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U760305

Listed below are comments made by U760305 between Wednesday, 27th May 2009 and Thursday, 3rd December 2009 (20 Hours Ago) .

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Did Google just blink? 12:10pm on 03 Dec 2009 Maybe they have, but I don't think it really matters.

The big issue is that now it is clear exactly why James Murdoch launched his attackon the BBC in Edinburgh earlier in the year. NewsCorp know they have problem because, at least in the UK, the BBC has pledged not to charge for content. This is the elephant in the room becasue Google are quite free to spider that (overseas URL wrangling notwithstanding).

People argue that people shouldn't expect something for nothing. Well the operattion is pretty much the same with commercial TV. The content is free to air and the consumer pays indirectly through advertising. In that sense the web is hardly any different.

you also have to ask: just how compelling is NewsCorp's content anyway? You couldn't pay me to sit through Glenn Beck on a regular basis or to read his "newspapers". So much for profit being the only true engine of quality, eh? The worry for Murdoch may be that if he does introduce more subscription based services, he may find few of them are as successful at hoovering up cash as Sky. There are many like me who would (and do) actively boycott such sources.
Reading the Kindle 1:06pm on 20 Oct 2009 The elephant in the room is Apple's long rumoured tablet device. The issue with Kindle and similar appliances is that it's a single function device - many will be looking for the value added by a convergent piece of equipment. I count myself among that number.

If Apple can get an intuitive interface onto such a device (and track record says the oods are good there) and they can bundle the right apps, like high quality eReaders, then Kindle could find itself in an already obsolete marketplace. In fact, Apple has most of the tools there alredy - PDF as a reading format, the already better than adequate Preview app extended to provide more reading functions and format support, and then a mobile device that can sync via the cloud.
Apple: All sizzle and no steak 9:17pm on 14 Sep 2009 @30. I'm not THAT naive. however, Apple are notorously touchy and, in some cases, litigious about pre-release leakage. I suspect it's rather less Apple than media and fanboys stoking the fire. Apple just don't say ANYTHING
Apple: All sizzle and no steak 8:35pm on 11 Sep 2009 Erm, and just who was it who hyped the whole thing up? Actually, not Apple. It was the user communities and the media.

They can't have their cake and eat it, predicting a whole slew of things that the comapny don't actually do, then complaining when they don't. It might have been "all fur coat and nae knickers" but that's only because the media swiped them off the line beforehand.
An evening with Generation Whatever 8:09pm on 02 Sep 2009 @4: ravenmorpheus. Yes, it seems it's yet another 'No s-t Sherlock' moment. I find myself exactly the same, using multiple media at once. Oddly, I've been doing this since childhood, reading multiple booska t once and writing, watching and listening at the same time. This is not an age issue, but one of transliteracy. and transliterates vary in age, as myself and ravenmorpheus demonstrate

Another thing that struck me was the following:

"A panel of teenagers was assembled and interrogated in an attempt to find out what the media habits of Generation Y (or "Generation Whatever" as one cynical father at the session had it) meant for the spending patterns of new customers for financial services."

Now, we're not told how this panel was assembled. There's no guarantee that it is in any way representative of this demographic at all. It just seems fundamentally clueless at pretty much every single level.
Chrome - living in a Google world? 11:23pm on 08 Jul 2009 @RealNeuromancer

Linux shares DNA with earlier Unix versions (Sys V and BSD). Unlike Windows, networked services were at its core. Windows was designed for one user on one desktop. Networking is a thing that was bolted on as an adjunct. And Mac OS X shares some of Unix's BSD DNA (Mach is effecively a BSD kernel). This is why both the Linux distros and Mac OS X win out over Windows in this important respect. It's also why Chrome's heart will beat pure Linux. The linux kernel is a tried and very reliable piece of code.

For years now Linux has been touted as a putative Windows killer, but it's never happened. Why? Because the application level sucks for end users who just want a tool that work and don't want to fiddle under the hood. Geeks like me love Mac OS and Linux becasue most of the low level tools, toolkits and dvelopement environments are there already (gcc, XCode, eclipse, need I go on). Think of cars. Most people just want to drive them without hving a low-level appreciation of their workings, while others like the tinkering under the hood too.

There are some things that Open source struggles to do. So, the examples of Final Cut and Cubase and the Adobe CS Suite are good ones. OSS just doesn't do the job here. But at the same time, most users neither want nor need these professional production tools. For many, Picassa, Audacity and even GIMP are enough. The key is to make these tools like the software equivalent of white goods.

If Google can get the netbook experience working well with ChromeOS (Intel's moblin project is a good guide to how a good system could look) then Microsoft may have to look over its shoulder. Apple are not really interested in the mass market at this point. If they were to enter the ultra portable market, it's likely to be with a well-designed niche product that will sell at higher margins than some of the vendors are managing now. In market share terms, the iPhone doesn't sell huge numbers, but its market is rock solid. Apple could easily repeat this with a good netbook.

@21 tecworx
Some of this this is factually correct. But then, the history of the industry could have been so diferent. If Gary Kildall's Digital Research (not DEC) had wanted to negotiate more with IBM, then MS would never have managed to get QDOS/MSDOS onto machines; DR-DOS would have been the OS of choice and PC's now could have all been running some descendent of DR's GEM as well. But it didn't happen. Microsoft pulled their fast one and here we are. Whichever way things went, the OS core of the PC was one per desk and not the shared resource model that Unix embraced.
Chrome - living in a Google world? 5:05pm on 08 Jul 2009 One word Rory. Netbooks.

Google's move into OS territory seems designed to capture a signifcant share of mobile devices. Apple aren't really there yet, though the noises about an apple tablet/mobile device aren't going away, and while Micrsoft are promising great things for Windows 7 on ultra-portable devices this is just par for the course. Windows XP is Microsoft's primary netbook offering but this can't go on forever.

Google come into this space looking to pinch share from MS and the variants of Linux sitting there too, like Ubuntu' variants. Chrome OS is not likely to make major inroads on the desktop. Google, I think, know that. After all, Apple are only hitting around 10% market share with the resources available to them (and I'm writing this in Mac OS X myself).

There are warning noise for MS to listen to though. Both Apple and Google are heavily involved in Open source tools and projects (Apache, Samba, Firefox et al). This amount of developer and financial muscle could mean that Linux might become a viable mass-market product with work done on the user experience.
Man Utd right to sell Ronaldo 2:47pm on 11 Jun 2009 Is he worth 42% more than Kaka?

But then NO ONE is worth that much money, even for purely commercial reasons. Real can have him, and good riddance to the preening play acting. He may be very talented, but I couldn't be paid to watch that kind of overweening smug self-satisfaction on a regular basis.

But with debt to service in a recession, United were hardly going to say no, were they?
Return of the Zune? 2:09pm on 27 May 2009 @andywg

Quite right. I first used IRC in about 1990. It was reasonably common practice even then. As you say, twitter has just borrowed it and made the trope mainstream. Why it is objectionable I don't know: it's lightweight, it's descriptive and it is fairly easy to understand why it's there. I'm usually something of a grammar pedant (though I will not make myself look stupid by invoking Muphry's Law here) but I can find nothing problematic about its use in the correct context.
Return of the Zune? 12:38pm on 27 May 2009 Hmm. Desperate attempt to reposition as an iPod Touch (or even PSP) competitor in the US. Doomed to failure really as the Zune brand is now fatally damaged.

@Tams80: iPod sound quality has improved steadily. The I found a big difference between the 5G iPod and the classic I have now (more space). Perhaps not surprisingly, the best sound quality I have heard is with some of the Sony units. The major problem with Zune and with Sony kit is the software: Sony's Soundstage is (or at least was - I haven't seen v recently) pretty clunky and MS do their usual trick of overcomplicating and overegging everything. ITunes does at least score in terms of simplicity, which is what the consumer market needs and wants.

And yeah, Apple's standard headphones do suck! The fact is, other platforms do some things better, but the iPod package as a whole wins on styling, ease of use and acceptable sound.

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