With Real pleading with Apple for a partnership, the wisdom of Apple's plans with the iPod and iTMS once again is in the spotlight.

I believe Steve has a plan. As I said in an earlier entry, Apple can own the digital music market.

Right now Apple is the only one with a real plan to make money in this market. They're making it now and they will continue to do so. Everyone else is going to starve. Once that happens Apple can license iTMS to the largest player manufacturers and own the market for good.

There is a future where the public sees iTMS as the only real way of buying music on line. If your player doesn't come with iTMS, it's crap. In this future the various iPod models collectively have 40-50% marketshare and there are a couple of iTMS licensed players.

Is this set in stone? No. But it's a good shot. And Apple would be foolish not to try for it. In the long term this will help Apple sell more macs.

From this translation on memri.org:

"Stop shedding our blood in order to protect your own blood. The solution to this easy-difficult equation is in your own hands. You should know that the longer you delay, the worse the situation will become, and when that happens, do not blame us, blame yourselves...

"As for those who lie to people and say that we hate freedom and kill for the sake of killing - reality proves that we are the speakers of truth and they lie, because the killing of the Russians took place only after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya; the killing of the Europeans took place only after the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; the killing of the Americans in the Battle of New York took place only after their support for the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula; their killing in Somalia happened only after Operation Restore Hope. We restored [i.e. repelled] them without hope, by the grace of Allah."

These were the words of Osama Bin Laden. Despite what George W. Bush says, the terrorists do NOT hate freedom. They hate our (USA, et al) foreign policies!

Am I blaming America first? No I am not. The facts are simple: killing innocent people is wrong.

It's equally as wrong when you crash planes into buildings as when you accidently bomb the wrong building and kill factory workers instead of terrorists.

It may seem that doing it on purpose sounds worse, but what if you phrase the situation this way:

They kill our innocents because they want control over their own countries. We kill their innocents because we want to decide who has control over their countries.

Now who is more evil? Now who's fighting for freedom? That's the way Bin Laden sees it. That's the way his followers see it. That's why 20 men were willing to die in order to kill those innocent Americans on 9/11.

Although the movies like to portray the "Bad Guys" as knowing that they're bad, in the real world the Bad Guys rarely think they're in the wrong. They always have a point-of-view that paints themselves as the "Good Guys" and their victims as the villians.

The sad thing about the current state of affairs is that, objectively, everyone who's involved are the Bad Guys. The real solution is to stop debating who's worse; put down the guns and bombs; and go home.

You listening, George?

MS Office has always been available for the mac and MacOSX can work with Windows fileshares.

So if your "real work" relies on Office and SMB, you should be able to get your "real work" done on a mac. This article shows that this is not always the case.

Now, his home SMB problems could be resolved by simply typing smb:// followed by his PC's IP address in the Connect to server dialog.

There are probably workarounds for his file conversion problems. And Entourage sucks, but I'm sure it's being worked on.

But that's not the point. The point is that this guy was unable to do his "real work" on a Mac, even though the features listed on the products involved had lead him to believe that he could.

The reality is that this is all Microsoft's fault. Why is the mac version of Office less than 100% compatable with MS's other products?

On the surface, the SMB problems would appear to be Apple's fault but they're not. It is only since MacOSX that macs have had any kind of SMB support. The reason is that SMB (and other related prototcols) are proprietary and secret. The open source SAMBA team has reverse engineered them and produced SAMBA which allows *nix machines to access Windows networks. Apple uses SAMBA to provide the SMB support.

If microsoft wasn't such a bunch of asshats and used open standards, there wouldn't be an issue here.

I'm not saying that this is some grand conspiracy on Microsoft's part to keep the Mac down. I think it's just part of Microsoft's larger problems. All of their products are like MacOffice or worse. Sure the features are listed on the box, but do they work perfectly? NO, they do not.

How MS can spend billions on development and still have the kinds of QA problems it has, I'll never know. My guess is that it has something to do with their coding practices.

Something at Microsoft has to change.

I hate everyone else for lots of reasons. Most of all because nearly everyone is an idiot. Those who are not just have other significant flaws instead.

Take the case of Transtopia. I took their little quiz and found that I support nearly all of their positions at least in principle if not in practice. But I can't support them.

Firstly, they follow a few "crackpot" theories such as memes. Now, Memetics is an interesting theory that provides some neat insights into certain aspects of humanity but I also believe that the theory, as a whole, is wrong and does not accurately describe reality.

They also support other things like Cryonics, Eugenics, and New/Free Country projects. I support such things in theory, but the reality of current and previous efforts leaves much to be desired.

Beyond that, my biggest gripe with these ass clowns is their immaturity about issues of profound importance to humanity. They are essentially sigularity worshippers and the name of this group is a play on Transhumanism.

I personally do not like the term "Transhumanism."
While I concur with the general idea of the singularity and transhumanism, I believe that our "humanity" is the only thing we will actually keep when the sigularity transforms our society and bodies.

The other side of the singularity is that it will be the most horrible event humanity will ever experience. The result will be good but the experience of the actual event will be terrible. While these Transtopians agree with this, I don't think they really grasp the reality of it.

If I end up sharing my Godhood with anyone, I guess it will most likely be people like these. Overall, I like them but I can only hope they grow up when they Transcend.

Lately everyone has been talking about this.

"Apple should add WMP support to the iPod & iTunes."

"Apple should license iTunes to other players."

"Apple should license fairplay to other manufacturers."

It goes on and on... What do I think Apple should do? I think they should continue doing what they have been.

1) The deal with HP still needs to start up. This is going to be huge when it does. If possible, other PC companies should be signed on for iTunes distribution.

2) They keep making improvements to the iPods.

3) They keep making improvements to iTunes.

4) They keep adding new material to the iTunes Music Store.

5) They should continue to pursue marketing deals like the one with Pepsi.

Apple is the largest and best player in this market and NO ONE is making a profit selling music online. Apple is the only one with a decent justification for being in the business. If Apple can stick to it for another year or two, all but one or two of the wannabes are going to eat each other to death. Then Apple can offer to license iTunes with fairplay to the remaining mp3 player manufacturers and own the market for good.

This /. post says it all.

Governments can't keep MS down. All this antitrust crap that's been going on for years only seems to make Microsoft stronger. The time has come to kick Microsoft in the balls.

One of those virus writing brats needs to create a hermaphroditic GA worm for Windows and bring MS to its knees. This kind of worm would render all current versions of windows permanently unusable.
This needs to be done before Palladium or whatever the hell they're calling it these days becomes available.

Come on boys, I know you can do it.
This time it's for the good of Humanity.

This guy is cool. I almost want to get a fax machine and an extra phone line...

Marshall's at it again. This time his idea is really out there. He suggests that we sould send astronauts to mars without their bodies! Would you be willing to literally kiss your ass goodbye for a trip to Mars?

This would greatly change the physical requirements to become an astronaut as only the health of the brain would matter.

The best part is what he leaves out: he makes no mention of puting the brains back into bodies when they return home!