"On the plus side, my general takeaway is that the Surface is a highly capable and highly enjoyable device to use most of the time, and is likely in need of some bug fixing and optimization. However, that seems like it should have been done prior to the release of the product to the public."
This seems like an unrealistic expectation once you remember that it is, after all, Microsoft.
Without some protection, why improve your product? A shorter patent life does that.
Only a fool would do the R&D to enable someone else to then make the product.
Some level of protection is needed but some judgment is needed as well
. If someone decides (possibly through ignorance or because their MD was craftily marketed to) that they shoud pay more for the latest version of the product rather than go with the expired-patent-cheaper-version then that is an education issue, not a an IP issue.
Microsoft has used this approach for years. Only an idiot would buy the newer version of their products (later than about Office 97 and win2k), yet some (admitedly uniformed) users will go out and buy the later versions and gain nothing. At that point its caveat buyer, not caveat seller.
It seems like we could mitigate a lot of the problems around IP patents (including Pharma and genetics) if we limited them to a life of 5 years from filing (software and processes) and 5 years from first commercial approval (Pharma and genetics)
Once we fix that, we should look seriously at restoring some sanity to copyright law as well.
The article begins by claiming it allowed them to "become vegetarians" but the content of the article says
"The change meant that humans no longer had to rely on just one food source, fish, for brain growth and development.
Not having to rely on just one food source (animals) doesn't sound like a vegetarian to me It reads much more like it allowed them to become omnivores and thus be able to move away from a purely animal protein based diet.
Its amazing how much prejudices of the authors can spin the results of a study.
Thankfully, we don't have faster than light (FTL) comms. Without them, virtual exploration light years away is a joke.
We will eventually push our way out there in the space equivalent of wagon trains (a bunch of settlers on a one-way trip enduring long periods of no communication with home.)
I expect that we'll see FTL transportation before we see FTL communications across vast distances.
Of course, that presumes we start teaching rigorous science and get society engaged in the goals of space exploration again. Many (fools) like to call space projects wasted money, but they sure like the stuff we got (sat comms, ICs, dialysis machines, etc..) as spin-offs.
I would have thought by now that just as measurable numbers of people are starting to move away from Broadcast/Cable/Sat TV to stream instead, that there would be similar movement in audio.
An unintended consequence of this move might be to put terrestrial and satellite stations completely out of the music business.
Oh joy! A future where every radio station is in an all talk format.....
The vast majority of radios and tvs cost a lot less than a retina MacBook Pro. They do a lot less too.
Well, that's true now, but back in the day, a nice color TV cost a significantly higher percentage of my annual pay than a MBP does now. In 1978 the average wage was $10,556 and a nice 25" color TV console set cost about $800. That's about 8% of pretax income. (And by then most TVs had quit using most tubes.)
The average US wage in 2010 was $41K. 8% of that would be $3200 which is a lot more than the average price of a MBP.
For a typical MBP to represent 8% of a buyer's income, the buyer would have to be making about $25k/year. I'd be very surprised if very many purchasers of MBP's are making $25K/year.
This is horrible.
Who would buy anything that they can't easily repaired and/or upgrade themselves?
Next thing you know, we won't be able to pull the tubes from our radios and TVs and take them down to the drug store to test them.
reinstitute Glass-Stegall, preventing conglomerates of investment banks with commercial lenders backed by government-insured savings and checking accounts.
Absolutely. Let's also reinstitute the Bank Holding Act of 1956 as well. When banks weren't giant, multi-state/multi-national conglomerates they couldn't become "too big to fail".
The days of hijacking a plane and flying it into a ground target are over. With the cockpit doors bolted and the passengers wary (and often pissed off) the only real chance a terrorist has is to blow up a plane and hope for some collateral damage on the ground. If they are reasonably determined, they can accomplish that without even being on board the aircraft.
So not only are you correct, statistically speaking, but it is incredibly hard to justify the dollars spent by the TSA. As a nation we make safety versus convenience and cost tradeoffs every day. This is no different and there's no way a terrorist event on a plane could cost the nation even a fraction of what we spend annually to theoretically prevent them from occurring.
I like the tech idea that they are working on at SolarRoadways. Turn roads, driveways, parking lots into solar cells. IF (notice its a big if) they can make it work in a resilient and affordable way it will not only solve the NIMBY problem, it will also reduce some of the national grid problems as well. Having power generated as close to the point of consumption as possible will reduce the amount of power wasted. Storage will still be an issue to address, but that's no different than any other solution.
It's great to see MS heat up the tablet market with more competition and variety. This puts 3 significant platforms in play for the tablet world and moves us a step further from a monoculture.
Variety improves features and competition lowers prices and increases quality. Monoculture technology markets do just the opposite.
Can you imagine what an train wreck it would be for any technology market to become a monoculture where one company dominated 90+% of the market. That's a recipe for unmitigated disaster.
The iPhone/iPad's regular voice recognition for diction (the mic on the virtual keyboard) isn't Siri but it also uses the cloud.
On top of that, many apps and browsers store data in the cloud and not just iOS phones; Android, RIM and others store data on servers in the cloud.
Seems like a pointless ban to me.
I wonder if anyone has run the numbers to see if the TSA is actually worth the investment?
We made a lot of security changes after 9/11 that have basically eliminated airline aircraft as a primary target for terrorists (cockpit doors, pissed off passengers, etc)
The TSA has been around over a decade with a significant and growing recurring cost. On top of that, we have the hidden costs of delays, airport evacuations and other actions that impact the airlines and the traveling public.
As a nation, we constantly make tradeoffs between safety and economics and there is usually some element of risk that we tolerate because the economics justify it. For instance, people still travel on airlines even though planes sometime crash or sail on cruise ships even though they sometimes run aground and kill people.
It seems to me that it is highly probable that the TSA's costs outweigh their savings. Let's just warn travelers of the danger and roll on without the cost and inconvenience (and loss of Constitutional rights) that the TSA presents.
This sounds like a good idea to me. We need something to happen to illustrate to everyone just how much our rights and our respect for the Constitution have eroded.
Most people have no clue.
This need shouldn't be a surprise. We've known for one reason or another that we needed less foreign energy dependence since 1973. Pile onto that the needs for cleaner air, less carbon, etc because we've known about that too.
Sadly, the President who could've really capitalized on this was Jimmy Carter. He was the first President elected after the 1973 embargo when it was still somewhat fresh in the public's mind. If he had started us down the road of CNG then, this would be a done deal. Sadly he either didn't want to do it or was too incompetent to do it (based on everything else he screwed up, I'd guess the latter.)
No President since Carter has had any interest in doing that (especially those that were Texas oilmen,)
Slashdot Mirror
From the review at The Verge:
"On the plus side, my general takeaway is that the Surface is a highly capable and highly enjoyable device to use most of the time, and is likely in need of some bug fixing and optimization. However, that seems like it should have been done prior to the release of the product to the public. "
This seems like an unrealistic expectation once you remember that it is, after all, Microsoft.
Why?
Anyone who gave such misleading advice should apologize for it.
And Michael Dell should apologize for his statements that Apple should "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders".
Why would an "Amerindians" give a flying F about UN Regulations? Did the UN sign a treaty with their tribe?
I can't imagine any case where someone's brain is improved by watching lots of video (TV, movies, video games or internet.)
Reading; playing in the fresh air, board games, etc.. are all better than sitting passively and absorbing another's unqualified opinions.
Without some protection, why improve your product? A shorter patent life does that.
Only a fool would do the R&D to enable someone else to then make the product.
Some level of protection is needed but some judgment is needed as well
. If someone decides (possibly through ignorance or because their MD was craftily marketed to) that they shoud pay more for the latest version of the product rather than go with the expired-patent-cheaper-version then that is an education issue, not a an IP issue.
Microsoft has used this approach for years. Only an idiot would buy the newer version of their products (later than about Office 97 and win2k), yet some (admitedly uniformed) users will go out and buy the later versions and gain nothing. At that point its caveat buyer, not caveat seller.
It seems like we could mitigate a lot of the problems around IP patents (including Pharma and genetics) if we limited them to a life of 5 years from filing (software and processes) and 5 years from first commercial approval (Pharma and genetics) Once we fix that, we should look seriously at restoring some sanity to copyright law as well.
Let me know when they reach element 666. I want to name that Numerologonium.
The article begins by claiming it allowed them to "become vegetarians" but the content of the article says
"The change meant that humans no longer had to rely on just one food source, fish, for brain growth and development.
Not having to rely on just one food source (animals) doesn't sound like a vegetarian to me It reads much more like it allowed them to become omnivores and thus be able to move away from a purely animal protein based diet.
Its amazing how much prejudices of the authors can spin the results of a study.
It is just easier to open a terminal and use rm though.
At least that still works like it should.
My experience is that most important actions are easier to do in terminal than through finder (or in a command window than in explorer.)
Let's add "None of the above" as a choice and require the winner (of a states electoral votes) to have a simple majority in that state's race.
Of course, if we did that, we'd need to shorten the length of the election process dramatically or we'd all go insane.
Thankfully, we don't have faster than light (FTL) comms. Without them, virtual exploration light years away is a joke.
We will eventually push our way out there in the space equivalent of wagon trains (a bunch of settlers on a one-way trip enduring long periods of no communication with home.)
I expect that we'll see FTL transportation before we see FTL communications across vast distances.
Of course, that presumes we start teaching rigorous science and get society engaged in the goals of space exploration again. Many (fools) like to call space projects wasted money, but they sure like the stuff we got (sat comms, ICs, dialysis machines, etc..) as spin-offs.
I would have thought by now that just as measurable numbers of people are starting to move away from Broadcast/Cable/Sat TV to stream instead, that there would be similar movement in audio.
An unintended consequence of this move might be to put terrestrial and satellite stations completely out of the music business.
Oh joy! A future where every radio station is in an all talk format.....
The vast majority of radios and tvs cost a lot less than a retina MacBook Pro. They do a lot less too.
Well, that's true now, but back in the day, a nice color TV cost a significantly higher percentage of my annual pay than a MBP does now. In 1978 the average wage was $10,556 and a nice 25" color TV console set cost about $800. That's about 8% of pretax income. (And by then most TVs had quit using most tubes.)
The average US wage in 2010 was $41K. 8% of that would be $3200 which is a lot more than the average price of a MBP.
For a typical MBP to represent 8% of a buyer's income, the buyer would have to be making about $25k/year. I'd be very surprised if very many purchasers of MBP's are making $25K/year.
This is horrible. Who would buy anything that they can't easily repaired and/or upgrade themselves? Next thing you know, we won't be able to pull the tubes from our radios and TVs and take them down to the drug store to test them.
reinstitute Glass-Stegall, preventing conglomerates of investment banks with commercial lenders backed by government-insured savings and checking accounts.
Absolutely.
Let's also reinstitute the Bank Holding Act of 1956 as well. When banks weren't giant, multi-state/multi-national conglomerates they couldn't become "too big to fail".
The days of hijacking a plane and flying it into a ground target are over. With the cockpit doors bolted and the passengers wary (and often pissed off) the only real chance a terrorist has is to blow up a plane and hope for some collateral damage on the ground. If they are reasonably determined, they can accomplish that without even being on board the aircraft.
So not only are you correct, statistically speaking, but it is incredibly hard to justify the dollars spent by the TSA. As a nation we make safety versus convenience and cost tradeoffs every day. This is no different and there's no way a terrorist event on a plane could cost the nation even a fraction of what we spend annually to theoretically prevent them from occurring.
I like the tech idea that they are working on at SolarRoadways. Turn roads, driveways, parking lots into solar cells. IF (notice its a big if) they can make it work in a resilient and affordable way it will not only solve the NIMBY problem, it will also reduce some of the national grid problems as well. Having power generated as close to the point of consumption as possible will reduce the amount of power wasted. Storage will still be an issue to address, but that's no different than any other solution.
It's great to see MS heat up the tablet market with more competition and variety. This puts 3 significant platforms in play for the tablet world and moves us a step further from a monoculture.
Variety improves features and competition lowers prices and increases quality. Monoculture technology markets do just the opposite.
Can you imagine what an train wreck it would be for any technology market to become a monoculture where one company dominated 90+% of the market. That's a recipe for unmitigated disaster.
The iPhone/iPad's regular voice recognition for diction (the mic on the virtual keyboard) isn't Siri but it also uses the cloud. On top of that, many apps and browsers store data in the cloud and not just iOS phones; Android, RIM and others store data on servers in the cloud. Seems like a pointless ban to me.
It does seem like the Slashdot headline should be "Xbox workers on strike".
I wonder if anyone has run the numbers to see if the TSA is actually worth the investment?
We made a lot of security changes after 9/11 that have basically eliminated airline aircraft as a primary target for terrorists (cockpit doors, pissed off passengers, etc)
The TSA has been around over a decade with a significant and growing recurring cost. On top of that, we have the hidden costs of delays, airport evacuations and other actions that impact the airlines and the traveling public.
As a nation, we constantly make tradeoffs between safety and economics and there is usually some element of risk that we tolerate because the economics justify it. For instance, people still travel on airlines even though planes sometime crash or sail on cruise ships even though they sometimes run aground and kill people.
It seems to me that it is highly probable that the TSA's costs outweigh their savings. Let's just warn travelers of the danger and roll on without the cost and inconvenience (and loss of Constitutional rights) that the TSA presents.
This sounds like a good idea to me. We need something to happen to illustrate to everyone just how much our rights and our respect for the Constitution have eroded. Most people have no clue.
Poor Sony. After all they've done to..er..for their customers. Karma is definitely a bitch
This need shouldn't be a surprise. We've known for one reason or another that we needed less foreign energy dependence since 1973. Pile onto that the needs for cleaner air, less carbon, etc because we've known about that too.
Sadly, the President who could've really capitalized on this was Jimmy Carter. He was the first President elected after the 1973 embargo when it was still somewhat fresh in the public's mind. If he had started us down the road of CNG then, this would be a done deal. Sadly he either didn't want to do it or was too incompetent to do it (based on everything else he screwed up, I'd guess the latter.)
No President since Carter has had any interest in doing that (especially those that were Texas oilmen,)