Maybe it's not obvious from the review, but I would have thought that a big part of a software marketing program would be costing out how much the campaign will cost along with a dicussion on different methodologies for raising additional funds for paying for advertising, booths, travel, giveaways, etc.
While the focus seems to be on direct sales, I would be interested in seeing Chapman's comments on dealing with retailers. I have a bit of experience with the issues of dealing with retailers and would have liked to understand how to respond to how the retailers (Best Buy and Radio Shack specifically) carry out test marketing in their stores as well as helping underlings pitch your product to their management.
The second quote you've listed really disappointed me as well. It sounded like the "journalist" cut and pasted the paragraph from the MPAA's press release to bump his word count up.
I remember reading (I think in the book "We almost lost Detroit") that a coal plant releases a lot of Carbon-12 into the atmosphere. The measurement that I remember is that over 25 years, a coal plant releases the same amount of radioactivity in form of Carbon-12 as a reactor meltdown.
In the five minutes that this thread has been active, I've seen a number of partisan posts rated "Funny"/"Insightful" to "Troll"/"Offtopic" and back again. It looks like the red/blue brains are fighting to support points of view that they agree with.
I'm waiting to see if the purported ultimate rating of "+5 Troll" will be achieved (if any topic could do it, this is it).
Maybe Linux is rated the #2 server OS source by revenue...
This post wasn't meant as a joke. I wonder if somebody summed the revenue of Linux distribution providers and compared it to Microsoft? I wonder if this calculation would include IBM as a distributor?
tHIS is not *even* in the same park. The factors are much, much different.
No?
I'd be curious to see what you consider the different "factors" and at the same time, I suggest you look over the history of the Orteig prize and how many famous aviators *died* trying to win it. At the same time, compare the features of Lindbergh's plane to the other competitors' and compare Lindbergh himself to the other competitors.
It is important to note that while Lindbergh is credited for spurring on trans-atlantic air travel - his aircraft could never be considered a prototype for the airliners that were later used for the task. There's a certain irony that the later aircraft were of the configuration of Lindbergh's competitors (multiple engines, multiple crew, etc). If one of SS1's competitor's beats it to the prize, I wouldn't be surprised if the winning team is lionized for the feat, but private spacecraft were more similar to SS1's concept than the winner's.
Getting back to the original question, what are the different factors? Travelling to space is different technically, but how is the danger, excitment, promise different in 2004 to crossing the Atlantic in 1927?
I think it's important to understand that there are several "competitors", but only one real contender...
Something similar would have been said in 1927 with the Ortig prize. The actual winner was essentially completely discounted; Lindberg (sp?) was considered to be underfunded, minimal experience, using an aircraft that had only been tested once (on a transcontinental flight) and only had one engine and one pilot to boot!
Maybe one of these groups with "garage technology" will have the right stuff.
About fifteen years ago, I was involved in the retirement of a number of older computing systems (specifically IBM "Series/1", "System/7" and "1130"s) used in manufacturing. At the time, these systems were critical in supporting older products (most notably FAA radar displays) but had been withdrawn from regular IBM support and parts were only available from returned equipment.
I could appreciate the article's comments about engineering detective work; we had some source code on paper, some source and binary code archived on disc and some binary code saved on cassette tape (seriously). Product, tester and controller documentation was spotty to say the least. For the most part, we had enough understanding of what was happening to be able to recreate the test specifications for all the products.
The big problem was understanding actual timings and electrical parameters; few of the part numbers were built from standard TTL ("VTL" in IBM parlance) and most were built using IBM "SLT" technology implementing RTL and DTL logic.
After collating all the data we had, we decided we could: we could simulate the controller operations in a PC. In many cases, we could emulate the operation of the controller/tester hardware with basic digital I/O cards connected to a PC. Finally, in quite a few cases we were completely on our own due to unusual (for today) electrical requirements.
Due to the large number of part numbers (1500), we wanted to come up with a single solution that made the most sense and, ideally, worked for all the different part numbers. We looked at simulating the controllers with PCs and passing the I/O to the old tester hardware, emulating the tester using a PC with I/O cards or converting the tests to run on a standard InCircuit Tester (ICT).
In virtually all the cases, it made the most sense to convert the tests to run on a standard ICT tester (GenRad (new Teredyne) 228x was chosen) rather than simulate or emulate the hardware. The conversion applications generally converted the binary code into digital I/O operations (or GPIB instrument I/O) rather than come up with compilers for the original source code (although we did do this in one case). This was still a rather large job, but it was completed before parts sources for the old controlling computers completely dried up.
I suspect that from the lack of hardware interfacing information in the article, the author has run into similar problems. Despite that, having a simulator could be very useful in understanding how an old computer system operated and what is required to properly emulate/convert it into more modern hardware.
And what, precisely, do you see the as philosophical difference between being drugged into hibernation and being drugged into unconsciousness?
None - the current drugs used to "put somebody under" for surgury and lowering blood pressure/heart rate/respiration are dangerous and require constant monitoring of the patient. If the same function could be provide by a "hibernation drug", I presume that this would be easier on the patient and safer through the course of the surgury.
I wondered the same thing - and going ahead with this, would it be easier to operate on somebody in hibernation?
Would hibernation be part of a safer anesthetic protocol for surgury? Put the patient into hibernation with local pain killers rather than forcing them into unconsciousness?
This could be a very useful spin-off of this technology and maybe be more important to humanity than facilitating very long duration space-flight.
Actually the big question I have about this suit is cooling. You've got a guy covered head to toe in bullet-proof (not just resistant) armour plus tons of electronics.
Isn't the big problem going to be keeping the soldier inside cool? A problem of equal magnitude is dumping the heat in such a way that the soldier isn't a walking IR target...
Armstrong left the Navy in 1955 to become a civilian test pilot for the X-15. Before becoming an astronaut, he was a consultant to Boeing on the X-20 (Dyna-Soar) around 1960. He was selected as an astronaut in 1963 as part of the "Next Nine".
It was a big thing that he was a civilian and an important factor in his being chosen to be mission commander for an Apollo mission.
I've seen articles like this for years and it seems to always take issue with the things the writer doesn't know how to do compared with the things they do and seem intuitive to them.
I would pick holes in just about all his arguments - he seems to ignore the initial training and years of condition on how a car works. The same with a TV set. I'm sure I could find somebody that has horror stories trying to figure them out for the first time and could write an article on how counter-intuitive these items are (like, why do you need a key for a car ignition when you've unlocked the door?).
I've seen many articles like this on the VCR, not to mention ones complaining about more sophisticated cars, kitchen appliances, telephones, heating/air-conditioning systems, all of them wanting the systems to be simpler (and most, like this one, wanting to return to simpler times).
One of the things that infuriates me the most about this article is that the writer doesn't try to do anything himself; his "computer guru" doesn't seem bright enough to be able to load software without getting his mom angry because he is late for dinner.
In any case, if he really wants to play scrabble simply, why doesn't he drop twenty bucks (probably less than he paid for the CD) and buy a hand held scrabble game?
Sorry for the Rant - I would be a lot kinder if the writer had tried to load an application, got a GPF and ended up in phone support hell between the ISV and Microsoft with each blaming each other and the theme of the article is that he just wanted it to work.
For an obsolete medium, there sure are a lot of CDs still being produced. What is interesting is that the number of CD players has certainly reduced with DVD players being slotted as the replacement with the ability to play CDs, CD-Rs, CDs with MP3s, VCDs as well as DVDs.
I agree with you (and gates) that there will something better in 10 years - but that does not mean that the usefulness of DVDs will have diminished. Like CDs, DVDs have been well designed for their primary task; providing movies with a variety of different features.
The 50 GB blue laser DVDs will probably be used for movies series and TV seasons as well as computer backups/applications and displace the current DVD format for computer applications, but I think anyone would be hard pressed to agree that DVDs will be "obsolete" anytime in the forseeable future (or even our lifetimes).
I suspect that Gates made the statement more to get his name in the news and present himself as a visionary, as a fairly positive piece about himself.
The article is slashdotted and I don't see a pointer to a mirror, but based on other people's comments, it sounds like it is a rehash of '50s rules and ettiquette and if it isn't how does it respond to questions like:
1. If you have call display, is it polite to answer the phone with the caller's name? I couple of years ago, this freaked people out, now it's very common. Older people tend to think of this as an invasion of privacy; but these same people consider it acceptable to have a peephole on their door and only open it to people they know.
2. What about call answer? Should you take the incoming call and how long should you be on it before returning to the original call? What happens if you consider the second call to be more important than the first?
3. Is call screening using an answering machine polite?
4. I give telemarketers one chance to hang up before I slam the receiver down on them. Is this polite or should I listen to their pitch? Can I blow a Fox-40 whistle into the receiver?
5. What are cell phone rules? Is it acceptable to have a social call while in line at the supermarket? What about a heated business call?
I suspect that a lot of these answers are based on how old you are and what your workplace experience is.
Personally, he was the most intriguing of Spidey's foes (too bad he ate a bullet about 20 years ago). He always seemed to bring out the best in PP.
It would be nice if Spider-Man did not follow the "Batman" path and have multiple villians in the sequels (Don't forget the second Batman had Catwoman and the Penguin as well as Christopher Walken as Max Schreck). This is what Michael Keaton complained about and why he refused to do anything after Batman Returns; the francise movies became less about the title character and more about the guest villians.
This is something that has always impressed me with Rutan; he has always been pretty honest with regards to the performance and safety of his designs.
He could have just as easily hid the issues and blamed the time to fix the problem on the FAA or a vendor (like the rocket motor supplier).
The attitude changes on motor light are significant problems that will have to be addressed although I wonder if it is due to center of gravity changes caused by the fully fueled motor. The big bang and deformed panel is a potentially bigger problem and may require significant changes to the structure.
This anti-climax has always stood out in my mind a lot more than anything else in the movie.
It's probably a central concept in the 15 minute short the film was based on, but I seem to remember that it only gained prominance in the last ten minutes or so of the movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's not obvious from the review, but I would have thought that a big part of a software marketing program would be costing out how much the campaign will cost along with a dicussion on different methodologies for raising additional funds for paying for advertising, booths, travel, giveaways, etc.
While the focus seems to be on direct sales, I would be interested in seeing Chapman's comments on dealing with retailers. I have a bit of experience with the issues of dealing with retailers and would have liked to understand how to respond to how the retailers (Best Buy and Radio Shack specifically) carry out test marketing in their stores as well as helping underlings pitch your product to their management.
myke
Yes, you're right, Carbon-14 is the radioactive form of Carbon that is released when coal is burned.
Sorry about that,
myke
The second quote you've listed really disappointed me as well. It sounded like the "journalist" cut and pasted the paragraph from the MPAA's press release to bump his word count up.
myke
I remember reading (I think in the book "We almost lost Detroit") that a coal plant releases a lot of Carbon-12 into the atmosphere. The measurement that I remember is that over 25 years, a coal plant releases the same amount of radioactivity in form of Carbon-12 as a reactor meltdown.
myke
Will she always be virus free?
Let's see, you're buying virtual flowers and such and probably using your phyiscal credit card number.
If the site or you (via the site) catches something you're gonna wonder how your virtual girlfriend had a Hawaiian vacation!
myke
In the five minutes that this thread has been active, I've seen a number of partisan posts rated "Funny"/"Insightful" to "Troll"/"Offtopic" and back again. It looks like the red/blue brains are fighting to support points of view that they agree with.
I'm waiting to see if the purported ultimate rating of "+5 Troll" will be achieved (if any topic could do it, this is it).
myke
Maybe Linux is rated the #2 server OS source by revenue...
This post wasn't meant as a joke. I wonder if somebody summed the revenue of Linux distribution providers and compared it to Microsoft? I wonder if this calculation would include IBM as a distributor?
myke
tHIS is not *even* in the same park. The factors are much, much different.
No?
I'd be curious to see what you consider the different "factors" and at the same time, I suggest you look over the history of the Orteig prize and how many famous aviators *died* trying to win it. At the same time, compare the features of Lindbergh's plane to the other competitors' and compare Lindbergh himself to the other competitors.
It is important to note that while Lindbergh is credited for spurring on trans-atlantic air travel - his aircraft could never be considered a prototype for the airliners that were later used for the task. There's a certain irony that the later aircraft were of the configuration of Lindbergh's competitors (multiple engines, multiple crew, etc). If one of SS1's competitor's beats it to the prize, I wouldn't be surprised if the winning team is lionized for the feat, but private spacecraft were more similar to SS1's concept than the winner's.
Getting back to the original question, what are the different factors? Travelling to space is different technically, but how is the danger, excitment, promise different in 2004 to crossing the Atlantic in 1927?
myke
I think it's important to understand that there are several "competitors", but only one real contender...
Something similar would have been said in 1927 with the Ortig prize. The actual winner was essentially completely discounted; Lindberg (sp?) was considered to be underfunded, minimal experience, using an aircraft that had only been tested once (on a transcontinental flight) and only had one engine and one pilot to boot!
Maybe one of these groups with "garage technology" will have the right stuff.
myke
About fifteen years ago, I was involved in the retirement of a number of older computing systems (specifically IBM "Series/1", "System/7" and "1130"s) used in manufacturing. At the time, these systems were critical in supporting older products (most notably FAA radar displays) but had been withdrawn from regular IBM support and parts were only available from returned equipment.
I could appreciate the article's comments about engineering detective work; we had some source code on paper, some source and binary code archived on disc and some binary code saved on cassette tape (seriously). Product, tester and controller documentation was spotty to say the least. For the most part, we had enough understanding of what was happening to be able to recreate the test specifications for all the products.
The big problem was understanding actual timings and electrical parameters; few of the part numbers were built from standard TTL ("VTL" in IBM parlance) and most were built using IBM "SLT" technology implementing RTL and DTL logic.
After collating all the data we had, we decided we could: we could simulate the controller operations in a PC. In many cases, we could emulate the operation of the controller/tester hardware with basic digital I/O cards connected to a PC. Finally, in quite a few cases we were completely on our own due to unusual (for today) electrical requirements.
Due to the large number of part numbers (1500), we wanted to come up with a single solution that made the most sense and, ideally, worked for all the different part numbers. We looked at simulating the controllers with PCs and passing the I/O to the old tester hardware, emulating the tester using a PC with I/O cards or converting the tests to run on a standard InCircuit Tester (ICT).
In virtually all the cases, it made the most sense to convert the tests to run on a standard ICT tester (GenRad (new Teredyne) 228x was chosen) rather than simulate or emulate the hardware. The conversion applications generally converted the binary code into digital I/O operations (or GPIB instrument I/O) rather than come up with compilers for the original source code (although we did do this in one case). This was still a rather large job, but it was completed before parts sources for the old controlling computers completely dried up.
I suspect that from the lack of hardware interfacing information in the article, the author has run into similar problems. Despite that, having a simulator could be very useful in understanding how an old computer system operated and what is required to properly emulate/convert it into more modern hardware.
myke
And what, precisely, do you see the as philosophical difference between being drugged into hibernation and being drugged into unconsciousness?
None - the current drugs used to "put somebody under" for surgury and lowering blood pressure/heart rate/respiration are dangerous and require constant monitoring of the patient. If the same function could be provide by a "hibernation drug", I presume that this would be easier on the patient and safer through the course of the surgury.
myke
I wondered the same thing - and going ahead with this, would it be easier to operate on somebody in hibernation?
Would hibernation be part of a safer anesthetic protocol for surgury? Put the patient into hibernation with local pain killers rather than forcing them into unconsciousness?
This could be a very useful spin-off of this technology and maybe be more important to humanity than facilitating very long duration space-flight.
myke
Actually the big question I have about this suit is cooling. You've got a guy covered head to toe in bullet-proof (not just resistant) armour plus tons of electronics.
Isn't the big problem going to be keeping the soldier inside cool? A problem of equal magnitude is dumping the heat in such a way that the soldier isn't a walking IR target...
myke
If it can send me to the planet of the cute co-eds with the tiny noses!
Steve Dallas
(It's Friday, been a long week, let's have a Bloom County Reference.)
myke
Armstrong left the Navy in 1955 to become a civilian test pilot for the X-15. Before becoming an astronaut, he was a consultant to Boeing on the X-20 (Dyna-Soar) around 1960. He was selected as an astronaut in 1963 as part of the "Next Nine".
It was a big thing that he was a civilian and an important factor in his being chosen to be mission commander for an Apollo mission.
myke
I've seen articles like this for years and it seems to always take issue with the things the writer doesn't know how to do compared with the things they do and seem intuitive to them.
I would pick holes in just about all his arguments - he seems to ignore the initial training and years of condition on how a car works. The same with a TV set. I'm sure I could find somebody that has horror stories trying to figure them out for the first time and could write an article on how counter-intuitive these items are (like, why do you need a key for a car ignition when you've unlocked the door?).
I've seen many articles like this on the VCR, not to mention ones complaining about more sophisticated cars, kitchen appliances, telephones, heating/air-conditioning systems, all of them wanting the systems to be simpler (and most, like this one, wanting to return to simpler times).
One of the things that infuriates me the most about this article is that the writer doesn't try to do anything himself; his "computer guru" doesn't seem bright enough to be able to load software without getting his mom angry because he is late for dinner.
In any case, if he really wants to play scrabble simply, why doesn't he drop twenty bucks (probably less than he paid for the CD) and buy a hand held scrabble game?
Sorry for the Rant - I would be a lot kinder if the writer had tried to load an application, got a GPF and ended up in phone support hell between the ISV and Microsoft with each blaming each other and the theme of the article is that he just wanted it to work.
myke
For an obsolete medium, there sure are a lot of CDs still being produced. What is interesting is that the number of CD players has certainly reduced with DVD players being slotted as the replacement with the ability to play CDs, CD-Rs, CDs with MP3s, VCDs as well as DVDs.
I agree with you (and gates) that there will something better in 10 years - but that does not mean that the usefulness of DVDs will have diminished. Like CDs, DVDs have been well designed for their primary task; providing movies with a variety of different features.
The 50 GB blue laser DVDs will probably be used for movies series and TV seasons as well as computer backups/applications and displace the current DVD format for computer applications, but I think anyone would be hard pressed to agree that DVDs will be "obsolete" anytime in the forseeable future (or even our lifetimes).
I suspect that Gates made the statement more to get his name in the news and present himself as a visionary, as a fairly positive piece about himself.
myke
The article is slashdotted and I don't see a pointer to a mirror, but based on other people's comments, it sounds like it is a rehash of '50s rules and ettiquette and if it isn't how does it respond to questions like:
1. If you have call display, is it polite to answer the phone with the caller's name? I couple of years ago, this freaked people out, now it's very common. Older people tend to think of this as an invasion of privacy; but these same people consider it acceptable to have a peephole on their door and only open it to people they know.
2. What about call answer? Should you take the incoming call and how long should you be on it before returning to the original call? What happens if you consider the second call to be more important than the first?
3. Is call screening using an answering machine polite?
4. I give telemarketers one chance to hang up before I slam the receiver down on them. Is this polite or should I listen to their pitch? Can I blow a Fox-40 whistle into the receiver?
5. What are cell phone rules? Is it acceptable to have a social call while in line at the supermarket? What about a heated business call?
I suspect that a lot of these answers are based on how old you are and what your workplace experience is.
Enquiring minds want to know!
myke
that The Onion article isn't serious.
I mean, other than Pamela Anderson, does anybody like kid rock?
myke
Personally, he was the most intriguing of Spidey's foes (too bad he ate a bullet about 20 years ago). He always seemed to bring out the best in PP.
It would be nice if Spider-Man did not follow the "Batman" path and have multiple villians in the sequels (Don't forget the second Batman had Catwoman and the Penguin as well as Christopher Walken as Max Schreck). This is what Michael Keaton complained about and why he refused to do anything after Batman Returns; the francise movies became less about the title character and more about the guest villians.
myke
Hey Chris,
Really interesting post - too bad it wasn't picked up by the moderators.
It has really given me something to think about with respect to quality of the things that I design.
Thanx,
myke
This is something that has always impressed me with Rutan; he has always been pretty honest with regards to the performance and safety of his designs.
He could have just as easily hid the issues and blamed the time to fix the problem on the FAA or a vendor (like the rocket motor supplier).
The attitude changes on motor light are significant problems that will have to be addressed although I wonder if it is due to center of gravity changes caused by the fully fueled motor. The big bang and deformed panel is a potentially bigger problem and may require significant changes to the structure.
myke
This anti-climax has always stood out in my mind a lot more than anything else in the movie.
It's probably a central concept in the 15 minute short the film was based on, but I seem to remember that it only gained prominance in the last ten minutes or so of the movie.
myke
Great movie introducing the first possible flight to the moon (with its own "Woody Woodpecker Cartoon" to help explain space flight).
Too bad there isn't a DVD version of the movie that used a high quality/remastered print.
myke
I don't know, it has a certain appeal, the idea's so obvious that Vader wouldn't bother looking there.
Obi Wan Kenobi, crazy like a fox.
myke