MTV = Media != Not always the truth. What can we expect? It's sickening, but I'd actually be interested if they made any valid points in this show.
Well, that's because a TV show about real hackers writing wonderful code would be a 1/2 hour of watching people type.
Not that that would be boring for some of us. However, there would be no way to get a decent amount of advertising (funding) to get it produced, unless you can get PBS to support it
In fact, the only time I see any sort of high tech workers at the office is when they are pointing out all the perks, and office Nerf battles. What they don't show is that the people pictured most likely are not usually playing games, take their stereos to the office because they never go home, and generally get treated like crap by thier employers.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't work for a high tech startup, so I'm just guessing from what I've seen from programmers I've known over the years, and from what I've read about it. Am I close to being right?
One thing that never seems to get mentioned in all the discussions of the future is that we are going to be in an ice age at some point (yes, I'm well aware of the global warming predictions that are mostly inconclusive). The last time this happened was right around the time the Roman Empire fell, and many historians think it was a factor. We're a little more prepared this time, but watch for all energy sources to become strained and cost to increase dramatically. It can make the 70's look like a walk in the park. Sure, there's plenty of options out there for developing new sources of energy, but funding development of them was not ever a priority.
We're also way overdue for a plague. The last major plague was limited to Europe, but with global travel comes global problems. It won't be easy to knock it out, either. I know someone whose wife is getting over an infection that almost killed her. The doctors had to use a massive amount of antibiotics just to get her stabilized. The super-bugs that exist today, that resist all known cures (some even feast on them) are only going to get more prevalent.
This may cause society to fractionalize into finer and finer groups. Paranoia will increase to the point that people will be afraid to have any contact with people they don't know. Travel will decrease, destroying what's left of most of the US economy (no more cars, highways, gasoline). The giant agriculture conglomerates will fall apart, since delivery of food will be more expensive than growing it yourself. People won't have time to develop technology much beyond current levels (and much of the knowledge will be lost due to neglect), since we'll all be trying to survive. People will flee the cities and coastal areas to find good farmland, and to escape the terrible living conditions. Major centralized government may become irrelevant.
At this point, we will be in a full-fledged dark age. Something (religion or the state) will be the only source of information, and much of that will be tainted to keep the source in power. It may not last quite as long as the last one, since, hopefully there will be enough people who have enough sense to archive current technology and develop new ideas in the barn.
Don't think it can't happen. I'm sure the Romans thought they'd be around forever, too. Of maybe I should just cheer up.
Yes, but he had a very clear vision of what the world should be. That, in many ways is much more important than defining specific products. Could you imagine the technical knowledge and capital of, say, IBM under the control of someone who demands the impossible?
A greater concern to Japan seems to be that all the great inovators seem to be dying off. I'm not an expert on Japan, but from what I've been told about their culture is that it does not exactly create free thinkers (which is just what they need right now). Sure, they can perfect devices (witness laptops), but can they do something truly new?
BTW, (feel free to argue this point) the most important product Sony ever introduced was the (professional) portable video recorder. Many of the programs, channels, and producers you see today owe much to that little device!
Betamax tape is bought by the foot. The most common length is 750'. They made an 8XX' length, but it was too thin for more than a few plays without problems.
The case was designed to be the same size as a paperback book. This caused a big problem, because it was very difficult to balence quality and recording time. The engineers produced a near-broadcast quality format (Beta I), but the tape would only hold 1.5 hours. They didn't want to reduce the tape speed (and quality) to fit a movie on one tape. JVC, not having the same restrictions on cassette size as Sony (see my post above), were more than happy to have a 2 hour tape (T-120). However, the quality was never as good as Beta I. Once Sony saw the problem with the length of the tape, they introduced Beta-II and later B-III. The quality of B-II and B-III is much worse than beta-I, but you can fit a movie on one tape.
Actually, you're a little off. Sony did invent Betamax (and Betacam, the professional format), but JVC and Matshuita (sp) invented VHS after Sony told them to pound sand on a colaberative effort (as they did with u-Matic).
As for CD's, Philips invented the compact disk, but didn't have a use for it until Sony presented them with the digital encode/decode process
read all about VHS and Beta in _Fast_Forward_. I especially like the story about when Akio Morita slammed a paperback book on a table demanding the engineers make the tape the same size. Much like the dress shirts that had an oversized pocket to prove their transistor radio was "pocket sized."
4) Some cable providers have stated commitments to add servers/switches if and when neighborhood bandwidth decreases to an unsatisfactory level. If a big player like AOL starts nipping at their market share, they should be even more willing to keep their customers happy.
I can vouch for this. We're experiencing T-1 saturation on our system. If it weren't for a provisioning problem with Bell Atlantic, we would have had a DS-3 line in place last month, just before the problem started. We should be up on it in a week or 2. @home was taking care of this before we knew we had a problem on the local level.
...Now if they could get their tech support right!
Keep in mind that _many_ 900-xxx-xxxx numbers are sold for "less than family" content and are offered by a few enormous companies (that make AOL look like a drop in the bucket). Sure, it is mandated by the.gov that they are a common carrier, but there is no indication from anyone in the Internet business that they are interested in censorship. That could change in the future. Also, keep in mind the nature of the net. It would be very difficult to keep sites blocked in any way other than scanning everything going through a router. If someone would censor your site, just encript it. Set up mirror sites. change your IP daily. Lots of options to keep the censors busy.
was in the "slow" math group in Grade 3 and I believe it had a definite impact on the constant downward spiral my math marks took from Grade 6 (about 80) to Grade 12 (just barely passed at 51) Not to mention math anxiety.
I know the feeling. I didn't figure things out until I was asked not to return to college for my third year. I think part of it was that I was just made to feel stupid by getting lousy grades. I just gave up. And besides, it wasn't like there was anyone holding me back. They seemed to just push me on through, no big deal, since he doesn't seem to cause any trouble.
I wonder if that would have anything to do with any success you or I may have now. I always feel I'm not doing a good enough job!
Ummm, I don't think there's quite that fine of a control in place (yet?). Yes, the fact that a theoritical QOS is possible with both cable and Xdsl does mean the the big mean company can control your speed, the QOS is usually determined at the time the interface box is provisioned, not on the fly (at least, that's the deal with cable).
Now, if someone were to hack a way to make modems provision on the fly and get different QOS scripts on the fly, and make them provision in a few miliseconds, it can be possible.
BTW: I have a cablemodem from AT&T@home and we don't have any upstream cap (yet).
It depends on the modem. Lan City and Com21 proprietary modems are wide open. However the Docsis/Open Cable modems are (at least) bridge devices and can be configured to block ports. The really good docsis modems are routers (cisco) and do NAT. One of the cisco models will even support ppptp. for more info, check out the public access area of http://www.cablemodem.com, Baseline privacy document (.pdf file).
Actually, the phone guys are just as screwed up as the cable guys. They just have the advantage of being around for 100+ years to get everything put into an easy, well defined process that (almost) no one could screw up. We are getting a DS-3 line installed, and the phone people had no clue as to why the alarms were not working. It turns out they didn't have something in the CO turned on. Spent about 3 hours troubleshooting. Also, many of those phone guys are x-cable guys.
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Let's not forget that many people thought that 4K basic was impossible...
MTV = Media != Not always the truth. What can we expect? It's sickening, but I'd actually be interested if they made any valid points in this show.
Well, that's because a TV show about real hackers writing wonderful code would be a 1/2 hour of watching people type.
Not that that would be boring for some of us. However, there would be no way to get a decent amount of advertising (funding) to get it produced, unless you can get PBS to support it
In fact, the only time I see any sort of high tech workers at the office is when they are pointing out all the perks, and office Nerf battles. What they don't show is that the people pictured most likely are not usually playing games, take their stereos to the office because they never go home, and generally get treated like crap by thier employers.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't work for a high tech startup, so I'm just guessing from what I've seen from programmers I've known over the years, and from what I've read about it. Am I close to being right?
Actually, there's some proof that negative population growth can _cause_ famine, since there aren't as many people willing to work the land.
One thing that never seems to get mentioned in all the discussions of the future is that we are going to be in an ice age at some point (yes, I'm well aware of the global warming predictions that are mostly inconclusive). The last time this happened was right around the time the Roman Empire fell, and many historians think it was a factor. We're a little more prepared this time, but watch for all energy sources to become strained and cost to increase dramatically. It can make the 70's look like a walk in the park. Sure, there's plenty of options out there for developing new sources of energy, but funding development of them was not ever a priority.
We're also way overdue for a plague. The last major plague was limited to Europe, but with global travel comes global problems. It won't be easy to knock it out, either. I know someone whose wife is getting over an infection that almost killed her. The doctors had to use a massive amount of antibiotics just to get her stabilized. The super-bugs that exist today, that resist all known cures (some even feast on them) are only going to get more prevalent.
This may cause society to fractionalize into finer and finer groups. Paranoia will increase to the point that people will be afraid to have any contact with people they don't know. Travel will decrease, destroying what's left of most of the US economy (no more cars, highways, gasoline). The giant agriculture conglomerates will fall apart, since delivery of food will be more expensive than growing it yourself. People won't have time to develop technology much beyond current levels (and much of the knowledge will be lost due to neglect), since we'll all be trying to survive. People will flee the cities and coastal areas to find good farmland, and to escape the terrible living conditions. Major centralized government may become irrelevant.
At this point, we will be in a full-fledged dark age. Something (religion or the state) will be the only source of information, and much of that will be tainted to keep the source in power. It may not last quite as long as the last one, since, hopefully there will be enough people who have enough sense to archive current technology and develop new ideas in the barn.
Don't think it can't happen. I'm sure the Romans thought they'd be around forever, too. Of maybe I should just cheer up.
Yes, but he had a very clear vision of what the world should be. That, in many ways is much more important than defining specific products. Could you imagine the technical knowledge and capital of, say, IBM under the control of someone who demands the impossible?
A greater concern to Japan seems to be that all the great inovators seem to be dying off. I'm not an expert on Japan, but from what I've been told about their culture is that it does not exactly create free thinkers (which is just what they need right now). Sure, they can perfect devices (witness laptops), but can they do something truly new?
BTW, (feel free to argue this point) the most important product Sony ever introduced was the (professional) portable video recorder. Many of the programs, channels, and producers you see today owe much to that little device!
Betamax tape is bought by the foot. The most common length is 750'. They made an 8XX' length, but it was too thin for more than a few plays without problems.
The case was designed to be the same size as a paperback book. This caused a big problem, because it was very difficult to balence quality and recording time. The engineers produced a near-broadcast quality format (Beta I), but the tape would only hold 1.5 hours. They didn't want to reduce the tape speed (and quality) to fit a movie on one tape. JVC, not having the same restrictions on cassette size as Sony (see my post above), were more than happy to have a 2 hour tape (T-120). However, the quality was never as good as Beta I. Once Sony saw the problem with the length of the tape, they introduced Beta-II and later B-III. The quality of B-II and B-III is much worse than beta-I, but you can fit a movie on one tape.
Actually, you're a little off. Sony did invent Betamax (and Betacam, the professional format), but JVC and Matshuita (sp) invented VHS after Sony told them to pound sand on a colaberative effort (as they did with u-Matic).
As for CD's, Philips invented the compact disk, but didn't have a use for it until Sony presented them with the digital encode/decode process
read all about VHS and Beta in _Fast_Forward_. I especially like the story about when Akio Morita slammed a paperback book on a table demanding the engineers make the tape the same size. Much like the dress shirts that had an oversized pocket to prove their transistor radio was "pocket sized."
4) Some cable providers have stated commitments to add servers/switches if and when neighborhood bandwidth decreases to an unsatisfactory level. If a big player like AOL starts nipping at their market share, they should be even more willing to keep their customers happy.
I can vouch for this. We're experiencing T-1 saturation on our system. If it weren't for a provisioning problem with Bell Atlantic, we would have had a DS-3 line in place last month, just before the problem started. We should be up on it in a week or 2. @home was taking care of this before we knew we had a problem on the local level.
...Now if they could get their tech support right!
Keep in mind that _many_ 900-xxx-xxxx numbers are sold for "less than family" content and are offered by a few enormous companies (that make AOL look like a drop in the bucket). Sure, it is mandated by the .gov that they are a common carrier, but there is no indication from anyone in the Internet business that they are interested in censorship. That could change in the future. Also, keep in mind the nature of the net. It would be very difficult to keep sites blocked in any way other than scanning everything going through a router. If someone would censor your site, just encript it. Set up mirror sites. change your IP daily. Lots of options to keep the censors busy.
I know the feeling. I didn't figure things out until I was asked not to return to college for my third year. I think part of it was that I was just made to feel stupid by getting lousy grades. I just gave up. And besides, it wasn't like there was anyone holding me back. They seemed to just push me on through, no big deal, since he doesn't seem to cause any trouble.
I wonder if that would have anything to do with any success you or I may have now. I always feel I'm not doing a good enough job!
Actually, most of the "popular" folks are in sales and marketing, making the same as or more than you. Only the ugly or really dumb are at McDonalds.
Ummm, I don't think there's quite that fine of a control in place (yet?). Yes, the fact that a theoritical QOS is possible with both cable and Xdsl does mean the the big mean company can control your speed, the QOS is usually determined at the time the interface box is provisioned, not on the fly (at least, that's the deal with cable).
Now, if someone were to hack a way to make modems provision on the fly and get different QOS scripts on the fly, and make them provision in a few miliseconds, it can be possible.
BTW: I have a cablemodem from AT&T@home and we don't have any upstream cap (yet).It depends on the modem. Lan City and Com21 proprietary modems are wide open. However the Docsis/Open Cable modems are (at least) bridge devices and can be configured to block ports. The really good docsis modems are routers (cisco) and do NAT. One of the cisco models will even support ppptp. for more info, check out the public access area of http://www.cablemodem.com, Baseline privacy document (.pdf file).
Actually, the phone guys are just as screwed up as the cable guys. They just have the advantage of being around for 100+ years to get everything put into an easy, well defined process that (almost) no one could screw up. We are getting a DS-3 line installed, and the phone people had no clue as to why the alarms were not working. It turns out they didn't have something in the CO turned on. Spent about 3 hours troubleshooting. Also, many of those phone guys are x-cable guys.