Same thing. Money talks. The essence of Jedi persona is tied up in the light saber. Now you've got a controller that can make you monetize that.
I'm sure they've got numbers that will indicate how many sales of any turd with "star wars" on the box will sell. Then you add in something that they haven't done before, but would just be cool, and there you have it. A Wii light saber game is a million sales minimum; the Wii artwork demands are not as bad as PS3/360, so all you need to do is make it work, and make people feel cool doing it.
Besides, I want me one of them twin-blade batons o' death.
People have a tendency to look at history of technoloy in a teleological sense: let's portray technology as an inexorable march towards the modern machines: for airplanes, you start with the Wright Flyer and you end with the A380. For Micros, you'd start with the Altair/Sol sort of stuff, and end with a dual-core dual-LCD screen workstation, some glowing riced-out gaming rig, a laptop, PDA and tablet PC.
But there are many other interesting stories to tell that make computers "historic". Let's limit it to Micros
Social History: how do these machines fit into the lives of the people who use them, and the lives of those who have to deal with those people? The ultra-hobbyist machines of the late-seventies appeared and were used very differently than later micros. What sort of impact on the office did the replacement of the dedicated word processors with micros have? The millions of Commodore 64s that were sold -- what did people actually do with them?
Business history: what about the people who made these machines. What were they trying to do? The Microcomputer field is fascinating as various companies try to mix and blend technologies and capabilities to achieve a "winning formula". There are some real oddball computers out there.
Intellectual History: tied to these computers are all kinds of software, and software development methods. How did the platforms and cultures interact to facilitate the exchange of software, and what modalities were used?
Bah, "courage to post something that wasn't only making fun of the Wii for its name"? Huh? There are enough rabid Nintendo fans around here that they couldn't let a Time article escape.
And yeah, the article is well written and full of smart observations. One of my favorites:
"[Wii] was unimaginable for them," Iwata says. "And because it was unimaginable, they could not say that they wanted it. If you are simply listening to requests from the customer, you can satisfy their needs, but you can never surprise them. Sony and Microsoft make daily-necessity kinds of things. They have to listen to the needs of the customers and try to comply with their requests. That kind of approach has been deeply ingrained in their minds."
I don't agree with Iwata on many things, but customers don't give you your vision. You present it to them, and they either buy it or they don't.
If people had refused to buy the first cell phones, saying, "oh, I'm going to wait until it is small enough to fit in my pocket," they would have waited, what, two decades?
Actually, yes. Most people did wait about two decades before buying cellphones.
Similarly, the Apple Newton was not a commercial success -- it took technology time to reach the level of the Palm for that to happen.
Like many others here, I had known about the Pepperpad's technical specifications beforehand. What I found disturbing about the review was the hyperbole: at one point you say that pressing a button on the text software is easier than turning a page, implying that it's better than a book. Of course, I don't plug my books into walls, nor do I strain my eyes to read them.
But the reason why I brought up the iRex (which probably will not be a success either, at least not in its current incarnation), mp3 players and the rest: there's a core problem with this design, and, for that matter, with Origami. It's a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. You bring up video editing. What kind of video editing would you want to do on a device like this that couldn't better be done at a proper workstation? Wireless: it's got a 802.11b card. Obviously something that costs around 800 Euros can't have at least b/g.
And ultimately there's a philosophical and religious difference underlying the positions. As I see it, the position you express here, and to a lesser degree in the article, is permeated by a Tux-Millenarianism, and you're reading the pepper pad as part of a larger eschatological scheme of unseating the thousand-year reign of the Antichrist. Pepperpad -- well, I wouldn't mind one if I received it in the mail for free -- is not messiah.
Let me clarify that, using baseball.
The last time the Yankees won the World Series was October 2000. Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001. 2 days later, the Yankees played the Diamondbacks in the World series and lost. The San Francisco Giants are known for Barry Bonds, a player who, if one believes reports, got upset with seeing others hit a bunch of home runs, so he took a lot of steroids, according to many violating the spirit of athletic competition.
So your analogy has four problems: 1) The Yankees haven't been performing well ever since Windows XP came out. 2) The Yankees may buy the best talent, but that alone doesn't guarantee them victory. 3) Microsoft is known noto for buying the best talent, but the second-best, and using its market position to impose mediocrity on the world. 4) Being a Giants fan in those conditions implies that the only way to beat Microsoft is to play their game, but cheat.
Now, had you picked the Oakland Athletics under the General Management of Billy Beane, you could have proposed a different model: We don't have the economic resources of the Yankees, but by careful selection of our teams, and aiming for specific goals, we can be competitive.
Right now, the brilliance of linux isn't that it's going to replace Windows on the desktop anytime soon. If anyone can afford a huge professional team to make a desktop computer with billions of potential configurations work, it's Microsoft. And signs are appearing that even they are now having trouble. Welcome to the myth of convergence: 1) the more complicated the system, the more likely it is to fail. 2) While convergence fans like to argue that , if their device performs tasks A, B, and C, then putting them in one device gives you: A*B*C, in fact the equation is more like (A+B+C)/(limitations of A+B+C). So, yeah, Pepper or Origami, you can't type on it because it's got a lousy keyboard. 2 hours battery life makes watching video, listening to MP3 or doing much of a chore. Slow processor speed makes it the wrong choice for editing video. TFT screen does not make it a replacement
So, what you're saying is that the pepper pad deserved a potential 9 out of 10, but actually merits something more along a 3?
When considering a purchase, the future I care about is not what the next generation will be, but what this generation will be a couple years from now. And if I buy a pepper pad now, in a year that stunning two hours of battery life is going to be down to a "2-minute dash to find an outlet before the bloody thing dies".
These guys have some real problems. Yes, they've got a neat idea, and they could pull it off, but their volume is so low, the price is prohibitive for most of us.
For example, you praise its ability as a book reader. Well, shucks, backlight displays aren't great for that, and for the same price I could get me an iRex Iliad (Assuming they ever ship that): half the weight, not only a higher resolution screen, but e-Ink, 802.11g and USB2, and 20 hours of battery life. Of course, that's primarily for reading texts. If you want something for videos, there's a better solution out there too. And Mp3 players are cheap, portable and have reasonable battery life.
Right now, the pepper pad is a nerd toy that deserves a niche for those who want a highly-portable platform to do any number of Linux hacks. It's not a mainstream consumer device by the simple reason that it's too expensive and too underpowered.
If I look only at what the Pepper Pad is today, it's because I'm considering a purchase. Linux fans may believe that the future belongs to them, but for most of us, belief alone is not enough.
That's how humans have read handwriting for most of the papyrus/parchment/paper era.
The problem now is that we're used to reading print. One of the main principles of palaeography is that you read the motions of the pen (or other writing tool) in the medium. Ink in particular is great for this sort of expression, because you can (especially with a flat nib) express all sorts of motions; and using a variety of analytical tools, you can reconstruct missed strokes, damage to the medium, overlapping words and the rest. Some of those analytical tools are, of course, analysis of the linguistic context. And that same context lets us get really fancy with our handwriting. For example, if something logically follows, I don't need to waste my time writing it out clearly.
To muddy the waters further, no two people use the same handwriting. Even in contexts where the formation of letters is strictly determined, everybody has their individual variations, epsecially in pressure, speed, stroke order, stroke direction, and lifting the pen. They also vary in how they form the letters.
So yeah, you can probably get decent success using handwriting OCR on things like addresses and bank account numbers -- because you've got a known context, and are basically looking for key numbers.
And I'm sure there's decent software recognition out there. But to get something that reads human script -- even a forced "machine-friendly" hand -- takes a lot of work, and a lot of training in areas that machines are not good at. You'd need a pretty big neural net.
And that is why "breaking and entering" is a crime: it refers to breaking a hole in the wall and coming through. That's how it was done in the time of Glanville.
So I go there, and I start shoving it text from my hard drive. I try:
A) Text of an article (Philosophy) I (native English speaker) wrote in Italian: 98.5 Authentic. B) Text of an article I wrote in English (History): 87.8 C) Text of an article (History) written in French by a native French speaker and translated into English: 93.2 D) Critical edition of a 14th-century Latin text (Theology): 97.7 Authentic. E) Documentation to a Field Artillery Simulation: 95.3 F) A completely bogus narrative for a monastic order that doesn't exist, written in a style that mimics A)-C): 16.8% Inauthentic
So in this case, we have a human written document that has superficial meaning, but is written as a "fake scientific paper", and registering as such.
And yes, I did read the "purpose" of the page; I know it's not supposed to detect it.
I love that excuse. This is the classic "pass the buck" line used to justify every disastrous release in the last two decades.
Publishers set the release date. Really? And HOW do they set the release date? By asking the developer, "when will this be ready?" So the developer's failing to deliver the product on in time is not the publisher's fault. The publisher, on the other hand, has the job of working out all the time-sensitive deals that make a product go: advertisements, baksheesh to the gaming rags, duplication and distribution. When the developer says "Oh, uh, wait, when I said it'd be ready in June, I mean 2007, not 2006," the publisher has to evaluate the cost of every delay versus the advantage of dumping a crappy product early.
Yeah, I know, developers are stuck with A) a shifting technological landscape, making every product speculative B) often an amateur design team: highly motivated, highly creative, but not always willing to give every aspect of the product the same attention C) whiny fanbois and Riff Randellesque community managers and D) distributors who change requirements at the last minute.
But buggy games aren't the publisher's fault; really nasty product abortions are indicative of systemic failure, starting with the developers.
Yeah? So I should stop testing at alpha? No need to do beta or final testing? After all, once I get all the functionality in there, it'll work great together
No offense, but your definition of beta testing does not correspond to mine.
The label "beta" has been applied and misapplied as a marketing tool, but that does not mean that the stage, and the QA processes with it, mysteriously disappears by an act of newspeak.
to paste the subtitle of the article "Looks can deceive", the tag: "Unfortunately, its performance is not always on par with its design." and the performance section, then slam slashdot and Tom's Hardware for shameless advertisement, and watch the karma arc from +5 informative to -1 troll.
But I'm lazy. So I'll just point out that they laud the design, but not the performance, and the review is not quite as gushing as the slashdot summary suggests.
Maybe it's a problem in the traditional F/OSS model. As long as the contributors aren't contributing professionally, the nature of the work done will reflect the social culture and personal interests. In a culture dominated by programmers and clever engineer-types, kudos tend to go to those people who pull off really clever feats. How many "bounties" have you seen for someone to provide documentation to an existing product? How many awards go to the best documentation-writer? Darn few, if any, and the reason is that it's work that's not fun to do and doesn't inspire the imagination. In fact, you need to pay someone to do that.
Okay, now what path is there for product support? Pretty much the same as for product development. IRC channels regularly get people coming through looking for "lessons". Those who could give "lessons" are usually too busy/interested in using their free time to develop additional content, or for solving really tricky problems.
It's not really snobbery - if you broke into a MS Office development meeting over in Redmond to ask how to set up a document template, you'd probably get the same response: who are you and why are you wasting my time?
Another way to put the problem is: a good producer knows (almost) never to let the engineers talk directly to the clients; instead they go through intermediaries who should be capable of representing (fairly) both sides. Your average F/OSS project doesn't have such intermediaries, since that's relatively uninteresting work you have to pay for.
Universal's "launch" title for HD-DVD is 'Serenity'. Mind you, I like Firefly and all that, but have I missed something? Is Serenity selling DVDs like hotcakes? Or is this Universal's way of announcing mediocre 'wait-and-see' interest in HD-DVD as part of the current format wars?
Then again, I might consider an HD-DVD player to watch Serenity. If, of course, I could afford a TV that would play it back.
CRTs historically give you better color fidelity, but the brightness of LCDs means less eyestrain. Having worn RGPs for years, and switched between CRTs and LCDs, I can tell you that I can wear contacts with LCDs, but not CRTs.
Marketing stunt? Okay, as homework, go and find all the cases of unrealistically high prices being leaked as marketing stunts.
On the one hand, Sony could be pulling a marketing stunt; on the other, they could be trying to get the marketing willing to pay that much. I'd say they're more worried about sticker shock than turning around and surprising everybody "hey, guess what, we lied -- it's lower!".
In yer dreams. They set the price range, now they tweak what they put in the box (accessory-wise) to match their projections.
It would be just like Sony to make this a marketing stunt and come in below the wire? More likely:it would be just like Sony to blow this one.
TFA confuses things a bit by focusing on the features of email. BCC and CC, searchability -- yeah, those are useful, but I'd guess many, if not a majority of email users don't use them. And when you get to email clients, those things offer practically no help as to email's success. Whatever you do, don't emulate outlook as an interface (and yes, I've been using outlook almost exclusively for nearly a decade)
Yes, the author is right that everyone's being familiar with Email helps it, and it's not something that everyone has to learn; likewise with SMTP being the common thread.
But well, I think the reason's a lot simpler. Email is simply more versatile than any number of collaboration tools because it can adapt to any number of tasks, and can be used in any number of ways. And underneath that is a basic design lesson that is most misunderstood. A good tool is one that can be used in a variety of ways, and people will prefer good tools. The problem is that, in the software world "use in a variety of ways" gets misunderstood. Take a flathead screwdriver. "use in a variety of ways" means, in addition to turning screws (its predominant application in many environments), it can open paint cans, punch corks into winebottles, and, eventually, serve as a magnet. To your "office software design committee", "use in a variety of ways" means, in addition to turning screws by being rotated, it can turn screws by pressing a button, or by affixing the screwdriver into an optional clamp attachment and rotating the object with the screw around the driveer. But the minute you apply it to a paint can, it breaks.
The point is, people don't need many ways to do the same thing; they need one tool that can do many things.
So let's return to the office collaboration thingembob: the annoying thing about office software for me is that it makes assumptions about what kind of work I'm going to be doing. And somewhere, that work falls under the rubric "business", and, like the syllabus for an MBA, includes all kinds tidbits and distractions that nobody in the business world ever uses.
The point is: email is not only simple; it can be used in many different ways. In any group, you'll have different levels of computer expertise and different levels of group involvement. Very rarely and in a few fields are the two linked. If you're building software for people to work together, don't focus on "expert users" or giving anyone specific training: make it do as little as possible, as simply as possible. After all, as I tell people repeatedly, it is much more efficient for most people to know how to do a few basic things in relatively inefficient manner, than to learn all the bells-and-whistles of a complex piece of software.
Things that are easy in the IT world, aren't elsewhere. Try setting up a revision control system for editing 14th-century Latin manuscripts.
Rich societies don't really need GMO -- but then again, farming (particularly grains) has always been based on Genetic Manipulation. Only recently have we begun manipulating the code directly (as opposed to selecting the type). Where GMO have real promise is in the third world, where people are starving to death. Dependency on a single crop, dependency on the wrong crop, crop failures -- you name it, there are serious problems. GMO have the capability to alleviate these problems, insuring higher, and more importantly, more regular yields.
Preventing spreading in the wild is a red herring. Any time you start farming an organism, plant or animal, the wild species die out. they're just not as resistant to the diseases that are born, spread and defeated in farm conditions. Sterilizing the plant doesn't solve the problem. So eat your wild salmon now.
Well,here's the deal. There is a situation on the ground, and there are the causes and principles.
The situation on the group is that Genetically Manipulated stocks are appearing on the market. Point 1) some people have a fear of genes as part of Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know. Genetics have great promise: GM foods they can produce high yields, resist pests, drouts, all kinds of things. They could greatly relieve world hunger and all kinds of other stuff. Point 2) in spite of great promise, we have a patent system in effect here. Companies are scouring the world for certain genetic traits in plants, then patenting them and reselling them. They then "manage their rights" by engineering sterile seeds, or milling the seeds before they provide them to famine-struck regions. So your dirt-poor third world farmer suddenly sees his plants being used, the genes being taken, then sold back in a "BRM-d form" so that the big drunk companies get rich. Genetic testing can improve people's lives: ask anyone who's had a cancer identified via a mutation; Likewise Genetic therapy. Point 3) Sure they can save lives, but the human genomes are being patented, and people are making money off of our inherent makeup. Point 4) Only rich companies and individuals have the means to play with genes this way. So by google putting this information out, they are favoring the exploitation of the poor by the rich.
That's the thought underlying it as near as I can make out: it's a combination of irrational fear of the unknown, outrage at shameless exploitation committed in the name of being humanitarian, perfectly reasonable resistance to the closed nature of information, and populist distrust of the motives of the rich and powerful.
google falls into categories one and four more than two and three, which is why most researchers are confused by the ranking. To the other side, the exploitation and privatization of common goods is part and parcel of the capitalist system.
Personally, I'm in favor of mapping all the genes out. And I've got a lovely mutation I'd love to get rid of.
Uh, the problem with arguing that "every single person has the potential to gain access, but the average joe doesn't have the access needed" is that it's just like saying "well, this system is secure because most users don't have the know-how to break it."
As with other security systems, those with a real interest in tampering with it will be able to overcome social boundaries with ease.
Here's how the polling works in the US:
You have a polling place staffed by volunteers who are given a minimum of training. Many of these are retirees, or similar civically-minded folks who can take a whole working day off. Political parties can send "observers" to the polls, to make sure no "hanky-panky" occurs, usually by the observers for the other side, but also by the pollsters. Basically, you sit there and cross off party voters from a list when they vote so they don't get called by the afternoon volunteer drive, and if the volunteers have some trouble with the voting laws, you offer whatever help you can.
Now, the parties don't send observers to all polling places at all times, so there are going to be some with only republican observers, or only democratic ones, or nobody. And those cases are probably going to see the volunteers leaning to the same party.
So right there you've got an opportunity for access. Now, add in the fact that your average volunteer does matches the demographic of the folks who actually wait 2 hours on tech support lines because they don't know anybody who knows how to run a computer, and you've got a problem that is dead easy to social engineer.
That's the way DRM is supposed to be. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DRM are going to make people care. The current path for HD player acceptance runs through the folks at the upper-end of the market who watch really big Bruckheimer explosions on their monster televisions.
The HD players coming out want to repeat the DVD player success story: the fastest adaptation of a new media technology ever. I mean, in the space of a few years, DVD video achieved something like 80 percent market penetration. Now here comes HD-DVD; only problem is HD televisions don't have that high market penetration numbers. But at the very least, someone who spent $3000 on a television will probably want to spent $500 on a player to watch something other than sports and CSI in hi-def.
Yet enter DRM: Sony and pals are so scared of nerds ripping off their signal and trading it peer-to-peer they're going to screw those who spent $3000 on TVs and who can afford and do purchase large amounts of DVDs.
So they're so afraid of the nerds in the basement and their 19" LCD screens, that they'll stop taking the money from those fat cats in their Bucky Balls wanting to watch Brucky Bombs go off.
Geeks don't particularly care about DRM ruining their access to stuff: it's a challenge that historically has been met every time. What bothers them more is the notion that DRM ruins cool technology by making it less attractive in the marketplace.
I know what you all are thinking. Great! He hacked it with three bytes, and showed his work. Now all AMD needs to do is get a 10-way conference call going on an X2 and they'll have another strike in their lawsuit against intel.
But wait -- there is a way out. See the code is written to identify CPUs, and to run on dual core CPUs, but it doesn't make that distinction for AMD. So all the defense needs to do is set up an XP box running an AMD 1.4 GhZ "Firebird", next to some oily rags, get a 10-way conference call going, and simulate a CPU heatsink failure. Clearly they were blocking AMD 10-way calls out of product liability concerns.
Slashdot Mirror
Same thing. Money talks. The essence of Jedi persona is tied up in the light saber. Now you've got a controller that can make you monetize that.
I'm sure they've got numbers that will indicate how many sales of any turd with "star wars" on the box will sell. Then you add in something that they haven't done before, but would just be cool, and there you have it. A Wii light saber game is a million sales minimum; the Wii artwork demands are not as bad as PS3/360, so all you need to do is make it work, and make people feel cool doing it.
Besides, I want me one of them twin-blade batons o' death.
Well, it depends on your model of an exhibition.
People have a tendency to look at history of technoloy in a teleological sense: let's portray technology as an inexorable march towards the modern machines: for airplanes, you start with the Wright Flyer and you end with the A380. For Micros, you'd start with the Altair/Sol sort of stuff, and end with a dual-core dual-LCD screen workstation, some glowing riced-out gaming rig, a laptop, PDA and tablet PC.
But there are many other interesting stories to tell that make computers "historic". Let's limit it to Micros
Social History: how do these machines fit into the lives of the people who use them, and the lives of those who have to deal with those people? The ultra-hobbyist machines of the late-seventies appeared and were used very differently than later micros. What sort of impact on the office did the replacement of the dedicated word processors with micros have? The millions of Commodore 64s that were sold -- what did people actually do with them?
Business history: what about the people who made these machines. What were they trying to do? The Microcomputer field is fascinating as various companies try to mix and blend technologies and capabilities to achieve a "winning formula". There are some real oddball computers out there.
Intellectual History: tied to these computers are all kinds of software, and software development methods. How did the platforms and cultures interact to facilitate the exchange of software, and what modalities were used?
Hi again Christian,
I'll let you have the last word on this one. I just wanted to thank you for clarifying your position.
And yeah, the article is well written and full of smart observations. One of my favorites:
I don't agree with Iwata on many things, but customers don't give you your vision. You present it to them, and they either buy it or they don't.
Actually, yes. Most people did wait about two decades before buying cellphones.
Similarly, the Apple Newton was not a commercial success -- it took technology time to reach the level of the Palm for that to happen.
Like many others here, I had known about the Pepperpad's technical specifications beforehand. What I found disturbing about the review was the hyperbole: at one point you say that pressing a button on the text software is easier than turning a page, implying that it's better than a book. Of course, I don't plug my books into walls, nor do I strain my eyes to read them.
But the reason why I brought up the iRex (which probably will not be a success either, at least not in its current incarnation), mp3 players and the rest: there's a core problem with this design, and, for that matter, with Origami. It's a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. You bring up video editing. What kind of video editing would you want to do on a device like this that couldn't better be done at a proper workstation? Wireless: it's got a 802.11b card. Obviously something that costs around 800 Euros can't have at least b/g.
And ultimately there's a philosophical and religious difference underlying the positions. As I see it, the position you express here, and to a lesser degree in the article, is permeated by a Tux-Millenarianism, and you're reading the pepper pad as part of a larger eschatological scheme of unseating the thousand-year reign of the Antichrist. Pepperpad -- well, I wouldn't mind one if I received it in the mail for free -- is not messiah.
Let me clarify that, using baseball.
The last time the Yankees won the World Series was October 2000. Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001. 2 days later, the Yankees played the Diamondbacks in the World series and lost.
The San Francisco Giants are known for Barry Bonds, a player who, if one believes reports, got upset with seeing others hit a bunch of home runs, so he took a lot of steroids, according to many violating the spirit of athletic competition.
So your analogy has four problems:
1) The Yankees haven't been performing well ever since Windows XP came out.
2) The Yankees may buy the best talent, but that alone doesn't guarantee them victory.
3) Microsoft is known noto for buying the best talent, but the second-best, and using its market position to impose mediocrity on the world.
4) Being a Giants fan in those conditions implies that the only way to beat Microsoft is to play their game, but cheat.
Now, had you picked the Oakland Athletics under the General Management of Billy Beane, you could have proposed a different model: We don't have the economic resources of the Yankees, but by careful selection of our teams, and aiming for specific goals, we can be competitive.
Right now, the brilliance of linux isn't that it's going to replace Windows on the desktop anytime soon. If anyone can afford a huge professional team to make a desktop computer with billions of potential configurations work, it's Microsoft. And signs are appearing that even they are now having trouble. Welcome to the myth of convergence:
1) the more complicated the system, the more likely it is to fail.
2) While convergence fans like to argue that , if their device performs tasks A, B, and C, then putting them in one device gives you: A*B*C, in fact the equation is more like (A+B+C)/(limitations of A+B+C).
So, yeah, Pepper or Origami, you can't type on it because it's got a lousy keyboard. 2 hours battery life makes watching video, listening to MP3 or doing much of a chore. Slow processor speed makes it the wrong choice for editing video. TFT screen does not make it a replacement
So, what you're saying is that the pepper pad deserved a potential 9 out of 10, but actually merits something more along a 3?
When considering a purchase, the future I care about is not what the next generation will be, but what this generation will be a couple years from now. And if I buy a pepper pad now, in a year that stunning two hours of battery life is going to be down to a "2-minute dash to find an outlet before the bloody thing dies".
These guys have some real problems. Yes, they've got a neat idea, and they could pull it off, but their volume is so low, the price is prohibitive for most of us.
For example, you praise its ability as a book reader. Well, shucks, backlight displays aren't great for that, and for the same price I could get me an iRex Iliad (Assuming they ever ship that): half the weight, not only a higher resolution screen, but e-Ink, 802.11g and USB2, and 20 hours of battery life.
Of course, that's primarily for reading texts. If you want something for videos, there's a better solution out there too. And Mp3 players are cheap, portable and have reasonable battery life.
Right now, the pepper pad is a nerd toy that deserves a niche for those who want a highly-portable platform to do any number of Linux hacks. It's not a mainstream consumer device by the simple reason that it's too expensive and too underpowered.
If I look only at what the Pepper Pad is today, it's because I'm considering a purchase. Linux fans may believe that the future belongs to them, but for most of us, belief alone is not enough.
That's how humans have read handwriting for most of the papyrus/parchment/paper era.
The problem now is that we're used to reading print. One of the main principles of palaeography is that you read the motions of the pen (or other writing tool) in the medium. Ink in particular is great for this sort of expression, because you can (especially with a flat nib) express all sorts of motions; and using a variety of analytical tools, you can reconstruct missed strokes, damage to the medium, overlapping words and the rest. Some of those analytical tools are, of course, analysis of the linguistic context. And that same context lets us get really fancy with our handwriting. For example, if something logically follows, I don't need to waste my time writing it out clearly.
To muddy the waters further, no two people use the same handwriting. Even in contexts where the formation of letters is strictly determined, everybody has their individual variations, epsecially in pressure, speed, stroke order, stroke direction, and lifting the pen. They also vary in how they form the letters.
So yeah, you can probably get decent success using handwriting OCR on things like addresses and bank account numbers -- because you've got a known context, and are basically looking for key numbers.
And I'm sure there's decent software recognition out there. But to get something that reads human script -- even a forced "machine-friendly" hand -- takes a lot of work, and a lot of training in areas that machines are not good at. You'd need a pretty big neural net.
We'll be seeing a kick-ass first-person Croquet game.
Yeah, people are gonna be just as pumped up for ordering "Soul Calibur Wii" as they were for "Getting the Smegma warmed up for the daily grind"
And that is why "breaking and entering" is a crime: it refers to breaking a hole in the wall and coming through. That's how it was done in the time of Glanville.
So I go there, and I start shoving it text from my hard drive. I try:
A) Text of an article (Philosophy) I (native English speaker) wrote in Italian: 98.5 Authentic.
B) Text of an article I wrote in English (History): 87.8
C) Text of an article (History) written in French by a native French speaker and translated into English: 93.2
D) Critical edition of a 14th-century Latin text (Theology): 97.7 Authentic.
E) Documentation to a Field Artillery Simulation: 95.3
F) A completely bogus narrative for a monastic order that doesn't exist, written in a style that mimics A)-C): 16.8% Inauthentic
So in this case, we have a human written document that has superficial meaning, but is written as a "fake scientific paper", and registering as such.
And yes, I did read the "purpose" of the page; I know it's not supposed to detect it.
And yet it does, decisively.
I love that excuse. This is the classic "pass the buck" line used to justify every disastrous release in the last two decades.
Publishers set the release date. Really? And HOW do they set the release date? By asking the developer, "when will this be ready?" So the developer's failing to deliver the product on in time is not the publisher's fault. The publisher, on the other hand, has the job of working out all the time-sensitive deals that make a product go: advertisements, baksheesh to the gaming rags, duplication and distribution. When the developer says "Oh, uh, wait, when I said it'd be ready in June, I mean 2007, not 2006," the publisher has to evaluate the cost of every delay versus the advantage of dumping a crappy product early.
Yeah, I know, developers are stuck with A) a shifting technological landscape, making every product speculative B) often an amateur design team: highly motivated, highly creative, but not always willing to give every aspect of the product the same attention C) whiny fanbois and Riff Randellesque community managers and D) distributors who change requirements at the last minute.
But buggy games aren't the publisher's fault; really nasty product abortions are indicative of systemic failure, starting with the developers.
Yeah? So I should stop testing at alpha? No need to do beta or final testing? After all, once I get all the functionality in there, it'll work great together
No offense, but your definition of beta testing does not correspond to mine.
The label "beta" has been applied and misapplied as a marketing tool, but that does not mean that the stage, and the QA processes with it, mysteriously disappears by an act of newspeak.
to paste the subtitle of the article "Looks can deceive", the tag: "Unfortunately, its performance is not always on par with its design." and the performance section, then slam slashdot and Tom's Hardware for shameless advertisement, and watch the karma arc from +5 informative to -1 troll.
But I'm lazy. So I'll just point out that they laud the design, but not the performance, and the review is not quite as gushing as the slashdot summary suggests.
Maybe it's a problem in the traditional F/OSS model. As long as the contributors aren't contributing professionally, the nature of the work done will reflect the social culture and personal interests. In a culture dominated by programmers and clever engineer-types, kudos tend to go to those people who pull off really clever feats. How many "bounties" have you seen for someone to provide documentation to an existing product? How many awards go to the best documentation-writer? Darn few, if any, and the reason is that it's work that's not fun to do and doesn't inspire the imagination. In fact, you need to pay someone to do that.
Okay, now what path is there for product support? Pretty much the same as for product development. IRC channels regularly get people coming through looking for "lessons". Those who could give "lessons" are usually too busy/interested in using their free time to develop additional content, or for solving really tricky problems.
It's not really snobbery - if you broke into a MS Office development meeting over in Redmond to ask how to set up a document template, you'd probably get the same response: who are you and why are you wasting my time?
Another way to put the problem is: a good producer knows (almost) never to let the engineers talk directly to the clients; instead they go through intermediaries who should be capable of representing (fairly) both sides. Your average F/OSS project doesn't have such intermediaries, since that's relatively uninteresting work you have to pay for.
Universal's "launch" title for HD-DVD is 'Serenity'. Mind you, I like Firefly and all that, but have I missed something? Is Serenity selling DVDs like hotcakes? Or is this Universal's way of announcing mediocre 'wait-and-see' interest in HD-DVD as part of the current format wars?
Then again, I might consider an HD-DVD player to watch Serenity. If, of course, I could afford a TV that would play it back.
CRTs historically give you better color fidelity, but the brightness of LCDs means less eyestrain. Having worn RGPs for years, and switched between CRTs and LCDs, I can tell you that I can wear contacts with LCDs, but not CRTs.
and get some sleep already.
Marketing stunt? Okay, as homework, go and find all the cases of unrealistically high prices being leaked as marketing stunts.
On the one hand, Sony could be pulling a marketing stunt; on the other, they could be trying to get the marketing willing to pay that much. I'd say they're more worried about sticker shock than turning around and surprising everybody "hey, guess what, we lied -- it's lower!".
In yer dreams. They set the price range, now they tweak what they put in the box (accessory-wise) to match their projections.
It would be just like Sony to make this a marketing stunt and come in below the wire?
More likely:it would be just like Sony to blow this one.
Kinda like "A screaming came across the sky." Makes sense to me.
TFA confuses things a bit by focusing on the features of email. BCC and CC, searchability -- yeah, those are useful, but I'd guess many, if not a majority of email users don't use them. And when you get to email clients, those things offer practically no help as to email's success. Whatever you do, don't emulate outlook as an interface (and yes, I've been using outlook almost exclusively for nearly a decade)
Yes, the author is right that everyone's being familiar with Email helps it, and it's not something that everyone has to learn; likewise with SMTP being the common thread.
But well, I think the reason's a lot simpler. Email is simply more versatile than any number of collaboration tools because it can adapt to any number of tasks, and can be used in any number of ways. And underneath that is a basic design lesson that is most misunderstood. A good tool is one that can be used in a variety of ways, and people will prefer good tools. The problem is that, in the software world "use in a variety of ways" gets misunderstood. Take a flathead screwdriver. "use in a variety of ways" means, in addition to turning screws (its predominant application in many environments), it can open paint cans, punch corks into winebottles, and, eventually, serve as a magnet. To your "office software design committee", "use in a variety of ways" means, in addition to turning screws by being rotated, it can turn screws by pressing a button, or by affixing the screwdriver into an optional clamp attachment and rotating the object with the screw around the driveer. But the minute you apply it to a paint can, it breaks.
The point is, people don't need many ways to do the same thing; they need one tool that can do many things.
So let's return to the office collaboration thingembob: the annoying thing about office software for me is that it makes assumptions about what kind of work I'm going to be doing. And somewhere, that work falls under the rubric "business", and, like the syllabus for an MBA, includes all kinds tidbits and distractions that nobody in the business world ever uses.
The point is: email is not only simple; it can be used in many different ways. In any group, you'll have different levels of computer expertise and different levels of group involvement. Very rarely and in a few fields are the two linked. If you're building software for people to work together, don't focus on "expert users" or giving anyone specific training: make it do as little as possible, as simply as possible. After all, as I tell people repeatedly, it is much more efficient for most people to know how to do a few basic things in relatively inefficient manner, than to learn all the bells-and-whistles of a complex piece of software.
Things that are easy in the IT world, aren't elsewhere. Try setting up a revision control system for editing 14th-century Latin manuscripts.
Rich societies don't really need GMO -- but then again, farming (particularly grains) has always been based on Genetic Manipulation. Only recently have we begun manipulating the code directly (as opposed to selecting the type). Where GMO have real promise is in the third world, where people are starving to death. Dependency on a single crop, dependency on the wrong crop, crop failures -- you name it, there are serious problems. GMO have the capability to alleviate these problems, insuring higher, and more importantly, more regular yields.
Preventing spreading in the wild is a red herring. Any time you start farming an organism, plant or animal, the wild species die out. they're just not as resistant to the diseases that are born, spread and defeated in farm conditions. Sterilizing the plant doesn't solve the problem. So eat your wild salmon now.
Well,here's the deal. There is a situation on the ground, and there are the causes and principles.
The situation on the group is that Genetically Manipulated stocks are appearing on the market. Point 1) some people have a fear of genes as part of Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know.
Genetics have great promise: GM foods they can produce high yields, resist pests, drouts, all kinds of things. They could greatly relieve world hunger and all kinds of other stuff.
Point 2) in spite of great promise, we have a patent system in effect here. Companies are scouring the world for certain genetic traits in plants, then patenting them and reselling them. They then "manage their rights" by engineering sterile seeds, or milling the seeds before they provide them to famine-struck regions. So your dirt-poor third world farmer suddenly sees his plants being used, the genes being taken, then sold back in a "BRM-d form" so that the big drunk companies get rich.
Genetic testing can improve people's lives: ask anyone who's had a cancer identified via a mutation; Likewise Genetic therapy.
Point 3) Sure they can save lives, but the human genomes are being patented, and people are making money off of our inherent makeup.
Point 4) Only rich companies and individuals have the means to play with genes this way. So by google putting this information out, they are favoring the exploitation of the poor by the rich.
That's the thought underlying it as near as I can make out: it's a combination of irrational fear of the unknown, outrage at shameless exploitation committed in the name of being humanitarian, perfectly reasonable resistance to the closed nature of information, and populist distrust of the motives of the rich and powerful.
google falls into categories one and four more than two and three, which is why most researchers are confused by the ranking. To the other side, the exploitation and privatization of common goods is part and parcel of the capitalist system.
Personally, I'm in favor of mapping all the genes out. And I've got a lovely mutation I'd love to get rid of.
Uh, the problem with arguing that "every single person has the potential to gain access, but the average joe doesn't have the access needed" is that it's just like saying "well, this system is secure because most users don't have the know-how to break it."
As with other security systems, those with a real interest in tampering with it will be able to overcome social boundaries with ease.
Here's how the polling works in the US:
You have a polling place staffed by volunteers who are given a minimum of training. Many of these are retirees, or similar civically-minded folks who can take a whole working day off.
Political parties can send "observers" to the polls, to make sure no "hanky-panky" occurs, usually by the observers for the other side, but also by the pollsters. Basically, you sit there and cross off party voters from a list when they vote so they don't get called by the afternoon volunteer drive, and if the volunteers have some trouble with the voting laws, you offer whatever help you can.
Now, the parties don't send observers to all polling places at all times, so there are going to be some with only republican observers, or only democratic ones, or nobody. And those cases are probably going to see the volunteers leaning to the same party.
So right there you've got an opportunity for access. Now, add in the fact that your average volunteer does matches the demographic of the folks who actually wait 2 hours on tech support lines because they don't know anybody who knows how to run a computer, and you've got a problem that is dead easy to social engineer.
"Here, let me fix that computer problem for you"
That's the way DRM is supposed to be. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DRM are going to make people care. The current path for HD player acceptance runs through the folks at the upper-end of the market who watch really big Bruckheimer explosions on their monster televisions.
The HD players coming out want to repeat the DVD player success story: the fastest adaptation of a new media technology ever. I mean, in the space of a few years, DVD video achieved something like 80 percent market penetration. Now here comes HD-DVD; only problem is HD televisions don't have that high market penetration numbers. But at the very least, someone who spent $3000 on a television will probably want to spent $500 on a player to watch something other than sports and CSI in hi-def.
Yet enter DRM: Sony and pals are so scared of nerds ripping off their signal and trading it peer-to-peer they're going to screw those who spent $3000 on TVs and who can afford and do purchase large amounts of DVDs.
So they're so afraid of the nerds in the basement and their 19" LCD screens, that they'll stop taking the money from those fat cats in their Bucky Balls wanting to watch Brucky Bombs go off.
Geeks don't particularly care about DRM ruining their access to stuff: it's a challenge that historically has been met every time. What bothers them more is the notion that DRM ruins cool technology by making it less attractive in the marketplace.
I know what you all are thinking. Great! He hacked it with three bytes, and showed his work. Now all AMD needs to do is get a 10-way conference call going on an X2 and they'll have another strike in their lawsuit against intel.
But wait -- there is a way out. See the code is written to identify CPUs, and to run on dual core CPUs, but it doesn't make that distinction for AMD. So all the defense needs to do is set up an XP box running an AMD 1.4 GhZ "Firebird", next to some oily rags, get a 10-way conference call going, and simulate a CPU heatsink failure. Clearly they were blocking AMD 10-way calls out of product liability concerns.