I have to say, I never thought the list would be so bad! I have to really look at the list to believe the ideas are really crap.
As you said, most of the ideas are complete crap. I can just barely find one that is even worth voting for. If not for that single one, I won't bother to vote at all. The rest are either completely stupid, or are so US centric that you can find the solution by just look at how the rest of the world did it.
What is killing console games is the inflexibility in pricing structures. Although AAA release game is okay at $60, a game like "Darkest of Days" is not. But since they are stuck in the same distribution channels they are forced into this pricing structure that doesn't make sense for the game.
Where have you been for the past ~2 years?
On the PS3, I can buy and play lots of cheap games. For just ~$15 (or $10? I forgot) I bought Battlefield 1943, and I must have enjoyed hundreds of hours of play already.
And what kind of career future or possible achievements would a genius salesperson have in a store where "selling stuff is not the main focus"?
If that's really Microsoft's position, then a top salesperson joining them for higher pay would be hurting his future career growth for near-term payout. Might work if you are near retiring, but not a good idea for younger "star" sales.
Keep in mind that until last week, we had no direct evidence of something so basic to modern physics as the Bohr model
Sorry, but this statement alone indicate that you don't know what you are talking about.
First off, the Bohr model is wrong, we already knew that. But if you really mean the model of electron orbits, the means Quantum Electrodynamics, then it has been measured and tested and is correct to umpteenth decimal places, that you would have a hard time finding another theory that was tested even more than QED.
If you insist that only pretty pictures could mean "direct evidence" then you know nothing about actual science.
Defining a "hit" as one of the top ten or top 1000 or any absolute number is stupid.
While it sounds stupid, using a top xx% is, in a way, validating the idea of long tail.
Why? Because before Amazon, when book stores are still only brick and mortar, there is only so much physical space to hold top 1000 or however many number of books. Note that this number is fixed, it won't grow because more kinds of books are published.
So having an absolute number of top 100 or top 1000 simply corresponds to the physical constraint that most bookstore can only put so many books on the shelf.
The advantage that Amazon has over physical book stores is that it can hold practically unlimited number of books. So only now, without the physical constrain, we can practically use top 10% instead. This, in fact, proved that there are many more profitable books outside top 1000 (or however many), and that physical bookstores are missing out many sales due to it.
It should only be fair to note that Sony might not be handling most YLOD repairs
Wrong. Whoever modded you insightful has not read Sony's reply either.
Sony's replied stated, under point 4: "SCEUK has run searches of its customer complaints/warranty database to identify the number of reports made to it regarding instances of system shutdown or failure in circumstances where the front panel yellow indicator is illuminated. The results show that of all PS3s sold in the UK to date, fewer than one half of one per cent of units have been reported as failing in circumstances where the yellow indicator is illuminated." (Emphasis mine)
Common sense said that if someone has a problem with PS3 failing, the first reaction would be to call Sony to try to get a free repair, and only when that failed, go to 3rd party repair shop to compare repair prices.
So a normal human being would conclude that 0.5% is a good indication of the failure rate for YLOD.
I don't care that the law says pedestrians have the right of way
This is one of a big mystery for me, not being a USian.
Do pedestrians really always have the right of way in the US? You mean I can just step out blindly into a road, and if a car hits me, it is automatically his fault? If so, it simply does not make sense!
Others having mentioned phishing, I will and another point.
Do you want your ISP or mail provider (Google or Yahoo) read all you bills and bank statements? That's what will happen if they email you a plain PDF. How about encrypted? Then good luck remembering the password 6 months later when you need to check the old statement, not to mention having to remember dozens of passwords from different sources.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but this is the current (insane) state of copyright laws we have. If game companies recreate real cities from tourists' pictures and put them in games, they are violating the copyrights of those tourists. I assume putting pictures on Flickr does not mean assigning copyright to them nor gave blanket permission to 3rd parties to do whatever they want.
If game companies like the current "protection" of the copyright laws, they need to be bound by the same rules.
Another theory would be you need to tell those students (who have never been to the US) how actual life in the US is. Even though they read about people like Madoff earning gazillions by cheating, and watched many US movies where cheating and lying works, they would actually get into big trouble if they try to do that themselves.
Native USians have no idea how their news and movies (those that made it to other countries) portray their own country to the world.
When you are already carrying a gadget around, with enough battery power, gobs of free memory available and enough processing power, is it that much a leap to put a camera on it?
I assume you don't have kids, because if you do, you would know that parents (surprise!) like their kids and will take lots of pictures/videos of them if only they have a camera handy. Some parents take to always carry a small camera, and would appreciate if their iPod can take pictures so they don't have to carry another gadget.
Personally, I found that after I got a phone with a camera, I took many more pictures. It is just like texting and sending email, you would never know how often people would do it until you give them the ability to do so easily.
NO one should be allowed to get this deal. That's sort of the whole point.
So would humankind be better off without digital access to old books?
Would you rather the old books are not scanned and stored, so if the last physical copy is lost, the content would be lost forever?
Isn't the whole purpose of copyright the betterment of humankind? Why wouldn't the betterment of humankind trumps whatever "rights" held by copyrights holders?
No idea why people are so keen on protecting Google though. This looks like they're trying to make a deal with a subset of publishers that will affect everyone, and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
I can't say about other people. But for me, the point is Google is the first one to take the effort to actually do this (scanning the books and make it available). Now that Google has done it, everyone comes and criticize them for this and that, but would any of them do this thing if Google has not done it?
With this in mind, the motive of all those naysayers are very suspect. Do they simply want to kill Google's initiative at the start and leave us without digital access to old books? And thus keep their old business model (whatever it is) intact? Or to avoid having to compete in a new area?
As someone else said, having some access through Google is better than no access at all.
there's so many sub-plots, and new characters, and little side quests, that you can go through an entire book and the main plot didn't advance at all.
I may be the minority here, but I actually liked the side plots and other characters. Although some of the characters (e.g. Perrin and Faile) I would prefer Jordan not to write so long about, but I understand some people do like them so I tolerate it.
While it may seems like the main plot didn't advance, but I say it would make a boring story if we just read Rand blow through all obstacles one by one and then win Tarmon Gaidon (we all knew he will win, don't we?) and then "The End". When Jordan describe the background and thoughts of even "side" characters (e.g. Bors) in detail, I appreciate the effort he took and amazed at the consistency of the whole thing.
From the start, it is quite clear to me that the story is about more than just Rand. Especially when the story focused on Mat leaving Tar Valon, I realized every one from Edmund's Field will play an important part.
I started when the first 4 books or so have been published, have re-read the series nearly every time a new book came out (and a couple times extra in-between), so I must have gone the whole thing 5-6 times by now. Yet on every re-read, I noticed things I missed before, and found hints and subtle references in the early books about plots revealed a few books later in the series. E.g. Mat first saw the Tower on Genjei (sp?) very early in the story when fleeing Shadar Logoth (I think), then a few books later Perrin saw it again in the World of Dream when chasing Slayer, then more hints about "snakes and foxes" when Mat play with Olver, and finally in the previous book we know Mat is going to get inside to save Moiranne (sp?).
I felt amazed at the gigantic plot Jordan was weaving in the book, and I can appreciate both the effort it took and realize it may take time to read. This is not the "I will write another sequel if it sells" kind of series here. It is clear that Jordan has at least most of the major plots in he head every early in the series.
I also realize this series is not for every one.
But if it took 3 more books for Mr. Sanderson to finish the story properly, I thank him for taking the time to do the job properly (at his own expense too!) rather than taking a shortcut.
It does not even make sense! China restricts exports and you propose retaliation by restricting imports?!
I assume you live in US (who else always talked about reviving local industries?), do you even know how many export restrictions there are in the US? Crypto, high-tech stuff, whatever vaguely related to "national security", you name it.
All countries (except those that have already became a vassal state of the US) restricts exports of critical resources, and this is allowed in WTO treaties. Examples from countries all over the world include restricting natural resources, science & technology, and even critical infrastructure (you do know that US blocked a company from buying the operations of the Panama Canal for "national security" reasons?).
Only in/. would this non-news story becomes news worthy to make the front page.
Could you explain to me why you seemed so concerned about having to finish the series?
For the record, I enjoyed every book of the series, some more, some less, but all enjoyable on the whole. So I don't mind Jordan writing out book after book, except for the fact that he didn't live long enough to write more.
Why would it upset you if the series go to book 20 if every one of them is good? Is it because you no longer like the book and just have to "finish" it? If so, why not just consider the last book you read as "finished" and move on? I did that with the Sword of Truth series, I just stopped after book 6 or 7 and never bothered the rest.
Looking at the comments in the last book of the Sword of Truth series, you can see lots of comments saying they just "have to finish it" even though they don't like the series anymore. I just wonder if so many negative comments about Jordan not finishing the book comes from people who just cannot stop even though they no longer like the series.
Reading George R.R. Martin's series will really put things in perspective, when it comes to authors wallowing in their sense of self importance and milking a popular series for all it is worth.
I take it you have not read The Sword of Truth series...
As an employee, I routinely have to stay working much more than 20 minutes after the "official" office hours, and my employers "didn't think it was a big deal" either.
(Note 1 USD ~= 7.8 HKD) The cheapest is less than US$10 a month, and most expensive ~US$75, and these are "no-contract" prices, you can get even cheaper if you willing to sign up a, e.g., 2-year contract.
Oh, yeah, by the way, all phones (including the iPhone) sold here are not locked to carrier. You can free plug-in another carrier's SIM card whenever you like, AND you can move your old number to the new carrier too.
Companies who lose sight of who the real customer is...
While I have no love for the **AA, I think you are mistaken in this case.
They have a very clear sight of who their customers are - the advertisement sponsors.
People "clicking their way around the screen" are the product which they sold to the ad sponsors. As calling people "product" is not a good idea, they used another very precise term - "consumers".
Like a livestock eating away at ("consuming") the feed, it doesn't matter what junk they use for the feed as long as the customer is ok with it. Have you ever cared what was used to feed the cow when you bought a pack of beef as long as it won't poison you? Ad sponsors won't care what's in the show as long as it won't reflect badly on their brand.
They have actually demonstrated that they have both the ability and the will to delete books from your kindle.
It is no longer a hypothetical situation when people say "Amazon could delete books you have paid for on your Kindle". It is now a FACT that Amazon had deleted paid-for books on customers Kindle, and they could do it again if they wish to.
This is the best example for showing what harm DRM could do from customers' point of view.
No amount of apology or refund is going to cover this up, unless they publicly send out an update to all Kindle to disable this ability to delete books, and then they have to hope people actually believe it.
I may be an optimizing freak, but in my view, how to solve a problem depends heavily which language and environment you will using.
For the same problem, I might use a approach in C++ that I would not consider at all if using Java, and vice versa. I might use yet another approach if I am on a Unix machine without a JVM, so I might even decide to use shell scripts instead of writing C++/Java program to solve.
In other words, picking the right solution depends heavily on context. If you take away the context (which, often, contains the constraint), then any "solution" is just empty talk.
For real world examples, have you ever seen programmers read 1 million rows from the database, then process each row-by-row to add up some amount XXX based on another field "TYPE" of that record? In theory, his approach is entirely correct! The program gives the correct result, it just run 100-1000x slower than simply "SELECT SUM(XXX), TYPE FROM TABLE_X GROUP BY TYPE".
1000x slower is not a joke, I have seen programs that used to run for a few hours but now finishes in 30 seconds with this kind of change.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say, I never thought the list would be so bad! I have to really look at the list to believe the ideas are really crap.
As you said, most of the ideas are complete crap. I can just barely find one that is even worth voting for. If not for that single one, I won't bother to vote at all. The rest are either completely stupid, or are so US centric that you can find the solution by just look at how the rest of the world did it.
What is killing console games is the inflexibility in pricing structures. Although AAA release game is okay at $60, a game like "Darkest of Days" is not. But since they are stuck in the same distribution channels they are forced into this pricing structure that doesn't make sense for the game.
Where have you been for the past ~2 years?
On the PS3, I can buy and play lots of cheap games. For just ~$15 (or $10? I forgot) I bought Battlefield 1943, and I must have enjoyed hundreds of hours of play already.
And what kind of career future or possible achievements would a genius salesperson have in a store where "selling stuff is not the main focus"?
If that's really Microsoft's position, then a top salesperson joining them for higher pay would be hurting his future career growth for near-term payout. Might work if you are near retiring, but not a good idea for younger "star" sales.
This is the most insightful comment in the whole thread!
I agree completely, don't waste your time working in companies where you need these tricks, life is just too short. Look for a way out asap.
Keep in mind that until last week, we had no direct evidence of something so basic to modern physics as the Bohr model
Sorry, but this statement alone indicate that you don't know what you are talking about.
First off, the Bohr model is wrong, we already knew that. But if you really mean the model of electron orbits, the means Quantum Electrodynamics, then it has been measured and tested and is correct to umpteenth decimal places, that you would have a hard time finding another theory that was tested even more than QED.
If you insist that only pretty pictures could mean "direct evidence" then you know nothing about actual science.
Defining a "hit" as one of the top ten or top 1000 or any absolute number is stupid.
While it sounds stupid, using a top xx% is, in a way, validating the idea of long tail.
Why? Because before Amazon, when book stores are still only brick and mortar, there is only so much physical space to hold top 1000 or however many number of books. Note that this number is fixed, it won't grow because more kinds of books are published.
So having an absolute number of top 100 or top 1000 simply corresponds to the physical constraint that most bookstore can only put so many books on the shelf.
The advantage that Amazon has over physical book stores is that it can hold practically unlimited number of books. So only now, without the physical constrain, we can practically use top 10% instead. This, in fact, proved that there are many more profitable books outside top 1000 (or however many), and that physical bookstores are missing out many sales due to it.
It should only be fair to note that Sony might not be handling most YLOD repairs
Wrong. Whoever modded you insightful has not read Sony's reply either.
Sony's replied stated, under point 4: "SCEUK has run searches of its customer complaints/warranty database to identify the number of reports made to it regarding instances of system shutdown or failure in circumstances where the front panel yellow indicator is illuminated. The results show that of all PS3s sold in the UK to date, fewer than one half of one per cent of units have been reported as failing in circumstances where the yellow indicator is illuminated." (Emphasis mine)
Common sense said that if someone has a problem with PS3 failing, the first reaction would be to call Sony to try to get a free repair, and only when that failed, go to 3rd party repair shop to compare repair prices.
So a normal human being would conclude that 0.5% is a good indication of the failure rate for YLOD.
I don't care that the law says pedestrians have the right of way
This is one of a big mystery for me, not being a USian.
Do pedestrians really always have the right of way in the US? You mean I can just step out blindly into a road, and if a car hits me, it is automatically his fault? If so, it simply does not make sense!
Others having mentioned phishing, I will and another point.
Do you want your ISP or mail provider (Google or Yahoo) read all you bills and bank statements? That's what will happen if they email you a plain PDF. How about encrypted? Then good luck remembering the password 6 months later when you need to check the old statement, not to mention having to remember dozens of passwords from different sources.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but this is the current (insane) state of copyright laws we have. If game companies recreate real cities from tourists' pictures and put them in games, they are violating the copyrights of those tourists. I assume putting pictures on Flickr does not mean assigning copyright to them nor gave blanket permission to 3rd parties to do whatever they want.
If game companies like the current "protection" of the copyright laws, they need to be bound by the same rules.
Another theory would be you need to tell those students (who have never been to the US) how actual life in the US is. Even though they read about people like Madoff earning gazillions by cheating, and watched many US movies where cheating and lying works, they would actually get into big trouble if they try to do that themselves.
Native USians have no idea how their news and movies (those that made it to other countries) portray their own country to the world.
How about, because people find it convenient?
When you are already carrying a gadget around, with enough battery power, gobs of free memory available and enough processing power, is it that much a leap to put a camera on it?
I assume you don't have kids, because if you do, you would know that parents (surprise!) like their kids and will take lots of pictures/videos of them if only they have a camera handy. Some parents take to always carry a small camera, and would appreciate if their iPod can take pictures so they don't have to carry another gadget.
Personally, I found that after I got a phone with a camera, I took many more pictures. It is just like texting and sending email, you would never know how often people would do it until you give them the ability to do so easily.
And how would having digital, accessible copies old books damage the "moral rights" of their authors?
NO one should be allowed to get this deal. That's sort of the whole point.
So would humankind be better off without digital access to old books?
Would you rather the old books are not scanned and stored, so if the last physical copy is lost, the content would be lost forever?
Isn't the whole purpose of copyright the betterment of humankind? Why wouldn't the betterment of humankind trumps whatever "rights" held by copyrights holders?
No idea why people are so keen on protecting Google though. This looks like they're trying to make a deal with a subset of publishers that will affect everyone, and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
I can't say about other people. But for me, the point is Google is the first one to take the effort to actually do this (scanning the books and make it available). Now that Google has done it, everyone comes and criticize them for this and that, but would any of them do this thing if Google has not done it?
With this in mind, the motive of all those naysayers are very suspect. Do they simply want to kill Google's initiative at the start and leave us without digital access to old books? And thus keep their old business model (whatever it is) intact? Or to avoid having to compete in a new area?
As someone else said, having some access through Google is better than no access at all.
there's so many sub-plots, and new characters, and little side quests, that you can go through an entire book and the main plot didn't advance at all.
I may be the minority here, but I actually liked the side plots and other characters. Although some of the characters (e.g. Perrin and Faile) I would prefer Jordan not to write so long about, but I understand some people do like them so I tolerate it.
While it may seems like the main plot didn't advance, but I say it would make a boring story if we just read Rand blow through all obstacles one by one and then win Tarmon Gaidon (we all knew he will win, don't we?) and then "The End". When Jordan describe the background and thoughts of even "side" characters (e.g. Bors) in detail, I appreciate the effort he took and amazed at the consistency of the whole thing.
From the start, it is quite clear to me that the story is about more than just Rand. Especially when the story focused on Mat leaving Tar Valon, I realized every one from Edmund's Field will play an important part.
I started when the first 4 books or so have been published, have re-read the series nearly every time a new book came out (and a couple times extra in-between), so I must have gone the whole thing 5-6 times by now. Yet on every re-read, I noticed things I missed before, and found hints and subtle references in the early books about plots revealed a few books later in the series. E.g. Mat first saw the Tower on Genjei (sp?) very early in the story when fleeing Shadar Logoth (I think), then a few books later Perrin saw it again in the World of Dream when chasing Slayer, then more hints about "snakes and foxes" when Mat play with Olver, and finally in the previous book we know Mat is going to get inside to save Moiranne (sp?).
I felt amazed at the gigantic plot Jordan was weaving in the book, and I can appreciate both the effort it took and realize it may take time to read. This is not the "I will write another sequel if it sells" kind of series here. It is clear that Jordan has at least most of the major plots in he head every early in the series.
I also realize this series is not for every one.
But if it took 3 more books for Mr. Sanderson to finish the story properly, I thank him for taking the time to do the job properly (at his own expense too!) rather than taking a shortcut.
It does not even make sense! China restricts exports and you propose retaliation by restricting imports?!
I assume you live in US (who else always talked about reviving local industries?), do you even know how many export restrictions there are in the US? Crypto, high-tech stuff, whatever vaguely related to "national security", you name it.
All countries (except those that have already became a vassal state of the US) restricts exports of critical resources, and this is allowed in WTO treaties. Examples from countries all over the world include restricting natural resources, science & technology, and even critical infrastructure (you do know that US blocked a company from buying the operations of the Panama Canal for "national security" reasons?).
Only in /. would this non-news story becomes news worthy to make the front page.
Could you explain to me why you seemed so concerned about having to finish the series?
For the record, I enjoyed every book of the series, some more, some less, but all enjoyable on the whole. So I don't mind Jordan writing out book after book, except for the fact that he didn't live long enough to write more.
Why would it upset you if the series go to book 20 if every one of them is good? Is it because you no longer like the book and just have to "finish" it? If so, why not just consider the last book you read as "finished" and move on? I did that with the Sword of Truth series, I just stopped after book 6 or 7 and never bothered the rest.
Looking at the comments in the last book of the Sword of Truth series, you can see lots of comments saying they just "have to finish it" even though they don't like the series anymore. I just wonder if so many negative comments about Jordan not finishing the book comes from people who just cannot stop even though they no longer like the series.
Reading George R.R. Martin's series will really put things in perspective, when it comes to authors wallowing in their sense of self importance and milking a popular series for all it is worth.
I take it you have not read The Sword of Truth series...
As an employee, I routinely have to stay working much more than 20 minutes after the "official" office hours, and my employers "didn't think it was a big deal" either.
Go and travel around the world. Heck, go and browse the web sites of mobile phone carriers outside the US, there are plenty $20/month plan.
E.g. http://www.smartone-vodafone.com/jsp/mobile/prices/monthly_plans/english/index.jsp#basic
(Note 1 USD ~= 7.8 HKD) The cheapest is less than US$10 a month, and most expensive ~US$75, and these are "no-contract" prices, you can get even cheaper if you willing to sign up a, e.g., 2-year contract.
Oh, yeah, by the way, all phones (including the iPhone) sold here are not locked to carrier. You can free plug-in another carrier's SIM card whenever you like, AND you can move your old number to the new carrier too.
Ideally, they would want every viewer to pay every time their content is heard or viewed ...
No, ideally, they would want every viewer to pay regardless of whether the content was viewed or not.
Companies who lose sight of who the real customer is ...
While I have no love for the **AA, I think you are mistaken in this case.
They have a very clear sight of who their customers are - the advertisement sponsors.
People "clicking their way around the screen" are the product which they sold to the ad sponsors. As calling people "product" is not a good idea, they used another very precise term - "consumers".
Like a livestock eating away at ("consuming") the feed, it doesn't matter what junk they use for the feed as long as the customer is ok with it. Have you ever cared what was used to feed the cow when you bought a pack of beef as long as it won't poison you? Ad sponsors won't care what's in the show as long as it won't reflect badly on their brand.
Exactly.
They have actually demonstrated that they have both the ability and the will to delete books from your kindle.
It is no longer a hypothetical situation when people say "Amazon could delete books you have paid for on your Kindle". It is now a FACT that Amazon had deleted paid-for books on customers Kindle, and they could do it again if they wish to.
This is the best example for showing what harm DRM could do from customers' point of view.
No amount of apology or refund is going to cover this up, unless they publicly send out an update to all Kindle to disable this ability to delete books, and then they have to hope people actually believe it.
I beg to differ about code tests.
I may be an optimizing freak, but in my view, how to solve a problem depends heavily which language and environment you will using.
For the same problem, I might use a approach in C++ that I would not consider at all if using Java, and vice versa. I might use yet another approach if I am on a Unix machine without a JVM, so I might even decide to use shell scripts instead of writing C++/Java program to solve.
In other words, picking the right solution depends heavily on context. If you take away the context (which, often, contains the constraint), then any "solution" is just empty talk.
For real world examples, have you ever seen programmers read 1 million rows from the database, then process each row-by-row to add up some amount XXX based on another field "TYPE" of that record? In theory, his approach is entirely correct! The program gives the correct result, it just run 100-1000x slower than simply "SELECT SUM(XXX), TYPE FROM TABLE_X GROUP BY TYPE".
1000x slower is not a joke, I have seen programs that used to run for a few hours but now finishes in 30 seconds with this kind of change.