I'm not sure why people think the iTunes Music Store makes Apple any money at all. Most of the money goes to whoever licenses the music. Apple provides the service to A) sell hardware (iPods with ~40% profit per unit, iTV?, mini?) and B) prove the feasibility and gain acceptance for digital distribution. Here are two of the big reasons for why the content from the iTMS has such low margins for Apple. They have the means and the motivation.
Motivation: As with all new products, Apple wanted iTMS to become popular and accepted. For any new technology to successfuly enter a market or create a new market, price and perceived quality are usually the most important factors. A cheaper better mouse trap with a pinch of good marketing will usually do well. Therefore Apple has an incentive to keep price as low as they can go.
Means: It is CHEAP to distribute digitally. Therefore Apple CAN sell for cheaper than the legacy content distribution moguls.
Note as evidence for at least the movies and TV episodes the recent Walmart vs. Apple articles, the articles usually contain some analysis that shows Apple undercutting Walmart's prices even though Walmart is selling new release DVDs at a loss! Trust me when I say that if anyone sells for less than Walmart (even if the products are not exactly the same), their profit margin is minimal. Then for music, even though this is not the greatest source, it's just one article of many that tell about the pennies made per song purchase on iTMS.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that there is not even a TV on the market that can support the Sony PS3's dual HDMI connection for 1080p at 60 fps? Last I read that 1080p30 has the same bandwidth as 1080i60, which is the max of each HDMI connection as per the standard. Hence, dual HDMI connectors like we have dual DVIs for large LCDs.
I just bought a 50" DLP, a Sony Grand Wega, from Circuit City. It was advertized at the store as a 1080p TV, but in actually is only a 1080i TV according to the manual. I will be returning it due to analog to digital conversion lag (e.g. even with Game Mode on, Halo 2 is sufficiently lagged up to tell the difference between my 32" CRT and the 50" DLP), and the bitter taste in my mouth about not being able to do 1080p60 with a $2000 TV. Not to mention the lack of DVI connectors... don't even get me started, but the sooner HDMI is hacked and I can connect my computer digitally to the screen the happier I will be to lay down $2000 for a High-Def TV.
Again, why doesn't Canada seem to have this problem? Crippling my ISP? How about using the contracted bandwidth that I paid for... The feasibility is there, the gumption and the desire to provide this level of service is not. It does not make the telecoms more money, therefore they will not do it.
Why would it cost 10x more? Where did you get that number? Why does it cost more in the US than Canada for twice the bandwidth with no caps? I don't think cost is an issue. It's more politics and our telecom industry doing the Ma Bell skit over, and over, and over, again.
Of course, there are better deals I'm sure, but that's what you get for 5 minutes of research.
The moral of the story is simply that of "good" business practices. The telecom industry keeps development costs down, our bandwidth shitty, and profits up. I'd do the regular 1, 2, 3 list with PROFIT! at the end but I think this worked just fine.
Well, I never expected anyone to read the spec but a major part of this project is to keep the privacy of its users intact. In other words, your CAR will report the road conditions, speed, etc. in a similar manner that an Anonymous Coward posts to/. except in this case, it actually has to be anonymous or it won't be implemented.
http://www.its.dot.gov/vii/
In summary, cars talk to cars that talk to a wireless roadway infrastructure for traffic, road, safety conditions, etc. I am about to start working on this project, as it seems to be slowly making progress between all the contributors but suffers overall management issues... mainly from all the car companies trying to make it a subscription-only service and other such nonsense. Write your reps and let them know we need this sooner than later, and not as some jacked up add-on service.
The PPUS should add some recent links to add credibility to the stories that they cite as evidence for their case. I remember in high school policy debate that whoever had the most recent and relevant articles were those who won the points being made. At least, when the judge knew how to debate before judging. =) Anyway, I just think that would add to the lacking credibility for the first-time viewers, as opposed to the slashdotters (which makes up for 99% of his bandwidth, I'm sure) who know the story inside and out.
Though most of us are not business majors, isn't this the perfect place to run a cost-benefit analysis? Wouldn't it go something like this (in your perferred unit of currency)...
(what improved vision is worth to you) * (success rate, or 1 - your defined failure rate)
- (what avoiding a complication is worth to you) * (complication rate)
- (cost of procedure)
if this is a positive number, then get the surgery. If it's not, try something else or wait until you want improved vision more than before.
The take-home message is that you have to want or need the improved vision at least the cost of the surgery more than you fear the chance of realistically suffering a complication.
You got lucky with your hardware and by getting to start with a later version of fbsd. My NIC card needed an obscurely named driver for fbsd, but was done more simply with a generic driver in Gentoo. Also, I managed to get sysinstall to skip steps and hang while downloading/unpacking the system files and ports many times. Thus warranting more reinstalls than I ever had to do with Gentoo. To each his own. =)
I think installing Gentoo a few times is a great way to get to know your computer. Once you think you have it all down, try the FreeBSD installer. It will rock your world. And by rock your world, I mean new levels of RTFM pain. Kind of like going from Sayan to Super Sayan for the first time. Pain and suffering.
Don't take my word for it. Try it yourself. Then set up benchmarks for the things you care about on your computer, such as startup times, average load times, routing/ping times, etc. and compare between the two. I found, years ago, that fbsd better suited my firewalling/natd needs over a fully optimized Gentoo distro built from scratch (with about a month's worth of kernel tweaking). I base this purely on network performance. This may no longer be the case so I recommend doing your own tests and be your own authority. Portage is a derivative of ports, so you will be fairly comfortable with that system, I think. It's just a little old and hard to use at times compared to its younger and cleaner python offspring.
It would serve us well to remember that there is a difference between rhetoric and dialectic. If we are talking about truth and logic, as those who subscribe to the whole Western thought process often do, then we stick to the Aristotelian dialectic and shun the rhetoric since rhetoric just confuses the issue at hand--truth. If you wish to compare the rhetoric between the IDer's and the Bush administration, I don't think it's a hard point to prove, especially given that they were both conceived from the same group--the conservative right. It seems natural that the rhetoric be similar, as it needs to appeal and seem familiar to the same people who have over the years grown to be comforted by it and possibly even need it in order to believe anything, whether it be news or science, fact or fiction, or even religion.
However, I have not seen much in the way of formal arguments with actual quotations and descriptions of the rhetorical devices used and direct comparisons made between these two groups. It might prove to be an interesting study in some academic sense, but where's the fun in that? It's easier to make sweeping generalizations and such at the problem instead of dealing with people and the issues.
In any case, back to the point, before we skewer all IDers in general let us make the distinction between the private IDer that keeps to him or herself and does not impose his or her belief upon others and the extroverted loadmouth with a loaded agenda to keep the wool over our children's eyes, thus giving anyone the power to use words to circumvent truth. Now why would anyone ever need to do such a thing... oh wait, maybe this will clear it up in a slightly more on-topic sense: So as you feel your skin cancer forming and watch the ice caps come washing over us, just remember it isn't because of mankind, President Bush says so.
--
Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. -- Seneca
I am sorry for sounding petty here, but I would like to see some references or citations for the research you mentioned. As far as I have seen and read, kids old enough to seek porn know how to differentiate between fantasy from reality.
The appeal to the violence argument is ridiculous, too. Don't *add* porn, *remove* the violence! If that means that your kids (and you) end up watching less (or no) TV, and skip almost every movie, can you argue that you have been harmed in some way?
I think you misunderstand. The violence argument is meant to be inclusive, not exclusive. For instance, we don't much care if our children watch live abortions but we don't really want them to know about the sex that makes those babies. Let alone the entertaining versions of such.
Besides, this so-called addiction is not like smoking cigs which generally annoys the others who do not. Who cares what horrible habits you have, so long as they don't infringe upon other people's rights? I don't. I just wish everyone would stop being so puritan about porn and see that perhaps it's only an issue since we make it an issue.
From a completely different perspective, what about the art behind the human form? What about being comfortable with who we are and how we look? I'd much rather children be exposed to as much stimuli as they wish, perhaps even a little more sometimes, and observe their reactions and coach them if necessary. For the most part, I think we underestimate our children and shoot them in the foot by sheltering them from their own curiosity. It's better than trying to hide things from them, because in the end, if they want it, they'll get it. It's just a matter of whether or not you will ever know about it.
I found this Google homepage quote of the day vaguely applicable to our topic.
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Apparently Mr Donofrio's intellect is at stake here.
Though, from his point of view the question is hard to answer. What is the "next big thing" that we can develop and market successfully? Ah, the simple life of the business elites--where the boxes are small and the problems are huge.
Sorry if I was taking to the hyperbole, but check this out:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=IMMR
They're not very good at much but losing money. Granted their products may be important, I don't think the niche market is enough to support the industry that they're trying to make it. The numbers from Immersion's black book tend to agree. At least within the scope of their current business model.
From an engineering standpoint the work they do is increasingly redundant and trivial to accomplish as the relevant technologies in motors, motor control, materials, LCDs, and digital electronics continue to improve. Hence my, and others', general indignation at the fact that innovation cannot be parallel but must be held to some archaically slow IP system via another archaic system that purportedly serves out Justice in a friendly neighborhood near you. I just don't get it. It's not Just and it's not The Right Way(tm).
Immersion is a small company with less interest in actually developing "touch sensitive" force feedback devices, and more interest in making money in a niche market that simply should not exist. Who the hell would buy such things to warrant the existence of an entire company? Oh wait... maybe game consoles and high-end/low-volume electronics customers would want this stuff. So why weren't they working with MS and Sony to begin with? This looks bad regardless of the light shining on it.
Is the moral of the story that patent law simply sucks or is it even broader in that we have some civic duty to try and get a lot of something for a doing a whole lot of nothing?
Let's not forget that this paid "expert" in quotations is the inventor of said technology. Of course he was paid to invent and develop it. What the hell kind of argument is it to say that because an engineer was paid to do his job his testimony concerning technolgy he invented has no relevance as to how the technology can be used legally?
Since when has origin been a significant means for authentication? Whitelists are only useful when we have authentic sender information. Then, even if we have authentic sending information, what about hijacking address lists then spamming the people who recieve mail from you. Can't say this chain-mail approach has never been done before. Nope. Not once.
I say this, if we want to get rid of spam and phishing, we should find the people who are doing it and hire Bruno from "the local mafia" shop to make him an offer he can't refuse. Surely the iron fist approach will work were all else has failed. =)
Slashdot Mirror
Wow... this is the first comment that looks like someone actually RTFA. Good job!
And no, that wasn't sarcasm.
So did they win? Tycho, that is... or is there something I need to pay for so I can read it? ;)
use a big stick. Didn't we learn anything in American History? Roosevelt pwned.
I'm not sure why people think the iTunes Music Store makes Apple any money at all. Most of the money goes to whoever licenses the music. Apple provides the service to A) sell hardware (iPods with ~40% profit per unit, iTV?, mini?) and B) prove the feasibility and gain acceptance for digital distribution. Here are two of the big reasons for why the content from the iTMS has such low margins for Apple. They have the means and the motivation.
Motivation: As with all new products, Apple wanted iTMS to become popular and accepted. For any new technology to successfuly enter a market or create a new market, price and perceived quality are usually the most important factors. A cheaper better mouse trap with a pinch of good marketing will usually do well. Therefore Apple has an incentive to keep price as low as they can go.
Means: It is CHEAP to distribute digitally. Therefore Apple CAN sell for cheaper than the legacy content distribution moguls.
Note as evidence for at least the movies and TV episodes the recent Walmart vs. Apple articles, the articles usually contain some analysis that shows Apple undercutting Walmart's prices even though Walmart is selling new release DVDs at a loss! Trust me when I say that if anyone sells for less than Walmart (even if the products are not exactly the same), their profit margin is minimal. Then for music, even though this is not the greatest source, it's just one article of many that tell about the pennies made per song purchase on iTMS.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that there is not even a TV on the market that can support the Sony PS3's dual HDMI connection for 1080p at 60 fps? Last I read that 1080p30 has the same bandwidth as 1080i60, which is the max of each HDMI connection as per the standard. Hence, dual HDMI connectors like we have dual DVIs for large LCDs.
I just bought a 50" DLP, a Sony Grand Wega, from Circuit City. It was advertized at the store as a 1080p TV, but in actually is only a 1080i TV according to the manual. I will be returning it due to analog to digital conversion lag (e.g. even with Game Mode on, Halo 2 is sufficiently lagged up to tell the difference between my 32" CRT and the 50" DLP), and the bitter taste in my mouth about not being able to do 1080p60 with a $2000 TV. Not to mention the lack of DVI connectors... don't even get me started, but the sooner HDMI is hacked and I can connect my computer digitally to the screen the happier I will be to lay down $2000 for a High-Def TV.
Again, why doesn't Canada seem to have this problem? Crippling my ISP? How about using the contracted bandwidth that I paid for... The feasibility is there, the gumption and the desire to provide this level of service is not. It does not make the telecoms more money, therefore they will not do it.
Why would it cost 10x more? Where did you get that number? Why does it cost more in the US than Canada for twice the bandwidth with no caps? I don't think cost is an issue. It's more politics and our telecom industry doing the Ma Bell skit over, and over, and over, again.
i spid=188&sp=PQ&serv_type=cable&busper=res&maxprc=1 00&city=Qu%E9bec%20City&SUBMIT=showdetail
Don't believe me, try this link:
http://www.canadianisp.com/cgi-bin/ispsearch.cgi?
Of course, there are better deals I'm sure, but that's what you get for 5 minutes of research.
The moral of the story is simply that of "good" business practices. The telecom industry keeps development costs down, our bandwidth shitty, and profits up. I'd do the regular 1, 2, 3 list with PROFIT! at the end but I think this worked just fine.
Well, I never expected anyone to read the spec but a major part of this project is to keep the privacy of its users intact. In other words, your CAR will report the road conditions, speed, etc. in a similar manner that an Anonymous Coward posts to /. except in this case, it actually has to be anonymous or it won't be implemented.
http://www.its.dot.gov/vii/ In summary, cars talk to cars that talk to a wireless roadway infrastructure for traffic, road, safety conditions, etc. I am about to start working on this project, as it seems to be slowly making progress between all the contributors but suffers overall management issues... mainly from all the car companies trying to make it a subscription-only service and other such nonsense. Write your reps and let them know we need this sooner than later, and not as some jacked up add-on service.
The PPUS should add some recent links to add credibility to the stories that they cite as evidence for their case. I remember in high school policy debate that whoever had the most recent and relevant articles were those who won the points being made. At least, when the judge knew how to debate before judging. =) Anyway, I just think that would add to the lacking credibility for the first-time viewers, as opposed to the slashdotters (which makes up for 99% of his bandwidth, I'm sure) who know the story inside and out.
Though most of us are not business majors, isn't this the perfect place to run a cost-benefit analysis? Wouldn't it go something like this (in your perferred unit of currency)...
(what improved vision is worth to you) * (success rate, or 1 - your defined failure rate)
- (what avoiding a complication is worth to you) * (complication rate)
- (cost of procedure)
if this is a positive number, then get the surgery. If it's not, try something else or wait until you want improved vision more than before.
The take-home message is that you have to want or need the improved vision at least the cost of the surgery more than you fear the chance of realistically suffering a complication.
You got lucky with your hardware and by getting to start with a later version of fbsd. My NIC card needed an obscurely named driver for fbsd, but was done more simply with a generic driver in Gentoo. Also, I managed to get sysinstall to skip steps and hang while downloading/unpacking the system files and ports many times. Thus warranting more reinstalls than I ever had to do with Gentoo. To each his own. =)
I think installing Gentoo a few times is a great way to get to know your computer. Once you think you have it all down, try the FreeBSD installer. It will rock your world. And by rock your world, I mean new levels of RTFM pain. Kind of like going from Sayan to Super Sayan for the first time. Pain and suffering.
Don't take my word for it. Try it yourself. Then set up benchmarks for the things you care about on your computer, such as startup times, average load times, routing/ping times, etc. and compare between the two. I found, years ago, that fbsd better suited my firewalling/natd needs over a fully optimized Gentoo distro built from scratch (with about a month's worth of kernel tweaking). I base this purely on network performance. This may no longer be the case so I recommend doing your own tests and be your own authority. Portage is a derivative of ports, so you will be fairly comfortable with that system, I think. It's just a little old and hard to use at times compared to its younger and cleaner python offspring.
In any case, install, learn, enjoy.
It would serve us well to remember that there is a difference between rhetoric and dialectic. If we are talking about truth and logic, as those who subscribe to the whole Western thought process often do, then we stick to the Aristotelian dialectic and shun the rhetoric since rhetoric just confuses the issue at hand--truth. If you wish to compare the rhetoric between the IDer's and the Bush administration, I don't think it's a hard point to prove, especially given that they were both conceived from the same group--the conservative right. It seems natural that the rhetoric be similar, as it needs to appeal and seem familiar to the same people who have over the years grown to be comforted by it and possibly even need it in order to believe anything, whether it be news or science, fact or fiction, or even religion.
However, I have not seen much in the way of formal arguments with actual quotations and descriptions of the rhetorical devices used and direct comparisons made between these two groups. It might prove to be an interesting study in some academic sense, but where's the fun in that? It's easier to make sweeping generalizations and such at the problem instead of dealing with people and the issues.
In any case, back to the point, before we skewer all IDers in general let us make the distinction between the private IDer that keeps to him or herself and does not impose his or her belief upon others and the extroverted loadmouth with a loaded agenda to keep the wool over our children's eyes, thus giving anyone the power to use words to circumvent truth. Now why would anyone ever need to do such a thing... oh wait, maybe this will clear it up in a slightly more on-topic sense: So as you feel your skin cancer forming and watch the ice caps come washing over us, just remember it isn't because of mankind, President Bush says so.
--
Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. -- Seneca
I am sorry for sounding petty here, but I would like to see some references or citations for the research you mentioned. As far as I have seen and read, kids old enough to seek porn know how to differentiate between fantasy from reality.
Besides, this so-called addiction is not like smoking cigs which generally annoys the others who do not. Who cares what horrible habits you have, so long as they don't infringe upon other people's rights? I don't. I just wish everyone would stop being so puritan about porn and see that perhaps it's only an issue since we make it an issue.
From a completely different perspective, what about the art behind the human form? What about being comfortable with who we are and how we look? I'd much rather children be exposed to as much stimuli as they wish, perhaps even a little more sometimes, and observe their reactions and coach them if necessary. For the most part, I think we underestimate our children and shoot them in the foot by sheltering them from their own curiosity. It's better than trying to hide things from them, because in the end, if they want it, they'll get it. It's just a matter of whether or not you will ever know about it.
I found this Google homepage quote of the day vaguely applicable to our topic.
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Apparently Mr Donofrio's intellect is at stake here.
Though, from his point of view the question is hard to answer. What is the "next big thing" that we can develop and market successfully? Ah, the simple life of the business elites--where the boxes are small and the problems are huge.
Sorry if I was taking to the hyperbole, but check this out: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=IMMR They're not very good at much but losing money. Granted their products may be important, I don't think the niche market is enough to support the industry that they're trying to make it. The numbers from Immersion's black book tend to agree. At least within the scope of their current business model. From an engineering standpoint the work they do is increasingly redundant and trivial to accomplish as the relevant technologies in motors, motor control, materials, LCDs, and digital electronics continue to improve. Hence my, and others', general indignation at the fact that innovation cannot be parallel but must be held to some archaically slow IP system via another archaic system that purportedly serves out Justice in a friendly neighborhood near you. I just don't get it. It's not Just and it's not The Right Way(tm).
Immersion is a small company with less interest in actually developing "touch sensitive" force feedback devices, and more interest in making money in a niche market that simply should not exist. Who the hell would buy such things to warrant the existence of an entire company? Oh wait... maybe game consoles and high-end/low-volume electronics customers would want this stuff. So why weren't they working with MS and Sony to begin with? This looks bad regardless of the light shining on it.
Is the moral of the story that patent law simply sucks or is it even broader in that we have some civic duty to try and get a lot of something for a doing a whole lot of nothing?
Let's not forget that this paid "expert" in quotations is the inventor of said technology. Of course he was paid to invent and develop it. What the hell kind of argument is it to say that because an engineer was paid to do his job his testimony concerning technolgy he invented has no relevance as to how the technology can be used legally?
Since when has origin been a significant means for authentication? Whitelists are only useful when we have authentic sender information. Then, even if we have authentic sending information, what about hijacking address lists then spamming the people who recieve mail from you. Can't say this chain-mail approach has never been done before. Nope. Not once.
I say this, if we want to get rid of spam and phishing, we should find the people who are doing it and hire Bruno from "the local mafia" shop to make him an offer he can't refuse. Surely the iron fist approach will work were all else has failed. =)