I think the best solution would be apps and backup data on the cloud while the working data is local - in an open format like XML or something. So, if cloud company XZY goes out of business, at least you could write some scripts to retrieve the data from the local machine and convert it to another app.
Never, never, NEVER put the only copy of your data in one place. And a cloud service is just "one place."
3. Feds establish rate limits for services. Data access would not be unlimited, but rates should be limited to $.05 per megabyte. Voice access rates should be capped to $15 per 1000 minutes per line.
Data is not a commodity, data is a service
When I go and buy a jar of salsa, the manufacturer had to pay a specific amount of $ to manufacture that specific jar. If I do not buy it, he can keep it around and sell that jar to someone else tomorrow.
When I want to park in a parking space for an hour, however, the city does not have to pay someone $ to create an hour in which I could park. If I do not park there, then the city cannot keep around the hour I was going to buy and sell it to someone else.
In fact, if the city had magical parking meters that would safetly and immediately eject the car of any non-paying person immediately as soon as someone with a quarter wanted to park, the city could just let non-payers park there as much as they wanted, with the understanding their car might not be at the same location when they got back.
The city would be foolish not to do this, as the parking meter is just there to make sure that someone going to the store on that street (say, to buy a jar of salsa) can find someplace to park. While magical parking meters don't exist, this IS how bandwidth works on the internet.
Unless your ISP is a drooling moron, they are NOT paying per-kb, per-mb, or any real per-use fee at all. They signed an agreement with backbone providers to get a certain amount of bandwidth for a certain amount of time, and they don't pay any more for bandwidth on an hour when NO ONE uses their network than they do for the busiest hour of their year.
If AT&T really wants to keep bandwidth responsive, they want to decrease the effect that heavy users have on their network. The cheap way is to just lie and charge those heavy users more -- but that's not the right way. The right way would be to set a self-tiering structure, where so much network activity over so long just puts a heavy user's requests at a lower priority than the lighter user who pays the same amount.
Letting heavy users voluntarily pay more to get faster service would be a great revenue model, too. Especially since it wouldn't be in danger of the FCC declaring it unlawful.
My current phone is Windows Mobile and I'd have a hard time switching to anything that didn't let me use real C++.
1: Mojo apps are written in Javascript. You might get some faster custom API's later, but unless you're an established (i.e., trustworthy) company, Palm won't be giving you the lower level access.
2: what the hell are you making on a PDA that needs to handle memory allocation, anyway?
3: It's Linux at the core. If you really want to just muck around with it, you can get root and run whatever the @#$ you want trivially easy.
Well, almost a 360, before anyone could distribute a Palm app from any site, not a URL generated by Palm themselves.
I had a half dozen Palms from a IIIe to a 680 / TX. Exactly two apps were EVER distributed over the internet, and only after I'd already installed them locally.
If you have a USB cable and a modicum of search capability, you can instally whatever the hell you want on a WebOS phone.
I think it's time for the public to use eminent domain to seize the cables.
Eminent domain is the gov'ts ability to force a private party to sell something at fair market cost. So, what you're suggesting is that the gov't give verizon MORE money for their network.
The power you're looking for is "anti-trust" or, if you prefer, "nationalization."
Let me guess. You're an attorney? 'Cause that's where all the dollars go when you take that action. But good luck and if you win, enjoy that coupon for a free cellphone with the purchase of another.
You're assuming that this would lead to a class action. Not all vs. corporation lawsuits go along that route -- I wager your state has its slew of "little guy X sued big corp Y to get Y to do what Y promised" lawsuits.
Manufacturers using whatever IDs they like can result in collisions in the namespace, which will result in things like crashing and malfunction sooner or later.
Yes, eventually -- but the blame can be fairly clearly laid on the party that deviates from the standard.
No where did you say why Apple has to force iTunes to be compatible with third party devices. Anti trust is not a reason because Apple is not a monopoly.
Apple is large enough to be considered "monopolistic" in MP3 players, music downloads, or "consumer smartphones."
It would not be shocking if, after someone being stupid enough to sue over this, Apple wound up declared a monopoly on one or all of the areas I mentioned before.
Re:like Oddworld or Psychonauts
on
Imagination In Games
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
More to the article's point, I think that it's a bad thing that "genre" in gaming means "style of play mechanics,"
Video games are GAMES. They are not movies, or stories, or paintings. They are meant to be picked up and played by real people for fun. As such, it is entirely appropriate that their market distinction is not "type of story", but rather "type of game."
Old cars make us smile not for being better cars, but because they are rare, and a 59 Bel-Air is one of the rarer of the rare.
You're assuming that GM and the IIHS crashed an original car that could still be driven. They probably did the cheaper of:
1: Buy a beat-up Bel-Air that would never drive again, but whose body was in good condition. 2: Buy a rebuilt Bel-Air using original specs but modern parts 3: Just build one for test purpsoses.
Note that Obama's own budget guys are expecting to run deficits in his first four years (excluding the Stimulus package and bailouts, mind you) that will be larger than the total deficits of Bush's eight years.
Yeah, actually including two wars in your budget will do that.
The PC I'm typing this on has never gotten a virus. It's really not THAT hard if you pay even a little bit of attention.
Because its not going to randomly bluescreen?
No, you get random kernel panics. About as often as I get a "random" bluescreen. (Last time it happened was a poorly-seated daughterboard; switching to a newer case fixed that problem, and it's been rock solid ever since.)
Because its hardware lets you do more things faster?
There's something magical about the Apple HARDWARE that makes you more productive? Really? Last I saw, it was still a monitor, mouse, and keyboard -- everything else comes down to software & drive layout, and last I heard powermacs weren't used for render farms.
No you are not the only one. Some don't even login to Slashdot to post comments and refuse to be intimidated by the bullying tactic of adding the apellation 'coward' to the perfectly reasonable and sensible one of just 'anon'.
No, sorry, you're an anonymous coward.
Accoutns on/. allow you to join together a series of comments as "you", even if this/. you has no relation to the actual you. You dont' want to even stand two comments together? You're a coward.
And after that, it's to keep a list of everyone who has entered the bar for the history of it's operation. Much easier to identify "troublemakers" when you have a list of people who like to have fun once in a while.
You DO know that in many states, a bartender is legally responsible for anything you do while drunk from the moment you take a drink until you're finally sober, right?
Democrats are essentially saying "let government take over the insurers, then we will pay for a lot of it". Mind you they do not reduce the cost ( except around the edges), they just say the government will pay for something we cannot afford but never tell us that the government can't afford it either.
"Comparative effectiveness." : that is, the gov't will spend money to study which treatments work, and which ones don't. You know, actual scientific studies.
"Public Option" -- cut out the privately ran, for-profit insurance company which has an incentive to raise costs and deny coverage, and substitute a government agency. The private insurance companies will suddenly either have to provide a BETTER value than the feds, or go out of business.
The Dems have a solid plan. Hell, when they bother to dust it off, the Republicans have a fairly solid plan, too. ("tax health care, and move away from the employer-provided model.") You can say you don't like them, or complain about the shortcomings (real or perceived) of either, but please don't pretend that they don't have real suggestions for improvement just because your pet peeve isn't addressed yet.
He neglects to mention that neither the President of Congress have Constitutional authorization to legislate health care for private individuals, or to form National health care organizations.
*ahem*
US Constitution. Article 1. Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To... provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Under no variation of our language would forming a nationwide health care organization be neither "general Welfare" nor "Commerce among the several states." And the precise limits of what businesses can be regulated by Congress are fairly well defined by this point -- if your business is covered by the federal minimum wage, it can be smacked with a requirement to provide health care as well.
And that's not even touching on the set-militia-standards or spend-money powers Congress has. (Fun fact: did you know that, unless you happen to be disabled, eldery, a child, or a woman, YOU are part of the US militia?)
Then we will have been spared from putting 1/6 of our economy through a disaster.
Healthcare should not be 1/6th of our economy without being, as a pundit put it recently, "worlds ahead of anyone else's."
I will not weep if the health insurance companies go out of business. Too much of them are simply sucking out dollars without any benefit to anyone beyond themselves and their shareholders. For crying out loud, that puts them beneath WAL-MART on the value-to-America scale.
Computers were meant to do tasks like this. It's just the legal cabal, much like medical cabal, doesn't want computers holding their specialized knowledge because they know their jobs are no more sacred than any one elses any more.
1: Computers DO tasks like this. Every law office or law school worth a dollar has a subscription to a massive database of laws, regulations, bills, and court records. This is data that Google really can't do a good job on -- I mean, hell, they aren't even getting simple things like publication dates right, and you NEED to know things like that when you're dealing in law. (Is this contract I signed back in 1997 valid? Well, what were the laws in 1997?)
2: The "medical cabal" doesn't hoard specialized knowledge. They have specialized JUDGMENT. I don't go to my doctor because I want to know what the flu is or what some medications for asthma are. I want to know if *I* have the flu, or what some medications for *my* asthma are that I can try. A lawyer performs the same task -- not telling you what the law is, but telling you *how it applies to your specific situation*.
3: My job is "sacred" because I have distinct judgement, not because I read information in a book somewhere. Yours should be to, or else you're not worth minimum wage.
The entire law profession relies on the ambiguities...
Sorry, wrong. A huge proportion of the law profession traffics in certainty. As in, "hire your lawyer so you get a guaranteed answer as to what the contract to buy your first house means"
Two fun facts about ambiguity in law (at least in NYS):
1: Ambiguities in contracts are interpreted against the party that drafted the contract. If it a reasonable layperson can read your "buy my home" contract and get two answers as to which home you're talking about, the guy you're selling to gets to pick.
2: Ambiguity due to complexity can result in a contract -- or a regulation, or a law -- being simply thrown out by a judge.
Keep in mind who writes the laws and it's clear why the idea falls apart.
Laws are written by two parties that have a vested interest in making themselves look better than the other guy. THAT is the problem, not lawyers. Want to get better laws? Vote against any local politician who "brings home the bacon" or favors simple answers over complex ones.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the best solution would be apps and backup data on the cloud while the working data is local - in an open format like XML or something. So, if cloud company XZY goes out of business, at least you could write some scripts to retrieve the data from the local machine and convert it to another app.
Never, never, NEVER put the only copy of your data in one place. And a cloud service is just "one place."
3. Feds establish rate limits for services. Data access would not be unlimited, but rates should be limited to $.05 per megabyte. Voice access rates should be capped to $15 per 1000 minutes per line.
Data is not a commodity, data is a service
When I go and buy a jar of salsa, the manufacturer had to pay a specific amount of $ to manufacture that specific jar. If I do not buy it, he can keep it around and sell that jar to someone else tomorrow.
When I want to park in a parking space for an hour, however, the city does not have to pay someone $ to create an hour in which I could park. If I do not park there, then the city cannot keep around the hour I was going to buy and sell it to someone else.
In fact, if the city had magical parking meters that would safetly and immediately eject the car of any non-paying person immediately as soon as someone with a quarter wanted to park, the city could just let non-payers park there as much as they wanted, with the understanding their car might not be at the same location when they got back.
The city would be foolish not to do this, as the parking meter is just there to make sure that someone going to the store on that street (say, to buy a jar of salsa) can find someplace to park. While magical parking meters don't exist, this IS how bandwidth works on the internet.
Unless your ISP is a drooling moron, they are NOT paying per-kb, per-mb, or any real per-use fee at all. They signed an agreement with backbone providers to get a certain amount of bandwidth for a certain amount of time, and they don't pay any more for bandwidth on an hour when NO ONE uses their network than they do for the busiest hour of their year.
If AT&T really wants to keep bandwidth responsive, they want to decrease the effect that heavy users have on their network. The cheap way is to just lie and charge those heavy users more -- but that's not the right way. The right way would be to set a self-tiering structure, where so much network activity over so long just puts a heavy user's requests at a lower priority than the lighter user who pays the same amount.
Letting heavy users voluntarily pay more to get faster service would be a great revenue model, too. Especially since it wouldn't be in danger of the FCC declaring it unlawful.
My current phone is Windows Mobile and I'd have a hard time switching to anything that didn't let me use real C++.
1: Mojo apps are written in Javascript. You might get some faster custom API's later, but unless you're an established (i.e., trustworthy) company, Palm won't be giving you the lower level access.
2: what the hell are you making on a PDA that needs to handle memory allocation, anyway?
3: It's Linux at the core. If you really want to just muck around with it, you can get root and run whatever the @#$ you want trivially easy.
Well, almost a 360, before anyone could distribute a Palm app from any site, not a URL generated by Palm themselves.
I had a half dozen Palms from a IIIe to a 680 / TX. Exactly two apps were EVER distributed over the internet, and only after I'd already installed them locally.
If you have a USB cable and a modicum of search capability, you can instally whatever the hell you want on a WebOS phone.
I think it's time for the public to use eminent domain to seize the cables.
Eminent domain is the gov'ts ability to force a private party to sell something at fair market cost. So, what you're suggesting is that the gov't give verizon MORE money for their network.
The power you're looking for is "anti-trust" or, if you prefer, "nationalization."
Let me guess. You're an attorney? 'Cause that's where all the dollars go when you take that action. But good luck and if you win, enjoy that coupon for a free cellphone with the purchase of another.
You're assuming that this would lead to a class action. Not all vs. corporation lawsuits go along that route -- I wager your state has its slew of "little guy X sued big corp Y to get Y to do what Y promised" lawsuits.
Why not just used the published method as BlackBerry / RIM does?
Because doing so costs more money than the two hours of programmer time Palm has spent on this media sync feature.
Manufacturers using whatever IDs they like can result in collisions in the namespace, which will result in things like crashing and malfunction sooner or later.
Yes, eventually -- but the blame can be fairly clearly laid on the party that deviates from the standard.
No where did you say why Apple has to force iTunes to be compatible with third party devices. Anti trust is not a reason because Apple is not a monopoly.
Apple is large enough to be considered "monopolistic" in MP3 players, music downloads, or "consumer smartphones."
It would not be shocking if, after someone being stupid enough to sue over this, Apple wound up declared a monopoly on one or all of the areas I mentioned before.
More to the article's point, I think that it's a bad thing that "genre" in gaming means "style of play mechanics,"
Video games are GAMES. They are not movies, or stories, or paintings. They are meant to be picked up and played by real people for fun. As such, it is entirely appropriate that their market distinction is not "type of story", but rather "type of game."
Old cars make us smile not for being better cars, but because they are rare, and a 59 Bel-Air is one of the rarer of the rare.
You're assuming that GM and the IIHS crashed an original car that could still be driven. They probably did the cheaper of:
1: Buy a beat-up Bel-Air that would never drive again, but whose body was in good condition.
2: Buy a rebuilt Bel-Air using original specs but modern parts
3: Just build one for test purpsoses.
Note that Obama's own budget guys are expecting to run deficits in his first four years (excluding the Stimulus package and bailouts, mind you) that will be larger than the total deficits of Bush's eight years.
Yeah, actually including two wars in your budget will do that.
There might be some inherent value in knowing how to use the underlying skills that make up the essential underpinnings of literacy?
Cursive writing is no more a requirement to literacy than knowing how to operate a printing press.
Now, "any form of writing at all" is important. But curisive?
Gee I don't know, I use a calculator to do all my math at work, why should I learn how to do long division?
Short division should be good enough for you.
Should be: MIT Project "Gaydar" Shakes Privacy Assumptions of Stupid Twats Who Still Won't Care
They shouldn't. They just need to contextualize anything that they get accused of doing.
Because its hard to get a virus?
The PC I'm typing this on has never gotten a virus. It's really not THAT hard if you pay even a little bit of attention.
Because its not going to randomly bluescreen?
No, you get random kernel panics. About as often as I get a "random" bluescreen. (Last time it happened was a poorly-seated daughterboard; switching to a newer case fixed that problem, and it's been rock solid ever since.)
Because its hardware lets you do more things faster?
There's something magical about the Apple HARDWARE that makes you more productive? Really? Last I saw, it was still a monitor, mouse, and keyboard -- everything else comes down to software & drive layout, and last I heard powermacs weren't used for render farms.
The iPhone can play HD video
The iPhone has a 320x480 screen. the comment box I'm typing this in has more pixels. HD video -- like, oh 720p -- is at least 1280x720.
Unless the iPhone has a video-out, is does NOT play HD video. It plays "higher than crap", but that's not the same thing.
Would you like to live near a Nuclear power plant?
1: yes.
2: Depending on where you are and what you mean by "near", you already do.
No you are not the only one. Some don't even login to Slashdot to post comments and refuse to be intimidated by the bullying tactic of adding the apellation 'coward' to the perfectly reasonable and sensible one of just 'anon'.
No, sorry, you're an anonymous coward.
Accoutns on /. allow you to join together a series of comments as "you", even if this /. you has no relation to the actual you. You dont' want to even stand two comments together? You're a coward.
And after that, it's to keep a list of everyone who has entered the bar for the history of it's operation. Much easier to identify "troublemakers" when you have a list of people who like to have fun once in a while.
You DO know that in many states, a bartender is legally responsible for anything you do while drunk from the moment you take a drink until you're finally sober, right?
Democrats are essentially saying "let government take over the insurers, then we will pay for a lot of it". Mind you they do not reduce the cost ( except around the edges), they just say the government will pay for something we cannot afford but never tell us that the government can't afford it either.
"Comparative effectiveness." : that is, the gov't will spend money to study which treatments work, and which ones don't. You know, actual scientific studies.
"Public Option" -- cut out the privately ran, for-profit insurance company which has an incentive to raise costs and deny coverage, and substitute a government agency. The private insurance companies will suddenly either have to provide a BETTER value than the feds, or go out of business.
The Dems have a solid plan. Hell, when they bother to dust it off, the Republicans have a fairly solid plan, too. ("tax health care, and move away from the employer-provided model.") You can say you don't like them, or complain about the shortcomings (real or perceived) of either, but please don't pretend that they don't have real suggestions for improvement just because your pet peeve isn't addressed yet.
He neglects to mention that neither the President of Congress have Constitutional authorization to legislate health care for private individuals, or to form National health care organizations.
*ahem*
US Constitution. Article 1. Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To ... provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; ... ...
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Under no variation of our language would forming a nationwide health care organization be neither "general Welfare" nor "Commerce among the several states." And the precise limits of what businesses can be regulated by Congress are fairly well defined by this point -- if your business is covered by the federal minimum wage, it can be smacked with a requirement to provide health care as well.
And that's not even touching on the set-militia-standards or spend-money powers Congress has. (Fun fact: did you know that, unless you happen to be disabled, eldery, a child, or a woman, YOU are part of the US militia?)
Then we will have been spared from putting 1/6 of our economy through a disaster.
Healthcare should not be 1/6th of our economy without being, as a pundit put it recently, "worlds ahead of anyone else's."
I will not weep if the health insurance companies go out of business. Too much of them are simply sucking out dollars without any benefit to anyone beyond themselves and their shareholders. For crying out loud, that puts them beneath WAL-MART on the value-to-America scale.
Computers were meant to do tasks like this. It's just the legal cabal, much like medical cabal, doesn't want computers holding their specialized knowledge because they know their jobs are no more sacred than any one elses any more.
1: Computers DO tasks like this. Every law office or law school worth a dollar has a subscription to a massive database of laws, regulations, bills, and court records. This is data that Google really can't do a good job on -- I mean, hell, they aren't even getting simple things like publication dates right, and you NEED to know things like that when you're dealing in law. (Is this contract I signed back in 1997 valid? Well, what were the laws in 1997?)
2: The "medical cabal" doesn't hoard specialized knowledge. They have specialized JUDGMENT. I don't go to my doctor because I want to know what the flu is or what some medications for asthma are. I want to know if *I* have the flu, or what some medications for *my* asthma are that I can try. A lawyer performs the same task -- not telling you what the law is, but telling you *how it applies to your specific situation*.
3: My job is "sacred" because I have distinct judgement, not because I read information in a book somewhere. Yours should be to, or else you're not worth minimum wage.
The entire law profession relies on the ambiguities...
Sorry, wrong. A huge proportion of the law profession traffics in certainty. As in, "hire your lawyer so you get a guaranteed answer as to what the contract to buy your first house means"
Two fun facts about ambiguity in law (at least in NYS):
1: Ambiguities in contracts are interpreted against the party that drafted the contract. If it a reasonable layperson can read your "buy my home" contract and get two answers as to which home you're talking about, the guy you're selling to gets to pick.
2: Ambiguity due to complexity can result in a contract -- or a regulation, or a law -- being simply thrown out by a judge.
Keep in mind who writes the laws and it's clear why the idea falls apart.
Laws are written by two parties that have a vested interest in making themselves look better than the other guy. THAT is the problem, not lawyers. Want to get better laws? Vote against any local politician who "brings home the bacon" or favors simple answers over complex ones.
I have no idea whether the US regulations are available online...
1: go to http://www.usa.gov/
2: type in "US Code"
3: Hey, look, the HOUSE has the US Code online! http://uscode.house.gov/
Most states have a similar index. And THESE are what are the actual laws, not the bills passed to amend them.