How do you reconcile your opinion with the fact (had you read the report) that the biggest complaint from the workers were: 1) Not enough available overtime in the off peak season 2) Lack of transportation out of the dorms after work hours
These people want MORE overtime. When I was working at a $50k job, hourly, overtime was GREAT. Sure, they aren't working $50k jobs, but don't ruin their dreams with your misplaced ideals. These people want the pay (of course they want more, at $50k a year I was wanting $70k), want the overtime, and want the opportunities.
Yes I can! NASA's goals and methods are conducive to specific things, not EVERYTHING. You are asking for everything and anything.
NASA can put up satellites, space stations, design rockets, design satellites, etc. Researchers working with NASA discover answers and at the same time discover NEW QUESTIONS.
For example, dark matter, as a theory, didn't exist 100 years ago. It wasn't until researchers (including NASA) discovered enough about the universe to make the discrepency between observed matter and observed gravity noticable.
The speed of light has always been fixed, but it wasn't until the tools became available that it became apparant that was true; nor until Einstein came up with general and special relativity that the reason for that limit existed.
NASA finds answers, and finds more questions. In searching space they discover that the cosmos is different, and so more questions get asked and old questions answered, discarded, or ignored. All the questions you bring up: Red shift (only an issue because size is incorrect) Size (only an issue because gravity/light doesn't measure up) Dark matter (only an issue because observations don't match predictions) Age (only an issue because size, redshift, and gravity doesn't match up) Planets (only an issue because we NEVER had a definition for planet before)
They aren't "truths" you write down and then fix. That is the realm of religion, faith, and the philosophical. Science, and NASA, is about continued search, exploration, breaking apart of old truths, discovering new models, and abandoning old models.
How many times have I read in the past 5 years that no one agrees on what causes red shifts, in space is finite, whether dark matter or dark energy exist, how old the planet is, how old the universe is, or whether or not we have 8, 9, 10, or 11 planets in the solar system?
None of those are NASA problems to solve though.
You can't measure redshift by sending a man to the Moon. You measure redshift using spectrometers, CCDs, and telescopes. You don't discover if space is finite through sending men to Mars. You measure the size of the universe with LIGOS, gravity waves, extra sensitive space telescopes, and redshift. You can't verify dark matter by sending men into space. You detect dark matter with ariel surveys, LIGOS, telescopes, and predictive computer models. You verify dark matter using quasar and supernova bursts and telescopes. And on and on and on.
Apple isn't winning the mp3 player market because iPods have good interfaces, they are winning because their marketing machine has made iPod synonymous with mp3 player... I think they will lose eventually because I believe that rational consumers will one day look past marketing and compare actual products. The point of my post was theres a good number of people who have tried iPods and they've fallen short or have heard horror stories about them and are unwilling to try them any more.
But they are winning because of their good interfaces. If the average user bought an iPod and could not use them, they would return them. If an average user bought a Cowon, which you argue has one of the worst interfaces out there, and could not use it, it would get trashed.
What is happening, at least from what I have seen in the five years I have owned an iPod, is people buy an iPod, learn how to use them quickly, and keep them. People buy Samsungs, Creatives, Sonys, etc, get frustrated, and then ditch them.
Your automatic/manual analogy isn't bad, except it's not extreme enough. Pre iPod the Creative Nomad had 11 buttons; post iPod the Creative Zen V now only has four buttons. So if you want to use the a/m analogy, imagine three different clutches. The iPod debuted in 2001 with five buttons and a scroll wheel against the then dominant Nomad. It took until 2004, with the release of the Zen Micro, for them to adopt the smaller form factor (switching from desktop to notebook to finally microdrive) and simpler interface as well as the iPod UI. Before that they were much harder.
People STILL complain about the Sony software; again the a/m analogy, with iTunes you pop in a CD and hit 'rip', then you plug in an iPod and wait. That's it. For most other software the process is still much harder.
So if it isn't Sony, Creative, Cowon, or Samsung with the better interfaces, who HAS the better interface to take down the iPod. As I said before, the interface is the device, and without a usable interface the device itself is unusable.
I think a lot of the smaller players have a better players* and (eventually) customers will wise up to that. More competition! More features! More better!
* A lot fo them really need to work on the interface and the sync up software.
How can they be better players if the interface and sync software aren't up to snuff? In the consumer electronics space, the interface really is the product, isn't it?
If you compare two products, and the inferior one has the superior interface, doesn't that mean it is easier to use, easier to learn, and therefore more likely to be used? And by that metric, ultimately more likely to be successful?
A car, for example, with the best handling, gas mileage, and performance might be a technically better car, but if you have to drive from the trunk using LCD goggles and a tongue based interface will lose out to a car with worse handling, mileage and performance but a standard easier to use interface.
Unless of course the goggles and tongue based interface IS easier to learn and use.
Let us see you try to "recognize" Mozart using sheet music only. Transform said sheet music into music, and he's instantly recognizable.
Or let us see you try to "recognize" the Mona Lisa using a 2 dimensional grid of hex values. It's still the Mona Lisa, but I bet you couldn't see it if you tried.
What if they happen to make a breakthrough discovery because they hear something they can't see?
Our ears happen to be immense parallel processors, with millions of hairs tuned to different frequencies, all operating simultaneousy.
Our eyes are similar, the problem is that the graphs/data is not presented in a way amenable to using our eyes rather than our brains. Perhaps if you take the data and transform it into a 2D false color animated movie...
Again, if it works, it works. Save the vilification for later.
If the mountain CAN be predicted, the output of that mountain by necessity cannot be random and there has to be a "personality". There has to be something PREDICTABLE otherwise this entire exercise is for naught.
So converting to sound may seem silly, but what if it happens to provide the insight we need to determine how to make valid predictions?
I repeat: Converting to sound seems silly, but it is merely transforming the data from one difficult to understand space to one more intuitively understandable. If it works, it works!
What, automatic, free, version controlled backup isn't a leap forward? Data loss is probably the next biggest thing a user can encounter outside of spyware and viruses, and so far the Mac has proven itself relatively immune.
Then there is the free built in video conferencing, desktop sharing, and remote access made possible with iChat.
And on top of that is the network capable Spotlight, allowing a private network to access public files from any machine... a great reason to have a second machine:)
Data is: 1) No longer trapped on a single machine (think end users who require floppies and CD-Rs to transfer files) 2) Data loss is less of an issue (think end users to delete whole directories by accident) 3) Remote access is easy (think end users who don't know how to use the Control Panel to update their settings)
When Apple adopted the G3 in the PowerMac, they kept the Beige style case for a generation before releasing the B&W G3 case. When Apple adopted the G4 in the PowerMac, they kept the G3 style case but changed it's color to silver When Apple moved to the G5 PowerMac they moved to a new style case, but now that they have switched to Intel they kept the G5 style case (at least for now)
When Apple released a new iBook, it was with a G3; it was upgraded to the G4 with no real changes, and then when they moved to the Intel CPU it remained essentially the same, with only the keyboard being brand new.
The PowerBooks tell a similar story, moving to Titanium with the G4, then aluminum for several generations, the keeping the aluminum with the switch to Intel.
There is a reason to not redesign something: Less bugs, less cost, higher reliability. Wait until they work out all the kinks with the new CPUs, motherboards, and electrics, then introduce a new case with new problems.
My point still stands; you can now affordably market MORE than you could before. In an online world, with fewer distribution/physical costs, prices can go down,, sales may go up, and therefore profits may exist to be tapped.
Google, for example, is a solution to the problem of "favored" position. Rather, search is the answer. Instead of wandering around Target's Home, Beauty, Electronics, and Appliances sections looking for an electric razor (guess where I found it!), I just type in "razor" at Target.com and I am presented a list of 8 different razors.
The interesting part is that the linked article 0.8 percent of NetFlix inventory generates 30% of the rentals.
That means of course that the remaining 99.2% of the inventory generate 70% of the rentals. If they "got rid" of this catalog they would lose a lot of customers.
Of course the data is very coarse, as Spider-Man II happens to fall into the 99.2% category. They need to start analyzing in terms of percentiles; 0.8% generates 30%, 1.5% generates 40%, 8% generates 50%, 17% generates 60%, 42% generates 70%, 78% generates 80%, etc, all the way up to 100% of the rentals.
I think the value add of the long tail is that the concept of "Hit" changes.
Where in a brick and mortar store, which suffers from space constraints so the ROI for any give stock has to be fairly high, the internet shines because the space constraints are looser and therefore the ROI for any given stock can be less and STILL be profitable.
If a Tower Records can only carry the top 10% of goods to be profitable, Tower Online can afford to carry the top 20% of goods and still be profitable. The top 10% will still sell, as always, but the next 10% may contribute up to 30% of the profits despite only being in the second percentile.
As efficiency increases, then each percentile after that becomes "more" profitable, relatively. If Best Buy online can afford to carry the top 30% and remain profitable, with the third percentile adding 11% of the profit and the second percentile adding 25% of the profit, they will sell more, necessarily, than Tower.
So all things being equal, the store with more inventory can sell more. The store with greater efficiency can afford to carry more.
Another question... why should you spend $3000+ on Alienware?
I could have spent: $599 on a dual core Mac mini with Windows in virtualization and BootCamp for all my PC, Linux, and Mac needs $599 on a Playstation 3 for my MGS4 needs $129 on a Nintendo DS for my Tetris DS needs $249 on a PSP for my Lumines needs
What if they play using a hardware DVD player, capture the output using component out, and encode using H.264 without every circumventing CSS?
Re:That's an easy one.
on
IBM Opts for AMD
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If AMD tried the "family" approach, with ads and marketing of how Athlons enabled heart warming success stories...
A GI chatting with his girlfriend over VideoChat A mom making a DVD of her newborn addressed to her own mom A dad making a movie of his boy's baseball game
Things like that. Right now by focusing on price, value, or performance they paint themselves as me-toos and knock-offs.
Why does the copyright need to expire before people can do anything they like with the work? You can already burn to CD and reimport into a lossless format and from there use it as a sample in another work, embed it in another work, modify and edit it, and essentially do anything you can already do with non DRM work.
If they got rid of the lossless burning things might be very different.
Yes, you can't just transfer the file. You can hand out as many copies as you wish, but the DRM prevents it from being played willy nilly. DRM is not copyright, and copyright is not DRM. There is nothing inherent about the iTMS DRM that make it unacceptable in 30 years because you should already have an unencrypted backup, burned to CD, of your work the minute you buy it. Take advantage of the technology!
As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable).
Well, as a consumer, purchasing from the iTMS gives you the right to backup, timeshift, and format shift.
So what is the problem? Is it theoretical, or real?
The real problem I see is that the DRM makes it inconvenient to format shift, but not impossible. In which case the iTMS DRM is really about minimal inconvenience, rather than restriction.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you reconcile your opinion with the fact (had you read the report) that the biggest complaint from the workers were:
1) Not enough available overtime in the off peak season
2) Lack of transportation out of the dorms after work hours
These people want MORE overtime. When I was working at a $50k job, hourly, overtime was GREAT. Sure, they aren't working $50k jobs, but don't ruin their dreams with your misplaced ideals. These people want the pay (of course they want more, at $50k a year I was wanting $70k), want the overtime, and want the opportunities.
So when we observe planets around other stars, we are seeing "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and that new one"?
What codec do you think that will be?
My bet is MP3+AAC
Guess who champions AAC? Guess who champions WMA?
In case you couln't tell, it has a wheel and buttons, not wheel-like buttons, and it's case is plastic and steel, not just plastic.
Yes I can! NASA's goals and methods are conducive to specific things, not EVERYTHING. You are asking for everything and anything.
NASA can put up satellites, space stations, design rockets, design satellites, etc. Researchers working with NASA discover answers and at the same time discover NEW QUESTIONS.
For example, dark matter, as a theory, didn't exist 100 years ago. It wasn't until researchers (including NASA) discovered enough about the universe to make the discrepency between observed matter and observed gravity noticable.
The speed of light has always been fixed, but it wasn't until the tools became available that it became apparant that was true; nor until Einstein came up with general and special relativity that the reason for that limit existed.
NASA finds answers, and finds more questions. In searching space they discover that the cosmos is different, and so more questions get asked and old questions answered, discarded, or ignored. All the questions you bring up:
Red shift (only an issue because size is incorrect)
Size (only an issue because gravity/light doesn't measure up)
Dark matter (only an issue because observations don't match predictions)
Age (only an issue because size, redshift, and gravity doesn't match up)
Planets (only an issue because we NEVER had a definition for planet before)
They aren't "truths" you write down and then fix. That is the realm of religion, faith, and the philosophical. Science, and NASA, is about continued search, exploration, breaking apart of old truths, discovering new models, and abandoning old models.
But they are winning because of their good interfaces. If the average user bought an iPod and could not use them, they would return them. If an average user bought a Cowon, which you argue has one of the worst interfaces out there, and could not use it, it would get trashed.
What is happening, at least from what I have seen in the five years I have owned an iPod, is people buy an iPod, learn how to use them quickly, and keep them. People buy Samsungs, Creatives, Sonys, etc, get frustrated, and then ditch them.
Your automatic/manual analogy isn't bad, except it's not extreme enough. Pre iPod the Creative Nomad had 11 buttons; post iPod the Creative Zen V now only has four buttons. So if you want to use the a/m analogy, imagine three different clutches. The iPod debuted in 2001 with five buttons and a scroll wheel against the then dominant Nomad. It took until 2004, with the release of the Zen Micro, for them to adopt the smaller form factor (switching from desktop to notebook to finally microdrive) and simpler interface as well as the iPod UI. Before that they were much harder.
People STILL complain about the Sony software; again the a/m analogy, with iTunes you pop in a CD and hit 'rip', then you plug in an iPod and wait. That's it. For most other software the process is still much harder.
So if it isn't Sony, Creative, Cowon, or Samsung with the better interfaces, who HAS the better interface to take down the iPod. As I said before, the interface is the device, and without a usable interface the device itself is unusable.
How can they be better players if the interface and sync software aren't up to snuff? In the consumer electronics space, the interface really is the product, isn't it?
If you compare two products, and the inferior one has the superior interface, doesn't that mean it is easier to use, easier to learn, and therefore more likely to be used? And by that metric, ultimately more likely to be successful?
A car, for example, with the best handling, gas mileage, and performance might be a technically better car, but if you have to drive from the trunk using LCD goggles and a tongue based interface will lose out to a car with worse handling, mileage and performance but a standard easier to use interface.
Unless of course the goggles and tongue based interface IS easier to learn and use.
Let us see you try to "recognize" Mozart using sheet music only. Transform said sheet music into music, and he's instantly recognizable.
Or let us see you try to "recognize" the Mona Lisa using a 2 dimensional grid of hex values. It's still the Mona Lisa, but I bet you couldn't see it if you tried.
What if they happen to make a breakthrough discovery because they hear something they can't see?
Our ears happen to be immense parallel processors, with millions of hairs tuned to different frequencies, all operating simultaneousy.
Our eyes are similar, the problem is that the graphs/data is not presented in a way amenable to using our eyes rather than our brains. Perhaps if you take the data and transform it into a 2D false color animated movie...
Again, if it works, it works. Save the vilification for later.
You don't seem to be self consistent.
If the mountain CAN be predicted, the output of that mountain by necessity cannot be random and there has to be a "personality". There has to be something PREDICTABLE otherwise this entire exercise is for naught.
So converting to sound may seem silly, but what if it happens to provide the insight we need to determine how to make valid predictions?
I repeat: Converting to sound seems silly, but it is merely transforming the data from one difficult to understand space to one more intuitively understandable. If it works, it works!
What version of Windows was released this year that had automatic backup and restore and file versioning?
It is versioning if you only save files once a day :D
What, automatic, free, version controlled backup isn't a leap forward? Data loss is probably the next biggest thing a user can encounter outside of spyware and viruses, and so far the Mac has proven itself relatively immune.
:)
Then there is the free built in video conferencing, desktop sharing, and remote access made possible with iChat.
And on top of that is the network capable Spotlight, allowing a private network to access public files from any machine... a great reason to have a second machine
Data is:
1) No longer trapped on a single machine (think end users who require floppies and CD-Rs to transfer files)
2) Data loss is less of an issue (think end users to delete whole directories by accident)
3) Remote access is easy (think end users who don't know how to use the Control Panel to update their settings)
Look at History, please.
When Apple adopted the G3 in the PowerMac, they kept the Beige style case for a generation before releasing the B&W G3 case.
When Apple adopted the G4 in the PowerMac, they kept the G3 style case but changed it's color to silver
When Apple moved to the G5 PowerMac they moved to a new style case, but now that they have switched to Intel they kept the G5 style case (at least for now)
When Apple released a new iBook, it was with a G3; it was upgraded to the G4 with no real changes, and then when they moved to the Intel CPU it remained essentially the same, with only the keyboard being brand new.
The PowerBooks tell a similar story, moving to Titanium with the G4, then aluminum for several generations, the keeping the aluminum with the switch to Intel.
There is a reason to not redesign something: Less bugs, less cost, higher reliability. Wait until they work out all the kinks with the new CPUs, motherboards, and electrics, then introduce a new case with new problems.
My point still stands; you can now affordably market MORE than you could before. In an online world, with fewer distribution/physical costs, prices can go down,, sales may go up, and therefore profits may exist to be tapped.
:)
Google, for example, is a solution to the problem of "favored" position. Rather, search is the answer. Instead of wandering around Target's Home, Beauty, Electronics, and Appliances sections looking for an electric razor (guess where I found it!), I just type in "razor" at Target.com and I am presented a list of 8 different razors.
This applies as well to digital media too
The interesting part is that the linked article 0.8 percent of NetFlix inventory generates 30% of the rentals.
That means of course that the remaining 99.2% of the inventory generate 70% of the rentals. If they "got rid" of this catalog they would lose a lot of customers.
Of course the data is very coarse, as Spider-Man II happens to fall into the 99.2% category. They need to start analyzing in terms of percentiles; 0.8% generates 30%, 1.5% generates 40%, 8% generates 50%, 17% generates 60%, 42% generates 70%, 78% generates 80%, etc, all the way up to 100% of the rentals.
I think the value add of the long tail is that the concept of "Hit" changes.
Where in a brick and mortar store, which suffers from space constraints so the ROI for any give stock has to be fairly high, the internet shines because the space constraints are looser and therefore the ROI for any given stock can be less and STILL be profitable.
If a Tower Records can only carry the top 10% of goods to be profitable, Tower Online can afford to carry the top 20% of goods and still be profitable. The top 10% will still sell, as always, but the next 10% may contribute up to 30% of the profits despite only being in the second percentile.
As efficiency increases, then each percentile after that becomes "more" profitable, relatively. If Best Buy online can afford to carry the top 30% and remain profitable, with the third percentile adding 11% of the profit and the second percentile adding 25% of the profit, they will sell more, necessarily, than Tower.
So all things being equal, the store with more inventory can sell more. The store with greater efficiency can afford to carry more.
Yeah, well, I didn't post, "Why should I spend $500-$600 on a console when I already spent $3000+ on an Alienware?"
:)
Of course maybe the post was being sarcastic. People spend $600 on a console to play games
Another question... why should you spend $3000+ on Alienware?
I could have spent:
$599 on a dual core Mac mini with Windows in virtualization and BootCamp for all my PC, Linux, and Mac needs
$599 on a Playstation 3 for my MGS4 needs
$129 on a Nintendo DS for my Tetris DS needs
$249 on a PSP for my Lumines needs
For only $1,580... plus tax.
What if they play using a hardware DVD player, capture the output using component out, and encode using H.264 without every circumventing CSS?
If AMD tried the "family" approach, with ads and marketing of how Athlons enabled heart warming success stories...
A GI chatting with his girlfriend over VideoChat
A mom making a DVD of her newborn addressed to her own mom
A dad making a movie of his boy's baseball game
Things like that. Right now by focusing on price, value, or performance they paint themselves as me-toos and knock-offs.
Why does the copyright need to expire before people can do anything they like with the work? You can already burn to CD and reimport into a lossless format and from there use it as a sample in another work, embed it in another work, modify and edit it, and essentially do anything you can already do with non DRM work.
If they got rid of the lossless burning things might be very different.
Yes, you can't just transfer the file. You can hand out as many copies as you wish, but the DRM prevents it from being played willy nilly. DRM is not copyright, and copyright is not DRM. There is nothing inherent about the iTMS DRM that make it unacceptable in 30 years because you should already have an unencrypted backup, burned to CD, of your work the minute you buy it. Take advantage of the technology!
Well, as a consumer, purchasing from the iTMS gives you the right to backup, timeshift, and format shift.
So what is the problem? Is it theoretical, or real?
The real problem I see is that the DRM makes it inconvenient to format shift, but not impossible. In which case the iTMS DRM is really about minimal inconvenience, rather than restriction.
The problem is that people are actually PAID to design butt ugly boxes.
What you want is to buy something where a person was PAID to design a purely functional box.
If you are asking for cheap, you will get extra case plastic and multi colored fans.