Wow, you just made me so angry I almost just filled this entire response with expletives. You are either stunningly ignorant of the how the entire world of communication works, or you are a troll, or you are one of the reasons why PR is required in the first place.
Of course the shift in language is a PR exercise. That's because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance. Public Relations is just that - relating information to the public at large. If you discover that the language you are using is not getting the message across, then you have to alter the language to succeed. Otherwise you simply get drowned out by people who are betting at language, but not necessarily better at science.
In case you hadn't noticed, the number of scientists in the world vs the number of 'laypeople' is somewhat disproportionate. scientists don't often get to pick the lessons that taught to the public, especially when a bit of controversy can be stirred up instead. Or the latest news about who's fucking paris hilton.
And this whole continual argument about how bad governments are at regulating stuff really gets up my nose as well. In what way are private businesses good at regulating anything?! The only thing private organisations regulate successfully is skimming as much profit off the rest of the world as they possibly can. Free markets only price short term costs, they have no model for pricing the long term impact of what they produce - certainly not without regulation and laws laid down by a strong government willing to take on special interests. Which are sadly few and far between.
I've run out of steam now, and I know that this will make no difference to anyone's opinion whatsoever. But i feel a smidgen better...
or how about, as adults, we have a responsibility to have learnt the difference between teasing someone in a way that is acceptable to them and fun, versus being offensive whatever guise that might take. The difference between being an adult and being a child is that as a child you are learning what is acceptable in life through experience, it's part of growing up.
Somewhere along the line kids should learn to treat other people with respect, and not tease them unless they have an appropriate relationship with those people.
I think this is also about what you are used to, and how you learn to interact with the written word and research in general. As today's younger generations grow up being more used to everything being available on line, they will demand content to be available online and be able to work with it as effectively (if not more so given storage, cross referencing, dynamic searching etc).
I'm with you, I much prefer reading stuff on paper. I'm just not convinced that it will hold true in years to come.
I don't see what this has to do with society being lost though?
http://www.kdawebservices.com/ - I use them for a bunch of domains, imap and the like. I dunno about price competition though, I am too lazy to worry about it once I find a price I am happy to pay.
Sadly doesn't cover my MBP that I bought 3 months ago. I spent a fruitless day trawling the web trying to find a way to resolve this problem (Matshita DVD-R UJ-857). Apparently the guy who used to do a lot of this work for the mac dvd drives retired, and no one has taken up the mantle yet.
I know that the standards are what they are, but it really f**ks me off when this comes up with laptops. The whole point of having a laptop is that I can travel with it, I buy all my dvds, I just happen to buy some in the US, some in the UK, a couple in Thailand, and some in New Zealand. And I bloody well should be able to.
My plan is to look into buying a drive for the mbp pro that can be modified, it's an annoying expense, but I think will be worth it...
agreed... I have in excess of 100,000 emails - google desktop has found me half remembered threads dozens of times. And tbh I've actually got to the point where it's good for just digging out recent emails, as it's quicker than faffing with my folders and the like
but one of the advantages of the additional channels for the bbc is that they can actually produce new and innovative shows to experiment with, and then take them to the major terestrial channels if they are successful. Much as used to happen with BBC2 to BBC1, you now have have BBC3 to BBC1 or BBC2. And BBC4 has some awesome stuff on it, so long as you are accepting of the concept that TV Shows don't all have to last 25 minutes and have lots of flashing lights
heh, I think my roots of being a city boy have been exposed - you are right of course that ordnance survey are much more useful when you aren't talking about urban areas!;-)
I have to say I think that their maps are a damnsight easier to read by not being ordnance survey maps... the way they colour everything is very clean, and makes things a lot clearer.
hmmm, perhaps I didn't word my initial statement very clearly, in an attempt at brevity. What I was trying to point out that is that just because some people are willing to pay a particular price for a product, doesn't mean that the product is actually worth it. But clearly that's actually a bit of a pointless thing to say as it is rather obvious, and also what underlies the basic principle of the demand side of supply and demand. So feel free to ignore it!
I am curious to know why you think my sentiments on prices moving slowly in response to demand changes is nonsense. Surely the very fact that we are still yet to see an adequate response to the potential change in distribution (and subsequently prices) is evidence of this? We've started to see changes in the distribution of music with the like of iTunes, but the prices for that are the same as if you bought a physical product.
I never actually described DVDs as being over-priced, I merely described it as a "high-end" price point to illustrate the contrast with the low-end of free. Personally I hope a middle ground is achieved. I think DVDs are a tad over-priced, but with squeezed retail margins at places like amazon, it's not too bad.
The "conspiracy" you feel I alluded to is not worthy of the title conspiracy. Which is why I didn't use the word. What I am referring to is the fact that the bigger studios have a vested interest in maintaining their current production and distribution models. They also have little incentive to compete on price, and typically don't (I am talking like for like new releases here, as opposed to back catalogue releases, although these tend to be similarly priced across the studios as well of course).
anyway, all very tedious, I think insted of going back to playing a video game, I might get back to work;-)
wrong. A product is not "worth" exactly how much somebody is willing to pay for it. A product can be priced at that value - but any product is worth something different to any given individual. The principles of supply and demand describe the willingness of producers and consumers to produce and consume at differing price points. i.e. producers will produce more the higher the price, consumers will consume more the lower the price.
The concept of supply and demand is bandied around on slashdot like some kind of panacea to all questions related to markets. People thing that because they understand this simple concept they have the answer to all the problems that various markets experience, such as the movie or music industry trying to deal with the new supply model of the internet.
The trouble here of course is that supply and demand only works when applied to completely free markets, and only over a period of time. And it's this second point that people don't seem to get. Supply and demand rules do not apply instantaneously, making sure that we always get the most efficient price point for a product. It can take years for this to be found as new producers enter markets, some drop out, each with differing pricing models and subtley different products.
right now with movies, we have a high-end price point on DVDs, which a lot of people aren't happy to pay. Because there isn't any competition between the big movie studios (i.e. they all belong to the same organisations, stick to the same price points etc) there is no movement in innovation and new pricing points, which leads to a thriving black market, where people are essentially getting stuff for free. Because no supply currently exists where the middleman is removed, and the pricing point is lower, it is impossible to judge where supply and demand will lead us, and whether a suitable pricing model can be established which means that a sufficiently high number of consumers will pay the new low price point to support continued production.
well there's always the oakley thump sunglasses - not so helpful in the dark, but certainly more practical than the hack. Pity about the capacity of course;-)
this is actually one of those movies where trying to be a purist is going to be nigh on impossible - what do you consider to be the original source material, the books, or the radio plays?! Given that DNA is also credited with the bulk of what has made it into the movie, so I don't think it can be dismissed in the same way.
It's the same as driving a car, but not having the faintest idea how to fill up the tank or washer fluid, or to check the oil etc. If a person knows how a device works then they are less likely to have a problem using it or to be afraid of it.
no it's not. Checking the oil, filling up with gas etc would be more analogous(sp?) to clearing out temp files, keeping the computer patched, knowing not to run exe files from the untrusted sources, that kind of thing.
Being able to program simple files would be something like changing a spark plug, changing the filters etc. Something that you can do with a little bit of understanding, but really something that most people leave to the mechanic when they get the car serviced.
I still find that every now and then, all the text renders way over to the right of the white background... it's intermittent, but annoying when it happens. Shift refresh generally sorts it though..
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, you just made me so angry I almost just filled this entire response with expletives. You are either stunningly ignorant of the how the entire world of communication works, or you are a troll, or you are one of the reasons why PR is required in the first place.
Of course the shift in language is a PR exercise. That's because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance. Public Relations is just that - relating information to the public at large. If you discover that the language you are using is not getting the message across, then you have to alter the language to succeed. Otherwise you simply get drowned out by people who are betting at language, but not necessarily better at science.
In case you hadn't noticed, the number of scientists in the world vs the number of 'laypeople' is somewhat disproportionate. scientists don't often get to pick the lessons that taught to the public, especially when a bit of controversy can be stirred up instead. Or the latest news about who's fucking paris hilton.
And this whole continual argument about how bad governments are at regulating stuff really gets up my nose as well. In what way are private businesses good at regulating anything?! The only thing private organisations regulate successfully is skimming as much profit off the rest of the world as they possibly can. Free markets only price short term costs, they have no model for pricing the long term impact of what they produce - certainly not without regulation and laws laid down by a strong government willing to take on special interests. Which are sadly few and far between.
I've run out of steam now, and I know that this will make no difference to anyone's opinion whatsoever. But i feel a smidgen better ...
or how about, as adults, we have a responsibility to have learnt the difference between teasing someone in a way that is acceptable to them and fun, versus being offensive whatever guise that might take. The difference between being an adult and being a child is that as a child you are learning what is acceptable in life through experience, it's part of growing up.
Somewhere along the line kids should learn to treat other people with respect, and not tease them unless they have an appropriate relationship with those people.
It's not difficult.
That's assuming you run xp or vista of course ... otherwise streaming is all your allowed. Which is a PITA
yeah, the difference being that if you search without the quotes, google returns a shedload of results. Cuil still returns nothing:
cuil search
google search
I think this is also about what you are used to, and how you learn to interact with the written word and research in general. As today's younger generations grow up being more used to everything being available on line, they will demand content to be available online and be able to work with it as effectively (if not more so given storage, cross referencing, dynamic searching etc).
I'm with you, I much prefer reading stuff on paper. I'm just not convinced that it will hold true in years to come.
I don't see what this has to do with society being lost though?
I think you mean cue ;-)
maybe you should've patented the idea? ;-)
Had they not heard of PDF?! Why anyone would publish Word, ODF, or anything like this I don't understand. Convert to PDF, and job done.
http://www.kdawebservices.com/ - I use them for a bunch of domains, imap and the like. I dunno about price competition though, I am too lazy to worry about it once I find a price I am happy to pay.
Sadly doesn't cover my MBP that I bought 3 months ago. I spent a fruitless day trawling the web trying to find a way to resolve this problem (Matshita DVD-R UJ-857). Apparently the guy who used to do a lot of this work for the mac dvd drives retired, and no one has taken up the mantle yet.
...
I know that the standards are what they are, but it really f**ks me off when this comes up with laptops. The whole point of having a laptop is that I can travel with it, I buy all my dvds, I just happen to buy some in the US, some in the UK, a couple in Thailand, and some in New Zealand. And I bloody well should be able to.
My plan is to look into buying a drive for the mbp pro that can be modified, it's an annoying expense, but I think will be worth it
agreed ... I have in excess of 100,000 emails - google desktop has found me half remembered threads dozens of times. And tbh I've actually got to the point where it's good for just digging out recent emails, as it's quicker than faffing with my folders and the like
surely the point is not that the earth is fragile, but that our (human) existence on the earth is fragile.
but one of the advantages of the additional channels for the bbc is that they can actually produce new and innovative shows to experiment with, and then take them to the major terestrial channels if they are successful. Much as used to happen with BBC2 to BBC1, you now have have BBC3 to BBC1 or BBC2. And BBC4 has some awesome stuff on it, so long as you are accepting of the concept that TV Shows don't all have to last 25 minutes and have lots of flashing lights
heh, I think my roots of being a city boy have been exposed - you are right of course that ordnance survey are much more useful when you aren't talking about urban areas! ;-)
I have to say I think that their maps are a damnsight easier to read by not being ordnance survey maps ... the way they colour everything is very clean, and makes things a lot clearer.
;-)
just my tuppence worth
that was something that really surprised me when I first saw a movie in the cinema in the States, just trailers and no adverts!!
over in the UK, typically a film starts around half an hour after the advertised time (adverts 20 mins, trailers 10 mins).
it drives me nuts, particularly as I go quite a lot, and the commercial reels don't get changed that frequently!
hmmm, perhaps I didn't word my initial statement very clearly, in an attempt at brevity. What I was trying to point out that is that just because some people are willing to pay a particular price for a product, doesn't mean that the product is actually worth it. But clearly that's actually a bit of a pointless thing to say as it is rather obvious, and also what underlies the basic principle of the demand side of supply and demand. So feel free to ignore it!
;-)
I am curious to know why you think my sentiments on prices moving slowly in response to demand changes is nonsense. Surely the very fact that we are still yet to see an adequate response to the potential change in distribution (and subsequently prices) is evidence of this? We've started to see changes in the distribution of music with the like of iTunes, but the prices for that are the same as if you bought a physical product.
I never actually described DVDs as being over-priced, I merely described it as a "high-end" price point to illustrate the contrast with the low-end of free. Personally I hope a middle ground is achieved. I think DVDs are a tad over-priced, but with squeezed retail margins at places like amazon, it's not too bad.
The "conspiracy" you feel I alluded to is not worthy of the title conspiracy. Which is why I didn't use the word. What I am referring to is the fact that the bigger studios have a vested interest in maintaining their current production and distribution models. They also have little incentive to compete on price, and typically don't (I am talking like for like new releases here, as opposed to back catalogue releases, although these tend to be similarly priced across the studios as well of course).
anyway, all very tedious, I think insted of going back to playing a video game, I might get back to work
wrong. A product is not "worth" exactly how much somebody is willing to pay for it. A product can be priced at that value - but any product is worth something different to any given individual. The principles of supply and demand describe the willingness of producers and consumers to produce and consume at differing price points. i.e. producers will produce more the higher the price, consumers will consume more the lower the price.
...
The concept of supply and demand is bandied around on slashdot like some kind of panacea to all questions related to markets. People thing that because they understand this simple concept they have the answer to all the problems that various markets experience, such as the movie or music industry trying to deal with the new supply model of the internet.
The trouble here of course is that supply and demand only works when applied to completely free markets, and only over a period of time. And it's this second point that people don't seem to get. Supply and demand rules do not apply instantaneously, making sure that we always get the most efficient price point for a product. It can take years for this to be found as new producers enter markets, some drop out, each with differing pricing models and subtley different products.
right now with movies, we have a high-end price point on DVDs, which a lot of people aren't happy to pay. Because there isn't any competition between the big movie studios (i.e. they all belong to the same organisations, stick to the same price points etc) there is no movement in innovation and new pricing points, which leads to a thriving black market, where people are essentially getting stuff for free. Because no supply currently exists where the middleman is removed, and the pricing point is lower, it is impossible to judge where supply and demand will lead us, and whether a suitable pricing model can be established which means that a sufficiently high number of consumers will pay the new low price point to support continued production.
Time will tell
well there's always the oakley thump sunglasses - not so helpful in the dark, but certainly more practical than the hack. Pity about the capacity of course ;-)
this is actually one of those movies where trying to be a purist is going to be nigh on impossible - what do you consider to be the original source material, the books, or the radio plays?! Given that DNA is also credited with the bulk of what has made it into the movie, so I don't think it can be dismissed in the same way.
...
and the trailer looks pretty damn cool
Walmart bought asda ... if they wanted to take over, they really should've got tesco instead
It's the same as driving a car, but not having the faintest idea how to fill up the tank or washer fluid, or to check the oil etc. If a person knows how a device works then they are less likely to have a problem using it or to be afraid of it.
no it's not. Checking the oil, filling up with gas etc would be more analogous(sp?) to clearing out temp files, keeping the computer patched, knowing not to run exe files from the untrusted sources, that kind of thing.
Being able to program simple files would be something like changing a spark plug, changing the filters etc. Something that you can do with a little bit of understanding, but really something that most people leave to the mechanic when they get the car serviced.
Baby Geniuses 2?!?!! There was one before this?!
ye gods.
I still find that every now and then, all the text renders way over to the right of the white background ... it's intermittent, but annoying when it happens. Shift refresh generally sorts it though ..
no his name was Inigo ... I've got the book right in front of me that says so ...