They could always create an International Obfuscated AJAX competition, then every entrant could be a winner.
Either I'm dumber than I had hoped, have worked with nimwitted programmers, or (much more likely) most AJAX implementations are just completely illogic to follow. When reviewing "Web 2.0" work, I often miss the logic and structure of C.
I think the real question is "Which movie download site sucks less". Really, none of them seem very good. When I want to watch a movie, I don't want to wait 12 hours for it to download and then watch it on my computer screen. And the burnable movies quality are awful, even compared to a standard DVD, let alone HD on-demand via cable.
I still think we're years away from a large percentage of the population downloading their movies. Before any of these options become viable, average download speeds need to hit 50-100Mbps and computers (or TB capacity video iPods/game consoles) need to become part of the family room, not the office.
This is just the French's way of getting some publicity. They'll probably come out with 6,000 drawings on napkins and cardboard cutouts of alien ships... as the French say "Un Anglais mort est toujours meilleur que livre de beurre, excepté sur des baguettes".
There's a lot that's either just so blatantly obvious or lame that it's hard to believe they consider these "wild". I'd hate to see Wired's parties... To try to be a little more "wild" with predictions, here are mine... I'll bet at least one pans out:
Gootube is sued by a consortium of Music Publishers, and caves hard to copyright protections
RIAA creates their own music sharing program cloaked as an offshore company, then gathers IPs and sues thousands of file sharers
Steve Jobs will step down amidst some scandal, either stock options or due to random trysts with Apple interns
The OLPC project will be featured on Sesame Street, and become the hot holiday product of 2007 for small children
Yahoo will make at least 2 ridiculously overpriced purchases, at least one will either be Facebook, or a floating dirigible high over Texas (similar to the banana over Texas... which surprisingly is a real project)
It's hard to believe that Google hasn't already discussed the delay and any consequences with the movie, television, and music studios. Google had such intensive conversations with them before purchasing YouTube, that it would be silly if they went quiet and just let things slide.
Re:Vista already doing some of this
on
DieHard, the Software
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sure, but wouldn't it be better if everything ran in it's own virtual session (or within a virtual secure space)? This was Microsoft's original plan with it's Palladium component of Longhorn, but my understanding is that this was almost entirely scrapped to get Vista out the door.
Part of the other problem is that most home users expect secure data, but they aren't willing to do anything about it (e.g. set up non-admin users, install virus checkers/firewalls/etc).
When I read "Gumboy Crazy Adventures" by "Cinemax", my first thought was that it was some type of cartoony play on late night skin flicks. Now that would be quirky!
Happy New Year everyone
I actually think this is a great thing. It always seemed ridiculous to me that law enforcement might need to spend hours/days retrieving data from other agencies in criminal proceedings.
5. Apple will break the 10% market share mark in new computer sales
4. The iPod will face it's first big competitor at Christmas 2007, from a vastly improved Zune
3. iPod will release a hard-drive free version of it's Video iPod, utilizing multiple flash memory cards to achieve 40GB+
2. Apple will release the iPhone, and it will be the must have phone of 2007
1. Apple will announce plans for a set-top box, integrating gaming, cable, and internet browsing
You're not too far away. The average Costco sells $115Million in merchandise per week, or approximately $2Million per non-holiday week. Costco's (and other retailers) get about 20% of their weekly sales on a Saturday, which would mean ~$400K on average.
Will enough people really want to spend $100K or so to travel halfway around the world in 2 hours vs. 20? After the novelty of going into space wears off for the rich, I see this as being about as exciting (and economically feasible) as the Concorde.
When you're talking about that many divisions, I'd say bring it in house. It may cost a little more, but the level of control you need cannot easily be quantified with a simple price tag.
I used to work for a 100,000+ employee consulting company, and I saw SLAs and contracts broken time and time again... or saw situations where companies had to spend millions (or even billions) to get out of contracts and unwind decisions that didn't make sense in the longterm. It was a nightmare to manage a few outsourcing contractors, I couldn't imagine trying to manage dozens or more.
And since you're working for a government agency, you probably won't even be able to achieve any significant cost savings by outsourcing (since most contractors save money by offshoring resources, which I believe is still a no-no for government work).
I don't see how this would ever work. Hardly anyone would be willing to pay for the ability to carry around a little 3 1/2" shopping buddy, and the shopping center would lose their shirt if they just handed them out (since many people would probably walk off with them). Seems like beeming info to shopper' cellphones would be a much more marketable (and profitable) endeavour.
Yes, you're already paying for it... but the cell phone providers and advertisers are really just looking our for your best interest... as the article says:
"The interest of advertisers in the medium stems from a theory that ads placed on mobile phones could create a particularly intimate bond with consumers"
Hmmm... interesting theory. I used to work in marketing, and always love how marketing/advertising folks have this idea that everyone loves ads and that ads make their lives better.
My favorite is always the login screens. Someone turns on the computer, and within a second or two a big generic login screen pops up. What's funny is that it usually doesn't have a user name, just a password. Then once logged in, all of a sudden the character can access any file instantaneously.
You've Got Mail is Always Good News is a good one from the list though. I'd love to see the movie of the same name change so that Meg Ryan opens up her Mac notebook to a "You've got mail", which turns out to be 37 advertisements for penis enlargement pills and viagra. Hehehe...
No offense to Captain Taco, slashdot, or anyone here... but I hardly imagine slashdot would take down the servers if the servers already handled Digg (particularly on Christmas Eve). Slashdot is News for Nerds, Digg used to be, but is now general purpose slop. As a result, Digg volume is unbelievably HUGE since it's now being used by a far larger population than just techies.
As an example, on a blog I own (not the site in my sig), one of my posts hit all the major "social bookmarking" sites at once. Here are the stats:
- Reddit: 1,027
- Del.icio.us: 1,856 (I was surprised here)
- Fark: 8,347
- Slashdot: 18,111
- Digg: 94,991
And on my site in my sig, the owner has seen #s from Digg around the 100,000 visits within 24 hours as well (since it's not a tech site, I can't compare #s to slashdot since it wouldn't hit slashdot's front page). It's actually really annoying, because Digg visitors almost never stay for more than ~5 seconds (slashdot readers appear to at least read part of the story).
I would have been really surprised if the government would have allowed a critical article co-written by a government official to be published. There is nothing sinister going on here... if the NYT is upset, they should have just interviewed the National Security Council employee instead of using that individual as a co-author.
Co-authoring any article with a government employee (or even a corporate employee) is always a risk. While the NYT is free to publish almost anything they want, the co-author (by nature of his/her employment) is not, which was the problem in this situation.
The new Blogger beta is, quite frankly, a disappointment. Blogger was pretty amazing when it came out years ago, but since Google bought them the brand has languished far behind competitors (Wordpress, Typepad, etc). Now Google adds a couple extra features, removes the Beta tag, and expects great fanfare. They just get ho-hum from me.
They certainly aren't the only options, but for your average non-techie desktop user they are probably the best answers. The problem is that there isn't any plan for creating a better user "experience". Developers typically hate creating non-functional "fluff", or even functional fluff... but all the fluff that make up Windows and Mac systems is what the average user wants, and what makes it more difficult for them to transition to Linux.
I think it's pretty funny that the article is titled "Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?" When was there a bubble to begin with? Doesn't there have to be rather widespread adoption or growth to constitute a bubble? Has the Linux desktop ever gained more than ~1% of the desktop market?
eBay works because people are always looking for fantastic deals, and the auction format provides a sense of urgency. eBay express is really only a buy-it-now subsection of eBay, except the products don't have an expiration date, and aren't displayed prominently in searches.
Search seems like the express product's major downfall. Most eBay users don't want to shop by store, they want to shop by product (and typically via a search). eBay express only comes up at the very bottom of main eBay searches, or if nothing was found during the search. Sometimes eBay express items also come up as "related items" when clicking on an auction item. But this really isn't going to drive significant traffic... it's seems more like an afterthought.
Also, for some reason the express site seems SLOOOOWWW. It took about 1 minute for the main page to come up just now (from 2 different locations on 2 different networks), ugh.
Regarding multiple machines/e-mails/clients/etc... will Thunderbird (or another e-mail program) handle multiple e-mail addresses well? Between businesses, home, and family, I have about 15 e-mail addresses, all POP accessible. I want something that will show me when I have mail from any of these, and if easily send from any of them. Will Thunderbird do this (I've never seen it mentioned in docs)?
I don't know if we should give browsers any slack just because CSS2 is "only 8.5 years old". It's pretty poor IMO that a widespread standard such as CSS 2.0 still isn't implemented fully by any browser.
Slashdot Mirror
They could always create an International Obfuscated AJAX competition, then every entrant could be a winner.
Either I'm dumber than I had hoped, have worked with nimwitted programmers, or (much more likely) most AJAX implementations are just completely illogic to follow. When reviewing "Web 2.0" work, I often miss the logic and structure of C.
"Which Movie Download Site Is Best?"
I think the real question is "Which movie download site sucks less". Really, none of them seem very good. When I want to watch a movie, I don't want to wait 12 hours for it to download and then watch it on my computer screen. And the burnable movies quality are awful, even compared to a standard DVD, let alone HD on-demand via cable.
I still think we're years away from a large percentage of the population downloading their movies. Before any of these options become viable, average download speeds need to hit 50-100Mbps and computers (or TB capacity video iPods/game consoles) need to become part of the family room, not the office.
This is just the French's way of getting some publicity. They'll probably come out with 6,000 drawings on napkins and cardboard cutouts of alien ships ... as the French say "Un Anglais mort est toujours meilleur que livre de beurre, excepté sur des baguettes".
It's hard to believe that Google hasn't already discussed the delay and any consequences with the movie, television, and music studios. Google had such intensive conversations with them before purchasing YouTube, that it would be silly if they went quiet and just let things slide.
Sure, but wouldn't it be better if everything ran in it's own virtual session (or within a virtual secure space)? This was Microsoft's original plan with it's Palladium component of Longhorn, but my understanding is that this was almost entirely scrapped to get Vista out the door.
Part of the other problem is that most home users expect secure data, but they aren't willing to do anything about it (e.g. set up non-admin users, install virus checkers/firewalls/etc).
When I read "Gumboy Crazy Adventures" by "Cinemax", my first thought was that it was some type of cartoony play on late night skin flicks. Now that would be quirky! Happy New Year everyone
I actually think this is a great thing. It always seemed ridiculous to me that law enforcement might need to spend hours/days retrieving data from other agencies in criminal proceedings.
And searchable via Google Phone Search
My top 5:
5. Apple will break the 10% market share mark in new computer sales
4. The iPod will face it's first big competitor at Christmas 2007, from a vastly improved Zune
3. iPod will release a hard-drive free version of it's Video iPod, utilizing multiple flash memory cards to achieve 40GB+
2. Apple will release the iPhone, and it will be the must have phone of 2007
1. Apple will announce plans for a set-top box, integrating gaming, cable, and internet browsing
Some of these were pretty good, but I would have liked to see some better shots ... I personally found Top 10 Best Space Stories of 2006 more interesting, and some of the pics in Most Amazing Galactic Images ever were pretty good too.
Here's a couple other pics that I thought were top 10 material:
Man in space
Earth from Satellite
You're not too far away. The average Costco sells $115Million in merchandise per week, or approximately $2Million per non-holiday week. Costco's (and other retailers) get about 20% of their weekly sales on a Saturday, which would mean ~$400K on average.
Will enough people really want to spend $100K or so to travel halfway around the world in 2 hours vs. 20? After the novelty of going into space wears off for the rich, I see this as being about as exciting (and economically feasible) as the Concorde.
When you're talking about that many divisions, I'd say bring it in house. It may cost a little more, but the level of control you need cannot easily be quantified with a simple price tag.
... or saw situations where companies had to spend millions (or even billions) to get out of contracts and unwind decisions that didn't make sense in the longterm. It was a nightmare to manage a few outsourcing contractors, I couldn't imagine trying to manage dozens or more.
I used to work for a 100,000+ employee consulting company, and I saw SLAs and contracts broken time and time again
And since you're working for a government agency, you probably won't even be able to achieve any significant cost savings by outsourcing (since most contractors save money by offshoring resources, which I believe is still a no-no for government work).
I don't see how this would ever work. Hardly anyone would be willing to pay for the ability to carry around a little 3 1/2" shopping buddy, and the shopping center would lose their shirt if they just handed them out (since many people would probably walk off with them). Seems like beeming info to shopper' cellphones would be a much more marketable (and profitable) endeavour.
My favorite is always the login screens. Someone turns on the computer, and within a second or two a big generic login screen pops up. What's funny is that it usually doesn't have a user name, just a password. Then once logged in, all of a sudden the character can access any file instantaneously.
You've Got Mail is Always Good News is a good one from the list though. I'd love to see the movie of the same name change so that Meg Ryan opens up her Mac notebook to a "You've got mail", which turns out to be 37 advertisements for penis enlargement pills and viagra. Hehehe...
No offense to Captain Taco, slashdot, or anyone here ... but I hardly imagine slashdot would take down the servers if the servers already handled Digg (particularly on Christmas Eve). Slashdot is News for Nerds, Digg used to be, but is now general purpose slop. As a result, Digg volume is unbelievably HUGE since it's now being used by a far larger population than just techies.
As an example, on a blog I own (not the site in my sig), one of my posts hit all the major "social bookmarking" sites at once. Here are the stats:
- Reddit: 1,027
- Del.icio.us: 1,856 (I was surprised here)
- Fark: 8,347
- Slashdot: 18,111
- Digg: 94,991
And on my site in my sig, the owner has seen #s from Digg around the 100,000 visits within 24 hours as well (since it's not a tech site, I can't compare #s to slashdot since it wouldn't hit slashdot's front page). It's actually really annoying, because Digg visitors almost never stay for more than ~5 seconds (slashdot readers appear to at least read part of the story).
I would have been really surprised if the government would have allowed a critical article co-written by a government official to be published. There is nothing sinister going on here ... if the NYT is upset, they should have just interviewed the National Security Council employee instead of using that individual as a co-author.
Co-authoring any article with a government employee (or even a corporate employee) is always a risk. While the NYT is free to publish almost anything they want, the co-author (by nature of his/her employment) is not, which was the problem in this situation.
The new Blogger beta is, quite frankly, a disappointment. Blogger was pretty amazing when it came out years ago, but since Google bought them the brand has languished far behind competitors (Wordpress, Typepad, etc). Now Google adds a couple extra features, removes the Beta tag, and expects great fanfare. They just get ho-hum from me.
They certainly aren't the only options, but for your average non-techie desktop user they are probably the best answers. The problem is that there isn't any plan for creating a better user "experience". Developers typically hate creating non-functional "fluff", or even functional fluff ... but all the fluff that make up Windows and Mac systems is what the average user wants, and what makes it more difficult for them to transition to Linux.
I think it's pretty funny that the article is titled "Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?" When was there a bubble to begin with? Doesn't there have to be rather widespread adoption or growth to constitute a bubble? Has the Linux desktop ever gained more than ~1% of the desktop market?
He'll at least have a front row seat to watch as all the people he didn't like before walk out the door.
eBay works because people are always looking for fantastic deals, and the auction format provides a sense of urgency. eBay express is really only a buy-it-now subsection of eBay, except the products don't have an expiration date, and aren't displayed prominently in searches.
... it's seems more like an afterthought.
Search seems like the express product's major downfall. Most eBay users don't want to shop by store, they want to shop by product (and typically via a search). eBay express only comes up at the very bottom of main eBay searches, or if nothing was found during the search. Sometimes eBay express items also come up as "related items" when clicking on an auction item. But this really isn't going to drive significant traffic
Also, for some reason the express site seems SLOOOOWWW. It took about 1 minute for the main page to come up just now (from 2 different locations on 2 different networks), ugh.
Regarding multiple machines/e-mails/clients/etc ... will Thunderbird (or another e-mail program) handle multiple e-mail addresses well? Between businesses, home, and family, I have about 15 e-mail addresses, all POP accessible. I want something that will show me when I have mail from any of these, and if easily send from any of them. Will Thunderbird do this (I've never seen it mentioned in docs)?
I don't know if we should give browsers any slack just because CSS2 is "only 8.5 years old". It's pretty poor IMO that a widespread standard such as CSS 2.0 still isn't implemented fully by any browser.