Physicians have been fighting this battle for quite some time. Traditionally, they only get paid for the services they actually render on call, so if a surgeon gets called in at 3:00AM to do an emergency appendectomy, they only get paid for doing the appendectomy, and nothing extra for having their sleep interrupted.
One of my family members just moved to an area where the physicians have negotiated a "Pay for Call" system with the local hospitals. Whatever specialist is covering a service gets paid a flat fee for covering call for a 24/hour period (IIRC, ~$800), in addition to getting paid for the actual services rendered. It's a pretty sweet deal - and while $800 might be excessive, I think the principle is correct. You want the ability to interrupt my life and restrict my travel / recreation options? You get to pay for that.
I hope I'd do something half as cool as what's Greg Carr's up to. He made his millions selling voicemail services to the baby bells right after the big bell was broken up. Now, he's more or less leased 1,500 square miles of Mozambique's largest wild area, Gorongosa National Park. It was once arguably the most magnificent game park in southern Africa, but has been decimated by years of civil war on Mozambique, and when Carr's foundation took over a few years ago, was nearly devoid of wildlife. His deal with the government is that he has 20 years to try and rehabilitate the park, bring back the animals, stop poaching and bring back tourists. Then he'll turn it back over to Mozambique, hopefully in something like it's former glory.
That's the kind of "work" I dream of doing after I somehow become a billionaire. Hell, why wait? I should email the Carr foundation right now and see if they have any need for a copywriter who's deathly afraid of snakes. I don't see how they could get by without that incredibly useful skillset.
You know your webserver's got problems when you can't even handle a comment-slashdotting. Apparently you sell $400,000 RVs that can survive a nuclear apocalypse, but you can't afford anything better than GoDaddy for your hosting. Bravo Global X Vehicles.
I donno, these are pretty #&$**!@ intrepid. Or at least, built to allow for some rather intrepid RV'ing. So, you know, it could happen.
We live near the hospital that commissioned this particularly ridiculous piece of machinery, and every time I see it, I get filled with the desire to drive over some shit. In a very manful way.
Touche good sir. I would have also accepted, "picking the major with the greatest percentage of sexually curious coeds" and "picking a major where facts are far less important than the way in which they are presented."
Sorry if I sound bitter, but I spent a lot of time reading this crap, and very little of it was as insightful or interesting as even my classmates' comments.
That sounds like more of a you problem than an academia problem. If you don't enjoy using a work's minutiae to accuse perfectly innocent authors of misogyny, innuendo, (to add a couple you forgot) blatant colonialism or latent homosexuality, what the fuck were you doing in an English Lit program? The rest of us live for that shit.
As someone who should not have majored in English Literature in college
Was that mac-bating, or a joke? I'm not sure. I've had a Pre since release day, and there are some things I like quite a bit better than the iPhone, and some things I get jealous about.
The iPhone wins at:
Apps - it's got a gajillion, the Pre has like 40 in the App store, and like 50 homebrew.
Autofocus & Video (In the 3GS)- The Pre's got a good camera, but no autofocus, and no video. I personally don't care about video too much, but it does seem lame to not include an autofocus camera.
The Compass - I'm not really sure what I'd do with the compass, but I wants it.
iTunes Ecosystem Integration - The Pre's pretty flexible about syncing media, but its media player kind of sucks, and it's integration with Amazon's MP3 store isn't perfect.
The Pre Wins at:
Price - At the moment, both phones are exclusive to one US carrier. If I were to replicate my Sprint plan on an iPhone, I'd be paying an extra $60/mo for my wife and I. $1,440 over the course of a two year contract.
The Keyboard - I like the slide out physical keyboard better than the onscreen keyboard.
Linux - The Pre is a little linux box. I can download a terminal app, then type in things like, "sudo apt-get" etc... How awesome is that? It means I come much closer to really owning this device than I would with an iPhone.
Multitasking - This is the one thing that really bugs me on an iPhone. I've gotten so used to switching back and forth between apps on my Pre, that it feels ridiculous to not be able to do it on an iPhone.
The Conclusion: Different strokes for different folks. They're both great devices - but I think for the Slashdot crowd, there's plenty to love about the Pre.
If businesses then go and market that way in the form of hacked decoder boxes... still 'tough tits' for the satellite company? In your legal frame of mind, I mean; it's obviously 'tough tits' for them in practice anyway and they have to introduce the next generation of encoding (or a different key.. whatever).
It took me a while to understand how the whole business works, but that's basically the way things work now.
Essentially the way you buy a 3rd party satellite receiver out of the box, it can only receive unencrypted satellite streams. But the decoder box manufacturers pay groups of coders to surreptitiously create and release software which allows the box to decrypt encrypted streams. For the last couple years, DirecTV has been on the as of yet uncracked N3, while Dish and Bellvue (Canada's main provider, with a signal that you can get throughout the US) have been on the cracked N2. A few months ago Bellvue switched to N3, and a week or so ago Dish completed its switch to N3.
In the meantime, a couple companies have implemented something they're calling Internet Key Sharing for their receivers - a system that shares decryption information from a paid subscription with that company's unauthorized receivers. I'm not sure of the technical details, but apparently this doesn't work as well as a true crack - and of course requires an internet connection to receive the frequently chancing keys.
Viewsat, who Kwak represents, doesn't currently have an Internet Key Sharing program, so, unless they can get someone to crack N3 - nobody's going to be buying their receivers.
Plus, the summary does a pretty awful job of getting to the real story. I've been following the development thread and chat since the rooting of the Pre was first announced. The motivation for the development forum's choice to stop talking about tethering wasn't eagerness to avoid lawsuits, it was appreciation for the way that Palm engineers have been interacting with the "underground" community.
Palm engineers have been involved in the unofficial dev forum threads and chat, dropping hints, giving the "hackers" knowledge that might have otherwise taken weeks or months for them to discover unaided.
The big stories here are: 1) Palm DIDN'T send a cease and desist. They nicely said, "Hey, if you want us to keep helping you out here, stop talking about tethering."
2) The Pre Dev community is doing some amazing things, thanks to the fact that the Pre is essentially a little Linux box with a nifty GUI.
3) It doesn't really matter that the affected wiki and forum aren't discussing tethering, since solutions have already been released elsewhere.
Want to get involved yourself? Head over to the most active dev thread at Precentral.net, contribute to the Wiki, or join the chat at #webos-internals on FreeNode (irc.freenode.net).
While I agree with your sentiment (parents should stop freaking out about their kids' safety) - you could say the same thing about things like child car seats. I mean, I made it just fine riding around (in Africa nevertheless) on my parent's laps without any safety restraints. So why should I subject my child to the constraints of a car seat?
Sure, getting in a traffic accident is a much more likely scenario than having your child lost by the school district, but since when was Slashdot against using technology to make our lives better / safer? Step back from the natural - ZOMG! Big Brother! - reaction, and it seems like making sure your 6-year-old is at school when she's supposed to be is a good thing.
People advocating stricter "control" measures don't give a crap about safety; they have deep rooted fears only care about controlling other people and situations beyond their control.
Congratulations! You win the inaccurate generalization of the day award!
I happen to think that guns are both Neat and Dangerous. I don't give a shit about controlling you - if you want to go shoot at pumpkins with your AK, I'm not bothered at all.
I have a brother-in-law who's licensed to carry, and frequently does. And I'm completely comfortable with that, because he's a responsible and careful human being. And while I'm all for responsible homeowners to be able to meet intruders at the door with a shotgun, I'm also all for policies that make it difficult for gangs and criminals to get firearms. We're lacking in effective policies that let responsible and careful gun nuts (like my brother in law) own all the guns they want, while preventing gang bangers from being able to pick up a glock at the corner store.
What gets my personal goat is when gun-nuts get up in arms (see what I did there) about policies that attempt to require more extensive licensing or certification for firearm ownership. It's not really infringing on my rights if part of my gun buying process is a detailed background check, or even some sort of training / licensing system, ala getting a driver's license.
I donno, not a horrible video, but I have trouble seeing how that's going to convince anyone to switch to the Linuxes. I think it's a bit to idealogical and lacking in the pragmatic. It could use some, "the advantages of Linux over PC's or Mac's are thus:"
I think the concept of Fon is excellent. But not all that useful in practice.
I live in a fairly populated area, and there are ~7 Fon routers within a five mile radius of where I live (Go to http://maps.fon.com/ to check around where you live). But every single one of those hotspots is in a residential area. Which is (I think) why I've never actually seen a Fon hotspot when I've been looking for WiFi. And, in the 6 months or so that I've ran a Fon hotspot out of my home, I've had zero outside connections.
I think the key to success for Fon would be to target businesses where people are typically looking for WiFi. Coffee Shops, Hotels and the like. The way it is now, I'd have to camp out on someone's Cul-de-sac to find a Fon hotspot.
it looks like it should be the rough draft that their marketing people mocked up as the pitch for some kind of ad
Precisely. But even in a mockup, there's no excuse for that script. I mean - honest to god - who types out "style-conscious individualist" and doesn't hang themselves by the cord of their own keyboard?
I'm ashamed to belong to the same profession as the poor copywriter who wrote this shit.
You, get up from your desk, you belong in Ad Sales.
"even many experienced Linux experts stay away from it" is ridiculous, but the principle of not requiring apt-get - or anything else that requires opening a terminal - from "teh newbz" is totally valid.
I think - like me - most new Linux users will initially revile and fear the terminal, then eventually discover that it's the easiest and quickest way to accomplish certain tasks, like Apt-Get.
The real question that Sony should ask themselves is if people are going to buy a 9 year-old console to play a cool game?
You're right on the money - but I'd add that another big factor is, well, the money. Buying the cheapest PS3 console will still set you back $400, while you can generally get a 360 arcade for $150. Sure, you're paying for better hardware, but if the titles aren't that much prettier as a result of that hardware, what's the point?
It all comes down to the experience of the games you're playing, and if the games on the PS3 aren't 2.7x better, it's difficult to justify the price of a console that costs 2.7x more.
a talking point amongst friends, a common thing to bond around, etc.
And even if you're antisocial and prefer to have exclusively internet friends, it's fun to be playing the games that blogs and forums and whatnot are talking about.
I was fairly confused, even after i RTFA, about how you talk into an ipod touch, since they don't come with either a microphone or bluetooth.
Google helped me find this Lifehacker Article that is way the hell more useful than the linked one. Basically you have to buy some sort of external mic that clips onto your touch, then use your headphones to listen to the call. To me, this awkwardness seems like sort of a deal breaker for the practically of an iPod TouchPhone.
If there were a way to hack a bluetooth module in there, it could be a whole different deal. You could talk using a handsfree bluetooth device, and in a brilliant circlejerk of redundancy, even tether your internet connection to a traditional cellphone with a data plan.
Slashdot Mirror
Physicians have been fighting this battle for quite some time. Traditionally, they only get paid for the services they actually render on call, so if a surgeon gets called in at 3:00AM to do an emergency appendectomy, they only get paid for doing the appendectomy, and nothing extra for having their sleep interrupted.
One of my family members just moved to an area where the physicians have negotiated a "Pay for Call" system with the local hospitals. Whatever specialist is covering a service gets paid a flat fee for covering call for a 24/hour period (IIRC, ~$800), in addition to getting paid for the actual services rendered. It's a pretty sweet deal - and while $800 might be excessive, I think the principle is correct. You want the ability to interrupt my life and restrict my travel / recreation options? You get to pay for that.
What, specifically, are you smoking? And where can I get some?
I hope I'd do something half as cool as what's Greg Carr's up to. He made his millions selling voicemail services to the baby bells right after the big bell was broken up. Now, he's more or less leased 1,500 square miles of Mozambique's largest wild area, Gorongosa National Park. It was once arguably the most magnificent game park in southern Africa, but has been decimated by years of civil war on Mozambique, and when Carr's foundation took over a few years ago, was nearly devoid of wildlife. His deal with the government is that he has 20 years to try and rehabilitate the park, bring back the animals, stop poaching and bring back tourists. Then he'll turn it back over to Mozambique, hopefully in something like it's former glory.
That's the kind of "work" I dream of doing after I somehow become a billionaire. Hell, why wait? I should email the Carr foundation right now and see if they have any need for a copywriter who's deathly afraid of snakes. I don't see how they could get by without that incredibly useful skillset.
You know your webserver's got problems when you can't even handle a comment-slashdotting. Apparently you sell $400,000 RVs that can survive a nuclear apocalypse, but you can't afford anything better than GoDaddy for your hosting. Bravo Global X Vehicles.
I donno, these are pretty #&$**!@ intrepid. Or at least, built to allow for some rather intrepid RV'ing. So, you know, it could happen. We live near the hospital that commissioned this particularly ridiculous piece of machinery, and every time I see it, I get filled with the desire to drive over some shit. In a very manful way.
Umm...racking up easy A's for Law School?
Touche good sir. I would have also accepted, "picking the major with the greatest percentage of sexually curious coeds" and "picking a major where facts are far less important than the way in which they are presented."
Sorry if I sound bitter, but I spent a lot of time reading this crap, and very little of it was as insightful or interesting as even my classmates' comments.
That sounds like more of a you problem than an academia problem. If you don't enjoy using a work's minutiae to accuse perfectly innocent authors of misogyny, innuendo, (to add a couple you forgot) blatant colonialism or latent homosexuality, what the fuck were you doing in an English Lit program? The rest of us live for that shit.
As someone who should not have majored in English Literature in college
There. I fixed it for you.
The iPhone wins at:
The Pre Wins at:
The Conclusion: Different strokes for different folks. They're both great devices - but I think for the Slashdot crowd, there's plenty to love about the Pre.
If businesses then go and market that way in the form of hacked decoder boxes... still 'tough tits' for the satellite company? In your legal frame of mind, I mean; it's obviously 'tough tits' for them in practice anyway and they have to introduce the next generation of encoding (or a different key.. whatever).
It took me a while to understand how the whole business works, but that's basically the way things work now.
Essentially the way you buy a 3rd party satellite receiver out of the box, it can only receive unencrypted satellite streams. But the decoder box manufacturers pay groups of coders to surreptitiously create and release software which allows the box to decrypt encrypted streams. For the last couple years, DirecTV has been on the as of yet uncracked N3, while Dish and Bellvue (Canada's main provider, with a signal that you can get throughout the US) have been on the cracked N2. A few months ago Bellvue switched to N3, and a week or so ago Dish completed its switch to N3.
In the meantime, a couple companies have implemented something they're calling Internet Key Sharing for their receivers - a system that shares decryption information from a paid subscription with that company's unauthorized receivers. I'm not sure of the technical details, but apparently this doesn't work as well as a true crack - and of course requires an internet connection to receive the frequently chancing keys.
Viewsat, who Kwak represents, doesn't currently have an Internet Key Sharing program, so, unless they can get someone to crack N3 - nobody's going to be buying their receivers.
Plus, the summary does a pretty awful job of getting to the real story. I've been following the development thread and chat since the rooting of the Pre was first announced. The motivation for the development forum's choice to stop talking about tethering wasn't eagerness to avoid lawsuits, it was appreciation for the way that Palm engineers have been interacting with the "underground" community.
Palm engineers have been involved in the unofficial dev forum threads and chat, dropping hints, giving the "hackers" knowledge that might have otherwise taken weeks or months for them to discover unaided.
The big stories here are:
1) Palm DIDN'T send a cease and desist. They nicely said, "Hey, if you want us to keep helping you out here, stop talking about tethering."
2) The Pre Dev community is doing some amazing things, thanks to the fact that the Pre is essentially a little Linux box with a nifty GUI.
3) It doesn't really matter that the affected wiki and forum aren't discussing tethering, since solutions have already been released elsewhere.
Want to get involved yourself? Head over to the most active dev thread at Precentral.net, contribute to the Wiki, or join the chat at #webos-internals on FreeNode (irc.freenode.net).
While I agree with your sentiment (parents should stop freaking out about their kids' safety) - you could say the same thing about things like child car seats. I mean, I made it just fine riding around (in Africa nevertheless) on my parent's laps without any safety restraints. So why should I subject my child to the constraints of a car seat?
Sure, getting in a traffic accident is a much more likely scenario than having your child lost by the school district, but since when was Slashdot against using technology to make our lives better / safer? Step back from the natural - ZOMG! Big Brother! - reaction, and it seems like making sure your 6-year-old is at school when she's supposed to be is a good thing.
People advocating stricter "control" measures don't give a crap about safety; they have deep rooted fears only care about controlling other people and situations beyond their control.
Congratulations! You win the inaccurate generalization of the day award!
I happen to think that guns are both Neat and Dangerous. I don't give a shit about controlling you - if you want to go shoot at pumpkins with your AK, I'm not bothered at all.
I have a brother-in-law who's licensed to carry, and frequently does. And I'm completely comfortable with that, because he's a responsible and careful human being. And while I'm all for responsible homeowners to be able to meet intruders at the door with a shotgun, I'm also all for policies that make it difficult for gangs and criminals to get firearms. We're lacking in effective policies that let responsible and careful gun nuts (like my brother in law) own all the guns they want, while preventing gang bangers from being able to pick up a glock at the corner store.
What gets my personal goat is when gun-nuts get up in arms (see what I did there) about policies that attempt to require more extensive licensing or certification for firearm ownership. It's not really infringing on my rights if part of my gun buying process is a detailed background check, or even some sort of training / licensing system, ala getting a driver's license.
Shit. I'm trading in the Yukon for a Smart Car.
They must be hosting this on a [Insert Your Least Favorite Underpowered Device Here].
Seems to be on the Youtubes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWEIQIv8zvY&feature=player_embedded
I donno, not a horrible video, but I have trouble seeing how that's going to convince anyone to switch to the Linuxes. I think it's a bit to idealogical and lacking in the pragmatic. It could use some, "the advantages of Linux over PC's or Mac's are thus:"
tuned in to watch Joan Rivers peddle here warez in HD!!!!
I had no idea Joan Rivers sold pirated software, in high definition no less!
Has someone alerted the BSA?
I would call this havoc.
Your scale is a bit out of whack. Havoc is an event like hurricane Katrina, not an event like 911 being out of commission for a day.
Plus, we all know it's not truly havoc until someone lets loose the dogs of war.
I think the concept of Fon is excellent. But not all that useful in practice.
I live in a fairly populated area, and there are ~7 Fon routers within a five mile radius of where I live (Go to http://maps.fon.com/ to check around where you live). But every single one of those hotspots is in a residential area. Which is (I think) why I've never actually seen a Fon hotspot when I've been looking for WiFi. And, in the 6 months or so that I've ran a Fon hotspot out of my home, I've had zero outside connections.
I think the key to success for Fon would be to target businesses where people are typically looking for WiFi. Coffee Shops, Hotels and the like. The way it is now, I'd have to camp out on someone's Cul-de-sac to find a Fon hotspot.
Perhaps. I suspect it'll just make a new sub-species of fat, lazy whales.
$#@&*!$ lazy-ass whales.
it looks like it should be the rough draft that their marketing people mocked up as the pitch for some kind of ad
Precisely. But even in a mockup, there's no excuse for that script. I mean - honest to god - who types out "style-conscious individualist" and doesn't hang themselves by the cord of their own keyboard?
I'm ashamed to belong to the same profession as the poor copywriter who wrote this shit.
You, get up from your desk, you belong in Ad Sales.
"even many experienced Linux experts stay away from it" is ridiculous, but the principle of not requiring apt-get - or anything else that requires opening a terminal - from "teh newbz" is totally valid.
I think - like me - most new Linux users will initially revile and fear the terminal, then eventually discover that it's the easiest and quickest way to accomplish certain tasks, like Apt-Get.
The real question that Sony should ask themselves is if people are going to buy a 9 year-old console to play a cool game?
You're right on the money - but I'd add that another big factor is, well, the money. Buying the cheapest PS3 console will still set you back $400, while you can generally get a 360 arcade for $150. Sure, you're paying for better hardware, but if the titles aren't that much prettier as a result of that hardware, what's the point?
It all comes down to the experience of the games you're playing, and if the games on the PS3 aren't 2.7x better, it's difficult to justify the price of a console that costs 2.7x more.
Sounds like an awesome little appliance, but what can you do with it? You know, besides a beowulf cluster.
I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters will have some suggestions. Let's hear 'em.
a talking point amongst friends, a common thing to bond around, etc.
And even if you're antisocial and prefer to have exclusively internet friends, it's fun to be playing the games that blogs and forums and whatnot are talking about.
Is spinning radio waves anything like spinning bullets? Because that would be totally awesome.
I was fairly confused, even after i RTFA, about how you talk into an ipod touch, since they don't come with either a microphone or bluetooth.
Google helped me find this Lifehacker Article that is way the hell more useful than the linked one. Basically you have to buy some sort of external mic that clips onto your touch, then use your headphones to listen to the call. To me, this awkwardness seems like sort of a deal breaker for the practically of an iPod TouchPhone.
If there were a way to hack a bluetooth module in there, it could be a whole different deal. You could talk using a handsfree bluetooth device, and in a brilliant circlejerk of redundancy, even tether your internet connection to a traditional cellphone with a data plan.