Competition is a beautiful thing. Of course, there was no competition in internet providers, which is the whole reason Google started their fiber service.
Obama was the one who appointed a former telecom CEO/Lobbyist as chairman of the FCC. It's safe to say he's not particularly interested in keeping net neutrality.
Let's not blow this out of proportion. Sure, it would be the bomb if the NSA stopped spying on everyone, as all this spying is a plague on our freedoms. But let's not burn any bridges here.
The petitions may not have any direct impact, however, they can help raise awareness, even if it's only a little bit. It's still better than nothing.
Public awareness is the only hope net neutrality has. Lobbying from companies like Netflix and Google can't turn the tide. Lobbying is more about money, it's about connections too, and most of the telecoms have connections that stem back before Netflix and Google even existed.
As much as it angers me, I don't think Net Neutrality can survive. People don't know, and the places they get their news from--the CNNs, Fox Newses, NBCs--they will never cover net neutrality in any meaningful way. I mean, hell, NBC is owned by Comcast, and we sure as hell know where they stand on net neutrality.
Anyone who is against net neutrality either (1) has no understanding of what it means, or (2) is being bankrolled by a corporate interest. I doubt that the FCC doesn't understand what net neutrality is, so that only leaves option (2).
Funny how net neutrality suddenly dies as soon as a former telecom lobbyist/CEO became the FCC chairman.
Since Google seems to be the only one serious about rolling out fiber (and high quality broadband at a reasonable price), I have a great idea. How about if the government took all the tax breaks/subsidies that are currently given to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc and give them to Google instead?
Bad analogy. The theaters are just vehicles for the content, not the content itself.
A better analogy would be going to see a the sequel to a great movie you really liked, only to find out you have to pay $0.99 for each character to appear in the movie. You're also given the option to skip the boring beginning credits, but that costs 0.99 cents. The high-quality CGI special effects are an extra $1.99. Every 30 minutes, you have a 10 minute wait, although you can bypass them by paying an additional 0.99 cents per wait. Also, the ending is not included, so you have to pay $4.99 to see it.
Wait, I hope I'm not giving Hollywood producers any ideas....
I often here people mention how they're bad at math, didn't do well at math in school, etc. It almost seems like a badge of honor. I hear it said with som pride. And you know what? Most of the time, when I hear it, it's a woman saying it. Men are often embarrassed to acknowledge that they're bad at math.
I don't think women are worse at it than men, at least by innate ability, but they don't seem to value it quite as much.
This seems like a pretty bad implementation of Android.
Maybe that's the point. A lot of people say that if Nokia went with Android, they'd be much better off than they are now. Maybe this half-assed attempt was ordered by Elop and his MS masters so that Nokia can say "See, we did try Android, and it didn't change anything. This is why we needed Microsoft"
Everything Google is doing now is for their upcoming robotics division. This is how their robots will see and map the environment. Man, I wish my Roomba had this ability, rather than just randomly moving and adjusting direction based on what it bumped into.
I have an Oculus Rift, and I tried this 360 degree porn movie on it. It was pretty neat--the POV was from the guy's head, and you could look around at any of the three girls around you. It wasn't 3D (that would be _amazing_, to have 3D and 360 degrees), but it was still really cool.
FTL is great! You will lose on your first playthrough, though. In fact, you'll very likely lose on your first few playthroughs. But you'll get an awesome story out of it.
My first playthrough ended when I jumped to a star system where a star was emitting these major solar flares, which cause different areas of the ship to catch on fire. At the same time, there was a pirate ship there that seemed oblivious to the danger. They attacked, and I defended myself.
While the two ships duked it out, the solar flares kept going off, causing both ships to have rampant fires. Finally, the pirate ship contacted me, requesting to call off the battle. Ordinarily I would've ignored their request and finished them off as punishment for trying to rob me in the first place. But given the situation, I agreed.
Unfortunately for the pirate ship, right after our ceasefire their ship exploded from the combined damage of the solar flares and my own previous attacks. I knew I had to get out of there immediately, but there was a small problem: the bridge of my ship was on fire. You need someone manning the bridge, or you can't do FTL jumps. Most of my crew had died from trying to put out the fires, so I had just one crewmember left. He desperately tried to put out the flames on the bridge so he could man the bridge and FTL out of there, but it was not meant to be: he died from the flames.
With my crew gone, my ship was doomed to drift alone, until the fires and solar flares undoubtedly destroyed what was left.
I tried changing the wallpaper on my brother-in-law's Windows 8 laptop the other day. So I downloaded a picture, and opened it after it finished downloading. The picture loaded in the OS' default image viewer. I saw the picture appear, full-screened, and with no interface. I tried right-clicking the picture. That didn't give me a menu, but an interface did fade into appearance. I promptly saw an option to "Set as."
I clicked it, thinking: "Surely this will let me set the image as the wallpaper", but I was given just two options: set as lockscreen (IT'S A LAPTOP!), and set as 'app tile'
I immediately closed the window since the option I wanted wasn't there--no wait, actually I didn't close it. There was no UI option to close this fullscreen picture. I alt-tabbed back to the desktop. I found the picture again, right clicked it, and went to the "open with" option. There were like 5 image viewers that came with Windows to choose from. I chose the old "Windows Photo Viewer" and set it as the default so this madness won't happen again.
They don't cause uncanny valley because--while they may look pretty realistic--they're actually not realistic enough yet to cause it. Your brain can still tell they're totally fake, even though it may simultaneously be thinking "Wow it looks so real!"
CGI humans in movies--pre-rendered by giant server farms for as long as it takes--still fall into the uncanny valley.
It'll be a long, long time before graphics can be rendered in real time with no uncanny valley. Although, with that said, humans still look fake enough to me in games that there is no uncanny valley. So I don't think it's a problem yet.
I don't think graphics really matter anymore, though. They're far from perfect, but 3D graphics have been "good enough" for a while now. There was a time that 3D graphics meant that hands had to be mittens with no individual fingers, and faces were just drawn on textures. Not anymore.
Also, you can do what I did, which was just create a shortcut to the mobile facebook website and place it on your homescreen. You get a nice looking icon that says "Facebook" under it, as if it were an actual app.
Yeah, the app was "better," but at least I don't have to worry about what it's leaching from my phone (and consequently, hurting battery life/usng data)
Slashdot Mirror
Competition is a beautiful thing. Of course, there was no competition in internet providers, which is the whole reason Google started their fiber service.
"Things are only impossible until they are not." -Picard
Obama was the one who appointed a former telecom CEO/Lobbyist as chairman of the FCC. It's safe to say he's not particularly interested in keeping net neutrality.
Let's not blow this out of proportion. Sure, it would be the bomb if the NSA stopped spying on everyone, as all this spying is a plague on our freedoms. But let's not burn any bridges here.
They'll just end up buying Charter in a couple years anyway.
The petitions may not have any direct impact, however, they can help raise awareness, even if it's only a little bit. It's still better than nothing.
Public awareness is the only hope net neutrality has. Lobbying from companies like Netflix and Google can't turn the tide. Lobbying is more about money, it's about connections too, and most of the telecoms have connections that stem back before Netflix and Google even existed.
As much as it angers me, I don't think Net Neutrality can survive. People don't know, and the places they get their news from--the CNNs, Fox Newses, NBCs--they will never cover net neutrality in any meaningful way. I mean, hell, NBC is owned by Comcast, and we sure as hell know where they stand on net neutrality.
Anyone who is against net neutrality either (1) has no understanding of what it means, or (2) is being bankrolled by a corporate interest. I doubt that the FCC doesn't understand what net neutrality is, so that only leaves option (2).
Funny how net neutrality suddenly dies as soon as a former telecom lobbyist/CEO became the FCC chairman.
If you ask Google Now how to reverse entropy, it has the appropriate response.
Best easter egg ever.
Since Google seems to be the only one serious about rolling out fiber (and high quality broadband at a reasonable price), I have a great idea. How about if the government took all the tax breaks/subsidies that are currently given to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc and give them to Google instead?
Someone's walking around with an extra $400,000 in their pocket.
Bad analogy. The theaters are just vehicles for the content, not the content itself.
A better analogy would be going to see a the sequel to a great movie you really liked, only to find out you have to pay $0.99 for each character to appear in the movie. You're also given the option to skip the boring beginning credits, but that costs 0.99 cents. The high-quality CGI special effects are an extra $1.99. Every 30 minutes, you have a 10 minute wait, although you can bypass them by paying an additional 0.99 cents per wait. Also, the ending is not included, so you have to pay $4.99 to see it.
Wait, I hope I'm not giving Hollywood producers any ideas....
I imagine this is due to the influence Jobs had on Apple's culture. It's my understanding he wasn't big on giving money away.
I think in time we'll see Apple more prone to contributions.
But if an election were coming up, I would vote for the guy that _didn't_ block Twitter.
I often here people mention how they're bad at math, didn't do well at math in school, etc. It almost seems like a badge of honor. I hear it said with som pride. And you know what? Most of the time, when I hear it, it's a woman saying it. Men are often embarrassed to acknowledge that they're bad at math.
I don't think women are worse at it than men, at least by innate ability, but they don't seem to value it quite as much.
I'll be able to play a game where I can create a GUI interface with Visual Basic to track an IP address.
This seems like a pretty bad implementation of Android.
Maybe that's the point. A lot of people say that if Nokia went with Android, they'd be much better off than they are now. Maybe this half-assed attempt was ordered by Elop and his MS masters so that Nokia can say "See, we did try Android, and it didn't change anything. This is why we needed Microsoft"
Everything Google is doing now is for their upcoming robotics division. This is how their robots will see and map the environment.
Man, I wish my Roomba had this ability, rather than just randomly moving and adjusting direction based on what it bumped into.
I'm really excited for the new robots industry :)
I have an Oculus Rift, and I tried this 360 degree porn movie on it. It was pretty neat--the POV was from the guy's head, and you could look around at any of the three girls around you. It wasn't 3D (that would be _amazing_, to have 3D and 360 degrees), but it was still really cool.
FTL is great! You will lose on your first playthrough, though. In fact, you'll very likely lose on your first few playthroughs. But you'll get an awesome story out of it.
My first playthrough ended when I jumped to a star system where a star was emitting these major solar flares, which cause different areas of the ship to catch on fire. At the same time, there was a pirate ship there that seemed oblivious to the danger. They attacked, and I defended myself.
While the two ships duked it out, the solar flares kept going off, causing both ships to have rampant fires. Finally, the pirate ship contacted me, requesting to call off the battle. Ordinarily I would've ignored their request and finished them off as punishment for trying to rob me in the first place. But given the situation, I agreed.
Unfortunately for the pirate ship, right after our ceasefire their ship exploded from the combined damage of the solar flares and my own previous attacks. I knew I had to get out of there immediately, but there was a small problem: the bridge of my ship was on fire. You need someone manning the bridge, or you can't do FTL jumps. Most of my crew had died from trying to put out the fires, so I had just one crewmember left. He desperately tried to put out the flames on the bridge so he could man the bridge and FTL out of there, but it was not meant to be: he died from the flames.
With my crew gone, my ship was doomed to drift alone, until the fires and solar flares undoubtedly destroyed what was left.
I posted this story a while back. Still relevant:
I tried changing the wallpaper on my brother-in-law's Windows 8 laptop the other day. So I downloaded a picture, and opened it after it finished downloading. The picture loaded in the OS' default image viewer. I saw the picture appear, full-screened, and with no interface. I tried right-clicking the picture. That didn't give me a menu, but an interface did fade into appearance. I promptly saw an option to "Set as."
I clicked it, thinking: "Surely this will let me set the image as the wallpaper", but I was given just two options: set as lockscreen (IT'S A LAPTOP!), and set as 'app tile'
I immediately closed the window since the option I wanted wasn't there--no wait, actually I didn't close it. There was no UI option to close this fullscreen picture. I alt-tabbed back to the desktop. I found the picture again, right clicked it, and went to the "open with" option. There were like 5 image viewers that came with Windows to choose from. I chose the old "Windows Photo Viewer" and set it as the default so this madness won't happen again.
They don't cause uncanny valley because--while they may look pretty realistic--they're actually not realistic enough yet to cause it. Your brain can still tell they're totally fake, even though it may simultaneously be thinking "Wow it looks so real!"
CGI humans in movies--pre-rendered by giant server farms for as long as it takes--still fall into the uncanny valley.
It'll be a long, long time before graphics can be rendered in real time with no uncanny valley. Although, with that said, humans still look fake enough to me in games that there is no uncanny valley. So I don't think it's a problem yet.
I don't think graphics really matter anymore, though. They're far from perfect, but 3D graphics have been "good enough" for a while now. There was a time that 3D graphics meant that hands had to be mittens with no individual fingers, and faces were just drawn on textures. Not anymore.
Also, you can do what I did, which was just create a shortcut to the mobile facebook website and place it on your homescreen. You get a nice looking icon that says "Facebook" under it, as if it were an actual app.
Yeah, the app was "better," but at least I don't have to worry about what it's leaching from my phone (and consequently, hurting battery life/usng data)
Sweet, I've always wanted Robocop to be real.