Not quite true, Mr. Jobs.
The first time people accepted lower quality for the convenience of portability and copy-ability was when we accepted cassette tapes as substitutes for hi-def LPs.
Kind of reminds me of what Charter Communications is doing.
They just rolled out the DVR box for an additional $10 a month; optional service of course.
Because it's so sweet and easy to use, people are adopting like crazy. Then Charter will see how willing people are to pay for it and before you know it, bam, the DVR is your cable box and it's no longer optional, but is simply "included" now. Oh, and instead of being $10 a month, now it's 16.99.
Both of those authors are found in a paper I wrote 5 years ago called "Symbols, Meaning and Computation" as a mathematics undergrad.
URL: http://www.joeldalley.com/cognitive-science/symbol s_computation_and_meaning.pdf
Forest for the trees man. This stuff's all just happening now, yes, it's very early in the game. But look at what Gmail's become: it's a cultural phenomenon. It's on "iPod", but it's 2nd place.
TFA Article Says: Microsoft is smart to take advantage of a popular core product -- Outlook -- to help make Hotmail more attractive to sophisticated users.
They're not targeting fungrl149@hotmail.com here. They're targeting the exact segment of the market
that Gmail appeals to now. Gmail took free web mail and turned it into a legitimate and attractive
service. MS would now like to up the ante a bit and charge a little (and the dude said the price
was 'steep', so it'll probably come down before launch) and provide more feature richness for that
money. It's just another step towards the increasing legitimacy and acceptance of online services
either replacing or merging with traditional desktop applications. I'm no fan of MS, but their participation
in the advancement of web based email services or other apps is part and parcel of the general move forward.
I doubt you have 3 cars for yourself. One for your spouse, one for your teen perhaps, and maybe, if you have more money than most people I know, you have a summer and a winter car for yourself.
And as far as renting or a 2 year lease, wtf? That's moot. Suppose I rent 1000 cars before picking one. At some point, I've chosen 1 to purchase or lease. Even if it's for 1 year, that's a HUGE commitment by comparison (or analogy) to anything on the web.
No. Quite the contrary. My point is precisely that one has a choice, at any given moment, of what search engine to use.
A car, on the other hand, is a long term commitement (relatively anyway), and most folks can choose only one car at a time and they're stuck with it for a while.
Agreed. Pics do suck if you're looking for text. Especially if bandwidth is an issue. But, a preferences setting that allowed images or other types of results (like Froogle) to come inline with Google's web results would very cool - and I think a lot of people would use it.
Right, but that analogy only flies if you owned both cars and always had a choice of what to drive. Then, after a very short time, one of the two (the inferior one I would hope) would become essentially redundant to you.
With Google kicking off Google Print (A9's other specialty) could A9 become redundant?"
Wasn't it always? I spent some time on A9 one day -- liked the inline images -- but overall wasn't impressed.
I'm sure there are dozens of handy, idiosyncratic features I missed that I'll be informed of momentarily, but my first impression was "blah."
I'd like to see more mixing of results onto a single page though. Seeing the first few images and the
first few Froogle results would be a nice addition.
Fair enough. I didn't mean to criticize anyone personally. We all fall under the crushing wheels of the juggernaut just the same. But it would sure be nice if someone with a lot of money would step up and fund more research that isn't commercially viable.
It's not criticism. I'm just saying he's got an ego. We're talking about a guy who proposes to stop death. Somewhere in that proposition, ego comes into play, no matter how altruistic he is. Plus he's operating outside the normal accepted avenues of research and development (even education), which speaks to a maverick mentality.
As he reviewed the possible reasons why so little progress had been made in spite of the remarkable molecular and cellular discoveries of recent decades, he came to the conclusion that the problem might be far less difficult to solve than some thought; it seemed to him related to a factor too often brushed under the table when the motivations of scientists are discussed, namely the small likelihood of achieving promising results within the period required for academic advancement--careerism, in a word. As he puts it, "High-risk fields are not the most conducive to getting promoted quickly."
The world needs more thinkers like him, even if he's a little nuts. Anyone willing to start his own international symposium after teaching himself micro biology is.
Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing
research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in
their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe.
Daly dreams of being on the cover of Time magazine I'm sure, ego is almost certainly a factor for him as well, and
no doubt a huge payday would follow and major advancement on any of his 7 problems. But it's the
all-or-nothing mentality, the fact that he's willing to go for it even if it never pans out, that
separates him.
The other thing that's not being addressed here is the fact that every single director in Hollywood was once an indepdendent or a student somewhere. The whole system needs an enema, and frankly, I see a paradigm change in film coming just as it came for music via Napster (and now legally iTunes, or Napster for that matter).
What will happen, and Hollywood will hate this, is independents will have cheap, powerful tools to create film and an even playing field (somewhat) for distributing them online.
You'd think Hollywood would love it though - talent scouting would be a simple as seeing what's popular online and making a phone call or emailing a director with an offer for big bucks.
Yeah, I realize that. It's just gotten so ridiculous though. An analogy to a lower-tech world would be if big media companies, which would be book publishers in those times, were to copyright the alphabet, or at least, words and phrases, to keep individual writers from writing. Stems competition, man, gotta do it!
Several companies, including Audible Magic and Shawn Fanning's Snocap ,
have demonstrated technology that could be used to block trades of copyrighted music,
although no such tool has yet been publicly shown for Hollywood movies. Some file-swapping
companies say these tools would be impractical to use on a widespread basis.
That quote says it all -- the implication is clearly that all p2p software is used exclusively or
nearly exlusively for illegal filesharing of copyrighted media. What frightens me about the idea
of using DRM or other crippled technology for media is when that becomes standard, where does
it leave an independent filmmaker like myself? Those fat cats in Hollywood never stop to
think that some of us actually produce content, as opposed to simply consuming it.
I guess I mean binary code compiled to a particular machine's architecture. That executable code simply won't run in a foreign environment. But XML is XML is XML. Java and the idea of a virtaul processor or virtual machine is another attempt at "silver bullet" cross compatibility, and another not-so silver bullet.
What's wrong with an OO paradigm for extensibility? XML is certainly more portable than binary code, as will be any plain text, but I just can't reckon why everything needs to be XML based these days. Will this allow multiple languages to use the same libraries transparently?
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite true, Mr. Jobs. The first time people accepted lower quality for the convenience of portability and copy-ability was when we accepted cassette tapes as substitutes for hi-def LPs.
Kind of reminds me of what Charter Communications is doing.
They just rolled out the DVR box for an additional $10 a month; optional service of course.
Because it's so sweet and easy to use, people are adopting like crazy. Then Charter will see how willing people are to pay for it and before you know it, bam, the DVR is your cable box and it's no longer optional, but is simply "included" now. Oh, and instead of being $10 a month, now it's 16.99.
That's a look at 18 months from now.
Nice post.
l s_computation_and_meaning.pdf
Both of those authors are found in a paper I wrote 5 years ago called "Symbols, Meaning and Computation" as a mathematics undergrad. URL: http://www.joeldalley.com/cognitive-science/symbo
Goddamn man. Slashdot is full of diabolical haters. When does Ice-T announce Player Hater of The Year?
Dude,
Forest for the trees man. This stuff's all just happening now, yes, it's very early in the game. But look at what Gmail's become: it's a cultural phenomenon. It's on "iPod", but it's 2nd place.
TFA Article Says:
Microsoft is smart to take advantage of a popular core product -- Outlook -- to help make Hotmail more attractive to sophisticated users.
They're not targeting fungrl149@hotmail.com here. They're targeting the exact segment of the market that Gmail appeals to now. Gmail took free web mail and turned it into a legitimate and attractive service. MS would now like to up the ante a bit and charge a little (and the dude said the price was 'steep', so it'll probably come down before launch) and provide more feature richness for that money. It's just another step towards the increasing legitimacy and acceptance of online services either replacing or merging with traditional desktop applications. I'm no fan of MS, but their participation in the advancement of web based email services or other apps is part and parcel of the general move forward.
philosophical shift
:)
You appear to have misspelled 'paradigm'.
But seriously, is there a difference between a company jumping on a market trend and a company having a "philosophical" shift?
Wha?? Pay attention. I didn't say per household.
I doubt you have 3 cars for yourself. One for your spouse, one for your teen perhaps, and maybe, if you have more money than most people I know, you have a summer and a winter car for yourself.
And as far as renting or a 2 year lease, wtf? That's moot. Suppose I rent 1000 cars before picking one. At some point, I've chosen 1 to purchase or lease. Even if it's for 1 year, that's a HUGE commitment by comparison (or analogy) to anything on the web.
The car analogy just isn't apt.
Yep. The Google article on here a couple days ago pointed out how Google specifically does testing on subnets before going wide with a new feature.
No. Quite the contrary. My point is precisely that one has a choice, at any given moment, of what search engine to use.
A car, on the other hand, is a long term commitement (relatively anyway), and most folks can choose only one car at a time and they're stuck with it for a while.
Agreed. Pics do suck if you're looking for text. Especially if bandwidth is an issue. But, a preferences setting that allowed images or other types of results (like Froogle) to come inline with Google's web results would very cool - and I think a lot of people would use it.
Right, but that analogy only flies if you owned both cars and always had a choice of what to drive. Then, after a very short time, one of the two (the inferior one I would hope) would become essentially redundant to you.
With Google kicking off Google Print (A9's other specialty) could A9 become redundant?"
Wasn't it always? I spent some time on A9 one day -- liked the inline images -- but overall wasn't impressed. I'm sure there are dozens of handy, idiosyncratic features I missed that I'll be informed of momentarily, but my first impression was "blah."
I'd like to see more mixing of results onto a single page though. Seeing the first few images and the first few Froogle results would be a nice addition.
Fair enough. I didn't mean to criticize anyone personally. We all fall under the crushing wheels of the juggernaut just the same. But it would sure be nice if someone with a lot of money would step up and fund more research that isn't commercially viable.
It's not criticism. I'm just saying he's got an ego. We're talking about a guy who proposes to stop death. Somewhere in that proposition, ego comes into play, no matter how altruistic he is. Plus he's operating outside the normal accepted avenues of research and development (even education), which speaks to a maverick mentality.
d'oh! Tis what I meant.
// runs and hides
As he reviewed the possible reasons why so little progress had been made in spite of the remarkable molecular and cellular discoveries of recent decades, he came to the conclusion that the problem might be far less difficult to solve than some thought; it seemed to him related to a factor too often brushed under the table when the motivations of scientists are discussed, namely the small likelihood of achieving promising results within the period required for academic advancement--careerism, in a word. As he puts it, "High-risk fields are not the most conducive to getting promoted quickly."
The world needs more thinkers like him, even if he's a little nuts. Anyone willing to start his own international symposium after teaching himself micro biology is. Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe.
Daly dreams of being on the cover of Time magazine I'm sure, ego is almost certainly a factor for him as well, and no doubt a huge payday would follow and major advancement on any of his 7 problems. But it's the all-or-nothing mentality, the fact that he's willing to go for it even if it never pans out, that separates him.
The other thing that's not being addressed here is the fact that every single director in Hollywood was once an indepdendent or a student somewhere. The whole system needs an enema, and frankly, I see a paradigm change in film coming just as it came for music via Napster (and now legally iTunes, or Napster for that matter). What will happen, and Hollywood will hate this, is independents will have cheap, powerful tools to create film and an even playing field (somewhat) for distributing them online. You'd think Hollywood would love it though - talent scouting would be a simple as seeing what's popular online and making a phone call or emailing a director with an offer for big bucks.
I did not know that. Very interesting. Poetic, even.
Yeah, I realize that. It's just gotten so ridiculous though. An analogy to a lower-tech world would be if big media companies, which would be book publishers in those times, were to copyright the alphabet, or at least, words and phrases, to keep individual writers from writing. Stems competition, man, gotta do it!
So true. Hypocracy, pure and simple. That's the golden rule for ya -- those with the gold make all the rules.
Several companies, including Audible Magic and Shawn Fanning's Snocap , have demonstrated technology that could be used to block trades of copyrighted music, although no such tool has yet been publicly shown for Hollywood movies. Some file-swapping companies say these tools would be impractical to use on a widespread basis.
That quote says it all -- the implication is clearly that all p2p software is used exclusively or nearly exlusively for illegal filesharing of copyrighted media. What frightens me about the idea of using DRM or other crippled technology for media is when that becomes standard, where does it leave an independent filmmaker like myself? Those fat cats in Hollywood never stop to think that some of us actually produce content, as opposed to simply consuming it.
I guess I mean binary code compiled to a particular machine's architecture. That executable code simply won't run in a foreign environment. But XML is XML is XML. Java and the idea of a virtaul processor or virtual machine is another attempt at "silver bullet" cross compatibility, and another not-so silver bullet.
What's wrong with an OO paradigm for extensibility? XML is certainly more portable than binary code, as will be any plain text, but I just can't reckon why everything needs to be XML based these days. Will this allow multiple languages to use the same libraries transparently?
I, for one, welcome our homoerotic, pie-eyed, playful floppy-disk tossing Overlord.
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