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I just created a Apple Support Sidebar to search http://search.info.apple.com/.
James Paul Stanson went on a shooting rampage, but was stopped by a friendly dog.
See Man's best friend saves the day or Suspect 'always loved dogs'
Got any cat-saves-the-day stories?
Ok, so we've been waiting 6 months or more for local channels from DirecTV. We were told "August" [2003] or "definitely by the end of the year" [2003]. Then when DishNet started offering local channels here months ago, I got an email from DirecTV saying "Local channels in April!!"
Of course April came and went. Then they said "June or July" I complained, they apologized, said it wasn't their fault, had problems with the satellite deployment, etc.
So we've been waiting. I've been meaning to call all week and see what the new estimate was.... when all of a sudden we accidentally discover that we have local channels. No idea how long they've been there.
I signed up for the email notification, I complained, and every time we turn on the Tivo, there's a spot for messages. Did they bother to let us know? Nope.
Unreal that they can't even get it right when they have a new service that customers have been asking for. Unreal.
Why Windows is a security nightmare. Good read. Note the part that after a clean install he didn't even have a chance to get his system patched before worms and messenger spam came in.
What I especially love about Windows Update is that it forces me to accept 'critical updates' for programs that I don't use and didn't want (i.e. Outlook Express) but the fact that they are installed by default means that I have no choice but to install them or Google for cryptic ways of uninstalling them.
I can't even imagine trying to use Windows Update on a clean install over a dialup modem. It's insane. And I have a CD with Windows XP SP1 on it, which means that I'm already saving a lot of download time.
Why you should dump IE, preferably before it lets spyware into your computer. That is all.
Press F5 if Opera failed to properly subscribe to an RSS feed the first time.
Until they fix the bug that prevents a lot of sites from being recognized as RSS feeds (and subscribing you to them), pressing F5 to reload the page seems to kick Opera into recognizing it.
Ode to Opera. A poem from an Opera Lover. Go. Read.
*Yawn* Oh, sorry. Just yet another story about CD prices dropping, and the music industry complaining about downloads. Quit your whining, you money grubbing thieves. You've been robbing your customers for years, not to mention the musicians themselves.
Study: CD prices sing the blues [C|Net] indicates that the average price for a CD fell to $13.29.
Analysts think that the recording industry is going to have to start gouging musicians out of their fair share of the profits from their music, pay them next to nothing, and cut expenses, such as buying fewer cars and swimming pools.
Oh wait, that's already happening. Well, except for the cutting back part.
Sorry if I can't feel badly for the recording industry folks. Some time ago there was a story about the recording industry getting in trouble with the FCC (maybe, can't remember) because they had basically all gotten together and decided to keep CD prices artificially high. Remember when CDs first came out, and they cost so much more than tapes, but everyone said "Well, it's new and it costs more, but the prices will come down in time?" For comparison, see every other product on the free market. Like Tivo. Or cars. Or Walkmans. Or anything.
Here's how it ought to work:
1) Some new invention comes out, and not many people adopt it, so prices are higher. There's the research costs to recoup, plus the higher manufacturing costs versus the low number of units sold. And there has to be some profit.
2) After time, assuming more people adopt the new invention (like VHS VCRs compared to Beta), then you expect the prices to come down. In fact, I can remember when new VHS VCR tapes for some movies used to cost $100. No, I'm not talking about the extended DVD set of The Godfather, I'm talking about a single VHS VCR tape like "The Hunt for Red October" with no special footage, no personal autograph from Harrison Ford and/or Sean Connery. VHS tapes really used to cost that much. And few people bought them. Mostly places like Blockbuster or the video stores before them. That's why people rented movies, because who was going to buy a $100 VHS tape?
Now after awhile, more people bought VCRs and the movie industry figured out they could sell a lot more at $12-$15 than they could at $100. So between the improvements in the manufacturing process and the opportunity for more potential buyers, the prices came down.
That didn't happen with CDs. When CDs first came out (IIRC), tapes sold for about $10-$12. CDs sold for $18-$20. People bought CDs because they sounded better, were easier to use, and didn't get gummed up in the tape deck (anyone else remember trying to extract tape from a car tape deck after the tape had been "eaten"? Anyone miss that? Nope).
What happened after CDs came out? Tape prices went down. Less demand. There was a better competitor on the market (CDs).
People bought CD players. Heck, I spent $400 on a portable CD player when I was a teenager. That was a lot of newspapers I had to deliver. Would I spend $400 on a portable CD player today? Heck no! Not unless it came with its own Swedish Masseuse. What happened? They made more of them, and the prices came down.
Several years ago (long before downloading music was a big thing), I remember reading an article about the music industry getting in trouble for colluding to keep CD prices artificially high. (I wish I could find a link to the story. I'm 99% sure it was on CNet, but I couldn't find it on their site.)
Basically, the charge (from the FCC? Not sure who it was) was that once CD prices had been set at $18-$20 and people were used to paying that, the music industry decided that they would keep CD prices at that level, even when they could have dropped the prices due to the exact same economics of scale we saw with VHS tapes and CD players.
They kept their prices higher to increase their profits. IIRC (and there is a slight chance I'm wrong), they were fined for their actions. Fortunately they had plenty of money on hand to pay the fine.
CD prices still didn't drop, at least not much. CD consumption was very high, and showed no signs of slowing down. (You may remember this time in the 90s when consumption of everything was high and showed no signs of slowing down.) But you know what, it did slow down.
Anyone with a brain and one semester of history should have known it wouldn't last for every, that that go-go 80s and the boom-boom 90s were eventually going to end.
Now the music industry apparently didn't see this coming. They were happily collecting your $18-$20 for a CD with maybe 4-5 good songs on it (probably closer to 2-3). You were paying at least $3-$4 per song you wanted. CD singles? Occasionally they would be offered, but not always.
Then there was the lovely practice of releasing a "Greatest Hits" CD that had 1 new song on it not available anywhere else. To get that one song you would have to shell out your $20, even though as a fan you probably already had the rest of the songs on other CDs already.
As happy as this made the music industry, it did not make for loyal customers. They realized that they were paying more for CDs than they had been for LPs or tapes. But they had no options.
The unexpected twist came with the internet. What had been a little network for academics suddenly became a playground for the world. And then came The Option.
The Option also came a time when the economy went south... first a little, then deep. Boom. Pop. Fizz.
The Option, of course, was downloading music from the Internet. The combination of the economy and The Option, along with the previous years spent spending too much on CDs that had too few little decent music on them, years when the music industry took advantage of the lack of technology to copy CDs (and you have to suspect that they were thrilled with this, especially considering that tape-to-tape recorders were very prevalent. But of course tape-to-tape is lossy, and even CD-to-tape was passable, but lossy).
Now, if CDs were running $8-$10 when the Internet came around, would music downloading have taken off? Possibly. If the music industry had not abused their position and kept prices artificially high, would music downloading have been a major contributing factor in the adoption of broadband? Maybe.
There are always going to be some who take whatever they can get for as little as they can pay. No question, no doubt. But I suspect that the reason The Option was so attractive to so many was that they felt like they had been cheated, exploited, for so long.
Even without the internet, CD sales would have slowed. Everything has slowed. Everything. Every business in the world has had drastic and dramatic slowdowns. Everyone is feeling it. Is there anything radical happening in music? Any new music coming out that is sparking some response inside people? Not really. I can't think of a single artist or a single band that has made people stand up and take notice.
Chicken or the egg, perhaps. The music industry would tell you that there's no new music because the downloading of music has kept people from getting into the music business. I'm not sure I believe that either. I think it is a phase we are going through. At some point down the future (X), there will have been worked out a solution which addresses the freedom to use the music that we buy with the same freedoms that we have had. It'll have to be. Otherwise whatever limitations are imposed will be broken. The CD worked because we could listen at home, in the car, in the portable player, on the computer. We didn't have to buy separate licenses to make a tape of a CD so we coupld play it in our car that only had a tape-deck. We won't pay more for a song that we've downloaded so we can use it in any of those places. That's the challenge, it's not so much a technological challenge as it is a social one. If they try to solve the problem with technology but don't allow the freedoms, they won't have addressed the social issue, and eventually the technology will be broken.
Find a way to fund the musicians so they can keep making the music that will inspire us. Find a way to get rid of some of the layers that were built up during the time of seemingly endless income. Those days are gone, and will not return in the previous format. All the lawsuits in the world won't stop the downloading of music. The tighter you squeeze the more people will struggle.
Apple's iTunes is a good start, although I understand that the music industry is trying to ruin that too by increasing the cost. You don't get the do that. We already know it can work at $0.99/song. You've got to work with that, or better.
That is all, at least for now.
Security fix and a few good features:
1) wide favicons could cover URL in the address line.
2) Various stability improvements
3) Redirecting links correctly marked as visited
4) Initial support for quoting selected text in messages
5) Solved problem with duplicate addresses when using "Reply all"
To blame every American transgression on the culture is to absolve Americans of any responsibility for anything. (Via: Dooce.com). You'll have to register [free] to read the first link to the NYTimes.com. It's worth it. A good evaluation of the way politics and religion are being used and abused.