I think overall they screwed up the launch. They started it as a limited test with a private-invite system-- but as a communication system, it's only useful if it's ubiquitous. They ramped up slowly, introducing more people as they went, while still not opening it completely. Plus, when it started out, it really wasn't ready for prime time.
So then by the time it was open and ready, a whole lot of people had tried it and said, "Meh, it has a bunch of technical problems and nobody uses it. No point trying it again now."
The private-invite system to use a beta worked with Gmail largely because it was using open email protocols, so you could use it to communicate with anyone who had email. When I got Google Wave, I knew 3 other people who had it.
You don't have to make it a random time. My understanding (I'm not a financial genius, but this is according to what I've read) is that some of these high-frequency cheats can be defeated just by setting discrete units of time, so that the issue can't come down to who has the fastest computer and the most direct line. Make it so all trades are executed on the minute mark. So all the trades that you request between 12:00 and 12:01 execute at 12:01, and all the requested trades between 12:01 and 12:02 execute at 12:02. Nobody can see the pending trades until they execute.
The unit of time doesn't have to be a minute-- it could be every second, and it would still defeat some of these things that are happening because people are competing over microseconds. I don't actually know if that works, though, or whether that introduces other problems.
I don't quite agree, but I understand and I stand by my claim that 3D compares well with surround sound. Both can improve the feeling of immersion, but both can also serve as a pointless distraction. Some of it is a matter of taste. However, I don't think it adds anything huge in either case.
People keep comparing 3D to adding sound to silent movies or color to black&white, but that doesn't seem like a fair comparison. When I watch a silent movie, I don't have sound. When I watch a black and white movie, I don't have color. When I watch a 2D movie, I still perceive depth. I don't perceive it was intensely as when watching a 3D movie, but it's there. I can tell what objects in the frame are closer, and which are farther away. The truth is that we use many different cues to determine depth, and stereoscopic vision is just one of them. So a "2D" movie actually contains lots of different visual cues about 3D space, and adding stereoscopic vision only adds one more cue. It's still lacking other cues, such as real parallax.
If I were to compare the new 3D technology to something, it would be the move from stereo sound to surround sound. A decade or two ago, everyone was talking about Dolby surround sound, and you'd hear lots of conversations after a movie where someone would say "Did you notice that part where, in the middle of the gunfight, you could hear a gunshot coming from behind you! That was so awesome."
And sure, most theaters have surround sound now, and some people put a lot of time and money into their home theater surround sound system. And sure, it adds something to the experience of watching the movie. But really, when you get down to it? Meh, no big deal. I bet you could release a big-budget action movie mixed for stereo only, and very few people would know the difference.
Obviously studios like it. It's harder to pirate, pushes audiences to theaters, adds to the ticket price, etc. Also, right when making films is potentially getting easier/cheaper due to advances in technology, you get a whole new super-expensive piece of equipment tying everyone to the big studio system-- i doubt that's a substantial consideration, but I bet it doesn't hurt.
They run that story at 11 because old people won't stay up that late. The news at 7pm explains how young people are stupid, fall for dumb marketing gimmicks, buy stuff they don't need, won't get off my lawn, etc.
I agree. I'm not saying it's not useful at all, but just that in general it probably doesn't turn out to be *that* useful. Like if my mom had an iPhone and said, "I heard about this jailbreak thing. Should I do that?" I'd probably say, "Don't bother."
Yeah, I'm not sure I really trust giving my credit card info to someone who writes apps for jailbroken iPhones, so I guess that may be part of the reason that I didn't see them. I didn't look in the "for pay" section.
I did Google around for "Google Voice iPhone" and "Google Voice Cydia" and mostly found either (a) old news articles about Google Voice or Jailbreaking; or (b) ad sites with no actual information.
I guess this all fits into my earlier assertion that jailbreaking your phone doesn't turn out to be that useful. It's hard to find what you want, even if it's there. I went into Cydia's package manager and searched for "Google" hoping to find a Google Voice app or at least a Google Talk app, and neither showed up. I think instead I found some themes to make your SMS conversations look more like Gmail, or something. I don't really remember, but it all looked pretty useless.
I looked for Google Voice and tethering support, but couldn't find them. (No, I didn't just look at the "latest changes", but probably Cydia's searching sucks, or I had to add some additional repository that wasn't added by default.)
Also, as someone who tried out the jailbreaking procedure, it's not that useful right now. You can get a billion different themes, almost all of them ugly. Or there are some apps which aren't that useful and tend to break. The thing that Apple has disallowed that I'd most like to see (Google Voice support) doesn't seem to exist even if you jailbreak the phone.
It seems like most developers who are developing something worthwhile for the iPhone are willing to jump through the hoops to get it on iTunes.
What about general studies that simply discuss how child behaviour has changed over the years in more general terms instead of splitting it into good vs evil? Did video games cause less reading of books?...
Yeah, from my own experience with video games, I think it's not very likely that they make us more violent or less violent. They might lead to less books and less time watching TV, but I suspect that in all these cases, the most powerful effects are the most subtle. Books, for example, train you to think of reality as something that is encoded in language. TV trained us all to be passive observers in life.
Games train us to look at reality as something which is not immediate. I don't mean temporally immediate, but that the world of games is mediated by the screen and controller. You don't interact with anything directly. Also, they train us to look at the world as something filled with distinct rules and directives. There are cheats and glitches, but there's a definite way that you're supposed to go about things, and there are explicit goals.
I suspect that those kinds of things, along with more and more culture moving online, will have a tremendous effect on how future generations see the world. Will it be good or bad? I don't really know.
The problem here is not lack of journalistic work, it's that the public doesn't care.
Even if you take the position that the media is so awful because the public seeks out sensationalism, that still doesn't excuse the media. It would still mean that, rather than trying to educate and inform the public, they're off seeking ratings.
Honestly I don't see how a normal person could possibly care about Afghanistan given the way it's reported. Even with this WikiLeaks story, the overwhelming focus of most of these stories are about whether WikiLeaks is doing something dangerous. They immediately shift focus away from the content of the leak, and instead talk about the meta-story of "what the leaks mean" and "whether it's responsible to make this information public."
A good reporter would find a story that really matters and then look for a way to tell the story so that people will care. Most reporters, however, just take press releases from the government, report on meta-stories like, "How does the President *feel* about this press release? Will it hurt his chances of reelection?!" and then talk about the cast from "The Jersey Shore" or something equally stupid.
Next up: "Yes, because we all know that JFK could only have died from assassination by someone EEEEVIL. It couldn't be that he died of natural causes due to a problem with the structural integrity of his head."
You realize that almost half of this country pays no income tax whatsoever, right? It seems silly to think that the upper-brackets are getting the sweetheart deal when nearly half of the working population pays nothing.
Yeah, they get to keep all of their $10k/year. I wish I got to take home $10k every year tax free, instead of only getting $7 billion of the $8.5 billion that I made last year.
It feels like the buggy whip manufacturers convinced the government that automobiles shouldn't be allowed on public roads because it would hurt their industry. (woo! Car analogy!)
Or if car manufacturers convinced the government to dismantle public transportation because it was hurting their industry. (woo! Car analogy that actually happened!)
How would you respond if Wikileaks put up your credit card information, bank account numbers, social security number and all your known residences and acquaintances?
Yeah, but that's not what they're doing, is it? Wikileaks isn't actually doing anything that our journalists wouldn't be doing, if they had the integrity to do their damned jobs.
Good point. Unfortunately, I think there's some kind of weird bias that "government spending" = "bad" and "communist", while giving tax breaks and subsidies are supposed to be good because it "harnesses market forces" and is therefore "capitalist".
Aside from not really being a sensible distinction (tax breaks and subsidies are both forms of government spending), there are lots of opportunities for perverse incentives. Plus, as you point out, it tends to give money to people who already have money while neglecting those who don't. You effectively get governmental redistribution of wealth, but it's about taking from the middle class and giving to the rich.
I agree. I'm not anti-iPad, but I don't think the iPad is quite a great e-reader. There's definitely still room for a dedicated e-reader. Make it as simple, light, thin, and cheap as possible.
I hope they don't sacrifice those things in favor of making them into iPad knock-offs. Apple will beat them in that market.
Yeah, Microsoft does some decent research and develops some interesting technologies. It's turning things into products that they seem to have trouble with.
Although technically, the blur in the image itself already recorded the motion, with better precision and without calibration issues.
In order to have any hope of getting that motion information from the blurred image, wouldn't you have to also have the image of what the image is supposed to look like without the blur?
And really, you'll get far better results if you just use an adequately short exposure time and some mechanical stabilization.
Well that's the whole problem, right? Short exposure times mean dark images, long exposure times mean blur. Sure, you can set up a professional camera with a tripod and do it the right way, but what about the rest of us who just want to take the occasional picture on a cheap camera without thinking about it? That's most of us.
Well it's not a problem per se, but every bit of DRM that's built into Android chips away at it's status as the "free" alternative to Apple's iOS. We can argue about whether or not that's fair, but it seems to be why people care about news like this.
A Nascar Driver's pit crew recieve a low 5-figure salary while their bosses - who use the cars to win races - often earn millions.
A) I'm not sure that that's fair.
B) I'm not sure that that's comparable.
Part of the question is, of course, what are the bosses bringing to the table? Expertise? Money? Or just that they're "in charge"?
I definitely don't think we should assume that, because someone can get themselves into the position of making lots of money, that they deserve all that money.
I don't know if you're officially below the poverty line, but you couldn't live comfortably on that. When I moved to NYC (and housing was cheaper) I made around $35k/year. That meant eating lots of pasta and PB&J, never having money to go out. My apartment was decent, but not great (in an outer borough). I had a roommate and barely made it by month to month.
Making ~$60k/year allowed me to finally live on my own in a small (probably ~600 sq feet) apartment, but I was still in a bad neighborhood. I could go out and buy some nice things, or I could save money, not both. $100k let me move into an equally small but nice apartment in a nicer neighborhood (still outer boroughs, not Manhattan), go out sometimes and still save some money. But I still live relatively modestly-- no fancy clothes, not a lot of expensive stuff.
Yeah, but how do we know that? We know that *sometimes* being killed in your dream wakes you up, but sometimes it sends you to limbo. We have a random explanation that's given in the movie, but which doesn't quite make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I think overall they screwed up the launch. They started it as a limited test with a private-invite system-- but as a communication system, it's only useful if it's ubiquitous. They ramped up slowly, introducing more people as they went, while still not opening it completely. Plus, when it started out, it really wasn't ready for prime time.
So then by the time it was open and ready, a whole lot of people had tried it and said, "Meh, it has a bunch of technical problems and nobody uses it. No point trying it again now."
The private-invite system to use a beta worked with Gmail largely because it was using open email protocols, so you could use it to communicate with anyone who had email. When I got Google Wave, I knew 3 other people who had it.
You don't have to make it a random time. My understanding (I'm not a financial genius, but this is according to what I've read) is that some of these high-frequency cheats can be defeated just by setting discrete units of time, so that the issue can't come down to who has the fastest computer and the most direct line. Make it so all trades are executed on the minute mark. So all the trades that you request between 12:00 and 12:01 execute at 12:01, and all the requested trades between 12:01 and 12:02 execute at 12:02. Nobody can see the pending trades until they execute.
The unit of time doesn't have to be a minute-- it could be every second, and it would still defeat some of these things that are happening because people are competing over microseconds. I don't actually know if that works, though, or whether that introduces other problems.
I don't quite agree, but I understand and I stand by my claim that 3D compares well with surround sound. Both can improve the feeling of immersion, but both can also serve as a pointless distraction. Some of it is a matter of taste. However, I don't think it adds anything huge in either case.
People keep comparing 3D to adding sound to silent movies or color to black&white, but that doesn't seem like a fair comparison. When I watch a silent movie, I don't have sound. When I watch a black and white movie, I don't have color. When I watch a 2D movie, I still perceive depth. I don't perceive it was intensely as when watching a 3D movie, but it's there. I can tell what objects in the frame are closer, and which are farther away. The truth is that we use many different cues to determine depth, and stereoscopic vision is just one of them. So a "2D" movie actually contains lots of different visual cues about 3D space, and adding stereoscopic vision only adds one more cue. It's still lacking other cues, such as real parallax.
If I were to compare the new 3D technology to something, it would be the move from stereo sound to surround sound. A decade or two ago, everyone was talking about Dolby surround sound, and you'd hear lots of conversations after a movie where someone would say "Did you notice that part where, in the middle of the gunfight, you could hear a gunshot coming from behind you! That was so awesome."
And sure, most theaters have surround sound now, and some people put a lot of time and money into their home theater surround sound system. And sure, it adds something to the experience of watching the movie. But really, when you get down to it? Meh, no big deal. I bet you could release a big-budget action movie mixed for stereo only, and very few people would know the difference.
Obviously studios like it. It's harder to pirate, pushes audiences to theaters, adds to the ticket price, etc. Also, right when making films is potentially getting easier/cheaper due to advances in technology, you get a whole new super-expensive piece of equipment tying everyone to the big studio system-- i doubt that's a substantial consideration, but I bet it doesn't hurt.
Old people resist change, news at 11.
They run that story at 11 because old people won't stay up that late. The news at 7pm explains how young people are stupid, fall for dumb marketing gimmicks, buy stuff they don't need, won't get off my lawn, etc.
I agree. I'm not saying it's not useful at all, but just that in general it probably doesn't turn out to be *that* useful. Like if my mom had an iPhone and said, "I heard about this jailbreak thing. Should I do that?" I'd probably say, "Don't bother."
But yeah, it'll have its uses for some people.
Yeah, I'm not sure I really trust giving my credit card info to someone who writes apps for jailbroken iPhones, so I guess that may be part of the reason that I didn't see them. I didn't look in the "for pay" section.
I did Google around for "Google Voice iPhone" and "Google Voice Cydia" and mostly found either (a) old news articles about Google Voice or Jailbreaking; or (b) ad sites with no actual information.
I guess this all fits into my earlier assertion that jailbreaking your phone doesn't turn out to be that useful. It's hard to find what you want, even if it's there. I went into Cydia's package manager and searched for "Google" hoping to find a Google Voice app or at least a Google Talk app, and neither showed up. I think instead I found some themes to make your SMS conversations look more like Gmail, or something. I don't really remember, but it all looked pretty useless.
I looked for Google Voice and tethering support, but couldn't find them. (No, I didn't just look at the "latest changes", but probably Cydia's searching sucks, or I had to add some additional repository that wasn't added by default.)
Also, as someone who tried out the jailbreaking procedure, it's not that useful right now. You can get a billion different themes, almost all of them ugly. Or there are some apps which aren't that useful and tend to break. The thing that Apple has disallowed that I'd most like to see (Google Voice support) doesn't seem to exist even if you jailbreak the phone.
It seems like most developers who are developing something worthwhile for the iPhone are willing to jump through the hoops to get it on iTunes.
What about general studies that simply discuss how child behaviour has changed over the years in more general terms instead of splitting it into good vs evil? Did video games cause less reading of books?...
Yeah, from my own experience with video games, I think it's not very likely that they make us more violent or less violent. They might lead to less books and less time watching TV, but I suspect that in all these cases, the most powerful effects are the most subtle. Books, for example, train you to think of reality as something that is encoded in language. TV trained us all to be passive observers in life.
Games train us to look at reality as something which is not immediate. I don't mean temporally immediate, but that the world of games is mediated by the screen and controller. You don't interact with anything directly. Also, they train us to look at the world as something filled with distinct rules and directives. There are cheats and glitches, but there's a definite way that you're supposed to go about things, and there are explicit goals.
I suspect that those kinds of things, along with more and more culture moving online, will have a tremendous effect on how future generations see the world. Will it be good or bad? I don't really know.
The problem here is not lack of journalistic work, it's that the public doesn't care.
Even if you take the position that the media is so awful because the public seeks out sensationalism, that still doesn't excuse the media. It would still mean that, rather than trying to educate and inform the public, they're off seeking ratings.
Honestly I don't see how a normal person could possibly care about Afghanistan given the way it's reported. Even with this WikiLeaks story, the overwhelming focus of most of these stories are about whether WikiLeaks is doing something dangerous. They immediately shift focus away from the content of the leak, and instead talk about the meta-story of "what the leaks mean" and "whether it's responsible to make this information public."
A good reporter would find a story that really matters and then look for a way to tell the story so that people will care. Most reporters, however, just take press releases from the government, report on meta-stories like, "How does the President *feel* about this press release? Will it hurt his chances of reelection?!" and then talk about the cast from "The Jersey Shore" or something equally stupid.
Way to "pwn" historical fact.
Next up: "Yes, because we all know that JFK could only have died from assassination by someone EEEEVIL. It couldn't be that he died of natural causes due to a problem with the structural integrity of his head."
You realize that almost half of this country pays no income tax whatsoever, right? It seems silly to think that the upper-brackets are getting the sweetheart deal when nearly half of the working population pays nothing.
Yeah, they get to keep all of their $10k/year. I wish I got to take home $10k every year tax free, instead of only getting $7 billion of the $8.5 billion that I made last year.
Damned lucky poor people!
It feels like the buggy whip manufacturers convinced the government that automobiles shouldn't be allowed on public roads because it would hurt their industry. (woo! Car analogy!)
Or if car manufacturers convinced the government to dismantle public transportation because it was hurting their industry. (woo! Car analogy that actually happened!)
How would you respond if Wikileaks put up your credit card information, bank account numbers, social security number and all your known residences and acquaintances?
Yeah, but that's not what they're doing, is it? Wikileaks isn't actually doing anything that our journalists wouldn't be doing, if they had the integrity to do their damned jobs.
Tax breaks = subsidies.
Think about it.
Good point. Unfortunately, I think there's some kind of weird bias that "government spending" = "bad" and "communist", while giving tax breaks and subsidies are supposed to be good because it "harnesses market forces" and is therefore "capitalist".
Aside from not really being a sensible distinction (tax breaks and subsidies are both forms of government spending), there are lots of opportunities for perverse incentives. Plus, as you point out, it tends to give money to people who already have money while neglecting those who don't. You effectively get governmental redistribution of wealth, but it's about taking from the middle class and giving to the rich.
I agree. I'm not anti-iPad, but I don't think the iPad is quite a great e-reader. There's definitely still room for a dedicated e-reader. Make it as simple, light, thin, and cheap as possible.
I hope they don't sacrifice those things in favor of making them into iPad knock-offs. Apple will beat them in that market.
Yeah, Microsoft does some decent research and develops some interesting technologies. It's turning things into products that they seem to have trouble with.
Although technically, the blur in the image itself already recorded the motion, with better precision and without calibration issues.
In order to have any hope of getting that motion information from the blurred image, wouldn't you have to also have the image of what the image is supposed to look like without the blur?
And really, you'll get far better results if you just use an adequately short exposure time and some mechanical stabilization.
Well that's the whole problem, right? Short exposure times mean dark images, long exposure times mean blur. Sure, you can set up a professional camera with a tripod and do it the right way, but what about the rest of us who just want to take the occasional picture on a cheap camera without thinking about it? That's most of us.
Well it's not a problem per se, but every bit of DRM that's built into Android chips away at it's status as the "free" alternative to Apple's iOS. We can argue about whether or not that's fair, but it seems to be why people care about news like this.
A Nascar Driver's pit crew recieve a low 5-figure salary while their bosses - who use the cars to win races - often earn millions.
A) I'm not sure that that's fair.
B) I'm not sure that that's comparable.
Part of the question is, of course, what are the bosses bringing to the table? Expertise? Money? Or just that they're "in charge"?
I definitely don't think we should assume that, because someone can get themselves into the position of making lots of money, that they deserve all that money.
I don't know if you're officially below the poverty line, but you couldn't live comfortably on that. When I moved to NYC (and housing was cheaper) I made around $35k/year. That meant eating lots of pasta and PB&J, never having money to go out. My apartment was decent, but not great (in an outer borough). I had a roommate and barely made it by month to month.
Making ~$60k/year allowed me to finally live on my own in a small (probably ~600 sq feet) apartment, but I was still in a bad neighborhood. I could go out and buy some nice things, or I could save money, not both. $100k let me move into an equally small but nice apartment in a nicer neighborhood (still outer boroughs, not Manhattan), go out sometimes and still save some money. But I still live relatively modestly-- no fancy clothes, not a lot of expensive stuff.
NYC ain't cheap.
How do we know that?
That's how people leave the dream world.
Yeah, but how do we know that? We know that *sometimes* being killed in your dream wakes you up, but sometimes it sends you to limbo. We have a random explanation that's given in the movie, but which doesn't quite make sense.