First of all note that claims 6-10 were not rejected. These contain much of the important part of the patent.
6. A client system for ordering an item comprising:
an identifier that identifies a customer;
a display component for displaying information identifying the item;
a single-action ordering component that in response to performance of only a single action, sends a request to a server system to order the identified item, the request including the identifier so that the server system can locate additional information needed to complete the order and so that the server system can fulfill the generated order to complete purchase of the item; and
a shopping cart ordering component that in response to performance of an add-to-shopping-cart action, sends a request to the server system to add the item to a shopping cart.
7. The client system of claim 6 wherein the display component is a browser.
8. The client system of claim 6 wherein the predefined action is the clicking of a mouse button.
9. A server system for generating an order comprising:
a shopping cart ordering component; and
a single-action ordering component including:
a data storage medium storing information for a plurality of users;
a receiving component for receiving requests to order an item, a request including an indication of one of the plurality of users, the request being sent in response to only a single action being performed; and
an order placement component that retrieves from the data storage medium information for the indicated user and that uses the retrieved information to place an order for the indicated user for the item; and
an order fulfillment component that completes a purchase of the item in accordance with the order placed by the single-action ordering component.
10. The server system of claim 9 wherein the request is sent by a client system in response to a single action being performed.
Now to answer your questions. Here are claims 1 and 11:
1 A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system,
displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,
receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
11.A method for ordering an item using a client system, the method comprising:
displaying information identifying the item and displaying an indication of a single action that is to be performed to order the identified item; and
in response to only the indicated single action being performed, sending to a server system a request to order the identified item
whereby the item is ordered independently of a shopping cart model and the order is fulfilled to complete a purchase of the item.
I know this is slightly OT, but I'd like to see some sort of reasoned debate over it here...
What exactly was so offensive about MoveOn.org's ad campaign in the first place?
Petraeus has handled the Iraq war poorly, and in several cases lied outright to the American people. MoveOn.org called him out on it. Isn't that how democratic politics and free speech are supposed to work?
It's no secret that many Americans feel that the government misled the general public in order to bolster support for their war, and the ad was a simple reflection of this reality. It wasn't even a baseless personal attack -- they provide quotations, and even cite their sources.
Perhaps the most troubling part of the whole saga is that the house passed a resolution condemning the advert 341-79, and the senate 71-29 (With all 49 republicans, and 22 democrats voting in favor). The president even got in on the action.
This Time editorial seems to have the best summation of the whole situation.
Is this all the legislative branch is good for these days? Sternly wagging their fingers at political action groups, and listening to baseball testimony? Well, it seems about right for politicians in general to not like the idea of Political action groups calling out specific politicians for their faults. It may be troubling, but is far from unexpected.
Of course, only when your Windows CD is old do you understand how crappy Windows is. I recently had the honor to install Win XP Pro SP1, and boy was that annoying. Of course there are many downloads with such an old release, a linux distro would not be fundamentally different (though it seems to me that for the amount of patches Windows downloaded, it should have included apps too, like a distro does). But I assure you that a linux distro would not reboot 20 times in the process. Boot, log in, Windows Update finds patches. Dl, install. Reboot. Login, it finds more patches. Dl, install, reboot, login. It finds more patches, and so on and so on. Why the fuck can't it download everything at once? Or how about patches that you need to install before Windows Update even offer the latest service pack to you? The service pack is a cumulative update! There should be no prerequisite patches. granted that when installing SP2 via windows update, some files may be skipped if they are irrelevant (already up to date), but I have personally found that on at least 5 different systems, Windows Update was not able to install SP2. I had to download the huge offline install EXE to install SP2, so I'm definitely re-downloading all the old updates. (I always try using windows update first, instead of heading directly for the service pack, for no really good reason. I guess I'm just optimistic that Windows Update might just work this time for installing SP2.)
How long should Verizon be required to support these CLECs with a copper infrastructure? Would it be okay if Verizon did not disconnect the copper but no longer maintained it if/when it rolls out fibre to cover all the current copper users? Business models do change and companies do get left in the dust. It's okay for the RIAA to die, but not CLECs when the business models change? Yeah, the government subsidized the copper network, they paid for a lot of things no one uses anymore. The article says they aren't disconnecting current copper users, only ones upgrading to FIOS. So clearly anyone getting FIOS has no need for CLECs anymore. So it's wrong for a CLEC to die because no one wants them? That's basically why their business is threatened because people want FIOS not service from a CLEC.
As far as dark fiber, I'm not aware of the government subsidizing that, the ILECs put that in, they shouldn't be forced sell it just because they aren't using it. Hmm.. If they stopped maintaining the copper, then they are failing to pay the right of way fees (that is part of the line maintenance costs). Thus the wire would be confiscated by the local government. I suppose legally the local government could maintain the lines and and sell the loops to the CLECs (in fact would be obligated to if they maintained the lines), or could tear the lines down, (and probably sue the ILEC's for the cost). however your claim that FIOS users have no need for CLECs is absurd. The CLECs exist so that there is a least some level of competition.
The other part of that story is that the the phone cables are the lowest on the poles, so something hitting the lines has to take out the high-voltage power lines, the lower voltage power lines, and the cable TV lines before the phone service is knocked out. If something takes out the whole pole, your phone goes out too, even though the telco's CO has a big battery/generator to backup the phone power. Depends on the poles. Sometimes the power poles are excusive to power (not often, but it does happen). Also some poles have no-voltage (ground) lines at the very top.
Very cool. Do you know if Divx hardware players will play back xvid-encoded files, too? Very generally speaking, yes, they will, because the decoders are identical. The difference is in the way that the compression is implemented, not in the format of the data. Codecs can be really messed up like this. We tend to think of a codec as being a compression format, but it is really the software. Any two codecs that have the end compression format can decode the results of each other. Both DivX and xvid yeild MPEG-4 ASP encoded video. That said, some DivX decoders are broken, failing to support some parts of the MPEG-4 ASP format. These may have trouble with xvid video.
So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray
that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?
It almost certainly has dual lasers, as do most recorders, but that
has nothing to do with what it does...
Until they release more specs I can only speculate, but the
press release makes it obvious enough - This simply contains
a perfectly ordinary DVD burner, to which it writes MPEG-4
data on a normal DVD using the FS layout expected by BR drives.
Just as you can burn a DVD filesystem to a CD, you can just as
easily burn a BR or HD filesystem to a DVD. They simply don't hold
as much, requiring either loss of quality or limited duration (or
both).
Now, why anyone would want to buy a recorder that costs more than the
difference in price of recordable discs over the practical lifetime
of that player while burning only ultra-low quality content, ya got
me. The coolness factor, I guess? Personally, I plan to wait for
dual-format next-gen burners and for one or the other's writeable
discs to drop a tolerable price. This seems likely. However, Note that while the DVD file system on a cd is legal,
it is not maditory for the devices to support it. Some devices do (including computers generally), although
a fair number of devices do not.
The same will likely be true of this technology. What I would find much more interesting is the use of these Discs with only
standard def content. The ability to have an entire season of TV show on one disc at Standard definition sound really nice to me.
The standards have support for this, but the studios will almost certainly not even consider using it. (After all, the main marketing point
for these discs is the HD, not the increased capacity).
Female mules are very ocassionally fertile. There is one confirmed case of a female hinny being fertile. Female tigons and ligers are usually fertile. Males of all of these hybrids are invariably sterile.
You sound like you are describing Debian's stable distribution (except for the quickly part). The point releases never contain new versions of the programs. They only contain backports of fixes to major bugs. There is also the security repository that works by posting fixed versions of programs with security problems, once again, done by back-porting the changes. the security fixes are done quickly. But the non-security bug fixes found in the point releases are not quick. (After all they need to be tested for stability).
Exactly. The feature in Firefox is nothing more than the "Google Safe Browsing" extention being integrated into the browser. That extension is now part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox, but is disabled on recent Firefox browsers because of the built-in equivalent. It has two modes of operation. In one mode it simply hashes the domain name, and checks if the hash is found in a hash database of known phishing sites. The enhanced mode (disabled by default) sends the domain name to Google, along with a "highly condensed fingerprint of the site." If the URL is of a known phishing site Google warns you. Otherwise it looks at the "fingerprint" and sees it if matches the fingerprint of well known legitimate sites. If the fingerprint matches the well known legitimate site, but the domain name does not, Google sends a warning, and notes the domain name for investigation and possible adding to database of known phishing sites.
Yeah the making it harder when stressed could be a problem. First of all when you are stressed the game is naturally harder (less clear minded and focused). Making it even harder seems wrong. However, if one does manage the skill of quickly killing off stress, the game remains easy. Then later with other games (not supporting this system) hopefully you will be able to apply the same technique, and thus not get stressed making this unrelated game easier, due to the lack of the naturally difficulty stress can add. At least that would be the theory. Certainly that is a technique worth mastering. But if this product really works, who knows?
There are some other reasons too. First of all, take iTunes. iTunes may not a real windows-like interface, and some apparently consider the Windows version to be bloated, but it does organize music well, and is easy enough to teach to people who are not computer literate. Some other players have good software, but others have software that is terrible.
iPod is easy to use. There is no denying that the scroll wheel interface is highly intuitive, and accessing features is fairly easy. Some other player do have interfaces that are just as good.
The iPod does not have feature bloat. Many other mp3 players have many extra features, but most of the times those features are very poorly implemented, and has the effect of just wasting menu space. These poorly implemented features also tend to drag the perception of the whole player down.
The headphones. For low to low mid-end earbuds, the ones that come with the iPod are some of the best. Of course, many headphones, or high-end earbuds are better.
The iPod has many accessories. It is one of the few players to support near full integration with some car head units (receivers).
It's name. Tell somebody you want an "iPod Nano" and they will be able to remember the name. There is no part of the name that looks like "z647", which people are quite likely to forget. Even if you wanted to specify the capacity it is still easier to remember. Many of the generations have distinct names like iPod Color, and iPod Video, which are easy to remember.
It has Apple's reputation for ease of use and reliability behind it. Most of the other closest competitors are marketed under brands with well known poor models, which can really hurt
The simple fact is that while many players are as good or better in some of those categories, they are lacking in one or more of the others. The combination of these atributes is why the iPod is the leading mp3 player.
Just a side note: people who are mentioning gap-less playback, please realize that many people have no such albums, and have no interest in this feature, so it should not be surprising that apple waited for so long before implementing.
It has been indicated that the iPod touch can run unmodified iPhone binaries. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/breaking/ipod-touch-runs-same-applications-as-iphone-296837.php
As such, it seems very likely that all non-phone apps from the iPhone that are missing from the iPod touch, will be able to be added by end users just as soon as a "jailbreak" method for the iPod touch has been found and verified. At that time, the Calendar app will support adding and editing entries. Considering that there is no legitimate reason for not supporting these apps and features apple may eventually add official support with a firmware update. The current reasons for crippling the iPod touch include attempting to differentiate the iPod Touch and the iPhone (this is not a very convincing reason, as the most important differences are obvious. The other reason is that previous iPods have generally been read-only devices. (Song playcounts, the on-the-go playlist, ratings, and very little else is treated as non-read-only by previous iPods).
iTunes is a direct port of the Mac iTunes. It uses the same idioms as other Mac applications. They may be different than window's idioms, but they are actually often more logical. The key is not to assume the usual Windows idioms apply. But if you have used Macs iTunes should be highly intuitive.
Well actually Xbox Live is the same service as "Games for Windows Live". (one subscription covers both). Windows Live itself is just a rebranding of most of MSN. This seems likely part of a long term strategy to kill off the MSN service entirely. The "Office Live" service is a completely unrelated service. (Not related to any other "Live" service, or even related to Office).
Also for what it is worth, Microsoft is working to tie the Windows Live and Xbox Live services a bit closer (hence the windows live messenger on XBOX360)
Doubt he's even a Windows power-user. They're a rare breed, and anyone who really knows Windows can learn Linux pretty easily. Well it depends. I mean a true power windows user will have deep familiarity with the available command line tools. They would not be afraid of scripting, and would likely use Windows PowerShell or Cygwin to gain better command line control of the system. However, if you have that level of understanding, you are likely to venture over to Linux.
However there are quite a few near-power-users that are comfortable playing in the registry, leave the file extensions unhidden, as well as the hidden and system files, etc. There is no doubt that that is a large step above many Windows users.
I think this gets to the nub of it. I wondered for many years why it was that people would vote for republicans. It was more or less a total mystery, then I realized that as incompetent as the GOP candidates are in my area, that the democrats are probably equally incompetent in GOP controlled areas.
You are spot on about dems and reps being basically equivalents. For the most part the way that our government functions is by trading off between the two parties who it is that is going to be screwing up the legislation. Why it is that around here I can't vote for a candidate that opposes the minimum wage and supports an income tax replacement for our sales tax and isn't a bigoted racist is beyond me. During last years elections one of the candidates was mainly running on a cut taxes and English is the national language platform. How useless is that? Especially when the the spending won't be cut to match the tax savings until there is serious trouble.
The key thing that the OP seems to have forgotten is that one doesn't become liberal or conservative by a change in intellect, the issue at the heart of it is a bit more personal, I would suspect that the more intellectually minded conservatives right now aren't republicans, mostly because of the assault by the republican party right now on anything intellectual.
What is the problem with the minimum wage statutes? They may be government regulation, but remember that there are many highly distinct types of regulation (although they can appar the same at first glance) and all have very different effects.
The first type of government regulation is generally beneficial. This is the regulation that covers working conditions. These regulations are in effect to prevent dangerous working conditions. (Lack of safety protocols generally increases a businesses profits, but can result in extremely nasty industrial accidents.)
Closely related is the government regulations that protect the public at large. These include truth in labeling laws, as an example.
There is also the type of government regulation that works to level the playing field. The idea is that large entrenched corporate monopolies do not let capitalism work well (there is not market to set the price if there is no competition). So this type of regulation works to decrease the barriers of entry into the field, to encourage additional small businesses to enter the feild, and have a chance of successfully competing with the giants. This type of regulation is admittedly uncommon, but does exist.
The most problematic government regulation as I see it, is regulation that is bought by the entrenched monopolies to protect themselves from competition. This type of regulation is often structured to look like one of the other types of regulation. The easiest way to detect this type of regulation is the lack of opposition to it by the large corporations affected.
First there is the non-gamer market. This is one of nintendo's current primary markets. The games for this market usually do not interest the hardcore gamer. They may or may not interest the average (semi-hardcore) gamer.
There is also the younger child target market. Nintendo tries to make sure that many of its games are appropriate for this market. These games may still interest the average gamer, and perhaps the occasional hard-core gamer.
Then there is the local multi-player area. This contains a fair amount of the previous two sections, with things like Wii Sports. It also includes party games like Mario party. It also contains a few semi-hardcore games like SSBB. This is likely to become the Wii's primary niche.
As the hardcore markets, recent nentendo systems have had fairly little to offer. Most of the best Hardcore/semi-hardcore games on the nintendo system come from the some classic franchises (Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Star Fox), and usually only a few major third-party games. This is one of the weaker areas of the system, but for some people it is more than enough to buy the system.
As for online play, the Wii does not even attempt to compete with the XBox360's "Live" system. (I have never used nor seen the online system of the 360, o I have no comment about that). This is partially because of the first two groups. Nintendo's consoles have always been the most child freindly systems, and if they were to have a full and decent online system, the newspapers would have a field day with think-of-the-children stories.
Best Buy can negotiate. Some of their stuff has a fairly large profit margin. For example my family has negotiated over $500 dollars off a TV! (A monster of a big screen TV). It sounds about like what you described there, except that the sale did come from Best Buy.
Based on appearances N has fixed the problem with 3rd party relations
Not in my observation. The Wiimote discourages traditional games, the Wii itself is so weak that its full potential will likely be realized within a couple of years, and Nintendo is still lackadaisical about online gaming. Those things are strong negatives to third parties.
Rob Generally this has been the case. Nintendo has a major focus on younger age range and non-gamers. These areas of focus mean that nintendo cannot really do much more than the irritating friend code system. Otherwise the Media would do a bunch of "pedo's can communicate with the children via the Wii!!!" type stories. (Those have already happened with the DS.) This is a shame. I will admit that the XBOX360 has a much better system (except for the idiotic subscription system). (I have never seen or used the PS3's online system, so I cannot comment on it). I honestly don't expect too much from the Wii in terms of hard-core or semi-hardcore games. The primarry ones will most likely be the Mario, Zelda, StarFox, and Metroid series (as always), with perhaps 1 or 2 good third party games.
However, the Wii has positioned itself fairly well for local-multiplayer. (Both non-traditional like Wiisports, or semi-tradional like SSBB and Mario Party series). So if one is a gamer, and local-multiplayer is not their thing, then the Wii is probably not the best console for them. However, it may still be worth having for the handful of good games it will have.
I'm afraid that the only thing that can be done is to fight this the same way Microsoft fights. (I.E. Pay companies to join the national standards organizations and vote NO.) The correct thing would have been for ISO to outright deny the fast tracking. After all, the standard conflicts with an existing standard, fails to use many exiting standards when relevant, and has no verified implementations. (One might say it has no implementations at all!) I mean the whole thing was stupid. Why did Microsoft even choose to go to an XML based format that actually has no benefits? The few benefits that XML could have brought have been canceled out by poor format design.
Google Earth has had the ability to look up into the sky for a while now. It has also had data to calculate the stars positions at a given time.
But This feature chooses not to re-use this at all! This is a whole set of data layers that works similarly but not identical to the data layers on earth.
The program does not look to be useful as a general astronomy program. It does even give information about the moon's position at any given time. (You have a limited system for animating the moon/planets positions, but only during a preselected time period.)
Well remember that on the average song there are many many different right holders. (Technically there are only a few true holders of copyright, but by tradition certain parts of the protected rights get sold to others in an exclusive contract. I'd be willing to say that quite a few of the complications of the US copyright laws are directly attributable to the entertainment industry.
There is copyright to the music, copyright to the lyrics, copyright to the performance (I've never been sure if this is a a true copyright on the performance, or a copyright on the recording or both), performance rights (The rights to perform the work), publication rights (For the lyrics), publication rights (for the sheet music), publication rights (for a specific recording of a specific performance), syncing rights (The rights to synchronize the music to video works [Yes this is a separate right]), and many more. In fact infringement of these rights is so easy that the big players most certainly do it all the time, entirely by accident. If they are caught, they simply pay what they owe plus a bit and everybody is happy. However, that does not work if you are a small player.
I have found that the whole system is fairly badly broken. Performers, lyricists, and composers get screwed out of their money both intentionally by the companies, and unintentionally by just how broken the system is.
Further, the whole system has messed up copyright law fairly badly. I have seen how parts of the law intended to protect the music industry can really mess up software licencing if anybody actually tried to apply those parts of the law to software. (The written law itself is perfectly clear that some of those concepts could be applied to software, despite never being intended to do so. I have no idea what the caselaw says on those issues).
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly was so offensive about MoveOn.org's ad campaign in the first place?
Petraeus has handled the Iraq war poorly, and in several cases lied outright to the American people. MoveOn.org called him out on it. Isn't that how democratic politics and free speech are supposed to work?
It's no secret that many Americans feel that the government misled the general public in order to bolster support for their war, and the ad was a simple reflection of this reality. It wasn't even a baseless personal attack -- they provide quotations, and even cite their sources.
Perhaps the most troubling part of the whole saga is that the house passed a resolution condemning the advert 341-79, and the senate 71-29 (With all 49 republicans, and 22 democrats voting in favor). The president even got in on the action.
This Time editorial seems to have the best summation of the whole situation.
Is this all the legislative branch is good for these days? Sternly wagging their fingers at political action groups, and listening to baseball testimony? Well, it seems about right for politicians in general to not like the idea of Political action groups calling out specific politicians for their faults. It may be troubling, but is far from unexpected.
While you are correct on all three points, the GP did note the third point, namely that Apple did contribute most of their changes back.
As far as dark fiber, I'm not aware of the government subsidizing that, the ILECs put that in, they shouldn't be forced sell it just because they aren't using it. Hmm.. If they stopped maintaining the copper, then they are failing to pay the right of way fees (that is part of the line maintenance costs). Thus the wire would be confiscated by the local government. I suppose legally the local government could maintain the lines and and sell the loops to the CLECs (in fact would be obligated to if they maintained the lines), or could tear the lines down, (and probably sue the ILEC's for the cost).
however your claim that FIOS users have no need for CLECs is absurd. The CLECs exist so that there is a least some level of competition.
It almost certainly has dual lasers, as do most recorders, but that has nothing to do with what it does...
Until they release more specs I can only speculate, but the press release makes it obvious enough - This simply contains a perfectly ordinary DVD burner, to which it writes MPEG-4 data on a normal DVD using the FS layout expected by BR drives.
Just as you can burn a DVD filesystem to a CD, you can just as easily burn a BR or HD filesystem to a DVD. They simply don't hold as much, requiring either loss of quality or limited duration (or both).
Now, why anyone would want to buy a recorder that costs more than the difference in price of recordable discs over the practical lifetime of that player while burning only ultra-low quality content, ya got me. The coolness factor, I guess? Personally, I plan to wait for dual-format next-gen burners and for one or the other's writeable discs to drop a tolerable price.
This seems likely. However, Note that while the DVD file system on a cd is legal, it is not maditory for the devices to support it. Some devices do (including computers generally), although a fair number of devices do not.
The same will likely be true of this technology. What I would find much more interesting is the use of these Discs with only standard def content. The ability to have an entire season of TV show on one disc at Standard definition sound really nice to me. The standards have support for this, but the studios will almost certainly not even consider using it. (After all, the main marketing point for these discs is the HD, not the increased capacity).
Female mules are very ocassionally fertile. There is one confirmed case of a female hinny being fertile. Female tigons and ligers are usually fertile. Males of all of these hybrids are invariably sterile.
You sound like you are describing Debian's stable distribution (except for the quickly part). The point releases never contain new versions of the programs. They only contain backports of fixes to major bugs. There is also the security repository that works by posting fixed versions of programs with security problems, once again, done by back-porting the changes. the security fixes are done quickly. But the non-security bug fixes found in the point releases are not quick. (After all they need to be tested for stability).
Exactly. The feature in Firefox is nothing more than the "Google Safe Browsing" extention being integrated into the browser. That extension is now part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox, but is disabled on recent Firefox browsers because of the built-in equivalent. It has two modes of operation. In one mode it simply hashes the domain name, and checks if the hash is found in a hash database of known phishing sites. The enhanced mode (disabled by default) sends the domain name to Google, along with a "highly condensed fingerprint of the site." If the URL is of a known phishing site Google warns you. Otherwise it looks at the "fingerprint" and sees it if matches the fingerprint of well known legitimate sites. If the fingerprint matches the well known legitimate site, but the domain name does not, Google sends a warning, and notes the domain name for investigation and possible adding to database of known phishing sites.
Did Firefox 3 change something?
Yeah the making it harder when stressed could be a problem. First of all when you are stressed the game is naturally harder (less clear minded and focused). Making it even harder seems wrong. However, if one does manage the skill of quickly killing off stress, the game remains easy. Then later with other games (not supporting this system) hopefully you will be able to apply the same technique, and thus not get stressed making this unrelated game easier, due to the lack of the naturally difficulty stress can add. At least that would be the theory. Certainly that is a technique worth mastering. But if this product really works, who knows?
Actually, She answered that it was art. She did not just say nothing. The police thought that she said nothing. A very big difference.
There are some other reasons too. First of all, take iTunes. iTunes may not a real windows-like interface, and some apparently consider the Windows version to be bloated, but it does organize music well, and is easy enough to teach to people who are not computer literate. Some other players have good software, but others have software that is terrible.
iPod is easy to use. There is no denying that the scroll wheel interface is highly intuitive, and accessing features is fairly easy. Some other player do have interfaces that are just as good.
The iPod does not have feature bloat. Many other mp3 players have many extra features, but most of the times those features are very poorly implemented, and has the effect of just wasting menu space. These poorly implemented features also tend to drag the perception of the whole player down.
The headphones. For low to low mid-end earbuds, the ones that come with the iPod are some of the best. Of course, many headphones, or high-end earbuds are better.
The iPod has many accessories. It is one of the few players to support near full integration with some car head units (receivers).
It's name. Tell somebody you want an "iPod Nano" and they will be able to remember the name. There is no part of the name that looks like "z647", which people are quite likely to forget. Even if you wanted to specify the capacity it is still easier to remember. Many of the generations have distinct names like iPod Color, and iPod Video, which are easy to remember.
It has Apple's reputation for ease of use and reliability behind it. Most of the other closest competitors are marketed under brands with well known poor models, which can really hurt
The simple fact is that while many players are as good or better in some of those categories, they are lacking in one or more of the others. The combination of these atributes is why the iPod is the leading mp3 player.
Just a side note: people who are mentioning gap-less playback, please realize that many people have no such albums, and have no interest in this feature, so it should not be surprising that apple waited for so long before implementing.
It has been indicated that the iPod touch can run unmodified iPhone binaries. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/breaking/ipod-touch-runs-same-applications-as-iphone-296837.php As such, it seems very likely that all non-phone apps from the iPhone that are missing from the iPod touch, will be able to be added by end users just as soon as a "jailbreak" method for the iPod touch has been found and verified. At that time, the Calendar app will support adding and editing entries. Considering that there is no legitimate reason for not supporting these apps and features apple may eventually add official support with a firmware update. The current reasons for crippling the iPod touch include attempting to differentiate the iPod Touch and the iPhone (this is not a very convincing reason, as the most important differences are obvious. The other reason is that previous iPods have generally been read-only devices. (Song playcounts, the on-the-go playlist, ratings, and very little else is treated as non-read-only by previous iPods).
iTunes is a direct port of the Mac iTunes. It uses the same idioms as other Mac applications. They may be different than window's idioms, but they are actually often more logical. The key is not to assume the usual Windows idioms apply. But if you have used Macs iTunes should be highly intuitive.
Well actually Xbox Live is the same service as "Games for Windows Live". (one subscription covers both). Windows Live itself is just a rebranding of most of MSN. This seems likely part of a long term strategy to kill off the MSN service entirely. The "Office Live" service is a completely unrelated service. (Not related to any other "Live" service, or even related to Office).
Also for what it is worth, Microsoft is working to tie the Windows Live and Xbox Live services a bit closer (hence the windows live messenger on XBOX360)
However there are quite a few near-power-users that are comfortable playing in the registry, leave the file extensions unhidden, as well as the hidden and system files, etc. There is no doubt that that is a large step above many Windows users.
You are spot on about dems and reps being basically equivalents. For the most part the way that our government functions is by trading off between the two parties who it is that is going to be screwing up the legislation. Why it is that around here I can't vote for a candidate that opposes the minimum wage and supports an income tax replacement for our sales tax and isn't a bigoted racist is beyond me. During last years elections one of the candidates was mainly running on a cut taxes and English is the national language platform. How useless is that? Especially when the the spending won't be cut to match the tax savings until there is serious trouble.
The key thing that the OP seems to have forgotten is that one doesn't become liberal or conservative by a change in intellect, the issue at the heart of it is a bit more personal, I would suspect that the more intellectually minded conservatives right now aren't republicans, mostly because of the assault by the republican party right now on anything intellectual.
What is the problem with the minimum wage statutes? They may be government regulation, but remember that there are many highly distinct types of regulation (although they can appar the same at first glance) and all have very different effects.
The first type of government regulation is generally beneficial. This is the regulation that covers working conditions. These regulations are in effect to prevent dangerous working conditions. (Lack of safety protocols generally increases a businesses profits, but can result in extremely nasty industrial accidents.)
Closely related is the government regulations that protect the public at large. These include truth in labeling laws, as an example.
There is also the type of government regulation that works to level the playing field. The idea is that large entrenched corporate monopolies do not let capitalism work well (there is not market to set the price if there is no competition). So this type of regulation works to decrease the barriers of entry into the field, to encourage additional small businesses to enter the feild, and have a chance of successfully competing with the giants. This type of regulation is admittedly uncommon, but does exist.
The most problematic government regulation as I see it, is regulation that is bought by the entrenched monopolies to protect themselves from competition. This type of regulation is often structured to look like one of the other types of regulation. The easiest way to detect this type of regulation is the lack of opposition to it by the large corporations affected.
This is mostly just a resumarization of my previous post at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=284221&cid=204 16563
but here is a quick glance some of the Wii's target areas.
First there is the non-gamer market. This is one of nintendo's current primary markets. The games for this market usually do not interest the hardcore gamer. They may or may not interest the average (semi-hardcore) gamer.
There is also the younger child target market. Nintendo tries to make sure that many of its games are appropriate for this market. These games may still interest the average gamer, and perhaps the occasional hard-core gamer.
Then there is the local multi-player area. This contains a fair amount of the previous two sections, with things like Wii Sports. It also includes party games like Mario party. It also contains a few semi-hardcore games like SSBB. This is likely to become the Wii's primary niche.
As the hardcore markets, recent nentendo systems have had fairly little to offer. Most of the best Hardcore/semi-hardcore games on the nintendo system come from the some classic franchises (Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Star Fox), and usually only a few major third-party games. This is one of the weaker areas of the system, but for some people it is more than enough to buy the system.
As for online play, the Wii does not even attempt to compete with the XBox360's "Live" system. (I have never used nor seen the online system of the 360, o I have no comment about that). This is partially because of the first two groups. Nintendo's consoles have always been the most child freindly systems, and if they were to have a full and decent online system, the newspapers would have a field day with think-of-the-children stories.
Best Buy can negotiate. Some of their stuff has a fairly large profit margin. For example my family has negotiated over $500 dollars off a TV! (A monster of a big screen TV). It sounds about like what you described there, except that the sale did come from Best Buy.
Not in my observation. The Wiimote discourages traditional games, the Wii itself is so weak that its full potential will likely be realized within a couple of years, and Nintendo is still lackadaisical about online gaming. Those things are strong negatives to third parties.
Rob Generally this has been the case. Nintendo has a major focus on younger age range and non-gamers. These areas of focus mean that nintendo cannot really do much more than the irritating friend code system. Otherwise the Media would do a bunch of "pedo's can communicate with the children via the Wii!!!" type stories. (Those have already happened with the DS.) This is a shame. I will admit that the XBOX360 has a much better system (except for the idiotic subscription system). (I have never seen or used the PS3's online system, so I cannot comment on it). I honestly don't expect too much from the Wii in terms of hard-core or semi-hardcore games. The primarry ones will most likely be the Mario, Zelda, StarFox, and Metroid series (as always), with perhaps 1 or 2 good third party games.
However, the Wii has positioned itself fairly well for local-multiplayer. (Both non-traditional like Wiisports, or semi-tradional like SSBB and Mario Party series). So if one is a gamer, and local-multiplayer is not their thing, then the Wii is probably not the best console for them. However, it may still be worth having for the handful of good games it will have.
I'm afraid that the only thing that can be done is to fight this the same way Microsoft fights. (I.E. Pay companies to join the national standards organizations and vote NO.) The correct thing would have been for ISO to outright deny the fast tracking. After all, the standard conflicts with an existing standard, fails to use many exiting standards when relevant, and has no verified implementations. (One might say it has no implementations at all!) I mean the whole thing was stupid. Why did Microsoft even choose to go to an XML based format that actually has no benefits? The few benefits that XML could have brought have been canceled out by poor format design.
Google Earth has had the ability to look up into the sky for a while now. It has also had data to calculate the stars positions at a given time.
But This feature chooses not to re-use this at all! This is a whole set of data layers that works similarly but not identical to the data layers on earth.
The program does not look to be useful as a general astronomy program. It does even give information about the moon's position at any given time. (You have a limited system for animating the moon/planets positions, but only during a preselected time period.)
Basically, the sky system is only a gimmick.
Well remember that on the average song there are many many different right holders. (Technically there are only a few true holders of copyright, but by tradition certain parts of the protected rights get sold to others in an exclusive contract. I'd be willing to say that quite a few of the complications of the US copyright laws are directly attributable to the entertainment industry.
There is copyright to the music, copyright to the lyrics, copyright to the performance (I've never been sure if this is a a true copyright on the performance, or a copyright on the recording or both), performance rights (The rights to perform the work), publication rights (For the lyrics), publication rights (for the sheet music), publication rights (for a specific recording of a specific performance), syncing rights (The rights to synchronize the music to video works [Yes this is a separate right]), and many more. In fact infringement of these rights is so easy that the big players most certainly do it all the time, entirely by accident. If they are caught, they simply pay what they owe plus a bit and everybody is happy. However, that does not work if you are a small player.
I have found that the whole system is fairly badly broken. Performers, lyricists, and composers get screwed out of their money both intentionally by the companies, and unintentionally by just how broken the system is.
Further, the whole system has messed up copyright law fairly badly. I have seen how parts of the law intended to protect the music industry can really mess up software licencing if anybody actually tried to apply those parts of the law to software. (The written law itself is perfectly clear that some of those concepts could be applied to software, despite never being intended to do so. I have no idea what the caselaw says on those issues).