Yeah, but dropping price is EASY. Just because it wasn't realised at $249 doesn't mean it won't be down to $249 in six months to a year. Apple could still follow Bob's plan but yet make more money in the beginning due to higher profit margins to help pay for the mini Mac's development.
I'm begining to get the feeling that Steve Jobs might be trying to reposition Apple. Hardware is a mugs game, after all.
Yeah, everyone buys the iPod for the software.
Apple is just doing a great job of integrating hardware and software. They do both. It amazes me how many people I hear say that Apple must open their hardware to cloners and become a software company like MS to be successful.
Whoa, the Doom movie might be bad? Wow, that's hard to believe considering how successful most of the movies based on video games have been. Like... well... I'm sure they're out there.
"...scientists are bound by ethics that have nothing to do with a god of any kind."
So where exactly do these ethics come from? I mean, if ethics is "a set of principles of right conduct" (which the dictionary says it is) then who ultimately determines what is right?
'It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface without having to endure the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft scattered across the landscape,'
The key to future success for media companies, television stations and cable MSOs in Video On Demand.
"Streaming" television will always be around: an array of multiple channels 24/7 with a set schedule that continues whether you're watching it or not. Not everyone wants to sit down in front of the TV and tell it what they want to watch. They just want to turn it on and for there to be something there. They want to flip around and don't care if they access The Daily Show halfway through. They don't need to see the entire show beginning to end. So TV as we know it will basically always be around.
But VOD will suppliment it. DVRs such as TiVo put the power on the client end - in the viewers' home. This has some advantages. The data is stored locally so the consumer has much more control over it: They can fast forward through commercials, burn to DVD, etc. But it also has limitations over a server-side solution such as VOD. With VOD, storage space is basically limitless. Instead of having 2 million people record an episode of Seinfeld on their local DVRs, the episode could be stored once on a VOD server and all 2 million people could access it.
So instead of telling your DVR "Record Seinfeld whenever it comes on" and that having to wait as those episodes are sent to you once or twice a day and worrying about the old ones getting deleted due to space, you can access the Seinfeld section of the VOD server and have every episode in front of you instantly.
This is MUCH more appealing to the average consumer (read: not Slashdot crowd) than the DVR model. And there's no "downloading" of anything involved either. If your cable company includes this powerful VOD option for free, why go buy a DVR?
Now I understand that Slashdot geeks will not trust anything they don't build themselves. I know BitTorrent will never fall and that there will always be pirated media floating out there. But content companies don't care as long as the masses are using what they want them to use. And I think this VOD system is the most appealing for the vast majority of TV viewers out there.
Also, since the data is now on the server end, the operators have more control. They can more easily force viewing of commercials. And you can't "flip away" because if you go to another channel, your current VOD selection will pause itself, so you'll have to watch the commercial eventually. DVRs won't be able to record the VOD stuff for you, because they can impliment a system where the viewer has to "Enter the 5 digit code" they see on the screen to access the VOD section. Yahoo and some other websites do this now to make sure it's a real person on the other end and not some spam bot.
On a positive note for consumers, this will allow commercials to be catered directly to the viewer, not just the show they're watching. So it could improve on commercial targetability and hopefully introduce some shorter commercials and less time per hour dedicated to commercial breaks.
If I have to pay 49$'s a month for cable why do I have to have commercials.
That comment really isn't all that "Insightful".
Your $49 a month (along with everyone else's) does not cover the billions of dollars networks put into programming every year. It only pays a portion of it.
Cable TV providers (Time Warner, Comcast, Adelphia...) pay the cable nets (HGTV, Sci Fi, Comedy Central, G4TV) a certain amount per month per subscriber the system carries. So if Adelphia has 5 million subscribers and Viacom charges 10 cents per subscriber to carry Comedy Central, that's $500,000 a month that Adelphia has to give to Comedy Central. But that's only $6 million a year for Comedy Central which only covers Dave Chappelle's salary. Hence, advertising dollars needed to cover the rest.
The $49 a month you pay also pays all the people that work at the call center, install cables, work at the headend, etc. Using Adelphia as an example again, only 10 percent of their revenue comes from local advertising sales. 90 percent comes from that monthly fee, but it's used to pay the networks, run all their offices so little old ladies can still walk in and pay their bills, upgrade systems to digital, new technology, etc...
If you don't want commercials, subscribe to a premium network such as HBO. But it'll cost ya more than 10 cents a month...
I attend various conferences. Some of them broadcast on a low power FM radio signal for people in the audience that are hard of hearing. Those people can have a private radio with headsets and adjust the volume to make it easier for them to hear. It also is a great way to record the program without the distracting noises from the audience.
Is there a delay with that? That would annoy the hell out of me.
Dual headphone jacks? You're gonna be walking down the street like a pair of Siamese twins.
Seriously... How often will that feature be used? If you just wanna give someone a quick listen to the song you have on, it'd be easier to just let them borrow your headphones for a sec. Do you always carry an extra pair of headphones just in case? Might as well carry a splitter then and just have the one jack...
Heck, why are we stopping at dual jacks? Let's go tri!
Please don't turn this into a "Republicans hate free speech, Democrats love it" debate. Kerry's camp is threatening to sue local TV stations that run particular TV commercials.
Perhaps free speech is suffering, but both sides are doing it. It's just that people love to yell "That's a violation of free speech!" when THEIR message gets censored.
To most of those I say, "So what?" except for maybe the "No display" part. That is kinda cool.
As far as changing songs, you put in your playlists and hit "Play". Why do you have to change that mid song? And how often? Web interface? Who cares.
Complaints about it only working with Apple software, no support of FLAC, WMA, no open source... Typical Slashdot. How mnay audio formats do you need? I know it's the elite thing to be able support every format that some 15-year-old chocked together in his parents' basement, but that doesn't mean it's practical.
That's awesome that you're a moral, ethical leader. The world needs more people like you. However, I don't think being a greedy bastard should be against the law. Yeah, it might be immoral and wrong and you're gonna have to make an account for the way you screwed people over your whole life so you could rake in it more, but I don't think it should be against the law.
Some people do.
What I find entertaining is the atheists on Slashdot who still say others should give more money, work to save the environment and help the starving in third world countries because it's the right thing to do. Right? According to who? God?;)
Like many things in life, outsourcing is not inherently evil but can be used for evil purposes. As far as "getting rid of jobs" is concerned, they said the same thing about machines in the 1940's and computers in the 1970's. (earlier?)
The result was that yes, mechanized production got rid of some factory jobs and computers got rid of jobs as well. But those jobs were replaced by better jobs that were unimaginable at the time.
If we were to put restrictions on computers and mechanized production back when those technologies came out, the US would have been passed up by the rest of the world by now.
"'It's going to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled,' wrote one message poster at Slashdot.org, which bills itself as a news provider for nerds."
Too bad they referred to you just as "one message poster" instead of LostCluster. I'd demand a correction.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but dropping price is EASY. Just because it wasn't realised at $249 doesn't mean it won't be down to $249 in six months to a year. Apple could still follow Bob's plan but yet make more money in the beginning due to higher profit margins to help pay for the mini Mac's development.
Yeah, everyone buys the iPod for the software.
Apple is just doing a great job of integrating hardware and software. They do both. It amazes me how many people I hear say that Apple must open their hardware to cloners and become a software company like MS to be successful.
That's awesome that you just compared a Mac rumor site to someone interviewing the world's most wanted terrorist.
Whoa, the Doom movie might be bad? Wow, that's hard to believe considering how successful most of the movies based on video games have been. Like... well... I'm sure they're out there.
The gove... Uh. Indus... Damn.
Linus Torvalds?
So where exactly do these ethics come from? I mean, if ethics is "a set of principles of right conduct" (which the dictionary says it is) then who ultimately determines what is right?
Am I offtopic yet?
Hahaha! Oh wait, they're serious.
The key to future success for media companies, television stations and cable MSOs in Video On Demand.
"Streaming" television will always be around: an array of multiple channels 24/7 with a set schedule that continues whether you're watching it or not. Not everyone wants to sit down in front of the TV and tell it what they want to watch. They just want to turn it on and for there to be something there. They want to flip around and don't care if they access The Daily Show halfway through. They don't need to see the entire show beginning to end. So TV as we know it will basically always be around.
But VOD will suppliment it. DVRs such as TiVo put the power on the client end - in the viewers' home. This has some advantages. The data is stored locally so the consumer has much more control over it: They can fast forward through commercials, burn to DVD, etc. But it also has limitations over a server-side solution such as VOD. With VOD, storage space is basically limitless. Instead of having 2 million people record an episode of Seinfeld on their local DVRs, the episode could be stored once on a VOD server and all 2 million people could access it.
So instead of telling your DVR "Record Seinfeld whenever it comes on" and that having to wait as those episodes are sent to you once or twice a day and worrying about the old ones getting deleted due to space, you can access the Seinfeld section of the VOD server and have every episode in front of you instantly.
This is MUCH more appealing to the average consumer (read: not Slashdot crowd) than the DVR model. And there's no "downloading" of anything involved either. If your cable company includes this powerful VOD option for free, why go buy a DVR?
Now I understand that Slashdot geeks will not trust anything they don't build themselves. I know BitTorrent will never fall and that there will always be pirated media floating out there. But content companies don't care as long as the masses are using what they want them to use. And I think this VOD system is the most appealing for the vast majority of TV viewers out there.
Also, since the data is now on the server end, the operators have more control. They can more easily force viewing of commercials. And you can't "flip away" because if you go to another channel, your current VOD selection will pause itself, so you'll have to watch the commercial eventually. DVRs won't be able to record the VOD stuff for you, because they can impliment a system where the viewer has to "Enter the 5 digit code" they see on the screen to access the VOD section. Yahoo and some other websites do this now to make sure it's a real person on the other end and not some spam bot.
On a positive note for consumers, this will allow commercials to be catered directly to the viewer, not just the show they're watching. So it could improve on commercial targetability and hopefully introduce some shorter commercials and less time per hour dedicated to commercial breaks.
That comment really isn't all that "Insightful".
Your $49 a month (along with everyone else's) does not cover the billions of dollars networks put into programming every year. It only pays a portion of it.
Cable TV providers (Time Warner, Comcast, Adelphia...) pay the cable nets (HGTV, Sci Fi, Comedy Central, G4TV) a certain amount per month per subscriber the system carries. So if Adelphia has 5 million subscribers and Viacom charges 10 cents per subscriber to carry Comedy Central, that's $500,000 a month that Adelphia has to give to Comedy Central. But that's only $6 million a year for Comedy Central which only covers Dave Chappelle's salary. Hence, advertising dollars needed to cover the rest.
The $49 a month you pay also pays all the people that work at the call center, install cables, work at the headend, etc. Using Adelphia as an example again, only 10 percent of their revenue comes from local advertising sales. 90 percent comes from that monthly fee, but it's used to pay the networks, run all their offices so little old ladies can still walk in and pay their bills, upgrade systems to digital, new technology, etc...
If you don't want commercials, subscribe to a premium network such as HBO. But it'll cost ya more than 10 cents a month...
Of all the movies Cameron did, using "Titanic" in the headline of this article seems an odd choice for Slashdot.
Is there a delay with that? That would annoy the hell out of me.
Dual headphone jacks? You're gonna be walking down the street like a pair of Siamese twins.
Seriously... How often will that feature be used? If you just wanna give someone a quick listen to the song you have on, it'd be easier to just let them borrow your headphones for a sec. Do you always carry an extra pair of headphones just in case? Might as well carry a splitter then and just have the one jack...
Heck, why are we stopping at dual jacks? Let's go tri!
How are they going to fit whores in a can?
I'm sure the "general public" isn't crying about this one.
Please don't turn this into a "Republicans hate free speech, Democrats love it" debate. Kerry's camp is threatening to sue local TV stations that run particular TV commercials.
Perhaps free speech is suffering, but both sides are doing it. It's just that people love to yell "That's a violation of free speech!" when THEIR message gets censored.
Sorry, but I find the 'theft' of GPL code of P2P software ironic.
Flame away.
How do monkeys slack off?
"Man, I know I should be throwing this poop, but I just don't want to right now."
No.
I don't know about the sand and VR equipment combination. Plus the whole being in the desert thing..
You're obviously not a Slashdot regular, are you?
To most of those I say, "So what?" except for maybe the "No display" part. That is kinda cool.
As far as changing songs, you put in your playlists and hit "Play". Why do you have to change that mid song? And how often? Web interface? Who cares.
Complaints about it only working with Apple software, no support of FLAC, WMA, no open source... Typical Slashdot. How mnay audio formats do you need? I know it's the elite thing to be able support every format that some 15-year-old chocked together in his parents' basement, but that doesn't mean it's practical.
That's awesome that you're a moral, ethical leader. The world needs more people like you. However, I don't think being a greedy bastard should be against the law. Yeah, it might be immoral and wrong and you're gonna have to make an account for the way you screwed people over your whole life so you could rake in it more, but I don't think it should be against the law.
;)
Some people do.
What I find entertaining is the atheists on Slashdot who still say others should give more money, work to save the environment and help the starving in third world countries because it's the right thing to do. Right? According to who? God?
Like many things in life, outsourcing is not inherently evil but can be used for evil purposes. As far as "getting rid of jobs" is concerned, they said the same thing about machines in the 1940's and computers in the 1970's. (earlier?)
The result was that yes, mechanized production got rid of some factory jobs and computers got rid of jobs as well. But those jobs were replaced by better jobs that were unimaginable at the time.
If we were to put restrictions on computers and mechanized production back when those technologies came out, the US would have been passed up by the rest of the world by now.
"'It's going to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled,' wrote one message poster at Slashdot.org, which bills itself as a news provider for nerds."
Too bad they referred to you just as "one message poster" instead of LostCluster. I'd demand a correction.
Blah blah Joe Six Pack isn't going to buy a Poweredge server OR install their own OS blah blah.
The "big deal" is that more computer systems with Linux preinstalled are showing up in the mainstream, i.e. non-Slashdot-reading geek community.