Compare "Sitting at home watching a movie at lousy quality any time of day, pausing to go to the toilet and having a cup of coffee, without leaving the apartment." with "Going to the bus-stop, waiting for ten minutes in the rain, switching bus, waiting for another ten minutes in the rain, running to the theater since you're a bit late due to the bus, waiting in queue at the theater for a ticket, waiting in line to get a snack, finding you seat, leaving in the middle of the movie to go to the toilet, waiting at the bus stop for the bus home, waiting while switching bus, coming home and discover that someone has stolen you wallet."
What's more convenient? =) (Ok, an extreme example, but it paints the picture)
Of course there are many for which the money is the biggest motivator, but I think that in most cases, people are just lazy.
Probably, but lots of people find it a hassle to find and download movies. At some price-point, the these people will rather pay to simply watch a Video-on-Demand right on their TV at the press of their remote-control than to download it for free, connect their computer to the TV or burn it to DVD and then watch it.
The biggest reason for pirating movies is the inconvenience of the legal alternatives. When pirating is more inconvenient than purchasing, people are prepared to spend.
As with most of their products, Apple tends to dictate the user experience to an unusually high degree. It's because it's (in their mind) their hardware and their software you've graciously been allowed to borrow, for a small fee. Of course you have no right to use it as you want.
In a year's time, DDR3 will have totally supplanted DDR2. Which is exactly what the post said:
DDR3 will of course come into its own as speeds increase still further
Wonder how many newton we're talking about. Didn't read the article so I don't know what mass they're talking about. If we're talking about creating 1/2 G of acceleration on a vessel that can bring humans to Mars, I'd say that using a light-source strong enough to produce that kind of force anywhere where people can be exposed to the light would be a bit... unwise.
Probably better to use chemical reaction for reaching orbit and then turn on the laser when at a safe distance.
Windows is already ad supported, if you use the default settings. Every internet-tool that MS supplies are ridden with ads. In some cases there are so much ads that it is hard to use the actual tool. One would think that a company like MS could afford to offer a search-engine or an IM-service without having to use 99% of the interface-area for ads.:/
Depends on how you look at it. It is only a wasted vote if everyone else thinks it's a waste. The only reason why people do this is because everyone else is doing it. If everyone that only votes for one of the Dragons because "otherwise it's a waste" actually started to vote for a party or candidate that they actually thought would represent their interest, the two Dragons might not have such a overwhelming majority anymore.
I'd say that not voting for what the rulers say you should vote for is good, if you do not like what the rulers do.
Yeah, most people tends to have flexible morales when enough money is involved, and as long as it isn't illegal, I have no problems with that. But a government should work for the good of the country and the people whom it represent. If a politician or a party receives compensations for working for the good of a corporation, and in doing this is neglecting the people or the overall good of the country, they should be voted into the marginals of political influence. Or, if the compensations has been in the form of bribes or in any other is illegal, they should face jail.
Just because people in general will gladly sell their fellow man of as a sex-slave for money, you shouldn't accept it when your government do. In a dictatorship or something with equal "people-influence" to that, you haven't got much choice unless you're into revolutions, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. In a democracy, you do have a choice.
Not all improvements are there to produce more speed. Sometimes, an improvement will give better functionality at the cost of a little speed. And with the speed we have in our pc's today, it does seem more rational to concentrate on improving funtionality and reliability rather than speed.
What it needed is for most of the more popular server-distributions to agree on a standard apache-tool and have it install as a default when installing Apache, or maybe even for Apache to include good GUI-tools in it's own standard installation. Of course it must be optional to install it, for the admins who prefer another toolkit or to use vi or some such.
The most common problem in using open source is not the availability of tools for a certain job, but a lack of uniformity. If I go from one LAMP-server to another, most tools will be different. The only secure point it going directly to the config-files with an editor. But even then, the placement and internal structure of these config-files might differ between two LAMP-servers just because they are of different distributions of sometimes even just different versions of the same dist. If I do the installations my self, no problem. I can choose what and how to install. If I have to work with servers that someone else has installed, which was the case most of the time when I worked as an IT-consultant, I have enough experience to work around it, but it's still annoying.
IIS comes already with Windows Server so it is fee enough for them. How many corporations or private persons do not have a separate server-installation for their web-server? If you do not also use your web-server as your domain-server, you still have to buy a whole new server-license to run an IIS, even if the IIS itself is free. So running a legal web-server using IIS will set you back the cost of a windows server-license, which cost more than my entire server-hardware.
Many legitimate hosting sites use a handful of IPs for hundreds or thousands of sites. Counting by IP isn't valid. When trying to find out how many servers that are running IIS or Apache or some other http-server, counting IP's are much more valid than counting sites for just that reason. If one IIS server has one thousand sites, it is still just one IIS server installation. If one Apache server has one thousand sites, it is still just one Apache server installation. Any other way of counting is invalid. The problem comes when one server has several IP's. But that would corrupt the data much less than counting sites on servers with multiple sites, since a server tends to have more sites than IP's.
can I create a new partition on any of my drives without destroying the data that's there? Have you ever tried doing the same thing with the partition utility in MS Windows installer? =) In most cases, it is damn near impossible to keep another OS bootable after using the MS utilities. They seem to have the position that you shouldn't have more than one OS on your harddrive.
Installing applications will probably not be just a matter of point and click on a standard phone either. Installing third party software is a matter of point and click on a standard phone, if you haven't got an old relic of a phone that doesn't support MIDP.
It goes like this: 1. Use standard broser to download an application you like, for instance Wayfinder Earth or Opera Mini 2. Copy the application to your SD or MS-card, if your phone support those, or connect your phone to your pc via USB, IR, Bluetooth or serial and install it using the application-installer supplied by the producer of your phone, whatever works best for you.
You still need to know how to open a web page in a browser and click a hyperlink and then either copy a file onto your SD/MS-card or how to put the cd that came with your phone in the cd-player and press "Install", plug a cable into the computer, start an application in windows and how to read buttons like one labled "Install" and then choose a file in a file-selector. Still, there is no magic or any hacks involved. All steps are done by "Point and click".
You also have the alternative of using the existing WAP-browser on your phone to install directly over the air, but that means you have to know how to enter a web-adress into a textfield on your phone and how to click a hyperlink in your WAP-browser. Not "Point and click", unless you've got a smartphone with a stylus/touchscreen.
What is needed for WoW-questing/leveling not to suck is adaptive and individual quests. Leveling two characters from 1-10 should not be the same, even if the charcters are identical. Later quests should be more dependant on what happens in the rest of the realm and on your own actions and change over time. It would make thottbot, allakhazam and other WoW-encylopedias more or less useless unless they started updating at a lunatic rate, but it would make WoW so much better.
Also, your actions should be the main deciding factor on what factions or individuals you are friend, enemy or neutral with, not a one time choice at character creation. If I want to be a traitor towards my own race, class or guild, I should be able to be that.
But as a former WoW-player (Account permanently deleted upon my own request to Blizzard-support) who only played for ~8 months, my word on what would make WoW playable again might not have much weight. =)
Depends on how you look at it. If you take a break from any hobby where being competitive is largely based on high-end equipment, skill or knowledge, you'll soon be obsoleted in one way or another. Skill and knowledge will allways drop while being inactive in a certain field. Equipment might not allways become outdated, but more often than not, it will. Personally, I don't understand why being competitive is important in a hobby anyway, but that's just me being somewhat of an agnostic about all kinds of competitions.
Regarding taking needing a break from WoW. I didn't like how they developed WoW and took a 5 month break. I got very dissapointed with how none of my issues with WoW was being fixed in Burning Crusade and decided to stop playing permanently. You can't delete you account by yourself, only your characters, but if you ask them, blizzard will remove your account for you. =) If most of your friends are WoW'ers, you might get looked upon as being a bit strange, but if you don't like having unused active online accounts lying around, that's the way to go. Bad manners of Blizzard not to have a "Delete account" function in the account-management, I think. All online services should have this very basic funktion.
Reading about Wrath or the Lich King, I still think I took the right decision. Still nothing being done about any of the stuff that suck in WoW. =(
They tried it with PNGs to overcome the GIF legal encumbrances, but just what percentage of images out there in the wild are PNGs? One of the biggest problems PNG had to overcome was the "Chicken/Egg" situation regarding Microsoft, most particularly Internet Explorer. A gif replacement that has defective or even no support at all in the worlds most used browser-software and that you can not open in the worlds most used OS? Not going to see much use, is it? PNG was, until recently, the format of choice in the communities that didn't care much for IE-compatibility, and that isn't a very big crowd even when counting people running web-servers mostly aimed at the Linux- or Unix-communities.
In order for a file-format to have a quick success, Microsoft must use it as a standard format and have complete support for it. They only fully support heavily entrenched formats that they can not ignore and they only use their own formats as defaults.
Why must MS support it for success? Simple. Most people use MS software. Only MS software. Most people do not know how to use a non-default file-format, nor do they care what format they use as long as their mobile-phone, "mp3-player", digital-camera, etc, support it. Compare the amount of media-capable devices that can play.ogg with the ones that can play.wma. If MS had things their way, Mediaplayer wouldn't even play mp3-files. Since it's such a widespread format, they have to support it, even if they'd never even dream fever-nightmares about using it as a default format and much less use ogg.
If the current JPEG was replaced with a format that had complete support in every updated MS software or device and was the standard format in all MS software and that the MS PR-division started putting pressure onto every other hardware/software-company to support, it might not be long until JPEG has been replaced. Say, 4-6 years from introduction? A year or two for it to become optional in cameras, another year or two for it to become default, another 2-3 years for the old equipment to become obsolete and replaced. In the area of worldwide default industry standards, I'd say that's a quick shift.
But sometimes the average Joe and the world industry will surprise you and do something extraordinary like not going for the easy road of doing what MS tells them to. =) (Nope, I've never been told that I'm a cynic.) Let's hope this is one of those times.
sort of like MSN has turned out to be for web searching. And yet one see people using it as their default home-page everywhere. What bothers me most about almost everything MS does on the internet is all the damn advertising. One would think that a corporation like Microsoft could afford to offer at least a few online-services/applications without having so much advertising that it looks like a Taiwanese porn-site.
That was a long rant. I'll be silent now. *silence*
There are international human rights that most countries adhere to. Those you always have with you unless you enter a country who do not recognize them. Local rights and laws apply only in the locality. It has nothing to do with people living in one country versus another. It has to do with your physical location at the present moment. If you're in the US, you have to follow US laws and are protected by US rights, regardless of your nationality. If you're in Egypt, you have to follow Egyptian laws and are protected by Egyptian rights, regardless of your nationality. If you're in China, you have to follow Chinese laws and are protected by Chinese rights, regardless of your nationality. Etc, etc...
If you can get to an embassy or some such before the local law enforcement can get to you, you might get around this. The embassies, diplomatic vehicles and most military bases on foreign soil are considered to be a part of the country it belongs to. The latter is mostly practiced by the US and there are exceptions to this where the US don't want to have to follow US law and thus have military bases/prisons where you, in theory, won't be protected by US law or have US rights even if you enter.
Yadda, yadda...
As an example, there was a rather comical incident a while back due to these circumstances. A chain of hotels here in Sweden was bought by a US corporation. They then was required to deny rooms to citizens of countries which US corporations are forbidden by US law to have business with. Such discrimination, though, is illegal by Swedish law, which they have to follow while doing business in Sweden. Can't remember how it was resolved in the end... =/
Nah... Just use "real world" mechanics. Everyone can try to start an empire, but you have to fight the current empires for land. If a bunch of people have a village somewhere, you have to kill everyone in it and burn it to the ground to start your own village there. You want to start a merchant empire? Then you have to compete with the other 56739 persons who are currently trying the same thing on your server. You're a basket weaver and need a shop to sell your baskets? Find a suitable place thats up for rent. Can't fine one? Well, you'll just have to keep looking, won't you? Or maybe hire an assasin to make a place vacant. =)
Seriouslly, IIRC, there still may be lots of old printers still functioning out there that use 132 columns. Theres also quite a few softwares with a 132 columns restriction, so keeping to this might not be such a bad idea.
I've actually looked into this. (Tried to get my SE-mobile to sync in Vista and Ubuntu) There's a rather good backend, along with sync-conduits for quite a few applications, in the Funambol project. I've also seen a free service that's built on Funambol and lets you sync you mobile over the air and also syncs against your google-calendar, etc, but I cant find it right now. (Got the link in a powered-off computer in the other end of the country)
Slashdot Mirror
Compare
"Sitting at home watching a movie at lousy quality any time of day, pausing to go to the toilet and having a cup of coffee, without leaving the apartment."
with
"Going to the bus-stop, waiting for ten minutes in the rain, switching bus, waiting for another ten minutes in the rain, running to the theater since you're a bit late due to the bus, waiting in queue at the theater for a ticket, waiting in line to get a snack, finding you seat, leaving in the middle of the movie to go to the toilet, waiting at the bus stop for the bus home, waiting while switching bus, coming home and discover that someone has stolen you wallet."
What's more convenient? =) (Ok, an extreme example, but it paints the picture)
Of course there are many for which the money is the biggest motivator, but I think that in most cases, people are just lazy.
Probably, but lots of people find it a hassle to find and download movies.
At some price-point, the these people will rather pay to simply watch a Video-on-Demand right on their TV at the press of their remote-control than to download it for free, connect their computer to the TV or burn it to DVD and then watch it.
The biggest reason for pirating movies is the inconvenience of the legal alternatives.
When pirating is more inconvenient than purchasing, people are prepared to spend.
Of course you have no right to use it as you want.
Wonder how many newton we're talking about. Didn't read the article so I don't know what mass they're talking about.
If we're talking about creating 1/2 G of acceleration on a vessel that can bring humans to Mars, I'd say that using a light-source strong enough to produce that kind of force anywhere where people can be exposed to the light would be a bit... unwise.
Probably better to use chemical reaction for reaching orbit and then turn on the laser when at a safe distance.
Windows is already ad supported, if you use the default settings. :/
Every internet-tool that MS supplies are ridden with ads. In some cases there are so much ads that it is hard to use the actual tool.
One would think that a company like MS could afford to offer a search-engine or an IM-service without having to use 99% of the interface-area for ads.
Well, one can at least avoid voting for people or parties who are known to be corporate hand-puppets or crazed war-mongers.
Depends on how you look at it.
It is only a wasted vote if everyone else thinks it's a waste.
The only reason why people do this is because everyone else is doing it.
If everyone that only votes for one of the Dragons because "otherwise it's a waste" actually started to vote for a party or candidate that they actually thought would represent their interest, the two Dragons might not have such a overwhelming majority anymore.
I'd say that not voting for what the rulers say you should vote for is good, if you do not like what the rulers do.
Yeah, most people tends to have flexible morales when enough money is involved, and as long as it isn't illegal, I have no problems with that.
But a government should work for the good of the country and the people whom it represent.
If a politician or a party receives compensations for working for the good of a corporation, and in doing this is neglecting the people or the overall good of the country, they should be voted into the marginals of political influence.
Or, if the compensations has been in the form of bribes or in any other is illegal, they should face jail.
Just because people in general will gladly sell their fellow man of as a sex-slave for money, you shouldn't accept it when your government do.
In a dictatorship or something with equal "people-influence" to that, you haven't got much choice unless you're into revolutions, guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
In a democracy, you do have a choice.
You are a democracy, goddamnit! Stop voting for corrupted politicians that only play for the highest bidder!
Not all improvements are there to produce more speed.
Sometimes, an improvement will give better functionality at the cost of a little speed.
And with the speed we have in our pc's today, it does seem more rational to concentrate on improving funtionality and reliability rather than speed.
Of course, if the agent in question is a friend of the president, he can always be pardoned if he should be found guilty in court. =P
What it needed is for most of the more popular server-distributions to agree on a standard apache-tool and have it install as a default when installing Apache, or maybe even for Apache to include good GUI-tools in it's own standard installation.
Of course it must be optional to install it, for the admins who prefer another toolkit or to use vi or some such.
The most common problem in using open source is not the availability of tools for a certain job, but a lack of uniformity.
If I go from one LAMP-server to another, most tools will be different. The only secure point it going directly to the config-files with an editor.
But even then, the placement and internal structure of these config-files might differ between two LAMP-servers just because they are of different distributions of sometimes even just different versions of the same dist.
If I do the installations my self, no problem. I can choose what and how to install.
If I have to work with servers that someone else has installed, which was the case most of the time when I worked as an IT-consultant, I have enough experience to work around it, but it's still annoying.
If you do not also use your web-server as your domain-server, you still have to buy a whole new server-license to run an IIS, even if the IIS itself is free.
So running a legal web-server using IIS will set you back the cost of a windows server-license, which cost more than my entire server-hardware.
If one IIS server has one thousand sites, it is still just one IIS server installation.
If one Apache server has one thousand sites, it is still just one Apache server installation.
Any other way of counting is invalid.
The problem comes when one server has several IP's. But that would corrupt the data much less than counting sites on servers with multiple sites, since a server tends to have more sites than IP's.
In most cases, it is damn near impossible to keep another OS bootable after using the MS utilities.
They seem to have the position that you shouldn't have more than one OS on your harddrive.
It goes like this:
1. Use standard broser to download an application you like, for instance Wayfinder Earth or Opera Mini
2. Copy the application to your SD or MS-card, if your phone support those, or connect your phone to your pc via USB, IR, Bluetooth or serial and install it using the application-installer supplied by the producer of your phone, whatever works best for you.
You still need to know how to open a web page in a browser and click a hyperlink and then either copy a file onto your SD/MS-card or how to put the cd that came with your phone in the cd-player and press "Install", plug a cable into the computer, start an application in windows and how to read buttons like one labled "Install" and then choose a file in a file-selector.
Still, there is no magic or any hacks involved.
All steps are done by "Point and click".
You also have the alternative of using the existing WAP-browser on your phone to install directly over the air, but that means you have to know how to enter a web-adress into a textfield on your phone and how to click a hyperlink in your WAP-browser.
Not "Point and click", unless you've got a smartphone with a stylus/touchscreen.
What is needed for WoW-questing/leveling not to suck is adaptive and individual quests.
Leveling two characters from 1-10 should not be the same, even if the charcters are identical.
Later quests should be more dependant on what happens in the rest of the realm and on your own actions and change over time. It would make thottbot, allakhazam and other WoW-encylopedias more or less useless unless they started updating at a lunatic rate, but it would make WoW so much better.
Also, your actions should be the main deciding factor on what factions or individuals you are friend, enemy or neutral with, not a one time choice at character creation.
If I want to be a traitor towards my own race, class or guild, I should be able to be that.
But as a former WoW-player (Account permanently deleted upon my own request to Blizzard-support) who only played for ~8 months, my word on what would make WoW playable again might not have much weight. =)
Depends on how you look at it.
If you take a break from any hobby where being competitive is largely based on high-end equipment, skill or knowledge, you'll soon be obsoleted in one way or another.
Skill and knowledge will allways drop while being inactive in a certain field.
Equipment might not allways become outdated, but more often than not, it will.
Personally, I don't understand why being competitive is important in a hobby anyway, but that's just me being somewhat of an agnostic about all kinds of competitions.
Regarding taking needing a break from WoW.
I didn't like how they developed WoW and took a 5 month break. I got very dissapointed with how none of my issues with WoW was being fixed in Burning Crusade and decided to stop playing permanently.
You can't delete you account by yourself, only your characters, but if you ask them, blizzard will remove your account for you. =)
If most of your friends are WoW'ers, you might get looked upon as being a bit strange, but if you don't like having unused active online accounts lying around, that's the way to go.
Bad manners of Blizzard not to have a "Delete account" function in the account-management, I think.
All online services should have this very basic funktion.
Reading about Wrath or the Lich King, I still think I took the right decision. Still nothing being done about any of the stuff that suck in WoW. =(
A gif replacement that has defective or even no support at all in the worlds most used browser-software and that you can not open in the worlds most used OS? Not going to see much use, is it?
PNG was, until recently, the format of choice in the communities that didn't care much for IE-compatibility, and that isn't a very big crowd even when counting people running web-servers mostly aimed at the Linux- or Unix-communities.
In order for a file-format to have a quick success, Microsoft must use it as a standard format and have complete support for it.
They only fully support heavily entrenched formats that they can not ignore and they only use their own formats as defaults.
Why must MS support it for success? Simple. Most people use MS software. Only MS software. Most people do not know how to use a non-default file-format, nor do they care what format they use as long as their mobile-phone, "mp3-player", digital-camera, etc, support it.
Compare the amount of media-capable devices that can play
If MS had things their way, Mediaplayer wouldn't even play mp3-files. Since it's such a widespread format, they have to support it, even if they'd never even dream fever-nightmares about using it as a default format and much less use ogg.
If the current JPEG was replaced with a format that had complete support in every updated MS software or device and was the standard format in all MS software and that the MS PR-division started putting pressure onto every other hardware/software-company to support, it might not be long until JPEG has been replaced.
Say, 4-6 years from introduction?
A year or two for it to become optional in cameras, another year or two for it to become default, another 2-3 years for the old equipment to become obsolete and replaced.
In the area of worldwide default industry standards, I'd say that's a quick shift.
But sometimes the average Joe and the world industry will surprise you and do something extraordinary like not going for the easy road of doing what MS tells them to. =) (Nope, I've never been told that I'm a cynic.)
Let's hope this is one of those times. sort of like MSN has turned out to be for web searching. And yet one see people using it as their default home-page everywhere.
What bothers me most about almost everything MS does on the internet is all the damn advertising.
One would think that a corporation like Microsoft could afford to offer at least a few online-services/applications without having so much advertising that it looks like a Taiwanese porn-site.
That was a long rant. I'll be silent now.
*silence*
There are international human rights that most countries adhere to. Those you always have with you unless you enter a country who do not recognize them.
Local rights and laws apply only in the locality.
It has nothing to do with people living in one country versus another. It has to do with your physical location at the present moment.
If you're in the US, you have to follow US laws and are protected by US rights, regardless of your nationality.
If you're in Egypt, you have to follow Egyptian laws and are protected by Egyptian rights, regardless of your nationality.
If you're in China, you have to follow Chinese laws and are protected by Chinese rights, regardless of your nationality.
Etc, etc...
If you can get to an embassy or some such before the local law enforcement can get to you, you might get around this.
The embassies, diplomatic vehicles and most military bases on foreign soil are considered to be a part of the country it belongs to. The latter is mostly practiced by the US and there are exceptions to this where the US don't want to have to follow US law and thus have military bases/prisons where you, in theory, won't be protected by US law or have US rights even if you enter.
Yadda, yadda...
As an example, there was a rather comical incident a while back due to these circumstances.
A chain of hotels here in Sweden was bought by a US corporation. They then was required to deny rooms to citizens of countries which US corporations are forbidden by US law to have business with. Such discrimination, though, is illegal by Swedish law, which they have to follow while doing business in Sweden.
Can't remember how it was resolved in the end... =/
Nah... Just use "real world" mechanics.
Everyone can try to start an empire, but you have to fight the current empires for land.
If a bunch of people have a village somewhere, you have to kill everyone in it and burn it to the ground to start your own village there.
You want to start a merchant empire? Then you have to compete with the other 56739 persons who are currently trying the same thing on your server.
You're a basket weaver and need a shop to sell your baskets? Find a suitable place thats up for rent. Can't fine one? Well, you'll just have to keep looking, won't you? Or maybe hire an assasin to make a place vacant. =)
I've actually looked into this. (Tried to get my SE-mobile to sync in Vista and Ubuntu)
There's a rather good backend, along with sync-conduits for quite a few applications, in the Funambol project.
I've also seen a free service that's built on Funambol and lets you sync you mobile over the air and also syncs against your google-calendar, etc, but I cant find it right now. (Got the link in a powered-off computer in the other end of the country)