Seriously it is really tiresome seeing Europeans with this high and mighty "We are so free over here and the US has become a horrible dictatorship," attitude.
You reap what you sow.
The image your government projects is that of trying to spread freedom and democracy around the world, when they actually just work in the interests of the USA. And many Americans are also under the belief that the USA is the place with the most freedom in the world. These things wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that many Americans, and even your leaders, tend to mock and berate the rest of the world about this issue. This is of course annoying for the rest of us, especially when the USA doesn't actually look any freer to us than any other first world country.
Ah, but the market segmentation with the traditional airlines when further than just business/economy classes. For instance, if you fly British Airways, you will pay more for a flight if you are British than a foreigner will pay for the same flight, because the Brits expect to pay more for stuff, apparently. Not surprisingly, many people find that kind of pricing model annoying...
That, and a more more customer friendly pricing model. There are lots of other examples of traditionally segmented markets being broken by companies with a simple, fair pricing model.
And do you like that you have to pay for every small upgrade on the OS, which is not the case with Windows?
I would rather pay for good, gradual additions of things that I actually want than get gradual additions of stuff I don't want and then have to pay a lot for essentially a completely new operating system which I need to buy a new computer for. So yes, I prefer the Apple way.
The windows pricing is a classic example of what marketeers call "market segmentation". When deciding how to price a product, you ask "How much will people pay?", and the answer is different people will pay different prices - some people actually want to pay more for essentially the same product.
It is an increasingly unpopular pricing method because people resent it. Note, for instance, the rapid growth of budget airlines (in Europe at least) - a lot of their popularity can be put down to the fact the traditional pricing model for flights was highly segmented - customers have come to resent paying different prices for essentially the same thing and so the budget airlines, with their simpler pricing model, have grown in popularity.
It is interesting that Apple do not do this, they don't even have separate "upgrade" prices. If you want the latest version of their OS or basic software (iWorks or iLife), then you pay one price. As a customer I like that.
I've got both home and office broadband connections in Spain with different companies, and I've found them to be ok (not great, but not terrible). I've had much worse problems with BT Broadband in the UK - if you want truely terrible service, they know how to provide it!
Let's face it, broadband providers have partial monopolies, and so they can get away with poor service. I'm sure this is just as true in many places in the USA as it in Europe.
What has this to do with net neutrality? They are talking about social networks. I don't see anything about reducing bandwidth in the article. Way to muddy the waters Slashdot editors!
You're missing the fact that people are indifferent.
Well, I guess that's the bit I don't understand. Why are people so indifferent to such an important issue? It gives me the creeps. It feels like there need only be another 9/11 type incident for Bush to be able to say "I'm suspending democratic elections in the USA for the forseeable future as we're a country at war. Support our brave troops!" and people would just cheer and wave their flags.
Speaking as a Euroweenie, I just don't understand the apparent apathy in the USA with regards to the very serious issues surrounding vote counting machines. In a democracy, could anything be more important than making sure that votes are counted correctly and fairly, with a transparent process that can be verified?
That was a computer programmer testifying (two years ago) that he'd been asked to write vote rigging software for the Ohio elections. What was the outcome of that? Was there a formal non-partisan enquiry into the elections in Ohio? Was there a huge public protest there? What am I missing?
Demand for irrigation -- which absorbs about 74 percent of all water used by people against 18 percent for hydro-power and other industrial uses and just 8 percent for households -- was likely to surge by 2050.
Surely hydro-power doesn't "absorb" any water at all? Surely water can be used both for hydro-power and then irrigation?
When will "professionals" realize that Word is not meant for all documents?
People often comment on how nice my documents look, my response is, it's because I don't use Word. Microsoft Word has always been terrible at creating attractive documents. It doesn't follow typesetting rules. I use Apple Pages now, used to use WordPerfect. Both produce documents that look much better than a standard Word document. In fact WordPerfect of ten years ago produced better looking documents than the current version of Word.
Actually you can, in the UK at least. If the tax man finds out that you've made lots of money without declairing it, then he'll want his share of it, even if you made that money through illegal means.
Has the SVG support improved? For the more complex stuff - animation and interactivity?
I've alway liked the idea of SVG overtaking Flash as the format of choice for more complex multimedia online, but nobody seems to use it very much. Any ideas why not? Why isn't the OSS community promoting SVG more?
One thing that annoys me about this subject is the deliberately misleading Microsoft advertisements aimed at parents. The ones that imply, for instance, that Microsoft software helps children become creative musicians, when Microsoft doesn't have any music creation applications.
I find it really outrageous that (in the UK at least) a big chunk of many schools IT budget goes towards Windows and Office, which are completely rubbish peices of software for educating young children. But the administrators don't understand much about computers, and the nice man from Microsoft is always taking them out to lunch, being helpful and giving them "special deals" which just happen to take up most of the IT budget...
With this specific system, this is impossible to happen
That was just one example of how an innocent person might be flagged, there are many others I can think of. For instance, we all know that people who have very insecure Windows machines. Say they get infected by a worm that then emails kiddie porn. The same scenario applies... Visit from police, computers taken away, the shy funny looking guy in the office who everyone thinks is a bit weird commits suicide because everyone thinks he must be a paedophile since he was investigated by the police...
The thing I really hate about this stuff, the people who say "If you're not doing anything wrong you don't have to worry". But consistently, when law enforcement starts treating everyone as potential criminals, innocent people are affected, sometimes very adversely.
How many people have been seriously inconvenienced when trying to take a flight because the system has flagged them as a potential terrorist? A lot more innocent people have been inconvenienced than terrorists have been caught. Now, imagine the same situation but applied to this...
We can just laugh off being tagged as a potential terrorist and tell it as a funny story to our friends and work collegues. Would you do the same thing if you'd been investigated by the police as a potential paedophile? I could see it happening quite easily - send a photo of your kids in the bath to their grandma, AOL system tags it, police come knocking at your door and take your computer and all your archives away. You get the computer back a week later with an apology from the police. But the damage is done, your neighbours and work collegues have found out why the police visited... It's a nightmare scenario but I'm afraid it's going to happen. And perhaps, more innocent people are going to be investigated than real paedophiles caught, as is the cause with "the war on terror".
I didn't say the teen would go unpunished. But the judge could understand the temptation of the open window and that the kid just climbed through it, and would likely be lenient in his sentence. Using the same situation as a metaphor on the internet, the judge wouldn't be able to understand if the window was open or not, and is less likely to be lenient in his sentence.
I think this raises a fundamental issue - most of our lawmakers and enforcers are people who have not grown up with these new technologies and have little understanding of them, both from a technology point of view, but also their social context.
Most judges, seeing a bank had implented very poor physical security - so poor that a lone teenager could fairly easily get into the bank without help - would be lenient on the teenager for breaking into that bank and bank would be in lots of legal trouble for having lax security. But when the internet is involved the teenager becomes an evil hacker in the eyes of both our lawmakers and much of society, and it's off to jail for the teen and no punishment for the bank.
I really worry about the next generation. All kids do stupid stuff and talk about stupid things as they are growing up. Only now, much of that stupid talk is done via electronic communications, and much of the stupid stuff is easier to trace.
I can see in the near future (maybe it's happening already?) that when a misdemeanour with a youth occurs one of the first steps a law enforcer will take will be to get access to the youths electronic communications. Then they'll uncover all kinds of stuff that will look terrible in the eyes of a law enforcer and the parents - and be extremely embarrassing or worrying for the youth. But in reality will just be the stupid things people do and say when they are growing up. We'll have youngers going to jail and being ostracized by their parents and society just for doing and saying the stupid things that we all did when we were young.
This brings to mind "memory palaces". I initially dismissed this as a gimmick but your post makes me think perhaps it would be a great way to improve your memory of all the information you have.
My theory is that the whole Origami project teaser campaign was a tactical spolier campaign by Microsoft that didn't work out. I think they assumed that Apple would come out with some fancy new product on their 30th anniversay, and so timed the campaign to coincide with that to spoil, or at least taint, anything Apple did. But then Apple didn't launch anything, and Microsoft was left running a spolier campaign without anything to spoil. I bet if Apple had released a new product, Microsoft would have made a lot more noise.
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Seriously it is really tiresome seeing Europeans with this high and mighty "We are so free over here and the US has become a horrible dictatorship," attitude.
You reap what you sow.
The image your government projects is that of trying to spread freedom and democracy around the world, when they actually just work in the interests of the USA. And many Americans are also under the belief that the USA is the place with the most freedom in the world. These things wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that many Americans, and even your leaders, tend to mock and berate the rest of the world about this issue. This is of course annoying for the rest of us, especially when the USA doesn't actually look any freer to us than any other first world country.
Ah, but the market segmentation with the traditional airlines when further than just business/economy classes. For instance, if you fly British Airways, you will pay more for a flight if you are British than a foreigner will pay for the same flight, because the Brits expect to pay more for stuff, apparently. Not surprisingly, many people find that kind of pricing model annoying...
Or rather, they grew because they were cheap.
That, and a more more customer friendly pricing model. There are lots of other examples of traditionally segmented markets being broken by companies with a simple, fair pricing model.
And do you like that you have to pay for every small upgrade on the OS, which is not the case with Windows?
I would rather pay for good, gradual additions of things that I actually want than get gradual additions of stuff I don't want and then have to pay a lot for essentially a completely new operating system which I need to buy a new computer for. So yes, I prefer the Apple way.
The windows pricing is a classic example of what marketeers call "market segmentation". When deciding how to price a product, you ask "How much will people pay?", and the answer is different people will pay different prices - some people actually want to pay more for essentially the same product.
It is an increasingly unpopular pricing method because people resent it. Note, for instance, the rapid growth of budget airlines (in Europe at least) - a lot of their popularity can be put down to the fact the traditional pricing model for flights was highly segmented - customers have come to resent paying different prices for essentially the same thing and so the budget airlines, with their simpler pricing model, have grown in popularity.
It is interesting that Apple do not do this, they don't even have separate "upgrade" prices. If you want the latest version of their OS or basic software (iWorks or iLife), then you pay one price. As a customer I like that.
I've got both home and office broadband connections in Spain with different companies, and I've found them to be ok (not great, but not terrible). I've had much worse problems with BT Broadband in the UK - if you want truely terrible service, they know how to provide it!
Let's face it, broadband providers have partial monopolies, and so they can get away with poor service. I'm sure this is just as true in many places in the USA as it in Europe.
What has this to do with net neutrality? They are talking about social networks. I don't see anything about reducing bandwidth in the article. Way to muddy the waters Slashdot editors!
You're missing the fact that people are indifferent.
Well, I guess that's the bit I don't understand. Why are people so indifferent to such an important issue? It gives me the creeps. It feels like there need only be another 9/11 type incident for Bush to be able to say "I'm suspending democratic elections in the USA for the forseeable future as we're a country at war. Support our brave troops!" and people would just cheer and wave their flags.
Speaking as a Euroweenie, I just don't understand the apparent apathy in the USA with regards to the very serious issues surrounding vote counting machines. In a democracy, could anything be more important than making sure that votes are counted correctly and fairly, with a transparent process that can be verified?
Have you seen this, for instance?
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/40755/
That was a computer programmer testifying (two years ago) that he'd been asked to write vote rigging software for the Ohio elections. What was the outcome of that? Was there a formal non-partisan enquiry into the elections in Ohio? Was there a huge public protest there? What am I missing?
From the article:
Demand for irrigation -- which absorbs about 74 percent of all water used by people against 18 percent for hydro-power and other industrial uses and just 8 percent for households -- was likely to surge by 2050.
Surely hydro-power doesn't "absorb" any water at all? Surely water can be used both for hydro-power and then irrigation?
I've looked at MySpace but I just don't get it. It just full of crap. Perhaps I'm too old.
Can anyone point out a page that's actually worth looking at?
When will "professionals" realize that Word is not meant for all documents?
People often comment on how nice my documents look, my response is, it's because I don't use Word. Microsoft Word has always been terrible at creating attractive documents. It doesn't follow typesetting rules. I use Apple Pages now, used to use WordPerfect. Both produce documents that look much better than a standard Word document. In fact WordPerfect of ten years ago produced better looking documents than the current version of Word.
You can't tax something that's illegal.
Actually you can, in the UK at least. If the tax man finds out that you've made lots of money without declairing it, then he'll want his share of it, even if you made that money through illegal means.
You guys can't gamble on the internet? [Takes long drag from joint]. I thought the USA was the land of freedom..?
In fact it's the best browser for any operating system other than Windows. In fact, it's the best choice for Windows users too!
Has the SVG support improved? For the more complex stuff - animation and interactivity?
I've alway liked the idea of SVG overtaking Flash as the format of choice for more complex multimedia online, but nobody seems to use it very much. Any ideas why not? Why isn't the OSS community promoting SVG more?
OTOH, microsoft offers significant discount for its software to schools.
What is the point if the software is no good for education?!!
One thing that annoys me about this subject is the deliberately misleading Microsoft advertisements aimed at parents. The ones that imply, for instance, that Microsoft software helps children become creative musicians, when Microsoft doesn't have any music creation applications.
I find it really outrageous that (in the UK at least) a big chunk of many schools IT budget goes towards Windows and Office, which are completely rubbish peices of software for educating young children. But the administrators don't understand much about computers, and the nice man from Microsoft is always taking them out to lunch, being helpful and giving them "special deals" which just happen to take up most of the IT budget...
I make a similar point in this post.
With this specific system, this is impossible to happen
That was just one example of how an innocent person might be flagged, there are many others I can think of. For instance, we all know that people who have very insecure Windows machines. Say they get infected by a worm that then emails kiddie porn. The same scenario applies... Visit from police, computers taken away, the shy funny looking guy in the office who everyone thinks is a bit weird commits suicide because everyone thinks he must be a paedophile since he was investigated by the police...
The thing I really hate about this stuff, the people who say "If you're not doing anything wrong you don't have to worry". But consistently, when law enforcement starts treating everyone as potential criminals, innocent people are affected, sometimes very adversely.
How many people have been seriously inconvenienced when trying to take a flight because the system has flagged them as a potential terrorist? A lot more innocent people have been inconvenienced than terrorists have been caught. Now, imagine the same situation but applied to this...
We can just laugh off being tagged as a potential terrorist and tell it as a funny story to our friends and work collegues. Would you do the same thing if you'd been investigated by the police as a potential paedophile? I could see it happening quite easily - send a photo of your kids in the bath to their grandma, AOL system tags it, police come knocking at your door and take your computer and all your archives away. You get the computer back a week later with an apology from the police. But the damage is done, your neighbours and work collegues have found out why the police visited... It's a nightmare scenario but I'm afraid it's going to happen. And perhaps, more innocent people are going to be investigated than real paedophiles caught, as is the cause with "the war on terror".
I didn't say the teen would go unpunished. But the judge could understand the temptation of the open window and that the kid just climbed through it, and would likely be lenient in his sentence. Using the same situation as a metaphor on the internet, the judge wouldn't be able to understand if the window was open or not, and is less likely to be lenient in his sentence.
I think this raises a fundamental issue - most of our lawmakers and enforcers are people who have not grown up with these new technologies and have little understanding of them, both from a technology point of view, but also their social context.
Most judges, seeing a bank had implented very poor physical security - so poor that a lone teenager could fairly easily get into the bank without help - would be lenient on the teenager for breaking into that bank and bank would be in lots of legal trouble for having lax security. But when the internet is involved the teenager becomes an evil hacker in the eyes of both our lawmakers and much of society, and it's off to jail for the teen and no punishment for the bank.
I really worry about the next generation. All kids do stupid stuff and talk about stupid things as they are growing up. Only now, much of that stupid talk is done via electronic communications, and much of the stupid stuff is easier to trace.
I can see in the near future (maybe it's happening already?) that when a misdemeanour with a youth occurs one of the first steps a law enforcer will take will be to get access to the youths electronic communications. Then they'll uncover all kinds of stuff that will look terrible in the eyes of a law enforcer and the parents - and be extremely embarrassing or worrying for the youth. But in reality will just be the stupid things people do and say when they are growing up. We'll have youngers going to jail and being ostracized by their parents and society just for doing and saying the stupid things that we all did when we were young.
This brings to mind "memory palaces". I initially dismissed this as a gimmick but your post makes me think perhaps it would be a great way to improve your memory of all the information you have.
My theory is that the whole Origami project teaser campaign was a tactical spolier campaign by Microsoft that didn't work out. I think they assumed that Apple would come out with some fancy new product on their 30th anniversay, and so timed the campaign to coincide with that to spoil, or at least taint, anything Apple did. But then Apple didn't launch anything, and Microsoft was left running a spolier campaign without anything to spoil. I bet if Apple had released a new product, Microsoft would have made a lot more noise.