His comments are based on a post-incident report that's been making the rounds on teh intardnet. I'll just paste it in here, if anybody's still reading. I don't vouch for its authority, other than A) I got it off the net, and B) it came with a note saying it was unclassified. Oh yeah, and it matches what the talking head says -- the navigation system brought down all their avionics. it also states what the QA process was that led to the problem:
Date: 12 Feb 07
To: CC
Info: CV, DS
Narrative:
1. A 1st Fighter Wing AEF 6-ship (Petro 91) departed Hickam AFB enroute to AEF location on 10 Feb. Approximately 4 hours into the mission and coincidental with crossing over the International Date Line, all six aircraft experienced a significant avionics failure including:
Both GINS 1 and 2 Fail
FLCS Degrade
Radar Fail
Fuel Degrade
Loss of all attitude references
Loss of Flight Path marker
Loss of all navigation aides (TACAN, ILS, Computed, etc.)
Loss of all heading indications
2. Aircraft communications were available via backup radio only. Only navigation available was via cockpit airspeed and altitude indications (both deemed accurate). All other aircraft systems, to include engines, electrical system and air refueling, were nominal.
3. Flight Lead, Lt Col Tolliver, initiated via the tanker a CONFERENCE HOTEL (CH) call with LM Aero. All CH team recommended workarounds (avionics restarts, date and time resets, etc.) did not resolve the problem.
4. Lt Col Tolliver assessed pressing to the AEF location but decided to turn back and return to Hickam. He also directed the second deployment cell, a 2-ship approximately one hour behind him, to return to Hickam. NOTE: This 2-ship never crossed the International Date Line.
5. Enroute back to Hickam, after crossing back over the International Date Line, avionics restarts were unsuccessfully attempted.
6. All aircraft successfully recovered at Hickam, shut down (cold iron), restarted engines and all avionics malfunctions cleared.
7. An F-22 Crisis Management Team (CMT) has convened. Two telecoms (1300 and 1700 EST) were conducted on 11 Feb. Participants included F-22 Program Office, LM, Boeing, NG and A8F personnel.
8. The F-22 Program is working 24/7 to resolve this issue. Both F-22 avionics integration labs (RAIL and AIL) have successfully duplicated the problem. The problem resides within the GINS software when the aircraft transitions between East/West Longitude. NOTE: Most RAIL and AIL testing simulate GINS inputs and past testing discovered no issues with over flying the Dateline or Poles. It took testing this weekend using actual GINS hardware and software to duplicate this problem.
9. A fix for this software problem has been developed at NG and currently is being evaluated in the RAIL. We should find out at our 1300 CMT telecom today if this fix works.
10. This fix will require an OFP update to be loaded on the aircraft. Currently no IMIS OFP loading support is on-site at Hickam. 1 FW IMIS was previously deployed to AEF location.
11. F-22 Program currently expects software fix, OFP loading hardware and LM support team in place at Hickam by mid-week. Aircraft possibly will be able to depart Hickam for their AEF location by the end of the week.
12. Updates to this issue will be provided as additional information becomes available. Translation: The navigational system (Global Positioning Inertial Navigation Systems (GINS)) had never been physically tested crossing the date line, but only on simulated real-world inputs. When it crossed the date line for the first time, it crashed, as did the backup, bringing down with it all navigational systems and much of the aircraft's instrumentation, leaving them with backup systems reminiscent of a Cessna 172 (without the navigational stack).
This has been going on for as long as CE have been sold with "commercially developed" firmware. If it's simple, it can be bug-free. When it gets complicated, if you're using the "write and debug" model, you will get bugs. And you'll get usage bugs: ones that affect practically all users, but don't show up until expensive real-world testing is done.
Shameless self-plug aside, this is happenng even with firmware we'd thought was following a different development model, like that in modern fighter jets. And there, they compounded problems by not having at hand the hardware necessary to upload firmware. That's why when you buy a cellphone today, you factor in the cost of a USB connector.
It boils down to this: PS2 compatibility is not a feature that's moving a lot of units. If people are buying PS3s, it's because either: A) They have money to burn and "must have the best", B) That want a blu-ray player or C) they're hoping to play some fun games on it.
The PS2 is currently outselling everything but the Wii, so PS3 owners who don't have PS2s and want to purchase PS2 games are a distinct minority.
Of course, there are those PS3 owners who want to play old PS2 games on their new machines: well, Sony doesn't see the margin in that. They already got their splash by claiming the PS3 plays PS2 games, unlike the Xbox 360, which won't play xbox games (except for a whitelist). But now they've gotta face the bill, and as the PS3 US and Japan launches showed, PS2 emulation was neither trivial nor problem-free. It didn't drive purchases either.
Bah, i googled it and found out that Courtney Love claims prior art, using it to describe the record industry in a 2000 Salon article. A more accurate use of the term, and somehow related, no doubt.
"Black is White" is certainly the case of "DRM increases consumer value". But the point to:
Similarly, consumers who want to consume content on only a single device can pay less than those who want to use it across all of their entertainment areas.
Isn't simply: "Abandoning DRM will prevent us from forcing our customers to keep paying us over and over again for the same movies and songs they've already paid for."
It's more pernicious than that. It reveals the fundamental difference in philosophy: we don't buy things anymore, we "consume content", and they "own content". Ownership is a social convention: in theory, we more or less agree what constitutes "property". Now they are trying to change the rules, claiming they own all the things we use, and we pay them whatever they deem fit. So we become intellectual sharecroppers: we own nothing and owe everything.
The beauty of the letter, however, really lies in how it reveals that the DRM proponents' own ridiculous notions of intellectual property prevent them from having their "DRM-laden paradise". For DRM to truly work, it has to be transparent to the user, interoperable, and add value, not remove it. And, wait! Today's technology can do that! But hold on: that technology is itself "High-value content", and as such needs protection through trade secrets, patents, and proprietary deals, and the resulting product is subject to the same market forces as the content it is supposed to protect. Dammit! The same logic we use to defend DRM shows us that DRM cannot work!
Dude. It's all about the live experience. With an HD DVR, you can start the party, then have everyone sit down two hours after kickoff and watch the commercials without sports interruption. And yeah, you can also avoid the halftime show with "Hooray for Everything" (shudder), without missing the eventual nipple.
Dunno about you guys, but in the humanities tons of prestigious journals are published by for-profit companies. Why? 'cos most of us in the "non-lucrative sciences" can't afford to set up our own journals, and someone has to manage the risk of publishing a journal where a circulation of 400 is the break-even point. When I go to my professional society's meetings, and they discussion the total assets of the society, it's on the order of 1.5*10E5. And yeah, by the way I formulated that, you know that I'm in the humanities.
If it's a genuine case of the offers being different, as you say, do not under any circumstances work there unless it is resolved to your satisfaction. Tell them up front. It might be an honest mistake, but it establishes a bad precedent, and sours the relationship from the start.
So write this out and send it off:
Dear Big Company, I'm afraid the apparent change in conditions of my employment makes it impossible for me to accept the job. While I understand and appreciate that this difference may be an honest mistake, no effort to provide an explanation has been given, and this issue has soured our relationship. While I incur great personal hardship in making this decision at this date, I cannot in good faith accept work for a company that unilaterally changes the terms of my employment.
If you need to, spend a couple hundred bucks on getting a lawyer to write it up for you.
translation: The HDMI cable is useless hardware created to make life more difficult for consumers who respect copyrights, decreasing the inherent value of retail media, and increasing the value of pirated goods.
The Amiga was the only OS I ever used where my interaction with it was characterized by screaming obscenities: it worked really well, really fast, and without ambiguity.
Reading this article makes it all hurt again: the author tries to write a review that glosses over the fact that all the applications are fifteen years behind the time, and the author fails. It still hurts.
In all fairness, he does have a point. GGP is an astroturfer, or at the very least a rabid fanboy. Just look at his previous posts.
I'm celebrating the PS3 demise too, and would love to see reliable reports about PS3s rusting on the shelves, but coming from someone with a posting record like his, the account is not trustworthy. Period.
Yeah, I've been using Office (predominantly Word) for 15 years too (migrating from Amiga WP), and I have to say that the "ribbon interface has a steep learning curve" is a week argument:
First, because he means the curve is shallow, not steep. A steep learning curve means something is easy to learn. If you doubt me, feel free to plot a "material learned/time" graph on the back of an envelope.
More seriously, what he means is that the interface is difficult to use. I've been using Office 2003 for 3 years, and every permutation before that, and I am still cursing the interface as buggy and counterintuitive. I hate contextual menus -- they mean I always have to check to see if the option I want is there, and it usually isn't. Microsoft ripped off that ill-advised Macintosh idea of making the computer "Smarter than the User", and the result is offensive. Take one example: Every time I encounter an installation of Word that I have to use, the first thing I do is disable everything automatic that I can. But, of course, since I collaborate with folks in several languages, including ones that Word doesn't recognize, inevitably Word will still decide I'm writing in a language I have no intention to write in (e.g., Document was originally created in Austrian German, so every time I insert a footnote, it's in Austrian German). Now it runs automatic language support for that, including all that autoformatting crap that sucks even if I were writing in that language. Better yet, they enable the autoformatting, but require a consultation of a regional install disk to actually control it. So there's no bloody way to turn it off.
Will Office 2007 be better? I don't know, but complaining about the interface being hard to learn doesn't make any sense? Office's interface has never been intuitive or useful -- well, at least since Word 5.1 for the Macintosh (and for the record, I've never liked Apple either).
If you go two layers deep into the "Tools" menu, you'll see that "Auto-Astroturf" is by default enabled, where it automatically monitors RSS feeds for relevant discussions and posts pro-Office messages without user intervention!
Dude, you're missin' the point. "Craplets" are bits of software not authorized by Microsoft. If we're going to make trusted computing work, we've got to run everything through authorized channels. Only those with deep enough pockets should be able to threaten system stability. It's about access to resources. You wouldn't want the end user to get the notion that s/he could write and distribute software (shudder).
6) isn't a no-brainer. After all, Sony needs to be in a situation where its current supply of PS3s is insufficient for demand. That may not happen, in which case IBM's current rate of Cell production is just fine. 7) is not a prediction. It's a "contrary-to-fact" statement ("I would, if there were" -- but there aren't so he doesn't) and a present-tensed declaration: "business is, Microsoft is... I am not making this up".
So, no, he ain't making solid predictions, so we can go back to reading Dvorak with confidence. And his Ph.D.? Has anyone actually read his thesis?
server time and bandwidth are only part of the resources. The really expensive ones are customer service, QA, and tech support. A massive user of server time and bandwidth isn't massive in today's internet terms, and, used properly, actually reduces customer service, QA and tech support costs.
Here's another way to put the "Children and McDonalds" argument:
We both agree that a parent has absolute responsibility for child raising. I would go further and say that, in all matters except those effecting the physical, psychological and social well-being of the child (health, education), the parents have the right to parent their child without undue influence from undesirable influences, particularly those opposed to the physical, psychological and social well-being of the child. This is why there are ordnances against putting adult book stores, saloons and rehab clinics next door to grammar schools. So what gives any company the right to interfere with my relationship with my child solely to make a buck? Free speech? That's for adults.
It's not the "Think of the Children" argument: A "Think of the Children" argument is a combination of an appeal to sentimentality with a slippery slope. "To protect our children against predators, pornographers and the bad kids at school, we need to spy on every citizen's internet use" -- here the fear and threat of crime or undesirable behavior on children is used to justify enacting a nanny state. A "Think of the Children" version of the McDonalds argument is: "McDonalds advertising targeting children interferes with the parent-child relationship in a deleterious manner. Therefore, we must ban all advertising."
Or a simpler way of putting it: if I walked up to a random kid on they way to school and told her to drink beer, most people would condemn that: "who the hell are you to tell my kid what to do?!" But we let companies get away with it? Whose liberties are you protecting? My liberty to undue influence from the government and corporations seeking to make a buck off me, or the liberty of these fictional entities to exploit my ass?
In any case, my argument wasn't that we ban McDonalds or even their advertisement, but rather that a lawsuit against a MMORPG would be even stronger than that against McDonalds. Let's take your quote:
he state should NOT be there to hold a person's hand all throughout their life so they dont' make bad decisions such as getting addicted to things. It should be there to make sure the person's rights are not violated, but beyond that not much more. If a person decides to get addicted to X game, and ruins their entire life because of said game, that is not the game makers fault, only the person who got addicted.
.
Alright, let expand the X a bit. How about drugs? I'm in favor of legalizing drugs, incidentally, just so you don't misunderstand my point: A company develops a new drug, let's call it "Crystal Meth". The company knows, from clinical trials and the social history of similar drugs, that Crystal Meth is extremely addictive and will effectively ruin the lives of a sizable percentage of the people who use it. The company then markets Crystal Meth as an alternative to coffee and places it on the supermarket shelves next to coffee, with massive ad campaigns and promotions.
So, on your logic, 'if a person decides to get addicted to Crystal Meth, and ruins their entire life because of Crystal Meth, that is not the fault of the company that A) knew this would happen, B) did nothing to inform their consumers of the real health dangers their product posed and C) did everything to prevent their consumers from learning about those health dangers, but rather the person who decided to take Crystal Meth.'
There are laws against selling rat poison as kiddie candy: for a person to make a rational, informed decision, that person has to be both rational (hence not a child) and capable of informing himself on the product. Suppress either one of those, and you suppress the notion of liberty.
First, try not to get indignant at people who don't exist yet. That's what people in MMORPGs do.
Second, I agree that a class-action suit against one of the really big MMORPGs (or all of them) is overdue. But when it happens, they'll have a stronger case than against McDonalds.
But first McDonalds: McDonalds uses massive ad campaigns targeted at children, a group than any self-respecting state recognizes has an imperfect will: the kid wanting something is not a rational choice. And McDonalds purveys as food substances that fool the senses into thinking they're receiving something extremely nutritive, when in fact, they're getting the obesity and diabetes express. So they're targeting a group not entirely capable of reason with a product that fools the senses. And they're intentionally doing that. So yeah, "Some people". Some people have free will, and are responsible for their actions. Others, by law, are not.
But what about MMORPGs? Here we have another way to suppress free will: addiction. MMORPGs are marketed like any other game: in boxes in stores; sometimes you can download them, but they are not designed like any other game. In particular, they are designed to encourage addiction. Sorry guys -- but when you give out intermittent reinforcement for work done, and then package that with a community that adds a social value to it, you have a dangerous recipe for addiction. And if you're a game company, you want to capture that addiction, and market it. $1 Bn/year in revenue is nothing to be sneezed at.
So yeah, I see a lawsuit here, and it won't necessarily be a bad thing. Putting in some brakes to the excesses that some players go to (and there are lots of players going to excesses) would be good for the overall experience for everyone.
I personally am savoring the effects of the Reality-Disotrtion Field on this whole discussion. The Forrester Group published a report, based on a small sample of opt-in consumers, where they suggest that iTunes might have hit a plateau in music sales. They provide ample documentation of their method, and admit problems related to sample size.
Yeah, the press blows stuff out of proportion, as they almost always do with statistics. Apple's stock loses 3%.
Then, Comscore comes out with an equally ridiculous set of claims, based on a much larger sample size, but their method of "selecting" their sample includes bundling their software with spyware-laden crap and hoping their "valued partners" remember to put an opt-in screen in there.
So, read slashdot, and what do you get? A bunch of "haha! Those Forrester boys were wrong, and it's clearly because their sample size is not only small, but poorly selected!"
The really scary bit is that ComScore tells us even less about what's going on in iTMS, but a lot about future corporate strategies. Given ComScore's approach and "problems in the past", it is reasonable to hypothesize that there will be a strong, positive correlation between a "ComScore" PC and a "Spyware-infected PC".
Put yourself in some fancy shoes and think about what that means: if you pay for marketing through spyware channels: direct to desktop ads, redirectors and all that nasty stuff, you can score a double bonus: your sales will increase, but secondarily, ComScore's rating of your sales will go through the roof.
Betamax may have been the "superior format", but not in all ways. You could record six hours on a VHS tape long before you could do anything similar with beta. A 2 hour tape meant you could get most (but not all) movies, and very few sporting events. 6-hour tape meant you could leave that sucker in there. You could also tape a daily show for a whole week and watch it on the weekend.
Those little technical differences gave VHS an edge in the home market. Plus, Sony's excluding Porn from Betamax really screwed them.
Yeah, no love for Sony on this one. Everyone wants to bring up the M$ is teh evil argument, but come on: Sony's trying use their dominant market position as leverage into another sector. That's one of the reasons why people hate M$. Hate the game, not the players.
Okay, so before it was: "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 720p, and 1080i (only) is screwed". Now it's "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 1080i, and everyone else is screwed".
So it went from a minor annoyance to a severe problem?
I wrote up some conspiracy theory on this, just for the hell of it.
It boils down to this: What about the ROKR? When that came out, people were digging up every possible excuse for why it was a good idea. Well, it probably wasn't -- but it did have some positive reverberations.
Same for the Zune. It'll flop tremendously. But the Zune people have put WiFi on a media player. Their failure will scare off anyone else trying to do so. At the same time, they've suppressed their gag reflex around the **AAs so that they can go back and say, "look, we tried it 'your way'. It didn't work, and we lost millions. The next version is going to give the features the consumer is clamoring for." They can say that, and _not_ be accused of piracy.
But yeah, more likely, the Zune will sink into much-deserved obscurity.
Slashdot Mirror
His comments are based on a post-incident report that's been making the rounds on teh intardnet. I'll just paste it in here, if anybody's still reading. I don't vouch for its authority, other than A) I got it off the net, and B) it came with a note saying it was unclassified. Oh yeah, and it matches what the talking head says -- the navigation system brought down all their avionics. it also states what the QA process was that led to the problem:
Date: 12 Feb 07
To: CC
Info: CV, DS
Narrative:
1. A 1st Fighter Wing AEF 6-ship (Petro 91) departed Hickam AFB enroute to AEF location on 10 Feb. Approximately 4 hours into the mission and coincidental with crossing over the International Date Line, all six aircraft experienced a significant avionics failure including:
Both GINS 1 and 2 Fail
FLCS Degrade
Radar Fail
Fuel Degrade
Loss of all attitude references
Loss of Flight Path marker
Loss of all navigation aides (TACAN, ILS, Computed, etc.)
Loss of all heading indications
2. Aircraft communications were available via backup radio only. Only navigation available was via cockpit airspeed and altitude indications (both deemed accurate). All other aircraft systems, to include engines, electrical system and air refueling, were nominal.
3. Flight Lead, Lt Col Tolliver, initiated via the tanker a CONFERENCE HOTEL (CH) call with LM Aero. All CH team recommended workarounds (avionics restarts, date and time resets, etc.) did not resolve the problem.
4. Lt Col Tolliver assessed pressing to the AEF location but decided to turn back and return to Hickam. He also directed the second deployment cell, a 2-ship approximately one hour behind him, to return to Hickam. NOTE: This 2-ship never crossed the International Date Line.
5. Enroute back to Hickam, after crossing back over the International Date Line, avionics restarts were unsuccessfully attempted.
6. All aircraft successfully recovered at Hickam, shut down (cold iron), restarted engines and all avionics malfunctions cleared.
7. An F-22 Crisis Management Team (CMT) has convened. Two telecoms (1300 and 1700 EST) were conducted on 11 Feb. Participants included F-22 Program Office, LM, Boeing, NG and A8F personnel.
8. The F-22 Program is working 24/7 to resolve this issue. Both F-22 avionics integration labs (RAIL and AIL) have successfully duplicated the problem. The problem resides within the GINS software when the aircraft transitions between East/West Longitude. NOTE: Most RAIL and AIL testing simulate GINS inputs and past testing discovered no issues with over flying the Dateline or Poles. It took testing this weekend using actual GINS hardware and software to duplicate this problem.
9. A fix for this software problem has been developed at NG and currently is being evaluated in the RAIL. We should find out at our 1300 CMT telecom today if this fix works.
10. This fix will require an OFP update to be loaded on the aircraft. Currently no IMIS OFP loading support is on-site at Hickam. 1 FW IMIS was previously deployed to AEF location.
11. F-22 Program currently expects software fix, OFP loading hardware and LM support team in place at Hickam by mid-week. Aircraft possibly will be able to depart Hickam for their AEF location by the end of the week.
12. Updates to this issue will be provided as additional information becomes available.
Translation: The navigational system (Global Positioning Inertial Navigation Systems (GINS)) had never been physically tested crossing the date line, but only on simulated real-world inputs. When it crossed the date line for the first time, it crashed, as did the backup, bringing down with it all navigational systems and much of the aircraft's instrumentation, leaving them with backup systems reminiscent of a Cessna 172 (without the navigational stack).
This has been going on for as long as CE have been sold with "commercially developed" firmware. If it's simple, it can be bug-free. When it gets complicated, if you're using the "write and debug" model, you will get bugs. And you'll get usage bugs: ones that affect practically all users, but don't show up until expensive real-world testing is done.
Shameless self-plug aside, this is happenng even with firmware we'd thought was following a different development model, like that in modern fighter jets. And there, they compounded problems by not having at hand the hardware necessary to upload firmware. That's why when you buy a cellphone today, you factor in the cost of a USB connector.
It boils down to this: PS2 compatibility is not a feature that's moving a lot of units. If people are buying PS3s, it's because either: A) They have money to burn and "must have the best", B) That want a blu-ray player or C) they're hoping to play some fun games on it.
The PS2 is currently outselling everything but the Wii, so PS3 owners who don't have PS2s and want to purchase PS2 games are a distinct minority.
Of course, there are those PS3 owners who want to play old PS2 games on their new machines: well, Sony doesn't see the margin in that. They already got their splash by claiming the PS3 plays PS2 games, unlike the Xbox 360, which won't play xbox games (except for a whitelist). But now they've gotta face the bill, and as the PS3 US and Japan launches showed, PS2 emulation was neither trivial nor problem-free. It didn't drive purchases either.
Bah, i googled it and found out that Courtney Love claims prior art, using it to describe the record industry in a 2000 Salon article. A more accurate use of the term, and somehow related, no doubt.
"Black is White" is certainly the case of "DRM increases consumer value". But the point to:
Isn't simply: "Abandoning DRM will prevent us from forcing our customers to keep paying us over and over again for the same movies and songs they've already paid for."
It's more pernicious than that. It reveals the fundamental difference in philosophy: we don't buy things anymore, we "consume content", and they "own content". Ownership is a social convention: in theory, we more or less agree what constitutes "property". Now they are trying to change the rules, claiming they own all the things we use, and we pay them whatever they deem fit. So we become intellectual sharecroppers: we own nothing and owe everything.
The beauty of the letter, however, really lies in how it reveals that the DRM proponents' own ridiculous notions of intellectual property prevent them from having their "DRM-laden paradise". For DRM to truly work, it has to be transparent to the user, interoperable, and add value, not remove it. And, wait! Today's technology can do that! But hold on: that technology is itself "High-value content", and as such needs protection through trade secrets, patents, and proprietary deals, and the resulting product is subject to the same market forces as the content it is supposed to protect. Dammit! The same logic we use to defend DRM shows us that DRM cannot work!
Dude. It's all about the live experience. With an HD DVR, you can start the party, then have everyone sit down two hours after kickoff and watch the commercials without sports interruption. And yeah, you can also avoid the halftime show with "Hooray for Everything" (shudder), without missing the eventual nipple.
Dunno about you guys, but in the humanities tons of prestigious journals are published by for-profit companies. Why? 'cos most of us in the "non-lucrative sciences" can't afford to set up our own journals, and someone has to manage the risk of publishing a journal where a circulation of 400 is the break-even point. When I go to my professional society's meetings, and they discussion the total assets of the society, it's on the order of 1.5*10E5. And yeah, by the way I formulated that, you know that I'm in the humanities.
If it's a genuine case of the offers being different, as you say, do not under any circumstances work there unless it is resolved to your satisfaction. Tell them up front. It might be an honest mistake, but it establishes a bad precedent, and sours the relationship from the start.
So write this out and send it off:
Dear Big Company,
I'm afraid the apparent change in conditions of my employment makes it impossible for me to accept the job. While I understand and appreciate that this difference may be an honest mistake, no effort to provide an explanation has been given, and this issue has soured our relationship. While I incur great personal hardship in making this decision at this date, I cannot in good faith accept work for a company that unilaterally changes the terms of my employment.
If you need to, spend a couple hundred bucks on getting a lawyer to write it up for you.
translation: The HDMI cable is useless hardware created to make life more difficult for consumers who respect copyrights, decreasing the inherent value of retail media, and increasing the value of pirated goods.
Nostalgia is Greek for "pain of the mind".
The Amiga was the only OS I ever used where my interaction with it was characterized by screaming obscenities: it worked really well, really fast, and without ambiguity.
Reading this article makes it all hurt again: the author tries to write a review that glosses over the fact that all the applications are fifteen years behind the time, and the author fails. It still hurts.
In all fairness, he does have a point. GGP is an astroturfer, or at the very least a rabid fanboy. Just look at his previous posts.
I'm celebrating the PS3 demise too, and would love to see reliable reports about PS3s rusting on the shelves, but coming from someone with a posting record like his, the account is not trustworthy. Period.
Feel free to add your interpretation to the wiki.
Yeah, I'm unclear, but so is everyone else.
Perhaps a better summary of my GP rant would be:
"If the machines are always right, then I'm a 13-year-old Gay Portuguese woman who is always trying to write a letter."
Then again, some of the responses seem to be arguing that that is exactly what I am.
Yeah, I've been using Office (predominantly Word) for 15 years too (migrating from Amiga WP), and I have to say that the "ribbon interface has a steep learning curve" is a week argument:
First, because he means the curve is shallow, not steep. A steep learning curve means something is easy to learn. If you doubt me, feel free to plot a "material learned/time" graph on the back of an envelope.
More seriously, what he means is that the interface is difficult to use. I've been using Office 2003 for 3 years, and every permutation before that, and I am still cursing the interface as buggy and counterintuitive. I hate contextual menus -- they mean I always have to check to see if the option I want is there, and it usually isn't. Microsoft ripped off that ill-advised Macintosh idea of making the computer "Smarter than the User", and the result is offensive.
Take one example: Every time I encounter an installation of Word that I have to use, the first thing I do is disable everything automatic that I can. But, of course, since I collaborate with folks in several languages, including ones that Word doesn't recognize, inevitably Word will still decide I'm writing in a language I have no intention to write in (e.g., Document was originally created in Austrian German, so every time I insert a footnote, it's in Austrian German). Now it runs automatic language support for that, including all that autoformatting crap that sucks even if I were writing in that language. Better yet, they enable the autoformatting, but require a consultation of a regional install disk to actually control it. So there's no bloody way to turn it off.
Will Office 2007 be better? I don't know, but complaining about the interface being hard to learn doesn't make any sense? Office's interface has never been intuitive or useful -- well, at least since Word 5.1 for the Macintosh (and for the record, I've never liked Apple either).
If you go two layers deep into the "Tools" menu, you'll see that "Auto-Astroturf" is by default enabled, where it automatically monitors RSS feeds for relevant discussions and posts pro-Office messages without user intervention!
Dude, you're missin' the point. "Craplets" are bits of software not authorized by Microsoft. If we're going to make trusted computing work, we've got to run everything through authorized channels. Only those with deep enough pockets should be able to threaten system stability. It's about access to resources. You wouldn't want the end user to get the notion that s/he could write and distribute software (shudder).
solid predictions?
6) isn't a no-brainer. After all, Sony needs to be in a situation where its current supply of PS3s is insufficient for demand. That may not happen, in which case IBM's current rate of Cell production is just fine.
7) is not a prediction. It's a "contrary-to-fact" statement ("I would, if there were" -- but there aren't so he doesn't) and a present-tensed declaration: "business is, Microsoft is... I am not making this up".
So, no, he ain't making solid predictions, so we can go back to reading Dvorak with confidence.
And his Ph.D.? Has anyone actually read his thesis?
server time and bandwidth are only part of the resources. The really expensive ones are customer service, QA, and tech support. A massive user of server time and bandwidth isn't massive in today's internet terms, and, used properly, actually reduces customer service, QA and tech support costs.
We both agree that a parent has absolute responsibility for child raising. I would go further and say that, in all matters except those effecting the physical, psychological and social well-being of the child (health, education), the parents have the right to parent their child without undue influence from undesirable influences, particularly those opposed to the physical, psychological and social well-being of the child. This is why there are ordnances against putting adult book stores, saloons and rehab clinics next door to grammar schools.
So what gives any company the right to interfere with my relationship with my child solely to make a buck? Free speech? That's for adults.
It's not the "Think of the Children" argument: A "Think of the Children" argument is a combination of an appeal to sentimentality with a slippery slope. "To protect our children against predators, pornographers and the bad kids at school, we need to spy on every citizen's internet use" -- here the fear and threat of crime or undesirable behavior on children is used to justify enacting a nanny state. A "Think of the Children" version of the McDonalds argument is: "McDonalds advertising targeting children interferes with the parent-child relationship in a deleterious manner. Therefore, we must ban all advertising."
Or a simpler way of putting it: if I walked up to a random kid on they way to school and told her to drink beer, most people would condemn that: "who the hell are you to tell my kid what to do?!" But we let companies get away with it? Whose liberties are you protecting? My liberty to undue influence from the government and corporations seeking to make a buck off me, or the liberty of these fictional entities to exploit my ass?
In any case, my argument wasn't that we ban McDonalds or even their advertisement, but rather that a lawsuit against a MMORPG would be even stronger than that against McDonalds. Let's take your quote:.
Alright, let expand the X a bit. How about drugs? I'm in favor of legalizing drugs, incidentally, just so you don't misunderstand my point:
A company develops a new drug, let's call it "Crystal Meth". The company knows, from clinical trials and the social history of similar drugs, that Crystal Meth is extremely addictive and will effectively ruin the lives of a sizable percentage of the people who use it. The company then markets Crystal Meth as an alternative to coffee and places it on the supermarket shelves next to coffee, with massive ad campaigns and promotions.
So, on your logic, 'if a person decides to get addicted to Crystal Meth, and ruins their entire life because of Crystal Meth, that is not the fault of the company that A) knew this would happen, B) did nothing to inform their consumers of the real health dangers their product posed and C) did everything to prevent their consumers from learning about those health dangers, but rather the person who decided to take Crystal Meth.'
There are laws against selling rat poison as kiddie candy: for a person to make a rational, informed decision, that person has to be both rational (hence not a child) and capable of informing himself on the product. Suppress either one of those, and you suppress the notion of liberty.
First, try not to get indignant at people who don't exist yet. That's what people in MMORPGs do.
Second, I agree that a class-action suit against one of the really big MMORPGs (or all of them) is overdue. But when it happens, they'll have a stronger case than against McDonalds.
But first McDonalds: McDonalds uses massive ad campaigns targeted at children, a group than any self-respecting state recognizes has an imperfect will: the kid wanting something is not a rational choice. And McDonalds purveys as food substances that fool the senses into thinking they're receiving something extremely nutritive, when in fact, they're getting the obesity and diabetes express. So they're targeting a group not entirely capable of reason with a product that fools the senses. And they're intentionally doing that.
So yeah, "Some people". Some people have free will, and are responsible for their actions. Others, by law, are not.
But what about MMORPGs? Here we have another way to suppress free will: addiction. MMORPGs are marketed like any other game: in boxes in stores; sometimes you can download them, but they are not designed like any other game. In particular, they are designed to encourage addiction. Sorry guys -- but when you give out intermittent reinforcement for work done, and then package that with a community that adds a social value to it, you have a dangerous recipe for addiction. And if you're a game company, you want to capture that addiction, and market it. $1 Bn/year in revenue is nothing to be sneezed at.
So yeah, I see a lawsuit here, and it won't necessarily be a bad thing. Putting in some brakes to the excesses that some players go to (and there are lots of players going to excesses) would be good for the overall experience for everyone.
I personally am savoring the effects of the Reality-Disotrtion Field on this whole discussion. The Forrester Group published a report, based on a small sample of opt-in consumers, where they suggest that iTunes might have hit a plateau in music sales. They provide ample documentation of their method, and admit problems related to sample size.
Yeah, the press blows stuff out of proportion, as they almost always do with statistics. Apple's stock loses 3%.
Then, Comscore comes out with an equally ridiculous set of claims, based on a much larger sample size, but their method of "selecting" their sample includes bundling their software with spyware-laden crap and hoping their "valued partners" remember to put an opt-in screen in there.
So, read slashdot, and what do you get? A bunch of "haha! Those Forrester boys were wrong, and it's clearly because their sample size is not only small, but poorly selected!"
The really scary bit is that ComScore tells us even less about what's going on in iTMS, but a lot about future corporate strategies. Given ComScore's approach and "problems in the past", it is reasonable to hypothesize that there will be a strong, positive correlation between a "ComScore" PC and a "Spyware-infected PC".
Put yourself in some fancy shoes and think about what that means: if you pay for marketing through spyware channels: direct to desktop ads, redirectors and all that nasty stuff, you can score a double bonus: your sales will increase, but secondarily, ComScore's rating of your sales will go through the roof.
Yup, and producing crappy quality. But that was good enough for most people.
Betamax may have been the "superior format", but not in all ways. You could record six hours on a VHS tape long before you could do anything similar with beta. A 2 hour tape meant you could get most (but not all) movies, and very few sporting events. 6-hour tape meant you could leave that sucker in there. You could also tape a daily show for a whole week and watch it on the weekend.
Those little technical differences gave VHS an edge in the home market. Plus, Sony's excluding Porn from Betamax really screwed them.
Yeah, no love for Sony on this one. Everyone wants to bring up the M$ is teh evil argument, but come on: Sony's trying use their dominant market position as leverage into another sector. That's one of the reasons why people hate M$. Hate the game, not the players.
Okay, so before it was: "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 720p, and 1080i (only) is screwed". Now it's "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 1080i, and everyone else is screwed".
So it went from a minor annoyance to a severe problem?
Who put Don Rumsfeld in charge of patches?
I wrote up some conspiracy theory on this, just for the hell of it.
It boils down to this: What about the ROKR? When that came out, people were digging up every possible excuse for why it was a good idea. Well, it probably wasn't -- but it did have some positive reverberations.
Same for the Zune. It'll flop tremendously. But the Zune people have put WiFi on a media player. Their failure will scare off anyone else trying to do so. At the same time, they've suppressed their gag reflex around the **AAs so that they can go back and say, "look, we tried it 'your way'. It didn't work, and we lost millions. The next version is going to give the features the consumer is clamoring for." They can say that, and _not_ be accused of piracy.
But yeah, more likely, the Zune will sink into much-deserved obscurity.
Er, the Wired editors do realize that the website in question is run by a competing sim publisher, with rather more interesting products, don't they?