Diaspora is DOA. No one wants to run a social network server, few would understand the concept, and without Zynga, it's a waste for the rest of the non-tech oriented world. I get you guys idea and your concern for privacydecentralization, and consumer control of private data, but I'm with Schmitt when he said if you don't want the world looking at something online, maybe you shouldn't share it online (paraphrasing).
Maybe it's time for big (err...meager) Bill to make a comeback. Let's face it, Ballmer isn't and never will be an innovator nor a visionary. He's like what would happen to Jobs if Jobs lost his ability to understand the simpleton market and create products that can only stand up to media attention and not nerd potential. You know, Jobs is a salesman. Ballmer however is good at churning profit from stuff that already exist, and might be the reason Microsoft is always playing catch up. What is the most innovative product Microsoft has created since Gates left? The Office ribbon? Windows 7 "snap" features? Bing's pretty pictures on the search page? The last two innovative products Microsoft had to offer was the xbox 360 and the Surface. One product is so old people are buying them because they're sick of playing their Wiis and the other is an overpriced coffee table with consumer potential but targeted at businesses that would rather use a more portable, cheaper, non-windows touch tablet.
If their is anything Microsoft is holding back that's truly innovative, then Ballmer needs to step aside and let someone with an actual vision of the future execute it, because the last product launches where he's been at the helm have just been utter failures.
Does the test capsule simulate weightless travel? I would assume that if the capsule is subject to the 9.81 m/s2 acceleration, that reminds us Americans that we're fat, the experiment is just a small room with a bunch of smelly men boarding together. How is this experiment any different than a college dorm?
I haven't read this or the other articles about the experiment beyond the headlines, so my ignorance is legitimate. Any replies, please give a subjective response riddled with your offtopic emotions of an iPhone vs Android response typically found in the/. Comment waters.
Yeah, I figured it out minutes after that post. My mistake was assuming the Leet was a particular phrase instead of two independent words, one word that is quite common.
I'm not sure this "similtaneous release" of content in theaters with content online idea holds much water, simply because someone has tried and failed at this approach. Morgan Freeman invested quite a bit into the idea with well intentions and not too bad execution, but the idea flopped as he learned an important point: it's not the way I receive my media, it's how much I pay for it. The large distribution studios are afraid to change their business models due to fear that they will lose control of the profit flow on what has amounted to mostly crap and rehashed ideas executed worse than the originals.
Avatar set a dangerous precedent for 3d movies. Studio execs saw how profitable it was decided all new movies with a singe computer generated effect should be in 3D, but ignored the fact that Avatar was visually stimulating from beginning to end, incorporating 3D into the production cycle, and not some cheap after thought to line a few pockets. So now I get an overpriced film, stuck in useless 3D, mediocre or re-hashed story, with over paid actors who lost their muster years ago. No thanks, I'll just wait for the DVD and continue to pay my Netflix subscription.
What I don't understand is why studios simply don't control the piracy flow. It's not hard to seed a torrent, and it's too complicated for average computer users to download torrents, so why not control the releases of a pirated film/song via sharing networks. To engage the pirates/consumers as to why they didn't purchase the film vs downloading it, then try to meet or exceed those viewers wants, needs, and expectations at a price point the market agrees with. If you want to stop piracy then find out why people pirate in the first place, then find ways to get them to pay. Oh, wait that requires creativity. Hollywood can't have creativity mucking with the business model. Oh well, like Blockbuster, the Razr, and CDs, failure to change your business as the technology changes long enough and someone else will come along and take your lunch right from underneath you.
This is going to reverse my mod points, but it's worth it. Yes, you can call t-mobile and simply talk to the reps about ANYTHING. I once called and held a conversation about call centers for over an hour before I informed them that I was a customer. They're like Canadians or beings from friendlyville. T-Mobile's network is terrible, 2G, 3G, and 4G; however, long standing customers will tell you that they treat your shit like gold. I've been through AT&T before and after the Cingular purchase, Cingular, Sprint, and Alltel (before the VZW buyout), and all of their customer service, especially Sprint, can't touch T-Mobile.
When people ask me why I use T-Mobile, I simply dial 611 from my mobile, say customer service (sometimes 2x at the most) and within seconds I have a rep. My best friend once raced me against AT&T, and he finally got a rep after 5 minutes of hold time. It's just that simple.
True, But the replied to post made the assumption that developers can't set the license of their software, which isn't true. I don't think he/she was trying to be misleading, just uninformed; however, my comment about user compliance is just as wrong not out of being uninformed but rather being reply-happy. Apple is a distributer of the software and therefor must comply with the GPL and provide source, but the developer could also just distribute the source code with the ipa package, since it's just a glorified archive file. This would force Apple to comply with the GPL without further effort.
The app store allows you to upload your own software license when you submit your app. What you meant to say was Apple would rather remove VLC from the repository than allow the USERS to COMPLY with the license.
I live close to the area where the Drum Fish were found (Fort Smith) and these two events seem to be rare coincidences and nothing more. Weather definitely isn't on the list as the recent tornado, also relatively close by by car, occurred a half a week ago. Unless the tornado (which occurred no where near the Arkansas river) swept up some diseased Drum fish, threw them in the river 50 40 miles away, which spread the disease to the other fish, that the birds ate and died of food poisoning while in mid-flight, weather is not likely to be the cause. We're in a cold front now with no real warm air around, and we normally don't see snow until February, so lightning, hail and other precipitation can be ruled out too.
This past week has just been wonky for Arkansas. Our weather is on the fritz and can't decide to be warm or cold yet. We've got a crap load of dead fish along an already smelly river bank that other states dump in, and now the left over dead birds from Angry Birds are being dumped here too. What sucks about the whole thing is that media outlets, with nothing better to do but create conspiracy theories, will be broadcasting the most redneck, hick, uneducated person they can find to provide a take as to what they "think" is happening to represent the entire state and populous, instead of sticking to scientific conclusions.
What's funny about this line is that a couple of days ago, there was a discussion on/. About badly coded games being leaked on purpose to prevent piracy.
After spending the last 24 hours trying to locate missing boot logs, use system repair, and failing to actually complete a system restore, I'm in agreement. AVG is the new Symantic. It's heavy on the PC, constantly asking to perform full scans when it's schedule to scan in the early AM, and the constant nagging about the free version being for non-commercial use just because I have the enterprise version of W7 is enough; it's going in the trash. I was so damn busy today that I didn't get to read up on the cause of my wife's worries and my headachs for something I suspected the entire time. As many geeks have recommended AVG in the past, why didn't this story make the front page of Google news?
News for nerds...cmdrtaco got that one right for sure.
Hack-a-day is a good one for me. They aggregate projects scattered all over the net, often times with schematics, demonstration videos, and parts references. While not all projects are DIY--literally, what some of these techs come up with is truly stunning. Favorite topic: Arduino boards.
Re:file sharing is the hydra of greek legend
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LimeWire Lives Again
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Not necessarily. The middle man will just change rolls. For instance, instead of someone fronting the artist for food money to keep them alive, paying for studio time, and printing CDs, the artist takes on most of the cost (food, studio,etc.) and the middle man distributes to the end users. Apple is a great example of a very profitable middle man. They pay for server space, bandwidth, and processing fees to charge the consumer (and tying a music player doesn't hurt). The current middle man is just trying to protect the business model of NOT paying the artist but still receiving the money. A case of this is the distributors selling CDs wholesale for $5-6 each and giving the artist $0.2-0.10 a piece and claiming the contribution margin was so low they couldn't get anything even though the royalty per disc was negotiated at signing in binary form in the small print.
Sure an artist can play both roles, as they could by printing their own CDs a decade ago, but the music changes to profit margins and viable business models instead of music people enjoy. But an artist shouldn't focus on what strategic model they should implement for success; leave that to someone else who's core competency is business and you focus on making music you feel good about. But it's naive to think the middle man is going any where. People can't be experts in everything.
Yes and no. The wii is seen as an hid device for the most part, but there are parts of it that don't work properly. For instance, the speaker on the wiimote can play 11Khz pcm audio when used by the wii, but can only play a single frequency at a time when used in conjunction with any other device. The power button also doesn't register any signals over Bluetooth either. So it's not just a simple hid profile, but just part of standards and part proprietary.
The ps3 controllers on the other hand do require drivers to work properly. Drivers were made by a Chinese company and Sony didn't lose their cool and threaten legal action for developing and/or using the controller with the pc. This would be the relevant comparison you were looking for.
Ditto. For a long time an AT&T flash ad on any system I had would drive up the CPU heat, and often you'd see the same juice sucking ads on the same page running in different threads. The ironic part was the ads were usually advertising the iPhone.
EIC doesn't help the middle class as most of them make too much to qualify and when they do, they don't get much out of it. EIC is actually the best way to help the lower class, who tend to be less educated and work for minimum wage.
Because they are less educated, they are usually the last to be hired and the first to be fired when budget cuts are necessary. Most minimum wage jobs go to part-time teenagers, the elderly/retired, and spouses who don't have to work but do so to get out of the house. Non of these labor participants actually need the money but since they are usually technologically advance (teenagers), hire educated (soccer moms/dads), and/or more experienced (elderly), they're more attractive than the worker that isn't educated and/or experienced. So when minimum wage is raised, the intended target group doesn't benefit much, but in fact suffers because inflation. Raising the minimum wage seems like a great social idea and great political taking point but has little affect to the group that needs it the most. However, this group tends to have children and EIC helps them make up lousy wages and raise their standard of living.
Unfortunately, this group is preyed upon by rapid tax refund loan providers that give loans where interest rates and fees are astronomical, often in the thousands of percents. Because the group is uneducated and desperate for money, they take the fee, lose $300-$1000 in credits, and take the lump sum cash. Instead of saving the money to supplement their incomes throughout the year, they tend to spend it all in a matter of days. Some quit their jobs and use the money to live off of for a few months and just restart the poverty cycle once all the cash is depleted.
I just hope this trend doesn't continue. Mobile phones are putting Moore's law back into relevance and if Apple becomes the dominant player, then there's going to be a huge shift in the way applications are priced to compensate for refunds (which are all but impossible to get from Apple) and the large chunk that the distributor is skimming off the top. Android makes this a little easier depending on carrier (AT&T being an outlier), but Google is still taking 30% off the top too. The only advantage to Google vs Apple right now is the way Google Checkout pays out so frequently you don't have to worry too much about cash flows. Unlike Apple, you don't have to accumulate $150 in one month and wait another month for the check. You do with the advertising but that's not anything new to those familiar with digital advertising.
My real anticipation is when AMD and nVidia get into the mobile race with GPUs that are smaller, use less electricity, and can produce stunning graphics like we see today. While that dream is a long ways off, one can hope for the day I can carry my phone around, go home and plop it on a base station to charge and get access to more input devices, larger screens, printers, and play a few high quality games while I'm there. I can already do most of those things with my Galaxy S, but HDMI out would be the killer feature for a mobile all in one (yes, I'm aware of the other Android phones with HDMI out but I have T-Mobile). Ahh....one can dream.
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Diaspora is DOA. No one wants to run a social network server, few would understand the concept, and without Zynga, it's a waste for the rest of the non-tech oriented world. I get you guys idea and your concern for privacydecentralization, and consumer control of private data, but I'm with Schmitt when he said if you don't want the world looking at something online, maybe you shouldn't share it online (paraphrasing).
Maybe it's time for big (err...meager) Bill to make a comeback. Let's face it, Ballmer isn't and never will be an innovator nor a visionary. He's like what would happen to Jobs if Jobs lost his ability to understand the simpleton market and create products that can only stand up to media attention and not nerd potential. You know, Jobs is a salesman. Ballmer however is good at churning profit from stuff that already exist, and might be the reason Microsoft is always playing catch up. What is the most innovative product Microsoft has created since Gates left? The Office ribbon? Windows 7 "snap" features? Bing's pretty pictures on the search page? The last two innovative products Microsoft had to offer was the xbox 360 and the Surface. One product is so old people are buying them because they're sick of playing their Wiis and the other is an overpriced coffee table with consumer potential but targeted at businesses that would rather use a more portable, cheaper, non-windows touch tablet.
If their is anything Microsoft is holding back that's truly innovative, then Ballmer needs to step aside and let someone with an actual vision of the future execute it, because the last product launches where he's been at the helm have just been utter failures.
Does the test capsule simulate weightless travel? I would assume that if the capsule is subject to the 9.81 m/s2 acceleration, that reminds us Americans that we're fat, the experiment is just a small room with a bunch of smelly men boarding together. How is this experiment any different than a college dorm?
I haven't read this or the other articles about the experiment beyond the headlines, so my ignorance is legitimate. Any replies, please give a subjective response riddled with your offtopic emotions of an iPhone vs Android response typically found in the /. Comment waters.
Yeah, I figured it out minutes after that post. My mistake was assuming the Leet was a particular phrase instead of two independent words, one word that is quite common.
Why does the line "three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian-Colombian" sound like a bad and racist "walk in a bar" joke?
Never mind, I figured it out. Elite Textor.
Google brought up nothing for 1337 73xx70r, please translate for those of us who don't speak text-bonics.
I'm not sure this "similtaneous release" of content in theaters with content online idea holds much water, simply because someone has tried and failed at this approach. Morgan Freeman invested quite a bit into the idea with well intentions and not too bad execution, but the idea flopped as he learned an important point: it's not the way I receive my media, it's how much I pay for it. The large distribution studios are afraid to change their business models due to fear that they will lose control of the profit flow on what has amounted to mostly crap and rehashed ideas executed worse than the originals.
Avatar set a dangerous precedent for 3d movies. Studio execs saw how profitable it was decided all new movies with a singe computer generated effect should be in 3D, but ignored the fact that Avatar was visually stimulating from beginning to end, incorporating 3D into the production cycle, and not some cheap after thought to line a few pockets. So now I get an overpriced film, stuck in useless 3D, mediocre or re-hashed story, with over paid actors who lost their muster years ago. No thanks, I'll just wait for the DVD and continue to pay my Netflix subscription.
What I don't understand is why studios simply don't control the piracy flow. It's not hard to seed a torrent, and it's too complicated for average computer users to download torrents, so why not control the releases of a pirated film/song via sharing networks. To engage the pirates/consumers as to why they didn't purchase the film vs downloading it, then try to meet or exceed those viewers wants, needs, and expectations at a price point the market agrees with. If you want to stop piracy then find out why people pirate in the first place, then find ways to get them to pay. Oh, wait that requires creativity. Hollywood can't have creativity mucking with the business model. Oh well, like Blockbuster, the Razr, and CDs, failure to change your business as the technology changes long enough and someone else will come along and take your lunch right from underneath you.
Now we now why Jobs didn't want anymore fart apps. It's one thing to hear farts, it's another to have to actually smell them.
This is going to reverse my mod points, but it's worth it. Yes, you can call t-mobile and simply talk to the reps about ANYTHING. I once called and held a conversation about call centers for over an hour before I informed them that I was a customer. They're like Canadians or beings from friendlyville. T-Mobile's network is terrible, 2G, 3G, and 4G; however, long standing customers will tell you that they treat your shit like gold. I've been through AT&T before and after the Cingular purchase, Cingular, Sprint, and Alltel (before the VZW buyout), and all of their customer service, especially Sprint, can't touch T-Mobile.
When people ask me why I use T-Mobile, I simply dial 611 from my mobile, say customer service (sometimes 2x at the most) and within seconds I have a rep. My best friend once raced me against AT&T, and he finally got a rep after 5 minutes of hold time. It's just that simple.
True, But the replied to post made the assumption that developers can't set the license of their software, which isn't true. I don't think he/she was trying to be misleading, just uninformed; however, my comment about user compliance is just as wrong not out of being uninformed but rather being reply-happy. Apple is a distributer of the software and therefor must comply with the GPL and provide source, but the developer could also just distribute the source code with the ipa package, since it's just a glorified archive file. This would force Apple to comply with the GPL without further effort.
Thanks for clarifying though.
The app store allows you to upload your own software license when you submit your app. What you meant to say was Apple would rather remove VLC from the repository than allow the USERS to COMPLY with the license.
Don't forget: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock sucker, mother fucker, tits.
I live close to the area where the Drum Fish were found (Fort Smith) and these two events seem to be rare coincidences and nothing more. Weather definitely isn't on the list as the recent tornado, also relatively close by by car, occurred a half a week ago. Unless the tornado (which occurred no where near the Arkansas river) swept up some diseased Drum fish, threw them in the river 50 40 miles away, which spread the disease to the other fish, that the birds ate and died of food poisoning while in mid-flight, weather is not likely to be the cause. We're in a cold front now with no real warm air around, and we normally don't see snow until February, so lightning, hail and other precipitation can be ruled out too.
This past week has just been wonky for Arkansas. Our weather is on the fritz and can't decide to be warm or cold yet. We've got a crap load of dead fish along an already smelly river bank that other states dump in, and now the left over dead birds from Angry Birds are being dumped here too. What sucks about the whole thing is that media outlets, with nothing better to do but create conspiracy theories, will be broadcasting the most redneck, hick, uneducated person they can find to provide a take as to what they "think" is happening to represent the entire state and populous, instead of sticking to scientific conclusions.
You mean "the time a human programed a computer error that could have wiped out the whole of human existence."
What's funny about this line is that a couple of days ago, there was a discussion on /. About badly coded games being leaked on purpose to prevent piracy.
After spending the last 24 hours trying to locate missing boot logs, use system repair, and failing to actually complete a system restore, I'm in agreement. AVG is the new Symantic. It's heavy on the PC, constantly asking to perform full scans when it's schedule to scan in the early AM, and the constant nagging about the free version being for non-commercial use just because I have the enterprise version of W7 is enough; it's going in the trash. I was so damn busy today that I didn't get to read up on the cause of my wife's worries and my headachs for something I suspected the entire time. As many geeks have recommended AVG in the past, why didn't this story make the front page of Google news?
News for nerds...cmdrtaco got that one right for sure.
No, networks are blocking Google TVs from their websites, not their actual networks. That would be extremely difficult to do anyway.
Hack-a-day is a good one for me. They aggregate projects scattered all over the net, often times with schematics, demonstration videos, and parts references. While not all projects are DIY--literally, what some of these techs come up with is truly stunning. Favorite topic: Arduino boards.
Not necessarily. The middle man will just change rolls. For instance, instead of someone fronting the artist for food money to keep them alive, paying for studio time, and printing CDs, the artist takes on most of the cost (food, studio,etc.) and the middle man distributes to the end users. Apple is a great example of a very profitable middle man. They pay for server space, bandwidth, and processing fees to charge the consumer (and tying a music player doesn't hurt). The current middle man is just trying to protect the business model of NOT paying the artist but still receiving the money. A case of this is the distributors selling CDs wholesale for $5-6 each and giving the artist $0.2-0.10 a piece and claiming the contribution margin was so low they couldn't get anything even though the royalty per disc was negotiated at signing in binary form in the small print.
Sure an artist can play both roles, as they could by printing their own CDs a decade ago, but the music changes to profit margins and viable business models instead of music people enjoy. But an artist shouldn't focus on what strategic model they should implement for success; leave that to someone else who's core competency is business and you focus on making music you feel good about. But it's naive to think the middle man is going any where. People can't be experts in everything.
Yes and no. The wii is seen as an hid device for the most part, but there are parts of it that don't work properly. For instance, the speaker on the wiimote can play 11Khz pcm audio when used by the wii, but can only play a single frequency at a time when used in conjunction with any other device. The power button also doesn't register any signals over Bluetooth either. So it's not just a simple hid profile, but just part of standards and part proprietary.
The ps3 controllers on the other hand do require drivers to work properly. Drivers were made by a Chinese company and Sony didn't lose their cool and threaten legal action for developing and/or using the controller with the pc. This would be the relevant comparison you were looking for.
Ditto. For a long time an AT&T flash ad on any system I had would drive up the CPU heat, and often you'd see the same juice sucking ads on the same page running in different threads. The ironic part was the ads were usually advertising the iPhone.
Nope. Android doesn't run a VM nor can you take Java code and run it natively on Android without recompilation.
EIC doesn't help the middle class as most of them make too much to qualify and when they do, they don't get much out of it. EIC is actually the best way to help the lower class, who tend to be less educated and work for minimum wage.
Because they are less educated, they are usually the last to be hired and the first to be fired when budget cuts are necessary. Most minimum wage jobs go to part-time teenagers, the elderly/retired, and spouses who don't have to work but do so to get out of the house. Non of these labor participants actually need the money but since they are usually technologically advance (teenagers), hire educated (soccer moms/dads), and/or more experienced (elderly), they're more attractive than the worker that isn't educated and/or experienced. So when minimum wage is raised, the intended target group doesn't benefit much, but in fact suffers because inflation. Raising the minimum wage seems like a great social idea and great political taking point but has little affect to the group that needs it the most. However, this group tends to have children and EIC helps them make up lousy wages and raise their standard of living.
Unfortunately, this group is preyed upon by rapid tax refund loan providers that give loans where interest rates and fees are astronomical, often in the thousands of percents. Because the group is uneducated and desperate for money, they take the fee, lose $300-$1000 in credits, and take the lump sum cash. Instead of saving the money to supplement their incomes throughout the year, they tend to spend it all in a matter of days. Some quit their jobs and use the money to live off of for a few months and just restart the poverty cycle once all the cash is depleted.
I just hope this trend doesn't continue. Mobile phones are putting Moore's law back into relevance and if Apple becomes the dominant player, then there's going to be a huge shift in the way applications are priced to compensate for refunds (which are all but impossible to get from Apple) and the large chunk that the distributor is skimming off the top. Android makes this a little easier depending on carrier (AT&T being an outlier), but Google is still taking 30% off the top too. The only advantage to Google vs Apple right now is the way Google Checkout pays out so frequently you don't have to worry too much about cash flows. Unlike Apple, you don't have to accumulate $150 in one month and wait another month for the check. You do with the advertising but that's not anything new to those familiar with digital advertising.
My real anticipation is when AMD and nVidia get into the mobile race with GPUs that are smaller, use less electricity, and can produce stunning graphics like we see today. While that dream is a long ways off, one can hope for the day I can carry my phone around, go home and plop it on a base station to charge and get access to more input devices, larger screens, printers, and play a few high quality games while I'm there. I can already do most of those things with my Galaxy S, but HDMI out would be the killer feature for a mobile all in one (yes, I'm aware of the other Android phones with HDMI out but I have T-Mobile). Ahh....one can dream.