And what happens when Tivo data echos the Neilson's data? Does that mean that Ally Mcbeal is the greatest show on earth?
Even with a good sample with good techniques it all ends up on the desk of some network executive. The current TV philosophy is to try to create very broad appealing shows and place them in competitive slots. If they don't meet X amount of expectations they get cancelled.
I don't buy the assumption that because 8 million people love the Family Guy and can prove it with their Tivos that Fox will apologize and put it back on the air. Most likely Fox will say "Only 8 mil? We can do better than that people!"
Here's a few reasons: No AI algorithm based program ever broke free from simulating bacteria eating each other to send death threads to its creators. No machine has ever been witnessed to portray a purely biological phenomenon(psychosis). There's no working theory of consciousness so its impossible to know if human consciousness as we know it could ever be translated over to the machine world.
My opinion is that it probably will be possible in the future to build a computer to simulate a human brain.
I doubt it. I'm certain there will be some kind of simulacra that's pretty convincing, like all those people fooled by cheesy IM/IRC chat scripts. But I wouldn't start going on about purely sci-fi concepts until there's at least a workable theory of consciousness about which will predict one way or the other.
As far as the "once a machine is complex or advanced enough it will be able to do X or it will magically come alive" argument goes its not true when applied to a lot of things. Our most complex machine happens to be the Space Shuttle, yet it has had no need to suddenly come alive and swallow its masters. Secondly, it takes a lot of hubris not to accept the limitations of technology and more importantly the limitations of human endeavour.
Its funny how so many self-styled geeks take the typical skeptical stance on a great many things, but when it comes to a robot invasion all caution is thrown to the wind and act like the irrational people they constantly criticize.
I'm not a gamer, but when I was a teenager living in the suburbs playing videogames took most of my time because of the lack of anything else going on. Yes, I did my homework and all that fun stuff, but when you're a teenager (a the person in the article is) you've got free time coming out the ass.
I don't think its a sign of bad parenting to let your kids do something they enjoy. Sure videogames are truly a time waster but finishing that RPG on my Master System or whatever was fun and rewarding.
I'm not expecting MS to start charging for their patches, but I'm curious if they're going to start handing out new versions of their software. If they were to truly replace huge chunks of code and lose a month's worth of work they might as well create a new upgrade path.
NASA should have just released a photo from the 1950's of a white guy with a crew cut holding the bible and be done with it.
It looks like NASA and the Russians have been fighting over this and came to a compromise. NASA would take the high-horse stand to avoid any embarassment that might cause congress to think about cutting funding or supporting private attempts to space and the Russians would make sure to lie and plead ignorance if the contract was broken.
Sadly, this thing hasn't been exposed yet, just dismissed on principle. Its a safe bet to call it a hoax/non-deliberate error, but journalistic integrity (which slashdot never had) would demand an examination of the device not just a general denial.
If michael would take of his James Randi glasses maybe he'd see that the articles themselves are skeptical and there isn't a need for a long "debunking" of something that's already pretty damn suspicious to begin with. Give people a little more credit and you'll be surprised how bright they are. Instead michael is patting himself on the back for providing the unwashed masses The Truth.
First off two wrongs don't make a right. The bigger question to me is why would the US do this to a plane that will be examined from the top down the second it gets delivered? The mostly likely conclusion is to generate more tensions between the US and China.
From the get-go the bush administration has been very adamant on trying to create a new red-scare ostensibly to help defense contracts get through. Think back before 9/11 and look at the various games of cat and mouse the US has been playing with China.
The sad part is that there is lots of trade to be lost by being percieved as the world's biggest spy. Look at the European take on MS and government collusion, Echelon, etc.
In the end this kind of strategy will cost companies revenues, jobs, and negatively affect the economy just to appease the military-industrial complex. In a slumping economy pissing off your potential customers is very bad business and I doubt the big defense contracts are going to make up for what the US is going to lose in trade by its reputation. Even if they did the money comes from American taxes, so its a no-win situation.
This is cold war politics at action. The Russians took this kind of thing as par for the course, but our current administration does not have a firm grasp on how important perception is in the 21st century. The old cold war games may now not be non-event exchanges but could cost us dearly.
I believe Pogo is a selling a young man. What a great way to kill interest in this thing: Lay on the marketing speel and don't show any close-ups or "virtual tours" of the device.
This thing supposedly does everything, yet a pretty and low content promotional tool (website) is all they're offering to get me to buy it? For shame.
The main problem I see is that its designed to reproduce print-like quality, which is great for when you need a hard copy, but the trend to turn PDF into a lazy man's HTML is definately for the worse.
First, the filesize is ridiculous.
The interface needs a lot of work, unless I have a scrolling mouse I won't even bother reading one. The little hand widget must go. Also, I don't want to have to resize my screen to be able to read half the poorly produced PDFs out there. No use in jumping to the next page when I can only display 2/3 of the current one. So back to the little hand.
They're non-editable for the most part once you make them.
They are in a closed format and controlled by a litigious company unafraid to use the DMCA for their own questionable ends.
The plug-ins are notoriously buggy.
Its great for sending something straight to the laser printer, but as an on-line advance it really just stinks.
There's no reason the X-box can't be fitted to be a "poor man's Tivo" or better yet a "poor teenager/student's Tivo." MS could use the intel processor to do a small mpeg-2 compression and then zoom it out to fill the screen. It may sound crappy, but if the dongle/adapter/whatever is priced at a fraction of what a VCR costs then you've just saved a whole lot of money. It could even look a lot better than your typical EP/LP VCR recordings. You can market it as the DVD player that records too.
The fact that MS didn't market this box as an all-in-one game/tv/tivo/web/email solution probably means this is just speculation or that they didn't want to press to pick up on the magic word "Bundle." Bundle would turn off a lot of people who are ambivalent towards MS but don't want to pay extra for stuff they don't need or turn off people who already have an OS monopolist gripe with them.
Its a PC disguised as a game machine, it can be a lot of other things if there's a market and most importantly if MS can compete in that market.
I don't know what you mean by tiny, but my Archos Jukebox isn't small but fits into any coat pocket, is under $250, and has 6 gigs of space.
A few peope think its "heavy," but relative to what? If you can't handle something a few ounces heavier than your CD case you should probably realize that you've entered the whining geek demographic.
Yeah the NT family of OSs certainly aren't the crash happy win95 OSs. In the article Barry deals with 98 on a daily basis. This article would have been relevent before 2k came out, but now it seems pretty dated.
What do people see in Barry anyways? A pun here a stupid reference there and he's selling books and getting posted here when he writes something criticizing well-know problems with win98.
Re:has the targeted demographic really changed?
on
Attack of the Clones
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Not at all, they're all kid's movies but some people refuse to accept that fact that something they loved as a child isn't so hot for adults. Its mostly nostalgia kicking in, though Empire was slightly darker and meaner.
This is more an exercise in demographics than anything. Obviously, things that interest the incredible number of vocal techies will have a disproprotional effect on voting. Remember all those ZDnet, Cnet, and CNN polls you stuffed about Linux?
Rev 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads
I think its fair interpretation isn't a strict Nostradamous like prediction of future events as much as a metaphor for deeds and mind - hand or forehead. Pre-Christian numerology has consiered 6 to be quite an evil number and three sixes it very very very evil. So the verse is more about being under the control or being a willing servant of evil. YMMV.
whether or not you believe them it is important that you at least respect them.
Well if youre going to tell me what to do I'll do the same. Respect yourself by being informed of more than just the fundamentalist view of things.
There are real reasons to go against treating humans as well-watched cattle, but this isn't one of them.
Here in Chicago comparable service from RCN gets you 800k down and I forgot how much up. Its been a while since I left them. Two months of them refusing to do anything about my outtages except occasionally changing the cable modem, which did nothing, made me switch to @home. For the same price as AT&T's, DSL gets you 800k down with 128k up.
How bitter have we become? 1.5 mbps is the downstream on a T1 line. Anyone every consider that the lack of capping downstreams may have been one of the contributing factors in excites demise?
Also, no one was forced to switch to AT&T. It was simply convienant. If you don't like their pricing policy and bandwidth go someplace else. Yep, AT&T has kept their 128k upstream mainly to keep people from running busy servers at home.
The real problem is that there are WAY too many rock-star wannabes that are willing to sign away everything for life in order to take a shot at being on the cover of Rolling Stone, so there's not much forcing the record companies to offer something other than a "we take everything forever" contract.
Exactly, you are completely correct. There's too much of a supply of musicians to ever make a dent in the business end of things. Sound familiar? Think pre-union United States. Just because there are people who are desperate to make a living as musicians doesn't necessarily mean that the current market and standard contracts are deserved punishments.
Yes, some have had the opportunity to get decent deals, but only after they've been informed of their rights. Many bands, and I'm not focusing on the multi-millionaires of this article, are ignorant of their rights and the fact that their contract is little more than a very bad loan. A loan that in all respects should be illegal to hand-out if it wasn't for the massive lobbying power of these labels.
Yeah, there is shared liability here, but in the end the more empowered musicians are the better off consumers are.
I don't see the fun in opposing as association of labels instead of attacking each label individually. The RIAA can dissolve tomorrow and nothing will have changed. What artists need is a class-action suit against their label for arguably decieving them with the "work for hire" clause in the Satellite of Love act of 1991 or whatever it was called.
Secondly, consumers must gripe and stop buying the artists' music. If Elton John fans go pissed enough he would be forced to file a suit to get a more respectable label (or perhaps form his own indie label) to sell his music. As long as you keep buying it doesn't matter, the label will have the upper hand.
Maybe one day when a free market for music exists again, people will care.
When was this? Its still business as usual at the major labels and they're still making money, in fact album sales have gone up in a recession. Not only are we dealing with manufactured youth-culture we're dealing with manufactured problems.
I especially liked the part that album sales are only UP 1% this year! Also note that there's no mention of blank CDs being used to store anything other than music. There's a strong suggestion in the article that all blank CDs end up being illegally copied music.
preferably in a coordinated effort targeted on a certain day...
Naww, I'd rather not be waiting in a 45 minute customer service line with you and one-hundred others. The more authentic the returns look the better.
Diary of the first Segway Owner
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
Slashdot Mirror
And what happens when Tivo data echos the Neilson's data? Does that mean that Ally Mcbeal is the greatest show on earth?
Even with a good sample with good techniques it all ends up on the desk of some network executive. The current TV philosophy is to try to create very broad appealing shows and place them in competitive slots. If they don't meet X amount of expectations they get cancelled.
I don't buy the assumption that because 8 million people love the Family Guy and can prove it with their Tivos that Fox will apologize and put it back on the air. Most likely Fox will say "Only 8 mil? We can do better than that people!"
Here's a few reasons: No AI algorithm based program ever broke free from simulating bacteria eating each other to send death threads to its creators. No machine has ever been witnessed to portray a purely biological phenomenon(psychosis). There's no working theory of consciousness so its impossible to know if human consciousness as we know it could ever be translated over to the machine world.
My opinion is that it probably will be possible in the future to build a computer to simulate a human brain.
I doubt it. I'm certain there will be some kind of simulacra that's pretty convincing, like all those people fooled by cheesy IM/IRC chat scripts. But I wouldn't start going on about purely sci-fi concepts until there's at least a workable theory of consciousness about which will predict one way or the other.
As far as the "once a machine is complex or advanced enough it will be able to do X or it will magically come alive" argument goes its not true when applied to a lot of things. Our most complex machine happens to be the Space Shuttle, yet it has had no need to suddenly come alive and swallow its masters. Secondly, it takes a lot of hubris not to accept the limitations of technology and more importantly the limitations of human endeavour.
Its funny how so many self-styled geeks take the typical skeptical stance on a great many things, but when it comes to a robot invasion all caution is thrown to the wind and act like the irrational people they constantly criticize.
I'm not a gamer, but when I was a teenager living in the suburbs playing videogames took most of my time because of the lack of anything else going on. Yes, I did my homework and all that fun stuff, but when you're a teenager (a the person in the article is) you've got free time coming out the ass.
I don't think its a sign of bad parenting to let your kids do something they enjoy. Sure videogames are truly a time waster but finishing that RPG on my Master System or whatever was fun and rewarding.
I'm not expecting MS to start charging for their patches, but I'm curious if they're going to start handing out new versions of their software. If they were to truly replace huge chunks of code and lose a month's worth of work they might as well create a new upgrade path.
NASA should have just released a photo from the 1950's of a white guy with a crew cut holding the bible and be done with it.
It looks like NASA and the Russians have been fighting over this and came to a compromise. NASA would take the high-horse stand to avoid any embarassment that might cause congress to think about cutting funding or supporting private attempts to space and the Russians would make sure to lie and plead ignorance if the contract was broken.
That's what they said about the wearable ATM.
Sadly, this thing hasn't been exposed yet, just dismissed on principle. Its a safe bet to call it a hoax/non-deliberate error, but journalistic integrity (which slashdot never had) would demand an examination of the device not just a general denial.
If michael would take of his James Randi glasses maybe he'd see that the articles themselves are skeptical and there isn't a need for a long "debunking" of something that's already pretty damn suspicious to begin with. Give people a little more credit and you'll be surprised how bright they are. Instead michael is patting himself on the back for providing the unwashed masses The Truth.
First off two wrongs don't make a right. The bigger question to me is why would the US do this to a plane that will be examined from the top down the second it gets delivered? The mostly likely conclusion is to generate more tensions between the US and China.
From the get-go the bush administration has been very adamant on trying to create a new red-scare ostensibly to help defense contracts get through. Think back before 9/11 and look at the various games of cat and mouse the US has been playing with China.
The sad part is that there is lots of trade to be lost by being percieved as the world's biggest spy. Look at the European take on MS and government collusion, Echelon, etc.
In the end this kind of strategy will cost companies revenues, jobs, and negatively affect the economy just to appease the military-industrial complex. In a slumping economy pissing off your potential customers is very bad business and I doubt the big defense contracts are going to make up for what the US is going to lose in trade by its reputation. Even if they did the money comes from American taxes, so its a no-win situation.
This is cold war politics at action. The Russians took this kind of thing as par for the course, but our current administration does not have a firm grasp on how important perception is in the 21st century. The old cold war games may now not be non-event exchanges but could cost us dearly.
I believe Pogo is a selling a young man. What a great way to kill interest in this thing: Lay on the marketing speel and don't show any close-ups or "virtual tours" of the device.
This thing supposedly does everything, yet a pretty and low content promotional tool (website) is all they're offering to get me to buy it? For shame.
The main problem I see is that its designed to reproduce print-like quality, which is great for when you need a hard copy, but the trend to turn PDF into a lazy man's HTML is definately for the worse.
First, the filesize is ridiculous.
The interface needs a lot of work, unless I have a scrolling mouse I won't even bother reading one. The little hand widget must go. Also, I don't want to have to resize my screen to be able to read half the poorly produced PDFs out there. No use in jumping to the next page when I can only display 2/3 of the current one. So back to the little hand.
They're non-editable for the most part once you make them.
They are in a closed format and controlled by a litigious company unafraid to use the DMCA for their own questionable ends.
The plug-ins are notoriously buggy.
Its great for sending something straight to the laser printer, but as an on-line advance it really just stinks.
There's no reason the X-box can't be fitted to be a "poor man's Tivo" or better yet a "poor teenager/student's Tivo." MS could use the intel processor to do a small mpeg-2 compression and then zoom it out to fill the screen. It may sound crappy, but if the dongle/adapter/whatever is priced at a fraction of what a VCR costs then you've just saved a whole lot of money. It could even look a lot better than your typical EP/LP VCR recordings. You can market it as the DVD player that records too.
The fact that MS didn't market this box as an all-in-one game/tv/tivo/web/email solution probably means this is just speculation or that they didn't want to press to pick up on the magic word "Bundle." Bundle would turn off a lot of people who are ambivalent towards MS but don't want to pay extra for stuff they don't need or turn off people who already have an OS monopolist gripe with them.
Its a PC disguised as a game machine, it can be a lot of other things if there's a market and most importantly if MS can compete in that market.
Then they would have to pull all polls. Remember the last ballot stuffing for linux you were involved in?
Unless you're running a webserver you can run a little fake webserver called edexter. It should time-out immediately.
http://accs-net.com/hosts/eDexter.html
http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
I don't know what you mean by tiny, but my Archos Jukebox isn't small but fits into any coat pocket, is under $250, and has 6 gigs of space.
A few peope think its "heavy," but relative to what? If you can't handle something a few ounces heavier than your CD case you should probably realize that you've entered the whining geek demographic.
Yeah the NT family of OSs certainly aren't the crash happy win95 OSs. In the article Barry deals with 98 on a daily basis. This article would have been relevent before 2k came out, but now it seems pretty dated.
What do people see in Barry anyways? A pun here a stupid reference there and he's selling books and getting posted here when he writes something criticizing well-know problems with win98.
Not at all, they're all kid's movies but some people refuse to accept that fact that something they loved as a child isn't so hot for adults. Its mostly nostalgia kicking in, though Empire was slightly darker and meaner.
This is more an exercise in demographics than anything. Obviously, things that interest the incredible number of vocal techies will have a disproprotional effect on voting. Remember all those ZDnet, Cnet, and CNN polls you stuffed about Linux?
Rev 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads
I think its fair interpretation isn't a strict Nostradamous like prediction of future events as much as a metaphor for deeds and mind - hand or forehead. Pre-Christian numerology has consiered 6 to be quite an evil number and three sixes it very very very evil. So the verse is more about being under the control or being a willing servant of evil. YMMV.
whether or not you believe them it is important that you at least respect them.
Well if youre going to tell me what to do I'll do the same. Respect yourself by being informed of more than just the fundamentalist view of things.
There are real reasons to go against treating humans as well-watched cattle, but this isn't one of them.
Here in Chicago comparable service from RCN gets you 800k down and I forgot how much up. Its been a while since I left them. Two months of them refusing to do anything about my outtages except occasionally changing the cable modem, which did nothing, made me switch to @home. For the same price as AT&T's, DSL gets you 800k down with 128k up.
How bitter have we become? 1.5 mbps is the downstream on a T1 line. Anyone every consider that the lack of capping downstreams may have been one of the contributing factors in excites demise?
Also, no one was forced to switch to AT&T. It was simply convienant. If you don't like their pricing policy and bandwidth go someplace else. Yep, AT&T has kept their 128k upstream mainly to keep people from running busy servers at home.
The real problem is that there are WAY too many rock-star wannabes that are willing to sign away everything for life in order to take a shot at being on the cover of Rolling Stone, so there's not much forcing the record companies to offer something other than a "we take everything forever" contract.
Exactly, you are completely correct. There's too much of a supply of musicians to ever make a dent in the business end of things. Sound familiar? Think pre-union United States. Just because there are people who are desperate to make a living as musicians doesn't necessarily mean that the current market and standard contracts are deserved punishments.
Yes, some have had the opportunity to get decent deals, but only after they've been informed of their rights. Many bands, and I'm not focusing on the multi-millionaires of this article, are ignorant of their rights and the fact that their contract is little more than a very bad loan. A loan that in all respects should be illegal to hand-out if it wasn't for the massive lobbying power of these labels.
Yeah, there is shared liability here, but in the end the more empowered musicians are the better off consumers are.
I don't see the fun in opposing as association of labels instead of attacking each label individually. The RIAA can dissolve tomorrow and nothing will have changed. What artists need is a class-action suit against their label for arguably decieving them with the "work for hire" clause in the Satellite of Love act of 1991 or whatever it was called.
Secondly, consumers must gripe and stop buying the artists' music. If Elton John fans go pissed enough he would be forced to file a suit to get a more respectable label (or perhaps form his own indie label) to sell his music. As long as you keep buying it doesn't matter, the label will have the upper hand.
Maybe one day when a free market for music exists again, people will care.
When was this? Its still business as usual at the major labels and they're still making money, in fact album sales have gone up in a recession. Not only are we dealing with manufactured youth-culture we're dealing with manufactured problems.
I especially liked the part that album sales are only UP 1% this year! Also note that there's no mention of blank CDs being used to store anything other than music. There's a strong suggestion in the article that all blank CDs end up being illegally copied music.
preferably in a coordinated effort targeted on a certain day...
Naww, I'd rather not be waiting in a 45 minute customer service line with you and one-hundred others. The more authentic the returns look the better.
http://everythingisnt.com/2001_12_02_control_archi ve.html#7626223