I don't want to bust this guy's bubble, but let me give it a try anyway. The problem that he describes is part 'peter principle' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle and part of the culture of bad leadership that infests (at least western cultures) big business.
The trouble is not what you think. Modern western businesses are generally run like the military, at least in form if not function. This puts too much control in the hands of those who are not proven fit to lead. The problem of good people moving on is prevalent in ALL industries, including the all volunteer military, forklift drivers, plumbers, restaurant managers... on and on and on. It has nothing to do with IT other than its affect on IT.
Bad leadership is the problem, and it spills out of corporate offices like stink from a blocked sewer pipe of grand proportions.
Hiring decisions are effected via budget restraints and leadership decisions between what amounts to two basic waring factions within the company: The IT shop and the HR group.
When you start to think of modern corporate businesses like armies you can see how things go wrong. It only takes one bad lieutenant to totally fuckup the battlefield. With field promotions, that Lt. gets to a spot that s/he doesn't belong and it becomes more short term pain to replace them than to let them carry on fucking things up. Bad leadership chooses to avoid short term pain. If sports teams were run the same way they would never win anything (sorry NY).
The problem is bad leadership. end. of. story.
With good leadership, all the other problems can be mitigated or removed.
CWAN Community Wide Area Network. You might go with Community Metropolitan Area Network but that would lend itself to being called c-man... no good.
Then later, outside of the East-Central Vermont CWAN project, you can add the South-Western Vermont CWAN
I'd stop short of calling it VCWAN in case McCain starts getting flashbacks.
Technically Grid or MAN describe what you are trying to make. Metropolitan Area Network is an old term. You could put an F on the front for Fiber, FGrid or FMAN instead of CWAN...
Finding a name is a good problem to have. Wish they had that problem around here
I read this a few times and it bothered me a lot.
Windows is getting better, as long as you keep up with patches How many people do you think actually patch? What percent of home users do you think actually have valid updated antivirus software running? Seriously, on face value what you say makes sense except for the fact that there are tons of unpatched, unprotected systems out there still. It just is NOT safe to assume that everyone is doing the normal stuff that you are supposed to do with a computer. Gasp... car analogy: some people don't even change their car's oil every 3000 miles. Radiator flush? what's that? What in hell makes you think that people are protecting their systems? Got some facts, stats, etc.?
Can we sign you up for a speaking tour in D.C. ? Huh? please? Someone needs to spend some time... well, a whole LOT of fucking time in D.C. writing this in soap on legislators car windows and stuff.
While you are up there, can you stop in and see the gang of nine in the courthouse, perhaps explain these intartubewebtrucks to them?
Not sure about all that, but when I had my TSEC it would not have been allowed to open secured data traffic to the Internet in any way shape or form. ELINT (USAF electronics spy types) would have laughed at such, then eyed you suspiciously for suggesting it. The military, my friends, is securely running on a darknet which requires more than will power and a h4x0rz kit to get into. This is all about scaring up some more money and a few more personal freedoms in the name of security from the evil terrorists, only this time it's a run up to take away some of your online rights and privacy. Don't even be fooled by the bullshit.
If the military was as susceptible as they might lead you to believe, they'd still be trying to stop spam emails from pouring out of the RNC servers. Holy shit man, if they were hackable someone on the NYT would already be posting the 'lost RNC emails' if you know what I mean... geez
I was commenting earlier about how many businesses are going to fail in the recession due to tight margins now that won't maintain them under duress of less custom.
If, and IMO, IF they want to stay relevant and solvent, what they need to do is keep away from lock-in business models and get on with 'we work with anything' business models. Yes, that would make for weak competition according to some, but if all you had to do was go to Blockbuster and ask the tech guy what to do to get all the movies you can handle, then sign up for their business/app/service they would only win.
Even better if the same system they sell or advocate supports anything else that is not damned^H^H^H^H DRM'd.... but sadly, big business doesn't think that way, no, they want everyone's share of the pie, or at least everyone eating from their pie and nobody else's. Shame really, they have a lot of assets/resources to push the home video/DVR arena into common practice.
Need some stats to glue you to that posh office chair you're sitting in? Try the CDC for mortality statistics http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm and watch how botnets blur into needless crap worthy of Fox News.
On the other hand, you are only hearing about the botnets that are reported! The ones that stay stealthy and only do a little espionage now and then are not reported... say from the USAF Cyber Defense Command!? Since MS et al are so cozy with the NSA these bots probably don't even register with detection software packages.
As stated, watch some port 25 traffic to see if you are spewing spam everywhere. Who knows what port the really nasty botnets are using. No, it's not tin foil I'm wearing on my head!!
Just because you're paranoid does NOT mean they are not out to get you. We've seen cable cuts, military attacks on various other-country establishments, industrial espionage from Israel, Chinese cyber attacks and all manner of oddities on the Internet.
I said it first: Recession will make the Internet more important than it is now. Cyber attackers will mature, and their attacks and goals will change also. Identity theft is peanuts if you can get inside a bank, a federal bank etc.
Think of it... 25 cents per transaction run through a large backend company for Visa? THAT is big money. Doesn't have to be a credit card company either.. just a large institution. Say the billing system of your local electric company gets hacked, and 25 cents per bill is being funneled off to Estonia? If you think it couldn't happen and is not happening, remind yourself how torture in the USA couldn't happen either!
Well, the 'gets it' part will be something of an afterthought as most retail industries are (or should be) preparing to dig in and wait out the recession (it's official now... nearly) and the wrath it brings to the currently propped up consumerism in Westernized societies.
Energy is taking a huge hit, and the knock on from that will begin happening as current stocks dwindle and must be replaced. In 6 months you will see a lot more online activity though free shipping might become a once useful dream. As adverse as Americans are to exercise, 'let your fingers do the walking' may get repurposed from old ads to new uses on the Internet.
When the retail spaces begin to implode, less traffic in the mall means less traffic to all of the stores. The Internet is going to have a huge role to play in the recovery process of the US if not more countries. While it is too costly to go cruising around in your SUV, cruising the Internet will be acceptable, and during and after the recovery process, it will remain as a way to find what you want from who you want it. Most brick and mortar operations already have Internet presence and it will become more important. Tagging along with that will be the industries that are forced by market forces to follow suit and bolster their Internet presence. This will lead to new business models and expansion of current 'gets it' models.
For artists, this means that Internet exposure becomes the new wave of posting bills on the side of telephone polls. Giving away stuff to get people to attend the concerts will be more prevalent, and you will see this in other industries also as the now highly mobile society in North America becomes a bit more isolated from the hustle and bustle of in your face interactions. Already people are not spending as much as they did last year, they worry about what they are spending on. You will have to give them free stuff to get their attention as many of them will only be looking at free stuff. Just putting your name and logo in their face 40 times a day won't do it.
Remember the last recession? That started an entire marketing ploy industry of get 20% more for free and other tricky things that have morphed into ways of making you think you really get something for free that are still with us today.
As the recession bites harder, selling anything but groceries and gas will become more difficult and those industries that are not willing to, or are unable to bribe customers into their shops or onto their website will be the real losers. Remember that in tough times, people begin to spend only on things they 'need' rather than on things they want. The Internet is thought of as free (fixed cost) so there will be more time spent on it, further entrenching some Internet technologies and industries. That will be where those businesses that want to succeed will go now. To not go there is foolish IMO.
Think of it like this: It costs nothing to come shop online in our Second Life store, or on our website, and if you spend more than $50, we'll give you a 15% discount in any of our stores... good for 45 days from date of purchase.
You as an artist... start something viral: offer to give anyone with more than 20 of your songs on their MP3 player a voucher for a libation at the concert. Yeah, sounds like you're paying them to download your music, but it's at the concert that you make your money on shirts and concessions.
Right now, in the early running, anyone that is tagging up with IBM's efforts is probably going to vault over the recession into the new digital era with grace and style. Google-partners will also.
The current white-knight issue with Yahoo will end up being a very big issue in 6 months. The Internet as a market place is consolidating just as other industries have in the last decade. This is both good and problematic. Google is about to prove that anyone can have a web-based email account but only if you are a gmail user do you have real convenience and power.
Now, I'd say that your opinion should carry some weight around these parts. Clearly you understand that it's not about free vs. expensive music, it's about the bullying criminal tactics of those that don't want anyone to have anything for free, that don't want to change their business model to suit the new markets.
IMO, you are part of the new guard, the wave of artists that gets it. Soon, not just music/movie artists will find it difficult to make mega-bucks from their craft, so will athletes and others who are making way more than they should.
This is not necessarily because of the digital age in some cases, but recession means fewer ticket sales etc. The digital age will in turn cap their market worth as well. The further that the sports industry goes into the digital age, the more it will change the very nature of their business. My guess is that many such industries have reached their peak capital performance values and are stagnating or slowly in decline. Much revenue is based on advertising and THAT has drastically changed. The entertainment industries on the other side of the advertising will have to follow suit, if not now then sometime in the VERY near future.
They adapted to color television, cable tv, advertising changes... they will have to adapt or die. Right now the NFL et al don't seem to be doing much better than the **AA, but I'm hoping they are watching the news and paying VERY close attention to how well it has worked out for the **AA so far.
Where are the details? I've seen several attempts to use such data, and the way that traffic works, the slow-down is clear by the time it is posted to the Internet, and what shows green is red when you get there. Without a tactical HUD and real time data, such things are little more than novelties.
Everyday I drive past one intersection that has a slow down on good days. When there are traffic problems ahead, you cannot tell until you are in the traffic jam already. Normally, it takes 2-3 minutes and you're moving again. Some days it's merely a slow-down. Traffic analysis will never show when that stretch of road is fully in congestion and the only prudent course is to get off the highway.
I don't even care how many volunteers were in the study, modeling traffic has been done before and it does not predict the daily problems that you have to deal with.
Nothing short of a HUD with real time data will help. Well, voice assistance from a system with real time data will help also, doesn't require a HUD.
The point is that modeling won't do it. Only monitoring in real time will do it. Without real time data, by the time you get to the decision point half the other drivers are already clogging your escape route.
That's all I have to say about anyone that can store then entirety of his life in one terabyte. Shit, that won't even store the copies of Windows that he has installed.
Yes, I know that is not the kind of thing you save, but from what I've seen when people have digital space to store things, they collect more things. They never worry about space until they run out.
"... oh, well then do you think I should get the 300GB drive?" says one little lady I know who just wants to have room for her 'stuff'. Yes, most of it is pictures and jokes. She is 65, has the address of some 3500 friends and letters and stuff she has written, including the manuscript from a book she had published. If she were to collect everything... well, 1 TByte isn't going to cut the mustard. Only the FSM knows how much room she'd need if she had grandchildren.
1 - embrace, extend 2 - send threatening letter 3 - lose shareholder support 4 - throw chairs 5 - remove legislator funding to pay off shareholders 6 - merge companies 7 - lay off good workers who have not yet left 8 - pay millions to change logos, make announcements 9 - pay off MSN staff 10... 11 profit!^H^H^H^H^H Watch Google grow exponentially
I think it quite fair to treat this like a reality TV show. First we gather together 9 legislators, each of whom want to sponsor some whacked out crack inspired law, like one that wants to tax porn downloads etc.
Then through the week they compete. Some of the competitions are simple, like correctly applying constitutional law to every day situations. Others are more difficult, like a 15000 word essay on financial markets reform.
At the end of the week, the legislator with the least points has to face off (mano a mano) with an Iraq war vet who is pissed off because he lost a leg due to lack of armored vehicles in Iraq. If the fist fight comes out even, each is given a knife. The weapons escalate every 10 minutes until one of them has nothing left to say, or rather is left speechless on the ground.
Then make it impossible for any California legislator to actually go anywhere but prison unless they can prove they watched every episode, and know exactly how their constituents voted each week on the show.
Think that is crazy? Perhaps the spectacle of it would shock legislators into making sense again. Don't ask when the last time they did make sense was because I'm not sure when John Hancock died.
You have a pretty good conceptual idea of how and why AI systems have failed to live up to their hyped up promises. On top of that, in a round about way, you managed to nail down the fact that teaching certificates earned in a course on how to be safe on the Internet will be worthless about 2 days after the curriculum is defined, never mind what it will be worth by the time students get it. My point is that it won't get taught until there are certifications for it, and by the time that it is presented to students, half of the Internet will have changed. Most things taught in school don't change much from semester to semester or year to year, the Internet is not as easily defined for teaching. By the time that courses are prepared and presented everything popular, including risks can and will have changed once or twice. This will require teachers to be continually educated 'experts' with regard to using the Internet.... and well, you can see where this is leading. The goals of the legislation are admirable but COMPLETELY misplaced because legislators have NO FUCKING CLUE about the Internet, never mind what I think of their flashing 12:00 VCR displays.
The schools would be better served by paying for daytime support from a company with the resources to stay abreast of current risks and trends... oooohhhh lets outsource this to India, yeah, that will work. Wait, this should be done by AMERICANS, Nope, I don't think Geek Squad is up to the task either... unless you want to teach kids how to hoard other people's pr0n.
There is currently no place that I know of where you can learn this information. Sure there are 100s of blogs out there and every antivirus maker has 100s of pages about risks. Every e-magazine has dozens or more 'white papers' on how to deal with Internet safety for home and small businesses. The trouble is that no-one is teaching it. period. At one point I half heartedly advocated an Internet license, not too different from having to have a driving license (there, got the car analogy in there) but that won't do either as that would put the curriculum for such testing in the hands of the State. Oh fsck, just typing that made my head hurt. So legislators, faced with these inarguable facts of 'how things are' have to be seen to do something with the danger that is life (presented in microcosmic splendor on the Internet). Think of the children, stop the terrorists, just say no to drugs, silence the athiests, regiment the daily adventures of the sheeple.....
Morals? Life sucks. It's dangerous! People really are out to get you, government included! Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!
In the end, this is no place for the government to be meddling. After kids reach 18 we can't blame their parents anymore. Lately, I'm all for blaming the kids to start with... oh sure, while they are still not old enough to drive their parents can share in the blame. There is enough information on the Internet to figure it out. If you can't be bothered to read any of it and take advantage of it... hmmmm I think there are some really really REALLY old sayings for things like this
Caveat Emptor! and all that kind of thing. Life is kind of like that. Yep, that free cell phone sounds like a good deal.... where are the government warnings for that?
Ok, I'm about done ranting. In conclusion, the nanny-state will never work, no matter how good your intentions are. We all know that a certification with MS products is only good until the next upgrade? If the state gets into regulating certifications for using the Internet how will they avoid conflict of interest when promoting education using only one product line? We are talking politics here so don't EVEN tell me that this won't be a problem.
siggghhhh Some days I believe that the FSM sent us us computing and the Internet to void any value that politicians used to represent!
It's possibly slightly worse that imagined. Imagine the course being taught by someone that can't answer the questions that high schoolers can ask about the Internet and resources to be found there?
How do I do that in Evolution? But adblockplus won't run under IE12, what do I do?
In the end, it will end up a MS/**AA fud fest because F/OSS communities do NOT have the resources to dedicate training or funds for training to teachers in all those schools.
Sure, you can put together a nice website for their use but can't mandate it as a teaching certificate quality thing. Teachers WILL have to be qualified by the state to teach the course and guess who will provide that training? Ubuntu?
There was also freeware, trialware, crippleware, shareware, talk of varying types of licenses, and anything you didn't pay for normally came with caveats that fall into the 'you get what you pay for' category. So, yes, there was a lot of suspicion about OSS because of all that it was competing with.
That was even before MS had killed off all of its serious competitors.
Then there was just MS and Windows developers. There were a few areas of competition but Windows was just a far cry above what DOS programs were doing at the time. Do you remember paradox? Qbase? WordPerfect? WordStar? Novell? 10Base5 ethernet?
I'm quite glad that OSS has made it this far and one so much.
And quite importantly, even if they do find a link between a human behavior and a genetic quality they do not yet know how that genetic variation is involved per se'
It might be simply that this particular genetic variation in combination with 27 others causes the person to be more likely to perceive of a situation in a given way, leading to ruthless behaviors. The fact remains that genetic variations are not understood well enough to say that gene XYZ causes such and such behavior.
The problem is that the MTBF is calculated on an accelerated lifecycle test schedule. Life in general does not actually act like the accelerated test expanded out to 1day=1day. It is an approximation, and prone to errors because of the aggregated averages created by the test.
On average, a disk drive can last as long as the MTBF number. What are the chances that you have an average drive? They are slim. Each component in the drive, every resistor, every capacitor, every part has an MTBF. They also have tolerance values: that is to say they are manufactured to a value with a given tolerance of accuracy. Each tolerance has to be calculated as one component out of tolerance could cause failure of complete sections of the drive itself. When you start calculating that kind of thing it becomes similar to an exercise in calculating safety on the space shuttle... damned complex in nature.
The tests remain valid because of a simple fact. In large data centers where you have large quantities of the same drive spinning in the same lifecycles, you will find that a percentage of them fail within days of each other. That means that there is a valid measurement of the parts in the drive, and how they will stand the test of life in a data center.
Is your data center an 'average' life for a drive? The accelerated lifecycle tests cannot tell you. All the testing does is look for failures of any given part over a number of power cycles, hours of use etc. It is quite improbable that your use of the drive will match that of the expanded testing life cycle.
The MTBF is a good estimation of when you can be certain of a failure of one part or another in your drive. There is ALWAYS room for it to fail prior to that number. ALWAYS.
Like any electronic device for consumers, if it doesn't fail in the first year, it's likely to last as long as you are likely to be using it. Replacement rates of consumer societies mean that manufacturers don't have to worry too much about MTBF as long as it's longer than the replacement/upgrade cycle.
If you are worried about data loss, implement a good data backup program and quit worrying about drive MTBFs.
And here is to hoping that the final outcome of this powerplay auction move is actually good for "us" the consumers.
I don't use Verizon, but know people who do. Their FIOS service is a large jump forward over cable, or would be if they did it right. The wireless AP they provide is less than optimal, and if you don't use their version of a 'standard' Windows installation it seems they are completely clueless as to how to help you or even support your setup.
Hopefully, with their auction win, they will begin to be a bit more open at all points, and stop trying to force a near-proprietary setup at the end-user point.
A couple of releases back, I sent OOo $45 and feel quite comfortable that this was appropriate, both for how much I use OOo and how useful it is to myself and my family. When they get a bit more features/integration with other apps, I will donate again. I feel this is a good program that comes with tons of support and very good update releases.
I'm still having trouble with some specific products that have not yet supported GNU/Linux and either do not work well under Wine or have no F/OSS alternatives but that is no problem. I'm teaching the family to check for software when making their buying decisions in the future. This is something you might want to teach your parents. The Internet is all you need to find out if anyone else is using product XYZ with what version of Linux. I remember when you had to do that for Windows too so I don't find it a pain.
Way back, I remember waiting for workable windows drivers for lots of things, even for any drivers for some products. DOS was supported, but you had to wait for Windows drivers... sigh
To some, this seems a step backwards, but sometimes you have to step back a bit and restart to get around the wall you ram into.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to bust this guy's bubble, but let me give it a try anyway. The problem that he describes is part 'peter principle' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle and part of the culture of bad leadership that infests (at least western cultures) big business.
The trouble is not what you think. Modern western businesses are generally run like the military, at least in form if not function. This puts too much control in the hands of those who are not proven fit to lead. The problem of good people moving on is prevalent in ALL industries, including the all volunteer military, forklift drivers, plumbers, restaurant managers... on and on and on. It has nothing to do with IT other than its affect on IT.
Bad leadership is the problem, and it spills out of corporate offices like stink from a blocked sewer pipe of grand proportions.
Hiring decisions are effected via budget restraints and leadership decisions between what amounts to two basic waring factions within the company: The IT shop and the HR group.
When you start to think of modern corporate businesses like armies you can see how things go wrong. It only takes one bad lieutenant to totally fuckup the battlefield. With field promotions, that Lt. gets to a spot that s/he doesn't belong and it becomes more short term pain to replace them than to let them carry on fucking things up.
Bad leadership chooses to avoid short term pain. If sports teams were run the same way they would never win anything (sorry NY).
The problem is bad leadership. end. of. story.
With good leadership, all the other problems can be mitigated or removed.
CWAN
Community Wide Area Network. You might go with Community Metropolitan Area Network but that would lend itself to being called c-man... no good.
Then later, outside of the East-Central Vermont CWAN project, you can add the South-Western Vermont CWAN
I'd stop short of calling it VCWAN in case McCain starts getting flashbacks.
Technically Grid or MAN describe what you are trying to make. Metropolitan Area Network is an old term. You could put an F on the front for Fiber, FGrid or FMAN instead of CWAN...
Finding a name is a good problem to have. Wish they had that problem around here
Ever watch the movie Dune?
Moha deeb.... rocket go boom
Can we sign you up for a speaking tour in D.C. ? Huh? please? Someone needs to spend some time... well, a whole LOT of fucking time in D.C. writing this in soap on legislators car windows and stuff.
While you are up there, can you stop in and see the gang of nine in the courthouse, perhaps explain these intartubewebtrucks to them?
Not sure about all that, but when I had my TSEC it would not have been allowed to open secured data traffic to the Internet in any way shape or form. ELINT (USAF electronics spy types) would have laughed at such, then eyed you suspiciously for suggesting it. The military, my friends, is securely running on a darknet which requires more than will power and a h4x0rz kit to get into. This is all about scaring up some more money and a few more personal freedoms in the name of security from the evil terrorists, only this time it's a run up to take away some of your online rights and privacy. Don't even be fooled by the bullshit.
If the military was as susceptible as they might lead you to believe, they'd still be trying to stop spam emails from pouring out of the RNC servers. Holy shit man, if they were hackable someone on the NYT would already be posting the 'lost RNC emails' if you know what I mean... geez
I was commenting earlier about how many businesses are going to fail in the recession due to tight margins now that won't maintain them under duress of less custom.
.... but sadly, big business doesn't think that way, no, they want everyone's share of the pie, or at least everyone eating from their pie and nobody else's. Shame really, they have a lot of assets/resources to push the home video/DVR arena into common practice.
If, and IMO, IF they want to stay relevant and solvent, what they need to do is keep away from lock-in business models and get on with 'we work with anything' business models. Yes, that would make for weak competition according to some, but if all you had to do was go to Blockbuster and ask the tech guy what to do to get all the movies you can handle, then sign up for their business/app/service they would only win.
Even better if the same system they sell or advocate supports anything else that is not damned^H^H^H^H DRM'd
Need some stats to glue you to that posh office chair you're sitting in? Try the CDC for mortality statistics http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm and watch how botnets blur into needless crap worthy of Fox News.
On the other hand, you are only hearing about the botnets that are reported! The ones that stay stealthy and only do a little espionage now and then are not reported... say from the USAF Cyber Defense Command!? Since MS et al are so cozy with the NSA these bots probably don't even register with detection software packages.
As stated, watch some port 25 traffic to see if you are spewing spam everywhere. Who knows what port the really nasty botnets are using. No, it's not tin foil I'm wearing on my head!!
Just because you're paranoid does NOT mean they are not out to get you. We've seen cable cuts, military attacks on various other-country establishments, industrial espionage from Israel, Chinese cyber attacks and all manner of oddities on the Internet.
I said it first: Recession will make the Internet more important than it is now. Cyber attackers will mature, and their attacks and goals will change also. Identity theft is peanuts if you can get inside a bank, a federal bank etc.
Think of it... 25 cents per transaction run through a large backend company for Visa? THAT is big money. Doesn't have to be a credit card company either.. just a large institution. Say the billing system of your local electric company gets hacked, and 25 cents per bill is being funneled off to Estonia? If you think it couldn't happen and is not happening, remind yourself how torture in the USA couldn't happen either!
Well, the 'gets it' part will be something of an afterthought as most retail industries are (or should be) preparing to dig in and wait out the recession (it's official now... nearly) and the wrath it brings to the currently propped up consumerism in Westernized societies.
Energy is taking a huge hit, and the knock on from that will begin happening as current stocks dwindle and must be replaced. In 6 months you will see a lot more online activity though free shipping might become a once useful dream. As adverse as Americans are to exercise, 'let your fingers do the walking' may get repurposed from old ads to new uses on the Internet.
When the retail spaces begin to implode, less traffic in the mall means less traffic to all of the stores. The Internet is going to have a huge role to play in the recovery process of the US if not more countries. While it is too costly to go cruising around in your SUV, cruising the Internet will be acceptable, and during and after the recovery process, it will remain as a way to find what you want from who you want it. Most brick and mortar operations already have Internet presence and it will become more important. Tagging along with that will be the industries that are forced by market forces to follow suit and bolster their Internet presence. This will lead to new business models and expansion of current 'gets it' models.
For artists, this means that Internet exposure becomes the new wave of posting bills on the side of telephone polls. Giving away stuff to get people to attend the concerts will be more prevalent, and you will see this in other industries also as the now highly mobile society in North America becomes a bit more isolated from the hustle and bustle of in your face interactions. Already people are not spending as much as they did last year, they worry about what they are spending on. You will have to give them free stuff to get their attention as many of them will only be looking at free stuff. Just putting your name and logo in their face 40 times a day won't do it.
Remember the last recession? That started an entire marketing ploy industry of get 20% more for free and other tricky things that have morphed into ways of making you think you really get something for free that are still with us today.
As the recession bites harder, selling anything but groceries and gas will become more difficult and those industries that are not willing to, or are unable to bribe customers into their shops or onto their website will be the real losers. Remember that in tough times, people begin to spend only on things they 'need' rather than on things they want. The Internet is thought of as free (fixed cost) so there will be more time spent on it, further entrenching some Internet technologies and industries. That will be where those businesses that want to succeed will go now. To not go there is foolish IMO.
Think of it like this: It costs nothing to come shop online in our Second Life store, or on our website, and if you spend more than $50, we'll give you a 15% discount in any of our stores... good for 45 days from date of purchase.
You as an artist... start something viral: offer to give anyone with more than 20 of your songs on their MP3 player a voucher for a libation at the concert. Yeah, sounds like you're paying them to download your music, but it's at the concert that you make your money on shirts and concessions.
Right now, in the early running, anyone that is tagging up with IBM's efforts is probably going to vault over the recession into the new digital era with grace and style. Google-partners will also.
The current white-knight issue with Yahoo will end up being a very big issue in 6 months. The Internet as a market place is consolidating just as other industries have in the last decade. This is both good and problematic. Google is about to prove that anyone can have a web-based email account but only if you are a gmail user do you have real convenience and power.
Watch for the industries that follow along
Now, I'd say that your opinion should carry some weight around these parts. Clearly you understand that it's not about free vs. expensive music, it's about the bullying criminal tactics of those that don't want anyone to have anything for free, that don't want to change their business model to suit the new markets.
IMO, you are part of the new guard, the wave of artists that gets it. Soon, not just music/movie artists will find it difficult to make mega-bucks from their craft, so will athletes and others who are making way more than they should.
This is not necessarily because of the digital age in some cases, but recession means fewer ticket sales etc. The digital age will in turn cap their market worth as well. The further that the sports industry goes into the digital age, the more it will change the very nature of their business. My guess is that many such industries have reached their peak capital performance values and are stagnating or slowly in decline. Much revenue is based on advertising and THAT has drastically changed. The entertainment industries on the other side of the advertising will have to follow suit, if not now then sometime in the VERY near future.
They adapted to color television, cable tv, advertising changes... they will have to adapt or die. Right now the NFL et al don't seem to be doing much better than the **AA, but I'm hoping they are watching the news and paying VERY close attention to how well it has worked out for the **AA so far.
Where are the details? I've seen several attempts to use such data, and the way that traffic works, the slow-down is clear by the time it is posted to the Internet, and what shows green is red when you get there. Without a tactical HUD and real time data, such things are little more than novelties.
Everyday I drive past one intersection that has a slow down on good days. When there are traffic problems ahead, you cannot tell until you are in the traffic jam already. Normally, it takes 2-3 minutes and you're moving again. Some days it's merely a slow-down. Traffic analysis will never show when that stretch of road is fully in congestion and the only prudent course is to get off the highway.
I don't even care how many volunteers were in the study, modeling traffic has been done before and it does not predict the daily problems that you have to deal with.
Nothing short of a HUD with real time data will help. Well, voice assistance from a system with real time data will help also, doesn't require a HUD.
The point is that modeling won't do it. Only monitoring in real time will do it. Without real time data, by the time you get to the decision point half the other drivers are already clogging your escape route.
That's all I have to say about anyone that can store then entirety of his life in one terabyte. Shit, that won't even store the copies of Windows that he has installed.
Yes, I know that is not the kind of thing you save, but from what I've seen when people have digital space to store things, they collect more things. They never worry about space until they run out.
"... oh, well then do you think I should get the 300GB drive?" says one little lady I know who just wants to have room for her 'stuff'. Yes, most of it is pictures and jokes. She is 65, has the address of some 3500 friends and letters and stuff she has written, including the manuscript from a book she had published. If she were to collect everything... well, 1 TByte isn't going to cut the mustard. Only the FSM knows how much room she'd need if she had grandchildren.
Yep, he must be boring as hell.
1 - embrace, extend ...
2 - send threatening letter
3 - lose shareholder support
4 - throw chairs
5 - remove legislator funding to pay off shareholders
6 - merge companies
7 - lay off good workers who have not yet left
8 - pay millions to change logos, make announcements
9 - pay off MSN staff
10
11 profit!^H^H^H^H^H Watch Google grow exponentially
Seriously! I thought this country was running out of engineers? Guess we just needed better problems. For anyone interested in a bit of GolDberg fun, try the made-of-Lego Great Ball Contraption http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&output=googleabout&btnG=Search+our+site&q=lego%20gbc
Truly team effort in creating time wasting fun.
WTF!! He did running man, this would be a piece of cake.
I think it quite fair to treat this like a reality TV show. First we gather together 9 legislators, each of whom want to sponsor some whacked out crack inspired law, like one that wants to tax porn downloads etc.
Then through the week they compete. Some of the competitions are simple, like correctly applying constitutional law to every day situations. Others are more difficult, like a 15000 word essay on financial markets reform.
At the end of the week, the legislator with the least points has to face off (mano a mano) with an Iraq war vet who is pissed off because he lost a leg due to lack of armored vehicles in Iraq. If the fist fight comes out even, each is given a knife. The weapons escalate every 10 minutes until one of them has nothing left to say, or rather is left speechless on the ground.
Then make it impossible for any California legislator to actually go anywhere but prison unless they can prove they watched every episode, and know exactly how their constituents voted each week on the show.
Think that is crazy? Perhaps the spectacle of it would shock legislators into making sense again. Don't ask when the last time they did make sense was because I'm not sure when John Hancock died.
Is this a guest spot for RD, or just a family reunion? damn!
You have a pretty good conceptual idea of how and why AI systems have failed to live up to their hyped up promises. On top of that, in a round about way, you managed to nail down the fact that teaching certificates earned in a course on how to be safe on the Internet will be worthless about 2 days after the curriculum is defined, never mind what it will be worth by the time students get it. My point is that it won't get taught until there are certifications for it, and by the time that it is presented to students, half of the Internet will have changed. Most things taught in school don't change much from semester to semester or year to year, the Internet is not as easily defined for teaching. By the time that courses are prepared and presented everything popular, including risks can and will have changed once or twice. This will require teachers to be continually educated 'experts' with regard to using the Internet.... and well, you can see where this is leading. The goals of the legislation are admirable but COMPLETELY misplaced because legislators have NO FUCKING CLUE about the Internet, never mind what I think of their flashing 12:00 VCR displays.
The schools would be better served by paying for daytime support from a company with the resources to stay abreast of current risks and trends... oooohhhh lets outsource this to India, yeah, that will work. Wait, this should be done by AMERICANS, Nope, I don't think Geek Squad is up to the task either... unless you want to teach kids how to hoard other people's pr0n.
There is currently no place that I know of where you can learn this information. Sure there are 100s of blogs out there and every antivirus maker has 100s of pages about risks. Every e-magazine has dozens or more 'white papers' on how to deal with Internet safety for home and small businesses. The trouble is that no-one is teaching it. period. At one point I half heartedly advocated an Internet license, not too different from having to have a driving license (there, got the car analogy in there) but that won't do either as that would put the curriculum for such testing in the hands of the State. Oh fsck, just typing that made my head hurt. So legislators, faced with these inarguable facts of 'how things are' have to be seen to do something with the danger that is life (presented in microcosmic splendor on the Internet). Think of the children, stop the terrorists, just say no to drugs, silence the athiests, regiment the daily adventures of the sheeple.....
Morals? Life sucks. It's dangerous! People really are out to get you, government included! Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!
In the end, this is no place for the government to be meddling. After kids reach 18 we can't blame their parents anymore. Lately, I'm all for blaming the kids to start with... oh sure, while they are still not old enough to drive their parents can share in the blame. There is enough information on the Internet to figure it out. If you can't be bothered to read any of it and take advantage of it... hmmmm I think there are some really really REALLY old sayings for things like this
Caveat Emptor! and all that kind of thing. Life is kind of like that. Yep, that free cell phone sounds like a good deal.... where are the government warnings for that?
Ok, I'm about done ranting. In conclusion, the nanny-state will never work, no matter how good your intentions are. We all know that a certification with MS products is only good until the next upgrade? If the state gets into regulating certifications for using the Internet how will they avoid conflict of interest when promoting education using only one product line? We are talking politics here so don't EVEN tell me that this won't be a problem.
siggghhhh Some days I believe that the FSM sent us us computing and the Internet to void any value that politicians used to represent!
It's possibly slightly worse that imagined. Imagine the course being taught by someone that can't answer the questions that high schoolers can ask about the Internet and resources to be found there?
How do I do that in Evolution? But adblockplus won't run under IE12, what do I do?
In the end, it will end up a MS/**AA fud fest because F/OSS communities do NOT have the resources to dedicate training or funds for training to teachers in all those schools.
Sure, you can put together a nice website for their use but can't mandate it as a teaching certificate quality thing. Teachers WILL have to be qualified by the state to teach the course and guess who will provide that training? Ubuntu?
Keep dreaming....
There was also freeware, trialware, crippleware, shareware, talk of varying types of licenses, and anything you didn't pay for normally came with caveats that fall into the 'you get what you pay for' category. So, yes, there was a lot of suspicion about OSS because of all that it was competing with.
That was even before MS had killed off all of its serious competitors.
Then there was just MS and Windows developers. There were a few areas of competition but Windows was just a far cry above what DOS programs were doing at the time. Do you remember paradox? Qbase? WordPerfect? WordStar? Novell? 10Base5 ethernet?
I'm quite glad that OSS has made it this far and one so much.
And quite importantly, even if they do find a link between a human behavior and a genetic quality they do not yet know how that genetic variation is involved per se'
It might be simply that this particular genetic variation in combination with 27 others causes the person to be more likely to perceive of a situation in a given way, leading to ruthless behaviors. The fact remains that genetic variations are not understood well enough to say that gene XYZ causes such and such behavior.
The problem is that the MTBF is calculated on an accelerated lifecycle test schedule. Life in general does not actually act like the accelerated test expanded out to 1day=1day. It is an approximation, and prone to errors because of the aggregated averages created by the test.
On average, a disk drive can last as long as the MTBF number. What are the chances that you have an average drive? They are slim. Each component in the drive, every resistor, every capacitor, every part has an MTBF. They also have tolerance values: that is to say they are manufactured to a value with a given tolerance of accuracy. Each tolerance has to be calculated as one component out of tolerance could cause failure of complete sections of the drive itself. When you start calculating that kind of thing it becomes similar to an exercise in calculating safety on the space shuttle... damned complex in nature.
The tests remain valid because of a simple fact. In large data centers where you have large quantities of the same drive spinning in the same lifecycles, you will find that a percentage of them fail within days of each other. That means that there is a valid measurement of the parts in the drive, and how they will stand the test of life in a data center.
Is your data center an 'average' life for a drive? The accelerated lifecycle tests cannot tell you. All the testing does is look for failures of any given part over a number of power cycles, hours of use etc. It is quite improbable that your use of the drive will match that of the expanded testing life cycle.
The MTBF is a good estimation of when you can be certain of a failure of one part or another in your drive. There is ALWAYS room for it to fail prior to that number. ALWAYS.
Like any electronic device for consumers, if it doesn't fail in the first year, it's likely to last as long as you are likely to be using it. Replacement rates of consumer societies mean that manufacturers don't have to worry too much about MTBF as long as it's longer than the replacement/upgrade cycle.
If you are worried about data loss, implement a good data backup program and quit worrying about drive MTBFs.
And here is to hoping that the final outcome of this powerplay auction move is actually good for "us" the consumers.
I don't use Verizon, but know people who do. Their FIOS service is a large jump forward over cable, or would be if they did it right. The wireless AP they provide is less than optimal, and if you don't use their version of a 'standard' Windows installation it seems they are completely clueless as to how to help you or even support your setup.
Hopefully, with their auction win, they will begin to be a bit more open at all points, and stop trying to force a near-proprietary setup at the end-user point.
A couple of releases back, I sent OOo $45 and feel quite comfortable that this was appropriate, both for how much I use OOo and how useful it is to myself and my family. When they get a bit more features/integration with other apps, I will donate again. I feel this is a good program that comes with tons of support and very good update releases.
I'm still having trouble with some specific products that have not yet supported GNU/Linux and either do not work well under Wine or have no F/OSS alternatives but that is no problem. I'm teaching the family to check for software when making their buying decisions in the future. This is something you might want to teach your parents. The Internet is all you need to find out if anyone else is using product XYZ with what version of Linux. I remember when you had to do that for Windows too so I don't find it a pain.
Way back, I remember waiting for workable windows drivers for lots of things, even for any drivers for some products. DOS was supported, but you had to wait for Windows drivers... sigh
To some, this seems a step backwards, but sometimes you have to step back a bit and restart to get around the wall you ram into.
Nice!! I'd mod you funny