Because none of this is true. The king of Thailand has very significant political influence - none of the military coups during his reign happened without his approval. He comes out against those defamation laws occasionally because it looks better when he does. If he really didn't want these laws to exist they wouldn't be there, though.
Yes, most Thais do love the king, but that's partly because the actual role of the king can't be discussed.
What exactly does a publisher do when a book is sold in electronic format? If what they do is still valuable, then someone will pay them for doing that. If not, what's the point of publishers?
Well similar articles appear in US media whenever some kid has early success in science or technology. As evidenced by the fact that this piece of news has even made it to Fox.
I would agree in general that Germany doesn't suffer quite as much from anti-intellectualism as the US, but it's not a black and white scenario, either.
It's possible that he has dual citizenship, but that seems unlikely given that he only arrived in Germany 4 years ago and didn't speak any German at the time. 4 years would be a bit short for him to receive citizenship otherwise.
None of the German newspaper articles I found refer to him as German, so I'm inclined to think it's simply an error in the article.
I don't see how that could work. Usually patents are submitted on the basis of source code which you've already written, but regardless: it's way easier for a programmer to write software than to write a legal document. I don't think that would add a significant hurdle for patent submissions.
What role would the example code have? If the patent scope is limited to the function of that code, that's basically reducing the patent to copyright. Someone could extract the general algorithm and write their own version. If the patent claims list still determines the scope of the patent - and the code is just one possible implementation - then adding that code makes no difference, you'd be in the same position as today.
They have a software system and servers to display the content, they have a well-connected marketing department which successfully sells advertising, they have a development department which is able to add features and keep users interested. Those are assets which are difficult to create, so they have value.
Their business model is similar to a TV station, showing content for free and getting paid for ads. (In addition Facebook has users who create the content, so they are getting that part for free.) You can argue how "tangible" that is, but it's certainly a viable business model.
The share price is dropping not because Facebook as a business is worthless, but because Facebook shares are massively overvalued when you look at the fundamentals and the growth potential.
And yet, they're made up of separate people. The ones harboring child molesters aren't likely the same ones doing the internet filtering, but because they share the title of "Orthodox Jew", they're lumped together in one big at-fault bunch.
The event is organized and supported by the governing bodies of these communities. Yes, they are the same people who should look into preventing further child abuse, they are the same people who are not cooperating with the "secular authorities", the same people who should do something about it when victims are excluded from their communities. They are not random Orthodox Jews, that's just not true.
Hang on, that's not quite it. These are actual religious communities - not just groups of people lumped together because of some shared characteristics and referred to as communities in order to avoid charges of racism.
As communities they set rules for themselves, and have structures to do so, and to control and enforce these rules. So in this case it's actually fair to ask why these communities focus on a topic like internet use, rather than addressing a wide-spread child abuse problem.
This is not specific to one religious group - e.g. the catholic church has systematically covered-up child abuse by its priesthood, too. That shouldn't give any group or organization (religious or not) a free pass, though - quite to the contrary: any of them should be questioned whenever something like this comes to light.
Well, Germany now has the Pirate party represented in it's fourth state parliament (Berlin: 15 seats, Saarland 4 seats, North_Rhine-Westphaliav 20 seats, Schleswig-Holstein 6 seats). They are polling at 11% for the federal elections.
One senate seat doesn't seem like all that much...
Indeed there is hope for us all. Most of us nerds find the prospect of coding a website which eventually nets a billion dollars, less daunting than the idea of talking to a girl. Who knew it could be that easy?
Hmmm... I think a new tech boom might be just around the corner.
Well, if you are working for a company which has no money and which you think will never be worth anything, then you should look for a new job in any case... Apart from that - it's going to be difficult to find a company whose stock is a worse bet than a lottery ticket. Even with Yahoo or Nokia you have a decent chance to avoid a 100% loss.
Well, if a company doesn't have the money to pay proper wages they can instead offer stock. Certainly you can keep working for them in the hope that they'll offer you a fair wage once they make enough money, but even then you are still out of a few years savings. At some point you will want to retire and those 3+ years you lost will be 3+ years you need to work longer. Who knows whether you'll even be able to find a job when you are older, and continuous wage dumping and outsourcing will have made it even harder to get reasonably paying jobs by then.
You also need to make up your mind whether you want to outsource a project - i.e. handing over a spec and getting SW in return, or if you want people to work on a project together with you.
In the former case, you want your partner company to provide project management etc. In the latter case you have temporary employees and you must do the project management, scheduling progress tracking etc.
You should only outsource a complete project if you know the company in question has a good track record delivering those. If you can't get that - or you are going for the temp employee model for some other reason - you should not let the outsourcing company establish a project manager or some other kind of liaison on their side. You need to deal with them one-on-one, and you should interview each employee individually, and insist that they work on your tasks 100% of the time.
Otherwise you'll get some good employees and a number of graduates who you will basically end up training on your dime. The experienced guys will be involved in various other projects and their liaison will put a barrier between you and your remote coworkers. Typically they'll sell that deal to your management by giving you the freshouts at a much reduced rate, and providing the project management for free - it's a fool's bargain.
There's an enormous mass of potential users who don't care at all about the policy because they don't know Google+ exists.
Yeah, but initially I was keen to advocate G+ to others - due to the real name policy I stopped. If that happens a lot, then potential users don't hear about G+ because they are not told about it.
The problem is: G+ offers features which appeal to users who want more privacy and control in social media. That's incompatible with the real name policy, so they end up offering a product which appeals to nobody.
I guess Ballmer is trying to leverage his dominance in one market (desktop) in order to gain market share in a related market (mobile devices). There is nothing really a desktop does which you would not also want to do on a mobile device if it was possible. (A mobile device might not be ideal for that, nor is it necessarily important if you can't - but it would still be a benefit for any application even if it's just a small benefit.) So if that was working, and if they had a way to bring all their desktop applications to the mobile devices, they'd have an edge.
In my impression MS does not currently have the technology to really deliver on that, but they might eventually. They would also need to develop technology so that the user interface matches the device automatically. Right now it seems they instead want to force a mobile UI on the desktop, which doesn't help either market. Strangely Ubuntu and Gnome appear to head in the same bizarre direction.
Eh, not much. Here is a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Using today's technology, if we build new power plants to produce our electricity from wind power rather than natural gas (the cheapest option) then we pay twice as much per kWh. (That's including standby costs.)
Now obviously using current technology we can't go 100% wind power (something has to *provide* standby), plus we'd need electric cars to reduce carbon emissions from transportation. However we have everything to get started now, and costs from wind power can only go down as operations scale up. In time we'll find the best way to handle standby (e.g. via hydrogen or improved battery technology, electric cars could help). Fossil fuels can only go up in costs, and always mean dependence on other countries in mainly unstable regions of the world.
How much of a price increase that means for an individual is hard to predict - there are many factors: how fast power plants get replaced (cheapest option would be to run them until they would normally go out of service anyway), how soon production costs go down, how much more efficient appliances get etc.
If we end up paying about twice as much for our electricity is that really the end of our lifestyle? Plus we'd have much reduced pollution allowing us to breathe much cleaner air, keep energy producing jobs in the country and would not flood our coastal cities. The US might even keep Florida around, and that's a nice place to retire, I hear.
Slashdot Mirror
Because none of this is true. The king of Thailand has very significant political influence - none of the military coups during his reign happened without his approval. He comes out against those defamation laws occasionally because it looks better when he does. If he really didn't want these laws to exist they wouldn't be there, though.
Yes, most Thais do love the king, but that's partly because the actual role of the king can't be discussed.
So after a year of waiting, would the ebook prices come down as well?
What exactly does a publisher do when a book is sold in electronic format? If what they do is still valuable, then someone will pay them for doing that. If not, what's the point of publishers?
Well similar articles appear in US media whenever some kid has early success in science or technology. As evidenced by the fact that this piece of news has even made it to Fox.
I would agree in general that Germany doesn't suffer quite as much from anti-intellectualism as the US, but it's not a black and white scenario, either.
It's possible that he has dual citizenship, but that seems unlikely given that he only arrived in Germany 4 years ago and didn't speak any German at the time. 4 years would be a bit short for him to receive citizenship otherwise.
None of the German newspaper articles I found refer to him as German, so I'm inclined to think it's simply an error in the article.
"Unique" - are you serious? Sorry, but the amount of nationalist conceit in that statement makes me want to barf.
I don't see how that could work. Usually patents are submitted on the basis of source code which you've already written, but regardless: it's way easier for a programmer to write software than to write a legal document. I don't think that would add a significant hurdle for patent submissions.
What role would the example code have? If the patent scope is limited to the function of that code, that's basically reducing the patent to copyright. Someone could extract the general algorithm and write their own version. If the patent claims list still determines the scope of the patent - and the code is just one possible implementation - then adding that code makes no difference, you'd be in the same position as today.
No matter where you stand on this case, surely the guy wasn't the *sole* cause of his roommates death?
They have a software system and servers to display the content, they have a well-connected marketing department which successfully sells advertising, they have a development department which is able to add features and keep users interested. Those are assets which are difficult to create, so they have value.
Their business model is similar to a TV station, showing content for free and getting paid for ads. (In addition Facebook has users who create the content, so they are getting that part for free.) You can argue how "tangible" that is, but it's certainly a viable business model.
The share price is dropping not because Facebook as a business is worthless, but because Facebook shares are massively overvalued when you look at the fundamentals and the growth potential.
And yet, they're made up of separate people. The ones harboring child molesters aren't likely the same ones doing the internet filtering, but because they share the title of "Orthodox Jew", they're lumped together in one big at-fault bunch.
The event is organized and supported by the governing bodies of these communities. Yes, they are the same people who should look into preventing further child abuse, they are the same people who are not cooperating with the "secular authorities", the same people who should do something about it when victims are excluded from their communities. They are not random Orthodox Jews, that's just not true.
Hang on, that's not quite it. These are actual religious communities - not just groups of people lumped together because of some shared characteristics and referred to as communities in order to avoid charges of racism.
As communities they set rules for themselves, and have structures to do so, and to control and enforce these rules. So in this case it's actually fair to ask why these communities focus on a topic like internet use, rather than addressing a wide-spread child abuse problem.
This is not specific to one religious group - e.g. the catholic church has systematically covered-up child abuse by its priesthood, too. That shouldn't give any group or organization (religious or not) a free pass, though - quite to the contrary: any of them should be questioned whenever something like this comes to light.
Well, Germany now has the Pirate party represented in it's fourth state parliament (Berlin: 15 seats, Saarland 4 seats, North_Rhine-Westphaliav 20 seats, Schleswig-Holstein 6 seats). They are polling at 11% for the federal elections.
One senate seat doesn't seem like all that much...
so most people are getting screwed.
Most people don't make anywhere near enough money to get even close to these brackets.
Indeed there is hope for us all. Most of us nerds find the prospect of coding a website which eventually nets a billion dollars, less daunting than the idea of talking to a girl. Who knew it could be that easy?
Hmmm ... I think a new tech boom might be just around the corner.
Well, if you are working for a company which has no money and which you think will never be worth anything, then you should look for a new job in any case... Apart from that - it's going to be difficult to find a company whose stock is a worse bet than a lottery ticket. Even with Yahoo or Nokia you have a decent chance to avoid a 100% loss.
Well, if a company doesn't have the money to pay proper wages they can instead offer stock. Certainly you can keep working for them in the hope that they'll offer you a fair wage once they make enough money, but even then you are still out of a few years savings. At some point you will want to retire and those 3+ years you lost will be 3+ years you need to work longer. Who knows whether you'll even be able to find a job when you are older, and continuous wage dumping and outsourcing will have made it even harder to get reasonably paying jobs by then.
You also need to make up your mind whether you want to outsource a project - i.e. handing over a spec and getting SW in return, or if you want people to work on a project together with you.
In the former case, you want your partner company to provide project management etc. In the latter case you have temporary employees and you must do the project management, scheduling progress tracking etc.
You should only outsource a complete project if you know the company in question has a good track record delivering those. If you can't get that - or you are going for the temp employee model for some other reason - you should not let the outsourcing company establish a project manager or some other kind of liaison on their side. You need to deal with them one-on-one, and you should interview each employee individually, and insist that they work on your tasks 100% of the time.
Otherwise you'll get some good employees and a number of graduates who you will basically end up training on your dime. The experienced guys will be involved in various other projects and their liaison will put a barrier between you and your remote coworkers. Typically they'll sell that deal to your management by giving you the freshouts at a much reduced rate, and providing the project management for free - it's a fool's bargain.
They took to long to make it available. Once G+ was introduced the window of opportunity had passed.
There's an enormous mass of potential users who don't care at all about the policy because they don't know Google+ exists.
Yeah, but initially I was keen to advocate G+ to others - due to the real name policy I stopped. If that happens a lot, then potential users don't hear about G+ because they are not told about it.
The problem is: G+ offers features which appeal to users who want more privacy and control in social media. That's incompatible with the real name policy, so they end up offering a product which appeals to nobody.
Yeah, true with current or foreseeable future protocols.
Protocols too, need to be agreed on.
Shouldn't be a problem, you can still get Samsung phones.
I guess Ballmer is trying to leverage his dominance in one market (desktop) in order to gain market share in a related market (mobile devices). There is nothing really a desktop does which you would not also want to do on a mobile device if it was possible. (A mobile device might not be ideal for that, nor is it necessarily important if you can't - but it would still be a benefit for any application even if it's just a small benefit.) So if that was working, and if they had a way to bring all their desktop applications to the mobile devices, they'd have an edge.
In my impression MS does not currently have the technology to really deliver on that, but they might eventually. They would also need to develop technology so that the user interface matches the device automatically. Right now it seems they instead want to force a mobile UI on the desktop, which doesn't help either market. Strangely Ubuntu and Gnome appear to head in the same bizarre direction.
Do they really think that anything they do is going to stop people from filesharing?
They probably think they can get paid by the MPAA/RIAA.
Also, Nokia replied to criticism of its new Lumia 900 cell phone
I can believe the rest of your post, but come on - for Nokia to get criticism of its new Lumia, people would have to buy it first.
Eh, not much. Here is a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Using today's technology, if we build new power plants to produce our electricity from wind power rather than natural gas (the cheapest option) then we pay twice as much per kWh. (That's including standby costs.)
Now obviously using current technology we can't go 100% wind power (something has to *provide* standby), plus we'd need electric cars to reduce carbon emissions from transportation. However we have everything to get started now, and costs from wind power can only go down as operations scale up. In time we'll find the best way to handle standby (e.g. via hydrogen or improved battery technology, electric cars could help). Fossil fuels can only go up in costs, and always mean dependence on other countries in mainly unstable regions of the world.
How much of a price increase that means for an individual is hard to predict - there are many factors: how fast power plants get replaced (cheapest option would be to run them until they would normally go out of service anyway), how soon production costs go down, how much more efficient appliances get etc.
If we end up paying about twice as much for our electricity is that really the end of our lifestyle? Plus we'd have much reduced pollution allowing us to breathe much cleaner air, keep energy producing jobs in the country and would not flood our coastal cities. The US might even keep Florida around, and that's a nice place to retire, I hear.