I certainly didn't mean to come off as arrogant, self-righteous or rude. I was just trying to phrase things lightly. I can certainly see how it would be percieved as such though, yeah.
I don't see TNR as unbiased reporting -- just the flipside of the more conservative Economist. Hence, like a lot of people, I read both. But I used to give the Economist a *lot* more weight. But maybe it's just me.
I realize the focus is e-commerce. Like I said, the straight numbers for business to business wern't free, so I couldn't point to them.
I'm not accusing the Economist of plagiarism -- they quote the Forrester study. Again, I was by no means attempting to insult the reader... Just pointing out where the numbers were coming from.
I'm not sure where the John Bircher stuff is coming from (especially after ref'ing TNR!), but I assure you I'm not a right wing radical, nor do I look upon the 80s with great nostalgia.
I agree that everyone can benifit from an internet presence of some sort. But e-business hype is targeted at larger business -- they're the ones who'd most benifit from the centralization, and that's where the money is for everything from infrastructure to consulting. I'm just saying if you add all the little guys up that's a sizable chunk of the market that might be overlooked, whatever.
1. The numbers are most likely coming from Forrester Research, a company that was founded to make projections about how technology impacts business. And they're traded on nasdaq. Go figure! It's like asking a Ford dealer what the best make of car is.
2. The Economist isn't always right. I've been keeping their projections for the future issues onhand for about five years now, and they simply don't do all that well. Apparently I'm not the only one -- the cover story from the June 14th issue of the New Republic ran a pretty sizable expose on it. Check it out.
3. The numbers are still pretty damn small. First, e-commerce: currently 8 billion out of 242,239 billion in consumer expenditures. A tiny fraction, seems about right. Forrester's saying in five years half of what's bought will be over the internet. ("Todd, we're out of milk... Can you hop online and order some?) Seems a little high to me! On the business to business side, I couldn't get the numbers -- if you wanted them you had to order a cdrom from the census bureau (but you couldn't order it online --the irony did not escape me). But total business reciepts were (breath!): $16,654,636,336,000. So do the math and make a rough calculation.
Lastly, let's remember that not that many people can afford computers. Also keep in mind that the vast, majority of businesses have less than four employees (no numbers handy, eek). Census dept gives us roughly 10 out of 11 as having under 20 employees, though. The cost of a comprehensive net presence isn't going to be worth it for most companies.
"the INTERNET... revolutionizing the way you obtain porn."
Slashdot regularly feeds us newswire stories on issues relating to computers and the law, be it privacy, cryptography, censorship, or taxation. But often conspiciously lacking from many of these stories is contact information -- which lawmakers should be contacted if an individual thinks the implementation of these laws is a poor (or for that matter, good) idea?
A journalist might skim through the email they recieve, but a politician's staff is damn well going to tally it all up. Most/. readers are living in a representitive democracy of some sort, and if people have a need to articulate their viewpoints outside the forum which/. provides it would be damn handy to have a nice mailto: link.
Sure, we whine about being reamed by the government, but how often do we actually do something about it? Granted, the author's urgings in regards to clarity and eloquence apply in this scenario as well. "t4x3z suK!" would not fare well, but I think my point has been illustrated.
Second, and directly related to the wonderful world of Linux advocacy:
Keep in mind who the target audience is. This is to say, suits. The usual arguments don't work, the bottom line is everything. Microsoft releases a substandard product. Great, yeah, just about every business has cut something to make a few extra bucks. This is pragmatic business planning. It's not a moral issue, it's only decisive if it affects THEIR finances. And be realistic about it. Even if they were GPF'ing once a day, that's what, ten minutes of labor? Hard costs are about the same -- a blanket license for linux with support isn't going to be that much cheaper than NT if you figure in switch over costs. Think out the arguments fully.
And finally, directly related to the previous comment:
What would be the legalities of some enterprising individual set up a linux support/distro as a federally registered non profit? They could hock their services to a business -- who could write it off -- pay their employees liberally, and then dump all the excess money back into the community. Seems like a tricky but valid plan to me.
Folks, before going all crazy/. style *please* read the paper that's linked from the techwire report. Bear in mind that the new law only covers domestic UK transmissions -- seeing as international transmissions are already monitored via eschelon and it's derivatives. It goes into great detail on what methods are currently in place for monitoring traffic (voice prints) and which ones are being developed (word recgonition!).
As far as monitoring within the EU, I can see a number of memeber nations throwing hissy fits. Wasn't it just within the last decade that Germany started allowing for electronic survailence by domestic authorities? (someone please correct me there)
It has to do with legal stuff and insurance... if you're a minor, the people who own the building will have more liability for a minor getting hurt on the premesis than an adult... they have to get pricier insurance if they want to do an all-ages gig, and if you're trying to seduce a corporate sector, most promoters would just save the money and make it 18+.
well if you just want to *hear* it, i know he has at least the cathedral and the bazzar in real audio on his homepage at the FSF...
Re:Athlon vs. Pentium - FPU and DSP routines
on
K7 Renamed "Athlon"
·
· Score: 1
The previous posters have all associated floating point calculations with games like quake. I don't play games -- I do music. But FPU is VITAL to most DSP routines, and my AMD k6/2 is severely lacking compared to a slower celeron on a similar machine. The new chips are supposed to be better in that department, but they plan on making them a lot more expensive as well ($600 for a processor alone? p3's are less than that). If you're doing basic office/internet type stuff, there's no reason not to go with a low end AMD. But if you need the dsp stuff, buy Intel. Or wait until the new AMD chips have seen some real-world action and then count your pennies.
Wait, which obscure literature reference? I was thinking Conrad or Vonnegut, but neither of those are obscure and both are Kilgore. Killgor and Killgour sound kind of dark-agesey, but I knew a guy with the last name Killgour once, so hey.
Memes make me think of the Sarif-Whorf hypothesis in linguistics -- essentially that the way and what we think are defined by our language (i.e. newspeak in 1984). On the surface level, it makes sense and it's catchy as all hell. But the more you think about it, the more holes you start to see in it. This doesn't mean it's a poorly constructed theory or that it's wrong, it just means that it hasn't evolved into a working, usable model yet.
I havn't read the new book, perhaps someone who has can clarify this for me: is the method in which the memes are introduced taken into account?
The most successful ideas are those that have been marketed well. It's hard to have a successful product without a catchy phrase. Social Darwinism is more Lamarkian than Darwinistic, but Social Darwinism is a better way to sell it -- regardless of the nature of the idea itself and what psychological needs it satisfies.
A number of/. readers have pointed out the inherently memitical (let's coin some new buzzwords here!) nature of the meme itself; Indeed, it seems to be a rather virulent one. Five years ago most people would have blinked when asked to describe a meme, now anyone who reads wired, is into conspiracy theory, studies linguistics, social psychology or public relations, etc. will be able to give you a relitively succinct and accurate definition.
But this hardly qualifies as proof -- so let's just sit back, wait and see. If it looks like a solid object, it might just be a lot of empty space with some electrons whizzing around that you can't pinpoint.
The crux of the article was essentially "why should joe six-pack use linux if he can't play pod racer on it?" GPL issues mean nothing to the average user. Heck, I run all my server stuff off linux (soon to be freebsd, actually) because a) linux performed better for networking activities (duely noted by ESR) and b) the damn thing didn't crash.
I'm the target market for the advocacy people, and those are common attitudes outside linuxland.
I find myself in almost 100% agreement with the upside articles. Naysayers take note:
Much has been said about the subjective nature of "quality" -- what party A likes isn't necessarily what party B likes. Some people dig lo-fi noise or songs about poop. God knows I do. But sadly, such products are not mainstream commodities. They are a niche market, and for as much as the media (tv, print, music, etc.) has discussed and feared demassification over the last thirty years, it was never realized. One product that the majority of folks will dig continues to be the dominant model, and will most likely continue as such for a great deal of time.
Musical tastes are conditioned. People buy Brittney Spears and the Spice Girls not just because it has been "shoved down their throats" by advertisers, but also because it's *musically* what they've been taught to like. This is the same reason that (again, for the most part) westerners don't really dig a well-written and catchy raja. Indian music just sounds wrong to their ears. The same process, albiet a more subtle derivative, is at work with radio vs mp3.com music.
You can analyze pop music the same way one would analyze classical music. Regardless of personal taste, there is good, and there is bad. When I first heard the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" I was floored. It was the _perfect_ pop song. Personally, I hated it, but I'm a niche market. It's still a great song -- as well it should be with all the work that went into the manufacture of it.
Granted, there are still nitche markets available for menial exploitation, of course, but people dig brand names. I buy $5 pants at the mexican store down the street, but Calvin Kline and the like are still going to do good business.
Everyone I know is on MP3.com. Some have been number 1, artist of the day, etc. But from a strictly traditional standpoint, they all suck, myself included. (sidebar: there was one band i liked on mp3.com -- anarchy steering committee. they have subesequently been signed to a real label. go figure.) My friends like my music. I like my music. But the songs arn't on par with mainstream music by any stretch of the imagination. For the purposes of the Upside article, good music was music that most people will like. (read: pop commodity)
Something that ALL the preceeding posts have overlooked is the tremendous amount of capital that is needed to make a hit record. People who have been lucky enough to circumvent interacting with the music industry might not realize how many people are involved and how much input they actually have. Producers, label execs, financers, A&R folks, engineers, the list is staggering. Not to mention image consultants, advertising agencies, video directors, and a million phone jocks doing promo for radio stations. All these people are professionals, working together to create the perfect commodity that will agree with consumers' tatstes. And for the most part they succeed. All you "new media revolution" types need to take this into consideration.
And this is ultimately where this discussion began: money. MP3.com will make money off advertisers. MP3.com will continue to exist entirely outside the music industry, except for bands that get signed. Please remember my pants.
A final technical note: DAM CDs will always suffer MP3's limitations -- once a file has been encoded to MP3, it's never going back to the original quality. MP3 works by deleting less vital data, thus conversion "back" to wav will always sound mp3ey. Also bear in mind the inherent poor recording conditions of independent music in general.
1. The US has libel laws as well. Libel (as well as slander) do not qualify as "protected speech."
2. The US also has laws governing the usage of "fighting words," a catagory in which your comment certainly may fall. Bear this in mind.
3. The UK has freedom of speech (essentially in the same sense that we in the US have it) as well. It's not in a "constitution" like ours, but we have constitutional supremacy and they have parlamentary supremacy, so it equates to essentially the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
it's kind of a funny story, in a dark, terribly sad sort of way.
www.attrition.org has all the juicy details.
I certainly didn't mean to come off as arrogant, self-righteous or rude. I was just trying to phrase things lightly. I can certainly see how it would be percieved as such though, yeah.
I don't see TNR as unbiased reporting -- just the flipside of the more conservative Economist. Hence, like a lot of people, I read both. But I used to give the Economist a *lot* more weight. But maybe it's just me.
I realize the focus is e-commerce. Like I said, the straight numbers for business to business wern't free, so I couldn't point to them.
I'm not accusing the Economist of plagiarism -- they quote the Forrester study. Again, I was by no means attempting to insult the reader... Just pointing out where the numbers were coming from.
I'm not sure where the John Bircher stuff is coming from (especially after ref'ing TNR!), but I assure you I'm not a right wing radical, nor do I look upon the 80s with great nostalgia.
I agree that everyone can benifit from an internet presence of some sort. But e-business hype is targeted at larger business -- they're the ones who'd most benifit from the centralization, and that's where the money is for everything from infrastructure to consulting. I'm just saying if you add all the little guys up that's a sizable chunk of the market that might be overlooked, whatever.
Again, I apologize if I came off rudely.
Indeed. A few things worthy of note here:
... revolutionizing the way you obtain porn."
1. The numbers are most likely coming from Forrester Research, a company that was founded to make projections about how technology impacts business. And they're traded on nasdaq. Go figure! It's like asking a Ford dealer what the best make of car is.
2. The Economist isn't always right. I've been keeping their projections for the future issues onhand for about five years now, and they simply don't do all that well. Apparently I'm not the only one -- the cover story from the June 14th issue of the New Republic ran a pretty sizable expose on it. Check it out.
3. The numbers are still pretty damn small. First, e-commerce: currently 8 billion out of 242,239 billion in consumer expenditures. A tiny fraction, seems about right. Forrester's saying in five years half of what's bought will be over the internet. ("Todd, we're out of milk... Can you hop online and order some?) Seems a little high to me! On the business to business side, I couldn't get the numbers -- if you wanted them you had to order a cdrom from the census bureau (but you couldn't order it online --the irony did not escape me). But total business reciepts were (breath!): $16,654,636,336,000. So do the math and make a rough calculation.
Lastly, let's remember that not that many people can afford computers. Also keep in mind that the vast, majority of businesses have less than four employees (no numbers handy, eek). Census dept gives us roughly 10 out of 11 as having under 20 employees, though. The cost of a comprehensive net presence isn't going to be worth it for most companies.
"the INTERNET
Slashdot regularly feeds us newswire stories on issues relating to computers and the law, be it privacy, cryptography, censorship, or taxation. But often conspiciously lacking from many of these stories is contact information -- which lawmakers should be contacted if an individual thinks the implementation of these laws is a poor (or for that matter, good) idea?
A journalist might skim through the email they recieve, but a politician's staff is damn well going to tally it all up. Most
Sure, we whine about being reamed by the government, but how often do we actually do something about it?
Granted, the author's urgings in regards to clarity and eloquence apply in this scenario as well. "t4x3z suK!" would not fare well, but I think my point has been illustrated.
Second, and directly related to the wonderful world of Linux advocacy:
Keep in mind who the target audience is. This is to say, suits. The usual arguments don't work, the bottom line is everything. Microsoft releases a substandard product. Great, yeah, just about every business has cut something to make a few extra bucks. This is pragmatic business planning. It's not a moral issue, it's only decisive if it affects THEIR finances. And be realistic about it. Even if they were GPF'ing once a day, that's what, ten minutes of labor? Hard costs are about the same -- a blanket license for linux with support isn't going to be that much cheaper than NT if you figure in switch over costs. Think out the arguments fully.
And finally, directly related to the previous comment:
What would be the legalities of some enterprising individual set up a linux support/distro as a federally registered non profit? They could hock their services to a business -- who could write it off -- pay their employees liberally, and then dump all the excess money back into the community. Seems like a tricky but valid plan to me.
Or maybe I just should have slept last night.
check it out. They've got a "low cost device" to open up the cable networks. And @home is pissed about it! So maybe sometime in the nearish future we could see some cable compitition... perhaps someone could interpret?
Folks, before going all crazy /. style *please* read the paper that's linked from the techwire report. Bear in mind that the new law only covers domestic UK transmissions -- seeing as international transmissions are already monitored via eschelon and it's derivatives. It goes into great detail on what methods are currently in place for monitoring traffic (voice prints) and which ones are being developed (word recgonition!).
As far as monitoring within the EU, I can see a number of memeber nations throwing hissy fits. Wasn't it just within the last decade that Germany started allowing for electronic survailence by domestic authorities? (someone please correct me there)
It has to do with legal stuff and insurance... if you're a minor, the people who own the building will have more liability for a minor getting hurt on the premesis than an adult... they have to get pricier insurance if they want to do an all-ages gig, and if you're trying to seduce a corporate sector, most promoters would just save the money and make it 18+.
Same goes for concerts and their ilk.
well if you just want to *hear* it, i know he has at least the cathedral and the bazzar in real audio on his homepage at the FSF...
The previous posters have all associated floating point calculations with games like quake. I don't play games -- I do music. But FPU is VITAL to most DSP routines, and my AMD k6/2 is severely lacking compared to a slower celeron on a similar machine. The new chips are supposed to be better in that department, but they plan on making them a lot more expensive as well ($600 for a processor alone? p3's are less than that). If you're doing basic office/internet type stuff, there's no reason not to go with a low end AMD. But if you need the dsp stuff, buy Intel. Or wait until the new AMD chips have seen some real-world action and then count your pennies.
Wait, which obscure literature reference? I was thinking Conrad or Vonnegut, but neither of those are obscure and both are Kilgore. Killgor and Killgour sound kind of dark-agesey, but I knew a guy with the last name Killgour once, so hey.
Memes make me think of the Sarif-Whorf hypothesis in linguistics -- essentially that the way and what we think are defined by our language (i.e. newspeak in 1984). On the surface level, it makes sense and it's catchy as all hell. But the more you think about it, the more holes you start to see in it. This doesn't mean it's a poorly constructed theory or that it's wrong, it just means that it hasn't evolved into a working, usable model yet.
/. readers have pointed out the inherently memitical (let's coin some new buzzwords here!) nature of the meme itself; Indeed, it seems to be a rather virulent one. Five years ago most people would have blinked when asked to describe a meme, now anyone who reads wired, is into conspiracy theory, studies linguistics, social psychology or public relations, etc. will be able to give you a relitively succinct and accurate definition.
I havn't read the new book, perhaps someone who has can clarify this for me: is the method in which the memes are introduced taken into account?
The most successful ideas are those that have been marketed well. It's hard to have a successful product without a catchy phrase. Social Darwinism is more Lamarkian than Darwinistic, but Social Darwinism is a better way to sell it -- regardless of the nature of the idea itself and what psychological needs it satisfies.
A number of
But this hardly qualifies as proof -- so let's just sit back, wait and see. If it looks like a solid object, it might just be a lot of empty space with some electrons whizzing around that you can't pinpoint.
more on memes and memetic engineering at disinfo
well. Yeah.
The crux of the article was essentially "why should joe six-pack use linux if he can't play pod racer on it?" GPL issues mean nothing to the average user. Heck, I run all my server stuff off linux (soon to be freebsd, actually) because a) linux performed better for networking activities (duely noted by ESR) and b) the damn thing didn't crash.
I'm the target market for the advocacy people, and those are common attitudes outside linuxland.
I find myself in almost 100% agreement with the upside articles. Naysayers take note:
Much has been said about the subjective nature of "quality" -- what party A likes isn't necessarily what party B likes. Some people dig lo-fi noise or songs about poop. God knows I do. But sadly, such products are not mainstream commodities. They are a niche market, and for as much as the media (tv, print, music, etc.) has discussed and feared demassification over the last thirty years, it was never realized. One product that the majority of folks will dig continues to be the dominant model, and will most likely continue as such for a great deal of time.
Musical tastes are conditioned. People buy Brittney Spears and the Spice Girls not just because it has been "shoved down their throats" by advertisers, but also because it's *musically* what they've been taught to like. This is the same reason that (again, for the most part) westerners don't really dig a well-written and catchy raja. Indian music just sounds wrong to their ears. The same process, albiet a more subtle derivative, is at work with radio vs mp3.com music.
You can analyze pop music the same way one would analyze classical music. Regardless of personal taste, there is good, and there is bad. When I first heard the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" I was floored. It was the _perfect_ pop song. Personally, I hated it, but I'm a niche market. It's still a great song -- as well it should be with all the work that went into the manufacture of it.
Granted, there are still nitche markets available for menial exploitation, of course, but people dig brand names. I buy $5 pants at the mexican store down the street, but Calvin Kline and the like are still going to do good business.
Everyone I know is on MP3.com. Some have been number 1, artist of the day, etc. But from a strictly traditional standpoint, they all suck, myself included. (sidebar: there was one band i liked on mp3.com -- anarchy steering committee. they have subesequently been signed to a real label. go figure.) My friends like my music. I like my music. But the songs arn't on par with mainstream music by any stretch of the imagination. For the purposes of the Upside article, good music was music that most people will like. (read: pop commodity)
Something that ALL the preceeding posts have overlooked is the tremendous amount of capital that is needed to make a hit record. People who have been lucky enough to circumvent interacting with the music industry might not realize how many people are involved and how much input they actually have. Producers, label execs, financers, A&R folks, engineers, the list is staggering. Not to mention image consultants, advertising agencies, video directors, and a million phone jocks doing promo for radio stations. All these people are professionals, working together to create the perfect commodity that will agree with consumers' tatstes. And for the most part they succeed. All you "new media revolution" types need to take this into consideration.
And this is ultimately where this discussion began: money. MP3.com will make money off advertisers. MP3.com will continue to exist entirely outside the music industry, except for bands that get signed. Please remember my pants.
A final technical note: DAM CDs will always suffer MP3's limitations -- once a file has been encoded to MP3, it's never going back to the original quality. MP3 works by deleting less vital data, thus conversion "back" to wav will always sound mp3ey. Also bear in mind the inherent poor recording conditions of independent music in general.
viva.
The midly popular WinOnCD package does this in the new versions. It's not quite EZCD levels of use, but it's pretty darn drag and drop.
Also, convience hinges on dominant platform... and the industry is pretty geared up to change formats from the CD to something else. (it's time.)
But yeah, if the industry is wise, they'll make sure that whatever the new platform is makes it difficult to impossible to use MP3ness.
Well you see:
1. The US has libel laws as well. Libel (as well as slander) do not qualify as "protected speech."
2. The US also has laws governing the usage of "fighting words," a catagory in which your comment certainly may fall. Bear this in mind.
3. The UK has freedom of speech (essentially in the same sense that we in the US have it) as well. It's not in a "constitution" like ours, but we have constitutional supremacy and they have parlamentary supremacy, so it equates to essentially the same thing.
God save the Queen!