From owen at permafrost.net Mon Feb 1 10:50:38 2010 From: owen at permafrost.net (owen at permafrost.net) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 18:50:38 +0000 Subject: [FoRK] iPad as personal TV In-Reply-To: <20100130042041.GA21426@permafrost.net> References: <4B62F230.1000704@cs.ucsc.edu> <20100130042041.GA21426@permafrost.net> Message-ID: <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 04:20:41AM +0000, owen at permafrost.net wrote: > On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 03:35:28PM +0100, Jim Whitehead wrote: > > It seems to me the iPad's capabilities and form factor make it much more > > of a personal TV than a reading device. > > > > Screens on existing PMPs make them a device that complements existing TV > > sets (no one would think of chucking their TV for an iPod touch -- just > > too small). With the larger screen of the iPad, I can imagine > > *eliminating* the TV set, and just getting a bunch of iPads for the > > family. When everyone has their own personal TV: > > > > * the kids can watch shows and movies and the house can still be quiet > > * no fighting over which show to watch > > * TV watching will be volitional, instead of "whatever is on right now" > > > > Eliminating the family's big TV would lead to: > > > > * loss of social center of gravity of the big honker TV set > > * make it so you can't invite a bunch of friends over to watch shows and > > movies together > > * can't play console videogames on the big TV > > > > So, perhaps what will happen is you'll still have the main TV, but this > > will be used for videogames and social TV watching. Solo TV watching > > will increasingly be on personal TVs. > > > > > > Implications: > > > > * For Netflix, getting a streaming viewer application onto the iPad is > > critical > > > > * Netflix, Google (YouTube), and Apple will increasingly be competitors, > > as they each represent significant ways of getting content to personal > > TVs > > > > * Apple might buy (or take a strong position in) Netflix to gain control > > over its wide range of video distribution channels to multiple devices. > > Alternately, Google might do the same. > > > > * Within 2 years, Google will release an Android-based "YouPad" centered > > around the YouTube watching experience and Chrome web browser. Since > > Google doesn't have a content story beyond YouTube, they will be the > > most open platform, and will be the platform of choice for content > > providers unhappy with the Apple distribution channel. > > > > * Netflix will become increasingly dependent on the Google tablet so > > they are not at the mercy of Apple for access to personal TV devices. > > > > * Wifi distribution of cable TV content throughout the house and to > > personal TVs (i.e., cable TV watching application for iPad) becomes > > critically important for cable operators, to avoid mass loss of > > subscribers from cable TV service > > > > - Jim > > _______________________________________________ > > FoRK mailing list > > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > > This article talks about some real deficienceies in that respect: > http://ifones.com/category/aspectratio/ > > Watching a movie on the new iPad will not as pleasurable experience as you might think. The screen being 1024x768 pixels is in a 4:3 ratio which is the exactly the same as an old CRT television set. Many of us are have gone on from there and are luxuriating in the glory of our 16x9 aspect HDTVs. > > It turns out that 16x9 will give you big honking black bars at the top and bottom of your screen as you can see by the green bar in the image above, and anything above or below it will be displayed as black bars. > > It gets worse, lots worse. Let's say you're playing a regular, non-widescreen movie which has an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. In that case anything above or below the blue area will be black bars. > > Now we get to ribbon-vision. Most widescreen films, from Star Wars to the new Star Trek were filmed in 2:35:1. This and all other resolutions mentioned refer to how wide the screen is as compared to how high. So these films are 2:35 times wider than they are high, and result in a mere ribbon on the iPad screen. Without measuring, it seems to me that a full half of the screen in landscape mode will be filled with black bars. > > One last kick in the pants. Having a resolution of 1024x768 pixels there is no way that you can display the gold standard of today's high-definition of 1080p. There just aren't enough pixels. > > So iBooks make sense, but movie watching will be somewhat limited. People frequently say that they really can't watch movies on an iPhone or iPod touch, since the resulting display is so small. The iPad will absolutely be better, but still at a trade-off. > > > Owen > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork I notice the JooJoo guy is trying to position his product as a better TV-watching device (it is 16:9): http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/01/joojoo-crunchpad-tablet/ Owen From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Mon Feb 1 10:58:57 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:58:57 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> References: <4B62F230.1000704@cs.ucsc.edu> <20100130042041.GA21426@permafrost.net> <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> Message-ID: Hi all, So with all the smoke and hot air blowing, I wanted to get some sort of objective metric of what people think will happen with the iPad. I'm not savvy enough to setup a prediction market, so I figured we could just place some bets. For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective categories. I'm open to discussions about how to quantify that (10 million in 18 months? 50 million in 24 months?). Any takers (on either side)? -- Ernie P. P.S. Yes, I work there, but I have zero insider knowledge. I only know what I read in the papers, just like you. From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Mon Feb 1 12:11:04 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 12:11:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion Message-ID: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The iPad announcement has sent this guy in a different direction. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=30259&tag=col1;post-30259 On yet another tangent, is this personal/private/public cloud stuff all just Back To The Future? Why does the talk about clouds and virtualization and thin clients make me think we did all this with mainframes and minicomputers and we're just doing it all again for the third time? Or still doing the same thing with a slightly different mix of technologies? Am I wrong? Significantly wrong? How/Where am I wrong? ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Mon Feb 1 12:19:57 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 12:19:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] iPad A4 SOC and Apple CPU History Message-ID: <430377.31220.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> A little bit about the iPad's A4 SOC (system on chip) processor and interesting history of Apple's CPU choices. http://tinyurl.com/yeff89j ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Mon Feb 1 12:32:42 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 12:32:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > Hi all, > > So with all the smoke and hot air blowing, I wanted to get > some sort of objective metric of what people think will > happen with the iPad.? I'm not savvy enough to setup a > prediction market, so I figured we could just place some > bets. > > For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org > that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook > computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective > categories.? I'm open to discussions about how to > quantify that (10 million in 18 months? 50 million in 24 > months?). > > Any takers (on either side)? > > -- Ernie P. > > P.S.? Yes, I work there, but I have zero insider > knowledge.? I only know what I read in the papers, just > like you. > Ernie, would you remind us what you think the iPhone and iPod did to their respective categories: exactly and specifically, using things like current market share numbers, total market before/now, etc? It's hard to make a bet, either way, when it's not clear what the bet is. If you can do that, it should also help answer your question about "quantifying". ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From wgstoddard at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 12:35:59 2010 From: wgstoddard at gmail.com (Bill Stoddard) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:35:59 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion In-Reply-To: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> On 2/1/10 3:11 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: > The iPad announcement has sent this guy in a different direction. > > http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=30259&tag=col1;post-30259 > > On yet another tangent, is this personal/private/public cloud stuff all just Back To The Future? Why does the talk about clouds and virtualization and thin clients make me think we did all this with mainframes and minicomputers and we're just doing it all again for the third time? Or still doing the same thing with a slightly different mix of technologies? Am I wrong? Significantly wrong? How/Where am I wrong? > > ...ken... > We're not talking 3270 thin and it's a lot easier (or will soon be a lot easier) to provision apps in the cloud and grow the cloud incrementally as compared to same on classic mainframes. History doesn't repeat but it rhymes. I'm still having a difficult time getting my head around doing 'enterprisey' (read 'profitable') things in the public cloud. Perhaps you have a really big pile of bits you'd like to do some analytics on... rent some cloud space, crunch some bits, collect results, rm -fr everything. I just can't imagine persistently keeping bits that form the backbone of your business outside the firewall. Hit-n-run analytics maybe? Bill From wgstoddard at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 12:40:37 2010 From: wgstoddard at gmail.com (Bill Stoddard) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:40:37 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4B673C45.70909@gmail.com> On 2/1/10 3:32 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: > --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > > >> Hi all, >> >> So with all the smoke and hot air blowing, I wanted to get >> some sort of objective metric of what people think will >> happen with the iPad. I'm not savvy enough to setup a >> prediction market, so I figured we could just place some >> bets. >> >> For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org >> that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook >> computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective >> categories. I'm open to discussions about how to >> quantify that (10 million in 18 months? 50 million in 24 >> months?). >> >> Any takers (on either side)? >> >> -- Ernie P. >> >> P.S. Yes, I work there, but I have zero insider >> knowledge. I only know what I read in the papers, just >> like you. >> >> > Ernie, would you remind us what you think the iPhone and iPod did to their respective categories: exactly and specifically, using things like current market share numbers, total market before/now, etc? It's hard to make a bet, either way, when it's not clear what the bet is. > > If you can do that, it should also help answer your question about "quantifying". > > ...ken... > > The only thing that could prevent Apple from making a whole pile of money from the iPad (directly or indirectly) will be the economy. Bill From gojomo at boxbe.com Mon Feb 1 12:45:17 2010 From: gojomo at boxbe.com (Gordon Mohr) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:45:17 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] iPad A4 SOC and Apple CPU History In-Reply-To: <430377.31220.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <430377.31220.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4B673D5D.7090306@boxbe.com> Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: > A little bit about the iPad's A4 SOC (system on chip) processor and interesting history of Apple's CPU choices. > > http://tinyurl.com/yeff89j Please include direct URLs as well, for context/safety/durability/etc: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/188146/apple_inside_the_significance_of_the_ipads_a4_chip.html - Gordon From lucas.gonze at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 13:14:25 2010 From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 13:14:25 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <4B673C45.70909@gmail.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673C45.70909@gmail.com> Message-ID: I'll lay this bet for the iPad: I bet that it will revolutionize ebooks. It will ensure that passive formats like epub and azw lose out in favor of active formats like HTML5 apps and proprietary phone-specific apps. It will enable the technology to finally get great. Ebook readers are a lame technology. EG, in-book ajax is a distant dream. Media playback not even that. I imagine that the reader app and book content will be bundled together in one opaque package. There will be a few different reader apps, each of which has its own API for the books to write to. The best APIs will be microformatted HTML. Dark horse bet for the winning data format: MAF. On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Bill Stoddard wrote: > On 2/1/10 3:32 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: >> >> --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar >> ?wrote: >> >> >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> So with all the smoke and hot air blowing, I wanted to get >>> some sort of objective metric of what people think will >>> happen with the iPad. ?I'm not savvy enough to setup a >>> prediction market, so I figured we could just place some >>> bets. >>> >>> For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org >>> that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook >>> computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective >>> categories. ?I'm open to discussions about how to >>> quantify that (10 million in 18 months? 50 million in 24 >>> months?). >>> >>> Any takers (on either side)? >>> >>> -- Ernie P. >>> >>> P.S. ?Yes, I work there, but I have zero insider >>> knowledge. ?I only know what I read in the papers, just >>> like you. >>> >>> >> >> Ernie, would you remind us what you think the iPhone and iPod did to their >> respective categories: exactly and specifically, using things like current >> market share numbers, total market before/now, etc? ?It's hard to make a >> bet, either way, when it's not clear what the bet is. >> >> If you can do that, it should also help answer your question about >> "quantifying". >> >> ? ? ? ? ?...ken... >> >> > > The only thing that could prevent Apple from making a whole pile of money > from the iPad (directly or indirectly) will be the economy. > > Bill > > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Mon Feb 1 13:28:41 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 13:28:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion In-Reply-To: <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> Message-ID: <572123.3202.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Bill Stoddard wrote: > On 2/1/10 3:11 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: > > The iPad announcement has sent this guy in a different > direction. > > > > http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=30259&tag=col1;post-30259 > > > > On yet another tangent, is this > personal/private/public cloud stuff all just Back To The > Future? Why does the talk about clouds and virtualization > and thin clients make me think we did all this with > mainframes and minicomputers and we're just doing it all > again for the third time? Or still doing the same thing with > a slightly different mix of technologies? Am I wrong?? > Significantly wrong?? How/Where am I wrong? > > > >? ? ? ? > ???...ken... > >? ? > > We're not talking 3270 thin and it's a lot easier (or will > soon be a lot easier) to provision apps in the cloud and > grow the cloud incrementally as compared to same on classic > mainframes.? History doesn't repeat but it rhymes. > I'm not sure I agree with the last statement. It stands to reason that as the various technologies themselves progress we should be able to do more stuff and do it more easily and in better ways. That means the sysadmin stuff as well as the user stuff. But have the basic models really changed significantly? E.g. does the fact of a stack of blades in the computer room instead of a mainframe box full of processors change anything? Really? Especially if you do virtualization on either? E.g. if you think about how a 3270 terminal relates to it's "host" environment versus how a thin client (browser) relates to it's "host" environment, can you articulate any really significant difference at the level of the basic computing model? In both cases it appears to me that all the really useful bits are on/in the host and the client part is just a way/place for the user to access (output and input thingies) the good stuff from some location that is physically different from the host. Yes? > ...???I just can't imagine > persistently keeping bits that form the backbone of your > business outside the firewall. > You're just not cynical enough. Just give the beancounters and non-technical managers in the C-suite the opportunity. Show them how it will improve the "bottom line" or juice the quarterly numbers that the market analysts revere and there won't be the slightest hesitation. Many companies already outsource the whole operations side. It's not a big step from handing over control of all the good stuff to a data centre like EDS to giving it to a more "public" service provider. "Security" differences between the two are only a very small difference of degree in both reality and perception. Many companies are already moving email and "desktop computing" apps into the cloud ... think Google Apps. In many organizations these are, or contain, mission-critical functions and data. In some cases they realize it. In some, not. This is not an issue of a computing model. It's the long-standing, ongoing tussle over outsourcing. That's a financial debate, not a technical issue. Even though the geeks like to think it is, 'tain't. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From tomhiggins at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 14:30:47 2010 From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:30:47 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: References: <4B62F230.1000704@cs.ucsc.edu> <20100130042041.GA21426@permafrost.net> <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> Message-ID: I will more than bet that the iPad will do for me exactly what the iPod and iPhone did in their respective categories. On the mp3 player front I had a couple of different players before the ipod made its mark, saw where the iTunes store was going when they rolled it out in 2003 and decided that was not the road for me. On the smartphone front they were very much in the locked down company store mentality from the get go and decided again it was not a good fit for me. I finally decided on the Droid just a few months ago. The tablet road looks to be about the same, that is I have had a chance to play with tablets for while now (heck I still have the pieces of the old Sonicblue Progear in my basement somewhere) and simply do not see the Apples vision for control a fit for what I want in a device. So yea, Apple continuing to not have me as a customer seems a good bet. Will they still make a few nation's GPD of worth on it...sure why not. Slap it once, slap it twice...you know the rest. Do I think they will shake things up? A beast that size is bound to. Now as to the demerits of the epub format, I am still sort of taken by it:)- It is simple, contained, and most fo the devices I have can now in rotation can render it (readers for linux desktop, netbook, sony pr505 and droid). HTML5 though is a good thought for it as well. I am not sure how much interactivity I want with my books, sure playing Choose Your Own Adventure books would rocketh...but one of the reasons I picked the pr505 was its decidedly unconnected uncomplicated book reading abilities. Yes, it is not the best for heavily laid out graphic works. I would like to see what comes from HTML5 and books. -tom(hard numbers...let us say that unless the devices gets totally fraked up in a bad pr spincycle it will be >15% of Apple's worth in 3 years.)higgins From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Mon Feb 1 14:47:53 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:47:53 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673C45.70909@gmail.com> Message-ID: <70091E49-2494-40CC-A5B9-9FE02CA3E52D@radicalcentrism.org> Hi Lucas, On Feb 1, 2010, at 1:14 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: > It will ensure that passive formats like epub and azw lose out in > favor of active formats like HTML5 apps and proprietary phone-specific > apps. > > It will enable the technology to finally get great. Ebook readers are > a lame technology. EG, in-book ajax is a distant dream. Media > playback not even that. > > I imagine that the reader app and book content will be bundled > together in one opaque package. There will be a few different reader > apps, each of which has its own API for the books to write to. The > best APIs will be microformatted HTML. Help me out here -- I thought ePub *was* microformatted XHTML. > Dark horse bet for the winning data format: MAF. Huh? Multiple Alignment Format? Mozilla Archive Format? Missionary Aviation Foundation? -- Ernie P. From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Mon Feb 1 14:52:03 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:52:03 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> Hi Ken, On Feb 1, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: > --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: >> For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org >> that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook >> computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective >> categories. I'm open to discussions about how to >> quantify that (10 million in 18 months? 50 million in 24 >> months?). >> > Ernie, would you remind us what you think the iPhone and iPod did to their respective categories: exactly and specifically, using things like current market share numbers, total market before/now, etc? It's hard to make a bet, either way, when it's not clear what the bet is. > > If you can do that, it should also help answer your question about "quantifying". Hey, if I wanted to do real work, I wouldn't be spouting off on a mailing list. :-) I'll settle for a single data point: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/10/apple-officially-surpasses-10-million-iphones-sold-in-2008.ars > The 6.9 million iPhones sold during Apple's fourth fiscal quarter added up to more iPhones than sales during the entire lifetime of the original iPhone (6.1million). That's 13 million iPhones in 15 months. Assuming a launch at the end of March 2010, that would imply 13 million iPads by the end of June 2011. There's even a decent chance we'd get an actual number by then, since it is the usual date for WWDC. So, anyone willing to bet *against* Apple selling 13 million iPads by June 2011? If you don't like that metric, feel free to suggest your own.... -- Ernie P. From gojomo at boxbe.com Mon Feb 1 15:23:06 2010 From: gojomo at boxbe.com (Gordon Mohr) Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:23:06 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> Message-ID: <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > So, anyone willing to bet *against* Apple selling 13 million iPads by June 2011? I will. $50? We can expect Apple's quarterly report for the quarter ending June 2011 to give enough info, right? And I actually think the iPad will be a big hit. Just not that big, in the first 15 months. Not as many people need iPads as iPhones. - Gordon From lucas.gonze at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 15:32:40 2010 From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 15:32:40 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> Message-ID: I think the macro scale impact of iPad is in changing the traditional desktop metaphor for the PC. I'm not convinced that iPad itself will sell a huge number of copies, but I do think it's likely that iPad-like user experiences will become common on machines with as much power as a PC. On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Gordon Mohr wrote: > And I actually think the iPad will be a big hit. Just not that big, in the > first 15 months. Not as many people need iPads as iPhones. From lucas.gonze at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 15:40:20 2010 From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 15:40:20 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <70091E49-2494-40CC-A5B9-9FE02CA3E52D@radicalcentrism.org> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673C45.70909@gmail.com> <70091E49-2494-40CC-A5B9-9FE02CA3E52D@radicalcentrism.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 2:47 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar > Help me out here -- I thought ePub *was* microformatted XHTML. It's XHTML but not microformatted. All the semantics that apps need to be able to extract are in external config files written in XML. And the XML itself is a gnarly bummer which is much harder to work with than necessary. The group that invented it seems to have not known how to slim down to a reasonable complexity without losing functionality. MAF == Mozilla Application Format, which is pretty big for its britches these days. wrote: > Hi Lucas, > > On Feb 1, 2010, at 1:14 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: >> It will ensure that passive formats like epub and azw lose out in >> favor of active formats like HTML5 apps and proprietary phone-specific >> apps. >> >> It will enable the technology to finally get great. ?Ebook readers are >> a lame technology. ?EG, in-book ajax is a distant dream. ?Media >> playback not even that. >> >> I imagine that the reader app and book content will be bundled >> together in one opaque package. ?There will be a few different reader >> apps, each of which has its own API for the books to write to. ?The >> best APIs will be microformatted HTML. > > Help me out here -- I thought ePub *was* microformatted XHTML. > >> Dark horse bet for the winning data format: MAF. > > Huh? ?Multiple Alignment Format? ?Mozilla Archive Format? Missionary Aviation Foundation? > > -- Ernie P. > > > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From tomhiggins at gmail.com Mon Feb 1 18:36:00 2010 From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 18:36:00 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] iPad as personal TV In-Reply-To: <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> References: <4B62F230.1000704@cs.ucsc.edu> <20100130042041.GA21426@permafrost.net> <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> Message-ID: Anyone on fork have an iside to the mess that was the crunchpad? I caught pieces of it on various blogs. The device looks nice enough. -tom(joojoo..dear lord when do we get products named well again)higgins From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Mon Feb 1 20:02:28 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 20:02:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> Message-ID: <605299.16858.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 2/1/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > Hi Ken, > > >> > > Ernie, would you remind us what you think the iPhone > and iPod did to their respective categories: exactly and > specifically, using things like current market share > numbers, total market before/now, etc?? It's hard to > make a bet, either way, when it's not clear what the bet > is. > > > > If you can do that, it should also help answer your > question about "quantifying". > > Hey, if I wanted to do real work, I wouldn't be spouting > off on a mailing list. :-) > > I'll settle for a single data point: > > http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/10/apple-officially-surpasses-10-million-iphones-sold-in-2008.ars > > > The 6.9 million iPhones sold during Apple's fourth > fiscal quarter added up to more iPhones than sales during > the entire lifetime of the original iPhone (6.1million). > > That's 13 million iPhones in 15 months.? Assuming a > launch at the end of March 2010, that would imply 13 million > iPads by the end of June 2011.? There's even a decent > chance we'd get an actual number by then, since it is the > usual date for WWDC. > > So, anyone willing to bet *against* Apple selling 13 > million iPads by June 2011? > > If you don't like that metric, feel free to suggest your > own.... > It still lacks context, Ernie. In your original note you said, "For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective categories." You need at least one data point for each product to illustrate what they "did to their respective categories". That would be their marketshare after some meaningful period of time, say, one or two years after they were introduced. Without that, the actual number of units sold really isn't very meaningful. E.g. a few million might sound impressive but if it's only 0.8% marketshare it's hardly noticable. Contrariwise, a few hundred thousand might well be impressive if it's 25% after a year. Also, your bet assumes it will be tablet and netbook markets that will be most impacted. Much of the chatter I've read is assuming it's ebooks that will be most affected by the iPad's existence. Perhaps a more interesting bet is which market(s) it will impact most? ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 07:53:41 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:53:41 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Coordination is hard Message-ID: <9C76738F-7414-4375-8807-A0D53EA6D76F@place.org> On the democracy / government / scalability front... Hanson, today: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/02/coordination-is-hard.html Nb., these comments are true of any "organization" --- i.e., group of individuals ostensibly attempting to accomplish an overall goal or variety of goals cooperatively / by working together, leveraging each others' work, yet with potentially dissimilar or even competing interests and priorities and subgoals. Several things make this acutely difficult in government, which are nonetheless fundamental to the very ideas and nature of "government." But it's no less a problem in e.g. companies. The interesting bit, from my perspective, is that there are increasingly compelling existence proofs (Google, Netflix, etc.) that effectiveness at real corporate scale requires a high level of "stigmergy" --- i.e., disorganization and decentralized, ad hoc coordination. But there are also very good proofs that this *fails* to work in many cases. Understanding what allows it to work in some but not in others would, I think, be useful. (I have my own conjectures about that, but will keep them to myself for now.) jb From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 08:04:10 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 10:04:10 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) Message-ID: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Have already mentioned by reservations about 3G in the iPad. I'm certainly not going to go down that road; entertained the thought briefly, but have concluded that it's stupid. (Like removable media before it, this idea of a direct WAN connection + Wi-Fi in every mobile device is daft. That won't keep millions from buying into the notion before they find that the friction of having to manage this on lots of devices becomes prohibitive.) Here's the solution: portable WAN-connected personal hotspots. The Verizon MiFi and similar devices have started to appear all over the place --- I first saw this device category appear a couple of years back with high-end aftermarket auto outfitters offering a solution (other than e.g. tethering your phone.) In general, I think the extrapolation of this category --- the full-fledged, always-on, WAN- connected *personal server* / gateway machine for a constellation of Wi-Fi enabled devices --- is pretty compelling. But even as a pure networking device, it's useful enough that I'm seriously considering adoption of this as a "tool to rely upon / organize around." FWIW, I also think that it's possible that such things *might* undermine the market for Bluetooth devices. There's really no good need for two separate radios in any given device, IMHO. Aside from power concerns, there's no reason that Wi-Fi cannot (and should not) service all the needs that Bluetooth presently serves. The protocol stack functionality can easily (and better, I would argue) be layered on top of Wi-Fi / IP / ... Thoughts / feedback? jb From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 08:49:12 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 10:49:12 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: Should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: This device *should* be your phone. And of course, with jailbreaks / rooting / etc. and a little hackery, it can be and already is for many folks. I'd just like the carriers to man up and work with the phone makers to make this the standard modus operandi / personal networking architecture. jb From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Tue Feb 2 09:05:44 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:05:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: <991154.20708.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Have already mentioned by reservations about 3G in the > iPad.? I'm certainly not going to go down that > road;? entertained the thought briefly, but have > concluded that it's stupid.? (Like removable media > before it, this idea of a direct WAN connection + Wi-Fi in > every mobile device is daft.? That won't keep millions > from buying into the notion before they find that the > friction of having to manage this on lots of devices becomes > prohibitive.) > I'm a little bit confused (yeah, I know that's more or less my permanent condition but let's say a little more confused than usual). You seem to use WAN to refer to at least two communication technologies. In this first paragraph it seems to refer to a broadband cellular data connection. If true, I agree with your opening objection to having both types of connectivity (broadband cellular data and wi-fi) in the user device. However, the reality is that there is nothing approaching universal coverage from either broadband cellular data or publicly accessable wi-fi. In at least the short term, if you want to be fairly mobile you really need both. There's also the issue of cost. If I'm somewhere away from any public wi-fi hotspot it's worth paying for a cellular broadband connection. But why would I pay such usurious prices for connectivity if I'm within range of a public wi-fi hotspot. That doesn't mean I like the current need for both types of connectivity in a user device but it needs to be pointed out. But that's not what confused me. Later in the post you seemed to use the term WAN as synonymous with a WAN based on wi-fi wide-area networking. That's what confused me. Are you suggesting that core WAN and edge connections should all be wi-fi using a variety of appropriate bits and pieces? If so, I agree. Or are you suggesting it should include broadband cellular data for the core WAN with the edge technologies all wi-fi, particularly in the user devices? If so, I disagree with this particular solution as long as we need to pay such a high price for cellular data. BTW, it was your reference to the Verizon Mi-Fi that cemented the confusion because it's mixed-media. It takes a broadband cellular connection and turns it into a portable wi-fi hotspot. Neat. But not cheap. I agree with a preference for wi-fi for all wireless connections to a user device versus Bluetooth for some and proprietary for rodents, keyboards, etc. It would require that the user device be able to do peer-to-peer wi-fi connections, which most cannot do right now without a lot of screwing around (e.g. I'm sure I could figure out some way to make my netbook and laptop talk directly to each other over wi-fi without a router or switch between them but it wouldn't be simple). Bluetooth provides that capability. Is it likely that Bluetooth and propietary wireless connections to the user device are the path of least resistance? E.g. easier to just create more wireless tehcnologies for distance-limited uses than to fight with whoever to get wi-fi (IEEE 802.11*) to do it? ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 09:32:42 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:32:42 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: <4B6861BA.5040306@lig.net> Jeff Bone wrote: > > Have already mentioned by reservations about 3G in the iPad. I'm > certainly not going to go down that road; entertained the thought > briefly, but have concluded that it's stupid. (Like removable media > before it, this idea of a direct WAN connection + Wi-Fi in every > mobile device is daft. That won't keep millions from buying into the > notion before they find that the friction of having to manage this on > lots of devices becomes prohibitive.) > > Here's the solution: portable WAN-connected personal hotspots. The > Verizon MiFi and similar devices have started to appear all over the > place --- I first saw this device category appear a couple of years > back with high-end aftermarket auto outfitters offering a solution > (other than e.g. tethering your phone.) In general, I think the > extrapolation of this category --- the full-fledged, always-on, > WAN-connected *personal server* / gateway machine for a constellation > of Wi-Fi enabled devices --- is pretty compelling. But even as a pure > networking device, it's useful enough that I'm seriously considering > adoption of this as a "tool to rely upon / organize around." > > FWIW, I also think that it's possible that such things *might* > undermine the market for Bluetooth devices. There's really no good > need for two separate radios in any given device, IMHO. Aside from > power concerns, there's no reason that Wi-Fi cannot (and should not) > service all the needs that Bluetooth presently serves. The protocol > stack functionality can easily (and better, I would argue) be layered > on top of Wi-Fi / IP / ... > > > Thoughts / feedback? I've been carrying a portable hotspot with me for several years now using a series of USB dongle (i.e. modem) devices with a Cradlepoint handheld router. You really can't beat it: just plug it in, wait 5-15 seconds, and you're connected via WiFi on every device. I have also tethered my phones (all the way back to the Treo 300) via USB, lately, Bluetooth and Wifi. Palm Pre and Android phones are capable of wireless tethering now. I also have a battery driven Cradlepoint OEM'd as WiPipe that will drive my 4G WiMax USB modems. I've measured over 3.5Mb down and 1Mb up (capped, the transmission is symmetrical). So, I agree, as a practical matter this is the way to go. I need a separate device so that I can be on the phone at the same time and also avoid draining the phone battery. For a variety of reasons, including both data/voice per $ / coverage (including free roaming on Verizon) / 4G availability, I use Sprint. So, no voice & data on the phone at once, but great data almost everywhere. Bluetooth and ZigBee will have their uses. It is unlikely that anyone will bother porting all of the protocols over to WiFi. Additionally, the economy of scale is already enough that the marginal cost of another radio is nothing. Not to mention that WiFi, BlueTooth, and ZigBee all have drastically different power / data rate optimizations that are beneficial. Maybe we'll end up with a software radio with some parallelism and an antenna array to handle about anything. Having 3G built-in is a great convenience, however unless it is your only WWAN unit (unlikely) having another account is just a waste of (a lot of) money. > > > jb sdw From russell.turpin at gmail.com Tue Feb 2 10:17:51 2010 From: russell.turpin at gmail.com (Russell Turpin) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 12:17:51 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <991154.20708.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <991154.20708.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: > There's also the issue of cost. If I'm somewhere away from any public wi-fi > hotspot it's worth paying for a cellular broadband connection. But why would > I pay such usurious prices for connectivity if I'm within range of a public wi-fi > hotspot. I suspect there are a lot of us who don't even have a data plan through our phone service, yet who carry a smart phone and make use of wi-fi at various locales. Of course, that's less about technology than it is about gaming the market. From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 10:19:05 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:19:05 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Different standards for slander / libel / calumny - The Age of Propaganda Message-ID: <4B686C99.8050409@lig.net> Isn't it interesting how politicians, pundits, and rabble rousers get away with slander and libel in ways that far exceed the legal limits of commercial and personal abuse? If equivalent people or organizations were to make such statements that stretch or simply ignore the truth about, say, GE or Sony or anyone with enough money to prosecute a case, they'd be taken down very quickly. Yet, we allow it for political people and groups with impunity, almost without comment by most. Those that know better just ignore it, however those that don't are infected with some randomly distributed local subset of flawed ideas which lead to blind bias. And many of those that are ignorant in various ways are provided immunity from enlightenment much like those religious groups that teach that anyone disagreeing with their creed at all is an agent of the devil and is just trying to trick them. Protective memes around a core of crap. With the Internet and certain polarization of "News" media, it seems qualitatively different than the past. We've always had a largely ignorant public, however it used to be more clear to more people which speakers were more ignorant than others. sdw From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 10:27:54 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:27:54 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Google leaving China? In-Reply-To: <4B4D634E.1090502@mithral.com> References: <4B4D634E.1090502@mithral.com> Message-ID: <4B686EAA.5060206@lig.net> Adam L Beberg wrote: > Translation: The Chinese employees are stealing everything and giving > it to the competition (everyone said they would, who knew), and nobody > here pays for a damn thing, we're leaving. Needed a good cover story.. > > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html > > A new approach to China > ... Britain thought to warn (some) of their companies: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/europe/01spy.html > Britain Warned Businesses of Threat of Chinese Spying > > By JOHN F. BURNS > Published: January 31, 2010 > > LONDON ? British business executives dealing with China were given a > formal warning more than a year ago by Britain?s security service, > MI5, that Chinese intelligence agencies were engaged in a wide-ranging > effort to hack into British companies? computers and to blackmail > British businesspeople over sexual relationships and other > improprieties, according to people familiar with the MI5 document. > > The warning, in a 14-page document titled ?The Threat from Chinese > Espionage,? was prepared in 2008 by MI5?s Center for the Protection of > National Infrastructure, and distributed in what security officials > described as a ?restricted? form to hundreds of British banks and > other financial institutions and businesses. The document followed > public warnings from senior MI5 officials that China posed ?one of the > most significant espionage threats? to Britain. > > Details of the document were confirmed Sunday by two people familiar > with its contents, who both spoke on an anonymous basis because of the > sensitivity of the subject. The document?s existence was first > reported in the British newspaper The Sunday Times. > > Last month, Google announced that it was considering ending its > operations in China after a ?sophisticated and targeted? cyberattack > that it said aimed primarily to gain access to the e-mail accounts of > Chinese human rights activists. Google said it was no longer willing > to cooperate with China in what amounted to censorship of its search > engine, which Google had operated in a way that prevented millions of > Chinese from reaching Web sites deemed hostile by Beijing. > > Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called on China to > investigate the cyberattacks, and said that companies like Google > should refuse to support ?politically motivated censorship.? Without > acknowledging any government involvement in the attacks, China has > responded by saying that Internet companies like Google are welcome to > do business in China ?according to the law.? A Foreign Ministry > spokesman said that ?Chinese law proscribes any form of hacking activity.? > > But a starkly different picture emerges from the document circulated > by MI5, Britain?s domestic security service. The Sunday Times account, > quoting from the document, said that officers from the People?s > Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security had approached > British businesspeople at trade fairs and exhibitions with offers of > ?gifts? that included cameras and computer memory sticks that were > found to contain bugs that provided the Chinese with remote access to > the recipients? computers. > > ?There have been cases where these ?gifts? have contained Trojan > devices and other types of malware,? the document said, according to > The Sunday Times. The accuracy of the paper?s citations from the > document was verified by the two people contacted by The New York > Times who said they had seen the document. > > The MI5 report described how China?s computer hacking campaign had > attacked British defense, energy, communications and manufacturing > companies, as well as public relations companies and international law > firms. The document explicitly warned British executives dealing with > China against so-called honey trap methods in which it said the > Chinese tried to cultivate personal relationships, ?often using lavish > hospitality and flattery,? either within China or abroad. > > ?Chinese intelligence services have also been known to exploit > vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships and illegal activities to > pressurize individuals to cooperate with them,? it warned. ?Hotel > rooms in major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai which have > been frequented by foreigners are likely to be bugged. Hotel rooms > have been searched while the occupants are out of the room.? > > Britain?s powerful Joint Intelligence Committee, responsible for > analyzing and coordinating policy between MI5 and MI6, the Secret > Intelligence Service that is responsible for Britain?s foreign > intelligence activities, warned last year that China?s growing > sophistication in cyberespionage could enable it to shut down critical > services, including power, food and water supplies. sdw From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 10:29:26 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 12:29:26 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> Ken writes (in 1024-character column width, as usual... reformatted here for your consumption. ;-) > I'm a little bit confused (yeah, I know that's more or less my > permanent condition but let's say a little more confused than > usual). You seem to use WAN to refer to at least two communication > technologies. Not clear where I did that, but I'm specifically referring to broadband cellular. The point, really, is that you ideally don't need more than *1* such device / connection per personal "constellation of devices" assuming that 1 device can act as a router between that broadband cellular connection and wi-fi. I.e., let's settle on a personal networking architecture where we've all got one portable, always-with-us broadband cellular interface and everything else talks wi-fi exclusively (and is routed via the broadband interface when appropriate.) That interface would, of course, only be used in cases where other (i.e., not out-through-broadband) wi-fi is unavailable. > Later in the post you seemed to use the term WAN as synonymous with > a WAN based on wi-fi wide-area networking. That's what confused me. Not sure how you drew that conclusion, but that certainly wasn't what I was suggesting. You can assume throughout the discussion that when I say "WAN" I mean broadband cellular Internet connectivity. Internet connectivity via e.g. home wi-fi, some public wi-fi w/ a better pipe, etc. would generally be the preferred mode for Internet connectivity from any device in the personal constellation of devices, and routed- through-broadband the fallback. > I agree with a preference for wi-fi for all wireless connections to > a user device versus Bluetooth for some and proprietary for rodents, > keyboards, etc. It would require that the user device be able to do > peer-to-peer wi-fi connections, which most cannot do right now > without a lot of screwing around (e.g. I'm sure I could figure out > some way to make my netbook and laptop talk directly to each other > over wi-fi without a router or switch between them but it wouldn't > be simple). Bluetooth provides that capability. Is it likely that > Bluetooth and propietary wireless connections to the user device are > the path of least resistance? E.g. easier to just create more > wireless tehcnologies for distance-limited uses than to fight with > whoever to get wi-fi (IEEE 802.11*) to do it? ...ken... Well, if the personal architecture assumptions universally included a mobile router / switch / WAP with you all the time serving as the gateway between broadband and wi-fi (when necessary), then you don't necessarily need the pure-p2p aspect of things (though of course then none of your gizmos can talk to each other absent that device.) OTOH, some of the p2p stuff is fairly trivial conceptually but I'm not sure how much fussing around you'd have to do to make it work w/ stock hardware and stacks. Some folks --- Eye-Fi for example --- are hot on the very-limited-application uses of Wi-Fi, so at least the meme is out there. Generally, I always bet on commodity / community standards vs. consortia standards in the long run... The whole Infiniband / SAN thing, for example, has always amused me to no end. An arms race that can't be won permanently, a pipe dream of VCs with more capital that needs to be "absorbed" / put to use than they have time to vet and do smaller deals. (In particular, this was a huge issue in Austin in the Early 'Oughts...) That help? jb From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Tue Feb 2 10:33:40 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 10:33:40 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <54673.47467.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Russell Turpin wrote: > > I suspect there are a lot of us who don't even have a data plan > through our phone service, yet who carry a smart phone and make use of > wi-fi at various locales. Of course, that's less about technology than > it is about gaming the market. > Indeed. :-) That is my plan, when we finally get a GSM network here and I can get the smartphone I want. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From kammeyer at rocketmail.com Tue Feb 2 10:40:52 2010 From: kammeyer at rocketmail.com (David Kammeyer) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 10:40:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <9376A896-2141-48D5-B47D-6C621CE2F159@place.org> References: <9376A896-2141-48D5-B47D-6C621CE2F159@place.org> Message-ID: <62797.498.qm@web50903.mail.re2.yahoo.com> I've been out of town the past week, so catching up... The announcement was a bit of a disappointment for me. Most everything Jeff said, I agree with. The lack of camera is astounding, and cuts out what is a completely obvious application of the device. That said, I think that when people use this device, they're going like using it. Sitting on the couch, or in a meeting, etc, I find myself using my phone, even when a laptop is available, because the laptop is too heavy-weight in a few dimensions. If I don't need a keyboard, it takes up a lot of space. The tablet is more like a clipboard -- imagine a doctor coming in to see a patient carrying a laptop vs. one of these. The laptop creates a psychological barrier between the patient and doctor that a tablet does not. The tablet is what we were promised from Star Trek. It's the perfect form factor for displaying information. The only problem is the input. I have to believe that version 2 will incorporate speech recognition, and if it has a camera, maybe they can augment it with some lip reading. If they can come up with a cool multi-touch interface for correcting the speech recognizer, it could get closer to a laptop replacement. As for the application situation, the iPhone model is a bit of a disappointment, but there are very real advantages to that model. One app at at time and full screen means that you make the most of your screen real estate. Managing overlapping windows, and using space for the window controls is not appropriate for a tablet. The sandboxed apps model, and limited communication between applications means much less sysadmin hassle. You can basically expect these things to not require maintainence. For a third device, it is unreasonable to expect that people will want to fiddle with them like they would their computer. The app store's model creates lots of problems for developers, and needing Apple's approval for applications makes developing really innovative applications risky, because who knows what Apple will accept. However, being able to very quickly pay for and download an application, with no separate payment, no installer program on your computer, no running an install program and having it ask to reboot, or restart your browser, is a much more seamless experience. This is really something that Apple could do on the Mac as well, but the Mac doesn't seem to have been their focus for the past couple of years. -Dave > From: Jeff Bone > A few other thoughts: > > = Is Apple Confused? = > > I think, for the first time in a very long time, this event shows us a confused > Apple. Lots of missteps and half-steps and design hesitation. I'm not sure > they understand where they want to go with this product, their entire product > line, and their entire future. I don't think they know what this product is; > from my perspective, this (kind of device / form factor --- repeat after me, > "the form factor is the application") is clearly an around-the-house / > around-the-office, mostly-impersonal (i.e., anybody picks it up and uses it as > needed, in situ) read-mostly de > From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 10:58:51 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 12:58:51 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <87ADAB21-CFC2-44B8-9AB3-E9071A70BE26@place.org> References: <9376A896-2141-48D5-B47D-6C621CE2F159@place.org> <4029AB19-0E59-4649-A155-F7C7699D48FB@place.org> <730256F9-1C43-4CDE-AEA4-2EE2312A50B7@place.org> <87ADAB21-CFC2-44B8-9AB3-E9071A70BE26@place.org> Message-ID: <69350CDD-9F07-41C9-AC62-A1E18EDC76AC@place.org> Dave K writes: > One app at at time and full screen means that you make the most of > your screen real estate. Managing overlapping windows, and using > space for the window controls is not appropriate for a tablet. +1. In fact, one thing I neglected to mention with respect to my own "little things" / conveniences argument --- I'm not sure that managing overlapping windows is *ever* appropriate for *any* device / form factor. After spending years laughing at the suits that run everything in fullscreen, once I decided (back around 2001 or so) to "live on the laptop" (i.e., use it as my exclusive read-write, command-and-control, input-intensive device, and use everything else as read-mostly) I find myself doing something like that --- almost. Basically, on the laptop, I tend to run the main apps in an left-aligned stack, all sized the same, taking up the left 3/4 of the screen. Another stack of "narrow" apps / windows (i.e., iChat or other buddy list windows, download manager windows, etc.) run in the right 1/4 or so of the screen, again all aligned. (One exception: I run two Terminal windows in a 1/3 on left, 2/3 on right geometry, with right Terminal and its tabs reserved for interactive tasks and two tabs on the left, one running my Terminal-based remembrance agent and the other running similar "monitoring" apps, top, etc. as needed.) Managing window geometry then becomes, simply, a matter of keyboard switching of foreground app via cmd-tab, cycling tabs and so forth. I'd really rather have something a bit smarter, and am envious of e.g. the various X tiling window managers --- but not enough to "switch." jb From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Tue Feb 2 11:00:13 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 11:00:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> Message-ID: <729461.13502.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Ken writes (in 1024-character column width, as usual... > reformatted here for your consumption.? ;-) > Wish I could help but ... > ... You can assume > throughout the discussion that when I say "WAN" I mean > broadband cellular Internet connectivity.? > I will, henceforth, assume you always mean that WANs should be done over cellular broadband. .......... Except when you don't, of course. :-) > > That help? > Yep. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 11:18:41 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:18:41 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Remembrance Agents In-Reply-To: <69350CDD-9F07-41C9-AC62-A1E18EDC76AC@place.org> References: <9376A896-2141-48D5-B47D-6C621CE2F159@place.org> <4029AB19-0E59-4649-A155-F7C7699D48FB@place.org> <730256F9-1C43-4CDE-AEA4-2EE2312A50B7@place.org> <87ADAB21-CFC2-44B8-9AB3-E9071A70BE26@place.org> <69350CDD-9F07-41C9-AC62-A1E18EDC76AC@place.org> Message-ID: <4B687A91.2020100@lig.net> I have a friend who has a planned-to-be-a-product for something like this. And I've used a few things but aren't happy yet. And it's an area of interest for several reasons. What do you use for a remembrance agent? How does it work? How do you use it? How well does it work for you? How often do you use it? Thanks, sdw Jeff Bone wrote: > > Dave K writes: > >> One app at at time and full screen means that you make the most of >> your screen real estate. Managing overlapping windows, and using >> space for the window controls is not appropriate for a tablet. > > +1. > > In fact, one thing I neglected to mention with respect to my own > "little things" / conveniences argument --- I'm not sure that managing > overlapping windows is *ever* appropriate for *any* device / form factor. > > After spending years laughing at the suits that run everything in > fullscreen, once I decided (back around 2001 or so) to "live on the > laptop" (i.e., use it as my exclusive read-write, command-and-control, > input-intensive device, and use everything else as read-mostly) I find > myself doing something like that --- almost. Basically, on the > laptop, I tend to run the main apps in an left-aligned stack, all > sized the same, taking up the left 3/4 of the screen. Another stack > of "narrow" apps / windows (i.e., iChat or other buddy list windows, > download manager windows, etc.) run in the right 1/4 or so of the > screen, again all aligned. (One exception: I run two Terminal > windows in a 1/3 on left, 2/3 on right geometry, with right Terminal > and its tabs reserved for interactive tasks and two tabs on the left, > one running my Terminal-based remembrance agent and the other running > similar "monitoring" apps, top, etc. as needed.) Managing window > geometry then becomes, simply, a matter of keyboard switching of > foreground app via cmd-tab, cycling tabs and so forth. > > I'd really rather have something a bit smarter, and am envious of e.g. > the various X tiling window managers --- but not enough to "switch." > > jb > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork From mdw at martinwills.com Tue Feb 2 12:04:54 2010 From: mdw at martinwills.com (mdw at martinwills.com) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 14:04:54 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Different standards for slander / libel / calumny - The Age of Propaganda In-Reply-To: <4B686C99.8050409@lig.net> References: <4B686C99.8050409@lig.net> Message-ID: > Isn't it interesting how politicians, pundits, and rabble rousers get > away with slander and libel in ways that far exceed the legal limits of > commercial and personal abuse? > > If equivalent people or organizations were to make such statements that > stretch or simply ignore the truth about, say, GE or Sony or anyone with > enough money to prosecute a case, they'd be taken down very quickly. > > Yet, we allow it for political people and groups with impunity, almost > without comment by most. Those that know better just ignore it, however > those that don't are infected with some randomly distributed local > subset of flawed ideas which lead to blind bias. And many of those that > are ignorant in various ways are provided immunity from enlightenment > much like those religious groups that teach that anyone disagreeing with > their creed at all is an agent of the devil and is just trying to trick > them. Protective memes around a core of crap. > > With the Internet and certain polarization of "News" media, it seems > qualitatively different than the past. We've always had a largely > ignorant public, however it used to be more clear to more people which > speakers were more ignorant than others. > > sdw > Interesting... Why don't you exercise your constitutional rights to bring this to the attention of your appropriate representation (i.e. state and federal representatives) rather than rant about it to a group that has little or no power to affect change? Regards, --Martin-- > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From wgstoddard at gmail.com Tue Feb 2 12:14:36 2010 From: wgstoddard at gmail.com (Bill Stoddard) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:14:36 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Coordination is hard In-Reply-To: <9C76738F-7414-4375-8807-A0D53EA6D76F@place.org> References: <9C76738F-7414-4375-8807-A0D53EA6D76F@place.org> Message-ID: <4B6887AC.4010803@gmail.com> On 2/2/10 10:53 AM, Jeff Bone wrote: > > On the democracy / government / scalability front... Hanson, today: > > http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/02/coordination-is-hard.html > > Nb., these comments are true of any "organization" --- i.e., group of > individuals ostensibly attempting to accomplish an overall goal or > variety of goals cooperatively / by working together, leveraging each > others' work, yet with potentially dissimilar or even competing > interests and priorities and subgoals. Several things make this > acutely difficult in government, which are nonetheless fundamental to > the very ideas and nature of "government." > > But it's no less a problem in e.g. companies. The interesting bit, > from my perspective, is that there are increasingly compelling > existence proofs (Google, Netflix, etc.) that effectiveness at real > corporate scale requires a high level of "stigmergy" --- i.e., > disorganization and decentralized, ad hoc coordination. But there are > also very good proofs that this *fails* to work in many cases. > Understanding what allows it to work in some but not in others would, > I think, be useful. (I have my own conjectures about that, but will > keep them to myself for now.) > Perhaps a goal that lends itself to being understand by 'organizational instinct'? Every member of the organization can relate, almost instinctively, to the business goal. In those cases, stigmergy 'works'. > > jb > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 12:23:06 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:23:06 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Different standards for slander / libel / calumny - The Age of Propaganda In-Reply-To: References: <4B686C99.8050409@lig.net> Message-ID: <4B6889AA.9010304@lig.net> mdw at martinwills.com wrote: >> ... >> With the Internet and certain polarization of "News" media, it seems >> qualitatively different than the past. We've always had a largely >> ignorant public, however it used to be more clear to more people which >> speakers were more ignorant than others. >> >> sdw >> >> > > Interesting... Why don't you exercise your constitutional rights to bring > this to the attention of your appropriate representation (i.e. state and > federal representatives) rather than rant about it to a group that has > little or no power to affect change? > > Regards, > --Martin-- > Probably, you greatly underestimate this group, both the active, lurkers, and real-time or eventual readers. And any representative worth talking to should be reading FoRK already anyway. ;-) To wit, I've already started thinking through a solution and registered a good domain to solve the problem. Although I would need a lot of help to push it forward. And because I wanted to check whether my perception was off or something since nearly everyone seems to just accept the gaffes and gaps in truth. Nothing seems remain in the overall consciousness but jumbled perceptions reinforced by bias and a murky history of recursive counter-accusations. sdw From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 12:28:21 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:28:21 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Coordination is hard In-Reply-To: <4B6887AC.4010803@gmail.com> References: <9C76738F-7414-4375-8807-A0D53EA6D76F@place.org> <4B6887AC.4010803@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B688AE5.2020905@lig.net> Bill Stoddard wrote: > On 2/2/10 10:53 AM, Jeff Bone wrote: >> >> On the democracy / government / scalability front... Hanson, today: >> >> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/02/coordination-is-hard.html >> >> Nb., these comments are true of any "organization" --- i.e., group of >> individuals ostensibly attempting to accomplish an overall goal or >> variety of goals cooperatively / by working together, leveraging each >> others' work, yet with potentially dissimilar or even competing >> interests and priorities and subgoals. Several things make this >> acutely difficult in government, which are nonetheless fundamental to >> the very ideas and nature of "government." >> >> But it's no less a problem in e.g. companies. The interesting bit, >> from my perspective, is that there are increasingly compelling >> existence proofs (Google, Netflix, etc.) that effectiveness at real >> corporate scale requires a high level of "stigmergy" --- i.e., >> disorganization and decentralized, ad hoc coordination. But there >> are also very good proofs that this *fails* to work in many cases. >> Understanding what allows it to work in some but not in others would, >> I think, be useful. (I have my own conjectures about that, but will >> keep them to myself for now.) >> > Perhaps a goal that lends itself to being understand by > 'organizational instinct'? Every member of the organization can > relate, almost instinctively, to the business goal. In those cases, > stigmergy 'works'. Core principles, BHAG (g==goal), etc. "Built to Last." et al. You can have all of that and still fail if you undermine the autonomy and power of individuals in various ways, which most organizations do. However those aspects are fundamentally needed. You could argue effectively that any group within an organization that is not actively working towards these goals can sabotage the whole effort. Working directly against the core principles and goals is even worse. sdw >> >> jb From mdw at martinwills.com Tue Feb 2 12:30:25 2010 From: mdw at martinwills.com (mdw at martinwills.com) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 14:30:25 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Different standards for slander / libel / calumny - The Age of Propaganda In-Reply-To: <4B6889AA.9010304@lig.net> References: <4B686C99.8050409@lig.net> <4B6889AA.9010304@lig.net> Message-ID: > mdw at martinwills.com wrote: >>> ... >>> With the Internet and certain polarization of "News" media, it seems >>> qualitatively different than the past. We've always had a largely >>> ignorant public, however it used to be more clear to more people which >>> speakers were more ignorant than others. >>> >>> sdw >>> >>> >> >> Interesting... Why don't you exercise your constitutional rights to >> bring >> this to the attention of your appropriate representation (i.e. state and >> federal representatives) rather than rant about it to a group that has >> little or no power to affect change? >> >> Regards, >> --Martin-- >> > > Probably, you greatly underestimate this group, both the active, > lurkers, and real-time or eventual readers. And any representative > worth talking to should be reading FoRK already anyway. ;-) > > To wit, I've already started thinking through a solution and registered > a good domain to solve the problem. Although I would need a lot of help > to push it forward. > > And because I wanted to check whether my perception was off or something > since nearly everyone seems to just accept the gaffes and gaps in > truth. Nothing seems remain in the overall consciousness but jumbled > perceptions reinforced by bias and a murky history of recursive > counter-accusations. > > sdw > That being said. I currently have the domain political-revolt.org already available with Wordpress I can volunteer for you purposes if it meets your needs. Regards, --Martin-- > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Tue Feb 2 13:34:02 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 13:34:02 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <605299.16858.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <605299.16858.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1C96A211-3012-4C05-A649-61140DCCC7CE@radicalcentrism.org> On Feb 1, 2010, at 8:02 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote: >> imply 13 million iPads by the end of June 2011 > It still lacks context, Ernie. In your original note you said, "For example, I'm willing to bet a $50 gift card to Kiva.org that the iPad will do to existing tablet and netbook computers what the iPhone and iPod did to their respective categories." > > You need at least one data point for each product to illustrate what they "did to their respective categories". That would be their marketshare after some meaningful period of time, say, one or two years after they were introduced. Without that, the actual number of units sold really isn't very meaningful. E.g. a few million might sound impressive but if it's only 0.8% marketshare it's hardly noticable. Contrariwise, a few hundred thousand might well be impressive if it's 25% after a year. Geez, you're really trying to turn this into a fact-based analysis rather than an excuse to vent hot air, aren't you? :-) A quick Google shows Netbooks in 2009 shipped 40M units for $11B in revenue (implying ASP of $275). http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/netbook-shipments-2009/ So, 13 million iPads in 15 months would be at least $6.5B, and probably more like $8B+. That would compare very favorably to the 10% share the iPhone was said to have two years after release: http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/05/20/iphone-doubles-share-smartphone-market/ Course, that report said iPhone had 5% market (unit) share only a year in, which would be 4-5M units in 12 months for the iPad. That seems a no-brainer; I'd give 2-to-1 odds on that. We could also bet on the 20% number in 2 years, which at that point would probably be close the 13M I predicted within 15 months. > Also, your bet assumes it will be tablet and netbook markets that will be most impacted. Much of the chatter I've read is assuming it's ebooks that will be most affected by the iPad's existence. > > Perhaps a more interesting bet is which market(s) it will impact most? Well, the Kindle is rumoured to have sold 3 million units: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/29/3-million-amazon-kindles-sold-apparently/ The iPad will almost certainly crush that number, though obviously not all of that would be for book reading. Still, if Kindle hardware sales drop dramatically, I suspect we could easily ascribe that to the iPad effect. Alas, Amazon rarely releases sales numbers for Kindles, and I suspect they will become even more reluctant to do so... -- Ernie P. From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Tue Feb 2 13:39:35 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 13:39:35 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> Message-ID: Hi Gordon, On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:23 PM, Gordon Mohr wrote: > Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: >> So, anyone willing to bet *against* Apple selling 13 million iPads by June 2011? > > I will. $50? Deal. > We can expect Apple's quarterly report for the quarter ending June 2011 to give enough info, right? Um, not necessarily. I don't think they break out unit shipments very often. We'd have to wait for some milestone press release, and perhaps interpolate. In case of vagueness, we can refer it to the list (ultimately, Rohit) for adjudication. > And I actually think the iPad will be a big hit. Just not that big, in the first 15 months. Not as many people need iPads as iPhones. They just don't know it. :-) Plus, don't forget that the iPhone didn't have an App Store and was limited to very few countries / carriers during that timeframe. On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:32 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: I think the macro scale impact of iPad is in changing the traditional > desktop metaphor for the PC. I'm not convinced that iPad itself will > sell a huge number of copies, but I do think it's likely that > iPad-like user experiences will become common on machines with as much > power as a PC. "I'm not convinced" -- are you just waffling, or will you join Gordon and put $50 behind your opinion? -- Ernie P. From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Tue Feb 2 14:03:02 2010 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 14:03:02 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Apple eBook contact? In-Reply-To: <1C96A211-3012-4C05-A649-61140DCCC7CE@radicalcentrism.org> References: <605299.16858.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1C96A211-3012-4C05-A649-61140DCCC7CE@radicalcentrism.org> Message-ID: <1496826B-EB19-4B22-8926-BF780324AB83@ceruleansystems.com> Tangential to the iPad eBook discussion, how does a publisher get ahold of someone at Apple to put their books on the iPad? I was just asked this question by a representative of a major publisher that is trying to find someone who might be able to (eventually) direct them to the right person at Apple. They were one of the major anchor publishers for the initial Kindle release and they want to put their catalog on the iPad. It seems like something Apple would want but apparently Apple hasn't made it easy. I know we have some Apple folks here, so if anyone has a point of contact that they can share offlist it would be much appreciated. Thanks! (Now back to our regularly scheduled ranting.) From sean at conman.org Tue Feb 2 14:13:27 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 17:13:27 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: <20100202221327.GA3677@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated: > > (Like removable media > before it, this idea of a direct WAN connection + Wi-Fi in every > mobile device is daft. That won't keep millions from buying into the > notion before they find that the friction of having to manage this on > lots of devices becomes prohibitive.) I think this is where the confusion happened. I know I didn't understand what you were talking about. In my line of work [1] we have a customer who does WAN Wi-Fi (wireless networking that's measured in miles, not feet), and our own network has what amounts to a 50 mile ethernet cable (connecting computers in Boca Raton, Florida to computers down in Miami [2]. Without further clarification, it was difficult to understand what you were saying. Also, I take it you have issues with laptops with both ethernet *and* wi-fi? In addition, I don't understand the removable media bit. -spc (For pennance, write a 500 word essay in the differences between LANs, WANs and MANs ... ) [1] We host websites and do Internet networking conslutting. [2] NAP of the Americas http://www.terremark.com/technology-platform/nap-of-the-americas.aspx From sean at conman.org Tue Feb 2 14:26:58 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 17:26:58 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: <20100202222658.GB3677@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated: > > Should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: > > This device *should* be your phone. And of course, with jailbreaks / > rooting / etc. and a little hackery, it can be and already is for many > folks. I'd just like the carriers to man up and work with the phone > makers to make this the standard modus operandi / personal networking > architecture. That's the last thing the Monopolistic Phone Company wants (breakup or no, it's *still* Ma Bell under the rubber mask). Their mindset is that of circuit-switching intelligent network with a dumb edge (they gain value by adding features and services to the network) while the Intenet is a packet-switched dumb network with a smart edge (new features and services are added at the edge, outside the control of the dumb central network, which just exists to fling data as fast as possible) [1]. Faster pipes? It's a lot harder to upsell that. Hindsight being 20/20, I think that Ma Bell should have been broken up by service (one company getting the physical wires, another company renting said pipes to provide phone service) instead of geographically. Then maybe we'd have decent Internet providers. -spc (bits are bits, after all ... ) [1] http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/stupidnet.html From marty at halvorson.us Tue Feb 2 16:28:15 2010 From: marty at halvorson.us (Marty Halvorson) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:28:15 -0700 Subject: [FoRK] Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) Message-ID: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> David Kammeyer wrote: "The tablet is more like a clipboard -- imagine a doctor coming in to see a patient carrying a laptop vs. one of these." My doctor has a gadget much like a clipboard. Except it's probably a laptop with the screen facing up when it's closed. It's about the same size as a paper file folder. In my case, the paper file is thicker than the laptop. It has a touch screen, a screen scribe with some text recognition, no mouse, and no keyboard. It contains my complete medical file. According to the doc, it took several months for everyone's medical file to be loaded to a server. When I have an appointment, my complete file is loaded, along with everyone else's that have an appointment that day. It's quite nice to look up medical test results without having to page through many pieces of paper. Peace, Marty Halvorson From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Tue Feb 2 16:37:57 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 16:37:57 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> Message-ID: Hi Marty, On Feb 2, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Marty Halvorson wrote: > David Kammeyer wrote: > "The tablet is more like a clipboard -- imagine a doctor coming in to see a patient carrying a laptop vs. one of these." > > My doctor has a gadget much like a clipboard. Except it's probably a laptop with the screen facing up when it's closed. It's about the same size as a paper file folder. In my case, the paper file is thicker than the laptop. It has a touch screen, a screen scribe with some text recognition, no mouse, and no keyboard. It contains my complete medical file. According to the doc, it took several months for everyone's medical file to be loaded to a server. When I have an appointment, my complete file is loaded, along with everyone else's that have an appointment that day. It's quite nice to look up medical test results without having to page through many pieces of paper. Yeah, i briefly fantasized about quitting my day job to build an iPad application optimized for doctor-patient interaction (my family is full of doctors, so I'm painfully aware of how archaic and arcane most of their technology is). I wonder who built that gadget of yours, and whether they're considering an iPad version... -- Ernie P. From kammeyer at rocketmail.com Tue Feb 2 16:44:58 2010 From: kammeyer at rocketmail.com (David Kammeyer) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 16:44:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <20100202222658.GB3677@brevard.conman.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <20100202222658.GB3677@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <910940.7425.qm@web50901.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > From: Sean Conner > Hindsight being 20/20, I think that Ma Bell should have been broken up by > service (one company getting the physical wires, another company renting > said pipes to provide phone service) instead of geographically. Then maybe > we'd have decent Internet providers. > This was tried in the late nineties. The Telecom Deregulation act in 1996 required that the baby bells lease out their equipment at regulated rates to competitors. Thus were born companies called CLECs that could rent wires from the local carriers to provide DSL and regular phone service. To do this, they had to install equipment in the switching stations. There was a time when you could get DSL from three or more providers if you lived in a major urban area. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, mostly the uncooperativeness of the baby bells in following the regulations, the CLECS have virtually entirely died out. -Dave From sean at conman.org Tue Feb 2 17:26:49 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:26:49 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <910940.7425.qm@web50901.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <20100202222658.GB3677@brevard.conman.org> <910940.7425.qm@web50901.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20100203012649.GA15546@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great David Kammeyer once stated: > > From: Sean Conner > > > > Hindsight being 20/20, I think that Ma Bell should have been broken up by > > service (one company getting the physical wires, another company renting > > said pipes to provide phone service) instead of geographically. Then maybe > > we'd have decent Internet providers. > > > > This was tried in the late nineties. The Telecom Deregulation act in 1996 > required that the baby bells lease out their equipment at regulated rates > to competitors. Not quite the same---the baby bells still owned both the pipes *and* the service. Had the split been between pipes and service, then the Telecom Deregulation Act would probably not have been required. > Thus were born companies called CLECs that could rent wires from the local > carriers to provide DSL and regular phone service. To do this, they had > to install equipment in the switching stations. There was a time when you > could get DSL from three or more providers if you lived in a major urban > area. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, mostly the > uncooperativeness of the baby bells in following the regulations, the > CLECS have virtually entirely died out. I have a few friends that went the CLEC route (mostly in the ISP business). It was nice being able to control both ends of my personal DSL connection (via said friends), but The Monopolistic Phone Company made it economically difficult for this to continue. -spc (Who misses having 32 static addresses for the home network) From gojomo at boxbe.com Tue Feb 2 17:43:00 2010 From: gojomo at boxbe.com (Gordon Mohr) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:43:00 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> Message-ID: <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > Hi Gordon, > > On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:23 PM, Gordon Mohr wrote: >> Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: >>> So, anyone willing to bet *against* Apple selling 13 million iPads by June 2011? >> I will. $50? > > Deal. It's on! >> We can expect Apple's quarterly report for the quarter ending June 2011 to give enough info, right? > > Um, not necessarily. I don't think they break out unit shipments very often. We'd have to wait for some milestone press release, and perhaps interpolate. In case of vagueness, we can refer it to the list (ultimately, Rohit) for adjudication. > >> And I actually think the iPad will be a big hit. Just not that big, in the first 15 months. Not as many people need iPads as iPhones. > > They just don't know it. :-) Plus, don't forget that the iPhone didn't have an App Store and was limited to very few countries / carriers during that timeframe. The most bullish analyst (BroadPoint AmTech) has a prediction that, if you squint and front-load their year-two numbers, just barely touches your estimate. See: http://www.benzinga.com/104011/apple%E2%80%99s-ipad-tears-up-the-rulebook zoom: http://iphonasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Picture-19.png ...or... http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/28/wall_street_expects_apples_risky_ipad_to_sell_1m_5m_in_first_year.html Note that these are from people who are generally bullish on the device and AAPL. So if they're all wrong, I lose. > On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:32 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: > I think the macro scale impact of iPad is in changing the traditional >> desktop metaphor for the PC. I'm not convinced that iPad itself will >> sell a huge number of copies, but I do think it's likely that >> iPad-like user experiences will become common on machines with as much >> power as a PC. > > "I'm not convinced" -- are you just waffling, or will you join Gordon and put $50 behind your opinion? Be an Ernie P.[1] or a Russell T. [2], not an Adam B. [3,4] -- put your money where your mouth is! - Gordon [1] this exchange [2] http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20050110/033188.html I won the bet as I offered -- USD did finish 2005 up against EUR -- though Russell was right on the CAD and the long-term trend! [3] http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2001-December/007548.html [4] http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2001-December/007550.html Despite my offer to let Adam pick addresses and timeframe, I don't think that even with 8 years' hindsight, and occasional nibbles at metered service testing in some regions, he could today find 5 addresses that had unmetered 1Mbps broadband in 2001 and then got more-expensive and/or metered broadband anytime since. So, his unwillingness to bet revealed the foolhardiness of his prediction that metering was the inevitable future of home internet access! From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 18:05:56 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:05:56 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> Message-ID: <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > Hi Marty, > > On Feb 2, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Marty Halvorson wrote: > >> David Kammeyer wrote: >> "The tablet is more like a clipboard -- imagine a doctor coming in to see a patient carrying a laptop vs. one of these." >> >> My doctor has a gadget much like a clipboard. Except it's probably a laptop with the screen facing up when it's closed. It's about the same size as a paper file folder. In my case, the paper file is thicker than the laptop. It has a touch screen, a screen scribe with some text recognition, no mouse, and no keyboard. It contains my complete medical file. According to the doc, it took several months for everyone's medical file to be loaded to a server. When I have an appointment, my complete file is loaded, along with everyone else's that have an appointment that day. It's quite nice to look up medical test results without having to page through many pieces of paper. >> > > Yeah, i briefly fantasized about quitting my day job to build an iPad application optimized for doctor-patient interaction (my family is full of doctors, so I'm painfully aware of how archaic and arcane most of their technology is). > > I wonder who built that gadget of yours, and whether they're considering an iPad version... > > -- Ernie P. > The facility that we go to, which has just about every specialty integrated including electronic-only lab, xray, and MRI, has computers on the wall of every office and patient room. They have a proximity ID card along with biometric login which more or less instantly brings up their patients, appointments, medical records, etc. Just a couple hours ago I watched an orthopedist scan through the 3D images of a high resolution MRI for someone to show us where a tendon was swollen. They are pretty slick. A dr. can order an xray, you walk 40 ft., wait a few minutes, have the xray taken, walk back to the doctor, and have it read on any patient-room screen immediately and be on your way in a few more minutes. And this is not an HMO or hospital. Why carry a pad when the computer next to you is part of (some) cloud that gives you secure access to the info you need? sdw From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 18:35:41 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:35:41 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> Message-ID: <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> Clarifications for Mr. Conner, etc. > I think this is where the confusion happened. I know I didn't > understand what you were talking about. In my line of work [1] we > have a customer who does WAN Wi-Fi (wireless networking that's > measured in miles, not feet), and our own network has what amounts > to a 50 mile ethernet cable (connecting computers in Boca Raton, > Florida to computers down in Miami [2]. Without further > clarification, it was difficult to understand what you were saying. > That's great and all, but let me clarify. Apologies if the sloppy terminology was mistaken for something else. By "WAN" --- in the above discussion *only*, and my assumption was that this would be clear from context --- I was referring to portable devices w/ 3G cellular broadband interfaces. The proposition was that, really, you don't need more than *one* device w/ both Wi-Fi and 3G interfaces. Everything else really only needs Wi-Fi, for most use cases, assuming the one that's got both can serve as a portable router between its own super-local Wi-Fi network and 3G. When in range of some better Wi-Fi - > broadband connectivity, that dual purpose device (and all the others) wouldn't need to use 3G. That clear now? Re: removable media, it's just a losing idea and always has been: media, formats, acceptable capacities, connectors, drive technologies, etc. etc. etc. all change so quickly that it's been a loser for years. It's just not "durable" (in the long-term sense, i.e., useful for more than a few years.) That hasn't kept millions of people from spending billions of dollars on such storage over the years, and consequently losing it. It also hasn't kept Sony and others for attempting, repeatedly, to lock a market using one kind of proprietary media and storage technology after another. It's a vicious cycle. (Obligatory disclosure; yeah, there are those rare occasions when it's useful --- bricked device rescue, for example. So yeah, I've got a thumb drive or two for those kinds of uses myself, despite being "philosophically" opposed to the idea of removable media in general...) As for the whole ethernet / wi-fi thing, that might be a reasonable extrapolation, but really I'm not too offended by that. But then, I don't have to buy a contract with either one of those... ;-) (The subtext of my objection about 3G +/- Wi-Fi is that, given their druthers, I'm sure the carriers would love to force the device manufacturers to *only* put 3G interfaces into *everything* --- and of course you'd need a contract, or at least a line-item on your bill, for each of those.) I guess in part I just object to the waste of having radios in every (or most, or even multiple) devices (and paying the hardware cost there, marginal though it might be --- and Stephen, you do realize the device manufacturer price-add relative to the wholesale cost-add is in the 10x range, right?) when that radio is useless w/o a contract / additional business relationship with somebody who answers the other end of that signal. ONE such relationship, and one such device, is technically sufficient for most use cases (even the multi-device ones) I can come up, certainly for myself and I would assume for most folks. (Stephen's objections notwithstanding; though I don't actually understand why he assumes, for example, that using your phone as your 3G->Wi-Fi router would preclude its use as your phone at any given moment...) Re: the dumb / smart network deal, but of course. This was nailed years ago by a sometime friend of mine, who subsequently got fired for taking the trouble to speak truth to power. ;-) For my own little part in this, my first company made its first nut *proving* the point; four scruffy guys and a POP client killed a 9-figure investment in rather stupid (ahem) "smart network" technology by AT&T. That my argument wouldn't sit well with the telcos doesn't, of course, invalidate it. In fact, I'd say that it supports it. ;-) :-) jb From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 18:38:19 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:38:19 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad Message-ID: I'm down w/ Dr. Ernie on this one, though only mildly and w/ some uncertainty regarding the timeframes involved. Mark Cuban convinced me. ;-) I don't think the bet's really been elaborated clearly and testably enough, though, so I'm just going to have to voice my support for the "pro" side of the proposition rather than actually put any money on it (though I'd love to if a good market for such things existed. This seems a bit trivial for e.g. Long Bets.) jb From sdw at lig.net Tue Feb 2 19:03:23 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:03:23 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> Message-ID: <4B68E77B.6090102@lig.net> Jeff Bone wrote: > > ... > > Re: removable media, it's just a losing idea and always has been: > media, formats, acceptable capacities, connectors, drive technologies, > etc. etc. etc. all change so quickly that it's been a loser for > years. It's just not "durable" (in the long-term sense, i.e., useful > for more than a few years.) That hasn't kept millions of people from > spending billions of dollars on such storage over the years, and > consequently losing it. It also hasn't kept Sony and others for > attempting, repeatedly, to lock a market using one kind of proprietary > media and storage technology after another. It's a vicious cycle. > (Obligatory disclosure; yeah, there are those rare occasions when > it's useful --- bricked device rescue, for example. So yeah, I've got > a thumb drive or two for those kinds of uses myself, despite being > "philosophically" opposed to the idea of removable media in general...) USB works for this for non-pocket use. MicroSD or whatever is fine. There was plenty of crap and crap strategies. (I'm looking at you, Sony.) It doesn't matter much that there are many standards when the devices cost $16 and 54-in-1 adapters cost $12. > > As for the whole ethernet / wi-fi thing, that might be a reasonable > extrapolation, but really I'm not too offended by that. But then, I > don't have to buy a contract with either one of those... ;-) (The > subtext of my objection about 3G +/- Wi-Fi is that, given their > druthers, I'm sure the carriers would love to force the device > manufacturers to *only* put 3G interfaces into *everything* --- and of > course you'd need a contract, or at least a line-item on your bill, > for each of those.) I guess in part I just object to the waste of > having radios in every (or most, or even multiple) devices (and paying > the hardware cost there, marginal though it might be --- and Stephen, > you do realize the device manufacturer price-add relative to the > wholesale cost-add is in the 10x range, right?) when that radio is > useless w/o a contract / I don't care if it is cheap enough. Wifi is nothing now. ZigBee will be like $0.50 per device at some point. 3G hardware isn't that great size/price wise, but not horrible. 4G (WiMax/LTE (maybe) is similar to 3G hardware in price now. Presumably it could be a lot cheaper. I agree that useless radios everywhere aren't that great. And I don't want more than 1 or 2 "contract" "lines", total. On the other hand, the same radio could implement WiFi, WiMax, LTE, etc. There may be no reason we can't do WiMax distances over unlicensed spectrum for WiFi-like usage while being able to do carrier WiMax when desired. > additional business relationship with somebody who answers the other > end of that signal. ONE such relationship, and one such device, is > technically sufficient for most use cases (even the multi-device ones) > I can come up, certainly for myself and I would assume for most > folks. (Stephen's objections notwithstanding; though I don't > actually understand why he assumes, for example, that using your phone > as your 3G->Wi-Fi router would preclude its use as your phone at any > given moment...) Because that's how CDMA2000 3G (and 2.5G and 1G) works. With 4G, everyone is VOIP so that goes away completely. > > Re: the dumb / smart network deal, but of course. This was nailed > years ago by a sometime friend of mine, who subsequently got fired for > taking the trouble to speak truth to power. ;-) For my own little > part in this, my first company made its first nut *proving* the > point; four scruffy guys and a POP client killed a 9-figure > investment in rather stupid (ahem) "smart network" technology by > AT&T. That my argument wouldn't sit well with the telcos doesn't, of > course, invalidate it. In fact, I'd say that it supports it. ;-) :-) I agree, telecoms squandered massive amounts of cash on stupidity and obstinance. And now they're losing most of their customers and angles. > > > jb sdw From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 19:24:28 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 21:24:28 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Remembrance Agents Message-ID: sdw asks about remembrance agents... > What do you use for a remembrance agent? Rolled my own; really more proof of concept / experiment than anything. Toy to tool in surprisingly short time. There are several others, including at least one Mac version (name escapes me) that unfortunately didn't quite seem to be ready for prime time when I last looked. > How does it work? It's a collection of bash scripts driven by data from a variety of sources, including grabbing data from various Mac apps via (gack!) AppleScript. Currently considering using Pennyworth (in some future version) for much broader and more sophisticated context-gathering. Unfortunately, if you want to integrate w/ apps that don't use whatever clue bus you decide on, you're forced to use some combination of log-scraping, web-scraping, command output-parsing, (e.g. on Mac) little Cocoa API-driving CLI utilities and AppleScript polling... Just a terminal thing. Display uses e.g. tset directly. Needs to be re-written in some thing else. Basically, it only does a few things. (1) It displays a header with some context info: location, local time, local weather, etc. Uses network awareness and geolocation for location determination, and then gets the rest based on that. (2) Its default mode is to cycle through a context-specific view of my todo.txt task manager data, showing me what's on my list of things to do, next actions, etc. It also has a concept called "focus" built-in; it's really just a minimalist query / filter language (some syntactic sugar around my usual uses of e.g. grep for such things, e.g. "@home -p:later - p:weekend" in order to trim the fat. (3) Hotkeys and / or shell commands can switch mode to quickly do several other small tasks: display (a subset, potentially filtered or transformed) of the clipboard, as text; display contact information from Address Book for the most-recent contact-of-interest from e.g. Mail, from a Web page, etc.; do dictionary lookups on the five least-common words from the most recently-viewed web page, with optional summary from Wikipedia given another key command; display status of various devices at the house (a kind of home automation summary screen, no control functionality yet); incoming e-mail notification and summary. That's about it for now, and probably all I will ever do to it before rewriting it w/ a bit more architecture aforethought. There's not much (i.e., nothing) there that you can't find e.g. a dashboard widget for. The main benefits vs. dashboard are: always there, always on, in-my-face when I am using my machine as a terminal, which is most of the time; and it is (minimally) context aware and reactive rather than something I have to "drive" for most common tasks. I.e., I can just watch it for a brief time and minimally "drive" it; it's job is to deliver useful information to me based on some contextual cues, and to default to something useful. > How do you use it? I look at it. ;-) Occasionally, I hit a few keys that explicitly make it change what it's showing me (as opposed to the default mode of it just "deciding" to make such changes in what it shows based on context.) > How well does it work for you? Works well enough for me to want a better version. ;-) > How often do you use it? All the time. Literally. The only time I can't see it is when I'm not in the terminal, and a future version would remedy that (I.e., I'd have a standalone GUI / wrapper for the basic functionality.) jb From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 19:32:32 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 21:32:32 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> Message-ID: <51A7B2FD-93CA-491D-A8C4-956738ADECAA@place.org> sdw says: > It doesn't matter much that there are many standards when the > devices cost $16 and 54-in-1 adapters cost $12. Actually, I disagree. You made this general point about the marginal cost of different radios, too. It's not about the pure cost economics; it's about the additive complexity and cognitive overhead, which is non-linear in the number of different standards / geegaws / etc... Occam's razor: don't needlessly multiple entities... ;-) $0.02, jb From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 19:55:43 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 21:55:43 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <51A7B2FD-93CA-491D-A8C4-956738ADECAA@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> <51A7B2FD-93CA-491D-A8C4-956738ADECAA@place.org> Message-ID: <5F22AAD1-8AC8-4D73-9883-6C7085405AC7@place.org> On Feb 2, 2010, at 9:32 PM, Jeff Bone wrote: > Occam's razor: don't needlessly multiple entities... ;-) Or multiply, if you prefer... :-/ ;-) English, I, not so much. jb From sean at conman.org Tue Feb 2 20:01:25 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 23:01:25 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> <46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org> <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org> Message-ID: <20100203040124.GA1694@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated: > > Clarifications for Mr. Conner, etc. > > That's great and all, but let me clarify. Apologies if the sloppy > terminology was mistaken for something else. By "WAN" --- in the > above discussion *only*, and my assumption was that this would be > clear from context --- I was referring to portable devices w/ 3G > cellular broadband interfaces. The proposition was that, really, you > don't need more than *one* device w/ both Wi-Fi and 3G interfaces. > Everything else really only needs Wi-Fi, for most use cases, assuming > the one that's got both can serve as a portable router between its own > super-local Wi-Fi network and 3G. When in range of some better Wi-Fi - > > broadband connectivity, that dual purpose device (and all the > others) wouldn't need to use 3G. > > That clear now? Yes. > Re: removable media, it's just a losing idea and always has been: > media, formats, acceptable capacities, connectors, drive technologies, > etc. etc. etc. all change so quickly that it's been a loser for > years. It's just not "durable" (in the long-term sense, i.e., useful > for more than a few years.) That hasn't kept millions of people from > spending billions of dollars on such storage over the years, and > consequently losing it. It also hasn't kept Sony and others for > attempting, repeatedly, to lock a market using one kind of proprietary > media and storage technology after another. It's a vicious cycle. > (Obligatory disclosure; yeah, there are those rare occasions when > it's useful --- bricked device rescue, for example. So yeah, I've got > a thumb drive or two for those kinds of uses myself, despite being > "philosophically" opposed to the idea of removable media in general...) Interesting. I've seen removable media used as backups (I worked for a time at a Winn Dixie distribution center and part of my job was driving a few tape cartridges of critical data off site to a secure facility and bringing back previous tapes) and I right now carry a USB key with signed certificates so I can log into work from any Internet capable PC with a web browser (and copies of puTTY, a Windows SSH client since it's a 90% chance that any Internet capable PC will be running Windows). And never underestimate the bandwidth [1] of a station wagon loaded with tapes [2]. -spc (Hmm ... I just noticed my removable 1T external harddrive ... ) [1] Or technically, would it be throughput? [2] I remember hearing that at some point in the 80s/very early 90s, it was faster to airship tapes of USENET than to transmit USENET via copper (daily flights). From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 20:17:14 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 22:17:14 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] hardware standards (a few more thoughts...) Message-ID: There's a reason auto companies and their constituents all up and down the supply chain "standardize" parts. A reason that militaries everywhere spend enormous resources insuring interoperability of a few basic models of the tools they use --- while simultaneously training soldiers that if, for example, you're deployed in Africa and cut off from your logistics, you should toss that .223 and pick up the first AK you see. A reason we've got e.g. UL certification, FCC certification, etc. A reason why the preppers insist on buying certain old models of truck for the rural retreat property, and or certain calibers of firearms. Absent such things, it's sort of a catch-22; and, perhaps, a decent example of market failure. One might suppose that "markets" would sort out and choose between technologies based on superiority or optimality or fitness of some kind, but all too often the actual suppliers in the market manipulate such things to their advantage, to the detriment of the buyers. One "benefit" (though perhaps it doesn't outweigh the costs) to e.g. a China-like system is that they can simply dictate that *the* interface for all mobile devices is micro USB, or whatever. Not all "choice" is actually to the benefit of the chooser. $0.02, jb From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Tue Feb 2 20:30:57 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:30:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <20100202222658.GB3677@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <415162.78978.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Sean Conner wrote: > > ? That's the last thing the Monopolistic Phone Company wants (breakup or no, > it's *still* Ma Bell under the rubber mask).? Their mindset is that of > circuit-switching intelligent network with a dumb edge (they gain value by > adding features and services to the network) while the Intenet is a > packet-switched dumb network with a smart edge (new features and services > are added at the edge, outside the control of the dumb central network, > which just exists to fling data as fast as possible) [1].? > > [1]??? http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/stupidnet.html > Wow, I just about hacked up a lung from all the dust on that thing. How old is that article anyway? Hint: he refers to his time on AT&T True Voice. That was circa 1990-93 or thereabouts, if memory serves. Intelligent Network (IN) technology was all the big thing in the late 80's and early 90's, around the same time as narrowband and broadband ISDN. Things have changed just a bit since then. I know you Americans really hate your giant phone companies, and not entirely without justification. But if you're going to trash them at least do it with something related to their operations in the current century. Circulating or referencing such dateless articles without also providing some way to place it in time should be outlawed. Or at least seriously frowned upon. E.g. Dateless != Timeless. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Tue Feb 2 20:43:50 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:43:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <235034.57895.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > > > > My doctor has a gadget much like a clipboard.? > > Except it's probably a laptop with the screen facing up when > > it's closed.? > > > I wonder who built that gadget of yours, and whether > they're considering an iPad version... > Ernie, it was very likely just a Wintel laptop. There are laptops available that you can rotate the screen and flop it down on the keyboard, turning it into a tablet. Check, for example, the HP TX1000. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From jbone at place.org Tue Feb 2 20:53:14 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 22:53:14 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) Message-ID: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> Sean says: > And never underestimate the bandwidth [1] of a station wagon loaded > with tapes [2]. Yeah, that's the standard argument. Realistically, in all these years in the industry, I have yet to see any significant *data transfer* accomplished via such means (or a FedEx full of CDs, etc.) I have seen (and actually been party to) shipments on the order of a truck full of pre-configured server racks, but the point there isn't really data transfer. Offsite data storage, yeah, but not particularly for bandwidth reasons (cost-vs-bandwidth, perhaps, arguably.) SneakerNet is SneakerNet no matter what form it takes. If that's all you've got, or you can't afford something better, then you make do. But for my own time and money, I prefer my bits online and have for some time (like, about 25 years or so ;-) In fact, at Sun, I was always amused by the "Network is the Computer" slogan. IMHO, it should've been "the network is the hard drive." (Particularly given that a large part of their success was due to NFS.) You shouldn't have to move bits around *as if* they were atoms. Ken says: > Wow, I just about hacked up a lung from all the dust on that thing. Some of the best insights --- and fundamental ones that change the world you and I and all the rest of us live in --- happened a while back. Isenberg's paper is actually *seminal.* It more or less singlehandedly put the telecom industry on notice. Making fun of important work simply because it happened a while back is, well, ridiculous. BTW, I had my chronology reversed. We'd already killed AT&T's $100M+ Telescript investment with $400k and a POP client before David wrote that; it was written in 1997. Telescript was dead by 1996. jb From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Tue Feb 2 21:39:53 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 21:39:53 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> Message-ID: Hi Stephen, On Feb 2, 2010, at 18:05, Stephen Williams wrote: > Why carry a pad when the computer next to you is part of (some) cloud that gives you secure access to the info you need? I'm all for storing this in the cloud, but the reason I am intrigued by a pad is as a subtle but intelligent note-taking device. My wife's office has computers everywhere, but they all involve breaking off from interacting with the patient to type into the keyboard. A wall screen is an intriguing idea, especially for sharing information with the patient, but I'm not sure if that solves the data entry problem. For example: > Ernie, it was very likely just a Wintel laptop. There are laptops available that you can rotate the screen and flop it down on the keyboard, turning it into a tablet. Check, for example, the HP TX1000. Sorry, I meant the software, not the hardware. My (admittedly limited) experience with traditional medical record software is that they look like a tn3270 bad nightmare with a gazillion tiny fields, which would be impossible to navigate on a tablet. I'm hoping whoever designed the software for that tablet-like device actually simplified the UI to the point of being useful, which would be a great start... -- Ernie P. From whump at mac.com Tue Feb 2 21:59:53 2010 From: whump at mac.com (Bill Humphries) Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:59:53 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> Message-ID: <4B3FF0EE-1FF2-42BF-8FAC-D9E074CF8780@mac.com> On Feb 2, 2010, at 9:39 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > I'm all for storing this in the cloud, but the reason I am intrigued by a pad is as a subtle but intelligent note-taking device. My wife's office has computers everywhere, but they all involve breaking off from interacting with the patient to type into the keyboard. A wall screen is an intriguing idea, especially for sharing information with the patient, but I'm not sure if that solves the data entry problem. My dentist switched to electronic records and the chair now has a flat screen with my latest x-rays displayed when I arrive at the office. When he takes new x-rays, they show up directly on the display. But he still has to use a keyboard to update it. I'm hoping Omni updates Omnifocus to take advantage of 3.2 and the iPad. Oh duh, you guys didn't think I was going to get one? -- whump From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Tue Feb 2 22:44:35 2010 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 22:44:35 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion In-Reply-To: <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> References: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7CD8C206-999A-4489-921A-533D08A47B0D@ceruleansystems.com> On Feb 1, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Bill Stoddard wrote: > I'm still having a difficult time getting my head around doing 'enterprisey' (read 'profitable') things in the public cloud. Perhaps you have a really big pile of bits you'd like to do some analytics on... rent some cloud space, crunch some bits, collect results, rm -fr everything. I just can't imagine persistently keeping bits that form the backbone of your business outside the firewall. Hit-n-run analytics maybe? We need to redefine what a "cloud" is. Let's start by having a cloud that can seamlessly scale a single system image across an arbitrary number of machines, not the current "I'm running WinXP on a hypervisor" fetish or the largely useless "I've distributed a simple hash table" fad. The former is running a non-cloud in someone else's basement and the latter has so little value for analytics that I can't remember why I mentioned it. I've tacitly identified why the cloud sucks above. The obvious point is that you can't do anything in it that you can't do somewhere else; it competes on price and that is rarely a path to something recognizable as "success". Analytics is driving a lot of the growth of large-scale data infrastructures and sharded models like MapReduce are largely useless for almost all analytics anyone would actually care about. We have "big data" but what we really need to make clouds useful is "big analytics". The software du jour is in dire need of a computer science overhaul in that regard. The subtle point is that even if we did have "big analytics" in a real cloud, the value of a semi-public cloud is that it would be horrendously expensive to backhaul the myriad quasi-realtime data sets that will be required in the near future in order for the analytics to be valuable. Having every third-rate or even first-rate company replicate their own version of exabytes of reality is a non-starter. Grossly inefficient and politically implausible. If analytic processes could seamlessly bridge the public-private sphere, it would be vastly more efficient than trying to suck the universe into a laughably tiny rack of servers. Designing a protocol that allows this will require semantics and protocols that are richer and more clever than what passes for a "service" today, but not that much more. Calling back to the previous paragraph, that would require better algorithms and data structures and little more. The economics of the "cloud" as currently defined don't pan out. The economics of a true cloud are so strong that once implemented most everyone will be sucked in whether they like it or not. From lucas.gonze at gmail.com Tue Feb 2 22:59:14 2010 From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 22:59:14 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion In-Reply-To: <7CD8C206-999A-4489-921A-533D08A47B0D@ceruleansystems.com> References: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> <7CD8C206-999A-4489-921A-533D08A47B0D@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: What kind of analytics? You mean business intelligence/ marketing dashboards? How come MapReduce is resistant to analytics? On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 10:44 PM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote: > > On Feb 1, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Bill Stoddard wrote: >> I'm still having a difficult time getting my head around doing 'enterprisey' (read 'profitable') things in the public cloud. Perhaps you have a really big pile of bits you'd like to do some analytics on... rent some cloud space, crunch some bits, collect results, rm -fr everything. ? I just can't imagine persistently keeping bits that form the backbone of your business outside the firewall. Hit-n-run analytics maybe? > > > We need to redefine what a "cloud" is. > > Let's start by having a cloud that can seamlessly scale a single system image across an arbitrary number of machines, not the current "I'm running WinXP on a hypervisor" fetish or the largely useless "I've distributed a simple hash table" fad. ?The former is running a non-cloud in someone else's basement and the latter has so little value for analytics that I can't remember why I mentioned it. > > I've tacitly identified why the cloud sucks above. > > The obvious point is that you can't do anything in it that you can't do somewhere else; it competes on price and that is rarely a path to something recognizable as "success". Analytics is driving a lot of the growth of large-scale data infrastructures and sharded models like MapReduce are largely useless for almost all analytics anyone would actually care about. We have "big data" but what we really need to make clouds useful is "big analytics". ?The software du jour is in dire need of a computer science overhaul in that regard. > > The subtle point is that even if we did have "big analytics" in a real cloud, the value of a semi-public cloud is that it would be horrendously expensive to backhaul the myriad quasi-realtime data sets that will be required in the near future in order for the analytics to be valuable. Having every third-rate or even first-rate company replicate their own version of exabytes of reality is a non-starter. Grossly inefficient and politically implausible. If analytic processes could seamlessly bridge the public-private sphere, it would be vastly more efficient than trying to suck the universe into a laughably tiny rack of servers. ?Designing a protocol that allows this will require semantics and protocols that are richer and more clever than what passes for a "service" today, but not that much more. Calling back to the previous paragraph, that would require better algorithms and data structures and little more. > > > The economics of the "cloud" as currently defined don't pan out. ?The economics of a true cloud are so strong that once implemented most everyone will be sucked in whether they like it or not. > > > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From sean at conman.org Tue Feb 2 23:04:57 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 02:04:57 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: <415162.78978.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20100202222658.GB3677@brevard.conman.org> <415162.78978.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20100203070457.GA9614@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo once stated: > > Things have changed just a bit since then. > > I know you Americans really hate your giant phone companies, and not > entirely without justification. But if you're going to trash them at least > do it with something related to their operations in the current century. I would, if they were operating in the current century, which is doubtful. I mean, we *only* got number portability within the last five years. I also have to deal with my European friends ragging on our celluar infrastructure. > Circulating or referencing such dateless articles without also providing > some way to place it in time should be outlawed. Or at least seriously > frowned upon. E.g. Dateless != Timeless. I suppose I should have linked here as well: http://isen.com/stupid.html to put it into context. -spc From sean at conman.org Tue Feb 2 23:27:15 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 02:27:15 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> Message-ID: <20100203072715.GA14314@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated: > > Sean says: > > >And never underestimate the bandwidth [1] of a station wagon loaded > >with tapes [2]. > > > Yeah, that's the standard argument. Realistically, in all these years > in the industry, I have yet to see any significant *data transfer* > accomplished via such means (or a FedEx full of CDs, etc.) I have > seen (and actually been party to) shipments on the order of a truck > full of pre-configured server racks, but the point there isn't really > data transfer. Offsite data storage, yeah, but not particularly for > bandwidth reasons (cost-vs-bandwidth, perhaps, arguably.) That bit about the USENET feed to Australia may have been true (at least, in the 80s). > SneakerNet is SneakerNet no matter what form it takes. If that's all > you've got, or you can't afford something better, then you make do. > But for my own time and money, I prefer my bits online and have for > some time (like, about 25 years or so ;-) In fact, at Sun, I was > always amused by the "Network is the Computer" slogan. IMHO, it > should've been "the network is the hard drive." (Particularly given > that a large part of their success was due to NFS.) A friend of mine had 700G of files he wanted to give me. Assuming both our computers were on 100Mb/sec networks, it still would have taken nearly 10 hours to transfer the data: Approximately 2^39 bytes, or 2^42 bits. 100Mb/sec is approximately 2^27 bits per second 2^42 / 2^27 = 2^15 or 32,768 seconds, or 9.9 hours. vs. an hour and a half driving time to hook the external drive up to my system. How many here would *love* a full duplex 100Mb/sec Internet connection? How many here *could* afford a full duplex 100Mb/sec Internet connection? [1] > You shouldn't have to move bits around *as if* they were atoms. No, you shouldn't. But still, in some cases, FedEx is still faster. -spc (Actual mileage may vary ... ) [1] We're a webhosting company, and we can *barely* afford one. Did I mention we're a *small* webhosting company? From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Tue Feb 2 23:33:25 2010 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 23:33:25 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion In-Reply-To: References: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> <7CD8C206-999A-4489-921A-533D08A47B0D@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: <0B837E5B-CD1F-4D35-81D1-D6CE5B2C08B7@ceruleansystems.com> On Feb 2, 2010, at 10:59 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: > What kind of analytics? You mean business intelligence/ marketing dashboards? Most non-trivial query workloads, the details do not matter much. Anything that uses transitive closures or data types that are not topologically degenerate deteriorate badly at terabyte scales. Graph and spatial analytics are well-known worst-cases. Most of the remainder become embarrassingly pathological by the time you reach a petabyte. Unfortunately, this describes a lot of high-value data sets. Once you get to the petabyte range, you are looking at the handful of things MapReduce can do, which isn't much for most practical purposes. An important distinction is that even with the caveats specified above, we are talking about batch-mode, forensic analytics. If you want something that can scale to quasi-realtime query results then you will need to slash off a couple orders of magnitude. In some of the more pathological real-world cases that are not CPU bound per se, the data set limits are on the order of a gigabyte -- too slow in-memory on a typical processor even though computationally simple. Note that these are the limits of the algorithms used; they do not imply the limits of computer science. > How come MapReduce is resistant to analytics? MapReduce makes some *severely* restrictive assumptions about the data model; anything slightly complex quickly becomes intractable. It largely comes down to the consequences of requiring that data models, no matter how complex, be sharded. Most non-trivial analytics (graph, spatial, inductive, semantic, predictive, etc) violate that assumption. It worked great for mining simple text patterns, not so good for everything else. From dme at dme.org Wed Feb 3 02:47:11 2010 From: dme at dme.org (David Edmondson) Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:47:11 +0000 Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or, why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?) In-Reply-To: (Jeff Bone's message of "Tue, 2 Feb 2010 10:49:12 -0600") References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org> Message-ID: <87bpg6k34g.fsf@aw.hh.sledj.net> * jbone at place.org [2010-02-02 16:49:12] > This device *should* be your phone. I've see-sawed about this somewhat - sometimes I agree and other times think that the 'always with you' device should be something more like the Mifi device - a matchbox sized thing with two radios (one for cellular WAN and another for PAN (originally thinking bluetooth, but the argument for wifi is strong)) and a power source. The matchbox device you'd carry everywhere, perhaps even implant it subdermally. The minimal configuration would be the matchbox and something like an existing bluetooth headset. To make a call you'd press a button (or speak a command phrase) and then say who you want to speak with. Any variety of other peripherals are possible - choose the one that suits your current activity and interest. An iPod Touch like device for simple browsing, email or an iPad device for more screen estate. If you want a real keyboard, grab a bigger device that is lying around the place. Telephone boxes would turn into terminals with a keyboard, large screen, camera, speakers, etc. that would connect to your device. They'd have no other connectivity and might run off a solar panel in the roof. If you are at Fred's house and want to show him something, borrow his iPad and tell it to communicate with your matchbox. Another option would be to have the matchbox device in watch form. At that point it would make sense to have a display and a couple of buttons (perhaps this looks mostly like the existing bluetooth watches). As real phones get smaller it will be awkward to 'do everything' on that device, so it should simply be an access gateway, as you said. dme. -- David Edmondson, http://dme.org From jebdm at jebdm.net Wed Feb 3 03:14:54 2010 From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 11:14:54 +0000 Subject: [FoRK] Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <69350CDD-9F07-41C9-AC62-A1E18EDC76AC@place.org> References: <9376A896-2141-48D5-B47D-6C621CE2F159@place.org> <4029AB19-0E59-4649-A155-F7C7699D48FB@place.org> <730256F9-1C43-4CDE-AEA4-2EE2312A50B7@place.org> <87ADAB21-CFC2-44B8-9AB3-E9071A70BE26@place.org> <69350CDD-9F07-41C9-AC62-A1E18EDC76AC@place.org> Message-ID: <69ae910f1002030314j3624014cx2bcf2399aa81781b@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 6:58 PM, Jeff Bone wrote: > > I'd really rather have something a bit smarter, and am envious of e.g. the > various X tiling window managers --- but not enough to "switch." > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > You should, really. Dunno how easy it is to set up on a Mac, though. A well-configured (hell, even the default) wmii (my personal preference) or xmonad gives a bliss unmatched. It makes the Windows and Mac interfaces--even Gnome and KDE--feel like clunks; using them is comparable to using the Windows command prompt once you're used to proper unix. The only thing I really am not a fan of with wmii is that it uses "stacking" instead of tabs, meaning it shows a bunch of titlebars in a column, which takes up too much screen real estate. But it doesn't really become an issue; with tagged windows/desktops (each window has tags attached to it, and "workspaces" are achieved by showing all the windows with particular tags; for example, you might tag firefox "browse+work", your chat program "browse", and your shell "work", and then switch back and forth between "browse" and 'work"; there are also numbered ones with shortcuts set up by default). And I'm sure a simple implementation of tabs could be worked out, if I cared enough; wmii is fully scriptable, accessible through a virtual filesystem (normal or plan 9). -- Jebadiah Moore http://jebdm.net From kelley at inkworkswell.com Wed Feb 3 03:52:57 2010 From: kelley at inkworkswell.com (kelley) Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:52:57 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Google attacks hit staff friends In-Reply-To: <002b01ca9e3a$90aa1d80$b1fe5880$@com> References: <002b01ca9e3a$90aa1d80$b1fe5880$@com> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20100203063953.02fe9db0@pop.inkworkswell.com> At 10:49 PM 1/25/2010, Michael Cummins wrote: >-- begin snip -- > >Google attacks hit staff friends >http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c18091ee-09ee-11df-8b23-00144feabdc0.html > >"Someone went to the trouble to backtrack: 'Let me look at their friends, >who I can target as a secondary person'." > >McAfee discovered that a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft's Internet >Explorer had been used in the attacks. Mr Kurtz said the attackers also used >one of the most popular instant messaging programmes to induce victims to >click on a link that installed spy software. > >-- end snip -- > >The social hacking is pretty interesting. I notice that they were all too >happy to name Microsoft's failure, but why go out of their way to avoid >naming "one of the most popular instant messaging programmes"? > >I must getting old. Everything smells like an agenda these days. > >- MEC it's always hard to tell when some technology journalist is writing, but it looks like all they did was send an IM with a link to a page containing malware. The malware exploited their browsers, and they used the browser vulnerability to gain further access to the targeted Google employees. In that case, it was a social engineering attack. The vulnerability was in the people, not the IM program. Kelley When you need to communicate, Ink Works! Web site: http://www.inkworkswell.com Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleywalker Phone: (757) 717-9969 From jbone at place.org Wed Feb 3 05:35:51 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 07:35:51 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> Message-ID: <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> Re: Sean's edge cases of SneakerNet usefulness... Well, sure. There are always the edge cases, and your argument is of course valid for those. I think the USENET think is folklore rather than fact, but I have no proof of that; but I've resorted to similar in a couple of situations myself when nothing else would suffice. You didn't dump that 700 gig on a thumb drive, though, did you? ;-) But perhaps I'm picking nits re: the definition of removable media. For such situations, I obtained a couple of these (different brand, but same thing) a while back and have found them useful on occasion: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS jb From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 3 07:32:03 2010 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:32:03 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] An interesting offshoot from the iPad discussion In-Reply-To: <7CD8C206-999A-4489-921A-533D08A47B0D@ceruleansystems.com> References: <883815.64405.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4B673B2F.9090100@gmail.com> <7CD8C206-999A-4489-921A-533D08A47B0D@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: <20100203153203.GO17686@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:44:35PM -0800, J. Andrew Rogers wrote: > We need to redefine what a "cloud" is. Nodes so thick they darken the star. Or making the night sky bright enough to read by. > Let's start by having a cloud that can seamlessly scale a single system image across an arbitrary number of machines, not the current "I'm running WinXP on a hypervisor" fetish or the largely useless "I've distributed a simple hash table" fad. The former is running a non-cloud in someone else's basement and the latter has so little value for analytics that I can't remember why I mentioned it. In principle you could scale to the accessible universe. The response latency would be a bit long, though. Gravitational assemblies define a natural adressing hierarchy, and you can do relativistic cut-through with a simple binary node labelling scheme. Long-term ephemeride forecast is a bitch, though. > I've tacitly identified why the cloud sucks above. > > The obvious point is that you can't do anything in it that you can't do somewhere else; it competes on price and that is rarely a path to something recognizable as "success". Analytics is driving a lot of the growth of large-scale data infrastructures and sharded models like MapReduce are largely useless for almost all analytics anyone would actually care about. We have "big data" but what we really need to make clouds useful is "big analytics". The software du jour is in dire need of a computer science overhaul in that regard. > > The subtle point is that even if we did have "big analytics" in a real cloud, the value of a semi-public cloud is that it would be horrendously expensive to backhaul the myriad quasi-realtime data sets that will be required in the near future in order for the analytics to be valuable. Having every third-rate or even first-rate company replicate their own version of exabytes of reality is a non-starter. Grossly inefficient and politically implausible. If analytic processes could seamlessly bridge the public-private sphere, it would be vastly more efficient than trying to suck the universe into a laughably tiny rack of servers. Designing a protocol that allows this will require semantics and protocols that are richer and more clever than what passes for a "service" today, but not that much more. Calling back to the previous paragraph, that would require better algorithms and data structures and little more. > > > The economics of the "cloud" as currently defined don't pan out. The economics of a true cloud are so strong that once implemented most everyone will be sucked in whether they like it or not. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 3 07:38:56 2010 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:38:56 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <4B3FF0EE-1FF2-42BF-8FAC-D9E074CF8780@mac.com> References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> <4B3FF0EE-1FF2-42BF-8FAC-D9E074CF8780@mac.com> Message-ID: <20100203153856.GR17686@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 09:59:53PM -0800, Bill Humphries wrote: > My dentist switched to electronic records and the chair now has a flat screen with my latest x-rays displayed when I arrive at the office. When he takes new x-rays, they show up directly on the display. But he still has to use a keyboard to update it. Are these 16 bit grayscale LCDs, I hopes? > I'm hoping Omni updates Omnifocus to take advantage of 3.2 and the iPad. > > Oh duh, you guys didn't think I was going to get one? I'm going to get one, too. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 3 07:47:31 2010 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:47:31 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> Message-ID: <20100203154731.GS17686@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:53:14PM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote: > Yeah, that's the standard argument. Realistically, in all these years > in the industry, I have yet to see any significant *data transfer* > accomplished via such means (or a FedEx full of CDs, etc.) I have How about a few TByte worth of flash in each LLEO bird, with standard PTN stack so delivery is during close (few 100 km, standard 4G) flybys. A few hundred of these should have a global coverage with not too shabby latency. Of course this hasn't been done, yet. > seen (and actually been party to) shipments on the order of a truck > full of pre-configured server racks, but the point there isn't really > data transfer. Offsite data storage, yeah, but not particularly for > bandwidth reasons (cost-vs-bandwidth, perhaps, arguably.) > > SneakerNet is SneakerNet no matter what form it takes. If that's all > you've got, or you can't afford something better, then you make do. > But for my own time and money, I prefer my bits online and have for > some time (like, about 25 years or so ;-) In fact, at Sun, I was > always amused by the "Network is the Computer" slogan. IMHO, it Sun (requiescat in pace) spoke truer than it knew. In the brain, the network is the computer, literally. Spikes or packets, not that large a difference. Too many people have been looking at CPU and memory bandwidth, too few at computing with tiny packets on tiny nodes atop of single piece of silicon. Billions of them. > should've been "the network is the hard drive." (Particularly given > that a large part of their success was due to NFS.) > > You shouldn't have to move bits around *as if* they were atoms. So when is this rapid manufacturing raveolution thing going to land on my street corner? > > Ken says: > > >Wow, I just about hacked up a lung from all the dust on that thing. > > Some of the best insights --- and fundamental ones that change the > world you and I and all the rest of us live in --- happened a while > back. Isenberg's paper is actually *seminal.* It more or less > singlehandedly put the telecom industry on notice. Making fun of > important work simply because it happened a while back is, well, > ridiculous. > BTW, I had my chronology reversed. We'd already killed AT&T's $100M+ > Telescript investment with $400k and a POP client before David wrote > that; it was written in 1997. Telescript was dead by 1996. > > jb > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From sdw at lig.net Wed Feb 3 11:33:00 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:33:00 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <20100203153856.GR17686@leitl.org> References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> <4B3FF0EE-1FF2-42BF-8FAC-D9E074CF8780@mac.com> <20100203153856.GR17686@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4B69CF6C.4030200@lig.net> Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 09:59:53PM -0800, Bill Humphries wrote: > > >> My dentist switched to electronic records and the chair now has a flat screen with my latest x-rays displayed when I arrive at the office. When he takes new x-rays, they show up directly on the display. But he still has to use a keyboard to update it. >> > > Are these 16 bit grayscale LCDs, I hopes? > My dentist has color monitors they use for this. Probably not 16 bit+, but could be. The x-ray machine is all digital, no film. They put a sensor in your mouth. > > >> I'm hoping Omni updates Omnifocus to take advantage of 3.2 and the iPad. >> >> Oh duh, you guys didn't think I was going to get one? >> > > I'm going to get one, too. > > I'll probably have to, and develop with it specifically in mind. If it does PDFs well, bonus. Or I'll do it. Stephen From simon at thegestalt.org Wed Feb 3 12:30:28 2010 From: simon at thegestalt.org (Simon Wistow) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 20:30:28 +0000 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> Message-ID: <20100203203028.GC69249@thegestalt.org> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:53:14PM -0600, Jeff Bone said: > Yeah, that's the standard argument. Realistically, in all these years in > the industry, I have yet to see any significant *data transfer* > accomplished via such means (or a FedEx full of CDs, etc.) It's regularly done in the film industry - especially in London where all the Post Houses are close together. The phrase there tends to be "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a speeding runner". Much quicker to load stuff onto an external HD and then send the kid off to the other facility with the data. More extremely - during the making of LoTR runners would be dispatched from NZ with (I think) iPods loaded dailies to send to LA. (On a side note Weta lent Rising Sun in Sydney their excess rendering capacity after LoTR by shipping their whole farm off via air crate) From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Wed Feb 3 12:56:18 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 12:56:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <20100203072715.GA14314@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <198456.46927.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 2/3/10, Sean Conner wrote: > > > > Sean says: > > > > >And never underestimate the bandwidth [1] of a station wagon loaded? > > >with tapes [2]. > > > > > > Yeah, that's the standard argument.? Realistically, in all these years? > > in the industry, I have yet to see any significant *data transfer*? > > accomplished via such means (or a FedEx full of CDs, etc.) > >? That bit about the USENET feed to Australia may have been true (at least, in the 80s). > > > ? A friend of mine had 700G of files he wanted to give me.? Assuming both > our computers were on 100Mb/sec networks, it still would have taken nearly > 10 hours to transfer the data: > > ...[snip calcs]... > > ? vs. an hour and a half driving time to hook the > external drive up to my system.? I built a new system from the junk box for my workshop to hook up my new golf swing monitor to. To move 50GB of music out there I could have driven to the store to buy a wifi card, driven home, installed it and transfered the files at something like 40-50Mbps. Yawn. Or dump them onto my USB hard drive and schlepp them out there. Guess which I chose. (I had no other reason to do a network connection.) > How many here would *love* a full duplex 100Mb/sec Internet > connection?? Pick me! Pick me!!! > How many here *could* afford a full duplex 100Mb/sec Internet > connection? > Actually, I would settle for a full duplex T1. xDSL sucks if you want to send anything big. Why haven't they implemented the adaption techniques that were developed for high-speed analogue modems in the 80's. They are asymmetrical but they load-sense and switch the fat pipe to the direction with the traffic. No reason xDSL couldn't do exactly the same thing. It flat pisses me off that the mavens of digital, to this day, refuse to believe there's anything to be learned from the analogue world. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ From sean at conman.org Wed Feb 3 14:12:41 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 17:12:41 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <198456.46927.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20100203072715.GA14314@brevard.conman.org> <198456.46927.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20100203221241.GA19476@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo once stated: > --- On Wed, 2/3/10, Sean Conner wrote: > > > How many here *could* afford a full duplex 100Mb/sec Internet > > connection? > > Actually, I would settle for a full duplex T1. The full duplex T1 will set you back a few hundred a month, plus don't forget the router (maybe another hundred or so for a used Cisco 2500/2600 series router) and tech to come out and configure it (unless you know Cisco IOS). > xDSL sucks if you want to > send anything big. Why haven't they implemented the adaption techniques > that were developed for high-speed analogue modems in the 80's. They are > asymmetrical but they load-sense and switch the fat pipe to the direction > with the traffic. No reason xDSL couldn't do exactly the same thing. No reason, except money. Why do you think most DSL providers include "running no servers" in their TOS? Businesses can expect to pay more for a given pipe size than a residential user (although on the flip side, you get better SLAs as a business than as a residential user---so that's where the money goes). Also, the common use case for DSL is residential use---little upload but huge downloads, with their network geared for this. A business may have a similar profile, unless they host their own web server (in which case it's the residential profile flipped) or email server (in which case it's symetrical both ways, given spam levels and infected Windows servers). And for all I know, DSLAMs (the hardware that runs DSL in the CO [1]) may be able to switch traffic---it's just not configured to do that. Or perhaps it's the consumer grade routers that can't support it (cheaper to make that way). > It flat pisses me off that the mavens of digital, to this day, refuse to > believe there's anything to be learned from the analogue world. It's not that we refuse to learn---it's just that it's messier 8-P An analog sort routine is O(1), but getting the spaghetti strings (representing the data) cut and bundled together takes O(n). I did have access to an analog computer in college, but given that 1) the programs were stored on a 3'x3' faceplate 2) there were only two faceplates as I recall 3) and both faceplates were being used by a) one grad student and b) one professor meant I didn't get to use it all that much (although if pressed, I probably could have, although I struggled through analog electroncs). -spc (Hmmm ... I could run fiber optic between my house and The Office, only costs about $3k for the cable alone, but getting the rights of way along the way may prove difficult ... ) [1] Telco speak for "Central Office" which isn't a central office in the "where all the employees work" meaning but in the "thus begins the last mile out to the customers" meaning. From sean at conman.org Wed Feb 3 14:15:24 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 17:15:24 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> Message-ID: <20100203221524.GB19476@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated: > > Re: Sean's edge cases of SneakerNet usefulness... > > You didn't dump that 700 gig on a thumb drive, though, did you? ;-) > But perhaps I'm picking nits re: the definition of removable media. No, my friend handed me a 1T external harddrive (read: removable media, as far as my computer is concerned). -spc (Heck, I could take my Mac mini around with me---it's not much larger than an external harddrive ... ) From marty at halvorson.us Wed Feb 3 14:32:13 2010 From: marty at halvorson.us (Marty Halvorson) Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:32:13 -0700 Subject: [FoRK] medical file In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B69F96D.8070405@halvorson.us> Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > My wife's office has computers everywhere, but they all involve > breaking off from interacting with the patient to type into the > keyboard. My doctor uses a pen to write on the face of the screen. It appears to convert what she writes to text. The gadget doesn't even have a keyboard. The pen can be used like a mouse. > Sorry, I meant the software, not the hardware. My (admittedly > limited) experience with traditional medical record software is that > they look like a tn3270 bad nightmare with a gazillion tiny fields, > which would be impossible to navigate on a tablet. I'm hoping whoever > designed the software for that tablet-like device actually simplified > the UI to the point of being useful, which would be a great start..." I have a call in to the doctors office IT department to see if they'll tell me anything about the device. If they won't I'll ask the doctor when I see her in 2 weeks. Peace Marty Halvorson From aaron at bavariati.org Wed Feb 3 14:41:12 2010 From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 14:41:12 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Why the U.S. is Ungovernable (and other bits) In-Reply-To: References: <4880C8EF-0DC7-4065-8131-C03D1D125EE0@place.org> Message-ID: <20100203224112.GB15562@aaron-x31> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 10:53:32AM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Aaron says: ZZZzzz...whut? That was Damien. I've been too busy fighting email overload, looking for work and tinkering with embedded stuff and power electronics design to look at FoRK 'til now. Flattered, Aaron From eugen at leitl.org Thu Feb 4 04:18:51 2010 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 13:18:51 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <20100203221524.GB19476@brevard.conman.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> <20100203221524.GB19476@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <20100204121851.GI17686@leitl.org> On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 05:15:24PM -0500, Sean Conner wrote: > No, my friend handed me a 1T external harddrive (read: removable media, > as far as my computer is concerned). 4-8-drive NAS are still pretty portable. The sneakernet is particularly effective for a f2f darknet. Those HD rips typically don't come at >100 MByte/s over BitTorrent, with zero chances of legal nastygrams. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From dmorton at bitfurnace.com Thu Feb 4 06:32:16 2010 From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 01:32:16 +1100 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance Message-ID: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/politics/04scotus.html?hp """ Justice Thomas said the First Amendment?s protections applied regardless of how people chose to assemble to participate in the political process. ?If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you?d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association,? he said. ?If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you?d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association.? ?But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?? Justice Thomas asked, suggesting that the answer must be the same. """ This is just so fucking wrong. Corporations are nothing like 10 people coming together to form a partnership to speak. Its one or more owners, who can now use the corporation's finances and employees to amplify their speech. From tomhiggins at gmail.com Thu Feb 4 08:19:06 2010 From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 08:19:06 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <20100204121851.GI17686@leitl.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> <20100203221524.GB19476@brevard.conman.org> <20100204121851.GI17686@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > 4-8-drive NAS are still pretty portable. > > The sneakernet is particularly effective for a f2f > darknet. Those HD rips typically don't come at >100 MByte/s > over BitTorrent, with zero chances of legal nastygrams. I am shocked and appalled to think there are people in this world who would load up TBs of movies, music and isos of various sorts and transport them to locations in their general vicinity for others to ...shudder...copy. It would seem this massive transfer of data should be regulated to prevent the misuse and abuse. It is said poor Lars Ulrich sheds a tear every time an illegal transfer is made. -tom("wire recordings are killing the music biz" 1940's bumpersticker)higgins From jbone at place.org Thu Feb 4 09:49:21 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 11:49:21 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] "removable" media rant (clarified, maybe) In-Reply-To: <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> Message-ID: <5EBAA5B8-87A5-4415-98AA-6F45A24367B2@place.org> So... We're a bit off in the weeds from what I was actually complaining about re: "removable" media. Lots of reasonable bulk-transfer use cases. Notice anything in common? The cases illustrated generally revolve around transporting high- capacity, high-speed, "dense" media around in order to accomplish the transfer; media that's generally not designed for the "removable" case particularly, and that is of the usual orders of capacity / density / speed as the primary media in the machines of question and / or of the same order of magnitude scale as the data sets of interest. Note that the use cases involved are substantially different from e.g. the "put USENET on CDs" type cases --- in that they don't involve hundred of individual pieces of media. The throughput of e.g. an 18- wheeler or whatever aside, the key qualitative difference between what I'm objecting to and the cases offered is how small the individual "chunks" have to be relative to the set. Want to move "30 hours worth" (e.g. at whatever your WAN connectivity speed might be) of data cross town? You can fit that in a single box in your passenger floorboard. Whether that box was designed as "removable" or not is actually not my beef. Got no problem w/ that, it's all good. My irritation is with those who perpetually assume that users want / need to partition / stash / transport / etc. small subsets of "their data" (i.e., orders-of-magnitude smaller than the whole set, or some substantial part of that whole set, e.g. "all my tunes" or whatever) and / or store individual datum on individual pieces of media, as standard operating procedure. It's an idea that just seems boffo to the capital and supply and content end of things, and yet is fundamentally wacko from an end-user perspective (if you really give it any thought at all.) jb On Feb 3, 2010, at 7:35 AM, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Re: Sean's edge cases of SneakerNet usefulness... > > Well, sure. There are always the edge cases, and your argument is > of course valid for those. I think the USENET think is folklore > rather than fact, but I have no proof of that; but I've resorted to > similar in a couple of situations myself when nothing else would > suffice. > > You didn't dump that 700 gig on a thumb drive, though, did you? ;-) > But perhaps I'm picking nits re: the definition of removable media. > > For such situations, I obtained a couple of these (different brand, > but same thing) a while back and have found them useful on occasion: > > http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS > > > > jb > From sdw at lig.net Thu Feb 4 10:18:23 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:18:23 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> Damien Morton wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/politics/04scotus.html?hp > > """ > Justice Thomas said the First Amendment?s protections applied regardless of > how people chose to assemble to participate in the political process. > > ?If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you?d say > you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of > association,? he said. ?If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you?d > say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association.? > > ?But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?? Justice Thomas asked, > suggesting that the answer must be the same. > > """ > > This is just so fucking wrong. Corporations are nothing like 10 people > coming together to form a partnership to speak. > > Its one or more owners, who can now use the corporation's finances and > employees to amplify their speech. > I can see why people are upset with this, however I think the reasoning is now correct, even if inconvenient. One thing I don't understand is what the people gathering petitions, etc., are going to do. Pretty much the only choice is A) a clever law that tries to circumvent the First Amendment (good luck) or B) a constitutional convention to make a change (really, good luck. Talk about a can o' worms). I don't see what is so magical about a corporation in this case. Companies do not have to be incorporated technically (although, practically, most do). Answering this would be illuminating: Sole proprietorships and partnerships are "companies" of individuals with no additional legal standing or entity. They can do just about any kind of business, except sell stock. (Although you could enter into stock-like royalty agreements possibly.) A person, operating as a sole proprietorship, could have any amount of money, land, buildings, etc., and could directly employ any number of people. What would or should be the legal basis for restrictions on such a person from using their "finances and employees to amplify their speech"? An employer isn't technically / normally controlled by its employees. A group of people can elect for a leader to guide, direct, and speak for them. I don't see the bright line of logic in the sentiment that a corporation has no free speech rights. There are "powerful" people who I agree with and trust and those that are quite the opposite. To some extent, more successful people have a greater reach in general. What ways of blunting their effective voice and reach are really valid? Of course we want and need to prevent corrupt self-reinforcement of government. Is it really the case that we can only control this at the Pavlovian level of money->speech->votes? Isn't that what the First Amendment specifically allows and trusts: Listener beware - survival of the fittest memes. If you are worried about the prospect of sheeple, then work to cure people of sheepleness. If you want an advantage in influencing sheeple, then shame on you. Certainly, there have been some nasty cases in the past. The tobacco industry for instance, but they were outright lying to the public, already illegal. Any time a company is so large that they saturate an area or other large group of people, there is some danger. If you were to catalog the resulting evils of too-large corporations, it might include things like decisions (politically related or otherwise) that run counter to certain business units or groups of employees or "stakeholders" in general. I would suggest that the best solution here is perhaps something along the lines of strengthening antitrust or similar mechanisms to break up companies before they get big enough to seriously cause certain kinds of problems. Or perhaps as soon as they are demonstrated to have those problems. We have plenty of communication and market exchange capability to have efficient markets of medium-sized companies rather than being dominated by a few giants. Companies should get into efficient trading / partnering arrangements rather than being allowed to roll up into can't-fail behemoths. sdw From jbone at place.org Thu Feb 4 11:29:22 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 13:29:22 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] standardization and logistics Message-ID: Random lunchtime conjecture, could be the pastrami talking: correlation between "standardization" (i.e., homogeneity, interoperability / interchangeability of parts, etc.) at the retail end and length of supply chain (measured however you would like, but probably topologically rather than geographically.) Not linear- causal; probably recurrent / non-linear feedback loops. $0.02, jb From dmorton at bitfurnace.com Thu Feb 4 11:47:53 2010 From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 06:47:53 +1100 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> Message-ID: <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Stephen Williams wrote: > Of course we want and need to prevent corrupt self-reinforcement of > government. Is it really the case that we can only control this at the > Pavlovian level of money->speech->votes? Isn't that what the First > Amendment specifically allows and trusts: Listener beware - survival of the > fittest memes. If you are worried about the prospect of sheeple, then work > to cure people of sheepleness. If you want an advantage in influencing > sheeple, then shame on you. > > The First Amendment doesnt say anything about money, and was framed in a day and age where communications was fragmented and population relatively small. It simply wasn't possible to get a message across to the entire population, let alone do so 24 hours a day. Here's a way of drawing the line: make a distinction between a corporation formed for the purposes of speech and one formed for the purposes of business. A corporation formed for the purposes of speech needs a democratic charter and gets certain tax advantages advantageous to political speech, while a corporation formed for the purposes of business needs no democratic charter, and gets certain tax advantages directed at business and tax penalties aimed at political speech. Corporations are islands of fascism in a democractic system - they certainly aren't democracies, and that's where the problem lies. Allowing powerful non-democratic institutions to participate in a democracy is suicide, pure and simple. From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Thu Feb 4 12:07:14 2010 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 12:07:14 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <42CCF276-869B-4118-8F72-538FDAC71DC2@ceruleansystems.com> On Feb 4, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Damien Morton wrote: > Corporations are islands of fascism in a democractic system - they > certainly aren't democracies, and that's where the problem lies. Corporations are no more "fascist" than governments are "democratic". That aside, there is not a generally compelling argument for one tyranny over another. > Allowing powerful non-democratic institutions to participate in a democracy > is suicide, pure and simple. The failure of democracy is that we haven't outlawed families? From sdw at lig.net Thu Feb 4 12:07:40 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:07:40 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B6B290C.2000802@lig.net> Damien Morton wrote: > On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Stephen Williams wrote: > > >> Of course we want and need to prevent corrupt self-reinforcement of >> government. Is it really the case that we can only control this at the >> Pavlovian level of money->speech->votes? Isn't that what the First >> Amendment specifically allows and trusts: Listener beware - survival of the >> fittest memes. If you are worried about the prospect of sheeple, then work >> to cure people of sheepleness. If you want an advantage in influencing >> sheeple, then shame on you. >> >> >> > The First Amendment doesnt say anything about money, and was framed in a day > and age where communications was fragmented and population relatively small. > It simply wasn't possible to get a message across to the entire population, > let alone do so 24 hours a day. > > Here's a way of drawing the line: make a distinction between a corporation > formed for the purposes of speech and one formed for the purposes of > business. A corporation formed for the purposes of speech needs a democratic > charter and gets certain tax advantages advantageous to political speech, > while a corporation formed for the purposes of business needs no democratic > charter, and gets certain tax advantages directed at business and tax > penalties aimed at political speech. > Full of fuzzy definitions, however I don't necessarily disagree that it seems reasonable on general principles. I'm not sure what a democratic charter for a corporation means. The shareholders vote? The employees? The public? > Corporations are islands of fascism in a democractic system - they > certainly aren't democracies, and that's where the problem lies. > I can too easily read this as a slippery slope to: "wealthy people are islands of fascism in a democratic system"... Are you sure that you are less concerned with a person with a billion dollars in cash vs. a corporation with a billion dollars in cash vs. some group of people not part of a corporation with a billion dollars in cash? What about an interest group or association that tell their members how to vote along with lobbying? Direct funds to politicians should be completely public, immediately and have whatever restrictions make sense. Politicians should be able to have talks with people in private so that people can try to persuade, however any action or substantive change at all, including current rationale for current and future decisions, should be immediately and publicly documented. Perhaps quarterly sync points where the "state of the politician" has to be published. I'm all for completely identifying the source of ads run, while keeping in mind that individuals should be able to publish anonymously. There should also be severe punishment for misleading and untrue political speech. In general though, hard for me to justify a priori control. > Allowing powerful non-democratic institutions to participate in a democracy > is suicide, pure and simple. > All of this hinges on the definition of "participate in a democracy". Is communication participating in a democracy? If all of the school children in Africa send email messages or postcards to every voter in America asking for help, are they participating in our democracy? What about someone who writes a novel about life in Afghanistan? If they influence us, are they participating in our democracy? sdw From jtauber at jtauber.com Thu Feb 4 12:10:12 2010 From: jtauber at jtauber.com (James Tauber) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 15:10:12 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9FEC4C00-145C-4B98-BD79-EFCD82DC30B4@jtauber.com> On Feb 4, 2010, at 2:47 PM, Damien Morton wrote: > Corporations are islands of fascism in a democractic system While I've described them myself as islands of central planning in a sea of markets, I've never fully understood the "fascism" label. While they share some characteristics with fascism (many of them I would argue fascism shares with socialism too, although not all), there seem to me to be some defining characteristics of fascism that corporations do not have: in particular the denial of economic motives over heroic ones. James From jtauber at jtauber.com Thu Feb 4 12:14:19 2010 From: jtauber at jtauber.com (James Tauber) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 15:14:19 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <42CCF276-869B-4118-8F72-538FDAC71DC2@ceruleansystems.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> <42CCF276-869B-4118-8F72-538FDAC71DC2@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: On Feb 4, 2010, at 3:07 PM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote: > > On Feb 4, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Damien Morton wrote: >> Corporations are islands of fascism in a democractic system - they >> certainly aren't democracies, and that's where the problem lies. > > > Corporations are no more "fascist" than governments are "democratic". That aside, there is not a generally compelling argument for one tyranny over another. Also, are people's concerns that corporations give *individuals* evils powers they don't otherwise have or that anthropomorphized corporations can somehow exhibit emergent evil? And why is either case more likely with corporations as opposed to, say, governments themselves? James From reverend.joe at gmail.com Thu Feb 4 13:29:14 2010 From: reverend.joe at gmail.com (Joe Fish) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 15:29:14 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> Message-ID: <50a84b4e1002041329o5bbccfa1y44ef4716c08295dc@mail.gmail.com> > ?I don't see the bright line of logic in the sentiment that a corporation > has no free speech rights. no such bright line is needed, for no one is arguing that a corporation should have "no free speech rights". not being able to spend unlimited funds in any conceivable way to try to buy elections / politicians != NO rights to free speech there are all kinds of situational limitations to both individuals' and corporations' rights to say whatever they want, that i can't really see how this one limitation has been such a theoretical or actual tragedy. free speech, for example, is unimportant enough that i can be jailed for 5 years and subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for a crime as harmless as whistling the tune to an Elvis song within earshot of 10 or more people ... and the justification for this limitation to my individual free speech rights is that we need to incentivize Elvis' (ghost) to write more hit songs? in light of that, somehow, i never managed to get myself all worked up about corporations being slightly limited in their speech in this one specific situation in a way that possibly had some balancing effect on something as important as electing public officials. otoh, its not like the restrictions the supremes struck down were really doing much good anyway -- or is it just me that had the perception that corporations really aren't going to be able to influence our elections much more than they already were? JOE From russell.turpin at gmail.com Thu Feb 4 15:07:50 2010 From: russell.turpin at gmail.com (Russell Turpin) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 17:07:50 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] "removable" media rant (clarified, maybe) In-Reply-To: <5EBAA5B8-87A5-4415-98AA-6F45A24367B2@place.org> References: <707A9CD5-6131-4511-A0D5-36E34206E8F8@place.org> <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> <5EBAA5B8-87A5-4415-98AA-6F45A24367B2@place.org> Message-ID: Without pretending that my use case defines how things ought to work, I keep my personal data on an encrypted file system on an SD card. Everyone once in a while, I tar that, pipe the result through gpg to encrypt it, and stash the copy on my phone. And, of course, I rotate SD cards, with the alternate kept off site. The important aspect to all this, besides having two backups, is that even if my laptop or phone gets stolen, it's quite unlikely that the thieves will have the tools and cycles to decrypt the data. That, arguably, could be managed in some fashion other than putting my data on a separate device. I'm layering the notion of "encrypted area" on top of the notion of file system, on top of device. Not very good separation of concerns. But given the current tool set, it works for me. As I said up front, this wasn't an argument about how things should be. Some time ago, I decided that a (micro-)SD card was a requirement for my phone, for different reason. The problem with connectivity over a wire or bluetooth is that phone makers layer an app stack on top that often is difficult to penetrate. It's not always easy or possible to connect a phone to a lap top and say "expose your file system." Carolyn just figured out how to do this with her new Tattoo. The nice thing about the removable media is that it defines an almost standard interface. I know if a phone puts its data on a card, I can plug it into something else to interpret it, back it up, etc., without having to go through the phone's application stack. From russell.turpin at gmail.com Thu Feb 4 15:25:07 2010 From: russell.turpin at gmail.com (Russell Turpin) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 17:25:07 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] "New babies get their DNA put in permanent government database" Message-ID: I bet this has some new dads here scrambling for that removal form: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/04/baby.dna.government/index.html From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Thu Feb 4 15:35:12 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 15:35:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <0B20E761-CEDA-4437-A5EF-16FB624FE149@place.org> Message-ID: <301122.39024.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 2/3/10, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Re:? Sean's edge cases of SneakerNet usefulness... > > Well, sure.? There are always the edge cases, and your > argument is of course valid for those.? > The problem is that if folks who think, or at least talk, like you convince manufacturers that removable media is definitely a Bad Thing and useless in any case, that eliminates the option for these "edge cases" where it is hugely useful. Fortunately, there are enough people who find removable/attachable media useful for a variety of things that I doubt the manufacturers see it as just a bunch of "edge cases". ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Connect with friends from any web browser - no download required. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger for the Web BETA at http://ca.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php From russell.turpin at gmail.com Thu Feb 4 15:39:40 2010 From: russell.turpin at gmail.com (Russell Turpin) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 17:39:40 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Damien Morton wrote: > Here's a way of drawing the line: make a distinction between a corporation > formed for the purposes of speech and one formed for the purposes of > business. ... Even in the days of the founders, the companies that ran the presses were formed to make a profit. And it was those companies to which the 1st amendment specifically refers to as "the press," and in equal terms with freedom of speech. There is no reasonable way to parse the 1st amendment as providing less protection of expression for NBC than it does for you and me. An alternative to trying a run around the 1st amendment, either legislatively or by repeal, is to focus on reforming electoral mechanics. Money has a large influence on elections not simply because money is influential, but also because current electoral mechanics is focused on maintaining party politics, and gives voters only a very restricted kind of choice. Admittedly, that reform also seems distant. But it would be healthier, in my opinion, than trying to cut through the 1st amendment. From sdw at lig.net Thu Feb 4 15:56:42 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:56:42 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B6B5EBA.3040500@lig.net> Russell Turpin wrote: > On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Damien Morton wrote: > >> Here's a way of drawing the line: make a distinction between a corporation >> formed for the purposes of speech and one formed for the purposes of >> business. ... >> > > Even in the days of the founders, the companies that ran the presses > were formed to make a profit. And it was those companies to which the > 1st amendment specifically refers to as "the press," and in equal > terms with freedom of speech. There is no reasonable way to parse the > 1st amendment as providing less protection of expression for NBC than > it does for you and me. > > An alternative to trying a run around the 1st amendment, either > legislatively or by repeal, is to focus on reforming electoral > mechanics. Money has a large influence on elections not simply because > money is influential, but also because current electoral mechanics is > focused on maintaining party politics, and gives voters only a very > restricted kind of choice. Admittedly, that reform also seems distant. > But it would be healthier, in my opinion, than trying to cut through > the 1st amendment. > I agree. It is already illegal to take bribes, sell a senate seat, etc. Bound things more carefully and far more in the light of day, through laws and social pressure, and the relevant fears can be addressed. A prerequisite to fixing things is having candidates that are A)truly honest, intelligent, and care about doing a good job and B) citizens that are not intent on acting like a pack of rabid dogs. Unfortunately, we currently have way too many of the latter, whipped up by agents that are clearly not aligned with the former. Thinking about Fox "News", I actually think I would welcome most corporate alternatives. It is hard to believe that many corporations could survive without much leveler heads controlling communications. Fox is an anomaly because their value proposition is specifically to do what they are doing. It's kind of like having WWF put in charge of anti-violence campaigns. Haliburton running a peace conference ("Behold, our new PeaceMaker 3.0!" To borrow from a great line in Iron Man "the weapon you only have to use once"). sdw From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Thu Feb 4 16:13:14 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 16:13:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Two bits (for Ken, Sean) In-Reply-To: <20100203221241.GA19476@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <866194.38417.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 2/3/10, Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo once stated: > > --- On Wed, 2/3/10, Sean Conner > wrote: > > > > > How many here *could* afford a full duplex 100Mb/sec Internet > > > connection? > > > > Actually, I would settle for a full duplex T1. > > ? The full duplex T1 will set you back a few hundred a > month, plus don't forget the router ... My bad. I meant equivalent bandwidth, e.g. 1.54Mbps in both directions instead of just the one direction as in my current DSL connection. I don't want an actual T1. > > xDSL sucks if you want to > > send anything big. Why haven't they implemented the adaption techniques > > that were developed for high-speed analogue modems in the 80's. They are > > asymmetrical but they load-sense and switch the fat pipe to the direction > > with the traffic. No reason xDSL couldn't do exactly the same thing. > > ? No reason, except money.? Why do you think most DSL providers include > "running no servers" in their TOS?? > ..... > > ? Also, the common use case for DSL is residential > use---little upload but huge downloads, with their network geared for this.? > ..... > > ? -spc (Hmmm ... I could run fiber optic between my house and The Office, > ??? only costs about $3k for the cable alone, but getting the rights of > ??? way along the way may prove difficult ... ) > > [1]??? Telco speak for "Central Office" which isn't a central office in the > ??? "where all the employees work" meaning but in the "thus begins the > ??? last mile out to the customers" meaning. > Yeah, I knew all that. I worked in the industry for nearly thirty years, almost all of it in a Canadian telco, in the IT and Engineering departments. It was just a rant. It's even more annoying when you know the reasons why. :( ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Get the name you've always wanted @ymail.com or @rocketmail.com! Go to http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/jacko/ From bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca Thu Feb 4 20:02:36 2010 From: bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca (John Parsons) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 20:02:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <549585.20571.qm@web112313.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 2/4/10, Damien Morton wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/politics/04scotus.html?hp > > """ > Justice Thomas said the First Amendment?s protections > applied regardless of > how people chose to assemble to participate in the > political process. > > ?If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as > a group, you?d say > you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First > Amendment right of > association,? he said. ?If you all then formed a > partnership to speak, you?d > say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and > of association.? > > ?But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?? > Justice Thomas asked, > suggesting that the answer must be the same. > > """ > > This is just so fucking wrong. Corporations are nothing > like 10 people > coming together to form a partnership to speak. > > Its one or more owners, who can now use the corporation's > finances and > employees to amplify their speech. Even if corporations *are* like 10 (or whatever) people for the purposes of association and speech, I still don't see why this should allow them the ability to contribute and thus influence political outcomes. They do not have a vote, per se, so why should they have the ability to meddle in that vote? If one person = one vote, is to mean anything, then any non-essential, extraneous noise can only be distracting. People have basic needs of governance which will motivate their choices, but corporations tend to act at a level independent of the public good. Please note, I am not saying they (always) act against the public good, but that their motivations are not necessarily aligned with individual values. If corporations were really acting in the public good, why not take the enormous sums spent on political contributions and send it directly to individuals? Action committees, special interest groups and the like can at least claim that their "speech" is a result of free association, but a corporation cannot claim that they represent voters who are "freely associating". Their money comes from customers that may not share the corporations goals (for a number of easily identified reasons). Corporate money is earned with the help of those "10" (or more) employees, whose only motivation may be to provide for their families, not to support the corporation's political aspirations. Anyway, it seems that independent of the Supremes' decision, the tables are already turning, big time. With the caps removed, it can only become more skewed. http://tinyurl.com/corp-outspending Can anyone believe that 150 million/year of corporate funding is not an investment that the corporations expect to recoup? John __________________________________________________________________ Connect with friends from any web browser - no download required. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger for the Web BETA at http://ca.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php From dmorton at bitfurnace.com Thu Feb 4 21:05:09 2010 From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 16:05:09 +1100 Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <42CCF276-869B-4118-8F72-538FDAC71DC2@ceruleansystems.com> References: <8092dc771002040632k449506a6j2de32cb2ab77662e@mail.gmail.com> <4B6B0F6F.4040407@lig.net> <8092dc771002041147n7f987255j5b2a7c9b5e43bbdb@mail.gmail.com> <42CCF276-869B-4118-8F72-538FDAC71DC2@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: <8092dc771002042105y18a8a5e8laf1b53dee2e93411@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 7:07 AM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote: > > On Feb 4, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Damien Morton wrote: > > Corporations are islands of fascism in a democractic system - they > > certainly aren't democracies, and that's where the problem lies. > > > Corporations are no more "fascist" than governments are "democratic". That > aside, there is not a generally compelling argument for one tyranny over > another. > Rubbish. Corporations are top-down power structures. Not saying that there isnt good that can come out of that, nor that there isnt some bottom-up flow of power (even the king has to listen to his peons once in a while). Fundamentally though, corporations concentrate the (economic? productive?) power of many people under the control of a few. From kammeyer at rocketmail.com Thu Feb 4 21:15:09 2010 From: kammeyer at rocketmail.com (David Kammeyer) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 21:15:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Justice Defends Ruling on Finance In-Reply-To: <549585.20571.qm@web112313.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <549585.20571.qm@web112313.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <660926.1989.qm@web50904.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Even though I'm against corporate spending on elections, I'm somewhat sympathetic to these free-speech issues. To me, the issue is bribery. Most of this type of spending amounts to wink and nod bribery. It would make sense for politicians to recuse themselves from votes where they have been given money or paid-for endorsements from corporations, and the corporations interests are being voted on, just like judges do. Of course, suggests the strategy of donating one thirty second TV commerical at 4am on a Sunday three months before the election to all of your political opponents, so they can't vote on issues pertaining to you. This of course suggests the strategy of donating to judges that might rule against you in jurisdictions you are in. I wonder if anyone has tried this in Marshall, TX? -Dave ----- Original Message ---- > From: John Parsons > Can anyone believe that 150 million/year of corporate funding is not an > investment that the corporations expect to recoup? From dmorton at bitfurnace.com Fri Feb 5 06:54:13 2010 From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 01:54:13 +1100 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <4B69CF6C.4030200@lig.net> References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> <4B3FF0EE-1FF2-42BF-8FAC-D9E074CF8780@mac.com> <20100203153856.GR17686@leitl.org> <4B69CF6C.4030200@lig.net> Message-ID: <8092dc771002050654n2ba332d7p3dfae873b25c7bb5@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Stephen Williams wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 09:59:53PM -0800, Bill Humphries wrote: >> >> >> >>> My dentist switched to electronic records and the chair now has a flat >>> screen with my latest x-rays displayed when I arrive at the office. When he >>> takes new x-rays, they show up directly on the display. But he still has to >>> use a keyboard to update it. >>> >>> >> >> Are these 16 bit grayscale LCDs, I hopes? >> >> > > My dentist has color monitors they use for this. Probably not 16 bit+, but > could be. The x-ray machine is all digital, no film. They put a sensor in > your mouth. > > My dentist used a sensor as well - fucking huge lump of plastic. Really uncomfortable. Much prefer the film in a flexible plastic cover. From jbone at place.org Fri Feb 5 08:24:28 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 10:24:28 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] "New babies get their DNA put in permanent government database" Message-ID: <99D3408F-75AB-42EB-85C6-B456E711CAAA@place.org> Russell says: > I bet this has some new dads here scrambling for that removal form: Actually, quite the opposite. We had extensive testing done, both pre- and post-natal, mandatory and elective. IIRC --- and I may not, as we only signed a bazillion (technical term common in geek-speak ;-) forms --- the State of Texas stuff was opt-in. Regardless, in all cases we actually opted to allow sharing and utilization of the relevant data. I'm acutely aware of the risks run by such things but in net I believe the potential benefits outweigh the probable risks involved. We'll see.* Had I become a parent, say, 10 years younger (but in the same e.g. legal and technological environment that we have today) I'd have made a different decision. jb * at a minimum, any sane legal system down the road should recognize subsequence information-on-file as prior art to prevent the "patented- person problem" (which, I think, will eventually be resolved by changes to generally-accepted IP law anyway.) Also, aggregative and longitudinal uses of this kind of information should have a massively accelerating and quality-improving impact on medical technology development, so in fact I'd encourage folks who might otherwise be skittish about this sort of thing to think long and hard before making such decisions. More data = better medicine. From kranenbuster at gmail.com Fri Feb 5 08:36:20 2010 From: kranenbuster at gmail.com (rob van kranenburg) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 17:36:20 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] "New babies get their DNA put in permanent government database" In-Reply-To: <99D3408F-75AB-42EB-85C6-B456E711CAAA@place.org> References: <99D3408F-75AB-42EB-85C6-B456E711CAAA@place.org> Message-ID: <3559b3cf1002050836j4f0b4074xf2f8e946027c161@mail.gmail.com> and the probably are weeding out exactly those kind of intelligences that are born in and for the network On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Russell says: > > I bet this has some new dads here scrambling for that removal form: >> > > > Actually, quite the opposite. We had extensive testing done, both pre- and > post-natal, mandatory and elective. IIRC --- and I may not, as we only > signed a bazillion (technical term common in geek-speak ;-) forms --- the > State of Texas stuff was opt-in. Regardless, in all cases we actually opted > to allow sharing and utilization of the relevant data. > > I'm acutely aware of the risks run by such things but in net I believe the > potential benefits outweigh the probable risks involved. We'll see.* > > > Had I become a parent, say, 10 years younger (but in the same e.g. legal > and technological environment that we have today) I'd have made a different > decision. > > > jb > > > * at a minimum, any sane legal system down the road should recognize > subsequence information-on-file as prior art to prevent the "patented-person > problem" (which, I think, will eventually be resolved by changes to > generally-accepted IP law anyway.) Also, aggregative and longitudinal uses > of this kind of information should have a massively accelerating and > quality-improving impact on medical technology development, so in fact I'd > encourage folks who might otherwise be skittish about this sort of thing to > think long and hard before making such decisions. More data = better > medicine. > > > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From sdw at lig.net Fri Feb 5 09:34:20 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:34:20 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re: iPad) In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002050654n2ba332d7p3dfae873b25c7bb5@mail.gmail.com> References: <4B68C31F.4060502@halvorson.us> <4B68DA04.7040900@lig.net> <4B3FF0EE-1FF2-42BF-8FAC-D9E074CF8780@mac.com> <20100203153856.GR17686@leitl.org> <4B69CF6C.4030200@lig.net> <8092dc771002050654n2ba332d7p3dfae873b25c7bb5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B6C569C.4020303@lig.net> Damien Morton wrote: > On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Stephen Williams wrote: > > >> .... >>> >> My dentist has color monitors they use for this. Probably not 16 bit+, but >> could be. The x-ray machine is all digital, no film. They put a sensor in >> your mouth. >> >> >> > My dentist used a sensor as well - fucking huge lump of plastic. Really > uncomfortable. Much prefer the film in a flexible plastic cover. > I'm with you. What lame product designer couldn't think of rounding the edges and corners?? Looks like a booming market. I found these specs: http://suni.reachlocal.com/coupon/?scid=1614897&cid=486333&tc=10020509264509057&rl_key=5f400fdbe9457fbff51309617aacc6f7&kw=10775480&dynamic_proxy=1&primary_serv=suni.reachlocal.net&se_refer=http%253A%252F%252Fsearch.conduit.com%252FResultsExt.aspx%253Fctid%253DCT2504091%2526SearchSource%253D3%2526q%253Delectronic%252Bsensor%252Bdental%252Bxray&pub_cr_id=4635583622 > Maximum Gray Levels 4096 4096 > 1. Resolution: The pixel resolution of the high resolution (HiRes) > sensors exceeds 15 lp/mm. The standard resolution of an X-Ray image, > as measured by the modulation transfer function (MTF) exceeds 12 > lp/mm. This is measured by using a standard 60 kV intraoral X-ray source. > 2. Dose Efficiency: The sensor will produce a high quality image > with an X-Ray dose that is only a fraction of the standard dose > required by Dental X-Ray film. > 3. Diagnostic Efficacy: The system will produce a superior image > quality of images obtained when using standard dental X-Ray film. This > allows the dentist to diagnose standard intraoral pathologies > encountered during screening procedures. > 4. Wide dynamic range: The sensor pixel well capacity is very high, > allowing a higher accommodation of greyscale (bone density) dynamic range. sdw From sdw at lig.net Fri Feb 5 09:44:01 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:44:01 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Here come the robots Message-ID: <4B6C58E1.4050908@lig.net> ROPID is the cutest one so far: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/28/ropid-the-adorable-humanoid-can-jump-3-inches-into-the-air-swee/ sdw From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Fri Feb 5 09:50:25 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 09:50:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] "New babies get their DNA put in permanent government database" In-Reply-To: <99D3408F-75AB-42EB-85C6-B456E711CAAA@place.org> Message-ID: <665266.75912.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 2/5/10, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Russell says: > > > I bet this has some new dads here scrambling for that > removal form: > > > Actually, quite the opposite.? We had extensive > testing done, both pre- and post-natal, mandatory and > elective.? IIRC --- and I may not, as we only signed a > bazillion (technical term common in geek-speak ;-) forms --- > the State of Texas stuff was opt-in.? Regardless, in > all cases we actually opted to allow sharing and utilization > of the relevant data. > > I'm acutely aware of the risks run by such things but in > net I believe the potential benefits outweigh the probable > risks involved.? We'll see.* > > > Had I become a parent, say, 10 years younger (but in the > same e.g. legal and technological environment that we have > today) I'd have made a different decision. > > > jb > > > * at a minimum, any sane legal system down the road should > recognize subsequence information-on-file as prior art to > prevent the "patented-person problem" (which, I think, will > eventually be resolved by changes to generally-accepted IP > law anyway.)? Also,? aggregative and longitudinal > uses of this kind of information should have a massively > accelerating and quality-improving impact on medical > technology development, so in fact I'd encourage folks who > might otherwise be skittish about this sort of thing to > think long and hard before making such decisions.? More > data = better medicine. > How much did you factor/weight the fact that you are making this decision primarily on behalf of your childrens' future, not your own? This is kind of like the tyranny of today's parents posting all those cute "kid pics" of their children all over the internet that those same kids will have to live with/live down as their peers and future potential friends, employers, lovers, etc. see them. Worse, parents are also adding narrative of the most intimate nature, not always kind or complimentary, of the children's "cute" foibles as they grow and learn. We are creating a reality for them that we cannot know and over which they have, and will have, little or no control. The saddest part is that it is mostly self-centred and thoughtless on the part of the parents. Not accusing you of any such behaviour, Jeff, honestly. Just riffing/ranting on the general subject of decisions we make on behalf of our progeny and about which many parents simply don't think. Or even comprehend that they *should* think. Nor would many of them even if you pointed it out to them. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ From jbone at place.org Fri Feb 5 11:42:57 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 13:42:57 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] parents / kids / privacy / decisions / obligations / etc. Message-ID: Ken writes, re: genetic testing / parental decision-making a priori childrens' ability to consent: > (a) How much did you factor/weight the fact that you are making this > decision primarily on behalf of your childrens' future, not your > own? (b) This is kind of like the tyranny of today's parents... (c) > We are creating a reality for them that we cannot know and over > which they have, and will have, little or no control... (d) The > saddest part is that it is mostly self-centred and thoughtless on > the part of the parents. (e) Not accusing you of any such behaviour No need to apologize at all, these are all entirely legitimate considerations / questions / concerns. Let me address these from my personal perspective. I can't speak for any other parent making any such decision. For me, this was a really big deal. Anybody who knows me at all well or has for any length of time will quickly come to realize that my future discount rate approaches zero on average, and is sometimes (often?) negative. ;-) Generally speaking, the major preoccupation of my entire life is and always has been thinking about the future. I've never been one of those "live in the moment" kinds of folks; I find it absolutely impossible and frankly don't usually understand such folks or get along well with them. And despite all appearances of the centrality and potentially exclusivity of self-interest in my little world --- and yeah, sure, guilty as charged on at least the former count ;-) --- I also understand and value extrapolated self-interest, i.e., life isn't a zero-sum game and generally speaking it's good to look out for opportunities for shared interest and, whenever possible, keep other folks' interests in mind. I was obsessively concerned with making the right call *for the kiddos* and for *the future they might occupy* (and their co- occupants). Had to make such decisions in the presence of irreducible uncertainty, *on their behalf*, absent their ability to make informed consent but in a situation requiring a decision *now.* Couldn't have acted in good conscience unless I was convinced that, given my best understanding and extrapolation, future benefits *to them* probably outweighed future risks *to them.* Would've been easier to say no w/o further thought, but that would have been a cop-out, though (obviously, as Russell indicated) that was probably what most folks who know me would have *thought* I'd do, given what they might know about my biases. "Ran the numbers" as rigorously as I could. In the end, I judged the opportunity cost to the kids (not to mention anyone else the data might benefit w/o costing the kiddos anything) to be, as calculated, simply too high. Your estimates (and hence your solutions) might vary. Did the best I could (along with the wife, running her own decision process in parallel; answers converged, confidence increased.) So... (a) Completely. Arguably obsessively. (b) I don't disagree, but unfortunately decisions had to be made at a point prior to their ability to make informed consent. I view parental obligation in this regard as ethically equivalent to e.g. fiduciary obligation. Made the best decision I could make on their behalf in good conscience. (c) That's just a truism. No different from any other point in human history. (d) Maybe. I'm comfortable that it was not in our case, can't speak to and have no desire to judge anyone else's. (e) Shrug, accuse if you like, I won't be offended (more accurately, I won't much care. ;-) jb From sdw at lig.net Fri Feb 5 12:18:28 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:18:28 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Microsoft's reality problem Message-ID: <4B6C7D14.5010804@lig.net> A good high-level summary of the problems. http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/microsofts-reality-problem-238?page=0,2&source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2010-02-05 > Just when Microsoft thought it couldn't get worse, ex-VP Dick Brass > has taken a sockful of manure and beaten his former employer with it. > > February 05, 2010 > Microsoft's reality problem > Apple's big iPad splash highlights Microsoft's failures as a company, > notes a former Redmond exec. And things are only going to get worse > Share or Email > | Print | 4 comments| > 10 Recommendations > > Just when Microsoft thought it couldn't get worse, ex-VP Dick Brass > has taken a sockful of manure and beaten his former employer with it. > > [ Also on InfoWorld: At the other end of the spectrum, Apple's iPad > continues to stupefy and astound, much to Microsoft's consternation. | > Send your crazy-but-true tale of IT gone awry to > offtherecord at infoworld.com. If we publish it, anonymously, of course, > we'll send you a $50 American Express gift cheque. ] > > In a New York Times opinion piece titled "Microsoft's Creative > Destruction," the recovering Redmondite dissects why a company like > Apple can introduce technology like the iPad to huzzahs, while > Microsoft's efforts to create a tablet PC over the years have earned > it nothing but guffaws. He writes: > > Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its > products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. > Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the > 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in > which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind > at the camera? > > While Apple continues to gain market share in many products, > Microsoft has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and > smartphones. Despite billions in investment, its Xbox line is still at > best an equal contender in the game console business. It first ignored > and then stumbled in personal music players until that business was > locked up by Apple....Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer > considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a > steady exit of its best and brightest. > ... Microsoft is GM, and Windows and Office are SUVs: hugely > profitable in their day, but dinosaurs sinking into the tar pits soon > after ... > Needless to say, Microsoft felt compelled to respond, via its Flack du > Flacks, Frank Shaw: > > At the highest level, we think about innovation in relation to its > ability to have a positive impact in the world. For Microsoft, it is > not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a > cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact.... for a company > whose products touch vast numbers of people, what matters is > innovation at scale, not just innovation at speed. > > In other words: What really matters is that a billion people use your > products, even if they mostly suck. ... > You have a reality problem. And the reality is that, despite whatever > people living inside the Microsoft bubble might think, the rest of the > world thinks you're a bully. And nobody likes bullies. > > Another of Microsoft's big reality gaps is its insistence that it's > one of the great tech innovators. Sure, Microsoft Research can go head > to head with the best labs in the world; it's done some amazing > things. But Microsoft's success is built on imitation, not innovation. > Nearly everything it does, somebody else did first and usually better > -- from graphical interfaces to music players, personal finance > software, search engines, Web portals, virtualization software, > phones, and PDAs, you name it. > A third reality disconnect: The notion that Microsoft has made > computing easy and ubiquitous for the masses. > Microsoft designs software under the assumption that everyone who uses > it is either a gibbering simpleton or an engineer -- so it vacillates > between condescending and pointless dialog boxes and incomprehensible > error messages, with few stops in between. sdw From mdw at martinwills.com Fri Feb 5 13:05:40 2010 From: mdw at martinwills.com (mdw at martinwills.com) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 15:05:40 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] Microsoft's reality problem In-Reply-To: <4B6C7D14.5010804@lig.net> References: <4B6C7D14.5010804@lig.net> Message-ID: <2a91bd36af15ec57105f47145b5f00b9.squirrel@webmail.martinwills.com> > A good high-level summary of the problems. > > http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/microsofts-reality-problem-238?page=0,2&source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2010-02-05 >> Just when Microsoft thought it couldn't get worse, ex-VP Dick Brass >> has taken a sockful of manure and beaten his former employer with it. >> >> February 05, 2010 >> Microsoft's reality problem >> Apple's big iPad splash highlights Microsoft's failures as a company, >> notes a former Redmond exec. And things are only going to get worse >> Share or Email >> | Print | 4 comments| >> 10 Recommendations >> >> Just when Microsoft thought it couldn't get worse, ex-VP Dick Brass >> has taken a sockful of manure and beaten his former employer with it. >> >> [ Also on InfoWorld: At the other end of the spectrum, Apple's iPad >> continues to stupefy and astound, much to Microsoft's consternation. | >> Send your crazy-but-true tale of IT gone awry to >> offtherecord at infoworld.com. If we publish it, anonymously, of course, >> we'll send you a $50 American Express gift cheque. ] >> >> In a New York Times opinion piece titled "Microsoft's Creative >> Destruction," the recovering Redmondite dissects why a company like >> Apple can introduce technology like the iPad to huzzahs, while >> Microsoft's efforts to create a tablet PC over the years have earned >> it nothing but guffaws. He writes: >> >> Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its >> products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. >> Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the >> 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in >> which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind >> at the camera? >> >> While Apple continues to gain market share in many products, >> Microsoft has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and >> smartphones. Despite billions in investment, its Xbox line is still at >> best an equal contender in the game console business. It first ignored >> and then stumbled in personal music players until that business was >> locked up by Apple....Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer >> considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a >> steady exit of its best and brightest. >> ... Microsoft is GM, and Windows and Office are SUVs: hugely >> profitable in their day, but dinosaurs sinking into the tar pits soon >> after ... > >> Needless to say, Microsoft felt compelled to respond, via its Flack du >> Flacks, Frank Shaw: >> >> At the highest level, we think about innovation in relation to its >> ability to have a positive impact in the world. For Microsoft, it is >> not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a >> cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact.... for a company >> whose products touch vast numbers of people, what matters is >> innovation at scale, not just innovation at speed. >> >> In other words: What really matters is that a billion people use your >> products, even if they mostly suck. > ... >> You have a reality problem. And the reality is that, despite whatever >> people living inside the Microsoft bubble might think, the rest of the >> world thinks you're a bully. And nobody likes bullies. >> >> Another of Microsoft's big reality gaps is its insistence that it's >> one of the great tech innovators. Sure, Microsoft Research can go head >> to head with the best labs in the world; it's done some amazing >> things. But Microsoft's success is built on imitation, not innovation. >> Nearly everything it does, somebody else did first and usually better >> -- from graphical interfaces to music players, personal finance >> software, search engines, Web portals, virtualization software, >> phones, and PDAs, you name it. > >> A third reality disconnect: The notion that Microsoft has made >> computing easy and ubiquitous for the masses. >> Microsoft designs software under the assumption that everyone who uses >> it is either a gibbering simpleton or an engineer -- so it vacillates >> between condescending and pointless dialog boxes and incomprehensible >> error messages, with few stops in between. > > sdw > hmmm, when did Microsoft start building hardware (e.g. desktop computers, tablet computers, smart phones etc..)? They are a software company and what hardware they do build (keyboards, mice, xbox etc) is actually built by someone else... --Martin-- > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From sdw at lig.net Fri Feb 5 13:29:43 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:29:43 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Microsoft's reality problem In-Reply-To: <2a91bd36af15ec57105f47145b5f00b9.squirrel@webmail.martinwills.com> References: <4B6C7D14.5010804@lig.net> <2a91bd36af15ec57105f47145b5f00b9.squirrel@webmail.martinwills.com> Message-ID: <4B6C8DC7.4030108@lig.net> mdw at martinwills.com wrote: >> A good high-level summary of the problems. >> >> http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/microsofts-reality-problem-238?page=0,2&source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2010-02-05 >> >> ... >>> A third reality disconnect: The notion that Microsoft has made >>> computing easy and ubiquitous for the masses. >>> Microsoft designs software under the assumption that everyone who uses >>> it is either a gibbering simpleton or an engineer -- so it vacillates >>> between condescending and pointless dialog boxes and incomprehensible >>> error messages, with few stops in between. >>> >> sdw >> >> > > > hmmm, when did Microsoft start building hardware (e.g. desktop computers, > tablet computers, smart phones etc..)? They are a software company and > what hardware they do build (keyboards, mice, xbox etc) is actually built > by someone else... > > --Martin-- > Xbox? They set the pace for innovation by deciding what they support, how well it works, etc. And with the level of contracts they had with manufacturers in the past, it has often been a little gray. Anyway, Apple doesn't build hardware either. They are a software and design house that has very good and tight contracting along with great branding. http://texyt.com/iphone+manufacturer+supplier+assembler+not+apple+00113 > Who makes the iPhone? If you answered 'Apple', you're wrong. The > iPhone is a global effort. Tens of thousands of people at more than 30 > companies on 3 continents work together to make Apple's first phone > possible. > > Apple, of course, designs the product, and also created the single > most important 'component' ? the software that gives the iPhone its > unique personality. > > iPhone launch But, while Apple gets the credit, behind the scenes > there are a host of other players, each of which has to build and > deliver complex parts on schedule to make the iPhone possible. > > Some of them are well known names, like US-based Intel, which supplies > the NOR flash chips which hold the iPhone's updatable system software; > and Korea's Samsung, which makes the video processor IC. Two famous > names from consumer electronics, Japan's Sharp and Sanyo Epson, are > among the suppliers of the phone's bright 3.5-inch display. > Unknown suppliers > > Then there are the unknowns, each of which plays a small but vital > role. Ever heard of Balda AG? Chinese factories owned by this German > firm make the touch sensitive modules which are fixed onto the > iPhone's LCD to make its innovative multi-touch control possible. It's > also Balda's technology which allowed Apple to switch to a tough > scratch-resistant glass screen, to avoid the complaints over > scratching that tainted the iPod Nano launch. > > Another low profile firm, the UK's Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR), is > the creator of the iPhone's Bluetooth module, in a deal that > reportedly earns the integrated circuit design house $1.20 for each > iPhone made. > > You might have heard of the companies behind a few of the other iPhone > chips ? if you've ever wrestled with network driver installation on a > PC. Marvell designs the WiFi chip, for example. Broadcom, best known > for its networking chips, is the company behind the specialized > interface chip that interprets the movement of your fingers on the > multitouch screen. > > While these chips are designed in Europe or the US, most of them > aren't made there. Instead they are rolling off production lines in > Asia, from companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co > (TSMC), undoubtedly the world's biggest unknown chip maker, or its > slightly smaller rival, United Microelectronic Corp (UMC) ? both > companies are based in Taiwan. > > The distinctive aluminum and stainless steel iPhone case is also made > by a Taiwanese firm, Catcher Technology, according to analysts in Taiwan. > Final assembly mystery > > No matter where the iPhone's myriad components are made, they all end > up in one place: the factories of a lead contractor whose identity is > now something of a mystery. Apple's iPod manufacturing partner, > Taiwan's Foxconn, was long rumored to be the company that assembled > the hundreds of components into a sleek iPhone. However, Foxconn's CEO > recently surprised investors by telling them that these reports were > incorrect, according to Reuters. Another likely Taiwanese candidate, > Quanta, is rumored to be working on the iPhone, but only on the next > generation, so-called 'iPhone 2.0'. > > Analysts in Foxconn's home base of Taipei however, still confidently > list Foxconn International Holdings as the iPhone's assembler, despite > the company CEO's apparent denial. Whoever the assembler is, it is > there that the chips are planted onto printed circuit boards supplied > by Taiwan's Unimicron Technology Corp. Then all the components are > fitted into the metal and plastic case to make a completed iPhone, > ready for shipment to the US. > A second 3G iPhone? > > During recent months, sources at a few of the component manufacturers > named in this article have told regional media that Apple appears to > be working on two different iPhone designs. The key feature attributed > to 'iPhone 2.0' is 3G, as well as the GSM standard supported by the > original iPhone. At least one of the smaller components suppliers has > reportedly already delivered parts for this forthcoming product. > > iPhone Primary Contractors - a partial list Software and design > Apple USA > Assembly Foxconn?, Quanta, Unknown Taiwan > TFT-LCD Screen Sanyo Epson, Sharp, TMD Japan > Video processor chip Samsung Korea > Touch screen overlay Balda Germany > Bluetooth chip Cambridge Silicon Radio UK > Chip manufacture TSMC, UMC Taiwan > Baseband IC Infineon Technology Germany > WIFI Chip Marvell USA > Touch screen control chip Broadcom USA > CMOS chip Micron USA > NOR Flash ICs Intel, SST USA > Display Driver chip National Semi, Novatek US, TW > Case, Mechanical parts Catcher, Foxconn Tech Taiwan > Camera lens Largan Precision Taiwan > Camera module Altus-Tech, Primax, Lite On Taiwan > Battery Charger Delta Electronics Taiwan > Timing Crystal TXC Taiwan > Passive components Cyntec Taiwan > Connector and cables Cheng Uei, Entery Taiwan > > Note: This article is based on information supplied by KGI Securities, > CLSA Asia-Pacific, published media reports, and other sources in Asia. > > Update June 30: Some of the first iPhones sold have been dismantled, > and more information about components is emerging. For example, iFixit > identifies Samsung as the manufacturer of the main NAND flash chips, > and SkyWorks as the designer of the mobile radio amplifier. Think > Secret has also carried out an iPhone teardown - in the linked photo > the large chip at the bottom of the shot is the Samsung flash chip. sdw From drernie at radicalcentrism.org Fri Feb 5 15:14:21 2010 From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 15:14:21 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] medical file Message-ID: <3F731D38-39A0-473A-9A31-B56506B8B9DF@radicalcentrism.org> Ah, nice to know I'm not the only one salivation at the idea of an iPad as the "mobile clinical assistant"... -- Ernie P. http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_14342360 iPad, anyone? Hospitals looking at the mobile device By Bobby Caina Calvan Sacramento Bee Posted: 02/05/2010 01:38:27 PM PST Updated: 02/05/2010 01:38:29 PM PST SACRAMENTO ? Apple's new creation, the iPad, may be a novelty to many consumers, but hospitals are already starting to abandon paper-and-pen clipboards for hand-held digital tablets. In Sacramento, Kaiser Permanente is in the midst of experimenting with one brand of computerized tablets ? with the hope of freeing nurses and doctors from old-school tools and allowing them more time at a patient's bedside. "We want our nurses to have time to actually nurse and support the patient. We want to remove the barriers ... to provide seamless technology integration," said Ann O'Brien, a registered nurse and Kaiser's national director of clinical informatics. The trial being conducted in Sacramento is part of a broader program, dubbed "Destination Bedside." Kaiser expects to choose an electronic tablet by the end of the year for use at its hospitals nationwide. The idea is to improve care and safety by providing up-to-the-minute medical information on the patient that can help prevent mistakes. X-rays, medical charts, prescriptions and notes would be readily available at a tap of a finger. One tablet, the Motion C5, promoted by its manufacturer as a "mobile clinical assistant," is about the size of a small bathroom scale. It has handles and is equipped with a stylus. "I love it," said Thomas Whiteford, a registered nurse at Kaiser's Sacramento Medical Center, who took part in testing the device. "I can sit next to the patient and do my charting." The popularity of Apple's iPhone among doctors could be a natural springboard for the iPad. But O'Brien, the health care giant's informatics director, said the device isn't even out yet to assess its potential. Already, the iPhone has become a favorite tool among young doctors, who use many of the scores of health care-related apps, including encyclopedic information on pharmaceuticals. Kaiser officials are considering whether the iPhone will become standard issue at its hospitals to more intimately bring technology to a patient's bedside. Jason Wilk, who authors the technology blogtinycomb.com, reported last month that Apple officials had visited a Los Angeles hospital, ostensibly to market their products. He presumed it was the iPad. "Considering what happened with the iPhone, it seems like it makes a lot of sense that they would be talking with hospitals," Wilk said, noting the mobile device's popularity among doctors. "You can do so much more with a larger screen, for medical charts. This is probably the future of computing." Perhaps it's the future of medicine, said Dr. Javeed Siddiqui, associate medical director for the Center for Health and Technology at UC Davis Medical Center. Nurses, doctors and pharmacists have already been using hand-held tablets, but wide-scale deployment would be expensive. The model that Kaiser is considering and that UC Davis is already using on a limited basis costs more than $2,000 per unit. Many hospitals now use full-size computers and monitors mounted on wheeled carts, but these don't offer the same ease of use and mobility as hand-held tablets. Laptops would seem an alternative, but aren't as easy to use as they would seem, particularly in a clinical setting where doctors and nurses are always on the go. And they aren't durable and can't easily be swabbed down for disinfection. The hope among hospital officials is that electronic tablets will further power the technological revolution already under way at hospitals. And it's an obvious extension of the industrywide push toward paperless electronic medical records. "The paper chart is an antiquated way of providing health care," Siddiqui said. "The paper chart is inefficient. It doesn't allow for rapid dissemination of information and really is no longer, I believe, the standard of care in health care delivery." From sdw at lig.net Fri Feb 5 17:05:07 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:05:07 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: References: <4B62F230.1000704@cs.ucsc.edu> <20100130042041.GA21426@permafrost.net> <20100201185038.GA20726@permafrost.net> Message-ID: <4B6CC043.5040508@lig.net> Tom Higgins wrote: > I will more than bet that the iPad will do for me exactly what the > iPod and iPhone did in their respective categories. > > On the mp3 player front I had a couple of different players before the > ipod made its mark, saw where the iTunes store was going when they > rolled it out in 2003 and decided that was not the road for me. On the > smartphone front they were very much in the locked down company store > mentality from the get go and decided again it was not a good fit for > me. I finally decided on the Droid just a few months ago. The tablet > road looks to be about the same, that is I have had a chance to play > with tablets for while now (heck I still have the pieces of the old > Sonicblue Progear in my basement somewhere) and simply do not see the > Apples vision for control a fit for what I want in a device. > They can't capture me on the iPhone side. WebOS and Android are very good, enough better in several ways that the iPhone isn't even close right now. On the other hand, the iPad seems like a relatively nice platform for some things. I don't think we've pointed out in this thread that Amazon has a Kindle reader for the iPhone/iPod Touch, and hence the iPad. So, while it is competing on the hardware side, it is already coopted on the reader side / content. Found this interesting clip in my archives from 5/7/2009 wnn at eletters.whatsnewnow.com: > How an iPad Could Kill the Kindle > > Mobile Analyst Sascha Segan is certainly not the only one > predicting the demise of the Amazon Kindle DX before it > even ships to customers. He, like others, sees a dark > shadow cast over the Kindle DX by Apple's ambitions, and > thinks the unknown hardware Apple may release next month > could be a stake through the heart of Amazon's infant > digital-book hardware business. Oddly, though, Segan does > not think Amazon will be upset if Apple introduces a large > format iPod-touch with cellular capability. I know Apple is > releasing some sort of new device next month, but I'm not > sure this is it. Even if it is, I bet Sascha is wrong. Read > the post and decide for yourself. > > Is Apple Eyeing the E-Book market? > http://ct2.eletters.whatsnewnow.com/rd/cts?d=42-3336-1-464-695322-901760-0-0-0-1-3-118 Additionally, there is a rumor of an iPad-like tablet OS X machine. If it has sufficient battery and a really great touch screen with good resolution, that would be much more interesting. Apple: go for battery life at all the cost of weight, but don't scrimp on RAM, CPU (too much), or storage (use a bunch of SD slots on the edge if you have to). http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/01/apple-tablet-os-x-ipad/ > So yea, Apple continuing to not have me as a customer seems a good > bet. Will they still make a few nation's GPD of worth on it...sure why > not. Slap it once, slap it twice...you know the rest. > > Do I think they will shake things up? A beast that size is bound to. > > Now as to the demerits of the epub format, I am still sort of taken by > it:)- It is simple, contained, and most fo the devices I have can now > in rotation can render it (readers for linux desktop, netbook, sony > pr505 and droid). HTML5 though is a good thought for it as well. I am > not sure how much interactivity I want with my books, sure playing > Choose Your Own Adventure books would rocketh...but one of the reasons > I picked the pr505 was its decidedly unconnected uncomplicated book > reading abilities. Yes, it is not the best for heavily laid out > graphic works. I would like to see what comes from HTML5 and books. > > Both HTML5 and extended Wiki formatting would be great ebook formats. How about something with Latex-like capabilities in HTML5? > > -tom(hard numbers...let us say that unless the devices gets totally > fraked up in a bad pr spincycle it will be >15% of Apple's worth in 3 > years.)higgins > sdw From sdw at lig.net Fri Feb 5 18:11:21 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:11:21 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B6CCFC9.2060207@lig.net> Excellent conceptual map, thanks. In my own experience with various people, including a few years interacting with the product manager for all of AOL (who had no vision), I learned that there is a huge difference in the ability to A) be creative in a variety of senses and B) be visionary. I.e. to be able to construct a future where a product exists and other aspects of reality have evolved and then to imagine a wide variety of responses by a range of people. Having vision ability, with out-of-the-box creativity, along with deep knowledge in as many areas as possible is the basis of being a Magician. These capabilities are also important for everyone else described. Jeff Bone wrote: > > ... > > -- The Magicians -- > > In The Beginning we had product magicians. Their product "magic" was > / is a process primarily of introspection; they reflect upon their > own attitudes about, uses of, and desires for certain technologies > and, from this reflection, can (or attempt to) extrapolate the needs > or desires of others and synthesize product definitions accordingly. > The result is something equally magical: a "vision." It is gestalt, > genius, artistry. It is aesthetic, soft, egoistic, passionate. The > process is highly subjective, intuition driven, and qualitative --- > and success or failure relies entirely upon the individual magician's > ability to execute this mysterious, internal, creative / synthetic / > syncretic process that they themselves probably cannot articulate, > much less teach others. Success or failure also requires the ability > of the magician to manage the efforts --- often dictatorially --- of > others in actually bringing the product to fruition while maintaining > the integrity of the original "vision." > ... Isn't this where the fun is? Even in the regimes below, you won't typically hill climb out of any serious local minima without at least some benefit from a Magician. Google gets this at least by buying companies and giving people a lot of autonomy. > > -- The Alchemists -- > > The product alchemists are product magicians that would be product > scientists, if merely they understood how. They attempt to apply > various external, reproducible, objective laws, observations, > measurements, methods, and so forth to the product creation process in > order to achieve the optimal result. However, there's still a kind of > animistic, ad hoc, magical quality to the effort. They tend to > reflect on the objects / artifacts themselves, their abstract purpose > and uses (use cases, etc.) and subjective musings about how > individuals might use any given artifact with any given configuration > of properties in some context to some end. The methods used tend to > be a mix of qualitative and quantitative. The alchemists have the > right goal in mind, but generally not the right tools (i.e., > developed-enough models, relying instead on ratios of bilious and > phlegmatic humors) or methods (obsessive focus on quantitative means > of taking actual input data and turning it into objective meaning.) > The input is too selective, the data sets too small, the processes too > ad hoc, the experiments too uncontrolled, and the objects of > consideration too abstract and animistic to really call what they do > science. To a large extent the success or failure of the effort still > devolves to the quality of the intuition of the individual alchemists > involved. > > ... > -- The Scientists --- > > There won't be any. > > > -- The Post-Scientists / The Empiricists --- > > There won't be any science of product, no grand unified theory of > product creation / innovation / marketing --- not because it's > impossible (though it might be) but because we're going to leap right > past that to something fuzzier, spookier, more massive, more > inscrutable, more data-driven, colder and yet simultaneously "wetter" > and more "biological" --- and more effective. Bigger, yet less > substantial; ectoplasmic. Something much... Google-ier. Cf. "The > Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data," "The Google Way of Science," > "Science Without Theory," etc. > > The basic idea here is: stop guessing, stop "modeling," stop > extrapolating, stop forecasting, stop focus grouping, stop asking... > and just measure and evolve. Measure early, measure often, measure > always, measure everything, measure a *whole lot.* Let the numbers > guide the decisions about what to build, how to build it, when to > build it, *why* to build it. What color should that background be? > Try them all and measure it. Should I build X, Y, or Z? Build them > all, see which works best, discard the rest. Should that button be > here or there? Let the (very large) masses decide. > ... This actually applies to what I'm doing. I was already planning a folksomy-like approach. This however has inspired me to go way beyond. > > > > --- Beyond-the-Beyond --- > > For now, humans remain in the loop, the analysts and actors, human > judgments and proactivity still essential to acts of invention, to the > product-conceiving and product-making creative process. That won't > always be the case. The next meta-level up the stack is automating > away that part of the process, closing the loop entirely, humans > merely as reactive agents and input signals, the population as a whole > an experimental testbed on which the process operates. Quo bono? Us, > hopefully. But not entirely certainly, and perhaps not forever... > > At the end of the line, we will find ourselves back to magic. Clarke > was right, of course; "any sufficiently advanced technology..." When > the technology in question is the meta-technology of technology > creation, and when you've moved beyond theory to pure, inscrutable, > dense, automatically-derived, data-driven mathematical models, > predictions, and processes... the creative process is out of our > hands, becomes recursive... the exclusive domain of focused (if > global, hopefully friendly (*cough*)) optimizers, optimizing away, > refining, perfecting, chiseling away at product-space oh-so-efficiently. Should be fun. > > And so we have a world of agents and daemons roaming invisibly through > virtual planes that intersect the desert of the real at select > touch-points, a whole bestiarum vocabulum of artificial, narrow beings > so eager to please: barely-aware fabs and repraps and reality > printers, vision-projectors and consensus hallucinator-facilitators, > stock feed logisticians, meta-compilers, automatic user interface > builders and mass customizers, usage statisticians and reality miners, > attention heat-mappers and points-of-sale streamers, all manner of > other localizers and trackers, transaction and other pattern > recognizers, time-on-page and other attention-attenders, > similarity-clusterers and preference-predictors, action-modality > specialists and subculture classifiers and fashion advisors and > memetic imagineers, cluestream-sniffers and cluehounds and sensor-node > watchers, remembrance agents and interest detectors, gaze gazers and > meta-suggestive sell suggesters, and so on... more attention and > effort and urgent need-to-please lavished instantaneously yet > continually on each individual than the sum of human attention and > effort throughout history... Nice. Endlessly recursive spin. Let's hope they don't start arguing politics. > > A swarm of cold intelligences operating for and on us, navigating, > searching silently and tirelessly across vast multi-dimensional > fitness landscapes of shimmery, roiling, chaotic, noisy, raw, rich, > pure data; mining it, sifting it, finding, reminding, refining, > synthesizing... competing, negotiating, cooperating, mutating, > replicating, mating, creating, minimizing the experimental error, > "understanding" their human experimental subjects by reduction to pure > math.. Climbing that hill... dancing some weird and intricate dance > of creative destruction and destructive creation... Simultaneously > the most personalized, customized, bespoke user experience for each > individual, a cornucopia of products, a consumer's Elysium... a > reality tailored perfectly and obsessively to each person, yet not > lovingly; so impersonal, so cold, too... perfect. Flawless. > Nothing objectionable, nothing out of place, no surprises - ever > (except when you want one and don't know it. They do.) > > And the whole thing certainly begins to look like magic. Spooky, > virtual, cold, alien magic. > > "Wonderful?" Certainly, if literally. Desirable? Arguable.* > Inevitable? Probably. > > > -- > > > $0.02, > > > jb > > > * Me? I guess I dig the idea. Count me in. But then, meatheads > never impress me much anyway. ;-) sdw From lucas.gonze at gmail.com Fri Feb 5 20:58:43 2010 From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 20:58:43 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Gordon Mohr wrote: > Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: >> On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:32 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: >> I think the macro scale impact of iPad is in changing the traditional >>> >>> desktop metaphor for the PC. ?I'm not convinced that iPad itself will >>> sell a huge number of copies, but I do think it's likely that >>> iPad-like user experiences will become common on machines with as much >>> power as a PC. >> >> "I'm not convinced" -- are you just waffling, or will you join Gordon and >> put $50 behind your opinion? > > Be an Ernie P.[1] or a Russell T. [2], not an Adam B. [3,4] -- put your > money where your mouth is! Aw, now you've got fighting words. My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa. It won't move a lot of units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will. A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate lots of ideas from it will sell more than X. Thoughts on T and X? For a starting guess I'll say 2015 and 10 million. Anybody interested in such a bet? From kranenbuster at gmail.com Sat Feb 6 04:14:06 2010 From: kranenbuster at gmail.com (rob van kranenburg) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 13:14:06 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: <4B6CCFC9.2060207@lig.net> References: <4B6CCFC9.2060207@lig.net> Message-ID: <3559b3cf1002060414w789f4311sf51aa7991b75c4ee@mail.gmail.com> Hallo from chilly Ghent, Yes, great line up of what is inevitable! Some years ago I wrote; " It has to do with my ability to visualise a setting in which people resonate with media through simulating processes. Simulating processes that are actual processes, for in a digitised real, any process might become experiential, might resonate."` I did not understand it then. Now I do. It is very simple: The Internet Of Things is the death of any subject-object relationship. From the moment it goes live, all and every relationship of me and my surroundings, objects, clothes, mobility... w h a t e v e r, will have an added component, a digital potentiality that is outside of my control. Things are in threes now, forever. You, me and a hit somewhere. You, me and the fix. So what? So what you say. Every generation builds it own add-ons to the notions of reality, to what it believes are the foundations of the real. What makes this move so different? There is a table. On the table a glass. A glass of tea, jasmine? Jasmine tea. Hmm, good tea. I reach for the glass in a hurry, I gotta run. My hand, it feels like sweeping it off the table yet gently grasp it. I am not in a hurry at ll. I can take it in my hand and admire the engravings. I can see drops of condensed water gently not quite sliding over the edge. I am not in a hurry. I pour you a glass. I offer it to you. Here, a glass of Jasmine tea. There are a great number of ways to reach out for a glass. And now this glass is the one your grandmother gave to you on her dying bed. You put it on the table. Pour out jasmine tea. The affordances of a lifetime, the scope of a generation, as your reach out for the cup, the gesture itself becomes the reality that bridges worlds. No kidding. Just what it is. Try to argue with that! I'm not afraid to write this. Let me tell you what will happen, quickly, as all things will be going quickly. A child will grow up and see a table. A glass on that table. She will put her mobile phone/device/cuddle next to the glass. She wants to find out what it is, what it means. She will for evermore and from the beginning of time do this with and through mediating devices. And lo and behold, a movie starts playing on her cuddle, triggered buy the tag embedded in the glass. The movie is scripted by the jasmine tea providers who tell the stories they want to tell. Finally the real has become scriptable and the scriptable becomes the real. Really now! All because for a younger generation the qualities of connectivity are intrinsic to what they perceive as the object. For us it is still an 'add-on', for them it is the thing itself. That is why I set up Council http://www.theinternetofthings.eu/ to get some crazy messy human sense of being and becoming bargaining power to hardcode some poetry into the heart of the protocols, desired frequencies and get some clear signals out there to take all these horrible wireless clutter out of the air, but this is a lame plan as people always get it when it is too late, and so I'm working hard with friends on a plan b and that is plain magic indeed, Greetings! Rob On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 3:11 AM, Stephen Williams wrote: > Excellent conceptual map, thanks. In my own experience with various > people, including a few years interacting with the product manager for all > of AOL (who had no vision), I learned that there is a huge difference in the > ability to A) be creative in a variety of senses and B) be visionary. I.e. > to be able to construct a future where a product exists and other aspects of > reality have evolved and then to imagine a wide variety of responses by a > range of people. Having vision ability, with out-of-the-box creativity, > along with deep knowledge in as many areas as possible is the basis of being > a Magician. These capabilities are also important for everyone else > described. > > Jeff Bone wrote: > >> >> ... >> >> -- The Magicians -- >> >> In The Beginning we had product magicians. Their product "magic" was / is >> a process primarily of introspection; they reflect upon their own attitudes >> about, uses of, and desires for certain technologies and, from this >> reflection, can (or attempt to) extrapolate the needs or desires of others >> and synthesize product definitions accordingly. The result is something >> equally magical: a "vision." It is gestalt, genius, artistry. It is >> aesthetic, soft, egoistic, passionate. The process is highly subjective, >> intuition driven, and qualitative --- and success or failure relies entirely >> upon the individual magician's ability to execute this mysterious, internal, >> creative / synthetic / syncretic process that they themselves probably >> cannot articulate, much less teach others. Success or failure also requires >> the ability of the magician to manage the efforts --- often dictatorially >> --- of others in actually bringing the product to fruition while maintaining >> the integrity of the original "vision." >> ... >> > > Isn't this where the fun is? > Even in the regimes below, you won't typically hill climb out of any > serious local minima without at least some benefit from a Magician. Google > gets this at least by buying companies and giving people a lot of autonomy. > >> >> -- The Alchemists -- >> >> The product alchemists are product magicians that would be product >> scientists, if merely they understood how. They attempt to apply various >> external, reproducible, objective laws, observations, measurements, methods, >> and so forth to the product creation process in order to achieve the optimal >> result. However, there's still a kind of animistic, ad hoc, magical quality >> to the effort. They tend to reflect on the objects / artifacts themselves, >> their abstract purpose and uses (use cases, etc.) and subjective musings >> about how individuals might use any given artifact with any given >> configuration of properties in some context to some end. The methods used >> tend to be a mix of qualitative and quantitative. The alchemists have the >> right goal in mind, but generally not the right tools (i.e., >> developed-enough models, relying instead on ratios of bilious and phlegmatic >> humors) or methods (obsessive focus on quantitative means of taking actual >> input data and turning it into objective meaning.) The input is too >> selective, the data sets too small, the processes too ad hoc, the >> experiments too uncontrolled, and the objects of consideration too abstract >> and animistic to really call what they do science. To a large extent the >> success or failure of the effort still devolves to the quality of the >> intuition of the individual alchemists involved. >> >> ... >> >> -- The Scientists --- >> >> There won't be any. >> >> >> -- The Post-Scientists / The Empiricists --- >> >> There won't be any science of product, no grand unified theory of product >> creation / innovation / marketing --- not because it's impossible (though it >> might be) but because we're going to leap right past that to something >> fuzzier, spookier, more massive, more inscrutable, more data-driven, colder >> and yet simultaneously "wetter" and more "biological" --- and more >> effective. Bigger, yet less substantial; ectoplasmic. Something much... >> Google-ier. Cf. "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data," "The Google Way >> of Science," "Science Without Theory," etc. >> >> The basic idea here is: stop guessing, stop "modeling," stop >> extrapolating, stop forecasting, stop focus grouping, stop asking... and >> just measure and evolve. Measure early, measure often, measure always, >> measure everything, measure a *whole lot.* Let the numbers guide the >> decisions about what to build, how to build it, when to build it, *why* to >> build it. What color should that background be? Try them all and measure >> it. Should I build X, Y, or Z? Build them all, see which works best, >> discard the rest. Should that button be here or there? Let the (very >> large) masses decide. >> ... >> > > This actually applies to what I'm doing. I was already planning a > folksomy-like approach. This however has inspired me to go way beyond. > > >> >> >> --- Beyond-the-Beyond --- >> >> For now, humans remain in the loop, the analysts and actors, human >> judgments and proactivity still essential to acts of invention, to the >> product-conceiving and product-making creative process. That won't always >> be the case. The next meta-level up the stack is automating away that part >> of the process, closing the loop entirely, humans merely as reactive agents >> and input signals, the population as a whole an experimental testbed on >> which the process operates. Quo bono? Us, hopefully. But not entirely >> certainly, and perhaps not forever... >> >> At the end of the line, we will find ourselves back to magic. Clarke was >> right, of course; "any sufficiently advanced technology..." When the >> technology in question is the meta-technology of technology creation, and >> when you've moved beyond theory to pure, inscrutable, dense, >> automatically-derived, data-driven mathematical models, predictions, and >> processes... the creative process is out of our hands, becomes recursive... >> the exclusive domain of focused (if global, hopefully friendly (*cough*)) >> optimizers, optimizing away, refining, perfecting, chiseling away at >> product-space oh-so-efficiently. >> > > Should be fun. > > >> And so we have a world of agents and daemons roaming invisibly through >> virtual planes that intersect the desert of the real at select touch-points, >> a whole bestiarum vocabulum of artificial, narrow beings so eager to please: >> barely-aware fabs and repraps and reality printers, vision-projectors and >> consensus hallucinator-facilitators, stock feed logisticians, >> meta-compilers, automatic user interface builders and mass customizers, >> usage statisticians and reality miners, attention heat-mappers and >> points-of-sale streamers, all manner of other localizers and trackers, >> transaction and other pattern recognizers, time-on-page and other >> attention-attenders, similarity-clusterers and preference-predictors, >> action-modality specialists and subculture classifiers and fashion advisors >> and memetic imagineers, cluestream-sniffers and cluehounds and sensor-node >> watchers, remembrance agents and interest detectors, gaze gazers and >> meta-suggestive sell suggesters, and so on... more attention and effort and >> urgent need-to-please lavished instantaneously yet continually on each >> individual than the sum of human attention and effort throughout history... >> > > Nice. Endlessly recursive spin. Let's hope they don't start arguing > politics. > > >> A swarm of cold intelligences operating for and on us, navigating, >> searching silently and tirelessly across vast multi-dimensional fitness >> landscapes of shimmery, roiling, chaotic, noisy, raw, rich, pure data; >> mining it, sifting it, finding, reminding, refining, synthesizing... >> competing, negotiating, cooperating, mutating, replicating, mating, >> creating, minimizing the experimental error, "understanding" their human >> experimental subjects by reduction to pure math.. Climbing that hill... >> dancing some weird and intricate dance of creative destruction and >> destructive creation... Simultaneously the most personalized, customized, >> bespoke user experience for each individual, a cornucopia of products, a >> consumer's Elysium... a reality tailored perfectly and obsessively to each >> person, yet not lovingly; so impersonal, so cold, too... perfect. >> Flawless. Nothing objectionable, nothing out of place, no surprises - ever >> (except when you want one and don't know it. They do.) >> >> And the whole thing certainly begins to look like magic. Spooky, virtual, >> cold, alien magic. >> >> "Wonderful?" Certainly, if literally. Desirable? Arguable.* >> Inevitable? Probably. >> >> >> -- >> >> >> $0.02, >> >> >> jb >> >> >> * Me? I guess I dig the idea. Count me in. But then, meatheads never >> impress me much anyway. ;-) >> > > sdw > > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From jbone at place.org Sat Feb 6 07:20:15 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 09:20:15 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: sdw says: > Isn't this where the fun is? Even in the regimes below, you won't > typically hill climb out of any serious local minima without at > least some benefit from a Magician. Google gets this at least by > buying companies and giving people a lot of autonomy. Not making any judgment calls here, other than to note that "magic isn't reliable." (I.e., the results are not always reproducible, and what worked once doesn't necessarily work a second time, even when faithfully repeated.) It may be "fun" --- but is that really the point? (I'd say it is, at least with respect to creatives. OTOH, there's no reason that creativity can't be taken up a meta-level, i.e. creativity becomes meta-creativity, the human creatives / magicians become the creators, curators, and custodians of the machine creative processes. (Of course, they need a little bit of alchemy at least, but probably meta-applied post-science, to do *this* part well, too... and so on, recursively and ever indirectly. OTOH, I've now heard the "stuck on a local hilltop" argument in several contexts here with respect to optimization processes, particularly data- / machine learning-driven processes, evolutionary computing, etc. It's a problem, that's true; but it's one that's easily avoided. The first step is being able to *determine* that you're not improving; and that's trivial. The second step is to relocate some distance / direction in the search space, and see what happens. Generally this "jolt" is done randomly; it can be the mutation step in a EC, or whatever. That doesn't work, start exploring ever-more-distant parts of the space. Standard operating procedure. How well it works depends on your ability to assess and to move around the fitness landscape as well as the shape of the landscape itself. But n-gradient detection isn't hard. Also worth pointing out that for most interesting problems the fitness landscape isn't static, it's dynamic; so even under most standard EC mechanisms, with even naive hilltop-avoidance, you get coevolution. So I'm not convinced that optimization processes necessarily involve getting eventually stuck on a local hilltop that you can't get off of. Indeed, the theory(-ies) of universal optimizers e.g. AIXI would have it otherwise. To assume that getting stuck is essential to such mechanical processes is to assume something, ahem, "magical" about the human brain itself. $0.02, jb Aside, re: rvk: nice post, thanks. From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Sat Feb 6 09:14:57 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 09:14:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <615618.55776.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/6/10, Jeff Bone wrote: > > OTOH, I've now heard the "stuck on a local hilltop" > argument in several contexts here with respect to > optimization processes, particularly data- / machine > learning-driven processes, evolutionary computing, > etc.? It's a problem, that's true;? but it's one > that's easily avoided.? The first step is being able to > *determine* that you're not improving;? and that's > trivial.? I disagree. For the typical person or organization - business or government - this is far from trivial. First, I don't think most are wired to accept that, despite their best efforts, they are not improving. Second, even having begun to suspect that it might be the case, I don't think most are wired to admit it. You need to do both before you can move on. For you and I, to whom the chase is everything, it's easy to admit to a dead-end and switch to some other path. But I have noted over the years that that is very much the exception. You actually seem to realize it intuitively: > The second step is to relocate some distance > / direction in the search space, and see what happens.? > Generally this "jolt" is done randomly;?... Yes, "jolt" is the correct word. It typically takes a very serious jolt to induce the sort of direction change you are describing. > > So I'm not convinced that optimization processes > necessarily involve getting eventually stuck on a local > hilltop that you can't get off of.? ... Optimization processes do not. Human nature seems to involve just that. > ... To assume that getting stuck is essential > to such mechanical processes is to assume something, ahem, > "magical" about the human brain itself. > No, it's not essential. But given human nature I would say it's unavoidable and typically requires some outside agency to impart that jolt you speak of. Let me put it another way. If one is stuck on that local hilltop it's probably because they have something vested in it. Something more compelling than the desire to improve/change. Conversely, if one is all about the chase they won't likely experience the problem. The local hilltop isn't. It's just a plateau - a point for (re)assessment - that gives one a better view of the surrounding terrain and is actually an incentive to change location/perspective/direction. I like to think of it as mental athletics. Top performing athletes will always eventually plateau in their training so are always trying to find ways to a) change the training regimen to bust through the plateau and b) avoid this "training effect" in the first place by keeping the training regimen sufficiently mixed. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From jbone at place.org Sat Feb 6 12:14:33 2010 From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 14:14:33 -0600 Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3BED000C-8203-4695-A36A-6C003857B2C6@place.org> Ken says... > I disagree. But of course you do. ;-) However, you're not actually disagreeing with what I was asserting; you're talking about human beings and human organizations --- Stephen and I were discussing whether *machine* creatives would inevitably become stuck in local optima. All of your statements about optimization vs. human nature are absolutely true in my experience, and I agree with them. However, what's true for humans and human optimization and creativity isn't necessarily --- and generally *is not* --- true of *machine* optimization and creativity. The techniques mentioned work *better* for machines than humans; they don't generally have the hang ups humans do --- no limbic systems and all that, we humans just can't seem to get out of our own way most of the time --- so that "jolting" / getting unstuck is even easier for machines than it is for human beings. That, in particular, is why I'm bullish about the prospects for machine "creativity" and problem-solution search. Just one small problem for most sufficiently complex and interesting problems... That problem, the biggest problem with machine creativity today, is creating a sufficiently rich yet dimensionally / computationally tractable representation of the fitness landscape for the problem you want to solve and for the shape of the individual solutions. But significant progress is being made on that front in various places, including (an area I'm particularly interested in) mechanical system design automation... (A second problem, particularly when the landscape is dynamic, is signal-to-noise in the data as represented, in the capture / sampling process, and often in the landscape / problem space itself. To be fair, for some domains that is *THE* problem...) BTW, my understanding of this stuff isn't intuitive, perhaps unfortunately. I've gained a lot of first-hand exposure to the machine side of this over the last several years. I'm sure there are folks for whom understanding the limits (and the *opportunities*) in the machine learning and intelligence space is a lot more intuitive than it is for me. For my part, I am continually surprised to find my assumptions about such things to be exactly wrong, though usually in hindsight these "discoveries" make perfect sense. Understanding human nature, on the other hand, is a lifetime endeavor --- and probably inherently constrained to the point of almost- impossibility in the general case. ;-) $0.02, YMMV. jb From dmorton at bitfurnace.com Sat Feb 6 18:43:48 2010 From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 13:43:48 +1100 Subject: [FoRK] universal welfare. Message-ID: <8092dc771002061843v5d84b7fds8d792ca7952f7de8@mail.gmail.com> http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/all/ """ If Bowles has the history of wealth figured out all the way back to the Stone Age, shouldn?t he have some practical advice? Indeed he does. Here, one number will suffice. $250,000. OK, that?s a figure Bowles picked out of the air. It?s how much each person might receive under a key economic reform he supports: universal welfare. It could also be called direct government investment in everyone. After all, taxpayers already invest in strangers? children through the public schools before turning them loose with nothing. ?Suppose instead what we did is this: We said, ?Look, when somebody turns 18, he gets a quarter of a million dollars and, after that, you?re on your own,?? Bowles says. ?Once you?ve got your quarter-million, you?ve got to make a decision: ?Should I go to college or do I want to start a business???which you could do with a quarter of a million.? This is a variant of an old idea, more recently popularized?at least in Europe?by the Belgian economist Philippe Van Parijs. Under his ?basic income grant? proposal, the government would redistribute wealth so that everyone has enough to live. ?They just get a check. And they get it no matter what?Rockefeller, the poorest person in America, everybody gets it,? Bowles says. ?There?s nothing you can do to get more; there?s nothing you can do to get less.? Such a system eliminates the disincentives to work in the current social safety net. ?The problem with the welfare system is that as soon as you get a job, they start taking your money,? Bowles says. ?This basically says, ?You?ve got this nest egg and, if you go out and get a job, you keep the whole thing?except for whatever taxes you pay.? """ From bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca Sat Feb 6 21:03:09 2010 From: bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca (John Parsons) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 21:03:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: <3559b3cf1002060414w789f4311sf51aa7991b75c4ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <319717.93672.qm@web112305.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/6/10, rob van kranenburg wrote: > The Internet Of Things is the death of any subject-object > relationship. From > the moment it goes live, all and every relationship of me > and my > surroundings, objects, clothes, mobility... w h a t e v e > r, will have an > added component, a digital potentiality that is outside of > my control. > Things are in threes now, forever. You, me and a hit > somewhere. You, me and > the fix. So what? So what you say. Every generation builds > it own add-ons to > the notions of reality, to what it believes are the > foundations of the real. > What makes this move so different? Alas, from the perspective of an old cynic, it seems that with every adjunct, while something is added, another is lost. The old saw about radio versus early television, in that radio had better pictures, is particularly poignant. Another example is music videos. The video component is added to the song and immediately clashes with your internal pictures and impression of the audio only version. Indeed, now, they are often indiguishable components. It becomes a gestalt performance, enhanced perhaps but more externally defined and less personable. By the same token, then, the idea of this additional "presence", this third perspective, is a little unsettling to me. As a life-long motorcyclist, I know that the best conversations one has, is with himself, free of extraneous input. I realize however, that I'm not the generation this would be aimed at or affect, and that my reticence could only be reaction to the unknown change it represents. As fabricated externalities increasingly affect our shared existence, do they free or enable great new states of consciousness or non-material being (the last thing the world needs more of, is materialism), or do they deaden and supress individual actuation (not necessarily a bad thing)? > Finally the real has become > scriptable and the > scriptable becomes the real. Really now! > All because for a younger generation the qualities of connectivity are > > intrinsic to what they perceive as the object. For us it is still an > 'add-on', for them it is the thing itself. As new generations evolve the world with these forever altered perceptions, does it still breed for survival (i.e. is this survival positive or negative)? Does it even matter? > I'm working hard with friends on a plan b and that is plain magic indeed, > Greetings! Rob What's plan B? Will we like it? :-) Cheers John __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From aaron at bavariati.org Sat Feb 6 21:08:28 2010 From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 21:08:28 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> Message-ID: <20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31> On Fri, Feb 05, 2010 at 08:58:43PM -0800, Lucas Gonze wrote: > My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa. It won't move a lot of > units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will. Wot, are we due for a flood of walled-garden netbooks-without-keyboards? And I suspect the Newton already played Lisa to the iPad/iPhone. > A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct > successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate > lots of ideas from it will sell more than X. What matters is, does the iPad add fun to CoD:Zombies or whatever Appleoids play instead of Trials HD? Sure the screen's bigger, but is the experience better for that? From sean at conman.org Sun Feb 7 00:26:39 2010 From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 03:26:39 -0500 Subject: [FoRK] universal welfare. In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002061843v5d84b7fds8d792ca7952f7de8@mail.gmail.com> References: <8092dc771002061843v5d84b7fds8d792ca7952f7de8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20100207082639.GA13954@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Damien Morton once stated: > http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/all/ Nice in theory, but I have real problems with the article overall. For instance: > Again with the numbers: > > 30 > > 32 > > The first number is the likelihood, expressed as a percentage, that a child > born to parents whose incomes fall within the top 10 percent of Americans > will grow up to be at least as wealthy. > > The second is the percentage likelihood that a person born into the bottom > 10 percent of society will stay at the bottom. > > Just to drive the point home, here?s a third number: 1.3 > > That?s the percentage likelihood that a bottom 10 percenter will ever make > it to the top 10 percent. For 99 out of 100 people, rags never lead to > riches. Here, let me rewrite that a bit: The first number is the likelihood, expressed as a percentage, that a child born in the top 10 percent of soceity will stay at the top. The second is the percentage likelihood that a child born to parents whose incomes fall within the bottom 10 percent of Americans will grow up to be at least as poor. Basically, children born to either the top or bottom 10 percent will have a similar chance of staying in that bracket. It's okay that 66% will fall out of the top 10, but *bad* that only 66% will rise out of the bottom 10? And okay, only 1.3% in the bottom will make it to the top [1], but it seems from the figures given that 66% will move *out* of the bottom 10 at least. And about that $250,000 ... is he serious? Let's see: Population of the US (estimate): 300,000,000 or 3*10^8 Proposed amount: 250,000 or 2.5*10^5 multiply the two together: 7.5*10^13 or 75,000,000,000,000 That's 75 TRILLION dollars. GNP as of 2008 was *only* 14.3 TRILLION [2]. Of course, we could go all Zimbabwe and run the printing presses 24x7 to get us to 75 trillion dollars ... -spc (Heck, let's just take Bill Gates $100 billion and distribute it amongst ourselves ... too bad that only works out to $333 per person, and there's a good chance Bill will *still* end up on the top 10% of rich folk in America afterwards ... ) [1] A 1 in 100 shot for making it in the top 10 in America. What about the rest of the world? Or even Europe? I would say an even less chance. Funny how the figures for the rest of the world aren't presented. [2] http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gnp_mktp_pp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=GNP+of+the+United+States Also, this site http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/PNB2.html Had the US at 13 trillion in 2005. From kranenbuster at gmail.com Sun Feb 7 00:40:32 2010 From: kranenbuster at gmail.com (rob van kranenburg) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 09:40:32 +0100 Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: <319717.93672.qm@web112305.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <3559b3cf1002060414w789f4311sf51aa7991b75c4ee@mail.gmail.com> <319717.93672.qm@web112305.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3559b3cf1002070040r2362198fk66f7e153b0355762@mail.gmail.com> Hi John, "As fabricated externalities increasingly affect our shared existence, do they free or enable great new states of consciousness or non-material being (the last thing the world needs more of, is materialism), or do they deaden and supress individual actuation (not necessarily a bad thing)?" I think this is a key question and only 'resolvable' by act of will. If you believe living is about a sustainable system of shopping, being quiet, safety - as in nothing 'happening' - as a default, having some fun at designated drinking times and in the right places with the approved drugs of the period then this is fantastic as it will ensure that this will remain 'normaility'. In a world that has become a permanent revolution there is no more need of the future as it is becoming evenly distributed (Gibson) and thus also there is no more need of visionairies or people who are 'change'. It may become easy for a society to keep their 'normality' by taking out the intelligences that are known to offer alternatives. It seems that "newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it's often done without the parents' consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center." "It's really a black mark against her, and there's nothing we can do to get it off there," Brown says. "And let's say in the future they can test for a gene for schizophrenia or manic-depression and your baby tests positive -- that would be on there, too." ( http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/04/baby.dna.government/index.html) I believe intelligences should vary and be distributed so as to make life. That is what makes love and shame possible, some sense of striving and dignity. Some people march do not march to a different drummer, no - they create a new tune. Every tribe should have one. I agree that this is my external fabrication that I would to script into the backbone and the tcp/ip's of IoT, distributing insecurity as a default, as that would 'ensure' a notion of flow and permanent change that is life to me. But it might not be so for other intelligences that vastly outnumber this perspective. > All because for a younger generation the qualities of connectivity are > > intrinsic to what they perceive as the object. For us it is still an 'add-on', for them it is the thing itself. > > As new generations evolve the world with these forever altered perceptions, > does it still breed for survival (i.e. is this survival positive or > negative)? Does it even matter? > In a way, no it does not matter. Life goes on, the planet will just keep adapting and is not troubled by us or climate change and humans, well, if I were an intelligence from outside this universe I would think 'good riddance' at the sight of a species that can not even collaborate when their existence is threatened as a whole. We are at this crossroads where this altered state of relationship between us and objects and environment can be very rich (magic, fairytale, solidarities through generic infrastructures, a new politics) or very poor (logistics, anti-theft, efficiency, safety......). Everything is geared for the poor option. This ensures that future generations will have less chance of dealing with the unexpected, with fallbacks, sudden events, as the poor option scripts in the shortest possible route from an action to some satisfaction, or at least some possibility of attaining a state of being 'happy' (vastly overrated), where everything is aimed at making the distance between wanting someting and 'having it' as short of possible. Learning and adapting means prolonging these states as long as possible. I think the point is that they do not ''evolve' as they no longer work with all the options - as a particular sense of normality has been scripted in as the for-ever-ontological-normal, and that they are - as we already - a very very easy bird for any cat of catastrophe. We already can no longer fix our own cars, and have to trust that food in trucks will come into our European cities every two days. > What's plan B? Will we like it? :-) > It still needs a lot of articulation so I have to get back to you on that later, but yes I think, I hope, you will like it, Greetings, Rob From sdw at lig.net Sun Feb 7 01:41:44 2010 From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams) Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:41:44 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] universal welfare. In-Reply-To: <20100207082639.GA13954@brevard.conman.org> References: <8092dc771002061843v5d84b7fds8d792ca7952f7de8@mail.gmail.com> <20100207082639.GA13954@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <4B6E8AD8.30102@lig.net> Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Damien Morton once stated: > >> http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/all/ >> > ... > > And about that $250,000 ... is he serious? Let's see: > > Population of the US (estimate): 300,000,000 or 3*10^8 > Proposed amount: 250,000 or 2.5*10^5 > > multiply the two together: 7.5*10^13 > or 75,000,000,000,000 > > That's 75 TRILLION dollars. GNP as of 2008 was *only* 14.3 TRILLION [2]. > Of course, we could go all Zimbabwe and run the printing presses 24x7 to get > us to 75 trillion dollars ... > From the article: > ?Suppose instead what we did is this: We said, ?Look, when somebody > turns 18, he gets a quarter of a million dollars and, after that, > you?re on your own,?? Bowles says. ?Once you?ve got your > quarter-million, you?ve got to make a decision: ?Should I go to > college or do I want to start a business???which you could do with a > quarter of a million.? 4.29 million are born in the US every year, so roughly 4 million turn 18 every year. So 4M * $250K = $1T / yr. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+children+born+us GDP of the US is $14.1T, or $45K per person. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=economy+of+united+states Assuming productive working age of 50 years (20-70), an increased GDP of $5K/yr./person on avg. would cover the $250K (not including financing / overhead costs). Seems plausible. If you assume a zero sum game, well, that's just dumb. There are so many opportunities, which are only growing at an increasing rate, that there is huge upside. And it isn't like every person doesn't already have a public and private cost that is going to be there to some degree whether they are productive or not. The US is 5% of the world's population, and the economy does OK, but we hardly take advantage of our strengths. I kind of feel like, at some level, in some ways, deliberately or not, we loaf along to give the rest of the world a chance to catch up. And that we've been doing it for a long, long time. Clearly, something like this would have to prevent, by clever design plus social aspects, people from just partying away all of the money instantly. Ideally, some structure(s) would be created to support things like enough people grouping together to create larger projects and entities. Perhaps there would be an infrastructure for the framework of companies (HR, purchasing, accounting, taxes, controller, etc.) in a neutral but not bureaucratic way so that all effort goes to creating something competitive. Interesting idea. Probably too big of a leap from the status quo. > -spc (Heck, let's just take Bill Gates $100 billion and distribute it > amongst ourselves ... too bad that only works out to $333 per > person, and there's a good chance Bill will *still* end up on the > top 10% of rich folk in America afterwards ... ) > > [1] A 1 in 100 shot for making it in the top 10 in America. What about > the rest of the world? Or even Europe? I would say an even less > chance. Funny how the figures for the rest of the world aren't > presented. > "Making it to the top" is meaningless to most people. With just $2-4M, a person could retire and be comfortable for the rest of their life. (10% interest / market gain.) Anything much over that and it's just a job to manage the money. > [2] http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gnp_mktp_pp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=GNP+of+the+United+States > > Also, this site > > http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/PNB2.html > > Had the US at 13 trillion in 2005. > Why are all of those other countries loafing?? Kind of misleading, EU is mostly equatable to US, with Germany = California+Texas (the latter pair is a bit larger), etc. You could probably lump China+India+Korea into a pseudo-country for some purposes (cheap factory labor, farming). Japan is an outlier in the far East. So, what you are saying, is that half of those 18 year olds should take their investment egg and start businesses in other countries where they can operate with lower costs / more upside? ;-) sdw From dmorton at bitfurnace.com Sun Feb 7 01:41:42 2010 From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 20:41:42 +1100 Subject: [FoRK] universal welfare. In-Reply-To: <20100207082639.GA13954@brevard.conman.org> References: <8092dc771002061843v5d84b7fds8d792ca7952f7de8@mail.gmail.com> <20100207082639.GA13954@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <8092dc771002070141g8cd9b55g8dc6eee4e884ba68@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Damien Morton once stated: > > http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/all/ > > Nice in theory, but I have real problems with the article overall. For > instance: > > And about that $250,000 ... is he serious? Let's see: > > Population of the US (estimate): 300,000,000 or 3*10^8 > Proposed amount: 250,000 or 2.5*10^5 > > multiply the two together: 7.5*10^13 > or 75,000,000,000,000 > > That's 75 TRILLION dollars. GNP as of 2008 was *only* 14.3 TRILLION [2]. > Of course, we could go all Zimbabwe and run the printing presses 24x7 to > get > us to 75 trillion dollars ... > > http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html shows that in 2000 there were about 20 million people aged 15-19, so I am guessing that there are around 4 million 18 year olds. 4e6 * 0.25e6 = 1e12 = 1 trillion dollars or about 7% of GNP. Its a number he pulled out of his ass. Could just as easily be 100K. Personally, I think giving $250k to 18-year olds is unwise. It would, however, revive the "gone-wild" industry. Better to give it at 21 or 25 or something. Or in tranches. I do like the universal welfare concept. You can wipe out huge swathes of bureaucracy in one go. Boom. No more trying to figure out who is entitled to what, everyone gets the same thing. Couple it with a flat tax, and you get major simplicity and an effectively progressive taxation system. From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Sun Feb 7 08:33:10 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 08:33:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: <3BED000C-8203-4695-A36A-6C003857B2C6@place.org> Message-ID: <993259.12786.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/6/10, Jeff Bone wrote: > > Ken says... > > > I disagree. > > But of course you do. ;-) > > However, you're not actually disagreeing with what I was > asserting;? you're talking about human beings and human > organizations --- Stephen and I were discussing whether > *machine* creatives would inevitably become stuck in local > optima. > Ooops. [blush] ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Sun Feb 7 09:25:12 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 09:25:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] universal welfare. In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002061843v5d84b7fds8d792ca7952f7de8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <997376.57166.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 2/6/10, Damien Morton wrote: > http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/all/ > > """ > If Bowles has the history of wealth figured out all the way > back to the Stone Age, shouldn?t he have some practical advice? > > Indeed he does. Here, one number will suffice. > > $250,000. > > OK, that?s a figure Bowles picked out of the air. It?s > how much each person might receive under a key economic reform he > supports: universal welfare. > I don't think that excerpt does justice to the article, really. I thought the information about such things as the uselessness of corporate welfare in job creation/retention and about the level of inequality in America and its enforcement and entrenchment was much more interesting and enlightening (right up there with such stellar performers as the Philippines and Rwanda!). Solid data were presented to illustrate both of those issues. The universal welfare thing was obviously just a thought experiment that begs more questions than it answers. But it's an interesting challenge. ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Sun Feb 7 09:53:31 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 09:53:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy, Science... and Beyond? In-Reply-To: <3559b3cf1002070040r2362198fk66f7e153b0355762@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <809843.50345.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 2/7/10, rob van kranenburg wrote: > > We are at this crossroads where this altered state of relationship > between us and objects and environment can be very rich (magic, > fairytale, solidarities through generic infrastructures, a new > politics)? or very poor (logistics, anti-theft, efficiency, > safety......). Everything is geared for the poor option. This ensures > that future generations will have less chance > of dealing with the unexpected, with fallbacks, sudden > events, ... > > I think the point is that they do not ''evolve' as they no > longer work with all the options - as a particular sense of normality > has been scripted in as the for-ever-ontological-normal, and that they > are - as we already - a very very easy bird for any cat of catastrophe. > We already can no longer fix our own cars, and have to trust that food > in trucks will come into our European cities every two days. > Yes. That situation is already here. Here on the Canadian Prairies we are still largely rural in reality. In the province of Saskatchewan we have an area only slightly smaller than Texas in the USA but a population that hovers around 1 million (1,000,000). Our two largest population centres are only slightly more than 200,000. But we are becoming ever more urban in mentality. That was brought home to me resoundingly last week. We had a typical winter storm come through for a couple of days. It was a pretty good blizzard but not a really big one for this time of year. It resulted in a few localized power outages in some rural areas that looked like they might last for more than a day. In many of the news reports that involved interviews with people in the affected areas there was much wringing of hands and worry because, among other things, they thought the food in their refridgerators and freezers might spoil. This is from farm people who choose to live in a rural setting where the possibility of some sort of disruption is constant and would seem more or less self-evident. These are people who, only one generation earlier, would have been prepared for such events as a normal course of living and would not have even remarked on it. This is from people living on the Canadian Prairies in January!!! Saskatchewan in January *IS* a refridgerator!!!! Stick the stuff in an unheated outbuilding or in a bucketful of snow until the power comes back on. There were other similarly stupid comments/complaints from some of the rural and farm residents in the affected communities. I don't mean to paint all of the people living here with the same brush of stupidity. I'm sure these anecdotes made the news *because* of their patent foolishness. But the fact that it happened at all and from enough people to be remarkable was a wakeup call. How much brainpower does it take to figure out how to deal with such simple problems??? How much programming does it take to make people so unprepared for such simple possibilities? ...ken... __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From lucas.gonze at gmail.com Sun Feb 7 09:59:52 2010 From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 09:59:52 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad In-Reply-To: <20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> <20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31> Message-ID: Aaron, are you stepping up to speak for conventional wisdom among techies? Sure there's wisdom in conventional wisdom? Form factor is a subtle and important part of comp sci. A netbook without a keyboard is not a lesser desktop, it is a new type of thing with new strengths. It's a profound development in the computer industry that the morphology of this object has so much in common with smart phones, maybe more than it does with desktops, and yet is competitive with desktops for many purposes. The desktop, including both monitor and keyboard, has defined our conception of computers. Laptops without keyboards are a significant step. The next step is to lose monitors. I wonder what that will be like? What if the device was voice controlled and had a speaker output? (But also a full scale web browser and connectivity). On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Aaron Burt wrote: > On Fri, Feb 05, 2010 at 08:58:43PM -0800, Lucas Gonze wrote: >> My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa. ?It won't move a lot of >> units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will. > > Wot, are we due for a flood of walled-garden netbooks-without-keyboards? > And I suspect the Newton already played Lisa to the iPad/iPhone. > >> A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct >> successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate >> lots of ideas from it will sell more than X. > > What matters is, does the iPad add fun to CoD:Zombies or whatever Appleoids > play instead of Trials HD? ?Sure the screen's bigger, but is the experience > better for that? > > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From marcerickson at gmail.com Sun Feb 7 16:10:14 2010 From: marcerickson at gmail.com (Marc Erickson) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 16:10:14 -0800 Subject: [FoRK] Apple Entry into Market Means Higher eBook Prices In-Reply-To: <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org> <4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com> <4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com> Message-ID: Apple Entry into Market Means Higher eBook Prices by Paul Thurrott For the past two years, online retailer Amazon.com has dominated the eBook market with its innovative Kindle devices. But Amazon's biggest eBook innovation-the low cost of eBooks-might soon be a thing of the past, thanks to Apple's new iPad device. The reason is that Apple, aping its iTunes Store model, will allow publishers to dramatically raise prices on eBooks. And Amazon might have no choice but to raise prices as well. The publishing industry has long complained about Amazon's consumer-friendly pricing practices. Whereas new hardcover books often sell in the $20 range at retail, Amazon wanted to establish its Kindle as the de facto eBook platform. So, it priced most new eBooks at $9.99, a much more attractive price that drove book lovers to Amazon's reader. What's interesting about Amazon's approach is that it actually loses money on each $9.99 Kindle eBook. That's because, today, publishers sell new eBooks at the same price to retailers as they do hardcover books. Amazon's bet was that by establishing a standard, it could later negotiate with publishers to lower the price. This strategy would benefit Amazon, of course, but also the millions of readers who purchased Kindle devices. Apple's entry into the eBook market with the iPad tablet device and its integrated iBooks eBook reader software has ruined this opportunity. Utilizing the tiered pricing model it provides for other content on the iTunes Store, Apple has presented the world's biggest publishers with a higher price range for eBooks than Amazon has. And hoping that Apple would be able to defeat Amazon in this market, virtually all these publishers have jumped on board. The result is much higher prices to consumers. And these higher prices come across the board: Higher prices for the device. The iPad comes in six models that cost from $499 to $829 per unit, compared with $259 for the Kindle. Amazon also sells a higher-end Kindle DX for $489, still well below the least expensive iPad. Of course, the iPad is far more than an eBook reader, but then it should be at those prices. Higher prices for wireless access to the device's online bookstore. When consumers purchase a Kindle, Amazon provides them with free 3G wireless access to the Amazon online store so that they can purchase content on the go. This access also works internationally, so travelers can purchase books effortlessly overseas, albeit at a small per-purchase price. Meanwhile, iPad users must utilize Wi-Fi, purchase books on PCs, and transfer them via USB, or pay AT&T for 3G wireless, at a cost of $15 to $30 a month. And this 3G connection won't work internationally (though other carriers will offer similar plans to customers who purchase iPads in other countries). Higher prices for books. Although Amazon pioneered a consumer-friendly $9.99 pricing structure for new books, Apple is allowing publishers to set their own price, and most have indicated that they're more interested in a $14.99 starting point for new books. While Apple was negotiating this coup with the world's biggest publishers, one of those publishers, Macmillan, demanded that Amazon raise prices on its Kindle books to match Apple's prices. Otherwise, Macmillan threatened that it would delay electronic publication of new Kindle books for several months so that customers would be forced to buy more expensive hardcover books (or utilize Apple's iTunes Store). Amazon responded to this threat last week by temporarily pulling all Macmillan titles from its Kindle store and Amazon.com website. But on Sunday, the retailer caved, saying that-in the end-it had to allow Macmillan to set prices if it wanted to stay competitive with the new Apple entry. "We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles," Amazon wrote in a statement to customers. "We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books." What Macmillan got out of Amazon was the same deal that the five biggest publishers-Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster-got from Apple: New eBooks will sell for at least $12.99 to $14.99, and the seller (Apple, Amazon) will get a 30 percent commission. And what consumers will get out of this Apple entry, of course, is higher prices. Yet another innovation for which we can thank Steve Jobs, and that's true whether we use a Kindle or an iPad. > -----Original Message----- > From: fork-bounces at xent.com [mailto:fork-bounces at xent.com] On > Behalf Of Gordon Mohr > Sent: February 2, 2010 5:43 PM > To: Friends of Rohit Khare > Subject: Re: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad > > Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > > Hi Gordon, > > > > On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:23 PM, Gordon Mohr wrote: > >> Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: > >>> So, anyone willing to bet *against* Apple selling 13 > million iPads by June 2011? > >> I will. $50? > > > > Deal. > > It's on! > > >> We can expect Apple's quarterly report for the quarter > ending June 2011 to give enough info, right? > > > > Um, not necessarily. I don't think they break out unit > shipments very often. We'd have to wait for some milestone > press release, and perhaps interpolate. In case of > vagueness, we can refer it to the list (ultimately, Rohit) > for adjudication. > > > >> And I actually think the iPad will be a big hit. Just not > that big, in the first 15 months. Not as many people need > iPads as iPhones. > > > > They just don't know it. :-) Plus, don't forget that the > iPhone didn't have an App Store and was limited to very few > countries / carriers during that timeframe. > > The most bullish analyst (BroadPoint AmTech) has a prediction > that, if you squint and front-load their year-two numbers, > just barely touches your estimate. See: > > http://www.benzinga.com/104011/apple%E2%80%99s-ipad-tears-up-t > he-rulebook > zoom: http://iphonasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Picture-19.png > > ...or... > > http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/28/wall_street_expects_ > apples_risky_ipad_to_sell_1m_5m_in_first_year.html > > Note that these are from people who are generally bullish on > the device and AAPL. So if they're all wrong, I lose. > > > On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:32 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote: > > I think the macro scale impact of iPad is in changing the > traditional > >> desktop metaphor for the PC. I'm not convinced that iPad > itself will > >> sell a huge number of copies, but I do think it's likely that > >> iPad-like user experiences will become common on machines with as > >> much power as a PC. > > > > "I'm not convinced" -- are you just waffling, or will you > join Gordon and put $50 behind your opinion? > > Be an Ernie P.[1] or a Russell T. [2], not an Adam B. [3,4] > -- put your money where your mouth is! > > - Gordon > > [1] this exchange > > [2] > http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20050110/033188.html > I won the bet as I offered -- USD did finish 2005 up > against EUR -- > though Russell was right on the CAD and the long-term trend! > > [3] http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2001-December/007548.html > [4] http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2001-December/007550.html > Despite my offer to let Adam pick addresses and > timeframe, I don't > think that even with 8 years' hindsight, and occasional > nibbles at > metered service testing in some regions, he could today find 5 > addresses that had unmetered 1Mbps broadband in 2001 and then got > more-expensive and/or metered broadband anytime since. So, his > unwillingness to bet revealed the foolhardiness of his prediction > that metering was the inevitable future of home internet access! > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca Sun Feb 7 19:21:38 2010 From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 19:21:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [FoRK] Apple Entry into Market Means Higher eBook Prices In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <294006.5240.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com> That's amazing. Why would anyone pay as much or more for an ebook than for a paperback? How do they get away with comparing ebook pricing to hardcover pricing? Will consumers actually put up with that? Enough of them to make it profitable? ...ken... --- On Sun, 2/7/10, Marc Erickson wrote: > Apple Entry into Market Means Higher > eBook Prices? > > by Paul Thurrott > For the past two years, online retailer Amazon.com has > dominated the eBook > market with its innovative Kindle devices. But Amazon's > biggest eBook > innovation-the low cost of eBooks-might soon be a thing of > the past, thanks > to Apple's new iPad device. The reason is that Apple, aping > its iTunes Store > model, will allow publishers to dramatically raise prices > on eBooks. And > Amazon might have no choice but to raise prices as well. > > ...[snip]... __________________________________________________________________ The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/