I think slashdot is not even worth the cost of the MP3 player battery for them. They likely aquired the whole bag in order to get their hands in SourceForge.
Bull. You are revising living memory. Of course it existed. It existed fifteen years ago, everywhere. The tech to listen in on all calls did not exist, nor was it legal. It was absolutely, constitutionally ILLEGAL to spy on citizens in the USA. We talked on the phone and messaged each other in the happy knowledge that it took a court order or Scientology operatives to obtain phone conversations or internet activity. Such things are possible today because our citizens are technologically and politcally illiterate and have absolutely no cultural memory past ALF reruns. The US is stupiding itself to death. OF COURSE WE HAD PRIVACY!! You gave it up!
There has been technology to wiretap calls for as long as there have been telephones. All you needed was access to the telephone company. Heck in the extreme early days, before phones were able to dial, a cop may simply sit by the operator and listen in.
There was a middle ground where it took a bit more legwork to get the wiretapping done, but there was no point where it became impossible if desired.
Yes, you “need” the court order, but that order can be granted in secret and is granted if no other ways to prove you are guilty of the investigated "serious" crime is available. If you are innocent, that usually means they will wiretap you because they wont find anything else to tie you up to the crime.
Over the decades warrants have been given to investigate even people just vaguely related to the real target of an investigation, as they may shed light on the target himself.
This is nothing new, and these computer monitoring is being implemented by many countries that simply don’t want to lose their ability to keep monitoring everything at will.
Basically any app that is developed under hire for promotional goals or customer service, like a Walgreens, Walmart, Burger King or movie themed app, or your favorite bank's account monitoring app.
All these apps are free, but the developers that made them got paid for their work. Some actually are full time employed to give the apps regular updates and bug fixes.
In fact, I think that's the most profitable area for Android Developers.
More developers concentrate on iOS, leading to better monetization on iOS.
Apple touts better monetization, and developers continue to concentrate on iOS.
It's not some big mystery.
I can't believe this. I am a developer, I focus first on iOS, but I don't buy more developers focusing on iOS.
I believe more developers that are willing to invest time and money on polish do go for iOS first. I believe there is more money on iOS. But ignoring quality, just looking at sheer numbers, there are more Android developers out there.
Ok I love my iPhone, I tend to be "on Apple's side"... but this sounds like BS... I mean, there is an absurd number of apps for Android, I think it dwarfs iOS App Store app count... what are they using as their definition of "project"?
Perhaps the real news here is that a huge chunk of Android developers don't care for Flurry as their analytic solution, at least relatively speaking compared to iOS developers.
I'd like to hear comments from these women when they are in their 40s and fat (or just old). "Nobody looks at me anymore. I used to be cute and guys would give me all kinds of attention. Now they don't even look.:-( " Young women (and men) don't appreciate the beauty they have until after it's gone.
When a woman says that, they dont mean the sweaty kid in a convention. They mean the well-dressed executives at the office or the good looking guy at the bar.
There are two paths that can take a good looking woman to be a "booth babe": Marketing or modeling.
A model or aspiring marketer (perhaps with a full degree) seeks a job, the marketing/modeling agency sees her, she is good looking and will offer her no other position than "Booth Babe" mainly because they know they must force all good looking women that path or they will have no booth babes to sell.
I can see the future... in a few years, you will have to slide a credit card to enable use of your car's radio if someone is sitting in the passenger sit (be the front or back sits!)
Not only speeds, but we have a lot of ISPs now threatening to enforce their paper caps (you know, the ones they have not enforced but we have covered a lot in Slashdot.)
On the article, though... I love how Wall Street Journal reports on the dismissal of a rumor no one ever confirmed. I was sure these things would have disk drives, it's obvious. Bandwidth is not the only issue, complete absence of internet connectivity is still an issue in many households that own XBox, be it a full household thing or just restrictions on the kid's console alone.
The real questions I have: Will I get day-one digital download access if I do have internet, or will publishers be allowed to side on FUD and not distribute digitally? Better: will perhaps I get earlier access if I decide to buy digital or will I have to wait for the brick & mortar launch date? Will non-transferable digital only copies be cheaper?
Thats an extremely hopeful twist on what happened... Google didn't convince Verizon to "agree" on wired net neutrality. Google simply bent over and offered its support in exchange of Android pimping.
It is because of Google that the wireless net neutrality exceptions were accepted, because "Google had nothing to win so their agreement must mean there is no biggie" (other than Google actually having a lot to win from Verizon's Android support.)
No, that would be wrong!!! You have to make sure to let the person know that singing is it's own reward and tell him he needs no money! You should know the drill if you played on the street for money!
recorded music is your advertising and you should be making money on live performances from the real fans
I was under the impression that it was always this way... that the records don't make you much, it's the gigs. Is that wrong?
Either way, those dirty fucks at Ticketmaster need to be next.
Partially true. The artist himself was not making much money because between loopholes and fine print tricks, the studios end up keeping nearly all the profits of media sale, in some situations some artist may find themselves owing money to the studios (since every cd sent to a radio station was/is fully expensed at a full retail price as a marketing cost that you are supposed to pay for from your profits.)
But media sales have always been very lucrative, an indie artist that refuses to give away his music in Spotify and instead sells directly via iTunes and other digital outlets, or even burning his own disks, may make a LOT of money.
I was into Reggaeton a few years back, a lot of the "reggaettoneros" artists wised up darn fast. They didn’t go to any label, they self-published their stuff and got filthy rich fast. Don Omar is a good example. These are people that didnt really grow daydreaming about the rock star life, so they seem to have pursued things in a more sensible way (despite their appearance and image of being uneducated and thug-like.)
I still don't get why in this information age, the american artist still dreams of being picked up by a big label and become a super star the 80's way.
Lady in street: I loved your performance, thank you, lovely music. I'll be on my way now.
Singer: But... I need food... please give me some money....
Lady in street: You greedy asshole? How dare you ask me for money?! Music should be done for the love of it!!! Performing for my pleasure while I eat should BE your food!!!! Now sing and stop begging!!!! If you want money go and get a real job!
Jonathan Coulton was talking about this a few months ago in the TWiT podcast.
Streaming services pay garbage to independent artists because the big studios (the old boss) bullied them into accepting horrible terms or literally take them out of business.
Make no mistake; the big studios get a generous split of the Spotify profits. But for Spotify to survive with such a "generous" deal, they had to screw someone else: the indie musician that "can't really bully" them.
Mind you, in some ways, if all indies got together and left Spotify, they would suffer (right now they average their profits with a mixture of indie and big studio playbacks.)
I would not be shocked if the studios want it to work this way, to discourage the next gen of artists from pursuing an indie career.
This is just a stunt. This is the second article from IBM CIO I read today with him trying to scare people of allowing Apple devices in the workplace. Fear mongering, that's all it is.
Given how few drugs are meant to save lives, and most are just to make conditions bearable or alleviate temporary effects (and in most cases just to fix patient negligence that cause things like diabetes) I think more people would die due to lack of drug testing than from lack of the drugs in question.
To be fair to Microsoft, they abandoned their Windows brand on one of their major at-the-time-new products. And yet for some reason the Zune still didn't take off...
There were many many bad things done with the Zune, but the first was attempting to do an "iPod Killer". They also abandoned the brand with the XBox and look how big of a success it has been. Thing is, the XBox was not done to mimic or copy a competitor, it simply was another console, and to be fair, one with loads of soul behind it.
I don't know what you're thinking with the "Metro brand". Are you suggesting they drop the Windows brand from their still market leading desktop OS (the only place where the Windows brand makes sense)? Are you suggesting they replace it with a brand which has so far attracted ample scorn from the internet's chattering classes, and is completely unknown to anybody else?
I'm thinking more about their stupid Windows RT naming for tablets and Windows Phone name. I think Metro Phone and Metro Tablet may have been much more marketable names for people that hear Windows and think "that thing I use at work."
Windows for PC should remain what it is, and the number system seems to be working very nicely in that realm (the year convention makes things feel old too fast and the random letter scheme, like XP, is just horrible.) But keep it there, Microsoft does not have to name every single product they make "Windows."
I'm not saying Microsoft needs to abandon Windows, but keep the product being itself and don't shoehorn it everywhere.
There is no reason for their phone OS to be called "Windows Phone", it's not just not App compatible, it does not even have the feature the OS was named after. The same applies for their upcoming Arm Tablet approach.
But no... They feel forced to market the Phone using Windows and Office brands. They think that big Microsoft Office tile in the home screen, and the Windows name, will sell their phones. It's already proven it won’t.
Even between Microsoft fans that love PCs, no one I ever met seems to think Windows is "cool" or desirable. They feel "windows" is that thing that runs in PCs and Office is a work requirement, not a fun toy. Windows fans, if anything, may feel more love for Direct X than the OS its part off.
BTW separate note: Apple appears to have about ~10% of the current PC market, not huge, but not a joke either. There may be a much larger PC install base, but a lot of those are not actually active. That's also part of the point: Ballmer is allowing OSX to gain too much traction.
The Xbox division is indeed doing great, but Ballmer seems to undermine it every time he can. There were some big losses last year due to some acquisitions (Skype? not sure...) and they "balanced the books" by punishing a lot of divisions, the Xbox division I understand was hit hard and would had shined had they not done that.
It's like Ballmer is ashamed of anything that does not have a big Windows brand in the box, when perhaps he should be doing the opposite.
Can you imagine how well Apple would had fared had they called their iPhone a MacPhone instead? I bet it would have been a flop just due to the horrible unmarketable name.
It’s time Microsoft realizes their future is in the Metro/Xbox brands, not in the Windows/Office ones. Ballmer's resistance is slowly going to kill Microsoft.
Huge issue: biggest chunk of apps moving in mobile markets are games. These games either need as much performance as possible (that can only be achieved with native code) or are forced to use hacks here and there that end up making them depend heavily on browser differences.
Not that this matters much here, I bet BB10 will have some form of support for native apps, and this HTML5 deal is just a way to make it easier on some to develop simple apps.
Side note: in theory you can write HTML5 apps for iOS and Android. All you need is to make a very small "shell" app with a browser view controller and redirect it to your internal HTML code.
Slashdot Mirror
I think slashdot is not even worth the cost of the MP3 player battery for them. They likely aquired the whole bag in order to get their hands in SourceForge.
Oh I'm sure: the days of Slashdot are now numbered.
Bull. You are revising living memory. Of course it existed. It existed fifteen years ago, everywhere. The tech to listen in on all calls did not exist, nor was it legal. It was absolutely, constitutionally ILLEGAL to spy on citizens in the USA. We talked on the phone and messaged each other in the happy knowledge that it took a court order or Scientology operatives to obtain phone conversations or internet activity. Such things are possible today because our citizens are technologically and politcally illiterate and have absolutely no cultural memory past ALF reruns. The US is stupiding itself to death. OF COURSE WE HAD PRIVACY!! You gave it up!
There has been technology to wiretap calls for as long as there have been telephones. All you needed was access to the telephone company. Heck in the extreme early days, before phones were able to dial, a cop may simply sit by the operator and listen in.
There was a middle ground where it took a bit more legwork to get the wiretapping done, but there was no point where it became impossible if desired.
Yes, you “need” the court order, but that order can be granted in secret and is granted if no other ways to prove you are guilty of the investigated "serious" crime is available. If you are innocent, that usually means they will wiretap you because they wont find anything else to tie you up to the crime.
Over the decades warrants have been given to investigate even people just vaguely related to the real target of an investigation, as they may shed light on the target himself.
This is nothing new, and these computer monitoring is being implemented by many countries that simply don’t want to lose their ability to keep monitoring everything at will.
Basically any app that is developed under hire for promotional goals or customer service, like a Walgreens, Walmart, Burger King or movie themed app, or your favorite bank's account monitoring app.
All these apps are free, but the developers that made them got paid for their work. Some actually are full time employed to give the apps regular updates and bug fixes.
In fact, I think that's the most profitable area for Android Developers.
More developers concentrate on iOS, leading to better monetization on iOS.
Apple touts better monetization, and developers continue to concentrate on iOS.
It's not some big mystery.
I can't believe this. I am a developer, I focus first on iOS, but I don't buy more developers focusing on iOS.
I believe more developers that are willing to invest time and money on polish do go for iOS first. I believe there is more money on iOS. But ignoring quality, just looking at sheer numbers, there are more Android developers out there.
I may have misread the article, I thought it was about started projects, not about sales.
Ok I love my iPhone, I tend to be "on Apple's side"... but this sounds like BS... I mean, there is an absurd number of apps for Android, I think it dwarfs iOS App Store app count... what are they using as their definition of "project"?
Perhaps the real news here is that a huge chunk of Android developers don't care for Flurry as their analytic solution, at least relatively speaking compared to iOS developers.
I'd like to hear comments from these women when they are in their 40s and fat (or just old). "Nobody looks at me anymore. I used to be cute and guys would give me all kinds of attention. Now they don't even look. :-( " Young women (and men) don't appreciate the beauty they have until after it's gone.
When a woman says that, they dont mean the sweaty kid in a convention. They mean the well-dressed executives at the office or the good looking guy at the bar.
Sadly that’s part of the issue.
There are two paths that can take a good looking woman to be a "booth babe": Marketing or modeling.
A model or aspiring marketer (perhaps with a full degree) seeks a job, the marketing/modeling agency sees her, she is good looking and will offer her no other position than "Booth Babe" mainly because they know they must force all good looking women that path or they will have no booth babes to sell.
I can see the future... in a few years, you will have to slide a credit card to enable use of your car's radio if someone is sitting in the passenger sit (be the front or back sits!)
Not only speeds, but we have a lot of ISPs now threatening to enforce their paper caps (you know, the ones they have not enforced but we have covered a lot in Slashdot.)
On the article, though... I love how Wall Street Journal reports on the dismissal of a rumor no one ever confirmed. I was sure these things would have disk drives, it's obvious. Bandwidth is not the only issue, complete absence of internet connectivity is still an issue in many households that own XBox, be it a full household thing or just restrictions on the kid's console alone.
The real questions I have:
Will I get day-one digital download access if I do have internet, or will publishers be allowed to side on FUD and not distribute digitally?
Better: will perhaps I get earlier access if I decide to buy digital or will I have to wait for the brick & mortar launch date?
Will non-transferable digital only copies be cheaper?
Thats an extremely hopeful twist on what happened... Google didn't convince Verizon to "agree" on wired net neutrality. Google simply bent over and offered its support in exchange of Android pimping.
It is because of Google that the wireless net neutrality exceptions were accepted, because "Google had nothing to win so their agreement must mean there is no biggie" (other than Google actually having a lot to win from Verizon's Android support.)
I know it's important to anti-Googlers because it's pretty much the closest the company has come so far to being evil
Far from it. Google's "most evil" act so far I'd say was joining with Verizon to kill wireless net-neutrality.
No, that would be wrong!!! You have to make sure to let the person know that singing is it's own reward and tell him he needs no money! You should know the drill if you played on the street for money!
recorded music is your advertising and you should be making money on live performances from the real fans
I was under the impression that it was always this way... that the records don't make you much, it's the gigs. Is that wrong?
Either way, those dirty fucks at Ticketmaster need to be next.
Partially true. The artist himself was not making much money because between loopholes and fine print tricks, the studios end up keeping nearly all the profits of media sale, in some situations some artist may find themselves owing money to the studios (since every cd sent to a radio station was/is fully expensed at a full retail price as a marketing cost that you are supposed to pay for from your profits.)
But media sales have always been very lucrative, an indie artist that refuses to give away his music in Spotify and instead sells directly via iTunes and other digital outlets, or even burning his own disks, may make a LOT of money.
I was into Reggaeton a few years back, a lot of the "reggaettoneros" artists wised up darn fast. They didn’t go to any label, they self-published their stuff and got filthy rich fast. Don Omar is a good example. These are people that didnt really grow daydreaming about the rock star life, so they seem to have pursued things in a more sensible way (despite their appearance and image of being uneducated and thug-like.)
I still don't get why in this information age, the american artist still dreams of being picked up by a big label and become a super star the 80's way.
Lady in street: I loved your performance, thank you, lovely music. I'll be on my way now.
Singer: But... I need food... please give me some money....
Lady in street: You greedy asshole? How dare you ask me for money?! Music should be done for the love of it!!! Performing for my pleasure while I eat should BE your food!!!! Now sing and stop begging!!!! If you want money go and get a real job!
Jonathan Coulton was talking about this a few months ago in the TWiT podcast.
Streaming services pay garbage to independent artists because the big studios (the old boss) bullied them into accepting horrible terms or literally take them out of business.
Make no mistake; the big studios get a generous split of the Spotify profits. But for Spotify to survive with such a "generous" deal, they had to screw someone else: the indie musician that "can't really bully" them.
Mind you, in some ways, if all indies got together and left Spotify, they would suffer (right now they average their profits with a mixture of indie and big studio playbacks.)
I would not be shocked if the studios want it to work this way, to discourage the next gen of artists from pursuing an indie career.
Sorry, what? When I write an email or text on my Android the entire text gets sent to Google? Even if I decide not to send it?
Unless you disabled automated draft saving... yea.
This is just a stunt. This is the second article from IBM CIO I read today with him trying to scare people of allowing Apple devices in the workplace. Fear mongering, that's all it is.
Kill their revenue stream? Every minute it's down, it's a minute they are not selling ads.
Given how few drugs are meant to save lives, and most are just to make conditions bearable or alleviate temporary effects (and in most cases just to fix patient negligence that cause things like diabetes) I think more people would die due to lack of drug testing than from lack of the drugs in question.
To be fair to Microsoft, they abandoned their Windows brand on one of their major at-the-time-new products. And yet for some reason the Zune still didn't take off...
There were many many bad things done with the Zune, but the first was attempting to do an "iPod Killer". They also abandoned the brand with the XBox and look how big of a success it has been. Thing is, the XBox was not done to mimic or copy a competitor, it simply was another console, and to be fair, one with loads of soul behind it.
I don't know what you're thinking with the "Metro brand". Are you suggesting they drop the Windows brand from their still market leading desktop OS (the only place where the Windows brand makes sense)? Are you suggesting they replace it with a brand which has so far attracted ample scorn from the internet's chattering classes, and is completely unknown to anybody else?
I'm thinking more about their stupid Windows RT naming for tablets and Windows Phone name. I think Metro Phone and Metro Tablet may have been much more marketable names for people that hear Windows and think "that thing I use at work."
Windows for PC should remain what it is, and the number system seems to be working very nicely in that realm (the year convention makes things feel old too fast and the random letter scheme, like XP, is just horrible.) But keep it there, Microsoft does not have to name every single product they make "Windows."
I'm not saying Microsoft needs to abandon Windows, but keep the product being itself and don't shoehorn it everywhere.
There is no reason for their phone OS to be called "Windows Phone", it's not just not App compatible, it does not even have the feature the OS was named after. The same applies for their upcoming Arm Tablet approach.
But no... They feel forced to market the Phone using Windows and Office brands. They think that big Microsoft Office tile in the home screen, and the Windows name, will sell their phones. It's already proven it won’t.
Even between Microsoft fans that love PCs, no one I ever met seems to think Windows is "cool" or desirable. They feel "windows" is that thing that runs in PCs and Office is a work requirement, not a fun toy. Windows fans, if anything, may feel more love for Direct X than the OS its part off.
BTW separate note: Apple appears to have about ~10% of the current PC market, not huge, but not a joke either. There may be a much larger PC install base, but a lot of those are not actually active. That's also part of the point: Ballmer is allowing OSX to gain too much traction.
The Xbox division is indeed doing great, but Ballmer seems to undermine it every time he can. There were some big losses last year due to some acquisitions (Skype? not sure...) and they "balanced the books" by punishing a lot of divisions, the Xbox division I understand was hit hard and would had shined had they not done that.
It's like Ballmer is ashamed of anything that does not have a big Windows brand in the box, when perhaps he should be doing the opposite.
Can you imagine how well Apple would had fared had they called their iPhone a MacPhone instead? I bet it would have been a flop just due to the horrible unmarketable name.
It’s time Microsoft realizes their future is in the Metro/Xbox brands, not in the Windows/Office ones. Ballmer's resistance is slowly going to kill Microsoft.
Huge issue: biggest chunk of apps moving in mobile markets are games. These games either need as much performance as possible (that can only be achieved with native code) or are forced to use hacks here and there that end up making them depend heavily on browser differences.
Not that this matters much here, I bet BB10 will have some form of support for native apps, and this HTML5 deal is just a way to make it easier on some to develop simple apps.
Side note: in theory you can write HTML5 apps for iOS and Android. All you need is to make a very small "shell" app with a browser view controller and redirect it to your internal HTML code.