After Do Electric Sheep Dream of Civil Rights? and A Shopping-Scanner Darkly, I was hoping for another Philip K. Dick title reference from ScuttleMonkey here. "'Squash My JavaScript Bugs,' the Acrobat said", perhaps? The Acrobat Whose JavaScript Bugs Were All Exactly Alike? JavaScript Bugs of the Acrobat Moon?
..but Gary Kreman kept pounding, pounding away, thrusting again and again into the slippery corridors of justice. It was sweaty working penetrating the tight holes of legal precedence necessary for him to release his load of depositions, a sticky, exhausting process. But he prevailed! A model for us all...
Given the numerous problems Reuters has had with its own Middle East reporting, what controls are they going to put in place to ensure that these Citizen Journalists aren't feeding them fake pictures?
A politician with the honesty of Bill Clinton, the dashing presence of Michael Dukakis, the sexy charisma of Hubert Humphrey, the commanding stature of Joseph Lieberman, the popularity of Gray Davis, the humble background of John D. Rockefeller, the down-home charm of John Kerry, the electoral experience of Pat Robertson, the honesty of Dan Rostenkowski, and the huge following of Dennis Kucinich!
...is that bloggers are usually much more open about their political biases than The New York Times. The "anything to hurt Bush" reporting that has increasingly come to characterize the paper in the last four years. Before that their liberal bias was also pronounced (how many front page stories do New York readers really want to read about Augusta National Golf Course's membership rules?), but in the last few years it's come to infect such places as the Theater, Architecture, and Fashion (!) sections.
At least when I read Instapundit or Daily Kos, they openly acknowledge their biases. The New York Times still pretends they're objective, when anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi can tell they're not. Maybe that's why their stock prices continues to decline, even outpassing the declines in other newspaper stocks.
I now await the usual Slashdot downmodding of non-liberal political posts.
Since Cringely isn't nearly as big an idiot as Rob Enderle or John C. Devorak, at least this doesn't seem like rank psuedoscience. But there seem to be an awful lot of unchallenged assumptions about the technology that need to be worked out for it to be commercially viable.
In particular, I'd like to see evidence for the following claims:
"They could design new families of disk drives that held up to three times as much data in the same space, were more reliable, actually cheaper to build, and used 70-95 percent less energy to run than the current state of the art."
I'd sure like to see the assumptions and numbers underlying that equation.
"The technology in question replaces the aluminum or glass platter in your hard disk drive with a "platter" made from stainless steel or titanium foil that is 22 microns or 25 microns thick, respectively. The materials cost more but we use so much less of it (the disk is so incredibly thin) that the total material cost is substantially less. This "floppy" material has the same kind of magnetic coatings used on standard disk drives and our drives live on the same technology growth curve as those others. The way we obtain greater storage density is simply by putting more platters in a drive (say 12-15 instead of 4-5 in an enterprise 3.5-inch drive) because they are much thinner and can be stacked closer together. The only parts of the drive that are significantly different are the platters and the heads and the heads vary only in having an extra slot. There is no rocket science here, but what science there is is patented."
Gee, Cringe, which do you think costs more: The raw platters themselves, or the read/write heads? I would say the latter. So you're going to drop the costs of hard drives by doubling the most expensive component? Huh?
The advantage of our drives goes beyond enterprise applications. We are able to build cheaper drives, for example, because our platters cost less to make and the nature of our flying heads is such that dust is sucked away from the head-disk interface, meaning the drives do not have to be assembled in a clean room.
Sorry, I'm not buying this at all. You don't think a non-cleanroom enclosure is going to result in data loss on the platters themselves? Even if you're not getting particles during the read/write phase itself, you're getting them on the platter. I'm not buying the logic here.
Who needs flash in general as a mass storage technology? Our 10-gigabyte 0.85-inch drive can spin up, read or write data, then shut down again, all in less time than it takes to perform the same task using flash.
Sorry, I'm not buying this at all. Until the advent of true Drexlarian nanotechnology, I doubt you're going to see a mechanical action (you still have to move the eread/write heads) beat an eletronic one (reading from Flash).
I'm not saying that the technology Cringely talks about is impossible, I'm saying: A.) There seem to be a lot of unwarrented assumptions underlying his logic, and B.) Implementation always has unforeseen hurldes and obstacles that will make these drives seem like far less of a slam-dunk vs. current technology (or more specifically, where regular drive technology will be 18 months from now) than it appears.
Finally, once it is ready, I'd like to see real-world tests for speed/electrical consumption metrics with existing technology. There might indeed be some savings, but I seriously doubt they are as dramatic as Cringely claims.
The language of the Forbes piece is indeed injudicious. Anytime you see someone pile on adjectives like this, you're looking at either a bad writer, or someone with an axe to grind.
That said, Pope Stallman is indeed an unyielding zelot when it comes to The One and True GPL Path, and many of the points the Forbes article rasies are valid.
As usual, the counter-attack against the article displays the usual marks of Stallmanist zelotry whne it comes to Attacks on the Glorious Leader.
However, the whole Forbes article, as well as Stallman's defenders, are irrelevant, since Linus has stated that he isn't going to place Linux under GPL, and few outside Stallman's hardcore Free Software Acolytes are going to use GPL3 as it stands now.
Q4 FY06 Q4 FY05
Revenue $4.84b $3.68B
Net Income $546m $430M
Earnings/Share: $.62 $.50
(Slashdot keeps taking out the spaces, which is why this looks funky.)
So, even though Dell has a little more than 3x Apple's gross sales, Apple is the more profitable company. Dell's profits dropped by 51% between Q2FY06 and Q2FY07, while Apple's profits reached new records. Moreover, Apple's profitability and market share are both increasing, while Dell's is decreasing.
And Apple would want to outsource manufacturing to a much less profitable and quality-conscious company why?
Does anyone else remember those "programmable matter" blocks someone was pushing on a website several years back? They were white blocks about a cubic foot in diamater, that supposdely could be linked together to do anything you wanted to. Sort of nanotechnology on a macro scale. Supposedly their first profitable application was going to be in bridge building.
Anyway, these sound similar, except for the fact that there was always something a little fishy about that "programmable matter" site...
But I don't know anyone who likes anything real does at all. I mean, they used to be a playering in streaming media, but we all know ...buffering... ...buffering... ...buffering...
how well that turned out: Microsoft and Apple ate their painfully bloated spyware's lunch.
So, market is Real a leader in? What do they make that everyone doesn't hate?
More than once, I've seen the founder of a startup get thrown out of his own company by venture capitalists, despite the fact that it was his idea and technology in the first place. How do I structure a VC deal so that I can't be kicked out of my own company?
This isn't a day late and a dollar short, it's at least three years too late and $100 short.
"Hey, let's offer a player two months from now at the same price as Apple is already selling the iPod at today. Also, let's make sure that our new, unproven propriatary music DRM is completely incompatible with our previous propritary music DRM! That way we get to drive away consumers fearful of unknown technology and piss off our existing music partners to boot!"
The War for the Home Media PC Market is Over, and Apple Has Won
Let's review, shall we?
Apple has the best media-enabled PC
Apple has the best operating system for playing and manipulating media content...by a wide margin.
Apple has the best music playing software (iTunes).
Apple has the best MP3 player (iPod) by an overwhelming margin.
Apple has the best legal music downloading service (iTunes Music Store) by a similarly overwhelming margin.
Now apple has what appears to be the best video-download store (also iTunes). Amazon and company took their best shot to capture the home media market with UnBox...and it's crap. Whatever drawbacks iTunes has as a media delivery platform, they pale in comparison to UnBox's unweildy, power-hungry, DRMed piece of crap.
Come early 2007, Apple will have what is probably the best set-top box on the market, with an attractive price point. Add a MythTV-like recorder function to that (and I'm sure they're working on it), and you have far and away the market leader right out of the gate.
In short, in anything in home entertainment that requires a real user interface, Apple has already beaten the competition so soundly that it is hard to see how they will recover. Apart from the XBox 360 line (still a money-loser, though they might finally eek out a profit if Sony doesn't get their act together), Microsoft is completely absent with viable competitors. With $349 for an 80 GB video iPod, does anyone think Zune, due in November, is going to be anything but dead on arrival?
Where are the glorious UI innovation like Clippy and Microsoft Bob?
Crow T. Trollbot
"Improving Their Writing Skills"?
on
Convergence Culture
·
· Score: 0, Troll
the interest of protecting their trademark, the studio sent out cease-and-desist letters to an online network of pre/teen [largely] girls who had been writing and sharing stories about Harry Potter as a way of learning to improve their writing skills.
Nobody writes fanfic to "improve their writing skills." They write it as a means of psychic wish fulfillment. (Has the author of the review never heard the phrase "Mary Sue" before?) Some may incidentally improve their writing skills, but the number of writers who started out writing media fanfic who went on to actually produce professional original works of fantasy and science fiction is vanishingly small.
Speaking of writing skills, the author of the review might want to spend some time honing his own...
"This time, Tom, he only walked on two feet of water! Why, if he fell through, he'd barely get his knees wet!"
"That's right, Diane. Moreover, reports say the amount of water Jobs convreted into wine was down almost 35% this year from last!"
Jeeze, over the last six years under Jobs, Apple sextuples it's share price, exceeds Dell in market cap, takes over the MP3 market, practically invents and dominates the music download market, doubles the Mac's market share, successfully transitions first from OS 9 to OS X, then from PowerPC to Intel, the last several months ahead of schedule. What the hell do you people want?
Christ, Jobs could announce that from now on every single Mac would ship with a free Natalie Portman clone, and you people would be complaining that it was a disappiontment because the rumors sites said it would ship with two free Natalie Portman clones, each holding ice creame sundaes!
Slashdot Mirror
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
Given the numerous problems Reuters has had with its own Middle East reporting, what controls are they going to put in place to ensure that these Citizen Journalists aren't feeding them fake pictures?
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
At least when I read Instapundit or Daily Kos, they openly acknowledge their biases. The New York Times still pretends they're objective, when anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi can tell they're not. Maybe that's why their stock prices continues to decline, even outpassing the declines in other newspaper stocks.
I now await the usual Slashdot downmodding of non-liberal political posts.
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
In particular, I'd like to see evidence for the following claims:
I'd sure like to see the assumptions and numbers underlying that equation. Gee, Cringe, which do you think costs more: The raw platters themselves, or the read/write heads? I would say the latter. So you're going to drop the costs of hard drives by doubling the most expensive component? Huh? Sorry, I'm not buying this at all. You don't think a non-cleanroom enclosure is going to result in data loss on the platters themselves? Even if you're not getting particles during the read/write phase itself, you're getting them on the platter. I'm not buying the logic here. Sorry, I'm not buying this at all. Until the advent of true Drexlarian nanotechnology, I doubt you're going to see a mechanical action (you still have to move the eread/write heads) beat an eletronic one (reading from Flash).I'm not saying that the technology Cringely talks about is impossible, I'm saying: A.) There seem to be a lot of unwarrented assumptions underlying his logic, and B.) Implementation always has unforeseen hurldes and obstacles that will make these drives seem like far less of a slam-dunk vs. current technology (or more specifically, where regular drive technology will be 18 months from now) than it appears.
Finally, once it is ready, I'd like to see real-world tests for speed/electrical consumption metrics with existing technology. There might indeed be some savings, but I seriously doubt they are as dramatic as Cringely claims.
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
Now if only they could find a way for viewers to dial down the "Perky" setting...
Crow T. Trollbot
10 PRINT 'HELLO WORLD'
20
Awww, CRAP! Gimme a minute, it will come back to me...
Crow T. Trollbot
(in millions, except per-share)
Q2, FY'07 Q2, FY'06 Change
Revenue $14,094 $13,428 5%
Operating Income $605 $1,173 (48%)
Net Income $502 $1,020 (51%)
Earnings/Share $0.22 $0.41 (46% )
Now let's look at Apple from their most recent announced results (in their case it's Q4 FY06 vs. Q4 FY05):
Q4 FY06 Q4 FY05
Revenue $4.84b $3.68B
Net Income $546m $430M
Earnings/Share: $.62 $.50
(Slashdot keeps taking out the spaces, which is why this looks funky.) So, even though Dell has a little more than 3x Apple's gross sales, Apple is the more profitable company. Dell's profits dropped by 51% between Q2FY06 and Q2FY07, while Apple's profits reached new records. Moreover, Apple's profitability and market share are both increasing, while Dell's is decreasing.
And Apple would want to outsource manufacturing to a much less profitable and quality-conscious company why?
Crow T. Trollbot
Anyway, these sound similar, except for the fact that there was always something a little fishy about that "programmable matter" site...
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
But I don't know anyone who likes anything real does at all. I mean, they used to be a playering in streaming media, but we all know
...buffering...
...buffering...
...buffering...
how well that turned out: Microsoft and Apple ate their painfully bloated spyware's lunch.
So, market is Real a leader in? What do they make that everyone doesn't hate?
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
"Hey, let's offer a player two months from now at the same price as Apple is already selling the iPod at today. Also, let's make sure that our new, unproven propriatary music DRM is completely incompatible with our previous propritary music DRM! That way we get to drive away consumers fearful of unknown technology and piss off our existing music partners to boot!"
Dead on Arrival.
Crow T. Trollbot
Let's review, shall we?
In short, in anything in home entertainment that requires a real user interface, Apple has already beaten the competition so soundly that it is hard to see how they will recover. Apart from the XBox 360 line (still a money-loser, though they might finally eek out a profit if Sony doesn't get their act together), Microsoft is completely absent with viable competitors. With $349 for an 80 GB video iPod, does anyone think Zune, due in November, is going to be anything but dead on arrival?
Game over, Man.
-Crow T. Trollbot
A ten kiloton nuclear weapon goes off in the heart of downtown Manhattan tomorrow.
How's that for a test? Certainly Iran is doing everything in its power to make this a real possibility...
- Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
Speaking of writing skills, the author of the review might want to spend some time honing his own...
Crow T. Trollbot
"That's right, Diane. Moreover, reports say the amount of water Jobs convreted into wine was down almost 35% this year from last!"
Jeeze, over the last six years under Jobs, Apple sextuples it's share price, exceeds Dell in market cap, takes over the MP3 market, practically invents and dominates the music download market, doubles the Mac's market share, successfully transitions first from OS 9 to OS X, then from PowerPC to Intel, the last several months ahead of schedule. What the hell do you people want?
Christ, Jobs could announce that from now on every single Mac would ship with a free Natalie Portman clone, and you people would be complaining that it was a disappiontment because the rumors sites said it would ship with two free Natalie Portman clones, each holding ice creame sundaes!
Crow T. Trollbot
Crow T. Trollbot
http://www.hiddenagenda.org/teddyrabbits/HappyBirt hday.mp3
Crow T. Trollbot