Very good point here. One interpretation that I haven't seen is this: Google's got thousands of employees, all of whom use, I'm sure, Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc. To some degree, even just having a uniform platform for normal day-to-day use for their employees would be a big win.
If the only people using Windows/Mac/Linux were people either developing or testin on those platforms, you could see an internal support cost upside. Everyone who doesn't need to be on a different platform could access all of their tools using a single, predictable OS release.
Example: give an iPhone HDMI out and two 6pin USB ports. Game over. No more need for desktop, laptop, anything. Just your "iPhone" and a charger, a monitor and keyboard at home and at the office. Done.
I love this idea. I'm not sure that processing power is quite good enough--I don't know if the iPhone could handle 16-track GarageBand recordings today, but maybe in 2012.
On the flip side, I brought my wife's iPod in once because it was making some funky noises, and they asked me one question after I described the problem: Do you need anything on this?
With my permission--she only had music on there from iTunes which would easily go on its replacement--they took the thing and handed me a new one.
Sorry, but this is a troll. You can do whatever you want with your device. However, if you want to use your iPod as a hammer or a fishing lure, then you can't expect them to provide free warranty repair service.
Hell bent on stripping you of your freedom? C'mon, that's almost a Godwin right there.
Anyone read this book? The idea is that someone figures out how to capture the state of a human brain on some special tapes. Comedy, of course, ensues.
Something like this will be possible one day, but my layperson's understanding of how the brain works is fundamentally different from how computers work. The hard-wired CPU/RAM model is just not a perfect parallel, so while we can and will improve on machines that learn, it's going to be different from the wetware that is constantly growing, changing, forming new connections and interacting with internal, external and imagined stimuli.
Let me tell you the best way to handle this - on the client side, after the proper DNS opportunities have been exhausted. This is because the client best knows the users browsing proclivities (most often viewed pages, favorite search engines, etc).
Mostly, yes, but not entirely. I like the way that Firefox, Safari and Chrome handle these errors, primarily because you can tell the difference between being off-line and getting an NX response. IE, however, seems to show the same error regardless. If I'm using IE and something stops working, I have to switch to Firefox and try again to determine if I need to restart my cable modem.
Additionally, if I get a 301 (moved) redirect to a non-existent domain with IE, the browser's location bar doesn't update; I get a failure that looks like its at the URL I was trying to go to. In the other browsers, the location updates, so I can see that the failed URL is a different one.
This last one might not seem like a big deal, but one of the things I do for work is build SSO integrations, and part of that is redirections to a challenge URL on un-authenticated access attempts. With IE, I try going to www.X.com, and get redirected to challenge.Y.com. If the latter URL is hidden behind a firewall, or if I mistyped it, it appears in IE that www.X.com doesn't exist, when really it does. It's annoying.
And unfortunately, since it's big corps that use these integrations, I have to do the majority of my testing in IE.
I think you're totally right, and my solution would be tiered pricing for consumers. Like the GP said, true competition could make this a reality.
As far as I'm concerned, if I could choose from 10 DSL/Cable/Fiber vendors to provide my Internet, chances are they'd all be clamoring for my patronage, even if I'm a small customer. As such, they'd offer me options ranging from $10/mo to $80/mo in $10/mo increments.
Each option would allow me to choose my maximum sustained and burst speeds, say 1 Mb/s with a 3 Mb/s burst, 3/6 and so on. The lower end would all have relatively small upload speeds (i.e. 1/4 of the sustained max download), being consumer-oriented, but for home office workers, the 10/20 plan might have a synchronous 10/20 upload upgrade.
The advantage of something like this is that it ensures that someone who's paying very little can't overwhelm the network with Hulu or P2P or some such, and that people who do want to push a lot of data can do so without running afoul of arbitrary (and sometimes anticompetitive) limitations. Even more important, there's not a cap per se, so people on the low end won't have to live in fear that they'll be billed for overages or threatened with disconnection.
And I know for a fact that this sort of thing is not impossible to do. Some time back I worked for an ISP where we did bandwidth-controlled hosting. We modified our BSD-based web servers' TCP stacks so that we could indicate in a config file how much bandwidth should be available to a given IP address. Since each site had its own IP (Yay for us having a class B address!), we could offer entry level hosting rates for a site on a virtual 28.8kbps connection vs. a 56kbps vs... anything. It was very cool No reason this couldn't be done for end users.
That is, as long as you keep that shotgun out of the hands of the perp. Lots of people end up at the wrong end of their own weapons when they try to defend their homes at 2am.
That era is coming to an end, and there is no a priori reason why it should not.
Right. I always wondered about Metallica's sense of entitlement. I mean, what did they really contribute to the world that they should not only never have to work again--which would be the case if they didn't make another dime--but also continue to profit from crappy songs written one to two decades ago?
In a sane world, they would have to continue to change and adapt, produce new music and perform, y'know, *work*, if they wanted to live such extravagant lives.
A friend of mine who is a cartoonist recently met Gahan Wilson, someone whose work I've admired since I was a child. If anyone deserves to be wealthy enough to live the easy life, I'd say he's on that list. He's worked hard and published works in thousands of magazines over the last several decades. But he's still submitting cartoons every week to the New Yorker.
A job is a job, not the lottery. As much as I think everyone should have to work less, this idea that someone can produce a couple of toe-tappers and never have to work again is just silly.
It may also tell us that the highly-paid RIAA lawyers are better at jury selection than the people who are representing the little guys who are trying to avoid paying a few thousand dollars in settlement fines.
I'm an Apple fanboi, and I think this is both funny and insightful, although a little bit funnier than it is insightful, just because Tim Cook seemed to do a pretty good job at the helm for a few months.
As sad as it will be when Jobs retires, even sadder when he passes, it is certainly possible, maybe even probable, that the passing of the torch will not be the gelding of the company. Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch.
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for the same reason you can't buy a Cadillac subcompact
Oh? Is that so?
Very good point here. One interpretation that I haven't seen is this: Google's got thousands of employees, all of whom use, I'm sure, Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc. To some degree, even just having a uniform platform for normal day-to-day use for their employees would be a big win.
If the only people using Windows/Mac/Linux were people either developing or testin on those platforms, you could see an internal support cost upside. Everyone who doesn't need to be on a different platform could access all of their tools using a single, predictable OS release.
Example: give an iPhone HDMI out and two 6pin USB ports. Game over. No more need for desktop, laptop, anything. Just your "iPhone" and a charger, a monitor and keyboard at home and at the office. Done.
I love this idea. I'm not sure that processing power is quite good enough--I don't know if the iPhone could handle 16-track GarageBand recordings today, but maybe in 2012.
Mod parent up! As a parent and a dog-owner, I find these statements to be absolutely on point!
So a dog goes into the telegraph office and submits his message for transmission: "Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof."
The telegraph operator says, "We normally charge by the word, but if you like, I'll give you the tenth 'woof' for free."
To this, the dog responded, "But that, my good chap, would make no sense at all!"
...umberto.eco
"A lot" is two words. You wouldn't say "alittle", would you?
How about this: a bird alit on an allotment of felled trees.
Did this actually happen, or is this a hypo which may or may not reflect what would actually happen?
On the flip side, I brought my wife's iPod in once because it was making some funky noises, and they asked me one question after I described the problem: Do you need anything on this?
With my permission--she only had music on there from iTunes which would easily go on its replacement--they took the thing and handed me a new one.
Sorry, but this is a troll. You can do whatever you want with your device. However, if you want to use your iPod as a hammer or a fishing lure, then you can't expect them to provide free warranty repair service.
Hell bent on stripping you of your freedom? C'mon, that's almost a Godwin right there.
Anyone read this book? The idea is that someone figures out how to capture the state of a human brain on some special tapes. Comedy, of course, ensues.
Something like this will be possible one day, but my layperson's understanding of how the brain works is fundamentally different from how computers work. The hard-wired CPU/RAM model is just not a perfect parallel, so while we can and will improve on machines that learn, it's going to be different from the wetware that is constantly growing, changing, forming new connections and interacting with internal, external and imagined stimuli.
I watched a demon in the Apple Store
They're called "geniuses".
Wouldn't that be TACOO?
Let me tell you the best way to handle this - on the client side, after the proper DNS opportunities have been exhausted. This is because the client best knows the users browsing proclivities (most often viewed pages, favorite search engines, etc).
Agreed!
Mostly, yes, but not entirely. I like the way that Firefox, Safari and Chrome handle these errors, primarily because you can tell the difference between being off-line and getting an NX response. IE, however, seems to show the same error regardless. If I'm using IE and something stops working, I have to switch to Firefox and try again to determine if I need to restart my cable modem.
Additionally, if I get a 301 (moved) redirect to a non-existent domain with IE, the browser's location bar doesn't update; I get a failure that looks like its at the URL I was trying to go to. In the other browsers, the location updates, so I can see that the failed URL is a different one.
This last one might not seem like a big deal, but one of the things I do for work is build SSO integrations, and part of that is redirections to a challenge URL on un-authenticated access attempts. With IE, I try going to www.X.com, and get redirected to challenge.Y.com. If the latter URL is hidden behind a firewall, or if I mistyped it, it appears in IE that www.X.com doesn't exist, when really it does. It's annoying.
And unfortunately, since it's big corps that use these integrations, I have to do the majority of my testing in IE.
I think you're totally right, and my solution would be tiered pricing for consumers. Like the GP said, true competition could make this a reality.
As far as I'm concerned, if I could choose from 10 DSL/Cable/Fiber vendors to provide my Internet, chances are they'd all be clamoring for my patronage, even if I'm a small customer. As such, they'd offer me options ranging from $10/mo to $80/mo in $10/mo increments.
Each option would allow me to choose my maximum sustained and burst speeds, say 1 Mb/s with a 3 Mb/s burst, 3/6 and so on. The lower end would all have relatively small upload speeds (i.e. 1/4 of the sustained max download), being consumer-oriented, but for home office workers, the 10/20 plan might have a synchronous 10/20 upload upgrade.
The advantage of something like this is that it ensures that someone who's paying very little can't overwhelm the network with Hulu or P2P or some such, and that people who do want to push a lot of data can do so without running afoul of arbitrary (and sometimes anticompetitive) limitations. Even more important, there's not a cap per se, so people on the low end won't have to live in fear that they'll be billed for overages or threatened with disconnection.
And I know for a fact that this sort of thing is not impossible to do. Some time back I worked for an ISP where we did bandwidth-controlled hosting. We modified our BSD-based web servers' TCP stacks so that we could indicate in a config file how much bandwidth should be available to a given IP address. Since each site had its own IP (Yay for us having a class B address!), we could offer entry level hosting rates for a site on a virtual 28.8kbps connection vs. a 56kbps vs... anything. It was very cool No reason this couldn't be done for end users.
That is, as long as you keep that shotgun out of the hands of the perp. Lots of people end up at the wrong end of their own weapons when they try to defend their homes at 2am.
That era is coming to an end, and there is no a priori reason why it should not. Right. I always wondered about Metallica's sense of entitlement. I mean, what did they really contribute to the world that they should not only never have to work again--which would be the case if they didn't make another dime--but also continue to profit from crappy songs written one to two decades ago?
In a sane world, they would have to continue to change and adapt, produce new music and perform, y'know, *work*, if they wanted to live such extravagant lives.
A friend of mine who is a cartoonist recently met Gahan Wilson, someone whose work I've admired since I was a child. If anyone deserves to be wealthy enough to live the easy life, I'd say he's on that list. He's worked hard and published works in thousands of magazines over the last several decades. But he's still submitting cartoons every week to the New Yorker.
A job is a job, not the lottery. As much as I think everyone should have to work less, this idea that someone can produce a couple of toe-tappers and never have to work again is just silly.
I was hoping for that browser that the Wollongong Group put together. Did you know that user surveys indicated it was twice as good as Netscape 4?
1. It was an expression of an opinion.
2. Truth is a defense.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Don't you know man? It's 'i' before 'e' except after 'w'.
It may also tell us that the highly-paid RIAA lawyers are better at jury selection than the people who are representing the little guys who are trying to avoid paying a few thousand dollars in settlement fines.
I'm an Apple fanboi, and I think this is both funny and insightful, although a little bit funnier than it is insightful, just because Tim Cook seemed to do a pretty good job at the helm for a few months.
As sad as it will be when Jobs retires, even sadder when he passes, it is certainly possible, maybe even probable, that the passing of the torch will not be the gelding of the company. Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch.
Reminds me of my old Made With VI badge I used to put on web sites I created.