Many Linux-style volunteers are building free...
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Lessig On Net Neutrality
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· Score: 2, Funny
Many Linux-style volunteers are building free wireless networks that enable participants to share access and offer capacity to others. These volunteers are also building free protocols that enable legal access without shifting control to a last-mile access provider.
Who? Why? Or are you talking just about all the unsuspecting people who set up unsecured wireless networks in their homes?
MINI swears that no personal information in contained in the keyfobs...
Doesn't really matter. All you need to know as a marketeer is the unique ID of the FOB. When the FOB was registered your name, etc. goes into the master DB in the sky and from that point forward any POS or PO-Advertisement that sees your FOB will have access to your personally identifiable consumer portrait.
The "see some stupid phrase on a billboard as you're driving to your lifeless cube" game is just a way to train various peons to be good consumers and hang onto their FOB.
Perhaps Microsoft read the comments from the Slashdot community on Windows Home Server?
More likely they are currently flooding the market with "educational" pieces designed to increase the public's awareness of a new category of product; its no coincidence that the forthcoming product will match what the public has been trained to expect of it in advance.
(Hint: look up "AIDA" as a marketing term sometime...)
Yet Another Phone, huh? The secret isn't so much how they kept this thing "under wraps" (as if) but how Apple is getting various media outlets to flog what appears to be Yet Another Phone (or PDA) as the "next generation", "innovative", etc.
At $500 a pop it may be Sony-ing it's way out of its target market too.
Then Sony is well positioned? Or Charter's cable?
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The Home Server Cometh
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Today's battle isn't about 'what brand of computer sits on the desk in your spare room, or even what operating system it runs, it's going to be about who gets to dominate the market for home servers that will control your entertainment, television, telephony, and your home automation system
Then Sony is well positioned? Or Charter's cable offerings?
For the past few decades, I'd say the trend has been to bring toy/home systems into the business. For example, desktop PCs of the '82 vintage eventually became mission-critical servers and the Linux you played Doom on in '93 eventually became a viable business OS. If this keeps up, will we see Nintendo rack-mounts in the server room in 10 years?
"LEDs in Clothes" is a loser? I'm guessing the authors haven't purchased young kids shoes recently; it's hard to find a pair of athletic shoes that DON'T come with LEDs.
IANAAA (I am not an amateur astronomer), but $6.5K really isn't that much to spend on your favorite hobby. Just think how much you've sunk into antique cars, shop tools you really don't need (or a shed/garage for your shop), high-end stereo or video gizmos, or even just video games and your "rigs" over the years. The fact that you can pick one of these up at the local camera store suggests that this isn't even "high end" backyard astronomy equipment.
Apple said that while its investigation revealed that the company's stock option procedures did not include sufficient safeguards to prevent manipulation, Mr. Jobs did not benefit financially from any questionable stock awards.
If this stands, its shitty news for anyone who holds stock. What this would essentially do is legalize corporate circle-jerking. In other words, it would be OK for top buddies to make deals that individually don't directly financially benefit the decision-maker, but such deals would be made with the mutual (oral/untraceable) understanding that the next deal by the next decision-maker would financially benefit the first decision-maker.
Is this by the same morons who do "name a star?" Personally, I prefer just stuffing a wad of crisp dollar bills down the garbage disposal: more bang for the buck.
C'mon, "editors"...this is SlashDot, not Time. Most people here could probably have written that article blindfolded. How about a couple of real tech articles today?
Since when is a corporation "cool"?
on
The Google Phone?
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Apple fans continue to salivate at the thought of a phone powered by the company-of-cool
Since when is a corporation "cool"? Are you honestly telling me there are halfwits out there who would buy ANYTHING Apple might crap out? (Well, I suppose there are; I had a neighbor once who had a room full of random junk all branded with Coca-Cola logos.)
You're close, but still missing it. The key isn't what is was "designed to do" in the theoretical world by a bunch of eggheads, but what consumers expect it to do when they see it in the real world.
To extend my "railing" example further, you could design a decorative railing held on with Scotch tape if it was designed for only a light wind load, but you'd still be liable if you decided to install that decorative railing on a staircase where people would expect a real railing.
Honestly, this is something a testing program would never catch... The strap only breaks when adults (one would assume reasonably large or athletic men) push the limits beyond what most people would feel comfortable with; when someone is testing something for a company (in particular if they are watched testing something) they react to it like it was glass.
Sometimes I think I ought to charge for the wisdom I dispense on SlashDot, but here's another free look into the real world:
When you do real consumer product testing, you don't ever tell the truth about what you are testing for. For example, you may heard about the "TV pilot" tests where they ask you to watch a bunch of new shows they are considering airing on TV. However, they are also showing you commercials and at the end they test you for retention of information shown in the commercials (what they really care about) in addition to what shows you would most like to see in the coming year (these results are tossed).
Nintendo (or any other console company) could get honest feedback about its products by setting up similar situations where the evaluators were told "you are going to evaluate snack treats" or a particular video game or something else and the console itself would just be part of the experience as far as the evaluators were concerned. It would also have been fairly cheap for Nintendo to send demo units home with trained employees and let Cousin Larry and the kids beat up on those units for a while.
The limitations of the strap could only be tested by morons who will treat a $40 controller like it was a $2 toy they got with their happy meal.
Once again, it has to be said that a Venn diagram showing "morons" and "console game players" would have a large overlapping area. Nintendo should have expected this, especially when it started pitching to "casual" gamers.
It was nice of them to include a wrist strap, but if they hadn't included one no one would blame the lack of one on losing their grip on the remote.
You may be surprised, but I completely agree with you here. They may have had fewer throwing incidents if people didn't think there was a strap to keep them from losing complete control of the remote.
A better other-product analogy to use here rather than footballs and knives would be a railing on a staircase that appeared to be attached but really was not. In this case the appearance of security was there, but not the reality.
Ummm... there was nothing defective about the controller at all.
I speak for the general public when I say that it's probably a good thing you aren't an engineer or manager. From the consumer's perspective (the only one that counts), the strap IS part of the controller because it came with the controller.
...the original strap was fine for normal people, the new version is basically the strap for dummies.
Again, if you're developing for consumers, you need to assume that a significant portion of your buyers will be dummies. Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board.
Kudos to Nintendo for trying to fix their fuck-up, but it was a fuck-up, and one that could have been avoided with a better "beta" program.
Despite all the Nintendo PR cover-up about the defective Wii controllers (e.g., SlashDot's "it's a replacement program, not a recall" wuss-out), it looks like the flaks missed one guy. Take a look at #7:
7. Nintendo Says 'when hand gets sweaty, simply wipe 'em'
The Nintendo Wii, current darling of the videogame press, has a dark side: it can kill unexpectedly. Kill televisions, that is, especially expensive HDTVs. With a flick of the wrist. The Wii remote straps that shipped with the first systems were wispy, flimsy, and -- in a word -- an imminent threat to high-end home entertainment equipment, windowpanes, and sibling noggins everywhere.
It's really inexcusable.
Wrong demographic for Mac...if you wanted to see male liberal arts majors with rectangular-lensed glasses watch Futurama reruns on bean-bag chairs I think you'd be happier.
...advertise on satellite radio that would be ideal, because the stations are geared towards a specific genre, whether it be sports or rap music, and you could gear ads towards a certain demographic.
And regular radio stations aren't "geared" toward a particular demographic? C'mon, kid: almost all modern media, including SlashDot is directed at a particular audience/demographic.
(As a Google AdWord subscriber, I can also tell you one thing Google currently does a very poor job of now is targeting particular demographics, especially if you ever use the hopeless "affiliate" feature on your buys.)
Slashdot Mirror
Who? Why? Or are you talking just about all the unsuspecting people who set up unsecured wireless networks in their homes?
Doesn't really matter. All you need to know as a marketeer is the unique ID of the FOB. When the FOB was registered your name, etc. goes into the master DB in the sky and from that point forward any POS or PO-Advertisement that sees your FOB will have access to your personally identifiable consumer portrait.
The "see some stupid phrase on a billboard as you're driving to your lifeless cube" game is just a way to train various peons to be good consumers and hang onto their FOB.
"HD-DVD" will win over "Blu-Ray" because of the name of the tech anyway...
Average consumer: "WTF is Blue Ray?"
Answer: "It lets you watch high-definition DVDs."
Average consumer: "Is there a Red Ray?"
Average consumer: "WTF is HD-DVD?"
Answer: "It lets you watch high-definition DVDs."
Average consumer: "Sorry I was such a dumbass."
More likely they are currently flooding the market with "educational" pieces designed to increase the public's awareness of a new category of product; its no coincidence that the forthcoming product will match what the public has been trained to expect of it in advance.
(Hint: look up "AIDA" as a marketing term sometime...)
Yet Another Phone, huh? The secret isn't so much how they kept this thing "under wraps" (as if) but how Apple is getting various media outlets to flog what appears to be Yet Another Phone (or PDA) as the "next generation", "innovative", etc.
At $500 a pop it may be Sony-ing it's way out of its target market too.
Then Sony is well positioned? Or Charter's cable offerings?
For the past few decades, I'd say the trend has been to bring toy/home systems into the business. For example, desktop PCs of the '82 vintage eventually became mission-critical servers and the Linux you played Doom on in '93 eventually became a viable business OS. If this keeps up, will we see Nintendo rack-mounts in the server room in 10 years?
"LEDs in Clothes" is a loser? I'm guessing the authors haven't purchased young kids shoes recently; it's hard to find a pair of athletic shoes that DON'T come with LEDs.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/07/ 211214
IANAAA (I am not an amateur astronomer), but $6.5K really isn't that much to spend on your favorite hobby. Just think how much you've sunk into antique cars, shop tools you really don't need (or a shed/garage for your shop), high-end stereo or video gizmos, or even just video games and your "rigs" over the years. The fact that you can pick one of these up at the local camera store suggests that this isn't even "high end" backyard astronomy equipment.
If this stands, its shitty news for anyone who holds stock. What this would essentially do is legalize corporate circle-jerking. In other words, it would be OK for top buddies to make deals that individually don't directly financially benefit the decision-maker, but such deals would be made with the mutual (oral/untraceable) understanding that the next deal by the next decision-maker would financially benefit the first decision-maker.
Enron II - here we come!
Is this by the same morons who do "name a star?" Personally, I prefer just stuffing a wad of crisp dollar bills down the garbage disposal: more bang for the buck.
C'mon, "editors"...this is SlashDot, not Time. Most people here could probably have written that article blindfolded. How about a couple of real tech articles today?
Since when is a corporation "cool"? Are you honestly telling me there are halfwits out there who would buy ANYTHING Apple might crap out? (Well, I suppose there are; I had a neighbor once who had a room full of random junk all branded with Coca-Cola logos.)
You're close, but still missing it. The key isn't what is was "designed to do" in the theoretical world by a bunch of eggheads, but what consumers expect it to do when they see it in the real world.
To extend my "railing" example further, you could design a decorative railing held on with Scotch tape if it was designed for only a light wind load, but you'd still be liable if you decided to install that decorative railing on a staircase where people would expect a real railing.
Sometimes I think I ought to charge for the wisdom I dispense on SlashDot, but here's another free look into the real world:
When you do real consumer product testing, you don't ever tell the truth about what you are testing for. For example, you may heard about the "TV pilot" tests where they ask you to watch a bunch of new shows they are considering airing on TV. However, they are also showing you commercials and at the end they test you for retention of information shown in the commercials (what they really care about) in addition to what shows you would most like to see in the coming year (these results are tossed).
Nintendo (or any other console company) could get honest feedback about its products by setting up similar situations where the evaluators were told "you are going to evaluate snack treats" or a particular video game or something else and the console itself would just be part of the experience as far as the evaluators were concerned. It would also have been fairly cheap for Nintendo to send demo units home with trained employees and let Cousin Larry and the kids beat up on those units for a while.
Once again, it has to be said that a Venn diagram showing "morons" and "console game players" would have a large overlapping area. Nintendo should have expected this, especially when it started pitching to "casual" gamers.
You may be surprised, but I completely agree with you here. They may have had fewer throwing incidents if people didn't think there was a strap to keep them from losing complete control of the remote.
A better other-product analogy to use here rather than footballs and knives would be a railing on a staircase that appeared to be attached but really was not. In this case the appearance of security was there, but not the reality.
That's basically my point. "Used as designed" is insufficient and the result of poor planning; consumers rarely use products exactly "as designed."
I speak for the general public when I say that it's probably a good thing you aren't an engineer or manager. From the consumer's perspective (the only one that counts), the strap IS part of the controller because it came with the controller.
Again, if you're developing for consumers, you need to assume that a significant portion of your buyers will be dummies. Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board.
Kudos to Nintendo for trying to fix their fuck-up, but it was a fuck-up, and one that could have been avoided with a better "beta" program.
Somewhere, Darwin is smiling.
Is "World of Warcraft Expansion missing Christmas 2006" one of the items listed there?
Javascript is also the heart of the Sphere gaming engine. http://aegisknight.org/sphere
Wrong demographic for Mac...if you wanted to see male liberal arts majors with rectangular-lensed glasses watch Futurama reruns on bean-bag chairs I think you'd be happier.
I think I speak for most Slashdotters when I say, "Who?"
And regular radio stations aren't "geared" toward a particular demographic? C'mon, kid: almost all modern media, including SlashDot is directed at a particular audience/demographic.
(As a Google AdWord subscriber, I can also tell you one thing Google currently does a very poor job of now is targeting particular demographics, especially if you ever use the hopeless "affiliate" feature on your buys.)