Here's an interview with the largest Swedish business paper, Dagens Industri: http://tinyurl.com/38ju9l (Swedish.)
A couple of months ago they launched a laptop for 3000SEK (~$450), the same model now being sold for $150: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.100914 (Swedish.)
Could be fraud, could be simply bad business, could be an attempt to gain market share by calculated loss. No matter what, it could definitely have been launched in a more professional way. Bad karma on the founder. I'm waiting (at least) 6 weeks to put in my order.
Has anyone tried setting up a harddrive based MP3-player without a PC? It should be possible to use one of the USB harddrive-to-WiFi proxies out there, like this one: Linksys NSLU2 together with one of the MP3 players that plays from the network, like Creatives: Wireless Player (although that one requires a server running some software). Then you'd have USB harddrive -> WiFi Proxy -> Mp3 player without the hassle, power consumption, noise and ugliness of a PC.
Right, there is of course a risk that it degenerates into flamewars but there could also be links to counter arguments or facts. Some sort of karma-system a la Slashdot could also help in sorting out the votes.
Of course, the Truthalizer wouldn't be a substitute for rational thinking. You will still have to think for yourself and draw your own conclusions. But maybe, just maybe, it will become a little bit harder to lie people in their faces.
There is a lot of information on the web but almost no way to verify the data. I would like a way for people to report the credibility of the information contained on a web page.
This is especially important with news reporting and double-extra-especially important in times of war.
It is also all too simple for politicians, journalists and other people of power to repeat the same old lies over and over.
The memory of media is short. A Truthalizer would help make it a bit longer.
Recognising faces is extremely difficult. It's one of those social functions that humans have evolved to perform with ease, but it also requires a significant portion of the brain to do it.
This is just one example of the increased power of automated pattern recognition. Once computers reach a level of vision close to humans, we will se an explosion in automated tasks.
Other examples include Sony Aibos vision, lip-reading software that helps in speech recognition, 'robot scientists' and the next generation of speech recognition with the potential to revolutionize human computer interaction. HAL, is that you?
Emergent properties of complex systems. That's the deal.
You might as well have written "a neuron is simply a cell, connected to other similar cells, that responds to input and generates output". It's true, but it's irrelevant. Put 20 billions neurons together, however, and things start to get interesting.
But what do I know. My brain haven't read the book yet.
...although perhaps not THAT heavy, and I doubt even a brontosaurus would be able to toss a tank across a mountain. Stilll, some people believe that in order for the dinosaurs to support their body mass, earths' gravity would have to be up to 8 times lower back then compared to today: http://www.dinosaur.org/extinction.htm
Personally, I think Hulk and all the other super heroes are just living in a different simulation.
Theft or no theft, the problem is a sudden and severe imbalance in supply and demand. This balance has been completely turned over.
I don't think the business logic of an entire industry ever before has changed as fast as we are currently observing the music industrys' to do. Basically, the entire business model of a record company has been swiped away.
"Each share also carries the right to download backup or media-shifting copies for $0.05 per song or $0.50 per CD [...]. If they download an average of 10 CDs per month revenue grows to $60 million per year. [...] Now grow the business to its logical size of 60 million users. At 10 CDs per user per year, Snapster download revenue would be $3.6 billion or about a quarter the size of the current recording industry, which it would effectively replace."
First let me start of with one of my favorite quotes: "Humans are a robots' way of making more robots."
Then, let me remind you all of the fact that robots and computers already are doing lots and lots of work that humans used to do. What is Google if nothing else than the automated task of collecting information?
Finally, if it ever becomes true that humans no longer has to work hours after hours doing pointless tasks such as building cars or writing software then so be it. Remember that we work in order to make money so that we can increase our own quality of life. If machines can provide a sufficient quality of life for us without requiring us to do tedious work, then what's wrong with that?
Let go of the notion that a job is an important part of life. It's not.
Besides, the popup problem is easy enough to solve without micropayments.
I can't imagine you're suggesting a solution that deprives the content providers of their only income.
I can't imagine you would be willing to suggest that micropayments be silently transferred without user interaction.
That's certainly an option. Of course there'd have to be some kind of way of setting limits to the amount of money to be paid, for example a maximum of $0.1 / minute without asking the user.
There could also be some simple way of regretting a purchase, making it in practice a donation.
Micropayments are more than just paying for each and every page you surf to. It is an infrastructure that allows financial transactions to take place that isn't possible today.
This infrastructure can be used for a lot of things, including paying poor starving independant artists for their MP3s, donating money to charity, playing a game or reading an article.
Clay seems to imply that with this infrastructure in place, every web page will suddenly cost money. This won't happen. But it does give people a lowered barrier to the opportunity to make a living on doing the things they love doing.
If you don't want to pay for it - fine, don't. Just don't start whining when all that's left to read on the web are MSN and Yahoo.
Kind of makes you wonder, once again, what Sony will do with Sony Ericsson and its' smartphones, such as the P800. The PDAs and the smartphones are getting more and more similar. Seems kind of foolish for Sony to have different strategies (not to mention different OS platforms - Palm and Symbian OS) for the two.
So far Sony is using Sony Ericsson to keep one foot in the mobile phone market, which is pretty much controlled by the operators (who Ericsson has steady relations to). This won't last forever, however, as the two markets merge and wireless internet access becomes transparent.
Then, as with the PC market, developers and content makers will be ones leading the market. They will choose the platform that provides the greatest leverage for their applications. If that platform is Palm OS, Symbian, Java or.Net remains to be seen. I guess that's what Sony's waiting for.
This new Clie is pretty cool to have while waiting, though. I most certainly want one!:o)
I would put a minimum time limit holding law on stocks, and make it realistic, at least one year and ideally two years
Then you would have to have _much_ harder regulations on the kind of information a company puts out as well as what kind of advice investment advisors give. Sorry, but I just don't think that's realistic.
1. Real income of white and blue collar workers have been on the decline for several decades, cost of living has been rising.
I think you could live a much better life much cheaper now than ever. I think we spend a lot of money on things such as market brands and expensive apartments, but these are things that aren't really necessary for your survival. Try taking a look at your expenses over a couple of months and see how much of it that actually goes to quite useless things.
2. Capitalism is basically killing it's own customers, since people earn less, they can consume less (otherwise they simply make more debts and creating dangerous bubbles).
The nice thing about capitalism is the balance between demand and supply. As soon as one thing changes the other thing replies by adopting to the change. I don't think the problem is with capitalism but with our current structure of society...
3. Most manufacturing is done by machines these days, only service and administration jobs are the main areas for humans. So most people work in jobs were they can be easily replaced.
...for example full time employments, which is a construct not suitable for a dynamic working evironment.
4. Job fluctuation has become extreme - compatred to the old "job for life" hardly anyone stays longer then five years in one company. This also dimishes the social fabric in companies, the ties between workers and management are loser, people stick less together.
This is true from one angle. But our social networks are more important than ever. They just don't coincide as much with our current employmment as they did before. In stead of saying "I work for Company X" you might be saying "I belong to network A, B and C. And, oh yeah, currently Company X is paying my salary". I think that's a good thing.
5. Globalisation also means not only the exchange of riches (by creating jobs in these developing countries9, but also sharing poverty (in those "rich countries").
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game, but you are right in that maybe finally the wealth distribution of the world is slowly flattening. I think this is good in the long run. People with a job, a good life and a secure income don't blow themselves up.
6. Protectionism (like US-steel tarifs) just speed up the shift of jobs, since they raise the benefits of outsourcing even higher and create a "false" market that could collapse anytime without more government intervention.
Agree.
7. Business is more and more concentrated, so less companies produce all the goods/services. Obviously less companies need less employees.
Yes, this is true for businesses in the production sector. But as people move up the Maslow ladder of needs their demands changes. In stead of a faster car we want a car that is an extension of our own personalities and that is fun to drive and own. In stead of a bigger burger we want a fun burger served by a clown that can do Bill Clinton impersonations standing on his arms. We're also healthier and live longer. We want a better quality of life, even as we age.
Conclusion 1: people in healthcare will always have things to do. We will never be healthy enough.
Conclusion 2: entertain your customers, no matter what you do.
8. The financial market has developed in a way that it investors make more money, thru short term money business instead of investing long term in companies. This of course doesn't create many jobs...
9. Since most companies these days are on the stock market, their share values have become more important then the actual core business. Instead on focusing on markets and products, CEO's are forced in a three months rhythm to create value for stockholders - so money gets sucked out of companies and long term projects are hardly tackled.
I agree. And I think one of the solutions to this problem is to l
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a link to an email conversation with the founder:= e0a49aad6aaa76aa2abfe67cb4d4ec44&postid=7539927#po st7539927
http://www.sweclockers.com/forum/showthread.php?s
The founder also has a column in a small Swedish paper:
http://www.jnytt.se/Read__7981.aspx (Swedish.)
He writes about life in Sao Paulo.
Here's an interview with the largest Swedish business paper, Dagens Industri:
http://tinyurl.com/38ju9l (Swedish.)
A couple of months ago they launched a laptop for 3000SEK (~$450), the same model now being sold for $150:
http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.100914 (Swedish.)
Could be fraud, could be simply bad business, could be an attempt to gain market share by calculated loss. No matter what, it could definitely have been launched in a more professional way. Bad karma on the founder. I'm waiting (at least) 6 weeks to put in my order.
Has anyone tried setting up a harddrive based MP3-player without a PC?
It should be possible to use one of the USB harddrive-to-WiFi proxies out there, like this one: Linksys NSLU2 together with one of the MP3 players that plays from the network, like Creatives: Wireless Player (although that one requires a server running some software).
Then you'd have USB harddrive -> WiFi Proxy -> Mp3 player without the hassle, power consumption, noise and ugliness of a PC.
Yepp, everything will become a PC.
Right, there is of course a risk that it degenerates into flamewars but there could also be links to counter arguments or facts. Some sort of karma-system a la Slashdot could also help in sorting out the votes.
Of course, the Truthalizer wouldn't be a substitute for rational thinking. You will still have to think for yourself and draw your own conclusions. But maybe, just maybe, it will become a little bit harder to lie people in their faces.
I would want a credibility rating on web pages.
There is a lot of information on the web but almost no way to verify the data. I would like a way for people to report the credibility of the information contained on a web page.
This is especially important with news reporting and double-extra-especially important in times of war.
It is also all too simple for politicians, journalists and other people of power to repeat the same old lies over and over.
The memory of media is short. A Truthalizer would help make it a bit longer.
Yepp, that's digital:, 00.html
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,54962
Still no flash, though. Guess I'll stick with my Pentax Optio S4 for a while longer.
I wonder when digital cameras will have bluetooth in them so I can take real pictures with a real camera and send them through the phone.
I assume that's 4x digital zoom, not optical.
Recognising faces is extremely difficult. It's one of those social functions that humans have evolved to perform with ease, but it also requires a significant portion of the brain to do it.
This is just one example of the increased power of automated pattern recognition. Once computers reach a level of vision close to humans, we will se an explosion in automated tasks. Other examples include Sony Aibos vision, lip-reading software that helps in speech recognition, 'robot scientists' and the next generation of speech recognition with the potential to revolutionize human computer interaction. HAL, is that you?
Emergent properties of complex systems. That's the deal.
You might as well have written "a neuron is simply a cell, connected to other similar cells, that responds to input and generates output". It's true, but it's irrelevant. Put 20 billions neurons together, however, and things start to get interesting.
But what do I know. My brain haven't read the book yet.
What!? You're saying it was a TRICK SHOT!?
*/me rips the Bloom-posters of the wall.*
Funny. At first I thought you said robotic mimers.
...although perhaps not THAT heavy, and I doubt even a brontosaurus would be able to toss a tank across a mountain. Stilll, some people believe that in order for the dinosaurs to support their body mass, earths' gravity would have to be up to 8 times lower back then compared to today:
http://www.dinosaur.org/extinction.htm
Personally, I think Hulk and all the other super heroes are just living in a different simulation.
Theft or no theft, the problem is a sudden and severe imbalance in supply and demand. This balance has been completely turned over.
I don't think the business logic of an entire industry ever before has changed as fast as we are currently observing the music industrys' to do. Basically, the entire business model of a record company has been swiped away.
No wonder they're pissed.
"Each share also carries the right to download backup or media-shifting copies for $0.05 per song or $0.50 per CD [...]. If they download an average of 10 CDs per month revenue grows to $60 million per year. [...] Now grow the business to its logical size of 60 million users. At 10 CDs per user per year, Snapster download revenue would be $3.6 billion or about a quarter the size of the current recording industry, which it would effectively replace."
That should be "10 CDs per user per month".
Funny, no one noticed.
First let me start of with one of my favorite quotes:
"Humans are a robots' way of making more robots."
Then, let me remind you all of the fact that robots and computers already are doing lots and lots of work that humans used to do. What is Google if nothing else than the automated task of collecting information?
Finally, if it ever becomes true that humans no longer has to work hours after hours doing pointless tasks such as building cars or writing software then so be it. Remember that we work in order to make money so that we can increase our own quality of life. If machines can provide a sufficient quality of life for us without requiring us to do tedious work, then what's wrong with that?
Let go of the notion that a job is an important part of life. It's not.
Besides, the popup problem is easy enough to solve without micropayments.
I can't imagine you're suggesting a solution that deprives the content providers of their only income.
I can't imagine you would be willing to suggest that micropayments be silently transferred without user interaction.
That's certainly an option. Of course there'd have to be some kind of way of setting limits to the amount of money to be paid, for example a maximum of $0.1 / minute without asking the user.
There could also be some simple way of regretting a purchase, making it in practice a donation.
Micropayments are more than just paying for each and every page you surf to. It is an infrastructure that allows financial transactions to take place that isn't possible today.
This infrastructure can be used for a lot of things, including paying poor starving independant artists for their MP3s, donating money to charity, playing a game or reading an article.
Clay seems to imply that with this infrastructure in place, every web page will suddenly cost money. This won't happen. But it does give people a lowered barrier to the opportunity to make a living on doing the things they love doing.
If you don't want to pay for it - fine, don't. Just don't start whining when all that's left to read on the web are MSN and Yahoo.
1. Providers need money to survive.
2. Today, that money either comes from annoying popups or doesn't come at all.
3. With a micropayment solution, the popups are gone and the provider receives money. Everyone's happy.
"genetic algorithms are increasingly being harnessed for real-world tasks such as designing more efficient refrigerators"
Wow. Walking refrigerators.
What makes you think the Sony pda division even knows what the Sony cellphone division is doing?
h p?id=24 6_0_2_0_C
Well, I hope they do. Anyway, the CEO of Sony comments the relationship here:
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.p
"I really want to own either Symbian or Palm -- I want to buy them."
Do they even care since the products are aimed at different audiences?
Are they? Why do you think so?
Yepp. That's kind of what I said in my post. :o)
Kind of makes you wonder, once again, what Sony will do with Sony Ericsson and its' smartphones, such as the P800. The PDAs and the smartphones are getting more and more similar. Seems kind of foolish for Sony to have different strategies (not to mention different OS platforms - Palm and Symbian OS) for the two.
.Net remains to be seen. I guess that's what Sony's waiting for.
:o)
So far Sony is using Sony Ericsson to keep one foot in the mobile phone market, which is pretty much controlled by the operators (who Ericsson has steady relations to). This won't last forever, however, as the two markets merge and wireless internet access becomes transparent.
Then, as with the PC market, developers and content makers will be ones leading the market. They will choose the platform that provides the greatest leverage for their applications. If that platform is Palm OS, Symbian, Java or
This new Clie is pretty cool to have while waiting, though. I most certainly want one!
I would put a minimum time limit holding law on stocks, and make it realistic, at least one year and ideally two years
Then you would have to have _much_ harder regulations on the kind of information a company puts out as well as what kind of advice investment advisors give. Sorry, but I just don't think that's realistic.
1. Real income of white and blue collar workers have been on the decline for several decades, cost of living has been rising.
I think you could live a much better life much cheaper now than ever. I think we spend a lot of money on things such as market brands and expensive apartments, but these are things that aren't really necessary for your survival. Try taking a look at your expenses over a couple of months and see how much of it that actually goes to quite useless things.
2. Capitalism is basically killing it's own customers, since people earn less, they can consume less (otherwise they simply make more debts and creating dangerous bubbles).
The nice thing about capitalism is the balance between demand and supply. As soon as one thing changes the other thing replies by adopting to the change. I don't think the problem is with capitalism but with our current structure of society...
3. Most manufacturing is done by machines these days, only service and administration jobs are the main areas for humans. So most people work in jobs were they can be easily replaced.
4. Job fluctuation has become extreme - compatred to the old "job for life" hardly anyone stays longer then five years in one company. This also dimishes the social fabric in companies, the ties between workers and management are loser, people stick less together.
This is true from one angle. But our social networks are more important than ever. They just don't coincide as much with our current employmment as they did before. In stead of saying "I work for Company X" you might be saying "I belong to network A, B and C. And, oh yeah, currently Company X is paying my salary". I think that's a good thing.
5. Globalisation also means not only the exchange of riches (by creating jobs in these developing countries9, but also sharing poverty (in those "rich countries").
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game, but you are right in that maybe finally the wealth distribution of the world is slowly flattening. I think this is good in the long run. People with a job, a good life and a secure income don't blow themselves up.
6. Protectionism (like US-steel tarifs) just speed up the shift of jobs, since they raise the benefits of outsourcing even higher and create a "false" market that could collapse anytime without more government intervention.
Agree.
7. Business is more and more concentrated, so less companies produce all the goods/services. Obviously less companies need less employees.
Yes, this is true for businesses in the production sector. But as people move up the Maslow ladder of needs their demands changes. In stead of a faster car we want a car that is an extension of our own personalities and that is fun to drive and own. In stead of a bigger burger we want a fun burger served by a clown that can do Bill Clinton impersonations standing on his arms. We're also healthier and live longer. We want a better quality of life, even as we age.
Conclusion 1: people in healthcare will always have things to do. We will never be healthy enough.
Conclusion 2: entertain your customers, no matter what you do.
8. The financial market has developed in a way that it investors make more money, thru short term money business instead of investing long term in companies. This of course doesn't create many jobs ...
9. Since most companies these days are on the stock market, their share values have become more important then the actual core business. Instead on focusing on markets and products, CEO's are forced in a three months rhythm to create value for stockholders - so money gets sucked out of companies and long term projects are hardly tackled.
I agree. And I think one of the solutions to this problem is to l