Actually, it's in Microsoft's interest for something like this to work, and work well.
I've mentioned before that I believe this is the best way for MS to fight Google. (Since MS is a software company, Google is an ad company. Why try to fight them with a search engine, it misses the point.)
Add an ad-blocker to IE, built in, on by default (in addition to this bug-blocker.) Single button on the toolbar to turn ads back on, with options for finer-grained settings.
Microsoft can then go further. Allow an opt-in user-requested ad feature, where the ads are served by the browser for participating websites. Users can set what type of ads they want (no anim, no sound, for example), white- or black-list products or companies, and list areas of interest. Advertisers will hate the user control, but because people have asked for the ads, and are thus more likely to trust the network, that increases both click-through and sales, so advertisers would generally pay more. That also means more money per-ad for websites, increasing their participation. etc etc. Users win, websites win, advertisers win.
Meanwhile, if most Firefox users use ABP, and all IE-default-setting users have ads blocked, that leaves only Chrome users to give Google their ad-revenue. Less money means less research, less innovation, more rivals, fragmented market. Microsoft wins.
Can you buy all but one?... Sounds like Sorites paradox to me.
Yeah, I thought that too, at the time. It's one of those vague "unreasonable" laws. It relies on judicial interpretation of "reasonable", and of the buyers perceived intent.
Mind you, loss leaders (which subsidised hardware for expensive consumables are) are a distortion of a free market. Anything which undermines it is wholesome and good.
Argh, stupid grammar. What I wrote is misleading.
"Anything which undermines it..." means "anything which undermines market distortion via loss-leaders", not "anything which undermines a free market". Is that any clearer, or did I just make it worse?
Why as an engineer is my work not as protected and valuable as the work of an artist?
It depends on the type of artist. If you are an artist producing unique works, like a painter or sculptor, you don't benefit from copyright when your early works are re-sold by buyers at a huge mark-up. If an author's children should benefit from an author's posthumous popularity, why shouldn't other artists and their families benefit?
Or can we accept that the whole thing is arbitrary?
Yeah, work in retail myself, in the past have been asked by a boss to go to a competitor and buy all their stock of one item,
Actually, that's the only exemption under our law. You can't buy them out. (That's meant to prevent a larger company (with deeper pockets) from ruining a genuine sale for a smaller competitor.)
Mind you, loss leaders (which subsidised hardware for expensive consumables are) are a distortion of a free market. Anything which undermines it is wholesome and good.
(Used to buy for a small retailer. Often the shelf price at large retailers was less than the wholesale price from the manufacturer/distributor. But they had "Three per customer" type limits, which turns out to be illegal under my State's consumer laws (written specifically to punish loss-leaders, apparently.) Used to make for fun public arguments.)
Maybe there's room for a more open, PC-like solution to consoles that will also help displace MS from gaming-on-the-PC? Given the current level of graphics-card development, would a micro-PC be able handle a card capable of matching or exceeding current gen consoles?
Imagine if a Linux group worked with whichever graphics card maker has the best record with Linux (AMD/ATI?) to create a hardware standard, and accompanying game-optimised branded Linux distro, for a micro-case PC-based "console". (As Google did with Android for phones.) Any manufacturer could make them, and game makers only need to make their games compatible with Game-Linux to play on any branded box (Plus on any PC running a suitable distro.)
You get three benefits: 1) An upgradeable console that keeps up with PC development. 2) Multiple console vendors with compatible games. 3) Games written primarily for Linux.
This is why you end up with second rate weapons. When you protect your domestic industry completely, they don't have to match foreign manufacturers, so they don't. That doesn't just hurt your soldiers, it also hurts exports.
If foreign made weapons were on the table, in a genuine value-for-price contract, US weapons manufacturers would have to match the best in the world. That makes it easier to sell to the world.
wouldn't urban "insurgents" have more and faster access to mostly-enclosed structures, while the occupiers would tend more to ad-hoc cover?
These should also work for enclosed structures. Picture a sniper inside a four story building. The sniper can shoot through one window, crouch, run to another window, pop and fire, rinse/repeat. Meanwhile, your patrol is largely exposed.
Currently, to prevent that, you have to throw a shit load of ammo at that building, not just the window he fired from, but all the surrounding ones, to make him keep his head down while you flank, or recover your wounded, or evac, or whatever.
But instead, you pop an XM25 through that first window, set to detonate 1.5m inside the room. Bye-bye sniper.
(Obviously, killing everyone else in the room too. But with the current "model", you kill everyone in every room.)
While it can be used against your patrol as well, you are more mobile. He's in one of a limited number of rooms.
I thought rods from god was a good idea until I did the calculations... turns out dropping a 16-ton weight at 4km/sec is the same as about 30 tons of TNT.
Except it's not the same. The number of Joules released may be the same, but the TNT is an explosion, the rods-from-god is a bullet. Different game. Even a shape-charge can't put all it's energy into one tiny area.
(15 years or so ago there was a small iron-meteorite impact near here, size of a golf-ball, hit a swampy area, penetrated a metre of water and sludge and a couple of metres of solid rock. Probably had the E(k) of a hand-grenade. Hell of a different outcome though.)
I still game daily. I am 34 and will never quit gaming on the PC.
34 <Laughs>. I have some bad news for you...
When you're a kid, you can assimilate language, culture, music, food, etc etc. As you get older, your ability to adapt to new forms fades. 34-37 years old is the kill zone for music, food and culture (and I suspect, games.)
Over the next few years you will find your various tastes in music/food/etc start to freeze up, it won't feel any different, it's just something you'll gradually notice. Seriously, it's quite freaky watching it happen.
Facebook's selling point was its exclusivity [...] There's no incentive to join Diaspora.
You've contradicted yourself. Exclusivity is exactly what Diaspora will have. And it's not Facebook, your grandmother uses Facebook. Mainstream, pedestrian. For people who think Farmville is cool.
FB is screaming out for an "exclusive" alternative. It's way overdue for the "omg are you still using lamebook?" effect.
I lived in a country that bordered the soviet union and the risk of invasion was very real... Every news broadcast about the latest political tension between us and our large neighbour was a reminder of it.)
Was? Why is this in the past tense? If you live near Russia, this shit happens now.
I'd love to hear of one of these cases going to court and someone tries the "I'm sorry, but I don't know who was using the computer then" defence.
Wilful negligence is generally not accepted as a defence. In most cases, laws only allow specific listed types of defences. As the primary account holder, the dad takes responsibility for whatever happens on the account that he could "reasonably" control. (Reasonable in the eyes of a 70 year old judge.)
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, GPS tracker plus red and green dye-pack? (And a speaker, "Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!")
Actually, it's in Microsoft's interest for something like this to work, and work well.
I've mentioned before that I believe this is the best way for MS to fight Google. (Since MS is a software company, Google is an ad company. Why try to fight them with a search engine, it misses the point.)
Add an ad-blocker to IE, built in, on by default (in addition to this bug-blocker.) Single button on the toolbar to turn ads back on, with options for finer-grained settings.
Microsoft can then go further. Allow an opt-in user-requested ad feature, where the ads are served by the browser for participating websites. Users can set what type of ads they want (no anim, no sound, for example), white- or black-list products or companies, and list areas of interest. Advertisers will hate the user control, but because people have asked for the ads, and are thus more likely to trust the network, that increases both click-through and sales, so advertisers would generally pay more. That also means more money per-ad for websites, increasing their participation. etc etc. Users win, websites win, advertisers win.
Meanwhile, if most Firefox users use ABP, and all IE-default-setting users have ads blocked, that leaves only Chrome users to give Google their ad-revenue. Less money means less research, less innovation, more rivals, fragmented market. Microsoft wins.
I haven't run antivirus software in years and I've never had a virus.
Ummm...
Yo momma?
You can't buy them out.
Can you buy all but one? ... Sounds like Sorites paradox to me.
Yeah, I thought that too, at the time. It's one of those vague "unreasonable" laws. It relies on judicial interpretation of "reasonable", and of the buyers perceived intent.
at least one of them is associated with a group that's highly critical of the US,
Working for the US embassy? Well, they're critical of everyone else, judging by the diplomatic cables. :)
Well, I thought you were being a complete sarcastic bastard, No-Id, if that helps?
Mind you, loss leaders (which subsidised hardware for expensive consumables are) are a distortion of a free market. Anything which undermines it is wholesome and good.
Argh, stupid grammar. What I wrote is misleading.
"Anything which undermines it..." means "anything which undermines market distortion via loss-leaders", not "anything which undermines a free market". Is that any clearer, or did I just make it worse?
Why as an engineer is my work not as protected and valuable as the work of an artist?
It depends on the type of artist. If you are an artist producing unique works, like a painter or sculptor, you don't benefit from copyright when your early works are re-sold by buyers at a huge mark-up. If an author's children should benefit from an author's posthumous popularity, why shouldn't other artists and their families benefit?
Or can we accept that the whole thing is arbitrary?
Yeah, work in retail myself, in the past have been asked by a boss to go to a competitor and buy all their stock of one item,
Actually, that's the only exemption under our law. You can't buy them out. (That's meant to prevent a larger company (with deeper pockets) from ruining a genuine sale for a smaller competitor.)
Mind you, loss leaders (which subsidised hardware for expensive consumables are) are a distortion of a free market. Anything which undermines it is wholesome and good.
(Used to buy for a small retailer. Often the shelf price at large retailers was less than the wholesale price from the manufacturer/distributor. But they had "Three per customer" type limits, which turns out to be illegal under my State's consumer laws (written specifically to punish loss-leaders, apparently.) Used to make for fun public arguments.)
Maybe there's room for a more open, PC-like solution to consoles that will also help displace MS from gaming-on-the-PC? Given the current level of graphics-card development, would a micro-PC be able handle a card capable of matching or exceeding current gen consoles?
Imagine if a Linux group worked with whichever graphics card maker has the best record with Linux (AMD/ATI?) to create a hardware standard, and accompanying game-optimised branded Linux distro, for a micro-case PC-based "console". (As Google did with Android for phones.) Any manufacturer could make them, and game makers only need to make their games compatible with Game-Linux to play on any branded box (Plus on any PC running a suitable distro.)
You get three benefits: 1) An upgradeable console that keeps up with PC development. 2) Multiple console vendors with compatible games. 3) Games written primarily for Linux.
The US should only buy US weapons.
This is why you end up with second rate weapons. When you protect your domestic industry completely, they don't have to match foreign manufacturers, so they don't. That doesn't just hurt your soldiers, it also hurts exports.
If foreign made weapons were on the table, in a genuine value-for-price contract, US weapons manufacturers would have to match the best in the world. That makes it easier to sell to the world.
wouldn't urban "insurgents" have more and faster access to mostly-enclosed structures, while the occupiers would tend more to ad-hoc cover?
These should also work for enclosed structures. Picture a sniper inside a four story building. The sniper can shoot through one window, crouch, run to another window, pop and fire, rinse/repeat. Meanwhile, your patrol is largely exposed.
Currently, to prevent that, you have to throw a shit load of ammo at that building, not just the window he fired from, but all the surrounding ones, to make him keep his head down while you flank, or recover your wounded, or evac, or whatever.
But instead, you pop an XM25 through that first window, set to detonate 1.5m inside the room. Bye-bye sniper.
(Obviously, killing everyone else in the room too. But with the current "model", you kill everyone in every room.)
While it can be used against your patrol as well, you are more mobile. He's in one of a limited number of rooms.
Silly troll. Double entendre only works if the target audience understands the second meaning.
Aus:Root, US:Screw, UK:Shag
That's nearly enough to carry me!
nearly.
I thought rods from god was a good idea until I did the calculations... turns out dropping a 16-ton weight at 4km/sec is the same as about 30 tons of TNT.
Except it's not the same. The number of Joules released may be the same, but the TNT is an explosion, the rods-from-god is a bullet. Different game. Even a shape-charge can't put all it's energy into one tiny area.
(15 years or so ago there was a small iron-meteorite impact near here, size of a golf-ball, hit a swampy area, penetrated a metre of water and sludge and a couple of metres of solid rock. Probably had the E(k) of a hand-grenade. Hell of a different outcome though.)
I meant MOO not MoM
Wow, you really set yourself up with that one?
I still game daily. I am 34 and will never quit gaming on the PC.
34 <Laughs>. I have some bad news for you...
When you're a kid, you can assimilate language, culture, music, food, etc etc. As you get older, your ability to adapt to new forms fades. 34-37 years old is the kill zone for music, food and culture (and I suspect, games.)
Over the next few years you will find your various tastes in music/food/etc start to freeze up, it won't feel any different, it's just something you'll gradually notice. Seriously, it's quite freaky watching it happen.
(And yeah, it sucks.)
Facebook's selling point was its exclusivity [...] There's no incentive to join Diaspora.
You've contradicted yourself. Exclusivity is exactly what Diaspora will have. And it's not Facebook, your grandmother uses Facebook. Mainstream, pedestrian. For people who think Farmville is cool.
FB is screaming out for an "exclusive" alternative. It's way overdue for the "omg are you still using lamebook?" effect.
"Unprovoked." Cute.
Or number of feet of visibility.
Desperately seeking emphatic adjective...
Read that as "Desperately seeking emphysema advice..."
I lived in a country that bordered the soviet union and the risk of invasion was very real ... Every news broadcast about the latest political tension between us and our large neighbour was a reminder of it.)
Was? Why is this in the past tense? If you live near Russia, this shit happens now.
I'd love to hear of one of these cases going to court and someone tries the "I'm sorry, but I don't know who was using the computer then" defence.
Wilful negligence is generally not accepted as a defence. In most cases, laws only allow specific listed types of defences. As the primary account holder, the dad takes responsibility for whatever happens on the account that he could "reasonably" control. (Reasonable in the eyes of a 70 year old judge.)
(IANAL, IANYL.)