Well, people still buy porn on DVD, but you have a good point. I'll point out that I've never seen porn that came crippled by DRM either.
In a completely rational world, I'd say that buying media on disks is getting to be an antequated concept - just as the mp3 was the successor to the CD, digital files should be the successor to DVD's. Bandwith and storage place will both get to the point where it's viable before either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD can get adopted by the market.
But we don't live in a rational world, media companies just can't get their head around it, and DRM any potential implementations of a digital distribution system into oblivion.
Oddly enough I've seen lots of people on slashdot complain about the price anyway. Try distributing the individual value to each song on total value of a CD. Subtract all the filler songs and you'll see that the hit songs make up far more than one dollar/song
First of all, that makes no sense. You're still paying for the "filler" songs on a CD - it doesn't make any sense to imagine one track is worth more than another on the same CD.
Secondly, $0.99 is overpriced. Depending on the album in question and how many tracks it is, it might be either a rip-off or a bargain. If I can get a 15 track CD used for under ten bucks, how have I saved money compared to iTunes? Also consider:
You're not getting any physical media
You're not getting any "extras" like cover art or lyrics
It's a much lower-quality format
You have a lot more flexibility to do what you want with the content on a CD than a DRMed track from iTunes.
Speaking as a Windows user, I couldn't agree more. I'm comfortable enough in a GUI that I can figure out how to do most anything that's doable with it - I'm just barely competent at using the shell though. While the shell might in fact be a better way of doing some tasks, it's much more difficult to learn coming from the Windows world. Especially when there's no analog to the task in the GUI.
I like the KDE interface a lot - it's straightforward enough to pick up on quickly, but there's a lot of hidden functionality and customizability that can be learned as the user advances. Gnome, on the other hand, reminds me a lot more of a Macintosh, which I never had much of a taste for. I believe it might adhere to better standards for interface design, but the customizability just isn't there.
First of all, CD Collections of 1,000+ aren't that uncommon, especially for people who've been collecting them for 20 years. My parents, as one example, have about 600, and frankly they're not even that into music. Several friends of mine who ARE into music easily cross the 1,000 mark. Buying two or three CD's at a time adds up quick.
I'd also wager most people with large capacity iPods only use a few gigs at most. Just because it can fit 15,000 tracks doesn't mean people will load it with that much - realistically that's well in excess of 30 straight days of continue. Even if you only have 100 CD's, an iPod is a still a far more convenient way.of storing and playing back your music collection than carrying around the physical media.
Secondly, there's no shortage of reasons why someone buying a new iPod wouldn't be buying new music from iTMS. Maybe they're simply upgrading or replacing from an older iPod. Maybe they are using it primarily for their CD collection. Maybe they're buying them as Christmas gifts, and they're currently sitting in a box and wrapping paper. Some people do in fact use them as portable storage (in addition to listening to music). Now the large capacity ones play video too. Some people may use them almost entirely to listen to Podcasts. "Right to be skeptical" my ass.
Finally, "The fact that it generates some revenue is an ancillary benefit, nothing more."... It's free money. The record companies do absolutely nothing and Steve Jobs sends them a check every month. How much money would they be making from online music sales if iTMS didn't exist?
For the record, I think $1 a song is a total rip off and iPods are overpriced and overrated. But I really get sick of the attitude that someone must be a criminal if they own an iPod.
As has been pointed out, Keyhole became Google Earth, Urchin became Google Analytics. Picasa probably just hasn't been renamed because Google's either working on doing something with it, or else hasn't figured out what they're doing with it of yet. I suspect sometime in the future there will be a re-branding and "launch" of some updated of "Google Picture Organizer".
On the flip side, Yahoo bought Flickr some time ago and hasn't re-branded it yet... there's just that "A Yahoo Company" logo in the corner.
Call me a dumb romantic if you will, but will such a user spend time learning only to turn against the things he loves?
I won't pretend to know much about the hacker culture - but I'd imagine that there would be major street cred for the first one that managed to write the first widespread virus that attacks linux boxes their owners thought were "safe". They don't do it for the love of the system, they do it for the same reason most people do anything: recognition and popularity within their social circles.
I do think linux is in a good position for the reason you suggest, just not by the same logic. Linux users are geeks that love their systems, and are far more likely to take care of them as a result, as well as practice common-sense security habits that are largely lacking with non-technical Windows users. Having a million eyeballs looking over every line of code for security flaws doesn't hurt, either.
Macintosh, on the other hand, probably gets by mostly through obscurity. There's no major servers running Mac OSX (that I know of at least) and few corporations, so your pool of potential victims is mostly limited home users. Hardly anything that'll make headlines.
Personally, I'm currently separated from my SO by 3,000 miles or so - it's damn nice to be able to be able to not just talk, but actually see her at night in the long periods between actually being together.
I think there's some demand for it - the psychological assurance of actually seeing a distant loved one (not just talking) shouldn't be underestimated.
In theory, you're right. A whitelist in this instance would be far more effective and easier to maintain than a blacklist.
But who decides what gets on that whitelist? Do sites that mention birth control get on it? Evolution? Homosexuality? Blatantly false religious-oriented sites?
How about the news? cnn.com isn't always kids safe. Wikipedia? It has lots of entries that the religious right would object to.
It would hardly change the battle at all. At the end of the day, these people don't just want to filter material they find "objectionable" - they want to eradicate it, render it inaccessible to *anyone*. Any solution that falls short of that, they won't be happy with. And since that's the end game, I don't see any particular reason to give them even an inch.
In the same way that weapons are the largest source of murders, right? Religion is many things, and that some use it as a tool of oppression does not necessarily mean religion itself is the source of the oppression.
What is religion but a source of oppression? It conceives of the ultimate Big Brother "God is watching you", and the entire thing is geared towards thought/behavior control. There's thoughtcrime in the form of blasphemy/profanity. It creates a dependence on the priest class for "salvation" by essentially outlawing fundamental human drives. It exploits the very worst human drives - fear, prejudice. It convinces peasants that great wealth awaits them in the "afterlife", so that they put up with living in shit for the benefit of people who have great wealth in *this life*. And traditionally, it doesn't exactly promote tolerance of other ideas in a community. Great lengths are taken to dehumanize non-believers.
Religion isn't something that some use as a tool of oppression. It is, by design, a tool of oppression. It's like a gun. They're not always used for murders - sometimes it might get used to defend your home, or for something like hunting. But it's primary purpose for being will always be to kill people.
Gmail is nifty in that it lets you send mail using another address (not just a reply to). Personally I just forward my other e-mail accounts to gmail.
Other webmail services (Yahoo at least used to, I assume it still does) will let you set up pop3 collection for your other accounts - no differently from Thunderbird really.
I second that. Not having access to the internet is such a rarity for me that I can't say being able to do something offline is a factor I even consider anymore. Further, with regards to e-mail specifically, I can't imagine how I'd "work" with them without being able to receive and send them - so its a moot point.
I've used Gmail as my e-mail client for almost a year now and I don't think there's ever been a time where I wanted it and couldn't get access to it.
As a side note, the biggest advantage of webmail (IMHO) is that it keeps my email synchronized between my desktop and laptop - which is the main reason I started using it in the first place.
I wish that was the case. When I attempted to create some local scenes over the years online, as more of my customer base jumped on the internet, more of the local scenes online fell way to the nationally-oriented scenes. The punks that used to stick to our punk rock forum (we sold punk music) dropped us for the national scene. The paintballers that used to frequent our paintball forum (we sell paintball equipment) dumped us for the national scene. The skateboards that used to frequent our skate spot forum (we sell skate equipment) did the same. Why? 5 messages a day from the same 100 people is boring compared to hundreds of opinions.
Punk-rock, paintball, and skateboards are all national things. There's still a lot of local stuff that's currently nearly impossible to find online, precisely because it's not national.
Yeah, you can talk about the latest paintball gun with just about anyone in the world with access to the same gun - but would you go to an international forum to ask a specific question that's only germane to the local paintball arena? How would you even know that there's a local paintball arena via that forum? Some dedicated paintball sites might try to keep a list of every arena, everywhere, but in my experience such lists are notoriously out of date and unreliable. Besides, at the end of the day it might be good to know that there's a popular paintball park in California - but it really doesn't concern you much if you happen to live in New York.
There's a ton of relevant local information that an international forum can't serve. My local church has a flea market coming up this weekend. There's absolutely no information about it online. I can't find the schedule for local high school football games online. There's events going on all over town that simply don't find their way online. Some of the larger local venues might post information on their individual web sites - but many people don't know those venues even exist, let alone check such sites everyday. I think there's a huge potential for local papers to aggregate this kind of information and provide it to their communities via their website, as well as provide the mechanisms for a forum and discussion. I'd wager there's a lot that goes on in my town that I'd be interested in but simply don't know about.
I think at least part of the success of craigslist can be attributed to the fact that its locally focused. There's not one giant "Craigslist.com", it's "newyork.craigslist", "boston.craigslist", etc. If I'm looking for a club or interest group to join, or a date for friday night, it's nice to know I'm perusing ads for things in a geographic area that I could actually get to the things I'm reading about.
Google and Yahoo are both dumping huge resources into local search - but the main barrier is that the kind of information they want to index just isn't online, and as a consequence just isn't useful to me. I think a local paper, with staff that actually lives in the community and can gather that kind of information, can fill that gap. Create a real community driven site, with real information about local businesses, local events, local things to do. Provide real local news. I think there's both a market and an opportunity there.
Bingo. Not being much of a programmer, Linux is as much a black box to me as Windows is. So open vs. closed source doesn't matter a whole bunch to me - I'll evaluate each on its merits, chiefly looking at functionality and usability.
However, what I can't stand is lock in. I should be able to use any client I want with MS Exchange, or replace Exchange outright with something that does the same thing. I should be able to buy music from iTunes and play it using any software I want and put it on any portable player. I should be able to use any word processor I want to work with my files.
Keeping the formats and protocols closed is as anti-competitive as you can get.
I live in an ancient house built in the 1920's, it's simply not friendly to running new wires between floors (An electrician would probably know how to do it; I don't)
The cable modem is located in the basement where the home office is. There's two computers on the second floor, one in each bedroom. There's a media server in the first floor living room that streams mp3's to our stereo. I have a laptop that I use primarily to surf the web and such with - today I've used it in the kitchen, in the living room, and right now I'm sitting in the basement on the couch watching TV with it. On nice days, I like to take it outside and sit on the deck with it. It's not just a novelty, it's a convenience that I've grown to enjoy immensely.
Now, if you want to come over and run all the wires to each of those locations? Be my guest. Just make sure that there's enough slack so that I can sit anywhere in the room with my laptop, and do make sure it doesn't look like crap, since ethernet cables are rather unsightly.
Dropouts are rare (maybe once a month or so I notice them), and I get an effective speed of about 18~24Mbs or thereabouts. Which frankly is fine on a 3Mbs cable connection. So I just don't see what your gripe is.
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Well, people still buy porn on DVD, but you have a good point. I'll point out that I've never seen porn that came crippled by DRM either.
In a completely rational world, I'd say that buying media on disks is getting to be an antequated concept - just as the mp3 was the successor to the CD, digital files should be the successor to DVD's. Bandwith and storage place will both get to the point where it's viable before either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD can get adopted by the market.
But we don't live in a rational world, media companies just can't get their head around it, and DRM any potential implementations of a digital distribution system into oblivion.
Oddly enough I've seen lots of people on slashdot complain about the price anyway. Try distributing the individual value to each song on total value of a CD. Subtract all the filler songs and you'll see that the hit songs make up far more than one dollar/song
First of all, that makes no sense. You're still paying for the "filler" songs on a CD - it doesn't make any sense to imagine one track is worth more than another on the same CD.
Secondly, $0.99 is overpriced. Depending on the album in question and how many tracks it is, it might be either a rip-off or a bargain. If I can get a 15 track CD used for under ten bucks, how have I saved money compared to iTunes? Also consider:
So exactly how is iTMS a bargain again?
Speaking as a Windows user, I couldn't agree more. I'm comfortable enough in a GUI that I can figure out how to do most anything that's doable with it - I'm just barely competent at using the shell though. While the shell might in fact be a better way of doing some tasks, it's much more difficult to learn coming from the Windows world. Especially when there's no analog to the task in the GUI.
I like the KDE interface a lot - it's straightforward enough to pick up on quickly, but there's a lot of hidden functionality and customizability that can be learned as the user advances. Gnome, on the other hand, reminds me a lot more of a Macintosh, which I never had much of a taste for. I believe it might adhere to better standards for interface design, but the customizability just isn't there.
There's so many things wrong here...
.of storing and playing back your music collection than carrying around the physical media.
First of all, CD Collections of 1,000+ aren't that uncommon, especially for people who've been collecting them for 20 years. My parents, as one example, have about 600, and frankly they're not even that into music. Several friends of mine who ARE into music easily cross the 1,000 mark. Buying two or three CD's at a time adds up quick.
I'd also wager most people with large capacity iPods only use a few gigs at most. Just because it can fit 15,000 tracks doesn't mean people will load it with that much - realistically that's well in excess of 30 straight days of continue. Even if you only have 100 CD's, an iPod is a still a far more convenient way
Secondly, there's no shortage of reasons why someone buying a new iPod wouldn't be buying new music from iTMS. Maybe they're simply upgrading or replacing from an older iPod. Maybe they are using it primarily for their CD collection. Maybe they're buying them as Christmas gifts, and they're currently sitting in a box and wrapping paper. Some people do in fact use them as portable storage (in addition to listening to music). Now the large capacity ones play video too. Some people may use them almost entirely to listen to Podcasts. "Right to be skeptical" my ass.
Finally, "The fact that it generates some revenue is an ancillary benefit, nothing more."... It's free money. The record companies do absolutely nothing and Steve Jobs sends them a check every month. How much money would they be making from online music sales if iTMS didn't exist?
For the record, I think $1 a song is a total rip off and iPods are overpriced and overrated. But I really get sick of the attitude that someone must be a criminal if they own an iPod.
As has been pointed out, Keyhole became Google Earth, Urchin became Google Analytics. Picasa probably just hasn't been renamed because Google's either working on doing something with it, or else hasn't figured out what they're doing with it of yet. I suspect sometime in the future there will be a re-branding and "launch" of some updated of "Google Picture Organizer".
On the flip side, Yahoo bought Flickr some time ago and hasn't re-branded it yet... there's just that "A Yahoo Company" logo in the corner.
Call me a dumb romantic if you will, but will such a user spend time learning only to turn against the things he loves?
I won't pretend to know much about the hacker culture - but I'd imagine that there would be major street cred for the first one that managed to write the first widespread virus that attacks linux boxes their owners thought were "safe". They don't do it for the love of the system, they do it for the same reason most people do anything: recognition and popularity within their social circles.
I do think linux is in a good position for the reason you suggest, just not by the same logic. Linux users are geeks that love their systems, and are far more likely to take care of them as a result, as well as practice common-sense security habits that are largely lacking with non-technical Windows users. Having a million eyeballs looking over every line of code for security flaws doesn't hurt, either.
Macintosh, on the other hand, probably gets by mostly through obscurity. There's no major servers running Mac OSX (that I know of at least) and few corporations, so your pool of potential victims is mostly limited home users. Hardly anything that'll make headlines.
Personally, I'm currently separated from my SO by 3,000 miles or so - it's damn nice to be able to be able to not just talk, but actually see her at night in the long periods between actually being together.
I think there's some demand for it - the psychological assurance of actually seeing a distant loved one (not just talking) shouldn't be underestimated.
In theory, you're right. A whitelist in this instance would be far more effective and easier to maintain than a blacklist.
But who decides what gets on that whitelist? Do sites that mention birth control get on it? Evolution? Homosexuality? Blatantly false religious-oriented sites?
How about the news? cnn.com isn't always kids safe. Wikipedia? It has lots of entries that the religious right would object to.
It would hardly change the battle at all. At the end of the day, these people don't just want to filter material they find "objectionable" - they want to eradicate it, render it inaccessible to *anyone*. Any solution that falls short of that, they won't be happy with. And since that's the end game, I don't see any particular reason to give them even an inch.
In the same way that weapons are the largest source of murders, right? Religion is many things, and that some use it as a tool of oppression does not necessarily mean religion itself is the source of the oppression.
What is religion but a source of oppression? It conceives of the ultimate Big Brother "God is watching you", and the entire thing is geared towards thought/behavior control. There's thoughtcrime in the form of blasphemy/profanity. It creates a dependence on the priest class for "salvation" by essentially outlawing fundamental human drives. It exploits the very worst human drives - fear, prejudice. It convinces peasants that great wealth awaits them in the "afterlife", so that they put up with living in shit for the benefit of people who have great wealth in *this life*. And traditionally, it doesn't exactly promote tolerance of other ideas in a community. Great lengths are taken to dehumanize non-believers.
Religion isn't something that some use as a tool of oppression. It is, by design, a tool of oppression. It's like a gun. They're not always used for murders - sometimes it might get used to defend your home, or for something like hunting. But it's primary purpose for being will always be to kill people.
Gmail is nifty in that it lets you send mail using another address (not just a reply to). Personally I just forward my other e-mail accounts to gmail. Other webmail services (Yahoo at least used to, I assume it still does) will let you set up pop3 collection for your other accounts - no differently from Thunderbird really.
I second that. Not having access to the internet is such a rarity for me that I can't say being able to do something offline is a factor I even consider anymore. Further, with regards to e-mail specifically, I can't imagine how I'd "work" with them without being able to receive and send them - so its a moot point.
I've used Gmail as my e-mail client for almost a year now and I don't think there's ever been a time where I wanted it and couldn't get access to it.
As a side note, the biggest advantage of webmail (IMHO) is that it keeps my email synchronized between my desktop and laptop - which is the main reason I started using it in the first place.
I wish that was the case. When I attempted to create some local scenes over the years online, as more of my customer base jumped on the internet, more of the local scenes online fell way to the nationally-oriented scenes. The punks that used to stick to our punk rock forum (we sold punk music) dropped us for the national scene. The paintballers that used to frequent our paintball forum (we sell paintball equipment) dumped us for the national scene. The skateboards that used to frequent our skate spot forum (we sell skate equipment) did the same. Why? 5 messages a day from the same 100 people is boring compared to hundreds of opinions.
Punk-rock, paintball, and skateboards are all national things. There's still a lot of local stuff that's currently nearly impossible to find online, precisely because it's not national.
Yeah, you can talk about the latest paintball gun with just about anyone in the world with access to the same gun - but would you go to an international forum to ask a specific question that's only germane to the local paintball arena? How would you even know that there's a local paintball arena via that forum? Some dedicated paintball sites might try to keep a list of every arena, everywhere, but in my experience such lists are notoriously out of date and unreliable. Besides, at the end of the day it might be good to know that there's a popular paintball park in California - but it really doesn't concern you much if you happen to live in New York.
There's a ton of relevant local information that an international forum can't serve. My local church has a flea market coming up this weekend. There's absolutely no information about it online. I can't find the schedule for local high school football games online. There's events going on all over town that simply don't find their way online. Some of the larger local venues might post information on their individual web sites - but many people don't know those venues even exist, let alone check such sites everyday. I think there's a huge potential for local papers to aggregate this kind of information and provide it to their communities via their website, as well as provide the mechanisms for a forum and discussion. I'd wager there's a lot that goes on in my town that I'd be interested in but simply don't know about.
I think at least part of the success of craigslist can be attributed to the fact that its locally focused. There's not one giant "Craigslist.com", it's "newyork.craigslist", "boston.craigslist", etc. If I'm looking for a club or interest group to join, or a date for friday night, it's nice to know I'm perusing ads for things in a geographic area that I could actually get to the things I'm reading about.
Google and Yahoo are both dumping huge resources into local search - but the main barrier is that the kind of information they want to index just isn't online, and as a consequence just isn't useful to me. I think a local paper, with staff that actually lives in the community and can gather that kind of information, can fill that gap. Create a real community driven site, with real information about local businesses, local events, local things to do. Provide real local news. I think there's both a market and an opportunity there.
Bingo. Not being much of a programmer, Linux is as much a black box to me as Windows is. So open vs. closed source doesn't matter a whole bunch to me - I'll evaluate each on its merits, chiefly looking at functionality and usability.
However, what I can't stand is lock in. I should be able to use any client I want with MS Exchange, or replace Exchange outright with something that does the same thing. I should be able to buy music from iTunes and play it using any software I want and put it on any portable player. I should be able to use any word processor I want to work with my files.
Keeping the formats and protocols closed is as anti-competitive as you can get.
I live in an ancient house built in the 1920's, it's simply not friendly to running new wires between floors (An electrician would probably know how to do it; I don't)
The cable modem is located in the basement where the home office is. There's two computers on the second floor, one in each bedroom. There's a media server in the first floor living room that streams mp3's to our stereo. I have a laptop that I use primarily to surf the web and such with - today I've used it in the kitchen, in the living room, and right now I'm sitting in the basement on the couch watching TV with it. On nice days, I like to take it outside and sit on the deck with it. It's not just a novelty, it's a convenience that I've grown to enjoy immensely.
Now, if you want to come over and run all the wires to each of those locations? Be my guest. Just make sure that there's enough slack so that I can sit anywhere in the room with my laptop, and do make sure it doesn't look like crap, since ethernet cables are rather unsightly.
Dropouts are rare (maybe once a month or so I notice them), and I get an effective speed of about 18~24Mbs or thereabouts. Which frankly is fine on a 3Mbs cable connection. So I just don't see what your gripe is.