On Influenza A (H1N1) « bunnie’s blog: “”
A computer science perspective on molecular biology. Interesting read. It’s been in my Read It Later list for a while now…
Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight – Charlie’s Diary: “Final note: to customers, Amazon would like to be a monopoly (i.e. the only store in town). To suppliers, Amazon would like to be a monopsony (i.e. the only customer in town). Their goal is to profit via arbitrage, and if they can achieve those twin goals they will own everyubody’s nuts — the authors, the customers, everyone.”
The post goes into detail on how the current model works how amazon and the publishers are trying to evolve it in different, mutually-exclusive ways.
After years of being screwed by the content industry at large (Music and Movie) I was generally inclined to be against the publishing industry in what I though was mostly their attempt to exact higher prices from consumers. And of course, DRM; it might not be important to the publishers but it is very important to consumers. Eventually, if one side offers DRM-free media and the other DRM-encumbered media, the winner is clear. Consumers are not as stupid as they appear to board level executives who I’m guessing are the type of people who think themselves much more intelligent than the rest.
Overall, the reverse auction model tends to be a very good one for the consumers – at least those of non-technical books whose prices seem to never go down *coff* – though this probably is just the way it has to work with a much more limited but “premium” market.
Most of the books I tend to read have been around for a few years – many of them already in the public domain, so I guess picking up a book at $6 is better than amazon’s fixed $10. But paying $15 is not. I wonder which books will cost more…
I just hope that this battle results in DRM free books like it did for music. DRM is always too expensive.
UPDATE: Amazon has replied via a post on the kindle community forum.
Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
Thank you for being a customer.
Seems surprisingly reasonable. It is clearly a victory for Macmillan. The prices are probably, as Amazon says, unreasonably high but you can chose not to buy them until they drop the prices…
I just hope that this is only the first battle in a long line that will result in DRM free e-books down the line.
Even in spite of the problems I’ve mentioned before. Ideally I will wait for at least the inclusion of the camera which will be there in the next version and a 128GB drive so I can actually carry around my photos as well as have enough space for movies. I still don’t understand the choice of a 4:3 1024×768 display instead of a 16:9 720p display but I don’t know if that will get “fixed” anytime soon (as opposed to 3yrs+ from now or never).
Great hands-on via slashgear – just look at them play with the giraffe:
Ironically, you will need flash to see it…
Going from irony to hypocrisy, it’s funny that the same blogs that applauded Google for listening to its users and providing an alternative to flash in youtube now post about how it’s a tragedy the iPad doesn’t support the plugin they professed to hate just days earlier.
And let’s not forget that this was the most requested feature for youtube. People’s hate for flash was greater than their love for Freedom of Speech (or copyright infringement) with better handling of DMCA takedowns coming in at second place on the request list.
But when Apple takes steps to rid the net of the garbage that is flash, however self-serving you might think it, it is suddenly tragic.
Than there’s the fuss surrounding “multitasking”. So ummm you want to split the screen in two and read on safari while you write to Pages… so you now have pages, safari and a huge virtual keyboard on scream… doesn’t seem very appealing but it’s a valid request. Allow me not to care though. It’s just too much of a minor issue for there to be such a big fuss. I think it’s mostly FUD being spread around by parrots and people suffering from reverse-fanboyism which is a lot more disfunctional than fanboyism.
Update: Apple customers don’t want flash on the iPad - Flash will become one the textbook example of why alienating a relatively small (in this case, mac & linux) customer base can be fatal.
Adobe are you surprised that he people you mistreated for years now want flash gone?
I wonder if internal pressure played a part in the speed with which google introduced HTML5-video into youtube. After all many of their engineers are mac users and open source types who probably use/used linux.
Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. the Android Tablets – Tablet fight – Gizmodo
Notion Ink’s product looks quite interesting.
2010 will be an interesting year for tablet/slates/ebook readers. I can’t wait to see if Apple drops the iPad like it did Apple TV, if it makes one hell of an iPad 2 or just incrementally updates it. But one thing is for sure: it’s going to face a lot more competition than the iPhone.
The evolution of HP’s slate – users wanted a rich media experience not just ebooks.
(youtube video via gizmodo)
Não vou aqui repetir à exaustão a lista de novidades e falhanços do iPad. Já há bastantes (demasiadas?) análises dedicadas a esses pontos. Quero sim falar do iPad como um vislumbre do futuro da computação para os próximos 5-10 anos.
Enquanto estava a ver a keynote na passada Quarta-Feira formou-se no meu espírito a ideia de que estávamos perante uma mudança sísmica no que toca à forma de usar e interagir com computadores e, também, a forma como eles se apresentam e fazem o que deles esperamos. A meu ver, vamos caminhar nos próximos anos de analogias e representações que nos têm acompanhado nos últimos trinta anos como o rato, as janelas ou o sistema de ficheiros. O mundo em que o que hoje chamamos PCs (Macs incluídos) ir-se-ão transfigurando, deixando de se assemelhar ao que são hoje para copiarem a interface e utilização de iPhones/iPads/Smartphones.
Teremos um triunfo dos porcos, como na errada tradução do livro de George Orwell.
Não obstante, por todo o entusiasmo que possa ter quanto ao gadget em si, fico perturbado quando penso nas implicações a largo prazo do seu ecosistema fechado (iTunes, App store, iBooks, nada mutável no seu interior) para a forma como as pessoas no futuro vão usar a generalidade dos computadores. Enquanto hoje a maioria de nós está confortável nos pilares actuais dos computadores (teclado, rato, ambiente gráfico baseado em janelas, relativa abertura para mexer no OS e no hardware) daqui por 5 anos toda uma nova geração terá crescido habituada não a essa representação da realidade mas sim uma em que um objecto alvo das interacções está trancado e só pode ser usado de certa e de determinada maneira.
Daqui por 5 anos muita gente terá 7-8 anos de experiência a usar iPhones/iPads/iPod Touch e poderá estar suficientemente habituada à sua forma de trabalhar para aceitar uma progressiva migração dos Macs, por exemplo, nesse sentido. Pensemos nas pessoas que não se sentem confortáveis com os computadores actuais e, por exemplo, miúdos que tinham 8-10 anos quando apareceu o iPhone. São uma mole imensa de pessoas não viciadas nas convenções que hoje damos por adquiridas.
Com alguém - neste caso a Apple - a fazer de gatekeeper desde o momento em que compramos o computador, durante toda a sua utilização e até ao final da sua vida útil. Não é visão que me agrade particularmente.
Não me admiraria que quando chegarmos ao OS 11 o mesmo seja muito mais similar ao iPhone OS do que alguma vez poderíamos pensar.
Neste mesmo sentido, Alex Payne.
Apple could’ve launched a cold fusion powered flying car with laser cannons mounted on top and some people would’ve still been disappointed.
This is my obligatory iPad post. All throughout the many years since we began hearing Apple Tablet rumors every time an Apple announcement/conference was imminent I’ve have constantly been against it. I don’t like tablets and I thought (and still think) that the introduction of one by Apple would stop them from making other, better products to prevent cannibalization of their tablet.
Obviously, Apple can’t make a netbook. It would be just as unreasonable to expect Ferrari to introduce an actual Ferrari-branded car below the $2000 price line. But Apple could’ve made an ultra portable – think 10-11″ Macbook Air. Now I doubt that will happen.
There is certainly a product gap between the phone and the laptop but neither the netbook or this ipad are going to fully fill it in my opinion.
From an OS perspective, the iPhone OS was the natural choice and the only one that made any sense. The lack of Multitasking in non-native apps is not the biggest limitation of the OS currently. In fact, that’s mostly a non-issue. It’s also temporary. The original iPhones, before the 3GS, simply didn’t have the power to handle multitasking properly so Apple disabled it. They will no doubt enable it in a year or so. For now it’s not a priority (since it is a MINOR issue) and they probably don’t want to anger everyone that doesn’t own a 3GS yet. I would like to see Multitasking in an instant messaging app. The hack that apps like IM+ use (having the connection to IM networks established in their servers) is nice but it’s slightly inconvenient since it takes some time to “restore” the connection to the iphone.
I’d also rather see them overhaul the terrible notification system which is far inferior to Android’s notification system.
The biggest problem however comes from the fact that it so heavily sandboxed/compartmentalized. As a use case example, you can’t easily expect to browse the piratebay in safari download a .torrent, add it to the bittorrent client, pass the resulting downloaded file to the zip extractor app and proceed to add the resulting music folder to the ipod app music library.
And You can’t easily add a video to the iPad (or the iPhone) without having to go through iTunes. Or dealing with format conversion in (too) many cases.
As for Flash support, I finally understand how Zararthustra felt when he came down from the mountain and realized that people didn’t know god was dead. Flash is dead.
The three most positive surprises were the ePub format support, the ability to run the iPhone apps you already purchased for your iPhone and the 500USD price point. I have no interest in 3G since I already have it on my iPhone and I’m not going to pay for two data plans.
Unfortunately there were also three rather negative surprises: the non-widescreen non-720p display and the lack of a front camera (or any camera for that matter) and the low storage of the entry model (16GB, seriously?).
In conclusion, inadequate video support, lack of a front camera, the inability for apps to truly cooperate in a PC/Mac fashion, a bad notification system, a poor display and low storage in the entry model – all problems present in the iPhone but somehow made much more significant in a tablet make the iPad rather unappealing. The potential is there but will Apple be able to exploit it or will the iPad be another Apple TV? Only time will tell but I think at least some of these problems will remain for the foreseeable future.
Project SIKULI: “Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). The first release of Sikuli contains Sikuli Script, a visual scripting API for Jython, and Sikuli IDE, an integrated development environment for writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API’s support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator”
Watch the video demo:
(Via The place João Bordalo calls home.)
The 4th major iteration of this blog is now online.
The previous was named Episode III: Revenge of the blog so it’s only fair that this becomes Episode VI: Return of The Blog since it also marks my intention (yeah…) to return to blogging. Neverming episodes IV and V.
The 2 biggest changes are a change in theme (which I don’t yet consider final) and a move to tags, away from categories. They are just a pain to manage.
I’m going to skip the introduction and go right to the point: support Mozilla!
How? Use firefox and promote it.
Why? Because you want the web to be Free (not free as in “free beer” but Free as in Freedom). Because you value Freedom and knowledge!
Read these two blog posts:
HTML5 video and codecs by Mike Shaver, Mozilla VP of Engineering
Video, Freedom And Mozilla by Robert O’Callahan, Mozilla Developer
(originally via Slashdot)
If you use Firefox you are giving it a bigger market share and thus more power with content providers. After all, youtube would be worthless without viewers.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
What if a video site is online but no one can view the videos in it? Is it still a video site? Would it have any traffic at all?
I was planning on switching to chrome – after all, it is open source and firefox is slower, uses more resources and I prefer chrome’s UI in many aspects (but not all). However none of those things is nearly as important to me as keeping the web an open place and I believe in the importance of sites like youtube (we’ve all heard about videos on youtube documenting things like police abuse for example).
I’m no Richard Stallman and I not trying to turn anyone into Stallman but the choice between Firefox and Chrome is a close one to begin with. It’s not like I’m going to start promoting Linux (gNewSense at that) over OSX.
I just had to share this!
“The US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom,” he said in a statement posted on the foreign ministry website.
“This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations.
An article in the Communist Party’s Global Times English language news website called Mrs Clinton’s criticisms “information imperialism“.
(my emphasis)
