only Sony has a management culture weird enough to keep pumping money into half-baked products like MiniDisc without anyone batting an eyelid. sure, you can find crappy product ideas anywhere without even trying, but ones that stay alive for 20 years before the plug is pulled? "WTF Sony" indeed.
I remember reading somewhere, long ago, that the minidisc was originally envisioned as a higher capacity replacement for the floppy disc and storage for digital cameras (I once had a Sony camera that stored the pictures on a floppy disk)..
The DRM certainly didn't help, but what really killed the minidisc was the introduction of the iPod and other MP3 players. Instead of constantly swapping out discs (each minidisc held 1 CD worth of music) you could just load up your MP3 player with dozens, or hundreds, of CDs. Once MP3 players came along, the minidisc went the way of the cassette Walkman.
I was going through a closet just today and threw out about 20 blank minidiscs that had never been used.
Several years ago I bought a portable minidisc player. Battery life was terrible. I literally had to carry a couple of AA batteries with me at all times. But even worse was getting music onto the player. There were only two choices -- a program made by Sony that was a complete piece of shit, or, a plugin for Realplayer.
And, for added amusement, transferring songs onto the player from my computer was very slow because they all had to be converted into Sony's propriietary, DRM infested ATRAC format.
Any law that is not enforced is meaningless. And that's the big problem here. If I get one of these calls that is clearly violating the law, then what? There is no one I can can contact who will immediately take action and prosecute the person who is breaking the law. It would take an enormous amount of resources to really clean up this problem, and so nothing is done. And the people making these calls know that.
It's hard to imagine that non-business users will pay for this. I imagine that most home users will shell out $120 for the Home version of Office every 6 yrs or so. That's 1/6 of the subscription cost over the same period. I could see MSFT charging $10/month for non-business licenses to ALL MSFT products (including windows).
I"ve come up with a better solution.
I'm using Office 2003. It works just fine for what I need, it's already paid for so there's no additional costs and it doesn't have the stupid "ribbon" that renders programs unusable.
Concur. Coulton is was one of the last straws for me when it came to "geek" fandom.
His works are not clever, they're not funny, and they're not interesting. I never realised just how similarly all geeks thought until I noticed how similar and shallow their cultural tastes are.
Yes, Glee sucks. But that is irrelevant to the story. Jonathan Coulton is a fucking douchebag who needs to shut the fuck up.
He didn't write the song. He just copied a song somebody else wrote because he a talentless hack who can't create anything worthwhile on his own. And now he's complaining that somebody copied his copying. Boo-fucking-Hoo.
With Open Source, if a bug is a real problem, then you can fix it.
Wrong. This is the big lie of Open Source.
I can submit a bug, but I can't force them to fix it. I have submitted many bugs to various open source projects over the years and none of them have ever been fixed. I can write a patch but I can't force them to accept it. Which makes sense -- you can't have random people messing with your code. I can only write a patch if I am proficient in whatever language they are using AND I am intimately familiar with the code base so that I know where to look.
Unless you are an expert programmer, with commit access to the codebase, open source is meaningless.
Low ranking managers, nurses/doctors/etc who only make "rounds" every other day or something to see patients, remote coders who stopped in the office for some reason, IT support persons with access to shared drives to spreadsheets/data containing patient information, etc, etc.
There are a number of reasons why laptops leave facilities.
Yes, there are many reasons why laptops leave facilities and all the ones you cited are perfectly valid, except for one thing. Why is there patient information on the laptop? That makes absolutely no sense.
You come into the facility for your once a week visit, you connect your laptop to the network and you access the patient information. There simply is no legitimate reason for the patient information to be on any laptop, let alone one that is going to leave the facility.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder about the same thing. Why is sensitive patient information on a laptop in the first place, and why is that laptop leaving the hospital.
If you are a business executive, I can understand that you would be carrying a laptop which contains emails and other documents. But I cannot think of a single good reason (GOOD REASON) why a hospital's patient information would ever need to be stored on a laptop. Seriously, if you have employees carrying around laptops loaded with patient information, you're doing it wrong.
When will something be done about this legal mafia?
Nothing will ever be done because every major company is playing the game.
Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM . . . . . every big company with deep pockets has been hit by patent trolls. So why don't they all get together and use their considerable lobbying power to demand that congress change the law? Why? Because they don't really want the law changed. They want to be able to whack somebody with a patent lawsuit when it suits them.
Bogus patents are the new nuclear weapons. Everyone knows they are bad and destructive, they serve no useful purpose and should be eliminated. But nobody is willing to actually do that because some day they might need a weapon to use against a competitor. That's the new business model. Litigation instead of competition.
The billions of views they lost is about the same amount of money the music industry has lost due to piracy.
Who said perception is reality? Just make your own, it's easier.
You've got it slightly wrong. The effect of losing all these "fake views" is exactly the same as the amount they have lost due to piracy -- nearly zero.
And seriously, what kind of bullshit story is this anyway? Nobody gives a rat's ass if Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber have 12 views or 12 billion.
What problem does Secure Boot solve, other than Microsoft's "other OS" problem?
Actually, it doesn't even "solve" that problem. Secure Boot is only a potential problem on computers running Windows 8. Once you buy that computer, Microsoft has already collected their "Windows Tax" so even if you install some other OS, it has no effect on Microsoft. They already got their money. This is one of Microsoft's biggest problems. The monopolist mentality is so deeply entrenched that they spend an enormous amount of time and money on stupid crap that is of absolutely no benefit to them.
More importantly, however, why exactly would you buy a computer with Windows 8 on it just so you can wipe it and install something else? That makes no sense.
That's the important question. And I got to say, the more I hear of his antics (dopplegangers changing their name to his?) and novelty drug habits, the less inclined I am to give him the benefit of doubt on this one.
It will soon be revealed that he killed Hans Reiser's wife.
It is difficult for us to imagine this is the outcome Congress intended.
They why did Congress put a provision into copyright law which specifically exempts foreign made items fron the right of first sale? It didn't get there out of thin air. This is obviously what they wanted.
Actually, you've hit on a good idea. Just like Netscape Navigator skipped from version 4.7 to 6 so they could jump ahead of Internet Explorer 5, Firefox should return to that practice. The next version of Firefox should be 29. Then they will be forever cooler and more modern than Chrome.
Yes, this is a shitty thing to do. So don't use Instagram or Facebook or any of the other "services" that are constantly trying to screw you for their profit. We got along just fine for a very long time without Facebook or Instagram. Time to grow up and move on.
Gmail servers were reconfigured to not connect to remote pop3 servers that have self-signed certificates, leaving folks with unencrypted connections, or no service when getting email from other services.
Sorry for the ignorance, but I don't understand this. Why would I be getting email from a "remote POP3 server" or "other service"? Why wouldn't I just have my email client connect directly to Gmail's POP3 server?
pop.gmail.com port 995 using SSL. I'm using Thunderbird and it works fine.
1) It makes me a lot more selective about putting things on the taskbar and desktop.
a) I put things I really do use out there, so things are highly geared to my workflow
b) Things I find I'm not using get punted 2) The windows button finally has purpose. You can hit that button, start typing an app name and then space/enter to launch. I find I'm mousing less actually.
In addition, Windows 8 hasn't come with the alternating-release-something-new instability problems we've gotten used to. It's every bit as solid as 7 and has better integrated security features. Win, win in my book.
LOL!!
Type the name of an app and then hit enter. Welcome to DOS. Are we suddenly back in 1992?
Slashdot Mirror
only Sony has a management culture weird enough to keep pumping money into half-baked products like MiniDisc without anyone batting an eyelid. sure, you can find crappy product ideas anywhere without even trying, but ones that stay alive for 20 years before the plug is pulled?
"WTF Sony" indeed.
fixed
I remember reading somewhere, long ago, that the minidisc was originally envisioned as a higher capacity replacement for the floppy disc and storage for digital cameras (I once had a Sony camera that stored the pictures on a floppy disk)..
The DRM certainly didn't help, but what really killed the minidisc was the introduction of the iPod and other MP3 players. Instead of constantly swapping out discs (each minidisc held 1 CD worth of music) you could just load up your MP3 player with dozens, or hundreds, of CDs. Once MP3 players came along, the minidisc went the way of the cassette Walkman.
I was going through a closet just today and threw out about 20 blank minidiscs that had never been used.
Several years ago I bought a portable minidisc player. Battery life was terrible. I literally had to carry a couple of AA batteries with me at all times. But even worse was getting music onto the player. There were only two choices -- a program made by Sony that was a complete piece of shit, or, a plugin for Realplayer.
And, for added amusement, transferring songs onto the player from my computer was very slow because they all had to be converted into Sony's propriietary, DRM infested ATRAC format.
Any law that is not enforced is meaningless. And that's the big problem here. If I get one of these calls that is clearly violating the law, then what? There is no one I can can contact who will immediately take action and prosecute the person who is breaking the law. It would take an enormous amount of resources to really clean up this problem, and so nothing is done. And the people making these calls know that.
It's hard to imagine that non-business users will pay for this. I imagine that most home users will shell out $120 for the Home version of Office every 6 yrs or so. That's 1/6 of the subscription cost over the same period. I could see MSFT charging $10/month for non-business licenses to ALL MSFT products (including windows).
I"ve come up with a better solution.
I'm using Office 2003. It works just fine for what I need, it's already paid for so there's no additional costs and it doesn't have the stupid "ribbon" that renders programs unusable.
Concur. Coulton is was one of the last straws for me when it came to "geek" fandom.
His works are not clever, they're not funny, and they're not interesting. I never realised just how similarly all geeks thought until I noticed how similar and shallow their cultural tastes are.
Yes, Glee sucks. But that is irrelevant to the story. Jonathan Coulton is a fucking douchebag who needs to shut the fuck up.
He didn't write the song. He just copied a song somebody else wrote because he a talentless hack who can't create anything worthwhile on his own. And now he's complaining that somebody copied his copying. Boo-fucking-Hoo.
http://i.minus.com/iU8wJETUUACV1.png
With Open Source, if a bug is a real problem, then you can fix it.
Wrong. This is the big lie of Open Source.
I can write a patch but I can't force them to accept it. Which makes sense -- you can't have random people messing with your code.
I can only write a patch if I am proficient in whatever language they are using AND I am intimately familiar with the code base so that I know where to look.
Unless you are an expert programmer, with commit access to the codebase, open source is meaningless.
Just this month, they have fixed bugs that were originally reported in 2000 and 2001.
Apparently you can search for lots of things on Facebook. For example:
http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/facebookgraphlols1.png
http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/facebooklols4.png
Low ranking managers, nurses/doctors/etc who only make "rounds" every other day or something to see patients, remote coders who stopped in the office for some reason, IT support persons with access to shared drives to spreadsheets/data containing patient information, etc, etc.
There are a number of reasons why laptops leave facilities.
Yes, there are many reasons why laptops leave facilities and all the ones you cited are perfectly valid, except for one thing. Why is there patient information on the laptop? That makes absolutely no sense.
You come into the facility for your once a week visit, you connect your laptop to the network and you access the patient information. There simply is no legitimate reason for the patient information to be on any laptop, let alone one that is going to leave the facility.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder about the same thing. Why is sensitive patient information on a laptop in the first place, and why is that laptop leaving the hospital.
If you are a business executive, I can understand that you would be carrying a laptop which contains emails and other documents. But I cannot think of a single good reason (GOOD REASON) why a hospital's patient information would ever need to be stored on a laptop. Seriously, if you have employees carrying around laptops loaded with patient information, you're doing it wrong.
When will something be done about this legal mafia?
Nothing will ever be done because every major company is playing the game.
Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM . . . . . every big company with deep pockets has been hit by patent trolls. So why don't they all get together and use their considerable lobbying power to demand that congress change the law? Why? Because they don't really want the law changed. They want to be able to whack somebody with a patent lawsuit when it suits them.
Bogus patents are the new nuclear weapons. Everyone knows they are bad and destructive, they serve no useful purpose and should be eliminated. But nobody is willing to actually do that because some day they might need a weapon to use against a competitor. That's the new business model. Litigation instead of competition.
The billions of views they lost is about the same amount of money the music industry has lost due to piracy.
Who said perception is reality? Just make your own, it's easier.
You've got it slightly wrong. The effect of losing all these "fake views" is exactly the same as the amount they have lost due to piracy -- nearly zero.
And seriously, what kind of bullshit story is this anyway? Nobody gives a rat's ass if Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber have 12 views or 12 billion.
What problem does Secure Boot solve, other than Microsoft's "other OS" problem?
Actually, it doesn't even "solve" that problem. Secure Boot is only a potential problem on computers running Windows 8. Once you buy that computer, Microsoft has already collected their "Windows Tax" so even if you install some other OS, it has no effect on Microsoft. They already got their money. This is one of Microsoft's biggest problems. The monopolist mentality is so deeply entrenched that they spend an enormous amount of time and money on stupid crap that is of absolutely no benefit to them.
More importantly, however, why exactly would you buy a computer with Windows 8 on it just so you can wipe it and install something else? That makes no sense.
That's the important question. And I got to say, the more I hear of his antics (dopplegangers changing their name to his?) and novelty drug habits, the less inclined I am to give him the benefit of doubt on this one.
It will soon be revealed that he killed Hans Reiser's wife.
It is difficult for us to imagine this is the outcome Congress intended.
They why did Congress put a provision into copyright law which specifically exempts foreign made items fron the right of first sale? It didn't get there out of thin air. This is obviously what they wanted.
Means you have to update the version number.
I suggest adding a 3000.
Because that's cooler.
Actually, you've hit on a good idea. Just like Netscape Navigator skipped from version 4.7 to 6 so they could jump ahead of Internet Explorer 5, Firefox should return to that practice. The next version of Firefox should be 29. Then they will be forever cooler and more modern than Chrome.
I'm serious.
Yes, this is a shitty thing to do. So don't use Instagram or Facebook or any of the other "services" that are constantly trying to screw you for their profit. We got along just fine for a very long time without Facebook or Instagram. Time to grow up and move on.
Gmail servers were reconfigured to not connect to remote pop3 servers that have self-signed certificates, leaving folks with unencrypted connections, or no service when getting email from other services.
Sorry for the ignorance, but I don't understand this. Why would I be getting email from a "remote POP3 server" or "other service"? Why wouldn't I just have my email client connect directly to Gmail's POP3 server?
pop.gmail.com port 995 using SSL. I'm using Thunderbird and it works fine.
I've noticed a couple different things:
1) It makes me a lot more selective about putting things on the taskbar and desktop.
a) I put things I really do use out there, so things are highly geared to my workflow
b) Things I find I'm not using get punted
2) The windows button finally has purpose. You can hit that button, start typing an app name and then space/enter to launch. I find I'm mousing less actually.
In addition, Windows 8 hasn't come with the alternating-release-something-new instability problems we've gotten used to. It's every bit as solid as 7 and has better integrated security features. Win, win in my book.
LOL!!
Type the name of an app and then hit enter. Welcome to DOS. Are we suddenly back in 1992?
the very notion that a party or group is getting used to something does not mean they like it or want it.
No, but the fact that they went out to the shops and bought it>
Wrong. They went out to buy a new computer and were given exactly one choice -- Windows 8.
when they could just as easily have bought something else
And what would that "something else" be? A substantially more expensive Apple product?
I could swear this same guy was complaining about problems with his "I swear it's not spam" mailing list several months ago.
if you care about users in China and Iran
You had me up till there. At that point I realized you're an asshole and stopped reading.