0.001%? Did they even ship enough disks in the first place to get such a small number of complaints as one in 100,000?
I can assure you that this is a gross underestimate of the actual situation. I'm guessing that Sony didn't get that many complaints because people were just beginning to track the problem back to them. I'm one of the people who was hit by this (with my Toshiba DVD player), and it was only three weeks ago that I was certain the problem was with Sony, as it was only the second DVD I had rented that had problems. I would guess that most people complained first to the video rental stores (like Blockbuster) or their retailer (Walmart), and then moved on to their DVD manufacturer (I know this was my progression). That would mean that most of the complaints have not yet really reached Sony, and they are just trying to sidestep the issue now.
I see they're finally getting around to using that formula Scotty provided.
It's unfortunate that it has to be produced as a thin membrane in order to be transparent. I think we're all looking for 1-inch thick plates that have the strength of aluminum with the transparency of glass.
Yes, but nobody (even Nintendo) expected the Wii to take off like it has. So they didn't start things early enough and now see there's money to be made.
And to top it off, publishers have to be careful about what they release. They are working with a different audience here -- casual gamers. Intricate games that attract hard core gamers may not be interesting at all to the Wii customers. Many Wii customers will instead be interested in short games that take full advantage of the unique controllers. Although they will care about the graphics, such concerns will take second place to how easy the game is to learn and play. This isn't to say that some of the hardcore games popular on the other consoles won't also be popular on the Wii. It's just that the big money to be made is with games that appeal to those who decided to buy the Wii instead of PS3 or XBox 360.
God bless? You mean to encourage this sort of thing?
Who are you to say whether people should have large families or not? That's a decision that you don't have any part of, given that in most cases those who choose to have the large family bear the full economic consequences themselves. Perhaps instead you advocate federal regulation to make it illegal for families to have more than one child? And then maybe if the child isn't the gender that the family wanted they can murder it to have another go at getting the gender they want?
We have one too and my wife loves it. But I can definitely say that a house with nine kids is no place for a Roomba. They are just too fragile for that. But for the DINKs (Dual-income, no kids) and those with one or two older children, they are great. For a while, keeping my youngest child away from it was a bit of a chore, but she's no longer interested in it now.
Keep in mind that in the UK, "hoover" has become the name for vacuum cleaners, similar to the way that "Kleenex" is the name for facial tissue in the US. It's obviously true that Hoover ran a successful marketing campaign as well, but the difference here is that there wasn't a tremendous amount of competition at the time, and they really offered what was a superior value at that time, so it makes sense that their brand became the common name of the product.
Yeah, sorry -- the folks working at Circuit City don't generally really qualify as being the "best in their field", unless you're defining the "field" as "people who work at Circuit City".
I think you're missing the point here. The "field" would be "people who work at budget electronics retailers". What's of note is that customers are constantly complaining about how bad the employees are at Circuit City, Best Buy and other retailers with similar market goals. The move that Circuit City is making will only exacerbate that situation, and is likely to spark a competitive war that will leave consumers to choose between expensive high-end stores that provide good service and budget outlets that provide unimaginably poor service. I think most of us would rather have a third choice that combines reasonable prices with reasonable service. I believe that this will ultimately emerge, but not before a period of chaos and consumer discontentment.
That aside, what offends me most is that this thread is this horrific notion that we've devolved to a point where the meaning of the term "American dream" has mutated from 'boundless opportunity in the marketplace and the ability to move out of the economic class you were born into' to 'lifetime employment at Circuit City'.
I agree 100 percent. The article summary would certainly be the biggest misinterpretation of the American Dream that I've ever seen.
In the case of this particular individual, he had never gone there before (never!) and was calling the waitresses whores and scum of society. Regardless of whether his home schooling was associated with a religion, this kind of comment is unacceptable. I personally find the outfits worn a little too tight and revealing, but they are certainly no worse than what you might find at the beach. My biggest complaint about taking the family to Hooters stems not from the people that work there, but from some of the patrons. That's what would prevent me from taking my whole family. But this could again be anecdotal and local to me. Depending on where you are, YMMV.
I will read your linked study and not think of every home-school as a representative of the rest.
The primary difference between home schooling and public (or private) education is that a home schooled child will most likely take on the behavior of his or her parents, whereas the institutionally schooled child will adopt a blend between those at home and those in the school. So, the moral of the story is that parents who are arrogant jerks should not home school their children.;)
I don't see much of a problem with home-schooling as long as the correct education is being taught and somehow playing with other kids is part of the experience.
Correct eduction is not much of an issue in most states these days. There are some fairly strict guidelines that must be followed as well as regular standardized testing to make sure the child is learning what they are supposed to. Also, most states have rather large home schooling organizations that deal with the social aspects by setting up clubs, play groups and other social events.
I certainly sympathize on your past experience with home schooled people. I had forgotten about it until now, but although my experience with home schooled people has been largely good, there is one family that comes to mind as a bad example. They don't appear to be religious nuts (in fact, we could never figure out WHAT [if any] religion they followed). The family has home schooled on and off for the last several years. The parents are a tad strange, but otherwise OK. Their daughter is fine. Their son, however, is a total jerk, and it's clear why. The parents make little or no effort to correct his behavior. They got lucky with their daughter but don't seem to be up to the challenge of their son. So I would guess that the actions of the parents with home schooled children factors heavily into the outcome.
There is one area where home schooled kids seem to have a disadvantage though. And that is in their social interactions.
Actually, although you may have anecdotal evidence in your own life, in general this statement is not true. The link I included earlier has a little blurb on that, and there are other studies you can search for with Google. My own experience has been contrary to yours, with home schooled "kids" being very respectful of others and capable of conversing about a variety of subjects comfortably with both adolescents of their own age as well as adults. In fact, I found exactly the attitude that you described in the "advanced" students within the public school system. Now, regarding whether home schoolers are religious nut jobs... you can't use Hooters as your "acid test". While it's certainly not even close to a strip club, it's also not a family restaurant, regardless of what their marketing droids would like you to think. It would be OK to go there with my wife and some friends, but I would not take my children there. If the home schoolers you encountered were like the ones that I have encountered, they would be quite firmly confident in their own beliefs and not in any way threatened by differing beliefs of others. As such, if they felt that Hooters was not the right place to go, they would quite clearly state so, apologize for the inconvenience to you, and then let you go by yourself if you wanted. If you continued to try to pressure them after that point, they would, indeed, begin to regard you with less respect because you were not respecting their beliefs. I'm not saying you did any of that, just presenting a potential scenario.
You do realize, of course, that aside from the rather strange cults that practice "targeted" home schooling, home schooled students are better educated than those who come out of the public schools. Right? For more information, refer to this site. Of course, since that link may be biased, feel free to argue with other studies that prove otherwise. But keep this in mind. One of the chief complaints I see here on Slashdot about public education is that students are "forced" into an educational framework that doesn't always meet their needs. One example is the argument over homework. Home schooled students, on the other hand, are generally educated in the manner that best suits their learning ability and are able to progress at their own speed, which is almost always faster than the pace found in the public schools.
Please don't use "home schooled" as an insult again. It just comes across as completely ignorant. "Raised by a cult" might have been better.
If they back off after receiving the 'stern letter', re-assessing their case, and deciding that they have a significant chance of losing, the defendant probably can't even get reimbursed for the amount spent on the lawyer to write the letter.
Note carefully that the letter itself made reimbursement of attorney fees part of the "deal." IANAL, but I would imagine that simply dropping the case after such a stern letter would be implied admission of a failure to execute material investigation that would leave plaintiffs' attorneys vulnerable to countersuit.
I wonder how this device works. You were probably looking for more than this, but...
From the article:
The technology, called ColorPath, combines a standard scope with a pair of rotating filters that vary the intensity of light coming from different colored objects. The brain interprets these variations as differences in color, enabling the viewer to recognize red and blue objects obscured by the green glow of today's night scopes.
You'll be able to license their specs for whatever is covered under the agreement, and the fees will be fixed and reasonable, but it will cost money and there may be conditions on it.
Costing money is fine as long as the fees are reasonable. But the conditions will be far more important. If there's a condition that reads like "this license is not valid if the protocol is used in conjunction with Open Source Software", then it will be completely unacceptable. It's quite nearly the same as saying "any company can license our software except {list of competitors}". For the pure OSS supporters, I know that having to pay license fees will not be acceptable, but it's not reasonable to expect a company to give everything away. The goal of this is to make sure that a large company does not abuse its dominant market position in such as way as to prevent competitors from obtaining a share of that market. Reasonable license fees with fairness to all potential competitors are an acceptable way of reaching that goal.
(and let's be very clear that the US only ever acts in what it considers to be its national interest)
And I suppose that you somehow think it's OK for you to make a general statement like this, but it's not OK for those in the US to make general statements about the French. Let's be perfectly clear here. Although the US avoids acting in ways that are contrary to its national interests, it frequently makes decisions and acts in ways that have no impact one way or the other on national interests -- just like pretty much any other country. The US has been, and continues to be very generous in many ways. Although some of that generosity has political aims, certainly not all of it does. I think you need to take a serious dose of your own medicine, lest you yourself be misconstrued as arrogant and ignorant. For what it's worth, I've heard pretty much the same joke come from the colleagues in England and Germany that I work with on a regular basis. Does that make it right? No, but it does show that US-bashing isn't the answer to the problem. Start at home and work your way outward.
You know, bronze is a lot easier to work with than stone. You obviously had it much easier in your day than I did in mine. I'd like to chat more, but my childhood friend Methuselah is at the door. I haven't seen him in at least a few thousand years, and it would be a pity to miss him.
You might want to do a little research on this before you get yourself in the middle of the war. Most of the accusations you cite are coming from a disillusioned developer from the DD-WRT project, who is now dedicated to X-WRT (which is the source of the blog you point to). Basically, the "infractions" committed by Brainslayer amount to the following:
Supposedly using code from other authors' work and changing to startup strings so that they don't get credit -- so far, this seems to amount to only one part of the product (although a big part), and that's Busybox. Brainslayer claims the change in string was a joke, and it also appears that the author of BusyBox gave him permission for what he did.
Creating a "special edition" for sale with features that are not included in other versions -- so? I really don't see this as a problem. The code is included. Buy it and redistribute it for free if you'd like.
Making the web-gui non-GPL -- apparently very old news that the dissenter likes to keep bringing up. This restriction has been removed for a while.
Including other non-GPL pieces -- I would see this as one of the two valid arguments. However, Brainslayer points out that some versions of the product include proprietary pieces (from hardware manufacturers) that need to be protected. A good example is the Broadcom stuff.
Requiring product activation on the x86 -- the other of the two valid arguments. I'm not sure this how this stacks up with the GPL. It seems sneaky anyway. But it should be easy enough to download the x86 code and remove the product activation piece. From comments made by Brainslayer, it is an attempt to keep the large corporations from copying the work and then passing it off as their own. Same old problem that any good open source project has, but I'm not sure I agree with the solution. At any rate, he gives out free activation codes to the private users.
For more information, see this thread in the dd-wrt forum. Keep in mind that it's likely to be biased 180 degrees from the x-wrt blog.
I don't think a criminal genius does their abduction at a PUBLIC AIRPORT.
Why not? Huge parking lot. Lots of potential suspects coming and going. Did the victim ever make it back to her car? All kinds of interesting questions. But anyway, nobody said she was a genius. Planning your attack and covering SOME of the bases is normal behavior for somebody who has reached the irrational point.
One question about this whole thing that has bothered me is that she wore diapers to obviate the need for bathroom breaks.
Although we can't be sure, I would guess that it was not to avoid wasting time, and was instead to avoid getting caught on camera. You can fill up your gas tank outside, but most gas stations these days have their WCs on the inside, and most of them have CCTV to take pretty pictures of you. If she was hoping to murder and dispose of her rival, she would absolutely not want any evidence that she had made a cross country trip around the time that the victim disappeared. Of course, most gas stations these days also have cameras watching the license plates of their customers to avoid drive-offs, but I guess she was improving her chances by not going inside.
Parent groups prepare to label real life as "violent and filled with adult-related content."....seriously, folks. Access isn't the issue in the modern era; teaching kids good judgment is.
Slashdot has sunk to a new low on this one. I've been here long enough to get used to (and laugh at) the ridiculous headlines and kneejerk reactions that make Slashdot so endearing. However, this one is just completely nuts. As a Christian parent, I'm not only concerned for my children, but also for the fringe nutcase groups out there that make most Christians look like complete idiots. It's not a question of whether a particular Christian group is fundamentalist, conservative or moderate. It's a question of whether the group knows WHERE to apply its force and HOW MUCH to apply. So after reading the article (blog), I took a trip over to "theporntalk.com" fully expecting to see a total slam of the Wii that makes Christians look like complete and utter fools. What I saw instead was a short article letting parents know that the Wii's wifi capabilities provide a method for their children to access pornography, and that Nintendo has thoughtfully included security controls that allows parents to require a PIN to access the internet and news feeds. Not only that, but parents can choose to block access to the online "points" store, which effectively prevents installing the web browser in the first place. The article squarely places the responsibility on the shoulders of the parents. It does not in any way slam the Wii. This is exactly what all of us on Slashdot want. Parents need to be responsible for monitoring and educating their children. Not Nintendo. Not the ISP. Not the porn industry. In fact, when I bought a Wii for our family, one of the first things I did was set up the PIN system.
So, I have to say that this particular news item completely has it wrong. And so does kotaku.com. The only thing to see here is a Christian advocacy group giving parents the information they need and leaving them with the responsibility of using it. Whether you agree with their religious beliefs or not, you can't really ask for more.
Slashdot Mirror
It's unfortunate that it has to be produced as a thin membrane in order to be transparent. I think we're all looking for 1-inch thick plates that have the strength of aluminum with the transparency of glass.
And to top it off, publishers have to be careful about what they release. They are working with a different audience here -- casual gamers. Intricate games that attract hard core gamers may not be interesting at all to the Wii customers. Many Wii customers will instead be interested in short games that take full advantage of the unique controllers. Although they will care about the graphics, such concerns will take second place to how easy the game is to learn and play. This isn't to say that some of the hardcore games popular on the other consoles won't also be popular on the Wii. It's just that the big money to be made is with games that appeal to those who decided to buy the Wii instead of PS3 or XBox 360.
Who are you to say whether people should have large families or not? That's a decision that you don't have any part of, given that in most cases those who choose to have the large family bear the full economic consequences themselves. Perhaps instead you advocate federal regulation to make it illegal for families to have more than one child? And then maybe if the child isn't the gender that the family wanted they can murder it to have another go at getting the gender they want?
We have one too and my wife loves it. But I can definitely say that a house with nine kids is no place for a Roomba. They are just too fragile for that. But for the DINKs (Dual-income, no kids) and those with one or two older children, they are great. For a while, keeping my youngest child away from it was a bit of a chore, but she's no longer interested in it now.
Keep in mind that in the UK, "hoover" has become the name for vacuum cleaners, similar to the way that "Kleenex" is the name for facial tissue in the US. It's obviously true that Hoover ran a successful marketing campaign as well, but the difference here is that there wasn't a tremendous amount of competition at the time, and they really offered what was a superior value at that time, so it makes sense that their brand became the common name of the product.
Speaking as an American, I'm perfectly happy to let the Europeans pay my taxes. *duck*
I think you're missing the point here. The "field" would be "people who work at budget electronics retailers". What's of note is that customers are constantly complaining about how bad the employees are at Circuit City, Best Buy and other retailers with similar market goals. The move that Circuit City is making will only exacerbate that situation, and is likely to spark a competitive war that will leave consumers to choose between expensive high-end stores that provide good service and budget outlets that provide unimaginably poor service. I think most of us would rather have a third choice that combines reasonable prices with reasonable service. I believe that this will ultimately emerge, but not before a period of chaos and consumer discontentment.
I agree 100 percent. The article summary would certainly be the biggest misinterpretation of the American Dream that I've ever seen.
Regardless of whether his home schooling was associated with a religion, this kind of comment is unacceptable. I personally find the outfits worn a little too tight and revealing, but they are certainly no worse than what you might find at the beach. My biggest complaint about taking the family to Hooters stems not from the people that work there, but from some of the patrons. That's what would prevent me from taking my whole family. But this could again be anecdotal and local to me. Depending on where you are, YMMV.
The primary difference between home schooling and public (or private) education is that a home schooled child will most likely take on the behavior of his or her parents, whereas the institutionally schooled child will adopt a blend between those at home and those in the school. So, the moral of the story is that parents who are arrogant jerks should not home school their children.
Correct eduction is not much of an issue in most states these days. There are some fairly strict guidelines that must be followed as well as regular standardized testing to make sure the child is learning what they are supposed to. Also, most states have rather large home schooling organizations that deal with the social aspects by setting up clubs, play groups and other social events.
I certainly sympathize on your past experience with home schooled people. I had forgotten about it until now, but although my experience with home schooled people has been largely good, there is one family that comes to mind as a bad example. They don't appear to be religious nuts (in fact, we could never figure out WHAT [if any] religion they followed). The family has home schooled on and off for the last several years. The parents are a tad strange, but otherwise OK. Their daughter is fine. Their son, however, is a total jerk, and it's clear why. The parents make little or no effort to correct his behavior. They got lucky with their daughter but don't seem to be up to the challenge of their son. So I would guess that the actions of the parents with home schooled children factors heavily into the outcome.
Actually, although you may have anecdotal evidence in your own life, in general this statement is not true. The link I included earlier has a little blurb on that, and there are other studies you can search for with Google. My own experience has been contrary to yours, with home schooled "kids" being very respectful of others and capable of conversing about a variety of subjects comfortably with both adolescents of their own age as well as adults. In fact, I found exactly the attitude that you described in the "advanced" students within the public school system. Now, regarding whether home schoolers are religious nut jobs... you can't use Hooters as your "acid test". While it's certainly not even close to a strip club, it's also not a family restaurant, regardless of what their marketing droids would like you to think. It would be OK to go there with my wife and some friends, but I would not take my children there. If the home schoolers you encountered were like the ones that I have encountered, they would be quite firmly confident in their own beliefs and not in any way threatened by differing beliefs of others. As such, if they felt that Hooters was not the right place to go, they would quite clearly state so, apologize for the inconvenience to you, and then let you go by yourself if you wanted. If you continued to try to pressure them after that point, they would, indeed, begin to regard you with less respect because you were not respecting their beliefs. I'm not saying you did any of that, just presenting a potential scenario.
Just in case you were thinking otherwise... I was not home schooled, and neither are my children. However, I have done some research on it.
You do realize, of course, that aside from the rather strange cults that practice "targeted" home schooling, home schooled students are better educated than those who come out of the public schools. Right? For more information, refer to this site. Of course, since that link may be biased, feel free to argue with other studies that prove otherwise. But keep this in mind. One of the chief complaints I see here on Slashdot about public education is that students are "forced" into an educational framework that doesn't always meet their needs. One example is the argument over homework. Home schooled students, on the other hand, are generally educated in the manner that best suits their learning ability and are able to progress at their own speed, which is almost always faster than the pace found in the public schools.
Please don't use "home schooled" as an insult again. It just comes across as completely ignorant. "Raised by a cult" might have been better.
Note carefully that the letter itself made reimbursement of attorney fees part of the "deal." IANAL, but I would imagine that simply dropping the case after such a stern letter would be implied admission of a failure to execute material investigation that would leave plaintiffs' attorneys vulnerable to countersuit.
Why create a new technology when you can apply an old one in a new way? This would be the first time this technology has been applied to a nightscope.
From the article:
Costing money is fine as long as the fees are reasonable. But the conditions will be far more important. If there's a condition that reads like "this license is not valid if the protocol is used in conjunction with Open Source Software", then it will be completely unacceptable. It's quite nearly the same as saying "any company can license our software except {list of competitors}". For the pure OSS supporters, I know that having to pay license fees will not be acceptable, but it's not reasonable to expect a company to give everything away. The goal of this is to make sure that a large company does not abuse its dominant market position in such as way as to prevent competitors from obtaining a share of that market. Reasonable license fees with fairness to all potential competitors are an acceptable way of reaching that goal.
And I suppose that you somehow think it's OK for you to make a general statement like this, but it's not OK for those in the US to make general statements about the French. Let's be perfectly clear here. Although the US avoids acting in ways that are contrary to its national interests, it frequently makes decisions and acts in ways that have no impact one way or the other on national interests -- just like pretty much any other country. The US has been, and continues to be very generous in many ways. Although some of that generosity has political aims, certainly not all of it does. I think you need to take a serious dose of your own medicine, lest you yourself be misconstrued as arrogant and ignorant. For what it's worth, I've heard pretty much the same joke come from the colleagues in England and Germany that I work with on a regular basis. Does that make it right? No, but it does show that US-bashing isn't the answer to the problem. Start at home and work your way outward.
Or so we strive to be.
You know, bronze is a lot easier to work with than stone. You obviously had it much easier in your day than I did in mine. I'd like to chat more, but my childhood friend Methuselah is at the door. I haven't seen him in at least a few thousand years, and it would be a pity to miss him.
For more information, see this thread in the dd-wrt forum. Keep in mind that it's likely to be biased 180 degrees from the x-wrt blog.
Break out the popcorn and pull up a chair.
Why not? Huge parking lot. Lots of potential suspects coming and going. Did the victim ever make it back to her car? All kinds of interesting questions. But anyway, nobody said she was a genius. Planning your attack and covering SOME of the bases is normal behavior for somebody who has reached the irrational point.
Good point. Maybe we'll find that out after her trial.
Although we can't be sure, I would guess that it was not to avoid wasting time, and was instead to avoid getting caught on camera. You can fill up your gas tank outside, but most gas stations these days have their WCs on the inside, and most of them have CCTV to take pretty pictures of you. If she was hoping to murder and dispose of her rival, she would absolutely not want any evidence that she had made a cross country trip around the time that the victim disappeared. Of course, most gas stations these days also have cameras watching the license plates of their customers to avoid drive-offs, but I guess she was improving her chances by not going inside.
Slashdot has sunk to a new low on this one. I've been here long enough to get used to (and laugh at) the ridiculous headlines and kneejerk reactions that make Slashdot so endearing. However, this one is just completely nuts. As a Christian parent, I'm not only concerned for my children, but also for the fringe nutcase groups out there that make most Christians look like complete idiots. It's not a question of whether a particular Christian group is fundamentalist, conservative or moderate. It's a question of whether the group knows WHERE to apply its force and HOW MUCH to apply. So after reading the article (blog), I took a trip over to "theporntalk.com" fully expecting to see a total slam of the Wii that makes Christians look like complete and utter fools. What I saw instead was a short article letting parents know that the Wii's wifi capabilities provide a method for their children to access pornography, and that Nintendo has thoughtfully included security controls that allows parents to require a PIN to access the internet and news feeds. Not only that, but parents can choose to block access to the online "points" store, which effectively prevents installing the web browser in the first place. The article squarely places the responsibility on the shoulders of the parents. It does not in any way slam the Wii. This is exactly what all of us on Slashdot want. Parents need to be responsible for monitoring and educating their children. Not Nintendo. Not the ISP. Not the porn industry. In fact, when I bought a Wii for our family, one of the first things I did was set up the PIN system.
So, I have to say that this particular news item completely has it wrong. And so does kotaku.com. The only thing to see here is a Christian advocacy group giving parents the information they need and leaving them with the responsibility of using it. Whether you agree with their religious beliefs or not, you can't really ask for more.