I don't know if I've ever seen a book review get bashed for being *too* thorough.
"Sorry, Mary. You weren't superficial enough in your review. I was looking for the soundbite version, and I didn't want to use that silly scrolling thing on the side of my browser to skip to the end. You suck!"
If "a real communist state is impossible in this world" then how can you also say communism is not a bad thing if you can find a setting in which it works?
Are we to take your word for it that communism will work if given the proper setting, when all previous attempts to achieve communism failed? By definition, communism does not allow for capitalism to coexist with it. You can have one, but not the other. To call the Internet "the new communism" is to portray the term "communism" as something other than inherently all-encompassing.
Also, the US government (and quite a few others that were threatened by the Soviet Union) didn't slap the term "communist" on the USSR. It was in 1918 that the Bolshevik Party changed its name to Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. So the misnomer started with the would-be communists themselves, who were already trying to con people into believing that their attempt at communism was successful.
I don't think it's that they don't care. I think it's that they don't realize they don't have to go with Microsoft, even when evidence to the contrary is staring them in the face. Here's a classic case in point:
In 2000 my uncle was getting ready to buy a new computer, because his bargain basement Windows box had once again died on him. He had already spent more money on repairs than the initial cost of the machine, and he was sick of it. Knowing that I use Linux, Mac, and Windows boxes, he asked me for a recommendation.
My advice was for him to buy a beige G3 from one of my buddies who was getting ready to upgrade to a G4. All my uncle needed was Office, email, and a web browser. He looked at the machine, played with it for a bit, liked what he saw, and ended up going with a Windows machine. His rationale was that he was concerned that he wouldn't be able to share files with all of the Windows users out there.
The dominance of Windows made him believe that there are two incompatible universes - one that runs Windows, and a much smaller one that runs Macintosh and Linux. Crossing between universes was not permitted.
After that machine died, and the next Windows machine died, he came to me again. He was so tired of having to screw around with viruses, service packs and so on that he said it really didn't matter if he couldn't communicate with "The Windows World".
I gave him my G3 iBook, which I'd already used for two solid years without any problems. He immediately fell in love with it, and was amazed by the lack of compatibility issues. He tells me every time I see him how much easier it is when you can simply use the computer, rather than service the computer then use it.
The amazing thing to me about this story is that it took him four years to break with Microsoft, even after we'd had countless conversations, even though he knew I worked with computers for a living, and even though he truly hated Microsoft.
My uncle is no idiot. To me he is representative of the larger group of computer users who have been told that Microsoft is the only way to go for so long that they simply don't believe there are other, less painful options.
I'm not sure if Jenner & Block is the only firm the RIAA uses, but they are already drawing increasing flak from some people in the ALA (American Library Association) for potential conflicts of interest, as the ALA uses Jenner & Block as well.
One wonders how a big, powerful law firm staffed with smart people could have made such an enormous blunder, if in fact Jenner & Block was the firm doing the work on this.
I'd be interested to find out how many lawyers the RIAA employs and/or keeps on retainer.
Wow, someone is going to get a huge raise for coming up with this extraordinarily imaginative concept. Let me get this straight: They want to take an animated TV series and... ok, I'm still trying to grasp this... they want to take the characters and put them into a video game? Imagine the possibilities!
If this is anything like the Simpsons games, it's going to be friggin' awesome! Anyone who can take a comedy show that pokes fun at family and culture and turn it into a game where the characters run around bashing things is getting my hard-earned dough.
There are problems w/Gladwell's argument
on
Blink
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Richard A. Posner provides a few counterpoints in his review of the book in the New Republic. The gist of Posner's criticism is that the book provides a great deal of anecdotal evidence, but little real analysis. In particular he hones in on what he considers to be mistaken interpretations of causality.
I haven't read the book myself, but Posner's somewhat scathing review doesn't keep me from wanting to read the book. It does, however, make me want to read it with a critical eye.
There's only one rational explanation for this: people are indeed happy to pay money for new versions of media they've already seen. And if we accept that, it seems perfectly logical to assert that they're [i]more[/i] likely to do it if they got the first viewing for free (less total spend for same result), not less.
I agree with you. One of my points was that content companies *think* they need to protect all of their content with an iron grip simply because they don't understand that their old assumptions are no longer valid. My larger point was that this just makes them stupid, not evil.
The ultimate goal of large content providers is to create a world where they take you money each and every time you view their content. NO EXCEPTIONS!
Well, all big content providers are, without exception, evil. So your thesis works perfectly.
But seriously, the goal of the large content providers is to make money. Public companies have to do that. They can't do things out of largesse, because they're not legally structured to operate in that fashion. They are structured to make money for shareholders.
Giving things away for free can be justified as part of a long-term profitmaking strategy (witness Internet Explorer among other examples). But the problem for content developers is that when perfect copies of content can be made, even ONE copy of a song or a movie could become copied again and again until it spreads worldwide. If your company sells content for a living, this is not an abstract question - this is about life or death for your company.
It is life or death because the content providers haven't yet figured out that while copying technology has been perfected in the digital age, that doesn't mean that they can't make money in other ways. The iTunes Music Store is one example of a way in which content providers are slowly learning that other options can be created.
Because of the advances in technology that allow perfect copies to be made, it's easy to say that the big content providers are evil scumbags who want to milk us for every penny. I would argue instead that they are a cartel that has grown fat an happy on an antiquated business model. They have to be prodded into realizing that the times have changed, and that their business model needs to change accordingly.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the law must provide the balance. Numerous cases surrounding P2P and copyright issues have boiled up in recent years, but while P2P decisions from the courts have been somewhat encouraging of late, the copyright problem is only getting worse.
Corporations will act in their self-interest, and it is up to the people to ensure that corporations act for society, not the other way around.
When Google creates its own Linux distro incorporating Google features into the desktop, that's when Microsoft can put up the sign, "Last one out turn off the lights."
I think of it a bit differently. It's not really about the desktop at all. Microsoft was born in the era when the desktop operating system ruled. But Google was born in the Internet Era, and it shows in their strategy. Their goal seems to be to develop a wide array of applications that live on the Internet, thereby obviating the need for a desktop monopoly. If everything is on the Net, who really cares what OS you're using?
Microsoft comes at it from the opposite direction, attempting to extend their desktop operating system to the Internet. But the Achilles Heel of this strategy is backward compatibility. Microsoft has to support its legacy operating systems, and no matter what they do to attempt to take over the Internet, they can't adequately leverage their desktop OS monopoly because they have to first convince people that it's worth the money to upgrade to gain the benefits of the Microsoft Internet.
Google is constantly improving their applications and they don't have to worry about legacy operating system issues. They can simply piggyback off of Internet standards and when they do push into the OS, they're leveraging Microsoft's immense investment in Windows. It doesn't really matter whether Linux, Windows, or the Mac is dominant, as far as Google is concerned. As long as no one is able to box them out by controlling access to the Web, Google is limited only by their ability to deliver great web apps.
Or did I miss that hollywood flick that now made him American
We Americans consider anything before WWII to be Ancient History and therefore not worth learning. The sole exception is the Civil War, which is taught one way in the South and another way everywhere else.
Seriously. Ask any ten Americans when the Revolutionar War ended (1783), who fought in the War of 1812, or what caused WWI, and see how many correct answers you get.
Actually I was curious about what reader reactions would be. I sometimes read stories in Slashdot primarily to read other people's opinions, rather than to absorb the information from the quoted story.
20 years is a long time in the business world, my friend. I'm not saying that HP definitively obtained this patent as a defensive measure, but I do think it's a possibility. Also, the same patent that is a defensive measure today could be an offensive measure tomorrow, and vice-versa.
It may be a defensive patent
on
No Pictures, Thanks
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The best part is, the end of the article mentions that HP doesn't plan on a commercial use for the patent, for exactly that reason.
They may hve figured out how to do this, then decided to patent it specifically to prevent its use in the wild.
At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.
The same thing happened to me. Three of the accounts we manage for clients were easily and seamlessly upgraded at no additional cost. I'm still happy about it, months later.
Lack of management training? You're not alone
on
Geeks in Management?
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· Score: 1
I have no formal (or any other, for that matter) management training.
As someone who went through a rigorous leadership program (army officer training) and then went out into the business world, I can say that most companies don't devote nearly enough energy to training leaders. The primary difference that I've seen between leadership training and management training is that people trained in leadership programs tend to have a better understanding of the importance of the actual human beings doing the work, while many management programs tend to focus on inputs and outputs.
This is a generalization, and I know (from personal experience) that many people who have gone through leadership programs still don't get it, and that many people who have gone through management training programs are very capable leaders.
But I chalk most of that up to individual personalities. Some people have more basic leadership aptitude, while no matter how much training some people receive, they'll always be incompetent in positions of leadership.
Many people have offered excellent advise on how to become a better manager, but I would go a step further and say that you should think of yourself as a leader, not a manager. That may ultimately make it easier to figure out how to function best in your new role.
If I had mod points, I'd definitely give you a +1 insightful. Paragraph three gets to the crux of the biscuit:
So it does not matter that the Constitution does not explicitly say "you have the right to etc., etc." What matters is that Congress shall make no laws restricting speech, which essentially means that we *maintain* our right to freedom of speech in the face of the State.
Unfortunately many Americans seem to have forgotten (or never learned) that the wording of the Constitution was bitterly fought over by the founding fathers specifically because they knew the impact these words would have. They also knew the tendency of government to assume greater and greater powers, and they wanted to ensure that these tendencies could be curbed.
In times of war these restraints on government power are tested most severely, in part because of the desires of government and in part because the citizens tend to forget about the value of their own rights as they pursue the short-term victory.
I've tried several hosts over the last few years, and have stuck with HE. Their help desk is on the ball, responds quickly, and knows their stuff. Their pricing is excellent, and they pretty much let you do what you want to on shared accounts. No wizards or extraneous b.s.. If you know what you're doing, HE doesn't get in your way.
We've got something like ten accounts with them, and have never had any down time or other problems.
No, I don't work for HE or have any affiliation with them. I am glad to spread the word about them because I've had several other accounts with hosting outfits that just didn't grok good service the way HE does.
The fact that the survey was conducted by phone makes me wary of the results.
For one thing, most people have a very hard time talking about the elements of computer interfaces. As someone who works on web interface development for clients, time and time again people will look at a comp, then when discussing the comp from memory will miss vital aspects of the comp or have a difficult time describing which elements of the comp they want altered and why.
This is a case where observed use would provide much better insight into how people interact with paid search ads. It's like the difference between focus group recommendations and usability testing results. Almost always there are differences between what people say they want when you're talking about it on the phone and what they actually want when they're sitting in front of a computer.
Also, I find it annoying that they didn't break the results out by engine. Not all paid advertising is set aside in the same fashion, and my guess is that results would vary by engine. The Pew folks likely have their reasons for keeping the results aggregated, but it also makes the information less valuable, because it doesn't reveal what specific aspects of advertiser identification work and which don't.
Hey, it happens to everyone at least once. I once posted on MacSlash that I was waiting for the new iBook because I wasn't happy with video mirroring and wanted true external monitor support. Turns out the existing iBook already had it. D'oh!
Slashdot Mirror
I think your comment neatly summarizes the Star Trek ethos pretty well.
Or not.
"Sorry, Mary. You weren't superficial enough in your review. I was looking for the soundbite version, and I didn't want to use that silly scrolling thing on the side of my browser to skip to the end. You suck!"
Are we to take your word for it that communism will work if given the proper setting, when all previous attempts to achieve communism failed? By definition, communism does not allow for capitalism to coexist with it. You can have one, but not the other. To call the Internet "the new communism" is to portray the term "communism" as something other than inherently all-encompassing.
Also, the US government (and quite a few others that were threatened by the Soviet Union) didn't slap the term "communist" on the USSR. It was in 1918 that the Bolshevik Party changed its name to Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. So the misnomer started with the would-be communists themselves, who were already trying to con people into believing that their attempt at communism was successful.
In 2000 my uncle was getting ready to buy a new computer, because his bargain basement Windows box had once again died on him. He had already spent more money on repairs than the initial cost of the machine, and he was sick of it. Knowing that I use Linux, Mac, and Windows boxes, he asked me for a recommendation.
My advice was for him to buy a beige G3 from one of my buddies who was getting ready to upgrade to a G4. All my uncle needed was Office, email, and a web browser. He looked at the machine, played with it for a bit, liked what he saw, and ended up going with a Windows machine. His rationale was that he was concerned that he wouldn't be able to share files with all of the Windows users out there.
The dominance of Windows made him believe that there are two incompatible universes - one that runs Windows, and a much smaller one that runs Macintosh and Linux. Crossing between universes was not permitted.
After that machine died, and the next Windows machine died, he came to me again. He was so tired of having to screw around with viruses, service packs and so on that he said it really didn't matter if he couldn't communicate with "The Windows World".
I gave him my G3 iBook, which I'd already used for two solid years without any problems. He immediately fell in love with it, and was amazed by the lack of compatibility issues. He tells me every time I see him how much easier it is when you can simply use the computer, rather than service the computer then use it.
The amazing thing to me about this story is that it took him four years to break with Microsoft, even after we'd had countless conversations, even though he knew I worked with computers for a living, and even though he truly hated Microsoft.
My uncle is no idiot. To me he is representative of the larger group of computer users who have been told that Microsoft is the only way to go for so long that they simply don't believe there are other, less painful options.
One wonders how a big, powerful law firm staffed with smart people could have made such an enormous blunder, if in fact Jenner & Block was the firm doing the work on this.
I'd be interested to find out how many lawyers the RIAA employs and/or keeps on retainer.
If this is anything like the Simpsons games, it's going to be friggin' awesome! Anyone who can take a comedy show that pokes fun at family and culture and turn it into a game where the characters run around bashing things is getting my hard-earned dough.
I haven't read the book myself, but Posner's somewhat scathing review doesn't keep me from wanting to read the book. It does, however, make me want to read it with a critical eye.
I agree with you. One of my points was that content companies *think* they need to protect all of their content with an iron grip simply because they don't understand that their old assumptions are no longer valid. My larger point was that this just makes them stupid, not evil.
Well, all big content providers are, without exception, evil. So your thesis works perfectly.
But seriously, the goal of the large content providers is to make money. Public companies have to do that. They can't do things out of largesse, because they're not legally structured to operate in that fashion. They are structured to make money for shareholders.
Giving things away for free can be justified as part of a long-term profitmaking strategy (witness Internet Explorer among other examples). But the problem for content developers is that when perfect copies of content can be made, even ONE copy of a song or a movie could become copied again and again until it spreads worldwide. If your company sells content for a living, this is not an abstract question - this is about life or death for your company.
It is life or death because the content providers haven't yet figured out that while copying technology has been perfected in the digital age, that doesn't mean that they can't make money in other ways. The iTunes Music Store is one example of a way in which content providers are slowly learning that other options can be created.
Because of the advances in technology that allow perfect copies to be made, it's easy to say that the big content providers are evil scumbags who want to milk us for every penny. I would argue instead that they are a cartel that has grown fat an happy on an antiquated business model. They have to be prodded into realizing that the times have changed, and that their business model needs to change accordingly.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the law must provide the balance. Numerous cases surrounding P2P and copyright issues have boiled up in recent years, but while P2P decisions from the courts have been somewhat encouraging of late, the copyright problem is only getting worse.
Corporations will act in their self-interest, and it is up to the people to ensure that corporations act for society, not the other way around.
I think of it a bit differently. It's not really about the desktop at all. Microsoft was born in the era when the desktop operating system ruled. But Google was born in the Internet Era, and it shows in their strategy. Their goal seems to be to develop a wide array of applications that live on the Internet, thereby obviating the need for a desktop monopoly. If everything is on the Net, who really cares what OS you're using?
Microsoft comes at it from the opposite direction, attempting to extend their desktop operating system to the Internet. But the Achilles Heel of this strategy is backward compatibility. Microsoft has to support its legacy operating systems, and no matter what they do to attempt to take over the Internet, they can't adequately leverage their desktop OS monopoly because they have to first convince people that it's worth the money to upgrade to gain the benefits of the Microsoft Internet.
Google is constantly improving their applications and they don't have to worry about legacy operating system issues. They can simply piggyback off of Internet standards and when they do push into the OS, they're leveraging Microsoft's immense investment in Windows. It doesn't really matter whether Linux, Windows, or the Mac is dominant, as far as Google is concerned. As long as no one is able to box them out by controlling access to the Web, Google is limited only by their ability to deliver great web apps.
I think this site has turned into a bunch of Anonymous Cowards. Go away Anonymous Cowards, I don't want you here. :-P
We Americans consider anything before WWII to be Ancient History and therefore not worth learning. The sole exception is the Civil War, which is taught one way in the South and another way everywhere else.
Seriously. Ask any ten Americans when the Revolutionar War ended (1783), who fought in the War of 1812, or what caused WWI, and see how many correct answers you get.
Actually I was curious about what reader reactions would be. I sometimes read stories in Slashdot primarily to read other people's opinions, rather than to absorb the information from the quoted story.
Rumors have always been fodder for Slashdot. Linux, Microsoft, Sun, Transmeta, Intel, AMD, XM/Sirius, and today it's Apple.
There are a lot of articles that don't really interest me, but that doesn't mean that they don't matter to other readers.
20 years is a long time in the business world, my friend. I'm not saying that HP definitively obtained this patent as a defensive measure, but I do think it's a possibility. Also, the same patent that is a defensive measure today could be an offensive measure tomorrow, and vice-versa.
They may hve figured out how to do this, then decided to patent it specifically to prevent its use in the wild.
The same thing happened to me. Three of the accounts we manage for clients were easily and seamlessly upgraded at no additional cost. I'm still happy about it, months later.
As someone who went through a rigorous leadership program (army officer training) and then went out into the business world, I can say that most companies don't devote nearly enough energy to training leaders. The primary difference that I've seen between leadership training and management training is that people trained in leadership programs tend to have a better understanding of the importance of the actual human beings doing the work, while many management programs tend to focus on inputs and outputs.
This is a generalization, and I know (from personal experience) that many people who have gone through leadership programs still don't get it, and that many people who have gone through management training programs are very capable leaders.
But I chalk most of that up to individual personalities. Some people have more basic leadership aptitude, while no matter how much training some people receive, they'll always be incompetent in positions of leadership.
Many people have offered excellent advise on how to become a better manager, but I would go a step further and say that you should think of yourself as a leader, not a manager. That may ultimately make it easier to figure out how to function best in your new role.
If I had mod points, I'd definitely give you a +1 insightful. Paragraph three gets to the crux of the biscuit:
So it does not matter that the Constitution does not explicitly say "you have the right to etc., etc." What matters is that Congress shall make no laws restricting speech, which essentially means that we *maintain* our right to freedom of speech in the face of the State.
Unfortunately many Americans seem to have forgotten (or never learned) that the wording of the Constitution was bitterly fought over by the founding fathers specifically because they knew the impact these words would have. They also knew the tendency of government to assume greater and greater powers, and they wanted to ensure that these tendencies could be curbed.
In times of war these restraints on government power are tested most severely, in part because of the desires of government and in part because the citizens tend to forget about the value of their own rights as they pursue the short-term victory.
That's the problem, isn't it? Get any five randomly-selected people in a room and ask them this questions and see if everyone agrees:
Does the Constitution guarantee that I have the right to bear arms up to and including automatic weapons whether I'm in a militia or otherwise?
What's obvious to me isn't obvious to you, and vice versa.
We've got something like ten accounts with them, and have never had any down time or other problems.
No, I don't work for HE or have any affiliation with them. I am glad to spread the word about them because I've had several other accounts with hosting outfits that just didn't grok good service the way HE does.
Well, it's me. But since it's a Monday I decided to go soft on you. ;-)
For one thing, most people have a very hard time talking about the elements of computer interfaces. As someone who works on web interface development for clients, time and time again people will look at a comp, then when discussing the comp from memory will miss vital aspects of the comp or have a difficult time describing which elements of the comp they want altered and why.
This is a case where observed use would provide much better insight into how people interact with paid search ads. It's like the difference between focus group recommendations and usability testing results. Almost always there are differences between what people say they want when you're talking about it on the phone and what they actually want when they're sitting in front of a computer.
Also, I find it annoying that they didn't break the results out by engine. Not all paid advertising is set aside in the same fashion, and my guess is that results would vary by engine. The Pew folks likely have their reasons for keeping the results aggregated, but it also makes the information less valuable, because it doesn't reveal what specific aspects of advertiser identification work and which don't.
Hey, it happens to everyone at least once. I once posted on MacSlash that I was waiting for the new iBook because I wasn't happy with video mirroring and wanted true external monitor support. Turns out the existing iBook already had it. D'oh!