Throughout centuries numerous scientists have argued that the simple questions have all been answered, that only the niche, complex and esoteric aspects will be studied from here on out. In fact many physicists felt that way shortly before the end of the 19th century.
Today I'm betting that, like then, there are still plenty of fundamental questions left to answer (although we might not know how to ask them yet). And the funny thing about truly fundamental questions is that they usually have pretty simple answers. But getting there through established theories and avenues of experimentation is often impossible; it takes a major shift in thought.
But the results can still be simple. While the mathematics that Einstein ultimately employed to describe the theory are complex, the general relativity theory itself is so simple in concept that high school kids can grasp it by simple analogy--the rubber mat with heavy objects on it.
And in fact Einstein himself struggled with the math--but that did not prevent him from formulating the theory. The theory came first, then with help he found the math that could describe it. Einstein's problems with advanced math did not keep him from making major breakthroughs, and I doubt it will stop the "next Einstein" either.
The English still totally control two entirenations, and half of a third. And they violently put down resistance from the locals. Sure the empire is not as big as it used to be, but let's not pretend it's just "bits."
Every piece of plastic I've ever owned has gotten scratched. My Sony Walkman had scratches on it. My Sony Discman had scratches on it. My cell phone has scratches on it. My damn swiss army knife and my sunglasses have scratches on them. Heck my VCR and TV have scratches on their cases just from being moved a couple of times.
Plastic scratches easily--get over it. I've had 4 laptops over the past 6 years and every one of them has developed scratches on the lid and bottom. But they were not noticed by most people because a) the plastic was matte not polished, and b) the plastic was grey or black.
I now own an iBook and 2 iPods. They don't scratch any more or less easily than my Kyocera cell phone or my swiss army knife or my other laptops. But more people seem to notice the scratches, because more people want to look closely at my iBook and iPod than at my cell phone. Apple products are seen as objects of "high design" and so people look more closely and maybe have higher expectations.
The whole idea of caring so deeply about a few scratches is kind of pathetic I think. If you want your possessions to be flawless things for you to admire, buy them and put them into a case. I want mine to do stuff, and I'll take precautions to protect their function but not their looks (I protect the screens but not the cases). I was brought up to view "babying" products as effete and pointless. Things should be useful first and if they're pretty that's a nice bonus...but keeping them flawlessly pristine is for collectors and people who don't do anything.
Pretty much every bank and online merchant today encrypts your session during financial transactions. You could run open WiFi, no transport security at all, and your CC info would still be safe unless you were e-mailing it in plain text...and now most Web mail providers use SSL as well.
WiFi security is more important for preventing bandwidth leeching and intrusion onto the computers of your network, than it is for keeping your Amazon online shopping session secure. Most people don't store their credit card numbers on their computer anyway, and installing and harvesting a keylogger is a much bigger pain in the ass than just sitting in your car and sniffing signal.
Your credit card number is far less secure in real life than it is online, WiFi or not.
...escalation? After all if you're risking $500, it better be one hell of a hack. Maybe harsher penalties will just bring out the real hardcore pranksters.:-)
Why is it, when we are faced with a new(ish) technology, we believe we must throw out all the rules we've learned with previous technology.
And why is it, when faced with new technology, we somehow forget all the flaws in existing systems?
If I wanted someone's credit card number I could take a job as a waiter at a restaurant, a cash register clerk at a retail store, or a mailman. Or just pose as one for a few minutes. It's ridiculously easy to get someone else's credit card number if you want--no digital expertise required.
The whole point is to do things that are mildly wrong and get away with it. If you're allowed to do it, what the heck is the attraction? Of course you might get caught, but good hackers know where the line is and stay within it (e.g. no destruction, no injury, etc).
$50 and a warning is, let's face it, a tiny slap on the wrist. I'd question whether anyone so concerned with their "permanent record" really has the stomach for pranks in the first place.
Regardless of what you call it, it is simply video delivered digitally--no different during consumption from your standard digital cable connection. Yet Nielsen feels qualifed to comment...perhaps because the back-end delivery is via the Internet vs. cable franchise? But it's the same from the user perspective.
Video is quite different from Web sites, which keys one of the most important rules of usability -- know your medium. There are decades of research and experience with video, far more than with the Web and with computers actually. IMO Nielsen would do well to keep that in mind and realize when he is out of his depth. He's put out some good products w/respect to Web site usability and should stick with that. Leave the video advice to the experts...it's not like no one has thought about what catches a person's eyes and attention in video before.
To point out just one failing of his post, he makes a classic mistaken assumption--that it really matters where your viewers' eyes are looking. In fact as the TV market knows, the most important thing is how long the viewer watches. It doesn't matter whether people get "the message" or read the background--as long as they don't click away. That is true whether it's a mouse or a TV remote in their hand.
Nielsen is out of touch with modern TV. Consider this quote:
broadcast TV is a medium for relaxation, where the "user" sits back and becomes immersed in whatever the program directors decided to air. In fact, TV users are usually called "viewers," emphasizing their passive mode of engagement. In contrast, computer users sit forward and drive their own experience through a continuous set of choices and clicks.
Any cable network executive would laugh him/herself sick at that assertion. They wish people just sat back and immersed themselved in whatever the station aired! In fact more and more, people approach TV viewing exactly as they approach the Web--with clicker in hand. And more and more, non-fiction television loads the screen edges with additional eye-catching content to keep people from clicking away. Yes, that directly contradicts Nielsen's assertion to "keep distracting elements out of the frame of your shots." Whose advice will you take--the Web usability guru, or the multi-billion dollar industry (the people who actually make money at this stuff)?
Remember--it doesn't matter if the viewer misses some of the "main content." The only thing that matters is that they don't click away. On the Web or on TV.
If all of the vehicles in your immediate vicinity are traveling at the same speed in the same direction their velocity relative to eachother is 0. You dont have to swerve to avoid a chair across the desk from you, do you? The same will apply to groups of vehicles traveling the highways under computer control.
True as postulated, but nowhere near real world conditions. For starters cars need to accelerate/decelerate along the axis of the road to merge, exit, and find openings to change lanes. Plus they have to accel/decel laterally to accomplish any of those. In addition, there are still going to be points of congestion which will force decel and accel. Computer control doesn't solve the basic problem of too many cars and not enough lanes.
Sociologically it's even more ridiculous...are people really going to be ok with having no control over their speed? Some people are in a hurry and want to go faster. Others like to drive conservatively at low speed. To achieve your assumed conditions there must 100% participation in a controlled traffic system--a classic command-and-control approach. The whole reason the car/road system put the railroads out of business was the personal relevance of full control over your journey.
In addition it would have to be switched over instantaneously, so as not to have computer-controlled and (unpredictable) human-controlled systems sharing the same road. There is no half-way state...if both are on the road the system devolves to the chaotic state of driving today.
Last time I drove down the freeway the only obstacles were other cars.
Not sure where you live, but around here (Mid-Atlantic U.S.) we have traffic jams, slow-moving trucks, random debris (fell off truck, car, etc), broken-down vehicles, various wildlife (up to deer size), puddles, snow patches, ice patches, and occassionally pedestrians on or along our highways at various times. In addition there are occassionally poorly-marked (or unmarked) lane changes around construction areas.
The "corridor" is like the highway and the obstacles simulate other vehicles.
Yet they didn't even allow moving vehicles around each other in the corridor...one had to stop while the other was near. They simply converted any multi-party system to a static system for one of the parties.
I definitely agree that you have to start somewhere and that the Grand Challenge is a great step forward. But let's not trivialize the challenge inherent in driving around other drivers...and in changing sociological expectations.
The desert is essentially a static environment over a short time frame. You can avoid nearly 100 percent of potential accidents by merely arresting your own movement. Compare to a busy highway, where dozens if not hundreds of independently moving actors can impact you regardless of how flawlessly you negotiate the roads.
Planes fly from city to city on autopilot, but jet fighters do not dogfight or land on carriers on autopilot. Same reason--it's a huge jump to go from single actor in static environment to the physical negotiations of multiple independent actors.
You're typing on a computer on Slashdot instead of sucking dicks in a slum in India.
Of course luck and circumstance are limiting factors on some people's lives. However for any given success story there is a pool of people with equivalent initial conditions. Plenty of people in the U.S. dropped out of college and messed around with computers with their friends in the 70's. Only a couple of them are running 30-year-old multi-national, multi-billion-dollar computer companies today.
It's not how many users they have, it's that they have users at all. Google is still effectively on version 1 of Gmail. They did not have a webmail system until they built Gmail as an "AJAX" app from scratch.
MS and Yahoo are on like version 5 or 7.7 or whatever. They have to replace a system with an AJAX version, not just introduce an AJAX version from scratch.
It's like the difference between upgrading the computer system of an airplane while it's flying through the air, versus building a new airplane in a hangar on the ground. It doesn't really matter how big the airplane is or how many passengers there are--what makes it hard is whether it's currently flying or not.
Google built Gmail "in the hangar" but now it has taken off. Now, at some point they'll be faced with the prospect of a massive upgrade in the air.
MS has demonstrated one of the best web clients for years; it comes with Exchange and is called outlook web access.
OWA is simply a framed Web site styled to look like its application big brother...the rendering to HTML still occurs completely at the server end. I've been using OWA for almost 6 years now and I think even 2003 is lacking compared to Gmail...it is noticably slower and the main frame must completely reload to do almost anything. One of the big advantages of Gmail is how quickly it responds to any action. In addition the OWA GUI is not nearly as clean and simple--too many unlabeled icons and cluttered layout. Yes, design matters.
What stops them from going public as quickly as google upgrades is that while google has a few million subscribers the other two have 10 of millions. It's a bit different when you deal with grown up numbers.
There is no fundamental difference between a "few" million and "10s of" million users. The barrier MS and Yahoo face is that their systems are already in use and have already been through numerous updates, patches, and bug fixes. It's a legacy problem, not a scale problem. Google's biggest advantage is that their system was built "modern" from the start. As their user numbers grow and technology advances, they will at some point undoubtedly face problems similar to what MS and Yahoo face now.
Government oversight can be very bad when it attempts to tell us what we can think, consume, etc.
But, it can be very good, and actually promote free market solutions, when it focuses on ensuring perfection of market information. In other words, not necessarily regulating the things that ISPs do, but regulating their disclosure of what they do. If I don't know that BellSouth is hindering my favorite Web service, how can I make an informed free market decision to find a new provider?
In addition, the existing telecom infrastructure does not exist in a vacuum; it wasn't created yesterday. The American public paid dearly to help spread telecom to all corners of the nation, through subsidies, rights-of-way grants, and monopoly franchise grants. THAT is an important reason why the FCC is still needed--not to regulate "new" services, but to ensure that the existing companies and monopolies that our parents and grandparents help create continue to serve the public good. One very good example is the concept of "common carrier", which would not exist outside of government regulation.
If BellSouth is going to limit what services I can buy over the pipes that my family helped pay for, Yes, I want regulation to prevent that. Companies like BellSouth and Verizon have legacy obligations based on what they have received from U.S. citizens, and we must act to ensure they meet their obligations to increase the common good. The government is our agent of action.
Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
Up for debate. Certain specific types of ecological change, like the orientation of the magnetic poles or ice ages, happen gradually over thousands of years. Other types, such as asteroid strikes or massive super-volcano eruptions, happen very quickly.
Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
"Evolution" is simply shorthand for change; it can happen at any speed. Mass extinction due to meteor strike would happen extremely quickly for some species, but that would still be considered an aspect of evolution.
When *that* happens, species just get wiped out.
Which is, of course, the heart of evolution--the extinction of certain species in favor of better-adapted species.
It's incorrect to think that "evolution" could somehow "cope" with arctic warming vis a vis polar bears if it happened more slowly. In fact the speed makes little difference. If the ecological conditions shift to select against polar bears, they are going to go extinct; it doesn't matter how fast or slow it happens.
What you might be thinking is that if it happens slowly enough, it may allow time for speciation to occur, and the polar bear line to branch into new, better adapted species. But it might not--it's not a guaranteed thing. Natural selection can only work with what speciation gives it.
...that the government saw the merits in splitting the OS layer from hardware to avoid monopolistic abuse by IBM, but they didn't see the merit of splitting the OS and applications layers to avoid further monopolistic abuse by Microsoft.
Microsoft should have been split IMO. They argued that it would cause tremendous harm but that's a load of shit. The IBM OS/hardware split created tremendous economic growth, as did the AT&T split. Dividing the layers creates a new platform for competition and growth.
Nonsense. Almost everything you do is driven by unconscious impulses. Finding a mate, getting a better job etc are all driven by the same desires that have been running our lives since the cavemen days.
Yes I am driven to get a mate. That doesn't mean that I fuck the secretary when she flirts with me. I have some self control and can make rational decisions even when they conflict with impulses.
So, when you look at a package, does your mind go along the following lines: "oh, that might be what I want. Oh wait, the eyes of the person on the box picture look odd. Oh, I get it, they've made her eyes slightly bigger than normal, which is a common marketing technique as it provides a child-like look and people like children. I will not buy that brand as they are trying to trick me!".
First of all that's not television advertising (subject of this thread), that's packaging. Second, I usually know what I'm looking for, cute eyes or no. Third, if I don't have a brand in mind I'm usually looking at the price not the packaging.
The power of suggestion only works effectively if you do not have a willful desire already in place. In other words if you're drifting through the store without a clear aim you may be susceptible to suggestion. I try not to drift through life.
In seriousness, I don't see humans as being all that different from animals. Animals have reason and self control, and it's not as if you can argue that humans are the most reasoned and self-controlled beings ever brought into existance. If you disagree, we could turn the topic of conversation to religion, politics and war...
I fail to see your point; TV advertising doesn't work very well on animals either.
Properly done commercials pay for themselves many times over. You cannot seriously sit there and suggest that they are ineffective, because all of the research suggests otherwise.
Wrong. Research merely suggests that advertising can be effective. It does not suggest that advertising affects the behavior of everyone who sees the advertisement, nor does the business case suggest that it even has to to be considered successful. For an advertisement to be a success, it must simply bring in enough new business to more than offset the cost associated with the ad. In most cases the needle only needs to be moved a little bit--only a small percentage of viewers need to be affected. Advertising by itself almost always produces only marginal results.
We all have a choice as to whether we are one of those people. To suggest otherwise would be to ignore the world around you. Do you purchase every item you see advertised on TV? Of course not.
This is not new ground and nothing I'm saying here is revolutionary.
Argument by assertion, and incorrect to boot. Most academics and advertising professionals would in fact find it pretty revolutionary to learn that they can reach directly into their customers' unconscious and force a buy decision with 100% success.
Go to your kitchen and look through the brands. Ask yourself how many of them advertise and how many don't.
Again the tiger and rock. You've simply proven that many companies advertise, not that they are effective at forcing my purchase decision.
Look, I know where you're coming from. There are plenty of tricks of suggestion that can be played. But there is simply no question that we have ultimate control over our decisions of what and what not to buy.
Wrong. You will subconciously recognize the brands on your next shopping trip and YOU WILL be more likely to buy them. Given the choice between a brand you "know" and a complete unknown, you will go for the "known", even if your "knowledge" of that product is through commercials you never paid attention to.
This is only correct if you let it be correct. You're not a fucking robot--use your head and think when you spend money and believe it or not, you can control what you buy and how much, despite any unconscious impulses. I have lots of emotions and impulses I don't follow through on every day--telling off the boss, punching the jerk, asking out the hottie (I'm engaged), etc. Reason and self control are part of what sets us apart from animals.
If adverts don't work, why are they so common and expensive?
Ridiculous logic, if you can call it that at all. You're simply assuming what you're arguing. "If my tiger-repelling rock doesn't work, why don't we see any tigers around here??"
Hell, they even test the ads at 2x and 4x normal speed, to ensure that the logo and possibly the message are intact.
They can test them all they want. I'm living proof that ads don't have to have an effect on what you buy. Thousands of people do it every day. I reject the "victim status" that I don't have control over my life, that the big bad advertisements will make me do what I don't want to.
What is your basis for thinking that the U.S. doesn't understand this? Just because WalMart buys t-shirts from China, it doesn't mean our military and counter-intelligence forces aren't playing hardball with the Chinese. Heck just because WalMart is buying in China doesn't mean they aren't playing hardball with every negotiation.
Make no mistake--plenty of people understand the score with China. International detente and diplomacy is not exactly a new subject to the U.S. But what you need to understand is that part of the rules of such a game is the public face of the relationship. China and the U.S. may sit at the table like friends, shaking hands and doing deals, but make no mistake--under the table, out of view, they wrestle for advantage. Just because you, Joe Public, don't see the weapons, don't assume they aren't there.
The real thing to understand with respect to China is that they are at significant disadvantage to the U.S. right now. Their technology is behind, their economy is almost an order of magnitude less powerful, they have a less capable military, a less capable populace. The only effective lever they have with which to grapple with the U.S. is brute-force manufacturing.
Yes, they are changing, but so is the U.S. Don't make the mistake of comparing the U.S. of today to the China of 20 years from now.
Advertising does not have to rule your life!! It's true. When the ads come on you can just mute the TV, go get a snack, talk to your buds, or do something else. You can leave it unmuted and just sit there taking it in. It won't kill you or even hurt you I promise. Advertising does not have to lead directly to a major life change and monastic denial of something you once enjoyed. It's not a drug and you're not an addict.
I really like to watch football--programming where the ads are primarily trucks, beer, steak, and drugs. But I drive a small station wagon, don't drink beer, rarely eat steak, and rarely take drugs of any kind. And I manage all this without a PVR--yes that's right, exposed directly to the advertisements! The secret is simply to make decisions about my consumption rationally rather than emotionally or impulsively.
The consumer culture is the ultimate class warfare. Rich people run companies and sell things to take money out of the pockets of other people. But it's a double hit on the consumers, since by purchasing rather than investing they are not only forfeiting their money for unnecessary expenses, they are ALSO forfeiting all the money they could have made with that money. Literally every time you buy something that does not appreciate, you are giving away potentially thousands to tens of thousands (or more) future dollars. But it doesn't have to end badly.
What I'm trying to say is that you run your life, not the advertisers. That's why I don't feel the need to give away my television simply because my favorite shows have ads in them. *I* determine the effect of the ads on me, not the ads. So I can choose to simply let them run and ignore them, and continue to make rational decisions about how I spend my money. If enought people do the same, at some point advertisers may figure out that they are wasting their money and stop paying for ads and airtime... But I doubt that will happen very soon.
Your response basically mirrored the other one but since you were more polite I'll respond to you.
First of all I never mentioned the federal speed limit, which was imposed for conservation reasons in the 1970's and to which both your posts referred.
I was actually referring to the development of state and local speed limits from the early 1900's to the 1970's, when the "federal 55" was imposed. During that time period the raising of the state or local limit was often in response to how fast people were actually driving--i.e. everyone was breaking the law so they changed the law. In the early 1900s, many towns had speed limits well under 25 mph throughout, for instance.
Obviously such a method of advancement would be hard to imagine in a world where the current speed limit is enforced with 100% effectiveness.
To call in another example--would record labels and TV networks be as interested in online distribution if the government could stop all online trafficking of copyrighted material?
The human tension between those disobeying and those enforcing the laws of the country is an integral part of the progress of American society, as both sides are citizens and in many ways equal (if enough citizens don't like a law, it can be changed). If you take humans out of the equation (automatic law enforcement) I think there's a real risk of dramatically changing the dynamic from a tension between equals, to a police state supervising its wards.
There are plenty of laws on the books at the federal and state level that were palatable only because the difficulty in enforcing them eases their impact on society.
There's never been such thing as 100% compliance with any law. The case could be made that 100% effective enforcement of laws would have a negative effect on the nation. Much progress occurs technologically and economically before it occurs legally.
Consider speed limits--they are now up to 70mph on some highways. But it wasn't that long ago that 70mph was considered suicidally fast for the average driver. Technological advances made safe driving at such high speed possible. But it was years of data showing that people can drive safely at such speeds that convinced governments to up the speed limit. But with 100% speed limit enforcement, those years of data would never have been collected and we'd likely all still be driving 50mph to get everywhere
And just think of the economic impact of everything you've ever bought getting there 15% slower than it does now. That's a big hit on the throughput of our economy
Every time I read stories like this one I think we're coming closer to the problem Frank Herbert outlines in "Whipping Star"--a government that becomes so efficient and effective that it is actually damaging to the nation it governs. Will we need an official Bureau of Sabotage one day to create the buffer that society needs from its laws?
There have only been a couple stories on Aperture and already I'm sick of the blind parroting of this line. It is not correct.
If Aperture is not for editing, why does it include 13 image manipulation functions? Why does Apple say (on the Aperture homepage):
Aperture makes RAW as easy as JPEG, letting you import, edit, catalog, organize, retouch, publish, and archive your images more effectively and efficiently than ever before.
There are already several programs for proofing "hundreds of frames in a relatively short period of time." My favorite is Photo Mechanic, others like iView, others like Bibble, others like Extensis, etc.
Please learn about the software before you admonish others. Apple intends this one program to take the place of ingesting, organizing, archiving, and image manipulating tools already on the market. It is not just a proofer, so don't lecture people that it is.
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Throughout centuries numerous scientists have argued that the simple questions have all been answered, that only the niche, complex and esoteric aspects will be studied from here on out. In fact many physicists felt that way shortly before the end of the 19th century.
Today I'm betting that, like then, there are still plenty of fundamental questions left to answer (although we might not know how to ask them yet). And the funny thing about truly fundamental questions is that they usually have pretty simple answers. But getting there through established theories and avenues of experimentation is often impossible; it takes a major shift in thought.
But the results can still be simple. While the mathematics that Einstein ultimately employed to describe the theory are complex, the general relativity theory itself is so simple in concept that high school kids can grasp it by simple analogy--the rubber mat with heavy objects on it.
And in fact Einstein himself struggled with the math--but that did not prevent him from formulating the theory. The theory came first, then with help he found the math that could describe it. Einstein's problems with advanced math did not keep him from making major breakthroughs, and I doubt it will stop the "next Einstein" either.
The English still totally control two entire nations, and half of a third. And they violently put down resistance from the locals. Sure the empire is not as big as it used to be, but let's not pretend it's just "bits."
Every piece of plastic I've ever owned has gotten scratched. My Sony Walkman had scratches on it. My Sony Discman had scratches on it. My cell phone has scratches on it. My damn swiss army knife and my sunglasses have scratches on them. Heck my VCR and TV have scratches on their cases just from being moved a couple of times.
Plastic scratches easily--get over it. I've had 4 laptops over the past 6 years and every one of them has developed scratches on the lid and bottom. But they were not noticed by most people because a) the plastic was matte not polished, and b) the plastic was grey or black.
I now own an iBook and 2 iPods. They don't scratch any more or less easily than my Kyocera cell phone or my swiss army knife or my other laptops. But more people seem to notice the scratches, because more people want to look closely at my iBook and iPod than at my cell phone. Apple products are seen as objects of "high design" and so people look more closely and maybe have higher expectations.
The whole idea of caring so deeply about a few scratches is kind of pathetic I think. If you want your possessions to be flawless things for you to admire, buy them and put them into a case. I want mine to do stuff, and I'll take precautions to protect their function but not their looks (I protect the screens but not the cases). I was brought up to view "babying" products as effete and pointless. Things should be useful first and if they're pretty that's a nice bonus...but keeping them flawlessly pristine is for collectors and people who don't do anything.
Pretty much every bank and online merchant today encrypts your session during financial transactions. You could run open WiFi, no transport security at all, and your CC info would still be safe unless you were e-mailing it in plain text...and now most Web mail providers use SSL as well.
WiFi security is more important for preventing bandwidth leeching and intrusion onto the computers of your network, than it is for keeping your Amazon online shopping session secure. Most people don't store their credit card numbers on their computer anyway, and installing and harvesting a keylogger is a much bigger pain in the ass than just sitting in your car and sniffing signal.
Your credit card number is far less secure in real life than it is online, WiFi or not.
...escalation? After all if you're risking $500, it better be one hell of a hack. Maybe harsher penalties will just bring out the real hardcore pranksters. :-)
Why is it, when we are faced with a new(ish) technology, we believe we must throw out all the rules we've learned with previous technology.
And why is it, when faced with new technology, we somehow forget all the flaws in existing systems?
If I wanted someone's credit card number I could take a job as a waiter at a restaurant, a cash register clerk at a retail store, or a mailman. Or just pose as one for a few minutes. It's ridiculously easy to get someone else's credit card number if you want--no digital expertise required.
...It's a school project.
The whole point is to do things that are mildly wrong and get away with it. If you're allowed to do it, what the heck is the attraction? Of course you might get caught, but good hackers know where the line is and stay within it (e.g. no destruction, no injury, etc).
$50 and a warning is, let's face it, a tiny slap on the wrist. I'd question whether anyone so concerned with their "permanent record" really has the stomach for pranks in the first place.
Regardless of what you call it, it is simply video delivered digitally--no different during consumption from your standard digital cable connection. Yet Nielsen feels qualifed to comment...perhaps because the back-end delivery is via the Internet vs. cable franchise? But it's the same from the user perspective.
Video is quite different from Web sites, which keys one of the most important rules of usability -- know your medium. There are decades of research and experience with video, far more than with the Web and with computers actually. IMO Nielsen would do well to keep that in mind and realize when he is out of his depth. He's put out some good products w/respect to Web site usability and should stick with that. Leave the video advice to the experts...it's not like no one has thought about what catches a person's eyes and attention in video before.
To point out just one failing of his post, he makes a classic mistaken assumption--that it really matters where your viewers' eyes are looking. In fact as the TV market knows, the most important thing is how long the viewer watches. It doesn't matter whether people get "the message" or read the background--as long as they don't click away. That is true whether it's a mouse or a TV remote in their hand.
Nielsen is out of touch with modern TV. Consider this quote:
broadcast TV is a medium for relaxation, where the "user" sits back and becomes immersed in whatever the program directors decided to air. In fact, TV users are usually called "viewers," emphasizing their passive mode of engagement. In contrast, computer users sit forward and drive their own experience through a continuous set of choices and clicks.
Any cable network executive would laugh him/herself sick at that assertion. They wish people just sat back and immersed themselved in whatever the station aired! In fact more and more, people approach TV viewing exactly as they approach the Web--with clicker in hand. And more and more, non-fiction television loads the screen edges with additional eye-catching content to keep people from clicking away. Yes, that directly contradicts Nielsen's assertion to "keep distracting elements out of the frame of your shots." Whose advice will you take--the Web usability guru, or the multi-billion dollar industry (the people who actually make money at this stuff)?
Remember--it doesn't matter if the viewer misses some of the "main content." The only thing that matters is that they don't click away. On the Web or on TV.
If all of the vehicles in your immediate vicinity are traveling at the same speed in the same direction their velocity relative to eachother is 0. You dont have to swerve to avoid a chair across the desk from you, do you? The same will apply to groups of vehicles traveling the highways under computer control.
True as postulated, but nowhere near real world conditions. For starters cars need to accelerate/decelerate along the axis of the road to merge, exit, and find openings to change lanes. Plus they have to accel/decel laterally to accomplish any of those. In addition, there are still going to be points of congestion which will force decel and accel. Computer control doesn't solve the basic problem of too many cars and not enough lanes.
Sociologically it's even more ridiculous...are people really going to be ok with having no control over their speed? Some people are in a hurry and want to go faster. Others like to drive conservatively at low speed. To achieve your assumed conditions there must 100% participation in a controlled traffic system--a classic command-and-control approach. The whole reason the car/road system put the railroads out of business was the personal relevance of full control over your journey.
In addition it would have to be switched over instantaneously, so as not to have computer-controlled and (unpredictable) human-controlled systems sharing the same road. There is no half-way state...if both are on the road the system devolves to the chaotic state of driving today.
Last time I drove down the freeway the only obstacles were other cars.
Not sure where you live, but around here (Mid-Atlantic U.S.) we have traffic jams, slow-moving trucks, random debris (fell off truck, car, etc), broken-down vehicles, various wildlife (up to deer size), puddles, snow patches, ice patches, and occassionally pedestrians on or along our highways at various times. In addition there are occassionally poorly-marked (or unmarked) lane changes around construction areas.
The "corridor" is like the highway and the obstacles simulate other vehicles.
Yet they didn't even allow moving vehicles around each other in the corridor...one had to stop while the other was near. They simply converted any multi-party system to a static system for one of the parties.
I definitely agree that you have to start somewhere and that the Grand Challenge is a great step forward. But let's not trivialize the challenge inherent in driving around other drivers...and in changing sociological expectations.
The desert is essentially a static environment over a short time frame. You can avoid nearly 100 percent of potential accidents by merely arresting your own movement. Compare to a busy highway, where dozens if not hundreds of independently moving actors can impact you regardless of how flawlessly you negotiate the roads.
Planes fly from city to city on autopilot, but jet fighters do not dogfight or land on carriers on autopilot. Same reason--it's a huge jump to go from single actor in static environment to the physical negotiations of multiple independent actors.
You're typing on a computer on Slashdot instead of sucking dicks in a slum in India.
Of course luck and circumstance are limiting factors on some people's lives. However for any given success story there is a pool of people with equivalent initial conditions. Plenty of people in the U.S. dropped out of college and messed around with computers with their friends in the 70's. Only a couple of them are running 30-year-old multi-national, multi-billion-dollar computer companies today.
There's more to life than what falls in your lap.
It's not how many users they have, it's that they have users at all. Google is still effectively on version 1 of Gmail. They did not have a webmail system until they built Gmail as an "AJAX" app from scratch.
MS and Yahoo are on like version 5 or 7.7 or whatever. They have to replace a system with an AJAX version, not just introduce an AJAX version from scratch.
It's like the difference between upgrading the computer system of an airplane while it's flying through the air, versus building a new airplane in a hangar on the ground. It doesn't really matter how big the airplane is or how many passengers there are--what makes it hard is whether it's currently flying or not.
Google built Gmail "in the hangar" but now it has taken off. Now, at some point they'll be faced with the prospect of a massive upgrade in the air.
MS has demonstrated one of the best web clients for years; it comes with Exchange and is called outlook web access.
OWA is simply a framed Web site styled to look like its application big brother...the rendering to HTML still occurs completely at the server end. I've been using OWA for almost 6 years now and I think even 2003 is lacking compared to Gmail...it is noticably slower and the main frame must completely reload to do almost anything. One of the big advantages of Gmail is how quickly it responds to any action. In addition the OWA GUI is not nearly as clean and simple--too many unlabeled icons and cluttered layout. Yes, design matters.
What stops them from going public as quickly as google upgrades is that while google has a few million subscribers the other two have 10 of millions. It's a bit different when you deal with grown up numbers.
There is no fundamental difference between a "few" million and "10s of" million users. The barrier MS and Yahoo face is that their systems are already in use and have already been through numerous updates, patches, and bug fixes. It's a legacy problem, not a scale problem. Google's biggest advantage is that their system was built "modern" from the start. As their user numbers grow and technology advances, they will at some point undoubtedly face problems similar to what MS and Yahoo face now.
Government oversight can be very bad when it attempts to tell us what we can think, consume, etc.
But, it can be very good, and actually promote free market solutions, when it focuses on ensuring perfection of market information. In other words, not necessarily regulating the things that ISPs do, but regulating their disclosure of what they do. If I don't know that BellSouth is hindering my favorite Web service, how can I make an informed free market decision to find a new provider?
In addition, the existing telecom infrastructure does not exist in a vacuum; it wasn't created yesterday. The American public paid dearly to help spread telecom to all corners of the nation, through subsidies, rights-of-way grants, and monopoly franchise grants. THAT is an important reason why the FCC is still needed--not to regulate "new" services, but to ensure that the existing companies and monopolies that our parents and grandparents help create continue to serve the public good. One very good example is the concept of "common carrier", which would not exist outside of government regulation.
If BellSouth is going to limit what services I can buy over the pipes that my family helped pay for, Yes, I want regulation to prevent that. Companies like BellSouth and Verizon have legacy obligations based on what they have received from U.S. citizens, and we must act to ensure they meet their obligations to increase the common good. The government is our agent of action.
Or at the very least, poorly phrased.
Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
Up for debate. Certain specific types of ecological change, like the orientation of the magnetic poles or ice ages, happen gradually over thousands of years. Other types, such as asteroid strikes or massive super-volcano eruptions, happen very quickly.
Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
"Evolution" is simply shorthand for change; it can happen at any speed. Mass extinction due to meteor strike would happen extremely quickly for some species, but that would still be considered an aspect of evolution.
When *that* happens, species just get wiped out.
Which is, of course, the heart of evolution--the extinction of certain species in favor of better-adapted species.
It's incorrect to think that "evolution" could somehow "cope" with arctic warming vis a vis polar bears if it happened more slowly. In fact the speed makes little difference. If the ecological conditions shift to select against polar bears, they are going to go extinct; it doesn't matter how fast or slow it happens.
What you might be thinking is that if it happens slowly enough, it may allow time for speciation to occur, and the polar bear line to branch into new, better adapted species. But it might not--it's not a guaranteed thing. Natural selection can only work with what speciation gives it.
...that the government saw the merits in splitting the OS layer from hardware to avoid monopolistic abuse by IBM, but they didn't see the merit of splitting the OS and applications layers to avoid further monopolistic abuse by Microsoft.
Microsoft should have been split IMO. They argued that it would cause tremendous harm but that's a load of shit. The IBM OS/hardware split created tremendous economic growth, as did the AT&T split. Dividing the layers creates a new platform for competition and growth.
Nonsense. Almost everything you do is driven by unconscious impulses. Finding a mate, getting a better job etc are all driven by the same desires that have been running our lives since the cavemen days.
Yes I am driven to get a mate. That doesn't mean that I fuck the secretary when she flirts with me. I have some self control and can make rational decisions even when they conflict with impulses.
So, when you look at a package, does your mind go along the following lines: "oh, that might be what I want. Oh wait, the eyes of the person on the box picture look odd. Oh, I get it, they've made her eyes slightly bigger than normal, which is a common marketing technique as it provides a child-like look and people like children. I will not buy that brand as they are trying to trick me!".
First of all that's not television advertising (subject of this thread), that's packaging. Second, I usually know what I'm looking for, cute eyes or no. Third, if I don't have a brand in mind I'm usually looking at the price not the packaging.
The power of suggestion only works effectively if you do not have a willful desire already in place. In other words if you're drifting through the store without a clear aim you may be susceptible to suggestion. I try not to drift through life.
In seriousness, I don't see humans as being all that different from animals. Animals have reason and self control, and it's not as if you can argue that humans are the most reasoned and self-controlled beings ever brought into existance. If you disagree, we could turn the topic of conversation to religion, politics and war...
I fail to see your point; TV advertising doesn't work very well on animals either.
Properly done commercials pay for themselves many times over. You cannot seriously sit there and suggest that they are ineffective, because all of the research suggests otherwise.
Wrong. Research merely suggests that advertising can be effective. It does not suggest that advertising affects the behavior of everyone who sees the advertisement, nor does the business case suggest that it even has to to be considered successful. For an advertisement to be a success, it must simply bring in enough new business to more than offset the cost associated with the ad. In most cases the needle only needs to be moved a little bit--only a small percentage of viewers need to be affected. Advertising by itself almost always produces only marginal results.
We all have a choice as to whether we are one of those people. To suggest otherwise would be to ignore the world around you. Do you purchase every item you see advertised on TV? Of course not.
This is not new ground and nothing I'm saying here is revolutionary.
Argument by assertion, and incorrect to boot. Most academics and advertising professionals would in fact find it pretty revolutionary to learn that they can reach directly into their customers' unconscious and force a buy decision with 100% success.
Go to your kitchen and look through the brands. Ask yourself how many of them advertise and how many don't.
Again the tiger and rock. You've simply proven that many companies advertise, not that they are effective at forcing my purchase decision.
Look, I know where you're coming from. There are plenty of tricks of suggestion that can be played. But there is simply no question that we have ultimate control over our decisions of what and what not to buy.
Wrong. You will subconciously recognize the brands on your next shopping trip and YOU WILL be more likely to buy them. Given the choice between a brand you "know" and a complete unknown, you will go for the "known", even if your "knowledge" of that product is through commercials you never paid attention to.
This is only correct if you let it be correct. You're not a fucking robot--use your head and think when you spend money and believe it or not, you can control what you buy and how much, despite any unconscious impulses. I have lots of emotions and impulses I don't follow through on every day--telling off the boss, punching the jerk, asking out the hottie (I'm engaged), etc. Reason and self control are part of what sets us apart from animals.
If adverts don't work, why are they so common and expensive?
Ridiculous logic, if you can call it that at all. You're simply assuming what you're arguing. "If my tiger-repelling rock doesn't work, why don't we see any tigers around here??"
Hell, they even test the ads at 2x and 4x normal speed, to ensure that the logo and possibly the message are intact.
They can test them all they want. I'm living proof that ads don't have to have an effect on what you buy. Thousands of people do it every day. I reject the "victim status" that I don't have control over my life, that the big bad advertisements will make me do what I don't want to.
What is your basis for thinking that the U.S. doesn't understand this? Just because WalMart buys t-shirts from China, it doesn't mean our military and counter-intelligence forces aren't playing hardball with the Chinese. Heck just because WalMart is buying in China doesn't mean they aren't playing hardball with every negotiation.
Make no mistake--plenty of people understand the score with China. International detente and diplomacy is not exactly a new subject to the U.S. But what you need to understand is that part of the rules of such a game is the public face of the relationship. China and the U.S. may sit at the table like friends, shaking hands and doing deals, but make no mistake--under the table, out of view, they wrestle for advantage. Just because you, Joe Public, don't see the weapons, don't assume they aren't there.
The real thing to understand with respect to China is that they are at significant disadvantage to the U.S. right now. Their technology is behind, their economy is almost an order of magnitude less powerful, they have a less capable military, a less capable populace. The only effective lever they have with which to grapple with the U.S. is brute-force manufacturing.
Yes, they are changing, but so is the U.S. Don't make the mistake of comparing the U.S. of today to the China of 20 years from now.
Advertising does not have to rule your life!! It's true. When the ads come on you can just mute the TV, go get a snack, talk to your buds, or do something else. You can leave it unmuted and just sit there taking it in. It won't kill you or even hurt you I promise. Advertising does not have to lead directly to a major life change and monastic denial of something you once enjoyed. It's not a drug and you're not an addict.
I really like to watch football--programming where the ads are primarily trucks, beer, steak, and drugs. But I drive a small station wagon, don't drink beer, rarely eat steak, and rarely take drugs of any kind. And I manage all this without a PVR--yes that's right, exposed directly to the advertisements! The secret is simply to make decisions about my consumption rationally rather than emotionally or impulsively.
The consumer culture is the ultimate class warfare. Rich people run companies and sell things to take money out of the pockets of other people. But it's a double hit on the consumers, since by purchasing rather than investing they are not only forfeiting their money for unnecessary expenses, they are ALSO forfeiting all the money they could have made with that money. Literally every time you buy something that does not appreciate, you are giving away potentially thousands to tens of thousands (or more) future dollars. But it doesn't have to end badly.
What I'm trying to say is that you run your life, not the advertisers. That's why I don't feel the need to give away my television simply because my favorite shows have ads in them. *I* determine the effect of the ads on me, not the ads. So I can choose to simply let them run and ignore them, and continue to make rational decisions about how I spend my money. If enought people do the same, at some point advertisers may figure out that they are wasting their money and stop paying for ads and airtime... But I doubt that will happen very soon.
You silly person. You are talking about TV. TV is not the same as the governement.
Not yet anyway.
Your response basically mirrored the other one but since you were more polite I'll respond to you.
First of all I never mentioned the federal speed limit, which was imposed for conservation reasons in the 1970's and to which both your posts referred.
I was actually referring to the development of state and local speed limits from the early 1900's to the 1970's, when the "federal 55" was imposed. During that time period the raising of the state or local limit was often in response to how fast people were actually driving--i.e. everyone was breaking the law so they changed the law. In the early 1900s, many towns had speed limits well under 25 mph throughout, for instance.
Obviously such a method of advancement would be hard to imagine in a world where the current speed limit is enforced with 100% effectiveness.
To call in another example--would record labels and TV networks be as interested in online distribution if the government could stop all online trafficking of copyrighted material?
The human tension between those disobeying and those enforcing the laws of the country is an integral part of the progress of American society, as both sides are citizens and in many ways equal (if enough citizens don't like a law, it can be changed). If you take humans out of the equation (automatic law enforcement) I think there's a real risk of dramatically changing the dynamic from a tension between equals, to a police state supervising its wards.
There are plenty of laws on the books at the federal and state level that were palatable only because the difficulty in enforcing them eases their impact on society.
There's never been such thing as 100% compliance with any law. The case could be made that 100% effective enforcement of laws would have a negative effect on the nation. Much progress occurs technologically and economically before it occurs legally.
Consider speed limits--they are now up to 70mph on some highways. But it wasn't that long ago that 70mph was considered suicidally fast for the average driver. Technological advances made safe driving at such high speed possible. But it was years of data showing that people can drive safely at such speeds that convinced governments to up the speed limit. But with 100% speed limit enforcement, those years of data would never have been collected and we'd likely all still be driving 50mph to get everywhere
And just think of the economic impact of everything you've ever bought getting there 15% slower than it does now. That's a big hit on the throughput of our economy
Every time I read stories like this one I think we're coming closer to the problem Frank Herbert outlines in "Whipping Star"--a government that becomes so efficient and effective that it is actually damaging to the nation it governs. Will we need an official Bureau of Sabotage one day to create the buffer that society needs from its laws?
There have only been a couple stories on Aperture and already I'm sick of the blind parroting of this line. It is not correct.
If Aperture is not for editing, why does it include 13 image manipulation functions? Why does Apple say (on the Aperture homepage):
There are already several programs for proofing "hundreds of frames in a relatively short period of time." My favorite is Photo Mechanic, others like iView, others like Bibble, others like Extensis, etc.
Please learn about the software before you admonish others. Apple intends this one program to take the place of ingesting, organizing, archiving, and image manipulating tools already on the market. It is not just a proofer, so don't lecture people that it is.
If it's not an image editor, why the editing features--filters, sharpen, etc.
The fact is, it's the bastard son of a image management and an image manipulation tool. I'd rather have two separate tools that do each job well.