Let's not forget the recent story about increases in beer cost as farmers switch over to corn for ethanol
If the price of the beer you drink has gone up because of the price of corn, then you need to do your taste buds a favor and quit drinking that piss water you've been calling beer.
REAL beer is made from barley or wheat, not corn. Corn is used as cheap adjunct for barley, mostly by the major American breweries.
I've seen those ads saying "counterfeited items can kill" with a teddy bear ready to burn a child alive because he's not fireproof, and I must say it felt a little bit too much.
When it's watches and hand-bags your talking about, then yes, it is a bit much. But when you start talking about counterfeit pharmaceuticals, that's a whole different story. The fact of the matter is, COUNTERFEIT PHARMACEUTICALS CAN KILL. It's one thing when your heroin was packaged under unsanitary conditions, another entirely when you heart medication has the wrong doses or even the wrong compounds in it.
I think your looking for the 4th Amendment as it relates to search and seizure, however, I think the 5th Amendment also comes into play here: The right to not incriminate yourself.
The 4th Amendment states that they need to have probable cause to search your property (i.e. your laptop). If there is no probable cause, they need a warrant (this involves a judge). So unless there is a really good reason why they might suspect your computer contains something illegal, they can't search it.
The 5th Amendment states that you are never forced to incriminate yourself. In court, this usually comes in the form of "Pleading the 5th" when asked "Did you kill John Doe." Your laptop is, no doubt, password protected, possibly even encrypted. That means that TSA or Customs, requires you to log in or unencrypt the data for them. This is an act that could potentially incriminate you (not to mention it gives complete strangers access to possibly sensitive information. Did Agent Jones take the Personally Identifiable Information Corporate Training and sign the NDA like I did? Didn't think so). This means that you should not be forced to comply with their demands. Unfortunately, we've got all kinds of precedent that steps all over this right (some with good reason). If you don't submit to a breathalyser you essentially are admitting to a DUI. They could similarly say that by not complying, you don't get to enter the country. That could be a tough call if the person is a United States citizen. They would probably just take the laptop anyway. But that then goes back to the 4th Amendment (specifically the "seizure" section).
Anyhow, the IANAL disclaimer is necessary here. Anyone who is a lawyer feel free to chime in a completely discredit me.
Someone's really trying hard to make an article out of nothing.
Well it was a study done by Accenture, a consulting company. Not only are they trying to make an article out of nothing, but they are probably also trying to sell an expensive solution for a problem that doesn't exist. I should know, I work for a competing consulting company.
If Microsoft split into two independent companies where one makes an OS and the other makes applications, then yes, they could have mutual benefits. In fact if this were the case, Windows would be much better and their Apps much more innovative. OS revenue wouldn't be subsidizing Zunes and Xboxes, it would go directly into improving the OS. For the Apps company, it would be in their best interest to support more operating systems. Just because it runs on Linux, doesn't even mean it has to be open source, although if the open source model is used, the Apps would benefit greatly. As well, just because it's open source, doesn't mean you can't make money on it. Unfortunately, Microsoft is one big monolithic company. Supporting Linux means cannibalizing their OS.
In the end, it was cheaper just to take the ticket.
WRONG! It is never cheaper to take the ticket. 20MPH over the speed limit is a moving violation. Every moving violation in the state of Pennsylvania carries at least 1 point on your license. I believe 20MPH over the speed limit is in the 3-4 range. What do these points mean? Well for starters, if you get 6 points within a certain amount of time, you lose your license. Think about how expensive that is. You can't use your car for anything. That means having to rely on public transportation or car-pooling. If you are single and live by yourself, this becomes pretty difficult.
Not only that, but points on your license increase your insurance premium A LOT. Not only that, but the insurance companies keep your points on record for at least 3 years, while the police only keep them for a year. For the police, every year you go without an infraction, you lose some points. For the insurance companies, every THREE years you go without an infraction, you lose some points. You accumulate them at the same rate, but you lose them differently, so you will always have 2 separate point balances. One for police, and one for the insurance company. In addition, the insurance company can add it's own points to your insurance record. When I lived in New Jersey, my insurance company assigned 5 points for an accident that was your own fault. That was in addition to any points given by the police for the accident. I was in an accident that was my fault. The police gave me two points for careless driving, the insurance company gave me an ADDITIONAL 5 points for being in an accident. A total of 7 points for one incident. After 11 points, they kick you off your policy. Unfortunately, I had a previous offense, and off I went. Now I was part of "Assigned Risk" insurance. Where the insurance companies are forced to take turns insuring risky drivers because the state wants everybody to have insurance. It's probably the most you will every pay for your insurance.
Chances are if you fight it, the cop won't even show up in court. That's happened to both me and my fiance on our last traffic violations. Mine was knocked down from 5 points, $325 and a 60 day suspension to no points + $150 fine and $450 in lawyers fees. Yeah it cost more cash in the short term, but there was no way I was going to be able to make it 60 days without a car and the insurance surcharges would have really hurt. In addition, any further infraction (that means as simple as failing to signal) would have resulted in losing my license.
It's no wonder they can't code. Spider Monkeys don't have any thumbs. It's hard to write thousands of lines of code using the "hunt and peck" technique. Although they are quite adept with their tails, you'd think they'd use that as the "space bar hitter".
Reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a Mac user who was starting a new job that required IE6. He was considering buying a "used" copy of XP from e-bay or something for less than retail. I told him that it is illegal, so if you're going to do that, you might as well download an illegal crack for free. You're breaking the law either way, but at least one is free. I still advised that if he didn't want to break the law, he run out QUICK and snap up a legit copy before it becomes impossible.
Actually, I think a pay for what you use model could work in everybody's favor. What if you charged on a per bit basis just like the electric or gas company? That means the people who do casual web surfing and e-mail will pay very little and will use less bandwidth and the people who do heavy gaming, bittorrent downloads and the like that use lots of bandwidth, pay more. The amount of money a heavy user can spend on internet is limited by the bandwidth. If it's slow, they can only download so much. This is an incentive for the ISP (which may be a monopoly) to increase the available bandwidth. More bandwidth, more bits/month getting to the user, the more money the user pays to the ISP. Of course, you'd have to crunch the numbers on how many people are being screwed vs. being capped by the current model and see if there are enough bandwidth thirsty people out there to make the switch beneficial.
Compared to the other broadcast networks, I think NBC has gotten it the best. While it's still not perfect, they are the only network that supports ALL platforms. I can watch their shows online for free (with some ads) with Linux. Other networks like ABC and CW actually go out of their way to block Linux users from viewing their shows online. If you watch it on a windows machine, there is no extra plugins to download (it's pretty much YouTube style flash), so Linux should work, but no, they block you. Haven't tried changing the user agent though, so who knows if it really would work or not. Regardless, NBC supports all, while the others don't. I don't care if ABC has more shows to offer via the web than NBC if I can't view any of them in the first place.
This is true, however, if you connect to another cleverly named "linksys" network that isn't yoru neighbors, then you will start connecting to your neighbor automatically again (i think). This goes back to my earlier comment, that NetworkManager needs better controls for setting which networks to connect to. I should be able to specify in an easy manner, which network is preferred.
I had the same problems as the GP and deleting the profile for your neighbors network in ~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks worked like a charm. NetworkManager really needs some better UI controls for editing profiles.
If you had read the article, then you would know that what Apple is proposing, is unlimited physical downloads that never expire. That means they cannot switch off your access, and if your hard drive crashed and killed everything on it, you could simply re-download your whole collection. If the company went bankrupt or sold, then as long as you still have the software or the device that can play the file format, then you are fine. This is not the same as other subscription services like Napster.
I like your sentiment, that kids need to be doing things other than watching TV, but I would like to counter that not everything on TV is mindless crap. There are plenty of programs that actually do engage the audience and enrich the mind in some way. You can't really miss with channels like Discovery and The History Channel, but there are plenty of fictional shows out there that are very substantial. Not all of them for kids, mind you, but I think you can definitely find some good programming out there for them. Some kids shows are idiotic. Others are more productive. Do you have any objections to Sesame Street? These programs aren't babysitters by any means, though. In fact, the value of these shows can be augmented when the parent sits down and participates in the viewing. It doesn't even have to be a "kids" show you watch with them. I used to watch every episode of the Simpsons with my parents starting from when the show premiered and I was in kindergarten. At the very least, it was a chance for the whole family to get together and ALL laugh our asses off.
Good shows will challenge the viewer. A show I've been watching lately (though not kid appropriate) is "Breaking Bad". A high school chemistry teacher is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, so he starts cooking crystal meth to pay for the expensive treatment and leave his family is a stable financial situation. It challenges the audience's beliefs of right and wrong, talks about some chemistry, discusses the ill affects of drug-use and the dealer/user lifestyle, and much more. Most of all, it's entertaining.
When used properly, TV is not as horrible as you try to make it sound. It must be viewed responsibly (with parental oversight) and viewed in moderation (otherwise, you run out of the good programs and start running into the mindless crap). When I have kids, I plan on incorporating TV into their development, but it will be on my terms, not the TV networks'.
There's already plenty of demand. As you said, the laptop market is one of them, but not just the "rugged" laptop market. The "thin" laptop market is one of them. The MacBook Air has a solid state drive (optional?) and the Lenovo ThinkPad competitor has one standard. Any laptop would benefit greatly from an SSD. For laptops, the HD is the last moving part, with the exception of cooling fans. Reliability is a key benefit to these drives (when used with a proper file system) because they don't have moving parts that can break down. Hard drive failure is the #1 hardware problem for ANY type of computer. Just ask any support desk. If spending a little more up front on SSD means not having to replace the drive down the road, then I'm sure plenty of organizations will want to make the switch. Even on servers, there is demand. Why do we have all of these SAN's with RAID 5 and 10 arrays? Because hard drives fail so often. We might not be getting rid of the RAID, but we will have less downtime and be replacing less drives.
Actually, taking computer science in my NJ high school DISCOURAGED me from pursuing a career in computer science. Although this is a good thing. At that point, I knew I wanted to work with computers, but the only career I knew about was Computer Science. Luckily, I realized early that coding was not for me, and after talking to people already in the IT field, I discovered that there was more to the field that writing code.
This is not to mean that CS in high school is worthless. In fact I'm saying it should be available as an option. Best to find out early, before you waste a lot of time and money in a college CS program. Although I'll agree with another poster, high school CS is nothing like college or "real" CS. Friends of mine who went on to CS or computer engineering in college had to relearn how to code.
Here's my definition of Web 2.0 (NOTE: Your definition may vary)
I refer to Web 2.0 as user generated content. I define user generated content pretty broadly as well. This isn't just YouTube videos and MySpace pages. This is the ability of the user to use the web to dynamically create content on the web, whether it's uploading a video to a public site, creating their own web profile, or typing a research paper using a browser based word processor. The user has the ability to go to a web site and then manipulate the data on the page dynamically to suit their needs. Things like Google Maps (and others) come to mind as well. In the past, you looked at static maps and clicked links to go to other maps. These tied together into different "views". But now, you manipulate a single map by dragging, zooming, placing "push pins", and changing the map overlay (satelite vs. non-satelite). Overall, I see the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0 as the emergence of a web sites as applications. AJAX is often associated with Web 2.0, as it, as well as other new techniques, is what helps make Web 2.0 possible.
The term Web 2.0 is a pretty ambiguous term, though, so others may have a different definition. Early in the Web 2.0 hype, my mother asked me "I've been hearing about Web 2.0 this and Web 2.0 that, but what the hell is it? No one seems to be able to explain this to me!". To which I replied, "Web 2.0 is a bullshit buzzword made up to describe everything new that is happening on the web. It is mostly meaningless marketing speak. Treat it as such." I was right at the time. It was such a blanket term. But looking back, I think we can better say what it is, because we can now see what all of the things classified as Web 2.0 have in common.
But having one player and two formats is just so damn wasteful. If we are treating both as if they are one format, why have two in the first place? All it does is create confusion. Us nerds may be fully aware that our player can play both, but Joe sixpack is sitting there not buying one or the other because he doesn't realize there's no difference (player-wise). Both should have agreed on a common format from the beginning, then they would all be making lots money off of hardware sales, instead of one making some money while the other looses it all. The fight was pointless anyway. By the time Blu-Ray becomes profitable, donwloadable movies will have become worthwhile (I hope).
So here's a lesson to all of the downloadable movie providers. Cater to what the customer wants. Customers didn't want a format war and I'm still not sure they even want a new format to begin with. So here's what we all want out of a downloadable movie: STANDARD OPEN FORMAT. This pretty much covers all of the problems with downloadable movies right now. I want my movie to play on any OS. I want it to play as many times as I want. I want it to be able to transfer to any device. I want to be able to make a backup. I want it to be as good if not better than DVD in overall quality. Right now, what we have out there is one company who has it sort of right and a bunch who don't have it right at all. Once again, the sort of right company is Apple. As far as I know, the video works much like the music. I download a physical copy (not streamed), I can move it to other devices (but only Apple devices). I can play that file multiple times (not sure if its infinite). Some of my other points, I'm not sure if Apple covers or not. I know the quality is nowhere near DVD, so that sucks. Apple at least is trying to solve the "last ten feet" issue of getting the video in the living room. As I said before, it only works with Apple devices like the iPod or the AppleTV. Portable's nice, but I want to choose the device. Apple also uses some DRM, but like the music its manageable. At the end of the day, I want it on my home theater. The others out there are just awful (Netflix I'm looking at you). They are either streaming the video (means low quality to deal with the bandwidth) or they use pretty awful DRM that requires Windows Media Player 11. You only get a small window to watch the movie, or you only get a restricted number of plays. That's fine for "rentals" but what if I want to own a copy? The downloadable movie market is looking just like the downloadable music market looked five years ago. A handful of companies who just don't get it, and Apple who gets it, kinda, but still wants some control. I'm hoping Amazon can come to the rescue again on this.
I wholeheartedly agree. In fact this morning I had the displeasure of comparing and contrasting my usual 6:45am flight packed with the same consultants every week (i.e. extremely frequent and efficient flyers) with a later flight. My normal flight is usually extremely efficient. Everyone in the security line knows the drill. There's a lot less yelling from TSA and you are through in minutes. Boarding the plane, everyone knows the drill and orderly form a line (although it looks close to chaos at first, it quickly funnels into order). Plane is loaded with little hassle and we're off. Then this morning I took a different flight. First there's security. Line is a lot longer, but it was a later flight and thus expected. But it certainly wasn't moving at the pace my earlier flight does. There's a lot of people who should know better who don't make the effort to make things quick. TSA is constantly yelling and the line goes nowhere. Now the first time, or low experience (particularly first time post liquid bomb era flyers) are gonna get yelled at. I was one of them. The first day I started flying regularly for business, TSA robbed me blind (fuckers) and it was still another week or two before the nagging went away. But now I'm an security check-in machine (which is really something considering I usually have 2 laptops and 2 carry-on bags. Once through security, then it comes down to the selfish bastard flyers. The ones who get in line before their zone is called. The ones who push you out of the way so that they can retrieve their gate-checked bag before you. Yeah those guys just suck.
In closing, if you're an inexperienced flyer, do a little homework first and keep efficiency in mind. It's OK if you don't get it right away, there is a learning curve. If you're not sure about something, ask the guy in the suit holding his shoes, he's probably done this before, and will be happy to help. Afterall, the sooner you get through, the sooner he gets through. And be polite. This can be tough during the hell that is air travel, but just remember, we're all in this together.
It's not my cup of tea, but if I spent most of my time in airports, shuttling between offices, I might look at it rather seriously
Actually, as someone who spends a lot of time in airports lately, the Air doesn't cut it. Actually, all sub-notebooks don't cut it. This is something I discovered when looking into getting a laptop for my Dad when he retired. I though having a sub-notebook would be great because they are so light and portable. But then when I really looked closely, I found that with reduced weight comes a lot of reduced functionality. In order to get that functionality back, you had to buy external devices or bases that then increased the total weight you carry to more than a regular notebook. Take the Lenovo ThinkPad X series subnotebook. It weighs less than 3 lbs. on it's own, but you don't have a lot of ports and you lack an optical drive. To get those features, you have to buy a base that then increases the overall weight to nearly 5 lbs. about the same as a 14inch T series, but at a significant price difference. The Air is the same way. I complained in another post (comparing the Air with the new Lenovo competitor) about the lack of built in functionality in the Air, as most people who travel a lot for business (like myself) need lots of versatility. Fanboys responded bitterly that there's all kinds of adapters and add ons etc. that will add the functionality. That's not the point. Those add-ons all create extra weight, and it's also more likely that I will loose/break one of those adapters or add-ons because they are jumbled loosely in my bag. The only difference between the Air and other subs are that the Air has a bigger keyboard and monitor (both pluses and part of the reason I stick with 14+ inch notebooks) but that's not enough for me.
I agree with you, it would be great if Adobe would start supporting Linux natively. I was even thinking that once Photshop is better supported under WINE, they may have a better picture of how many people use their products in Linux. Unfortunatly, Photoshop would not be able to accurately report back what systems people are using. This brings me to the OT rant. Some apps report back what system the user is running, essentially a survey so the company knows their market better. I encountered this with Steam. I have Steam running under WINE on Fedora 7 right now. When it asked to report my hardware, i obliged, hoping that it would detect a Linux system and someone at Valve would give a double-take. The hope being that if they keep seeing Linux in their stats, they might start developing for it. Unfortunately, WINE reports the system as Windows XP. Well that was dissapointing. I think it would be in the Linux communities interest if WINE had a way of reporting it more like "GNU/Linux with Windows XP compatibility layer" or something like that. No biggie, but maybe it would help get the word out to some of the game developers that Linux gamers do exist.
I think you've got the makings of the next great sci-fi movie. Dystopian futures seem to always play well, sci-fi or not. Just look at Matrix, Blade Runner, even Children of Men (such a good movie). If you can get me a script, we're in business.
As others have stated, the main issue is that they are leveraging their dominant market position t push their own media player on the consumer. But there's even more to it than that, and this goes back to the whole issue of Microsoft needing to open things up more.
I once had a discussion about media players with a co-worker who was so into Microsoft it was scary (I think he had a man crush on Bill Gates). Anyhow, I was saying that I've recently started using VLC because a) it's cross-platform (import for a Linux user) and b) it comes with every codec you'll ever need, including all of the MS ones (I hate hunting down codecs). I was recommending he and some others try it in Windows, as I've had others recommend it. His argument against using any cross-platform media player, was that it would not be optimized for Windows. He further argues that Microsoft has inside knowledge of Windows that no other developer has, which allows them to optimize WMP to run much better than any 3rd party media player, even Windows only players. His argument is valid, especially if you are looking for the most efficient player for your platform. However, it raises another issue. ONLY Microsoft has access to this Windows insider information. This is anti-competitive. The API's for Windows should be detailed enough that a 3rd party developer could create a media player that is just as optimized, if not more so. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Almost all API's for Microsoft products are "3rd Party" editions. Only Microsoft has access to the detailed versions. There have been stories about this on Slashdot in regards to MS Office, and I'm experiencing it right now with SharePoint.
My client wants to make a lot of customizations to SharePoint, but unfortunately, the API's are not detailed enough to do some of these customizations effectively. Going forward, I probably wouldn't recommend SharePoint to anybody unless they wanted just the sraight out of the box functionality simply because customizing it is such a pain in the ass. In this case, they are shooting themselves in the foot, because SharePoint SHOULD be a platform, not a product (or at least that's how they've marketed it). Rather, it is a product that comes in a box and all implementations must fit in that box. But I digress.
The point is, the Microsoft's openness is one of the big issues with including any non-essential software. A media player is not essential for an OS, but it is important if you want to deliver a full featured desktop environment. Including a media player is not necessarily anti-competitive, but including one that no competitor could ever compete with because of proprietary secrets, now THAT is anti-competitive.
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REAL beer is made from barley or wheat, not corn. Corn is used as cheap adjunct for barley, mostly by the major American breweries.
I think your looking for the 4th Amendment as it relates to search and seizure, however, I think the 5th Amendment also comes into play here: The right to not incriminate yourself.
The 4th Amendment states that they need to have probable cause to search your property (i.e. your laptop). If there is no probable cause, they need a warrant (this involves a judge). So unless there is a really good reason why they might suspect your computer contains something illegal, they can't search it.
The 5th Amendment states that you are never forced to incriminate yourself. In court, this usually comes in the form of "Pleading the 5th" when asked "Did you kill John Doe." Your laptop is, no doubt, password protected, possibly even encrypted. That means that TSA or Customs, requires you to log in or unencrypt the data for them. This is an act that could potentially incriminate you (not to mention it gives complete strangers access to possibly sensitive information. Did Agent Jones take the Personally Identifiable Information Corporate Training and sign the NDA like I did? Didn't think so). This means that you should not be forced to comply with their demands. Unfortunately, we've got all kinds of precedent that steps all over this right (some with good reason). If you don't submit to a breathalyser you essentially are admitting to a DUI. They could similarly say that by not complying, you don't get to enter the country. That could be a tough call if the person is a United States citizen. They would probably just take the laptop anyway. But that then goes back to the 4th Amendment (specifically the "seizure" section).
Anyhow, the IANAL disclaimer is necessary here. Anyone who is a lawyer feel free to chime in a completely discredit me.
If Microsoft split into two independent companies where one makes an OS and the other makes applications, then yes, they could have mutual benefits. In fact if this were the case, Windows would be much better and their Apps much more innovative. OS revenue wouldn't be subsidizing Zunes and Xboxes, it would go directly into improving the OS. For the Apps company, it would be in their best interest to support more operating systems. Just because it runs on Linux, doesn't even mean it has to be open source, although if the open source model is used, the Apps would benefit greatly. As well, just because it's open source, doesn't mean you can't make money on it. Unfortunately, Microsoft is one big monolithic company. Supporting Linux means cannibalizing their OS.
Not only that, but points on your license increase your insurance premium A LOT. Not only that, but the insurance companies keep your points on record for at least 3 years, while the police only keep them for a year. For the police, every year you go without an infraction, you lose some points. For the insurance companies, every THREE years you go without an infraction, you lose some points. You accumulate them at the same rate, but you lose them differently, so you will always have 2 separate point balances. One for police, and one for the insurance company. In addition, the insurance company can add it's own points to your insurance record. When I lived in New Jersey, my insurance company assigned 5 points for an accident that was your own fault. That was in addition to any points given by the police for the accident. I was in an accident that was my fault. The police gave me two points for careless driving, the insurance company gave me an ADDITIONAL 5 points for being in an accident. A total of 7 points for one incident. After 11 points, they kick you off your policy. Unfortunately, I had a previous offense, and off I went. Now I was part of "Assigned Risk" insurance. Where the insurance companies are forced to take turns insuring risky drivers because the state wants everybody to have insurance. It's probably the most you will every pay for your insurance.
Chances are if you fight it, the cop won't even show up in court. That's happened to both me and my fiance on our last traffic violations. Mine was knocked down from 5 points, $325 and a 60 day suspension to no points + $150 fine and $450 in lawyers fees. Yeah it cost more cash in the short term, but there was no way I was going to be able to make it 60 days without a car and the insurance surcharges would have really hurt. In addition, any further infraction (that means as simple as failing to signal) would have resulted in losing my license.
Moral of the story, ALWAYS FIGHT THE TICKET!
It's no wonder they can't code. Spider Monkeys don't have any thumbs. It's hard to write thousands of lines of code using the "hunt and peck" technique. Although they are quite adept with their tails, you'd think they'd use that as the "space bar hitter".
Reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a Mac user who was starting a new job that required IE6. He was considering buying a "used" copy of XP from e-bay or something for less than retail. I told him that it is illegal, so if you're going to do that, you might as well download an illegal crack for free. You're breaking the law either way, but at least one is free. I still advised that if he didn't want to break the law, he run out QUICK and snap up a legit copy before it becomes impossible.
Actually, I think a pay for what you use model could work in everybody's favor. What if you charged on a per bit basis just like the electric or gas company? That means the people who do casual web surfing and e-mail will pay very little and will use less bandwidth and the people who do heavy gaming, bittorrent downloads and the like that use lots of bandwidth, pay more. The amount of money a heavy user can spend on internet is limited by the bandwidth. If it's slow, they can only download so much. This is an incentive for the ISP (which may be a monopoly) to increase the available bandwidth. More bandwidth, more bits/month getting to the user, the more money the user pays to the ISP. Of course, you'd have to crunch the numbers on how many people are being screwed vs. being capped by the current model and see if there are enough bandwidth thirsty people out there to make the switch beneficial.
Compared to the other broadcast networks, I think NBC has gotten it the best. While it's still not perfect, they are the only network that supports ALL platforms. I can watch their shows online for free (with some ads) with Linux. Other networks like ABC and CW actually go out of their way to block Linux users from viewing their shows online. If you watch it on a windows machine, there is no extra plugins to download (it's pretty much YouTube style flash), so Linux should work, but no, they block you. Haven't tried changing the user agent though, so who knows if it really would work or not. Regardless, NBC supports all, while the others don't. I don't care if ABC has more shows to offer via the web than NBC if I can't view any of them in the first place.
I know we've been pushing China to be more "green", but I think something was lost in the translation.
This is true, however, if you connect to another cleverly named "linksys" network that isn't yoru neighbors, then you will start connecting to your neighbor automatically again (i think). This goes back to my earlier comment, that NetworkManager needs better controls for setting which networks to connect to. I should be able to specify in an easy manner, which network is preferred.
I had the same problems as the GP and deleting the profile for your neighbors network in ~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks worked like a charm. NetworkManager really needs some better UI controls for editing profiles.
If you had read the article, then you would know that what Apple is proposing, is unlimited physical downloads that never expire. That means they cannot switch off your access, and if your hard drive crashed and killed everything on it, you could simply re-download your whole collection. If the company went bankrupt or sold, then as long as you still have the software or the device that can play the file format, then you are fine. This is not the same as other subscription services like Napster.
I like your sentiment, that kids need to be doing things other than watching TV, but I would like to counter that not everything on TV is mindless crap. There are plenty of programs that actually do engage the audience and enrich the mind in some way. You can't really miss with channels like Discovery and The History Channel, but there are plenty of fictional shows out there that are very substantial. Not all of them for kids, mind you, but I think you can definitely find some good programming out there for them. Some kids shows are idiotic. Others are more productive. Do you have any objections to Sesame Street? These programs aren't babysitters by any means, though. In fact, the value of these shows can be augmented when the parent sits down and participates in the viewing. It doesn't even have to be a "kids" show you watch with them. I used to watch every episode of the Simpsons with my parents starting from when the show premiered and I was in kindergarten. At the very least, it was a chance for the whole family to get together and ALL laugh our asses off.
Good shows will challenge the viewer. A show I've been watching lately (though not kid appropriate) is "Breaking Bad". A high school chemistry teacher is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, so he starts cooking crystal meth to pay for the expensive treatment and leave his family is a stable financial situation. It challenges the audience's beliefs of right and wrong, talks about some chemistry, discusses the ill affects of drug-use and the dealer/user lifestyle, and much more. Most of all, it's entertaining.
When used properly, TV is not as horrible as you try to make it sound. It must be viewed responsibly (with parental oversight) and viewed in moderation (otherwise, you run out of the good programs and start running into the mindless crap). When I have kids, I plan on incorporating TV into their development, but it will be on my terms, not the TV networks'.
There's already plenty of demand. As you said, the laptop market is one of them, but not just the "rugged" laptop market. The "thin" laptop market is one of them. The MacBook Air has a solid state drive (optional?) and the Lenovo ThinkPad competitor has one standard. Any laptop would benefit greatly from an SSD. For laptops, the HD is the last moving part, with the exception of cooling fans. Reliability is a key benefit to these drives (when used with a proper file system) because they don't have moving parts that can break down. Hard drive failure is the #1 hardware problem for ANY type of computer. Just ask any support desk. If spending a little more up front on SSD means not having to replace the drive down the road, then I'm sure plenty of organizations will want to make the switch. Even on servers, there is demand. Why do we have all of these SAN's with RAID 5 and 10 arrays? Because hard drives fail so often. We might not be getting rid of the RAID, but we will have less downtime and be replacing less drives.
Actually, taking computer science in my NJ high school DISCOURAGED me from pursuing a career in computer science. Although this is a good thing. At that point, I knew I wanted to work with computers, but the only career I knew about was Computer Science. Luckily, I realized early that coding was not for me, and after talking to people already in the IT field, I discovered that there was more to the field that writing code.
This is not to mean that CS in high school is worthless. In fact I'm saying it should be available as an option. Best to find out early, before you waste a lot of time and money in a college CS program. Although I'll agree with another poster, high school CS is nothing like college or "real" CS. Friends of mine who went on to CS or computer engineering in college had to relearn how to code.
Here's my definition of Web 2.0 (NOTE: Your definition may vary)
I refer to Web 2.0 as user generated content. I define user generated content pretty broadly as well. This isn't just YouTube videos and MySpace pages. This is the ability of the user to use the web to dynamically create content on the web, whether it's uploading a video to a public site, creating their own web profile, or typing a research paper using a browser based word processor. The user has the ability to go to a web site and then manipulate the data on the page dynamically to suit their needs. Things like Google Maps (and others) come to mind as well. In the past, you looked at static maps and clicked links to go to other maps. These tied together into different "views". But now, you manipulate a single map by dragging, zooming, placing "push pins", and changing the map overlay (satelite vs. non-satelite). Overall, I see the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0 as the emergence of a web sites as applications. AJAX is often associated with Web 2.0, as it, as well as other new techniques, is what helps make Web 2.0 possible.
The term Web 2.0 is a pretty ambiguous term, though, so others may have a different definition. Early in the Web 2.0 hype, my mother asked me "I've been hearing about Web 2.0 this and Web 2.0 that, but what the hell is it? No one seems to be able to explain this to me!". To which I replied, "Web 2.0 is a bullshit buzzword made up to describe everything new that is happening on the web. It is mostly meaningless marketing speak. Treat it as such." I was right at the time. It was such a blanket term. But looking back, I think we can better say what it is, because we can now see what all of the things classified as Web 2.0 have in common.
But having one player and two formats is just so damn wasteful. If we are treating both as if they are one format, why have two in the first place? All it does is create confusion. Us nerds may be fully aware that our player can play both, but Joe sixpack is sitting there not buying one or the other because he doesn't realize there's no difference (player-wise). Both should have agreed on a common format from the beginning, then they would all be making lots money off of hardware sales, instead of one making some money while the other looses it all. The fight was pointless anyway. By the time Blu-Ray becomes profitable, donwloadable movies will have become worthwhile (I hope).
So here's a lesson to all of the downloadable movie providers. Cater to what the customer wants. Customers didn't want a format war and I'm still not sure they even want a new format to begin with. So here's what we all want out of a downloadable movie: STANDARD OPEN FORMAT. This pretty much covers all of the problems with downloadable movies right now. I want my movie to play on any OS. I want it to play as many times as I want. I want it to be able to transfer to any device. I want to be able to make a backup. I want it to be as good if not better than DVD in overall quality. Right now, what we have out there is one company who has it sort of right and a bunch who don't have it right at all. Once again, the sort of right company is Apple. As far as I know, the video works much like the music. I download a physical copy (not streamed), I can move it to other devices (but only Apple devices). I can play that file multiple times (not sure if its infinite). Some of my other points, I'm not sure if Apple covers or not. I know the quality is nowhere near DVD, so that sucks. Apple at least is trying to solve the "last ten feet" issue of getting the video in the living room. As I said before, it only works with Apple devices like the iPod or the AppleTV. Portable's nice, but I want to choose the device. Apple also uses some DRM, but like the music its manageable. At the end of the day, I want it on my home theater. The others out there are just awful (Netflix I'm looking at you). They are either streaming the video (means low quality to deal with the bandwidth) or they use pretty awful DRM that requires Windows Media Player 11. You only get a small window to watch the movie, or you only get a restricted number of plays. That's fine for "rentals" but what if I want to own a copy? The downloadable movie market is looking just like the downloadable music market looked five years ago. A handful of companies who just don't get it, and Apple who gets it, kinda, but still wants some control. I'm hoping Amazon can come to the rescue again on this.
I wholeheartedly agree. In fact this morning I had the displeasure of comparing and contrasting my usual 6:45am flight packed with the same consultants every week (i.e. extremely frequent and efficient flyers) with a later flight. My normal flight is usually extremely efficient. Everyone in the security line knows the drill. There's a lot less yelling from TSA and you are through in minutes. Boarding the plane, everyone knows the drill and orderly form a line (although it looks close to chaos at first, it quickly funnels into order). Plane is loaded with little hassle and we're off. Then this morning I took a different flight. First there's security. Line is a lot longer, but it was a later flight and thus expected. But it certainly wasn't moving at the pace my earlier flight does. There's a lot of people who should know better who don't make the effort to make things quick. TSA is constantly yelling and the line goes nowhere. Now the first time, or low experience (particularly first time post liquid bomb era flyers) are gonna get yelled at. I was one of them. The first day I started flying regularly for business, TSA robbed me blind (fuckers) and it was still another week or two before the nagging went away. But now I'm an security check-in machine (which is really something considering I usually have 2 laptops and 2 carry-on bags. Once through security, then it comes down to the selfish bastard flyers. The ones who get in line before their zone is called. The ones who push you out of the way so that they can retrieve their gate-checked bag before you. Yeah those guys just suck.
In closing, if you're an inexperienced flyer, do a little homework first and keep efficiency in mind. It's OK if you don't get it right away, there is a learning curve. If you're not sure about something, ask the guy in the suit holding his shoes, he's probably done this before, and will be happy to help. Afterall, the sooner you get through, the sooner he gets through. And be polite. This can be tough during the hell that is air travel, but just remember, we're all in this together.
I agree with you, it would be great if Adobe would start supporting Linux natively. I was even thinking that once Photshop is better supported under WINE, they may have a better picture of how many people use their products in Linux. Unfortunatly, Photoshop would not be able to accurately report back what systems people are using. This brings me to the OT rant. Some apps report back what system the user is running, essentially a survey so the company knows their market better. I encountered this with Steam. I have Steam running under WINE on Fedora 7 right now. When it asked to report my hardware, i obliged, hoping that it would detect a Linux system and someone at Valve would give a double-take. The hope being that if they keep seeing Linux in their stats, they might start developing for it. Unfortunately, WINE reports the system as Windows XP. Well that was dissapointing. I think it would be in the Linux communities interest if WINE had a way of reporting it more like "GNU/Linux with Windows XP compatibility layer" or something like that. No biggie, but maybe it would help get the word out to some of the game developers that Linux gamers do exist.
I think you've got the makings of the next great sci-fi movie. Dystopian futures seem to always play well, sci-fi or not. Just look at Matrix, Blade Runner, even Children of Men (such a good movie). If you can get me a script, we're in business.
As others have stated, the main issue is that they are leveraging their dominant market position t push their own media player on the consumer. But there's even more to it than that, and this goes back to the whole issue of Microsoft needing to open things up more.
I once had a discussion about media players with a co-worker who was so into Microsoft it was scary (I think he had a man crush on Bill Gates). Anyhow, I was saying that I've recently started using VLC because a) it's cross-platform (import for a Linux user) and b) it comes with every codec you'll ever need, including all of the MS ones (I hate hunting down codecs). I was recommending he and some others try it in Windows, as I've had others recommend it. His argument against using any cross-platform media player, was that it would not be optimized for Windows. He further argues that Microsoft has inside knowledge of Windows that no other developer has, which allows them to optimize WMP to run much better than any 3rd party media player, even Windows only players. His argument is valid, especially if you are looking for the most efficient player for your platform. However, it raises another issue. ONLY Microsoft has access to this Windows insider information. This is anti-competitive. The API's for Windows should be detailed enough that a 3rd party developer could create a media player that is just as optimized, if not more so. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Almost all API's for Microsoft products are "3rd Party" editions. Only Microsoft has access to the detailed versions. There have been stories about this on Slashdot in regards to MS Office, and I'm experiencing it right now with SharePoint.
My client wants to make a lot of customizations to SharePoint, but unfortunately, the API's are not detailed enough to do some of these customizations effectively. Going forward, I probably wouldn't recommend SharePoint to anybody unless they wanted just the sraight out of the box functionality simply because customizing it is such a pain in the ass. In this case, they are shooting themselves in the foot, because SharePoint SHOULD be a platform, not a product (or at least that's how they've marketed it). Rather, it is a product that comes in a box and all implementations must fit in that box. But I digress.
The point is, the Microsoft's openness is one of the big issues with including any non-essential software. A media player is not essential for an OS, but it is important if you want to deliver a full featured desktop environment. Including a media player is not necessarily anti-competitive, but including one that no competitor could ever compete with because of proprietary secrets, now THAT is anti-competitive.