I'm in a similar postion but with full total access to only about 30 people. I once had the whole year copied on my iPod and took it home. Did I read it? Did I fuck. The less I know the better - I couldn't care less. If something's not working right, I'll fix it but apart from that I don't care about the deeply boring personal and working lives of my users. I spend a lot of time developing a trustworthy bedside manner much like a doctor and I'm not going to blow it reading their garbage. It also gives me the creeps and I just can't make myself do it. I guess I'm just honest but really I just don't care.
I've come to the conclusion that the next killer app doesn't really exist. Or that it does but it isn't imaginable with the current level of technology. A killer app by definition has to be of high value to a large number of users and past examples include DTP programs, spreadsheets, and perhaps 3D F.P.S. games. All of those things opened doors to new ways of doing tasks (or playing games) that were seen as being revolutionary - and they were. The last application I knew that felt like a killer app was SoundJam for the Mac which quickly was bought by Apple and morphed into iTunes. Everybody I knew was using it and it spread like wildfire. According to Cassidy and Greene it was one of the most heavily pirated apps ever (perhaps only MS Office and Photoshop were more pirated) - and that's a useful way to gauge 'killerness'.
Now, I think, most major bases are covered so that future successful apps will naturally live in smaller niches and are therefore less 'killer' by definition. An example of that would be iMovie - damn useful if you want to do easy editing of video but not enough people actually can be bothered or want to do that. Hence not quite a killer app. The same logic applies to everything imaginable on current hardware and so I don't think we'll see a killer app anytime soon. In the future I can see that a talking/listening program/system would be a killer app - something like an automated digital assistant with true intelligence - but we may need machines 100-1000x faster to achieve this or an entirely new way of designing logic chips away from current Boolean techniques. I studied AI and remain sceptical we will see this anytime within the next 20 years.
On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance.
This is a very good point and one that I often think of. I remember when the OSX beta came out (yup, I bought a copy) and I thought that the translucency was over done in the drop down menus but I didn't worry because it was a beta and they had a new model to play with. Of course over time they realised the translucency wasn't helping and successively toned it down so that now it's pretty near exactly right. Everything I've seen of Vista reminds me of the OSX beta which puts them 6 years behind. And with no graphic design skillz. I just don't think the punters are that stupid anymore - they are not going to be impressed by Vista.
I know, I avoid political things on/. because of the huge right-wing bias. It shocks me sometimes how strong it is. Don't forget though - you're not alone on this.
I don't think youTube has been censoring. The real story of the last few weeks is Google video censoring Alex Jones' Terrorstorm by reseting the views counter to keep it from the top10. There's a link here:
Most people don't believe that GV made a technical error twice on this particular film when no others were effected. For this reason some people were concerned when Google bought youTube.
Personally I think that (if they're not already) it's only a matter of time before Google becomes 'evil'. There are certain consequences to being a huge public traded company.
Thing is if as Steve B says the 1.6bn is about 1% of Google market cap (I'm sure he's right - i'm too tired to look it up) then in relative terms it isn't a big thing. Even if the whole thing goes tits up Google will carry on and be ok. It looks like extraordinary money to normal people but to Google it's not - but they do get to nip a competitor in the bud.
Or as our Lord Bill Hicks said: "By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. No, this is not a joke: kill yourself . . . I know what the marketing people are thinking now too: 'Oh. He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market.' Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags."
The Mac platform is a lot worse than Windows where I'm locked not only into proprietary OS (which is outdated every year and you have to re-buy it), but also proprietary hardware which you can't upgrade any better than a laptop (add some RAM, a DVD.. and that's it.. wanna faster processor on your iMac? throw away the whole machine and buy a new one).
There is some truth to that but it's not the whole story. It IS possible to buy processor upgrades for Macs and has been for a very long time. They are as hard/easy to install as PC chip upgrades in my experience. Secondly, an old Mac nearly always has value to someone - it is not like the PC market where a three year old machine becomes nearly valueless. Thirdly if a person is strapped for cash they don't need to upgrade the OS to the latest and greatest - all the basic functionality is there anyway and nothing stops working because it's old. Additionally the life cycle of each 'big cat' release is getting longer - Tiger will be current for 2 years whereas previous cats were closer to a year.
couldn't agree more. I mean, step back and look at this situation: it's utterly ridiculous. The trouble is the geneal public are not sophisticated enough to see this as primarily MS's problem brought about by bad design decisions.
yes, that's right. I had an Atari because of Steinberg Pro24 (which later became Cubase). Steinberg (and slightly later C-Lab) Innovated for the platform because of these built-in ports. Apparently it was an arbitrary decision on the part of Atari, they just needed some gimmick and didn't really mind what. It's also worth remembering Steinberg started on the C64 with Pro16.
At one stage in the music business (from about 86-95 roughly) million dollar studios had the humble Atari holding it all together at the heart. Using Steinberg Mimex even desk automation was possible (but never that popular). Eventually the Macs took over of course but the Amiga just never made this niche.
The next time you see a big muscular guy together with a beautiful girl (even better if all of you are drunk), try to tell the girl loudly that you would like to nibble on her tits while pumping your dick up her ass.
We have got to go out sometime!
+
Well said about the 'in Europe' comments - Americans do that all the time and it's a little annoying sometimes.
Full? Rubbish man, there's still 364 places left. Or there was last Monday when I read it in the paper. As Billy Butlin used to say "book early....";-)
I had an Atari ST cos I was (still am) a working musician. You know the reason for that: built-in MIDI ports. But, let me say, did I ever have Amiga jealousy. (TOS was so bad it made Windoze3.1 look good - god I hated it). All the best games were Amiga and got ported (usually not that well) to the Atari much later. Kinda of like the Mac/PC situation now. First time I've thought of it for over a decade today. I really hope they do well, we need more platforms out there and I'm so bored of the PC/Mac/Linux world we live in.
totally agree with that. I used to work for a firm selling Macs and support and we used to recommend NAV for all systems. (We didn't use it ourselves because it's clunks up the system and there is no threat - internally we thought it was sh*te). But what we did like was the profit from NAV. For clients I knew well I would get rid of it for them and they were always impressed about how the user experience improved (even if they didn't have those words). Basically it's a total con.
Slashdot Mirror
amen brother!
I'm in a similar postion but with full total access to only about 30 people. I once had the whole year copied on my iPod and took it home. Did I read it? Did I fuck. The less I know the better - I couldn't care less. If something's not working right, I'll fix it but apart from that I don't care about the deeply boring personal and working lives of my users. I spend a lot of time developing a trustworthy bedside manner much like a doctor and I'm not going to blow it reading their garbage. It also gives me the creeps and I just can't make myself do it. I guess I'm just honest but really I just don't care.
I've come to the conclusion that the next killer app doesn't really exist. Or that it does but it isn't imaginable with the current level of technology. A killer app by definition has to be of high value to a large number of users and past examples include DTP programs, spreadsheets, and perhaps 3D F.P.S. games. All of those things opened doors to new ways of doing tasks (or playing games) that were seen as being revolutionary - and they were. The last application I knew that felt like a killer app was SoundJam for the Mac which quickly was bought by Apple and morphed into iTunes. Everybody I knew was using it and it spread like wildfire. According to Cassidy and Greene it was one of the most heavily pirated apps ever (perhaps only MS Office and Photoshop were more pirated) - and that's a useful way to gauge 'killerness'.
Now, I think, most major bases are covered so that future successful apps will naturally live in smaller niches and are therefore less 'killer' by definition. An example of that would be iMovie - damn useful if you want to do easy editing of video but not enough people actually can be bothered or want to do that. Hence not quite a killer app. The same logic applies to everything imaginable on current hardware and so I don't think we'll see a killer app anytime soon. In the future I can see that a talking/listening program/system would be a killer app - something like an automated digital assistant with true intelligence - but we may need machines 100-1000x faster to achieve this or an entirely new way of designing logic chips away from current Boolean techniques. I studied AI and remain sceptical we will see this anytime within the next 20 years.
spywear
That's like dark glasses, false moustache, hat, black leather jacket?
I don't know if you use OSX or not but what you've described is pretty much that.
On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance.
This is a very good point and one that I often think of. I remember when the OSX beta came out (yup, I bought a copy) and I thought that the translucency was over done in the drop down menus but I didn't worry because it was a beta and they had a new model to play with. Of course over time they realised the translucency wasn't helping and successively toned it down so that now it's pretty near exactly right. Everything I've seen of Vista reminds me of the OSX beta which puts them 6 years behind. And with no graphic design skillz. I just don't think the punters are that stupid anymore - they are not going to be impressed by Vista.
I'm so glad I won't be using it.
In other words every Win app is going to look like an over-tweaked Flash site.
MOD PARENT UP.
/. because of the huge right-wing bias. It shocks me sometimes how strong it is. Don't forget though - you're not alone on this.
I know, I avoid political things on
I don't think youTube has been censoring. The real story of the last few weeks is Google video censoring Alex Jones' Terrorstorm by reseting the views counter to keep it from the top10. There's a link here:
0 91006googleadmits.htm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/
Most people don't believe that GV made a technical error twice on this particular film when no others were effected. For this reason some people were concerned when Google bought youTube.
Personally I think that (if they're not already) it's only a matter of time before Google becomes 'evil'. There are certain consequences to being a huge public traded company.
[snigger]
Thing is if as Steve B says the 1.6bn is about 1% of Google market cap (I'm sure he's right - i'm too tired to look it up) then in relative terms it isn't a big thing. Even if the whole thing goes tits up Google will carry on and be ok. It looks like extraordinary money to normal people but to Google it's not - but they do get to nip a competitor in the bud.
Or as our Lord Bill Hicks said: "By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. No, this is not a joke: kill yourself . . . I know what the marketing people are thinking now too: 'Oh. He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market.' Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags."
The Mac platform is a lot worse than Windows where I'm locked not only into proprietary OS (which is outdated every year and you have to re-buy it), but also proprietary hardware which you can't upgrade any better than a laptop (add some RAM, a DVD.. and that's it.. wanna faster processor on your iMac? throw away the whole machine and buy a new one).
There is some truth to that but it's not the whole story. It IS possible to buy processor upgrades for Macs and has been for a very long time. They are as hard/easy to install as PC chip upgrades in my experience. Secondly, an old Mac nearly always has value to someone - it is not like the PC market where a three year old machine becomes nearly valueless. Thirdly if a person is strapped for cash they don't need to upgrade the OS to the latest and greatest - all the basic functionality is there anyway and nothing stops working because it's old. Additionally the life cycle of each 'big cat' release is getting longer - Tiger will be current for 2 years whereas previous cats were closer to a year.
couldn't agree more. I mean, step back and look at this situation: it's utterly ridiculous. The trouble is the geneal public are not sophisticated enough to see this as primarily MS's problem brought about by bad design decisions.
yes, that's right. I had an Atari because of Steinberg Pro24 (which later became Cubase). Steinberg (and slightly later C-Lab) Innovated for the platform because of these built-in ports. Apparently it was an arbitrary decision on the part of Atari, they just needed some gimmick and didn't really mind what. It's also worth remembering Steinberg started on the C64 with Pro16.
At one stage in the music business (from about 86-95 roughly) million dollar studios had the humble Atari holding it all together at the heart. Using Steinberg Mimex even desk automation was possible (but never that popular). Eventually the Macs took over of course but the Amiga just never made this niche.
I've only got 2 but here they are:
1. Mr Do - totally love this game (Universal, 1982). I play it using MAME. Incidently if anyone can beat 206,000 I like to hear from them.
2. MicroMachines 3 - PSX. A classic when played 2 players. Me and a friend have had the most laughs with this title over the years.
The next time you see a big muscular guy together with a beautiful girl (even better if all of you are drunk), try to tell the girl loudly that you would like to nibble on her tits while pumping your dick up her ass.
We have got to go out sometime!
+
Well said about the 'in Europe' comments - Americans do that all the time and it's a little annoying sometimes.
Full? Rubbish man, there's still 364 places left. Or there was last Monday when I read it in the paper. As Billy Butlin used to say "book early...." ;-)
I had an Atari ST cos I was (still am) a working musician. You know the reason for that: built-in MIDI ports. But, let me say, did I ever have Amiga jealousy. (TOS was so bad it made Windoze3.1 look good - god I hated it). All the best games were Amiga and got ported (usually not that well) to the Atari much later. Kinda of like the Mac/PC situation now. First time I've thought of it for over a decade today. I really hope they do well, we need more platforms out there and I'm so bored of the PC/Mac/Linux world we live in.
As a Brit IT guy tell me something I don't know. Or N.T.S.H.M.A.
or,
Try asking a Mac user for his MAC address. Can get very tricky. That's the cruelest TLA of all.
Hi Bill!
That is going to need a lot of cream.
It's easy if you have this:
http://www.scifihifi.com/podworks/
And a geek can do it without if he wants. There's no DRM cracking going on there, just moving files about.
totally agree with that. I used to work for a firm selling Macs and support and we used to recommend NAV for all systems. (We didn't use it ourselves because it's clunks up the system and there is no threat - internally we thought it was sh*te). But what we did like was the profit from NAV. For clients I knew well I would get rid of it for them and they were always impressed about how the user experience improved (even if they didn't have those words). Basically it's a total con.
I thought car/computer analogies were made illegal back in 2001?