What nailed Intel/Rambus was the cost associated with it. The performance gain didn't match the premium price Intel/Rambus demanded. So in response people ended up buying older Intel technology or if they needed the speed and performance they bought AMD.
Here's hoping Sony was able to liscense the technology for cheap. If not, they're going to be stuck when it comes down to a price war between Nintendo and Microsoft when the next generation gaming machines come out.
documents how the USA slipped to just 29% of the world's launch market share in the year 2000, even though we had 48% of it in 1996, and apparently all of it the decade before.
How did this happen if NASA has a larger space budget than all other civilian space agencies combined, as well as its Congressional mandate to: "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space"? How did some countries evolve from non-players in space two decades ago into dominant commercial players today?
Perhaps NASA should build a "Sea Station" 1000 feet below the sea and use submarines to take foreigners and other salaried government tourists on "missions" to conduct "experiments" and set "endurance records" while "improving international relations". This idea may seem crazy, but it would be much cheaper than the shuttle program and accomplish just as much.
Imagine what could happen if the $4 billion a year and 30,000 shuttle experts were diverted to R&D?
I just can't help but feel the whole ISS and Shuttle Programs are a waste of money. I'm much rather see NASA's time and money spent researching other ways of getting into space.
If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay,
Here's How to Set It Straight
What You Buy Affects Recommendations
On Amazon.com, Too; Why the Cartoons?
By JEFFREY ZASLOW
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean.
But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital videorecorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record. A phone call the machine makes to TiVo, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., once a day provides key information. As these men learned, when TiVo thinks it has you pegged, there's just one way to change its "mind": outfox it.
Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."
"The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."
He mentioned his TiVo tussle to a friend, who told an executive at CBS's "The King of Queens," who then wrote an episode with a My-TiVo-thinks-I'm-gay subplot.
A lot of gadgets and Web sites now feature "personalization technologies" that profile consumers by tracking what they watch, listen to or buy. The software, embedded in sites such as Amazon.com and CDNOW.com, then recommends other books, videos and music based on a customer's tastes.
The Willies
Many consumers appreciate having computers delve into their hearts and heads. But some say it gives them the willies, because the machines either know them too well or make cocksure assumptions about them that are way off base. That's why even TiVo lovers are tempted to hoodwink it -- a phenomenon that was also spoofed this year on another TV show, HBO's "The Mind of the Married Man."
[TiVo Remote]
Remote Control: Viewers help TiVo understand their tastes by giving TV shows thumbs up or down.
Mike Binder, creator and star of that show, had set his home TiVo to record his 1999 movie, "The Sex Monster," about a man whose wife becomes bisexual. After that, Mr. Binder's TiVo assumed he would enjoy a steady stream of gay programming. Unnerved, he counteracted the onslaught by recording the Playboy Channel and MTV's spring break bikini coverage. It worked, he says. "My TiVo doesn't look at me funny anymore."
His wife, however, was taken aback when she saw all the half-naked women he was ordering through TiVo. He told her those women meant nothing to him: "I'm just counterprogramming because TiVo thinks I'm gay." She was unamused. The incident inspired an episode of his show.
Though some users contend TiVo has sex on the brain, TiVo's general manager, Brodie Keast, explains that the box is merely "reacting to feedback you give it." Still, the machine employs algorithms -- searching several thousand key details (favorite actors, movie and TV genres) -- that leave some people wondering whether it is judging their predilections.
Mr. Karlsson, 26, says he "pre-emptively" found all the religious shows in his TV listings and used the "thumbs down" button on his remote control to tell TiVo he has no interest in them. (Giving three thumbs down is the best way to block a program.) After that, his TiVo recorded movies about creepy homicides. "They all have titles like 'Murder on Skeleton Isle,' " says the computer system administrator in Cambridge, Mass.
He uses the "thumbs" button to tell TiVo he hates such films. He also orders cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of him. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer," he says.
Mr. Cohen, 30, has a TiVo that mysteriously assumed he wanted Korean news programs. The Philadelphia lawyer gave thumbs down to anything Korean, and his TiVo got the message. Sort of. "The next day, it recorded the Chinese news," he says.
TiVo's 500,000 subscribers use the box primarily to record programs they specifically request, and many laud its ability to pause live broadcasts and record a show's entire season. Still, in TiVo-focused online chat-rooms and in secretive admissions to one another, some say they resent being pigeonholed by TiVo's suggestions.
'A Pregnant Gay Man'
Like TiVo, other techno-profilers run hard with limited information. Ray Everett-Church of Fremont, Calif., who is gay, ordered "Queer as Folk" videos from Amazon.com. Understandably, the site began suggesting gay-related calendars and books. Then he bought a baby book for a pregnant friend. So for weeks, the site also recommended parenting books. He says it was as if Amazon.com decided he was "a pregnant gay man."
He fought back, he says, "by inundating it with additional data. I searched for other stuff -- on politics, computers -- so it would stop throwing baby books at me. Now it thinks I've abandoned the baby and I'm preparing for a career in politics."
Mr. Everett-Church, a privacy consultant for businesses, predicts that as techno-profiling increases, more people will purposely muck up their profiles. They'll fear ordering books on mental illnesses or sexual preferences because they'll wonder if they'll somehow be publicly identified.
All techno-profiling companies contacted for this article said that information gleaned is for the customer's personal use only. Still, even Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos knows the potential mortification factor.
For a live demonstration before an audience of 500 people, Mr. Bezos once logged onto Amazon.com (amazon.com) to show how it caters to his interests. The top recommendation it gave him? The DVD for "Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity." That popped up because he had previously ordered "Barbarella," starring Jane Fonda, a spokesman explains.
Dawn Freeman, 23, a tax analyst in Lexington, Ky., has bought lowbrow videos, such as "American Pie," from Amazon.com. But she was aghast when the site suggested Tom Green's gross-out performance in "Road Trip."
"I thought, 'I know I don't like high cinema, but have I really reached the point where I'd like to watch Tom Green lick a mouse?" To even out her Amazon profile, she went through the site finding "witty independent films."
Her TiVo also thinks she's a sophomoric-humor-loving 12-year-old, she says. It keeps giving her cartoons. "I know it's dumb to take it personally, but it's in your face. These are supposedly objective computers saying, 'This is what we think of you.' "
Dissing Ice Cube
A.J. Meyer, a 35-year-old Web site developer in Minneapolis, ordered the DVD for "Scarface," the Al Pacino gangster movie, from Netflix.com (netflix.com). After that, the site kept recommending movies about gangster rappers. He stopped the assault by giving negative ratings to all movies starring Ice Cube. (Netflix allows members to rate any of its 12,000-plus titles with one to five stars -- whether they have rented a film or not. That helps the site calculate future recommendations.)
After Mr. Meyer ordered a documentary about New York from Amazon.com, it pitched him countless documentaries -- even one on the history of the thimble. He stopped the Ken Burnsification of his profile by searching the site for plasma TVs. "That way, I identified myself as a high-tech guy," he says. "The thimble is more low tech."
Virginia Heffernan, TV columnist for Slate.com, doesn't understand why some people are resistant to techno-profiling, or find it creepy. She didn't look for any deep meaning when her TiVo kept giving her TV shows in Polish. And after buying self-help books on Amazon.com, she accepted that every time she logged on, the site pitched products to make her a more self-fulfilled human being.
"I like the idea that someone cares," she says. "Even a machine."
TiVo users can program the machine to skip certain channels entirely. But many users don't bother to figure out how to do it, or are too intrigued by TiVo's recommendation process, says a spokesman. TiVo is paid to promote programs and products it calls "advertainment" on a special screen. But the company says none of these are given to users as suggestions.
Some people have given up trying to manipulate personalization technologies. Dino Leon, a hair-salon owner in Birmingham, Mich., says his TiVo quickly figured out that he and his partner were gay. They were OK with that, but just for fun, they tried to confuse the software by punching in "redneck" programs, like Jerry Springer's talk show.
TiVo wasn't fooled, and kept recording gay shows. Mr. Leon believes the box was giving them a message: "You're definitely gay. And you're watching too much TV."
Ah, but you originally didn't say anything about calling the police (Shutting the spammer down). You just told the original poster that rather than vent and try to do something about the spammer, he should just get his sysadmin to figure out a way to stop spam but allow legit mail through (install a new, better window).
What a grat way of thinking. I think I'm going to help those who construct fences and install windows. I'm going to go to your house, and start throwing rocks through the windows. If you are true to your logic, rather than find a way to get me to stop throwing rocks through your window (like calling the police) you'll help spur the economy by hiring people to design and install rock proof glass.
He only wrote 2 or three. However, he was the script editor for almost all of the Tom Baker years. This means he had input into almost all episodes, and he bitched in the past that he often had to (re)write entire story arcs.
Based on this, he probably made serious contributions to many episodes, even if he didn't get full credit.
You can get them on eBay for $10 or so. Same ones they sell at EB and QVC. Pitfall's the only game on there worth getting. Also, be warned, these things break like crazy. I've gone through two in less than 2 hours gaming. One would require about 30 "resets" before I could play after turning it on, the other plays for about 5-10 min, then the screen starts going nutty.
With Bluetooth finally making an appearance, expect to see a lot more of this. Since Bluetooth devices are supposed to automatically find each other and just "work", this is only going to become more common. Imagine giving a very important PowerPoint presentation when everything goes hawire when someone giving a presentation of their own the next floor up has their Bluetooth remote starting giving signals to your computer.
I know there are security and other settings that when properly configured will help prevent these mistakes, but just look at the number of unsecured business wireless networks out there that don't even have WEP turned on. Its going to be nasty.
The same thing happenes when the mob runs things. Its just instead of it making it into the paper as a "hacker" story, it would wind up in the paper as "Headless Body Found in East River".
FYI, he didn't sue to get access to the information he needed to do his job, he sued to get access to the information without having to sign a NDA. Basically, the info was available to him for internal purposes, but they would then not have allowed him to divulge what he learned to the masses. He sued to have the ability to inform the public about some of ICANN's internal mechanations.
Ok, I admit I don't know much about ICANN, could someone fill me in on a few things?
#1. The story makes it seem as if the seats were removed because of the trouble he was causing them. If that is the case, why did they eliminate the other seats.
#2. How many "publically elected" seats are left? The story just says they eliminated 5 without elaborating.
#3. Other than through public election, how does one get a seat on ICANN?
Can you imagine having to try to figure out what sales tax to charge and who to forward the payment on to if local/state governments are allowed to tax online sales? Not only do you have to contend with different rates for different localities, but you have to mess with different exemptions and ways of classifying products for tax purposes. This will kill the small online merchants in a heartbeat.
Basically, a species is a species when scientists say it is. Its really arbitrary. The general rule is if they cannot reproduce with any other similiar type of animal, they are a different species. However, there are plenty of birds/fish that are classified as different species, despite the fact they can mate and produce perfectly healthy offspring with other "species".
Scientists, to justify this, have changed the rule, and basically said, "If you can find any tiny little difference between two populations, and for some reason there isn't much cross breeding (Say, thanks to a mountain range between the two groups), then each is its own particular species. Of course, this is really just a matter of different breeds (think dogs), rather than species.
The problem is you have to know there is a camera there in the first place. If you don't know its there, you can't shine a laser at it.
And lets not forget the liability of shining a laser in someone's eye. Even though he mentions he's using low powered laser pointers, those still have the potential of harming someone. And in our sue happy society, we don't even have to wait until it actually does harm someone. All it will take is a greedy lawyer to start up a class action lawsuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's hoping Sony was able to liscense the technology for cheap. If not, they're going to be stuck when it comes down to a price war between Nintendo and Microsoft when the next generation gaming machines come out.
A nice article on what its really like to be a game tester.
That's right, a plane made out of a pizza box. Fly's pretty good too. Read more here and see videos of them flying HERE.
Good thing for you there's no law forcing female physics majors to date male physics majors.
The Space Station's Cost
INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.
Scrap the Shuttle Program
documents how the USA slipped to just 29% of the world's launch market share in the year 2000, even though we had 48% of it in 1996, and apparently all of it the decade before.
How did this happen if NASA has a larger space budget than all other civilian space agencies combined, as well as its Congressional mandate to: "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space"? How did some countries evolve from non-players in space two decades ago into dominant commercial players today?
Perhaps NASA should build a "Sea Station" 1000 feet below the sea and use submarines to take foreigners and other salaried government tourists on "missions" to conduct "experiments" and set "endurance records" while "improving international relations". This idea may seem crazy, but it would be much cheaper than the shuttle program and accomplish just as much.
Imagine what could happen if the $4 billion a year and 30,000 shuttle experts were diverted to R&D?
I just can't help but feel the whole ISS and Shuttle Programs are a waste of money. I'm much rather see NASA's time and money spent researching other ways of getting into space.
By JEFFREY ZASLOW
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean.
But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital videorecorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record. A phone call the machine makes to TiVo, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., once a day provides key information. As these men learned, when TiVo thinks it has you pegged, there's just one way to change its "mind": outfox it.
Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."
"The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."
He mentioned his TiVo tussle to a friend, who told an executive at CBS's "The King of Queens," who then wrote an episode with a My-TiVo-thinks-I'm-gay subplot.
A lot of gadgets and Web sites now feature "personalization technologies" that profile consumers by tracking what they watch, listen to or buy. The software, embedded in sites such as Amazon.com and CDNOW.com, then recommends other books, videos and music based on a customer's tastes.
The Willies
Many consumers appreciate having computers delve into their hearts and heads. But some say it gives them the willies, because the machines either know them too well or make cocksure assumptions about them that are way off base. That's why even TiVo lovers are tempted to hoodwink it -- a phenomenon that was also spoofed this year on another TV show, HBO's "The Mind of the Married Man." [TiVo Remote] Remote Control: Viewers help TiVo understand their tastes by giving TV shows thumbs up or down.
Mike Binder, creator and star of that show, had set his home TiVo to record his 1999 movie, "The Sex Monster," about a man whose wife becomes bisexual. After that, Mr. Binder's TiVo assumed he would enjoy a steady stream of gay programming. Unnerved, he counteracted the onslaught by recording the Playboy Channel and MTV's spring break bikini coverage. It worked, he says. "My TiVo doesn't look at me funny anymore."
His wife, however, was taken aback when she saw all the half-naked women he was ordering through TiVo. He told her those women meant nothing to him: "I'm just counterprogramming because TiVo thinks I'm gay." She was unamused. The incident inspired an episode of his show.
Though some users contend TiVo has sex on the brain, TiVo's general manager, Brodie Keast, explains that the box is merely "reacting to feedback you give it." Still, the machine employs algorithms -- searching several thousand key details (favorite actors, movie and TV genres) -- that leave some people wondering whether it is judging their predilections.
Mr. Karlsson, 26, says he "pre-emptively" found all the religious shows in his TV listings and used the "thumbs down" button on his remote control to tell TiVo he has no interest in them. (Giving three thumbs down is the best way to block a program.) After that, his TiVo recorded movies about creepy homicides. "They all have titles like 'Murder on Skeleton Isle,' " says the computer system administrator in Cambridge, Mass.
He uses the "thumbs" button to tell TiVo he hates such films. He also orders cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of him. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer," he says.
Mr. Cohen, 30, has a TiVo that mysteriously assumed he wanted Korean news programs. The Philadelphia lawyer gave thumbs down to anything Korean, and his TiVo got the message. Sort of. "The next day, it recorded the Chinese news," he says.
TiVo's 500,000 subscribers use the box primarily to record programs they specifically request, and many laud its ability to pause live broadcasts and record a show's entire season. Still, in TiVo-focused online chat-rooms and in secretive admissions to one another, some say they resent being pigeonholed by TiVo's suggestions.
'A Pregnant Gay Man'
Like TiVo, other techno-profilers run hard with limited information. Ray Everett-Church of Fremont, Calif., who is gay, ordered "Queer as Folk" videos from Amazon.com. Understandably, the site began suggesting gay-related calendars and books. Then he bought a baby book for a pregnant friend. So for weeks, the site also recommended parenting books. He says it was as if Amazon.com decided he was "a pregnant gay man."
He fought back, he says, "by inundating it with additional data. I searched for other stuff -- on politics, computers -- so it would stop throwing baby books at me. Now it thinks I've abandoned the baby and I'm preparing for a career in politics."
Mr. Everett-Church, a privacy consultant for businesses, predicts that as techno-profiling increases, more people will purposely muck up their profiles. They'll fear ordering books on mental illnesses or sexual preferences because they'll wonder if they'll somehow be publicly identified.
All techno-profiling companies contacted for this article said that information gleaned is for the customer's personal use only. Still, even Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos knows the potential mortification factor.
For a live demonstration before an audience of 500 people, Mr. Bezos once logged onto Amazon.com (amazon.com) to show how it caters to his interests. The top recommendation it gave him? The DVD for "Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity." That popped up because he had previously ordered "Barbarella," starring Jane Fonda, a spokesman explains.
Dawn Freeman, 23, a tax analyst in Lexington, Ky., has bought lowbrow videos, such as "American Pie," from Amazon.com. But she was aghast when the site suggested Tom Green's gross-out performance in "Road Trip."
"I thought, 'I know I don't like high cinema, but have I really reached the point where I'd like to watch Tom Green lick a mouse?" To even out her Amazon profile, she went through the site finding "witty independent films."
Her TiVo also thinks she's a sophomoric-humor-loving 12-year-old, she says. It keeps giving her cartoons. "I know it's dumb to take it personally, but it's in your face. These are supposedly objective computers saying, 'This is what we think of you.' "
Dissing Ice Cube
A.J. Meyer, a 35-year-old Web site developer in Minneapolis, ordered the DVD for "Scarface," the Al Pacino gangster movie, from Netflix.com (netflix.com). After that, the site kept recommending movies about gangster rappers. He stopped the assault by giving negative ratings to all movies starring Ice Cube. (Netflix allows members to rate any of its 12,000-plus titles with one to five stars -- whether they have rented a film or not. That helps the site calculate future recommendations.)
After Mr. Meyer ordered a documentary about New York from Amazon.com, it pitched him countless documentaries -- even one on the history of the thimble. He stopped the Ken Burnsification of his profile by searching the site for plasma TVs. "That way, I identified myself as a high-tech guy," he says. "The thimble is more low tech."
Virginia Heffernan, TV columnist for Slate.com, doesn't understand why some people are resistant to techno-profiling, or find it creepy. She didn't look for any deep meaning when her TiVo kept giving her TV shows in Polish. And after buying self-help books on Amazon.com, she accepted that every time she logged on, the site pitched products to make her a more self-fulfilled human being.
"I like the idea that someone cares," she says. "Even a machine."
TiVo users can program the machine to skip certain channels entirely. But many users don't bother to figure out how to do it, or are too intrigued by TiVo's recommendation process, says a spokesman. TiVo is paid to promote programs and products it calls "advertainment" on a special screen. But the company says none of these are given to users as suggestions.
Some people have given up trying to manipulate personalization technologies. Dino Leon, a hair-salon owner in Birmingham, Mich., says his TiVo quickly figured out that he and his partner were gay. They were OK with that, but just for fun, they tried to confuse the software by punching in "redneck" programs, like Jerry Springer's talk show.
TiVo wasn't fooled, and kept recording gay shows. Mr. Leon believes the box was giving them a message: "You're definitely gay. And you're watching too much TV."
Write to Jeffrey Zaslow at
jeffrey.zaslow@wsj.com
If has since been shut down and removed from Yahoo! Anyone know where it has moved to?
Ah, but you originally didn't say anything about calling the police (Shutting the spammer down). You just told the original poster that rather than vent and try to do something about the spammer, he should just get his sysadmin to figure out a way to stop spam but allow legit mail through (install a new, better window).
If this is accurate, mod this up.
What a grat way of thinking. I think I'm going to help those who construct fences and install windows. I'm going to go to your house, and start throwing rocks through the windows. If you are true to your logic, rather than find a way to get me to stop throwing rocks through your window (like calling the police) you'll help spur the economy by hiring people to design and install rock proof glass.
Yes, that's right. Sony is going to release the game on their competitors system first. Brilliant deduction.
For the last big meteor shower, I drove east for over an hour before I could start to see stars, and then parked in a private driveway to see.
Based on this, he probably made serious contributions to many episodes, even if he didn't get full credit.
StepUp Computing
You can get them on eBay for $10 or so. Same ones they sell at EB and QVC. Pitfall's the only game on there worth getting. Also, be warned, these things break like crazy. I've gone through two in less than 2 hours gaming. One would require about 30 "resets" before I could play after turning it on, the other plays for about 5-10 min, then the screen starts going nutty.
10 meters is about 30 feet. That'll easily cover 2 floors up or down from you.
I know there are security and other settings that when properly configured will help prevent these mistakes, but just look at the number of unsecured business wireless networks out there that don't even have WEP turned on. Its going to be nasty.
The same thing happenes when the mob runs things. Its just instead of it making it into the paper as a "hacker" story, it would wind up in the paper as "Headless Body Found in East River".
FYI, he didn't sue to get access to the information he needed to do his job, he sued to get access to the information without having to sign a NDA. Basically, the info was available to him for internal purposes, but they would then not have allowed him to divulge what he learned to the masses. He sued to have the ability to inform the public about some of ICANN's internal mechanations.
#1. The story makes it seem as if the seats were removed because of the trouble he was causing them. If that is the case, why did they eliminate the other seats.
#2. How many "publically elected" seats are left? The story just says they eliminated 5 without elaborating.
#3. Other than through public election, how does one get a seat on ICANN?
Hey, its hard to be a karma whore if you actually read the linked article.
Can you imagine having to try to figure out what sales tax to charge and who to forward the payment on to if local/state governments are allowed to tax online sales? Not only do you have to contend with different rates for different localities, but you have to mess with different exemptions and ways of classifying products for tax purposes. This will kill the small online merchants in a heartbeat.
Maybe from the fossilized muscle tissue found in the shoulder and other areas?
Scientists, to justify this, have changed the rule, and basically said, "If you can find any tiny little difference between two populations, and for some reason there isn't much cross breeding (Say, thanks to a mountain range between the two groups), then each is its own particular species. Of course, this is really just a matter of different breeds (think dogs), rather than species.
Its all bullshit and arbitrary.
And lets not forget the liability of shining a laser in someone's eye. Even though he mentions he's using low powered laser pointers, those still have the potential of harming someone. And in our sue happy society, we don't even have to wait until it actually does harm someone. All it will take is a greedy lawyer to start up a class action lawsuit.