Music downloads pushed much of the mainstream broadband adoption we saw before 2005. People who waited an hour for a song realized it would take only minutes with broadband and gladly made the switch.
We have an equivalent that is just starting to get noticed by the mainstream...video. More and more people are realizing they can get their tv shows and movies online like happened five or six years ago with music. The networks are responding to this trend much faster than the music industry did and embracing online distribution.
Bandwidth demand will rise significantly as video downloads become common. ISPs will start to advertise based not on web speeds and music downloads, but on how long it takes to get an hour of HDTV content. The changes will start in the areas saturated with cable and DSL providers (yay for competition) and then filter down to the rest of us.
Had a conversation with our admin Friday concerning this. Our content filtering provider blocked port 443 because Google Talk uses the port. Problem is, so does HTTPS. Really smart move on the part of the provider, block all secure websites just to kill GTalk. And it took them nearly the entire day to fix the problem.
That led us to wonder: what happens when a P2P app uses HTTP protocols on port 80 to slip through unnoticed by less observant admins? If you could disguise P2P and chat traffic as normal web traffic, that'd be a nightmare for smaller networks.
If ISPs decided to start blocking ports or charging useage fees on certain ports, I suspect we'd see a mass migration to programs that work to hide inside web and ftp traffic.
It's been my experience that putting two geeks together is a bad idea. They never clean, never cook, and if they manage to reproduce before irradiating one or both during a home "experiment", the resulting ubergeek would have no hope of mating within the species, much less actually reproducing. So for the sake of the geek race, keep fresh genes coming in. Geek inbreeding is a bad thing.
Here in the 'States, postal theft is taken very seriously. The USPS has an army of Postal Inspectors whose sole job it is to catch employees in the act of theft. IIRC, tampering with the mail is a felony here and can quite easily land you prison time.
My father works for the USPS. At his office they had a guy pick up a Playboy magazine off the line, stuff it under his shirt, and walk out on his lunch break. He walked out the back door straight into two Inspectors who recovered the mail, promptly fired him, and held him for the police to pick up. That's the only known case of attempted mail theft.
In a modern post office here there are raised, enclosed walkways that cover the entire processing floor. These walways have one-way windows placed so that there is nowhere on the floor you can hide. The entire system has a separate entrance so that employees can't see inspectors coming or going. Basically any person in any office could be observed at any time, and they never know whether there's even an inspector present. It's a very effective deterrent.
If you buy insurance for something you ship with USPS, it's put in a seperate "cage" for handling, and only certain employees can even touch it. My father once had a $250,000 stock certificate come through; he personally carried it from the front counter to the insured mail area and had the Postmaster watch him place it in the hands of the guy handling certified mail. They take personal responsibility seriously there.
Supposedly an ancestor of mine was murdered for land he and his brother owned. His brother fled to another part of the country to save his own life. That land was promptly condemned and handed over to an oil baron, who drilled on it. The wells have since produced millions (billions?) of dollars in oil and the original company ultimately was consumed by one of the major oil companies.
No one can prove it happened that way, so the family has been trying to bring it to court for generations.
I hear all kind of talk about how these laptops are supposed to help bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries...what about here at home? I work for a rural school district that has about one PC for every ten students, and their specifications are about on par with these $100 laptops. In other words, they're old.
My first thought when I read about this project was that it could finally put a computer in the hands of every American student and make technology accessible in the poorer inner-city and rural districts. It's amazing how many people don't realize just how much of a divide still exists here in the States.
Then no one could ever sell their computers, public libraries would no longer need internet terminals, cybercafes would be nonexistent, and we wouldn't be able to use our work PCs for anything but work. Yep, this is definitely going to catch on and be hugely popular and accepted by the public.
Here's a thought: maybe building that into a computer isn't the brightest idea...
Sure, there's the $.10/word control of the original site...but it's not really a control because it ran ads long before the experiment started, which means it can't really be compared to the dummy sites given Google's vast number of factors used in listing.
When you run a $1/word site and drop it to $.40, you really need two more contols to measure the change: a second $1/word, and another that was kept at $.40. The only way to know for certain what the performance should have been at $.40/word is to have a control at that level.
Conversely, $250 a person is a LOT of money considering the fact that the vast majority of those people would not benefit from IPv6 any time in the near future.
I recently bought a new TV. I could have bought an HDTV monitor (sans receiver) for $400. Instead I bought an analog TV for $150. Why? Because I didn't want to pay $250 for a technology I have no use for now and see no use for within the next five years.
The right way to make this a cheap and painless conversion is to simply have all new devices support IPv6. Eventually enough large companies will adopt it that the price will fall substantially to finish making the switch. I see no reason to hurry into something like this.
I've been saying this for years. I don't have cable or satellite because I don't want to buy 125 channels so that I can watch five of them. Instead, I just *gasp* download the programs I'm interested in and buy them on DVD if they are released and I like them enough to watch twice.
Networks are starting to sell their programming via the web. In a few years we'll probably start to see provider subscriptions drop in favor of season subscriptions for specific shows. If we're lucky, we might get to see the demise of traditional television in twenty years or so...to be replaced with internet streams and direct download subscriptions.
Red Vs. Blue has demonstrated that it's an effective business model, even on a volutnary subscription basis. CAD now has a web-only (so far as I know) animated series coming out in three months. ABC took the lead, releasing Lost and Desperate Housewives for the new iPod. It's only a matter of time now before TV goes the way of the LP...some day we'll see a major show with more paid downloads than network viewers. I can't wait.
MP3 players were around for a long time before the iPod. Granted Apple made it idi...err...user-friendly, but can we PLEASE stop with the pod crap? It's almost as bad as the "i" that's been shoved in front over every word known to man since the debut of the iMac. Couldn't we just once stop being consumer whores long enough to pick a brand-neutral name for something?
I *just* bought a new non-HD television.
Why?
Because a decent 27-inch analog TV costs $150. Out of the box it can recieve broadcast signals and works with all common hardware from satellite and cable companies.
A comparable HDTV monitor costs somewhere around $300. If you want to receive broadcast signals, you have to pay an additional $200 for an HDTV receiver or buy a $600 TV (I still can't figure out where the extra $100 got there, but that's the prices I saw in the stores). If you have cable or satellite, you have to get an HDTV decoder for their signals, and the upgrade can cost money with some providers.
In other words, I saved a MINIMUM of $350 by not buying HDTV. The government can just buy me a decoder when they force the shut down of analog signals in a few years. Screw HDTV, I'll buy it when it's at a reasonable price.
With lryics like this:
Bombastic love
So fantastic
Where I'm completely yours and you are mine
And it's gonna be exactly like in a movie
When we fall in love for the first time
How could we not force people to pay money to read them???
For a second I saw a dinosaur in that, until I discovered the eyes and tried to see the "Not a lemur" thing. (ofcourse Dinosaurs aren't lemurs!)
Good to know I'm not the only one. 'Chop out the eyes and you've got a great "Minidino discovered in _________!!!" headline for the Weekly World News.
Slashdot Mirror
Nyet. In Soviet Russia, you surrender to the French.
That'd be a welcome change.
(I couldn't resist)
I'm of French (Acadian, Cajun) descent. I'm also descended of a freed slave. I joke about both.
This is why instant news is a bad thing. Updated news: 12 coal miners found dead. 1 survivor. Just in case someone hasn't heard.
I really need to learn to use tags in my posts here.
Your haiku skills need practice, grasshoppah. Fixt: iPod connection? I have a Creative Zen, Insensitive clod!
Seriously, folks. I think it's a fair observation. The borg pic does hint at a clear bias against Microsoft.
Of course, I don't recall /. ever making any claims at objectivity.
Music downloads pushed much of the mainstream broadband adoption we saw before 2005. People who waited an hour for a song realized it would take only minutes with broadband and gladly made the switch. We have an equivalent that is just starting to get noticed by the mainstream...video. More and more people are realizing they can get their tv shows and movies online like happened five or six years ago with music. The networks are responding to this trend much faster than the music industry did and embracing online distribution. Bandwidth demand will rise significantly as video downloads become common. ISPs will start to advertise based not on web speeds and music downloads, but on how long it takes to get an hour of HDTV content. The changes will start in the areas saturated with cable and DSL providers (yay for competition) and then filter down to the rest of us.
Hippy Dippy Weatherman paraphrase: "Technology trends will change off and on for a long, long time."
It's called alimony.
The hypothetical US response: "No, you can't have GPS. But we're willing to compromise and allow you to form a powerless UN committee to 'advise' us."
Had a conversation with our admin Friday concerning this. Our content filtering provider blocked port 443 because Google Talk uses the port. Problem is, so does HTTPS. Really smart move on the part of the provider, block all secure websites just to kill GTalk. And it took them nearly the entire day to fix the problem.
That led us to wonder: what happens when a P2P app uses HTTP protocols on port 80 to slip through unnoticed by less observant admins? If you could disguise P2P and chat traffic as normal web traffic, that'd be a nightmare for smaller networks.
If ISPs decided to start blocking ports or charging useage fees on certain ports, I suspect we'd see a mass migration to programs that work to hide inside web and ftp traffic.
It's been my experience that putting two geeks together is a bad idea. They never clean, never cook, and if they manage to reproduce before irradiating one or both during a home "experiment", the resulting ubergeek would have no hope of mating within the species, much less actually reproducing. So for the sake of the geek race, keep fresh genes coming in. Geek inbreeding is a bad thing.
Here in the 'States, postal theft is taken very seriously. The USPS has an army of Postal Inspectors whose sole job it is to catch employees in the act of theft. IIRC, tampering with the mail is a felony here and can quite easily land you prison time.
My father works for the USPS. At his office they had a guy pick up a Playboy magazine off the line, stuff it under his shirt, and walk out on his lunch break. He walked out the back door straight into two Inspectors who recovered the mail, promptly fired him, and held him for the police to pick up. That's the only known case of attempted mail theft.
In a modern post office here there are raised, enclosed walkways that cover the entire processing floor. These walways have one-way windows placed so that there is nowhere on the floor you can hide. The entire system has a separate entrance so that employees can't see inspectors coming or going. Basically any person in any office could be observed at any time, and they never know whether there's even an inspector present. It's a very effective deterrent.
If you buy insurance for something you ship with USPS, it's put in a seperate "cage" for handling, and only certain employees can even touch it. My father once had a $250,000 stock certificate come through; he personally carried it from the front counter to the insured mail area and had the Postmaster watch him place it in the hands of the guy handling certified mail. They take personal responsibility seriously there.
A friend of mine is starting at RIM in January.
Hope he enjoys his RIMjob while it lasts.
Supposedly an ancestor of mine was murdered for land he and his brother owned. His brother fled to another part of the country to save his own life. That land was promptly condemned and handed over to an oil baron, who drilled on it. The wells have since produced millions (billions?) of dollars in oil and the original company ultimately was consumed by one of the major oil companies.
No one can prove it happened that way, so the family has been trying to bring it to court for generations.
I hear all kind of talk about how these laptops are supposed to help bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries...what about here at home? I work for a rural school district that has about one PC for every ten students, and their specifications are about on par with these $100 laptops. In other words, they're old.
My first thought when I read about this project was that it could finally put a computer in the hands of every American student and make technology accessible in the poorer inner-city and rural districts. It's amazing how many people don't realize just how much of a divide still exists here in the States.
Here's a thought: maybe building that into a computer isn't the brightest idea...
A proper control.
Sure, there's the $.10/word control of the original site...but it's not really a control because it ran ads long before the experiment started, which means it can't really be compared to the dummy sites given Google's vast number of factors used in listing.
When you run a $1/word site and drop it to $.40, you really need two more contols to measure the change: a second $1/word, and another that was kept at $.40. The only way to know for certain what the performance should have been at $.40/word is to have a control at that level.
...welcome our new chimpanzee overlords.
...it had to be said.
...and probably already has.
Conversely, $250 a person is a LOT of money considering the fact that the vast majority of those people would not benefit from IPv6 any time in the near future.
I recently bought a new TV. I could have bought an HDTV monitor (sans receiver) for $400. Instead I bought an analog TV for $150. Why? Because I didn't want to pay $250 for a technology I have no use for now and see no use for within the next five years.
The right way to make this a cheap and painless conversion is to simply have all new devices support IPv6. Eventually enough large companies will adopt it that the price will fall substantially to finish making the switch. I see no reason to hurry into something like this.
I've been saying this for years. I don't have cable or satellite because I don't want to buy 125 channels so that I can watch five of them. Instead, I just *gasp* download the programs I'm interested in and buy them on DVD if they are released and I like them enough to watch twice.
Networks are starting to sell their programming via the web. In a few years we'll probably start to see provider subscriptions drop in favor of season subscriptions for specific shows. If we're lucky, we might get to see the demise of traditional television in twenty years or so...to be replaced with internet streams and direct download subscriptions.
Red Vs. Blue has demonstrated that it's an effective business model, even on a volutnary subscription basis. CAD now has a web-only (so far as I know) animated series coming out in three months. ABC took the lead, releasing Lost and Desperate Housewives for the new iPod. It's only a matter of time now before TV goes the way of the LP...some day we'll see a major show with more paid downloads than network viewers. I can't wait.
...suddenly get "Pod" attached to it?
MP3 players were around for a long time before the iPod. Granted Apple made it idi...err...user-friendly, but can we PLEASE stop with the pod crap? It's almost as bad as the "i" that's been shoved in front over every word known to man since the debut of the iMac. Couldn't we just once stop being consumer whores long enough to pick a brand-neutral name for something?
I *just* bought a new non-HD television. Why? Because a decent 27-inch analog TV costs $150. Out of the box it can recieve broadcast signals and works with all common hardware from satellite and cable companies. A comparable HDTV monitor costs somewhere around $300. If you want to receive broadcast signals, you have to pay an additional $200 for an HDTV receiver or buy a $600 TV (I still can't figure out where the extra $100 got there, but that's the prices I saw in the stores). If you have cable or satellite, you have to get an HDTV decoder for their signals, and the upgrade can cost money with some providers. In other words, I saved a MINIMUM of $350 by not buying HDTV. The government can just buy me a decoder when they force the shut down of analog signals in a few years. Screw HDTV, I'll buy it when it's at a reasonable price.
With lryics like this: Bombastic love So fantastic Where I'm completely yours and you are mine And it's gonna be exactly like in a movie When we fall in love for the first time How could we not force people to pay money to read them???
For a second I saw a dinosaur in that, until I discovered the eyes and tried to see the "Not a lemur" thing. (ofcourse Dinosaurs aren't lemurs!) Good to know I'm not the only one. 'Chop out the eyes and you've got a great "Minidino discovered in _________!!!" headline for the Weekly World News.