> "There are going to be those who have it and those who don't. And even those who get it later are going to be a generation behind," Ford said.
Come on. Ford's Marketing Department is right. You know how in the 1990s Ford pioneered putting the super-secure push button keys [1|2 3|4 5|6 7|8] on the driver's side door to enable you to open the door and stuff? Cool! The other car makers are doing something similar where they put the push buttons on this thing that goes on your key fob (yeah, that'll catch on!), but no one puts it on the door like Ford does. So all the other car makers are more than a generation behind; they're a decade behind!
I suspect that Windows Automotive will be like that keyless entry thing, but even more so!
The Net Neutrality concession is good news, but there's other interesting news.
According to the article:
To "assign and/or transfer to an unaffiliated third party" all of its 2.5 GHZ spectrum currently licensed to BellSouth within one year of the merger closing date.
A bit of trivia: according to the FCC's license database, BellSouth owns more than 60 channels useful for WiMAX, 40 of them at 2.5 GHz. The article implies that BellSouth would retain the 2.3 GHz spectrum they have (about 20 licenses). (AT&T probably has licenses, too, so the reason for divestment must have been to avoid overlap.)
This means that either a new service provider could appear who could deploy WiMAX, or an existing service provider could expand their footprint. BellSouth has been a major proponent for WiMAX, so it probably won't accelerate the adoption any more than before, but it could help increase the number of broadband service providers in the area.
> That is just plain not true (16e being restricted only)
I may have oversimplified, but let me explain. There are two components to this: the standard as defined by the IEEE, and the profiles as defined by the WiMAX Forum. The former describes the components of the MAC and PHY layers. The latter describes the frequencies, channel bandwidth, number of tones for the OFDM signal, and other parameters. The IEEE standard 802.16e-2005 is not defined for unlicensed spectrum. The profiles defined by the WiMAX Forum are defined by the Mobile Task Group (MTG), and there are several major profiles:
* 1A: 2300 - 2400 MHz, 8.75 MHz channels (otherwise known as the WiBro profile)
* 1B: 2300-2400 MHz, 5/10 MHz channels
* 2A/B/C: 2305-2360 (corresponding to the WCS spectrum in the US), 3.5/5/10 MHz channels
* 3A: 2496-2690 MHz, 5/10 MHz
* 4A/B/C: 3300-3400 MHz with 5/7/10 MHz channel bandwidths
* 5A/B/CL: 3400-3600 MHz with 5/7/10 MHz channels
* 5A/B/CH: 3600-3800 MHz with 5/7/10 MHz channels
In the U.S. 2.3 and 2.5 GHz are defined as allocated spectrum (similar for Canada, except with the addition of 2.5 GHz). However, for the last one, this does encompass the 3650 MHz license exempt range in the U.S., but because of the way the FCC defined the rules, it isn't clear how existing 3.5 GHz 16e equipment being sold for licensed spectrum in Canada and Europe will be adapted to the frequency.
> And I would not call 16d "old." It's what most people are using.
16d (or to use its formal name IEEE 802.16d-2004) was ratified in 2004, while the 16e (IEEE 802.16e-2005) standard was ratified in 2005. So it is correct to call 16d the older standard. 16e offers many improvements over 16d, including the ability to scale the number of OFDM tones with the channel bandwidth, support for turbo coding to improve the link budget, and significantly improved authentication methods.
> Every company that I've dealt with is a fixed provider and has bought 16d equipment. > I don't know any mobile providers yet (they are coming, but I don't personally know of any).
You're correct that in terms of deployed WiMAX today, it's all 16d equipment; 16e equipment is still in the market trial stage, happening all over the world. It is expected that starting in 2007, 16e deployments will dwarf 16d deployments, with 16e growing to 10x the size of 16d. Almost all 16d equipment vendors are announcing plans to try to convert their equipment to 16e, since that's the direction the market is going. The major wireless infrastructure vendors who are doing WiMAX (Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Nokia Siemens, etc) are all adopting 16e. This is because the major holders of spectrum in North America are planning on moving to 16e, with the largest being Sprint Nextel. Similarly, note that BellSouth is testing 16e as well. The consensus in the industry is that 16e will be the basis for broadband wireless access, with 16d (as well as the proprietary variants) relegated to niche deployments or going away.
> It isn't all that much different than the 2.4 we know and love today, except that the spectrum is licensed. A lot of the other transmission pitfalls > will likely remain (Line-of-Sight, etc.)
The major difference is that the output power levels at 2.4 GHz is significantly limited. The power is limited to 30 dBm (1W) for 2.4 GHz, but there is no such limitation at 2.5 GHz (since it's licensed spectrum), so a single base station can put out 1500 W (EiRP), like what you see with 3G mobile technologies.
Combined with smart antennas, the range will be much greater, and you can engineer the network to support non line of sight and pure mobility. At 2.5 GHz with 16e WiMAX, you should see the same distances as with 3G mobile at 1.9 GHz.
> There is no uniform global licensed spectrum for WiMAX. You can run WiMAX in the unlicensed spectrum. There are already companies doing it.
There are two different standards for WiMAX (from an access perspective).
The older 16d standard (designed for fixed environments) can work in unlicensed (5.8 GHz) spectrum and licensed spectrum. The newer 16e standard is only defined for licensed spectrum (2.3, 2.5, and 3.5 GHz). The majority of the service providers will deploy 16e because it supports mobility, in addition to fixed applications.
Fanboys are a national treasure. Their diligence to spending hours/days/years nurturing and cataloging their obsession provide a useful function for the rest of us. Like a beaver spending its life building and maintaining a dam, or an oyster taking a piece of dirt and slowly making a pearl, we benefit from the years of their hard work for the few short moments when we care.
I'm sure we all go through periods when we run across something cool and it keeps our interest for a few weeks. We develop an interest and we're grateful to find the web site of some guy who has obsessed about our new subject for most of his life. We satisfy our desire for learning about whatever the subject du jour is, and then we go about our lives. I for one appreciate the effort they put into their obsession.
For example, over the years, I've developed or rekindled an interest in random topics: the show "The Prisoner" (from the 1960s), Magic the Gathering (which I hadn't played for 10 years), the musician Donovan, and other oddball things. I thought it was cool that one quick search on the Web revealed information that probably took all of someone's free time for several years (reading biographies, attending fan conventions, and talking to other hardcore fans):
1. I know that from the opening sequence from the Prisoner describes both the desire to get secrets from the spy named Number 6 but was also a pun for conformity: "What do you want?" Was he saying "Information" or "In formation"? Neat.
2. I know that the rules for "banding" were changed three times for MTG. Nifty.
3. I know that Donovan sang on the song "Billion Dollar Babies" by Alice Cooper. And Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin may or may not have played guitar on "Hurdy Gurdy Man", but John Paul Jones (the bassist from Led Zeppelin) did play bass on the song. Neato.
Could I have lived my life having never learned this info? Sure. Am I glad to learn this trivia? Yes. With fanboys, I can do both! Fanboys are like the Cliff Notes for millions of subjects, albeit disproportionately on Hobbits, lightsabers, or even Billy Joel.
I'm not mocking them, of course. I think it's funny because we're all obsessed about something or another -- they're called hobbies. For example, I probably seem to be a fanboy about some topics (I'll let the bored Slashdot reader sift through my previous posts to figure those out).
Anyway, here's to you, fanboys! Keep up the good work!
> That episode still chokes me up...actually, I watched it once on TV and never again. That track on my DVD has never been played.
I watched it once on the DVD, but only to listening to the director's commentary track. I wanted to hear if they could provide some justification for the episode. No such luck. They started off mentioning that the episode generated the most hate mail they had received, and then they carefully avoided the plot during the rest of the commentary.
> Ya I hate that episode, and by hate I mean I don't like feeling depressed for hours after it.
Agreed.
I always assumed that Fry's dog was a metaphor for the way Fox treated Futurama as a show. It was *always* on hiatus or being pre-empted, and yet Groening didn't try to take his enterprise to another network.
> I looked at the Wii, and went "annnnddddd......?" I wasn't impressed. but after reading reviews and seeing it in action, I'm considering it.
I've got two Playstation 2s (to play network games within my house), but the Playstation 3 is waaay too expensive. I couldn't figure out what the deal with the Wii was. However, after the review, the Wii actually looks like a pretty good choice. I'm glad to see that Nintendo went in a different direction than Sony and Microsoft.
> Yes, it's good for everyone, even the citizens that call themselves Republican.
It's good for another reason. Political parties sometimes need a straw-man to put blame on as an excuse to not cater to their most extreme constituents. So they get the benefit of support from that member of the constituency, without having to actually do what they would like. Think about how much the Republican base has been complaining that Bush hasn't delivered on promises. In fact, the only group who has gotten what they wanted was the amoral rich -- billions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthiest people (including somehow cutting the estate tax!) while racking up the biggest deficit and national debt in history. The Christian fundamentalists keep complaining that Bush didn't turn the U.S. into a theocracy, and the Neocons didn't get to turn Iraq into a virtual colony. It's like, "Oh, I'd *love* to support your tax cut for the rich/outlaw science/create colonies around the world, but I can't -- those darn Democrats are stopping me." It's the equivalent of starting a fight in bar, desperately hoping your friend will get in between to stop it.
The big difference is with the Democrats, the most extreme constituents have little or no power (I'm looking at you, Dennis Kucinich and your "Department of Peace" weirdness). With the Republicans, the most extreme members have been running the party the past 12 years. Now with some checks and balances back in place, we can actually get some good work done for the country.
> A tape in what? Tape players stopped being put in cars right around 2000.
My 2001 Mercedes SLK320 came with a tape player (in addition to the disc changer). It was unreliable as hell, so I sold it and bought a 2003 Nissan 350Z, which also had a tape player (in addition to the disc changer). Both had Bose systems (blah).
Hard to believe but at least up until 2003, cars did come with tape players. Not to listen to tapes, but to listen to audio books on tape (where you could get away with 8 tapes instead of 20 discs, or whatever).
Now that iPods are so popular, it's probably cheaper just to put an aux jack and leave off the tape deck.
> Griffin makes the SmartDeck, which does exactly that.
Theoretically. The SmartDeck wasn't so smart for my 2003 350Z. The controls didn't work to actually translate head unit commands to my iPod. So I returned it and bought a regular Sony tape adapter.
Someone at Nissan should explain why a freakin' Nissan Minima (AKA Sentra) came with an Aux jack on the front of the head unit, but my 350Z didn't.
I've been trying to install Windows 2000 from the original CD (the one that came with Virtual PC), and I had to give up. The app kept giving me a DOS error that said no bootable disk, and I couldn't figure out how to create a bootable disk image.
> It's not using stereotypes or ridiculing the black woman in any way. It's just saying "hey, here comes the white PSP and it's going to take the > world by storm, and here's a picture to grab your attention"
Your post is well put, and from a logical perspective, you're right. However, what's interesting is from an advertising perspective (I'm not an expert, but I took a couple of advertising classes when I got my MBA), the ad is racist (or was at least intended to be perceived as racist). There are some other factors in the ad, too, but this content is the most interesting.
Advertising isn't about logic or reason; it's about emotions and persuasion. The key to advertising is to understand that to an advertiser, the reason why you buy a product is because you have a more favorable attitude for that product than the alternatives. So advertising is about getting your attention and giving you an emotional impression, but sometimes in an indirect way.
A major tool with advertising is called association: the idea that you transfer the positive emotions for something to something else wholly unrelated. What does Tiger Woods have to do with Accenture? Nothing, but Accenture wants you to think about the positive emotions you have for Tiger Woods and apply them to their consulting business. Association is everything.
Think about what you wrote: "yes, the white woman is acting aggressively towards the black woman." In the U.S., we would associate that aggression with racism. You're right, the ad is not specifically racist -- the black woman isn't a stereotype or something-- but the actions depicted are associated with people who are racists (again, not logical but emotional). And since advertising uses association as a powerful tool, they can't complain when the same association works against them and an ad is called racist.
Frankly, I don't think Sony's purpose was to be racist, but it was to be controversial (by exploiting racist images). They knew there would be calls of "racism", and they hoped it would provide free publicity. So far, it's working.
> the success of an add is whether or not it propts you do buy the product
Ad success is partially determined by whether it sticks in your head or not. Oftentimes it's too hard to determine if a particular ad resulted in a sale. This is because there's a time lag between when you see the ad and when you purchase. So they usually measure ad effectiveness by your ability to recall the ad after varying periods of time. So if you remember the ad two weeks from now, then they'll call it a success.
However, the ultimate purpose of all advertisements is to make you have a favorable attitude towards a product or service. So a particular advertisement, even if it's offensive, can be a success if it gets your attention, but you eventually forget about the offensive ad but remember the product in a good way.
However, it's been found that if you don't like an ad, you will associate negative feelings towards the product. Thus, there is such a thing as bad publicity.
The other spots put the ad in context, but I suspect they were created just for the purpose of having plausible deniability -- "Hey, we're not being racist! Look at the other spots [that you wouldn't have noticed before if we hadn't had the offensive version shown first]". However, I don't their intention was to be racist, but rather to be controversial (like the old Benetton ads). Sony was hoping to get tons of inevitable publicity from a racist ad, but they had the other two produced to shield themselves from the inevitable fall out.
It's important to remember that any major corporation (or political entity, for that matter) carefully scrutinizes every single element that goes into an ad photo. They hire psychologists for the sole purpose of this.
Like the old Simpsons episode, if you want advertisements to go away, stop paying attention. Just don't look.
> As stated in the original posts, the respondents said that they traded this want for the "status symbol" nature of the iPod.
I'm interested in your results. Did you do a conjoint analysis? How much was did the "status symbol" overweigh the other salient attributes?
> iTune isn't really much of a factor anyways.
I disagree with this. From my own study (part time MBA as well) the combined iTunes + iPod + iTunes Music Store is the reason why the iPod is such a success. The three of them together served as what's called a "whole product" in that they satisfied all three aspects of the Kano model (boring paper available upon request!). Although it's possible your survey respondents may not realize this explicitly.
I, for one, am happy with the remastered, remixed, redone versions. In fact, I think that Lucas should make even more random changes in the next versions. Like changing it so that when Itchy plays Scratchy's rib twice in succession, it makes three different tones!
However, if Lucas wants to put out new DVDs, more power to him. However, you know what's funny? Sure, Lucas is releasing DVDs that have the original uncut versions of the OT on them. But note:
Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film.
If you absolutely have to have the original versions, you have to buy the Special Editions to get them. So if you've already bought the DVD collection, you get to buy it again. So the "OMG!!1! HAN DIDN'T SHOOT FIRST?? I'M SO BUMMED!!" crowd get to buy the version they hate *twice*.
Sure, those consumers will put the other versions up for sale on Ebay as fast as possible. But by the time they sell, the Bluray/HD-DVD version comes out.
I don't think I've ever visited WinSuperSite before, but that's a fan site! Once you get past the saliva, the understatements are hilarious.
The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X.
He starts drooling over Microsoft's "Aero" interface, but it just looks like a cheap imitation of Aqua. It even sounds like "Aqua".
Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials.
we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth.
And my favorite understatement:
Some of my best friends work at the company either directly or indirectly
> Microsoft's address is "One Microsoft Way. I'm not kidding. That's their address. A bit > pretentious don't you think?
Microsoft's isn't as nefarious as it sounds. In and around Seattle/Redmond/Bellevue/etc a lot of the streets are called "blah blah Way." IIRC, more than half the streets are like that. So, when you see it in that context, it doesn't seem as pretentious or even unusual. Chances are their address would have been One Way, so they might as well have chosen Microsoft for the street name.
However, I agree that Microsoft's and Apple's addresses seem to match their corporate cultures pretty well.
> foreign-owned companies create American shell companies to handle all the details > that the parent company is not allowed to work with
I'm not sure about "shell company", but Alcatel has a U.S.-based subsidiary that is set up to handle sensitive items like this called Alcatel Government Solutions
> Given the fact that Alcatel is basically bailing Lucent out, they'll probably just drop the > Lucent name.
You're right about Alcatel being an abbreviation of an older name, but I believe they're planning on changing the name. According to publicly available information, at their conference call, they will provide more details, but they said
> This current RE bubble is going to end in such a disaster I can't even contemplate how the US will > ever work its way out recession that follows...Anyone have a financial bomb shelter??
Depressingly enough, probably the only "financial bomb shelter" is to invest your money in areas that will benefit from a real estate bust.
The problem is that too many people today believe that "flipping houses" is an easy way to get rich, just like the way people talked about day trading back in the late 1990s.
Too many people today believe the surefire way to get rich is to buy an almost dilapidated house on mortgage, do some cosmetic repairs, paint the house a neutral Pottery Barn color, add a granite countertop, a tile backsplash, and some stainless steel appliances. Do it all for as cheap as possible, and then sell it for a huge profit before the first payment is due. There are so many shows on television that show this, that way too many people are getting into this.
I've seen quite a few houses in my neighborhood go like this. A house goes on sale, and someone picks it up. Suddenly the landscaping improves and the trim is painted a different color (but that ominous rotting wood on the trim on the side remains), and before long, there's a cheap cardboard sign proclaiming something like, "A++ Realtors -- $0 Down/Willing to Finance 100%." There was a beautiful two story house with a graceful front yard and cathedral picture windows in the front that used to be a nice house. After no fewer than four owners in eight years, it's a wreck.
All of this reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) quote of Joseph Kennedy about getting out of the stock market in the late 1920s when the shoeshine boys were talking about which stocks to buy.
> The New AT&T could probably buy Lucent for a medium sized bag of P-type ringers.
And by lining his grave with magnets, they can use the power of a furiously-spinning Judge Greene to charge their backup batteries.
I hesitate to think what's going to happen to the big telecom infrastructure vendors. When their customers merge, can it be far behind for Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, Marconi, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, or Siemens?
Slashdot Mirror
> "There are going to be those who have it and those who don't. And even those who get it later are going to be a generation behind," Ford said.
Come on. Ford's Marketing Department is right. You know how in the 1990s Ford pioneered putting the super-secure push button keys [1|2 3|4 5|6 7|8] on the driver's side door to enable you to open the door and stuff? Cool! The other car makers are doing something similar where they put the push buttons on this thing that goes on your key fob (yeah, that'll catch on!), but no one puts it on the door like Ford does. So all the other car makers are more than a generation behind; they're a decade behind!
I suspect that Windows Automotive will be like that keyless entry thing, but even more so!
According to the article:
A bit of trivia: according to the FCC's license database, BellSouth owns more than 60 channels useful for WiMAX, 40 of them at 2.5 GHz. The article implies that BellSouth would retain the 2.3 GHz spectrum they have (about 20 licenses). (AT&T probably has licenses, too, so the reason for divestment must have been to avoid overlap.)
This means that either a new service provider could appear who could deploy WiMAX, or an existing service provider could expand their footprint. BellSouth has been a major proponent for WiMAX, so it probably won't accelerate the adoption any more than before, but it could help increase the number of broadband service providers in the area.
> That is just plain not true (16e being restricted only)
I may have oversimplified, but let me explain. There are two components to this: the standard as defined by the IEEE, and the profiles as defined by the WiMAX Forum. The former describes the components of the MAC and PHY layers. The latter describes the frequencies, channel bandwidth, number of tones for the OFDM signal, and other parameters. The IEEE standard 802.16e-2005 is not defined for unlicensed spectrum. The profiles defined by the WiMAX Forum are defined by the Mobile Task Group (MTG), and there are several major profiles:
* 1A: 2300 - 2400 MHz, 8.75 MHz channels (otherwise known as the WiBro profile)
* 1B: 2300-2400 MHz, 5/10 MHz channels
* 2A/B/C: 2305-2360 (corresponding to the WCS spectrum in the US), 3.5/5/10 MHz channels
* 3A: 2496-2690 MHz, 5/10 MHz
* 4A/B/C: 3300-3400 MHz with 5/7/10 MHz channel bandwidths
* 5A/B/CL: 3400-3600 MHz with 5/7/10 MHz channels
* 5A/B/CH: 3600-3800 MHz with 5/7/10 MHz channels
In the U.S. 2.3 and 2.5 GHz are defined as allocated spectrum (similar for Canada, except with the addition of 2.5 GHz). However, for the last one, this does encompass the 3650 MHz license exempt range in the U.S., but because of the way the FCC defined the rules, it isn't clear how existing 3.5 GHz 16e equipment being sold for licensed spectrum in Canada and Europe will be adapted to the frequency.
> And I would not call 16d "old." It's what most people are using.
16d (or to use its formal name IEEE 802.16d-2004) was ratified in 2004, while the 16e (IEEE 802.16e-2005) standard was ratified in 2005. So it is correct to call 16d the older standard. 16e offers many improvements over 16d, including the ability to scale the number of OFDM tones with the channel bandwidth, support for turbo coding to improve the link budget, and significantly improved authentication methods.
> Every company that I've dealt with is a fixed provider and has bought 16d equipment.
> I don't know any mobile providers yet (they are coming, but I don't personally know of any).
You're correct that in terms of deployed WiMAX today, it's all 16d equipment; 16e equipment is still in the market trial stage, happening all over the world. It is expected that starting in 2007, 16e deployments will dwarf 16d deployments, with 16e growing to 10x the size of 16d. Almost all 16d equipment vendors are announcing plans to try to convert their equipment to 16e, since that's the direction the market is going. The major wireless infrastructure vendors who are doing WiMAX (Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Nokia Siemens, etc) are all adopting 16e. This is because the major holders of spectrum in North America are planning on moving to 16e, with the largest being Sprint Nextel. Similarly, note that BellSouth is testing 16e as well. The consensus in the industry is that 16e will be the basis for broadband wireless access, with 16d (as well as the proprietary variants) relegated to niche deployments or going away.
> It isn't all that much different than the 2.4 we know and love today, except that the spectrum is licensed. A lot of the other transmission pitfalls
> will likely remain (Line-of-Sight, etc.)
The major difference is that the output power levels at 2.4 GHz is significantly limited. The power is limited to 30 dBm (1W) for 2.4 GHz, but there is no such limitation at 2.5 GHz (since it's licensed spectrum), so a single base station can put out 1500 W (EiRP), like what you see with 3G mobile technologies.
Combined with smart antennas, the range will be much greater, and you can engineer the network to support non line of sight and pure mobility. At 2.5 GHz with 16e WiMAX, you should see the same distances as with 3G mobile at 1.9 GHz.
> There is no uniform global licensed spectrum for WiMAX. You can run WiMAX in the unlicensed spectrum. There are already companies doing it.
There are two different standards for WiMAX (from an access perspective).
The older 16d standard (designed for fixed environments) can work in unlicensed (5.8 GHz) spectrum and licensed spectrum. The newer 16e standard is only defined for licensed spectrum (2.3, 2.5, and 3.5 GHz). The majority of the service providers will deploy 16e because it supports mobility, in addition to fixed applications.
Great article!
Fanboys are a national treasure. Their diligence to spending hours/days/years nurturing and cataloging their obsession provide a useful function for the rest of us. Like a beaver spending its life building and maintaining a dam, or an oyster taking a piece of dirt and slowly making a pearl, we benefit from the years of their hard work for the few short moments when we care.
I'm sure we all go through periods when we run across something cool and it keeps our interest for a few weeks. We develop an interest and we're grateful to find the web site of some guy who has obsessed about our new subject for most of his life. We satisfy our desire for learning about whatever the subject du jour is, and then we go about our lives. I for one appreciate the effort they put into their obsession.
For example, over the years, I've developed or rekindled an interest in random topics: the show "The Prisoner" (from the 1960s), Magic the Gathering (which I hadn't played for 10 years), the musician Donovan, and other oddball things. I thought it was cool that one quick search on the Web revealed information that probably took all of someone's free time for several years (reading biographies, attending fan conventions, and talking to other hardcore fans):
1. I know that from the opening sequence from the Prisoner describes both the desire to get secrets from the spy named Number 6 but was also a pun for conformity: "What do you want?" Was he saying "Information" or "In formation"? Neat.
2. I know that the rules for "banding" were changed three times for MTG. Nifty.
3. I know that Donovan sang on the song "Billion Dollar Babies" by Alice Cooper. And Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin may or may not have played guitar on "Hurdy Gurdy Man", but John Paul Jones (the bassist from Led Zeppelin) did play bass on the song. Neato.
Could I have lived my life having never learned this info? Sure. Am I glad to learn this trivia? Yes. With fanboys, I can do both! Fanboys are like the Cliff Notes for millions of subjects, albeit disproportionately on Hobbits, lightsabers, or even Billy Joel.
I'm not mocking them, of course. I think it's funny because we're all obsessed about something or another -- they're called hobbies. For example, I probably seem to be a fanboy about some topics (I'll let the bored Slashdot reader sift through my previous posts to figure those out).
Anyway, here's to you, fanboys! Keep up the good work!
> That episode still chokes me up...actually, I watched it once on TV and never again. That track on my DVD has never been played.
I watched it once on the DVD, but only to listening to the director's commentary track. I wanted to hear if they could provide some justification for the episode. No such luck. They started off mentioning that the episode generated the most hate mail they had received, and then they carefully avoided the plot during the rest of the commentary.
> Ya I hate that episode, and by hate I mean I don't like feeling depressed for hours after it.
Agreed.
I always assumed that Fry's dog was a metaphor for the way Fox treated Futurama as a show. It was *always* on hiatus or being pre-empted, and yet Groening didn't try to take his enterprise to another network.
> I looked at the Wii, and went "annnnddddd......?" I wasn't impressed. but after reading reviews and seeing it in action, I'm considering it.
I've got two Playstation 2s (to play network games within my house), but the Playstation 3 is waaay too expensive. I couldn't figure out what the deal with the Wii was. However, after the review, the Wii actually looks like a pretty good choice. I'm glad to see that Nintendo went in a different direction than Sony and Microsoft.
> Yes, it's good for everyone, even the citizens that call themselves Republican.
It's good for another reason. Political parties sometimes need a straw-man to put blame on as an excuse to not cater to their most extreme constituents. So they get the benefit of support from that member of the constituency, without having to actually do what they would like. Think about how much the Republican base has been complaining that Bush hasn't delivered on promises. In fact, the only group who has gotten what they wanted was the amoral rich -- billions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthiest people (including somehow cutting the estate tax!) while racking up the biggest deficit and national debt in history. The Christian fundamentalists keep complaining that Bush didn't turn the U.S. into a theocracy, and the Neocons didn't get to turn Iraq into a virtual colony. It's like, "Oh, I'd *love* to support your tax cut for the rich/outlaw science/create colonies around the world, but I can't -- those darn Democrats are stopping me." It's the equivalent of starting a fight in bar, desperately hoping your friend will get in between to stop it.
The big difference is with the Democrats, the most extreme constituents have little or no power (I'm looking at you, Dennis Kucinich and your "Department of Peace" weirdness). With the Republicans, the most extreme members have been running the party the past 12 years. Now with some checks and balances back in place, we can actually get some good work done for the country.
> A tape in what? Tape players stopped being put in cars right around 2000.
My 2001 Mercedes SLK320 came with a tape player (in addition to the disc changer). It was unreliable as hell, so I sold it and bought a 2003 Nissan 350Z, which also had a tape player (in addition to the disc changer). Both had Bose systems (blah).
Hard to believe but at least up until 2003, cars did come with tape players. Not to listen to tapes, but to listen to audio books on tape (where you could get away with 8 tapes instead of 20 discs, or whatever).
Now that iPods are so popular, it's probably cheaper just to put an aux jack and leave off the tape deck.
> Griffin makes the SmartDeck, which does exactly that.
Theoretically. The SmartDeck wasn't so smart for my 2003 350Z. The controls didn't work to actually translate head unit commands to my iPod. So I returned it and bought a regular Sony tape adapter.
Someone at Nissan should explain why a freakin' Nissan Minima (AKA Sentra) came with an Aux jack on the front of the head unit, but my 350Z didn't.
> I just installed Windows 2000
Hi,
I've been trying to install Windows 2000 from the original CD (the one that came with Virtual PC), and I had to give up. The app kept giving me a DOS error that said no bootable disk, and I couldn't figure out how to create a bootable disk image.
Do you have any tips on how you did this?
thanks
> It's not using stereotypes or ridiculing the black woman in any way. It's just saying "hey, here comes the white PSP and it's going to take the
> world by storm, and here's a picture to grab your attention"
Your post is well put, and from a logical perspective, you're right. However, what's interesting is from an advertising perspective (I'm not an expert, but I took a couple of advertising classes when I got my MBA), the ad is racist (or was at least intended to be perceived as racist). There are some other factors in the ad, too, but this content is the most interesting.
Advertising isn't about logic or reason; it's about emotions and persuasion. The key to advertising is to understand that to an advertiser, the reason why you buy a product is because you have a more favorable attitude for that product than the alternatives. So advertising is about getting your attention and giving you an emotional impression, but sometimes in an indirect way.
A major tool with advertising is called association: the idea that you transfer the positive emotions for something to something else wholly unrelated. What does Tiger Woods have to do with Accenture? Nothing, but Accenture wants you to think about the positive emotions you have for Tiger Woods and apply them to their consulting business. Association is everything.
Think about what you wrote: "yes, the white woman is acting aggressively towards the black woman." In the U.S., we would associate that aggression with racism. You're right, the ad is not specifically racist -- the black woman isn't a stereotype or something-- but the actions depicted are associated with people who are racists (again, not logical but emotional). And since advertising uses association as a powerful tool, they can't complain when the same association works against them and an ad is called racist.
Frankly, I don't think Sony's purpose was to be racist, but it was to be controversial (by exploiting racist images). They knew there would be calls of "racism", and they hoped it would provide free publicity. So far, it's working.
> the success of an add is whether or not it propts you do buy the product
Ad success is partially determined by whether it sticks in your head or not. Oftentimes it's too hard to determine if a particular ad resulted in a sale. This is because there's a time lag between when you see the ad and when you purchase. So they usually measure ad effectiveness by your ability to recall the ad after varying periods of time. So if you remember the ad two weeks from now, then they'll call it a success.
However, the ultimate purpose of all advertisements is to make you have a favorable attitude towards a product or service. So a particular advertisement, even if it's offensive, can be a success if it gets your attention, but you eventually forget about the offensive ad but remember the product in a good way.
However, it's been found that if you don't like an ad, you will associate negative feelings towards the product. Thus, there is such a thing as bad publicity.
The other spots put the ad in context, but I suspect they were created just for the purpose of having plausible deniability -- "Hey, we're not being racist! Look at the other spots [that you wouldn't have noticed before if we hadn't had the offensive version shown first]". However, I don't their intention was to be racist, but rather to be controversial (like the old Benetton ads). Sony was hoping to get tons of inevitable publicity from a racist ad, but they had the other two produced to shield themselves from the inevitable fall out.
It's important to remember that any major corporation (or political entity, for that matter) carefully scrutinizes every single element that goes into an ad photo. They hire psychologists for the sole purpose of this.
Like the old Simpsons episode, if you want advertisements to go away, stop paying attention. Just don't look.
> As stated in the original posts, the respondents said that they traded this want for the "status symbol" nature of the iPod.
I'm interested in your results. Did you do a conjoint analysis? How much was did the "status symbol" overweigh the other salient attributes?
> iTune isn't really much of a factor anyways.
I disagree with this. From my own study (part time MBA as well) the combined iTunes + iPod + iTunes Music Store is the reason why the iPod is such a success. The three of them together served as what's called a "whole product" in that they satisfied all three aspects of the Kano model (boring paper available upon request!). Although it's possible your survey respondents may not realize this explicitly.
However, if Lucas wants to put out new DVDs, more power to him. However, you know what's funny? Sure, Lucas is releasing DVDs that have the original uncut versions of the OT on them. But note:
If you absolutely have to have the original versions, you have to buy the Special Editions to get them. So if you've already bought the DVD collection, you get to buy it again. So the "OMG!!1! HAN DIDN'T SHOOT FIRST?? I'M SO BUMMED!!" crowd get to buy the version they hate *twice*.
Sure, those consumers will put the other versions up for sale on Ebay as fast as possible. But by the time they sell, the Bluray/HD-DVD version comes out.
The circle is now complete!
He starts drooling over Microsoft's "Aero" interface, but it just looks like a cheap imitation of Aqua. It even sounds like "Aqua".
And my favorite understatement:
You don't say!
> Microsoft's address is "One Microsoft Way. I'm not kidding. That's their address. A bit
> pretentious don't you think?
Microsoft's isn't as nefarious as it sounds. In and around Seattle/Redmond/Bellevue/etc a lot of the streets are called "blah blah Way." IIRC, more than half the streets are like that. So, when you see it in that context, it doesn't seem as pretentious or even unusual. Chances are their address would have been One Way, so they might as well have chosen Microsoft for the street name.
However, I agree that Microsoft's and Apple's addresses seem to match their corporate cultures pretty well.
> foreign-owned companies create American shell companies to handle all the details
> that the parent company is not allowed to work with
I'm not sure about "shell company", but Alcatel has a U.S.-based subsidiary that is set up to handle sensitive items like this called Alcatel Government Solutions
> Lucent name.
You're right about Alcatel being an abbreviation of an older name, but I believe they're planning on changing the name. According to publicly available information, at their conference call, they will provide more details, but they said
> This current RE bubble is going to end in such a disaster I can't even contemplate how the US will
> ever work its way out recession that follows...Anyone have a financial bomb shelter??
Depressingly enough, probably the only "financial bomb shelter" is to invest your money in areas that will benefit from a real estate bust.
The problem is that too many people today believe that "flipping houses" is an easy way to get rich, just like the way people talked about day trading back in the late 1990s.
Too many people today believe the surefire way to get rich is to buy an almost dilapidated house on mortgage, do some cosmetic repairs, paint the house a neutral Pottery Barn color, add a granite countertop, a tile backsplash, and some stainless steel appliances. Do it all for as cheap as possible, and then sell it for a huge profit before the first payment is due. There are so many shows on television that show this, that way too many people are getting into this.
I've seen quite a few houses in my neighborhood go like this. A house goes on sale, and someone picks it up. Suddenly the landscaping improves and the trim is painted a different color (but that ominous rotting wood on the trim on the side remains), and before long, there's a cheap cardboard sign proclaiming something like, "A++ Realtors -- $0 Down/Willing to Finance 100%." There was a beautiful two story house with a graceful front yard and cathedral picture windows in the front that used to be a nice house. After no fewer than four owners in eight years, it's a wreck.
All of this reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) quote of Joseph Kennedy about getting out of the stock market in the late 1920s when the shoeshine boys were talking about which stocks to buy.
Why do I feel like some marketing guy at Apple is eyeing my ITMS account, just waiting for me to sign up:
..."
"Hey pal, you said you'd do it
> The New AT&T could probably buy Lucent for a medium sized bag of P-type ringers.
And by lining his grave with magnets, they can use the power of a furiously-spinning Judge Greene to charge their backup batteries.
I hesitate to think what's going to happen to the big telecom infrastructure vendors. When their customers merge, can it be far behind for Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, Marconi, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, or Siemens?
You came in just under the line! I begrudgingly submit to your taunts.