Now I was sure to qualify those things. These things generally do cancel out by the time you get to our level. From the general layman's perspective of quantum physics being a field where "nothing makes sense", another thing that doesn't make sense isn't all that interesting.
I think this is a mistake that science-minded people sometimes make: they throw endless amounts of seemingly nonsensical theories at laymen which the laymen have little hope of really understanding, and try to get us all caught up in the cool-sounding implications. Oh, yes, quantum entanglement can be used for teleportation, but not teleportation of actual stuff and physical objects. It can't be used for faster-than-light transmission of information. But still, I swear! Teleportation!
Oh, and there's "dark matter" and "dark energy", which nobody can actually explain, but there are some equations that say it's there. Oh, and a scientist made a radio wave that travels faster than light, but it's really a composite wave traveling faster than light, which is essentially an illusion. But it's cool! You probably don't even know what the hell we're talking about, but trust us! IT'S AWESOME!
And yeah, after a while, laymen get overloaded and say, meh, whatever.
But sure, hopefully this will lead to something new, and maybe even practical applications.
Thus, young potential scientists with any trace of self-preservation in them might become lower-mid level corporate drones rather than put up with a flat-out meat grinder of a scientific landscape.
Yeah, I don't really disagree with that. I'd like to think I would have had the aptitude to go into a math/science career, and I would have been interested if it had seemed like there were decent opportunities.
Still, I guess my larger point was that some of the smartest 20-somethings that I know have jobs like "math teacher" or "dance instructor" or "social worker". The sensibility seems to be, "I'd love to learn, but school sucks. I'd love to be doing more and making more money, but there aren't a lot of great opportunities. I've I'm going to be working my ass off for no pay, I may as well be doing something that means something to me." That seems like an appropriate reaction.
I even know a very smart 23 year old coffee shop barista who explained, "Sitting in a coffee shop, serving coffee, and talking to people is more pleasant than going into an office, sitting in a cubicle, and getting yelled at by some PHB. Either way, I can barely live off the income, but the coffee shop is nicer."
Now I'm not saying these careers are bad or aren't valuable. The world needs math teachers and dance instructors and social workers. The world even needs coffee shop baristas. However, if you want to argue that you'd like some of these people to work their asses off to become scientists, you'll have to make that career path more appealing. I'm an IT guy who makes pretty decent money, and these days I'm tempted to quit and work at a coffee shop.
Yeah, in abstract, I think of the quantum world as one where anything can happen and nothing makes sense. From that perspective, on a layman's level, this doesn't seem particularly interesting. Those weird quantum things cancel out by the time you get to our level.
However, I don't know if this has some kind of crazy/awesome implications.
I'm not sure it's "the youngest and brightest". I'd be far more likely to agree that it's "the most ambitious and driven and money-hungry".
I think part of the problem with the financial meltdown is that massive amounts of money often doesn't attract the brightest candidates. It can attract a bunch of moronic frat-boy back-patting sociopaths who don't know what they're doing but are looking for get-rich-quick schemes.
What I see with some of the best-and-brightest young 20-somethings (of which I am not one) is that they're horribly confused. They're trying to remain optimistic while discovering that their current career choices are not very good. They're discovering the emptiness of the promise, "do what you're told and go to college and you'll have a comfortable life with plenty of money."
Some of them are interested in math and science, but they're not aware of any careers in those fields that actually seem interesting and rewarding. Most of them imagine careers in math and science as being the sort of thing that only an autistic could love: sitting alone in a sterile room for 12 hours a day pouring over numbers and figures, working for a small paycheck. I'm not sure how far off they are.
So it seems to me like a lot of young people are aiming for jobs that they see as "rewarding" in a non-financial sense. They want to be musicians and artists, or they want to work with people or teach children or save the world. There's some aspect of this that's educational; parents and teachers have told them that they should follow their dreams and that they could do whatever they wanted. Parents and teachers have also taught them that math and science are boring subjects with limited practical application (I know, it's strange). However, I get the sense that some of it is also born in a sort of hopelessness; it's like, "Well the world is falling apart in front of me and I can't build a lifelong career, so I may as well do something easy and/or pleasant."
It's a pretty whacky generation, but I can't say that I blame them for their neuroses. We did this to them.
If people aren't interested in your product they are never going to buy it. On the other hand if people are interested in your product but don't know about it, they would buy it as soon as they found out about it.
Yeah, but advertisers aren't very interested in either of these two groups. Sometimes they will target people who are never going to buy the product because that's what the client wants, but generally not. Sometimes they're simply trying to inform people about it, but that's not very interesting or difficult.
Most often, they're trying to find and influenced the people who can be talked into buying the product. They're trying to get to people who can be seduced, pushed, bullied, scared, or otherwise influenced into buying the product, even though they otherwise wouldn't have bought the product. It's pretty hard to be selective about that, though, so they try to force everyone to watch the ad and hope that some percentage of people respond favorably. They know they're going to piss off a decent percentage of people with no positive effect, but they hope those people weren't in their target audience anyway.
Anyway, advertisers aren't always providing their clients with the best services. Remember, advertisers are using the same methods to sell their clients on their own services. They're sometimes selling their crap services to people who don't need them.
Equally, the user has the right to work around that if (s)he is sufficiently motivated to. Advertisers seem to want to motivate users to do that, these days, is all I'm saying.
I think this is a big tension that we (as a culture) are trying to work out right now. Advertising does serve a valid purpose in our society. Besides being a strange form of "public funding" for some services, it also informs us of products and services that we might be interested in.
On the other hand, a lot of the advertisement we encounter is amounts to some creep harassing us to buy crap we don't need and don't want. There are various attempts to manipulate us psychologically and force us to act in counterproductive and unhealthy ways. We know this, and so we're developing ways of avoiding all advertising in order to avoid this harassment.
I feel like we need some kind of feedback system. No, I don't mean simply an email address where you can "send feedback". I mean there needs to be a way in which advertisers who abuse our good will are basically punished for it, while advertisers who do a good job of informing us and entertaining us are rewarded.
Well, there are ultimately two different issues going on here. The first is that there is a sort of "arms race" right now between advertisers and people who don't want to see the ads (or people who are providing help to those who don't want to see the ads). We have AdBlock and Safari Reader, and they're trying to come up with ways to make those technologies unhelpful. But it's not about Safari per se, and it's not about Safari "forcing" the web to be an e-reader. It's just an issue of ad-blocking
But there's a second issue that's a little less obvious, which is the idea of reformatting web pages to display in a way other than what the designer intended. This is an issue came up a while ago with GreaseMonkey scripts, but it never became a big deal because so few people use GreaseMonkey. But basically, HTML is a semantic markup language that potentially allows you to parse the information and display it how you want or use it in unanticipated ways. Some publishers and designers don't like that, which is why they get excited about the possibility of passing image files to e-readers (e.g. Wired's iPad app).
I would actually prefer the second option since I think this was a rather unethical thing to do from Apples part.
Unethical?
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I think that idea needs to be fleshed out a bit more. Is it because you think ad-blockers are unethical? Or do you think it's generally unethical to reformat someone else's page? Or are you among those who suppose that this is part of a grand scheme to herd companies toward using iAds?
Yeah, I think this is very important. I worked in advertising briefly, and it creeped me out. The way advertisers see their jobs is not how most people understand advertisers' jobs.
So here's a funny thing that many of you don't realize: you probably want to see some ads. I only really realized this until I cancelled my cable (Netflix only) and had been using Adblock for months. I realized that I had no idea what was going on. New products were being released, new movies were in theaters, and I didn't know these things existed. I wanted to know that they existed. I wanted to buy some of those products and see some of those movies.
So I really started thinking about advertising, and specifically targeted advertising. I thought about how I kind of wish there was a site that I could go to what would tell me about all the things that I was missing by not seeing ads.
So I wanted to learn about all of these things, but I wanted to learn about these things on my own terms, I wanted to look at the ads that I wanted to see, and not other ads. I wanted to look at them on my own schedule. I wanted to skip any ad that I didn't like. And that seemed totally reasonable to me, because in my mind an advertiser should be looking to connect me with information about products that I might want to buy.
And then I remembered: That's not how advertisers see their jobs. Advertisers specifically do not want you to learn about anything on your own terms. They want to control the whole setup so that they can push you into buying products that you don't really want. Advertisers are not happy allowing you to watch the ads you want to watch, they are only happy when they force you to watch an ad that you don't want to watch.
And what really drove this home for me was trying to watch movie trailers on YouTube, and YouTube was making me watch an ad before each movie trailer. It took me a second to remember that movie trailers are themselves advertisements. YouTube was forcing me to watch and ad that I didn't want before they'd let me watch the ad I wanted to watch.
What it comes down to is this: It'd be great if we could match entertaining and informative advertisements up with people who would like to see those ads. There are advertisers who will try to do this. However, advertisers are generally employed by people who want to sell crap to people who don't really want that crap. As long as that's the case, advertisers will try to push you ads that you don't want to see.
I'm also just more generally unconvinced. Wii has been a stunning success, but in some ways the control is kind of gimmicky. This control scheme is even more gimmicky. Gimmicks only work so well.
And I haven't seen anything recent, but the examples they showed a while back were underwhelming. Oh, you can talk to some creepy computerized AI kid? Great. No way I want to spend my time doing that.
In general, my impression of Microsoft is that they're not terribly good at innovating. They don't understand where things are going, and they don't know how to make their gimmicks practical. Maybe this will be an exception, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not sure our brains are built for complex grammar. It's definitely built for interpreting body language and tone, but I suspect complex language is a clever hack.
Have we fully come to terms with the devastating effect that the written word has had on our minds?
Probably not. Our brains weren't exactly built for reading. They weren't built for science, contemplation, or abstract thought for that matter. Our brains were build for hunting/gathering and social interaction. The amazing thing is that we've been able to use social/hunting/gathering/survival brain functions for all of these other purposes.
Ultimately, the terms of your employment were negotiated when you were hired. You agreed to do X and they agreed to pay you $Y (and give Z benefits). That's the deal. You didn't just agree to do "whatever your boss tells you". When they ask you to do something outside of X, they're renegotiating. It's always a negotiation, so if you aren't satisfied with the situation, then negotiate for something better.
Now there are lots of ways that they can sweeten the deal, and pay is just one. There's the possibility of better perks, better working conditions, more time off, more flexible working hours, more strict working hours (i.e. you work your hours and then leave; no ifs, ands, or buts), or a better title. It's funny, but sometimes even relatively small changes can make you happier about your work life, and if you're valuable to your company, they should be willing to work on it with you.
However, if you're going to renegotiate, you have to have leverage. That means that, when they ask you to do something outside of your job description, you have to be willing to say "no, not unless...". If you want real leverage, you'll have to be willing to quit if it comes to that. If you're desperate to keep your job and you'd be willing to do whatever your boss asks you to do, then you have no leverage to negotiate.
No, I think what he's saying is that the strategy reeks of extortion. If I were managing someone and I gave them more responsibilities and they said, "That's not part of my job. If you want to make it part of my job, then I want [some kind of additional compensation]." then I'd respect that. It's a negotiation.
However, if I had the sense that the employee specifically waited until 1 month before launch and said, "More money or I quit and leave you high and dry." then I might very well fire him on the spot (unless I really couldn't, in which case I'd wait).
I wouldn't use the term "team player", but the point is you can't trust people who try to extort money out of you, and I don't want employees that I can't trust.
I have my doubts that video chat will actually catch on, but...
I think it's worth pointing out that Apple has a knack for making things usable and practical in a way that makes old ho-hum technologies catch on. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but it was the one that made MP3 players popular. Smart phones had been around for years, as had touch screens, but the iPhone made them common in a way that nothing else had before. Tablets had existed for years, but I don't think any of them have been as popular as the iPad.
Apple's strong suit is not necessarily in inventing totally new technologies, but in refining them to the point where "normal people" will use it. Some of the reasons video chat hasn't caught on are social/psychological (e.g. we don't actually want people to see us), but some of the reasons are very practical (e.g. relatively few people are set up for video chat, so there's no one to talk to). If Apple puts this in the hands of a lot of people and makes it dead-simple to use, you might just see it getting used.
Now that has been replaced by an even MORE in-personal way of communicating
You mean "impersonal"?
Maybe this whole thing is indicitive of something else, but I think it caters too much to the "me" generation... What are we calling them? Gen Z? I'll tell you right now, Gen Z doesn't want to look at people when they are talking to them, so good luck there apple - I think you just wasted money.
I'm not going to argue with your anti-Facebook stuff, but here's the thing: it's probably not too much of a waste for Apple even if it's not heavily used. The front-facing camera isn't too expensive, and it allows for other possibilities beyond video chat. For example, it would make it easier to take a picture of yourself and post it on Facebook. (perfect for the "me" generation!)
Down the road, it could lead to even more interesting stuff. Like, I don't know... eye tracking. I suspect eye tracking will eventually become a common part of UI, where the computer will know what you're looking at and therefore be better able to read your intention. Nothing like that will exist in this iPhone, but these things happen in increments. Pretty much all of Apple's stuff already has a camera pointed at the user, so it's not unreasonable to think that Apple might be experimenting with these sorts of things.
Apparently not. According to Apple's statistics, Flash is the crashiest thing going on OSX. IIRC, that was one of Job's points, that overwhelmingly Flash generates more crash reports than any other program.
I use Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and I don't experience the problems that you are experiencing with flash.
Then either you're not paying attention or you have magical computers. I can mostly speak towards OSX since that's what I use for my main desktop computer, but Flash crashes constantly there. Now, it's not blindingly obvious that it's Flash crashing if you're not paying attention, so let me ask you this: Does your browser crash or freeze up on OSX? If Safari or Chrome freeze on OSX, it's most likely because Flash crashed. I thought Safari was super-buggy for years until I realized that it was Flash that was crashing, and taking Safari with it. The reason it's not such a big problem anymore is because Apple set Flash to run in some kind of sandbox.
I'll give you that the Windows version is relatively stable, but I'm surprised you haven't had trouble with Linux. My experience with Flash on Linux is that it doesn't crash as much as OSX, but it doesn't run well either. I've seen it on various Linux systems, so I can't say whether it was an up-to-date version or maybe Gnash in some instances, but I've seen it fail to run, render things improperly, or just run very slow.
Your linux distribution not coming with Flash isn't Flash's fault
Well it's arguably Adobe's fault for not providing a good player and/or not providing an open source player. It's not really the "fault" of the Linux distro if they aren't including buggy closed-source software with licensing issues. Also, to my knowledge they have no 64-bit version on Linux, which certainly isn't my distro's fault.
But regardless of who's "fault" it is, the fact remains: Flash is not supported everywhere. It is not "write once, play anywhere". It's "write once, play on Windows, sort of play on Mac but crash constantly, and maybe play on Linux if you're lucky". Let's at least be honest about that.
I agree. I still can't get used to the word "blog" and get a bit annoyed at "infographic". I would say that i generally don't like neologisms, but I'm not sure I like the word "neologism".
More generally, I'd like to see an attempt to categorize and name these new forms of communication and turn them into open standards. To me, a "tweet" isn't meaningfully different from a Google "buzz" or a Facebook status update. Let's settle on a name, devise standard protocols, and quit tying ourselves to particular providers.
To my mind, there are 3 different issues related to "computers in the classroom":
Teaching kids about computers: This is valid. The ability to use computers and a basic understanding of how computers work are very important work skills, and it's becoming increasingly important for basic citizenship. I think that by the time a student graduates high school, they should know how to operate a computer, use a word processor, etc. Also, there should be basic programming classes, though perhaps they should be electives.
Making use of computers in limited ways: Valid. As we all know, computers are useful for writing papers, doing research, taking notes, etc. I expect that, at some point, it will be cheaper and more convenient to provide every student with an e-reader than with physical text books. We might not be there yet, but it will definitely happen if we start using open source textbooks. I could see there being a completely open-source/public-domain curriculum.
Expectations that computers will magically improve education: Doesn't work out. In the '80s, we thought computers were magical. We apparently found it believable that a computer could use a laser to download a human into a virtual world, where that man could play video games against random computer programs. In the '90s, we pushed for "a computer in every classroom", and you had a computer sitting in every classroom doing nothing. Computers aren't magical; sticking your child in front of a computer is not a replacement for a good teacher.
We can reevaluate when we have developed real AI, but until then, there is no replacement for a good teacher.
It matters because we don't live in the capitalist utopia that you wish we did. People do not make "rational" purchasing decisions based on cost/benefit alone. Purchases have an emotional element, and part of the issue is whether their customers *feel* like they're being treated fairly. Then these numbers will also go into governmental discussions regarding regulation and whatnot.
If these numbers didn't matter, the carrier wouldn't bother releasing them.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I was sure to qualify those things. These things generally do cancel out by the time you get to our level. From the general layman's perspective of quantum physics being a field where "nothing makes sense", another thing that doesn't make sense isn't all that interesting.
I think this is a mistake that science-minded people sometimes make: they throw endless amounts of seemingly nonsensical theories at laymen which the laymen have little hope of really understanding, and try to get us all caught up in the cool-sounding implications. Oh, yes, quantum entanglement can be used for teleportation, but not teleportation of actual stuff and physical objects. It can't be used for faster-than-light transmission of information. But still, I swear! Teleportation!
Oh, and there's "dark matter" and "dark energy", which nobody can actually explain, but there are some equations that say it's there. Oh, and a scientist made a radio wave that travels faster than light, but it's really a composite wave traveling faster than light, which is essentially an illusion. But it's cool! You probably don't even know what the hell we're talking about, but trust us! IT'S AWESOME!
And yeah, after a while, laymen get overloaded and say, meh, whatever.
But sure, hopefully this will lead to something new, and maybe even practical applications.
Funny, but even if I were into pirating (which I'm not) I'd want to see the trailer so I could decide what to pirate.
I wasn't saying it was unethical. I was asking thePig why he thought it was unethical.
Thus, young potential scientists with any trace of self-preservation in them might become lower-mid level corporate drones rather than put up with a flat-out meat grinder of a scientific landscape.
Yeah, I don't really disagree with that. I'd like to think I would have had the aptitude to go into a math/science career, and I would have been interested if it had seemed like there were decent opportunities.
Still, I guess my larger point was that some of the smartest 20-somethings that I know have jobs like "math teacher" or "dance instructor" or "social worker". The sensibility seems to be, "I'd love to learn, but school sucks. I'd love to be doing more and making more money, but there aren't a lot of great opportunities. I've I'm going to be working my ass off for no pay, I may as well be doing something that means something to me." That seems like an appropriate reaction.
I even know a very smart 23 year old coffee shop barista who explained, "Sitting in a coffee shop, serving coffee, and talking to people is more pleasant than going into an office, sitting in a cubicle, and getting yelled at by some PHB. Either way, I can barely live off the income, but the coffee shop is nicer."
Now I'm not saying these careers are bad or aren't valuable. The world needs math teachers and dance instructors and social workers. The world even needs coffee shop baristas. However, if you want to argue that you'd like some of these people to work their asses off to become scientists, you'll have to make that career path more appealing. I'm an IT guy who makes pretty decent money, and these days I'm tempted to quit and work at a coffee shop.
Yeah, in abstract, I think of the quantum world as one where anything can happen and nothing makes sense. From that perspective, on a layman's level, this doesn't seem particularly interesting. Those weird quantum things cancel out by the time you get to our level.
However, I don't know if this has some kind of crazy/awesome implications.
The internet can have privacy. Open web pages can't really have privacy, but encrypted emails, for example, are pretty private.
I'm not sure it's "the youngest and brightest". I'd be far more likely to agree that it's "the most ambitious and driven and money-hungry".
I think part of the problem with the financial meltdown is that massive amounts of money often doesn't attract the brightest candidates. It can attract a bunch of moronic frat-boy back-patting sociopaths who don't know what they're doing but are looking for get-rich-quick schemes.
What I see with some of the best-and-brightest young 20-somethings (of which I am not one) is that they're horribly confused. They're trying to remain optimistic while discovering that their current career choices are not very good. They're discovering the emptiness of the promise, "do what you're told and go to college and you'll have a comfortable life with plenty of money."
Some of them are interested in math and science, but they're not aware of any careers in those fields that actually seem interesting and rewarding. Most of them imagine careers in math and science as being the sort of thing that only an autistic could love: sitting alone in a sterile room for 12 hours a day pouring over numbers and figures, working for a small paycheck. I'm not sure how far off they are.
So it seems to me like a lot of young people are aiming for jobs that they see as "rewarding" in a non-financial sense. They want to be musicians and artists, or they want to work with people or teach children or save the world. There's some aspect of this that's educational; parents and teachers have told them that they should follow their dreams and that they could do whatever they wanted. Parents and teachers have also taught them that math and science are boring subjects with limited practical application (I know, it's strange). However, I get the sense that some of it is also born in a sort of hopelessness; it's like, "Well the world is falling apart in front of me and I can't build a lifelong career, so I may as well do something easy and/or pleasant."
It's a pretty whacky generation, but I can't say that I blame them for their neuroses. We did this to them.
If people aren't interested in your product they are never going to buy it. On the other hand if people are interested in your product but don't know about it, they would buy it as soon as they found out about it.
Yeah, but advertisers aren't very interested in either of these two groups. Sometimes they will target people who are never going to buy the product because that's what the client wants, but generally not. Sometimes they're simply trying to inform people about it, but that's not very interesting or difficult.
Most often, they're trying to find and influenced the people who can be talked into buying the product. They're trying to get to people who can be seduced, pushed, bullied, scared, or otherwise influenced into buying the product, even though they otherwise wouldn't have bought the product. It's pretty hard to be selective about that, though, so they try to force everyone to watch the ad and hope that some percentage of people respond favorably. They know they're going to piss off a decent percentage of people with no positive effect, but they hope those people weren't in their target audience anyway.
Anyway, advertisers aren't always providing their clients with the best services. Remember, advertisers are using the same methods to sell their clients on their own services. They're sometimes selling their crap services to people who don't need them.
Equally, the user has the right to work around that if (s)he is sufficiently motivated to. Advertisers seem to want to motivate users to do that, these days, is all I'm saying.
I think this is a big tension that we (as a culture) are trying to work out right now. Advertising does serve a valid purpose in our society. Besides being a strange form of "public funding" for some services, it also informs us of products and services that we might be interested in.
On the other hand, a lot of the advertisement we encounter is amounts to some creep harassing us to buy crap we don't need and don't want. There are various attempts to manipulate us psychologically and force us to act in counterproductive and unhealthy ways. We know this, and so we're developing ways of avoiding all advertising in order to avoid this harassment.
I feel like we need some kind of feedback system. No, I don't mean simply an email address where you can "send feedback". I mean there needs to be a way in which advertisers who abuse our good will are basically punished for it, while advertisers who do a good job of informing us and entertaining us are rewarded.
Well, there are ultimately two different issues going on here. The first is that there is a sort of "arms race" right now between advertisers and people who don't want to see the ads (or people who are providing help to those who don't want to see the ads). We have AdBlock and Safari Reader, and they're trying to come up with ways to make those technologies unhelpful. But it's not about Safari per se, and it's not about Safari "forcing" the web to be an e-reader. It's just an issue of ad-blocking
But there's a second issue that's a little less obvious, which is the idea of reformatting web pages to display in a way other than what the designer intended. This is an issue came up a while ago with GreaseMonkey scripts, but it never became a big deal because so few people use GreaseMonkey. But basically, HTML is a semantic markup language that potentially allows you to parse the information and display it how you want or use it in unanticipated ways. Some publishers and designers don't like that, which is why they get excited about the possibility of passing image files to e-readers (e.g. Wired's iPad app).
I would actually prefer the second option since I think this was a rather unethical thing to do from Apples part.
Unethical?
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I think that idea needs to be fleshed out a bit more. Is it because you think ad-blockers are unethical? Or do you think it's generally unethical to reformat someone else's page? Or are you among those who suppose that this is part of a grand scheme to herd companies toward using iAds?
This is relevant.
Yeah, I think this is very important. I worked in advertising briefly, and it creeped me out. The way advertisers see their jobs is not how most people understand advertisers' jobs.
So here's a funny thing that many of you don't realize: you probably want to see some ads. I only really realized this until I cancelled my cable (Netflix only) and had been using Adblock for months. I realized that I had no idea what was going on. New products were being released, new movies were in theaters, and I didn't know these things existed. I wanted to know that they existed. I wanted to buy some of those products and see some of those movies.
So I really started thinking about advertising, and specifically targeted advertising. I thought about how I kind of wish there was a site that I could go to what would tell me about all the things that I was missing by not seeing ads.
So I wanted to learn about all of these things, but I wanted to learn about these things on my own terms, I wanted to look at the ads that I wanted to see, and not other ads. I wanted to look at them on my own schedule. I wanted to skip any ad that I didn't like. And that seemed totally reasonable to me, because in my mind an advertiser should be looking to connect me with information about products that I might want to buy.
And then I remembered: That's not how advertisers see their jobs. Advertisers specifically do not want you to learn about anything on your own terms. They want to control the whole setup so that they can push you into buying products that you don't really want. Advertisers are not happy allowing you to watch the ads you want to watch, they are only happy when they force you to watch an ad that you don't want to watch.
And what really drove this home for me was trying to watch movie trailers on YouTube, and YouTube was making me watch an ad before each movie trailer. It took me a second to remember that movie trailers are themselves advertisements. YouTube was forcing me to watch and ad that I didn't want before they'd let me watch the ad I wanted to watch.
What it comes down to is this: It'd be great if we could match entertaining and informative advertisements up with people who would like to see those ads. There are advertisers who will try to do this. However, advertisers are generally employed by people who want to sell crap to people who don't really want that crap. As long as that's the case, advertisers will try to push you ads that you don't want to see.
I'm also just more generally unconvinced. Wii has been a stunning success, but in some ways the control is kind of gimmicky. This control scheme is even more gimmicky. Gimmicks only work so well.
And I haven't seen anything recent, but the examples they showed a while back were underwhelming. Oh, you can talk to some creepy computerized AI kid? Great. No way I want to spend my time doing that.
In general, my impression of Microsoft is that they're not terribly good at innovating. They don't understand where things are going, and they don't know how to make their gimmicks practical. Maybe this will be an exception, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not sure our brains are built for complex grammar. It's definitely built for interpreting body language and tone, but I suspect complex language is a clever hack.
Have we fully come to terms with the devastating effect that the written word has had on our minds?
Probably not. Our brains weren't exactly built for reading. They weren't built for science, contemplation, or abstract thought for that matter. Our brains were build for hunting/gathering and social interaction. The amazing thing is that we've been able to use social/hunting/gathering/survival brain functions for all of these other purposes.
I think this is the best advice here.
Ultimately, the terms of your employment were negotiated when you were hired. You agreed to do X and they agreed to pay you $Y (and give Z benefits). That's the deal. You didn't just agree to do "whatever your boss tells you". When they ask you to do something outside of X, they're renegotiating. It's always a negotiation, so if you aren't satisfied with the situation, then negotiate for something better.
Now there are lots of ways that they can sweeten the deal, and pay is just one. There's the possibility of better perks, better working conditions, more time off, more flexible working hours, more strict working hours (i.e. you work your hours and then leave; no ifs, ands, or buts), or a better title. It's funny, but sometimes even relatively small changes can make you happier about your work life, and if you're valuable to your company, they should be willing to work on it with you.
However, if you're going to renegotiate, you have to have leverage. That means that, when they ask you to do something outside of your job description, you have to be willing to say "no, not unless...". If you want real leverage, you'll have to be willing to quit if it comes to that. If you're desperate to keep your job and you'd be willing to do whatever your boss asks you to do, then you have no leverage to negotiate.
And as a consultant...
I'm sorry, but this is not the way to start a post. No one with any sense will listen to you after that.
No, I think what he's saying is that the strategy reeks of extortion. If I were managing someone and I gave them more responsibilities and they said, "That's not part of my job. If you want to make it part of my job, then I want [some kind of additional compensation]." then I'd respect that. It's a negotiation.
However, if I had the sense that the employee specifically waited until 1 month before launch and said, "More money or I quit and leave you high and dry." then I might very well fire him on the spot (unless I really couldn't, in which case I'd wait).
I wouldn't use the term "team player", but the point is you can't trust people who try to extort money out of you, and I don't want employees that I can't trust.
I have my doubts that video chat will actually catch on, but...
I think it's worth pointing out that Apple has a knack for making things usable and practical in a way that makes old ho-hum technologies catch on. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but it was the one that made MP3 players popular. Smart phones had been around for years, as had touch screens, but the iPhone made them common in a way that nothing else had before. Tablets had existed for years, but I don't think any of them have been as popular as the iPad.
Apple's strong suit is not necessarily in inventing totally new technologies, but in refining them to the point where "normal people" will use it. Some of the reasons video chat hasn't caught on are social/psychological (e.g. we don't actually want people to see us), but some of the reasons are very practical (e.g. relatively few people are set up for video chat, so there's no one to talk to). If Apple puts this in the hands of a lot of people and makes it dead-simple to use, you might just see it getting used.
Now that has been replaced by an even MORE in-personal way of communicating
You mean "impersonal"?
Maybe this whole thing is indicitive of something else, but I think it caters too much to the "me" generation... What are we calling them? Gen Z? I'll tell you right now, Gen Z doesn't want to look at people when they are talking to them, so good luck there apple - I think you just wasted money.
I'm not going to argue with your anti-Facebook stuff, but here's the thing: it's probably not too much of a waste for Apple even if it's not heavily used. The front-facing camera isn't too expensive, and it allows for other possibilities beyond video chat. For example, it would make it easier to take a picture of yourself and post it on Facebook. (perfect for the "me" generation!)
Down the road, it could lead to even more interesting stuff. Like, I don't know... eye tracking. I suspect eye tracking will eventually become a common part of UI, where the computer will know what you're looking at and therefore be better able to read your intention. Nothing like that will exist in this iPhone, but these things happen in increments. Pretty much all of Apple's stuff already has a camera pointed at the user, so it's not unreasonable to think that Apple might be experimenting with these sorts of things.
Your view is subjective.
Apparently not. According to Apple's statistics, Flash is the crashiest thing going on OSX. IIRC, that was one of Job's points, that overwhelmingly Flash generates more crash reports than any other program.
I use Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and I don't experience the problems that you are experiencing with flash.
Then either you're not paying attention or you have magical computers. I can mostly speak towards OSX since that's what I use for my main desktop computer, but Flash crashes constantly there. Now, it's not blindingly obvious that it's Flash crashing if you're not paying attention, so let me ask you this: Does your browser crash or freeze up on OSX? If Safari or Chrome freeze on OSX, it's most likely because Flash crashed. I thought Safari was super-buggy for years until I realized that it was Flash that was crashing, and taking Safari with it. The reason it's not such a big problem anymore is because Apple set Flash to run in some kind of sandbox.
I'll give you that the Windows version is relatively stable, but I'm surprised you haven't had trouble with Linux. My experience with Flash on Linux is that it doesn't crash as much as OSX, but it doesn't run well either. I've seen it on various Linux systems, so I can't say whether it was an up-to-date version or maybe Gnash in some instances, but I've seen it fail to run, render things improperly, or just run very slow.
Your linux distribution not coming with Flash isn't Flash's fault
Well it's arguably Adobe's fault for not providing a good player and/or not providing an open source player. It's not really the "fault" of the Linux distro if they aren't including buggy closed-source software with licensing issues. Also, to my knowledge they have no 64-bit version on Linux, which certainly isn't my distro's fault.
But regardless of who's "fault" it is, the fact remains: Flash is not supported everywhere. It is not "write once, play anywhere". It's "write once, play on Windows, sort of play on Mac but crash constantly, and maybe play on Linux if you're lucky". Let's at least be honest about that.
I agree. I still can't get used to the word "blog" and get a bit annoyed at "infographic". I would say that i generally don't like neologisms, but I'm not sure I like the word "neologism".
More generally, I'd like to see an attempt to categorize and name these new forms of communication and turn them into open standards. To me, a "tweet" isn't meaningfully different from a Google "buzz" or a Facebook status update. Let's settle on a name, devise standard protocols, and quit tying ourselves to particular providers.
To my mind, there are 3 different issues related to "computers in the classroom":
We can reevaluate when we have developed real AI, but until then, there is no replacement for a good teacher.
It matters because we don't live in the capitalist utopia that you wish we did. People do not make "rational" purchasing decisions based on cost/benefit alone. Purchases have an emotional element, and part of the issue is whether their customers *feel* like they're being treated fairly. Then these numbers will also go into governmental discussions regarding regulation and whatnot.
If these numbers didn't matter, the carrier wouldn't bother releasing them.