Actually the subscription thing is primarily driven by businesses, not consumers.
You're mostly right... so far. But if you read the current stories about Microsoft's Office 365 pitch, they are very clearly pitching consumers. There have only been two subscription plans announced for Office 2013 so far: Home & Student and Home & Business. The Business one is designed for companies with 10 employees or less. The Home & Student one includes a license to install the software on five computers, and all can be used by different people as long as they belong to the same household.
Microsoft is expected to announce enterprise subscription plans for Office 2013, but they have said nothing about it so far. It's all pretty much been home users and very small businesses.
I once said something that someone at/. apparently took offense at, because for the next several days, "someone" would go back and downmod every single post I made... but only after some time had gone by, and only posts that hadn't otherwise been upmodded.
So if I posted a comment and it got modded up to +4, nothing would happen to it. If I posted a comment that didn't get modded either way, about a day later it would suddenly get modded down one, but usually not until after that story had scrolled off the homepage.
To me, it seemed like such a weird pattern that I figured it had to be that some kind of "bitchslap" mod bot had been sicced on my account. So I emailed the editors about it. Someone emailed me back and said, "No, we don't have anything like that, nothing is happening to your posts but regular moderation from users"... and after that, the downmods immediately stopped.
There is no fundamental barrier to supporting Linux on Clover Trail since it utilizes Intel architecture cores, we are simply focusing our current efforts for this Clover Trail product on Windows 8. Our Medfield products support Android-based smartphones and tablets on the market today, and we may evaluate supporting Linux-based OSes on other tablet products in the future.
Good luck convincing your bank to offer its application on Amazon or SlideME. I own an Archos 43 Internet Tablet, which didn't come with what was then called Android Market. I called a representative of Chase Bank and asked how to get Chase Quick Deposit working, and I was told that there were no plans to support my device. Nor were there plans to support a PC's flatbed scanner instead of a smartphone's rear camera.
What does either thing have to do with whether you bought the app on the Amazon store or Google Play? I'm looking at the Amazon store right now and there's a Chase Mobile app there and it says it supports Quick Deposit. If it doesn't support your device, you can't claim it's because the bank doesn't want to offer its app through Amazon, because it does. Bank of America has an app in there, too, though it looks like it explicitly only supports the Kindle Fire (which is sort of logical, since that seems to be Amazon's main app market these days).
why is the infected person bleeding and/or shitting all over the food?
They don't have to shit in the food. Have you ever been to a restaurant restroom? You know that sign that says "employees must wash hands"? There's a reason for that sign.
Amazing! That's almost two years!! How can they stand to use anything so ancient?
Mobile is a rapidly-developing technology market. Every phone I've owned has been significantly better than the last. What people are starting to understand, though, is that many of the improvements -- some of which are major -- can be delivered via software only. UI glitches in older versions would disappear... if the carrier or phone maker would just deliver the new software. But they don't. Imagine if you bought a car, and then in the next two years they put out a new model that has the same engine, same transmission, same drive train, but different software in the onboard computer, and it gets 10 mpg better gas mileage. Wouldn't you want to get your hands on that software? Now imagine GM has put a system into your car that makes it impossible to upload the new software. Wouldn't you complain?
How portable does it have to be? Most Android tablets don't include cellular equipment. Since you like Motorola, maybe a Motorola Xoom, which has a good upgrade record. Some app UIs don't look very good on tablet-sized screens, though.
That said, every Android phone I've owned has included switches for both the WiFi and 3G radios. "Airplane mode" turns off both, but you can also switch off one or the other, if you choose. Switch off the cell radio and forget about it. Or for that matter, buy a GSM Android phone and don't put a SIM card in it. Voila! Your phone will not work as a phone.
So, basically... buy whatever you want. My main suggestion is to buy it used, though, because unless you buy a phone that's been subsidized by a mobile contract, it will probably cost you $400 or more to buy new.
Here is the official Google blog announcing the Nexus S. It was announced on December 6, 2010. It wasn't available for sale in the U.S. until December 16. Even assuming you ran out and bought one the day it shipped, you still haven't owned it for three years. Not even two, in fact.
Oracle should be commended for finally bringing their "Write Once, Run Everywhere(tm)" vision to the exploit community.
Funny, but it brings up an important point. These have all been Java bugs that allow attackers to execute malicious code. The malicious code itself, though, is not Java -- it's a binary payload. So while the vulnerabilities are cross-platform, and hence so are the exploits, the actual exploits that have been discovered in the wild so far would only really harm Windows systems. They actually included a little branching JavaScript that said, essentially, "Got Windows? Download payload.exe. Else Do Nothing." It would absolutely not be impossible to craft a cross-platform exploit that sent different payloads for Mac OS X and Linux, too, but so far nobody has done that.
Might be, but it's actually still used in Africa, where it can be very effective. DDT remains potent a long time, so you can spray it around the surfaces of the interior of a hut (say) and it will keep killing mosquitoes whenever they land, and it also acts as an insect repellent to some degree. Its use was discouraged in Africa for a long time, the same way it was elsewhere, but the fact that it's again being used despite all of the opposition should demonstrate just how bad the malaria problem in some parts of Africa really is.
People in this thread need to understand a few things about malaria. For starters, malaria isn't AIDS, so there's no reason to have the same prejudices about it. You don't get malaria because you're ignorant, or stupid, or religious, or poor, or you have bad morals, or you don't believe in medicine. You get it because one time, a mosquito landed on you and bit you. That's all it takes. It could happen when you're outside working in the fields or it could happen when you're indoors, in bed, asleep.
Second, unlike AIDS, malaria doesn't go around killing everybody who gets it. In fact, a lot of people who get malaria get better. The problem is, while you're suffering from it, you are very ill. It's not, "Hey Bob, you were looking pretty rough during that PowerPoint presentation, is everything OK at home?" "Aw, well you know I got this malaria, it's really kicking my ass..." No, you are at home, in bed, covered with sweat, feeling miserable.
Third, malaria is not chicken pox. When you get better from malaria, you don't now have immunity against malaria. There are also two forms of malaria. One form, you get better and you're fine. The other form, you only seem to be fine, but the malaria will actually come back, again and again. So people in high risk areas sometimes get sick with malaria for a two-digit percentage of their adult lives.
So what we're talking about when we talk about curing malaria in Africa is improving the overall productivity of an entire region, not just increasing the population. Imagine what happens when you're a subsistence farmer who feeds your family by growing crops on your own land, but every 18 months you fall ill with malaria. Simple: You and your whole family starve.
Now imagine your chances of completing a college education if you live in a malaria-stricken area. Or finishing the third grade. One Laptop Per Child won't help you if you can't get out of bed.
People being healthy and productive isn't what causes widespread poverty and starvation. People being alive, yet unable to do even the most low-level agricultural work, let alone some kind of entrepreneurial work that can advance their community, is what causes it.
And you know what else it causes? High birth rates. When whole communities have been reduced to poverty because of disease (among other factors), most families there will support themselves through pure physical labor. What do you need to do physical labor? Hands and strong backs. One hedge against your crops failing because you come down with malaria in harvest season is to have some children who can take over the work for you. Maybe the more the better, since children aren't adults. Also, children are more vulnerable to actually die of malaria, and it's always heartbreaking to be left childless, so more people might be disinclined to stop at one.
Given all this, I can't imagine a single argument that would justify prolonging the suffering of Africa from malaria, in an age when we know exactly what causes it and we have the technology to prevent it. That's like saying the buildings keep burning down, but starting a fire department would be too expensive.
Malaria was once highly prevalent in the southern United States. We mainly used civics projects to combat it -- draining swamps and the like -- and now it's all but eradicated here. Those same methods might be impractical in Africa -- medicine is probably necessary -- but the fact that no living American remembers a time when malaria was a commonplace disease in the U.S. proves that although malaria has been with mankind since the dawn of recorded history, it doesn't need to be. Like smallpox, it may be possible to eradicate it completely. Anybody who thinks that's a bad thing needs to have their head examined.
Another day another thinly-vieled attempt at getting people to drive up page hits to the ghost towns of SlashBI/Cloud/etc. Just post the story here rather than trying redirect people to your buzzword sites.
Not to mention that the "buzzword sites" are all advertising anyway. A lot of the posts on SlashBI are by Mike Vizard, who is currently a member of the "content strategy team" at King Fish Media, a company that has trademarked the phrase "own your own media channel." Basically, Slashdot has sold itself out as a propaganda channel for tech vendors, disguised as news.
Basically you're bolting three proprietary, poorly maintained web browsers onto your shiny main webbrowser. Guess where the bugs are going to be?
To be fair, though, Java is open source. Even if you think Oracle wields too much control over it, the source code is there for anyone to read, for security purposes or otherwise.
This is my problem with how patents are being enforced in general. If you come up with the cure for cancer it is considered a crime against humanity to charge money for it. If you come up with an erectile dysfunction treatment you can charge whatever you want and make billions a year.
Citation needed. Because last I heard, getting treated for cancer costs a lot of money.
I haven't read the 106 pages of juror instructions and don't care to, nor do I know all the testimony and evidence presented, but it sounds like -- based on the jury falling back to the foreman's experience with patents -- that the judge and attorneys never really prepared a Patent Law for Dummies for the jurors.
Uh huh. And since we're all listening to you, what else do you suppose was or wasn't in the jury instructions that you can't be bothered to read?
I met a project manager at Google in London, who was on his way to a meeting at 21:00 (+0100/London), as that was 14:00 (-0700/California), and the developers in California refused to get up any earlier for the meeting.
I don't understand what you're saying. Was this person really claiming that Google developers don't get in to work before 2pm in the afternoon? Because I call B.S.
Yours is a rather simplistic response that is likely to be easily shot down by this ethicist guy, but it highlights an important point.
Arguments in favor of eugenics have always been made on the basis of the idea that the people we select for will be superior. They will be stronger, taller, able to run faster, able to throw a discus with more accuracy, they will be smarter... they will be more BLONDE!
So this guy, an ethicist, comes along and says -- because it's his speciality -- that if we breed humans properly we can make ones that are more ethical.
Logic demands that we ask, "So what?" What is the difference between breeding babies that are more ethical and breeding ones that look more like Dolph Lundgren? We have decided that one goal is abhorrent. Why is the other goal not so?
Through the lens of logic, this guy is just a eugenicist. His being an ethicist matters no more or less than him having any other job, as far as the validity of his argument goes.
From the website, though, it doesn't seem like that's a BYO plan. It looks like you have to sign up through the website to get that deal, and they will only let you sign up if you order one of their "prepaid compatible" handsets.
This is why good quality office chairs are adjustable in various ways - you're expected to adjust the various bits to suit your own body and what feels comfortable to you.
And not just once. It's not a matter of buying it and adjusting it "so it's just right for me." If you later start feeling fatigued in some way, you adjust it again. Maybe a few times a day, if it seems necessary. The human body just was not meant to sit upright and tense, arms outward, for long periods of time. Any furniture that's labeled "ergonomic" but isn't adjustable is putting you on.
$500 to promote a post? Of course companies will pony up.
At that rate, $30,000 will get you 60 promoted posts. Say you post twice a day -- and we're assuming that you're not just posting the same thing over and over, here, but you have an actual strategy. $30,000 buys you an ad campaign that lasts an entire month.
Depending how you play it, it beats an ad in a magazine, which could easily run you $30,000 (or more).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the subscription thing is primarily driven by businesses, not consumers.
You're mostly right ... so far. But if you read the current stories about Microsoft's Office 365 pitch, they are very clearly pitching consumers. There have only been two subscription plans announced for Office 2013 so far: Home & Student and Home & Business. The Business one is designed for companies with 10 employees or less. The Home & Student one includes a license to install the software on five computers, and all can be used by different people as long as they belong to the same household.
Microsoft is expected to announce enterprise subscription plans for Office 2013, but they have said nothing about it so far. It's all pretty much been home users and very small businesses.
I once said something that someone at /. apparently took offense at, because for the next several days, "someone" would go back and downmod every single post I made... but only after some time had gone by, and only posts that hadn't otherwise been upmodded.
So if I posted a comment and it got modded up to +4, nothing would happen to it. If I posted a comment that didn't get modded either way, about a day later it would suddenly get modded down one, but usually not until after that story had scrolled off the homepage.
To me, it seemed like such a weird pattern that I figured it had to be that some kind of "bitchslap" mod bot had been sicced on my account. So I emailed the editors about it. Someone emailed me back and said, "No, we don't have anything like that, nothing is happening to your posts but regular moderation from users" ... and after that, the downmods immediately stopped.
<shrug>
This is from an Intel rep:
There is no fundamental barrier to supporting Linux on Clover Trail since it utilizes Intel architecture cores, we are simply focusing our current efforts for this Clover Trail product on Windows 8. Our Medfield products support Android-based smartphones and tablets on the market today, and we may evaluate supporting Linux-based OSes on other tablet products in the future.
Just quoting, believe what you want.
Good luck convincing your bank to offer its application on Amazon or SlideME. I own an Archos 43 Internet Tablet, which didn't come with what was then called Android Market. I called a representative of Chase Bank and asked how to get Chase Quick Deposit working, and I was told that there were no plans to support my device. Nor were there plans to support a PC's flatbed scanner instead of a smartphone's rear camera.
What does either thing have to do with whether you bought the app on the Amazon store or Google Play? I'm looking at the Amazon store right now and there's a Chase Mobile app there and it says it supports Quick Deposit. If it doesn't support your device, you can't claim it's because the bank doesn't want to offer its app through Amazon, because it does. Bank of America has an app in there, too, though it looks like it explicitly only supports the Kindle Fire (which is sort of logical, since that seems to be Amazon's main app market these days).
Not only that, Intel actually originally developed Meego b'cos Windows 7 did not support the Atom.
Eh? I have an Asus Eee PC with a first-generation Atom processor and it runs Windows 7 just fine. Did you mean to say ARM?
why is the infected person bleeding and/or shitting all over the food?
They don't have to shit in the food. Have you ever been to a restaurant restroom? You know that sign that says "employees must wash hands"? There's a reason for that sign.
Errr, I don't see that response. All I see is you being sarcastic and talking about Wikipedia. I thought I'd give you a source other than Wikipedia.
Amazing! That's almost two years!! How can they stand to use anything so ancient?
Mobile is a rapidly-developing technology market. Every phone I've owned has been significantly better than the last. What people are starting to understand, though, is that many of the improvements -- some of which are major -- can be delivered via software only. UI glitches in older versions would disappear ... if the carrier or phone maker would just deliver the new software. But they don't. Imagine if you bought a car, and then in the next two years they put out a new model that has the same engine, same transmission, same drive train, but different software in the onboard computer, and it gets 10 mpg better gas mileage. Wouldn't you want to get your hands on that software? Now imagine GM has put a system into your car that makes it impossible to upload the new software. Wouldn't you complain?
How portable does it have to be? Most Android tablets don't include cellular equipment. Since you like Motorola, maybe a Motorola Xoom, which has a good upgrade record. Some app UIs don't look very good on tablet-sized screens, though.
That said, every Android phone I've owned has included switches for both the WiFi and 3G radios. "Airplane mode" turns off both, but you can also switch off one or the other, if you choose. Switch off the cell radio and forget about it. Or for that matter, buy a GSM Android phone and don't put a SIM card in it. Voila! Your phone will not work as a phone.
So, basically... buy whatever you want. My main suggestion is to buy it used, though, because unless you buy a phone that's been subsidized by a mobile contract, it will probably cost you $400 or more to buy new.
Here is the official Google blog announcing the Nexus S. It was announced on December 6, 2010. It wasn't available for sale in the U.S. until December 16. Even assuming you ran out and bought one the day it shipped, you still haven't owned it for three years. Not even two, in fact.
Oracle should be commended for finally bringing their "Write Once, Run Everywhere(tm)" vision to the exploit community.
Funny, but it brings up an important point. These have all been Java bugs that allow attackers to execute malicious code. The malicious code itself, though, is not Java -- it's a binary payload. So while the vulnerabilities are cross-platform, and hence so are the exploits, the actual exploits that have been discovered in the wild so far would only really harm Windows systems. They actually included a little branching JavaScript that said, essentially, "Got Windows? Download payload.exe. Else Do Nothing." It would absolutely not be impossible to craft a cross-platform exploit that sent different payloads for Mac OS X and Linux, too, but so far nobody has done that.
How about, "DDT might be harmful to birds' eggs?"
Might be, but it's actually still used in Africa, where it can be very effective. DDT remains potent a long time, so you can spray it around the surfaces of the interior of a hut (say) and it will keep killing mosquitoes whenever they land, and it also acts as an insect repellent to some degree. Its use was discouraged in Africa for a long time, the same way it was elsewhere, but the fact that it's again being used despite all of the opposition should demonstrate just how bad the malaria problem in some parts of Africa really is.
... they'll all die of starvation anyway.
People in this thread need to understand a few things about malaria. For starters, malaria isn't AIDS, so there's no reason to have the same prejudices about it. You don't get malaria because you're ignorant, or stupid, or religious, or poor, or you have bad morals, or you don't believe in medicine. You get it because one time, a mosquito landed on you and bit you. That's all it takes. It could happen when you're outside working in the fields or it could happen when you're indoors, in bed, asleep.
Second, unlike AIDS, malaria doesn't go around killing everybody who gets it. In fact, a lot of people who get malaria get better. The problem is, while you're suffering from it, you are very ill. It's not, "Hey Bob, you were looking pretty rough during that PowerPoint presentation, is everything OK at home?" "Aw, well you know I got this malaria, it's really kicking my ass..." No, you are at home, in bed, covered with sweat, feeling miserable.
Third, malaria is not chicken pox. When you get better from malaria, you don't now have immunity against malaria. There are also two forms of malaria. One form, you get better and you're fine. The other form, you only seem to be fine, but the malaria will actually come back, again and again. So people in high risk areas sometimes get sick with malaria for a two-digit percentage of their adult lives.
So what we're talking about when we talk about curing malaria in Africa is improving the overall productivity of an entire region, not just increasing the population. Imagine what happens when you're a subsistence farmer who feeds your family by growing crops on your own land, but every 18 months you fall ill with malaria. Simple: You and your whole family starve.
Now imagine your chances of completing a college education if you live in a malaria-stricken area. Or finishing the third grade. One Laptop Per Child won't help you if you can't get out of bed.
People being healthy and productive isn't what causes widespread poverty and starvation. People being alive, yet unable to do even the most low-level agricultural work, let alone some kind of entrepreneurial work that can advance their community, is what causes it.
And you know what else it causes? High birth rates. When whole communities have been reduced to poverty because of disease (among other factors), most families there will support themselves through pure physical labor. What do you need to do physical labor? Hands and strong backs. One hedge against your crops failing because you come down with malaria in harvest season is to have some children who can take over the work for you. Maybe the more the better, since children aren't adults. Also, children are more vulnerable to actually die of malaria, and it's always heartbreaking to be left childless, so more people might be disinclined to stop at one.
Given all this, I can't imagine a single argument that would justify prolonging the suffering of Africa from malaria, in an age when we know exactly what causes it and we have the technology to prevent it. That's like saying the buildings keep burning down, but starting a fire department would be too expensive.
Malaria was once highly prevalent in the southern United States. We mainly used civics projects to combat it -- draining swamps and the like -- and now it's all but eradicated here. Those same methods might be impractical in Africa -- medicine is probably necessary -- but the fact that no living American remembers a time when malaria was a commonplace disease in the U.S. proves that although malaria has been with mankind since the dawn of recorded history, it doesn't need to be. Like smallpox, it may be possible to eradicate it completely. Anybody who thinks that's a bad thing needs to have their head examined.
Another day another thinly-vieled attempt at getting people to drive up page hits to the ghost towns of SlashBI/Cloud/etc. Just post the story here rather than trying redirect people to your buzzword sites.
Not to mention that the "buzzword sites" are all advertising anyway. A lot of the posts on SlashBI are by Mike Vizard, who is currently a member of the "content strategy team" at King Fish Media, a company that has trademarked the phrase "own your own media channel." Basically, Slashdot has sold itself out as a propaganda channel for tech vendors, disguised as news.
Basically you're bolting three proprietary, poorly maintained web browsers onto your shiny main webbrowser. Guess where the bugs are going to be?
To be fair, though, Java is open source. Even if you think Oracle wields too much control over it, the source code is there for anyone to read, for security purposes or otherwise.
This is my problem with how patents are being enforced in general. If you come up with the cure for cancer it is considered a crime against humanity to charge money for it. If you come up with an erectile dysfunction treatment you can charge whatever you want and make billions a year.
Citation needed. Because last I heard, getting treated for cancer costs a lot of money.
It may have something to do with the fact that they get $50 per day, including expenses? Is that even above the minimum wage?
And when you eventually go to court for something, do you honestly want the jury to be there for the money?
I haven't read the 106 pages of juror instructions and don't care to, nor do I know all the testimony and evidence presented, but it sounds like -- based on the jury falling back to the foreman's experience with patents -- that the judge and attorneys never really prepared a Patent Law for Dummies for the jurors.
Uh huh. And since we're all listening to you, what else do you suppose was or wasn't in the jury instructions that you can't be bothered to read?
I met a project manager at Google in London, who was on his way to a meeting at 21:00 (+0100/London), as that was 14:00 (-0700/California), and the developers in California refused to get up any earlier for the meeting.
I don't understand what you're saying. Was this person really claiming that Google developers don't get in to work before 2pm in the afternoon? Because I call B.S.
didn't the Nazis try this a few years back ??
Yours is a rather simplistic response that is likely to be easily shot down by this ethicist guy, but it highlights an important point.
Arguments in favor of eugenics have always been made on the basis of the idea that the people we select for will be superior. They will be stronger, taller, able to run faster, able to throw a discus with more accuracy, they will be smarter ... they will be more BLONDE!
So this guy, an ethicist, comes along and says -- because it's his speciality -- that if we breed humans properly we can make ones that are more ethical.
Logic demands that we ask, "So what?" What is the difference between breeding babies that are more ethical and breeding ones that look more like Dolph Lundgren? We have decided that one goal is abhorrent. Why is the other goal not so?
Through the lens of logic, this guy is just a eugenicist. His being an ethicist matters no more or less than him having any other job, as far as the validity of his argument goes.
It might only be 2012, but here's an article about this same brain from 2011, and it was actually discovered in 2008. "Old news," indeed.
From the website, though, it doesn't seem like that's a BYO plan. It looks like you have to sign up through the website to get that deal, and they will only let you sign up if you order one of their "prepaid compatible" handsets.
This is why good quality office chairs are adjustable in various ways - you're expected to adjust the various bits to suit your own body and what feels comfortable to you.
And not just once. It's not a matter of buying it and adjusting it "so it's just right for me." If you later start feeling fatigued in some way, you adjust it again. Maybe a few times a day, if it seems necessary. The human body just was not meant to sit upright and tense, arms outward, for long periods of time. Any furniture that's labeled "ergonomic" but isn't adjustable is putting you on.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I just cannot fathom 'meating' my future food.
Hey, what's the problem, earthman?
$500 to promote a post? Of course companies will pony up.
At that rate, $30,000 will get you 60 promoted posts. Say you post twice a day -- and we're assuming that you're not just posting the same thing over and over, here, but you have an actual strategy. $30,000 buys you an ad campaign that lasts an entire month.
Depending how you play it, it beats an ad in a magazine, which could easily run you $30,000 (or more).