If you think humans were successful endurance hunters, you've probably never tried to chase down so much as a dog.
I'd say it was a miracle our ancestors survived long enough to invent the thrown spear, but that wouldn't be fair to Thag Grobnak. Real predators would have driven us to extinction long ago if not for his efforts.
So if you're reading this, drink a toast to Thag Grobnak and his highly successful chain of Opposable-Thumb Massage Parlors.
Every analogy, by definition, compares different things. Pointing out every detail how the two things differ does not make an analogy invalid.
I'd suggest reading up on the difference between goods and services, but there are enough exceptions, loopholes, and legal grey areas to give you a headache.
Let's start with the most obvious difference: Goods are usually bought one-off, while services--particularly contract services--are often long-term relationships. If I piss off my Ford dealer, for any reason, he can throw me out of his store. Likewise, if the Ford I bought pisses me off for any reason, I can always refuse to buy a Ford ever again.
In the case of AT&T, it ought to be the same, but the local monopolies can make it hard for me to switch phone providers. Conversely, AT&T has to codify what "pisses them off" in their contract, and then have those rules hold up in court if a customer challenges them.
Unfortunately, if "goods" and "services" are slightly vague, civil law is a swirling, choking miasma that not even lawyers understand more than a fraction of. The most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that the general goal of contract law (and law in general) is to provide a sense of equality; in this case, a fair playing field for buyer and seller. Mind you, not everyone has the same definition of "fair", but judges generally try to find a reasonable middle ground.
So let's speak in generalities.
Goods and metered services are frequently the same from the "fairness" perspective. If I sell someone a especially pretty rock, I presumably make my profit on the spot, there's nothing the buyer can do to cheat me out of money later, and so I have no justifiable reason to tell the buyer how they can or cannot use my rock. If I clean someone's house and get paid for my time, I have again presumably made my profit, and again it would be unfair for me to put stipulations on the buyer. (Warranties and guarantees are an exception to this, but they function more as unmetered services sold on top of a good, and as such are subject to terms of service.)
Unmetered services are different, and this is where things start to get complicated. If I offer an unmetered service--flat rate internet, unmetered water, an all-you-can-eat buffet, a pre-paid warranty--now the seller's profit is dependent on exactly how the buyer uses or abuses the service.
Even though the buyer ostensibly "bought" an unlimited amount of internet transfer, or water, or food, or repairs, if the buyer uses far too much of them, it can become very unprofitable for me, the seller--especially if the buyer then shares their "unlimited" service with others who stop paying me for their own service.
Now, "fairness" suggests that the seller isn't required to subsidize exploitative users, and sure enough, unmetered service typically come with plenty of terms of service about what constitutes unreasonable use of their services, and as long as they aren't terribly unfair in favor of the seller, the courts uphold them.
And while unmetered services are an obvious example of why terms of sale or service are necessary to maintain "fairness", there are other examples as well. My restaurant might have child, adult, and senior prices. Or I might sell software for academic, home, and corporate prices. If I couldn't control how my product or service was used after the sale, nothing would stop a Fortune 500 company from buying my software at dirt-poor student prices and then giving to all their top executives. That again wouldn't be fair to me, the seller.
The reverse is true as well. Verizon and AT&T switched from unmetered to metered cellular data plans and the FCC began pressuring them on neutrality to eliminate gotchas and exceptions from their service. While their rates haven't exactly gone down, their new plans offer free tethering, free texting, free voice, video conferencing, and a bunch of other things they wanted to tack on as extras before.
So to answer your question, the difference between a Ford and AT&T service is that if I abuse the car, it doesn't hurt Ford (in fact, they'd love to sell me another). If I abuse the long distance service, I do hurt AT&T.
Because one is a service, subject to terms of service, and the other is physical goods?
But if a physical analogy helps: If you have unmetered water at your apartment, what do you think would happen if you bought a huge water tank, pipes and hoses and set yourself up as a utility company for your entire neighborhood?
You're right, competition and fresh perspectives are what we need.
Even if BB10 isn't a huge success, you can bet the Android and iOS teams will pore over it for clever ideas that could be adapted to their own platforms.
The funny thing is, Apple actually implemented multitouch app switching way back in iOS 4.3, but they haven't enabled it on the iPhone—presumably because smartphone screens are a bit small for their 3+ finger gestures.
You can use Activator (available on Cydia) to enable it, though you'll have to wait for the new jailbreak coming out in a few days. Speaking of jailbreaking, if you like BB10's app previews you could give Auxo or other app switcher replacements/enhancements a try as well.
Quite a few pages have hidden flash elements that are vital to the operation of the page. Most web music players, for instance. Blocking flash by default would break quite a few sites.
Software developers—and browser makers in particular—have to weigh security against user experience.
Thank you. The GP has absolutely no business on Slashdot if he can't even distinguish Iron Man's palm-mounted arsenal from his wrist-mounted arsenal. It brings shame upon the entire community.
I used Lala quite a bit, and in all honesty, I didn't expect it to stick around even before Apple bought the company. You could preview an entire track for free, then pay ten cents for unlimited listens with no ads and no subscription fees. With payment processing fees, servers, storage, and bandwidth, I doubt Lala was making anything, much less paying the record companies. Heck, you would have had to buy six hundred songs a year just to match Spotify's cheapest subscription. Twelve or eighteen hundred to match Zune or Rhapsody. Oh, and did I mention Lala would even scan your existing music library and then let you stream all your songs from their servers for free? Yeah, that's a sustainable business model.
I'm sure Lala was nothing but acquision-bait, like Youtube and Instagram. Offer a good service for way below cost, get a huge following, find somebody with deep pockets to buy your "community" and retire to a tropical island.
I understand your point, but that is a rather misleading analogy, for Slashdot is widely known to be the best possible place to debate the 10 finest sparling ice-wines this side of faerun.
On the other hand, while typing I've noticed it's often faster to quickly jab buttons or perform gestures on the screen than to reach down and use a trackpad.
I agree that most screens will be touch screens...eventually. In the same way that most televisions will be 3D...eventually. It's still primarily a gimmick at this point, but it has some use. As the price goes down and the practical downsides are slowly engineered away, it will become a standard feature and applications will evolve to better use it.
(p.s. I don't own a touch screen laptop, but I do have an iPad with keyboard which works the same way...and, ironically, predates modern touch screen laptops.)
Twitter did it a while back. Facebook finally jumped on the bandwagon. Now if only ChatRoulette would follow suit, I could finally bare every detail of my life to strangers without fear of prying eyes.
That's just it, though. These aliens are suffering from crippling anachronisms and logical inconsistencies—both common side effects of my-species-can-be-described-in-25-words-or-less syndrome. And that is why we're so interesting to them. In the words of their lead researcher, Valium Beta 9000:
Humans don't realize how unique they are in the universe. Their society is complex and vibrant, and, alone among all others, doesn't feel like it was hastily thrown together by a science fiction writer short on ideas. We study them because we have so much to learn from them, to fix our own surprisingly obvious flaws:
The Zenzu, for instance, have the genetic inability to change their minds about anything. This is a surprisingly widespread trait in the universe.
The Inixicai developed incredible shields to to shrug off attacks from the most powerful energy weapons, but their defenses were completely useless against matter-based weapons like guided missiles and small thrown rocks. It seemed a small oversight, but sadly they greatly underestimated the amount of physical matter in the universe.
The 0110—alas, the 0110. Their entire race self-destructed when they were presented with an illogical argument.
So you see, Humans really have no idea how special they are. And they must never know, because we're supposed to destroy them. And steal their women. Or something. Sorry, what were we talking about again?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for being the first person to state the obvious here.
Oh, and let me paraphrase the summary:
We gave one group of subjects strawberry ice cream cones. We gave a second group dry spaghetti noodles.
Afterward, members of the first group were more willing to do us a favor than members of the second group.
Therefore, we conclude that there is a link between strawberries and altruistic behavior.
And with 'flavors' like "pristine Tibet" and "post-industrial Taiwan", perhaps slightly subversive humor as well.
Agreed. Heaters should never be left unattended.
Always put them on a timer, or better yet, a remote-controlled outlet you can monitor and control from anywhere.
I have a Belkin unit that works great. Highly recommended!
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
If you think humans were successful endurance hunters, you've probably never tried to chase down so much as a dog.
I'd say it was a miracle our ancestors survived long enough to invent the thrown spear, but that wouldn't be fair to Thag Grobnak. Real predators would have driven us to extinction long ago if not for his efforts.
So if you're reading this, drink a toast to Thag Grobnak and his highly successful chain of Opposable-Thumb Massage Parlors.
Every analogy, by definition, compares different things. Pointing out every detail how the two things differ does not make an analogy invalid.
I'd suggest reading up on the difference between goods and services, but there are enough exceptions, loopholes, and legal grey areas to give you a headache.
Let's start with the most obvious difference: Goods are usually bought one-off, while services--particularly contract services--are often long-term relationships. If I piss off my Ford dealer, for any reason, he can throw me out of his store. Likewise, if the Ford I bought pisses me off for any reason, I can always refuse to buy a Ford ever again.
In the case of AT&T, it ought to be the same, but the local monopolies can make it hard for me to switch phone providers. Conversely, AT&T has to codify what "pisses them off" in their contract, and then have those rules hold up in court if a customer challenges them.
Unfortunately, if "goods" and "services" are slightly vague, civil law is a swirling, choking miasma that not even lawyers understand more than a fraction of. The most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that the general goal of contract law (and law in general) is to provide a sense of equality; in this case, a fair playing field for buyer and seller. Mind you, not everyone has the same definition of "fair", but judges generally try to find a reasonable middle ground.
So let's speak in generalities.
Goods and metered services are frequently the same from the "fairness" perspective. If I sell someone a especially pretty rock, I presumably make my profit on the spot, there's nothing the buyer can do to cheat me out of money later, and so I have no justifiable reason to tell the buyer how they can or cannot use my rock. If I clean someone's house and get paid for my time, I have again presumably made my profit, and again it would be unfair for me to put stipulations on the buyer. (Warranties and guarantees are an exception to this, but they function more as unmetered services sold on top of a good, and as such are subject to terms of service.)
Unmetered services are different, and this is where things start to get complicated. If I offer an unmetered service--flat rate internet, unmetered water, an all-you-can-eat buffet, a pre-paid warranty--now the seller's profit is dependent on exactly how the buyer uses or abuses the service.
Even though the buyer ostensibly "bought" an unlimited amount of internet transfer, or water, or food, or repairs, if the buyer uses far too much of them, it can become very unprofitable for me, the seller--especially if the buyer then shares their "unlimited" service with others who stop paying me for their own service.
Now, "fairness" suggests that the seller isn't required to subsidize exploitative users, and sure enough, unmetered service typically come with plenty of terms of service about what constitutes unreasonable use of their services, and as long as they aren't terribly unfair in favor of the seller, the courts uphold them.
And while unmetered services are an obvious example of why terms of sale or service are necessary to maintain "fairness", there are other examples as well. My restaurant might have child, adult, and senior prices. Or I might sell software for academic, home, and corporate prices. If I couldn't control how my product or service was used after the sale, nothing would stop a Fortune 500 company from buying my software at dirt-poor student prices and then giving to all their top executives. That again wouldn't be fair to me, the seller.
The reverse is true as well. Verizon and AT&T switched from unmetered to metered cellular data plans and the FCC began pressuring them on neutrality to eliminate gotchas and exceptions from their service. While their rates haven't exactly gone down, their new plans offer free tethering, free texting, free voice, video conferencing, and a bunch of other things they wanted to tack on as extras before.
So to answer your question, the difference between a Ford and AT&T service is that if I abuse the car, it doesn't hurt Ford (in fact, they'd love to sell me another). If I abuse the long distance service, I do hurt AT&T.
(...but I don't feel particularly bad about it.)
Because one is a service, subject to terms of service, and the other is physical goods?
But if a physical analogy helps: If you have unmetered water at your apartment, what do you think would happen if you bought a huge water tank, pipes and hoses and set yourself up as a utility company for your entire neighborhood?
You're right, competition and fresh perspectives are what we need.
Even if BB10 isn't a huge success, you can bet the Android and iOS teams will pore over it for clever ideas that could be adapted to their own platforms.
The funny thing is, Apple actually implemented multitouch app switching way back in iOS 4.3, but they haven't enabled it on the iPhone—presumably because smartphone screens are a bit small for their 3+ finger gestures.
You can use Activator (available on Cydia) to enable it, though you'll have to wait for the new jailbreak coming out in a few days. Speaking of jailbreaking, if you like BB10's app previews you could give Auxo or other app switcher replacements/enhancements a try as well.
Kernel developers are discussing a change in the samsung-laptop driver.
To be fair, they didn't realize anybody would actually implement the HCF instruction.
Quite a few pages have hidden flash elements that are vital to the operation of the page. Most web music players, for instance. Blocking flash by default would break quite a few sites.
Software developers—and browser makers in particular—have to weigh security against user experience.
And why was Schindler's List in black and white, anyway? Couldn't they afford color film?
On the other hand, Hollywood prop designers finally feel vindicated.
Thank you. The GP has absolutely no business on Slashdot if he can't even distinguish Iron Man's palm-mounted arsenal from his wrist-mounted arsenal. It brings shame upon the entire community.
I used Lala quite a bit, and in all honesty, I didn't expect it to stick around even before Apple bought the company. You could preview an entire track for free, then pay ten cents for unlimited listens with no ads and no subscription fees. With payment processing fees, servers, storage, and bandwidth, I doubt Lala was making anything, much less paying the record companies. Heck, you would have had to buy six hundred songs a year just to match Spotify's cheapest subscription. Twelve or eighteen hundred to match Zune or Rhapsody. Oh, and did I mention Lala would even scan your existing music library and then let you stream all your songs from their servers for free? Yeah, that's a sustainable business model.
I'm sure Lala was nothing but acquision-bait, like Youtube and Instagram. Offer a good service for way below cost, get a huge following, find somebody with deep pockets to buy your "community" and retire to a tropical island.
Fun fact: In a strange case of Hollywood writers actually getting basic science right, the error was intentional and explained in the original script:
...
HAN: Han Solo. I'm captain of the Millennium Falcon. Chewie here tells
me you're looking for passage to the Alderaan system.
BEN: Yes, indeed. If it's a fast ship.
HAN: Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
BEN: Should I have?
HAN: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve
parsecs!
Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with
obvious misinformation.
The Outer Limits?
I understand your point, but that is a rather misleading analogy, for Slashdot is widely known to be the best possible place to debate the 10 finest sparling ice-wines this side of faerun.
My mates and I are lobbying to have the neighborhood Pizza Hut declared a national landmark, so we can always eat there for free.
Not exactly a compelling use case, indeed.
On the other hand, while typing I've noticed it's often faster to quickly jab buttons or perform gestures on the screen than to reach down and use a trackpad.
I agree that most screens will be touch screens...eventually. In the same way that most televisions will be 3D...eventually. It's still primarily a gimmick at this point, but it has some use. As the price goes down and the practical downsides are slowly engineered away, it will become a standard feature and applications will evolve to better use it.
(p.s. I don't own a touch screen laptop, but I do have an iPad with keyboard which works the same way...and, ironically, predates modern touch screen laptops.)
To be pedantic, there are actually a pair of genes at that location.
Obligatory...
Twitter did it a while back. Facebook finally jumped on the bandwagon. Now if only ChatRoulette would follow suit, I could finally bare every detail of my life to strangers without fear of prying eyes.
That's just it, though. These aliens are suffering from crippling anachronisms and logical inconsistencies—both common side effects of my-species-can-be-described-in-25-words-or-less syndrome. And that is why we're so interesting to them. In the words of their lead researcher, Valium Beta 9000:
Humans don't realize how unique they are in the universe. Their society is complex and vibrant, and, alone among all others, doesn't feel like it was hastily thrown together by a science fiction writer short on ideas. We study them because we have so much to learn from them, to fix our own surprisingly obvious flaws:
The Zenzu, for instance, have the genetic inability to change their minds about anything. This is a surprisingly widespread trait in the universe.
The Inixicai developed incredible shields to to shrug off attacks from the most powerful energy weapons, but their defenses were completely useless against matter-based weapons like guided missiles and small thrown rocks. It seemed a small oversight, but sadly they greatly underestimated the amount of physical matter in the universe.
The 0110—alas, the 0110. Their entire race self-destructed when they were presented with an illogical argument.
So you see, Humans really have no idea how special they are. And they must never know, because we're supposed to destroy them. And steal their women. Or something. Sorry, what were we talking about again?
Hey, did you know you double posted?
Oh...oh, shit.