I've been using a lousy phillips 'digital' wireless transceiver to beam DivX from my lovely iMac G5 to the lounge for a little over a year and, with my Airport Express showing it age, I would rush to buy an Airport replacement that can forward DivX and H.264. The trouble is you know that it will be cripple ware:
Content must be held in iTunes, which means that it will take hours to convert all your DivX/pr0n collection encouraging you to buy from iTMS
The software will center around downloading HiDef content which will only be available in the US, even though the BBC would probably bite their arms off to get that sort of publicity
The connectors will be a choice of SVideo or a HD connection, leaving SCART loving Europe with the same terrible picture quality as the USA and Japan
It won't work as a PVR - which would be the real killer app
Front Row 2.0 and the BT remote control will be optional extras
But it will be easier to setup than modding an old XBox which is the next best solution (unless your willing to pay Elagatos extortionate prices).
Why can't I get from WalMart or Amazon a portable, opensource office suite on a USB key?
Sell it for $5 more than the cheapest equivalent capacity stick, or about the same as a branded stick and let the profits go to the developers.
$50 for 512MB portable office is cheap, especially if all a noob has to do to install it is plug it into a USB slot and double click the application. My poorly wired consumer brain is reluctant to shell out for software on a CD, if only becuase they're slow and you know their practically free to make. I'd probably buy an office on a stick because I know if I didn't like the software at least I'd still have something that I still have some use for.
Style: if its prettier than a white box PC, 51% of the worlds population add $100 to its percieved value. If its quieter, people will buy it.
Ease of use: Why should somebody who just wants to edit a few photos and surf the web need to even know that there is a file system? If there is just one application, the web browser, there is less GUI gumpf to confuse noobs. This is unlikely, but if they user is only ever using a handful of applications, why do they need the interface gumf that allows them to multitask? I'm not saying the OS won't need to slice in every now and then to garbage collect, maange IO etc, but I see little reason a device like I'm imagining ever needing more than a single tabbed browser session open.
Bomb proof: Let the the webmin worry about viruses and service upgrades, all you have to do is bring it out of sleep and start browsing. Worst case, you have to switch it off for 20 secs, then in reboots in under a minute and, as your session data is held on the web service you don't loose any work.
TCO: Is the smogasbord free? Even if they are gratis and libre, it still takes time to learn how to find, install and use those applications, not to mention the time and money it costs to fix the damage they cause - malware targets this market too. Unless you place no value on your time, and are educated enough to identify the risks, the TCO of the dedicated system will be lower.
As for 11 year olds in south east asia... the American school year is short because it was designed around an agricultural society, where children were expected to help with the harvest. Europeans grew their industrial economies by using children to complete small and delicate tasks - like fixing cotten weavers whilst they were running. That is our history, and, unless we are prepared to give handouts to developing nations to prevent child labour we should accept that it is an integeral part of progress, however distasteful it may be.
Our nations grew because we could sell products globally for less than they could be made locally. Every invention that we now take for granted, was born of a job that was repetitive, dangerous or expensive in man power. Where there is muck there is money.
We now sell these jobs abroad, and eventually these nations will figure out a way of doing them for less money by inventing a tool to do it for them and if they are lucky that invention will be as revolutionary as the water mill, jet engine or integrated circuit. It will be interesting to see how quickly the USA doubles back on its patent treaties/laws if it ever finds itself on the wrong end of that stick.
Would people buy a $200 computer that doesn't run Windows, if it carried the Google Brand?
I, personally doubt it.
Would they buy a GoogleBox, that allows them to access their web mail, google office (assuming its not a myth) and various web sites "without a computer", and all they have to do is hook it up to a DSL/Cable line and a power line? I think they would.
My sister is terrified of computers. Her husband finally bought one and within a day they were swamped with the usual microsoft web experience (malware and viruses). All they want their computer for is email, online banking, storing digital photos and getting cheap flights. They don't word process, because neither of them do any work at home (nurse/buyer). Now they have a 64bit Athalon gathering dust in the corner of their office (i didn't recommend it... i know its a waste).
A GoogleBox could really solve their problems, and $200 is a good price point. To really take off it needs to:
Not look like a computer - think Mac Mini (for use with a TV) or tablet
Be nothing else than a reasonable harddisk (for local caching of photos and email) and a fanless processor with 256MB RAM
be built into a 15" touchscreen LCD. If my sister can connect her Nintedo DS to my network using nothing but a touchscreen, we're getting somewhere.
Include solitare or another equally time wasting mini-game
Not use the words: computer, network, PC, homework anywhere near it. Instead say: web point, research, email and internet.
Basically, think PDA but without PIM, and make it abundantly clear that this thing lives on the coffee table/kitchen sideboard, not in the brief case, on the train/plane or in the office so that the dim witts at PC World don't start comparing it PDAs/Laptops. If its going to be compared to anything it should be web service built into some cable set-top boxes and look terrible at NTSC resolutions. There could really be a market.
...want others to buy this. I don't believe for a second that this is actually a useful product, but if a few thousand, more-money-than-sense iPod owners can bring the the price of wearable screens down I'm happy.
I hate sitting at a 20" CRT at work, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of sitting at a 20" LCD at home. I've tried dual and triple heading my system, and to be honest, it still doesn't feel natural. What I need is a wearable, virtual display, that reacts to me tilting my head. If I'm not working on a document, I want to drag it onto my actual desktop by looking down and placing it out of sight. If I'm reading something, whilst I'm working on something else I want to have to turn my head so that I can read it. I don't really care that it only has 800x600 resolution. I'd prefer more, but if I can increase my desktop real estate just by moving my head I'm sure I can wait for the second or third generation device that have a decent resolution and more reasonable price.
If at all possible I'd like it to be transparent and not to be back lit, so that I'm encourage to sit in a room with natural light as opposed to closing the curtains and working at night to avoid glare. LCDs arn't very good at reflecting light, but they really not that bad at transmitting - thats the whole point, so having to lug around a battery to backlight a screen when there is an abundance of natural light seams ridiculous.
$600 is not an unreasonable price for early adopters (I know these sorts of displays have been around for years, but this is the first consumer product I've seen that actually looks viable), and for the neigh sayers that are pointing out that this is more than the actual iPod, well, at current prices - an Apple Cinema display is 3 times the price of mac mini - different people have different needs.
Would I ever wear on in public? Hell no, but then I only wear my bluetooth headset in the car, where it actually serves a purpose. Would I wear one in an office if it genuinely meant that not only would my privacy increase, but so would my desktop space? Hell yes.
Now all I need is a keyboard replacement that fits in my pocket. I'm thinking gloves/rings, which mimic a keyboard, pinch to click/drag. Just a thought.
Imagine where Wozniak would have been if he'd never met Jobs. I imagine that on this website alone there are a handful of geeks with the same, or better, technical competance as Wozniak, but we need a business and aesthetic mind like Jobs in order to be successful.
Left to our own devices geeks would write small, reuseable code that could be piped together and requires you to learn a new syntax for each one: UNIX. Proded by a bridge man who understands markets, design and people although has no skills in any of them and you eventually get OS X.
If Jobs hadn't have found Wozniak, I suspect that he would have found a similarly talented geek to do his work, and thats his talent... talent spotting. So if Steve Jobs turns round to me (yeah right) and says watch this guy, he's going to write the next big thing, or I think this product is going to sell really well I'll listen. If turns round to me and says Obj C is the perfect programing language I'm going to be asking myself:
What is he selling? Who is telling him this?
Obj C is a neat language, but really the only thing that makes it stand out is the frameworks that it's been used to create. Given the kind of resources that Obj C has had thrown at it I suspect even perl could start to look like a enterprise language.
Can't consumers make analogue to digital transfers pretty easily?
Complicated, silicon solutions aside, my father-in-law, who doesn't know how to send email, figured out how to digitize his old 8mm films on his own - point a digicam at the screen.
Last time I checked, I didn't have an organic usb port in the back of my head, so at some point the digital signals have to be converted to light and sound, and neither of them can be DRMd without making the whole system useless, because unless they are going to make home studios and digital cameras illegal they can't stop us from recording it.
When will they learn that DRM is a deterant not a solution? Not least of all, its an incentive to others, who break it 'because they can'.
My point was that even though the XBox is sold as a games machine its really a fully fledged 'real' computer, just like the commodore amiga was in its day, its just crippled.
My second point was that if it wasn't DRM encumbered, and was allowed to run a full OS, its share in the home market would probably make up a significant percentage, just like the commodore amiga did back in the 90s.
My final point, although it was probably the weakest, is that it doesn't matter what you are selling, if its not Intel/Windows its not a 'real' computer in the eyes of the public. It doesn't matter how fast, how well it works, or how much better it is than Wintel, people will always assume its a toy unless it got the wintel seal of approval.
For example devices you can send email from:
mobile phone
Sky/Cable Box
PDA
Mac/Linux
Wintel Box
What do people buy when they want to send email regularly? A wintel box. Why? Because its a real computer, and everything else is just playing at email... at least thats the perception.
Its not really the publics fault. We might be used to the IT horizon changing every couple of months, but other social groups just arn't used the that rapid sense of change. It might be 5 years since you couldn't transfer a Mac floppy/usb stick to a PC, but its only now that this fundamental change is starting to sync with the public psyche.
Linux has gotten an even bigger mountain to climb. It may be getting some free advertising in the national press, but if you ran a vox pop on Linux asking "What do you know about Linux?" I'd bet you get more half truths, fud and outdated misconceptions than in a Microsoft marketing thinktank, and if you can find anyone who's even heard of *BSD out side of the IT industry I'd be very suprised.
As for your point about price tags. I understand that the machines are subsidised, and that they recoupe that cost through development licenses and game sales, I just don't remember asking for it. Nintendo sold their games on cartriges because it made the games load faster. I can respect that, especially as the console before that was a spectrum 48k. I can also see that from a business point fo view it entitled them to charge for game licences and development kits... cartridge fabricators arn't exactly standard on new PCs.
What annoyed the hell out of me was when Sony and Microsoft waded in with commodity hardware and decided to cripple the real functionality and decide that what the community wanted was cheaper, but restricted hardware, and then getting all pissy when people didn't want to play just the offical games. If you stick USB ports, firewire, CD/DVD drives on a box with a general purpose CPU in it, its going to be cracked. Release the development kit, and let nature create the greatest games on the planet.
I don't have a problem with copyright holders coming down hard on piracy rackets who are profiting at the expense of their expertise and genius. I don't have a problem with console builders suing the hell out of software companies that sell games without paying a licence. I do have a problem with publishing houses and hardware vendors who penalise people for wanting to get the most of hardware that they own, using free software. If you buy lost leader ink-jet paper from Costco are you restricted from using it in a printer your bought from Best Buy? Of course not.
I'm sorry I made you feel persecuted, but I think I'm on your side.
My point, as badly worded as it was, was saying that the Amiga WAS a real computer, but that public perception was that it was a toy... and that public perception was wrong.
With the benefit of hindsight, and a wider perception of the IT industry, I can see what a valuable platform the Amiga could have been, had it been widely told what it could do. I helped my father waste £1500 on a Pentium 90, when in reality we would probably have been better served by the significantly cheaper Amiga 500, or gotten a Mac instead. C'est la vie.
Its really interesting reading these articles where they mention Commodore 64s and IBM PC Clones in the same breath. I was 'growing up' during that period and hadn't adopted the shroud of geekdom, but I was still pretty tech savvi. I went through a BBC Micro, Spectrum 48k, and a lot of my friends bought Amiga 500s (luck SOBs) and the school had a few Macs, but when it came to doing work we used IBM clones, because they were 'real' computers.
Even before the world standardized on Microsoft Office, and people were using Word Perfect and Lotus Office, saying that an Amiga 500 was a proper computer was the equivalent of saying that an XBox 360 is a 'real' computer now.
Thats the tragedy of the 90s, these great systems are gone, not because they weren't any good, but because people didn't know how to use them, and nothing has changed now. I shocked a developer that I work with yesterday by saying that you could run a lot of DirectX games on Linux. Everytime I pull my PowerBook out in a meeting with new clients they are shocked that a geek would use a Mac instead of a 'real' computer. But if anything its more ridiculous:
SCSI/Firewire/USB/SATA/PCI/Ethernet/TCP/IP
We have standardized on so much that even our games consoles are almost indistinguisable from an IBM clone, and yet if you walk into an computer shop you have at most two options: PC / Mac, and in a couple of months both of those systems will be identical in all but OS.
So as a world, why are we so obessed with the Wintel platform?
Its can't be performance. Ever since the PIII, the two biggest barriers to real office performance have been RAM and HDD speed, and with 256MB RAM costing £20 and fast enough HDDs for £40 that really isn't a barrier.
It can't be price. Apple, with their extrodinary mark-ups are capable of producing the Mac Mini for £350. Where are the other PPC / ARM / SPARC / POWER contenders?
It can't even be software. Linux, in particular Ubuntu, have matured to such an extent that for 'real' computer task it exceeds Windows in usability and functionality. I could sit my dad in front of Open Office, on an Ubuntu box and he'd be just as functional within hours.
I think its DRM.
The XBox 360 has a 20GB harddrive, 512MB RAM a full networking stack and an API sophisticated enough that it is possible to create applications with graphics comparable to Jurasic Park, in real time. It has the ability to connect to my iPod, my camera, a keyboard and mouse, and it even has an external SATA connection (albeit proprietary) for future expansion of the harddrive. At £270 its a good price, for a system that would be fascinating to play with because of its 6 hardware threads. And yet its competitor is the unreleased PS3, not the mac mini.
Millions of these units will be sold and will achieve a market penetration that Steve Jobs would kill for, many of them to lower income families (who value entertainment and keeping up with the Jones' over education) and yet, because of DRM, the number of children that will do their homework on one, or use it as a 'real' computer will be counted on one hand, and even fewer will ever use it to develop software for the console itself (unlike the Commodore 64).
Beacause of DRM, turning these systems into a home computer isn't as simple as inserting a Live DVD and attaching a £10 keyboard and mouse set. Because of DRM, an exciting and innovative hardware platform will never be anything more than a toy. Because of DRM, in 30 years time, the Ars Technica article won't even mention the PS3 or the XBox when they're talking about the development of the home computer. So much for protecting innovators and artists.
So whats the end game? This isn't going to work, so they'll double their efforts and try something doubly draconian and doubly futile.
A well encrypted ham signal should sound like static, but with it you can co-ordinate attacks just as easily as on the internet. Encrypted letters have been used to wage wars since the greeks. A well designed script can see the transmission of a childs christmas list turned into a plan for a bomb by encoding the white space. There arn't the resources to monitor every human / human interaction and a list of visited websites and voip calls isn't going to stop the next terroist attack.
You want to stop terrorism? Stop spreading the terror. 24 hour news does more for terrorism than the internet ever did. What's more valuble to a company: it's phone line or it's advertising? (Hint: phone lines weren't invented until the 20th century) But I would no more sanction the removal of the press, than I would the logging of the internet.
Every year 40,000 people are killed by traffic accidents in the USA alone. Thats a Madrid bombing every two days, or a London bombing every 5 hours, or a 9/11 every month. Its a tragedy, but your not going to stop it by bombing the hell out of Detroit and monitoring the sale of cars, you'll rust 'radicalise' those that you are trying to protect - isn't that what the right to arms is all about?
So is it the governments business if your planning an attact? Sure it is. But the result of a terrosist attack is never going to be as bad as the sanctions imposed trying to stop it from happening.
It worked then. You would have infringed copyright had iTunes allowed you to share. They allow a work around that is both time consuming and annoying, but not difficult, and you refuse to break copyright. Sounds like pretty succesful system.
When it comes to DRM - don't make it hard, people like a challenge, make it boring.
I was really excited. VHS was a dumb format. Expensive, low quality, quality reduced with time and it needed rewinding. It was so dumb, that people didn't even mind loosing the ability to record TV when they moved over. In addition to that DVDs usually contained more than just the show, they also had extras, another great incentive. What has blu-ray got? Higher resolution... but only when you've bought a new TV.
Now don't get me wrong, I'll buy one... but then I'm finding it increasingly more difficult to listen to compressed AACs and I can't watch DVDs on my iMac because of pixelation (DVD on high res screens look awful) - I'm not your average consumer, however I can see very few reasons for the more sane members of my family and friends to buy one. Even if I buy the box, I'm unlikely to rebuild my DVD collection (like I did with my VHS and tape collections) because I'm finding that I buy DVDs a lot less than I used to. It's too cheap and easy to rent from the likes of Amazon and Netflix, TV-on-demand is looking better with Telewest's Teleport and I'll soon have a 10MB data pipe to get HD films when iTMS finally gets its act together with the studios.
I will be very suprised if Blu-ray does half as well as DVD. People were happy with VHS, in much the same way as they're happy with DivX now, video quality is much less of a concern than the studios would like you to think.
Is that we have to use books at all. I do have a few books, but they go out of date so quickly that I invariably get an electronic version where I can. As geeks we should pioneering the paperless office, but my experiance is we use more than most and I'm as guilty as anyone.
My pattern is that I download the manual/article that I want to read, skim it on the screen, then when I find a section that I want to read/refer to I'll print out a temperary copy. Once I've finished with it I'll throw it away. When I started with Linux / OS X, man -t was my best friend.
There is still no substitute for the paper inteface. I've tried two CRTs on the same system, but found that I just feel closed in. Then I tried a 20" LCD for work with a 12" laptop for reading. Much better, as I could read it in another room/forest but still not as confortable as a few sheets of A4.
Also, I've recently found myself asking this question. Paper, unlike most electricity, is a renewable resource. Am I doing more or less good to the environment by reading it from a power hungry laptop than I am by printing off a copy? The only thing I seem to be saving by not owning physical books is storage space and small percentage of the purchase price.
So the settlement was for 0.6% of his personal worth? Or bearly equivalent to a speeding ticket to a guy on $30,000 and he gets 5 years to pay it and no criminal record?
As a Brit I've definately seen a change in the people around me, but I'd say its got a lot to do with the types of games that people play. Halo 2 and Doom 3 may appeal to the traditional gamer, but its games like Buzz, Trivial Pursuit and Pop Idol that non-gamers are playing.
This year my parents are buying a PS2 as a board game replacement. My sister (who is a complete technophobe) was telling me which games to play,( she was recommening ER) and my other sister was counting down the minutes until Monkey Ball was release for the PS2 (I haven't been that excited about a games release since Starfox).
I've also got a sneaky suspision that my girlfriend is buying me a console for christmas. As grateful as I'll be, I know it's because the last 3 girls night outs that she's been on have all centered around singing games and drink monkey ball - the irony: as soon as I mention that I'd quite like to get a few of guys around for a Halo 2 lan party she laughs her head off and calls us "stupid boys".
In the mean time, my game guru shroud has been perminantly revoked. I don't understand what they see in these short, family fun games any more than they get from running around yet another 3D maze getting my ass kicked by a 13 year virgin. Its a different world out there!
I expect Mac and Linux support are a bit of a way off, but after seeing Jake2, my faith in Java has been renewed... why not create a Java client?
Instant cross-platformy goodness (all be it wrapped in proprietary Sun licence badness)
If they can render Quake 2 at 260 fps then video at 15fps has got to be easy... doesn't it? Just make sure its rendered in jogl and joal rather than evil Swing. The one sticking point I can see is getting the data from the camera in Java... any thoughts?
I guess I should take power into account, $4 a month isn't the real cost (as the environmentalist in me says)...
The biggest factor (next to economics) for why I've not filled the spare room with PCs is noise pollution. PCs sure are fan happy and external HDDs are noisy too. Thank god for cheap CAT5 cable so that I can run my linux boxes in the basement!
I don't think thats the point. Its more that correlation is the science equivalent of vaporware, or "Wake me up when you've got causation".
Reports of a new correlation between events in the popular press just confound the general public who don't understand science, and assume that because a scientist finds this correlation interesting it must be true. This is proved frequently on Slashdot, where otherwise normal geeks, who have an above average understanding of science (that's a scary thought) are thrown into a frenzy of panic when somebody says something like "High concentration of caffiene in the blood is found to reduce attraction to women".
I'm not saying Joe 'Karma' Whore should get +5 Insightful everytime they state the obvious, but it would appear that Correlation != Causation can't be said enough when dealing with the public.
Video games need to get off the Gillette model. If you give away the razor, and sell the blade - people steal the blades. Mach 3 Razors are one of the most shoplifted items in the western world. Of course Gillette don't care, they are buffered from the financial ramifications by the middlemen who have to absorb the loss and in the process they get market penetration.
So what are their options?
Charge less for games. $50 is lot of money - and it takes a really good game to justify that cost. What marketeers fail to realise is that in the old days if you charged too much for a product people didn't buy it, and you simply adjusted your prices accordingly. In the modern software market, if you charge too much people pirate the software. Like it or not, copyright infringement doesn't feel like theft.
Sell hardware, not software - and for a profit. People arn't that stupid, they know that the potential distribution and manufacturing costs of games (once developed) is nothing, but they still think that an FPGA wrapped in plastic takes an act of God to create. Follow the lead of dance mats, donkey konga, light guns and sell them for $50 game included (if you've got to sell something for $50). This doesn't have to be limited 'fun' games either - sell a halo controller, or a lightsaber and even if you demand that it be plugged in, in order for the game to play... its easier than expecting software alone to provide encryption.
Finally take a look at where the real money is at - pro sports.
Gambling
Merchandise
TV Deals
Advertising
Spectators
And they don't charge the players - they pay them if they're good enough.
Now that broadband is getting more and more ubiquitous, how long until you pay to watch a multiplayer deathmatch? There is certainly scope for gambling - as anyone who has played drink project gothem racing will attest.
I've ranted about this before, but why are people so obsessed with email?
No encryption (unless you have a degree in IT), no authentication (because people are tight, and nobody out side of IT knows what PGP is), poor support for attachments (MIME is a hack) and no enforcable equivalent to recorded delivery.
That's before we start to think about the mess that is HTML encoded mails.
I could live without security, but I'm really suprised that corporations can.
We've been using email for over 10 years now, and it hasn't progressed at all and I don't believe for a moment that this is a 'if its not broke...' situation.
If the FOSS community could establish a new email protocol that transparnetly added real support for attachments, security and formatting and it was adopted quickly by Thunderbird, Evolution and Mail.app (I'm a Mac zealot so I want it too) the next version of Exchange would support it too. In the mean time, Redhat, Suse and Ubuntu could be peddling Linux as the next big thing in email - something that might get the attention of CEOs who's only realy contact with a computer is email.
I can only speak for the UK, but its already Java software, but its a web app. Sure you can buy Quicken UK etc, which will talk directly to the government gateway, but you can also just point any browser at government website and you can calculate and file your tax there too.
I used it last year for my income tax and it worked a treat. I kept my accounts on excel, followed the wizard (which took about 3 hours, but you could save halfway through) and it calculated my return instantly.
They also offer company tax and PAYE filling software, which is used far more than they ever expected - the assumption was that people would want to use a 'real' application. It turned out that nobody was tighter than an accountant and when faced with the option of shelling out for tax software or using a free, and very usable (if not quite as powerful) alternative they jumped at the web app.
Slashdot Mirror
But it will be easier to setup than modding an old XBox which is the next best solution (unless your willing to pay Elagatos extortionate prices).
Why can't I get from WalMart or Amazon a portable, opensource office suite on a USB key?
Sell it for $5 more than the cheapest equivalent capacity stick, or about the same as a branded stick and let the profits go to the developers.
$50 for 512MB portable office is cheap, especially if all a noob has to do to install it is plug it into a USB slot and double click the application. My poorly wired consumer brain is reluctant to shell out for software on a CD, if only becuase they're slow and you know their practically free to make. I'd probably buy an office on a stick because I know if I didn't like the software at least I'd still have something that I still have some use for.
Lets see...
Style: if its prettier than a white box PC, 51% of the worlds population add $100 to its percieved value. If its quieter, people will buy it.
Ease of use: Why should somebody who just wants to edit a few photos and surf the web need to even know that there is a file system? If there is just one application, the web browser, there is less GUI gumpf to confuse noobs. This is unlikely, but if they user is only ever using a handful of applications, why do they need the interface gumf that allows them to multitask? I'm not saying the OS won't need to slice in every now and then to garbage collect, maange IO etc, but I see little reason a device like I'm imagining ever needing more than a single tabbed browser session open.
Bomb proof: Let the the webmin worry about viruses and service upgrades, all you have to do is bring it out of sleep and start browsing. Worst case, you have to switch it off for 20 secs, then in reboots in under a minute and, as your session data is held on the web service you don't loose any work.
TCO: Is the smogasbord free? Even if they are gratis and libre, it still takes time to learn how to find, install and use those applications, not to mention the time and money it costs to fix the damage they cause - malware targets this market too. Unless you place no value on your time, and are educated enough to identify the risks, the TCO of the dedicated system will be lower.
As for 11 year olds in south east asia... the American school year is short because it was designed around an agricultural society, where children were expected to help with the harvest. Europeans grew their industrial economies by using children to complete small and delicate tasks - like fixing cotten weavers whilst they were running. That is our history, and, unless we are prepared to give handouts to developing nations to prevent child labour we should accept that it is an integeral part of progress, however distasteful it may be.
Our nations grew because we could sell products globally for less than they could be made locally. Every invention that we now take for granted, was born of a job that was repetitive, dangerous or expensive in man power. Where there is muck there is money.
We now sell these jobs abroad, and eventually these nations will figure out a way of doing them for less money by inventing a tool to do it for them and if they are lucky that invention will be as revolutionary as the water mill, jet engine or integrated circuit. It will be interesting to see how quickly the USA doubles back on its patent treaties/laws if it ever finds itself on the wrong end of that stick.
I, personally doubt it.
Would they buy a GoogleBox, that allows them to access their web mail, google office (assuming its not a myth) and various web sites "without a computer", and all they have to do is hook it up to a DSL/Cable line and a power line? I think they would.
My sister is terrified of computers. Her husband finally bought one and within a day they were swamped with the usual microsoft web experience (malware and viruses). All they want their computer for is email, online banking, storing digital photos and getting cheap flights. They don't word process, because neither of them do any work at home (nurse/buyer). Now they have a 64bit Athalon gathering dust in the corner of their office (i didn't recommend it... i know its a waste).
A GoogleBox could really solve their problems, and $200 is a good price point. To really take off it needs to:
Basically, think PDA but without PIM, and make it abundantly clear that this thing lives on the coffee table/kitchen sideboard, not in the brief case, on the train/plane or in the office so that the dim witts at PC World don't start comparing it PDAs/Laptops. If its going to be compared to anything it should be web service built into some cable set-top boxes and look terrible at NTSC resolutions. There could really be a market.
...want others to buy this. I don't believe for a second that this is actually a useful product, but if a few thousand, more-money-than-sense iPod owners can bring the the price of wearable screens down I'm happy.
I hate sitting at a 20" CRT at work, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of sitting at a 20" LCD at home. I've tried dual and triple heading my system, and to be honest, it still doesn't feel natural. What I need is a wearable, virtual display, that reacts to me tilting my head. If I'm not working on a document, I want to drag it onto my actual desktop by looking down and placing it out of sight. If I'm reading something, whilst I'm working on something else I want to have to turn my head so that I can read it. I don't really care that it only has 800x600 resolution. I'd prefer more, but if I can increase my desktop real estate just by moving my head I'm sure I can wait for the second or third generation device that have a decent resolution and more reasonable price.
If at all possible I'd like it to be transparent and not to be back lit, so that I'm encourage to sit in a room with natural light as opposed to closing the curtains and working at night to avoid glare. LCDs arn't very good at reflecting light, but they really not that bad at transmitting - thats the whole point, so having to lug around a battery to backlight a screen when there is an abundance of natural light seams ridiculous.
$600 is not an unreasonable price for early adopters (I know these sorts of displays have been around for years, but this is the first consumer product I've seen that actually looks viable), and for the neigh sayers that are pointing out that this is more than the actual iPod, well, at current prices - an Apple Cinema display is 3 times the price of mac mini - different people have different needs.
Would I ever wear on in public? Hell no, but then I only wear my bluetooth headset in the car, where it actually serves a purpose.
Would I wear one in an office if it genuinely meant that not only would my privacy increase, but so would my desktop space? Hell yes.
Now all I need is a keyboard replacement that fits in my pocket. I'm thinking gloves/rings, which mimic a keyboard, pinch to click/drag. Just a thought.
Imagine where Wozniak would have been if he'd never met Jobs. I imagine that on this website alone there are a handful of geeks with the same, or better, technical competance as Wozniak, but we need a business and aesthetic mind like Jobs in order to be successful.
Left to our own devices geeks would write small, reuseable code that could be piped together and requires you to learn a new syntax for each one: UNIX. Proded by a bridge man who understands markets, design and people although has no skills in any of them and you eventually get OS X.
If Jobs hadn't have found Wozniak, I suspect that he would have found a similarly talented geek to do his work, and thats his talent... talent spotting. So if Steve Jobs turns round to me (yeah right) and says watch this guy, he's going to write the next big thing, or I think this product is going to sell really well I'll listen. If turns round to me and says Obj C is the perfect programing language I'm going to be asking myself:
What is he selling?
Who is telling him this?
Obj C is a neat language, but really the only thing that makes it stand out is the frameworks that it's been used to create. Given the kind of resources that Obj C has had thrown at it I suspect even perl could start to look like a enterprise language.
Can't consumers make analogue to digital transfers pretty easily?
Complicated, silicon solutions aside, my father-in-law, who doesn't know how to send email, figured out how to digitize his old 8mm films on his own - point a digicam at the screen.
Last time I checked, I didn't have an organic usb port in the back of my head, so at some point the digital signals have to be converted to light and sound, and neither of them can be DRMd without making the whole system useless, because unless they are going to make home studios and digital cameras illegal they can't stop us from recording it.
When will they learn that DRM is a deterant not a solution? Not least of all, its an incentive to others, who break it 'because they can'.
My second point was that if it wasn't DRM encumbered, and was allowed to run a full OS, its share in the home market would probably make up a significant percentage, just like the commodore amiga did back in the 90s.
My final point, although it was probably the weakest, is that it doesn't matter what you are selling, if its not Intel/Windows its not a 'real' computer in the eyes of the public. It doesn't matter how fast, how well it works, or how much better it is than Wintel, people will always assume its a toy unless it got the wintel seal of approval.
For example devices you can send email from:
What do people buy when they want to send email regularly? A wintel box. Why? Because its a real computer, and everything else is just playing at email... at least thats the perception.
Its not really the publics fault. We might be used to the IT horizon changing every couple of months, but other social groups just arn't used the that rapid sense of change. It might be 5 years since you couldn't transfer a Mac floppy/usb stick to a PC, but its only now that this fundamental change is starting to sync with the public psyche.
Linux has gotten an even bigger mountain to climb. It may be getting some free advertising in the national press, but if you ran a vox pop on Linux asking "What do you know about Linux?" I'd bet you get more half truths, fud and outdated misconceptions than in a Microsoft marketing thinktank, and if you can find anyone who's even heard of *BSD out side of the IT industry I'd be very suprised.
As for your point about price tags. I understand that the machines are subsidised, and that they recoupe that cost through development licenses and game sales, I just don't remember asking for it. Nintendo sold their games on cartriges because it made the games load faster. I can respect that, especially as the console before that was a spectrum 48k. I can also see that from a business point fo view it entitled them to charge for game licences and development kits... cartridge fabricators arn't exactly standard on new PCs.
What annoyed the hell out of me was when Sony and Microsoft waded in with commodity hardware and decided to cripple the real functionality and decide that what the community wanted was cheaper, but restricted hardware, and then getting all pissy when people didn't want to play just the offical games. If you stick USB ports, firewire, CD/DVD drives on a box with a general purpose CPU in it, its going to be cracked. Release the development kit, and let nature create the greatest games on the planet.
I don't have a problem with copyright holders coming down hard on piracy rackets who are profiting at the expense of their expertise and genius. I don't have a problem with console builders suing the hell out of software companies that sell games without paying a licence. I do have a problem with publishing houses and hardware vendors who penalise people for wanting to get the most of hardware that they own, using free software. If you buy lost leader ink-jet paper from Costco are you restricted from using it in a printer your bought from Best Buy? Of course not.
I'm sorry I made you feel persecuted, but I think I'm on your side. My point, as badly worded as it was, was saying that the Amiga WAS a real computer, but that public perception was that it was a toy... and that public perception was wrong. With the benefit of hindsight, and a wider perception of the IT industry, I can see what a valuable platform the Amiga could have been, had it been widely told what it could do. I helped my father waste £1500 on a Pentium 90, when in reality we would probably have been better served by the significantly cheaper Amiga 500, or gotten a Mac instead. C'est la vie.
Its really interesting reading these articles where they mention Commodore 64s and IBM PC Clones in the same breath. I was 'growing up' during that period and hadn't adopted the shroud of geekdom, but I was still pretty tech savvi. I went through a BBC Micro, Spectrum 48k, and a lot of my friends bought Amiga 500s (luck SOBs) and the school had a few Macs, but when it came to doing work we used IBM clones, because they were 'real' computers.
Even before the world standardized on Microsoft Office, and people were using Word Perfect and Lotus Office, saying that an Amiga 500 was a proper computer was the equivalent of saying that an XBox 360 is a 'real' computer now.
Thats the tragedy of the 90s, these great systems are gone, not because they weren't any good, but because people didn't know how to use them, and nothing has changed now. I shocked a developer that I work with yesterday by saying that you could run a lot of DirectX games on Linux. Everytime I pull my PowerBook out in a meeting with new clients they are shocked that a geek would use a Mac instead of a 'real' computer. But if anything its more ridiculous:
SCSI/Firewire/USB/SATA/PCI/Ethernet/TCP/IP
We have standardized on so much that even our games consoles are almost indistinguisable from an IBM clone, and yet if you walk into an computer shop you have at most two options: PC / Mac, and in a couple of months both of those systems will be identical in all but OS.
So as a world, why are we so obessed with the Wintel platform?
Its can't be performance. Ever since the PIII, the two biggest barriers to real office performance have been RAM and HDD speed, and with 256MB RAM costing £20 and fast enough HDDs for £40 that really isn't a barrier.
It can't be price. Apple, with their extrodinary mark-ups are capable of producing the Mac Mini for £350. Where are the other PPC / ARM / SPARC / POWER contenders?
It can't even be software. Linux, in particular Ubuntu, have matured to such an extent that for 'real' computer task it exceeds Windows in usability and functionality. I could sit my dad in front of Open Office, on an Ubuntu box and he'd be just as functional within hours.
I think its DRM.
The XBox 360 has a 20GB harddrive, 512MB RAM a full networking stack and an API sophisticated enough that it is possible to create applications with graphics comparable to Jurasic Park, in real time. It has the ability to connect to my iPod, my camera, a keyboard and mouse, and it even has an external SATA connection (albeit proprietary) for future expansion of the harddrive. At £270 its a good price, for a system that would be fascinating to play with because of its 6 hardware threads. And yet its competitor is the unreleased PS3, not the mac mini.
Millions of these units will be sold and will achieve a market penetration that Steve Jobs would kill for, many of them to lower income families (who value entertainment and keeping up with the Jones' over education) and yet, because of DRM, the number of children that will do their homework on one, or use it as a 'real' computer will be counted on one hand, and even fewer will ever use it to develop software for the console itself (unlike the Commodore 64).
Beacause of DRM, turning these systems into a home computer isn't as simple as inserting a Live DVD and attaching a £10 keyboard and mouse set. Because of DRM, an exciting and innovative hardware platform will never be anything more than a toy. Because of DRM, in 30 years time, the Ars Technica article won't even mention the PS3 or the XBox when they're talking about the development of the home computer. So much for protecting innovators and artists.
So whats the end game? This isn't going to work, so they'll double their efforts and try something doubly draconian and doubly futile.
A well encrypted ham signal should sound like static, but with it you can co-ordinate attacks just as easily as on the internet. Encrypted letters have been used to wage wars since the greeks. A well designed script can see the transmission of a childs christmas list turned into a plan for a bomb by encoding the white space. There arn't the resources to monitor every human / human interaction and a list of visited websites and voip calls isn't going to stop the next terroist attack.
You want to stop terrorism? Stop spreading the terror. 24 hour news does more for terrorism than the internet ever did. What's more valuble to a company: it's phone line or it's advertising? (Hint: phone lines weren't invented until the 20th century) But I would no more sanction the removal of the press, than I would the logging of the internet.
Every year 40,000 people are killed by traffic accidents in the USA alone. Thats a Madrid bombing every two days, or a London bombing every 5 hours, or a 9/11 every month. Its a tragedy, but your not going to stop it by bombing the hell out of Detroit and monitoring the sale of cars, you'll rust 'radicalise' those that you are trying to protect - isn't that what the right to arms is all about?
So is it the governments business if your planning an attact? Sure it is. But the result of a terrosist attack is never going to be as bad as the sanctions imposed trying to stop it from happening.
its just the set of Space Cadets 2.
It worked then. You would have infringed copyright had iTunes allowed you to share. They allow a work around that is both time consuming and annoying, but not difficult, and you refuse to break copyright. Sounds like pretty succesful system.
When it comes to DRM - don't make it hard, people like a challenge, make it boring.
I was really excited. VHS was a dumb format. Expensive, low quality, quality reduced with time and it needed rewinding. It was so dumb, that people didn't even mind loosing the ability to record TV when they moved over. In addition to that DVDs usually contained more than just the show, they also had extras, another great incentive. What has blu-ray got? Higher resolution... but only when you've bought a new TV.
Now don't get me wrong, I'll buy one... but then I'm finding it increasingly more difficult to listen to compressed AACs and I can't watch DVDs on my iMac because of pixelation (DVD on high res screens look awful) - I'm not your average consumer, however I can see very few reasons for the more sane members of my family and friends to buy one. Even if I buy the box, I'm unlikely to rebuild my DVD collection (like I did with my VHS and tape collections) because I'm finding that I buy DVDs a lot less than I used to. It's too cheap and easy to rent from the likes of Amazon and Netflix, TV-on-demand is looking better with Telewest's Teleport and I'll soon have a 10MB data pipe to get HD films when iTMS finally gets its act together with the studios.
I will be very suprised if Blu-ray does half as well as DVD. People were happy with VHS, in much the same way as they're happy with DivX now, video quality is much less of a concern than the studios would like you to think.
Is that we have to use books at all. I do have a few books, but they go out of date so quickly that I invariably get an electronic version where I can. As geeks we should pioneering the paperless office, but my experiance is we use more than most and I'm as guilty as anyone.
My pattern is that I download the manual/article that I want to read, skim it on the screen, then when I find a section that I want to read/refer to I'll print out a temperary copy. Once I've finished with it I'll throw it away. When I started with Linux / OS X, man -t was my best friend.
There is still no substitute for the paper inteface. I've tried two CRTs on the same system, but found that I just feel closed in. Then I tried a 20" LCD for work with a 12" laptop for reading. Much better, as I could read it in another room/forest but still not as confortable as a few sheets of A4.
Also, I've recently found myself asking this question. Paper, unlike most electricity, is a renewable resource. Am I doing more or less good to the environment by reading it from a power hungry laptop than I am by printing off a copy? The only thing I seem to be saving by not owning physical books is storage space and small percentage of the purchase price.
So the settlement was for 0.6% of his personal worth? Or bearly equivalent to a speeding ticket to a guy on $30,000 and he gets 5 years to pay it and no criminal record?
That's justice right there.
XBox?
$100 dollars and a mod-chip and you got your self a streaming thin client. Even a has a remote control and plugs into either HiDef or standard TVs!
As a Brit I've definately seen a change in the people around me, but I'd say its got a lot to do with the types of games that people play. Halo 2 and Doom 3 may appeal to the traditional gamer, but its games like Buzz, Trivial Pursuit and Pop Idol that non-gamers are playing.
This year my parents are buying a PS2 as a board game replacement. My sister (who is a complete technophobe) was telling me which games to play,( she was recommening ER) and my other sister was counting down the minutes until Monkey Ball was release for the PS2 (I haven't been that excited about a games release since Starfox).
I've also got a sneaky suspision that my girlfriend is buying me a console for christmas. As grateful as I'll be, I know it's because the last 3 girls night outs that she's been on have all centered around singing games and drink monkey ball - the irony: as soon as I mention that I'd quite like to get a few of guys around for a Halo 2 lan party she laughs her head off and calls us "stupid boys".
In the mean time, my game guru shroud has been perminantly revoked. I don't understand what they see in these short, family fun games any more than they get from running around yet another 3D maze getting my ass kicked by a 13 year virgin. Its a different world out there!
I expect Mac and Linux support are a bit of a way off, but after seeing Jake2, my faith in Java has been renewed... why not create a Java client?
Instant cross-platformy goodness (all be it wrapped in proprietary Sun licence badness)
If they can render Quake 2 at 260 fps then video at 15fps has got to be easy... doesn't it? Just make sure its rendered in jogl and joal rather than evil Swing. The one sticking point I can see is getting the data from the camera in Java... any thoughts?
I guess I should take power into account, $4 a month isn't the real cost (as the environmentalist in me says)...
The biggest factor (next to economics) for why I've not filled the spare room with PCs is noise pollution. PCs sure are fan happy and external HDDs are noisy too. Thank god for cheap CAT5 cable so that I can run my linux boxes in the basement!
Any modern web browser.
I don't think thats the point. Its more that correlation is the science equivalent of vaporware, or "Wake me up when you've got causation".
Reports of a new correlation between events in the popular press just confound the general public who don't understand science, and assume that because a scientist finds this correlation interesting it must be true. This is proved frequently on Slashdot, where otherwise normal geeks, who have an above average understanding of science (that's a scary thought) are thrown into a frenzy of panic when somebody says something like "High concentration of caffiene in the blood is found to reduce attraction to women".
I'm not saying Joe 'Karma' Whore should get +5 Insightful everytime they state the obvious, but it would appear that Correlation != Causation can't be said enough when dealing with the public.
So what are their options?
Charge less for games. $50 is lot of money - and it takes a really good game to justify that cost. What marketeers fail to realise is that in the old days if you charged too much for a product people didn't buy it, and you simply adjusted your prices accordingly. In the modern software market, if you charge too much people pirate the software. Like it or not, copyright infringement doesn't feel like theft.
Sell hardware, not software - and for a profit. People arn't that stupid, they know that the potential distribution and manufacturing costs of games (once developed) is nothing, but they still think that an FPGA wrapped in plastic takes an act of God to create. Follow the lead of dance mats, donkey konga, light guns and sell them for $50 game included (if you've got to sell something for $50). This doesn't have to be limited 'fun' games either - sell a halo controller, or a lightsaber and even if you demand that it be plugged in, in order for the game to play... its easier than expecting software alone to provide encryption.
Finally take a look at where the real money is at - pro sports.
And they don't charge the players - they pay them if they're good enough.
Now that broadband is getting more and more ubiquitous, how long until you pay to watch a multiplayer deathmatch? There is certainly scope for gambling - as anyone who has played drink project gothem racing will attest.
I've ranted about this before, but why are people so obsessed with email?
No encryption (unless you have a degree in IT), no authentication (because people are tight, and nobody out side of IT knows what PGP is), poor support for attachments (MIME is a hack) and no enforcable equivalent to recorded delivery.
That's before we start to think about the mess that is HTML encoded mails.
I could live without security, but I'm really suprised that corporations can.
We've been using email for over 10 years now, and it hasn't progressed at all and I don't believe for a moment that this is a 'if its not broke...' situation.
If the FOSS community could establish a new email protocol that transparnetly added real support for attachments, security and formatting and it was adopted quickly by Thunderbird, Evolution and Mail.app (I'm a Mac zealot so I want it too) the next version of Exchange would support it too. In the mean time, Redhat, Suse and Ubuntu could be peddling Linux as the next big thing in email - something that might get the attention of CEOs who's only realy contact with a computer is email.
I can only speak for the UK, but its already Java software, but its a web app. Sure you can buy Quicken UK etc, which will talk directly to the government gateway, but you can also just point any browser at government website and you can calculate and file your tax there too.
I used it last year for my income tax and it worked a treat. I kept my accounts on excel, followed the wizard (which took about 3 hours, but you could save halfway through) and it calculated my return instantly.
They also offer company tax and PAYE filling software, which is used far more than they ever expected - the assumption was that people would want to use a 'real' application. It turned out that nobody was tighter than an accountant and when faced with the option of shelling out for tax software or using a free, and very usable (if not quite as powerful) alternative they jumped at the web app.