Re:next we'll hear that Dell is in trouble...
on
Dell Ditches Netbooks
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm just not sure there's really much room between the laptop market and the tablet market, people are putting their money on either samll and light, or bigger but more powerful. The netbook really didn't quite fit in either category. Almost powerful enough to be a real computer, and almost portable enough to take with you everywhere... but not quite either.
Ummm... sorry, I have trouble believing that you can skip over a regular ad break in less time that it takes me to watch an ad that simply is not there. Most of the networks have their content up completely commercial free. a few have a single 15 second ad before an hour long show, and only the occasional (and very rare) one I go to have a single 15 second commercial in each normal ad break.
Though I did have to laugh at the CBC website a while back, at the time they didn't show any ads in their online content, but they did keep the entire ad break in place. So you ended up watching about 3 minutes of a splash screen of their logo at each commercial break, unless you fast forwarded.
I completely replaced my laptop with an Acer Iconia tablet + USB keyboard + wireless mouse (keyboard and mouse only used for "serious" computing tasks) and haven't looked back yet. I've been using that setup for about 4 months with no problems.
Of course I still use my desktop when I'm at home, though I have found that even that can now go several days without getting powered up as I do more and more on the tablet.
The base information for the DNS are already publicly available, most people use it as a hosts file on their own computer (I just found a list through google), and then I've manually added a few dozen that slip through. I'm not really in a position to make it public, it's on a small VPS with a few other things, and although DNS lookups aren't all that resource intensive, more than just myself and a few close friends using it and I'm sure I'd notice the hit. I'm not really willing to pay my own money to upgrade just so more people can use it, and I can't really find much of a way to offset the costs any other way (do you want ads with your ad-blocking?)
The person who was either: a) stupid enough to click on an ad (ANY ad, we don't want to encourage that) b) stupid enough to run a machine without the latest patches to prevent something they didn't even click on from running arbitrary code on their machine.
The summary asks "Will only the last 'ad supported' software in the chain win?" We could only wish! Unfortunately what usually happens is that each step simply adds more ads. Rarely do they remove existing ones to do that. As a result, you simply end up with more and more ads.
I'm at a point now where I am so fed up with ads in general, that I am ruthless in my ad blocking. I run adblock, and flashblock, and I run adfree on both my cell phone and my tablet. Additionally I run my own DNS server that is used by my computers, as well as my cell phone and tablet, and any time I see an ad on any device I do my best to track down where it came from and block the domain. And it's not just the web either, I don't have commercial TV service because I can't stand the ads. Many of the networks have their shows available right on their websites, for free and without the long commercial breaks either!
Had advertisers kept things reasonable, I might have never resorted to such measures, but as it is, I'm fed up enough to just block everything.
Actually it's interesting that you point out that the decision doesn't appear to exempt political parties on the robodial rules. As for "Tell that to the Conservatives"... how about also telling it to the Liberals, the NDP, and even an independent candidate in my riding last election. Every one of them Robodialled me.
technically you are correct, however one of the strict rules you refer to is that they must have explicit prior consent of the person they are calling. And I can tell you that there are currently NO organizations on this planet who have my consent to robodial me.
I can't speak for the US, but in Canada Robo-calls are already illegal... unless you're a politician... must be nice to be able to write yourself an exemption in to any law you pass.
I generally make it a policy never to vote for anyone who uses such scummy practices. Problem is, I believe that I should vote, and last election there weren't any candidates on the ballot who hadn't robo-called my cell phone at least once, one of them almost 10 times!
And why not? there are an awful lot of people that will GLADLY trade a couple of grams for the many extra features you get on this sort of tablet over an ipad. I actually have one of the heavier android tablets, and I would never even consider trading it for either an ipad2 or a galaxy tab because neither of those can do half of what this one does.
As for those ultra-light, mostly useless tablets.... If it doesn't have a USB host port, HDMI port, and removable storage then is not going to make it.
I get a different reaction when I tell people that my Iconia is not an ipad. Of course I do get the glazed over look like you describe from anyone who doesn't use such things, but the others don't refer to it as a knock off, more like "so... it's like an ipad... but better?"
I guess it's all how I describe it... It's like an ipad... except that I can pop in a micro SD card for more storage, I can plug in devices like hard drives, digital cameras, or USB keys to the full sized USB port, and I can watch my movies from it full screen on an HD TV thanks to the HDMI output. It has a higher res camera, and costs a fair amount less. Additionally I can load any app I want on it without having to "jailbreak" because it's android. I've actually seen a look of jealousy from several iPad users when they see how I use the Iconia.
Best is when I'm working with someone who sees me use it at the desk hooked up to keyboard, mouse, and external 300GB USB hard drive, and then we get a call and I grab just the tablet portion and go. Suddenly everyone wants one.
> I'd known about the ability to block a digital phone since the change from analogue
Question. What difference does it make if it's analog or digital? The fact is that the carrier has a way of identifying that phone on the network with a fair degree of reliability (otherwise they wouldn't be able to bill you for your calls) so regardless of if it's analog or digital they still have a way of blocking it.
The ability to block cell phones didn't start with phones going digital. It started when phones no longer required you to tell the operator who you were before you made a call. Unfortunately the willingness to use such a feature is a completely different problem...
Except that many patents these days are so broad as to not include any way of implementing what they describe (which means they are no better than a trade secret) AND the "limited time" isn't even applicable anymore when you realize just how long that time frame is and how fast the technology is progressing.
I'm not an expert on patents in the 19th and early 20th centuries to know for certain if they did in fact encourage invention at that time or not (I suspect it was really a bit of a mixed bag). But I am quite certain that by the end of the 20th century and in the early 21st century they do no such thing, and in fact actively stifle innovation to large degree. At this point there is no way to invent ANYTHING without running afoul of one patent or another. Even something new and novel that nobody has ever even dreamed of is likely to run afoul of one patent or another on the shape of it's case, the method of powering it, or the user interface to run it (among other ridiculous things).
Patents today are badly broken. They protect mega-corps at the expense of small time inventors. they protect exactly the people who need it least against those who would require it the most. It's time they were abolished, or at the very least, subjected to a MAJOR overhaul.
Forget "skilled in the art" even lay people found this obvious! I remember many years ago thinking that if my GPS knew where I was it would seem logical that it could also tell me what to do when I was there. Later I was frustrated that my PDA had calendar, to-do list, and GPS, and yet had no way of combining the three of them. I'm technologically inclined, but I'm certainly not "skilled in the art" of making phones/GPSs/PDAs/etc.
It's more likely that they will approve ALL of them with the theory of "let the courts sort it out." The end result of which is that the big companies continue as business as usual, but any smaller company that tries to implement a similar thing will find themselves quickly on the wrong end of a patent infringement suit from one of the big players. Of course that's par for the course right now, the primary purpose of patents shifted from protecting innovation to stifling it years ago.
Of course your version would be how it SHOULD work, after all, what is better proof of the obviousness of an idea than 4 different companies racing to patent the same idea!
Well... next time they cut funding to the patent office, have them correspondingly cut the authority of patents.
Big government is not the answer to too much IP, less IP is synonymous with smaller government. (No government at all would have no rules for intellectual property and anyone could copy anything) (just to clarify, I'm not advocating an end to government)
Is it more ethical that that animal shall live for several years and experience one small painful event at the end of it's life... Or to never have lived at all? (I'm not by the way stating that I know the answer to this one, and I would doubt anyone really does to be honest) Remember that the vast majority of animals consumed for food would never have even been alive were they not being raised for food. If the human race stopped raising cattle for food, there wouldn't be millions of happy cows, there would be very few cows indeed, in fact they could potentially become an endangered species as there is very little natural habitat for these purpose raised creatures to exist in.
Is driving a species to the brink of extinction ethical?
Depends on your definition of "better". Right now I'm not convinced there are any "better" options for me than my normal omnivorous diet. Humans are after all omnivores, as can be shown through the development of our teeth and the placement of our eyes (both have aspects geared toward hunting and eating meat)
Avoiding a specific part of our natural diet is not in and of itself "better", it is simply a different option. An option that was not really even available until relatively recently as the variety of nutrients required to be a healthy vegetarian are not easy to come by naturally in most geographic areas.
I am not however stating that I will never give up on eating dead animals. A project such as this could eventually produce an adequate substitute that I would be ok with. However I'm quite certain that it is nowhere near that stage yet.
The point wasn't grazing vs hunted, it was grazing vs feedlot.
I am however curious as to that answer, I've seen many people on here spouting the PETA talking points about cruel feedlots, but I live in cattle country and I've never seen a feedlot, I can't however drive 5 minutes on the highway without seeing field upon field of grazing cattle. Now it may be that my particular area is an anomaly, or that the massive feedlots are just better hidden, but I really am curious to know what percentage of cattle raised in north america is feedlot vs grazing?
Dairy depends on what their position is... if it's about people not keeping animals, then you're right, if it's simply about not KILLING animals, than dairy should be fine.
It is actually interesting to see this article on here today, I was actually just reading information about the progression of human ethics and morality. From the past where anyone not of your own religion, skin colour, or gender were considered non-human and treated accordingly, to today's world where discrimination still happens, but is generally recognized as such within society and strongly discouraged, to a future where everyone is truly equal and discrimination is a thing of the past. One of the big thoughts brought forward of course is that in the past while people of other groups were treated as non-human, it was taken for granted that this was in fact the case, and while there may have been some people who believed otherwise, it was a generally accepted fact in society.
Now to the point, if our sense of morality was so different in the past, where will it be in the future? There is an argument that the way we treat (and eat) animals right now will look not much different to a person a couple hundred years from now than the way we now see the idea of how other races were treated a couple hundred years ago. I don't know if I agree with that sentiment or not, however it seems a logical extension of where morality has been to where it is going, and as a person living in today's society it is impossible to see what cultural biases might be clouding my judgement.
That said, I love meat, I plan to keep eating meat. Will I eat synthetically grown meat? I don't see why not, assuming they manage to make it taste close enough to the real thing (which is a tougher task than one might think, what we taste in meat is not just the raw muscle itself, but is also influenced by the way the animal as exercised, and the food it has eaten.)
Of course one more jab on the animal rights front, many animals alive today would simply not be here if humans didn't eat meat. While it may seem noble to not slaughter the cows for beef, it must be realized that if humans didn't eat meat most of those cows would never have lived in the first place. (same for almost any animal that humans regularly eat) I know many people on here were talking about feedlotting vs grazing, and while I know there must be a lot of feedlots, I've never seen one, and yet I can't drive five minutes on the highway around here without seeing fields full of grazing cows. I'm not sure if that's just coincidence, of if feedlots aren't as common in my area as real grazing is?
I think the problem is not the bonuses themselves, but the way they are calculated. Many higher-ups have clauses in their contracts mandating bonuses, meaning even if they completely screw up, they still get their bonus... (personally I would call that sallary, but that's not always the case) In other cases people are getting bonuses based on number of loans, rather than on the profitability of the loan, or the likelyhood to repay. There are all sorts of other messed up "bonus" situations too.
Bonuses give people the incentive to work hard, but only if the bonus itself is well thought out. If the bonus is for the wrong thing, you only encourage your employees to do that wrong thing.
Give people who do well a bonus, fire those who do poorly (WITHOUT a golden parachute). That's how the rest of the world works, it's time the people at the top had to work the same way.
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I'm just not sure there's really much room between the laptop market and the tablet market, people are putting their money on either samll and light, or bigger but more powerful. The netbook really didn't quite fit in either category. Almost powerful enough to be a real computer, and almost portable enough to take with you everywhere... but not quite either.
Ummm... sorry, I have trouble believing that you can skip over a regular ad break in less time that it takes me to watch an ad that simply is not there. Most of the networks have their content up completely commercial free. a few have a single 15 second ad before an hour long show, and only the occasional (and very rare) one I go to have a single 15 second commercial in each normal ad break.
Though I did have to laugh at the CBC website a while back, at the time they didn't show any ads in their online content, but they did keep the entire ad break in place. So you ended up watching about 3 minutes of a splash screen of their logo at each commercial break, unless you fast forwarded.
not so far...
I completely replaced my laptop with an Acer Iconia tablet + USB keyboard + wireless mouse (keyboard and mouse only used for "serious" computing tasks) and haven't looked back yet. I've been using that setup for about 4 months with no problems.
Of course I still use my desktop when I'm at home, though I have found that even that can now go several days without getting powered up as I do more and more on the tablet.
The base information for the DNS are already publicly available, most people use it as a hosts file on their own computer (I just found a list through google), and then I've manually added a few dozen that slip through.
I'm not really in a position to make it public, it's on a small VPS with a few other things, and although DNS lookups aren't all that resource intensive, more than just myself and a few close friends using it and I'm sure I'd notice the hit. I'm not really willing to pay my own money to upgrade just so more people can use it, and I can't really find much of a way to offset the costs any other way (do you want ads with your ad-blocking?)
The person who was either:
a) stupid enough to click on an ad (ANY ad, we don't want to encourage that)
b) stupid enough to run a machine without the latest patches to prevent something they didn't even click on from running arbitrary code on their machine.
So in short, you bill the end user.
The summary asks "Will only the last 'ad supported' software in the chain win?"
We could only wish! Unfortunately what usually happens is that each step simply adds more ads. Rarely do they remove existing ones to do that. As a result, you simply end up with more and more ads.
I'm at a point now where I am so fed up with ads in general, that I am ruthless in my ad blocking. I run adblock, and flashblock, and I run adfree on both my cell phone and my tablet. Additionally I run my own DNS server that is used by my computers, as well as my cell phone and tablet, and any time I see an ad on any device I do my best to track down where it came from and block the domain.
And it's not just the web either, I don't have commercial TV service because I can't stand the ads. Many of the networks have their shows available right on their websites, for free and without the long commercial breaks either!
Had advertisers kept things reasonable, I might have never resorted to such measures, but as it is, I'm fed up enough to just block everything.
Actually it's interesting that you point out that the decision doesn't appear to exempt political parties on the robodial rules. As for "Tell that to the Conservatives"... how about also telling it to the Liberals, the NDP, and even an independent candidate in my riding last election. Every one of them Robodialled me.
technically you are correct, however one of the strict rules you refer to is that they must have explicit prior consent of the person they are calling. And I can tell you that there are currently NO organizations on this planet who have my consent to robodial me.
Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-6 Section IV
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2008/dt2008-6.htm#m4
(as for what role the CRTC has in such matters... you can look that up yourself, but they do have the force of law behind their decisions)
I can't speak for the US, but in Canada Robo-calls are already illegal... unless you're a politician... must be nice to be able to write yourself an exemption in to any law you pass.
I generally make it a policy never to vote for anyone who uses such scummy practices. Problem is, I believe that I should vote, and last election there weren't any candidates on the ballot who hadn't robo-called my cell phone at least once, one of them almost 10 times!
And why not? there are an awful lot of people that will GLADLY trade a couple of grams for the many extra features you get on this sort of tablet over an ipad. I actually have one of the heavier android tablets, and I would never even consider trading it for either an ipad2 or a galaxy tab because neither of those can do half of what this one does.
As for those ultra-light, mostly useless tablets.... If it doesn't have a USB host port, HDMI port, and removable storage then is not going to make it.
I get a different reaction when I tell people that my Iconia is not an ipad. Of course I do get the glazed over look like you describe from anyone who doesn't use such things, but the others don't refer to it as a knock off, more like "so... it's like an ipad... but better?"
I guess it's all how I describe it... It's like an ipad... except that I can pop in a micro SD card for more storage, I can plug in devices like hard drives, digital cameras, or USB keys to the full sized USB port, and I can watch my movies from it full screen on an HD TV thanks to the HDMI output. It has a higher res camera, and costs a fair amount less. Additionally I can load any app I want on it without having to "jailbreak" because it's android.
I've actually seen a look of jealousy from several iPad users when they see how I use the Iconia.
Best is when I'm working with someone who sees me use it at the desk hooked up to keyboard, mouse, and external 300GB USB hard drive, and then we get a call and I grab just the tablet portion and go. Suddenly everyone wants one.
> I'd known about the ability to block a digital phone since the change from analogue
Question. What difference does it make if it's analog or digital? The fact is that the carrier has a way of identifying that phone on the network with a fair degree of reliability (otherwise they wouldn't be able to bill you for your calls) so regardless of if it's analog or digital they still have a way of blocking it.
The ability to block cell phones didn't start with phones going digital. It started when phones no longer required you to tell the operator who you were before you made a call. Unfortunately the willingness to use such a feature is a completely different problem...
Except that many patents these days are so broad as to not include any way of implementing what they describe (which means they are no better than a trade secret) AND the "limited time" isn't even applicable anymore when you realize just how long that time frame is and how fast the technology is progressing.
I'm not an expert on patents in the 19th and early 20th centuries to know for certain if they did in fact encourage invention at that time or not (I suspect it was really a bit of a mixed bag). But I am quite certain that by the end of the 20th century and in the early 21st century they do no such thing, and in fact actively stifle innovation to large degree. At this point there is no way to invent ANYTHING without running afoul of one patent or another. Even something new and novel that nobody has ever even dreamed of is likely to run afoul of one patent or another on the shape of it's case, the method of powering it, or the user interface to run it (among other ridiculous things).
Patents today are badly broken. They protect mega-corps at the expense of small time inventors. they protect exactly the people who need it least against those who would require it the most. It's time they were abolished, or at the very least, subjected to a MAJOR overhaul.
Forget "skilled in the art" even lay people found this obvious! I remember many years ago thinking that if my GPS knew where I was it would seem logical that it could also tell me what to do when I was there. Later I was frustrated that my PDA had calendar, to-do list, and GPS, and yet had no way of combining the three of them. I'm technologically inclined, but I'm certainly not "skilled in the art" of making phones/GPSs/PDAs/etc.
It's more likely that they will approve ALL of them with the theory of "let the courts sort it out." The end result of which is that the big companies continue as business as usual, but any smaller company that tries to implement a similar thing will find themselves quickly on the wrong end of a patent infringement suit from one of the big players. Of course that's par for the course right now, the primary purpose of patents shifted from protecting innovation to stifling it years ago.
Of course your version would be how it SHOULD work, after all, what is better proof of the obviousness of an idea than 4 different companies racing to patent the same idea!
Well... next time they cut funding to the patent office, have them correspondingly cut the authority of patents.
Big government is not the answer to too much IP, less IP is synonymous with smaller government. (No government at all would have no rules for intellectual property and anyone could copy anything) (just to clarify, I'm not advocating an end to government)
Why are root vegetables considered worse than say fruits or grains?
If you want to take it to those sorts of extremes you should only be eating minerals...
Is it more ethical that that animal shall live for several years and experience one small painful event at the end of it's life... Or to never have lived at all? (I'm not by the way stating that I know the answer to this one, and I would doubt anyone really does to be honest)
Remember that the vast majority of animals consumed for food would never have even been alive were they not being raised for food. If the human race stopped raising cattle for food, there wouldn't be millions of happy cows, there would be very few cows indeed, in fact they could potentially become an endangered species as there is very little natural habitat for these purpose raised creatures to exist in.
Is driving a species to the brink of extinction ethical?
Depends on your definition of "better". Right now I'm not convinced there are any "better" options for me than my normal omnivorous diet. Humans are after all omnivores, as can be shown through the development of our teeth and the placement of our eyes (both have aspects geared toward hunting and eating meat)
Avoiding a specific part of our natural diet is not in and of itself "better", it is simply a different option. An option that was not really even available until relatively recently as the variety of nutrients required to be a healthy vegetarian are not easy to come by naturally in most geographic areas.
I am not however stating that I will never give up on eating dead animals. A project such as this could eventually produce an adequate substitute that I would be ok with. However I'm quite certain that it is nowhere near that stage yet.
The point wasn't grazing vs hunted, it was grazing vs feedlot.
I am however curious as to that answer, I've seen many people on here spouting the PETA talking points about cruel feedlots, but I live in cattle country and I've never seen a feedlot, I can't however drive 5 minutes on the highway without seeing field upon field of grazing cattle. Now it may be that my particular area is an anomaly, or that the massive feedlots are just better hidden, but I really am curious to know what percentage of cattle raised in north america is feedlot vs grazing?
Dairy depends on what their position is... if it's about people not keeping animals, then you're right, if it's simply about not KILLING animals, than dairy should be fine.
It is actually interesting to see this article on here today, I was actually just reading information about the progression of human ethics and morality. From the past where anyone not of your own religion, skin colour, or gender were considered non-human and treated accordingly, to today's world where discrimination still happens, but is generally recognized as such within society and strongly discouraged, to a future where everyone is truly equal and discrimination is a thing of the past. One of the big thoughts brought forward of course is that in the past while people of other groups were treated as non-human, it was taken for granted that this was in fact the case, and while there may have been some people who believed otherwise, it was a generally accepted fact in society.
Now to the point, if our sense of morality was so different in the past, where will it be in the future? There is an argument that the way we treat (and eat) animals right now will look not much different to a person a couple hundred years from now than the way we now see the idea of how other races were treated a couple hundred years ago. I don't know if I agree with that sentiment or not, however it seems a logical extension of where morality has been to where it is going, and as a person living in today's society it is impossible to see what cultural biases might be clouding my judgement.
That said, I love meat, I plan to keep eating meat. Will I eat synthetically grown meat? I don't see why not, assuming they manage to make it taste close enough to the real thing (which is a tougher task than one might think, what we taste in meat is not just the raw muscle itself, but is also influenced by the way the animal as exercised, and the food it has eaten.)
Of course one more jab on the animal rights front, many animals alive today would simply not be here if humans didn't eat meat. While it may seem noble to not slaughter the cows for beef, it must be realized that if humans didn't eat meat most of those cows would never have lived in the first place. (same for almost any animal that humans regularly eat) I know many people on here were talking about feedlotting vs grazing, and while I know there must be a lot of feedlots, I've never seen one, and yet I can't drive five minutes on the highway around here without seeing fields full of grazing cows. I'm not sure if that's just coincidence, of if feedlots aren't as common in my area as real grazing is?
Much easier to control for exposure to chemicals, diseases, and other toxins in a lab than it is in free ranging animals....
I think the problem is not the bonuses themselves, but the way they are calculated.
Many higher-ups have clauses in their contracts mandating bonuses, meaning even if they completely screw up, they still get their bonus... (personally I would call that sallary, but that's not always the case)
In other cases people are getting bonuses based on number of loans, rather than on the profitability of the loan, or the likelyhood to repay.
There are all sorts of other messed up "bonus" situations too.
Bonuses give people the incentive to work hard, but only if the bonus itself is well thought out. If the bonus is for the wrong thing, you only encourage your employees to do that wrong thing.
Give people who do well a bonus, fire those who do poorly (WITHOUT a golden parachute). That's how the rest of the world works, it's time the people at the top had to work the same way.