This is a case of pure spin combined with a lack of english skills. Here's what he was trying to say:
"Our hardware is so powerful that *of course* it's hard to develop for. So to use the most advanced hardware in the world, only the smartest developers will take advantage of it".
That kind of spin may play in Japanese markets, but it just sounds dumb to everyone else.
"I'd hate to break it to you, but the 2nd amendment as imagined by the Republican party doesn't exist."
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but certainly the Supreme Court agrees with the interpretation that there is a constitutional right for people to own handguns (and certainly long weapons as well). I think the 2nd amendment is worded pretty plainly; it seems like wishful thinking to say that it legitimizes weapons only for the militia; if that was the correct interpretation, it wouldn't be necessary to have the amendment if you really think about it.
Anyway, here's but one of the links. I'm sure you're aware of it:
If they don't want to "legitimize" porn, but want to tax everything else, wouldn't it make sense to classify your stuff as porn? After all, nobody can define porn, so I don't know of any law against calling *too much* stuff porn. Seems like a reasonable plan to me to avoid taxes.
"How you think goods ordered online make it to the consumer?"
Through UPS or FedEx. These companies pay road tax, and they pay local, state and federal tax to support the roads and police. Those costs are passed on to you in the form of shipping costs.
Nobody is really getting cheated when people buy via the internet. The cost is there regardless.
Oh sure, the transputer. Back in the 80's, I was at an Amiga developer's conference where they were showing off a networked transputer card that fit into the Zorro II slots on the Amiga 2000. I believe it was Commodore Germany showing it off, hinting about how it was "imminent". Sadly, I was naive on these types of product and how little chance of Commodore delivering something like this.
"He didn't hesitate, even for a second. "Online Video!"."
Sure, and pretty soon people aren't going to be satisfied with a little windows with 640x480, they'll want 1920x1080 on their computer and set top boxes. Then all those people who say "...I only use 40M a month, so only the pirates care about ISP download caps..." will finally understand why download caps are anti-technology and anti-consumer.
I believe the ISPs (like Comcast) knew this change was coming 2-3 years ago and they're looking for new revenue sources to pay for infrastructure upgrade costs. I think Verizon's FIOS presents a difficult challenge to Comcast because there is significantly more bandwidth in fiber, but more importantly, Verizon is a large, well-financed company that won't be going away.
You can already see Comcast's HD TV offerings are not very good; they offer few channels, and the ones they offer have so many artifacts it makes you wonder exactly how Comcast will compete on the TV front with Verizon now offering almost 200 HD channels, not to mention higher bandwidth offerings and as of now, no download caps.
"satellite radio as a market will have to turn itself into a cost structure like Iridium satellite phones. Think dollars per minute, rather than dollars per month"
Well, no. Satellite TV is a much closer model; the Iridium is expensive, but it's providing 2-way communication from any spot on earth at pretty much any time. Satellite Radio is one-way, providing a footprint over North America. TV provides that kind of footprint for 30-40 bucks a month for "unlimited viewing".
Look at Muzak (http://www.domyweb.net/music.htm). Muzak provides commercial music, with all BMI/ASCAP/Performance fees for ~$80/month. I'm not sure why we'd expect satellite radio to cost dollars per minute.
If you care about the NFL and want to actually learn the game, the NFL channel on Sirius is remarkable. Pat Kirwan will teach you more about football in an hour than you'll learn in a lifetime of watching ESPN, Fox, and the rest of the broadcasting world.
I think a lot of people here don't quite understand that once you get out of the city, there is no 3G data plans, there is no radio to speak of, and when you can get some reception, the AM/FM dial only has local sports & information on it. And yes, there are iPods, but when you spend a lot of time in your car, you've listened to your 10G of music for the hundredth time, you'd actually like to be surprised by music you haven't heard of before.
It's also fair to say that many people here believe that everybody is willing to pay thousands of dollars for a cell phone data plan simply because they do, but that's not my main point here...;)
Not really. The appeal of satellite radio on car trips is that even when I can't get cell phone service at all, I can get Satellite radio. If you just drive 10 minutes to work in the suburbs near a city, then perhaps your idea is fine. But the bulk of the U.S. does not get 3G service. Then you'd have to deal with the issue of how you tie your smart phone into the sound system of your car. While this is conceptually easy, from an infrastructure standpoint, you'd have to get all cell-phone makes agree they will support bluetooth streaming of stereo sound, you'd have to get the carriers to agree to allow this to happen, then you'd have to get the automobile manufacturers to tightly integrate this capability into the sound systems. Not to mention the man/machine interface that would support tuning stations inside an automobile without fiddling with a smart phone. These problems will take years to solve.
I don't think smart phone data plans allow the kind of access that would let you stream audio hours a day. Seems to me if significant numbers of people started streaming media on their smart phones everywhere, 3G service capacity just isn't there to support more than a handful of users. You'd end up with higher rates on your smart phones, or they plans would get severely curtailed, or both.
I think what's likely to happen here is that Sirius/XM will declare bankruptcy, and force the banks to restructure the debt. I'd hate to be holding a lot of paper for Sirius/XM right now; you'll be lucky to get 25 cents on the dollar.
"I do miss Howard, but I hope that he'll go online once Sirius XM goes tits up."
Howard Stern became non-entertaining right around the time that Sirius made him extremely wealthy. His rants against *the man* were entirely too forced when he actually became *the man*.
Plus, he stopped putting effort into the show. Fridays off, long vacations, "Best of Howard Stern" but with the really controversial parts taken out (when you're *the man*, you don't risk your money being controversial), I assume he got married to the broken down model/girlfriend, whining about how his 4-day a week, 4 hour a day was just too hard on him anymore, Richard & Sal being the most creative on the show, fake "artie must be banned because he threw a CD" nonsense. Seriously, if Howard did that stuff when he was on FM, he wouldn't have lasted a week.
Perhaps the show has gotten better in the last 12 months, but I took the advice of the true believers, and *just stopped listening*.
"No developers == no (or at least less) apps created without effort on the part of Apple."
I don't follow. You're saying that no one will create apps for the iPhone/iPod unless they do it through a vendor lock in via iTunes? That doesn't make sense.
Isn't it more likely that many more developers would develop if they didn't have to get approval of their application from Apple? Sort of like the shareware scene now, where there are millions of developers, and you only have to go to their website and download it (and presumably pay for it).
There are tons of literature on this point, how natural selection works, the purpose of sexual reproduction (which is fascinating), but people in my experience confuse cause and effect. This is what leads people to believe in ID.
For example, people say "Deer evolved large antlers to fend off predators".
It is more correct to say "Deer with large antlers tended reproduce more than deer with smaller antlers because they were not killed by predators".
Simple change, but it corrects the cause/effect. Evolution does not "choose" winners or losers, rather evolution is a description of the process that says essentially this:
"Whoever produces more children that survive to produce children 'wins' the genetic lottery"
You've hit the nail on the head. 250GB isn't that much data today, not really. And 3 years from now, it will seem like even less. This talk that "there's no way a 'normal' person could hit 250GB" reminds of when somebody said "640KB should be enough for anybody". The internet today isn't just surfing the web and checking email. That's a usage pattern from about 1997. Today, the internet is videos, streaming music, high bandwidth apps. I think it's odd that everybody assumes their internet pattern is the "normal" one.
Plus, it reminds me of 1996 when the internet got popular and all the ISP's complained that people were staying on so long, so they limited usage to 30-40 hours per month. Because a "normal" person didn't need to be on that long.
That seems silly and quaint today. And bandwidth caps are more of the same.
But once upon a time, music videos popped up on networks, on late-night shows on WTBS superstation (at least I think so) they appeared here and there. People liked them, they seemed cutting edge (we laugh now), and they were a change of pace from waiting for something interesting on network TV. Simultaneously, "cable TV" was becoming more than HBO. ESPN started, showing "Australian Rules Football", and it all seemed weird and cool (like the Internet when it was new).
Well, like any new medium, somebody got the idea that people think these odd videos are cool, and they think all these new cable channels are cool... why not put them together? I was in college when they started, and I have to admit, the thing was addictive. In my apartment, we kept MTV on almost 24x7. In fact, finals week senior year, I found myself so distracted, I went to the library to study to make sure I actually, y'know graduated.
My point is, the record companies were giving the videos away, because they sold more records that way. And once MTV took over, if you wanted to sell music, you had to sell it via MTV with a cool video. A good song with a crappy video would kill it. The downside, in my opinion, was that image started to matter a lot more to music than the music. A lot of really great musicians are unattractive and overweight. Well, for most of us, we saw a picture on the inside of an album. We didn't care what the musician looked like. But how can you sell cool music with an un-cool musician in a video staring you in the face? So you got a lot of pretty musicians (the whole 80's hair thing) that were not very good, but made a good video. You could always do wonders in the studio (Hello, Millie Vanillie)
That history may not be quite correct, but from a average guy who was going to school during that time, that's how it looked to me.
The gripe that they effectively created MTV, they gripe that the revived Apple.
If I was a large shareholder, I'd fire the lot of these guys. Because either one of the two is true:
1) They're lying as an excuse for their failures 2) They have all this business opportunities that create entire new industries, but they can't get it done themselves, effectively giving up 10's of Billions of dollars.
I wouldn't want those guys working for me, that's for sure.
North Korea's test explosion was most likely a fizzle yield, thus, they don't quite have this "atomic bomb" thingy quite down. And they fact that they haven't tested again tells you that they used up all their fissile material.
In reality, North Korea is heavily armed with *conventional* armaments. That, combined with their extreme close proximity to South Korea, a close ally, democratic nation, and prosperous country are a lot more compelling arguments for containment than a non-functioning atomic bomb.
Well, you could get a golden retriever for your son, but I'd hold out for a golden retriever and a car, depending on if your kid is cute or not. Kids are worth a lot more when they're cute.
Cloning a human or animal will not make it like the old animal. Oh sure, the animal may look the same, but unless you raised it precisely the same way, then it will be different, and probably by a lot. Look at identical twins... they are clones, and they're often nothing alike. I think a lot of people think a clone will be a snapshot of the first animal. Perhaps they watch too much television.
You can get the same effect by just buying a new animal of the same breed. It will look pretty much the same, and you have about the same chance as a clone of getting a similar temperament.
"Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service."
I realize you're talking in theory.
But now that Comcast has capped traffic, have they provided a new, inexpensive tier of service? Or has their prices gone up? Can you name any company that capped traffic and then lowered prices?
Seems to me capping traffic is simply a way to stay revenue neutral, and reduce costs. Let's not pretend it's for any other reason.
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This is a case of pure spin combined with a lack of english skills. Here's what he was trying to say:
"Our hardware is so powerful that *of course* it's hard to develop for. So to use the most advanced hardware in the world, only the smartest developers will take advantage of it".
That kind of spin may play in Japanese markets, but it just sounds dumb to everyone else.
"I'd hate to break it to you, but the 2nd amendment as imagined by the Republican party doesn't exist."
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but certainly the Supreme Court agrees with the interpretation that there is a constitutional right for people to own handguns (and certainly long weapons as well). I think the 2nd amendment is worded pretty plainly; it seems like wishful thinking to say that it legitimizes weapons only for the militia; if that was the correct interpretation, it wouldn't be necessary to have the amendment if you really think about it.
Anyway, here's but one of the links. I'm sure you're aware of it:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25390404/
If they don't want to "legitimize" porn, but want to tax everything else, wouldn't it make sense to classify your stuff as porn? After all, nobody can define porn, so I don't know of any law against calling *too much* stuff porn. Seems like a reasonable plan to me to avoid taxes.
"How you think goods ordered online make it to the consumer?"
Through UPS or FedEx. These companies pay road tax, and they pay local, state and federal tax to support the roads and police. Those costs are passed on to you in the form of shipping costs.
Nobody is really getting cheated when people buy via the internet. The cost is there regardless.
Oh sure, the transputer. Back in the 80's, I was at an Amiga developer's conference where they were showing off a networked transputer card that fit into the Zorro II slots on the Amiga 2000. I believe it was Commodore Germany showing it off, hinting about how it was "imminent". Sadly, I was naive on these types of product and how little chance of Commodore delivering something like this.
"He didn't hesitate, even for a second. "Online Video!"."
Sure, and pretty soon people aren't going to be satisfied with a little windows with 640x480, they'll want 1920x1080 on their computer and set top boxes. Then all those people who say "...I only use 40M a month, so only the pirates care about ISP download caps..." will finally understand why download caps are anti-technology and anti-consumer.
I believe the ISPs (like Comcast) knew this change was coming 2-3 years ago and they're looking for new revenue sources to pay for infrastructure upgrade costs. I think Verizon's FIOS presents a difficult challenge to Comcast because there is significantly more bandwidth in fiber, but more importantly, Verizon is a large, well-financed company that won't be going away.
You can already see Comcast's HD TV offerings are not very good; they offer few channels, and the ones they offer have so many artifacts it makes you wonder exactly how Comcast will compete on the TV front with Verizon now offering almost 200 HD channels, not to mention higher bandwidth offerings and as of now, no download caps.
It probably won't be popular to say around here, but Transmeta was a fairly spectacular failure, particularly the Crusoe line.
"satellite radio as a market will have to turn itself into a cost structure like Iridium satellite phones. Think dollars per minute, rather than dollars per month"
Well, no. Satellite TV is a much closer model; the Iridium is expensive, but it's providing 2-way communication from any spot on earth at pretty much any time. Satellite Radio is one-way, providing a footprint over North America. TV provides that kind of footprint for 30-40 bucks a month for "unlimited viewing".
Look at Muzak (http://www.domyweb.net/music.htm). Muzak provides commercial music, with all BMI/ASCAP/Performance fees for ~$80/month. I'm not sure why we'd expect satellite radio to cost dollars per minute.
If you care about the NFL and want to actually learn the game, the NFL channel on Sirius is remarkable. Pat Kirwan will teach you more about football in an hour than you'll learn in a lifetime of watching ESPN, Fox, and the rest of the broadcasting world.
I think a lot of people here don't quite understand that once you get out of the city, there is no 3G data plans, there is no radio to speak of, and when you can get some reception, the AM/FM dial only has local sports & information on it. And yes, there are iPods, but when you spend a lot of time in your car, you've listened to your 10G of music for the hundredth time, you'd actually like to be surprised by music you haven't heard of before.
It's also fair to say that many people here believe that everybody is willing to pay thousands of dollars for a cell phone data plan simply because they do, but that's not my main point here... ;)
"3G wireless works just fine in the car"
Not really. The appeal of satellite radio on car trips is that even when I can't get cell phone service at all, I can get Satellite radio. If you just drive 10 minutes to work in the suburbs near a city, then perhaps your idea is fine. But the bulk of the U.S. does not get 3G service. Then you'd have to deal with the issue of how you tie your smart phone into the sound system of your car. While this is conceptually easy, from an infrastructure standpoint, you'd have to get all cell-phone makes agree they will support bluetooth streaming of stereo sound, you'd have to get the carriers to agree to allow this to happen, then you'd have to get the automobile manufacturers to tightly integrate this capability into the sound systems. Not to mention the man/machine interface that would support tuning stations inside an automobile without fiddling with a smart phone. These problems will take years to solve.
I don't think smart phone data plans allow the kind of access that would let you stream audio hours a day. Seems to me if significant numbers of people started streaming media on their smart phones everywhere, 3G service capacity just isn't there to support more than a handful of users. You'd end up with higher rates on your smart phones, or they plans would get severely curtailed, or both.
I think what's likely to happen here is that Sirius/XM will declare bankruptcy, and force the banks to restructure the debt. I'd hate to be holding a lot of paper for Sirius/XM right now; you'll be lucky to get 25 cents on the dollar.
"I do miss Howard, but I hope that he'll go online once Sirius XM goes tits up."
Howard Stern became non-entertaining right around the time that Sirius made him extremely wealthy. His rants against *the man* were entirely too forced when he actually became *the man*.
Plus, he stopped putting effort into the show. Fridays off, long vacations, "Best of Howard Stern" but with the really controversial parts taken out (when you're *the man*, you don't risk your money being controversial), I assume he got married to the broken down model/girlfriend, whining about how his 4-day a week, 4 hour a day was just too hard on him anymore, Richard & Sal being the most creative on the show, fake "artie must be banned because he threw a CD" nonsense. Seriously, if Howard did that stuff when he was on FM, he wouldn't have lasted a week.
Perhaps the show has gotten better in the last 12 months, but I took the advice of the true believers, and *just stopped listening*.
"No developers == no (or at least less) apps created without effort on the part of Apple."
I don't follow. You're saying that no one will create apps for the iPhone/iPod unless they do it through a vendor lock in via iTunes? That doesn't make sense.
Isn't it more likely that many more developers would develop if they didn't have to get approval of their application from Apple? Sort of like the shareware scene now, where there are millions of developers, and you only have to go to their website and download it (and presumably pay for it).
Nice post and dead on the mark.
There are tons of literature on this point, how natural selection works, the purpose of sexual reproduction (which is fascinating), but people in my experience confuse cause and effect. This is what leads people to believe in ID.
For example, people say "Deer evolved large antlers to fend off predators".
It is more correct to say "Deer with large antlers tended reproduce more than deer with smaller antlers because they were not killed by predators".
Simple change, but it corrects the cause/effect. Evolution does not "choose" winners or losers, rather evolution is a description of the process that says essentially this:
"Whoever produces more children that survive to produce children 'wins' the genetic lottery"
It's less hard than it looks.
There is no difference between the parties these days when it comes to spending.
They both want to spend *more*. There is a slight difference in what they want it spent on, but only a little.
You've hit the nail on the head. 250GB isn't that much data today, not really. And 3 years from now, it will seem like even less. This talk that "there's no way a 'normal' person could hit 250GB" reminds of when somebody said "640KB should be enough for anybody". The internet today isn't just surfing the web and checking email. That's a usage pattern from about 1997. Today, the internet is videos, streaming music, high bandwidth apps. I think it's odd that everybody assumes their internet pattern is the "normal" one.
Plus, it reminds me of 1996 when the internet got popular and all the ISP's complained that people were staying on so long, so they limited usage to 30-40 hours per month. Because a "normal" person didn't need to be on that long.
That seems silly and quaint today. And bandwidth caps are more of the same.
I don't have the real history.
But once upon a time, music videos popped up on networks, on late-night shows on WTBS superstation (at least I think so) they appeared here and there. People liked them, they seemed cutting edge (we laugh now), and they were a change of pace from waiting for something interesting on network TV. Simultaneously, "cable TV" was becoming more than HBO. ESPN started, showing "Australian Rules Football", and it all seemed weird and cool (like the Internet when it was new).
Well, like any new medium, somebody got the idea that people think these odd videos are cool, and they think all these new cable channels are cool... why not put them together? I was in college when they started, and I have to admit, the thing was addictive. In my apartment, we kept MTV on almost 24x7. In fact, finals week senior year, I found myself so distracted, I went to the library to study to make sure I actually, y'know graduated.
My point is, the record companies were giving the videos away, because they sold more records that way. And once MTV took over, if you wanted to sell music, you had to sell it via MTV with a cool video. A good song with a crappy video would kill it. The downside, in my opinion, was that image started to matter a lot more to music than the music. A lot of really great musicians are unattractive and overweight. Well, for most of us, we saw a picture on the inside of an album. We didn't care what the musician looked like. But how can you sell cool music with an un-cool musician in a video staring you in the face? So you got a lot of pretty musicians (the whole 80's hair thing) that were not very good, but made a good video. You could always do wonders in the studio (Hello, Millie Vanillie)
That history may not be quite correct, but from a average guy who was going to school during that time, that's how it looked to me.
The gripe that they effectively created MTV, they gripe that the revived Apple.
If I was a large shareholder, I'd fire the lot of these guys. Because either one of the two is true:
1) They're lying as an excuse for their failures
2) They have all this business opportunities that create entire new industries, but they can't get it done themselves, effectively giving up 10's of Billions of dollars.
I wouldn't want those guys working for me, that's for sure.
North Korea's test explosion was most likely a fizzle yield, thus, they don't quite have this "atomic bomb" thingy quite down. And they fact that they haven't tested again tells you that they used up all their fissile material.
In reality, North Korea is heavily armed with *conventional* armaments. That, combined with their extreme close proximity to South Korea, a close ally, democratic nation, and prosperous country are a lot more compelling arguments for containment than a non-functioning atomic bomb.
I didn't criticize them, I'm simply trying to push aside the B.S. about helping customers and get down to brass tacks.
It's a cost saving measure.
"I'm looking for a golden retriever for my son"
Well, you could get a golden retriever for your son, but I'd hold out for a golden retriever and a car, depending on if your kid is cute or not. Kids are worth a lot more when they're cute.
It still doesn't make any sense.
Cloning a human or animal will not make it like the old animal. Oh sure, the animal may look the same, but unless you raised it precisely the same way, then it will be different, and probably by a lot. Look at identical twins... they are clones, and they're often nothing alike. I think a lot of people think a clone will be a snapshot of the first animal. Perhaps they watch too much television.
You can get the same effect by just buying a new animal of the same breed. It will look pretty much the same, and you have about the same chance as a clone of getting a similar temperament.
"Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service."
I realize you're talking in theory.
But now that Comcast has capped traffic, have they provided a new, inexpensive tier of service? Or has their prices gone up? Can you name any company that capped traffic and then lowered prices?
Seems to me capping traffic is simply a way to stay revenue neutral, and reduce costs. Let's not pretend it's for any other reason.
"Did you see how this "leader" was treated at the G12 summit once they knew his ass was gone? "
There's a real story there in convictions and courage. Yessiree.