Like many others, I’m having more and more problems with Leopard on my four-core, 4GB RAM, 3+TB disk Mac Pro. In addition to my previously mentioned problems, which have only gotten worse, let’s see…
- HP printer and scanner drivers are a mess. HP says, We’re working on it.
- My wireless Microsoft mouse gets lost requiring more reboots.
- Mail can’t recover from once being able to send through my SMTP server.
- Forget about Parallels. Once you run it, just assume you’ll reboot within an hour.
- QuickTime has completely crapped out. I can’t play anything with a filename ending in .mpg. The application (QT, iTunes, or anything else using the QT engine) crashes.
- Like Oliver Rist wrote on PCMag.com, it doesn’t just work like Tiger used to.
Two things are clear to me:
- Third-party ISVs like HP and Parallels weren’t given adequate opportunity to develop and test with this software.
- Someone in senior management said “ship it!” despite the recommendations of his/her QA department in order to meet the already once-delayed release date. Whatever you might say about Microsoft, they don’t have too much trouble missing multiple release dates.
Dave posted his thoughts about whether podcasting has or hasn’t achieved its promise and what that promise was, is and should be. He’s right about the devices, and as he points out regarding his own listening habits, it’s all about the content. Programs that have a high value to listeners will continue to be heard. Low-value novelty-only material never has a long-term future.
Two weeks ago we started looking into The Conversations Network’s use of the Creative Commons Sampling License, which is no longer officially supported by CC. We received terrific feedback including this email from CC founder Lawrence Lessig, who is also on our own Board of Advisors:
As others have commented, the license continues to be served (and will always be served) and you are free to use it. The Sampling Plus license is preferred of course, but of course it permits noncommercial reposting. While that is inconsistent in theory with your objectives, I would urge you to think practically about it. There are not many incentives to hosting large files that are not commercial, so while there may be a few who do it, I wouldn’t think it would be deeply inconsistent with your objectives to allow it.
For a variety of reasons, we’ve decided to stick with the existing CC Sampling License, at least for the time being. It really does come closest to meeting our set of objectives. But we’ll continue to review this issue on a regular basis.