People don't care about quality, they want convenience. SACD & DVD-A came around about the same time MP3 caught on. Once you could buy an iPod and carry around days worth of music, dealing with more discs just didn't make sense.
Now we have the same choice on the video-front. Blu-ray vs download/streaming. I can start watching something downloaded from iTunes or streaming on Netflix on one device (Living room TV, Office computer, Laptop, Tablet, etc...) then continue it wherever I want, whenever I want. (Netflix will even remember where I paused)
Obviously Blu-Ray is going to look better on the big-screen in the living room, just like SACD/DVD-A is going to sound better on the home-theater. Just doesn't matter when you are laying in bed, riding on the bus, or sitting in a hotel room across the country.
Sidenote: I'm sure it will come at some point, but Netflix/iTunes also hasn't forced me to sit through a commercial, or accused me of copyright infringement yet...
Wikileaks lost the majority of their credibility in January when they decided to stop actually being a decent site and instead beg for donations for a few months.
Since, as we all know, servers and bandwidth are free, particularly for a site that gets shit-hammered with traffic.
750KHz clock, completed 75,000 instructions per second 1/10 of an instruction per clock cycle. Current procs can do what, 2 or 3 per clock cycle on a good day? Funny how almost every facet of computing has scaled up or down by multiple orders of magnitude, but 40 years later we have only bumped IPC by 20x.
Gotta love an industry where a 20x improvment by any measure could be considered "paltry":-)
After reading the blog post, I felt like it was an honest apology. They thought that it would be easier for all involved to just give a google checkout credit instead of going through the task of tracking down everyone and making sure that their credit-card information was still up to date. I could see myself making a similar decision and I empathize. Ultimately, refunding the money AND letting everyone keep the checkout credit is a nice thing that they simply didn't need to do. On top of that, most companies are so afraid of getting sued that flat out saying that they screwed up is a very brave move that I respect.
I feel like if Microsoft was in a similar position, they would make users jump through a bunch of hoops just to get part of their money back, and they would some how spin it as empowering the consumer. I could NEVER imagine Microsoft coming out and saying "we screwed up" without 10 paragraphs of legalese attached refuting the previous statement.
Sharia law is evil in exactly the same sense that Communism and Nazism are evil.
Communism isn't in and of it self evil, it is usually the totalitarian regime that enforces it. Look at China, they transitioned away from communism years ago, but they're still fairly "evil". Possibly more-so now that they have proper funding...
Since you seem to have discovered a portal to the past, can you tell me some good stocks to buy which will greatly increase in value between my time and your time?
Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
General Tagge: But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
And yet, our automobiles only get about double the mileage of the first assembly line produced ones. Sure, they're far, far more reliable*, safer, get better mileage for their size, emit less pollution. But they're still a car. The problem of fuel mileage has far less to do with ability than necessity. Reliability, Safety, & Pollution were all seen as more pressing issues to solve, since, until recently, fuel was cheap and plentiful.
Mostly what we've seen is the commonization of technology. Turning technology into a commodity is probably the single most important advancement in human history. Every piece of technology we take for granted today relies on commodity parts and modern science would be impossible without it. Quantum physics, biotech, nanotech, climate science, materials science, energy production, -all- of them rely on commodity tools. Even 100 years ago, a geologist didn't have to custom forge a hammer & chisel to study rocks. Do you think that when Woz developed the Apple II, he had to custom build the components on the motherboard?
Commodization makes things more accessible, allowing more people to use that commodity in new, unintended, and even previously unimaginable ways. To downplay the importance of this is arrogant, blind, and foolish beyond belief.
Because the average person stealing a laptop is going to look at the ID3 tags on music files before opening your email client, browser, financial apps etc...
Regarding Sony "ignoring the biggest market in the world":
The problem with "The Biggest Market in the World" is that it is a highly fragmented market requiring support channels in at least a dozen languages(not to mention marketing, packaging, etc..). It is far easier to sell to the US and Japan(combined a larger market than Europe), with -2- support channels. Microsoft targeting a single market with a first gen device that they are going to lose money on in the forseeable future makes far more sense than spending significant resources to try and support all of Europe.
Comparing the European economy to the US would only be fair if there was a single european language, some general similarity in culture and a strong central government.
I doubt it, I recently moved from Maryland to Wyoming (I hate people and Maryland has way-too-fucking many of them) and -none- of the states between here and there had a speed limit below 65 mph, States like South Dakota & Wyoming allow up to 75 mph. If you know Wyoming roads, even this is a loose restriction, there is so much road and such a low population density that outside the larger towns there are few, if any, cops to enforce the speed-limit in the first place.
Had to appreciate the realistic dialogue, showed that Sheridan was at heart a normal guy, not an Oxford scholar that also happens to know how to captain a space ship (I'm looking at you Picard)
I love Star Trek, but it is a little grating when you KNOW that a word of dialogue was written for no other reasons than to make the character seem "advanced" and to impress the writer's contemporaries (using "ennui" instead of boredom for example.)
How is this any different than people taking pictures on the street on their own?
Because depending on your local laws, it is either illegal or VERY bad form to use a photograph of someone without their permission. 99% of the time people don't care, or will purposely stand in front of the camera("Hey Mom!") but if someone takes your picture you can always go to the person and ask that they not use it. If they use it anyway, at the bare minimum you can sue them. You can't do the same thing with a state-controlled video camera.
We have absolutely NO idea:
How long the video records are kept(1 month, 1 year, indefinite?)
How they are stored(tape,optical disc, massive database connected to the internet with Diebold Election style security...?)
If they have any notion of tamper-proofing (especially if there isn't an immutable hard copy this could be ripe for abuse)
How they are indexed.(With the right kind of facial recognition can they run a search for anyone with a valid state issued photo ID and find out exactly where a person was and when?)
When or if the video is disposed of
The method of that disposal. (is that crate of DVD backups from the camera across from the AIDS clinic going to end up in a dumpster for anyone to pick up?)
If the data is available to corporations. (I could see massive abuse by Insurance companies, retailers wanting more data on consumer habits, companies looking for a reason to void waranties, etc)
The type of analysis done on the video. (Am I going to end up on a terroist watch list because I happen to have similar habits to a local sleeper cell member?)
What other kind of information is stored with that video (Audio, Anomalous Substance detection... if you get a barium enema, are you subject to secret PATRIOT ACT sort of investigation because of a trace radiological signature?)
I admit that I am paranoid, but just the sheer number of unanswered questions and the lame "We will only use in emergencies or to get Terrorists" excuse should be enough to make anyone's "Spidey-Sense" tingle a little.
...but the iPod story really can't be explained by Apple fanboys. Unless they are buying 8 to 10 iPod each per quarter and giving them to people, there just simply are not enough fanboys to account for the sales figures.
I didn't say that the iPod phenomenon was purely Apple fanboys, I'm just saying that almost anything that Apple releases will have an automatic vocal fanbase and the idea that "No one will care" is simply impossible, especially an item that has been hyped forever like the iPhone. It's kinda like saying "What if you got hit by a freight train at full speed and you didn't die"
(waiting for the inevitable link to the person who got smushed by a freight train and lived:-) )
Slashdot Mirror
MPAA Parenting Tip:
If your dog makes a mess on the floor, remember to punish your children for feeding him.
If they can do this, why do they need SOPA again?
New technology is expensive and uncommon a couple months after release. News at 11.
People don't care about quality, they want convenience. SACD & DVD-A came around about the same time MP3 caught on. Once you could buy an iPod and carry around days worth of music, dealing with more discs just didn't make sense.
Now we have the same choice on the video-front. Blu-ray vs download/streaming. I can start watching something downloaded from iTunes or streaming on Netflix on one device (Living room TV, Office computer, Laptop, Tablet, etc...) then continue it wherever I want, whenever I want. (Netflix will even remember where I paused)
Obviously Blu-Ray is going to look better on the big-screen in the living room, just like SACD/DVD-A is going to sound better on the home-theater. Just doesn't matter when you are laying in bed, riding on the bus, or sitting in a hotel room across the country.
Sidenote: I'm sure it will come at some point, but Netflix/iTunes also hasn't forced me to sit through a commercial, or accused me of copyright infringement yet...
OK I'll take the bullet and get the meme out of the way so we can focus on serious-business /. discussion.
"In Soviet Russia, Climate changes you!"
Knowing Google it was probably more like 3500 computers for 3.5 days.
Wikileaks lost the majority of their credibility in January when they decided to stop actually being a decent site and instead beg for donations for a few months.
Since, as we all know, servers and bandwidth are free, particularly for a site that gets shit-hammered with traffic.
Gotta love an industry where a 20x improvment by any measure could be considered "paltry"
The station will have 6 crewmembers in 2009, after most of the lab modules have been installed.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/iss_manifest.html
Kinda pointless to have more than 3 people up there if they don't have a place to work.
The joke is that Neo played the Fiddle (Which isn't true either, the Fiddle was invented 1500 years too late...)
For the programmers out there:
Fiddle != Violin
http://fiddleguru.com/violin_fiddle.html
I hope you were joking at the expense of gullible people, but just in case:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Gullibility
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/gullible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullibility
I know that using wikipedia as an example of a reference work is shaky for some people, but you get the idea...
After reading the blog post, I felt like it was an honest apology. They thought that it would be easier for all involved to just give a google checkout credit instead of going through the task of tracking down everyone and making sure that their credit-card information was still up to date. I could see myself making a similar decision and I empathize. Ultimately, refunding the money AND letting everyone keep the checkout credit is a nice thing that they simply didn't need to do. On top of that, most companies are so afraid of getting sued that flat out saying that they screwed up is a very brave move that I respect.
I feel like if Microsoft was in a similar position, they would make users jump through a bunch of hoops just to get part of their money back, and they would some how spin it as empowering the consumer. I could NEVER imagine Microsoft coming out and saying "we screwed up" without 10 paragraphs of legalese attached refuting the previous statement.
By default OS X only has ready-only NTFS support, but there is a Read-Write plugin (ntfs-3g) available as a plugin for MacFUSE:
r ead-and-write-ntfs-windows-partition-on-mac-os-x.h tml
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
Here is a set of instructions to get it working, it mentions much older versions, but the idea is the same:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-
Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
General Tagge: But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
or something like that...
Neat idea but it won't work.
What would stop patent-squatter A partnering with patent-squatter B and licensing each-others patents for n+1 dollars?
What if other factors lead to a net loss for the first couple of years, even though long term they could be profitable?
What if the patent is just one among dozens in a complex product? How prove that you earned $n profit with a particular patented widget in the device?
In 10.5, Carbon was not ported to 64-bit.
Uh no... The only part of Carbon that wasn't ported to 64bit are the GUI layers of HIToolbox.
http://www.carbondev.com/site/?page=64-bit+Carbon
Commodization makes things more accessible, allowing more people to use that commodity in new, unintended, and even previously unimaginable ways. To downplay the importance of this is arrogant, blind, and foolish beyond belief.
Because the average person stealing a laptop is going to look at the ID3 tags on music files before opening your email client, browser, financial apps etc...
Regarding Sony "ignoring the biggest market in the world":
The problem with "The Biggest Market in the World" is that it is a highly fragmented market requiring support channels in at least a dozen languages(not to mention marketing, packaging, etc..). It is far easier to sell to the US and Japan(combined a larger market than Europe), with -2- support channels. Microsoft targeting a single market with a first gen device that they are going to lose money on in the forseeable future makes far more sense than spending significant resources to try and support all of Europe.
Comparing the European economy to the US would only be fair if there was a single european language, some general similarity in culture and a strong central government.
I doubt it, I recently moved from Maryland to Wyoming (I hate people and Maryland has way-too-fucking many of them) and -none- of the states between here and there had a speed limit below 65 mph, States like South Dakota & Wyoming allow up to 75 mph. If you know Wyoming roads, even this is a loose restriction, there is so much road and such a low population density that outside the larger towns there are few, if any, cops to enforce the speed-limit in the first place.
Actually it was "Get the Hell out of our Galaxy!"
Had to appreciate the realistic dialogue, showed that Sheridan was at heart a normal guy, not an Oxford scholar that also happens to know how to captain a space ship (I'm looking at you Picard)
I love Star Trek, but it is a little grating when you KNOW that a word of dialogue was written for no other reasons than to make the character seem "advanced" and to impress the writer's contemporaries (using "ennui" instead of boredom for example.)
Because depending on your local laws, it is either illegal or VERY bad form to use a photograph of someone without their permission. 99% of the time people don't care, or will purposely stand in front of the camera("Hey Mom!") but if someone takes your picture you can always go to the person and ask that they not use it. If they use it anyway, at the bare minimum you can sue them. You can't do the same thing with a state-controlled video camera.
We have absolutely NO idea:
I admit that I am paranoid, but just the sheer number of unanswered questions and the lame "We will only use in emergencies or to get Terrorists" excuse should be enough to make anyone's "Spidey-Sense" tingle a little.
...but the iPod story really can't be explained by Apple fanboys. Unless they are buying 8 to 10 iPod each per quarter and giving them to people, there just simply are not enough fanboys to account for the sales figures.
:-) )
I didn't say that the iPod phenomenon was purely Apple fanboys, I'm just saying that almost anything that Apple releases will have an automatic vocal fanbase and the idea that "No one will care" is simply impossible, especially an item that has been hyped forever like the iPhone. It's kinda like saying "What if you got hit by a freight train at full speed and you didn't die"
(waiting for the inevitable link to the person who got smushed by a freight train and lived