Anonymous Coward, you are correct on both counts. Since nobody has bothered to mod you up, I am responding so those browsing at 1 don't miss your post.
I was thinking that the cost of individualizing and tailoring the ads to a million people on a one by one basis would be more than the costs of for a broad demographic. As in "this one responds better to red, that one to blue" etc.
That assumption only holds up if tailoring an ad to individual taste involves human effort for each case.
In the long run, this will all be done with databases and careful programming logic. No human being will need to keep track what your tastes are, but the marketing software will quietly determine whether your next speedboat will be promoted to you by a blonde or a red-head, and whether you are even in the market for a speedboat in the first place.
While the book's frenzied style will be compared to that of Hunter S. Thompson, I view the book instead as the first real book written in hyperlink-style. Jumping all over the map and all over the mind in search of gonzo marketing. Scrolling from idea to author to tactic and back again around the horn again.
A simpler way to put it would be "The book was poorly written".
Thompson was a satarist, and his twisted style is an element of comic timing. Most of the time, he writes with the intention of seeming like a drug-addled rant. His insights are a reward that is given only to those who can sort out when he is not being completely sarcastic.
If a book which wants to be taken seriously reminds you of his work, then the author should probably be rushed to rehab immediately. His very life may be in danger.
Did I read that correctly? Did you just characterize the well educated, multi-billionare military tactical mastermind Osama bin Ladin and his educated, filthy rich, war-tested, well-armed associates as "hapless, poverty stricked [sic] farmers"!?
So much for your credibility.
This is not a case of poor revolutionaries fighting against superpower imperialism for the hope of survivial. Many of the poor in Afghanistan would frankly prefer to see us win (and if they didn't before, the sight of the Taliban army burning the contents of our food drops oughta do it).
This is a case of well-off oil barons who happen to be religious nuts who want to rid their part of the world of Western influence in favor of radical Islamic dictatorships... and that includes the total dissolution of friendly US-Saudi relations, and the complete erasure of the nation-state of Israel. They will not be happy until the entire Arab world is run by religious/military dictatorships like the Taliban.
Of course, an ISP also has the right to not provide massive upstream traffic support unless you pay extra for it.
If you want to host a web server, you can. It's easy. All you have to do is pay for a connection that allows it. I've done so myself, and not of the "corporate interests" you complain about seem to have done anything to stop me.
Oh... by "right" you mean you should be able to do it without paying for it, don't you? Never mind.
As a citizen in a country with a (theoretically) representative government, who uses my tax dollars to wage war, I deserve full and complete disclosure
Okay. I guess we will just post the identities and locations of every field agent and informant, so you can be assured that you, as a tax-payer, know exactly how your money is being spent. Great idea.
It's time for some people to grow up and realize that no, you do not have an absolute right to be in the loop on everyting the government does while they are doing it.
Don't like it? Then vote for a President who promises to tell you everything. Personally, I would prefer a President who promises not to tell you everything.
This is exactly why right-wing Clinton haters were shouting "character issues matter" during the last three elections. The success of an American President depends on that President's ability to do some things in secret, or act on informaiton that is not being disclosed to the public. The majority of Americans might have been more supportive of Clinton's bombing of the Sudan, even after it turned out to be a wrong target, if Clinton did not have a well-established history of lying to protect his own personal interests.
I didn't vote for Bush, but I support his current effort, and there are certain details I do not want to know about until after the war (i.e., the locations of the President and V.P. at certain times, the intel reports on Iraq and Iran, the troop positions within Afghanistan, how much the CIA knows about current terrorist camps, etc)... because if you and I know this information, then so do our enemies.
Do you really think it's going to be easier to teach a new user a whole bag of application specific tricks than how to access a contextual menu?
Ah. Here is where the cultures collide.
What you are probably not aware of is that interface standards on the Mac are extremely global compared to Windows, Gnome, etc. "Command-W" will always close the current window without quitting the application. The "Edit" menu will always be right next to the "File" menu. When a pull-down menu has a keyboard shortcut, the menu will always remind you what it is.
Also, as the previous poster pointed out, to replicate all the possible alternate clicks of an Apple mouse, I would need a mouse with at least 5 buttons (click, control-click, command-click, alt-click, and shift-click). I use shift-click and command-click even more often than I use contextual pop-up menus... a second mouse button is no help to me there.
Apple's current mouse is so easy to operate that, if you really wanted to, you could use a USB extention cable, take your right shoe off, and operate the mouse with your foot. (Come to think of it, Apple could make that a selling point for people with CTS).
Politically, America is an intensely polarized country...
America is a nation made up mostly of either moderate pragmatists, and people who are not really very engaged in politics. If it seems polarized, it is because our media is made up mostly of shrill extremists (like Mr. Katz).
Actually, he took a very popular position. Most Americans like freedom. He was also incorrect in much of what he said:
Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.
Here, he is saying that a massive computer database of faces could not possibly do better than a minimum-wage drone looking at people and going of half-rememberd police sketches like those you see on the post-office wall.
Really. If you want to object to cameras and digital face-prints on privacy grounds, then make your case on privacy grounds, instead of lying about their potential effectiveness.
To stop them will require public opposition.
No, to stop them might require public oppostion. If there is a clear-cut civil liberties issue here, a small group of old people in black robes could also stop them.
Handing the president carte blanche in a moment of anger is exactly the mistake that led the United States into the Vietnam War.
This betrays a profound ignorance of history. What "moment of anger" could you possibly be referring to!? We trickled into Nam very slowly, over the course of the JFK and LBJ administrations. First with advisors and indirect support, then gradually sending in more and more troops.
Furthermore, if we had brought the full force of the US military to bear "in a moment of anger," we might not have lost. The fact is that the American people did not have the stomache to see US soldiers getting killed every night in a war that was fought for a purpose that few really understood.
All kidding aside (and it was pretty damn funny... thank you for that), as an American I would like to express my gratitude to the people of Canada. During the early hours of the crisis, it was reported that the Canadians allowed us to route some international flights to their airports. Also, the Canadian hospitals have opened their doors to victims of the attack.
...Palestinians dancing in the streets???). Support for a free Palestine? GONE. Somewhat restrained responses to things like the Saudi apt bombings, the USS Cole Bombing? GONE. Americans don't take attacks like this lightly.
You're damn right.
For as long as I have been familiar with the situation in the Middle East, I have felt a great deal of sympathy for the Palistinian people and their plight, particularilly those families living in exile camps near Israel, and those living within Israel itself. I've always been of the opinion that Israli forces were frequently going too far and behaving in a brutal and thuggish matter. My heart went out to many of these people, and I was glad to see that many of them were building good lives for themselves in Eurpoe and America.
The sight of Palestinians celebrating in the streets, like they just won the fucking Superbowl or something... by throat fills with bile at the thought of it. There were probably about 50,000 innocent people in that building. I can't remember the last time I looked at the image of a living human being and hated them more. It was one of the most disgusting displays I've ever seen... an oppressed people, no strangers to human tragidy, jumping around like fucking monkeys cheering about the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Whoever did this, and whoever helped them... be assured that you have awoken a sleeping giant for the first time in 60 years. You are about to be fucking erased.
As for your point about missile defense... I think this underscores the importance of spending on intellegence, conventional forces, AND missile defense.
Missile defence may seem expensive now (even though it is a pittance compared to what we spend to fight terrorism), but one thing that we have always observed about technology is that it gets cheaper and better the more it is used. In the long run, missile defense may prove to be a net cost savings, because even with an SDI system that is only 10% effective, we could eventually retain second-strike capability with a much smaller arsonal of missiles.
Most of us wanted them. Gore even claimed (as his campaign slipped into panic mode) that he wanted to cut some taxes (most were "tax cuts" for people who actually pay no taxes, but the point is that he had to mirror the pro-cut rhetoric if he wanted to stand a chance at winning). Many of us wish the cuts were much deeper.
Damn, I am sick of all this hand-wringing over IPv6, like it's going to change our lives or something.
(This is not addressed directly at your comment mr100percent, so please don't take this too personally...)
It's so much not the big deal some people are trying to make it out to be. Here is one example of a simple solution:
Write IP drivers that treat all devices which return an old IP addres as being the old address followed by 96 zeroes. Treat all IP calls from legacy software the same way. Then when people update their drivers (or replace their NIC cards, whichever is less hassle for them), they just keep all IP settings exactly the same. After a few months of transition goes by (to give everybody a chance to make the update), you start assigning 128-bit IP's for all new requests. Done. Wasn't that easy?
The Interstate Highway system was not built to make a drive from Dallas to Chicago a little quicker. It was a pre-WWII military project, enabling fast movement of troops and equipment.
Had the Federal Department of Transportation been ash-canned, the states, cities, or yes even private enterprises would probably have done a better job at keeping them up efficiently. It might have meant no truck-mounted MX missiles during the early Reagan years, but otherwise life would go on.
Also, the Feds would not be able to hold highway money hostage to impose such foolishness as a nation-wide ban on drinking among 18-20 year olds, as they did back in the 80's. (Thanks for nothing, Liddy Dole!)
Whew... too many points for me to have the energy to respond to right now. To put it simply, you (the consumer) still have all the power. If you don't like the cable service, don't buy it. If you think the price of a CD is too high, don't buy it. (Personally, I buy most of my CD's from used album stores. I picked up one of Miles Davis's better albums for seven bucks a few weeks ago.)
Oh yea, and yes I have heard indie music lately. From two different sources: 1. Net Radio - Apple's free MP3 software (iTunes) ships with Internet Radio links which include a lot of "indie only" stations. 2. Live Performances - For a midwestern town, the Minneapolis nightclub scene kicks ass. Everything from punk to jazz, and all points in between... if you just know where to look.
It's two single standards, from two different sources.
The hole in his logic (and yours) is that "the media" is not a single sourse. It is the vehicle by which lots of people, with diverse opinion, transmit their ideas.
First, you have the people who seem to be saying, through the media, that "the Net is a breeding ground for thieves and degenerates" (as Mr. Katz puts it with his usual hyperbolic flair). People like Sen. Lieberman, and various talking heads on the news.
Then, you have the TV executives who decide to air shows like Big Brother, or the game designers who ship games like "Carmageddon" (a favorite of mine, btw), or the various on-line porno merchants.
Just because a TV executive allows somebody like Bill Bennett to rant about violence in the media during a "Meet The Press" interview doesn't mean he endorses that opinion.
The typical media mogul puts violent shows on his network because there are viewers who want to watch them. He puts anti-violence rants on the news shows because there are also people who want to watch them. For pretty much anything where there are enough people who want to see it, he puts it on.
Therefore, it has nothing to do with hypocracy. If Turner or Eisner were campaigning against the Internet as beeing too exploitative, you could make that case, but I see no evidence of them holding such positions.
As of the newer iBook, I would be inclined to agree. (...although it would be tough to watch TV on an iBook screen unless you are perched right in front of it. I suppose you could always hook it up to an external monitor... or a projector if you have the cash.)
In fact, the iBook is such a good value, it makes me wonder if there is anybody left who would be better off with the iMac.
Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Coward, you are correct on both counts. Since nobody has bothered to mod you up, I am responding so those browsing at 1 don't miss your post.
[insert Soylent Green parody here]
That assumption only holds up if tailoring an ad to individual taste involves human effort for each case.
In the long run, this will all be done with databases and careful programming logic. No human being will need to keep track what your tastes are, but the marketing software will quietly determine whether your next speedboat will be promoted to you by a blonde or a red-head, and whether you are even in the market for a speedboat in the first place.
'Nuff said.
A simpler way to put it would be "The book was poorly written".
Thompson was a satarist, and his twisted style is an element of comic timing. Most of the time, he writes with the intention of seeming like a drug-addled rant. His insights are a reward that is given only to those who can sort out when he is not being completely sarcastic.
If a book which wants to be taken seriously reminds you of his work, then the author should probably be rushed to rehab immediately. His very life may be in danger.
So much for your credibility.
This is not a case of poor revolutionaries fighting against superpower imperialism for the hope of survivial. Many of the poor in Afghanistan would frankly prefer to see us win (and if they didn't before, the sight of the Taliban army burning the contents of our food drops oughta do it).
This is a case of well-off oil barons who happen to be religious nuts who want to rid their part of the world of Western influence in favor of radical Islamic dictatorships... and that includes the total dissolution of friendly US-Saudi relations, and the complete erasure of the nation-state of Israel. They will not be happy until the entire Arab world is run by religious/military dictatorships like the Taliban.
Of course, an ISP also has the right to not provide massive upstream traffic support unless you pay extra for it.
If you want to host a web server, you can. It's easy. All you have to do is pay for a connection that allows it. I've done so myself, and not of the "corporate interests" you complain about seem to have done anything to stop me.
Oh... by "right" you mean you should be able to do it without paying for it, don't you? Never mind.
Okay. I guess we will just post the identities and locations of every field agent and informant, so you can be assured that you, as a tax-payer, know exactly how your money is being spent. Great idea.
It's time for some people to grow up and realize that no, you do not have an absolute right to be in the loop on everyting the government does while they are doing it.
Don't like it? Then vote for a President who promises to tell you everything. Personally, I would prefer a President who promises not to tell you everything.
This is exactly why right-wing Clinton haters were shouting "character issues matter" during the last three elections. The success of an American President depends on that President's ability to do some things in secret, or act on informaiton that is not being disclosed to the public. The majority of Americans might have been more supportive of Clinton's bombing of the Sudan, even after it turned out to be a wrong target, if Clinton did not have a well-established history of lying to protect his own personal interests.
I didn't vote for Bush, but I support his current effort, and there are certain details I do not want to know about until after the war (i.e., the locations of the President and V.P. at certain times, the intel reports on Iraq and Iran, the troop positions within Afghanistan, how much the CIA knows about current terrorist camps, etc)... because if you and I know this information, then so do our enemies.
Ah. Here is where the cultures collide.
What you are probably not aware of is that interface standards on the Mac are extremely global compared to Windows, Gnome, etc. "Command-W" will always close the current window without quitting the application. The "Edit" menu will always be right next to the "File" menu. When a pull-down menu has a keyboard shortcut, the menu will always remind you what it is.
Also, as the previous poster pointed out, to replicate all the possible alternate clicks of an Apple mouse, I would need a mouse with at least 5 buttons (click, control-click, command-click, alt-click, and shift-click). I use shift-click and command-click even more often than I use contextual pop-up menus... a second mouse button is no help to me there.
Apple's current mouse is so easy to operate that, if you really wanted to, you could use a USB extention cable, take your right shoe off, and operate the mouse with your foot. (Come to think of it, Apple could make that a selling point for people with CTS).
Politically, America is an intensely polarized country...
America is a nation made up mostly of either moderate pragmatists, and people who are not really very engaged in politics. If it seems polarized, it is because our media is made up mostly of shrill extremists (like Mr. Katz).
And no, that was not what started the war, as RMS seems to think. It was one of many key events.
One in a long series of incremental steps of military commitment. Neither the first, nor the last, of that particular conflict.
But hey, thanks for playing.
Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.
Here, he is saying that a massive computer database of faces could not possibly do better than a minimum-wage drone looking at people and going of half-rememberd police sketches like those you see on the post-office wall.
Really. If you want to object to cameras and digital face-prints on privacy grounds, then make your case on privacy grounds, instead of lying about their potential effectiveness.
To stop them will require public opposition.
No, to stop them might require public oppostion. If there is a clear-cut civil liberties issue here, a small group of old people in black robes could also stop them.
Handing the president carte blanche in a moment of anger is exactly the mistake that led the United States into the Vietnam War.
This betrays a profound ignorance of history. What "moment of anger" could you possibly be referring to!? We trickled into Nam very slowly, over the course of the JFK and LBJ administrations. First with advisors and indirect support, then gradually sending in more and more troops.
Furthermore, if we had brought the full force of the US military to bear "in a moment of anger," we might not have lost. The fact is that the American people did not have the stomache to see US soldiers getting killed every night in a war that was fought for a purpose that few really understood.
No.
Don't put words into other people's mouths, and then attack them for things they didn't say, anonymous coward asshole.
So hats off to Canada, eh?
You're damn right.
For as long as I have been familiar with the situation in the Middle East, I have felt a great deal of sympathy for the Palistinian people and their plight, particularilly those families living in exile camps near Israel, and those living within Israel itself. I've always been of the opinion that Israli forces were frequently going too far and behaving in a brutal and thuggish matter. My heart went out to many of these people, and I was glad to see that many of them were building good lives for themselves in Eurpoe and America.
The sight of Palestinians celebrating in the streets, like they just won the fucking Superbowl or something... by throat fills with bile at the thought of it. There were probably about 50,000 innocent people in that building. I can't remember the last time I looked at the image of a living human being and hated them more. It was one of the most disgusting displays I've ever seen... an oppressed people, no strangers to human tragidy, jumping around like fucking monkeys cheering about the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Whoever did this, and whoever helped them... be assured that you have awoken a sleeping giant for the first time in 60 years. You are about to be fucking erased.
As for your point about missile defense... I think this underscores the importance of spending on intellegence, conventional forces, AND missile defense.
Missile defence may seem expensive now (even though it is a pittance compared to what we spend to fight terrorism), but one thing that we have always observed about technology is that it gets cheaper and better the more it is used. In the long run, missile defense may prove to be a net cost savings, because even with an SDI system that is only 10% effective, we could eventually retain second-strike capability with a much smaller arsonal of missiles.
Most of us wanted them. Gore even claimed (as his campaign slipped into panic mode) that he wanted to cut some taxes (most were "tax cuts" for people who actually pay no taxes, but the point is that he had to mirror the pro-cut rhetoric if he wanted to stand a chance at winning). Many of us wish the cuts were much deeper.
I, for one, am thrilled with my tax cut.
If you don't want it, can I have yours, too?
Always be wary of odd-numbered Star Trek movies, and even-numbered Microsoft Service Packs. More often than not, you will regret the experience.
Now try not to be such an acronym nazi.
(j/k) :)
(This is not addressed directly at your comment mr100percent, so please don't take this too personally...)
It's so much not the big deal some people are trying to make it out to be. Here is one example of a simple solution:
Write IP drivers that treat all devices which return an old IP addres as being the old address followed by 96 zeroes. Treat all IP calls from legacy software the same way. Then when people update their drivers (or replace their NIC cards, whichever is less hassle for them), they just keep all IP settings exactly the same. After a few months of transition goes by (to give everybody a chance to make the update), you start assigning 128-bit IP's for all new requests. Done. Wasn't that easy?
Perhaps not for long. Word is that Motorola is thinking of selling off their PPC division soon. IBM is rumored to be interested, as are Apple and AMD.
Had the Federal Department of Transportation been ash-canned, the states, cities, or yes even private enterprises would probably have done a better job at keeping them up efficiently. It might have meant no truck-mounted MX missiles during the early Reagan years, but otherwise life would go on.
Also, the Feds would not be able to hold highway money hostage to impose such foolishness as a nation-wide ban on drinking among 18-20 year olds, as they did back in the 80's. (Thanks for nothing, Liddy Dole!)
Oh yea, and yes I have heard indie music lately. From two different sources: 1. Net Radio - Apple's free MP3 software (iTunes) ships with Internet Radio links which include a lot of "indie only" stations. 2. Live Performances - For a midwestern town, the Minneapolis nightclub scene kicks ass. Everything from punk to jazz, and all points in between... if you just know where to look.
The hole in his logic (and yours) is that "the media" is not a single sourse. It is the vehicle by which lots of people, with diverse opinion, transmit their ideas.
First, you have the people who seem to be saying, through the media, that "the Net is a breeding ground for thieves and degenerates" (as Mr. Katz puts it with his usual hyperbolic flair). People like Sen. Lieberman, and various talking heads on the news.
Then, you have the TV executives who decide to air shows like Big Brother, or the game designers who ship games like "Carmageddon" (a favorite of mine, btw), or the various on-line porno merchants.
Just because a TV executive allows somebody like Bill Bennett to rant about violence in the media during a "Meet The Press" interview doesn't mean he endorses that opinion.
The typical media mogul puts violent shows on his network because there are viewers who want to watch them. He puts anti-violence rants on the news shows because there are also people who want to watch them. For pretty much anything where there are enough people who want to see it, he puts it on.
Therefore, it has nothing to do with hypocracy. If Turner or Eisner were campaigning against the Internet as beeing too exploitative, you could make that case, but I see no evidence of them holding such positions.
Don't mistake diversity for hypocracy.
In fact, the iBook is such a good value, it makes me wonder if there is anybody left who would be better off with the iMac.