- If your market is those people who must have things the way they always were, then innovation will fail.
- If your market is people who will accept innovation, as long it is not too far off, then some innovation is possible.
- If your market is people who like try new things, then there is a chance innovation will work.
For the case of where innovation is possible, it can't exist on its own. The promise of a new improved gaming experience still needs to be there. Nintendo innovates, but doesn't always get it right, but with the right market and developer support, then these products work.
While stand-by is an issue in the general sense, stand-by would already be an improvement in most offices. I say this based on experience that in most places I have worked people don't switch off their computers or even put their computers into stand-by. Now just to find out whether the stand-by feature is set by default to activate after a certain amount of idle time?
We all know what Vista is stated to require, but I would really be interested to find out what the minimum anyone has been able to run Vista on, while still have a satisfactory experience. For example has anyone managed to get it running on P3 with 512MB RAM.
A few years back I heard of another solution, which was targeted for the Sahara desert. Basically it consisted of a number of long fibres, like hair, on which water would condense and then the water would drip into a container. Its been some time since I have seen anything about it, so I would be curious if anyone else has heard of this and his links to it.
IBM decided Apple wasn't worth the pain. Looks like Verizon's making that same call, too.
Well, there might be some truth in that, but I think what really happened was different. Apple certainly is demanding in what they ask for, because they have customers with certain expectations to cater for. The portable and compact computer markets is where its at. For that you need low power and high performance, not something that is easy to achieve. IBM has little interest to invest in that market, but Intel does. With clients such as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all wanting high powered chips, that don't care about energy efficiency, and with a potentially larger market between them than any PC manufacturer, you can understand IBM wanting to prioritise these guys.
Intel in many ways is probably the better match, since Intel is catering for the PC market and the type of computers that market demands. That market demands wants high performance chips that won't melt a laptop. Apple is after the PC market and therefore has the same needs. One thing that should be mentioned, is that generally Apple wants the latest chips for their computers.
Glamorous, yeah, and it looks really impressive at PR time. But when the cameras are off and you're just hanging around the apartment trying to have a relationship, you spend a whole lotta time ducking the cellphones being thrown at your head.
From my experience, I have had a better relationship with my Mac than any MS-Windows operating system. I spend my time trying to have a relationship with my MS-Windows based PC at work, but I am never good enough, my way is always wrong, but I do manage to get my work done. With my Mac it doesn't give me any false pretences of what it will do for me, in fact I usually find I can do more with it than it initially indicates.
true, but there's not much will for that mission, one has already been cancelled, and I doubt this one will go ahead either
Yup, the Bush administration doesn't see much use in science and NASA has been hurting badly since, then again, the Bush administration isn't the only issue, given that ever since the last shuttle accident no one is willing to risk anything in the name of progress. There are certainly other space agencies around the planet that could work together to make a worthy successor to the Hublle Space Telescope, but I am not aware of anyone doing so.
I would be curious to know whether some of the new Earth based observatories give Hubble a run for its money?
Now that people know it is possible, I am sure it is only a matter of time before others across the globe attempt to find the weakness. Some of these people won't even be affected by USA law, unless they decide to visit or transit through the country.
I spoke with my wallet some time ago and bought a Mac. Its not perfect, but there is certainly a philosphy that the user controls the system. If you can't control it, then the system doesn't make you think you do. MS-Windows is very much 'the you don't know what you doing' philosophy. An example of this is in Excel: try pasting a file:/// into a cell and see what happens - grrr - ok this is not Windows, but it is the same company and the same school of thought.
BTW Microsoft's Mac business unit seems to live in universe separate to the rest of the company, and is actually surprisingly capabale to putting out well thought out products, which aren't hindered by the above philosophy.
Companies always scream 'let the market decide', yet they manage to pressure politicians into passing laws which are anything but the market deciding. I don't live in the USA, so normally this shouldn't bother me but it does. It bothers me because the USA in turn manages to pressure members of international trade to establish the same laws, or risk being excluded from international trade. It is disgusting, but that's what seem to be happening. While I hold out hope for the customer to win this one, it won't be easy since the media industry has so much more money to influence the powers that be. At least having their security systems bypassed makes them think about the money the invested in these stupid systems.
On the other hand we have some companies, such as Disney, who recognise that piracy is another business model and that if this business model is succeeding then something is going wrong in their own business model. In many ways they have got passed the point of denial and started recognising maybe they should be taking another approach. Unfortunately this is not true for the rest of the large media companies. Two of the issues I see are pricing and availability:
- Pricing: If you look at the DVD series of Star Trek and Farscape, then you are looking at around $140 USD+TAX per season. This sort of pricing stinks of price gauging and targets the core fans. Anyone else who is interested, yet doesn't want to pony up that sort of cash, in acquiring the series either pirates or goes without. On other hand when you see a series such as 'Stargate SG-1' retailing at $30 CAD+TAX, you are tempted into making a purchase.
- Availability: What do I do if I want to buy some music not available in my country? Sometimes if you hunt down hard enough you may find some willing to order it for you, but it isn't easy. Now that there are online stores, such as iTunes, you would have thought you would finally be able to buy music from anywhere easily: wrong, since the music industries still impose their outdated distribution limitations on online stores.
Although I did mention two, DRM makes buying online music inconvenient and also makes it hard to explain to your parents why they can't do what they want with their music. For me technology is all about making the difficult easy, yet DRM is all the opposite: making the easy difficult and makes listening to my legally bought music akin to trying to deal with government. I still buy CDs because they are free of DRM and easy to use because of it.
This is why you don't see a company like Microsoft doing much that is ground breaking. If you look at Apple's strategy, you get the feeling that they already understood this some time back. The existence and popularity of sites such as YouTube confirms this direction.
I originally wondered about the lack of 3G. In the USA, where the iPhone first comes out 3G is not that available. At the same time more and more places are providing Wi-Fi access, which is much faster than 3G. By the time the phone gets to Europe (2008), you may find that the phone has matured enough to include good 3G support. In the meantime I think cellphone companies could start providing wi-fi access, which they provided at a reduced price (or free) for their customers and at a cost for non-customers. This would reduce the burden on the cellphone networks and potentially provide an extra revenue stream.
In the end I am not a soothsayer, so I can only analyse what might happen based on what's true now.
I wonder whether the price of going to the movie is a factor in any of this? Does anyone have a chart of how much it costs to watch a film, in various countries, taking into account all taxes paid at purchase?
The blog entry explains why S. Korea is in such a bad position. What I would like to know is, other than holding off on Vista, what is being recommended as a proper long term solution? For example are they recommending companies to adapt to standard web standards?
Also why not have a paper trail.With a paper backup all fraud can be caught given enough time for recounts (again if elections are not controlled by local partisan officials they cant arbitrarily decide not to have recounts).
In many ways Diebold et al. are all showing symptoms of not realising that they are trying to add technology to the wrong part of the process. In many ways the punch card system or optical card reader systems are the better systems, since the paper trail exists before the vote is taken into account: WYSIWYG. The proposed solutions provide a paper trail as a result of the process, if at all. The problem with this is that the paper trail may not be a result of what you inputted.
Remember just because technology can be used for a process, it does not necessarily mean that technology is needed for the process. Technology is there to make a complex task simple, not the other way round.
What I've never understood is why the bother to block other regions (looks like there are regions 7 and 8 for special purposes). Then again, maybe they don't, I don't have a R7 or R8 dvd to test that.
Region 8 is for aircraft, so if you are watching a DVD anywhere else than on an airline you probably didn't get it through legitimate sources.
ActiveX is pervasive in the Korean webspace. They should move to something that work in linux, mac os, and windows
Of course they should, but reality is not there. Some sites even insist on using VB, in place of Javascript - ugh! IMHO, the problem lies with uninformed web developers and managers who have never used anything other than MS-Windows and therefore the fact there are others OSs and web browsers is news to them.
MOAB are still flaming Apple Inc., Apple users, and anyone else who critiques their methods, and it's gotten personal and insulting. They come out swinging their fists at the Apple community, then cry foul because someone hits back.
This may be true and there may be better ways (using the Bug Report server for example), but if the end result is getting these problems fixed and a better system out of it, then I am happy with the effort put into it.
Maybe we need something like this for Linux and Windows?
but it's faster than dialup, and if that's how one is drawing the line (i.e., broadband is anything that isn't dialup), then 200kbps is probably as good a number as any. I seem to recall that my first ISDN connection was only 128kbps.
Maybe we needs to categorize broadband in the amount of bandwidth for suitable doing a certain task, such as streaming music, watching streaming video, etc. The other possibility simply categorize anything below 1Mbit/s as lowband (low broadband)?
I'd really hate to be at google at the moment. Search results will be doing really funny things in the next month or so.
This is why I feel that Google needs to provide multiple indexing algorithms, where a user can decide how pages are ranked in their search results. This would make things a bit more complicated for Google, but even more complicated for the people try target deficiencies in the algorithm. The idea being if there are multiple algorithms, it is hard to know which one to target.
On reading about this I decided to install it on my Mac and see what it gives. While a great advancement, this is still a work in progress and still very much something for people familiar with the command line. The aspect that would change all this the ability to use FUSE based FS URLs in the Finder ( known issue ), though this seems to be a limitation based on some private APIs needing to be made public, which I hope Apple resolves.
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It really depends what your market is:
- If your market is those people who must have things the way they always were, then innovation will fail.
- If your market is people who will accept innovation, as long it is not too far off, then some innovation is possible.
- If your market is people who like try new things, then there is a chance innovation will work.
For the case of where innovation is possible, it can't exist on its own. The promise of a new improved gaming experience still needs to be there. Nintendo innovates, but doesn't always get it right, but with the right market and developer support, then these products work.
While stand-by is an issue in the general sense, stand-by would already be an improvement in most offices. I say this based on experience that in most places I have worked people don't switch off their computers or even put their computers into stand-by. Now just to find out whether the stand-by feature is set by default to activate after a certain amount of idle time?
We all know what Vista is stated to require, but I would really be interested to find out what the minimum anyone has been able to run Vista on, while still have a satisfactory experience. For example has anyone managed to get it running on P3 with 512MB RAM.
A few years back I heard of another solution, which was targeted for the Sahara desert. Basically it consisted of a number of long fibres, like hair, on which water would condense and then the water would drip into a container. Its been some time since I have seen anything about it, so I would be curious if anyone else has heard of this and his links to it.
I second that, as well as being the easiest method of updating the BIOS (which happens more often than not on my DFI Lanparty nf4 sli-dr expert).
Given the abundance of USB-Flash keys, I would hope that most modern PCs can be booted off USB devices.
Thanks for the clarification :)
IBM decided Apple wasn't worth the pain. Looks like Verizon's making that same call, too.
Well, there might be some truth in that, but I think what really happened was different. Apple certainly is demanding in what they ask for, because they have customers with certain expectations to cater for. The portable and compact computer markets is where its at. For that you need low power and high performance, not something that is easy to achieve. IBM has little interest to invest in that market, but Intel does. With clients such as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all wanting high powered chips, that don't care about energy efficiency, and with a potentially larger market between them than any PC manufacturer, you can understand IBM wanting to prioritise these guys.
Intel in many ways is probably the better match, since Intel is catering for the PC market and the type of computers that market demands. That market demands wants high performance chips that won't melt a laptop. Apple is after the PC market and therefore has the same needs. One thing that should be mentioned, is that generally Apple wants the latest chips for their computers.
Glamorous, yeah, and it looks really impressive at PR time. But when the cameras are off and you're just hanging around the apartment trying to have a relationship, you spend a whole lotta time ducking the cellphones being thrown at your head.
From my experience, I have had a better relationship with my Mac than any MS-Windows operating system. I spend my time trying to have a relationship with my MS-Windows based PC at work, but I am never good enough, my way is always wrong, but I do manage to get my work done. With my Mac it doesn't give me any false pretences of what it will do for me, in fact I usually find I can do more with it than it initially indicates.
true, but there's not much will for that mission, one has already been cancelled, and I doubt this one will go ahead either
Yup, the Bush administration doesn't see much use in science and NASA has been hurting badly since, then again, the Bush administration isn't the only issue, given that ever since the last shuttle accident no one is willing to risk anything in the name of progress. There are certainly other space agencies around the planet that could work together to make a worthy successor to the Hublle Space Telescope, but I am not aware of anyone doing so.
I would be curious to know whether some of the new Earth based observatories give Hubble a run for its money?
Now that people know it is possible, I am sure it is only a matter of time before others across the globe attempt to find the weakness. Some of these people won't even be affected by USA law, unless they decide to visit or transit through the country.
I spoke with my wallet some time ago and bought a Mac. Its not perfect, but there is certainly a philosphy that the user controls the system. If you can't control it, then the system doesn't make you think you do. MS-Windows is very much 'the you don't know what you doing' philosophy. An example of this is in Excel: try pasting a file:/// into a cell and see what happens - grrr - ok this is not Windows, but it is the same company and the same school of thought.
BTW Microsoft's Mac business unit seems to live in universe separate to the rest of the company, and is actually surprisingly capabale to putting out well thought out products, which aren't hindered by the above philosophy.
Companies always scream 'let the market decide', yet they manage to pressure politicians into passing laws which are anything but the market deciding. I don't live in the USA, so normally this shouldn't bother me but it does. It bothers me because the USA in turn manages to pressure members of international trade to establish the same laws, or risk being excluded from international trade. It is disgusting, but that's what seem to be happening. While I hold out hope for the customer to win this one, it won't be easy since the media industry has so much more money to influence the powers that be. At least having their security systems bypassed makes them think about the money the invested in these stupid systems.
On the other hand we have some companies, such as Disney, who recognise that piracy is another business model and that if this business model is succeeding then something is going wrong in their own business model. In many ways they have got passed the point of denial and started recognising maybe they should be taking another approach. Unfortunately this is not true for the rest of the large media companies. Two of the issues I see are pricing and availability:
- Pricing: If you look at the DVD series of Star Trek and Farscape, then you are looking at around $140 USD+TAX per season. This sort of pricing stinks of price gauging and targets the core fans. Anyone else who is interested, yet doesn't want to pony up that sort of cash, in acquiring the series either pirates or goes without. On other hand when you see a series such as 'Stargate SG-1' retailing at $30 CAD+TAX, you are tempted into making a purchase.
- Availability: What do I do if I want to buy some music not available in my country? Sometimes if you hunt down hard enough you may find some willing to order it for you, but it isn't easy. Now that there are online stores, such as iTunes, you would have thought you would finally be able to buy music from anywhere easily: wrong, since the music industries still impose their outdated distribution limitations on online stores.
Although I did mention two, DRM makes buying online music inconvenient and also makes it hard to explain to your parents why they can't do what they want with their music. For me technology is all about making the difficult easy, yet DRM is all the opposite: making the easy difficult and makes listening to my legally bought music akin to trying to deal with government. I still buy CDs because they are free of DRM and easy to use because of it.
This is why you don't see a company like Microsoft doing much that is ground breaking. If you look at Apple's strategy, you get the feeling that they already understood this some time back. The existence and popularity of sites such as YouTube confirms this direction.
Also, they want it positioned as a "premium" product, and they know idiots will pay full price regardless.
Nah, it only makes it into the semi-premium category. Now this is a premium phone: Vertu.
I originally wondered about the lack of 3G. In the USA, where the iPhone first comes out 3G is not that available. At the same time more and more places are providing Wi-Fi access, which is much faster than 3G. By the time the phone gets to Europe (2008), you may find that the phone has matured enough to include good 3G support. In the meantime I think cellphone companies could start providing wi-fi access, which they provided at a reduced price (or free) for their customers and at a cost for non-customers. This would reduce the burden on the cellphone networks and potentially provide an extra revenue stream.
In the end I am not a soothsayer, so I can only analyse what might happen based on what's true now.
I wonder whether the price of going to the movie is a factor in any of this? Does anyone have a chart of how much it costs to watch a film, in various countries, taking into account all taxes paid at purchase?
The blog entry explains why S. Korea is in such a bad position. What I would like to know is, other than holding off on Vista, what is being recommended as a proper long term solution? For example are they recommending companies to adapt to standard web standards?
Also why not have a paper trail .With a paper backup all fraud can be caught given enough time for recounts (again if elections are not controlled by local partisan officials they cant arbitrarily decide not to have recounts).
In many ways Diebold et al. are all showing symptoms of not realising that they are trying to add technology to the wrong part of the process. In many ways the punch card system or optical card reader systems are the better systems, since the paper trail exists before the vote is taken into account: WYSIWYG. The proposed solutions provide a paper trail as a result of the process, if at all. The problem with this is that the paper trail may not be a result of what you inputted.
Remember just because technology can be used for a process, it does not necessarily mean that technology is needed for the process. Technology is there to make a complex task simple, not the other way round.
What I've never understood is why the bother to block other regions (looks like there are regions 7 and 8 for special purposes). Then again, maybe they don't, I don't have a R7 or R8 dvd to test that.
Region 8 is for aircraft, so if you are watching a DVD anywhere else than on an airline you probably didn't get it through legitimate sources.
ActiveX is pervasive in the Korean webspace.
They should move to something that work in linux, mac os, and windows
Of course they should, but reality is not there. Some sites even insist on using VB, in place of Javascript - ugh! IMHO, the problem lies with uninformed web developers and managers who have never used anything other than MS-Windows and therefore the fact there are others OSs and web browsers is news to them.
MOAB are still flaming Apple Inc., Apple users, and anyone else who critiques their methods, and it's gotten personal and insulting. They come out swinging their fists at the Apple community, then cry foul because someone hits back.
This may be true and there may be better ways (using the Bug Report server for example), but if the end result is getting these problems fixed and a better system out of it, then I am happy with the effort put into it.
Maybe we need something like this for Linux and Windows?
Please don't tell me there is such a thing as a flying pig - there goes my reality check.
but it's faster than dialup, and if that's how one is drawing the line (i.e., broadband is anything that isn't dialup), then 200kbps is probably as good a number as any. I seem to recall that my first ISDN connection was only 128kbps.
Maybe we needs to categorize broadband in the amount of bandwidth for suitable doing a certain task, such as streaming music, watching streaming video, etc. The other possibility simply categorize anything below 1Mbit/s as lowband (low broadband)?
I'd really hate to be at google at the moment. Search results will be doing really funny things in the next month or so.
This is why I feel that Google needs to provide multiple indexing algorithms, where a user can decide how pages are ranked in their search results. This would make things a bit more complicated for Google, but even more complicated for the people try target deficiencies in the algorithm. The idea being if there are multiple algorithms, it is hard to know which one to target.
Lets see how well IE 7 does if it costs $4.99 to download and install
If you take that stance, you could well do the same for Firefox and see if that works out.
On reading about this I decided to install it on my Mac and see what it gives. While a great advancement, this is still a work in progress and still very much something for people familiar with the command line. The aspect that would change all this the ability to use FUSE based FS URLs in the Finder ( known issue ), though this seems to be a limitation based on some private APIs needing to be made public, which I hope Apple resolves.