Network operators counter that they deserve the right to charge premium fees to bandwidth hogs in order to offset their vast investments in infrastructure and to ensure the quality and security of their products. Mediacom has made $1.7 billion in capital investments over the past decade, according to Commisso.
Eh? All the bandwidth is already paid for: consumers pay for their connection, and Google picks up the tab for the (undoubtedly rather fat) pipes they need for their service.
Suppose I build a toll road to a shopping mall, and charge motorists $.25 for the use of the road. Then, a Walmart opens next to the mall. Suppose I'd go to Walmart saying: "You guys are making millions, and only because shoppers can drive in on my road. I want you to pay me for each visiting customer, else I will ask every motorist if they are going to visit you, and direct them to the 15km/h lane if they are.". I think they'd put me away, especially if Wal-mart had already paid for the right to build an on-ramp onto my highway. (Yes, a crap analogy like all analogoes are...)
All they are seeing is a succesful company they think they can milk for more profits.
But if you can find a way to remember them (ex: 94FE5spd - 94 Ford Exploer 5spd)
That's a good trick, but it breaks down when you have to remember passwords on multiple systems that have varying password expiry timeframes and different rules for password length, allowable characters, etc. You'll still end up writing them down.
MS ripped everything out of Vista that was truly innovative and we are left with XP rethemed and few nice subsystem tweaks. Frankly Vista is a decent update if it had be released in 2003. WTF have they been doing for 6 years?
They've been busy implementing the functionality that they deem the most important: DRM and Trusted Computing. I bet those functions weren't cut by a whisker.
Nopes, but like my other addictions, I prefer moderation over abstinence. I have started to pay a bit more attention to what I'm watching, and I was surprised to find a few true gems. Maybe this sounds silly, but perhaps you simply don't know what you are missing, which isn't surprising since the "gems" are buried under tons and tons of crap. But they are there (I'm not naming anything since I'll just elicit a "How can you like that?" response).
Getting more or less back on topic: if you're sick of television, get a digital video recorder (DVR). That sounds like a contradiction, after all why would you want a recorder for the stuff you hate, but a DVR will help you skip the crap and find the gems. Especially if you record some stuff that you never heard of, stuff that the guys around the water cooler never discuss, and stuff that airs at 3am.
A DVR really is a lot more than just a VCR with a hard disk. I find myself watching less TV but seeing a lot more, quality-wise. No more channel surfing! Instead, you'll be program-surfing: picking and recording shows, and then watching whatever fits your current mood. No tapes to swap, no finding blank tapes to record new stuff, no difficult programming, easy selection of shows on the on-screen tv guide, skipping commercials: these may be relatively small improvements over tape-baced VCRs, but they add up to making this new way of watching TV possible. I can highly recommend a DVR to people who don't want to spend a lot of time in front of the TV, but aren't ready to throw it out.
Re:Nanotech bounding forth with no safety concerns
on
Nanotech Gone Awry?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion.
And then their "food" in the petri dish runs out, and the next morning a scientist takes care of the problem with a spray can of "Nano-b-gone". Don't lose any sleep over it... there are plenty of real dangers of nanotech to worry about, such as the one cited in the main article.
To be really fair, sentence them to the time a recipient will have to spend to deal with one spam message. Say 1 second to read the subject and hit delete. 600 million spams sent (an amount easily achieved by most spammers) would equate to about 20 years of jail time. I would suggest the minute-per-spam rule to st. Peter as a guideline of the time to be spent in purgatory.
I think it's a good idea to make the attractive side of bulk spamming (the more you send, the better your chances of targetting a gullible customer), work against the spammer when it's time to pass judgment.
"Hearing senior executives say things like: 'I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week; I want to get to the bottom of this' was at least one measure of success from my point of view"
"I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week; I want to get to the bottom of this" is management-speak for "not it!".
It wasn't only "ask nicely"... I remember years ago the copy protection was simply to enter "The 4th word on the tenth line on the 10th page of the instruction manual", etc.
Ah yes, very annoying. So annoying in fact that I went out and got the pirated versions (without the password nagging "feature") of games that I owned legal copies of.
That is the risk of copy protection on games (or indeed on music and movies as well). Why punish people for buying your software or music, with annoying passwords, dongles that don't work properly, DRM software that is little more than malware, and the inability to make backup copies for legitimate purposes? It's a fine way to destroy any goodwill people have towards your company, and you're only encouraging them to get the illegal, de-DRM'ed versions.
It seems to me that it wouldn'd be too difficult to come up with something that might be almost as effective as a walled office, but not nearly as expensive as the "built-in" approach.
Most offices I've worked in are like that: basically a huge open space with a few semi-permanent but movable walls in them.
The idea doesn't work if you want to give everyone their own office anyway, not without renting a lot more floorspace. Cubes can be as small as they are because of the half-height walls, which give them the illusion of roominess. If you had to work in fully enclosed offices of the same size, it would feel like working in the broom closet.
Still, anything beats open plan offices. I did see a combination of cubes and open-plan at a client office, which was a pretty good work environment. They used half height walls to section off areas for 6 or so people, each with their own free-standing desk (instead of them being pushed together like in a typical open-plan office). The desks all faced outwards in a different direction, and were far enough apart to create the illusion of privacy, yet close enough to be able to easily talk to your team mates.
When did you realize that George Lucas had defecated on your childhood memories?
Jar Jar, or the Midiclorians. But still... I could have lived with these annoyances if the rest of the movies had been anywhere near the standard of the 1st three. They weren't. And I wasn't sure why. Like the article's author, I thought the CGI was way, way over the top at times, especially during the space battles and chase scenes. But still not enough to ruin a good movie. Then I read this: "The universe gets smaller as we find out that every page of history contains the same dozen names. The fantastic, magical universe starts to seem like something some guy just sat down and wrote."
That's just it! In the first movies, we see little parts of a "fantastic, magical universe". A few dirty, grubby planets with a couple of ineffective and somewhat inconsequential guys mucking about in their struggle against the giant, evil (and squeeky clean) empire. A couple of weird creatures and exotic locations. That's it. And yet it's totally believable.
In the last 3 movies, Lucas throws breathtaking vista after heart-stopping action at us, interspersed with scenes of utter insignificant drivel, petty disputes and barfy love scenes. These movies are the first ones with a binary tension scale: it's either an all-out adrenaline rush or Bergman on prozac. The scenes and the plot jump around more and faster than Jar Jar on fire, and we're faced with a dazzling array of bad guys, about whom we know nothing and care about even less. All this in an attempt to make something from a plot about a rather boring trade dispute. And we never get the chance to catch our breaths, take in the scenery and get to know and care for the characters, and immerse ourselves in this universe.
But just gain experience while off-line? What's the point in rewarding people for doing nothing? Next you are going to ask that you be given a stipend for not playing that character? The character should get free currency because they weren't played?
No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.
This is not just about secondary characters, but about casual players.
Many MMORPGs struggle with accommodating both casual players and power gamers. If gaining XP is too easy, the power gamers complain that their accomplishments are essentialy meaningless. If it is too hard, casual gamers complain that they will never have a chance to build up a worthwhile character.
The early MMORPGs made the mistake of tweaking only the difficulty of gaining XP, not the duration. Later on, they started taking duration into account as well. A good example is Ultima Online's "guaranteed gain" system. Instead of having to churn out 1000 swords for that elusive 0.1 skill gain, they made it so that every so often (increasingly less frequent as your skill level went up), you would be guaranteed a skill gain on the first sword you made. After that, the regular grind system applies.
Casual players do not have less time for grinding, they often have no time at all for this, if they want to have any time left over to do fun stuff. But a casual UO player could log on, make 1 sword and get their 0.1 gain, then get on with actually playing the game. It would take him perhaps a year to get to Master Smith that way, but eventually he'd get there. And powergamers would still have an edge on him; by grinding they would get their Master's title much faster.
The system described is similar in that it offer the player a tradeoff between duration and difficulty: either wait a long time for your "free" skill gain, or work at the grind to get your skill faster. I think it's a good way to cater to casual players without taking away the accomplishments of the power gamers.
They took one dollar for salary, not $1.4B. Their compensation was large, yes, but it was not a salary. If Google had tanked they would have made far less. What they've effectively done is told their employees: We care about the company because if it makes no money nor will we.
Google would have to tank seriously hard for them to make less than a huge bundle on going public. It's a nice gesture, sure, but nothing more than that, and certainly not something deserving of the epithet of "coolness". I think it's more of a publicity stunt than anything else; when you are already pretty sure to make millions on your stock, it;s all too easy to forego the paycheck.
With that said, I am all for execs earning their millions through stock options (i.e. by adding value to the company) rather than just awarding themselves a huge salary.
I think it was Stephen Baxter explored this idea as well in "Manifold: space". People take advantage of relativistic effects to travel a few centuries forward in time, to find themselves rich from the interest on their bank accounts. However, when the scheme becomes popular it start to seriously mess up the economy, and governments start seizing the assets of these time travellers.
I race RC cars and fly RC helis. I used my thumbs and fingers to control these. I've never had thumb fatuige any more than I have had my foot get tired from driving a real car. In fact, when I drive a real car, I find the controls big and clumsy. Pressing my foot on a pedal is nowhere near as precise as using my index finger to squeeze a trigger and the big steering wheel feels so slow to turn.
Ever flown an RC aircraft for 4 hours straight? Ever tried hovering while someone is shaking your shoulders (the equivalent of driving over a bumpy road)?
Braking and accelerating do not have to be precise; they need to be safe from accidentally applying them too much. Stiff pedals do a good job there. Same for the steering wheel... Even a joystick control that changes according to the speed of the car (fast steering at slow speeds, slow steering at faster speeds) will not at the same time be safe from steering you into a ditch when you sneeze or bump the control, and allow a larger-than-normal steering action in case of an emergency.
If folks are being offended by these kind of silly mistakes and coincidences, then we have well and truly won the war against racism... because apparently the Perenially Indignant have no more real issues to rally against. Count your lucky stars if all the racism you have to face is a mismatched movie recommendation (or, as some have pointed out, not-so-mismatched).
You raise a good point. Countries with weak intellectual property laws tend to be the same countries that don't export a lot of intellectual property, and vice versa. In the world of intellectual property, it's safe to say that Sweden is on the "consumer" side of the scale
I beg to differ. They don't have a Hollywood to churn out easy to digest hit movies that everyone likes, but Swedish cinema has produced a number of very good movies, especially in recent years. Sadly these movies never make it to the cinema, but they're widely available on DVD in the video store... even in the States.
Verstreken is member and politician of the VB in question. And VB is Belgiums' biggest nightmare after WW II. The issue is so sickening, that I even have to post anonymously.
So fight these people with ideas and argumentation, not with censorship and selective misinterpretation of broadcast laws. The apprehension many people feel about the idea of multiculturalism will not go away by such censorship and prosecution, on the contrary. Everyone who leaned towards the viewpoints of the VB party will now be doubly affirmed in their choice. People will think that if the "left wing bleeding hearts" try to silence VB, it must be because VB are saying things to threaten the ruling proponents of multiculturalism.
Many people, misguided or not, support parties like VB. If you outlaw such parties and deny those people even the possibility to discuss their problems, they will turn to other means to get attention or address those problems. You may then have another "Paris" on your hands.
There are those of us that thing animal experimentation is already an example of crossing the boundaries of what science can do ethically.
(I always get flamed for saying this on slashdot...)
Flamed, or presented with counter-arguments?
I think it is fine to kill or hurt animals to provide clothing, food, to test medications, and to advance science in general. I also think we should keep the suffering of the animals in question to a minimum, and that our use of animals should stop when there are good alternatives. (No, vegan diets and human test subjects are not viable alternatives)
In this case, there is no good alternative to tinkering with mice, and the knowledge gained is valuable enough. Let them continue, I say.
And whatever the outcome, this lady will lose as well. If she loses the case, the RIAA will take her for every penny she's got. If she wins, she will still have to pay the legal fees, which can be enough to bankrupt her if the RIAA try and keep the case in court for an extended time.
As usual, the only real winners are the lawyers. When are you guys going for a "loser pays" system? That's what we have, and if our local RIAA equivalent would sue me on such flimsy charges and for such low actual damages, I'd just tell them "make my day" and clal my lawyer.
In a free market it should be the case that subscribers can say "FU!" this this man, going with competitors, but unfortunately there isn't enough competition in most areas yet (so you get the casual collusion where they all mirror the same restrictive policies).
That's the real problem.
This story reminds me of a funny dispute between CNN and the Amsterdam cable TV company:
Cable co. "We will start charging you for providing access to your viewers"
- CNN: "Well, actually you should really pay us, for providing content for your cable network"
Cable co: "Pay or we will remove CNN from our lineup"
- CNN: "Fine, we'll take our content elsewhere"
The cable TV model worked quite well: customers pay the cable company for physical access to various stations. These stations provide content for free, supported by ads, or at an extra charge to the customers. In this case, some idiot exec got greedy and tried to charge both sides of the network. Fortunately, neither side wasn't having any of that. CNN didn't play ball, and customers didn't exactly relish the idea of paying twice for content, and threatened to buy satellite dishes and ditch cable. After a few weeks, CNN was put back onto the network, for free.
This case is much the same. Over here, we have a choice of backbone networks and ISPs re-selling access to those backbones. Any ISP trying to pull a stunt like this will see their customers melt away. After all, people have gotten used to the idea of flat rate Internet access, in facr that's what ISPs used to lure people over to ADSL.
However, in cases were there is a monopoly of one or a few companies working together, they can and will get away with it.
Be careful with this UI concept: email demands immediate attention.
Only if you let it. Many people do treat email like the phone or an IM client, but reading and responding to email is a task in its own right; something you should sit down for and focus on. If you get lots of email, try ignoring incoming mail if you're working on something else (turn the "new email" sound off!). When you feel like it, process all items in your inbox in one go. Trust me, you'll feel much less "swamped" by your email this way. Oh, and if you're afraid of missing an urgent mail item... if something is really urgent, people will call you, believe me.
With that said, I prefer the specialised RSS readers over Outlook-lookalikes.
"File sharing is reducing the probability that any act is able to sell millions of records, and if the success of the mega-star artists is what drives the investment in new acts, it might reduce the incentive to invest in new talent."
So what this is saying is, P2P helps smaller independent artists and is detrimental to large "manufactured" pop acts. Which is pretty much common sense, and is why the corporate music industry is so against it.
Indeed. What it is saying, is that small acts may no longer actually need that investment and backing from the labels in order to make a decent living off their music. Small acts may now be able to make it on their own... and at the very least they will not have to sell themselves into slavery in order to get their music published. That's why the industry is so much against it, because it just might make them obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose I build a toll road to a shopping mall, and charge motorists $.25 for the use of the road. Then, a Walmart opens next to the mall. Suppose I'd go to Walmart saying: "You guys are making millions, and only because shoppers can drive in on my road. I want you to pay me for each visiting customer, else I will ask every motorist if they are going to visit you, and direct them to the 15km/h lane if they are.". I think they'd put me away, especially if Wal-mart had already paid for the right to build an on-ramp onto my highway. (Yes, a crap analogy like all analogoes are...)
All they are seeing is a succesful company they think they can milk for more profits.
Getting more or less back on topic: if you're sick of television, get a digital video recorder (DVR). That sounds like a contradiction, after all why would you want a recorder for the stuff you hate, but a DVR will help you skip the crap and find the gems. Especially if you record some stuff that you never heard of, stuff that the guys around the water cooler never discuss, and stuff that airs at 3am.
A DVR really is a lot more than just a VCR with a hard disk. I find myself watching less TV but seeing a lot more, quality-wise. No more channel surfing! Instead, you'll be program-surfing: picking and recording shows, and then watching whatever fits your current mood. No tapes to swap, no finding blank tapes to record new stuff, no difficult programming, easy selection of shows on the on-screen tv guide, skipping commercials: these may be relatively small improvements over tape-baced VCRs, but they add up to making this new way of watching TV possible. I can highly recommend a DVR to people who don't want to spend a lot of time in front of the TV, but aren't ready to throw it out.
I think it's a good idea to make the attractive side of bulk spamming (the more you send, the better your chances of targetting a gullible customer), work against the spammer when it's time to pass judgment.
That is the risk of copy protection on games (or indeed on music and movies as well). Why punish people for buying your software or music, with annoying passwords, dongles that don't work properly, DRM software that is little more than malware, and the inability to make backup copies for legitimate purposes? It's a fine way to destroy any goodwill people have towards your company, and you're only encouraging them to get the illegal, de-DRM'ed versions.
The idea doesn't work if you want to give everyone their own office anyway, not without renting a lot more floorspace. Cubes can be as small as they are because of the half-height walls, which give them the illusion of roominess. If you had to work in fully enclosed offices of the same size, it would feel like working in the broom closet.
Still, anything beats open plan offices. I did see a combination of cubes and open-plan at a client office, which was a pretty good work environment. They used half height walls to section off areas for 6 or so people, each with their own free-standing desk (instead of them being pushed together like in a typical open-plan office). The desks all faced outwards in a different direction, and were far enough apart to create the illusion of privacy, yet close enough to be able to easily talk to your team mates.
That's just it! In the first movies, we see little parts of a "fantastic, magical universe". A few dirty, grubby planets with a couple of ineffective and somewhat inconsequential guys mucking about in their struggle against the giant, evil (and squeeky clean) empire. A couple of weird creatures and exotic locations. That's it. And yet it's totally believable.
In the last 3 movies, Lucas throws breathtaking vista after heart-stopping action at us, interspersed with scenes of utter insignificant drivel, petty disputes and barfy love scenes. These movies are the first ones with a binary tension scale: it's either an all-out adrenaline rush or Bergman on prozac. The scenes and the plot jump around more and faster than Jar Jar on fire, and we're faced with a dazzling array of bad guys, about whom we know nothing and care about even less. All this in an attempt to make something from a plot about a rather boring trade dispute. And we never get the chance to catch our breaths, take in the scenery and get to know and care for the characters, and immerse ourselves in this universe.
Many MMORPGs struggle with accommodating both casual players and power gamers. If gaining XP is too easy, the power gamers complain that their accomplishments are essentialy meaningless. If it is too hard, casual gamers complain that they will never have a chance to build up a worthwhile character.
The early MMORPGs made the mistake of tweaking only the difficulty of gaining XP, not the duration. Later on, they started taking duration into account as well. A good example is Ultima Online's "guaranteed gain" system. Instead of having to churn out 1000 swords for that elusive 0.1 skill gain, they made it so that every so often (increasingly less frequent as your skill level went up), you would be guaranteed a skill gain on the first sword you made. After that, the regular grind system applies.
Casual players do not have less time for grinding, they often have no time at all for this, if they want to have any time left over to do fun stuff. But a casual UO player could log on, make 1 sword and get their 0.1 gain, then get on with actually playing the game. It would take him perhaps a year to get to Master Smith that way, but eventually he'd get there. And powergamers would still have an edge on him; by grinding they would get their Master's title much faster.
The system described is similar in that it offer the player a tradeoff between duration and difficulty: either wait a long time for your "free" skill gain, or work at the grind to get your skill faster. I think it's a good way to cater to casual players without taking away the accomplishments of the power gamers.
So what does that even mean?
Ultima Online still has them beat with a practising S&M guild
With that said, I am all for execs earning their millions through stock options (i.e. by adding value to the company) rather than just awarding themselves a huge salary.
I think it was Stephen Baxter explored this idea as well in "Manifold: space". People take advantage of relativistic effects to travel a few centuries forward in time, to find themselves rich from the interest on their bank accounts. However, when the scheme becomes popular it start to seriously mess up the economy, and governments start seizing the assets of these time travellers.
Braking and accelerating do not have to be precise; they need to be safe from accidentally applying them too much. Stiff pedals do a good job there. Same for the steering wheel... Even a joystick control that changes according to the speed of the car (fast steering at slow speeds, slow steering at faster speeds) will not at the same time be safe from steering you into a ditch when you sneeze or bump the control, and allow a larger-than-normal steering action in case of an emergency.
Many people, misguided or not, support parties like VB. If you outlaw such parties and deny those people even the possibility to discuss their problems, they will turn to other means to get attention or address those problems. You may then have another "Paris" on your hands.
Wake me up when they have a music search where I can whistle a few bars into the mike, and the software comes back with matching songs.
I think it is fine to kill or hurt animals to provide clothing, food, to test medications, and to advance science in general. I also think we should keep the suffering of the animals in question to a minimum, and that our use of animals should stop when there are good alternatives. (No, vegan diets and human test subjects are not viable alternatives)
In this case, there is no good alternative to tinkering with mice, and the knowledge gained is valuable enough. Let them continue, I say.
As usual, the only real winners are the lawyers. When are you guys going for a "loser pays" system? That's what we have, and if our local RIAA equivalent would sue me on such flimsy charges and for such low actual damages, I'd just tell them "make my day" and clal my lawyer.
This story reminds me of a funny dispute between CNN and the Amsterdam cable TV company:
Cable co. "We will start charging you for providing access to your viewers"
- CNN: "Well, actually you should really pay us, for providing content for your cable network"
Cable co: "Pay or we will remove CNN from our lineup"
- CNN: "Fine, we'll take our content elsewhere"
The cable TV model worked quite well: customers pay the cable company for physical access to various stations. These stations provide content for free, supported by ads, or at an extra charge to the customers. In this case, some idiot exec got greedy and tried to charge both sides of the network. Fortunately, neither side wasn't having any of that. CNN didn't play ball, and customers didn't exactly relish the idea of paying twice for content, and threatened to buy satellite dishes and ditch cable. After a few weeks, CNN was put back onto the network, for free.
This case is much the same. Over here, we have a choice of backbone networks and ISPs re-selling access to those backbones. Any ISP trying to pull a stunt like this will see their customers melt away. After all, people have gotten used to the idea of flat rate Internet access, in facr that's what ISPs used to lure people over to ADSL.
However, in cases were there is a monopoly of one or a few companies working together, they can and will get away with it.
With that said, I prefer the specialised RSS readers over Outlook-lookalikes.