Small companies do, Larger companies start to think about specific needs of departments and might branch out to purchase the right thing for the right job.
John is a CIO in a large teaching hospital network. The group runs enterprise apps, remote employees, clinical staff, physicians, the business side of a hospital, and the university people. It's not a surprise that one contract with Dell can't handle this.
Good reminder, it also reminds me that I don't think this works well. I get daily credit card offers from organizations I have no relationship with even though I'm on this list. The telemarketing one seems to work well, however. The difference might be explained in the financial penalties for junk phone calls, which I don't think exist for junk mail.
I've seen them on TV and on the Internet. I've seen empty boxes with price tags on them in stores. I've seen demo systems behind glass running a demo.
I'VE NEVER SEEN THE WII
Does anyone actually own one and play it in their home? These things have supposedly been out since Christmas, I live in a major metropolitan area, I know lots of people, and I don't know anyone that has one or heard anyone talking about playing one. Did they only make a few dozen that were snapped up by Best Buy employees?
I don't believe the demand is there anymore - I only here people buying XBOX 360 because that't the only thing to buy.
The parent is a very good comment. Google is in this same place, although making this a large process patent focused on human feedback for machine learning makes it seem unique. However, my understanding is this is well researched stuff in acedemia and seems like another example of USPTO overworked and unable to mine prior art in software because so much is prior to software patents.
It's not about "artificial intelligence". It's about "machine learning" or "supervised learning".
The system's point is to collect human corrections to machine generated results - language translation, fact abstraction, etc. The corrections are fed back to the system to adjust the algorithms or to tune the statistical model for generating the results. The process has tons of prior art (Google "machine learning", and coincidentally there is a paid link from Google because they are hiring in this area).
That being the point of the system, the patent is on the distribution of items to the human correctors, and there is a lot in common between the Amazon system you reference and what Google was awarded a patent on. The Google patent screams prior art, but this is a large "process" patent and small changes to the process would be considered something different. But, one wonders what USPTO is thinking in awarding these kinds of things.
That's not the point of the comment. The point of the comment was critical on the term "important sci-fi film". The quoted statement admits I don't know the series nor the film, and I have no opinion on the quality of either.
I'm simply pointing out that "important" should be measurable in some way - and from a business standpoint and extrapolated to its cultural impact its questionable that Serenity is "important". I went through most of the comments and found little insight on what makes this film important.
As I said, provocative. The original post seems to be meant to start an argument.
Serenity was an important scifi film and will be talked about still in ten years, as will the Firefly series.
Any more than other cult movies? A small collection of fans that found some connection to the movie talking about it?
The original post is (probably on purpose) provocative. It is comparing a small, possibly unprofitable TV spin off movie with a cultural legacy that spans 30 years. It is a comparison of a 25M (US$) gross revenue with a 2,180M (US$) gross revenue, not even counting all the books and merchandising and adjusting 1977 dollars to today (according to IMDB). While I wouldn't argue that the Star Wars franchise has its bad moments, and purists would argue agasint how "sci-fi" it is, as an "important film" it seems difficult to challenge Star Wars with Serenity.
Of course, I've been watching Star Wars almost my whole life and my only experience with Firefly was an episode where a Muppet seemed to have a problem with exploding urine. Probably not the franchise's finest moment.
"Important" seems to imply that the movie had a unique story line, original sci-fi theme, an evolution in special effects, the finest acting of its genre, or a box office smash or other business record. It would be great to define the use of this word in a way that we can understand the fan's loyalty or the basis for the comparison. The director's quote in the original article seems like it could apply to the original Star Wars movie as well.
Maybe its the only solution to the real problem - too many features for the driver to deal with.
The Wikipedia article is pretty negative on the approach - "iDistract". The BMW video is very positive, and states the knob is where your arm "normally rests" (and we remember from Driver's Ed that both hands are on the wheel?).
I think navigation and entertainment systems are becoming too overwhelming in cars, and the interior design oriented around a large center display screen is horrible. But who am I to talk - I'm still trying to get over the windshield wiper control being moved to the turn signal...
Lights-Wiper-Choke-Wheel-Key-Heater-Fan-Volume-Tun ing
I agree with that. I see a lot more sinister motive in posting as an Anonymous Coward than in a PR firm building a comprehensive profile:-)
What I thought about most as I read the leaked document is the effort that goes into building and tracking this information. Microsoft must spend a hugh amount of money on these types of documents - and is in the fortunately position of being able to pay for this kind of service. It's a J Edger Hoover type operation going on there, and perhaps this was leaked to let all those tech reporters know they are watching the watchers:
"Fred, per his MO, is relatively tight-lipped about other interviewees though we know he's talking to Winer, Scoble and he'll be talking to Tim O'Reilly."
They have a lot of people chasing things down and maintaining a communication network of informers.
An upstream comment on this firm being Ballmer's wife is insightful as well. There's a lot of inbred thinking going on in Redmond and a lot of the smarmy attitude of their employees might be explained by this.
Pity. Sold Apple products with attractive in-store financing. Nice business desk with additional discounts for being a "business customer" (anyone with a business card willing to fill out a form).
Anyone who wants to push your music through iTunes can sign up, and manage their music catalog. How much more accessible does this need to be?
And, if your an indie and you want to push your music as MP3's (or whatever) without DRM, what do you need iTunes for? iPods play mp3's just fine.
I don't understand all this energy on this whole issue. There are plenty of hardware, software, and content vendors out there. Apple owns the market because they've created the best products and customer experience for the money. It's just the way it is. It's not like all those iPods were sold because corporate IT departments figured this was the cheapest deal to make - its a purely consumer driven product.
EVENTUALLY, enough sales people at Best Buy and the like will tell people what's wrong with Sony and Apple and the word will get out.
This is kind of a strange thing to add. Would sales people at Best Buy understand enough to even comment on this? Isn't Best Buy on a trajectory to sell nothing by HP and a Best Buy generic brand? I'm wondering why anyone would go to a warehouse store for advice on an expensive purchase - you do your research ahead of time and just go pick it off the shelf.
Is Apple's nonsense really so different than others? While their strict adherence to style creates a rigid organization in some ways, it also creates a consistency which is a property that some applaud. Compare the occasional support need with Apple to the constant support need with Microsoft, for example. Apple's recent corporate performance indicates that they will be around for a while.
(Disclaimer, somewhat recent Apple customer who has been impressed with their product quality and support)
Ugh. Like it gets more and more expensive to manage the process of keeping the.com database going. Why does GoDaddy charge my $10 and Verisign charges me $30.
Round Rock, Texas, September 29, 2006 Dell announced today that additional information was received regarding affected battery packs containing cells manufactured by Sony, which has led to an increase in the number of recalled batteries from 4.1 million units to approximately 4.2 million units
When a vendor reports a problem with their product, the public demands as much information on this as possible, particularly when only a percentage of the product is impacted. The public wants to know if they are impacted by the problem, or how such a thing could happen. A simple statement about "we screwed up" and wait for the press to dissect the issue is more what a politician does, then a technology product company. I don't see anything wrong with Apple's statement, particularly because they admit they are more upset at themselves for not anticipating the issue and the root cause of the problem is the trusting nature of the operating system in question.
At the very least, Apple alerted Microsoft customers about the dangers of plugging in a USB storage device, whether its from the factory or because you dragged it around the office after the factory shipment.
Slashdot Mirror
Small companies do, Larger companies start to think about specific needs of departments and might branch out to purchase the right thing for the right job.
John is a CIO in a large teaching hospital network. The group runs enterprise apps, remote employees, clinical staff, physicians, the business side of a hospital, and the university people. It's not a surprise that one contract with Dell can't handle this.
Another exception: playing music in the public domain.
Gregorian Chant cover bands rejoice!
Based on all the server logs I look at, just about everyone is someone new to Safari.
A clarification:
Junk Mail does not waste the Post Office's time. They make money on it. They actively promote the creation of it.
http://www.usps.com/directmail/
Good reminder, it also reminds me that I don't think this works well. I get daily credit card offers from organizations I have no relationship with even though I'm on this list. The telemarketing one seems to work well, however. The difference might be explained in the financial penalties for junk phone calls, which I don't think exist for junk mail.
Another off-topic comment - the post office takes offense to the term "junk mail", and actively encourages its creation.
I've seen them on TV and on the Internet. I've seen empty boxes with price tags on them in stores. I've seen demo systems behind glass running a demo.
I'VE NEVER SEEN THE WII
Does anyone actually own one and play it in their home? These things have supposedly been out since Christmas, I live in a major metropolitan area, I know lots of people, and I don't know anyone that has one or heard anyone talking about playing one. Did they only make a few dozen that were snapped up by Best Buy employees?
I don't believe the demand is there anymore - I only here people buying XBOX 360 because that't the only thing to buy.
The parent is a very good comment. Google is in this same place, although making this a large process patent focused on human feedback for machine learning makes it seem unique. However, my understanding is this is well researched stuff in acedemia and seems like another example of USPTO overworked and unable to mine prior art in software because so much is prior to software patents.
It's not about "artificial intelligence". It's about "machine learning" or "supervised learning".
The system's point is to collect human corrections to machine generated results - language translation, fact abstraction, etc. The corrections are fed back to the system to adjust the algorithms or to tune the statistical model for generating the results. The process has tons of prior art (Google "machine learning", and coincidentally there is a paid link from Google because they are hiring in this area).
That being the point of the system, the patent is on the distribution of items to the human correctors, and there is a lot in common between the Amazon system you reference and what Google was awarded a patent on. The Google patent screams prior art, but this is a large "process" patent and small changes to the process would be considered something different. But, one wonders what USPTO is thinking in awarding these kinds of things.
That's not the point of the comment. The point of the comment was critical on the term "important sci-fi film". The quoted statement admits I don't know the series nor the film, and I have no opinion on the quality of either.
I'm simply pointing out that "important" should be measurable in some way - and from a business standpoint and extrapolated to its cultural impact its questionable that Serenity is "important". I went through most of the comments and found little insight on what makes this film important.
As I said, provocative. The original post seems to be meant to start an argument.
My thoughts too. Kind of blows away the "for the safety of the plane" speech at the beginning of the flight.
They'll let us rent radio controll cars to race up and down the aisles next.
"exercise outside"
Wrong web site...
We're struggling with sun glare on the screen while firing up Counter Strike...
Any more than other cult movies? A small collection of fans that found some connection to the movie talking about it?
The original post is (probably on purpose) provocative. It is comparing a small, possibly unprofitable TV spin off movie with a cultural legacy that spans 30 years. It is a comparison of a 25M (US$) gross revenue with a 2,180M (US$) gross revenue, not even counting all the books and merchandising and adjusting 1977 dollars to today (according to IMDB). While I wouldn't argue that the Star Wars franchise has its bad moments, and purists would argue agasint how "sci-fi" it is, as an "important film" it seems difficult to challenge Star Wars with Serenity.
Of course, I've been watching Star Wars almost my whole life and my only experience with Firefly was an episode where a Muppet seemed to have a problem with exploding urine. Probably not the franchise's finest moment.
"Important" seems to imply that the movie had a unique story line, original sci-fi theme, an evolution in special effects, the finest acting of its genre, or a box office smash or other business record. It would be great to define the use of this word in a way that we can understand the fan's loyalty or the basis for the comparison. The director's quote in the original article seems like it could apply to the original Star Wars movie as well.
Maybe its the only solution to the real problem - too many features for the driver to deal with.
n ing
The Wikipedia article is pretty negative on the approach - "iDistract". The BMW video is very positive, and states the knob is where your arm "normally rests" (and we remember from Driver's Ed that both hands are on the wheel?).
I think navigation and entertainment systems are becoming too overwhelming in cars, and the interior design oriented around a large center display screen is horrible. But who am I to talk - I'm still trying to get over the windshield wiper control being moved to the turn signal...
Lights-Wiper-Choke-Wheel-Key-Heater-Fan-Volume-Tu
I agree with that. I see a lot more sinister motive in posting as an Anonymous Coward than in a PR firm building a comprehensive profile :-)
What I thought about most as I read the leaked document is the effort that goes into building and tracking this information. Microsoft must spend a hugh amount of money on these types of documents - and is in the fortunately position of being able to pay for this kind of service. It's a J Edger Hoover type operation going on there, and perhaps this was leaked to let all those tech reporters know they are watching the watchers:
"Fred, per his MO, is relatively tight-lipped about other interviewees
though we know he's talking to Winer, Scoble and he'll be talking to Tim O'Reilly."
They have a lot of people chasing things down and maintaining a communication network of informers.
An upstream comment on this firm being Ballmer's wife is insightful as well. There's a lot of inbred thinking going on in Redmond and a lot of the smarmy attitude of their employees might be explained by this.
Wow. All the DC area stores closed.
Pity. Sold Apple products with attractive in-store financing. Nice business desk with additional discounts for being a "business customer" (anyone with a business card willing to fill out a form).
iTunes is open to Indies:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/musicmarketing/
Anyone who wants to push your music through iTunes can sign up, and manage their music catalog. How much more accessible does this need to be?
And, if your an indie and you want to push your music as MP3's (or whatever) without DRM, what do you need iTunes for? iPods play mp3's just fine.
I don't understand all this energy on this whole issue. There are plenty of hardware, software, and content vendors out there. Apple owns the market because they've created the best products and customer experience for the money. It's just the way it is. It's not like all those iPods were sold because corporate IT departments figured this was the cheapest deal to make - its a purely consumer driven product.
Not the only one. Shrek started with a fart joke I believe. How much better can it get from there?
You might want to watch how strongly you promote this. You may not enjoy your 70cm band if everyone with a cell phone is trying to use the same band.
This is kind of a strange thing to add. Would sales people at Best Buy understand enough to even comment on this? Isn't Best Buy on a trajectory to sell nothing by HP and a Best Buy generic brand? I'm wondering why anyone would go to a warehouse store for advice on an expensive purchase - you do your research ahead of time and just go pick it off the shelf.
Is Apple's nonsense really so different than others? While their strict adherence to style creates a rigid organization in some ways, it also creates a consistency which is a property that some applaud. Compare the occasional support need with Apple to the constant support need with Microsoft, for example. Apple's recent corporate performance indicates that they will be around for a while.
(Disclaimer, somewhat recent Apple customer who has been impressed with their product quality and support)
Not seeing the "innovation" however. Flash drives are old as dirt - bought my first one in 1988. Used the same interface as the mechanical ones.
Does "innovation" mean "cheaper"?
BTW - the no-moving-parts thing is a nice byproduct, but the real important property is the huge jump in response time.
Ugh. Like it gets more and more expensive to manage the process of keeping the .com database going. Why does GoDaddy charge my $10 and Verisign charges me $30.
...young people prefer cheap little cars to Jaguar, BMW, and Mercedes. What do they know that people with money don't?
And here's Dell's press release where they mention Sony batteries:
r p/pressoffice/en/2006/2006_09_29_rr_000?c=us&l=en& s=corp
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/co
Round Rock, Texas, September 29, 2006
Dell announced today that additional information was received regarding affected battery packs containing cells manufactured by Sony, which has led to an increase in the number of recalled batteries from 4.1 million units to approximately 4.2 million units
And, Ford _did_ blame Firestone for the problem:
_ recall__from_bad.shtml)
"Ford blames all the trouble on the tires.
"This is a tire issue," Nasser said, "and only a tire issue.""
(From http://www.sptimes.com/News/062001/Firestone/Ford
When a vendor reports a problem with their product, the public demands as much information on this as possible, particularly when only a percentage of the product is impacted. The public wants to know if they are impacted by the problem, or how such a thing could happen. A simple statement about "we screwed up" and wait for the press to dissect the issue is more what a politician does, then a technology product company. I don't see anything wrong with Apple's statement, particularly because they admit they are more upset at themselves for not anticipating the issue and the root cause of the problem is the trusting nature of the operating system in question.
At the very least, Apple alerted Microsoft customers about the dangers of plugging in a USB storage device, whether its from the factory or because you dragged it around the office after the factory shipment.