A million dollars? This is what happens when business people dabble in science. Artificial Intelligence grad students and professors have been studying these kinds of problems for decades.
I think that is the point - academia has been studying this for decades and has yet to produce meaningful results. I'm not saying that universities haven't contributed their fair share of technological advances through the years, but doing so in a practical and timely manner isn't exactly what they're known for. When business and/or money gets thrown into the mix, the pace of progress tends to rapidly accelerate.
X Prize Foundation Millennium Problems 2008 Templeton Prize
Netflix could have saved a boatload of money by throwing some cash at a university with an established AI group and asking them to research the current state-of-the-art
According to the Netflix site there are currently 35558 contestants on 29326 teams from 170 different countries. They could have thrown any amount of money at any university and still not received the kind of effort they've seen to date. I'd say their million dollars is money well spent.
"...one studio went so far as to propose that GPS chips be placed in all computers with a DVD player so that Hollywood could enforce region coding from the sky..."
Fascinating for sure but more like science fiction or out and out bullshit.
Somehow I have supreme confidence that there is a studio exec out there who proposed this...
...Ink cartridges should not be costing 20,30,40 dollars. It's ink... the technology has been around for several hundred years...
The expensive part of a cartridge is not the ink, it is the printhead that shoots the ink out. That printhead is really a multi-layered silcon chip that has been manufactured in a manner similar to microprocessors and DRAM, except that tiny holes (on the order of thousand per inch) have been placed to allow ink to squirt out.
Whether it is Epson's piezo technology or HP's thermal technology, an inkjet cartridge is simply a bag of ink sitting on top of a carefully designed silicon chip. And all of the these printer manufacturers have chip fabs that would make Intel proud.
Now, should it still cost 20,30,40 dollars? Probably not. But there is a little more to it than just ink...
This is good news for Dell. They'll be selling their own printers in about a month...
Dell will not be selling their own printers, they will be selling Lexmark's printers with the Dell name stamped on them. It is in Dell's best interests for Lexmark to do well in this case.
I would encourage everyone to read Dr. Felten's original paper, not just because you can now, but because it provides a lot of insight into the techniques that were used to watermark the SDMI audio files.
One thing that really struck me was how simplistic the watermarking was. Not to take anything away from the team's accomplishment, but I have no doubt these technologies would have been defeated by someone within days of release.
If this was the current state of the art in watermarking technologies (and you have to assume it was), it makes me wonder if digital watermarking is really a viable technology.
To avoid a complete meltdown of the Internet, President G.W. Bush has recommended that rolling blankouts begin within the next two months. During peak periods of Internet traffic, up to 100,000 sites may have their routing tables blanked for up to an hour in order to reduce the load on the system.
"I may not know much about the Internet, but I don't think you need a PhD to see what all this free music trading is doing to our nation supply of routing tables," Bush was quoted as saying. Asked if he was implying that Napster was responsible for the rolling blankouts, he replied "The RIAA says they are, so it must be true."
"in there he predicted a number of things, such as the concept of the Internet would never take off, and that proprietary online services like the Microsoft Network would be much more popular"
Actually, I think Bill got this one mostly right, just that MSN didn't turn out to be the proprietary online service of choice - AOL did.
AOL has by far more subscribers than any other online service, and the vast majority of those people are not accessing the "Internet", but are instead using it for AOL E-mail, AOL Instant Messaging, AOL chat rooms, AOL shopping and AOL bulletin boards. Sure, the underlying backbone of this is the Internet, but the entire experience is wrapped in a nice, proprietary front end essentially design to keep you in AOL's area of cyberspace.
I think the AOL-Time Warner merger serves to underscore this. I don't think anyone (not even Bill;-) could have imagined that an online service would eventually be big enough to purchase one of the largest media companies in the world. If you don't think there are millions of people who equate the terms AOL and Internet now, just wait...
"Their concern was how to keep the Earth cool as the Sun ages and warms up in a billion years."
In a billion years, I have to believe that making the sun behave like we want is going to be easier than actually moving the Earth. By then, who's to say that extending the sun's lifetime isn't simpler?
As an American who has lived and worked in Italy for nearly 4 years, I can say that U.S. employees in technical jobs typically earn twice as much as their European counterparts.
Conversely, the typical European tech worker enjoys much better benefits. For example, in Italy it was pretty common to have 4-6 weeks of paid time-off as a new employee.
As a contractor, though, it seems like a lose-lose situation. You'd get half the salary, and none of the benefits.
From Microsoft's latest balance sheet and income statement:
Total cash: $24 billion
Quarterly expense rate: $3 billion
Even if Microsoft didn't sell a single additional product starting today, they could continue to pay all their people and hang around for an additional two years.
They have one of the best balance sheets in the industry and will definitely take advantage of it (e.g. a cool $500 million is slated for X-box advertising).
Is this going to have an affect on any of your offices?
The proposed OSHA standard has already greatly affected the place where I work. In the past year:
All employees have been required to attend an ergonomics course.
All offices have been evaluated and personalized according to ergonomic guidelines.
All employees are required to complete an online ergonomic self-evaluation every year.
I was very resistant to these changes when they were first introduced. Who the hell are they to tell me how I have to lay out my office?
I now have a $600 ergo chair, $500 negative tilt keyboard and mouse tray, and all my worksurfaces (that's what us cube dwellers call a desk) have been adjusted to my leg and arm lengths.
How can my company afford all of this? It must cost millions! The answer is: they can't afford to not do it. Most folks here earn about $100K per year, and if only one develops a career threatening case of RSI, the lawsuit to cover lost future income will dwarf the amount spent on all the ergo stuff.
It is a simple matter of accounting. In this case, money spent on ergo is considered an insurance policy against any future RSI lawsuit.
-Sommelier
BTW, after all my complaining a year ago, it turns out I love my new ergo office. I can work for hours in relative comfort. I can't remember ever being this pain free at work.
OSHA has no right to regulate whether I want to get RSI or not. Unfortunately, they treat individuals as official representatives of their company, thus regulating them. This is dead wrong.
If RSI only impacted you, then I would agree with your statement. However, if developing RSI impacts the company, either through lost employee productivity, increased health costs or both, then the company not only has the right, but the obligation to do something about it.
Despite the fact that the PS2 arrived "late", does anyone else think that Sony might have jumped the gun on its U.S. intro? It might be hard to sustain the current level of hype into the meat of the holiday shopping season (still another good 3-4 weeks away for most people).
Slashdot Mirror
I think that is the point - academia has been studying this for decades and has yet to produce meaningful results. I'm not saying that universities haven't contributed their fair share of technological advances through the years, but doing so in a practical and timely manner isn't exactly what they're known for. When business and/or money gets thrown into the mix, the pace of progress tends to rapidly accelerate.
X Prize Foundation
Millennium Problems
2008 Templeton Prize
Netflix could have saved a boatload of money by throwing some cash at a university with an established AI group and asking them to research the current state-of-the-art
According to the Netflix site there are currently 35558 contestants on 29326 teams from 170 different countries. They could have thrown any amount of money at any university and still not received the kind of effort they've seen to date. I'd say their million dollars is money well spent.
"...one studio went so far as to propose that GPS chips be placed in all computers with a DVD player so that Hollywood could enforce region coding from the sky..."
Fascinating for sure but more like science fiction or out and out bullshit.
Somehow I have supreme confidence that there is a studio exec out there who proposed this...
-Sommelier
The expensive part of a cartridge is not the ink, it is the printhead that shoots the ink out. That printhead is really a multi-layered silcon chip that has been manufactured in a manner similar to microprocessors and DRAM, except that tiny holes (on the order of thousand per inch) have been placed to allow ink to squirt out.
Whether it is Epson's piezo technology or HP's thermal technology, an inkjet cartridge is simply a bag of ink sitting on top of a carefully designed silicon chip. And all of the these printer manufacturers have chip fabs that would make Intel proud.
Now, should it still cost 20,30,40 dollars? Probably not. But there is a little more to it than just ink...
Sommelier
Dell will not be selling their own printers, they will be selling Lexmark's printers with the Dell name stamped on them. It is in Dell's best interests for Lexmark to do well in this case.
-SommelierI would encourage everyone to read Dr. Felten's original paper, not just because you can now, but because it provides a lot of insight into the techniques that were used to watermark the SDMI audio files.
One thing that really struck me was how simplistic the watermarking was. Not to take anything away from the team's accomplishment, but I have no doubt these technologies would have been defeated by someone within days of release.
If this was the current state of the art in watermarking technologies (and you have to assume it was), it makes me wonder if digital watermarking is really a viable technology.
-Sommelier
To avoid a complete meltdown of the Internet, President G.W. Bush has recommended that rolling blankouts begin within the next two months. During peak periods of Internet traffic, up to 100,000 sites may have their routing tables blanked for up to an hour in order to reduce the load on the system.
"I may not know much about the Internet, but I don't think you need a PhD to see what all this free music trading is doing to our nation supply of routing tables," Bush was quoted as saying. Asked if he was implying that Napster was responsible for the rolling blankouts, he replied "The RIAA says they are, so it must be true."
Actually, I think Bill got this one mostly right, just that MSN didn't turn out to be the proprietary online service of choice - AOL did.
AOL has by far more subscribers than any other online service, and the vast majority of those people are not accessing the "Internet", but are instead using it for AOL E-mail, AOL Instant Messaging, AOL chat rooms, AOL shopping and AOL bulletin boards. Sure, the underlying backbone of this is the Internet, but the entire experience is wrapped in a nice, proprietary front end essentially design to keep you in AOL's area of cyberspace.
I think the AOL-Time Warner merger serves to underscore this. I don't think anyone (not even Bill ;-) could have imagined that an online service would eventually be big enough to purchase one of the largest media companies in the world. If you don't think there are millions of people who equate the terms AOL and Internet now, just wait...
Sommelier
In a billion years, I have to believe that making the sun behave like we want is going to be easier than actually moving the Earth. By then, who's to say that extending the sun's lifetime isn't simpler?
Sommelier
Conversely, the typical European tech worker enjoys much better benefits. For example, in Italy it was pretty common to have 4-6 weeks of paid time-off as a new employee.
As a contractor, though, it seems like a lose-lose situation. You'd get half the salary, and none of the benefits.
Sommelier
Punctuation is your friend embrace it.
Punctuation is your friend, embrace it.
From Microsoft's latest balance sheet and income statement:
Total cash: $24 billion
Quarterly expense rate: $3 billion
Even if Microsoft didn't sell a single additional product starting today, they could continue to pay all their people and hang around for an additional two years.
They have one of the best balance sheets in the industry and will definitely take advantage of it (e.g. a cool $500 million is slated for X-box advertising).
-Sommelier
The proposed OSHA standard has already greatly affected the place where I work. In the past year:
All employees have been required to attend an ergonomics course.
All offices have been evaluated and personalized according to ergonomic guidelines.
All employees are required to complete an online ergonomic self-evaluation every year.
I was very resistant to these changes when they were first introduced. Who the hell are they to tell me how I have to lay out my office?
I now have a $600 ergo chair, $500 negative tilt keyboard and mouse tray, and all my worksurfaces (that's what us cube dwellers call a desk) have been adjusted to my leg and arm lengths.
How can my company afford all of this? It must cost millions! The answer is: they can't afford to not do it. Most folks here earn about $100K per year, and if only one develops a career threatening case of RSI, the lawsuit to cover lost future income will dwarf the amount spent on all the ergo stuff.
It is a simple matter of accounting. In this case, money spent on ergo is considered an insurance policy against any future RSI lawsuit.
-Sommelier
BTW, after all my complaining a year ago, it turns out I love my new ergo office. I can work for hours in relative comfort. I can't remember ever being this pain free at work.
If RSI only impacted you, then I would agree with your statement. However, if developing RSI impacts the company, either through lost employee productivity, increased health costs or both, then the company not only has the right, but the obligation to do something about it.
Despite the fact that the PS2 arrived "late", does anyone else think that Sony might have jumped the gun on its U.S. intro? It might be hard to sustain the current level of hype into the meat of the holiday shopping season (still another good 3-4 weeks away for most people).