..if you're going to spend resources to build infrastructure in 3rd world countries, how about we spend it on more practical infrastructure. For instance, if you or Bill Gates are against $100 laptops for their silly cranks, instead of suggesting we build a country-wide infrastructure for wireless networking, how about suggest we build a country-wide infrastructure for electricity. Or clean water. Or vaccinations. Etc, etc, etc.
In the context of spending money on dumbed-down laptops, your idea is tops; however, when you broaden the scope a bit, you're still faced with some of the problems they tried to address in the $100 laptop project (i.e. adding a crank to power the laptop, because electricity isn't available 24 hours a day in their area..how frustrating would it be knowing that you don't have power, but you do have wireless connectivity?)
Conversely, when Doom 4 comes out and your new $1400 system becomes obsolete, and you need a new $250 blazing PCI-XXX videocard just to get it to run at 640x480 with a decent framerate, some dude will be playing Halo 3 on his ~$350 360, which will be optimized to the best of the developers' ability for the system. This discussion has been a non-issue for years now, dudezilla.
Re:The clue's in the developer's name
on
Review - Full Auto
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· Score: 1
When Vorbis first came out, a large portion of files available online were conversions from 160kbs or [usually] less MP3s, and thusly, everthing sounded like crap. Seriously, the last thing we need is the impending threat of obsoletion to goad everyone into converting their lossy-compression files into a different lossy-compression format with different properties, and brings out the worst in both formats. Don't do it!
Yes, clearly. Knowledge (especially free knowledge) is always a bad idea to arm the masses with. Allowing persons very interested in a particular subject access to informtion from a highly-esteemed university in spite of [perhaps] barriers that may have prevented them from attending that university (or any university at all) is indeed "pretty useless". The commoditization of education as your (+3 Informative!) comment implies is one of the larger factors [in my opinion] in the steady decline of the US as a knowledge leader.
To quickly derail this thread, you're not only incorrect (or misstating yourself), but you're missing the point entirely.
Port 80 == http Well, no, actually. According to the HTTP 1.1 RFC, port 80 is an [AFAIK] arbitrary port that's simply the de facto standard for HTTP traffic ("The default port is TCP 80 [19], but other ports can be used." Source). This argument is just like the standard/. retort to the "Let's wrest control of the DNS root servers out of the US's hands!" debate: If you don't want to use our stuff, do it your own way. If an incredibly isolationist China were to decide to mandate all internal Webservers to operate over Port 1938138, and announce this to all ISPs, the public, et al. they could simply block port 80 at all outgoing routers, and effectively cut off any Chinese accesses to the rest of the world's Web. The same thing goes with DNS root servers, they could just set up their own, instead of implicitly giving the US root servers authority by registering domains there.
Back on topic. The OP was talking about the "RSS port" being blocked, but as you've established, there is no "RSS port", and one may transmit RSS over any port they wish. However, just like the de facto [but again, not required1] port for HTTP is 80, the de facto transmission protocol for transmitting RSS XML files is: HTTP. As someone mentioned, this person probably just doesn't notice his aggregator picking up new headlines before he gets to the airport, then while at the airport (where port 80 is blocked/redirected) he checks his 'fresh' headlines, but is not their long enough or with enough frequency to notice that no new headlines are being populated while he is there (because the default port for his RSS streams is being blocked).
1.) I agree. 2.) Chris Farley's dead. I'd pay a lot of money to see him star in "Weekend At Bernie's 3" 3.) Sweet! I'm still in the running! 4.) How is, "tall and fuckable" more complex than, "cute and fuckable?" What simple creatures we are.
Advertising does have strategic benefits.... companies thought that we were either not viable or not a major player.
Uh, no. You haven't actually described any strategic benefits whatsoever, just illustrated the pass-the-buck structure of marketing; it's all about image. Did your company know what the actual strategic benefit of advertising was? No, but you knew you had to have them. Did the "companies" know what the strategic benefit of advertising was? No, but they knew they had to have them. The onus of proving why ads (or rather, why the amount of money thrown at advertising budgets) are necessary is continually passed on from one entity to another, without any real accountability as to why we just blew a large portion of our budget on monogrammed beer cozies and a 20-second ad with a horse in it on NBC.
Maybe you should revise your hip vocab not to copy something associated with the extremely uneducated.
Thanks for simultaneously pigeon-holing not only myself, but an entire culture, Mr. Ethnocentric Douchebag! Quite to the contrary of your belief, you've actually only depreciated the value of your own insipid opinion.
I, too, believe that bash.org said it best:
i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet
A lot of you have said this, but I'm missing the use of the word 'amount' in the phrase, "Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered." (which is the title) Maybe it's implied?
Actually, I heard it on the radio, but it's also present in page 5 of the financial section of Merck's Annual Report. My bad though, it was 50%, not 60%. Clearly, that means that I have a bias. Sorry to waste your time.
Dogg, you got flat schooled on the other post. If you'd listen to what I said, my point was that they "went after" him for as much as they could for a "pissant amount". Yes, $800 is not much at all. However, should a HOSPITAL--that is, an organization created to serve the health needs of the greater population--ruin someone's credit and disallow any future service to someone over what you admit to a drop in the bucket? I sure don't think so. Your original point was that hospitals never ever screw over poor people who can't afford huge medical bills, write it off, and everyone wins. I was telling an anecdote where that didn't happen, even though it was a small amount. Do you really think if he had an emergency appendectomy they wouldn't have ruined his credit much in the same way if he didn't pay? Can you seriously not remember back more than one post?
I'll actually agree with most of that, but I seriously felt sick when I heard that figure about Merck's marketing expenditure, and I can't help but feel that if either the money was diverted primarily toward research, or they started charging half the price and cut their marketing department (which, we both know that while jobs are jobs, marketing contracts are heavily inflated, and cutting X dollars in marketing jobs is a lot different than cutting X dollars in manufacturing jobs), the world would be that much better.
Also, my only problem with anarchism is coincidentally my only problem with socialism: it just doesn't work on a large scale. If you take out the government, but existing channels of supply (e.g. trains, cars, planes, ships) and communications exist, corporations will take their immediate place, and eventually become as bad or worse for the populace. The only way I can actually see that working is to move civilization back to city-states with limited trade, and I can't see that happening before the zombie apocalypse.
You seem like a reasonable dude after all, sorry about the Captain Industry jab.
This is sort of off-topic, but a full day's stay in emergency care in the US would be a lot more than $300. Even with insurance, you'd probably still have to pay a hefty deductible, that may be as high or higher than that $300, depending on your plan; if you're in an HMO, and that's not your hospital, forget it.
What do you mean by "go after"? A friend of mine severely sliced his hand, and required immediate surgery two years ago, and got an $800 bill that he couldn't, and didn't, pay. Sure, the hospital didn't send their thugs after him, but his credit rating is now trash, and the hospital will now refuse care on him, except in dire circumstances.
What about maintenance? Supposing a poor person could afford a procedure, how on earth would they pay for prescriptions? Prices have skyrocketed in the past few decades, meanwhile, Merck spends over 60% of their budget on Marketing, mostly in telling the middle and upper classes what designer drugs they should ask their doctor about, as well as random kickbacks for doctors to prescribe their brand exclusively.
What about malpractice insurance? This is probably the #1 cause of inflated health care prices, our overly-litigious society is effectively killing services, private and governmental, while trial lawyers are cleaning up.
It's not all the government's fault, Captain Industry.
That even after marketing, testing, production, distribution, licensing, and development, there's still a large, large markup to be made on games, it already has surpassed Hollywood in gross sales. What the per-disc-pressed model implies is that they can afford to eat a large licensing some one time, and still make a profit, even when you factor in units not sold and units marked down later (yes, this has a lot to do with the fact that the marginal cost is near zero, but it's nonetheless a complex model).
Is that figure daunting? Extremely. That's why you generally don't see very many smaller publishers for consoles; there certainly are some games made by lesser-known design companies, but video game publishing is very quickly going the way of the record industry half a century ago.
Of course, that's also why you see a lot of games cashing in sequels, brand/character recognition, and variations on the same theme/concept/engine, but we've already had that conversation.
Slashdot Mirror
..if you're going to spend resources to build infrastructure in 3rd world countries, how about we spend it on more practical infrastructure. For instance, if you or Bill Gates are against $100 laptops for their silly cranks, instead of suggesting we build a country-wide infrastructure for wireless networking, how about suggest we build a country-wide infrastructure for electricity. Or clean water. Or vaccinations. Etc, etc, etc.
In the context of spending money on dumbed-down laptops, your idea is tops; however, when you broaden the scope a bit, you're still faced with some of the problems they tried to address in the $100 laptop project (i.e. adding a crank to power the laptop, because electricity isn't available 24 hours a day in their area..how frustrating would it be knowing that you don't have power, but you do have wireless connectivity?)
No, but 10 happens to be bigger than 8. Thus, he's right.
Man, kudos. That was seriously the fifth time I've actually laughed out loud (if only a chuckle, not a guffaw, mind you) at the Internet.
Conversely, when Doom 4 comes out and your new $1400 system becomes obsolete, and you need a new $250 blazing PCI-XXX videocard just to get it to run at 640x480 with a decent framerate, some dude will be playing Halo 3 on his ~$350 360, which will be optimized to the best of the developers' ability for the system. This discussion has been a non-issue for years now, dudezilla.
AJAX Interactive, perchance?
When Vorbis first came out, a large portion of files available online were conversions from 160kbs or [usually] less MP3s, and thusly, everthing sounded like crap. Seriously, the last thing we need is the impending threat of obsoletion to goad everyone into converting their lossy-compression files into a different lossy-compression format with different properties, and brings out the worst in both formats. Don't do it!
Hey..or there's always the Semantic Web! [crickets]
Yes, clearly. Knowledge (especially free knowledge) is always a bad idea to arm the masses with. Allowing persons very interested in a particular subject access to informtion from a highly-esteemed university in spite of [perhaps] barriers that may have prevented them from attending that university (or any university at all) is indeed "pretty useless".
The commoditization of education as your (+3 Informative!) comment implies is one of the larger factors [in my opinion] in the steady decline of the US as a knowledge leader.
To quickly derail this thread, you're not only incorrect (or misstating yourself), but you're missing the point entirely.
/. retort to the "Let's wrest control of the DNS root servers out of the US's hands!" debate: If you don't want to use our stuff, do it your own way. If an incredibly isolationist China were to decide to mandate all internal Webservers to operate over Port 1938138, and announce this to all ISPs, the public, et al. they could simply block port 80 at all outgoing routers, and effectively cut off any Chinese accesses to the rest of the world's Web. The same thing goes with DNS root servers, they could just set up their own, instead of implicitly giving the US root servers authority by registering domains there.
Port 80 == http
Well, no, actually. According to the HTTP 1.1 RFC, port 80 is an [AFAIK] arbitrary port that's simply the de facto standard for HTTP traffic ("The default port is TCP 80 [19], but other ports can be used." Source). This argument is just like the standard
Back on topic. The OP was talking about the "RSS port" being blocked, but as you've established, there is no "RSS port", and one may transmit RSS over any port they wish. However, just like the de facto [but again, not required1] port for HTTP is 80, the de facto transmission protocol for transmitting RSS XML files is: HTTP. As someone mentioned, this person probably just doesn't notice his aggregator picking up new headlines before he gets to the airport, then while at the airport (where port 80 is blocked/redirected) he checks his 'fresh' headlines, but is not their long enough or with enough frequency to notice that no new headlines are being populated while he is there (because the default port for his RSS streams is being blocked).
I like how no one got or appreciated this joke.
1.) I agree.
2.) Chris Farley's dead. I'd pay a lot of money to see him star in "Weekend At Bernie's 3"
3.) Sweet! I'm still in the running!
4.) How is, "tall and fuckable" more complex than, "cute and fuckable?" What simple creatures we are.
This article is on the MSNBC website, which--last time I checked--is owned in part by Microsoft.
Advertising does have strategic benefits. ... companies thought that we were either not viable or not a major player.
Uh, no. You haven't actually described any strategic benefits whatsoever, just illustrated the pass-the-buck structure of marketing; it's all about image. Did your company know what the actual strategic benefit of advertising was? No, but you knew you had to have them. Did the "companies" know what the strategic benefit of advertising was? No, but they knew they had to have them. The onus of proving why ads (or rather, why the amount of money thrown at advertising budgets) are necessary is continually passed on from one entity to another, without any real accountability as to why we just blew a large portion of our budget on monogrammed beer cozies and a 20-second ad with a horse in it on NBC.
Maybe you should revise your hip vocab not to copy something associated with the extremely uneducated.
Thanks for simultaneously pigeon-holing not only myself, but an entire culture, Mr. Ethnocentric Douchebag! Quite to the contrary of your belief, you've actually only depreciated the value of your own insipid opinion.
I, too, believe that bash.org said it best:
i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet
A lot of you have said this, but I'm missing the use of the word 'amount' in the phrase, "Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered." (which is the title) Maybe it's implied?
Actually, I heard it on the radio, but it's also present in page 5 of the financial section of Merck's Annual Report. My bad though, it was 50%, not 60%. Clearly, that means that I have a bias. Sorry to waste your time.
Dogg, you got flat schooled on the other post. If you'd listen to what I said, my point was that they "went after" him for as much as they could for a "pissant amount". Yes, $800 is not much at all. However, should a HOSPITAL--that is, an organization created to serve the health needs of the greater population--ruin someone's credit and disallow any future service to someone over what you admit to a drop in the bucket? I sure don't think so. Your original point was that hospitals never ever screw over poor people who can't afford huge medical bills, write it off, and everyone wins. I was telling an anecdote where that didn't happen, even though it was a small amount. Do you really think if he had an emergency appendectomy they wouldn't have ruined his credit much in the same way if he didn't pay? Can you seriously not remember back more than one post?
Cut.
Huh. I figured as much when I saw "Fremont", but never thought about that. I guess I know why it was called Whistler now.
I'll actually agree with most of that, but I seriously felt sick when I heard that figure about Merck's marketing expenditure, and I can't help but feel that if either the money was diverted primarily toward research, or they started charging half the price and cut their marketing department (which, we both know that while jobs are jobs, marketing contracts are heavily inflated, and cutting X dollars in marketing jobs is a lot different than cutting X dollars in manufacturing jobs), the world would be that much better.
Also, my only problem with anarchism is coincidentally my only problem with socialism: it just doesn't work on a large scale. If you take out the government, but existing channels of supply (e.g. trains, cars, planes, ships) and communications exist, corporations will take their immediate place, and eventually become as bad or worse for the populace. The only way I can actually see that working is to move civilization back to city-states with limited trade, and I can't see that happening before the zombie apocalypse.
You seem like a reasonable dude after all, sorry about the Captain Industry jab.
This is sort of off-topic, but a full day's stay in emergency care in the US would be a lot more than $300. Even with insurance, you'd probably still have to pay a hefty deductible, that may be as high or higher than that $300, depending on your plan; if you're in an HMO, and that's not your hospital, forget it.
Did you know that in the US in 2006, more children will grow up in homes that have declared bankruptcy than will grow up with divorced parents?
Did you also know that as of 2004, over 50% of all bankruptcies in the US are directly related to a major medical illness somewhere in the family?
50% Medical Bankruptcy article (2005)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 1999 (~ 500,000 families)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 2001 (~ 1.5 million families)
What do you mean by "go after"? A friend of mine severely sliced his hand, and required immediate surgery two years ago, and got an $800 bill that he couldn't, and didn't, pay. Sure, the hospital didn't send their thugs after him, but his credit rating is now trash, and the hospital will now refuse care on him, except in dire circumstances.
What about maintenance? Supposing a poor person could afford a procedure, how on earth would they pay for prescriptions? Prices have skyrocketed in the past few decades, meanwhile, Merck spends over 60% of their budget on Marketing, mostly in telling the middle and upper classes what designer drugs they should ask their doctor about, as well as random kickbacks for doctors to prescribe their brand exclusively.
What about malpractice insurance? This is probably the #1 cause of inflated health care prices, our overly-litigious society is effectively killing services, private and governmental, while trial lawyers are cleaning up.
It's not all the government's fault, Captain Industry.
Goto considers harmful YOU.
That even after marketing, testing, production, distribution, licensing, and development, there's still a large, large markup to be made on games, it already has surpassed Hollywood in gross sales. What the per-disc-pressed model implies is that they can afford to eat a large licensing some one time, and still make a profit, even when you factor in units not sold and units marked down later (yes, this has a lot to do with the fact that the marginal cost is near zero, but it's nonetheless a complex model).
Is that figure daunting? Extremely. That's why you generally don't see very many smaller publishers for consoles; there certainly are some games made by lesser-known design companies, but video game publishing is very quickly going the way of the record industry half a century ago.
Of course, that's also why you see a lot of games cashing in sequels, brand/character recognition, and variations on the same theme/concept/engine, but we've already had that conversation.