I saw some commentary on this topic claiming it was "unthinkable" that a human ancestor would mate with a chimp. Now, as near as I can tell, some of the issues of, erm, cross-species intercourse are continuing to this day. It's frowned upon, sure. But social norms be damned it's still happening. It's just that the intercourse actually led to reproduction. That's the sticky bit. Um. Pun not intended.
Stop making this an abstract argument about someone sniffing your underpants, and get back to the meat of the article. It's about seeing what types of music you listen to and then marketing similar recommendations to you. Can someone tell me, with specific emphasis on the issue at hand, what the big fucking problem is? Oh, shit...they'll know I'm listening to old '80's bands! So. Um. They'll...try to sell me more of the same?
If someone were to tell me that Apple was devising a policy whereby people who listen predominantly to death metal were going to see MacBook prices 10% higher than those people that listen to Norah Jones, well then there'd be a problem. But what's the issue here?
Trust me: if you don't like that marketers are listening and trying to respond, you need to get over it. The spread of technology (databases particularly, but also the mature business intelligence systems that connect to them) means that every "real" business will be listening and reacting. It's time to expect more value from these activities, not cower in fear that they're happening. That's just ignorant.
The beauty of this technology is in the long-term view. See, advertisers will look to run cheaper ads...like billboards and such that update electronically rather than having old school paper versions that have to be torn down and repainted/reprinted. Then the script kiddies start trying to find a way into the system. Five minutes later...voila! All the iPod ads get funny moustaches and new headlines:)
Okay, so the page states that they need our help getting the word out. But there's no rush -- hell, we've got lifetimes to get the word out and it'll still be as effective as ever! But we need something really big. Maybe if we carve the coordinates and timestamp into a hillside in South America so that it can be read from space, then maybe it'll work? It's got to be big and lasting otherwise all of our efforts will have as much impact as Taco Bell's big giveaway a few years back.
Wouldn't it be funny as hell if Raimi and Campbell just kept remaking the same film every 10 years or so and incrementing the release number? I'm sorry, but I'd drop by to see that every time it came out! Evil Dead...eh, good, not great. Evil Dead II -- _fucking_ great. Army of Darkness...eh, good to great. Moral of the story? Stick with what works.
Shit, for that matter, maybe Lucas can just make another Empire and make us all happy!
Humorously, I just installed Desktop Manager (very cool btw) and had to hook up my laptop to a projector for a quick presentation. Not only did I get multiple monitors through spanning (not mirroring) but I had another four desktops through Desktop Manager. 4x2=8=maybe a little difficult to remember where everything goes.
Of course, I've just posted this message in one of six tabs, in one of two Safari windows, in one of four desktops, on one of two displays, using one of three users... No, really:)
1. True Integration of media objects into the browser. Right now, the browser still drops a little box on the screen and tells the plug-in where to paint it's output. Why can't everything be integrated as pure objects in the DOM such that layering one item on top of another can happen with no problems? If I want a QuickTime movie as my background, with the page content painted over the top...why do I need to build the whole thing in Director? The browser should be able to sort this out.
2. Consistency in access to standard IO functions regardless of plug-in type. If I want to trigger the start of a media stream out of Flash, Director, RealAudio or QuickTime (or the countless other media types) can't there be a consistent way to code play()? That would also allow for client-side code that detects which plug-in is installed and simply passes a standardized code chunk into the page...rather than forking off and having individual code chunks to handle each plug-in type.
3. A _FINAL_ decision regarding the OBJECT and EMBED tags. This is silly Microsoftism, and requires double-coding...a killer to all things HTML.
4. W3C support.
I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I've been disappointed for a long, long time.
Obviously you don't live in San Francisco. Try renting a 2 bedroom crap apartment for $2,600/month then having to rent a parking space for another $350/month. Hmm. $100k doesn't seem like so much now, does it?
Interesting idea. And if you can read the intent behind each sentence then you can build on this to provide personalized or customized content to the reader based on text read off the page and compared to the user profile. I've been thinking about a tangent to this for a long time now, but can never figure out how to actually build it.
It's the idea of each thought being an atom of the content tree, captured in either a sentence, sentence group or paragraph. If each thought is a unique object, then each can be dynamically associated with relevant metadata or hyperlinks, and also manipulated to provide the user with the level of detail or level of expertise that's appropriate for them.
The example I use is a textbook on a common subject...say, microeconomics. The "thought" of price competition could either be encapsulated in a simple way for a survey-level audience or dynamically substituted to a more complex version that provides better information to better education audiences (e.g., "price competition varies by industry structure, where the degree of product homogeneity largely determines the pressures placed on pricing" for mid-level audiences and "price competition is the ability for each firm to impact the price that other firms in the marketplace can charge" for an entry-level audience). In this case, the system would need to understand both how to understand the content object and then how to articulate it back to the user in understandable terms.
We're getting there...but I don't think there's enough base technology to launch this idea yet. There's a lot of AI involved, particularly when it comes to the varied characterstics of the audience (people don't tend to come according to standards...). Maybe I'll do something fabulous with this in 10-20 years or so...
I agree with you both...FOAF doesn't work without interconnectivity and there's a huge disincentive for FOAF providers to open their network because the positive network effects are the entire reason behind doing this. That, of course, brings me to the open source issue.
The backend code for Slashter and PeopleAggregator are both GPL'd. That's great and very much in the flavor of "information wants to be free." The challenge is that the relationships here are the real information, and until this is all opened up there's really no freedom.
I met with a few MSFT reps to talk about the possibilities of Passport, and one of the diagrams they showed us had these relationships between user id and every connection you would want to make (web sites, email, chat, credit cards, online shopping, bill pay...pretty much all of it). Don't bother with the anti-MSFT stuff...I'm already a convert. But consider the big idea behind it: have one public id and one private id and free us to exchange with whomever we want. That's true freedom from the Yahoo!'s, AOLs and MSN's of the world.
We spend a huge amount of time thinking about platforms and software that we can give away for free but maybe that doesn't really matter. I don't care so much that all of these different open source word processors work...I care that they allow me to fulfill the task at hand and share my work with others. I don't care if I use Photoshop or Gimp, but I DO care if I can share high-quality images with my clients. And I don't care if I use a Yahoo! account or a Friendster account...what I want most is to just connect with services and people and let the rest of this all be transparent. And from my perspective, this sounds like the next big opportunity for true open source work. Replicate Passport, make it bulletproof and use it to power all of these services. Then you finally take away the power from the big corporations.
Of course, funding this indefinitely could be a problem. But you could argue the same thing about Linux...so there's a solution in there somewhere.
They do. Unicast and a couple of the others use a bandwidth checker to figure out if it's worth it to actually worth it to start downloading. It's how they're avoiding the problem of users lacking broadband. It's basically a "speed check" (I've used it in campaigns for Compaq...so you get the sense that this has been around since 2000/2001).
Question then: has anyone experienced any bandwidth problems that are associated with these types of ads?
Debt is very good for public companies (in fact it raises the valuation, mainly because of the tax ramifications on debt versus equity issuance). [note: I'm a first year MBA at Georgia Tech...so I'm speaking strictly academically].
It makes me wonder about Jobs' (or the CFO's) motivations. Strictly speaking, this would be the smartest move if Apple were to pursue a Leverage BuyOut (LBO), which is basically a reverse IPO. I can't see them doing this, but would give them a chance to radically reposition the company without requiring stockholder approval.
...if a little more of the information was given to the public. There are a lot of very bright, very interested and very talented engineers that would love to contribute to the solution. Some aspects would need to be kept out of the public hands (lest, of course, some kid in the Bronx go joy-riding in Spirit using just some RadioShack spare parts). But the lion's share of the problem could be posted up for the best (dare I say it?) open-source solution to an engineering problem.
Bugzilla for NASA. I guess that's the best way to describe what I'm thinking.
Agreed. I've got my moderator points back but the only thing I'd like to use them for is to mod down the original story. Hey Cowboy: why can't I do that?
"Still, I have to say that it makes sense to leverage both the Netscape and AOL brands. They're obviously positioning Netscape as the low-cost bare-bones option for dialup ISP service"
I still can't quite figure out why AOL looked at Netscape and thought "hey, there's a nice brand identity that people associate with value." Maybe I'm in the minority, but wasn't that the CompuServe strategy? Or even Prodigy (which I think is still owned by AOL/TW)?
From a brand positioning standpoint, why didn't we end up with "Netscape: The Promise Fulfilled" or "Netscape: A Pioneer Returns"? Nope, instead we get "Netscape: cheap enough you can buy two!"
As if it weren't enough my stock portfolio was worthless...now my heroes have all sold out to Steve Case. Sad.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait a second: it says specifically that you can't BURN A DVD from the downloaded file. Wha'?
Absolutely the worst idea, and opens the door extra wide for a certain, slightly balding man in a black mock turtleneck...
I saw some commentary on this topic claiming it was "unthinkable" that a human ancestor would mate with a chimp. Now, as near as I can tell, some of the issues of, erm, cross-species intercourse are continuing to this day. It's frowned upon, sure. But social norms be damned it's still happening. It's just that the intercourse actually led to reproduction. That's the sticky bit. Um. Pun not intended.
No one's asked to be CowboyNeal yet! What, did you all just miss the tie-in?
Great, but you only ever watch 7 minutes at a time! That's like 100 billion years of pr0n!!
Stop making this an abstract argument about someone sniffing your underpants, and get back to the meat of the article. It's about seeing what types of music you listen to and then marketing similar recommendations to you. Can someone tell me, with specific emphasis on the issue at hand, what the big fucking problem is? Oh, shit...they'll know I'm listening to old '80's bands! So. Um. They'll...try to sell me more of the same?
If someone were to tell me that Apple was devising a policy whereby people who listen predominantly to death metal were going to see MacBook prices 10% higher than those people that listen to Norah Jones, well then there'd be a problem. But what's the issue here?
Trust me: if you don't like that marketers are listening and trying to respond, you need to get over it. The spread of technology (databases particularly, but also the mature business intelligence systems that connect to them) means that every "real" business will be listening and reacting. It's time to expect more value from these activities, not cower in fear that they're happening. That's just ignorant.
Man, you guys are tripping me out...
Wait, isn't there a kick-ass Netscape competitor to Castinet? Netscape Constellation? Web-based desktop...heeeerrrrreee I come!
(next step: look at calendar, smack self in forehead...it's not 1997 anymore)
The beauty of this technology is in the long-term view. See, advertisers will look to run cheaper ads...like billboards and such that update electronically rather than having old school paper versions that have to be torn down and repainted/reprinted. Then the script kiddies start trying to find a way into the system. Five minutes later...voila! All the iPod ads get funny moustaches and new headlines :)
Okay, so the page states that they need our help getting the word out. But there's no rush -- hell, we've got lifetimes to get the word out and it'll still be as effective as ever! But we need something really big. Maybe if we carve the coordinates and timestamp into a hillside in South America so that it can be read from space, then maybe it'll work? It's got to be big and lasting otherwise all of our efforts will have as much impact as Taco Bell's big giveaway a few years back.
Clicking on the image takes you to their Webinar page. Maybe they could offer a piece on security?
Wouldn't it be funny as hell if Raimi and Campbell just kept remaking the same film every 10 years or so and incrementing the release number? I'm sorry, but I'd drop by to see that every time it came out! Evil Dead...eh, good, not great. Evil Dead II -- _fucking_ great. Army of Darkness...eh, good to great. Moral of the story? Stick with what works.
Shit, for that matter, maybe Lucas can just make another Empire and make us all happy!
Torrent?
Humorously, I just installed Desktop Manager (very cool btw) and had to hook up my laptop to a projector for a quick presentation. Not only did I get multiple monitors through spanning (not mirroring) but I had another four desktops through Desktop Manager. 4x2=8=maybe a little difficult to remember where everything goes.
:)
Of course, I've just posted this message in one of six tabs, in one of two Safari windows, in one of four desktops, on one of two displays, using one of three users... No, really
Sorry, but I thought they just BOUGHT whatever they didn't have. Of course, buying Apple seems, well, unfathomable now doesn't it? :)
...a few more pieces.
1. True Integration of media objects into the browser. Right now, the browser still drops a little box on the screen and tells the plug-in where to paint it's output. Why can't everything be integrated as pure objects in the DOM such that layering one item on top of another can happen with no problems? If I want a QuickTime movie as my background, with the page content painted over the top...why do I need to build the whole thing in Director? The browser should be able to sort this out.
2. Consistency in access to standard IO functions regardless of plug-in type. If I want to trigger the start of a media stream out of Flash, Director, RealAudio or QuickTime (or the countless other media types) can't there be a consistent way to code play()? That would also allow for client-side code that detects which plug-in is installed and simply passes a standardized code chunk into the page...rather than forking off and having individual code chunks to handle each plug-in type.
3. A _FINAL_ decision regarding the OBJECT and EMBED tags. This is silly Microsoftism, and requires double-coding...a killer to all things HTML.
4. W3C support.
I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I've been disappointed for a long, long time.
Obviously you don't live in San Francisco. Try renting a 2 bedroom crap apartment for $2,600/month then having to rent a parking space for another $350/month. Hmm. $100k doesn't seem like so much now, does it?
Interesting idea. And if you can read the intent behind each sentence then you can build on this to provide personalized or customized content to the reader based on text read off the page and compared to the user profile. I've been thinking about a tangent to this for a long time now, but can never figure out how to actually build it.
It's the idea of each thought being an atom of the content tree, captured in either a sentence, sentence group or paragraph. If each thought is a unique object, then each can be dynamically associated with relevant metadata or hyperlinks, and also manipulated to provide the user with the level of detail or level of expertise that's appropriate for them.
The example I use is a textbook on a common subject...say, microeconomics. The "thought" of price competition could either be encapsulated in a simple way for a survey-level audience or dynamically substituted to a more complex version that provides better information to better education audiences (e.g., "price competition varies by industry structure, where the degree of product homogeneity largely determines the pressures placed on pricing" for mid-level audiences and "price competition is the ability for each firm to impact the price that other firms in the marketplace can charge" for an entry-level audience). In this case, the system would need to understand both how to understand the content object and then how to articulate it back to the user in understandable terms.
We're getting there...but I don't think there's enough base technology to launch this idea yet. There's a lot of AI involved, particularly when it comes to the varied characterstics of the audience (people don't tend to come according to standards...). Maybe I'll do something fabulous with this in 10-20 years or so...
I agree with you both...FOAF doesn't work without interconnectivity and there's a huge disincentive for FOAF providers to open their network because the positive network effects are the entire reason behind doing this. That, of course, brings me to the open source issue.
The backend code for Slashter and PeopleAggregator are both GPL'd. That's great and very much in the flavor of "information wants to be free." The challenge is that the relationships here are the real information, and until this is all opened up there's really no freedom.
I met with a few MSFT reps to talk about the possibilities of Passport, and one of the diagrams they showed us had these relationships between user id and every connection you would want to make (web sites, email, chat, credit cards, online shopping, bill pay...pretty much all of it). Don't bother with the anti-MSFT stuff...I'm already a convert. But consider the big idea behind it: have one public id and one private id and free us to exchange with whomever we want. That's true freedom from the Yahoo!'s, AOLs and MSN's of the world.
We spend a huge amount of time thinking about platforms and software that we can give away for free but maybe that doesn't really matter. I don't care so much that all of these different open source word processors work...I care that they allow me to fulfill the task at hand and share my work with others. I don't care if I use Photoshop or Gimp, but I DO care if I can share high-quality images with my clients. And I don't care if I use a Yahoo! account or a Friendster account...what I want most is to just connect with services and people and let the rest of this all be transparent. And from my perspective, this sounds like the next big opportunity for true open source work. Replicate Passport, make it bulletproof and use it to power all of these services. Then you finally take away the power from the big corporations.
Of course, funding this indefinitely could be a problem. But you could argue the same thing about Linux...so there's a solution in there somewhere.
dunno. This may seem curmudgeonly, but it is, after all, yet ANOTHER language ... Sigh.
Yes, but it paves the way for Pro-arrot...the prototype-inclusive all-language compiler (said with fancy eyebrow-wagging sarcasm).
They do. Unicast and a couple of the others use a bandwidth checker to figure out if it's worth it to actually worth it to start downloading. It's how they're avoiding the problem of users lacking broadband. It's basically a "speed check" (I've used it in campaigns for Compaq...so you get the sense that this has been around since 2000/2001).
Question then: has anyone experienced any bandwidth problems that are associated with these types of ads?
Debt is very good for public companies (in fact it raises the valuation, mainly because of the tax ramifications on debt versus equity issuance). [note: I'm a first year MBA at Georgia Tech...so I'm speaking strictly academically].
It makes me wonder about Jobs' (or the CFO's) motivations. Strictly speaking, this would be the smartest move if Apple were to pursue a Leverage BuyOut (LBO), which is basically a reverse IPO. I can't see them doing this, but would give them a chance to radically reposition the company without requiring stockholder approval.
Just thinking out loud...
.
...if a little more of the information was given to the public. There are a lot of very bright, very interested and very talented engineers that would love to contribute to the solution. Some aspects would need to be kept out of the public hands (lest, of course, some kid in the Bronx go joy-riding in Spirit using just some RadioShack spare parts). But the lion's share of the problem could be posted up for the best (dare I say it?) open-source solution to an engineering problem.
Bugzilla for NASA. I guess that's the best way to describe what I'm thinking.
Please, please don't let Lucas write anymore!!! Empire was _awesome_ and just so overshadows Eps 1 & 2...
Agreed. I've got my moderator points back but the only thing I'd like to use them for is to mod down the original story. Hey Cowboy: why can't I do that?
Um, I'm not so sure that worked so well last time...
I still can't quite figure out why AOL looked at Netscape and thought "hey, there's a nice brand identity that people associate with value." Maybe I'm in the minority, but wasn't that the CompuServe strategy? Or even Prodigy (which I think is still owned by AOL/TW)?
From a brand positioning standpoint, why didn't we end up with "Netscape: The Promise Fulfilled" or "Netscape: A Pioneer Returns"? Nope, instead we get "Netscape: cheap enough you can buy two!"
As if it weren't enough my stock portfolio was worthless...now my heroes have all sold out to Steve Case. Sad.