I installed GD2 last night, here are some observations of the Sidebar:
#1 After 8 hours, "Email" still says "Currently indexing Gmail..." Why?
#2 "Photos" feature looks cute. Love it.
#3 "News" feature shows me 5-hour old news, and not something I'm interested in. Not good.
#4 "What's Hot" feature looks suspiciously like ads.
#5 When the Sidebar is minimized down to the task bar, the icon is gone, replaced by a generic folder.
Otherwise, it looks like a nifty device I can use.
Blogger has addressed the "Flag" abuse issue. From their own internal "Blogger Buzz" blog (http://buzz.blogger.com/), it says: "From a technical standpoint, we are able to detect when multiple votes come from the same source. We prevent against ballot box stuffing. But most importantly, we're not automatically removing content based on the flags. We're using the feedback from Blog*Spot readers to help assess what the community has noted as potentially objectionable. In the cases where objectionable content has been identified, the most common action is for the support team to 'delist' the blog. This simply means that the blog is not promoted in areas of blogger.com like Recently Updated - but it's still viewable on the web. The content is not blocked or removed in anyway when the blog is delisted."
So for those who are concerned that their "enemies" might use the "Flag" feature to attack their blogs, relax!
Try teaching him how to use Tux Paint (free download at: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/), an open source (free) drawing software designed specifically for children. Personally, I find using drawing software the best way to learn computer -- for both children and adults. You learn how to use the interfaces, how to be creative, how to solve problems, and the children get to create a bunch of cute graphics for wallpaper.
I taught myself how to use GIMP, a more advanced open source graphics software, and have been using the graphics I created for my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/
Don't forget that Hollywood is a big user of open source software such as CinePaint, which is basically a "Son of GIMP". Hollywood studios like DreamWorks, Sony, ILM use CinePaint. A bit ironic if you think about it -- the most profit-driven business, Hollywood, uses free open-source software.
Bush's remark is unfortunate for a head of state whose constitution specifically spells out the separation of church and state. Although his curriculum vitae has never pointed to an appreciation of science anyway, so it's not much of a surprise.
If people want to see the "benefit" of religion, they need not look further than the daily headlines of religious extremists everywhere slaughtering those who do not share their beliefs, in the name of their gods.
You said, "I need to be able to provide truly targeted email to people that, believe or not, actually want them."
Do exactly that -- make it clear to people that they "actually" want email solicitations, and "truly" target your email campaign to those people only.
I don't know about others, but an astonishing 90% of my emails are unsolicited email ads. I have an email address which I rarely give out and only use it for contact-info purpose on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/), and everyday the inbox is filled with spam emails.
And I don't mean "political correctness" either. In the early 80s when I started out in Tinseltown, I was fortunate enough to work for a boss who was into computers, and we got the state-of-the-art Apple IIe!!! People like actress Kim Cattral (a youngster then) would widen her eyes with admiration as she passed by my desk.
I myself spent $300 on an NBC portable computer (PC-8201A) with a whopping, get this, 16k built-in memory. Not 16 gig, not 16 meg, but 16k! I actually wrote 2 screenplays with that beauty. I'd write six or seven pages and the memory would be full, then I had to download the pages to a cassette tape as a backup memory.
Flash forward, now in 2005, I'm writing on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) about Hollywood and the state of cinema, without ever having to worry about running out of memory.
"Creative Commons" notice clearly does something -- it tells people to go ahead, don't be shy, take whatever you like and use it, but just don't use it to make money. "Copyright 2005 by So-and-So" notice basically says that you need the author's approval to use his creative work for whatever purpose.
The use of Creative Commons notice is a choice. Mr. Dvorak seems to be huffing and puffing over something he would not choose to use anyway. If the significance of Creative Commons puzzles him, this long essay of his is an even more puzzling non sequitur.
I'm a blogger/amateur graphic artist; in my blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, I offer the graphics I created to anyone who wants it, without copyright concern. I am also a novelist who has just published a novel, "Unwrapped" (at http://www.lulu.com/content/138218), which is protected by the standard copyright notice. Two different things. Yet somehow this simple reality seems to be taxing the brain cells of a well-known columnist of a major publication.
Linus's comparison of MS with IBM is off. Without sounding like a PR person for MS, I'd like to point out the fact that in the history of IBM there has never been anyone at the top who is like Bill Gates. IBM is better known as a hardware producer, and even then it has recently lost quite a bit of luster by selling PC business to Lenovo and losing Apple as a client. IBM has always conjured up an image of a mammoth corporation with faceless techies, but the only image Microsoft projects is that geeky guy named Gates, and yet, like it or not, he is out-wrestling every husky guy in the arena, so far.
I do agree with Linus when he said he doesn't believe in dynasties and that successful companies eventually get lazy and conceited. Open source, however, is a movement, not a commercial entity, and a movement is, here again Linux is right, unstoppable. This is not to say open source products will "replace" proprietary products, but they do "erode" their markets and force proprietary products to improve, which is a great thing.
Traditional dead-tree newspapers these days are scared to the death about their own survival because online news sites like Google News are luring Joe and Jane Click-Happys away from them. Putting aside the stern journalistic theories, LA Times might be onto something by creating this "Wiki Wrestling Arena" for political partisans to congregate and fight it out, thereby boosting its sagging readership.
Wiki is a fascinating technology. The jury is still out on its virtue. Will it some day replace blogs? Personal journals? Social networking sites? Or perhaps instant messaging? We'll see. I've recently begun to test a free wiki hosting service called "PBwiki", which has a unique function -- it has a password-protection mechanism that lets the creator of the account decide who can edit his wiki pages. I've created a test wiki at: http://sunandfun.pbwiki.com/, which has a link to the page where you can create your own account with them.
Let's have some hypothetical fun and assume that there are some brave souls who live in, say, Beijing, and who decide to write about their views on Taiwan independence, or democracy, or freedom of speech, there are many ways to get around it -- just use different words! For instance, I'm sure someone would have no problem setting up a Chinese blog titled "Taiwanese People should decide their own fate", or "People are the master of their political future", or "Putting people in prison for their words is wrong" etc, I mean I can go on and on. Relax, Chinese people aren't dumb; they'll figure out myriads of ways to get around their stupid government's tyrannical rules.
I'm glad that the bloggers are blowing the whistle on this unholy alliance between Microsoft and the Chinese government. For those of you who are still cynical about the power of blogging, consider this: the struggle for individual freedom is being fought, not by politicians in Washington, but on a new frontline called "blogosphere".
Bloggers are everywhere, we are unstoppable. I've written a light-hearted piece titled "Invasion of Blogging Critters" on my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, if anyone's interested.
I serialized a 16-chapter novel of mine online at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/, if you want to try it. Mind you, it's not science fiction, if that's what you're looking for.
If you still think blogging is about teenagers keeping their journals, you're so 2003.
Blogging has entered business in a big way, and people getting paid to blog is a natural progression. A good blogger must be able to crank out topical posts every day, often more than one entry a day. It ain't easy. I try to keep up my graphic blog (at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) regularly and the best I can do is about one post every two days.
The lady in the Wall Street Journal article blogs for a yogurt company. I'm sure blogging is a more effective way of pulling in business than, say, sending out sample dispensers in supermarkets, which is kind of messy, plus the company has to provide all the samples that always get eaten by people who never buy. Of course, her blog will be even more popular now that she's got a write-up in Wall Street Journal.
How I remember the blinking green monster of the Apple Eye-Eye monochrome screen so well...
(Dissolve the picture, a la reminiscing mode, and cue the early 80s disco hits, if you please)
I was working for a Roger-Cormanish Hollywood cheapo movie company with a boss that was into computer tech, and we were one of the first productions to use an accounting software that was, at the time, still being fine-tuned as the movie was shot. When we started out, there was no such thing as hard disk, and swapping those big old 5-1/4-inch floppies was no fun. Later on, we upgraded to a hard disk that had a "whopping" 20-meg storage capacity, and it broke down on a daily basis.
Oh, yeah, even back then Hollywood knew it was critical to "count" the money in glorious high-tech fashion.
The point the professor is trying to make is: Which is worse -- a person stealing food items from a supermarket, or the supermarket chain's CEO cooking its book to get a fatter bonus check?
I'm glad the professor also taught him a history lesson -- the history of RIAA is filled with chapters of discrimination (against many black musicians who are now considered legends), deceit (rampant accounting fraud), and now outright oppression of music downloaders.
Branding music downloaders as "thieves" is the most bizarre event in the modern legal arena. If lawyers began filing lawsuits against people who record movies and music off the air, against students who borrow a Photoshop master to make a copy, against corporate employees who take pens and pencils home, we would have a chaotic judicial system. And yes, the activities described above are all technically illegal.
Slashdotters who frown upon the blogging phenomenon should realize that Slashdot is considered a blog and tracked by websites like Daypop (at http://www.daypop.com/blogrank/), so if you're merrily whipping these comments out, you are considered a blogger as well, only you're doing it on a community blog.
Blogspotting sounds hip, but it's a shock (yeah, falling-off-the-chair shock) to see the photos of these two Businessweek bloggers who look like they were sent straight from Hollywood Central Casting for "corporate cubicle type"; I mean, put on some Goth makeup or something.
From the tech perspective -- Japan and Germany have tried this before, and I don't mean back in the 40s, but as recent as the 70s, we heard talks about the "domination" of Japan and Germany in the car industry. Flash forward 30 years, I don't think anyone can claim that Japanese and German cars are the only ones people buy now.
The political dimension -- true, Tibet is the clear victim of this unholy alliance. India should be thanked for hosting Tibetans who had to flee China because of the genocidal and religious persecution, but it is puzzling that the Indian leadership now thinks it needs the cheap labor in China to augment its burgeoning software industry. I mean, there is already a vast pool of qualified, and inexpensive to be sure, workers dying for manufacturing jobs within India's own borders, isn't it?
A side note: I wrote a novel, titled "Slipping into Madness", which deals with the suffering of Tibetan exiles; if anyone is interested, it is posted online in its entirety at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/.
From the description in this news article, "Current" sounds like MTV without the music tapes. String together all the semi-hip news and pretentious lecture-in-disguise clips MTV now offers, and you get "Current"!
A friend who has participated in numerous "brainstorm" sessions in TV industry once described those meetings as "plenty of saliva storm but no brain". Now I know why.
The report says Gore bought the network for $70 million; my graphic blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, does not cost a dime to produce and offers plenty of entertainment.
GIMP is a beauty, and I've created more than a dozen graphics with it for my graphic blog; check them out at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/
I'm not a trained graphic artist, and I don't make a living in that field, but my experience with GIMP has been great, despite all the talks about its awkward UI.
Somewhere in the closet I have an old PlayStation One packed neatly in its original box. Game makers' fundamental strategy is to get the consumers to keep buying the "latest and grandest" so they can sustain the industry. Their marketing scheme dictates that they constantly talk about that "illusive future game super console" or else people will find other brands or other forms of entertainment.
Always remember, the marketing mantra of any consumer hardware industry is: "Talk up a storm about the 'mystique' of the yet-to-be-released new product, so people will buy them at the premium price as soon as it comes out, because that is how they make profits with the biggest margin."
Yep, that's why I paid $299 for my PlayStation One, which I doubt I could fetch more than $10 (if at all) for at a garage sale.
I'm sure GM could find 70 car collectors who would buy these EVs and gladly sign non-operation agreement and legal-waiver, but no, they decided to feed these engineering gems to the compactor. This is a very sad chapter of GM, whose ignorance of EV fans' enthusiasm is sure to result in the loss of customers.
What is the GM leadership thinking? The analogy here is that if Paramount decided not only it would cancel the sci-fi TV show "Enterprise", but also destroy all the films!
Web-based services are already here in various forms. If you're a Yahoo subscriber, you get to store unlimited photos on their "Photo" service, and Yahoo's "Briefcase" gives the subscriber free 30-megabyte storage. Sounds small, but 30 megabytes is equivalent to about 60 novel-length manuscripts. Besides, if you sign up for, say, 5 Yahoo accounts, you get 150-megabyte storage.
Google's one-gig Gmail can also be used as a storage system -- you simply send yourself an email with the files you'd like to store as attachments, and they'll be sitting pretty somewhere at a Google server. And yes, you can do the same with Yahoo's free 250-meg email account.
Thin-client terminal concept sounds fine, except it excludes the option of doing work offline, and there are a lot of stuff we prefer to do offline.
If this is what the ladies and gents at HP labs can brag about, they are in deeper trouble than we think. Allow me to present three battery-life-saving tips that won't cost a penny of research money:
1) Use a portable DVD player (one can be had for as low as $129 at Walmart), instead of watching DVDs on your laptop, which, if it is your office laptop, you're supposed to use only for work (wink).
2) Set the brightness level of the display all the way down (I just did, and I can still see clearly).
3) Use AC power as much as you can.
Maybe we got it wrong all along -- maybe HP did not fire Carly; maybe she quit after having to put up with all the ineptitude?
Historically, Hollywood has not only survived non-theatrical distribution formats such as TV, VCR, DVD, it has also benefited from them, and it will eventually figure out a way to use Internet as a distribution channel. With due respect to Mr. McNamee's convoluted theorem, I think Hollywood has no reason to fear these "gadgets of the month" like Tivo and Akimbo, and I base my observation on my 15-year experience of working in both movie studios and independent film industry. Allow me to explain.
Hollywood has a group of loyal friends, namely, local theater owners -- all these guys have to do is to find an air-conditioned place, a projection booth, and a nice concession stand, they can sell "good times" for less than $20 per person (parking and food included). The theater owners probably don't make a lot on ticket sales, but their profits from selling popcorns and soft drinks are significant. As long as there are teenagers dying to get out of the house, lovers who are looking for a dark place to smooch, and families that need some cheap entertainment to refuel after a hard day, people will go to the movies.
This weekend, a friend excitedly informed me that he had just gotten DSL and had been downloading movies from p2p sites, but when he said it took him "days" to download a DVD-quality movie, I knew my old coworkers at the movie studios got nothing to worry about their jobs.
"Streaming or caching?" Mr. McNamee posed the big philosophical question. To me, it is as profound as asking "paper or plastic?" at the supermarket. That is to say, it's not a big deal. Hollywood makes movies for people so they can get out of the house. Those who like to stay indoors and fret over "streaming or caching" will always have their Web forums to yak until the cows come home.
Slashdot Mirror
I installed GD2 last night, here are some observations of the Sidebar:
#1 After 8 hours, "Email" still says "Currently indexing Gmail..." Why?
#2 "Photos" feature looks cute. Love it.
#3 "News" feature shows me 5-hour old news, and not something I'm interested in. Not good.
#4 "What's Hot" feature looks suspiciously like ads.
#5 When the Sidebar is minimized down to the task bar, the icon is gone, replaced by a generic folder.
Otherwise, it looks like a nifty device I can use.
Blogger has addressed the "Flag" abuse issue. From their own internal "Blogger Buzz" blog (http://buzz.blogger.com/), it says: "From a technical standpoint, we are able to detect when multiple votes come from the same source. We prevent against ballot box stuffing. But most importantly, we're not automatically removing content based on the flags. We're using the feedback from Blog*Spot readers to help assess what the community has noted as potentially objectionable. In the cases where objectionable content has been identified, the most common action is for the support team to 'delist' the blog. This simply means that the blog is not promoted in areas of blogger.com like Recently Updated - but it's still viewable on the web. The content is not blocked or removed in anyway when the blog is delisted."
So for those who are concerned that their "enemies" might use the "Flag" feature to attack their blogs, relax!
Try teaching him how to use Tux Paint (free download at: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/), an open source (free) drawing software designed specifically for children. Personally, I find using drawing software the best way to learn computer -- for both children and adults. You learn how to use the interfaces, how to be creative, how to solve problems, and the children get to create a bunch of cute graphics for wallpaper.
I taught myself how to use GIMP, a more advanced open source graphics software, and have been using the graphics I created for my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/
Don't forget that Hollywood is a big user of open source software such as CinePaint, which is basically a "Son of GIMP". Hollywood studios like DreamWorks, Sony, ILM use CinePaint. A bit ironic if you think about it -- the most profit-driven business, Hollywood, uses free open-source software.
o f-gimp.html).
Personally, I use GIMP extensively to create graphics for my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/), and have written a blog entry in praise of the good old GIMP (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/2005/04/in-praise-
Oh, yeah, open source all the way!!!!
Bush's remark is unfortunate for a head of state whose constitution specifically spells out the separation of church and state. Although his curriculum vitae has never pointed to an appreciation of science anyway, so it's not much of a surprise.
If people want to see the "benefit" of religion, they need not look further than the daily headlines of religious extremists everywhere slaughtering those who do not share their beliefs, in the name of their gods.
Here is a better article on the news: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_stor y.asp?category=1700&slug=Yahoo%20Konfabulator
It says Konfabulator has only three employees!!! Now we know which three households have champagnes popping tonight.
You said, "I need to be able to provide truly targeted email to people that, believe or not, actually want them."
Do exactly that -- make it clear to people that they "actually" want email solicitations, and "truly" target your email campaign to those people only.
I don't know about others, but an astonishing 90% of my emails are unsolicited email ads. I have an email address which I rarely give out and only use it for contact-info purpose on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/), and everyday the inbox is filled with spam emails.
And I don't mean "political correctness" either. In the early 80s when I started out in Tinseltown, I was fortunate enough to work for a boss who was into computers, and we got the state-of-the-art Apple IIe!!! People like actress Kim Cattral (a youngster then) would widen her eyes with admiration as she passed by my desk.
I myself spent $300 on an NBC portable computer (PC-8201A) with a whopping, get this, 16k built-in memory. Not 16 gig, not 16 meg, but 16k! I actually wrote 2 screenplays with that beauty. I'd write six or seven pages and the memory would be full, then I had to download the pages to a cassette tape as a backup memory.
Flash forward, now in 2005, I'm writing on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) about Hollywood and the state of cinema, without ever having to worry about running out of memory.
"Creative Commons" notice clearly does something -- it tells people to go ahead, don't be shy, take whatever you like and use it, but just don't use it to make money. "Copyright 2005 by So-and-So" notice basically says that you need the author's approval to use his creative work for whatever purpose.
The use of Creative Commons notice is a choice. Mr. Dvorak seems to be huffing and puffing over something he would not choose to use anyway. If the significance of Creative Commons puzzles him, this long essay of his is an even more puzzling non sequitur.
I'm a blogger/amateur graphic artist; in my blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, I offer the graphics I created to anyone who wants it, without copyright concern. I am also a novelist who has just published a novel, "Unwrapped" (at http://www.lulu.com/content/138218), which is protected by the standard copyright notice. Two different things. Yet somehow this simple reality seems to be taxing the brain cells of a well-known columnist of a major publication.
Linus's comparison of MS with IBM is off. Without sounding like a PR person for MS, I'd like to point out the fact that in the history of IBM there has never been anyone at the top who is like Bill Gates. IBM is better known as a hardware producer, and even then it has recently lost quite a bit of luster by selling PC business to Lenovo and losing Apple as a client. IBM has always conjured up an image of a mammoth corporation with faceless techies, but the only image Microsoft projects is that geeky guy named Gates, and yet, like it or not, he is out-wrestling every husky guy in the arena, so far.
I do agree with Linus when he said he doesn't believe in dynasties and that successful companies eventually get lazy and conceited. Open source, however, is a movement, not a commercial entity, and a movement is, here again Linux is right, unstoppable. This is not to say open source products will "replace" proprietary products, but they do "erode" their markets and force proprietary products to improve, which is a great thing.
Traditional dead-tree newspapers these days are scared to the death about their own survival because online news sites like Google News are luring Joe and Jane Click-Happys away from them. Putting aside the stern journalistic theories, LA Times might be onto something by creating this "Wiki Wrestling Arena" for political partisans to congregate and fight it out, thereby boosting its sagging readership.
Wiki is a fascinating technology. The jury is still out on its virtue. Will it some day replace blogs? Personal journals? Social networking sites? Or perhaps instant messaging? We'll see. I've recently begun to test a free wiki hosting service called "PBwiki", which has a unique function -- it has a password-protection mechanism that lets the creator of the account decide who can edit his wiki pages. I've created a test wiki at: http://sunandfun.pbwiki.com/, which has a link to the page where you can create your own account with them.
Let's have some hypothetical fun and assume that there are some brave souls who live in, say, Beijing, and who decide to write about their views on Taiwan independence, or democracy, or freedom of speech, there are many ways to get around it -- just use different words! For instance, I'm sure someone would have no problem setting up a Chinese blog titled "Taiwanese People should decide their own fate", or "People are the master of their political future", or "Putting people in prison for their words is wrong" etc, I mean I can go on and on. Relax, Chinese people aren't dumb; they'll figure out myriads of ways to get around their stupid government's tyrannical rules.
I'm glad that the bloggers are blowing the whistle on this unholy alliance between Microsoft and the Chinese government. For those of you who are still cynical about the power of blogging, consider this: the struggle for individual freedom is being fought, not by politicians in Washington, but on a new frontline called "blogosphere".
Bloggers are everywhere, we are unstoppable. I've written a light-hearted piece titled "Invasion of Blogging Critters" on my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, if anyone's interested.
I serialized a 16-chapter novel of mine online at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/, if you want to try it. Mind you, it's not science fiction, if that's what you're looking for.
If you still think blogging is about teenagers keeping their journals, you're so 2003.
Blogging has entered business in a big way, and people getting paid to blog is a natural progression. A good blogger must be able to crank out topical posts every day, often more than one entry a day. It ain't easy. I try to keep up my graphic blog (at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) regularly and the best I can do is about one post every two days.
The lady in the Wall Street Journal article blogs for a yogurt company. I'm sure blogging is a more effective way of pulling in business than, say, sending out sample dispensers in supermarkets, which is kind of messy, plus the company has to provide all the samples that always get eaten by people who never buy. Of course, her blog will be even more popular now that she's got a write-up in Wall Street Journal.
How I remember the blinking green monster of the Apple Eye-Eye monochrome screen so well...
(Dissolve the picture, a la reminiscing mode, and cue the early 80s disco hits, if you please)
I was working for a Roger-Cormanish Hollywood cheapo movie company with a boss that was into computer tech, and we were one of the first productions to use an accounting software that was, at the time, still being fine-tuned as the movie was shot. When we started out, there was no such thing as hard disk, and swapping those big old 5-1/4-inch floppies was no fun. Later on, we upgraded to a hard disk that had a "whopping" 20-meg storage capacity, and it broke down on a daily basis.
Oh, yeah, even back then Hollywood knew it was critical to "count" the money in glorious high-tech fashion.
The point the professor is trying to make is: Which is worse -- a person stealing food items from a supermarket, or the supermarket chain's CEO cooking its book to get a fatter bonus check?
I'm glad the professor also taught him a history lesson -- the history of RIAA is filled with chapters of discrimination (against many black musicians who are now considered legends), deceit (rampant accounting fraud), and now outright oppression of music downloaders.
Branding music downloaders as "thieves" is the most bizarre event in the modern legal arena. If lawyers began filing lawsuits against people who record movies and music off the air, against students who borrow a Photoshop master to make a copy, against corporate employees who take pens and pencils home, we would have a chaotic judicial system. And yes, the activities described above are all technically illegal.
Slashdotters who frown upon the blogging phenomenon should realize that Slashdot is considered a blog and tracked by websites like Daypop (at http://www.daypop.com/blogrank/), so if you're merrily whipping these comments out, you are considered a blogger as well, only you're doing it on a community blog.
Blogspotting sounds hip, but it's a shock (yeah, falling-off-the-chair shock) to see the photos of these two Businessweek bloggers who look like they were sent straight from Hollywood Central Casting for "corporate cubicle type"; I mean, put on some Goth makeup or something.
From the tech perspective -- Japan and Germany have tried this before, and I don't mean back in the 40s, but as recent as the 70s, we heard talks about the "domination" of Japan and Germany in the car industry. Flash forward 30 years, I don't think anyone can claim that Japanese and German cars are the only ones people buy now.
The political dimension -- true, Tibet is the clear victim of this unholy alliance. India should be thanked for hosting Tibetans who had to flee China because of the genocidal and religious persecution, but it is puzzling that the Indian leadership now thinks it needs the cheap labor in China to augment its burgeoning software industry. I mean, there is already a vast pool of qualified, and inexpensive to be sure, workers dying for manufacturing jobs within India's own borders, isn't it?
A side note: I wrote a novel, titled "Slipping into Madness", which deals with the suffering of Tibetan exiles; if anyone is interested, it is posted online in its entirety at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/.
From the description in this news article, "Current" sounds like MTV without the music tapes. String together all the semi-hip news and pretentious lecture-in-disguise clips MTV now offers, and you get "Current"!
A friend who has participated in numerous "brainstorm" sessions in TV industry once described those meetings as "plenty of saliva storm but no brain". Now I know why.
The report says Gore bought the network for $70 million; my graphic blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, does not cost a dime to produce and offers plenty of entertainment.
GIMP is a beauty, and I've created more than a dozen graphics with it for my graphic blog; check them out at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/
I'm not a trained graphic artist, and I don't make a living in that field, but my experience with GIMP has been great, despite all the talks about its awkward UI.
Somewhere in the closet I have an old PlayStation One packed neatly in its original box. Game makers' fundamental strategy is to get the consumers to keep buying the "latest and grandest" so they can sustain the industry. Their marketing scheme dictates that they constantly talk about that "illusive future game super console" or else people will find other brands or other forms of entertainment.
Always remember, the marketing mantra of any consumer hardware industry is: "Talk up a storm about the 'mystique' of the yet-to-be-released new product, so people will buy them at the premium price as soon as it comes out, because that is how they make profits with the biggest margin."
Yep, that's why I paid $299 for my PlayStation One, which I doubt I could fetch more than $10 (if at all) for at a garage sale.
I'm sure GM could find 70 car collectors who would buy these EVs and gladly sign non-operation agreement and legal-waiver, but no, they decided to feed these engineering gems to the compactor. This is a very sad chapter of GM, whose ignorance of EV fans' enthusiasm is sure to result in the loss of customers.
What is the GM leadership thinking? The analogy here is that if Paramount decided not only it would cancel the sci-fi TV show "Enterprise", but also destroy all the films!
Web-based services are already here in various forms. If you're a Yahoo subscriber, you get to store unlimited photos on their "Photo" service, and Yahoo's "Briefcase" gives the subscriber free 30-megabyte storage. Sounds small, but 30 megabytes is equivalent to about 60 novel-length manuscripts. Besides, if you sign up for, say, 5 Yahoo accounts, you get 150-megabyte storage.
Google's one-gig Gmail can also be used as a storage system -- you simply send yourself an email with the files you'd like to store as attachments, and they'll be sitting pretty somewhere at a Google server. And yes, you can do the same with Yahoo's free 250-meg email account.
Thin-client terminal concept sounds fine, except it excludes the option of doing work offline, and there are a lot of stuff we prefer to do offline.
If this is what the ladies and gents at HP labs can brag about, they are in deeper trouble than we think. Allow me to present three battery-life-saving tips that won't cost a penny of research money:
1) Use a portable DVD player (one can be had for as low as $129 at Walmart), instead of watching DVDs on your laptop, which, if it is your office laptop, you're supposed to use only for work (wink).
2) Set the brightness level of the display all the way down (I just did, and I can still see clearly).
3) Use AC power as much as you can.
Maybe we got it wrong all along -- maybe HP did not fire Carly; maybe she quit after having to put up with all the ineptitude?
Historically, Hollywood has not only survived non-theatrical distribution formats such as TV, VCR, DVD, it has also benefited from them, and it will eventually figure out a way to use Internet as a distribution channel. With due respect to Mr. McNamee's convoluted theorem, I think Hollywood has no reason to fear these "gadgets of the month" like Tivo and Akimbo, and I base my observation on my 15-year experience of working in both movie studios and independent film industry. Allow me to explain.
Hollywood has a group of loyal friends, namely, local theater owners -- all these guys have to do is to find an air-conditioned place, a projection booth, and a nice concession stand, they can sell "good times" for less than $20 per person (parking and food included). The theater owners probably don't make a lot on ticket sales, but their profits from selling popcorns and soft drinks are significant. As long as there are teenagers dying to get out of the house, lovers who are looking for a dark place to smooch, and families that need some cheap entertainment to refuel after a hard day, people will go to the movies.
This weekend, a friend excitedly informed me that he had just gotten DSL and had been downloading movies from p2p sites, but when he said it took him "days" to download a DVD-quality movie, I knew my old coworkers at the movie studios got nothing to worry about their jobs.
"Streaming or caching?" Mr. McNamee posed the big philosophical question. To me, it is as profound as asking "paper or plastic?" at the supermarket. That is to say, it's not a big deal. Hollywood makes movies for people so they can get out of the house. Those who like to stay indoors and fret over "streaming or caching" will always have their Web forums to yak until the cows come home.