After all, they've still got to make the shows entertaining (to someone), even with the product placement, or nobody will watch.
Uhhh -- yeah. Like most people watching TV in the United States are really enjoying what's on the box already. Everybody has a couple of favorite shows, but pretty much everybody watches a whole lotta crap too, because there's just "nothing else on." This is only going to make television even worse.
Is it just me or would regular TV greatly improve if they would revert to a PBS style sponsors message and the beginning and then let you actually watch the damn show without interruption every few minutes.
I expect they'll actually start doing this very soon now, especially for "much anticipated series premieres" and so forth. It's a good way to rope in the viewers. (In fact, didn't they already do this with the season premiere of 24?)
The downside? Forget commercials -- you're now going to see more and more products integrated into the shows themselves. Picture an entire episode of Seinfeld where Kramer hears on the news that the union drivers who distribute Coca-Cola are on strike, and he travels to Connecticut to buy a can of Coke. (Hilarity ensues.)
The difference with Slashdot between other media outlets is that Slashdot doesn't dare mention the damage to the music industry. It's all a "culture movement," or something.
Because, not being an employee of one of the (three?) remaining major record labels, I couldn't really care less. Just like how, when I buy a Coke, I don't feel compelled to get on Slashdot and cry about the guilt I feel for the damage I've just done to Pepsi. There's such a thing as a corporation's desire to reap immense profits from its product, and then there's such a thing as The Way the World Is. In the case of the RIAA vs. Modern Technology, I don't think the World is about to budge.
Man, you're getting confused. The "bits" that the current generation of processors can sling around have no meaningful comparison to the qubits of quantum computers.
Ultimately, part of the problem here is that people are still trying to find one single, meaningful number that can tell them whether one processor is "better" or "faster" than another. There just isn't such a thing anymore. Yes, megahertz really is (at least partly) a myth. Processor vendors are doing a lot of things with their chips now that make any single figure pretty much irrelevant. You have to look at a whole bunch of things, like pipeline depth, cache design, the things being done to make chips more efficient at lower clock speeds (a la AMD's chips and the Pentium-M), the number and workload of actual function units on each chip, etc.
A "64-bit chip" isn't automatically "better" than a 32-bit one, just like a 2GHz chip isn't automatically better than a 1.8GHz one. One thing remains true: processors are getting better all the time, and will continue to do so.
Windows has a native 64-bit version but Intel have prompted MS to delay the release until they can come up with a competitive processor.
What you say may be true behind the scenes, but would you care to cite a source? Last I heard, Microsoft's decision to withhold its Windows 2003 update would impact both AMD and Intel. At any rate, it's not like Microsoft isn't working with AMD.
For about $20 a month I subscribe to Netflix. I can watch pretty much all the DVDs I want, any time I want. No commercials, the movies start and stop when I want them to, and I can pause them while I'm making dinner -- no additional TiVo required.
It's not just theory either. As a freelancer I occasionally take contracts that require commuting by train, along with others where I commute by car. The state of my health directly mirrors the form of transport, and when trains result in a direct and blatantly obvious loss of health then only a fool can consider trains as good.
The problem with public transport isn't that it's public, but that it's mass, packing in everyone like a herd of animals. We're not animals.
Wow, could you be a little more dramatic?
How about just saying, "I am something of a hypochondriac and I believe I suffer from illnesses when I'm forced to be in the company of my fellow human beings," and be done with it?
1430 of them being unsecured, that bothers the heck out of me.
OK, my immediate reaction is... why?
Fine, corporate "enterprises" (beginning to hate that word) should have secured their wireless networks. But lets face it, most of the APs discovered are probably Linksys routers sitting in some dude's office. Exactly why do all of these need to be secured?
I'm a normal, conscientious Internet user. Most of the day, my Internet usage consists of email and (I admit) wasting time on Slashdot. I'm not looking at porn, and I'm not wasting significant amounts of bandwidth. Honestly, who should care if I happen to use their unprotected wireless network?
Furthermore, I personally wouldn't care if anyone used mine. I would love to feel confident that I could leave my wireless access point unprotected. Several points nag me, however:
Every now and then, I'm going to want to download some Linux ISOs. (OK, I mean labels' entire catalogs of songs on MP3.) When I want to do that, *I* should have the bandwidth to do it. I pay for it, I get dibs. So far, I don't know of anything available to your average consumer that will let you throttle bandwidth for your "guests" at will (or, ideally, automatically -- my own MAC addresses get top priority).
The kiddie porn issue is an issue. As is, I guess, MP3 downloading. I don't want to have to firewall out P2P ports (and play the game of "what port are they using this week") just to protect myself from people using my AP who are too dumb to cover their tracks. No, I do not believe "but my port was unprotected, open to the world" is going to hold up in court.
People are, by and large, bastards. If I leave my AP unprotected, it's not going to be used occasionally by passers-by etc. It's going to be my next-door neighbor, using it to download massive AVIs all night long, all the time thinking "hee hee hee, this dumbass left his wireless AP unprotected." If I were to open my AP, I'd want the first thing to pop up on your browser to be a notice letting you know that, yes, I see you, yes, I'm logging you, and yes, if you were a decent person and you wanted to use this thing all the time, you might drop by, ring my doorbell, and offer to kick me a couple bucks every month.
Furthermore, I'd like to publicly thank the various people around town whose unprotected access points I've used without permission. You never knew I did it, but it probably saved me some hassle.
And finally, I'd like to publicly ask owners of coffee shops, delis, diners, bars, and other lounge-around spots: Have you ever considered not charging for that miraculous wireless network you just "installed"? Face it, Internet access is a flat fee for you. You want to bring in customers to buy that cup of half-and-half (I once heard that milk-based froofy coffee drinks have such an exorbitant profit margin that Starbuck's is essentially in the milk business). So why not do it by offering them a place to sit around, relax, and use their laptops? Seems to me it's no skin off your nose. Coffee shops have been providing shelves of books for years -- why not Internet access?
I bring it up because the coffee shop down the street from my house recently switched from offering free wireless access to charging for it -- something like $15/month, fully a third of the cost of a DSL line that will give me full high-speed access around the clock. Lots of other places are starting to do the same here (San Francisco) -- the "trial period" is over, now you have to pay.
I ask you: Where's the sense in that? I had just gotten into the habit of spending my mornings in that coffee shop, eating bagels and coffee while I got some work done, when they pulled the rug out from under me. Now the main thing that keeps me going down there is the fact that a couple of the shop's neighbors have their own wireless APs -- unprotected, of course. So now I'm not going to the shop as often, I'm buying less coffee and bagels, and worse, you went ahead and paid for all that (evidently quite expensive) Internet hardware and now I'm not going to be part of that new profit-center either.
Make it free, man! Wired magazine said as much, months ago.
from experience - an Apple IIe @ 14.4K - Kermit paled in comparison to ZModem
But that's exactly the point of what was quoted. In your "reference example," not only were you using the (presumably) United States telephone infrastructure, which is fairly robust, but you were also using a 14.4K modem, which had built-in error correction and recovery in the form of a protocol called MNP. Thus, you had what were essentially "ideal" conditions: The chance of the file transfer software encountering an error at the communications link layer were almost nil. Compare to the likelihood of encountering an error in a radio-based transmission from an orbiting space station.
Clients that require such features are a minimal market. Linux is better choice for 95% of the clients. Most clients would rather have a platform that has a future, not a past.
Exactly. If your OS can scale well to 128+ CPUs, etc., then you have a platform that has a future -- even if you don't "require" these features today.
In Malaysia last year, I saw a number of ATMs with signs next to them warning of precisely these dangers. The signs say, essentially, "Watch out for any equipment that may be attached to this ATM that appears unusual. And please be aware that you may be taking a risk by using this ATM at all." And one such sign was next to a machine inside one of those little rooms at a bank branch, mind you.
If they integrated some other forms of identification that couldn't be forged, such as biometrics or retinal scans, perhaps I'd be a bit less worried.
I've always been disturbed by the fact that, with the new feature of most ATM cards which allows them to be used at any credit card terminal, if someone steals my wallet he doesn't even need to know my PIN to get my money. Why not just get rid of the PIN and save me a minute's worth of hassle when I'm at the ATM?
It seems to me that both DVD+R and DVD-R are going to be around for a little while yet. Plus, we're talking about burners that are sub-$100. If all of a sudden your supply of blank media dried up completely, how much of a tragedy would that be? By that time, you'd probably want to buy a new drive anyway -- like one of the aforementioned double-layer models.
So I don't really understand why people fret so much over which format their drive supports. As far as I understand it, once you've burned the media, anyone can read it. It can be put in any DVD-ROM drive or any home DVD player (more or less). So the choice of media really only matters to the person who's got to burn the disc, and makes no difference to anyone trying to use the disc.
Um -- when I first heard the word "gerrymander" I think I was in junior high school. Was that sound I heard in the 7th grade the death-rattle of democracy?
This is similar to the current depraved state of the Congress, which has been destroyed by each voter thinking that although the Congress as a whole is terrible, that their own rep is wonderful.
The biggest problem I had with the old series though was how they broght Baltar back to life, haha. At the end of the Pilot movie, a Cylon centurion decapitated him... then he suddenly reappears in the series. I don't think they ever explained that.
The truth of how this panned out always confused me, too. I just thought they changed it in the series, so Baltar didn't die. That is, when you read the novelization or the comic-book adaptation, they have Baltar decapitated in a scene where he talks to Imperious Leader. I saw the first episode on TV once, not too long ago, and the same scene just shows Baltar being led away by the Centurions. I assume that if there was a scene where Baltar dies at the end of the original pilot, they later cut it out for re-runs.
State intervention isn't the solution, it'll make the problem worse. Or, if you're a State interventionist, better, because later on, you'll need even more State intervention.
OK, so what is the solution? Consumer revolt -- just don't use the healthcare system? Cuz that's pretty much what I'm doing now. I'm uninsured, like a vast number of Americans, which means that one nasty accident is basically going to ruin me financially for the rest of my life.
Re:Sad state of affairs...
on
Stealth Inflation
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Similar situation: When I had my wisdom teeth taken out by an oral surgeon, I was given the option of having general anaesthetic (i.e. being put out completely). The surgeon was apparently required to brief me on the risks and dangers involved -- which meant he sat me down in front of an 8-minute video tape and left the room. I was ushered into all this as if it was part of the procedure -- I had no choice whatsoever.
When the surgeon eventually returned into the room, I asked, "Look -- do I have to have general?" He looked at me like I was nuts: "Of course not!" More carefully, I asked, "Am I going to want general? Like -- is it going to hurt so bad I'll wish I was put out?" He replied, "Not at all. I doubt you'll feel a thing." I said, "OK, I'll pass."
(Sure enough, it was no big deal -- some blood, some bone chips, but nothing that I'd really describe as "pain" -- though the surgeon did comment that I was "a very tolerant patient.")
Anyway, when the bill eventually arrived, sure enough, there was (I believe) a $65 charge for "anaesthetic consultation fee." That's right, finding out the health risks of being put under anaesthesia was the most expensive video rental in the world.
But there's more! When I got the summary from my insurance company, they denied the charge -- because apparently the law says you cannot have the consultation and the procedure on the same day! I guess I'm supposed to be able to go home and think it over. (Never mind that I declined to have it anyway.)
Anyway, I later got another bill from the surgeon where he basically reversed the consultation charge. So my insurance company didn't pay it, and I didn't pay it either. The doctor just ate it.
Now, before you say "everything worked out" here, think about how f'ed up the medical system is and how it has to deal with the insurance companies. In that case, the insurance company said "no, we won't pay this fee" and the doctor, looking at his options, just shrugged and said, "OK, I guess I won't get paid, then."
And this kind of thing happens all the time -- and not just for questionable charges like this "video consultation fee." My mom worked for many years in the medical billing field (yes, there's an entire industry devoted to working out these billing problems for doctors) and she tells me that most doctors never see the full amount they bill for the procedures they conduct, if they have to bill an insurance company. Got that? Never. The power of the insurance companies is such that they -- despite being private corporations, not government regulators -- can essentially set the prices doctors are allowed to charge for procedures.
I have another friend who works for a large national HMO and he tells me lots of stories, too. You may not realize it, but there are a lot of people out there who, say, have their legs put back together through reconstructive surgery -- they can walk again, that kind of thing -- and then they turn around and say their bills were unfair and they won't pay. They get a lawyer and they flat-out tell the provider that they won't pay a dime. Again, mark me now: They don't try to re-negotiate, they don't try to set up a payment plan, they don't try to talk the doctor into rolling back a few charges. They flat-out say that they will not pay the bill, and in some cases, because of the structure of the industry, the way that it is regulated etc., they will absolutely get away with it. (Their credit might get messed up, but that's a different story.)
So my point is: Lest you read my initial story and say, "Yeah, doctors screwing the patients again," consider that the medical industry in the United States is maybe a different case than, say, sneaking an extra $2 charge onto your phone bill. Healthcare in this country has almost completely broken down. Personally, I place the majority of the blame on the insurance companies, though doctors are at fault as well. But the way the industry is set up now, both sides pretty much have to play these stupid little billing games just to keep the money flowing, and personally I'm hard-pressed to figure out how this is going to change without some serious regulatory hammer falling.
"There are no plans to stop pushing tablets. When Microsoft first started out, people didn't want tablets. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this."
Slashdot Mirror
The downside? Forget commercials -- you're now going to see more and more products integrated into the shows themselves. Picture an entire episode of Seinfeld where Kramer hears on the news that the union drivers who distribute Coca-Cola are on strike, and he travels to Connecticut to buy a can of Coke. (Hilarity ensues.)
Man, you're getting confused. The "bits" that the current generation of processors can sling around have no meaningful comparison to the qubits of quantum computers.
Ultimately, part of the problem here is that people are still trying to find one single, meaningful number that can tell them whether one processor is "better" or "faster" than another. There just isn't such a thing anymore. Yes, megahertz really is (at least partly) a myth. Processor vendors are doing a lot of things with their chips now that make any single figure pretty much irrelevant. You have to look at a whole bunch of things, like pipeline depth, cache design, the things being done to make chips more efficient at lower clock speeds (a la AMD's chips and the Pentium-M), the number and workload of actual function units on each chip, etc.
A "64-bit chip" isn't automatically "better" than a 32-bit one, just like a 2GHz chip isn't automatically better than a 1.8GHz one. One thing remains true: processors are getting better all the time, and will continue to do so.
For about $20 a month I subscribe to Netflix. I can watch pretty much all the DVDs I want, any time I want. No commercials, the movies start and stop when I want them to, and I can pause them while I'm making dinner -- no additional TiVo required.
Already some discussion of this here.
How about just saying, "I am something of a hypochondriac and I believe I suffer from illnesses when I'm forced to be in the company of my fellow human beings," and be done with it?
Fine, corporate "enterprises" (beginning to hate that word) should have secured their wireless networks. But lets face it, most of the APs discovered are probably Linksys routers sitting in some dude's office. Exactly why do all of these need to be secured?
I'm a normal, conscientious Internet user. Most of the day, my Internet usage consists of email and (I admit) wasting time on Slashdot. I'm not looking at porn, and I'm not wasting significant amounts of bandwidth. Honestly, who should care if I happen to use their unprotected wireless network?
Furthermore, I personally wouldn't care if anyone used mine. I would love to feel confident that I could leave my wireless access point unprotected. Several points nag me, however:
- Every now and then, I'm going to want to download some Linux ISOs. (OK, I mean labels' entire catalogs of songs on MP3.) When I want to do that, *I* should have the bandwidth to do it. I pay for it, I get dibs. So far, I don't know of anything available to your average consumer that will let you throttle bandwidth for your "guests" at will (or, ideally, automatically -- my own MAC addresses get top priority).
- The kiddie porn issue is an issue. As is, I guess, MP3 downloading. I don't want to have to firewall out P2P ports (and play the game of "what port are they using this week") just to protect myself from people using my AP who are too dumb to cover their tracks. No, I do not believe "but my port was unprotected, open to the world" is going to hold up in court.
- People are, by and large, bastards. If I leave my AP unprotected, it's not going to be used occasionally by passers-by etc. It's going to be my next-door neighbor, using it to download massive AVIs all night long, all the time thinking "hee hee hee, this dumbass left his wireless AP unprotected." If I were to open my AP, I'd want the first thing to pop up on your browser to be a notice letting you know that, yes, I see you, yes, I'm logging you, and yes, if you were a decent person and you wanted to use this thing all the time, you might drop by, ring my doorbell, and offer to kick me a couple bucks every month.
Furthermore, I'd like to publicly thank the various people around town whose unprotected access points I've used without permission. You never knew I did it, but it probably saved me some hassle.And finally, I'd like to publicly ask owners of coffee shops, delis, diners, bars, and other lounge-around spots: Have you ever considered not charging for that miraculous wireless network you just "installed"? Face it, Internet access is a flat fee for you. You want to bring in customers to buy that cup of half-and-half (I once heard that milk-based froofy coffee drinks have such an exorbitant profit margin that Starbuck's is essentially in the milk business). So why not do it by offering them a place to sit around, relax, and use their laptops? Seems to me it's no skin off your nose. Coffee shops have been providing shelves of books for years -- why not Internet access?
I bring it up because the coffee shop down the street from my house recently switched from offering free wireless access to charging for it -- something like $15/month, fully a third of the cost of a DSL line that will give me full high-speed access around the clock. Lots of other places are starting to do the same here (San Francisco) -- the "trial period" is over, now you have to pay.
I ask you: Where's the sense in that? I had just gotten into the habit of spending my mornings in that coffee shop, eating bagels and coffee while I got some work done, when they pulled the rug out from under me. Now the main thing that keeps me going down there is the fact that a couple of the shop's neighbors have their own wireless APs -- unprotected, of course. So now I'm not going to the shop as often, I'm buying less coffee and bagels, and worse, you went ahead and paid for all that (evidently quite expensive) Internet hardware and now I'm not going to be part of that new profit-center either.
Make it free, man! Wired magazine said as much, months ago.
Ummmm
Exactly. If your OS can scale well to 128+ CPUs, etc., then you have a platform that has a future -- even if you don't "require" these features today.
In Malaysia last year, I saw a number of ATMs with signs next to them warning of precisely these dangers. The signs say, essentially, "Watch out for any equipment that may be attached to this ATM that appears unusual. And please be aware that you may be taking a risk by using this ATM at all." And one such sign was next to a machine inside one of those little rooms at a bank branch, mind you.
It seems to me that both DVD+R and DVD-R are going to be around for a little while yet. Plus, we're talking about burners that are sub-$100. If all of a sudden your supply of blank media dried up completely, how much of a tragedy would that be? By that time, you'd probably want to buy a new drive anyway -- like one of the aforementioned double-layer models.
So I don't really understand why people fret so much over which format their drive supports. As far as I understand it, once you've burned the media, anyone can read it. It can be put in any DVD-ROM drive or any home DVD player (more or less). So the choice of media really only matters to the person who's got to burn the disc, and makes no difference to anyone trying to use the disc.
So what's the big deal?
Um -- when I first heard the word "gerrymander" I think I was in junior high school. Was that sound I heard in the 7th grade the death-rattle of democracy?
Similar situation: When I had my wisdom teeth taken out by an oral surgeon, I was given the option of having general anaesthetic (i.e. being put out completely). The surgeon was apparently required to brief me on the risks and dangers involved -- which meant he sat me down in front of an 8-minute video tape and left the room. I was ushered into all this as if it was part of the procedure -- I had no choice whatsoever.
When the surgeon eventually returned into the room, I asked, "Look -- do I have to have general?" He looked at me like I was nuts: "Of course not!" More carefully, I asked, "Am I going to want general? Like -- is it going to hurt so bad I'll wish I was put out?" He replied, "Not at all. I doubt you'll feel a thing." I said, "OK, I'll pass."
(Sure enough, it was no big deal -- some blood, some bone chips, but nothing that I'd really describe as "pain" -- though the surgeon did comment that I was "a very tolerant patient.")
Anyway, when the bill eventually arrived, sure enough, there was (I believe) a $65 charge for "anaesthetic consultation fee." That's right, finding out the health risks of being put under anaesthesia was the most expensive video rental in the world.
But there's more! When I got the summary from my insurance company, they denied the charge -- because apparently the law says you cannot have the consultation and the procedure on the same day! I guess I'm supposed to be able to go home and think it over. (Never mind that I declined to have it anyway.)
Anyway, I later got another bill from the surgeon where he basically reversed the consultation charge. So my insurance company didn't pay it, and I didn't pay it either. The doctor just ate it.
Now, before you say "everything worked out" here, think about how f'ed up the medical system is and how it has to deal with the insurance companies. In that case, the insurance company said "no, we won't pay this fee" and the doctor, looking at his options, just shrugged and said, "OK, I guess I won't get paid, then."
And this kind of thing happens all the time -- and not just for questionable charges like this "video consultation fee." My mom worked for many years in the medical billing field (yes, there's an entire industry devoted to working out these billing problems for doctors) and she tells me that most doctors never see the full amount they bill for the procedures they conduct, if they have to bill an insurance company. Got that? Never. The power of the insurance companies is such that they -- despite being private corporations, not government regulators -- can essentially set the prices doctors are allowed to charge for procedures.
I have another friend who works for a large national HMO and he tells me lots of stories, too. You may not realize it, but there are a lot of people out there who, say, have their legs put back together through reconstructive surgery -- they can walk again, that kind of thing -- and then they turn around and say their bills were unfair and they won't pay. They get a lawyer and they flat-out tell the provider that they won't pay a dime. Again, mark me now: They don't try to re-negotiate, they don't try to set up a payment plan, they don't try to talk the doctor into rolling back a few charges. They flat-out say that they will not pay the bill, and in some cases, because of the structure of the industry, the way that it is regulated etc., they will absolutely get away with it. (Their credit might get messed up, but that's a different story.)
So my point is: Lest you read my initial story and say, "Yeah, doctors screwing the patients again," consider that the medical industry in the United States is maybe a different case than, say, sneaking an extra $2 charge onto your phone bill. Healthcare in this country has almost completely broken down. Personally, I place the majority of the blame on the insurance companies, though doctors are at fault as well. But the way the industry is set up now, both sides pretty much have to play these stupid little billing games just to keep the money flowing, and personally I'm hard-pressed to figure out how this is going to change without some serious regulatory hammer falling.
According to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer:
"There are no plans to stop pushing tablets. When Microsoft first started out, people didn't want tablets. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this."