Yes, cell phones are increasingly becoming more and more like credit cards. I've noticed this trend. You can buy all kinds of ring tones. In some countries, you can pay bills, etc. Isn't it time we start demanding the same assurances. For instance, if someone steals my credit card, the max I'm liable for is $50. Can't that be the case with cell phones too? I for one am going to read the contract more carefully next time. I'd encourage everyone else to do the same.
The article opines: 'It takes a lot of the hard work out of searching the web. The very clever thing about social software is that it puts the burden on to the user, not the provider.'
This led me to believe the author of the article is the one that thinks this is what Yahoo is thinking. Which is why I said if that's what they think, they're missing the point.
wrong idea about Social Networks and search
on
On Yahoo!'s Acquisitions
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It takes a lot of the hard work out of searching the web. The very clever thing about social software is that it puts the burden on to the user, not the provider.
If this is how Yahoo sees it, they're missing the point. Yahoo (and other web-portals) can use Social Networks to learn more about their users. For instance, a certain social circle may all be members of a bowling league, so maybe show bowling ball advertisers to people that have a direct connection with the bowling league circle. The connection I see is more in delivering more appropriate content to users, not saving money on search.
Just have a set of tasks, like configure email client or download and install said software. Then, ask them how hard it was to do this. Give them no more instructions than the very simple sentances I gave earlier and make sure to have a group of people doing the testing that is pretty representative of the public (read not all Ph D. students in CS). You might want to come up with a list of questions that get you the comments you desire for each activity, but that should be a short list and let the testers know that they don't have to answer all questions, but they questions are suggested questions. They could be something like:
1.) About how long did this task take you?
2.) How was the experience?
3.) Any room for improvement?
....
Also, make sure they alternate which system they test first, so maybe the first task, they run it on Gnome first, then second on KDE first.
I suspect that it will take roughly the same amount of time that the CEO & board-of-directors take to decide wether they want to risk their money mass-manufacturing a computer for people five-kilometers below the poverty line.
If they can make it for $80 and sell it for $100, they'll do it. There's nothing evil about that, it's just capitalism.
There's nothing revolutionary about the MIT system. It could have been built fifteen years ago (albeit using less advanced parts).
And it would have cost way more. I bought a IBM 286 about 15 years ago, and it was well into the thousands, we're not even talking laptops here and no internet connection. Oh yeah, we upgraded the RAM to 1 Megabyte too.
But, there's no large profit in it, and the "large" part is just as important as the "profit".
Sure there is a large profit in it. If you can make this thing for $80, and sell it for $100, your going to make a ton of money because they will be able to buy hundreds of millions of them. The big computer manufacturers have all lowered their prices because they realized that they can make more money selling these things at $300, than they can at $1000. The system is setup correctly to motivate suppliers to set prices correctly.
Frankly, I'm surprised they were able to find anyone willing to use their manufacturing capacity to mass produce these. Quanta's CEO is either unusually progressive for a suit ("You know what, I'm willing to take a bit of a cut in profits for this."), or is getting a substantial subsidy per-unit to offset the lower margins.
I'm sure Quanta will potentiall make a killing on this deal, that is if this laptop beats the other manufacturers to market and is substantially functional when compared to the $299 system I linked to. Again, it's about volume, if you sell 1 billion systems and make $10 per system, that's $10 billion dollars.
ink-printed images of today to a digital medium of flashing graphics and text that displays prices, special offers or alluring photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens.
This means that as people check out, the cash register could swipe the RFID tag on the umbrella that was just sold and tell all the other umbrellas to raise their price on this e-paper by $1.00 because it might be raining.
Google obviously can't buy Firefox, so Opera might be the next possible candidate.
Key word is 'might'. I can't believe this was turned into, 'Google is planning to buy Opera'. This guy is just speculating and I don't think it's good speculation either.
I think you'd be better off waiting for Michael Dell to get you a $100 laptop. The prices of laptops have been dropping fast. These things are not likely to ship anytime soon due to the fact that there's a big difference between designing a $100 laptop and mass producing 100 million of them. If this guy can pull it off great. I will be impressed.
This is quite different that IBM saying no one would want a PC. Intel's point is that no one is going to want this device. I'm not sure he's right, but I don't think anyone is proposing that this device will replace the PC. I'll be honest with you, I'm not going to throw out my Toshiba and get one of these things. It's possible that there will be a market for these things at the low end, but they way they want to distribute them is flawed. They are trying to sell to governments and have them distribute. This really sounds like an experiment in Socialism. Why not just sell them to people who cannot afford a computer? I guess I'm just missing the whole sell to government idea of it. Also, these poorer countries tend to have a lot of corruption, so I wouldn't be surprised if the govt. officials end up selling the laptops at their market value anyways.
Well, you have a point about versatility. EE is fairly versitile. I was a CE (Computer Engineering) major which I believe is even more versatile. But, if I was in school now I would probably major in CS, but that's more of a personal preferance. The advantage of CS over EE is that CS makes you a lot more qualified for designing virtual environments and other advanced programming jobs. Most EE majors don't even get into graphics programming, compilers, or software engineering theory classes. So, there's a big difference between saying you know C++ and knowing how to design a good piece of software.
Like I said we are in a cyclical downturn in the US, but this is a shorterm trend. I agree with your assessment that there are some people who are out of work. Most of the really good engineers are working though, but some of the people that were programmers during the late nineties are now working at Best Buy. However, the long term (10 - 20 years) trend is that all physical labor and simple jobs are being automated out. For instance, there used to be a person that checked me out at the grocery store. Now, there is a system that I scan items with and it tells me my total. Similarly, there used to be a job called file clerk. This is now largely done with databases today. This trend will continue. All of these sytems require software and support and there will be more and more of it as we go along. This is only going to create IT jobs. In fact, globally the IT hiring trend is not bad at all. The company I work for is hiring like crazy, only it's in the Czech Republic, Russia and India. Not much in the US. I explained in my previous post why this trend will tap out soon. Basically, their wages are rising, while ours are fairly stagnant here in the US. The workers are starting to get complacent in these places where the IT industry is booming and their salaries are going up. Soon we will be on an even playing feild and hiring will startup here too. So, to sum it up...we are in the process of automating all work and will continue to automate. You want to be on the side of the automaters as opposed to the automated. This is why IT will be one of the last jobs that can be automated by computers and why it is the right place to be.
I have to wonder, as a student who can graduate in May 2007 (the deadline for those students to still receive a degree in any of the cut majors) with a Computer Science degree, but wants to stay an extra year, should I transfer to another university, graduate on time, or switch majors?
I would not reccomend changing majors. CS will be one of the most in demand majors this century. The reason I say that is because the internet is coming everywhere in the world and all the users will need software. As we go along this century, virtual reality environments will become common place for everyone. Currently, this trend is manifesting itself as the gaming industry. This industry will continue to grow as technology replaces most other jobs, gaming and software design will be the best jobs. Healthcare of course will also be good, but CS is the way to go if that's your thing. I know theres a lot of concern right now because the Nasdaq has gone down, but it's just short term. These things are always cyclical. Also, the concern with jobs migrating to India....don't worry about that. I've heard that salaries are rising fast and up to $40,000 per year fully loaded can be demanded by engineers in India. On top of this, the turn over rate is much higher and the quality standards are much lower. If you factor in the other costs of doing business in India, like opening offices, phone calls, etc. it's pretty much a wash when compared to many parts of the United States. There will be a big back-lash shortly. That's my prediction.
Or why not let the market deal with it: sooner or later, there will be a demand for this service.
There already is a market for products that do this. Yes, this is a basic question as to the role of govt. Parents can take responsibility for their own kids on this matter and install stuff that will work at least as good as what this person is proposing, but the real solution is to watch your kids. Just move the computer into the living room and monitor their activity as best possible.
Not many. I think it's about 1% of the hits generated by IE users that are back on IE 4.
How many turned off all scripting like they were warned to do after the latest IE scripting exploit?
Again, not many. Last time I looked it was less than 1% of hits that have javascript disabled.
Basically anyone who doesn't have AJAX enabled is either wearing a tin foil hat (security freak) or hasn't updated their browser in ages (like 5 years or so).
You'd be surprised. I had a co-worker who gave a 6 month notice that he would retire. This was two months before the upcoming layoffs which we knew about. He happened to get laid off and got a 4 month package. So, if he stopped working or got laid off, he'd get the same amount of money. His boss laid him off so, it all worked out for him niceley and he didn't have to work after that.
Sure, it is possible in principle to use graceful degradation to serve alternate content to these users, but most designers don't bother designing two versions of their pages and reserve the no script option for a "helpful" link to the download site for an ajax-supporting browser version.
Good post. The real issue is that these news outlets could very easily say in their robots.txt that they don't want Google to look at their site. They don't do that because most people click the link anyways and they would loose many of their visitors if they did. So, basically they have the ability to tell Google not to do this so they can't complain.
Publishers from Europe are complaining that Internet search engines are making money off their copyright-protected material.
There are so many things that these publishers could do to avoid being indexed by Google if they so choose. I guess they haven't heard of using robot.txt to tell Google to leave them alone.
Charge a monthly fee per user (e.g. $20 a month) for all music on the labels. Then, the authors share in the profits based on a the percentage of downloads of their songs that month. I would imagine that the authors of the music would make more money this way, and consumers would get access to all music. The overhead would be extremely low compared to the bricks and mortar model.
You never really know where you will stand with Sun next month, next year, or even tomorrow.
Well, I would say that once they opensource all their software, there's really no turning back. They cannot say, "just kidding". It's all done and out there. The new COO (Johnathan Schwartz) seems to be 100% for open source. I really don't see them turning back now.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, cell phones are increasingly becoming more and more like credit cards. I've noticed this trend. You can buy all kinds of ring tones. In some countries, you can pay bills, etc. Isn't it time we start demanding the same assurances. For instance, if someone steals my credit card, the max I'm liable for is $50. Can't that be the case with cell phones too? I for one am going to read the contract more carefully next time. I'd encourage everyone else to do the same.
So, as a google user am I 5% less cool today?
The article opines: 'It takes a lot of the hard work out of searching the web. The very clever thing about social software is that it puts the burden on to the user, not the provider.'
This led me to believe the author of the article is the one that thinks this is what Yahoo is thinking. Which is why I said if that's what they think, they're missing the point.
It takes a lot of the hard work out of searching the web. The very clever thing about social software is that it puts the burden on to the user, not the provider.
If this is how Yahoo sees it, they're missing the point. Yahoo (and other web-portals) can use Social Networks to learn more about their users. For instance, a certain social circle may all be members of a bowling league, so maybe show bowling ball advertisers to people that have a direct connection with the bowling league circle. The connection I see is more in delivering more appropriate content to users, not saving money on search.
Just have a set of tasks, like configure email client or download and install said software. Then, ask them how hard it was to do this. Give them no more instructions than the very simple sentances I gave earlier and make sure to have a group of people doing the testing that is pretty representative of the public (read not all Ph D. students in CS). You might want to come up with a list of questions that get you the comments you desire for each activity, but that should be a short list and let the testers know that they don't have to answer all questions, but they questions are suggested questions. They could be something like:
....
1.) About how long did this task take you?
2.) How was the experience?
3.) Any room for improvement?
Also, make sure they alternate which system they test first, so maybe the first task, they run it on Gnome first, then second on KDE first.
I suspect that it will take roughly the same amount of time that the CEO & board-of-directors take to decide wether they want to risk their money mass-manufacturing a computer for people five-kilometers below the poverty line.
If they can make it for $80 and sell it for $100, they'll do it. There's nothing evil about that, it's just capitalism.
There's nothing revolutionary about the MIT system. It could have been built fifteen years ago (albeit using less advanced parts).
And it would have cost way more. I bought a IBM 286 about 15 years ago, and it was well into the thousands, we're not even talking laptops here and no internet connection. Oh yeah, we upgraded the RAM to 1 Megabyte too.
But, there's no large profit in it, and the "large" part is just as important as the "profit".
Sure there is a large profit in it. If you can make this thing for $80, and sell it for $100, your going to make a ton of money because they will be able to buy hundreds of millions of them. The big computer manufacturers have all lowered their prices because they realized that they can make more money selling these things at $300, than they can at $1000. The system is setup correctly to motivate suppliers to set prices correctly.
Frankly, I'm surprised they were able to find anyone willing to use their manufacturing capacity to mass produce these. Quanta's CEO is either unusually progressive for a suit ("You know what, I'm willing to take a bit of a cut in profits for this."), or is getting a substantial subsidy per-unit to offset the lower margins.
I'm sure Quanta will potentiall make a killing on this deal, that is if this laptop beats the other manufacturers to market and is substantially functional when compared to the $299 system I linked to. Again, it's about volume, if you sell 1 billion systems and make $10 per system, that's $10 billion dollars.
ink-printed images of today to a digital medium of flashing graphics and text that displays prices, special offers or alluring photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens.
This means that as people check out, the cash register could swipe the RFID tag on the umbrella that was just sold and tell all the other umbrellas to raise their price on this e-paper by $1.00 because it might be raining.
Google obviously can't buy Firefox, so Opera might be the next possible candidate.
Key word is 'might'. I can't believe this was turned into, 'Google is planning to buy Opera'. This guy is just speculating and I don't think it's good speculation either.
Dell is already selling desktops for $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
By the time these things get down to $100, what price will it be to buy from Dell or another manufacturer?
I think you'd be better off waiting for Michael Dell to get you a $100 laptop. The prices of laptops have been dropping fast. These things are not likely to ship anytime soon due to the fact that there's a big difference between designing a $100 laptop and mass producing 100 million of them. If this guy can pull it off great. I will be impressed.
I'd rather have this guy at a college than teaching kindergarten actually, but point taken.
This is quite different that IBM saying no one would want a PC. Intel's point is that no one is going to want this device. I'm not sure he's right, but I don't think anyone is proposing that this device will replace the PC. I'll be honest with you, I'm not going to throw out my Toshiba and get one of these things. It's possible that there will be a market for these things at the low end, but they way they want to distribute them is flawed. They are trying to sell to governments and have them distribute. This really sounds like an experiment in Socialism. Why not just sell them to people who cannot afford a computer? I guess I'm just missing the whole sell to government idea of it. Also, these poorer countries tend to have a lot of corruption, so I wouldn't be surprised if the govt. officials end up selling the laptops at their market value anyways.
Well, you have a point about versatility. EE is fairly versitile. I was a CE (Computer Engineering) major which I believe is even more versatile. But, if I was in school now I would probably major in CS, but that's more of a personal preferance. The advantage of CS over EE is that CS makes you a lot more qualified for designing virtual environments and other advanced programming jobs. Most EE majors don't even get into graphics programming, compilers, or software engineering theory classes. So, there's a big difference between saying you know C++ and knowing how to design a good piece of software.
Like I said we are in a cyclical downturn in the US, but this is a shorterm trend. I agree with your assessment that there are some people who are out of work. Most of the really good engineers are working though, but some of the people that were programmers during the late nineties are now working at Best Buy. However, the long term (10 - 20 years) trend is that all physical labor and simple jobs are being automated out. For instance, there used to be a person that checked me out at the grocery store. Now, there is a system that I scan items with and it tells me my total. Similarly, there used to be a job called file clerk. This is now largely done with databases today. This trend will continue. All of these sytems require software and support and there will be more and more of it as we go along. This is only going to create IT jobs. In fact, globally the IT hiring trend is not bad at all. The company I work for is hiring like crazy, only it's in the Czech Republic, Russia and India. Not much in the US. I explained in my previous post why this trend will tap out soon. Basically, their wages are rising, while ours are fairly stagnant here in the US. The workers are starting to get complacent in these places where the IT industry is booming and their salaries are going up. Soon we will be on an even playing feild and hiring will startup here too. So, to sum it up...we are in the process of automating all work and will continue to automate. You want to be on the side of the automaters as opposed to the automated. This is why IT will be one of the last jobs that can be automated by computers and why it is the right place to be.
I have to wonder, as a student who can graduate in May 2007 (the deadline for those students to still receive a degree in any of the cut majors) with a Computer Science degree, but wants to stay an extra year, should I transfer to another university, graduate on time, or switch majors?
I would not reccomend changing majors. CS will be one of the most in demand majors this century. The reason I say that is because the internet is coming everywhere in the world and all the users will need software. As we go along this century, virtual reality environments will become common place for everyone. Currently, this trend is manifesting itself as the gaming industry. This industry will continue to grow as technology replaces most other jobs, gaming and software design will be the best jobs. Healthcare of course will also be good, but CS is the way to go if that's your thing. I know theres a lot of concern right now because the Nasdaq has gone down, but it's just short term. These things are always cyclical. Also, the concern with jobs migrating to India....don't worry about that. I've heard that salaries are rising fast and up to $40,000 per year fully loaded can be demanded by engineers in India. On top of this, the turn over rate is much higher and the quality standards are much lower. If you factor in the other costs of doing business in India, like opening offices, phone calls, etc. it's pretty much a wash when compared to many parts of the United States. There will be a big back-lash shortly. That's my prediction.
Or why not let the market deal with it: sooner or later, there will be a demand for this service.
There already is a market for products that do this. Yes, this is a basic question as to the role of govt. Parents can take responsibility for their own kids on this matter and install stuff that will work at least as good as what this person is proposing, but the real solution is to watch your kids. Just move the computer into the living room and monitor their activity as best possible.
How many use IE3 or 4 though?
Not many. I think it's about 1% of the hits generated by IE users that are back on IE 4. How many turned off all scripting like they were warned to do after the latest IE scripting exploit?
Again, not many. Last time I looked it was less than 1% of hits that have javascript disabled.
Basically anyone who doesn't have AJAX enabled is either wearing a tin foil hat (security freak) or hasn't updated their browser in ages (like 5 years or so).
You'd be surprised. I had a co-worker who gave a 6 month notice that he would retire. This was two months before the upcoming layoffs which we knew about. He happened to get laid off and got a 4 month package. So, if he stopped working or got laid off, he'd get the same amount of money. His boss laid him off so, it all worked out for him niceley and he didn't have to work after that.
Right on. Every new technology has these issues. The author probably could have writen a similar article about the internet in the early days.
Sure, it is possible in principle to use graceful degradation to serve alternate content to these users, but most designers don't bother designing two versions of their pages and reserve the no script option for a "helpful" link to the download site for an ajax-supporting browser version.
This is the purpose for the Dojo toolkit. The degredation is built-in. http://www.dojotoolkit.org/
Ajax Compatible Browsers: 78%
No way.....85% use IE alone and IE is Ajax compatible. That's not even counting Firefox, Mozilla, and others.
Good post. The real issue is that these news outlets could very easily say in their robots.txt that they don't want Google to look at their site. They don't do that because most people click the link anyways and they would loose many of their visitors if they did. So, basically they have the ability to tell Google not to do this so they can't complain.
Publishers from Europe are complaining that Internet search engines are making money off their copyright-protected material.
There are so many things that these publishers could do to avoid being indexed by Google if they so choose. I guess they haven't heard of using robot.txt to tell Google to leave them alone.
Charge a monthly fee per user (e.g. $20 a month) for all music on the labels. Then, the authors share in the profits based on a the percentage of downloads of their songs that month. I would imagine that the authors of the music would make more money this way, and consumers would get access to all music. The overhead would be extremely low compared to the bricks and mortar model.
You never really know where you will stand with Sun next month, next year, or even tomorrow.
Well, I would say that once they opensource all their software, there's really no turning back. They cannot say, "just kidding". It's all done and out there. The new COO (Johnathan Schwartz) seems to be 100% for open source. I really don't see them turning back now.