That aside, I can certainly see Skype soon becoming crippled in some way or other on anything that's not Windows 7+
The reason Mr. Bates is so damned happy has less to do with working under Ballmer, and more to do with the contents of his freshly filled bank accounts. As CEO, he likely got one hell of a healthy chunk out of that $8bn. I look for him to pull the D-Ring the moment that the contracts say he can.
(OTOH, maybe he thinks he can take over after Ballmer leaves?)
I can agree to this (and was there too - as a former member of the Digital Home Group) - The Canmore project for instance had some serious potential, but the thing was somewhat hobbled from the start (NDA prevents opinions as to exactly why, but let's just say that IMPO it could've done a lot more than it actually did).
The biggest problem was that they interrupted everyone on the Oregon side with a physical move (From CO to JF), and after that began the whole 'let's be a part of Viiv!' bullshit (Viiv? Yeah, that little bastard really should have been strangled in the crib, but more than a couple upper management types had a little too much political capital invested in it). Either way, that in turn caused more than a few key PMs to jump to other groups (one even jumped right into the pool - didn't give a damn) and DHG imploded shortly thereafter.
Kinda sad, too... the whole thing ran its dev on Linux, and the SDK/PDK delivery setup was hella cool.:(
The acronym of their name explains why... they've got patronage from NBC (who is in way too deep financially to pull out now), and Microsoft (whose continued presence is curious at best, and a full-on "WTF are they still doing there!?" at worst.
Depends on the photographer. Not everyone can capture every pivotal event with perfect composition. Even though I am a fairly handy photographer, I realized pretty quickly that getting the perfect shot takes *work*, even with digital cameras and perfect frame-by-frame HD video to help out.
People and objects get in the way, the lighting could be absolute crap, crowds (and your subjects) ebb and flow in unpredictable patterns, the action could be taking place from an angle that makes the composition look like crap, or there could be a massive distraction in the frame that ruins the whole message being conveyed in the shot (weird but plausible example to prove the point: say you're recording a fist-fight between two political ideologues on the street, but there's a topless young lady in the background).
Sometimes, it can be necessary to 'stage' a still photo to portray a news item. It's a very fine line, though.
By way of example, the recent "Occupy Portland" demonstrations were very public, and very much in the local (and in some cases national) media. Because there was a ton of media coverage, the Portland PD behaved in a very sensitive manner over the whole situation (there were only two arrests, and the police went out of their way to show that the arrests were for vandalism related to spray-painting a police car and someone's building or house, forget which).
If there were no media coverage, they could pretty much behave any way they wanted to.
This is IMHO a result of the television era... something that riot police learned the hard way back in the 1960's, when they discovered that using fire hoses and attack dogs didn't look so good on television to a national audience.
Journalists twist and manipulate facts to amp the drama, in order to capture eyeballs, gain influence, and garner advertising dollars.
I don't normally do FTFY type posts, but this time it seemed kind of appropriate.
I do (partially) agree with you that the ideologies of management does cloud the waters a little (especially in newspapers), but honestly? When it comes to cable news networks, they have only one overriding ideology - increasing ratings to gain influence, and more importantly, to get more of that almighty dollar bill.
If you're still following (and care), if I live in a county in California and go to a different county to purchase a car, I have to pay the sales tax as if I bought the car in the county where I live -- not where the car dealer is located. This is to keep people in high sales tax counties from going to low sales tax counties to make car purchases. But this is all within the state of California so California makes the rules, not the Federal.
Actually, I think that Washington State (which has a high sales tax) has something similar for its residents who purchase cars in Oregon (which has no sales tax) - they collect it when you register the car (not 100% certain since I'm an OR resident, but I believe this to be the case).
Naturally, I can't speak for anyone else. But, when I'm shopping IRL and online, the sales tax (or lack thereof) doesn't even enter into the equation..
For cheap items like a USB jump drive or a couple of specialized SATA cables, I can see the point. But if I spend $1500 for a MacBook Pro, a 6% sales tax (which I paid in Utah when I lived there) comes to $90, and will definitely enter in the equation.
I get what you mean about availability, but that aforementioned ninety bucks would cover the markup for a local Mac reseller (even if they ordered the item), or even make a 1.5 hour drive to the nearest Apple Store a lot more feasible (especially if I have other bits in town I need to pick up).
To give you an idea, my last purchase online was for an $850 wiring harness kit to repair my old Jeep. That aforementioned 6% tax is just over fifty bucks. Instead, I used that $50 to buy supporting items, such as tape, terminators, some plastic tubing, spare wires, a Chilton's manual (which includes schematics that allow me to recycle the existing ECU) and etc.
It would have cost me $900 to buy the harness locally from a nearby 4x4 shop (and again, here in Oregon sales tax is a null figure). That 6% sales tax online would have made the harness cost about the same either way, so buying locally would actually now make more sense (especially since I needed to get other bits for the job anyway).
Like I said, I agree perfectly for small items, and impulse buys. But once you start talking about larger purchases, that sales tax begins to make a big difference.
1) Safari is an "iPhone app" 2) So is the movie viewer 3) So is any other generic video or image app that uses HTML5, or can read from the local hard disk.
To hell with the virtual - why the frig should those of us living in states with no sales taxes in the real world (Oregon) have to pay up for everyone else's, and since when would we be forced to start paying one?
Dunno about you, but it would pretty much change buying habits for most purchases around here. Sure, some things would still be cheaper online after figuring in shipping costs and (now this proposed) sales tax, but things online would end up being far less attractive than before... including a lot of Amazon's stock.
OTOH, maybe it'd be the push needed to support local (offline) business more?
So how about you explain why Comcast and Qwest lobbied the hell out of the Utah legislature in 2002-3, when a few towns got together and decided to put together their own municipal Internet network, often in areas that both companies avoided provisioning like it were the plague?
Agreed. I'd go for this plan on one condition: That large ISPs (e.g. Comcast sized or so) are forced to do what AT&T was forced to do back in the 1950's or so - string out a reasonable broadband speed to even the most remote rural area, upon request, at a fixed price ceiling. Then I'd demand that independent and random sampling be done (both in-town and out) to insure that speeds and quality are consistent nationwide. Finally, set up a hotline or similar means by which consumers can lodge complaints, and for each valid and provable complaint, the ISP has to pay back a fixed sum of money to the FCC - low enough to not kill the system immediately, but high enough to get their attention.
Dude... five minutes and an executable downloaded from rockbox.org is "tinkering"?
Seriously?
I remember hacking a frickin' iPaq 3530 bootloader over a serial modem connection (because the default USB connector wouldn't cut it), and praying that the act of loading an early beta build of Familiar Linux didn't brick the shiny $500 PDA.
From the fall of AOL to the rise of iComputing, we had a 12 year golden age where walled gardens were derided, people owned their own devices, and the landscape of the internet formed more or less naturally.
Nevermind things like WGA, TPM, DRM, the omni-present EULAs in nearly everything that the majority of humanity used, making backups of one's media was considered to be "theft", Windows(!?) was actually poised to take over the server room, decoding an encrypted file or a proprietary chip meant litigation and/or jail time, and many, many other examples...
because it tended to coincide with other "pro-life" beliefs, such as opposition to war and capital punishment, or advocacy for healthcare for people who can't pay for it.
Actually, if you look at basic Christian religious beliefs, you'll find that consistency in most of them. In any Catholic church, asking around will find all of that to be true.
Not sure where you gents get your news, but the juvenile bias certainly shows ("anti-choice"? Really? Grow up already).
Nobody with any sense complains about adult stem cells. Each adult has billions, if not trillions of those to spare. Nobody has to die in order to procure them.
Now how about you tell us how successful embryonic cells are versus adult stem cells? I'll save the arguments - the adult cells tend to work far better for the intended purpose. Turning those same cells into 'embryonic' ones may lead somewhere, they may not. OTOH, it still means the source wasn't a separate and distinct human being that had to be destroyed in order to produce them (which is the whole kick against the embryonic ones in the first place), so I don't foresee any major (or credible) theological or moral opposition to the idea.
Now, where are those downmods from scores of angry people, most of whom cannot comprehend an opposition based on one honest moral concept?
Oh, it gets even worse than that... try cashing a corporate or business check drawn against a BoA account. They will happily charge *you* $6 for the privilege, unless you have an account there yourself.
Took care of that last year, when I was bitten by their nasty habit of processing debits before credits (one emergency purchase later, in spite of getting paid the night before they processed the check)...
Much happier at the local credit union. Now, they pay me 7% on my checking account balance, and I get reimbursed for any ATM fees I incur. TBH, I wish I would have done this years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
c'mon man... even from my POV that meme is dying.
That aside, I can certainly see Skype soon becoming crippled in some way or other on anything that's not Windows 7+
The reason Mr. Bates is so damned happy has less to do with working under Ballmer, and more to do with the contents of his freshly filled bank accounts. As CEO, he likely got one hell of a healthy chunk out of that $8bn. I look for him to pull the D-Ring the moment that the contracts say he can.
(OTOH, maybe he thinks he can take over after Ballmer leaves?)
I can agree to this (and was there too - as a former member of the Digital Home Group) - The Canmore project for instance had some serious potential, but the thing was somewhat hobbled from the start (NDA prevents opinions as to exactly why, but let's just say that IMPO it could've done a lot more than it actually did).
The biggest problem was that they interrupted everyone on the Oregon side with a physical move (From CO to JF), and after that began the whole 'let's be a part of Viiv!' bullshit (Viiv? Yeah, that little bastard really should have been strangled in the crib, but more than a couple upper management types had a little too much political capital invested in it). Either way, that in turn caused more than a few key PMs to jump to other groups (one even jumped right into the pool - didn't give a damn) and DHG imploded shortly thereafter.
Kinda sad, too... the whole thing ran its dev on Linux, and the SDK/PDK delivery setup was hella cool. :(
The acronym of their name explains why... they've got patronage from NBC (who is in way too deep financially to pull out now), and Microsoft (whose continued presence is curious at best, and a full-on "WTF are they still doing there!?" at worst.
Depends on the photographer. Not everyone can capture every pivotal event with perfect composition. Even though I am a fairly handy photographer, I realized pretty quickly that getting the perfect shot takes *work*, even with digital cameras and perfect frame-by-frame HD video to help out.
People and objects get in the way, the lighting could be absolute crap, crowds (and your subjects) ebb and flow in unpredictable patterns, the action could be taking place from an angle that makes the composition look like crap, or there could be a massive distraction in the frame that ruins the whole message being conveyed in the shot (weird but plausible example to prove the point: say you're recording a fist-fight between two political ideologues on the street, but there's a topless young lady in the background).
Sometimes, it can be necessary to 'stage' a still photo to portray a news item. It's a very fine line, though.
You know, that does work both ways.
By way of example, the recent "Occupy Portland" demonstrations were very public, and very much in the local (and in some cases national) media. Because there was a ton of media coverage, the Portland PD behaved in a very sensitive manner over the whole situation (there were only two arrests, and the police went out of their way to show that the arrests were for vandalism related to spray-painting a police car and someone's building or house, forget which).
If there were no media coverage, they could pretty much behave any way they wanted to.
This is IMHO a result of the television era... something that riot police learned the hard way back in the 1960's, when they discovered that using fire hoses and attack dogs didn't look so good on television to a national audience.
Journalists twist and manipulate facts to amp the drama, in order to capture eyeballs, gain influence, and garner advertising dollars.
I don't normally do FTFY type posts, but this time it seemed kind of appropriate.
I do (partially) agree with you that the ideologies of management does cloud the waters a little (especially in newspapers), but honestly? When it comes to cable news networks, they have only one overriding ideology - increasing ratings to gain influence, and more importantly, to get more of that almighty dollar bill.
If you're still following (and care), if I live in a county in California and go to a different county to purchase a car, I have to pay the sales tax as if I bought the car in the county where I live -- not where the car dealer is located. This is to keep people in high sales tax counties from going to low sales tax counties to make car purchases. But this is all within the state of California so California makes the rules, not the Federal.
Actually, I think that Washington State (which has a high sales tax) has something similar for its residents who purchase cars in Oregon (which has no sales tax) - they collect it when you register the car (not 100% certain since I'm an OR resident, but I believe this to be the case).
Naturally, I can't speak for anyone else. But, when I'm shopping IRL and online, the sales tax (or lack thereof) doesn't even enter into the equation..
For cheap items like a USB jump drive or a couple of specialized SATA cables, I can see the point. But if I spend $1500 for a MacBook Pro, a 6% sales tax (which I paid in Utah when I lived there) comes to $90, and will definitely enter in the equation.
I get what you mean about availability, but that aforementioned ninety bucks would cover the markup for a local Mac reseller (even if they ordered the item), or even make a 1.5 hour drive to the nearest Apple Store a lot more feasible (especially if I have other bits in town I need to pick up).
To give you an idea, my last purchase online was for an $850 wiring harness kit to repair my old Jeep. That aforementioned 6% tax is just over fifty bucks. Instead, I used that $50 to buy supporting items, such as tape, terminators, some plastic tubing, spare wires, a Chilton's manual (which includes schematics that allow me to recycle the existing ECU) and etc.
It would have cost me $900 to buy the harness locally from a nearby 4x4 shop (and again, here in Oregon sales tax is a null figure). That 6% sales tax online would have made the harness cost about the same either way, so buying locally would actually now make more sense (especially since I needed to get other bits for the job anyway).
Like I said, I agree perfectly for small items, and impulse buys. But once you start talking about larger purchases, that sales tax begins to make a big difference.
ASCII porn from a BBS over a 2400 baud modem needed to die.
1) Safari is an "iPhone app"
2) So is the movie viewer
3) So is any other generic video or image app that uses HTML5, or can read from the local hard disk.
1. Attempt to view porn on iPhone app
Two methods:
1a. open mobile browser
1b. surf to pr0n page
--or--
1a. import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes via one of dozens of video codec convertors
1b. view pr0n movie on iPhone
This isn't exactly rocket science, and amazingly, aside from the "import to iTunes" step, is exactly like any other phone on the planet.
Or are you just mad that you can't buy T&A in their store?
(...who the hell actually pays for the stuff these days anyway?)
-sent from my crappy Blackberry curve.
No sales tax in Oregon either, so companies based here have no legal compulsion to collect them, keep track of them, or any such device.
...why is national infrastructure paid for at a local level?
It isn't. National infrastructure (Interstate highways, for instance) is paid for directly by federal (national) funding.
To hell with the virtual - why the frig should those of us living in states with no sales taxes in the real world (Oregon) have to pay up for everyone else's, and since when would we be forced to start paying one?
Dunno about you, but it would pretty much change buying habits for most purchases around here. Sure, some things would still be cheaper online after figuring in shipping costs and (now this proposed) sales tax, but things online would end up being far less attractive than before... including a lot of Amazon's stock.
OTOH, maybe it'd be the push needed to support local (offline) business more?
Really?
So how about you explain why Comcast and Qwest lobbied the hell out of the Utah legislature in 2002-3, when a few towns got together and decided to put together their own municipal Internet network, often in areas that both companies avoided provisioning like it were the plague?
Agreed. I'd go for this plan on one condition: That large ISPs (e.g. Comcast sized or so) are forced to do what AT&T was forced to do back in the 1950's or so - string out a reasonable broadband speed to even the most remote rural area, upon request, at a fixed price ceiling. Then I'd demand that independent and random sampling be done (both in-town and out) to insure that speeds and quality are consistent nationwide. Finally, set up a hotline or similar means by which consumers can lodge complaints, and for each valid and provable complaint, the ISP has to pay back a fixed sum of money to the FCC - low enough to not kill the system immediately, but high enough to get their attention.
No improvements, no money.
It's not a typo
(see def. #3)
Dude... five minutes and an executable downloaded from rockbox.org is "tinkering"?
Seriously?
I remember hacking a frickin' iPaq 3530 bootloader over a serial modem connection (because the default USB connector wouldn't cut it), and praying that the act of loading an early beta build of Familiar Linux didn't brick the shiny $500 PDA.
You know what? Get offa my effing lawn!
From the fall of AOL to the rise of iComputing, we had a 12 year golden age where walled gardens were derided, people owned their own devices, and the landscape of the internet formed more or less naturally.
Nevermind things like WGA, TPM, DRM, the omni-present EULAs in nearly everything that the majority of humanity used, making backups of one's media was considered to be "theft", Windows(!?) was actually poised to take over the server room, decoding an encrypted file or a proprietary chip meant litigation and/or jail time, and many, many other examples...
Golden age, my ass.
because it tended to coincide with other "pro-life" beliefs, such as opposition to war and capital punishment, or advocacy for healthcare for people who can't pay for it.
Actually, if you look at basic Christian religious beliefs, you'll find that consistency in most of them. In any Catholic church, asking around will find all of that to be true.
So your point was what - a strawman argument?
Not sure where you gents get your news, but the juvenile bias certainly shows ("anti-choice"? Really? Grow up already).
Nobody with any sense complains about adult stem cells. Each adult has billions, if not trillions of those to spare. Nobody has to die in order to procure them.
Now how about you tell us how successful embryonic cells are versus adult stem cells? I'll save the arguments - the adult cells tend to work far better for the intended purpose. Turning those same cells into 'embryonic' ones may lead somewhere, they may not. OTOH, it still means the source wasn't a separate and distinct human being that had to be destroyed in order to produce them (which is the whole kick against the embryonic ones in the first place), so I don't foresee any major (or credible) theological or moral opposition to the idea.
Now, where are those downmods from scores of angry people, most of whom cannot comprehend an opposition based on one honest moral concept?
Oh, it gets even worse than that... try cashing a corporate or business check drawn against a BoA account. They will happily charge *you* $6 for the privilege, unless you have an account there yourself.
Took care of that last year, when I was bitten by their nasty habit of processing debits before credits (one emergency purchase later, in spite of getting paid the night before they processed the check)...
Much happier at the local credit union. Now, they pay me 7% on my checking account balance, and I get reimbursed for any ATM fees I incur. TBH, I wish I would have done this years ago.
Even worse, those six days are right at the beginning of the month, when many folks pay rent, bills, etc.
That has got to suck.
Given the general tone of the thread (that it's affordable for the poorer folk), it's not an implication. ;)