It was a decent plot and the characters were interesting (for what it was), but I've been wondering about the motivation of the Cylons coming back after so many years.
To me, it just seemed like they reappeared. Was this fully explained or was I just missing something?
The screenshots look like Outlook, but with extra windows for the calendar and other things. I suppose this will take up desktop space, but then I've been wondering how I was going to waste all this extra space I now have with a dual head video card...
From the article... "People are overwhelmed by the volume of new email they receive each day. They report spending increasing amounts of time simply managing their email."
In MY world, I call this SPAM. I didn't need 10 years of research to know it was a BAD thing. Spam, I think, is better stopped at the servers or better yet, by blacklisting the spammers.
Outlook (and other clients) have filters that can direct email into various folders sorted by importance. In this way, the important stuff gets my FIRST attention, while the least important stuff can wait.
However, a lot of this aforementioned filtering capability is ALSO dependent on a person's ability to fully utilize their email client. I know of a number of people in management positions who are FULLY CLUELESS regarding moving files from one directory to another. Setting up a filter WOULD BE totally beyond them. Without even basic computer literacy skills, any new technology that requires interaction with a user interface is bound to stumble. Relying the smarts of the end user is simply not a good business model unless you're dealing with technically-savvy people.
Instead, you and your friends will get together, decide that Ferrari's design is NOT optimal, create a better design, open source it and allow others to contribute to it.
The end result will be that the proprietary design will be less desired than the open source one and Ferarri will go the way of the dinosaurs (the large ones, not the flying ones).
For example, a short time ago, I did a white paper on power scavenging sources. About 1/2 the articles I read were HTML or PDF sources. Rather than just citing the URL, I downloaded/saved every online article I referenced. If someone wants the source and cannot find it, I'll just provide it to them. If your paper is going to be read by a number of people, it makes good sense to have those sources on-hand; it never hurts to cover your arse.
Hard drive/Network/Optical space is virtually unlimited, so storage isn't a problem. Paper journals are archived by most libraries, anyway, so until they start archiving technical sources, I'm going to have to do my OWN archiving.
Considering MTV's track record with music videos, I shudder to think at what they could be offering:
1. Waves and Waves of boy bands and Britney/Christina clones.
2. Non-stop product endorsements embedded in MP3s and video downloads.
3. Downloadable versions of Real World and other "reality" shows.
4. "Special" IM clients that ensure a "safe" environment for children (no perverts, etc) while allowing only "approved" advertizing to float by the screen. Note: This software will automatically monitor you computer to make sure your "children" don't "accidentally" download copywrited material. Anything not digitally signed will be automatically deleted "for your own good."
My inlaw's computer is a cesspool of Ad/Spy ware caused by the various crap their 16 year old daughter's downloaded over the past two years. I routinely have to uninstall garbage that she installs just to get past annoying popups.
If this follows the trend that previous new display technologies do, you can immediately expect enhanced:
1. Games 2. Porn
After that, expect widespread adoption followed by support from mainstream Windows business apps, followed by support from Linux hardware and software vendors.
This all hinges on the actual usefulness of the technology, the willingness of Sharp to support it and the willingness of vendors to develop for it.
These type of "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunities usually happen every couple of months. If there are enough people asking for it, they WILL offer it again, or offer it as a permanent premium service. I compare this to the "once-in-a-lifetime" pay per view specials on cable that always seem to make their way to the regular channels two months later.
Given that there are so many competitors (free and otherwise) in this particular market, they will have to bend over for the consumer or perish.
Of course, they COULD be wearing rose-colored glasses and MIGHT just drive the company off a cliff before offering this again, so you never know. The marketing critters who make these planning decisions make squirrels planning for winter look like geniuses.
If I subscribe at the monthly rate $9.99, then over the course of a year, I'll pay $119.88 and download 480 songs.
If I opt for the $50/month subscription and CHOOSE to subscribe twice a year, every SIX months, then I'll pay only $100 and be able to download 600 songs. I can use the time lag to see if they can indeed add to their song catalog in the meantime and wait for something worth downloading (good music, good quality files, etc) to be added.
Not only that, but the time lag ALSO allows me to go elsewhere to their competitors (or to Newsgroups, overseas web/ftp sites, IRC for that matter).
Encouraging your revenue sources to go elsewhere away isn't a good idea, to say the least.
Not if you reload your own...
on
NYT on RFID
·
· Score: 1
Ammunition CAN be reloaded. You can buy kits that do this. You can melt your own lead, pour it into molds and cast the bullets. Gun power and bullet primers can be purchased seperately. Bullet cases can be ordered via mail.
I used to do this as a kid with my father. He still does it.
A propretary video format allows ONLY the playing of that format within it's borders. Since the Chinese also don't like the idea of "foreign ideologies" (blocked CNN, blocked Western websites) streaming into the country, proprietary video is a way to only allow the masses to view what the government deems is "safe."
The article says that an inspector first became suspicious because he noticed corn plants among the harvested soybeans. IANAF (I am not a farmer), but I would imagine that it doesn't take too much intelligence to discern corn from soybeans and any mixing of the plants can be quickly dealt with at a processing plant.
Also, given that only a few corn plants were present among tons of soybeans, what is the real danger of poisoning someone? Since soybeans are processed into edible and non-edible products, is there a REAL, measurable danger?
Vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs generally help a lot more people than they hurt. Are we going to ban GE foods because a few people might have a problem with them? Why not ban the peanut plant, since peanuts DO cause allergic reactions in some people?
Press START, SETTINGS, Go into Control Panel, Select Add/Remove Software and remove the offending software.
If they complain, invent a ficticious "Computer Guy" who told you it was the reason your system was locking up all the time.
Mention that you have lots of games and Internet Explorer "add-ons" that you have downloaded and installed. Believe me, NO technician will want to muck about through a myriad of windows software installations to troubleshoot their spyware.
This is the problem with trying to argue these points when science and religion collide. Both sides believe that they are correct based on their own dogma. The religious side is correct because the bible is correct - end of argument. The science side is correct because this is the prevailing paradigm.
Actually, religion is more a victim of dogma. A religion asks that you accept its statements based on faith alone. A person NEVER needs to prove that God exists because faith is enough to sustain his/her belief. Faith then becomes a rubber stamp explanation for EVERYTHING, while predicting nothing. It contributes nothing to the real understanding of the physical world. Creationism depends on literal biblical interpretation, which most main-stream Christians do NOT subscribe to. It ignores the belief systems of non-Christians. It does not predict anything new, nor does it offer explanations for anything (other than the rubber-stamp "God did it" variety). THAT is dogma.
Science on the other hand, demands PROOF - and not just any proof. It demands verifiable and reproducible proof. It does not hang onto paradigms because they sound good or are fashionable. If something comes around that demonstrates a need for a paradigm shift, then science adjusts its stance. It deals with cold, hard reality and embraces knowledge from a variety of sources. It weighs arguments on the basis of evidence and invites others to openly support and challenge those arguments. There is NO ROOM for dogma in science.
If the creationism belief is going to spread as science, it should concentrate on producing a God. If one exists, then surely there is direct physical evidence of Him/Her no matter what the Bible says. It's not enough to look around you and say: "Explain the complexities of life." Others do this either through science or other religions. There needs to be unquestioned, verifiable, reproducible direct, physical proof of God in order for creationism to be taken seriously.
Take into account that a dial-up service PLUS the cost of an additional line just about equals the cost of broadband.
I spend a LOT of time online and was tying up the phone line for roommates, family, etc. The only solution to it was to go online when:
1. No one else was home. 2. Everyone else went to bed. 3. No one else wanted to use the phone.
I happened to relocate to an area that offered broadband just as I was seriously considering getting a second line. I tried it out, and never looked back.
For families with teenagers (my in-laws, for example), it's a great thing to get, since it keeps the phone line from being tied up. For households with people that NEED an internet connection, a single broadband connection connected to a firewall/switch can provide decent access for everyone.
It wasn't so long ago when Microsoft was telling everyone how open source was going to undermine business and innovation.
Now they've linked to a well known competitor - who is using it as a BUSINESS TOOL, no less. Microsoft's formal linking of Linux to IBM gives open source a boost of respectabilty it probably couldn't get on it's own.
Good luck undermining open source, the new business process.
The basic problem here is that some people feel the need to "bring it to the masses" - for whatever reason. I see a couple of solutions:
1. Turn off the service on these thieves.
2. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and place a cap of some sort on their monthly transfers or bandwidth.
3. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and charge them for usage accordingly.
4. Acknowledge this is happening and set up a public information infrastructure, where the cost would be shared by businesses, providers AND taxpayers. This is akin to setting up public streetlamps, wastebaskets, water fountains, etc. The public has shown an interest in this type of thing, so it's alternately good business and good public policy - something you don't see too much of.
The current market favors commodity hardware. Should AMD/Intel try to make their motherboard proprietary, two things could happen:
1. Anti-trust lawsuit 2. Relegation of the new design to a niche.
The problem with making ANY commodity a non-commodity is that you attach some extra value to it, real or imagined. You also become a niche player of sorts. Apple, in keeping itself proprietary, turned itself into a niche producer. There are makers of coffee, water, soda-pop, etc that managed to uncommoditize these things and made good money, but only as niche players (you don't, for example, shower with bottled water).
Besides, with operating systems like Linux already ported to a variety of processors, how long would it be until some other company tries to create a commodity PC to replace the Paladium stuff? The original IBM PC freed people from using mini/mainframe computers, after all. Eventually, history will repeat itself.
Even if a proprietary hardware design DOESN'T appear, what's to stop people from running virtual machines ON TOP of the "secure" hardware/software? VMWARE comes to mind immediately. Maybe you can start mini VMWARE-like environment to play MP3's or watch movies. For good measure, this mini-environment could also store your files, effectively locking them away from the "prying eyes" of the paladium-enabled OS. Paladium will add more complexity to an already complex and powerful machine. Such complexity will demand more speed. More speed means you'll be able to run virtual machines more seemlessly.
In the end, I think, users will be able to do what they want.
Suppose you want to bypass the whole thing by setting up a virtual machine to run your very own user environment? The virtual machine COULD be registered with the "thought police," but the apps it run need not be.
Within a virtual machine, you could run and store whatever file formats you want, and it would be transparent to the host operating system.
You could run one virtual machine or a host of them, depending on your needs or desires.
Stuff that comes to mind immediately is the Java VM and VMWARE. With both or those, the host operating system (and hardware) has NO idea what you're doing. In fact, I used to run Windows 2000 within a VMWARE session (under Linux) because that configuration was more stable than running Windows on the hardware alone.
This amounts to using Paladium precisely for what is was designed to do. The fact that you can run the world's largest trojan horse under it means nothing, for all it would see is a large program.
Re:Devices hostile to 3rd party peripherals
on
Analyzing Palladium
·
· Score: 2
I think that would depend on the engineering that went into the battery or the cartridge. You can always add some "features" to the consumable and take a patent out on it. You then license the consumable to different manufacturers.
In cases where the manufacturer holds a virtual monopoly over a widely used device, it would be expected that the consumer get a choice in buying spare parts. This was done to General Motors in the 1960's. At that time, GM held a HUGE market share, yet refused to allow anyone to manufacture spare auto parts (they owned or controlled all of their suppliers). That monopoly was broken up.
Even though there WILL be more musicians because of falling entry barriers, I believe that the most famous musicians will earn MORE.
You have to look at what can't be made into a commodity. Personal appearances (not concerts), TV and radio commercials, product endorsements, etc. will become more important as time goes on. Sure some musicians will sign bad deals, but there will be those who will be savvy enough to get filthy rich off of this by turning their careers into sustained media events and wisely investing their earnings.
The distribution of recorded music will become a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.
Re:R&D -- They'll probably continue...
on
IBM Spins Down
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
IBM still does a lot of semiconductor fabrication research and licenses the patents out. I would guess this will happen to hard drive technology.
Making chips and hard drives is basically a commodity business. The real money is in developing new methods, products, etc. that can be licensed. IBM is very good at this.
Slashdot Mirror
... Only the uniforms were brown and they were called "Stormtroopers."
Piracy USED to be an economic activity, NOW it's becoming a political statement.
All this so they can sell us more Britney Spears...
It was a decent plot and the characters were interesting (for what it was), but I've been wondering about the motivation of the Cylons coming back after so many years.
To me, it just seemed like they reappeared. Was this fully explained or was I just missing something?
The screenshots look like Outlook, but with extra windows for the calendar and other things. I suppose this will take up desktop space, but then I've been wondering how I was going to waste all this extra space I now have with a dual head video card...
From the article...
"People are overwhelmed by the volume of new email they receive each day. They report spending increasing amounts of time simply managing their email."
In MY world, I call this SPAM. I didn't need 10 years of research to know it was a BAD thing. Spam, I think, is better stopped at the servers or better yet, by blacklisting the spammers.
Outlook (and other clients) have filters that can direct email into various folders sorted by importance. In this way, the important stuff gets my FIRST attention, while the least important stuff can wait.
However, a lot of this aforementioned filtering capability is ALSO dependent on a person's ability to fully utilize their email client. I know of a number of people in management positions who are FULLY CLUELESS regarding moving files from one directory to another. Setting up a filter WOULD BE totally beyond them. Without even basic computer literacy skills, any new technology that requires interaction with a user interface is bound to stumble. Relying the smarts of the end user is simply not a good business model unless you're dealing with technically-savvy people.
Nope!
Instead, you and your friends will get together, decide that Ferrari's design is NOT optimal, create a better design, open source it and allow others to contribute to it.
The end result will be that the proprietary design will be less desired than the open source one and Ferarri will go the way of the dinosaurs (the large ones, not the flying ones).
Then DOWNLOAD the pages from your web citations.
For example, a short time ago, I did a white paper on power scavenging sources. About 1/2 the articles I read were HTML or PDF sources. Rather than just citing the URL, I downloaded/saved every online article I referenced. If someone wants the source and cannot find it, I'll just provide it to them. If your paper is going to be read by a number of people, it makes good sense to have those sources on-hand; it never hurts to cover your arse.
Hard drive/Network/Optical space is virtually unlimited, so storage isn't a problem. Paper journals are archived by most libraries, anyway, so until they start archiving technical sources, I'm going to have to do my OWN archiving.
Wasn't a REAL news website good enough? Now they have to be in competition with THEMSELVES?
At first glance I thought it was a new place to search usenet news. This new "news site" is just plain worthless. It reminds me of the USAToday site.
Considering MTV's track record with music videos, I shudder to think at what they could be offering:
1. Waves and Waves of boy bands and Britney/Christina clones.
2. Non-stop product endorsements embedded in MP3s and video downloads.
3. Downloadable versions of Real World and other "reality" shows.
4. "Special" IM clients that ensure a "safe" environment for children (no perverts, etc) while allowing only "approved" advertizing to float by the screen. Note: This software will automatically monitor you computer to make sure your "children" don't "accidentally" download copywrited material. Anything not digitally signed will be automatically deleted "for your own good."
My inlaw's computer is a cesspool of Ad/Spy ware caused by the various crap their 16 year old daughter's downloaded over the past two years. I routinely have to uninstall garbage that she installs just to get past annoying popups.
If this follows the trend that previous new display technologies do, you can immediately expect enhanced:
1. Games
2. Porn
After that, expect widespread adoption followed by support from mainstream Windows business apps, followed by support from Linux hardware and software vendors.
This all hinges on the actual usefulness of the technology, the willingness of Sharp to support it and the willingness of vendors to develop for it.
These type of "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunities usually happen every couple of months. If there are enough people asking for it, they WILL offer it again, or offer it as a permanent premium service. I compare this to the "once-in-a-lifetime" pay per view specials on cable that always seem to make their way to the regular channels two months later.
Given that there are so many competitors (free and otherwise) in this particular market, they will have to bend over for the consumer or perish.
Of course, they COULD be wearing rose-colored glasses and MIGHT just drive the company off a cliff before offering this again, so you never know. The marketing critters who make these planning decisions make squirrels planning for winter look like geniuses.
1. Print Money
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
If I subscribe at the monthly rate $9.99, then over the course of a year, I'll pay $119.88 and download 480 songs.
If I opt for the $50/month subscription and CHOOSE to subscribe twice a year, every SIX months, then I'll pay only $100 and be able to download 600 songs. I can use the time lag to see if they can indeed add to their song catalog in the meantime and wait for something worth downloading (good music, good quality files, etc) to be added.
Not only that, but the time lag ALSO allows me to go elsewhere to their competitors (or to Newsgroups, overseas web/ftp sites, IRC for that matter).
Encouraging your revenue sources to go elsewhere away isn't a good idea, to say the least.
Ammunition CAN be reloaded. You can buy kits that do this. You can melt your own lead, pour it into molds and cast the bullets. Gun power and bullet primers can be purchased seperately. Bullet cases can be ordered via mail.
I used to do this as a kid with my father. He still does it.
A propretary video format allows ONLY the playing of that format within it's borders. Since the Chinese also don't like the idea of "foreign ideologies" (blocked CNN, blocked Western websites) streaming into the country, proprietary video is a way to only allow the masses to view what the government deems is "safe."
The article says that an inspector first became suspicious because he noticed corn plants among the harvested soybeans. IANAF (I am not a farmer), but I would imagine that it doesn't take too much intelligence to discern corn from soybeans and any mixing of the plants can be quickly dealt with at a processing plant.
Also, given that only a few corn plants were present among tons of soybeans, what is the real danger of poisoning someone? Since soybeans are processed into edible and non-edible products, is there a REAL, measurable danger?
Vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs generally help a lot more people than they hurt. Are we going to ban GE foods because a few people might have a problem with them? Why not ban the peanut plant, since peanuts DO cause allergic reactions in some people?
On Windows,
Press START, SETTINGS, Go into Control Panel, Select Add/Remove Software and remove the offending software.
If they complain, invent a ficticious "Computer Guy" who told you it was the reason your system was locking up all the time.
Mention that you have lots of games and Internet Explorer "add-ons" that you have downloaded and installed. Believe me, NO technician will want to muck about through a myriad of windows software installations to troubleshoot their spyware.
They'll go away.
This is the problem with trying to argue these points when science and religion collide. Both sides believe that they are correct based on their own dogma. The religious side is correct because the bible is correct - end of argument. The science side is correct because this is the prevailing paradigm.
Actually, religion is more a victim of dogma. A religion asks that you accept its statements based on faith alone. A person NEVER needs to prove that God exists because faith is enough to sustain his/her belief. Faith then becomes a rubber stamp explanation for EVERYTHING, while predicting nothing. It contributes nothing to the real understanding of the physical world. Creationism depends on literal biblical interpretation, which most main-stream Christians do NOT subscribe to. It ignores the belief systems of non-Christians. It does not predict anything new, nor does it offer explanations for anything (other than the rubber-stamp "God did it" variety). THAT is dogma.
Science on the other hand, demands PROOF - and not just any proof. It demands verifiable and reproducible proof. It does not hang onto paradigms because they sound good or are fashionable. If something comes around that demonstrates a need for a paradigm shift, then science adjusts its stance. It deals with cold, hard reality and embraces knowledge from a variety of sources. It weighs arguments on the basis of evidence and invites others to openly support and challenge those arguments. There is NO ROOM for dogma in science.
If the creationism belief is going to spread as science, it should concentrate on producing a God. If one exists, then surely there is direct physical evidence of Him/Her no matter what the Bible says. It's not enough to look around you and say: "Explain the complexities of life." Others do this either through science or other religions. There needs to be unquestioned, verifiable, reproducible direct, physical proof of God in order for creationism to be taken seriously.
Take into account that a dial-up service PLUS the cost of an additional line just about equals the cost of broadband.
I spend a LOT of time online and was tying up the phone line for roommates, family, etc. The only solution to it was to go online when:
1. No one else was home.
2. Everyone else went to bed.
3. No one else wanted to use the phone.
I happened to relocate to an area that offered broadband just as I was seriously considering getting a second line. I tried it out, and never looked back.
For families with teenagers (my in-laws, for example), it's a great thing to get, since it keeps the phone line from being tied up. For households with people that NEED an internet connection, a single broadband connection connected to a firewall/switch can provide decent access for everyone.
It wasn't so long ago when Microsoft was telling everyone how open source was going to undermine business and innovation.
Now they've linked to a well known competitor - who is using it as a BUSINESS TOOL, no less. Microsoft's formal linking of Linux to IBM gives open source a boost of respectabilty it probably couldn't get on it's own.
Good luck undermining open source, the new business process.
The basic problem here is that some people feel the need to "bring it to the masses" - for whatever reason. I see a couple of solutions:
1. Turn off the service on these thieves.
2. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and place a cap of some sort on their monthly transfers or bandwidth.
3. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and charge them for usage accordingly.
4. Acknowledge this is happening and set up a public information infrastructure, where the cost would be shared by businesses, providers AND taxpayers. This is akin to setting up public streetlamps, wastebaskets, water fountains, etc. The public has shown an interest in this type of thing, so it's alternately good business and good public policy - something you don't see too much of.
PERSONALLY - I prefer the fourth option.....
The current market favors commodity hardware. Should AMD/Intel try to make their motherboard proprietary, two things could happen:
1. Anti-trust lawsuit
2. Relegation of the new design to a niche.
The problem with making ANY commodity a non-commodity is that you attach some extra value to it, real or imagined. You also become a niche player of sorts. Apple, in keeping itself proprietary, turned itself into a niche producer. There are makers of coffee, water, soda-pop, etc that managed to uncommoditize these things and made good money, but only as niche players (you don't, for example, shower with bottled water).
Besides, with operating systems like Linux already ported to a variety of processors, how long would it be until some other company tries to create a commodity PC to replace the Paladium stuff? The original IBM PC freed people from using mini/mainframe computers, after all. Eventually, history will repeat itself.
Even if a proprietary hardware design DOESN'T appear, what's to stop people from running virtual machines ON TOP of the "secure" hardware/software? VMWARE comes to mind immediately. Maybe you can start mini VMWARE-like environment to play MP3's or watch movies. For good measure, this mini-environment could also store your files, effectively locking them away from the "prying eyes" of the paladium-enabled OS. Paladium will add more complexity to an already complex and powerful machine. Such complexity will demand more speed. More speed means you'll be able to run virtual machines more seemlessly.
In the end, I think, users will be able to do what they want.
Suppose you want to bypass the whole thing by setting up a virtual machine to run your very own user environment? The virtual machine COULD be registered with the "thought police," but the apps it run need not be.
Within a virtual machine, you could run and store whatever file formats you want, and it would be transparent to the host operating system.
You could run one virtual machine or a host of them, depending on your needs or desires.
Stuff that comes to mind immediately is the Java VM and VMWARE. With both or those, the host operating system (and hardware) has NO idea what you're doing. In fact, I used to run Windows 2000 within a VMWARE session (under Linux) because that configuration was more stable than running Windows on the hardware alone.
This amounts to using Paladium precisely for what is was designed to do. The fact that you can run the world's largest trojan horse under it means nothing, for all it would see is a large program.
I think that would depend on the engineering that went into the battery or the cartridge. You can always add some "features" to the consumable and take a patent out on it. You then license the consumable to different manufacturers.
In cases where the manufacturer holds a virtual monopoly over a widely used device, it would be expected that the consumer get a choice in buying spare parts. This was done to General Motors in the 1960's. At that time, GM held a HUGE market share, yet refused to allow anyone to manufacture spare auto parts (they owned or controlled all of their suppliers). That monopoly was broken up.
Even though there WILL be more musicians because of falling entry barriers, I believe that the most famous musicians will earn MORE.
You have to look at what can't be made into a commodity. Personal appearances (not concerts), TV and radio commercials, product endorsements, etc. will become more important as time goes on. Sure some musicians will sign bad deals, but there will be those who will be savvy enough to get filthy rich off of this by turning their careers into sustained media events and wisely investing their earnings.
The distribution of recorded music will become a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.
IBM still does a lot of semiconductor fabrication research and licenses the patents out. I would guess this will happen to hard drive technology.
Making chips and hard drives is basically a commodity business. The real money is in developing new methods, products, etc. that can be licensed. IBM is very good at this.
This is Microsoft's Annual Report (publicly available) as of Sept 18, 2001.
_ ma in.asp?dcn=0001032210-01-501099
http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/edgardoc/finSys
According to it, they paid this:
$ 4,106 in 1999
$ 4,854 in 2000
$ 3,804 in 2001
These numbers are in MILLIONS of dollars, so read it 4.1 billion, 4.8 billion and 3.8 billion.