I can't comment on the other cities but Atlanta horrible public transit for two reasons that have nothing to do with history, race, or evil politicians. While those may be additional factors the two main reasons are that Atlanta grew up after 1960 (post-automobile) and Atlanta has no geographic constraints (mountains, lakes, etc). Those two reaons far outweigh the others and have insured that Atlanta doesn't have the density to make good use of public transit. Now eventually the suburb to in-town commute will become a limiting factor itself and encourage density (this is already happening in some areas) but it's a very, very slow process that will take years to make changes. In the mean time traffic will continue to get worse. There are only two ways to aleviate the problem long term: encourage people who work in the city to live in the city (some urban renewal projects Atlanta are doing a good job with this right now) and encourage people who live outside the city to work outside the city. This is happening too with the huge buildup north of the perimeter, but it's hampered by the freeways that force people to drive south to the perimeter, go west five miles, then drive north again up GA 400. The perpetually blocked northern arc freeway would help greatly here, but that's not going to happen anytime soon if the anti-sprawl folks continue to have their way.
- former Atlanta resident who foolishly moved to the San Francisco area
i mean fairly liquid assets. the own parts of
other companies too, but they could pretty
much drop down 4 billion in a game of poker
if they wanted to.
i am sure of those facts. i've read accounts
by both gil himself and several third parties.
the very first thing he did was talk to apple's
creditors to get the loans rolled back. if that
had not happened then apple would have defaulted
and quite possible have gone out of business.
I think you are being a bit harsh here.
All of these people have been big Apple supporters and recognize the dream of Apple. They've all just gone about perusing them in different ways.
Gil was the best thing that ever happened to Apple. He brought reality back to the company. He killed some popular projects that were hurting the company, got Apple's debt rolled back and refinanced, and then brought in the people necessary to make the company great again. If it wasn't for Gil's 18 months, there would be no Apple. Out of business. Kay-put! Because of him they now have 4 billion in assets instead of debt.
JLG quit a long time ago and for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps he's a bit grumpy now because Next+Apple fulfilled his dream of a next-gen media OS better than Be did. At least he's always been nice about it. You should read the letter he sent to Gil when he found out Next was chosen over Be. Very classy.
Jef Raskin was quite misquoted in the article you are thinking about. His point was about all modern OSs, not just OSX. He wants to see a radical change in the way we think about computer interfaces. Changes that I agree with and hope to see/build one day. OSX with it's full vector based 2d system actually comes closer to his vision than anything else today.
Can't comment on the other two, but they both seem
to be respectable people.
Many brilliant people can disagree about something like the Apple vision and still have their minds on the future. I think they are more than adequate to discuss Apple.
I hate to say it, but it just looks like a fast Newton with a better screen. It still doesn't address the core problems that the Newton had, namely a large pricetag and lack of real uses for consumers. The technology for all of these devices has been around for a while, it's just a matter of getting it cheap and easy enough. ie: when bright LCD panels get cheap and Airport becomes prevalent. Once the price gets to be 200$ then the floodgates will open.
we are almost there, just a few for times around the block and we'll have it.
from the proliferation of standards i can see two trends. first: that they can't agree because each party wants to control the spec. standard operating procedure for large tech companies. second, that no one is exactly sure what features are really going to be needed in the future.
i think the answer is that we simply don't know and that there will always be new features needed. so how do you upgrade consumer devices in the field? it has to be as easy as clicking a button to upgrade and having the change done immediately, transparently, and free. anything less will be unacceptable to consumers and then they simply won't upgrade. imagine if all web pages were still written using HTML 1.1.
about the only good thing i can think of is that it was gone quickly. a friend and i wanted to see it last weekend. knowing that it was a horrible, horrible movie we wished to revel in it's fantastic horribleness, but it was already gone. only three weeks after it's multi-screen premiere it was gone from every screen in every theater in the surrounding 50 mile radius. so is that good or bad? joshy
This may very well be the future.
on
The Leased Life?
·
· Score: 1
I see a couple of trends here:
In the business world: Companies are getting smaller and faster. That means your resources need to be more modular and hot swappable (to put it in programming terms). Everything is transient and recycled: the cars, the copier, the cubes; everything. This leads to lots of leasing and contracting.
In the personal world: Consumer products are increasingly commoditized. anything you buy has three competitors, is consumable, and wouldn't last very long anyway. We no longer have such attachment to personal posessions over the long haul. Nobody cares about a hand crafted table that has been handed down from generation to generation. All products are effectively commodities. This will only get worse when bio and nano-tech finally hit.
Why own something if you will get rid of it in the future anyway. and half of what you would want to own doesn't exist in a physical sense anyway. I recently looked at my finances and realized that the vast majority of my purchases were for empheral consumables: movies, CDs, software. About the only physical thing I buy is food and clothing. (hmm... "movies, music, microcode, and high speed pizza delivery.":)
I'm not going to take a stand for or against this lifestyle, but it's interesting to note that it has some difficulties to be resolved. The average person has many more choices to make. And for any particular choice (say, which bank to use) there are many more alternatives. Add in a constant stream of advertising and distractions and you end up with a country full of nervous breakdowns.
How do you solve it? I'm thinking of a few things. Everyone will need a personal assistant, digital or real. Everyone will have a expert/broker to assist them in a particular area. Imagine having not only legal, medical, and financial consultants, but also ones for planning your meals, purchasing audio equipment, designing your home decorations, and teaching your children. And of course if you have too many assistants then you need another assistant just to manage it all.
It may be a strange vision, but it's certainly a possibility with the way things are going.
oh but of course. i have a high flying TV lifestyle, but i've always dreamed of playing down in the dirt with a bunch of code monkeys. no wait. maybe it was the other way around.:)
i read their review and they really don't explain how it works. yes, i know steroscopic vision is one of the many techniques used to create a 3d effect inside the brain, but how does it work? how do they make sure each eye gets a separate image?
after a little more research i came up with this Philips research paper. (be sure to look at the nice diagrams in the slides).
the gist of it is this: much like 3d postcards, they use a grid of cylindrical lens over the LCD panel. each lens covers a specified number of real LCD pixels, 4 being a common number. since the lens is constructed to have the LCD pixel be at the focal point, when you look at the screen through the lens your eye will be directed towards one of the 4 pixels and not the others. thus the lens has turned 4 real pixels into one 3d pixel. (and dropped your resolution to 1/4th!) if you shift your viewing angle then you will look at a different one. if, like many people, you have two eyeballs which are separated by a few inches, then each eye will see a different image.
another way of thinking about it is to imagine that four zones of images are being projected out from each pixel to your eyes. as long as your eyes are in separate zones then you are okay. this is the case if you are sitting at normal reading distance. but if you get too far away (or have a head the size of a mouse) then your eyes will end up in the same zone and you lose the 3d effect.
philips has also done some innovative work to even out the resolution loss and improve the viewing angle.
- joshy
after reading how it works i now understand why it's so dim. if there is a 4:1 ratio of real pixels to 3d pixels, then each eye is only getting 1/4 the light it used to. guess they are going to have to beef up that backlight. then you can switch back to 2d and have a blinding image reflect of your face, just like in the movies.:)
i realize that some people don't like the way netscape has been handling the mozilla project, but all open source efforts need to build up critical mass and get some legitimacy before lots of people jump on board. now that there is a real preview version that the average person can use i think we will start to work ramp up. and we can let the fun begin. and it also means that people can start coding against the new standards and have a legitimate complaint that MS doesn't implement the new features.
Combining with Atlanta Linux Showcase will pool the resources of the two conferences and make it into something clout of Linux World. I worry, however, that ALS may be getting too big. I was there last year and was amazed at how large it had gotten. Having been at the 0th ALS in 1995 it was quite a shock. It was still fairly cozy though. Everyone seemed pretty loose and a lot of interesting discussions happened. LinuxWorld, on the other hand, was huge and very corporate.
I'm all for the Linux community being expanded and supported by businesses, but I think it's good to have a conference that is just for the geeks and techies. A place where we can discuss what's on our mind and really connect with eachother instead of concentrating on the business aspects. If ALS attracts more geeks from the south east area by merging with Linux Expo (and uses Atlanta's more ample convention space) then I'm all for it. But if ALS is just going to become LinuxWorld, (and therefore be on the road to another Comdex) then I'd rather just call the whole thing off. The geeks still need a place of their own.
It's good to see this kind of stuff finally happening. I realize that many people find cloning and genetic engineering distasteful. I find it a little queasy myself. But I'm sure that I will feel different when I'm 84 and I can buy a heart transplant for a thousand bucks. (which will probably won't even buy a gallon of gas by then:).
Manipulating and replicating genes is just another technology. It can be used for good or (my fav) for evil. Passing legislation to stop or retard it is not the answer. If we don't create this technology someone else will. And then we won't even get the benefits. Eventually, all people will want this technology and I, for one, would like to be in the driver's seat instead of standing by the side of the road trying to hitch a ride.
I do not fear genetic engineering. I fear the lack of it.
21 billion seems a bit much, but i suppose it's imaginary money anyway. i am a little disturbed by the way verisign has been gobbling companies up. presuambly they weant to become the premier trusted agency on the web. you register your domain and your keys with them and they serve as the authority on such matters. there is probably only one agency that could stop them: The United States Post Office.
now think about it for a second. we've all heard about how the Post Office wants to make themselves relevant in the 21st century. why don't they become an offical key authenticator. they are already used to dealing with huge numbers of people and are recognized as a trusted authority with special legal rights. tampering with the mail is a federal offense. becoming a key signer is a much better way to stay relevant than by giving everyone an email address. and their trusted status would lend creedence to the internet way of doing business.
only half of the cost of producing an album, and hence justifing the huge revenue slice the label gets, is the distribution. the other half is actually recording the record. time in a good studio with good engineers can cost as much as 1000$/hr. if you are The Beatles and already famous then you can afford to spend 8 weeks in the studio to cut an album, but if you are joe schmoe band then you may have to save up for a month to get just one hour in the studio.
in order to make producing records profitable in the long run, the labels have to charge quite a lot just to break even. 9 out of 10 bands don't make it big so the label needs to cover their costs with the one hit. once you add in the market and distribution costs, you see why it costs so much. only people with deep pockets can afford to be in this business. it used to be like this in the movie industry as well, but things changed. and the music industry will change as well for the same reasons: the distribution is easier and the production costs are lower.
the distribution changed because specialty theaters opened up to take independent films. also the multiplexs are so huge now that mainstream theaters often devote one or two screens to small films.
the production costs have changed because they have simply gotten cheaper. a movie company used to spend 10s of thousands of dollars just on the film when they made a movie. today cheap filmstock, cheap video equipment, and cheap computer systems have drastically reduced the cost of making a small film. now anyone can do it.
eventually technology will help out the music makers too. the internet promises to cut out the middle man for small musicians and cheap recording and editing equipment (usually in the form of computers) are reducing the cost of producing the actual album. two guys in a bedroom can record something that sounds better than a $100k studio from 30 years ago. (remember, The Beatles started out on cheap 4 track tape because they didn't have any money).
the music industry is changing, but of course the incumbent players don't like it. they never do. but eventually, just like the dinosaurs, they will adapt or die. if i were a record studio, i would rather slim down and become a bird than die and turn to oil for someone else to burn.
actually, i once walked through a disney Imagineering hallway and saw a picture of a water atom that they had blown up. it looked just like Mickey with the large oxygen atom in the middle and the two H's as ears! perhaps disney is going to claim copyright on 2/3 of the world's surface now.
the patent system already has some of these mechanisms. something is not patentable unless is its original and novel. unfortunately the patent office doesn't seem to be too good about enforcing this rule. i would say that priceline's patent on reverse auctions on the web is original but certainly not novel.
and on the last point, you already cannot patent something in nature, and most of mathematics is considered part of nature. makes you wonder where encryption stands. is it an algorithm or mathematics?
while i like having an unlimited account, bit taxes will eventually be necessary. i pay by the unit for electricity, natural gas, water, gasoline and many other products. why not pay for our media and internet with the same scheme. sure, we are all complaining because a 250 GB/ month limit is not a lot when you download code all of the time. but eventually we will all be downloading lots of things much bigger than linux kernels and using many more GB/mo. and when that day comes the price per GB will be very low. lower than the unlimited accounts we have today. internet deployment isn't sustainable without such a metered scheme.
lets take a look at some examples of flat fees:
the phone company: do you realize that a phone bill in the city is subsidising the cost of providing phone service to rural areas. i don't even use a phone very often because most of my communication is in person or through email. and yet i still pay the same amount each month. if i paid by how much i used and how expensive it was for the phone company to provide the service to me (not much since i live in a 4 million person city), then my phone bill would probably be 5 bucks a month instead of the 25/mo i pay now.
the cable company: i pay 35-45 dollars to media one per month for cable. and yet i only watch 5-7 stations. if i could pay by the station i would have fox (for The Simpsons), wb (for buffy), comedy central (for southpark), cartoon network (for dexter's lab) and a few educational channels like the history channel and discovery. and yet i have to pay 40 bucks a month to media one because i have no choice. if i paid by the channel then media one would know exactly what i want to watch and it would be to their advantage to offer stations i really want rather than the most popular or the cheapest stations. (ever wonder why they have so many shopping channels? because they make money off of those instead of paying for them). with metering they might start to offer stations like m2 (mtv with actual music instead of reality shows) or oddessy (with lots of muppet stuff). a metered system would do wonders for my tv viewing, but as it is i can no longer justify paying media one for 50 stations i never watch. i may switch to a dish if they can offer fox, but i'll still have to pay for much more than i watch.
summary: flat fee: gives some people a free ride and others get screwed. this is oppression. metering you pay as you go. you buy as much as you can afford. you save as much as you want. this is freedom.
vote for choice. vote for freedom. vote for metering and competition.
Toffler says that the Third Wave is not communism or traditional capitalism.
Under capitalisim today the means of production are not owned by a small elite. Most companies are owned by stockholders, and most stockholders are large scale investors like mutual funds and retirement accounts. However the people who run the company are the CEOs and upper managment. They are in this odd position where they neither work to create a product, consume the product, or own the company. This has created many problems in modern corporations.
Under communism all of the people own the companies and make a standardized product for everyone to use. This isn't any better than before.
What we need are small companies with self-interest who are owned by the employees. Then all of the companies compete with eachother to make the best product for a diverse set of markets.
one to many is okay many to one is okay many to many is much better.
A friend of mine talked to him about the CDA and Microsoft once. He thought that the CDA would be declared unconstitutional and that MS is part of a larger issue to early to decide on now.
Re:The review wasn't even good the first time.
on
Review:The Third Wave
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· Score: 1
I was not aware that anyone had written a review of this before. When was it? I don't recall seeing one by anyone since I've started reading/. (a little over a year).
I don't reply to articles too often, but this definately needs a response. College is not for all people, that's true, but it certainly is not worthless. For some people it would be a mistake or a waste of time, but for many it is much more valuable than an equivalent time in the workforce. There are three things someone will get out of college that are not rapidly aging skills:
the theory
the process
the people
Theory
I am not a programmer.
I am not a coder.
I am not a sysadmin or a linux geek.
Actually, I am all of those things, but the are side-effects of getting a degree in computer science. (and I mean a real 4 year degree from a real university, not some 2 year piece of crap from Devry).
I am a software engineer, and there's a lot more to that than knowing how to code a web page. I learned theory and methodology that will serve me well for the rest of my life. I know how to write a raytracer, do proofs on automata, and design systems way to complex for a single programmer to complete. No matter how the programming languages change over the years, I'm still going to need that knowlege. I wrote the first raytracer in Java (actually the second, but that's another story). Someone who had just read up on Doom code in their BlackMajik Of 3D Coding book wouldn't be able to do that. What I got out of college wasn't skills. It was meta-knowledge. That I also got a whole lot of applicable skills at the same time is simple a nice side benefit. Because of my degree I'll never be just a coder. I'm a software developer; designing, implementing, and dictating to programmers below me. (sure hope no one from work reads this.:)
The Process
The act of completing a degree, particularly a computer science degree from a good university, is a learning experience in it self. When it comes down to a deadline at work and we have to ship something by the end of the week, I know that people who completed a degree have experience working under pressure. Ship time at a startup company is very similar to the end of quarter pressure of Dead Week and Finals. Someone who can take that stress each quarter for four years (sometimes 5 or 6:) can be depended upon for real world deadlines.
The People
I met my best friends in college. Some of them will be with me for the rest of my life. I plan to start companies with a few of them in the future, long after my years at Tech are but a distant memory. When you start a company you need people who have proven themselves under the same circumstances that you have. It's a rough world out there and you need people you can trust.
BTW. To whoever it was that said that CS majors are a dime a dozen, you're wrong. There are something on the order of 180,000 jobs openings for IT people and only 25,000 IT people graduating each year. And only a portion of those 25k are actual CS majors. Real CS majors are hot items and the pay reflects it (usually 10k more to start, but sometimes a lot more). Plus there are some jobs that require a degree even better than a CS bachelors. I'd like to work at Be (www.be.com, one of/.'s generous advertisers and an extremely cool company) but I can't because I don't have a Masters.
To make a long story short (too late), college is a lot more than just learning to program. It's about becoming a college graduate and (depending on your degree) an engineer.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't comment on the other cities but Atlanta horrible public transit for two reasons that have nothing to do with history, race, or evil politicians. While those may be additional factors the two main reasons are that Atlanta grew up after 1960 (post-automobile) and Atlanta has no geographic constraints (mountains, lakes, etc). Those two reaons far outweigh the others and have insured that Atlanta doesn't have the density to make good use of public transit. Now eventually the suburb to in-town commute will become a limiting factor itself and encourage density (this is already happening in some areas) but it's a very, very slow process that will take years to make changes. In the mean time traffic will continue to get worse. There are only two ways to aleviate the problem long term: encourage people who work in the city to live in the city (some urban renewal projects Atlanta are doing a good job with this right now) and encourage people who live outside the city to work outside the city. This is happening too with the huge buildup north of the perimeter, but it's hampered by the freeways that force people to drive south to the perimeter, go west five miles, then drive north again up GA 400. The perpetually blocked northern arc freeway would help greatly here, but that's not going to happen anytime soon if the anti-sprawl folks continue to have their way.
- former Atlanta resident who foolishly moved to the San Francisco area
i mean fairly liquid assets. the own parts of
other companies too, but they could pretty
much drop down 4 billion in a game of poker
if they wanted to.
i am sure of those facts. i've read accounts
by both gil himself and several third parties.
the very first thing he did was talk to apple's
creditors to get the loans rolled back. if that
had not happened then apple would have defaulted
and quite possible have gone out of business.
I think you are being a bit harsh here.
All of these people have been big Apple supporters and recognize the dream of Apple. They've all just gone about perusing them in different ways.
Gil was the best thing that ever happened to Apple. He brought reality back to the company. He killed some popular projects that were hurting the company, got Apple's debt rolled back and refinanced, and then brought in the people necessary to make the company great again. If it wasn't for Gil's 18 months, there would be no Apple. Out of business. Kay-put! Because of him they now have 4 billion in assets instead of debt.
JLG quit a long time ago and for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps he's a bit grumpy now because Next+Apple fulfilled his dream of a next-gen media OS better than Be did. At least he's always been nice about it. You should read the letter he sent to Gil when he found out Next was chosen over Be. Very classy.
Jef Raskin was quite misquoted in the article you are thinking about. His point was about all modern OSs, not just OSX. He wants to see a radical change in the way we think about computer interfaces. Changes that I agree with and hope to see/build one day. OSX with it's full vector based 2d system actually comes closer to his vision than anything else today.
Can't comment on the other two, but they both seem
to be respectable people.
Many brilliant people can disagree about something like the Apple vision and still have their minds on the future. I think they are more than adequate to discuss Apple.
we are almost there, just a few for times around the block and we'll have it.
joshy
i think the answer is that we simply don't know and that there will always be new features needed. so how do you upgrade consumer devices in the field? it has to be as easy as clicking a button to upgrade and having the change done immediately, transparently, and free. anything less will be unacceptable to consumers and then they simply won't upgrade. imagine if all web pages were still written using HTML 1.1.
joshy
about the only good thing i can think of is that it was gone quickly. a friend and i wanted to see it last weekend. knowing that it was a horrible, horrible movie we wished to revel in it's fantastic horribleness, but it was already gone. only three weeks after it's multi-screen premiere it was gone from every screen in every theater in the surrounding 50 mile radius. so is that good or bad?
joshy
I see a couple of trends here:
In the business world: Companies are getting smaller and faster. That means your resources need to be more modular and hot swappable (to put it in programming terms). Everything is transient and recycled: the cars, the copier, the cubes; everything. This leads to lots of leasing and contracting.
In the personal world: Consumer products are increasingly commoditized. anything you buy has three competitors, is consumable, and wouldn't last very long anyway. We no longer have such attachment to personal posessions over the long haul. Nobody cares about a hand crafted table that has been handed down from generation to generation. All products are effectively commodities. This will only get worse when bio and nano-tech finally hit.
Why own something if you will get rid of it in the future anyway. and half of what you would want to own doesn't exist in a physical sense anyway. I recently looked at my finances and realized that the vast majority of my purchases were for empheral consumables: movies, CDs, software. About the only physical thing I buy is food and clothing. (hmm... "movies, music, microcode, and high speed pizza delivery." :)
I'm not going to take a stand for or against this lifestyle, but it's interesting to note that it has some difficulties to be resolved. The average person has many more choices to make. And for any particular choice (say, which bank to use) there are many more alternatives. Add in a constant stream of advertising and distractions and you end up with a country full of nervous breakdowns.
How do you solve it? I'm thinking of a few things. Everyone will need a personal assistant, digital or real. Everyone will have a expert/broker to assist them in a particular area. Imagine having not only legal, medical, and financial consultants, but also ones for planning your meals, purchasing audio equipment, designing your home decorations, and teaching your children. And of course if you have too many assistants then you need another assistant just to manage it all.
It may be a strange vision, but it's certainly a possibility with the way things are going.
In the future everything will be outsourced.
- joshy
TV lifestyle, but i've always dreamed of playing down in the dirt with a bunch of code monkeys. no wait. maybe it was the other way around.
- joshy
after a little more research i came up with this Philips research paper. (be sure to look at the nice diagrams in the slides).
the gist of it is this: much like 3d postcards, they use a grid of cylindrical lens over the LCD panel. each lens covers a specified number of real LCD pixels, 4 being a common number. since the lens is constructed to have the LCD pixel be at the focal point, when you look at the screen through the lens your eye will be directed towards one of the 4 pixels and not the others. thus the lens has turned 4 real pixels into one 3d pixel. (and dropped your resolution to 1/4th!) if you shift your viewing angle then you will look at a different one. if, like many people, you have two eyeballs which are separated by a few inches, then each eye will see a different image.
another way of thinking about it is to imagine that four zones of images are being projected out from each pixel to your eyes. as long as your eyes are in separate zones then you are okay. this is the case if you are sitting at normal reading distance. but if you get too far away (or have a head the size of a mouse) then your eyes will end up in the same zone and you lose the 3d effect.
philips has also done some innovative work to even out the resolution loss and improve the viewing angle.
- joshy
after reading how it works i now understand why it's so dim. if there is a 4:1 ratio of real pixels to 3d pixels, then each eye is only getting 1/4 the light it used to. guess they are going to have to beef up that backlight. then you can switch back to 2d and have a blinding image reflect of your face, just like in the movies. :)
i realize that some people don't like the way netscape has been handling the mozilla project, but all open source efforts need to build up
critical mass and get some legitimacy before lots
of people jump on board. now that there is a
real preview version that the average person can
use i think we will start to work ramp up. and we
can let the fun begin. and it also means that people can start coding against the new standards
and have a legitimate complaint that MS doesn't implement the new features.
I'm all for the Linux community being expanded and supported by businesses, but I think it's good to have a conference that is just for the geeks and techies. A place where we can discuss what's on our mind and really connect with eachother instead of concentrating on the business aspects. If ALS attracts more geeks from the south east area by merging with Linux Expo (and uses Atlanta's more ample convention space) then I'm all for it. But if ALS is just going to become LinuxWorld, (and therefore be on the road to another Comdex) then I'd rather just call the whole thing off. The geeks still need a place of their own.
It's good to see this kind of stuff finally happening. I realize that many people find cloning and genetic engineering distasteful. I find it a little queasy myself. But I'm sure that I will feel different when I'm 84 and I can buy a heart transplant for a thousand bucks. (which will probably won't even buy a gallon of gas by then :).
Manipulating and replicating genes is just another technology. It can be used for good or (my fav) for evil. Passing legislation to stop or retard it is not the answer. If we don't create this technology someone else will. And then we won't even get the benefits. Eventually, all people will want this technology and I, for one, would like to be in the driver's seat instead of standing by the side of the road trying to hitch a ride.
I do not fear genetic engineering. I fear the lack of it.
- joshynow think about it for a second. we've all heard about how the Post Office wants to make themselves relevant in the 21st century. why don't they become an offical key authenticator. they are already used to dealing with huge numbers of people and are recognized as a trusted authority with special legal rights. tampering with the mail is a federal offense. becoming a key signer is a much better way to stay relevant than by giving everyone an email address. and their trusted status would lend creedence to the internet way of doing business.
in order to make producing records profitable in the long run, the labels have to charge quite a lot just to break even. 9 out of 10 bands don't make it big so the label needs to cover their costs with the one hit. once you add in the market and distribution costs, you see why it costs so much. only people with deep pockets can afford to be in this business. it used to be like this in the movie industry as well, but things changed. and the music industry will change as well for the same reasons: the distribution is easier and the production costs are lower.
the distribution changed because specialty theaters opened up to take independent films. also the multiplexs are so huge now that mainstream theaters often devote one or two screens to small films.
the production costs have changed because they have simply gotten cheaper. a movie company used to spend 10s of thousands of dollars just on the film when they made a movie. today cheap filmstock, cheap video equipment, and cheap computer systems have drastically reduced the cost of making a small film. now anyone can do it.
eventually technology will help out the music makers too. the internet promises to cut out the middle man for small musicians and cheap recording and editing equipment (usually in the form of computers) are reducing the cost of producing the actual album. two guys in a bedroom can record something that sounds better than a $100k studio from 30 years ago. (remember, The Beatles started out on cheap 4 track tape because they didn't have any money).
the music industry is changing, but of course the incumbent players don't like it. they never do. but eventually, just like the dinosaurs, they will adapt or die. if i were a record studio, i would rather slim down and become a bird than die and turn to oil for someone else to burn.
joshy
actually, i once walked through a disney Imagineering hallway and saw a picture of a water atom that they had blown up. it looked just like Mickey with the large oxygen atom in the middle and the two H's as ears! perhaps disney is going to claim copyright on 2/3 of the world's surface now.
the patent system already has some of these mechanisms. something is not patentable unless is its original and novel. unfortunately the patent office doesn't seem to be too good about enforcing this rule. i would say that priceline's patent on reverse auctions on the web is original but certainly not novel.
and on the last point, you already cannot patent something in nature, and most of mathematics is considered part of nature. makes you wonder where encryption stands. is it an algorithm or mathematics?
if you don't agree, i'd like to hear why. why is a flat fee better than metered billing?
- joshy
while i like having an unlimited account, bit taxes will eventually be necessary. i pay by the unit for electricity, natural gas, water, gasoline and many other products. why not pay for our media and internet with the same scheme. sure, we are all complaining because a 250 GB/ month limit is not a lot when you download code all of the time. but eventually we will all be downloading lots of things much bigger than linux kernels and using many more GB/mo. and when that day comes the price per GB will be very low. lower than the unlimited accounts we have today. internet deployment isn't sustainable without such a metered scheme.
lets take a look at some examples of flat fees:
the phone company: do you realize that a phone bill in the city is subsidising the cost of providing phone service to rural areas. i don't even use a phone very often because most of my communication is in person or through email. and yet i still pay the same amount each month. if i paid by how much i used and how expensive it was for the phone company to provide the service to me (not much since i live in a 4 million person city), then my phone bill would probably be 5 bucks a month instead of the 25/mo i pay now.
the cable company: i pay 35-45 dollars to media one per month for cable. and yet i only watch 5-7 stations. if i could pay by the station i would have fox (for The Simpsons), wb (for buffy), comedy central (for southpark), cartoon network (for dexter's lab) and a few educational channels like the history channel and discovery. and yet i have to pay 40 bucks a month to media one because i have no choice. if i paid by the channel then media one would know exactly what i want to watch and it would be to their advantage to offer stations i really want rather than the most popular or the cheapest stations. (ever wonder why they have so many shopping channels? because they make money off of those instead of paying for them). with metering they might start to offer stations like m2 (mtv with actual music instead of reality shows) or oddessy (with lots of muppet stuff). a metered system would do wonders for my tv viewing, but as it is i can no longer justify paying media one for 50 stations i never watch. i may switch to a dish if they can offer fox, but i'll still have to pay for much more than i watch.
summary:
flat fee: gives some people a free ride and others get screwed. this is oppression.
metering you pay as you go. you buy as much as you can afford. you save as much as you want. this is freedom.
vote for choice. vote for freedom. vote for metering and competition.
(maybe i went a little over board there. :)
Toffler says that the Third Wave is not communism or traditional capitalism.
Under capitalisim today the means of production are not owned by a small elite. Most companies are owned by stockholders, and most stockholders are large scale investors like mutual funds and retirement accounts. However the people who run the company are the CEOs and upper managment. They are in this odd position where they neither work to create a product, consume the product, or own the company. This has created many problems in modern corporations.
Under communism all of the people own the companies and make a standardized product for everyone to use. This isn't any better than before.
What we need are small companies with self-interest who are owned by the employees. Then all of the companies compete with eachother to make the best product for a diverse set of markets.
one to many is okay
many to one is okay
many to many is much better.
- joshy
A friend of mine talked to him about the CDA and Microsoft once. He thought that the CDA would be declared unconstitutional and that MS is part of a larger issue to early to decide on now.
I was not aware that anyone had written a review of this before. When was it? I don't recall seeing one by anyone since I've started reading /. (a little over a year).
- joshy
Theory
I am not a programmer.
I am not a coder.
I am not a sysadmin or a linux geek.
Actually, I am all of those things, but the are side-effects of getting a degree in computer science. (and I mean a real 4 year degree from a real university, not some 2 year piece of crap from Devry).
I am a software engineer, and there's a lot more to that than knowing how to code a web page. I learned theory and methodology that will serve me well for the rest of my life. I know how to write a raytracer, do proofs on automata, and design systems way to complex for a single programmer to complete. No matter how the programming languages change over the years, I'm still going to need that knowlege. I wrote the first raytracer in Java (actually the second, but that's another story). Someone who had just read up on Doom code in their BlackMajik Of 3D Coding book wouldn't be able to do that. What I got out of college wasn't skills. It was meta-knowledge. That I also got a whole lot of applicable skills at the same time is simple a nice side benefit. Because of my degree I'll never be just a coder. I'm a software developer; designing, implementing, and dictating to programmers below me. (sure hope no one from work reads this.
The Process
The act of completing a degree, particularly a computer science degree from a good university, is a learning experience in it self. When it comes down to a deadline at work and we have to ship something by the end of the week, I know that people who completed a degree have experience working under pressure. Ship time at a startup company is very similar to the end of quarter pressure of Dead Week and Finals. Someone who can take that stress each quarter for four years (sometimes 5 or 6
The People
I met my best friends in college. Some of them will be with me for the rest of my life. I plan to start companies with a few of them in the future, long after my years at Tech are but a distant memory. When you start a company you need people who have proven themselves under the same circumstances that you have. It's a rough world out there and you need people you can trust.
BTW. To whoever it was that said that CS majors are a dime a dozen, you're wrong. There are something on the order of 180,000 jobs openings for IT people and only 25,000 IT people graduating each year. And only a portion of those 25k are actual CS majors. Real CS majors are hot items and the pay reflects it (usually 10k more to start, but sometimes a lot more). Plus there are some jobs that require a degree even better than a CS bachelors. I'd like to work at Be (www.be.com, one of
To make a long story short (too late), college is a lot more than just learning to program. It's about becoming a college graduate and (depending on your degree) an engineer.
- joshy "a helluva engineer"