...Putting a phone interface on a desktop was a bad idea. We already knew that, but it's nice to get confirmation.
Come on man, its the worst of both worlds! The limitations of a small screen and limited touch interface are wonderful replacements for a full rich gui and a keyboard.
Or, as my android phone came up with when I spoke that response into it because it was too much to type:
"Carnal mom, tis thrash bob wills. The lamentation of the women..."
Not really, that's just one guy who wrote a self published book full of misrepresentations and distortions. Read what actual scientists have to say about it here. The went through and did a comprehensive take down of that guy's nonsense. Alternatively, this is a fun well cited video. My favorite bit: he claims that transgenes are taken up by gut flora and continue to function, meaning that they could be producing the Bt protein that kills insects (which is totally harmless to humans anyway, but whatever). He cites Netherwood 2004 as proof. That paper's abstract ends with "we conclude that gene transfer did not occur during the feeding experiment." So they guy who wrote that site either does not bother to even look at the papers he cites, or he flat out lies. He is also one of the leaders in the anti-GE movement, and is very highly respected and often cited among those who espouse anti-GE sentiment. So what should that tell you?
But either way, if there is nothing wrong then there should be no reason against the labeling.
If there's nothing wrong why should the be labeled? There's tons of things we do to plants that are not dangerous that most people have never heard of, like mutagenesis and doubled haploid hybridization and selection of bud sport mutants. I don't think GE should be singled out. That is just using people's ignorance to scare them about genetic engineering by making it stand out as something different and unique.
If I have a choice between a gmo product that hasn't been in the food supply long enough to know if its okay or not and one that isnt a gmo product, I'd be happy to have the information to make my own informed choices.
That is easy to do already and I'll tell you how. Corn, soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, and papaya. Eight species have been genetically engineered in the US. Due to the way they are processed, anything containing them that is not labeled as organic or non-GMO contains genetically engineered crops. Now you know how to avoid them if you want, and you can do it without a label. However, they have been in the food supply for a long time, and tested even longer, and there is no reason whatsoever to think they pose any more of a health risk than any other crop.
That having been said, since Dr. Oz recommends avoiding GMO foods
That interview was horribly edited by the way. And somehow, those of us who support genetic engineering are the deceitful ones.
Eh, I just took the first google result on the topic to show that 'zero' may be an inaccurate assessment. I'm afraid I have to take a 50,000 foot view of the situation in order to see that most nutritional studies get it wrong the first, second and third times. I also see many nutritional studies that omit data or game their acceptance criteria to get the result they really wanted in the first place.
Remember when butter and lard and coconut oil would kill you, so we should use transfats, hydrogenated fats and margarine? I suspect that maneuver killed millions. Eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad again? Salt is bad for you if you remove the 50% of the study participants that showed no effects from eating salt, like Intersalt did. The lipid theory that 'proved' that saturated fats are bad for you had to eliminate 17 countries out of 22 to get that result. The truth in re-reading the study shows that patients who live in countries that eat high calorie, high energy, heavily processed and packaged foods had heart trouble
But either way, if there is nothing wrong then there should be no reason against the labeling. If I have a choice between a gmo product that hasn't been in the food supply long enough to know if its okay or not and one that isnt a gmo product, I'd be happy to have the information to make my own informed choices.
That having been said, since Dr. Oz recommends avoiding GMO foods, I'd say about 95% of women won't be buying them...
When I was a forum mod for a large forum some years ago, we had a lot of troll problems and the same guys would keep showing up as sock puppets. A lot of the time it took a while to suss out if someone was for real or one of the persistent trolls.
So I did come up with an idea to mirror the forum, with idiots and highly suspected idiots able to post all they wanted on the fake mirror, with the non crappy people on the real forum. So what it looked like was that everyone had the trolls on their ignore list, or that they weren't very interesting because no matter what they said, nobody answered them. But they did have some fun conversations with each other that nobody ever saw.
After a while, the persistent ones got tired of the effort since they were getting no return, and they went away.
So yeah, your idea should work unless the spammer notices that the bot isn't actually working properly.
That has to be one of the stupidest remote support solutions I've ever heard, when you could do a better job just using Skype's free desktop sharing function in a video conference if for some reason TeamViewer scares you off.
I understand how frustrating it is to spend a lot of time thinking up how to make complicated solutions work when a simpler one does as well or better, only most people never thought about it. I also understand that many technical people like to bollux things up so they're the only one that can fix them.
Webcams can be cheap, but some people just don't want them for whatever reasons, including completely illogical ones
Hmm, I had no problems with 100% of the people who want me to help them with computer problems accepting a free webcam. If you have some sort of issue with it, keep it in a drawer.
The screencap idea isn't a bad one, just not easy for ad hoc support. You can't guarantee that one's nearby, but a lot of people with computers have smartphones and can get the screenshot of the error message pretty well. Beats having to spell a long error message screen string, one character at a time, with the dog barking in the background.
I have no idea why you'd think its not easy for ad hoc support. Really? "Hold the camera up so I can see the screen. Okay, type this, click on that, problem solved". 90% of family support questions are "I'm seeing something funny on the screen, I can't describe it...how do I make it go away?".
I guess its not as sexy as full remote control, but as many people have pointed out, that can be hard to set up and use. Some times simple, cheap and effective are all you need...
Idk how it can be double or triple the cost. At $16,500,000 for 2500 kindle(assuming that's correct), it's already at $6,600 per kindle. If the majority of the costs are just side costs, then iPads will just raise it marginally.
Any time you take a contract thats been in existence for a while and re-do it with a new supplier that uses more expensive hardware, you can pretty much count on a significant increase in the project cost.
Logitech and best buy routinely sell cheap decent webcams. I've picked up regular ones, and 720p and 1080p HD versions for under ten bucks each shipped.
Bought one for each family member.
When they have a problem, I start a video chat with them, they take the webcam off the monitor and point it at the screen. On some cams you have to click the 'mirror' button to reverse the image. Then we work on the problem. If that computer is dead, put the webcam on a laptop and use that, or do a video chat with their phone or pad if they have one.
Securing software, poking hole in firewalls and all that seems like a waste of time when you can actually SEE whats going on for yourself.
Same conversation I had with the other guy, with the same observation. If you make almost 100% of your money from ad revenue, then you're an advertising company.
Twist it up any way you want. Same result. Google makes a living by being paid to show ads. Most television networks are also advertising companies, since thats what they try hard to get and receive most of their revenues from.
If I spent all day making wine, but made all of my money selling cowbells on ebay, am I a seller of wine or a seller of cowbells?
Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I think its an important distinction to identify how people make money and what their inferred motivations are.
Google and Facebook sell ads and live and die by advertising. Apple sells digital content and content delivery systems. Amazon sells merchandise.
Each will be one of the three superpowers driving our markets for the next 10-20 years. But as you can see they're quite different in terms of their objectives and revenue source. A stupid person would say all three are technology companies. While factually correct, this does little to help one figure out what a company is good at or where they may be going in the future.
At this distinction point, its also worthy to point out that the management of each company is good at what they're doing right now, but not at other stuff. I doubt Amazon execs know a lot about making most of their money from ads. I doubt Facebook execs could come up with a system for purchasing 10,000,000 items online. I'm pretty sure that Apple wont start making most of their money by festooning ipads and ipods with advertising. Google doesn't understand much in the way of slick consumer products, but motorola mobility will help a little there. Amazon is learning lessons in this area at a good clip.
Eh, someone up the food chain realized that they weren't buying ipads, and those are what the cool kids have. Cue the story about them opening a contract with apple to do the same exact thing, only for double or triple the cost.
They're doing that here in California. Our state budget left the rails and took out every major city, and we're letting go of teachers left and right. But we found money to buy 5 ipads for every classroom from one of those buckets where the money can only be spent one way. No integration, no IT strategy...just 5 paperweights with a quiz on them about a book, and you have to transcribe the results from the ipad to a piece of paper when you're done, as there is no rollup.
I just want to know what person sits in what office in the state organization that agreeably says "Oh, you want to donate money to our schools? Yeah, well those ipads would be pretty much useless...feel like funding something critical thats being cut or how about we buy cheaper tablets, get 20 per class instead of 5, and get someone to do a nice integration job with our curriculum?
We missed a prime opportunity last year when HP (a california company) decided to get out of the touchpad business and sold tens of thousands of them for below cost. Someone from the state should have gotten them to donate them, make more so every kid could have one, and build the software and support infrastructure with that. Replace all textbooks and teaching materials with the pad. Give HP tax credits so its worth it for them to take it on. Hell, it took the NFL no time at all to switch from playbooks and lots of pieces of paper to a tablet solution. If they can do it, I'm pretty sure HP and the state of california could have done it.
I'm still laughing my ass off about this. "Yes, people want DLC so when the game sucks and doesn't have enough content, you have something to download and play".
Wrong problem pal, and the wrong solution to that problem.
I love watching people contort themselves to prove their own point.
I'm not buying any games with DLC content that would cost me money to buy in order to play the entire game as sold, because the game will be next to worthless on the used market where I usually recoup half of my purchase price. Since the game is no longer worth much used, its worth a lot less to me new. I'm certainly not paying what I used to pay for a used game, then anteing up another $8-10+ for the missing 'first day dlc'.
These guys think they found a way to kill the used game business. As far as I'm concerned, they found a way to make me buy one of the 8000 used titles that came out without first-day-dlc. Then wait a year or two for all of the new titles to drop to the $5-10 they're now worth rather than the $10-20 I used to pay used. Then it'll make economic sense.
However, I'm sure the vast majority of drooling masses will keep buying the new ones, never try to sell them used, and will never notice that any of this is going on.
110% correct. Somewhere along the line our corporate leadership stepped away from doing the right thing to doing the thing that gets them the biggest paychecks.
But this is the mindset these days...how to get out of your obligations. Pensions, mortgages on underwater homes, etc.
No. Facebook and Google are monetized through advertising. Amazon is monetized through retail sales. There's a big difference.
How do you suppose that people find their way to amazon to shop, see items that they'd like to buy there, and/or have any impression about what a product or company is about before they purchase it?
Right....
Its also the case the entirety of the internet and our entire television broadcasting system wouldn't exist or would be a lot simpler without advertising.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with someone that insisted that google was a software/tech company. But when the vast majority of your income is from advertising...then you're an advertising company.
My point was that you need opportunity to advertise to someone, and the original article talked about people sidestepping google if they want to buy something and going directly to the amazon umbrella and remaining there. Right now google cant sell much aside from whats in the Play store. They can aggregate, but that turns ugly at some point.
Apple, Amazon and Google all have fully formed advertising and sales channels for products. Amazon obviously has a much broader ecosystem, google ridiculous amounts of money and eyeballs, and Apple has the slickest appliances. Microsoft could do it, but they want to glue Windows to everything, which will be their undoing. Its time to blow that product up and start over. Facebook could have been a contender, until they screwed up their IPO.
Like the man said, follow the money. Everything is monetized through advertising...tv, movies, games, the internet, etc. All of that money is spent to build brands and to sell products. Wouldn't it be cool to skip all of those intermediaries and make and sell things directly through your own ecosystem? Consider what apple did with itunes and music, only spread that around to all media and products.
How 'bout if amazon gave you a high end phone, a high end tablet, and provided you with free service on both, as long as you're a Prime customer? Oh, and the whole interface is built to help you shop at amazon? I think you'll see it...next year or so.
Google might end up offering many people free internet, in order to study all of your internet traffic and stuffing you full of ads. I have to admit that free internet sounds good, but I feel a little squeamish about someone being able to see everything I do.
The answer is much simpler than some silly battery problem. Samuel L. Jackson is not a fan of unlocked bootloaders. In fact, he's mother@%$#ing tired of these ^%@#$ing unlocked bootloaders, and he's going to open up a very, very large cap of whupass on everyone who installs one.
So...pretty comprehensive disclaimer. I used to stick a half page one at the end of most of my work, talking about incorrect line voltages and pirates.
This is a case of the CEO admitting "we would have to upgrade the hardware providing the service, and we don't want to do that".
There are all sorts of things I don't want to do, but I'd be divorced and homeless if I quit doing them. Lifetime deals sound great for small businesses to bring in a lot of future income. But they do sort of have to remember that years later when all of that free early funding starts becoming onerous.
If they don't want to upgrade the hardware for the older service, then give free lifetime usage for the new system.
This is akin to saying "Hey, all you people about to retire next month? Yeah, well all that money you put into social security over the last 40 years got spent on pork, and we don't want to stop our frivolous spending so we can send you your retirement check."
I guess the morale of the story is "Don't give out lifetime deals if you aren't planning on supporting them for a lifetime."
I'm sure more will be spent on lawyers than it would have cost them to do the right thing.
The people with Tivo lifetime memberships brag about their financial prowess every chance they get.
Well since you mentioned it, I have four tivo's and two directv-tivo's, all bought with lifetime around 6-11 years ago. They all still work, and they've been free to use since purchased. They even let me transfer the lifetime to another box a couple of times, then left it still working on the old one.
On three other tivo's, I hacked in some huge hard drives and sold them for more than I paid for the box, hard drives and lifetime. I actually have come close to having a zero cost for all of my tivo's and lifetime.
But then again I'm a multimillionaire that retired at 40, so I guess my financial prowess was already well established.
FYI, if you're on Precise Pangolin (Ubuntu 12.04), hit the Unity button and type "Drivers". Click on Additional Drivers.
Why how completely intuitive. How could I have missed that one?
Funny listening to the different opinions about installation and driver issues. Tell you why, with a car analogy.
About ten years ago I gave up on shoddy american cars and started buying japanese cars. Wonderful. I have three of them for over 8 years, not one has needed anything other than filters and oil changes. Big change from 12 warranty trips to the dealer to get this and that fixed. So one of my friends asserts "Well, I've had chrysler products for the last two decades and nothing ever goes wrong with those either!". Well, as it turns out he felt that making all of those warranty trips was just part of owning any car and that was 'normal'.
So I suspect that you linux adherents do all sorts of things that seem 'ordinary and reasonable' to install an OS. You've done it and you know to push the unity button and type something in or bring up the hardware drivers applet under system/administration/hardware drivers. I'd have no idea to do that or to look there.
But seriously folks, I've installed ubuntu on quite a few machines. Its sort of my default 'well, this machine isnt working, let me boot it up on ubuntu and see if its the operating system or the hardware, first thing'. Not once has it ever fully installed everything ootb. And the resolution was never simple.
Only machine I've installed windows on that required a driver disk was a ~2004 dell laptop with a core duo in it and windows media center edition 2005. Haven't really needed a driver disk of any kind with win7 in years. If it isn't on the cd, its on windows update or some helpful system message pops up with a link on where to get it.
Stick your head in the sand all you want. Linux is still an operating system by technical people, for technical people and it doesn't have the polish of an OS like windows and osx. It cant. Its 'owned' by too many people that make critical decisions based on non business driven matters. And it always has been. Its not like I keep up with this stuff on a daily basis, but haven't they ripped out the primary gui at least twice in the last 3 years in exchange for something else, most recently because keeping the old one meant the OS wouldn't fit on a cd? Now if almost everyone had one of those 'dvd' drives in their computer, then this wouldn't be a problem. Oh wait? We do?!?
So put win7 on a retina mackbook and tell me how many drivers you lack... if you even get that far. Not an apple fan or microsoft, though I can program for both. Kubuntu for 6-7 years now, and it just works... on comodity hardware.
Actually win7 goes on a retina macbook with ease and no additional drivers needed.
I see you're under the mistaken impression that macbooks aren't made from commodity hardware. Nothing in that slab that isn't in 100 other models. Once you brush aside the faery dust that is.
It's been a while since you tried Linux, hasn't it? If not, you've chosen the wrong distro, which is what I suspect happened her
Not long at all. And its the same thing every time I install, over perhaps a 5-6 year period? I usually go with ubuntu. Had a laptop where the video wouldn't work because the company that made the video didn't lick the right open source tabs, so ubuntu didn't include the driver. Had a laptop where the common as hell wireless network card wasn't supported OOB.
You'll have to bear in mind that my unix travels started with being one of the people at DEC that put out Ultrix V1.0, so I'm not exactly inexperienced with it and I generally can make it work in an hour or two. But its also quite obvious to me that the 'politeness' around open source and the lack of cohesive linux support by many hardware companies creates an inability for an average tech person to install a distro on common hardware platforms without performing a fair bit of post install stuff.
I'm afraid windows 7 has spoiled me. I stick it in anything made in the last 10 years and with few exceptions I have a fully running system about 15-45 minutes later.
This proves it for once and for all. Apple is evil!!! What?
I don't think so, since this sounds like every linux installation I've ever done. Some main component never works OOB, I always have to edit a bunch of files and download all sorts of odds and ends before I have a running machine.
Wow that was a fun ride...modded from zero to four to -1. I guess the people who knew I'm telling the truth modded me up, and those trying to hide the fact that there isnt a linux distro that can reliably install on more than 3-4 out of every ten common configurations, without performing a bunch of post-installation shenanigans. If you're lucky, you get to do the post install shenanigans with a working network connection, but thats not super likely.
The only mechanism I can think of which would case a solar flare to render optical disks unreadable would be radiation damage. A solar flare which delivered that kind of dose would likely wipe out all life on earth so you probably wouldn't be worrying about your backups.
This proves it for once and for all. Apple is evil!!! What?
I don't think so, since this sounds like every linux installation I've ever done. Some main component never works OOB, I always have to edit a bunch of files and download all sorts of odds and ends before I have a running machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on man, its the worst of both worlds! The limitations of a small screen and limited touch interface are wonderful replacements for a full rich gui and a keyboard.
Or, as my android phone came up with when I spoke that response into it because it was too much to type:
"Carnal mom, tis thrash bob wills. The lamentation of the women..."
I think I had it set to 'conan' mode.
Not really, that's just one guy who wrote a self published book full of misrepresentations and distortions. Read what actual scientists have to say about it here. The went through and did a comprehensive take down of that guy's nonsense. Alternatively, this is a fun well cited video. My favorite bit: he claims that transgenes are taken up by gut flora and continue to function, meaning that they could be producing the Bt protein that kills insects (which is totally harmless to humans anyway, but whatever). He cites Netherwood 2004 as proof. That paper's abstract ends with "we conclude that gene transfer did not occur during the feeding experiment." So they guy who wrote that site either does not bother to even look at the papers he cites, or he flat out lies. He is also one of the leaders in the anti-GE movement, and is very highly respected and often cited among those who espouse anti-GE sentiment. So what should that tell you?
But either way, if there is nothing wrong then there should be no reason against the labeling.
If there's nothing wrong why should the be labeled? There's tons of things we do to plants that are not dangerous that most people have never heard of, like mutagenesis and doubled haploid hybridization and selection of bud sport mutants. I don't think GE should be singled out. That is just using people's ignorance to scare them about genetic engineering by making it stand out as something different and unique.
If I have a choice between a gmo product that hasn't been in the food supply long enough to know if its okay or not and one that isnt a gmo product, I'd be happy to have the information to make my own informed choices.
That is easy to do already and I'll tell you how. Corn, soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, and papaya. Eight species have been genetically engineered in the US. Due to the way they are processed, anything containing them that is not labeled as organic or non-GMO contains genetically engineered crops. Now you know how to avoid them if you want, and you can do it without a label. However, they have been in the food supply for a long time, and tested even longer, and there is no reason whatsoever to think they pose any more of a health risk than any other crop.
That having been said, since Dr. Oz recommends avoiding GMO foods
That interview was horribly edited by the way. And somehow, those of us who support genetic engineering are the deceitful ones.
Eh, I just took the first google result on the topic to show that 'zero' may be an inaccurate assessment. I'm afraid I have to take a 50,000 foot view of the situation in order to see that most nutritional studies get it wrong the first, second and third times. I also see many nutritional studies that omit data or game their acceptance criteria to get the result they really wanted in the first place.
Remember when butter and lard and coconut oil would kill you, so we should use transfats, hydrogenated fats and margarine? I suspect that maneuver killed millions. Eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad again? Salt is bad for you if you remove the 50% of the study participants that showed no effects from eating salt, like Intersalt did. The lipid theory that 'proved' that saturated fats are bad for you had to eliminate 17 countries out of 22 to get that result. The truth in re-reading the study shows that patients who live in countries that eat high calorie, high energy, heavily processed and packaged foods had heart trouble
Because there is zero evidence that consuming GMO foods causes any harm whatsoever.
Putting a label on it only serves to reinforce people's existing prejudices.
Eh, theres a bit more than zero.
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/health-risks
But either way, if there is nothing wrong then there should be no reason against the labeling. If I have a choice between a gmo product that hasn't been in the food supply long enough to know if its okay or not and one that isnt a gmo product, I'd be happy to have the information to make my own informed choices.
That having been said, since Dr. Oz recommends avoiding GMO foods, I'd say about 95% of women won't be buying them...
When I was a forum mod for a large forum some years ago, we had a lot of troll problems and the same guys would keep showing up as sock puppets. A lot of the time it took a while to suss out if someone was for real or one of the persistent trolls.
So I did come up with an idea to mirror the forum, with idiots and highly suspected idiots able to post all they wanted on the fake mirror, with the non crappy people on the real forum. So what it looked like was that everyone had the trolls on their ignore list, or that they weren't very interesting because no matter what they said, nobody answered them. But they did have some fun conversations with each other that nobody ever saw.
After a while, the persistent ones got tired of the effort since they were getting no return, and they went away.
So yeah, your idea should work unless the spammer notices that the bot isn't actually working properly.
That has to be one of the stupidest remote support solutions I've ever heard, when you could do a better job just using Skype's free desktop sharing function in a video conference if for some reason TeamViewer scares you off.
I understand how frustrating it is to spend a lot of time thinking up how to make complicated solutions work when a simpler one does as well or better, only most people never thought about it. I also understand that many technical people like to bollux things up so they're the only one that can fix them.
Webcams can be cheap, but some people just don't want them for whatever reasons, including completely illogical ones
Hmm, I had no problems with 100% of the people who want me to help them with computer problems accepting a free webcam. If you have some sort of issue with it, keep it in a drawer.
The screencap idea isn't a bad one, just not easy for ad hoc support. You can't guarantee that one's nearby, but a lot of people with computers have smartphones and can get the screenshot of the error message pretty well. Beats having to spell a long error message screen string, one character at a time, with the dog barking in the background.
I have no idea why you'd think its not easy for ad hoc support. Really? "Hold the camera up so I can see the screen. Okay, type this, click on that, problem solved". 90% of family support questions are "I'm seeing something funny on the screen, I can't describe it...how do I make it go away?".
I guess its not as sexy as full remote control, but as many people have pointed out, that can be hard to set up and use. Some times simple, cheap and effective are all you need...
Idk how it can be double or triple the cost. At $16,500,000 for 2500 kindle(assuming that's correct), it's already at $6,600 per kindle. If the majority of the costs are just side costs, then iPads will just raise it marginally.
Any time you take a contract thats been in existence for a while and re-do it with a new supplier that uses more expensive hardware, you can pretty much count on a significant increase in the project cost.
Logitech and best buy routinely sell cheap decent webcams. I've picked up regular ones, and 720p and 1080p HD versions for under ten bucks each shipped.
Bought one for each family member.
When they have a problem, I start a video chat with them, they take the webcam off the monitor and point it at the screen. On some cams you have to click the 'mirror' button to reverse the image. Then we work on the problem. If that computer is dead, put the webcam on a laptop and use that, or do a video chat with their phone or pad if they have one.
Securing software, poking hole in firewalls and all that seems like a waste of time when you can actually SEE whats going on for yourself.
Its alright. It was produced by the department of redundancy department.
Same conversation I had with the other guy, with the same observation. If you make almost 100% of your money from ad revenue, then you're an advertising company.
Twist it up any way you want. Same result. Google makes a living by being paid to show ads. Most television networks are also advertising companies, since thats what they try hard to get and receive most of their revenues from.
If I spent all day making wine, but made all of my money selling cowbells on ebay, am I a seller of wine or a seller of cowbells?
Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I think its an important distinction to identify how people make money and what their inferred motivations are.
Google and Facebook sell ads and live and die by advertising. Apple sells digital content and content delivery systems. Amazon sells merchandise.
Each will be one of the three superpowers driving our markets for the next 10-20 years. But as you can see they're quite different in terms of their objectives and revenue source. A stupid person would say all three are technology companies. While factually correct, this does little to help one figure out what a company is good at or where they may be going in the future.
At this distinction point, its also worthy to point out that the management of each company is good at what they're doing right now, but not at other stuff. I doubt Amazon execs know a lot about making most of their money from ads. I doubt Facebook execs could come up with a system for purchasing 10,000,000 items online. I'm pretty sure that Apple wont start making most of their money by festooning ipads and ipods with advertising. Google doesn't understand much in the way of slick consumer products, but motorola mobility will help a little there. Amazon is learning lessons in this area at a good clip.
Last time I lost an electronic device or had it stolen, the exact same people swung into action and recovered it for me.
Oh wait...what? Nobody did anything at all?
Awwwwww.... :(
wonder who they ticked off this time
Eh, someone up the food chain realized that they weren't buying ipads, and those are what the cool kids have. Cue the story about them opening a contract with apple to do the same exact thing, only for double or triple the cost.
They're doing that here in California. Our state budget left the rails and took out every major city, and we're letting go of teachers left and right. But we found money to buy 5 ipads for every classroom from one of those buckets where the money can only be spent one way. No integration, no IT strategy...just 5 paperweights with a quiz on them about a book, and you have to transcribe the results from the ipad to a piece of paper when you're done, as there is no rollup.
I just want to know what person sits in what office in the state organization that agreeably says "Oh, you want to donate money to our schools? Yeah, well those ipads would be pretty much useless...feel like funding something critical thats being cut or how about we buy cheaper tablets, get 20 per class instead of 5, and get someone to do a nice integration job with our curriculum?
We missed a prime opportunity last year when HP (a california company) decided to get out of the touchpad business and sold tens of thousands of them for below cost. Someone from the state should have gotten them to donate them, make more so every kid could have one, and build the software and support infrastructure with that. Replace all textbooks and teaching materials with the pad. Give HP tax credits so its worth it for them to take it on. Hell, it took the NFL no time at all to switch from playbooks and lots of pieces of paper to a tablet solution. If they can do it, I'm pretty sure HP and the state of california could have done it.
I'm still laughing my ass off about this. "Yes, people want DLC so when the game sucks and doesn't have enough content, you have something to download and play".
Wrong problem pal, and the wrong solution to that problem.
I love watching people contort themselves to prove their own point.
I'm not buying any games with DLC content that would cost me money to buy in order to play the entire game as sold, because the game will be next to worthless on the used market where I usually recoup half of my purchase price. Since the game is no longer worth much used, its worth a lot less to me new. I'm certainly not paying what I used to pay for a used game, then anteing up another $8-10+ for the missing 'first day dlc'.
These guys think they found a way to kill the used game business. As far as I'm concerned, they found a way to make me buy one of the 8000 used titles that came out without first-day-dlc. Then wait a year or two for all of the new titles to drop to the $5-10 they're now worth rather than the $10-20 I used to pay used. Then it'll make economic sense.
However, I'm sure the vast majority of drooling masses will keep buying the new ones, never try to sell them used, and will never notice that any of this is going on.
110% correct. Somewhere along the line our corporate leadership stepped away from doing the right thing to doing the thing that gets them the biggest paychecks.
But this is the mindset these days...how to get out of your obligations. Pensions, mortgages on underwater homes, etc.
Everything is monetized through advertising
No. Facebook and Google are monetized through advertising. Amazon is monetized through retail sales. There's a big difference.
How do you suppose that people find their way to amazon to shop, see items that they'd like to buy there, and/or have any impression about what a product or company is about before they purchase it?
Right....
Its also the case the entirety of the internet and our entire television broadcasting system wouldn't exist or would be a lot simpler without advertising.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with someone that insisted that google was a software/tech company. But when the vast majority of your income is from advertising...then you're an advertising company.
My point was that you need opportunity to advertise to someone, and the original article talked about people sidestepping google if they want to buy something and going directly to the amazon umbrella and remaining there. Right now google cant sell much aside from whats in the Play store. They can aggregate, but that turns ugly at some point.
Apple, Amazon and Google all have fully formed advertising and sales channels for products. Amazon obviously has a much broader ecosystem, google ridiculous amounts of money and eyeballs, and Apple has the slickest appliances. Microsoft could do it, but they want to glue Windows to everything, which will be their undoing. Its time to blow that product up and start over. Facebook could have been a contender, until they screwed up their IPO.
Like the man said, follow the money. Everything is monetized through advertising...tv, movies, games, the internet, etc. All of that money is spent to build brands and to sell products. Wouldn't it be cool to skip all of those intermediaries and make and sell things directly through your own ecosystem? Consider what apple did with itunes and music, only spread that around to all media and products.
How 'bout if amazon gave you a high end phone, a high end tablet, and provided you with free service on both, as long as you're a Prime customer? Oh, and the whole interface is built to help you shop at amazon? I think you'll see it...next year or so.
Google might end up offering many people free internet, in order to study all of your internet traffic and stuffing you full of ads. I have to admit that free internet sounds good, but I feel a little squeamish about someone being able to see everything I do.
The answer is much simpler than some silly battery problem. Samuel L. Jackson is not a fan of unlocked bootloaders. In fact, he's mother@%$#ing tired of these ^%@#$ing unlocked bootloaders, and he's going to open up a very, very large cap of whupass on everyone who installs one.
So...pretty comprehensive disclaimer. I used to stick a half page one at the end of most of my work, talking about incorrect line voltages and pirates.
This is a case of the CEO admitting "we would have to upgrade the hardware providing the service, and we don't want to do that".
There are all sorts of things I don't want to do, but I'd be divorced and homeless if I quit doing them. Lifetime deals sound great for small businesses to bring in a lot of future income. But they do sort of have to remember that years later when all of that free early funding starts becoming onerous.
If they don't want to upgrade the hardware for the older service, then give free lifetime usage for the new system.
This is akin to saying "Hey, all you people about to retire next month? Yeah, well all that money you put into social security over the last 40 years got spent on pork, and we don't want to stop our frivolous spending so we can send you your retirement check."
I guess the morale of the story is "Don't give out lifetime deals if you aren't planning on supporting them for a lifetime."
I'm sure more will be spent on lawyers than it would have cost them to do the right thing.
The people with Tivo lifetime memberships brag about their financial prowess every chance they get.
Well since you mentioned it, I have four tivo's and two directv-tivo's, all bought with lifetime around 6-11 years ago. They all still work, and they've been free to use since purchased. They even let me transfer the lifetime to another box a couple of times, then left it still working on the old one.
On three other tivo's, I hacked in some huge hard drives and sold them for more than I paid for the box, hard drives and lifetime. I actually have come close to having a zero cost for all of my tivo's and lifetime.
But then again I'm a multimillionaire that retired at 40, so I guess my financial prowess was already well established.
FYI, if you're on Precise Pangolin (Ubuntu 12.04), hit the Unity button and type "Drivers". Click on Additional Drivers.
Why how completely intuitive. How could I have missed that one?
Funny listening to the different opinions about installation and driver issues. Tell you why, with a car analogy.
About ten years ago I gave up on shoddy american cars and started buying japanese cars. Wonderful. I have three of them for over 8 years, not one has needed anything other than filters and oil changes. Big change from 12 warranty trips to the dealer to get this and that fixed. So one of my friends asserts "Well, I've had chrysler products for the last two decades and nothing ever goes wrong with those either!". Well, as it turns out he felt that making all of those warranty trips was just part of owning any car and that was 'normal'.
So I suspect that you linux adherents do all sorts of things that seem 'ordinary and reasonable' to install an OS. You've done it and you know to push the unity button and type something in or bring up the hardware drivers applet under system/administration/hardware drivers. I'd have no idea to do that or to look there.
But seriously folks, I've installed ubuntu on quite a few machines. Its sort of my default 'well, this machine isnt working, let me boot it up on ubuntu and see if its the operating system or the hardware, first thing'. Not once has it ever fully installed everything ootb. And the resolution was never simple.
Only machine I've installed windows on that required a driver disk was a ~2004 dell laptop with a core duo in it and windows media center edition 2005. Haven't really needed a driver disk of any kind with win7 in years. If it isn't on the cd, its on windows update or some helpful system message pops up with a link on where to get it.
Stick your head in the sand all you want. Linux is still an operating system by technical people, for technical people and it doesn't have the polish of an OS like windows and osx. It cant. Its 'owned' by too many people that make critical decisions based on non business driven matters. And it always has been. Its not like I keep up with this stuff on a daily basis, but haven't they ripped out the primary gui at least twice in the last 3 years in exchange for something else, most recently because keeping the old one meant the OS wouldn't fit on a cd? Now if almost everyone had one of those 'dvd' drives in their computer, then this wouldn't be a problem. Oh wait? We do?!?
So put win7 on a retina mackbook and tell me how many drivers you lack... if you even get that far. Not an apple fan or microsoft, though I can program for both. Kubuntu for 6-7 years now, and it just works... on comodity hardware.
Actually win7 goes on a retina macbook with ease and no additional drivers needed.
I see you're under the mistaken impression that macbooks aren't made from commodity hardware. Nothing in that slab that isn't in 100 other models. Once you brush aside the faery dust that is.
It's been a while since you tried Linux, hasn't it? If not, you've chosen the wrong distro, which is what I suspect happened her
Not long at all. And its the same thing every time I install, over perhaps a 5-6 year period? I usually go with ubuntu. Had a laptop where the video wouldn't work because the company that made the video didn't lick the right open source tabs, so ubuntu didn't include the driver. Had a laptop where the common as hell wireless network card wasn't supported OOB.
You'll have to bear in mind that my unix travels started with being one of the people at DEC that put out Ultrix V1.0, so I'm not exactly inexperienced with it and I generally can make it work in an hour or two. But its also quite obvious to me that the 'politeness' around open source and the lack of cohesive linux support by many hardware companies creates an inability for an average tech person to install a distro on common hardware platforms without performing a fair bit of post install stuff.
I'm afraid windows 7 has spoiled me. I stick it in anything made in the last 10 years and with few exceptions I have a fully running system about 15-45 minutes later.
This proves it for once and for all. Apple is evil!!! What?
I don't think so, since this sounds like every linux installation I've ever done. Some main component never works OOB, I always have to edit a bunch of files and download all sorts of odds and ends before I have a running machine.
Wow that was a fun ride...modded from zero to four to -1. I guess the people who knew I'm telling the truth modded me up, and those trying to hide the fact that there isnt a linux distro that can reliably install on more than 3-4 out of every ten common configurations, without performing a bunch of post-installation shenanigans. If you're lucky, you get to do the post install shenanigans with a working network connection, but thats not super likely.
The only mechanism I can think of which would case a solar flare to render optical disks unreadable would be radiation damage. A solar flare which delivered that kind of dose would likely wipe out all life on earth so you probably wouldn't be worrying about your backups.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
This proves it for once and for all. Apple is evil!!! What?
I don't think so, since this sounds like every linux installation I've ever done. Some main component never works OOB, I always have to edit a bunch of files and download all sorts of odds and ends before I have a running machine.