"...Is this kind of model sustainable, where voice becomes an outmoded and free technology, and carriers turn entirely into dumb pipes which have no control over what passes over them?"
Pun kind of intended, this is the pipe-dream of every IT savvy person on the planet and an abject nightmare for any service deliverer that fashions themselves as a "content provider".
Do a search for "Carrier IQ.". Apple's been removing it over time since iOS 4, but it was still present in a form under iOS5.
Beyond that, your iPhone also keeps its own internal locational database of where you've been.
Spouses can install apps on Jailbroken iPhones that let them do everything up to and iincluding surreptitiously turning on the mic and recording conversations.
Huge varities of third party apps can interact with your calendars, contacts and internal services.
It's not just Android phones that are vulnerable. They're just the most transparent.
This isn't specifiically about internet advertising, but it is relevant. Last week I paid $20 to see a movie at my local cinema. I also paid another $15 for stale popcorn and watery soda.
I then had to sit through what they had the audacity to call a "pre-show programme" which consisted of (I timed it) 3 previews totalling about 6 minutes together and close to 15 minutes of advertising.
This shit is in my face, wasting my time and adding no value. Based on the prices I'm paying at the box-office it's also not cross-subsidizing my moviegoing experience either... So how am I benefiting?
You can also apply this back to a doomsayer's future where half the web is behind paywalls. Will the ads magically disapear, considering that unlike print magazines the cost of delivery is as logistically close to zero as you can get? Or will I still be paying a premium price to have annoying ads plastered all over my content?
Also, I might be in the minority here but I'm actually less likely to react positively to targetted advertising. I find it offensive and creepy, not "relevant".
This is pure speculation on my part but I'd suspect that any non-compete clause on their contract would remain in effect for at least for a couple of years after they left EA.
Big, bright new things in a couple of years, I'm sure.
You're forgetting that while taking out a camera and snapping a pic of the screen seems like a simple idea, there's two points worth considering that will still make this a reasonably effective tool:
- A not-insignificant number of people simply don't have the attention span or lateral thinking ability to even conceptualise taking out a camera
- There is a larger goal-to-effort ratio here that many people flipping through random Facebook posts just won't overcome.
Foolproof? Not on your life. Reasonably effective? Fairly safe to say it will be.
Wrong! You know why? Bill Gates, Richard Murdoch and Donald Trump on a grand scale eat about the same amout of food as you do. Also, even with food taken out of the equation if their net worth is somewhere in the realm of $3 billion and your net worth is something like 100,000, they're not buying 30,000 times as many taxable goods as you.
This IS A fairly serious crime going on here. But considering how disfunctional the American politican campaign machine is and how much money is shovels out of the economy to drown out the other side's voice, I find that in this particular instance I'm OK with some money being funneled away from "the machine".
By the way, that's not a partisan statement. I'd like to see all sides with equal and far more limited funds. Less effective lobby groups and more time spent on actual policy by candidates. Works everywhere else in the Western world.
As much as Apple is I'm sure now a company that now commercially leverages a lot of the aggregated usage data it collects, at least for now Apple is still first and foremost a hardware company.
Apple most likely (for now) never do something as crass as putting adds on your lockscreen. Apple's entire marketing juggernaut is based around image, and such obvious ads are both "uncool" and also take away a user's sense of ownership over their own device. That's the last thing Apple wants to happen. The "I must have it! I'll make it be mine" psychology that results in regular hardware refreshes is rather more integral to Apple's bottom line at least right now than advertising revenue is.
As somebody who unfortunately missed the Scott Kurtz/Kris Straub-presented "Video Games Unplugged" in Melbourne last April due to being unable to get mid-week off work, I would blissfully welcome a local PAX convention in Melbourne or Sydney.
There's definitely a critical mass of convention-starved gamers here in Australia and probably a fair lot in New Zealand too that would love a chance to experience some of what we only read about in the American cons.
All cynicism aside, I can understand and get behind this initative. This is actually a contemporarily rare example of Google adhering to their old "Don't be evil" mantra.
When their entire business model involves a suite of free services and applications that filter down and commoditize users' viewing habits and usage metrics, information security becomes even more important. As much as I don't really appreciate Google having this information themselves (and obviously sharing with vetted partners I might not agree with), I'd be far more concerned about illicit third-parties gaining this information.
Google are worthy of at least some ackowledgment of them doing the right thing here.
'Most bankers are decent, honorable people,' Dimon says. 'We're wrapped up in all this crap right now. We made a mistake. We're sorry. It doesn't detract from all the good things we've done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis.'
I call bovine effluent. They perpetuate an unsustainable cycle and thusly are part of the problem.
Funnily enough, as an Aussie I actually don't know anyone that likes VB.
As for your main point, it's not so much an unrealistic expectation of responsibility of the company to appease the consumer. What I was trying to get at was that marketing people and the companies that employ them need to be far more cynical and cautionary about social media. Facebook might use real names, but with fake accounts or a lack of face-to-face consequences, people still don't feel the same kind of accountability they do in real life. Subsequently they're going to say harsh, blunt and sometimes downright defamatory things that reflect their real opinion on stuff.
How can marketing people not get that when their whole job is reading people?
'You simply can no longer have two-way conversations with your customers.'"
Idiot bogans aside, the truth of it really is that these companies don't like what the customer on the other end of the conversation is now able to say to them.
Corporate moves to live-chat for support are usually the result of a razor-gang corporate management style focussing on short-term savings benefits.
Closed job numbers will look great on a monthly report, but issue resolution will be sub-par at best while customer satisfaction will be considerably lower. As mentioned above it's not a popular option with support staff either...
I'm not going to pretend to have much of a legal mind, but the whole EULA-manged arbitration process isn't really legally binding isn't it?
If someone wants to start a lawsuit (class action or not), can't they just file papers and well... Sue Valve? Whether or not it becomes a class-action lawsuit would have more to do with the plaintiff's request being approved by a presiding judge wouldn't it?
...Because this isn't at all like the current Doctor Who / Star Trek: Next Generation crossover series where the Borg team up with the Cybermen, is it?
Verizon argues that the rules amount to 'government compulsion to turn over [network owners'] private property for use by others without compensation.'"
They get compensation for use by others. It's called subscription fees.
It's all subjective, but is the 7" form factor really as viable as people thing for tablet use?
I've never found anything smaller than iPad size to meet my needs as a light, portable and *usable* screenless computing device until you get into smartphone territory... Where the game changes. 7" just seems to sit somewhere in the middle. Too big to fit in a pocket or treat like a phone but too small to justify the investment as a usable tablet device.
Is it just me?
Deinitely fine. 1280x800 is a pretty solid compromise for a 7-inch tablet. I've got a 10-inch Acer Iconia with the same resolution and it's fine even at that size.
Slashdot Mirror
"...Is this kind of model sustainable, where voice becomes an outmoded and free technology, and carriers turn entirely into dumb pipes which have no control over what passes over them?"
Pun kind of intended, this is the pipe-dream of every IT savvy person on the planet and an abject nightmare for any service deliverer that fashions themselves as a "content provider".
Do a search for "Carrier IQ.". Apple's been removing it over time since iOS 4, but it was still present in a form under iOS5.
Beyond that, your iPhone also keeps its own internal locational database of where you've been.
Spouses can install apps on Jailbroken iPhones that let them do everything up to and iincluding surreptitiously turning on the mic and recording conversations.
Huge varities of third party apps can interact with your calendars, contacts and internal services.
It's not just Android phones that are vulnerable. They're just the most transparent.
As an Aussie, I say bring on the Woz! Total validation for our fantastic NBN and potentially a great addition to our national IQ.
Then you no longer have real privacy.
Disclaimer: I do indeed have a smartphone. I'm just not kidding myself.
This isn't specifiically about internet advertising, but it is relevant. Last week I paid $20 to see a movie at my local cinema. I also paid another $15 for stale popcorn and watery soda.
I then had to sit through what they had the audacity to call a "pre-show programme" which consisted of (I timed it) 3 previews totalling about 6 minutes together and close to 15 minutes of advertising.
This shit is in my face, wasting my time and adding no value. Based on the prices I'm paying at the box-office it's also not cross-subsidizing my moviegoing experience either... So how am I benefiting?
You can also apply this back to a doomsayer's future where half the web is behind paywalls. Will the ads magically disapear, considering that unlike print magazines the cost of delivery is as logistically close to zero as you can get? Or will I still be paying a premium price to have annoying ads plastered all over my content?
Also, I might be in the minority here but I'm actually less likely to react positively to targetted advertising. I find it offensive and creepy, not "relevant".
This is pure speculation on my part but I'd suspect that any non-compete clause on their contract would remain in effect for at least for a couple of years after they left EA. Big, bright new things in a couple of years, I'm sure.
Foolproof? Not on your life. Reasonably effective? Fairly safe to say it will be.
Wrong! You know why? Bill Gates, Richard Murdoch and Donald Trump on a grand scale eat about the same amout of food as you do. Also, even with food taken out of the equation if their net worth is somewhere in the realm of $3 billion and your net worth is something like 100,000, they're not buying 30,000 times as many taxable goods as you.
This is why income tax is a good thing.
This IS A fairly serious crime going on here. But considering how disfunctional the American politican campaign machine is and how much money is shovels out of the economy to drown out the other side's voice, I find that in this particular instance I'm OK with some money being funneled away from "the machine".
By the way, that's not a partisan statement. I'd like to see all sides with equal and far more limited funds. Less effective lobby groups and more time spent on actual policy by candidates. Works everywhere else in the Western world.
As much as Apple is I'm sure now a company that now commercially leverages a lot of the aggregated usage data it collects, at least for now Apple is still first and foremost a hardware company.
Apple most likely (for now) never do something as crass as putting adds on your lockscreen. Apple's entire marketing juggernaut is based around image, and such obvious ads are both "uncool" and also take away a user's sense of ownership over their own device. That's the last thing Apple wants to happen. The "I must have it! I'll make it be mine" psychology that results in regular hardware refreshes is rather more integral to Apple's bottom line at least right now than advertising revenue is.
As somebody who unfortunately missed the Scott Kurtz/Kris Straub-presented "Video Games Unplugged" in Melbourne last April due to being unable to get mid-week off work, I would blissfully welcome a local PAX convention in Melbourne or Sydney.
There's definitely a critical mass of convention-starved gamers here in Australia and probably a fair lot in New Zealand too that would love a chance to experience some of what we only read about in the American cons.
All cynicism aside, I can understand and get behind this initative. This is actually a contemporarily rare example of Google adhering to their old "Don't be evil" mantra.
When their entire business model involves a suite of free services and applications that filter down and commoditize users' viewing habits and usage metrics, information security becomes even more important. As much as I don't really appreciate Google having this information themselves (and obviously sharing with vetted partners I might not agree with), I'd be far more concerned about illicit third-parties gaining this information.
Google are worthy of at least some ackowledgment of them doing the right thing here.
'Most bankers are decent, honorable people,' Dimon says. 'We're wrapped up in all this crap right now. We made a mistake. We're sorry. It doesn't detract from all the good things we've done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis.'
I call bovine effluent. They perpetuate an unsustainable cycle and thusly are part of the problem.
From a purely self-interest perspective, what these managers are doing by leaving now is actually the smartest decision they could make.
The stock price has probably got further down to go. Depending on their stock options they'd actually stand to lose money by staying don't they?
The worst we'll probably see is mackerel that can outrun fishing trawlers.
Good for them I say.
Funnily enough, as an Aussie I actually don't know anyone that likes VB.
As for your main point, it's not so much an unrealistic expectation of responsibility of the company to appease the consumer. What I was trying to get at was that marketing people and the companies that employ them need to be far more cynical and cautionary about social media. Facebook might use real names, but with fake accounts or a lack of face-to-face consequences, people still don't feel the same kind of accountability they do in real life. Subsequently they're going to say harsh, blunt and sometimes downright defamatory things that reflect their real opinion on stuff.
How can marketing people not get that when their whole job is reading people?
'You simply can no longer have two-way conversations with your customers.'" Idiot bogans aside, the truth of it really is that these companies don't like what the customer on the other end of the conversation is now able to say to them.
Corporate moves to live-chat for support are usually the result of a razor-gang corporate management style focussing on short-term savings benefits.
Closed job numbers will look great on a monthly report, but issue resolution will be sub-par at best while customer satisfaction will be considerably lower. As mentioned above it's not a popular option with support staff either...
I'm not going to pretend to have much of a legal mind, but the whole EULA-manged arbitration process isn't really legally binding isn't it? If someone wants to start a lawsuit (class action or not), can't they just file papers and well... Sue Valve? Whether or not it becomes a class-action lawsuit would have more to do with the plaintiff's request being approved by a presiding judge wouldn't it?
...Because this isn't at all like the current Doctor Who / Star Trek: Next Generation crossover series where the Borg team up with the Cybermen, is it?
At least for once we can say that Goldman Sachs is guilty of negligence instead of thievery.
Verizon argues that the rules amount to 'government compulsion to turn over [network owners'] private property for use by others without compensation.'"
They get compensation for use by others. It's called subscription fees.
...why China won't ratify ACTA.
It's all subjective, but is the 7" form factor really as viable as people thing for tablet use? I've never found anything smaller than iPad size to meet my needs as a light, portable and *usable* screenless computing device until you get into smartphone territory... Where the game changes. 7" just seems to sit somewhere in the middle. Too big to fit in a pocket or treat like a phone but too small to justify the investment as a usable tablet device. Is it just me?
Deinitely fine. 1280x800 is a pretty solid compromise for a 7-inch tablet. I've got a 10-inch Acer Iconia with the same resolution and it's fine even at that size.