A young, british male wandering around the US, lamenting on his MySpace page that there's no good soccer?
Not sure where the plug for the car was supposed to be, but I am betting this was supposed to be targeted towards fanatical soccer fans (pardon my redundancy).
The quotes in the article make it sound like the guy is touring around the country and maybe looking for places to crash. Perhaps with sympathetic fellow soccer lovers.
Unless there are some quotes that weren't included in the article, I'd say the menace this woman felt when reading these emails was entirely of her own making.
Most people have no particular obligation, need, or desire to fix programs or write their own. It's a total matter of choice.
Huh? Most people I know spend every minute they're at the computer wishing that the software they have to use was better, smarter, more efficient and more adapted to their way of working.
However, they recognize that they do not have the skills required to change the behavior of their computer. To this they turn to experts.
The GP's point is quite apt. Complicated systems require expertise. Wishing that life was simple does not make it so.
they don't do patent searches, because willful violation is treble damages
That is bizarre reasoning. Since they're still paying damages at the end of the day.
Ostensibly a patent search would reveal that your product is patented and therefore you can't sell it without permission from the inventor. So either, you get permission or you change your product so it's no longer infringing.
the third option (the one implied by the quote above), continue selling infringing product in the hopes that you don't get caught is stupid and anyone who does that deserves to pay triple.
Though as a rule of thumb if you're worried about the cost of hiring a lawyer, then your software probably isn't going to run afoul of any patent trolls.
Patent trolls generally don't sue people with no money.
Her school won't let her carry a concealed weopen [sic], I want her to carry my pistol but I'm afraid if she gets caught with it there would be criminal charges filed.
...because "Teacher Kills Student During Class" is just such a terrific headline.
Well let's see... the GP didn't RTFA (or even visit the F site) and instead took the overwrought summary's troll-ish interpretation as fact. You echoed the GP with the specious argument that you have "first hand experience" and some vague criticism of "government contracts".
I am forced to assume you didn't look at the site in question. And so the basis for your comment is just your personal opinion. Which you are entitled to.
However, I did look at the site and I think you're wrong.
Since, if you clicked through the site at all you might understand that they are addressing employees who use their computers to access sensitive information and don't think critically about the vulnerabilities in the software they download and use every day.
Now, you might have no respect for such people, but they are highly skilled in areas other than IT. And they need training and simple rules of thumb, like P2P file-sharing is dangerous and prohibited (which is what the site actually says on the subject).
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
So: 1) based on the source material (TFA), your thesis statement (sub-par pieces of crap) appears unfounded 2) there's nothing on the referenced site or in the summary about health care reform 3) the current debate on health care reform is already laden with troll-ish arguments like "we can't trust government to run healthcare" and "pulling the plug on grandma"
and as a bonus there's 4) you think 3 people modding you insightful on Slashdot means that everyone agrees with you
Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[33] This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners.[33][34] A leaked cash flow statement showed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million.[35]
that's over $40 million to develop a site to let people share pictures, play scrabble, and post nonsensical one-liners about how bored they are at work.
$18 million so that everyone can see how the disparate federal agencies are spending their appropriations... if it works, I'd say that's worth it.
Whoever we elect has to deal with all the other people we elected. Not to mention the thousands of people who've spent years of their lives (and upon whom we've spent millions of dollars) to become experts in their fields so they can accurately advise the president.
Though I am sure Ron Paul would have had all the answers. He would have know how to forestall a second great depression, made peace with the suicide bombers in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, reversed the spread of AIDS and malaria in Africa and brought prescription and health care costs to 1970s levels.
Why, his very presence would have inspired NASA to...
oh wait, he would have spent all his political capital trying to do away with the income tax. his platform of drastically reduced federal spending and lax regulation would have been perfectly timed for our recent recession. the slashing of federal spending just as private capital was drying up would have an incredible impact on our way of life.
and then after the fallout and devastation following the second great depression the survivors could get to the real business of building a new utopia based on the works of Ayn Rand.
it might be a little silly when your bank balance is $30 million and your wife is constantly taking out hundreds of thousands to buy new cars and planes.
and of course, then she says that the $10k is for a way for everyone in the family to more honestly account for the money they are using.
what a crazy hypothetical. why didn't you use Osama Bin Laden?
there's probably a lot of interesting little things in government contracts. but then there are a lot of interesting things in my wireless phone contract. it seems to be the nature of the beast.
do you actually think if you could read the full text you would find a place where it said, "The President of the United States will have a secret password that will allow him to edit anything he wants so no one will know it happened."?
I mean, you think of the Federal Government as one big unified whole, acting to screw you at every step. But it's really an enormous collection of disparate entities (made up of regular people doing their jobs) that have a wide variety of purposes, goals and agendas and almost always in conflict with itself.
These entities send reports hither and thither, and that information goes to some people in government and not others. It's hard to keep track of what's going on and there's no central place for it all.
Now Obama's idea (probably not his idea originally, but he's a proponent of it) is to not only store that information centrally, but also to make it available to everyone.
I can see the value in it and I don't see the point of dismissing it as a propaganda tool before it ever exists.
it was the panties thing!? wow, I struck a little close to the mark apparently. Guess I could have said "Nothing to see here, move along."
so let's see. $16M for a website that will coordinate disparate information flowing from all the federal government's offices and organizations, collating that information securely and providing it quickly and to thousands of users on a daily basis.
a little on the pricey side, sure, but it looks like these systems will tie in to the DoD and other sensitive agencies. I don't suppose that's easy stuff to do. also, they've probably put a rush on it. hard to judge until we see the finished product, though, eh?
Is it just me or is Slashdot really ramping up the troll articles lately?
Do people really care what the details are of the contract for building a website? (I can assure you it's full of semi-technically garble designed to assure both parties that on the one hand the work will get done and on the other hand they will get paid for it.) Or does this just provide the Obama-haters in the audience another thing to bloviate over?
That it's mostly redacted is probably overkill and I suppose regrettable. But it's not like there's any information in that document you or I might be interested in. (If only they hadn't redacted it we would now know the location of Sadam's WMDs!)
They're just building a website, people! Don't get your panties in a bunch.
I read the privacy policy and it doesn't really seem like it's built to cover this kind of snooping.
And then there's this:
You may choose whether or not to provide your personal information to us. If you choose not to do so, you can continue to interact with Palm, but you may not be able to take advantage of certain products, services, offers, or options that depend on personal information.
So is there a website or a setting on the Pre to disable this thing. TFA seems to say there isn't.
I mean, there's utility in understanding how people are using your device. But not letting your users know you're uploading daily usage stats and not giving them a way to turn it off?
The US has adopted a "subscriber pays" model wherein the wireless customer pays a higher price and for incoming minutes but those who call him and do so at the same rate as any other phone call.
i don't know what wireless company you're using, but I am billed for both incoming and outgoing minutes & texts.
It doesn't really tell us much to see a per month cost break down without looking at all of these other factors.
I can't tell if your subject line is intended to be ironic. The report does compare apples to apples, maybe you actually would prefer an apples to oranges comparison instead.
Including the marketing gimmicks that you call "perks" in the calculation of a per-minute rate only serves to occlude the fact almost everyone in the US pays a fixed monthly rate.
If I use 100 minutes or 0 minutes or 1000 minutes or destroy my phone with a sledgehammer my bill at the end of the month is the same. So a "per minute" calculation (and comparison) is meaningless to me.
This report points out that for that monthly fee I get the same (or less) features and service that people in every other country get, except I pay more for it.
seriously. and add to your example that at some point over the term of your contract, you wind up paying off the subsidy (probably long before your contract ends). but your rate never goes down. even at the end of the contract, when surely the phone company has recouped the subsidy, you never get a discount.
the phone companies are playing a shell game, and we're all suckers.
if the price of a iPhone is too daunting for your customers, do what other retail stores do, pay by installments!
there's no reason you can't have two contracts: one for the phone (which lasts until you've paid off the balance), one for the service (which lasts until you get sick of your carrier).
what a weird argument you're making here. are you suggesting that federal and state agencies prevent the phone companies from changing their plans and pricing? if they do, it can't be that much of a hassle, because Verizon does it all the time!
I believe the GP is suggesting that Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and Cingular all act as a cartel in the US to artificially control prices, keep out competition and constrain consumer choice.
Why on earth is it the default to hide coursenotes from students who are not enrolled on a particular course?
Perhaps because universities would like to prevent people from auditing courses that they didn't pay for.
Of course, you're right in that BB should have made it easier to set up document sharing between courses, but there are educational institutions that have a legitimate interest in preventing/limiting that behavior.
Since neither FAQ mentioned any mechanism for reporting sites that have illegal content, I assume that means they're relying on some dedicated law-enforcement professionals to go out looking for child porn/bestial porn.
That's gonna make that first date "and what do you do?" conversation a little awkward.
And hey, slowing down everyone's internet experience for only half a million dollars/year? That's quite a steal!
And don't forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature. Microsoft and Google have yet to do something like that.
Hmm. So he wishes that Google would try to revolutionize a mature market. Like say, Operating Systems and Office Software, maybe? (Perhaps mobile phones as well).
Or perhaps he wishes Microsoft could take a risk and try to revolutionize a mature market. Like, um, I don't know... search?
Cringely dismisses the chances of two brand new efforts to succeed out of hand. He thinks that Bing wont work because Google's too dominant and Chrome wont work because Microsoft's too dominant. His primary argument is that neither company has enough people on the project.
But the iPhone wasn't developed by a team of 1,000 people. And it could have failed because Nokia/Blackberry/Motorolla were too dominant. It succeeded because it was better than any of the products it competed against.
In short, Cringely is a moron and no one should pay any attention to him.
Slashdot Mirror
A young, british male wandering around the US, lamenting on his MySpace page that there's no good soccer?
Not sure where the plug for the car was supposed to be, but I am betting this was supposed to be targeted towards fanatical soccer fans (pardon my redundancy).
The quotes in the article make it sound like the guy is touring around the country and maybe looking for places to crash. Perhaps with sympathetic fellow soccer lovers.
Unless there are some quotes that weren't included in the article, I'd say the menace this woman felt when reading these emails was entirely of her own making.
Most people have no particular obligation, need, or desire to fix programs or write their own. It's a total matter of choice.
Huh? Most people I know spend every minute they're at the computer wishing that the software they have to use was better, smarter, more efficient and more adapted to their way of working.
However, they recognize that they do not have the skills required to change the behavior of their computer. To this they turn to experts.
The GP's point is quite apt. Complicated systems require expertise. Wishing that life was simple does not make it so.
they don't do patent searches, because willful violation is treble damages
That is bizarre reasoning. Since they're still paying damages at the end of the day.
Ostensibly a patent search would reveal that your product is patented and therefore you can't sell it without permission from the inventor. So either, you get permission or you change your product so it's no longer infringing.
the third option (the one implied by the quote above), continue selling infringing product in the hopes that you don't get caught is stupid and anyone who does that deserves to pay triple.
Hire a lawyer.
Though as a rule of thumb if you're worried about the cost of hiring a lawyer, then your software probably isn't going to run afoul of any patent trolls.
Patent trolls generally don't sue people with no money.
Her school won't let her carry a concealed weopen [sic], I want her to carry my pistol but I'm afraid if she gets caught with it there would be criminal charges filed.
...because "Teacher Kills Student During Class" is just such a terrific headline.
Well let's see... the GP didn't RTFA (or even visit the F site) and instead took the overwrought summary's troll-ish interpretation as fact. You echoed the GP with the specious argument that you have "first hand experience" and some vague criticism of "government contracts".
I am forced to assume you didn't look at the site in question. And so the basis for your comment is just your personal opinion. Which you are entitled to.
However, I did look at the site and I think you're wrong.
Since, if you clicked through the site at all you might understand that they are addressing employees who use their computers to access sensitive information and don't think critically about the vulnerabilities in the software they download and use every day.
Now, you might have no respect for such people, but they are highly skilled in areas other than IT. And they need training and simple rules of thumb, like P2P file-sharing is dangerous and prohibited (which is what the site actually says on the subject).
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
ala Wikipedia
So:
1) based on the source material (TFA), your thesis statement (sub-par pieces of crap) appears unfounded
2) there's nothing on the referenced site or in the summary about health care reform
3) the current debate on health care reform is already laden with troll-ish arguments like "we can't trust government to run healthcare" and "pulling the plug on grandma"
and as a bonus there's
4) you think 3 people modding you insightful on Slashdot means that everyone agrees with you
yeah, I don't know... what do you think?
From wikipedia:
Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[33] This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners.[33][34] A leaked cash flow statement showed that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million.[35]
that's over $40 million to develop a site to let people share pictures, play scrabble, and post nonsensical one-liners about how bored they are at work.
$18 million so that everyone can see how the disparate federal agencies are spending their appropriations... if it works, I'd say that's worth it.
Whoever we elect has to deal with all the other people we elected. Not to mention the thousands of people who've spent years of their lives (and upon whom we've spent millions of dollars) to become experts in their fields so they can accurately advise the president.
Though I am sure Ron Paul would have had all the answers. He would have know how to forestall a second great depression, made peace with the suicide bombers in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, reversed the spread of AIDS and malaria in Africa and brought prescription and health care costs to 1970s levels.
Why, his very presence would have inspired NASA to ...
oh wait, he would have spent all his political capital trying to do away with the income tax. his platform of drastically reduced federal spending and lax regulation would have been perfectly timed for our recent recession. the slashing of federal spending just as private capital was drying up would have an incredible impact on our way of life.
and then after the fallout and devastation following the second great depression the survivors could get to the real business of building a new utopia based on the works of Ayn Rand.
now that is change I can believe in! sign me up!
Once again we see how the perfect is the enemy of the good.
And Stallman can do whatever he wants. I will use the tool that's best for the job.
it might be a little silly when your bank balance is $30 million and your wife is constantly taking out hundreds of thousands to buy new cars and planes.
and of course, then she says that the $10k is for a way for everyone in the family to more honestly account for the money they are using.
how much is Facebook purportedly worth? ~$4 billion.
how much did MySpace lose its owner (News Corp) this year? $680 million.
what a crazy hypothetical. why didn't you use Osama Bin Laden?
there's probably a lot of interesting little things in government contracts. but then there are a lot of interesting things in my wireless phone contract. it seems to be the nature of the beast.
do you actually think if you could read the full text you would find a place where it said, "The President of the United States will have a secret password that will allow him to edit anything he wants so no one will know it happened."?
I mean, you think of the Federal Government as one big unified whole, acting to screw you at every step. But it's really an enormous collection of disparate entities (made up of regular people doing their jobs) that have a wide variety of purposes, goals and agendas and almost always in conflict with itself.
These entities send reports hither and thither, and that information goes to some people in government and not others. It's hard to keep track of what's going on and there's no central place for it all.
Now Obama's idea (probably not his idea originally, but he's a proponent of it) is to not only store that information centrally, but also to make it available to everyone.
I can see the value in it and I don't see the point of dismissing it as a propaganda tool before it ever exists.
it was the panties thing!? wow, I struck a little close to the mark apparently. Guess I could have said "Nothing to see here, move along."
so let's see. $16M for a website that will coordinate disparate information flowing from all the federal government's offices and organizations, collating that information securely and providing it quickly and to thousands of users on a daily basis.
a little on the pricey side, sure, but it looks like these systems will tie in to the DoD and other sensitive agencies. I don't suppose that's easy stuff to do. also, they've probably put a rush on it. hard to judge until we see the finished product, though, eh?
how much is Facebook hypothetically worth again?
was it the panties thing?
Is it just me or is Slashdot really ramping up the troll articles lately?
Do people really care what the details are of the contract for building a website? (I can assure you it's full of semi-technically garble designed to assure both parties that on the one hand the work will get done and on the other hand they will get paid for it.) Or does this just provide the Obama-haters in the audience another thing to bloviate over?
That it's mostly redacted is probably overkill and I suppose regrettable. But it's not like there's any information in that document you or I might be interested in. (If only they hadn't redacted it we would now know the location of Sadam's WMDs!)
They're just building a website, people! Don't get your panties in a bunch.
I read the privacy policy and it doesn't really seem like it's built to cover this kind of snooping.
And then there's this:
You may choose whether or not to provide your personal information to us. If you choose not to do so, you can continue to interact with Palm, but you may not be able to take advantage of certain products, services, offers, or options that depend on personal information.
So is there a website or a setting on the Pre to disable this thing. TFA seems to say there isn't.
I mean, there's utility in understanding how people are using your device. But not letting your users know you're uploading daily usage stats and not giving them a way to turn it off?
Truly Uncool.
The US has adopted a "subscriber pays" model wherein the wireless customer pays a higher price and for incoming minutes but those who call him and do so at the same rate as any other phone call.
i don't know what wireless company you're using, but I am billed for both incoming and outgoing minutes & texts.
It doesn't really tell us much to see a per month cost break down without looking at all of these other factors.
I can't tell if your subject line is intended to be ironic. The report does compare apples to apples, maybe you actually would prefer an apples to oranges comparison instead.
Including the marketing gimmicks that you call "perks" in the calculation of a per-minute rate only serves to occlude the fact almost everyone in the US pays a fixed monthly rate.
If I use 100 minutes or 0 minutes or 1000 minutes or destroy my phone with a sledgehammer my bill at the end of the month is the same. So a "per minute" calculation (and comparison) is meaningless to me.
This report points out that for that monthly fee I get the same (or less) features and service that people in every other country get, except I pay more for it.
And we all know what upstanding members of their local and international community the companies that run diamond mines and their distributors are.
seriously. and add to your example that at some point over the term of your contract, you wind up paying off the subsidy (probably long before your contract ends). but your rate never goes down. even at the end of the contract, when surely the phone company has recouped the subsidy, you never get a discount.
the phone companies are playing a shell game, and we're all suckers.
if the price of a iPhone is too daunting for your customers, do what other retail stores do, pay by installments!
there's no reason you can't have two contracts: one for the phone (which lasts until you've paid off the balance), one for the service (which lasts until you get sick of your carrier).
what a weird argument you're making here. are you suggesting that federal and state agencies prevent the phone companies from changing their plans and pricing? if they do, it can't be that much of a hassle, because Verizon does it all the time!
I believe the GP is suggesting that Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and Cingular all act as a cartel in the US to artificially control prices, keep out competition and constrain consumer choice.
Is that clear enough?
Why on earth is it the default to hide coursenotes from students who are not enrolled on a particular course?
Perhaps because universities would like to prevent people from auditing courses that they didn't pay for.
Of course, you're right in that BB should have made it easier to set up document sharing between courses, but there are educational institutions that have a legitimate interest in preventing/limiting that behavior.
Sir, I think you are mistaken.
Your "data" source is a pop-psychology magazine article with specious sounding and essentially unsupported claims.
The evidence presented sounds more like they're making up rationales and cherry-picking facts to fit their pre-conceived story line.
For further reading, I found this wikipedia page about one of the authors enlightening.
Since neither FAQ mentioned any mechanism for reporting sites that have illegal content, I assume that means they're relying on some dedicated law-enforcement professionals to go out looking for child porn/bestial porn.
That's gonna make that first date "and what do you do?" conversation a little awkward.
And hey, slowing down everyone's internet experience for only half a million dollars/year? That's quite a steal!
From the article
And don't forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature. Microsoft and Google have yet to do something like that.
Hmm. So he wishes that Google would try to revolutionize a mature market. Like say, Operating Systems and Office Software, maybe? (Perhaps mobile phones as well).
Or perhaps he wishes Microsoft could take a risk and try to revolutionize a mature market. Like, um, I don't know... search?
Cringely dismisses the chances of two brand new efforts to succeed out of hand. He thinks that Bing wont work because Google's too dominant and Chrome wont work because Microsoft's too dominant. His primary argument is that neither company has enough people on the project.
But the iPhone wasn't developed by a team of 1,000 people. And it could have failed because Nokia/Blackberry/Motorolla were too dominant. It succeeded because it was better than any of the products it competed against.
In short, Cringely is a moron and no one should pay any attention to him.