“Yes, I would like some vinyl siding.”

“Yes, I would like satellite TV.”

“No, I am not sure that I will be voting for your candidate, but I would be glad to donate.”

I would very much like to meet the person who pitched, and sold the first robo-caller. In Detroit right now, in an alley, nursing some fortified courage, is where I will probably meet this forward-thinking Marketeer. A person who fundamentally misunderstands cold-calling and human interaction to such a degree, one can only assume they are unemployed and unable to panhandle.

Is there a person alive who actually listens through a full robo-call other than to push the “take me off your f-ing list” button? Perhaps Aspergers patients who would like the practice, maybe a schizophrenic who isn’t sure which voice is on the phone and which is in their head?

I am not sure if it was intentional, but this bit of diabolically annoying technology is giving us a capitalist’s answer to the Turing test. Alan Turing was a brilliant Mathematician who devised a simple test to deem a machine “sentient,” and the method was a conversation in which a person is fooled into believing that the computer is another human. Ideally, one assumes that robo-callers will reach this with full market force before, if not shortly after, MIT does. The simple reason being economics and evolution.

Economically, more funds will go toward keeping people on the phone, as this yields a higher percentage of sales. Also, computers like this will be infinitely cheaper than humans, have programmable dialects and even language modules for other countries. Evolution will be present in the many companies using different approaches in parallel, learning from each other and building on the mountain of statistical data gained one annoying car warranty call at a time. With each hardware and software iteration, the conversation will get a little bit better.

When a human and a computer are indistinguishable from one another on the phone, it isn’t much of a stretch for a robo-call to sample your voice after a short conversation and use it to call your mother. What percentage of the populace will have to be fooled and for how long before the test is passed? What happens when less ethical persons get their hands on this technology

Maybe my digital secretary, or intelligent digital agent can screen my calls with a Turing Captcha.

What kind of questions will be hardest to answer?

I am attempting to suss out a CMS for a site that I am building… I didn’t realize:

http://www.cmsmatrix.org

Damn, how am I supposed to get everything that I want? I am just going to have to wait for 37 signals to build one.

I have been waiting for an important firmware upgrade for my Sony Alpha A100 before really going into a hearty review, and this week…I downloaded and installed it. Here we go.

I am a fan of Sony cameras. I have been since my first major digital camera, the f717. On the Internet, I read that a bunch of pervs were using the camera to try to look through peoples clothes. After seeing the negative press, my curiosity was piqued-a digital camera that sees a wavelength of light we can’t? Holy crap. I read a few books on IR photography and HAD to have the camera. (more…)

I lurk. I have never been much of a joiner, but I troll. A large part of my time is currently being spent trying to diagnose a problem with my new camera. OK, not really a problem, a “feature” that I may go into later. There are so many photo forums for shooters, editors, snappers, and curmudgeons who incessantly argue about something or other. It is very amusing. At some point the cranks and the noobs will go around about: Survey says… DIGITAL VS. FILM and to a lesser degree Canon vs. Nikon, or even Fuji vs. Kodak.

I would like to weigh in, and this is just my personal experience and doesn’t really reflect what others may think. I don’t think that I would be the photographer that I am without having a digital camera. There is a big difference between what we see and what a camera sees. I didn’t progress with film until college, when I had a class from a brilliant teacher. Even then, progress was slow and the film was black and white.

Oh yeah, B&W Vs. Color.

Shooting 400 iso 35mm in WV, where cloud cover is epidemic, is not a good way to see progress. My first digital changed things. In addition to immediate feedback, I could make leaps forward with teaching photography, which is what I did. If anyone doesn’t believe the best way to learn something is to teach it, try it. Methodology was Memorize/Terrorize. It was very effective. For me.

Feeling confident in trying film again, I skipped 35mm and purchased a Pentacon 6, a medium format slr that is cheap and build like a soviet era tank. Which means that sometimes it doesn’t work, and I am ok with that. It was only about $120 american and I learned how to make a bank transfer to the Czech Republic.

I like shooting with the medium, but I have to admit, it is inconvenient. I shot a few pics at a wedding and didn’t know that a few (most) didn’t turn out, due to a small problem with the B setting. That made me a bit sad, as I really like long exposure, especially night photos. Anyway, that got me to this point. Had I known, I could have reloaded and shot again. I should have used the digital.

As I am not a pro, not used the medium all day, everyday so I am not an expert on the sublties, but for education and convenience, digital is the way to go.

Lately I have been noticing that Sony just can’t catch a break. The PS3 problems, Exploding batteries and a DVD format war that doesn’t look good are all doing a great deal of damage to the morale, if not the per share price of Sony Corporation. I wonder where all of this bad karma came from?

Could it be their dogged determination to get a proprietary format out into circulation and make money on licencing? Lets take a walk down memory lane and remember fondly how they tried to stick us with closed technology.

Betamax
Betacam
Minidisc
Multi-Media Compact Disc
HiFD
Super Audio Compact Disc
Memory Stick
Memory Stick Pro
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick Micro M2
UMD
Blu-Ray

Notice that I added blu-ray? hehehe. What is important to remember is that these are not the only physical media formats that Sony has participated in or helped develop. Sucesses include:

3.25″ floppy
CD
CD-Rom
DVD
Video8
Hi8
DV
MiniDV

Wow. So that is quite a list. The failures are marked by a.) few, if any partners and b.) open, saturated market with cheaper or better products. Some of these are even case studies in why a product won’t be sucessful. The Betamax/VHS war is infamous thoughout marketing circles and is over-simplified often with allustions to the adult industry. The first Memory Stick came into a market with the smaller xd, the cheaper Compact Flash and the ubiquitous Secure Digital.

I just purchased my 4th Sony camera, and the reason for my rant is that I am surprised. There is no Memory Stick port in it at all, as a matter of fact, they included an ADAPTER just in case you would really like to use the Sticks you already have. It is a Compact Flash sized device, with a PRO Duo slot. I was amazed, utterly.

Perhaps in the coming format war, the primary players would do well to remember the folly of the past. When the dust settles, will anyone really want a physical medium? Will the confluence of IPTV, TiVo, and market model like the iTunes Movie store make physical media obsolete? The MySpace generation is getting older, typically doesn’t have a home phone and has uploaded image and video to the internet at least once. It is possible that HD\Blu-DVD/Ray will go the way of the laser disc. Maybe it will just get replaced with a Memory Stick.