Interactive 3D sound was incredible on my sound card with a Vortex 2 chipset back around 1999. After their acquisition by Creative Labs I've heard very little good 3D sound. Is it really that uncommon, or am I just numb? Seems odd that we're still trying to get this figured out.
They live in a fantasy land where those tools are a key differentiator for their product. As if Granny is impressed by all this when making her purchase. What other explanation can there be? They really think their stuff raises eyebrows.
Lots of great internet stuff requires "being there". Live chats. Live events. Game streaming. It's nothing new and in the right circumstance it works.
The weakest part of YouTube has got to be the comments. They are silent, and they are usually stupid or old or both. Now imagine joining a voice chat (or even text) channel with others sharing a common interest, watching something simulcasted and talking about it in real time, with a person or a mechanism designated to queue up videos. That has possibilities. These don't have to be people you know.
There are already ways to do this, of course. The trick is creating an interface that makes it easy enough for the idea to gain traction.
I won't be quick to dismiss this. One of the downsides of watching internet videos is that you lose out on some of the shared viewing experience. Meanwhile the shared communication experience (voice, Twitter, whatever) is nearing full strength. It would make sense to take advantage of that. There's value in seeing things at once, as a group.
Another example is with online-only shows like House of Cards. It's an excellent show and binge watching is great. But I think Netflix may be missing out on a lot of word of mouth that might come with a shared viewing experience. It might have benefited them if, for example, they had a countdown for each individual episode to become available (with unlimited streaming after), perhaps on a more traditional broadcast schedule. It might improve water cooler discussions.
Secondly, the companies pushing for more visas are NOT doing it because they're looking for the best and the brightest from around the world. They're doing it to drive the price of programming down.
Thank you, I agree.
OK now to muddy the waters with my ignorant thought. Seems to me this isn't the whole story. Since their goal is to spend less money on programmers, the increased tax money from immigrants would be offset by less money moving from the company to the economy. Score one for hiring domestic workers. On the other hand, educated immigrants (also bearing educated children) might improve the economy as a whole, since their presence lowers the cost of doing business while adding new entrepreneurs. This increases the likelihood of companies headquartering in the U.S. rather than somewhere else which, in turn, creates more tax revenue. Score one for immigration.
I really have no clue where this all leads, but at the very least I do agree that we should get companies' intentions straight: They want cheaper workers and they do not value their excellence as much as they say they do.
Right, but those techniques rely on extremely vague understandings. Imagine if we were known so well that even if we saw it coming we were powerless to object. In fact we'd welcome it, no matter how horrible it might be.
This makes the sci-fi part of my brain tingle, imagining a scenario where our understanding of the brain becomes so good that behavioral manipulation reaches extraordinary heights. High-precision brainwashing on a grand scale. Who would remain immune to play the role of puppeteer?
In summary: I don't necessarily think it is offensive to say that bugs are coded by developers, because they are. However, it is offensive to say that they are responsible for the bugs without taking into account the broader context in which they are working (and indeed, saying they are responsible for the bugs still doesn't necessarily mean that they are in some way wrong or deficient for entering a bug. People - even brilliant people - can and do make mistakes, and that is why review processes do (or should) exist.
Yes, that's a good way to put it. I wonder if they considered attaching biometric probes to managers to find out when they are most likely to come up with stupid ideas?:)
The core implication here is that developers are the source of mistakes, and those mistakes must be minimized. Never mind that developers are also a source of productivity and innovation, and that dehumanizing them decreases both.
You can also just put an NFC sticker in your wallet. Works pretty well. Admittedly, it's often more natural just to swipe in my pattern. And if you keep your phone and wallet in the same pocket you'll be prone to butt dialing.
You hit the nail on the head, but you missed a few things. On most dedicated Blu-ray players the load times are hideous, as are the menu response times. And that's on top of all the unskippable preview nonsense. And there's seemingly no standard way to control playback features, so you're at the whims of whatever overblown, backwards menu system the producer came up with. It's the same problems DVDs had, amplified. And finally, if you so much as fart in the general direction of a Blu-ray disc it will develop a skip. That can't be good for collectors.
One of the few handy features Blu-ray brings to the table is the ability to resume playback, which only seems to work on occasion.
Eliminating the profession doesn't make the problem go away. It just hands the work off to a different set of people who are no less likely to screw it up. How about we be honest and admit that, like any other skill set out there, there are good designers and bad designers?
I wonder now if we aren't gradually trading one bad situation for another. With each service getting more and more exclusive content, I hope we don't end up needing ten different $15 subscriptions just to see the shows we want.
Don't get me wrong, it would still beat the pants off cable. You could always subscribe for a month, binge watch your show, then cancel until they release something else you're interested in.
Correct, the studios can't stop DVD rentals. But they can stop this "virtual DVD" proposition brought up in the article. Why would the studios allow something that makes DVD rentals cheaper and more convenient, when their true desire is for them to DIE DIE DIE? The only possible way to make it happen would be if the cost savings went directly to the studios. But even then, it's supporting a model (rental) that they fundamentally dislike.
There is a lot more room than most people think, but technology can't stop math. If people stop dying, you run out of room, unless you prevent births. And technology could also drastically increase the birth rate, making things worse. Granted we are talking about a problem that is eons away, but once we get around to eliminating death we better be well on our way to populating other planets.
I don't know about 10 years ago specifically, and I don't use the entire Office suite, but I really like the current versions of Outlook and Excel. Outlook's view customization is nice, the searching is instantaneous, and the formatting is so quick and works so well that Outlook has become my repository for half-baked ideas and notes. (OneNote is my repository for more permanent notes.) If I need to remember something, or if I need a place to save a screenshot along with some text, I just open a new email, paste and type a bit, then close it. I can search for it instantly later on if and when I need it.
I love Excel's "Format as Table" command for quickly formatting, sorting, and filtering chunks of data that don't take up the entire sheet.
I use these features all the time.
While I can't sit here and do a quantitative analysis about why Office is superior to the open source options, I can say that I really, really like the stuff I'm currently using. I even like the ribbon!
For many businesses, there needs to be a way to queue transactions in cases where the credit processor is unavailable. Otherwise a simple internet outage will shut down your business. Are there readers that can do this? If not, the black box setup isn't going to work well in a lot of cases.
It's not that insidious. To maintain visual consistency between handhelds and desktops, the GUI can't be a pig. So they stripped out the glossy Aero stuff that was going out of fashion anyway.
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Interactive 3D sound was incredible on my sound card with a Vortex 2 chipset back around 1999. After their acquisition by Creative Labs I've heard very little good 3D sound. Is it really that uncommon, or am I just numb? Seems odd that we're still trying to get this figured out.
Informative post yes. But your first paragraph opinion is absolutely nuts. Infringement? No. Blatant infringement? What are you smoking?
I would love to hear you go into more detail about how this constitutes infringement.
They live in a fantasy land where those tools are a key differentiator for their product. As if Granny is impressed by all this when making her purchase. What other explanation can there be? They really think their stuff raises eyebrows.
Exactly. If McAfee isn't bloatware, I don't know what is.
Lots of great internet stuff requires "being there". Live chats. Live events. Game streaming. It's nothing new and in the right circumstance it works.
The weakest part of YouTube has got to be the comments. They are silent, and they are usually stupid or old or both. Now imagine joining a voice chat (or even text) channel with others sharing a common interest, watching something simulcasted and talking about it in real time, with a person or a mechanism designated to queue up videos. That has possibilities. These don't have to be people you know.
There are already ways to do this, of course. The trick is creating an interface that makes it easy enough for the idea to gain traction.
I won't be quick to dismiss this. One of the downsides of watching internet videos is that you lose out on some of the shared viewing experience. Meanwhile the shared communication experience (voice, Twitter, whatever) is nearing full strength. It would make sense to take advantage of that. There's value in seeing things at once, as a group.
Another example is with online-only shows like House of Cards. It's an excellent show and binge watching is great. But I think Netflix may be missing out on a lot of word of mouth that might come with a shared viewing experience. It might have benefited them if, for example, they had a countdown for each individual episode to become available (with unlimited streaming after), perhaps on a more traditional broadcast schedule. It might improve water cooler discussions.
Thank you, I agree.
OK now to muddy the waters with my ignorant thought. Seems to me this isn't the whole story. Since their goal is to spend less money on programmers, the increased tax money from immigrants would be offset by less money moving from the company to the economy. Score one for hiring domestic workers. On the other hand, educated immigrants (also bearing educated children) might improve the economy as a whole, since their presence lowers the cost of doing business while adding new entrepreneurs. This increases the likelihood of companies headquartering in the U.S. rather than somewhere else which, in turn, creates more tax revenue. Score one for immigration.
I really have no clue where this all leads, but at the very least I do agree that we should get companies' intentions straight: They want cheaper workers and they do not value their excellence as much as they say they do.
Right, but those techniques rely on extremely vague understandings. Imagine if we were known so well that even if we saw it coming we were powerless to object. In fact we'd welcome it, no matter how horrible it might be.
This makes the sci-fi part of my brain tingle, imagining a scenario where our understanding of the brain becomes so good that behavioral manipulation reaches extraordinary heights. High-precision brainwashing on a grand scale. Who would remain immune to play the role of puppeteer?
I appreciate how he shares technical details with us even though it probably doesn't benefit him personally at all.
Yes, that's a good way to put it. I wonder if they considered attaching biometric probes to managers to find out when they are most likely to come up with stupid ideas? :)
The core implication here is that developers are the source of mistakes, and those mistakes must be minimized. Never mind that developers are also a source of productivity and innovation, and that dehumanizing them decreases both.
MS is apparently buying into the whole "every other release is good" thing too. They sure seem to be in a hurry to iterate the version number.
You can also just put an NFC sticker in your wallet. Works pretty well. Admittedly, it's often more natural just to swipe in my pattern. And if you keep your phone and wallet in the same pocket you'll be prone to butt dialing.
You hit the nail on the head, but you missed a few things. On most dedicated Blu-ray players the load times are hideous, as are the menu response times. And that's on top of all the unskippable preview nonsense. And there's seemingly no standard way to control playback features, so you're at the whims of whatever overblown, backwards menu system the producer came up with. It's the same problems DVDs had, amplified. And finally, if you so much as fart in the general direction of a Blu-ray disc it will develop a skip. That can't be good for collectors.
One of the few handy features Blu-ray brings to the table is the ability to resume playback, which only seems to work on occasion.
Eliminating the profession doesn't make the problem go away. It just hands the work off to a different set of people who are no less likely to screw it up. How about we be honest and admit that, like any other skill set out there, there are good designers and bad designers?
I wonder now if we aren't gradually trading one bad situation for another. With each service getting more and more exclusive content, I hope we don't end up needing ten different $15 subscriptions just to see the shows we want.
Don't get me wrong, it would still beat the pants off cable. You could always subscribe for a month, binge watch your show, then cancel until they release something else you're interested in.
Correct, the studios can't stop DVD rentals. But they can stop this "virtual DVD" proposition brought up in the article. Why would the studios allow something that makes DVD rentals cheaper and more convenient, when their true desire is for them to DIE DIE DIE? The only possible way to make it happen would be if the cost savings went directly to the studios. But even then, it's supporting a model (rental) that they fundamentally dislike.
I don't even wear a dumb watch, so this is probably not for me, but...
These are all just assumptions. I have no idea what features this thing really has. All would be pretty handy though.
There is a lot more room than most people think, but technology can't stop math. If people stop dying, you run out of room, unless you prevent births. And technology could also drastically increase the birth rate, making things worse. Granted we are talking about a problem that is eons away, but once we get around to eliminating death we better be well on our way to populating other planets.
Funny story... your comment is INVISIBLE on Slashdot beta. At least, I can't find it, and I'm staring at this very sub-thread in a separate tab.
I don't know about 10 years ago specifically, and I don't use the entire Office suite, but I really like the current versions of Outlook and Excel. Outlook's view customization is nice, the searching is instantaneous, and the formatting is so quick and works so well that Outlook has become my repository for half-baked ideas and notes. (OneNote is my repository for more permanent notes.) If I need to remember something, or if I need a place to save a screenshot along with some text, I just open a new email, paste and type a bit, then close it. I can search for it instantly later on if and when I need it.
I love Excel's "Format as Table" command for quickly formatting, sorting, and filtering chunks of data that don't take up the entire sheet.
I use these features all the time.
While I can't sit here and do a quantitative analysis about why Office is superior to the open source options, I can say that I really, really like the stuff I'm currently using. I even like the ribbon!
For actually doing office work, Microsoft stuff is hard to beat. Maybe it'll turn out great though, who knows.
For many businesses, there needs to be a way to queue transactions in cases where the credit processor is unavailable. Otherwise a simple internet outage will shut down your business. Are there readers that can do this? If not, the black box setup isn't going to work well in a lot of cases.
It's not that insidious. To maintain visual consistency between handhelds and desktops, the GUI can't be a pig. So they stripped out the glossy Aero stuff that was going out of fashion anyway.