Ahhhh you meant the hub, okay. I'm not sure why some keep them bare. A small dome is actually advantageous for a number of reasons - primarily as a protection against the elements and the odd crash ( they do happen:) ). Wind-wise I'm not sure which is actually better. While various electronic components can seem like obstacles, they're usually quite small with a lot empty space between them. A dome is definitely a greater surface.
The few people who have built quad copters for semi-professional use here (mostly photography) all have domes of some sort on them (styrofoam hemisphere, a plastic cup that once housed snackfood, that sort of thing). The professional rigs I've seen all have domes or dome options as well. The hobbyist rigs, DIY/kits, etc. though do usually come bare and I guess their users don't see much need for the dome and leave them 'as is'.
You can actually compare this to Arduino projects and, more recently, Raspberry Pi. A lot of people will happily build something with it.. and then just leave it bare. No enclosures whatsoever. For the Raspberry Pi there are some enclosures available now, and people are buying them - so I guess it might be an aversion to messing with materials themselves.. or just laziness.
Because in general you want to avoid putting on extra unneeded weight.
Do it right and it might help flight in moving air (since the air would just pass around, instead of pushing against the components)
The airstream from the rotors itself already hits barely anything (i.e. the struts). I'd guess you could get some better airflow depending on the shape of those struts, but adding a skin between the struts wouldn't help much..in fact, it would make it easier for the wind to 'catch' it.
Toy quadcopters that you can get off-the-shelf for cheap (but usually have poor gyros and are too small to handle themselves in even a slight breeze) do typically have more of a a body, though.
ummmm, If you bother to look at the previous slashdot article, when it was covered before, it wasn't a kickstarter project.
I guess if people don't bother reading past the summary at Slashdot, you would be absolutely right. Of course if they had, they would have found the same tidbit that the following comment quoted 10 minutes after the story was posted: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2789489&cid=39699579 ( It was approved on the 17th )
It's useful to actually read the post you're responding and to check your facts before posting
It's more useful to hit preview so I close my blockquotes correctly, but to get to the point you're trying to make..
So, your response is that you can, except that you can't?
No, my response is that sometimes you can fund a project Kickstarter outside of the Kickstarter funding channel. That includes funding when the Kickstarter project has closed (successful, failed, cancelled or suspended) and when it's still live on Kickstarter itself.
The Double Fine Adventure 'Kickstarter project', for example, also allowed funding outside of Kickstarter through their own site because Kickstarter didn't allow for the high pledge level the Double Fine guys had in mind. They additionally opened up a PayPal account for those who found credit cards (required by the Amazon setup which Kickstarter uses) to be a hassle or couldn't get theirs to work.
I guess if you want to argue that a project that seeks funding through means other than Kickstarter can't be labeled 'Kickstarter project', then the answer is "No, you can't fund a 'Kickstarter project' after it's closed." It would be an incomplete answer, but there you go.
That's why I attempted to give a more complete answer.
And yes, I know that it seems that for this particular project, there is no alternative funding route (although I bet if you contact him and do the 'shut up and take my money' routine, there may be alternative routes yet). But then I'm just going to argue that 'sometimes [...]' is still a perfectly reasonable response to 'a [...[ project'.
Links to Kickstarter projects are much more interesting BEFORE the the funding round ends.
uhm.
Chris Granger's Light Table IDE, covered here previously on Slashdot
By the way, why can't I fund a closed (but funded) Kickstarter project past the deadline?
Sometimes you can - just not on KickStarter. KickStarter is an all-or-nothing + deadline type crowdfunding platform. There's actually very few that allow projects without a deadline - invested.in is biggest one that does that, off the top of my head. However, sometimes projects set up alternative funding routes on their website.. paypal, credit card directly, etc. You can try and see if they offer that.
Title: Backyard Brains Makes Educational (and Fun) Bioengineering Lab Kits Description: Their motto is "Neuroscience for Everyone," and they mean it!
00:00) TITLE A shot of Rob Rozeboom sitting at a small table appears with the SlasdotTV logo bar reading "Slashdot Editor Rob Rozeboom".
00:00) Rob If you're a fan of Frankenstein but have worries about villagers chasing you with pitchforks and torches, the folks at Backyard Brains have science kits for you.
00:08) TITLE The SlashdotTV title sequence appears with the title Backyard Brains and two small photos of electronics mounted to insects.
00:12) TITLE A view of a guy at a group desk with various computer screens and tools appears.
00:12) Guy To all those out there on the interwebs listening to me and thinking "When is this guy gonna show us the inventions already?",
00:17) TITLE The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view identifying this guy as "Backyard Brains Co-Founder Timothy Marzullo".
00:17) Timothy The reason I can talk fast and hopefully talk about interesting things or boring things is because I have neurons. Neurons are electrochemical devices - cells - and it's hard to monitor the chemical secretions - the neurotransmitters - because they happen in very small spaces, you need powerful microscopes and fluorescently tagged molecules, but the electricity that a neuron generates is easy to... well, easier to monitor due to this magical invention which is allowing all the listeners to watch me and it's called the transistor. We all know due to the magic of the PN- and NP-junctions and creative uses of capacitors and resistors, we can make amplifiers and even computers.
00:58) Timothy So what we have here are cockroaches and these are [...]
01:03) TITLE The view zooms in on the box of cockroaches
01:03) Timothy [...] muy especial cockroaches
- viven en el bosque de Sudamerica - they live in the rain forests of South America. One of the reasons cockroaches are so fast is they have very large neurons in their legs. [...]
01:16) TITLE The view zooms back out
01:16) Timothy [...] These very large neurons are quite easy to record from. Now, we want to treat the cockroaches in a humane fashion, so we need to anesthetize them and so, uhm.. did you bring your halothane with you, in addition to your camera?
01:31) Rob No..
01:32) Timothy The propathol?
01:33) Rob No... I
01:34) Timothy The pentobarbital?
01:35) Rob I might have a fifth of Jack in the car, but..
01:38) Timothy Yeah, yeah.. so we could actually use that for the earthworms, but for the cockroaches we're just gonna use.. this is relatively old technology that probably doesn't excite the people at Slashdot that much, but when water goes below a certain temperature it undergoes a phase change in terms from a liquid to a solid, and so what we have here is ice, in water, and so we're gonna put the cockroaches in the ice water [...]
02:03) TITLE The view zooms in on the cup of ice water
02:03) Timothy [...] and after a minute or two that will chill them out and anesthetize them.
02:06) Timothy I'm actually allergic to cockroaches because I've been working on them for about two years. I used to work in a rat lab, then I got allergic to rats, so I moved to cockroaches, now I'm allergic to cockroaches, so I'll have to move to.. maybe jellyfish and sea anemones next. It's a constantly.. I'm constantly fighting this battle between creatures.
02:25) TITLE Timothy grabs a cockroach and puts it into the ice water.
02:25) Timothy So these are.. they live in the rotting trees of the Amazonian rain forest, and I'm jut gonna dunk 'm into the ice water. And because these are cold-blooded, he can't mod.. regulate his own body core temperature and after a minute or two, he'll slowly.. he'll begin to move slower and slower and then we can do our exp
They did imagine what Firefly could do - petitions, money promises, and till no renewal. So they did the next-best thing.. they made a movie. Not just TV, not just straight-to-DVD, but a theatrical release. They had "Done the impossible". But as the documentary with that same name makes very painfully clear, the people behind that effort were disappointed by the low turnout despite the petitions and money promises, and that some fan reactions hurt their effort.
I honestly don't see a 'crowdfunded' Firefly working. Time to move on to a different show. Right now zombies, vampires and middle-ages-y stuff with subtle borderline soft porn seem to be able to get funding.
Those who prefer sci-fi may just have to wave money at the Pioneer One people.
I know it sounds impressive... fastest funded (a claim made), blowing past their $75k goal, etc.
But does anybody actually remember the average cost of an episode of Firefly? Low estimates - and I do mean low are $500,000. Per episode.
Now, I know.. they don't need seasoned actors. They don't need expensive VFX firms. They don't need extensive sets. Perhaps they don't need people for wardrobe, catering, location scouting, etc. etc. etc. And yes, I did see Star Wreck. But if that is the sort of result that one can expect*, it's entertaining enough but certainly not nearly as good as most of the TNG or DS9 episodes, Firefly, BSG, StarGate, or even Red Dwarf.
* I actually have, or had, higher hopes for Pioneer One. But Season 2 still seems very much up in the air, with the crew behind it admitting that they'll have to secure far more substantial funding first.
Step 1 is to figure out what your absolute demands are so as to narrow your choice already. This includes budgeting, what you'll be using the thing for, etc. Sounds like you've already done this.
Step 2: Walk into a store. No, seriously. It's all good and well to spec out a machine on the web and then say "this one's perfect!". But then you get it and... the casing feels weird, the way the keyboard types makes you cringe, the glossy screen you thought would be nice and sharp is really just reflecting the bright windows behind you when you sit at your desk, the backslash is situated next to the shift key, the audio quality can be called poor at best and while you intend to use headphones most of the time it's really just not acceptable, and whenever you glance at something else, you can't help but notice some weird fuzzy...moving..jittery.. things on the screen that you can't quite see when you look straight at it but you swear they're there (and they are - hello, temporal dithering - load up the LCD test webpage if possible if you care about the screen).
So go to a store and test the machines in person. THEN go back to the internet to find the best deal / customization options if you really want.. or, if you've pretty much found the one you want, get it at the store (yeah, you could save some bucks - but the store did provide you the service of allowing a hands-on.. might as well reward them, within reason).
Your budget is pretty high for a computer that doesn't need to have much graphical prowess, by the way.
I always wondered if big sites really license all the photos they use, or are operating on some kind of fair use I don't know about.
The really, really big sites have proper departments for this who have media teams that have running subscriptions to all the major stock photography places, have flickrs / deviantart / etc. searches for images that can be used commercially readily set up, etc. Some may still fall through the cracks, of course.
But for the smaller ones.. really, anything that pops up on google images is fair game. Copy. Paste. Done. The odds that the actual author ever finds that you used their image are small. The odds that even when they do, they'll care, are small. The odds that when they care, they'll care enough to do something about it, are small. The odds that said 'something' is issue a take-down notice, is small. In the case you get a take-down notice: the impact on you, is small. In case they want to strike a licensing deal, you can generally also just take it down, because the odds that they'd want to start having lawyers talk is, you guessed it, small.
You can't really blame this mentality. The general hive mind of the internet user is that doing this is perfectly fine when it comes to downloading songs, TV episodes and movies, and sharing them with your group of 10,000 'friends'. That same hive mind says that anything you post to the internet is pretty much public. Don't want people seeing it, knowing about it, copying it - then don't post it to the internet. So you can't really expect people to suddenly believe it's wrong to take some random picture somebody posts to the internet and put them on their own site (whether used commercially or not).
Worse, if you try talking to one of the more nefarious companies - think broadcasters, news websites, etc. - don't be entirely surprised if they suggest that you should be thankful that your image was used, and that the added exposure to you is nothing but free advertising that you should attempt to monetize. They stay just shy of suggesting that you should pay them, and just shy of anything that could be used as ammo by your own lawyer if it were to go that far.
We don't want there to be multimillionaire 'artists', or hundreds of supposedly indie (but really signed with GenericIndieLabelX that's part of IndieGroupY that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of QuirkyMusicZ, a division of SONY Music Entertainment).
'We' want bands to be able to stand on the merit of the quality of their music - be that through being highly popular at the whim of the way the 'popular' wind blows, or through a devout share of followers who will buy merchandise and go to concerts. We want the remaining artists to perform music not for the money but because they want to perform it for their own joy (either out of performing or out of the reactions of the crowd) and any money they get out of that is just a nice little bonus.
'We' don't care if that means most current artists will just have to find something else to do, and others will just have to make it their hobby next to an 'honest' job.
And if that situation is not to particular people's liking, they would be more than welcome to become patrons of the (musical) arts if they have the wealth to do so.
As long as 'we' get to enjoy music for next to nothing or completely nothing, and certainly with as few middlemen as possible - because that is what the process induced by technology has allowed us since the days of the cassette tape, which the internet has merely accelerated.
tl;dr: Something about horse-and-buggies and all that.
Agreed - and also not much to transcribe as a result.
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Title: "Fourth Time's a Charm" - The SpaceX Falcon Finally Gets Off the Ground Description: It's been a long time coming, but a private spaceship is finally heading for the International Space Station. Yay!
00:00 TITLE A shot of Timothy Lord in front of the countdown clock at Cape Canaveral is shown.
00:00) Countdown voice guy 7 minutes
00:01) Timothy As you can see from the countdown clock behind me, it's now just under 7 minutes until the historic SpaceX launch to the International Space Station is set to happen. Hopefully, we won't have any engine glitches this time, and it will actually go off.
00:12) TITLE The SlashdotTV title sequence fades into view. It reads: Timothy Lord, reporting from Cape Canaveral, Florida
00:18) TITLE The view changes to that of the Falcon 9 rocket at its final countdown stages. The Video is credited as: (NASA video clip)
00:17) Countdown voice guy 5... 4... 3... 2.. 1... 0. Aaand launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, as NASA turns to the private sector to resupply the International Spac Station.
00:33) TITLE Various shots of the rocket's progression are shown from hereon without specific commentary outside of that of the control room with the background noise being the roaring rumble of the Falcon 9 rocket.
01:45) TITLE The image mixes and changes to a view of the control room with personnel carefully watching the mission and congratulating each other on the successful launch, before the rocket's progression is shown once more.
02:47) TITLE The view fades slowly back to that of Timothy Lord on the grounds at Cape Canaveral.
02:47) Timothy The Falcon 9 lift vehicle has now done its job. It's much more to the Dragon capsule's mission before it can deliver its half ton of supplies, and must go through an elaborate sequence of moves to approach, and then dock with, the ISS itself.
02:57) TITLE The view changes back to the Falcon 9 rocket as it ascents further into space.
02:57) Timothy That docking is slated for Friday.
03:13) TITLE The view of the Falcon 9 rocket fades out as the SlashdotTV logo fades in.
-----
Although I think the editing is not in-sequence. A few shots of the 'close-up' of the engine with little plumage are shown spliced between shots where the rocket's exhaust is unmistakable. The live stream I watched showed the engine close-up fairly late into the launch. I also do wish they had included, or were able to include (perhaps that's SpaceX's property, rather than government?) footage of the solar panel deployment. The control room crew were much, much more excited about that then they were about the successful launch - to the point of one of the control room people on audio breaking her calm demeanor in announcing telemetry data and practically giggled. It was really great hearing that, and the elation that followed, in the audio. On the other hand, it's cool seeing the control room shots in this video - I don't remember seeing those in the stream I watched. Quite different from what one might expect.
It's not about having to wait. If the issue were just having to wait then people who now keep saying they would buy DVDs if they only cost $3 would wait the 18 months that it takes for big titles to end up in the clearance bins.
It's about the social network. In our increasingly socially connected world - one which even Microsoft is going to push further by making Windows 8 not about Windows, or the apps, but about sharing everything with your friends - if you don't watch Game of Thrones within, say, 2 weeks, you're already going to be bombarded with spoilers from people you follow on twitter, your friends on facebook, the people in your Google+ circle, etc. The more people end up on these centralized social networks rather than their own fragmented pieces (Orkut, Hyves, whatever), the more people get exposed to that phenomenon.
You can liken this to some people who watch sports just because that's what their colleagues are likely to talk about at the watercooler, and they don't want to feel left out by not knowing a single thing about what's being referred to.
So if people on your social networks are discussing the latest episode of Game of Thrones, it's not so much the issue that you may only be able to see it (legally) a week later. It's that by the time that week is done, if you were to try talking about it it'd be like saying "The cake is a lie!" and "Bruce Willis is dead people!". Your entire discussion is old news and hardly anybody will want to engage you.
That may not matter to you, particularly. I certainly don't give a flying brick. But to many, many people - it matters.
The media companies would do well to recognize this, but they would rather negotiate large sums with foreign distributors, networks, etc. According to their accountants, any lost sales as a result are insignificant compared to the lost sales, contracts, etc. if they were to try and offer their content directly to any and all who are interested for a low price.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Problem is, they are often the indistinguishable.
Say facebook decides to track their users physical whereabouts and makes them automatically 'like' a profile that is attached to an establishment they entered. People revolt (well, hopefully), and then.. what?
Was it malice? Well it certainly was intentional. I'm sure they didn't mean any harm, just that people took offense to it. Was it stupidity to think that people wouldn't take offense to it? Perhaps, but certainly the implementation wasn't the result of that stupidity. The stupidity there is only tangentially related.
In this particular case, what would the stupidity be? That the censoring was applied to the wrong item (an album, rather than, say an app that offers jailbreaking)? Because that still smells an awful lot like malice to me.
The only way it could be actual stupidity is if whoever writes their censorship words list was meant to enter e.g. 'cocksucker' and ended up entering 'jailbreak' instead. A common typo, I'm sure.
Title: Scheduled SpaceX Launch Scrubbed at the Last Minute Description: The kids whose experiment was scheduled to go into space were disappointed but not crushed by the delay
00:00) TITLE A SlashdotTV title animation appears.
00:05) TITLE The view fades to that of Timothy Lord on the grounds at Cape Canaveral.
00:05) Timothy This is not what anyone saw today on Cape Canaveral.
00:08) TITLE An animation sequence of what was to be the SpaceX Falcon+Dragon launch is shown with "- animated simulation - do not try at home" repeatedly scrolling past in the bottom. Hereafter referred to as "SpaceX animated simulation".
00:19) Timothy Instead it was pretty darn disappointing when today's launch of SpaceX's Dragon capsule was nixed with just seconds on the clock.
00:25) Timothy An early announcement said the abort was based on a high pressure reading in engine number 5.
00:29) TITLE SpaceX animated simulation is shown.
00:33) Timothy Among those disappointed by the launch were some students who were here all the way from Indiana to watch the launch of an experiment they've been working on since last October.
00:40) TITLE A shot of three kids at the Cape Canaveral facilities appears.
00:40) J.P. I am J.P. [last name]
00:42) Cameron And I'm Cameron [last name]
00:44) Jack And I'm Jack [last name]
00:45) J.P. We are from Highland, Indiana. We were here to see the Falcon 9 take off, with our experiment, for the International Space Station.
00:56) J.P. Our experiment is: how does microgravity affect the nutritional value of a 92M72 genetically modified soy bean sprout.
01:08) J.P. Astronauts were gonna perform the experiment, and then it was gonna be sent back down to Earth, and we were gonna also perform the experiment on Earth, and compare the results.
01:21) Jack It's an after-school extracurricular club that we have.
01:25) Jack The shirts we got from Pioneer [Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc -- ed.] who gave us a grant to come down here. They gave us the seeds, and so they gave us a grant to get some press for the shirts and stuff, and they gave us a grant to come down here - they paid for everything, so..
01:39) Jack I'm not too disappointed because.. it's a space program and things happen, and we have Tuesday to look forward to - whether on TV or we get to come here - and we'll see what happens.
01:50) TITLE SpaceX animated simulation is shown.
01:55) TITLE The view fades back to Timothy on the grounds at Cape Canaveral.
01:56) Timothy The next launch window is Tuesday, about 72 hours from now. Hopefully the fourth time's the charm, and we'll actually see both Falcon and Dragon take off.
02:03) TITLE SpaceX animated simulation is shown.
02:18) TITLE A SlashdotTV credits animation sequence is shown. The credits depicted are: Camera and narration: Timothy Lord Edited by Robin 'Roblimo' Miller Opening title by Danielle Attinella Animated footage supplied by SpaceX
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And why does the antenna no longer break out of the header bar?
Oh I'm not saying he shouldn't feel bad about it - that's highly personal. But unless he screwed up on his end of the deal of the relationship (e.g. failed to communicate to her what he was doing and how that may impact her as well - I don't know why she was arrested, anybody?), his heart - so to speak - may well ache, but in his mind he should realize that this may not have been the girl for him.
As for whether or not she was ugly... I don't even know where that factors in:D
setting aside the meat of the story for a moment..
his girlfriend left him (she got arrested too)
...do we know why she (being girlfriend or, as an AC-followup notes, wife) left him?
Perhaps he left the seat up. Perhaps he failed to inform her that he was purposefully taunting the authorities. She may have had crappy or good reasons to leave him for things he did or failed to do.
Or perhaps she just got tired of him being in jail, and found it too difficult to remain 'at his side'. In which case perhaps that's a 'weak' reason but not entirely non-understandable. Regardless of one's views, I'd imagine he'd want a girlfriend/wife who sticks with him no matter what (well, within reason) - so wouldn't he be better off without her anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for the guy and believe the case against him was indeed just to set an example (except that they keep 'setting examples' so it's certainly not having much of an effect). But the whole girlfriend/wife angle feels a bit too much like plucking at heartstrings.
I know you're AC and unlikely to return back here, but back in my AC days I did.. so let's give it a shot..
Precursor: I've argued for the removal of copyright, period, before - my view on this is rather black-and-white, if you will.
You say that 25 years is reasonable. But do you then believe that strict enforcement under the full penalty that the law allows is also reasonable for infringement of works that fall within that 25-year period?
You note that you 'might' be willing to pay for a new movie. Can you expand on the 'might'? Specifically, are you saying that you may or may not even want to see the new movie (and thus payment being implied in the case where you do want to see it) - or are you saying that if you want to see the movie, you might pay for it, but then again you might still 'pirate' it as you have been doing? In the latter case, how do you believe that your argument for a 25-year period is bolstered by that behavior?
You also only note that you might be willing 'to pay' for a new movie. I would be willing to pay for a Lamborghini, myself, but not the several hundreds of thousands of dollars they currently go for. What do you feel is a reasonable price for a new movie - taking into account, say, day 1 of release?
The remainder of your comment takes a turn. Lobbying for laws has always been 'a business model', but one might well argue that in this case it's not particularly working anyway. One might also well argue that being backed into the corner they're in is not solely their own doing. After all, even if the film industry had caught on early and started putting every movie in their library and new releases as high quality files online without DRM for the cost of $1 each in a well-organized system with an open API so that it could also be offered through e.g. IMDB or any other site... then each movie would still find its way onto sites that will simply bypass that $1 payment and have every bit the breadth of offering, quality, and ease of use.. as those are mere technical limitations that are easily overcome. I have no doubt that it would have cut into 'piracy' substantially - given that there are people who will happily use their Roku to buy an Amazon Prime movie that for all intents and purposes may as well be DRM'd and can only be played back for 24 hours after having started it and must be started within a 48-hour period (iirc). But then again, the Roku box doesn't have an interface to piracy sites. Some others do. Over here it's not entirely uncommon for people to have a big-name media player with official 'newsgroups' support and people will simply hook that up to their favorite binaries server and download the latest movies for free (or something like $8/month if applicable to the binaries server), while people paying to see a movie on demand is far less common.
As to whether they should take a revenue cut... I don't believe they 'should'. That implies direction from above. I believe that if people buy their merchandise less, revenue cuts will follow. Basic business mechanisms will deal with revenue rise/fall - there's no 'should' required or desirable any more than a their desire of a revenue rise that 'should' happen by making it law for everybody to buy at least 1 movie per month. Legislation that says "pirating is disallowed" is vastly different from "you must buy", as the former still leaves the option of neither pirating -nor- buying.
Javascript timer with now-blank divs that once housed actual server-written content - view any project page source, look for "ksr_page_timer". The divs that follow once contained server-written data (e.g. "44 hours left") - which needn't have been removed for the javascript timer to work.
Note that the example projects mentioned were but a few. There's so many more that would stand out as examples of things where better screening, intervention, communication and combinations of the aforementioned would have been thoroughly welcome and easily serve as material that could cause a 'PR hit' than the subject matter of TFA.
If MS was clearly positioning the ARM tablets as something different from the non-ARM tablets, that would be different.
Shouldn't that be "If MS will be"? Or is the U.S. already being flooded with marketing material in which there's little to no differentiation being made, for devices that do not yet publicly exist running operating systems that are not as of yet finalized?
Because it's either that, or we're making assumptions here for the sake of bolstering arguments.
I love KickStarter and am a backer of various projects there. Also at IndieGoGo and RocketHub. Suffice to say, I love the concept.
That said... they're getting a PR hit over this? Give me a break. As it is, perhaps it'd be a good thing so that the public can vet projects before they actually go live for funding. That way KickStarter could avoid some things that they really should have gotten PR hits over.
Like scam projects. They got very limited exposure for that recently with the Mythic project, but at least it resulted in it being shut down. Contrast that with the Projektor project which merrily ended - thankfully unfunded as the people leaving comments warned everybody off and caused others to withdraw (on the up side, KS only runs the charge if the project is successful).
Or like their inability to communicate appropriately. For example, to the KickStarter Mobile App guys. Approved on Day 1, suspended on Day 2. Or to the Glospex guy, whose first attempt failed so he closed early, re-submitted with a lower goal and better material, exceeded that goal, but a few days before close got suspended. Why? They won't tell them. Or, you know, to the public. Especially backers. Unless there's some privacy-sensitive reason for suspending a project, how about letting backers know?
That inability to communicate goes away right quick when you have a highly successful project, though. The Double Fine guys ($3mil+) got the KickStarter people to appear live in their ustream.
In fact, they're very willing to work with you when you bring in the big bucks. You've heard of Pebble, right? That project is still going - 4 days left. Oh, but you can't actually pledge at a level that would net you the Pebble watch anymore. They managed to wave a magic wand that other project creators couldn't in the past and closed all the pledges (except the $1 one) by marking them as limited reward pledges. Why? No idea - if you can have 85,000 watches manufactured, 100,000 is hardly a huge step over that.. you don't even have to worry about warehousing if you have things shipped in a staggered fashion. On the other hand, through their own store they will sell for $150+, while through KickStarter they get - after the KickStarter / Amazon deduction - about $105. More power to them, but what a crap maneuver to pull. ( For the curious, that project is still, currently, pulling in $400/hour.. People are crazy. )
And don't even get me started on whoever is writing their web code and killed their server-written static countdown, replacing it with a javascript one. With javascript disabled, you can now not even see how long the project will last anymore. Though I suppose not even the nerdiest of news sites would bother writing about that one;)
Seriously, though.. the press are trying to hop on the "KickStarter is doomed to fail!" bandwagon. I was saddened that even xkcd decided to do a comic about it (because what comic hasn't yet?) in a somewhat negative light (really, there's not that much more competition post-Double Fine, which never even impacted any category outside of computer gaming anyway, and getting noticed doesn't require extremes - just some marketing.. as it always has).
KickStarter is thriving, and they're in the limelight, so I guess some negative attention after people trying to flaunt their projects all over the (popular) press is natural. But it all seems too much like knee-jerk reactions to a concept that's been going on for years, or a poor attempt at trying to marry their "I told you so!"-driven stories about KickStarter with their "Major Site Hack of the Day"-driven stories.
I can't wait for them to discovery Quirky. The press should have a field day with all the stuff they can conjure up about that one.
The CSS rules specify that the last one overrides. So they're still following the rules.
No, the CSS rules say that when there are conflicts, the last one overrides. For example, if I specify background-color twice for the same selector (or selectors that end up selecting the same elements), then the last-specified overrules any prior ones.
In the case of the vendor-specific prefixes, however, there is no conflict. Keep in mind that browsers aren't even supposed to be reading other browers/vendor/engine/whatever prefix rules. I.e. -webkit-thing -moz-thing and -o-thing do not conflict because they by definition do not conflict. That of course changes if you start doing a search&replace for -webkit- to replace with -o-, then all of a sudden you get -o-thing -moz-thing and -o-thing. Then you get a conflict. But that's an enthusiastically stupid method of doing it for the very reason I outlined in my post; if everybody started aliasing everybody else, then web developers will definitely not bother with small marketshare browsers anymore because they can't even be sure which one gets applied anymore.
I know what you're thinking.. "That's the point! Hopefully those web developers will then just drop the prefixes altogether!" - except that Opera has themselves explained that they don't even support some of the non-prefixed versions because they are not set in stone in the standard. So what's the more likely outcome? -webkit- prefixes for everyone. ( And no, I'm not one of those developers - I actually try to stay away from anything that requires a prefix for the very reason that I'd be writing prefixes all day long even with macros. It may make a page less shiny, not have a pretty icon on iPhones, etc. but then I don't care about that. Others, however, do. It's them, among others, who should take issue with this. )
Why the hell would you want each browser to have a specific color?
It's called an example. I can go into features that are far more subtle in difference between browsers, but pointing you to google should be enough.
Which brings me to..
Your website should look the same regardless of browser, that's what CSS and HTML is for.
Excellent. Mind telling the browser vendors that, so that people don't even have to use any browser-specific bits anymore? That includes letting things be dealt with automatically using jquery and other frameworks. Just because you've passed that burden off to a third party doesn't mean it's not there. I swear I explained this in paragraph 1:)
Opera is aliasing certain features, not so everyone can start using the webkit prefixes, but so that websites will work and hopefully eventually, those webkit prefixes will disappear and they can remove this hack.
I wholly agree that in principle they're not doing this so that people will -start- using the -webkit- prefixes. I even believe that if they had the power to stop people from using them, they would. But the reality of the matter is that people already are using them and aren't about to listen to Opera or Mozilla's pleas to either stop doing so (and make their sites less shiny in webkit browsers, which dominate the mobile market, own the Apple market, and is strong on others via Chrome and derivatives) or add their own vendor-specific prefixes just to deal with their tiny market. The reality is that Opera doesn't want their users to go "the sites I visit look way better in Chrome/Safari/whatever, so I'll use that instead of Opera" - and thus started accepting the -webkit- prefixes for themselves. And thus the reality is that people who were using -webkit- will continue to do so, knowing that now Opera, Mozilla and even IE (to an extent) will accept them), and others will be encouraged to do so (because the non-prefixed versions get ignored and they do want the shiny).
The decision to accept -webkit- prefixes effects the complete opposite result of what is being aimed for. ( Not that they have a choice. )
It's like back in the bad old days of web design, where websites ran JavaScript to detect what browser was in use
Those bad old days are ongoing. Just because everybody and their dog are including jquery now doesn't mean the sites aren't still using browser-specific javascript, css, markup, etc.
It's easier to just duplicate the same detail with different prefixes (and slightly different parameters, as needed), and know that the directive will be ignored by browsers that don't do exactly what the designer wanted.
Which, unfortunately, got broken with the popularity of WebKit (whether one blames Apple or Google, doesn't really matter), because designers just started using the webkit prefixed CSS and ignored the rest because it still looked 'okay enough' in other browsers, so why bother making those look 'great'? The same applies to things outside of the CSS realm, like the apple-touch-icon link. Android uses it. Yep - want pretty bookmarks on Android? Specify the Apple (by name) icons. Largely this is because the standards people are moving way, way too slow.
But then there's the flipside of the coin. The Opera article in which they announced - along with Mozilla - to support some webkit prefixes, was hilarious.
Their solution is to essentially alias the webkit prefixes to their own. Fine, right? But what happens if there's directives for both? Well, the last one specified overrides. Note that not the vendor-specific one that applies to that vendor's browser overrides, just the last one specified.
So when it comes time to build a site that works well on all browsers, including the ones that use such aliasing, what do they suggest?
But then they also note that for some features, they don't support the prefix-less version for reasons of it not being finalized yet.
So let's say webkit specifies a blue background, moz specifies a yellow one, and o specifies red. When you view it in Opera it will be? red. Now you view it in a Mozilla browser, using the same aliasing nonsense, what color will it be? red. Opera's. Because that was specified last. Want to fix it to yellow? You'll have to specify the moz line last. Except that then Opera will also render it in yellow.
It's all good and well to want to accept other vendors' prefixes, but why would you not let your own override, rather than the last-specified? I realize that as CSS goes, last-specified is supposed to override when there are conflicting specifications... but given the vendor-specific prefixes, there is no actual conflict.
Most hilariously, they already anticipated one response... "So I only need to use -webkit- prefixes now? w00t!" and answered it with "absolutely not." and then go on to give a very, very weak defense for why developers shouldn't do exactly that. Use the webkit prefixes where webkit doesn't make use of the non-prefixed version, use the non-prefixed version to make the page future-proof (assuming the behavior stays the same, but them's the breaks), and call it a day, because Opera now supports the webkit prefix, Mozilla apparently intends to support it, and IE... well, IE...
I was going to post something along these lines...
What's the deal here? Is it just someone setting themselves up to say "I told you so!" later, so that they can seem smart? Is it some kind of astroturfing?
...then saw that you already did, so was going to mod you up... only to see that I can't mod or have no mod points to mod with.
It's a combination of "I told you so!" and news sites just wanting to drive 'bad news' in general. Bad news gets more eyes. More comments. More facebook likes. More tweets. And, ultimately, more advertising money.
Title: Slashdot's SlashBI: All Your Busines Intelligence Info in One Place Description: SlashBI is a new site for the latest in business intelligence news and analysis, created each day by the industry's top experts, and produced by Slashdot.
00:00) <TITLE> A small picture of "Nick Kowalski - Senior Editor, Geeknet" appears over a screenshot of the Slashdot website featuring the "Bitcoin Mining Startup gets $500k in Venture Capital" story which slowly zooms out.
00:00) Nick> Slashdot is growing. We have exciting new sites in the works.
00:04) <TITLE> The backdrop changes to that of a blurred view of the SlashBI page, that slowly becomes sharper, featuring the post "B.I. Analysts: Start with the Right Questions, Then Use Tools".
00:04) Nick> The first one, SlashBI, focuses on the fast-changing world of Business Intelligence.
00:11) <TITLE> The view changes to that of a post with a tree graph from the "Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are driving the need for more storage." article.
00:11) Nick> Its articles and opinion pieces, which are created by a mix of technologists and experts, field everything from BI fundamentals for businesses [...]
00:18) <TITLE> The view changes to the "Choosing a Database That's Right for Your Business" post.
00:18) Nick> [...] to choosing the right database.
00:20) <TITLE> The view changes to an interview video.
00:20) Nick> SlashBI will also feature videos of developers and other notable figures in BI.
00:25) <TITLE> The view changes to that of the "Salesforce EVP Byron Sebastian: Platform-as-a-Service Here to Stay" post.
00:25) Nick> More companies than ever are relying on Business Intelligence apps that collect and analyze data.
00:32) <TITLE> The view changes to a screenshot of another article listing a few BI mobile apps.
00:32) Nick> With this information in hand, executives can make more informed choices [...]
00:35) <TITLE> The view changes to that of an overview of several SlashBI posts.
00:35) Nick> [...] about everything from marketing and sales to production.
00:37) <TITLE> The view changes to that of several styles of BI analysis graphs
00:37) Nick> Rapidly growing areas of Business Intelligence include predictive analytics, datamining and performance management.
00:44) <TITLE> The view changes to a still of, identified by caption, "Crawford Del Prete - Executive Vice President, WW Research Products - IDC" as it fades to a graph with a generally upward trend.
00:44) Nick> Research from IDC predicts the big data market will grow from $3.2B in 2010 to $16.9B in 2013.
00:55) <TITLE> The view changes to that of a car with a through-hood turbocharger with its engine shown.
00:55) Nick> That's more than enough information growth to supercharge the BI sector.
00:58) <TITLE> The view changes to an overview of SlashBI posts scrolling past.
00:58) Nick> SlashBI's news stream will keep up-to-the-minute track of the latest acquisitions and software releases, [...]
01:05) <TITLE> The view changes to that of the "Death of the Salesmen: The Geeks Did It" op-ed post.
01:05) Nick> [...] while its analysts and pundits offer a big picture view of the action.
01:08) <TITLE> The view changes to that of a stylized head shown in profile with various technical elements within, and the text "Business Intelligence - http://slashdot.org/topic/bi" overlaid on it.
01:08) Nick> So, all the intelligence you'll need on Business Intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhhh you meant the hub, okay. I'm not sure why some keep them bare. A small dome is actually advantageous for a number of reasons - primarily as a protection against the elements and the odd crash ( they do happen :) ). Wind-wise I'm not sure which is actually better. While various electronic components can seem like obstacles, they're usually quite small with a lot empty space between them. A dome is definitely a greater surface.
The few people who have built quad copters for semi-professional use here (mostly photography) all have domes of some sort on them (styrofoam hemisphere, a plastic cup that once housed snackfood, that sort of thing). The professional rigs I've seen all have domes or dome options as well. The hobbyist rigs, DIY/kits, etc. though do usually come bare and I guess their users don't see much need for the dome and leave them 'as is'.
You can actually compare this to Arduino projects and, more recently, Raspberry Pi. A lot of people will happily build something with it.. and then just leave it bare. No enclosures whatsoever. For the Raspberry Pi there are some enclosures available now, and people are buying them - so I guess it might be an aversion to messing with materials themselves.. or just laziness.
Because in general you want to avoid putting on extra unneeded weight.
The airstream from the rotors itself already hits barely anything (i.e. the struts). I'd guess you could get some better airflow depending on the shape of those struts, but adding a skin between the struts wouldn't help much..in fact, it would make it easier for the wind to 'catch' it.
Toy quadcopters that you can get off-the-shelf for cheap (but usually have poor gyros and are too small to handle themselves in even a slight breeze) do typically have more of a a body, though.
I guess if people don't bother reading past the summary at Slashdot, you would be absolutely right.
Of course if they had, they would have found the same tidbit that the following comment quoted 10 minutes after the story was posted:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2789489&cid=39699579
( It was approved on the 17th )
It's more useful to hit preview so I close my blockquotes correctly, but to get to the point you're trying to make..
No, my response is that sometimes you can fund a project Kickstarter outside of the Kickstarter funding channel. That includes funding when the Kickstarter project has closed (successful, failed, cancelled or suspended) and when it's still live on Kickstarter itself.
The Double Fine Adventure 'Kickstarter project', for example, also allowed funding outside of Kickstarter through their own site because Kickstarter didn't allow for the high pledge level the Double Fine guys had in mind. They additionally opened up a PayPal account for those who found credit cards (required by the Amazon setup which Kickstarter uses) to be a hassle or couldn't get theirs to work.
I guess if you want to argue that a project that seeks funding through means other than Kickstarter can't be labeled 'Kickstarter project', then the answer is "No, you can't fund a 'Kickstarter project' after it's closed." It would be an incomplete answer, but there you go.
That's why I attempted to give a more complete answer.
And yes, I know that it seems that for this particular project, there is no alternative funding route (although I bet if you contact him and do the 'shut up and take my money' routine, there may be alternative routes yet). But then I'm just going to argue that 'sometimes [...]' is still a perfectly reasonable response to 'a [...[ project'.
uhm.
Title: Backyard Brains Makes Educational (and Fun) Bioengineering Lab Kits
Description: Their motto is "Neuroscience for Everyone," and they mean it!
00:00) TITLE
A shot of Rob Rozeboom sitting at a small table appears with the SlasdotTV logo bar reading "Slashdot Editor Rob Rozeboom".
00:00) Rob
If you're a fan of Frankenstein but have worries about villagers chasing you with pitchforks and torches, the folks at Backyard Brains have science kits for you.
00:08) TITLE
The SlashdotTV title sequence appears with the title Backyard Brains and two small photos of electronics mounted to insects.
00:12) TITLE
A view of a guy at a group desk with various computer screens and tools appears.
00:12) Guy
To all those out there on the interwebs listening to me and thinking "When is this guy gonna show us the inventions already?",
00:17) TITLE
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view identifying this guy as "Backyard Brains Co-Founder Timothy Marzullo".
00:17) Timothy
The reason I can talk fast and hopefully talk about interesting things or boring things is because I have neurons.
Neurons are electrochemical devices - cells - and it's hard to monitor the chemical secretions - the neurotransmitters - because they happen in very small spaces, you need powerful microscopes and fluorescently tagged molecules, but the electricity that a neuron generates is easy to... well, easier to monitor due to this magical invention which is allowing all the listeners to watch me and it's called the transistor.
We all know due to the magic of the PN- and NP-junctions and creative uses of capacitors and resistors, we can make amplifiers and even computers.
00:58) Timothy
So what we have here are cockroaches and these are [...]
01:03) TITLE
The view zooms in on the box of cockroaches
01:03) Timothy
[...] muy especial cockroaches
- viven en el bosque de Sudamerica - they live in the rain forests of South America.
One of the reasons cockroaches are so fast is they have very large neurons in their legs. [...]
01:16) TITLE
The view zooms back out
01:16) Timothy
[...] These very large neurons are quite easy to record from.
Now, we want to treat the cockroaches in a humane fashion, so we need to anesthetize them and so, uhm.. did you bring your halothane with you, in addition to your camera?
01:31) Rob
No..
01:32) Timothy
The propathol?
01:33) Rob
No... I
01:34) Timothy
The pentobarbital?
01:35) Rob
I might have a fifth of Jack in the car, but..
01:38) Timothy
Yeah, yeah.. so we could actually use that for the earthworms, but for the cockroaches we're just gonna use.. this is relatively old technology that probably doesn't excite the people at Slashdot that much, but when water goes below a certain temperature it undergoes a phase change in terms from a liquid to a solid, and so what we have here is ice, in water, and so we're gonna put the cockroaches in the ice water [...]
02:03) TITLE
The view zooms in on the cup of ice water
02:03) Timothy
[...] and after a minute or two that will chill them out and anesthetize them.
02:06) Timothy
I'm actually allergic to cockroaches because I've been working on them for about two years.
I used to work in a rat lab, then I got allergic to rats, so I moved to cockroaches, now I'm allergic to cockroaches, so I'll have to move to.. maybe jellyfish and sea anemones next.
It's a constantly.. I'm constantly fighting this battle between creatures.
02:25) TITLE
Timothy grabs a cockroach and puts it into the ice water.
02:25) Timothy
So these are.. they live in the rotting trees of the Amazonian rain forest, and I'm jut gonna dunk 'm into the ice water.
And because these are cold-blooded, he can't mod.. regulate his own body core temperature and after a minute or two, he'll slowly.. he'll begin to move slower and slower and then we can do our exp
They did imagine what Firefly could do - petitions, money promises, and till no renewal.
So they did the next-best thing.. they made a movie. Not just TV, not just straight-to-DVD, but a theatrical release. They had "Done the impossible".
But as the documentary with that same name makes very painfully clear, the people behind that effort were disappointed by the low turnout despite the petitions and money promises, and that some fan reactions hurt their effort.
I honestly don't see a 'crowdfunded' Firefly working. Time to move on to a different show. Right now zombies, vampires and middle-ages-y stuff with subtle borderline soft porn seem to be able to get funding.
Those who prefer sci-fi may just have to wave money at the Pioneer One people.
I know it sounds impressive... fastest funded (a claim made), blowing past their $75k goal, etc.
But does anybody actually remember the average cost of an episode of Firefly? Low estimates - and I do mean low are $500,000. Per episode.
Now, I know.. they don't need seasoned actors. They don't need expensive VFX firms. They don't need extensive sets. Perhaps they don't need people for wardrobe, catering, location scouting, etc. etc. etc.
And yes, I did see Star Wreck. But if that is the sort of result that one can expect*, it's entertaining enough but certainly not nearly as good as most of the TNG or DS9 episodes, Firefly, BSG, StarGate, or even Red Dwarf.
* I actually have, or had, higher hopes for Pioneer One. But Season 2 still seems very much up in the air, with the crew behind it admitting that they'll have to secure far more substantial funding first.
Still, best of luck to them.
Step 1 is to figure out what your absolute demands are so as to narrow your choice already. This includes budgeting, what you'll be using the thing for, etc. Sounds like you've already done this.
Step 2: Walk into a store.
No, seriously. It's all good and well to spec out a machine on the web and then say "this one's perfect!". But then you get it and... the casing feels weird, the way the keyboard types makes you cringe, the glossy screen you thought would be nice and sharp is really just reflecting the bright windows behind you when you sit at your desk, the backslash is situated next to the shift key, the audio quality can be called poor at best and while you intend to use headphones most of the time it's really just not acceptable, and whenever you glance at something else, you can't help but notice some weird fuzzy...moving..jittery.. things on the screen that you can't quite see when you look straight at it but you swear they're there (and they are - hello, temporal dithering - load up the LCD test webpage if possible if you care about the screen).
So go to a store and test the machines in person. THEN go back to the internet to find the best deal / customization options if you really want.. or, if you've pretty much found the one you want, get it at the store (yeah, you could save some bucks - but the store did provide you the service of allowing a hands-on.. might as well reward them, within reason).
Your budget is pretty high for a computer that doesn't need to have much graphical prowess, by the way.
The really, really big sites have proper departments for this who have media teams that have running subscriptions to all the major stock photography places, have flickrs / deviantart / etc. searches for images that can be used commercially readily set up, etc.
Some may still fall through the cracks, of course.
But for the smaller ones.. really, anything that pops up on google images is fair game. Copy. Paste. Done.
The odds that the actual author ever finds that you used their image are small. The odds that even when they do, they'll care, are small. The odds that when they care, they'll care enough to do something about it, are small. The odds that said 'something' is issue a take-down notice, is small. In the case you get a take-down notice: the impact on you, is small. In case they want to strike a licensing deal, you can generally also just take it down, because the odds that they'd want to start having lawyers talk is, you guessed it, small.
You can't really blame this mentality. The general hive mind of the internet user is that doing this is perfectly fine when it comes to downloading songs, TV episodes and movies, and sharing them with your group of 10,000 'friends'. That same hive mind says that anything you post to the internet is pretty much public. Don't want people seeing it, knowing about it, copying it - then don't post it to the internet.
So you can't really expect people to suddenly believe it's wrong to take some random picture somebody posts to the internet and put them on their own site (whether used commercially or not).
Worse, if you try talking to one of the more nefarious companies - think broadcasters, news websites, etc. - don't be entirely surprised if they suggest that you should be thankful that your image was used, and that the added exposure to you is nothing but free advertising that you should attempt to monetize. They stay just shy of suggesting that you should pay them, and just shy of anything that could be used as ammo by your own lawyer if it were to go that far.
But this is what 'we' want, right?
We don't want there to be multimillionaire 'artists', or hundreds of supposedly indie (but really signed with GenericIndieLabelX that's part of IndieGroupY that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of QuirkyMusicZ, a division of SONY Music Entertainment).
'We' want bands to be able to stand on the merit of the quality of their music - be that through being highly popular at the whim of the way the 'popular' wind blows, or through a devout share of followers who will buy merchandise and go to concerts. We want the remaining artists to perform music not for the money but because they want to perform it for their own joy (either out of performing or out of the reactions of the crowd) and any money they get out of that is just a nice little bonus.
'We' don't care if that means most current artists will just have to find something else to do, and others will just have to make it their hobby next to an 'honest' job.
And if that situation is not to particular people's liking, they would be more than welcome to become patrons of the (musical) arts if they have the wealth to do so.
As long as 'we' get to enjoy music for next to nothing or completely nothing, and certainly with as few middlemen as possible - because that is what the process induced by technology has allowed us since the days of the cassette tape, which the internet has merely accelerated.
tl;dr: Something about horse-and-buggies and all that.
Agreed - and also not much to transcribe as a result.
-----
Title: "Fourth Time's a Charm" - The SpaceX Falcon Finally Gets Off the Ground
Description: It's been a long time coming, but a private spaceship is finally heading for the International Space Station. Yay!
00:00 TITLE
A shot of Timothy Lord in front of the countdown clock at Cape Canaveral is shown.
00:00) Countdown voice guy
7 minutes
00:01) Timothy
As you can see from the countdown clock behind me, it's now just under 7 minutes until the historic SpaceX launch to the International Space Station is set to happen.
Hopefully, we won't have any engine glitches this time, and it will actually go off.
00:12) TITLE
The SlashdotTV title sequence fades into view. It reads:
Timothy Lord, reporting
from Cape Canaveral, Florida
00:18) TITLE
The view changes to that of the Falcon 9 rocket at its final countdown stages. The Video is credited as: (NASA video clip)
00:17) Countdown voice guy
5... 4... 3... 2.. 1... 0.
Aaand launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, as NASA turns to the private sector to resupply the International Spac Station.
00:33) TITLE
Various shots of the rocket's progression are shown from hereon without specific commentary outside of that of the control room with the background noise being the roaring rumble of the Falcon 9 rocket.
01:45) TITLE
The image mixes and changes to a view of the control room with personnel carefully watching the mission and congratulating each other on the successful launch, before the rocket's progression is shown once more.
02:47) TITLE
The view fades slowly back to that of Timothy Lord on the grounds at Cape Canaveral.
02:47) Timothy
The Falcon 9 lift vehicle has now done its job.
It's much more to the Dragon capsule's mission before it can deliver its half ton of supplies, and must go through an elaborate sequence of moves to approach, and then dock with, the ISS itself.
02:57) TITLE
The view changes back to the Falcon 9 rocket as it ascents further into space.
02:57) Timothy
That docking is slated for Friday.
03:13) TITLE
The view of the Falcon 9 rocket fades out as the SlashdotTV logo fades in.
-----
Although I think the editing is not in-sequence. A few shots of the 'close-up' of the engine with little plumage are shown spliced between shots where the rocket's exhaust is unmistakable. The live stream I watched showed the engine close-up fairly late into the launch.
I also do wish they had included, or were able to include (perhaps that's SpaceX's property, rather than government?) footage of the solar panel deployment. The control room crew were much, much more excited about that then they were about the successful launch - to the point of one of the control room people on audio breaking her calm demeanor in announcing telemetry data and practically giggled. It was really great hearing that, and the elation that followed, in the audio.
On the other hand, it's cool seeing the control room shots in this video - I don't remember seeing those in the stream I watched. Quite different from what one might expect.
It's not about having to wait. If the issue were just having to wait then people who now keep saying they would buy DVDs if they only cost $3 would wait the 18 months that it takes for big titles to end up in the clearance bins.
It's about the social network. In our increasingly socially connected world - one which even Microsoft is going to push further by making Windows 8 not about Windows, or the apps, but about sharing everything with your friends - if you don't watch Game of Thrones within, say, 2 weeks, you're already going to be bombarded with spoilers from people you follow on twitter, your friends on facebook, the people in your Google+ circle, etc.
The more people end up on these centralized social networks rather than their own fragmented pieces (Orkut, Hyves, whatever), the more people get exposed to that phenomenon.
You can liken this to some people who watch sports just because that's what their colleagues are likely to talk about at the watercooler, and they don't want to feel left out by not knowing a single thing about what's being referred to.
So if people on your social networks are discussing the latest episode of Game of Thrones, it's not so much the issue that you may only be able to see it (legally) a week later. It's that by the time that week is done, if you were to try talking about it it'd be like saying "The cake is a lie!" and "Bruce Willis is dead people!". Your entire discussion is old news and hardly anybody will want to engage you.
That may not matter to you, particularly. I certainly don't give a flying brick. But to many, many people - it matters.
The media companies would do well to recognize this, but they would rather negotiate large sums with foreign distributors, networks, etc. According to their accountants, any lost sales as a result are insignificant compared to the lost sales, contracts, etc. if they were to try and offer their content directly to any and all who are interested for a low price.
Problem is, they are often the indistinguishable.
Say facebook decides to track their users physical whereabouts and makes them automatically 'like' a profile that is attached to an establishment they entered. People revolt (well, hopefully), and then.. what?
Was it malice? Well it certainly was intentional. I'm sure they didn't mean any harm, just that people took offense to it.
Was it stupidity to think that people wouldn't take offense to it? Perhaps, but certainly the implementation wasn't the result of that stupidity. The stupidity there is only tangentially related.
In this particular case, what would the stupidity be? That the censoring was applied to the wrong item (an album, rather than, say an app that offers jailbreaking)? Because that still smells an awful lot like malice to me.
The only way it could be actual stupidity is if whoever writes their censorship words list was meant to enter e.g. 'cocksucker' and ended up entering 'jailbreak' instead. A common typo, I'm sure.
*tap tap* is this thing on?
-----
Title: Scheduled SpaceX Launch Scrubbed at the Last Minute
Description: The kids whose experiment was scheduled to go into space were disappointed but not crushed by the delay
00:00) TITLE
A SlashdotTV title animation appears.
00:05) TITLE
The view fades to that of Timothy Lord on the grounds at Cape Canaveral.
00:05) Timothy
This is not what anyone saw today on Cape Canaveral.
00:08) TITLE
An animation sequence of what was to be the SpaceX Falcon+Dragon launch is shown with "- animated simulation - do not try at home" repeatedly scrolling past in the bottom. Hereafter referred to as "SpaceX animated simulation".
00:19) Timothy
Instead it was pretty darn disappointing when today's launch of SpaceX's Dragon capsule was nixed with just seconds on the clock.
00:25) Timothy
An early announcement said the abort was based on a high pressure reading in engine number 5.
00:29) TITLE
SpaceX animated simulation is shown.
00:33) Timothy
Among those disappointed by the launch were some students who were here all the way from Indiana to watch the launch of an experiment they've been working on since last October.
00:40) TITLE
A shot of three kids at the Cape Canaveral facilities appears.
00:40) J.P.
I am J.P. [last name]
00:42) Cameron
And I'm Cameron [last name]
00:44) Jack
And I'm Jack [last name]
00:45) J.P.
We are from Highland, Indiana.
We were here to see the Falcon 9 take off, with our experiment, for the International Space Station.
00:56) J.P.
Our experiment is: how does microgravity affect the nutritional value of a 92M72 genetically modified soy bean sprout.
01:08) J.P.
Astronauts were gonna perform the experiment, and then it was gonna be sent back down to Earth, and we were gonna also perform the experiment on Earth, and compare the results.
01:21) Jack
It's an after-school extracurricular club that we have.
01:25) Jack
The shirts we got from Pioneer [Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc -- ed.] who gave us a grant to come down here.
They gave us the seeds, and so they gave us a grant to get some press for the shirts and stuff, and they gave us a grant to come down here - they paid for everything, so..
01:39) Jack
I'm not too disappointed because.. it's a space program and things happen, and we have Tuesday to look forward to - whether on TV or we get to come here - and we'll see what happens.
01:50) TITLE
SpaceX animated simulation is shown.
01:55) TITLE
The view fades back to Timothy on the grounds at Cape Canaveral.
01:56) Timothy
The next launch window is Tuesday, about 72 hours from now.
Hopefully the fourth time's the charm, and we'll actually see both Falcon and Dragon take off.
02:03) TITLE
SpaceX animated simulation is shown.
02:18) TITLE
A SlashdotTV credits animation sequence is shown. The credits depicted are:
Camera and narration: Timothy Lord
Edited by Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
Opening title by Danielle Attinella
Animated footage supplied by SpaceX
-----
And why does the antenna no longer break out of the header bar?
Excellent reply and I thank you for taking the time to revisit and post it.
Oh I'm not saying he shouldn't feel bad about it - that's highly personal. But unless he screwed up on his end of the deal of the relationship (e.g. failed to communicate to her what he was doing and how that may impact her as well - I don't know why she was arrested, anybody?), his heart - so to speak - may well ache, but in his mind he should realize that this may not have been the girl for him.
As for whether or not she was ugly... I don't even know where that factors in :D
setting aside the meat of the story for a moment..
Perhaps he left the seat up. Perhaps he failed to inform her that he was purposefully taunting the authorities. She may have had crappy or good reasons to leave him for things he did or failed to do.
Or perhaps she just got tired of him being in jail, and found it too difficult to remain 'at his side'. In which case perhaps that's a 'weak' reason but not entirely non-understandable. Regardless of one's views, I'd imagine he'd want a girlfriend/wife who sticks with him no matter what (well, within reason) - so wouldn't he be better off without her anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for the guy and believe the case against him was indeed just to set an example (except that they keep 'setting examples' so it's certainly not having much of an effect). But the whole girlfriend/wife angle feels a bit too much like plucking at heartstrings.
I know you're AC and unlikely to return back here, but back in my AC days I did.. so let's give it a shot..
Precursor: I've argued for the removal of copyright, period, before - my view on this is rather black-and-white, if you will.
You say that 25 years is reasonable. But do you then believe that strict enforcement under the full penalty that the law allows is also reasonable for infringement of works that fall within that 25-year period?
You note that you 'might' be willing to pay for a new movie. Can you expand on the 'might'?
Specifically, are you saying that you may or may not even want to see the new movie (and thus payment being implied in the case where you do want to see it) - or are you saying that if you want to see the movie, you might pay for it, but then again you might still 'pirate' it as you have been doing?
In the latter case, how do you believe that your argument for a 25-year period is bolstered by that behavior?
You also only note that you might be willing 'to pay' for a new movie. I would be willing to pay for a Lamborghini, myself, but not the several hundreds of thousands of dollars they currently go for. What do you feel is a reasonable price for a new movie - taking into account, say, day 1 of release?
The remainder of your comment takes a turn. Lobbying for laws has always been 'a business model', but one might well argue that in this case it's not particularly working anyway. One might also well argue that being backed into the corner they're in is not solely their own doing. After all, even if the film industry had caught on early and started putting every movie in their library and new releases as high quality files online without DRM for the cost of $1 each in a well-organized system with an open API so that it could also be offered through e.g. IMDB or any other site... then each movie would still find its way onto sites that will simply bypass that $1 payment and have every bit the breadth of offering, quality, and ease of use.. as those are mere technical limitations that are easily overcome. I have no doubt that it would have cut into 'piracy' substantially - given that there are people who will happily use their Roku to buy an Amazon Prime movie that for all intents and purposes may as well be DRM'd and can only be played back for 24 hours after having started it and must be started within a 48-hour period (iirc). But then again, the Roku box doesn't have an interface to piracy sites. Some others do. Over here it's not entirely uncommon for people to have a big-name media player with official 'newsgroups' support and people will simply hook that up to their favorite binaries server and download the latest movies for free (or something like $8/month if applicable to the binaries server), while people paying to see a movie on demand is far less common.
As to whether they should take a revenue cut... I don't believe they 'should'. That implies direction from above. I believe that if people buy their merchandise less, revenue cuts will follow. Basic business mechanisms will deal with revenue rise/fall - there's no 'should' required or desirable any more than a their desire of a revenue rise that 'should' happen by making it law for everybody to buy at least 1 movie per month. Legislation that says "pirating is disallowed" is vastly different from "you must buy", as the former still leaves the option of neither pirating -nor- buying.
Yes, sorry - I had added links after previewing in a separate tab, but ended up submitting the original.
So here we go:
KickStarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/
IndieGoGo: http://www.indiegogo.com/
RocketHub: http://www.rockethub.com/
Mythic: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/273246798/mythic-the-story-of-gods-and-men
Projektor: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1747147409/projektor-make-your-mobile-devices-larger-than-lif
KickStarter Mobile Phone App project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/128239212/kickstarter-mobile-phone-app
GloSpex (original): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816244302/glospex
Go GloSpex (resubmit): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816244302/go-glospex
Double Fine adventure: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
Pebble: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/
Javascript timer with now-blank divs that once housed actual server-written content - view any project page source, look for "ksr_page_timer". The divs that follow once contained server-written data (e.g. "44 hours left") - which needn't have been removed for the javascript timer to work.
xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/1055/
Quirky: http://www.quirky.com/
Note that the example projects mentioned were but a few. There's so many more that would stand out as examples of things where better screening, intervention, communication and combinations of the aforementioned would have been thoroughly welcome and easily serve as material that could cause a 'PR hit' than the subject matter of TFA.
Shouldn't that be "If MS will be"? Or is the U.S. already being flooded with marketing material in which there's little to no differentiation being made, for devices that do not yet publicly exist running operating systems that are not as of yet finalized?
Because it's either that, or we're making assumptions here for the sake of bolstering arguments.
I love KickStarter and am a backer of various projects there. Also at IndieGoGo and RocketHub. Suffice to say, I love the concept.
That said... they're getting a PR hit over this? Give me a break. As it is, perhaps it'd be a good thing so that the public can vet projects before they actually go live for funding. That way KickStarter could avoid some things that they really should have gotten PR hits over.
Like scam projects. They got very limited exposure for that recently with the Mythic project, but at least it resulted in it being shut down. Contrast that with the Projektor project which merrily ended - thankfully unfunded as the people leaving comments warned everybody off and caused others to withdraw (on the up side, KS only runs the charge if the project is successful).
Or like their inability to communicate appropriately. For example, to the KickStarter Mobile App guys. Approved on Day 1, suspended on Day 2. Or to the Glospex guy, whose first attempt failed so he closed early, re-submitted with a lower goal and better material, exceeded that goal, but a few days before close got suspended. Why? They won't tell them. Or, you know, to the public. Especially backers. Unless there's some privacy-sensitive reason for suspending a project, how about letting backers know?
That inability to communicate goes away right quick when you have a highly successful project, though. The Double Fine guys ($3mil+) got the KickStarter people to appear live in their ustream.
In fact, they're very willing to work with you when you bring in the big bucks. You've heard of Pebble, right? That project is still going - 4 days left. Oh, but you can't actually pledge at a level that would net you the Pebble watch anymore. They managed to wave a magic wand that other project creators couldn't in the past and closed all the pledges (except the $1 one) by marking them as limited reward pledges. Why? No idea - if you can have 85,000 watches manufactured, 100,000 is hardly a huge step over that.. you don't even have to worry about warehousing if you have things shipped in a staggered fashion. On the other hand, through their own store they will sell for $150+, while through KickStarter they get - after the KickStarter / Amazon deduction - about $105. More power to them, but what a crap maneuver to pull. ( For the curious, that project is still, currently, pulling in $400/hour.. People are crazy. )
And don't even get me started on whoever is writing their web code and killed their server-written static countdown, replacing it with a javascript one. With javascript disabled, you can now not even see how long the project will last anymore. Though I suppose not even the nerdiest of news sites would bother writing about that one ;)
Seriously, though.. the press are trying to hop on the "KickStarter is doomed to fail!" bandwagon. I was saddened that even xkcd decided to do a comic about it (because what comic hasn't yet?) in a somewhat negative light (really, there's not that much more competition post-Double Fine, which never even impacted any category outside of computer gaming anyway, and getting noticed doesn't require extremes - just some marketing.. as it always has).
KickStarter is thriving, and they're in the limelight, so I guess some negative attention after people trying to flaunt their projects all over the (popular) press is natural. But it all seems too much like knee-jerk reactions to a concept that's been going on for years, or a poor attempt at trying to marry their "I told you so!"-driven stories about KickStarter with their "Major Site Hack of the Day"-driven stories.
I can't wait for them to discovery Quirky. The press should have a field day with all the stuff they can conjure up about that one.
No, the CSS rules say that when there are conflicts, the last one overrides.
For example, if I specify background-color twice for the same selector (or selectors that end up selecting the same elements), then the last-specified overrules any prior ones.
In the case of the vendor-specific prefixes, however, there is no conflict. Keep in mind that browsers aren't even supposed to be reading other browers/vendor/engine/whatever prefix rules.
I.e. -webkit-thing -moz-thing and -o-thing do not conflict because they by definition do not conflict.
That of course changes if you start doing a search&replace for -webkit- to replace with -o-, then all of a sudden you get -o-thing -moz-thing and -o-thing. Then you get a conflict. But that's an enthusiastically stupid method of doing it for the very reason I outlined in my post; if everybody started aliasing everybody else, then web developers will definitely not bother with small marketshare browsers anymore because they can't even be sure which one gets applied anymore.
I know what you're thinking.. "That's the point! Hopefully those web developers will then just drop the prefixes altogether!" - except that Opera has themselves explained that they don't even support some of the non-prefixed versions because they are not set in stone in the standard.
So what's the more likely outcome? -webkit- prefixes for everyone.
( And no, I'm not one of those developers - I actually try to stay away from anything that requires a prefix for the very reason that I'd be writing prefixes all day long even with macros. It may make a page less shiny, not have a pretty icon on iPhones, etc. but then I don't care about that. Others, however, do. It's them, among others, who should take issue with this. )
It's called an example. I can go into features that are far more subtle in difference between browsers, but pointing you to google should be enough.
Which brings me to..
Excellent. Mind telling the browser vendors that, so that people don't even have to use any browser-specific bits anymore? That includes letting things be dealt with automatically using jquery and other frameworks. Just because you've passed that burden off to a third party doesn't mean it's not there. I swear I explained this in paragraph 1 :)
I wholly agree that in principle they're not doing this so that people will -start- using the -webkit- prefixes. I even believe that if they had the power to stop people from using them, they would.
But the reality of the matter is that people already are using them and aren't about to listen to Opera or Mozilla's pleas to either stop doing so (and make their sites less shiny in webkit browsers, which dominate the mobile market, own the Apple market, and is strong on others via Chrome and derivatives) or add their own vendor-specific prefixes just to deal with their tiny market.
The reality is that Opera doesn't want their users to go "the sites I visit look way better in Chrome/Safari/whatever, so I'll use that instead of Opera" - and thus started accepting the -webkit- prefixes for themselves.
And thus the reality is that people who were using -webkit- will continue to do so, knowing that now Opera, Mozilla and even IE (to an extent) will accept them), and others will be encouraged to do so (because the non-prefixed versions get ignored and they do want the shiny).
The decision to accept -webkit- prefixes effects the complete opposite result of what is being aimed for.
( Not that they have a choice. )
Those bad old days are ongoing. Just because everybody and their dog are including jquery now doesn't mean the sites aren't still using browser-specific javascript, css, markup, etc.
Which, unfortunately, got broken with the popularity of WebKit (whether one blames Apple or Google, doesn't really matter), because designers just started using the webkit prefixed CSS and ignored the rest because it still looked 'okay enough' in other browsers, so why bother making those look 'great'?
The same applies to things outside of the CSS realm, like the apple-touch-icon link. Android uses it. Yep - want pretty bookmarks on Android? Specify the Apple (by name) icons.
Largely this is because the standards people are moving way, way too slow.
But then there's the flipside of the coin. The Opera article in which they announced - along with Mozilla - to support some webkit prefixes, was hilarious.
Their solution is to essentially alias the webkit prefixes to their own. Fine, right? But what happens if there's directives for both? Well, the last one specified overrides. Note that not the vendor-specific one that applies to that vendor's browser overrides, just the last one specified.
So when it comes time to build a site that works well on all browsers, including the ones that use such aliasing, what do they suggest?
But then they also note that for some features, they don't support the prefix-less version for reasons of it not being finalized yet.
So let's say webkit specifies a blue background, moz specifies a yellow one, and o specifies red. When you view it in Opera it will be? red.
Now you view it in a Mozilla browser, using the same aliasing nonsense, what color will it be? red. Opera's. Because that was specified last.
Want to fix it to yellow? You'll have to specify the moz line last.
Except that then Opera will also render it in yellow.
It's all good and well to want to accept other vendors' prefixes, but why would you not let your own override, rather than the last-specified? I realize that as CSS goes, last-specified is supposed to override when there are conflicting specifications... but given the vendor-specific prefixes, there is no actual conflict.
Most hilariously, they already anticipated one response... "So I only need to use -webkit- prefixes now? w00t!" and answered it with "absolutely not." and then go on to give a very, very weak defense for why developers shouldn't do exactly that. Use the webkit prefixes where webkit doesn't make use of the non-prefixed version, use the non-prefixed version to make the page future-proof (assuming the behavior stays the same, but them's the breaks), and call it a day, because Opera now supports the webkit prefix, Mozilla apparently intends to support it, and IE... well, IE...
I was going to post something along these lines...
It's a combination of "I told you so!" and news sites just wanting to drive 'bad news' in general. Bad news gets more eyes. More comments. More facebook likes. More tweets. And, ultimately, more advertising money.
Title: Slashdot's SlashBI: All Your Busines Intelligence Info in One Place
Description: SlashBI is a new site for the latest in business intelligence news and analysis, created each day by the industry's top experts, and produced by Slashdot.
00:00) <TITLE>
A small picture of "Nick Kowalski - Senior Editor, Geeknet" appears over a screenshot of the Slashdot website featuring the "Bitcoin Mining Startup gets $500k in Venture Capital" story which slowly zooms out.
00:00) Nick>
Slashdot is growing.
We have exciting new sites in the works.
00:04) <TITLE>
The backdrop changes to that of a blurred view of the SlashBI page, that slowly becomes sharper, featuring the post "B.I. Analysts: Start with the Right Questions, Then Use Tools".
00:04) Nick>
The first one, SlashBI, focuses on the fast-changing world of Business Intelligence.
00:11) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a post with a tree graph from the "Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are driving the need for more storage." article.
00:11) Nick>
Its articles and opinion pieces, which are created by a mix of technologists and experts, field everything from BI fundamentals for businesses [...]
00:18) <TITLE>
The view changes to the "Choosing a Database That's Right for Your Business" post.
00:18) Nick>
[...] to choosing the right database.
00:20) <TITLE>
The view changes to an interview video.
00:20) Nick>
SlashBI will also feature videos of developers and other notable figures in BI.
00:25) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of the "Salesforce EVP Byron Sebastian: Platform-as-a-Service Here to Stay" post.
00:25) Nick>
More companies than ever are relying on Business Intelligence apps that collect and analyze data.
00:32) <TITLE>
The view changes to a screenshot of another article listing a few BI mobile apps.
00:32) Nick>
With this information in hand, executives can make more informed choices [...]
00:35) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of an overview of several SlashBI posts.
00:35) Nick>
[...] about everything from marketing and sales to production.
00:37) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of several styles of BI analysis graphs
00:37) Nick>
Rapidly growing areas of Business Intelligence include predictive analytics, datamining and performance management.
00:44) <TITLE>
The view changes to a still of, identified by caption, "Crawford Del Prete - Executive Vice President, WW Research Products - IDC" as it fades to a graph with a generally upward trend.
00:44) Nick>
Research from IDC predicts the big data market will grow from $3.2B in 2010 to $16.9B in 2013.
00:55) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a car with a through-hood turbocharger with its engine shown.
00:55) Nick>
That's more than enough information growth to supercharge the BI sector.
00:58) <TITLE>
The view changes to an overview of SlashBI posts scrolling past.
00:58) Nick>
SlashBI's news stream will keep up-to-the-minute track of the latest acquisitions and software releases, [...]
01:05) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of the "Death of the Salesmen: The Geeks Did It" op-ed post.
01:05) Nick>
[...] while its analysts and pundits offer a big picture view of the action.
01:08) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a stylized head shown in profile with various technical elements within, and the text "Business Intelligence - http://slashdot.org/topic/bi" overlaid on it.
01:08) Nick>
So, all the intelligence you'll need on Business Intelligence.