I had no interest in buying a Nook until B&N decided to stand up to the Microsoft mobile device/linux extortion racket. Now I'm about to start buying the things as x-mas presents.
While your point stands regardless, out of curiosity, is that 90% stat real or hyperbole? It sounds like hyperbole but we are talking Apple and profit here . . .
The sad thing is that when there's dupes - one with a sensational (and inaccurate) headline and the other with an unsensational (and accurate) headline - the sensational headline makes it to the front page whereas the other gets buried as a dupe. It's not that the community actively works to create inaccuracies and sensationalism, it's just that those are better at catching people's attention.
'Could' transformed to 'will' is probably the most common headline error on/. 'Could' stories aren't interesting - that word usually indicates an opinion piece (usually in the form of a blog) or some shoddy survey (such as this article). People tend to glance over them. 'Will' stories tend to be either a conclusion with legitimate research to back it up or a bait and switch of 'could.' So we look for 'will' and overlook 'could.'
I only post this nuanced examination into the phenomenon in hopes that it inspires others to bury these could = will stories before they can escape the firehose.
I understand that Flash/Silverlight can also make annoying ads, poorly constructed websites that would be much better serviced by AJAX, and crappy games the world can do without; but the quote you were commenting on is specifically about video. The death of competition is a good thing when you're competing to see who can make the bigger turd sandwich. Point being: video was the only thing Flash was good for and now it's not needed.
But this isn't the dead of competition. HTML 5 doesn't provide a video codec, it provides an HTML tag that allows for multiple forms of video to be placed in. H.264, WebM, Theora - the competition is still there, but two of the big lock-in bullies (MS, Adobe) are bowing out. All Flash and Silverlight did for video was provide a way of getting it to the browser that is no longer necessary. Is it a bad thing that the wagon-wheel market doesn't have much competition anymore?
Personally, I'm pulling for WebM. It's free, open source, and under the BSD license. The lack of competition is a good thing when the only thing used is free and open source (b/c if you want to change it, you can). I would argue that FOS drives innovation more than competition (just look at all the Linux desktops - almost everything that's been added to Mac OS X or Windows in the last decade showed up on some linux desktop first). I'd love to see MPEG LA disappear forever. We don't need their 'competition.'
But if you told the ones who don't know that they're being censored, do you think they would be surprised? Many probably wouldn't even understand the moral complaint regarding censorship (e.g. - if people can say whatever they want, then they can lie, slander, mislead, etc. - all governments partake in censorship, it's just a matter of to what degree).
If tomorrow Wikileaks reveals some nefarious action by the NSA that no one knew about, would you be surprised? At this point, would anyone but a vocal minority even be outraged?
Why don't you come here and live in Gary, Indiana? Oh, you won't be doing that, right? What a fuckin' surprise.
While I still love my good 'old U.S. of A., it is facing a rapid decline, whereas China is still the fastest growing economy in the world.
btw, 'disciplined citizenship' means that less crimes are committed. In America, crime is a burgeoning culture and has been since the 20s. We incarcerate far more people than China does - both in total numbers and percentage-wise. Nothing says freedom quite like prison.
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.
Heh, next thing you know the cops are going to crack down on bums for dumpster diving.
And to all those who have responded to your post with "what if the restaurants sell this stuff?" - they're wrong. The restaurants, like you said, pay to have it removed.
I know a guy who has a VW TDI converted into a grease engine. He's banned from every Wal-Mart in America because he worked out some arrangement with the McDonald's manager (inside the Wal-Mart) to get enough old vegetable oil to keep his car on the road. Some security guard at Wal-Mart saw him taking the oil out of the waste container in the back and disapproved. I think the McDonald's manager got in trouble for it as well.
Now I think he gets his fuel from Rallys or Wendy's or some place like that. But he doesn't really steal it because he asks for it, first. The companies pay to have the stuff disposed of so usually the managers usually don't mind.
I have a TDI for my winter car (summer car is a mid-engine, rwd), but I haven't converted it because 1) filtering the IKG is a pain in the ass 2) it makes your car perpetually smell like fast food 3) it can be high maintenance and 4) driving a diesel around is cheap as hell anyway (40-45mpg on a 15 yr old car!).
I don't know, I've been seeing less and less Flash-dependent websites since the iPhone came out. Kind of like the old days where there was "click here for Flash version of site, click here for non-Flash" except less people notice it now b/c the site just auto-detects whether Flash is present or not. I've been noticing a lot less Flash ads as well (this is extremely noticeable b/c I use Flashblock). The transition has been underway for a couple years now. Now that there is no disputing the status of Flash, stupid managers and lazy web designers will no longer have an excuse to continue using it. An open source Flash would just make it easier to exploit the many security holes present, which I doubt anyone in the open source community wants to waste their time fixing.
While your theory is interesting, it would help if you had better evidence to back it up. The BP example doesn't hold much water and Airbus is more of a military-industrial complex issue than evidence of a xenophobic bias on the part of the American judiciary.
Things like this make it seem like the 'cyberpunk' dystopias of William Gibson novels are quickly becoming reality. Laws have some eerie parallels with with alcohol prohibition. The word 'escalation' comes to mind.
Gordon: What about escalation?
Batman: Escalation?
Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics and they buy automatics. We start wearing kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds.
Batman: Yeah?
Gordon: And you're wearing a mask. Jumping off rooftops.
This is why Gibson's newer novels take place in the present rather than the future. Professional scammers, Anonymous, Wikileaks . . . an escalation of black hats, grey hats, and white hats respectively. Pieces of legislation like this won't do much to curb piracy but they will cause further escalation. Create a new class of criminals - ones much worse than current black hats, but ones the black hats will come to depend on. All of a sudden Neuromancer doesn't seem all that unrealistic.
At some point, one begins to wonder what's worse -- the Chinese government being upfront about their censorship and their belief that the government is more important than the people whom it governs; or the Americans and Europeans and Australians who pass these laws in the name of liberty? If totalitarianism must be implemented, isn't it worse with the doublespeak?
At least the Chinese method of honesty fashions a disciplined citizenship whereas this western Orwellianism depends on fools who believe the definition of a word is its antonym. And thus begins the Idiotocracy. China's starting to look not so bad.
Fortunately, congress has been busy passing a lot of important legislation lately. I'm sure we can trust these wonderful representatives to continue to stand up for the issues that matter as they diligently work to bring this country back to the prominent state God intended it to be in. I'm sure that once congress has passed comprehensive patent reform, they'll soon get to on other digital issues such as legally enforcing net-neutrality and guaranteeing that using the internet does not void one's fourth amendment rights.
Ah, the old Clockwork Orange argument: an action isn't good without good intent.
When it comes to the patent wars, I think those on the losing end of things are bound to be the ones to petition for reform. We might as well support them, regardless of what drives them to this position.
I would encourage a trade that cannot be outsourced. Electrician, plumber, A/C repair, etc. Once you've worked for someone else making b.s. money for a few years it's painfully easy to start your own business in those fields and make more than most engineers.
And how long are those jobs going to remain well paid if no-one else is making good wages?
Business and government clients are usually where the money's at. A guy living on welfare in the projects can't afford to hire a repairman, but he doesn't have to. The project manager does (i.e., the government). Furthermore, now that the housing bubble has burst, there are no longer a bunch of homeowners who can barely afford their mortgage (they've already defaulted). When it comes to renters, the landlord pays repair bills.
How do you explain Sal Khan's statistical evidence that, for the most part, there are no 'bright' students and 'slow' students? People just have different ways of learning and learn at different paces. He postulates that the system has always been a failure. It rewards those who work well within the constrains of the system, and punishes those who learn at a slower pace or don't learn well in a traditional classroom setting. It's no different than the old story of how Einstein failed algebra. There actually is a point to that story even though the story itself isn't true.
Also, I would argue that the 'instant gratification' theory doesn't hold much weight. There have always been 'instant gratification' people and they've always been the majority. But there was once a time when a person's economic needs could be instantly gratified by going to work a blue collar job. These aren't available anymore. It pisses me off to no end to hear people from my parents generation disparage my generation for not working hard enough. There aren't more people going to college now because more people want to go to college, there are more people going to college because there is no other economic recourse. Naturally, many of those who reluctantly enroll in higher education are ill suited for its culture, discipline, and teaching methods.
The way I see it, the education system was somewhat effective when it was okay for a large percentage of students to fail. In fact, that was necessary because of how much of the economy depended on blue collar jobs. The economy has changed but education hasn't. This has nothing to do with giving trophies to the winners and losers. It's not a game where there must be winners and there must be losers. When it comes to education, anyone who isn't mentally handicapped can and should be a winner.
Slashdot Mirror
by mimicking Microsoft Windows' power behavior in the Linux kernel
Microsoft's lawyers probably love that description.
I had no interest in buying a Nook until B&N decided to stand up to the Microsoft mobile device/linux extortion racket. Now I'm about to start buying the things as x-mas presents.
While your point stands regardless, out of curiosity, is that 90% stat real or hyperbole? It sounds like hyperbole but we are talking Apple and profit here . . .
The sad thing is that when there's dupes - one with a sensational (and inaccurate) headline and the other with an unsensational (and accurate) headline - the sensational headline makes it to the front page whereas the other gets buried as a dupe. It's not that the community actively works to create inaccuracies and sensationalism, it's just that those are better at catching people's attention.
'Could' transformed to 'will' is probably the most common headline error on /. 'Could' stories aren't interesting - that word usually indicates an opinion piece (usually in the form of a blog) or some shoddy survey (such as this article). People tend to glance over them. 'Will' stories tend to be either a conclusion with legitimate research to back it up or a bait and switch of 'could.' So we look for 'will' and overlook 'could.'
I only post this nuanced examination into the phenomenon in hopes that it inspires others to bury these could = will stories before they can escape the firehose.
I had to check, but it turns out that newgrounds actually still exists. There's a third thing for the users.
I understand that Flash/Silverlight can also make annoying ads, poorly constructed websites that would be much better serviced by AJAX, and crappy games the world can do without; but the quote you were commenting on is specifically about video. The death of competition is a good thing when you're competing to see who can make the bigger turd sandwich. Point being: video was the only thing Flash was good for and now it's not needed.
But this isn't the dead of competition. HTML 5 doesn't provide a video codec, it provides an HTML tag that allows for multiple forms of video to be placed in. H.264, WebM, Theora - the competition is still there, but two of the big lock-in bullies (MS, Adobe) are bowing out. All Flash and Silverlight did for video was provide a way of getting it to the browser that is no longer necessary. Is it a bad thing that the wagon-wheel market doesn't have much competition anymore?
Personally, I'm pulling for WebM. It's free, open source, and under the BSD license. The lack of competition is a good thing when the only thing used is free and open source (b/c if you want to change it, you can). I would argue that FOS drives innovation more than competition (just look at all the Linux desktops - almost everything that's been added to Mac OS X or Windows in the last decade showed up on some linux desktop first). I'd love to see MPEG LA disappear forever. We don't need their 'competition.'
Don't let facts get in the way of his cynical pessimism.
But if you told the ones who don't know that they're being censored, do you think they would be surprised? Many probably wouldn't even understand the moral complaint regarding censorship (e.g. - if people can say whatever they want, then they can lie, slander, mislead, etc. - all governments partake in censorship, it's just a matter of to what degree).
If tomorrow Wikileaks reveals some nefarious action by the NSA that no one knew about, would you be surprised? At this point, would anyone but a vocal minority even be outraged?
Why don't you come here and live in Gary, Indiana? Oh, you won't be doing that, right? What a fuckin' surprise.
While I still love my good 'old U.S. of A., it is facing a rapid decline, whereas China is still the fastest growing economy in the world.
btw, 'disciplined citizenship' means that less crimes are committed. In America, crime is a burgeoning culture and has been since the 20s. We incarcerate far more people than China does - both in total numbers and percentage-wise. Nothing says freedom quite like prison.
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all
Heh, next thing you know the cops are going to crack down on bums for dumpster diving.
And to all those who have responded to your post with "what if the restaurants sell this stuff?" - they're wrong. The restaurants, like you said, pay to have it removed.
I know a guy who has a VW TDI converted into a grease engine. He's banned from every Wal-Mart in America because he worked out some arrangement with the McDonald's manager (inside the Wal-Mart) to get enough old vegetable oil to keep his car on the road. Some security guard at Wal-Mart saw him taking the oil out of the waste container in the back and disapproved. I think the McDonald's manager got in trouble for it as well.
Now I think he gets his fuel from Rallys or Wendy's or some place like that. But he doesn't really steal it because he asks for it, first. The companies pay to have the stuff disposed of so usually the managers usually don't mind.
I have a TDI for my winter car (summer car is a mid-engine, rwd), but I haven't converted it because 1) filtering the IKG is a pain in the ass 2) it makes your car perpetually smell like fast food 3) it can be high maintenance and 4) driving a diesel around is cheap as hell anyway (40-45mpg on a 15 yr old car!).
I don't know, I've been seeing less and less Flash-dependent websites since the iPhone came out. Kind of like the old days where there was "click here for Flash version of site, click here for non-Flash" except less people notice it now b/c the site just auto-detects whether Flash is present or not. I've been noticing a lot less Flash ads as well (this is extremely noticeable b/c I use Flashblock). The transition has been underway for a couple years now. Now that there is no disputing the status of Flash, stupid managers and lazy web designers will no longer have an excuse to continue using it. An open source Flash would just make it easier to exploit the many security holes present, which I doubt anyone in the open source community wants to waste their time fixing.
While your theory is interesting, it would help if you had better evidence to back it up. The BP example doesn't hold much water and Airbus is more of a military-industrial complex issue than evidence of a xenophobic bias on the part of the American judiciary.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
The way I understand it, extortion was never legal, regardless of the legal status of software patents.
Things like this make it seem like the 'cyberpunk' dystopias of William Gibson novels are quickly becoming reality. Laws have some eerie parallels with with alcohol prohibition. The word 'escalation' comes to mind.
Gordon: What about escalation?
Batman: Escalation?
Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics and they buy automatics. We start wearing kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds.
Batman: Yeah?
Gordon: And you're wearing a mask. Jumping off rooftops.
This is why Gibson's newer novels take place in the present rather than the future. Professional scammers, Anonymous, Wikileaks . . . an escalation of black hats, grey hats, and white hats respectively. Pieces of legislation like this won't do much to curb piracy but they will cause further escalation. Create a new class of criminals - ones much worse than current black hats, but ones the black hats will come to depend on. All of a sudden Neuromancer doesn't seem all that unrealistic.
At some point, one begins to wonder what's worse -- the Chinese government being upfront about their censorship and their belief that the government is more important than the people whom it governs; or the Americans and Europeans and Australians who pass these laws in the name of liberty? If totalitarianism must be implemented, isn't it worse with the doublespeak?
At least the Chinese method of honesty fashions a disciplined citizenship whereas this western Orwellianism depends on fools who believe the definition of a word is its antonym. And thus begins the Idiotocracy. China's starting to look not so bad.
Fortunately, congress has been busy passing a lot of important legislation lately. I'm sure we can trust these wonderful representatives to continue to stand up for the issues that matter as they diligently work to bring this country back to the prominent state God intended it to be in. I'm sure that once congress has passed comprehensive patent reform, they'll soon get to on other digital issues such as legally enforcing net-neutrality and guaranteeing that using the internet does not void one's fourth amendment rights.
Ah, the old Clockwork Orange argument: an action isn't good without good intent.
When it comes to the patent wars, I think those on the losing end of things are bound to be the ones to petition for reform. We might as well support them, regardless of what drives them to this position.
I would encourage a trade that cannot be outsourced. Electrician, plumber, A/C repair, etc. Once you've worked for someone else making b.s. money for a few years it's painfully easy to start your own business in those fields and make more than most engineers.
And how long are those jobs going to remain well paid if no-one else is making good wages?
Business and government clients are usually where the money's at. A guy living on welfare in the projects can't afford to hire a repairman, but he doesn't have to. The project manager does (i.e., the government). Furthermore, now that the housing bubble has burst, there are no longer a bunch of homeowners who can barely afford their mortgage (they've already defaulted). When it comes to renters, the landlord pays repair bills.
It is a commodity that is easily outsourced.
Yeah, engineering jobs aren't getting outsourced . . . oh, hi India.
How do you explain Sal Khan's statistical evidence that, for the most part, there are no 'bright' students and 'slow' students? People just have different ways of learning and learn at different paces. He postulates that the system has always been a failure. It rewards those who work well within the constrains of the system, and punishes those who learn at a slower pace or don't learn well in a traditional classroom setting. It's no different than the old story of how Einstein failed algebra. There actually is a point to that story even though the story itself isn't true.
Also, I would argue that the 'instant gratification' theory doesn't hold much weight. There have always been 'instant gratification' people and they've always been the majority. But there was once a time when a person's economic needs could be instantly gratified by going to work a blue collar job. These aren't available anymore. It pisses me off to no end to hear people from my parents generation disparage my generation for not working hard enough. There aren't more people going to college now because more people want to go to college, there are more people going to college because there is no other economic recourse. Naturally, many of those who reluctantly enroll in higher education are ill suited for its culture, discipline, and teaching methods.
The way I see it, the education system was somewhat effective when it was okay for a large percentage of students to fail. In fact, that was necessary because of how much of the economy depended on blue collar jobs. The economy has changed but education hasn't. This has nothing to do with giving trophies to the winners and losers. It's not a game where there must be winners and there must be losers. When it comes to education, anyone who isn't mentally handicapped can and should be a winner.
You can grow apples in Texas? Is it even worth the irrigation?
Okay, I'm being pedantic, but that just stuck out as a real odd example. Apples = Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. Ya know, Johnny Appleseed?
Jobs died, but his humongous reality distortion field is still operational.
In his will, the reality distortion field was left to Tim Cook.
How can Apple be sued for something they haven't done?