Video gaming in general could have used more prominence in TFA. After all, it's undoubtedly a part of the tech sector.
But not as widely relevant as computers, phones, or the internet. I'd guess those are all used by 99% of TFA's readers, and use of media such as TV and music are probably over 95%. Sure, games are popular, but not quite so universal. For example, the last console I owned was an Atari, and unless you count the couple apps I installed on my iPhone out of curiosity, the last video game I played was Riven.
You didn't get 911 service in your area until 2001?
Sorry for the pedantry, but referring to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 with a phone number is sloppy (could you at least try to put a slash or a dash in there?), and trivializes the event.
I'm old enough to appreciate the value of a piece of tech that has served so well for so long. Likewise, I have a soft spot for the land-line and the command line. But there are pleasurable vices that we simply can't afford to cling to, and the big petrol-burning engine is one of them.
So after all these years of fretting that users of free OSes are unwilling to support worthwhile commercial development for them (e.g. ports of popular apps and games to Linux, to free people from the tyranny of Windows and Mac OS), we now have a Linux-based platform that is attracting commercial development and that's a problem?
What I find difficult to wrap my mind around is the fact that anyone really cares this much what song is at #1 on Christmas. Yes, I know, it's a long-standing British fixation, presumably starting from some record label or another trumpeting about how popular a gift their latest 45 was. And it's nice that from time to time it can be used to focus attention on something serious, like with "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
Under the Berne Convention and all other copyright treaties, local copyright laws apply in every country. Trademark laws are local as well. The state of Holy See could pass legislation copyrighting the Bible for God's sake (pun intended), and it would have no impact whatsoever on the rest of the world, where that legislation has no relevance.
Whether organizations around the world connected to the Roman Catholic Church are affected by this isn't a matter of copyright law. That's simply a matter of the rules that a church lays out for its members. If the RCC says "no meat on Friday" or "no condoms" or "no use of the pope's logo without permission", that's just a church being a church. I can see members of that church being concerned about a change in those rules, but is this News For Nerds or Stuff That Matters? No.
This sounds like Steve Jobs before he announced that the iPhone would be supporting native apps and not just web apps. It already had a pretty fast, capable browser, and there were hardly any apps for it. Within a week of shipping an SDK, there were hundreds.
Money orders are still used by the underclass who don't have checking accounts. Just drive through "the bad part of town" and look at the windows of the convenience stores that serve as the local groceries, and the check-cashing places that substitute for banks. You'll see plenty of signs advertising the sale of money orders and bill-paying services. These are all horribly overpriced, of course, taking advantage of people who can't maintain the minimum balances or afford the fees required for checking. Google "the poor pay more" for more info about this phenomenon.
I used to work at an Apple store, and always hated it when someone wanted to pay with a check. It wasn't so much the fact that it required transferring the transaction from my portable checkout device to the one remaining register; when someone paid with cash we'd have to do the same thing (and it was entertaining counting out $2000 in twenties once in a while). It was the hell of getting approval for their checks. Unlike a credit card or a debit card, which is approved/denied based on a simple mag-strip read and an electronic query of how much credit/money the person has left, the check approval requires a MICR scan (which usually failed), hand-typing their driver's license # and zip code, scribbling codes on their check, and in about 1 in 10 times ended with a phone call to the check authorization service, which is using some kind of black magic to determine whether the person is trustworthy or not. You can have $10K in the bank and still get your check rejected for a $1K purchase if you let your cable bill go unpaid in protest over them dropping the Bowling Channel.
Debit cards aren't a perfect solution, however. Most people don't realize that their bank puts a limit on the size of transactions, so even if you have enough money in your account to pay for that lovely new MacBook Pro, it'll probably be declined if you don't call them ahead of time to OK it.
Exactly. This smacks of someone getting very very angry and lashing out without giving any thought to what he's trying to accomplish, and how to achieve them. Sometimes an uncivil riot gets results. This isn't one of them. Stupid tactics, stupid strategy.
I think any software company that wasn't named in this suit should sue for defamation. Since this is a "Who's Who" of software developers, being left out implies that they aren't important.
Figuring out the specs for en/decoding the data is no big deal. Display devices capable of producing the images without costing a small fortune and requiring the viewer to wear glasses... that's the challenge.
POTS is a mature, robust technology that provides remarkably clear and reliable voice service throughout the country (nearly the globe) at an affordable cost.
DSL isn't IP over voice. Your typical ADSL configuration is IP running on the same copper alongside voice (or more properly, POTS). It can also be run on copper without POTS (sometimes called "naked DSL"), but the Bells don't like that because it means letting people drop their landlines.
"99% of use would be a child scared by something which is not actually illegal or dangerous and the responder simply explaining what happened and closing the problematic content."
And who exactly is going to provide this handholding/babysitting service? And take the liability for when (not if) they brush something off that turns out to be serious?
This would be the electronic equivalent of a kid yelling "mom!" every time something happens they don't like. What's the penalty going to be for kids who "push the dolphin" because the printer doesn't work, or a web site is asking them to upgrade their PDF plug-in, or some other kid posted a message saying that [insert child pop star here] is a poopyhead?
For the 13,674th time, people: Please stop asking the government to parent our children. It's not their job.
But "Tell them to leave" is not a lawful order from a police officer. The police do not have the legal authority to order you to say anything. They can ask you to, just like they can ask you to let them search your house, or ask you to confess to a crime, but that's not an order.
We should set up small groups around the country to independently engage in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math... call them STEM Cells, and watch the right-wingers line up to ban funding them, on reflex.
They have to know that they're never going to get the source code. A) It'd be an incredibly earth-shattering precedent, and B) it's beside the point to what they're charging. It doesn't matter of Apple and AT&T colluded to brick one hacked phone, odd-numbered hacked-phones, or even hacked phones on Verizon's network. If the issue is the practice of tying the purchase of an iPhone to the purchase of an AT&T service plan, the source code is not relevant. It's a contractual question, not a technical one. This kind of tangential waste of time on a pointless bit of discovery that's obviously not germane to the charges, but only serves to yank the chain of the defendant, could backfire by pissing off the judge.
I use a similar mix of OSes and devices. I don't have a serious strategy for keeping files in synch between them, but what I do works pretty well. First, I have a Linux box running Samba which is the official "home" for all data; OS X, Windows, and Linux can all access this anywhere around the house. For stuff I'm working on that I know I'll want to access away from home, I use my MobileMe account; OS X knows how to use the iDisk natively, and there's a utility to map a Windows drive letter to it (but without background synching, damnit). (A Linux laptop should be able to access the iDisk through WebDAV, but I haven't had a reason to try that.) For files I didn't know I'd want on the road, there's always SFTP back to the Linux server. I manually copy files from the iDisk to the server every few days... like I said, it's mostly for active projects. For semi-remote backup, the server "cp -dupR"s files nightly to a wifi-connected little Linux box with a big disk, tucked away in the basement, and the Macs use my Time Capsule, mostly for their software (the Aperture and iTunes libraries are on the file server).
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But not as widely relevant as computers, phones, or the internet. I'd guess those are all used by 99% of TFA's readers, and use of media such as TV and music are probably over 95%. Sure, games are popular, but not quite so universal. For example, the last console I owned was an Atari, and unless you count the couple apps I installed on my iPhone out of curiosity, the last video game I played was Riven.
You didn't get 911 service in your area until 2001?
Sorry for the pedantry, but referring to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 with a phone number is sloppy (could you at least try to put a slash or a dash in there?), and trivializes the event.
I'm old enough to appreciate the value of a piece of tech that has served so well for so long. Likewise, I have a soft spot for the land-line and the command line. But there are pleasurable vices that we simply can't afford to cling to, and the big petrol-burning engine is one of them.
So after all these years of fretting that users of free OSes are unwilling to support worthwhile commercial development for them (e.g. ports of popular apps and games to Linux, to free people from the tyranny of Windows and Mac OS), we now have a Linux-based platform that is attracting commercial development and that's a problem?
What I find difficult to wrap my mind around is the fact that anyone really cares this much what song is at #1 on Christmas. Yes, I know, it's a long-standing British fixation, presumably starting from some record label or another trumpeting about how popular a gift their latest 45 was. And it's nice that from time to time it can be used to focus attention on something serious, like with "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
But really: Why does it matter?
Under the Berne Convention and all other copyright treaties, local copyright laws apply in every country. Trademark laws are local as well. The state of Holy See could pass legislation copyrighting the Bible for God's sake (pun intended), and it would have no impact whatsoever on the rest of the world, where that legislation has no relevance.
Whether organizations around the world connected to the Roman Catholic Church are affected by this isn't a matter of copyright law. That's simply a matter of the rules that a church lays out for its members. If the RCC says "no meat on Friday" or "no condoms" or "no use of the pope's logo without permission", that's just a church being a church. I can see members of that church being concerned about a change in those rules, but is this News For Nerds or Stuff That Matters? No.
This sounds like Steve Jobs before he announced that the iPhone would be supporting native apps and not just web apps. It already had a pretty fast, capable browser, and there were hardly any apps for it. Within a week of shipping an SDK, there were hundreds.
Money orders are still used by the underclass who don't have checking accounts. Just drive through "the bad part of town" and look at the windows of the convenience stores that serve as the local groceries, and the check-cashing places that substitute for banks. You'll see plenty of signs advertising the sale of money orders and bill-paying services. These are all horribly overpriced, of course, taking advantage of people who can't maintain the minimum balances or afford the fees required for checking. Google "the poor pay more" for more info about this phenomenon.
I used to work at an Apple store, and always hated it when someone wanted to pay with a check. It wasn't so much the fact that it required transferring the transaction from my portable checkout device to the one remaining register; when someone paid with cash we'd have to do the same thing (and it was entertaining counting out $2000 in twenties once in a while). It was the hell of getting approval for their checks. Unlike a credit card or a debit card, which is approved/denied based on a simple mag-strip read and an electronic query of how much credit/money the person has left, the check approval requires a MICR scan (which usually failed), hand-typing their driver's license # and zip code, scribbling codes on their check, and in about 1 in 10 times ended with a phone call to the check authorization service, which is using some kind of black magic to determine whether the person is trustworthy or not. You can have $10K in the bank and still get your check rejected for a $1K purchase if you let your cable bill go unpaid in protest over them dropping the Bowling Channel.
Debit cards aren't a perfect solution, however. Most people don't realize that their bank puts a limit on the size of transactions, so even if you have enough money in your account to pay for that lovely new MacBook Pro, it'll probably be declined if you don't call them ahead of time to OK it.
Exactly. This smacks of someone getting very very angry and lashing out without giving any thought to what he's trying to accomplish, and how to achieve them. Sometimes an uncivil riot gets results. This isn't one of them. Stupid tactics, stupid strategy.
More likely, the judges in question take their popularity as an indication that they're doing the right thing, and keep at it.
I think any software company that wasn't named in this suit should sue for defamation. Since this is a "Who's Who" of software developers, being left out implies that they aren't important.
I for one, am a little nervous about meeting our flying, heat-vision-wielding overlords from Super-Earth.
Figuring out the specs for en/decoding the data is no big deal. Display devices capable of producing the images without costing a small fortune and requiring the viewer to wear glasses... that's the challenge.
"Its amazing what a little bit of copper wire can do."
Quoted for wisdom.
POTS is a mature, robust technology that provides remarkably clear and reliable voice service throughout the country (nearly the globe) at an affordable cost.
Of course we're going to replace it.
I'm 44. I'm pretty sure POTS will outlive me.
DSL isn't IP over voice. Your typical ADSL configuration is IP running on the same copper alongside voice (or more properly, POTS). It can also be run on copper without POTS (sometimes called "naked DSL"), but the Bells don't like that because it means letting people drop their landlines.
"seriously evaluate how this disruptive model will change your projects, your organization, and even your career"
For the worse? Anyone who thinks that "disruptive" is a positive attribute is someone who is divorced from real-world concerns.
"99% of use would be a child scared by something which is not actually illegal or dangerous and the responder simply explaining what happened and closing the problematic content."
And who exactly is going to provide this handholding/babysitting service? And take the liability for when (not if) they brush something off that turns out to be serious?
This would be the electronic equivalent of a kid yelling "mom!" every time something happens they don't like. What's the penalty going to be for kids who "push the dolphin" because the printer doesn't work, or a web site is asking them to upgrade their PDF plug-in, or some other kid posted a message saying that [insert child pop star here] is a poopyhead?
For the 13,674th time, people: Please stop asking the government to parent our children. It's not their job.
But "Tell them to leave" is not a lawful order from a police officer. The police do not have the legal authority to order you to say anything. They can ask you to, just like they can ask you to let them search your house, or ask you to confess to a crime, but that's not an order.
Wikitravel is your friend. While you're at it, become Wikitravel's friend and contribute.
We should set up small groups around the country to independently engage in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math... call them STEM Cells, and watch the right-wingers line up to ban funding them, on reflex.
They have to know that they're never going to get the source code. A) It'd be an incredibly earth-shattering precedent, and B) it's beside the point to what they're charging. It doesn't matter of Apple and AT&T colluded to brick one hacked phone, odd-numbered hacked-phones, or even hacked phones on Verizon's network. If the issue is the practice of tying the purchase of an iPhone to the purchase of an AT&T service plan, the source code is not relevant. It's a contractual question, not a technical one. This kind of tangential waste of time on a pointless bit of discovery that's obviously not germane to the charges, but only serves to yank the chain of the defendant, could backfire by pissing off the judge.
I use a similar mix of OSes and devices. I don't have a serious strategy for keeping files in synch between them, but what I do works pretty well. First, I have a Linux box running Samba which is the official "home" for all data; OS X, Windows, and Linux can all access this anywhere around the house. For stuff I'm working on that I know I'll want to access away from home, I use my MobileMe account; OS X knows how to use the iDisk natively, and there's a utility to map a Windows drive letter to it (but without background synching, damnit). (A Linux laptop should be able to access the iDisk through WebDAV, but I haven't had a reason to try that.) For files I didn't know I'd want on the road, there's always SFTP back to the Linux server. I manually copy files from the iDisk to the server every few days... like I said, it's mostly for active projects. For semi-remote backup, the server "cp -dupR"s files nightly to a wifi-connected little Linux box with a big disk, tucked away in the basement, and the Macs use my Time Capsule, mostly for their software (the Aperture and iTunes libraries are on the file server).