The economy has continued to worsen in the previous two years and unemployment continues to rise. It is not at all unreasonable to think more and more American consumers are finally awakening to the depth of the economic crisis and beginning to ignore the irrational exuberance network news tends to spew.
Couldn't tell you that. What I can tell you is "Apple did it" holds about as much water explaining the decline of the videogame industry as " did it" does for explaining physical phenomena unless someone has better statistics than a loose correlation between a product release and a sharper decline in an already declining industry.
If you believe all the increasingly speculative articles lately, the ipad has killed videogames, netbooks, paper books, adobe, countless child laborers, and who knows what else.
Seems to me all it's killed is what shreds of reason Apple fans had left.
I think I was going to whine about advertising, but I like that guy's full disclosure argument and the related one about doing the same for the chronic corporate apologist armies of apple and such.
Carry on knowing you have placated the curiosity of some random jerkoff lol
What's with that logo after your username? Some googling showed it to be your company's logo, but I don't understand why it would be displayed with your posts.
It's really eye-catching in a land of plaintext usernames. In a bad way.
Are you disagreeing with me or what? You don't need functional knowledge of mechanical devices to use them, but you should probably be aware of the privacy implications of using them if you care about privacy.
Might as well be surprised facebook wall posts are public. It's knowledge that comes from the most basic familiarity with the tech. Familiarity one should probably possess before making use of said tech, especially if you're using that technology to violate copyright laws.
I won't be shocked when someone tells me you can get a picture of at least 70% of the people on a flight if you bring a camera to the gate at boarding time.
I've been doing a horrible job of clearly making my implications lately, lol.
I didn't mean to imply any sort of puritanical value, or even to imply that something "addictive" is bad. If anything, I'd say any act someone enjoys can reach the level of addiction given enough other coinciding factors, and addictive behavior is rarely even the "fault" of the specific behavior but more an emergent consequence of a number of things.
I've been up all night and am now rambling. I hope I haven't said anything too stupid.
Does this mean fatty food is "that" addictive, or does this perhaps mean cocaine isn't that addictive? Though I suppose the mere notion of shades of "addictiveness" can be dishonest itself, considering the binary nature of addiction (you either are, or you aren't, and exhibit a different set of behaviors based on that).
Also, I wonder if this study holds true for various other pleasurable inputs. As far as anyone knows, cocaine acts by causing direct stimulation of the reward center, a property shared by (as far as I know) any behavior the brain seeks to reinforce, including eating energy dense foods, so I wonder if things like bathing and receiving affection could also demonstrate similar "cocaine-like addictions," witness OCD handwashing and narcissism.
Seems like the scientists continue to find supporting evidence for the brilliant motto, "Everything in moderation. Including moderation." Except probably cocaine.
Scientists on earth were said to be embarrassed by overlooking what had been there all along, and promised to never again take what they have for granted.
"It's like some crappy teen drama, and we just had to wait for the prom scene to realize how beautiful our soft-spoken nerdy friend is."
90% of the universe could not be reached for comment, as it decided itself too good for its unappreciative inattentive "friends" and went to the football players' afterparty.
Fuck you, man. I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Here I am, newly unemployed, bored out of my mind trying to have a good time mocking the folly of those I envy (someone getting paid enough to support a family by pretending he's John Madden announcing his team's gradual march down the supply curve) and you have to slap me in the face with a cynical expose of what turns out to be a well-considered and sinister plot to maintain the establishment's stranglehold over world markets of both products and ideas.
I'm gonna go play with my roommate's cat. And I hate cats. Microsoft probably operates entire underground breeding stations for stray cats. Every adopted stray and the ensuing "beer knocked over on laptop" is another license fee in their pocket.
Perhaps I failed at properly representing my point.
There is always some new technology signaling the end of current technology. There are always some hurdles that remain before this technology overtakes current tech because otherwise, well, it already would have.
Apparently, there is also always a market for tech writers who can sensationalize incremental price drops in consumer tech. HARD DRIVES WERE HERE TO STAY, FOREVER, UNTIL THESE NEW AMAZING PRICE DROPS HAVE FINALLY OPENED OUR EYES AND STARTED THIS AMAZING DEATH CLOCK FOR HARD DRIVES THAT NOBODY SAW COMING.
I'm not sure your specifics on the economics of consumer electronics are relevant.
I also disagree with your point on helicopters and solar cells. You could have said SSDs "have inefficiencies built into them that cause their cost to remain relatively high" a number of years ago and been correct about them. It would be naive to assume helicopters and solar cells won't undergo technological advances that result in significantly lower costs of construction.
Helicopters signal the end of automobiles, just as soon as their poor $$/mile traveled ratio reaches parity, but you can buy helicopters from Air Hog right now!
Solar panels signal the end of nuclear power AND the oil industry, just as soon as their poor $$/watt ratio reaches parity! But you can get a solar powered calculator RIGHT NOW!
You actually raise an interesting alternate point by mentioning both cameras and accelerometers.
Consumer grade digital cameras already have image stabilization that works to some degree. It likely wouldn't be a stretch to apply that tech to the picoprojector. Stick the "bulb" or whatever on a ball and socket joint then using accelerometer input and camera input (like an optical mouse, say), use it to display a fairly consistently placed image, barring extreme changes in orientation.
I think enabling use of the projector while still being held will be a critical part of getting average people to accept these, at least as parts of their phones.
I'm from Tennessee, and people around here enjoy many amateur engineering projects involving projectiles. You may have heard of something called a "potato gun."
I have a feeling free-floating billboards would spark a resurgence in their popularity.
With this focus by Swiss leadership on the dubious social dangers of simulated violence, we can at least take heart knowing they've found solutions to all other social issues with demonstrated negative impacts.
I'm so happy to live in a world with such pragmatic leaders. We can always count on politicians for intellectually honest debate of issues and good faith efforts to fix the problems they can.
So nice to sleep easy knowing that representatives the world over don't let themselves get bogged down in baseless populist hysteria or abuse the power they're given to manipulate economies such that wealth is redistributed to their buddies.
I don't know what we'd do without our honest, hard working politicians. May your silver spoons never tarnish, you captains of hypocrisy.
Careful, our federal nannies don't much care for that kind of wondering. The mere act is probably technically "gaining unlawful access to a computer or network."
And do you have clearance from the FCC to operate a network at that altitude?
Also, do you realize the destructive potential channeled through your "device" (and precariously contained by parts sourced from the lowest [Chinese] bidder) represents severe danger of shock or electrocution to someone unfortunate enough to find themselves playing with it in the shower?
Sir, we're going to need to examine the devices memory. We've heard there's rumors on the internets of drug dealing communist child molestors trafficking child porn on chips fabricated out of 110% pure cocaine. Please get in line and choose between a complimentary set of kneepads or astroglide. Just kidding. You think we can afford lube with all those federal agents we have to pay to deal with people like you?
I've never played City of Heroes, but I have to assume as an MMORPG its players cover a wide range of ages.
Why not just implement a public voting system that works along the lines of movie and game ratings, with the game client itself possessing a parental rating lock? There's much less grief-voting incentive, unless the playerbase includes a large number of pedophiles specifically looking to get furry porn voted down to a PG rating and expose some kids, but it wouldn't be hard to lock content's rating once it has received a certain number of trusted votes.
That brings me to another point: AFAIK this is a pay game, which means creating new accounts isn't free or trivial. Many other communities have implemented the idea of 'trusted users' who can be expected to vote reasonably. If someone is consistently voting erratically, stop weighing their votes as heavily as someone who has been spot-on with majority ratings in the past.
I don't quite understand why this guy seems set on only having a simple 'flag as inappropriate' button when there are so many more options available.
Because last I heard, having genes predisposing one to a heart attack pretty much guarantees it while many people live lengthy lives on extremely high fat and sodium diets (see the south).
Personally I want to know why a flamebait comment can't also be insightful, even if I think my above comment was more stating the obvious.
News is slow and Ars Technica has already declared the death of internet advertising. Those editors need to keep the content flowing before the gravy train derails.
What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.
Maybe editors are so hard up for pageviews that they'll post whatever inconsequential slop comes to mind, and internet users are just so hard up for interesting news that they'll comment on whatever garbage the editors feed them.
If the tech sites puked out story after story about motherfucking lolcats apparently Timothy would take the comments to indicate mass obsession with them, which, shit... bad example.
But seriously, who is actually obsessed with Google's favicon and who is just bored?
Slashdot Mirror
Please support your assertion.
The economy has continued to worsen in the previous two years and unemployment continues to rise. It is not at all unreasonable to think more and more American consumers are finally awakening to the depth of the economic crisis and beginning to ignore the irrational exuberance network news tends to spew.
Couldn't tell you that. What I can tell you is "Apple did it" holds about as much water explaining the decline of the videogame industry as " did it" does for explaining physical phenomena unless someone has better statistics than a loose correlation between a product release and a sharper decline in an already declining industry.
If you believe all the increasingly speculative articles lately, the ipad has killed videogames, netbooks, paper books, adobe, countless child laborers, and who knows what else.
Seems to me all it's killed is what shreds of reason Apple fans had left.
...and entertainment budgets tend to be the first cut during hard economic times. While true, your point does little to counter his.
I think I was going to whine about advertising, but I like that guy's full disclosure argument and the related one about doing the same for the chronic corporate apologist armies of apple and such.
Carry on knowing you have placated the curiosity of some random jerkoff lol
What's with that logo after your username? Some googling showed it to be your company's logo, but I don't understand why it would be displayed with your posts.
It's really eye-catching in a land of plaintext usernames. In a bad way.
Are you disagreeing with me or what? You don't need functional knowledge of mechanical devices to use them, but you should probably be aware of the privacy implications of using them if you care about privacy.
Might as well be surprised facebook wall posts are public. It's knowledge that comes from the most basic familiarity with the tech. Familiarity one should probably possess before making use of said tech, especially if you're using that technology to violate copyright laws.
I won't be shocked when someone tells me you can get a picture of at least 70% of the people on a flight if you bring a camera to the gate at boarding time.
It is an important reminder of just how ignorant most technology users are of the very tools they're using.
If this is that big a deal, I hope nobody finds out I've actually been having sex while the economy tanks.
Especially my wife.
I've been doing a horrible job of clearly making my implications lately, lol.
I didn't mean to imply any sort of puritanical value, or even to imply that something "addictive" is bad. If anything, I'd say any act someone enjoys can reach the level of addiction given enough other coinciding factors, and addictive behavior is rarely even the "fault" of the specific behavior but more an emergent consequence of a number of things.
I've been up all night and am now rambling. I hope I haven't said anything too stupid.
Does this mean fatty food is "that" addictive, or does this perhaps mean cocaine isn't that addictive? Though I suppose the mere notion of shades of "addictiveness" can be dishonest itself, considering the binary nature of addiction (you either are, or you aren't, and exhibit a different set of behaviors based on that).
Also, I wonder if this study holds true for various other pleasurable inputs. As far as anyone knows, cocaine acts by causing direct stimulation of the reward center, a property shared by (as far as I know) any behavior the brain seeks to reinforce, including eating energy dense foods, so I wonder if things like bathing and receiving affection could also demonstrate similar "cocaine-like addictions," witness OCD handwashing and narcissism.
Seems like the scientists continue to find supporting evidence for the brilliant motto, "Everything in moderation. Including moderation." Except probably cocaine.
Scientists on earth were said to be embarrassed by overlooking what had been there all along, and promised to never again take what they have for granted.
"It's like some crappy teen drama, and we just had to wait for the prom scene to realize how beautiful our soft-spoken nerdy friend is."
90% of the universe could not be reached for comment, as it decided itself too good for its unappreciative inattentive "friends" and went to the football players' afterparty.
Fuck you, man. I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Here I am, newly unemployed, bored out of my mind trying to have a good time mocking the folly of those I envy (someone getting paid enough to support a family by pretending he's John Madden announcing his team's gradual march down the supply curve) and you have to slap me in the face with a cynical expose of what turns out to be a well-considered and sinister plot to maintain the establishment's stranglehold over world markets of both products and ideas.
I'm gonna go play with my roommate's cat. And I hate cats. Microsoft probably operates entire underground breeding stations for stray cats. Every adopted stray and the ensuing "beer knocked over on laptop" is another license fee in their pocket.
Perhaps I failed at properly representing my point.
There is always some new technology signaling the end of current technology. There are always some hurdles that remain before this technology overtakes current tech because otherwise, well, it already would have.
Apparently, there is also always a market for tech writers who can sensationalize incremental price drops in consumer tech. HARD DRIVES WERE HERE TO STAY, FOREVER, UNTIL THESE NEW AMAZING PRICE DROPS HAVE FINALLY OPENED OUR EYES AND STARTED THIS AMAZING DEATH CLOCK FOR HARD DRIVES THAT NOBODY SAW COMING.
I'm not sure your specifics on the economics of consumer electronics are relevant.
I also disagree with your point on helicopters and solar cells. You could have said SSDs "have inefficiencies built into them that cause their cost to remain relatively high" a number of years ago and been correct about them. It would be naive to assume helicopters and solar cells won't undergo technological advances that result in significantly lower costs of construction.
Dammit man, I'm a slashdot troll, not a market researcher!
Helicopters signal the end of automobiles, just as soon as their poor $$/mile traveled ratio reaches parity, but you can buy helicopters from Air Hog right now!
Solar panels signal the end of nuclear power AND the oil industry, just as soon as their poor $$/watt ratio reaches parity! But you can get a solar powered calculator RIGHT NOW!
Can I be a tech pundit yet?
You actually raise an interesting alternate point by mentioning both cameras and accelerometers.
Consumer grade digital cameras already have image stabilization that works to some degree. It likely wouldn't be a stretch to apply that tech to the picoprojector. Stick the "bulb" or whatever on a ball and socket joint then using accelerometer input and camera input (like an optical mouse, say), use it to display a fairly consistently placed image, barring extreme changes in orientation.
I think enabling use of the projector while still being held will be a critical part of getting average people to accept these, at least as parts of their phones.
I'm from Tennessee, and people around here enjoy many amateur engineering projects involving projectiles. You may have heard of something called a "potato gun."
I have a feeling free-floating billboards would spark a resurgence in their popularity.
With this focus by Swiss leadership on the dubious social dangers of simulated violence, we can at least take heart knowing they've found solutions to all other social issues with demonstrated negative impacts.
I'm so happy to live in a world with such pragmatic leaders. We can always count on politicians for intellectually honest debate of issues and good faith efforts to fix the problems they can.
So nice to sleep easy knowing that representatives the world over don't let themselves get bogged down in baseless populist hysteria or abuse the power they're given to manipulate economies such that wealth is redistributed to their buddies.
I don't know what we'd do without our honest, hard working politicians. May your silver spoons never tarnish, you captains of hypocrisy.
Careful, our federal nannies don't much care for that kind of wondering. The mere act is probably technically "gaining unlawful access to a computer or network."
And do you have clearance from the FCC to operate a network at that altitude?
Also, do you realize the destructive potential channeled through your "device" (and precariously contained by parts sourced from the lowest [Chinese] bidder) represents severe danger of shock or electrocution to someone unfortunate enough to find themselves playing with it in the shower?
Sir, we're going to need to examine the devices memory. We've heard there's rumors on the internets of drug dealing communist child molestors trafficking child porn on chips fabricated out of 110% pure cocaine. Please get in line and choose between a complimentary set of kneepads or astroglide. Just kidding. You think we can afford lube with all those federal agents we have to pay to deal with people like you?
That joke made my sense of humor murder my sympathy.
I've never played City of Heroes, but I have to assume as an MMORPG its players cover a wide range of ages.
Why not just implement a public voting system that works along the lines of movie and game ratings, with the game client itself possessing a parental rating lock? There's much less grief-voting incentive, unless the playerbase includes a large number of pedophiles specifically looking to get furry porn voted down to a PG rating and expose some kids, but it wouldn't be hard to lock content's rating once it has received a certain number of trusted votes.
That brings me to another point: AFAIK this is a pay game, which means creating new accounts isn't free or trivial. Many other communities have implemented the idea of 'trusted users' who can be expected to vote reasonably. If someone is consistently voting erratically, stop weighing their votes as heavily as someone who has been spot-on with majority ratings in the past.
I don't quite understand why this guy seems set on only having a simple 'flag as inappropriate' button when there are so many more options available.
Source?
Because last I heard, having genes predisposing one to a heart attack pretty much guarantees it while many people live lengthy lives on extremely high fat and sodium diets (see the south).
Personally I want to know why a flamebait comment can't also be insightful, even if I think my above comment was more stating the obvious.
News is slow and Ars Technica has already declared the death of internet advertising. Those editors need to keep the content flowing before the gravy train derails.
What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.
Maybe editors are so hard up for pageviews that they'll post whatever inconsequential slop comes to mind, and internet users are just so hard up for interesting news that they'll comment on whatever garbage the editors feed them.
If the tech sites puked out story after story about motherfucking lolcats apparently Timothy would take the comments to indicate mass obsession with them, which, shit... bad example.
But seriously, who is actually obsessed with Google's favicon and who is just bored?