The US has a habit of attempting to limit the control the purchasers actually have over their products - in the defence field as well. You'll probably find that Australia wanted to be able to designate A-4s as targets, but the US wanted $Xmillion to make the software change and probably screw up some other stuff at the same time. Therefore Australia cracked the radar software to gain control over their purchases. This behaviour is actually one of the main reason many allied countries avoid buying from the US - they are shits for trying to keep control of the equipment after delivery to get follow on contracts as well as control. Most won't fall for it any more.
Or to look at it from another direction, the actual creative part of the process, coming up with new ideas, works well. However when it comes to MBA types getting their head out of their arse for more than two seconds at a time, if all falls down. Somehow its supposed to be the responsibility of the person who came up with the idea to force the uptake of it through, against opposition from those same MBAs, and to receive nothing from it at the end of the process if they happen to be successful.
You want the 'innovator' to make all the running when others on higher salaries do nothing? Well, its a minimum of 10% of the profits from the IP for the next 20 years. Otherwise there is no point. You want to keep that 10%? Force the MBAs to be something more than rote paper pushers - make them earn their percentage of the spoils.
One of the major problems in these types of simulation are that no knock on effects are simulated. The assumption is made that people will continue to come into work and will indeed work to someone else's plan. In reality people will look after themselves and their family, which will mean closing the door and staying at home. Work will be unimportant; who would seriously take that degree of risk for a meagre salary.
At our rough calculations the transition from business as usual to total shutdown will take two week max. As soon as the threat is recognised by the populous as real, people will react to save themselves.
Expect the various waves of pandemic flu to take a minimum of six months to run their course
I'm not sure where you got those UK text rates, but typical costs are 5-10p (10-20c) a text, or many pay monthly people get many included free texts in their plans. Nobody pays 25p a text.
If I had a dollar for every time a softie had blamed unclear requirements or scope creep for a project's failure - I still probably wouldn't have much with the way the dollar is plunging
Point is, the world moves on, needs move on, things develop. If you and your methodology can't cope then I'm afraid IT'S YOUR PROBLEM. You need a different development methodology, a different approach that's more flexible. Its no good saying "this is the twentieth time a project has suffered from requirements creep" - its a fact of real life, deal.
Specifically, a modular, or phased development process with short development phases and scope to grow is a much better bet than 'Big Bang' - which I still see suggested far too often. "No" is not a solution to the problem. "Yes, that's no problem" is a solution.
Its YOUR responsibility to expect and be able to deal with real requirements change - stop whining.
They are not entering an unsophisticated market (at least in Europe). EVERY other phone can replace the battery, a battery compartment is not complicated or difficult, yet they have failed to do even this.
Couple that with the other problems and expect those other than the Apple fan boys will wait for version 2 or the reply by the other manufacturers. As a minimum, 3G with a fallback to edge, automatic home Wifi utilisation, working bluetooth, proper camera, replaceable batteries, replaceable SIMs and a more reasonable price are needed urgently before any European debut.
However this is Apple, so I expect they won't listen.
There's quite a lot of evidence that we are at the top of that curve, and nothing that seriously suggests we are only half way up.
Government figures are divorced from reality (political spikes in reserves, oil invented to meet demand curves) whilst the reality is peaked output from SA, falls from Mexico, etc. Canada is capped in the amount it can produce, and oil shales are a joke.
Reality will set in in the second half of the year. There just isn't enough oil to go round, so prices will rise and some will go without.
What would be your ideal programming of video content?
Would you want adhoc channels put together by others to your tastes?
Would you want just one or two key programmes?
How would you want to get your news/weather?
What about current affairs/politics?
Are long running independent serials good, or do you want story arcs?
What place the one-off?
When there are no constraints, what is the best way of getting your interest in content and delivering it?
Its more to do with this ban being an illegal act under the WTO rules, with two judgements against the US and the threat of sanctions and fines. As has been reported before, US companies could lose international IP protection via Antigua if something isn't done.
The US HAS to move, otherwise Microsoft faces legal copies of software and Hollywood faces legal movie copies. It was always a stupid law, an illegal law - now there is a scramble to save face.
Look, I'm not interested the academic niceties of semantic searching and metadata. What I want, would would actually be useful, would be a way to separate out the low value sites from those of relevance FOR THE SEARCH I'M DOING.
If I'm looking for a review of a product, I don't want 50 shops trying to sell me one. If I'm looking for a explanation/definition of a term, I don't want a page that may mention the word, even if it does have high page rank. If I'm looking for a site that gives me lots of links to connected sites, I don't want one that thinks its an island on its own.
Stop trying to classify the small scale, focus on getting the broad scale right and on classifying the search first. Its an easier and more important question.
"Chapter five, "the lone innovator", debunks the legend of, well, the lone innovator. It sounds good, and plays into our noble story of the hero, but it's not common in reality."
In my experience each and every innovation can trace its roots back to one key insight in the mind of one person. The group can help, support, enhance and develop that insight, but without it and that key individual - there is nothing.
It doesn't matter how many monkeys you have, you're still not producing Shakespeare.
Jamming remote control bomb detention, because the typical attackers aren't known to detonate the bomb by hand...
You've got to say Idiocracy is more a documentary than a work of fiction. The reality is, if any smart attacker wanted to off Bush, they could handle it easily. However, any smart attacker knows their biggest supporter is Bush himself. Why attack the person that helps you year after year and acts as your greatest recruitment poster? He might get replaced by someone with a clue (OK, not likely, but the risk is there).
Bush and Islamic extremists are a symbiotic pairing. He could wander around any part of the middle east and be safe. The biggest danger to Bush is Bush himself.
Details a US that suffers greatly when far east countries simply cancel 'intellectual property' and copy the hell out of anything and everything. Sure you can try import bans, but with their goods being even cheaper than before, since no IP tax to pay, who worldwide would bother about the US feelings? Despite what many in the US seem to think, its only a small percentage of the world market anyway (only 22.7% of china's exports go to the US). Goods are smuggled in, companies collapse, economy collapses.
IP is like energy security - a massive threat to western civilisations as a result of poor understanding of the realities born of economic theory. It can disappear in an instant.
Boy are you ever wrong. Military systems are often decades behind commercial products. The complexity of getting anything from government labs to fielded systems is so poor that its a wonder you ever see any output. The reason you see new concepts moving from government labs to commercial exploitation is because that's easier than military exploitation.
The funding of short term research by commercial interests is many times that of the military domain. What used to be better was long term research, but that has essentially been killed off to fund the wars we've been having. Don't hold your breath for much of the long term nature coming out of government funding in future.
My only wish is that they didn't keep on giving Microsoft chances and simply hammered them for their existing crimes. Break them up into OS and apps and have done with it; we all know that's what's needed. The EU can, and has the power and moral right to do so. Forget all this "its a US company", it an international company that has played a monopoly hand in the EU. If the US can get away with hijacking legal EU businessmen, the EU can get away with imposing breakup on a company even outside its borders. From a practical standpoint, if the choice was "break in two or all your copyrights are cancelled" what do you think would happen? What do you think China would do?
The funny thing is this is Microsoft bringing it on their own heads. If they had made this data freely available years ago there would BE no case. Its purely because they decided to play cute that they are here. Bluffing on a weak hand is never a smart move.
Putting the power down. Fine you have four wheel drive and can control the massive torque individually, but in something the size and weight of a mini, with a mini's little tyres, there is a limit to how much of that power you can put on the road.
Still I'd say something which is a hybrid, but can accelerate in the same class as a ferrari is not something to be sniffed at.
Sex: No limits on showing 'normal' sex. Its natural and if the prudes stopped running the country people might have a healthier attitude. A nipple is not a cause for censorship.
Violence: Ban all the unthinking use of extreme violence on TV, including 24 and any show where anyone fires off 10,000 rounds with no thought of the consequences. Its fairly obvious that the majority of US citizens are incapable of realising its not real and not an indication of what you should be doing. Allow violent content on restricted channels where only those that can demonstrate a reasonable IQ and grip of reality can join. Ban the rest as being too dumb. Just think of the advertising demographics.
Religion: Ban all religious elements from all TV stations, for much the same reason as violence. Too many dumb people, too much indoctrination, too little questioning.
Politics: Banned. They should be listening, not talking.
Reality TV: Charge stations a tax for showing it that brings costs up to the level of better quality TV programs. Maybe that will kill it off.
News: Legal requirement to really be fair and balanced - it perfectly possible guys.
You're missing the point. Ideas all by themselves are worthless.
Let's see: Good idea + Effort = Success
or. . . . . . ..No Idea + Effort = Failure
If you refuse to value ideas, then you get NOTHING. Why should I? For all I know I might have use for it in the future, or I might find the effort to exploit it myself. Not telling you maintains its value; telling you loses it.
Personally I'd say that a good idea has more worth to a company than the CEO, since its been shown time and again that most CEOs have little better idea how to make a company succeed than the average chimp. If you pay the CEO six figures, you pay me six figures for the idea on success.
Do you whine and whinge about graphics and layout on webpages? No, you whine and whinge about people NOT using CSS. You even get up in arms about badly constructed CSS webpages not rendering correctly (Acid2).
Well guess what. For certain purposes how an email looks is very important - at least as important as what it says. Using the same standard for that is used for webpages makes a vast amount of sense. Thus this move by Microsoft is another f*ck y*u to those that want some sanity and consistancy in approach.
You want to send text only email, then send text only emails. But don't start whine about those that need and use more.
1. Microsoft will make billions on vista. duh.
2. Itanic is still dead. Wow. What a revelation.
3. Cell takes over HPC. Not gonna happen. See GPGPU for why.
4. Slowaris wins out over linux. Literally when pigs fly. The funny thing is you can get a much more realistic set of predictions by inverting many of these.
Microsoft will hit financial/stock trouble as Vista flops, with businesses not buying it and the public not keen on the upgrades/lack of wow.
Itanic get killed, zeroed and deleted from the Intel history books
Cell is on life support by the end of the year, off the back of poor PS3 sales, poor yields, and nobody wanting to fight to program the damn thing.
Linux comes of age as the disto crowd final package a version sensibly. Sun is on life support off the back of poor business decisions.
Slightly more bravely:
Energy efficent always-on home machines take off, doing multiple jobs in convienent form factors (eg firewall/router/voip/server/backup/IPTV).
Broadband IPTV begins to supplant regional broadcast TV. Media moguls go ape and start threatening people
The PDA comes back, but in a massively different form
The question I would love to see addressed is how much space a movie takes up, with a decent codec - MINIMUM.
In the same way that DVD Shrink could make a good job backing up 8.5GB movies onto 4.4GB DVD-Rs, I'll bet it doesn't require 24GB to store an entire HD movie at I-don't-notice-the-difference quality. Given the nonlinearities in encoding, I'd tend to guess the multiplication factor over DVD is nearer to x2 than the x4 that might be naivly expected. Add to that the benefits of better encoding over MPEG2 and we reach acceptable sizes for distribution.
I for one won't weep when the money grabbing little toads who looked on higher resolution for a pay day see their pot of gold disappear with the DRM rainbow.
Slashdot Mirror
The US has a habit of attempting to limit the control the purchasers actually have over their products - in the defence field as well. You'll probably find that Australia wanted to be able to designate A-4s as targets, but the US wanted $Xmillion to make the software change and probably screw up some other stuff at the same time. Therefore Australia cracked the radar software to gain control over their purchases. This behaviour is actually one of the main reason many allied countries avoid buying from the US - they are shits for trying to keep control of the equipment after delivery to get follow on contracts as well as control. Most won't fall for it any more.
Because they see the average level of intelligence shown by those around them and don't want any of that lot deciding things for them?
Or to look at it from another direction, the actual creative part of the process, coming up with new ideas, works well. However when it comes to MBA types getting their head out of their arse for more than two seconds at a time, if all falls down. Somehow its supposed to be the responsibility of the person who came up with the idea to force the uptake of it through, against opposition from those same MBAs, and to receive nothing from it at the end of the process if they happen to be successful.
You want the 'innovator' to make all the running when others on higher salaries do nothing? Well, its a minimum of 10% of the profits from the IP for the next 20 years. Otherwise there is no point. You want to keep that 10%? Force the MBAs to be something more than rote paper pushers - make them earn their percentage of the spoils.
Google the phrase "cytokine storm" if you don't already know why pandemic flu is different.
One of the major problems in these types of simulation are that no knock on effects are simulated. The assumption is made that people will continue to come into work and will indeed work to someone else's plan. In reality people will look after themselves and their family, which will mean closing the door and staying at home. Work will be unimportant; who would seriously take that degree of risk for a meagre salary.
At our rough calculations the transition from business as usual to total shutdown will take two week max. As soon as the threat is recognised by the populous as real, people will react to save themselves.
Expect the various waves of pandemic flu to take a minimum of six months to run their course
I'm not sure where you got those UK text rates, but typical costs are 5-10p (10-20c) a text, or many pay monthly people get many included free texts in their plans. Nobody pays 25p a text.
If I had a dollar for every time a softie had blamed unclear requirements or scope creep for a project's failure - I still probably wouldn't have much with the way the dollar is plunging
Point is, the world moves on, needs move on, things develop. If you and your methodology can't cope then I'm afraid IT'S YOUR PROBLEM. You need a different development methodology, a different approach that's more flexible. Its no good saying "this is the twentieth time a project has suffered from requirements creep" - its a fact of real life, deal.
Specifically, a modular, or phased development process with short development phases and scope to grow is a much better bet than 'Big Bang' - which I still see suggested far too often. "No" is not a solution to the problem. "Yes, that's no problem" is a solution.
Its YOUR responsibility to expect and be able to deal with real requirements change - stop whining.
They are not entering an unsophisticated market (at least in Europe). EVERY other phone can replace the battery, a battery compartment is not complicated or difficult, yet they have failed to do even this.
Couple that with the other problems and expect those other than the Apple fan boys will wait for version 2 or the reply by the other manufacturers. As a minimum, 3G with a fallback to edge, automatic home Wifi utilisation, working bluetooth, proper camera, replaceable batteries, replaceable SIMs and a more reasonable price are needed urgently before any European debut.
However this is Apple, so I expect they won't listen.
George W Bush, eldest son of George H W Bush.
There's quite a lot of evidence that we are at the top of that curve, and nothing that seriously suggests we are only half way up.
Government figures are divorced from reality (political spikes in reserves, oil invented to meet demand curves) whilst the reality is peaked output from SA, falls from Mexico, etc. Canada is capped in the amount it can produce, and oil shales are a joke.
Reality will set in in the second half of the year. There just isn't enough oil to go round, so prices will rise and some will go without.
Assume that network broadcast TV is dead.
What would be your ideal programming of video content?
Would you want adhoc channels put together by others to your tastes?
Would you want just one or two key programmes?
How would you want to get your news/weather?
What about current affairs/politics?
Are long running independent serials good, or do you want story arcs?
What place the one-off?
When there are no constraints, what is the best way of getting your interest in content and delivering it?
Its more to do with this ban being an illegal act under the WTO rules, with two judgements against the US and the threat of sanctions and fines. As has been reported before, US companies could lose international IP protection via Antigua if something isn't done.
The US HAS to move, otherwise Microsoft faces legal copies of software and Hollywood faces legal movie copies. It was always a stupid law, an illegal law - now there is a scramble to save face.
Look, I'm not interested the academic niceties of semantic searching and metadata. What I want, would would actually be useful, would be a way to separate out the low value sites from those of relevance FOR THE SEARCH I'M DOING.
If I'm looking for a review of a product, I don't want 50 shops trying to sell me one. If I'm looking for a explanation/definition of a term, I don't want a page that may mention the word, even if it does have high page rank. If I'm looking for a site that gives me lots of links to connected sites, I don't want one that thinks its an island on its own.
Stop trying to classify the small scale, focus on getting the broad scale right and on classifying the search first. Its an easier and more important question.
"Chapter five, "the lone innovator", debunks the legend of, well, the lone innovator. It sounds good, and plays into our noble story of the hero, but it's not common in reality."
In my experience each and every innovation can trace its roots back to one key insight in the mind of one person. The group can help, support, enhance and develop that insight, but without it and that key individual - there is nothing.
It doesn't matter how many monkeys you have, you're still not producing Shakespeare.
Jamming remote control bomb detention, because the typical attackers aren't known to detonate the bomb by hand...
You've got to say Idiocracy is more a documentary than a work of fiction. The reality is, if any smart attacker wanted to off Bush, they could handle it easily. However, any smart attacker knows their biggest supporter is Bush himself. Why attack the person that helps you year after year and acts as your greatest recruitment poster? He might get replaced by someone with a clue (OK, not likely, but the risk is there).
Bush and Islamic extremists are a symbiotic pairing. He could wander around any part of the middle east and be safe. The biggest danger to Bush is Bush himself.
Distraction: a book by Bruce Sterling.
Details a US that suffers greatly when far east countries simply cancel 'intellectual property' and copy the hell out of anything and everything. Sure you can try import bans, but with their goods being even cheaper than before, since no IP tax to pay, who worldwide would bother about the US feelings? Despite what many in the US seem to think, its only a small percentage of the world market anyway (only 22.7% of china's exports go to the US). Goods are smuggled in, companies collapse, economy collapses.
IP is like energy security - a massive threat to western civilisations as a result of poor understanding of the realities born of economic theory. It can disappear in an instant.
Boy are you ever wrong. Military systems are often decades behind commercial products. The complexity of getting anything from government labs to fielded systems is so poor that its a wonder you ever see any output. The reason you see new concepts moving from government labs to commercial exploitation is because that's easier than military exploitation.
The funding of short term research by commercial interests is many times that of the military domain. What used to be better was long term research, but that has essentially been killed off to fund the wars we've been having. Don't hold your breath for much of the long term nature coming out of government funding in future.
Quite right.
My only wish is that they didn't keep on giving Microsoft chances and simply hammered them for their existing crimes. Break them up into OS and apps and have done with it; we all know that's what's needed. The EU can, and has the power and moral right to do so. Forget all this "its a US company", it an international company that has played a monopoly hand in the EU. If the US can get away with hijacking legal EU businessmen, the EU can get away with imposing breakup on a company even outside its borders. From a practical standpoint, if the choice was "break in two or all your copyrights are cancelled" what do you think would happen? What do you think China would do?
The funny thing is this is Microsoft bringing it on their own heads. If they had made this data freely available years ago there would BE no case. Its purely because they decided to play cute that they are here. Bluffing on a weak hand is never a smart move.
Putting the power down. Fine you have four wheel drive and can control the massive torque individually, but in something the size and weight of a mini, with a mini's little tyres, there is a limit to how much of that power you can put on the road.
Still I'd say something which is a hybrid, but can accelerate in the same class as a ferrari is not something to be sniffed at.
Pick my side, well personally I'd suggest:
Sex: No limits on showing 'normal' sex. Its natural and if the prudes stopped running the country people might have a healthier attitude. A nipple is not a cause for censorship.
Violence: Ban all the unthinking use of extreme violence on TV, including 24 and any show where anyone fires off 10,000 rounds with no thought of the consequences. Its fairly obvious that the majority of US citizens are incapable of realising its not real and not an indication of what you should be doing. Allow violent content on restricted channels where only those that can demonstrate a reasonable IQ and grip of reality can join. Ban the rest as being too dumb. Just think of the advertising demographics.
Religion: Ban all religious elements from all TV stations, for much the same reason as violence. Too many dumb people, too much indoctrination, too little questioning.
Politics: Banned. They should be listening, not talking.
Reality TV: Charge stations a tax for showing it that brings costs up to the level of better quality TV programs. Maybe that will kill it off.
News: Legal requirement to really be fair and balanced - it perfectly possible guys.
Let's see: Good idea + Effort = Success .No Idea + Effort = Failure
or. . . . . . .
If you refuse to value ideas, then you get NOTHING. Why should I? For all I know I might have use for it in the future, or I might find the effort to exploit it myself. Not telling you maintains its value; telling you loses it.
Personally I'd say that a good idea has more worth to a company than the CEO, since its been shown time and again that most CEOs have little better idea how to make a company succeed than the average chimp. If you pay the CEO six figures, you pay me six figures for the idea on success.
Coming up with a domain name that can be read as "Star Tupping"
Tales from the pen of the latest boyband member, maybe?
What the hell is it with the hair shirt brigade?
Do you whine and whinge about graphics and layout on webpages? No, you whine and whinge about people NOT using CSS. You even get up in arms about badly constructed CSS webpages not rendering correctly (Acid2).
Well guess what. For certain purposes how an email looks is very important - at least as important as what it says. Using the same standard for that is used for webpages makes a vast amount of sense. Thus this move by Microsoft is another f*ck y*u to those that want some sanity and consistancy in approach.
You want to send text only email, then send text only emails. But don't start whine about those that need and use more.
2. Itanic is still dead. Wow. What a revelation.
3. Cell takes over HPC. Not gonna happen. See GPGPU for why.
4. Slowaris wins out over linux. Literally when pigs fly. The funny thing is you can get a much more realistic set of predictions by inverting many of these.
- Microsoft will hit financial/stock trouble as Vista flops, with businesses not buying it and the public not keen on the upgrades/lack of wow.
- Itanic get killed, zeroed and deleted from the Intel history books
- Cell is on life support by the end of the year, off the back of poor PS3 sales, poor yields, and nobody wanting to fight to program the damn thing.
- Linux comes of age as the disto crowd final package a version sensibly. Sun is on life support off the back of poor business decisions.
Slightly more bravely:The question I would love to see addressed is how much space a movie takes up, with a decent codec - MINIMUM.
In the same way that DVD Shrink could make a good job backing up 8.5GB movies onto 4.4GB DVD-Rs, I'll bet it doesn't require 24GB to store an entire HD movie at I-don't-notice-the-difference quality. Given the nonlinearities in encoding, I'd tend to guess the multiplication factor over DVD is nearer to x2 than the x4 that might be naivly expected. Add to that the benefits of better encoding over MPEG2 and we reach acceptable sizes for distribution.
I for one won't weep when the money grabbing little toads who looked on higher resolution for a pay day see their pot of gold disappear with the DRM rainbow.