I have a data projector that dishes up HDTV on a 10ft screen. I run it from my PS3 for fastest BluRay load speeds.
Apart from the comfort, no crowds, no mobile phones, I can pause... I can drink a beer while I'm watching. I can fall asleep if it's late at night. My partner and I can canoodle without offending anyone else.
The theatres want to charge me AU$15+ per person for a worse experience, on a lower quality screen, with poorer sound gear.
Admittedly, I don't get to watch the latest releases as I don't stream or download - but who cares if I'm 3 months behind the theatres? They are pushing too hard to make squillions of dollars in week 1 anyway. I enjoyed movies like Potter and Avatar wayyy better a few months after the rest of the crowd, and as many here have said in this thread, its not like the plot will be a big surprise.
Variations in the use of the letter 'u' in certain words is largely irrelevant to people's understanding of the written word. Even misspellings of there, their and they're (or 'you're' and 'your') are not an issue. The human mind can easily make sense of the sentence.
The bigger problem is the differences in short date formats. dd/mm/yyyy vs mm/dd/yyyy can easily generate significant errors in calculation. Anyone who's integrated more than one Microsoft product together in both countries will have encountered the challenge.
Personally, I think our (AU) reverse polish date notation is ridiculous, but at least its not inside out notation (US).
Can we just settle on yyyy/mm/dd and be done with it? Please?
Was pleased to see his contribution to The Adjustment Bureau. Could have been a better movie - and I expect that some of the concepts would have been better explored in a book.
At first, I was like 'damn patent laws', but then I was like 'what if Apple did steal the technology?'.
This ruling implies that Apple stole the technology from Motorola, and the lawsuit is Motorola's attempt to force Apple to relent.
Congratulations. I've passed patent trolling 101.
What concerns me most is that there are enough of these rulings being made at the moment to suggest that all the large technology houses are simply stealing each other's technology on the basis of saying 'prove that I stole it'. Its kind of like the schoolyard bully saying 'make me'. It occurs to me that these injunctions are too much about cash changing hands and not enough about providing a disincentive to the company that stole the technology.
Perhaps some more novel punishments need to be dished out by the judges. For example: indict all current and past company directors on criminal charges, and proceed with extradition orders. That might put the frighteners into some of them.
As one of the first people to start a statewide petition to support an R18+ rating for games, I can say that its taken a long time to reach this point, and its not over yet. This is a really encouraging step in the right direction.
What is particularly interesting about it is that it highlights the disparaity between the speed that technology moves, and the speed that our lawmakers move.
I believe we may be an entire generation away from a government of technology-savvy lawmakers.
I agree with your sentiment./. seems to have become a large virtual ping pong table across which flamewars are held on a number of topics.
So, allow me to throw in what I hope will be a more level comment.
In form of full disclosure, I am an Android user. A HTC Desire to be precise (the old one, not the HD). I have never owned an iPhone or an iPod, but my partner owns an iPad, and my kids have iPhones, so I am exposed regularly to both devices.
My HTC battery goes flat daily. And that's with limited use and very few calls (maybe 30 minutes of calltime per day). I've gone to the extent of having a 'charging shelf' at home where all devices are plugged in for recharging. That's where I can usually find my phone if its not in my pocket.
My partner's iPad on the other hand has awesome battery life. She can get something like 20 hours of use between chargings.
My comment? I think Apple may have made a rod for their own back. By setting very high standards for themselves (I believe MacBooks have pretty good battery life too), they have created a dynamic where a phone that performs like other smart phones is unacceptable.
Having read TFA, and a couple of the related articles, it sounds like the iPhone 4S is just performing like other smart phones. My pre-smartphone was purchased on the criteria of needing insanely good battery life. It was a Nokia. My current phone was not purchased on that basis. Buyer beware.
Well, thanks for that. Are you a lawyer? Do the owners of your healthcare IT company include you in their meetings with their company lawyers? Do you get to read the legal advice handed to them?
Your credibility is zip. I'd prefer to hear what the owner of your healthcare IT company says.
Someone else bailed me up about this too. I am notorious for mixing my metaphors, so its probably my bad. Having said that, I don't think anyone would be unclear about my intent.
You don't know much about IP laws in China, do you?
Sorry.. that sounds inflammatory. Let me try again.
As soon as one copy of our software exists legally in China, they can copy it ad-nauseum.
As long as every Chinese instance of our software is illegal, we have a legal option.
It also makes it easier for our staff - eg 'Uh.. you're in China. Sorry, we don't sell our software in China'. Therefore... why would anyone in China want our software? Therefore... piracy deterrant. Doesn't seem so stupid.
We make medical records software. If someone dies at the hands of the medical professional, we're next in the firing line regardless of whether our software was at fault.
The legal costs of selling software overseas is often less about the 'level of risk' involved in the software, and more about the litigious nature of the country we're selling into. The price on PI insurance is not something we set or control. The insurance companies do that. They are the ones who have made the US an untenable market for us.
BTW: We currently sell into 14 countries (and, yes, the UK is one of them).
Well, that pretty well wraps it up for anyone trying to prove anything supernatural or extra-terrestrial on earth. Who would ever believe any video evidence now?
I ran an OCZ 60GB SSD in my desktop until I ditched it for a laptop. It fully KICKS ASS. I did Windows XP and Windows 7 startup comparisons (seemed to be the easiest 'controlled' test). The SSD on a clean/fresh/fully patched install on WinXpSP3 or Win7 (not SP1 at the time) was four times faster than a conventional drive. And that is including the POST.
To be more specific, my test was 'power on to an open Windows Explorer displaying a network drive directory'.
On a traditional drive (200Gb Seagate Barracuda), Win 7 did it in roughly 60 seconds - whereas the SSD did it consistently in under 15.
Over a 12 month period, the SSD performed flawlessly.
The only reason I have discontinued using it is the switch to a lappie, and the need for more drivespace in a single drive. I'll upgrade to a 500Gb SSD as soon as the price is a bit more tolerable.
In Aus, security guards know little more than how to punch someone's head in - though a few more enlightened ones have been educated to use a mobile phone to call for help - because legally, they can't do anything else.
Having said all that, it occurs to me that the man in TFA breached a civil contract by taking the photos - and could/should be pursued via the civil courts.
Taking his phone from him is robbery. A criminal act.
This.
There is a clear and present danger to the American Military's most powerful weapon system - and they are continuing to use it. Who cares about the OS that was attacked? Some moron/loser/hacker/spy in the American Military found a way to infect the drone control systems with an 'exploratory virus'. Now that they know they can do it (and every military/espionage agency in the world knows too), the floodgates will open. Stuxnet will be child's play.
Its just a matter of time until some teenager on/b/ drops some serious weaponry onto the Scientology HQ on American soil. No... wait... that would be a good thing.
Carry on...
I suspect that a more likely progression will be 'obsolescence by stealth'. At first, the 'robots' (really just PCs in the white collar field) will replace the most mundane legal activities (eg facilitating the completion of forms). We're already seeing this in the form of a spate of on-line application forms. Eventually, some of the more complex tasks will be replaced (eg settlement of a property exchange). These kinds of tasks will have a 'human backup' in case of a problem outside the parameters of the program. The effect will be to reduce 'lawyer involvement' in trivial matters. This may result in a reduction of the total number of lawyers (jokes about buses and cliffs abound), but it is more likely to drive the less competent lawyers into competition in the more complex fields of law. We'll see a spate of incompetent, low price lawyers screw up some important cases before the legal profession acts to eliminate them.
At that point, a small percentage of our lawyers will be gone. Lets guesstimate that will be 5% of them. Now, we simply rinse and repeat. Gradually over time (perhaps decades), some of the more complex tasks will be replaced - eventually leading to 50% replacement, 75%? Who knows?
The fascinating part of the overall story is that we are repeating this same thing in every field of human endeavour. Within decades, it will be reasonable to assume that we will have pushed 75% of the population into welfare. Personally, I'm looking forward to being dead and buried by then.
Australia has some interesting Trade Practices legislation that says it is illegal to bundle products together unless it is 'impossible to unbundle them'. This effectively means that Dell's policy of selling every workstation with a copy of Windows is illegal - unless it is impossible for Dell to sell a PC without Windows 7 - which (while untested in a court) is what Dell is saying.
The net effect is that you cannot buy a Dell PC without Windows. If you could, this would be Dell's admission that they were breaching Australian Trade Practices. Not sure who is more evil in this scenario, Aus govt or Dell... shall leave it to you to decide.
I don't see a big issue here. Most workstations are bought with an OS pre-installed simply because it is legislated. Corporations wipe them and re-install their own 'flavour' of the OS - even if it is the same version. And many private buyers do too. We install our own flavour of the OS regardless of what came on the PC. We buy workstations with 'Home' editions and install 'Pro' editions (legitimately) We will not be buying hardware that doesn't come with the PKI Key declared - and I doubt that any of the serious vendors (eg Dell, IBM, Toshiba, etc) would ship equipment without the PKI Key clearly identified on a sticky label on the box.
This is a healthy security improvement - primarily because anyone who doesn't know a) how to ask for the key; or b) where to find it - probably shouldn't be replacing the OS anyway.
Not meaning to blow sunshine up the asses of Linux users, but they are the least likely folks to be negatively impacted by this change.
Fascinating to see how quickly someone attacked it. And with such a base dialog.
Gotta wonder what drives people to such infantile behaviour. Child abuse maybe? I couldn't imagine engaging with this person in real life without thinking 'Sheesh. This guy has some seriously faulty wiring'.
Here's hoping that/. has some IP tracking and can filter it out fairly quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
+1
/rant
I have a data projector that dishes up HDTV on a 10ft screen. I run it from my PS3 for fastest BluRay load speeds.
Apart from the comfort, no crowds, no mobile phones, I can pause... I can drink a beer while I'm watching. I can fall asleep if it's late at night. My partner and I can canoodle without offending anyone else.
The theatres want to charge me AU$15+ per person for a worse experience, on a lower quality screen, with poorer sound gear.
Admittedly, I don't get to watch the latest releases as I don't stream or download - but who cares if I'm 3 months behind the theatres? They are pushing too hard to make squillions of dollars in week 1 anyway. I enjoyed movies like Potter and Avatar wayyy better a few months after the rest of the crowd, and as many here have said in this thread, its not like the plot will be a big surprise.
Variations in the use of the letter 'u' in certain words is largely irrelevant to people's understanding of the written word. Even misspellings of there, their and they're (or 'you're' and 'your') are not an issue. The human mind can easily make sense of the sentence.
The bigger problem is the differences in short date formats. dd/mm/yyyy vs mm/dd/yyyy can easily generate significant errors in calculation. Anyone who's integrated more than one Microsoft product together in both countries will have encountered the challenge.
Personally, I think our (AU) reverse polish date notation is ridiculous, but at least its not inside out notation (US).
Can we just settle on yyyy/mm/dd and be done with it? Please?
Was pleased to see his contribution to The Adjustment Bureau. Could have been a better movie - and I expect that some of the concepts would have been better explored in a book.
At first, I was like 'damn patent laws', but then I was like 'what if Apple did steal the technology?'.
This ruling implies that Apple stole the technology from Motorola, and the lawsuit is Motorola's attempt to force Apple to relent.
Congratulations. I've passed patent trolling 101.
What concerns me most is that there are enough of these rulings being made at the moment to suggest that all the large technology houses are simply stealing each other's technology on the basis of saying 'prove that I stole it'. Its kind of like the schoolyard bully saying 'make me'. It occurs to me that these injunctions are too much about cash changing hands and not enough about providing a disincentive to the company that stole the technology.
Perhaps some more novel punishments need to be dished out by the judges. For example: indict all current and past company directors on criminal charges, and proceed with extradition orders. That might put the frighteners into some of them.
As one of the first people to start a statewide petition to support an R18+ rating for games, I can say that its taken a long time to reach this point, and its not over yet. This is a really encouraging step in the right direction.
What is particularly interesting about it is that it highlights the disparaity between the speed that technology moves, and the speed that our lawmakers move.
I believe we may be an entire generation away from a government of technology-savvy lawmakers.
I agree with your sentiment. /. seems to have become a large virtual ping pong table across which flamewars are held on a number of topics.
So, allow me to throw in what I hope will be a more level comment.
In form of full disclosure, I am an Android user. A HTC Desire to be precise (the old one, not the HD). I have never owned an iPhone or an iPod, but my partner owns an iPad, and my kids have iPhones, so I am exposed regularly to both devices.
My HTC battery goes flat daily. And that's with limited use and very few calls (maybe 30 minutes of calltime per day). I've gone to the extent of having a 'charging shelf' at home where all devices are plugged in for recharging. That's where I can usually find my phone if its not in my pocket.
My partner's iPad on the other hand has awesome battery life. She can get something like 20 hours of use between chargings.
My comment? I think Apple may have made a rod for their own back. By setting very high standards for themselves (I believe MacBooks have pretty good battery life too), they have created a dynamic where a phone that performs like other smart phones is unacceptable.
Having read TFA, and a couple of the related articles, it sounds like the iPhone 4S is just performing like other smart phones. My pre-smartphone was purchased on the criteria of needing insanely good battery life. It was a Nokia. My current phone was not purchased on that basis. Buyer beware.
After the previous thread listed on the homepage, it is a courageous Slashdot that uses the term 'app store' for anything not owned by Apple.
Well, thanks for that. Are you a lawyer? Do the owners of your healthcare IT company include you in their meetings with their company lawyers? Do you get to read the legal advice handed to them?
Your credibility is zip. I'd prefer to hear what the owner of your healthcare IT company says.
I own mine.
Someone else bailed me up about this too. I am notorious for mixing my metaphors, so its probably my bad. Having said that, I don't think anyone would be unclear about my intent.
You don't know much about IP laws in China, do you?
Sorry.. that sounds inflammatory. Let me try again.
As soon as one copy of our software exists legally in China, they can copy it ad-nauseum.
As long as every Chinese instance of our software is illegal, we have a legal option.
It also makes it easier for our staff - eg 'Uh.. you're in China. Sorry, we don't sell our software in China'. Therefore... why would anyone in China want our software? Therefore... piracy deterrant. Doesn't seem so stupid.
Hehehe... no. PI is not just about bodily injury.
We make medical records software. If someone dies at the hands of the medical professional, we're next in the firing line regardless of whether our software was at fault.
The legal costs of selling software overseas is often less about the 'level of risk' involved in the software, and more about the litigious nature of the country we're selling into. The price on PI insurance is not something we set or control. The insurance companies do that. They are the ones who have made the US an untenable market for us.
BTW: We currently sell into 14 countries (and, yes, the UK is one of them).
Sorry. Poor English. Either term is adequate.
Our software company has already black-banned China. We flatly refuse to license any product in China due to IP concerns.
/we know this wont stop them from copying it. It is a deterrant.
It is one of two countries that we have black-banned for legal reasons.
The other is the US. We're not a big software house, and we can't afford the PI insurance to sell products in America.
Well, that pretty well wraps it up for anyone trying to prove anything supernatural or extra-terrestrial on earth. Who would ever believe any video evidence now?
I ran an OCZ 60GB SSD in my desktop until I ditched it for a laptop. It fully KICKS ASS. I did Windows XP and Windows 7 startup comparisons (seemed to be the easiest 'controlled' test). The SSD on a clean/fresh/fully patched install on WinXpSP3 or Win7 (not SP1 at the time) was four times faster than a conventional drive. And that is including the POST.
To be more specific, my test was 'power on to an open Windows Explorer displaying a network drive directory'.
On a traditional drive (200Gb Seagate Barracuda), Win 7 did it in roughly 60 seconds - whereas the SSD did it consistently in under 15.
Over a 12 month period, the SSD performed flawlessly.
The only reason I have discontinued using it is the switch to a lappie, and the need for more drivespace in a single drive. I'll upgrade to a 500Gb SSD as soon as the price is a bit more tolerable.
Yes. Shouldn't the explanation have come out before the findings?
In Aus, security guards know little more than how to punch someone's head in - though a few more enlightened ones have been educated to use a mobile phone to call for help - because legally, they can't do anything else.
/not a lawyer
Having said all that, it occurs to me that the man in TFA breached a civil contract by taking the photos - and could/should be pursued via the civil courts.
Taking his phone from him is robbery. A criminal act.
This. There is a clear and present danger to the American Military's most powerful weapon system - and they are continuing to use it. Who cares about the OS that was attacked? Some moron/loser/hacker/spy in the American Military found a way to infect the drone control systems with an 'exploratory virus'. Now that they know they can do it (and every military/espionage agency in the world knows too), the floodgates will open. Stuxnet will be child's play. Its just a matter of time until some teenager on /b/ drops some serious weaponry onto the Scientology HQ on American soil. No... wait... that would be a good thing.
Carry on...
I suspect that a more likely progression will be 'obsolescence by stealth'. At first, the 'robots' (really just PCs in the white collar field) will replace the most mundane legal activities (eg facilitating the completion of forms). We're already seeing this in the form of a spate of on-line application forms. Eventually, some of the more complex tasks will be replaced (eg settlement of a property exchange). These kinds of tasks will have a 'human backup' in case of a problem outside the parameters of the program. The effect will be to reduce 'lawyer involvement' in trivial matters. This may result in a reduction of the total number of lawyers (jokes about buses and cliffs abound), but it is more likely to drive the less competent lawyers into competition in the more complex fields of law. We'll see a spate of incompetent, low price lawyers screw up some important cases before the legal profession acts to eliminate them.
At that point, a small percentage of our lawyers will be gone. Lets guesstimate that will be 5% of them. Now, we simply rinse and repeat. Gradually over time (perhaps decades), some of the more complex tasks will be replaced - eventually leading to 50% replacement, 75%? Who knows?
The fascinating part of the overall story is that we are repeating this same thing in every field of human endeavour. Within decades, it will be reasonable to assume that we will have pushed 75% of the population into welfare. Personally, I'm looking forward to being dead and buried by then.
Null post to remove accidental mod point
Australia has some interesting Trade Practices legislation that says it is illegal to bundle products together unless it is 'impossible to unbundle them'. This effectively means that Dell's policy of selling every workstation with a copy of Windows is illegal - unless it is impossible for Dell to sell a PC without Windows 7 - which (while untested in a court) is what Dell is saying.
The net effect is that you cannot buy a Dell PC without Windows. If you could, this would be Dell's admission that they were breaching Australian Trade Practices. Not sure who is more evil in this scenario, Aus govt or Dell... shall leave it to you to decide.
Or... payback's a bitch.
I don't see a big issue here. Most workstations are bought with an OS pre-installed simply because it is legislated. Corporations wipe them and re-install their own 'flavour' of the OS - even if it is the same version. And many private buyers do too. We install our own flavour of the OS regardless of what came on the PC. We buy workstations with 'Home' editions and install 'Pro' editions (legitimately) We will not be buying hardware that doesn't come with the PKI Key declared - and I doubt that any of the serious vendors (eg Dell, IBM, Toshiba, etc) would ship equipment without the PKI Key clearly identified on a sticky label on the box.
This is a healthy security improvement - primarily because anyone who doesn't know a) how to ask for the key; or b) where to find it - probably shouldn't be replacing the OS anyway.
Not meaning to blow sunshine up the asses of Linux users, but they are the least likely folks to be negatively impacted by this change.
Fascinating to see how quickly someone attacked it. And with such a base dialog.
/. has some IP tracking and can filter it out fairly quickly.
Gotta wonder what drives people to such infantile behaviour. Child abuse maybe? I couldn't imagine engaging with this person in real life without thinking 'Sheesh. This guy has some seriously faulty wiring'.
Here's hoping that
One step closer to understanding some of the recent legislative changes...