Yeah except you can't really predict how the public will react to marketing ploys.
Seriously, pwnies may have a good point, and this could very well have been a staged marketing ploy. Get the name out there with a ridiculously low price, make geeks aware that a really cool tablet is coming out. Then take advantage of the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" and "JooJoo" is all over the newsblurbs as the thing that "was supposed to be" revolutionary. Then wait for a few lazy editors to drop the "was supposed to be" to "was thought", then it just becomes "was", and suddenly it's the next new cool thing.
Tablets probably ain't gonna make it, except maybe from a company like Apple who, for good or bad, is really good at marketing well-built, well-designed shiny things to people who want to spend their money on well-built, well-designed shiny things. The tablet market is not one for the "function over form" crowd because most of us have no true use for an LCD-based tablet. We either need a keyboard, or we need it to be more durable than we can handle for weight or form factor, or whatever.
Bookreaders work because they use eInk, and are specifically designed for a niche - reading books. Other form factors of computer work because they are designed for their niche. Day-in-day-out, what is the niche for tablets (a portable, keyboard-less computer)? You see them all the time in science fiction, but would you have a daily use for one that would make it worth the battery life, weight, fragility, and cost issues?
Maybe they'll win over the zero-to-5 age group. We all know THEY have $500 burning a hole in their pockets. Though their parents might, after the "Baby Einstein" refund.
In most cases, the apostrophe is used to replace a space followed by a letter. For example, in the word "they're" the apostrophe replaces a space followed by the letter "a" in the original "they are". In the word "it's" the apostrophe replaces a space followed by "i" from the original "it is."
In the non-possessive form of "PowerPoint's", the apostrophe is obviously intended to replace a space followed by the word "presentation".
It's not a grammatical error, it's an error in conflicting substitution tables.:)
And on that flea there was a rash a rare rash, a rattlin' rash. The rash on the flea and the flea on the wing and the wing on the bird and the bird in the egg and the egg in the bird and the bird in the nest and the nest on the leaf and the leaf on the twig and the twig on the branch and the branch on the trunk and the trunk on the tree and the tree in the bog and the bog down in the valley-o.
it's 'simple. 'Sometimes you put an apo'strophe in front of the letter "'s", and 'sometime's you dont. Other letter's occasionally get an apo'strophe be'side them but the "'s" i's the mo'st likely 'so 'some people ju'st u'se the apo'strophe con'stantly 'so they dont have to de'cide. ('c' in thi's ca'se i's prinoun'ced a's an 's).
'see what I mean? ju'st 'simplifie's the whole 'senten'ce 'structure. No de'ci'sion's ne'ce's'sary.
It astonishes me that they charge $1.99 minimum. With my wife's parents' phones, it was a few pennies per access, totaled something like 55 cents or so.
My wife's parents ended up with some incidental charges for accidental data access on their phones, called AT&T, and they refunded the amounts and asked if they wanted a "data block" put in place to prevent them from accidentally accessing data again. "Yes" "OK, we're all done, thanks for calling AT&T". Next day, my father-in-law tried the data access, and it came up "unavailable", and they've never seen a charge since.
So you're saying that a clear, readable statement about privacy is more suspicious than total and complete silence on the issue? Or am I missing something? That's not really what you meant, right?
Google feels the need to do this because every time they offer a new service "privacy" is the very first word off everyone's lips. How many times have we all read diatribes against Latitude, Gmail, etc for lack of a clear disclosure of privacy terms before the service even goes beta? And now that Google has released clear, plain English privacy statements about a new service, it's suspicious behavior? Sounds to me like Google is giving the general public what they asked for.
I'd say that if Google is the first ISP or service to have a privacy policy (which they are not, but let's say they are) then this is to be commended, not criticized. Again, they are not. OpenDNS, at least, has a clear policy and it seems to be a good one. And kudos to them for offering it.
I'd rather have a clear cut policy, even if it is subject to change, than total silence where the vendor can do anything they want without telling me. Google has been pretty good about telling me when the privacy policy for specific services changes, and for the most part they have been responses to accusations of what people THINK they MIGHT do with the data, and by and large they've been "no, we don't do that." I don't think I've ever seen them update a privacy policy for the purpose of giving them more rights than they had prior to the change.
If you don't trust Google, fine. They, like any other company or person, certainly could be lying. Fair enough.
I think they've certainly held up well to public scrutiny of their actual privacy practices, overall. They've certainly made some mistakes, but they've also been pretty good about discussing them openly, correcting them when their user base decides that a particular practice is unacceptable, and (like Microsoft with security) seem to be taking privacy extremely seriously.
Of course, Google also does not provide any core services. Email (Gmail), IM (GoogleTalk), DNS, search, mapping, collaboration (Wave), news aggregation (Google News) - every one of these services is available elsewhere. Just make sure you look at the privacy policies of your chosen vendor, and please consider that a lack of a written policy is generally not a good sign.
1. Use my ISP, who never made any promises of privacy at all, and at least in the case of mine ALSO redirects me to an ad if I typo a DNS request (faked NX records). Comcastic!
2. Use OpenDNS, which promises not to sell.. oh, yeah, that's right, promises don't really mean anything to you from Google, then they probably don't from OpenDNS either, but anyway they make the same promises as Google. And they redirect me to an ad-laden third party site if I typo a DNS request. So I get a little more privacy (in theory) but my ISP can still detect what traffic is going about. And I still get NX violation.
3. Use Google. The only of the three who has promised (for what that promise is worth) not to share my DNS requests, *AND* follows the NX standard for mistyped URLs (error message). Free, fast.
4. Use Level3's DNS servers directly (4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4). -- My choice. They are a little slower, but they work, and as far as I've seen they follow the NX standard. Of course, I don't know what their privacy policy is like.
My DNS lookups are going to be spied upon no matter who I use. Comcast, by definition, can see all the traffic I generate including DNS lookups. So giving it to Google is [ __ not worth | __ worth ] getting properly-working NX records on a relatively high-speed DNS server. Check the appropriate checkbox. If you chose "worth", then 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are for you! If you checked "not worth", then you might want to research your alternatives.
The really interesting part of this whole thing is that some people are becoming more aware that there ARE actually choices in DNS, and that it's not just an invisible part of the Internet. If no one ever uses GoogleDNS, this whole debate would be a major win for that and no other reason.
I think his article was well-thought-out and well articulated, but I have a few problems with it.
First, he does address Google's claim that Google does not redirect to ad-laden placeholders then cleverly redirects the argument to one of privacy. If OpenDNS is directing me to an ad-laden site if I mistype a URL or enter an invalid one, then I have a bunch of ad servers who now have my IP address and probably know what site I meant to go to. This may be better than giving all of my DNS lookups to a company, but at least with Google I'm giving them all to one company that I know and can decide if I want to trust. With OpenDNS, if I typo a URL, my error is, in effect, being sold to an unknown third party. I think it's somewhat disingenuous to tout privacy then use redirect pages to send users to third-party advertisers who may or may not respect the OpenDNS privacy policy. At least Google is subjecting my DNS lookups, both good and bad, to a consistent privacy policy.
He does, however, make an excellent point about their Dashboard service and the level of control you as an OpenDNS customer have over your experience. Of course, in return for that you do have to sign up for an account to use it, and you get usage logs associated with your account and email address. Their privacy policy on such information appears excellent, but Google promises to anonymize the data as well, so that boils down to a matter of who you trust more. Personally, I'd be inclined to trust both, so it really boils down to what features are most important to you - proper domain handling, or detailed controls over everything BUT proper domain handling?
Knowing every DNS lookup you do from your computer, along with your originating IP address so they can tie it to a Google account the first time you log in.
Also, if these are "very Google" people, by which I assume they mean "big users and supporters of Google toolkits", and they are happy doing so AND BEING PAID BY SOMEONE ELSE, then why in the hell would Google feel the need to hire them?:)
Now if we could add an "e" between your "N" and "W":)
There was a company here in NEW England (US) that tried a WiFi grid supported by scattered landline connections, but they tried to do the repeating through 802.11b (11mbps). I actually talked to them about getting my mother's house set up as a repeater (it would have been a long haul, but she's at a good altitude and had line-of-sight to their nearest station ~20 miles away, and it would have opened up new markets for them).
They expressed some interest and were going to loan me a directional antenna and some testing gear, but then their funding for expansion collapsed. I think the company still exists, but just as a cash cow.
There are a few small-scale WiFi players around here, but most of them are a "repeat a landline signal" types, not a WiFi grid. And most of them are either extremely limited in coverage or exceptionally expensive (in the "satellite would be cheaper" price ranges).
Google would be well-served by implementing WiFi now, and I think it would be fun if they did it in the same sort of participatory manner that they do everything else - they ship you a cheap or free GoogleRepeater, you put an antenna on your rooftop, and in certain areas Google pays for an Internet connection that they can connect to the GoogleRepeaterGrid. The network spreads as people are willing to install and run GoogleRepeaters, and remains fast based on them adding fiber connections at strategic points along the GoogleRepeaterGrid.
If they can find a channel, the long-haul connection between GoogleRepeaters could be handled on a longer-distance higher-bandwidth frequency or range of frequencies, and the local repeaters could output standard WiFi. But they wouldn't have to pay to put up towers, because there are a good number of people who would be more than happy to install the repeater gear at our houses and help spread the signal. Google? Are you listening? You can ship it to me now. I've got a primo spot on my rooftop antenna tower with your name on it.
As to the rail thing, it's still used for a lot of transportation of goods. It's amazingly efficient compared to any other way of moving product (except maybe floating it downstream on barges, but rail doesn't have to worry about river flow directions). You might be surprised at how much of the stuff you use every day was hauled at least part of the way by rail. It's more efficient than barging it, and almost ten times more efficient than hauling by the next-most-efficient method that's not dependent on current (trucks).
Slashdot Mirror
Some people like the "Running Man" upgrade.
Yeah except you can't really predict how the public will react to marketing ploys.
Seriously, pwnies may have a good point, and this could very well have been a staged marketing ploy. Get the name out there with a ridiculously low price, make geeks aware that a really cool tablet is coming out. Then take advantage of the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" and "JooJoo" is all over the newsblurbs as the thing that "was supposed to be" revolutionary. Then wait for a few lazy editors to drop the "was supposed to be" to "was thought", then it just becomes "was", and suddenly it's the next new cool thing.
Tablets probably ain't gonna make it, except maybe from a company like Apple who, for good or bad, is really good at marketing well-built, well-designed shiny things to people who want to spend their money on well-built, well-designed shiny things. The tablet market is not one for the "function over form" crowd because most of us have no true use for an LCD-based tablet. We either need a keyboard, or we need it to be more durable than we can handle for weight or form factor, or whatever.
Bookreaders work because they use eInk, and are specifically designed for a niche - reading books. Other form factors of computer work because they are designed for their niche. Day-in-day-out, what is the niche for tablets (a portable, keyboard-less computer)? You see them all the time in science fiction, but would you have a daily use for one that would make it worth the battery life, weight, fragility, and cost issues?
As long as "the cloud" can mean a server I control, that's fine.
Of course, for $500, I could get a pretty kick-ass laptop, or a matching pair of netbooks, or a Kindle/Nook and a netbook.
Still, it's probably a nifty neato early adopters toy.
He could be their campaign spokes...umm...thing.
"Meesa Likesa JooJoo!"
Maybe they'll win over the zero-to-5 age group. We all know THEY have $500 burning a hole in their pockets. Though their parents might, after the "Baby Einstein" refund.
Yes, buzzwords are always a lose-lose proposition. Time for a paradigm shift!
In most cases, the apostrophe is used to replace a space followed by a letter. For example, in the word "they're" the apostrophe replaces a space followed by the letter "a" in the original "they are". In the word "it's" the apostrophe replaces a space followed by "i" from the original "it is."
In the non-possessive form of "PowerPoint's", the apostrophe is obviously intended to replace a space followed by the word "presentation".
It's not a grammatical error, it's an error in conflicting substitution tables. :)
Or, in Tiger's case, sneak out and play a round of golf. :)
...or if they get an ad for a splinter removal kit.
Is that why I took a picture of the Washington Monument and got a wide range of results on specific "medications"?
Sorry, good point. I forgot about 1 and 6.
There's also 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, and 4.2.2.4, all owned by Level3 Communications.
You can't get much more authoritative than that, though they aren't the fastest DNS servers by far.
When *I* was a kid, we had to walk to the banks. Uphill. Both ways. In the snow.
Until, of course, we get to The Great A'Tuin.
And on that flea there was a rash a rare rash, a rattlin' rash. The rash on the flea and the flea on the wing and the wing on the bird and the bird in the egg and the egg in the bird and the bird in the nest and the nest on the leaf and the leaf on the twig and the twig on the branch and the branch on the trunk and the trunk on the tree and the tree in the bog and the bog down in the valley-o.
it's 'simple. 'Sometimes you put an apo'strophe in front of the letter "'s", and 'sometime's you dont. Other letter's occasionally get an apo'strophe be'side them but the "'s" i's the mo'st likely 'so 'some people ju'st u'se the apo'strophe con'stantly 'so they dont have to de'cide. ('c' in thi's ca'se i's prinoun'ced a's an 's).
'see what I mean? ju'st 'simplifie's the whole 'senten'ce 'structure. No de'ci'sion's ne'ce's'sary.
It's right there, in your flying car.
It astonishes me that they charge $1.99 minimum. With my wife's parents' phones, it was a few pennies per access, totaled something like 55 cents or so.
Does Verizon allow you to block data?
My wife's parents ended up with some incidental charges for accidental data access on their phones, called AT&T, and they refunded the amounts and asked if they wanted a "data block" put in place to prevent them from accidentally accessing data again. "Yes" "OK, we're all done, thanks for calling AT&T". Next day, my father-in-law tried the data access, and it came up "unavailable", and they've never seen a charge since.
So you're saying that a clear, readable statement about privacy is more suspicious than total and complete silence on the issue? Or am I missing something? That's not really what you meant, right?
Google feels the need to do this because every time they offer a new service "privacy" is the very first word off everyone's lips. How many times have we all read diatribes against Latitude, Gmail, etc for lack of a clear disclosure of privacy terms before the service even goes beta? And now that Google has released clear, plain English privacy statements about a new service, it's suspicious behavior? Sounds to me like Google is giving the general public what they asked for.
I'd say that if Google is the first ISP or service to have a privacy policy (which they are not, but let's say they are) then this is to be commended, not criticized. Again, they are not. OpenDNS, at least, has a clear policy and it seems to be a good one. And kudos to them for offering it.
I'd rather have a clear cut policy, even if it is subject to change, than total silence where the vendor can do anything they want without telling me. Google has been pretty good about telling me when the privacy policy for specific services changes, and for the most part they have been responses to accusations of what people THINK they MIGHT do with the data, and by and large they've been "no, we don't do that." I don't think I've ever seen them update a privacy policy for the purpose of giving them more rights than they had prior to the change.
If you don't trust Google, fine. They, like any other company or person, certainly could be lying. Fair enough.
I think they've certainly held up well to public scrutiny of their actual privacy practices, overall. They've certainly made some mistakes, but they've also been pretty good about discussing them openly, correcting them when their user base decides that a particular practice is unacceptable, and (like Microsoft with security) seem to be taking privacy extremely seriously.
Of course, Google also does not provide any core services. Email (Gmail), IM (GoogleTalk), DNS, search, mapping, collaboration (Wave), news aggregation (Google News) - every one of these services is available elsewhere. Just make sure you look at the privacy policies of your chosen vendor, and please consider that a lack of a written policy is generally not a good sign.
Choices:
1. Use my ISP, who never made any promises of privacy at all, and at least in the case of mine ALSO redirects me to an ad if I typo a DNS request (faked NX records). Comcastic!
2. Use OpenDNS, which promises not to sell.. oh, yeah, that's right, promises don't really mean anything to you from Google, then they probably don't from OpenDNS either, but anyway they make the same promises as Google. And they redirect me to an ad-laden third party site if I typo a DNS request. So I get a little more privacy (in theory) but my ISP can still detect what traffic is going about. And I still get NX violation.
3. Use Google. The only of the three who has promised (for what that promise is worth) not to share my DNS requests, *AND* follows the NX standard for mistyped URLs (error message). Free, fast.
4. Use Level3's DNS servers directly (4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4). -- My choice. They are a little slower, but they work, and as far as I've seen they follow the NX standard. Of course, I don't know what their privacy policy is like.
My DNS lookups are going to be spied upon no matter who I use. Comcast, by definition, can see all the traffic I generate including DNS lookups. So giving it to Google is [ __ not worth | __ worth ] getting properly-working NX records on a relatively high-speed DNS server. Check the appropriate checkbox. If you chose "worth", then 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are for you! If you checked "not worth", then you might want to research your alternatives.
The really interesting part of this whole thing is that some people are becoming more aware that there ARE actually choices in DNS, and that it's not just an invisible part of the Internet. If no one ever uses GoogleDNS, this whole debate would be a major win for that and no other reason.
I think his article was well-thought-out and well articulated, but I have a few problems with it.
First, he does address Google's claim that Google does not redirect to ad-laden placeholders then cleverly redirects the argument to one of privacy. If OpenDNS is directing me to an ad-laden site if I mistype a URL or enter an invalid one, then I have a bunch of ad servers who now have my IP address and probably know what site I meant to go to. This may be better than giving all of my DNS lookups to a company, but at least with Google I'm giving them all to one company that I know and can decide if I want to trust. With OpenDNS, if I typo a URL, my error is, in effect, being sold to an unknown third party. I think it's somewhat disingenuous to tout privacy then use redirect pages to send users to third-party advertisers who may or may not respect the OpenDNS privacy policy. At least Google is subjecting my DNS lookups, both good and bad, to a consistent privacy policy.
He does, however, make an excellent point about their Dashboard service and the level of control you as an OpenDNS customer have over your experience. Of course, in return for that you do have to sign up for an account to use it, and you get usage logs associated with your account and email address. Their privacy policy on such information appears excellent, but Google promises to anonymize the data as well, so that boils down to a matter of who you trust more. Personally, I'd be inclined to trust both, so it really boils down to what features are most important to you - proper domain handling, or detailed controls over everything BUT proper domain handling?
Knowing every DNS lookup you do from your computer, along with your originating IP address so they can tie it to a Google account the first time you log in.
It's like marketing GOLD, baby!
Also, if these are "very Google" people, by which I assume they mean "big users and supporters of Google toolkits", and they are happy doing so AND BEING PAID BY SOMEONE ELSE, then why in the hell would Google feel the need to hire them? :)
Now if we could add an "e" between your "N" and "W" :)
There was a company here in NEW England (US) that tried a WiFi grid supported by scattered landline connections, but they tried to do the repeating through 802.11b (11mbps). I actually talked to them about getting my mother's house set up as a repeater (it would have been a long haul, but she's at a good altitude and had line-of-sight to their nearest station ~20 miles away, and it would have opened up new markets for them).
They expressed some interest and were going to loan me a directional antenna and some testing gear, but then their funding for expansion collapsed. I think the company still exists, but just as a cash cow.
There are a few small-scale WiFi players around here, but most of them are a "repeat a landline signal" types, not a WiFi grid. And most of them are either extremely limited in coverage or exceptionally expensive (in the "satellite would be cheaper" price ranges).
Google would be well-served by implementing WiFi now, and I think it would be fun if they did it in the same sort of participatory manner that they do everything else - they ship you a cheap or free GoogleRepeater, you put an antenna on your rooftop, and in certain areas Google pays for an Internet connection that they can connect to the GoogleRepeaterGrid. The network spreads as people are willing to install and run GoogleRepeaters, and remains fast based on them adding fiber connections at strategic points along the GoogleRepeaterGrid.
If they can find a channel, the long-haul connection between GoogleRepeaters could be handled on a longer-distance higher-bandwidth frequency or range of frequencies, and the local repeaters could output standard WiFi. But they wouldn't have to pay to put up towers, because there are a good number of people who would be more than happy to install the repeater gear at our houses and help spread the signal. Google? Are you listening? You can ship it to me now. I've got a primo spot on my rooftop antenna tower with your name on it.
As to the rail thing, it's still used for a lot of transportation of goods. It's amazingly efficient compared to any other way of moving product (except maybe floating it downstream on barges, but rail doesn't have to worry about river flow directions). You might be surprised at how much of the stuff you use every day was hauled at least part of the way by rail. It's more efficient than barging it, and almost ten times more efficient than hauling by the next-most-efficient method that's not dependent on current (trucks).