Issues like this are just going to increase the demand for downloadable movies, and hasten the demise of "Disc Media" as the primary means of movie watching.
The telco's case is getting weaker and weaker as time goes on. "Broadband" as we know it here in the U.S. is getting fairly old now, but it has not kept up with the pace of other areas of technological advancement in IT, since the telco's and cable companies are reluctant to re-invest their multi-billion dollar profits (i.e. the 18,000 foot limit still applies for DSL in most places, although the technology has been there to extend it well beyond that). I live in an urbanized area in the middle of a medium-sized city, and cable Internet is my only choice for broadband since I am beyond AT&T's 18,000 foot limit. The cable Internet service is $55 per month and not reliable at all. My friends who have DSL are not really satisfied with the service they get for their price either. I don't know of anyone who even has more than two choices. The players in the broadband industry are operating as a cartel right now.
You can *apply* for a patent for anything. You can apply for a patent on your own style of walking if you wanted to. That does not mean the patent would be actually granted. What's curious is the fact that these companies even dare apply for patents on such obvious concepts.
I watched TechTV for a few weeks back in 2001 when it was still on and I found it boring and irrelevant. Most of the tech stuff they had on there was already old by the time they broadcast it, due to the fact that I had already read it on the Internet and began to forget about it by the time they could show it.
I kind of felt the same sentiment towards that channel that I do towards hard-copy tech magazines (I found them very enjoyable in the early 90's prior to the web boom, but obviously, due to the web, they have pretty much dropped down to zero-relevance). News and information (the focus of TechTV) has much more value, the more "hot off the press" it is. Only the Internet can provide the most "hot off the press" news in a practicle, relatively low-cost manner.
Isn't this the same Diebold that has spent many years making ATM machines for banks that handle CASH transactions? Do their ATM machines have these same vulnerabilities and flaws? Shouldn't they be experts in securing machines for any sort of electronic transactions that require security, tracking and auditing, after being in the ATM business for so long?
Re:Interesting twist..
on
The End of E3?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But you can argue that such venues for making announcements, have become irrelevant in this era of multimedia web content. All a Major Industry Company has to do is make press releases that get published on all of the major gaming and tech/new sites and reach a lot more people, much more quickly and efficiently with their big announcements. I think it's realistic to say that the web generates the vast majority of hype for pretty much all things tech nowadays. I'm sure if some sort of measurement was done, you would find that the number of game players that actually go to E3 is probably miniscule in comparison to those that surf the gaming/tech news sites.
In the movie theather market for major motion picture releases, there is very little competition. Here in the very large central region of california - an area encompassing a few large counties, there are dozens of movie theaters - but they are all owned by one company - Regal Cinemas (Regal bought out many chains, including United Artist and Edwards). When one chain has a monopoly over regional markets like this, they can afford to take a major hit in revenue and still remain very profitable. Also, major theater chains have exclusive deals with the major studios.
Since there are less than ten major studios like Sony, Paramount, etc. (which is VERY FEW when you consider the overall demand for movies) with massive marketing power, there is plenty of consumer money to be divvy'd up between the studios. Indie film producers and studios have a hard time getting their films into these major chains due to the fact that the (few) major studios have good relationships with the few major chains and effectively shut them out.
These factors along with the fact that big companies do not like to take "creative risks", leave the major studios with little incentive to change from "tried & true" formulas in film creation. This leads to less overall creativity in the long run, and although ticket numbers are down, these companies are still VERY profitable.
Of course, the Internet can change this and one can argue that the Internet has in fact contributed to the growing popularity of Indie films, which can be quite a refreshing change from the formulaic, predictable Major Releases.
This can also be tied to Net neutrality... one of the reasons the major Telcos oppose net neutrality is because they see the potential for lucrative relationships with the Few Big Motion Picture Distributors to deliver their movies at high speed to their customers, while the speed of other content is capped (i.e. really good, creative, cutting-edge Indie Films that have the potential to be hits and compete with the major studios, but obviously lack the $$$ to share with the Telcos).
The whole reason you were chided for your calls being too short, is because your company likely had an agreement with Gateway to bill them by the average time spent "servicing" each customer, rather than by the call. I have done the contracted-call-center thing too, working in a place where we had multiple "skill sets" supporting multiple big-name clients. The majority of the Big Name clients were billed by the call, so call-center "agents" just had to take as many calls as possible, keeping them as short as possible. But then there were a few Big Name clients who had somehow determined that keeping call times longer than X minutes safeguarded them against having customers rushed off the phones, but placed a maximum target of Y minutes as a safeguard to keep call handle times from being excessive. Invariably, when customer support is outsourced, the company who is trying to get the contract from Big Name Client sells themselves on how they provide the best service, their agents are intensely trained, etc. - BUT, in the end, it ends up being all about the numbers, because customer satisfaction with their support is hardly ever tracked reliably. Also, outsourced wages (even on-shore) are almost always too low to retain call-center agents with the decent technical troubleshooting ability required to both post good call stats and actually satisfy the customer's needs at the same time.
Rather than misunderstanding like you say, I think most people on here are smart enough see through the smoke of the grossly-obfuscated language used in most of these patents. With the recent patent news, I think most people by now are aware of items #1 and #2 that you mention. But then we get to item #3, which is where the problem lies. If you understand technology and/or are highly literate, as is the case for most Slashdot readers, you can read the claims for many of these patents, see through the obfuscatory smoke, and realize that what they describe is either something that is blatantly obvious and/or something that has been done before.
For example, the portion of Microsoft's claims that you included above can be summarized as follows: A program that runs on a customer's PC, letting the customer opt-in and select how they want their ads delivered, stores information about the customer, and then delivers the ads according to what information has been collected from the customer.
Just the fact that these companies would even dare to apply for things like that should naturally be enough to set off alarms. So I believe most people do in fact understand quite well what is going on.
Isn't this already happening today?? Coding jobs are being outsourced overseas, and Oracle in particular comes to mind, when you speak of "programs are intentionally made difficult to use, so as to drive up the necessity for consulting/customization and the fees incurred from that".
I think it would be perfectly logical to see Microsoft gradually move away from the closed-source model. I would not be surprised if they announce a decision to make Windows open-source a few years from now, seeing as how the entire economics of the enterprise software industry is moving towards consulting and support as a primary source of revenue (e.g., Oracle, Red Hat, Sun and others). (After a complete change in leadership of course, with gates and others moving out of the picture.) The basic economic forces of supply and demand in a highly competitive enterprise software market dictate that they logically should not be able to rely on revenue from software licensing for very long into the future. Their monopoly days are over.
If Netflix is on top of their game, they had better move quickly and setup deals with the studios to offer movies for download, or else they will quickly see themselves cast to the wayside.
Interesting coincidence how at the same time that MySpace reached the "most visited site status" ever, the major TV networks saw their "lowest ratings week" ever.
It's not as if it is impractical to deploy enough capacity to keep the networks from being "Overtaxed" but of course the greedy telcos want to make everyone (falsely) believe that that they will be driven out of business if they actually spend some cash building out their infrastructure.
Aggressive telecom lobbying is the main reason that the consumer broadband market is not competitive right now. Most places in America have at most two choices for broadband. After seven years of having broadband (A LONG TIME when talking tech) prices, performance and choice have yet to improve significantly, with the exception of "special introductory rates" that revert back to the same high prices when the introductory period is over.
I find it amusing how it took the behemoth of a company this long to realize that charging nearly 25-dollars-a-month for dial-up access is ridiculous. Of course, they tried to up-sell their "premium content" all of which could be had for free elsewhere on the world wide web. This was a prime example of executives lagging on meeting consumer needs/desires in the name of greed.
IMHO, this is a sign of competition introduced by the competitive on-line market place. Many typical shoppers are realizing that they can almost always get products from on-line-only retailers that are equal in price or even cheaper than the so-called "price after rebate" at the Brick & Mortar retailers. Who wants to wait months on end to get a rebate check when you can realize the discount immediately by simply ordering the product? Rebate or not, where I live it is impossible to get competitively priced computer hardware from the B&M retailers. In my city, we have best buy, circuit city, comp usa, office max, office depot, costco, sam's club as well as numerous ma-and-pa shops to choose from, (what *looks* like a reasonable amount of competition) but the markups on major hardware components still seems to be excessive. The only reason a lot of these places are still making money is because of the stupid masses, who are gradually becoming less-stupid.
The same thing is happening with the oil markets right now. Notice that oil prices spiked sharply although there was no correlating sharp change in supply or demand. The media monkeys just keep saying over and over again that oil prices are up on "worries".
From TFA of the telecom exec: "Over time, we would end up with a slower Internet and higher broadband prices and taxes for consumers, less broadband choice and slower broadband deployment to all Americans." - Too late, this is already true. Most places in America have two choices AT MOST for broadband. (I live in a well-populated urban area, and my ONLY option is Cable Internet, I am often unsatisfied with the Quality of Service, but I have no choice but to either keep paying $50+ dollars per month, or go back to dialup) Broadband has been in my city since 1999 now (SEVEN years, an eternity when you are talking tech) and prices/choice have YET to improve, with the exception of "special introductory rates" which revert to the same high prices when the introductory period is over. Meanwhile, we keep hearing about places such as South Korea where they are WAY ahead of the U.S. market in speed (common 20 Mbps+ connections) and have MUCH lower prices to boot. If anything, government intervention is sorely needed purely to protect the consumer from price gouging and monopolistic/duopolistic behavior.
Yes very true. Of course at the executive level in companies, they are usually given the opportunity to resign with grace rather than get fired, except in extreme cases such as those where criminal accusations are involved. IMHO, I think we're seeing a broad (and probably sorely needed) shakeup as a result of all the recent negative publicity surrounding the Vista delay, often speculated to be caused by culture issues. Corporate culture issues are difficult to fix in any organization, let alone a huge one like Microsoft, and often necessitate changes starting from the top down to even begin to make progress.
Apple really should buy TiVo. I really believe TiVo nicely complements the overall direction and image of Apple's product line. They just need to make slight modifications to the casing to make it match their other products. Also, it really wouldn't be too hard for them to tie it into iTunes service as well, thereby using iTune's success to increase the TiVo user base. If this happened, Apple would corner the home entertainment market. Hopefully someone at Apple has the insight to see this. Of course, there are behind the scenes accounting and finance factors that determine whether or not a large buyout like this would be feasible for a company such as Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
Issues like this are just going to increase the demand for downloadable movies, and hasten the demise of "Disc Media" as the primary means of movie watching.
Sounds like a bloody...er..soaking-good time!
The telco's case is getting weaker and weaker as time goes on. "Broadband" as we know it here in the U.S. is getting fairly old now, but it has not kept up with the pace of other areas of technological advancement in IT, since the telco's and cable companies are reluctant to re-invest their multi-billion dollar profits (i.e. the 18,000 foot limit still applies for DSL in most places, although the technology has been there to extend it well beyond that). I live in an urbanized area in the middle of a medium-sized city, and cable Internet is my only choice for broadband since I am beyond AT&T's 18,000 foot limit. The cable Internet service is $55 per month and not reliable at all. My friends who have DSL are not really satisfied with the service they get for their price either. I don't know of anyone who even has more than two choices. The players in the broadband industry are operating as a cartel right now.
You can *apply* for a patent for anything. You can apply for a patent on your own style of walking if you wanted to. That does not mean the patent would be actually granted. What's curious is the fact that these companies even dare apply for patents on such obvious concepts.
Apparently it pays well.
Microsoft is still raking in Billions
I watched TechTV for a few weeks back in 2001 when it was still on and I found it boring and irrelevant. Most of the tech stuff they had on there was already old by the time they broadcast it, due to the fact that I had already read it on the Internet and began to forget about it by the time they could show it.
I kind of felt the same sentiment towards that channel that I do towards hard-copy tech magazines (I found them very enjoyable in the early 90's prior to the web boom, but obviously, due to the web, they have pretty much dropped down to zero-relevance). News and information (the focus of TechTV) has much more value, the more "hot off the press" it is. Only the Internet can provide the most "hot off the press" news in a practicle, relatively low-cost manner.
Isn't this the same Diebold that has spent many years making ATM machines for banks that handle CASH transactions? Do their ATM machines have these same vulnerabilities and flaws? Shouldn't they be experts in securing machines for any sort of electronic transactions that require security, tracking and auditing, after being in the ATM business for so long?
But you can argue that such venues for making announcements, have become irrelevant in this era of multimedia web content. All a Major Industry Company has to do is make press releases that get published on all of the major gaming and tech/new sites and reach a lot more people, much more quickly and efficiently with their big announcements. I think it's realistic to say that the web generates the vast majority of hype for pretty much all things tech nowadays. I'm sure if some sort of measurement was done, you would find that the number of game players that actually go to E3 is probably miniscule in comparison to those that surf the gaming/tech news sites.
In the movie theather market for major motion picture releases, there is very little competition. Here in the very large central region of california - an area encompassing a few large counties, there are dozens of movie theaters - but they are all owned by one company - Regal Cinemas (Regal bought out many chains, including United Artist and Edwards). When one chain has a monopoly over regional markets like this, they can afford to take a major hit in revenue and still remain very profitable. Also, major theater chains have exclusive deals with the major studios.
Since there are less than ten major studios like Sony, Paramount, etc. (which is VERY FEW when you consider the overall demand for movies) with massive marketing power, there is plenty of consumer money to be divvy'd up between the studios. Indie film producers and studios have a hard time getting their films into these major chains due to the fact that the (few) major studios have good relationships with the few major chains and effectively shut them out.
These factors along with the fact that big companies do not like to take "creative risks", leave the major studios with little incentive to change from "tried & true" formulas in film creation. This leads to less overall creativity in the long run, and although ticket numbers are down, these companies are still VERY profitable.
Of course, the Internet can change this and one can argue that the Internet has in fact contributed to the growing popularity of Indie films, which can be quite a refreshing change from the formulaic, predictable Major Releases.
This can also be tied to Net neutrality... one of the reasons the major Telcos oppose net neutrality is because they see the potential for lucrative relationships with the Few Big Motion Picture Distributors to deliver their movies at high speed to their customers, while the speed of other content is capped (i.e. really good, creative, cutting-edge Indie Films that have the potential to be hits and compete with the major studios, but obviously lack the $$$ to share with the Telcos).
The whole reason you were chided for your calls being too short, is because your company likely had an agreement with Gateway to bill them by the average time spent "servicing" each customer, rather than by the call. I have done the contracted-call-center thing too, working in a place where we had multiple "skill sets" supporting multiple big-name clients. The majority of the Big Name clients were billed by the call, so call-center "agents" just had to take as many calls as possible, keeping them as short as possible. But then there were a few Big Name clients who had somehow determined that keeping call times longer than X minutes safeguarded them against having customers rushed off the phones, but placed a maximum target of Y minutes as a safeguard to keep call handle times from being excessive. Invariably, when customer support is outsourced, the company who is trying to get the contract from Big Name Client sells themselves on how they provide the best service, their agents are intensely trained, etc. - BUT, in the end, it ends up being all about the numbers, because customer satisfaction with their support is hardly ever tracked reliably. Also, outsourced wages (even on-shore) are almost always too low to retain call-center agents with the decent technical troubleshooting ability required to both post good call stats and actually satisfy the customer's needs at the same time.
Rather than misunderstanding like you say, I think most people on here are smart enough see through the smoke of the grossly-obfuscated language used in most of these patents. With the recent patent news, I think most people by now are aware of items #1 and #2 that you mention. But then we get to item #3, which is where the problem lies. If you understand technology and/or are highly literate, as is the case for most Slashdot readers, you can read the claims for many of these patents, see through the obfuscatory smoke, and realize that what they describe is either something that is blatantly obvious and/or something that has been done before.
For example, the portion of Microsoft's claims that you included above can be summarized as follows:
A program that runs on a customer's PC, letting the customer opt-in and select how they want their ads delivered, stores information about the customer, and then delivers the ads according to what information has been collected from the customer.
Just the fact that these companies would even dare to apply for things like that should naturally be enough to set off alarms. So I believe most people do in fact understand quite well what is going on.
It's server monkey day, and every geek is celebratin', YAY!!!
Isn't this already happening today?? Coding jobs are being outsourced overseas, and Oracle in particular comes to mind, when you speak of "programs are intentionally made difficult to use, so as to drive up the necessity for consulting/customization and the fees incurred from that".
I think it would be perfectly logical to see Microsoft gradually move away from the closed-source model. I would not be surprised if they announce a decision to make Windows open-source a few years from now, seeing as how the entire economics of the enterprise software industry is moving towards consulting and support as a primary source of revenue (e.g., Oracle, Red Hat, Sun and others). (After a complete change in leadership of course, with gates and others moving out of the picture.) The basic economic forces of supply and demand in a highly competitive enterprise software market dictate that they logically should not be able to rely on revenue from software licensing for very long into the future. Their monopoly days are over.
SGI is still in business???
If Netflix is on top of their game, they had better move quickly and setup deals with the studios to offer movies for download, or else they will quickly see themselves cast to the wayside.
Interesting coincidence how at the same time that MySpace reached the "most visited site status" ever, the major TV networks saw their "lowest ratings week" ever.
It's not as if it is impractical to deploy enough capacity to keep the networks from being "Overtaxed" but of course the greedy telcos want to make everyone (falsely) believe that that they will be driven out of business if they actually spend some cash building out their infrastructure.
Aggressive telecom lobbying is the main reason that the consumer broadband market is not competitive right now. Most places in America have at most two choices for broadband. After seven years of having broadband (A LONG TIME when talking tech) prices, performance and choice have yet to improve significantly, with the exception of "special introductory rates" that revert back to the same high prices when the introductory period is over.
I find it amusing how it took the behemoth of a company this long to realize that charging nearly 25-dollars-a-month for dial-up access is ridiculous. Of course, they tried to up-sell their "premium content" all of which could be had for free elsewhere on the world wide web. This was a prime example of executives lagging on meeting consumer needs/desires in the name of greed.
IMHO, this is a sign of competition introduced by the competitive on-line market place. Many typical shoppers are realizing that they can almost always get products from on-line-only retailers that are equal in price or even cheaper than the so-called "price after rebate" at the Brick & Mortar retailers. Who wants to wait months on end to get a rebate check when you can realize the discount immediately by simply ordering the product? Rebate or not, where I live it is impossible to get competitively priced computer hardware from the B&M retailers. In my city, we have best buy, circuit city, comp usa, office max, office depot, costco, sam's club as well as numerous ma-and-pa shops to choose from, (what *looks* like a reasonable amount of competition) but the markups on major hardware components still seems to be excessive. The only reason a lot of these places are still making money is because of the stupid masses, who are gradually becoming less-stupid.
The same thing is happening with the oil markets right now. Notice that oil prices spiked sharply although there was no correlating sharp change in supply or demand. The media monkeys just keep saying over and over again that oil prices are up on "worries".
From TFA of the telecom exec: "Over time, we would end up with a slower Internet and higher broadband prices and taxes for consumers, less broadband choice and slower broadband deployment to all Americans."
- Too late, this is already true. Most places in America have two choices AT MOST for broadband. (I live in a well-populated urban area, and my ONLY option is Cable Internet, I am often unsatisfied with the Quality of Service, but I have no choice but to either keep paying $50+ dollars per month, or go back to dialup) Broadband has been in my city since 1999 now (SEVEN years, an eternity when you are talking tech) and prices/choice have YET to improve, with the exception of "special introductory rates" which revert to the same high prices when the introductory period is over. Meanwhile, we keep hearing about places such as South Korea where they are WAY ahead of the U.S. market in speed (common 20 Mbps+ connections) and have MUCH lower prices to boot. If anything, government intervention is sorely needed purely to protect the consumer from price gouging and monopolistic/duopolistic behavior.
Yes very true. Of course at the executive level in companies, they are usually given the opportunity to resign with grace rather than get fired, except in extreme cases such as those where criminal accusations are involved. IMHO, I think we're seeing a broad (and probably sorely needed) shakeup as a result of all the recent negative publicity surrounding the Vista delay, often speculated to be caused by culture issues. Corporate culture issues are difficult to fix in any organization, let alone a huge one like Microsoft, and often necessitate changes starting from the top down to even begin to make progress.
Apple really should buy TiVo. I really believe TiVo nicely complements the overall direction and image of Apple's product line. They just need to make slight modifications to the casing to make it match their other products. Also, it really wouldn't be too hard for them to tie it into iTunes service as well, thereby using iTune's success to increase the TiVo user base. If this happened, Apple would corner the home entertainment market. Hopefully someone at Apple has the insight to see this. Of course, there are behind the scenes accounting and finance factors that determine whether or not a large buyout like this would be feasible for a company such as Apple.