Well, yeah, that's true, but there are less than 300 million english speakers in the US and there are over a billion world wide, so it expands your audiance significantly. Also, the same thing works for other languages. For Spanish, it's the difference from being a show in Argentina as opposed to a show that all Spanish speakers can watch. Chinese too.
Well, it turns out Newton's theory of gravitation is flawed and that Einstien's theory of general theory of relativity better explained things. So, following your logic that means that because Newton's ideas were flawed they were a waste of time. If Newton's theory wasn't discovered would Einstein be able to come up with his theory of general relativity? Even if a theory is proven to be false, it can still be a useful way of looking at things (e.g. F = ma). Another example would be the model of the atom. Our theory about how atoms work has evolved over the years, just because it turns out that all of our models have been innacurate, that doesn't mean they weren't useful in the evolutionary process of understanding.
Actually I've found that the data found in Wikipedia on contraversial topics is very accurate. There can be slant, but the data is good. This is because many people read the articles and any bad data would be corrected quickly.
How exactly are you receiving the content? Via broadband internet perhaps? nless you're among the lucky miniscule who receive your internet via wireless, the distribution cost of this model is exactly the same as regular cable -- its going over the exact same infrastructure!
Again, Google doesn't pay your broadband bill. You do. I probably should have said, "Google's distribution cost is very low" instead of "the distribution cost is very low".
The only problem with that, is a lot of companies aren't looking for worldwide ads for everything . . . then you end up with stuff like ads in English only, campaigns not always being global, etc.
The underlying assumption is that everyone would see the same ad. This is exactly why the internet is better than tv. The internet can customize the ads to the user. At a minimum, Google could detect that your ip is from Hong Kong and automatically serve up Cantonese content or whatever language you speak, at the maximum it could remember that you had clicked on an ad for a new car three months ago and serve up ads for refinancing your auto loan this time. There's no way to do anything like this in TV which is why I think much of the content on the major networks and even cable will be available for free on the net shortly. If companies aren't looking for world wide ads, I'm sure Google could very easily implement a system that targets ads to US ips or Japanese IPs, etc. To take it one step further, they could probably even target to regional areas. Like only Northern California users, etc.
You can't possibly be serious. Broadband on-demand video cheaper than traditional broadcasting!?
Not in terms of total cost, but remember, you pay a bill each month to your broadband provider for your service. This is a sunk cost and Google doesn't have to consider this in their costs (as long as we have net neutrality). Also, Google has to pay for their bandwidth usage. I'm sure they have this cost in their equations already though, so it has been factored in. If it's profitable for one user, it's profitable for 40 million.
When that day comes, Google's video servers will burn up faster than an un-recalled PowerBook 5300 running Apache that just got slashdotted.
If Google is doing the ad sponsored video, I'm sure they've crunched the numbers. They're not doing something that loses them money. If they can make money with a couple thousand users, they'll make more money if they have millions. All they have to do is scale. So far they've been great at scaling. They're currently building a 20 acre supercomputer with it's own power plant for cooling (I'm too lazy to post the link but the story was slashdotted earlier). I think they can handle the file serving side of it for sure. File serving is not super compute intensive.
It's already seen overseas. Don't ask me how, but when I was in Japan, girls there could name just about every contestant.
Sure it's seen oversees because it was syndicated oversees to many many countries. But the beauty of this is that you don't need to negotiate a separate contract for each country, you don't need to hire lawyers to setup corporations in each country, etc. Google just hosts it. Anyone in the world can see the same video. Yes, American Idol can afford to syndicate globally, but can your average Joe who's uploading his vlog? I don't think so. Now he doesn't have to do all that stuff, it's just available everywhere.
will this be a step closer to us getting free episodes of CSI/Lost etc. If they are going to have adverts why not put on stuff like that?
Yeah, I really think this might mean we get most of our content free. Why? Well, because the distrubution cost is very low. Much lower than the cable companies distrubution costs (i.e. maintaining their networks). Also, imagine if you instantly had your content available accross the world (as opposed to just one country at a time). Shows could instantly be a hit world wide. Also, you have a single partner to deliver this content (Google). In fact, Google makes it so easy to upload anyone can do it. You don't have to be a big shot tv producer. If American Idol had 40 million viewers in the US, how many people around the world would have tuned in if it was easily accessible? Also, I believe Google has the capability to make much more ad revenue off of these shows than traditional tv ads. This is because they allow the allow a more direct marketing approach by giving click-thrus. On tv, it's mostly just image advertising. So, why charge for content when you can make so much with ad revenue. Pay-per-view content will still be around, but it will be highly specialized content that doesn't get a lot of viewers.
Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, it said.
From Wikipedia: The Earth's average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 degrees Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 20th century. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".
An important thing to notice is that the temperature has risen around 1 degree Ferenheit in the last 100 years. They usually don't mention this in most doomsday articles.
Since we're talking about a coffee shop, the customers would have to install the WEP key on their laptop in order to use it as you've described. Since this is a pretty long number, I think it would turn off (or confuse) most users. I setup WEP in my home, because once I've done it, I'm done, but if I had a public access point, I would not enable WEP so that customers could easily connect. Also, enabling WEP wouldn't have stopped this guy because he'd probably just walk in and get the WEP key once as it's posted on the wall. No one would think it's a big deal since it's his first request for the WEP key and they would have never known he'd keep returning.
Or did you just look at the name and decide they're ridiculous?
Well, the name doesn't help, but I did read the statement that is linked to from the post.
Just curious, what part of their platform is ridiculous?
Ok, here's some examples:
Preceding and following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government has had a longstanding antipathy towards protecting the privacy of ordinary Americans when it conflicts with their interests in state control.
Whoa, how'd we get into 9/11? Why side track the issue with this mention of 9/11? In any case, this is silly because they just say before and after 9/11.... Why not say before and after 6/22/03 or 7/20/04? I mean it just seems totaly arbitrary to me.
Similarly, the pharmaceutical firms of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have, through the power of their medicine patents, denied lifesaving medical treatment to the world's poorest people suffering on a horrific scale just to raise their profit margins.
Demonizing the pharmaceutical companies and blaming them for death and suffering is also silly. Lets not forget the scientists they employ are the ones who have brought us cures and vaccines for many diseases like Polio, many forms of cancer, among countless others. Yes, they are for profit businesses, but if they weren't would so many of the brightest doctors and scientists be able to make a living looking for these cures?
I could go on, but basically, I think almost everyone agrees that reform is needed in the patent system. People shouldn't be getting patents for hyperlinks and one click checkouts, etc. Patent trolls should be put out of business unless they actually start making something to sell. But this party is just a total joke. Even if they had a more reasonable name I would say the same thing.
A nanowire is a wire of dimensions of the order of a nanometer (109 meters). They can be made out of Carbon Nanotube, but can also be made of other substances (e.g. Nickel, or Silicon)
The difference is SiGe (Silicon Germanium) vs. Nanowire. The 500 gHz SiGe processor is something that can be made today. In fact it was made by IBM according to the article you linked to. The reason you don't see a commercial version probably has to do with the fact that it's expensive and consumes a lot of power. I would imagine it would be more economical to buy 500 1 gHz chips at $40 a piece (current bulk price for a 1 gZh chip). The nanowire chip has potential to be more economical. If we can learn how to incorporate them into current CMOS processes, they will be very useful because wires are actually one of the biggest components in chips believe it or not. These nanowires are so small (and apparently fast now too) that they'd make chips cheaper/faster/less power intensive.
When the big news is that, in some country, some leader only got 90% of the vote instead of the 97% expected, it may be significant, but you know that country is no democracy.
I prefer Firefox also, but I guess I don't see this the same way as you do. Business is not a democracy. There are other companies that have a 90% market share too and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. This doesn't mean that you aren't free to use a different product. They do exist. If you don't like the current choice of products, you can even make your own to compete with the current alternatives. No one including Microsoft is going to stop you from doing so. Obviously, the reason most people use internet explorer is because it's there when you install Windows and Windows is usually there when you buy your pc. Is this really a problem though? It's not a problem for me. Since I can easily download the browser that I like, no issue. Quite frankly, I think Mozilla/Firefox has the right solution to the problem: make a superior product. Firefox is much better than IE and that's why it's taking away market share. I think it will continue to do so unless Microsoft improves the quality of their product as well.
I don't have a problem with private businesses using cameras to monitor their property as long as the cameras are not government sanctioned stations to monitor the public. I would hope that tapes from those business cameras would at least take a subpoena to be viewed. Where I do have a problem is when an officer seems to justify unwarranted surveillance devoid of probable cause using unmanned drones patrolling my backyard. What happened to my Constitutional rights regarding search and seizure?
Ok, you can take off the tin foil cap. This is no different than if a Police officer was walking down the street. Or in this case, flying in a helicoptor looking for a bad guy. The Police have a right to patrol both the street and airspace. This tool will make it cheaper for the police to do this. If you're in your back yard and a police officer sees you smoking a joint through your fence, he can then search you because he has probable cause. Have your civil rights been violated? No, I don't think so. This is no different. We already have manned police helicoptors flying around. I don't think many people have a problem with the manned helicoptors looking for criminals, etc. This just moves the pilot from the cockpit to a desk monitoring the uav.
in the US, the Internet will be a place for businesses that can pay the carrier cartels. In Europe, the Internet will be a place (more like what we in the US have today) where ideas are exchanged freely.
Don't hold your breath on this one. I think the more likely scenario is that in the US, you will have really fast service for a small fee and in parts of Europe, you'll have a slow connection provided by the government that has problems and is perpetually in great need of an upgrade. The truth is that the cost of providing internet service has dramatically decreased over time and will continue to do so. I've seen articles about the cost of providing wireless internet connections to a city. It's actually cheaper to provide wifi internet accross a city than it is to run a local ad sponsored newspaper. Ad sponsored wifi will be pervasive soon and no one will even consider using a slow goverment connection. Why waste the money?
sorry Al, I think you're talented and love your music, but that's supply and demand, man. If iTunes means a fairer price for all involved, then I'd ask you to take it in stride.
Maybe this will make artists stop making 10 crappy songs to go along with their 2 good songs and instead focus on making 3-5 really good songs that people actually want to download and not worry about those album fillers.
...challenge. I think Carnegie Mellon wants revenge against Stanford for beating them in the 2006 DARPA grand challenge. Maybe 2007 will be Carnegie Mellon's year to win the grand challenge. If this happens, we're only a hop skip and a jump to having these things drive us around (esp on freeways).
Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.
The interesting thing is that probably none of these things would threaten life on earth. It would only threaten human life (that may or may not be important to you:). Ok, I suppose there are disasters that could wipe out all life on earth, but it would have to be something like Mars crashing into earth. Even that might not destoy all life. It's hard to imagine something the size of Mars crashing into Earth. I also suppose that if the temperatures rose to 400 degrees like on Venus that _might_ wipe out all life. I don't think we've found life that can survive at 400+ degrees. As far as genetically engineered viruses, they are lifeforms themselves. A more accurate statement might be: Human life on earth is at the ever.....
The real solution is to let Moon colonies form when they are economically feasible. It's not going to work otherwise. If we do build a space elavator and space travel gets cheaper, the silicon that's found on the Moon will undoubtably become an attractive resource.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah, that's true, but there are less than 300 million english speakers in the US and there are over a billion world wide, so it expands your audiance significantly. Also, the same thing works for other languages. For Spanish, it's the difference from being a show in Argentina as opposed to a show that all Spanish speakers can watch. Chinese too.
Well, it turns out Newton's theory of gravitation is flawed and that Einstien's theory of general theory of relativity better explained things. So, following your logic that means that because Newton's ideas were flawed they were a waste of time. If Newton's theory wasn't discovered would Einstein be able to come up with his theory of general relativity? Even if a theory is proven to be false, it can still be a useful way of looking at things (e.g. F = ma). Another example would be the model of the atom. Our theory about how atoms work has evolved over the years, just because it turns out that all of our models have been innacurate, that doesn't mean they weren't useful in the evolutionary process of understanding.
Ok, fine. Here's one that's sourced from the EPA: http://www.policyalmanac.org/environment/global_wa rming.shtml
Actually I've found that the data found in Wikipedia on contraversial topics is very accurate. There can be slant, but the data is good. This is because many people read the articles and any bad data would be corrected quickly.
How exactly are you receiving the content? Via broadband internet perhaps? nless you're among the lucky miniscule who receive your internet via wireless, the distribution cost of this model is exactly the same as regular cable -- its going over the exact same infrastructure!
Again, Google doesn't pay your broadband bill. You do. I probably should have said, "Google's distribution cost is very low" instead of "the distribution cost is very low".
The only problem with that, is a lot of companies aren't looking for worldwide ads for everything . . . then you end up with stuff like ads in English only, campaigns not always being global, etc.
The underlying assumption is that everyone would see the same ad. This is exactly why the internet is better than tv. The internet can customize the ads to the user. At a minimum, Google could detect that your ip is from Hong Kong and automatically serve up Cantonese content or whatever language you speak, at the maximum it could remember that you had clicked on an ad for a new car three months ago and serve up ads for refinancing your auto loan this time. There's no way to do anything like this in TV which is why I think much of the content on the major networks and even cable will be available for free on the net shortly. If companies aren't looking for world wide ads, I'm sure Google could very easily implement a system that targets ads to US ips or Japanese IPs, etc. To take it one step further, they could probably even target to regional areas. Like only Northern California users, etc.
You can't possibly be serious. Broadband on-demand video cheaper than traditional broadcasting!?
Not in terms of total cost, but remember, you pay a bill each month to your broadband provider for your service. This is a sunk cost and Google doesn't have to consider this in their costs (as long as we have net neutrality). Also, Google has to pay for their bandwidth usage. I'm sure they have this cost in their equations already though, so it has been factored in. If it's profitable for one user, it's profitable for 40 million.
When that day comes, Google's video servers will burn up faster than an un-recalled PowerBook 5300 running Apache that just got slashdotted.
If Google is doing the ad sponsored video, I'm sure they've crunched the numbers. They're not doing something that loses them money. If they can make money with a couple thousand users, they'll make more money if they have millions. All they have to do is scale. So far they've been great at scaling. They're currently building a 20 acre supercomputer with it's own power plant for cooling (I'm too lazy to post the link but the story was slashdotted earlier). I think they can handle the file serving side of it for sure. File serving is not super compute intensive.
It's already seen overseas. Don't ask me how, but when I was in Japan, girls there could name just about every contestant.
Sure it's seen oversees because it was syndicated oversees to many many countries. But the beauty of this is that you don't need to negotiate a separate contract for each country, you don't need to hire lawyers to setup corporations in each country, etc. Google just hosts it. Anyone in the world can see the same video. Yes, American Idol can afford to syndicate globally, but can your average Joe who's uploading his vlog? I don't think so. Now he doesn't have to do all that stuff, it's just available everywhere.
will this be a step closer to us getting free episodes of CSI/Lost etc. If they are going to have adverts why not put on stuff like that?
Yeah, I really think this might mean we get most of our content free. Why? Well, because the distrubution cost is very low. Much lower than the cable companies distrubution costs (i.e. maintaining their networks). Also, imagine if you instantly had your content available accross the world (as opposed to just one country at a time). Shows could instantly be a hit world wide. Also, you have a single partner to deliver this content (Google). In fact, Google makes it so easy to upload anyone can do it. You don't have to be a big shot tv producer. If American Idol had 40 million viewers in the US, how many people around the world would have tuned in if it was easily accessible? Also, I believe Google has the capability to make much more ad revenue off of these shows than traditional tv ads. This is because they allow the allow a more direct marketing approach by giving click-thrus. On tv, it's mostly just image advertising. So, why charge for content when you can make so much with ad revenue. Pay-per-view content will still be around, but it will be highly specialized content that doesn't get a lot of viewers.
RTFA, most programs use only 5% of the processing power according to TFA so 57% is pretty good.
Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, it said.
From Wikipedia: The Earth's average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 degrees Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 20th century. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".
An important thing to notice is that the temperature has risen around 1 degree Ferenheit in the last 100 years. They usually don't mention this in most doomsday articles.
Since we're talking about a coffee shop, the customers would have to install the WEP key on their laptop in order to use it as you've described. Since this is a pretty long number, I think it would turn off (or confuse) most users. I setup WEP in my home, because once I've done it, I'm done, but if I had a public access point, I would not enable WEP so that customers could easily connect. Also, enabling WEP wouldn't have stopped this guy because he'd probably just walk in and get the WEP key once as it's posted on the wall. No one would think it's a big deal since it's his first request for the WEP key and they would have never known he'd keep returning.
Yeah, I saw it after I hit submit. Looks pretty silly, but you get the idea. Should have been 10^-9.
touche
Or did you just look at the name and decide they're ridiculous?
Well, the name doesn't help, but I did read the statement that is linked to from the post.
Just curious, what part of their platform is ridiculous?
Ok, here's some examples:
Preceding and following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government has had a longstanding antipathy towards protecting the privacy of ordinary Americans when it conflicts with their interests in state control.
Whoa, how'd we get into 9/11? Why side track the issue with this mention of 9/11? In any case, this is silly because they just say before and after 9/11.... Why not say before and after 6/22/03 or 7/20/04? I mean it just seems totaly arbitrary to me.
Similarly, the pharmaceutical firms of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have, through the power of their medicine patents, denied lifesaving medical treatment to the world's poorest people suffering on a horrific scale just to raise their profit margins.
Demonizing the pharmaceutical companies and blaming them for death and suffering is also silly. Lets not forget the scientists they employ are the ones who have brought us cures and vaccines for many diseases like Polio, many forms of cancer, among countless others. Yes, they are for profit businesses, but if they weren't would so many of the brightest doctors and scientists be able to make a living looking for these cures?
I could go on, but basically, I think almost everyone agrees that reform is needed in the patent system. People shouldn't be getting patents for hyperlinks and one click checkouts, etc. Patent trolls should be put out of business unless they actually start making something to sell. But this party is just a total joke. Even if they had a more reasonable name I would say the same thing.
Their platform is redicoulas and goes off on odd tangents. This completely discredits the pro patent reform movement.
Yeah, you're right. There are uses for high frequency chips. I should have worded it a little differently.
I am happy (and proud) to say that only 58% of the visitors to my various websites use IE.
Hmmm, since your url is: http://nerds.palmdrive.net/, I'm not surprised you have fewer IE users.
A nanowire is a wire of dimensions of the order of a nanometer (109 meters). They can be made out of Carbon Nanotube, but can also be made of other substances (e.g. Nickel, or Silicon)
The difference is SiGe (Silicon Germanium) vs. Nanowire. The 500 gHz SiGe processor is something that can be made today. In fact it was made by IBM according to the article you linked to. The reason you don't see a commercial version probably has to do with the fact that it's expensive and consumes a lot of power. I would imagine it would be more economical to buy 500 1 gHz chips at $40 a piece (current bulk price for a 1 gZh chip). The nanowire chip has potential to be more economical. If we can learn how to incorporate them into current CMOS processes, they will be very useful because wires are actually one of the biggest components in chips believe it or not. These nanowires are so small (and apparently fast now too) that they'd make chips cheaper/faster/less power intensive.
When the big news is that, in some country, some leader only got 90% of the vote instead of the 97% expected, it may be significant, but you know that country is no democracy.
I prefer Firefox also, but I guess I don't see this the same way as you do. Business is not a democracy. There are other companies that have a 90% market share too and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. This doesn't mean that you aren't free to use a different product. They do exist. If you don't like the current choice of products, you can even make your own to compete with the current alternatives. No one including Microsoft is going to stop you from doing so. Obviously, the reason most people use internet explorer is because it's there when you install Windows and Windows is usually there when you buy your pc. Is this really a problem though? It's not a problem for me. Since I can easily download the browser that I like, no issue. Quite frankly, I think Mozilla/Firefox has the right solution to the problem: make a superior product. Firefox is much better than IE and that's why it's taking away market share. I think it will continue to do so unless Microsoft improves the quality of their product as well.
I don't have a problem with private businesses using cameras to monitor their property as long as the cameras are not government sanctioned stations to monitor the public. I would hope that tapes from those business cameras would at least take a subpoena to be viewed. Where I do have a problem is when an officer seems to justify unwarranted surveillance devoid of probable cause using unmanned drones patrolling my backyard. What happened to my Constitutional rights regarding search and seizure?
Ok, you can take off the tin foil cap. This is no different than if a Police officer was walking down the street. Or in this case, flying in a helicoptor looking for a bad guy. The Police have a right to patrol both the street and airspace. This tool will make it cheaper for the police to do this. If you're in your back yard and a police officer sees you smoking a joint through your fence, he can then search you because he has probable cause. Have your civil rights been violated? No, I don't think so. This is no different. We already have manned police helicoptors flying around. I don't think many people have a problem with the manned helicoptors looking for criminals, etc. This just moves the pilot from the cockpit to a desk monitoring the uav.
Microsoft's axis of evil: OpenBSD, Linux, Mac OSx.
in the US, the Internet will be a place for businesses that can pay the carrier cartels. In Europe, the Internet will be a place (more like what we in the US have today) where ideas are exchanged freely.
Don't hold your breath on this one. I think the more likely scenario is that in the US, you will have really fast service for a small fee and in parts of Europe, you'll have a slow connection provided by the government that has problems and is perpetually in great need of an upgrade. The truth is that the cost of providing internet service has dramatically decreased over time and will continue to do so. I've seen articles about the cost of providing wireless internet connections to a city. It's actually cheaper to provide wifi internet accross a city than it is to run a local ad sponsored newspaper. Ad sponsored wifi will be pervasive soon and no one will even consider using a slow goverment connection. Why waste the money?
sorry Al, I think you're talented and love your music, but that's supply and demand, man. If iTunes means a fairer price for all involved, then I'd ask you to take it in stride.
Maybe this will make artists stop making 10 crappy songs to go along with their 2 good songs and instead focus on making 3-5 really good songs that people actually want to download and not worry about those album fillers.
...challenge. I think Carnegie Mellon wants revenge against Stanford for beating them in the 2006 DARPA grand challenge. Maybe 2007 will be Carnegie Mellon's year to win the grand challenge. If this happens, we're only a hop skip and a jump to having these things drive us around (esp on freeways).
Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.
:). Ok, I suppose there are disasters that could wipe out all life on earth, but it would have to be something like Mars crashing into earth. Even that might not destoy all life. It's hard to imagine something the size of Mars crashing into Earth. I also suppose that if the temperatures rose to 400 degrees like on Venus that _might_ wipe out all life. I don't think we've found life that can survive at 400+ degrees. As far as genetically engineered viruses, they are lifeforms themselves. A more accurate statement might be: Human life on earth is at the ever.....
The interesting thing is that probably none of these things would threaten life on earth. It would only threaten human life (that may or may not be important to you
The real solution is to let Moon colonies form when they are economically feasible. It's not going to work otherwise. If we do build a space elavator and space travel gets cheaper, the silicon that's found on the Moon will undoubtably become an attractive resource.