Why do you think that physical media could not be DRM-ed? It would not be difficult, given the ubiquity (please excuse my triteness) of internet connectivity. I'll leave it to the sick, twisted side of your imagination to figure out how you could actually implement it.
How soon we forget. In point of fact, that's already been tried. Fortunately a dismal failure.
> 1950's- Colonise it with men in nuclear rockets!
Sounds like the colony would be hard put to get past the first generation.
"Pairs of male elephants to be released into the forests of America. There it is hoped that they will grow in number and the people can tame them and use them as beasts of burden."
"But your majesty, I don't think you mean pairs of MALE elephants."
You said it yourself. iPad, possibly a keyboard for her and you are done. Every person I've met that didn't have an iPad has said, I don't know what I'd use it for. Every person who has an iPad has said, how did I live without it? I've seen a lot of conversions, so I just bought iPads for my family and now I don't do tech support.
(raises hand...) My company issued me an ipad because we support apps on that platform. I played with it, took it home and let wife and daughter play with it, and we all got the impression that it was kinda a toy, as there was always something we wanted to do that either didn't work at all or was a pain in the ass to do, or could easily be done on our smartphones, which we were more likely to have on us when we needed them. I gave it back.
So, even for free, we chose to live without the ipad.
It is somewhat useful from a technical support perspective, because whatever they're trying to do, if they can't do it, then it probably can't be done, usually because Apple doesn't allow it. That simplifies support considerably.
I bought one of the printing apps from the Android store, one that has a client process that runs on one of your PCs. Not only can I print on either of our printers (laser or photo), I can do it from anywhere I can get cell service. Printing takes some set-up but it's doable and reliable.
In all fairness, I think what was meant was that older people are less likely to be geeks, because computers were sparse and specialized when we were young. (I'm in my fifties.) Moreover, the older one is, the less likely that one will embrace a new technology and learn it thoroughly.
As with any generalization, there are exceptions. Mother-in-law is extremely good about practicing safe computing, and as an IT customer (with me providing support) is more knowledgeable than many of my customers at work. My mother (in her seventies) has picked up a surprising amount about computers in a fairly short time, and has absolutely no fear of technology. A couple years ago she called me, said the computer wouldn't boot (turns out to be a corrupted DLL) so she booted into recovery mode and had been playing around with the commands, seeing if she could fix it. When she had given it her best shot, she called me. I am still amazed that she would think to do that. (And very happy she had not caused additional damage.)
On the other hand, my wife (about the same age as me) just this morning handed her Kindle Fire to me and said "it's not working". We're at mother-in-law's house, and the Kindle was set up for the network credentials at our house. Turns out she had never activated her AT&T account, had been using the Kindle only via wifi all this time.
Wife bought a tablet recently to replace her laptop, thinking that her requirements were modest enough that a tablet could handle it. The requirements (which were all met by her laptop) were:
(1) Runs the Kindle app
(2) Allows access to her Yahoo email
(3) Allows her to play Facebook games
(4) Allows her to see videos (ok, soap operas) on the ABC website.
So, kindle, check. yahoo email, check. Facebook access, check, but none of her facebook games would run. Also, all videos on the ABC site gave her the error "this video can not be played".
After a few very frustrating weeks the tablet has become pretty much shelfware. She's gone back to the laptop and only occasionally uses the tablet to read her kindle books.
Now, what she was missing, turns out, is flash. Yes, we all know why, and that websites should be switching to html 5 or something, but the fact remains that a lot of sites are still using it, and as a consequence, no currently available Android or Apple tablet will display the content. Therefore, it'd be important in your case to explore exactly what your mother's expectations are before pulling that particular trigger.
Yes, I know that you can dink around with an Android tablet and get flash to work. On some implementations it works great, on others it's prone to crashing. In any case, it's not something she's going to be able to fix herself, so you may have to steel yourself to do some sysadmin on the device and be on the hook for support. Just sayin'.
I think you and your wife should prepare for the eventuality of your daughter kicking you both out. She sounds like the responsible adult in the house (though she probably could use a cooking course).
I haven't told anyone else this, and I'm probably an idiot for saying it here, but between daughter and her mom, daughter has been the more mature of the two since, oh, probably seven years old. There are medical reasons for why this is so. Things are actually stable now compared to the late nineties, a period that daughter and I refer to as "the dark times". I've pretty much been in the role of a single father for most of daughter's life, and this has forced me to be a better person than I would probably otherwise have been. I've had to recognize my limitations, which for me means no games at all -- we don't own any consoles, and I don't play any PC games, and I don't watch any network TV at all. (We do watch a movie on Fridays, and occasionally daughter and I watch a select few titles -- burn notice, bunheads, The Big Bang Theory -- online. In contrast, wife has her TV on every waking moment.) I've tried to be there for her, and about once a week I ask her if I've apologized lately for her crappy childhood.
I think daughter could cook if she wanted to. I think the issue might be that it's important to her to see her mom get off the couch and move about. Cooking is pretty much the last thing her mom still does.
My original point was "it's my house, and while you live here you're not entitled to wallow in your addictions at the exclusion of all else". But as I write this, I see that I've in effect made an exception for my wife. But I still think, in the original situation (father/adult age son) that the point still applies. I'll have to think about this some more.
I think the father is overthinking this. I can't get at TFA from here, but if the son is living at the father's house, there are much better solutions. If it's a game console, disconnect it and donate it to the Salvation Army. If it's the son's personal property, fine, but if the son is living at the father's home, the internet connection probably belongs to the father. Login to router, disallow son's device. (And change the admin password.)
What it comes down to is this: "It's my house. If you want to live as you please, go out and get your own place. You're old enough. And if you think you can keep an apartment as a professional game player, let me know how that works out for you."
We had a similar issue at my house. I was at work and missed the fireworks, but I'm told they were spectacular. Wife was absolutely addicted to a Facebook game, wouldn't get off the couch except to go to the bathroom. Daughter needed food, couldn't get wife's attention. So daughter went out to the garage and turned off the router. (Wife doesn't know a router from a coffee pot, didn't know what to turn on.) Whoo boy. Initially wife's reaction was "I'm not going to do anything for you until you turn the internet back on" (imagine that much louder and a bit hysterical). Daughter's response "you weren't doing anything anyway, so what have I lost?" I'm told that after shouting back and forth for awhile, and a half hour of sulking, wife finally got up and made dinner with very bad grace. As soon as the food was ready, daughter turned on the router.
Later, I got home, said "hi" got no answer. Said "Hello" a little louder, still no answer. Called wife's name, got "Don't. Talk. To. Me." Ooookay then.....
I tend to be self-correcting on games. I may have mentioned before, I was a Warcraft addict for awhile, and when I realized I couldn't stay away, I gave the disc to daughter and told her to hide it. A year and a half later, I still don't know where it is. But I have so much more time at home to actually interact with my family (when wife isn't playing facebook games) and do stuff around the house.
In yet another instance, I had a nephew staying with me, and when he quit college because it's "too hard" and decided he could make a living as a game tester if he just put in enough practice, it was time for him to find some place else to live. I hear he slept in his car for awhile.
You have good points; it wouldn't be easy, but I still think it's doable. However:
> However, just hiring a known entertainment name to create content for your business is not enough. You also need to fund the expenses that studios have -- soundstages, cameras, sets, costumes, catering, etc. -- while producing the content. Unless you want new science fiction stories filmed through a laptop camera and recorded with headset microphones for YouTube, that is.
I'm hoping you meant that as hyperbole. As a matter of fact, production and post-production costs have been dropping for quite a while. You may have heard about the House season finale that was shot entirely with a Canon 5D. I wouldn't have done that, but a Canon C-300 (about fifteen grand plus lenses) is within reach of a small studio. (or rent it for $400 a day) Looking at what has been done in webisodes (notably Sanctuary before Sci-Fi channel bought it and killed it) it's easy to see how a decent production can be done for a reasonable price. "a laptop camera and headset microphones" is so last century. Look at the first (and sadly, probably only) episode of the scifi drama "L5".
But your underlying point, that the money to produce the shows has to come from somewhere, is correct. However, there is another layer in all this that we haven't mentioned yet. Traditionally the money for pilots are provided by studios, which, if they sell, get paid by the networks to continue. The studios are usually completely different entities from the networks. I'm saying, the studios don't really need the networks anymore, they have the opportunity to make similar deals with the new content providers, Intel, Apple, Google and the like. And in fact, to the extent they continue to work with the networks only, they're going to eventually be at a competitive disadvantage. The world is changing.
Instead of trying to force the content providers (networks) to allow ala carte, why don't we go directly to the content creators, the people who produce shows that may be picked up by the networks, and present them with a convenient, well-integrated outlet to consumers that bypasses the networks entirely?
I know, to a certain extent this is already being done, but I'm thinking that Intel (in this example) should be going directly to Chuck Lorre, J. J. Abrams, Tim Kring, et al, and say "how would you like to survive the inevitable downfall of network television? And make a lot of money?"
The content providers are just middle men. It seems like they could be eliminated.
Of the people rebadged and still onsite, we've lost about a third so far. That definitely puts a time limit on leveraging former employees by insourcing.
To a certain extent it depends on the outsourcing company. At a place I used to work, which did a huge IT outsourcing after I left, former co-workers told me that they were offered (a) a separation package, or (b) their current jobs, if they moved to India on their own dime and worked for prevailing wage. I don't think (b) got any takers.
Things were not that bad here, but I'm told that there is enough stress amongst the rebadged employees that the only thing keeping most of them here is the down economy.
> First rule of outsourcing : take the client's old and good employees, get them to write simple manuals covering basic processes; give those manuals to low-level employees; force the new low level employees to follow the manuals to the letter; move the previous client employees elsewhere and split them up.
What employees they kept were the most senior admins in various categories, and at first the plan (as I understand it) was to keep them onsite for a short period of time during a transition period and then gradually give them work at other customer sites. What actually happened was that all the offshore admins were utterly incompetent, untrained, and inexperienced and things detonated during cutover. The few local IT people had to do the work of a staff that had been ten times their size to try to put out the most egregious fires, and the rest just stayed broken for a very long time.
But that wasn't even the punch line. A little later, we discovered two phenomenon:
One: In total self-defense, we desperately tried to train up the offshore admins to a level where they could at least understand the problem and follow simple instructions. But we ran into the big dirty secret of outsourcing: To make the business model work, first level has to be paid starvation wages, and as soon as they get some training, they go find a better paying job. (Who wouldn't?) So we'd train up an admin, he'd get a little better, and then he'd disappear and we'd have another taxi driver who didn't know how to spell Unix. And there was no way to solve the problem, because it is built into the business model.
Two: The business model is not sustainable over the long term. You grow senior admins by hiring junior admins and allowing them to move up through the ranks as they gain skills and experience. With no new juniors coming in, and seniors finally getting disgusted and leaving, the pool of competence tends to dwindle over time. We are gliding along on inertia at the moment, due in part to the down economy and the culture of outsourcing, because there are still some experienced admins that can fill the gap as your third and fourth level people leave. But eventually we'll find that the people who truly know how to make stuff run (as opposed to paging through procedures) are retiring or otherwise leaving the field, and there will be nobody to replace them.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think that physical media could not be DRM-ed? It would not be difficult, given the ubiquity (please excuse my triteness) of internet connectivity. I'll leave it to the sick, twisted side of your imagination to figure out how you could actually implement it.
How soon we forget. In point of fact, that's already been tried. Fortunately a dismal failure.
This.
Imagine such a system... compromised.
Everyone meets in the hotel lobby at the beginning of the day, and swaps wristbands.
"I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
> 1950's- Colonise it with men in nuclear rockets!
Sounds like the colony would be hard put to get past the first generation.
"Pairs of male elephants to be released into the forests of America. There it is hoped that they will grow in number and the people can tame them and use them as beasts of burden."
"But your majesty, I don't think you mean pairs of MALE elephants."
I got bored waiting for the commercial to end, never saw the skit.
How about the trunk monkey.
I'd have to look at it.
You said it yourself. iPad, possibly a keyboard for her and you are done. Every person I've met that didn't have an iPad has said, I don't know what I'd use it for. Every person who has an iPad has said, how did I live without it? I've seen a lot of conversions, so I just bought iPads for my family and now I don't do tech support.
(raises hand...) My company issued me an ipad because we support apps on that platform. I played with it, took it home and let wife and daughter play with it, and we all got the impression that it was kinda a toy, as there was always something we wanted to do that either didn't work at all or was a pain in the ass to do, or could easily be done on our smartphones, which we were more likely to have on us when we needed them. I gave it back.
So, even for free, we chose to live without the ipad.
It is somewhat useful from a technical support perspective, because whatever they're trying to do, if they can't do it, then it probably can't be done, usually because Apple doesn't allow it. That simplifies support considerably.
I bought one of the printing apps from the Android store, one that has a client process that runs on one of your PCs. Not only can I print on either of our printers (laser or photo), I can do it from anywhere I can get cell service. Printing takes some set-up but it's doable and reliable.
In all fairness, I think what was meant was that older people are less likely to be geeks, because computers were sparse and specialized when we were young. (I'm in my fifties.) Moreover, the older one is, the less likely that one will embrace a new technology and learn it thoroughly.
As with any generalization, there are exceptions. Mother-in-law is extremely good about practicing safe computing, and as an IT customer (with me providing support) is more knowledgeable than many of my customers at work. My mother (in her seventies) has picked up a surprising amount about computers in a fairly short time, and has absolutely no fear of technology. A couple years ago she called me, said the computer wouldn't boot (turns out to be a corrupted DLL) so she booted into recovery mode and had been playing around with the commands, seeing if she could fix it. When she had given it her best shot, she called me. I am still amazed that she would think to do that. (And very happy she had not caused additional damage.)
On the other hand, my wife (about the same age as me) just this morning handed her Kindle Fire to me and said "it's not working". We're at mother-in-law's house, and the Kindle was set up for the network credentials at our house. Turns out she had never activated her AT&T account, had been using the Kindle only via wifi all this time.
It was not. The situation, as they say, is what it is.
Wife bought a tablet recently to replace her laptop, thinking that her requirements were modest enough that a tablet could handle it. The requirements (which were all met by her laptop) were:
(1) Runs the Kindle app
(2) Allows access to her Yahoo email
(3) Allows her to play Facebook games
(4) Allows her to see videos (ok, soap operas) on the ABC website.
So, kindle, check. yahoo email, check. Facebook access, check, but none of her facebook games would run. Also, all videos on the ABC site gave her the error "this video can not be played".
After a few very frustrating weeks the tablet has become pretty much shelfware. She's gone back to the laptop and only occasionally uses the tablet to read her kindle books.
Now, what she was missing, turns out, is flash. Yes, we all know why, and that websites should be switching to html 5 or something, but the fact remains that a lot of sites are still using it, and as a consequence, no currently available Android or Apple tablet will display the content. Therefore, it'd be important in your case to explore exactly what your mother's expectations are before pulling that particular trigger.
Yes, I know that you can dink around with an Android tablet and get flash to work. On some implementations it works great, on others it's prone to crashing. In any case, it's not something she's going to be able to fix herself, so you may have to steel yourself to do some sysadmin on the device and be on the hook for support. Just sayin'.
Thanks, but no. I need to do real-life things with my time.
I don't exactly remember. Maybe 15. Thanks. She's always been a geek.
It is, and I haven't in the past because the mother almost always gets custody.
I think you and your wife should prepare for the eventuality of your daughter kicking you both out. She sounds like the responsible adult in the house (though she probably could use a cooking course).
I haven't told anyone else this, and I'm probably an idiot for saying it here, but between daughter and her mom, daughter has been the more mature of the two since, oh, probably seven years old. There are medical reasons for why this is so. Things are actually stable now compared to the late nineties, a period that daughter and I refer to as "the dark times". I've pretty much been in the role of a single father for most of daughter's life, and this has forced me to be a better person than I would probably otherwise have been. I've had to recognize my limitations, which for me means no games at all -- we don't own any consoles, and I don't play any PC games, and I don't watch any network TV at all. (We do watch a movie on Fridays, and occasionally daughter and I watch a select few titles -- burn notice, bunheads, The Big Bang Theory -- online. In contrast, wife has her TV on every waking moment.) I've tried to be there for her, and about once a week I ask her if I've apologized lately for her crappy childhood.
I think daughter could cook if she wanted to. I think the issue might be that it's important to her to see her mom get off the couch and move about. Cooking is pretty much the last thing her mom still does.
My original point was "it's my house, and while you live here you're not entitled to wallow in your addictions at the exclusion of all else". But as I write this, I see that I've in effect made an exception for my wife. But I still think, in the original situation (father/adult age son) that the point still applies. I'll have to think about this some more.
Those are symptoms of a serious addiction and it will only get worse. Your wife needs professional help.
Sigh. Just between you and me, you're right. But as she's an adult, my options are limited.
I think the father is overthinking this. I can't get at TFA from here, but if the son is living at the father's house, there are much better solutions. If it's a game console, disconnect it and donate it to the Salvation Army. If it's the son's personal property, fine, but if the son is living at the father's home, the internet connection probably belongs to the father. Login to router, disallow son's device. (And change the admin password.)
What it comes down to is this: "It's my house. If you want to live as you please, go out and get your own place. You're old enough. And if you think you can keep an apartment as a professional game player, let me know how that works out for you."
We had a similar issue at my house. I was at work and missed the fireworks, but I'm told they were spectacular. Wife was absolutely addicted to a Facebook game, wouldn't get off the couch except to go to the bathroom. Daughter needed food, couldn't get wife's attention. So daughter went out to the garage and turned off the router. (Wife doesn't know a router from a coffee pot, didn't know what to turn on.) Whoo boy. Initially wife's reaction was "I'm not going to do anything for you until you turn the internet back on" (imagine that much louder and a bit hysterical). Daughter's response "you weren't doing anything anyway, so what have I lost?" I'm told that after shouting back and forth for awhile, and a half hour of sulking, wife finally got up and made dinner with very bad grace. As soon as the food was ready, daughter turned on the router.
Later, I got home, said "hi" got no answer. Said "Hello" a little louder, still no answer. Called wife's name, got "Don't. Talk. To. Me." Ooookay then.....
I tend to be self-correcting on games. I may have mentioned before, I was a Warcraft addict for awhile, and when I realized I couldn't stay away, I gave the disc to daughter and told her to hide it. A year and a half later, I still don't know where it is. But I have so much more time at home to actually interact with my family (when wife isn't playing facebook games) and do stuff around the house.
In yet another instance, I had a nephew staying with me, and when he quit college because it's "too hard" and decided he could make a living as a game tester if he just put in enough practice, it was time for him to find some place else to live. I hear he slept in his car for awhile.
I always wondered where Mel went to when he "moved on to greener pa$ture$".
"Your code sucks."
You have good points; it wouldn't be easy, but I still think it's doable. However:
> However, just hiring a known entertainment name to create content for your business is not enough. You also need to fund the expenses that studios have -- soundstages, cameras, sets, costumes, catering, etc. -- while producing the content. Unless you want new science fiction stories filmed through a laptop camera and recorded with headset microphones for YouTube, that is.
I'm hoping you meant that as hyperbole. As a matter of fact, production and post-production costs have been dropping for quite a while. You may have heard about the House season finale that was shot entirely with a Canon 5D. I wouldn't have done that, but a Canon C-300 (about fifteen grand plus lenses) is within reach of a small studio. (or rent it for $400 a day) Looking at what has been done in webisodes (notably Sanctuary before Sci-Fi channel bought it and killed it) it's easy to see how a decent production can be done for a reasonable price. "a laptop camera and headset microphones" is so last century. Look at the first (and sadly, probably only) episode of the scifi drama "L5".
But your underlying point, that the money to produce the shows has to come from somewhere, is correct. However, there is another layer in all this that we haven't mentioned yet. Traditionally the money for pilots are provided by studios, which, if they sell, get paid by the networks to continue. The studios are usually completely different entities from the networks. I'm saying, the studios don't really need the networks anymore, they have the opportunity to make similar deals with the new content providers, Intel, Apple, Google and the like. And in fact, to the extent they continue to work with the networks only, they're going to eventually be at a competitive disadvantage. The world is changing.
Instead of trying to force the content providers (networks) to allow ala carte, why don't we go directly to the content creators, the people who produce shows that may be picked up by the networks, and present them with a convenient, well-integrated outlet to consumers that bypasses the networks entirely?
I know, to a certain extent this is already being done, but I'm thinking that Intel (in this example) should be going directly to Chuck Lorre, J. J. Abrams, Tim Kring, et al, and say "how would you like to survive the inevitable downfall of network television? And make a lot of money?"
The content providers are just middle men. It seems like they could be eliminated.
Of the people rebadged and still onsite, we've lost about a third so far. That definitely puts a time limit on leveraging former employees by insourcing.
To a certain extent it depends on the outsourcing company. At a place I used to work, which did a huge IT outsourcing after I left, former co-workers told me that they were offered (a) a separation package, or (b) their current jobs, if they moved to India on their own dime and worked for prevailing wage. I don't think (b) got any takers.
Things were not that bad here, but I'm told that there is enough stress amongst the rebadged employees that the only thing keeping most of them here is the down economy.
> First rule of outsourcing : take the client's old and good employees, get them to write simple manuals covering basic processes; give those manuals to low-level employees; force the new low level employees to follow the manuals to the letter; move the previous client employees elsewhere and split them up.
What employees they kept were the most senior admins in various categories, and at first the plan (as I understand it) was to keep them onsite for a short period of time during a transition period and then gradually give them work at other customer sites. What actually happened was that all the offshore admins were utterly incompetent, untrained, and inexperienced and things detonated during cutover. The few local IT people had to do the work of a staff that had been ten times their size to try to put out the most egregious fires, and the rest just stayed broken for a very long time.
But that wasn't even the punch line. A little later, we discovered two phenomenon:
One: In total self-defense, we desperately tried to train up the offshore admins to a level where they could at least understand the problem and follow simple instructions. But we ran into the big dirty secret of outsourcing: To make the business model work, first level has to be paid starvation wages, and as soon as they get some training, they go find a better paying job. (Who wouldn't?) So we'd train up an admin, he'd get a little better, and then he'd disappear and we'd have another taxi driver who didn't know how to spell Unix. And there was no way to solve the problem, because it is built into the business model.
Two: The business model is not sustainable over the long term. You grow senior admins by hiring junior admins and allowing them to move up through the ranks as they gain skills and experience. With no new juniors coming in, and seniors finally getting disgusted and leaving, the pool of competence tends to dwindle over time. We are gliding along on inertia at the moment, due in part to the down economy and the culture of outsourcing, because there are still some experienced admins that can fill the gap as your third and fourth level people leave. But eventually we'll find that the people who truly know how to make stuff run (as opposed to paging through procedures) are retiring or otherwise leaving the field, and there will be nobody to replace them.