I had a Kindle for a while, and it does what it is supposed to admirably. This new book format is bound to do things even better, which is great.
But everyone else seems to be using ePub. Libraries use ePub too. Which really means that if you buy a Kindle you're stuck in the Amazon ecosystem. Well, unless you find a publisher that is willing to use unprotected PDF or MOBI files. That sometimes happens for the books you buy. But that won't happen for libraries (which need some sort of DRM).
And libraries are a serious concern for me. The ebook/digial audio book section is already confusing enough with device support.
I'm sorry, but I'm a teacher who has to put up with all sorts of crap to prove my integrity. So when it comes down to people who have even more power and even more rights, I believe that they should be held more accountable.
So fuck your unions. Mine has agreed to semi independent reviews. Yours should too. I can still be hung by my balls over baseless accussations (that you claim to investigate), so you should too. When you are willing to find innocence (or guilt) of my members, I will listen to your whinng. Until then, you're just a baseless bunch of bureaucrats.
Publishers serve another important function: they filter out the crap. It may not seem like it sometimes. A lot of stuff which has no merit does get published but (a) there is a lot worse that they do chop out and (b) you can usually tell by the imprint whether the book is a good bet or a risky one.
I know that a lot of authors complain about being rejected by one publisher and accepted by the next. A lot of times that's because publishers target particular markets. Selecting the wrong title not only diminishes their image, but it diminishes the number of readers (which hurts the author).
I'm not saying that publishers are perfect since their practices can be downright ugly. But they would have disappeared a long time ago if they didn't serve a purpose.
1) Most people still live by the sun. Some may be a few hours earlier than others (morning people) and some people may be a few hours later than people (night owls), but there is a definite correlation between when the sun is "up" and when people live their lives.
2) People find it easier to translate between time zones than they do between local norms. "Let's see, hour business hours are between 3.33 and 6.66 while their business hours are between 8.85 and 2.18. Which is a 5.52 offset. It's now 6.14, which makes it 11.66 in their time. No, that's not right. That's 1.66. No, that's the wrong way around... screw this."
3) People hate change. Well, at least this type of change. I live in a country that switched to metric decades ago, and people still use imperial units for just about everything. Making life even more fun, different people use a different mix between metric and imperial. More often than not it seems to depend upon how they were introduced to the units, so you will run into weird combinations like measuring apples in pounds and olives in grams.
Quantum computing is about algorithmic efficiency, not speed. So calculating pi will be a whole lot slower until you find and implement an quantum algorithm that is more efficient than classical solutions.
But that would require spending money on staff who are capable of providing good service and knowing your products, by hiring competent people then training them. That is a big no-no as far as businesses who seek to maximize profits by minimizing expenses (i.e. working people) and maximizing revenues (i.e. consumers) are concerned.
So get a land line with a really long extension cable!
I don't meant to trivialize what you're saying, but there is a price that you have to pay if you want the toys. Unfortunately, it is a price that is both inherent in existing technology and it cannot simply be legislated away. (Marketers can be a slimy lot and some will ignore the law.) So it is probably best to let people know about the potential uses and let them decide if they want to turn it off when it is not needed.
Actually, you're old fashioned politics was a popularity poll. Finding a politician who can formulate policy based upon public opinion, objective data, and reliable models -- even if it goes against their firmly held convictions -- is the challenging part. Yes, some of their own personality will enter the mix when it comes to things like choosing between conflicting models, figuring out which data is objective, But pretending that any man or woman can share all of the views of a single person (heck, they may even disagree with themselves in the future) is naive -- never mind sharing the views of the majority of the people whom they represent.
There were a lot of things that the below average kids didn't learn until later in life either.
Here's the thing: I think that we judge the excellent far more than we judge the mediocre. Some times those judgements are complimentary (intelligent, hard working, conscientious). Yet they are often derogatory (arrogant, competitive, weird). Because of that they are separated from society, either because society feels that it is better than the excellent or society feels inferior to the excellent. So rather than reaching out to embrace them for who they are, society would much matter reduce the excellent to the mediocre. A path that may produce better people, yet may also create people who regret lost dreams or have strayed down a path of impulsive self-destructiveness.
... and he is generally more concerned about the profitability of businesses. Still, he said, a fact is a fact and it doesn't matter if someone researched the shit out of it to verify it. You can't change what it is, and you shouldn't be able to claim rights to it.
I didn't bother to mention how some databases falsify (unimportant) facts to try to prove data's origins and make copyright claims, simply because that would make his blood boil -- because the only thing worse than claiming the truth is lying.
The real problem is that creative people often lack business skills, and marketers have found a way to exploit that by marketing other peoples' products without actually paying for the product that they market.
I don't know whether to blame this on the ignorance of creative people or the greed of sales people. I'm inclined to blame the latter because this has been an ongoing problem (e.g. music publishers) and we can't be specialists in everything (e.g. most people are good at producing content or good at marketing, but few are great at both).
I know that there are other options out there, but most of the people that I know (including myself) uses iTunes. It is an effective monopoly, and that's bad.
Then again, it was pretty close to a monopoly before. It was slightly better in that there were multiple labels and multiple retailers, but if you were interested in a particular artist you were still stuck with a particular label. Which is pretty much how it is today. Granted, you still have many retailers to choose from.
It looks like they use a different satellite, but the News section discusses the sorts of things that affect service and if you scroll down the list you'll find traffic data for communities served by satellite.
Outages are common, and can be caused by anything from the town's electrical generators going down to the nature of the satellite's orbit.
I've been in places like that before, and it's about all that you can do. There is no sense in getting upset over something that is beyond anyone's control.
I'm a pacifist, so I basically don't want to think about the darker side of war even when it was necessary evil to ensure the freedom of the children and grandchildren of those who fought in the war.
So when I see governments acknowledging the contributions of non-combatants in non-violent roles, I have to congratulate them. Bletchley Park mayn't have ended the war, but it certainly made it shorter and less bloody.
I don't blame them for doing this, since they are businesses and businesses are out to make a profit. I don't even blame the greed because they are providing a service and they calculate their revenues based upon a single purchaser (and not subsequent purchases of the title second hand).
On the other hand, when it comes to gaming, I'm definitely a consumer. As a consumer, I don't want to spend more than I have to and that includes paying for access to servers for multiplayer games. So don't expect me to buy in to this scheme.
Hell, don't expect me to pay into this scheme even if I had money to burn since I prefer single player games to social gaming and I prefer to social gaming to multiplayer games. Which basically means that I'll take a PS3 when I want to have some fun, a Nintendo when I want to enjoy a game with friend, and basically don't care about this scheme because I don't give a damn about playing 'alone' against human opponents who I will never meet.
Of course, your opinion may differ. But I don't care. When I game it's about me (and maybe my real life friends).
If someone contributes to the economy by buying counterfeit DVDs, wouldn't they also contribute to the economy by buying counterfeit popcorn?
Seriously though, the honour of lying is right up their with piracy in my books. And embellishment is a form of lying. Any serious analysis of piracy would take into consideration that the habits of people who buy are different from the habits of people who take. Even marketers know that: they will gladly give away goodies to grab people's attention, get people to try their products, or lock them into contracts because people will hesitate if they have to pay for something and grab up almost anything that is free. The same goes for piracy. It's not hard to come across stories of people who pirate more than they could ever consume, and even taking that into consideration is still leaving you with the assumption that they would pay for what they do consume.
And the popcorn thing is just silly. I realize that a lot of people are stupid enough with money to go to the theatre's vending stand, but a lot of people don't. Heck, you could go out for a decent dinner before or after the movie and still pay less than you would for a bunch of junk food at the theatre.
Yeap, because there is a great anti-Apple conspiracy out there.
Or maybe Slashdot is a pretty diverse place, and it always has a group of people who thinks that particular metric is meaningless and another group who thinks that metric is valuable. (Plus plenty of people who don't care either way.)
And maybe you just think that the attitude has changed because you feel violated at any perceived attack upon Apple.
Or maybe not. Maybe there is a vast anti-Apple conspiracy and I just don't know about it because I haven't been let in on it yet. If so, where do I apply. A high ranking conspirator position would be appreciated.;)
On the other hand, it would not be cheap to conduct a proper survey.
So until somebody ponies up the cash to conduct a proper survey or Apple stops being so secretive about it's business, this sort of thing is the best we will have. And even with selection bias, the results are likely better than a small collection of anecdotes.
A decrease in one column of numbers and a corresponding increase in a second column of numbers doesn't mean that one is related to the other.
For all we know, a lot of Firefox users are switching to IE because they want a more predictable release cycle.
You may also have Firefox and IE users switching to Chrome for other reasons. As I said earlier, Chrome seems to be faster and have a more responsive interface.
The article mentions that test scores went up and suggested that it was due to improved concentration. In other words, the children were probably more engaged in class due to the novelty of the technology.
They would probably find similar results if they replaced the regular classroom teacher with a guest speaker for a week or incorporated a variety of instructional strategies (i.e. going beyond the traditional reading, problem solving, and chalk & talk). Oh, and those instructional strategies wouldn't cost a dime.
If the consequences of the poorly written code are negligible, who cares.
If the user can take well known preventative measures to avoid damages, and don't, then they are liable.
If a software fault causes damage to life or property, then the liability of the developer is a serious consideration.
A lot of research has been done to improve software engineering practices to make software more reliable. A lot of research has been done in computer science to prove algorithms. If you're writing mission critical software and ignore that research then you are doing something wrong and perhaps you should be paying the price.b
Slashdot Mirror
I had a Kindle for a while, and it does what it is supposed to admirably. This new book format is bound to do things even better, which is great.
But everyone else seems to be using ePub. Libraries use ePub too. Which really means that if you buy a Kindle you're stuck in the Amazon ecosystem. Well, unless you find a publisher that is willing to use unprotected PDF or MOBI files. That sometimes happens for the books you buy. But that won't happen for libraries (which need some sort of DRM).
And libraries are a serious concern for me. The ebook/digial audio book section is already confusing enough with device support.
I'm sorry, but I'm a teacher who has to put up with all sorts of crap to prove my integrity. So when it comes down to people who have even more power and even more rights, I believe that they should be held more accountable.
So fuck your unions. Mine has agreed to semi independent reviews. Yours should too. I can still be hung by my balls over baseless accussations (that you claim to investigate), so you should too. When you are willing to find innocence (or guilt) of my members, I will listen to your whinng. Until then, you're just a baseless bunch of bureaucrats.
Publishers serve another important function: they filter out the crap. It may not seem like it sometimes. A lot of stuff which has no merit does get published but (a) there is a lot worse that they do chop out and (b) you can usually tell by the imprint whether the book is a good bet or a risky one.
I know that a lot of authors complain about being rejected by one publisher and accepted by the next. A lot of times that's because publishers target particular markets. Selecting the wrong title not only diminishes their image, but it diminishes the number of readers (which hurts the author).
I'm not saying that publishers are perfect since their practices can be downright ugly. But they would have disappeared a long time ago if they didn't serve a purpose.
In the off chance that you are serious:
1) Most people still live by the sun. Some may be a few hours earlier than others (morning people) and some people may be a few hours later than people (night owls), but there is a definite correlation between when the sun is "up" and when people live their lives.
2) People find it easier to translate between time zones than they do between local norms. "Let's see, hour business hours are between 3.33 and 6.66 while their business hours are between 8.85 and 2.18. Which is a 5.52 offset. It's now 6.14, which makes it 11.66 in their time. No, that's not right. That's 1.66. No, that's the wrong way around ... screw this."
3) People hate change. Well, at least this type of change. I live in a country that switched to metric decades ago, and people still use imperial units for just about everything. Making life even more fun, different people use a different mix between metric and imperial. More often than not it seems to depend upon how they were introduced to the units, so you will run into weird combinations like measuring apples in pounds and olives in grams.
Quantum computing is about algorithmic efficiency, not speed. So calculating pi will be a whole lot slower until you find and implement an quantum algorithm that is more efficient than classical solutions.
But that would require spending money on staff who are capable of providing good service and knowing your products, by hiring competent people then training them. That is a big no-no as far as businesses who seek to maximize profits by minimizing expenses (i.e. working people) and maximizing revenues (i.e. consumers) are concerned.
So get a land line with a really long extension cable!
I don't meant to trivialize what you're saying, but there is a price that you have to pay if you want the toys. Unfortunately, it is a price that is both inherent in existing technology and it cannot simply be legislated away. (Marketers can be a slimy lot and some will ignore the law.) So it is probably best to let people know about the potential uses and let them decide if they want to turn it off when it is not needed.
Actually, you're old fashioned politics was a popularity poll. Finding a politician who can formulate policy based upon public opinion, objective data, and reliable models -- even if it goes against their firmly held convictions -- is the challenging part. Yes, some of their own personality will enter the mix when it comes to things like choosing between conflicting models, figuring out which data is objective, But pretending that any man or woman can share all of the views of a single person (heck, they may even disagree with themselves in the future) is naive -- never mind sharing the views of the majority of the people whom they represent.
There were a lot of things that the below average kids didn't learn until later in life either.
Here's the thing: I think that we judge the excellent far more than we judge the mediocre. Some times those judgements are complimentary (intelligent, hard working, conscientious). Yet they are often derogatory (arrogant, competitive, weird). Because of that they are separated from society, either because society feels that it is better than the excellent or society feels inferior to the excellent. So rather than reaching out to embrace them for who they are, society would much matter reduce the excellent to the mediocre. A path that may produce better people, yet may also create people who regret lost dreams or have strayed down a path of impulsive self-destructiveness.
... and he is generally more concerned about the profitability of businesses. Still, he said, a fact is a fact and it doesn't matter if someone researched the shit out of it to verify it. You can't change what it is, and you shouldn't be able to claim rights to it.
I didn't bother to mention how some databases falsify (unimportant) facts to try to prove data's origins and make copyright claims, simply because that would make his blood boil -- because the only thing worse than claiming the truth is lying.
The real problem is that creative people often lack business skills, and marketers have found a way to exploit that by marketing other peoples' products without actually paying for the product that they market.
I don't know whether to blame this on the ignorance of creative people or the greed of sales people. I'm inclined to blame the latter because this has been an ongoing problem (e.g. music publishers) and we can't be specialists in everything (e.g. most people are good at producing content or good at marketing, but few are great at both).
I know that there are other options out there, but most of the people that I know (including myself) uses iTunes. It is an effective monopoly, and that's bad.
Then again, it was pretty close to a monopoly before. It was slightly better in that there were multiple labels and multiple retailers, but if you were interested in a particular artist you were still stuck with a particular label. Which is pretty much how it is today. Granted, you still have many retailers to choose from.
Satellite dishes are very directional. So they can distinguish between two signals that appear very close, even if one is significantly stronger.
Look up antenna patterns if you're interested.
If you want to see what living with satellite communications is like, KNet has some detailed statistics and news:
http://tech.knet.on.ca/
It looks like they use a different satellite, but the News section discusses the sorts of things that affect service and if you scroll down the list you'll find traffic data for communities served by satellite.
Outages are common, and can be caused by anything from the town's electrical generators going down to the nature of the satellite's orbit.
I've been in places like that before, and it's about all that you can do. There is no sense in getting upset over something that is beyond anyone's control.
I guess they were too busy laughing at you downloading music with a 9600 bps modem to disconnect you.
I'm a pacifist, so I basically don't want to think about the darker side of war even when it was necessary evil to ensure the freedom of the children and grandchildren of those who fought in the war.
So when I see governments acknowledging the contributions of non-combatants in non-violent roles, I have to congratulate them. Bletchley Park mayn't have ended the war, but it certainly made it shorter and less bloody.
I don't blame them for doing this, since they are businesses and businesses are out to make a profit. I don't even blame the greed because they are providing a service and they calculate their revenues based upon a single purchaser (and not subsequent purchases of the title second hand).
On the other hand, when it comes to gaming, I'm definitely a consumer. As a consumer, I don't want to spend more than I have to and that includes paying for access to servers for multiplayer games. So don't expect me to buy in to this scheme.
Hell, don't expect me to pay into this scheme even if I had money to burn since I prefer single player games to social gaming and I prefer to social gaming to multiplayer games. Which basically means that I'll take a PS3 when I want to have some fun, a Nintendo when I want to enjoy a game with friend, and basically don't care about this scheme because I don't give a damn about playing 'alone' against human opponents who I will never meet.
Of course, your opinion may differ. But I don't care. When I game it's about me (and maybe my real life friends).
If someone contributes to the economy by buying counterfeit DVDs, wouldn't they also contribute to the economy by buying counterfeit popcorn?
Seriously though, the honour of lying is right up their with piracy in my books. And embellishment is a form of lying. Any serious analysis of piracy would take into consideration that the habits of people who buy are different from the habits of people who take. Even marketers know that: they will gladly give away goodies to grab people's attention, get people to try their products, or lock them into contracts because people will hesitate if they have to pay for something and grab up almost anything that is free. The same goes for piracy. It's not hard to come across stories of people who pirate more than they could ever consume, and even taking that into consideration is still leaving you with the assumption that they would pay for what they do consume.
And the popcorn thing is just silly. I realize that a lot of people are stupid enough with money to go to the theatre's vending stand, but a lot of people don't. Heck, you could go out for a decent dinner before or after the movie and still pay less than you would for a bunch of junk food at the theatre.
Yeap, because there is a great anti-Apple conspiracy out there.
Or maybe Slashdot is a pretty diverse place, and it always has a group of people who thinks that particular metric is meaningless and another group who thinks that metric is valuable. (Plus plenty of people who don't care either way.)
And maybe you just think that the attitude has changed because you feel violated at any perceived attack upon Apple.
Or maybe not. Maybe there is a vast anti-Apple conspiracy and I just don't know about it because I haven't been let in on it yet. If so, where do I apply. A high ranking conspirator position would be appreciated. ;)
Of course many of those iOS games are going to be better than the PC games kids played in the 80's.
Yes, there are many faults with this survey.
Yes, it would be easy to design a better survey.
On the other hand, it would not be cheap to conduct a proper survey.
So until somebody ponies up the cash to conduct a proper survey or Apple stops being so secretive about it's business, this sort of thing is the best we will have. And even with selection bias, the results are likely better than a small collection of anecdotes.
A decrease in one column of numbers and a corresponding increase in a second column of numbers doesn't mean that one is related to the other.
For all we know, a lot of Firefox users are switching to IE because they want a more predictable release cycle.
You may also have Firefox and IE users switching to Chrome for other reasons. As I said earlier, Chrome seems to be faster and have a more responsive interface.
The article mentions that test scores went up and suggested that it was due to improved concentration. In other words, the children were probably more engaged in class due to the novelty of the technology.
They would probably find similar results if they replaced the regular classroom teacher with a guest speaker for a week or incorporated a variety of instructional strategies (i.e. going beyond the traditional reading, problem solving, and chalk & talk). Oh, and those instructional strategies wouldn't cost a dime.
If the consequences of the poorly written code are negligible, who cares.
If the user can take well known preventative measures to avoid damages, and don't, then they are liable.
If a software fault causes damage to life or property, then the liability of the developer is a serious consideration.
A lot of research has been done to improve software engineering practices to make software more reliable. A lot of research has been done in computer science to prove algorithms. If you're writing mission critical software and ignore that research then you are doing something wrong and perhaps you should be paying the price.b