I disagree. Software As A Service has not as-yet clear boundaries, so perhaps both definitions apply. When you paint it as the fear-mongering, DRM-laden "you don't touch the box" version, it's a bit of a stretch from today. I don't think folks would like to wait for each piece of software to download each time they click on an icon.
I see software as local, pulled down in persistent modules, with only it's accessability managed by-wire. This means that it may exist, but cannot be run (without hacking) because it needs to check with a remote server. This is perhaps where we diverge, and thats ok with me.
SAAS to me simply means you pay for a time-period of software usage - you're renting it instead of buying it. How all that occurs is up for debate, but the models of doing it in small checks or large downloads (ug) is no different.
All my other examples were trying to point out pieces of tech that already use similar models. You deny it as loud as you want, but in fact they apply: Each is an example of downloading and installing permanent or temporary pieces of software under sort implied license. Time-bombing the license, setting up a recurring fee, and pushing updates in the background via a service are the next steps. We'll see what parts of the market embrace it.
All programs are supposed to "behave accordingly" - and ones that don't are usually classified as malware. For example, if a program accesses the network without explicitly saying so, or needing to for the type of program it is (would you be surprised if calculator accessed the web?) - then it "isn't behaving." The significance is that if a program is updating itself in the background without the user's knowledge (many do already), then we're changing the market model.
But SAAS is very different in full commodizied form:
Imagine if said calculator program offered a menu of "buy once", "buy package" or "subscribe to all" to expand the functions it could perform, and capabilities for graphing, tracking data, etc. People would buy what they like, without paying for parts they didn't. And yes, it would be tied to that program and no others, so DRM exists there.
I'd much rather have many productivity programs like the Office Suite, MS's OS parts, etc come in packages that I didn't have to get if I didn't want (even in a bundle) unless I explicitly asked. Today, people do the opposite, they buy the entire package (or a rough guess, like Vista's "levels") and then tune within those bounds. Imagine only paying for and getting the parts you need. This is the answer to bloatware packages.
DRM in these cases is the same as implied today: If you bought it, it's yours. Want it on multiple machines at once? You should buy multiple copies, otherwise there is a transfer. Check out the Steam model for the plus/minus viewpoints. Giving to friends and family was always a no-no, so simply going to SAAS doesn't do more than enforce what has always been the understood market.
Overall, the model isn't much different to how most Linux distros work, or how I choose the cygwin image I like per box I want to configure. The SAAS model simply ties that "menu of downloads" to the concepts on the application menu live. Imagine if cygwin had an app to research and acquire/install further apps from the command line. This is the same concept, except tied to a market model where money is paid for such acquisitions. I research "function lookup" and see flavors of ctag() offered. If my connection is configured, it simply downloads it and installs it. No big deal. This is how I maintain BSD now.
Now imagine a core MS Excel without most of the bloat. I dynamically get the drawing package, dictionary/thesaurus, ODBC connectivity, and scripting package for a price, hooked to that Excel install. I'm not sure what issues you have with that, except ranting about DRM. If I cleanly unregister those packages via the software/network, I can use my account to put them elsewhere.
Of all the evidence I've already listed of this occuring in the real world, with or without paid models, you have to admit: We are going to a commoditized model for SAAS. Packages are simply too large, diverse, and the market too fragmented to ask everyone to buy the whole cart each time. Plus, why fill up your hard drive with things you don't want?
This *will* cause a fragmentation of "who do I have accounts with?" for all the software on your machine, which is going to be fought over by many large vendors. Indeed, we see this same competition by the large online portals now. MSN, Yahoo, Google, NYT, even/. etc all want you to have a subscription for some price - where you can get extra content and software.
The last step of letting a vendor manage a sandbox on your hard drive is not far away. One could argue that file sharing/torrent models already do this hands-off.
Uh, what? What in the world does file sharing/torrent models have to do with vendor's managed a "sandbox" on your harddrive? What does that even MEAN?
If I'm not mistaken, torrent pieces are distributed without explicit knowledge of the machine owner. This means, in effect, each machine has dedicated a "sandbox" to be managed by the node software.
Locally stored software is exactly what I'm talking about. Don't confuse Software As A Service with the concept of download on demand. I'm not not saying any of this is revolutionary, quite the opposite. I'm stating that SAAS is a concept that simply hasn't been standardized/commoditized yet, but will be. We're not far from it already.
Actually, I know of several enterprises that wouldn't mind trading in their huge infrastructure of Support Centers, Compatability Labs, Desktop Maintenance, etc. SAAS (Software As A Service) won't remove all this, but if the netework-based OS grows, there a bit less to manage in-house.
Service models are already common in technology (power, bandwidth, hardware, projects). Software will be no different, and I'm quite eager to see companies leapfrog over one another to offer the best model.
We're already moving to halfway-there models: Torrent for software, WGA/Steam for ownership, OS updates via FTP, Web-based everything (photo,document,email,maps,package tracking). The last step of letting a vendor manage a sandbox on your hard drive is not far away. One could argue that file sharing/torrent models already do this hands-off.
The last-mile step of clicking on the Trust request, Install/Update request, possible reboot is all thats left for many of these things. If a company wants to enter into a trusted agreement with a vendor to remove these clicks, they should IMHO.
In the end, companies just want their employees to have an appliance for productivity - not "rights" about ownership of machines, not "freedom" to mix-match packages and preferences. This is a much different beast than a home computer. Anyone who's watched an audit of a company's PCs knows all the crap that gunks up the works on them.
It'll be delicate, but think of how far software install/udpate/audit/clean tasks have come already. I agree with TFA, we're not far from SAAS oferings.
After all my wins of "things" - I always lack from the inability to connect to more people by just buying stuff. Skip that expensive lesson and just try to meet more people (adult classes, bike/book/art clubs, community theatre, dart/bowling/pool leagues). These days, I use the neighborhood potluck concept to bring people together and play silly boardgames. This cascades into weekend bike rides, hikes, dog babysitters, recipie sharing, and lots of laughs.
Your resourse is to encourage more and more of your neighbors to introduce themselves to such neighbor. To ask him/her why they want to keep such things, to talk though the issues. This is the heart of "neighborhood," which goes beyond just a collective location for people to live. Communication clears things up much faster than not.
All in all, the (re)telling of this story underscores one thing in my mind: You can do almost anything if you have the balls. Errikson may have needed a few attempts (and jail sentences) to get the act down, but eventually he walked and talked like a successful gangster.
Sadly, the mindset to work such blatent lies seems to coincide with a juvenile need to collect shite and "play fancy." This is by far one of the most telling aspects of the story: It was motivated by intense greed.
I've been richer and poorer than now, and I have to say that Satisfaction for me derives from doing, not having. Strinking a balance between luddite and materialist, one has to find a way of extracting value from life without just collecting overly-expensive things.
Re:10 hours is a lot, really.
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Actually, "Atlas Shrugged" can be read in about 15 minutes, since any synopsis of it will eschew the mundane character development and endless repetition of capitalistic independence. As for economic philosophy, try reading about the effects of unchecked consumptive capitalism in the real world (The Wal-Mart Effect) instead of fiction from last century.
I'd be more impressed by high-altitude drone blimps that could move silently and take high-resolution videos in a variety of frequencies. Given that air currents would carry them far and away, perhaps they eventually collapse/drop their balloon sections and fly/glide home (or dive bomb). More interesting to me. There no end to the silly ways we can combine technology.
Lotteries, casinos, poker and slots in bars, horse and dog betting, general sports betting via your wookplace bookie, and playing poker with your buddies at home is still legal.
This is just going to push the online gambling towards clearing houses for accounts overseas. If I can register to put money in offshore account, then build a paypal-like link to a site, then register for gambling using this as credential and escrow, nothing stops folks from playing (perhaps via proxy). Overall, this is just silly.
As soon as YouTube places commercials in front of their vids, even if they cookie them to just 1 per hour per viewer, the money will be flooding in.
Here's why: YouTube's content review and tagging system for searches, plus their popularity and "stars" rating systems are perfect metadata for targeted ads. Not "somewhat fuzzily targeted" based on collected trends but directly. That car. That skateboard. THAT song. Learn THAT trick. Go to THAT place. All for sale "HERE".
People won't stand for too many, but tuned right the loss of viewers from annoyance versus the revenue from commercials' simple brainwashing techniques (think of commercials as competing social memes) will balance.
Like spinning arrows marking paragraphs?
Howabout dancing pokemon?
Forum avatar images that flash, blink and jump?
Emoticons that wink and wave?
Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?
There are two metaphors here people are used to: Static reading mode, and TV mode. Combining the two is a no no. Do NOT animate portions of a reading metaphor (over-stimuli), and do NOT ask people to just read words via video (under-stimuli).
The same goes for sound. If people want to listen to something, OFFER it to them, and let them control the start and stop of it. Playing sounds unasked on a web page is just...trashy. Animations are no different.
HINT: Adblock is popular for a reason. Even IE6 allows one to stop GIFs from animating.
No, I predict Zune-based file transfers are DOA. Here's why: Most private music collections are not kept on the portables, so transferring the song over wireless + broadband (almost everywhere this Zune market is) is alreay easy, DRM-free.
Once the public learns that Zune-transferred song only last 3 days, they will either rip it from Zunes or simply send it to their friends another way.
...that they themselves are a brand. They sell their methods, scope and delivery as of the highest quality and strongest reliability. They have an established market, cater their style towards the "executive" woodgrain model, and compete with an ever-stronger ear to the ground: the 'net and specifically the tech blogosphere.
They opine on techniques that have resulted in both success and failure, quote objective data, and compile their own trends and predictions. This isn't necessarily bad, but taken alone (and they price and market themselves as the only source necessary) can make for a myopic view of the world.
Their predictions are "poor to fair" in my opinion. Their influences worked badly at shops I've seen, which are more "good ole boy" than "hip entrpreneur". Their style to digest large amounts of trending information and craft a slick prediction does not make a process leader. In fact, it can make an environment seem "behind the times" as well as "constantly changing" since shops that get directed to perform changes based on Gartner papers too often switch gears to trends already fading.
Much of what they say is execu-craft-speak, without stating anything concrete at all. Only the style of the presentation and perceived caliber of the brand have influence. Plenty of other magazines try this too (see the cage litter "Application Development Trends").
Component-model designs, where change is encapsulated in replaceable (and OTS) pieces, has been a goal for some time. Software projects that slide scope cannot simply "be killed." The charge that programmers constantly find better ways to perform the same tasks is at the heart of the technology era: Programming itself is one of the tasks becoming better automated every day, just like the business tasks they code for.
Fascinating article, and I have to admit to not seeing it before. But I have heard of the implications a negative trend. As you alluded, there are problems each way. Personally, having been through one direction, I wouldn't mind helping find solutions to the other. The survival of the species during the Plague, the subsequent dark period of relative stagnation, then the recovery with the Enlightenment, would seem to me to be an example worth thinking about. No doubt, with this Information Age upon us, the choices of what to really hang our hat on are so numerous as to be paralyzing.
Genetic algorithms are still a long long way from strong AI. One doesn't just choose the right selection parameters for later generations based on how "real" the program acts. The embryology stage of converting a single sequence of master instructions into a "thing" is still hugely complex, and a I doubt strong AI will skip that stage.
A large part of the strong AI models are built around the 5 senses (including the passage of time, so add one). Once you can process those input streams efficiently, you still have just one interpretation of data that may or may not mimic human processing. Remember, our senses process a narrow band of the available environmental data (see: animals that use sonar, electromagnetism, different light frequencies, different tactile sensitivities, different perceptions of time).
Now assume you even build/select for this bull's eye similarity to humanity. The mimicry of emotion and intellect are still not close. The chemical soup driving our own complex machinery for this is still beyond computing power, and our investigative power, so that only models suffice for experiments.
White-room examples of robots dancing, talking on the phone to an automated teller, or watching a chat bot freak someone are interesting, but limited. Read the news and notice the insightful (and insane) things taking place with people everywhere, and then ask if this is really what we really need to replicate in the first place.
I would argue that "strong AI" isn't necessary, but essentially forming a replication system of any kind would be a more interesting goal, as unintelligent as neccessary. The lower we could push the start of such a machine's beginnings (sunlight, sand and water?) the closer we are to the blackboard that intelligence came from in the first place. Remember, our brains are 3.8 billion years in the making (origins of life until now), and still we ourselves aren't smart enough to solve many more problems than survival.
Indeed, the only way to truly win is not to play the game. The market economy we live in requires an ever-growing population. This is no secret, and the whole theme to many political bouts comes down to surviving as a global economical powerhouse through this growth.
I'd much rather start to see humble and thoughtful look on the growth of populations relative to resources devoured (and waste made). Someday someone will state that it is not a simple ratio, but closer to exponential cost.
Think about not pushing your genes onward. Actually, given that higher-incomes have less children on average, think about adopting an at-risk child and giving them a good education.
Not only does Gore fly around in a jet and drive a big car...
This is why you discount the message of global warming? Mr Gore may himself need to learn a few changes, but please don't wait for anyone to be the example for you to change yourself. Anything else is just rationalizing the Business As Usual which will someday get society a big slap in the face.
9/11? I doubt it. The segway is mostly a marketing boondoggle IMHO:
There is a narrow band of physically handicapped that it serves (there was already a wheelchair by Kamen's company that aided the "sitting style").
It only replaces walking, which is by far the number-one necessary motion for our population's health.
It weighs more than it's intended market can safely lift.
It performs poorly compared to a bicycle. (integration systems with autos, variations in design/collapse-ability, maintenance)
It costs more than a used car.
It cannot safely navigate curbs, cambered surfaces, or wet/slick surfaces
It is limited in distance and usage by a battery system that adds complexity, saves no overall energy, and ensures operating costs out of your control (price of energy).
It cannot "go everywhere" since overhead clearance indoors is an issue.
It's width, exposed wheels, potential for mishandling, precluded it from most cities' sidewalks.
It screams "pampered dork" in it's aesthetics.
I'd much rather use a recumbant or upright bicycle. While not solving all of the above, it is a time-tested design that suffers from few comparable problems.
Ok, I'll go along with you, if only in terms. The concept of hypnotic, or relaxed-stated learning is nothing new (late-night TV adverts can seems overly repetative for a reason) - and I was linking to a "sleep-learning" site. It is officially not "Sublimial."
I've used hypnotic learning programs, where one plays a tape in a relaxed state (not faling asleep). They were not instructional, but simply motivational, and I've felt they were effecctive. I'm unsure how much was hypnosis and how much was self-delusion, but it was a fun experiment.
I am aware that the entire basis of hypnosis itself is sometimes questioned. I'm unaware of any studies linking "suggestability" to relaxation states, which may perhaps clear things up there.
I seriously doubt the capbilities of a GIF to recreate a true subliminal advertisement. It's a bit dependent on the screen position, machine load, audience's focus, etc. With a movie or a a captured TV audience, it's a bit stronger. Also, this isn't a metaphorical allure, but simply a crude flashing.
I doubt this is going to be much of a difference in SPAM, and is rather a sales differentiation point for a mass marketeer. Somebody is paying extra for this, for sure.
"Dasyatids do not attack aggressively, or even actively defend themselves. When threatened their primary reaction is to swim away. However, when they are attacked by predators or stepped on, the barbed stinger in their tail is mechanically whipped up, usually into the offending foot; it is also possible, although less likely, to be stung "accidentally" by brushing against the stinger. Contact with the stinger causes local trauma (from the cut itself), pain and swelling from the venom, and possible infection from parts of the stinger left in the wound, as well as from seawater entering the wound. It is possible for ray stings to be fatal if they sever major arteries, are in the chest or pelvic region, or are improperly treated."
--- The antics of dancing around dangerous animals will detract from this man's legacy forever. At his core, he was indeed a strong advocate for protecting natural habitats. Too bad he felt needed to traipse around in them. The lasting irony is that he was filming a production to "demystify the stingray" - no mystery here, they're fucking dangerous (but rarely deadly).
There's no guarantee that you're decoding to full res, that your player WILL EVER be able to decode to full res, that full res is even WORTH watching, and that you ever really OWN the content you bought.
Why would anyone buy this stuff? There's few positive selling points about it. Movies are on DVD for as long as anyone can foresee, and computers can record on these formats and play on setops. What are the market-accepted details for the new formats? Nobody can decide.
Peh, I'd love to see the capacities go up, but DRM fouled both these formats. Nobody's going to wipe the stink off them, and so we must let them die. Perhaps a company will simply go for capacity and format without mucking around with anything else.
make it more difficult than just going out and buying it. "going out" and buying it is vastly more inconvenient.
A single bit flag that commercial CD burning software respects would be enough Why care about burning a CD when disc space and bandwidth is cheap?
Variations on a theme:
- Bytes transferred to user's machine + swapped disk images can run the complete game.
- Bytes captured from user's machine + swapped disk images can be copied.
- Tricks to look for original media are removed from said software.
- Online registration suffers from being just another "check" for a special value. It can be removed.
Heh. Silly me. I was really expecting an account of the state-of-the-art of copyright protection schemes. Y'know, Valve's details, current other mechanisms, etc.
TFA instead gives a belly-laugh of some strange russian software copyright company. Pardon the ignorance here.
I guess if I wanted to get a real summary, we go yet again to the Grouptionary.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. Software As A Service has not as-yet clear boundaries, so perhaps both definitions apply. When you paint it as the fear-mongering, DRM-laden "you don't touch the box" version, it's a bit of a stretch from today. I don't think folks would like to wait for each piece of software to download each time they click on an icon.
I see software as local, pulled down in persistent modules, with only it's accessability managed by-wire. This means that it may exist, but cannot be run (without hacking) because it needs to check with a remote server. This is perhaps where we diverge, and thats ok with me.
SAAS to me simply means you pay for a time-period of software usage - you're renting it instead of buying it. How all that occurs is up for debate, but the models of doing it in small checks or large downloads (ug) is no different.
All my other examples were trying to point out pieces of tech that already use similar models. You deny it as loud as you want, but in fact they apply: Each is an example of downloading and installing permanent or temporary pieces of software under sort implied license. Time-bombing the license, setting up a recurring fee, and pushing updates in the background via a service are the next steps. We'll see what parts of the market embrace it.
All programs are supposed to "behave accordingly" - and ones that don't are usually classified as malware. For example, if a program accesses the network without explicitly saying so, or needing to for the type of program it is (would you be surprised if calculator accessed the web?) - then it "isn't behaving." The significance is that if a program is updating itself in the background without the user's knowledge (many do already), then we're changing the market model.
/. etc all want you to have a subscription for some price - where you can get extra content and software.
But SAAS is very different in full commodizied form:
Imagine if said calculator program offered a menu of "buy once", "buy package" or "subscribe to all" to expand the functions it could perform, and capabilities for graphing, tracking data, etc. People would buy what they like, without paying for parts they didn't. And yes, it would be tied to that program and no others, so DRM exists there.
I'd much rather have many productivity programs like the Office Suite, MS's OS parts, etc come in packages that I didn't have to get if I didn't want (even in a bundle) unless I explicitly asked. Today, people do the opposite, they buy the entire package (or a rough guess, like Vista's "levels") and then tune within those bounds. Imagine only paying for and getting the parts you need. This is the answer to bloatware packages.
DRM in these cases is the same as implied today: If you bought it, it's yours. Want it on multiple machines at once? You should buy multiple copies, otherwise there is a transfer. Check out the Steam model for the plus/minus viewpoints. Giving to friends and family was always a no-no, so simply going to SAAS doesn't do more than enforce what has always been the understood market.
Overall, the model isn't much different to how most Linux distros work, or how I choose the cygwin image I like per box I want to configure. The SAAS model simply ties that "menu of downloads" to the concepts on the application menu live. Imagine if cygwin had an app to research and acquire/install further apps from the command line. This is the same concept, except tied to a market model where money is paid for such acquisitions. I research "function lookup" and see flavors of ctag() offered. If my connection is configured, it simply downloads it and installs it. No big deal. This is how I maintain BSD now.
Now imagine a core MS Excel without most of the bloat. I dynamically get the drawing package, dictionary/thesaurus, ODBC connectivity, and scripting package for a price, hooked to that Excel install. I'm not sure what issues you have with that, except ranting about DRM. If I cleanly unregister those packages via the software/network, I can use my account to put them elsewhere.
Of all the evidence I've already listed of this occuring in the real world, with or without paid models, you have to admit: We are going to a commoditized model for SAAS. Packages are simply too large, diverse, and the market too fragmented to ask everyone to buy the whole cart each time. Plus, why fill up your hard drive with things you don't want?
This *will* cause a fragmentation of "who do I have accounts with?" for all the software on your machine, which is going to be fought over by many large vendors. Indeed, we see this same competition by the large online portals now. MSN, Yahoo, Google, NYT, even
If I'm not mistaken, torrent pieces are distributed without explicit knowledge of the machine owner. This means, in effect, each machine has dedicated a "sandbox" to be managed by the node software.
Locally stored software is exactly what I'm talking about. Don't confuse Software As A Service with the concept of download on demand. I'm not not saying any of this is revolutionary, quite the opposite. I'm stating that SAAS is a concept that simply hasn't been standardized/commoditized yet, but will be. We're not far from it already.
Actually, I know of several enterprises that wouldn't mind trading in their huge infrastructure of Support Centers, Compatability Labs, Desktop Maintenance, etc. SAAS (Software As A Service) won't remove all this, but if the netework-based OS grows, there a bit less to manage in-house.
Service models are already common in technology (power, bandwidth, hardware, projects). Software will be no different, and I'm quite eager to see companies leapfrog over one another to offer the best model.
We're already moving to halfway-there models: Torrent for software, WGA/Steam for ownership, OS updates via FTP, Web-based everything (photo,document,email,maps,package tracking). The last step of letting a vendor manage a sandbox on your hard drive is not far away. One could argue that file sharing/torrent models already do this hands-off.
The last-mile step of clicking on the Trust request, Install/Update request, possible reboot is all thats left for many of these things. If a company wants to enter into a trusted agreement with a vendor to remove these clicks, they should IMHO.
In the end, companies just want their employees to have an appliance for productivity - not "rights" about ownership of machines, not "freedom" to mix-match packages and preferences. This is a much different beast than a home computer. Anyone who's watched an audit of a company's PCs knows all the crap that gunks up the works on them.
It'll be delicate, but think of how far software install/udpate/audit/clean tasks have come already. I agree with TFA, we're not far from SAAS oferings.
After all my wins of "things" - I always lack from the inability to connect to more people by just buying stuff. Skip that expensive lesson and just try to meet more people (adult classes, bike/book/art clubs, community theatre, dart/bowling/pool leagues). These days, I use the neighborhood potluck concept to bring people together and play silly boardgames. This cascades into weekend bike rides, hikes, dog babysitters, recipie sharing, and lots of laughs.
Your resourse is to encourage more and more of your neighbors to introduce themselves to such neighbor. To ask him/her why they want to keep such things, to talk though the issues. This is the heart of "neighborhood," which goes beyond just a collective location for people to live. Communication clears things up much faster than not.
All in all, the (re)telling of this story underscores one thing in my mind: You can do almost anything if you have the balls. Errikson may have needed a few attempts (and jail sentences) to get the act down, but eventually he walked and talked like a successful gangster.
Sadly, the mindset to work such blatent lies seems to coincide with a juvenile need to collect shite and "play fancy." This is by far one of the most telling aspects of the story: It was motivated by intense greed.
I've been richer and poorer than now, and I have to say that Satisfaction for me derives from doing, not having. Strinking a balance between luddite and materialist, one has to find a way of extracting value from life without just collecting overly-expensive things.
Actually, "Atlas Shrugged" can be read in about 15 minutes, since any synopsis of it will eschew the mundane character development and endless repetition of capitalistic independence. As for economic philosophy, try reading about the effects of unchecked consumptive capitalism in the real world (The Wal-Mart Effect) instead of fiction from last century.
I'd be more impressed by high-altitude drone blimps that could move silently and take high-resolution videos in a variety of frequencies. Given that air currents would carry them far and away, perhaps they eventually collapse/drop their balloon sections and fly/glide home (or dive bomb). More interesting to me. There no end to the silly ways we can combine technology.
Lotteries, casinos, poker and slots in bars, horse and dog betting, general sports betting via your wookplace bookie, and playing poker with your buddies at home is still legal.
This is just going to push the online gambling towards clearing houses for accounts overseas. If I can register to put money in offshore account, then build a paypal-like link to a site, then register for gambling using this as credential and escrow, nothing stops folks from playing (perhaps via proxy). Overall, this is just silly.
Commercials.
As soon as YouTube places commercials in front of their vids, even if they cookie them to just 1 per hour per viewer, the money will be flooding in.
Here's why: YouTube's content review and tagging system for searches, plus their popularity and "stars" rating systems are perfect metadata for targeted ads. Not "somewhat fuzzily targeted" based on collected trends but directly. That car. That skateboard. THAT song. Learn THAT trick. Go to THAT place. All for sale "HERE".
People won't stand for too many, but tuned right the loss of viewers from annoyance versus the revenue from commercials' simple brainwashing techniques (think of commercials as competing social memes) will balance.
Dude, GIF for animations?
Like spinning arrows marking paragraphs?
Howabout dancing pokemon?
Forum avatar images that flash, blink and jump?
Emoticons that wink and wave?
Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?
There are two metaphors here people are used to: Static reading mode, and TV mode. Combining the two is a no no. Do NOT animate portions of a reading metaphor (over-stimuli), and do NOT ask people to just read words via video (under-stimuli).
The same goes for sound. If people want to listen to something, OFFER it to them, and let them control the start and stop of it. Playing sounds unasked on a web page is just...trashy. Animations are no different.
HINT: Adblock is popular for a reason. Even IE6 allows one to stop GIFs from animating.
No, I predict Zune-based file transfers are DOA. Here's why: Most private music collections are not kept on the portables, so transferring the song over wireless + broadband (almost everywhere this Zune market is) is alreay easy, DRM-free.
Once the public learns that Zune-transferred song only last 3 days, they will either rip it from Zunes or simply send it to their friends another way.
They opine on techniques that have resulted in both success and failure, quote objective data, and compile their own trends and predictions. This isn't necessarily bad, but taken alone (and they price and market themselves as the only source necessary) can make for a myopic view of the world.
Their predictions are "poor to fair" in my opinion. Their influences worked badly at shops I've seen, which are more "good ole boy" than "hip entrpreneur". Their style to digest large amounts of trending information and craft a slick prediction does not make a process leader. In fact, it can make an environment seem "behind the times" as well as "constantly changing" since shops that get directed to perform changes based on Gartner papers too often switch gears to trends already fading.
Much of what they say is execu-craft-speak, without stating anything concrete at all. Only the style of the presentation and perceived caliber of the brand have influence. Plenty of other magazines try this too (see the cage litter "Application Development Trends").
Component-model designs, where change is encapsulated in replaceable (and OTS) pieces, has been a goal for some time. Software projects that slide scope cannot simply "be killed." The charge that programmers constantly find better ways to perform the same tasks is at the heart of the technology era: Programming itself is one of the tasks becoming better automated every day, just like the business tasks they code for.
Fascinating article, and I have to admit to not seeing it before. But I have heard of the implications a negative trend. As you alluded, there are problems each way. Personally, having been through one direction, I wouldn't mind helping find solutions to the other. The survival of the species during the Plague, the subsequent dark period of relative stagnation, then the recovery with the Enlightenment, would seem to me to be an example worth thinking about. No doubt, with this Information Age upon us, the choices of what to really hang our hat on are so numerous as to be paralyzing.
Genetic algorithms are still a long long way from strong AI. One doesn't just choose the right selection parameters for later generations based on how "real" the program acts. The embryology stage of converting a single sequence of master instructions into a "thing" is still hugely complex, and a I doubt strong AI will skip that stage.
A large part of the strong AI models are built around the 5 senses (including the passage of time, so add one). Once you can process those input streams efficiently, you still have just one interpretation of data that may or may not mimic human processing. Remember, our senses process a narrow band of the available environmental data (see: animals that use sonar, electromagnetism, different light frequencies, different tactile sensitivities, different perceptions of time).
Now assume you even build/select for this bull's eye similarity to humanity. The mimicry of emotion and intellect are still not close. The chemical soup driving our own complex machinery for this is still beyond computing power, and our investigative power, so that only models suffice for experiments.
White-room examples of robots dancing, talking on the phone to an automated teller, or watching a chat bot freak someone are interesting, but limited. Read the news and notice the insightful (and insane) things taking place with people everywhere, and then ask if this is really what we really need to replicate in the first place.
I would argue that "strong AI" isn't necessary, but essentially forming a replication system of any kind would be a more interesting goal, as unintelligent as neccessary. The lower we could push the start of such a machine's beginnings (sunlight, sand and water?) the closer we are to the blackboard that intelligence came from in the first place. Remember, our brains are 3.8 billion years in the making (origins of life until now), and still we ourselves aren't smart enough to solve many more problems than survival.
Indeed, the only way to truly win is not to play the game. The market economy we live in requires an ever-growing population. This is no secret, and the whole theme to many political bouts comes down to surviving as a global economical powerhouse through this growth.
I'd much rather start to see humble and thoughtful look on the growth of populations relative to resources devoured (and waste made). Someday someone will state that it is not a simple ratio, but closer to exponential cost.
Think about not pushing your genes onward. Actually, given that higher-incomes have less children on average, think about adopting an at-risk child and giving them a good education.
Not only does Gore fly around in a jet and drive a big car...
This is why you discount the message of global warming? Mr Gore may himself need to learn a few changes, but please don't wait for anyone to be the example for you to change yourself. Anything else is just rationalizing the Business As Usual which will someday get society a big slap in the face.
Then again, I think it needs just such a slap.
I'd much rather use a recumbant or upright bicycle. While not solving all of the above, it is a time-tested design that suffers from few comparable problems.
Ok, I'll go along with you, if only in terms. The concept of hypnotic, or relaxed-stated learning is nothing new (late-night TV adverts can seems overly repetative for a reason) - and I was linking to a "sleep-learning" site. It is officially not "Sublimial."
I've used hypnotic learning programs, where one plays a tape in a relaxed state (not faling asleep). They were not instructional, but simply motivational, and I've felt they were effecctive. I'm unsure how much was hypnosis and how much was self-delusion, but it was a fun experiment.
I am aware that the entire basis of hypnosis itself is sometimes questioned. I'm unaware of any studies linking "suggestability" to relaxation states, which may perhaps clear things up there.
I seriously doubt the capbilities of a GIF to recreate a true subliminal advertisement. It's a bit dependent on the screen position, machine load, audience's focus, etc. With a movie or a a captured TV audience, it's a bit stronger. Also, this isn't a metaphorical allure, but simply a crude flashing.
For some things subliminal messages can work. For others, it is well-known to be completely ineffective.
I doubt this is going to be much of a difference in SPAM, and is rather a sales differentiation point for a mass marketeer. Somebody is paying extra for this, for sure.
From the Grouptionary:
"Dasyatids do not attack aggressively, or even actively defend themselves. When threatened their primary reaction is to swim away. However, when they are attacked by predators or stepped on, the barbed stinger in their tail is mechanically whipped up, usually into the offending foot; it is also possible, although less likely, to be stung "accidentally" by brushing against the stinger. Contact with the stinger causes local trauma (from the cut itself), pain and swelling from the venom, and possible infection from parts of the stinger left in the wound, as well as from seawater entering the wound. It is possible for ray stings to be fatal if they sever major arteries, are in the chest or pelvic region, or are improperly treated."
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The antics of dancing around dangerous animals will detract from this man's legacy forever. At his core, he was indeed a strong advocate for protecting natural habitats. Too bad he felt needed to traipse around in them. The lasting irony is that he was filming a production to "demystify the stingray" - no mystery here, they're fucking dangerous (but rarely deadly).
There's no guarantee that you're decoding to full res, that your player WILL EVER be able to decode to full res, that full res is even WORTH watching, and that you ever really OWN the content you bought.
Why would anyone buy this stuff? There's few positive selling points about it. Movies are on DVD for as long as anyone can foresee, and computers can record on these formats and play on setops. What are the market-accepted details for the new formats? Nobody can decide.
Peh, I'd love to see the capacities go up, but DRM fouled both these formats. Nobody's going to wipe the stink off them, and so we must let them die. Perhaps a company will simply go for capacity and format without mucking around with anything else.
make it more difficult than just going out and buying it.
"going out" and buying it is vastly more inconvenient.
A single bit flag that commercial CD burning software respects would be enough
Why care about burning a CD when disc space and bandwidth is cheap?
Variations on a theme:
- Bytes transferred to user's machine + swapped disk images can run the complete game.
- Bytes captured from user's machine + swapped disk images can be copied.
- Tricks to look for original media are removed from said software.
- Online registration suffers from being just another "check" for a special value. It can be removed.
Heh. Silly me. I was really expecting an account of the state-of-the-art of copyright protection schemes. Y'know, Valve's details, current other mechanisms, etc.
TFA instead gives a belly-laugh of some strange russian software copyright company. Pardon the ignorance here.
I guess if I wanted to get a real summary, we go yet again to the Grouptionary.