Of course there are real reasons to be skeptical. If they wanted to get honest opinion they would have asked 100 people who *purchased* a Fiesta to blog/twitter/youtube about their experience with the vehicle.
From the article: "Ford wants to generate buzz for the Fiesta, which will bring Europe's "small cars can be cool" ethos to America when it arrives next year."
It's illogical to expect a corporation not to act in its own best interests. What is interesting about this promotion however, is a corporation realising that in this age of communication, sometimes its best interests are served by not treating its customer base like idiots. It's not like the whole "free car for 6 months" part is a secret - would you not take that into account while reading a review from such a person?
Why are we so quick to indulge in righteous outrage?
And if there are real reasons to be sceptical, such as those as you suggest, then it'll all come out in the wash.
To me though, it just seems like one of those rare instances of a large company respecting its customer base and bravely embracing the internet - good things IMHO.
Getting large companies to get in touch with its customers like this can be really tough.. but when you think about it, and all the wasted natural resources from making crappy products.. initiatives like this should be encouraged.
My point was summed up quite succinctly in the first sentence. But I forgot to qualify it by the fact that he denied the particular quote attributed to him. As it was by the Daily Mail newspaper, who neglected to respond, I give him the benefit of the doubt.
While I don't suggest that any particular negative account of him is untrue, since he has become such a caricature it's easy, though unfair, to assume that everything written about him is true. In this case, at least, it appeared to be false.
You know, not *everything* written about Jack Thompson is true. A while back I went to the trouble of tracking down his email address to quiz him over some outrageous comment.
I was somewhat surprised, but more disappointed to receive a civil and level-headed response.
It's just taking a while because we're emotionally attached to things like paper news.
But it's a process and the over-valuation of old media models are upheld by vested interests. Our current cable networks add nothing to the mix except for the occasional cornerscreen logo.
Ten years ago there would be no way to identify and fund popular content without cable companies. In ten years time there will be very few, if any, cable companies left - with virtually all production funded from web advertising revenue.
Getting from here to there is the tricky part, but it is inevitable.
There are several hundred years worth of data, showing a regular 11 year cycle. Even measurements plotted monthly map to that graph.
You seem to be displaying a form of anthropomorphism towards the sun. You can't just map the lifespan of a human to the lifespan of the sun and conclude that from your perceived frame of reference, a year is the equivalent of a fraction of a second or 'blip'.
Don't worry, in my head I pronounced it G-A-E and only went back to it when I was "wtf FABULOUS?"
I'm curious now how Google refer to it internally. Google Widget Toolkit is apparently pronounced "gwit".. so it follows that we both might be doing it wrong.
Buzzwords aside, the ability to try GAE for free and use it for your own tests and experiments is a good thing. I've been much more productive hacking with python/GAE than php/mysql.
On a similar vein, I think the reason we're not seeing the answers right now are partly because of an over-valuation of the old forms of media advertising.
Imagine a world where instead of going to thepiratebay, you could - for the price of a login and supplying some demographic information - legally download your favourite shows. Imagine if these files had one minute of targeted advertising embedded at the start - short enough that most times you might not even bother fast-forwarding through it.
Such adverts could represent higher-value for advertisers, reducing the need for the "1/3rds adverts to every 2/3rds of content" shotgun approach we currently are subjected to.
The only things standing in the way of this are the existing networks and cable companies who parasitically feed off the entertainment production industry and add nothing but an initial funding capital, the requirement of which has been propagated by the imperfect flow of information which the internet corrects -- an infrastructure like YouTube could sell $1 shares in the next Joss Whedon project, or "pets wearing hats" channel, and everyone would be happy.
But until new media asserts its muscle with regards the value it can provide advertisers, and wrestles control away from our bloated old-media, we'll be stuck in this limbo of litigation and thinking the alternative is limited to "Ask a Ninja".
You may ask, why wouldn't people still go to thepiratebay and get advertless-clips, thus destroying the model? They certainly will if they are paranoid about giving out any information, if they do not have the option to fast-forward through ads, or if the ads themselves are too long or not targeted. But for most folks, ease-of-use of a single-source, and guaranteed quality would be strong retention factors I think.
I was estimating around 3-4 flights per plane, per day (domestic), which, with your figures, would make it between 50-66 days to start being profitable given ideal circumstances.
Even assuming less than ideal circumstances it's still a very short time to get a 100% ROI.
You know, I never understood the "don't drop the soap" joke. Surely if someone is physically able to rape you anally, then there is little to no advantage to you bending over initially.
And if you've ever got a large quantity of soap in your eyes, you'll know that having bent over to get the soap, you've got your hands on quite a good weapon.
The joke seems to imply an attitude of "Oh jeeze - well, since you've started, you might as well finish", which rather cuts against the whole homophobic thrust. I've read back over these passages a few times, but it still doesn't make sense - is it just going straight over my head?
There is no reason why funding shouldn't follow the law of supply and demand. Future media models will have to start taking into account how much advertising people will consume before turning to other advertising-free sources which require decreasingly minimal effort.
That is to say, if the total number of adverts goes down, the unit price can freely go up.
I lied in my first sentence - there are a number of reasons and vested interests involved in maintaining a status quo - but following the trends, it seems like going into the future the successful networks will be the ones who don't assume their viewers are passive statistics.
You seem to be arguing that no open system can be a success unless it comes into existence shiny and new.
It could only come into existence shiny and new if it had an extended initial period of closed development (like the iPhone), which is entirely against the point of having an open system.
I mean, do you see the point I'm making, or am I playing with a troll here?
In addition, I am not happy with obsolete anything, my quote which you truncated was making the point that an open system can stay close to cutting edge, long after closed systems such as the iPhone are obsolete.
It requires a bit of patience is all - while Linux might not have been an advanced OS when you were using your 386, you can now pull that box out of the cupboard and load the very latest kernel on that if you wanted.
So yeah - roll on OpenMoko, because until there is a healthy open mobile communications ecosystem, we're all gonna be stuck to the teats of whichever large telecom companies hold joint monopoly in our local areas.
The OpenMoko project refers not only to the bundled kernel/user layer software, but the open hardware aspect also. One without the other would be an entirely pointless prospect, and neither is a trivial undertaking.
You miss entirely the point about open systems. We need at least the first viable open mobile system, before we can build upon that foundation. The OpenMoko team have made great strides on that front.
I agree with you that it isn't finished or end-user friendly yet, but what's your point?
I'd rather have an open system a few years behind cutting edge, because it will still be upgradable a few years after the cutting edge product becomes artificially obsolete due to its pre-designed marketing lifecycle.
Because we're at the behest of the phone companies, not the other way around. They can comfortably sit on technology, and decide when to release/market it for the most $$$.
Then not only are you stuck with older technology, you're locked out of exploiting that technology to its fullest extent, by the same companies who have a secondary market peddling crappy closed source software.
Actually, when I worked at Spider a few years later, there was still a lot of bitterness as apparently Microsoft did not so much as license the code, as just take it.
But a small company of around 50 bodies does not have the resources to take Microsoft to court, so what are you going to do about it? Microsoft would counter-sue for defamation or somesuch and you'd be bankrupt before you got chance to prove your original claim.
It's a non-issue. Paper as a news medium is simply becoming a non-sustainable business model - that's all. There are whole load of emotional/nostalgic factors at play though - newspapers have been around for all living human memory - it's weird to think that they'll soon be consigned to history.
Web advertising has been undervalued for a long time. In terms of reaching a target demographic, it beats print and broadcast tv hands down. Once it undergoes an industry re-evaluation then it'll become more viable for quality online publications to staff seasoned teams of journalists. But the longer we dump cash into print media, the more painful the transition will be.
You can get gears to work reliably if you scale them all down by one grid unit to allow centering. If you scale them by different amounts though, the teeth will grind in that effect you mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course there are real reasons to be skeptical. If they wanted to get honest opinion they would have asked 100 people who *purchased* a Fiesta to blog/twitter/youtube about their experience with the vehicle.
From the article: "Ford wants to generate buzz for the Fiesta, which will bring Europe's "small cars can be cool" ethos to America when it arrives next year."
It's illogical to expect a corporation not to act in its own best interests. What is interesting about this promotion however, is a corporation realising that in this age of communication, sometimes its best interests are served by not treating its customer base like idiots. It's not like the whole "free car for 6 months" part is a secret - would you not take that into account while reading a review from such a person?
Why are we so quick to indulge in righteous outrage?
Well yeah, and I'm guessing that when handing over the keys, Ford didn't kick them in the shins either.
And the free car is only for six months - if Ford took it away early because of a bad review, can you imagine the terrible PR?
And if there are real reasons to be sceptical, such as those as you suggest, then it'll all come out in the wash.
To me though, it just seems like one of those rare instances of a large company respecting its customer base and bravely embracing the internet - good things IMHO.
Getting large companies to get in touch with its customers like this can be really tough.. but when you think about it, and all the wasted natural resources from making crappy products.. initiatives like this should be encouraged.
My point was summed up quite succinctly in the first sentence. But I forgot to qualify it by the fact that he denied the particular quote attributed to him. As it was by the Daily Mail newspaper, who neglected to respond, I give him the benefit of the doubt.
While I don't suggest that any particular negative account of him is untrue, since he has become such a caricature it's easy, though unfair, to assume that everything written about him is true. In this case, at least, it appeared to be false.
You know, not *everything* written about Jack Thompson is true. A while back I went to the trouble of tracking down his email address to quiz him over some outrageous comment.
I was somewhat surprised, but more disappointed to receive a civil and level-headed response.
It's just taking a while because we're emotionally attached to things like paper news.
But it's a process and the over-valuation of old media models are upheld by vested interests. Our current cable networks add nothing to the mix except for the occasional cornerscreen logo.
Ten years ago there would be no way to identify and fund popular content without cable companies. In ten years time there will be very few, if any, cable companies left - with virtually all production funded from web advertising revenue.
Getting from here to there is the tricky part, but it is inevitable.
If you're talking about astrological timescales, then yes, but that's also a strawman.
There are several hundred years worth of data, showing a regular 11 year cycle. Even measurements plotted monthly map to that graph.
You seem to be displaying a form of anthropomorphism towards the sun. You can't just map the lifespan of a human to the lifespan of the sun and conclude that from your perceived frame of reference, a year is the equivalent of a fraction of a second or 'blip'.
Old != Static
One day doesn't form a statistically significant sample, 365 days do.
Don't worry, in my head I pronounced it G-A-E and only went back to it when I was "wtf FABULOUS?"
I'm curious now how Google refer to it internally. Google Widget Toolkit is apparently pronounced "gwit".. so it follows that we both might be doing it wrong.
Any Googlers care to illuminate?
Whoosh indeed, thanks for clarifying. I guess I need to find me some immature co-workers, cause I'm evidently out of touch.
Whoa, FABULOUS acronym!
Dude, php and sql are acronyms too. WAIAFOA (We are in a field of acronyms). What's your point?
Buzzwords aside, the ability to try GAE for free and use it for your own tests and experiments is a good thing. I've been much more productive hacking with python/GAE than php/mysql.
On a similar vein, I think the reason we're not seeing the answers right now are partly because of an over-valuation of the old forms of media advertising.
Imagine a world where instead of going to thepiratebay, you could - for the price of a login and supplying some demographic information - legally download your favourite shows. Imagine if these files had one minute of targeted advertising embedded at the start - short enough that most times you might not even bother fast-forwarding through it.
Such adverts could represent higher-value for advertisers, reducing the need for the "1/3rds adverts to every 2/3rds of content" shotgun approach we currently are subjected to.
The only things standing in the way of this are the existing networks and cable companies who parasitically feed off the entertainment production industry and add nothing but an initial funding capital, the requirement of which has been propagated by the imperfect flow of information which the internet corrects -- an infrastructure like YouTube could sell $1 shares in the next Joss Whedon project, or "pets wearing hats" channel, and everyone would be happy.
But until new media asserts its muscle with regards the value it can provide advertisers, and wrestles control away from our bloated old-media, we'll be stuck in this limbo of litigation and thinking the alternative is limited to "Ask a Ninja".
You may ask, why wouldn't people still go to thepiratebay and get advertless-clips, thus destroying the model? They certainly will if they are paranoid about giving out any information, if they do not have the option to fast-forward through ads, or if the ads themselves are too long or not targeted. But for most folks, ease-of-use of a single-source, and guaranteed quality would be strong retention factors I think.
I was estimating around 3-4 flights per plane, per day (domestic), which, with your figures, would make it between 50-66 days to start being profitable given ideal circumstances.
Even assuming less than ideal circumstances it's still a very short time to get a 100% ROI.
If it pays for itself within a few months, then good. Profitable airlines == more competition, and less nickel and diming for snacks and hydration.
Huh? What do you mean?
You know, I never understood the "don't drop the soap" joke. Surely if someone is physically able to rape you anally, then there is little to no advantage to you bending over initially.
And if you've ever got a large quantity of soap in your eyes, you'll know that having bent over to get the soap, you've got your hands on quite a good weapon.
The joke seems to imply an attitude of "Oh jeeze - well, since you've started, you might as well finish", which rather cuts against the whole homophobic thrust. I've read back over these passages a few times, but it still doesn't make sense - is it just going straight over my head?
There is no reason why funding shouldn't follow the law of supply and demand. Future media models will have to start taking into account how much advertising people will consume before turning to other advertising-free sources which require decreasingly minimal effort.
That is to say, if the total number of adverts goes down, the unit price can freely go up.
I lied in my first sentence - there are a number of reasons and vested interests involved in maintaining a status quo - but following the trends, it seems like going into the future the successful networks will be the ones who don't assume their viewers are passive statistics.
You seem to be arguing that no open system can be a success unless it comes into existence shiny and new.
It could only come into existence shiny and new if it had an extended initial period of closed development (like the iPhone), which is entirely against the point of having an open system.
I mean, do you see the point I'm making, or am I playing with a troll here?
In addition, I am not happy with obsolete anything, my quote which you truncated was making the point that an open system can stay close to cutting edge, long after closed systems such as the iPhone are obsolete.
It requires a bit of patience is all - while Linux might not have been an advanced OS when you were using your 386, you can now pull that box out of the cupboard and load the very latest kernel on that if you wanted.
So yeah - roll on OpenMoko, because until there is a healthy open mobile communications ecosystem, we're all gonna be stuck to the teats of whichever large telecom companies hold joint monopoly in our local areas.
The OpenMoko project refers not only to the bundled kernel/user layer software, but the open hardware aspect also. One without the other would be an entirely pointless prospect, and neither is a trivial undertaking.
You miss entirely the point about open systems. We need at least the first viable open mobile system, before we can build upon that foundation. The OpenMoko team have made great strides on that front.
I agree with you that it isn't finished or end-user friendly yet, but what's your point?
I'd rather have an open system a few years behind cutting edge, because it will still be upgradable a few years after the cutting edge product becomes artificially obsolete due to its pre-designed marketing lifecycle.
Because we're at the behest of the phone companies, not the other way around. They can comfortably sit on technology, and decide when to release/market it for the most $$$.
Then not only are you stuck with older technology, you're locked out of exploiting that technology to its fullest extent, by the same companies who have a secondary market peddling crappy closed source software.
Roll on OpenMoko.
Actually, when I worked at Spider a few years later, there was still a lot of bitterness as apparently Microsoft did not so much as license the code, as just take it.
But a small company of around 50 bodies does not have the resources to take Microsoft to court, so what are you going to do about it? Microsoft would counter-sue for defamation or somesuch and you'd be bankrupt before you got chance to prove your original claim.
It's a non-issue. Paper as a news medium is simply becoming a non-sustainable business model - that's all. There are whole load of emotional/nostalgic factors at play though - newspapers have been around for all living human memory - it's weird to think that they'll soon be consigned to history.
Web advertising has been undervalued for a long time. In terms of reaching a target demographic, it beats print and broadcast tv hands down. Once it undergoes an industry re-evaluation then it'll become more viable for quality online publications to staff seasoned teams of journalists. But the longer we dump cash into print media, the more painful the transition will be.
You can get gears to work reliably if you scale them all down by one grid unit to allow centering. If you scale them by different amounts though, the teeth will grind in that effect you mentioned.