I get it. Makes total sense. Maybe you could share the wisdom that's not apparent in being sarcastic about two totally strawman arguments.
When a useless / overpriced upgrade shows up, we say, "meh," and move on, maybe wondering what happened to the firm we once kinda partnered with. OTOH, we'll cuss or flame when we feel the cost is too high, but we're locked in. As in, the VirusBorg will own you if you don't upgrade, but it'll cost you $299 plus a bunch of compatibility hassles that could triple that cost if your time is worth more than $2.15/hour.
So, are you locked into upgrading to Leopard on Day One but aggravated about the $129 plus an hour plus a bunch of hassles with Adobe, Filemaker or others? In contrast, was Vista dead easy cuz your machine was fully capable; you had no driver or other hardware incompatibilities; you lost zero legacy software; you had a coupon to do it for free and you knew if it wasn't a walk in the park, at least it'd be a worthy intellectual challenge? And the enhanced features or speed or ease-of-use worth way more than all that? Izzat what you're saying?
Most artists make little money from records, and most of it from performances, etc.
Or, in other words, virtually every artist is an absolute moron for going thru the "labels." That pimps exist only by illegal threats of aranging bad things to happen to "independents." That RIAA members, not known to force artists into signing contracts, don't actually exist in the real world where artists are at least approximately as rational as the rest of us.
In your world, on the other hand, a band is ("should" be) an integrated business instead of just a bunch of musicians who write, record and tour. They create all their raw materials, produce them into finished products (MP3s or CDs), package them, promote them without partners, and sell them directly to the end user. Never mind that this is unlike virtually every other business model on the face of the planet. Well, maybe the guy who grows tomatoes and takes them direct to his neighbors' houses, not thru an organized farmers' market where he has to pay for a booth.
Does it not occur to people who make such self-satisfied pronouncements that the current arrangements might actually serve some artists in some meaningful way? That every such contract was chosen voluntarily? Yes, several artists with whom I'm acquainted self-publish, but they find they spend a LOT of time finding studio and technology partners, managing the look and feel of a website thru learning about web design or working with somebody who needs specific guidance as to look'n'feel, dealing with online credit card issues, etc. Cuts into their music activities pretty heavily. Once they can, they're happy to subcontract that side of their business out, to... to the labels.
Individual band members may not like all aspects of the deal that they signed, or think that they get more customer allegiance by spouting off about their partners' practices, but at the end of the day, they chose those relationships in order to get paid for doing what they wanted to do.
Until somebody shows examples of contracts between labels and artists where the artist could not possibly gain any benefit (which, by the way, is a contract that courts would happily void), any broadside attack on the labels should be understood as an attack on the partnership of the labels and the artists. You don't have to like the labels, but until the artists, whose ass is on the line, choose to go to your model, anti-label arguments are just ego-gratifying claptrap.
"Use the C and D scales to do multiplication or division. They're scaled so that whatever the position, the ratio of a number on the C scale divided by the aligned number on the D scale, is constant for all numbers. To multiply X times Y = Z, position X on the C scale over 1 and look at the number over Y on the D scale, because X/1 = Z/Y is the same as Z=X*Y by simple algebra. Likewise, for division of X/Y=Z, position X on the C scale over Y on the D scale, then look at the number over 1 because X/Y = Z/1. Use the glass slider gizmo to clarify locations, or for other types of calculations..."
Other choices (especially the inverted fractions) work just as well, depending on what is easier to reach.
It always helped me to know why the damn thing worked. It wouldn't be bad to mention that two ordinary rulers, lined up right, do addition: put 3 over zero then notice that 5 is over 2 to add 3+2. But slide rules are not scaled linearly, but rather, as logs, so you get multiplication instead of addition. (Log(x) + log(Y) = log(X*Y).)
Leads to the suspicion that the guy who wrote the instructions never grokked the relationship to elementary algebra.
What's the solution? I'd love to know...any ideas anyone? Sure. First, recognize a simple, accurate description of the problem:
oligopoly noun ( pl. -lies) a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers.
Second, understand that the US Govt (perhaps, others, too) helps enforce the oligopoly by enabling the co's to carve up the market in incompatible, non-competitive ways. Unlike countries where only GSM is licensed, the US multi-standard approach means that EACH competitor has to have national coverage; it makes investment in marginal areas less profitable, so the first co in each area wins, guaranteeing multiple, non-overlapping firms. (Yes, all the biggies work in downtown LA, but I understand people hate T-Mo in NYC, AT&T along I-95, etc.)
Third, recognize how such non-competitive arrangements have broken up in the past. At this point I'm a bit out of my depth; I know the SCOTUS has re-legislated our major anti-trust law ("new economic thinking has rendered the simple reading of section 1 obsolete") but there's always political pressure on the FCC along the lines that Google is proposing, and maybe a little interest by Congress could re-define the terms of how these companies exploit the public airwaves for excessive profits and reduced service. These latter choices are a bit iffy, however: the telcos and their evil spawn, the wireless co's, hire the best lobbyists and aren't afraid to pull out the checkbook for their pals.
I read the Supreme Court's Keegin decision, or at least a bunch before the argumentation seemed tedious and in pursuit of some neocon, anti-government regulation as opposed to "enforcement of the law" or "justice." (They acknowledge that the plain reading of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, section 1, prohibits minimum selling price contracts without argument, but decided that it was a bad law -- too sweeping -- based on subsequent economic opinions, so lawsuits would have to argue the merits case-by-case.)
The concern in Keegin was that manufacturers are allowed to dictate the terms under which their products are distributed; the immediate point was the selling price. It is inconceivable that the store honored a selling contract by selling to an eBay retailer, who then sold the products below the purchase price (i.e., at a loss). Either the ultimate seller's purchases were not really arm's length deals, the seller is an idiot who will soon be parted from enough money to disappear, or the store broke the minimum selling price contract with the manufacturer.
So, "nice try" is about as good as the post warrants. I'm only a bit surprised at how quickly the Court's right-wing nonsense has turned into full-scale, mischief that will especially harm non-traditional venues such as eBay and other internet-based sellers, for whom price is a major advantage.
...the question he raised about free education is a debate worth having. Preferably without insults.
Agreed. So Slashdot ("Hardware," even!) is the wrong place for it. Reasonable people don't introduce off-topic issues and expect a reasonable discussion to ensue. Ignoring the "on topic" guidance makes/. less useful for its unique purpose. I can go visit HuffNPuff or The Conservative Voice or lots of other sites if I want to consider politics, society-not-as-touched-by-politics, or whatever.
So can you, or so can anyone.
No, I'm not looking for a high level, Social Issues Barely Touched by Computing on Slashdot.
Previous replies have given specific answers but allow me to observe that most science left the "direct observation" phase decades ago, and astronomy has relied primarily on "indirect" measures, e.g., telescopes, for centuries. (Yes, reasonable, thoughtful people doubted Jupiter's moons because you could only see 'em thru those new-fangled tele-thingies.)
Not that our basic senses are that terribly much more trustworthy. We're surrounded by our projections of what we think the world is about.
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
[Citation needed.]
No, throughout time, "science" can be fairly well described as the formation of a hypothesis (prediction) of what will ensue given starting conditions X; leading to a system of tested knowledge for which the predictions were tested but not shown to be false. Definitions that emphasize the falsifiability of hypotheses lead to notions of one continuous scientific process.
Dictionaries seem to prefer the "system of knowledge" angle; I'm a big fan of the "falsifiability" end of the spectrum: that it's worthless if you make statements for which you couldn't reasonably be disproved. (E.g., "every 20,000 years Big Bird will hatch out of somewhere in the Southern Pacific.")
A key link in ID is the "irreducible complexity" argument. It has a certain appeal. However, it is not provable because it can't be shown to be false. And, in fact, examples that are cited are constantly knocked over -- for example, showing all the precursor uses of genetic material that became complex eyes. So, it ain't "science." No, it's not bad science; it's some other form of contention besides science by the simple requirement of falsifiable predictions. Get 125 million people to vote for it (about 43% of Americans). Argue whether it's "reasonable." But it ain't science and was probably never meant to be.
Scientific revolutions -- where previously unexpected connections, causes, forces, whatever are recognized -- inevitably trump the old science by a broader, more general, more predictable, whatever explanation of the interaction. Not necessarily "more accurate," since some great science, such as Copernican theory, was initially less able to predict planetary positions.
Not quite so. Apple's putative genius notwithstanding, this can be figured out by others. RIM (and probably many others) are actively courting the high-end mobile not-necessarily-"mobile professionals;" they see this (quite rightly, methinks) as a huge growth market.
Who are they? People who might really like push email from work, but have a personal subscription. Or work at a job that doesn't take them on the road so much, but still like to have a digital life. The "one device per purse/pocket" crowd. People who like calamari.
Or, as I was told, your soccer-mom housewife. In all, lotsa people; lotsa disposable income.
Your family might also develop a system to alert you to laws. Many states forbid any headphones that isolate you sonically while driving. (Yes, I'm presuming that when you sit in *your* car, you're probably in the driver's seat & moving.) Dangerous whether legal or not, I'd hazard.
Dunno about others, but the Etymotic 4P's definitely produce sweet sound, all the nicer for blocking out all the other crap -- especially when I get to fly turboprop. A bit more than $40, but a Good Enough deal that I didn't think twice about buying a 2nd set when I accidentally donated a set to the NorthWest Lost & Found Auction charity.
It is not for you to say how much he can sell his OWN stuff for.
Right. Nor is it for Obama. Could somebody educate me as to why this is anything other than an issue of how MySpace runs its business?
If this guy has a beef, it's with MySpace, and the "investment" he made into running a joint business with them is the stake.
It's like Obama walks into my favorite coffee place and says, "I'm in a hurry -- can I get a double cap?" despite 20 of us in line. The cashier can say, "sure!" and possibly PO 20 regulars, or "Of Course! Right after those other guys." If I don't like the outcome, I can stop buying my coffee where they don't treat me the way I expect.
(In fact, I did recently walk out of a coffee shop when they didn't treat me the way I wanted. My issue was not with the other guy, but the shop's service.)
Blaming this on Obama, or his campaign staff, seems to miss the fact that he can't take a MySpace name unless MySpace gives it to him. And if it's that simple, fingering Obama (and/or staff) seems to be almost intentionally to discredit him falsely, nothing to do with his actions. FUD.
I can think of several good reasons.
* CAN-SPAM makes unsolicited commercial email illegal in the US, but enforcement is very difficult.
* Spam must be a huge expense to the broad community of internet users -- bandwidth, filter costs, manual efforts, etc.
* Providing spammers with incentive to take over others' PCs with zombie botnets extracts further costs to hapless users. ...
And maybe a collective satisfaction of seeing anti-social thieves locked up should count for something, too.
An AACS licensed drive shall retain in non-volatile storage, the most recent Host Revocation List (HRL) data which it encounters...
Makes me wonder: what will be the bait for the downloadable DVD Trojan that includes spoofed HRL files to disable the most popular 100 DVD players? Nude Brittany? Snuff Films? Hillary & bin Laden in flagrante delicto? Or will the Trojans target only Sony, or MSFT, or ???
Or how about some warez that'll burn a 15-second DVD of the FBI warning, complete with an as-of-today HRL that re-grants permissions to a user-specifiable list of devices? How long until they appear?
Looks like the vaunted AACS encryption scheme is rather leakier than anybody could've imagined.
Whee!
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
Apple... needs FCC approval which would have made the device public anyway.
Yeah, He said that. But the same day, Apple released the Airport SuperDuper, which is also an FCC licensed device, and which was untouched by the rumor mills.
Seems the FCC has a program for those who like to keep things secret.
> Earplugs are good at muffling excessively loud sounds... But you can still hear them.
I fly about weekly; last nite was a family flight with lots of kids screaming in pain as their runny-nose-blocked ear canals started hurting as we descended thru 8000 feet. (How hard is it to tell parents to bring gum, lollipops or milk bottles for kids?)
I hardly heard them while flying, as my iPod was making sweet sounds. The noise-blocking earplugs mean I can listen to SOFT music and still barely hear my surroundings. But when "electronics off" gets announced, I can sorta hear them thru the phones. WAAY below aggravation level.
If this doesn't sell a gazillion iPods and earplug-style noise blockers (I love my Etymotic plugs; others like Shure...) or noise cancellers (Bose, Sony,...), I don't know what would. In any case, lighten up: excellent prophyllactics are available.
this seeming insistence that everything that is cool or nifty, or even useful, is somehow a rip-off of something Apple did first.
Nah, the issue is that Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Google, etc., sell products with very limited lifetimes because the NEXT innovator's products will draw us away quickly. So the question of whether Vendor X is with respect to the bleeding edge is an important part of the Value Equation.
Even more so with the incredible complexity of migrations... heck, the average corporate adoption of Vista is expected to be in 2008. It costs plenty to put in a system that doesn't meet users' needs (OK, desires) when it's brand spanking new.
Pogue is merely saying that the typical corporate user, WHEN he gets Vista in 2008, is going to feel happy about finally getting 2005 features for about 30 days, and then is going to start being VERY unhappy about all the 2006 and 2007 features that "the other guys" have been using for workgroup collaborations, data organization, build-it-yourself automation & widget tools that go from the trivially easy to the not-too-hard html pages, etc.
Makes Vista look like a lousy deal. Yes, MSFT HAD to spend all that time fixing the broken security models (and then pooched it with the cop-outs not being smart) and putting a thick layer of Aero lipstick on the pig, but that doesn't make it a good value for the client. But that's the typical problem with monopolies: they emphasize inseparability rather than interoperability, to preserve their profits at the expense of user value.
As if somehow, the Register talking about a waste of dead trees is any less a waste of bandwidth?
If this is important to Register readers (and Slashdotters), then the NYT, and specifically its attempts to get the best accuracy/timeliness/depth IS important, too. No? I never see exposès of Digg, the idiot stepbrother of/., which channels fake news, outright lies and such, all the time.
I always get a laugh when sources like the Huff'n'Puff Post waste our bandwidth sanctimoniously decrying the MainStreamMedia while citing stories that the HnPP could never come close to covering independently. Same story here: The Reg (which I like) is trying to claim superiority to a "paper" (I read mine online; my wife likes the hardcopy) not by scooping the NYT about MSFT, but by talking about the Times' efforts at getting the balance right.
The NYT recently has stepped up its efforts to distinguish between reviews/editorials and news. The only way you can tell the difference on the Reg is when it's merely snippy as opposed to being sneeringly sarcastic. And you have to be almost a full-time slashdot reader before you have any clue what axe any particular writer is grinding.
MacBooks and MacBookPro's do support right mouse buttons.
Or get a $9 2-button-and-scrollwheel USB mouse, plug it in & use all of its features exactly as expected.
...spend a few extra bucks on a 40 GB drive over at Newegg and throw the OS and programs on one and your docs and files on the other.
Perhaps all your software doesn't care if it loads onto the D: drive, and that key files, perm files, library support files, configs & inits, likewise can go into any drive you like. Maybe you can put all these into a "shared" user file so you can get them from different user configurations so your coding doesn't screw up other apps. Maybe your hardware doesn't come with drivers that assume a C:directory, or that your preferences go there.
If so, you are a very lucky person. Or perhaps you don't use any of the top ten vertical apps for the investment management business. Maybe you don't really use Win much at all, and assume because Linux has a rational directory metaphor, every other Modern OS must have somethng at least pretty close.
I'd think most Slashdotters have to be very careful in parsing the meanings in the documentation that describes their work tools. And many of us have more than a smidge of mathematical training. Why don't I see evidence of those skills here?
For starters, a uniform random search stragegy -- every person, at checkin, has a x% chance of getting the 10-minute full scan -- is universally understood as a wasteful, hopelessly impractical way to catch potential bad guys. Because x% would probably be something like 0.5%. Somebody with something to hide would (more or less rightly) figure his chances of being caught were as good as nil.
So chuck the simplistic sense of random. Nobody believes it, or wants you to.
Incorporating other attributes into the mix doesn't make it non-random. For example, one-way ticket buyers might get a one-in-five chance of a full check. That'd still be random. (Or pseudo-random, the common kind of "random" number generators in PC's.) The stock market is (nearly) random in that sense. On a given day, the S&P 500 will gain by a percentage that looks a lot like if God drew a random number from a normal (0 , 1%) distribution. Anybody who knows the real, non-random formula in advance is invited to contact me.
Quasi-randomness has been my experience. For a while, my occasional one-way flights (usually, a dog-leg flight on a different airline than my origin/return flights) were pretty likely to trigger the search. It's been a while now, but it still happens.
Push enough buttons -- one-way ticket, bought the day before, paid in cash, not a frequent flyer, soundex match against names on the No-fly list -- and you could get pretty close to 100%, and still have a "random" "excuse me."
Even if it were entirely deterministic, you'd want people to be told it's random. First, it leaves ambiguity about the formula for prospective baddies to worry about. Second, you don't want people going ballistic because some TSA type says, "excuse me, I don't like something about your ticket." Travel is stressful enough as it is without people raging about America having morphed into a Gulag.
> It's blatantly obvious that Apple's lawyers have > come down on him like a ton of bricks, forcing > him to be quiet until they get a patch out.
The least likely answer, actually. From the various info, this is not even an exploit of Apple hardware or software. What's to patch?
Any Apple lawyers parachuting from black helicopters (a rather calm, reasoned metaphor, wouldn't you say?) are probably telling him that claims about *Apple OSX* insecurity that are false would be defamation. While Americans are welcome to spout their opinions, false claims of fact can be found to be libel and he could be subject enforecement of damages.
If indeed that were Apple's response, I'd keep my fat trap shut before I found out that I'd stuck not just my foot, but most of my anatomy down it. Uncomfortable.
Companies didn't have to report stock option expenses on their financials until just recently.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board has been insisting on options disclosure for over a decade, IIRC. And many firms have been vociferous, including lobbying Congress, in trying to keep the grants out of the limelight. The rules for reporting were laid out a couple of years back and companies got to choose when/how they started reporting.
Given that this was ID'd by all parties as a Major Issue a decade ago, and grace periods were established, the "just recently" argument doesn't hold water. As an investor, I'm surprised that so many companies thought they'd get away with blatant misrepresentation having gotten such clear notice of investors' interest.
When companies report an option grant incorrectly, they are commiting fraud. As described earlier, there's no law against giving employees backdated options, or other bonus type compensation; the problem is claiming that the grant was valuable ONLY if the shares went up in price from the time they were given.
The investment industry -- intermediaries such as mutual funds and institutional investment firms who manage your retirement accounts whether 401(k) or defined pensions -- are setting up tools to detect this fraud, so they can avoid firms with management teams that attempt to hose the owners. No Surprise Dept: firms that are implicated in the backdating scandal are those with the most "aggressive" accounting and closed governance policies. That is, this is just one more way that some companies' managements increase their pay by unilaterally changing their contracts with the people who put up the money to start/run the company.
The United States enjoys dramatically better opportunities for entrepreneurs because of high quality financial reporting, openness and anti-fraud provisions. Allowing a few firms to exploit the trust established by others opens the door to an economic catastrophe because nobody will be able to get reasonable access to money to start new businesses. Tech firms would be the hardest hit.
Finally Mr. Warmenhoven ought to be censured by his board: the SEC was founded with the explicit mission of protecting the shareholders from misrepresentation by his ilk. (The nature of the scams has changed, but not the need to root them out.) Claiming that the SEC is on a witch hunt when it's doing its job is an admission that he doesn't understand the environment in which he is expected to excel.
Not to cast too much doubt on Science's hypothesis that politicization and fundamentalism are to blame, but it's obvious that incompetence in core knowledge springs from other causes, too.
Slashdot Mirror
When a useless / overpriced upgrade shows up, we say, "meh," and move on, maybe wondering what happened to the firm we once kinda partnered with. OTOH, we'll cuss or flame when we feel the cost is too high, but we're locked in. As in, the VirusBorg will own you if you don't upgrade, but it'll cost you $299 plus a bunch of compatibility hassles that could triple that cost if your time is worth more than $2.15/hour.
So, are you locked into upgrading to Leopard on Day One but aggravated about the $129 plus an hour plus a bunch of hassles with Adobe, Filemaker or others? In contrast, was Vista dead easy cuz your machine was fully capable; you had no driver or other hardware incompatibilities; you lost zero legacy software; you had a coupon to do it for free and you knew if it wasn't a walk in the park, at least it'd be a worthy intellectual challenge? And the enhanced features or speed or ease-of-use worth way more than all that? Izzat what you're saying?
Guess I don't get it. Whose double standard?
Most artists make little money from records, and most of it from performances, etc.
Or, in other words, virtually every artist is an absolute moron for going thru the "labels." That pimps exist only by illegal threats of aranging bad things to happen to "independents." That RIAA members, not known to force artists into signing contracts, don't actually exist in the real world where artists are at least approximately as rational as the rest of us.
In your world, on the other hand, a band is ("should" be) an integrated business instead of just a bunch of musicians who write, record and tour. They create all their raw materials, produce them into finished products (MP3s or CDs), package them, promote them without partners, and sell them directly to the end user. Never mind that this is unlike virtually every other business model on the face of the planet. Well, maybe the guy who grows tomatoes and takes them direct to his neighbors' houses, not thru an organized farmers' market where he has to pay for a booth.
Does it not occur to people who make such self-satisfied pronouncements that the current arrangements might actually serve some artists in some meaningful way? That every such contract was chosen voluntarily? Yes, several artists with whom I'm acquainted self-publish, but they find they spend a LOT of time finding studio and technology partners, managing the look and feel of a website thru learning about web design or working with somebody who needs specific guidance as to look'n'feel, dealing with online credit card issues, etc. Cuts into their music activities pretty heavily. Once they can, they're happy to subcontract that side of their business out, to... to the labels.
Individual band members may not like all aspects of the deal that they signed, or think that they get more customer allegiance by spouting off about their partners' practices, but at the end of the day, they chose those relationships in order to get paid for doing what they wanted to do.
Until somebody shows examples of contracts between labels and artists where the artist could not possibly gain any benefit (which, by the way, is a contract that courts would happily void), any broadside attack on the labels should be understood as an attack on the partnership of the labels and the artists. You don't have to like the labels, but until the artists, whose ass is on the line, choose to go to your model, anti-label arguments are just ego-gratifying claptrap.
Yeah, it's like a parody.
How about,
"Use the C and D scales to do multiplication or division. They're scaled so that whatever the position, the ratio of a number on the C scale divided by the aligned number on the D scale, is constant for all numbers. To multiply X times Y = Z, position X on the C scale over 1 and look at the number over Y on the D scale, because X/1 = Z/Y is the same as Z=X*Y by simple algebra. Likewise, for division of X/Y=Z, position X on the C scale over Y on the D scale, then look at the number over 1 because X/Y = Z/1. Use the glass slider gizmo to clarify locations, or for other types of calculations..."
Other choices (especially the inverted fractions) work just as well, depending on what is easier to reach.
It always helped me to know why the damn thing worked. It wouldn't be bad to mention that two ordinary rulers, lined up right, do addition: put 3 over zero then notice that 5 is over 2 to add 3+2. But slide rules are not scaled linearly, but rather, as logs, so you get multiplication instead of addition. (Log(x) + log(Y) = log(X*Y).)
Leads to the suspicion that the guy who wrote the instructions never grokked the relationship to elementary algebra.
Sure. First, recognize a simple, accurate description of the problem:
Second, understand that the US Govt (perhaps, others, too) helps enforce the oligopoly by enabling the co's to carve up the market in incompatible, non-competitive ways. Unlike countries where only GSM is licensed, the US multi-standard approach means that EACH competitor has to have national coverage; it makes investment in marginal areas less profitable, so the first co in each area wins, guaranteeing multiple, non-overlapping firms. (Yes, all the biggies work in downtown LA, but I understand people hate T-Mo in NYC, AT&T along I-95, etc.)
Third, recognize how such non-competitive arrangements have broken up in the past. At this point I'm a bit out of my depth; I know the SCOTUS has re-legislated our major anti-trust law ("new economic thinking has rendered the simple reading of section 1 obsolete") but there's always political pressure on the FCC along the lines that Google is proposing, and maybe a little interest by Congress could re-define the terms of how these companies exploit the public airwaves for excessive profits and reduced service. These latter choices are a bit iffy, however: the telcos and their evil spawn, the wireless co's, hire the best lobbyists and aren't afraid to pull out the checkbook for their pals.
I read the Supreme Court's Keegin decision, or at least a bunch before the argumentation seemed tedious and in pursuit of some neocon, anti-government regulation as opposed to "enforcement of the law" or "justice." (They acknowledge that the plain reading of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, section 1, prohibits minimum selling price contracts without argument, but decided that it was a bad law -- too sweeping -- based on subsequent economic opinions, so lawsuits would have to argue the merits case-by-case.)
The concern in Keegin was that manufacturers are allowed to dictate the terms under which their products are distributed; the immediate point was the selling price. It is inconceivable that the store honored a selling contract by selling to an eBay retailer, who then sold the products below the purchase price (i.e., at a loss). Either the ultimate seller's purchases were not really arm's length deals, the seller is an idiot who will soon be parted from enough money to disappear, or the store broke the minimum selling price contract with the manufacturer.
So, "nice try" is about as good as the post warrants. I'm only a bit surprised at how quickly the Court's right-wing nonsense has turned into full-scale, mischief that will especially harm non-traditional venues such as eBay and other internet-based sellers, for whom price is a major advantage.
...the question he raised about free education is a debate worth having. Preferably without insults.
/. less useful for its unique purpose. I can go visit HuffNPuff or The Conservative Voice or lots of other sites if I want to consider politics, society-not-as-touched-by-politics, or whatever.
Agreed. So Slashdot ("Hardware," even!) is the wrong place for it. Reasonable people don't introduce off-topic issues and expect a reasonable discussion to ensue. Ignoring the "on topic" guidance makes
So can you, or so can anyone.
No, I'm not looking for a high level, Social Issues Barely Touched by Computing on Slashdot.
Previous replies have given specific answers but allow me to observe that most science left the "direct observation" phase decades ago, and astronomy has relied primarily on "indirect" measures, e.g., telescopes, for centuries. (Yes, reasonable, thoughtful people doubted Jupiter's moons because you could only see 'em thru those new-fangled tele-thingies.)
Not that our basic senses are that terribly much more trustworthy. We're surrounded by our projections of what we think the world is about.
Is there a work around or anything?
VMWare+XP. Not exactly cheap, but I hear that there are lots of useful programs written for Windows that'd come with it.
Let's all be dense & cute. Even if it didn't work for Ms. Hilton.
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
[Citation needed.]
No, throughout time, "science" can be fairly well described as the formation of a hypothesis (prediction) of what will ensue given starting conditions X; leading to a system of tested knowledge for which the predictions were tested but not shown to be false. Definitions that emphasize the falsifiability of hypotheses lead to notions of one continuous scientific process.
Dictionaries seem to prefer the "system of knowledge" angle; I'm a big fan of the "falsifiability" end of the spectrum: that it's worthless if you make statements for which you couldn't reasonably be disproved. (E.g., "every 20,000 years Big Bird will hatch out of somewhere in the Southern Pacific.")
A key link in ID is the "irreducible complexity" argument. It has a certain appeal. However, it is not provable because it can't be shown to be false. And, in fact, examples that are cited are constantly knocked over -- for example, showing all the precursor uses of genetic material that became complex eyes. So, it ain't "science." No, it's not bad science; it's some other form of contention besides science by the simple requirement of falsifiable predictions. Get 125 million people to vote for it (about 43% of Americans). Argue whether it's "reasonable." But it ain't science and was probably never meant to be.
Scientific revolutions -- where previously unexpected connections, causes, forces, whatever are recognized -- inevitably trump the old science by a broader, more general, more predictable, whatever explanation of the interaction. Not necessarily "more accurate," since some great science, such as Copernican theory, was initially less able to predict planetary positions.
...this market segment has never been touched.
Not quite so. Apple's putative genius notwithstanding, this can be figured out by others. RIM (and probably many others) are actively courting the high-end mobile not-necessarily-"mobile professionals;" they see this (quite rightly, methinks) as a huge growth market.
Who are they? People who might really like push email from work, but have a personal subscription. Or work at a job that doesn't take them on the road so much, but still like to have a digital life. The "one device per purse/pocket" crowd. People who like calamari.
Or, as I was told, your soccer-mom housewife. In all, lotsa people; lotsa disposable income.
Your family might also develop a system to alert you to laws. Many states forbid any headphones that isolate you sonically while driving. (Yes, I'm presuming that when you sit in *your* car, you're probably in the driver's seat & moving.) Dangerous whether legal or not, I'd hazard.
Dunno about others, but the Etymotic 4P's definitely produce sweet sound, all the nicer for blocking out all the other crap -- especially when I get to fly turboprop. A bit more than $40, but a Good Enough deal that I didn't think twice about buying a 2nd set when I accidentally donated a set to the NorthWest Lost & Found Auction charity.
Or have I been trolled into reasoning with audiophiles?
Some of the comments seem equally random, but less earnest, elitist or poetic. This article seems driven by a weird combo of populism & junk science.
Either way, your efforts at reason seem futile.
It is not for you to say how much he can sell his OWN stuff for.
Right. Nor is it for Obama. Could somebody educate me as to why this is anything other than an issue of how MySpace runs its business?
If this guy has a beef, it's with MySpace, and the "investment" he made into running a joint business with them is the stake.
It's like Obama walks into my favorite coffee place and says, "I'm in a hurry -- can I get a double cap?" despite 20 of us in line. The cashier can say, "sure!" and possibly PO 20 regulars, or "Of Course! Right after those other guys." If I don't like the outcome, I can stop buying my coffee where they don't treat me the way I expect.
(In fact, I did recently walk out of a coffee shop when they didn't treat me the way I wanted. My issue was not with the other guy, but the shop's service.)
Blaming this on Obama, or his campaign staff, seems to miss the fact that he can't take a MySpace name unless MySpace gives it to him. And if it's that simple, fingering Obama (and/or staff) seems to be almost intentionally to discredit him falsely, nothing to do with his actions. FUD.
Is there any kind of mandate for this?
...
I can think of several good reasons.
* CAN-SPAM makes unsolicited commercial email illegal in the US, but enforcement is very difficult.
* Spam must be a huge expense to the broad community of internet users -- bandwidth, filter costs, manual efforts, etc.
* Providing spammers with incentive to take over others' PCs with zombie botnets extracts further costs to hapless users.
And maybe a collective satisfaction of seeing anti-social thieves locked up should count for something, too.
An AACS licensed drive shall retain in non-volatile storage, the most recent Host Revocation List (HRL) data which it encounters...
Makes me wonder: what will be the bait for the downloadable DVD Trojan that includes spoofed HRL files to disable the most popular 100 DVD players? Nude Brittany? Snuff Films? Hillary & bin Laden in flagrante delicto? Or will the Trojans target only Sony, or MSFT, or ???
Or how about some warez that'll burn a 15-second DVD of the FBI warning, complete with an as-of-today HRL that re-grants permissions to a user-specifiable list of devices? How long until they appear?
Looks like the vaunted AACS encryption scheme is rather leakier than anybody could've imagined. Whee! "Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
Apple ... needs FCC approval which would have made the device public anyway.
Yeah, He said that. But the same day, Apple released the Airport SuperDuper, which is also an FCC licensed device, and which was untouched by the rumor mills.
Seems the FCC has a program for those who like to keep things secret.
> Earplugs are good at muffling excessively loud sounds ... But you can still hear them.
...), I don't know what would. In any case, lighten up: excellent prophyllactics are available.
I fly about weekly; last nite was a family flight with lots of kids screaming in pain as their runny-nose-blocked ear canals started hurting as we descended thru 8000 feet. (How hard is it to tell parents to bring gum, lollipops or milk bottles for kids?)
I hardly heard them while flying, as my iPod was making sweet sounds. The noise-blocking earplugs mean I can listen to SOFT music and still barely hear my surroundings. But when "electronics off" gets announced, I can sorta hear them thru the phones. WAAY below aggravation level.
If this doesn't sell a gazillion iPods and earplug-style noise blockers (I love my Etymotic plugs; others like Shure...) or noise cancellers (Bose, Sony,
this seeming insistence that everything that is cool or nifty, or even useful, is somehow a rip-off of something Apple did first.
Nah, the issue is that Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Google, etc., sell products with very limited lifetimes because the NEXT innovator's products will draw us away quickly. So the question of whether Vendor X is with respect to the bleeding edge is an important part of the Value Equation.
Even more so with the incredible complexity of migrations... heck, the average corporate adoption of Vista is expected to be in 2008. It costs plenty to put in a system that doesn't meet users' needs (OK, desires) when it's brand spanking new.
Pogue is merely saying that the typical corporate user, WHEN he gets Vista in 2008, is going to feel happy about finally getting 2005 features for about 30 days, and then is going to start being VERY unhappy about all the 2006 and 2007 features that "the other guys" have been using for workgroup collaborations, data organization, build-it-yourself automation & widget tools that go from the trivially easy to the not-too-hard html pages, etc.
Makes Vista look like a lousy deal. Yes, MSFT HAD to spend all that time fixing the broken security models (and then pooched it with the cop-outs not being smart) and putting a thick layer of Aero lipstick on the pig, but that doesn't make it a good value for the client. But that's the typical problem with monopolies: they emphasize inseparability rather than interoperability, to preserve their profits at the expense of user value.
As if somehow, the Register talking about a waste of dead trees is any less a waste of bandwidth?
/., which channels fake news, outright lies and such, all the time.
If this is important to Register readers (and Slashdotters), then the NYT, and specifically its attempts to get the best accuracy/timeliness/depth IS important, too. No? I never see exposès of Digg, the idiot stepbrother of
I always get a laugh when sources like the Huff'n'Puff Post waste our bandwidth sanctimoniously decrying the MainStreamMedia while citing stories that the HnPP could never come close to covering independently. Same story here: The Reg (which I like) is trying to claim superiority to a "paper" (I read mine online; my wife likes the hardcopy) not by scooping the NYT about MSFT, but by talking about the Times' efforts at getting the balance right.
The NYT recently has stepped up its efforts to distinguish between reviews/editorials and news. The only way you can tell the difference on the Reg is when it's merely snippy as opposed to being sneeringly sarcastic. And you have to be almost a full-time slashdot reader before you have any clue what axe any particular writer is grinding.
MacBooks and MacBookPro's do support right mouse buttons.
Or get a $9 2-button-and-scrollwheel USB mouse, plug it in & use all of its features exactly as expected.
...spend a few extra bucks on a 40 GB drive over at Newegg and throw the OS and programs on one and your docs and files on the other.
Perhaps all your software doesn't care if it loads onto the D: drive, and that key files, perm files, library support files, configs & inits, likewise can go into any drive you like. Maybe you can put all these into a "shared" user file so you can get them from different user configurations so your coding doesn't screw up other apps. Maybe your hardware doesn't come with drivers that assume a C:directory, or that your preferences go there.
If so, you are a very lucky person. Or perhaps you don't use any of the top ten vertical apps for the investment management business. Maybe you don't really use Win much at all, and assume because Linux has a rational directory metaphor, every other Modern OS must have somethng at least pretty close.
I'd think most Slashdotters have to be very careful in parsing the meanings in the documentation that describes their work tools. And many of us have more than a smidge of mathematical training. Why don't I see evidence of those skills here?
For starters, a uniform random search stragegy -- every person, at checkin, has a x% chance of getting the 10-minute full scan -- is universally understood as a wasteful, hopelessly impractical way to catch potential bad guys. Because x% would probably be something like 0.5%. Somebody with something to hide would (more or less rightly) figure his chances of being caught were as good as nil.
So chuck the simplistic sense of random. Nobody believes it, or wants you to.
Incorporating other attributes into the mix doesn't make it non-random. For example, one-way ticket buyers might get a one-in-five chance of a full check. That'd still be random. (Or pseudo-random, the common kind of "random" number generators in PC's.) The stock market is (nearly) random in that sense. On a given day, the S&P 500 will gain by a percentage that looks a lot like if God drew a random number from a normal (0 , 1%) distribution. Anybody who knows the real, non-random formula in advance is invited to contact me.
Quasi-randomness has been my experience. For a while, my occasional one-way flights (usually, a dog-leg flight on a different airline than my origin/return flights) were pretty likely to trigger the search. It's been a while now, but it still happens.
Push enough buttons -- one-way ticket, bought the day before, paid in cash, not a frequent flyer, soundex match against names on the No-fly list -- and you could get pretty close to 100%, and still have a "random" "excuse me."
Even if it were entirely deterministic, you'd want people to be told it's random. First, it leaves ambiguity about the formula for prospective baddies to worry about. Second, you don't want people going ballistic because some TSA type says, "excuse me, I don't like something about your ticket." Travel is stressful enough as it is without people raging about America having morphed into a Gulag.
> It's blatantly obvious that Apple's lawyers have
> come down on him like a ton of bricks, forcing
> him to be quiet until they get a patch out.
The least likely answer, actually. From the various info, this is not even an exploit of Apple hardware or software. What's to patch?
Any Apple lawyers parachuting from black helicopters (a rather calm, reasoned metaphor, wouldn't you say?) are probably telling him that claims about *Apple OSX* insecurity that are false would be defamation. While Americans are welcome to spout their opinions, false claims of fact can be found to be libel and he could be subject enforecement of damages.
If indeed that were Apple's response, I'd keep my fat trap shut before I found out that I'd stuck not just my foot, but most of my anatomy down it. Uncomfortable.
Companies didn't have to report stock option expenses on their financials until just recently.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board has been insisting on options disclosure for over a decade, IIRC. And many firms have been vociferous, including lobbying Congress, in trying to keep the grants out of the limelight. The rules for reporting were laid out a couple of years back and companies got to choose when/how they started reporting.
Given that this was ID'd by all parties as a Major Issue a decade ago, and grace periods were established, the "just recently" argument doesn't hold water. As an investor, I'm surprised that so many companies thought they'd get away with blatant misrepresentation having gotten such clear notice of investors' interest.
When companies report an option grant incorrectly, they are commiting fraud. As described earlier, there's no law against giving employees backdated options, or other bonus type compensation; the problem is claiming that the grant was valuable ONLY if the shares went up in price from the time they were given.
The investment industry -- intermediaries such as mutual funds and institutional investment firms who manage your retirement accounts whether 401(k) or defined pensions -- are setting up tools to detect this fraud, so they can avoid firms with management teams that attempt to hose the owners. No Surprise Dept: firms that are implicated in the backdating scandal are those with the most "aggressive" accounting and closed governance policies. That is, this is just one more way that some companies' managements increase their pay by unilaterally changing their contracts with the people who put up the money to start/run the company.
The United States enjoys dramatically better opportunities for entrepreneurs because of high quality financial reporting, openness and anti-fraud provisions. Allowing a few firms to exploit the trust established by others opens the door to an economic catastrophe because nobody will be able to get reasonable access to money to start new businesses. Tech firms would be the hardest hit.
Finally Mr. Warmenhoven ought to be censured by his board: the SEC was founded with the explicit mission of protecting the shareholders from misrepresentation by his ilk. (The nature of the scams has changed, but not the need to root them out.) Claiming that the SEC is on a witch hunt when it's doing its job is an admission that he doesn't understand the environment in which he is expected to excel.
> Did Humans Evolve? No, Says Americans
Not to cast too much doubt on Science's hypothesis that politicization and fundamentalism are to blame, but it's obvious that incompetence in core knowledge springs from other causes, too.