where do i see a demo to see whether something like this is even worth implementing? i looked all over the page:(. this is something i may want to take a stab at, but no clue what end product is.
Really, on a scale from one to ten, the ipod was a 4 of innovation. It was the marketing campaign behind the product, and the incremental improvements over ipod generations that really made it a good/smart product.
A real disruptive technology: a portable mp3 player with 30 hours of battery life, bluetooth for wireless headphones, with a powerful enough of a UI and cellular access, allowing you to purchase songs as you hear them. Imagine if it could hear 5-10 seconds of a song, identify it by recording it into the product, and then it will download it for you, automatically billing it to your credit card or the debit points you have.
You'll notice I did not include that it should be a cell phone. Sometimes, a product doesn't have to do 80 things, but rather 1 or 2 very well.
you have a good point, but with the prices of computer parts having come down over the past few years and the introduction of plug and play, it's not long before the PC does what the console does and more. but the console market is bigger and hence, developers will always introduce games on console first, so you are right:)
Is it me or are console and portable game releases ridiculously overhyped? That's a rhetorical question, because I know that I have been reading about DS, PSP, PS3, XBOX360 for way too long now, and with little substance. Let me elaborate:
slashdot, engadget, and boingboing posters spend a year arguing about whether an Xbox360 will cost $300 or $1200 or somewhere inbetween. Will the DS battery life last 1 hour or 72 hours? I myself am guilty, because I am interested in technology and video games.
But when the freakin thing comes out with limited games, burns carpets, and does not seem like a huge jump above current PC technology (talking about 360 not DS), I am a little disappointed. For example, I have an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ with an ATI X800 video card and can run Need for Speed Hot Pursuit to look and feel almost the same as the XBOX 360. When a PC can do all the 360 can do and more, and a laptop can do all the DS can do and more, why do people bother spending money on these gadgets? Surely, teaching a kid how to use a PC (gaming included) is bestoying upon him/her a much broader skillset than showing him/her how to use a DS or PSP. In fact, the recent announcement that Opera is going to port its browser to the DS underscores this point that PCs are superior.
How about making consoles do unique things with videogames? Offer cool accessories like video game goggles that immerse the gamer in their experience; or the possibility of betting on live game matches and using those points towards something tangible? This might be a rant but I just don't see the point...anyone?
I took a $15k pay cut to work at a hip retail start-up. I was an R&D consultant and now I do business development...10x more fun, 10x better people...but the pay cut hurts.
Everything is a trade-off -- no job is perfect, but you can certainly work towards your ideal job. The only problem is what comes next after you realize what you thought was ideal actually isn't so great at all.
I would agree with you, except that many Google analysts and employees themselves, when asked about the long-lasting beta status of Google news, offered one informational nugget:
Google calls software beta when it has not yet figured out a way to turn a profit out of it. Google News, for example, was created without an obvious profit mechanism in mind. Once it was released into beta, Google couldn't figure out a way to make money off of it since all the content (with the exception of news headlines) is hosted on partner sites. For something like Google Video Store, Google is hard-pressed to claim that it is not pulling a profit, especially after it has been around for a little while.
My prediction? It will be tweaked soon and then taken out of beta.
Now that's irony: he wrote a comment mocking the "slashdot is dying" comments and another dude replied with a "shashdot is dying" comment.
IMHO, slashdot is still great -- sure there are false "coming soon" entries and sometimes I hear it at boingboing 3 days earlier, but the genius of the site is in the democratic modding system. Depending on the story, the comments are 30-45% more important than the story itself because they draw on a huge knowledge base that whomever wrote the referenced article cannot.
Randall, I would agree with you except there was a time before Firefox when IE was not the best product out there and yet Microsoft shipped IE with Windows instead of with Netscape. Why did they do this? Because they wanted a majority of Windows internet users to come through their portal and ultimately help their bottom line...
There's nothing wrong with being a monopoly, but when you choose to give your customer an inferior product just because it gives you dominance, that is an anti-customer policy, isn't it?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't solving a problem like this create more information than you previously had? And wouldn't you have to index that information and so on and so forth?
Also, can someone explain to me how you even approach something like this from a mathematical model point of view? How did the 170 terrabyte number even come up? Aren't there different definitions for what constitutes 'information?' Also, who the hell spent their 20% on this problem when there was integral code for vital programs to write, such as Google Suggest and Google Suggest in Japanese?
PLEASE, SOMEONE EXPLAIN BEFORE I GO OFF INTO MORE OF A FLAMEBAIT RANT!
just because mozilla can react quicker to security flaws found in its browser, doesn't make Symantec's report that greater security flaws are being found in Firefox less valid.
it's a rarity to see ZDNet make that kind of mistake.
oil is inherently a finite resource. the US government is always reluctant to fund alternate sources of automobile fuel until an absolute oil crisis is on the horizon. sure, the hybrid thing is a stop-gap solution, but at least it pushes a little against the suppliers and can temporarily delay price increases while we work towards a more permanent solution (maybe fuel cell, but it's just too damn expensive now to be viable for private consumers).
for those of you who tell me this gas problem is only temporary and that we need to innovate to improve oil extraction productivity, bear in mind that this is not the oil shock of the 70s: we now have a strong China and India on the scene, who do not help OPEC's wheeling and dealing of supply/demand. those countries' demand will not go away, and for the short term, neither will the political unrest in the Middle East which threatens our supply of crude. c'mon thinking we can stabilize the Middle East is like Englishmen talking about actively Westernizing China: people have been trying unsuccessfully for so many years; what makes you think you can do it?
having worked for an R&D consulting firm, i often spoke with the big gas extracting and refining firms. they are so hesitant to move into a new technology because they keep getting paid for gas. i can see where they're coming from. still, the smartest companies practice technology roadmapping to allocate resources towards the development of a disruptive technology (read Xerox copy machines, VOIP) which will leave their competitors in the dust. so yes, it does make business sense to diversify and innovate, but large public companies are reluctant to allocate too many resources towards these activities because they are busy meeting quarterly earnings requirements and satisfying their stakeholders.
with the big companies unable to wholly fund alternate fuel R&D efforts, the onus lies on the US government to help fund these programs. yet, non-defense/DARPA funding towards science programs has been cut. i wonder where that money is going?
OHHH:
tie fighters
it's a bit of a catch-22; i only wish it was as funny as the book.
bits and bytes are a lot easier than print to manipulate.
perhaps, but on the client side, bits and bytes are much more difficult to deny access to simply because they are easier to copy, and hence, more accessible, right?
i too can quote a novel from high school english class here. In Fahrenheit 451, they burnt hordes of books successfully, did they not?
Slashdot Mirror
Read it!
where do i see a demo to see whether something like this is even worth implementing? i looked all over the page :(. this is something i may want to take a stab at, but no clue what end product is.
testicles.
Really, on a scale from one to ten, the ipod was a 4 of innovation. It was the marketing campaign behind the product, and the incremental improvements over ipod generations that really made it a good/smart product.
A real disruptive technology: a portable mp3 player with 30 hours of battery life, bluetooth for wireless headphones, with a powerful enough of a UI and cellular access, allowing you to purchase songs as you hear them. Imagine if it could hear 5-10 seconds of a song, identify it by recording it into the product, and then it will download it for you, automatically billing it to your credit card or the debit points you have.
You'll notice I did not include that it should be a cell phone. Sometimes, a product doesn't have to do 80 things, but rather 1 or 2 very well.
post
you have a good point, but with the prices of computer parts having come down over the past few years and the introduction of plug and play, it's not long before the PC does what the console does and more. but the console market is bigger and hence, developers will always introduce games on console first, so you are right :)
slashdot, engadget, and boingboing posters spend a year arguing about whether an Xbox360 will cost $300 or $1200 or somewhere inbetween. Will the DS battery life last 1 hour or 72 hours? I myself am guilty, because I am interested in technology and video games.
But when the freakin thing comes out with limited games, burns carpets, and does not seem like a huge jump above current PC technology (talking about 360 not DS), I am a little disappointed. For example, I have an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ with an ATI X800 video card and can run Need for Speed Hot Pursuit to look and feel almost the same as the XBOX 360. When a PC can do all the 360 can do and more, and a laptop can do all the DS can do and more, why do people bother spending money on these gadgets? Surely, teaching a kid how to use a PC (gaming included) is bestoying upon him/her a much broader skillset than showing him/her how to use a DS or PSP. In fact, the recent announcement that Opera is going to port its browser to the DS underscores this point that PCs are superior.
How about making consoles do unique things with videogames? Offer cool accessories like video game goggles that immerse the gamer in their experience; or the possibility of betting on live game matches and using those points towards something tangible? This might be a rant but I just don't see the point...anyone?
I took a $15k pay cut to work at a hip retail start-up. I was an R&D consultant and now I do business development...10x more fun, 10x better people...but the pay cut hurts.
Everything is a trade-off -- no job is perfect, but you can certainly work towards your ideal job. The only problem is what comes next after you realize what you thought was ideal actually isn't so great at all.
Google calls software beta when it has not yet figured out a way to turn a profit out of it. Google News, for example, was created without an obvious profit mechanism in mind. Once it was released into beta, Google couldn't figure out a way to make money off of it since all the content (with the exception of news headlines) is hosted on partner sites. For something like Google Video Store, Google is hard-pressed to claim that it is not pulling a profit, especially after it has been around for a little while.
My prediction? It will be tweaked soon and then taken out of beta.
pimp?
Now that's irony: he wrote a comment mocking the "slashdot is dying" comments and another dude replied with a "shashdot is dying" comment.
IMHO, slashdot is still great -- sure there are false "coming soon" entries and sometimes I hear it at boingboing 3 days earlier, but the genius of the site is in the democratic modding system. Depending on the story, the comments are 30-45% more important than the story itself because they draw on a huge knowledge base that whomever wrote the referenced article cannot.
are you employing that new literary tool...the name escapes me...sarcasm?
Randall, I would agree with you except there was a time before Firefox when IE was not the best product out there and yet Microsoft shipped IE with Windows instead of with Netscape. Why did they do this? Because they wanted a majority of Windows internet users to come through their portal and ultimately help their bottom line...
There's nothing wrong with being a monopoly, but when you choose to give your customer an inferior product just because it gives you dominance, that is an anti-customer policy, isn't it?
I, for one, am outraged. Could you imagine if Microsoft did the same thing and had Internet Explorer installed on every new computer?
Oh wait...
sometimes i wonder if there will ever be a slashdot thread without at least one google comment :)
Also, can someone explain to me how you even approach something like this from a mathematical model point of view? How did the 170 terrabyte number even come up? Aren't there different definitions for what constitutes 'information?' Also, who the hell spent their 20% on this problem when there was integral code for vital programs to write, such as Google Suggest and Google Suggest in Japanese?
PLEASE, SOMEONE EXPLAIN BEFORE I GO OFF INTO MORE OF A FLAMEBAIT RANT!
just because mozilla can react quicker to security flaws found in its browser, doesn't make Symantec's report that greater security flaws are being found in Firefox less valid.
it's a rarity to see ZDNet make that kind of mistake.
oil is inherently a finite resource. the US government is always reluctant to fund alternate sources of automobile fuel until an absolute oil crisis is on the horizon. sure, the hybrid thing is a stop-gap solution, but at least it pushes a little against the suppliers and can temporarily delay price increases while we work towards a more permanent solution (maybe fuel cell, but it's just too damn expensive now to be viable for private consumers).
for those of you who tell me this gas problem is only temporary and that we need to innovate to improve oil extraction productivity, bear in mind that this is not the oil shock of the 70s: we now have a strong China and India on the scene, who do not help OPEC's wheeling and dealing of supply/demand. those countries' demand will not go away, and for the short term, neither will the political unrest in the Middle East which threatens our supply of crude. c'mon thinking we can stabilize the Middle East is like Englishmen talking about actively Westernizing China: people have been trying unsuccessfully for so many years; what makes you think you can do it?
having worked for an R&D consulting firm, i often spoke with the big gas extracting and refining firms. they are so hesitant to move into a new technology because they keep getting paid for gas. i can see where they're coming from. still, the smartest companies practice technology roadmapping to allocate resources towards the development of a disruptive technology (read Xerox copy machines, VOIP) which will leave their competitors in the dust. so yes, it does make business sense to diversify and innovate, but large public companies are reluctant to allocate too many resources towards these activities because they are busy meeting quarterly earnings requirements and satisfying their stakeholders.
with the big companies unable to wholly fund alternate fuel R&D efforts, the onus lies on the US government to help fund these programs. yet, non-defense/DARPA funding towards science programs has been cut. i wonder where that money is going?
OHHH:
tie fighters it's a bit of a catch-22; i only wish it was as funny as the book.
woot
it's in spanish and here is the transoogle, erm, googlation:
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&sl=es&u=ht tp://www.aromeo.net/archives/cat_telematics.html&p rev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.aromeo.net/archives/c at_telematics.html%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff% 26sa%3DG
do i take the red or blue pill?
Someone has a crush on a company and biases make for shitty news
...in related news, the stock of Sanford, creator of the Sharpie market pen, has soared to record levels.
Just kidding, Sanford is not a publically traded company.
respek
perhaps, but on the client side, bits and bytes are much more difficult to deny access to simply because they are easier to copy, and hence, more accessible, right?
i too can quote a novel from high school english class here. In Fahrenheit 451, they burnt hordes of books successfully, did they not?
it's good to see someone is doing their reading =P