From the article: Clayton Christiansen, a Harvard Business School professor, has coined the idea of the innovator's dilemma. If a successful supplier innovates it is generally to add features to and improve a product, but not to destroy it by developing radically better technology.
I've often found it tempting to assume that if capitalism ceased to exist, so would this problem. I'm not asking "would it", but could it?
For this thought experiment, I assume the scenario to be a moneyless society in which sustainable development is of primary importance.
We also might assume that:
1. New technologies aren't made available until they're put through the most rigorous field testing. Even if a project is shelved, the science is in itself regarded as a valued product which may be employed in future technologies.
2. Our hypothetical society utilizes an established set of hardware standards at any given time. The relative universality of the standard is determined pragmatically.
3. Compatibility with existing systems is always addressed as needed.
4. An infrastructure exists to upgrade hardware as unobtrusively as possible when the need arises, rather than as a result of a psychological desire for the illusion of progress.
This experiment is itself a "prototype", but I'm very interested in your insights. When thinking about techno-utopia and contrasting it with the real-life status quo, consider who's interests are being served in each case. I'm trying to envision a realistic scenario in which technological impact is healthy and sustainable.
In this case, the imaginary society roughly sketched above would almost certainly house an intricate bureaucracy, so our perceived technological evolution might actually be even slower in such a case. However, even if each technology's generation lasted longer, that doesn't inherently mean slower scientific progress, but slower techno-social change. Even in our society, of course, development and progress happen behind the scenes even if we don't see a marketed product. It's not entirely proper to evaluate the technology status quo as a whole based solely on what products we have chosen to engineer.
But consider that all products have a social impact, that they're chosen for their desired impact, and that it's safe to assume that the impetus for their production is usually not socially-conscious in the long-term.
In case anyone's interested, I finally indentified the model in question. My memory was a bit fuzzy, but this is definitely it: Unisonic's Tournament 2000 (T-2000-JR), the first game console I ever played.
I've pored and pored through pong-story.com and old-computers.com, and I have not found it. I had no idea there were so many different Pong units. The model I remember was an American release that looked vaguely similar to this, but the controllers had sliders, not knobs, and the deck's finish was silver and faux wood. The controllers also were silver. The game selector slid up and down, and highlighted the selected game in orange. I think the gun may have been detachable, and it may have been one of the lightgun models that had the modular rifle attachments.
Wow, I really could have used this information 20 years ago! I was devestated when the power supply to my TI-99/4a blew out from overheating, and lord knows those Odyssey2 joysticks weren't built to last. Actually, any information about repairing and replacing hard-wired peripherals would have been helpful back then.
One console that's missing from the list was an early console (does anyone remember the name?) that competed with the original Odyssey. It was the ultimate in hard-wired madness. All of its games were built-in, and were selectable with a sliding knob. It had two hardwired sliding-stick controllers, and possibly the first console lightgun, which was made of pig iron and weighed approximately 185 pounds. The monochromatic games were all variations on table tennis and "shoot the square". And yes, that used to be fun.:)
Give everyone a GUID, a complete random key of sufficient length that you can't simply guess and get a valid GUID. Mail it to them. [snip]
But who's checking for votes from dead and imaginary people?
The GUID would be based partially on voter precinct, so if the number of registered voters is less than the number of GUIDs for a district, raise the red flag. But that remaining problem is an old one: how does one prevent insiders from 'creating' new constituents?
From Professor Rubin's account: "If we continue to use the kind of insecure DREs that were used in this election, it is only a matter of time before somebody exploits them. And the worst part is that we may never know it." [emphasis added]
It seems that no one really wants to come forward and raise this as a serious concern for this election, despite the fact that it's entirely plausible. Unfortunately, it seems highly unlikely that anyone who dares cast doubt on this election will be regarded as objective.
"... Lucasfilm also indicated that the trailer will be available via Usenet and BitTorrent, and that the complete film was officially released last week on IRC."
If some insidious government officials were to approve the installation an easily-corruptible voting system in order to co-opt the election according to their agenda, and if the mass media then convinced the masses that the election is really close and could go either way, then it wouldn't be quite so transparent when the election was rigged in favor of one candidate!
If you have any problems at your polling place, call the Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683). This is not the time for complaisance.
More Tricks (the REAL art of cable folding)
on
The Art of Cable Folding
·
· Score: 4, Informative
In the world of roadies and pro audio nerds, there's a method for cable folding/wrapping that I learned years ago. It's popularly called the "over/under method".
The idea is to wrap the cable in such a way that, when thrown, it will unravel perfectly without any knots or tangles; but it's still useful for smaller cables because it trains the shielding in such a way that promotes flexibility and prevents twists, curves, and tangles.
Stagecraft has a video demonstration of how to do it (QuickTime, AVI, RealMedia), and the Internet Sound Institute has a tutorial with diagrams.
I wouldn't say that since Noam Chomsky's huge body of work spans so many topics, but nonetheless he is arguably the leading theorist on the subject (not to mention stupifyingly brilliant).
Some specific titles: * Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origins, and Use * Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures * The Architecture of Language (Chomsky et al.) * New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind
Other theoretical traditions would say that there is no innate grammar, but rather that learning a language consists of learning statistical patterns which are represented through neural activation patterns
Which partially describes Kuhl's work, which is the subject of the article. However, I would not go so far as to say that these theories must be mutually exclusive. I subscribe to Chomsky's notion of genetic predisposition toward certain innate language structures, and at the same time I see no contradiction between that theory and Kuhl's description of a possible mechanism for language-learning.
Note to the judges, If the text in your logo needs to be readable to identify your product, it's not a good logo.
That is not the case. By your definition, no text-only logo could ever be "good". The thing to understand here is that in graphic design, text functions simultaneously as a means of encoding a verbal message and as a formal graphic in its own right. The letterforms or typefaces are significant, the configuration is significant, the colors are significant, and all of those things culminate in a recognizable pattern. Don't view the word and the image as mutually exclusive concepts when looking at the logo (or in general, for that matter). There are more aspects to reaction than the cognitive.
Anyone who knows NetBSD's heritage knows the significance of the flag. The old image has been distilled into something iconic, but by the reactions it seems that many slashdotters have again demonstrated that unfortunate tendency to hastily judge based on instantaneous first reaction. Contrary to some of the criticisms voiced today, this logo does mean something.
What will the favicon look like? The logo is nice, but work will have to be done to simplify the fine elements of the design, so that they don't turn to fuzz in small versions of the image.
Probably just the flag. Logos that have both text and graphical elements are often reduced to graphical emblems for certain purposes. The flag should scale to 16x16 with relative ease.
Well, this was a long time coming, but I'm really pleased with the new logo. For a while I was wondering if the long delay meant that all the contest submissions were rubbish! In case you're wondering, the official reason for the long processing time was twofold: 1) the selection process (of course), and 2) the legal transfer of the logo from the artist to the NetBSD Foundation.
A month ago this item appeared in the NetBSD Quarterly Status Report:
"As announced in the last quarterly status report, the NetBSD Project has reviewed all of the entries submitted to the international competition for the creation of a new logo. Members of the NetBSD Foundation voted for the new logo from a short-list of six submitted designs selected by the logo committee. Characteristics important for the new logo were simplicity, appealing form and color choice, and dentification with the project.
"At this point, a new logo has been selected the last formal step -- the process of transferring the Intellectual Property from the artist to the NetBSD Foundation (which includes the time-consuming but important careful review of some legal documents by a lawyer to ensure that everything is done correctly and appropriately) -- is virtually completed. Updating the website and creating imagery from the master copy are the last steps that need to be resolved. It is unfortunate that this procedure has delayed the official announcement of the new logo even further; the NetBSD Project would like to thank all users for their patience."
All of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification.
Ballmer mentions licensing indemnification because (as he mentions elsewhere) Microsoft recently removed the liabiliy cap on their products. I'll leave it to you to decide how relevant this feature is for other platforms.
He also makes it sound as thought charging for technical support (et al) is a new development they've only just discovered since their last impartial analysis.
But in case you haven't seen done this before, let's look at a couple of product pricing and technical support models:
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assisted Support Options These pages describe prices of phone, e-mail, and direct support only. The prices do not include the actual cost of products from the Windows Server 2003 family.
On the other hand, maybe they're going about this backwards. I think it would be pretty cool to have a digital camera that had some basic audio playback functions. Would that be more or less expensive to produce than an audio device with a cheapo camera built in?
They must get a nickel every time someone runs to the John. Don't we suffer enough!
Hey, look at the bright side: with the convenience of two powerful diuretics in one convenient product, your other arm is free for carrying the two liter of bottle you'd need to stay hydrated.
Microsoft says you can't do this. But the courts have indicated that you can.
To date, eBay still terminates auctions for bundled/OEM software. A few of my own auctions have been terminated for this reason (I was very candid about the OEM status), so if there's a legal defense for this, I'd like to know. Amazon has a similar policy, but I've never actually had an OEM software listing removed from Amazon Marketplace.
Since another parody of the original trilogy would seem a bit dated, I think it's more likely that the next Spaceballs will satirize the prequel--which would mean that very few of Spaceballs' castmembers would return to reprise their original roles.
It's probably wishful thinking, but I really hope that the cast includes a lot of old greats in true Brookes fashion, rather than a assemblage of Hollywood's current mugging dipshits of the week... you know, the ones who wouldn't know comic timing and subtle humour even if it cut them a check for $7 million?
The process works by mixing eighty percent soil with twenty percent waste and then heating the mixture to three thousand degrees centigrade. When the mixture cools it forms into a glass harder than concrete.
You bastards, that's my extra chunky granola bar recipe!!!
OR...
In other words, it's like the nuclear plants are shitting bricks
I wonder if it's the display that's lagging, or the video drivers? The last time I recall seeing an LCD display "lag" was back before the days of TFT screens
This seems to be a much more sensible explanation for the apparent lag. Even early TFT displays suffer from comparitively slow screen update intervals.
How the heck did this question make it past the editorial filter anyway? The idea that LCD displays are susceptible to some kind of input device lag specifically (as opposed to any other kind of state change that affects redraw) is preposterous.
Slashdot Mirror
"I wrote a this piece on Techworld about it."
That really makes me want to go read the article.
Yes, I found that introduction to be highly offensive to English-speaking Italians.
From the article: Clayton Christiansen, a Harvard Business School professor, has coined the idea of the innovator's dilemma. If a successful supplier innovates it is generally to add features to and improve a product, but not to destroy it by developing radically better technology.
I've often found it tempting to assume that if capitalism ceased to exist, so would this problem. I'm not asking "would it", but could it?
For this thought experiment, I assume the scenario to be a moneyless society in which sustainable development is of primary importance.
We also might assume that:
1. New technologies aren't made available until they're put through the most rigorous field testing. Even if a project is shelved, the science is in itself regarded as a valued product which may be employed in future technologies.
2. Our hypothetical society utilizes an established set of hardware standards at any given time. The relative universality of the standard is determined pragmatically.
3. Compatibility with existing systems is always addressed as needed.
4. An infrastructure exists to upgrade hardware as unobtrusively as possible when the need arises, rather than as a result of a psychological desire for the illusion of progress.
This experiment is itself a "prototype", but I'm very interested in your insights. When thinking about techno-utopia and contrasting it with the real-life status quo, consider who's interests are being served in each case. I'm trying to envision a realistic scenario in which technological impact is healthy and sustainable.
In this case, the imaginary society roughly sketched above would almost certainly house an intricate bureaucracy, so our perceived technological evolution might actually be even slower in such a case. However, even if each technology's generation lasted longer, that doesn't inherently mean slower scientific progress, but slower techno-social change. Even in our society, of course, development and progress happen behind the scenes even if we don't see a marketed product. It's not entirely proper to evaluate the technology status quo as a whole based solely on what products we have chosen to engineer.
But consider that all products have a social impact, that they're chosen for their desired impact, and that it's safe to assume that the impetus for their production is usually not socially-conscious in the long-term.
In case anyone's interested, I finally indentified the model in question. My memory was a bit fuzzy, but this is definitely it: Unisonic's Tournament 2000 (T-2000-JR), the first game console I ever played.
I've pored and pored through pong-story.com and old-computers.com, and I have not found it. I had no idea there were so many different Pong units. The model I remember was an American release that looked vaguely similar to this, but the controllers had sliders, not knobs, and the deck's finish was silver and faux wood. The controllers also were silver. The game selector slid up and down, and highlighted the selected game in orange. I think the gun may have been detachable, and it may have been one of the lightgun models that had the modular rifle attachments.
Wow, I really could have used this information 20 years ago! I was devestated when the power supply to my TI-99/4a blew out from overheating, and lord knows those Odyssey2 joysticks weren't built to last. Actually, any information about repairing and replacing hard-wired peripherals would have been helpful back then.
One console that's missing from the list was an early console (does anyone remember the name?) that competed with the original Odyssey. It was the ultimate in hard-wired madness. All of its games were built-in, and were selectable with a sliding knob. It had two hardwired sliding-stick controllers, and possibly the first console lightgun, which was made of pig iron and weighed approximately 185 pounds. The monochromatic games were all variations on table tennis and "shoot the square". And yes, that used to be fun. :)
Give everyone a GUID, a complete random key of sufficient length that you can't simply guess and get a valid GUID. Mail it to them. [snip]
But who's checking for votes from dead and imaginary people?
The GUID would be based partially on voter precinct, so if the number of registered voters is less than the number of GUIDs for a district, raise the red flag. But that remaining problem is an old one: how does one prevent insiders from 'creating' new constituents?
From Professor Rubin's account: "If we continue to use the kind of insecure DREs that were used in this election, it is only a matter of time before somebody exploits them. And the worst part is that we may never know it." [emphasis added]
It seems that no one really wants to come forward and raise this as a serious concern for this election, despite the fact that it's entirely plausible. Unfortunately, it seems highly unlikely that anyone who dares cast doubt on this election will be regarded as objective.
"... Lucasfilm also indicated that the trailer will be available via Usenet and BitTorrent, and that the complete film was officially released last week on IRC."
Wait a minute... something just occurred to me!
If some insidious government officials were to approve the installation an easily-corruptible voting system in order to co-opt the election according to their agenda, and if the mass media then convinced the masses that the election is really close and could go either way, then it wouldn't be quite so transparent when the election was rigged in favor of one candidate!
Holy crap!
If you have any problems at your polling place, call the Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683). This is not the time for complaisance.
In the world of roadies and pro audio nerds, there's a method for cable folding/wrapping that I learned years ago. It's popularly called the "over/under method".
The idea is to wrap the cable in such a way that, when thrown, it will unravel perfectly without any knots or tangles; but it's still useful for smaller cables because it trains the shielding in such a way that promotes flexibility and prevents twists, curves, and tangles.
Stagecraft has a video demonstration of how to do it (QuickTime, AVI, RealMedia), and the Internet Sound Institute has a tutorial with diagrams.
For more information, read anything by Chomsky.
I wouldn't say that since Noam Chomsky's huge body of work spans so many topics, but nonetheless he is arguably the leading theorist on the subject (not to mention stupifyingly brilliant).
Some specific titles:
* Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origins, and Use
* Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures
* The Architecture of Language (Chomsky et al.)
* New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind
Other theoretical traditions would say that there is no innate grammar, but rather that learning a language consists of learning statistical patterns which are represented through neural activation patterns
Which partially describes Kuhl's work, which is the subject of the article. However, I would not go so far as to say that these theories must be mutually exclusive. I subscribe to Chomsky's notion of genetic predisposition toward certain innate language structures, and at the same time I see no contradiction between that theory and Kuhl's description of a possible mechanism for language-learning.
To see more really cool, ingenious costumes, check out these gems made by Rob Cockerham of cockeyed.com:
Paparazzi costume
Jenga costume
Africa costume
California costume
Note to the judges, If the text in your logo needs to be readable to identify your product, it's not a good logo.
That is not the case. By your definition, no text-only logo could ever be "good". The thing to understand here is that in graphic design, text functions simultaneously as a means of encoding a verbal message and as a formal graphic in its own right. The letterforms or typefaces are significant, the configuration is significant, the colors are significant, and all of those things culminate in a recognizable pattern. Don't view the word and the image as mutually exclusive concepts when looking at the logo (or in general, for that matter). There are more aspects to reaction than the cognitive.
Anyone who knows NetBSD's heritage knows the significance of the flag. The old image has been distilled into something iconic, but by the reactions it seems that many slashdotters have again demonstrated that unfortunate tendency to hastily judge based on instantaneous first reaction. Contrary to some of the criticisms voiced today, this logo does mean something.
What will the favicon look like? The logo is nice, but work will have to be done to simplify the fine elements of the design, so that they don't turn to fuzz in small versions of the image.
Probably just the flag. Logos that have both text and graphical elements are often reduced to graphical emblems for certain purposes. The flag should scale to 16x16 with relative ease.
A month ago this item appeared in the NetBSD Quarterly Status Report:
All of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification.
Ballmer mentions licensing indemnification because (as he mentions elsewhere) Microsoft recently removed the liabiliy cap on their products. I'll leave it to you to decide how relevant this feature is for other platforms.
He also makes it sound as thought charging for technical support (et al) is a new development they've only just discovered since their last impartial analysis.
But in case you haven't seen done this before, let's look at a couple of product pricing and technical support models:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Support Options and Pricing
This chart shows subscription rates for various Red Hat server products.
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assisted Support Options
These pages describe prices of phone, e-mail, and direct support only. The prices do not include the actual cost of products from the Windows Server 2003 family.
Windows Server 2003 Pricing
Prices in USD for Windows Server 2003 products and CALs.
It's common knowledge that IE is fault-tolerant. So it can render malformed code... wake we when it can finally properly render well-formed code.
On the other hand, maybe they're going about this backwards. I think it would be pretty cool to have a digital camera that had some basic audio playback functions. Would that be more or less expensive to produce than an audio device with a cheapo camera built in?
They must get a nickel every time someone runs to the John. Don't we suffer enough!
Hey, look at the bright side: with the convenience of two powerful diuretics in one convenient product, your other arm is free for carrying the two liter of bottle you'd need to stay hydrated.
From the article: "They don't understand that we opened our hearts to them," Simon said.
There's the problem right there. Never, ever open your heart to TV executives!!
Microsoft says you can't do this. But the courts have indicated that you can.
To date, eBay still terminates auctions for bundled/OEM software. A few of my own auctions have been terminated for this reason (I was very candid about the OEM status), so if there's a legal defense for this, I'd like to know. Amazon has a similar policy, but I've never actually had an OEM software listing removed from Amazon Marketplace.
Since another parody of the original trilogy would seem a bit dated, I think it's more likely that the next Spaceballs will satirize the prequel--which would mean that very few of Spaceballs' castmembers would return to reprise their original roles.
It's probably wishful thinking, but I really hope that the cast includes a lot of old greats in true Brookes fashion, rather than a assemblage of Hollywood's current mugging dipshits of the week... you know, the ones who wouldn't know comic timing and subtle humour even if it cut them a check for $7 million?
The process works by mixing eighty percent soil with twenty percent waste and then heating the mixture to three thousand degrees centigrade. When the mixture cools it forms into a glass harder than concrete.
You bastards, that's my extra chunky granola bar recipe!!!
OR...
In other words, it's like the nuclear plants are shitting bricks
and so on.
I wonder if it's the display that's lagging, or the video drivers? The last time I recall seeing an LCD display "lag" was back before the days of TFT screens
This seems to be a much more sensible explanation for the apparent lag. Even early TFT displays suffer from comparitively slow screen update intervals.
How the heck did this question make it past the editorial filter anyway? The idea that LCD displays are susceptible to some kind of input device lag specifically (as opposed to any other kind of state change that affects redraw) is preposterous.