I”m sorry?? Amazon’s work in selling these e-books is next to nothing. I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all that’s left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!
That's up there with "Rock Stars don't do anything difficult- I could do that if I wanted to!". Why don't you then? Undercut the big players, offer lots to the authors? Make your millions?
I'll tell you why- if you set up an e-book website, it'd flop. There's more to being a mega-retailer than just writing a web-page and setting up a money transfer. Advertising, promoting, negotiating with publishers and authors, maintaining partnerships... the website itself is no more significant than the shop-front is for a jewelery shop- it's everything else that makes the shop, not the bricks and mortar.
Plenty of people do try and fail- only the ones who are good at all that other stuff survive. Amazon have, Apple have, lots haven't. It's their talents in all these other niggling little areas that enables to act like the juggernaut-bullies that they are.
I think, to torture this metaphor, it'd be like saying: We have poetry in a given form We have invented a new (public domain) written language Can I patent poetry in the new written language?
Or to put it back into context: We have telephone voice communication already in use over certain data transfer methods We have invented a new (public domain) data transfer method Can I patent voice communication over the new data protocol?
The implied answer to both should be "no". All "new" invention happens at steps 1 & 2; step 3 is simply combining two already patented/public domain inventions in a new, fairly obvious way.
They should have done. But if all 25 sets of mothers and fathers have the same reaction, you've got 25 unvaccinated kids. Pity the poor kids who can't get vaccinated for any given reason.
On the subject of the MMR vaccine, this applies to my GF. She cannot have that particular vaccine due to an allergic reaction. In theory she should still be protected by herd immunity, but alas no-more. Particularly worrying as she is a teacher (in contact with said unvaccinated children) and the diseases in question are particularly dangerous to pregnant women (she isn't, but no reason why she couldn't be).
To add to this, he had also filed for a patent on something suspiciously like a single-vaccine for measles, which would only have had a market if the MMR fell out of use.
Record companies may not be able to pay DJ's to play their music anymore, but they get around that problem by owning most of the radio stations, and controlling their playlists.
Record companies do not own radio stations....But what you have now is seriously homogenized music choices that lean towards hits of the past (safe bets to keep listeners) instead of challenging listeners with new music. So radio does very, very little to introduce new music. Less than it used to under the payola system, which was ridiculously weighted towards the established record labels instead of independent record labels or the actual musicians.
Just another way on just another day that I'm thankful for the BBC. Bless you, Auntie.
As for automated rendezvous, the Russians have been doing this for years. Just buy it from them.
The ESA too, with their ATV programme.
Re:Could someone explain to me
on
Making Sense of ACTA
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The British Motor Corporation (/British Leyland/Rover MG) will back you up on that one. Unions are wonderful, but the overzealous ones have killed off many a healthy local industry.
In the case above, the union kept making demands, and the incompetent management never managed to balance them out properly, in the end the company was busy producing the fewest, shoddiest, most expensive excuses for automobiles available this side of the iron curtain, before duly going bust for the final time.
If you're talking about the same WinCE devices I'm seeing around then you're quite wrong. Around here there are Linux versions of the same devices shipping right alongside WinCE.
Google "Little Linux Laptop", as they're affectionately collectively known, for further information.
Whether my time is worth money is somewhat irrelevant- my Windows machine breaks down just as much (much more, generally) than my Linux machine. I'm just as likely to lose time using XP or Ubuntu. But like I said, I bitch about XP more because I paid for it.
Not that my time is worth anything. I havee 2 linux machines at home- a desktop (used for writing CV's, emails, etc., a little WINE maybe) and this here netbook (used principally to trawl Slashdot). I'd probably care more if I were in a production environment, but I'd be willing to bet that 90% of home computers share a usage pattern with mine.
No-one cares, people keep watching the services that they want to watch, the services keep making money through whatever channels they've always made, the content providers keep selling their content to whoever is dragging in the traffic?
I agree, and I never said that Linux was particularly buggy.
My XP boot still suffers from plenty of genuine bugs- just last week something vital corrupted itself spontaneously and forced me to dig out a Windows recovery disk- very unusual, but highly in keeping with how XP usually behaves. My Linux partition is much more sane, but still suffers problems (just not necessarily bugs, per se). My Ubuntu boot screwed itself up running an auto-update once- that's a problem. It protested about my off-the-shelf wireless card a few years back- not a bug, but still a problem. Its never been happy with my external-DVD, and nor has my Xandros (don't start) netbook- not a bug, but still not perfect.
Like I said though, I'm happy with my Linux boots, even with their very minor problems, because they've never asked anything of me in return (for example, my credit card details). Something valued at a week's wages (the latest full version of Windows 7 at my local PC World) earns my wrath far more easily.
If you want your floor vacuumed by your humanoid robot then you'll also need to buy him a vacuum cleaner with which to do it. Considering the low cost of computer equipment now, why not just jam a tiny electronic brain in the vacuum which you'll have to buy either way?
Same goes for most things. Why buy one car and one humanoid robotic chauffeur when you could just buy the car (which you have to buy either way) and stick a computer and a couple of sensors in it? Why have a shed full of gardening equipment and an android gardener when you could just bundle all your already-required tools into a handy automated bundle?
And that's not all of it. The idea of having a machine going around and controlling other machines by way of buttons and leavers it quaint- why wouldn't all of these devices just network with each other? Why have an android turn the steering wheel and push the pedals on a car (and designing it with hands and feet for just this purpose) when it could just connect (wirelessly perhaps) and order the car what to do? Why would it even need to be there to do that?
Far more sensible to have your big "house" computer nestled away somewhere, controlling all your devices for you over the airwaves. Like HAL, only with less psychopathy.
Value for money, my friend. My Windows and my Linux machines have, lets be honest, a relatively similar number of problems. Windows suffers from the most outright bugs, but then Linux can still sometimes throw a hardware or compatibility wobbly, and sometimes does suffer the occasional deeper problem.
The difference is that one of them is distributed free over the internet, and the other cost me £150 and still delights in harassing how "genuine" I am every time I visit the developer's website.
You tend to be far more forgiving when something is both free (beer) and, feels like it belongs to you instead of some distant oligarchy.
Mine crashed plenty, and I found the car sections so awful as to be almost unplayable. But the majority of the regular gameplay, plus the plot and all the bonus extras, I enjoyed quite a lot.
But then a game that buggy is pretty unforgivable.
Saddam Hussein was Iraq's dictator not president. A presidency requires there be some degree of democracy which Iraq was sorely lacking.
No it doesn't. Presidency has nothing to do with democracy. It comes from the word "preside", as in "presides over things", and essentially just means "leader". It is usually used by republics, which also has nothing to do with democracy- "republic" just means "not ruled by royalty".
That seems stupid, considering a lot of compact keyboards (on laptops, for example) have already relegated SysRq to "Function" status anyhow. Pressing that keycombo on the laptop I'm using right now would mean Alt+Fn+SysRq+K. That's quite a lot of fingers-on-buttons for quite a small keyboard.
Presumably Google.cn is itself based in China. Its crawlers will be subject to the GFW, in that it still won't be able to access sites which Chinese ISPs won't serve to it. Just because Google aren't censoring what they put out anymore, it doesn't mean that what they're putting in isn't censored by other people.
While I don't really agree with all the posts about the @aol, hotmail etc., I agree with you that there's little excuse to have your "fun" email handle on professional documents.
I have 2 email addresses. The first is my primary address, which is based on patch86 (my generic internet handle); it's fairly neutral, not exactly "drunkd00d54@", but isn't very professional. My second is a gmail address "firstname.lastname@" which forwards all mail to my primary, and is what goes on CVs.
I think that's plenty simple enough for the sake off a bit of professionalism.
Has encryption been invented? Check. Can it be used to encrypt computer files? Check. Has p2p downloading been invented? Check. Does it allow transferring computer files? Check.
Obviousness is a perfectly valid reason to deny a patent too, you know.
"Their" and "they" can be and are used as non-gender specific singular pronouns. Although it's frowned upon by many, it's extremely common in most English dialects, and has been used for centuries (including by both Shakespeare and Austen, IIRC).
In other words, don't be such a damned pedant. Language isn't that straight forward.
And no consumers want choice, right? People much prefer to compromise on what they want from a product because of a limited product line, obviously!
(Nokia sells a range of different devices filling a whole range of price and hardware niches. Seeing as their combined range outsells Apples combined range by a considerable amount, I'd guess it's a strategy which is serving them pretty well).
All mobile phone networks in the UK still use SIMs, and to my knowledge the Droid (sold as the "Milestone" here) is sold unlocked to any network and SIM free.
I have no idea whether this would work, but would it be possible just to import yourself one of the unlocked UK ones and stick a US SIM in it?
And that's exactly why actors, singers and sports athletes (i.e. professional gamers) are all terribly impoverished while street sweepers and sewage engineers are living the high life.
If they had jumped in one at a time they would have been slaughtered by the waiting defenders. If you have 700 people and the enemy has a very similar number, the only way you could hope to win is by jumping most (if not all) of it in at once.
If that's the only way to win and that doesn't work due to server problems then they could be forgiven for being peeved at the new combat mechanics.
Slashdot Mirror
I”m sorry?? Amazon’s work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all that’s left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!
That's up there with "Rock Stars don't do anything difficult- I could do that if I wanted to!". Why don't you then? Undercut the big players, offer lots to the authors? Make your millions?
I'll tell you why- if you set up an e-book website, it'd flop. There's more to being a mega-retailer than just writing a web-page and setting up a money transfer. Advertising, promoting, negotiating with publishers and authors, maintaining partnerships... the website itself is no more significant than the shop-front is for a jewelery shop- it's everything else that makes the shop, not the bricks and mortar.
Plenty of people do try and fail- only the ones who are good at all that other stuff survive. Amazon have, Apple have, lots haven't. It's their talents in all these other niggling little areas that enables to act like the juggernaut-bullies that they are.
I think, to torture this metaphor, it'd be like saying:
We have poetry in a given form
We have invented a new (public domain) written language
Can I patent poetry in the new written language?
Or to put it back into context:
We have telephone voice communication already in use over certain data transfer methods
We have invented a new (public domain) data transfer method
Can I patent voice communication over the new data protocol?
The implied answer to both should be "no". All "new" invention happens at steps 1 & 2; step 3 is simply combining two already patented/public domain inventions in a new, fairly obvious way.
They should have done. But if all 25 sets of mothers and fathers have the same reaction, you've got 25 unvaccinated kids. Pity the poor kids who can't get vaccinated for any given reason.
On the subject of the MMR vaccine, this applies to my GF. She cannot have that particular vaccine due to an allergic reaction. In theory she should still be protected by herd immunity, but alas no-more. Particularly worrying as she is a teacher (in contact with said unvaccinated children) and the diseases in question are particularly dangerous to pregnant women (she isn't, but no reason why she couldn't be).
To add to this, he had also filed for a patent on something suspiciously like a single-vaccine for measles, which would only have had a market if the MMR fell out of use.
This conflict of interest went undisclosed.
Record companies may not be able to pay DJ's to play their music anymore, but they get around that problem by owning most of the radio stations, and controlling their playlists.
Record companies do not own radio stations....But what you have now is seriously homogenized music choices that lean towards hits of the past (safe bets to keep listeners) instead of challenging listeners with new music. So radio does very, very little to introduce new music. Less than it used to under the payola system, which was ridiculously weighted towards the established record labels instead of independent record labels or the actual musicians.
Just another way on just another day that I'm thankful for the BBC. Bless you, Auntie.
As for automated rendezvous, the Russians have been doing this for years. Just buy it from them.
The ESA too, with their ATV programme.
The British Motor Corporation (/British Leyland/Rover MG) will back you up on that one. Unions are wonderful, but the overzealous ones have killed off many a healthy local industry.
In the case above, the union kept making demands, and the incompetent management never managed to balance them out properly, in the end the company was busy producing the fewest, shoddiest, most expensive excuses for automobiles available this side of the iron curtain, before duly going bust for the final time.
(Car analogy five?)
Sorry to reply to myself, but to be helpful:
http://www.cnmlifestyle.com/
If you're talking about the same WinCE devices I'm seeing around then you're quite wrong. Around here there are Linux versions of the same devices shipping right alongside WinCE.
Google "Little Linux Laptop", as they're affectionately collectively known, for further information.
Whether my time is worth money is somewhat irrelevant- my Windows machine breaks down just as much (much more, generally) than my Linux machine. I'm just as likely to lose time using XP or Ubuntu. But like I said, I bitch about XP more because I paid for it.
Not that my time is worth anything. I havee 2 linux machines at home- a desktop (used for writing CV's, emails, etc., a little WINE maybe) and this here netbook (used principally to trawl Slashdot). I'd probably care more if I were in a production environment, but I'd be willing to bet that 90% of home computers share a usage pattern with mine.
No-one cares, people keep watching the services that they want to watch, the services keep making money through whatever channels they've always made, the content providers keep selling their content to whoever is dragging in the traffic?
Also, who is this Nielsen?
I agree, and I never said that Linux was particularly buggy.
My XP boot still suffers from plenty of genuine bugs- just last week something vital corrupted itself spontaneously and forced me to dig out a Windows recovery disk- very unusual, but highly in keeping with how XP usually behaves. My Linux partition is much more sane, but still suffers problems (just not necessarily bugs, per se). My Ubuntu boot screwed itself up running an auto-update once- that's a problem. It protested about my off-the-shelf wireless card a few years back- not a bug, but still a problem. Its never been happy with my external-DVD, and nor has my Xandros (don't start) netbook- not a bug, but still not perfect.
Like I said though, I'm happy with my Linux boots, even with their very minor problems, because they've never asked anything of me in return (for example, my credit card details). Something valued at a week's wages (the latest full version of Windows 7 at my local PC World) earns my wrath far more easily.
It's lazy thinking, that.
If you want your floor vacuumed by your humanoid robot then you'll also need to buy him a vacuum cleaner with which to do it. Considering the low cost of computer equipment now, why not just jam a tiny electronic brain in the vacuum which you'll have to buy either way?
Same goes for most things. Why buy one car and one humanoid robotic chauffeur when you could just buy the car (which you have to buy either way) and stick a computer and a couple of sensors in it? Why have a shed full of gardening equipment and an android gardener when you could just bundle all your already-required tools into a handy automated bundle?
And that's not all of it. The idea of having a machine going around and controlling other machines by way of buttons and leavers it quaint- why wouldn't all of these devices just network with each other? Why have an android turn the steering wheel and push the pedals on a car (and designing it with hands and feet for just this purpose) when it could just connect (wirelessly perhaps) and order the car what to do? Why would it even need to be there to do that?
Far more sensible to have your big "house" computer nestled away somewhere, controlling all your devices for you over the airwaves. Like HAL, only with less psychopathy.
Value for money, my friend. My Windows and my Linux machines have, lets be honest, a relatively similar number of problems. Windows suffers from the most outright bugs, but then Linux can still sometimes throw a hardware or compatibility wobbly, and sometimes does suffer the occasional deeper problem.
The difference is that one of them is distributed free over the internet, and the other cost me £150 and still delights in harassing how "genuine" I am every time I visit the developer's website.
You tend to be far more forgiving when something is both free (beer) and, feels like it belongs to you instead of some distant oligarchy.
Mine crashed plenty, and I found the car sections so awful as to be almost unplayable. But the majority of the regular gameplay, plus the plot and all the bonus extras, I enjoyed quite a lot.
But then a game that buggy is pretty unforgivable.
Saddam Hussein was Iraq's dictator not president. A presidency requires there be some degree of democracy which Iraq was sorely lacking.
No it doesn't. Presidency has nothing to do with democracy. It comes from the word "preside", as in "presides over things", and essentially just means "leader". It is usually used by republics, which also has nothing to do with democracy- "republic" just means "not ruled by royalty".
That seems stupid, considering a lot of compact keyboards (on laptops, for example) have already relegated SysRq to "Function" status anyhow. Pressing that keycombo on the laptop I'm using right now would mean Alt+Fn+SysRq+K. That's quite a lot of fingers-on-buttons for quite a small keyboard.
Presumably Google.cn is itself based in China. Its crawlers will be subject to the GFW, in that it still won't be able to access sites which Chinese ISPs won't serve to it. Just because Google aren't censoring what they put out anymore, it doesn't mean that what they're putting in isn't censored by other people.
Might not that account for the difference?
While I don't really agree with all the posts about the @aol, hotmail etc., I agree with you that there's little excuse to have your "fun" email handle on professional documents.
I have 2 email addresses. The first is my primary address, which is based on patch86 (my generic internet handle); it's fairly neutral, not exactly "drunkd00d54@", but isn't very professional. My second is a gmail address "firstname.lastname@" which forwards all mail to my primary, and is what goes on CVs.
I think that's plenty simple enough for the sake off a bit of professionalism.
What about obviousness?
Has encryption been invented? Check.
Can it be used to encrypt computer files? Check.
Has p2p downloading been invented? Check.
Does it allow transferring computer files? Check.
Obviousness is a perfectly valid reason to deny a patent too, you know.
"Their" and "they" can be and are used as non-gender specific singular pronouns. Although it's frowned upon by many, it's extremely common in most English dialects, and has been used for centuries (including by both Shakespeare and Austen, IIRC).
In other words, don't be such a damned pedant. Language isn't that straight forward.
And no consumers want choice, right? People much prefer to compromise on what they want from a product because of a limited product line, obviously!
(Nokia sells a range of different devices filling a whole range of price and hardware niches. Seeing as their combined range outsells Apples combined range by a considerable amount, I'd guess it's a strategy which is serving them pretty well).
All mobile phone networks in the UK still use SIMs, and to my knowledge the Droid (sold as the "Milestone" here) is sold unlocked to any network and SIM free.
I have no idea whether this would work, but would it be possible just to import yourself one of the unlocked UK ones and stick a US SIM in it?
And that's exactly why actors, singers and sports athletes (i.e. professional gamers) are all terribly impoverished while street sweepers and sewage engineers are living the high life.
Right?
If they had jumped in one at a time they would have been slaughtered by the waiting defenders. If you have 700 people and the enemy has a very similar number, the only way you could hope to win is by jumping most (if not all) of it in at once.
If that's the only way to win and that doesn't work due to server problems then they could be forgiven for being peeved at the new combat mechanics.