... they already have over 1% of the population in prison. Maybe they can't technically get everyone, but they sure as hell are trying.
Interestingly, I wonder what the tipping point is when the US simply cannot afford to put any more people into incarceration. I wonder how much tax as a percentage is spent on putting people into prison?
Actually I think it shows that they are getting more and more scared - which can only be because the people are getting more and more agitated. These folks act in reaction to perceived threats to them and their jobs. If they are cracking down by trying to pass these over-reaching laws it can only mean that they are losing a large amount of control and power on this front. On one hand it is good, I believe in power to the people - though within reason, but on the other hand it brings us one step closer to an Orwellian state which is scary.
... and all those VMware fees would come in handy.
And there is nothing wrong with that in my books. If anything, it's a great thing. Some big-wig wants to buy an island, migrates [some of] the company to open source and in doing so shows many smaller businesses that it is possible, it works and they feel more confident the next time some geek makes a suggestion like that in a meeting.
I am personally very tired of pushback from management based purely on the fact that they don't understand technology and have been trained to think that the best product must have the biggest price tag.
A nation should be able to retaliate against attack.
I think the old saying "If you play with fire, you might get burnt..." applies here. Do I think it is right, yes and no at the same time. Just because the hacker is sitting in an office typing on a keyboard doesn't mean he/she isn't inflicting real world harm on others in another part of the world. At the same time, I think it would likely be a huge escalation to go from something being hacked to dropping a bomb - but that's not to say that dumb things don't happen - especially when politicians are involved.
I think anyone who is doing harm to another country, whether it is with a rifle and boots, or with a keyboard and an internet connection is fair game.
Got to love those politicians. Unwitting, often clueless but trying their best. God bless em, cause blessings are probably in short order from elsewhere.
Yeah, I sort of think that that statement actually makes my point even stronger. Look at how many millions Microsoft has put into Silverlight. Now, if they only have a handful of sites using it, they can only make money back off those same sites. Lets face it, the only reason that Netflix would choose to adopt a new technology is if it made it cheaper for them. Even iTunes pissed off the studios by offering DRM free content because they saw it would make them more money.
If everyone starts using DRM, a site will pop up that doesn't use it if there is a want of it from the consumers.
It will just be another technology that ends up falling on it's face while sucking money out of the corporations while they try to get it adopted as the mainstream or most adopted technology. If they are good for all, they will get used. If they aren't, why on earth would a developer use them? Every W3C set of standards has a bunch of tags that no-one in their right mind uses - or they come up with great new ways to get what they want out of them. I mean as an example (though it never made it into W3C) but look at Silverlight, Microsoft tried to take the market away from Flash, invested heavily into Silverlight, no doubt paid a LOT of developers to use their stuff, I found for a while a bunch of free downloads that "asked" to install Silverlight along with their code.
Look at these stats:
According to statowl.com, Microsoft Silverlight has a penetration of 64.16% on May 2011. Usage on July 2010 was 53.54%, whereas Adobe Flash is installed on 95.26% of browsers, and Java support is available on 76.51% of browsers (May 2011); these statistics makes Adobe Flash the market leader in terms of penetration.[20] As of 26 August 2011, 0.3% sites are using Silverlight,[21] whereas site usage of Adobe Flash is around 27%.
That's because the Australian regulations add to the development costs of games.
To legally sell in Australia they have to go trough a ton of legal bullshit your elected officials inflict in the name of 'The Children'.
Really? So how about all the non-game software, how about Adobe, Microsoft and many others? From the article:
“If you go to Apple’s iTunes and buy Macklemore’s song Same Love, which is number two in the Australian charts, it’s 69 cents in the US and over $2 in Australia,” he said.
“[And] we found it cost $5795 more to buy Microsoft’s Visual Studio software in Australia compared with the US. These are downloaded products with no Australian labour involved and no local distribution costs – it’s simply a matter of where the computer server thinks you’re coming from.”
Can't agree with this more. We had a similar experience withinmy company when a lot of the in-house support and dev guys were replaced with (much) cheaper contractors. They did the entire handover nicely, showed the new guys the ropes and moved into other roles or other companies. The new contractors of course are giving the quality of service as is being paid for - so many of our systems are suffering constant delays, SLAs are being missed and there is a strong push from within the business side to re-hire some of the folks that were let go. Of course, now to get them back, the salaries will have to be extra competitive as we want those exact folks back.
Sometimes cheaper is not really cheaper. I would say do a great job of handing over the project as best you can, let the new guy take the reigns. If it works out, great, if not, the company will probably want you back in short order anyhow. You can even look at it as an opportunity. Why not offer to stay on with a retainer, let the new guy handle all the gruntwork, but offer to explain or guide him/her for an hourly fee if needed. Assuming the do improve over time, you will be able to work in a new company at your normal rate and still get a small fee from this older company.
The Opposition policy is to extend FTTN which will put in place a good speed at each exchange. While I prefer the Labour policy of FTTH, even with a FTTN, my exchange will greatly improve in speed. Currently, at dawn, I can download a file at around 1.5 megabytes a second - however in the afternoon between five and ten, that speed is slashed to around 100 kilobytes at most. That simply means that the exchange is getting smashed and the throughput there is suffering. Again, I would prefer FTTH, but FTTN will still greatly improve my speeds at all times (especially the commonly used ones) of the day.
Amazon Instant has most of those shows the day after air without ads for a couple of bucks per episode.
Amazon Instant Video (formerly Amazon Video On Demand) is an Internet video on demand service, only available in the United States.
Emphasis mine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Instant_Video. Having said that, it sounds decent. Bit of a shame that they only provide the files in a format that plays on a limited number of devices:
The optional Amazon Unbox player lets users download higher-quality copies of videos. The Unbox player is compatible only with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Downloaded films include a full-resolution video file and can include a lower-resolution copy for portable devices. The content can be viewed using the Amazon Unbox Video Player, Windows Media Player, a Windows Media Center Extender such as an Xbox 360, a PlaysForSure portable device. Downloaded videos may be burned to a DVD for storage purposes, but the resulting DVD will not play on a DVD player.
So yes, a step in the right direction, but as per my original comment, the P2P community is still offering a better product. Me personally, I would be happy to pay that $2 per episode to get a decent quality mkv or even mp4 and be able to store it on my server and watch it via my WD media player.
can you name 2 shows you would be willing to pay say $5 a month for
That's my point, not a month, but either per episode or per season - and yes.
Off the top of my head: Archer, Dexter, Walking Dead, Falling Skies, Revolution, Game of Thrones, Castle, American Horror Story, Big Bang Theory.
If I could download a decent quality (doesn't have to be super duper 1080p or anything like that) at the time it comes out and without a plethora of ads in it for $1 per episode, or get access to the whole season for say $15 or $20, I would gladly do so. Makes it easy for me to watch what I want to, and at the same time I can be smug in knowing that my money is supporting the shows that I like. It is a total WIN-WIN scenario.
Its all about control. they are losing it and the masses have it.
Absolutely. The problem is that the only way that they can wrest control back from the masses is to *at least* provide the same thing that they do. Make it even better, and the masses will give them control back.
cultural birthright from the parasitic rent-seeking content cartels
I can't agree with this. You can't tell me that the latest boy band single that comes out is your birthright. It is a paradoxically impossible question. If you put the punishment for copyright infrigement at a "reasonable" amount - say, 10 times the price of the CD/whatever it comes on, then it costs more to chase the punishment than it does to get it back. If you put the punishment at a level where it potentially becomes financially feasible for the copyright owner to chase it down, then it is an asinine figure for the actual infringement.
The only solution that I see is for the media companies to make their products so accessible that it is simply no longer WORTH bothering to download it illegally, but the problem is that the folks who put torrents or downloads online do such a damn good job that is makes competing with them very difficult.
Speculation, but very likely. These sort of folks have to do something basically *criminal* to be fired. Anything else is a note saying you have [insert number] days to tender a resignation. Firing someone at that level generally looks bad on the company doing it, so they prefer to let the person resign themselves - and it most often works in favor of the person as well, so they take up the offer.
... and totally won't just go do the same kind of shit elsewhere.
Actually, I think you might underestimate how "big companies" look to other "big companies" to see what to do and what not to do. If this was some little dev house, no it wouldn't make a difference in the world. Given that it is such a large company, others might actually take some notice.
Also, there is a good chance that given such a negative dismissal, he is going to find it harder to get into the next position. Not to say that he won't, but it likely won't be as good as he had hoped for.
Possible, but more likely that it branched away from another more abundant form, filled a niche in and was pretty much forgotten about by everything else. Not to say that it couldn't well be an exceptionally early form that simply never changed.
Newsflash: there are more than 2 parties in the US [wikipedia.org]. Most Americans are too uneducated or too brainwashed by television to realize that though...
A two-party system often develops in a plurality voting system. In this system, voters have a single vote, which they can cast for a single candidate in their district, in which only one legislative seat is available. In plurality voting (i.e. first past the post), in which the winner of the seat is determined purely by the candidate with the most votes, several characteristics can serve to discourage the development of third parties and reward the two major parties.
Duverger suggests two reasons this voting system favors a two party system. One is the result of the "fusion" (or an alliance very much like fusion) of the weak parties, and the other is the "elimination" of weak parties by the voters, by which he means that voters gradually desert the weak parties on the grounds that they have no chance of winning.....
An[other] example was seen in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, when Ross Perot's candidacy received zero electoral votes despite getting 19% of the popular vote.
Slashdot Mirror
... they already have over 1% of the population in prison. Maybe they can't technically get everyone, but they sure as hell are trying.
Interestingly, I wonder what the tipping point is when the US simply cannot afford to put any more people into incarceration. I wonder how much tax as a percentage is spent on putting people into prison?
Actually I think it shows that they are getting more and more scared - which can only be because the people are getting more and more agitated. These folks act in reaction to perceived threats to them and their jobs. If they are cracking down by trying to pass these over-reaching laws it can only mean that they are losing a large amount of control and power on this front. On one hand it is good, I believe in power to the people - though within reason, but on the other hand it brings us one step closer to an Orwellian state which is scary.
It's what plants crave!!
... and all those VMware fees would come in handy.
And there is nothing wrong with that in my books. If anything, it's a great thing. Some big-wig wants to buy an island, migrates [some of] the company to open source and in doing so shows many smaller businesses that it is possible, it works and they feel more confident the next time some geek makes a suggestion like that in a meeting.
I am personally very tired of pushback from management based purely on the fact that they don't understand technology and have been trained to think that the best product must have the biggest price tag.
A joke shared between two employees does not a mountain of bad press make. Firing the employees for cracking a joke does.
A nation should be able to retaliate against attack.
I think the old saying "If you play with fire, you might get burnt..." applies here. Do I think it is right, yes and no at the same time. Just because the hacker is sitting in an office typing on a keyboard doesn't mean he/she isn't inflicting real world harm on others in another part of the world. At the same time, I think it would likely be a huge escalation to go from something being hacked to dropping a bomb - but that's not to say that dumb things don't happen - especially when politicians are involved.
I think anyone who is doing harm to another country, whether it is with a rifle and boots, or with a keyboard and an internet connection is fair game.
Got to love those politicians. Unwitting, often clueless but trying their best. God bless em, cause blessings are probably in short order from elsewhere.
Netflix is one of those sites
Yeah, I sort of think that that statement actually makes my point even stronger. Look at how many millions Microsoft has put into Silverlight. Now, if they only have a handful of sites using it, they can only make money back off those same sites. Lets face it, the only reason that Netflix would choose to adopt a new technology is if it made it cheaper for them. Even iTunes pissed off the studios by offering DRM free content because they saw it would make them more money.
If everyone starts using DRM, a site will pop up that doesn't use it if there is a want of it from the consumers.
It will just be another technology that ends up falling on it's face while sucking money out of the corporations while they try to get it adopted as the mainstream or most adopted technology. If they are good for all, they will get used. If they aren't, why on earth would a developer use them? Every W3C set of standards has a bunch of tags that no-one in their right mind uses - or they come up with great new ways to get what they want out of them. I mean as an example (though it never made it into W3C) but look at Silverlight, Microsoft tried to take the market away from Flash, invested heavily into Silverlight, no doubt paid a LOT of developers to use their stuff, I found for a while a bunch of free downloads that "asked" to install Silverlight along with their code.
Look at these stats:
According to statowl.com, Microsoft Silverlight has a penetration of 64.16% on May 2011. Usage on July 2010 was 53.54%, whereas Adobe Flash is installed on 95.26% of browsers, and Java support is available on 76.51% of browsers (May 2011); these statistics makes Adobe Flash the market leader in terms of penetration.[20] As of 26 August 2011, 0.3% sites are using Silverlight,[21] whereas site usage of Adobe Flash is around 27%.
Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight#Adoption
It could be worse, if the Pentagon were to give it to the TSA...
Given all the pre-flight checks that the TSA would no doubt do, that might be a good thing. The things would never get off the ground...
That's because the Australian regulations add to the development costs of games.
To legally sell in Australia they have to go trough a ton of legal bullshit your elected officials inflict in the name of 'The Children'.
Really? So how about all the non-game software, how about Adobe, Microsoft and many others?
From the article:
“If you go to Apple’s iTunes and buy Macklemore’s song Same Love, which is number two in the Australian charts, it’s 69 cents in the US and over $2 in Australia,” he said.
“[And] we found it cost $5795 more to buy Microsoft’s Visual Studio software in Australia compared with the US. These are downloaded products with no Australian labour involved and no local distribution costs – it’s simply a matter of where the computer server thinks you’re coming from.”
Can't agree with this more. We had a similar experience withinmy company when a lot of the in-house support and dev guys were replaced with (much) cheaper contractors. They did the entire handover nicely, showed the new guys the ropes and moved into other roles or other companies. The new contractors of course are giving the quality of service as is being paid for - so many of our systems are suffering constant delays, SLAs are being missed and there is a strong push from within the business side to re-hire some of the folks that were let go. Of course, now to get them back, the salaries will have to be extra competitive as we want those exact folks back.
Sometimes cheaper is not really cheaper. I would say do a great job of handing over the project as best you can, let the new guy take the reigns. If it works out, great, if not, the company will probably want you back in short order anyhow. You can even look at it as an opportunity. Why not offer to stay on with a retainer, let the new guy handle all the gruntwork, but offer to explain or guide him/her for an hourly fee if needed. Assuming the do improve over time, you will be able to work in a new company at your normal rate and still get a small fee from this older company.
The Opposition policy is to extend FTTN which will put in place a good speed at each exchange. While I prefer the Labour policy of FTTH, even with a FTTN, my exchange will greatly improve in speed. Currently, at dawn, I can download a file at around 1.5 megabytes a second - however in the afternoon between five and ten, that speed is slashed to around 100 kilobytes at most. That simply means that the exchange is getting smashed and the throughput there is suffering. Again, I would prefer FTTH, but FTTN will still greatly improve my speeds at all times (especially the commonly used ones) of the day.
Amazon Instant has most of those shows the day after air without ads for a couple of bucks per episode.
Amazon Instant Video (formerly Amazon Video On Demand) is an Internet video on demand service, only available in the United States.
Emphasis mine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Instant_Video. Having said that, it sounds decent. Bit of a shame that they only provide the files in a format that plays on a limited number of devices:
The optional Amazon Unbox player lets users download higher-quality copies of videos. The Unbox player is compatible only with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Downloaded films include a full-resolution video file and can include a lower-resolution copy for portable devices. The content can be viewed using the Amazon Unbox Video Player, Windows Media Player, a Windows Media Center Extender such as an Xbox 360, a PlaysForSure portable device. Downloaded videos may be burned to a DVD for storage purposes, but the resulting DVD will not play on a DVD player.
So yes, a step in the right direction, but as per my original comment, the P2P community is still offering a better product. Me personally, I would be happy to pay that $2 per episode to get a decent quality mkv or even mp4 and be able to store it on my server and watch it via my WD media player.
I think you just made me enter an infinite loop of trying to work out whether you are serious or whether you are being sarcastic.
Thank you Poe's Law. Thank you very much.
can you name 2 shows you would be willing to pay say $5 a month for
That's my point, not a month, but either per episode or per season - and yes.
Off the top of my head: Archer, Dexter, Walking Dead, Falling Skies, Revolution, Game of Thrones, Castle, American Horror Story, Big Bang Theory.
If I could download a decent quality (doesn't have to be super duper 1080p or anything like that) at the time it comes out and without a plethora of ads in it for $1 per episode, or get access to the whole season for say $15 or $20, I would gladly do so. Makes it easy for me to watch what I want to, and at the same time I can be smug in knowing that my money is supporting the shows that I like. It is a total WIN-WIN scenario.
Its all about control. they are losing it and the masses have it.
Absolutely. The problem is that the only way that they can wrest control back from the masses is to *at least* provide the same thing that they do. Make it even better, and the masses will give them control back.
cultural birthright from the parasitic rent-seeking content cartels
I can't agree with this. You can't tell me that the latest boy band single that comes out is your birthright. It is a paradoxically impossible question. If you put the punishment for copyright infrigement at a "reasonable" amount - say, 10 times the price of the CD/whatever it comes on, then it costs more to chase the punishment than it does to get it back. If you put the punishment at a level where it potentially becomes financially feasible for the copyright owner to chase it down, then it is an asinine figure for the actual infringement.
The only solution that I see is for the media companies to make their products so accessible that it is simply no longer WORTH bothering to download it illegally, but the problem is that the folks who put torrents or downloads online do such a damn good job that is makes competing with them very difficult.
Speculation, but very likely. These sort of folks have to do something basically *criminal* to be fired. Anything else is a note saying you have [insert number] days to tender a resignation. Firing someone at that level generally looks bad on the company doing it, so they prefer to let the person resign themselves - and it most often works in favor of the person as well, so they take up the offer.
... and totally won't just go do the same kind of shit elsewhere.
Actually, I think you might underestimate how "big companies" look to other "big companies" to see what to do and what not to do. If this was some little dev house, no it wouldn't make a difference in the world. Given that it is such a large company, others might actually take some notice.
Also, there is a good chance that given such a negative dismissal, he is going to find it harder to get into the next position. Not to say that he won't, but it likely won't be as good as he had hoped for.
Oh lordy, welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department.
They can see small things?
No, but they would have spotted this dupe a mile away...
Your best results would probably be using graphene, but good luck pirnting that :)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/usa-desalination-idUSL1N0C0DG520130313
Possible, but more likely that it branched away from another more abundant form, filled a niche in and was pretty much forgotten about by everything else. Not to say that it couldn't well be an exceptionally early form that simply never changed.
If parent and grandparent were going for Karma, they should know that +Funny gives no Karma and hence would be rather pointless.
Newsflash: there are more than 2 parties in the US [wikipedia.org]. Most Americans are too uneducated or too brainwashed by television to realize that though...
A two-party system often develops in a plurality voting system. In this system, voters have a single vote, which they can cast for a single candidate in their district, in which only one legislative seat is available. In plurality voting (i.e. first past the post), in which the winner of the seat is determined purely by the candidate with the most votes, several characteristics can serve to discourage the development of third parties and reward the two major parties.
Duverger suggests two reasons this voting system favors a two party system. One is the result of the "fusion" (or an alliance very much like fusion) of the weak parties, and the other is the "elimination" of weak parties by the voters, by which he means that voters gradually desert the weak parties on the grounds that they have no chance of winning. ....
An[other] example was seen in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, when Ross Perot's candidacy received zero electoral votes despite getting 19% of the popular vote.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law.
I understand that there are more than two parties in the US, but it is basically a two party system.