191–200 of 206 posts
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Segways solved problems: Does your job require walking around on a flat service all day? Segway for Mall Cops. Do you want people who have a hard time walking for a few miles so they can do a tourist tour? Segway for tourist. That's about it from me.
Those markets are not large enough to sustain a product like the Segway.
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Remember how douchey the bluetooth headset people were? ... but the kids wearing large, crappy headphones in other environments (e.g. at meals) are kind of pathetic. Isn't this really judgmental? Doesn't this say more about you than about them? I'm completely serious. I do not judge people on the tools they use in their life that is of no consequence to me. The same holds for Google Glass -- it is somewhat perverse,…
> Isn't this really judgmental? Doesn't this say more about you than about them? Not really. Bluedouches are so self-involved that they don't realize and/or care how annoying it is for them to walk around in public (apparently) loudly talking to themselves. Normally, we only excuse this behavior in schizophrenics.
I really don't see the difference between me talking to a friend in public when they are next to me, at the end of a phone call mediated by a handset, or a phone call mediated by a bluetooth headset. The volume of my speech is the same in all three cases, so I have to assume some people are upset that they cannot listen to both sides of my conversation, and become annoyed with the phone/headset scenarios when they are unable to eavesdrop?
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The whole point of fashion is to shape how people judge you. If most people weren't affected by it, it wouldn't exist. So if it says something about him, it's only that he's human.
Outside of the notion that you can be judgmental about a person ("douche", "pathetic") based upon the tools they use -- conflating wearing a fedora with using a piece of technology -- fashion largely concerns itself with the inconsequential , and in almost all industries and applications follows a far second behind function. Now someone might point to some freakish catwalk outfit and some bizarro shoes, but those hav…
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The difference for me is that we've learned that CCTV basically never has a direct impact on our lives. I'm sure I'm caught on security cameras 20 times a day for the last 10 years, but not one of those 73,000 recordings has ever come to my attention or mattered at all. The same isn't true of handheld cameras. When people take a picture of me, it could go places, and I know that. If you're snapping pictures of people…
I thought your comment was going the other way. The same generally is true of handheld cameras. Can you recall a situation where a stranger snapping a photo that had you in it caused a problem for you?
I've also occasionally ended up in the newspaper in crowd shots. That can be fun or irritating, but either way it definitely matters to me.
I can see the point don't know if Glass will make it however it used to be EXTREMELY weird to see people with bluetooth headsets and even more odd if people were talking on them in public places "Are you talking to me?" now it's so normal for the most part I don't even notice them.
Really? I haven't seen someone wear a bluetooth headset in public in years.
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I will take that bet. Name your stakes and we will put it up on the site pronto.
What could go wrong? Done!
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Might I suggest putting money down? http://longbets.org/ I built the site ten years ago, and the Long Now Foundation has plenty of other things going on, so I'm pretty confident that this will do for your 10-year bet. If you find a challenger, I'm glad to help you two negotiate a testable prediction and get the bet up on the site.
Wow. I've had for many years an idea I've called GoodBets to get people who argue on the web to put their money where their mouth is, with the money going to the winner's choice of charity, just as you have with Long Bets. GoodBets would integrate with comment systems, such as this one on HN, so if someone makes some unequivocal statement you think is baloney, you can challenge them with a GoodBet in your reply. They…
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I would say exactly the same things about Google Glass.
Yeah, if heads-up computing fails in this iteration (and I suspect it will in this iteration ) its not going to be aesthetics it will be because no one can build a compelling use case for the price. Privacy/Social-Contract concerns will probably worsen that, but I really doubt they will be sufficient on their own.
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A lot of people who knew the iPhone and iPad were going to be huge also think Glass is doomed for the consumer market. Sometimes the way you look matters. See: the Segway. It's a threshold. Did headphones really make you look as dorky as the Segway does to your contemporaries? Doubtful. Does Glass? I think it comes close.
Segways did not fail because they made you look dorky. They failed because they were an extremely expensive toy that didn't solve anyone's problems and were bulky enough that they made new problems when people tried to use them.
Speeding up intra-city commuting without having to walk or ride a bike obviously would be awesome. When people pointed this out back when the Segway came out even the fattest nerds were saying they were being lazy, but the truth is most technology helps people be lazy, so it seems to me the dork factor played a huge role in preventing early adoption.
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> Isn't this really judgmental? Doesn't this say more about you than about them? Not really. Bluedouches are so self-involved that they don't realize and/or care how annoying it is for them to walk around in public (apparently) loudly talking to themselves. Normally, we only excuse this behavior in schizophrenics.
Is it also really annoying for you to see people walking around in public and talking (apparently) to themselves, but while they are with one of their friends who is doing the same thing? I really don't see the difference between me talking to a friend in public when they are next to me, at the end of a phone call mediated by a handset, or a phone call mediated by a bluetooth headset. The volume of my speech is the s…
Second, I don't think it's a matter of eavesdropping; rather, it seems harder to ignore a half-conversation than a full one, because the latter is normal and expected. Maybe we will eventually become habituated, and in another 10 years we will all be walking around talking to our glasses, watches, or whatever, automatically ignoring each other.