The thing that really bugs me is that everyone is running around saying "See macs get viruses too!!" because they're are a few proof of concept viruses for the mac.
The way I see it regarding viruses is:
Macs:Flu as Windows:AIDS
Really for the virus commercial the "PC" guy should be covered in boils or something....
I was just saying that any society advanced enough to come up with FTL, would be able to come up with sufficeintly advanced analog as well as digital technologies if they were fighting an enemy that could break networked digital communications easily. Also, its even shown on the show that they already have hardened digital systems that do not comuunicate over a digital network, so HDTV and DVD wouldn't be technology that couldn't exist in the BG universe.
What I found most annoying about that was that a society that has FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL!!! doesn't have flying cars. Hell, they even, obviously, but it is never mentioned, mastered ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY. Yet they drive frakking cars with wheels, come on.
Also some of there tech is incredibly behind where it really should be and mostly done so on the part of the creators of the show to "add drama". But really listening to news over cheesy looking 60's transistor radios?? And don't tell me that they need analog communication devices because of the cylons computer advantage. A society with, again, FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL!!! should be able to build an analog holographic communication network, or something equally futuristic, I'd even be fine with ubiquitous video displays like on Minority Report, or Total Recall.
Its one of my major pet peeves for the series.
I really don't as a rule like prequels for the fact that they almost always destroy continuity in the series that spanwed them. I'm certain this prequel will destroy the technolgical continuity of BSG as well as the historical, almost gaurunteed.
I've got to agree with you. While I was all ready to get a Revolution when it comes out, I'm not so sure I'd want to buy a Wii at all and its the SAME THING.
I just goes to show you that sometimes there is something behind this marketing stuff.
It seem that these days the marketing types have just lost it. I mean viiv? MacBook Pro?? and now Wii????? I mean come on, the codename for the project should not be coller than the name for the ACTUAL product, and if it is then chnange your product name to the code name!!!
What really bugged me about DVC was how blatently obvious that the good non-hero character was actually the bad guy. I mean as soon as our hero brought him up, it was obvious that he was the Teacher. Brown tries from then on, really hard actually, to make you doubt that conclusion, but never succeeds at it. The book really needed another possible character to play that role and maybe it wouldn't have been so obvious.
Theres anothr movie that people have failed to mention that I think gets some aspects of IT better that any of these mentioned so far, and that would be.
Office Space
It certainly nails the office politics aspect of IT;-).
Its a sad comment you are making here. The worst part is that, yes, this is the belief. But I believe that following in the wake of CS as "uncool" jobs is engineering, I mean the moneys just not in it for engineers right?
While business "believes" that CS workers are foundry workers. Most CS workers are creating new things every project, they don't forge the same hunk of steel over and over. As much as business wants CS to be a production job, its really a creation job, and the business leaders don't get it.
All this reverence in this country for business degrees is going to really come back to bite us. Innovation and invention is on the decline in this country, and without the new things and the technological innovation, all those business people will be left with nothing to manage, because eventually with all the creation going on overseas, enventually overseas companies will take all the companies (and their management) with them.
You're right about these sentiments exactly, there are a small number of Linux people who know nothing about windows, but most have to have at least working knowledge about the windows OS.
What I was basically talking about was the refusal to learn anything new so that they can make informed decisions. I guess I always lean towards trying to learn as much as I can about a lot of things instead of learning as much as I can about one thing.
Also, the knowledge of different systems and the differences between them also helps increase understanding because it helps you see how multiple approaches to the same problem each can have their strong and weak points.
On another note, I also believe this beyond just operating systems. The KDE vs. Gnome battles on/. just make me roll my eyes. Learning them both is not that hard, railing against one or the other is mostly useless. I try to apply the same philosophy to that issue that I am espousing for operating systems.
I don't know what will happen with mods on this, but here goes....
In my experience I've found a striking number of highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people absolutely REFUSE to learn anything about Linux. Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!".
Of course that means that they really aren't the highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people they're making themselves out to be.
We've been up and we've been down before. I'll throw out the reverse of this. What makes you think things won't change?
Where America is in 20 years is still up for debate. There are things, like this, that don't look like they're getting better, and other things that are improving, or things that will improve in the next 20 years. Sure there's always still the possibility that everything will go completely to hell, but for reference points from History, America's already been through some of that too. Theres the Civil War, Great Depression, to name a couple. And rights in the country, while some may be in decline, have at other points in history been worse. We don't have internment camps for Arab-Americans like we did for the Japanese in World War II. Don't even get started on Guantanmo Bay, its order of magnitudes smaller.
There is good and bad in all times. The good old days may not be as good as they seem, and the future's not always as bright as it looks. One thing that comforts some Americans is that in our system no one person can run the country for more than 8 years. Bush will not be President in 3 years, and I think the term limit on the President is a great thing for making sure the country adapts to change and is run from different viewpoints. 20 years of Bush would be bad and so would have 20 years of Clinton running the country.
One reason however horrible leglislation like this gets brought up is because the damn leglislators are often elected for what seem like lifetime terms. I'm sure there are some in support of this bill who really do know what its impact will be and that its not a good deal for the people who will vote for it anyway because they know their reelection is a lock. One of these days they will #$%@^ with peoples computers or living rooms one time to many and will not win their seat back. I really really hope that that happens. Theres nothing however, we can do about the administration but hope that they don't get this pushed through before its their time to go.
However, I think that "my competitor voted for the law thats forcing you to watch commercials" may then become one of the best campaign slogans ever. People will be genuinely, extremely, pissed off if they lose the ability to channel surf during commercials. Theres no need to be technically savy at all to grasp the impact of this. The people will actaully be mad as hell over this one, and they will know it is the politicians that will have sold them out.
An interesting side effect off this, though, is that perhaps both major parties won't be bold enough to run the campaign slogan mentioned above, maybe they'll both sell us out and hope that no one notices that they were both complicit. As hard as it is to say it, maybe that kind of sellout will be what it takes to get a third party some headway in this country.
The other thing is that this kind of law would actually be extremely rights limiting. Sure, you can stop watching TV, but for all intents and purposes, if they pass a law like this the government would be dictating what you could do, and would have to do in the privacy of your own homes. Now think of the other issues where the government might want to do that to. Off course they'll just say "Its only TV", but I for one DO belive in slippery slopes.
Anyway, she's so obsucre as government people go, I doubt her promotion of DRM is going to create a groundswell of public support anytime soon.
There will never be a groundswell of public support. What there will be is industry telling us why they need DRM, but no one will ever want it. The maddening part is that things like HD-DVD and Blue Ray will be unmitigated failures because of the barriers that DRM puts in the way of them actually being useful.
When DRM blocks the use of products by consumers, or requires them to buy extra items (including whole new HDTV's sometimes), they will just plain stay away. Of course then the industry will scratch its head and wonder why their new hideously crippled formats aren't selling, and point the finger at "Pirates". It never ceases to amaze me how absoultely befuddled and stupid their greed makes the entertainment industry.
You have an interesting comment, but theres one problem with it.
Malware massively affects the same "more human" institutions you are talking about.
The reason I believe that industry hasn't demanded that malware companies be drawn and quartered is not the rights they hold with the governement and not wanting anything to be done. I believe it that the egos these institutions create, prevent them from seeing the writing on the wall about how using Microsoft Operating systems just weren't a good decision to make.
You are correct, if the music industry lets sites sell for less than a dollar. If they don't I fully expect more peopel to choose option 3 I mentioned in my earlier post.
I do believe that people really do want to buy music online if they can, they just have very low threashold for how much they're willing to pay. I think Apple is on the upper end of that threashold. The recording industry thinks a dollar is abysmally low.
I think when the consumer feels ripped off, they feel more inclined to just use p2p to download music.
So my prediction is the only on-line music store that will beat iTunes will have to be selling its music for LESS (20-30% less), and not more.
So you're saying that others selling songs for MORE than iTunes are going to eat away at iTunes share.
Here's the way I see it (remember your idea could be right were other sites selling songs for less the $0.99, but we all know thats not what variable pricing is about and I've already said that). If other sites offer songs the record labels want to sell for say $2.99 and they're no longer available on iTunes, people would still have 3 options.
1) Bend over for the record industry and pay the $ 2.99 on the "other" site 2) Not buy the song or..... 3) Download for free
The record industry utterly and completely fails to realize how much money they could make if they had a true market where demand actually had some real, not falsely inflated, impact on price.
And it is really hard to belive the same people who promised that if everyone switched from tapes to CDs that the price would go down. Only to see them proceed to fix the prices on CDs to ridiculously high levels.
You miss the point. I don't think the RIAA is looking at providing lower priced music. It just the bait they're using to try to hook you.
I think when they say variable pricing they mean $0.99 for some and $2.99 for most others. Sure, they may have the entire catalog of some crappy artists' music avaiable for $0.49/song just to make it look like they're fair.
But don't mistake the fact that they're looking to make more (way more) money with variable pricing.
A-la carte cable is evil for exactly the same reason.
Whats interesting is that when the RIAA says "variable pricing" what they invariably mean is that some songs cost $0.99, while others (more popular songs) will cost more. I have utterly 0 faith that the recording industry would even think that songs should ever be sold for less than $0.99/song.
Now what really, really baffles me is that articles like this make it sound like the variable pricing I just mentioned, is going to somehow magically eat away at iTunes market share.
They just keep spouting off like this hoping that market forces won't apply to them and that people will line up to pay MORE for music from someone other than Apple, just because its not iTunes.
Its mind boggling. There a better chance they can change the laws of physics that to get people to switch to an online music store where the majority of the music (remember "popular" songs would cost more) is more expensive.
Its the same as the whole cell phones will replace iPods argument.... Not at $2.99 a song they won't!!
If wishes were horses, then the record companies might just get this to work, but they're not.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that really bugs me is that everyone is running around saying "See macs get viruses too!!" because they're are a few proof of concept viruses for the mac.
The way I see it regarding viruses is:
Macs:Flu as Windows:AIDS
Really for the virus commercial the "PC" guy should be covered in boils or something....
The herd of turtles that is the American people look to have wised up
No they haven't, not while all we have is a two party system where both parties both work to basically the same goals.
We really need third, and fourth parties that have a chance in this country to see real change.
I was just saying that any society advanced enough to come up with FTL, would be able to come up with sufficeintly advanced analog as well as digital technologies if they were fighting an enemy that could break networked digital communications easily. Also, its even shown on the show that they already have hardened digital systems that do not comuunicate over a digital network, so HDTV and DVD wouldn't be technology that couldn't exist in the BG universe.
Ron really likes his explosions.
Actaully he doesn't. Listen to the podcasts.
What I found most annoying about that was that a society that has FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL!!! doesn't have flying cars. Hell, they even, obviously, but it is never mentioned, mastered ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY. Yet they drive frakking cars with wheels, come on.
Also some of there tech is incredibly behind where it really should be and mostly done so on the part of the creators of the show to "add drama". But really listening to news over cheesy looking 60's transistor radios?? And don't tell me that they need analog communication devices because of the cylons computer advantage. A society with, again, FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL!!! should be able to build an analog holographic communication network, or something equally futuristic, I'd even be fine with ubiquitous video displays like on Minority Report, or Total Recall.
Its one of my major pet peeves for the series.
I really don't as a rule like prequels for the fact that they almost always destroy continuity in the series that spanwed them. I'm certain this prequel will destroy the technolgical continuity of BSG as well as the historical, almost gaurunteed.
I've got to agree with you. While I was all ready to get a Revolution when it comes out, I'm not so sure I'd want to buy a Wii at all and its the SAME THING.
I just goes to show you that sometimes there is something behind this marketing stuff.
It seem that these days the marketing types have just lost it. I mean viiv? MacBook Pro?? and now Wii????? I mean come on, the codename for the project should not be coller than the name for the ACTUAL product, and if it is then chnange your product name to the code name!!!
They really have to change the name back.
What really bugged me about DVC was how blatently obvious that the good non-hero character was actually the bad guy. I mean as soon as our hero brought him up, it was obvious that he was the Teacher. Brown tries from then on, really hard actually, to make you doubt that conclusion, but never succeeds at it. The book really needed another possible character to play that role and maybe it wouldn't have been so obvious.
Theres anothr movie that people have failed to mention that I think gets some aspects of IT better that any of these mentioned so far, and that would be.
;-).
Office Space
It certainly nails the office politics aspect of IT
Its a sad comment you are making here. The worst part is that, yes, this is the belief. But I believe that following in the wake of CS as "uncool" jobs is engineering, I mean the moneys just not in it for engineers right?
While business "believes" that CS workers are foundry workers. Most CS workers are creating new things every project, they don't forge the same hunk of steel over and over. As much as business wants CS to be a production job, its really a creation job, and the business leaders don't get it.
All this reverence in this country for business degrees is going to really come back to bite us. Innovation and invention is on the decline in this country, and without the new things and the technological innovation, all those business people will be left with nothing to manage, because eventually with all the creation going on overseas, enventually overseas companies will take all the companies (and their management) with them.
You're right about these sentiments exactly, there are a small number of Linux people who know nothing about windows, but most have to have at least working knowledge about the windows OS.
/. just make me roll my eyes. Learning them both is not that hard, railing against one or the other is mostly useless. I try to apply the same philosophy to that issue that I am espousing for operating systems.
What I was basically talking about was the refusal to learn anything new so that they can make informed decisions. I guess I always lean towards trying to learn as much as I can about a lot of things instead of learning as much as I can about one thing.
Also, the knowledge of different systems and the differences between them also helps increase understanding because it helps you see how multiple approaches to the same problem each can have their strong and weak points.
On another note, I also believe this beyond just operating systems. The KDE vs. Gnome battles on
Oh, come now. The President's always been able to ask lawmakers to introduce legislation for them. That's nothing new.
Its just that this particular law is a pile of crap, no matter who wrote it.
I don't know what will happen with mods on this, but here goes....
In my experience I've found a striking number of highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people absolutely REFUSE to learn anything about Linux. Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!".
Of course that means that they really aren't the highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people they're making themselves out to be.
We've been up and we've been down before. I'll throw out the reverse of this. What makes you think things won't change?
Where America is in 20 years is still up for debate. There are things, like this, that don't look like they're getting better, and other things that are improving, or things that will improve in the next 20 years. Sure there's always still the possibility that everything will go completely to hell, but for reference points from History, America's already been through some of that too. Theres the Civil War, Great Depression, to name a couple. And rights in the country, while some may be in decline, have at other points in history been worse. We don't have internment camps for Arab-Americans like we did for the Japanese in World War II. Don't even get started on Guantanmo Bay, its order of magnitudes smaller.
There is good and bad in all times. The good old days may not be as good as they seem, and the future's not always as bright as it looks. One thing that comforts some Americans is that in our system no one person can run the country for more than 8 years. Bush will not be President in 3 years, and I think the term limit on the President is a great thing for making sure the country adapts to change and is run from different viewpoints. 20 years of Bush would be bad and so would have 20 years of Clinton running the country.
One reason however horrible leglislation like this gets brought up is because the damn leglislators are often elected for what seem like lifetime terms. I'm sure there are some in support of this bill who really do know what its impact will be and that its not a good deal for the people who will vote for it anyway because they know their reelection is a lock. One of these days they will #$%@^ with peoples computers or living rooms one time to many and will not win their seat back. I really really hope that that happens. Theres nothing however, we can do about the administration but hope that they don't get this pushed through before its their time to go.
However, I think that "my competitor voted for the law thats forcing you to watch commercials" may then become one of the best campaign slogans ever. People will be genuinely, extremely, pissed off if they lose the ability to channel surf during commercials. Theres no need to be technically savy at all to grasp the impact of this. The people will actaully be mad as hell over this one, and they will know it is the politicians that will have sold them out.
An interesting side effect off this, though, is that perhaps both major parties won't be bold enough to run the campaign slogan mentioned above, maybe they'll both sell us out and hope that no one notices that they were both complicit. As hard as it is to say it, maybe that kind of sellout will be what it takes to get a third party some headway in this country.
The other thing is that this kind of law would actually be extremely rights limiting. Sure, you can stop watching TV, but for all intents and purposes, if they pass a law like this the government would be dictating what you could do, and would have to do in the privacy of your own homes. Now think of the other issues where the government might want to do that to. Off course they'll just say "Its only TV", but I for one DO belive in slippery slopes.
But there are still a lot of people looking forward optimistically to the new features in Vista.
But how could they possibly ignore the "feature" of DRM?
You've got that right. With DRM they'll get to look back on a time when the could actually USE the files that are on their computer.
Anyway, she's so obsucre as government people go, I doubt her promotion of DRM is going to create a groundswell of public support anytime soon.
There will never be a groundswell of public support. What there will be is industry telling us why they need DRM, but no one will ever want it. The maddening part is that things like HD-DVD and Blue Ray will be unmitigated failures because of the barriers that DRM puts in the way of them actually being useful.
When DRM blocks the use of products by consumers, or requires them to buy extra items (including whole new HDTV's sometimes), they will just plain stay away. Of course then the industry will scratch its head and wonder why their new hideously crippled formats aren't selling, and point the finger at "Pirates". It never ceases to amaze me how absoultely befuddled and stupid their greed makes the entertainment industry.
the upcoming UMPC
....
Errr, shouldn't that be
the upcoming video iPod
Yep. Admittedly, running games is the only reason I would consider dual-boot for my iMac, and I'm still holding off for now.
You have an interesting comment, but theres one problem with it.
Malware massively affects the same "more human" institutions you are talking about.
The reason I believe that industry hasn't demanded that malware companies be drawn and quartered is not the rights they hold with the governement and not wanting anything to be done. I believe it that the egos these institutions create, prevent them from seeing the writing on the wall about how using Microsoft Operating systems just weren't a good decision to make.
You are correct, if the music industry lets sites sell for less than a dollar. If they don't I fully expect more peopel to choose option 3 I mentioned in my earlier post.
I do believe that people really do want to buy music online if they can, they just have very low threashold for how much they're willing to pay. I think Apple is on the upper end of that threashold. The recording industry thinks a dollar is abysmally low.
I think when the consumer feels ripped off, they feel more inclined to just use p2p to download music.
So my prediction is the only on-line music store that will beat iTunes will have to be selling its music for LESS (20-30% less), and not more.
So you're saying that others selling songs for MORE than iTunes are going to eat away at iTunes share.
Here's the way I see it (remember your idea could be right were other sites selling songs for less the $0.99, but we all know thats not what variable pricing is about and I've already said that). If other sites offer songs the record labels want to sell for say $2.99 and they're no longer available on iTunes, people would still have 3 options.
1) Bend over for the record industry and pay the $ 2.99 on the "other" site
2) Not buy the song or.....
3) Download for free
The record industry utterly and completely fails to realize how much money they could make if they had a true market where demand actually had some real, not falsely inflated, impact on price.
And it is really hard to belive the same people who promised that if everyone switched from tapes to CDs that the price would go down. Only to see them proceed to fix the prices on CDs to ridiculously high levels.
You miss the point. I don't think the RIAA is looking at providing lower priced music. It just the bait they're using to try to hook you.
I think when they say variable pricing they mean $0.99 for some and $2.99 for most others. Sure, they may have the entire catalog of some crappy artists' music avaiable for $0.49/song just to make it look like they're fair.
But don't mistake the fact that they're looking to make more (way more) money with variable pricing.
A-la carte cable is evil for exactly the same reason.
Whats interesting is that when the RIAA says "variable pricing" what they invariably mean is that some songs cost $0.99, while others (more popular songs) will cost more. I have utterly 0 faith that the recording industry would even think that songs should ever be sold for less than $0.99/song.
Now what really, really baffles me is that articles like this make it sound like the variable pricing I just mentioned, is going to somehow magically eat away at iTunes market share.
They just keep spouting off like this hoping that market forces won't apply to them and that people will line up to pay MORE for music from someone other than Apple, just because its not iTunes.
Its mind boggling. There a better chance they can change the laws of physics that to get people to switch to an online music store where the majority of the music (remember "popular" songs would cost more) is more expensive.
Its the same as the whole cell phones will replace iPods argument.... Not at $2.99 a song they won't!!
If wishes were horses, then the record companies might just get this to work, but they're not.
I wish I still had some mod points for you. Well said!!
Hell, I can't even get the local telco to sell me a bare copper wire, let alone dark fiber.