Have you ever considered reading non-genre fiction, then? Seriously; I barely ever read any genre stuff, for pretty much the reasons you cite.
There's no such thing as non-genre fiction. I've read fiction from dozens of genres ranging from espionage thrillers to cultural experience novels to coming of age stories to political intrigue to horror and so on. The only genre I haven't spent serious time with is war, and mostly because I read Johnny Got His Gun and decided that, important as the issues were, I didn't read fiction for that kind of experience (I have the news for that).
What I think you were aiming at was fiction which is less defined by its genre than by its themes. I would hold up some works of science fiction in this category (in fact, I expect that the OP was suggesting Vonnegut specifically because he tends to inhabit this space) along with a few political intrigue stories and even some fantasy (Alice in Wonderland comes to mind). These are stories whose genre exists only as a metaphor and whose larger issues dominate the story.
> My DVR runs apps from Netflix, Amazon and a plethora of other vendors.
No. It runs one app with plugins for things like Netflix or Amazon.
It is essentially a variant of WebTV or one of those old Word Processor machines.
I'm not sure I follow. How is that different from an iPhone which runs one app (Springboard) and several plugins (some from Apple and some from other vendors)?
Are you prepared to cite a formal definition of app vs plugin for the sake of this discussion?
Transmetroplitan is a direct riff on Hunter S Thompson.
I'm not sure what "direct riff" really means, but yes, Transmet is about a Hunter S. Thompson analog dealing with a world of designer genetics, high tech drugs and nanotechnology. I'm really not certain where you think that's been done before, but I have to say that it was something I couldn't have quite imagined before I read Transmet.
The Sandman struck me as being extremely derivative of the a lot "New Wave" fantasy from the '70s. Stuff like Roger Zelazny, Philip José Farmer, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin.
So, because it reminded you of the style of other authors it was ripping off... what, exactly? You're reaching. Quite a lot.
I have to step back just a bit from this. I still think I'm right, but I was responding to a mis-read. I read "When people hold up Bradbury over Vonnegut," thought it said "Bradbury or Vonnegut." That certainly gives the whole thing a very different tone.
That being said, Vonnegut and Bradbury are an interesting pair to compare. After all, they're primarily known for their work from 30-40 years ago. I think that if you're going to discuss as vibrant a genre as SF, it makes sense to lean on more modern examples. Then again, perhaps the OP didn't have any recent examples handy. If so, I hope that I've helped by providing some examples that run the spectrum.
Devices marketed for running only one application. These include handheld calculators, DVRs, satellite navigation devices, entry-level mobile phones, cameras, vehicles, and HDTVs.
Not so. My car runs a number of apps on its in-dash system which range from engine monitoring to navigation to environmental controls.
My DVR runs apps from Netflix, Amazon and a plethora of other vendors.
Devices marketed for running only applications from developers hand-picked by the device maker. These include any Nintendo or PlayStation system.
I believe that the iPhone belongs in this category, since there really is no difference at all besides the exposure of the development kit to a larger audience.
So, I understand that you're able to categorize, but I don't see the point.
If you choose the restrictive provider and then complain about their being restrictive, then you're either not paying attention or just looking for an argument (that's down the hall on the right).
This is absolutely true. However, it is also possible to modify the law to where this is no longer true.
So you think that people should be allowed to choose anything they like as long as it isn't a restrictive platform? How is that reasonable?
I'm not saying that Robert Jordan is one of the standard Sci-fi/Fantasy authors who simply couldn't write a good story to save their lives.
This is true of all genres. That you limited your analysis to SF/Fantasy shows that you have an axe to grind.
It's just that the vast majority of this genre is little better than unillustrated comic books,
You've now isolated a medium and displayed yet another bias which is absurd.
and most of the readership is too unversed in other forms of literature to provide an objective opinion about a book's quality.
Also true for every genre.
When people hold up Bradbury over Vonnegut or Niven over Murakami, you know that they aren't reading anything but pulp.
I'm not sure that I see what you're driving at. Are you suggesting that Vonnegut, for example, is a pulp author, or are you suggesting that people who cite Vonnegut also read pulp (whatever that is)?
I've read some excellent sharecropper SF. I've read some truly horrendous socio/political fiction. I have yet to run into a genre without an excellent author (though I'll admit that I haven't read a modern romance author worth slogging through). Sure, there are Mercedes Lackeys and Peter Davids out there (both of whom I've read and enjoyed in the same way that I enjoy ice cream, which can be very hard to make well), but when I read Ian M. Banks or Jonathan Letham I get something very different out of the experience. There is a craftsmanship of story that really has nothing to do with genre (as evidenced by the fact that I selected two authors whose SF and non-SF works are well respected).
Any given genre, however, is not only about authorship. Vernor Vinge is a good author, but he's certainly not the best I've read. His novels are deeply insightful when it comes to the future of humankind and technology, though. It's exceedingly rare that those two qualities come together in one author, and so I'm willing to give a good amount of ground. This is also why I enjoy Neil Stephenson's work, who can be brilliant at times, but isn't exactly what I'd call a god of characterization.
To sum up, your statements about the genres of science fiction and fantasy evidence either a profound lack of exposure to either or such a deeply jaded palate that I can't imagine you being able to read more than one or two books a decade that you enjoy.
With the iPod and now the iPhone, Apple have achieved a level of control over their hardware and their users that hitherto has been enjoyed only by video game console manufacturers
Oh wait, I think you forgot one... what about hand-held calculators? Oh and DVRs. Oh and in-dash nav systems, every non-Android cell phone ever made, digital cameras, all modern cars, planes and other vehicles, HDTVs, and... well, everything with a CPU that isn't a general-purpose computer or Android phone.
General purpose computers are far and away the exception to the rule when it comes to control of installed software.
Apple has contracts with ATT and the fellow app makers.
What gives Apple the right to enter into contracts which restrict my behavior? And whatever it is, do we really have to live in a society that tolerates that?
If you bought an iPhone, you did.
The concern with respect to Net Neutrality is that you can't just go use a different Internet. If all of the major backbone providers collude to set pricing for access to their market of users then the consumer has no recourse as building a new backbone is insanely expensive, and arguably couldn't be done again from scratch without the backing of a major government.
On the other hand, you can go buy an Android phone any time you want.
You can choose the restrictive provider or the permissive one. If you choose the restrictive provider and then complain about their being restrictive, then you're either not paying attention or just looking for an argument (that's down the hall on the right).
"Don't want," I can buy (though it smells of being a Luddite just for the sake of it, at this point... I had relatives who insisted they didn't need a household phone until the mid-50s, but they eventually had to admit that it was just too useful). "Don't need?" That's not fundamentally a personal call. You need a cell phone if and when you're in a situation where having one would provide for some other need (rodeside help, calling emergency services when you see an accident, etc.)
They still make standalone mp3 players and pdas and cameras.
You're posting from a (presumably somewhat modern) computer. I don't think you really have the moral high-ground to complain about consolidation of technology.
They still even make standalone cell phones.
I'm not aware of any. I believe that the only "standalone" cell phones these days are phones where the features that scare off individuals such as yourselves are turned off at the factory.
For Android to kill GPS, they would have to offer it cheaper than a standalone and provide a working GPS function that did not require a cell phone service contract for it to work.
Define "kill." For Android to kill stand-alone GPS units (and I'm not sure it will be Android that does it), it would merely have to become financially impractical for existing GPS makers to stay in business. Garmin just lost over a billion dollars in market share in a day... on the announcement, before anyone had this thing in their hands. Why? Because the people who buy cool tech gadgets already have data plans by and large, and the people who don't will probably settle with in-dash units which will probably go Android or a similar system with access to Google Navigation over the long run for pretty much exactly the same reasons that cell phones will (reduction in overhead and faster time-to-market with the features that the people making the hardware actually differentiate themselves on).
Heck, you might even see a big GPS maker get in bad with Google and produce an Android stand-alone unit.
True, and I agree with you, but the devil's in the details- like when you're texting Judy that you're going to be late and you miss your offramp exit.
But yes, voice, gesture, control etc are all very viable answers to my original concerns
Of course, there's always added risk when you introduce new distractions into a car, but I was responding to your original point, not a more general discussion of in-card distraction.
How about if we just say it's, "difficult to learn". The phrase is more clear, less pretentious, and less cliché.
There's nothing inherently wrong with your request. It's just that it's not going to happen.
Language evolves and what sounds imprecise, pretentious or cliché to you now, can become standard usage tomorrow. There's little that any of us can do about that.
And speaking of cliché, please keep your pulpy mass out of the discussion. I find it confusing and pretentious. Just say it's over-used.... or don't.
Their only saving grace are those that try to precariously do 10 million things on their phone while driving- flipping back and forth from music player, to phone, to GPS to...heaven forbid, text messaging, all that requires UI navigation
Well, Google Navigation is voice-controlled, and presumably Android already has a number of voice-controlled features (I notice that a key word "navigate" was used before each voice command in the demo video), so I expect you'll see a lot of drivers talking to thin air in their cars, even when not making a phone call.
"Navigate to west coast office. Shuffle play playlist, Bach. Text Judy, I'm going to be late. Call Robert."
All of that is fairly easy to build into a simple voice-recognition command structure without any real smarts.
You're starting to see the value, but remember that the value of PageRank isn't that it's got one useful metric, but dozens. Re-tweets are akin to links. PageRank considers links to a page, but it also considers who is linking. Get re-tweeted by someone who frequently gets re-tweeted, and there's going to be more juice in that. By the same token, if you use more than two hash-tags or currently trending terms, and there should probably be a reduction in your rank, since that's likely just automated. A few others:
* Does it contain a link? What's the page rank of that link? * Google Image Search could pick up tweeted images, which often contain breaking news, traffic scenes, * How often have a user's tweet's been shared on other social services and RSS link-sharing services like Google Reader? * If the user links to their Twitter feed in a Google Profile, what's the rank of their other pages? * How many people follow the tweeter? * How many people does the tweeter follow? (is that a plus or minus, or is it more complex?) * How often does the tweeter tweet? * What's the average length of the tweeter's tweets compared to the current message? * Is the tweet a reply? (probably a minus, but not a huge one)
* Is it a reply to more than one other user? * Does the tweet use plain English or is it l33t?
There are many more factors you could consider. Noise attenuation is a hard problem, but fortunately one Google is pretty good at.
My mind boggles that you think a color LCD is superior, the color elements are pretty easy to see on a typical handheld sized LCD
I'm sure you're going to explain why I care. I grew up on the Tandy Color Computer with pixels the size of your head. If I wanted photo-realism, I'd go for a walk. When I want to read, being able to see pixels isn't a concern.
Maybe I'm just biased, having made ebook readers for years now.
Aha! Now, it all becomes clear. I was wondering how someone became so hyper-senstitive to every feature of their reading medium, and then you explained it all. Yes, I have known people who were in the book printing world who couldn't read books that were printed on "low quality" paper, and preferred books that were printed with those ragged torn-looking pages, so I understand where you're coming from. However, it's important for you to realize that you've damaged your experience by being too close to the problem. It's not that everyone else is content to suffer, it's that you've become so aware of the medium that you can't escape it long enough to enjoy what you're reading.
I obviously don't want to read a novel on a cellphone either.
I'm not sure why that's obvious. My cell phone is frequently used to real books from either Kindle (iPhone app) or Google (Google Books free version, which is available today). I find it quite handy for reading while commuting (I walk or take the bus) and before bed. It's not an ideal size, but I can read with it just fine, and I find the ease of carrying around the phone beats out the form-factor in terms of overall experience.
CSIRO is not a patent troll. What is a patent troll? A patent troll is an organisation that exists only to accumulate patents (and make a profit off royalties).
I've tried to make this point, here in the past as well. The responses that I got indicted that there are many Slashdot readers who think "patent troll" is what you call someone who tried to defend a patent in court, irrespective of a) their involvement in the actual invention or b) the defensibility of said patent.
As far as I can tell, this is just backlash from folks who don't understand the patent system as it's intended to protect actual inventors of non-obvious technology, and see actual patent trolls manipulating the system for outrageous gain. I can understand the frustration, there, but it's clearly not a rational approach.
Don't be an ass. Using ports allows someone to set up an ah-hoc server for testing or whatever easily. The last thing they want to do is dick about having to update DNS's bastard child before they can access it from the browser.
One: I don't think the GP was the one being "an ass."
Two: I don't think the GP was suggesting that there be no way at all to force your browser to another port for testing purposes (at the very least, a command-line option to browsers could be provided). The point was that for general usage when talking to remote systems, there's no reason not to use DNS, and it would have solved one of the largest problems with IP proliferation: the need to lock SSL to a specific port, due to the fact that the URI used is hidden from intermediate hosts.
However, I do like the URI syntax as it stands. I do think that dot should not have been a valid last character for scheme (which would have allowed you disambiguate host and scheme by using the FQDN of the host with trailing "." For that matter, I'm not sure dots should have been allowed in schemes at all.
One thing that the URI syntax suffers from is something that Larry Wall pointed out when managing the design effort and RFCs for Perl 6: Everyone wants the colon. The double-slash, though, I think is a good thing. It allows for rooted URIs such as / without ambiguity.
What goes to the person who reports the most false positives?
A background investigation.
Actually, I'd be far more concerned about the person who reports highly accurately. A terrorist, for example, is going to expose themselves to behavior analysis if they frequent potential bombing targets (either physically or through something like Google Street View). On the other hand, if they're a "good citizen" watching videos all day long and reporting accurately on criminal behavior, then they get to scope out as many locations as they can handle (perhaps not 24/7, since that too might be too far outside of the norm), and there's no behavior analysis that you can do other than looking for people who use the service as it was intended because the terrorist isn't choosing where to look (I presume, but that'd be the only way to make the service work, since it would otherwise expose you to people who just wanted to watch their neighbor's windows all day).
Yeah, this one is going to be fun. Hang on a sec, I'll get my popcorn!
Not just "because somebody thinks they saw something". The video is the proof. [... ] This isn't hearsay. This is video for everyone to see.
The problem is (I'm basing this on U.S. law, so YMMV) that your life can be turned upside down on suspicion of anything. Sure, eventually your name will be cleared, but not until you've missed work, been labeled a pariah by your social circle, and possibly had permanent records stored in various databases (depending on the nature of the alleged crime). If you were accused of a sex crime in the U.S., for example, the conviction matters little. You'll be let go from your job if you worked with children for reasons of parental confidence. If the crime related to terrorism, you might end up on international watch-lists regardless of a conviction.
So, this is bad for the following reasons:
The public are going to find wrong-doing far more readily than trained police and be sure that they "got lucky".
People's lives will be disrupted as a consequence
If you don't like someone who shows up in a video that you're looking at...
You're giving people who want to find someone to stalk a wonderful resource (sure, it might be random, but it's still a great stalker starting-kit)
You can bet that anyone with enough power and influence is going to be "opted out". I don't think you'll see the daily activities of powerful politicians.
If you're looking to blow up a bomb and kill a lot of people, wouldn't it be handy to be able to scope out locations from the privacy of your home?
This has to be one of the worst ideas proposed in recent memory.
It's true. The only problems with the patent system right now are:
* Patents in fields that advance far more quickly than physical industries are protected for the same amount of time (e.g. software)
* Patents can be trivially modified and re-submitted in order to "renew" an existing patent (e.g. pharma industry)
* Prior art reviews and obviousness tests are poorly done, relying mostly on court challenges after the fact to resolve such issues
Resolve those three problems and you have a patent system that accomplishes the original goal: to foster the advancement of the sciences and useful arts.
I've proposed solutions here before, but to re-cap:
1) Establish a product lifecylce metric for each industry and tie patent duration to reasonable multiples of the lifecycle (e.g. 2-4 times the time it takes to design and release a new product in that industry)
2) Enhance the review process and reject far more patents on the basis of prior art.
3) Open the prior art review process up to the public after the first round approval.
4) Establish fines for those who repeatedly submit applications for patents that have prior art (not just a couple of times, but as an ongoing business practice; the goal is not to hurt individuals who make mistakes).
I looked for this because I didn't want to post redundantly, but there's more that needs to be said, here: I'm no fan of bad patents, but Slashdot has mis-posted about patents time and time again. It's time that the Slashdot editors start doing some basic (and I mean 2 minutes tops) fact-checking of these articles:
1. Does the submitted article claim that a basic process or natural phenomenon is being patented while the source article claims that it's the process around utilizing these that has been covered? This happens at least 1-2 times per week.
2. Does the article misleadingly only discuss one or a small minority of claims from a patent which has far more?
3. Is the article based only on the patent abstract? Does it even claim that a lawyer has reviewed its interpretation?
4. Is the patent a design patent, and not a process or mechanism patent at all?
If any one of the above is true, it should be noted before posting to the main page.
If more than one of the above is true, then it's simply not worth the confusion of posting to the main page.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever considered reading non-genre fiction, then? Seriously; I barely ever read any genre stuff, for pretty much the reasons you cite.
There's no such thing as non-genre fiction. I've read fiction from dozens of genres ranging from espionage thrillers to cultural experience novels to coming of age stories to political intrigue to horror and so on. The only genre I haven't spent serious time with is war, and mostly because I read Johnny Got His Gun and decided that, important as the issues were, I didn't read fiction for that kind of experience (I have the news for that).
What I think you were aiming at was fiction which is less defined by its genre than by its themes. I would hold up some works of science fiction in this category (in fact, I expect that the OP was suggesting Vonnegut specifically because he tends to inhabit this space) along with a few political intrigue stories and even some fantasy (Alice in Wonderland comes to mind). These are stories whose genre exists only as a metaphor and whose larger issues dominate the story.
> My DVR runs apps from Netflix, Amazon and a plethora of other vendors.
No. It runs one app with plugins for things like Netflix or Amazon.
It is essentially a variant of WebTV or one of those old Word Processor machines.
I'm not sure I follow. How is that different from an iPhone which runs one app (Springboard) and several plugins (some from Apple and some from other vendors)?
Are you prepared to cite a formal definition of app vs plugin for the sake of this discussion?
Joss Whedon has issued an open letter, bidding $10,000 for the franchise.
It's funny as hell.
Transmetroplitan is a direct riff on Hunter S Thompson.
I'm not sure what "direct riff" really means, but yes, Transmet is about a Hunter S. Thompson analog dealing with a world of designer genetics, high tech drugs and nanotechnology. I'm really not certain where you think that's been done before, but I have to say that it was something I couldn't have quite imagined before I read Transmet.
The Sandman struck me as being extremely derivative of the a lot "New Wave" fantasy from the '70s. Stuff like Roger Zelazny, Philip José Farmer, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin.
So, because it reminded you of the style of other authors it was ripping off ... what, exactly? You're reaching. Quite a lot.
I have to step back just a bit from this. I still think I'm right, but I was responding to a mis-read. I read "When people hold up Bradbury over Vonnegut," thought it said "Bradbury or Vonnegut." That certainly gives the whole thing a very different tone.
That being said, Vonnegut and Bradbury are an interesting pair to compare. After all, they're primarily known for their work from 30-40 years ago. I think that if you're going to discuss as vibrant a genre as SF, it makes sense to lean on more modern examples. Then again, perhaps the OP didn't have any recent examples handy. If so, I hope that I've helped by providing some examples that run the spectrum.
There are four categories:
Not so. My car runs a number of apps on its in-dash system which range from engine monitoring to navigation to environmental controls.
My DVR runs apps from Netflix, Amazon and a plethora of other vendors.
I believe that the iPhone belongs in this category, since there really is no difference at all besides the exposure of the development kit to a larger audience.
So, I understand that you're able to categorize, but I don't see the point.
If you choose the restrictive provider and then complain about their being restrictive, then you're either not paying attention or just looking for an argument (that's down the hall on the right).
This is absolutely true. However, it is also possible to modify the law to where this is no longer true.
So you think that people should be allowed to choose anything they like as long as it isn't a restrictive platform? How is that reasonable?
Dang. Here, I crafted a long-winded reply with lots of examples, and you manage to sum it up in one word. Well done, sir.
I'm not saying that Robert Jordan is one of the standard Sci-fi/Fantasy authors who simply couldn't write a good story to save their lives.
This is true of all genres. That you limited your analysis to SF/Fantasy shows that you have an axe to grind.
It's just that the vast majority of this genre is little better than unillustrated comic books,
You've now isolated a medium and displayed yet another bias which is absurd.
and most of the readership is too unversed in other forms of literature to provide an objective opinion about a book's quality.
Also true for every genre.
When people hold up Bradbury over Vonnegut or Niven over Murakami, you know that they aren't reading anything but pulp.
I'm not sure that I see what you're driving at. Are you suggesting that Vonnegut, for example, is a pulp author, or are you suggesting that people who cite Vonnegut also read pulp (whatever that is)?
I've read some excellent sharecropper SF. I've read some truly horrendous socio/political fiction. I have yet to run into a genre without an excellent author (though I'll admit that I haven't read a modern romance author worth slogging through). Sure, there are Mercedes Lackeys and Peter Davids out there (both of whom I've read and enjoyed in the same way that I enjoy ice cream, which can be very hard to make well), but when I read Ian M. Banks or Jonathan Letham I get something very different out of the experience. There is a craftsmanship of story that really has nothing to do with genre (as evidenced by the fact that I selected two authors whose SF and non-SF works are well respected).
Any given genre, however, is not only about authorship. Vernor Vinge is a good author, but he's certainly not the best I've read. His novels are deeply insightful when it comes to the future of humankind and technology, though. It's exceedingly rare that those two qualities come together in one author, and so I'm willing to give a good amount of ground. This is also why I enjoy Neil Stephenson's work, who can be brilliant at times, but isn't exactly what I'd call a god of characterization.
To sum up, your statements about the genres of science fiction and fantasy evidence either a profound lack of exposure to either or such a deeply jaded palate that I can't imagine you being able to read more than one or two books a decade that you enjoy.
A mistake in my above post:
I said Garmin lost $1B in "market share" in a day. I meant "market cap." Big difference, there.
With the iPod and now the iPhone, Apple have achieved a level of control over their hardware and their users that hitherto has been enjoyed only by video game console manufacturers
Oh wait, I think you forgot one... what about hand-held calculators? Oh and DVRs. Oh and in-dash nav systems, every non-Android cell phone ever made, digital cameras, all modern cars, planes and other vehicles, HDTVs, and ... well, everything with a CPU that isn't a general-purpose computer or Android phone.
General purpose computers are far and away the exception to the rule when it comes to control of installed software.
Apple has contracts with ATT and the fellow app makers.
What gives Apple the right to enter into contracts which restrict my behavior? And whatever it is, do we really have to live in a society that tolerates that?
If you bought an iPhone, you did.
The concern with respect to Net Neutrality is that you can't just go use a different Internet. If all of the major backbone providers collude to set pricing for access to their market of users then the consumer has no recourse as building a new backbone is insanely expensive, and arguably couldn't be done again from scratch without the backing of a major government.
On the other hand, you can go buy an Android phone any time you want.
You can choose the restrictive provider or the permissive one. If you choose the restrictive provider and then complain about their being restrictive, then you're either not paying attention or just looking for an argument (that's down the hall on the right).
Some of us don't want or need cellphones.
"Don't want," I can buy (though it smells of being a Luddite just for the sake of it, at this point... I had relatives who insisted they didn't need a household phone until the mid-50s, but they eventually had to admit that it was just too useful). "Don't need?" That's not fundamentally a personal call. You need a cell phone if and when you're in a situation where having one would provide for some other need (rodeside help, calling emergency services when you see an accident, etc.)
They still make standalone mp3 players and pdas and cameras.
You're posting from a (presumably somewhat modern) computer. I don't think you really have the moral high-ground to complain about consolidation of technology.
They still even make standalone cell phones.
I'm not aware of any. I believe that the only "standalone" cell phones these days are phones where the features that scare off individuals such as yourselves are turned off at the factory.
For Android to kill GPS, they would have to offer it cheaper than a standalone and provide a working GPS function that did not require a cell phone service contract for it to work.
Define "kill." For Android to kill stand-alone GPS units (and I'm not sure it will be Android that does it), it would merely have to become financially impractical for existing GPS makers to stay in business. Garmin just lost over a billion dollars in market share in a day... on the announcement, before anyone had this thing in their hands. Why? Because the people who buy cool tech gadgets already have data plans by and large, and the people who don't will probably settle with in-dash units which will probably go Android or a similar system with access to Google Navigation over the long run for pretty much exactly the same reasons that cell phones will (reduction in overhead and faster time-to-market with the features that the people making the hardware actually differentiate themselves on).
Heck, you might even see a big GPS maker get in bad with Google and produce an Android stand-alone unit.
True, and I agree with you, but the devil's in the details- like when you're texting Judy that you're going to be late and you miss your offramp exit.
But yes, voice, gesture, control etc are all very viable answers to my original concerns
Of course, there's always added risk when you introduce new distractions into a car, but I was responding to your original point, not a more general discussion of in-card distraction.
How about if we just say it's, "difficult to learn". The phrase is more clear, less pretentious, and less cliché.
There's nothing inherently wrong with your request. It's just that it's not going to happen.
Language evolves and what sounds imprecise, pretentious or cliché to you now, can become standard usage tomorrow. There's little that any of us can do about that.
And speaking of cliché, please keep your pulpy mass out of the discussion. I find it confusing and pretentious. Just say it's over-used. ... or don't.
Their only saving grace are those that try to precariously do 10 million things on their phone while driving- flipping back and forth from music player, to phone, to GPS to...heaven forbid, text messaging, all that requires UI navigation
Well, Google Navigation is voice-controlled, and presumably Android already has a number of voice-controlled features (I notice that a key word "navigate" was used before each voice command in the demo video), so I expect you'll see a lot of drivers talking to thin air in their cars, even when not making a phone call.
"Navigate to west coast office. Shuffle play playlist, Bach. Text Judy, I'm going to be late. Call Robert."
All of that is fairly easy to build into a simple voice-recognition command structure without any real smarts.
You're starting to see the value, but remember that the value of PageRank isn't that it's got one useful metric, but dozens. Re-tweets are akin to links. PageRank considers links to a page, but it also considers who is linking. Get re-tweeted by someone who frequently gets re-tweeted, and there's going to be more juice in that. By the same token, if you use more than two hash-tags or currently trending terms, and there should probably be a reduction in your rank, since that's likely just automated. A few others:
* Does it contain a link? What's the page rank of that link?
* Google Image Search could pick up tweeted images, which often contain breaking news, traffic scenes,
* How often have a user's tweet's been shared on other social services and RSS link-sharing services like Google Reader?
* If the user links to their Twitter feed in a Google Profile, what's the rank of their other pages?
* How many people follow the tweeter?
* How many people does the tweeter follow? (is that a plus or minus, or is it more complex?)
* How often does the tweeter tweet?
* What's the average length of the tweeter's tweets compared to the current message?
* Is the tweet a reply? (probably a minus, but not a huge one)
* Is it a reply to more than one other user?
* Does the tweet use plain English or is it l33t?
There are many more factors you could consider. Noise attenuation is a hard problem, but fortunately one Google is pretty good at.
LCDs have terrible battery life
True, that.
and are just painful to read.
Now you've made a leap, there.
My mind boggles that you think a color LCD is superior, the color elements are pretty easy to see on a typical handheld sized LCD
I'm sure you're going to explain why I care. I grew up on the Tandy Color Computer with pixels the size of your head. If I wanted photo-realism, I'd go for a walk. When I want to read, being able to see pixels isn't a concern.
Maybe I'm just biased, having made ebook readers for years now.
Aha! Now, it all becomes clear. I was wondering how someone became so hyper-senstitive to every feature of their reading medium, and then you explained it all. Yes, I have known people who were in the book printing world who couldn't read books that were printed on "low quality" paper, and preferred books that were printed with those ragged torn-looking pages, so I understand where you're coming from. However, it's important for you to realize that you've damaged your experience by being too close to the problem. It's not that everyone else is content to suffer, it's that you've become so aware of the medium that you can't escape it long enough to enjoy what you're reading.
I obviously don't want to read a novel on a cellphone either.
I'm not sure why that's obvious. My cell phone is frequently used to real books from either Kindle (iPhone app) or Google (Google Books free version, which is available today). I find it quite handy for reading while commuting (I walk or take the bus) and before bed. It's not an ideal size, but I can read with it just fine, and I find the ease of carrying around the phone beats out the form-factor in terms of overall experience.
CSIRO is not a patent troll. What is a patent troll? A patent troll is an organisation that exists only to accumulate patents (and make a profit off royalties).
I've tried to make this point, here in the past as well. The responses that I got indicted that there are many Slashdot readers who think "patent troll" is what you call someone who tried to defend a patent in court, irrespective of a) their involvement in the actual invention or b) the defensibility of said patent.
As far as I can tell, this is just backlash from folks who don't understand the patent system as it's intended to protect actual inventors of non-obvious technology, and see actual patent trolls manipulating the system for outrageous gain. I can understand the frustration, there, but it's clearly not a rational approach.
Don't be an ass. Using ports allows someone to set up an ah-hoc server for testing or whatever easily. The last thing they want to do is dick about having to update DNS's bastard child before they can access it from the browser.
One: I don't think the GP was the one being "an ass."
Two: I don't think the GP was suggesting that there be no way at all to force your browser to another port for testing purposes (at the very least, a command-line option to browsers could be provided). The point was that for general usage when talking to remote systems, there's no reason not to use DNS, and it would have solved one of the largest problems with IP proliferation: the need to lock SSL to a specific port, due to the fact that the URI used is hidden from intermediate hosts.
However, I do like the URI syntax as it stands. I do think that dot should not have been a valid last character for scheme (which would have allowed you disambiguate host and scheme by using the FQDN of the host with trailing "." For that matter, I'm not sure dots should have been allowed in schemes at all.
One thing that the URI syntax suffers from is something that Larry Wall pointed out when managing the design effort and RFCs for Perl 6: Everyone wants the colon. The double-slash, though, I think is a good thing. It allows for rooted URIs such as / without ambiguity.
What goes to the person who reports the most false positives?
A background investigation.
Actually, I'd be far more concerned about the person who reports highly accurately. A terrorist, for example, is going to expose themselves to behavior analysis if they frequent potential bombing targets (either physically or through something like Google Street View). On the other hand, if they're a "good citizen" watching videos all day long and reporting accurately on criminal behavior, then they get to scope out as many locations as they can handle (perhaps not 24/7, since that too might be too far outside of the norm), and there's no behavior analysis that you can do other than looking for people who use the service as it was intended because the terrorist isn't choosing where to look (I presume, but that'd be the only way to make the service work, since it would otherwise expose you to people who just wanted to watch their neighbor's windows all day).
Yeah, this one is going to be fun. Hang on a sec, I'll get my popcorn!
Not just "because somebody thinks they saw something". The video is the proof. [... ] This isn't hearsay. This is video for everyone to see.
The problem is (I'm basing this on U.S. law, so YMMV) that your life can be turned upside down on suspicion of anything. Sure, eventually your name will be cleared, but not until you've missed work, been labeled a pariah by your social circle, and possibly had permanent records stored in various databases (depending on the nature of the alleged crime). If you were accused of a sex crime in the U.S., for example, the conviction matters little. You'll be let go from your job if you worked with children for reasons of parental confidence. If the crime related to terrorism, you might end up on international watch-lists regardless of a conviction.
So, this is bad for the following reasons:
This has to be one of the worst ideas proposed in recent memory.
It's true. The only problems with the patent system right now are:
* Patents in fields that advance far more quickly than physical industries are protected for the same amount of time (e.g. software)
* Patents can be trivially modified and re-submitted in order to "renew" an existing patent (e.g. pharma industry)
* Prior art reviews and obviousness tests are poorly done, relying mostly on court challenges after the fact to resolve such issues
Resolve those three problems and you have a patent system that accomplishes the original goal: to foster the advancement of the sciences and useful arts.
I've proposed solutions here before, but to re-cap:
1) Establish a product lifecylce metric for each industry and tie patent duration to reasonable multiples of the lifecycle (e.g. 2-4 times the time it takes to design and release a new product in that industry)
2) Enhance the review process and reject far more patents on the basis of prior art.
3) Open the prior art review process up to the public after the first round approval.
4) Establish fines for those who repeatedly submit applications for patents that have prior art (not just a couple of times, but as an ongoing business practice; the goal is not to hurt individuals who make mistakes).
I looked for this because I didn't want to post redundantly, but there's more that needs to be said, here: I'm no fan of bad patents, but Slashdot has mis-posted about patents time and time again. It's time that the Slashdot editors start doing some basic (and I mean 2 minutes tops) fact-checking of these articles:
1. Does the submitted article claim that a basic process or natural phenomenon is being patented while the source article claims that it's the process around utilizing these that has been covered? This happens at least 1-2 times per week.
2. Does the article misleadingly only discuss one or a small minority of claims from a patent which has far more?
3. Is the article based only on the patent abstract? Does it even claim that a lawyer has reviewed its interpretation?
4. Is the patent a design patent, and not a process or mechanism patent at all?
If any one of the above is true, it should be noted before posting to the main page.
If more than one of the above is true, then it's simply not worth the confusion of posting to the main page.