So... you've got through 18 years of school without, apparently, spending more than a few idle minutes on what kind of job you are actually working towards?
At the very least, I would expect that you would spend a few days before entering a master's program, thinking about what it would do for your job prospects, and finding out what doing a masters does for you.
It's fine if the person is actually working with the company and doing more than blogging... but if they're just blogging, then it's just a new term for advertising.
Steve has been hinting at this for months with his "year of HD" speech. Bill G has just recently been trying to shoot across the bow of Apple, with his own "year of HD" bit.
At 5 cents a song, why would any company do this? Maintaining infrastructure to support the service, and the simple download costs per song probably vastly exceed the return you'd get from 5 cents a song.
I don't know what the giants like Google and Apple pay for bandwidth, but assume it's way better than what you and I pay, and maybe it's 50 cents a gig. OK, a song is 50 megs... do the math and just letting someone download it costs the company 5 cents. Bang goes your 5 cent model.
Assume their bandwith costs are half that. You're still paying out half your revenue before even starting to cover any of your other costs. Insane.
Now, if you built the model right into a peer-to-peer sharing network that would still collect the cash, you'd spread the cost of downloads onto a diffuse group of users/clients, and therefore maybe be a little more do-able. But then, of course, you introduce all kinds of new issues with security, payment, etc. etc.
Seriously, while his comments may be accurate about a portion of the blogs out there, the elistist attitude and obvious lack of checking out some of the really top-notch resources out there are symptomatic of someone who's day is done: dead tree libraries just aren't as important as they used to be.
It sucks if you own something like katie.com to go thru this, but sheesh, squeeze the lemons, lady, and:
a) put Google AdWords on the site, with some abuse content. You'll make a mint.
or
b) put a porn site at katie.com. See how fast Penguin Books will stop promoting it. (I do not recommend this, I do not support/agree with/recommend porn, but this would be an effective way of dealing with a pushy publisher.
Just think of all that free publicity and traffic... someone could make a lot of money with this domain.
I fully agree with the author (and it sounds like the reviewer) that there are an awful lot more failure than success stories regarding computers in education.
However, shouldn't we expect failure?
Think about it:
We're trying to reinvent something (schools) that exist today much the same as they existed 100 years ago. We're trying entirely different things here.
Most of these attempts are doomed to failure. But that doesn't mean we stop trying!
Eventually, as we find the things that work and the things that don't, we'll have an evolution towards the things that do. And the overall quality of computer instruction will go up.
The problems we currently face are many:
trying something new (always hard!)
untrained oldschool teachers
faddish adoption of technology for technologies sake
the inevitable problems of reinventing PART of a process while leaving the rest the same (i.e., real computer-assisted education is going to shake a lot of paradigms, including class size, what a class is, what a school is, who can take what class when, what a teacher is, who a teacher teaches, when a teacher teaches, what teaching means, what it means to be 'in school,', etc. etc. Changing one variable - throwing computers into a school - is not enough)
a predatory marketplace looking to dump tech for $$$ in education
poor understanding of integration of an entire software stack for students individually and a school community as a group
quick-hit political projects
and much, much more
The only way to work through these problems is to try, fail, and adopt an attitude of "fail faster."
In that complex environment of change and reinvention and failure and occasional success, we're going to hit on a number of different models that work.
And then education will really start to change. And then, I think, students (how do you define those btw?) will really start to benefit.
The key point is: chaos and failure are part of the process. Don't bitch about it - encourage it.
Frankly, though, there's a lot of bad SF out there that deserves to be trashed - it's only made because pre-pubescent scient-oriented teenage boys will read anything (well, except for most good stuff.)
One comment though: the Thranx, and insectoid race in Alan Dean Foster's Flinx & Commonwealth series, are actually more noble, peace-loving, and rational than humans. Less stinky too.
(Of course, Alan Dean Foster has really sunk to the level of the type of books that you're talking about, and his SF has never been really hard... or even logical... but he used to have a few good books now and then. But at least here's one example of an insect race being very good.)
He adds that future business applications for smart mobs might start anywhere in the world, like "finding out about the spot labor market in [an] African village."
These Africans, who are trying to find a day's worth of work here, there, and anywhere they can, who desperately need that day's worth of bread, can afford a Palm or PocketPC or cell phone?
What kind of idiot says stuff like this?
This is what's wrong with tech today: stupid apps for stupid reasons. We're just fortunate that a lot of people using a lot of apps in a lot of situations find some that actually totally kick ass, because if we only had the options inventors and tech reporters gave us, we'd be in a sorry state.
If this proceeds, and I agree it's bullshit, I sure hope MS just licenses the 'technology.'
Because, what if they bought it for $5 billion?
Would they have a lock on all digital distribution?
On another note, this is hilarious: Here is the company, MS, that said some weeks ago when they licensed SCO code for NO REAL PURPOSE AT ALL that "Microsoft respects intellectual property and other people's rights"
You can't do one-click. You can't do shopping carts. You can't do streaming. You can't do SHIT!!!
I thought you couldn't patent an idea, only a specific implementation of that idea.
In any case, this is going to far.
Can some crackers out there massively fuck with the Patent system in the US, please?
Can you hack/crack in, kill everything digital, burn everything paper, so we can all start from square one?
Or, what about a massive DDOS on everything connected to the patent office? Or cracking into their computers/servers/database.
Someone, somewhere, white or black hat, has got to be able to do something to save us all from the fucking do-nothing-productive, make-nothing, sue-happy, blood-sucking, parasitic lawyers and companies out there.
FYI this is a rhetorical question meant for discussion of ethical consquences. I would never endorse breaking the law of the land you, dear reader, happen to live in!
We hear a lot about accessibility, and the need for accessibility, but not a lot about WHY it's important for a site to be accessible.
I'd like to know what percentage of surfers are visually disabled, or otherwise disabled in ways that require special features and/or technology to be able to use the web easily.
I'll tell you from experience of looking at browser stats, when something falls below 5% we forget about it and focus on the big numbers of people.
That may not be nice, and that may not be altruistic, and it may not be PC, but it makes very good business sense when we have limited development dollars, time, and resources.
So, what's the percentage of people who need accessibility features in websites?
There seems to be a lot of doom+gloom about connectivity pricing and access here.
No-one is considering what the effect of wireless networks could be. Add to them a peer-sharing protocol like Bittorrent, and instead of dl'ing from Timbuktu you're dl'ing from Uncle Buck across the street.
In fact, the neighborhood onramp doesn't even know what the heck you're doing.
So while I think it's OK for cable companies to charge more based on more usage, I also think it long-term won't lead to the devastation of the stereotypical bandwidth hog lifestyle.
Neither of those links contains the term "Mishrad."
I'm not suggesting you're "making this up," but I am suggesting you're mistaken.
Jewish scholars were/are incredibly detail-oriented about things like this, an attitude not likely to be the case if it was all just metaphor.
Furthermore, while there were sects (e.g., Sadduccees) that were quite free and loose about interpreting and using the Torah and prophets, others, (e.g., Pharisees) were pretty fanatical about literalness and taking the word of God at face value.
Just reading the books of the 'old testament' is a good way of determining that these authors were not intending to be read, by and large, metaphorically.
There are certain obvious exceptions, Song of Solomon being one. And the Psalms are pretty lyrical, as are the Proverbs and Ecclesiates. But most of the OT is intended to be taken literally as the inspired Word of God.
I supposed Numbers, with its endless listing of genealogies and families, is metaphor? Or Leviticus, with its ceremonial law?
Or Kings and Chronicles, with their meticulous history of kings and prophets and wars?
The Jewish people did consider what we now call the Old Testament canonical or authoritative and literal - that's why they copied those texts so carefully for thousands of years. (Talk about Xtreme Programming - they team-copied OT books incredibly carefully).
I'm afraid that all those who replied to part one of Jon's M$ article in a very negative way just don't get it.
MS is doing everything it can to leverage it's power in areas it dominates to those areas it does not (yet) dominate.
Just think: IE is used by perhaps 80% of net users. Push that percentage a few points higher, and MS can do WHATEVER THE HECK IT WANT in terms of proprietary tags,.NET tie-ins, 'integration' into the operating system. In fact... they're already doing it with the 'Smart Tags,' which will change your web page and my web page and provide links where? To MS's sites, of course.
The very perceptive comment Katz made is that MS is MUCH more powerful and monopolistic now than it was at the time of original antitrust suit.
The uber-geeks in this crowd don't seem to care because Linux will always be around, and there will always be some free OSS stuff to play with and get off on... but that kind of abandon-the-masses approach is isolationistic and dangerous. If 90% of your website visitors expect (even need) proprietary serverside extensions or software in order to view your content, because that's the way MS build their browsers... what are you going to do? Close up shop?
(Note: MS just also aquired a content management system... nCompass Resolution. Next thing you know, that will be 'integrated' into IIS. Website in a box -for one low price!!! Only from MS!!!!)
What the majority of people just don't seem to get is that everything that MS does - EVERYTHING - is aimed at making itself stronger, making itself more indispensable, making itself more unassailable.
Can you imagine a MS-free business in North America these days? I can, and you can... but most corporate types can't even begin to.
The MS thing IS depressing. It IS worrying. MS is like a cult... and they've brainwashed themselves most of all... that is intent on worldwide domination.
I can only hope that the technology world will be saved from incredible domination by adoption of Linux en masse by 2nd and 3rd world countries like China and Mexico, who, then, when they get enough economic power, will be able to build technology infrastructures on non-MS foundations.
What the US government doesn't recognize, seemingly, is that slavish protection of and concessions for MS could likely result in the US be marginalized in the long term, technologically speaking.
PS: I am so incredibly SICK of the 'adding value for customers' argument from MS. Do they even believe it themselves? How can they keep a straight face???
The people who say 'it's just another company,' 'they're just trying to be competitive,' etc. etc. are probably MS plants at Slashdot.
This company IS evil, it HAS crushed competitors, it HAS reduced choice and options for ordinary people, and it WILL use it's desktop and possibly future internet monopolies to contain to get people to pay, pay, pay, and pay some more... all for the glory of Gates.
Slashdot Mirror
HP's new teleconferencing solution does pretty much the same thing ...
r net-future/
http://www.gilgamesh.ca/index.php/2005/12/14/inte
I'm not to worried. If the telcos push this, they'll just lose even more clients.
So ... you've got through 18 years of school without, apparently, spending more than a few idle minutes on what kind of job you are actually working towards?
Unbelievable.
I blogged this:
http://www.gilgamesh.ca/?p=302
At the very least, I would expect that you would spend a few days before entering a master's program, thinking about what it would do for your job prospects, and finding out what doing a masters does for you.
It's fine if the person is actually working with the company and doing more than blogging ... but if they're just blogging, then it's just a new term for advertising.
Cringle has a great bit on it as well. (Scroll down a bit.)
I have no idea why, but I got to thinking what I'd want in a system like this if I was a studio exec.
Here's my answer
This is the beginning of the flood. The only thing that can compete with is a torrent.
I don't know what the giants like Google and Apple pay for bandwidth, but assume it's way better than what you and I pay, and maybe it's 50 cents a gig. OK, a song is 50 megs ... do the math and just letting someone download it costs the company 5 cents. Bang goes your 5 cent model.
Assume their bandwith costs are half that. You're still paying out half your revenue before even starting to cover any of your other costs. Insane.
Now, if you built the model right into a peer-to-peer sharing network that would still collect the cash, you'd spread the cost of downloads onto a diffuse group of users/clients, and therefore maybe be a little more do-able. But then, of course, you introduce all kinds of new issues with security, payment, etc. etc.
Again, the model is not crazy. The price is.
John Koetsier
http://gilgamesh.ca/
I wonder what Macromedia thinks about all this Ajax hype?
Seriously, while his comments may be accurate about a portion of the blogs out there, the elistist attitude and obvious lack of checking out some of the really top-notch resources out there are symptomatic of someone who's day is done: dead tree libraries just aren't as important as they used to be.
It sucks if you own something like katie.com to go thru this, but sheesh, squeeze the lemons, lady, and:
a) put Google AdWords on the site, with some abuse content. You'll make a mint.
or
b) put a porn site at katie.com. See how fast Penguin Books will stop promoting it. (I do not recommend this, I do not support/agree with/recommend porn, but this would be an effective way of dealing with a pushy publisher.
Just think of all that free publicity and traffic ... someone could make a lot of money with this domain.
We're trying to reinvent something (schools) that exist today much the same as they existed 100 years ago. We're trying entirely different things here. Most of these attempts are doomed to failure. But that doesn't mean we stop trying! Eventually, as we find the things that work and the things that don't, we'll have an evolution towards the things that do. And the overall quality of computer instruction will go up. The problems we currently face are many:
- trying something new (always hard!)
- untrained oldschool teachers
- faddish adoption of technology for technologies sake
- the inevitable problems of reinventing PART of a process while leaving the rest the same (i.e., real computer-assisted education is going to shake a lot of paradigms, including class size, what a class is, what a school is, who can take what class when, what a teacher is, who a teacher teaches, when a teacher teaches, what teaching means, what it means to be 'in school,', etc. etc. Changing one variable - throwing computers into a school - is not enough)
- a predatory marketplace looking to dump tech for $$$ in education
- poor understanding of integration of an entire software stack for students individually and a school community as a group
- quick-hit political projects
- and much, much more
The only way to work through these problems is to try, fail, and adopt an attitude of "fail faster." In that complex environment of change and reinvention and failure and occasional success, we're going to hit on a number of different models that work. And then education will really start to change. And then, I think, students (how do you define those btw?) will really start to benefit. The key point is: chaos and failure are part of the process. Don't bitch about it - encourage it.Frankly, though, there's a lot of bad SF out there that deserves to be trashed - it's only made because pre-pubescent scient-oriented teenage boys will read anything (well, except for most good stuff.)
One comment though: the Thranx, and insectoid race in Alan Dean Foster's Flinx & Commonwealth series, are actually more noble, peace-loving, and rational than humans. Less stinky too.
(Of course, Alan Dean Foster has really sunk to the level of the type of books that you're talking about, and his SF has never been really hard ... or even logical ... but he used to have a few good books now and then. But at least here's one example of an insect race being very good.)
Clever placement of your solar array will catch full sunlight 95% of the time.
Import your songs into iTunes. Then use the built-in functionality to access the music database online.
If you have your stuff organized by albums, iTunes will find the artists, albums, etc. etc.
He adds that future business applications for smart mobs might start anywhere in the world, like "finding out about the spot labor market in [an] African village."
These Africans, who are trying to find a day's worth of work here, there, and anywhere they can, who desperately need that day's worth of bread, can afford a Palm or PocketPC or cell phone?
What kind of idiot says stuff like this?
This is what's wrong with tech today: stupid apps for stupid reasons. We're just fortunate that a lot of people using a lot of apps in a lot of situations find some that actually totally kick ass, because if we only had the options inventors and tech reporters gave us, we'd be in a sorry state.
Because, what if they bought it for $5 billion?
Would they have a lock on all digital distribution?
On another note, this is hilarious:
Here is the company, MS, that said some weeks ago when they licensed SCO code for NO REAL PURPOSE AT ALL that "Microsoft respects intellectual property and other people's rights"
They are so full of it.
The reports state it's a 3.06 GHz Xeon.
You can't do one-click. You can't do shopping carts. You can't do streaming. You can't do SHIT!!!
I thought you couldn't patent an idea, only a specific implementation of that idea.
In any case, this is going to far.
Can some crackers out there massively fuck with the Patent system in the US, please?
Can you hack/crack in, kill everything digital, burn everything paper, so we can all start from square one?
Or, what about a massive DDOS on everything connected to the patent office? Or cracking into their computers/servers/database.
Someone, somewhere, white or black hat, has got to be able to do something to save us all from the fucking do-nothing-productive, make-nothing, sue-happy, blood-sucking, parasitic lawyers and companies out there.
FYI this is a rhetorical question meant for discussion of ethical consquences. I would never endorse breaking the law of the land you, dear reader, happen to live in!
We hear a lot about accessibility, and the need for accessibility, but not a lot about WHY it's important for a site to be accessible.
I'd like to know what percentage of surfers are visually disabled, or otherwise disabled in ways that require special features and/or technology to be able to use the web easily.
I'll tell you from experience of looking at browser stats, when something falls below 5% we forget about it and focus on the big numbers of people.
That may not be nice, and that may not be altruistic, and it may not be PC, but it makes very good business sense when we have limited development dollars, time, and resources.
So, what's the percentage of people who need accessibility features in websites?
No-one is considering what the effect of wireless networks could be. Add to them a peer-sharing protocol like Bittorrent, and instead of dl'ing from Timbuktu you're dl'ing from Uncle Buck across the street.
In fact, the neighborhood onramp doesn't even know what the heck you're doing.
So while I think it's OK for cable companies to charge more based on more usage, I also think it long-term won't lead to the devastation of the stereotypical bandwidth hog lifestyle.
I'm not suggesting you're "making this up," but I am suggesting you're mistaken.
Jewish scholars were/are incredibly detail-oriented about things like this, an attitude not likely to be the case if it was all just metaphor.
Furthermore, while there were sects (e.g., Sadduccees) that were quite free and loose about interpreting and using the Torah and prophets, others, (e.g., Pharisees) were pretty fanatical about literalness and taking the word of God at face value.
Just reading the books of the 'old testament' is a good way of determining that these authors were not intending to be read, by and large, metaphorically.
There are certain obvious exceptions, Song of Solomon being one. And the Psalms are pretty lyrical, as are the Proverbs and Ecclesiates. But most of the OT is intended to be taken literally as the inspired Word of God.
Or Kings and Chronicles, with their meticulous history of kings and prophets and wars?
The Jewish people did consider what we now call the Old Testament canonical or authoritative and literal - that's why they copied those texts so carefully for thousands of years. (Talk about Xtreme Programming - they team-copied OT books incredibly carefully).
Your argument holds no water whatsoever.
A person is smart. People are stupid.
One on one you can reason with people. En masse, you can only emote with them.
Emotions have huge bandwidth but tiny frequency ... in other words: they're very powerful but they're incredibly stupid (low infomrational content).
Changing that reality would entail re-engineering the human race.
Might change some people's perception of BG and company.
MS is doing everything it can to leverage it's power in areas it dominates to those areas it does not (yet) dominate.
Just think: IE is used by perhaps 80% of net users. Push that percentage a few points higher, and MS can do WHATEVER THE HECK IT WANT in terms of proprietary tags, .NET tie-ins, 'integration' into the operating system. In fact ... they're already doing it with the 'Smart Tags,' which will change your web page and my web page and provide links where? To MS's sites, of course.
The very perceptive comment Katz made is that MS is MUCH more powerful and monopolistic now than it was at the time of original antitrust suit.
The uber-geeks in this crowd don't seem to care because Linux will always be around, and there will always be some free OSS stuff to play with and get off on ... but that kind of abandon-the-masses approach is isolationistic and dangerous. If 90% of your website visitors expect (even need) proprietary serverside extensions or software in order to view your content, because that's the way MS build their browsers ... what are you going to do? Close up shop?
(Note: MS just also aquired a content management system ... nCompass Resolution. Next thing you know, that will be 'integrated' into IIS. Website in a box -for one low price!!! Only from MS!!!!)
What the majority of people just don't seem to get is that everything that MS does - EVERYTHING - is aimed at making itself stronger, making itself more indispensable, making itself more unassailable.
Can you imagine a MS-free business in North America these days? I can, and you can ... but most corporate types can't even begin to.
The MS thing IS depressing. It IS worrying. MS is like a cult ... and they've brainwashed themselves most of all ... that is intent on worldwide domination.
I can only hope that the technology world will be saved from incredible domination by adoption of Linux en masse by 2nd and 3rd world countries like China and Mexico, who, then, when they get enough economic power, will be able to build technology infrastructures on non-MS foundations.
What the US government doesn't recognize, seemingly, is that slavish protection of and concessions for MS could likely result in the US be marginalized in the long term, technologically speaking.
PS: I am so incredibly SICK of the 'adding value for customers' argument from MS. Do they even believe it themselves? How can they keep a straight face???
The people who say 'it's just another company,' 'they're just trying to be competitive,' etc. etc. are probably MS plants at Slashdot.
This company IS evil, it HAS crushed competitors, it HAS reduced choice and options for ordinary people, and it WILL use it's desktop and possibly future internet monopolies to contain to get people to pay, pay, pay, and pay some more ... all for the glory of Gates.
But did you see the copyright line at the very bottom of the article?
© Copyright 2000 The Walt Disney Company.
Doesn't that make you feel good?