>> i dont see how money can be brought into this at all.
That's possibly because you're not a lawyer, or even read the actual goings on of the trial, including the opposing arguments and the judge's comments.
The reason money "can be brought into this at all," is that a "fair use" defense requires certain conditions be met--one of which is that it benefits society. This is typically qualified with the intent of the derived work: educational uses bolster strengthen this argument; while purely commercial ones weaken it.
By the way, I'm also not a lawyer, but I read some of the documents from the court.
>> "It means you need to separate the concept of the Java programming language from the Java runtime environment. The language is what the code is written in. The runtime environment is where the compiled code gets executed. The compilation to byte code is what separates Dalvik and the JRE."
Actually, he did, but you didn't. When he said that "Java is fragmented," he is talking about the mind-share of developers using that language.
You seem to be obsessed with trying to keep Android and Java separated by grasping to straws, delineating their technical differences. Who cares?! The reason this is at trial and a Judge is seriously considering the issue (as opposed to dismissing it right from the outset), is because it is not as clear-cut as you claim.
Sun's (and now Oracle's) intention with *both* the language and framework was to have developers expend effort on training for a single platform that will then run everywhere, including mobile platforms. Android throws a wrench into the works by splintering the development efforts of Java developers into essentially two platforms, and arresting Sun's (now Oracle's) potential to release an official mobile Java platform.
Part of Oracle's argument is that *this* was Google's intention from the beginning: to avoid having to compete with yet another programming language and exploit an existing large group of developers already trained in the language--without paying for a license to clone it or its API.
You are incorrect. They stored all data slurped, unencrypted *and* encrypted. That's why the modifications to the kismet software.
Plus, the headers of all transmissions are sent unencrypted, even if the payload is. So they slurped the source and destinations, and additional information, of all transmissions sniffed, even of those that were clearly intended to be private.
>> We seem to be moving from a data-centric view of the world to a view which encompasses the application which created the data, and I don't think I like it.
I must say that this has always been the goal of personal computing. Why is it important to access files directly when you can only use it with specific applications? Isn't it the job of the applications to handle their own data types, rather than deferring all this administrative work to the user?
I want my photo application to have access to my photos and show them to me, and allow me to edit them. I further want this access abstracted. I profit not in the least by having them thrown in with a bunch of text files and other documents of myriad type; it just adds to the confusion and the maintenance burden.
Likewise for word processor documents: why would I ever need to see them thrown anonymously in a folder without context? If I ever need to access them is to read, edit, or share them, and a suitable application would allow me to do so.
Compartmentalizing the file system by document type (or application-specific function) using folders goes someways towards this, but why not extend this to its logical conclusion and abstract the entire file system.
But the price is set by the Publisher. If they don't sell books, they don't make money. It is in their interest to price their books at a reasonable price.
Amazon, on the other hand, sells abso-fscking-lutely everything under the Sun, and can afford to lower it's prices below cost (as it was doing before) to prevent competition.
Actually, Amazon is doing to e-book Publishers what Wal-Mart does to their suppliers: they are a de facto monopoly in the market and get to dictate the terms to them. Amazon did not allow any publishers to raise their wholesale price, and would decide what price to set. Most of the time, the price was artificially low and at a loss, to bar entry into the market by competitors.
This prevented the publishers from being able to sell their goods to someone else, and in essence made them beholden to Amazon's whims. This was the problem. This is what the author is decrying in this article: where was the DOJ then?
The prices are a bit more expensive now, when the market is still nascent. It is expected to fall as competition enters the market. This is the point.
Moreover, the prices are more expensive because before they were kept artificially lowered by Amazon. Yes, it may have been great for consumers in the short-termed, but the complaint from the publishers has always been that it was not sustainable for the industry.
In a nutshell, Amazon went crazy with VC money growing their automated distribution and inventory management systems at the turn of the Century (as many other start-ups did at the time), and when the dot-com bubble burst there was pressure to make money out of their existing infrastructure.
They came up with some clever marketing to convince large and mid-size corporations to hand over computer processing in their hosted environments, harking back to the days of centralized mainframe and "utility computing" back in the 1970s.
Amazon weren't the only ones, many other companies were caught by the downturned economy with large data centers with little to process.
>> "First, content owners need only hold a couple of copies of each title, one in SD, the second in HD."
Uh.. Sounds fine for them. Alright, what do I get?
>> "Secondly, if a studio decides to offer, say, 4K by 2K copies, it can do so easily."
Hum... That's for *them*, too. Surely, there's something good for me, since it's designed to improve my experience, and make it more convenient than pirating, right?
>> "But, yes, all this involves DRM, to prevent folk giving content away to all and sundry."
DOH! I should have known. That and the focus on a "rental" model are really the reasons why this endeavor will surely fail.
I'll stick to ripping my own DVDs into my computer, and playing them on my Apple TV.
But how much of a "runaway success" is it really, if the product makes no money? It's true, Google created a service which ended up being the best of breed and loved by all, but which had to be modified from it's original design in order to make money and support a business.
The problem is that, as long as Google "owned" the Web, as they seemed to do for some time, they could avoid impacting their flagship service with much intrusive ads, because the sheer scale of their usage made enough money with minimum ads. However, this is predicated on Google being the de facto portal to the Web and all online services and destinations.
The truth is that they didn't contemplate this changing, or at least not so soon.
It's not that Google needs to be Facebook in order to survive in the current marketplace; it's that they need to be *something else* than what they are right now. People are accessing online services through myriad other resources that are not Google, and "Web Search" is much less relevant at the moment.
Some may call these "silos," but in essence, they are specialized utilities. Just like the electric company provides you electricity and the water works company provides you with water and sewage service, different online resources provide different services. That they require discrete information from you to do this, well, that's par for the course--the water and electric companies also need to know where you live and how you like to pay, and by extension of you being a customer, will always know how you consume their services.
Google chose to be Facebook, because they thought that turning search algorithms for online web pages into a social-graph analysis machine would be simple (perhaps it is), but mostly because Facebook was raking in the money, and Google wanted some of that.
Even if every user enters the wrong text for the unknown image, I would imagine that they have a very low chance of entering the *same* wrong text. Therefore, the image never gets a high enough confidence of correctness. The end result is that there is no change in state for the image, it remains unknown.
That may not help solve the unknown images, but it doesn't necessarily pollute the database with bad data.
Right. Just like they did with their Nexus One store.
The article doesn't mention it, but the impetus of Google's previous online storefront wasn't just to provide a channel for the Nexus One--it was intended to remove distribution control from the carriers and open up a market place where *all* phones could be sold. Back then it was lauded as Google shaking up the incumbency and bringing in a new model to the industry--at least if you took Google's word.
As it turned out, no other device manufacturer joined and few customers came, and the rest is history.
That's the same "Google the Juggernaut" attacking "the monopoly & the status quo" back then too.
Let's not forget that the iPad is less than 2 years old. Saying that Apple depends on a relatively new product means nothing, unless you are suggesting that they will not produce anything else new.
Moreover, any other company would kill to have the income from any of the other products Apple sells. That the iPad dwarfs them all does not mean that Apple would not be able to survive without it. After all, it did survive before the iPhone and the iPad, and in fact it brought itself back from the brink of bankruptcy before even the iPod.
So, Apple "relies" on the iPad today as much as it "relied" on the iPhone before it, and the iPod before that, and the Macs before them all. It has always relied on the products it just happens to be selling at the time.
>> "They aren't selling very well because very few are willing to pay a premium for an Internet TV when they can buy a big screen LCD TV for less and plug it into Cable or Satellite."
It could also be because they treat the Web on the TV as "The Web," just like a PC, and come with a scary-looking keyboard that further cements the idea that it's more like "work" than "passive entertainment."
>> "Apple has zero leverage to strong arm anyone in the TV industry to work with them. Movie content may be another subject altogether, but again, Comcast is much bigger than Apple and doesn't need them, much less CBS or any of the others."
True, they have zero leverage... right now. Just like they had zero leverage on the Music Industry at some point. More importantly, Apple does not need leverage on them, only the promise of increased profits from their vast user rolls.
Of course, the content industry can choose to snob Apple, but that doesn't make it a good strategic decision, just a puerile pissing match.
>> "They lose nothing by not working with Apple. Apple on the other hand loses an opportunity to get content providers on board."
Actually, if Apple gets other content providers on-board, and their product and model proves successful, CBS may see themselves in a weaker position to negotiate themselves back into the fold.
It is true that they lose nothing *right now*, but again I say that this may not necessarily be the best strategic decision. Streamed content and Internet-connected "smart" TVs seems to be the future of television, and so far nobody has been able to break the floodgates of revenue in that market.
Apple, however, has a proven track record of entering emerging markets and raking in the profits for themselves and their partners.
You're putting too much weight on the words of one self-aggrandizing CEO.
>> "Taking on established incumbents in a price-sensitive market like TVs just isn't their style,"
You mean, like they did with the iPod in the MP3 Player market and the iPhone in the Smartphone market?
Sure, in retrospect it may seem like these were emerging markets that were completely re-invented. However, when they entered these, the view from outside was that they were attempting to compete with entrenched players, such as Creative Labs and Nokia.
Perhaps in five years you'll look back and recognize the "Smart/Internet TV" as an emergent market that nobody knew how to handle properly until Apple came along.
I'm not excusing the extradition or discussing the merits of the case. It's just that some of us remember back when Mr. Dotcom, known then as Kimble, used to be a self-promoting prick, boasting of his hacking prowess and setting up fly-by-night shell companies designed to take money from unsuspecting and gullible punters.
He hasn't changed a bit (perhaps he got fatter?), though it appears that he finally hit paydirt for real with Megauploads--at least for a while.
It's comforting to know that his bullshit stories and ostentatious display of apparent wealth have not changed one bit.
At least there's one constant in this Universe. Go, Kimble--er, Mr. Dotcom--show us your cars, houses, and chicks; and tell us again how much of a bad ass hacker you are.
Not only that, but I cannot see any sane person in their right minds choosing to be charged by the network carrier, and be subjected to curious hidden fees, dubious taxes, and other charge obfuscations effected on their monthly telephone bill. You know, as opposed to the Apple or Google invoice which contains a single line item per purchase, the price on the tag, and the final total.
Unless they force Apple and Google to use their payment methods, which I'm sure the Feds will have something to say about.
Direct phone-bill payments sounded like a good idea when mobile e-commerce depended on a wide and diverse array of individual processors, each with a different interface and requirements. But with 1-click purchases from Apple and Google readily available, why would anybody care?
Those are not "verboten questions," they just don't have a default behaviour with Siri. You can always ask Siri to search the web for those questions, like "Search the web for the benefits of jailbreaking my iPhone."
The main difference is that most other voice-control applications are just a front-end to a search engine. Siri, on the other hand, tries to integrate with other parts of the system, and presumably these parts will grow in the future.
The reason it doesn't respond to those questions directly is because it detects the question as related to an Apple product, and so it directs you to their web site. Searching the Web is not the default behaviour, since (contrary to what many think) the Web is not the actual One True (Accurate) Repository Of All Knowledge.
Putting your point regarding weasel words aside, your comment does not address my question. The article starts by mentioning how Apple is on top of the charts, but then describes how the numbers of all other manufacturers are higher. I must be missing something because it seems to me incongruous.
>> "Apple put more smartphones in the hands of punters than any other vendor during Q4 2011 [...]"
Then mentions the following,
>> "In Q4 2011, then, some 35,456,000 people received an iPhone [...] Nokia topped the chart, selling 111,699,400 phones [...] Samsung, the vendor favoured by 92,682,300 buyers [...]"
>> "For 2011 as a whole, we see the same top three: Nokia, Samsung and Apple, selling, respectively, 422,478,300, 313,904,200 and 89,263,200 handsets to real people."
And finally concludes with this comment,
>> "[...] it's clear that while Samsung accounted for a big chunk of those 75m Android sales, it didn't sell more than Apple did [...]"
How is Apple the top seller again? Can someone please explain what I'm missing here?
Actually, the one I own was released in the late 90s, before Space Quest 6 came out. So it includes only 1 through 5. However, I purchased SQ 6 when a bit later when it was released, so I'm all covered. :)
Leisure Suite Larry is one of my all-time favorite games. Some time during the late 1990s Sierra Online released the Ultimate Larry Collection, which contained all games, 1 through 7, in all versions available, EGA/CGA and VGA. Every few years I fire up DosBox and go at the whole series.
Very entertaining, indeed.
Another favorite of mine that I would like showcased here is the Space Quest series. Similar in humorous style and tone (minus the sexual innuendo), irreverent and unapologetic of its silliness; and just as good--especially for the sci-fi inclined geek.
Except it doesn't work like that in most modern TV sets. There is no "AV" on the remote; there is probably an "Input" button that takes you to some menu where you select from a list of arcane options like "Video 1" or "HDMI 3."
Moreover, finding that button requires hunting it down in remote that may have over 50 buttons, each with tiny labels.
To a "techie" this may not seem like a big deal, but my Mother has absolutely no idea what an HDMI is, and which one of them is the one hooked up to the DVD vs the grandkids game machine. Someone could certainly change the label, but that requires an entire new set of merit badges in Crappy-Remote-Button-Smashing and Hideous-Interface-From-Hell-Technician.
Have you used a TV lately? Have you seen the hideous and convoluted set of menus to configure the darn thing? Almost all default settings are crap, but adjusting them requires a degree in Crap Interface Design and the serenity and patience of a Tibetan monk. Their remote controls are just as well designed by the same people.
Configuring any external input is also a hassle. And this is not even counting the "added value" features like Internet access and photo albums. Most people don't use any of that crap because it's such a pain to figure out.
Now, imagine if you bought your Apple-branded TV set and it looks great the moment you turn it on, with proper colour-corrected schemes and maybe even automatic brightness and contrast adjustment. Imagine being able to hook up your DVD player by just plugging in the cable and clicking a button.
But most importantly, imagine navigating the entire set of options, channels, and other features with a simple little remote with a handful of buttons.
It's a "Special Edition" with all the trimmings and embellishment worthy of a Star Wars sequel. It's even "enhanced" with CGI backgrounds and robots and stuff!
When I think of the "imagination, focus, vision and drive" of George Lucas I imagine it would be like if Steve Jobs worked for Microsoft; and instead of the the iPod, iPhone, and the iPad, he were stuck working on the Zune, Longhorn, and that clunky flip-book-tablet-with-a-stylus thingy.
They exist, but not as the main attraction. The DVD set of the "Special Edition" versions (wtih "all the stupid colour changing/Annaking overlaying bullshit") contains on each disc the original, theatrical release of the movies as a "bonus feature."
These are gritty, without the benefits of the re-mastering and restoration performed during the 1990s. However, they also are devoid of extraneous embellishments or extra scenes, just as you saw them in the theater, with a mono soundtrack and all.
I'll be eternally grateful to the man that made Star Wars. I loved that movie, and I still watch it every now and then. What is this "A New Hope" you speak off? Is that one of those episode-somethings?
As a programmer and, at times, designer, I disagree with you. Most developers think it's boring because they do know how to do it, and thus are not bothered to understand its intricacies.
I see it all the time at the various places I've worked at: when given the chance, a typical developer with apathy towards design would end up with something horrendously complex and unwieldy. For instance, on this particular application, an otherwise brilliant programmer took the data model literally, and created a form that contained a label and field for each entity attribute, just one below the other. He even made a direct translation between data-types and field control without regard to actual user workflows or usability.
No wonder people like him later decry that task as "boring."
You can send iMessages and avoid SMS when communicating between two iOS 5 devices, whether they are using Wi-Fi or, in the case of the iPad and iPhone, 3G.
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Re: Accounting can be very creative
>> i dont see how money can be brought into this at all.
That's possibly because you're not a lawyer, or even read the actual goings on of the trial, including the opposing arguments and the judge's comments.
The reason money "can be brought into this at all," is that a "fair use" defense requires certain conditions be met--one of which is that it benefits society. This is typically qualified with the intent of the derived work: educational uses bolster strengthen this argument; while purely commercial ones weaken it.
By the way, I'm also not a lawyer, but I read some of the documents from the court.
Reading and knowledge, they're a dangerous thing.
-dZ.
Re: Nope
>> "It means you need to separate the concept of the Java programming language from the Java runtime environment. The language is what the code is written in. The runtime environment is where the compiled code gets executed. The compilation to byte code is what separates Dalvik and the JRE."
Actually, he did, but you didn't. When he said that "Java is fragmented," he is talking about the mind-share of developers using that language.
You seem to be obsessed with trying to keep Android and Java separated by grasping to straws, delineating their technical differences. Who cares?! The reason this is at trial and a Judge is seriously considering the issue (as opposed to dismissing it right from the outset), is because it is not as clear-cut as you claim.
Sun's (and now Oracle's) intention with *both* the language and framework was to have developers expend effort on training for a single platform that will then run everywhere, including mobile platforms. Android throws a wrench into the works by splintering the development efforts of Java developers into essentially two platforms, and arresting Sun's (now Oracle's) potential to release an official mobile Java platform.
Part of Oracle's argument is that *this* was Google's intention from the beginning: to avoid having to compete with yet another programming language and exploit an existing large group of developers already trained in the language--without paying for a license to clone it or its API.
-dZ.
OK I give up!
I'll never be able to understand the Japanese. WTF?!
Re: Ughh... Still shudder when I recall those days
Branches are jumps; they add an offset to the program counter. That they react on the status flags is just a technicality, they're still GOTOs.
The typical micro BASIC dialect promoted the following idiom for control flow:
IF (X = 1) THEN GOTO 300
That's assembled as (depending on your CPU dialect):
@@if:
MVII #1, R0
CMP X, R0
BEQ @@300
; false
B @@end
@@300:
; true
@@end:
; end
That was e point of the poster you responded to.
Re: Sounds believable!
You are incorrect. They stored all data slurped, unencrypted *and* encrypted. That's why the modifications to the kismet software.
Plus, the headers of all transmissions are sent unencrypted, even if the payload is. So they slurped the source and destinations, and additional information, of all transmissions sniffed, even of those that were clearly intended to be private.
This is why they are in trouble.
Re: Am I alone?
>> We seem to be moving from a data-centric view of the world to a view which encompasses the application which created the data, and I don't think I like it.
I must say that this has always been the goal of personal computing. Why is it important to access files directly when you can only use it with specific applications? Isn't it the job of the applications to handle their own data types, rather than deferring all this administrative work to the user?
I want my photo application to have access to my photos and show them to me, and allow me to edit them. I further want this access abstracted. I profit not in the least by having them thrown in with a bunch of text files and other documents of myriad type; it just adds to the confusion and the maintenance burden.
Likewise for word processor documents: why would I ever need to see them thrown anonymously in a folder without context? If I ever need to access them is to read, edit, or share them, and a suitable application would allow me to do so.
Compartmentalizing the file system by document type (or application-specific function) using folders goes someways towards this, but why not extend this to its logical conclusion and abstract the entire file system.
-dZ.
Re: Not a great solution
But the price is set by the Publisher. If they don't sell books, they don't make money. It is in their interest to price their books at a reasonable price.
Amazon, on the other hand, sells abso-fscking-lutely everything under the Sun, and can afford to lower it's prices below cost (as it was doing before) to prevent competition.
-dZ.
Re: What kind of article is this?
Actually, Amazon is doing to e-book Publishers what Wal-Mart does to their suppliers: they are a de facto monopoly in the market and get to dictate the terms to them. Amazon did not allow any publishers to raise their wholesale price, and would decide what price to set. Most of the time, the price was artificially low and at a loss, to bar entry into the market by competitors.
This prevented the publishers from being able to sell their goods to someone else, and in essence made them beholden to Amazon's whims. This was the problem. This is what the author is decrying in this article: where was the DOJ then?
-dZ.
Re: Problem
The prices are a bit more expensive now, when the market is still nascent. It is expected to fall as competition enters the market. This is the point.
Moreover, the prices are more expensive because before they were kept artificially lowered by Amazon. Yes, it may have been great for consumers in the short-termed, but the complaint from the publishers has always been that it was not sustainable for the industry.
-dZ.
Does it really matter?
If Apple are making a lot of money, much more so than Google is from Android, what do they care about market share?
-dZ.
Re: Yikes
In a nutshell, Amazon went crazy with VC money growing their automated distribution and inventory management systems at the turn of the Century (as many other start-ups did at the time), and when the dot-com bubble burst there was pressure to make money out of their existing infrastructure.
They came up with some clever marketing to convince large and mid-size corporations to hand over computer processing in their hosted environments, harking back to the days of centralized mainframe and "utility computing" back in the 1970s.
Amazon weren't the only ones, many other companies were caught by the downturned economy with large data centers with little to process.
-dZ.
It will fail.
The main reason is elucidated by the article:
>> "There are two advantages here."
Great! Not one, but two. I'm excited!
>> "First, content owners need only hold a couple of copies of each title, one in SD, the second in HD."
Uh.. Sounds fine for them. Alright, what do I get?
>> "Secondly, if a studio decides to offer, say, 4K by 2K copies, it can do so easily."
Hum... That's for *them*, too. Surely, there's something good for me, since it's designed to improve my experience, and make it more convenient than pirating, right?
>> "But, yes, all this involves DRM, to prevent folk giving content away to all and sundry."
DOH! I should have known. That and the focus on a "rental" model are really the reasons why this endeavor will surely fail.
I'll stick to ripping my own DVDs into my computer, and playing them on my Apple TV.
-dZ.
Re: Tricky
But how much of a "runaway success" is it really, if the product makes no money? It's true, Google created a service which ended up being the best of breed and loved by all, but which had to be modified from it's original design in order to make money and support a business.
The problem is that, as long as Google "owned" the Web, as they seemed to do for some time, they could avoid impacting their flagship service with much intrusive ads, because the sheer scale of their usage made enough money with minimum ads. However, this is predicated on Google being the de facto portal to the Web and all online services and destinations.
The truth is that they didn't contemplate this changing, or at least not so soon.
It's not that Google needs to be Facebook in order to survive in the current marketplace; it's that they need to be *something else* than what they are right now. People are accessing online services through myriad other resources that are not Google, and "Web Search" is much less relevant at the moment.
Some may call these "silos," but in essence, they are specialized utilities. Just like the electric company provides you electricity and the water works company provides you with water and sewage service, different online resources provide different services. That they require discrete information from you to do this, well, that's par for the course--the water and electric companies also need to know where you live and how you like to pay, and by extension of you being a customer, will always know how you consume their services.
Google chose to be Facebook, because they thought that turning search algorithms for online web pages into a social-graph analysis machine would be simple (perhaps it is), but mostly because Facebook was raking in the money, and Google wanted some of that.
-dZ.
Re: Points ->
Nicely played sir...
Even if every user enters the wrong text for the unknown image, I would imagine that they have a very low chance of entering the *same* wrong text. Therefore, the image never gets a high enough confidence of correctness. The end result is that there is no change in state for the image, it remains unknown.
That may not help solve the unknown images, but it doesn't necessarily pollute the database with bad data.
-dZ.
Re: Reincarnation of the PC in another form
Right. Just like they did with their Nexus One store.
The article doesn't mention it, but the impetus of Google's previous online storefront wasn't just to provide a channel for the Nexus One--it was intended to remove distribution control from the carriers and open up a market place where *all* phones could be sold. Back then it was lauded as Google shaking up the incumbency and bringing in a new model to the industry--at least if you took Google's word.
As it turned out, no other device manufacturer joined and few customers came, and the rest is history.
That's the same "Google the Juggernaut" attacking "the monopoly & the status quo" back then too.
-dZ.
This is about 3 years too late.
Re: Remind us how to short Apple shares?
Man.... That's exactly what I thought when it was at about $200.00. "No point in buying stock now, I mean, how much higher can it get?"
Then, when it reached about $300.00 I thought, "for real, this is it, I should have invested at $200.00, but I didn't and now I missed the boat."
Now I wish I had, though.
dZ.
Re: Uhm...
Let's not forget that the iPad is less than 2 years old. Saying that Apple depends on a relatively new product means nothing, unless you are suggesting that they will not produce anything else new.
Moreover, any other company would kill to have the income from any of the other products Apple sells. That the iPad dwarfs them all does not mean that Apple would not be able to survive without it. After all, it did survive before the iPhone and the iPad, and in fact it brought itself back from the brink of bankruptcy before even the iPod.
So, Apple "relies" on the iPad today as much as it "relied" on the iPhone before it, and the iPod before that, and the Macs before them all. It has always relied on the products it just happens to be selling at the time.
dZ.
Re: "Scarce"?
>> "They aren't selling very well because very few are willing to pay a premium for an Internet TV when they can buy a big screen LCD TV for less and plug it into Cable or Satellite."
It could also be because they treat the Web on the TV as "The Web," just like a PC, and come with a scary-looking keyboard that further cements the idea that it's more like "work" than "passive entertainment."
>> "Apple has zero leverage to strong arm anyone in the TV industry to work with them. Movie content may be another subject altogether, but again, Comcast is much bigger than Apple and doesn't need them, much less CBS or any of the others."
True, they have zero leverage... right now. Just like they had zero leverage on the Music Industry at some point. More importantly, Apple does not need leverage on them, only the promise of increased profits from their vast user rolls.
Of course, the content industry can choose to snob Apple, but that doesn't make it a good strategic decision, just a puerile pissing match.
>> "They lose nothing by not working with Apple. Apple on the other hand loses an opportunity to get content providers on board."
Actually, if Apple gets other content providers on-board, and their product and model proves successful, CBS may see themselves in a weaker position to negotiate themselves back into the fold.
It is true that they lose nothing *right now*, but again I say that this may not necessarily be the best strategic decision. Streamed content and Internet-connected "smart" TVs seems to be the future of television, and so far nobody has been able to break the floodgates of revenue in that market.
Apple, however, has a proven track record of entering emerging markets and raking in the profits for themselves and their partners.
You're putting too much weight on the words of one self-aggrandizing CEO.
-dZ.
Re: This seems odd, to me.
>> "Taking on established incumbents in a price-sensitive market like TVs just isn't their style,"
You mean, like they did with the iPod in the MP3 Player market and the iPhone in the Smartphone market?
Sure, in retrospect it may seem like these were emerging markets that were completely re-invented. However, when they entered these, the view from outside was that they were attempting to compete with entrenched players, such as Creative Labs and Nokia.
Perhaps in five years you'll look back and recognize the "Smart/Internet TV" as an emergent market that nobody knew how to handle properly until Apple came along.
Then again, the "iTV" may flop.
-dZ.
Megaupload, Megabox, Megakey...
I guess "Mega" is the new "Kim."
Is he going to change his name to Megable now? LOL!
Re: Oh, Kimble!
What's with the downvotes?
I'm not excusing the extradition or discussing the merits of the case. It's just that some of us remember back when Mr. Dotcom, known then as Kimble, used to be a self-promoting prick, boasting of his hacking prowess and setting up fly-by-night shell companies designed to take money from unsuspecting and gullible punters.
He hasn't changed a bit (perhaps he got fatter?), though it appears that he finally hit paydirt for real with Megauploads--at least for a while.
-dZ.
Oh, Kimble!
I had almost forgotten you!
It's comforting to know that his bullshit stories and ostentatious display of apparent wealth have not changed one bit.
At least there's one constant in this Universe. Go, Kimble--er, Mr. Dotcom--show us your cars, houses, and chicks; and tell us again how much of a bad ass hacker you are.
-dZ.
Re: lol
LOL! Well played, sir, well played. You win the Intarnetz for the day.
600K or 15M users..
But, are they making money?
Das ist alles.
Re: 7 bit US-ASCII - Grrr!
Of, course it's US-ASCII, it's the *ONLY* ASCII there is. You know, the *A*merican *S*tandard *C*ode for *I*nformation *I*nterchange.
-dZ.
Re: Sharp technology reinvented by Apple - news at 11 :)
Also, Apple worked on improving the manufacturing process, not necessarily the invention of SHA.
Re: Of course it is
Not only that, but I cannot see any sane person in their right minds choosing to be charged by the network carrier, and be subjected to curious hidden fees, dubious taxes, and other charge obfuscations effected on their monthly telephone bill. You know, as opposed to the Apple or Google invoice which contains a single line item per purchase, the price on the tag, and the final total.
Unless they force Apple and Google to use their payment methods, which I'm sure the Feds will have something to say about.
Direct phone-bill payments sounded like a good idea when mobile e-commerce depended on a wide and diverse array of individual processors, each with a different interface and requirements. But with 1-click purchases from Apple and Google readily available, why would anybody care?
-dZ.
Re: Ah but can it answer the following?
Those are not "verboten questions," they just don't have a default behaviour with Siri. You can always ask Siri to search the web for those questions, like "Search the web for the benefits of jailbreaking my iPhone."
The main difference is that most other voice-control applications are just a front-end to a search engine. Siri, on the other hand, tries to integrate with other parts of the system, and presumably these parts will grow in the future.
The reason it doesn't respond to those questions directly is because it detects the question as related to an Apple product, and so it directs you to their web site. Searching the Web is not the default behaviour, since (contrary to what many think) the Web is not the actual One True (Accurate) Repository Of All Knowledge.
-dZ.
ENHORABUENA!
Felicitaciones, chicos!
Putting your point regarding weasel words aside, your comment does not address my question. The article starts by mentioning how Apple is on top of the charts, but then describes how the numbers of all other manufacturers are higher. I must be missing something because it seems to me incongruous.
-dZ.
I don't get it...
The article starts with,
>> "Apple put more smartphones in the hands of punters than any other vendor during Q4 2011 [...]"
Then mentions the following,
>> "In Q4 2011, then, some 35,456,000 people received an iPhone [...] Nokia topped the chart, selling 111,699,400 phones [...] Samsung, the vendor favoured by 92,682,300 buyers [...]"
>> "For 2011 as a whole, we see the same top three: Nokia, Samsung and Apple, selling, respectively, 422,478,300, 313,904,200 and 89,263,200 handsets to real people."
And finally concludes with this comment,
>> "[...] it's clear that while Samsung accounted for a big chunk of those 75m Android sales, it didn't sell more than Apple did [...]"
How is Apple the top seller again? Can someone please explain what I'm missing here?
-dZ.
Yes indeed, and I own that one too. :)
Actually, the one I own was released in the late 90s, before Space Quest 6 came out. So it includes only 1 through 5. However, I purchased SQ 6 when a bit later when it was released, so I'm all covered. :)
-dZ.
Ahhh... Larry, old friend!
Leisure Suite Larry is one of my all-time favorite games. Some time during the late 1990s Sierra Online released the Ultimate Larry Collection, which contained all games, 1 through 7, in all versions available, EGA/CGA and VGA. Every few years I fire up DosBox and go at the whole series.
Very entertaining, indeed.
Another favorite of mine that I would like showcased here is the Space Quest series. Similar in humorous style and tone (minus the sexual innuendo), irreverent and unapologetic of its silliness; and just as good--especially for the sci-fi inclined geek.
Now, excuse me while I configure my DosBox...
-dZ.
Re: A bargain
I have millions of dollars to invest. Can I pay in bitcoins? How about in Flooz?
Except it doesn't work like that in most modern TV sets. There is no "AV" on the remote; there is probably an "Input" button that takes you to some menu where you select from a list of arcane options like "Video 1" or "HDMI 3."
Moreover, finding that button requires hunting it down in remote that may have over 50 buttons, each with tiny labels.
To a "techie" this may not seem like a big deal, but my Mother has absolutely no idea what an HDMI is, and which one of them is the one hooked up to the DVD vs the grandkids game machine. Someone could certainly change the label, but that requires an entire new set of merit badges in Crappy-Remote-Button-Smashing and Hideous-Interface-From-Hell-Technician.
-dZ.
I'll tell you why...
Have you used a TV lately? Have you seen the hideous and convoluted set of menus to configure the darn thing? Almost all default settings are crap, but adjusting them requires a degree in Crap Interface Design and the serenity and patience of a Tibetan monk. Their remote controls are just as well designed by the same people.
Configuring any external input is also a hassle. And this is not even counting the "added value" features like Internet access and photo albums. Most people don't use any of that crap because it's such a pain to figure out.
Now, imagine if you bought your Apple-branded TV set and it looks great the moment you turn it on, with proper colour-corrected schemes and maybe even automatic brightness and contrast adjustment. Imagine being able to hook up your DVD player by just plugging in the cable and clicking a button.
But most importantly, imagine navigating the entire set of options, channels, and other features with a simple little remote with a handful of buttons.
-dZ.
@Is it me?
What is this "we" you speak of?
Re: Prior art
No, it's a brand new invention. It has been rendered novel by the addition of "...on the Internet" to all claims of the patent.
-dZ.
BRAVO!
Have a pint to celebrate!
Now, get back to work. :)
Re: THX1138 "his way
>> "I don't remember any new SpecialAnniversaryEditionWhatsit versions of THAT."
*sigh*
Unfortunately, it does exist:
http://www.amazon.com/THX-1138-Two-Disc-Directors-Special/dp/B0002CHIKG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1326909639&sr=8-2
It's a "Special Edition" with all the trimmings and embellishment worthy of a Star Wars sequel. It's even "enhanced" with CGI backgrounds and robots and stuff!
-dZ.
Re: Good Luck George
When I think of the "imagination, focus, vision and drive" of George Lucas I imagine it would be like if Steve Jobs worked for Microsoft; and instead of the the iPod, iPhone, and the iPad, he were stuck working on the Zune, Longhorn, and that clunky flip-book-tablet-with-a-stylus thingy.
-dZ.
Re: @Giles
@AC:
They exist, but not as the main attraction. The DVD set of the "Special Edition" versions (wtih "all the stupid colour changing/Annaking overlaying bullshit") contains on each disc the original, theatrical release of the movies as a "bonus feature."
These are gritty, without the benefits of the re-mastering and restoration performed during the 1990s. However, they also are devoid of extraneous embellishments or extra scenes, just as you saw them in the theater, with a mono soundtrack and all.
-dZ.
Re: *sigh*
I'll be eternally grateful to the man that made Star Wars. I loved that movie, and I still watch it every now and then. What is this "A New Hope" you speak off? Is that one of those episode-somethings?
@Uncle Slacky
You mean... Biblical cherubim? :)
Re: Devs Can Do UI (Not really)
As a programmer and, at times, designer, I disagree with you. Most developers think it's boring because they do know how to do it, and thus are not bothered to understand its intricacies.
I see it all the time at the various places I've worked at: when given the chance, a typical developer with apathy towards design would end up with something horrendously complex and unwieldy. For instance, on this particular application, an otherwise brilliant programmer took the data model literally, and created a form that contained a label and field for each entity attribute, just one below the other. He even made a direct translation between data-types and field control without regard to actual user workflows or usability.
No wonder people like him later decry that task as "boring."
-dZ.
Wi-Fi is not required
You can send iMessages and avoid SMS when communicating between two iOS 5 devices, whether they are using Wi-Fi or, in the case of the iPad and iPhone, 3G.
-dZ.
Russian Rock From Outer Space
And here I was thinking the story was about explaining why certain Russian loud music is so strange.
-dZ.
Soccer?
Really??
Is El Reg all'merkin now?
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