About loss of revenue: Mozilla might not be selling copies of Firefox to end-users, they are still getting paid (by Google, among other) to produce it.
Trademark damages are not limited to loss to revenue. They can also be determined by how much money is made by the infringer. Which can easily be treble. So while Mozilla might not have "lost" any money from this, the other company certainly benefited, and the role of the damage calculation Is to prohibit such behavior as it means a bigger company could willingly violate trademarks and write it off as cost of business. The whole goal is not just to make the infringed whole, but to make it unprofitable to infringe.
And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.
This question is easier to ask when you're making well-above-average computer-programmer-level salaries and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something) and the various manufactured things which depend on that price isn't going to really ding your lifestyle. But given the number of people in this world who make a trivial fraction of that, it gets more complicated.
The thing is, as oil gets harder to exact, the price WILL go up. Sorta like how oil prices now are still higher than just 15 years ago, or people are paying 3+ times as much for gas today than they were in the mid 90s?
The thing is, if the "rich" people switch to renewables, their lifestyles are impacted modestly, but demand for oil falls which help regulates the price as well.
The poor folks will be impacted if we do nothing and consume oil as we always have as well - because they won't be able to afford it. And they'd be even less equipped to switch to renewables.
Basically - there's nothing wrong with wanting to plan for the future and do research alternatives while we can with the hope that the alternatives will be ready by the time we need them. Rather than needing to do the research when oil gets expensive and everyone suffers in the meantime.
Hell, we're seeing the effects of "running out of oil" right now. It's call IPv4 address exhaustion. Both IP addresses and oil are finite resources. We already have one alternative used to preserve address space (NAT), and an alternative ready (IPv6). But given how freaking hard it is to switch (mostly because of the way the alternatives work, sort of how switching from oil to anything else will be hard), it takes a long time.
Just because something can be recycled doesn't mean one should use more of it. The phrase "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" indicates the order in which those things should be done. It's better to Reduce than the Reuse and better to Reuse than Recycle. Apple could easily reduce their cardboard use by using thinner cardboard while still keeping their products intact for delivery. Since the boxes are so nice they also could offer to reuse them if you drop them off at one of their stores. Paper making is a nasty, wasteful process which consumes copious energy and water and recycling paper is only marginally less so.
And I'm sure Apple has done the analysis to ensure that if they could use thinner cardboard, they would to save money. Because when you're selling 100M+ of a device, saving 1 cent on cheaper cardboard is a reduction of $1M. And we know how Apple prides itself on its margins.
As for wastefulness of paper - note that making electronics involves using tons of nasty chemicals and poisons, tons of water and lots of energy as well.
This resolution drought we've been in for a decade really pisses me off. I was running 2048x1280 15 years ago on a Sony Trinitron monitor with 0.22" dot pitch. Why the fuck are all monitors today still shittier than we had over 15 years ago?
You can find better monitors, and always could. You just had to pay what you were paying 15 years ago prices to get them.
Monitors, like laptops, have dropped in price, but you still have to pay a pretty penny for good ones. You pay less now than you did before, but you ain't getting it for rock-bottom prices.
1080p monitors are helped by two things - 1) commodity (1080p is cheap - video processors handling 1080p are common to drive commodity TVs and now, monitors), 2) compatibility (to drive these HDTVs, they used component, RGB (aka VGA), and DVI/HDMI. The latter two are what PCs could drive easily, thus making video processor circuits compatible).
If you wanted a good monitor, you always paid, even if you wanted a 19x12 one because they don't have the advantage of commoditization.
But, just like people paid easily $3000+ for a good monitor 10-20 years ago and $300 for a crappy one, you can still get 1080p ones for sub-$100, and nice high res ones for $1000.
Likewise, the same happened with laptops - yes you can find them for $300. But if you want something half-decent, you're still looking at $1000+. Cheaper than the $5-10K you paid even just a decade earlier, but no, the high end high quality stuff does NOT participate in the race to the bottom.
Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's good. (And depending on the compromises, that $300 laptop can make more profit than the $500 one). And just like how people concentrated on single numbers, well, that's what they got - inches, GHz, gigabytes (RAM), gigabytes (HDD), megapixels, etc. Manufacturers learned they can cut corners elsewhere - 1366x768, 1080p, onboard graphics, etc.
Hell, everyone loves to bash Apple for overpricing their computers and monitors ($1000 for a 27"?! You can get it for $200!), you do have to realize they actually do add value (that 27" isn't a 1080p monitor...). Or how the low end 13" laptop has 1366x768 and not the 15" or 17" (which even had 19x12, not 1080p when they were available).
Samsung is outselling the iphone because of those larger screens. Poll after consumer poll constantly pegs screen size as the reason.
The SGS3 is not outselling the iPhone. Samsung phones are outselling the iPhone. Last I checked, Samsung made dozens of models. Roughly speaking, 1 out of 10 Android phones sold is an SGS3. Samsung commands nearly 80% of all Android phone sales. Or roughly 8 phones out of those 10 are Samsung, and only 1 is an SGS3. (This is taken by Google's daily activation numbers which range from 1-1.5M/day, and SGS3 sales, which are around 50M). Those other 7 aren't big screen monsters. They're reasonable small screen free phones. Among SGS3 owners, yes, screen size is an issue.
Though, I personally don't care for big screens (the Gnex is about the largest I can handle single-handedly), so it's a pain because all sub 4" phones are crap - lousy processor, lousy RAM, lousy screen. I understand why people like big screens - for games, and movies, it's nice. But since I don't use my phone with two hands normally, it's an issue if you want to use it for say, directions. Always amusing to see people use the SGS3 - every time, it's dual handed unless they're just holding it.
Of course, I know people who have a Note II as well. They like it, but their use case is again, dual handed. Heaven forbid their significant other should text or call while they're carrying groceries or something.
Sort of? We have a project to identify and track all the space-junk we can, but the library is far from complete. Once we know where one is and how fast it's going, it doesn't deviate much from that.
We make a practice of avoid the junk we know about. Intercepting it, on the other hand, is a fools errand. You're talking about shooting a bullet down with a gun. Hypothetically: sure, but in reality, it's not gonna happen.
Only above a certain size (1cm or so?), and yes, they do deviate because they hit things while they orbit.
Even worse is that, you cannot intercept them because you risk making the problem worse - one large piece of debris is easier to deal with than many smaller pieces, and the smaller pieces often form clouds of debris which can cover a larger area, which create more debris as they hit more stuff.
There is a critical point where we would effectively be trapped because the space debris would cause chain reactions which spray off more debris, which hit off more stuff and make more debris, etc. Like an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
The only way to clean it up is to deorbit it, and orbital mechanics say to do that, you can only decelerate it (your orbit altitude is determined by your speed - go faster, you go higher. Go slower, you go lower)
I never cared for pinball on the PC or consoles; it just felt "wrong". But I recently tried Pinball Arcade on my Android tablet and I'm hooked. It must be the way you can lay the tablet flat the way a real pinball table is oriented instead of looking up at a vertical screen.
It's supposed to be a mode exclusive to the upcoming PC version for those Ultrapin style machines.
And yes, it does feel "wrong", but when the option is hunting around the globe for $10K+ machines or video pinball, the latter has to do. Even when Pinball Arcade costs around $60 all paid up (every table purchased), it's probably the only sane alternative out there for a quick fix.
i love pinball, but finding a machine is rare! let's hope bars/arcades start stocking them instead of that stupid bowling/golf thingy
Pinball started dying out in the 80s and 90s because video games were cheaper and more reliable, and more importantly, smaller. Pinball machines required a lot of space and tons of maintenance.
The problem is, a pinball machine's purpose is to make money. The money goes to the operator (the person responsible for buying and maintaining the machines) and the site owner (the guy offering up space for the machine). So whenever it gets broken or goes down, it stops making money and the operator has to spend money to fix it. Video games and other machines last a lot longer so less money is paid out ot maintain them and more money goes to the site owner and the operator. Plus, since a machine consumes more space, you could often fit two video games in the space of one.
Plus, good pins are hard to get - Williams was the #1 pinball manufacturer - their machines were high quality, had good feel, and had various compensation mechanisms to allow for it to be in quite a bad state of disrepair and still be playable. As a result, even the worst DMD Williams machine is now horrendously expensive (maybe even more $$$ than new - $5000+). Some of the more popular machines command even more - prices of $15K+ aren't exactly unheard of.
So now it's even a worse proposition for operators and owners.
The only manufacturer left, Stern, evolved out of Data East/Sega, well known for very cheap crappy pins. However, they survived purely because Williams' factories are designed to pump up 10,000's worth of machines (pinball, slot machines, etc) and are very unprofitable building thousands or less, while Stern's can build hundreds and still be profitable. The latest WPC pins only sold between 2-5000 units (Pin2K was one of the first to reverse the unprofitability of the pinball division).
Williams in the end stopped pinball in 1999, but they wanted to hold it in their back pocket just in case it was a bad decision. Unfortunately, even doing something like reviving old hit machines wasn't ever an option because the sales wouldn't be enough to make money (again, when you're geared to build tens of thousands, building sub-10K is very inefficient and expensive).
Pinball machines will remain a niche these days because the economics aren't there. The problem is the machines have to make money, so it's a balance between ball time and difficulty - too difficult, and people don't play, but too long a ball and the machine doesn't make money because it's in use all the time. And what happened was pro pinball players started demanding more complex pins, which ended up excluding newbies and bringing fresh blood and new money to the industry.
It's changing, slowly, thanks to video pins - for those of us wanting recreations of the old machines, The Pinball Arcade is one of the premier video pinball simulators that feature many licensed recreations (many fully emulated a la PinMAME) on every platform (iOS, Android (including Android clones like Ouya, Kindle), PS3, Xbox360 (currently on hold because Crave (publisher) went bankrupt and is holding the contract hostage), and OS X). PC was just greenlit a few weeks ago on Steam, so the PC version is coming out soon. And of course it has a fan site with forums.
There are many others as well, which have the advantage that if you're not making money per play, they can concentrate on fun more than balancing fun with the need to make money.
I don't know, 11 year old routers might be pretty uncommon. Hell, I'd suggest that it'd be a good time to upgrade. My Netgear WNDR-3700 has 64MB of RAM and 8MB of flash, so this will work fine for me. I'll be upgrading from 10.03.1 so the lack of an ancient, obsolete kernel like Linux 2.4 means nothing to me.
Well, a bigger reason is that if you're on the faster internet service, ye olde WRT54GL is no longer fast enough. I think it's routing speed is fast for when it was released (50Mbps?) but it's no longer adequate in this age where a startling number are getting 25, 50, 100Mbps service (indeed, it's become the bottleneck). Even using it for 25Mbps might get iffy due to the low headroom available.
It was stupidly fast on release when few had 10Mbps service, but it seems the availability of faster service has rendered it out of date.
Especially with modern high end routers getting 750+Mbps speeds. Not fast enough for Google Fiber, but definitely enough with headroom for the top tier 250Mbps service available in some areas.
It's time for it to be retired. There are new generations of open routers available nowadays. Though, router power consumption is creeping upwards a bit - I'm sure you can build a PC that can do full wirespeed GigE routing and consumes under 50W, plus handle wifi and everything else and be pretty much fanless and quiet.
I don't see why a corner shop would have tighter margins than a supermarket: the retail food business is a cut-throat game, and everyone in it is running at the razor's edge between a few percent profit and driving away their fickle customers.
Anyway, the point I'm making is about the statistics of small numbers. A supermarket with 10,000 customers a week can count on selling, say, 100 cucumbers a week, pretty reliably. A corner shop with 200 customers a week might sell 2 cucumbers a week on average, but some weeks it'll be 5, some weeks it'll be zero. So they'll probably stock 5 a week, and have to throw them all out half the time.
Except a corner store's primary form of business comes from around the neighbourhood - people don't typically drive miles to get to the corner store (if they were driving, they'd go to the supermarket).
The side effect is that the store owner gets to know their customers and their needs, and thus optimizes their grocery selection appropriately to serve their clientele.
Like cucumbers - they know when their customers typically buy them so they bring it in on those days to get the freshest and so they don't hang around. If someone needs a special order (e.g., a party) they typically either tell the storekeeper ahead of time (so they can order in a larger quantity of those items, or special order stuff) or get in the car and drive to the supermarket. Depends on the amount of forethought in the planning process.
A corner store is tiny - a couple of thousand squarefeet of space versus a supermarket's 20,000+ easily. They can't carry many products, and they don't. Knowing business comes from around, they optimize based on what they typically order (and sometimes more "if you liked this, you should try this...").
And since the clientbase is smaller, they often learn the names of their customers and the customers get into the habit of asking for stuff not normally stocked - maybe it can be brought in, maybe not.
I think it is perfectly legit to use cryptographic means for conditional access for pay media (e.g. satellite radio, satellite/cable TV). --BUT-- The purpose is to deliver the product to the paying customer while not deliving it to non-paying. Once it is in the hands of the paying customer, it should be unlocked.
You do realize that's the purpose of most DRM out there, right? Software is DRM'd to keep non-paying people from using it. Books, movies are DRM'd to keep non-paying people from using it. Etc.
Overwhelming market advantage. Not unlike what the RIAA has on artists. Itunes has around 70% of the market for music downloads. Sure you can buy an MP3 from Amazon just like you can find music from bands that haven't signed with the RIAA. But Apple and the RIAA are both at least 3x larger than their nearest competitors.
Hint. It is not illegal to own a monopoly
It is illegal to use one monopoly to leverage an advantage in another market though, and in the mid 2000's, Apple was in serious danger of doing just that - between iTunes (music sales) and iPod (MP3 players). Despite being able to load DRM-free music (obtained via download or CD, or that you could defeat the DRM using the supported "Burn and Rip" method). Of course, it all came to pass when Amazon decided to up the game and release DRM-free MP3s that worked on iPod.
Anyhow, just because iTunes accounts for 70% of sales - there's nothing that says no competitor can come in and upset the cart. Hell, online radio services like spotify, Pandora, etc., have done just that. As has Amazon. And many other places - hell, I bought an album the other day and it came DRM free. I could've gotten it through iTunes, but I didn't (I went to the musician's web page for that). I wanted it in FLAC and I knew it was an option if I went direct.
This should replace elections. And elected officials. Measure the real people's publicly-stated opinions and rule from that.
Replace all corrupted clowns chosen by rigged popularity contests with math. Math can be trusted. Public data can be verified. Anything short of "free to know for everyone everywhere forever" has no place in public policy space.
Exactly. The Salem Witch Trials were a GOOD thing. As were the lynch mobs. And the Boston Marathon bombing? That kid featured on Reddit should've changed his name before! I mean, it was his fault for being falsely convicted, right?
On a more serious note, the problem is that people voting rarely, if every, have all the information. Which is why those tragedies happened. After all, if it was on Facebook, it must be true, right? But no tweet, nor post can often convey the subtleties of everything.
Hell, explaining the difference between design patents and regular patents to the/. crowd is an uphill battle. Even amongst people who should know better, and who claim despite being more "intelligent the average Joe", can be stupidly ignorant at the same time.
Granted, though, there can be some hits - with careful choices of sample, crowdsourcing can be quite successful, especially if you want to market something to a large audience (in which case ignorance and peer pressure are generally good things to get your stuff sold).
While it's a great theory for how taxes should be defined. it may be problematic... Suppose, you use X bitcoins to buy a digital product, such as an eBook, that is not for sale by any other means (it is not available to be purchased for USD).
You have a problem, since the product doesn't have a fair market value that can be uniquely discerned.
I believe the tax code assigns fair value as being the value when the exchange happened. If your ebook cost 1 bitcoin and the current exchange rate was $200/bitcoin, it would be taxed as a $200 ebook.
It's how it drives other sales - if the fair market value isn't directly on the item (which causes a pile of problems if you're bartering and using coupons, because without documentation, you'll be charged the full regular price for taxation).
For things involving forex, the same thing happens - it happens at the going exchange rate of the day. If you bought an ebook for $100 Canadian dollars (about $97 US dollars), it would be charged at $97. (Failure to document can incur penalties including using the highest exchange rate of the period, i.e., you pay more).
The government may also choose to assign a fair market value that can be decidedly unfair. Though it rarely occurs since there's typically some way to exchange it to the usual currencies. Like the bitcoin exchanges.
PC manufacturers won't bother - the $200 price point was not appealing the first time around. There was absolutely no money to be made then, just like now. Unless Intel is shovelling parts at the OEMs for free, there's no way.
Hell, before the iPad came out, you want to know what happened to the $300 netbooks? They became $400 and $500 netbooks! The $300 ones were basically clearances or older models that haven't moved because they were tiny 7" screens or other compromises that people didn't like.
Even Chromebooks are compromised to get them to that price point, mostly by going ARM.
At this point, the question of $200 will depend on what crap they can cut in order to meet the price - most likely you'll see the return of crappy screens (ye olde 800x480), tiny RAM (2GB or so if you're lucky), and miniscule hard drives (8GB SSDs). All of which would make a Windows 8 experience pretty terrible.
A $200 retail laptop would have to have $150 tops in parts (the $50 is eaten as retailer profit, manufacturer profit, shipping and warehousing, etc). A cheap spinning rust hard drive is probably $50 for 500GB, way too expensive. 8GB of SSD storage from a thumbdrive, say, is cheap - $5. Then there's RAM, CPU, battery, and all the other pieces which quickly eat up that BOM cost.
This "problem" already exists. All cell phones have a microphone designed to pick up ambient sound (aka "speakerphone") and comes with included software to allow arbitrary audio recording. The storage capability of phones allow pretty much non-stop audio recording for days (and recording software designed to pause recording when the sound level is below some threshold can go for months on a single storage card). Yet how many people do you know that does such a thing? One of the reasons people don't bother is because managing the data, and making any useful sense out of it, would be incredibly tedious and time consuming.
No, a big reason is the audio quality sucks. Most microphones are incredibly non-directional, and they capture everything and nothing at the same time. The brain does a HUGE amount of audio processing to get the directionality that the pair of ears gets you. A microphone does not.
Try it - put your smartphone on record, then walk around the room while you read some lines out of some text. It's incredibly difficult to understand the recording unless you're up close (you'll find noise and echoes hamper intelligibility), even though someone standing nearby would hear you perfectly.
It's why people use lapel mics and other things - because the audio sucks. Or why Hollywood has evolved sound processing and recording and dubbing and a pile of other tools - most movie audio is faked nowadays - re-recorded and re-dubbed and looped and foley'd and everything. It's the only way to get crisp clear audio.
Not to say you can't record audio better - but you need an array of microphones and post-processing to properly get directionality and ignore background noise
Well, one good reason would be to have content for the customer to purchase.
A lot of PC games these days come with Steam DRM. And a good chunk of them are also on consoles, so the PC version is pretty much a wash - the cost to port is the same as what they'd make from sales. It's why PC ports typically come later or are console ports - the PC just doesn't make a ton of money (of course, the PC "sales" are higher with the extensive piracy, but I'm sure paid copies make enough money).
So without DRM, most publishers would probably skip PC releases and produce for the console. Which may or may not be a good situation. Most new PC games I see are DRM-free indie games, but I'm sure there's a small contingent who wants their Modern Warfare or Black Ops and other games on that as well.
Then again, we may see evolution like what we see because of Android piracy - the games are now freemium and plastered with ads that you can pay to remove. Of course, then the ad stuff will now have DRM on it so the people don't remove the ads themselves...
The problem isn't being seen in public. It's being seen in public, and identified. And possibly doing something controversial.
First - identification. Google has already announced plans to use facial and clothing recognition to put faves to names (and their Google accounts). Now, whether or not the Glass user gets this information is irrelevant. It just means Google now knows where you are every minute of every day. All it takes is for some Glass user to capture you in the camera.
Next, imagine his argument of busybodies. He's afraid of drones flying over his house because it infringes on his rights to do as he pleases. But how about you? Not a problem.
And don't forget what having all that information tied to you is worth. Insurance companies would love to know what you buy at the supermarket - do you buy chips and pop, or fruits and vegetables? Your heath insurance premiums may depend on it. (Remember how we argue this with supermarket loyalty cards? Glass will be even more accurate).
Nevermind busybodies who keep track of people who buy videogames (videogames cause violence!), alcohol (alcohol abuse! drunk driving!, prohibition!), adult stores, abortion clinics, etc.
Some open source projects are in a better state than others, but in my experience it is a good idea to treat all of them as if they can stop working at any time, and manage that risk. In other words, have a contingency plan ready. In some cases you may be able to fx a broken bit of software yourself (or hire a company to do this). In other cases there are alternative software products you can switch to. Or simply accept the fact that whatever it is you've put together will stop working some day (obviously nothing mission critical). The last option may sound scary, especially to managers, but often it's better to have something rather than nothing, even if its for a limited amount of time.
Unless the software is dependent on an external service, the OSS part shouldn't just suddenly "stop working" - it's open-source after all. What may happen is a particular version falls out of official support, but so what? The source is there to see and maintain yourself.
Migrating is always an option and probably a good one if you want to keep getting upstream security updates and the like, but really, if something FOSS is discontinued, it doesn't die.
It's one of the big things FOSS has over commercial products - an EOL notice isn't really EOL and you're stuck with ancient binaries. No, you can move onto the newest and shiniest even with ancient FOSS software purely because the source is there.
It's only a balance between maintaining the current codebase or moving to a new version.
Now, if you're considering one of several FOSS projects that do similar things, then maybe it is desirable to use one that's supported longer (but there are often other considerations that may swing to the lesser supported project).
and why the employee was naive enough to hand it over.
For the same reason I'd do the same, in a frickin' heartbeat - $2500 in rewards dollars (and AmEx gives "real" dollars creditable to your account; not "miles", not "bux", not "flooz"). And in general, legit companies not on the brink of bankruptcy don't usually flake on their bills. Though sometimes... They do.
It does surprise me that AmEx wouldn't reverse the charge, though - They have one of the most consumer-friendly (and practically merchant-hostile) dispute policies out there. You ask, they reverse it and ask questions later, with the burden of proof on the merchant.
I'm surprised AmEx didn't want immediate payment.
Last time I had AmEx, I bought a house air conditioner at Costco - about $5000 or so. AmEx called up a few days later and asked us when the bill will be paid. I said on the day it's due. They immediately asked if they could be paid within the next couple of days. This went on a few times and a few phone calls - AmEx wanting payment immediately (despite being a cardholder for 20+ years). Then they demanded immediate payment to which I refused since the bill has not come yet.
In the end, the air conditioner was refunded because it was misadvertised as having a rebate that didn't apply to that model. The amount outstanding was paid minus the refund of the annual fees paid, and the account closed.
For a customer that has never paid a bill late for decades, they were surprisingly hostile especially since larger amounts were paid just fine. And of course, AmEx keeps soliciting for a card.
I've never bought into the induced demand argument.
There is a finite amount of cars, and a finite amount of trips being made. Just because more freeway capacity opens up, it doesn't mean that people start randomly driving to places they don't need to go - they were still going to be going there regardless of if the freeway was built / expanded. They were just doing it on unmetered neighborhood streets before.
Wouldn't we rather have those cars on the freeway, rather than clogging up neighborhoods?
Problem is, every empirical study done has shown that widening roads does not work - traffic is alleviated for a short while then builds right back to where it was before.
There are essentially an infinite number of cars on the road - you'll find that a car is really only used 1% or so of the time - the other 99%, it's parked. And the big problem is rush hour - once a road backs up, it cascades and forms "brake waves" (it's actually counter-intuitive, but sometimes *adding* a traffic light can smooth traffic because it curtails the brake wave - the wave terminates before traffic catches up).
Improving a freeway also has the habit of getting people to move to the suburbs and further from work - whether it's the picket fence lifestyle, or cheaper costs, or whatever - if people were commuting 1 hour before, and now its reduced to 45 minutes, they'd go and find a house 15 minutes down the road (of course, in a couple of years that added distance and traffic jam means it becomes a 1h15 or 1h30 commute).
In fact, without public transit (light rail), the best alternative would be cars that are autonomous or semi autonomous with communications. This way when a traffic light turns green, all cars can begin moving simultaneously. And brake waves would be reduced because it likely won't cascade (if you're getting too close, you can always communicate that to other cars and have them reduce speed to the right amount rather than overshooting).
Next those idiots that don't understand economics are going to give people free air to breathe. Obviously with a "free" resource like that everyone is just going to keep on breathing and breathing until there's no more air left.
Well, if you ask someone living in Beijing, they might disagree. Given that it's not people "consuming" the air that's the problem, it's the people polluting it so people can't breathe it anymore.
And in fact, we do charge for it through pollution taxes, carbon taxes, air quality standards, etc. Because if given a chance, people DO spoil it. Hell, LA used to have a huge smog problem until California introduced some of the most stringent air quality standards around.
And that was people consuming air for "free". Now China's actually had to admit the air in Beijing is actually polluted.
Sounds like it. After all, they're doing value-add here - in this case, they're not just shipping you the equipment you ordered, but customizing, configuring and ensuring it all works before shipping it out and assembling it on the spot.
So unlike a regular reseller that just sells you stuff, a VAR offers additional services that you pay for to get your stuff the way you want it. Also known as system integrators. A lot of resellers often are VARs as well - your neighbourhood computer store can sell you computer parts that you put together and build a PC with, or they can offer a VAR and not only put together the PC, but install the OS and get it all working smoothly.
At least, that would make sense. But given from some of these comments, you'd think people are so boxed up in their little world with blinders that they never go out to explore the bigger picture. Is a little general not-in-your-speciality knowledge so dangerous? It may not be related to what you do, but it certainly doesn't hurt to be able to look up and see the bigger picture or see how your part influences the world.
You realize most of those attendee's are major companies right? While in the past a lot of "consumers" would manage to get a ticket to this, these days its massively frowned upon and I would venture to say 80-90% of those tickets went to companies looking to send their developers for facetime with the heads of Apples Mac and iOS development teams about issues/concerns/ideas.
The days of jackasses like Violet Blue coming to a developer conference to hob nob when she doesnt know shit about being a developer have long passed when people started to care about app development and iOS.
It's also why Apple has stopped really announcing new products at WWDC because they want the people who work in their ecosystem to benefit, not random press bloggers who simply are there for the new stuff.
And no, it's not just major companies - Apple wants to encourage developers to attend - iOS or OS X, a good chunk of whom are tiny one-man companies but who have just a big a chance of attending and bitching/learning about changes in iOS and OS X.
In short, it's really like Google I/O without the hardware giveaways. It's held for developers to learn and do things better. It's not for Joe Average Fanboy who wants to see the latest shiny. But engaging the developer with upcoming changes means that when the upcoming shiny comes out, developers have already have stuff using the new APIs out of the gate.
T-Mobile is offering consumers the ability to pay for the phone over time - at the same overall cost as if they paid up front - and my state's AG is complaining that they are requiring you still pay for the phone if you walk away from their phone service.
No, the problem is that you can opt for the phone loan/financing. The problem is the financing is tied to the service - cancel your service, your loan is called in. If it was truly separate, you could still cancel the service (it's no contract, after all), but you'd still be responsible for the phone payments. Which if it wasn't tied to the service, means you can still spend the rest of the time paying off a phone that has no service.
This can be useful if you need to discontinue service for a little while but plan on reconnecting it later. The problem is when you disconnect, your phone loan becomes due. It's not possible to cancel your "no contract" service without affecting the contract loan payment plan, effectively making the no contract service part of the contract.
So it's not that you separately finance a phone and get service separately - if you finance a phone, service is mandatory and calling the service "no contract" is correct technically, but the contract of your phone financing makes the "no contract" plan part of the contract.
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Trademark damages are not limited to loss to revenue. They can also be determined by how much money is made by the infringer. Which can easily be treble. So while Mozilla might not have "lost" any money from this, the other company certainly benefited, and the role of the damage calculation Is to prohibit such behavior as it means a bigger company could willingly violate trademarks and write it off as cost of business. The whole goal is not just to make the infringed whole, but to make it unprofitable to infringe.
The thing is, as oil gets harder to exact, the price WILL go up. Sorta like how oil prices now are still higher than just 15 years ago, or people are paying 3+ times as much for gas today than they were in the mid 90s?
The thing is, if the "rich" people switch to renewables, their lifestyles are impacted modestly, but demand for oil falls which help regulates the price as well.
The poor folks will be impacted if we do nothing and consume oil as we always have as well - because they won't be able to afford it. And they'd be even less equipped to switch to renewables.
Basically - there's nothing wrong with wanting to plan for the future and do research alternatives while we can with the hope that the alternatives will be ready by the time we need them. Rather than needing to do the research when oil gets expensive and everyone suffers in the meantime.
Hell, we're seeing the effects of "running out of oil" right now. It's call IPv4 address exhaustion. Both IP addresses and oil are finite resources. We already have one alternative used to preserve address space (NAT), and an alternative ready (IPv6). But given how freaking hard it is to switch (mostly because of the way the alternatives work, sort of how switching from oil to anything else will be hard), it takes a long time.
And I'm sure Apple has done the analysis to ensure that if they could use thinner cardboard, they would to save money. Because when you're selling 100M+ of a device, saving 1 cent on cheaper cardboard is a reduction of $1M. And we know how Apple prides itself on its margins.
As for wastefulness of paper - note that making electronics involves using tons of nasty chemicals and poisons, tons of water and lots of energy as well.
You can find better monitors, and always could. You just had to pay what you were paying 15 years ago prices to get them.
Monitors, like laptops, have dropped in price, but you still have to pay a pretty penny for good ones. You pay less now than you did before, but you ain't getting it for rock-bottom prices.
1080p monitors are helped by two things - 1) commodity (1080p is cheap - video processors handling 1080p are common to drive commodity TVs and now, monitors), 2) compatibility (to drive these HDTVs, they used component, RGB (aka VGA), and DVI/HDMI. The latter two are what PCs could drive easily, thus making video processor circuits compatible).
If you wanted a good monitor, you always paid, even if you wanted a 19x12 one because they don't have the advantage of commoditization.
But, just like people paid easily $3000+ for a good monitor 10-20 years ago and $300 for a crappy one, you can still get 1080p ones for sub-$100, and nice high res ones for $1000.
Likewise, the same happened with laptops - yes you can find them for $300. But if you want something half-decent, you're still looking at $1000+. Cheaper than the $5-10K you paid even just a decade earlier, but no, the high end high quality stuff does NOT participate in the race to the bottom.
Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's good. (And depending on the compromises, that $300 laptop can make more profit than the $500 one). And just like how people concentrated on single numbers, well, that's what they got - inches, GHz, gigabytes (RAM), gigabytes (HDD), megapixels, etc. Manufacturers learned they can cut corners elsewhere - 1366x768, 1080p, onboard graphics, etc.
Hell, everyone loves to bash Apple for overpricing their computers and monitors ($1000 for a 27"?! You can get it for $200!), you do have to realize they actually do add value (that 27" isn't a 1080p monitor...). Or how the low end 13" laptop has 1366x768 and not the 15" or 17" (which even had 19x12, not 1080p when they were available).
The SGS3 is not outselling the iPhone. Samsung phones are outselling the iPhone. Last I checked, Samsung made dozens of models. Roughly speaking, 1 out of 10 Android phones sold is an SGS3. Samsung commands nearly 80% of all Android phone sales. Or roughly 8 phones out of those 10 are Samsung, and only 1 is an SGS3. (This is taken by Google's daily activation numbers which range from 1-1.5M/day, and SGS3 sales, which are around 50M). Those other 7 aren't big screen monsters. They're reasonable small screen free phones. Among SGS3 owners, yes, screen size is an issue.
Though, I personally don't care for big screens (the Gnex is about the largest I can handle single-handedly), so it's a pain because all sub 4" phones are crap - lousy processor, lousy RAM, lousy screen. I understand why people like big screens - for games, and movies, it's nice. But since I don't use my phone with two hands normally, it's an issue if you want to use it for say, directions. Always amusing to see people use the SGS3 - every time, it's dual handed unless they're just holding it.
Of course, I know people who have a Note II as well. They like it, but their use case is again, dual handed. Heaven forbid their significant other should text or call while they're carrying groceries or something.
Only above a certain size (1cm or so?), and yes, they do deviate because they hit things while they orbit.
Even worse is that, you cannot intercept them because you risk making the problem worse - one large piece of debris is easier to deal with than many smaller pieces, and the smaller pieces often form clouds of debris which can cover a larger area, which create more debris as they hit more stuff.
There is a critical point where we would effectively be trapped because the space debris would cause chain reactions which spray off more debris, which hit off more stuff and make more debris, etc. Like an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
The only way to clean it up is to deorbit it, and orbital mechanics say to do that, you can only decelerate it (your orbit altitude is determined by your speed - go faster, you go higher. Go slower, you go lower)
It's supposed to be a mode exclusive to the upcoming PC version for those Ultrapin style machines.
And yes, it does feel "wrong", but when the option is hunting around the globe for $10K+ machines or video pinball, the latter has to do. Even when Pinball Arcade costs around $60 all paid up (every table purchased), it's probably the only sane alternative out there for a quick fix.
Pinball started dying out in the 80s and 90s because video games were cheaper and more reliable, and more importantly, smaller. Pinball machines required a lot of space and tons of maintenance.
The problem is, a pinball machine's purpose is to make money. The money goes to the operator (the person responsible for buying and maintaining the machines) and the site owner (the guy offering up space for the machine). So whenever it gets broken or goes down, it stops making money and the operator has to spend money to fix it. Video games and other machines last a lot longer so less money is paid out ot maintain them and more money goes to the site owner and the operator. Plus, since a machine consumes more space, you could often fit two video games in the space of one.
Plus, good pins are hard to get - Williams was the #1 pinball manufacturer - their machines were high quality, had good feel, and had various compensation mechanisms to allow for it to be in quite a bad state of disrepair and still be playable. As a result, even the worst DMD Williams machine is now horrendously expensive (maybe even more $$$ than new - $5000+). Some of the more popular machines command even more - prices of $15K+ aren't exactly unheard of.
So now it's even a worse proposition for operators and owners.
The only manufacturer left, Stern, evolved out of Data East/Sega, well known for very cheap crappy pins. However, they survived purely because Williams' factories are designed to pump up 10,000's worth of machines (pinball, slot machines, etc) and are very unprofitable building thousands or less, while Stern's can build hundreds and still be profitable. The latest WPC pins only sold between 2-5000 units (Pin2K was one of the first to reverse the unprofitability of the pinball division).
Williams in the end stopped pinball in 1999, but they wanted to hold it in their back pocket just in case it was a bad decision. Unfortunately, even doing something like reviving old hit machines wasn't ever an option because the sales wouldn't be enough to make money (again, when you're geared to build tens of thousands, building sub-10K is very inefficient and expensive).
Pinball machines will remain a niche these days because the economics aren't there. The problem is the machines have to make money, so it's a balance between ball time and difficulty - too difficult, and people don't play, but too long a ball and the machine doesn't make money because it's in use all the time. And what happened was pro pinball players started demanding more complex pins, which ended up excluding newbies and bringing fresh blood and new money to the industry.
It's changing, slowly, thanks to video pins - for those of us wanting recreations of the old machines, The Pinball Arcade is one of the premier video pinball simulators that feature many licensed recreations (many fully emulated a la PinMAME) on every platform (iOS, Android (including Android clones like Ouya, Kindle), PS3, Xbox360 (currently on hold because Crave (publisher) went bankrupt and is holding the contract hostage), and OS X). PC was just greenlit a few weeks ago on Steam, so the PC version is coming out soon. And of course it has a fan site with forums.
There are many others as well, which have the advantage that if you're not making money per play, they can concentrate on fun more than balancing fun with the need to make money.
Well, a bigger reason is that if you're on the faster internet service, ye olde WRT54GL is no longer fast enough. I think it's routing speed is fast for when it was released (50Mbps?) but it's no longer adequate in this age where a startling number are getting 25, 50, 100Mbps service (indeed, it's become the bottleneck). Even using it for 25Mbps might get iffy due to the low headroom available.
It was stupidly fast on release when few had 10Mbps service, but it seems the availability of faster service has rendered it out of date.
Especially with modern high end routers getting 750+Mbps speeds. Not fast enough for Google Fiber, but definitely enough with headroom for the top tier 250Mbps service available in some areas.
It's time for it to be retired. There are new generations of open routers available nowadays. Though, router power consumption is creeping upwards a bit - I'm sure you can build a PC that can do full wirespeed GigE routing and consumes under 50W, plus handle wifi and everything else and be pretty much fanless and quiet.
Except a corner store's primary form of business comes from around the neighbourhood - people don't typically drive miles to get to the corner store (if they were driving, they'd go to the supermarket).
The side effect is that the store owner gets to know their customers and their needs, and thus optimizes their grocery selection appropriately to serve their clientele.
Like cucumbers - they know when their customers typically buy them so they bring it in on those days to get the freshest and so they don't hang around. If someone needs a special order (e.g., a party) they typically either tell the storekeeper ahead of time (so they can order in a larger quantity of those items, or special order stuff) or get in the car and drive to the supermarket. Depends on the amount of forethought in the planning process.
A corner store is tiny - a couple of thousand squarefeet of space versus a supermarket's 20,000+ easily. They can't carry many products, and they don't. Knowing business comes from around, they optimize based on what they typically order (and sometimes more "if you liked this, you should try this...").
And since the clientbase is smaller, they often learn the names of their customers and the customers get into the habit of asking for stuff not normally stocked - maybe it can be brought in, maybe not.
You do realize that's the purpose of most DRM out there, right? Software is DRM'd to keep non-paying people from using it. Books, movies are DRM'd to keep non-paying people from using it. Etc.
Hint. It is not illegal to own a monopoly
It is illegal to use one monopoly to leverage an advantage in another market though, and in the mid 2000's, Apple was in serious danger of doing just that - between iTunes (music sales) and iPod (MP3 players). Despite being able to load DRM-free music (obtained via download or CD, or that you could defeat the DRM using the supported "Burn and Rip" method). Of course, it all came to pass when Amazon decided to up the game and release DRM-free MP3s that worked on iPod.
Anyhow, just because iTunes accounts for 70% of sales - there's nothing that says no competitor can come in and upset the cart. Hell, online radio services like spotify, Pandora, etc., have done just that. As has Amazon. And many other places - hell, I bought an album the other day and it came DRM free. I could've gotten it through iTunes, but I didn't (I went to the musician's web page for that). I wanted it in FLAC and I knew it was an option if I went direct.
Exactly. The Salem Witch Trials were a GOOD thing. As were the lynch mobs. And the Boston Marathon bombing? That kid featured on Reddit should've changed his name before! I mean, it was his fault for being falsely convicted, right?
On a more serious note, the problem is that people voting rarely, if every, have all the information. Which is why those tragedies happened. After all, if it was on Facebook, it must be true, right? But no tweet, nor post can often convey the subtleties of everything.
Hell, explaining the difference between design patents and regular patents to the /. crowd is an uphill battle. Even amongst people who should know better, and who claim despite being more "intelligent the average Joe", can be stupidly ignorant at the same time.
Granted, though, there can be some hits - with careful choices of sample, crowdsourcing can be quite successful, especially if you want to market something to a large audience (in which case ignorance and peer pressure are generally good things to get your stuff sold).
I believe the tax code assigns fair value as being the value when the exchange happened. If your ebook cost 1 bitcoin and the current exchange rate was $200/bitcoin, it would be taxed as a $200 ebook.
It's how it drives other sales - if the fair market value isn't directly on the item (which causes a pile of problems if you're bartering and using coupons, because without documentation, you'll be charged the full regular price for taxation).
For things involving forex, the same thing happens - it happens at the going exchange rate of the day. If you bought an ebook for $100 Canadian dollars (about $97 US dollars), it would be charged at $97. (Failure to document can incur penalties including using the highest exchange rate of the period, i.e., you pay more).
The government may also choose to assign a fair market value that can be decidedly unfair. Though it rarely occurs since there's typically some way to exchange it to the usual currencies. Like the bitcoin exchanges.
PC manufacturers won't bother - the $200 price point was not appealing the first time around. There was absolutely no money to be made then, just like now. Unless Intel is shovelling parts at the OEMs for free, there's no way.
Hell, before the iPad came out, you want to know what happened to the $300 netbooks? They became $400 and $500 netbooks! The $300 ones were basically clearances or older models that haven't moved because they were tiny 7" screens or other compromises that people didn't like.
Even Chromebooks are compromised to get them to that price point, mostly by going ARM.
At this point, the question of $200 will depend on what crap they can cut in order to meet the price - most likely you'll see the return of crappy screens (ye olde 800x480), tiny RAM (2GB or so if you're lucky), and miniscule hard drives (8GB SSDs). All of which would make a Windows 8 experience pretty terrible.
A $200 retail laptop would have to have $150 tops in parts (the $50 is eaten as retailer profit, manufacturer profit, shipping and warehousing, etc). A cheap spinning rust hard drive is probably $50 for 500GB, way too expensive. 8GB of SSD storage from a thumbdrive, say, is cheap - $5. Then there's RAM, CPU, battery, and all the other pieces which quickly eat up that BOM cost.
No, a big reason is the audio quality sucks. Most microphones are incredibly non-directional, and they capture everything and nothing at the same time. The brain does a HUGE amount of audio processing to get the directionality that the pair of ears gets you. A microphone does not.
Try it - put your smartphone on record, then walk around the room while you read some lines out of some text. It's incredibly difficult to understand the recording unless you're up close (you'll find noise and echoes hamper intelligibility), even though someone standing nearby would hear you perfectly.
It's why people use lapel mics and other things - because the audio sucks. Or why Hollywood has evolved sound processing and recording and dubbing and a pile of other tools - most movie audio is faked nowadays - re-recorded and re-dubbed and looped and foley'd and everything. It's the only way to get crisp clear audio.
Not to say you can't record audio better - but you need an array of microphones and post-processing to properly get directionality and ignore background noise
Well, one good reason would be to have content for the customer to purchase.
A lot of PC games these days come with Steam DRM. And a good chunk of them are also on consoles, so the PC version is pretty much a wash - the cost to port is the same as what they'd make from sales. It's why PC ports typically come later or are console ports - the PC just doesn't make a ton of money (of course, the PC "sales" are higher with the extensive piracy, but I'm sure paid copies make enough money).
So without DRM, most publishers would probably skip PC releases and produce for the console. Which may or may not be a good situation. Most new PC games I see are DRM-free indie games, but I'm sure there's a small contingent who wants their Modern Warfare or Black Ops and other games on that as well.
Then again, we may see evolution like what we see because of Android piracy - the games are now freemium and plastered with ads that you can pay to remove. Of course, then the ad stuff will now have DRM on it so the people don't remove the ads themselves...
The problem isn't being seen in public. It's being seen in public, and identified. And possibly doing something controversial.
First - identification. Google has already announced plans to use facial and clothing recognition to put faves to names (and their Google accounts). Now, whether or not the Glass user gets this information is irrelevant. It just means Google now knows where you are every minute of every day. All it takes is for some Glass user to capture you in the camera.
Next, imagine his argument of busybodies. He's afraid of drones flying over his house because it infringes on his rights to do as he pleases. But how about you? Not a problem.
And don't forget what having all that information tied to you is worth. Insurance companies would love to know what you buy at the supermarket - do you buy chips and pop, or fruits and vegetables? Your heath insurance premiums may depend on it. (Remember how we argue this with supermarket loyalty cards? Glass will be even more accurate).
Nevermind busybodies who keep track of people who buy videogames (videogames cause violence!), alcohol (alcohol abuse! drunk driving!, prohibition!), adult stores, abortion clinics, etc.
Unless the software is dependent on an external service, the OSS part shouldn't just suddenly "stop working" - it's open-source after all. What may happen is a particular version falls out of official support, but so what? The source is there to see and maintain yourself.
Migrating is always an option and probably a good one if you want to keep getting upstream security updates and the like, but really, if something FOSS is discontinued, it doesn't die.
It's one of the big things FOSS has over commercial products - an EOL notice isn't really EOL and you're stuck with ancient binaries. No, you can move onto the newest and shiniest even with ancient FOSS software purely because the source is there.
It's only a balance between maintaining the current codebase or moving to a new version.
Now, if you're considering one of several FOSS projects that do similar things, then maybe it is desirable to use one that's supported longer (but there are often other considerations that may swing to the lesser supported project).
I'm surprised AmEx didn't want immediate payment.
Last time I had AmEx, I bought a house air conditioner at Costco - about $5000 or so. AmEx called up a few days later and asked us when the bill will be paid. I said on the day it's due. They immediately asked if they could be paid within the next couple of days. This went on a few times and a few phone calls - AmEx wanting payment immediately (despite being a cardholder for 20+ years). Then they demanded immediate payment to which I refused since the bill has not come yet.
In the end, the air conditioner was refunded because it was misadvertised as having a rebate that didn't apply to that model. The amount outstanding was paid minus the refund of the annual fees paid, and the account closed.
For a customer that has never paid a bill late for decades, they were surprisingly hostile especially since larger amounts were paid just fine. And of course, AmEx keeps soliciting for a card.
Problem is, every empirical study done has shown that widening roads does not work - traffic is alleviated for a short while then builds right back to where it was before.
There are essentially an infinite number of cars on the road - you'll find that a car is really only used 1% or so of the time - the other 99%, it's parked. And the big problem is rush hour - once a road backs up, it cascades and forms "brake waves" (it's actually counter-intuitive, but sometimes *adding* a traffic light can smooth traffic because it curtails the brake wave - the wave terminates before traffic catches up).
Improving a freeway also has the habit of getting people to move to the suburbs and further from work - whether it's the picket fence lifestyle, or cheaper costs, or whatever - if people were commuting 1 hour before, and now its reduced to 45 minutes, they'd go and find a house 15 minutes down the road (of course, in a couple of years that added distance and traffic jam means it becomes a 1h15 or 1h30 commute).
In fact, without public transit (light rail), the best alternative would be cars that are autonomous or semi autonomous with communications. This way when a traffic light turns green, all cars can begin moving simultaneously. And brake waves would be reduced because it likely won't cascade (if you're getting too close, you can always communicate that to other cars and have them reduce speed to the right amount rather than overshooting).
Well, if you ask someone living in Beijing, they might disagree. Given that it's not people "consuming" the air that's the problem, it's the people polluting it so people can't breathe it anymore.
And in fact, we do charge for it through pollution taxes, carbon taxes, air quality standards, etc. Because if given a chance, people DO spoil it. Hell, LA used to have a huge smog problem until California introduced some of the most stringent air quality standards around.
And that was people consuming air for "free". Now China's actually had to admit the air in Beijing is actually polluted.
Sounds like it. After all, they're doing value-add here - in this case, they're not just shipping you the equipment you ordered, but customizing, configuring and ensuring it all works before shipping it out and assembling it on the spot.
So unlike a regular reseller that just sells you stuff, a VAR offers additional services that you pay for to get your stuff the way you want it. Also known as system integrators. A lot of resellers often are VARs as well - your neighbourhood computer store can sell you computer parts that you put together and build a PC with, or they can offer a VAR and not only put together the PC, but install the OS and get it all working smoothly.
At least, that would make sense. But given from some of these comments, you'd think people are so boxed up in their little world with blinders that they never go out to explore the bigger picture. Is a little general not-in-your-speciality knowledge so dangerous? It may not be related to what you do, but it certainly doesn't hurt to be able to look up and see the bigger picture or see how your part influences the world.
It's also why Apple has stopped really announcing new products at WWDC because they want the people who work in their ecosystem to benefit, not random press bloggers who simply are there for the new stuff.
And no, it's not just major companies - Apple wants to encourage developers to attend - iOS or OS X, a good chunk of whom are tiny one-man companies but who have just a big a chance of attending and bitching/learning about changes in iOS and OS X.
In short, it's really like Google I/O without the hardware giveaways. It's held for developers to learn and do things better. It's not for Joe Average Fanboy who wants to see the latest shiny. But engaging the developer with upcoming changes means that when the upcoming shiny comes out, developers have already have stuff using the new APIs out of the gate.
No, the problem is that you can opt for the phone loan/financing. The problem is the financing is tied to the service - cancel your service, your loan is called in. If it was truly separate, you could still cancel the service (it's no contract, after all), but you'd still be responsible for the phone payments. Which if it wasn't tied to the service, means you can still spend the rest of the time paying off a phone that has no service.
This can be useful if you need to discontinue service for a little while but plan on reconnecting it later. The problem is when you disconnect, your phone loan becomes due. It's not possible to cancel your "no contract" service without affecting the contract loan payment plan, effectively making the no contract service part of the contract.
So it's not that you separately finance a phone and get service separately - if you finance a phone, service is mandatory and calling the service "no contract" is correct technically, but the contract of your phone financing makes the "no contract" plan part of the contract.