However I think commercial, lowest-common-denominator television that most people absorb will continue to be supported by advertising. Most people simply need to have their content spoon-fed to them, and even though most of them are already paying a ridiculous amount of money for it (cable/satellite subscriptions), they still wouldn't like the idea of paying for something they can get for free!
Speeding is the one crime that continuously goes unpunished in this country, and it needs to be taken seriously. I support quadrupling fines for speeding, and also adding a minimum one-month license suspension for speeding offences. It's really ridiculous, people in this country seem to think it's not even a crime any more. I have had friends actually yell at me for driving the speed limit! It's absurd...
You must know an awful lot of Tory cunts then, because any unbiased observer would see quite clearly that there is nothing remotely left-wing about the BBC, in fact they go out of their way to take a centrist position sometimes, even when the truth is frustratingly obvious! Fox News is provably much, much worse--this is a matter of fact, not just opinion. The difference is that, when Fox News gets out of line, there's not a damn thing we can do about it, other than whine and complain (which means someone actually has to watch it in the first place), but when the BBC is out of line, there is a public outcry and they have to answer for their mistakes to the people, as it should be. Without the BBC to temper them, I wouldn't be surprised if Sky news went (further) in the same direction.
We desperately need an independent, publicly funded television network. News reporting has turned to complete and utter rubbish and it's time to put a stop to it. I say television because, let's face it, the number of people smart enough to read newspapers in this country is dwindling fast. TV gets much more exposure to a wider audience. This would benefit everyone and not just news--entertainment as well, which is suffering immensely and dumbing down the populous. I really do revel in the thought of an American BBC, just a shame we can't call it the ABC because of those bastards at Disney. The name isn't important, however, the content is!
Flash-based websites are *notorious* for being the worst-designed in the industry... Doesn't everyone agree on this, or am I really that sheltered? Maybe the designers have sheltered themselves as well, actually believing that the Flash garbage they produce is usable. As far as I can tell, most Flash websites are produced by people straight out of their Flash courses in school with little real-world nor usability experience. I admit flash (currently) has its uses, for streaming video, audio, or web-based games, but *never* as a means to actually design an entire website! Absolutely never. These sites are always horrific. Designers should never be programming in the first place. They do the art. Leave it to the programmers to do the code. Let each be an expert in his or her own respective field. Flash will die eventually, but it does seem like it will be a long and painful death. At least we're moving in the right direction!
Those people have been scamming the system for far too long, I'm very glad to hear this. Unfortunately they're still not doing enough to go after the mega-corporations and their thousands of tax loopholes.
Yes, I should have read the actual post to notice the dates, but making that mistake hardly makes me a "troll."
You are quite foolish to underestimate the influence of Microsoft. I'm suggesting that, as soon as the vulnerability in Firefox surfaced, the BSI came under an enormous amount of pressure from Microsoft (and all of its thousands of tiny front groups) to be "fair" and post this anti-Firefox FUD right away. Had they bothered contacting Mozilla themselves, instead of just reading the blog post, they might have been made aware that the release was imminent. Hell, even if the release wasn't ready, Mozilla might have even pushed a minor update simply to fix this one issue instead of having this bad press get out there...
If they would have contacted the Mozilla team they could have announced that the update was due out TODAY and advise users to upgrade, instead of advising them not to use it.
This is just irresponsible fear-mongering, and I think it is highly likely that it was done as a form of retaliation against the previous IE recommendation.
I'm glad my laptop doesn't have a line-in, what a waste that would be! It's a very *specialist* use-case that should not be installed standard. Are there really that many old records that haven't been converted to digital yet? Or is the problem just that certain people don't think they are entitled to download a digital version of something they already own without paying for it a second time?
Hmm, I know the cost is minor, but I'm sure it really adds up in aggregate. It's a real waste to spend money on printing and shipping a CD if you don't even need it. I think a regular, old donation is much better in this case.
Seriously! Even for commercial products don't people purchase them electronically? Maybe I'm just so far-removed from the commercial software world that I can't even comprehend this in this day and age... I did order a free Ubuntu CD once, but never even ended up using it because Ubuntu releases so often that there's almost always a newer version the next time you want to install it, and downloading via bittorrent is so fast. Of course I understand for those unlucky folk who are living in the middle of nowhere on a analogue or satellite connection or something, but seems this market is rather small.
...until they both get their act together and allow for messages >160 characters. This is absolutely the most ridiculous restriction in the 21st century I have ever seen. 1120 bits per message? Seriously? It's like we're living in the 80s with 300 baud modems on our mobiles or something...so ridiculous! And the cost is even more outrageous. In the U.S. most companies charge 20 cents per message... That's $1497 per MiB! WTF is wrong with this picture?
Google Buzz has vastly improved upon the Twitter concept, allowing attachments of images, links, etc. with no character limit. I really hope twitter will soon die the miserable death it deserves...
This is probably the most brilliant "Sim" game I've heard of since SimCity! I would buy this in a second, it is really a brilliant idea! And it would be GREAT education for kids!
Gamers--the people who really fuel the gaming industry (as opposed to the casual gamer) are a very unique market segment. They are, for the most part, people who actually *think*. A religious game targeted at this group would make no sense, as many of the responses to this story have demonstrated. Not only would I say the majority of the "gamer" market is probably atheist, but even the ones who do believe in something are much more likely to be independent in their thinking and what they believe, and not likely to take their religion from a third party source such as a video game.
Now, certainly some religious mythology could be used to make some good games. And this is the sad part, I find. Game manufacturers are too afraid of offending the right-wing religious nutjobs who are out there monitoring everything. Even though these people in no way represent their market, they end up controlling so much and can even have a negative impact on sales. (Of course, as with GTA, it can also have the opposite effect.) I would like to see a Jesus vs.Mohammed-style deathmatch game. Of course then the Muslims would totally freak out for allowing their precious messenger to appear in a game.
I could also easily see a MMORPG set in the middle ages with a heavy religious theme, which would be great--so long as it's accurate. Using religion to control your subjects just as it was used in real life.
It's also too bad that it would be illegal to insert religion into "America's Army," because those people would be the perfect audience to receive it!
This is exactly right. And it's not only wifi, they charge extra for pool/health club access, no free breakfast, parking like you already mentioned, sometimes they even charge for airport shuttles! It really is insane. I always try to avoid those hotels if I can... Sure, they might have fluffy beds and fancy marble showers, but the rest of the service is just terrible...
You have an interesting definition of "better." Sure Starbucks only has cakes and muffins, but at least it's real food that isn't going to rot you from the inside-out! I'm not saying I never eat at McDonald's, but I certainly regret it when I do... No person who cares about their body should be eating there, pretty much ever...
I've been using this Adblock+ extension in Chromium for a while and it works well and even supports (Firefox) Adblock Plus subscriptions. However, Chromium doesn't yet support content filtering so all this extension does is *hide* ads, it does not stop them from loading...
That's a good point, I thought pretty much all phones released these days were quad-band. This is yet another area where the lack of standardization (of frequencies) is extremely frustrating. I also got my phone in the UK which I use on T-Mobile here since what they offer is such junk...
Do you have some source to show that Verizon's CDMA network covers an area "much larger than all of Europe"? It's true that Europe might only be 85% the size of the U.S., but it is much more densely populated, and mobile coverage is much better overall. There are huge unpopulated areas of the U.S. with little or no mobile coverage at all, and these need to be taken into account. I question very much whether Verizon covers a greater area than the GSM networks in Europe. If I had to guess, they are probably about the same. And this does not account for the entire rest of the world that is also using GSM!
Also, it is extremely wasteful to buy a second "throwaway" phone, when you simply need a new sim card. You are right that most Americans never leave this country, which is extremely pathetic but that is a separate issue.
Open standards and interoperability are important when it comes to everything else here on Slashdot, there's no reason mobile phones should be an exception. A while ago, "no one" would care that some websites didn't render correctly in Mozilla because it's irrelevant to "almost everyone" who used IE, with all of its standards-breaking bugs... Those of us who actually *know* need to lead the ignorant masses who don't, and who will never care.
Illustrating how Verizon's proprietary CDMA garbage is only available in the USA and very few limited countries, while the GSM that AT&T uses is available around the entire world. That would put Verizon in their place.
I can't tell if this is a typo or an actual term someone might use. I suppose shuttering the operation would simply mean concealing it from the public?
This whole notion of releasing these tiny, little crap software programs for money and profit is absurd. This is why I can't stand the Apple commercials advertising their thousands of "apps" for this and that...they never mention the fact that said apps are being released by greedy developers who insist upon selling them. And it seems Apple doesn't even want developers to release the source code of their apps either. We have to accept the fact that Apple is actually trying to fuel the proprietary software "industry" on their iPhone platform, and that it is in their best interests for people to sell their apps, and dupe users into thinking they should have to pay for such software. What a waste of talent when so many talented developers are writing useless iPhone apps in an attempt to make money instead of contributing to decent open source software for everyone to enjoy...
Thank god my N900 will be able to run whatever open source apps I chose, free of piracy...
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However I think commercial, lowest-common-denominator television that most people absorb will continue to be supported by advertising. Most people simply need to have their content spoon-fed to them, and even though most of them are already paying a ridiculous amount of money for it (cable/satellite subscriptions), they still wouldn't like the idea of paying for something they can get for free!
Speeding is the one crime that continuously goes unpunished in this country, and it needs to be taken seriously. I support quadrupling fines for speeding, and also adding a minimum one-month license suspension for speeding offences. It's really ridiculous, people in this country seem to think it's not even a crime any more. I have had friends actually yell at me for driving the speed limit! It's absurd...
Seriously, why would anyone pay to use this limited garbage when they can install a full-featured Linux distribution for free?
You must know an awful lot of Tory cunts then, because any unbiased observer would see quite clearly that there is nothing remotely left-wing about the BBC, in fact they go out of their way to take a centrist position sometimes, even when the truth is frustratingly obvious! Fox News is provably much, much worse--this is a matter of fact, not just opinion. The difference is that, when Fox News gets out of line, there's not a damn thing we can do about it, other than whine and complain (which means someone actually has to watch it in the first place), but when the BBC is out of line, there is a public outcry and they have to answer for their mistakes to the people, as it should be. Without the BBC to temper them, I wouldn't be surprised if Sky news went (further) in the same direction.
We desperately need an independent, publicly funded television network. News reporting has turned to complete and utter rubbish and it's time to put a stop to it. I say television because, let's face it, the number of people smart enough to read newspapers in this country is dwindling fast. TV gets much more exposure to a wider audience. This would benefit everyone and not just news--entertainment as well, which is suffering immensely and dumbing down the populous. I really do revel in the thought of an American BBC, just a shame we can't call it the ABC because of those bastards at Disney. The name isn't important, however, the content is!
Flash-based websites are *notorious* for being the worst-designed in the industry... Doesn't everyone agree on this, or am I really that sheltered? Maybe the designers have sheltered themselves as well, actually believing that the Flash garbage they produce is usable. As far as I can tell, most Flash websites are produced by people straight out of their Flash courses in school with little real-world nor usability experience. I admit flash (currently) has its uses, for streaming video, audio, or web-based games, but *never* as a means to actually design an entire website! Absolutely never. These sites are always horrific. Designers should never be programming in the first place. They do the art. Leave it to the programmers to do the code. Let each be an expert in his or her own respective field. Flash will die eventually, but it does seem like it will be a long and painful death. At least we're moving in the right direction!
Those people have been scamming the system for far too long, I'm very glad to hear this. Unfortunately they're still not doing enough to go after the mega-corporations and their thousands of tax loopholes.
Yes, I should have read the actual post to notice the dates, but making that mistake hardly makes me a "troll."
You are quite foolish to underestimate the influence of Microsoft. I'm suggesting that, as soon as the vulnerability in Firefox surfaced, the BSI came under an enormous amount of pressure from Microsoft (and all of its thousands of tiny front groups) to be "fair" and post this anti-Firefox FUD right away. Had they bothered contacting Mozilla themselves, instead of just reading the blog post, they might have been made aware that the release was imminent. Hell, even if the release wasn't ready, Mozilla might have even pushed a minor update simply to fix this one issue instead of having this bad press get out there...
The immaturity of people on this site never ceases to amaze me. My post was making a very valid point that is topical to the discussion.
If they would have contacted the Mozilla team they could have announced that the update was due out TODAY and advise users to upgrade, instead of advising them not to use it.
This is just irresponsible fear-mongering, and I think it is highly likely that it was done as a form of retaliation against the previous IE recommendation.
I'm glad my laptop doesn't have a line-in, what a waste that would be! It's a very *specialist* use-case that should not be installed standard. Are there really that many old records that haven't been converted to digital yet? Or is the problem just that certain people don't think they are entitled to download a digital version of something they already own without paying for it a second time?
Hmm, I know the cost is minor, but I'm sure it really adds up in aggregate. It's a real waste to spend money on printing and shipping a CD if you don't even need it. I think a regular, old donation is much better in this case.
Seriously! Even for commercial products don't people purchase them electronically? Maybe I'm just so far-removed from the commercial software world that I can't even comprehend this in this day and age... I did order a free Ubuntu CD once, but never even ended up using it because Ubuntu releases so often that there's almost always a newer version the next time you want to install it, and downloading via bittorrent is so fast. Of course I understand for those unlucky folk who are living in the middle of nowhere on a analogue or satellite connection or something, but seems this market is rather small.
...until they both get their act together and allow for messages >160 characters. This is absolutely the most ridiculous restriction in the 21st century I have ever seen. 1120 bits per message? Seriously? It's like we're living in the 80s with 300 baud modems on our mobiles or something...so ridiculous! And the cost is even more outrageous. In the U.S. most companies charge 20 cents per message... That's $1497 per MiB! WTF is wrong with this picture?
Google Buzz has vastly improved upon the Twitter concept, allowing attachments of images, links, etc. with no character limit. I really hope twitter will soon die the miserable death it deserves...
This is probably the most brilliant "Sim" game I've heard of since SimCity! I would buy this in a second, it is really a brilliant idea! And it would be GREAT education for kids!
Gamers--the people who really fuel the gaming industry (as opposed to the casual gamer) are a very unique market segment. They are, for the most part, people who actually *think*. A religious game targeted at this group would make no sense, as many of the responses to this story have demonstrated. Not only would I say the majority of the "gamer" market is probably atheist, but even the ones who do believe in something are much more likely to be independent in their thinking and what they believe, and not likely to take their religion from a third party source such as a video game.
Now, certainly some religious mythology could be used to make some good games. And this is the sad part, I find. Game manufacturers are too afraid of offending the right-wing religious nutjobs who are out there monitoring everything. Even though these people in no way represent their market, they end up controlling so much and can even have a negative impact on sales. (Of course, as with GTA, it can also have the opposite effect.) I would like to see a Jesus vs .Mohammed-style deathmatch game. Of course then the Muslims would totally freak out for allowing their precious messenger to appear in a game.
I could also easily see a MMORPG set in the middle ages with a heavy religious theme, which would be great--so long as it's accurate. Using religion to control your subjects just as it was used in real life.
It's also too bad that it would be illegal to insert religion into "America's Army," because those people would be the perfect audience to receive it!
This is exactly right. And it's not only wifi, they charge extra for pool/health club access, no free breakfast, parking like you already mentioned, sometimes they even charge for airport shuttles! It really is insane. I always try to avoid those hotels if I can... Sure, they might have fluffy beds and fancy marble showers, but the rest of the service is just terrible...
You have an interesting definition of "better." Sure Starbucks only has cakes and muffins, but at least it's real food that isn't going to rot you from the inside-out! I'm not saying I never eat at McDonald's, but I certainly regret it when I do... No person who cares about their body should be eating there, pretty much ever...
I've been using this Adblock+ extension in Chromium for a while and it works well and even supports (Firefox) Adblock Plus subscriptions. However, Chromium doesn't yet support content filtering so all this extension does is *hide* ads, it does not stop them from loading...
I have no mod points, but this is exactly what I was going to suggest... Get the best of both worlds.
That's a good point, I thought pretty much all phones released these days were quad-band. This is yet another area where the lack of standardization (of frequencies) is extremely frustrating. I also got my phone in the UK which I use on T-Mobile here since what they offer is such junk...
Do you have some source to show that Verizon's CDMA network covers an area "much larger than all of Europe"? It's true that Europe might only be 85% the size of the U.S., but it is much more densely populated, and mobile coverage is much better overall. There are huge unpopulated areas of the U.S. with little or no mobile coverage at all, and these need to be taken into account. I question very much whether Verizon covers a greater area than the GSM networks in Europe. If I had to guess, they are probably about the same. And this does not account for the entire rest of the world that is also using GSM!
Also, it is extremely wasteful to buy a second "throwaway" phone, when you simply need a new sim card. You are right that most Americans never leave this country, which is extremely pathetic but that is a separate issue.
Open standards and interoperability are important when it comes to everything else here on Slashdot, there's no reason mobile phones should be an exception. A while ago, "no one" would care that some websites didn't render correctly in Mozilla because it's irrelevant to "almost everyone" who used IE, with all of its standards-breaking bugs... Those of us who actually *know* need to lead the ignorant masses who don't, and who will never care.
Illustrating how Verizon's proprietary CDMA garbage is only available in the USA and very few limited countries, while the GSM that AT&T uses is available around the entire world. That would put Verizon in their place.
I can't tell if this is a typo or an actual term someone might use. I suppose shuttering the operation would simply mean concealing it from the public?
This whole notion of releasing these tiny, little crap software programs for money and profit is absurd. This is why I can't stand the Apple commercials advertising their thousands of "apps" for this and that...they never mention the fact that said apps are being released by greedy developers who insist upon selling them. And it seems Apple doesn't even want developers to release the source code of their apps either. We have to accept the fact that Apple is actually trying to fuel the proprietary software "industry" on their iPhone platform, and that it is in their best interests for people to sell their apps, and dupe users into thinking they should have to pay for such software. What a waste of talent when so many talented developers are writing useless iPhone apps in an attempt to make money instead of contributing to decent open source software for everyone to enjoy...
Thank god my N900 will be able to run whatever open source apps I chose, free of piracy...