I suppose, then, my response is for the NY Times author more than for Ms. Keating:)
I just find this whole idea of "OMG the music industry will collapse if musicians only make money from live performances" to be utterly asinine. As if musicians were born the moment recording contracts were invented or something...
So you're telling me that you made a recording a few years ago, and now you just sit back and do nothing and a stream of money comes trickling in? Wow, that sucks. I feel for you.
Other then my bad math, I am not in the least bit confused, but perhaps confusing.
If I am not mistaken, you are attempting to link witch hunts with a lack of government controlled police forces. My claim is that there is little to no connection.
You're off by a century. The witch hunts were back in the late 1700s. In addition to that, they were hardly a product of a "private police force". Modern police forces are in no way immune to the witch hunt mentality (McCarthy, anyone?).
Also, private detectives were an integral part of the public police force even into the early 1900s.
I had the same problem with that large bank (many years ago before I dropped them like a bad habit). It turns out that the geniuses at Large Bank in America decided there should be two separate "addresses" for you, both changeable online, but in two completely separate places. One address for your account, and one address for your mail. Please don't ask me to explain that in a way that makes any sense.
In America you do not own land, you lease it from the government. (not just trolling, I'm serious, although quite possibly oversimplifying the situation)
Actually, you're more or less right about the Federal Reserve Bank (factually right, but your assessment of how much power that confers is subjective), but that was one of three off the top of my head, there are plenty more. Remove it if you like. My point still stands.
I have often made similar statements to people who think the President has way more power than he does, but you have gone too far in the other direction. The Executive branch has grown to a size of epic proportions and the President has full authority over it. The war on drugs, the Federal Reserve Bank and the IRS are all prime examples.
I'm not necessarily against taxing gasoline. However, before we start using a gasoline tax as a tool to force people to behave a certain way, maybe we should consider eliminating the billions of dollars of subsidies given to the oil industry so that we can see the *true* price of gasoline?
God I wish I had mod points right now! The only thing I think you left out is: If the guy has so much "down time", why did he waste his personal time writing this software? Why not do it in all his copious down time and thus get paid for writing it?
The question is "Why haven't *they* put BASIC on the phone?".
The answer, of course, is simple: 1. There isn't much demand for it. 2. It would open up their platform and their cell network to a barrage of crappy software.
Not to mention the fact that Libya only produces about 2 million barrels of oil per day (http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4513). Figure they export at most 1.5 million of it, that's not a lot to spread around. Hardly worth invading them for it. I'll stick with the "human rights" excuse too.
Agreed. The article seemed to be describing old hackers, hardly the methodical, *sudo using* people with the talent to be actual admins. Granted, there's a lot of overlap, but they are far from the same thing.
FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China. What is this backed by?
Anyway, another fad "currency". Might as well collect "ISK in eveonline" or "gold nuggets in WoW" - same thing.
You've got it completely backwards. Fiat currency is called fiat currency specifically because it *is not* backed by anything. It has value for no reason other then because someone (in this case a government) says so. But you are right about BitCoin, it is not backed by anything. BitCoin therefore, like the USD, is also a fiat currency, as it does not represent any actual value beyond that determined by the issuing agency or the merchants accepting it.
I believe that in this context the group of people who are advocating for things like civilian run mesh networks are not advocating that we *replace* the Internet as we know it today with these networks as so man Slashdotters seem to be assuming. They are not talking about having these systems in place for watching movies on Netflix, or for telling all your friends on facebook that you just farted.
Rather, the point is so that in a state of emergency (i.e., the government has completely lost it's marbles and decided to declare martial law and thereby shutdown all civilian communications) these networks can be used to continue to take advantage of the kind of instant mass communications our society has come to rely on. The point is so that you can still contact your family back on the other coast, or tell your friends you're hosting a meeting to talk about how to handle the national guard unit stationed around your neighborhood for your own "safety",...etc.
I think really, they just want to be able to send e-mail, and post in online forums.
Personally, I think it's too late. If, for example, the US federal government decides to "go Egypt on our asses", they're going to do it in the next few years, well before we have time to setup any sophisticated civilian run mesh networking. Our only hope is to make sure that such a thing never happens by pressuring our politicians hard, and getting our friends to do the same...
I suspect that most of the Slashdoters who are hating on OnLive actually just hate this Perlman fellow, and have never actually tried OnLive.
I've had a (free) OnLive since the beta and while I wouldn't pay money for it, it's not hard to imagine that lots of people would. When it works (which is subject to the whims of your ISP) it works surprisingly well and you quickly forget that it's a highly compressed video stream running at (for me) about 4Mbps. For RTSs, RPGs, puzzle games and the like (i.e., a very significant portion of PC games) it's quite usable. I tried a few FPSs on it, and they also ran well, but obviously if you're training for a career in Korea you'll be purchasing a copy for play on your local machine.
I've seen posts claiming it costs more then just buying a good gaming machine. I'd like to see some evidence for that. At 10$/mo. it's only $120/yr. Even if you only replace your gaming rig every 5 (gasp!) years, that gives you a measly $600 gaming rig. I think typical mid-range rigs go for more like $1,000 at the very least.
One negative comment that I will add about OnLive: Whenever they think your bandwidth has dropped too low, they'll automatically pause your game and force you to stare at a 5 minute countdown timer until you get booted entirely. Sometimes you get the option to reconnect, sometimes you don't. It "claims" to be testing your bandwidth to determine whether or not to let you reconnect. I've done a little snooping and it often seems that it isn't sending any data at all. This is a minor issue though which could easily be fixed.
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I get it, you want a broad scope of opinions, but don't forget to ask the six people you're managing. We can't tell you what will make them happy.
You mean, of course, evidence that his hypothesis is wrong...
I suppose, then, my response is for the NY Times author more than for Ms. Keating :)
I just find this whole idea of "OMG the music industry will collapse if musicians only make money from live performances" to be utterly asinine. As if musicians were born the moment recording contracts were invented or something...
So you're telling me that you made a recording a few years ago, and now you just sit back and do nothing and a stream of money comes trickling in? Wow, that sucks. I feel for you.
Other then my bad math, I am not in the least bit confused, but perhaps confusing.
If I am not mistaken, you are attempting to link witch hunts with a lack of government controlled police forces. My claim is that there is little to no connection.
Oops, just realized that the time from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s is quite a bit less than a century ;)
Still, my other points remain.
You're off by a century. The witch hunts were back in the late 1700s. In addition to that, they were hardly a product of a "private police force". Modern police forces are in no way immune to the witch hunt mentality (McCarthy, anyone?).
Also, private detectives were an integral part of the public police force even into the early 1900s.
I had the same problem with that large bank (many years ago before I dropped them like a bad habit). It turns out that the geniuses at Large Bank in America decided there should be two separate "addresses" for you, both changeable online, but in two completely separate places. One address for your account, and one address for your mail. Please don't ask me to explain that in a way that makes any sense.
In America you do not own land, you lease it from the government. (not just trolling, I'm serious, although quite possibly oversimplifying the situation)
Actually, you're more or less right about the Federal Reserve Bank (factually right, but your assessment of how much power that confers is subjective), but that was one of three off the top of my head, there are plenty more. Remove it if you like. My point still stands.
I have often made similar statements to people who think the President has way more power than he does, but you have gone too far in the other direction. The Executive branch has grown to a size of epic proportions and the President has full authority over it. The war on drugs, the Federal Reserve Bank and the IRS are all prime examples.
I'm not necessarily against taxing gasoline. However, before we start using a gasoline tax as a tool to force people to behave a certain way, maybe we should consider eliminating the billions of dollars of subsidies given to the oil industry so that we can see the *true* price of gasoline?
(NY Times on oil subsidies: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html)
All the posters here keep crying about how "the open market" has failed, but we aren't in an open market, so that is nonsense.
Government auction? That's a lot of computer bits...
Unless you've got a citation for that, I'm going to call it arrogance and hyperbole.
I don't exactly disagree with you, but bear in mind that a huge segment of Congress doesn't know what they are talking about either.
God I wish I had mod points right now! The only thing I think you left out is: If the guy has so much "down time", why did he waste his personal time writing this software? Why not do it in all his copious down time and thus get paid for writing it?
In addition to my own (There isn't much demand for it) I think we've seen a variety of answers to that in other posts.
Those aren't on cell networks because they aren't phones.
The question is "Why haven't *they* put BASIC on the phone?".
The answer, of course, is simple:
1. There isn't much demand for it.
2. It would open up their platform and their cell network to a barrage of crappy software.
Not to mention the fact that Libya only produces about 2 million barrels of oil per day (http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4513). Figure they export at most 1.5 million of it, that's not a lot to spread around. Hardly worth invading them for it. I'll stick with the "human rights" excuse too.
Agreed. The article seemed to be describing old hackers, hardly the methodical, *sudo using* people with the talent to be actual admins. Granted, there's a lot of overlap, but they are far from the same thing.
You're wrong, the parent is right.
FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China. What is this backed by?
Anyway, another fad "currency". Might as well collect "ISK in eveonline" or "gold nuggets in WoW" - same thing.
You've got it completely backwards. Fiat currency is called fiat currency specifically because it *is not* backed by anything. It has value for no reason other then because someone (in this case a government) says so. But you are right about BitCoin, it is not backed by anything. BitCoin therefore, like the USD, is also a fiat currency, as it does not represent any actual value beyond that determined by the issuing agency or the merchants accepting it.
I believe that in this context the group of people who are advocating for things like civilian run mesh networks are not advocating that we *replace* the Internet as we know it today with these networks as so man Slashdotters seem to be assuming. They are not talking about having these systems in place for watching movies on Netflix, or for telling all your friends on facebook that you just farted.
Rather, the point is so that in a state of emergency (i.e., the government has completely lost it's marbles and decided to declare martial law and thereby shutdown all civilian communications) these networks can be used to continue to take advantage of the kind of instant mass communications our society has come to rely on. The point is so that you can still contact your family back on the other coast, or tell your friends you're hosting a meeting to talk about how to handle the national guard unit stationed around your neighborhood for your own "safety", ...etc.
I think really, they just want to be able to send e-mail, and post in online forums.
Personally, I think it's too late. If, for example, the US federal government decides to "go Egypt on our asses", they're going to do it in the next few years, well before we have time to setup any sophisticated civilian run mesh networking. Our only hope is to make sure that such a thing never happens by pressuring our politicians hard, and getting our friends to do the same...
I suspect that most of the Slashdoters who are hating on OnLive actually just hate this Perlman fellow, and have never actually tried OnLive.
I've had a (free) OnLive since the beta and while I wouldn't pay money for it, it's not hard to imagine that lots of people would. When it works (which is subject to the whims of your ISP) it works surprisingly well and you quickly forget that it's a highly compressed video stream running at (for me) about 4Mbps. For RTSs, RPGs, puzzle games and the like (i.e., a very significant portion of PC games) it's quite usable. I tried a few FPSs on it, and they also ran well, but obviously if you're training for a career in Korea you'll be purchasing a copy for play on your local machine.
I've seen posts claiming it costs more then just buying a good gaming machine. I'd like to see some evidence for that. At 10$/mo. it's only $120/yr. Even if you only replace your gaming rig every 5 (gasp!) years, that gives you a measly $600 gaming rig. I think typical mid-range rigs go for more like $1,000 at the very least.
One negative comment that I will add about OnLive: Whenever they think your bandwidth has dropped too low, they'll automatically pause your game and force you to stare at a 5 minute countdown timer until you get booted entirely. Sometimes you get the option to reconnect, sometimes you don't. It "claims" to be testing your bandwidth to determine whether or not to let you reconnect. I've done a little snooping and it often seems that it isn't sending any data at all. This is a minor issue though which could easily be fixed.