You're right, but you have to think of the average end user and Google's needs as well. Google Pack is a good idea for a couple of reasons:
Geeky people can tell their clueless computer friends to install one thing to get them started. Google Pack invites them to run and try all of the software by presenting them a list of what was just installed.
Google Pack will keep their software up to date by downloading upgrades (I hope that it mentions this before doing anything).
It allows Google a way to bundle their really cool applications together in a meaningful way. That is to say, often many people know about Google Earth but have not heard of Picasa or Google Desktop.
from the article: The revolutionary product could be on the market as early as next year, with the new DVD players needed to view them.
Sorry, but it won't work if I and millions of other people who already have DVD players, have to buy a "special" player. This reminds me a lot like DiVX.
I think Vonage made a huge tactical blunder depending on the customer to setup their own 911 service. As we have seen with the flashing 12:00 most people are pretty lazy when it comes to configuring their electronic devices.
Their interim solution of just using your address to determine your local emergency number probably would have been fine and could have been mentioned to the customer during signup in a disclosure. At least had they set things up like that it might have prevented the FCC from going into regulation mode which they did so quite soon after two parents of a 17-year old girl were shot and the girl couldn't reach 911.
Basically, if you're going to take the step to allow Vonage customers to register their phone to use 911 to dial a local emergency number via a web form based on your address (like they had done prior to the FCC ruling), you've already done 90% of the work and you probably should just set this up for all of your subscribers.
Doing stuff like this just makes legal online music downloading look like it will always fail, because hackers will continue to keep cracking it.
But it will always fail. Even if an impenetrable DRM were possible there is always the analog hole to get ahold of music you buy in a non-DRM format so you can actually use it conveniently.
DRM is essentially worthless. It only serves as a deterrent. People who want to steal will always steal; people who want to be able to "rip" their "DRMed music" will always find a way to do so. The only difference is that some people are stealing and the other people are exercising fair use rights.
Thats why campaign contributions should only be able to be made by those legally able to vote. That would eliminate corporate donations, and if some CEO wanted to put up their own money, it would be more visible. While this doesn't address lobbying in particular, it is a start.
Then said corporations will just pay CEO's more to make the donations. Understand that so long as government has the ability to benefit special interests the special interests will always find a way to get their laws passed. The special interests will either be corporations or NGOs, it doesn't matter. If reducing lobbying is the goal the only way you're going to be able to do it is by reducing the size and powers of governments most importantly of the Federal Government in Washington D.C. where all the powerful government officials and mouchers/bribers/lobbyists congregate.
I know the wikimedia folks are fundraising for more servers, but I wonder if this will provide more incentive to accept Google's offer?
What you mean to ask is if Google's team of secret agents sneaking into the colocation facility and tripping the circuit breakers will result in wikipedia deciding to accept Google's offer and thus further their plans for world domination.
I can't imaging how you expect some "extra rental option" other than as some scheme to outlaw VCRs. Copyright holders have no right to restrict VCRs and similar personal recording.
While copyright holders have no right to restrict VCRs they should have every right to decide how their content can be used. If you're the creator of a piece of work you have every right to distribute under whatever terms you decide. This is how software works today. You read a EULA and agree to it before installing the software. I see no legal reason why something similar could be applied to movies, TV shows, etc.
Just because nobody would want to buy a piece of software which has as part of its EULA that you can not make a backup copy of the installation media doesn't mean that it shouldn't be legal to license such software that way. Fair use doesn't mean that you have a divine right to make backups or timeshift for personal use. Although I haven't read the court decision my guess is that it was made in place of something being present such as a EULA for movies and TV shows. If media holders wanted to start applying EULA's to copyrighted works I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to.
Not that I have anything against the idea of nearly unlimited rights to TV episodes but I will point out that I would want an additional option to rent TV. The reason is quite simple, how often do you watch a TV episode more than once? Sure you might on your favorite shows but most shows you watch once and that's it. It's the same way with books. There's no economical reason for you to pay $8-$20 to buy a book if you're fairly certain you're only going to read it once.
You're much better off using a library and in the case of TV you're probably far better off renting episodes and just paying the $1 for the few that you really like. So, as long as there was a way to rent TV I would have no problem with the $1 idea.
To be honest I got a bit sick of what I would like to call the "Wayne, Check It Out: Extreme close up..! Whoaaa" shots... and the steadycam as well.
Sure the zoom was nice a few times but they overused it and they also started using it in the standard shots as well which was cheezy.
I liked pretty much everything else about the show though. Should make for a great series provided the director can get his hands off of the zoom controls.
Oh boo-hoo. This is a tired old saw I can't believe still gets people's mod points.
The labels only have these rights because the artists assign them, and I have no sympathy for artists who exchange control of their creative works for the coddling of a record label.
I suspect that you have no idea how hard it is for an independent artist to make a living without the help of the record industry in today's market. You may call it "coddling" but it is actually simply advertising and exposure without which most popular bands today would simply be unknowns.
I wouldn't disagree with you that we should encourage musicians to try to remove the middle-men from the equation but to say that you have no respect for musicians who sign with the RIAA (essentially for promotional purposes) demonstrates a lack of understanding in how the music industry works and a lack of compassion for the struggling artist who for many practical reasons does not have the time nor willpower to effect their own marketing strategy on a nationwide level.
1. The battery is internal so it's not easily pulled/replace (see comment 2)
True, although how often do you replace a battery?
2. Sometimes the palm OS will crash and there will be a reset button on the touch screen but it's so locked up you can't hit it, and the phone's power button won't work either so you have to leave the screen open until the battery completely dies.
Unscrew the tip of your stylus and stick it in the hole in the back of the PDA marked reset. This will give you a soft reset. In order to get a hard reset hold down the power button by the antenna while doing this for about 20 seconds and then release it. A dialog box will appear which will allow you to clear all data on your PDA.
3. This phone's SMS doesn't work with Sprint's network so the keypad is only really useful for managing the phone book.
The SMS or lack thereof sucks on the Treo 300. If you want to use SMS you're pretty much consigned to buying Treo300SMS ($19.95).
4. Treo 300 doesn't have built in modem software like my old Kyocera 6035 so I can't hook it up to my laptop and dial up to anything. I might be able to use Sprint's vision software but I'm not sure if there are additional charges for that.
True. You have to buy PDANet ($34.00) which will let you use Sprint's vision service and download all the data you want to your laptop/desktop.
5. It doesn't use the standard audio jack for the headset. I thought my phone was broken until I discovered there was a special headset for it. I'm not sure what the difference is. It's still mono with a mic. I can't imagine what different wiring patterns there would be.
It's a smaller form factor and the wiring allows for a button connected to your headset which does things like allow you to hang up the phone. It does kinda suck they didn't use standard size adaptors but headsets aren't too expensive these days.
6. Battery life isn't great.
Yeah this is definitely true. Especially when your battery starts to wear out after a year or so. I got a little gadget which plugs in and allows you to charge the PDA with 4 rechargable AA batteries. It comes in handy when I start running low on power after a lot of LCD/radio use.
7. No bluetooth! (I don't think the Treo 600 has it either.)
True
8. I can't sync it up with Mozilla Sunbird! (yet) but this is no fault of Palm's I suppose.
Hopefully the Mozilla people will add this feature soon.
9. It seems like I have to go into sprint and get PRC updates more often than I did with other phones. This might be a sprint thing I'm not sure.
AFAIK there is one ROM update for the Treo 300 if that's what you're referring to but I heard mixed reviews for it so I didn't install it although I'm not sure if there is any data to back up the claims I read on the internet. I heard data throughput was marginally improved at the cost of more battery use and decided on that basis not to fix what wasn't broken.
10. It's not a very bring screen.
Yes the screen is hard to read in direct sunlight. It's nowhere near as bright as the 600.
One feature GMail sadly lacks
on
Gmail Adds Features
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I know I will probably get modded down for this one but it lacks the ability to take a message in your inbox and forward it to people in your address book while looking at it (i.e. using checkboxes for forwarding). You can type in their names and use autocomplete but there is no easy way to choose from amongst your address book who you are going to forward to.
I don't really forward emails off to a gazillion people but it apparantly is a very common thing these days which was the reason I could not get my Grandmother to switch to gmail (she's one of those people that forwards every joke email she gets onto you thinking you'll read it).
They do have this feature for sending new mail to people now, however.
Isn't it logical to assume that the people of Iraq might be grateful to the United States for freeing them from the boot of Saddam? Now it might not happen that way but the people in Iraq are being given a chance that many dictatorships around the world have very little hope of accomplishing: their right to organize themselves as a free country with a democratically elected government.
The newly elected government also isn't stupid. They will probably realize that until the troops are trained to defend their own borders they are going to need the help of the United States in order to the new country underway. Once they have control themselves though after elections have taken place the United States will be there at the invitation of the Iraqi government.
Your statement assumes that people in a democracy have the right to vote to enslave themselves. In an unlimited democracy one could easily see a country electing a dictator to take over. Germany appointed Hitler and I could clearly see Iraq appointing an Islamic dictator. The important thing to realize about this is two things:
1. Most "democracies" are implemented as republics. Take for example the United States. Our Constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion and there is a balance of power seperating the three branches of government and the bill of rights to protect the rights of the populace. I would hope that the United States is helping the Iraqi people enough such that they realize the importance in such a diverse country as themselves (Kurds in the North and Muslims in the South) to forbid the establishment of a state religion.
2. A free society has no right to hold a vote to determine which people of the society will be enslaved at the expense of other people in the society (or what will happen to people who don't worship Islam). Were such a thing to happen it would be an inherent violation of the individual rights of every person in that country. In essence it would be no different than two criminals approaching you and declaring that they were going to have a vote to determine who out of the three people was going to be lynched and obviously having the majority went ahead and lynched you.
The White House is the final authority in Iraq today and will be for many years to come.
If the White House wanted to be the final authority in Iraq for years to come why are elections scheduled in Iraq this January? Doesn't this give the people of that country the right to elect their own leaders to effect the policy they desire?
I hate to say this, but the "Green" party is really just the new "Red" party. They're socialists. Why would they want to work with a party which embraces capitalism and free-markets?
Sure there are some issues which libertarians and Greens agree on, but they are few and far between. Legalizing marijuana, the War on Iraq, ballot access, and Civil Liberties are probably the biggest but when it comes to anything economic the Green Party is virtually identical to the Socialist Party.
They view happiness as a right and refuse to recognize the distinction between "the pursuit of happiness" and "happiness" when defining rights. You can see this quite clearly in their platform. When asked who is to provide people with the "right" to healthcare, the "right" to a "living wage", etc. the answer is quite clear. You, the able and willing owe your life to the unable and the unwilling.
The assumption underlying your post is that regulations and rules should be used to legislate morality. Libertarians will be the first people to tell you that the government has no business legislating morality in the slightest but they will also be the first people to tell you that they see nothing "wrong" in things like drug abuse, prostitution, gambling, etc.
This is a major problem with libertarians. Some treat libertarianism as it should be treated as a political philosophy with no foundation in ethics whatsoever while others attempt to derive their ethical philosophy (what is right and wrong) from libertarianism. The end result of those who choose the latter is a group of people who believe that drug abuse isn't wrong and child porn is fine provided the child consents since neither infringes on anyone's rights.
Some libertarians steal from Objectivism in deriving their metaphysics and ethics while others steal from religion. The ones to worry about are those who try to go backwards starting with political principles involving the rights of man and deriving their ethics from it.
Just FYI, you're preaching to the choir here. I never condoned the way the Iraq War was conducted. The important question here is if you believe that the United States has the right to invade dictatorships. I believe that many liberals and libertarians believe that dictatorships are sovereign and cannot be invaded by foreign governments.
Another way to put the question is if you see American troops in Iraq as liberators or as occupiers.
Do you believe that the U.S. Government has the right to invade countries run by dictators like Saddam Hussein and liberate the people by establishing a free society even if those countries do not threaten the United States?
In a nutshell, how does the libertarian principle of non-initiation of force apply to foreign dictators? Who or what has the right to unseat these dictators?
Do you think Moore was behind the scenes, going, "Despite all of these headlines out there reporting that Gore won the election, I want you to take a letter to the editor instead and make it look like a headline, and tweak its date!" ?
If there were multitudes of headlines out there reporting that Gore won the election as you imply, why would Moore go to the trouble of having a letter to the editor doctored to look like a headline and then putting a fake date on it? You have to admit that it looks awfully deceptive.
The solution to this should be simple. Google should take a stand against these kinds of invasive privacy laws by displaying a message to all users connecting from the *.uk domains explaining that they are legally forbidden from offering the services in the United Kingdom and suggesting that the people contact their politicians and have the laws changed.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, but you have to think of the average end user and Google's needs as well. Google Pack is a good idea for a couple of reasons:
from the article:
The revolutionary product could be on the market as early as next year, with the new DVD players needed to view them. Sorry, but it won't work if I and millions of other people who already have DVD players, have to buy a "special" player. This reminds me a lot like DiVX.
Their interim solution of just using your address to determine your local emergency number probably would have been fine and could have been mentioned to the customer during signup in a disclosure. At least had they set things up like that it might have prevented the FCC from going into regulation mode which they did so quite soon after two parents of a 17-year old girl were shot and the girl couldn't reach 911. Basically, if you're going to take the step to allow Vonage customers to register their phone to use 911 to dial a local emergency number via a web form based on your address (like they had done prior to the FCC ruling), you've already done 90% of the work and you probably should just set this up for all of your subscribers.
But it will always fail. Even if an impenetrable DRM were possible there is always the analog hole to get ahold of music you buy in a non-DRM format so you can actually use it conveniently.
DRM is essentially worthless. It only serves as a deterrent. People who want to steal will always steal; people who want to be able to "rip" their "DRMed music" will always find a way to do so. The only difference is that some people are stealing and the other people are exercising fair use rights.
I know the wikimedia folks are fundraising for more servers, but I wonder if this will provide more incentive to accept Google's offer?
What you mean to ask is if Google's team of secret agents sneaking into the colocation facility and tripping the circuit breakers will result in wikipedia deciding to accept Google's offer and thus further their plans for world domination.
I can't imaging how you expect some "extra rental option" other than as some scheme to outlaw VCRs. Copyright holders have no right to restrict VCRs and similar personal recording.
While copyright holders have no right to restrict VCRs they should have every right to decide how their content can be used. If you're the creator of a piece of work you have every right to distribute under whatever terms you decide. This is how software works today. You read a EULA and agree to it before installing the software. I see no legal reason why something similar could be applied to movies, TV shows, etc.
Just because nobody would want to buy a piece of software which has as part of its EULA that you can not make a backup copy of the installation media doesn't mean that it shouldn't be legal to license such software that way. Fair use doesn't mean that you have a divine right to make backups or timeshift for personal use. Although I haven't read the court decision my guess is that it was made in place of something being present such as a EULA for movies and TV shows. If media holders wanted to start applying EULA's to copyrighted works I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to.
But will it ever happen?
Not that I have anything against the idea of nearly unlimited rights to TV episodes but I will point out that I would want an additional option to rent TV. The reason is quite simple, how often do you watch a TV episode more than once? Sure you might on your favorite shows but most shows you watch once and that's it. It's the same way with books. There's no economical reason for you to pay $8-$20 to buy a book if you're fairly certain you're only going to read it once.
You're much better off using a library and in the case of TV you're probably far better off renting episodes and just paying the $1 for the few that you really like. So, as long as there was a way to rent TV I would have no problem with the $1 idea.
To be honest I got a bit sick of what I would like to call the "Wayne, Check It Out: Extreme close up..! Whoaaa" shots... and the steadycam as well.
Sure the zoom was nice a few times but they overused it and they also started using it in the standard shots as well which was cheezy.
I liked pretty much everything else about the show though. Should make for a great series provided the director can get his hands off of the zoom controls.
I suspect that you have no idea how hard it is for an independent artist to make a living without the help of the record industry in today's market. You may call it "coddling" but it is actually simply advertising and exposure without which most popular bands today would simply be unknowns.
I wouldn't disagree with you that we should encourage musicians to try to remove the middle-men from the equation but to say that you have no respect for musicians who sign with the RIAA (essentially for promotional purposes) demonstrates a lack of understanding in how the music industry works and a lack of compassion for the struggling artist who for many practical reasons does not have the time nor willpower to effect their own marketing strategy on a nationwide level.
True, although how often do you replace a battery?
2. Sometimes the palm OS will crash and there will be a reset button on the touch screen but it's so locked up you can't hit it, and the phone's power button won't work either so you have to leave the screen open until the battery completely dies.
Unscrew the tip of your stylus and stick it in the hole in the back of the PDA marked reset. This will give you a soft reset. In order to get a hard reset hold down the power button by the antenna while doing this for about 20 seconds and then release it. A dialog box will appear which will allow you to clear all data on your PDA.
3. This phone's SMS doesn't work with Sprint's network so the keypad is only really useful for managing the phone book.
The SMS or lack thereof sucks on the Treo 300. If you want to use SMS you're pretty much consigned to buying Treo300SMS ($19.95).
4. Treo 300 doesn't have built in modem software like my old Kyocera 6035 so I can't hook it up to my laptop and dial up to anything. I might be able to use Sprint's vision software but I'm not sure if there are additional charges for that.
True. You have to buy PDANet ($34.00) which will let you use Sprint's vision service and download all the data you want to your laptop/desktop.
5. It doesn't use the standard audio jack for the headset. I thought my phone was broken until I discovered there was a special headset for it. I'm not sure what the difference is. It's still mono with a mic. I can't imagine what different wiring patterns there would be.
It's a smaller form factor and the wiring allows for a button connected to your headset which does things like allow you to hang up the phone. It does kinda suck they didn't use standard size adaptors but headsets aren't too expensive these days.
6. Battery life isn't great.
Yeah this is definitely true. Especially when your battery starts to wear out after a year or so. I got a little gadget which plugs in and allows you to charge the PDA with 4 rechargable AA batteries. It comes in handy when I start running low on power after a lot of LCD/radio use.
7. No bluetooth! (I don't think the Treo 600 has it either.)
True
8. I can't sync it up with Mozilla Sunbird! (yet) but this is no fault of Palm's I suppose.
Hopefully the Mozilla people will add this feature soon.
9. It seems like I have to go into sprint and get PRC updates more often than I did with other phones. This might be a sprint thing I'm not sure.
AFAIK there is one ROM update for the Treo 300 if that's what you're referring to but I heard mixed reviews for it so I didn't install it although I'm not sure if there is any data to back up the claims I read on the internet. I heard data throughput was marginally improved at the cost of more battery use and decided on that basis not to fix what wasn't broken.
10. It's not a very bring screen.
Yes the screen is hard to read in direct sunlight. It's nowhere near as bright as the 600.
I know I will probably get modded down for this one but it lacks the ability to take a message in your inbox and forward it to people in your address book while looking at it (i.e. using checkboxes for forwarding). You can type in their names and use autocomplete but there is no easy way to choose from amongst your address book who you are going to forward to.
I don't really forward emails off to a gazillion people but it apparantly is a very common thing these days which was the reason I could not get my Grandmother to switch to gmail (she's one of those people that forwards every joke email she gets onto you thinking you'll read it).
They do have this feature for sending new mail to people now, however.
Isn't it logical to assume that the people of Iraq might be grateful to the United States for freeing them from the boot of Saddam? Now it might not happen that way but the people in Iraq are being given a chance that many dictatorships around the world have very little hope of accomplishing: their right to organize themselves as a free country with a democratically elected government.
The newly elected government also isn't stupid. They will probably realize that until the troops are trained to defend their own borders they are going to need the help of the United States in order to the new country underway. Once they have control themselves though after elections have taken place the United States will be there at the invitation of the Iraqi government.
Your statement assumes that people in a democracy have the right to vote to enslave themselves. In an unlimited democracy one could easily see a country electing a dictator to take over. Germany appointed Hitler and I could clearly see Iraq appointing an Islamic dictator. The important thing to realize about this is two things:
1. Most "democracies" are implemented as republics. Take for example the United States. Our Constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion and there is a balance of power seperating the three branches of government and the bill of rights to protect the rights of the populace. I would hope that the United States is helping the Iraqi people enough such that they realize the importance in such a diverse country as themselves (Kurds in the North and Muslims in the South) to forbid the establishment of a state religion.
2. A free society has no right to hold a vote to determine which people of the society will be enslaved at the expense of other people in the society (or what will happen to people who don't worship Islam). Were such a thing to happen it would be an inherent violation of the individual rights of every person in that country. In essence it would be no different than two criminals approaching you and declaring that they were going to have a vote to determine who out of the three people was going to be lynched and obviously having the majority went ahead and lynched you.
The White House is the final authority in Iraq today and will be for many years to come.
If the White House wanted to be the final authority in Iraq for years to come why are elections scheduled in Iraq this January? Doesn't this give the people of that country the right to elect their own leaders to effect the policy they desire?
If I hadn't already posted comments I would mod the parent of this post up!
There is no reason with Slashdot's political "clout" that G.W. Bush and John Kerry wouldn't go for a 15 question interview.
I hate to say this, but the "Green" party is really just the new "Red" party. They're socialists. Why would they want to work with a party which embraces capitalism and free-markets?
Sure there are some issues which libertarians and Greens agree on, but they are few and far between. Legalizing marijuana, the War on Iraq, ballot access, and Civil Liberties are probably the biggest but when it comes to anything economic the Green Party is virtually identical to the Socialist Party.
They view happiness as a right and refuse to recognize the distinction between "the pursuit of happiness" and "happiness" when defining rights. You can see this quite clearly in their platform. When asked who is to provide people with the "right" to healthcare, the "right" to a "living wage", etc. the answer is quite clear. You, the able and willing owe your life to the unable and the unwilling.
One has to wonder if we would be dealing with the broadcast flag and all that other crap if the government would simply let HDTV develop on it's own.
Computer companies have no problem combining forces and devising standards. Why not let the broadcasters do the same?
They knew they would be slashdotted of course! (at least according to this sourceforge.net forum post)
/. again when 1.0 comes out?
The question is, will gaim be
The assumption underlying your post is that regulations and rules should be used to legislate morality. Libertarians will be the first people to tell you that the government has no business legislating morality in the slightest but they will also be the first people to tell you that they see nothing "wrong" in things like drug abuse, prostitution, gambling, etc.
This is a major problem with libertarians. Some treat libertarianism as it should be treated as a political philosophy with no foundation in ethics whatsoever while others attempt to derive their ethical philosophy (what is right and wrong) from libertarianism. The end result of those who choose the latter is a group of people who believe that drug abuse isn't wrong and child porn is fine provided the child consents since neither infringes on anyone's rights.
Some libertarians steal from Objectivism in deriving their metaphysics and ethics while others steal from religion. The ones to worry about are those who try to go backwards starting with political principles involving the rights of man and deriving their ethics from it.
Just FYI, you're preaching to the choir here. I never condoned the way the Iraq War was conducted. The important question here is if you believe that the United States has the right to invade dictatorships. I believe that many liberals and libertarians believe that dictatorships are sovereign and cannot be invaded by foreign governments.
Another way to put the question is if you see American troops in Iraq as liberators or as occupiers.
Do you believe that the U.S. Government has the right to invade countries run by dictators like Saddam Hussein and liberate the people by establishing a free society even if those countries do not threaten the United States?
In a nutshell, how does the libertarian principle of non-initiation of force apply to foreign dictators? Who or what has the right to unseat these dictators?
If there were multitudes of headlines out there reporting that Gore won the election as you imply, why would Moore go to the trouble of having a letter to the editor doctored to look like a headline and then putting a fake date on it? You have to admit that it looks awfully deceptive.
The solution to this should be simple. Google should take a stand against these kinds of invasive privacy laws by displaying a message to all users connecting from the *.uk domains explaining that they are legally forbidden from offering the services in the United Kingdom and suggesting that the people contact their politicians and have the laws changed.