If you read the PDF associated with the article the survey looks to me more like an assessment of financial ability to deploy. The 40% number already have PLANS to deploy. Of that 60% some portion probably want to deploy 7, but don't have a plan in place to do so. Perhaps they are waiting for things to shake out, perhaps they are waiting for the economy to recover so they can afford to spend money on IT.
This was perhaps the most misleading/. title I've ever seen.
Sorry, but I'd be more concerned about the cost and battery drainage. The odds of being killed by a terrorist is infinitely smaller than car accidents or treatable diseases. I'd much rather see the government try to fix one of those problems rather than detecting nuclear material with cell phones.
I agree. It's probably largely an issue of shoppers browsing that accounts for purchases. I think this is especially true with movies and music. There tend to be fewer games in game racks in stores like Target relative to DVD's and CD's. Also, gamers are more likely to know exactly what they want when they go into the store.
To respond to a post a ways up, if you take the cd/dvd into the bathroom rip off the shrink wrap and just grab the disk, you don't have to worry about the alarm tag.
Perhaps a better solution would be to imbed the alarm tag inside the disk rather than in the packaging.
I disagree. If a manufacture knows that 10% of his goods will break during shipment, he must charge enough money to cover the cost of producing the broken goods as well as the sellable goods. If a change to the shipping process allows him to have 99.9% of his goods arrive intact, then he can reevaluate the price in order to increase quantity demanded thus changing the total return.
Example.
Cost of production (end to end): $5
Cost of lost product: $0.50
Selling price: $7.00
Quantity demanded: 10,000
profit: $18,0000
Improve process reduces lost product to $0.002
(assume cost of production is the same)
Cost of lost product: 1 cent
Selling Price: $7.00
Quanitity demanded: 10,000
profit: $19,980
if price goes down to $6.50
and quantity demanded goes up to 15,000
profit: 22477.5
Granted, the quantity demanded might not actually increase. It's possible that the price is at it's best point still.
I still have a copy of Boondock Saints that I bought over 4 years ago from Best Buy which has no content on it. I've never been motivated enough to drive over to a Best Buy with the disk to try to exchange it, but I was pretty upset when I found out. The fact that I had seen it before, and had a copy on my computer was the only motivating factor to not get pissed off.
Funny, that would be the alst thing to go for me =D I'd start selling off my furniture before losing the internet.
As far as killer ap. I think video on demand is going to really boost desire for faster internet connections. If you can get a multitude of TV shows, movies, make phone calls, and all the basic functions through one service, then people will start to see the savings and switch. Granted, there will always be people who do not think they need the connection.
Does this include people who have a shared folder within a local network? Can I not listen to music I've purchased and legally ripped on a different computer from the one that I ripped it on?
There are also potential fake components. You could buy a resister or capacitor that uses lead (which is illegal in some countries). The general quality control won't be as high which can lead to all sorts of malfunctions.
My dad has had thinkpad laptops going back many years. I still have a 266MHz machine that will run like a champ if I have the time to wait for it to load a page. The only problem that I've known my dad to have was the paint peeling off between the keyboard and the edge of the laptop (where you rest your wrists), but it ended up oxidizing and turning back to black anyway.
I've had several friends who I've convenced to buy thinkpads, and now they swear by them. I think they are well built quality machines. Two of my friends have purchased at least 2 IBM Thinkpads.
That being said, I saw Dell running 40% off their notebooks several months ago and couldn't pass the deal up. I managed to get linux installed on it without much trouble and have wireless also working successfully. I haven't had any problems yet, but I don't feel like the construction quality is as good as IBM.
A few months ago I was doing some work for a client on a Dell laptop and ended up spending over 8 hours with their online support convencing them that there was a hardware issue with the notebook. One of the first few things they wanted me to try was to format the hard drive. The issue was with the video card causing the system to crash on boot so I couldn't backup the data either. I told the support person that it was an unacceptable solution and started telling her how I should attempt to move forward. On the 3rd or 4th call I managed to find someone who said they'd accept the return, but then proceded to ask for information and confirm and reconfirm on every little thing. What should have been a 30 minute phone call took over 4 hours. Between this and a few other situations I've had with Dell I've sworn off ever buying any of their products again.
I also have a friend who's not very computer savy who picked up a powerbook when she went to college and fell in love with it. She recently upgraded to a newer model in fact. I have to say it's pretty looking, but I think they are even more overpriced (compared to IBM). I love being able to do portible computing, but when everything is at least 3 times as expensive as a desktop I find it so hard to spend the money.
Is the reason for this decision to ensure that things will run as designed? If you make the hardware you do the QA testing and can only accept products from quality venders.
That being said, they are way too damn expensive for me.
That just sounds like another reason for me to not bother getting a TiVo =D If I really decide I need to move from BitTorrent I'll build a MythTV box....or I'll just stop watching.
The question is, how much easier would it be to just use bittorrent?
I also think that TiVo is providing a service to watchers. Their job isn't to make content providers happy. It has been established that TiVo and other DVR solutions is protected under fair-use (at least I've heard McCain argue it in the senate).
The cable/sat companies have to be careful since they are the ones that negotiate with the content providers for shows.
I was having this discussion early in the week only more focused on BitTorrent v. Broadcast. I'll post some of the relevant content below. The thought was that you could d/l a show for free and have focused ads at the beginning or middle that you'd have to watch. If you paid $1 then you could watch the show commerical free right after the show finished airing on TV. If you paid $2 then you could watch the show as soon as it started to air on TV without any commercials. The prices are what I'd be willing to pay (I'd just do the $1 method personally). There would also have to be different price structuring for if you wanted to be able to watch the show once, watch it as long as you had a copy on your computer and be able to d/l and rewatch whenever you wanted.
Pro/Con of d/l tv shows
con - illegal (but low risk)
con - takes longer to get content (currently about 5 hours after airing)
con - need more knowledge to pull it off (or a friend that knows)
con - requires disk space to store shows
pro - watch whenever you want
pro - commercial free
pro - can pause and rewind
pro - can watch as many times as you want
pro - sticking it to the man
If you use P2P for distribution there is a fairly marginal distribution cost. You'd want to have a few license servers that ensure people are authorized to watch a show and the initial seeding systems. I can d/l a TV show in half the time it takes to watch it. Somehow you have to set things up so that people will be seeding while watching and after watching for a while so that most distribution is handled by consumers. This wouldn't work for people who don't have a fast connection, but it's a supplement to the current cable system not a replacement.
I think if distribution channels like this got popular you'd start seeing more synchronous Internet connections that can upload faster.
What some of the illegal d/l sites do is they allow you to d/l first if you have a share ration > 1.0 or 1.5. What this does is it quickly distributes the show to people who are likely to share it with more people. The TV studios can allow the people with the highest ratios to have access to the show a few hours before it's on the air, and then allow them to start watching as soon as it comes on TV or as soon as it finishes (or somewhere in the middle). That would promote people to keep sharing longer. Also, if you start the distribution early, then more people will share longer (assuming your require them to share from the time the start the d/l until they finish watching the show).
Another thing you'd want to do is encode the license of the person viewing the show into the video stream so that if someone were to break the protection that only allows people with a license to watch the show it's easy to track down who it was "owned" that particular episode.
Here's my timeline:
time T is the time that the show airs.
T - 2 hours: allow the show to be downloaded by the people with the highest ratio
T - 30 min: allow everyone to start downloading the show
T: show starts on TV
T + 10 min: allow people who pay added premium (extra $1) to start watching the show
T + 30 min: allow everyone to start watching the show
T + 40 min: show 60 seconds of commercials to people who don't pay $1 to have them removed
T + 50 min: people can choose to stop sharing the show
Then have the shows cached on the hard drive for a few days. You'd have to come up with some sort of algorithm that keeps track of what shows to keep on different computers based on the amount they share and popularity of the show. Periodically, you can have the hosts check in with a central server to determine what shows are needed for sharing and who has the shows available. Then the hosts will change what shows it is sharing in order to maximize the use of bandwidth.
I personally don't have a TiVo, but I have to say I'd be more intersted in buying one for a fixed lifetime cost than having to pay $10/mo for the rest of my life. If you can pick up a lifetime membership for $200, then you would pay that off in less than 2 years at $10/mo. If you can't save up $200 over a couple months in order to pay for it outright you probably have bigger financial problems and buying a TiVo shouldn't be a priority....granted those are probably the same people who would say I can't afford $200, but I can pay $10 every month.
Here's the price model I'd likely be willing to pay
TV Show (20 minute or 40 minute): $0.50-$1.50
Movie: $3-$4
Song: $0, I'll d/l for free and if I like it I'll buy the CD.
All of this can change if it's based on a "rental" model. I'm not willing to spend as much if I can only watch it once or only for a certain period of time. I'd say for $2 I might be willing to "rent" a movie in which I could d/l it and watch it for so many hours after the first time I played it. Then have a cheaper rate to rewatch it if you don't have to d/l it again. I'd probably pay $.50 for a tv show if I could only watch it once. This all is based on the fact that the timer starts when I watch the movie for the first time.
I find it hard to believe that a TV show wouldn't want to allow people to d/l and watch at least the first half of one TV show for free. You have to come up with some want to attract new viewer.
I imagine you could put a PDA with one of those verizon modems in someone's car, and then it could determine where the person is and everyone once in a while send you an email with the location...
Alternatively, it could be possible to create a virus/malicious piece of software for a cell phone that will use the triangulation to determine a location and use SMS to send that information to someone else.
One of the points made in the white paper is that you can't always use satellite based systems, i.e. when you are in a building. By using radio beacons you are able to triangulate a position while not having a view of the sky.
Letting the fires burn is an important part of the cycle of forest life. My parents bought a house in rural Colorado. Recently, there was a huge forest fire that has caused some problems for their community.
I was talking to my Uncle who's very natury (lots of hard core hunting, ranching, etc.) about a move to allow some logging. Basically, he said that if you allow people to come in and harvest lumber responsibly you end up clearing out lots of the trees that are still some what valuable before they collapse and rot. After they have fallen (or burned) they quickly lose value as small insects and fungi start to decompose them. During this transition phase they are also at their more vulnerable to fires. You also have more problems when the trees are very closely packed together.
I think the natural evolution of power and wealth is to concentrate into smaller groups. Then the masses revolt and kill the rich.
You have to look at the advantage of having a widely educated and healthy population. If the only people that can afford medical care are the super rich, then disease will run rampant and potentially kill significant portions of the population (granted this is a worst case senario). Similarly, if we have a lot of well educated people will will continue to expand on the development of others. I think the decline of the US is going to come by our complaciency and lack of innovation. In the past we've been bleeding edge on so many things, but it's easy to teach someone how to do something that's already been done before.
I agree that growing your own food and making your own clothing is not a viable option; however, the problem with our government system is not having enough choice. You've got two parties that are fed money from corporations and other interest groups that generally represent big businesses. If one of the parties took a stand and said, we're not going to let businesses run our country they'd very quickly lose funding and at the same time a huge smear campaign would be launched. Meanwhile, most people don't realize exactly what's going on. They see Bush said "The poorest whatever percent of the popultation won't pay anything in income taxes" and people don't realize that he's not really changing anything as those people didn't pay very much income tax anyway. I think the thing Gore did poorly was explain that proportionally to disposable income and tax burden the richest people in the population would be paying significantly less in taxes than the poorest people.
Also, no politician points out what's losing funding. I complain all the time about the poor quality of the roads in Houston. If politician A came in and said he'd lower my taxes and politician B points out that it would be at the expense of repairing roads. I'd vote for B.
The margins at grocery stores are about 1%. It's one of the lowest profit margins. The only thing they have going for them is just about everyone shops at grocery stores; therefore, they can make up for low margins by high turnover. Or so I was told by my marketing professor.
Are there any plans to update the protocol so that messages are verified by the receiving MTA?
Basically, usera@server1.com sends a message to userb@server2.com. server1.com keeps a record of that outgoing message (with some sort of hash). Once server2.com receives the message they create the hash and send it back to server1.com. If the message was originated by server1.com then a confirmation is sent back. When a message NDR's the hash is removed from server1.com.
This solution is fairly processor intensive since you'd have to create a lot of hashes, but I'm not sure how much stress that would create for legitimate mail. If the recepient and sender are tied into the hashing it would make sending out mass mails much more processor intensive.
I'd question how good of a sample salary.com has. I imagine anyone who's already surfing to a website to take a survey is likely to spend more time surfing anyway. There is no mention of the confidence interval or any other important statistical information.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the PDF associated with the article the survey looks to me more like an assessment of financial ability to deploy. The 40% number already have PLANS to deploy. Of that 60% some portion probably want to deploy 7, but don't have a plan in place to do so. Perhaps they are waiting for things to shake out, perhaps they are waiting for the economy to recover so they can afford to spend money on IT. This was perhaps the most misleading /. title I've ever seen.
Sorry, but I'd be more concerned about the cost and battery drainage. The odds of being killed by a terrorist is infinitely smaller than car accidents or treatable diseases. I'd much rather see the government try to fix one of those problems rather than detecting nuclear material with cell phones.
I agree. It's probably largely an issue of shoppers browsing that accounts for purchases. I think this is especially true with movies and music. There tend to be fewer games in game racks in stores like Target relative to DVD's and CD's. Also, gamers are more likely to know exactly what they want when they go into the store. To respond to a post a ways up, if you take the cd/dvd into the bathroom rip off the shrink wrap and just grab the disk, you don't have to worry about the alarm tag. Perhaps a better solution would be to imbed the alarm tag inside the disk rather than in the packaging.
I disagree. If a manufacture knows that 10% of his goods will break during shipment, he must charge enough money to cover the cost of producing the broken goods as well as the sellable goods. If a change to the shipping process allows him to have 99.9% of his goods arrive intact, then he can reevaluate the price in order to increase quantity demanded thus changing the total return. Example. Cost of production (end to end): $5 Cost of lost product: $0.50 Selling price: $7.00 Quantity demanded: 10,000 profit: $18,0000 Improve process reduces lost product to $0.002 (assume cost of production is the same) Cost of lost product: 1 cent Selling Price: $7.00 Quanitity demanded: 10,000 profit: $19,980 if price goes down to $6.50 and quantity demanded goes up to 15,000 profit: 22477.5 Granted, the quantity demanded might not actually increase. It's possible that the price is at it's best point still.
I still have a copy of Boondock Saints that I bought over 4 years ago from Best Buy which has no content on it. I've never been motivated enough to drive over to a Best Buy with the disk to try to exchange it, but I was pretty upset when I found out. The fact that I had seen it before, and had a copy on my computer was the only motivating factor to not get pissed off.
Funny, that would be the alst thing to go for me =D I'd start selling off my furniture before losing the internet. As far as killer ap. I think video on demand is going to really boost desire for faster internet connections. If you can get a multitude of TV shows, movies, make phone calls, and all the basic functions through one service, then people will start to see the savings and switch. Granted, there will always be people who do not think they need the connection.
Get our network infrastructure updated so we can connect via remote desktop, vnc, etc. and have a useable connection to our home systems.
Does this include people who have a shared folder within a local network? Can I not listen to music I've purchased and legally ripped on a different computer from the one that I ripped it on?
There are also potential fake components. You could buy a resister or capacitor that uses lead (which is illegal in some countries). The general quality control won't be as high which can lead to all sorts of malfunctions.
I've had several friends who I've convenced to buy thinkpads, and now they swear by them. I think they are well built quality machines. Two of my friends have purchased at least 2 IBM Thinkpads.
That being said, I saw Dell running 40% off their notebooks several months ago and couldn't pass the deal up. I managed to get linux installed on it without much trouble and have wireless also working successfully. I haven't had any problems yet, but I don't feel like the construction quality is as good as IBM.
A few months ago I was doing some work for a client on a Dell laptop and ended up spending over 8 hours with their online support convencing them that there was a hardware issue with the notebook. One of the first few things they wanted me to try was to format the hard drive. The issue was with the video card causing the system to crash on boot so I couldn't backup the data either. I told the support person that it was an unacceptable solution and started telling her how I should attempt to move forward. On the 3rd or 4th call I managed to find someone who said they'd accept the return, but then proceded to ask for information and confirm and reconfirm on every little thing. What should have been a 30 minute phone call took over 4 hours. Between this and a few other situations I've had with Dell I've sworn off ever buying any of their products again.
I also have a friend who's not very computer savy who picked up a powerbook when she went to college and fell in love with it. She recently upgraded to a newer model in fact. I have to say it's pretty looking, but I think they are even more overpriced (compared to IBM). I love being able to do portible computing, but when everything is at least 3 times as expensive as a desktop I find it so hard to spend the money.
Is the reason for this decision to ensure that things will run as designed? If you make the hardware you do the QA testing and can only accept products from quality venders. That being said, they are way too damn expensive for me.
That just sounds like another reason for me to not bother getting a TiVo =D If I really decide I need to move from BitTorrent I'll build a MythTV box. ...or I'll just stop watching.
The question is, how much easier would it be to just use bittorrent? I also think that TiVo is providing a service to watchers. Their job isn't to make content providers happy. It has been established that TiVo and other DVR solutions is protected under fair-use (at least I've heard McCain argue it in the senate). The cable/sat companies have to be careful since they are the ones that negotiate with the content providers for shows. I was having this discussion early in the week only more focused on BitTorrent v. Broadcast. I'll post some of the relevant content below. The thought was that you could d/l a show for free and have focused ads at the beginning or middle that you'd have to watch. If you paid $1 then you could watch the show commerical free right after the show finished airing on TV. If you paid $2 then you could watch the show as soon as it started to air on TV without any commercials. The prices are what I'd be willing to pay (I'd just do the $1 method personally). There would also have to be different price structuring for if you wanted to be able to watch the show once, watch it as long as you had a copy on your computer and be able to d/l and rewatch whenever you wanted. Pro/Con of d/l tv shows con - illegal (but low risk) con - takes longer to get content (currently about 5 hours after airing) con - need more knowledge to pull it off (or a friend that knows) con - requires disk space to store shows pro - watch whenever you want pro - commercial free pro - can pause and rewind pro - can watch as many times as you want pro - sticking it to the man If you use P2P for distribution there is a fairly marginal distribution cost. You'd want to have a few license servers that ensure people are authorized to watch a show and the initial seeding systems. I can d/l a TV show in half the time it takes to watch it. Somehow you have to set things up so that people will be seeding while watching and after watching for a while so that most distribution is handled by consumers. This wouldn't work for people who don't have a fast connection, but it's a supplement to the current cable system not a replacement. I think if distribution channels like this got popular you'd start seeing more synchronous Internet connections that can upload faster. What some of the illegal d/l sites do is they allow you to d/l first if you have a share ration > 1.0 or 1.5. What this does is it quickly distributes the show to people who are likely to share it with more people. The TV studios can allow the people with the highest ratios to have access to the show a few hours before it's on the air, and then allow them to start watching as soon as it comes on TV or as soon as it finishes (or somewhere in the middle). That would promote people to keep sharing longer. Also, if you start the distribution early, then more people will share longer (assuming your require them to share from the time the start the d/l until they finish watching the show). Another thing you'd want to do is encode the license of the person viewing the show into the video stream so that if someone were to break the protection that only allows people with a license to watch the show it's easy to track down who it was "owned" that particular episode. Here's my timeline: time T is the time that the show airs. T - 2 hours: allow the show to be downloaded by the people with the highest ratio T - 30 min: allow everyone to start downloading the show T: show starts on TV T + 10 min: allow people who pay added premium (extra $1) to start watching the show T + 30 min: allow everyone to start watching the show T + 40 min: show 60 seconds of commercials to people who don't pay $1 to have them removed T + 50 min: people can choose to stop sharing the show Then have the shows cached on the hard drive for a few days. You'd have to come up with some sort of algorithm that keeps track of what shows to keep on different computers based on the amount they share and popularity of the show. Periodically, you can have the hosts check in with a central server to determine what shows are needed for sharing and who has the shows available. Then the hosts will change what shows it is sharing in order to maximize the use of bandwidth.
I personally don't have a TiVo, but I have to say I'd be more intersted in buying one for a fixed lifetime cost than having to pay $10/mo for the rest of my life. If you can pick up a lifetime membership for $200, then you would pay that off in less than 2 years at $10/mo. If you can't save up $200 over a couple months in order to pay for it outright you probably have bigger financial problems and buying a TiVo shouldn't be a priority. ...granted those are probably the same people who would say I can't afford $200, but I can pay $10 every month.
Thanks for telling me of a place to find new torrent files =D http://www.torrentportal.com/ http://static.thepiratebay.org/ http://www.torrentbox.com/ http://www.fulldls.com/ http://www.metal-torrents.com/ http://bittorrent.bctel.org/ http://torrentz.ws/
Here's the price model I'd likely be willing to pay
TV Show (20 minute or 40 minute): $0.50-$1.50
Movie: $3-$4
Song: $0, I'll d/l for free and if I like it I'll buy the CD.
All of this can change if it's based on a "rental" model. I'm not willing to spend as much if I can only watch it once or only for a certain period of time. I'd say for $2 I might be willing to "rent" a movie in which I could d/l it and watch it for so many hours after the first time I played it. Then have a cheaper rate to rewatch it if you don't have to d/l it again. I'd probably pay $.50 for a tv show if I could only watch it once. This all is based on the fact that the timer starts when I watch the movie for the first time.
I find it hard to believe that a TV show wouldn't want to allow people to d/l and watch at least the first half of one TV show for free. You have to come up with some want to attract new viewer.
I imagine you could put a PDA with one of those verizon modems in someone's car, and then it could determine where the person is and everyone once in a while send you an email with the location... Alternatively, it could be possible to create a virus/malicious piece of software for a cell phone that will use the triangulation to determine a location and use SMS to send that information to someone else.
One of the points made in the white paper is that you can't always use satellite based systems, i.e. when you are in a building. By using radio beacons you are able to triangulate a position while not having a view of the sky.
Letting the fires burn is an important part of the cycle of forest life. My parents bought a house in rural Colorado. Recently, there was a huge forest fire that has caused some problems for their community.
I was talking to my Uncle who's very natury (lots of hard core hunting, ranching, etc.) about a move to allow some logging. Basically, he said that if you allow people to come in and harvest lumber responsibly you end up clearing out lots of the trees that are still some what valuable before they collapse and rot. After they have fallen (or burned) they quickly lose value as small insects and fungi start to decompose them. During this transition phase they are also at their more vulnerable to fires. You also have more problems when the trees are very closely packed together.
You have to look at the advantage of having a widely educated and healthy population. If the only people that can afford medical care are the super rich, then disease will run rampant and potentially kill significant portions of the population (granted this is a worst case senario). Similarly, if we have a lot of well educated people will will continue to expand on the development of others. I think the decline of the US is going to come by our complaciency and lack of innovation. In the past we've been bleeding edge on so many things, but it's easy to teach someone how to do something that's already been done before.
I agree that growing your own food and making your own clothing is not a viable option; however, the problem with our government system is not having enough choice. You've got two parties that are fed money from corporations and other interest groups that generally represent big businesses. If one of the parties took a stand and said, we're not going to let businesses run our country they'd very quickly lose funding and at the same time a huge smear campaign would be launched. Meanwhile, most people don't realize exactly what's going on. They see Bush said "The poorest whatever percent of the popultation won't pay anything in income taxes" and people don't realize that he's not really changing anything as those people didn't pay very much income tax anyway. I think the thing Gore did poorly was explain that proportionally to disposable income and tax burden the richest people in the population would be paying significantly less in taxes than the poorest people.
Also, no politician points out what's losing funding. I complain all the time about the poor quality of the roads in Houston. If politician A came in and said he'd lower my taxes and politician B points out that it would be at the expense of repairing roads. I'd vote for B.
The margins at grocery stores are about 1%. It's one of the lowest profit margins. The only thing they have going for them is just about everyone shops at grocery stores; therefore, they can make up for low margins by high turnover. Or so I was told by my marketing professor.
Basically, usera@server1.com sends a message to userb@server2.com. server1.com keeps a record of that outgoing message (with some sort of hash). Once server2.com receives the message they create the hash and send it back to server1.com. If the message was originated by server1.com then a confirmation is sent back. When a message NDR's the hash is removed from server1.com.
This solution is fairly processor intensive since you'd have to create a lot of hashes, but I'm not sure how much stress that would create for legitimate mail. If the recepient and sender are tied into the hashing it would make sending out mass mails much more processor intensive.
I was hoping someone would point out our inability to win a war on a social issue.
I'd question how good of a sample salary.com has. I imagine anyone who's already surfing to a website to take a survey is likely to spend more time surfing anyway. There is no mention of the confidence interval or any other important statistical information.