FWIW only online purchases (ie MP3s, Game downloads, etc) can really be bought that way from Amazon by a third party who has your password. From experience (not hacking! Just using) whenever you enter a new shipping address you have to re-enter your credit card information for the card you're using to make the purchase. You can't simply say "Oh, I'll use the one you have on file ending in 1234."
I'm sure it's a problem for many people, but at the same time it's not as bad as it could be if, say, someone bought a new overpriced Mac using your credit card, rather than a $1.29 MP3 or $50 game.
I wish that were true. We used it on 300MHz (from memory, thereabouts anyway) Alpha servers, and it wasn't exactly snappy. I suspect it was doing a lot of things "the wrong way" from an X11 point of view.
Was it really news that the CEO stated that he supported the Biblical version of marriage? No, it wasn't.
You're missing the context. It wasn't the CEO merely stating, out of the blue, that he supported a particular view of marriage. It was him explaining why Chic-fil-A gives money to certain "Christian" organizations that lobby, for example, African governments to pass laws that mandate the execution of gay people.
While a lot of people have pretended this is merely about the personal beliefs of the CEO of a fast food chain, it isn't. It's about the fact that buying products from said fast food chain directly contributes to utterly horrific homophobic actions.
And BTW, as for that "Christian" label people like to slap on homophobia - as I've said elsewhere, despite the actions of "Conservative Christians" to make me believe otherwise, I refuse to believe our creator is an evil intolerant jackass.
There are virtually no analog systems running any more
D-AMPS (so-called "TDMA") is dead
cdmaOne/cdma2000 (so-called "CDMA") is beginning a slow process of being phased out in favor of LTE, though no operators have announced actual plans (as in deadlines) - as yet - to discontinue it. I'd be surprised if Sprint and Verizon didn't have at least a limited cdma2000 service in ten years, though in twenty I think it'll be gone.
The discontinuation of 2G GSM has been announced by one company. Every other GSM operator is still running it, but ultimately everyone knows it'll also eventually be supplanted by UMTS and LTE (3G and 4G GSM respectively.)
(2G) GSM is cheap, has tiny spectrum requirements, is easy to expand, and is everywhere, so despite AT&T's decision, I doubt it's going to go away any time soon. I suspect quite a few networks will turn off their 2G GSM service over the next twenty years, but I'd be surprised if the phones themselves aren't still supporting it in 20 years.
Google's fines have been for "privacy invasions" that are of virtually no consequence - collecting Wifi packets as they drove past homes and not discarding them, but with no sign they ever intended to use anything beyond the MAC addresses.
You seem to be implying the suspension of accounts over a possible "real name" (or other) policy is in some way demonstrative that Google is evil. May I point out:
1. Google+ is a social network. It relies upon network effects. Each person Google prevents from using it is a problem for Google. Therefore, ergo, all cases where someone is booted off who isn't an active nuisance is a screw-up not a conspiracy. This is whether it's because of a false positive of a legitimate rule, or a true positive of a stupid rule.
2. Google+ is a social network. It's free. Therefore there is nobody who actively requires it. Nobody outside of Google themselves is actively damaged by Google+ screwing up by blocking their access.
People are fans of Google for numerous reasons. They include:
1. They provide useful, well designed, services.
2. They produce innovative and original services such as Google Maps.
3. Despite their inherent collection and use of personal data - as an advertising distribution company - they, thus far, over-hyped cases like the Wifi thing included, been essentially ethical with the data they collect.
4. They responded to Apple's attempt to take over the mobile computing industry and turn it into a closed environment by creating and releasing a superb and open alternative, available even to Google's competitors at no charge.
Are they perfect? Hell no. But compared to Microsoft or Apple, you don't have to achieve perfection in the ethics department to be considered positive and for people to actually like you. Google fits that, which is why, for many of us, Google is our favorite faceless giant corporation.
Dan himself didn't have a long term problem - his account was suspended while under review (it wasn't deleted or anything like that) and other than the fact he's not sure why it happened in the first place, there's no problem other than mild inconvenience.
The others consist of people Dan found while Googling for tales of having one's account suspended. They include rather obvious cases where someone has a "suspicious name" and has managed to fall foul of the real names policy. (Yes, I know, a driver's license ought to clear it, but unless you present it in person, it's not exactly proof of anything. I can put together a scan of my driver's license, showing my real name as "Squiggle McGoogle" in a few minutes if you need to see it...)
The underlying problem here is a dumb, stupid, idiotic policy Google shouldn't have: the real names policy. It's an utterly stupid thing to have because:
People don't always have sane names, especially in the US.
Proving who you are, unless Google has access to government records, is pretty close to impossible.
People value their privacy, and do, actually, want to converse with communities without those communities being able to track down their employers, etc (putting my hand up here. I like pissing and moaning about my boss, thank you.)
No, Google, it doesn't serve the "Let's make everyone polite" thing.
This has nothing to do with the Facebook shills. They're posting the usual "Google's capture of Wifi MAC addresses means THEY'RE OUT TO KILL YOU!" crap. This is the straightforward example of the obvious consequences of a misguided policy.
Unfortunately not, that name was already trademarked by the German firm of "Microsoft Office Live Style UI Media Center Edition for Windows Genuine Advantage and Company"
The evidence was submitted as a response to specific evidence Apple manufactured (such as the infamous pre-iPhone/post-iPhone graphic), so no, it couldn't have been submitted earlier in the discovery process - at least not significantly earlier.
Sitting on the board of Directors of another company while developing a competing project of your own
Apple was well aware that Google was developing a phone when Schmidt was on their board, and it was public knowledge he recused himself during many iPhone discussions. Apple could have ejected him at any time.
Apple is playing dirty in this fight, and Samsung is having problems as a result. What's absolutely clear is that the evidence Samsung has presented in public shows that Apple is basically lying about Samsung's products and development processes.
And last I looked, Samsung is the most popular manufacturer of Android phones, itself the most popular smartphone operating system. So there's a hell of a lot of people who disagree with your last sentence. The mystery is why a locked down pseudo-smartphone that doesn't even let you change the battery without special tools has a single buyer.
These documents were already unsealed. Samsung was pointing at information already in the public domain. By her orders. Read the Groklaw link if you need more information on this.
How much did who pay me to write what? Because I really don't understand what you're trying to imply, given the rest of your comment is almost a rewrite of "The only thing I can see that's potentially an issue (having not used 8 since the original beta, so it might have improved a lot since) is that Metro might not be ideal on the desktop, and might even be actively off-putting enough for Windows 8 to be Vista to Windows 7's XP."
Re:MS is out of touch unless it's with chairs
on
Windows 8 Is Ready
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· Score: 1
FWIW, Metro's more the UI. But anyway: would "Mass Transit System" or "City Bus Company" have been any better as names? And don't say "But what about Subway" as people in the US associate that with sandwiches made on stale hoagie rolls.
I think it's important to remember that Windows 8 is a reaction to the problems Microsoft is having. They're developing a UI that'll be consistent across their systems that will work well on phones, and Windows 8 itself is designed to be just as at home on a tablet as a PC. The only thing I can see that's potentially an issue (having not used 8 since the original beta, so it might have improved a lot since) is that Metro might not be ideal on the desktop, and might even be actively off-putting enough for Windows 8 to be Vista to Windows 7's XP.
I admit as a free software enthusiast, I find 8 scary. It has a huge amount of potential, and if Microsoft gets what it wants, the progress made with Android in making a genuinely popular free and open platform may be reversed.
They certainly have the potential. Surface looks like a genuinely good tablet; there's no reason to think Windows will be displaced on the desktop; and well, that leaves the mobile space, and it's possible, however unlikely it seems now, that Microsoft can use Metro to sell that.
Your starter for ten: Birth Certificates. Secret Muslim. Kenya and "Colonial view of the world". Would any of these right wing talking points be raised if Obama was white?
Everything else seems to me to be up for grabs, and vary from hour to hour depending on who he's talking to.
Which is why nobody's judging him on what he says (even the things you claim he's consistent on), but on how he's acted when he actually has power. He was a moderately competent politically moderate governor of MA. That's his record. We just had a year of campaigning in which it was obvious the GOP didn't consider Mitt pure enough, which is why virtually every opposing candidate had their time in the sun (with the exception of Ron Paul, for obvious reasons.) That's also left its mark on Romney's reputation.
You and I and everyone else knows that he has to keep the Republican base on board during the election. I don't know if you remember 2008, but John McCain turned into a right wing asshole for the entire campaign period, before reverting to the familiar friend-of-Jon-Stewart persona afterwards. I suspect, in part, that's why Obama is having a little difficulty portraying Mittens as a ruthless right wing nutcase. Romney isn't a ruthless rightwing nutcase. Nobody believes him when he pretends to be one, and nobody believes Obama when he says he is one.
It's very much personal. If I've stored files at 320K, then the conversion to 256K represents a loss of quality. If I'm content with 128K and Amazon converts to 256K, then they're effectively halving the number of songs per dollar that I can store. And if they also mess with my custom tags, the files are less useful to me, and it will cost me some work to restore them on Amazon's service. So basically, if someone dicks with my data without my consent, then it's personal, regardless of the extent or nature of the dicking.
Honestly, I think you're using a different definition of the word "personal" to everyone else. It doesn't normally mean "technical attributes of files stored on a PC not being propagated across a buffered network".
It's yet another example of the high-handed 'all of your everything are belong to us' attitude that corporations are ramming down our throats.
Not really. It's Amazon making technical choices about a service they run. They're not even particularly radical, all things considered. In fact, I'd argue they're necessary to deliver the service as expected.
Amazon MP3 is not a file mirroring system, it's not a remote drive. It's a way to play and sync music "from anywhere". I'd expect, given it's not a file mirroring system, them to make technical choices like this. In fact, if Amazon wants it to be more useful, I'd expect them to actually go beyond what they're doing. 256kbps is a horrible rate to standardize on if you're expecting people to stream from the service at work, or download music over 3G (or worse, EDGE) against some data quota. If Amazon makes the decision - and they should - to deliver the music, rather than the raw source files, then this is something they can fix.
The more I think about it, the more I'd say Amazon is making the right decision here. Who's negatively affected by it? No-one. No-one is using Amazon to "store" their pristine original MP3s. So nobody is losing anything as a result of this change. Insofar as it's a problem, it's that it reduces flexibility to add more music by encoding at a lower bitrate. That's it. Metadata? You still have it. It's still stored in the originals. You can still copy those originals over to your MP3 player, just as you always have. And if you really need to transfer the originals using "the cloud", there are plenty of cloud services that are actually designed to do that. I believe Amazon even runs one...
You would have to be a complete moron to trust a third party with your personal data. A complete and utter moron
Amazon's cloud service stores, for free, about 5Gb of your music. The intention of cloud music services like Amazon's (and Google's, and Apple's, and Ubuntu's...) is to provide a convenient way to access your music from anywhere at any time. Your purchases from the named service get added automatically, you're encouraged to download them too, and you run a program that syncs your main music repository, which you typically continue to use, with the cloud service so everything you add to that gets added to the service. Then, when you want to access a track, playlist, or whatever, you can do so whether you're at home, at work, or in the middle of nowhere with your smartphone.
I'm not entirely sure how that's "personal", and I'm not sure how you're defining "trust", but it's hard to see how anyone would be a moron for merely using the system. If, tomorrow, the cloud services drop off the face of the planet, you still have your music, and you can continue to use that music just as you did before the cloud service existed.
The summary seems to invent a person who'd be personally affected by the fact that meta-data and custom encodings (maybe? Not mentioned but I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt) might change once music is uploaded, now, as a result of this policy change, but short of someone idiot enough to delete their music from their PC in the expectation that Amazon will store it for them - and who does that? - I can't see anyone actually being seriously affected by this move.
Do I use them myself for anything other than music I've bought from them? No, largely because I'm too much of a cheapskate and 5Gb isn't enough to store my music collection. Actually, it probably is if I rescanned everything as HE-AAC, but that's a lot of work, I can't be bothered, and it sounds like Amazon, at least, would no longer make that useful. But at the same time, I just can't see how I'd be more than slightly inconvienenced by this move if I was a big Amazon MP3 user. And I certainly wouldn't describe someone who uses it as a moron.
I thought that in 2008 until McCain picked Palin and I saw (as in I knew personally) die-in-the-wool conservatives actually announce they were supporting Obama this time.
Despite attempts to depict him otherwise (sometimes by himself!), Romney comes across as a moderately competent political moderate, and I suspect his support from centrists is higher than, say, someone like Santorum would have. It's unlikely Romney will pick someone more centrist than himself, the question is whether he'll pick someone all his supporters can live with. McCain picked badly.
Depending on how the assets are packaged, the id approach is certainly not bad. What most of us are concerned about with a game is whether we'll still be able to play it in ten years.
If the game assets are proprietary, but the engine isn't, and the engine doesn't require platform dependent code in the assets (unfortunately, there are quite a few engines that do), then you're kind of set: the engine can be ported by the community, and then all you need to do is supply the assets.
Unfortunately, the combination of free engines and unfree platform independent assets seems to be relatively rare.
Do you mean "unlocked" as in "Able to switch carrier" or "Able to change software"?
If you mean the former, that's probably true but I'm not sure it pertains to the issue at hand. If you mean the latter, well, the Galaxy Nexus is available for Sprint and Verizon, and does still include an unlockable* bootloader, from everything I've read.
Not that the Galaxy Nexus is a typical Android phone, but there are options, anyway.
* (that is, officially unlockable, I don't mean "We can exploit this buffer overflow bug during a race condition to temporarily unlock..." type stuff, you can just use the standard Android adb command)
It will never be put in the repos of mainstream distros, and should not be,
Of course it will. The major major distros have carried the official Flash plug-in forever, and had Java available long before it was free, usually bending over backwards to create some frankenpackage to deal with the licensing issues.
If distro maintainers consider Steam important enough, and if there's a way to include it legally, they'll include it.
I agree absolutely with the rest of your comment. Well said.
Kenmore just rebadges stuff (they're the Sears house brand, it's not like Sears is going to build factories for appliances anywhere.) We have an LG fridge that's been rebadged as a Kenmore for example. That said, your point over all stands;-)
You evidently haven't experienced the woe and misery that is the almost non-existent US passenger rail network!
Of course, it's back-assward in the States. The rails are private (with the exception of a small segment in the North East), and the passenger trains are semi-public (Amtrak is ultimately responsible to the government in the same way that the Post Office is, although it's actually part owned by the railroads.)
Is the UK system worse? Well, no, it's actually not awful. I've used British Rail, and I've ridden on its successor private trains, and I can't really say that the system is worse overall than BR was. And more importantly, it's just a little bit safer (that is, more likely to be around 50 years from now, I have no idea if you're less likely to be killed.)
- As "British Rail", like Amtrak, it was under constant threat of being shut down by right wing politicians.
- Operators are actually trying to open new routes and start new services. Under BR, routes were cut, and virtually never added.
- Ridership is up.
I know it's far from perfect, but don't think the weird privatization thing wasn't ultimately positive.
USB may lack these features, but the connector that microUSB mandates does, indeed, support a standard that provides video and audio out. Even better it works in parallel with USB charging and data.
That's how, for example, video works on the Galaxy Nexus.
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FWIW only online purchases (ie MP3s, Game downloads, etc) can really be bought that way from Amazon by a third party who has your password. From experience (not hacking! Just using) whenever you enter a new shipping address you have to re-enter your credit card information for the card you're using to make the purchase. You can't simply say "Oh, I'll use the one you have on file ending in 1234."
I'm sure it's a problem for many people, but at the same time it's not as bad as it could be if, say, someone bought a new overpriced Mac using your credit card, rather than a $1.29 MP3 or $50 game.
I wish that were true. We used it on 300MHz (from memory, thereabouts anyway) Alpha servers, and it wasn't exactly snappy. I suspect it was doing a lot of things "the wrong way" from an X11 point of view.
You're missing the context. It wasn't the CEO merely stating, out of the blue, that he supported a particular view of marriage. It was him explaining why Chic-fil-A gives money to certain "Christian" organizations that lobby, for example, African governments to pass laws that mandate the execution of gay people.
While a lot of people have pretended this is merely about the personal beliefs of the CEO of a fast food chain, it isn't. It's about the fact that buying products from said fast food chain directly contributes to utterly horrific homophobic actions.
And BTW, as for that "Christian" label people like to slap on homophobia - as I've said elsewhere, despite the actions of "Conservative Christians" to make me believe otherwise, I refuse to believe our creator is an evil intolerant jackass.
Well, the GP is several decades too early.
State of mainstream Western mobile technologies:
(2G) GSM is cheap, has tiny spectrum requirements, is easy to expand, and is everywhere, so despite AT&T's decision, I doubt it's going to go away any time soon. I suspect quite a few networks will turn off their 2G GSM service over the next twenty years, but I'd be surprised if the phones themselves aren't still supporting it in 20 years.
Google's fines have been for "privacy invasions" that are of virtually no consequence - collecting Wifi packets as they drove past homes and not discarding them, but with no sign they ever intended to use anything beyond the MAC addresses.
You seem to be implying the suspension of accounts over a possible "real name" (or other) policy is in some way demonstrative that Google is evil. May I point out:
1. Google+ is a social network. It relies upon network effects. Each person Google prevents from using it is a problem for Google. Therefore, ergo, all cases where someone is booted off who isn't an active nuisance is a screw-up not a conspiracy. This is whether it's because of a false positive of a legitimate rule, or a true positive of a stupid rule.
2. Google+ is a social network. It's free. Therefore there is nobody who actively requires it. Nobody outside of Google themselves is actively damaged by Google+ screwing up by blocking their access.
People are fans of Google for numerous reasons. They include:
1. They provide useful, well designed, services.
2. They produce innovative and original services such as Google Maps.
3. Despite their inherent collection and use of personal data - as an advertising distribution company - they, thus far, over-hyped cases like the Wifi thing included, been essentially ethical with the data they collect.
4. They responded to Apple's attempt to take over the mobile computing industry and turn it into a closed environment by creating and releasing a superb and open alternative, available even to Google's competitors at no charge.
Are they perfect? Hell no. But compared to Microsoft or Apple, you don't have to achieve perfection in the ethics department to be considered positive and for people to actually like you. Google fits that, which is why, for many of us, Google is our favorite faceless giant corporation.
Based upon the article, I'd say virtually none.
Dan himself didn't have a long term problem - his account was suspended while under review (it wasn't deleted or anything like that) and other than the fact he's not sure why it happened in the first place, there's no problem other than mild inconvenience.
The others consist of people Dan found while Googling for tales of having one's account suspended. They include rather obvious cases where someone has a "suspicious name" and has managed to fall foul of the real names policy. (Yes, I know, a driver's license ought to clear it, but unless you present it in person, it's not exactly proof of anything. I can put together a scan of my driver's license, showing my real name as "Squiggle McGoogle" in a few minutes if you need to see it...)
The underlying problem here is a dumb, stupid, idiotic policy Google shouldn't have: the real names policy. It's an utterly stupid thing to have because:
This has nothing to do with the Facebook shills. They're posting the usual "Google's capture of Wifi MAC addresses means THEY'RE OUT TO KILL YOU!" crap. This is the straightforward example of the obvious consequences of a misguided policy.
Unfortunately not, that name was already trademarked by the German firm of "Microsoft Office Live Style UI Media Center Edition for Windows Genuine Advantage and Company"
The evidence was submitted as a response to specific evidence Apple manufactured (such as the infamous pre-iPhone/post-iPhone graphic), so no, it couldn't have been submitted earlier in the discovery process - at least not significantly earlier.
Apple was well aware that Google was developing a phone when Schmidt was on their board, and it was public knowledge he recused himself during many iPhone discussions. Apple could have ejected him at any time.
Apple is playing dirty in this fight, and Samsung is having problems as a result. What's absolutely clear is that the evidence Samsung has presented in public shows that Apple is basically lying about Samsung's products and development processes.
And last I looked, Samsung is the most popular manufacturer of Android phones, itself the most popular smartphone operating system. So there's a hell of a lot of people who disagree with your last sentence. The mystery is why a locked down pseudo-smartphone that doesn't even let you change the battery without special tools has a single buyer.
These documents were already unsealed. Samsung was pointing at information already in the public domain. By her orders. Read the Groklaw link if you need more information on this.
How much did who pay me to write what? Because I really don't understand what you're trying to imply, given the rest of your comment is almost a rewrite of "The only thing I can see that's potentially an issue (having not used 8 since the original beta, so it might have improved a lot since) is that Metro might not be ideal on the desktop, and might even be actively off-putting enough for Windows 8 to be Vista to Windows 7's XP."
FWIW, Metro's more the UI. But anyway: would "Mass Transit System" or "City Bus Company" have been any better as names? And don't say "But what about Subway" as people in the US associate that with sandwiches made on stale hoagie rolls.
"Metro" was definitely the right choice...
I think it's important to remember that Windows 8 is a reaction to the problems Microsoft is having. They're developing a UI that'll be consistent across their systems that will work well on phones, and Windows 8 itself is designed to be just as at home on a tablet as a PC. The only thing I can see that's potentially an issue (having not used 8 since the original beta, so it might have improved a lot since) is that Metro might not be ideal on the desktop, and might even be actively off-putting enough for Windows 8 to be Vista to Windows 7's XP.
I admit as a free software enthusiast, I find 8 scary. It has a huge amount of potential, and if Microsoft gets what it wants, the progress made with Android in making a genuinely popular free and open platform may be reversed.
They certainly have the potential. Surface looks like a genuinely good tablet; there's no reason to think Windows will be displaced on the desktop; and well, that leaves the mobile space, and it's possible, however unlikely it seems now, that Microsoft can use Metro to sell that.
I just moused over the Start button (sorry, the circle with a Windows logo in it) on my bog standard Windows 7 PC, and the tooltip "Start" came up.
So yeah, you still press Start to Stop your PC. Not that that's a problem, it's just amusing.
Because you're not taking any notice?
Your starter for ten: Birth Certificates. Secret Muslim. Kenya and "Colonial view of the world". Would any of these right wing talking points be raised if Obama was white?
Which is why nobody's judging him on what he says (even the things you claim he's consistent on), but on how he's acted when he actually has power. He was a moderately competent politically moderate governor of MA. That's his record. We just had a year of campaigning in which it was obvious the GOP didn't consider Mitt pure enough, which is why virtually every opposing candidate had their time in the sun (with the exception of Ron Paul, for obvious reasons.) That's also left its mark on Romney's reputation.
You and I and everyone else knows that he has to keep the Republican base on board during the election. I don't know if you remember 2008, but John McCain turned into a right wing asshole for the entire campaign period, before reverting to the familiar friend-of-Jon-Stewart persona afterwards. I suspect, in part, that's why Obama is having a little difficulty portraying Mittens as a ruthless right wing nutcase. Romney isn't a ruthless rightwing nutcase. Nobody believes him when he pretends to be one, and nobody believes Obama when he says he is one.
Honestly, I think you're using a different definition of the word "personal" to everyone else. It doesn't normally mean "technical attributes of files stored on a PC not being propagated across a buffered network".
Not really. It's Amazon making technical choices about a service they run. They're not even particularly radical, all things considered. In fact, I'd argue they're necessary to deliver the service as expected.
Amazon MP3 is not a file mirroring system, it's not a remote drive. It's a way to play and sync music "from anywhere". I'd expect, given it's not a file mirroring system, them to make technical choices like this. In fact, if Amazon wants it to be more useful, I'd expect them to actually go beyond what they're doing. 256kbps is a horrible rate to standardize on if you're expecting people to stream from the service at work, or download music over 3G (or worse, EDGE) against some data quota. If Amazon makes the decision - and they should - to deliver the music, rather than the raw source files, then this is something they can fix.
The more I think about it, the more I'd say Amazon is making the right decision here. Who's negatively affected by it? No-one. No-one is using Amazon to "store" their pristine original MP3s. So nobody is losing anything as a result of this change. Insofar as it's a problem, it's that it reduces flexibility to add more music by encoding at a lower bitrate. That's it. Metadata? You still have it. It's still stored in the originals. You can still copy those originals over to your MP3 player, just as you always have. And if you really need to transfer the originals using "the cloud", there are plenty of cloud services that are actually designed to do that. I believe Amazon even runs one...
Amazon's cloud service stores, for free, about 5Gb of your music. The intention of cloud music services like Amazon's (and Google's, and Apple's, and Ubuntu's...) is to provide a convenient way to access your music from anywhere at any time. Your purchases from the named service get added automatically, you're encouraged to download them too, and you run a program that syncs your main music repository, which you typically continue to use, with the cloud service so everything you add to that gets added to the service. Then, when you want to access a track, playlist, or whatever, you can do so whether you're at home, at work, or in the middle of nowhere with your smartphone.
I'm not entirely sure how that's "personal", and I'm not sure how you're defining "trust", but it's hard to see how anyone would be a moron for merely using the system. If, tomorrow, the cloud services drop off the face of the planet, you still have your music, and you can continue to use that music just as you did before the cloud service existed.
The summary seems to invent a person who'd be personally affected by the fact that meta-data and custom encodings (maybe? Not mentioned but I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt) might change once music is uploaded, now, as a result of this policy change, but short of someone idiot enough to delete their music from their PC in the expectation that Amazon will store it for them - and who does that? - I can't see anyone actually being seriously affected by this move.
Do I use them myself for anything other than music I've bought from them? No, largely because I'm too much of a cheapskate and 5Gb isn't enough to store my music collection. Actually, it probably is if I rescanned everything as HE-AAC, but that's a lot of work, I can't be bothered, and it sounds like Amazon, at least, would no longer make that useful. But at the same time, I just can't see how I'd be more than slightly inconvienenced by this move if I was a big Amazon MP3 user. And I certainly wouldn't describe someone who uses it as a moron.
I thought that in 2008 until McCain picked Palin and I saw (as in I knew personally) die-in-the-wool conservatives actually announce they were supporting Obama this time.
Despite attempts to depict him otherwise (sometimes by himself!), Romney comes across as a moderately competent political moderate, and I suspect his support from centrists is higher than, say, someone like Santorum would have. It's unlikely Romney will pick someone more centrist than himself, the question is whether he'll pick someone all his supporters can live with. McCain picked badly.
Depending on how the assets are packaged, the id approach is certainly not bad. What most of us are concerned about with a game is whether we'll still be able to play it in ten years.
If the game assets are proprietary, but the engine isn't, and the engine doesn't require platform dependent code in the assets (unfortunately, there are quite a few engines that do), then you're kind of set: the engine can be ported by the community, and then all you need to do is supply the assets.
Unfortunately, the combination of free engines and unfree platform independent assets seems to be relatively rare.
Do you mean "unlocked" as in "Able to switch carrier" or "Able to change software"?
If you mean the former, that's probably true but I'm not sure it pertains to the issue at hand. If you mean the latter, well, the Galaxy Nexus is available for Sprint and Verizon, and does still include an unlockable* bootloader, from everything I've read.
Not that the Galaxy Nexus is a typical Android phone, but there are options, anyway.
* (that is, officially unlockable, I don't mean "We can exploit this buffer overflow bug during a race condition to temporarily unlock..." type stuff, you can just use the standard Android adb command)
Of course it will. The major major distros have carried the official Flash plug-in forever, and had Java available long before it was free, usually bending over backwards to create some frankenpackage to deal with the licensing issues.
If distro maintainers consider Steam important enough, and if there's a way to include it legally, they'll include it.
I agree absolutely with the rest of your comment. Well said.
Kenmore just rebadges stuff (they're the Sears house brand, it's not like Sears is going to build factories for appliances anywhere.) We have an LG fridge that's been rebadged as a Kenmore for example. That said, your point over all stands ;-)
You evidently haven't experienced the woe and misery that is the almost non-existent US passenger rail network!
Of course, it's back-assward in the States. The rails are private (with the exception of a small segment in the North East), and the passenger trains are semi-public (Amtrak is ultimately responsible to the government in the same way that the Post Office is, although it's actually part owned by the railroads.)
Is the UK system worse? Well, no, it's actually not awful. I've used British Rail, and I've ridden on its successor private trains, and I can't really say that the system is worse overall than BR was. And more importantly, it's just a little bit safer (that is, more likely to be around 50 years from now, I have no idea if you're less likely to be killed.)
- As "British Rail", like Amtrak, it was under constant threat of being shut down by right wing politicians.
- Operators are actually trying to open new routes and start new services. Under BR, routes were cut, and virtually never added.
- Ridership is up.
I know it's far from perfect, but don't think the weird privatization thing wasn't ultimately positive.
USB may lack these features, but the connector that microUSB mandates does, indeed, support a standard that provides video and audio out. Even better it works in parallel with USB charging and data.
That's how, for example, video works on the Galaxy Nexus.