Simply because you have all these features does not necessarily mean that you're going to be a successful competitor against products like iTunes. iTunes has been marketed so well that it has become almost synonymous with online music shopping. Without support of the major labels and strong advertising companies you simply will not be successful against a product like iTunes in the mainstream market. Furthermore, many people use iTunes as a simple player and therefore when they do feel the need to shop online for music it's just so easy for them to do so through the iTunes interface.
Also, it seems that they're striving to have a lot of features however many sites that do this do indeed come out with many features however they don't perform any of those features exceptionally well. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but a startup company boasting this many features doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence in the quality of all these services. This service, from what I can see, is also only available in a subscription based service model which quite frankly the majority of this market is not interested in. Their free plan also only comes with 50MB of space which is not going to persuade people to yet again switch service providers.
Most of the features they're boasting are also fairly standard and people are not going to switch to a new service unless it offers significant benefits. For example, why would I switch to use this email service when they only give me 50MB of space and other free services give me 50 times that amount? Switching these services is also a pain in the ass for myself and everyone who communicates with me.
I'm sorry but it's just pathetic when a grown man gets the opportunity to go to space and his first concern is if he can dress up like his favorite Gundam character....
Perhaps, instead of going to space he should take some of that money and hire a psychiatrist.
It completely depends on where you get your online degree. Many universities offer online degree programs that are fully recognized at accredited universities. This is something that you have to look for and be aware of. I suggest contacting other universities and inquiring whether they recognize degrees from the online university you are considering, and also make sure that credits from the online university are transferable to other universities.
Also, you have to make sure that you're able to stay motivated working in an environment of your choice. Like many telework situations, some people find that they're not productive at home due to too many distractions. I know a few people who are incredibly smart that have received online degrees and it really depends a lot on how motivated you are and how much you want to get out of it. They also recommending asking as many questions as possible to make sure you get the most out of your education experience.
I really doubt that Google is currently working on a full Linux desktop. They're a business and there's currently not a lot of money in the Linux desktop field, especially with so many free options out there that are making continuous and fast progress. Most people are more than happy to choose one of the freely available DE's. Furthermore, everything that Google has released so far that is not delivered over the web has been Windows only. How about we wait and see if they release any of these applications on Linux, MacOS X, BSD etc. at all before we speculate about them releasing a full DE. Currently, they've said that they have no plans to release any of these applications to any other platform other than Windows.
There's also a huge difference between the complexities of a DE compared to anything they've released so far in terms of desktop applications.
I agree. It looks like an ugly version of gDesklets or Konfabulator except it doesn't have even close to as many useful widgets. It also includes a large ugly Google symbol on the top bar which it seems can't be removed. It's also another Google product that is available only for Windows.
Fair enough. I didn't really think of that as a huge benefit since all of the computers I regularly work with either have MS Office or Star/Open Office installed already, however I see where it would benefit people who are not in the same situation. I, like many others here I'm sure, also have a setup in which I can access my files from anywhere with a network connection so I guess I'm not really the norm/target audience in this instance. Perhaps, I'm also just very biased as I really, really prefer rich client side applications instead of web interfaces.
I really don't understand this obsession with an online office suite. I haven't met one person that really wants to use something like this. The average computer comes with well over 80GBs nowadays so why not use some of that space for rich client side applications. Most online interfaces are nowhere near competing with their rich client side counterparts and I can't see any significant benefit of having my office suite online other than having updates rolled out to clients automatically. Furthermore, I'm not interested in having a subscription based service model, which is what all these companies are aiming for. I'm also not interested in typing my documents up through a web browser where the creators of the online office suite easily have the ability to monitor what I'm typing. No matter how fast a connection you currently have, nothing is going to be faster than having the client application stored on your hard drive. Look at all the people that have been saying OO.o is slow, do these people think this is going to improve if we host and run the entire thing over the network??? How many features will we need to remove to make this run at an even remotely acceptable speed?
With the current bandwidth constraints that many people have I just don't see something like this as feasible or necessary. Why would you want to do everything through your web browser over the network? It just doesn't make any sense to me however maybe some of you will point out some benefits I'm not seeing.
You just don't get it. Apple doesn't want people running it on unsupported hardware where it is very likely that the OS is going to have problems, crashes etc. One of the biggest reasons people use Apple is because it just works and if they lose this public perception they're in for a lot of problems. Think about it, if people start having regular problems with OS X, whether unsupported hardware or not, Apple will start to develop a bad name for itself amongst the user base. Especially, amongst the vast majority of users who don't understand why it's unsupported hardware and why they're having problems. All they will see is that OS X has many problems while they're Windows XP continues to work mostly correctly. Windows is a perfect example, as many of the problems that they've encountered in bugs and security has been due to the fact that they try and support such a wide range of hardware. Even Windows developers have become frustrated and vocal about the number of small ugly code hacks contained in the Operating Systems for certain pieces of hardware.
If you can have some control of what the OS is running on hardware wise it is much more likely that you will be able to develop a secure and bug free OS.
I couldn't agree more with all of your points. I just watched III (for the first and last time) with some friends and by about half way through the movie we just couldn't wait for it to end. The plot has so many holes in it and the dialogue is atrocious at best. The scenes with Anakin and Padme are quite possibly the worst written scenes in motion picture history. I'm amazed that they had a concept with so much potential and ended up making a movie with such an utterly horrific dialogue. Some of the acting throughout the file was also just horrible. This is honestly one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.
Perhaps the most laughable part of the movie was how utterly easy it was to pull Anakin to the dark side. They really should have spread this out more effectively through episode I and II to make it at least slightly more believable.
Palpatine: Learn to embrace the dark side of the force.
Anakin: No.
Palpatine: Do it.
Anakin: Ok.
I use Linux primarily and I don't consider using WMV the equivalent of "giving us the finger". WMV is by far the most convenient for the majority of people and I can get WMV working very easily under Linux and MacOS X (Xine, MPlayer etc.). Quicktime is a poor choice because many Windows and Linux users won't have the codec installed and unless your videos are very important many people will not bother to install it to watch them. WMV also produces similar quality in smaller file sizes.
Since Windows has such dominance in the OS marketplace, WMV would give you the widest demographic by far.
I want a project manager that gives me this kinds of deadline. =(
Re:Reusing Code == Unoriginal Game Play
on
Sid Meier Responds
·
· Score: 1
Nobody is complaining that games aren't original enough because they're reusing code. Reusing code hardly has a serious effect on the concept of the game. The concept of the game and the code which they're reusing are not that tightly coupled. Graphics code for instance is very reusable in many cases regardless of the type or concept of the game it is being applied too.
"yeah, you can rid yourself of everything microsoft until some jerk offers video content exclusively in.wmv, and you really need to view it. and they don't take appeals, and you can't install linux/mplayer."
Well obviously if you want to watch WMV you're going to need to install a video player.... You could have made the exact same statement about any other codec too. The problem is not that there isn't a video player capable of playing WMV under Linux it's that you can't install one to use.
I agree with you in that I don't think Linux negatively affects Java or server sales. However, from what I've seen (I'm no expert on this subject either) Sun really wants to sell a package. They want to package their hardware with Solaris, Java etc. than offer support. I agree that hardware makes most of their money but I think the entire hardware/software/support package is what they're trying to do most.
Considering how long Sun has been working with Linux and how much source code they've released to the Open Source community I'd hardly classify them as "jumping on the bandwagon". There are few companies that give back as much to the community as Sun and yet they continue to do so even with hoards of people like you demanding more.
Would you prefer companies not "jump on the bandwagon" and just ignore Linux all together?
As a developer I find the complete opposite. I would much rather work with Solaris (or BSD) in a server environment than any other OS. I've had no problems finding binary versions of any packages and even if I did it's not like compiling from source is a problem.... Dependency problems happen no where near as often as they do in Linux and generally they can be resolved very easily if you know what you're doing. As to your admins blindly installing Sun updates, this speaks more about the quality of your admins than it says anything about Sun. No updates for any OS are perfect especially when you're admins just "blindly install" them.
It's interesting how you didn't touch on any of the good aspects of Solaris that can't be found in any other OS. Perhaps, if you look at some of the internals of Solaris you would see why the DoD is using it.
You thought wrong. It's very clear to anyone with any knowledge of the subject that they offer much more than just hardware. I'm not quite sure why you feel that a company needs to be a "hardware" company or a "software" company as plenty of companies can do both...
I really don't think they feel threatened by GTalk. It's basically nothing more than another Jabber client. I know a lot of people who tried GTalk, including myself, however I can't name one that plans on continuing to use it.
"Whoa, where have you been? Perhaps you were not around a year ago when it was blogs reacting to exit poll data that were first claiming that Kerry was going to dethrone Bush. News outlets turned around and reported much the same thing, but only after the blogs focussed attention on it. Mainstream media didn't want such hasty conclusions, not because they were wrong, but because they wanted people to stay tuned all night long."
Most of the blogs were wrong so I hardly see how it paid off in the end. News outlets waited and didn't make hasty conclusions because they don't want to make false calls as they have some level of accountability. Bloggers have no accountability so they can say whatever they want and more often than not they're poorly written, uninformed and factually wrong.
"Even more recently, it was bloggers that started the cries of outrage over the US government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Again, mainstream media is very reluctant to openly criticize politicians for fear of being accused of lacking impartiality and (more importantly) because they must rely on these same politicians and don't want to burn bridges. Look at 9/11. It tooks months before criticism grew and it had to have its roots with the victims' families. This time things were much, much quicker because of bloggers. Bloggers don't care about being impartial and don't care if they upset politicians. "
In regards to Hurricane Katrina, this is just untrue. There was plenty of outrage in other media outlets including mainstream newspapers. The people that were suffering through the tragedy and their families were the ones causing most of the commotion and it was hardly the bloggers that deserve credit. Some bloggers wrote about the story. Wow. That hardly gives them the ability to take credit for changing the situation... Even on many television news programs people were outraged. Blogs are only read by a very miniscule section of the population and most bloggers/blog readers give them far too much credit.
"In both cases, "the news" changed because of bloggers. That's where the power of blogging comes from. It allows a broader range of people to define what is news."
I hardly think that the news changed significantly in either of those cases directly due to bloggers. Yes, it allows a broader range of people to define what news is however more often than not these people are not educated, not qualified to be doing so and are factually wrong. People that blog/read blogs regularly give themselves way more credit than they deserve. I admit they have made small changes but nothing like what most bloggers give them credit for.
I know you're being sarcastic however it's really quite funny how many people actually think that blogs and podcasts will revolutionize the way we get news. Blogging has had a very little effect on changing global media. The vast majority of people don't read blogs nor do they care what some random person has to say over the Internet. Most blogs are incredibly poorly written and it shows almost immediately. Podcasts generally are incredibly poorly produced and often have little to no content. Most of the people that are creating podcasts are very young and frankly they offer nothing of value to their listeners. I have yet to find any podcasts that I would regularly enjoy listening to.
I think the one thing that blogs and podcasts have shown very clearly is that people who want to write stories or produce their own shows really need to be educated to do so; otherwise they're more than likely to end up creating more trash.
Slashdot Mirror
It's effortless because nobody will put in the effort to use it.
Simply because you have all these features does not necessarily mean that you're going to be a successful competitor against products like iTunes. iTunes has been marketed so well that it has become almost synonymous with online music shopping. Without support of the major labels and strong advertising companies you simply will not be successful against a product like iTunes in the mainstream market. Furthermore, many people use iTunes as a simple player and therefore when they do feel the need to shop online for music it's just so easy for them to do so through the iTunes interface.
Also, it seems that they're striving to have a lot of features however many sites that do this do indeed come out with many features however they don't perform any of those features exceptionally well. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but a startup company boasting this many features doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence in the quality of all these services. This service, from what I can see, is also only available in a subscription based service model which quite frankly the majority of this market is not interested in. Their free plan also only comes with 50MB of space which is not going to persuade people to yet again switch service providers.
Most of the features they're boasting are also fairly standard and people are not going to switch to a new service unless it offers significant benefits. For example, why would I switch to use this email service when they only give me 50MB of space and other free services give me 50 times that amount? Switching these services is also a pain in the ass for myself and everyone who communicates with me.
I'm sorry but it's just pathetic when a grown man gets the opportunity to go to space and his first concern is if he can dress up like his favorite Gundam character....
Perhaps, instead of going to space he should take some of that money and hire a psychiatrist.
It completely depends on where you get your online degree. Many universities offer online degree programs that are fully recognized at accredited universities. This is something that you have to look for and be aware of. I suggest contacting other universities and inquiring whether they recognize degrees from the online university you are considering, and also make sure that credits from the online university are transferable to other universities.
Also, you have to make sure that you're able to stay motivated working in an environment of your choice. Like many telework situations, some people find that they're not productive at home due to too many distractions. I know a few people who are incredibly smart that have received online degrees and it really depends a lot on how motivated you are and how much you want to get out of it. They also recommending asking as many questions as possible to make sure you get the most out of your education experience.
More speculation about a GoogleOS....
Google Fanboy: They made an email app, a desktop search bar and an IM client, HOW COULD THEY NOT BE MAKING AN OS????
I really doubt that Google is currently working on a full Linux desktop. They're a business and there's currently not a lot of money in the Linux desktop field, especially with so many free options out there that are making continuous and fast progress. Most people are more than happy to choose one of the freely available DE's. Furthermore, everything that Google has released so far that is not delivered over the web has been Windows only. How about we wait and see if they release any of these applications on Linux, MacOS X, BSD etc. at all before we speculate about them releasing a full DE. Currently, they've said that they have no plans to release any of these applications to any other platform other than Windows.
There's also a huge difference between the complexities of a DE compared to anything they've released so far in terms of desktop applications.
I agree. It looks like an ugly version of gDesklets or Konfabulator except it doesn't have even close to as many useful widgets. It also includes a large ugly Google symbol on the top bar which it seems can't be removed. It's also another Google product that is available only for Windows.
Fair enough. I didn't really think of that as a huge benefit since all of the computers I regularly work with either have MS Office or Star/Open Office installed already, however I see where it would benefit people who are not in the same situation. I, like many others here I'm sure, also have a setup in which I can access my files from anywhere with a network connection so I guess I'm not really the norm/target audience in this instance. Perhaps, I'm also just very biased as I really, really prefer rich client side applications instead of web interfaces.
Cheers.
I really don't understand this obsession with an online office suite. I haven't met one person that really wants to use something like this. The average computer comes with well over 80GBs nowadays so why not use some of that space for rich client side applications. Most online interfaces are nowhere near competing with their rich client side counterparts and I can't see any significant benefit of having my office suite online other than having updates rolled out to clients automatically. Furthermore, I'm not interested in having a subscription based service model, which is what all these companies are aiming for. I'm also not interested in typing my documents up through a web browser where the creators of the online office suite easily have the ability to monitor what I'm typing. No matter how fast a connection you currently have, nothing is going to be faster than having the client application stored on your hard drive. Look at all the people that have been saying OO.o is slow, do these people think this is going to improve if we host and run the entire thing over the network??? How many features will we need to remove to make this run at an even remotely acceptable speed?
With the current bandwidth constraints that many people have I just don't see something like this as feasible or necessary. Why would you want to do everything through your web browser over the network? It just doesn't make any sense to me however maybe some of you will point out some benefits I'm not seeing.
You just don't get it. Apple doesn't want people running it on unsupported hardware where it is very likely that the OS is going to have problems, crashes etc. One of the biggest reasons people use Apple is because it just works and if they lose this public perception they're in for a lot of problems. Think about it, if people start having regular problems with OS X, whether unsupported hardware or not, Apple will start to develop a bad name for itself amongst the user base. Especially, amongst the vast majority of users who don't understand why it's unsupported hardware and why they're having problems. All they will see is that OS X has many problems while they're Windows XP continues to work mostly correctly. Windows is a perfect example, as many of the problems that they've encountered in bugs and security has been due to the fact that they try and support such a wide range of hardware. Even Windows developers have become frustrated and vocal about the number of small ugly code hacks contained in the Operating Systems for certain pieces of hardware.
If you can have some control of what the OS is running on hardware wise it is much more likely that you will be able to develop a secure and bug free OS.
If you can't see the difference in these situations you're either very dumb or so much of a fan boy that you're ignoring common sense.
I couldn't agree more with all of your points. I just watched III (for the first and last time) with some friends and by about half way through the movie we just couldn't wait for it to end. The plot has so many holes in it and the dialogue is atrocious at best. The scenes with Anakin and Padme are quite possibly the worst written scenes in motion picture history. I'm amazed that they had a concept with so much potential and ended up making a movie with such an utterly horrific dialogue. Some of the acting throughout the file was also just horrible. This is honestly one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.
Perhaps the most laughable part of the movie was how utterly easy it was to pull Anakin to the dark side. They really should have spread this out more effectively through episode I and II to make it at least slightly more believable.
Palpatine: Learn to embrace the dark side of the force.
Anakin: No.
Palpatine: Do it.
Anakin: Ok.
It doesn't get much worse than this.....
I use Linux primarily and I don't consider using WMV the equivalent of "giving us the finger". WMV is by far the most convenient for the majority of people and I can get WMV working very easily under Linux and MacOS X (Xine, MPlayer etc.). Quicktime is a poor choice because many Windows and Linux users won't have the codec installed and unless your videos are very important many people will not bother to install it to watch them. WMV also produces similar quality in smaller file sizes.
Since Windows has such dominance in the OS marketplace, WMV would give you the widest demographic by far.
I want a project manager that gives me this kinds of deadline. =(
Nobody is complaining that games aren't original enough because they're reusing code. Reusing code hardly has a serious effect on the concept of the game. The concept of the game and the code which they're reusing are not that tightly coupled. Graphics code for instance is very reusable in many cases regardless of the type or concept of the game it is being applied too.
Jack Thompson
Well by the Principle of Double Negation...
"yeah, you can rid yourself of everything microsoft until some jerk offers video content exclusively in .wmv, and you really need to view it. and they don't take appeals, and you can't install linux/mplayer."
Well obviously if you want to watch WMV you're going to need to install a video player.... You could have made the exact same statement about any other codec too. The problem is not that there isn't a video player capable of playing WMV under Linux it's that you can't install one to use.
I agree with you in that I don't think Linux negatively affects Java or server sales. However, from what I've seen (I'm no expert on this subject either) Sun really wants to sell a package. They want to package their hardware with Solaris, Java etc. than offer support. I agree that hardware makes most of their money but I think the entire hardware/software/support package is what they're trying to do most.
Considering how long Sun has been working with Linux and how much source code they've released to the Open Source community I'd hardly classify them as "jumping on the bandwagon". There are few companies that give back as much to the community as Sun and yet they continue to do so even with hoards of people like you demanding more.
Would you prefer companies not "jump on the bandwagon" and just ignore Linux all together?
As a developer I find the complete opposite. I would much rather work with Solaris (or BSD) in a server environment than any other OS. I've had no problems finding binary versions of any packages and even if I did it's not like compiling from source is a problem.... Dependency problems happen no where near as often as they do in Linux and generally they can be resolved very easily if you know what you're doing. As to your admins blindly installing Sun updates, this speaks more about the quality of your admins than it says anything about Sun. No updates for any OS are perfect especially when you're admins just "blindly install" them.
It's interesting how you didn't touch on any of the good aspects of Solaris that can't be found in any other OS. Perhaps, if you look at some of the internals of Solaris you would see why the DoD is using it.
You thought wrong. It's very clear to anyone with any knowledge of the subject that they offer much more than just hardware. I'm not quite sure why you feel that a company needs to be a "hardware" company or a "software" company as plenty of companies can do both...
I really don't think they feel threatened by GTalk. It's basically nothing more than another Jabber client. I know a lot of people who tried GTalk, including myself, however I can't name one that plans on continuing to use it.
"Whoa, where have you been? Perhaps you were not around a year ago when it was blogs reacting to exit poll data that were first claiming that Kerry was going to dethrone Bush. News outlets turned around and reported much the same thing, but only after the blogs focussed attention on it. Mainstream media didn't want such hasty conclusions, not because they were wrong, but because they wanted people to stay tuned all night long."
Most of the blogs were wrong so I hardly see how it paid off in the end. News outlets waited and didn't make hasty conclusions because they don't want to make false calls as they have some level of accountability. Bloggers have no accountability so they can say whatever they want and more often than not they're poorly written, uninformed and factually wrong.
"Even more recently, it was bloggers that started the cries of outrage over the US government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Again, mainstream media is very reluctant to openly criticize politicians for fear of being accused of lacking impartiality and (more importantly) because they must rely on these same politicians and don't want to burn bridges. Look at 9/11. It tooks months before criticism grew and it had to have its roots with the victims' families. This time things were much, much quicker because of bloggers. Bloggers don't care about being impartial and don't care if they upset politicians. "
In regards to Hurricane Katrina, this is just untrue. There was plenty of outrage in other media outlets including mainstream newspapers. The people that were suffering through the tragedy and their families were the ones causing most of the commotion and it was hardly the bloggers that deserve credit. Some bloggers wrote about the story. Wow. That hardly gives them the ability to take credit for changing the situation... Even on many television news programs people were outraged. Blogs are only read by a very miniscule section of the population and most bloggers/blog readers give them far too much credit. "In both cases, "the news" changed because of bloggers. That's where the power of blogging comes from. It allows a broader range of people to define what is news."
I hardly think that the news changed significantly in either of those cases directly due to bloggers. Yes, it allows a broader range of people to define what news is however more often than not these people are not educated, not qualified to be doing so and are factually wrong. People that blog/read blogs regularly give themselves way more credit than they deserve. I admit they have made small changes but nothing like what most bloggers give them credit for.
I know you're being sarcastic however it's really quite funny how many people actually think that blogs and podcasts will revolutionize the way we get news. Blogging has had a very little effect on changing global media. The vast majority of people don't read blogs nor do they care what some random person has to say over the Internet. Most blogs are incredibly poorly written and it shows almost immediately. Podcasts generally are incredibly poorly produced and often have little to no content. Most of the people that are creating podcasts are very young and frankly they offer nothing of value to their listeners. I have yet to find any podcasts that I would regularly enjoy listening to.
I think the one thing that blogs and podcasts have shown very clearly is that people who want to write stories or produce their own shows really need to be educated to do so; otherwise they're more than likely to end up creating more trash.