"It purports to solve problems that are already pretty much solved -- spam, reliable delivery -- while not solving all the difficult ones and introducing new dangers for the customers"
A strange conclusion. I don't see how spam has been "pretty much solved" at all. Current anti-spam techniques are far from ideal and phishing is an extremely serious, still-emerging, problem. Also, making wild predictions on a technologies uptake upon initial announcement is a complete guessing game. If you could know for sure you'd be far too busy making millions and living it up on a yacht in the Caribbean to be commenting on Slashdot.
Sure, encryption and backwards compatibility would be good, making the system far from perfect, but for the vast majority of email use, this system would - from initial appearances - help combat the issues that are without doubt the most serious current and emerging issues affecting email.
I really hope this turns out to be the case. Agree, it's crazy how little content is produced for such a high disposable income viewership. Someone will no-doubt make a fortune when it eventually happens, but shows take an awfully long time to go from an idea to broadcast.
I think you're pushing the barrel a bit. The channels like Bravo & HBO were never specialized channels and do still have many shows of the same genres as when they launched. None of the unique channels (Discovery, History, MTV, VH1) suddenly one day said "we're canceling all our traditional shows and replacing them with shows of a different genre". Maybe MTV, but that's only because they added more channels which have kept on being music video channels.
At the least, Syfy would be at the very extreme end of that list.
All the new supposed sci-fi shows are "supernatural" shows, featuring vampires, ghosts, monsters and the rules of science and logic are meaningless. A few (like Warehouse 13) tread around the edges of Sci-fi (but are really more crime-drama, but true Sci-fi can no longer be found on Syfy.
As a result, this channel, which used to be my most watched channel, is now an increasingly rare visit (I don't really even bother checking its listings now). Such a shame. My favorite type of TV show is gone:(
What on earth is the point of migrating from Windows to Mac? You're simply replacing one closed-source, crash-prone system with another, more expensive, less supported one.
"Studies have shown that in the long run, OSX becomes cheapest to maintain. " I think you mean to say "Studies have shown that in the long run, [company sponsoring research] becomes cheapest to maintain. "
I guess it's possible, but still, that's a million miles away from the plant based technologies "biofuels" of today and even theoretical algae biofuel technology is still likely to be less efficient land-wise than other solar powered derived electric vehicle techniques.
Provides a comparison of required land use of algae biodiesel production to a PV solar-energy powered electric car. The PV -> electric car method requires around 1/5 the land use. The real efficiency killer is simply the internal combustion engine. Also, that's based on theoretical algae biodiesel production, commercial-scale production would probably be less efficient. Meanwhile, both solar-power and electric car technologies are getting more efficient all the time.
1) OK, hopefully technology can overcome the waste issue, although there's also the "accidental discharge" issue which still occurs from time to time at nuclear plants (both power production and processing) around the world.
2) I'd hope the human race survives longer than just the next 100 years. Then we're left without a unique element which could have other future uses.
3) In terms of subsidies, I was referring more to to the absolutely enormous amount spent on the Manhattan project and nuclear power development over the first half of the twenith century both in the USA and around the world. I think that multi-trillion dollar (by todays money) R&D subsidy is more comparative to alternative energy subsidies. Many alternative energy techniques being invested in (like tidal energy) don't even exist on a commercial scale yet.
Considering the insane amount of land and resources biofuels would require to replace fossil fuels I'd say these oil companies are being (unintentionally) socially responsible by patent trolling biofuel production.
Biofuel is nothing more than an absurdly inefficient kind of solar power.
Whilst nuclear power is certainly something I support, I don't think you can call it a "green energy". There's the unsolved waste issue and in its current non-fusion form it isn't particularly sustainable either, using one of the earth's rarest naturally occurring elements as fuel.
Also you mention subsidies, nuclear power wouldn't be around if it wasn't for trillions of dollars in subsidies.
africa so it could become a major agricultural exporter of grains.
One of the fundamental problems I don't understand how to overcome is modern mass-produce agriculture relies on massive quantities of oil-based fertilizer, tractors constantly going up and down fields planting, spraying and harvesting, then the food being shipped all over the world. Cheap oil is crucial to the availability of cheap mass-produced food. If the price per barrel goes up to the region of $250 and more. Then food is surely going to experience massive price rises too.
With an already precarious food situation and high population growth rate throughout the 3rd world, how can frequent mass-famines not be an almost guaranteed regular occurrence in future decades?
"When Apple merged it into the x86 platform it removed much of the pricing barrier that was keeping people off of Apple" Guess they forgot to inform my local Apple store where the cheapest comps out-price the most expensive PCs of most other shops around town.
iTunes is "the ultimate music software"? Yeah, and Internet Explorer is "the ultimate web browser".
Have you just returned home from the local Apple store's Sunday morning sermons or something?
Whatever, just point out that while Australia has a few dozen gun deaths a year, the USA has hundreds of times that figure, despite only 10x the population. Thats the facts.
No, the price of a cocktail in an Aussie bar is getting beat up for buying a womans drink.
Banning firearms, IMO, is the biggest loss of civil liberty in Australia.
Maybe to you, but you won't find many Aussies wanting guns legalized. Few would even define the absence of guns as a loss of liberty anymore than they'd define the absence of smallpox as a loss of liberty. We aren't particularly eager to imitate America's tens of thousands of gun deaths a year, we'd rather stick to having tens of gun deaths a year.
It wasn't "enviro-nuts" who stopped nuclear research, it was politicians showing their typical short-sightedness, fleeing a sector which received such sensationalized reporting following the Chenobyl incident. Also the conservatives baulked at the government spending frequently involved. Environmentalists also called for an end to coal, oil & gas power stations - more prevalent now than ever - so it shows how much their voices were listened to.
The media like to jump on anyone with the most extreme views, but most environmentalists in the 60s, 70s and 80s just wanted the nuclear industry to clean up their act, which at the time was pretty appalling with radioactive waste frequently discharged into rivers, illegal/corrupt waste dumping, falsified reports etc.
"A group of people disagreeing with you is not censorship."
Yes it is. At their choice, I cannot see that comment. That's censorship. Sure you can change settings and get around it to view the comment, but that's usually the case with any censorship.
Users can always browse to Wikileaks to it if they want to see that information, and Apple will do nothing to prevent that, just as they don't prevent you from browsing porn or whatnot. They simply refuse to peddle it.
Well as they prevent users from downloading apps from anywhere but their app store they are doing more than "simply refuse to peddle it". They are censoring it by virtue of not providing access to it and not letting owners use any other service which will.
This is the exact same line countries like China use (i.e. they officially don't "block" anything on the Internet, they just don't facilitate access to lots of sites, and there's no other way to access the Internet but using their service).
I'm not saying they're being quite as bad as China (you can still use Safari), but they aren't simply "not peddling it" either due to their walled garden policy.
Yeah, thats about right. I thought iPhone apps were great until I started realizing the vast majority are just simplistic, functionality-stripped versions of websites. Just like my Nokia phone could do back in 2001, although it didn't provide the pleasurable experience of forcing me to pay $0.99 per website. Although it did have a built-in alarm clock, but unfortunately with no adverts or 30 second load-time!
There was a massive range of setups, plans and living environments. Obviously there was some extremely greedy and extremely generous mill owners (and a variety in between). But even that over-simplifies the situation as out of the need to support their workforce (e.g. providing schools, hospitals etc) many (e.g. http://www.robert-owen.com/Robert Owen) encouraged community involvement and personal self-improvement, for the purpose of creating a vibrant, content and sustainable workforce rather than direct profit. Over time co-operative employer-employee agreements developed and these helped pave the way for socio-economic theories like socialism and communism - developed by Marx and Engels whilst living in Victorian England.
Slashdot Mirror
Convenience and usability is key, and SMS currently wins by many miles.
SMS is going to be around for a long time yet.
Of course, because you don't use snail mail much, why would anyone else in the world ever want to?
A short code of capital letters and numbers is easier to automatically verify than a stamp.
"It purports to solve problems that are already pretty much solved -- spam, reliable delivery -- while not solving all the difficult ones and introducing new dangers for the customers"
A strange conclusion. I don't see how spam has been "pretty much solved" at all. Current anti-spam techniques are far from ideal and phishing is an extremely serious, still-emerging, problem. Also, making wild predictions on a technologies uptake upon initial announcement is a complete guessing game. If you could know for sure you'd be far too busy making millions and living it up on a yacht in the Caribbean to be commenting on Slashdot.
Sure, encryption and backwards compatibility would be good, making the system far from perfect, but for the vast majority of email use, this system would - from initial appearances - help combat the issues that are without doubt the most serious current and emerging issues affecting email.
I really hope this turns out to be the case. Agree, it's crazy how little content is produced for such a high disposable income viewership. Someone will no-doubt make a fortune when it eventually happens, but shows take an awfully long time to go from an idea to broadcast.
I think you're pushing the barrel a bit. The channels like Bravo & HBO were never specialized channels and do still have many shows of the same genres as when they launched. None of the unique channels (Discovery, History, MTV, VH1) suddenly one day said "we're canceling all our traditional shows and replacing them with shows of a different genre". Maybe MTV, but that's only because they added more channels which have kept on being music video channels.
At the least, Syfy would be at the very extreme end of that list.
Couldn't agree more.
All the new supposed sci-fi shows are "supernatural" shows, featuring vampires, ghosts, monsters and the rules of science and logic are meaningless. A few (like Warehouse 13) tread around the edges of Sci-fi (but are really more crime-drama, but true Sci-fi can no longer be found on Syfy.
As a result, this channel, which used to be my most watched channel, is now an increasingly rare visit (I don't really even bother checking its listings now). Such a shame. My favorite type of TV show is gone :(
What? You're calling me biased?
LOL, this coming from someone who wrote "what is not available to the mac is usually not worthy to have most often low quality stuff".
What on earth is the point of migrating from Windows to Mac? You're simply replacing one closed-source, crash-prone system with another, more expensive, less supported one.
"Studies have shown that in the long run, OSX becomes cheapest to maintain. "
I think you mean to say "Studies have shown that in the long run, [company sponsoring research] becomes cheapest to maintain. "
I guess it's possible, but still, that's a million miles away from the plant based technologies "biofuels" of today and even theoretical algae biofuel technology is still likely to be less efficient land-wise than other solar powered derived electric vehicle techniques.
http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2008/06/algae-biodiesel-vs-solar-panels.html
Provides a comparison of required land use of algae biodiesel production to a PV solar-energy powered electric car. The PV -> electric car method requires around 1/5 the land use. The real efficiency killer is simply the internal combustion engine. Also, that's based on theoretical algae biodiesel production, commercial-scale production would probably be less efficient. Meanwhile, both solar-power and electric car technologies are getting more efficient all the time.
1) OK, hopefully technology can overcome the waste issue, although there's also the "accidental discharge" issue which still occurs from time to time at nuclear plants (both power production and processing) around the world.
2) I'd hope the human race survives longer than just the next 100 years. Then we're left without a unique element which could have other future uses.
3) In terms of subsidies, I was referring more to to the absolutely enormous amount spent on the Manhattan project and nuclear power development over the first half of the twenith century both in the USA and around the world. I think that multi-trillion dollar (by todays money) R&D subsidy is more comparative to alternative energy subsidies. Many alternative energy techniques being invested in (like tidal energy) don't even exist on a commercial scale yet.
Considering the insane amount of land and resources biofuels would require to replace fossil fuels I'd say these oil companies are being (unintentionally) socially responsible by patent trolling biofuel production.
Biofuel is nothing more than an absurdly inefficient kind of solar power.
Making unprovoked personal insults is pretty moronic in my opinion.
Whilst nuclear power is certainly something I support, I don't think you can call it a "green energy". There's the unsolved waste issue and in its current non-fusion form it isn't particularly sustainable either, using one of the earth's rarest naturally occurring elements as fuel.
Also you mention subsidies, nuclear power wouldn't be around if it wasn't for trillions of dollars in subsidies.
Maybe it's more free as in speech rather than free as in beer.
Wind energy certainly has a lot less issues on both the supply and disposal side than fossil fuel & nuclear based energy production.
africa so it could become a major agricultural exporter of grains.
One of the fundamental problems I don't understand how to overcome is modern mass-produce agriculture relies on massive quantities of oil-based fertilizer, tractors constantly going up and down fields planting, spraying and harvesting, then the food being shipped all over the world. Cheap oil is crucial to the availability of cheap mass-produced food. If the price per barrel goes up to the region of $250 and more. Then food is surely going to experience massive price rises too.
With an already precarious food situation and high population growth rate throughout the 3rd world, how can frequent mass-famines not be an almost guaranteed regular occurrence in future decades?
OSX - penultimate? Billions of fans?
"When Apple merged it into the x86 platform it removed much of the pricing barrier that was keeping people off of Apple"
Guess they forgot to inform my local Apple store where the cheapest comps out-price the most expensive PCs of most other shops around town.
iTunes is "the ultimate music software"?
Yeah, and Internet Explorer is "the ultimate web browser".
Have you just returned home from the local Apple store's Sunday morning sermons or something?
Whatever, just point out that while Australia has a few dozen gun deaths a year, the USA has hundreds of times that figure, despite only 10x the population. Thats the facts.
But if the price of a cocktail is your identity
No, the price of a cocktail in an Aussie bar is getting beat up for buying a womans drink.
Banning firearms, IMO, is the biggest loss of civil liberty in Australia.
Maybe to you, but you won't find many Aussies wanting guns legalized. Few would even define the absence of guns as a loss of liberty anymore than they'd define the absence of smallpox as a loss of liberty. We aren't particularly eager to imitate America's tens of thousands of gun deaths a year, we'd rather stick to having tens of gun deaths a year.
It wasn't "enviro-nuts" who stopped nuclear research, it was politicians showing their typical short-sightedness, fleeing a sector which received such sensationalized reporting following the Chenobyl incident. Also the conservatives baulked at the government spending frequently involved. Environmentalists also called for an end to coal, oil & gas power stations - more prevalent now than ever - so it shows how much their voices were listened to.
The media like to jump on anyone with the most extreme views, but most environmentalists in the 60s, 70s and 80s just wanted the nuclear industry to clean up their act, which at the time was pretty appalling with radioactive waste frequently discharged into rivers, illegal/corrupt waste dumping, falsified reports etc.
It's sensationalism, and personally I can't stand it. There's no need to exaggerate every attribute when describing a person or event.
The art of journalism is meant to revolve around giving a truthful depiction, not whichever depiction is likely to sell the most newspapers.
"A group of people disagreeing with you is not censorship."
Yes it is. At their choice, I cannot see that comment. That's censorship. Sure you can change settings and get around it to view the comment, but that's usually the case with any censorship.
Users can always browse to Wikileaks to it if they want to see that information, and Apple will do nothing to prevent that, just as they don't prevent you from browsing porn or whatnot. They simply refuse to peddle it.
Well as they prevent users from downloading apps from anywhere but their app store they are doing more than "simply refuse to peddle it". They are censoring it by virtue of not providing access to it and not letting owners use any other service which will.
This is the exact same line countries like China use (i.e. they officially don't "block" anything on the Internet, they just don't facilitate access to lots of sites, and there's no other way to access the Internet but using their service).
I'm not saying they're being quite as bad as China (you can still use Safari), but they aren't simply "not peddling it" either due to their walled garden policy.
Yeah, thats about right. I thought iPhone apps were great until I started realizing the vast majority are just simplistic, functionality-stripped versions of websites. Just like my Nokia phone could do back in 2001, although it didn't provide the pleasurable experience of forcing me to pay $0.99 per website. Although it did have a built-in alarm clock, but unfortunately with no adverts or 30 second load-time!
There was a massive range of setups, plans and living environments. Obviously there was some extremely greedy and extremely generous mill owners (and a variety in between). But even that over-simplifies the situation as out of the need to support their workforce (e.g. providing schools, hospitals etc) many (e.g. http://www.robert-owen.com/Robert Owen) encouraged community involvement and personal self-improvement, for the purpose of creating a vibrant, content and sustainable workforce rather than direct profit. Over time co-operative employer-employee agreements developed and these helped pave the way for socio-economic theories like socialism and communism - developed by Marx and Engels whilst living in Victorian England.