"Those "unlimited", flat-rate offerings are merely a modern variant of the commons. They depend on people not being greedy. We all know how well that works.;)"
Well if they knew we would all abuse it then they should have been prepared for the flood of data they sold us. Unlimited means exactly that. I don't remember reading "don't be greedy" on my contract nor should they have some assumption of my data traffic needs. They sold me unlimited I will use as much as I want. If they lied to all of us they are simply reaping what they sow. I don't think we should all have to pay the price to keep them honest and transparent.
"Upgrading the last mile and local caching capacity is more efficient than upgrading access to the backbone. Local hosting means fewer middlemen."
It may be more efficient but I think we can all agree that the whole system is long overdue for serious upgrades. Upgrades that could and would improve all of our service and pave the way for the demands and added stresses that future tech is going to create for the entire system .
"especially those that rely on peer-to-peer networks - consider bandwidth as something that can be externalized. They are looking at ISPs, looking at their own customers, and see a free lunch waiting to be picked up."
What are you talking about. No one gets a free lunch. We already pay for the bandwith. We all have agreements with the telcos for the service that gives "unlimited" access to the bandwith level we pay for. If the telcos OVERSOLD their bandwith are we all supposed to be ok with degraded service. If the water taps in your home suddenly slowed to a drip would you just call up the water co. and pay more for "unlimited" water pressure because joe's stop and shop bought up all the water pressure ( he has more money that you so he deserves to buy all the pressure he can afford even if it means you suffer...right).
Also It's peer to peer which is to say i'm paying for my bandwith up until it gets to the exchange point then your paying for the bandwith until it gets to you. This is just a way for the telcos to legislate never having to upgrade and thus save themselves tons of cash by (what someone else already pointed out) reselling the same bandwith over and over instead of "building" more bandwith to meet demand. The reality is that if they reinvested money into their backend there would be fewer if any traffic issues QOS issues etc. They would attract more people to their faster better and improved service and we would all have the bandwith we need to get all the crap we do on the internet done.
Also I might just not be so cool but what if any p2p networks actually produce profit from running a network and how do they do it?
Also it sounds like you want to shift hosting to the ISP forcing independent hosting services to align themselves with telcos to get the sites they host packet priority over other ISPs. That doesn't sound very neutral to me.
"Give financial value to uploads, and the most active file sharers will view illegal file sharing as a financial loss. Similarly, piracy will become an observable, tangible loss to ISPs."
BTW bandwith already has value; I pay a monthly charge that includes "unlimited upload and download" within the speed range I pay for. Uploads have value,look at Itunes they charge a per upload ( on their side) charge of 99cents per file (how much of that actually helps pay to maintain their network is a good question). All this does is create a store front where the uploader determines the price that we would all have to pay. Why should I pay joe shmoe for a something legal to download when I can find it being hosted by a reputable company and pay them like I already do. If your idea is to make a General Store of uploading then maybe it could work for some types of files but I don't think that there would be very many "legal" things of real value to download from such a service unless of course you are already lubing yourself up to start getting big media involved in your work.
How much stuff would you download from youtube if you had to pay for it. Not much I would say. Piracy exists because people feel that the content is not worth the price producers are asking as well as the restrictions of not actually owning the stuff you buy legally ( you only have a license to play the album for yourself privately on a cd player only etc) As well as content companies seeming inability to just open up their own itunes-esque stores and sell directly to people. People want to use the content anyway they want and piracy breaks all the locks and frees up media to be Truly Consumed.
Not to flame an attempt ( because i am not ) to fix the problem. It's just that the issue is not THAT piracy is happening but WHY piracy still exists.
Yes 80% of games are dreck but as you mentioned so are 80% of music ( I will also add books,movies,tv and pretty much everything we as a species do- a few winners and a whole lotta losers ) but that is not to say that they should not have existed.For every Transformers : the movie there has to be a few Hitman : The movie. As for your comparison of older games to newer ones I find that you jump to far to quickly. Raiden III would not exist if it were not for galaga. Mario would not exist if it were not for donkey kong and in 20 years halo 3 will look like doom compared to what will be available. Does that mean that super mario 1 was a shitty game? How about final fantasy 3 (US FF3), or Street fighter 2,etc? Games are still in evolution and much like photography will continue to evolve forever. Does that mean that the glass negatives of the early days of photography are worthless drivel compared to the 40 mp digital captures of today. They[games] may have been simpler but are no less valid than the games of today. Not to mention that todays games are orders of magnitude easier to complete than the games of yesterday.
Todays games are all about what current tech can produce and you see this in the nature of the graphics heavy games of today. Not to say that 3d is not great but with current tech there is no reason that a developer could not produce a drop-dead gorgeous 2d game. Yet we don't see these games being made. There are very few games telling compelling stories in compelling ways today and I wonder if its because devs are too worried about the game not selling well because the graphics aren't "next-gen" enough or because the games doesn't feel halo enough.
The original arcade games were also different than most modern games in one respect. Arcade games were about "getting good" and todays games (for the most part) are about "looking good". Sure donkey kong looks pretty bad graphically but unless you are a hardcore gamer I would bet that most here have not even seen level 7 or 8 let alone the final level ( i think it's somthing like 28) in donkey kong. Yet almost every game you buy today you have probably played to the end.
Except you can't retouch in lightroom. Lightroom is the adobe answer to Apple Aperture which is more of a archiving and editing tool( as in refining image selection not editing as in retouching).
That the terms of the store credit have not been decided. How much would you like to bet that certain products will not qualify for this store credit. Steve may have dropped the price sooner than expected but he is by not means an idiot. I would expect there to be some rules that govern the purchases you will be able to make with said credit. Maybe like $100 off anything over 200 dollars.
I know what you mean by the DIY nature of the more natural drugs but I think that the state and potential corporate growers would make money at it. Just because you can grow it doesn't mean people will grow it. For the same reason most people don't brew their own beer or distill their own booze. I'd rather buy a ready to use product ( pack of malboro joints please ) as opposed to growing my own because I don't have the time or money required ( high power growing lights etc. room for plants) to do it myself.
The one advantage if you are on a pc switching or trying linux to replace windows is that you don't have to buy anything to try it. If your going to try OS X you have to buy or already own a mac which means that you may automatically become biased (who's going to spend $600 to $2400 on a Mac only to go put linux or windows on it. You would of course try as hard as you could to justify your purchase first). Those who already have OS X but want to try linux should try to work with the UNIX side of OS X first then go on to a full fledged linux distro to really see if it will "do" what you need it to. Those people may find that they already have all the power they really need in a system that is both functional and pretty . And the few people who have no clue as to what they really want or need (assuming you don't have a computer) should get a low end mac and put all three on it and see for themselves.
I think the real problem is that the average person who uses OS X and is considering linux may not know how much they can actually do with OS X from a purely CLI standpoint. It seems to me that people really want both a very easy to use visual-cue based OS and a powerful CLI for when you need to do more detailed and complex actions and it already exists in OS X. Now when linux can make similar claims of ease of use on the visual-side then and only then will there be cause for a real OS holy war because the battle will be over cost and "power user" class features.
Build a firewall between farms. A wall of fire that will keep the offending DNA at bay. Or how about these farmers start to think about producing a virus or herbicide that targets only the offending DNA. They shouldn't get sued for it because they are protecting their crops and themselves from infection by Monsantos DNA and their lawyers.
Everybody is starting to ask if news coverage is objective. And I will say yes it is.
If the objective is to make shareholders more money. The only real solution to the problem is to get the stock suits out of the news room.I know it'll never happen even though the news as we (in the U.S. at least) know it has become nothing more than a break in between ads. If you want to know about anything that is really going on you have to look for it yourself.
Unless of course someone makes a movie about it ( for however precise it is in its arguments ).
Hell if I didn't really need my Harmony remote ( too many a/v gadgets) I would have taken it back after seeing that you can't use the software unless you are connected to the internet.
If my player required me to be online to watch movies I'd be on p2p faster than a fat chick on an ice cream buffet.
"Windows doesnt support A LOT of hardware- even some that Linux DOES support. the hardware that isnt supported out of the box by Linux certainly isnt by Windows."
How much of this hardware is stuff that the average joe would use?
Also If you needed this hardware would it indirectly imply a base set of computer knowledge (e.g. a high end video editing card. or some network device designed for high end applications) Or are you talking about some exotic hardware that only real power users NEED. You have to consider who is making the purchase. If I am already on linux then I will already be serching for linux compatibility when I buy, but since we live in a windows (and increasingly OS X world) the everyday person ASSUMES such is already in place. IMO what everybody who is knocking linux as an alternative to Windows or Mac OS X is really saying is that until you can assume linux compatibility for %80+ of everyday hardware (printers, scanners, cameras, video cards , wifi cards ETC.) Linux will not even register a blip on the masses radar. Also some real marketing would really help to get that kind of support moving . Ubuntu TV commercial anyone.
"Graphics cards and WiFi just tend to be popular and give a bad impression."
But aren't those the exact things that the average joe needs to work out of the box.
I'm all for whats best for the job but I don't think the linux will ever get where it wants until things like this are fixed. I (assuming I am coming to linux from windows or os x ) shouldn't have to make any calls to figure out why my wifi or 3d cards aren't working properly(graphic card) or at all ( wifi ). If you want to convince people that linux is better or at the very least equal to windows or os x you need to make sure that you can have a VERY similar experience on linux as you do in windows and for me that means NEVER having to do more than double click on an executable driver install, enter my password and be done. No terminal no digging in the file system for locations of anything,2 clicks password done.
I know Linux is super cool but Joe sixpack is not going to deal with very much more than what I just said. And for those of you who will claim to have converted people to linux I would like to know how many calls you get a month or year about some new gadget that needs to be set up. Because if its more than zero you have already lost to windows and mac os x. In a nutshell people need these systems to be so easy to use that it will irritate anyone with half a tech-savvy brain.
I didn't say you'd like it I just said it would be the truth.
"The concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing." Except that less restricted thinking does not always lead to wealth. Sometimes the people who are the most detail oriented are better prepared to handle the rigors of society. I can't imagine that you would prefer a open-thinking surgeon to one who is going to make sure that every stitch inside and out is perfect."
Could you argue that because surgeons (if they do) train in smaller rooms that they are almost always more detail oriented?
kind of off topic but I'd like to have our friendly brothers up north start exporting some more reasonable thinking and common sense our way we seem to have a severe shortage of both.
I think that alcohol should be considered a HARD drug. Because for sure that drug had ruined more lives than all of the soft illegal drugs ( pot , hash IDK if lsd is considered hard but that too ) combined.
"Now, compare that to how a genuine addiction works. I've known lots of smokers. I've also known a guy who started smoking cannabis at 15 and who was dead of a heroin overdose at 23. I've never known a smoker just give up the habit because they found cigarettes just didn't do much for them any more. From what I've seen (and I've never smoked), giving up smoking is painful (emotionally and perhaps even physically) and requires a good chunk of will-power. When drug users find that their current drug of choice doesn't do much for them any more, the response seems to be to move onto something harder."
I did exactly what you just said I quit smoking tobacco(from a pack a day) because It really did stop doing anything for me. It is a common myth that you have to hit a bottom before you can get better. Some people, me included , are proof that if you really decide to stop,you can. If you watch intervention (I do mostly because I have friends who fight addiction) it tends to be the people that do get better don't put up a real fight when confronted. They know they have a problem and really do WANT to get better. The sad truth is that depressed or lonely people will have a harder time getting away from one of the few things that fulfills them emotionally. I don't want to downplay addiction.. it is very serious and I can understand how hard it can be to quit but you do have to understand that unless you really want to stop for yourself you probably won't.
Slashdot Mirror
"Those "unlimited", flat-rate offerings are merely a modern variant of the commons. They depend on people not being greedy. We all know how well that works. ;)"
Well if they knew we would all abuse it then they should have been prepared for the flood of data they sold us. Unlimited means exactly that. I don't remember reading "don't be greedy" on my contract nor should they have some assumption of my data traffic needs. They sold me unlimited I will use as much as I want. If they lied to all of us they are simply reaping what they sow. I don't think we should all have to pay the price to keep them honest and transparent.
"Upgrading the last mile and local caching capacity is more efficient than upgrading access to the backbone. Local hosting means fewer middlemen."
It may be more efficient but I think we can all agree that the whole system is long overdue for serious upgrades. Upgrades that could and would improve all of our service and pave the way for the demands and added stresses that future tech is going to create for the entire system .
"especially those that rely on peer-to-peer networks - consider bandwidth as something that can be externalized. They are looking at ISPs, looking at their own customers, and see a free lunch waiting to be picked up."
What are you talking about. No one gets a free lunch. We already pay for the bandwith. We all have agreements with the telcos for the service that gives "unlimited" access to the bandwith level we pay for. If the telcos OVERSOLD their bandwith are we all supposed to be ok with degraded service. If the water taps in your home suddenly slowed to a drip would you just call up the water co. and pay more for "unlimited" water pressure because joe's stop and shop bought up all the water pressure ( he has more money that you so he deserves to buy all the pressure he can afford even if it means you suffer...right).
Also It's peer to peer which is to say i'm paying for my bandwith up until it gets to the exchange point then your paying for the bandwith until it gets to you. This is just a way for the telcos to legislate never having to upgrade and thus save themselves tons of cash by (what someone else already pointed out) reselling the same bandwith over and over instead of "building" more bandwith to meet demand. The reality is that if they reinvested money into their backend there would be fewer if any traffic issues QOS issues etc. They would attract more people to their faster better and improved service and we would all have the bandwith we need to get all the crap we do on the internet done.
Also I might just not be so cool but what if any p2p networks actually produce profit from running a network and how do they do it?
Also it sounds like you want to shift hosting to the ISP forcing independent hosting services to align themselves with telcos to get the sites they host packet priority over other ISPs. That doesn't sound very neutral to me.
It should be called ISP Neutrality
"Give financial value to uploads, and the most active file sharers will view illegal file sharing as a financial loss. Similarly, piracy will become an observable, tangible loss to ISPs."
,look at Itunes they charge a per upload ( on their side) charge of 99cents per file (how much of that actually helps pay to maintain their network is a good question). All this does is create a store front where the uploader determines the price that we would all have to pay. Why should I pay joe shmoe for a something legal to download when I can find it being hosted by a reputable company and pay them like I already do. If your idea is to make a General Store of uploading then maybe it could work for some types of files but I don't think that there would be very many "legal" things of real value to download from such a service unless of course you are already lubing yourself up to start getting big media involved in your work.
BTW bandwith already has value; I pay a monthly charge that includes "unlimited upload and download" within the speed range I pay for. Uploads have value
How much stuff would you download from youtube if you had to pay for it. Not much I would say. Piracy exists because people feel that the content is not worth the price producers are asking as well as the restrictions of not actually owning the stuff you buy legally ( you only have a license to play the album for yourself privately on a cd player only etc) As well as content companies seeming inability to just open up their own itunes-esque stores and sell directly to people. People want to use the content anyway they want and piracy breaks all the locks and frees up media to be Truly Consumed.
Not to flame an attempt ( because i am not ) to fix the problem. It's just that the issue is not THAT piracy is happening but WHY piracy still exists.
Yes 80% of games are dreck but as you mentioned so are 80% of music ( I will also add books,movies,tv and pretty much everything we as a species do- a few winners and a whole lotta losers ) but that is not to say that they should not have existed.For every Transformers : the movie there has to be a few Hitman : The movie. As for your comparison of older games to newer ones I find that you jump to far to quickly. Raiden III would not exist if it were not for galaga. Mario would not exist if it were not for donkey kong and in 20 years halo 3 will look like doom compared to what will be available. Does that mean that super mario 1 was a shitty game? How about final fantasy 3 (US FF3), or Street fighter 2,etc? Games are still in evolution and much like photography will continue to evolve forever. Does that mean that the glass negatives of the early days of photography are worthless drivel compared to the 40 mp digital captures of today. They[games] may have been simpler but are no less valid than the games of today. Not to mention that todays games are orders of magnitude easier to complete than the games of yesterday.
Todays games are all about what current tech can produce and you see this in the nature of the graphics heavy games of today. Not to say that 3d is not great but with current tech there is no reason that a developer could not produce a drop-dead gorgeous 2d game. Yet we don't see these games being made. There are very few games telling compelling stories in compelling ways today and I wonder if its because devs are too worried about the game not selling well because the graphics aren't "next-gen" enough or because the games doesn't feel halo enough.
The original arcade games were also different than most modern games in one respect. Arcade games were about "getting good" and todays games (for the most part) are about "looking good". Sure donkey kong looks pretty bad graphically but unless you are a hardcore gamer I would bet that most here have not even seen level 7 or 8 let alone the final level ( i think it's somthing like 28) in donkey kong. Yet almost every game you buy today you have probably played to the end.
Except you can't retouch in lightroom. Lightroom is the adobe answer to Apple Aperture which is more of a archiving and editing tool( as in refining image selection not editing as in retouching).
I'll vote for giant douche.
That the terms of the store credit have not been decided. How much would you like to bet that certain products will not qualify for this store credit. Steve may have dropped the price sooner than expected but he is by not means an idiot. I would expect there to be some rules that govern the purchases you will be able to make with said credit. Maybe like $100 off anything over 200 dollars.
I know what you mean by the DIY nature of the more natural drugs but I think that the state and potential corporate growers would make money at it. Just because you can grow it doesn't mean people will grow it. For the same reason most people don't brew their own beer or distill their own booze. I'd rather buy a ready to use product ( pack of malboro joints please ) as opposed to growing my own because I don't have the time or money required ( high power growing lights etc. room for plants) to do it myself.
Maybe you could send MSFT a couple of win logo hits. It might help.
While you're at it you could send me couple of those too.
"it would become genetically/evolutionarily advantageous for one race to think of or treat the others as subhumans"
Is that why we say we(USA) want to help Africa but we never seem to get around to it?
The one advantage if you are on a pc switching or trying linux to replace windows is that you don't have to buy anything to try it. If your going to try OS X you have to buy or already own a mac which means that you may automatically become biased (who's going to spend $600 to $2400 on a Mac only to go put linux or windows on it. You would of course try as hard as you could to justify your purchase first). Those who already have OS X but want to try linux should try to work with the UNIX side of OS X first then go on to a full fledged linux distro to really see if it will "do" what you need it to. Those people may find that they already have all the power they really need in a system that is both functional and pretty . And the few people who have no clue as to what they really want or need (assuming you don't have a computer) should get a low end mac and put all three on it and see for themselves. I think the real problem is that the average person who uses OS X and is considering linux may not know how much they can actually do with OS X from a purely CLI standpoint. It seems to me that people really want both a very easy to use visual-cue based OS and a powerful CLI for when you need to do more detailed and complex actions and it already exists in OS X. Now when linux can make similar claims of ease of use on the visual-side then and only then will there be cause for a real OS holy war because the battle will be over cost and "power user" class features.
korea
"I think it's called experience."
I think it's called a lobby.
Build a firewall between farms. A wall of fire that will keep the offending DNA at bay. Or how about these farmers start to think about producing a virus or herbicide that targets only the offending DNA. They shouldn't get sued for it because they are protecting their crops and themselves from infection by Monsantos DNA and their lawyers.
Everybody is starting to ask if news coverage is objective. And I will say yes it is.
If the objective is to make shareholders more money. The only real solution to the problem is to get the stock suits out of the news room.I know it'll never happen even though the news as we (in the U.S. at least) know it has become nothing more than a break in between ads. If you want to know about anything that is really going on you have to look for it yourself.
Unless of course someone makes a movie about it ( for however precise it is in its arguments ).
Hell if I didn't really need my Harmony remote ( too many a/v gadgets) I would have taken it back after seeing that you can't use the software unless you are connected to the internet.
If my player required me to be online to watch movies I'd be on p2p faster than a fat chick on an ice cream buffet.
"Windows doesnt support A LOT of hardware- even some that Linux DOES support. the hardware that isnt supported out of the box by Linux certainly isnt by Windows."
How much of this hardware is stuff that the average joe would use?
Also If you needed this hardware would it indirectly imply a base set of computer knowledge (e.g. a high end video editing card. or some network device designed for high end applications) Or are you talking about some exotic hardware that only real power users NEED. You have to consider who is making the purchase. If I am already on linux then I will already be serching for linux compatibility when I buy, but since we live in a windows (and increasingly OS X world) the everyday person ASSUMES such is already in place. IMO what everybody who is knocking linux as an alternative to Windows or Mac OS X is really saying is that until you can assume linux compatibility for %80+ of everyday hardware (printers, scanners, cameras, video cards , wifi cards ETC.) Linux will not even register a blip on the masses radar. Also some real marketing would really help to get that kind of support moving . Ubuntu TV commercial anyone.
"Graphics cards and WiFi just tend to be popular and give a bad impression."
,2 clicks password done.
But aren't those the exact things that the average joe needs to work out of the box.
I'm all for whats best for the job but I don't think the linux will ever get where it wants until things like this are fixed. I (assuming I am coming to linux from windows or os x ) shouldn't have to make any calls to figure out why my wifi or 3d cards aren't working properly(graphic card) or at all ( wifi ). If you want to convince people that linux is better or at the very least equal to windows or os x you need to make sure that you can have a VERY similar experience on linux as you do in windows and for me that means NEVER having to do more than double click on an executable driver install, enter my password and be done. No terminal no digging in the file system for locations of anything
I know Linux is super cool but Joe sixpack is not going to deal with very much more than what I just said. And for those of you who will claim to have converted people to linux I would like to know how many calls you get a month or year about some new gadget that needs to be set up. Because if its more than zero you have already lost to windows and mac os x. In a nutshell people need these systems to be so easy to use that it will irritate anyone with half a tech-savvy brain.
I didn't say you'd like it I just said it would be the truth.
Just had to tell you that made me really Laugh. Thanks
"The concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing." Except that less restricted thinking does not always lead to wealth. Sometimes the people who are the most detail oriented are better prepared to handle the rigors of society. I can't imagine that you would prefer a open-thinking surgeon to one who is going to make sure that every stitch inside and out is perfect."
Could you argue that because surgeons (if they do) train in smaller rooms that they are almost always more detail oriented?
kind of off topic but I'd like to have our friendly brothers up north start exporting some more reasonable thinking and common sense our way we seem to have a severe shortage of both.
I think that alcohol should be considered a HARD drug.
Because for sure that drug had ruined more lives than all of the soft illegal drugs ( pot , hash IDK if lsd is considered hard but that too ) combined.
Just a thought.
Sorry for the repost wasn't logged in.
I thought that apple was already in support of Blu-ray. Aren't they part of the BLU-man group or what ever sony is calling their consortium.
This is all a bait and switch to get troops into korea. ( smoothing out tin-foil hat ) Can't you all see they hate our freedom.
"Now, compare that to how a genuine addiction works. I've known lots of smokers. I've also known a guy who started smoking cannabis at 15 and who was dead of a heroin overdose at 23. I've never known a smoker just give up the habit because they found cigarettes just didn't do much for them any more. From what I've seen (and I've never smoked), giving up smoking is painful (emotionally and perhaps even physically) and requires a good chunk of will-power. When drug users find that their current drug of choice doesn't do much for them any more, the response seems to be to move onto something harder."
,you can. If you watch intervention (I do mostly because I have friends who fight addiction) it tends to be the people that do get better don't put up a real fight when confronted. They know they have a problem and really do WANT to get better. The sad truth is that depressed or lonely people will have a harder time getting away from one of the few things that fulfills them emotionally. I don't want to downplay addiction.. it is very serious and I can understand how hard it can be to quit but you do have to understand that unless you really want to stop for yourself you probably won't.
I did exactly what you just said I quit smoking tobacco(from a pack a day) because It really did stop doing anything for me. It is a common myth that you have to hit a bottom before you can get better. Some people, me included , are proof that if you really decide to stop