One might think the reason for their spending money on finding bugs but not spending money on fixing them was so they could be a few steps ahead of everyone in knowing ways into OSS systems.
These are the folks that hired an officer from doubleclick.net
"I'm sorry Fred. The only way we'll let you off of your Windows ME box and onto XP, Linux, or a Mac, is if you design a rocket to launch that machine into a star."
Think of it as having some hidden EasterEggs or a game. Perhaps It'll come back with something interesting if you listen to things like Joe Wecker - DeCSS Song or Wierd Al Yakovic - Windows 95 Sucks
Could anyone else care about what you listen to?
If your collection is really Da BOMB, it'll include JJ Walker - DYNOMITE! Simon and Garfunkle BRIDGE Over Troubled Water Moody Blues - TUESDAY AFTERNOON The Vogues - FIVE O'CLOCK World
I can't imagine that a new line of iBooks with Yonah CPUs (either Core Solo or Duo) will be announced with no updates to the PowerBooks as well...wouldn't that make the iBooks more powerful than the PowerBooks?
In practice no. Beyond the included Apple applications, many of the others are likely to be running in emulation which takes a huge performance hit. While performance of many non-intensive apps in emulation will be fine for consumers, that's definately far from acceptable for power-users who really need a performance upgrade instead of a downgrade. More time is need for a wealth of high-end and non Xcode(TM) apps to be moved over and fully tested. Even if they recompiled easily, quite a bit of time should be allowed for testing. Those apps which used Altivec have needed those portions of the code rewritten. Past Pentiums were not as good at certain operations as G4/G5 Altivec. Apps originally not built in Xcode need a considerable amount of work. I'd be very surprised if Photoshop is ready. Something that complex has a long testing cycle. For the high end machines performance can't just be usable or about the same as current PPC, it has to be significantly better. That is especially true for current PPC users upgrading, since they need to have enough improvement to justify the cost/hassle of software upgrades. The scientific community using 64-bit apps on quad-core G5 will probably continue to be better of with G5s for a while yet.
Whatever Intel Macs ship soon should help increase the field of available beta testers for the high-end apps. Hopefully developers selling PPC software now will include a free upgrade for updated software when it is ready. I suspect that the appeal of the initial Intel Macs will be driven by cost, power consumption/battery life, and bundled features (apps or new hardware functions), not performance.
I woulnd't be surprised if high-end G4/G4 Macs got another small speed bump.
A system like this seems well suited for exchanges of small files.
Each player could transmit the owners profile and compare received profiles to see if they're a good fit. If both players get matches they alert the owners to chat, exchange pictures etc. This could be handy in many different settings. You never know what you can find when out shopping.
If you're on the road and it's a REALLY good match it hooks into the auto-pilot and ya make a U turn....
Wondering if this was vaporware since the article lacked links to a service page or client download, I checked the MS homepage and noticed that Gate's keynote [.asf stream URL] is available. Not using Windows I tried opening it in VLC, but got an error saying that there was no WMV3 codec. I'm not about to put the MS player on my machine, so perhaps someone else here can see if the keynote provides any more meat than the article.
It really seems shortsighted that the industry experts haven't figured out that virtually all of their DRM'd works still appear unencumbered on the P2P networks. If they had a little insight and some balls they could actually go after selling to iPod users and everyone else by providing watermarked DRM-free product. Simply make it very well known that the buyers name and city is visible and also well buried by other means into everything they buy (include visible places like ID3 tags and movie intros as a reminder) and that'll discourage the vast majority of purchasers from posting their material to the net. With NO limitations of DRM from a user perspective, their sales can reach maximum potential as their offerings will play on EVERYTHING. (This also assumes that they don't use a proprietary format that requires licensing to support). While it'll likely still be possible to strip the buyer ID, there will be little incentive to do so since all users will have total flexibility in using what they buy and no one is excluded.
No DRM + Open Standards = Good + Profit + Freedom DRM + WMA + WMV + WMD = Evil + Lost Sales + Digital Constipation
(visualizing Grateful Dead cover with ice cream cone on forehead and hearing Homer Simpson "duh".)
Blu-ray or HD DVD would be great for backup, if it is cheap enough. It might be wise to wait for some credible reports on the life and durability of the media though.
I have no plans to buy movies in that format, at least not while there is effective DRM. If it won't do everything (including rip) that a DVD-R does, I won't pull a DVD-R drive to install Blu-ray.
For now I'd rather see some cheap dual-layer DVD media. $2 a disc is still too much
Of course my interest might be perked up a bit if Apple announces a cheap box with PVR, DTV/HDTV tuning, and Blu-ray record capability next week....
iNtel iNside? Help! The Little Endians are after me!
The problem is that there are many people in the UK who would love to end the TV license system of funding the BBC
After seeing what's happened to tv in the U.S., I hope for your sake it doesn't happen. At least not if it means running advertising. With the exception of public television, news coverage and programming here have been getting worse and worse.
Advertising is pushing many things that are not in the public interest, and the media news barely covers the negative impacts of those companies/products. There are no longer any limits on how much advertising stations can air. Some of the smaller stations where I am run infomercials more than half of the time. Many half-hour long infomercials are aired, many of them are promoting scammers. Many drug companies run ads at a time when we're spending more money than ever on drugs and it is driving health insurance costs to where many individuals and even businesses cannot afford them. There is heavy advertising for products made in China even though there is a huge trade deficit. Between the operation and purchasing power of Wal-Mart, a huge distributor of mostly Chinese products, many retail and manufacturing businesses have closed costing many jobs. TV ads promote many very unhealthy and relatively expensive foods at a time when many Americans are grossly overweight and still more suffer from eating unhealthy processed junk. Even children are developing diabetes from bad eating habits. Political corruption is a serious problem. Much of the bad legislation that it passed gets little public outcry because the media don't put enough importance on it. Much of the corruption of politicians starts when they have to resort to funding from the wrong sources to wage competitive (usually nasty and misleading) political ads. Of course its the media getting all that money. If the media didn't run paid political ads things wouldn't be as bad. The media is all about consumption. Frequent ads promote credit cards with incredibly nasty contracts, at a time when the average family has close to $10,000 in credit card debt. While there is some coverage of global warming and environmental issues, they fail to take politicians to task for bad legislation, and continue promoting things that are bad for the environment. Broadcast ownership has been largely taken over by huge corporations. The old limit of 7 AM, 7 FM, and 7 TV stations by one owner is gone. Clear Channel owns over 1000 tv and radio stations. This leads to more political corruption, less diverse news, and far less diverse exposure of music nationally. It is pretty much all or nothing exposure for musicians now.
The media mentions computer malware but never points to alternate operating systems for relief.
Many TV programs are now so-called reality shows. Many are produced at low cost using members of the public. Basically anything cheap to produce that gets a large audience is aired. An early episode of Fear Factor, had contestants eating animal penises in their competition for the prize. The media tend to all focus on some "big" story, while ignoring far more important things. For instance when they were all preoccupied with coverage of the jury selection for Michael Jackson here, the BBC had coverage of about 60% of the Iraqi oil money that was overseen by the US to be used for reconstruction being unaccounted for. (If the BBC hadn't had this on the web, I would have never known. I haven't been able to find that story again though. Hmmmm) Most tv in the U.S. is very bad, at least we still have PBS (public television). It includes some programming from the BBC also. US radio is even worse than tv. The audio is overprocessed, most of the programming comes from satellite sources and computer automation (which inserts local-sounding announcers). Half of the time if there's a major power outage, fire or other problem in the medium sized community I'm in, none of the stations will be talking about it while it is happening. Small-market news operation
Considering the do-good attitude Google has shown so far, and things they've done like Summer of Code, it seems quite reasonable that Google could put together their own Linux distribution and get it to the masses in this way (hardware at Wal-Mart). They've got the resources to help polish a few things, and at the same time it'd be a good mechanism to get some of their own projects out to the masses. Strong synergy is likely between such hardware, software, infrastructure they've built, and services they could offer. While it may not seem viable for them to compete with Microsoft on a business model of SELLING another OS to vendors, they'd certainly face a much smoother path providing it for free while supporting service-oriented business. Many consumers only ended up running Windows because it was what happened to be on the machines they bought. A number of these buyers probably would have preferred Linux or Mac OS had they known more and been given the choice. And many others weary of security issues are likely to be a bit intimidated at the thought of switching to Linux, not because it isn't excellent, but because there are so many choices and available support isn't always obvious. There's also the issue of mindshare since it is not massively marketed or something that they see very often. We've seen how well Firefox has done. Would as much consumer switching to open-source browsing have occurred if there been a dozen choices all about as good as Firefox?? If many people still think Explorer is the internet, and haven't got a clue about browsers, they're not likely to be of a mindset that's very ready to go transplanting operating systems. For some of them, such a change doesn't happen until they buy new hardware with the new OS pre-installed.
Google has the weight to drive Linux adoption to critical mass. With the mindshare that comes with marketing, greater perceived support, and the comfort of pre-installed software, and safety in numbers, Google can potentially bring Linux to a huge number of people. Potentially Apple could do they same thing with Mac OS Xi, but they've got the problem that wider distribution of their OS could hurt the margins on sales of their own hardware. Linux and Apple communities are good for each other. Both benefit from the other increasing the perception that Windows isn't the only choice, and both help the other by promoting more-open file formats.
Google can be a very good thing for adoption of open-source. If they put Linux on the desktops of many machines sold at Wal-Mart, I predict we'd see Linux gain mindshare from many friends and neighbors of those buyers. It could be a win for open-source, for consumers, and for the success of Google services. Even Windows users should benefit as alternatives increase the incentive for innovation and improvement.
Google could aggressively get into emerging markets by getting their own hardware out there. It wouldn't surprise me if they go beyond simply providing alternative PCs and really add functionality, perhaps through video distribution services. The coming shutdown of NTSC television broadcasting, and the continuing malware problems that some experience, could easily fuel consumers to adopt something new or different. I expect that open-source, Google, and Apple will all be winners in this wave of change.
As long as they don't fuel political corruption by becoming another path for (improperly) paid-for political advertising, I welcome our new open-source Google overlords.
They're talking about tech (data) security overall, not just the net. The losses result from a variety of problems. Identity theft is high on the list I'm sure. While the online side of this is the first thing we tend to think of, it is also occuring at the retail/mailbox/trashcan/employee level. I read a recent article which pointed out that law enforcement was only fairly recently catching on to the motivation behind one large segment of identity theft. An increasing number of meth addicts are turning to identity theft in addition to more traditional crime to finance drug purchases. An deep understanding of what is happening is essential to dealing with our problems. While efforts to go after criminals after the fact are very important, we need to go beyond that and work at many types of prevention. Education of the public, data handlers, and other areas of law enforcement are essential. Some businesses need some major changes to improve security, and they have been too slow in coming. When companies focus on profits while neglecting the public good, regulation has failed. It's partly the fault of laws limiting liability that Windows continues to be so insecure. Credit card companies seem to be too busy ripping of their customers through obscenely high interest rates and fees generated through unethical behaviours including unethical promotions, contract terms, and business practices. If the credit industry were properly regulated and having to function on more reasonable rates, they'd have more incentive to protect those profits by improving the security of the system. As it is, as long as we're healthy enough for them to feed on, they're happy. (Sounds like the Wraith??)
It is very misleading to measure what's going on here by the amount of funding to one agency. The roots of our problems go far deeper than that. What we're needing is increased insight, reform, caring, and honesty in all levels of government and throughout society. Much of what government has done through improper regulation, especially at the federal level, has permitted us to be ripped off from all directions. The banking deregulation act of 1980 let banks profit while the public was ripped off. It cost us over $1300 PER HOUSEHOLD. The picture grows larger. Some of the bad regulation and enforcement is from political corruption. Still other regulations encourage that. The F.C.C., who has left us ripe for feeding the cable/ISP/cellular/phone companies, has also undermined a core part of our society by changing regulations in a way where commercial broadcasters have strayed far from being responsible trustees of the public interest. We ought to have locally owned licensees (living in the coverage area of stations they own). Instead we've got the broadcast counterpart of Wal-Mart. They're masking much news that matters, and pushing many bad products and behaviours. As a start, if broadcasters had to provide fair and equal political information for free (NO PAID POLITICAL ADS), we'd have far less trouble with politicians needing to sell their souls to fund their campaigns. The media is also more directly connected to some of the lower-tech scams. Has anyone else noticed all of the scammers on info-mercials? Most are not high-tech, although some hide behind satellite phones. Changing the rules relating to advertising brought us infomercials, drug ads, and attorney ads. If station ownership was far more diverse, we'd have fewer bad regulations sneaking though while the media acts like one giant eye focusing on one thing excessively while something much worse is happening. I think many of our problems, including financial security, are more effectively tackled through good policy than brute-force spending.
"Good God Katie! This is supposed to be a news show!" - Jim Carrey on the Today Show, as Katie goes into the usual fluff in spite of the people of New York struggling with freezing temperatures outside while having no pubic transportation.
You'll be able to order things wirelessly from your iPod when you get home. If Windows gets a cold, PC users will be able to buy repair tools through the iPod and use it as a recovery disc. There will be several repair options. If you answer "Yes" to "Do ya really, really, really wanna get rid of this problem?" it'll install Mac OS Xi and charge your iTMS account.
Sued by the state of Texas under the stalking laws, Doubleclick has made extensive use of cookies. With the Office of Homeland Security having a former officer of Doubleclick on staff, it's a pretty good guess that the government sees their sort of information gathering technology as useful. Doubleclick handles banner ads on a huge number of websites.
I wouldn't put it past them to be buying the purchasing data from every chain store that has a member discount card. Do/will RFID chips in our tires get scanned at intersections? If it is possible, and potentially useful, shouldn't we expect it to happen unless there are laws to prevent it?
Have you ever had to answer a bunch of questions when applying for a purchase rebate? Someone is using or selling that info.
How much gathering, sale and use of data on us reasonable? What should be legal? What about the damage done to us when info from the data collectors is used for identity theft?
Who passed these laws allowing opt-out privacy policies at banks and insurance companies?
Where does the Auto Club get off tying in with MBNA sending out credit card mailings?
I don't see any mention of this being open-source, and some features will not be free:
"How can it be free? There must be a catch. Nope. Because we're using P2P technology, we don't need to maintain a large server farm for managing huge files collections as our network grows. On top of that, we don't think people should have to pay to share with friends. Of course, we are still a company and we need to make money to pay for the luxurious lifestyle of our development team. That's why we will be deploying new services on AllPeers, some of which will require payment."
If they had the idea for this in 2003 or earlier, it's a bit odd it isn't wasn't shipping some time ago.
Domain Name: ALLPEERS.COM, Record created on 15-Mar-2003 Administrative Contact : RWCM LTD SAINT TROPEZ, 83990 FR (I edited out other details)
Looks like that's enough power to run the laser that'll go through your skull and erase all memories of that movie you just watched. Sorry, no organic backups permitted...
The animated movie Ice Age has a segment with Dodos and three watermelons. If I hadn't seen that on tv last night I wouldn't have caught the reference.
I doubt it is going to happen, but I would hope that now when NBC covers the latest major Windows malware outbreak they'll consider pointing out that there are other OSes that are unaffected.
I'd wondered if the NBC connection to Microsoft would cause a lack of news coverage of the widespread Xbox 360 thermal problems (likely to be more widely experienced after units wrapped as gifts are opened and later when the weather gets hot). I haven't caught any tv coverage. But I didn't see coverage of the Sony fiasco either. It may be that the U.S. commercial media are reluctant to cover negative stories involving advertisers. They do a better job when safety is involved as in the case of toy or automotive product recalls.
Advertising supported "Free TV" seems to carry a high social cost. We get biased news, unhealthy promotion of certain foods and drugs, unhealthy promotion of the use of credit, unhealthy promotion of products that damage the environment, and paid political ads which are at the core of our political corruption. If broadcasters had to carry all candidate/proposition information ONLY in a FREE and balanced way, politicians would have less need to sell out to special interests to finance media-buys for their campaigns. I think the broadcast regulatory changes of the past 25 years have gone the wrong direction.
Considering that broadcasters are trustees of the public interest, I believe that there should be no paid political advertising, no broadcast ownership shared by those connected to other media, and no broadcast licenses granted to those who live outside the coverage area of the station(s) they own.
Next Story: The owners of these bones inherit the rights to all license fees; Species with derivative DNA should now be prepared to pay retroactive license fees. Interest to be limited by the laws of South Dakota.
Tavis Smiley: Good evening. From Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley. Tonight, a conversation about the state of the movie business with Dan Glickman, chair and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. The former Kansas congressman heads up the MPAA at a crucial time. He must contend with increasing concerns about sex and violence in movies, DVD piracy and the continuing political debate over Hollywood's perceived liberal bias. Dan Glickman must also fill the large shoes left by Jack Valente who was Hollywood's top lobbyist in Washington for 38 years.
Also tonight, from the legendary R&B group, the Elements, "Earth, Wind & Fire," Verdine White, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson stop by. This fall, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers are out with their 23rd and latest CD, called "Illumination." We're glad you've joined us. That's all coming up right now.
Announcer: "Tavis Smiley" is made possible in part by Toyota, makers of the 2006 Toyota Camry. Toyota, now, that's moving you forward. This portion of "Tavis Smiley" is brought to you by Wal-Mart. We embrace diversity and strive to uphold its ideals for our customers and our associates. We are committed to our community partnerships, and we are an equal opportunity employer. And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.
Dan Glickman Learn more about this guest. Tavis: Dan Glickman is the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, although tonight we will call him the opening act for "Earth, Wind & Fire." He took over at the MPAA following Jack Valente's 38-year run as Hollywood's top lobbyist. Prior to his new post, he served in the House of Representatives for nearly 20 years, representing his home state of Kansas. From 1995 to 2000, he was US Secretary of Agriculture, you'll recall, under President Bill Clinton. I'm pleased to have him here in LA. Mr. Glickman, nice to have you here, sir. Dan Glickman: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: How does it feel to be opening act for a group like "Earth, Wind & Fire"?
Glickman: I'm just shaking in my boots, actually. I hope I don't hurt their routine.
Tavis: Yeah, I'm sure you won't, sure you won't. Let me start, before I get to the MPAA, with the news of today. You are a former member of Congress, former member of a presidential cabinet. Today's big news, Tom DeLay has been indicted. The Majority Leader has to step down at least temporarily while these charges go forward. What's your sense of what this does to politics in Washington, Republican politics, what Democrats are going to make out of this? A lot of heat on Tom DeLay for months now. And today he officially has to step down.
Glickman: Well, I actually served with him for a period of years when I was in the House. It's not good when any public official, Republican or Democrat, gets indicted. It further diminishes the public view of public officials, whatever party they are. And I don't know enough about the facts. I think that will have to run its own course. I do think that this is kind of a symbol of excessive amounts of money in politics. I mean, politics today involves just this frenetic search for money by anybody in office or running for office.
And I think that this is the kind of the natural evolution of what happens when people rush too hard to race for the dollar. Again, not knowing the facts, we'll have to watch how it turns out. But you know, I'm sure that it's not going to make people feel better about politics in this country. But look, if he committed a felony, he'll have to pay for that.
Tavis: In light of this indictment, and many before it, certainly, Republican and Democrat to your point, in light of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing debate about what the government did not do and how they did not respond quickly enough, FEMA hearings for Michael Brown earlier this week, I wonder whether it is your sense that the public trust in the integrity of our body politic is, in fact, eroding
>>As a serious question though, who's going to be doing renders and such where dual cores really shine, on a laptop? Can anyone tell me applications of dual core for a on-the-go computer?
The kid in "Surface", who is getting into so much trouble for the destructive behavior of the creature Nimrod, got a new iMac G5 to replace that iMac G4 in his bedroom after just a few episodes.
I should have gotten into more trouble when I was a kid.
They may want to fry satellites with this, but they'd have an easier time selling it to the public as a defense system against virus infected birds. Wake me up when the household version that kills flies and termites is ready.
Instead of cooking a perfectly good satellites, there either should be a remote way of hacking satellites to make them friendly, or teams that go up and modify them. If these guys had been watching Mission Impossible (1966-1973 tv show) instead of playing violent video games as kids we might get some more creative solutions.
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One might think the reason for their spending money on finding bugs but not spending money on fixing them was so they could be a few steps ahead of everyone in knowing ways into OSS systems.
These are the folks that hired an officer from doubleclick.net
"I'm sorry Fred.
The only way we'll let you off of your Windows ME box and onto XP, Linux, or a Mac, is if you design a rocket to launch that machine into a star."
Think of it as having some hidden Easter Eggs or a game.
Perhaps It'll come back with something interesting if you listen to things like Joe Wecker - DeCSS Song or Wierd Al Yakovic - Windows 95 Sucks
Could anyone else care about what you listen to?
If your collection is really Da BOMB, it'll include
JJ Walker - DYNOMITE!
Simon and Garfunkle BRIDGE Over Troubled Water
Moody Blues - TUESDAY AFTERNOON
The Vogues - FIVE O'CLOCK World
I can't imagine that a new line of iBooks with Yonah CPUs (either Core Solo or Duo) will be announced with no updates to the PowerBooks as well...wouldn't that make the iBooks more powerful than the PowerBooks?
In practice no. Beyond the included Apple applications, many of the others are likely to be running in emulation which takes a huge performance hit. While performance of many non-intensive apps in emulation will be fine for consumers, that's definately far from acceptable for power-users who really need a performance upgrade instead of a downgrade. More time is need for a wealth of high-end and non Xcode(TM) apps to be moved over and fully tested. Even if they recompiled easily, quite a bit of time should be allowed for testing. Those apps which used Altivec have needed those portions of the code rewritten. Past Pentiums were not as good at certain operations as G4/G5 Altivec. Apps originally not built in Xcode need a considerable amount of work. I'd be very surprised if Photoshop is ready. Something that complex has a long testing cycle. For the high end machines performance can't just be usable or about the same as current PPC, it has to be significantly better. That is especially true for current PPC users upgrading, since they need to have enough improvement to justify the cost/hassle of software upgrades. The scientific community using 64-bit apps on quad-core G5 will probably continue to be better of with G5s for a while yet.
Whatever Intel Macs ship soon should help increase the field of available beta testers for the high-end apps. Hopefully developers selling PPC software now will include a free upgrade for updated software when it is ready. I suspect that the appeal of the initial Intel Macs will be driven by cost, power consumption/battery life, and bundled features (apps or new hardware functions), not performance.
I woulnd't be surprised if high-end G4/G4 Macs got another small speed bump.
A system like this seems well suited for exchanges of small files.
Each player could transmit the owners profile and compare received profiles to see if they're a good fit. If both players get matches they alert the owners to chat, exchange pictures etc. This could be handy in many different settings.
You never know what you can find when out shopping.
If you're on the road and it's a REALLY good match it hooks into the auto-pilot and ya make a U turn....
The Reality Distortion Field is widely misunderstood.
Steve doesn't simply change perception of reality, he changes reality.
Wondering if this was vaporware since the article lacked links to a service page or client download, I checked the MS homepage and noticed that Gate's keynote [.asf stream URL] is available. Not using Windows I tried opening it in VLC, but got an error saying that there was no WMV3 codec. I'm not about to put the MS player on my machine, so perhaps someone else here can see if the keynote provides any more meat than the article.
It really seems shortsighted that the industry experts haven't figured out that virtually all of their DRM'd works still appear unencumbered on the P2P networks. If they had a little insight and some balls they could actually go after selling to iPod users and everyone else by providing watermarked DRM-free product. Simply make it very well known that the buyers name and city is visible and also well buried by other means into everything they buy (include visible places like ID3 tags and movie intros as a reminder) and that'll discourage the vast majority of purchasers from posting their material to the net. With NO limitations of DRM from a user perspective, their sales can reach maximum potential as their offerings will play on EVERYTHING. (This also assumes that they don't use a proprietary format that requires licensing to support). While it'll likely still be possible to strip the buyer ID, there will be little incentive to do so since all users will have total flexibility in using what they buy and no one is excluded.
No DRM + Open Standards = Good + Profit + Freedom
DRM + WMA + WMV + WMD = Evil + Lost Sales + Digital Constipation
(visualizing Grateful Dead cover with ice cream cone on forehead and hearing Homer Simpson "duh".)
Blu-ray or HD DVD would be great for backup, if it is cheap enough.
It might be wise to wait for some credible reports on the life and durability of the media though.
I have no plans to buy movies in that format, at least not while there is effective DRM.
If it won't do everything (including rip) that a DVD-R does, I won't pull a DVD-R drive to install Blu-ray.
For now I'd rather see some cheap dual-layer DVD media. $2 a disc is still too much
Of course my interest might be perked up a bit if Apple announces a cheap box with PVR, DTV/HDTV tuning, and Blu-ray record capability next week....
iNtel iNside? Help! The Little Endians are after me!
The problem is that there are many people in the UK who would love to end the TV license system of funding the BBC
After seeing what's happened to tv in the U.S., I hope for your sake it doesn't happen. At least not if it means running advertising. With the exception of public television, news coverage and programming here have been getting worse and worse.
Advertising is pushing many things that are not in the public interest, and the media news barely covers the negative impacts of those companies/products. There are no longer any limits on how much advertising stations can air. Some of the smaller stations where I am run infomercials more than half of the time. Many half-hour long infomercials are aired, many of them are promoting scammers. Many drug companies run ads at a time when we're spending more money than ever on drugs and it is driving health insurance costs to where many individuals and even businesses cannot afford them. There is heavy advertising for products made in China even though there is a huge trade deficit. Between the operation and purchasing power of Wal-Mart, a huge distributor of mostly Chinese products, many retail and manufacturing businesses have closed costing many jobs.
TV ads promote many very unhealthy and relatively expensive foods at a time when many Americans are grossly overweight and still more suffer from eating unhealthy processed junk. Even children are developing diabetes from bad eating habits.
Political corruption is a serious problem. Much of the bad legislation that it passed gets little public outcry because the media don't put enough importance on it. Much of the corruption of politicians starts when they have to resort to funding from the wrong sources to wage competitive (usually nasty and misleading) political ads. Of course its the media getting all that money. If the media didn't run paid political ads things wouldn't be as bad. The media is all about consumption. Frequent ads promote credit cards with incredibly nasty contracts, at a time when the average family has close to $10,000 in credit card debt. While there is some coverage of global warming and environmental issues, they fail to take politicians to task for bad legislation, and continue promoting things that are bad for the environment. Broadcast ownership has been largely taken over by huge corporations. The old limit of 7 AM, 7 FM, and 7 TV stations by one owner is gone. Clear Channel owns over 1000 tv and radio stations. This leads to more political corruption, less diverse news, and far less diverse exposure of music nationally. It is pretty much all or nothing exposure for musicians now.
The media mentions computer malware but never points to alternate operating systems for relief.
Many TV programs are now so-called reality shows. Many are produced at low cost using members of the public. Basically anything cheap to produce that gets a large audience is aired. An early episode of Fear Factor, had contestants eating animal penises in their competition for the prize.
The media tend to all focus on some "big" story, while ignoring far more important things.
For instance when they were all preoccupied with coverage of the jury selection for Michael Jackson here, the BBC had coverage of about 60% of the Iraqi oil money that was overseen by the US to be used for reconstruction being unaccounted for. (If the BBC hadn't had this on the web, I would have never known. I haven't been able to find that story again though. Hmmmm)
Most tv in the U.S. is very bad, at least we still have PBS (public television). It includes some programming from the BBC also. US radio is even worse than tv. The audio is overprocessed, most of the programming comes from satellite sources and computer automation (which inserts local-sounding announcers). Half of the time if there's a major power outage, fire or other problem in the medium sized community I'm in, none of the stations will be talking about it while it is happening. Small-market news operation
The i was already tacky and cliche even when they released the imac in 1998, and it hasn't gotten any less so since then.
It's comments like that which make us unpopular with the people of iRaq.
Please be more sensitive!
Considering the do-good attitude Google has shown so far, and things they've done like Summer of Code, it seems quite reasonable that Google could put together their own Linux distribution and get it to the masses in this way (hardware at Wal-Mart). They've got the resources to help polish a few things, and at the same time it'd be a good mechanism to get some of their own projects out to the masses. Strong synergy is likely between such hardware, software, infrastructure they've built, and services they could offer.
While it may not seem viable for them to compete with Microsoft on a business model of SELLING another OS to vendors, they'd certainly face a much smoother path providing it for free while supporting service-oriented business.
Many consumers only ended up running Windows because it was what happened to be on the machines they bought. A number of these buyers probably would have preferred Linux or Mac OS had they known more and been given the choice. And many others weary of security issues are likely to be a bit intimidated at the thought of switching to Linux, not because it isn't excellent, but because there are so many choices and available support isn't always obvious. There's also the issue of mindshare since it is not massively marketed or something that they see very often. We've seen how well Firefox has done. Would as much consumer switching to open-source browsing have occurred if there been a dozen choices all about as good as Firefox?? If many people still think Explorer is the internet, and haven't got a clue about browsers, they're not likely to be of a mindset that's very ready to go transplanting operating systems. For some of them, such a change doesn't happen until they buy new hardware with the new OS pre-installed.
Google has the weight to drive Linux adoption to critical mass. With the mindshare that comes with marketing, greater perceived support, and the comfort of pre-installed software, and safety in numbers, Google can potentially bring Linux to a huge number of people. Potentially Apple could do they same thing with Mac OS Xi, but they've got the problem that wider distribution of their OS could hurt the margins on sales of their own hardware. Linux and Apple communities are good for each other. Both benefit from the other increasing the perception that Windows isn't the only choice, and both help the other by promoting more-open file formats.
Google can be a very good thing for adoption of open-source. If they put Linux on the desktops of many machines sold at Wal-Mart, I predict we'd see Linux gain mindshare from many friends and neighbors of those buyers. It could be a win for open-source, for consumers, and for the success of Google services.
Even Windows users should benefit as alternatives increase the incentive for innovation and improvement.
Google could aggressively get into emerging markets by getting their own hardware out there. It wouldn't surprise me if they go beyond simply providing alternative PCs and really add functionality, perhaps through video distribution services. The coming shutdown of NTSC television broadcasting, and the continuing malware problems that some experience, could easily fuel consumers to adopt something new or different. I expect that open-source, Google, and Apple will all be winners in this wave of change.
As long as they don't fuel political corruption by becoming another path for (improperly) paid-for political advertising, I welcome our new open-source Google overlords.
I guess this tells us how Sony feels about product placement.
They're talking about tech (data) security overall, not just the net. The losses result from a variety of problems. Identity theft is high on the list I'm sure. While the online side of this is the first thing we tend to think of, it is also occuring at the retail/mailbox/trashcan/employee level. I read a recent article which pointed out that law enforcement was only fairly recently catching on to the motivation behind one large segment of identity theft. An increasing number of meth addicts are turning to identity theft in addition to more traditional crime to finance drug purchases. An deep understanding of what is happening is essential to dealing with our problems. While efforts to go after criminals after the fact are very important, we need to go beyond that and work at many types of prevention. Education of the public, data handlers, and other areas of law enforcement are essential. Some businesses need some major changes to improve security, and they have been too slow in coming. When companies focus on profits while neglecting the public good, regulation has failed. It's partly the fault of laws limiting liability that Windows continues to be so insecure. Credit card companies seem to be too busy ripping of their customers through obscenely high interest rates and fees generated through unethical behaviours including unethical promotions, contract terms, and business practices. If the credit industry were properly regulated and having to function on more reasonable rates, they'd have more incentive to protect those profits by improving the security of the system. As it is, as long as we're healthy enough for them to feed on, they're happy. (Sounds like the Wraith??)
It is very misleading to measure what's going on here by the amount of funding to one agency. The roots of our problems go far deeper than that. What we're needing is increased insight, reform, caring, and honesty in all levels of government and throughout society. Much of what government has done through improper regulation, especially at the federal level, has permitted us to be ripped off from all directions.
The banking deregulation act of 1980 let banks profit while the public was ripped off. It cost us over $1300 PER HOUSEHOLD. The picture grows larger. Some of the bad regulation and enforcement is from political corruption. Still other regulations encourage that. The F.C.C., who has left us ripe for feeding the cable/ISP/cellular/phone companies, has also undermined a core part of our society by changing regulations in a way where commercial broadcasters have strayed far from being responsible trustees of the public interest. We ought to have locally owned licensees (living in the coverage area of stations they own). Instead we've got the broadcast counterpart of Wal-Mart. They're masking much news that matters, and pushing many bad products and behaviours. As a start, if broadcasters had to provide fair and equal political information for free (NO PAID POLITICAL ADS), we'd have far less trouble with politicians needing to sell their souls to fund their campaigns. The media is also more directly connected to some of the lower-tech scams. Has anyone else noticed all of the scammers on info-mercials? Most are not high-tech, although some hide behind satellite phones.
Changing the rules relating to advertising brought us infomercials, drug ads, and attorney ads. If station ownership was far more diverse, we'd have fewer bad regulations sneaking though while the media acts like one giant eye focusing on one thing excessively while something much worse is happening.
I think many of our problems, including financial security, are more effectively tackled through good policy than brute-force spending.
"Good God Katie! This is supposed to be a news show!" - Jim Carrey on the Today Show, as Katie goes into the usual fluff in spite of the people of New York struggling with freezing temperatures outside while having no pubic transportation.
Whoa! What next? Anticipatory purchasing?
You'll be able to order things wirelessly from your iPod when you get home. If Windows gets a cold, PC users will be able to buy repair tools through the iPod and use it as a recovery disc. There will be several repair options. If you answer "Yes" to "Do ya really, really, really wanna get rid of this problem?" it'll install Mac OS Xi and charge your iTMS account.
Sued by the state of Texas under the stalking laws, Doubleclick has made extensive use of cookies.
With the Office of Homeland Security having a former officer of Doubleclick on staff, it's a pretty good guess that the government sees their sort of information gathering technology as useful.
Doubleclick handles banner ads on a huge number of websites.
I wouldn't put it past them to be buying the purchasing data from every chain store that has a member discount card. Do/will RFID chips in our tires get scanned at intersections? If it is possible, and potentially useful, shouldn't we expect it to happen unless there are laws to prevent it?
Have you ever had to answer a bunch of questions when applying for a purchase rebate?
Someone is using or selling that info.
How much gathering, sale and use of data on us reasonable? What should be legal?
What about the damage done to us when info from the data collectors is used for identity theft?
Who passed these laws allowing opt-out privacy policies at banks and insurance companies?
Where does the Auto Club get off tying in with MBNA sending out credit card mailings?
I don't see any mention of this being open-source, and some features will not be free:
"How can it be free? There must be a catch.
Nope. Because we're using P2P technology, we don't need to maintain a large server farm for managing huge files collections as our network grows. On top of that, we don't think people should have to pay to share with friends. Of course, we are still a company and we need to make money to pay for the luxurious lifestyle of our development team. That's why we will be deploying new services on AllPeers, some of which will require payment."
If they had the idea for this in 2003 or earlier, it's a bit odd it isn't wasn't shipping some time ago.
Domain Name: ALLPEERS.COM, Record created on 15-Mar-2003
Administrative Contact : RWCM LTD SAINT TROPEZ, 83990 FR (I edited out other details)
Looks like that's enough power to run the laser that'll go through your skull and erase all memories of that movie you just watched. Sorry, no organic backups permitted...
I hope the Borg doesn't start designing them. Then they'd always be asking for money and getting the flu.
Wooden horse included for free?
My name is Talking Tina and you'd better pay your license fee...
The animated movie Ice Age has a segment with Dodos and three watermelons.
If I hadn't seen that on tv last night I wouldn't have caught the reference.
I doubt it is going to happen, but I would hope that now when NBC covers the latest major Windows malware outbreak they'll consider pointing out that there are other OSes that are unaffected.
I'd wondered if the NBC connection to Microsoft would cause a lack of news coverage of the widespread Xbox 360 thermal problems (likely to be more widely experienced after units wrapped as gifts are opened and later when the weather gets hot). I haven't caught any tv coverage. But I didn't see coverage of the Sony fiasco either.
It may be that the U.S. commercial media are reluctant to cover negative stories involving advertisers. They do a better job when safety is involved as in the case of toy or automotive product recalls.
Advertising supported "Free TV" seems to carry a high social cost. We get biased news, unhealthy promotion of certain foods and drugs, unhealthy promotion of the use of credit, unhealthy promotion of products that damage the environment, and paid political ads which are at the core of our political corruption. If broadcasters had to carry all candidate/proposition information ONLY in a FREE and balanced way, politicians would have less need to sell out to special interests to finance media-buys for their campaigns. I think the broadcast regulatory changes of the past 25 years have gone the wrong direction.
Considering that broadcasters are trustees of the public interest, I believe that there should be no paid political advertising, no broadcast ownership shared by those connected to other media, and no broadcast licenses granted to those who live outside the coverage area of the station(s) they own.
Next Story: The owners of these bones inherit the rights to all license fees; Species with derivative DNA should now be prepared to pay retroactive license fees. Interest to be limited by the laws of South Dakota.
A shovel: $15
All your bones: Priceless.
Transcript: Dan Glickman, Tavis Smiley
Tavis Smiley: Good evening. From Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley. Tonight, a conversation about the state of the movie business with Dan Glickman, chair and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. The former Kansas congressman heads up the MPAA at a crucial time. He must contend with increasing concerns about sex and violence in movies, DVD piracy and the continuing political debate over Hollywood's perceived liberal bias. Dan Glickman must also fill the large shoes left by Jack Valente who was Hollywood's top lobbyist in Washington for 38 years.
Also tonight, from the legendary R&B group, the Elements, "Earth, Wind & Fire," Verdine White, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson stop by. This fall, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers are out with their 23rd and latest CD, called "Illumination." We're glad you've joined us. That's all coming up right now.
Announcer: "Tavis Smiley" is made possible in part by Toyota, makers of the 2006 Toyota Camry. Toyota, now, that's moving you forward. This portion of "Tavis Smiley" is brought to you by Wal-Mart. We embrace diversity and strive to uphold its ideals for our customers and our associates. We are committed to our community partnerships, and we are an equal opportunity employer. And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.
Dan Glickman
Learn more about this guest.
Tavis: Dan Glickman is the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, although tonight we will call him the opening act for "Earth, Wind & Fire." He took over at the MPAA following Jack Valente's 38-year run as Hollywood's top lobbyist. Prior to his new post, he served in the House of Representatives for nearly 20 years, representing his home state of Kansas. From 1995 to 2000, he was US Secretary of Agriculture, you'll recall, under President Bill Clinton. I'm pleased to have him here in LA. Mr. Glickman, nice to have you here, sir.
Dan Glickman: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: How does it feel to be opening act for a group like "Earth, Wind & Fire"?
Glickman: I'm just shaking in my boots, actually. I hope I don't hurt their routine.
Tavis: Yeah, I'm sure you won't, sure you won't. Let me start, before I get to the MPAA, with the news of today. You are a former member of Congress, former member of a presidential cabinet. Today's big news, Tom DeLay has been indicted. The Majority Leader has to step down at least temporarily while these charges go forward. What's your sense of what this does to politics in Washington, Republican politics, what Democrats are going to make out of this? A lot of heat on Tom DeLay for months now. And today he officially has to step down.
Glickman: Well, I actually served with him for a period of years when I was in the House. It's not good when any public official, Republican or Democrat, gets indicted. It further diminishes the public view of public officials, whatever party they are. And I don't know enough about the facts. I think that will have to run its own course. I do think that this is kind of a symbol of excessive amounts of money in politics. I mean, politics today involves just this frenetic search for money by anybody in office or running for office.
And I think that this is the kind of the natural evolution of what happens when people rush too hard to race for the dollar. Again, not knowing the facts, we'll have to watch how it turns out. But you know, I'm sure that it's not going to make people feel better about politics in this country. But look, if he committed a felony, he'll have to pay for that.
Tavis: In light of this indictment, and many before it, certainly, Republican and Democrat to your point, in light of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing debate about what the government did not do and how they did not respond quickly enough, FEMA hearings for Michael Brown earlier this week, I wonder whether it is your sense that the public trust in the integrity of our body politic is, in fact, eroding
>>As a serious question though, who's going to be doing renders and such where dual cores really shine, on a laptop?
Can anyone tell me applications of dual core for a on-the-go computer?
Another core for the anti-virus software!
The kid in "Surface", who is getting into so much trouble for the destructive behavior of the creature Nimrod, got a new iMac G5 to replace that iMac G4 in his bedroom after just a few episodes.
I should have gotten into more trouble when I was a kid.
They may want to fry satellites with this, but they'd have an easier time selling it to the public as a defense system against virus infected birds. Wake me up when the household version that kills flies and termites is ready.
Instead of cooking a perfectly good satellites, there either should be a remote way of hacking satellites to make them friendly, or teams that go up and modify them. If these guys had been watching Mission Impossible (1966-1973 tv show) instead of playing violent video games as kids we might get some more creative solutions.