This. It helps immensely helped with keeping my sleep cycle consistent. There's also Lux for Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux&hl=en) which was very helpful too
All these words are used to describe Hollywood's Windowing System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distribution). The industry has long established these release windows prior to digital distribution, which has become a new window outside of the traditional theater, physical media, and premium cable windows. It allows the industry to milk each distribution for all its worth and, simultaneously, put expectations in consumers' minds about different ways to consume movies.
With everything going digital these windows are shrinking (and somewhat merging into each other), however both the industry's & consumers' habits are slower to change than technological progress. Witness the kerfuffle with Netflix trying to break apart its digital & DVD offerings.
It sounds like Kurt Sutter has not thought about the economics of his industry. There is more media (tv shows, movies, albums, etc.) than ever before in human history. The tools to create and distribute are cheaper than they have ever been. At the same time, the amount of time people have to consume media has either stayed the same or shrank, if one considers other new forms of media created over the last few decades. The laws of supply & demand dictate than an ever-increasing supply with shrinking (or stagnant) demand leads to cheaper prices.
Google has no effect on these forces at work. It is a value added service that sits on top of the content ocean of the web. Even if it tried to be the right hand arm of US copyright enforcement, it couldn't stop people who have more time than money on hand (a big contributor to piracy demand) or the economics of piracy hubs. Where there is infringing copyright accessible through Google, it has mechanisms (e.g. YouTube Content ID, DMCA takedowns, etc.) in place to take it down. I don't see what else Mr Sutter expects from Google other than to be scapegoat for piracy on the web.
Feedly seems to be the best alternative if you've become accustomed to using Google Reader. It synchronizes itself with Google Reader (or it will until July). It even has some the same keyboard shortcuts. Transitioning is seamless; it uses Google's OAuth to gain access to your Google account and pull in all your feeds & tags.
It looks like the app is a little slow right now as they are dealing with the surge in demand.
I've been hearing for years that Microsoft is moving to a subscription model for all its software products. I'm still not buying that this is the heart of any strategy.
Perhaps I can see a complete subscription model working in the Enterprise segment, but the consumer segment? I don't see it. I don't doubt that MS plans on building out services that they hope to attract subscription revenue. They have XBox Live and it's working pretty well. After that, what else is there? They have Office 365 which is competitive but I'm sure it doesn't make up for the revenue lost on traditional Office licenses. Windows? Forget it. I don't see the average consumer getting on board with a subscription tied to the computer unless the computer is subsidized to a free price point. SkyDrive? That's another crowded market with Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. Azure? Amazon, Google, Rackspace...I don't think there's any web service that MS can offer that would be a "sneak attack."
Nope, MS is a behemoth company. As such, it's doing many different things at the same time just like Google & Apple. It has web services like Google. It has hardware like Apple. And all of them are vying to be the center of everyone's computing ecosystem to the point that the barrier of exiting is nearly insurmountable. It's that simple.
MS wants to be on the Desktop, in the cloud, on your mobile device, in your living room, and on your tablet. The question is if they can pull all their disparate teams together to provide something that excels in what Apple & Google has already done.
OS X has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go.
Long way to go for what, market share?
It's pretty clear what Apple's strategy is: sell devices at premium prices to people who value simplicity, stability and reliability over an abundant one-size-fits-all feature set. All they have to do is make quality products and convince the consumer it's worth their premium price. They've done it with the iPhone/iPad thanks to the lower price points and carrier subsidies. The introduction of the Surface shows that MS fears that Apple has already done it for the desktop/workstation computer.
As nice a product as the Surface looks to be, I think Metro's hybrid desktop/tablet interface (another abundant one-size-fits-all feature set) is just going to confuse many customers and push them toward alternative tablets or desktops depending on their use case.
Steven Levy's In the Plex has a great quote about Google's prospectus and it's aspirational language:
Meanwhile the Securities and Exchange Commission was unimpressed by the charms of Page's "Owner's Manual." "Please revise or delete the statements about providing 'a great service to the world', 'to do things that matter', 'greater positive impact on the world, don't be evil', and 'making the world a better place,'" they wrote. (Google would not revise the letter.)
Everything I've read and heard from the Google founders indicates to me that money, in many ways, is a means to an end of bigger goals. Certainly money is driving factor - Page has referenced Tesla, who died in poverty despite his great contributions to the world, as an example of what he doesn't want to see happen with Google - but there are lot of things Google wouldn't be doing if it was a purely profit motivated enterprise.
I would be much more skeptical of Google once the founder's are no longer at the helm. That's when companies start to mutate in profit creation beasts that have no relation to what its founders originally set out to do (e.g. Disney).
I'm not sure what the OP is referring to about Picasa, but he is definitely on the mark about Chrome. Maybe you haven't noticed IE9's or FF4's UI; both have taken cues from Chrome's original design (tabs on top, pinning tabs, etc). Chrome has also started a browser arms race in terms of performance. The browser is rapidly acquiring market share; at the current rate of growth, it looks like it will overtake FF in the next year or two (http://www.thechromesource.com/tag/chrome-market-share-2011/).
...guess what's going to happen? You're going to be *the target* to hit for spam. That's the way spam works, volume. Email, Altavista, Google...it doesn't matter what the target it is, as long as it nets you the biggest audience. Additionally, every article I see that complains about Google search spam never uses any good examples.
"Anecdotally, my personal search results have also been noticeably worse lately. As part of Christmas shopping for my wife, I searched for 'iPhone 4 case' in Google. I had to give up completely on the first two pages of search results as utterly useless, and searched Amazon instead."
Hmm, I googled iPhone 4 case. 3rd link...shopping results for iPhone 4 cases which has a huge list of different types of cases, places I can get them, local retailer locations, and so on. How is that "utterly useless?"
In a world of pretenious machine-automated videogame trailers, one man must stop the recycled cliches before they stop him. Coming this summer, Pretentious Voiceover II: Revenge of jacobw.
If (and that's a big IF) such a device is invented, I doubt we will have much need for an economy at all. Economies are about dividing scarce resources - this device would ultimately make all resources unlimited. And don't tell me the designs for stuff this replicator can make have monetary value. When all other resources are unlimited, money has no meaning.
Not exactly. Even with such fantastic machines there will still be a need for raw materials, the atoms and molecules that the nanobots will have to use to make products from. The universe is only made of a finite amount of matter (and consequently energy); there will always be some sort of scarcity when it comes to material goods. The only other option is to completely fulfill all human desire to the point where everyone, everywhere has everything they want and need. Given human nature's desire to always want more, I doubt we'll ever see that happen either.
The two schmoes who put the signs up will pay for that as they're charged with everything from littering to having bad haircuts (real charge: making city officials look foolish).
On the plus side they did get a chance to hold one of the funniest press conferences ever. I guess if you're going to be burned at the stake might as well do it in style.
I threw out this figure based on a walk I did to a friends house in 'burbs. It took about an hour as a leisurely walk (and I considered it close when I drove!). According to Google Maps, the distance is 3 miles. Distance from the local USPS office in my town: 5.4 miles. A here and back trek @ 3mi/h ~ 3.6 hours. Ugh, no thanks.
It's not just that sprawl makes pedestrian unfriendly environments. Sprawl, by its nature, consumes more land per person and creates wider distances between people and the places they need to be. Often, these distances are way too great to make walking even an option. Example: When I lived in the 'burbs, in order for me to go to the post office, I had to drive (unless I like walking for hours). Now that I live in downtown, the post office is a couple blocks in walking distance. That is an option I frequently take advantage of.
When they say 3rd, I think what they mean (although they don't say it explicitly) is 3rd in the market of hardcore gaming, the people who live and die by videogames. I think you're right; Nintendo will be 1st or 2nd, because they are shooting for something else, a market that includes everyone, including hardcore gamers. Conventional thinking in the industry has been to pander to hardcore gamers and if they like it a lot, the rest of the market will follow. However this is ignoring a lot of people who are completely put off by a controlling a device that has 2 analog sticks, a d-pad, as well as 10+ other buttons. I was reading in the Economist where Iwata voiced his concerned about this ultimately leading to the demise of the industry, believing that there are existing signs of game industry shrinking in Japan. To use a choic quote from that article...
As it sets out to broaden the gaming population, Nintendo is not fighting against Sony and Microsoft, says Mr Iwata. Its real enemy is the indifference that many people still feel towards gaming. Of course, says Mr Iwata, he would be happy if Nintendo became the leading console-maker again as a result of its new approach. But a victory over Sony and Microsoft in a shrinking market, he says, would not be a victory at all.
It isn't news. First, it's inaccurate; the article talks as if the PS3 and Wii articles are locked away from any editing at all. For some reason journalists still can't get their facts straight when it comes to the two kinds of page protections(protecting and semi-protecting) Wikipedia has. Second, this isn't an event of any significance as it happens all the time; Wikipedia often protects and semi-protects articles that are on controversial topics, topics covered heavily in news media, or topics that draw a huge number edits from random users.
Is it? I don't know, I just picked it as an example because of its small population. I'd still wager only a small fraction of people on the planet know about it.
Well the emtymology of the word "encyclopedia" is close to that(see link) and that is close to the goal of an encyclopedia, but it is impossible to a have some master document/website/whatever that contains every human thought about every subject ever. At best you could say an encyclopedia covers the most important topics to humanity. The format of an encyclopedia is one that it summarizes important information and topics regarding a specific subject into a reasonable article. Example: an encyclopedic article on the English language wouldn't contain the entirety of words, grammar, slang, and usage of the English language, just a summary of it.
You're right. A lot people mistakenly think that the Wikipedia is a huge ball that encompasses every piece of human knowledge, it's not. It's an encyclopedia, albeit one that can covers topics traditionally considered too trivial for print standards. I made that mistake before I got big into editing for the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia covers a lot of information but there is some information that it isn't made for. Want to know where 123 Fake St. is at in your home town? Wikipedia won't help you. Want to know what movies are playing tonight? Wikipedia won't help you. Want to know, in detail, about the life of the president of an obscure African country? Wikipedia will help you, but not as much as it will help you know about every single, obscure, trivial detail of a fictional character's life.
I've never understood this argument. Hollywood isn't some nebulous force that has a pressing agenda. It is an amoral business. Are there people in hollywood who make movies that push various moral perspective? Sure. Are there various morality messages in movies? Yeah. But what has more influence over you? The people close to you (friends, family, community) or a piece of media (game, book, movie)? Unless you're a hermit, it's probably the former. The people around you are much more significant to your morality than some vague force called Hollywood. At best you could can say a Hollywood movie might introduce a concept, idea, perspective, or philosphy that someone might have not thought of before and might influence their moral perspective down the road. Ultimately, a person choose to be and do what they want based on all that they've seen, heard, and thought about.
Internet piracy is huge for one big reason; it's cheap and easy. It has nothing morals at all. Both diametric perspectives (down-with-the-man! and copying-dvds-is-theft!) might treat it as a huge moral issue, but for people this is an afterthought, a justification of their position and actions from what is in their best interest.
We'll support the PS3 but if, or when, the Wii becomes the dominate console don't expect us to keep the FF series exclusive to Sony. We gotta make the bucks(or yen) and supporting one console won't do it this time.
Slashdot Mirror
This. It helps immensely helped with keeping my sleep cycle consistent. There's also Lux for Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux&hl=en) which was very helpful too
All these words are used to describe Hollywood's Windowing System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distribution). The industry has long established these release windows prior to digital distribution, which has become a new window outside of the traditional theater, physical media, and premium cable windows. It allows the industry to milk each distribution for all its worth and, simultaneously, put expectations in consumers' minds about different ways to consume movies.
With everything going digital these windows are shrinking (and somewhat merging into each other), however both the industry's & consumers' habits are slower to change than technological progress. Witness the kerfuffle with Netflix trying to break apart its digital & DVD offerings.
It sounds like Kurt Sutter has not thought about the economics of his industry. There is more media (tv shows, movies, albums, etc.) than ever before in human history. The tools to create and distribute are cheaper than they have ever been. At the same time, the amount of time people have to consume media has either stayed the same or shrank, if one considers other new forms of media created over the last few decades. The laws of supply & demand dictate than an ever-increasing supply with shrinking (or stagnant) demand leads to cheaper prices.
Google has no effect on these forces at work. It is a value added service that sits on top of the content ocean of the web. Even if it tried to be the right hand arm of US copyright enforcement, it couldn't stop people who have more time than money on hand (a big contributor to piracy demand) or the economics of piracy hubs. Where there is infringing copyright accessible through Google, it has mechanisms (e.g. YouTube Content ID, DMCA takedowns, etc.) in place to take it down. I don't see what else Mr Sutter expects from Google other than to be scapegoat for piracy on the web.
Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
Feedly seems to be the best alternative if you've become accustomed to using Google Reader. It synchronizes itself with Google Reader (or it will until July). It even has some the same keyboard shortcuts. Transitioning is seamless; it uses Google's OAuth to gain access to your Google account and pull in all your feeds & tags.
It looks like the app is a little slow right now as they are dealing with the surge in demand.
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/
I've been hearing for years that Microsoft is moving to a subscription model for all its software products. I'm still not buying that this is the heart of any strategy.
Perhaps I can see a complete subscription model working in the Enterprise segment, but the consumer segment? I don't see it. I don't doubt that MS plans on building out services that they hope to attract subscription revenue. They have XBox Live and it's working pretty well. After that, what else is there? They have Office 365 which is competitive but I'm sure it doesn't make up for the revenue lost on traditional Office licenses. Windows? Forget it. I don't see the average consumer getting on board with a subscription tied to the computer unless the computer is subsidized to a free price point. SkyDrive? That's another crowded market with Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. Azure? Amazon, Google, Rackspace...I don't think there's any web service that MS can offer that would be a "sneak attack."
Nope, MS is a behemoth company. As such, it's doing many different things at the same time just like Google & Apple. It has web services like Google. It has hardware like Apple. And all of them are vying to be the center of everyone's computing ecosystem to the point that the barrier of exiting is nearly insurmountable. It's that simple.
MS wants to be on the Desktop, in the cloud, on your mobile device, in your living room, and on your tablet. The question is if they can pull all their disparate teams together to provide something that excels in what Apple & Google has already done.
OS X has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go.
Long way to go for what, market share?
It's pretty clear what Apple's strategy is: sell devices at premium prices to people who value simplicity, stability and reliability over an abundant one-size-fits-all feature set. All they have to do is make quality products and convince the consumer it's worth their premium price. They've done it with the iPhone/iPad thanks to the lower price points and carrier subsidies. The introduction of the Surface shows that MS fears that Apple has already done it for the desktop/workstation computer.
As nice a product as the Surface looks to be, I think Metro's hybrid desktop/tablet interface (another abundant one-size-fits-all feature set) is just going to confuse many customers and push them toward alternative tablets or desktops depending on their use case.
I thought most people know whether or not they have a Facebook account.
Steven Levy's In the Plex has a great quote about Google's prospectus and it's aspirational language:
Everything I've read and heard from the Google founders indicates to me that money, in many ways, is a means to an end of bigger goals. Certainly money is driving factor - Page has referenced Tesla, who died in poverty despite his great contributions to the world, as an example of what he doesn't want to see happen with Google - but there are lot of things Google wouldn't be doing if it was a purely profit motivated enterprise.
I would be much more skeptical of Google once the founder's are no longer at the helm. That's when companies start to mutate in profit creation beasts that have no relation to what its founders originally set out to do (e.g. Disney).
I'm not sure what the OP is referring to about Picasa, but he is definitely on the mark about Chrome. Maybe you haven't noticed IE9's or FF4's UI; both have taken cues from Chrome's original design (tabs on top, pinning tabs, etc). Chrome has also started a browser arms race in terms of performance. The browser is rapidly acquiring market share; at the current rate of growth, it looks like it will overtake FF in the next year or two (http://www.thechromesource.com/tag/chrome-market-share-2011/).
...guess what's going to happen? You're going to be *the target* to hit for spam. That's the way spam works, volume. Email, Altavista, Google...it doesn't matter what the target it is, as long as it nets you the biggest audience. Additionally, every article I see that complains about Google search spam never uses any good examples.
Hmm, I googled iPhone 4 case. 3rd link...shopping results for iPhone 4 cases which has a huge list of different types of cases, places I can get them, local retailer locations, and so on. How is that "utterly useless?"
From the TechCrunch article that reported about streaming search awhile back:
“At any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments. You can learn more on our blog.”
The google blog states that they randomly select which computers get used for testing new features like streaming search.
In a world of pretenious machine-automated videogame trailers, one man must stop the recycled cliches before they stop him. Coming this summer, Pretentious Voiceover II: Revenge of jacobw.
Not exactly. Even with such fantastic machines there will still be a need for raw materials, the atoms and molecules that the nanobots will have to use to make products from. The universe is only made of a finite amount of matter (and consequently energy); there will always be some sort of scarcity when it comes to material goods. The only other option is to completely fulfill all human desire to the point where everyone, everywhere has everything they want and need. Given human nature's desire to always want more, I doubt we'll ever see that happen either.
On the plus side they did get a chance to hold one of the funniest press conferences ever. I guess if you're going to be burned at the stake might as well do it in style.
I threw out this figure based on a walk I did to a friends house in 'burbs. It took about an hour as a leisurely walk (and I considered it close when I drove!). According to Google Maps, the distance is 3 miles. Distance from the local USPS office in my town: 5.4 miles. A here and back trek @ 3mi/h ~ 3.6 hours. Ugh, no thanks.
It's not just that sprawl makes pedestrian unfriendly environments. Sprawl, by its nature, consumes more land per person and creates wider distances between people and the places they need to be. Often, these distances are way too great to make walking even an option. Example: When I lived in the 'burbs, in order for me to go to the post office, I had to drive (unless I like walking for hours). Now that I live in downtown, the post office is a couple blocks in walking distance. That is an option I frequently take advantage of.
It isn't news. First, it's inaccurate; the article talks as if the PS3 and Wii articles are locked away from any editing at all. For some reason journalists still can't get their facts straight when it comes to the two kinds of page protections(protecting and semi-protecting) Wikipedia has. Second, this isn't an event of any significance as it happens all the time; Wikipedia often protects and semi-protects articles that are on controversial topics, topics covered heavily in news media, or topics that draw a huge number edits from random users.
Is it? I don't know, I just picked it as an example because of its small population. I'd still wager only a small fraction of people on the planet know about it.
Well the emtymology of the word "encyclopedia" is close to that(see link) and that is close to the goal of an encyclopedia, but it is impossible to a have some master document/website/whatever that contains every human thought about every subject ever. At best you could say an encyclopedia covers the most important topics to humanity. The format of an encyclopedia is one that it summarizes important information and topics regarding a specific subject into a reasonable article. Example: an encyclopedic article on the English language wouldn't contain the entirety of words, grammar, slang, and usage of the English language, just a summary of it.
You're right. A lot people mistakenly think that the Wikipedia is a huge ball that encompasses every piece of human knowledge, it's not. It's an encyclopedia, albeit one that can covers topics traditionally considered too trivial for print standards. I made that mistake before I got big into editing for the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia covers a lot of information but there is some information that it isn't made for. Want to know where 123 Fake St. is at in your home town? Wikipedia won't help you. Want to know what movies are playing tonight? Wikipedia won't help you. Want to know, in detail, about the life of the president of an obscure African country? Wikipedia will help you, but not as much as it will help you know about every single, obscure, trivial detail of a fictional character's life.
Considering how much those controllers are going to cost, $50, they better replace it at no cost.
I've never understood this argument. Hollywood isn't some nebulous force that has a pressing agenda. It is an amoral business. Are there people in hollywood who make movies that push various moral perspective? Sure. Are there various morality messages in movies? Yeah. But what has more influence over you? The people close to you (friends, family, community) or a piece of media (game, book, movie)? Unless you're a hermit, it's probably the former. The people around you are much more significant to your morality than some vague force called Hollywood. At best you could can say a Hollywood movie might introduce a concept, idea, perspective, or philosphy that someone might have not thought of before and might influence their moral perspective down the road. Ultimately, a person choose to be and do what they want based on all that they've seen, heard, and thought about.
Internet piracy is huge for one big reason; it's cheap and easy. It has nothing morals at all. Both diametric perspectives (down-with-the-man! and copying-dvds-is-theft!) might treat it as a huge moral issue, but for people this is an afterthought, a justification of their position and actions from what is in their best interest.
We'll support the PS3 but if, or when, the Wii becomes the dominate console don't expect us to keep the FF series exclusive to Sony. We gotta make the bucks(or yen) and supporting one console won't do it this time.
Nice try, but wrong.