Why should take off? What's the drive behind it? What need does it satisfy? You can't push out something without a market. Flash created a market for 2D web graphics, and now HTML5 standardizes that based on the experience we had in the Flash years. Unity is doing the same thing for 3D, but it will take a while before 3D on the web becomes common enough to need standardization.
I can't believe that all the honey in the grocery store is fake.
It is. Almost all honey in stores have been tampered with. That doesn't mean a local producer will always sell you good stuff, you will have to find an honest beekeeper and then stick him.
Now I'm not very familiar with the American society, so this is sort of an outsider view. As far as I can see, the American republic is a better system than most democracies. In a democracy, the majority rules, and one half of the population forces their will on the other slightly smaller half. But in America, you have a liberal federal government that gives enough autonomy to the states to choose their own way of living. Mobility between the states is very high, and the state governments are elected democratically. This allows for a system where each person can choose which type of society they want to live in, as conservatives, liberals and socialist can simply move to a conservative, liberal or welfare state. Instead of only the majority getting their way, in the American system everybody is happy. The constant migration also forces states to compete for people, and pay attention even to those who aren't as politically active. Now the problem is that over time the federal government has become much bigger, which is the worst of the two worlds: a big government that the citizens have no direct control over. One way to solve that is to switch to a more direct way of electing the federal government, but going back to a small federal government with the diverse states governments doing most of the work may also be an option.
Wrong, in the prisoner's dilemma both inmates are guilty. In this case however, if they both blame the other one they can still walk free because the police won't be able to tell which one of them did it.
Market share is not the only way to make a difference. Opera mattered because they were at the forefront of innovation, they came up with the stuff the others followed. That said, they are still going to develop Webkit, so this is not necessarily bad news. Also, Webkit being opensource it's not really possible to exploit its monopoly in any way, it would be just forked.
Tragedy of the commons. While many companies aren't playing fair when tracking their costumers, it's unrealistic to expect them to abandon that profit. I would say that the real blame lies with the W3C who have been completely ignoring all security concerns during standard design. If we want to make a safer web, we should make a safer web standard instead of handing control to the lawyers.
They seem to have managed to scale industrial-quality 3D printing down to a hobbyist level. What I find amazing in stereolithography is that it's precise enough to print fully assembled machinery that works out of the printer.
My problem is that the W3C has already bit off more than they can chew, so wasting resources implementing DRM is quite extravagant when we still don't have HTML5.
We have moved quite a bit forward from calculators. The question now is not whether to teach arithmetic, more like whether to teach calculus and equation systems, or just use a symbolic program. I still think it's useful to at least learn how they work, but cutting back on doing repeated exercises might be a good idea.
3D printing is unsuitable for guns because 3D printed objects are weak, unreliable and deteriorate quickly under heavy use. There's a reason industrial 3D printing is called 'rapid prototyping': it's not good enough for final products. That said, there are other ways to assemble a reliable metal magazine, but CNCs still aren't banned.
It doesn't matter, this is the internet. If you send an unencrypted email, then you should expect that anybody interested can intercept and read it. If you have a problem with someone reading a mail, you should consider encrypting it.
I never got this argument. While I have little knowledge of the American legal system, there are a couple of basics that hold true in every legal state. One of them is that everything is legal that hasn't been specifically forbidden by law. Another is that every entity is liable only for their own actions. I don't get how passing a new law could make something legal, or on what grounds could anybody be prosecuted for the actions of their users before the DMCA came into effect. While companies do have a right not to conduct business with you, under normal conditions they also have the right to do so. DMCA takes away that right, because it forces companies to end business with costumers accused of copyright infringement. When a site doesn't comply, they get a treatment like Megaupload did. So the sites in question do not terminate business with you out of their free will, but because of legal threats. The copyright industry managed to pass laws allowing them to force companies to operate as their own police, thus they don't have to drag you in court. That doesn't mean you don't suffer damages for something you haven't been proven to have done.
The problem is, what do you do when a suspect flees to another country and refuses to come back and appear in court, like most assassinated people did? Shooting an escaping fugitive is legal in many countries.
However much economists try to paint an optimistic picture of an ever-growing economy, depressions are a natural part of a capitalist market. They are not just a crisis that has to be survived, they have an important cleansing function that has to be done from time to time. By not letting badly managed companies to fail, governments have helped the root cause of the crisis to remain, and thus the effects of the recession stay instead of going away.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't create a good standard without knowing in what ways it will be used. No standard doesn't mean no tools, however.
It's fairly easy, find one that sells good stuff. After you stop buying supermarket crap you will be able to taste the difference.
So why didn't VRML take off if it's such a good thing?
Why should take off? What's the drive behind it? What need does it satisfy?
You can't push out something without a market. Flash created a market for 2D web graphics, and now HTML5 standardizes that based on the experience we had in the Flash years. Unity is doing the same thing for 3D, but it will take a while before 3D on the web becomes common enough to need standardization.
I can't believe that all the honey in the grocery store is fake.
It is. Almost all honey in stores have been tampered with. That doesn't mean a local producer will always sell you good stuff, you will have to find an honest beekeeper and then stick him.
I see. But if the democratic states did such a bad job, then maybe the American society isn't ready for a democratic federation yet.
Now I'm not very familiar with the American society, so this is sort of an outsider view.
As far as I can see, the American republic is a better system than most democracies. In a democracy, the majority rules, and one half of the population forces their will on the other slightly smaller half. But in America, you have a liberal federal government that gives enough autonomy to the states to choose their own way of living. Mobility between the states is very high, and the state governments are elected democratically. This allows for a system where each person can choose which type of society they want to live in, as conservatives, liberals and socialist can simply move to a conservative, liberal or welfare state. Instead of only the majority getting their way, in the American system everybody is happy. The constant migration also forces states to compete for people, and pay attention even to those who aren't as politically active.
Now the problem is that over time the federal government has become much bigger, which is the worst of the two worlds: a big government that the citizens have no direct control over. One way to solve that is to switch to a more direct way of electing the federal government, but going back to a small federal government with the diverse states governments doing most of the work may also be an option.
Wrong, in the prisoner's dilemma both inmates are guilty. In this case however, if they both blame the other one they can still walk free because the police won't be able to tell which one of them did it.
Market share is not the only way to make a difference. Opera mattered because they were at the forefront of innovation, they came up with the stuff the others followed. That said, they are still going to develop Webkit, so this is not necessarily bad news. Also, Webkit being opensource it's not really possible to exploit its monopoly in any way, it would be just forked.
Or Apple could just buy the trademark instead of citing the other guy in court like usual.
Tragedy of the commons. While many companies aren't playing fair when tracking their costumers, it's unrealistic to expect them to abandon that profit. I would say that the real blame lies with the W3C who have been completely ignoring all security concerns during standard design. If we want to make a safer web, we should make a safer web standard instead of handing control to the lawyers.
They seem to have managed to scale industrial-quality 3D printing down to a hobbyist level. What I find amazing in stereolithography is that it's precise enough to print fully assembled machinery that works out of the printer.
Giving a nice speech doesn't really convince me of his intentions after sabotaging Kyoto.
You mean like Skype?
But the energy of the earthquake is still a lower boundary for the energy of the bomb.
My problem is that the W3C has already bit off more than they can chew, so wasting resources implementing DRM is quite extravagant when we still don't have HTML5.
We have moved quite a bit forward from calculators. The question now is not whether to teach arithmetic, more like whether to teach calculus and equation systems, or just use a symbolic program. I still think it's useful to at least learn how they work, but cutting back on doing repeated exercises might be a good idea.
3D printing is unsuitable for guns because 3D printed objects are weak, unreliable and deteriorate quickly under heavy use. There's a reason industrial 3D printing is called 'rapid prototyping': it's not good enough for final products.
That said, there are other ways to assemble a reliable metal magazine, but CNCs still aren't banned.
It doesn't matter, this is the internet. If you send an unencrypted email, then you should expect that anybody interested can intercept and read it. If you have a problem with someone reading a mail, you should consider encrypting it.
As long as they are open about selling data about their users, I don't see an ethical problem. Most businesses do the same behind your back.
This is a PhD in philosophy, it would be pretty much worthless even if it was legit. It's far harder to cheat in an actual science.
I never got this argument. While I have little knowledge of the American legal system, there are a couple of basics that hold true in every legal state. One of them is that everything is legal that hasn't been specifically forbidden by law. Another is that every entity is liable only for their own actions. I don't get how passing a new law could make something legal, or on what grounds could anybody be prosecuted for the actions of their users before the DMCA came into effect.
While companies do have a right not to conduct business with you, under normal conditions they also have the right to do so. DMCA takes away that right, because it forces companies to end business with costumers accused of copyright infringement. When a site doesn't comply, they get a treatment like Megaupload did. So the sites in question do not terminate business with you out of their free will, but because of legal threats. The copyright industry managed to pass laws allowing them to force companies to operate as their own police, thus they don't have to drag you in court. That doesn't mean you don't suffer damages for something you haven't been proven to have done.
The next update will fix the issue, you'll just have to download it...oh, wait.
The problem is, what do you do when a suspect flees to another country and refuses to come back and appear in court, like most assassinated people did? Shooting an escaping fugitive is legal in many countries.
However much economists try to paint an optimistic picture of an ever-growing economy, depressions are a natural part of a capitalist market. They are not just a crisis that has to be survived, they have an important cleansing function that has to be done from time to time. By not letting badly managed companies to fail, governments have helped the root cause of the crisis to remain, and thus the effects of the recession stay instead of going away.