Naah, leaving an unlocked car on the street isn't entrapment. That deosn't incite you to cause a crime-- you're not suppossed to steal stuff, regardless of its secureness.
Now, if there was an undercover cop lurking nearby, pointing out the car was unlocked and offering you fifty bucks to steal it for him-- that's entrapment.
Excellent post. If I hadn't already posted I'd have modded you up!
When we redesigned FoxKids.com in 2000, we did a competitive review of Disney, Nick and Cartoon.
It was simply incredible to me that Disney seeemed to be consciously making decisions that hid and obscured all its content, while Nick and Cartoon adopted designs that "churned" their available content to the top.
What's more incredible is that they haven't addressed that in the two years since!
We structured our site based on two things- what kids wanted to see, and what we wanted them to see. To that end, the two main sections of our site are Games and TV Shows (we exist to promote the network, after all). Can't get more direct than that!
I stubbornly resisted all efforts to create an area named "Fun Zone" on our site-- as in, if that's the zone that's fun, what does that make everything else?- so we ended up with a "Hangout" section for all the miscellaneous content that either defied classification or didn't deserve top placement.
So the answer, then, for more succesful advertising is even further blurring of content and advertisement.
Sadly, yes. The most effective advertising on our site FoxKids.com[caution- Flash heavy and loud] are our sponsored games, where the advertising messages are so deeply intertwined with the gameplay that you can't avoid the product shots and ad messages.
The funny thing is, it can backfire-- when access to a game level is blocked if the kid hasn't purchased a product or received a code, we get tons of negative feedback along the lines of "cut the cheap tricks, assholes!" (except with much filthier language).
Our own focus groups disagree...
on
How Kids Use the Web
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...with some of Neilsen's findings, specifically regarding the willingness of kids to read paragraphs of text.
In my "real life" job as Creative Director for FoxKids.com, we ran test groups on our target demo (boys 6-11). Specifically, we had them run through pages with varying amounts of text vs. imagery.
We found that kids systematically ignored any text more than two sentences long, or not specifically associated with content they were interested in.
In the case of games, since they were interested in playing they would reluctantly read a paragraph- but it was much more effective to have pictures with one word legends, like "Collect" and "Avoid."
It may sound depressing- "Kid's don't read!" - but you can turn it around-- maybe most of these kids have already learned that most of the text on the Internet is useless filler copy written by marketing droids, and they're just going straight for the interactivity.
Yes, Spider-Man was part of the trio. Iceman was a pre-existing Marvel hero (from X-Men), and Firestar was created for the TV series.
Later, she was brought into the comics as well- perhaps as a part of the New Mutants, but my memory is sketchy there.
One notable thing about the series was that it featured cameos and guest appearances by other Marvel characters at a time when such appearances were few and far in between.
However, those episodes where not without some hilarious flaws- Wolverine, a Canadian in the comics, was rendered with an Australian accent (with the whole G'Day, Mate! bit and all)-- there are no wolverines in Australia, they are a cold-weather creature.
Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, was inexplicably saddled with a Jamaican "Hey Mon" accent. Perhaps they felt that it made him sound more like a millionaire playboy? I dunno.
More than likely, the budget demanded that they use existing voice artists for the guest shots, and so the main characters "doubled up" by changing their voices and doing the guest bits.
I used to be an assistant editor at Marvel Comics, and if you let "Spiderman" get into print, you would fear for your job. Something about diluting the trademark...
My wife caught one a couple of years ago and kept it in a jar to prove to me they exist (I had been reluctant to believe that such a monster was real).
She calls it a "potato bug," and they're relatively common in the desert valley she grew up in.
As a New Yorker, I had seen my share of giant waterbugs, but this took the cake. It's the hideous proportions of the bug, and it's languid movements, that make it so creepy- almost as if it knows it doesn't have to be scared of anything.
(Except coyotes, apparently, and curious SoCal residents with jars).
News flash: Women here can be naked, too, if you do stuff like listen to what they say. Or at least pretend to, with an understanding look on your face, while you visualize them being naked.
You already share bandwidth with a whole mess of people in your neighborhood... you just don't know them, and that's why the cable co's can screw you all.
All it takes is some knowledgable people to form community ISPs, lease a fat pipe and redistribute the bandwidth via the most convenient method (802.11?) When the need to make a profit is removed from the cost of being an ISP, the price per user can come down quite a bit... hopefully the cable co's will start to feel some of the pricing pressure they thought they escaped when they killed the competition.
Sure, easier said than done, but hatred of getting screwed is a strong motivator...
And I reserve the right to castigate you for not selling your computer and disconnecting your ISP in order to divert the money to the homeless, as your doctrine apparently states you should.
When you're no longer posting on Slashdot I'll believe that you've lived up to the courage of your convictions;-)
The networks feel hamstrung; HBO and CineMax can cuss all day and night, and show all sorts of body parts, that the networks are constrained from doing.
They're attempting to push their own "edginess" in the face of what they regard as an unfair restriction.
This was already shown by using our own airplane/jet technology as a weapon. Also during the flight our cell phone technology was used as a weapon of terror by having the hostages call thier families.
Zara,
I heartily disagree. Because of cellphones, the passengers of the fourth flight found out there had been a paradigm shift in the tactics of hijacking, and fought back against the terrorists.
I would argue that our cellphones were an asset, allowing our people to instantly adapt to and counter this new form of terror- albeit at the cost of their lives.
I worked for a major toy company that was basically subsidized by Intel to put a USB port on every one of our products. Additionally, we were encouraged to bundle CPU intensive software in order to drive computer upgrades.
We all knew that USB was a poor choice for anything but momentary inputs, but we were pumping video, sound, all sorts of crap through the lines, and watching the signals degrade and the software sputter to a halt. This was USB-1, of course, but IMO, regardless of the bandwidth, it's a poor choice for the sort of tasks FireWire is ideal for, precisely because it's CPU dependent.
This is a small airship, obviously meant as a demonstrator. Their site says the concept can scale from here without much trouble.
Airships wouldn't replace jet aircraft, but they could certainly supplement them as regional transportation. Despite their large size, they can land in a relatively small amount of space... the Goodyear Blimp's landing field, here in Southern California, is the size of a large store parking lot. Couple that with their quieter (than a jet) operations, and you have a great short hop commuter aircraft between smaller markets (Akron to Pittsburgh, for example) or as a transfer vehicle between metropolitan airports and bedroom communities that would otherwise be a multihour bus or van trip away.
On the contrary- Saddam Hussein thought he had the tacit approval of the entire world to invade Kuwait, thanks to some vague language employed by our ambassador to Iraq at the time (April Glaspie).
He was surprised when we got all hot and bothered about what he considered to be a local dispute.
More to the point: an enemy ICBM launched toward the United States has a big, flaming return address stamped on it. Any nation foolhardy enough to attack in such a manner would, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist thirty minutes later.
Even the most hardcore nutjob is likely to think twice in that situation. Most attacks against United States property and citizens come in the form of guerilla, surprise terrorist attacks... why should a nuclear attack be any different?
Missile defense is resources misspent in a manner that's just going to piss off our nuclear peers (Russia and China) and fail to address the real threat of terrorist nuclear attacks.
All the recent news stories around the rise and fall of the dot coms are starting to resemble the urban myths that make up 83.2% of all corporate e-mail traffic. The truth is far more complicated and far less interesting to the average reader.
I'm sure there's plenty of human interest stories in other boom-to-bust industries, but they lack the "magical" elements (massive wealth at a young age, mysterious computer skills) that lend the Dot Com stories their fairytale qualities.
I personally can't wait until these stories join the Chupacabra and Monkeyman in the footnote department.
Any alien race sufficiently advanced to travel the interstellar distances to reach us will be able to do whatever they please to us, DNA or no.
In fact, we'd probably be beneath their notice. What can we, stuck on this pitiful rock, offer to a race that can span stars and mine asteroids? (Other than amusement, of course).
Witness the results of every encounter between advanced human races and primitives (like the Spaniards and the Incas). It almost always ends up VERY poorly for the primitives (Japan was a notable exception).
Yikes! Did you catch that picture of Tito that went with the story? Now that gravity can work its ravages on him again, he looks twenty years older than he did floating around that space station!
There's the real killer app for the space program. Have rich, old geezers pay to fly in space as orbital servants (Tito said he served meals for the crew!) while trying to extend their own lives by escaping gravity.
Distributed computing is a core part of businesses like Pixar and PDI ("Shreck" animators). They depend on their internal render farms to build their computer animated films one frame at a time.
Several companies offer online render farms for hire; this is a case where someone is selling cycles and presumably, making money.
The difference between these render farms and other distributed projects is the complexity and cost of the client application. To be useful, the render farms have to run copies of 3D animation software that can cost up to USD$15,000 per seat. Add that to the security concerns of the copyright holder, and you probably won't see a free, downloadable Pixar Renderman client anytime soon.
Seems a solution to this would be a client that performs the raw math required for the render software and sends it back to a render controller. Even if it's only 1/100 as effecient as a copy of Lightwave running locally, the sheer numbers of participants can make up for it. I'm sure a studio in a crunch wouldn't turn down the help of 40,000 otherwise idle CPUs!
Someone smarter than me will have to write that particular piece of software. So get to it!
Jay Leno hangs out at a local motorcycle joint I frequent (the Rock Store.) Last October I happened to be there, digital camera in hand, when Jay pulled up on his turbine bike. I snapped about 30 pictures of Jay and his bike, and wrote up what I heard him say about it. It's here:Leno Lands At the Rock Store
Although Mac OS9 doesn't natively support dual processors, application support for duals can be added via a system extension.
Several Mac OS9 apps are specifically coded to use the second processor... Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Photoshop, Cinema 4D, and other graphically intensive apps. Users of those applications appreciate all the cycles they can get.
Since the second processor is dedicated to the single application using it at the time, you usually see pretty high effeciencies for a kludge-- 190% speed increases in those specific apps.
Apple has flirted with duals since 1996's 9600 MP, but it wasn't until OSX that they really made sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Naah, leaving an unlocked car on the street isn't entrapment. That deosn't incite you to cause a crime-- you're not suppossed to steal stuff, regardless of its secureness.
Now, if there was an undercover cop lurking nearby, pointing out the car was unlocked and offering you fifty bucks to steal it for him-- that's entrapment.
Excellent post. If I hadn't already posted I'd have modded you up!
When we redesigned FoxKids.com in 2000, we did a competitive review of Disney, Nick and Cartoon.
It was simply incredible to me that Disney seeemed to be consciously making decisions that hid and obscured all its content, while Nick and Cartoon adopted designs that "churned" their available content to the top.
What's more incredible is that they haven't addressed that in the two years since!
We structured our site based on two things- what kids wanted to see, and what we wanted them to see. To that end, the two main sections of our site are Games and TV Shows (we exist to promote the network, after all). Can't get more direct than that!
I stubbornly resisted all efforts to create an area named "Fun Zone" on our site-- as in, if that's the zone that's fun, what does that make everything else?- so we ended up with a "Hangout" section for all the miscellaneous content that either defied classification or didn't deserve top placement.
So the answer, then, for more succesful advertising is even further blurring of content and advertisement.
Sadly, yes. The most effective advertising on our site FoxKids.com [caution- Flash heavy and loud] are our sponsored games, where the advertising messages are so deeply intertwined with the gameplay that you can't avoid the product shots and ad messages.
The funny thing is, it can backfire-- when access to a game level is blocked if the kid hasn't purchased a product or received a code, we get tons of negative feedback along the lines of "cut the cheap tricks, assholes!" (except with much filthier language).
...with some of Neilsen's findings, specifically regarding the willingness of kids to read paragraphs of text.
In my "real life" job as Creative Director for FoxKids.com, we ran test groups on our target demo (boys 6-11). Specifically, we had them run through pages with varying amounts of text vs. imagery.
We found that kids systematically ignored any text more than two sentences long, or not specifically associated with content they were interested in.
In the case of games, since they were interested in playing they would reluctantly read a paragraph- but it was much more effective to have pictures with one word legends, like "Collect" and "Avoid."
It may sound depressing- "Kid's don't read!" - but you can turn it around-- maybe most of these kids have already learned that most of the text on the Internet is useless filler copy written by marketing droids, and they're just going straight for the interactivity.
Yes, Spider-Man was part of the trio. Iceman was a pre-existing Marvel hero (from X-Men), and Firestar was created for the TV series.
Later, she was brought into the comics as well- perhaps as a part of the New Mutants, but my memory is sketchy there.
One notable thing about the series was that it featured cameos and guest appearances by other Marvel characters at a time when such appearances were few and far in between.
However, those episodes where not without some hilarious flaws- Wolverine, a Canadian in the comics, was rendered with an Australian accent (with the whole G'Day, Mate! bit and all)-- there are no wolverines in Australia, they are a cold-weather creature.
Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, was inexplicably saddled with a Jamaican "Hey Mon" accent. Perhaps they felt that it made him sound more like a millionaire playboy? I dunno.
More than likely, the budget demanded that they use existing voice artists for the guest shots, and so the main characters "doubled up" by changing their voices and doing the guest bits.
It's "Spider-Man."
Spider-dash-Capital M-Man.
I used to be an assistant editor at Marvel Comics, and if you let "Spiderman" get into print, you would fear for your job. Something about diluting the trademark...
My wife caught one a couple of years ago and kept it in a jar to prove to me they exist (I had been reluctant to believe that such a monster was real).
She calls it a "potato bug," and they're relatively common in the desert valley she grew up in.
As a New Yorker, I had seen my share of giant waterbugs, but this took the cake. It's the hideous proportions of the bug, and it's languid movements, that make it so creepy- almost as if it knows it doesn't have to be scared of anything.
(Except coyotes, apparently, and curious SoCal residents with jars).
News flash: Women here can be naked, too, if you do stuff like listen to what they say. Or at least pretend to, with an understanding look on your face, while you visualize them being naked.
:-)
Try it sometime
...are going to drive bandwidth collectives.
You already share bandwidth with a whole mess of people in your neighborhood... you just don't know them, and that's why the cable co's can screw you all.
All it takes is some knowledgable people to form community ISPs, lease a fat pipe and redistribute the bandwidth via the most convenient method (802.11?) When the need to make a profit is removed from the cost of being an ISP, the price per user can come down quite a bit... hopefully the cable co's will start to feel some of the pricing pressure they thought they escaped when they killed the competition.
Sure, easier said than done, but hatred of getting screwed is a strong motivator...
And I reserve the right to castigate you for not selling your computer and disconnecting your ISP in order to divert the money to the homeless, as your doctrine apparently states you should.
;-)
When you're no longer posting on Slashdot I'll believe that you've lived up to the courage of your convictions
The networks feel hamstrung; HBO and CineMax can cuss all day and night, and show all sorts of body parts, that the networks are constrained from doing.
They're attempting to push their own "edginess" in the face of what they regard as an unfair restriction.
This was already shown by using our own airplane/jet technology as a weapon. Also during the flight our cell phone technology was used as a weapon of terror by having the hostages call thier families.
Zara, I heartily disagree. Because of cellphones, the passengers of the fourth flight found out there had been a paradigm shift in the tactics of hijacking, and fought back against the terrorists. I would argue that our cellphones were an asset, allowing our people to instantly adapt to and counter this new form of terror- albeit at the cost of their lives.
I worked for a major toy company that was basically subsidized by Intel to put a USB port on every one of our products. Additionally, we were encouraged to bundle CPU intensive software in order to drive computer upgrades.
We all knew that USB was a poor choice for anything but momentary inputs, but we were pumping video, sound, all sorts of crap through the lines, and watching the signals degrade and the software sputter to a halt. This was USB-1, of course, but IMO, regardless of the bandwidth, it's a poor choice for the sort of tasks FireWire is ideal for, precisely because it's CPU dependent.
Or perhaps the medical staffers stand farther away because they *know* how dangerous the X-rays can be, unlike the security drones...
This is a small airship, obviously meant as a demonstrator. Their site says the concept can scale from here without much trouble.
Airships wouldn't replace jet aircraft, but they could certainly supplement them as regional transportation. Despite their large size, they can land in a relatively small amount of space... the Goodyear Blimp's landing field, here in Southern California, is the size of a large store parking lot. Couple that with their quieter (than a jet) operations, and you have a great short hop commuter aircraft between smaller markets (Akron to Pittsburgh, for example) or as a transfer vehicle between metropolitan airports and bedroom communities that would otherwise be a multihour bus or van trip away.
On the contrary- Saddam Hussein thought he had the tacit approval of the entire world to invade Kuwait, thanks to some vague language employed by our ambassador to Iraq at the time (April Glaspie).
He was surprised when we got all hot and bothered about what he considered to be a local dispute.
More to the point: an enemy ICBM launched toward the United States has a big, flaming return address stamped on it. Any nation foolhardy enough to attack in such a manner would, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist thirty minutes later.
Even the most hardcore nutjob is likely to think twice in that situation. Most attacks against United States property and citizens come in the form of guerilla, surprise terrorist attacks... why should a nuclear attack be any different?
Missile defense is resources misspent in a manner that's just going to piss off our nuclear peers (Russia and China) and fail to address the real threat of terrorist nuclear attacks.
All the recent news stories around the rise and fall of the dot coms are starting to resemble the urban myths that make up 83.2% of all corporate e-mail traffic. The truth is far more complicated and far less interesting to the average reader.
I'm sure there's plenty of human interest stories in other boom-to-bust industries, but they lack the "magical" elements (massive wealth at a young age, mysterious computer skills) that lend the Dot Com stories their fairytale qualities.
I personally can't wait until these stories join the Chupacabra and Monkeyman in the footnote department.
THEY just don't want you to know what sort of traffic is REALLY moving between the TVA and the Greys.
TVA=MIB?!?!
Any alien race sufficiently advanced to travel the interstellar distances to reach us will be able to do whatever they please to us, DNA or no.
In fact, we'd probably be beneath their notice. What can we, stuck on this pitiful rock, offer to a race that can span stars and mine asteroids? (Other than amusement, of course).
Witness the results of every encounter between advanced human races and primitives (like the Spaniards and the Incas). It almost always ends up VERY poorly for the primitives (Japan was a notable exception).
Yikes! Did you catch that picture of Tito that went with the story? Now that gravity can work its ravages on him again, he looks twenty years older than he did floating around that space station!
There's the real killer app for the space program. Have rich, old geezers pay to fly in space as orbital servants (Tito said he served meals for the crew!) while trying to extend their own lives by escaping gravity.
Now they can email our EP-3 back to us!
"Downloading segment 13 of 64,842 parts...."
Distributed computing is a core part of businesses like Pixar and PDI ("Shreck" animators). They depend on their internal render farms to build their computer animated films one frame at a time.
Several companies offer online render farms for hire; this is a case where someone is selling cycles and presumably, making money.
The difference between these render farms and other distributed projects is the complexity and cost of the client application. To be useful, the render farms have to run copies of 3D animation software that can cost up to USD$15,000 per seat. Add that to the security concerns of the copyright holder, and you probably won't see a free, downloadable Pixar Renderman client anytime soon.
Seems a solution to this would be a client that performs the raw math required for the render software and sends it back to a render controller. Even if it's only 1/100 as effecient as a copy of Lightwave running locally, the sheer numbers of participants can make up for it. I'm sure a studio in a crunch wouldn't turn down the help of 40,000 otherwise idle CPUs!
Someone smarter than me will have to write that particular piece of software. So get to it!
Jay Leno hangs out at a local motorcycle joint I frequent (the Rock Store.) Last October I happened to be there, digital camera in hand, when Jay pulled up on his turbine bike. I snapped about 30 pictures of Jay and his bike, and wrote up what I heard him say about it. It's here:Leno Lands At the Rock Store
Although Mac OS9 doesn't natively support dual processors, application support for duals can be added via a system extension.
Several Mac OS9 apps are specifically coded to use the second processor... Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe Photoshop, Cinema 4D, and other graphically intensive apps. Users of those applications appreciate all the cycles they can get.
Since the second processor is dedicated to the single application using it at the time, you usually see pretty high effeciencies for a kludge-- 190% speed increases in those specific apps.
Apple has flirted with duals since 1996's 9600 MP, but it wasn't until OSX that they really made sense.
Ironically enough, I work for Fox. Perhaps I'll propose, "When Mars Faces Attack -- II!"