Seems fair to me since each view probably costs them more than just bandwidth and they probably have to give up something to the content providers and the content providers may have even specified that free prime accounts can't have it.
So far they have done it right. DRM mp3s, fast and cheap books and a decent selection of 3rd parties selling on their site to cater for more rare searches.
My only complaint would be the Kindle. Technically it's perfect but I wish they'd treat books like MP3s and give us DRM free PDFs like O'Reilly.
Re:Another great Python 3.x series release
on
Python 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
With the likes of Linode if you can't afford a VPS then you're are total small timer and certainly not a corporation which means porting to 3x shouldn't be an issue.
Re:Another great Python 3.x series release
on
Python 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Except for the fact the previously mentioned C# is increasingly growing in popularity as is Python. I'm sure corporations that think IE6 is still a good browser don't mind a language never growing but the rest of the world likes their languages to evolve and grow.
If they're so worried about space then why do they insist on the big ass download bar to remind you what you have downloaded? That should go before anything else.
Whether it's an hd, ssd or optical disc only a few people really care enough to secure their data and in the end if you want to make sure no one gets it the physically destroy the media when you're done. It's the safest way for all of them.
Let's face it as much as game companies talk a bout catering for adults they don't and this why a mature game as a movie would be viewed as needing to be PG-13 so it's easier for the kids to watch it. Fuck that, let's actually cater to adults and then maybe it won't be an issue if game based movies are R-rated.
While it may be true that we could lose a few people on this planet but it still more unfair to significantly raise the price of a food which will affect more people and probably sop more people from eating veg and living with poorer health.
Not everyone wastes petrol and drives unnecessarily but a lot of people do. I believe there is less reason to punish people globally by raising fuel prices instead of limiting people's wasteful driving.
Why should everyone deal with higher food prices especially healthy foods we shouldn't discourage people from eating? Fuck the lazy and make them drive less and build up superior public transportation. It's not like the whole world has too much food and we'd only be converting waste.
You simply don't need to drive your big ass SUV down the road to the shop. When the petrol runs out then tough luck. Walk more fatties.
I much prefer paying the real price for a laptop with my macbook and not having the shit software installed and as an added bonus I get a laptop that's not cheap plastic rubbish.
Google have made a nice short clear screen warning you of everything but no one pays attention to it and it's just yet another screen to click through to get the app you want. I suspect if you asked people what their apps were doing they wouldn't have a clue. Of course it's no longer Google's problem and it's the idiot user who opted to completely ignore the warnings.
Seriously, I'd rather pay someone to beat children with a sack of door knobs than pay for porn. If they guy wants money he should pick a career where people aren't happy to give up the goods for free.
The definition of an application is "a program that gives a computer instructions that provide the user with tools to accomplish a task;" and the definition of a program is "a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute;"
As far as I'm concerned everything mentioned falls under those definitions. Google provides web apps which are apps taht run on the web just as you'd expect. Their apps aren't websites. Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it a website. Though arguably a web page could be an application by the strictest form of the definition.
Most people I know consider an app a smaller application and an application to be a larger program so even then it's not taking anything away from 'standard' applications. I'm not sure why anyone other than some grumpy old man would get their panties in a wad about this.
Not really. You've asked Google to show you some of their data by using your search term which means very little without Google's data. By all means index the web yourself and then it's your data.
What other search engine is there in the eyes of most people? Alta Vista is just Yahoo which uses Bing. Not only that it would appear Bing was the only one doing this. So until some other search engine cheekily pinches results from Google then why would they mention any other?
Do you think a Nobel peace prize should go towards people who cater to corporations over citizens, start questionable wars or would prefer people who have had cancer shouldn't be able to get healthcare? That would discredit the award immensely,
You could argue that. But any benefit was over by 1934. Also, please name a worse harm.
I'd argue the Microsoft monopoly was worse. Sure people haven't been stopped from communicating but they have been given a tool that locks them into proprietary formats, an insecure system, generally allow around inferior system with back-doors for the government and even to this day MS is still using their browser lock-in to gain advantages elsewhere (ie pinching Google search results).
You can argue that Google is approach monopoly status and any competition is good but Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and anyone else isn't able to gain the advantage MS has by having their browser built in and trying to push Bing on people.
By MS being the one to potentially topple Google it will then be exceptionally harder to topple Bing once that is tightly tied into their system and again comeptition will be stiffled.
Thanks to their piles of money they can jump into any market like game consoles, mobile phones or anything and keep marching forward with unpopular products until they get lucky and once they do it will be hard to get them out.
IE6 has helped make web development harder for no good reason, made the web more insecure (for its users) and I feel it's held the internet back.
I think we going to find it much harder to rid ourselves of MS and their tactics than it was to bust up AT&T.
I'd also argue the US mobile phone market is a mess that probably will never go away. The whole idea that you effectively don't own your phone can't take it to any network is a joke especially considering how expensive they can be.
Note that government does fuck up national defense and road building. I don't advocate that the government do these things because they are more competent, but because the conflicts of interest in a private national defense or road system are somewhat likely to cause problems.
Telecommunications is different in that many rival systems can operate at the same time. Hence, it is far more conducive to private operation and market competition. As a matter of national security, I would advocate private ownership and operation due to the natural incompetence of government.
To be fair they can only operate in the same at the same time and in the same space largely in part to government intervention that allowed them to take parts of people's land to lay lines and part of which came from AT&T's beginnings. If we started all over or even stopped right of way and companies had to negotiate with each land owner you can be certain they negotiate for exclusive rights.
Just look at the remarkable developments in telecomms since 1984. At the very least, US citizens in AT&T coverage areas could have owned a telephone before 1984 (there was an explosion in style and variation of regular telephones in the late 80s). Long distance service would have probably improved greatly. Cell phone development would probably have been a bit quicker too.
I think part of that is down to the fact AT&T had a monopoly to begin with which is why I argued that the problems with AT&T weren't the worst problem we've had.
Again the US mobile phone market. It is in no way consumer friendly. The US is typically cheaper than Europe and espepecially the UK in virtually everything except one thing and that is mobile phones. The US pays more for less minutes / text / data, pays more for the phone which you may not necessarily be able to take to another network and pays to receive calls unlike landlines.
Really there is no reason it should be that way considering all the competition but where is the incentive to change? The UK at least has sensibly regulated mobile phones and there is no way to keep users through lock-in. You own your phone and your number and can take either with you easily to any network at no cost. So the only thing they have t compete with is p
FCC was instrumental in creating the AT&T monopoly, the single most harmful communication action in US history by anyone business or government. Do you yet see why I don't agree?
I'd argue that isn't the case because the Kingsbury Commitment put that monopoly in place before the FCC existed.
The idea was that they'd give up their controlling share of western union which at least stops them controlling two forms of communication, it was probably quite instrumental in the quick growth of phone services within the US and I think things like the US nationalising the phone network for WWI and then gave it back to AT&T as a private company at which point it was effectively a monopoly and this was still before the FCC.
I'm not saying the FCC didn't do anything wrong but the US was well on it's way to take AT&T's advice to let them run as a monopoly for the benefit of the nation before the FCC existed and because there was some initial benefit I'm not sure if it's the worst thing to ever happen.
This is a remarkably stupid argument that crops up frequently when someone proposes modest government restrictions. After all, telecommunications are neither road systems nor military infrastructure. So we can't weaken any government regulation of US citizens and businesses because government is better at running roads and national defense?
Sure except for the fact roads and telecommunications are equally important and the US would never have been a super power without either.
Also people can't go around saying the government fucks up everything and then think that actually they should run two very important aspect. It's partly due to the fact people know toll roads and the costs will shoot through the roof. Even if everything stays the same all that tax money that is wrongly going towards roads from other sources including tobacco taxes (when that money should go towards healthcare) would disappear and the slack would have to be taken up by drivers. They don't want that so it's ok to let the government control the roads.
Where as the reality is telecommunications are just as important as the roads and even the military. If the idea of the government having its hands on telecommunications is laughable then yes it applies to the other two as well.
How about fast food? Should government be responsible for making all our burgers and french fries? Of course not. Private business is more than adequate for stuffing us with all the cheap, greasy food we could desire.
Fast food isn't a necessity that needs to be created by the government but it certainly, like all foods, needs to be regulated to ensure it's safe. Just look at Taco Bell getting caught out for trying to pass off its meat as beef. That's with regulation. What sort of stuff would they get up to if they were completely free to do what they want?
Neither observation helps us in the matter of ISPs because: 1) They aren't run by government, but regulated. Almost everyone agrees in some degree of government regulation. 2) Even though there are legitimate government roles, doesn't mean that a new role is or should be legitimate. 3) It also matters how government comes to some action. Here, the FCC has decided by whim that it can regulate ISPs to enforce something it calls "net neutrality". It's power is solely delegated by Congress. My opinion is that Congress needs to explicitly empower the FCC before they can regulate ISPs in such a way.
I agree there needs to be better definition to what the FCC does. I don't think the FCC should be able to censor content but it should be able to ensure there is net neutrality and that I have the same opportunities as Google to run a business online rather than my traffic being limited because I don't have a hope in hell of matching Google's funds.
So then it's ok for the government to grow bigger, more unmanageabl
Yes and no. Search indeed is better for the iPhone but last time I had a look through Google's market for, what I believe was the utilities category, I literally had to sift through tons of the same sort of calendar app which I believe came from the same person. They were slight variations like women in bikini calendar, blonde women calendar, black women calendar, etc. The games category was filled with a ton of pointless credits for some game.
If they'd at least find a way to spot very similar apps (especially those by the same developer) and only show one with an option to expand on that for those that may want the repetition that alone would help a lot.
Of course they arise naturally because most people are generally selfish especially on what they consider important issues. That doesn't mean we should just accept it and say nothing can be done to improve it.
I'd rather 100 congressmen simply decide to vote against something than 1 party decides that 100 congressmen must vote a certain way and tow the party line. I rather than people decide that one guy is better because he wants to ban abortion (even if I'm for it) than the idea that they're voting for a guy just because he's in a certain party without actually thinking about what he stands for.
Banning political parties won't magically make things perfect but I think they will improve things. For starters can you remove primaries where you only have to cater to a small subset of people and then the whole nation has only two men to choose between where in reality they may have preferred someone who lost in the primaries.
Sure you can argue the guy wasn't popular enough amongst his own people but for instance one of the other republican candidates may have been more popular with the whole nation in comparison to McCain even if he was more popular amongst republicans in the primaries.
Slashdot Mirror
You've never heard of sarcasm have you?
Seems fair to me since each view probably costs them more than just bandwidth and they probably have to give up something to the content providers and the content providers may have even specified that free prime accounts can't have it.
So far they have done it right. DRM mp3s, fast and cheap books and a decent selection of 3rd parties selling on their site to cater for more rare searches.
My only complaint would be the Kindle. Technically it's perfect but I wish they'd treat books like MP3s and give us DRM free PDFs like O'Reilly.
With the likes of Linode if you can't afford a VPS then you're are total small timer and certainly not a corporation which means porting to 3x shouldn't be an issue.
Except for the fact the previously mentioned C# is increasingly growing in popularity as is Python. I'm sure corporations that think IE6 is still a good browser don't mind a language never growing but the rest of the world likes their languages to evolve and grow.
If they're so worried about space then why do they insist on the big ass download bar to remind you what you have downloaded? That should go before anything else.
Whether it's an hd, ssd or optical disc only a few people really care enough to secure their data and in the end if you want to make sure no one gets it the physically destroy the media when you're done. It's the safest way for all of them.
Let's face it as much as game companies talk a bout catering for adults they don't and this why a mature game as a movie would be viewed as needing to be PG-13 so it's easier for the kids to watch it. Fuck that, let's actually cater to adults and then maybe it won't be an issue if game based movies are R-rated.
While it may be true that we could lose a few people on this planet but it still more unfair to significantly raise the price of a food which will affect more people and probably sop more people from eating veg and living with poorer health.
Not everyone wastes petrol and drives unnecessarily but a lot of people do. I believe there is less reason to punish people globally by raising fuel prices instead of limiting people's wasteful driving.
Why should everyone deal with higher food prices especially healthy foods we shouldn't discourage people from eating? Fuck the lazy and make them drive less and build up superior public transportation. It's not like the whole world has too much food and we'd only be converting waste.
You simply don't need to drive your big ass SUV down the road to the shop. When the petrol runs out then tough luck. Walk more fatties.
I much prefer paying the real price for a laptop with my macbook and not having the shit software installed and as an added bonus I get a laptop that's not cheap plastic rubbish.
You already pay it you tit.
Google have made a nice short clear screen warning you of everything but no one pays attention to it and it's just yet another screen to click through to get the app you want. I suspect if you asked people what their apps were doing they wouldn't have a clue. Of course it's no longer Google's problem and it's the idiot user who opted to completely ignore the warnings.
Seriously, I'd rather pay someone to beat children with a sack of door knobs than pay for porn. If they guy wants money he should pick a career where people aren't happy to give up the goods for free.
The definition of an application is "a program that gives a computer instructions that provide the user with tools to accomplish a task;" and the definition of a program is "a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute;"
As far as I'm concerned everything mentioned falls under those definitions. Google provides web apps which are apps taht run on the web just as you'd expect. Their apps aren't websites. Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it a website. Though arguably a web page could be an application by the strictest form of the definition.
Most people I know consider an app a smaller application and an application to be a larger program so even then it's not taking anything away from 'standard' applications. I'm not sure why anyone other than some grumpy old man would get their panties in a wad about this.
I presume it would be easier on Windows anyway so who cares?
Not really. You've asked Google to show you some of their data by using your search term which means very little without Google's data. By all means index the web yourself and then it's your data.
What other search engine is there in the eyes of most people? Alta Vista is just Yahoo which uses Bing. Not only that it would appear Bing was the only one doing this. So until some other search engine cheekily pinches results from Google then why would they mention any other?
Do you think a Nobel peace prize should go towards people who cater to corporations over citizens, start questionable wars or would prefer people who have had cancer shouldn't be able to get healthcare? That would discredit the award immensely,
You could argue that. But any benefit was over by 1934. Also, please name a worse harm.
I'd argue the Microsoft monopoly was worse. Sure people haven't been stopped from communicating but they have been given a tool that locks them into proprietary formats, an insecure system, generally allow around inferior system with back-doors for the government and even to this day MS is still using their browser lock-in to gain advantages elsewhere (ie pinching Google search results).
You can argue that Google is approach monopoly status and any competition is good but Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and anyone else isn't able to gain the advantage MS has by having their browser built in and trying to push Bing on people.
By MS being the one to potentially topple Google it will then be exceptionally harder to topple Bing once that is tightly tied into their system and again comeptition will be stiffled.
Thanks to their piles of money they can jump into any market like game consoles, mobile phones or anything and keep marching forward with unpopular products until they get lucky and once they do it will be hard to get them out.
IE6 has helped make web development harder for no good reason, made the web more insecure (for its users) and I feel it's held the internet back.
I think we going to find it much harder to rid ourselves of MS and their tactics than it was to bust up AT&T.
I'd also argue the US mobile phone market is a mess that probably will never go away. The whole idea that you effectively don't own your phone can't take it to any network is a joke especially considering how expensive they can be.
Note that government does fuck up national defense and road building. I don't advocate that the government do these things because they are more competent, but because the conflicts of interest in a private national defense or road system are somewhat likely to cause problems.
Telecommunications is different in that many rival systems can operate at the same time. Hence, it is far more conducive to private operation and market competition. As a matter of national security, I would advocate private ownership and operation due to the natural incompetence of government.
To be fair they can only operate in the same at the same time and in the same space largely in part to government intervention that allowed them to take parts of people's land to lay lines and part of which came from AT&T's beginnings. If we started all over or even stopped right of way and companies had to negotiate with each land owner you can be certain they negotiate for exclusive rights.
Just look at the remarkable developments in telecomms since 1984. At the very least, US citizens in AT&T coverage areas could have owned a telephone before 1984 (there was an explosion in style and variation of regular telephones in the late 80s). Long distance service would have probably improved greatly. Cell phone development would probably have been a bit quicker too.
I think part of that is down to the fact AT&T had a monopoly to begin with which is why I argued that the problems with AT&T weren't the worst problem we've had.
Again the US mobile phone market. It is in no way consumer friendly. The US is typically cheaper than Europe and espepecially the UK in virtually everything except one thing and that is mobile phones. The US pays more for less minutes / text / data, pays more for the phone which you may not necessarily be able to take to another network and pays to receive calls unlike landlines.
Really there is no reason it should be that way considering all the competition but where is the incentive to change? The UK at least has sensibly regulated mobile phones and there is no way to keep users through lock-in. You own your phone and your number and can take either with you easily to any network at no cost. So the only thing they have t compete with is p
FCC was instrumental in creating the AT&T monopoly, the single most harmful communication action in US history by anyone business or government. Do you yet see why I don't agree?
I'd argue that isn't the case because the Kingsbury Commitment put that monopoly in place before the FCC existed.
The idea was that they'd give up their controlling share of western union which at least stops them controlling two forms of communication, it was probably quite instrumental in the quick growth of phone services within the US and I think things like the US nationalising the phone network for WWI and then gave it back to AT&T as a private company at which point it was effectively a monopoly and this was still before the FCC.
I'm not saying the FCC didn't do anything wrong but the US was well on it's way to take AT&T's advice to let them run as a monopoly for the benefit of the nation before the FCC existed and because there was some initial benefit I'm not sure if it's the worst thing to ever happen.
This is a remarkably stupid argument that crops up frequently when someone proposes modest government restrictions. After all, telecommunications are neither road systems nor military infrastructure. So we can't weaken any government regulation of US citizens and businesses because government is better at running roads and national defense?
Sure except for the fact roads and telecommunications are equally important and the US would never have been a super power without either.
Also people can't go around saying the government fucks up everything and then think that actually they should run two very important aspect. It's partly due to the fact people know toll roads and the costs will shoot through the roof. Even if everything stays the same all that tax money that is wrongly going towards roads from other sources including tobacco taxes (when that money should go towards healthcare) would disappear and the slack would have to be taken up by drivers. They don't want that so it's ok to let the government control the roads.
Where as the reality is telecommunications are just as important as the roads and even the military. If the idea of the government having its hands on telecommunications is laughable then yes it applies to the other two as well.
How about fast food? Should government be responsible for making all our burgers and french fries? Of course not. Private business is more than adequate for stuffing us with all the cheap, greasy food we could desire.
Fast food isn't a necessity that needs to be created by the government but it certainly, like all foods, needs to be regulated to ensure it's safe. Just look at Taco Bell getting caught out for trying to pass off its meat as beef. That's with regulation. What sort of stuff would they get up to if they were completely free to do what they want?
Neither observation helps us in the matter of ISPs because: 1) They aren't run by government, but regulated. Almost everyone agrees in some degree of government regulation. 2) Even though there are legitimate government roles, doesn't mean that a new role is or should be legitimate. 3) It also matters how government comes to some action. Here, the FCC has decided by whim that it can regulate ISPs to enforce something it calls "net neutrality". It's power is solely delegated by Congress. My opinion is that Congress needs to explicitly empower the FCC before they can regulate ISPs in such a way.
I agree there needs to be better definition to what the FCC does. I don't think the FCC should be able to censor content but it should be able to ensure there is net neutrality and that I have the same opportunities as Google to run a business online rather than my traffic being limited because I don't have a hope in hell of matching Google's funds.
So then it's ok for the government to grow bigger, more unmanageabl
Yes and no. Search indeed is better for the iPhone but last time I had a look through Google's market for, what I believe was the utilities category, I literally had to sift through tons of the same sort of calendar app which I believe came from the same person. They were slight variations like women in bikini calendar, blonde women calendar, black women calendar, etc. The games category was filled with a ton of pointless credits for some game.
If they'd at least find a way to spot very similar apps (especially those by the same developer) and only show one with an option to expand on that for those that may want the repetition that alone would help a lot.
Of course they arise naturally because most people are generally selfish especially on what they consider important issues. That doesn't mean we should just accept it and say nothing can be done to improve it.
I'd rather 100 congressmen simply decide to vote against something than 1 party decides that 100 congressmen must vote a certain way and tow the party line. I rather than people decide that one guy is better because he wants to ban abortion (even if I'm for it) than the idea that they're voting for a guy just because he's in a certain party without actually thinking about what he stands for.
Banning political parties won't magically make things perfect but I think they will improve things. For starters can you remove primaries where you only have to cater to a small subset of people and then the whole nation has only two men to choose between where in reality they may have preferred someone who lost in the primaries.
Sure you can argue the guy wasn't popular enough amongst his own people but for instance one of the other republican candidates may have been more popular with the whole nation in comparison to McCain even if he was more popular amongst republicans in the primaries.
It's a country maybe that POF operates in (possibly with an office set up there) and would be friendly to their lawsuit?
If only weight was the only problem. It's a free site so it attracts the dregs of society.