unwilling to pay even a tiny token amount for a service they use
This isn't really true, though. Whatsapp used to be an annual paid service at $1 per year. People are willing to pay some small amount for a compelling service.
Librem 5 from purism is a linux phone in development. [1]
Sure, it's not shipping for another year, but the company has shipped plenty of (well-regarded) linux laptops, and even gone so far as to figure out how to shut off intel's AMT in their newer machines. [2]
I've dealt with a few, and I will grant that for some 'shiny' is probably enough.... but... I think that in most cases it will depend on whether the CEO is willing to dedicate time to learning Win8 or not. It does take time to learn, and until you learn, you look stupid.
CEOs don't like to look stupid.
Unless they have come to Win8 on their own, it is very unlikely that a CEOs underlings will persuade them to change.
Sure, people lose some mental faculty as they age, but in my estimation it's far more likely because of physical degradation of the brain than a hand-waving concept like "degradation of psyche". Stop the physical degradation of the brain, and the mind will remain fresh.
Observation: Insurance rates are currently set at a level that the market and competitive pressure will bear, without this additional information.
Prediction: Early adopters will see some benefit in lowered insurance costs, but once most people are enrolled, insurance rates will creep back up to previous levels (that being the established level that the market will bear). Insurance companies will create additional rules that will facilitate a greater rate of insurance claim denial based up the new information, and will see greater profits arise due to this. Consumers overall will see no benefit in the long run.
Apple's dev kit was free until v4, and is now priced at a whopping $4.99. With that, you get easy access to a huge amount of resources for learning, and a thriving community to boot. The eclipse dev kit and the android development plugin is free, and again you get a huge number of example, a community, and support.
What you don't get from either is jerked around for $200 before you can even poke your head in the door. With iOS and Android, you can develop to your heart's content for free, and if you decide you've got something that you want to publish, you can do it after paying the $99 (Apple) or $25 (Android).
If that's too expensive, shift your focus to Android development. You can release you APK for free, and anyone can install after downloading it from your own website.
Finally - other people have disagreed with me, but I see the Arthur/Fenchurch bit as the high point of the series. Here's Arthur, beaten up for years in the other books, finally find a soulmate and happiness. Marvin finally feels good about something.
The first time a company attempts shenanigans like this, there's an uproar. Then they wait a while, for some of the people to get used to the idea, or apathetic, or both, and then attempt it again.
Too much hue and cry the second time results in a third repetition, with a slightly longer cycle. Process repeats until implementation.
I've got agree with malevolentjelly on this. If you're going to take on the mantle of speaking from authority, you should have some authority to speak from. In addition, the parent poster states that
"When Doctorow makes sweeping statements, it's best to back away and think through them"
and you write
"Measure an idea on its merits"
How does encouraging readers to step back and examine NOT cause them to measure ideas on merit? Did you even read what you replied to?
Yeah, plus there's always the wired metric.... at the height of the last bubble, wired magazine reached a whopping 16mm thick. Last month it was only 6mm. Still a ways to go yet.
>I don't think DVDs had any sort of encryption when they were first sold to consumers. It was an afterthought...
DVDs did originally come with the same copy protection they have now. It was a poorly-implemented and weak 40-bit encryption algorithm. See this article in Wired from 1999. (It may be that the original spec as written did not include copy protection, but to my knowledge this was not the case).
I'm quite sure that CDs, on the other hand, were never encrypted.
>>Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
>Really? There has not yet been a catastrophic event in Earth's history that life has not coped with. The KT event that killed the dinosaurs led to the massive radiation of bird and mammal species that we know today. You don't call that drastic?
"That life has not coped with"... Am I to assume here that you are OK with wiping out all large species, introducing a loss of complexity that will take hundreds of millions of years to return? Because life will "cope" with it?
Generally speaking, evolution can be assumed to take place at a rate proportional to the generational time of the species in question, and survivability is largely determined by the ratio of the amount of resources available to the resources required.
This is why bacteria have adapted so fast (~50 years) to antibiotics. They have run through hundred of millions of generations in that time. Large animals with a longer generational time can't adapt that fast. You will notice that it was predominantly the LARGE animals that were wiped out in the K-T extinction event... the animals that require more resource and with a higher generational time.
In addition to breeding quickly, small animals such as mice use far less resources than large animals, allowing them to more easily survive such an event.
A large animal with a relatively long generation time (such as a polar bear) cannot be expected to easily adapt to change on the order of 10s of years.
>The Permian-Triassic extinction wiped out an even larger percentage of species, and then back they came.
The lost species did not "come back". New species arose. This is an important difference.
But I'm going to have to close by asking the same question that The Register did of the (apparently only) letter sent to their site that mounted a similarly enthusiastic defense: "Are you an employee or shareholder in RIM?"
Slashdot Mirror
unwilling to pay even a tiny token amount for a service they use
This isn't really true, though. Whatsapp used to be an annual paid service at $1 per year.
People are willing to pay some small amount for a compelling service.
Librem 5 from purism is a linux phone in development. [1]
Sure, it's not shipping for another year, but the company has shipped plenty of (well-regarded) linux laptops, and even gone so far as to figure out how to shut off intel's AMT in their newer machines. [2]
[1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
[2] https://puri.sm/learn/avoiding...
"We regret to inform you that we're discontinuing YouTube TV. You will have nine days to move to a new TV provider."
Like clockwork.
It's a pretty big world, and part of it's always going to be gloomy, and part of it's always going to be booming.
That's how slashdot's always been...
I've dealt with a few, and I will grant that for some 'shiny' is probably enough.... but... I think that in most cases it will depend on whether the CEO is willing to dedicate time to learning Win8 or not. It does take time to learn, and until you learn, you look stupid.
CEOs don't like to look stupid.
Unless they have come to Win8 on their own, it is very unlikely that a CEOs underlings will persuade them to change.
Sure, people lose some mental faculty as they age, but in my estimation it's far more likely because of physical degradation of the brain than a hand-waving concept like "degradation of psyche". Stop the physical degradation of the brain, and the mind will remain fresh.
Observation: Insurance rates are currently set at a level that the market and competitive pressure will bear, without this additional information.
Prediction: Early adopters will see some benefit in lowered insurance costs, but once most people are enrolled, insurance rates will creep back up to previous levels (that being the established level that the market will bear). Insurance companies will create additional rules that will facilitate a greater rate of insurance claim denial based up the new information, and will see greater profits arise due to this. Consumers overall will see no benefit in the long run.
Apple's dev kit was free until v4, and is now priced at a whopping $4.99. With that, you get easy access to a huge amount of resources for learning, and a thriving community to boot. The eclipse dev kit and the android development plugin is free, and again you get a huge number of example, a community, and support.
What you don't get from either is jerked around for $200 before you can even poke your head in the door. With iOS and Android, you can develop to your heart's content for free, and if you decide you've got something that you want to publish, you can do it after paying the $99 (Apple) or $25 (Android).
If that's too expensive, shift your focus to Android development. You can release you APK for free, and anyone can install after downloading it from your own website.
Finally - other people have disagreed with me, but I see the Arthur/Fenchurch bit as the high point of the series. Here's Arthur, beaten up for years in the other books, finally find a soulmate and happiness. Marvin finally feels good about something.
As far as I'm concerned, THE END.
The first time a company attempts shenanigans like this, there's an uproar. Then they wait a while, for some of the people to get used to the idea, or apathetic, or both, and then attempt it again.
Too much hue and cry the second time results in a third repetition, with a slightly longer cycle. Process repeats until implementation.
I've got agree with malevolentjelly on this. If you're going to take on the mantle of speaking from authority, you should have some authority to speak from. In addition, the parent poster states that
"When Doctorow makes sweeping statements, it's best to back away and think through them"
and you write
"Measure an idea on its merits"
How does encouraging readers to step back and examine NOT cause them to measure ideas on merit? Did you even read what you replied to?
If you hang around long enough it looks like digg is in the process of rolling it all back for us, by stripping off most of the non-technical users.
Yeah, plus there's always the wired metric.... at the height of the last bubble, wired magazine reached a whopping 16mm thick.
Last month it was only 6mm. Still a ways to go yet.
Article on one page (as opposed to *10* seperate pages...)
http://www.cio.com/article/print/114550
I will use this product and/or service because I like the bunny.
That is all.
I think he meant kibimiles.
(which of course derives from kibibyte - a term that I've resolved to never use, along with mebibyte, gibibyte, etc.)
No threading? Welcome to Farkdot.
Had you spent the 1400 hours chasing chicks, what do you think you might have had to show for it? Other than VD or a seriously brused ego?
Fame.
He was expelled from college because he stole computer time to develop the BASIC software that launched Microsoft.
I don't know if that's true or not and I'm too lazy to look it up, but if it is, in a way, that makes him even geekier.
>I don't think DVDs had any sort of encryption when they were first sold to consumers. It was an afterthought...
DVDs did originally come with the same copy protection they have now. It was a poorly-implemented and weak 40-bit encryption algorithm. See this article in Wired from 1999. (It may be that the original spec as written did not include copy protection, but to my knowledge this was not the case).
I'm quite sure that CDs, on the other hand, were never encrypted.
>I will not buy either until safely assured the DRM is broken and I can rip as I want.
So what.... like eight days after release?
>>Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
... Am I to assume here that you are OK with wiping out all large species, introducing a loss of complexity that will take hundreds of millions of years to return? Because life will "cope" with it?
>Really? There has not yet been a catastrophic event in Earth's history that life has not coped with. The KT event that killed the dinosaurs led to the massive radiation of bird and mammal species that we know today. You don't call that drastic?
"That life has not coped with"
Generally speaking, evolution can be assumed to take place at a rate proportional to the generational time of the species in question, and survivability is largely determined by the ratio of the amount of resources available to the resources required.
This is why bacteria have adapted so fast (~50 years) to antibiotics. They have run through hundred of millions of generations in that time. Large animals with a longer generational time can't adapt that fast. You will notice that it was predominantly the LARGE animals that were wiped out in the K-T extinction event... the animals that require more resource and with a higher generational time.
In addition to breeding quickly, small animals such as mice use far less resources than large animals, allowing them to more easily survive such an event.
A large animal with a relatively long generation time (such as a polar bear) cannot be expected to easily adapt to change on the order of 10s of years.
>The Permian-Triassic extinction wiped out an even larger percentage of species, and then back they came.
The lost species did not "come back". New species arose. This is an important difference.
I'm done with it.
But I'm going to have to close by asking the same question that The Register did of the (apparently only) letter sent to their site that mounted a similarly enthusiastic defense:
"Are you an employee or shareholder in RIM?"
The only concrete example, in those you linked to, of RIM suing for patent infringement is for the QWERTY keyboard on a handheld device
Oh really? Well, here you go. You can pick through them on your own time, as there are an abundance of examples.
1. Patent obvious idea but never implement it :D
2. Wait till a fool does
3. Sue / License
4. Profit!!
Don't we love America?
That's the thing about RIM, though.
Live by the sword and all that...