"$30 a disk you fuckers. No sale!" It's $10 a disk. No clue!...because of course everyone lives in America don't they? You're the one with no clue. Where I live (Australia) there are still plenty of albums priced over $25.
Copyright abuse is not about crediting work vs. the control of that work. RIAA/MPAA couldn't give a shit about actually controlling the work except as a means to an end. The struggle is actually about monetary compensation for the work. This is why they're willing to throw people into jail for 5 years for backing up their damned DVD - it takes away their potential profit.
What we need is a system that:
1) Financially compensates the creator, not the middle man. Make it unprofitable to be a middle-man and institutions like RIAA/MPAA go away. There should be a cap on what anyone else can make from selling a person's creation.
2) Does not allow an artist/inventor/creator to control distribution or use of the work. Seek compensation proportional to losses, yes, but have to prove that what they're asking is reasonable. Suddenly the whole problem of patented drugs and treatments being overpriced and people dying as a result goes away. Even more beautiful, if someone's able to distribute a creation more efficiently than the creator, they can do it. This also takes care of sharing work creatively where no profit is derived (ie. creating remixes, "mashups" and the like).
3) Removes unreasonable punishment for copyright infringement. 5 years for backing up a damned DVD is not reasonable. Heck doing that with the whole collection shouldn't land you in jail.
Unfortunately a lot of very powerful people and their allies stand to lose big time if such fairness came to pass. It would also be quite difficult to set up a system that administered these principles fairly and was resistant to corruption. So I agree wuith others when they say it's unlikely to come to pass. Pity, because all of the above is achievable.
Whoever wrote this article is clueless. The end user has no fucking interest in software development or suggesting improvements or bug fixes. They want a tool that works to do a job that for most users has nothing to do with software development.
Do you buy a hammer, then when it breaks criticise the user for not mailing the company about it? If you did would you expect them to change their manufacture process? No, it's a shitty hammer and you don't buy another one from the same company. You have no interest in making hammers better, just driving in the nail to accomplish a task.
Software ships every day with heinous and obvious bugs to meet an arbitrary deadline. It's correct to blame the developers and testers for choosing meeting the deadline over fixing the product.
*Would you guys like to take Rupert Murdoch back? I mean, you can have him, absolutely free. We won't charge a penny.
Not a chance. Consider it a very small partial payback for all the American redneck celebs that we have to hear about in our media. Its very hard to ignore when there's little else on. Although I must say the thought of Paris going to jail is poetic.
Why so short a jail sentence? Copying a single DVD, or DRM encoded music file lands you in jail for 5 years for a first offense. Longer than some violent crimes. Why do these fuckers get to go to prison for just 1 year.
obs, record labels, RIAA go fuck yourselves. I want the low price and the lack of DRM thank you very much. Your music isn't worth half my pay cheque, and nor do I want to be screwed (or made a criminal who is risking 5 years jail) when I go to listen to what I bought on a different player. JI won't buy your shit until you give me something I can use at a reasonable price. I'm no longer a teenager and frankly can't give a shit about most of the sad excuse for pre-processed market researched "music" coming out of your so called "artists" these days anyway. It's simple supply and demand. You ain't supplying what I am demanding, and I'm not going to settle for $30 a disk you fuckers. No sale!
I want to hear what he has to say, but I don't like the guy. Every fucking article Joel writes is written in a superior holier than thou "I'm better than you and here's proof" kind of tone. In this case he's boasting about how he managed to out-think Bill Gates and answer Bill's most difficult question - something he claims no one else had ever done. Why doesn't Bill say fuck more than 4 times? Joel claims because he convinced Bill he was right and competent. No mention that this might just have been a good day for Bill, or that he wanted to move on to his next meeting nothing. Joel concludes that his billiance won the day. Well I conclude THAT is the kind of arrogant self-important shit that thrives at MS.
There is no excuse for Bill Gates or any other manager being a rude asshole. It's not needed to show strength, and it's pathetic. I've had very competent bosses that didn't need to use profanity or knock you to the ground to get results from you. I can think of one guy who's a true gentleman even under pressure. So long as you're not a goof off this man doesn't turn into a feral toad, even if you made a mistake where large sums of money are involved SO LONG as you're willing to do what it takes to fix it.
The fact is these "managers" may be successful and may be intelligent but they have the people skills of a grizzly bear and they'll be remembered for the rude twits they are....and so they should be.
As for how Joel handled it, I agree with the other child post - by his own admission like a teenage girl meeting her pop idol, _PERHAPS_ minus the blow-job. He didn't even consider that someone else may have scribbled that crap in the margins of his report and briefed Bill....and in the same article he boasts about pushing for the addition of the VARIANT type to VB. For that alone he should be put in jail.
How about we just remove the damned 5 year prison sentences for a first offense of backing up your own fucking DVD. That'd be a great start. Sure they're not being enforced yet, but every motherf@#$er that worked to introduce that penalty should be put in prison for treason. Yes treason: How else would you categorise draconian punishments selectively dealt out against individuals.
You're the second American ex-military person I've seen speak sensibly and profoundly about how wrong things are. I'm not an American, I live in Australia, but as Australia is part of the world I'd like to thank you and say I we need more people like you on the planet.
I can and do sometimes download 10GB in a single day. I'm not limited on my downloads in that fashion.
Good for you, but like I said that's my monthly limit and I'm not alone in this.
For that matter most movies don't need a complete 9GB. 1GB would be good enough quality for many movies(non-hidef, of course), and I could put a thouand movies on a single HD at that price.
You say 1GB is good enough? Why settle for shitty quality when a trip to the local store gets you much better quality. A 1TB drive isn't that common yet either. Perhaps in a few years. I'd have a total of about 2TB at home, and I can think of nothing worse than wasting that space on movies. Not to mention that drives fail even if you look after them. CDs/DVDs get scratched but that's not all your eggs in one basket.
Remember, it wasn't that many years ago that the same thing could be said about storing music on a HD... Compression has gotten better right along with the sizes of HD's.
Bandwidth is also a different proposition than storage. A new larger hard disk comes out, you can buy it immediately. Major infrastructure needs to be put in place by a telco and ISP before your bandwidth goes up.
I didn't say you're not allowed to complain if you spend 10K on CDs, just that you'd be silly to do so. If you spend that much on any collection you're going to need to invest some time and money into organising it. It's not anyone else's fault that you can't find your own CDs or DVDs.
If you want to rip them, and it's legal to do so where you live, than that's one way to do it. However until broadband is significantly faster your fantasy of a convenient DVD download service is just that - a fantasy. You're talking up to 9GB a DVD. Don't know about you but my monthly limit's 10GB and I'm not wasting on a single DVD only to have it download over the period of a week. I could get about 20GB for a similar price (or a little more) but it'd be less reliable. Wooohooo 2 DVDs.
How is that any different to buying the obsolete format in the first place? You better hope there's something out there that'll transcode so your collection isn't obsolete. That's true whether you'd created them from vinyl, ripped from CD or bought the mp3.
At least with a digital format like a CD or mp3 there is some hope you can transcode faster than real time. Your problem with vinyl is that you'd have to physically babysit the process and then you'd have to manually split into each track. Of course when the new format comes it probably won't be legal to transcode, and there'll be a 5 year fucking jail sentence for violating copyright if you do so.
I did end up re-buying about a dozen of my favourite vinyl albums as CD. I've vowed I won't do that again. Fuck them if they think they can make me pay again and again for the same fucking music. I'd rather just hum the fucking tunes than do that again. Of course they'll start prosecuting for humming too no doubt. Fuckers.
Yes it is a pain to rip a collection initially! However once you've done that, you could rip as you buy. Youngsters wouldn't even have this problem, just old timers. However I do see your point as well.
If you have that many CDs you can buy a storage box that'll hold 500 and get rid of the jewel cases and is less than 60 cm long, and that's not much bigger in width and height than a CD. (Personally I'd keep the inserts at least though, so that's a little more storage).
In any case lets say the average price of a CD is $10. If you have 1000 of them that's $10000. If you're spending that much don't whine that you can't afford storage or that it's a hassle. Personally I probably own about 150 CDs and my fiancee probably owns the same. It's no burden. She still buys them, but I haven't bought a CD in years. They're all still in their jewel cases.
If you want to talk about wasted space lets talk DVD jewel cases, which are unecessarily and artificially longer than they need to be.
That's insightful? The "wasteful packaging" includes a backup and album artwork. You know ART, as in art and music. The convenience I'll grant you IF it all works correctly. It's honestly not that much less convenient to rip a CD and store it.
Tell that to someone who's life's been ruined by a RIAA lawsuit. Immaturity aside, just how evil must a man be before we're allowed to celebrate his death? This man did a lot of people a lot of harm, and that harm continues even after he's dead. Political correctness and point scoring/karma whoring only get you so far in life?
Just to end the debate in the traditional manner I'll bring up the Nazi's. Would you celebrate Hitler's death if you were a Jewish holocaust survivor? How about the guy in charge of your death camp?
So people are "fuming" that their personalized news page and other crap, which is free, and mostly in beta, had a minor glitch and now they'll have to spend two minutes setting up their precious, precious settings again.
Let me fix it for you...
So people are "fuming" that their personalized settings which they've set up just the way they want to so long ago they forgot how they did it, and which they've been encouraged to use for free so Google can make advertising revenue, but are perpetually in beta with more possibility of Duke Nukem Forever coming out than the beta phase ending, was hosed and now they'll have to spend a few hours working with shitty configurations to work out what their precious settings were again.
I bet you don't have any time invested in configuring this software and weren't affected. Nice to see so much empathy on/.
If I sell fruit cakes and my suppliers can't supply fruit, it quickly becomes my problem. Often with fruit suppliers, you can go to someone else to supply the fruit which is a commodity - ie you can replace it with the equivalent without missing a beat. Likewise with every other example you put up. There are other companies that will supply people to clean your toilets or transport your good. Your data on the other hand is not a commodity.
You often can't go to a different supplier because computer services tend towards monopolies. Find me a decent alternative to Google for searching. Find me another free/ad based web usenet provider that only requires port 80. For that reason keeping your email store with a 3rd party that's more than a little stupid. An alternative company can't sell you a new copy. Trusting a company in that way is crazy. It's not quite as high a level of trust as you're forced to place in your doctor or taxi driver, because there your life is at stake. However that's why these industries are heavily regulated. The internet...well good luck settling that issue in court and if your data just happens to be destroyed in the meantime, whooopsie it slipped.
When something goes wrong on your desktop you have control. You can work around it. You decide when to upgrade the hardware and software. I haven't lost much in Office for a long time because I know it's quirks and work around it.
By contrast when Google groups suddenly started eating all my usenet posts the other day while falsely showing they were being posted, then stopped showing new Usenet messages, I was borked. There was nothing I could do. It's still borked by the way and I'm totally at their mercy.
Now when you say Google are responsive about it all, what do you mean? I can't get a reply for one from one of their staff for a problem I experience. If the problem isn't being had by a large number of people I can guarantee I'll be ignored.
I don't understand how someone can say with a straight face that it's no different with remote apps. Even more puzzling is how it gets modded insightful.
Interesting. You call me a snob and then snob me because I haven't made science my vocation, while simulataneously repeatedly accusing *ME* of setting up the straw man.
Yes, science is hard work, and can be tedious. That's something that kids certainly shouldn't be sheltered from. However your insistence that science has to be presented in a boring fashion makes me think perhaps you're burnt out and should be looking at different work. If you're a scientist you should know better than to suggest that. You'd have grown up with wonderous scientific shows that aren't about blowing stuff up. Science requires imagination as well as all the hard slog, and you've probably seen better science. Sensationalist pop TV is just plain shite. YOU well know that.
Actually, though I'm not a professional scientist, I have a Masters in Astronomy, which I did with no intention of changing careers and simply because I love learning. The irony of you talking about straw men while attacking me personally, based on false assumptions, rather than attacking my argument is priceless.To anyone who knows how to conduct an argument it makes everything else you say look even weaker than it actually is. I can only guess that you were taught the basics of classification of argument types at school, and therefore armed with some semblance of this knowledge you think you're brilliant being able to use a phrase like "straw man".
Mythbusters certainly don't set up lots of controls behind the scenes to eve try to make sure their conclusions are right. That you think so makes me wonder what combination of naive and clueless you are. The only saving point is that you admit you wouldn't bet money on their conclusions, so one can hope you're not a complete moron.
The Myth Busters are special effects guys who set up pyrotechnics and sensationalist pseudo-science but because you like them and are entertained by the show you feel the need to defend them. You talk about the spirit of experimentation yet call the details about scientific controls a "bore". What kind of mindless hypocritical bullshit is that? If you're interested, and if it's presented well these details are not boring. They are so interesting in fact that very intelligent people spend their entire lives on these details. Getting the spirit of experimentation right if you look at some history involves being tenacious and meticulous, and hard work, not blowing shit up and exclaiming "close enough". You know what though, real science is absolutely fascinating, and contrary to what you believe it can in fact be presented very entertainingly because it is so fascinating by its very nature. There are plenty of shows that do it and do it well, but they don't blow shit up so they don't get popular.
The myths are bad yes, but that doesn't give the Myth Busters a free pass to get away with claiming to scientifically disprove them when their methods aren't scientific. You might be an adult that understands how flawed the experiments are, but that's because somewhere along the way you've picked up some (and I repeat only some) idea of how to go about thinking for yourself and therefore realize it. The last thing you want is an impressionable kid thinking their methods are science.
If you feed your kids nothing but junk food, they end up unhealthy. If you can't find a good scientific show and feed them pseudo scientific junk instead, they end up stupid.
Often what the Myth Busters do is not sound science, and isn't just disproof by counterexample as you suggest. What I've seen them do is take a very general myth, and conclude that it's not true ("busted" in their parlance) because it doesn't happen for that single instance.
For example they'll test one or if you're lucky two kinds of mobile phone near a petrol pump to see if it'll trigger an explosion and conclude that because those two mobile phones didn't trigger an explosion, mobile phones at the pump are safe. That's horse shit science. There are many brands of mobile phone. They operate on different frequencies and networks world wide etc. etc. Of course pointing any of this out or referring to actual scientific studies would be boring where as blowing up the petrol pump anyway is exciting so that's what they'd rather do.
It ain't science. It's a couple of special effects guys blowing things up under the guise of science. There's a difference.
It has nothing to do with being a pompous ass. You can present science to a lay person at a level they can understand without dumbing it down so much that it's factually incorrect, and the fact that you don't understand this just shows how brainwashed by reality tv and stupidity.
Mythbusters is an example of what happens when special effects guys run the science department. It'd take all of about an hour's extra effort per show to set up proper controls, and refer to actual scientific results on the matter in lay terms. Instead they would rather their hillbilly sensationalist approach.
Cosmos, and The Elegant Universe are good examples of how to do science on TV well. But hey brain washed sheep like yourself keep calling me a pompous ass. Meanwhile you'd rather see dickheads like the crocodile hunter harass an animal than an Attenborough special because hey it's just not exciting enough, and boo hoo Attenborough is a little monotonous. You get what you deserve. Fucking season after season of big brother, and a generation of kids that wouldn't know how to conduct a controlled scientific experiment if their life depended on it, never mind actually look into what other scientists had found. You wonder why western nations are slipping into the toilet when it comes to science. Your attitude that a person who actually wants a bit more than explosions and idiots jumping on animals is a "pompous ass" on TV is why. There's a reason people call it the idiot box, and when you treat anyone with a modicum of desire for factual accuracy as a "pompous ass" you get what you deserve.
Yo moron? blah blah blah and your argument is essentially that kids are stupid and that all science has to be presented boringly if its not dumbed down. You're basically an idiot that's been brainwashed by too much reality TV. You want to know why western countries are falling behind. Fuckwits like yourself.
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"$30 a disk you fuckers. No sale!" It's $10 a disk. No clue! ...because of course everyone lives in America don't they? You're the one with no clue. Where I live (Australia) there are still plenty of albums priced over $25.
Copyright abuse is not about crediting work vs. the control of that work. RIAA/MPAA couldn't give a shit about actually controlling the work except as a means to an end. The struggle is actually about monetary compensation for the work. This is why they're willing to throw people into jail for 5 years for backing up their damned DVD - it takes away their potential profit.
What we need is a system that:
1) Financially compensates the creator, not the middle man. Make it unprofitable to be a middle-man and institutions like RIAA/MPAA go away. There should be a cap on what anyone else can make from selling a person's creation.
2) Does not allow an artist/inventor/creator to control distribution or use of the work. Seek compensation proportional to losses, yes, but have to prove that what they're asking is reasonable. Suddenly the whole problem of patented drugs and treatments being overpriced and people dying as a result goes away. Even more beautiful, if someone's able to distribute a creation more efficiently than the creator, they can do it. This also takes care of sharing work creatively where no profit is derived (ie. creating remixes, "mashups" and the like).
3) Removes unreasonable punishment for copyright infringement. 5 years for backing up a damned DVD is not reasonable. Heck doing that with the whole collection shouldn't land you in jail.
Unfortunately a lot of very powerful people and their allies stand to lose big time if such fairness came to pass. It would also be quite difficult to set up a system that administered these principles fairly and was resistant to corruption. So I agree wuith others when they say it's unlikely to come to pass. Pity, because all of the above is achievable.
Whoever wrote this article is clueless. The end user has no fucking interest in software development or suggesting improvements or bug fixes. They want a tool that works to do a job that for most users has nothing to do with software development.
Do you buy a hammer, then when it breaks criticise the user for not mailing the company about it? If you did would you expect them to change their manufacture process? No, it's a shitty hammer and you don't buy another one from the same company. You have no interest in making hammers better, just driving in the nail to accomplish a task.
Software ships every day with heinous and obvious bugs to meet an arbitrary deadline. It's correct to blame the developers and testers for choosing meeting the deadline over fixing the product.
*Would you guys like to take Rupert Murdoch back? I mean, you can have him, absolutely free. We won't charge a penny.
Not a chance. Consider it a very small partial payback for all the American redneck celebs that we have to hear about in our media. Its very hard to ignore when there's little else on. Although I must say the thought of Paris going to jail is poetic.
Why so short a jail sentence? Copying a single DVD, or DRM encoded music file lands you in jail for 5 years for a first offense. Longer than some violent crimes. Why do these fuckers get to go to prison for just 1 year.
obs, record labels, RIAA go fuck yourselves. I want the low price and the lack of DRM thank you very much. Your music isn't worth half my pay cheque, and nor do I want to be screwed (or made a criminal who is risking 5 years jail) when I go to listen to what I bought on a different player. JI won't buy your shit until you give me something I can use at a reasonable price. I'm no longer a teenager and frankly can't give a shit about most of the sad excuse for pre-processed market researched "music" coming out of your so called "artists" these days anyway. It's simple supply and demand. You ain't supplying what I am demanding, and I'm not going to settle for $30 a disk you fuckers. No sale!
I want to hear what he has to say, but I don't like the guy. Every fucking article Joel writes is written in a superior holier than thou "I'm better than you and here's proof" kind of tone. In this case he's boasting about how he managed to out-think Bill Gates and answer Bill's most difficult question - something he claims no one else had ever done. Why doesn't Bill say fuck more than 4 times? Joel claims because he convinced Bill he was right and competent. No mention that this might just have been a good day for Bill, or that he wanted to move on to his next meeting nothing. Joel concludes that his billiance won the day. Well I conclude THAT is the kind of arrogant self-important shit that thrives at MS.
...and in the same article he boasts about pushing for the addition of the VARIANT type to VB. For that alone he should be put in jail.
There is no excuse for Bill Gates or any other manager being a rude asshole. It's not needed to show strength, and it's pathetic. I've had very competent bosses that didn't need to use profanity or knock you to the ground to get results from you. I can think of one guy who's a true gentleman even under pressure. So long as you're not a goof off this man doesn't turn into a feral toad, even if you made a mistake where large sums of money are involved SO LONG as you're willing to do what it takes to fix it.
The fact is these "managers" may be successful and may be intelligent but they have the people skills of a grizzly bear and they'll be remembered for the rude twits they are....and so they should be.
As for how Joel handled it, I agree with the other child post - by his own admission like a teenage girl meeting her pop idol, _PERHAPS_ minus the blow-job. He didn't even consider that someone else may have scribbled that crap in the margins of his report and briefed Bill.
How about we just remove the damned 5 year prison sentences for a first offense of backing up your own fucking DVD. That'd be a great start. Sure they're not being enforced yet, but every motherf@#$er that worked to introduce that penalty should be put in prison for treason. Yes treason: How else would you categorise draconian punishments selectively dealt out against individuals.
You're the second American ex-military person I've seen speak sensibly and profoundly about how wrong things are. I'm not an American, I live in Australia, but as Australia is part of the world I'd like to thank you and say I we need more people like you on the planet.
I can and do sometimes download 10GB in a single day. I'm not limited on my downloads in that fashion.
Good for you, but like I said that's my monthly limit and I'm not alone in this.
For that matter most movies don't need a complete 9GB. 1GB would be good enough quality for many movies(non-hidef, of course), and I could put a thouand movies on a single HD at that price.
You say 1GB is good enough? Why settle for shitty quality when a trip to the local store gets you much better quality. A 1TB drive isn't that common yet either. Perhaps in a few years. I'd have a total of about 2TB at home, and I can think of nothing worse than wasting that space on movies. Not to mention that drives fail even if you look after them. CDs/DVDs get scratched but that's not all your eggs in one basket.
Remember, it wasn't that many years ago that the same thing could be said about storing music on a HD... Compression has gotten better right along with the sizes of HD's.
Bandwidth is also a different proposition than storage. A new larger hard disk comes out, you can buy it immediately. Major infrastructure needs to be put in place by a telco and ISP before your bandwidth goes up.
I didn't say you're not allowed to complain if you spend 10K on CDs, just that you'd be silly to do so. If you spend that much on any collection you're going to need to invest some time and money into organising it. It's not anyone else's fault that you can't find your own CDs or DVDs.
If you want to rip them, and it's legal to do so where you live, than that's one way to do it. However until broadband is significantly faster your fantasy of a convenient DVD download service is just that - a fantasy. You're talking up to 9GB a DVD. Don't know about you but my monthly limit's 10GB and I'm not wasting on a single DVD only to have it download over the period of a week. I could get about 20GB for a similar price (or a little more) but it'd be less reliable. Wooohooo 2 DVDs.
How is that any different to buying the obsolete format in the first place? You better hope there's something out there that'll transcode so your collection isn't obsolete. That's true whether you'd created them from vinyl, ripped from CD or bought the mp3.
At least with a digital format like a CD or mp3 there is some hope you can transcode faster than real time. Your problem with vinyl is that you'd have to physically babysit the process and then you'd have to manually split into each track. Of course when the new format comes it probably won't be legal to transcode, and there'll be a 5 year fucking jail sentence for violating copyright if you do so.
I did end up re-buying about a dozen of my favourite vinyl albums as CD. I've vowed I won't do that again. Fuck them if they think they can make me pay again and again for the same fucking music. I'd rather just hum the fucking tunes than do that again. Of course they'll start prosecuting for humming too no doubt. Fuckers.
Yes it is a pain to rip a collection initially! However once you've done that, you could rip as you buy. Youngsters wouldn't even have this problem, just old timers. However I do see your point as well.
If you have that many CDs you can buy a storage box that'll hold 500 and get rid of the jewel cases and is less than 60 cm long, and that's not much bigger in width and height than a CD. (Personally I'd keep the inserts at least though, so that's a little more storage).
In any case lets say the average price of a CD is $10. If you have 1000 of them that's $10000. If you're spending that much don't whine that you can't afford storage or that it's a hassle. Personally I probably own about 150 CDs and my fiancee probably owns the same. It's no burden. She still buys them, but I haven't bought a CD in years. They're all still in their jewel cases.
If you want to talk about wasted space lets talk DVD jewel cases, which are unecessarily and artificially longer than they need to be.
That's insightful? The "wasteful packaging" includes a backup and album artwork. You know ART, as in art and music. The convenience I'll grant you IF it all works correctly. It's honestly not that much less convenient to rip a CD and store it.
Tell that to someone who's life's been ruined by a RIAA lawsuit. Immaturity aside, just how evil must a man be before we're allowed to celebrate his death? This man did a lot of people a lot of harm, and that harm continues even after he's dead. Political correctness and point scoring/karma whoring only get you so far in life?
Just to end the debate in the traditional manner I'll bring up the Nazi's. Would you celebrate Hitler's death if you were a Jewish holocaust survivor? How about the guy in charge of your death camp?
The next version of Windows will be called MS ENRON
So people are "fuming" that their personalized news page and other crap, which is free, and mostly in beta, had a minor glitch and now they'll have to spend two minutes setting up their precious, precious settings again.
/.
Let me fix it for you...
So people are "fuming" that their personalized settings which they've set up just the way they want to so long ago they forgot how they did it, and which they've been encouraged to use for free so Google can make advertising revenue, but are perpetually in beta with more possibility of Duke Nukem Forever coming out than the beta phase ending, was hosed and now they'll have to spend a few hours working with shitty configurations to work out what their precious settings were again.
I bet you don't have any time invested in configuring this software and weren't affected. Nice to see so much empathy on
If I sell fruit cakes and my suppliers can't supply fruit, it quickly becomes my problem. Often with fruit suppliers, you can go to someone else to supply the fruit which is a commodity - ie you can replace it with the equivalent without missing a beat. Likewise with every other example you put up. There are other companies that will supply people to clean your toilets or transport your good. Your data on the other hand is not a commodity.
You often can't go to a different supplier because computer services tend towards monopolies. Find me a decent alternative to Google for searching. Find me another free/ad based web usenet provider that only requires port 80. For that reason keeping your email store with a 3rd party that's more than a little stupid. An alternative company can't sell you a new copy. Trusting a company in that way is crazy. It's not quite as high a level of trust as you're forced to place in your doctor or taxi driver, because there your life is at stake. However that's why these industries are heavily regulated. The internet...well good luck settling that issue in court and if your data just happens to be destroyed in the meantime, whooopsie it slipped.
When something goes wrong on your desktop you have control. You can work around it. You decide when to upgrade the hardware and software. I haven't lost much in Office for a long time because I know it's quirks and work around it.
By contrast when Google groups suddenly started eating all my usenet posts the other day while falsely showing they were being posted, then stopped showing new Usenet messages, I was borked. There was nothing I could do. It's still borked by the way and I'm totally at their mercy.
Now when you say Google are responsive about it all, what do you mean? I can't get a reply for one from one of their staff for a problem I experience. If the problem isn't being had by a large number of people I can guarantee I'll be ignored.
I don't understand how someone can say with a straight face that it's no different with remote apps. Even more puzzling is how it gets modded insightful.
Interesting. You call me a snob and then snob me because I haven't made science my vocation, while simulataneously repeatedly accusing *ME* of setting up the straw man.
Yes, science is hard work, and can be tedious. That's something that kids certainly shouldn't be sheltered from. However your insistence that science has to be presented in a boring fashion makes me think perhaps you're burnt out and should be looking at different work. If you're a scientist you should know better than to suggest that. You'd have grown up with wonderous scientific shows that aren't about blowing stuff up. Science requires imagination as well as all the hard slog, and you've probably seen better science. Sensationalist pop TV is just plain shite. YOU well know that.
Actually, though I'm not a professional scientist, I have a Masters in Astronomy, which I did with no intention of changing careers and simply because I love learning. The irony of you talking about straw men while attacking me personally, based on false assumptions, rather than attacking my argument is priceless.To anyone who knows how to conduct an argument it makes everything else you say look even weaker than it actually is. I can only guess that you were taught the basics of classification of argument types at school, and therefore armed with some semblance of this knowledge you think you're brilliant being able to use a phrase like "straw man".
Mythbusters certainly don't set up lots of controls behind the scenes to eve try to make sure their conclusions are right. That you think so makes me wonder what combination of naive and clueless you are. The only saving point is that you admit you wouldn't bet money on their conclusions, so one can hope you're not a complete moron.
The Myth Busters are special effects guys who set up pyrotechnics and sensationalist pseudo-science but because you like them and are entertained by the show you feel the need to defend them. You talk about the spirit of experimentation yet call the details about scientific controls a "bore". What kind of mindless hypocritical bullshit is that? If you're interested, and if it's presented well these details are not boring. They are so interesting in fact that very intelligent people spend their entire lives on these details. Getting the spirit of experimentation right if you look at some history involves being tenacious and meticulous, and hard work, not blowing shit up and exclaiming "close enough". You know what though, real science is absolutely fascinating, and contrary to what you believe it can in fact be presented very entertainingly because it is so fascinating by its very nature. There are plenty of shows that do it and do it well, but they don't blow shit up so they don't get popular.
The myths are bad yes, but that doesn't give the Myth Busters a free pass to get away with claiming to scientifically disprove them when their methods aren't scientific. You might be an adult that understands how flawed the experiments are, but that's because somewhere along the way you've picked up some (and I repeat only some) idea of how to go about thinking for yourself and therefore realize it. The last thing you want is an impressionable kid thinking their methods are science.
If you feed your kids nothing but junk food, they end up unhealthy. If you can't find a good scientific show and feed them pseudo scientific junk instead, they end up stupid.
Often what the Myth Busters do is not sound science, and isn't just disproof by counterexample as you suggest. What I've seen them do is take a very general myth, and conclude that it's not true ("busted" in their parlance) because it doesn't happen for that single instance.
For example they'll test one or if you're lucky two kinds of mobile phone near a petrol pump to see if it'll trigger an explosion and conclude that because those two mobile phones didn't trigger an explosion, mobile phones at the pump are safe. That's horse shit science. There are many brands of mobile phone. They operate on different frequencies and networks world wide etc. etc. Of course pointing any of this out or referring to actual scientific studies would be boring where as blowing up the petrol pump anyway is exciting so that's what they'd rather do.
It ain't science. It's a couple of special effects guys blowing things up under the guise of science. There's a difference.
It has nothing to do with being a pompous ass. You can present science to a lay person at a level they can understand without dumbing it down so much that it's factually incorrect, and the fact that you don't understand this just shows how brainwashed by reality tv and stupidity.
Mythbusters is an example of what happens when special effects guys run the science department. It'd take all of about an hour's extra effort per show to set up proper controls, and refer to actual scientific results on the matter in lay terms. Instead they would rather their hillbilly sensationalist approach.
Cosmos, and The Elegant Universe are good examples of how to do science on TV well. But hey brain washed sheep like yourself keep calling me a pompous ass. Meanwhile you'd rather see dickheads like the crocodile hunter harass an animal than an Attenborough special because hey it's just not exciting enough, and boo hoo Attenborough is a little monotonous. You get what you deserve. Fucking season after season of big brother, and a generation of kids that wouldn't know how to conduct a controlled scientific experiment if their life depended on it, never mind actually look into what other scientists had found. You wonder why western nations are slipping into the toilet when it comes to science. Your attitude that a person who actually wants a bit more than explosions and idiots jumping on animals is a "pompous ass" on TV is why. There's a reason people call it the idiot box, and when you treat anyone with a modicum of desire for factual accuracy as a "pompous ass" you get what you deserve.
Yo moron? blah blah blah and your argument is essentially that kids are stupid and that all science has to be presented boringly if its not dumbed down. You're basically an idiot that's been brainwashed by too much reality TV. You want to know why western countries are falling behind. Fuckwits like yourself.