Subscribing to shows instead of channels was (is?) the iTunes model of selling TV. I don't think the market wants that. (Which is good, because it would it would spell the end of the "sleeper" hit, or most niche programming.) Ye olde radio, traditional basic cable, and the current popularity of streaming music all point to a desire for access to a general mass of content, for people to select from without a whole lot of thought.
In the next several years I think we're going to move to a hybrid subscription-to-channels/libraries model, where people pay a monthly fee to ESPN, HBO, Syfy, WWE, Golf, or some other collection of content that appeals to their interests (much like people used to subscribe to magazines), along with a general service or two like Hulu or Netflix which offers a package of content that roughly corresponds to the old broadcast and basic-cable networks.
The AppleTV sat in the corner of Apple Stores for a long time, doing pretty much nothing. I worked at one between "real" jobs about five years ago, and whenever a customer noticed the AppleTV and asked about it, I described it as "Apple best-kept secret". Not that it was a difficult secret to keep, because there was almost nothing to say about it. I don't recall ever selling one. Granted, that was a rather different device from the current streaming box (my other pitch line was "an iPod for your movies"), but it was definitely a "hobby" in the same sense that the IRS defines one: something you do on the side without expecting to make any money from it.
Don't factor your son's draft registration into your decision-making. There is absolutely no will in Washington to reinstate the draft, and to do so after so many decades without it would be political suicide. And even if that changes somehow before he ages out of eligibility, a dual-citizen raised and living abroad wouldn't have much trouble getting a deferment (which goes double if we're at war with Belgium or Sweden).
So here's a guy who calls himself a "libertarian", declaring that it's not legal for a private entity to refuse to do business with him based on their political views.
The irony is that the kind of people who post comments on articles on web sites tend to be the least qualified to do so. By commenting on a news article, you are acknowledging that you have nothing more constructive to do with your time, and that you aren't satisfied with the attention that you get from the people around you. The level of hateful and ignorant bile in most news sites' comment sections is so great that anyone who would stoop to adding to them must be kinda sad and desperate.
And yes, I am completely aware that my comments here contain a full day's supply of irony.
Is there really any one person – even Theo de Raadt – who is personally familiar with the entirety of OpenBSD? And even if there are such people, isn't that more a reflection of the fact that it's fundamentally still Ye Olde BSD (which was tightly focused and built-to-purpose), and not a modern general-purpose OS?
It's a "solution" that only a libertarian would think is workable. Instead of enforceable government regulation, it's a voluntary opt-in system run by a private entity, which will work because all people are "rational actors" who will see that their self-interest is served by it. Or something.
It isn't just Linux; it's the nature of modern systems to become "too complex". Back in the days of my youth, it was possible for one person to grok an entire operating system, but it simply isn't possible anymore, unless it's a tightly-focused and built-to-purpose system.
Home schooling is a great way to ensure that your children get the same singular viewpoint and misinformation that their parents grew up with, and that they aren't burdened by the intellectual challenge of deciding which of the conflicting ideas they might encounter from classmates and teachers, is correct.
Just as a healthy immune system needs exposure to a variety of germs during the formative years (with some vaccinations to take care of the worst ones), a healthy intellect needs exposure to a variety of ideas, good and bad. Involved parents at home help to quash the most irredeemable ideas that kids will be exposed to (like vaccines do), while letting children reach their own conclusions about the rest of them (and generally landing pretty close to the tree).
It's bad enough that adults are increasingly getting all of their news and information from singular ideological sources (Fox News, HuffPo, etc), but to restrict the intellectual diet of a child to what Mom and Dad teach them will isolate them before they even leave the nest. One of the great achievements of the American publication education system in the 20th century – something that was worth breaking down separate-but-equal to accomplish – was to bring together children of different ethnicities, religions, races, and even (to some extent) economic classes, teaching them a shared history and a shared set of values. Which they learned as much from each other as from the teacher. As a member of a Middle-Class White Protestant Republican family, I'm a better person – a better citizen – now because of the time I spent learning side by side with kids who weren't all of those things... and in some cases none of them.
The notion that Facebook supports free expression is really quite laughable. You don't even need to be a government to get Facebook to censor images for you. Their content-reporting system allows one self-appointed censor to complain anonymously about an image they don't like (such as two clothed men about to kiss, or PG13-level partial male nudity), and if the complaint gets assigned to someone equally homophobic, the image gets deleted and the person who posted it gets blocked, with no effective method of appeal. The whole Facebook content-policing system is rigged heavily in favor of bullies and censors.
Blu-ray is already a physical-media format that we don't need. The CD isn't obsolete simply because a higher-capacity disc came along to replace it; it's obsolete because there's a better way to music files: the internet. The DVD is on the way out for the same reason. In fact, if not for the streaming rights being a licensing clusterfuck, Netflix would have completely shut down its DVD-mailing business by now. We don't need another higher-resolution media format. We just need a convenient way to watch movies at whatever resolution our display devices can manage, and that's the internet + a licensing clearinghouse.
Health care still uses faxes. Lots of semi-confidential information + routine signature requirements + an industry staffed largely by computer-illiterates = an amazing quantity of images of sheets of paper transmitted via the switched telephony network.
While it's true that low-interest voters tend to be low-information voters, there is also the problem that highly-interested voters are often highly misinformed voters. You have fundamentalist preachers frightening their congregations to vote in favor of bans on same-sex marriage by telling them horror stories about gay couples adopting babies to molest; or dogmatic political organizations telling their members to vote against a candidate because she's going to take their handguns and hunting rifles away, when all she said was that she'd look into restricting sales of assault weapons. Voters who haven't been mainlining bullshit propaganda crafted to "mobilize the base" can actually have a better grasp of the truth.
Another human that you create is not a "semi-autonomous bot". It is a self-aware person, and is held responsible for its own actions. Maybe if you can demonstrate that your bot is sentient and fully autonomous, that'll get you off the hook.
Slashdot Mirror
If the executive in charge of branding back in the mid-00's was still in charge, it would be called 2016 Microsoft Windows Office Internet.
If they're selling a lot of them, that's something new. As I said: I went a year without selling one.
In other news, job candidates who fill out applications online are more likely to be computer literate than those who fill them out on paper.
Subscribing to shows instead of channels was (is?) the iTunes model of selling TV. I don't think the market wants that. (Which is good, because it would it would spell the end of the "sleeper" hit, or most niche programming.) Ye olde radio, traditional basic cable, and the current popularity of streaming music all point to a desire for access to a general mass of content, for people to select from without a whole lot of thought.
In the next several years I think we're going to move to a hybrid subscription-to-channels/libraries model, where people pay a monthly fee to ESPN, HBO, Syfy, WWE, Golf, or some other collection of content that appeals to their interests (much like people used to subscribe to magazines), along with a general service or two like Hulu or Netflix which offers a package of content that roughly corresponds to the old broadcast and basic-cable networks.
The AppleTV sat in the corner of Apple Stores for a long time, doing pretty much nothing. I worked at one between "real" jobs about five years ago, and whenever a customer noticed the AppleTV and asked about it, I described it as "Apple best-kept secret". Not that it was a difficult secret to keep, because there was almost nothing to say about it. I don't recall ever selling one. Granted, that was a rather different device from the current streaming box (my other pitch line was "an iPod for your movies"), but it was definitely a "hobby" in the same sense that the IRS defines one: something you do on the side without expecting to make any money from it.
Don't factor your son's draft registration into your decision-making. There is absolutely no will in Washington to reinstate the draft, and to do so after so many decades without it would be political suicide. And even if that changes somehow before he ages out of eligibility, a dual-citizen raised and living abroad wouldn't have much trouble getting a deferment (which goes double if we're at war with Belgium or Sweden).
Sports Illustrated devotes every issue to readers who've had this procedure done.
Apple and Microsoft seem to be working hard to make BeOS look modern again.
So here's a guy who calls himself a "libertarian", declaring that it's not legal for a private entity to refuse to do business with him based on their political views.
I did say "sad and desperate".
The irony is that the kind of people who post comments on articles on web sites tend to be the least qualified to do so. By commenting on a news article, you are acknowledging that you have nothing more constructive to do with your time, and that you aren't satisfied with the attention that you get from the people around you. The level of hateful and ignorant bile in most news sites' comment sections is so great that anyone who would stoop to adding to them must be kinda sad and desperate.
And yes, I am completely aware that my comments here contain a full day's supply of irony.
https://twitter.com/avoidcomme...
Or maybe the comments are just so full of utter garbage posted by the most degenerate members of society that it turns off regular readers.
Or maybe the Irish goddess.
"Lack of national unity" isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Is there really any one person – even Theo de Raadt – who is personally familiar with the entirety of OpenBSD? And even if there are such people, isn't that more a reflection of the fact that it's fundamentally still Ye Olde BSD (which was tightly focused and built-to-purpose), and not a modern general-purpose OS?
It's a "solution" that only a libertarian would think is workable. Instead of enforceable government regulation, it's a voluntary opt-in system run by a private entity, which will work because all people are "rational actors" who will see that their self-interest is served by it. Or something.
It isn't just Linux; it's the nature of modern systems to become "too complex". Back in the days of my youth, it was possible for one person to grok an entire operating system, but it simply isn't possible anymore, unless it's a tightly-focused and built-to-purpose system.
Not just Common Sense, also The Federalist Papers .
Home schooling is a great way to ensure that your children get the same singular viewpoint and misinformation that their parents grew up with, and that they aren't burdened by the intellectual challenge of deciding which of the conflicting ideas they might encounter from classmates and teachers, is correct.
Just as a healthy immune system needs exposure to a variety of germs during the formative years (with some vaccinations to take care of the worst ones), a healthy intellect needs exposure to a variety of ideas, good and bad. Involved parents at home help to quash the most irredeemable ideas that kids will be exposed to (like vaccines do), while letting children reach their own conclusions about the rest of them (and generally landing pretty close to the tree).
It's bad enough that adults are increasingly getting all of their news and information from singular ideological sources (Fox News, HuffPo, etc), but to restrict the intellectual diet of a child to what Mom and Dad teach them will isolate them before they even leave the nest. One of the great achievements of the American publication education system in the 20th century – something that was worth breaking down separate-but-equal to accomplish – was to bring together children of different ethnicities, religions, races, and even (to some extent) economic classes, teaching them a shared history and a shared set of values. Which they learned as much from each other as from the teacher. As a member of a Middle-Class White Protestant Republican family, I'm a better person – a better citizen – now because of the time I spent learning side by side with kids who weren't all of those things ... and in some cases none of them.
This venue is not recommend for commercial transactions initiated through the "personals" section of Craigslist.
The notion that Facebook supports free expression is really quite laughable. You don't even need to be a government to get Facebook to censor images for you. Their content-reporting system allows one self-appointed censor to complain anonymously about an image they don't like (such as two clothed men about to kiss, or PG13-level partial male nudity), and if the complaint gets assigned to someone equally homophobic, the image gets deleted and the person who posted it gets blocked, with no effective method of appeal. The whole Facebook content-policing system is rigged heavily in favor of bullies and censors.
Blu-ray is already a physical-media format that we don't need. The CD isn't obsolete simply because a higher-capacity disc came along to replace it; it's obsolete because there's a better way to music files: the internet. The DVD is on the way out for the same reason. In fact, if not for the streaming rights being a licensing clusterfuck, Netflix would have completely shut down its DVD-mailing business by now. We don't need another higher-resolution media format. We just need a convenient way to watch movies at whatever resolution our display devices can manage, and that's the internet + a licensing clearinghouse.
Health care still uses faxes. Lots of semi-confidential information + routine signature requirements + an industry staffed largely by computer-illiterates = an amazing quantity of images of sheets of paper transmitted via the switched telephony network.
While it's true that low-interest voters tend to be low-information voters, there is also the problem that highly-interested voters are often highly misinformed voters. You have fundamentalist preachers frightening their congregations to vote in favor of bans on same-sex marriage by telling them horror stories about gay couples adopting babies to molest; or dogmatic political organizations telling their members to vote against a candidate because she's going to take their handguns and hunting rifles away, when all she said was that she'd look into restricting sales of assault weapons. Voters who haven't been mainlining bullshit propaganda crafted to "mobilize the base" can actually have a better grasp of the truth.
Another human that you create is not a "semi-autonomous bot". It is a self-aware person, and is held responsible for its own actions. Maybe if you can demonstrate that your bot is sentient and fully autonomous, that'll get you off the hook.