You've heard the adage: "Give away the razor and make money on the blades." Right? Like game consoles - subsidize the console and make money on the games. Apple is doing something brilliant here: They could give away the games (okay, sell them for $CHEAP and make money on the player (iPod).
From TFA:
According to the engineer, an Apple hiring manager named Mike Lampell is heading up a group inside Apple's storied iTunes division. The group is specifically hiring for 'C/C++ coders with a gaming background.'
(Emphasis added.)
Every product in the marketplace has substitutes and complements. A substitute is another product you might buy if the first product is too expensive. Chicken is a substitute for beef. If you're a chicken farmer and the price of beef goes up, the people will want more chicken, and you will sell more.
A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems. And babysitters are a complement of dinner at fine restaurants. In a small town, when the local five star restaurant has a two-for-one Valentine's day special, the local babysitters double their rates. (Actually, the nine-year-olds get roped into early service.)
All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease. (Emphasis added.)
There is a precedent for what Apple may be doing here. Anyone remember the Atari 800? I bought one just so I could play Star Raiders. I bought it at a store outside Boston (IIRC at a Bit Bucket in Newton, MA) which had this set up on a 5-foot projection TV for video and a 100 Watt stereo driving the audio. The salesperson told me: THAT ONE GAME was responsible for something like half of their sales of the Atari 800. At the time (1980 or so), the Atari 800 cost me about $800... and I happily paid it so that I could play a ~$50 game. AND, once I got the computer, I bought many more applications and peripherals. Star Raiders was the "killer app" of its day.
Apple might be looking to do the same. Sell some subsidized games on iTunes for little money so as to encourage additional iPod sales. Once he consumer has the iPod, and has overcome paying its (non-negotiable) price, the barrier to buying more things for it is overcome. Increased iTunes sales. Even MORE profit for Apple. A larger market. Synergistic growth.
Someone else here mentioned about Disney. Kid sees friend playing Disney game on iPod. Kid Wants Game. Kid pesters parents incessantly. Parents buy an iPod for junior to play these nice kid-friendly Disney games. Kids become experienced users of an increasingly dominant platform. [Apocryphally, IBM gave (?) Selectric typewriters to schools to use in Touch Typing Classes. Said students go off into the business world and are faced with klunky manual typewriters. Secretaries all-so-often are the ones who Get. Things. Done. Not too hard to start persuading the PHBs to buy a Selectric typewriter. Lather, rinse, repeat.] Apple has done similarly with schools by offering a significant educational discount for their computers. Microsoft has a student discount for their Office suite. Hook 'em while they're young.
Here, Apple could hook 'em before they even GET to school! Like I said, Brilliant. Absolutely Brilliant!
This represents the UNCHANGING blue-print for the software. The customers would get exactly what they wanted, and you would produce a solid software product. (emphasis added)
I share your vision of hope for the future. But I would first like to digress for a moment on your statement before fleshing out how I DO agree with you, too.
(BTW it is currently 4 AM so I apologize if this rambles a bit. I've tried to go back and edit it to make it clearer, but I seem to keep making mistakes. That in itself seems apropos to this discussion. <grin>)
In my experience, it's more like: the customers get what they asked for and then find out they did NOT get what they WANTED. The problem is that the customers do not understand software, the environment the software runs in (hardware, political, and legal), what is possible, and what has never been done before. It's more often the case that "they will know it when they see it, but they can't really tell you what THAT is, exactly, before hand." Further, because they do not know what is and is not possible, they don't understand the ramifications of their choices. Lastly, there is a HUGE difference between research and development. It's one thing to code a one-off of something you've done many times before; it's quite another to do something completely new, and get it right the first time. As more and more people become computer literate, and gain first-hand experience on using software, I am cautiously optimistic that this disconnect will diminish over time.
Strive to UNDERSTAND your problem,
Don't try to SOLVE it.
A fully stated problem embodies its solution.
D.T. RossSofTech;November 1978
Helmets - As an example, I remember watching some old footage and was amazed to see that professional hockey players did not wear helmets. Now it sure likes ALL players wear them. Why? We learned the added inconveniece and expense was worth it. I've worked on development projects where there was no allowance (i.e. time and money) set aside for anything but the barest amount of testing. Now I am increasingly seeing that built into development schedules, as a matter of course. Granted, in some cases this testing would be analagous to a hockey player wearing only a LEATHER helmet (instead of today's high-impact plastic) but it shows progress and gives me hope for the future. I welcome the day when testing and quality assurance are an integral part of EVERY development effort instead of a rare luxury. The benefit is that libraries of well-documented and thoroughly-tested code will become increasingly available. AND the methodology to USE them PROPERLY, (i.e. SAFELY!)
It's thanks to developers' incessant optimism, I believe, that we have our current problems, and also the seeds for the solution. Please, don't get me wrong on this one. IIRC, it was Tesla who said that "If I had known it was impossible, I wouldn't have done it." We create doftware to do things which have NEVER been done before, ever. Even in the face of statements like: "That'll NEVER work!". The response? "Oh yeah? Hmmmmm. Wait a minute! If I, hmmm, and then... AHA! I think that just might work!" And on nothing more than a hunch, a hope, and a blind ignorance of just how many hours of debugging it will entail, we regularly go off and do something absolutely incredible. I have gained much inspiration from a quote by Mark Twain:
To be the FIRST - that is the idea. To do something, say something, see
something, before ANYBODY else - these are the things that confer a pleasure
compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies
cheap and trivial.
In tandem with this one by Thomas A. Edison:
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
It's that thrill which drives so much inspiration and pers
I've recently thought of an idea for how to deal with patents. Something similar to Slashdot should be used.
You mean something like PatentDot ??? which I suggested on Feb. 12, 2006:
How about a Slashdot for Patents???? Given the knowledge and interest I've seen displayed here, and the fact that the SlashCode is available, I really think this could work!
Features: Here's a rough, back of the envelope, sketch of how it could work:
Getting patents A daemon could periodically check the USPTO site, and create an article for each new patent application it finds.
Categorization Patents would be categorized into different "departments".
Hmmm, could a Bayesian filter come up with a short list of recommendations? These could be attached to the article as options for "High-Karma" users to select (or offer something better). As soon as some threshhold (say 10 votes) is reached, the article is moved from the NEW department to the selected department.
Moderation This could procede as it does here on slashdot, but the comments' focus could be to examine the patents:
Provide references to PRIOR ART.
Discuss the [IM]POSSIBILITY of the application.
And, of course, HUMOR would be encouraged!
Benefits Offhand, I see this would:
provide a venue for those who are proficient in the area to comment
help the beleagured patent office, and
inform readers as to the workings of the PTO.
What have I missed? I know there has to be SOMEthing! Thoughts? Ideas?
You wouldn't let a government agent swing by every morning and look at all the mailing addresses on letters going to/from your house, why the hell would you let them do the same to your phone records?
Handwritten address interpretation research began at CEDAR in 1987 through funding from the United States Postal Service (USPS). The objective was to automate mail sorting through a system that could read a handwritten street address and ZIP code and encode each envelope with the destination address for machine sorting.
This research ultimately led to the development and deployment of system that automates mail sorting through image analysis, digit recognition, word recognition, postal directory lookup, and a barcode assignment that designates the destination address. Since field-testing began in 1996, the Handwritten Address Interpretation System (HWAI) has been implemented at all USPS mail processing centers.
(emphasis mine.)
So, it's only a small step to record all that metadata for every letter sent within the USA. Just have postmasters general submit the day's scan logs to the gov't for review for possible terrorist links, and, by the way, archive all th information received. This information could include:
Who received mail.
Who sent it (from the return address).
When it was sent.
How much it weighed.
How urgently it was sent (overnight, first class, parcel post, etc.)
So, maybe you were just joking, but from what I've seen lately, I'd have to suspect that this may already in place... can anyone corroborate this?
You might wanna check this out. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/17050 6_b_Memorandum.htm It turns out, the President gave a memorandum telling the National Intelligence Director he could authorize companies to lie about dealings having to do with national security without being subject to penalties almost a week before the NSA shit really started hitting the fan.
Thanks for that link! Want to do something about it? The referenced article states:
But an[sic] presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))
Some googling found this link:
U.S. Code collection: 78m. Periodical and other reports and the referenced section of the code states:
(A) With respect to matters concerning the national security of the United States, no duty or liability under paragraph (2) of this subsection shall be imposed upon any person acting in cooperation with the head of any Federal department or agency responsible for such matters if such act in cooperation with such head of a department or agency was done upon the specific, written directive of the head of such department or agency pursuant to Presidential authority to issue such directives. Each directive issued under this paragraph shall set forth the specific facts and circumstances with respect to which the provisions of this paragraph are to be invoked. Each such directive shall, unless renewed in writing, expire one year after the date of issuance.
(B) Each head of a Federal department or agency of the United States who issues a directive pursuant to this paragraph shall maintain a complete file of all such directives and shall, on October 1 of each year, transmit a summary of matters covered by such directives in force at any time during the previous year to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate.
(emphasis: mine.)
As I see it, these telecom companies could have been authorized to lie to the SEC, their shareholders, and the general public about their participation in this.
How much will it take for people to realize what is going on... and do something about it? How about people contact the congressional members who are responsible for monitoring these activities? Wikipedia lists the members of these organizations and provides some background:
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives
and
Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate
Actually, the cell phone signal here is marginal, at best. I often have calls drop on me, if I can get them at all. Hence my request in the original post for others to try it and report how it worke for them.
FTA:
Even so, Santos says the system would need extensive testing before she would be willing to ride in a fly-by-wireless plane. She also admits that stringent aviation regulations may mean the technology first appears in cars rather than planes.
"Cables are already a problem in cars," Santos says, because many manufacturers cram ever more electronic gadgetry into each new model.
She admits the idea of having no physical connections may seem scary at first but believes ultimately it will become an accepted way to control brakes and even steering mechanisms in road vehicles.
Just fire up a strong RF source, drive down the road, and point it at, e.g., the police car that is chasing you.:/ Or, with suitable hacking, you could suddenly take over control of the car next to you on the interstate and take care of his steering and braking for him! Or, for the ambulance chasing types, set up shop downtown and arrange for an "accident" when business is slacking off.
Or, set up with a cantenna and pick planes out of the air whenever you want.
Don't need to blind the pilot with a green laser, blind the plane's electronics, instead. Geesh!
Seriously, I wish people would have a little more common sense. This is just an accident waiting to happen.
You realize you've gauranteed a cell phone won't work in your house if you do that, right? As a prospective home-buyer, that is an immediate no-sale point.
It is possible to construct a Faraday Cage to block wireless network signals without blocking cell phone communications... Wireless networking uses 2.4 GHz signals. Cell phones use entirely different frequencies.
Try it yourself! Place your cell phone in a microwave, close the door (but don't turn it on, of course), and call your cell phone. If your phone rings, then the cell phone signal made it past the microwave's faraday cage. And microwave and wireless networking signals are almost the same -- my network throughput dies whenever I use my microwave.
NOTE: Different cell phone frequencies exist, so YMMV. I can't try this myself (no land-line) but according to what I learned in physics class (LONG ago), I'm pretty confident it should work just fine.
Anyone want to give this experiment a try and post how it worked for you?
NOTE: These are not virgin frequencies; some relocation of existing users' bandwith is required in order to free up these frequencies. See the Fact Sheet for details.
Heh! In this case there is quite possibly a greater chance of a "casual" link than there is of a "causal" link. What I think you meant, though, was "causal":
It's the scientific method applied to life - in a game environment so it encourages exploration while having fun. It encourages trial and error. I often learn best from what goes wrong - not just from what succeeds. This reminds me of a couple quotations which have helped me greatly through the years:
Life is a harsh teacher - it gives the test first and the lesson later.
and:
Tell me and I'll forget;
Show me and I may remember;
Involve me and I will understand.
(I wish I had attribution for these... does anyone know who wrote them?)
The other thing I see is that the game is safe. The player can try things *objectively* without the risk of an *emotional* reaction that a parent might produce. "What the *&#@(% were you THINKING?" I am NOT suggesting parents abdicate their responsibilities to a game!
For example: hitting my little brother got a swift reaction from my parents. I learned that I didn't want to get punished, so I stopped doing it. Playing it out in a game, I would get to see the emotional, long-term damage that it would cause -- I would better understand why it was a bad idea.
Pull the debuggers in front of the curtain, and you'll see people debug. If we only appreciate the people who wrote a feature in the first place, even if that feature doesn't work 100%, we won't see people debug.
Here Here! Seti at home had a gazillon(tm) people contributing cycles to the effort (many times in teams) to see who could place highest on the list of contributors.
How about a BFoD - Best Fix Of the Day? Each day, post the name of the submitter and some details about the item debugged and fixed:
Name Recognition Not just to see your name in "lights", but also gain something you could add to your resume.
New Code - preference to bug fixers Make a policy that you will give top priority to bug fixes... if you attach your new feature to a bug fix, it will get preferential treatment. Those without a bug fix fall to the bottom of the queue.
Share / Educate Share debugging techniques and tools. Make it easier to fix bugs by sharing best practices with the community.
Scratch an Itch It may not be fun, but if you develop new code, you also get to spend time debugging... learning from the preceding item will speed the development process and you'll be able to complete your Next New Thing(tm) even faster and better!
Competition Have contests for the Best Fix of the Month (BFoM) and Best Fix Of the Year (BFoY). To be chosen from the winners of the BFoDs.
This could be further improved by posting a Bug Of the Day (BoD) where there is a daily bug that is to be fixed. The first fixer gets recognized as well as anyone who provides an especially elegant solution. Award bonus points for fixing related bugs in the area so as to promote more complete fixing in that area.
Post these prominently for all to see and I'd be willing to bet that there would be a groundswell of support.
This is just off the top of my head - please post any suggestions for enhancements or (gasp) any problems you see in it!
Besides the obvious military uses, it seems to me that a more popular use would be as an adjunct to MMORPGs (or any other interactive RPG computer game, for that matter). Imagine being able to "see" the bogeys right behind you without having to take your eyes off your current target!
He could not only get willing beta testers, but can you imagine the kind of user-mods/hacks that could be created?! "Only" 144 sensory points? Heck, I just hacked it to provide 1024!
I am certain that the need for focus and persistence to complete the game of Adventure (and later a number of Infocom titles) served me well in my computing career. I started programming in 1972 and later specialized in Software Testing and Software Quality Assurance.
I found that software testing is like playing a game of Adventure:
Adventure: Explore cave and collect treasure.
Testing: Explore code and collect bugs.
There are lots of little treasures (low-priority bugs), but once in a while I'd discover just the right "incantation" and locate one of the *really valuable* treasures: System Crash, Infinite Loop, Data Corruption, and Major Security Hole!
There is one significant difference, though... testing has much better pay!:)
FWIW: I first played Adventure in 1978 on an IBM Mainframe (3033) running MTS (Michigan Terminal System) at RPI. Someone in my dorm had found it on our system and we spent the next several months competing to be the first to complete it. I can't recall if I was first, but I *did* make it to Adventure Grandmaster with a perfect score of 350. I was later able to get a copy of it on magtape and a printed listing... I think I may still have them in a box in storage, too.
We've both donated our respective expertise, covered major ground, and agreed from the start that everything will be split 50-50 (ownership, power, etc). Unfortunately, the time has come to incorporate, and potential investors have advised against assigning Co-CEO's. So who should be the CEO? Should the Finance Major get the job based solely on his Business knowledge, or should the Computer Science guy get the job because it was his idea?
First off, congratulations on having found potential investors! There are many
who have had great ideas but could get no further than the idea. That investors are
interested enough in your project that they are looking into HOW to make it work
is a major accomplishment. 'Tis easy to focus on problems and to not take comfort in successes. There will ALWAYS be problems... celebrate what you have already accomplished! I promise that kind of an attitude will help wonders in
making it through the challenges that WILL come.
<TIC>OTOH, I hope it was NOT your intent to go to your partner and tell him,
"8 out of 10 geeks on Slashdot think I should be CEO, so that settles it!":^)
</TIC>
That said, I have to ask: "Why does the CEO have to be one of you two?"
Sure, it's nice to have authority, but in my experience that brings responsibility for those decisions, too. When you're up to your eyeballs in alligators trying to get over a hurdle in development, do you really want to be
totally overwhelmed with management problems, too?
I'm sensing there is a fear that you are going to be boxed into a corner with the *responsibility* to do something, but lack the *authority* to carry it out.
That's an understandable fear. Your potential investors have fears, too.
I have no idea of how much funding you're seeking, but if I were to put up, say,
$1 million, I sure as heck would like to know that common, typical problems
would not arise and cause the company to fail. Having a deadlock situation on critical decisions has to be high up on the list.
I would offer, therefore, a suggestion: hire a CEO. S/he would have
the responsibility. But you (plural, both of you) would ultimately have the authority as you are the co-owners of the company. Better yet, you will have the input of an interested third party. One who just might be able to provide an objective, tie-breaking perspective that would not have come to either of you.
I can already imagine you're thinking: "We can't afford to hire someone else."
Let me ask you this: "In light of your current problems in trying to make THIS DECISION, can you really afford NOT to?" Many, many more difficult decisions will come along. You've already had to spend considerable time and effort trying to
solve this problem. How much mre time will you have to give up for those new
problems? Hire someone you can trust and let THEM do the dirty work FOR you!
Be honest... wouldn't you rather be programming right now instead of dealing with this?
Seriously, you might even find that your investors have more than cash to bring to the table. I would not be surprised if the already have someone who would do a better job than EITHER of you ever could. S/he can bring real-world experience of what works. And more importantly, what DOES NOT work! Just make it abundantly clear as you set up your company that the CEO works for YOU.
In the end, it's just a job. If things don't work out, have the company buy out your shares (you DO have that in your articles of incorporation, right?) and then go off and start something else. I've found it's okay to make mistakes, I just try to make new ones each time! <grin>
Lastly, I'm sure you have heard the adage: "hindsight is 20/20." I've found much wisdom in that. So, why not draw on that wisdom, today?
When faced with a difficult decision, I have found it extremely helpful to practice what I call: 20/20 Foresight.
Just imagine it's some time i
If a business carelessly loses 1,000 customers' credit card details but then gets hit with a dent to their bottom line of 1,000 x $AVERAGE_COST_PER_CARD_FRAUD + $COSTS_INCURRED_BY_AUDITORS + $SIGNIFICANT_PENALTY_CHARGE, then maybe it will become enough of a priority on the executive radar to do something about it. Similarly, if identity thefts or other more serious consequences arise, the costs of cleaning those up can be incorporated into the penalty; naturally, this should include compensation for the time spent by the affected individuals and any third parties they had to deal with to fix the problem.
I agree with your thinking in that there should be some kind of penalty based on the number of affected users. I would go one step further and suggest that there should ALSO be a penalty paid to EACH of those customers. I should not have to wait to find out if my identity is/was compromised. Each breach should entitle each customer to a cash payment of, say, $1000.00.
Insurance companies will have an opportunity to provide coverage, companies will have an incentive to obtain coverage, and the insurance companies will have an incentive to provide audits, tools, etc. to help lessen the need for the policies' benefits being paid.
This could appear as reduced rates for following certain best practices. I have had car insurance policies that had a discount for certain anti-theft devices being installed in my car. My homeowner's policy had a discount for cetain smoke detectors.
If a company doesn't want to deal with the hassle of dealing with an insurance company, they should have the option of self-insuring and posting a bond to cover potential losses.
Further, I would like to have a searchable, on-line resource which provided information on which companies had had breaches, the date of the breach, the number of customers affected, and the amount of the fines, penalties. For additional motivation, include who was the president, CEO, CTO, CIO, (and EIEIO:^) at the time. Hmm, add in who was on the board of directors, too.
That way, the dumping of one company and the creation of another with the same actors could not be used to hide from the consequences of their [in]actions.
(Any suggestions on other info to include?)
Ultimately, this might encourage companies to use data encryption as a matter of course - to the point that it becomes the de-facto norm of how information is stored on a computer. Maybe, with time, to the point where Joe Sixpack's home PC or PDA is secure by default. Given some of the articles and posts I've seen on/., I would like to think that, in some small way, this might help protect citizens from governmental intrusions. Not just in the USA, but set an example that could be followed in other countries around the world.
P.S. What would you do differently if these proposals were in effect and your SOHO computer were compromised? I'm pressed for time right now, but just thinking about this from THAT perspective is already making me re-think how I do things.
"Why do users refuse to adopt collaboration software?"
Well, that can be summed up in a single word, "proprietary".
Actually, I think the reason people fall back onto e-mail is: TRANSPARENCY.
The information and the "communications protocol" are both in-band. Whereas, for a proprietary collaboration tool, my experience has been that the communications protocol tends to be out-of-band. Thus, when (not "if") something goes wrong, the means to identify and work-aroud the problem is hidden inside some "complicated" interface.
Just as it is easier to debug my own code than it is to maintain someone else's, I believe a self-constructed protocol, imbedded into e-mail, is easier for users to UNDERSTAND, and thus easier to come up with a solution / word-around. Even if it is not easier (bailing wire and bubble-gum infested historical precedents), it provides the APPEARANCE and hence the BELIEF that problems can be identified and solved.
In short, people tend to fear what they cannot (or will not) understand.
IANARS (I Am Not A Rocket Scientist), but as I understand it, one of the problems in making a working scramjet is How do you go fast enough to compress the air enough to get it to warm up enough to reach combustion temperature?
Questions:
Why not heat the air before it gets to the combustion chamber?
Why not heat the fuel (e.g. hydrogen) so that it is closer to combustion temperature?
I am NOT suggesting this would solve the entire problem, and I can't be the first to consider this, but it *seems* this would allow combustion to occur at a lower air speed. What am I missing?
PS: The amount of heating of the air and/or fuel could be variable, too, so as to allow it to be used over a range of speeds.
What if the government put out a bid for someone to undertake cyber attacks against them as well as provide funding for the repair/protection of these systems?
Offer, say, $1M to an organization to start cyber attacks on a specified date. These agencies would know full well that such an attack was coming. Do *YOU* want to be the one to try and explain why *YOUR* system was able to be broken into? Just as there was a huge effort to counterract the Y2K "bug", and we survived it relatively unscathed, I'm thinking a scheduled attack would do wonders in getting things secured, ASAP.
We could have nearly impenetrable systems by year's end.
The logging information is just what I was looking for! But a quick search for it on the 'net revealed:
this page. Some users lost the contents of their hard disk just by INSTALLING it! (YIKES!) Any other suggestions?
Thanks for the info. I have not tried GoBack, but do have some experience with Norton Ghost. After my Dad's PC got infested with malware, and we finally got it cleaned up, I picked up a copy of ghost and an extra hard drive and periodically backed up his entire disk.
But this solution is not ideal. I'm cautious about installing new software on my PC, but once in a great while, I find something is broken and it could have happened weeks/months ago. Everything seemed to be okay (at the time), but then I discover that it is not. For example, I can no longer write to my CD drive. The last time I tried, successfully, was 2 months ago, and then had a period where I did not try to write anything to CD. (I've got a spare 300GB USB Maxtor Onetouch drive on which I do my backups).
So, now, I need to be able to backtrack:
Find out which one of the umpteen applications I've installed since then caused the problem.
Back out just that one application.
If I were to roll back my entire system to where it was 2 months ago (say using a Ghost image), I'd still have a boat load of applications to re-install, program defaults to establish, and the like.:/
In my original post Rolling back - what do YOU do? I suggested it would be helpful if there were a log, in human-readable form, which listed all things that are Created, Read, Updated, or Deleted. That, in concert with SysInternals Filemon, Regmon, and Process Monitors, I can find out what's going wrong NOW, and identify which application bolixed things up. Then, using Windows' Add/Remove programs, I should be able to yank just THAT application.
Does anyone have a file logging tool like this for windows? If so, what has your real-world experience been with it? After this McAfee fiasco, I'm not interested in marketing fluff and instead want info from "down in the trenches!"
Just last week, in response to: The Trouble With Software Upgrades I posted a question asking what do you do to protect yourself from automatic updates that go bad... but I got no responses. In light of the current situation, I'd really appreciate hearing some responses, here.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a precedent for what Apple may be doing here. Anyone remember the Atari 800? I bought one just so I could play Star Raiders. I bought it at a store outside Boston (IIRC at a Bit Bucket in Newton, MA) which had this set up on a 5-foot projection TV for video and a 100 Watt stereo driving the audio. The salesperson told me: THAT ONE GAME was responsible for something like half of their sales of the Atari 800. At the time (1980 or so), the Atari 800 cost me about $800... and I happily paid it so that I could play a ~$50 game. AND, once I got the computer, I bought many more applications and peripherals. Star Raiders was the "killer app" of its day.
Apple might be looking to do the same. Sell some subsidized games on iTunes for little money so as to encourage additional iPod sales. Once he consumer has the iPod, and has overcome paying its (non-negotiable) price, the barrier to buying more things for it is overcome. Increased iTunes sales. Even MORE profit for Apple. A larger market. Synergistic growth.
Someone else here mentioned about Disney. Kid sees friend playing Disney game on iPod. Kid Wants Game. Kid pesters parents incessantly. Parents buy an iPod for junior to play these nice kid-friendly Disney games. Kids become experienced users of an increasingly dominant platform. [Apocryphally, IBM gave (?) Selectric typewriters to schools to use in Touch Typing Classes. Said students go off into the business world and are faced with klunky manual typewriters. Secretaries all-so-often are the ones who Get. Things. Done. Not too hard to start persuading the PHBs to buy a Selectric typewriter. Lather, rinse, repeat.] Apple has done similarly with schools by offering a significant educational discount for their computers. Microsoft has a student discount for their Office suite. Hook 'em while they're young.
Here, Apple could hook 'em before they even GET to school! Like I said, Brilliant. Absolutely Brilliant!
I share your vision of hope for the future. But I would first like to digress for a moment on your statement before fleshing out how I DO agree with you, too. (BTW it is currently 4 AM so I apologize if this rambles a bit. I've tried to go back and edit it to make it clearer, but I seem to keep making mistakes. That in itself seems apropos to this discussion. <grin>)
In my experience, it's more like: the customers get what they asked for and then find out they did NOT get what they WANTED. The problem is that the customers do not understand software, the environment the software runs in (hardware, political, and legal), what is possible, and what has never been done before. It's more often the case that "they will know it when they see it, but they can't really tell you what THAT is, exactly, before hand." Further, because they do not know what is and is not possible, they don't understand the ramifications of their choices. Lastly, there is a HUGE difference between research and development. It's one thing to code a one-off of something you've done many times before; it's quite another to do something completely new, and get it right the first time. As more and more people become computer literate, and gain first-hand experience on using software, I am cautiously optimistic that this disconnect will diminish over time.
Helmets - As an example, I remember watching some old footage and was amazed to see that professional hockey players did not wear helmets. Now it sure likes ALL players wear them. Why? We learned the added inconveniece and expense was worth it. I've worked on development projects where there was no allowance (i.e. time and money) set aside for anything but the barest amount of testing. Now I am increasingly seeing that built into development schedules, as a matter of course. Granted, in some cases this testing would be analagous to a hockey player wearing only a LEATHER helmet (instead of today's high-impact plastic) but it shows progress and gives me hope for the future. I welcome the day when testing and quality assurance are an integral part of EVERY development effort instead of a rare luxury. The benefit is that libraries of well-documented and thoroughly-tested code will become increasingly available. AND the methodology to USE them PROPERLY, (i.e. SAFELY!)
It's thanks to developers' incessant optimism, I believe, that we have our current problems, and also the seeds for the solution. Please, don't get me wrong on this one. IIRC, it was Tesla who said that "If I had known it was impossible, I wouldn't have done it." We create doftware to do things which have NEVER been done before, ever. Even in the face of statements like: "That'll NEVER work!". The response? "Oh yeah? Hmmmmm. Wait a minute! If I, hmmm, and then... AHA! I think that just might work!" And on nothing more than a hunch, a hope, and a blind ignorance of just how many hours of debugging it will entail, we regularly go off and do something absolutely incredible. I have gained much inspiration from a quote by Mark Twain:
In tandem with this one by Thomas A. Edison:
It's that thrill which drives so much inspiration and pers
You mean something like PatentDot ??? which I suggested on Feb. 12, 2006:
Given that nantechnology has been used in the formulation of sun screens, one could then reasonably ask:
(For the humor impaired, this is a parody of the "Pardon me, do you have any Gray Poupon?" mustard commercials.)
This got me thinking... according to this link: Handwritten address interpretation :
(emphasis mine.)So, it's only a small step to record all that metadata for every letter sent within the USA. Just have postmasters general submit the day's scan logs to the gov't for review for possible terrorist links, and, by the way, archive all th information received. This information could include:
So, maybe you were just joking, but from what I've seen lately, I'd have to suspect that this may already in place... can anyone corroborate this?
Thanks for that link! Want to do something about it? The referenced article states:
Some googling found this link: U.S. Code collection: 78m. Periodical and other reports and the referenced section of the code states:
(emphasis: mine.)As I see it, these telecom companies could have been authorized to lie to the SEC, their shareholders, and the general public about their participation in this. How much will it take for people to realize what is going on... and do something about it? How about people contact the congressional members who are responsible for monitoring these activities? Wikipedia lists the members of these organizations and provides some background: Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate
Actually, the cell phone signal here is marginal, at best. I often have calls drop on me, if I can get them at all. Hence my request in the original post for others to try it and report how it worke for them.
"Cables are already a problem in cars," Santos says, because many manufacturers cram ever more electronic gadgetry into each new model.
She admits the idea of having no physical connections may seem scary at first but believes ultimately it will become an accepted way to control brakes and even steering mechanisms in road vehicles.
Gives new meaning to the expression: War Driving !
Just fire up a strong RF source, drive down the road, and point it at, e.g., the police car that is chasing you. :/ Or, with suitable hacking, you could suddenly take over control of the car next to you on the interstate and take care of his steering and braking for him! Or, for the ambulance chasing types, set up shop downtown and arrange for an "accident" when business is slacking off.
Or, set up with a cantenna and pick planes out of the air whenever you want.
Don't need to blind the pilot with a green laser, blind the plane's electronics, instead. Geesh!
Seriously, I wish people would have a little more common sense. This is just an accident waiting to happen.
It is possible to construct a Faraday Cage to block wireless network signals without blocking cell phone communications... Wireless networking uses 2.4 GHz signals. Cell phones use entirely different frequencies.
Try it yourself! Place your cell phone in a microwave, close the door (but don't turn it on, of course), and call your cell phone. If your phone rings, then the cell phone signal made it past the microwave's faraday cage. And microwave and wireless networking signals are almost the same -- my network throughput dies whenever I use my microwave.
NOTE: Different cell phone frequencies exist, so YMMV. I can't try this myself (no land-line) but according to what I learned in physics class (LONG ago), I'm pretty confident it should work just fine. Anyone want to give this experiment a try and post how it worked for you?
Auction 66 Summary Page
Auction 66 Fact Sheet (Lots of details on this page if you scroll down).
NOTE: These are not virgin frequencies; some relocation of existing users' bandwith is required in order to free up these frequencies. See the Fact Sheet for details.
Heh! In this case there is quite possibly a greater chance of a "casual" link than there is of a "causal" link. What I think you meant, though, was "causal":
casual - occuring by chance . causal - Of, involving, or constituting a causeIOW: You can't casually cause causal casualties! :)
It's the scientific method applied to life - in a game environment so it encourages exploration while having fun. It encourages trial and error. I often learn best from what goes wrong - not just from what succeeds. This reminds me of a couple quotations which have helped me greatly through the years:
and:(I wish I had attribution for these... does anyone know who wrote them?)
The other thing I see is that the game is safe. The player can try things *objectively* without the risk of an *emotional* reaction that a parent might produce. "What the *&#@(% were you THINKING?" I am NOT suggesting parents abdicate their responsibilities to a game! For example: hitting my little brother got a swift reaction from my parents. I learned that I didn't want to get punished, so I stopped doing it. Playing it out in a game, I would get to see the emotional, long-term damage that it would cause -- I would better understand why it was a bad idea.
Here Here! Seti at home had a gazillon(tm) people contributing cycles to the effort (many times in teams) to see who could place highest on the list of contributors.
How about a BFoD - Best Fix Of the Day? Each day, post the name of the submitter and some details about the item debugged and fixed:
This could be further improved by posting a Bug Of the Day (BoD) where there is a daily bug that is to be fixed. The first fixer gets recognized as well as anyone who provides an especially elegant solution. Award bonus points for fixing related bugs in the area so as to promote more complete fixing in that area.
Post these prominently for all to see and I'd be willing to bet that there would be a groundswell of support.
This is just off the top of my head - please post any suggestions for enhancements or (gasp) any problems you see in it!
Besides the obvious military uses, it seems to me that a more popular use would be as an adjunct to MMORPGs (or any other interactive RPG computer game, for that matter). Imagine being able to "see" the bogeys right behind you without having to take your eyes off your current target!
He could not only get willing beta testers, but can you imagine the kind of user-mods/hacks that could be created?! "Only" 144 sensory points? Heck, I just hacked it to provide 1024!
I am certain that the need for focus and persistence to complete the game of Adventure (and later a number of Infocom titles) served me well in my computing career. I started programming in 1972 and later specialized in Software Testing and Software Quality Assurance.
I found that software testing is like playing a game of Adventure:
There are lots of little treasures (low-priority bugs), but once in a while I'd discover just the right "incantation" and locate one of the *really valuable* treasures: System Crash, Infinite Loop, Data Corruption, and Major Security Hole!
There is one significant difference, though... testing has much better pay! :)
FWIW: I first played Adventure in 1978 on an IBM Mainframe (3033) running MTS (Michigan Terminal System) at RPI. Someone in my dorm had found it on our system and we spent the next several months competing to be the first to complete it. I can't recall if I was first, but I *did* make it to Adventure Grandmaster with a perfect score of 350. I was later able to get a copy of it on magtape and a printed listing... I think I may still have them in a box in storage, too.
FTA: NASA astronauts visited the moon during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the Apollo program but have not returned.
I think it's a little late, now, to think of sending up missions to bring them back to earth.<grin>
First off, congratulations on having found potential investors! There are many who have had great ideas but could get no further than the idea. That investors are interested enough in your project that they are looking into HOW to make it work is a major accomplishment. 'Tis easy to focus on problems and to not take comfort in successes. There will ALWAYS be problems... celebrate what you have already accomplished! I promise that kind of an attitude will help wonders in making it through the challenges that WILL come.
<TIC>OTOH, I hope it was NOT your intent to go to your partner and tell him, "8 out of 10 geeks on Slashdot think I should be CEO, so that settles it!" :^)
</TIC>
That said, I have to ask: "Why does the CEO have to be one of you two?" Sure, it's nice to have authority, but in my experience that brings responsibility for those decisions, too. When you're up to your eyeballs in alligators trying to get over a hurdle in development, do you really want to be totally overwhelmed with management problems, too?
I'm sensing there is a fear that you are going to be boxed into a corner with the *responsibility* to do something, but lack the *authority* to carry it out. That's an understandable fear. Your potential investors have fears, too. I have no idea of how much funding you're seeking, but if I were to put up, say, $1 million, I sure as heck would like to know that common, typical problems would not arise and cause the company to fail. Having a deadlock situation on critical decisions has to be high up on the list.
I would offer, therefore, a suggestion: hire a CEO. S/he would have the responsibility. But you (plural, both of you) would ultimately have the authority as you are the co-owners of the company. Better yet, you will have the input of an interested third party. One who just might be able to provide an objective, tie-breaking perspective that would not have come to either of you.
I can already imagine you're thinking: "We can't afford to hire someone else." Let me ask you this: "In light of your current problems in trying to make THIS DECISION, can you really afford NOT to?" Many, many more difficult decisions will come along. You've already had to spend considerable time and effort trying to solve this problem. How much mre time will you have to give up for those new problems? Hire someone you can trust and let THEM do the dirty work FOR you! Be honest... wouldn't you rather be programming right now instead of dealing with this?
Seriously, you might even find that your investors have more than cash to bring to the table. I would not be surprised if the already have someone who would do a better job than EITHER of you ever could. S/he can bring real-world experience of what works. And more importantly, what DOES NOT work! Just make it abundantly clear as you set up your company that the CEO works for YOU.
In the end, it's just a job. If things don't work out, have the company buy out your shares (you DO have that in your articles of incorporation, right?) and then go off and start something else. I've found it's okay to make mistakes, I just try to make new ones each time! <grin>
Lastly, I'm sure you have heard the adage: "hindsight is 20/20." I've found much wisdom in that. So, why not draw on that wisdom, today? When faced with a difficult decision, I have found it extremely helpful to practice what I call: 20/20 Foresight. Just imagine it's some time i
I agree with your thinking in that there should be some kind of penalty based on the number of affected users. I would go one step further and suggest that there should ALSO be a penalty paid to EACH of those customers. I should not have to wait to find out if my identity is/was compromised. Each breach should entitle each customer to a cash payment of, say, $1000.00.
Insurance companies will have an opportunity to provide coverage, companies will have an incentive to obtain coverage, and the insurance companies will have an incentive to provide audits, tools, etc. to help lessen the need for the policies' benefits being paid.
This could appear as reduced rates for following certain best practices. I have had car insurance policies that had a discount for certain anti-theft devices being installed in my car. My homeowner's policy had a discount for cetain smoke detectors.
If a company doesn't want to deal with the hassle of dealing with an insurance company, they should have the option of self-insuring and posting a bond to cover potential losses.
Further, I would like to have a searchable, on-line resource which provided information on which companies had had breaches, the date of the breach, the number of customers affected, and the amount of the fines, penalties. For additional motivation, include who was the president, CEO, CTO, CIO, (and EIEIO :^) at the time. Hmm, add in who was on the board of directors, too.
That way, the dumping of one company and the creation of another with the same actors could not be used to hide from the consequences of their [in]actions.
(Any suggestions on other info to include?)
Ultimately, this might encourage companies to use data encryption as a matter of course - to the point that it becomes the de-facto norm of how information is stored on a computer. Maybe, with time, to the point where Joe Sixpack's home PC or PDA is secure by default. Given some of the articles and posts I've seen on /., I would like to think that, in some small way, this might help protect citizens from governmental intrusions. Not just in the USA, but set an example that could be followed in other countries around the world.
P.S. What would you do differently if these proposals were in effect and your SOHO computer were compromised? I'm pressed for time right now, but just thinking about this from THAT perspective is already making me re-think how I do things.
Actually, I think the reason people fall back onto e-mail is: TRANSPARENCY. The information and the "communications protocol" are both in-band. Whereas, for a proprietary collaboration tool, my experience has been that the communications protocol tends to be out-of-band. Thus, when (not "if") something goes wrong, the means to identify and work-aroud the problem is hidden inside some "complicated" interface.
Just as it is easier to debug my own code than it is to maintain someone else's, I believe a self-constructed protocol, imbedded into e-mail, is easier for users to UNDERSTAND, and thus easier to come up with a solution / word-around. Even if it is not easier (bailing wire and bubble-gum infested historical precedents), it provides the APPEARANCE and hence the BELIEF that problems can be identified and solved.
In short, people tend to fear what they cannot (or will not) understand.
First off, there's a description and history on the wiki scramjet page and here's a description of scramjet operation.
IANARS (I Am Not A Rocket Scientist), but as I understand it, one of the problems in making a working scramjet is How do you go fast enough to compress the air enough to get it to warm up enough to reach combustion temperature?
Questions:
I am NOT suggesting this would solve the entire problem, and I can't be the first to consider this, but it *seems* this would allow combustion to occur at a lower air speed. What am I missing?
PS: The amount of heating of the air and/or fuel could be variable, too, so as to allow it to be used over a range of speeds.
What if the government put out a bid for someone to undertake cyber attacks against them as well as provide funding for the repair/protection of these systems?
Offer, say, $1M to an organization to start cyber attacks on a specified date. These agencies would know full well that such an attack was coming. Do *YOU* want to be the one to try and explain why *YOUR* system was able to be broken into? Just as there was a huge effort to counterract the Y2K "bug", and we survived it relatively unscathed, I'm thinking a scheduled attack would do wonders in getting things secured, ASAP.
We could have nearly impenetrable systems by year's end.
Saving Tips for Business Insurance?
I suppose that's ONE way to do it... Still, I doubt you'll collect enough tips at your receptionist's desk to pay the whole insurance bill. :>
The logging information is just what I was looking for! But a quick search for it on the 'net revealed: this page. Some users lost the contents of their hard disk just by INSTALLING it! (YIKES!) Any other suggestions?
Thanks for the info. I have not tried GoBack, but do have some experience with Norton Ghost. After my Dad's PC got infested with malware, and we finally got it cleaned up, I picked up a copy of ghost and an extra hard drive and periodically backed up his entire disk.
But this solution is not ideal. I'm cautious about installing new software on my PC, but once in a great while, I find something is broken and it could have happened weeks/months ago. Everything seemed to be okay (at the time), but then I discover that it is not. For example, I can no longer write to my CD drive. The last time I tried, successfully, was 2 months ago, and then had a period where I did not try to write anything to CD. (I've got a spare 300GB USB Maxtor Onetouch drive on which I do my backups).
So, now, I need to be able to backtrack:
If I were to roll back my entire system to where it was 2 months ago (say using a Ghost image), I'd still have a boat load of applications to re-install, program defaults to establish, and the like. :/
In my original post Rolling back - what do YOU do? I suggested it would be helpful if there were a log, in human-readable form, which listed all things that are Created, Read, Updated, or Deleted. That, in concert with SysInternals Filemon, Regmon, and Process Monitors, I can find out what's going wrong NOW, and identify which application bolixed things up. Then, using Windows' Add/Remove programs, I should be able to yank just THAT application.
Does anyone have a file logging tool like this for windows? If so, what has your real-world experience been with it? After this McAfee fiasco, I'm not interested in marketing fluff and instead want info from "down in the trenches!"
So, again I ask: how do you backtrack?
Just last week, in response to: The Trouble With Software Upgrades I posted a question asking what do you do to protect yourself from automatic updates that go bad... but I got no responses. In light of the current situation, I'd really appreciate hearing some responses, here.