To put it more bluntly, lets see how this goes over.
Then comes some sycophants in the press talking it up as a valid method of taxing "electric" vehicles and so on over the next year or so and suddenly it gets floated again. Now if Bush had floated this it would be a screaming shit fit on the left proclaiming how it WAS proof he was aligned with oil companies by taxing alternatively powered vehicles. Toss in the fun that the press and certain politicians who decried four dollar gasoline are silent or worse telling us the benefits of it... now
The day they require app installation for third party products to go through the "App Store" is the day I stop buying Apple computers. I don't care about the restriction on the iPad, that was there when I bought it. If anything all the App Store has proved to me is that its nearly impossible to separate good programs from bad ones because it costs nothing to get them on the store. By that I mean, to have a successful product in the retail environment today means being quality enough or a well enough known group to get stores to stock your products. With the App Store there is such a small barrier to entry it just becomes a cluttered mess.
Back to the story, I don't care where I get OS versions/updates. Whats so different from an App Store than downloading from a corporate website (like you do with Windows Service Packs which is what Lion feels to me - just like Snow Leopard was before it... etc)
If it was the corporation I could see the need for people to pummel them, but the actions of a franchisee do not speak for a whole company. I am not keen on rent to own, especially electronics, but let us not use an overly broad brush here. Hell people seem to forget the government keeps giving itself more rights with new "xxx bill of rights" legislation which means that they don't need spyware, they just use the force of law to take your stuff.
these same artist convincing your local municipality into funding their lack of taste and having it rubbed into your face each time you drive past a public building or go to the airport. Far too many "artists" are self important snits who goad society into funding them by making it to be "if you don't fund the arts your just cavemen/bigots/etc" so that we end up paying stupid sums of money to people who can't sell their product to anyone with a sense of sight or taste.
Like I posted elsewhere in this thread, I didn't go there to save the world or community. I contributed to something that sparked my fancy and at the same time let me have some fun. (speaking of the trebuchets). However this type of site will also go along way in teaching these artists just what society values, not just what they think society should value. It does this by giving them immediate exposure to their peer's successes and failures.
If your looking for something to change the world or benefit other nations there are hundreds of charities that can use your money, some can use your time if your willing. give.org lists thousands of them so can check to see if the one you chose is worthwhile.
I recently bought into this one after seeing the story on hacker news. So they can be about anything, this one just happens to be fun for both contributors and those who receive the contributions. Besides being totally geek oriented, after all who would not want a toy to fling stuff at co workers?
Sorry but I can flip this coin as well, your willing to penalize those with other majors with higher costs to support science and technical majors? Some of which have very disparate costs. Hell, if you separate out the costs and such you might end up having more people complete college as it would be affordable for those doing "soft" degrees.
If the cost of an education is a discouragement to these "STEM" degrees then I would suggest investigating other schools who have lower costs or realigning one's desires with reality. If that discourages some then so be it. Why so cavalier? Because some people get into majors they won't finish. Perhaps seeing the upfront costs difference will do two things, discourage those who should not be there and encourage those who are incurring the costs to work harder to get the most from it. Plus it can be used as leverage by these students to demand more from the schools for charging more. Simply by the fact their education is costing more they should feel the school is obligated to ensure it is worth it.
If they cannot support their original high speed intentions, most likely from the costs of keeping all that track up to specification as well as keeping the trains well maintained then its best to use them in the most efficient means possible.
China can abandon the tracks, China can and does abandon its own people. Property is no different to them if its living or not. This project was more national pride BS that China was using to position themselves in the world as something equal to the Western world. While in many cases they are they certainly leave behind hundreds of millions of people to do it. Those hundreds are only valuable to China when they need to reduce something bad they are doing in "by populace numbers" - say pollution.
So lower speed rail transportation makes sense if national pride can take a hike. Freight usage would go a long way to paying it off.
Look at Chinese cars. Very much clones of Honda and other Japanese brands yet youtube is replete with them failing European crash tests, some spectacularly. Very much a product of a society where all the appearances are there but the substance is not. Why? Most likely because for the most part there is little chance the blame will land on those who are mostly responsible.
Poor steel quality, copying only to the point of necessity, and an uninspired workforce, will all catch up to China soon.
Like North Korea, the real money and quality is only ensured when it comes to the military.
they will raise the caps at the same time introducing a new pricing structure that just happens to be the equivalent to buying internet and cable TV from them.
Just a note about how screwed up Comcast is
When I wanted basic cable (local channels and some chaff) it was a royal pain to get this from Comcast at the price shown on their internet site. I called the number on my bill and was told it was $23.95 for basic cable though their website showed $12.95. After trying two levels of phone support I initiated a contract for basic cable using their online chat. The people on the phone told me the web price was wrong or not available in my area but I have the service at the web price
As in, to keep from having to explain his holiness why they are having such a hard time with peaceful nuclear work it is useful to have a bogeyman. An Israeli / American bogeyman.
Figure if they run out of viruses then they can start on physical sabotage.
See, the iPhone has this curious problem, if it has the wrong password for mail or the likes it doesn't ask for the correct one, it spams the server till it locks out the account. Throw in no support for ActiveSync and well that leaves Blackberry and Android
I agree, the capes and the idea of making kids stand in a special line are bad. However the debit cards in lieu of food stamps is pushing it in my book. There should be some things people taking from the government where a little "prodding" to get off would be worth while. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, some do things which show it off all too well; think section 8 housing I have volunteered to clean up afterward.
A folding tablet design which allowed pen entry. I already have a BT keyboard for my iPad as I found that I as used it more that input became more and more of an issue. Voice recognition won't work in a meeting and the built in keyboard can be a pain. Hence I have a clam shell case with BT keyboard. I remember the old Palm days with their shorthand and such. Adapt that idea. Give me alternative methods of entering data. Tie it all together with One Note. The folding / split screen approach would allow easy separation of work as well let alone make it more compact to carry.
Still the more I use my tablet the more I begin to wonder how long they will persist, they are good for presenting what I have, not so much for creating on, at least in the business environment
1) Good enough. DVD is good enough for the majority of people and content. While many feature films can benefit from the density blu-ray offers television series rarely will. Throw in that most people don't have either or both a good enough display and sound system to notice a difference.
2) Costs. Blu-Ray content still carries too much of premium. DVDs are still pricey. They have not reached the impulse level needed for small purchases. If you put the effort into you can buy your blu-ray or dvds are significantly cheaper prices even on release day. It just takes more work than most people wanted.
3) DVRs, Internet, WOW, etc There simply is a large amount of entertainment outside of movie watching available to people now. While streaming is coming up I don't see it making as much of a dent anytime soon even on DVD sales. Tech sites and users of them like this one don't cover a large enough portion of the buying population for an accurate sample of buying behavior.
Things going for Blu-Ray in the future.
Blockbusters and Hollywood Video are essentially dead. Gone, kaput. Being able to rent relieved many people of having to buy the actual disc. This might lead more people to try Netflix but a lot of moving buying and watching was impulse buys which were easy when you could just run down to your neighborhood rental store. The kiosks don't offer near the selection and Netflix still takes a day or two.
Pricing, the player price difference is still closing and the bargain bin blu-rays are falling. The razor model doesn't work well, especially when you don't control both ends of the market. So blu-ray has been hampered by both high player prices, requirement of a TV that supports HDMI (now guaranteed), and high disc prices. Two of those three are nearly completely a non issue now, only disc pricing remains a sticking point for some.
Streaming, yeah, it benefits Blu-Ray at this time. It looks like shit on a lot of large displays. I have had both good and bad experiences with it. When its bad its very bad and always seems to time itself to happen when you want to show it off. Hey guys, Watch this, oh, it never did that before, oh, just wait a minute I will figure it out.
While some may say its time has passed I am not complete sure on that. Streaming has a long way to go, simply follow the availability of high speed internet and then take a very very small portion of those people and that shows you the market possibilities.
they will adapt their pages and quickly smother google searches. I know the news pages are like this, the day after the first change many sites dropped off of the right side bar only to return within weeks. A great example on the unfiltered news site is Huffington Post, NY Times, and LA Times. All three fell off, the first more than the other two, but now fill the sides up again.
Google can keep tweaking all they want but more people are paid to ensure rankings and page hits than Google has to ensure fairness and correctness of results
if anything it is to set the stage so new categories are open for class action suit by irresponsible sugar using industries. It could also be used as an opening for politicians to tax products containing sugar.
which pretty much makes the idea of teaching Chess in schools a non starter. Chess has a winner. It also is not a team sport Back in the good old days only the nerds played chess or were on the Chess team; yeah I know I just said its not a team sport but names are meaningless.
Perhaps battle chess would be a good way to introduce younger children to the game, something where its fun to watch as well play.
but I am not going to pay nine dollars for a paperback I can buy used for two dollars. Worse, the author passed many years ago and gave the rights to his university. So now the e-book version costs as much as the large format paper back versions, the small ones are seven dollars or such.
Where is the value? Out of the the ten or so e-books I tried to buy only one had price parity with paperbacks, the rest were priced over ten dollars a pop and in all cases I am looking at books over ten years old, many twenty.
It is a common thread, people on sites like slashdot will vilify a corporation which doesn't have power over state actors yet ignore the fact their own country trades or has other involved relations with the same country. As in, oh its wrong for RIM to allow monitoring of transmissions in that country but its okay for our government to sell them arms or even the equipment to do the monitoring.
The story summary makes this site come across as if it were staffed by a bunch of immature do nothings.
to think of all of this as, the world is catching up with the US (and in general, the rest of the world is catching up to Western Civilization). Yeah the US certainly has its problems, but like the article stated, comparing it to four countries who added together don't have half the population of the US, let alone the land area, is no different than having your answer before your facts to support it.
Saying the China is moving to a digital economy faster than the US is odd, but then again the favorite thing to do among such people is to ignore all those China doesn't count when it wants to look good, who happen to be the same people it counts when it wants to look good in other areas. Let alone, moving from where they were to anywhere would show more progress than most countries can make. After seeing the real estate situation in China I figure it is just a few years before they have similar problems. They are just better at hiding the problems they have, from practice and intimidation.
The only problem the US faces that is has not tried to fix is Washington DC. Entitlement spending will cripple this country. The discretionary spending (where those mythical 39 billion dollars from recent cuts came out of) is less than a third of the budget. The rest is guaranteed spending. Meaning we could cut everything but Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense, and still be spending negatively.
So, the threat is real, but it is from the leadership of the country, not some foreign bogeyman. As with all power structures that have crumbling support they need external bogeymen. Hence through their sycophants in the media they create them on demand.
Slashdot Mirror
To put it more bluntly, lets see how this goes over.
Then comes some sycophants in the press talking it up as a valid method of taxing "electric" vehicles and so on over the next year or so and suddenly it gets floated again. Now if Bush had floated this it would be a screaming shit fit on the left proclaiming how it WAS proof he was aligned with oil companies by taxing alternatively powered vehicles. Toss in the fun that the press and certain politicians who decried four dollar gasoline are silent or worse telling us the benefits of it ... now
The day they require app installation for third party products to go through the "App Store" is the day I stop buying Apple computers. I don't care about the restriction on the iPad, that was there when I bought it. If anything all the App Store has proved to me is that its nearly impossible to separate good programs from bad ones because it costs nothing to get them on the store. By that I mean, to have a successful product in the retail environment today means being quality enough or a well enough known group to get stores to stock your products. With the App Store there is such a small barrier to entry it just becomes a cluttered mess.
Back to the story, I don't care where I get OS versions/updates. Whats so different from an App Store than downloading from a corporate website (like you do with Windows Service Packs which is what Lion feels to me - just like Snow Leopard was before it... etc)
and not Aaron Rents.
If it was the corporation I could see the need for people to pummel them, but the actions of a franchisee do not speak for a whole company. I am not keen on rent to own, especially electronics, but let us not use an overly broad brush here. Hell people seem to forget the government keeps giving itself more rights with new "xxx bill of rights" legislation which means that they don't need spyware, they just use the force of law to take your stuff.
these same artist convincing your local municipality into funding their lack of taste and having it rubbed into your face each time you drive past a public building or go to the airport. Far too many "artists" are self important snits who goad society into funding them by making it to be "if you don't fund the arts your just cavemen/bigots/etc" so that we end up paying stupid sums of money to people who can't sell their product to anyone with a sense of sight or taste.
Like I posted elsewhere in this thread, I didn't go there to save the world or community. I contributed to something that sparked my fancy and at the same time let me have some fun. (speaking of the trebuchets). However this type of site will also go along way in teaching these artists just what society values, not just what they think society should value. It does this by giving them immediate exposure to their peer's successes and failures.
If your looking for something to change the world or benefit other nations there are hundreds of charities that can use your money, some can use your time if your willing. give.org lists thousands of them so can check to see if the one you chose is worthwhile.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803756771/trebuchette-the-snap-together-desktop-trebuchet
I recently bought into this one after seeing the story on hacker news. So they can be about anything, this one just happens to be fun for both contributors and those who receive the contributions. Besides being totally geek oriented, after all who would not want a toy to fling stuff at co workers?
Sorry but I can flip this coin as well, your willing to penalize those with other majors with higher costs to support science and technical majors? Some of which have very disparate costs. Hell, if you separate out the costs and such you might end up having more people complete college as it would be affordable for those doing "soft" degrees.
If the cost of an education is a discouragement to these "STEM" degrees then I would suggest investigating other schools who have lower costs or realigning one's desires with reality. If that discourages some then so be it. Why so cavalier? Because some people get into majors they won't finish. Perhaps seeing the upfront costs difference will do two things, discourage those who should not be there and encourage those who are incurring the costs to work harder to get the most from it. Plus it can be used as leverage by these students to demand more from the schools for charging more. Simply by the fact their education is costing more they should feel the school is obligated to ensure it is worth it.
If they cannot support their original high speed intentions, most likely from the costs of keeping all that track up to specification as well as keeping the trains well maintained then its best to use them in the most efficient means possible.
China can abandon the tracks, China can and does abandon its own people. Property is no different to them if its living or not. This project was more national pride BS that China was using to position themselves in the world as something equal to the Western world. While in many cases they are they certainly leave behind hundreds of millions of people to do it. Those hundreds are only valuable to China when they need to reduce something bad they are doing in "by populace numbers" - say pollution.
So lower speed rail transportation makes sense if national pride can take a hike. Freight usage would go a long way to paying it off.
Look at Chinese cars. Very much clones of Honda and other Japanese brands yet youtube is replete with them failing European crash tests, some spectacularly. Very much a product of a society where all the appearances are there but the substance is not. Why? Most likely because for the most part there is little chance the blame will land on those who are mostly responsible.
Poor steel quality, copying only to the point of necessity, and an uninspired workforce, will all catch up to China soon.
Like North Korea, the real money and quality is only ensured when it comes to the military.
they will raise the caps at the same time introducing a new pricing structure that just happens to be the equivalent to buying internet and cable TV from them.
Just a note about how screwed up Comcast is
When I wanted basic cable (local channels and some chaff) it was a royal pain to get this from Comcast at the price shown on their internet site. I called the number on my bill and was told it was $23.95 for basic cable though their website showed $12.95. After trying two levels of phone support I initiated a contract for basic cable using their online chat. The people on the phone told me the web price was wrong or not available in my area but I have the service at the web price
even when they hit the wrong address you have to go to court to get them to pay for damages to your property.
As in, to keep from having to explain his holiness why they are having such a hard time with peaceful nuclear work it is useful to have a bogeyman. An Israeli / American bogeyman.
Figure if they run out of viruses then they can start on physical sabotage.
then hand it to them.
Nothing requires it work.
they know where I am at all times and where I have been so that the RIAA's precious rights can be protected.
See, the iPhone has this curious problem, if it has the wrong password for mail or the likes it doesn't ask for the correct one, it spams the server till it locks out the account. Throw in no support for ActiveSync and well that leaves Blackberry and Android
I agree, the capes and the idea of making kids stand in a special line are bad. However the debit cards in lieu of food stamps is pushing it in my book. There should be some things people taking from the government where a little "prodding" to get off would be worth while. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, some do things which show it off all too well; think section 8 housing I have volunteered to clean up afterward.
A folding tablet design which allowed pen entry. I already have a BT keyboard for my iPad as I found that I as used it more that input became more and more of an issue. Voice recognition won't work in a meeting and the built in keyboard can be a pain. Hence I have a clam shell case with BT keyboard. I remember the old Palm days with their shorthand and such. Adapt that idea. Give me alternative methods of entering data. Tie it all together with One Note. The folding / split screen approach would allow easy separation of work as well let alone make it more compact to carry.
Still the more I use my tablet the more I begin to wonder how long they will persist, they are good for presenting what I have, not so much for creating on, at least in the business environment
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html
Does that story give you the creeps or not?
So the government can make you rat on your clients and you can't even tell your own people your doing the work of the government
1) Good enough. DVD is good enough for the majority of people and content. While many feature films can benefit from the density blu-ray offers television series rarely will. Throw in that most people don't have either or both a good enough display and sound system to notice a difference.
2) Costs. Blu-Ray content still carries too much of premium. DVDs are still pricey. They have not reached the impulse level needed for small purchases. If you put the effort into you can buy your blu-ray or dvds are significantly cheaper prices even on release day. It just takes more work than most people wanted.
3) DVRs, Internet, WOW, etc There simply is a large amount of entertainment outside of movie watching available to people now. While streaming is coming up I don't see it making as much of a dent anytime soon even on DVD sales. Tech sites and users of them like this one don't cover a large enough portion of the buying population for an accurate sample of buying behavior.
Things going for Blu-Ray in the future.
Blockbusters and Hollywood Video are essentially dead. Gone, kaput. Being able to rent relieved many people of having to buy the actual disc. This might lead more people to try Netflix but a lot of moving buying and watching was impulse buys which were easy when you could just run down to your neighborhood rental store. The kiosks don't offer near the selection and Netflix still takes a day or two.
Pricing, the player price difference is still closing and the bargain bin blu-rays are falling. The razor model doesn't work well, especially when you don't control both ends of the market. So blu-ray has been hampered by both high player prices, requirement of a TV that supports HDMI (now guaranteed), and high disc prices. Two of those three are nearly completely a non issue now, only disc pricing remains a sticking point for some.
Streaming, yeah, it benefits Blu-Ray at this time. It looks like shit on a lot of large displays. I have had both good and bad experiences with it. When its bad its very bad and always seems to time itself to happen when you want to show it off. Hey guys, Watch this, oh, it never did that before, oh, just wait a minute I will figure it out.
While some may say its time has passed I am not complete sure on that. Streaming has a long way to go, simply follow the availability of high speed internet and then take a very very small portion of those people and that shows you the market possibilities.
they will adapt their pages and quickly smother google searches. I know the news pages are like this, the day after the first change many sites dropped off of the right side bar only to return within weeks. A great example on the unfiltered news site is Huffington Post, NY Times, and LA Times. All three fell off, the first more than the other two, but now fill the sides up again.
Google can keep tweaking all they want but more people are paid to ensure rankings and page hits than Google has to ensure fairness and correctness of results
if anything it is to set the stage so new categories are open for class action suit by irresponsible sugar using industries. It could also be used as an opening for politicians to tax products containing sugar.
which pretty much makes the idea of teaching Chess in schools a non starter. Chess has a winner. It also is not a team sport Back in the good old days only the nerds played chess or were on the Chess team; yeah I know I just said its not a team sport but names are meaningless.
Perhaps battle chess would be a good way to introduce younger children to the game, something where its fun to watch as well play.
I trust VISA and my bank more than I trust my government. I will keep voting my conscience and hopefully one day that will work out.
but I am not going to pay nine dollars for a paperback I can buy used for two dollars. Worse, the author passed many years ago and gave the rights to his university. So now the e-book version costs as much as the large format paper back versions, the small ones are seven dollars or such.
Where is the value? Out of the the ten or so e-books I tried to buy only one had price parity with paperbacks, the rest were priced over ten dollars a pop and in all cases I am looking at books over ten years old, many twenty.
It is a common thread, people on sites like slashdot will vilify a corporation which doesn't have power over state actors yet ignore the fact their own country trades or has other involved relations with the same country. As in, oh its wrong for RIM to allow monitoring of transmissions in that country but its okay for our government to sell them arms or even the equipment to do the monitoring.
The story summary makes this site come across as if it were staffed by a bunch of immature do nothings.
to think of all of this as, the world is catching up with the US (and in general, the rest of the world is catching up to Western Civilization). Yeah the US certainly has its problems, but like the article stated, comparing it to four countries who added together don't have half the population of the US, let alone the land area, is no different than having your answer before your facts to support it.
Saying the China is moving to a digital economy faster than the US is odd, but then again the favorite thing to do among such people is to ignore all those China doesn't count when it wants to look good, who happen to be the same people it counts when it wants to look good in other areas. Let alone, moving from where they were to anywhere would show more progress than most countries can make. After seeing the real estate situation in China I figure it is just a few years before they have similar problems. They are just better at hiding the problems they have, from practice and intimidation.
The only problem the US faces that is has not tried to fix is Washington DC. Entitlement spending will cripple this country. The discretionary spending (where those mythical 39 billion dollars from recent cuts came out of) is less than a third of the budget. The rest is guaranteed spending. Meaning we could cut everything but Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense, and still be spending negatively.
So, the threat is real, but it is from the leadership of the country, not some foreign bogeyman. As with all power structures that have crumbling support they need external bogeymen. Hence through their sycophants in the media they create them on demand.