Eskimo Heel’s Comments

• Aug 10th, 2009 @ 9:20am

  Papers are missing an opportunity...

  on What's A Big City Without A Newspaper? Still A Big City Last I Checked
  News - the details, the quotes, the facts - do require some 'heavy lifting', but that's a small part of why I had subscribed to my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News. The real meat I want from them is great coverage of local news, and opinion and analysis of the national news. The SJ Merc treats local as 'everything that might have happened in the San Francisco Bay area', which brings me shootings in San Francisco, 60 miles away. And they have their own damn newspaper. They first stopped running the 'Business Monday", a deep analysis of high tech news and information. They stopped running most of the comics the used to run; and now they ended their Sunday 'editorials and opinions' section. They've stopped producing value for me - and apparently many others - so I'm now a 'former subscriber'.
  
  A newspaper that gives me good editorial thinking on news stories and on how they will impact me; that gives me a cross-section of analysis by people I respect; and good local coverage will get me to subscribe. Until then, I have the web for raw news.
• Jun 17th, 2009 @ 6:35pm

  Re: Re: Because...

  on Apple Warns Palm Pre Users: We're Going To Break Your iTunes Syncing
  Apple is the true monopoly in the high tech market.
  
  I also believe "bundling" an unprofitable service with a profitable one and preventing anyone else from connecting a product they can offer that uses the unprofitable service is monopolistic and probably illegal -for example, BM was not able to prevent Amdahl from using the IBM OS on Amdahl hardware. Apple wants it both ways - they want to have products where they fix the price; and they don't want anyone taking any of their business (how else do you figure they'd have the nerve to parent a magnetic power plug so third party power adapter companies cannot offer a Mac power supply? Apple, of course, is "popular" so no one at DOJ will be looking.. yet.
• Jun 8th, 2009 @ 10:54am

  Licensing media or content?

  on Bad Science's Ben Goldacre Rips Apart Bogus Study On File Sharing
  The real issue is that these guys want you to believe you are licensing CONTENT rather than the physical media. And they want it both ways. How about the fact that I've bought the Beatles' "Abbey Road" at least 4 times - LP, 8-track, cassette, and DVD. I can't tell you how many of the LPs and tapes wore out too. If they are really licensing content, I should be able to present a defective media and, at a reduced cost, get a replacement... but they don't do that because when you take this approach, they say you BOUGHT the content.
  So now that I've made digital recordings of the content I have clearly bought - er, LICENSED - I'm never going to buy another copy of Abbey Road - have they considered their lost revenue is because none of us will EVER need to buy additional copies of music already bought? Hm, I wonder if all of started going back with defective MEDIA and asked to have the license transferred to a different copy of the media, would they have to give in? Any lawyers in the audience?