Now, I'm sure Verizon should have been more flexible here, but not because she was a widow. Because the early termination fee is unfair in this circumstance. Do others get to be treated unfairly because they haven't had a bereavement?
Perhaps. It looks like it may be possible to use the same specification for Canvas as well.
The way I see it though, is that ability to use common equipment for transmission and receiving has so many benefits that if the first major broadcaster chooses a specific platform then all others would be wise to follow.
The BBC does have a lot of clout. If the BBC doesn't support a UK TV standard then that standard is not going to catch on in the UK.
And the BBC is a big international name. If the rest of Europe is looking for a solution they're quite likely to go for the same one simply for compatibility as long as it's a reasonably decent system.
The thing is, while there are a few websites that will have a handful of visitors but relate to multi-million pound businesses, most government websites are targeted at individuals. Thousands of people will visit the DfT website to renew their road tax every day.
On the other hand, does the food standards agency really need its own website, updated daily with separate pages for Scotland and Wales? Couldn't this be combined with several others into a single government information site? Does Ofsted really need a team of 4 to keep its website up to date? Some of these departments spend a few thousand outsourcing. Great! Can others? Well worth considering.
And even the ones that do provide a single reference for a handful of multi-million pound companies - can't they be made a little cheaper?
The iPhone 4 has two symmetrical slots in the stainless frame. If you short these slots, or cover them with your hand, the antenna performance will suffer (see this video I found on YouTube). There is no way around this, it's a design compromise that is forced by the requirements of the FCC, AT&T, Apple's marketing department and Apple's industrial designers, to name a few.
Possible solutions include:
having another small slot so the two antennae aren't right next to each other and you'd have to short both slots.
Cover with a non-conductive coating
Put the antennae actually inside the phone.
I guess there are some extremely complex technical or aesthetic or regulatory reasons why each of these isn't going to work but I'd like to know what they are.
Well, it's part of the spec that there's no guaranteed delivery time.
But the protocol should be able to deal with this. It's a well understood problem - TCP/IP needs to deal with out of order packet delivery. As far as I understand it you just need a sequence number.
This does seem to be pretty much what the safe harbor provisions are about.
Okay - really it was written at a time when people actually paid for web space, and it was to protect the providers from the copyright infringement of their paying customers rather than their free users, but in principle this is what the provisions are for.
They've spent billions on both those markets. If Microsoft had bought Sega's console division - something I'm sure Sega would have been happy to consider - they'd have spent roughly the same amount and everyone would have considered it a bargain. The result is that \microsoft is considered a serious player in the video games arena.
Bing has roughly 15% of Google's market share. Google is worth billions. Spending a couple of billion to gain a foothold there is well worth it.
These are expanding markets. They'll get their money back.
There are the numbers milliard and billiard for 1000 million and 1000 billion respectively, although I've typically heard the long winded version when it's used. In practice it doesn't matter that much. Values larger than a million aren't used that much except in finance. Science uses standard form and engineering uses SI units because they're less ambiguous.
You should realise that the "S" stands for seconds. Okay - it doesn't matter that much, but this is meant to be a technical site. The editors should really get this stuff right.
Well, you might have been able to say the same about Steve Jobs and Apple in 1998. They're both cut from the same mould. Both very aggressive businessmen. Both are willing to take risks. MS won't be able to gain a monopoly on anything new, since the Windows monopoly was a result of being in the right place at the right time, but they can easily grab a hefty market share of any emerging market. The company is doing pretty well ow in both video games and search, and at least with search, would have done better with a more aggressive, more aware leader.
Uhm... I wouldn't take the MPAA is the mafia rheotric too seriously.
The MPAA sues people for violating copyrights, and has a lot of influence in law making. The mafia buys politicians, kills people, and rigs entire elections.
The MPAA uses the laws that you disapprove of to produce something of value. The mafia ignores the laws and produces nothing.
Slightly aggressive business practices and organised crime aren't the same thing.
People who are willing to pay money for an illegal download would obviously pay at least something for a legal download. Some people probably believe these are genuine sites.
Now, I'm pretty neutral about people downloading movies for free. I don't think it does a lot of harm although the sense of entitlement a lot of downloaders have irritates me. These guys on the other hand, are directly profiting from someone else's work. Sure, the MPAA could compete pretty well if they dind't have to make the damn films in the first place.
This is exactly the sort of thing copyright law was intended to prevent. It's a system that has worked reasonably well for quite some time. I'm surprised there's so much sympathy for criminals.
It's just confusing how corporations are treated as people when in themselves they're not. They're an abstraction representing a group of people with a common goal.
While it's true that a corporation can't be imprisoned, that doesn't mean that corporations can break the law. Several people who worked for Enron are went to prison for fraud. Likewise immortality doesn't apply because they're not alive in the first place.
If a completely different set of people run a company, should they automatically be punished for the criminal behaviour of their predecessors? Even if the new owners uncover the crime and endeavour to make good on it?
A corporation commits a crime, and a person was responsible. If that person was the CEO, then the CEO should be charged. The regular shareholders haven't done anything wrong and are often the victims. Why should they be punished as well?
Was going to post pretty much the same. A typical Slashdot article will have mostly knee jerk reactions, a couple of trolls with a fair number of responses to those trolls, a handful of tired memes and probably about 5% with some sort of analysis or counterpoint.
It's not like it takes long to filter out the crud. One insight every 583 characters isn't too bad for unedited raw data.
Seriously where do you get that idea from? Did you read the thread?
The idea is that if a candidate's policies - we're talking about policies here not skin colour - are supported by a fraction of the populace, then those policies should get a roughly proportional fraction of the representation. So if a sixth of the population want spending on public transport, 2 sixths want reduced taxes, a sixth want spending on education and 2 sixths want everything to stay exactly as it is, and they all turn up to vote, and they're roughly evenly distributed, you get representatives for all those positions who get to argue it out and come to a compromise.
How is it punishing anyone to give them a voice proportionate to their support? How does this have anything to do with skin colour?
This isn't about lack of participation. It's about lack of representation for those who do participate. If the 49% do participate, they still get 0% of the representation.
Actually, when the recent European elections gave us 2 BNP MEPs, I made pretty much the same point. If people have political opinions that we find unpleasant then rigging the electoral system isn't the way to fix it.
It's not about skin colour. And it's a shame it's been presented like that.
If 16% of the populace broadly agree with a certain set of policies, then shouldn't those policies have 16% of the reputation? There are a lot of sets of policies, and lots of overlap between different candidates. But using a first past the post system means that all candidates may well be clones of the most popular candidate of a small minority. You lose any benefit of having multiple representatives.
Slashdot Mirror
True, I guess, but you don't even need a contract to have the legal right to be a dick.
Except she (the contractee) didn't die. Her husband did.
Talk about playing the sympathy card.
Now, I'm sure Verizon should have been more flexible here, but not because she was a widow. Because the early termination fee is unfair in this circumstance. Do others get to be treated unfairly because they haven't had a bereavement?
Perhaps. It looks like it may be possible to use the same specification for Canvas as well.
The way I see it though, is that ability to use common equipment for transmission and receiving has so many benefits that if the first major broadcaster chooses a specific platform then all others would be wise to follow.
The BBC does have a lot of clout. If the BBC doesn't support a UK TV standard then that standard is not going to catch on in the UK.
And the BBC is a big international name. If the rest of Europe is looking for a solution they're quite likely to go for the same one simply for compatibility as long as it's a reasonably decent system.
The thing is, while there are a few websites that will have a handful of visitors but relate to multi-million pound businesses, most government websites are targeted at individuals. Thousands of people will visit the DfT website to renew their road tax every day.
On the other hand, does the food standards agency really need its own website, updated daily with separate pages for Scotland and Wales? Couldn't this be combined with several others into a single government information site? Does Ofsted really need a team of 4 to keep its website up to date? Some of these departments spend a few thousand outsourcing. Great! Can others? Well worth considering.
And even the ones that do provide a single reference for a handful of multi-million pound companies - can't they be made a little cheaper?
Possible solutions include:
I guess there are some extremely complex technical or aesthetic or regulatory reasons why each of these isn't going to work but I'd like to know what they are.
Well, it's part of the spec that there's no guaranteed delivery time.
But the protocol should be able to deal with this. It's a well understood problem - TCP/IP needs to deal with out of order packet delivery. As far as I understand it you just need a sequence number.
This does seem to be pretty much what the safe harbor provisions are about.
Okay - really it was written at a time when people actually paid for web space, and it was to protect the providers from the copyright infringement of their paying customers rather than their free users, but in principle this is what the provisions are for.
They've spent billions on both those markets. If Microsoft had bought Sega's console division - something I'm sure Sega would have been happy to consider - they'd have spent roughly the same amount and everyone would have considered it a bargain. The result is that \microsoft is considered a serious player in the video games arena.
Bing has roughly 15% of Google's market share. Google is worth billions. Spending a couple of billion to gain a foothold there is well worth it.
These are expanding markets. They'll get their money back.
There are the numbers milliard and billiard for 1000 million and 1000 billion respectively, although I've typically heard the long winded version when it's used. In practice it doesn't matter that much. Values larger than a million aren't used that much except in finance. Science uses standard form and engineering uses SI units because they're less ambiguous.
You should realise that the "S" stands for seconds. Okay - it doesn't matter that much, but this is meant to be a technical site. The editors should really get this stuff right.
A lot of PCs only have VGA outputs out of that list.
It's not. It's a different API that has a subset of the functionality of OpenGL, and some superficial similarities.
I mix metaphors like a plague of rubber.
Well, you might have been able to say the same about Steve Jobs and Apple in 1998. They're both cut from the same mould. Both very aggressive businessmen. Both are willing to take risks. MS won't be able to gain a monopoly on anything new, since the Windows monopoly was a result of being in the right place at the right time, but they can easily grab a hefty market share of any emerging market. The company is doing pretty well ow in both video games and search, and at least with search, would have done better with a more aggressive, more aware leader.
Uhm... I wouldn't take the MPAA is the mafia rheotric too seriously.
The MPAA sues people for violating copyrights, and has a lot of influence in law making. The mafia buys politicians, kills people, and rigs entire elections.
The MPAA uses the laws that you disapprove of to produce something of value. The mafia ignores the laws and produces nothing.
Slightly aggressive business practices and organised crime aren't the same thing.
People who are willing to pay money for an illegal download would obviously pay at least something for a legal download. Some people probably believe these are genuine sites.
Now, I'm pretty neutral about people downloading movies for free. I don't think it does a lot of harm although the sense of entitlement a lot of downloaders have irritates me. These guys on the other hand, are directly profiting from someone else's work. Sure, the MPAA could compete pretty well if they dind't have to make the damn films in the first place.
This is exactly the sort of thing copyright law was intended to prevent. It's a system that has worked reasonably well for quite some time. I'm surprised there's so much sympathy for criminals.
They're not.
It's just confusing how corporations are treated as people when in themselves they're not. They're an abstraction representing a group of people with a common goal.
While it's true that a corporation can't be imprisoned, that doesn't mean that corporations can break the law. Several people who worked for Enron are went to prison for fraud. Likewise immortality doesn't apply because they're not alive in the first place.
If a completely different set of people run a company, should they automatically be punished for the criminal behaviour of their predecessors? Even if the new owners uncover the crime and endeavour to make good on it?
A corporation commits a crime, and a person was responsible. If that person was the CEO, then the CEO should be charged. The regular shareholders haven't done anything wrong and are often the victims. Why should they be punished as well?
Was going to post pretty much the same. A typical Slashdot article will have mostly knee jerk reactions, a couple of trolls with a fair number of responses to those trolls, a handful of tired memes and probably about 5% with some sort of analysis or counterpoint.
It's not like it takes long to filter out the crud. One insight every 583 characters isn't too bad for unedited raw data.
No!
Seriously where do you get that idea from? Did you read the thread?
The idea is that if a candidate's policies - we're talking about policies here not skin colour - are supported by a fraction of the populace, then those policies should get a roughly proportional fraction of the representation. So if a sixth of the population want spending on public transport, 2 sixths want reduced taxes, a sixth want spending on education and 2 sixths want everything to stay exactly as it is, and they all turn up to vote, and they're roughly evenly distributed, you get representatives for all those positions who get to argue it out and come to a compromise.
How is it punishing anyone to give them a voice proportionate to their support? How does this have anything to do with skin colour?
This isn't about lack of participation. It's about lack of representation for those who do participate. If the 49% do participate, they still get 0% of the representation.
A group of people that includes myself who consider themselves to be of the same mind.
Actually, when the recent European elections gave us 2 BNP MEPs, I made pretty much the same point. If people have political opinions that we find unpleasant then rigging the electoral system isn't the way to fix it.
It's not about skin colour. And it's a shame it's been presented like that.
If 16% of the populace broadly agree with a certain set of policies, then shouldn't those policies have 16% of the reputation? There are a lot of sets of policies, and lots of overlap between different candidates. But using a first past the post system means that all candidates may well be clones of the most popular candidate of a small minority. You lose any benefit of having multiple representatives.