There we disagree. I think the patent system need serious reform but I completely disagree that removing it would be a better situation. If you are going to make this case I'll demand some actual researched evidence from you. Just asserting that the current system is broken isn't good enough.
Patents aren't being used for their intended purpose anymore. They're used to accumulate a huge stack of them, to have something you can throw at any potential competitor in the business.
I don't think that problem is easily solvable. Patent trolls might be, but the fact that Microsoft or IBM are guaranteed to be able to find something you infringe on if you do anything computer related doesn't seem to be.
The patent system exists for a very good reason - to create incentives to invent and create in the face of the free rider problem. Removing the patent system altogether without any replacement is NOT an improvement because the free rider problem hasn't gone away.
That's what I mean when I say you demand perfection. In my view, the "free rider" problem is a very small one, so not solving it still ends up with a better situation than what we have now.
Huge swaths of the world economy depend on patents and copyright. You think just doing away with them will not have devastating consequences?
Yes, and that devastation would be entirely intentional on my part. Patent trolls would instantly go out of business, companies making a living entirely out of licensing designs would have to make some radical changes. I'm perfectly aware of that, and that some of the consequences would cause losses, but still think that when the dust settles, the resulting situation will be better than what we have now.
It's not competition if the original product never gets developed. Patents aren't there to prohibit competition for all time on existing products. They are there to ensure that people continue to have an economic incentive to create NEW products. For all their flaws, patents have been wildly successful for this purpose.
Of course things will get developed. Did humanity sit idle and not advance until somewhere in the prehistory Ogg the caveman invented patents? Hell, no. Patents are a very recent invention. But we clearly somehow managed to get pretty far without them.
Patents often slow down innovation as well. Sometimes it happens that the patent owner does nothing useful with it, or gets tied up in a fight with somebody else, and the invention only takes off once the patent expires.
That's why patents expire. You haven't addressed how to deal with free riders crushing the incentive to invent. THAT is why patents exist and it is not even remotely a question that patents create powerful incentives for invention.
It still makes sense to invent because having ideas is easy. Implementing them is the hard part. If you have the ability to get it done properly, you'll have a large advantage over the rest. If you don't have the means to get it done, then a patent won't help much, because any corporation has plenty ways around a small inventor.
I agree with the arguments that patents (often) last too long, are too easily granted, shouldn't be granted on software (copyright covers that fine) or business models, etc. There are LOTS of changes that can and should be made. Just throwing the whole system out because it needs updating though is stupid, short sighted, naive and would have vast economic and social consequences that you haven't remotely addressed.
I think they could be made better, but getting rid of them entirely is a much easier option. If the system remains it'd have to be defined and watched very diligently, and there are plety forces that would attempt to bend things again in the wrong direction.
If a doctor(never mind whether the doctor is reputable, he is a doctor) recommends that I do heroin to help with my stubbed toe, should the government and insurance companies pay for it, simply because some doctor says that it would help rehabilitate me?
Yes. I don't see why insurance companies should be in the business of deciding who needs what treatment. That's what the doctors are for. If a doctor finds that a somewhat unusual method gets the right results cheaply, then that's fine with me.
Now, if the doctor is prescribing the wrong things, or for the wrong reasons, go after the doctor and revoke their license.
Any exercise that this man could do on a Wii Fit is an exercise he could do without it. If he ends up getting one, I can only hope he is forced to give it back once he has been fully rehabilitated.
You're saying it as if the alternative to the Wii was simply no Wii. No, the alternative would be a licensed therapist, who probably charges per hour a significant part of the cost of a new Wii + Wii Fit. So the Wii, if it works is actually by far the cheapest option.
No problem. Just come up with a solution to the free rider problem and we won't need patents or copyright. A Nobel prize in economics awaits your brilliance.
I see it this way: The situation with patents is starting to become unmanageable. Removing patents would make it a lot better. You demand that a replacement must be not just better, but absolutely perfect, and if it can't be then the broken system must be kept.
I think that the problem of free riders would be much less severe than what we have now, so that even leaving that entirely unsolved would be better than keeping things as they are.
Knockoffs compete just fine. Ask any drug manufacturer if generics (a knock off even though a legal one) hurt their business.
I call that "competition".
The thing I have in mind when I propose abolishing patents is not large companies making even more money. It's more companies entering the marketplace, driving prices down, and adding more variety and competition.
Sure it is. The laws and patent system just have loop holes and faults that are creating unintended problems. The problem isn't with the idea of patents it's with the implementation.
At this point, I think things would be better without any implementation at all, but let's hear your alternative.
Producers won't release video in the format if nobody can play it. However, it's easy to add support for playing, especially in software, even if nobody ends up using it. If nobody tries to do anything, nothing will ever get done.
If that's the worst you could find, I'm not impressed.
Do mice get osteoporosis in space? (link)
If we want to put people into space, questions like the health effects of being there is rather important.
And they test on mice, because you can kill it and examine all the bones in detail. I'm sure they do checks of the astronaut's bones as well, but you can do much more invasive examinations of a mouse.
Do LANs work in space? (link)
It seems to me this is a test of the IIS' specific LAN, not LANs in general. Things in space have to be specially designed, I'm pretty sure it's not a normal off the shelf switch what they have up there. And any lessons learned there will be probably useful for future things. I don't know if space telescopes use networking internally, but it seems like a possibility.
How do people deal with the vibrations of a space launch? (link)
Well, again, if you want to launch people into space, not killing them while getting there is important. This one seems to also test whether the UI will be readable in launch conditions. Which also seems kind of important, since they may need to interact with it during launch.
The genetic changes in yeast in space. ()
Just like with the mice, it's research of the long term consequences of being in space. Yeast reproduces quickly, too, which is good for genetics research.
When you are up against such ground breaking breakthroughs as these, you can see how it is tough to scrape together the cash to study trivial things like the origin of the universe and whether there are other inhabitable planets in the galaxy.
Ok, and how do you go inhabit a planet, if you don't know whether the astronauts will be able to deal with launch conditions, not die of cancer due to the radiation during the travel, and retain enough bone mass to avoid breaking their legs during the landing?
I vaguely remember hearing that atronauts' health deteriorates significantly after staying on the IIS for a long time. If we're going to land on another planet we'd have to be sure that the astronauts will be in good enough condition to do whatever needs to be done once they land.
well it's strange because we are talking about servers that "could have spyware or malware". Wouldn't it be easier to actually search for the spyware and come forward with some proof?
When checking that a medicine is not poisonous, what you'd do is to look at what's in it. It's much easier to check a list of ingredients, and test those if necessary, than to check it against every harmful substance known.
In the same way, when checking a program for malicious content, it's best to look at the source code. How else would they do it, anyway? A virus scanner won't work if it's custom made.
And no, it "wouldn't be easier". When trying to ensure security you apply a whitelist: you demand that things be proved to be safe to be allowed. Then if you allow 3 devices to be used, you only need to check those 3. That's easier than trying to blacklist every malicious one in existence.
Also for telecom the security it's pretty easy to achieve: you need physical access to their machines to do anything. Spyware calling home? how? These are not 24/7 internet connected machines.
Eh? Huawei sells things like 3G dongles. Those things connect to the internet by definition. And firewalls and routers tend to run 24/7 and to have an internet connection.
But isn't this strange? They put a ban because chinese "could have spyware or malware" in their equipment. Isn't this like putting someone in jail because he might do something bad in the future?
Why is it strange? I'm pretty sure the FDA does something quite similar to this. You can't sell a medicine made of undisclosed components.
With that stance, hell will freeze over before Apple sees a cent of my money. Though even if they didn't say that, why crack the system when I can buy a better one that lets me do whatever I want?
But what about security, performance, reliability? No one here has anything to say about that, and I'll take that as tacitly agreeing that Steve is right on those issues.
Well, I'll say something then:
I think it should be ultimately up to me to decide that. The manufacturer should of course try to deliver a secure, performing and reliable device. But I should be able to override that and install whatever I please.
Rule #1 - Any positive comments about Apple will get you modded troll it seems. Slashdot has turned from rational thinking and actual intelligent discourse in regards to Apple to simply "they are anti-geek or anti-hacker and therefore evil".
Slashdot is "news for nerds". Many things that Apple does goes straight against things nerds want to do. So I find it entirely unsurprising that are considered evil by many people.
And for me at least it is indeed that simple: They are anti-geek or anti-hacker and therefore unworthy of my support. Supporting them would be going squarely against my interests.
It doesn't matter what the context or the content of the post is. Any 'fuck apple' will get an immediate 5 Insightful. Look to the top of this entire thread for a prime example. Apple gives plenty to the community: Clang, Blocks (in llvm), libdispatch (Grand Central Dispatch services), OpenCL, WebKit (including a whole new JavaScript VM), CUPS, Darwin, blocks, Bonjour, Calendar and Contacts Server, Darwin Streaming Server, launchd and XQuartz, MacRuby. Many of those not insignificant, and something which could have generated a lot of revenue in patents. I'm sure there are more, but those are just off the top of my head.
That is irrelevant. Doing good doesn't erase your evil deeds. The court might be a bit more lenient if you're generally upstanding character and did nothing too heinous, but I've never heard of anybody get declared innocent due to a good deed cancelling out some wrongdoing. Al Capone ran soup kitchens, but that didn't help, which is precisely the way things should work.
I have no problem with recognizing that they did some good work there, but don't see why that suddenly absolve them of anything.
They are a far more responsible corporation than some,
What any other company does or doesn't do doesn't enter into it. My neighbour stealing a lot doesn't justify me stealing a bit.
[...] but they ARE a company, and given who they are competing with, they have to protect their profits. Apparently they are supposed to simply allow anyone to use their patents and copyrights, and defending those patents will immediately make you even more evil, even if it's justified (something that has yet to be determined by the courts, but has already been decided here).
I do think patents should be greatly reduced, and software ones shouldn't exist at all. That said, there are plenty companies that manage to exist perfectly fine while being a lot less heavy handed, so improvement must be possible.
They are also not allowed to control their product sales, terms of service, or anything else that is accepted in thousands of other products around the world, all because they have 'insulted' the geek crowd.
It's not specifically about Apple. Personally I believe that there should be as much freedom as possible for the individual, but that companies should be much more limited in what they can do. Again, that somebody else does it isn't an excuse. Right of first sale should be absolute, for all companies, not just Apple. I have just as much of a problem with game companies wanting to end second hand sales, but their fanboys seem to be less numerous, so pointing out I don't agree with it seems to be a lot less controversial.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
Then it seems that the real source of those issues isn't the one that gets the blame. Instead the blame goes on computers or tech in general, and some friendly geek/tech support is asked to deal with it.
Commercial air travel is supposed to be safe. There are some risks like with anything else, of course, but nobody expects to be in mortal danger when they get on the plane.
Getting into space though is still very much experimental, and always involves a considerable amount of risk, even when everything goes according to the plan. Anybody participating in it knows what they're in for.
If planes failed as often as the space shuttle they'd be crashing down on a daily basis, and that'd be very, very ugly.
It's theft if I look at the internals of the system and make something better, but not theft if I examine the system externally? Or it's only if the source was integrated into a new program? But that last case is a very clear one of copyright infringement, no need to bring "theft" into it.
First, I don't think it lost its value. It's not like I can legally go and torrent it. It's still copyrighted. It's still illegal for me to use it without Google's permission. So if somebody wanted to license it, just because it's somewhere out there doesn't mean they don't have to anymore.
Now, maybe you're trying to say that value was lost because there's more information about it than before, or because the ability to look at it somehow uncovers something that makes it less valuable. But that's nonsensical, because by this logic a negative review would be theft as well, since it reduces the value of something in the eyes of the public.
Also value could be lost because somebody else made something better, or it became obsolete. Is that theft as well?
Re:Stop making apps, start making web-apps
on
Cross With the Platform
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· Score: 5, Insightful
No thanks.
Personally, I hate web apps. They're still vastly inferior to desktop applications. They need a constant connection, are less responsive than a desktop app, are limited in the GUI they can have, work or not depending on the browser, and are in many cases outside of my control, which is excellent for lock-in.
There still are many places where I have no internet connection. It happens when travelling in the underground. It's frequent above the ground in a train in some areas. It's unaffordable when roaming. It doesn't work in the middle of nowhere. I find it unacceptable to lose access to my stuff just because I happen to be somewhere without a cell tower.
What we need is more open architectures, where anybody can make anything they want without interference.
Better solar cells won't help. There's about 1.36 kW/m^2 that comes from the Sun, before taking the atmosphere into account. On the surface that's reduced to about 1 kW/m^2 in the best cases. If there are any clouds, you get much less. If it's winter, you get much less. If you're far from the equator, you get much less. And all those things can combine as well.
I don't think a solar car will ever be practical even in tropical countries, because the amount of energy that can be gathered in perfect conditions with a perfect solar panel by something the size of a normal car is still not that large. Something the size of a SUV in absolutely perfect conditions would top out at 4 HP.
Solar could help if you've got a panel on your house's roof, or the road itself is a huge solar panel. But an actual solar car seems mostly pointless except as a tech demo.
The different pirate parties don't all work the same. I see it as a generic name for the concept, just like there's a "Communist Party" or "Conservative Party" in multiple countries. They may agree on the basics between themselves, but don't necessarily actively cooperate or agree on the specifics.
The different pirate parties do disagree on things like how long copyright should last. There's a general agreement that the current length is too long, but the swedish one wants 5 years, while there are others that would be fine with 20.
I mean, you could take Avatar and film the same story with old tech, with people in rubber suits in the style of the old godzilla movies. Would you actually go to see that in 2010, though?
I don't see it as a revolutionary thing, just another step in special effects. Every time small improvements are added that don't really make that much difference as compared to the year before, but look back 20 years and the difference is enormous, and many people will find it difficult to believe somebody would get deeply emotional about something so horrible looking.
He's been trying to get his pet project going for years, and people demonstrated repeatedly that nobody really cares about his vision.
Nupedia went nowhere and died after having produced 24 approved articles after 3 years. Then in 2006 he started Citizendium with great fanfare, and in those 4 years it managed to produce 121 approved articles.
So it seems that if he can't compete, he'll try killing Wikipedia the legal way. Maybe then some of the contributors will switch to Citizendium. On my part, I don't see how would that work for him, because I'd just really hate his guts and never touch anything related to him after that.
The really pragmatic approach is thinking before buying about not only how things are right this minute, but how could they possibly change during the useful life of the object. For a car for instance I'd consider not only the purchase price, but also the long term reliability, maintenance costs, availability of spare parts, etc.
For an iPhone, yes, right now you can jailbreak it. But how about later? Apple already demonstrated they have to problem with bricking jailbroken phones, and releasing updates that close the holes that make it possible. They clearly do not like it. And again, why would I want to give money to somebody who really doesn't seem to want to have me as a customer?
Jailbreaking is a pretty cool achievement, but it's something that exists thanks to volunteers that could at any time find something more exciting to do.
Of course I agree with that - I think either extreme is a ridiculous farce. With that in mind, however, Apple *has* demonstrated time and again that the "lack" of something initially (cf. Native iPhone SDK, copy & paste, and now multitasking) is usually because they are spending time "getting it right," for some value of "right" that they decide upon in the context of their design goals.
That's something that makes sense, but people very rarely actually say it that way.
It's unusual to see "Applications/multitasking/etc would be nice to have, but I can wait until they get them right". No, it's usually "You don't need applications/multitasking/etc", which instantly changes to "Applications/multitasking/etc are awesome" the moment it gets fixed.
As for your porn requirement, mobile.spankwire.com works great on my iPhone. Maybe you should check it out, plenty of free streaming porn, over 3G or WiFi. Perfect for that early morning wank when you just don't feel like walking over to the computer.
I was speaking about the applications. Personally not my kind of thing, but due to the complaints of "geekiness" about the other examples, I figured this one wouldn't have that problem.
The question was intended in the sense that I was asking if we can agree that there is no "one right tool" for all jobs and purposes, and that what is appropriate for your needs may not be universally appropriate for everyone else's needs.
You should read what you originally replied to, then. I wasn't talking about any specific product. The subject matter was something like "my issues with claims made by some apple fanboys". You can agree or disagree with that, but it's not a post about a tool, and in fact should be right or wrong independently of the actual characteristics of any products.
Slashdot Mirror
Patents aren't being used for their intended purpose anymore. They're used to accumulate a huge stack of them, to have something you can throw at any potential competitor in the business.
I don't think that problem is easily solvable. Patent trolls might be, but the fact that Microsoft or IBM are guaranteed to be able to find something you infringe on if you do anything computer related doesn't seem to be.
That's what I mean when I say you demand perfection. In my view, the "free rider" problem is a very small one, so not solving it still ends up with a better situation than what we have now.
Yes, and that devastation would be entirely intentional on my part. Patent trolls would instantly go out of business, companies making a living entirely out of licensing designs would have to make some radical changes. I'm perfectly aware of that, and that some of the consequences would cause losses, but still think that when the dust settles, the resulting situation will be better than what we have now.
Of course things will get developed. Did humanity sit idle and not advance until somewhere in the prehistory Ogg the caveman invented patents? Hell, no. Patents are a very recent invention. But we clearly somehow managed to get pretty far without them.
Patents often slow down innovation as well. Sometimes it happens that the patent owner does nothing useful with it, or gets tied up in a fight with somebody else, and the invention only takes off once the patent expires.
It still makes sense to invent because having ideas is easy. Implementing them is the hard part. If you have the ability to get it done properly, you'll have a large advantage over the rest. If you don't have the means to get it done, then a patent won't help much, because any corporation has plenty ways around a small inventor.
I think they could be made better, but getting rid of them entirely is a much easier option. If the system remains it'd have to be defined and watched very diligently, and there are plety forces that would attempt to bend things again in the wrong direction.
Yes. I don't see why insurance companies should be in the business of deciding who needs what treatment. That's what the doctors are for. If a doctor finds that a somewhat unusual method gets the right results cheaply, then that's fine with me.
Now, if the doctor is prescribing the wrong things, or for the wrong reasons, go after the doctor and revoke their license.
You're saying it as if the alternative to the Wii was simply no Wii. No, the alternative would be a licensed therapist, who probably charges per hour a significant part of the cost of a new Wii + Wii Fit. So the Wii, if it works is actually by far the cheapest option.
I see it this way: The situation with patents is starting to become unmanageable. Removing patents would make it a lot better. You demand that a replacement must be not just better, but absolutely perfect, and if it can't be then the broken system must be kept.
I think that the problem of free riders would be much less severe than what we have now, so that even leaving that entirely unsolved would be better than keeping things as they are.
I call that "competition".
The thing I have in mind when I propose abolishing patents is not large companies making even more money. It's more companies entering the marketplace, driving prices down, and adding more variety and competition.
At this point, I think things would be better without any implementation at all, but let's hear your alternative.
Well, it has to start somewhere.
Producers won't release video in the format if nobody can play it. However, it's easy to add support for playing, especially in software, even if nobody ends up using it. If nobody tries to do anything, nothing will ever get done.
If that's the worst you could find, I'm not impressed.
If we want to put people into space, questions like the health effects of being there is rather important.
And they test on mice, because you can kill it and examine all the bones in detail. I'm sure they do checks of the astronaut's bones as well, but you can do much more invasive examinations of a mouse.
It seems to me this is a test of the IIS' specific LAN, not LANs in general. Things in space have to be specially designed, I'm pretty sure it's not a normal off the shelf switch what they have up there. And any lessons learned there will be probably useful for future things. I don't know if space telescopes use networking internally, but it seems like a possibility.
Well, again, if you want to launch people into space, not killing them while getting there is important. This one seems to also test whether the UI will be readable in launch conditions. Which also seems kind of important, since they may need to interact with it during launch.
Just like with the mice, it's research of the long term consequences of being in space. Yeast reproduces quickly, too, which is good for genetics research.
Ok, and how do you go inhabit a planet, if you don't know whether the astronauts will be able to deal with launch conditions, not die of cancer due to the radiation during the travel, and retain enough bone mass to avoid breaking their legs during the landing?
I vaguely remember hearing that atronauts' health deteriorates significantly after staying on the IIS for a long time. If we're going to land on another planet we'd have to be sure that the astronauts will be in good enough condition to do whatever needs to be done once they land.
The article says "including smart cards, firewall and routers".
So, how exactly is a router not a 24/7 internet connected machine, or require physical access to use it?
When checking that a medicine is not poisonous, what you'd do is to look at what's in it. It's much easier to check a list of ingredients, and test those if necessary, than to check it against every harmful substance known.
In the same way, when checking a program for malicious content, it's best to look at the source code. How else would they do it, anyway? A virus scanner won't work if it's custom made.
And no, it "wouldn't be easier". When trying to ensure security you apply a whitelist: you demand that things be proved to be safe to be allowed. Then if you allow 3 devices to be used, you only need to check those 3. That's easier than trying to blacklist every malicious one in existence.
Eh? Huawei sells things like 3G dongles. Those things connect to the internet by definition. And firewalls and routers tend to run 24/7 and to have an internet connection.
Why is it strange? I'm pretty sure the FDA does something quite similar to this. You can't sell a medicine made of undisclosed components.
No, they don't merely "recommend against it". Apple argues jailbreaking is illegal. They also intentionally bricked jailbroken devices.
With that stance, hell will freeze over before Apple sees a cent of my money. Though even if they didn't say that, why crack the system when I can buy a better one that lets me do whatever I want?
Well, I'll say something then:
I think it should be ultimately up to me to decide that. The manufacturer should of course try to deliver a secure, performing and reliable device. But I should be able to override that and install whatever I please.
Slashdot is "news for nerds". Many things that Apple does goes straight against things nerds want to do. So I find it entirely unsurprising that are considered evil by many people.
And for me at least it is indeed that simple: They are anti-geek or anti-hacker and therefore unworthy of my support. Supporting them would be going squarely against my interests.
That is irrelevant. Doing good doesn't erase your evil deeds. The court might be a bit more lenient if you're generally upstanding character and did nothing too heinous, but I've never heard of anybody get declared innocent due to a good deed cancelling out some wrongdoing. Al Capone ran soup kitchens, but that didn't help, which is precisely the way things should work.
I have no problem with recognizing that they did some good work there, but don't see why that suddenly absolve them of anything.
What any other company does or doesn't do doesn't enter into it. My neighbour stealing a lot doesn't justify me stealing a bit.
I do think patents should be greatly reduced, and software ones shouldn't exist at all. That said, there are plenty companies that manage to exist perfectly fine while being a lot less heavy handed, so improvement must be possible.
It's not specifically about Apple. Personally I believe that there should be as much freedom as possible for the individual, but that companies should be much more limited in what they can do. Again, that somebody else does it isn't an excuse. Right of first sale should be absolute, for all companies, not just Apple. I have just as much of a problem with game companies wanting to end second hand sales, but their fanboys seem to be less numerous, so pointing out I don't agree with it seems to be a lot less controversial.
So let's hear your take on what's wrong with it. We had a claim, then this refutation. What's your take on it?
Precisely.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
Then it seems that the real source of those issues isn't the one that gets the blame. Instead the blame goes on computers or tech in general, and some friendly geek/tech support is asked to deal with it.
Very different cases here, though.
Commercial air travel is supposed to be safe. There are some risks like with anything else, of course, but nobody expects to be in mortal danger when they get on the plane.
Getting into space though is still very much experimental, and always involves a considerable amount of risk, even when everything goes according to the plan. Anybody participating in it knows what they're in for.
If planes failed as often as the space shuttle they'd be crashing down on a daily basis, and that'd be very, very ugly.
What do you mean by "using the code"?
It's theft if I look at the internals of the system and make something better, but not theft if I examine the system externally? Or it's only if the source was integrated into a new program? But that last case is a very clear one of copyright infringement, no need to bring "theft" into it.
I don't see why.
First, I don't think it lost its value. It's not like I can legally go and torrent it. It's still copyrighted. It's still illegal for me to use it without Google's permission. So if somebody wanted to license it, just because it's somewhere out there doesn't mean they don't have to anymore.
Now, maybe you're trying to say that value was lost because there's more information about it than before, or because the ability to look at it somehow uncovers something that makes it less valuable. But that's nonsensical, because by this logic a negative review would be theft as well, since it reduces the value of something in the eyes of the public.
Also value could be lost because somebody else made something better, or it became obsolete. Is that theft as well?
No thanks.
Personally, I hate web apps. They're still vastly inferior to desktop applications. They need a constant connection, are less responsive than a desktop app, are limited in the GUI they can have, work or not depending on the browser, and are in many cases outside of my control, which is excellent for lock-in.
There still are many places where I have no internet connection. It happens when travelling in the underground. It's frequent above the ground in a train in some areas. It's unaffordable when roaming. It doesn't work in the middle of nowhere. I find it unacceptable to lose access to my stuff just because I happen to be somewhere without a cell tower.
What we need is more open architectures, where anybody can make anything they want without interference.
Better solar cells won't help. There's about 1.36 kW/m^2 that comes from the Sun, before taking the atmosphere into account. On the surface that's reduced to about 1 kW/m^2 in the best cases. If there are any clouds, you get much less. If it's winter, you get much less. If you're far from the equator, you get much less. And all those things can combine as well.
I don't think a solar car will ever be practical even in tropical countries, because the amount of energy that can be gathered in perfect conditions with a perfect solar panel by something the size of a normal car is still not that large. Something the size of a SUV in absolutely perfect conditions would top out at 4 HP.
Solar could help if you've got a panel on your house's roof, or the road itself is a huge solar panel. But an actual solar car seems mostly pointless except as a tech demo.
I don't understand why you try to equate copyrighted content with private data.
Most copyrighted content is extremely public. The content of your post is copyrighted, but its content is no secret to anybody.
Actually, no.
The different pirate parties don't all work the same. I see it as a generic name for the concept, just like there's a "Communist Party" or "Conservative Party" in multiple countries. They may agree on the basics between themselves, but don't necessarily actively cooperate or agree on the specifics.
The different pirate parties do disagree on things like how long copyright should last. There's a general agreement that the current length is too long, but the swedish one wants 5 years, while there are others that would be fine with 20.
A dumb pipe is precisely what you are, and should continue being.
Isn't it all a gimmick?
I mean, you could take Avatar and film the same story with old tech, with people in rubber suits in the style of the old godzilla movies. Would you actually go to see that in 2010, though?
I don't see it as a revolutionary thing, just another step in special effects. Every time small improvements are added that don't really make that much difference as compared to the year before, but look back 20 years and the difference is enormous, and many people will find it difficult to believe somebody would get deeply emotional about something so horrible looking.
He's been trying to get his pet project going for years, and people demonstrated repeatedly that nobody really cares about his vision.
Nupedia went nowhere and died after having produced 24 approved articles after 3 years. Then in 2006 he started Citizendium with great fanfare, and in those 4 years it managed to produce 121 approved articles.
So it seems that if he can't compete, he'll try killing Wikipedia the legal way. Maybe then some of the contributors will switch to Citizendium. On my part, I don't see how would that work for him, because I'd just really hate his guts and never touch anything related to him after that.
You should be ashamed, mr. Sanger.
That's a short sighted way of viewing things.
The really pragmatic approach is thinking before buying about not only how things are right this minute, but how could they possibly change during the useful life of the object. For a car for instance I'd consider not only the purchase price, but also the long term reliability, maintenance costs, availability of spare parts, etc.
For an iPhone, yes, right now you can jailbreak it. But how about later? Apple already demonstrated they have to problem with bricking jailbroken phones, and releasing updates that close the holes that make it possible. They clearly do not like it. And again, why would I want to give money to somebody who really doesn't seem to want to have me as a customer?
Jailbreaking is a pretty cool achievement, but it's something that exists thanks to volunteers that could at any time find something more exciting to do.
That's something that makes sense, but people very rarely actually say it that way.
It's unusual to see "Applications/multitasking/etc would be nice to have, but I can wait until they get them right". No, it's usually "You don't need applications/multitasking/etc", which instantly changes to "Applications/multitasking/etc are awesome" the moment it gets fixed.
I was speaking about the applications. Personally not my kind of thing, but due to the complaints of "geekiness" about the other examples, I figured this one wouldn't have that problem.
You should read what you originally replied to, then. I wasn't talking about any specific product. The subject matter was something like "my issues with claims made by some apple fanboys". You can agree or disagree with that, but it's not a post about a tool, and in fact should be right or wrong independently of the actual characteristics of any products.