There are obviously multiple definitions of random going around here, and I think it's safe to say that everyone talking about Pi really means 'equally dispersed', not random.
Wait, so the people making the big purchasing decisions are looking for the most games?
Sure games push the hardware limits, and porn is the most popular type of internet content, that is the nature of those things.
But what does 'nothing more important' mean? If you mean most computing time is spent playing games and watching porn, and the most money is spent to achieve these goals, our country is definitely not gonna be the dominant world economy much longer.
What is your evidence that people buy hardware for the games?
New & Revolutionary is not what is needed in 10.1. Performance enhancements and robustness is what Apple needs to be focusing on, and I'm glad to hear that they are.
The infringed party should at least initiate this. They don't have to spend money, they could simply authorize a law-firm to do this... if it's got enough attention that it is hurting a company, you can bet they will know about it, so why have lawyers chomping at the bit to leech everybody who makes a poor choice.
Your argument is like saying cops should patrol private property and shoot anyone that doesn't own it...
Napster already served it's purpose... that is to open up the eyes of big corporations to the power of on-line file sharing. But I shouldn't say it's done yet, because Napster is about to open up big corporations' eyes to the fact that a brand doesn't mean $#!T w/o some kind of ethic behind it.
Nothing may ever live up to the ease of use or accessibility of Napster again, but I think it will come damn close..
For me I'm just glad that Napster has salvaged some personal success for the people involved in creating it. I mean, first they had a huge lawsuit aimed at them, now they are actually getting paid by the music industry, and the great irony is that the industry is bound to lose even more money on Napster than they were before they tried to shut it down.
Damn, thats a messed up law. Perhaps I'm too cynical, being American and all, but what possible useful purpose could a law like that serve? When would be a good time for the 'infringed' company not to know about legal threats on their behalf for someone else's benefit?
Hmmm, I don't see my post as arguing that we don't have good property-rights. The problem as I present it comes between property rights and the profitability derived therefrom.
Property rights mean you have the RIGHT to sell something, but if people are giving it away for free on a mass peer-to-peer system, it will be about as enforceable as people copying videotapes.
FWIW, we do a pretty good job of making people money despite these obvious difficulties. It just seems like a lot better stuff would be produced if we had a system whereby we had a general 'content creator' fund that was distributed to content creators according to how much value people attributed to it. That is to say all content would be free, and everyone would be able to allocate a certain amount of value from the general fund to go to that author.
Unfortunately the overhead for this kind of massive venture would have to come from some sort of non-profit organization. The government would be ideal, but since we have a general distrust of government here, and even more distrust of socialism, this would never fly in today's political climate.
In this context it seems that the actual media publications were printed on was the only thing that made content publishing economically viable.
Now we seem to have an ever-increasing conflict between content publishers and the public who will get information for free if they can. Micro-payments and subscriptions are possible answers, but they seem like very clumsy solutions to this problem.
With easy duplication of information in the so-called information age, and the difficulty the market is having transferring cash value to the content generators, maybe the Internet and easy duplication of information is exposing a fundamental flaw of capitalism?
We all know that information has INCREDIBLE value, yet the free market doesn't seem able to transfer the benefit of this value to the people who create the content. As such, they will have to find another means of making a living which may well be less valuable to society, but yet pays them better...
What kind of power would legislation that makes it illegal to send mass unsolicited emails be?
It's understandable to be wary of the government stepping in, but don't forget that they are the ones who make it possible for a rapist to go to jail, or a telemarketer to be charged for ripping off old people.
For all that we don't like the Internet being a commercialized place, it bodes well for all of us who make a living off of it if there is more money in it.
To be sure the free geek help tech sector of the Internet has not been helped as much as other parts of the Internet in recent years, but I would say that it's still bigger than it was, it's just more diluted by all the crap.
Geeks have enough time on their hands to keep their communities going, I wouldn't worry about that.
Watching TV would be a similar waste of time to getting 'morally outraged' about things that we aren't even sure are happening much less are causing us any harm.
You still didn't explain what's the good in fighting something that you can't see and can't feel, but may be morally questionable. Go ahead and waste your life with your paranoid conspiracy theories, meanwhile I'll be living it up doing what I want to do.
That's right! There was no public outcry about the massive fogging of entire neighborhoods with DDT, until -after- a generation of birds died, so clearly there was nothing wrong with it. BK425 "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."
Nobody bothered to consider that it was harmful... but that misses the point anyway. My point is that there is all kinds of secret stuff going on behind our backs that we don't know about, and shouldn't worry about until it affects us.
It's silly to jump up and cry 'foul' when someone suggests a novel way to use existing technology. Sure they could use it for this that and the other thing, but they could do it without telling anbody anyway.
What makes you think they're not tracking you now?
The only people who should be so paranoid are people that are involved in some huge conspiracies themselves.
The common man should never have anything to worry about from 'the man' because anything that was that damaging to that many people would cause a public outcry.
The only way to get good at it you mean...
on
The Blender Book
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, if you wanna be good you have to play, but explanations of the UI always speeds things up for me...
Sure it sounds like a great idea... I just don't see it becoming widespread. The traditional publishing industry has us figured out pretty well, and most of the profit to be made is in current books that are selling a lot.
Machines such as these would fill a great niche market to print those few out-of-print books that people want from time to time. The economies of large-scale printing are what the industry has come to depend on for profits. These individual books will be either lower quality or higher price, or both, and are not going to be a good source of income for your local bookstore.
And that is assuming that every book is already in digital format (anybody know what percentage of older books are?)...
Sadly I haven't read the books, so I'm probably not qualified to even comment, but with acting so bad that it's painful to watch, it's hard to get over the low-budgetness it.
Lynch's movie at least was a good movie. I know it doesn't follow the books at all, and it bastardizes the story, etc. I think the horrible acting and complete lack of atmosphere in the mini-series is too much to pay for a slightly better representation of the books... especially considering that a movie can never really measure up to a book anyway.
Of course the real question on my mind is why is Sci-fi taking on all these old projects. I am, of course, referring to The Shining. An even better movie which they could never hope to even come close to. I guess they must believe that any publicity is good publicity, because both those shows stunk.
I think asking people whether they will pay for content misses the point. If you asked people 30 years ago if they would pay a subscription fee for television, they probably would have laughed in your face.
Change doesn't happen on the common man's whim. Rather, it happens when there is an idea that has potential value. People are uncomfortable with change unless they are sufficiently excited about the possibilities.
The bursting of the technology bubble is often cited as an example of how advertising alone can not support a web business. Yet I see it more as an example of how ideas that don't have any real value to anyone can't survive.
I agree that a viable micro-payment system is needed (I'm sure anything transparent enough to fill the need is at least 10 years out)... But the other side of the issue is where is the value? The Internet has incredible value for finding up-to-date information and rapid communication. Yet when people think of the Internet they don't think of well-refined, robust services (ie. the kind we expect to get when we pay). If you're going to pay, there's better places to get information.
In the geek culture (especially the OSS movement), sharing of information is highly valued. The irony is that much of the best information (ie. most charge-worthy) getting published is coming from geeks whos only desire for 'payment' is that others share information as well.
Given this climate, content payment can only succeed once someone offers content of sufficiently high quality so as to surpass what is being offered for free or in a better value in print form.
Slashdot Mirror
There are obviously multiple definitions of random going around here, and I think it's safe to say that everyone talking about Pi really means 'equally dispersed', not random.
Wait, so the people making the big purchasing decisions are looking for the most games?
Sure games push the hardware limits, and porn is the most popular type of internet content, that is the nature of those things.
But what does 'nothing more important' mean? If you mean most computing time is spent playing games and watching porn, and the most money is spent to achieve these goals, our country is definitely not gonna be the dominant world economy much longer.
What is your evidence that people buy hardware for the games?
New & Revolutionary is not what is needed in 10.1. Performance enhancements and robustness is what Apple needs to be focusing on, and I'm glad to hear that they are.
The infringed party should at least initiate this. They don't have to spend money, they could simply authorize a law-firm to do this... if it's got enough attention that it is hurting a company, you can bet they will know about it, so why have lawyers chomping at the bit to leech everybody who makes a poor choice. Your argument is like saying cops should patrol private property and shoot anyone that doesn't own it...
Napster already served it's purpose... that is to open up the eyes of big corporations to the power of on-line file sharing. But I shouldn't say it's done yet, because Napster is about to open up big corporations' eyes to the fact that a brand doesn't mean $#!T w/o some kind of ethic behind it. Nothing may ever live up to the ease of use or accessibility of Napster again, but I think it will come damn close.. For me I'm just glad that Napster has salvaged some personal success for the people involved in creating it. I mean, first they had a huge lawsuit aimed at them, now they are actually getting paid by the music industry, and the great irony is that the industry is bound to lose even more money on Napster than they were before they tried to shut it down.
Damn, thats a messed up law. Perhaps I'm too cynical, being American and all, but what possible useful purpose could a law like that serve? When would be a good time for the 'infringed' company not to know about legal threats on their behalf for someone else's benefit?
Hmmm, I don't see my post as arguing that we don't have good property-rights. The problem as I present it comes between property rights and the profitability derived therefrom. Property rights mean you have the RIGHT to sell something, but if people are giving it away for free on a mass peer-to-peer system, it will be about as enforceable as people copying videotapes. FWIW, we do a pretty good job of making people money despite these obvious difficulties. It just seems like a lot better stuff would be produced if we had a system whereby we had a general 'content creator' fund that was distributed to content creators according to how much value people attributed to it. That is to say all content would be free, and everyone would be able to allocate a certain amount of value from the general fund to go to that author. Unfortunately the overhead for this kind of massive venture would have to come from some sort of non-profit organization. The government would be ideal, but since we have a general distrust of government here, and even more distrust of socialism, this would never fly in today's political climate.
In this context it seems that the actual media publications were printed on was the only thing that made content publishing economically viable.
Now we seem to have an ever-increasing conflict between content publishers and the public who will get information for free if they can. Micro-payments and subscriptions are possible answers, but they seem like very clumsy solutions to this problem.
With easy duplication of information in the so-called information age, and the difficulty the market is having transferring cash value to the content generators, maybe the Internet and easy duplication of information is exposing a fundamental flaw of capitalism?
We all know that information has INCREDIBLE value, yet the free market doesn't seem able to transfer the benefit of this value to the people who create the content. As such, they will have to find another means of making a living which may well be less valuable to society, but yet pays them better...
chew on that for a while.
What kind of power would legislation that makes it illegal to send mass unsolicited emails be? It's understandable to be wary of the government stepping in, but don't forget that they are the ones who make it possible for a rapist to go to jail, or a telemarketer to be charged for ripping off old people.
Well spoken.
For all that we don't like the Internet being a commercialized place, it bodes well for all of us who make a living off of it if there is more money in it.
To be sure the free geek help tech sector of the Internet has not been helped as much as other parts of the Internet in recent years, but I would say that it's still bigger than it was, it's just more diluted by all the crap.
Geeks have enough time on their hands to keep their communities going, I wouldn't worry about that.
Watching TV would be a similar waste of time to getting 'morally outraged' about things that we aren't even sure are happening much less are causing us any harm. You still didn't explain what's the good in fighting something that you can't see and can't feel, but may be morally questionable. Go ahead and waste your life with your paranoid conspiracy theories, meanwhile I'll be living it up doing what I want to do.
Nobody bothered to consider that it was harmful... but that misses the point anyway. My point is that there is all kinds of secret stuff going on behind our backs that we don't know about, and shouldn't worry about until it affects us.
It's silly to jump up and cry 'foul' when someone suggests a novel way to use existing technology. Sure they could use it for this that and the other thing, but they could do it without telling anbody anyway.
What makes you think they're not tracking you now? The only people who should be so paranoid are people that are involved in some huge conspiracies themselves. The common man should never have anything to worry about from 'the man' because anything that was that damaging to that many people would cause a public outcry.
Yeah, if you wanna be good you have to play, but explanations of the UI always speeds things up for me...
Sure it sounds like a great idea... I just don't see it becoming widespread. The traditional publishing industry has us figured out pretty well, and most of the profit to be made is in current books that are selling a lot.
Machines such as these would fill a great niche market to print those few out-of-print books that people want from time to time. The economies of large-scale printing are what the industry has come to depend on for profits. These individual books will be either lower quality or higher price, or both, and are not going to be a good source of income for your local bookstore.
And that is assuming that every book is already in digital format (anybody know what percentage of older books are?)...
Sadly I haven't read the books, so I'm probably not qualified to even comment, but with acting so bad that it's painful to watch, it's hard to get over the low-budgetness it.
:P
Lynch's movie at least was a good movie. I know it doesn't follow the books at all, and it bastardizes the story, etc. I think the horrible acting and complete lack of atmosphere in the mini-series is too much to pay for a slightly better representation of the books... especially considering that a movie can never really measure up to a book anyway.
Of course the real question on my mind is why is Sci-fi taking on all these old projects. I am, of course, referring to The Shining. An even better movie which they could never hope to even come close to. I guess they must believe that any publicity is good publicity, because both those shows stunk.
BTW, Capoeira rules, meu irmao!
I think asking people whether they will pay for content misses the point. If you asked people 30 years ago if they would pay a subscription fee for television, they probably would have laughed in your face.
Change doesn't happen on the common man's whim. Rather, it happens when there is an idea that has potential value. People are uncomfortable with change unless they are sufficiently excited about the possibilities.
The bursting of the technology bubble is often cited as an example of how advertising alone can not support a web business. Yet I see it more as an example of how ideas that don't have any real value to anyone can't survive.
I agree that a viable micro-payment system is needed (I'm sure anything transparent enough to fill the need is at least 10 years out)... But the other side of the issue is where is the value? The Internet has incredible value for finding up-to-date information and rapid communication. Yet when people think of the Internet they don't think of well-refined, robust services (ie. the kind we expect to get when we pay). If you're going to pay, there's better places to get information.
In the geek culture (especially the OSS movement), sharing of information is highly valued. The irony is that much of the best information (ie. most charge-worthy) getting published is coming from geeks whos only desire for 'payment' is that others share information as well.
Given this climate, content payment can only succeed once someone offers content of sufficiently high quality so as to surpass what is being offered for free or in a better value in print form.