What relation does this technology have to the Weta Digital's Massive program, which was used to create the characters for the war scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies? That program used sub-elements called Agents which could be tailored to give you certain randomated AI actions for characters. (Check the LOTR DVDs or google for Weta Massive for more info... I don't want to slashdot anyone in particular;-) )
The biggest question is, how in the world can you tell if a backup or filesharing service is legal or not? The only way to really be sure is to monitor the network 24x7, which is an invasion of privacy. And even if you monitor for file names, the only way to REALLY be sure that someone isn't changing the name to fool you is to actually read the file. Then I could turn it around and say the file monitors are stealing from me, because if they can read my files, then they can copy them.
The biggest problem is you can't gauge the intent of the person making a file backup. Maybe I'm a good little citizen and I'm making a personal backup. Maybe I'm not, and I just told all my friends where my files are so they can access them. Or maybe some people found my file stash accidentally, and are downloading my files without my concent. How do you prove which of these cases is true? You can't. Networks don't care: content is content. There are no physical boundaries to say which files belong to which people. (Unless you're talking about DRMed files, which in any case can be cracked to not point to a specific owner.)
No, you pay for both. Expectation of increased security is just one of the many tactics used to convince people to upgrade.
You also fail to see that software companies push VERY hard the belief that if you don't upgrade, you will be "left out". This may be a scare tactic, and not the best reason in the world to upgrade, but it DOES influence your buying decision. Mainly because the technology world moves so fast that it's important for people to remain current with what is going on. (Software companies abuse this idea all the time to get people to upgrade.)
I already know about the Tiger Early Start Kit
on
Tiger Early Start Kit
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· Score: 2, Funny
I think the biggest difficulty surrounding large organizations is the lack of communication tools linking the right engineers together. It seems unfathomable that some of these mistakes were able to propegate throughout the entire engineering process and nobody caught them.
Unless you consider the fact that often in large organizations, the left hand typically has no clue what the right hand is doing. I work at Lockheed Martin, and typically I'm involved in situations where one group makes an improvement that then none of the other groups know about, changes/decisions are poorly documented (if at all) so nobody knows where the process is going, people making poor decisions due to lack of proper procedures from management about what to do, teams not being co-located, poor information about which people have the necessary knowledge to solve a particular problem, or any number of things that confuses the engineering process, to the detriment of the product. Most of these situations are caused by a lack of communication throughout the organization as a whole.
This is a serious problem, and it needs to be acknowledged by the people in a position to make a difference.
I personally don't go into many technology stores that only display a single company's products. One of the most important abilities when shopping is being able to compare different companies against each other to see which products are better. You don't get any of those comparisions if it's only products from a single company.
I think the Apple model works because the stores are overly flashy (draws in new customers) and because apple uses gimics to keep people in the store, like training sessions or "fun stuff for the kids". The other reason is because mac users typically can't FIND mac stuff in other stores, so the ability to go to an apple store and get your "mac fix" is a worthwhile option to have.
The point is, usually I'm LOOKING to go into an apple store because I need to buy something from apple. Other companies have their product in other stores, so there is little need to go to a company-specific store.
I also think that most other companies don't have the brand interest that apple has. People will go into apple stores just because they are facinated with apple product. I don't think there are really that many hardcore Dell users, for example, that would be looking to go into a Dell store to see all that great new Dell product. With a single-company store, it's all about the interest people have in that one particular company. With most PC companies, consumers are just interested in whatever they can get that's cheapest. There isn't that kind of brand-loyalty that Apple has created for themselves. Apple is just better at creating product that facinates you and making you want to come in and see what's in the store.
Could it work for Dell? Maybe, if Dell's interested in promoting their brand. But I don't think it would be anywhere as near successful as what apple has done.
(1) Geeks know there are better codecs to rip to then MP3.
(2) iTunes makes getting the song you want relatively cheap, so there's less of an excuse to use p2p, where most of the MP3s are.
(2) "Average people" don't know about p2p and so they are getting their files from legal sources, sources which don't publish in MP3 because MP3 doesn't have DRM.
It looks like the industry's quest to kill MP3 and get DRM into everything is finally starting to pay off. However, I predict the trend against MP3 will reverse when people finally discover just how restrictive DRM is. It hasn't happened yet, but once all CDs have copy-protection and it becomes a pain to do what you want to do with your music, the subject will get more and more attention.
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What relation does this technology have to the Weta Digital's Massive program, which was used to create the characters for the war scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies? That program used sub-elements called Agents which could be tailored to give you certain randomated AI actions for characters. (Check the LOTR DVDs or google for Weta Massive for more info... I don't want to slashdot anyone in particular ;-) )
The biggest question is, how in the world can you tell if a backup or filesharing service is legal or not? The only way to really be sure is to monitor the network 24x7, which is an invasion of privacy. And even if you monitor for file names, the only way to REALLY be sure that someone isn't changing the name to fool you is to actually read the file. Then I could turn it around and say the file monitors are stealing from me, because if they can read my files, then they can copy them. The biggest problem is you can't gauge the intent of the person making a file backup. Maybe I'm a good little citizen and I'm making a personal backup. Maybe I'm not, and I just told all my friends where my files are so they can access them. Or maybe some people found my file stash accidentally, and are downloading my files without my concent. How do you prove which of these cases is true? You can't. Networks don't care: content is content. There are no physical boundaries to say which files belong to which people. (Unless you're talking about DRMed files, which in any case can be cracked to not point to a specific owner.)
News at 11: "All Palm websites slashdotted! Entire Palm internet goes down! New record!"
But I would duel-boot OS X and Windows on the same machine.
In fact, I wouldn't care if the box was PPC or on x86: simply running both OSes on the same box at full speed would kick ass.
No, you pay for both. Expectation of increased security is just one of the many tactics used to convince people to upgrade. You also fail to see that software companies push VERY hard the belief that if you don't upgrade, you will be "left out". This may be a scare tactic, and not the best reason in the world to upgrade, but it DOES influence your buying decision. Mainly because the technology world moves so fast that it's important for people to remain current with what is going on. (Software companies abuse this idea all the time to get people to upgrade.)
It's called Bittorrent ;-)
I think the biggest difficulty surrounding large organizations is the lack of communication tools linking the right engineers together. It seems unfathomable that some of these mistakes were able to propegate throughout the entire engineering process and nobody caught them.
Unless you consider the fact that often in large organizations, the left hand typically has no clue what the right hand is doing. I work at Lockheed Martin, and typically I'm involved in situations where one group makes an improvement that then none of the other groups know about, changes/decisions are poorly documented (if at all) so nobody knows where the process is going, people making poor decisions due to lack of proper procedures from management about what to do, teams not being co-located, poor information about which people have the necessary knowledge to solve a particular problem, or any number of things that confuses the engineering process, to the detriment of the product. Most of these situations are caused by a lack of communication throughout the organization as a whole.
This is a serious problem, and it needs to be acknowledged by the people in a position to make a difference.
I personally don't go into many technology stores that only display a single company's products. One of the most important abilities when shopping is being able to compare different companies against each other to see which products are better. You don't get any of those comparisions if it's only products from a single company. I think the Apple model works because the stores are overly flashy (draws in new customers) and because apple uses gimics to keep people in the store, like training sessions or "fun stuff for the kids". The other reason is because mac users typically can't FIND mac stuff in other stores, so the ability to go to an apple store and get your "mac fix" is a worthwhile option to have. The point is, usually I'm LOOKING to go into an apple store because I need to buy something from apple. Other companies have their product in other stores, so there is little need to go to a company-specific store. I also think that most other companies don't have the brand interest that apple has. People will go into apple stores just because they are facinated with apple product. I don't think there are really that many hardcore Dell users, for example, that would be looking to go into a Dell store to see all that great new Dell product. With a single-company store, it's all about the interest people have in that one particular company. With most PC companies, consumers are just interested in whatever they can get that's cheapest. There isn't that kind of brand-loyalty that Apple has created for themselves. Apple is just better at creating product that facinates you and making you want to come in and see what's in the store. Could it work for Dell? Maybe, if Dell's interested in promoting their brand. But I don't think it would be anywhere as near successful as what apple has done.
(1) Geeks know there are better codecs to rip to then MP3. (2) iTunes makes getting the song you want relatively cheap, so there's less of an excuse to use p2p, where most of the MP3s are. (2) "Average people" don't know about p2p and so they are getting their files from legal sources, sources which don't publish in MP3 because MP3 doesn't have DRM. It looks like the industry's quest to kill MP3 and get DRM into everything is finally starting to pay off. However, I predict the trend against MP3 will reverse when people finally discover just how restrictive DRM is. It hasn't happened yet, but once all CDs have copy-protection and it becomes a pain to do what you want to do with your music, the subject will get more and more attention.