When you get a job and you work in the real world, you'll find that virtually all companies that store large amounts of data have numerous people who have access to all of that data. Unfortunately it's virtually impossible not to have that situation. You'll find that's as true of, say, hospitals and health insurers as it is of car dealerships and sewing supplies stores.
Can this be changed? Not easily. Virtually every third party tool that you use makes it difficult to hide data not specifically required for someone's immediate task at hand, not intentionally, but because it's close to impossible to create universal tools that can do that without burying their usefulness in complexity and bureaucracy.
If you think individual Google engineers don't have access, you're naive. If you think there's anything Google can do about that situation except create heavy penalties for offenders, then you're not living in the real world. If you think the vast majority of Google engineers are going to risk their careers and even potential prison time simply to get hold of your sexual preferences so they can make fun of you on Facebook, well, then you're extremely and unrealistically paranoid.
No, I don't doubt they'll lose more. I've had a few times where I've gone to a network's website, and found that I had to dig out authentication information with the network in order to watch a show online, and frankly I don't see most people being willing to do that, as it's a PITA and somewhat confusing.
I suspect that it wouldn't matter if 100% of Hulu's users had cable or not, we're probably looking at a 90% drop in users if the story is as described. Casual access is valuable, Hulu is making a mistake if they fail to recognize that. Even paysites usually make a point to ensure some degree of casual access is possible before requiring payments and registrations.
2-3 ads would be almost OK were I not paying for it as well. But try five advertising breaks in a 22 minute show.
Five. Quoting from a log I sent to Hulu (of the next show we watched after sending in a complaint, not of a particularly bad episode - this was typical):
On the episode we just watched (Season 2, Episode 3), the ads were at the beginning, five minutes in, five minutes after those, seven after that, and finally five after that (one minute before the show ended.)
This is the response I got:
Thank you for that information! After reviewing the video, I can say that unfortunately it has the correct amount of commercials. Still, compared to what you would be viewing on TV, this is actually half the amount of commercials. Each commercial break on TV is normally 2 or 2.5 minutes long, and happens 3 - 4 times per 22 minute episodes. In relation, Hulu Plus may have the same amount of commercial breaks, but each break only shows two 30 second commercials.
I do understand how annoying this is, especially since you paid to a subscription service. Hopefully we will be able to have multiple options for viewing ads in the future, but as of right now that is the business model that works best with the most amount of our viewers.
Note that five advertising breaks suddenly got justified because each commercial break on TV happens "3-4 times per 22 minute episode."
So you're OK with 2-3. Hulu's support staff are OK with 3-4, and Hulu's support staff ignore, and their programmers implement, five in a 22 minute show.
People use Hulu because it's a way to watch shows that aren't on air, or that your DVR didn't get.
I'm not sure where this crap that Hulu is for people who don't have cable came from. I suspect that 75% of Hulu's users have cable or satellite - like the rest of America.
Honestly, if this was any other company, there would be more outrage in the comments.
No, there wouldn't. It's a non-issue. Google didn't spend all day installing a sensitive microphone to pick up the conversations of Mrs Edith Rosebud, 1298 Willoughby Avenue, New Hicksville, NC 65536. Instead a few Wifi packets were recorded by software that was actually trawling for MAC addresses, as a ugly-ass Google branded SUV drove up a street.
The funny thing is that actually what Google published from that SUV was far more likely to breach people's privacy, and that's NOT what we're talking about. Google's SUV is covered in cameras, and was taking pictures. If you were unfortunate enough to have a hole in your optical security - say, a window that can be seen into from the part of the street the SUV was driving through when it took the photo - your information is now published for the world to see.
The information Google collected that it could reasonably expect people to think was private never got seen by human beings. The other information - published for the world to see. On Slashdot, a den of supposedly tech savvy nerds, only Slashdot's anti-Google element, and Apple/Oracle shills, could possibly consider this a major scandal.
You're saying that the onus on people if they don't want others to take advantage of them is to hide all their vulnerable points. And I'm saying that's the sign of a lawless anarchy where people aren't presumed to have rights.
Perhaps we need a sense of proportion in this discussion, because the above doesn't make sense either. Google didn't "take advantage of" anyone, not even in the version where Eric Schmidt himself was evilly rubbing his hands together and saying "Do it! RECORD EVERYTHING YOU CAN! HAHAHAHAHA!"
What Google did was record a lot of data. That data was destroyed when they found it wasn't what was needed for the mapping project Google ran. There is no suggestion that Google, at any point, intended to publish the data, or use it to harass anyone, or in any other way abuse the overload of information they added.
Now, you talk about rights. What rights are we talking about? The right to have privacy, or the right not to have data you're transmitting - deliberately or otherwise - recorded temporarily by a non-sentient device?
I say this because the two are not the same. The latter is not an abuse of privacy unless that information is actually published to one or more sentient beings in a way those sentient beings can interpret and process.
When we get all hot and bothered about electronic devices recording things, it's usually because we're concerned that they are going to be actively used to violate an individual's privacy. But that's not the case here. What people are getting upset about is the electronic side without the actual betrayal of privacy at the end of the process.
I understand it. But in the great scheme of things, recording information from people who appear not to be concerned about their privacy, temporarily, in a way that will never be published and probably never even be seen internally, strikes me as pretty inconsequential.
What Google did was evil, plain and simple. Innocent people who were just using their Airports to connect together their Apple iPads were spied upon.. And they snooped on high quality businesses, the type that know that Oracle is the number one choice for high quality database management system.
Google harvested this information from innocent people, quite obviously, so that at some point in the future, Google's plan to sell human beings to advertisers as slaves could take place.
That's what we're talking about here. People with the number one tablet in the world, who are normally protected by its superior security model thanks to Apple's revolutionary App Store, being snooped on by a bunch of slave traders. Businesses, high quality businesses running high quality Oracle software, being spied upon.
There is nothing right here. In my view, Google should IMMEDIATELY be broken up. Android phone users should be rounded up and required to purchase one iPhone for every year they've possessed an Android phone. There is no lesser punishment that would be as deserving.
Thank you for reading this post. Also: iPad iPad iPad.
You are full of crap. The aim and intention of MPEG-1 was CIF resolution at CD (1x) bitrates
...so I was right. One profile. The only difference between what I'm saying and what you're saying is you're saying it was intentional. That doesn't make it any less of a mistake, or a series of a poor judgements.
There was never any reason to avoid specifying other profiles, or including at least some of the metadata I mentioned (such as the source/display frame rates), or to hardcode the number of audio channels.
Also, MPEG-4 part 2 (ASP) was not really a failure. It did have some features that were of dubious value (like global motion compensation and a few other things), but it was in no way a prototype. It was a huge step forward from MPEG-2.
No, it was a failure. It wasn't a huge step forward from MPEG-2, if it had it would have been used for more than just DivX;-) and low resolution MMS messages. It's been around since before the adoption of digital TV standards, don't you think it says something that ATSC, DVB, ISDB, and the other standards actually stuck with MPEG-2 - despite later jumping right onto the AVC codec despite the fact the digital TV standards had already been rolled out by the time they were adopted?
Why do you think Blu-ray, launched long after ASP's release, never incorporated the technology?
Why do you think AVC and Microsoft's VC-2 came about in the first place? They were both launched several years after ASP and had exactly the same aims!
You could have really said the same thing about AVC when it first came around. I remember trying out the first encoders
...encoders are not formats. We're still seeing maturity on the MPEG 1/2 space too. That's not the issue here.
If tomorrow Microsoft will decide that C# must implement Qt slot/signal syntax and semantics internally, all C# implementations will have to implement Qt slot/signal syntax and semantics, or they will no longer be considered C#.
Sorry, you miswrote that, here, let me fix it:
If tomorrow ECMA will decide that C# must implement Qt slot/signal syntax and semantics internally, all C# implementations will have to implement Qt slot/signal syntax and semantics, or they will no longer be considered C#.
That's what you meant to write, correct?
Well, in any case, ECMA is actually a standards body, which means it does have the right to modify a standard while still claiming that standard is non-proprietary.
HEVC will suck because MPEG always follows the pattern of releasing a prototype video codec followed by a decent one.
Thus far it's been:
- MPEG1 - lack of support for profiles except a single low resolution "standard", two channel audio, no support for Interlace (at the time a necessity), no metadata to describe how to deal with a difference between original and display frame rates.
- MPEG2 - Identical to MPEG1, except all the above fixed.
- MPEG4 part 2 (ASP) - Entire kitchen sink thrown in, with no thought as to what would be useful, apparently to pacify patent holders. Only a subset of features actually *allowed* to be used. Requires huge amounts of processing effort. Promised 50% improvement over MPEG-2, achieved closer to 5%. Only popular thanks to DivX;-).
- MPEG4 part 10 (AVC/H.264) - The good parts of ASP, coupled with the stuff that should have been there to begin with, and most of crap removed. Made good, for the most part, on the "50% better than MPEG-2" promise.
Thus, HEVC will be a giant pile of crap, but AHEVC (or whatever the post HEVC codec will be called) will actually be pretty decent.
One of the ironies is that many materials are prized for their scarcity, but their scarcity actually makes them less valuable in the real world.
Take gold as an extreme example. There's not enough of it to be useful, so we don't really use it that often. Instead, its rarity is prized by people who value rarity and that's it.
Libertarians might think it's valuable as some post-apocalyptic currency. Me, I think gold's useless. Outside of plating electrical connectors (something silver's pretty good at too), it's only in my house 'cos my wife like wearing the stuff decoratively.
If we had lots of gold, on the other hand, we'd start using it. Copper wire would start being replaced by gold/copper alloys. We'd use it to plate large objects to protect them from rust - car components, train bodies (perhaps even train rails.)
The irony here is that by becoming abundant, gold would become useful. As such it would be valuable. You could build and fuel industries around it. There's not enough of it to build industries around it today.
It doesn't mean there won't be government funded agencies where it makes sense. It doesn't mean zero social nets and letting people starve to death if they lose their job.
Then what the fuck does it mean?
"When it makes sense" is an all purpose cop out. Can I have a national health service in a libertarian paradise? Why of course! What about a universal benefit to ensure nobody falls between the cracks. Why, that's entirely compatible too!
It's like the people who say "Oh, so you believe in the constitution huh? Well why don't you support Ron Paul then? He's the only candidate who's for the constitution".
On what basis? Because he says he is? Obama says he is too, and he's fucking sending out drones to kill people. But Ron Paul is, of course, saying that virtually everything the Fed does is illegal and unconstitutional, and therefore he must be pro-constitution!
But when was that ever the case? Does the commerce clause suddenly disappear because we don't like the implications?
Notebooks and laptops are portable computing devices, but predate the Internet in concept, and are designed to be used standalone. The reason someone is given a notebook is typically so that they can work offline. A salesperson can go to a client and show a Powerpoint presentation. A software developer can go home and hack on their project. In that context, where connectivity is optional, the concept of using a million hacks to connect to the office network isn't that bizarre. It wasn't that long ago that "going online" when on the road meant using a modem.
Tablets? No. That's not how they're going. Tablets are, right now, running the same operating systems that mobile phones run. They expect to be online, all the time. A quick look at Windows 8 (which I've used and was moderately impressed by) shows an OS that, by default, is set up as an online operating system, one that's going to be very weird and clunky without a network connection.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's not quite the same. It's about expectations, it's about how seamlessly the system integrates with the hacks upon hacks we've been using for decades.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to get my tablets to connect to my home network. In theory, they have the capabilities, and all I have to do is run the VPN server at home. And from time to time I've implemented it, and it's been - to say the least - very ugly when I've tried. Some of that is Android's fault, but some of it is merely Android trying to do the right thing, trying to avoid being online when, for example, the device isn't in use, to save battery power. It doesn't feel right. It's probably never going to feel right. And until we quit it with the ugly hacks, and go for IPv6 + IPSEC everywhere, I don't see this being resolved any time soon.
I knew that this was a false flag operation as soon as I saw Anonymous was teaming up with the People's Liberation Front, and not the Liberation Front of the People. Splitters!
If it were true that the excuse was they "ran out of time", then someone somewhere would be lying. The ActiveDirectory integration of Windows isn't written in assembler, and there's no reason whatsoever to think it even has endian issues given it's all standard Kerberos and LDAP (OK, with some added functions, but nothing that involves decoding binary numbers in quite that way.) It's fair to say that enabling it is literally a matter of enabling a compile time flag, and running it through the test cycle a few times to catch whatever very minor issues might come up.
So whatever the case, we can safely rule out "time" as being a reason.
Here's a couple of more probable solutions.
1. Microsoft sees tablets right now as being a consumer item.
Microsoft is not ruling out there being a corporate need soon, but they know that tablet makers are not going to be trying to push them to small and medium businesses quite yet.
And larger enterprises aren't going to want it either. Larger enterprises are conservative, they're not going to jump ship or start corporately purchasing swathes of devices that do not run the software they already have, which by and large is standard Win32 (or even Win16) stuff. The day larger enterprises consider tablets worth jumping onto is the day Microsoft is in for a world of hurt, because an enterpise that can do that can just as easily switch to Ubuntu or Mac OS X, or iOS, or Android, or whatever, too.
So tablet makers are going to want a version of Windows that's aimed at the consumer. They're not going to pay extra, and waste precious Flash memory, on unneeded extras.
The story is essentially hogwash. This wasn't a decision made in a high level tech meeting, but in a marketing department. Having been bitten many times before, Microsoft is being very careful in introducing their tablet operating system.
2. We haven't moved to IPv6 yet
That might sound like a weird comment to make but think about it for a moment. The primary feature we're talking about here is domain management. Domain management works when every computer that's in the domain is part of the same network. There's little or no point in it when that's not the case.
Now... what are the characteristics of tablets? Well, tablets are ultraportable computing devices. If a business hands them out to employees expecting them to only ever be used on the corporate network, then... well, why is the business handing them out at all? Why not just go for regular PCs?
And if they're expecting the users to use them anywhere, then without hacks using VPNs, there's not going to be a way of ensuring the tablets are always on the same "network" as everyone else until that network is The Internet, which is only going to happen once we have ubiquitous IPv6.
Essentially, you're opening a can of worms by putting domain management features on a tablet in 2012. If "time" is the excuse, then it's not in the sense of "We can't implement domain management in time", because that's a load of crap. But it may be "We can implement it, but once we implement it, everyone's going to see a whole host of problems that have always been there, but weren't anything like as important back when you could expect even most office laptops to never leave the office network."
Do 50% of first day sales need to be at Gamestop however?
To put it another way: would all those people who bought "EA's Banhammernorefunds" at Gamestop the day it came out have not gone to other retailers if Gamestop hadn't stocked it?
I wonder if the problem here isn't Gamestop or used game sales, so much as the fact we're still using the same business model from the 1970s to sell games consoles and games despite the fact the world has drastically moved on since then. There's nothing good about a system that requires high game prices to fund development and cover the disadvantages of... having high game prices.
Many Slashdotters argue that the problem is simply the high prices, and that people would not buy used games if the new games were cheaper than they are today. Is that actually realistic? If you were given the choice between a $5 used game and a $25 new game, would most people fork out $25? And would enough people spend $25 to make up for the fact that is isn't $50 any more (remember, also, that the fixed costs in each game, from the console maker's royalty to the cost of pressing a disc and the cost of manufacturing the box, means that you'd need considerably more than twice as many sales to get the same income)
The arguments here are largely going on because we've reached a point where a high tech box that you plug "games" into that you buy at high cost has become unsustainable. People who argue it's all about the used market are missing the point. The used market will always exist in such an environment. People who feel that prices are too high will never buy new games, where used games are available or not. Prices are therefore going to continue to go up.
And in the meantime, I'm sitting here paying (relatively) peanuts for games on Steam. I'm paying peanuts though, for the most part, because those games are two or three years old. I can't really judge whether the developers would be getting the money they spent on development if their new releases cost the same as their two or three year old prices.
Something's going to give, and unfortunately, it's probably not going to be prices, but the crashing down of an industry that can no longer keep up with expectations while producing a product that will sell at any price high enough to recover its costs.
If you ever feel like it, buy yourself an Android device (one with Google), and actually try buying some software - or even downloading stuff from a third party website and installing it directly.
You'll notice that "auditing every bit of software (you) install" is ridiculously easy. The installer tells you what rights the app needs when you install it. It's pretty easy to determine that a game does not need to capture your keystrokes, and if a cool tool to change the wall paper needs "access to your Google account" then there's obviously something odd going on.
If an app doesn't ask for a particular right, Android's security model prevents it from doing whatever it was that required the right in the first place.
By comparison, as I understand it, I only have Apple's (and a developer's) word that a particular tool for iOS doesn't contain malware. I'm not going to be told what parts of the system it needs to access, I just get a straight "Do you want the advertised features or not?" choice.
The flaw here is on Apple's side. Both systems require you audit the apps you install. Only Android actually lets you do that.
Not so much circular reasoning as a description of an unsustainable feedback loop.
It's kind of like the American car market. As one soccer mom replaces her station wagon with a larger one, followed by an SUV, followed by a larger SUV, she forces other soccer moms to do the same thing, as those left with the slightly smaller model of SUV or station wagon finds themselves at a competitive disadvantage on the same roads, being unable to see past the rival Canyonero in front of them.
Eventually the group of soccer moms is unable to diversify by having multiple sizes of vehicles, which means that when a megadisaster, such as a massive rise in oil prices, occurs, the group suffers considerably more than they would have done. The species dies out, as one by one their homes are foreclosed upon, and groups that previously lived in the shadows of these groups - cyclists, Democrats, Prius drivers, etc, gain the upper hand.
Slashdot Mirror
When you get a job and you work in the real world, you'll find that virtually all companies that store large amounts of data have numerous people who have access to all of that data. Unfortunately it's virtually impossible not to have that situation. You'll find that's as true of, say, hospitals and health insurers as it is of car dealerships and sewing supplies stores.
Can this be changed? Not easily. Virtually every third party tool that you use makes it difficult to hide data not specifically required for someone's immediate task at hand, not intentionally, but because it's close to impossible to create universal tools that can do that without burying their usefulness in complexity and bureaucracy.
If you think individual Google engineers don't have access, you're naive. If you think there's anything Google can do about that situation except create heavy penalties for offenders, then you're not living in the real world. If you think the vast majority of Google engineers are going to risk their careers and even potential prison time simply to get hold of your sexual preferences so they can make fun of you on Facebook, well, then you're extremely and unrealistically paranoid.
No, I don't doubt they'll lose more. I've had a few times where I've gone to a network's website, and found that I had to dig out authentication information with the network in order to watch a show online, and frankly I don't see most people being willing to do that, as it's a PITA and somewhat confusing.
I suspect that it wouldn't matter if 100% of Hulu's users had cable or not, we're probably looking at a 90% drop in users if the story is as described. Casual access is valuable, Hulu is making a mistake if they fail to recognize that. Even paysites usually make a point to ensure some degree of casual access is possible before requiring payments and registrations.
2-3 ads would be almost OK were I not paying for it as well. But try five advertising breaks in a 22 minute show.
Five. Quoting from a log I sent to Hulu (of the next show we watched after sending in a complaint, not of a particularly bad episode - this was typical):
This is the response I got:
Note that five advertising breaks suddenly got justified because each commercial break on TV happens "3-4 times per 22 minute episode."
So you're OK with 2-3. Hulu's support staff are OK with 3-4, and Hulu's support staff ignore, and their programmers implement, five in a 22 minute show.
It's not acceptable.
It's not watchable.
People use Hulu because it's a way to watch shows that aren't on air, or that your DVR didn't get.
I'm not sure where this crap that Hulu is for people who don't have cable came from. I suspect that 75% of Hulu's users have cable or satellite - like the rest of America.
I dropped the Hulu+ service after a month after my wife and I found the number of ads made it unwatchable.
Just warning.
No, there wouldn't. It's a non-issue. Google didn't spend all day installing a sensitive microphone to pick up the conversations of Mrs Edith Rosebud, 1298 Willoughby Avenue, New Hicksville, NC 65536. Instead a few Wifi packets were recorded by software that was actually trawling for MAC addresses, as a ugly-ass Google branded SUV drove up a street.
The funny thing is that actually what Google published from that SUV was far more likely to breach people's privacy, and that's NOT what we're talking about. Google's SUV is covered in cameras, and was taking pictures. If you were unfortunate enough to have a hole in your optical security - say, a window that can be seen into from the part of the street the SUV was driving through when it took the photo - your information is now published for the world to see.
The information Google collected that it could reasonably expect people to think was private never got seen by human beings. The other information - published for the world to see. On Slashdot, a den of supposedly tech savvy nerds, only Slashdot's anti-Google element, and Apple/Oracle shills, could possibly consider this a major scandal.
Perhaps we need a sense of proportion in this discussion, because the above doesn't make sense either. Google didn't "take advantage of" anyone, not even in the version where Eric Schmidt himself was evilly rubbing his hands together and saying "Do it! RECORD EVERYTHING YOU CAN! HAHAHAHAHA!"
What Google did was record a lot of data. That data was destroyed when they found it wasn't what was needed for the mapping project Google ran. There is no suggestion that Google, at any point, intended to publish the data, or use it to harass anyone, or in any other way abuse the overload of information they added.
Now, you talk about rights. What rights are we talking about? The right to have privacy, or the right not to have data you're transmitting - deliberately or otherwise - recorded temporarily by a non-sentient device?
I say this because the two are not the same. The latter is not an abuse of privacy unless that information is actually published to one or more sentient beings in a way those sentient beings can interpret and process.
When we get all hot and bothered about electronic devices recording things, it's usually because we're concerned that they are going to be actively used to violate an individual's privacy. But that's not the case here. What people are getting upset about is the electronic side without the actual betrayal of privacy at the end of the process.
I understand it. But in the great scheme of things, recording information from people who appear not to be concerned about their privacy, temporarily, in a way that will never be published and probably never even be seen internally, strikes me as pretty inconsequential.
Look, I think you're missing the point.
What Google did was evil, plain and simple. Innocent people who were just using their Airports to connect together their Apple iPads were spied upon.. And they snooped on high quality businesses, the type that know that Oracle is the number one choice for high quality database management system.
Google harvested this information from innocent people, quite obviously, so that at some point in the future, Google's plan to sell human beings to advertisers as slaves could take place.
That's what we're talking about here. People with the number one tablet in the world, who are normally protected by its superior security model thanks to Apple's revolutionary App Store, being snooped on by a bunch of slave traders. Businesses, high quality businesses running high quality Oracle software, being spied upon.
There is nothing right here. In my view, Google should IMMEDIATELY be broken up. Android phone users should be rounded up and required to purchase one iPhone for every year they've possessed an Android phone. There is no lesser punishment that would be as deserving.
Thank you for reading this post. Also: iPad iPad iPad.
There was never any reason to avoid specifying other profiles, or including at least some of the metadata I mentioned (such as the source/display frame rates), or to hardcode the number of audio channels.
No, it was a failure. It wasn't a huge step forward from MPEG-2, if it had it would have been used for more than just DivX ;-) and low resolution MMS messages. It's been around since before the adoption of digital TV standards, don't you think it says something that ATSC, DVB, ISDB, and the other standards actually stuck with MPEG-2 - despite later jumping right onto the AVC codec despite the fact the digital TV standards had already been rolled out by the time they were adopted?
Why do you think Blu-ray, launched long after ASP's release, never incorporated the technology?
Why do you think AVC and Microsoft's VC-2 came about in the first place? They were both launched several years after ASP and had exactly the same aims!
Sorry, you miswrote that, here, let me fix it:
That's what you meant to write, correct?
Well, in any case, ECMA is actually a standards body, which means it does have the right to modify a standard while still claiming that standard is non-proprietary.
HEVC will suck because MPEG always follows the pattern of releasing a prototype video codec followed by a decent one.
Thus far it's been:
- MPEG1 - lack of support for profiles except a single low resolution "standard", two channel audio, no support for Interlace (at the time a necessity), no metadata to describe how to deal with a difference between original and display frame rates.
- MPEG2 - Identical to MPEG1, except all the above fixed.
- MPEG4 part 2 (ASP) - Entire kitchen sink thrown in, with no thought as to what would be useful, apparently to pacify patent holders. Only a subset of features actually *allowed* to be used. Requires huge amounts of processing effort. Promised 50% improvement over MPEG-2, achieved closer to 5%. Only popular thanks to DivX ;-).
- MPEG4 part 10 (AVC/H.264) - The good parts of ASP, coupled with the stuff that should have been there to begin with, and most of crap removed. Made good, for the most part, on the "50% better than MPEG-2" promise.
Thus, HEVC will be a giant pile of crap, but AHEVC (or whatever the post HEVC codec will be called) will actually be pretty decent.
I use Steam under WINE. I can tell you that not only do I not complain about it, I'm delighted about the amount of stuff that works under it.
So suck on that, quit your bitchin', and whatever else it is you young people say!
Summary of article: Employee breaks Google's rules about confidentiality, is fired.
I'm sorry, but how does that article do anything other than encourage trust in Google?
One of the ironies is that many materials are prized for their scarcity, but their scarcity actually makes them less valuable in the real world.
Take gold as an extreme example. There's not enough of it to be useful, so we don't really use it that often. Instead, its rarity is prized by people who value rarity and that's it.
Libertarians might think it's valuable as some post-apocalyptic currency. Me, I think gold's useless. Outside of plating electrical connectors (something silver's pretty good at too), it's only in my house 'cos my wife like wearing the stuff decoratively.
If we had lots of gold, on the other hand, we'd start using it. Copper wire would start being replaced by gold/copper alloys. We'd use it to plate large objects to protect them from rust - car components, train bodies (perhaps even train rails.)
The irony here is that by becoming abundant, gold would become useful. As such it would be valuable. You could build and fuel industries around it. There's not enough of it to build industries around it today.
Well, now we know what jobs those fired Secret Service agents will be applying for...
Then what the fuck does it mean?
"When it makes sense" is an all purpose cop out. Can I have a national health service in a libertarian paradise? Why of course! What about a universal benefit to ensure nobody falls between the cracks. Why, that's entirely compatible too!
It's like the people who say "Oh, so you believe in the constitution huh? Well why don't you support Ron Paul then? He's the only candidate who's for the constitution".
On what basis? Because he says he is? Obama says he is too, and he's fucking sending out drones to kill people. But Ron Paul is, of course, saying that virtually everything the Fed does is illegal and unconstitutional, and therefore he must be pro-constitution!
But when was that ever the case? Does the commerce clause suddenly disappear because we don't like the implications?
Notebooks and laptops are portable computing devices, but predate the Internet in concept, and are designed to be used standalone. The reason someone is given a notebook is typically so that they can work offline. A salesperson can go to a client and show a Powerpoint presentation. A software developer can go home and hack on their project. In that context, where connectivity is optional, the concept of using a million hacks to connect to the office network isn't that bizarre. It wasn't that long ago that "going online" when on the road meant using a modem.
Tablets? No. That's not how they're going. Tablets are, right now, running the same operating systems that mobile phones run. They expect to be online, all the time. A quick look at Windows 8 (which I've used and was moderately impressed by) shows an OS that, by default, is set up as an online operating system, one that's going to be very weird and clunky without a network connection.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's not quite the same. It's about expectations, it's about how seamlessly the system integrates with the hacks upon hacks we've been using for decades.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to get my tablets to connect to my home network. In theory, they have the capabilities, and all I have to do is run the VPN server at home. And from time to time I've implemented it, and it's been - to say the least - very ugly when I've tried. Some of that is Android's fault, but some of it is merely Android trying to do the right thing, trying to avoid being online when, for example, the device isn't in use, to save battery power. It doesn't feel right. It's probably never going to feel right. And until we quit it with the ugly hacks, and go for IPv6 + IPSEC everywhere, I don't see this being resolved any time soon.
And Assange works for RT, Russia's state-owned Putin-controlled Fox News equivalent.
It might be best to ignore the figureheads, and concentrate on the content.
I knew that this was a false flag operation as soon as I saw Anonymous was teaming up with the People's Liberation Front, and not the Liberation Front of the People. Splitters!
If it were true that the excuse was they "ran out of time", then someone somewhere would be lying. The ActiveDirectory integration of Windows isn't written in assembler, and there's no reason whatsoever to think it even has endian issues given it's all standard Kerberos and LDAP (OK, with some added functions, but nothing that involves decoding binary numbers in quite that way.) It's fair to say that enabling it is literally a matter of enabling a compile time flag, and running it through the test cycle a few times to catch whatever very minor issues might come up.
So whatever the case, we can safely rule out "time" as being a reason.
Here's a couple of more probable solutions.
1. Microsoft sees tablets right now as being a consumer item.
Microsoft is not ruling out there being a corporate need soon, but they know that tablet makers are not going to be trying to push them to small and medium businesses quite yet.
And larger enterprises aren't going to want it either. Larger enterprises are conservative, they're not going to jump ship or start corporately purchasing swathes of devices that do not run the software they already have, which by and large is standard Win32 (or even Win16) stuff. The day larger enterprises consider tablets worth jumping onto is the day Microsoft is in for a world of hurt, because an enterpise that can do that can just as easily switch to Ubuntu or Mac OS X, or iOS, or Android, or whatever, too.
So tablet makers are going to want a version of Windows that's aimed at the consumer. They're not going to pay extra, and waste precious Flash memory, on unneeded extras.
The story is essentially hogwash. This wasn't a decision made in a high level tech meeting, but in a marketing department. Having been bitten many times before, Microsoft is being very careful in introducing their tablet operating system.
2. We haven't moved to IPv6 yet
That might sound like a weird comment to make but think about it for a moment. The primary feature we're talking about here is domain management. Domain management works when every computer that's in the domain is part of the same network. There's little or no point in it when that's not the case.
Now... what are the characteristics of tablets? Well, tablets are ultraportable computing devices. If a business hands them out to employees expecting them to only ever be used on the corporate network, then... well, why is the business handing them out at all? Why not just go for regular PCs?
And if they're expecting the users to use them anywhere, then without hacks using VPNs, there's not going to be a way of ensuring the tablets are always on the same "network" as everyone else until that network is The Internet, which is only going to happen once we have ubiquitous IPv6.
Essentially, you're opening a can of worms by putting domain management features on a tablet in 2012. If "time" is the excuse, then it's not in the sense of "We can't implement domain management in time", because that's a load of crap. But it may be "We can implement it, but once we implement it, everyone's going to see a whole host of problems that have always been there, but weren't anything like as important back when you could expect even most office laptops to never leave the office network."
Do 50% of first day sales need to be at Gamestop however?
To put it another way: would all those people who bought "EA's Banhammernorefunds" at Gamestop the day it came out have not gone to other retailers if Gamestop hadn't stocked it?
I wonder if the problem here isn't Gamestop or used game sales, so much as the fact we're still using the same business model from the 1970s to sell games consoles and games despite the fact the world has drastically moved on since then. There's nothing good about a system that requires high game prices to fund development and cover the disadvantages of... having high game prices.
Many Slashdotters argue that the problem is simply the high prices, and that people would not buy used games if the new games were cheaper than they are today. Is that actually realistic? If you were given the choice between a $5 used game and a $25 new game, would most people fork out $25? And would enough people spend $25 to make up for the fact that is isn't $50 any more (remember, also, that the fixed costs in each game, from the console maker's royalty to the cost of pressing a disc and the cost of manufacturing the box, means that you'd need considerably more than twice as many sales to get the same income)
The arguments here are largely going on because we've reached a point where a high tech box that you plug "games" into that you buy at high cost has become unsustainable. People who argue it's all about the used market are missing the point. The used market will always exist in such an environment. People who feel that prices are too high will never buy new games, where used games are available or not. Prices are therefore going to continue to go up.
And in the meantime, I'm sitting here paying (relatively) peanuts for games on Steam. I'm paying peanuts though, for the most part, because those games are two or three years old. I can't really judge whether the developers would be getting the money they spent on development if their new releases cost the same as their two or three year old prices.
Something's going to give, and unfortunately, it's probably not going to be prices, but the crashing down of an industry that can no longer keep up with expectations while producing a product that will sell at any price high enough to recover its costs.
If you ever feel like it, buy yourself an Android device (one with Google), and actually try buying some software - or even downloading stuff from a third party website and installing it directly.
You'll notice that "auditing every bit of software (you) install" is ridiculously easy. The installer tells you what rights the app needs when you install it. It's pretty easy to determine that a game does not need to capture your keystrokes, and if a cool tool to change the wall paper needs "access to your Google account" then there's obviously something odd going on.
If an app doesn't ask for a particular right, Android's security model prevents it from doing whatever it was that required the right in the first place.
By comparison, as I understand it, I only have Apple's (and a developer's) word that a particular tool for iOS doesn't contain malware. I'm not going to be told what parts of the system it needs to access, I just get a straight "Do you want the advertised features or not?" choice.
The flaw here is on Apple's side. Both systems require you audit the apps you install. Only Android actually lets you do that.
Yep, once I finished my screenplay I sold my Powerbook and stopped hanging out there...
I had no idea, that's almost 500 per coffee shop!
Not so much circular reasoning as a description of an unsustainable feedback loop.
It's kind of like the American car market. As one soccer mom replaces her station wagon with a larger one, followed by an SUV, followed by a larger SUV, she forces other soccer moms to do the same thing, as those left with the slightly smaller model of SUV or station wagon finds themselves at a competitive disadvantage on the same roads, being unable to see past the rival Canyonero in front of them.
Eventually the group of soccer moms is unable to diversify by having multiple sizes of vehicles, which means that when a megadisaster, such as a massive rise in oil prices, occurs, the group suffers considerably more than they would have done. The species dies out, as one by one their homes are foreclosed upon, and groups that previously lived in the shadows of these groups - cyclists, Democrats, Prius drivers, etc, gain the upper hand.
That's how it works.