I can't believe how difficult these channels are to "talk" to. It's as if they don't want to hear from the customers. ABC/CBS was not too bad, but on NBC they forced me to fill-out some stupid survey. On FOX I couldn't find a "contact us" link, so I was forced to do a search. Then after I submitted my question, I was redirected to a FAQ and my question never mailed to a real person. NPR had exactly the same problem when I tried to contact them yesterday.
Now contrast that with CW which proudly displays "Feedback" right on the top menu, plus includes a public discussion forum. They are probably the most web-friendly of these networks.
>>>they are terrified that people will stop watching regular TV
True. Because they make less profit from online ads. But perhaps it's time TV stop spending 1-2 million dollars per episode? Back in the 50s and 60s, television only cost $200,000 per episode (in today's dollars). There's not really any reason to spend much more than that today. ----- Babylon 5 only cost $800,000 per episode... half what Star Trek DS9/VOY cost. They accomplished that by (1) finishing scripts one week prior to shoot, instead of last-minute on-the-set changes and (2) 8 day schedules instead of 10 day and (3) no overtime for the crew; each day was limited to eight hours. .
>>>Charging an ISP per customer to let them have access to a website
I hope not. That's what drove the cost of Comcast Cable from $25 to $70/month. I hope ISPs continue to say "no" to websites charging for access. If I wanted to see EXPN360.com or Disneyconnection.com or Playboy.com, then I'd whip out my credit card and pay to see it. Websites should continue to be sold direct-to-the-individual, rather than seeking fees out of the internet company.
>>>6:00 am before work. 10 years ago...that advertising revenue would have vanished
That's not even close to accurate. Ten years ago people had VCRs. They taped what they wanted to see, which included the ads. (Nielsen Research at the time showed most viewers didn't skip the ads.) So almost no advertising revenue was lost by the networks. .
>>>internet ad space (for the moment) is worth less than TV ad time,
Precisely. The networks prefer that people watch (or tape) the TV ads, rather than the online ads. In fact one of the networks, FOX, makes you wait eight days before you can see shows online. That's their way of encouraging people to watch during the primetime hour, because it's more profitable for them.
>>>If Google simply sits there, patiently, eventually Big Media will, snarling all the way, cave.
You are correct (maybe). That's what Cable companies typically do during negotiations. For example when FOX recently cut-off Time-Warner, the cable company refused to budge. Eventually they reached an agreement that TW would pay 25 cents to air the channel, which was far less than the 1 dollar FOX wanted.
Google can and should adopt similar tactics. The only problem is that GoogleTV is a new object with few customers. They don't have the same "muscle" that TW has with its ~35 million subscribers. Google has a few thousand. ABC/CBS/NBC don't consider that 0.01% a significant loss. It's not even a blip on the Nielsen Ratings.
>>>torrent trackers I use started using whitelists
I am on one of those trackers, and they do that for good reason. Many of those clients "cheat" and feed back false data to boost user share ratios (claiming you uploaded 10:1 ratio when you did not upload at all). If the programs did not cheat, then trackers wouldn't need to ban them, but since they Do cheat, the trackers act to protect themselves. They have that right.
>>>I don't think there's any law that dictates what User Agent String a web browser returns.
There is but it's never been enforced. For example Opera Browser let's you pretend to be Firefox or Internet Explorer, and access sites that might otherwise be blocked. According to the DMCA that's "hacking" and illegal, but nobody has ever bothered to file a lawsuit. However they could if they wanted to, and probably win.
Disagree. Just because you publish a website, doesn't mean you have to share it with all IP addresses..... similar to how you don't have to serve everyone at a business ("no shirt; no service"). Or how some.com/.us sites are not visible in embargoed countries like Cuba.
Net neutrality is about stopping the ISP from censoring the web (prevent them from blocking gop.org). It's not about forcing website owners (us) to share things we don't want to share.
>>>they will wait a few more years and try and launch their own version which will suck.
Or maybe not. The history of invention shows that being "first" is typically a bad idea. It's often a good tactic to let someone else waste millions on R&D, plus advertising, and then jump on the bandwagon after the technology is already proven. It also helps you avoid wasting cash on flops (like Digital Cassette* or CED Videorecords or Betamax).
>>>Because Google ( a business in the business of making money ) wants to make boat loads of money on their product without paying for it?
Ooops! ABC, CBS, and NBC are public broadcasters. They don't charge to access their content. You can watch it for free (via antenna or internet).
I can't think of any logical reason why these broadcasters would block Google or any other web device. Perhaps the FCC ought to revoke their licenses to public frequencies, and give channels 2 to 51 for cellphone/internet usage? Why? Because ABC, CBS, NBC are acting like turds. Not that I want that to lose free TV, but it would be a friendly reminder to the Big Three where they sit (their use of the People's airwaves is a *privilege* not a right). .
>>>If Google wants to make money off of them, than perhaps they should pay the networks a cut of the take?
Why? CATV doesn't. DishTV doesn't. Neither do I (all of them I get free).
Too bad my Verizon ISP stopped carrying Usenet newsgroups. I can understand the newsgroups used a lot of bandwidth/storage, but they could have dropped the *.binary groups and kept pure text forums like rec.arts.tv or rec.arts.startrek. (sigh) At least they haven't installed datacaps like my other ISP comcast did.
>>>A Strange game. The only winning move is not to play
Pretty much. Obviously "Mutually Assured Destruction" was meant as a deterrent to scare the ____ out of the Russians so they would never act, but if I were president I still would not have pressed the button. The US would be incinerated, but South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia would still be radiation free and livable.
They might fall to Communism as Russia expanded, but Homo sapiens would still be alive rather than extinct.
Mr Clarke (and Heinlein and Asimov) also claimed we'd have regular tourist travel to the moon by 2001. And flying cars. So he's not as "visionary" as you claim. He was wrong.
In fact MOST of their predictions from those stories were wrong. The challenge for people who are ACTUAL designers (i.e. me) is to determine which "future forecasts" are accurate, and which are just nonsense. For example will the board I'm designing need 100 gigabytes of RAM in the year 2020, or will future developments (such as cloud computing) mean just 5 gigs is enough? The current system is still running on a 386 so maybe that's sufficient, but I honestly don't know what new ideas OTHER engineers might invent. And neither did Mr. Cerf.
To demand we engineers be Crystal Ball Readers is just complete and utter bullshit. Hindsight is 20/20. Future sight is more like driving through a thick fog (praying your still on the road instead of in a ditch). If you don't believe me, give it a try. Predict what technology will be like in 2040, put it in a safe somewhere, and then dig it out to see how accurate you were. (Hint: You'll be way off.)
Fine. Vint Cerf was an idiot for not being a visionary as you folks. He should have been able to predict in 1976 that Disco would die, records would be replaced with MP3s, and that everyone would be surfing his not-yet-built internet on their cellphones.
Let's hang the bastard. ----- I assume when YOU design products, you don't just give them a few gigabytes? You give them 10,000 gigabytes..... ya know, for future growth. (rolls eyes)
Imagine you've got a program called "Opera Browser" and you are Not distributed through the app store. That means you won't be able to use the LaunchPad and 1-Click Updates. Wouldn't that tend to make your program less attractive than, say, Apple Safari which DOES have those abilities?
Just thinking out loud. Please don't damage my karma.
- Since 1986 computers have developed new tools that did not exist then (on PCs anyway), like Paint programs, music creation programs, web browsers, media players. That required hiring more programmers to develop those new tools.
- Microsoft had been a small company serving IBM, Commodore, etc, but now they have to serve thousands of businesses and millions of consumers directly. That requires additional programmers to handle the extra grunt work ("No ma'am the CD drive is not a coffee holder.").
Another example is Sony when they decided, "One hour of tape is enough." That decision eventually killed the Betamax VCR. The competition called JVC also thought it was enough time but RCA, which was used to dealing with consumer expectations, insisted it had to be 4 hours minimum so Americans could tape football games. JVC complied and VHS won.
I wonder if we'll ever run out of phone numbers? The current US limit is 9,999,999,999 or about 10 billion. That's enough for 30 phones per citizen, so I suppose we're okay.;-)
I have 3 numbers assigned to me: Wired phone, cellphone, plus security system.
Were you even alive then - 1976? I was. Remember that was a time when being able to buy a video & watch it at home was an alien concept (pre-VCR). If you had said to someone, "Someday you'll be able to sit on a bus and watch a video from 10,000 miles away," they'd probably lock you in a loony bin. Or just say, "You're a nutty nerd - let's give you a wedgie."
Computers in 1976 were the size of small rooms, and they were just beginning to be shrunk to PC size, but they were hard-to-use (no keyboards or screens; they used esoteric switches). Nobody at the time thought common people (read: uneducated boobs) would have computers with self-assigned addresses. Nobody thought there'd be more than one computer per home, much less 2-3 per person. Most envisioned computers as being like Star Trerk - a single unit running the whole house. The number of homes was only 900 million, so having ~4000 million addresses was plenty.
It was pre-home computer revolution and nobody thought computers would shrink to the size of everybody's pockets (cellphones). Nobody thought we'd be using machines will a billion bits (or more) or memory. Back than ~4000 was considered a lot (it was the hardcoded limit for the Atari console). Everything was smaller in scale, and Mr. Cerf is not to blame for not predicting the invention of the Web Browser (killer app) and how it would reach into every facet of our lives.
Don't forget Oklahoma City. The FBI was never able to prove their case, but even today they still suspect Bin Laden was funding and providing technical know-how to Timothy McVeigh. After all the bomb was near-identical to the one used in the WTC, and using the same tactic (a van blowing-out the foundation/pillars).
I always thought it was foolish for the US to counterstrike, and extinct the human race.
Obviously it was meant as a deterrent, but the wiser course if Russia attacked would be to say, "Oh damn," and do nothing. The eastern half of the world would fall to Communism, but Homo sapiens would still be alive. And no government lasts forever. Even if it took 500 years eventually the communist empire would bankrupt itself, collapse (as happened with Rome), and a new civilization would arise to fill the gap.
Slashdot Mirror
P.S.
I can't believe how difficult these channels are to "talk" to. It's as if they don't want to hear from the customers. ABC/CBS was not too bad, but on NBC they forced me to fill-out some stupid survey. On FOX I couldn't find a "contact us" link, so I was forced to do a search. Then after I submitted my question, I was redirected to a FAQ and my question never mailed to a real person. NPR had exactly the same problem when I tried to contact them yesterday.
Now contrast that with CW which proudly displays "Feedback" right on the top menu, plus includes a public discussion forum.
They are probably the most web-friendly of these networks.
Dang. I had NoScript turned-off, and that nbc site brought my browser (Gecko Mozilla/5.0) to a crawl. What on earth kind of scripting are they using?
"Dear ABC/CB/NBC:
"Google TV blocked - why? I'm not angry. I'd just like to know WHY you chose to block my new GoogleTV device from seeing your shows? Thank you. :-)"
>>>Many people here will redoubtably recall temporary [cable] blackouts of some network stations
God I'm glad I have an antenna.
No blackouts here. Ever.
>>>they are terrified that people will stop watching regular TV
True. Because they make less profit from online ads. But perhaps it's time TV stop spending 1-2 million dollars per episode? Back in the 50s and 60s, television only cost $200,000 per episode (in today's dollars). There's not really any reason to spend much more than that today. ----- Babylon 5 only cost $800,000 per episode... half what Star Trek DS9/VOY cost. They accomplished that by (1) finishing scripts one week prior to shoot, instead of last-minute on-the-set changes and (2) 8 day schedules instead of 10 day and (3) no overtime for the crew; each day was limited to eight hours.
.
>>>Charging an ISP per customer to let them have access to a website
I hope not. That's what drove the cost of Comcast Cable from $25 to $70/month. I hope ISPs continue to say "no" to websites charging for access. If I wanted to see EXPN360.com or Disneyconnection.com or Playboy.com, then I'd whip out my credit card and pay to see it. Websites should continue to be sold direct-to-the-individual, rather than seeking fees out of the internet company.
>>>6:00 am before work. 10 years ago...that advertising revenue would have vanished
That's not even close to accurate. Ten years ago people had VCRs. They taped what they wanted to see, which included the ads. (Nielsen Research at the time showed most viewers didn't skip the ads.) So almost no advertising revenue was lost by the networks.
.
>>>internet ad space (for the moment) is worth less than TV ad time,
Precisely. The networks prefer that people watch (or tape) the TV ads, rather than the online ads. In fact one of the networks, FOX, makes you wait eight days before you can see shows online. That's their way of encouraging people to watch during the primetime hour, because it's more profitable for them.
>>>If Google simply sits there, patiently, eventually Big Media will, snarling all the way, cave.
You are correct (maybe). That's what Cable companies typically do during negotiations. For example when FOX recently cut-off Time-Warner, the cable company refused to budge. Eventually they reached an agreement that TW would pay 25 cents to air the channel, which was far less than the 1 dollar FOX wanted.
Google can and should adopt similar tactics. The only problem is that GoogleTV is a new object with few customers. They don't have the same "muscle" that TW has with its ~35 million subscribers. Google has a few thousand. ABC/CBS/NBC don't consider that 0.01% a significant loss. It's not even a blip on the Nielsen Ratings.
>>>torrent trackers I use started using whitelists
I am on one of those trackers, and they do that for good reason. Many of those clients "cheat" and feed back false data to boost user share ratios (claiming you uploaded 10:1 ratio when you did not upload at all). If the programs did not cheat, then trackers wouldn't need to ban them, but since they Do cheat, the trackers act to protect themselves. They have that right.
>>>I don't think there's any law that dictates what User Agent String a web browser returns.
There is but it's never been enforced. For example Opera Browser let's you pretend to be Firefox or Internet Explorer, and access sites that might otherwise be blocked. According to the DMCA that's "hacking" and illegal, but nobody has ever bothered to file a lawsuit. However they could if they wanted to, and probably win.
Disagree. Just because you publish a website, doesn't mean you have to share it with all IP addresses..... similar to how you don't have to serve everyone at a business ("no shirt; no service"). Or how some .com/.us sites are not visible in embargoed countries like Cuba.
Net neutrality is about stopping the ISP from censoring the web (prevent them from blocking gop.org).
It's not about forcing website owners (us) to share things we don't want to share.
>>>they will wait a few more years and try and launch their own version which will suck.
Or maybe not. The history of invention shows that being "first" is typically a bad idea. It's often a good tactic to let someone else waste millions on R&D, plus advertising, and then jump on the bandwagon after the technology is already proven. It also helps you avoid wasting cash on flops (like Digital Cassette* or CED Videorecords or Betamax).
*
* This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette
>>>Because Google ( a business in the business of making money ) wants to make boat loads of money on their product without paying for it?
Ooops! ABC, CBS, and NBC are public broadcasters.
They don't charge to access their content.
You can watch it for free (via antenna or internet).
I can't think of any logical reason why these broadcasters would block Google or any other web device. Perhaps the FCC ought to revoke their licenses to public frequencies, and give channels 2 to 51 for cellphone/internet usage? Why? Because ABC, CBS, NBC are acting like turds. Not that I want that to lose free TV, but it would be a friendly reminder to the Big Three where they sit (their use of the People's airwaves is a *privilege* not a right).
.
>>>If Google wants to make money off of them, than perhaps they should pay the networks a cut of the take?
Why? CATV doesn't. DishTV doesn't. Neither do I (all of them I get free).
Interesting post
Is any of that legal?
Too bad my Verizon ISP stopped carrying Usenet newsgroups. I can understand the newsgroups used a lot of bandwidth/storage, but they could have dropped the *.binary groups and kept pure text forums like rec.arts.tv or rec.arts.startrek. (sigh) At least they haven't installed datacaps like my other ISP comcast did.
>>>A Strange game. The only winning move is not to play
Pretty much. Obviously "Mutually Assured Destruction" was meant as a deterrent to scare the ____ out of the Russians so they would never act, but if I were president I still would not have pressed the button. The US would be incinerated, but South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia would still be radiation free and livable.
They might fall to Communism as Russia expanded, but Homo sapiens would still be alive rather than extinct.
Mr Clarke (and Heinlein and Asimov) also claimed we'd have regular tourist travel to the moon by 2001. And flying cars. So he's not as "visionary" as you claim. He was wrong.
In fact MOST of their predictions from those stories were wrong. The challenge for people who are ACTUAL designers (i.e. me) is to determine which "future forecasts" are accurate, and which are just nonsense. For example will the board I'm designing need 100 gigabytes of RAM in the year 2020, or will future developments (such as cloud computing) mean just 5 gigs is enough? The current system is still running on a 386 so maybe that's sufficient, but I honestly don't know what new ideas OTHER engineers might invent. And neither did Mr. Cerf.
To demand we engineers be Crystal Ball Readers is just complete and utter bullshit. Hindsight is 20/20. Future sight is more like driving through a thick fog (praying your still on the road instead of in a ditch). If you don't believe me, give it a try. Predict what technology will be like in 2040, put it in a safe somewhere, and then dig it out to see how accurate you were. (Hint: You'll be way off.)
(sigh)
Fine. Vint Cerf was an idiot for not being a visionary as you folks. He should have been able to predict in 1976 that Disco would die, records would be replaced with MP3s, and that everyone would be surfing his not-yet-built internet on their cellphones.
Let's hang the bastard. ----- I assume when YOU design products, you don't just give them a few gigabytes? You give them 10,000 gigabytes..... ya know, for future growth. (rolls eyes)
But MS-DOS was designed for the 1981 PC and therefore predated larger processors like the 386.
And: Wikipedia says the 8086 can address 1024k. So the 640 limit was a Microsoft decision, not a hardware limitation.
Okay just some random conjecture:
Imagine you've got a program called "Opera Browser" and you are Not distributed through the app store. That means you won't be able to use the LaunchPad and 1-Click Updates. Wouldn't that tend to make your program less attractive than, say, Apple Safari which DOES have those abilities?
Just thinking out loud.
Please don't damage my karma.
Gates forgot to take into account two things:
- Since 1986 computers have developed new tools that did not exist then (on PCs anyway), like Paint programs, music creation programs, web browsers, media players. That required hiring more programmers to develop those new tools.
- Microsoft had been a small company serving IBM, Commodore, etc, but now they have to serve thousands of businesses and millions of consumers directly. That requires additional programmers to handle the extra grunt work ("No ma'am the CD drive is not a coffee holder.").
Another example is Sony when they decided, "One hour of tape is enough." That decision eventually killed the Betamax VCR. The competition called JVC also thought it was enough time but RCA, which was used to dealing with consumer expectations, insisted it had to be 4 hours minimum so Americans could tape football games. JVC complied and VHS won.
I wonder if we'll ever run out of phone numbers? The current US limit is 9,999,999,999 or about 10 billion. That's enough for 30 phones per citizen, so I suppose we're okay. ;-)
I have 3 numbers assigned to me: Wired phone, cellphone, plus security system.
>>>Only those with no imagination---
Were you even alive then - 1976? I was. Remember that was a time when being able to buy a video & watch it at home was an alien concept (pre-VCR). If you had said to someone, "Someday you'll be able to sit on a bus and watch a video from 10,000 miles away," they'd probably lock you in a loony bin. Or just say, "You're a nutty nerd - let's give you a wedgie."
Computers in 1976 were the size of small rooms, and they were just beginning to be shrunk to PC size, but they were hard-to-use (no keyboards or screens; they used esoteric switches). Nobody at the time thought common people (read: uneducated boobs) would have computers with self-assigned addresses. Nobody thought there'd be more than one computer per home, much less 2-3 per person. Most envisioned computers as being like Star Trerk - a single unit running the whole house. The number of homes was only 900 million, so having ~4000 million addresses was plenty.
What happened to IPv5?
Or that it wasn't Bill Gates instead of Cerf.
"640,000 addresses out to be enough."
The scale of computing was much smaller then.
It was pre-home computer revolution and nobody thought computers would shrink to the size of everybody's pockets (cellphones). Nobody thought we'd be using machines will a billion bits (or more) or memory. Back than ~4000 was considered a lot (it was the hardcoded limit for the Atari console). Everything was smaller in scale, and Mr. Cerf is not to blame for not predicting the invention of the Web Browser (killer app) and how it would reach into every facet of our lives.
>>>WTC, the US Embassy, or USS Cole attacks
Don't forget Oklahoma City. The FBI was never able to prove their case, but even today they still suspect Bin Laden was funding and providing technical know-how to Timothy McVeigh. After all the bomb was near-identical to the one used in the WTC, and using the same tactic (a van blowing-out the foundation/pillars).
I always thought it was foolish for the US to counterstrike, and extinct the human race.
Obviously it was meant as a deterrent, but the wiser course if Russia attacked would be to say, "Oh damn," and do nothing. The eastern half of the world would fall to Communism, but Homo sapiens would still be alive. And no government lasts forever. Even if it took 500 years eventually the communist empire would bankrupt itself, collapse (as happened with Rome), and a new civilization would arise to fill the gap.