"In this industry, you don't have to be good, just good enough."
I can think of few industries where this isn't the case (Medicine perhaps, at one time I would say NASA but no longer). With unrealistic deadlines and tight budgets, "good enough" isn't just the minimum acceptable goal, it's the only acceptable goal. Don't blame the software engineers for a problem inherent in the system.
The irony is that many of the companies that are uncomfortable with this medium for advertising is that they're perfectly willing to spend millions on TV and print advertising where they can't even reliably track anything.
I'm reminded of a quote: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don't know which half." ~ Viscount Leverhulme, Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)
Oooh shiny wins with consumers every time. Apple knew this when they made the first Macs.
The first Mac was a beige box with a monochrome screen. Gadzooks, my black-and-silver TRS-80 looked like a more modern design! What impressed people about the first Mac was the point-and-click user interface, not the ugly box. The Mac II and Quadras were even worse, looking just like a contemporary IBM-PC. Apple didn't really get the whole industrial-design thing together until the release of the first iMac.
Wired News has an article on a 'cortically coupled computer vision' system being developed at Columbia University and funded by the ever-curious folks at DARPA.
Don't tell the MPAA! By feeding digital images directly into the brain of the viewer, they've finally managed to get rid of that nasty analog hole that pirates are always exploiting.
seriously, my PIII laptop has 'Designed for Windows 98' on it, and can run Windows 2000 and Windows XP just fine [linuxvirus.net], but the mainstream Linux distros are too bloaty to even install: the Ubuntu and Fedora installers literally hang, and SUSE and Mandriva are too slow even on my other machine in the +2GHz range.
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that is the biggest pile of FUD I have ever heard.
I've had the same experience as the OP and I can tell you it's not FUD. On the glowing recommendations of the Slashdot crowd, I ordered the free Ubuntu CD which arrived last week. I planned to install it on my 'Designed for Win 98' laptop (a 1GHz P3 IBM Thinkpad). I stuck the CD in, rebooted, chose 'install' from the boot manager, and that's about as far as it got. I'm sure there's some command-line mojo that could have got it to install, but that's exactly the reason Linux is not 'ready for the desktop'. I'm not a Microsoft zealot by any means and was willing to give Ubuntu a try, but now that's another missed opertunity for Linux adoption. Anyone got a link for Win2K install CD?
Re:Seems an obvious patent
on
Talking iPods
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· Score: 1
As Creative kindly reminded Apple, having defensive patents to make sure your competitors think twice about suing you for patent infringment is a smart move.
Your honor, Creative Labs claims prior art in the field of text-to-speech interfaces, and we can prove it. I'd like to call as my first witness Doctor Sbaitso.
You may remember the outcries when Ted Turner started "colorising" black and white movies.
Yes, and I'm convinced that if he was doing it today rather than in the 80s when colorization technology was primative, that fewer people would care. Look at the hack job that George Lucas has done to his classic Star Wars movies. But they are the copyright holders, so we can't legally stop them from re-editing their movies. Personally, I think what Lucas did to Star Wars is far worse than some bible-thumper removing a few seconds of Kate Winslet's boobs from Titanic. At least the original, un-edited version is still available for those that want it (unlike Star Wars).
A better way to do it would be if you try to open a file format that is "unknown" to the default Office, it would check the MS website for an appropriate plug-in, much the way Windows Media Player checks for new codecs when you try to open a media file it doesn't recognize.
Better still would be to ask after it downloads the plug-in "Do you want to make ODF the default format for saving Office documents?". Fat chance of that happening though.
If you used a computer in school, how similar was it to the one you use for your job today? When I was at school we used Acorn Archimedes....
When I was at school we had Commodore PETs. I can't really say that I've utilized my skills at Artillery and Time Trek in my current job. If only the PET had a solitare game, that would have prepared me for working with Windows PCs.
Lawrence Lessig...has this to say about free content: 'I think it's going to be a more significant movement than the free software movement because whatever the importance of the freedom of coders, coders will still be just a tiny proportion of the public, but culture is... much broader.'"
But I think that's the main reason free software has florished and other types of free content haven't. Coders are a small, 'elite' group with skills most of the public don't have. What they produce (free or not) has tangible value to others.
On the other hand, the world is full of self-proclaimed writers, musicians and other artists. Yes, there are lots of no-talent hacks, but many are every bit as good as the famous artists, and that's the problem. The only thing to distingish the professionals from the talented amatures is promotion; and if everyone is promoted equally via free content, there's just too many to choose from. Unfortunately (free or not), the world can only support so many artists; the rest are doomed to toil in obscurity or give up and get 'real jobs'.
It could at last let computers do real science - looking at published results and theories for new links and directions.
Does this mean that computers don't do 'real science' now? Compiling and analyzing terabytes of experimental data is not 'real science' but plagiarizing (I mean, extrapolating from) the work of other scientists is?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great to have a standardized format for searching the results of other researchers, I just don't see the connection to 'real science'.
This article is trying to get accross the point that Google is targeting MS Office but in my opinion I think that Google is targeting MS Windows and fleshing out their applications suites before they push for launching a user space or OS type web project. Perhaps all you'll need pretty soon to be productive is a machine with Linux installed & merely a good web browser?
In the begining, all computers were huge mainframes that filled entire buildings. Only a few people (government, big business, universities) could afford computers and controlled access to them. If you wanted to use a computer, you connected remotely with a dumb terminal (assuming you could get permission) and waited for you assigned cycles.
Then micro-processors brought about a computing revolution. Small and inexpensive, it was now possible to have Personal Computers! Every year they got more powerful and useful. The centralized computing model was broken, power was now in the hands of the people.
Do we really want to back to old days? Replace mainframe with server farm and dumb terminal with thin client and that's exactly what you have. No matter how benevolent they might seem, having all the computing power in the hands of a few individuals not a good idea.
Both of which are your property for you to do as you wish with, aslong as that what you wish is inside of applicable law. There are things you can't do with these items, even though you own them. Because you're constrained by law. For example, you can't hit your neighbour over the head with the book, because there's laws against that. And you can't have a public performance of the music on the CD, because copyright-law prevents that.
I think you hit the nail on the head. What the law says is that you have every right except for those that have been specifically prohibited. What the MPAA/RIAA wants (and wants you to think already exists) is a system where you have only the rights that they specifically assign to you. When I exchange my money for a CD or DVD, they cannot dictate what I do with it any more than I can dictate to them what they do with my money (as long as no laws are broken, in either case). It is a purchase, not a license agreement (did you sign a contract when you bought that CD?). Software is a slightly different case since some claim the click-through EULA is a contract, but even that is not entirely certain. Of course, IANAL (thank God).
Hey, the only Canadian beer we get down here is pisswater like Molson and Moosehead.
Unfortunately, you can't buy real Canadian beer in the US. If it's a Canadian brand that has "Export" on the label, it's just a Canadian brewery's version of what they think American beer drinkers want. The same goes for American beer brands like Budwiser sold in Canada; quite different from the American Bud.
I'd put Goose Island, Redhook, Fat Tire, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, Yuengling, and any of hundreds of other small, regional American brews up against the souile you export to us any day.
Agreed, I thought all American beer was bland swill until I tried some of the regional, specialty and microbrewery beers on a trip to Boston. There's good beer in America, you just have to look for it. Of course, the same is true in Canada (some regional brands to look for are Propeller, Sleeman's and Big Rock, at least IMHO) .
I can't see a way to download the videos to you[r] HD
Go to Keepvid.com They may not have Yahoo!Video support yet but I'm sure they will soon since they already support downloads for YouTube, GoogleVideo, iFilm, Break, FindVideos, etc. etc.
splicings with other movies like Dick's _Running Man_
Stephen King wrote 'The Running Man'. I think you are confusing it with another Schwatzenager movie 'Total Recall' which is based on Dick's short story 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'.
Finally I have a good excuse to give the IT department why I need to upgrade my video card. I need to do FFTs faster (it has nothing at all to do with Doom3).
This implies that the heliosphere, a spherical bubble of charged low-energy particles created by our Sun's solar wind, is irregularly shaped, bulging in the northern hemisphere and pressed inward in the south.
I guess we need to change the name of the heliosphere to helioelipsoid or maybe helioblob.
Elephants were dreaming of an open movie which got caught in a web (and then released), therefore there was a "web release of the open movie elephants dream". Makes perfect sense to me. Except I thought those things they sell at the Indian gift shop were called dream catchers not webs (though they do kinda look like webs).
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I can think of few industries where this isn't the case (Medicine perhaps, at one time I would say NASA but no longer). With unrealistic deadlines and tight budgets, "good enough" isn't just the minimum acceptable goal, it's the only acceptable goal. Don't blame the software engineers for a problem inherent in the system.
I'm reminded of a quote: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don't know which half." ~ Viscount Leverhulme, Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)
The first Mac was a beige box with a monochrome screen. Gadzooks, my black-and-silver TRS-80 looked like a more modern design! What impressed people about the first Mac was the point-and-click user interface, not the ugly box. The Mac II and Quadras were even worse, looking just like a contemporary IBM-PC. Apple didn't really get the whole industrial-design thing together until the release of the first iMac.
Step 4: Think "Damn, I should have thought about clicking the Preview button first".
Don't tell the MPAA! By feeding digital images directly into the brain of the viewer, they've finally managed to get rid of that nasty analog hole that pirates are always exploiting.
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that is the biggest pile of FUD I have ever heard.
I've had the same experience as the OP and I can tell you it's not FUD. On the glowing recommendations of the Slashdot crowd, I ordered the free Ubuntu CD which arrived last week. I planned to install it on my 'Designed for Win 98' laptop (a 1GHz P3 IBM Thinkpad). I stuck the CD in, rebooted, chose 'install' from the boot manager, and that's about as far as it got. I'm sure there's some command-line mojo that could have got it to install, but that's exactly the reason Linux is not 'ready for the desktop'. I'm not a Microsoft zealot by any means and was willing to give Ubuntu a try, but now that's another missed opertunity for Linux adoption. Anyone got a link for Win2K install CD?
Your honor, Creative Labs claims prior art in the field of text-to-speech interfaces, and we can prove it. I'd like to call as my first witness Doctor Sbaitso.
Yes, and I'm convinced that if he was doing it today rather than in the 80s when colorization technology was primative, that fewer people would care. Look at the hack job that George Lucas has done to his classic Star Wars movies. But they are the copyright holders, so we can't legally stop them from re-editing their movies. Personally, I think what Lucas did to Star Wars is far worse than some bible-thumper removing a few seconds of Kate Winslet's boobs from Titanic. At least the original, un-edited version is still available for those that want it (unlike Star Wars).
Better still would be to ask after it downloads the plug-in "Do you want to make ODF the default format for saving Office documents?". Fat chance of that happening though.
When I was at school we had Commodore PETs. I can't really say that I've utilized my skills at Artillery and Time Trek in my current job. If only the PET had a solitare game, that would have prepared me for working with Windows PCs.
In other news, massive layoff of state-level IT workers due to outsourcing. Film at 11.
...when I made it on Techdirt this morning. Oh well, great minds think alike (so what's our excuse).
But I think that's the main reason free software has florished and other types of free content haven't. Coders are a small, 'elite' group with skills most of the public don't have. What they produce (free or not) has tangible value to others.
On the other hand, the world is full of self-proclaimed writers, musicians and other artists. Yes, there are lots of no-talent hacks, but many are every bit as good as the famous artists, and that's the problem. The only thing to distingish the professionals from the talented amatures is promotion; and if everyone is promoted equally via free content, there's just too many to choose from. Unfortunately (free or not), the world can only support so many artists; the rest are doomed to toil in obscurity or give up and get 'real jobs'.
Does this mean that computers don't do 'real science' now? Compiling and analyzing terabytes of experimental data is not 'real science' but plagiarizing (I mean, extrapolating from) the work of other scientists is?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great to have a standardized format for searching the results of other researchers, I just don't see the connection to 'real science'.
In the begining, all computers were huge mainframes that filled entire buildings. Only a few people (government, big business, universities) could afford computers and controlled access to them. If you wanted to use a computer, you connected remotely with a dumb terminal (assuming you could get permission) and waited for you assigned cycles.
Then micro-processors brought about a computing revolution. Small and inexpensive, it was now possible to have Personal Computers! Every year they got more powerful and useful. The centralized computing model was broken, power was now in the hands of the people.
Do we really want to back to old days? Replace mainframe with server farm and dumb terminal with thin client and that's exactly what you have. No matter how benevolent they might seem, having all the computing power in the hands of a few individuals not a good idea.
I think you hit the nail on the head. What the law says is that you have every right except for those that have been specifically prohibited. What the MPAA/RIAA wants (and wants you to think already exists) is a system where you have only the rights that they specifically assign to you. When I exchange my money for a CD or DVD, they cannot dictate what I do with it any more than I can dictate to them what they do with my money (as long as no laws are broken, in either case). It is a purchase, not a license agreement (did you sign a contract when you bought that CD?). Software is a slightly different case since some claim the click-through EULA is a contract, but even that is not entirely certain. Of course, IANAL (thank God).
It was made obsolete by Sony's other great experiments like Digital Audio Tape (DAT), MiniDisc (MD), Super Audio CD (SACD) and of course RootKit Enabled CD (RECD).
Unfortunately, you can't buy real Canadian beer in the US. If it's a Canadian brand that has "Export" on the label, it's just a Canadian brewery's version of what they think American beer drinkers want. The same goes for American beer brands like Budwiser sold in Canada; quite different from the American Bud.
I'd put Goose Island, Redhook, Fat Tire, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, Yuengling, and any of hundreds of other small, regional American brews up against the souile you export to us any day.
Agreed, I thought all American beer was bland swill until I tried some of the regional, specialty and microbrewery beers on a trip to Boston. There's good beer in America, you just have to look for it. Of course, the same is true in Canada (some regional brands to look for are Propeller, Sleeman's and Big Rock, at least IMHO) .
Go to Keepvid.com They may not have Yahoo!Video support yet but I'm sure they will soon since they already support downloads for YouTube, GoogleVideo, iFilm, Break, FindVideos, etc. etc.
Stephen King wrote 'The Running Man'. I think you are confusing it with another Schwatzenager movie 'Total Recall' which is based on Dick's short story 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'.
Finally I have a good excuse to give the IT department why I need to upgrade my video card. I need to do FFTs faster (it has nothing at all to do with Doom3).
I guess we need to change the name of the heliosphere to helioelipsoid or maybe helioblob.
...the "C.P.U.". It's also not called the "Hard Drive".
...then swallow that power pill and go home to Ms. Pakman. Wokka, wokka, wokka, wokka.
Elephants were dreaming of an open movie which got caught in a web (and then released), therefore there was a "web release of the open movie elephants dream". Makes perfect sense to me. Except I thought those things they sell at the Indian gift shop were called dream catchers not webs (though they do kinda look like webs).