Windows "didn't really drive any TRENDS in computing"... perhaps, but Windows drove COMPUTING as a TREND, and at that, a trend which is clearly here to stay. Which do you suppose is more important? Computing did not just happen as some inevitable result of the power in a PC -- hardly, users would never have gotten far building kits. Remember Gates' and thus MS' old maxim, "a computer on every desk!" and you'll acknowledge that computing did not just happen -- Microsoft and Windows and Office made it happen. Like it, or not.
Right, just like when They introduced HTML, the World Wide Web, and gave all these crackers browsers. Ruined my decade, and as you say, "only led to more unmitigated crap."
Since when did the principle of universal readership and the realization of decades' dreams of a participatory universal information database become a bad thing? Wrong side of the bed today, brother?
If you don't like what you're clicking on, then maybe you need to query more carefully. Your wish is your machine's command.
I don't see this as incremental, while it is a step in a longer path. I expect users to be more than partially excited.
Time was when we debated whether IM would subsume email; think we called them "instant messaging" and "e-mail" at that point 8)
IM and HTTP/HTTPS, different protocols, different Subnets, architecture which in classic Geek fashion precipitated different end user apps for each.
Welcome again to 2006, some say "the year of user experience" in what is clearly, at least a minor era thereof. Different protowhats? Try explaining to users why IM and email have been kept apart until now.
These apps had to change, had to merge, for users have been forced to keep vague, human mental track of what was said when and where and to whom. Until and even with Google Desktop, we had little hope of "keeping straight" what we had typed to each other through our machines. From a user's point of view, this is absurd! What should be simpler?
Google's founders were 15 and 16 years old (Brin, Page respectively) when "Field of Dreams" introduced the iconic phrase "If you build it, they will come." In software, this mantra has never been more true than when "they" are users -- not clients in the B2B case, users. Maybe that film hit the Googlers at just the right, impressionable age.
Let their corporate motto, "Don't be evil" extend to "don't be greedy." The greedy engineer, nee the greedy corporation, puts its own, short term interests first, followed closely by its clients' interests, followed somewhere after by its users' interests. We all know that happy B2B users lead to happy clients lead to happy software businesses and happy engineers. Under market pressures though, few of us software businessmen, middle managers, and engineers have the nads to invest in the idea. What could be worse than knowing better and still acting greedy, if not evil?
The cliche's are irresistable, I'm sorry; let's try: "give, and ye shall receive." Or, how about a metaphor: The User King. A testy, unpredictable ruler when misunderstood and/or abused, when well treated he is a benevolent king who will stay with and guide you. You need only build for him a castle, provide him servants and society, influence in court, importance and so on.
If the engineers and businessmen submit to their User King despite short term expenses, they will find themselves well cared for in return. "Leveraging" this, to "utilize" in your "solutions" of course, is only as difficult as letting go of your ego. Let the "participation age," the Web 2.0ness wash over you. Speak softly to yourself "I am not the user, I am not in control, The User is my King." Let go of your pet features, your opinions about graphics and cuteness. Let go of everything visible in the application.
Make no assumptions about what King User wants or needs. Take some time and ask him, not your boss or your executive leadership or your shareholders or your clients, accept no substitutes. Ask your User, then include not one more feature than your users need: remember Google.com, circa 1999? One or two interesting touches, like a looser-than-most corporate logo policy and some casual, entertaining wording like "I'm feeling lucky," that's fine. Be Geeky, but whatever you do: "don't be difficult." Don't be a Geek. Don't be the Geek you know you are; rather, be only what King User wants you to be, not one thing more.
I like the "coming soon" type announcements when we can believe the company saying it. Coming soon to free, minimalist, searchable, 3 Gig accounts near you: "IM and email, what's the difference? and could RSS be any easier?"
According to 2005 figures,
more
Americans pay for Internet access than pay for non-broadcast (additional charge,
beyond the hardware) television. You're right that most Americans pay for
TV, but I'm fairly certain (after some research, which unfortunately I don't see
any one, perfect and freely accessible source on) you're wrong in that most
*people* do not pay for TV. As so often happens here, you've confused
"people" with "Americans." What I'm saying generally is that in the real world,
for most people, TV programming is in fact free.
"ads 20min out of every hour"...
The real, typical, American figure is 16 minutes, 20% less than your number.
Most ads are 15-second "hooks."
Hey, I don't want these interrupting my game flow either and I'd bet most gamers, for
most game types, would agree with us on that. Just like Google did for browsers and primarily PC
users, a successful Google for ad supported games would need to develop the
right user experience for it all to work. It sounds like more mild hyperbole for you to argue that TV type adverts are
a logical method for corporations to advertise in games.
We should expect that
the significant market pressure all those advertising $ billions create will
mean that ad supported gaming will happen, to some degree. Personally I hope to
see a game world mirror of the Google win-win.
I may be mistaken, but I believe Google has provided consumers and corporations with a relative win-win advertising model which could and likely will port into any technology driven experience, certainly and obviously including games. The potential for abuse of a successful, but new tool or model has historically only delayed those tools' and models' onset. The efficiency and other improvements all parties lose to human fear must be frightful ("The only thing we have to fear is...").
I prefer to anticipate, embrace, and positively influence the implementation gaps into which proven technology will flow. While pointing out potential pitfalls is a part of that process, I'm less enthused about the value of doomsday, slippery slope, and "keep that new thing away from me" style arguments.
I'm sorry, but Babel Fish is crystal clear on this one. The notice reads: "According to the legal law and the policy, the partial searches fruit does not show."
In exchange for a free gaming experience I am willing to suffer the Coke, Pepsi, and other ads, much like I do in "the real world," or in exchange for television programming free of additional charge. I would play more games if they didn't each cost so much. In fact, I suppose all of us (and many others) might play more by a margin large enough... for advertising to be valuable enough... for an ad supported gaming market, and an emergent Google of games?
Sad that piddling language parsing, legalese, even copyright are what the American Thinkers have to trot out to "win" the debate with the American Believers. How did the intellectuals lose this one --> we had the religious sitting in public classrooms for decades, being taught science and certainly being taught evolution, with blind religious belief kept strictly separate from the curriculum.
Even I grew up in conservative Catholic schools, but I was taught evolution. It's not as if the majority of Americans were taught creationism in school. We've lost this battle on two fronts: in the classroom, obviously, where we're in complete control and we've no excuses, and then in the churches and temples across this country.
This is a massive, historic failure by American intellectuals and American education. Scientific methodology, philosophy, nay critical thinking have not been adequately communicated to the tens of millions of people who now also believe they, their country and their president "lead the world," "police the world," and are the world's "only Super Power." We have a Believer for what they call "the leader of the free world."
Here's a thought: 99% of us reading and writing here loved science and math class, we couldn't get enough of it. I still see some sigs here and there with "Jesus saved me and he can save you, too" appending an otherwise critically considered opinion. Generally speaking though, we're not blind Believers.
So I'm preaching to the choir, in some respects, except that rather than preaching I'm really saying: we've failed, failed the American people and in some regard the world, for at least one entire generation. What are we going to do about it?
It could be as simple as communication. Maybe the thinkers should learn to play organs and guitars, write some melodramatic music and stories about the origins of the universe, life and humankind. While marching around with candles and holding up portraits of Great Scientists, we can explain the afterlife (worm pudding), but in a comforting way ( maybe some of Thanatopsis?). We can discuss modding, karmatic/., and maybe Newton's third law of motion (action, reaction) so the congregation understands justice in a critically considered and organized nature.
If we dress science up a bit, teach it as Truth (not as right or wrong, but as critically considered and open minded). We could strongly recommend that all people, for all their life, attend a science class every Sunday morning.
I'm willing to propose that if families regularly attended science class together, we would all enjoy a more reasonable, and more peaceful world.
As much as we intellectuals have failed to "save" the believers, we can take a hard look at where this country has been since 2000 and say undoubtedly, that even moreso the believers have failed us all. Are not the biggest sinners walking this earth today also those most loudly denouncing sin?
This is where the U.S. Congress has license to go after these companies, legally. A few hearings ought to clear everything up for the American people, where the "two-tier distribution models" that pass responsibility for distribution on to resellers become front-page news and election issues. The problem here though, is one of significantly higher order than sanctions and software in Myanmar. For Congress to assert itself and American law in this one case would only belie the greater reality and delay the onset of global justice.
If we're going to live in a world of nations, then we each maintain our own law and for example, the U.S. Congress does have something substantive to say about how American companies conduct their business. If companies are to continue being considered "American" or "German" or "Japanese" at all, then the national governments must reassert themselves. Under the current circumstances, only fools believe what's written in all those books, charters, and constitutions. Americans argue over whether The Pledge of Allegiance should be said -- they ought to consider first whether any of it is relevant, anymore. Fact is, corporations are already far more nimble and powerful than countries. Nations are already unable to protect and govern their citizens, so are they nations at all?
Economics lead and politics follow. At some point, the national governments will admit their standing and, in a grab for power they can no longer pretend to have, they will coalesce with other, similar national governments. As we've seen in the EU, mergers between governments will attempt to catch up to the transnationalism of corporations. Before this happens, I think corporations will need to abuse their workers and their consumers somewhat more than already they do, and all of us will need to hear and read more about it. There will need to be significant public support for a body like the U.S. Congress to go on suggesting a merger with other governments, admitting it cannot otherwise corral American companies.
The Chinese may yet prove me wrong, but so far I'm still pretty sure that capitalism requires an overseeing democracy to maintain justice. Justice's scales are far out of balance at the moment, where the laws we write here in the U.S. are wholly ignored by American companies elsewhere. Hell, even the American government itself just outsources its torture and killing of detainees and enemies of our state. Whenever we want to break our own laws, we just go somewhere else to do it. The connection between laws and land is an ancient concept, one which bears decreasing resemblance to 21st century reality.
So yes, American companies should not be selling product there, because there are those sanctions and yes, I do think the American government could still do something to stop it, but not so long as they remain only the government of America. To really do something about it, to right the scales of Justice, to police and govern the world, we require world government. Nothing less will do, all this nonsense about being a "Super Power" and the policemen of the world set aside. Our tech and strategy and experience can't even put Iraq at peace; the U.S. and its few close friends are nowhere near the strength required of a global government.
wIth ePaper tHough, wHy wOuld tHere bE aNymore tHan oNe pIece oF pAper? wOuldn't tHat bE lIke hAving oNe mOnitor pEr "pAge" yOu rEad oNline?
I understand -- first generation ePaper won't be everything the threads here foresee, but sometime soon... The ancient concepts of "online," "virtual reality," "cyber-everything," and "eWhatever" will fade away, when finally it is commonplace for almost all people to almost always "be online." When we hold "the information superhighway" in our hands all the time, when there is in fact no other way to get information , it will cease to warrant linguistic distinction from "the real world." Tell that to the people who are already freaked about "video games."
That "virtual reality" is equally if not more real is true for some of us now, it is nearly true for roughly half of the "First World" now but most of us aren't not entirely on top of it yet, and this is not true at all for the large majority of humanity yet, sadly. Electronic paper in its many forms (if Siemens is first to market.. ) and the still exploding mobile/cell markets are set to take care of the majority, methinks.
Is (hu)mankind as a whole ready to comprehend that life is not unique to Earth? People often assume formal religions would be more or less screwed, but I'm not so sure. After being around for oh, 2,000 or so years, The Roman Catholic Church for one example is likely to take it all in stride. More than one billion Earthlings look to The Church for guidance, so if the Vatican can apologize for the existence of extraterrestrial life it would have a significant calming effect on humankind's reaction.
So can they? There is a lot in this Interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer. I think Catholicism is more than ready to explain all this away, and if one billion plus people believe what they've dished out for 2,000 years, then I think those people are likely to believe almost anything, anything at all the Vatican tells them to.
Aside from religion, a place most people will turn when faced with news of life "in the heavens," there is the fact of how the human intellect operates. Our prejudice with regard to extraterrestrial life is considerable, and our crippling penchant for prejudice is not something we are likely to overcome soon.
After so much popular preparation for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, I would not expect humanity to shift its current comprehension much in any direction, regardless of the extraterrestrial life we encounter. We are just barely conscious in daily life as it is, relying on routines and recognition. We've already made up our minds how we'll react if we find microbes -- barely -- and if we find intelligent competition -- with deep fear and self destructive tendencies guided by a belief that They must be out to destroy us (but that we'll miraculously "win" in a Hollywood ending).
Despite the dearth of official links (MS still doesn't 'get' the whole Internet thing, do they?!), we do now have some more authoritative sources coming online.
The reveal was in Munich today, which is part of the reason you might see less if you're only trolling around on American sites (on the U.S. dominated and controlled Web).
As for TFA, Paul Bryan is not even a
Real Microsoft Executive, but
Mike
Nash sure is, and you can catch a couple quotes from him via some trustworthy sources.
"The term plutocracy indicates a form of government where all the state's decisions are centralized in an affluent wealthy class of citizenry and the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.... This can apply to a multitude of government systems as these concepts transcend and often occur concomitantly with them. The word itself is derived from the ancient Greek root pluotos meaning wealth."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
As evidenced by a spectrum of personal globalization from the rise of the Web to the rise of open sourceware to the rise of common humanity in tsunami relief, a significant meritocratic groundswell exists in which you can vest your hopes for righting plutocracy. When my wife and I visited tsunami relief efforts near Chennai this March, we saw firsthand that our actions from Anytown, USA can have immediate impact, anywhere in the world. We can take into our own hands some parts of the governance of the world, and we can do a more just job of it than the plutocrats.
Through NGOs like Asha for Education, we volunteer our resources and we have done more of certain types of good for tsunami victims than the Indian or Tamil Nadu State governments could do. Our efforts improved victims' lives immediately, effectively, personally, and in a longer lasting manner. In March we saw and it's true still today, NGOs we have funded and volunteered for are actively providing victims with the specific, personal help and resources they need. Asha for Education, for example, is a wholly volunteer organization. They are educating, and clothing and feeding and sheltering and nurturing, the children in India who are most in need. Some of the children they've educated are now adults, some of them here on/.
The plutocrats meanwhile have mismanaged scads of U.N. resources, most of that being from either USA/taxes and/or rerouted U.S. Red Cross donations. Governments have resisted helping victims where there was no additional financial gain for a corporate friend, votes to be won for politicians, or when there was no interest in another press conference with another film star. We saw examples of this on the ground in Tamil Nadu, too. Something like a "housing contract" would be handed out like just another party favor. In turn the lowest quality, even unusable shelters have been constructed by the plutocrats, who believe they have thus maximized their socioeconomic profits.
When I talk about the power "we" have and the change "we've" wrought, I should say that yes I am personally involved but I mean We The People, not of the USA but the people, all people. We more of meritos, though less of plutos. We of more veritas than the profiteers.
The network is the computer, and we are the network.
Kurzweil refers to merger of mind and machine as one tipping point. Beyond that, he speaks of 300-year lifespans.
When minds are ported to machines, we will soon network beyond recognition as individuals. Kurzweil is a digital immigrant with uncommon powers of imagination, but he doesn't understand even the sands now shifting beneath him.
Digital natives already live in an editable world. From fan fiction and remixes to wikis and wares, we claim and respect less individual ownership than our elders. This is equally true of all property, creation, and ideas. We blab ever more freely to the entire online world ever more intimate details of our "personal" lives, our personal and professional lives are ever less separate, we expose ever more details of our presence, our purpose, our thoughts, ourselves.
We give in unprecedented amounts and haste to relieve the suffering of millions we would never have met in a world of just five years ago. I'm a boy from 1970s Ohio; my neighborhood was defined as the distance my two feet could take me. "Long distance telephone calls" were themselves prohibitively expensive. An unthinkable two decades later, our neighborhood is defined as the distance our thoughts can travel, streaming freely (and with incredible clarity) in Google Talk. The billions living in Asia are as much a part of my community as anyone, anymore. More than half my colleagues in the U.S. are from the other half of the planet, and my next job might very well be on their turf. I hear the weather's great in Bangalore.
We can publish anything, anytime, to anyone anywhere, and I'd rather not be the only author. I'd rather not pay for access to others' thoughts and creations, and I'd rather not charge for access to my own. Let's talk about profit. I suppose profit is something you get by lying to whomever pays you. You convince them what you offer is worth more than truly it is, and then you profit. Sounds like the ancient, barbaric oppression from which humanity is emerging; sounds evil. No thanks.
Let's metaphorically say that on the order of 10,000 years ago humankind first effectively wrote, recording thought extrasomatically for posterity on tokens representing commerce between ancient farmers. 1,000 years or so ago, we effectively published (in 1041, movable clay type was invented in China). 100 or so years ago, we jumped into cars, we recorded real images and audio and video. We left ever more of ourselves behind, expressed ourselves and learned and experience ever more extrasomatically. We began living ever more through machines. It took thousands of years for us to realize what began 10,000 years ago, hundreds of years to realize what began 1,000 years ago, and it took decades to realize what began roughly 100 years ago.
10 years go, we began "browsing" and the world hit the Web. Critical mass for this as a publishing medium was achieved almost "instantly," let's say within the course of one year. Finally, 1 year ago, GOOG hit the ticker, and one day later,/. began whorring full-force for Google:)
Seriously, the point is we are less somatic than ever, and the latest jump (here on the Internets) happened in less than one generation. Thus digital immigrants like Kurzweil are on the slow side of a huge leap away from ancient human nature. This generation gap gapes unlike any generation gap before it.
We are merging already, with only a minority of the world online and only Riemannian Sums of shared experience among the connected. When we are online, the integral of connectivity will swiftly overwhelm whatever remaining essence of the ancient, the organic, the fragile, human individual.
Lifespans of 300 years will be suffered only by the relative Luddites who insist on their intellectual independence. Their inferiority will ensure both their irrelevance, and the irrelevance of any concept of "lifespan." These trends are easily visible now, to anyone whose mentality is digitally native.
"Tourism can be defined as the act of travel for the purpose of recreation, and the provision of services for this act. A tourist is someone who travels at least fifty miles from home, as defined by the World Tourism Organization (a United Nations body)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourist
50 miles: check.
recreation: not so much, no.
Olsen paid for access to a laboratory in which he will study things he could not anywhere else, such as crystal growth and infrared imaging sensor performance. Even during the two-day Soyuz journey to the ISS, Olsen is operating some oxygen systems and filling other small but necessary roles. He's spent the last several months training more as a member of the crew, even learning Russian (mandatory). He is not just along for the ride.
Sounds like a great holiday to me, but as a matter of respect and perhaps even by definition, I would not call him a tourist.
Larger parts of this are public relations, cool factor, and the real, hard science potential. Even if office space made it this deal with these terms on this day, this is not about real estate.
Where did Velma go to work after Scooby Doo? NASA.
Where will Dib go to work after Invader Zim? Google.
<sigh> and what ever happened to Penny (Inspector Gadget)...
SZ, dig deeper. Leo Sheridan is not at all a kook.
Sheridan is a well respected British expert particularly on wrecked ships, who occasionally chimes in to solve odd seaborne mysteries like the myriad washed up, dead dolphins in '98, a curious lot of whom sported blast holes in their necks. Google him and you'll grant Sheridan more respect.
The U.S. conducted lot of related research since WWII both in and out of dedicated programs and offices, as did the Soviets. (Other countries' efforts were limited.) Nothing on the Navy page you point to dilutes Sheridan's account of a classified program. That is to say, the existence of open source and/or declassified programs and material says nothing about whether a classified program exists.
Your overstatements are a little strange, as when you wrote "supposedly top secret" to berate Sheridan's commentary about the U.S. program, when he had only referred to the program as "classified." SZ, have you ever heard of a straw man?
It seems like you assumed you had a slam-dunk analysis of this thread. Without looking deeply enough you proceeded to repeat and laud yourself (and repeat lauding yourself).
Take another look around, and consider all the history of this research. That the U.S. Navy has this classified program and in 1998 fumbled some remote training and networking technologies -- this is too hard for you to believe? Or, do you find it unlikely that the U.S. Navy would blast some dolphins to cover its ass?
It seems plausible that if any of the dolphins missing here in 2005 were armed or otherwise comprised of valuable intel bits, they may turn up dead in the local news down South or in Mexico. By being aware of what may have occurred in 1998, we'll sooner see whether this particular story gets any more interesting.
"It sounds incredible, but this program is quite well-known in military circles," says Leo Sheridan, an internationally respected accident investigator, to London's The Observer in a relevant article from March, 1998.
In February 1998, dozens of dead dolphins began washing ashore along the French Mediterranean. According to Jon Henley, a reporter for The Observer, "Most bore an identical, and mysterious wound - a neat, fist-sized hole - on the underside of their necks."
Marine biologists were baffled but Leo Sheridan proposed the only explanation that has not yet been dismissed. "I am convinced that these were dolphins trained by the US Navy and that something went badly wrong," Sheridan told The Observer.
Sheridan believes "they were disposed of to conceal the existence of the Americans' military dolphin program." In fact it was 1989 when the U.S. Navy began its classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission. The San Diego-based operation involved fitting dolphins with neck harnesses that pressed small electrodes into their skin.
The animals were taught to recognize and drown enemy divers. The dolphins could be remotely monitored and controlled via electric signals transmitted through the neck harness. In order to prevent the dolphins and the Navy's technology from falling into the wrong hands, a small explosive charge was planted in the harness on the underside of the animal's neck.
Sheridan noted that 16 of the dead dolphins displayed the same kind of round puncture wound that is "consistent with a small detonation. "It seems to me no accident that these dolphins first began washing up in the middle of a military crisis when American warships and submarines were en route to the [Persian] Gulf."
... it's safe to assume technology and maybe even the Navy are a bit smarter, seven years on. If I were going to remotely eliminate the swimming evidence, assuming I could regain control of it, I would have each dolphin swim to a different location.
I'd also not kill each with the same mechanism. Some could enjoy the release of a toxin they might have naturally eaten too much of, others an electric shock they might naturally have happened upon. In any event I'd be more inventive than blasting equivalent holes in 16 necks, then tossing on a few dozen other dolphins to cover the ass of a classified program.
Like the difference between municipal drinking water fountains and having municipal water in your office or home, cities do not need to offer access of equivalent quality and delivery method free to all users, everywhere. Could there be a less desirable, but workable version of the utility freely available on city streets (like the fountains), with a sweeter and for-pay version of the utility available within businesses and homes? The sweeter version can compete with private entities, while the basic service of lower quality access can be provided for all who cannot afford or are not positioned to use better.
Access to information is as important to life as water -- my honest opinion, a corollary of sorts to "Give me liberty or give me death."
Particularly as it is Google's mission to "to organize the world's information
and make it universally accessible and useful," it is especially striking that they acknowledge any wiki type ability to do so, presumably with enough sophistication that Google does not want to duplicate and/or surpass the wiki. Google is paying yet another compliment to concepts which are theoretically aligned with OSS. Heads way up!
Cross references of all this data via identity is RFID's most frightening "promise." All the arguments had in recent years about privacy are exponentially more critical; already, we are awash in more publically available data about ourselves than we can individually manage. We need tools as individuals being tracked, to manage access to data which identifies us.
Is anyone in the U.S. Congress close enough to technical to understand, to defend individuals from exploitation? Who there can swim in the deep end RFID is pulling us out into? Most/.ers are probably
too young to run for office.
On the fringe of topic here, but yes the connection between behavior, identity, and credit is the most troubling you mention. I can't even see my credit score, despite a recent federal act mandating that I get occasional free
credit reports, without buying it. This despite that it is my credit score which is often used to evaluate my credit worthiness.
RFID exponentially increases the importance of this question. Casinos are one frontier at which the technical issues will find their resolutions; before long though, we are going to need more concerted efforts in Congress and similar places around the world, if consumers are to be protected from what could become corporate omniscience with regard to consuming mentalities of individuals.
Not to be unduly snarky in reply to an Informative post, but... I've read that the "internets" can be used to transmit information collected in one place, to another place. If this absurd idea were true, an RFID scan, via "computers" connected to "internets," could be read anywhere -- for a price.
Anyone ELSE seeing a HUGE business in reading RFID from location X, and transmitting data to various buyers?
I agree, who wouldn't, that MS' historic stance was against inter-op in so far as inter-op harmed their business model. I see this as the primary reason they got Googled and that they are getting out-Fire Foxed. They tried to have it both ways with their approach to the Internet, but could not bend it sufficiently to the anti-inter-op will which worked for them so well, for so long.
Not only the natural trends in technology driven by human behavior and the Net's architecture, but also the courts have certainly weighed in, and they have demonstrably changed MS. I disagree that MS would continue in the same vein, against inter-op. They are out to earn, and earn big. No one can deny smaller devices already supplanting PCs, call them "phones" if you must, and the near-future trend toward ever more hardware integration with previously offline environs (LCD paint, anyone?). MS will change their strategy to be more pro-inter-op, because that is the only way in which they can continue to earn, and maybe the only way in which they can continue to (legally) exist as MS.
Slashdot Mirror
BG
Since when did the principle of universal readership and the realization of decades' dreams of a participatory universal information database become a bad thing? Wrong side of the bed today, brother?
If you don't like what you're clicking on, then maybe you need to query more carefully. Your wish is your machine's command.
Time was when we debated whether IM would subsume email; think we called them "instant messaging" and "e-mail" at that point 8)
IM and HTTP/HTTPS, different protocols, different Subnets, architecture which in classic Geek fashion precipitated different end user apps for each.
Welcome again to 2006, some say "the year of user experience" in what is clearly, at least a minor era thereof. Different protowhats? Try explaining to users why IM and email have been kept apart until now.
These apps had to change, had to merge, for users have been forced to keep vague, human mental track of what was said when and where and to whom. Until and even with Google Desktop, we had little hope of "keeping straight" what we had typed to each other through our machines. From a user's point of view, this is absurd! What should be simpler?
Google's founders were 15 and 16 years old (Brin, Page respectively) when "Field of Dreams" introduced the iconic phrase "If you build it, they will come." In software, this mantra has never been more true than when "they" are users -- not clients in the B2B case, users. Maybe that film hit the Googlers at just the right, impressionable age.
Let their corporate motto, "Don't be evil" extend to "don't be greedy." The greedy engineer, nee the greedy corporation, puts its own, short term interests first, followed closely by its clients' interests, followed somewhere after by its users' interests. We all know that happy B2B users lead to happy clients lead to happy software businesses and happy engineers. Under market pressures though, few of us software businessmen, middle managers, and engineers have the nads to invest in the idea. What could be worse than knowing better and still acting greedy, if not evil?
The cliche's are irresistable, I'm sorry; let's try: "give, and ye shall receive." Or, how about a metaphor: The User King. A testy, unpredictable ruler when misunderstood and/or abused, when well treated he is a benevolent king who will stay with and guide you. You need only build for him a castle, provide him servants and society, influence in court, importance and so on.
If the engineers and businessmen submit to their User King despite short term expenses, they will find themselves well cared for in return. "Leveraging" this, to "utilize" in your "solutions" of course, is only as difficult as letting go of your ego. Let the "participation age," the Web 2.0ness wash over you. Speak softly to yourself "I am not the user, I am not in control, The User is my King." Let go of your pet features, your opinions about graphics and cuteness. Let go of everything visible in the application.
Make no assumptions about what King User wants or needs. Take some time and ask him, not your boss or your executive leadership or your shareholders or your clients, accept no substitutes. Ask your User, then include not one more feature than your users need: remember Google.com, circa 1999? One or two interesting touches, like a looser-than-most corporate logo policy and some casual, entertaining wording like "I'm feeling lucky," that's fine. Be Geeky, but whatever you do: "don't be difficult." Don't be a Geek. Don't be the Geek you know you are; rather, be only what King User wants you to be, not one thing more.
I like the "coming soon" type announcements when we can believe the company saying it. Coming soon to free, minimalist, searchable, 3 Gig accounts near you: "IM and email, what's the difference? and could RSS be any easier?"
Couldn't have come from a more usual suspect.
"ads 20min out of every hour" ...
The real, typical, American figure is 16 minutes, 20% less than your number.
Most ads are 15-second "hooks."
Hey, I don't want these interrupting my game flow either and I'd bet most gamers, for most game types, would agree with us on that. Just like Google did for browsers and primarily PC users, a successful Google for ad supported games would need to develop the right user experience for it all to work. It sounds like more mild hyperbole for you to argue that TV type adverts are a logical method for corporations to advertise in games.
We should expect that the significant market pressure all those advertising $ billions create will mean that ad supported gaming will happen, to some degree. Personally I hope to see a game world mirror of the Google win-win.
I prefer to anticipate, embrace, and positively influence the implementation gaps into which proven technology will flow. While pointing out potential pitfalls is a part of that process, I'm less enthused about the value of doomsday, slippery slope, and "keep that new thing away from me" style arguments.
I'm sorry, but Babel Fish is crystal clear on this one. The notice reads: "According to the legal law and the policy, the partial searches fruit does not show."
In exchange for a free gaming experience I am willing to suffer the Coke, Pepsi, and other ads, much like I do in "the real world," or in exchange for television programming free of additional charge. I would play more games if they didn't each cost so much. In fact, I suppose all of us (and many others) might play more by a margin large enough ... for advertising to be valuable enough ... for an ad supported gaming market, and an emergent Google of games?
Sad that piddling language parsing, legalese, even copyright are what the American Thinkers have to trot out to "win" the debate with the American Believers. How did the intellectuals lose this one --> we had the religious sitting in public classrooms for decades, being taught science and certainly being taught evolution, with blind religious belief kept strictly separate from the curriculum.
Now, less than half of the U.S. "believes in evolution?"
Even I grew up in conservative Catholic schools, but I was taught evolution. It's not as if the majority of Americans were taught creationism in school. We've lost this battle on two fronts: in the classroom, obviously, where we're in complete control and we've no excuses, and then in the churches and temples across this country.
This is a massive, historic failure by American intellectuals and American education. Scientific methodology, philosophy, nay critical thinking have not been adequately communicated to the tens of millions of people who now also believe they, their country and their president "lead the world," "police the world," and are the world's "only Super Power." We have a Believer for what they call "the leader of the free world."
Here's a thought: 99% of us reading and writing here loved science and math class, we couldn't get enough of it. I still see some sigs here and there with "Jesus saved me and he can save you, too" appending an otherwise critically considered opinion. Generally speaking though, we're not blind Believers.
So I'm preaching to the choir, in some respects, except that rather than preaching I'm really saying: we've failed, failed the American people and in some regard the world, for at least one entire generation. What are we going to do about it?
It could be as simple as communication. Maybe the thinkers should learn to play organs and guitars, write some melodramatic music and stories about the origins of the universe, life and humankind. While marching around with candles and holding up portraits of Great Scientists, we can explain the afterlife (worm pudding), but in a comforting way ( maybe some of Thanatopsis?). We can discuss modding, karmatic /., and maybe Newton's third law of motion (action, reaction) so the congregation understands justice in a critically considered and organized nature.
If we dress science up a bit, teach it as Truth (not as right or wrong, but as critically considered and open minded). We could strongly recommend that all people, for all their life, attend a science class every Sunday morning.
I'm willing to propose that if families regularly attended science class together, we would all enjoy a more reasonable, and more peaceful world.
As much as we intellectuals have failed to "save" the believers, we can take a hard look at where this country has been since 2000 and say undoubtedly, that even moreso the believers have failed us all. Are not the biggest sinners walking this earth today also those most loudly denouncing sin?
BG
If we're going to live in a world of nations, then we each maintain our own law and for example, the U.S. Congress does have something substantive to say about how American companies conduct their business. If companies are to continue being considered "American" or "German" or "Japanese" at all, then the national governments must reassert themselves. Under the current circumstances, only fools believe what's written in all those books, charters, and constitutions. Americans argue over whether The Pledge of Allegiance should be said -- they ought to consider first whether any of it is relevant, anymore. Fact is, corporations are already far more nimble and powerful than countries. Nations are already unable to protect and govern their citizens, so are they nations at all?
Economics lead and politics follow. At some point, the national governments will admit their standing and, in a grab for power they can no longer pretend to have, they will coalesce with other, similar national governments. As we've seen in the EU, mergers between governments will attempt to catch up to the transnationalism of corporations. Before this happens, I think corporations will need to abuse their workers and their consumers somewhat more than already they do, and all of us will need to hear and read more about it. There will need to be significant public support for a body like the U.S. Congress to go on suggesting a merger with other governments, admitting it cannot otherwise corral American companies.
The Chinese may yet prove me wrong, but so far I'm still pretty sure that capitalism requires an overseeing democracy to maintain justice. Justice's scales are far out of balance at the moment, where the laws we write here in the U.S. are wholly ignored by American companies elsewhere. Hell, even the American government itself just outsources its torture and killing of detainees and enemies of our state. Whenever we want to break our own laws, we just go somewhere else to do it. The connection between laws and land is an ancient concept, one which bears decreasing resemblance to 21st century reality.
So yes, American companies should not be selling product there, because there are those sanctions and yes, I do think the American government could still do something to stop it, but not so long as they remain only the government of America. To really do something about it, to right the scales of Justice, to police and govern the world, we require world government. Nothing less will do, all this nonsense about being a "Super Power" and the policemen of the world set aside. Our tech and strategy and experience can't even put Iraq at peace; the U.S. and its few close friends are nowhere near the strength required of a global government.
I understand -- first generation ePaper won't be everything the threads here foresee, but sometime soon ... The ancient concepts of "online," "virtual reality," "cyber-everything," and "eWhatever" will fade away, when finally it is commonplace for almost all people to almost always "be online." When we hold "the information superhighway" in our hands all the time, when there is in fact no other way to get information , it will cease to warrant linguistic distinction from "the real world." Tell that to the people who are already freaked about "video games."
That "virtual reality" is equally if not more real is true for some of us now, it is nearly true for roughly half of the "First World" now but most of us aren't not entirely on top of it yet, and this is not true at all for the large majority of humanity yet, sadly. Electronic paper in its many forms (if Siemens is first to market .. ) and the still exploding mobile/cell markets are set to take care of the majority, methinks.
So can they? There is a lot in this Interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer. I think Catholicism is more than ready to explain all this away, and if one billion plus people believe what they've dished out for 2,000 years, then I think those people are likely to believe almost anything, anything at all the Vatican tells them to.
Aside from religion, a place most people will turn when faced with news of life "in the heavens," there is the fact of how the human intellect operates. Our prejudice with regard to extraterrestrial life is considerable, and our crippling penchant for prejudice is not something we are likely to overcome soon.
After so much popular preparation for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, I would not expect humanity to shift its current comprehension much in any direction, regardless of the extraterrestrial life we encounter. We are just barely conscious in daily life as it is, relying on routines and recognition. We've already made up our minds how we'll react if we find microbes -- barely -- and if we find intelligent competition -- with deep fear and self destructive tendencies guided by a belief that They must be out to destroy us (but that we'll miraculously "win" in a Hollywood ending).
Despite the dearth of official links (MS still doesn't 'get' the whole Internet thing, do they?!), we do now have some more authoritative sources coming online.
The reveal was in Munich today, which is part of the reason you might see less if you're only trolling around on American sites (on the U.S. dominated and controlled Web).
As for TFA, Paul Bryan is not even a Real Microsoft Executive, but Mike Nash sure is, and you can catch a couple quotes from him via some trustworthy sources.
From The New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg News, and the International Herald Tribune: "Nash said he had seen a culture change since Bill Gates said three years ago security would be a top priority. 'I used to be begging people to pay attention to security. Now they get it. Security is part of everyone's job.'"
BG
As evidenced by a spectrum of personal globalization from the rise of the Web to the rise of open sourceware to the rise of common humanity in tsunami relief, a significant meritocratic groundswell exists in which you can vest your hopes for righting plutocracy. When my wife and I visited tsunami relief efforts near Chennai this March, we saw firsthand that our actions from Anytown, USA can have immediate impact, anywhere in the world. We can take into our own hands some parts of the governance of the world, and we can do a more just job of it than the plutocrats.
Through NGOs like Asha for Education, we volunteer our resources and we have done more of certain types of good for tsunami victims than the Indian or Tamil Nadu State governments could do. Our efforts improved victims' lives immediately, effectively, personally, and in a longer lasting manner. In March we saw and it's true still today, NGOs we have funded and volunteered for are actively providing victims with the specific, personal help and resources they need. Asha for Education, for example, is a wholly volunteer organization. They are educating, and clothing and feeding and sheltering and nurturing, the children in India who are most in need. Some of the children they've educated are now adults, some of them here on /.
The plutocrats meanwhile have mismanaged scads of U.N. resources, most of that being from either USA/taxes and/or rerouted U.S. Red Cross donations. Governments have resisted helping victims where there was no additional financial gain for a corporate friend, votes to be won for politicians, or when there was no interest in another press conference with another film star. We saw examples of this on the ground in Tamil Nadu, too. Something like a "housing contract" would be handed out like just another party favor. In turn the lowest quality, even unusable shelters have been constructed by the plutocrats, who believe they have thus maximized their socioeconomic profits.
When I talk about the power "we" have and the change "we've" wrought, I should say that yes I am personally involved but I mean We The People, not of the USA but the people, all people. We more of meritos, though less of plutos. We of more veritas than the profiteers.
The network is the computer, and we are the network.
When minds are ported to machines, we will soon network beyond recognition as individuals. Kurzweil is a digital immigrant with uncommon powers of imagination, but he doesn't understand even the sands now shifting beneath him.
Digital natives already live in an editable world. From fan fiction and remixes to wikis and wares, we claim and respect less individual ownership than our elders. This is equally true of all property, creation, and ideas. We blab ever more freely to the entire online world ever more intimate details of our "personal" lives, our personal and professional lives are ever less separate, we expose ever more details of our presence, our purpose, our thoughts, ourselves.
We give in unprecedented amounts and haste to relieve the suffering of millions we would never have met in a world of just five years ago. I'm a boy from 1970s Ohio; my neighborhood was defined as the distance my two feet could take me. "Long distance telephone calls" were themselves prohibitively expensive. An unthinkable two decades later, our neighborhood is defined as the distance our thoughts can travel, streaming freely (and with incredible clarity) in Google Talk. The billions living in Asia are as much a part of my community as anyone, anymore. More than half my colleagues in the U.S. are from the other half of the planet, and my next job might very well be on their turf. I hear the weather's great in Bangalore.
We can publish anything, anytime, to anyone anywhere, and I'd rather not be the only author. I'd rather not pay for access to others' thoughts and creations, and I'd rather not charge for access to my own. Let's talk about profit. I suppose profit is something you get by lying to whomever pays you. You convince them what you offer is worth more than truly it is, and then you profit. Sounds like the ancient, barbaric oppression from which humanity is emerging; sounds evil. No thanks.
Let's metaphorically say that on the order of 10,000 years ago humankind first effectively wrote, recording thought extrasomatically for posterity on tokens representing commerce between ancient farmers. 1,000 years or so ago, we effectively published (in 1041, movable clay type was invented in China). 100 or so years ago, we jumped into cars, we recorded real images and audio and video. We left ever more of ourselves behind, expressed ourselves and learned and experience ever more extrasomatically. We began living ever more through machines. It took thousands of years for us to realize what began 10,000 years ago, hundreds of years to realize what began 1,000 years ago, and it took decades to realize what began roughly 100 years ago.
10 years go, we began "browsing" and the world hit the Web. Critical mass for this as a publishing medium was achieved almost "instantly," let's say within the course of one year. Finally, 1 year ago, GOOG hit the ticker, and one day later, /. began whorring full-force for Google :)
Seriously, the point is we are less somatic than ever, and the latest jump (here on the Internets) happened in less than one generation. Thus digital immigrants like Kurzweil are on the slow side of a huge leap away from ancient human nature. This generation gap gapes unlike any generation gap before it.
We are merging already, with only a minority of the world online and only Riemannian Sums of shared experience among the connected. When we are online, the integral of connectivity will swiftly overwhelm whatever remaining essence of the ancient, the organic, the fragile, human individual.
Lifespans of 300 years will be suffered only by the relative Luddites who insist on their intellectual independence. Their inferiority will ensure both their irrelevance, and the irrelevance of any concept of "lifespan." These trends are easily visible now, to anyone whose mentality is digitally native.
50 miles: check.
recreation: not so much, no.
Olsen paid for access to a laboratory in which he will study things he could not anywhere else, such as crystal growth and infrared imaging sensor performance. Even during the two-day Soyuz journey to the ISS, Olsen is operating some oxygen systems and filling other small but necessary roles. He's spent the last several months training more as a member of the crew, even learning Russian (mandatory). He is not just along for the ride.
Sounds like a great holiday to me, but as a matter of respect and perhaps even by definition, I would not call him a tourist.
Let's say scientist, engineer, inventor, or maybe inspiration (his bio at his company's site).
Where did Velma go to work after Scooby Doo? NASA.
Where will Dib go to work after Invader Zim? Google.
<sigh> and what ever happened to Penny (Inspector Gadget) ...
Sheridan is a well respected British expert particularly on wrecked ships, who occasionally chimes in to solve odd seaborne mysteries like the myriad washed up, dead dolphins in '98, a curious lot of whom sported blast holes in their necks. Google him and you'll grant Sheridan more respect.
The U.S. conducted lot of related research since WWII both in and out of dedicated programs and offices, as did the Soviets. (Other countries' efforts were limited.) Nothing on the Navy page you point to dilutes Sheridan's account of a classified program. That is to say, the existence of open source and/or declassified programs and material says nothing about whether a classified program exists.
Your overstatements are a little strange, as when you wrote "supposedly top secret" to berate Sheridan's commentary about the U.S. program, when he had only referred to the program as "classified." SZ, have you ever heard of a straw man?
It seems like you assumed you had a slam-dunk analysis of this thread. Without looking deeply enough you proceeded to repeat and laud yourself (and repeat lauding yourself).
Take another look around, and consider all the history of this research. That the U.S. Navy has this classified program and in 1998 fumbled some remote training and networking technologies -- this is too hard for you to believe? Or, do you find it unlikely that the U.S. Navy would blast some dolphins to cover its ass?
It seems plausible that if any of the dolphins missing here in 2005 were armed or otherwise comprised of valuable intel bits, they may turn up dead in the local news down South or in Mexico. By being aware of what may have occurred in 1998, we'll sooner see whether this particular story gets any more interesting.
In February 1998, dozens of dead dolphins began washing ashore along the French Mediterranean. According to Jon Henley, a reporter for The Observer, "Most bore an identical, and mysterious wound - a neat, fist-sized hole - on the underside of their necks."
Marine biologists were baffled but Leo Sheridan proposed the only explanation that has not yet been dismissed. "I am convinced that these were dolphins trained by the US Navy and that something went badly wrong," Sheridan told The Observer.
Sheridan believes "they were disposed of to conceal the existence of the Americans' military dolphin program." In fact it was 1989 when the U.S. Navy began its classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission. The San Diego-based operation involved fitting dolphins with neck harnesses that pressed small electrodes into their skin.
The animals were taught to recognize and drown enemy divers. The dolphins could be remotely monitored and controlled via electric signals transmitted through the neck harness. In order to prevent the dolphins and the Navy's technology from falling into the wrong hands, a small explosive charge was planted in the harness on the underside of the animal's neck.
Sheridan noted that 16 of the dead dolphins displayed the same kind of round puncture wound that is "consistent with a small detonation. "It seems to me no accident that these dolphins first began washing up in the middle of a military crisis when American warships and submarines were en route to the [Persian] Gulf."
I'd also not kill each with the same mechanism. Some could enjoy the release of a toxin they might have naturally eaten too much of, others an electric shock they might naturally have happened upon. In any event I'd be more inventive than blasting equivalent holes in 16 necks, then tossing on a few dozen other dolphins to cover the ass of a classified program.
BG
Like the difference between municipal drinking water fountains and having municipal water in your office or home, cities do not need to offer access of equivalent quality and delivery method free to all users, everywhere. Could there be a less desirable, but workable version of the utility freely available on city streets (like the fountains), with a sweeter and for-pay version of the utility available within businesses and homes? The sweeter version can compete with private entities, while the basic service of lower quality access can be provided for all who cannot afford or are not positioned to use better.
Access to information is as important to life as water -- my honest opinion, a corollary of sorts to "Give me liberty or give me death."
BG
Particularly as it is Google's mission to "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," it is especially striking that they acknowledge any wiki type ability to do so, presumably with enough sophistication that Google does not want to duplicate and/or surpass the wiki. Google is paying yet another compliment to concepts which are theoretically aligned with OSS. Heads way up!
BG
Cross references of all this data via identity is RFID's most frightening "promise." All the arguments had in recent years about privacy are exponentially more critical; already, we are awash in more publically available data about ourselves than we can individually manage. We need tools as individuals being tracked, to manage access to data which identifies us.
Is anyone in the U.S. Congress close enough to technical to understand, to defend individuals from exploitation? Who there can swim in the deep end RFID is pulling us out into? Most /.ers are probably
too young to run for office.
BG
On the fringe of topic here, but yes the connection between behavior, identity, and credit is the most troubling you mention. I can't even see my credit score, despite a recent federal act mandating that I get occasional free credit reports, without buying it. This despite that it is my credit score which is often used to evaluate my credit worthiness.
RFID exponentially increases the importance of this question. Casinos are one frontier at which the technical issues will find their resolutions; before long though, we are going to need more concerted efforts in Congress and similar places around the world, if consumers are to be protected from what could become corporate omniscience with regard to consuming mentalities of individuals.
BG
Not to be unduly snarky in reply to an Informative post, but ... I've read that the "internets" can be used to transmit information collected in one place, to another place. If this absurd idea were true, an RFID scan, via "computers" connected to "internets," could be read anywhere -- for a price.
Anyone ELSE seeing a HUGE business in reading RFID from location X, and transmitting data to various buyers?
BG
I agree, who wouldn't, that MS' historic stance was against inter-op in so far as inter-op harmed their business model. I see this as the primary reason they got Googled and that they are getting out-Fire Foxed. They tried to have it both ways with their approach to the Internet, but could not bend it sufficiently to the anti-inter-op will which worked for them so well, for so long.
Not only the natural trends in technology driven by human behavior and the Net's architecture, but also the courts have certainly weighed in, and they have demonstrably changed MS. I disagree that MS would continue in the same vein, against inter-op. They are out to earn, and earn big. No one can deny smaller devices already supplanting PCs, call them "phones" if you must, and the near-future trend toward ever more hardware integration with previously offline environs (LCD paint, anyone?). MS will change their strategy to be more pro-inter-op, because that is the only way in which they can continue to earn, and maybe the only way in which they can continue to (legally) exist as MS.
BG