Suspicious that my online communications were being monitored (esp. as regards criticism of management), I actually installed PGP at work. We have a keyring of about six people and it enables us to vent freely online without threat of retribution. The ring had to deinstall its PGP apps recently to get around a third-party security audit, but we'll be reinstalling as soon as the audit is through. This has worked fine and it has made the rank-and-file employees breathe a lot easier.
In an early '90s issue of Guitar World, guitar synth enthusiast Allan Holdsworth was asked to react to his detractors who decried his use of the SynthAxe, a guitar-like MIDI controller. These detractors claimed that it robbed his music of soul.
His answer was simple and elegant: "Everything man-made is the product of technology, even a string stretched across a hole."
People who similarly deride art that uses Photoshop, The GIMP, or whatever should take this to heart. The airbrush, the paintbrush, and even the simple reed used to inscribe characters in the wet clay of cuneiform tablets could be considered "technology."
Ozzy Osbourne...Metallica...Judas Priest...PMRC...AC/DC...
In all cases, and upon inspection of the case, the problem was a horrible and less-than-nurturing family life. It wasn't the games or the music.
When she first got word that her son was shooting up kids at the high school, Dylan Klebold's mom's first instinct was to CANCEL HER HAIR APPOINTMENT AT AN EXCLUSIVE SALON AND RESCHEDULE!!!
No, it's not the games. How a kid can amass an arsenal and build pipe bombs in the basement without the parents knowing is simply beyond my comprehension.
I've been in the technology PR industry for about five years, having moved from the IT industry. Here are my thoughts...
There are no hard-fast rules to getting good PR. If you are a start-up company, I highly recommend either 1) getting a mid-to-senior practicioner in-house, or 2) hiring an independant consultant. If the company starts to scale in terms of revenue, customer, headcount, funding, and so on, then it makes sense to retain an agency in order to hammer out a solid strategy and position the startup to play in the bigger leagues.
The dot-com boom brought in a lot of PR shysters, kibbitzers, and dilletantes. I would surmise that the person who posted this "Ask Slashdot" may have been taken by one of them. There was a point when such a dilletante could strip naked, tattoo "I do PR" on his/her ass, run up-and-down Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park (the famous VC shopping mall), and get three clients or so.
In today's environment, you can pretty much take your pick of agencies. (I will refrain from pitching my own firm here, but I will say that we're mid-sized, independent, and very good at what we do.)
As the current downturn runs its course, it acts like a crucible on the high-tech PR industry: all of the crap and impurities are being burned away and, within the year, the best product will remain.
PR isn't rocket science but, done poorly, it's disastrous. What trips people up often isn't PR strategies/tactics, but learning about the client's technology. Coming from an IT background, that hasn't been a problem for me. You'd be surprised how many people have gotten into high-tech PR who lack the technical smarts that God gave the pygmy marmoset.
> Is DataPlay the next big thing, or
> something to avoid?
Moving the conversation from SDMI, which is just a technology good for keeping honest people honest...
In general, people should be somewhat leery of rotating drives for digital content storage.
Rotating drives simply consume too much power for battery-powered apps-- you have to drive a motor and a laser. I picked up a Dataplay datasheet at CES and power dissipation figures were curiously absent.
Furthermore, to make a Dataplay-ready device, I have to assume that manufacturers will have to incorporate a proprietary drive slot, adding to the cost. Ergo, to reap the cost/MB benefits of a Dataplay disk, a consumer has to swallow the hidden cost of the special drive. Consumers like cheap, though. Sure, flash memory may be costly, but the slot costs practically nothing thanks to the existence of standards bodies like the CompactFlash Association.
In short, Dataplay (and Iomega's HipPocketWhateverzip, by extension) are gonna get creamed if the following comes to pass-- The introduction of a low-cost, high-capacity, solid-state technology that uses standard flash slots (CompactFlash, SmartMedia, etc.)
Based on what any self-respecting tech-head reads in the trades, this isn't too far off, right? For example, process shrinks (0.13-micron and below?) are making it possible to produce chips with higher densities and at higher volumes. The first chips to be run on such processes will be memories, since companies will test out a process with a memory product first before qualifying it to make other products.
All things considered, I fall into the "avoid" camp, myself. From a silicon and hardware perspective, there are just too many nifty advancements on the horizon. I'd love to hear what Slashdotters might have to offer from a hardware and design perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
Suspicious that my online communications were being monitored (esp. as regards criticism of management), I actually installed PGP at work. We have a keyring of about six people and it enables us to vent freely online without threat of retribution. The ring had to deinstall its PGP apps recently to get around a third-party security audit, but we'll be reinstalling as soon as the audit is through. This has worked fine and it has made the rank-and-file employees breathe a lot easier.
His answer was simple and elegant: "Everything man-made is the product of technology, even a string stretched across a hole."
People who similarly deride art that uses Photoshop, The GIMP, or whatever should take this to heart. The airbrush, the paintbrush, and even the simple reed used to inscribe characters in the wet clay of cuneiform tablets could be considered "technology."
...then I can think of better ways you can spend your money.
http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/08/ 28/000828opcringe_cto.xml
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/roxio 060501.htm
Ozzy Osbourne...Metallica...Judas Priest...PMRC...AC/DC... In all cases, and upon inspection of the case, the problem was a horrible and less-than-nurturing family life. It wasn't the games or the music. When she first got word that her son was shooting up kids at the high school, Dylan Klebold's mom's first instinct was to CANCEL HER HAIR APPOINTMENT AT AN EXCLUSIVE SALON AND RESCHEDULE!!! No, it's not the games. How a kid can amass an arsenal and build pipe bombs in the basement without the parents knowing is simply beyond my comprehension.
I've been in the technology PR industry for about five years, having moved from the IT industry. Here are my thoughts...
There are no hard-fast rules to getting good PR. If you are a start-up company, I highly recommend either 1) getting a mid-to-senior practicioner in-house, or 2) hiring an independant consultant. If the company starts to scale in terms of revenue, customer, headcount, funding, and so on, then it makes sense to retain an agency in order to hammer out a solid strategy and position the startup to play in the bigger leagues.
The dot-com boom brought in a lot of PR shysters, kibbitzers, and dilletantes. I would surmise that the person who posted this "Ask Slashdot" may have been taken by one of them. There was a point when such a dilletante could strip naked, tattoo "I do PR" on his/her ass, run up-and-down Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park (the famous VC shopping mall), and get three clients or so.
In today's environment, you can pretty much take your pick of agencies. (I will refrain from pitching my own firm here, but I will say that we're mid-sized, independent, and very good at what we do.)
As the current downturn runs its course, it acts like a crucible on the high-tech PR industry: all of the crap and impurities are being burned away and, within the year, the best product will remain.
PR isn't rocket science but, done poorly, it's disastrous. What trips people up often isn't PR strategies/tactics, but learning about the client's technology. Coming from an IT background, that hasn't been a problem for me. You'd be surprised how many people have gotten into high-tech PR who lack the technical smarts that God gave the pygmy marmoset.
As to resources, InternetPRguide.com is often helpful. People can rant back to me here or at maximum_entropy@hotmail.com.
The Dreamcast was powered by the SH-4 micro. It was a nice little piece of silicon. I wonder what the Dreamcast's demise means for the SH?
> Is DataPlay the next big thing, or
> something to avoid?
Moving the conversation from SDMI, which is just a technology good for keeping honest people honest...
In general, people should be somewhat leery of rotating drives for digital content storage.
Rotating drives simply consume too much power for battery-powered apps-- you have to drive a motor and a laser. I picked up a Dataplay datasheet at CES and power dissipation figures were curiously absent.
Furthermore, to make a Dataplay-ready device, I have to assume that manufacturers will have to incorporate a proprietary drive slot, adding to the cost. Ergo, to reap the cost/MB benefits of a Dataplay disk, a consumer has to swallow the hidden cost of the special drive. Consumers like cheap, though. Sure, flash memory may be costly, but the slot costs practically nothing thanks to the existence of standards bodies like the CompactFlash Association.
In short, Dataplay (and Iomega's HipPocketWhateverzip, by extension) are gonna get creamed if the following comes to pass-- The introduction of a low-cost, high-capacity, solid-state technology that uses standard flash slots (CompactFlash, SmartMedia, etc.)
Based on what any self-respecting tech-head reads in the trades, this isn't too far off, right? For example, process shrinks (0.13-micron and below?) are making it possible to produce chips with higher densities and at higher volumes. The first chips to be run on such processes will be memories, since companies will test out a process with a memory product first before qualifying it to make other products.
All things considered, I fall into the "avoid" camp, myself. From a silicon and hardware perspective, there are just too many nifty advancements on the horizon. I'd love to hear what Slashdotters might have to offer from a hardware and design perspective.
Is it just me, or is 25W unacceptably high?