At best you're an engineering student who doesn't actually understand what an engineer does or at worst you really don't have a clue. Engineering is not about "learning rules and following them". Engineering is about understanding that the world is modeled in mathematics and that we use these models as tools to accomplish tasks. We design things, we test things, we build things. The only engineers I've ever met who just "learn rules and follow them" are bad engineers and they've certainly been the minority of engineers in the US.
Engineers and scientists are very closely related. The only real difference is that scientists goal is knowledge and the engineers goal is a product. We both use the scientific method and statistics very often in determining the "truth" of the situation. Weather that "truth" is the reliability of a process or the speed of a nutrino, the process is the same.
Yes, but the barrier to entry is all about the software market. No one wants to buy even the coolest gaming rig if there aren't games. Building a gaming rig is actually pretty easy in comparison to building the hardware. I mean, hell, MS will just go out and source a bunch of PC based chips and package them all inside their box. Before they have the software market, they have to pay people to develop software and work really hard to support them in their development work. This is the REAL barrier to entry for this market. Once they have a software market they can CHARGE for their help and their design tools. Building a new box is just not that big an investment.
I would be surprised if they DON'T make back all the money they invested going forward. They have successfully cut themselves a niche in a lucrative marketplace which had VERY high and expensive barriers to entry. Are they going to get kicked out of this marketplace in the next 5 years? 10 years? I wouldn't bet in that direction. Microsoft does somethings very well and hardware is not one of them. But, now that they have successful hardware in the homes I have confidence in their ability to create and manage the very profitable software end of things for many years to come.
Again, who's going to push them out of the market? Sony? Nintendo? Sorry, don't believe it.
I never heard once in my life a friend of mine use this as a reason for buying an ipod.
And personally, Itunes and the insanity that is "getting music onto an ipod" is the #1 reason I regret buying my ipod. I recognize that I'm not the average customer, but I still have never heard of it as a selling feature.
"For young people who use the internet, their top suggestion is the legalization of MJ. But who the hell cares because those losers don't vote anyway. Nor do they give campaign money. So... throw a few platitudes their way, and move on. We REALLY don't want to upset the older people who *actually* vote and are still stuck in the 'just say no' mindset."
I think this is the real issue here. It all has to be coming from problems with skype's security and nothing else. Skype should take this as a huge warning and encrypt their packet information NOW. I don't care what this is used for, people sniffing packets and being able to tell who someone is on a program like skype that is often left on 24/7 is a huge security risk for the person involved! This should NOT be happening and it's all skype's fault.
You guys are getting to hung up on the bit torrent aspect of this and should realize that it's really a major skype fuck up.
Too true. If you're looking for something to convert your money into to give you something that you can barter for the apocalypse, buy a big gas tank and bury it in the ground somewhere. Hell, that might even make you rich in a few years even without the apocalypse!
So I use voice stuff on android... but the thing I've found most useful for using it for is addresses, and I want to do that while looking at the phone, not while it's attached to my ear.
*go to map program... hit the voice input button... "home depot in San Jose"... wait a second, and it pops up.
I've actually been pretty surprised at how accurate Android's voice recognition is. It gets names that I would have thought it'd fail at... for example it grabbed "Xilinx" exactly right the other day. IMHO, anyone who thinks Android's voice commands suck either speaks with a thick accent or simply has never used the previous generations of voice input.
So far from what I've hard, Siri sounds like catch-up tech that doesn't take it beyond what Android's is, so I expect the same performance and limitations. I'm not trying to dog on Siri or say "my phone is better than your phone". I'm just saying they sound equal thus far.
Corporations interjecting themselves into the political process is bad. Legalized corruption (i.e. campaign contributions) are bad. Massive wealth inequality is bad. Unequal/low quality education options for low income kids is bad. Worshiping profits and our pocketbooks more than education and the environment is bad. Propaganda journalism is bad.
However the truth is that these are all gray area issues and IMO the pendulum has just swung so far in one direction it's not worth pointing out the nuances.
The only real "simple" solution is simple in action, but very difficult to implement with our current political process. The simple solution is in campaign finance reform. The reality is that whoever pays for a politician is making an investment in said politician. The person who pays their bills has leverage over them and that leverage should be from the people, not from the elite or from companies. If you make politicians accountable to the people then overnight you'd turn around the government of the US. For example, if you said each and every person has $100 (pick the number) to give to any politician or politicians running for office and that was it... no corporations, unions, political groups, etc are allowed to put in any money...then overnight the government would less corporate friendly and more people friendly.
The world is nuanced, but details don't make for good chants at rallies.
MSFT is a company... the communist party in china is a government. You go ahead and try taking down the government of the USA and see how you do, if you want to compare apples to apples.
Every country has a 1%... I mean that's stupidly obvious. It's like saying "there will always be people who are above average!" Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't have wealth classes in the US, what we're arguing is that the separation shouldn't banana republic large (which it is today).
... but EIDE cables are always unshielded. They should have some checksum to validate the integrity of the data. Also, magnets wouldn't effect data traveling over data cables. If you had moving magnets that could generate noise on the cables, but stationary magnets won't do anything to data transmission.
(The reason it effects your HDD is because it's a magnetic platter, not because of the electronics inside.)
Wow... i've grown used to cynicism and ignorance on the internet... but I've got to say your post is really quite depressing. Your post has a combination of cynicism, ignorance, and intelligence all at the same time and it's sad to see.
"Milk is good for you" is you repeating an advertisement. It has calcium yes, but it's also a high fat drink and it's health benefits are debatable. But I agree with your main premiss that corporations sponsoring PSAs are not intrinsically bad, except that it can lead to slanting of the truth to benefit said corporation. It most cases if you allow this, the corporation will just turn the PSA into an advertisement designed to sell their product. If some unbiased group controls what "truth" is told, then it's cool, but if the corporation controls this "truth", then we're in trouble.
Corporations are not your friend. Corporations are tools and they see you as a tool, "a resource". Each resource should be replaceable with another resource. People are only useful as long as they provide labor. The environment has little value. Profits are everything. Fairness, ethics, loyalty, responsibility are not expected or desired. Corporations are sociopaths by nature. This is the way they are designed. However... if properly harnessed with regulations to prevent abuses (such as not dumping toxic waste in their own back yard), and properly put into direct competition with other such corporations, they can produce benefit for all society.
The idea that "many decisions of the government being based upon what corporations want is not entirely a bad thing" is mind bogglingly stupid. If allowed corporations will make laws that only benefit themselves. They will push as many expenses away from themselves and toward citizens. They will capture regulators so they don't have to play fair. They will make laws so they don't have to pay for what they use, put in safety features, or properly dispose of waste. They will create monopolies. They will give themselves tax breaks, tax advantages, and make decisions that are only beneficial to the people in control of the corporation (these people are known as the top 1%). Their only goal is to make money.
As I said, corporations are sociopaths, so while they do good a lot of the time, you don't want to turn your backs to them and leave sharp objects lying around, and then tell them they can't do something. Government needs to be controlled by the people because that is our defense against and our control over the corporations that already control so much of our lives.
This isn't playing like babies, this is playing like the big boys. (although in this case I'll admit it's the same thing.)
Patents are nukes. If you get in the way of some large company's business by throwing a few patent lawsuits around, they will retaliate. This is Samsung's way of getting leverage and forcing a negotiated settlement. If you call out companies like Samsung this is exactly how you'd expect them to respond. This is not in the slightest childish.
This is not childish, this is business.
Unless you're calling Apple childish for dropping the first patent bomb. I think their lawsuit was stupid... but they simply thought they had a strategic advantage and that Samsung couldn't hurt them much in return. Samsung has responded by pulling an ace out of their hand and dropping it on the table. In theory, a critical patent like this is supposed be licensed in a fair and non-discriminatory manner as agreed upon within a standards body, but I don't know how legally binding the standards bodies agreements are. In any case, it would probably be settled in court AFTER they got an injunction against apple, and this would mean years of Apple being blocked from whatever market they could get.
Wait a minute... why doesn't apple have a license for 3G patents already? The standards bodies say you have to license them in a fair and non-discriminatory manner... so if apple had a license already, everything would be cool because they'd have a contract stating their rights. But if they don't have a license... then they ARE violating the patents. Why wouldn't Samsung have approached them way before this and said "hey, license our tech or we'll sue"? Hm.... some part of my understanding is not correct here....
Some people (mainly the old engineers) pronounce "giga-" as a "jiga-" sound for some reason. Always sounds funny to me, but I've heard that pronunciation. Obviously Dr Brown was one such old engineer.
From Wikipedia: "Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets" Fairness, regulation, or even free market is not a crucial part of this definition.
In my own personal definition I see capitalism as "free market capitalism"... however there are many ways a free market can be corrupted as both agree upon. However just because the markets are corrupted and not fair and/or unregulated, it's still capitalism.
"Without the ethics and regulation the market will be nothing like fair." I Agree. However people seem to define the robber barons time of monopolies as "capitalism run amok", thus still defining it as capitalism. For example laissez-faire capitalism is capitalism with no or very little regulation. These are phrases and uses of capitalism that seem to be lacking in morality and fairness so they imply that fairness is NOT a requirement of capitalism.
Feudalism is also an economic system. Which people does it serve? Feudalism is only people friendly if you're at the top? You're using a metric for defining the success of an economic system that is not intrinsic to the definition of an economic system. An economic system doesn't care about people, only about how commerce happens.
So, my point is that you can have free market capitalism without regulation or fairness, but you can not have it without personal greed.
"certainly a part of capitalism"??? If you remove greed, you don't have capitalism. What do you think capitalism is?
Ethical business practices are something imposed upon capitalism to make it more people friendly, it has nothing to do with what capitalism is. Same as regulation.
No, honestly, I'm kind of scratching my head at what your vision of capitalism is. Please explain because if you understand free markets and all, then you should be able to see it for what it is. The motivating factor in capitalism is greed. period. end of story. The goal of capitalism is to set up system where greed motivates people to compete with each other. In this competition, assuming it is somewhat close to fair (i.e. not corrupt, not a monopoly, etc), people's desire for more money will drive the system to create more and more efficient products, to make more and more efficient use of natural resources and people. This has nothing to do with ethics, laws, niceties or anything else. We impose them on capitalism to keep it fair and to protect things we care about from "excesses".
I've always figured that the solution is exactly what you just mentioned and I get frustrated in these slashdot discussions that the answer doesn't appear this obvious to everyone.
The problem with this is that this is that it's an e-book reader primarily. At that price point, you can bet it's going to be quite underpowered. This is equivalent to a netbook vs a real laptop. For a certain portion of the market it'll be just fine and the price will win it over the competition, but for the slashdot crowd, we'll all find it a slow and clunky android tablet and we'll be thoroughly dissatisfied.
I wish the Ipad back luck, but IMHO, this isn't likely to dethrone it. it's just a slightly expanded e-book reader.
(All analysis is based upon the list price and past history. I haven't even looked at the raw specs and haven't done anything resembling honest research.)
Slashdot Mirror
At best you're an engineering student who doesn't actually understand what an engineer does or at worst you really don't have a clue. Engineering is not about "learning rules and following them". Engineering is about understanding that the world is modeled in mathematics and that we use these models as tools to accomplish tasks. We design things, we test things, we build things. The only engineers I've ever met who just "learn rules and follow them" are bad engineers and they've certainly been the minority of engineers in the US.
Engineers and scientists are very closely related. The only real difference is that scientists goal is knowledge and the engineers goal is a product. We both use the scientific method and statistics very often in determining the "truth" of the situation. Weather that "truth" is the reliability of a process or the speed of a nutrino, the process is the same.
d
Yes, but the barrier to entry is all about the software market. No one wants to buy even the coolest gaming rig if there aren't games. Building a gaming rig is actually pretty easy in comparison to building the hardware. I mean, hell, MS will just go out and source a bunch of PC based chips and package them all inside their box. Before they have the software market, they have to pay people to develop software and work really hard to support them in their development work. This is the REAL barrier to entry for this market. Once they have a software market they can CHARGE for their help and their design tools. Building a new box is just not that big an investment.
d
I would be surprised if they DON'T make back all the money they invested going forward. They have successfully cut themselves a niche in a lucrative marketplace which had VERY high and expensive barriers to entry. Are they going to get kicked out of this marketplace in the next 5 years? 10 years? I wouldn't bet in that direction. Microsoft does somethings very well and hardware is not one of them. But, now that they have successful hardware in the homes I have confidence in their ability to create and manage the very profitable software end of things for many years to come.
Again, who's going to push them out of the market? Sony? Nintendo? Sorry, don't believe it.
d
I never heard once in my life a friend of mine use this as a reason for buying an ipod.
And personally, Itunes and the insanity that is "getting music onto an ipod" is the #1 reason I regret buying my ipod. I recognize that I'm not the average customer, but I still have never heard of it as a selling feature.
d
Let me help translate that for you:
"For young people who use the internet, their top suggestion is the legalization of MJ. But who the hell cares because those losers don't vote anyway. Nor do they give campaign money. So... throw a few platitudes their way, and move on. We REALLY don't want to upset the older people who *actually* vote and are still stuck in the 'just say no' mindset."
d
I think this is the real issue here. It all has to be coming from problems with skype's security and nothing else. Skype should take this as a huge warning and encrypt their packet information NOW. I don't care what this is used for, people sniffing packets and being able to tell who someone is on a program like skype that is often left on 24/7 is a huge security risk for the person involved! This should NOT be happening and it's all skype's fault.
You guys are getting to hung up on the bit torrent aspect of this and should realize that it's really a major skype fuck up.
d
Too true. If you're looking for something to convert your money into to give you something that you can barter for the apocalypse, buy a big gas tank and bury it in the ground somewhere. Hell, that might even make you rich in a few years even without the apocalypse!
d
Awesome. Now THAT would be understanding "natural language", not bullshit preset commands. This truly sounds like the next step in audio.
d
Oh no... I want to *say* the polite version, but have the program send the one you wrote!
d
So I use voice stuff on android... but the thing I've found most useful for using it for is addresses, and I want to do that while looking at the phone, not while it's attached to my ear.
*go to map program... hit the voice input button... "home depot in San Jose"... wait a second, and it pops up.
I've actually been pretty surprised at how accurate Android's voice recognition is. It gets names that I would have thought it'd fail at... for example it grabbed "Xilinx" exactly right the other day. IMHO, anyone who thinks Android's voice commands suck either speaks with a thick accent or simply has never used the previous generations of voice input.
So far from what I've hard, Siri sounds like catch-up tech that doesn't take it beyond what Android's is, so I expect the same performance and limitations. I'm not trying to dog on Siri or say "my phone is better than your phone". I'm just saying they sound equal thus far.
d
agreed
Corporations interjecting themselves into the political process is bad.
Legalized corruption (i.e. campaign contributions) are bad.
Massive wealth inequality is bad.
Unequal/low quality education options for low income kids is bad.
Worshiping profits and our pocketbooks more than education and the environment is bad.
Propaganda journalism is bad.
However the truth is that these are all gray area issues and IMO the pendulum has just swung so far in one direction it's not worth pointing out the nuances.
The only real "simple" solution is simple in action, but very difficult to implement with our current political process. The simple solution is in campaign finance reform. The reality is that whoever pays for a politician is making an investment in said politician. The person who pays their bills has leverage over them and that leverage should be from the people, not from the elite or from companies. If you make politicians accountable to the people then overnight you'd turn around the government of the US. For example, if you said each and every person has $100 (pick the number) to give to any politician or politicians running for office and that was it ... no corporations, unions, political groups, etc are allowed to put in any money...then overnight the government would less corporate friendly and more people friendly.
The world is nuanced, but details don't make for good chants at rallies.
d
MSFT is a company... the communist party in china is a government. You go ahead and try taking down the government of the USA and see how you do, if you want to compare apples to apples.
Every country has a 1%... I mean that's stupidly obvious. It's like saying "there will always be people who are above average!" Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't have wealth classes in the US, what we're arguing is that the separation shouldn't banana republic large (which it is today).
d
... but EIDE cables are always unshielded. They should have some checksum to validate the integrity of the data. Also, magnets wouldn't effect data traveling over data cables. If you had moving magnets that could generate noise on the cables, but stationary magnets won't do anything to data transmission.
(The reason it effects your HDD is because it's a magnetic platter, not because of the electronics inside.)
d
Maybe on the fourth try she got tired of taking it back to the same guys who couldn't seem to fix her problem?
d
Wow... i've grown used to cynicism and ignorance on the internet... but I've got to say your post is really quite depressing. Your post has a combination of cynicism, ignorance, and intelligence all at the same time and it's sad to see.
"Milk is good for you" is you repeating an advertisement. It has calcium yes, but it's also a high fat drink and it's health benefits are debatable. But I agree with your main premiss that corporations sponsoring PSAs are not intrinsically bad, except that it can lead to slanting of the truth to benefit said corporation. It most cases if you allow this, the corporation will just turn the PSA into an advertisement designed to sell their product. If some unbiased group controls what "truth" is told, then it's cool, but if the corporation controls this "truth", then we're in trouble.
Corporations are not your friend. Corporations are tools and they see you as a tool, "a resource". Each resource should be replaceable with another resource. People are only useful as long as they provide labor. The environment has little value. Profits are everything. Fairness, ethics, loyalty, responsibility are not expected or desired. Corporations are sociopaths by nature. This is the way they are designed. However... if properly harnessed with regulations to prevent abuses (such as not dumping toxic waste in their own back yard), and properly put into direct competition with other such corporations, they can produce benefit for all society.
The idea that "many decisions of the government being based upon what corporations want is not entirely a bad thing" is mind bogglingly stupid. If allowed corporations will make laws that only benefit themselves. They will push as many expenses away from themselves and toward citizens. They will capture regulators so they don't have to play fair. They will make laws so they don't have to pay for what they use, put in safety features, or properly dispose of waste. They will create monopolies. They will give themselves tax breaks, tax advantages, and make decisions that are only beneficial to the people in control of the corporation (these people are known as the top 1%). Their only goal is to make money.
As I said, corporations are sociopaths, so while they do good a lot of the time, you don't want to turn your backs to them and leave sharp objects lying around, and then tell them they can't do something. Government needs to be controlled by the people because that is our defense against and our control over the corporations that already control so much of our lives.
d
WTH is a "professional outdoorsman"?
d
???
This isn't playing like babies, this is playing like the big boys. (although in this case I'll admit it's the same thing.)
Patents are nukes. If you get in the way of some large company's business by throwing a few patent lawsuits around, they will retaliate. This is Samsung's way of getting leverage and forcing a negotiated settlement. If you call out companies like Samsung this is exactly how you'd expect them to respond. This is not in the slightest childish.
This is not childish, this is business.
Unless you're calling Apple childish for dropping the first patent bomb. I think their lawsuit was stupid... but they simply thought they had a strategic advantage and that Samsung couldn't hurt them much in return. Samsung has responded by pulling an ace out of their hand and dropping it on the table. In theory, a critical patent like this is supposed be licensed in a fair and non-discriminatory manner as agreed upon within a standards body, but I don't know how legally binding the standards bodies agreements are. In any case, it would probably be settled in court AFTER they got an injunction against apple, and this would mean years of Apple being blocked from whatever market they could get.
Wait a minute... why doesn't apple have a license for 3G patents already? The standards bodies say you have to license them in a fair and non-discriminatory manner... so if apple had a license already, everything would be cool because they'd have a contract stating their rights. But if they don't have a license... then they ARE violating the patents. Why wouldn't Samsung have approached them way before this and said "hey, license our tech or we'll sue"? Hm.... some part of my understanding is not correct here....
d
Well said.
If I had a mod point, I'd give it.
d
Some people (mainly the old engineers) pronounce "giga-" as a "jiga-" sound for some reason. Always sounds funny to me, but I've heard that pronunciation. Obviously Dr Brown was one such old engineer.
d
Several points:
From Wikipedia:
"Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets" Fairness, regulation, or even free market is not a crucial part of this definition.
In my own personal definition I see capitalism as "free market capitalism"... however there are many ways a free market can be corrupted as both agree upon. However just because the markets are corrupted and not fair and/or unregulated, it's still capitalism.
"Without the ethics and regulation the market will be nothing like fair." I Agree. However people seem to define the robber barons time of monopolies as "capitalism run amok", thus still defining it as capitalism. For example laissez-faire capitalism is capitalism with no or very little regulation. These are phrases and uses of capitalism that seem to be lacking in morality and fairness so they imply that fairness is NOT a requirement of capitalism.
Feudalism is also an economic system. Which people does it serve? Feudalism is only people friendly if you're at the top? You're using a metric for defining the success of an economic system that is not intrinsic to the definition of an economic system. An economic system doesn't care about people, only about how commerce happens.
So, my point is that you can have free market capitalism without regulation or fairness, but you can not have it without personal greed.
d
"certainly a part of capitalism"??? If you remove greed, you don't have capitalism. What do you think capitalism is?
Ethical business practices are something imposed upon capitalism to make it more people friendly, it has nothing to do with what capitalism is. Same as regulation.
No, honestly, I'm kind of scratching my head at what your vision of capitalism is. Please explain because if you understand free markets and all, then you should be able to see it for what it is. The motivating factor in capitalism is greed. period. end of story. The goal of capitalism is to set up system where greed motivates people to compete with each other. In this competition, assuming it is somewhat close to fair (i.e. not corrupt, not a monopoly, etc), people's desire for more money will drive the system to create more and more efficient products, to make more and more efficient use of natural resources and people. This has nothing to do with ethics, laws, niceties or anything else. We impose them on capitalism to keep it fair and to protect things we care about from "excesses".
d
You forgot one crucial step. There needs to be a step where the voter views the paper receipt before it visibly falls into a box.
d
Mod parent up.
I've always figured that the solution is exactly what you just mentioned and I get frustrated in these slashdot discussions that the answer doesn't appear this obvious to everyone.
d
The problem with this is that this is that it's an e-book reader primarily. At that price point, you can bet it's going to be quite underpowered. This is equivalent to a netbook vs a real laptop. For a certain portion of the market it'll be just fine and the price will win it over the competition, but for the slashdot crowd, we'll all find it a slow and clunky android tablet and we'll be thoroughly dissatisfied.
I wish the Ipad back luck, but IMHO, this isn't likely to dethrone it. it's just a slightly expanded e-book reader.
(All analysis is based upon the list price and past history. I haven't even looked at the raw specs and haven't done anything resembling honest research.)
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