they're still losing ground because they can't compete with on-demand,
Have they considered offering their content on-demand? I know it sounds crazy, but maybe, just maybe, the customers actually know what they want?
If the content industry survives at all (and they are doing their absolute best not to.) The only way I envision this is with a fully on-demand model. The idea of "channels" will vanish completely, you'll just have an on-demand catalogue. Shows won't air in a specific time slot, their episodes will just appear in the on-demand catalogue at a certain time each week. The shows then stay in that catalogue, available to be watched at whatever time, and on whatever device, is convenient for the end customer.
People are willing to pay for this. The content providers just aren't willing to provide it. And worst of all, it seems from your anecdote that they already know this!
You assume people live somewhere where they can receive OTA broadcasts...
I live in a city of over a million people, and while there are about 4 OTA channels available in many parts of the city, none of them can be received from my house, even with a large antenna on the roof. (Ok, I haven't tried the rooftop antenna thing, but my neighbour did without success, and I know with "conventional" rabbit ears I couldn't even pick up enough of a signal to tell that there was one...) (and yes, I live in the city, not even on the outskirts of town)
Where I live it's only available to people in the newest parts of town, but it costs exactly the same as DSL (for exactly the same speeds)... seems the phone company is using it as a technological replacement, but not as a differentiating service. (in fact people who qualify for fibre can't get DSL, the new houses don't have any copper lines going to them any more)
Your PVR can only record one show at a time? how quaint... The local phone company here is selling TV service with a PVR capable of recording 4 shows simultaneously
They have to pay the cable company for Internet access, and for residential customers who don't also subscribe to TV, the monthly Internet bill includes a "dry loop fee" that's about a penny less than the monthly price of the lowest tier of TV. The same thing happens to DSL customers who have gone VOIP- or mobile-only.
Your country is messed up... granted where I live the cable company doesn't have to provide competitors access to their lines (and doesn't) but for DSL it's an entirely different ballgame. If you buy your DSL service from the phone company they charge an extra $5/month if you don't have either their phone, or TV service, (if you have DSL+TV you don't pay the extra $5) but their cheapest phone line is $23/month. The phone company is also legally required to resell their DSL service to their competitors at a cost that's actually below their cost to maintain the infrastructure (they've been through regulatory hearings on that one, and it may change in the near future)
People will take their business somewhere that WANTS their business... the pirate sites. Is it "right"? that's a completely different discussion. But as has been proved many many times throughout history, if you refuse to give people a legal way to get what they really want, they WILL get it the illegal way.
The hope is that if the majority of the population is breaking the law, that one of 2 things will happen, either the law will change, or someone will make a legal solution.
Actually it IS relevant as there is a huge difference between trademark and patent protection. If the iPad/galaxy tablet bit were about trademark then Samsung could simply have changed the bezel colour or something else that visually differentiates. Apple doesn't want that, they want Samsung to quit making a tablet that people want to use.
The watertight bulkheads were taller than waterline, but you're right that if enough of them fill (and it took more than one or two) the ship rides lower and eventually the tops of the bulkheads end up below the waterline and the rest invariably fill. Still, from the stand point of building a modern version of the same ship, that is in fact a very minor design flaw, because it takes very little when building your new ship to make your bulkheads go all the way to a watertight ceiling (in fact I believe that it's actually required on modern ships?) They won't be building this using the original blueprints, at most a modern shipbuilder will use the original layout and "look and feel" and there was nothing wrong with either of those that makes it a failed design. The ship itself will be a modern design, designed and built by a modern shipbuilder, and up to all modern standards.
I'm sure they'll have no problem retrofitting enough lifeboats for everyone, lifeboat technology has improved since then. When any of these "reproductions" happen, they are never exact copies. What is more likely is a similar looking ship, with similar style decor, but a lot of fundamental differences. As they point out, it will have entirely different navigation systems, the propulsion plant is guaranteed an upgrade, they'll need more lifeboats for safety's sake, and most people won't want to travel steerage, so those cabins will have to be upgraded. Most likely a smaller crew complement will be needed, so some of that cabin space will be changed, additionally the ship likely won't need as much storage capacity, as people don't move to another country by cruise liner anymore, and they don't pack quite as much for a cruise vacation as a permanent move.
And that's just the minimum changes likely to be seen, I wouldn't be surprised if it's much more than that.
I love how you use a car analogy, and yet when exactly the same thing happens in the car world, nobody gets sued! Think the Chrysler 300, widely known to be a Bently knockoff, and people sell kits to make them even more so, and yet no lawsuit. Similarly most of the recent Hyundais try to look like Mercedes. Of course if Apple were in the auto market they'd sue anyone who used 4 round tires. (they'd have a separate lawsuit going against anyone using a steering wheel)
It would still need to meet some regulations, the regulations aren't only to protect the people on board, they are also to protect anyone in other aircraft and on the ground.
While I have no knowledge of actual policies or regulations surrounding this, wouldn't the cycles be important for non pressurized craft as well? after all, landing and takeoff are bound to exert more stress on an aircraft than simply flying straight and level.
Not sure how this fits in at all, but I do remember talking to a pilot of a military Hercules aircraft, and he commented that every hour they flew with the ramp open counted as 2 hours against the lifespan of the aircraft (due to the extra stresses on the airframe) (of course that same aircraft was already about 50 years old and kept flying almost as much as possible that whole time. (The pilot was proud to be flying the very same aircraft that his father before him had... not just the same model, the same plane)
There are regulations against flying unproven tech, and specifically remote controlled aircraft, almost everywhere, and specifically near population centres (where most airports happen to be)
As for "ejecting" It's more likely that he simply bailed out the rear ramp with a parachute, hardly a high risk activity really, in fact people pay for the privilege of jumping out of planes all the time.
That depends, it seems like this might be one of the best instrumented/documented air crashes of all time. Could still provide some valuable insight, even with the older aircraft.
As for money, how expensive is it to buy one that's just reached end of life? If you have a plane that can't fly anymore anyway (not through mechanical failure, but simply reached the end of it's hour rating), and you're going to have to get rid of it one way or another...
It's not that "reality" shows are very popular, it's that they're adequately popular, and very cheap to produce. The actors do things for essentially free (one of a group of people might get a million or so at the end of a season, or many people get a few thousand or something, but you don't pay nearly what real actors demand for a season of work) The script writing is very limited, even the sets and costuming are often cheaper than many shows.
Reality shows are popular because they're huge cash cows for the networks. Not because people prefer them outright. Unfortunately it does make finding good programming very difficult these days. It is also the main reason I stopped paying for any form of TV service. The one or two shows I actually want I can stream (free and legal) from the provider's websites, and the rest is such garbage that I don't miss it at all.
While I don't condone what foxconn does, unpaid internships are pretty common in many many different fields in most first world countries. In most of those internships the unpaid person works HARDER than those getting paid, and at least the same, if not more, hours.
Now you could argue that this is a bad idea all around, but you can hardly use that as the example of what makes foxconn different and worse than companies operating in major western countries.
I tried freenet, and my impression was the same as yours. The basic problem is that there aren't enough people on it to make it fast and full of content, but nobody will be on it until it is... I also thought about TOR, but I don't like the idea that someone else pops out of the TOR network on to the public internet through my connection. It leaves me liable for their dirty deeds (I'd love to think that the simple fact that you can't know who it is would help, but I know that law enforcement would at the bare minimum make my life a royal pain for a very long time, even if that argument did eventually win (something I'm not 100% certain of))
The sad truth though is that as long as data travels on big corporate pipes, we are vulnerable to this. The only real solution is a true mesh network built from the ground up to be anonymous and secure. Unfortunately, developing this and marketing it on a wide enough scale to be useful isn't a profitable venture (economically, socially, or politically), and as such there isn't likely to be such a thing in the near future.
I have had no success with google's filetype search at all recently. it used to work well, but any time I use "filetype" now it just seems to ignore it (of course it generally ignores most of the explicit instructions I give it anyway, so maybe that's just the new google...
It has not become a purchase. not until you are allowed to do anything you want with it. something current copyright law doesn't allow.
You want more regulation to stop it. I want less. reduce copyright law and let the free market take care of it. The only reason for the current mess is too much regulation in the first place.
Nothing wrong with purchasing one, as long as you are then allowed to do anything at all that you want with it once you have. What is unacceptable is the current state of affairs where the media cartels refuse to clarify if you are buying of licensing, trying to get the best of both worlds They say it's only a license to do something very specific any time you try to do something else with it (ie they claim it was only licensed for your home computer, and you shouldn't be allowed to move it to an MP3 player for example) and yet if you loose or delete the file, they refuse to let you have another one, because it was a purchase and not a license... Can't have it both ways...(unless you can afford enough politicians)
but now they can make sharing a digital copy just as inconvenient as sharing a physical one. All by the magic of near field communication, you'll have to actually meet up with the person to gift it.
Of course just wait until the content cartels get wind of this!
Except that you didn't even for a moment demonstrate that it didn't make sense. Instead you tried to dodge the question because your faith has prevented any real analytical thought on the subject.
Hence what this whole article is about. As soon as you start thinking analytically you MUST discount the possibility of a God.
My argument has never been that the non-existent entity requires another non-existent entity to have created him. My argument is that having the non-existent entity exist at all is both unnecessary to explain how anything works, and only makes the explanation of how anything works more complicated and more unlikely. This goes for "god"s involvement in absolutely everything and anything. Having a god doesn't explain anything, and it only adds an unnecessary level of complexity.
If I drop something and it falls, you may ask why it falls. I could answer gravity and the explanation is done. You could answer God, and I ask how, and you say that god invented gravity. You're already an extra step from where I was, and you still haven't explained how god himself came to exist. Adding God complicated matters for no purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
they're still losing ground because they can't compete with on-demand,
Have they considered offering their content on-demand?
I know it sounds crazy, but maybe, just maybe, the customers actually know what they want?
If the content industry survives at all (and they are doing their absolute best not to.) The only way I envision this is with a fully on-demand model. The idea of "channels" will vanish completely, you'll just have an on-demand catalogue. Shows won't air in a specific time slot, their episodes will just appear in the on-demand catalogue at a certain time each week. The shows then stay in that catalogue, available to be watched at whatever time, and on whatever device, is convenient for the end customer.
People are willing to pay for this. The content providers just aren't willing to provide it. And worst of all, it seems from your anecdote that they already know this!
You assume people live somewhere where they can receive OTA broadcasts...
I live in a city of over a million people, and while there are about 4 OTA channels available in many parts of the city, none of them can be received from my house, even with a large antenna on the roof. (Ok, I haven't tried the rooftop antenna thing, but my neighbour did without success, and I know with "conventional" rabbit ears I couldn't even pick up enough of a signal to tell that there was one...) (and yes, I live in the city, not even on the outskirts of town)
Where I live it's only available to people in the newest parts of town, but it costs exactly the same as DSL (for exactly the same speeds)... seems the phone company is using it as a technological replacement, but not as a differentiating service. (in fact people who qualify for fibre can't get DSL, the new houses don't have any copper lines going to them any more)
Your PVR can only record one show at a time? how quaint...
The local phone company here is selling TV service with a PVR capable of recording 4 shows simultaneously
They have to pay the cable company for Internet access, and for residential customers who don't also subscribe to TV, the monthly Internet bill includes a "dry loop fee" that's about a penny less than the monthly price of the lowest tier of TV. The same thing happens to DSL customers who have gone VOIP- or mobile-only.
Your country is messed up... granted where I live the cable company doesn't have to provide competitors access to their lines (and doesn't) but for DSL it's an entirely different ballgame. If you buy your DSL service from the phone company they charge an extra $5/month if you don't have either their phone, or TV service, (if you have DSL+TV you don't pay the extra $5) but their cheapest phone line is $23/month. The phone company is also legally required to resell their DSL service to their competitors at a cost that's actually below their cost to maintain the infrastructure (they've been through regulatory hearings on that one, and it may change in the near future)
People will take their business somewhere that WANTS their business... the pirate sites.
Is it "right"? that's a completely different discussion. But as has been proved many many times throughout history, if you refuse to give people a legal way to get what they really want, they WILL get it the illegal way.
The hope is that if the majority of the population is breaking the law, that one of 2 things will happen, either the law will change, or someone will make a legal solution.
Actually it IS relevant as there is a huge difference between trademark and patent protection. If the iPad/galaxy tablet bit were about trademark then Samsung could simply have changed the bezel colour or something else that visually differentiates. Apple doesn't want that, they want Samsung to quit making a tablet that people want to use.
The watertight bulkheads were taller than waterline, but you're right that if enough of them fill (and it took more than one or two) the ship rides lower and eventually the tops of the bulkheads end up below the waterline and the rest invariably fill.
Still, from the stand point of building a modern version of the same ship, that is in fact a very minor design flaw, because it takes very little when building your new ship to make your bulkheads go all the way to a watertight ceiling (in fact I believe that it's actually required on modern ships?) They won't be building this using the original blueprints, at most a modern shipbuilder will use the original layout and "look and feel" and there was nothing wrong with either of those that makes it a failed design. The ship itself will be a modern design, designed and built by a modern shipbuilder, and up to all modern standards.
I'm sure they'll have no problem retrofitting enough lifeboats for everyone, lifeboat technology has improved since then. When any of these "reproductions" happen, they are never exact copies. What is more likely is a similar looking ship, with similar style decor, but a lot of fundamental differences. As they point out, it will have entirely different navigation systems, the propulsion plant is guaranteed an upgrade, they'll need more lifeboats for safety's sake, and most people won't want to travel steerage, so those cabins will have to be upgraded. Most likely a smaller crew complement will be needed, so some of that cabin space will be changed, additionally the ship likely won't need as much storage capacity, as people don't move to another country by cruise liner anymore, and they don't pack quite as much for a cruise vacation as a permanent move.
And that's just the minimum changes likely to be seen, I wouldn't be surprised if it's much more than that.
I love how you use a car analogy, and yet when exactly the same thing happens in the car world, nobody gets sued!
Think the Chrysler 300, widely known to be a Bently knockoff, and people sell kits to make them even more so, and yet no lawsuit. Similarly most of the recent Hyundais try to look like Mercedes.
Of course if Apple were in the auto market they'd sue anyone who used 4 round tires. (they'd have a separate lawsuit going against anyone using a steering wheel)
It would still need to meet some regulations, the regulations aren't only to protect the people on board, they are also to protect anyone in other aircraft and on the ground.
While I have no knowledge of actual policies or regulations surrounding this, wouldn't the cycles be important for non pressurized craft as well? after all, landing and takeoff are bound to exert more stress on an aircraft than simply flying straight and level.
Not sure how this fits in at all, but I do remember talking to a pilot of a military Hercules aircraft, and he commented that every hour they flew with the ramp open counted as 2 hours against the lifespan of the aircraft (due to the extra stresses on the airframe) (of course that same aircraft was already about 50 years old and kept flying almost as much as possible that whole time. (The pilot was proud to be flying the very same aircraft that his father before him had... not just the same model, the same plane)
There are regulations against flying unproven tech, and specifically remote controlled aircraft, almost everywhere, and specifically near population centres (where most airports happen to be)
As for "ejecting" It's more likely that he simply bailed out the rear ramp with a parachute, hardly a high risk activity really, in fact people pay for the privilege of jumping out of planes all the time.
That depends, it seems like this might be one of the best instrumented /documented air crashes of all time. Could still provide some valuable insight, even with the older aircraft.
As for money, how expensive is it to buy one that's just reached end of life? If you have a plane that can't fly anymore anyway (not through mechanical failure, but simply reached the end of it's hour rating), and you're going to have to get rid of it one way or another...
It's not that "reality" shows are very popular, it's that they're adequately popular, and very cheap to produce. The actors do things for essentially free (one of a group of people might get a million or so at the end of a season, or many people get a few thousand or something, but you don't pay nearly what real actors demand for a season of work) The script writing is very limited, even the sets and costuming are often cheaper than many shows.
Reality shows are popular because they're huge cash cows for the networks. Not because people prefer them outright. Unfortunately it does make finding good programming very difficult these days. It is also the main reason I stopped paying for any form of TV service. The one or two shows I actually want I can stream (free and legal) from the provider's websites, and the rest is such garbage that I don't miss it at all.
Dear Australia:
It's not just you
Sincerely,
Canada
While I don't condone what foxconn does, unpaid internships are pretty common in many many different fields in most first world countries. In most of those internships the unpaid person works HARDER than those getting paid, and at least the same, if not more, hours.
Now you could argue that this is a bad idea all around, but you can hardly use that as the example of what makes foxconn different and worse than companies operating in major western countries.
or maybe samsung was just the low hanging fruit, sue them first, sue the others later if you win?
I tried freenet, and my impression was the same as yours. The basic problem is that there aren't enough people on it to make it fast and full of content, but nobody will be on it until it is...
I also thought about TOR, but I don't like the idea that someone else pops out of the TOR network on to the public internet through my connection. It leaves me liable for their dirty deeds (I'd love to think that the simple fact that you can't know who it is would help, but I know that law enforcement would at the bare minimum make my life a royal pain for a very long time, even if that argument did eventually win (something I'm not 100% certain of))
The sad truth though is that as long as data travels on big corporate pipes, we are vulnerable to this. The only real solution is a true mesh network built from the ground up to be anonymous and secure. Unfortunately, developing this and marketing it on a wide enough scale to be useful isn't a profitable venture (economically, socially, or politically), and as such there isn't likely to be such a thing in the near future.
I have had no success with google's filetype search at all recently. it used to work well, but any time I use "filetype" now it just seems to ignore it (of course it generally ignores most of the explicit instructions I give it anyway, so maybe that's just the new google...
It has not become a purchase. not until you are allowed to do anything you want with it. something current copyright law doesn't allow.
You want more regulation to stop it. I want less. reduce copyright law and let the free market take care of it. The only reason for the current mess is too much regulation in the first place.
Nothing wrong with purchasing one, as long as you are then allowed to do anything at all that you want with it once you have. What is unacceptable is the current state of affairs where the media cartels refuse to clarify if you are buying of licensing, trying to get the best of both worlds
They say it's only a license to do something very specific any time you try to do something else with it (ie they claim it was only licensed for your home computer, and you shouldn't be allowed to move it to an MP3 player for example) and yet if you loose or delete the file, they refuse to let you have another one, because it was a purchase and not a license...
Can't have it both ways...(unless you can afford enough politicians)
but now they can make sharing a digital copy just as inconvenient as sharing a physical one. All by the magic of near field communication, you'll have to actually meet up with the person to gift it.
Of course just wait until the content cartels get wind of this!
Except that you didn't even for a moment demonstrate that it didn't make sense. Instead you tried to dodge the question because your faith has prevented any real analytical thought on the subject.
Hence what this whole article is about. As soon as you start thinking analytically you MUST discount the possibility of a God.
My argument has never been that the non-existent entity requires another non-existent entity to have created him.
My argument is that having the non-existent entity exist at all is both unnecessary to explain how anything works, and only makes the explanation of how anything works more complicated and more unlikely. This goes for "god"s involvement in absolutely everything and anything. Having a god doesn't explain anything, and it only adds an unnecessary level of complexity.
If I drop something and it falls, you may ask why it falls. I could answer gravity and the explanation is done. You could answer God, and I ask how, and you say that god invented gravity. You're already an extra step from where I was, and you still haven't explained how god himself came to exist. Adding God complicated matters for no purpose.