That's exactly the problem... nobody realizes that the consumer is who needs to make the decision
Another problem is that the television networks are looking for traditional ways to exploit HDTV rather than innovate. It should come as no surprise that advertisers wouldn't pay more for regular commercials during HDTV broadcasts... a viewer can change the channel in the middle of an HDTV commercial just as easily as any other.
Broadcasters fail to willingly recognize two driving factors for HDTV:
The public now demands it, so they don't really have a choice (other than beg the government to force carriers to give the networks kickbacks)
The technology and vastly improved resolution will allow greater integration of programs with the internet. This would allow viewers to seamlessly interact with game shows via a remote, or to purchase clothing that their favorite soap stars might be wearing. Advertisers are willing to pay HUGE sums of money for interactive content and online purchasing.
Where I do agree with the networks is their argument for dropping traditional HDTV radio wave broadcasts. It's ridiculous for the government to mandate that HDTV be receivable via antenna, let the networks use public demand as a gauge for where and how to best deliver hi-def.
If you can't use your hands, why not do something that doesn't require your fingers much? Dance Dance Revolution is fun and gives you a good workout, some of the Nintendo Wii games don't require fine motor control, etc. Just because you can't hit the buttons like a madman anymore doesn't mean you have to stop gaming.
I wonder if anyone has tried adding a bunch of high performance GPU chips into the mix (e.g. NVidia or ATI's can run at close to 1 TFlop), or hook together a bunch of PS3 Cell chips? I realize these are more specialized, but they are SO fast that augmenting classic commodity chips with these specialized chips seems like it could greatly boost performance.
Not original? Apparently you didn't read Fox's teaser bits... they were going to have Booger be the one staying up all night to spy on the ladies instead of Louis, and then Poindexter was going to get the girl on the Moonbounce. These are earth shaking plot twists!
I must be missing something... if the technique was first described and shown in 2001, then reaffirmed in 2003, why haven't they moved forward with trying to treat humans with severe/end-stage diabetes? In fact, they don't even discuss the possibility, which makes me wonder if there is something else in play (bad side effects for example). This sounds like a MAJOR medical breakthrough, and typically breakthroughs like this are pushed into more expanded trials and even human tests faster than the researchers at MGH are moving forward.
I wonder why they didn't just setup a basic html page or two for the home page in order to handle the traffic. By enabling a landing page for 15 minutes or so, they could have directed all the folks seeking these incredible deals to the correct page, instead of ensuring everyone is fed dynamic CPU-intensive pages. It's not like it's the first time that Walmart or Amazon have experienced traffic spikes.
If there is so much variation between humans, how does this impact future genetic therapies? Wouldn't we need to map each person's genome, then study the impact of disease on each of the genes, to understand what gene therapies would work best for an individual? This article seems to suggest that the everyday "We've found the gene that causes " claims are only true for a subset of the population.
Why not just buy one of the OLPC machines? Price to performance and considering heat produced, nothing else can come close. I'm sure once Brazil and other countries start receiving theirs, we'll see them all over ebay for a bargain.
Seriously though, this is a great list, except for the fact that the machines are pretty expensive. If I was to blow that type of money on a laptop, I'd probably go for the Toshiba. But until then, I'll stick with my $500 Dell laptop. Sure it's a little bit slower (1.8Ghz I believe), but the battery is too small to catch anything on fire.
I wonder if this is one of the first moves that Microsoft is making to back away from the agreement, or rather... to back away from their original intentions (whatever they may have been).
Well, they'd probably have to show some proof... but an editor or writer could easily create that proof and make sure that his/her tracks cannot be followed. For example, let's say a single writer decided to ridiculously slander a celebrity. As long as the writer published the story on a message board first, they could republish the story in their online newspaper (or if the law was extended as you suggest, in their print). Since the only person who knows the scheme is the writer, it would be difficult to impossible to link the newspaper to the libelous content.
There definitely needs to be some sort of line drawn, the difficulty is finding where to put it. If a blogger republishes a story about K-Fed and Britney, I could see offering some sort of protection/immunity against the blogger getting sued by K-Fed or Britney. But stating that anyone who republishes a story, particularly if it's from an anonymous source, cannot be sued goes too far in my opinion.
Hehe... wouldn't that be funny if Microsoft folks were viewing this as another OS/2, where they'd steal enough technology to create their own Linux-like server product? Unlike with Windows, I doubt Microsoft could pull it off though... the Linux advocates are too anti-Redmond to adopt a M$ linux clone.
I'd truly hate to see what the adult entertainment industry would do with this one... sure, there'd be some gems, but how many plots would revolve around having the stars "reach out and grab you" over and over.
All of the cities listed in the story are small towns, the largest boasts of reducing their traffic signals from 18 to 2. Imagine trying to eliminate traffic signals and signs in a city like New York City, where there are over 11,000 signals, and almost 3,000 in Manhattan alone. If you've ever ridden in a cab at 5:00am, you have seen the chaos that ensues when there are no signals (since cabbies completely ignore all lights at that time). It's certainly not safer.
If we rely on courtesy to dictate our traffic patterns, we'll be victim to those who have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk. The U.S. has far too many people that fall into this category for the strategy to be effective.
While the videos are pretty entertaining, there's a ridiculous amount of spam and popups (particularly on ie). After every video, I was taken to another site where it said I had to order a plasma screen TV just to watch the vid, uuggghhh.
Oh well, maybe I'm the only person this works for... I even tried to fake it out and it still gave me right answers (even though some of them I didn't exactly like).
Finally, technology that gives power back to the teenage prankster. Now "Hey, did you know your refridgerator is running?" calls will be answered with "Yes Mr. President, I did... Oh, and by the way, your voice sounds so much younger in person" instead of "Johnny, please hangup the phone before I tell your mother".
Unbelievably to me, some sites can already ascertain your character using little real info. For example, "www.LikeBetter.com guesses your physical and personality characteristics just by which pictures you like. Every 10 or so pictures you can click on the brain at the bottom and it tells you what it knows about you. I couldn't believe how accurate it was... After about 10 rounds, it had given me 20 characteristics, only 1 was incorrect.
Both Yahoo and Google this year have introduced a mind-blowing number of new services that make it easy to accuse either of spreading themselves too thin. Remember when Google said they'd only offer search, not chat or finance pages or horoscopes? Right, now they've also added 30+ other products (luckily they've stayed away from horoscopes for now).
The difference between the two is that Google has at least devoted the resources to improving upon their key product (search), while Yahoo has a difficult time defining what their key product is. I'm sure Brad Garlinghouse (being the VP of Mail) of the memo would say it's Yahoo! Mail, but if you were to interview every VP you'd likely get a different answer.
As an example of their lack of focus, look at the homepage. One week it focuses on news stories, the next it focuses on some random $50,000 video contest. This may keep people entertained, but it also reflects the lack of consistency inherent in the organization (or shows the bread through the peanut butter as Brad might say).
Maybe not in Europe, but in the U.S. all information is encrypted using 3DES or other encryption algorithms (it's now mandatory by law). On some machines (like the Diebold ATMs), hardware encryption is used in the keypad. This ensures that even if you somehow planted a device inside the ATM to capture data sent from the keypad to the CPU you still wouldn't be able to get personal information.
This may be possible in Europe, but I don't believe it's possible in the U.S. anymore. 3DES has been the standard ATM encryption method for a few years, and almost all ATM machines have been converted to 3DES (by Dec 31st they apparently won't operate unless they are 3DES since the ATM networks will only allow encrypted communications).
Even if someone can no longer use a generic man-in-the-middle attack in the future due to encryption, it's amazing how many other means for ATM fraud still exist. I couldn't believe this one when I saw it the other day.
If Google pursues this, I don't think they'll do so for financial reasons, but rather for PR reasons (just like they used the installation of a relatively large solar capacity as PR). But nowadays $200 Million isn't that much to Google, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them support the effort to some extent.
What's really unfortunate is that the lawsuits' end result is that the music industry gets significant licensing revenues from the deal, but the agreements are setup in such a way that the individual artists never do. Many of these are artists would be more than happy to share their music (or some subset thereof), but not in a situation where everyone is making money from their music except the creators.
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Another problem is that the television networks are looking for traditional ways to exploit HDTV rather than innovate. It should come as no surprise that advertisers wouldn't pay more for regular commercials during HDTV broadcasts
Broadcasters fail to willingly recognize two driving factors for HDTV:
- The public now demands it, so they don't really have a choice (other than beg the government to force carriers to give the networks kickbacks)
- The technology and vastly improved resolution will allow greater integration of programs with the internet. This would allow viewers to seamlessly interact with game shows via a remote, or to purchase clothing that their favorite soap stars might be wearing. Advertisers are willing to pay HUGE sums of money for interactive content and online purchasing.
Where I do agree with the networks is their argument for dropping traditional HDTV radio wave broadcasts. It's ridiculous for the government to mandate that HDTV be receivable via antenna, let the networks use public demand as a gauge for where and how to best deliver hi-def.If you can't use your hands, why not do something that doesn't require your fingers much? Dance Dance Revolution is fun and gives you a good workout, some of the Nintendo Wii games don't require fine motor control, etc. Just because you can't hit the buttons like a madman anymore doesn't mean you have to stop gaming.
I wonder if anyone has tried adding a bunch of high performance GPU chips into the mix (e.g. NVidia or ATI's can run at close to 1 TFlop), or hook together a bunch of PS3 Cell chips? I realize these are more specialized, but they are SO fast that augmenting classic commodity chips with these specialized chips seems like it could greatly boost performance.
Not original? Apparently you didn't read Fox's teaser bits ... they were going to have Booger be the one staying up all night to spy on the ladies instead of Louis, and then Poindexter was going to get the girl on the Moonbounce. These are earth shaking plot twists!
Oh, I didn't see that in the article. Are you saying it causes cancer because you have read about this potential diabetes treatment on another site or journal, or just because (in general) stem cells have been shown to become cancerous more readily than researchers had hoped? If the former, I'd love to read the article if you have a link.
I must be missing something ... if the technique was first described and shown in 2001, then reaffirmed in 2003, why haven't they moved forward with trying to treat humans with severe/end-stage diabetes? In fact, they don't even discuss the possibility, which makes me wonder if there is something else in play (bad side effects for example). This sounds like a MAJOR medical breakthrough, and typically breakthroughs like this are pushed into more expanded trials and even human tests faster than the researchers at MGH are moving forward.
I wonder why they didn't just setup a basic html page or two for the home page in order to handle the traffic. By enabling a landing page for 15 minutes or so, they could have directed all the folks seeking these incredible deals to the correct page, instead of ensuring everyone is fed dynamic CPU-intensive pages. It's not like it's the first time that Walmart or Amazon have experienced traffic spikes.
If they are trying to impress people with its size, you'd think they'd come up with a better name than "The Large Millimeter Telescope".
If there is so much variation between humans, how does this impact future genetic therapies? Wouldn't we need to map each person's genome, then study the impact of disease on each of the genes, to understand what gene therapies would work best for an individual? This article seems to suggest that the everyday "We've found the gene that causes " claims are only true for a subset of the population.
Why not just buy one of the OLPC machines? Price to performance and considering heat produced, nothing else can come close. I'm sure once Brazil and other countries start receiving theirs, we'll see them all over ebay for a bargain.
Seriously though, this is a great list, except for the fact that the machines are pretty expensive. If I was to blow that type of money on a laptop, I'd probably go for the Toshiba. But until then, I'll stick with my $500 Dell laptop. Sure it's a little bit slower (1.8Ghz I believe), but the battery is too small to catch anything on fire.
I wonder if this is one of the first moves that Microsoft is making to back away from the agreement, or rather ... to back away from their original intentions (whatever they may have been).
Well, they'd probably have to show some proof ... but an editor or writer could easily create that proof and make sure that his/her tracks cannot be followed. For example, let's say a single writer decided to ridiculously slander a celebrity. As long as the writer published the story on a message board first, they could republish the story in their online newspaper (or if the law was extended as you suggest, in their print). Since the only person who knows the scheme is the writer, it would be difficult to impossible to link the newspaper to the libelous content.
There definitely needs to be some sort of line drawn, the difficulty is finding where to put it. If a blogger republishes a story about K-Fed and Britney, I could see offering some sort of protection/immunity against the blogger getting sued by K-Fed or Britney. But stating that anyone who republishes a story, particularly if it's from an anonymous source, cannot be sued goes too far in my opinion.
Hehe ... wouldn't that be funny if Microsoft folks were viewing this as another OS/2, where they'd steal enough technology to create their own Linux-like server product? Unlike with Windows, I doubt Microsoft could pull it off though ... the Linux advocates are too anti-Redmond to adopt a M$ linux clone.
I'd truly hate to see what the adult entertainment industry would do with this one ... sure, there'd be some gems, but how many plots would revolve around having the stars "reach out and grab you" over and over.
Exactly.
All of the cities listed in the story are small towns, the largest boasts of reducing their traffic signals from 18 to 2. Imagine trying to eliminate traffic signals and signs in a city like New York City, where there are over 11,000 signals, and almost 3,000 in Manhattan alone. If you've ever ridden in a cab at 5:00am, you have seen the chaos that ensues when there are no signals (since cabbies completely ignore all lights at that time). It's certainly not safer.
If we rely on courtesy to dictate our traffic patterns, we'll be victim to those who have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk. The U.S. has far too many people that fall into this category for the strategy to be effective.
While the videos are pretty entertaining, there's a ridiculous amount of spam and popups (particularly on ie). After every video, I was taken to another site where it said I had to order a plasma screen TV just to watch the vid, uuggghhh.
Oh well, maybe I'm the only person this works for ... I even tried to fake it out and it still gave me right answers (even though some of them I didn't exactly like).
Finally, technology that gives power back to the teenage prankster. Now "Hey, did you know your refridgerator is running?" calls will be answered with "Yes Mr. President, I did ... Oh, and by the way, your voice sounds so much younger in person" instead of "Johnny, please hangup the phone before I tell your mother".
Unbelievably to me, some sites can already ascertain your character using little real info. For example, "www.LikeBetter.com guesses your physical and personality characteristics just by which pictures you like. Every 10 or so pictures you can click on the brain at the bottom and it tells you what it knows about you. I couldn't believe how accurate it was ... After about 10 rounds, it had given me 20 characteristics, only 1 was incorrect.
Both Yahoo and Google this year have introduced a mind-blowing number of new services that make it easy to accuse either of spreading themselves too thin. Remember when Google said they'd only offer search, not chat or finance pages or horoscopes? Right, now they've also added 30+ other products (luckily they've stayed away from horoscopes for now).
The difference between the two is that Google has at least devoted the resources to improving upon their key product (search), while Yahoo has a difficult time defining what their key product is. I'm sure Brad Garlinghouse (being the VP of Mail) of the memo would say it's Yahoo! Mail, but if you were to interview every VP you'd likely get a different answer.
As an example of their lack of focus, look at the homepage. One week it focuses on news stories, the next it focuses on some random $50,000 video contest. This may keep people entertained, but it also reflects the lack of consistency inherent in the organization (or shows the bread through the peanut butter as Brad might say).
Maybe not in Europe, but in the U.S. all information is encrypted using 3DES or other encryption algorithms (it's now mandatory by law). On some machines (like the Diebold ATMs), hardware encryption is used in the keypad. This ensures that even if you somehow planted a device inside the ATM to capture data sent from the keypad to the CPU you still wouldn't be able to get personal information.
This may be possible in Europe, but I don't believe it's possible in the U.S. anymore. 3DES has been the standard ATM encryption method for a few years, and almost all ATM machines have been converted to 3DES (by Dec 31st they apparently won't operate unless they are 3DES since the ATM networks will only allow encrypted communications).
Even if someone can no longer use a generic man-in-the-middle attack in the future due to encryption, it's amazing how many other means for ATM fraud still exist. I couldn't believe this one when I saw it the other day.
If Google pursues this, I don't think they'll do so for financial reasons, but rather for PR reasons (just like they used the installation of a relatively large solar capacity as PR). But nowadays $200 Million isn't that much to Google, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them support the effort to some extent.
What's really unfortunate is that the lawsuits' end result is that the music industry gets significant licensing revenues from the deal, but the agreements are setup in such a way that the individual artists never do. Many of these are artists would be more than happy to share their music (or some subset thereof), but not in a situation where everyone is making money from their music except the creators.