Simple economic history dictates that when the market share of a commodity is growing in contrast to previous market trends, there is a potential for upheaval of the containing market to the point of equilibrium between the contender and the incumbent market force.
Translation: Firefox grows quickly. IE's growth is stagnant. Who knows how much more ground IE can lose? The closer the margin gets, the more porting you will see.
Economics is a social science concerned not only with the present but past and future. I know: I studied it for years.
This is a solution, but not for a Windows user. One should be careful not to restrict security concerns of the type in this post to *nix platforms: most of the security breaches of this type happen on the Windows platform first, especially in the IE case (due to its popularity).
While I understand the point that Mr. Sheets is making, however, I disagree with his definition of safe.
The implication of this article stems in the absolutes of security: can it ward off intruders or not. This is a flawed approach, and while seemingly a logical one, denounces another reality of this level of breach: the lion's share of these breaches are not of the most malicious sort (read: that stupid data miner which causes popups, search bars from hell, etc). These kind of easily hackable sections of Internet Explorer are less prevalent in Firefox. Market forces of the sheer user base would dictate that if this were not so, more spyware would have been ported to Firefox by now. 25 million downloads, right? That's a sizable chunk for any malware vendor, or aspiring intruder, to infiltrate.
One must acknowledge the reality of security by statistics alongside security by absolutes.
I applaud this effort by Microsoft to fix what seems to be a service which has experienced the exposition of a host of security problems since its inception by allowing for increased accountability of abusers of the Hotmail service.
If I am correct, Hotmail email addresses generate the most spam on the internet, or at least have in the past. Whether this is because they have such a large user base or the security flaws aforementioned is debatable, but irrespective of this fact, accountability should be encouraged at all levels of the spamming process, from creation to transmission.
The Semantic Web appears to be a budding server-side solution to the paradigm of information glut online. Social bookmarking appears to be a client-side solution to the paradigm of information glut online.
It is refreshing to see exciting new solutions to the problems we have at present of targeted information retrieval on the internet. I can remember years of stagnation in this field (read: early 90's), and any change from today's google-and-pray searching mentality among the majority of end-users will be welcome.
I wonder how well Nvidia can keep up with trying to innovate in the high-end market against ATI if they are busy trying to corner a new subdivision of the graphics market. Considering how revolutionary NVIDIA and ATI chipsets have been to high-end gaming in the past few years, it would be a shame if high-end innovation was slowed or delayed due to all the exciting changes of the recent past, present, and projected future.
This is yet another crucial shot across the bow for the coming media wars. With 850GB storage, however, competing formats have an interesting road ahead of them.
Well, this just proves that money isn't everything. Around the time of the merger, one of the largest corporations on earth was being created. It was the greatest thing to happen to the corner of Wall and Broad in decades. Stock analysts gushed over the seemingly invincible titan.
What on earth happened?
It seems that AOL has lost its unique luster... the early days of the burgeoning internet long since past. The prime days of AOL were seen when there was no other way for Johnny Nontechie to get information from the internet with any kind of ease of use. It, arguably, represented one of the first comprehensive portals accessible to the end-user.
The Internet grew, and AOL stopped being so unique. A failure to diversify and many flawed versions of the AOL software later, its popularity has waned. Time Warner has diversified its Roadrunner offering to add portal features, and so has everybody and their mother....
Absorbing antiquated business models in lateral merger never makes for a good formula unless you plan to do something with the antiquated business model (you know, innovation and the like?). Was it planned to boost Roadrunner's position? Was it a lack of foresight? Who knows.
It will mercifully end soon enough, this failed experiment.
And, for the first time ever, I have used my translator in Dashboard!!!:D
On a serious note, it seems to me to be readily apparent the best RAID setup on the face of the Earth can be absolutely evicerated by a poor driver. There seems to be no profundity in saying that, and these benchmarks seem to be a result of this.
This seems obvious, but the original intent of the cell phone is being lost amongst a myriad of features that may not be necessary. Those who bought the cell phone to make phone calls (something on which I hope we can all agree is a sizable number) will be sorely disappointed when their talk time is cut in half because media has to be able to stream to their phone...
We must reserve the utmost caution in adding these new features to devices randomly without taking into consideration their adverse effects on the other uses of the potentially modified devices.
This opens up a relevant question of just how much collusion of our communications and multimedia entities we want, and what steps must we take to be guarded about the possible negative effects of the aforementioned collusion?
Translation: When news media became more centralized, it raised heated debates and exposed grievous issues. What would happen in the world proposed here?
I see all these new mobile technologies develop. Mobile web access, 3G networks, multimedia content, picture mail.... these are all well and good.
What I question is why there isn't more urgency on working on the increasingly insufficient battery life of the modern mobile device. This is not restricted to cell phones, either, but is particularly relevant in this case. The more features we jam-pack into these phones, the more and more our talk time (which is why we call these devices cellular telephones and not something else: they should make phone calls) tanks. Granted, much technological innovation and research is being done globally with hydrogen fuel cells, increasing efficiency of solar technologies, etc.... but the effort spent adding another gimmick (or feature, whichever is less offensive to you) is wasted when this mobile power problem for these devices seems ever the more relevant....
Though the possibility of watching Scrubs at work to make my bosses that much madder at me seems enticing....
Seriously, we should dedicate more energy to the mobile power problem.
The introduction of social bookmarking was ahead of its time. However, with the phenomena of blogging, podcasting, and the like, a revisiting of this idea is a welcome change to our never-ending search for better quality in our instant information-accessing ways.
I see some mention about this topic of likening social bookmarking to a search engine, but I fail to see it. A search engine starts with the assumption you have a big pile of mess you need to plod through to find what you want, and casts the widest net possible to do it. While social bookmarking also addresses this assumption, the search for the content you want does not begin in a randomized mess. I have also heard the phrase P2P for categorized search engines, allowing each person who participates to do some of the sorting for you, saving you from the cast-the-widest-net-possible approach of our most popular search engines; a seemingly valid point.
I can see social bookmarking doing for searching what RSS did for syndicated news online. I, quite frankly, hope it does.
I understand your point, however, Hormel is run by human beings, and my point follows that logic. Companies cannot be treated as isolated intangibles for the purposes of this discussion: a group of humans are asserting what is perceived as their right.
Well we are talking about a company's right to assert a trademark. This is a rights-based discussion.... it affects our rights in the sense of how names can be trademarked and whether a body seeking to claim a "trademark" which has been in common vernacular for a number of years has the right to assert the aforementioned ownership to that name....
I am curious why this article wasn't filed as "Your Rights Online". Maybe I am missing the boat here, but this seems to be an IP-related discussion and not a technical issue.
It may be a more practical thought excercise to understand what happeneed to BG and decide whether this popularity of this show is because it is in a genre which garners its survival from this sort of fan loyalty or not. Translation: Star Wars, Star Trek.... fans tend to be far more engrossed into the world these shows create then, say, a football game. There is plenty of content which doesn't require one to be so engrossed to enjoy it.
I could be wrong, but I feel the debate should be more case-by-case and content-centric than it is currently.
Has anyone who has read the C|Net article considered the source of this statement:
"Sony has not said when it will release its next-generation console, tentatively named PS3, although industry watchers generally expect it to hit stores sometime next year."
Who are these industry watchers, anyway? Yes, this seems to be the buzz that's about the net, but let's be fair minded here and assume that products can launch when they're not expected to, or not at all, and have in the past (think Duke Nukem Forever, and other vainglorious examples of vaporware in various technological fields).
"I don't expect to give up downloading TV shows anytime soon. The real kicker is that if the broadcasters would instead offer bittorents of the shows (with a few commercials to pay for them) at the same time they are broadcast, they would beat the groups that are ripping them soley for "respect" from peers. AND they would have the control they are so desperately seeking."
This is the do-it-because-you-can argument. While you did not explicitly say that there are not more reasons people rip this content, the implication by this post is that this is the most significant reason. I can guarantee plenty of people download this content (which, let's remember, is technically ILLEGAL to do in this fashion) for utilitarian reasons: they want to watch it. Such existential arguments for file sharing always escaped me. To summarize: people download illegal content because they "need" aka want it by and large, and not to "hack the planet" like a 21st century version of the movie which the common public uses to pigeonhole anyone who can turn on a computer without scratching their head.
"TV shows are about the only thing I download via bittorrent (and a few books), mainly because I can't watch when shows are on, and it is more convenient than my DVR. The shows I watch already have logos from TV stations, etc., why not run a "drink coke" banner at the bottom from time to time instead?"
These banners are drawing more and more ire from the viewing public. Furors have ensued over enlarged banners for such purposes on sports events on major networks for the past five years or so. The question of how to recoup loss from this activity by the viewing public seems to be the question you are driving at, and that is an interesting discussion.... as present methods seem to be ineffective. I am surprised improving the actual content doesn't come across anyone's mind.... but that's a discussion for another day maybe?
"If they were really smart, they would also provide their own bittorrent tracker server (complete with Google/Overture ads), making it unnecessary for me to go to other sites and be "tempted" to download music and movies as well."
Sure, you could do this. Somehow, the host makes money from it, whether through advertising on the page with the tracker, or some kind of subscription service. What stops Johnny Filesharing from turning around and sharing the file himself? A robust DRM schema for video files is not yet upon us, so doing this would centralize the distribution of television content, but do nothing to ameliorate the losses suffered by these networks.
Why the heck not? Isn't technology able to be improved?
Do you still use punch cards for I/O? NO!!!!! They technically worked. Non-standard UIs are modern punch cards. Room for improvement exists with stramlining and standardization.
While I do understand the sentiment, it is quite clear from viewing any public facility with a computer that you will find more gold in another gold rush to California than Linux desktop users.
This is quite distressing, as great UI's like Gnome, KDE, and so on exist. It seems to be consensus that some form of X will be used ad the underlying foundation for any UI for Linux. Try explaining this to the typical Wintel user, that they can view an operating system in more than one way!? PERPOSTEROUS!
The Linux community needs a strong thrust into one UI. The purists can quibble all they like (I, being a purist and valuing my choice of UI in Linux, will do just that), but just one needs enough development attention to truly thrust it into the mainstream, and needs the marketing muscle to make it palatable to the Wintel trolls with the blinders only seeing what's right in front of their faces.
This is the dilemma. This is what holds Linux back from taking Microsoft and beating the ever loving **** out of it. You get over this bump, and Microsoft will be seeking patents like candy bars at break time (Oh no! They already DO THAT!) to save themselves.
Until then, it must be recognized that Microsoft rules the OS universe to the average end user, or anybody looking for the easy way out as opposed to proper configuration, security, and maintenance practices. We must move on with this knowledge, and seek to equalize the balance of OSS and, sadly, FUD. We can't just jump from A to B.
This is the perfectly valid criticism to which I was referring, minus the anti-OSS troll of course.
ROLAP queries are quite useful... then again, so are subqueries, which I actually use more in my daily life, but ROLAP certainly is a valid way to do things. Distributed databases? I can't speak to those because I have never used one.
Slashdot Mirror
At 59 million users, how is it not already a target in the manner which you describe?
I appreciate the sentiment, but fail to see how 59 million users does not meet criterion for widespread public adoption.
Simple economic history dictates that when the market share of a commodity is growing in contrast to previous market trends, there is a potential for upheaval of the containing market to the point of equilibrium between the contender and the incumbent market force.
Translation: Firefox grows quickly. IE's growth is stagnant. Who knows how much more ground IE can lose? The closer the margin gets, the more porting you will see.
Economics is a social science concerned not only with the present but past and future. I know: I studied it for years.
This is a solution, but not for a Windows user. One should be careful not to restrict security concerns of the type in this post to *nix platforms: most of the security breaches of this type happen on the Windows platform first, especially in the IE case (due to its popularity).
While I understand the point that Mr. Sheets is making, however, I disagree with his definition of safe.
The implication of this article stems in the absolutes of security: can it ward off intruders or not. This is a flawed approach, and while seemingly a logical one, denounces another reality of this level of breach: the lion's share of these breaches are not of the most malicious sort (read: that stupid data miner which causes popups, search bars from hell, etc). These kind of easily hackable sections of Internet Explorer are less prevalent in Firefox. Market forces of the sheer user base would dictate that if this were not so, more spyware would have been ported to Firefox by now. 25 million downloads, right? That's a sizable chunk for any malware vendor, or aspiring intruder, to infiltrate.
One must acknowledge the reality of security by statistics alongside security by absolutes.
I applaud this effort by Microsoft to fix what seems to be a service which has experienced the exposition of a host of security problems since its inception by allowing for increased accountability of abusers of the Hotmail service. If I am correct, Hotmail email addresses generate the most spam on the internet, or at least have in the past. Whether this is because they have such a large user base or the security flaws aforementioned is debatable, but irrespective of this fact, accountability should be encouraged at all levels of the spamming process, from creation to transmission.
The Semantic Web appears to be a budding server-side solution to the paradigm of information glut online. Social bookmarking appears to be a client-side solution to the paradigm of information glut online.
It is refreshing to see exciting new solutions to the problems we have at present of targeted information retrieval on the internet. I can remember years of stagnation in this field (read: early 90's), and any change from today's google-and-pray searching mentality among the majority of end-users will be welcome.
A second front for Nvidia to fight on... hmmm.
I wonder how well Nvidia can keep up with trying to innovate in the high-end market against ATI if they are busy trying to corner a new subdivision of the graphics market. Considering how revolutionary NVIDIA and ATI chipsets have been to high-end gaming in the past few years, it would be a shame if high-end innovation was slowed or delayed due to all the exciting changes of the recent past, present, and projected future.
Just a thought...
This is yet another crucial shot across the bow for the coming media wars. With 850GB storage, however, competing formats have an interesting road ahead of them.
Well, this just proves that money isn't everything. Around the time of the merger, one of the largest corporations on earth was being created. It was the greatest thing to happen to the corner of Wall and Broad in decades. Stock analysts gushed over the seemingly invincible titan.
What on earth happened?
It seems that AOL has lost its unique luster... the early days of the burgeoning internet long since past. The prime days of AOL were seen when there was no other way for Johnny Nontechie to get information from the internet with any kind of ease of use. It, arguably, represented one of the first comprehensive portals accessible to the end-user.
The Internet grew, and AOL stopped being so unique. A failure to diversify and many flawed versions of the AOL software later, its popularity has waned. Time Warner has diversified its Roadrunner offering to add portal features, and so has everybody and their mother....
Absorbing antiquated business models in lateral merger never makes for a good formula unless you plan to do something with the antiquated business model (you know, innovation and the like?). Was it planned to boost Roadrunner's position? Was it a lack of foresight? Who knows.
It will mercifully end soon enough, this failed experiment.
And, for the first time ever, I have used my translator in Dashboard!!! :D
On a serious note, it seems to me to be readily apparent the best RAID setup on the face of the Earth can be absolutely evicerated by a poor driver. There seems to be no profundity in saying that, and these benchmarks seem to be a result of this.
I am open to correction on this one, of course.
This seems obvious, but the original intent of the cell phone is being lost amongst a myriad of features that may not be necessary. Those who bought the cell phone to make phone calls (something on which I hope we can all agree is a sizable number) will be sorely disappointed when their talk time is cut in half because media has to be able to stream to their phone... We must reserve the utmost caution in adding these new features to devices randomly without taking into consideration their adverse effects on the other uses of the potentially modified devices.
This opens up a relevant question of just how much collusion of our communications and multimedia entities we want, and what steps must we take to be guarded about the possible negative effects of the aforementioned collusion?
Translation: When news media became more centralized, it raised heated debates and exposed grievous issues. What would happen in the world proposed here?
I see all these new mobile technologies develop. Mobile web access, 3G networks, multimedia content, picture mail.... these are all well and good.
What I question is why there isn't more urgency on working on the increasingly insufficient battery life of the modern mobile device. This is not restricted to cell phones, either, but is particularly relevant in this case. The more features we jam-pack into these phones, the more and more our talk time (which is why we call these devices cellular telephones and not something else: they should make phone calls) tanks. Granted, much technological innovation and research is being done globally with hydrogen fuel cells, increasing efficiency of solar technologies, etc.... but the effort spent adding another gimmick (or feature, whichever is less offensive to you) is wasted when this mobile power problem for these devices seems ever the more relevant....
Though the possibility of watching Scrubs at work to make my bosses that much madder at me seems enticing....
Seriously, we should dedicate more energy to the mobile power problem.
The introduction of social bookmarking was ahead of its time. However, with the phenomena of blogging, podcasting, and the like, a revisiting of this idea is a welcome change to our never-ending search for better quality in our instant information-accessing ways. I see some mention about this topic of likening social bookmarking to a search engine, but I fail to see it. A search engine starts with the assumption you have a big pile of mess you need to plod through to find what you want, and casts the widest net possible to do it. While social bookmarking also addresses this assumption, the search for the content you want does not begin in a randomized mess. I have also heard the phrase P2P for categorized search engines, allowing each person who participates to do some of the sorting for you, saving you from the cast-the-widest-net-possible approach of our most popular search engines; a seemingly valid point. I can see social bookmarking doing for searching what RSS did for syndicated news online. I, quite frankly, hope it does.
I understand your point, however, Hormel is run by human beings, and my point follows that logic. Companies cannot be treated as isolated intangibles for the purposes of this discussion: a group of humans are asserting what is perceived as their right.
Well we are talking about a company's right to assert a trademark. This is a rights-based discussion.... it affects our rights in the sense of how names can be trademarked and whether a body seeking to claim a "trademark" which has been in common vernacular for a number of years has the right to assert the aforementioned ownership to that name....
How is this not a rights issue?
I am curious why this article wasn't filed as "Your Rights Online". Maybe I am missing the boat here, but this seems to be an IP-related discussion and not a technical issue.
The food of my horrible, lonely geek life destroys my keyboard! :P
It may be a more practical thought excercise to understand what happeneed to BG and decide whether this popularity of this show is because it is in a genre which garners its survival from this sort of fan loyalty or not. Translation: Star Wars, Star Trek.... fans tend to be far more engrossed into the world these shows create then, say, a football game. There is plenty of content which doesn't require one to be so engrossed to enjoy it.
I could be wrong, but I feel the debate should be more case-by-case and content-centric than it is currently.
The Four Horsemen have been sighted today in an undisclosed location...
Has anyone who has read the C|Net article considered the source of this statement: "Sony has not said when it will release its next-generation console, tentatively named PS3, although industry watchers generally expect it to hit stores sometime next year." Who are these industry watchers, anyway? Yes, this seems to be the buzz that's about the net, but let's be fair minded here and assume that products can launch when they're not expected to, or not at all, and have in the past (think Duke Nukem Forever, and other vainglorious examples of vaporware in various technological fields).
"I don't expect to give up downloading TV shows anytime soon. The real kicker is that if the broadcasters would instead offer bittorents of the shows (with a few commercials to pay for them) at the same time they are broadcast, they would beat the groups that are ripping them soley for "respect" from peers. AND they would have the control they are so desperately seeking."
This is the do-it-because-you-can argument. While you did not explicitly say that there are not more reasons people rip this content, the implication by this post is that this is the most significant reason. I can guarantee plenty of people download this content (which, let's remember, is technically ILLEGAL to do in this fashion) for utilitarian reasons: they want to watch it. Such existential arguments for file sharing always escaped me. To summarize: people download illegal content because they "need" aka want it by and large, and not to "hack the planet" like a 21st century version of the movie which the common public uses to pigeonhole anyone who can turn on a computer without scratching their head.
"TV shows are about the only thing I download via bittorrent (and a few books), mainly because I can't watch when shows are on, and it is more convenient than my DVR. The shows I watch already have logos from TV stations, etc., why not run a "drink coke" banner at the bottom from time to time instead?"
These banners are drawing more and more ire from the viewing public. Furors have ensued over enlarged banners for such purposes on sports events on major networks for the past five years or so. The question of how to recoup loss from this activity by the viewing public seems to be the question you are driving at, and that is an interesting discussion.... as present methods seem to be ineffective. I am surprised improving the actual content doesn't come across anyone's mind.... but that's a discussion for another day maybe?
"If they were really smart, they would also provide their own bittorrent tracker server (complete with Google/Overture ads), making it unnecessary for me to go to other sites and be "tempted" to download music and movies as well."
Sure, you could do this. Somehow, the host makes money from it, whether through advertising on the page with the tracker, or some kind of subscription service. What stops Johnny Filesharing from turning around and sharing the file himself? A robust DRM schema for video files is not yet upon us, so doing this would centralize the distribution of television content, but do nothing to ameliorate the losses suffered by these networks.
Why make C++ out of C? Linux from Unix?
Why the heck not? Isn't technology able to be improved?
Do you still use punch cards for I/O? NO!!!!! They technically worked. Non-standard UIs are modern punch cards. Room for improvement exists with stramlining and standardization.
You status quo people kill innovation...
While I do understand the sentiment, it is quite clear from viewing any public facility with a computer that you will find more gold in another gold rush to California than Linux desktop users. This is quite distressing, as great UI's like Gnome, KDE, and so on exist. It seems to be consensus that some form of X will be used ad the underlying foundation for any UI for Linux. Try explaining this to the typical Wintel user, that they can view an operating system in more than one way!? PERPOSTEROUS! The Linux community needs a strong thrust into one UI. The purists can quibble all they like (I, being a purist and valuing my choice of UI in Linux, will do just that), but just one needs enough development attention to truly thrust it into the mainstream, and needs the marketing muscle to make it palatable to the Wintel trolls with the blinders only seeing what's right in front of their faces. This is the dilemma. This is what holds Linux back from taking Microsoft and beating the ever loving **** out of it. You get over this bump, and Microsoft will be seeking patents like candy bars at break time (Oh no! They already DO THAT!) to save themselves. Until then, it must be recognized that Microsoft rules the OS universe to the average end user, or anybody looking for the easy way out as opposed to proper configuration, security, and maintenance practices. We must move on with this knowledge, and seek to equalize the balance of OSS and, sadly, FUD. We can't just jump from A to B.
This is the perfectly valid criticism to which I was referring, minus the anti-OSS troll of course.
ROLAP queries are quite useful... then again, so are subqueries, which I actually use more in my daily life, but ROLAP certainly is a valid way to do things. Distributed databases? I can't speak to those because I have never used one.