Considering MSFT's stock being up 20% this year - a lot of people think you are wrong.
BEEEP Lack of context penalty!
Why is MSFT stock up 20%? Is it irrational exuberance? Did they shave unproductive brands/divisions? Cut workforce? Move more workforce to countries where workers are paid a fraction of high western wages? Give some background to defend your assertion.
In response to the underhanded update, users take to the ratings system with a vengeance and downmod the developer into oblivion. Thus, the app ecosystem sees shady behavior as 'damage' and 'routes' around it.
And thus customers become wiser. Slightly poorer, by five quid, but wiser.
Neither of these is a dilemma. Any righteous person should feel the moral obligation to boycott DRM-inflicted products and inflict physical violence on the people who make them, their loved ones and their property.
I certainly hope you are only joking about inflicting physical violence, etc. It is a vexing new model of business, which the best possible means of making displeasure known is the age-old Voting With Your Feet (or dollars) by walking away from anyone practicing such things. I'm a slow adopter on quite a few things, largely because of my elevating level of disappointment with the way people are deciding is appropriate for doing business - by wrecking something you have already paid for and are using.
I have a legitimately paid for Android phone, provided by my employer. Because it is provided by my employer, I do not intend to be buying music, or video rentals, or downloads.
Yet, Android forced through a MarketPlace update that makes me agree to all kinds of User Agreements for those services, which I do not intend to use. Therefore, I do not intend to agree.
Therefore, I can't use Marketplace again to update my phone.
Therefore, my paid-for phone is now becoming less and less useful.
Well, except for one thing. As long as I don't update Marketplace, none of the *other* malicious updates make it through.
*grin* Google being evil has protected me from others being evil.
Reminds me of the aggrevation I'm going through with Chrome. Imagine software on your computer which updates itself, in ways which make it less useful and even infuriating to find work arounds. One update cause all of our users to experience time-out issues which nearly broght about a revolt. We're choosing to support Firefox, for any who have had it up to here with Google's shenanigans.
I think the teacher's union would have more credibility if teachers were ever fired for poor performance. If there appeared to be any kind of performance-based accountability, the public might not care about this.
That's the core of the argument, but the part the union is fighting. This is the kind of fight which erodes the union's credibility.
Back when I lived in Michigan the auto workers unions were busy blaming the car companies for their eroding market share, quality of cars, etc. Then an amazing magazine, as part of the Detroit Free Press, was published containing several accounts by former auto workers, who seemed to be lacking a lot of guile or simply felt there was nothing to lose, confessing how overstaffed the assembly lines where - because the union would never back down. At the least little action by companies the workers would go on strike, so they hamstrung the automakers. Now it's a different generation of auto workers and a leaner, more competitive several auto companies. The excesses forced upon the manufacturers have taken decades to undo, nearly bringing GM and Chrysler to the end in 2008, because they were still saddled with retirement and benefit plans, negotiated decades before, which were crushing the companies.
The teachers unions should take a page from this: Don't ruin the education or the credibility of all teachers for the sake of a few - embrase performance review and become a part of it.
It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.
Might be useful in some way for consulting with parents, but a knife-edge decision there, to decide whether to tell people their child might develop Autism, with the possibility you culd be wrong. While it is interesting information the practice side of how to use it raises some questions.
I'd love to test our Social Networking application we ran in college, long before this interweb thing came along, against some of the patents people are claiming now.
As for email, I've got junk from my Dad's Model 14 Teletype, with headers and all, which could certainly pass for early email. Back then it was passed between stations until intended recipient was expected to have received it - your TTY was always expected to be left on.
Largely happy with T-Mobile on the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) plan. I but time when I need it. They do have a data plan you can buy for a day, week or month as needed, which I'll got to when I can scrape up enough (read: stop spending $1,000/mo. on GoGos Crazy Bones) to buy a smart-er phone. Have a little problem with text spam, which they won't filter for PAYG and the usual Mexican Lottery scam calls, same as I get on all phones, but not a major problem. As I'm not dependant upon my phone for all my communications and entertainment, I can stretch my time out to as low as $5/mo. (which leaves more money for Crazy Bones.)
I typed in my symptoms and my iPhone says that I have:
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
Well, many ER's these days do have open wireless access for people stuck in the waiting room. I'd just advise NOT checking in.
That might hurt.
A local hospital charges your for checking in. You could be directed to X-Ray, but hop in your car and go home, still find a bill in your post box within two weeks.
DIY medicine started a lot earlier than smartphone. My friend got hit by a boom while sailing once and split his forehead. His dad grabbed the duct tape conveniently aboard (they were far from a hospital) and *PRESTO*, wound sealed. It healed with less of a scar than my finger I got stitches for.
On a slightly more serious note, the interwebs and all its tubes have increased the ease of access to medical information and I certainly hope have improved the quality of care patients can get just by being more educated.
I use Super Glue on cuts all the time. Faster than a bandage. Also good when I get one of those damn split fingernails, just glue the sucker back together and I'm back picking my n... picking apples like a pro.
...right, because doctors are infallible, and never make mistakes. They also aren't prone to prescription med payola, or general self interest.
It would be less cynical stance to claim that this will reduce malpractice suits, rather than focus on self inflicted death.
BTW, while we're on such grim topics, where the assisted suicide device/app?
You have given us the expectation of the first Lawsuit against a telecom company because the mobile phone run over their network gave someone poor advice which resulted in their illness, complication, death or zombification.
As long as people don't like/trust doctors, or paying the high bills, there will always be serious interest in self-diagnosis. Smartphones do nothing to add to it, aside from allowing a portable search engine to plug symptoms into. Instant gratification.
On the plus side, this'll likely increase the amount of reported deaths caused by self-treatment, because "ZOMG Technology is EVOL!"
It's a boon to hypochondriacs - they'll find a horrible ailment for every ache, pain, disorientation, discoloration, etc.
I suspect mining landfills is going to be a major industry in the century to come. I wonder how you would go about looking to see who, if anyone, has been buying up mineral rights on landfills?
Seems to be an improbably old and frail gentleman, who goes by the name of Monty Burns.
Did they remember to plug it in with the direction marks pointing to the computer?
Pretty sure they didn't buy their cables from Denon or through Amazon... which would likely be good enough for us, but when you are building race tracks for atomic particles you generally buy them, out of necessity of the appearance of the project, from the guy who runs the $600 toilet seat store.
Can you measure time with a $600 toilet seat? Do you get crappy results? Oh well, it looked good on paper.
Nothing says you're serious about science like a huge budget. And when you have a huge budget you have to buy things which cost a lot. Otherwise it erodes your credibililty with the modern media.
Just make up some bullshit about how only machine brand XYZ will work for us. All the others can be hacked by predators to take pictures of the children. Use FUD to your advantage.
You didn't "listen" to TFA - you would still have to make it work. Generally the laptops would work with a bit more memory, as I have a real bottleneck now with my work PCs having less memory than optimal. As time marches on Operating System and Software require more resources and the real killer is paging memory. A bit of push-back may be required - have IT issue (with support from upper management, no mean feat) a minimum plaftorm for purchases. When technology decisions bypass IT and then IT is saddled with maintaining it, it sets the stage for Failure. Ultimately the IT department has to make its wishes known and have full support or the battle will always be a losing one.
The cable transmitted the signal 60ns faster than the time used in their compensation. I wouldn't call that defective.
Either the cable is shorter than they thought, or it's propagation factor is higher than specified, or they simply used the wrong number in their original calculations.
Way too early to blame anything on the cable manufacturer.
What's tuggin away at my trouserleg of concern is: How many other experients, with this cable in place, turned out as expected?
at the moment they have merely found out that "data" sent over the fiber-optic cable arrives 60ns earlier then assumed
How does that happen? I've worked at fiber using telecom companies since 96 (customer and provider sites) and I've never heard of a loose cable causing 60 ns of constant delay. Random jitter as the connector bounces around? OK yeah. Intermittent loss? OK yeah.
You can trivially make a fiber "60 ns longer" but thats quite a length of extra fiber, not a tiny fraction of an inch.
My guess is someone thought they were purchasing a X yard long fiber cable, but the helpful installers put in a X meter long fiber without telling anyone, and the stereotypical telecom BS about loose connectors is the coverup for the situation. Or the gear is buggy, it stopped being buggy, and all the tech did was tighten the connectors, so "it must have been the connector". Uh huh, yeah, heard that one before.
A television repairman is condemned to Hell for his practices of deceiving and overcharging customers. On his orientation tour of the netherworld he is led past people boiling in pits of lava, having their organs pecked out by beasts and others being flayed, over and over. Thus his fear is great as he is taken down a cavern to his own assignment of eternal doom. A demon shows him to a door, which he opens to find leads to a seemingly endless cavern piled high with television sets, DVD players, cable decoders, etc. "You must fix each and every one of them", proclaims the demon. The repairman relaxes and says, "Well, that doesn't seem so bad after all." "Ah," replies the demon, "but every one of them has an intermittent problem."
Slashdot Mirror
Considering MSFT's stock being up 20% this year - a lot of people think you are wrong.
BEEEP Lack of context penalty!
Why is MSFT stock up 20%? Is it irrational exuberance? Did they shave unproductive brands/divisions? Cut workforce? Move more workforce to countries where workers are paid a fraction of high western wages? Give some background to defend your assertion.
In response to the underhanded update, users take to the ratings system with a vengeance and downmod the developer into oblivion. Thus, the app ecosystem sees shady behavior as 'damage' and 'routes' around it.
And thus customers become wiser. Slightly poorer, by five quid, but wiser.
Neither of these is a dilemma. Any righteous person should feel the moral obligation to boycott DRM-inflicted products and inflict physical violence on the people who make them, their loved ones and their property.
I certainly hope you are only joking about inflicting physical violence, etc. It is a vexing new model of business, which the best possible means of making displeasure known is the age-old Voting With Your Feet (or dollars) by walking away from anyone practicing such things. I'm a slow adopter on quite a few things, largely because of my elevating level of disappointment with the way people are deciding is appropriate for doing business - by wrecking something you have already paid for and are using.
I have a legitimately paid for Android phone, provided by my employer. Because it is provided by my employer, I do not intend to be buying music, or video rentals, or downloads.
Yet, Android forced through a MarketPlace update that makes me agree to all kinds of User Agreements for those services, which I do not intend to use. Therefore, I do not intend to agree.
Therefore, I can't use Marketplace again to update my phone.
Therefore, my paid-for phone is now becoming less and less useful.
Well, except for one thing. As long as I don't update Marketplace, none of the *other* malicious updates make it through.
*grin* Google being evil has protected me from others being evil.
Reminds me of the aggrevation I'm going through with Chrome. Imagine software on your computer which updates itself, in ways which make it less useful and even infuriating to find work arounds. One update cause all of our users to experience time-out issues which nearly broght about a revolt. We're choosing to support Firefox, for any who have had it up to here with Google's shenanigans.
There was something on Slashdot a few years ago about people buying a service, then having to pay more to disable advertising.
I'd dump them without a second through. Cut your losses and move one.
I'd probably warn others as well as prospective future clients, by going to /. and other sites and writing about the craptivation of the game.
I think the teacher's union would have more credibility if teachers were ever fired for poor performance. If there appeared to be any kind of performance-based accountability, the public might not care about this.
That's the core of the argument, but the part the union is fighting. This is the kind of fight which erodes the union's credibility.
Back when I lived in Michigan the auto workers unions were busy blaming the car companies for their eroding market share, quality of cars, etc. Then an amazing magazine, as part of the Detroit Free Press, was published containing several accounts by former auto workers, who seemed to be lacking a lot of guile or simply felt there was nothing to lose, confessing how overstaffed the assembly lines where - because the union would never back down. At the least little action by companies the workers would go on strike, so they hamstrung the automakers. Now it's a different generation of auto workers and a leaner, more competitive several auto companies. The excesses forced upon the manufacturers have taken decades to undo, nearly bringing GM and Chrysler to the end in 2008, because they were still saddled with retirement and benefit plans, negotiated decades before, which were crushing the companies.
The teachers unions should take a page from this: Don't ruin the education or the credibility of all teachers for the sake of a few - embrase performance review and become a part of it.
It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.
Might be useful in some way for consulting with parents, but a knife-edge decision there, to decide whether to tell people their child might develop Autism, with the possibility you culd be wrong. While it is interesting information the practice side of how to use it raises some questions.
Yeah, but Chuck Norris was the first one to use it.
oh, and ..
In Soviet Russia email patents YOU!
I'd love to test our Social Networking application we ran in college, long before this interweb thing came along, against some of the patents people are claiming now.
As for email, I've got junk from my Dad's Model 14 Teletype, with headers and all, which could certainly pass for early email. Back then it was passed between stations until intended recipient was expected to have received it - your TTY was always expected to be left on.
Largely happy with T-Mobile on the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) plan. I but time when I need it. They do have a data plan you can buy for a day, week or month as needed, which I'll got to when I can scrape up enough (read: stop spending $1,000/mo. on GoGos Crazy Bones) to buy a smart-er phone. Have a little problem with text spam, which they won't filter for PAYG and the usual Mexican Lottery scam calls, same as I get on all phones, but not a major problem. As I'm not dependant upon my phone for all my communications and entertainment, I can stretch my time out to as low as $5/mo. (which leaves more money for Crazy Bones.)
In Soviet Russia phone plans for YOU!
I typed in my symptoms and my iPhone says that I have:
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
Well, many ER's these days do have open wireless access for people stuck in the waiting room. I'd just advise NOT checking in.
That might hurt.
A local hospital charges your for checking in. You could be directed to X-Ray, but hop in your car and go home, still find a bill in your post box within two weeks.
DIY medicine started a lot earlier than smartphone. My friend got hit by a boom while sailing once and split his forehead. His dad grabbed the duct tape conveniently aboard (they were far from a hospital) and *PRESTO*, wound sealed. It healed with less of a scar than my finger I got stitches for.
On a slightly more serious note, the interwebs and all its tubes have increased the ease of access to medical information and I certainly hope have improved the quality of care patients can get just by being more educated.
I use Super Glue on cuts all the time. Faster than a bandage. Also good when I get one of those damn split fingernails, just glue the sucker back together and I'm back picking my n... picking apples like a pro.
I typed in my symptoms and my iPhone says that I have:
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
I think there's some huck^H^H^H^Hexpert selling a device which will save you, but it requires 10 easy payments.
...right, because doctors are infallible, and never make mistakes. They also aren't prone to prescription med payola, or general self interest.
It would be less cynical stance to claim that this will reduce malpractice suits, rather than focus on self inflicted death.
BTW, while we're on such grim topics, where the assisted suicide device/app?
You have given us the expectation of the first Lawsuit against a telecom company because the mobile phone run over their network gave someone poor advice which resulted in their illness, complication, death or zombification.
Well done.
As long as people don't like/trust doctors, or paying the high bills, there will always be serious interest in self-diagnosis. Smartphones do nothing to add to it, aside from allowing a portable search engine to plug symptoms into. Instant gratification.
On the plus side, this'll likely increase the amount of reported deaths caused by self-treatment, because "ZOMG Technology is EVOL!"
It's a boon to hypochondriacs - they'll find a horrible ailment for every ache, pain, disorientation, discoloration, etc.
I suspect mining landfills is going to be a major industry in the century to come.
I wonder how you would go about looking to see who, if anyone, has been buying up mineral rights on landfills?
Seems to be an improbably old and frail gentleman, who goes by the name of Monty Burns.
I thought Australia was proving to be rich in rare Earch metals.
Linky
I still sleep in two chunks, only I call the second one "work"
I've met people who do it in three, the third one is driving.
And too much soup, beer, whatever, before go sleep.
Over-efficient kidneys, too.
Did they remember to plug it in with the direction marks pointing to the computer?
Pretty sure they didn't buy their cables from Denon or through Amazon ... which would likely be good enough for us, but when you are building race tracks for atomic particles you generally buy them, out of necessity of the appearance of the project, from the guy who runs the $600 toilet seat store.
Can you measure time with a $600 toilet seat? Do you get crappy results? Oh well, it looked good on paper.
Nothing says you're serious about science like a huge budget. And when you have a huge budget you have to buy things which cost a lot. Otherwise it erodes your credibililty with the modern media.
Just make up some bullshit about how only machine brand XYZ will work for us. All the others can be hacked by predators to take pictures of the children. Use FUD to your advantage.
You didn't "listen" to TFA - you would still have to make it work. Generally the laptops would work with a bit more memory, as I have a real bottleneck now with my work PCs having less memory than optimal. As time marches on Operating System and Software require more resources and the real killer is paging memory. A bit of push-back may be required - have IT issue (with support from upper management, no mean feat) a minimum plaftorm for purchases. When technology decisions bypass IT and then IT is saddled with maintaining it, it sets the stage for Failure. Ultimately the IT department has to make its wishes known and have full support or the battle will always be a losing one.
I'm sure Denon will have a "faster than light" TOSLINK cable for sale for $1,000+ in no time. Better to get those audio bits before time itself.
And for their next trick they'll work in Super-Sonic Audio, which arrives at the ear before it's transmitted from the audio drivers. Marvelous.
The cable transmitted the signal 60ns faster than the time used in their compensation. I wouldn't call that defective.
Either the cable is shorter than they thought, or it's propagation factor is higher than specified, or they simply used the wrong number in their original calculations.
Way too early to blame anything on the cable manufacturer.
What's tuggin away at my trouserleg of concern is: How many other experients, with this cable in place, turned out as expected?
Bit of a poser, that one.
at the moment they have merely found out that "data" sent over the fiber-optic cable arrives 60ns earlier then assumed
How does that happen? I've worked at fiber using telecom companies since 96 (customer and provider sites) and I've never heard of a loose cable causing 60 ns of constant delay. Random jitter as the connector bounces around? OK yeah. Intermittent loss? OK yeah.
You can trivially make a fiber "60 ns longer" but thats quite a length of extra fiber, not a tiny fraction of an inch.
My guess is someone thought they were purchasing a X yard long fiber cable, but the helpful installers put in a X meter long fiber without telling anyone, and the stereotypical telecom BS about loose connectors is the coverup for the situation. Or the gear is buggy, it stopped being buggy, and all the tech did was tighten the connectors, so "it must have been the connector". Uh huh, yeah, heard that one before.
A television repairman is condemned to Hell for his practices of deceiving and overcharging customers. On his orientation tour of the netherworld he is led past people boiling in pits of lava, having their organs pecked out by beasts and others being flayed, over and over. Thus his fear is great as he is taken down a cavern to his own assignment of eternal doom. A demon shows him to a door, which he opens to find leads to a seemingly endless cavern piled high with television sets, DVD players, cable decoders, etc. "You must fix each and every one of them", proclaims the demon. The repairman relaxes and says, "Well, that doesn't seem so bad after all." "Ah," replies the demon, "but every one of them has an intermittent problem."