So even WITH the subsidy, he still had to pay $15K for his setup?
I think you just negated your own argument. You say "if only the majority of people got on board", and yet you yourself admit that you haven't and won't be because you simply can't afford it.
As I said... solar will never take off until it's much cheaper and more robust.
That may be, but that still means Solar power can ONLY function as an adjunct to other existing power. Once the sun goes down, you *still* need power to cook your dinner, turn on the heat if necessary, etc.
The article was (to me) implying that solar could replace existing power wholesale. Which it can't.
That is true. And if you can find camera software that can do that, then great. But Dropbox is ubiquitous and almost everyone knows what it is and how to use it.
In this situation, the best you can do is unlink your phone from your account and change your password before it occurs to the police to try to hack into it.
What you say is completely true. My point is that the article was very high in hand-wavy, "infinite energy if we just pepper the continent with solar panels" goodness, and very low on actual logistics.
Generating the power is one thing. Doing something with it is another. And for some reason the latter seems to get nowhere near the coverage of the former. Presumably because it's not as sexy.
They throw around some mighty big numbers. I wonder how those numbers look when the sun sets.
Solar is, and will continue to be, nowhere near it's full potential until battery technology catches up.
Solar power will not catch on until you can get a bunch of solar panels and a decent battery together for a price low enough that it's a no brainer to install them. Until then, solar will be limited to the world of rich eco-friendly types.
Ah, that's my problem. I don't watch TV, so I'm totally out of the loop in ads. The few ads I see when I'm out and about almost universally make me go WTF anyway, so I didn't realize....;)
For those that don't know, there is a simple and fantastic service called SpamGourmet. You can create disposable addresses on the fly, control how many emails they accept, etc.
Pre 7.0 apps need major retooling, if not a complete rewrite, to work with 7.x. And then it has to be done again for 8? Why would people bother? Hell, even Apple maintains some level of compatibility from one release to the next.
If Microsoft's goal is to throw a mulligan across their entire Windows 8 brand, they are succeeding marvelously.
The summary missed what is probably the most important line of the article:
"The Apple vs. Samsung trial was always destined to be a circus, "
It's clear that neither Apple nor Samsung is going to look good PR wise after all is said and done.
So the question becomes, who will get screwed over the hardest? Right now I'm betting on Samsung, simply because Apple has way more... um... "thermonuclear" experience.
I think it would be more valuable to have laws against stupidity. You REALLY thought it would be a good idea to use a toilet brush as a personal hygiene product? That's a $125 fine!
They probably just ran out of new terms to use, so they strung more and more existing ones together till it sounded good.
Reminds me of way back when, ATI (pre-AMD) released the following series of video cards: Graphics Ultra Graphics Ultra Pro Graphics Ultra Pro Turbo
I was really hoping they would release a Graphics Ultra Pro Turbo Pro Pro Ultra (maybe with 'Mongoose' thrown in somewhere), but they ended up releasing a new processor and the names went a different direction.
You spend less because of those top titles. You have no more time to play them, so you won't be needing any more games for a long time (unless they have an even deeper sale to tempt you).
Apart from the time thing, I really don't understand you. How do I spend less *because* of the top titles? Game prices are obscenely and artificially high in the first place. And that's still nothing compared to the majority of console games.
And I have backed up savegames. It's called "A USB HDD".
That may be true, but you're missing the point. It's the convenience. Why in the world would I spend money on hardware just to backup save games? I have significantly more important things that need backing up. If Steam didn't do it, I sure as hell wouldn't.
I can already load the game onto an entirely different machine. And moreover, I can let someone else play that game while I play another. Unlike Steam.
You can't with any of the DRM'ed titles, but I see your point. All I can say is that that situation has yet to arise for me.
Ok, Diablo had mac/windows on the same disk. So did Starcraft. Now, please name me some others? Having multiple platforms on one disk was an abberation, not common place.
You don't get the Mac version for a Steam game if it isn't released on both Steam and PC. And Diablo and Diablo II both had Mac and PC versions on the same disk.
And if a mac version of the game doesn't exist, then I wouldn't be buying it anyway. I really don't see your point for that one.
You can also lose ALL your games if you disobey the ToS. That's a rather big downside, isn't it?
What part of the ToS would I disobey? The only one I can think of would possibly be the ability to resell my games. Given that the majority of the games I bought were $10 bucks, who cares? The money I got back from reselling wouldn't even be enough to buy a happy meal.
If you don't like Steam, that's fine. All the more power to you. But Steam does what *I* want, for prices that I consider shockingly reasonable. So, they get my custom. It's really not any more complicated than that.
Because of Steam, I have actually bought MORE games than I ever had in my entire life up to that point. And that's, IMO, it actually gives me value: a) amazing deals on games, allowing me to buy top titles for $15 as long as I'm patient enough to wait for the sale b) saved games are backed up, so when I need to delete a game, I know that I can reinstall in the future and continue from where I left off c) I can load the game onto an entirely *different* machine and continue from where I left off d) My primary machine is a mac, but when I buy a game on steam I get the mac AND windows version. While I have not actually tried to yet, I *think* the save games are supposed to move between platforms as well. I could be wrong about that though. e) Steam/Valve has done a LOT to improve the gaming scene on Mac, and now they are trying to do the same for Linux.
The only real downside is that I can't sell my games second-hand to someone else. But considering that I've never really done that anyway, it's a moot point.
So yeah, Steam may have the properties of a DRM system, but I am willing to live with it because I consider the benefits to dramatically outweigh the negatives.
Meanwhile Blizzard and Ubisoft provide nothing of the sort, and can go DIAF for all I care.
As someone who personally boycotted Ubisoft a long time ago because of their DRM shenanigans, the only thing I have to say is:
HA HA (in nelsons voice)
It's impossible to convince everyone to not buy a game because people just don't care. So I'll just sprinkle this nice big helping of schadenfreude onto my cereal this morning, instead.
It's funny... everyone complains about how the comments are going down hill, people don't read the article before commenting, etc etc.
Reading the comments on wired, the signal to noise ratio is amazing. Not only do people not even read the article, they can't even read the captions under the pictures. And there are people who actually bring out the bible, as if that somehow has relevance to anything.
Slashdot seems to be a lot like democracy. It's the worst system there is, except for all the other ones we've come up with.
A company I worked for a few years back (before the bastards laid off the entire *building*) had a contract to provide tech support to apple. At that time, there was absolutely no policies for handling items declared stolen. Unless things have changed since then, I call shenanigans.
Granted, they do now have that "Find my idevice" service, but thats a self serve feature that only works for the most recent generation of devices. You could just as easily use Prey, which works on all devices. IMO, they haven't done nearly enough to justify claiming they 'led the industry'.
Slashdot Mirror
And nothing of value was lost.
So even WITH the subsidy, he still had to pay $15K for his setup?
I think you just negated your own argument. You say "if only the majority of people got on board", and yet you yourself admit that you haven't and won't be because you simply can't afford it.
As I said... solar will never take off until it's much cheaper and more robust.
That may be, but that still means Solar power can ONLY function as an adjunct to other existing power. Once the sun goes down, you *still* need power to cook your dinner, turn on the heat if necessary, etc.
The article was (to me) implying that solar could replace existing power wholesale. Which it can't.
That is true. And if you can find camera software that can do that, then great. But Dropbox is ubiquitous and almost everyone knows what it is and how to use it.
In this situation, the best you can do is unlink your phone from your account and change your password before it occurs to the police to try to hack into it.
It's Robot Unicorn Attack for spoiled self-entitled jerks who have more money than they should.
What you say is completely true. My point is that the article was very high in hand-wavy, "infinite energy if we just pepper the continent with solar panels" goodness, and very low on actual logistics.
Generating the power is one thing. Doing something with it is another. And for some reason the latter seems to get nowhere near the coverage of the former. Presumably because it's not as sexy.
They throw around some mighty big numbers. I wonder how those numbers look when the sun sets.
Solar is, and will continue to be, nowhere near it's full potential until battery technology catches up.
Solar power will not catch on until you can get a bunch of solar panels and a decent battery together for a price low enough that it's a no brainer to install them. Until then, solar will be limited to the world of rich eco-friendly types.
Ah, that's my problem. I don't watch TV, so I'm totally out of the loop in ads. The few ads I see when I'm out and about almost universally make me go WTF anyway, so I didn't realize.... ;)
We'll find out the answer to that question after the Samsung vs Apple suit is over. :)
For those that don't know, there is a simple and fantastic service called SpamGourmet. You can create disposable addresses on the fly, control how many emails they accept, etc.
http://spamgourmet.com/
I don't see the big deal. I just watched the "Basically" ad, and thought it was kinda cute.
What would these supposed critics prefer? Something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqkNPcUMffU
Pre 7.0 apps need major retooling, if not a complete rewrite, to work with 7.x. And then it has to be done again for 8? Why would people bother? Hell, even Apple maintains some level of compatibility from one release to the next.
If Microsoft's goal is to throw a mulligan across their entire Windows 8 brand, they are succeeding marvelously.
The summary missed what is probably the most important line of the article:
"The Apple vs. Samsung trial was always destined to be a circus, "
It's clear that neither Apple nor Samsung is going to look good PR wise after all is said and done.
So the question becomes, who will get screwed over the hardest? Right now I'm betting on Samsung, simply because Apple has way more... um... "thermonuclear" experience.
How else are you going to take advantage of the fidelity of your Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable?
So they have laws against asshole-ism?
I think it would be more valuable to have laws against stupidity. You REALLY thought it would be a good idea to use a toilet brush as a personal hygiene product? That's a $125 fine!
....wow. You're comparing a form of regime that represses people, and in many cases brutally murders them..... to a video game distribution system?
There are no words....
They probably just ran out of new terms to use, so they strung more and more existing ones together till it sounded good.
Reminds me of way back when, ATI (pre-AMD) released the following series of video cards:
Graphics Ultra
Graphics Ultra Pro
Graphics Ultra Pro Turbo
I was really hoping they would release a Graphics Ultra Pro Turbo Pro Pro Ultra (maybe with 'Mongoose' thrown in somewhere), but they ended up releasing a new processor and the names went a different direction.
You spend less because of those top titles. You have no more time to play them, so you won't be needing any more games for a long time (unless they have an even deeper sale to tempt you).
Apart from the time thing, I really don't understand you. How do I spend less *because* of the top titles? Game prices are obscenely and artificially high in the first place. And that's still nothing compared to the majority of console games.
And I have backed up savegames. It's called "A USB HDD".
That may be true, but you're missing the point. It's the convenience. Why in the world would I spend money on hardware just to backup save games? I have significantly more important things that need backing up. If Steam didn't do it, I sure as hell wouldn't.
I can already load the game onto an entirely different machine. And moreover, I can let someone else play that game while I play another. Unlike Steam.
You can't with any of the DRM'ed titles, but I see your point. All I can say is that that situation has yet to arise for me.
Ok, Diablo had mac/windows on the same disk. So did Starcraft. Now, please name me some others? Having multiple platforms on one disk was an abberation, not common place.
You don't get the Mac version for a Steam game if it isn't released on both Steam and PC. And Diablo and Diablo II both had Mac and PC versions on the same disk.
And if a mac version of the game doesn't exist, then I wouldn't be buying it anyway. I really don't see your point for that one.
You can also lose ALL your games if you disobey the ToS. That's a rather big downside, isn't it?
What part of the ToS would I disobey? The only one I can think of would possibly be the ability to resell my games. Given that the majority of the games I bought were $10 bucks, who cares? The money I got back from reselling wouldn't even be enough to buy a happy meal.
If you don't like Steam, that's fine. All the more power to you. But Steam does what *I* want, for prices that I consider shockingly reasonable. So, they get my custom. It's really not any more complicated than that.
Because of Steam, I have actually bought MORE games than I ever had in my entire life up to that point. And that's, IMO, it actually gives me value:
a) amazing deals on games, allowing me to buy top titles for $15 as long as I'm patient enough to wait for the sale
b) saved games are backed up, so when I need to delete a game, I know that I can reinstall in the future and continue from where I left off
c) I can load the game onto an entirely *different* machine and continue from where I left off
d) My primary machine is a mac, but when I buy a game on steam I get the mac AND windows version. While I have not actually tried to yet, I *think* the save games are supposed to move between platforms as well. I could be wrong about that though.
e) Steam/Valve has done a LOT to improve the gaming scene on Mac, and now they are trying to do the same for Linux.
The only real downside is that I can't sell my games second-hand to someone else. But considering that I've never really done that anyway, it's a moot point.
So yeah, Steam may have the properties of a DRM system, but I am willing to live with it because I consider the benefits to dramatically outweigh the negatives.
Meanwhile Blizzard and Ubisoft provide nothing of the sort, and can go DIAF for all I care.
As someone who personally boycotted Ubisoft a long time ago because of their DRM shenanigans, the only thing I have to say is:
HA HA (in nelsons voice)
It's impossible to convince everyone to not buy a game because people just don't care. So I'll just sprinkle this nice big helping of schadenfreude onto my cereal this morning, instead.
It's funny... everyone complains about how the comments are going down hill, people don't read the article before commenting, etc etc.
Reading the comments on wired, the signal to noise ratio is amazing. Not only do people not even read the article, they can't even read the captions under the pictures. And there are people who actually bring out the bible, as if that somehow has relevance to anything.
Slashdot seems to be a lot like democracy. It's the worst system there is, except for all the other ones we've come up with.
You know very well that they can't teach kids Critical Thinking classes. The religious right/intelligent designers would be in an uproar. ;)
O_O
10 points to you sir (or madam)
A company I worked for a few years back (before the bastards laid off the entire *building*) had a contract to provide tech support to apple. At that time, there was absolutely no policies for handling items declared stolen. Unless things have changed since then, I call shenanigans.
Granted, they do now have that "Find my idevice" service, but thats a self serve feature that only works for the most recent generation of devices. You could just as easily use Prey, which works on all devices. IMO, they haven't done nearly enough to justify claiming they 'led the industry'.
Sssshhhhh! You're getting in the way of a perfectly good rant!
*makes popcorn*