Report for when someone interesting is on or they cover something really interesting, that would be perfect.
Apple, are you listening? Oh, As Seen on TV, where are you?!
I keep waiting for Paramount to figure out that TNG is waaay overpriced, considering that the first two seasons are pretty silly.
A&E seemed to have figured this out, and they released a new version of the complete Monty Python series that's cheaper than the previous set, has better packaging (i.e., smaller cases), and more content. Eventually Paramount will figure out they should repackage TNG, reduce the price, and make a killing.
Disables Quartz 2D Extreme--Quartz 2D Extreme is not a supported feature in Tiger, and re-enabling it may lead to video redraw issues or kernel panics.
I'm confused. Is Quartz 2D Extreme a Mac OS X "Tiger" feature or not? Quartz is listed as a Tiger feature and there's a page that describes it. But 10.4.3 sounds like it disabled it.
Then again, John Siracusa at Ars Technica says it super fast, but I thought I had read it wasn't ready for 10.4.0. so is it there or not? Was it ever? Does it matter?
Re:They even have a "Bell Labs"
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 3, Informative
> Formerly called SBC Technology Resources, Inc., currently called SBC Labs, will it be renamed to Bell Labs > now that the former holder of the name gave it up for the trendy 90's marketroid name of "Lucent"?
If things keep going the same for Lucent, they might not be needing that name any longer, either.
speculation about Lucent's long-term outlook - and even its survival as an independent company - gathered steam yesterday after it released earnings for the fourth quarter. Profits plunged 69 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, to $374 million, or 8 cents a share, from $1.21 billion, or 23 cents a share.
> According to John Dvorak of PC Mag, no one seems to point out the > connection between the skewed coverage and the existence of this peculiar >conflict of interest based on the national writers' use of Macs.
So Mac users are biased and have a conflict of interest, while Microsoft users don't? That's ridiculous to suggest that someone can't be objective if they use a particular platform.
I knew that person who used to accuse me of being platform-biased since I use a Mac. I ignored it until once I responded to him, "Look, I purchased Microsoft Office, I purchased Microsoft Windows to work with Virtual PC. I have no problems using Windows, Linux, or whatever. I even own Microsoft stock. How much Microsoft stuff do I have to own for you to considered me unbiased?"
> From the article: "This reality is not going to change. In fact it will only get > worse as technology coverage is handed to newer, less-qualified observers > who simply cannot use a Microsoft Windows computer.
Dvorak's just trying to troll. Dvorak admitted years ago that he trolled for responses: calling the iBook a makeup case (1999), writing articles about fake dreams ("In my dream, Jobs was in line at a movie theater with Bill Gates..." from 1998), and my favorite,
Folks, the Mac platform is through--totally--and this may be the last, if not the next to last, Mac show. (January 1, 1998)
He's just doing it again. Moreover, he's claiming "bias" without suitable proof -- and the burden of proof on Dvorak is a lot greater than "I could list 50". Hey, John, if you really think your fellow columns and analysts are biased, then name names. But waving around your secret list in order to troll is silly.
Crying bias! is just Dvorak's way of crying for help.
I can't figure out if you're trolling or if you're horribly mistaken.
> more rigorously prove
One cannot "prove" in science. One can only disprove a falsifiable hypothesis.
> they probably never would have even bothered to address irreducible complexity issues
Biology has and continues to progress quite well without religious fundamentalists trying to legislate their way into the classrooms.
> creationists hadn't mainstreamed discussion of evolution
Yes, and I imagine what the world would be like if the members of the Flat Earth society weren't constantly screaming at Rand McNally. Participating in legitimate scientific discussion is good. Cluttering the public with rhetorical tricks is a waste of everyone's time.
> cartel of biologists would be analyzing the issue
Besides the loaded language (and misuse) of "cartel," this is ridiculous. There is an amazing amount of dissent in good scientific discussion. But, you are correct; no competent scientist is considering the impact of fairies, trolls, or biblical floods on their experiments.
> Imagine if the Bible said something about quantum physics (yeah, yeah, I know you can > claim it does, but bear with me here). Wouldn't that speed up the demise of bad theories in > that field?
I'd rather imagine how much more good science could be done if religious fundamentalists weren't wasting everyone's time trying to legislate their nonsense.
If you didn't intend to troll, learn about science and the scientific method! You will be enlightened and possibly intrigued about how the process works.
The 20-member panel, reporting at the request of a bipartisan group in Congress, said that without such an effort the United States 'could soon loose its privileged position.'
Wait, shouldn't this be "lose" and not "loose"? It's in the NYT article too, and I would assume they can spell.
One major question is why the Panel didn't mention the fact that religious fundamentalists are trying to legislate science out of the classroom, as illustrated by the Intelligent Design lawsuit going on in Pennsylvania? If you're not allowed to teach biology in science class, but instead, you must give "equal time" to "creationism", doesn't that tend to degrade science, too?
It's not surprising that the U.S. will lose its scientific dominance. It's a combination of the guns versus butter argument, an alarming increase in the politicization of science, and the general retreat of science in the face of religious zealotry in this country. Overseas outsourcing of technical jobs isn't helping either.
I imagine that after three more years of Bush being in office, we should be ecstatic if the majority of the population is still toilet trained.
> Season X DVDs of TV shows are already imensely popular.
That's the killer app right there. The studios are making a lot of money from putting out old shows on DVD, but I suspect they would sell even better if you could buy one or two episodes, rather than an entire season. Few will want to buy Season 1 of Sanford and Son as a joke, but they might buy a single episode or two. It'll be very useful for shows like the Simpsons where last three or four seasons have been awful (unlike earlier, when every episode was gold), with maybe a single good episode or two.
I think selling TV show episodes on iTunes is going to be big.
I did a search for a couple of songs, and it gave me some interesting suggestions. "Ch-Check It Out" by the Beastie Boys gave a great track, and "E-Pro" by Beck gave some interesting choices. I got kind of excited and started picking out random tracks in my iTunes collection. Then things went awry.
I searched for The Charlatans UK (neglecting to put the UK) and it got me in touch with some '60s band called "The Charlatans" that didn't sound right at all. So I added the UK, and it found the right band, but the songs it chose that I liked were just other Charlatans UK songs. Hmm... wotta a lucky guess. The other ones weren't too good.
"Walkin' on the Sun" by Smashmouth was an unmitigated disaster. I hated every song it came up with.
I did a last try with "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin. I recently started re-listening to them (I hadn't really listened to them in about 10 years), and it amazed me how complex that song is. The time signature is completely bizarre and the blues influence is fascinating (earlier I had been listening to old blues music ca 1930-1960)). Unfortunately Pandora wasn't very useful there. It provided a couple of Led Zeppelin songs (not very insightful there), but then it provided derivative music -- bands that understood that Jimmy Page turned his guitar up loud, but didn't understand the notion of composition, layers, and blues music. I was hoping for it to point to influences back in time, rather than influenced artists forward in time. So that was disappointing.
However, I expect that as the service matures, the recommendations will get more interesting since they have to get the critics to manually comb through all sorts of music. I like the fact that you can buy the song straight from iTunes from their service. I presume they're getting some sort of commission, which is a good way to fund their business.
> The only thing that's changed is we have someone in the White House that isn't as in line > with European political views as the last administration. How did people who are more > conservative come to power? Through the democratic, meritocratic, and "free" (libre) system > of government that we have in place. The system hasn't changed, just the people chosen by > the people to lead, but isn't that what democracy is all about?
Not exactly. The Bush administration has done likely the best job in recent history of cloaking its aims under a veneer of language that is acceptable to the majority of Americans.
Here are a few examples.
1. Note that Bush's two Supreme Court justice nominees have been "stealth" candidates. There's been little written record of their views, and no one would argue they've been rather shy about their beliefs and Roberts refused to respond to most questions during his confirmation. Miers has no record at all. Will Roberts and Miers seek outlaw women's access to abortion? Religious conservatives would love nothing better, but neither candidate would even hint aloud. This is one of the reasons why Conservatives are so angry at the Miers nomination -- they thought they since they control all three branches of the Federal government, the Conservative ideology could come out of the closet (so to speak). Instead, they're still forced to maintain this veneer over their true beliefs.
2. Bush continuously adopts language that is diametrically opposite of what he really believes. He's a uniter, not a divider -- yet he's divided the country more than any president in history, and our reputation in the world is significantly diminished. He was for Social Security privatization, but then suddenly that phrase was outlawed and no Republican could use it because it polled badly. Then they started using it again after Bush won the election in 2004.
3. Any objective observer would agree that Bush's justifications of the Iraq war have been changing continuously since 2003 (regardless of how you actually feel about the war). Again, the actions were determined and the message was adjusted according to what resonates with the voters.
So we're not talking about the theoretical "market place of ideas;" we're entering the realm where advertising and spin are as effective or more effective than the actual products attributes.
I agree with the grand parent post; this issue probably never would have come up if Bush weren't so distrusted. Under Clinton, or presumably any political moderate, this issue probably wouldn't have even come up.
Re:Still not sure it's a good idea
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
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· Score: 2, Funny
> Say you make it taller than it is wide and rotate it ninety degrees to view video. Then you're 2" > tall, but still only about 2.7" wide, giving you a whopping 3.3" diagonal, up from 2.5" on the > current iPod.
You're too critical!
Look, if I were 2" tall, I'd love to watch TV on a 3.3" screen! I'd even put up with the 2.5" screen. Imagine a screen bigger than you are-- it would be like your own personal cinema!
Of course, if I were 2" tall and 2.7" wide as you suggest, I'd have plenty of free time to watch TV because no one would want to hang around with a horribly obese person such as myself.
Hmm... I tried to reply, but slashdot didn't actually take the comment. Hopefully this won't be posted twice.
> In fact, having owners of the most popular portable digital music player automatically stuck with the > system would contribute to its popularity, making the statistics on the matter less meaningful > anyway.
But the iPod didn't hit its exponential growth until after the ecosystem was in place, and I argue that the iPod and ITMS both became popular because of each other -- they formed an ecosystem. So the results are actually more meaningful than if you looked at the iPod or ITMS individually.
> The bottom line is, if you have an iPod and want to listen to the music you download on it, then > you do not get to choose from stores in this market.
But that's not true.
If you buy an MP3 (i.e., non DRM music file) from Emusic, it will play just fine in your iPod or in iTunes-- no conversion required. You can buy a music file from any online service that doesn't use a proprietary DRM scheme, and it will play fine in iTunes or on your iPod. There's nothing there that precludes your choice.
And since some 90% of the MP3 players are iPods and 80% of the online music purchases are from ITMS, the question of "choice" is almost academic.
The issue of choice comes from the DRM scheme, not necessarily the type of file. And the complaints of lack of choice is coming from music player vendors or online music stores that use their own DRM scheme, but not from the majority of consumers.
Those iPod owners are "stuck" with iTunes? The iPod has only 90% of the MP3 player market. And iTunes is the market leader for music downloads and it has the largest catalog. In fact, Apple reported to its investors that ITMS has the second most signed-up accounts (10 million), behind Amazon. In other words, Apple has built the only successful music "ecosystem" in the industry with iPod+iTunes+ITMS. So "stuck" seems to be an odd choice of words.
The "lowdown" is also misleading. Under iTunes, they put $0.99/song, but not $9.99 for most albums. But for some reason, they put the album purchase information under Napster.
Money is a medium of exchange and is legal tender. You deposit money in a bank for one reason because you're paid interest because your money serves as working capital (i.e., an short term asset the bank can use for other transactions).
Documents are completely different. But I can imagine with this new system, you would say "deposit" a memo. And each month, the hosting company would add a little more text to the memo as a payment for you for letting them use your document for other things. So you'd one day "withdraw" your memo, and there'd be a little bit more appended to the end or something.
> Individual with neither passion nor aptitude for engineering attempts engineering degree, finds it > tough, fails, and blames the system. Aside from the math being hard, he complains that the > parties were dull.
That's a little harsh. I did electrical engineering at one of the top engineering schools, and I can relate to what he went through. There were tons of classes where the professor or TA couldn't teach worth anything. They didn't instill a love of learning; they made you slog through the course trying to figure it out for yourself.
In my vector calculus class, the professor couldn't explain anything. He was this short, stocky guy with a horrible beard and an indecipherable accent. He stood in front of class with his pants hiked up to his armpits, and I couldn't understand most of what he said. This was an advanced calculus class, but he would start with the basics, so everyone would fall asleep. When you were asleep, he'd hit the tough part, so when you woke up, you'd have no idea what the hell was going on. I believe I got a 20 on one test, and then I found out that was better than class average! It's been more than 10 years since I took that class, and I still have nightmares about it.
Then there was my second semester physics for engineers professor. He was German, and he spoke in this incredibly boring monotone voice with a nearly impossible German accent. Except when he had to say "omega": he said it like "OH MY GOD!" every time. So every day was like this: being lulled to sleep and then jerked awake by the professor yelling for some reason: "Blah blah blah blah blah blah OH MY GOD! blah blah blah." It felt like a sensory deprivation experiment.
My statistics professor was the worst, because I didn't learn a damn thing. He used to teach a graduate level number theory class, but he had to leave for a year. When he returned, they gave him an undergrad statistics class, but he wanted his old class back. So he basically taught us number theory instead of statistics. We had no book, and we certainly didn't have the background as undergrads to do graduate level number theory. We covered so much theory, that we didn't do mean/median/mode until nearly the last day of class. To this day, I don't what the hell a "sigma algebra" is or how it relates to statistics, but we covered that for weeks. That professor is now in jail for attempting to shoot the dean (have you guessed the school yet?)
As I got to my upper division classes, the professors did get better. My optics professor and my advanced electromagnetics professor were both pretty good and they made extremely difficult topics understandable. My engineering entrepreneurship professor was probably the best.
> We should make our engineering programs easier and more glamorous so that more people can > hack it.
The answer is to get better professors. The classes don't have to be easier, but it's hard to believe one can learn about a tough subject by sitting through "blah blah blah blah OH MY GOD! blah blah blah".
Snopes says that sensitive credit card information aren't encoded on the card from major chains:
None of the hotels we contacted (including the Doubletree chain) said they do (or even can) encode personal information on hotel keycards, nor could any of them offer a plausible explanation of how they would benefit from doing so.
They later quoted a reader who said
I have worked as a desk clerk for three hotels: Holiday Inn, Best Western and the Howard Johnson. In all cases, the TESA lock system (key-card) was not connected to the front desk computer in any way. To create a key for a guest, we typed the room number, the number of nights of the stay and how many keys we wanted to create. That's all the information that was recorded.
There was no way of encoding any other information.
Near the end, they mentioned that during a security conference, a number of people had their hotel keys scanned, and only one showed up with a credit card number, but it could have been from a single hotel, and very likely was not a large chain.
Despite Snopes' insistence on making the site look like a personal home page ca 1995, it continues to provide useful information.
I can't find the original article, so here's the only reference I could find:
During his keynote speech at MACWORLD Expo Boston... Dr. Amelio announced a fundamental shift in the way that Apple delivers new operating-system functionality.
Dr. Amelio stated in his keynote speech that Apple is changing its strategy to deliver new functionality through incremental releases rather than large monolithic releases. Moving forward, Apple intends to follow the industry model of shipping software releases in incremental segments.... The motivation for this change is that Apple believes that its current model of monolithic system-software releases isn't working, and that it doesn't allow Apple to get software advancements out to customers and developers soon enough.
I found a similar statement in a Boston Globe article from August 8, 1996:
As far as Apple's new operating system, known as Copland, Amelio wouldn't give a release date, saying instead the company would begin selling components of the new operating system as they become available. Such
piecemeal advances in the operating system are part of a broader shift by Apple away from big, monolithic upgrades. "Copland is going to appear, but it's going to appear over a series of releases," said Amelio.
Who would have thought that about a decade later, it would seem like Microsoft was having the same problems:
Microsoft has overhauled its core software development practices to avoid any repetition of the delays that have bedevilled the next planned version of Windows, according to Steve Ballmer, the company's chief executive.
The changes, along with plans to release more frequent, less ambitious versions of the widely used software, mark a significant shift in Microsoft's approach following one of the most troubled new product cycles in its 30-year history.
"We attempted something that was beyond the planning and conceptualisation of the system," Mr Ballmer said of Windows Vista, the much-delayed version of the software that is now planned for late next year.
"The product cycle has been longer than it should have been," he told the FT.
Of course, what fixed Apple was not doing incremental releases. They had to do a step-function switch to Mac OS X.
Does anyone else remember in the mid 1990s when Apple announced the same thing? It was around 1996, and Apple was finding it impossible to get its next generation Copland/Mac OS 8 operating system out the door. I think it was then-CEO Gil Amelio who announced after several years of delays that Apple wasn't going to do monolithic releases any longer. They would do little ones to be more manageable. Eventually, they came out with Mac OS 7.6, Mac OS 8 (what many considered to be 7.7), and Mac OS 9. That's also when they started shopping around, looking at Be and NeXT.
As Apple discovered--and now, I guess Microsoft is discovering the same thing-- it's really hard to keep backwards compatibility, drive new features, and do it within a reasonable budget when you have a big installed base. Apple's installed base was never more than a small fraction of Microsoft's, but Microsoft's resources were also proportionately more extensive.
Microsoft is having as many (or more) delays with Longhorn/Vista as Apple had with Copland/Mac OS 8. In the mean time, Apple bit the bullet with NeXT/Mac OS X back in 1997, and now they're seeing some pretty good returns on their investment. Releases have been fairly rapid, and they've introduced lots of innovative features.
So as far as coming up with their next OS, Microsoft, you can use the word now. Apple doesn't need it any more.
> If Steve Jobs really thinks people are going to buy two devices > when one will do, his calculated risk is not calculating enough.
This is conventional wisdom today (particularly in the tech industry), but I don't think it's necessarily true.
The problem is that a converged device assumes that the technology advances slow down enough that you can release the converged product on a cycle that corresponds to the lowest common denominator of the two technologies. Imagine an example where the - means development and + means product release. And we have two products A and B.
A : ---+---+---+---+ B : --+--+--+--+--+-
Even if it requires no R&D to integrate the two, you can see that the converged device AB has a few options:
AB: ---+-------+----
The product releases slow down until the two technologies can be released together. Or you can do more rapid product releases, but the technology will in the converged technology will lag that of the stand-alone device for certain product releases.
If the two technologies are pretty mature, then that may not be a problem, but with rapid advances, the converged device just doesn't make sense.
We've seen similar things today. Many people have been eschewing general purpose PDAs in favor of more specialized devices, such as Blackberrys or iPods, because of the technological advances and the fact that a special purpose device will have a better user interface than a multiple purpose device.
As for carrying two devices on one's belt, when you get into the iPod nano and the RAZR phone, the devices are so small that many people won't care anyway.
> So the ROKR actually weakens the position of other phone > makers (who are pitching music phones) and pushes customers > towards the RAZR and iPod nano.
I just thought of another way the ROKR hurts the other mobile phone makers building music phones. Now they'll have to find a way to further differentiate from the ROKR since the iTunes integration provides a big advantage. They'll have three options:
1. Make their phones better looking-- which increases their costs, and right now the RAZR wins this battle
2. Reduce their price-- and either hurt their margins, or find a way to cut production costs
3. Increase their capacity above the 100 song limitation, which will increase the costs and thus the price) -- but this still doesn't mitigate the fact that the phone won't play songs from ITMS
So Motorola gets another advantage; they have forced the other phone makers to market around the ROKR yard stick.
Sometimes this type of strategy is called a "call option". This means that by working with Motorola to build an "iTunes phone," Apple can test the market for MP3-enabled phones. It's probably cheaper to work with Motorola in this way than it is to do the primary market research. The ROKR, even if it does not sell well, helps Apple and Motorola be better positioned in the face of the latest telecom trend (or fad) of converged devices, specifically music-enabled phones.
If the phone is a success, Apple has a few options. First, they can build their own phone and build it with their award winning industry design sense. Second, they could work with Cingular or another wireless service provider to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), similar to what Virgin Mobile (in the U.S.) and Boost Mobile do, and where Disney and ESPN are starting. Combining their ITMS with an MVNO presence would help them differentiate.
Motorola gets something out of it, too. The RAZR was an obvious choice to do this with, but I suspect the costs of that phone are pretty high, and Motorola does not want to make them higher. However, by putting this function on the uglier ROKR, the RAZR stands out better. The ROKR gets them in the store, but they walk out with a RAZR.
With the ROKR, what Motorola and Apple have done is changed the argument for convergence. Before the ROKR, a consumer might buy an MP3-enabled phone or a regular phone. The former had the potential to hurt iPod and ITMS sales, but the latter does not. If the consumer chose the music phone, Apple's role would be limited because the phone wouldn't be able to play ITMS purchases, and Motorola would be forced to compete with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc. So Apple and Motorola benefit from pushing the consumer towards a regular phone and away from convergence.
However, with the ROKR, the consumer will choose between the ROKR and the other music phones, if that's what they care about. And they may swing towards the ROKR because of Apple's >80% market share for online music (chances are they have bought a song from ITMS). But if they're concerned more with esthetics, standing in the store, they may look six inches over and eschew the ROKR in favor of the RAZR, and then go buy the iPod nano, which in terms of size are together smaller than most other phones.
So the ROKR actually weakens the position of other phone makers (who are pitching music phones) and pushes customers towards the RAZR and iPod nano.
> An intelligent, wise consumer always investigates before > making purchases.
Although your idea to get more "intelligent consumers" is admirable, it's misplaced. Basic understanding of consumer behavior indicates that "investigation" does not necessarily proceed the purchase, regardless of the "intelligence" or "wisdom" of the consumer.
There are considered to be three types of decision making processes for consumers: a. Extended problem solving b. Limited problem solving c. Habitual or routine
Extended problem solving is used for high value, high involvement goods, like cars, houses, etc. Limited problem solving is used for low value, low involvement goods. Habitual is used for low involvement items that people purchase frequently.
For extended problem solving, the process looks as follows: 1. Problem recognition (the consumer recognizes a "problem") 2. Internal search (the consumer thinks of possibilities) 3. External search (the consumer does research for other possibilities; i.e. investigation) 4. Alternative evaluation (the consumer considers the different choices that came up from internal and external searching) 5. Choice (the consumer makes a decision; i.e. purchases) 6. Outcomes (the consumer evaluates their results for determining a solution for the next time)
For low involvement decision making, there is a limited decision making process that's fundamentally different: 1. Problem recognition 2. Internal search (the consumer thinks of possibilities) 3. Choice (the consumer makes a decision) 4. Outcomes (the consumer evaluates their results) 5. Alternative evaluation (if the consumer is unsatisfied, they seek out other alternatives that will be considered for the next time they purchase)
(I'll skip Habitual here)
"Investigates" implies external search and alternative evaluation, and you can see that those only occur before the purchase in an extended decision making process, but they do not occur in a limited decision making process. In a limited decision making process, the user may consider alternatives if they're not happy in the last step, so the next time they may do an extended decision making process and then they'll do an external search.
Now no one is going to go through extended problem solving whenever they want to buy a Coke, but they may either go through extended or limited when they're going to buy a car. Often times, that's the purpose of a coupon -- to push people out of a limited decision making process or habitual process and into an extended decision making process so they'll consider the product. You can also see that limited problem solving when IT managers at companies play the game "no one was ever fired for buying XXX".
It has nothing to do with "intelligence" as it has to do with the personal involvement with the purchase. And for a $100-200 MP3 player, a consumer isn't necessarily going to go through the extended decision process; they may recognize an iPod, file it mentally away, and tap into that knowledge when they do the internal search for a limited decision making process.
I'm actually surprised that (as of when I made my post, at least) this Slashdot discussion has been pretty insightful. However, your post is confusing.
The problem has nothing to do with religion - its about lowered standards of quality in American culture. Does the religious right let Bush get away with anything he wants? Sure. But religion only happens to fit into the model because that's Bush's demographic. Nixon's demographic let him get away with anything he wanted, just like Clinton's, Reagan's and Johnson's did. Voters rarely turn on the guy they put into office. Bad Presidents always reflect poorly on the individuals who support them, but that doesn't mean that the ideas that bind the demographic are neccesarily invalid simply for that reason.
The decline has a lot to do with religion. We've seen a dramatic turn in the U.S. away from the principles of the Enlightenment and backwards towards faith. Bush starts a war in Iraq based on WMDs, and it's Bush's facts under dispute. Before the war, the Bush Administration claimed they knew exactly where the WMDs were and that Iraq was an imminent threat so we couldn't let the weapons inspectors finish their search. During the 2004 election, Bush supporters actually believed that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that WMDs had been found. People who knew the facts tended to vote for Kerry. It was faith versus facts.
And this faith is being wrapped in gilded, "Christian"-themed package (despite going against Christian principles) to appeal to those who use their religion as an excuse for hate. Iraq was a religious war for them as 9/11 sparked a return to the Crusades.
Your claim about other presidents' supporters doesn't make any sense. Nixon was forced to resign. Johnson didn't seek a second term. Conversely, Clinton was by all objective measures one of the best presidents of the 20th century, despite his personal failings. And even then, his supporters were vocal about censuring him for his personal indiscretions.
> Intelligent Design is a ridiculous idea from a very very small > minority in Kansas.
It's a lot bigger than that. Prominent Republicans, such as George W. Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and John McCain have all publicly voiced their support that this religious fraud be taught in science class. This is just the latest example of Bush wrapping his conservative ideology in a Christian package to cement the support of those Christians who will buy anything with a Jesus fish on it.
> Simply blaming religion is insulting to those of us who are > thoughtfully religious, and worse than that, its wrong.
Religion per se isn't the problem, but the people who are perverting it for their political gains. You shouldn't complain about people who are seemingly blaming religion-- you should blame those who shamelessly use religion to further their political agenda. When Pat Robinson advocates the very non-Christian idea of Capitalism and social Darwinism, call him on it. When Tom DeLay is investigated for numerous ethics violations, and he claims he is being persecuted as a Christian, call him on it. When Bush gives tax cuts to the rich and then declares Jesus is on his side, call him on it.
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Easy for you to say; you've already bought everything!
Just kidding.
Seriously, good luck with that. I'm sure, like when Homer Simpson told Moe that he wouldn't buy any more "Flaming Moe's", Apple and others will be able to hear your "You just lost yourself a customer!" declaration over their excited, yelling customers and ringing cash registers.
You know how just about every department store puts a don't-steal-me tag on the clothes that has to be removed before you can wear it? They're treating you like a potential criminal, too. Just something to think about before you boycott an industry that takes irritating measures to keep their stuff from getting stolen.
For what it's worth, although I avoid buying CDs that aren't real red book Compact Disc (I want to rip my music with no limits), I have no problems with Apple's DRM.
> He did not lie when he said "I don't recall ever owning a droid" as far as we know.
Agreed. As we can tell, Obi-Wan often speaks in a way that his words can be interpreted to mean two different things. He said he didn't recall owning any droids, not, "I have no idea who these droids are." His statement was true, but it also mislead Luke to think that Obi Wan didn't know the droids at all. Obi-Wan also does this when he describes what happened to Luke's father.
Obi Wan's response is natural. He's been a hermit for 20 years after Darth Vader hunted down all the Jedi, and he's used to being coy about his identity. Advertising who he was was not in his best interest.
Personally, I thought this Slate article was a little silly. It seems almost to be a parody of film criticism. I believe that Episodes I-VI are good movies (with the exception of about half of VI), but not because they're "post modern". David Begor's article does a much better job of describing Lucas' three major themes: the circular nature of violence, duality of good/evil, and the nature of redemption.
> 'Till they have the Daily Show or the News Hour available for download, I'm not really
> interested.
I've bought a few music videos, but the TV shows are uninteresting right now.
The Daily Show doesn't make much sense on DVD, since there are so many episodes, and they're rather timely. However, if I could buy selected episodes of The Daily Show and the new Colbert Report for when someone interesting is on or they cover something really interesting, that would be perfect.
Apple, are you listening? Oh, As Seen on TV, where are you?!
> 7 Seasons of TNG at $100/season = $700
I keep waiting for Paramount to figure out that TNG is waaay overpriced, considering that the first two seasons are pretty silly.
A&E seemed to have figured this out, and they released a new version of the complete Monty Python series that's cheaper than the previous set, has better packaging (i.e., smaller cases), and more content. Eventually Paramount will figure out they should repackage TNG, reduce the price, and make a killing.
I'm confused. Is Quartz 2D Extreme a Mac OS X "Tiger" feature or not? Quartz is listed as a Tiger feature and there's a page that describes it. But 10.4.3 sounds like it disabled it.
Then again, John Siracusa at Ars Technica says it super fast, but I thought I had read it wasn't ready for 10.4.0. so is it there or not? Was it ever? Does it matter?
> now that the former holder of the name gave it up for the trendy 90's marketroid name of "Lucent"?
If things keep going the same for Lucent, they might not be needing that name any longer, either.
From today's New York Times:
> connection between the skewed coverage and the existence of this peculiar
>conflict of interest based on the national writers' use of Macs.
So Mac users are biased and have a conflict of interest, while Microsoft users don't? That's ridiculous to suggest that someone can't be objective if they use a particular platform.
I knew that person who used to accuse me of being platform-biased since I use a Mac. I ignored it until once I responded to him, "Look, I purchased Microsoft Office, I purchased Microsoft Windows to work with Virtual PC. I have no problems using Windows, Linux, or whatever. I even own Microsoft stock. How much Microsoft stuff do I have to own for you to considered me unbiased?"
> From the article: "This reality is not going to change. In fact it will only get
> worse as technology coverage is handed to newer, less-qualified observers
> who simply cannot use a Microsoft Windows computer.
Dvorak's just trying to troll. Dvorak admitted years ago that he trolled for responses: calling the iBook a makeup case (1999), writing articles about fake dreams ("In my dream, Jobs was in line at a movie theater with Bill Gates..." from 1998), and my favorite,
He's just doing it again. Moreover, he's claiming "bias" without suitable proof -- and the burden of proof on Dvorak is a lot greater than "I could list 50". Hey, John, if you really think your fellow columns and analysts are biased, then name names. But waving around your secret list in order to troll is silly.
Crying bias! is just Dvorak's way of crying for help.
I can't figure out if you're trolling or if you're horribly mistaken.
> more rigorously prove
One cannot "prove" in science. One can only disprove a falsifiable hypothesis.
> they probably never would have even bothered to address irreducible complexity issues
Biology has and continues to progress quite well without religious fundamentalists trying to legislate their way into the classrooms.
> creationists hadn't mainstreamed discussion of evolution
Yes, and I imagine what the world would be like if the members of the Flat Earth society weren't constantly screaming at Rand McNally. Participating in legitimate scientific discussion is good. Cluttering the public with rhetorical tricks is a waste of everyone's time.
> cartel of biologists would be analyzing the issue
Besides the loaded language (and misuse) of "cartel," this is ridiculous. There is an amazing amount of dissent in good scientific discussion. But, you are correct; no competent scientist is considering the impact of fairies, trolls, or biblical floods on their experiments.
> Imagine if the Bible said something about quantum physics (yeah, yeah, I know you can
> claim it does, but bear with me here). Wouldn't that speed up the demise of bad theories in
> that field?
I'd rather imagine how much more good science could be done if religious fundamentalists weren't wasting everyone's time trying to legislate their nonsense.
If you didn't intend to troll, learn about science and the scientific method! You will be enlightened and possibly intrigued about how the process works.
Wait, shouldn't this be "lose" and not "loose"? It's in the NYT article too, and I would assume they can spell.
One major question is why the Panel didn't mention the fact that religious fundamentalists are trying to legislate science out of the classroom, as illustrated by the Intelligent Design lawsuit going on in Pennsylvania? If you're not allowed to teach biology in science class, but instead, you must give "equal time" to "creationism", doesn't that tend to degrade science, too?
It's not surprising that the U.S. will lose its scientific dominance. It's a combination of the guns versus butter argument, an alarming increase in the politicization of science, and the general retreat of science in the face of religious zealotry in this country. Overseas outsourcing of technical jobs isn't helping either.
I imagine that after three more years of Bush being in office, we should be ecstatic if the majority of the population is still toilet trained.
> Season X DVDs of TV shows are already imensely popular.
That's the killer app right there. The studios are making a lot of money from putting out old shows on DVD, but I suspect they would sell even better if you could buy one or two episodes, rather than an entire season. Few will want to buy Season 1 of Sanford and Son as a joke, but they might buy a single episode or two. It'll be very useful for shows like the Simpsons where last three or four seasons have been awful (unlike earlier, when every episode was gold), with maybe a single good episode or two.
I think selling TV show episodes on iTunes is going to be big.
Ditto ditto, although my results were mixed.
I did a search for a couple of songs, and it gave me some interesting suggestions. "Ch-Check It Out" by the Beastie Boys gave a great track, and "E-Pro" by Beck gave some interesting choices. I got kind of excited and started picking out random tracks in my iTunes collection. Then things went awry.
I searched for The Charlatans UK (neglecting to put the UK) and it got me in touch with some '60s band called "The Charlatans" that didn't sound right at all. So I added the UK, and it found the right band, but the songs it chose that I liked were just other Charlatans UK songs. Hmm... wotta a lucky guess. The other ones weren't too good.
"Walkin' on the Sun" by Smashmouth was an unmitigated disaster. I hated every song it came up with.
I did a last try with "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin. I recently started re-listening to them (I hadn't really listened to them in about 10 years), and it amazed me how complex that song is. The time signature is completely bizarre and the blues influence is fascinating (earlier I had been listening to old blues music ca 1930-1960)). Unfortunately Pandora wasn't very useful there. It provided a couple of Led Zeppelin songs (not very insightful there), but then it provided derivative music -- bands that understood that Jimmy Page turned his guitar up loud, but didn't understand the notion of composition, layers, and blues music. I was hoping for it to point to influences back in time, rather than influenced artists forward in time. So that was disappointing.
However, I expect that as the service matures, the recommendations will get more interesting since they have to get the critics to manually comb through all sorts of music. I like the fact that you can buy the song straight from iTunes from their service. I presume they're getting some sort of commission, which is a good way to fund their business.
> The only thing that's changed is we have someone in the White House that isn't as in line
> with European political views as the last administration. How did people who are more
> conservative come to power? Through the democratic, meritocratic, and "free" (libre) system
> of government that we have in place. The system hasn't changed, just the people chosen by
> the people to lead, but isn't that what democracy is all about?
Not exactly. The Bush administration has done likely the best job in recent history of cloaking its aims under a veneer of language that is acceptable to the majority of Americans.
Here are a few examples.
1. Note that Bush's two Supreme Court justice nominees have been "stealth" candidates. There's been little written record of their views, and no one would argue they've been rather shy about their beliefs and Roberts refused to respond to most questions during his confirmation. Miers has no record at all. Will Roberts and Miers seek outlaw women's access to abortion? Religious conservatives would love nothing better, but neither candidate would even hint aloud. This is one of the reasons why Conservatives are so angry at the Miers nomination -- they thought they since they control all three branches of the Federal government, the Conservative ideology could come out of the closet (so to speak). Instead, they're still forced to maintain this veneer over their true beliefs.
2. Bush continuously adopts language that is diametrically opposite of what he really believes. He's a uniter, not a divider -- yet he's divided the country more than any president in history, and our reputation in the world is significantly diminished. He was for Social Security privatization, but then suddenly that phrase was outlawed and no Republican could use it because it polled badly. Then they started using it again after Bush won the election in 2004.
3. Any objective observer would agree that Bush's justifications of the Iraq war have been changing continuously since 2003 (regardless of how you actually feel about the war). Again, the actions were determined and the message was adjusted according to what resonates with the voters.
So we're not talking about the theoretical "market place of ideas;" we're entering the realm where advertising and spin are as effective or more effective than the actual products attributes.
I agree with the grand parent post; this issue probably never would have come up if Bush weren't so distrusted. Under Clinton, or presumably any political moderate, this issue probably wouldn't have even come up.
> Say you make it taller than it is wide and rotate it ninety degrees to view video. Then you're 2"
> tall, but still only about 2.7" wide, giving you a whopping 3.3" diagonal, up from 2.5" on the
> current iPod.
You're too critical!
Look, if I were 2" tall, I'd love to watch TV on a 3.3" screen! I'd even put up with the 2.5" screen. Imagine a screen bigger than you are-- it would be like your own personal cinema!
Of course, if I were 2" tall and 2.7" wide as you suggest, I'd have plenty of free time to watch TV because no one would want to hang around with a horribly obese person such as myself.
Hmm... I tried to reply, but slashdot didn't actually take the comment. Hopefully this won't be posted twice.
> In fact, having owners of the most popular portable digital music player automatically stuck with the
> system would contribute to its popularity, making the statistics on the matter less meaningful
> anyway.
But the iPod didn't hit its exponential growth until after the ecosystem was in place, and I argue that the iPod and ITMS both became popular because of each other -- they formed an ecosystem. So the results are actually more meaningful than if you looked at the iPod or ITMS individually.
> The bottom line is, if you have an iPod and want to listen to the music you download on it, then
> you do not get to choose from stores in this market.
But that's not true.
If you buy an MP3 (i.e., non DRM music file) from Emusic, it will play just fine in your iPod or in iTunes-- no conversion required. You can buy a music file from any online service that doesn't use a proprietary DRM scheme, and it will play fine in iTunes or on your iPod. There's nothing there that precludes your choice.
And since some 90% of the MP3 players are iPods and 80% of the online music purchases are from ITMS, the question of "choice" is almost academic.
The issue of choice comes from the DRM scheme, not necessarily the type of file. And the complaints of lack of choice is coming from music player vendors or online music stores that use their own DRM scheme, but not from the majority of consumers.
I was thinking the same thing.
Those iPod owners are "stuck" with iTunes? The iPod has only 90% of the MP3 player market. And iTunes is the market leader for music downloads and it has the largest catalog. In fact, Apple reported to its investors that ITMS has the second most signed-up accounts (10 million), behind Amazon. In other words, Apple has built the only successful music "ecosystem" in the industry with iPod+iTunes+ITMS. So "stuck" seems to be an odd choice of words.
The "lowdown" is also misleading. Under iTunes, they put $0.99/song, but not $9.99 for most albums. But for some reason, they put the album purchase information under Napster.
Not a very useful article.
> who wanted to keep their money in banks?
What a great analogy!
Money is a medium of exchange and is legal tender. You deposit money in a bank for one reason because you're paid interest because your money serves as working capital (i.e., an short term asset the bank can use for other transactions).
Documents are completely different. But I can imagine with this new system, you would say "deposit" a memo. And each month, the hosting company would add a little more text to the memo as a payment for you for letting them use your document for other things. So you'd one day "withdraw" your memo, and there'd be a little bit more appended to the end or something.
That would be cool! Or useless. Whichever.
> Individual with neither passion nor aptitude for engineering attempts engineering degree, finds it
> tough, fails, and blames the system. Aside from the math being hard, he complains that the
> parties were dull.
That's a little harsh. I did electrical engineering at one of the top engineering schools, and I can relate to what he went through. There were tons of classes where the professor or TA couldn't teach worth anything. They didn't instill a love of learning; they made you slog through the course trying to figure it out for yourself.
In my vector calculus class, the professor couldn't explain anything. He was this short, stocky guy with a horrible beard and an indecipherable accent. He stood in front of class with his pants hiked up to his armpits, and I couldn't understand most of what he said. This was an advanced calculus class, but he would start with the basics, so everyone would fall asleep. When you were asleep, he'd hit the tough part, so when you woke up, you'd have no idea what the hell was going on. I believe I got a 20 on one test, and then I found out that was better than class average! It's been more than 10 years since I took that class, and I still have nightmares about it.
Then there was my second semester physics for engineers professor. He was German, and he spoke in this incredibly boring monotone voice with a nearly impossible German accent. Except when he had to say "omega": he said it like "OH MY GOD!" every time. So every day was like this: being lulled to sleep and then jerked awake by the professor yelling for some reason: "Blah blah blah blah blah blah OH MY GOD! blah blah blah." It felt like a sensory deprivation experiment.
My statistics professor was the worst, because I didn't learn a damn thing. He used to teach a graduate level number theory class, but he had to leave for a year. When he returned, they gave him an undergrad statistics class, but he wanted his old class back. So he basically taught us number theory instead of statistics. We had no book, and we certainly didn't have the background as undergrads to do graduate level number theory. We covered so much theory, that we didn't do mean/median/mode until nearly the last day of class. To this day, I don't what the hell a "sigma algebra" is or how it relates to statistics, but we covered that for weeks. That professor is now in jail for attempting to shoot the dean (have you guessed the school yet?)
As I got to my upper division classes, the professors did get better. My optics professor and my advanced electromagnetics professor were both pretty good and they made extremely difficult topics understandable. My engineering entrepreneurship professor was probably the best.
> We should make our engineering programs easier and more glamorous so that more people can
> hack it.
The answer is to get better professors. The classes don't have to be easier, but it's hard to believe one can learn about a tough subject by sitting through "blah blah blah blah OH MY GOD! blah blah blah".
They later quoted a reader who said
Near the end, they mentioned that during a security conference, a number of people had their hotel keys scanned, and only one showed up with a credit card number, but it could have been from a single hotel, and very likely was not a large chain.
Despite Snopes' insistence on making the site look like a personal home page ca 1995, it continues to provide useful information.
I found a similar statement in a Boston Globe article from August 8, 1996:
Who would have thought that about a decade later, it would seem like Microsoft was having the same problems:
Of course, what fixed Apple was not doing incremental releases. They had to do a step-function switch to Mac OS X.
Remember the 1997 buzzword "beleaguered"?
Does anyone else remember in the mid 1990s when Apple announced the same thing? It was around 1996, and Apple was finding it impossible to get its next generation Copland/Mac OS 8 operating system out the door. I think it was then-CEO Gil Amelio who announced after several years of delays that Apple wasn't going to do monolithic releases any longer. They would do little ones to be more manageable. Eventually, they came out with Mac OS 7.6, Mac OS 8 (what many considered to be 7.7), and Mac OS 9. That's also when they started shopping around, looking at Be and NeXT.
As Apple discovered--and now, I guess Microsoft is discovering the same thing-- it's really hard to keep backwards compatibility, drive new features, and do it within a reasonable budget when you have a big installed base. Apple's installed base was never more than a small fraction of Microsoft's, but Microsoft's resources were also proportionately more extensive.
Microsoft is having as many (or more) delays with Longhorn/Vista as Apple had with Copland/Mac OS 8. In the mean time, Apple bit the bullet with NeXT/Mac OS X back in 1997, and now they're seeing some pretty good returns on their investment. Releases have been fairly rapid, and they've introduced lots of innovative features.
So as far as coming up with their next OS, Microsoft, you can use the word now. Apple doesn't need it any more.
> when one will do, his calculated risk is not calculating enough.
This is conventional wisdom today (particularly in the tech industry), but I don't think it's necessarily true.
The problem is that a converged device assumes that the technology advances slow down enough that you can release the converged product on a cycle that corresponds to the lowest common denominator of the two technologies. Imagine an example where the - means development and + means product release. And we have two products A and B.Even if it requires no R&D to integrate the two, you can see that the converged device AB has a few options:The product releases slow down until the two technologies can be released together. Or you can do more rapid product releases, but the technology will in the converged technology will lag that of the stand-alone device for certain product releases.
If the two technologies are pretty mature, then that may not be a problem, but with rapid advances, the converged device just doesn't make sense.
We've seen similar things today. Many people have been eschewing general purpose PDAs in favor of more specialized devices, such as Blackberrys or iPods, because of the technological advances and the fact that a special purpose device will have a better user interface than a multiple purpose device.
As for carrying two devices on one's belt, when you get into the iPod nano and the RAZR phone, the devices are so small that many people won't care anyway.
> So the ROKR actually weakens the position of other phone
> makers (who are pitching music phones) and pushes customers
> towards the RAZR and iPod nano.
I just thought of another way the ROKR hurts the other mobile phone makers building music phones. Now they'll have to find a way to further differentiate from the ROKR since the iTunes integration provides a big advantage. They'll have three options:
1. Make their phones better looking-- which increases their costs, and right now the RAZR wins this battle
2. Reduce their price-- and either hurt their margins, or find a way to cut production costs
3. Increase their capacity above the 100 song limitation, which will increase the costs and thus the price) -- but this still doesn't mitigate the fact that the phone won't play songs from ITMS
So Motorola gets another advantage; they have forced the other phone makers to market around the ROKR yard stick.
Sometimes this type of strategy is called a "call option". This means that by working with Motorola to build an "iTunes phone," Apple can test the market for MP3-enabled phones. It's probably cheaper to work with Motorola in this way than it is to do the primary market research. The ROKR, even if it does not sell well, helps Apple and Motorola be better positioned in the face of the latest telecom trend (or fad) of converged devices, specifically music-enabled phones.
If the phone is a success, Apple has a few options. First, they can build their own phone and build it with their award winning industry design sense. Second, they could work with Cingular or another wireless service provider to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), similar to what Virgin Mobile (in the U.S.) and Boost Mobile do, and where Disney and ESPN are starting. Combining their ITMS with an MVNO presence would help them differentiate.
Motorola gets something out of it, too. The RAZR was an obvious choice to do this with, but I suspect the costs of that phone are pretty high, and Motorola does not want to make them higher. However, by putting this function on the uglier ROKR, the RAZR stands out better. The ROKR gets them in the store, but they walk out with a RAZR.
With the ROKR, what Motorola and Apple have done is changed the argument for convergence. Before the ROKR, a consumer might buy an MP3-enabled phone or a regular phone. The former had the potential to hurt iPod and ITMS sales, but the latter does not. If the consumer chose the music phone, Apple's role would be limited because the phone wouldn't be able to play ITMS purchases, and Motorola would be forced to compete with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc. So Apple and Motorola benefit from pushing the consumer towards a regular phone and away from convergence.
However, with the ROKR, the consumer will choose between the ROKR and the other music phones, if that's what they care about. And they may swing towards the ROKR because of Apple's >80% market share for online music (chances are they have bought a song from ITMS). But if they're concerned more with esthetics, standing in the store, they may look six inches over and eschew the ROKR in favor of the RAZR, and then go buy the iPod nano, which in terms of size are together smaller than most other phones.
So the ROKR actually weakens the position of other phone makers (who are pitching music phones) and pushes customers towards the RAZR and iPod nano.
> An intelligent, wise consumer always investigates before
> making purchases.
Although your idea to get more "intelligent consumers" is admirable, it's misplaced. Basic understanding of consumer behavior indicates that "investigation" does not necessarily proceed the purchase, regardless of the "intelligence" or "wisdom" of the consumer.
There are considered to be three types of decision making processes for consumers:
a. Extended problem solving
b. Limited problem solving
c. Habitual or routine
Extended problem solving is used for high value, high involvement goods, like cars, houses, etc. Limited problem solving is used for low value, low involvement goods. Habitual is used for low involvement items that people purchase frequently.
For extended problem solving, the process looks as follows:
1. Problem recognition (the consumer recognizes a "problem")
2. Internal search (the consumer thinks of possibilities)
3. External search (the consumer does research for other possibilities; i.e. investigation)
4. Alternative evaluation (the consumer considers the different choices that came up from internal and external searching)
5. Choice (the consumer makes a decision; i.e. purchases)
6. Outcomes (the consumer evaluates their results for determining a solution for the next time)
For low involvement decision making, there is a limited decision making process that's fundamentally different:
1. Problem recognition
2. Internal search (the consumer thinks of possibilities)
3. Choice (the consumer makes a decision)
4. Outcomes (the consumer evaluates their results)
5. Alternative evaluation (if the consumer is unsatisfied, they seek out other alternatives that will be considered for the next time they purchase)
(I'll skip Habitual here)
"Investigates" implies external search and alternative evaluation, and you can see that those only occur before the purchase in an extended decision making process, but they do not occur in a limited decision making process. In a limited decision making process, the user may consider alternatives if they're not happy in the last step, so the next time they may do an extended decision making process and then they'll do an external search.
Now no one is going to go through extended problem solving whenever they want to buy a Coke, but they may either go through extended or limited when they're going to buy a car. Often times, that's the purpose of a coupon -- to push people out of a limited decision making process or habitual process and into an extended decision making process so they'll consider the product. You can also see that limited problem solving when IT managers at companies play the game "no one was ever fired for buying XXX".
It has nothing to do with "intelligence" as it has to do with the personal involvement with the purchase. And for a $100-200 MP3 player, a consumer isn't necessarily going to go through the extended decision process; they may recognize an iPod, file it mentally away, and tap into that knowledge when they do the internal search for a limited decision making process.
The decline has a lot to do with religion. We've seen a dramatic turn in the U.S. away from the principles of the Enlightenment and backwards towards faith. Bush starts a war in Iraq based on WMDs, and it's Bush's facts under dispute. Before the war, the Bush Administration claimed they knew exactly where the WMDs were and that Iraq was an imminent threat so we couldn't let the weapons inspectors finish their search. During the 2004 election, Bush supporters actually believed that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that WMDs had been found. People who knew the facts tended to vote for Kerry. It was faith versus facts.
And this faith is being wrapped in gilded, "Christian"-themed package (despite going against Christian principles) to appeal to those who use their religion as an excuse for hate. Iraq was a religious war for them as 9/11 sparked a return to the Crusades.
Your claim about other presidents' supporters doesn't make any sense. Nixon was forced to resign. Johnson didn't seek a second term. Conversely, Clinton was by all objective measures one of the best presidents of the 20th century, despite his personal failings. And even then, his supporters were vocal about censuring him for his personal indiscretions.
> Intelligent Design is a ridiculous idea from a very very small
> minority in Kansas.
It's a lot bigger than that. Prominent Republicans, such as George W. Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and John McCain have all publicly voiced their support that this religious fraud be taught in science class. This is just the latest example of Bush wrapping his conservative ideology in a Christian package to cement the support of those Christians who will buy anything with a Jesus fish on it.
> Simply blaming religion is insulting to those of us who are
> thoughtfully religious, and worse than that, its wrong.
Religion per se isn't the problem, but the people who are perverting it for their political gains. You shouldn't complain about people who are seemingly blaming religion-- you should blame those who shamelessly use religion to further their political agenda. When Pat Robinson advocates the very non-Christian idea of Capitalism and social Darwinism, call him on it. When Tom DeLay is investigated for numerous ethics violations, and he claims he is being persecuted as a Christian, call him on it. When Bush gives tax cuts to the rich and then declares Jesus is on his side, call him on it.