Sure, but how *fast* would these micro-cores run? Will we wind up with a single core not being able to handle anything on it's own?
Plus, adding more cores for shared tasks increases the management overhead. It's like a project: more resources can help get the job done faster...if they're properly co-ordinated, communicating properly, and everyone isn't waiting for one particular resource to finish it's task before the others can proceed. All of this takes significant overhead time IRL, I can't imagine it would be much different for flocks of cores...
I can see this allowing more simultaneous processes to run without bumping into one another, but basic speed for each process might go way, way down.
Search engines are not the internet. Google is not the only search engine.
Indeed, but who says they won't try to strongarm the other major search providers the same way? It's the same logic chain : "hey, you're making money off of showing people some of our content, we want a piece!" Want to take wagers on how many search providers will agree to that? They're already providing these paranoid schmucks with a valuable service by indexing their content and making it available to inquiring netizens across the globe, why would they then agree to pay to provide this service?
The French content providers could simply request that Google and other search providers only show the headline with no summary info, that would seem to work. Trouble is, if you don't show the end user enough to confirm that your article has the info they're looking for, they'll just move on to the next item in the search results. I guess that's simply the consequences of greed.
These guys had better be confident in the fidelity and longevity of their already subscribed user base, otherwise they're shooting themselves in the foot with this move.
"And it's a heave-ho, hi-ho, comin' down the plains Stealin' wheat and barley and all the other grains It's a ho-hey, hi-hey farmers bar yer doors When ya see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!"
Er? Bandwidth restrictions, traffic filtering, etc then I'd say it's well within the ISP's rights
VS.
Fines and fees would be toeing an uncomfortable line.
They really are the same thing. The difference that the ISP is taking the fine out of your payment by providing bandwidth restricted and filtered traffic.
Simple* solution: quantity-restrict your payments to the ISP.
If you can show proof positive that they deliberately did not provide the service you contracted for, why on earth would you pay them full price? You wouldn't pay a contractor full price if they only installed 3/4 of your hardwood floor...and if you only received, say, every second newspaper, I'm sure you'd be pissed off if they still charged you full price for your subscription...
*'Simple' solution, but apt to get messy, especially if you deal with larger ISP's. They simply do not like to encourage that sort of thinking on the part of their sheeple...er, I mean 'customers', and are likely to retaliate quite strongly indeed. IANAL, but if you do go this route, prepare for storms of lawyers and rains of debt collectors. Y'all might want a raincoat.
"Japan's third-largest wireless carrier intends to acquire Sprint, the third-largest U.S. carrier for 20.1 Billion U.S. dollars, creating the third-largest global carrier...."
In my opinion, you can't have a decent quality of life without large doses of humour on a regular basis.
I have never found a better writer than Sir Terry Pratchett for dry, engaging wit, and the occasional turn of phrase that will still leave you chuckling days later. His Discworld series also provides concise and often cutting criticisms of society and some of our more inane foibles, camouflaged behind the general fantasy setting (the Campaign for Equal Heights movement for Dwarves, for example). His characters are engaging and his situational comedy is absolutely stellar!
Please don't be thrown just because it is situated in a world that is shaped like a disc, perched atop four elephants who in turn are standing on a giant turtle swimming through the deeps of space:) Yes, it's set in a 'silly' world, and populated with fantastic creatures, but the challenges and triumphs his characters face are usually very applicable to this here modern, mundane world. I heartily recommend all of his works, but the Discworld books in particular.
I'm sorry, is there some sort of fairy godmother that provides free cash while an author is writing their first book?
Yes. They're called publishers, and the free cash is called an advance. It's common practice to provide a significant amount of funding to an author up-front, which is guaranteed but will be reclaimed out of their later earnings if the book makes money. This is done because publishers are picky about which authors they take on but view those they do sign up as investments, so they want the first book from the author (and any book with their publishing house's name on it) to be as good as they can make it.
Really? So I can go to a publisher, tell them I have this idea for a book, and they'll give me cash? Sweet deal! Why isn't everyone a writer, then?!?
Contrary to popular (read: corporate) belief, ordinary people don't mind purchasing their media, as long as it's convenient, not ridiculously overpriced, and supports the actual creator of the work...
Unfortunately, the real world evidence is not nearly as clear as you're making out. If it were, this debate would have been over a long time ago.
In reality, when creators offer choose-your-own-pricing, plenty of people do just take the product for free. Even creators who give away their work completely free, from a well designed and robust source available to anyone, still find that a significant number of other people will rip it and redistribute, and a significant number of users are using those "pirate" versions instead of real ones.
Of course there are plenty of people who will be honest and pay a fair price, particularly if it's clearly supporting the people who did the hard work to create the product. But this is nowhere near as universal as you're claiming.
I still can't figure out how that iTunes makes so much money, if that's the case...oh, wait, it's because ordinary people (read, not either cheapskates, broke-ass students or people living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to make rent every month) don't usually mind paying a bit for their entertainment, even if they know it can be had for free elsewhere. If they only made the paid media a more convenient and reliable option than the pirated versions, with suitably large percentages of the reasonable purchase price clearly going to the artists, Ma and Pa Johnson would prefer that to fiddling around with torrents and the like. As it is, the legal options are the most annoying and user unfriendly, while the pirated versions are sleek and simple to use (once downloaded or ripped).
Just look at Google music to see how it's done (barring stupid artificial restrictions on geography). Now we just need the same system (i.e., DRM-Free purchase/downloads/storage) for video and ebooks. TOR and Baen are DRM-Free on all their ebooks, and guess what? Those are the only two publishers I'll buy ebooks from because I know that if the format I bought doesn't work on one of my readers, I can format shift it without hassle because it's *mine*, it's not artificially broken. And yes, I may also lend it to a friend or two, but in that case the publisher is getting exactly the same profit as they would if I bought, read, then shared a hard copy...a wider reader base for certain authors, and potential future sales from new fans.
So, after a helpful LAPD officer suggested it would be impossible for a supervillain to make off with OV-105, Torchinsky went ahead and made a plan to do just that. All he needs is a submarine, a score of Sikorsky CH-53E heavy-lift helicopters, a salvaged and disguised Buran spaceplane, and the assistance of Switzerland.
Bet'cha the crew from Leverage could do it. They probably wouldn't even need the Swiss, although they might borrow a minister or two for misdirection
They did 'steal' the Spruce Goose, after all...:o)
If you build a Dyson sphere, your available power resources are vastly greater (physical material such as food and water can, theoretically, by recycled with 100% efficiency given sufficient power).
Okay, ew.
I know that's basically how mother nature does it too (with lesser efficiency)...but still. Ew.
The flaw with your scheme is that the first, unfunded work will serve as the example by which the author is judged. It is also the one that is going to be produced in spare hours after the day job that pays the bills, written without the assistance of a professional editor, etc. Rare indeed is the author who can produce their best work under those conditions.
I'm sorry, is there some sort of fairy godmother that provides free cash while an author is writing their first book? They somehow found the time and energy to produce that first work, and now people are interested enough to want to see a second offering. This would simply allow the readers to express their support for that future work directly, rather than indirectly through book sales.
Perhaps the site could provide some percentage of the bucket to the author while they are writing the next work, to help them focus on it and not their day job. Plus, nothing in this model prohibits the author placing their first work up for sale at Amazon, etc., it just means that they had better price it reasonably enough to be able to compete with the public domain copy. eBooks should not be priced the same as or higher than physical books, like some are now (although it's getting better...slowly). If the pricing is low enough and the interest is high enough, that's money they can live on while writing the next book for their bucket, although after the publishers / bookstores / etc. take their cut, it may not be much.
Here's an idea, the same site that people can contribute to future works could also offer DRM-free digital or hard copy direct sales of their last book (or books), with a much higher percentage of the profits going directly to the author than it would through Amazon or other online retailers. Going DRM-Free hasn't hurt the music industry (see iTunes, Amazon MP3, Google Music, etc.), no matter how much the studios bitch about it, since the only thing that is preventing them from making more money on selling MP3's is the fact that they artificially restrict their sales areas (oh, you're Canadian? Sorry, we don't actually want your money here, thanks anyways. No, really, we simply won't sell you this digital file that costs us practically nothing to host across borders, you'll just have to look for it *elsewhere*...so fuck off, eh?)
Contrary to popular (read: corporate) belief, ordinary people don't mind purchasing their media, as long as it's convenient, not ridiculously overpriced, and supports the actual creator of the work...and can't be yanked back at the whim of some greedy or inept corporate lackey, or because it isn't considered 'popular' enough to waste hosting space on it any more (I'm looking at you, Netflix).
Sorry buddy, "because FUCK the copyright holders!" is not an argument. You may be right in saying that we should have the right to do what we want with what we've purchased, but play the Devil's advocate for a moment...
The year is 2016: Every book that has ever been printed is now considered "public domain" since copyright laws have been abolished and you can find any literature you want just by googling the title and author. Sound great? Well it also turns out that books have annually been published 80% less since the copyright laws were struck down. Why is that, do you think? Perhaps it's because there's no longer any motivation for authors to publish their books since they aren't paid any money once they are published. They are made immediately available for the public's viewing. All the author gets is good feeling that people are reading their work. Reward enough? 80% of authors would say no.
Obviously it's a hypothetical argument, but I can say that as an aspiring novelist, my motivation to finish my book would be lessened if I knew that even if my work went viral, I would have nothing to show for it except for a few book readings at coffee shops.
I'd like to add one little wrinkle to your oh-so-pessimistic future.
Authors across the globe join together in a Kickstarter-esque crowd sourcing micropayment service, so if people read their latest book, love it and want to see another, they contribute some $ to the writers 'next book bucket' to support it. That way, the writer knows ahead of time if there is sufficient interest in his/her writing to justify creating a new work. Doners would indicate at the time of contribution whether they prefer to receive the new book in e-format or dead-tree format (shipping to be paid once the book is ready to ship). And, to keep the fraudsters out of it, if the author doesn't produce a new work within a certain timeframe (barring delays from family emergencies, illness, etc.), their bucket gets dumped into a general administration fund for the site, or refunded back to the doners, or donated to charity, etc. etc.
Personally, I would love to be able to support my favourite authors directly, without propping up the stagnant publishing industry (other than TOR and Baen, those guys rock!:) Even better if we could directly support expansion of specific series / characters / universes. I have way too many "really wish they'd written a sequel to that" books on my shelves...
And hey, would this model work for music too? I wonder...
Telling people not to block ads because it's the "wrong thing to do" sounds like the honor system to me. A nice idea but not a strong basis for a business model.
What gets me is the fact that these idiots aren't even protesting people blocking ads, they're protesting people being able to tell them not to invade their privacy in order to make a bigger buck.
In effect, they're 'protesting' the very technology that could, in fact, make the online advertising industry more effective and profitable than ever. Do they really think that if they go "nyah nyah, we don't care, we're gonna track you whether you want us to or not!" that people will really shrug and say "oh well, we tried"? No, if anything, this will drive people who cared enough to turn on the Do Not Track feature in their browser to search for other ways of castrating these asshats...and ultimately find ABP, NoScript, etc.
Think about it, those of you who block ads outright...what was your initial motivation? For many it was probably to get rid of annoying flash-pop-zing, bandwidth-hogging banners on the screen, but for others (including myself) it was simply because that was the best way to 'unsubscribe' from the constant, intrusive tracking regime. If Do Not Track requests were legally or technically enforceable (or even just verifiable) from the users end, I think ABP would see a drop in install base. NoScript would still be right up there, since it protects from the shady side as well as the technically legal (albeit slimy) side of teh internets, but ABP would lose one of it's primary advantages.
if they can't make money with the old business model then let them sell t-shirts or whatever, its not our job to bend over backwards because dumbasses can't figure out how to make money.
That's not necessarily the direction they want us all to bend over...
I fully agree, though. If the advertising industry *somehow* managed to eke out a meager living </sarcasm> before they were able to attach the equivalent of a surveillance bug to every single person they meet, something tells me that they'll survive just fine if we rise up and rip those bugs out of the system. Or even if we, a trifle more politely, tell them exactly where they can shove their bugs and tracker cookies.
I can remember waiting awkwardly in line with other people with nothing more to do then stare at some advertisement or products around me. I, and certainly no one around me, wanted to start up a random stranger dialogue and shoot the shit.
Methinks you have hit the nail on the head there.
If one were to dig deep, it would not be surprising to find some dead-tree advertisement firms in the funding chain for this study somewhere. People's eyeballs are being seduced away from their carefully placed blandishments, and they don't like that one bit. Much better to force everyone to 'zone out' and let the ever-present advertising jargon seep directly into their subconscious. There are no ad block apps for billboards...and you can't pay $0.99 extra to upgrade to an ad-free bus ride.
We had the same problem when we first installed occupancy sensing switches in the main traffic areas of our house. It seemed like a coincidence that soon after we installed the switches, we lost a couple of cfl's that weren't that old yet, but we just shrugged, replaced them and carried on. When the brand new ones started to fail after a month or two, we dug a little deeper and found out that certain types of occupancy sensor switches (i.e., the cheaper ones you'll typically see in home improvement stores) do not play nicely with compact fluorescent ballasts at all.
We shopped around until we found different switches that did work with our cfl's (for three times the $$, of course) ordering them from an online retailer because they didn't carry any in local stores, and at the time there weren't many cfl compatible options, so forget shopping by 'style' or 'look' of the switch. It was a royal pain in the arse, though now it seems manufacturers do offer a few more cfl compatible options than they did way back when:o)
Single point of publication. You publish content, and hundreds or thousands of your subscribers can view it.
Gee...full of yourself much?:o)
Or you can announce that you are getting a divorce by changing your status from Married to Single, and you don't have to tell all your friends and family, thus allowing you to ignore painful questions that you will have a hard time dodging if asked face-to-face.
Or, you can waste time fielding the endless concerned calls and emails from friends and family when, after forgetting to log yourself out of FB (*perhaps* due to a few too many bubbly beverages), one of your jerkwad friends starts editing your relationship status for you..."No mom, I did not break up with Jane. No, I am not, nor have I ever been in a committed relationship with John. My 'friends' are just dicks."
True (but hilarious, at least to those watching) story.
So what? It could be a three hundred quintillion dollar industry. It doesn't change the ethics, morals, or the fact that most people don't want it.
If people didn't want it, it wouldn't be an industry. Its an industry and as large of one as it is because people keep buying shit from the ads. Its not going anywhere as long as it works.
Exact same argument has been made for the persistence of spam. Does that make it legitimate or desirable to society? Does that mean we should ban all spam filtering, everywhere?
No. Advertising at the extreme scale we see it now is a parasitical drain on society. Targeted advertising just adds a more personalized, boot-in-the-face type insult to the injury. People should have the right and the capability to tell the asshats to fuck off and leave us alone.
I don't think its as useful as it could be. There are other charities that simply give money to other charities. The charities that raise the money are the ones that take the hit on the administrative costs, where as the recipient gets all of the reporting benefit. Its kind of odd explaining why your charity's administrative costs are higher with a donor at one of these fund-raisers that actually end up giving the money to one with a higher rate due to this phenomenon.
True...but then it is up to that charity to explain why it is better for people to give them the money to give to the other charity, rather than just giving the money to the other charity directly. As I said, I prefer not to give money to organizations for whom a large part of their primary goal is to be able to ask me or my friends for more money later on.
Depending on your theory of giving, it might seem to be a better idea to just give the money without the fund-raising activity and the money it costs to put it on. Some of them are very educational as well, and that educational role about the charity's work, its importance and the donor's role in it ( volunteers are awesome because they don't add to that administrative overhead ) is pretty valuable as well. The right kind of a charity will improve the lives of the donors as well as the recipients.
Ah, you see where I am coming from...kinda. While I appreciate the value of getting the word out there, I don't really see an organization that does that while soliciting donations for another as a 'charitable' institution. I'd consider it more of a not-for-profit organization with worthy goals and ideals.
To be clear, I'm not defending the validity of this silly patent that Motorola/Google is waving about. I'm just saying, when you voluntarily restrict your product lines so severely, it's not really surprising that when problems show up they show up everywhere...
I realize the point is to increase the interoperability of their devices (while, ahem, attempting to exclude everyone else from the club, as it were), but still, it is a foreseeable risk stemming directly from their core business plan. IMHO, diversity and specialization is a good thing, be it in genetics or microchips.
I guess that's one of the risks if your company chooses to focus on creating and pushing absolutely identical clones of one product, instead of providing a range of devices with different options and hardware from competing manufacturers...it's an all the eggs = one basket kinda t'ing. If your device violates a patent...all your devices are likely to violate the same patent in the same way.
I don't understand your argument. Samsung has lots of products, not just absolutely identical clones of the iPhone and iPad.
Umm...sorry, I should have been more clear. I'm saying that Apple has a product line with absolutely no diversity allowed wherever possible, so naturally if their product violates one patent, the rest of their products are very likely to violate it as well. That's why Google can cry patent infringement across the entirety of the Appleverse, while Apple could only pick on a single product line from a particular manufacturer (more or less).
I just think it's bullshit to complain about Apple's abuse of patents because they seek to ban SOME devices from ONE manufacturer, while Google seeks to prevent the sale of EVERY Apple computer and iOS device.
If you're going to be mad about patent abuse be mad consistently, is all I ask.
I guess that's one of the risks if your company chooses to focus on creating and pushing absolutely identical clones of one product, instead of providing a range of devices with different options and hardware from competing manufacturers...it's an all the eggs = one basket kinda t'ing. If your device violates a patent...all your devices are likely to violate the same patent in the same way.
On the plus side, it's sure a lot easier for your customers to find cool cases and custom screen protectors.:o)
Right now we still use XP and it does everything we need it to. Sure 7 might do more
If it does, I haven't found it. In fact, I found little improvement aside from better security and stability (although it was usually flaky hardware that made Windows unstable, several times I've had Win and Lin dual boot, and cursed Windows until the flaky hardware failed completely, and so far I'm running W7 on a newish machine).
In many places it's gone backwards. The file manager has gotten worse, the search function is useless. XP was far better than W7 in both places.
Amen to that. While it's nice and all that the Win 7 version of Windows Explorer plays a bit better with image and media metadata, the loss of basic functionality like instant summarized size information when viewing a directory or when files are selected, and the barmy space-wasting (but oooh shiny!) column headers are so not worth it.
And the less said about Windows 7 search, the better. Seriously. I mean, WTF were they thinking? Not everything in this life has to subscribe to the Google mindset, you know...
BTW, for those seeking a vastly improved local search capability (like, you know, Win XP has), I highly recommend FileSearchEX. It's trialware, so you can put it through it's paces before dropping cash, and after the trial period expires it's only $10. For me, it was more than worth it to be able to actually find my files, and to not have to restart a damn slow-ass search every time I want to sort the results so far on a different column...seriously Microsoft?
Looking for a replacement for Windows Explorer? FreeCommander. It's also available in a portable version (check PortableApps.com). It's dual-pane and multi-tabbed, which may take some getting used to if you're new to it, but trust me, once you've tried it, you'll never go back:) Well...unless you need more than basic columns (like Name, Extension, Path, Size, Attributes, Type, Modified, Created or Last Access). For example, it doesn't support 'Date Taken' columns for photos yet, as read from the photo EXIF, which is just about the only reason I still have Windows Explorer shortcuts on my Win 7 machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, but how *fast* would these micro-cores run? Will we wind up with a single core not being able to handle anything on it's own?
Plus, adding more cores for shared tasks increases the management overhead. It's like a project: more resources can help get the job done faster...if they're properly co-ordinated, communicating properly, and everyone isn't waiting for one particular resource to finish it's task before the others can proceed. All of this takes significant overhead time IRL, I can't imagine it would be much different for flocks of cores...
I can see this allowing more simultaneous processes to run without bumping into one another, but basic speed for each process might go way, way down.
Search engines are not the internet. Google is not the only search engine.
Indeed, but who says they won't try to strongarm the other major search providers the same way? It's the same logic chain : "hey, you're making money off of showing people some of our content, we want a piece!" Want to take wagers on how many search providers will agree to that? They're already providing these paranoid schmucks with a valuable service by indexing their content and making it available to inquiring netizens across the globe, why would they then agree to pay to provide this service?
The French content providers could simply request that Google and other search providers only show the headline with no summary info, that would seem to work. Trouble is, if you don't show the end user enough to confirm that your article has the info they're looking for, they'll just move on to the next item in the search results. I guess that's simply the consequences of greed.
These guys had better be confident in the fidelity and longevity of their already subscribed user base, otherwise they're shooting themselves in the foot with this move.
Canadian pirates? What, they attack people with canoes?
Have you never heard of the Last Saskatchewan Pirate?!?
"And it's a heave-ho, hi-ho, comin' down the plains
Stealin' wheat and barley and all the other grains
It's a ho-hey, hi-hey farmers bar yer doors
When ya see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!"
Arrr, matey!
Er? Bandwidth restrictions, traffic filtering, etc then I'd say it's well within the ISP's rights
VS.
Fines and fees would be toeing an uncomfortable line.
They really are the same thing. The difference that the ISP is taking the fine out of your payment by providing bandwidth restricted and filtered traffic.
Simple* solution: quantity-restrict your payments to the ISP.
If you can show proof positive that they deliberately did not provide the service you contracted for, why on earth would you pay them full price? You wouldn't pay a contractor full price if they only installed 3/4 of your hardwood floor...and if you only received, say, every second newspaper, I'm sure you'd be pissed off if they still charged you full price for your subscription...
*'Simple' solution, but apt to get messy, especially if you deal with larger ISP's. They simply do not like to encourage that sort of thinking on the part of their sheeple...er, I mean 'customers', and are likely to retaliate quite strongly indeed. IANAL, but if you do go this route, prepare for storms of lawyers and rains of debt collectors. Y'all might want a raincoat.
Not knowing how to use an apostrophe has nothing to do with grammar, it has to do with basic literacy.
Too true.
Here's a memorable guide to proper apostrophe usage. Also, IMO all of these guides should literally be required reading for anyone wishing to post to teh interwebs (in English, that is).
"Japan's third-largest wireless carrier intends to acquire Sprint, the third-largest U.S. carrier for 20.1 Billion U.S. dollars, creating the third-largest global carrier. ..."
We're number three! We're number three!
In my opinion, you can't have a decent quality of life without large doses of humour on a regular basis.
I have never found a better writer than Sir Terry Pratchett for dry, engaging wit, and the occasional turn of phrase that will still leave you chuckling days later. His Discworld series also provides concise and often cutting criticisms of society and some of our more inane foibles, camouflaged behind the general fantasy setting (the Campaign for Equal Heights movement for Dwarves, for example). His characters are engaging and his situational comedy is absolutely stellar!
Please don't be thrown just because it is situated in a world that is shaped like a disc, perched atop four elephants who in turn are standing on a giant turtle swimming through the deeps of space :) Yes, it's set in a 'silly' world, and populated with fantastic creatures, but the challenges and triumphs his characters face are usually very applicable to this here modern, mundane world. I heartily recommend all of his works, but the Discworld books in particular.
Happy hunting!
I'm sorry, is there some sort of fairy godmother that provides free cash while an author is writing their first book?
Yes. They're called publishers, and the free cash is called an advance. It's common practice to provide a significant amount of funding to an author up-front, which is guaranteed but will be reclaimed out of their later earnings if the book makes money. This is done because publishers are picky about which authors they take on but view those they do sign up as investments, so they want the first book from the author (and any book with their publishing house's name on it) to be as good as they can make it.
Really? So I can go to a publisher, tell them I have this idea for a book, and they'll give me cash? Sweet deal! Why isn't everyone a writer, then?!?
Contrary to popular (read: corporate) belief, ordinary people don't mind purchasing their media, as long as it's convenient, not ridiculously overpriced, and supports the actual creator of the work...
Unfortunately, the real world evidence is not nearly as clear as you're making out. If it were, this debate would have been over a long time ago.
In reality, when creators offer choose-your-own-pricing, plenty of people do just take the product for free. Even creators who give away their work completely free, from a well designed and robust source available to anyone, still find that a significant number of other people will rip it and redistribute, and a significant number of users are using those "pirate" versions instead of real ones.
Of course there are plenty of people who will be honest and pay a fair price, particularly if it's clearly supporting the people who did the hard work to create the product. But this is nowhere near as universal as you're claiming.
I still can't figure out how that iTunes makes so much money, if that's the case...oh, wait, it's because ordinary people (read, not either cheapskates, broke-ass students or people living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to make rent every month) don't usually mind paying a bit for their entertainment, even if they know it can be had for free elsewhere. If they only made the paid media a more convenient and reliable option than the pirated versions, with suitably large percentages of the reasonable purchase price clearly going to the artists, Ma and Pa Johnson would prefer that to fiddling around with torrents and the like. As it is, the legal options are the most annoying and user unfriendly, while the pirated versions are sleek and simple to use (once downloaded or ripped).
Just look at Google music to see how it's done (barring stupid artificial restrictions on geography). Now we just need the same system (i.e., DRM-Free purchase/downloads/storage) for video and ebooks. TOR and Baen are DRM-Free on all their ebooks, and guess what? Those are the only two publishers I'll buy ebooks from because I know that if the format I bought doesn't work on one of my readers, I can format shift it without hassle because it's *mine*, it's not artificially broken. And yes, I may also lend it to a friend or two, but in that case the publisher is getting exactly the same profit as they would if I bought, read, then shared a hard copy...a wider reader base for certain authors, and potential future sales from new fans.
So, after a helpful LAPD officer suggested it would be impossible for a supervillain to make off with OV-105, Torchinsky went ahead and made a plan to do just that. All he needs is a submarine, a score of Sikorsky CH-53E heavy-lift helicopters, a salvaged and disguised Buran spaceplane, and the assistance of Switzerland.
Bet'cha the crew from Leverage could do it. They probably wouldn't even need the Swiss, although they might borrow a minister or two for misdirection
They did 'steal' the Spruce Goose, after all... :o)
If you build a Dyson sphere, your available power resources are vastly greater (physical material such as food and water can, theoretically, by recycled with 100% efficiency given sufficient power).
Okay, ew.
I know that's basically how mother nature does it too (with lesser efficiency)...but still. Ew.
The flaw with your scheme is that the first, unfunded work will serve as the example by which the author is judged. It is also the one that is going to be produced in spare hours after the day job that pays the bills, written without the assistance of a professional editor, etc. Rare indeed is the author who can produce their best work under those conditions.
I'm sorry, is there some sort of fairy godmother that provides free cash while an author is writing their first book? They somehow found the time and energy to produce that first work, and now people are interested enough to want to see a second offering. This would simply allow the readers to express their support for that future work directly, rather than indirectly through book sales.
Perhaps the site could provide some percentage of the bucket to the author while they are writing the next work, to help them focus on it and not their day job. Plus, nothing in this model prohibits the author placing their first work up for sale at Amazon, etc., it just means that they had better price it reasonably enough to be able to compete with the public domain copy. eBooks should not be priced the same as or higher than physical books, like some are now (although it's getting better...slowly). If the pricing is low enough and the interest is high enough, that's money they can live on while writing the next book for their bucket, although after the publishers / bookstores / etc. take their cut, it may not be much.
Here's an idea, the same site that people can contribute to future works could also offer DRM-free digital or hard copy direct sales of their last book (or books), with a much higher percentage of the profits going directly to the author than it would through Amazon or other online retailers. Going DRM-Free hasn't hurt the music industry (see iTunes, Amazon MP3, Google Music, etc.), no matter how much the studios bitch about it, since the only thing that is preventing them from making more money on selling MP3's is the fact that they artificially restrict their sales areas (oh, you're Canadian? Sorry, we don't actually want your money here, thanks anyways. No, really, we simply won't sell you this digital file that costs us practically nothing to host across borders, you'll just have to look for it *elsewhere*...so fuck off, eh?)
Contrary to popular (read: corporate) belief, ordinary people don't mind purchasing their media, as long as it's convenient, not ridiculously overpriced, and supports the actual creator of the work...and can't be yanked back at the whim of some greedy or inept corporate lackey, or because it isn't considered 'popular' enough to waste hosting space on it any more (I'm looking at you, Netflix).
Hmmm...
Sorry buddy, "because FUCK the copyright holders!" is not an argument. You may be right in saying that we should have the right to do what we want with what we've purchased, but play the Devil's advocate for a moment...
The year is 2016: Every book that has ever been printed is now considered "public domain" since copyright laws have been abolished and you can find any literature you want just by googling the title and author. Sound great? Well it also turns out that books have annually been published 80% less since the copyright laws were struck down. Why is that, do you think? Perhaps it's because there's no longer any motivation for authors to publish their books since they aren't paid any money once they are published. They are made immediately available for the public's viewing. All the author gets is good feeling that people are reading their work. Reward enough? 80% of authors would say no.
Obviously it's a hypothetical argument, but I can say that as an aspiring novelist, my motivation to finish my book would be lessened if I knew that even if my work went viral, I would have nothing to show for it except for a few book readings at coffee shops.
I'd like to add one little wrinkle to your oh-so-pessimistic future.
Authors across the globe join together in a Kickstarter-esque crowd sourcing micropayment service, so if people read their latest book, love it and want to see another, they contribute some $ to the writers 'next book bucket' to support it. That way, the writer knows ahead of time if there is sufficient interest in his/her writing to justify creating a new work. Doners would indicate at the time of contribution whether they prefer to receive the new book in e-format or dead-tree format (shipping to be paid once the book is ready to ship). And, to keep the fraudsters out of it, if the author doesn't produce a new work within a certain timeframe (barring delays from family emergencies, illness, etc.), their bucket gets dumped into a general administration fund for the site, or refunded back to the doners, or donated to charity, etc. etc.
Personally, I would love to be able to support my favourite authors directly, without propping up the stagnant publishing industry (other than TOR and Baen, those guys rock! :) Even better if we could directly support expansion of specific series / characters / universes. I have way too many "really wish they'd written a sequel to that" books on my shelves...
And hey, would this model work for music too? I wonder...
Telling people not to block ads because it's the "wrong thing to do" sounds like the honor system to me. A nice idea but not a strong basis for a business model.
What gets me is the fact that these idiots aren't even protesting people blocking ads, they're protesting people being able to tell them not to invade their privacy in order to make a bigger buck.
In effect, they're 'protesting' the very technology that could, in fact, make the online advertising industry more effective and profitable than ever. Do they really think that if they go "nyah nyah, we don't care, we're gonna track you whether you want us to or not!" that people will really shrug and say "oh well, we tried"? No, if anything, this will drive people who cared enough to turn on the Do Not Track feature in their browser to search for other ways of castrating these asshats...and ultimately find ABP, NoScript, etc.
Think about it, those of you who block ads outright...what was your initial motivation? For many it was probably to get rid of annoying flash-pop-zing, bandwidth-hogging banners on the screen, but for others (including myself) it was simply because that was the best way to 'unsubscribe' from the constant, intrusive tracking regime. If Do Not Track requests were legally or technically enforceable (or even just verifiable) from the users end, I think ABP would see a drop in install base. NoScript would still be right up there, since it protects from the shady side as well as the technically legal (albeit slimy) side of teh internets, but ABP would lose one of it's primary advantages.
if they can't make money with the old business model then let them sell t-shirts or whatever, its not our job to bend over backwards because dumbasses can't figure out how to make money.
That's not necessarily the direction they want us all to bend over...
I fully agree, though. If the advertising industry *somehow* managed to eke out a meager living </sarcasm> before they were able to attach the equivalent of a surveillance bug to every single person they meet, something tells me that they'll survive just fine if we rise up and rip those bugs out of the system. Or even if we, a trifle more politely, tell them exactly where they can shove their bugs and tracker cookies.
Sometimes he felt the need to take it out and hide from the real world.
Always in his pocket, the temptation grew stronger and stronger.
Hey! How did you know my phone is named 'Precious'?!?
I can remember waiting awkwardly in line with other people with nothing more to do then stare at some advertisement or products around me. I, and certainly no one around me, wanted to start up a random stranger dialogue and shoot the shit.
Methinks you have hit the nail on the head there.
If one were to dig deep, it would not be surprising to find some dead-tree advertisement firms in the funding chain for this study somewhere. People's eyeballs are being seduced away from their carefully placed blandishments, and they don't like that one bit. Much better to force everyone to 'zone out' and let the ever-present advertising jargon seep directly into their subconscious. There are no ad block apps for billboards...and you can't pay $0.99 extra to upgrade to an ad-free bus ride.
Pretty sure the requirement for CFLs/LEDs etc trumps the requirement for the dimmer.
How about compatibility with occupancy sensors (motion sensors)?
We had the same problem when we first installed occupancy sensing switches in the main traffic areas of our house. It seemed like a coincidence that soon after we installed the switches, we lost a couple of cfl's that weren't that old yet, but we just shrugged, replaced them and carried on. When the brand new ones started to fail after a month or two, we dug a little deeper and found out that certain types of occupancy sensor switches (i.e., the cheaper ones you'll typically see in home improvement stores) do not play nicely with compact fluorescent ballasts at all.
We shopped around until we found different switches that did work with our cfl's (for three times the $$, of course) ordering them from an online retailer because they didn't carry any in local stores, and at the time there weren't many cfl compatible options, so forget shopping by 'style' or 'look' of the switch. It was a royal pain in the arse, though now it seems manufacturers do offer a few more cfl compatible options than they did way back when :o)
Single point of publication. You publish content, and hundreds or thousands of your subscribers can view it.
Gee...full of yourself much? :o)
Or you can announce that you are getting a divorce by changing your status from Married to Single, and you don't have to tell all your friends and family, thus allowing you to ignore painful questions that you will have a hard time dodging if asked face-to-face.
Or, you can waste time fielding the endless concerned calls and emails from friends and family when, after forgetting to log yourself out of FB (*perhaps* due to a few too many bubbly beverages), one of your jerkwad friends starts editing your relationship status for you..."No mom, I did not break up with Jane. No, I am not, nor have I ever been in a committed relationship with John. My 'friends' are just dicks."
True (but hilarious, at least to those watching) story.
So what? It could be a three hundred quintillion dollar industry. It doesn't change the ethics, morals, or the fact that most people don't want it.
If people didn't want it, it wouldn't be an industry. Its an industry and as large of one as it is because people keep buying shit from the ads. Its not going anywhere as long as it works.
Exact same argument has been made for the persistence of spam. Does that make it legitimate or desirable to society? Does that mean we should ban all spam filtering, everywhere?
No. Advertising at the extreme scale we see it now is a parasitical drain on society. Targeted advertising just adds a more personalized, boot-in-the-face type insult to the injury. People should have the right and the capability to tell the asshats to fuck off and leave us alone.
I don't think its as useful as it could be. There are other charities that simply give money to other charities. The charities that raise the money are the ones that take the hit on the administrative costs, where as the recipient gets all of the reporting benefit. Its kind of odd explaining why your charity's administrative costs are higher with a donor at one of these fund-raisers that actually end up giving the money to one with a higher rate due to this phenomenon.
True...but then it is up to that charity to explain why it is better for people to give them the money to give to the other charity, rather than just giving the money to the other charity directly. As I said, I prefer not to give money to organizations for whom a large part of their primary goal is to be able to ask me or my friends for more money later on.
Depending on your theory of giving, it might seem to be a better idea to just give the money without the fund-raising activity and the money it costs to put it on. Some of them are very educational as well, and that educational role about the charity's work, its importance and the donor's role in it ( volunteers are awesome because they don't add to that administrative overhead ) is pretty valuable as well. The right kind of a charity will improve the lives of the donors as well as the recipients.
Ah, you see where I am coming from...kinda. While I appreciate the value of getting the word out there, I don't really see an organization that does that while soliciting donations for another as a 'charitable' institution. I'd consider it more of a not-for-profit organization with worthy goals and ideals.
A Mac is a very different beast from an iPhone.
Not quite different enough, it seems... :o)
To be clear, I'm not defending the validity of this silly patent that Motorola/Google is waving about. I'm just saying, when you voluntarily restrict your product lines so severely, it's not really surprising that when problems show up they show up everywhere...
I realize the point is to increase the interoperability of their devices (while, ahem, attempting to exclude everyone else from the club, as it were), but still, it is a foreseeable risk stemming directly from their core business plan. IMHO, diversity and specialization is a good thing, be it in genetics or microchips.
I guess that's one of the risks if your company chooses to focus on creating and pushing absolutely identical clones of one product, instead of providing a range of devices with different options and hardware from competing manufacturers...it's an all the eggs = one basket kinda t'ing. If your device violates a patent...all your devices are likely to violate the same patent in the same way.
I don't understand your argument. Samsung has lots of products, not just absolutely identical clones of the iPhone and iPad.
Umm...sorry, I should have been more clear. I'm saying that Apple has a product line with absolutely no diversity allowed wherever possible, so naturally if their product violates one patent, the rest of their products are very likely to violate it as well. That's why Google can cry patent infringement across the entirety of the Appleverse, while Apple could only pick on a single product line from a particular manufacturer (more or less).
Of course it is. It's a digital scavenger hunt :)
Quite fun, and will probably be the most-bookmarked webcomic of the year as people realize the size of it and flag it for perusal in their off hours.
Well played Mr. Munroe, well played indeed.
I totally agree Google should fight back.
I just think it's bullshit to complain about Apple's abuse of patents because they seek to ban SOME devices from ONE manufacturer, while Google seeks to prevent the sale of EVERY Apple computer and iOS device.
If you're going to be mad about patent abuse be mad consistently, is all I ask.
I guess that's one of the risks if your company chooses to focus on creating and pushing absolutely identical clones of one product, instead of providing a range of devices with different options and hardware from competing manufacturers...it's an all the eggs = one basket kinda t'ing. If your device violates a patent...all your devices are likely to violate the same patent in the same way.
On the plus side, it's sure a lot easier for your customers to find cool cases and custom screen protectors. :o)
Right now we still use XP and it does everything we need it to. Sure 7 might do more
If it does, I haven't found it. In fact, I found little improvement aside from better security and stability (although it was usually flaky hardware that made Windows unstable, several times I've had Win and Lin dual boot, and cursed Windows until the flaky hardware failed completely, and so far I'm running W7 on a newish machine).
In many places it's gone backwards. The file manager has gotten worse, the search function is useless. XP was far better than W7 in both places.
Amen to that. While it's nice and all that the Win 7 version of Windows Explorer plays a bit better with image and media metadata, the loss of basic functionality like instant summarized size information when viewing a directory or when files are selected, and the barmy space-wasting (but oooh shiny!) column headers are so not worth it.
And the less said about Windows 7 search, the better. Seriously. I mean, WTF were they thinking? Not everything in this life has to subscribe to the Google mindset, you know...
BTW, for those seeking a vastly improved local search capability (like, you know, Win XP has), I highly recommend FileSearchEX. It's trialware, so you can put it through it's paces before dropping cash, and after the trial period expires it's only $10. For me, it was more than worth it to be able to actually find my files, and to not have to restart a damn slow-ass search every time I want to sort the results so far on a different column...seriously Microsoft?
Looking for a replacement for Windows Explorer? FreeCommander. It's also available in a portable version (check PortableApps.com). It's dual-pane and multi-tabbed, which may take some getting used to if you're new to it, but trust me, once you've tried it, you'll never go back :) Well...unless you need more than basic columns (like Name, Extension, Path, Size, Attributes, Type, Modified, Created or Last Access). For example, it doesn't support 'Date Taken' columns for photos yet, as read from the photo EXIF, which is just about the only reason I still have Windows Explorer shortcuts on my Win 7 machine.