You know? With the android mobile gaming market showing signs of serious growth and market presence, how is it they think they can milk the addicted gaming market for more that so many can tolerate? They want their $50-60 every time the disk media changes hands? When fun little games exist on Android devices for a dollar?! Really?
I'm rather interested to see how badly the "big ticket" gaming market fails. Their greed will be the root cause.
It takes a special kind of mind to accept religion. Seriously. Across the whole spectrum of religious personalities, you may notice some commonalities and patterns along the way. But at the end of the day, it's about wanting something more powerful to dominate one in some capacity. After all, when was the last time you heard a believer say something like "I truly believe there is a god but I sure wish there wasn't." Religion is something which is not just wanted, it's just about needed for such people. They lack the ability to face reality without some way to tidy things up in some way... to know there are causes and reasons and purposes even if they may never know what they are.
Maybe I shouldn't say special kind of mind though... it takes a common one. I wish all who are in the 12 step program much luck.
That is NOT what I am saying. I am talking about taking freedoms away, not keeping the peace or promoting the general welfare of the community. We know general services are good and important.
What we don't need is our rights limited or removed. It does not help anything to do that.
I am in total agreement. Coming from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, I have seen a small highway project take decades until a new leader stepped in and said "okay. No more money. This is where it ends. If you can't do it for this amount of time and money, we are getting someone else." The project was completed in under a year. FACT.
The model is to put something on the air, on the cable or on the net which will cause people to stop doing anything else and to focus their attention on the content. This enables the content providers to add their own other content to mix in with the stream. This enables them to influence our knowledge, perception, thoughts, beliefs and ideals. MOST of the time, the additional content is advertising which does all of the afore mentioned with the purpose of getting people to buy things.
SO. With that said, it is most efficient to create content which most interesting to the people that buy the most and are most easily influenced.
This is why the good shows don't last while crap shows stay on forever and are replicated over and over and over again.
The exception is when "the content is the product" of course, but that's a rather rare in the grand scheme of things.
That's a bit difference. We are still exploring ourselves, our origins and plotting alternatives to extinction on this planet. We are preparing to expand beyond this rock.
Super-smart aliens have undoubtedly gone beyond all of that to arrive to their super-smart alien state. Now, depending on what they conclude from their knowledge and experience, they might behave in all manner of ways. Surely the economic arguments posited in the writing make sense. So if some alien race were to find themselves near Earth and had some interest, what would it be? That's the nature of the discussion, but we're simply incapable, as a species of generally understanding any of it.
If they "wanted" something, we can only guess, but if it had anything to do with us, it could be anything from "zoo exhibit" to "ascendence" or "complete destruction."
Humanity is a mess as we are today. And with our perpetual pattern of the few taking advantage of the many, it's hard to imagine us even enabling ourselves to think in the way the author has.... I mean as a species.
When I first started driving, I bought maps... first the cheap ones, then the really good street atlas books with indices. From there, I was able to plot my way to my destination pretty quickly though it required I step myself through each turn, street name and all that. But in the end, I learned where I was at any given time, felt I knew generally where anything was relative to my own position and about how far and how long it would take me to get there. None of this was as fast or efficient as a car GPS with traffic signal reception, of course. So after I moved away from my home area to another state, I finally broke down to get a GPS with traffic and all that. The new location was far more challenging to drive in and missing turns were far more costly in terms of time and frustration -- it was a much older area and so the roads are much more complicated, unpredictable and unforgiving.
But now that I have been using GPS all this time, I find that my ability to learn my way around and know where I am has diminished significantly. I have grown extremely reliant on GPS navigation. I have lost the skills and knowledge I once had. (My knowledge not actually lost... I'm still familiar with my original area and know my way around quite well still)
I think most people will find the same problem where other technological improvements are concerned. Even the practice of typing instead of writing has had affect on our ability to write by hand for many of us and remembering simple things like phone numbers? I used to have dozens in my head. Now I have just a few and the rest are comfortably in my phone where I have ready access to them. Tech has definitely made us all soft even if it's more efficient. It makes us horribly dependent.
So what if we went to the next levels? Brain interfaces? Computer data completely replacing our own memories? With intelligent decision making telling us "the best choice" in any given situation? The things we can allow machines to do for us is probably beyond my imagination, but even what I can imagine is pretty frightening when you think about it. What will we become when we become symbionts with the machines?
Giving up what little I have already lost is reason enough for me to reconsider how much I should rely on technology. But to imagine what humanity might become is certainly reason to consider blocking certain things to prevent our own failure.
Consider what might happen if we all matrix ourselves until the first outage we experience cuts us off from all knowledge. We instantly become as useless as a 5-year-old.
Perhaps this is a bit off-topic, but the summary was enough to release a collection of thoughts which have been gathering over the past few years.
That's most definitely the truth, but it's hard to convince people to understand that their expectations of life are simply wrong. In a car or crossing the street, we all know, at some level, there is a certain amount of risk and possibility that something "bad" could happen... and when it's an accident, we can forgive and move on. When it's something else, we want to blame, punish and all manner of other things.
Here's the thing though -- none of the things the government will do can make anyone "safer." It just makes it easier for them to do other things and to inhibit and limit others while permitting themselves and their friends added privilege, freedom and protection from public knowledge.
Culturally, we have got to get a better grip on and perspective of reality. There was a time and a place where we could let our children run around free to play and learn and grow. We can't do that any more because we've been cultured into fear of everything. And this all happened in my life time as I recall as a 5 to 10 year old being all over the neighborhood without a thought of checking in at home or any such thing. I was always home in time to eat or go to bed... I did what was expected of me and my parents had no cause for worry. I'm 45 years old this year. PEOPLE have not changed. They have not. It is our fears which have changed everything.
... but the public *MUST* have access to the tapes at ALL TIMES. I mean ALL TIMES. There shall be dire consequences when the public is excluded from having access to the events and occurances which go on in the public. There must be full accountability. There must be protection against data loss or other causes which may prevent the public from having instant access to the same information the government uses.
Sorry, but if it happens in public, there should be no "national security" interest blocking the public's access to the truth.
To do this any other way further adds to the caste system we have in place where government and business are above all others. This way, when the goverment has unidentified contractors walking around in uniform, there can be no denying or hiding of that fact. This type of thing needs to cut both ways -- you watch us, we watch you.
If you want to throw money at the problem of highway construction, you offer a large payout contingent on how quickly it gets done while still within project specifications.
The workers get paid by the hour and so do the contractor managers most of the time. So to give them money with the promise of "more if needed" will result in pleas of "hey! we need more!!!"
These people seriously don't understand how it works when highways are constructed with public money -- the recipients never want the money to run out.
What requirement for liver survival is not being met? I recall quite some time ago when it was considered to be some sort of breakthrough when they realized "you know that pump we use when we do heart surgery? The body needs pulsing circulation to survive, so let's do that instead of just streaming fluid." I have to wonder if they are trying something similar here.
Yes... the minefield is officially open for business. If we thought all of this patent troll craziness was bad, wait for the trolls who license pre-'72 works to start coming out of the woodwork.
So the 1972 federal changes did NOT extend the copyrights on older materials? I can't see how it can be both ways. All this time, everyone seems to have been working under the assumptions that all works protected under copyright had their rights extended and all that under the 1972 federal copyright changes. So their protection has been enhanced and the defense provided by the DMCA is not available because the 1972 federal copyright changes do not cover...
That's just idiotic. Another commenter said it easier I guess -- they get to have their cake and eat it too. Insane.
Sorry, but nothing excuses GNOME people from GNOME Shell... or Canonical from Unity. Who "did it first" anyway? Doesn't matter. Neither occurred because there was a need. They did it "anticipating" a need or a change of public interest. I think it is clear that anticipating change can be just as bad as being "late to the party." (right Microsoft?)
I think neither would have been so bad if they hadn't taken this "all or nothing" / "one direction" approach to their development. A better idea, I think, would have been to keep things as they were and create a "skunk works" spin for people to get more comfortable with and to develop suitable use case scenarios. The fact that people jumped ship on these UIs with such anger speaks volumes.
Change for the sake of change is bad for a great many things and especially in the PC/Computer/Internet world. Let me offer a car analogy... no wait, let's change that.
Let me offer a wife analogy. Everything is going just fine... things are stable. And then one day your wife says "...we need to talk..."
How is that not "oh shit...."?
In the grown up IT world, we do a change management process which includes things like "purpose" and "impact assessments" before making sweeping changes. I see no indication that goes on at Ubuntu. If it did go on at Ubuntu, then I am sure they wouldn't mind sharing the relevant data on the subject. It seems indicative that they haven't done anything of the kind when they resort to calling their Linux "art." Once they call it art, it can't be judged by real standards or expectations. "It is what we say it is."
Nice response. Don't expect to be taken seriously for much longer.
Punish the technology because of how it is used? I thought we grew past that notion already.
At some point, one of the few remaining ways to get good information and news will be through these rougue channels and methods. Do we have to keep re-hashing the same ridiculous notions? How about we ban types of music based on the fact that thugs and criminals like it and glorify killing?
I'm not convinced of that. There's more to temperature regulation than merely cooling things off. There's also the portion of the system which generates the heat in the first place. Reducing the systems and functions which create the heat can also be used to regulate body temperature... think metabolic variations and the roles dietary content play in this. I have been all through hacking my metabilism to get the results I was after and it worked quite well.
In bother approaches, there are limits to the results which can be achieved in the human body. There are limits to the what can be achieved through metabolic controls and limits to what can be achieved through respiratory, perspiratory and circulatory controls. As I said in another comment, I'm not sure modeling a system after human systems are a great idea. In the end, humans adapt best through the use of his brain rather than through his body.
Evolution is a very powerful force. I recall an evolutionary software design system that was used to create the most efficient antenna discussed here on Slashdot some years ago. It was a pretty cool concept and it worked pretty well as I recall. But to straight up model a system after the human circulatory system? Really? I would think there were far better systems than the human system. Humans have stopped evolving physically and one could say we are devolving as our survival is no longer so dependent on what is physically the most fit.
I would look to life which survives well in difficult climates to see what adaptations could be mimmicked.
It's *NOT* unlikely because I have seen something quite similar in my dentist's office. He couldn't afford what this company wanted to charge for the software on a new server. The software was licensed for a particular server and all this nonsense. The best I was able to offer was an upgrade of memory. The user couldn't install the software for himself. And so while yes, "it's not a Windows thing" specifically, it is definitely a case of Microsoft enabling and even encouraging this type of behavior. I also recall a similar problem with a private investigator's software. I offered the VMWare solution as a means of getting this Windows95 software moved into WindowsXP life but in the end, the software originator would not budge and this guy did not want to risk his configuration. I told him the Windows95 machine's HDD would eventually fail and he just said he'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Sad, sad, sad...
Software is stupidly expensive to the point they are often completely unfair in the way they do things. Unskilled customers often give in to the demands without realizing what they are giving up or what it all means..,.until it's too late and often even after that.
The IT world sickens me often when I see this crap. And don't get me started on Cisco...
Oh yes... the software world is increasingly greedy and hostile to the customer and it has been Microsoft leading the way from the beginning. And in case anyone was wondering when we would reach the breaking point? I'd say many of us have reached it or so sayeth the declining PC sales.
Things are about to enter a stage of incredible change and upheaval and not just in the computer/internet worlds, but all over. "we live in interesting times."
Actually, there was a guy I work with who was dealing with some real estate agency who was selling a house to him and really gave him some nonsense about these various programs. They kept steering him in one direction but he had VA benefits to use and other qualifications. I'm not quite sure of all the details, but in the end, he ceased doing business with them and didn't get the house because of all the games they were playing trying to get him to use a particular financing plan. I'm not sure who lost out the most, but they could have sold the house and I'm sure that loss must have hurt. But they were most definitely willing to play that game with him primarily, I believe, because he is military and they really believe military people are really THAT stupid. (For the most part, 'they' are correct in that assessment, just that he wasn't one of them... and neither am/was I --- reminds me of the time a car dealership was trying to sell me a "sport" version of the "Yugo" for like $12,000... it had racing stripes... it still had the weak engine and no real features. I was like "are you shittin' me?! A Yugo?!" I didn't want one of those at any price, but I did try to mess with him by negotiating down but he would budge. Sickened me, because it meant they were dead set on raping the next sailor who came onto that lot.)
Oh the sales game.. and especially sales with financing involved. They sicken me so much. And yeah, there are contracts and legalese involved. Last car I bought, I just got pre-approved for an amount, went shopping, got what I wanted and told them "No, I will not be financing through you and my lender will ONLY give me this much. Give me what I want at this price. I cannot bargain with my lender." In the end it worked. Good car; exceptional price and no weird contracts. The dealership called me back within a few days trying to convince me I owed them some more money somehow. I told them "fine... okay... I'll just bring the car back. I really told you the finance company would not give me more and I simply don't have more... so when do you want it back?" They called me back and said "keep it...." hehehe...
Why can't buying a car or a house be like buying a can of soup? I give you money, you give me the thing? No? You want to dick around with me to see if you can squeeze a little more out?
And don't get me started on "trade-ins." They scam people out of FREE CARS so damned often that practice should be 100% criminal as fraud and/or theft. They accept the "trade in" and roll whatever is left on the loan (if there is any) into your new loan (if you finance through them or their company) and accept your car. Whatever they offered in the trade, they ALSO roll into the loan "to pay off the car." In the end, you paid off the car and gave it to them for free!! Nice deal right?! READ the paperwork carefully... VERY carefully. It seems they will ALWAYS try to pull some crap or another. As I said with my last car purchase, I thought I finally defeated the games when I had ONE MORE to deal with... I was literally prepared to return the car. I was NOT playing. But they gave in. Shit made me so mad.
Sorry... someone pushed a button there didn't they?
I recall as the voice recognition technologies were developing and how increasingly accurate and impressive it became. Eventually, the problems of using it was voice strain just as the problems of typing is carpel tunnel syndrome. I believe a device controlled by the brain which is not like a natural interface in the body will become a point of stress with the user.
There would invariably and undoubtedly be a "training" with the user and following that, the user learns to communicate. But to "do" in a way that the device doesn't confuse normal activity with device control activity will require some sort of mental mode shifting and it is not hard to imagine how a distractive environment could completely interfere with the user's ability to interface with a device.
In my opinion, if they want to do it right, it would involve neural impants and a rendering system that produces "terminator vision" combined with physical gesture recognition.
It's the perfect time and subject for an experiment I have been considering. I think that broadcast networks are no longer needed or perhaps simply not quite so necessary. If Groening were to keep a team of enthusiast artists and the original voice actors, I would be willing to bet people would subscribe to Futurama online paying micro payments or simply not worry about that and they can sell ad space on their own streaming host server. The point being that the internet has enabled much. And publishing and continuing a favorite TV series is probably a good thing to try.
It's too late for "Firefly" (or is it?) but maybe not for Futurama... and seriously, without network censors?? It'll be WAY better.
Slashdot Mirror
You know? With the android mobile gaming market showing signs of serious growth and market presence, how is it they think they can milk the addicted gaming market for more that so many can tolerate? They want their $50-60 every time the disk media changes hands? When fun little games exist on Android devices for a dollar?! Really?
I'm rather interested to see how badly the "big ticket" gaming market fails. Their greed will be the root cause.
It takes a special kind of mind to accept religion. Seriously. Across the whole spectrum of religious personalities, you may notice some commonalities and patterns along the way. But at the end of the day, it's about wanting something more powerful to dominate one in some capacity. After all, when was the last time you heard a believer say something like "I truly believe there is a god but I sure wish there wasn't." Religion is something which is not just wanted, it's just about needed for such people. They lack the ability to face reality without some way to tidy things up in some way... to know there are causes and reasons and purposes even if they may never know what they are.
Maybe I shouldn't say special kind of mind though... it takes a common one. I wish all who are in the 12 step program much luck.
That is NOT what I am saying. I am talking about taking freedoms away, not keeping the peace or promoting the general welfare of the community. We know general services are good and important.
What we don't need is our rights limited or removed. It does not help anything to do that.
I am in total agreement. Coming from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, I have seen a small highway project take decades until a new leader stepped in and said "okay. No more money. This is where it ends. If you can't do it for this amount of time and money, we are getting someone else." The project was completed in under a year. FACT.
The model is to put something on the air, on the cable or on the net which will cause people to stop doing anything else and to focus their attention on the content. This enables the content providers to add their own other content to mix in with the stream. This enables them to influence our knowledge, perception, thoughts, beliefs and ideals. MOST of the time, the additional content is advertising which does all of the afore mentioned with the purpose of getting people to buy things.
SO. With that said, it is most efficient to create content which most interesting to the people that buy the most and are most easily influenced.
This is why the good shows don't last while crap shows stay on forever and are replicated over and over and over again.
The exception is when "the content is the product" of course, but that's a rather rare in the grand scheme of things.
That's a bit difference. We are still exploring ourselves, our origins and plotting alternatives to extinction on this planet. We are preparing to expand beyond this rock.
Super-smart aliens have undoubtedly gone beyond all of that to arrive to their super-smart alien state. Now, depending on what they conclude from their knowledge and experience, they might behave in all manner of ways. Surely the economic arguments posited in the writing make sense. So if some alien race were to find themselves near Earth and had some interest, what would it be? That's the nature of the discussion, but we're simply incapable, as a species of generally understanding any of it.
If they "wanted" something, we can only guess, but if it had anything to do with us, it could be anything from "zoo exhibit" to "ascendence" or "complete destruction."
Humanity is a mess as we are today. And with our perpetual pattern of the few taking advantage of the many, it's hard to imagine us even enabling ourselves to think in the way the author has.... I mean as a species.
When I first started driving, I bought maps... first the cheap ones, then the really good street atlas books with indices. From there, I was able to plot my way to my destination pretty quickly though it required I step myself through each turn, street name and all that. But in the end, I learned where I was at any given time, felt I knew generally where anything was relative to my own position and about how far and how long it would take me to get there. None of this was as fast or efficient as a car GPS with traffic signal reception, of course. So after I moved away from my home area to another state, I finally broke down to get a GPS with traffic and all that. The new location was far more challenging to drive in and missing turns were far more costly in terms of time and frustration -- it was a much older area and so the roads are much more complicated, unpredictable and unforgiving.
But now that I have been using GPS all this time, I find that my ability to learn my way around and know where I am has diminished significantly. I have grown extremely reliant on GPS navigation. I have lost the skills and knowledge I once had. (My knowledge not actually lost... I'm still familiar with my original area and know my way around quite well still)
I think most people will find the same problem where other technological improvements are concerned. Even the practice of typing instead of writing has had affect on our ability to write by hand for many of us and remembering simple things like phone numbers? I used to have dozens in my head. Now I have just a few and the rest are comfortably in my phone where I have ready access to them. Tech has definitely made us all soft even if it's more efficient. It makes us horribly dependent.
So what if we went to the next levels? Brain interfaces? Computer data completely replacing our own memories? With intelligent decision making telling us "the best choice" in any given situation? The things we can allow machines to do for us is probably beyond my imagination, but even what I can imagine is pretty frightening when you think about it. What will we become when we become symbionts with the machines?
Giving up what little I have already lost is reason enough for me to reconsider how much I should rely on technology. But to imagine what humanity might become is certainly reason to consider blocking certain things to prevent our own failure.
Consider what might happen if we all matrix ourselves until the first outage we experience cuts us off from all knowledge. We instantly become as useless as a 5-year-old.
Perhaps this is a bit off-topic, but the summary was enough to release a collection of thoughts which have been gathering over the past few years.
That's most definitely the truth, but it's hard to convince people to understand that their expectations of life are simply wrong. In a car or crossing the street, we all know, at some level, there is a certain amount of risk and possibility that something "bad" could happen... and when it's an accident, we can forgive and move on. When it's something else, we want to blame, punish and all manner of other things.
Here's the thing though -- none of the things the government will do can make anyone "safer." It just makes it easier for them to do other things and to inhibit and limit others while permitting themselves and their friends added privilege, freedom and protection from public knowledge.
Culturally, we have got to get a better grip on and perspective of reality. There was a time and a place where we could let our children run around free to play and learn and grow. We can't do that any more because we've been cultured into fear of everything. And this all happened in my life time as I recall as a 5 to 10 year old being all over the neighborhood without a thought of checking in at home or any such thing. I was always home in time to eat or go to bed... I did what was expected of me and my parents had no cause for worry. I'm 45 years old this year. PEOPLE have not changed. They have not. It is our fears which have changed everything.
... but the public *MUST* have access to the tapes at ALL TIMES. I mean ALL TIMES. There shall be dire consequences when the public is excluded from having access to the events and occurances which go on in the public. There must be full accountability. There must be protection against data loss or other causes which may prevent the public from having instant access to the same information the government uses.
Sorry, but if it happens in public, there should be no "national security" interest blocking the public's access to the truth.
To do this any other way further adds to the caste system we have in place where government and business are above all others. This way, when the goverment has unidentified contractors walking around in uniform, there can be no denying or hiding of that fact. This type of thing needs to cut both ways -- you watch us, we watch you.
What say you government?
...and they want their "something or other" back.
Oh, we're not doing that?
If you want to throw money at the problem of highway construction, you offer a large payout contingent on how quickly it gets done while still within project specifications.
The workers get paid by the hour and so do the contractor managers most of the time. So to give them money with the promise of "more if needed" will result in pleas of "hey! we need more!!!"
These people seriously don't understand how it works when highways are constructed with public money -- the recipients never want the money to run out.
What requirement for liver survival is not being met? I recall quite some time ago when it was considered to be some sort of breakthrough when they realized "you know that pump we use when we do heart surgery? The body needs pulsing circulation to survive, so let's do that instead of just streaming fluid." I have to wonder if they are trying something similar here.
Yes... the minefield is officially open for business. If we thought all of this patent troll craziness was bad, wait for the trolls who license pre-'72 works to start coming out of the woodwork.
So the 1972 federal changes did NOT extend the copyrights on older materials? I can't see how it can be both ways. All this time, everyone seems to have been working under the assumptions that all works protected under copyright had their rights extended and all that under the 1972 federal copyright changes. So their protection has been enhanced and the defense provided by the DMCA is not available because the 1972 federal copyright changes do not cover...
That's just idiotic. Another commenter said it easier I guess -- they get to have their cake and eat it too. Insane.
Sorry, but nothing excuses GNOME people from GNOME Shell... or Canonical from Unity. Who "did it first" anyway? Doesn't matter. Neither occurred because there was a need. They did it "anticipating" a need or a change of public interest. I think it is clear that anticipating change can be just as bad as being "late to the party." (right Microsoft?)
I think neither would have been so bad if they hadn't taken this "all or nothing" / "one direction" approach to their development. A better idea, I think, would have been to keep things as they were and create a "skunk works" spin for people to get more comfortable with and to develop suitable use case scenarios. The fact that people jumped ship on these UIs with such anger speaks volumes.
Change for the sake of change is bad for a great many things and especially in the PC/Computer/Internet world. Let me offer a car analogy... no wait, let's change that.
Let me offer a wife analogy. Everything is going just fine... things are stable. And then one day your wife says "...we need to talk..."
How is that not "oh shit...."?
In the grown up IT world, we do a change management process which includes things like "purpose" and "impact assessments" before making sweeping changes. I see no indication that goes on at Ubuntu. If it did go on at Ubuntu, then I am sure they wouldn't mind sharing the relevant data on the subject. It seems indicative that they haven't done anything of the kind when they resort to calling their Linux "art." Once they call it art, it can't be judged by real standards or expectations. "It is what we say it is."
Nice response. Don't expect to be taken seriously for much longer.
Punish the technology because of how it is used? I thought we grew past that notion already.
At some point, one of the few remaining ways to get good information and news will be through these rougue channels and methods. Do we have to keep re-hashing the same ridiculous notions? How about we ban types of music based on the fact that thugs and criminals like it and glorify killing?
I'm not convinced of that. There's more to temperature regulation than merely cooling things off. There's also the portion of the system which generates the heat in the first place. Reducing the systems and functions which create the heat can also be used to regulate body temperature... think metabolic variations and the roles dietary content play in this. I have been all through hacking my metabilism to get the results I was after and it worked quite well.
In bother approaches, there are limits to the results which can be achieved in the human body. There are limits to the what can be achieved through metabolic controls and limits to what can be achieved through respiratory, perspiratory and circulatory controls. As I said in another comment, I'm not sure modeling a system after human systems are a great idea. In the end, humans adapt best through the use of his brain rather than through his body.
Evolution is a very powerful force. I recall an evolutionary software design system that was used to create the most efficient antenna discussed here on Slashdot some years ago. It was a pretty cool concept and it worked pretty well as I recall. But to straight up model a system after the human circulatory system? Really? I would think there were far better systems than the human system. Humans have stopped evolving physically and one could say we are devolving as our survival is no longer so dependent on what is physically the most fit.
I would look to life which survives well in difficult climates to see what adaptations could be mimmicked.
It's *NOT* unlikely because I have seen something quite similar in my dentist's office. He couldn't afford what this company wanted to charge for the software on a new server. The software was licensed for a particular server and all this nonsense. The best I was able to offer was an upgrade of memory. The user couldn't install the software for himself. And so while yes, "it's not a Windows thing" specifically, it is definitely a case of Microsoft enabling and even encouraging this type of behavior. I also recall a similar problem with a private investigator's software. I offered the VMWare solution as a means of getting this Windows95 software moved into WindowsXP life but in the end, the software originator would not budge and this guy did not want to risk his configuration. I told him the Windows95 machine's HDD would eventually fail and he just said he'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Sad, sad, sad...
Software is stupidly expensive to the point they are often completely unfair in the way they do things. Unskilled customers often give in to the demands without realizing what they are giving up or what it all means..,.until it's too late and often even after that.
The IT world sickens me often when I see this crap. And don't get me started on Cisco...
Oh yes... the software world is increasingly greedy and hostile to the customer and it has been Microsoft leading the way from the beginning. And in case anyone was wondering when we would reach the breaking point? I'd say many of us have reached it or so sayeth the declining PC sales.
Things are about to enter a stage of incredible change and upheaval and not just in the computer/internet worlds, but all over. "we live in interesting times."
Actually, there was a guy I work with who was dealing with some real estate agency who was selling a house to him and really gave him some nonsense about these various programs. They kept steering him in one direction but he had VA benefits to use and other qualifications. I'm not quite sure of all the details, but in the end, he ceased doing business with them and didn't get the house because of all the games they were playing trying to get him to use a particular financing plan. I'm not sure who lost out the most, but they could have sold the house and I'm sure that loss must have hurt. But they were most definitely willing to play that game with him primarily, I believe, because he is military and they really believe military people are really THAT stupid. (For the most part, 'they' are correct in that assessment, just that he wasn't one of them... and neither am/was I --- reminds me of the time a car dealership was trying to sell me a "sport" version of the "Yugo" for like $12,000... it had racing stripes... it still had the weak engine and no real features. I was like "are you shittin' me?! A Yugo?!" I didn't want one of those at any price, but I did try to mess with him by negotiating down but he would budge. Sickened me, because it meant they were dead set on raping the next sailor who came onto that lot.)
Oh the sales game.. and especially sales with financing involved. They sicken me so much. And yeah, there are contracts and legalese involved. Last car I bought, I just got pre-approved for an amount, went shopping, got what I wanted and told them "No, I will not be financing through you and my lender will ONLY give me this much. Give me what I want at this price. I cannot bargain with my lender." In the end it worked. Good car; exceptional price and no weird contracts. The dealership called me back within a few days trying to convince me I owed them some more money somehow. I told them "fine... okay... I'll just bring the car back. I really told you the finance company would not give me more and I simply don't have more... so when do you want it back?" They called me back and said "keep it...." hehehe...
Why can't buying a car or a house be like buying a can of soup? I give you money, you give me the thing? No? You want to dick around with me to see if you can squeeze a little more out?
And don't get me started on "trade-ins." They scam people out of FREE CARS so damned often that practice should be 100% criminal as fraud and/or theft. They accept the "trade in" and roll whatever is left on the loan (if there is any) into your new loan (if you finance through them or their company) and accept your car. Whatever they offered in the trade, they ALSO roll into the loan "to pay off the car." In the end, you paid off the car and gave it to them for free!! Nice deal right?! READ the paperwork carefully... VERY carefully. It seems they will ALWAYS try to pull some crap or another. As I said with my last car purchase, I thought I finally defeated the games when I had ONE MORE to deal with... I was literally prepared to return the car. I was NOT playing. But they gave in. Shit made me so mad.
Sorry... someone pushed a button there didn't they?
I recall as the voice recognition technologies were developing and how increasingly accurate and impressive it became. Eventually, the problems of using it was voice strain just as the problems of typing is carpel tunnel syndrome. I believe a device controlled by the brain which is not like a natural interface in the body will become a point of stress with the user.
There would invariably and undoubtedly be a "training" with the user and following that, the user learns to communicate. But to "do" in a way that the device doesn't confuse normal activity with device control activity will require some sort of mental mode shifting and it is not hard to imagine how a distractive environment could completely interfere with the user's ability to interface with a device.
In my opinion, if they want to do it right, it would involve neural impants and a rendering system that produces "terminator vision" combined with physical gesture recognition.
It's the perfect time and subject for an experiment I have been considering. I think that broadcast networks are no longer needed or perhaps simply not quite so necessary. If Groening were to keep a team of enthusiast artists and the original voice actors, I would be willing to bet people would subscribe to Futurama online paying micro payments or simply not worry about that and they can sell ad space on their own streaming host server. The point being that the internet has enabled much. And publishing and continuing a favorite TV series is probably a good thing to try.
It's too late for "Firefly" (or is it?) but maybe not for Futurama... and seriously, without network censors?? It'll be WAY better.
Oh my. That is simply beautiful. +1 Poetic