Indeed. And Lego kits, with the exception of the tub-o'-bricks, have always been like that: you got a box with pieces and instructions for building one or two models with it. After that, you're on your own.
What is a bit different nowadays is how kids play with it. When we got a new Lego box, we'd build the model from plans once, then the bricks would disappear into a huge drawer with the rest of the Lego, to be used for building whatever took our fancy. And we learned to build a lot just by trying: spin locks, differential gears, the obligatory repeating crossbow... And every kid on our block was like that. However kids today treat Lego more like Revell kits: you build it once, then display it. Though I have no idea if that's a generational thing and if all kids arel like that, or if it's just the kids I happen to know.
Maybe what GP means is that at some point Lego introduced far too many special blocks, like A "Death Star, top left blast shield panel" brick that is pretty much only good for exactly that purpose, precluding re-use for some other design. But they have realised that mistake a good while ago, and vastly reduced the number of special bricks. And the Technic line is better than it ever was. My wife gave me a big kit for my birthday (yeah I'm spoiled...) and I was amazed at the cleverness of the design compared to the Technic kits of 30 years ago.
Maybe it's the other way around: the least competent employees have most to gain from their union, so they are the most active in making sure unions enforce FIFO rules and the like.
Some people thrive in that kind of environment. Working under pressure on something that really matters to the company, and with fluid roles and a lack of procedures, you have a lot of freedom as well as an opportunity to make a meaningful and unique contribution to the product as well as to the way the company will do things in the future. I know I perform better in such an environment than in the corporate one, with entrenched interests, highly compartmentalised roles, stifling procedures and generally terrible middle management. Sure, there's downsides to each environment as well as advantages. Personally I found a nice middle ground by working on innovation in larger organisations.
The reason you can't have a nuke isn't (and shouldn't be) because you cannot provide a valid reason for having one, it's because there actually are compelling reasons not to let you have one, and because those concerns cannot be mitigated by softer measures such as regulations or registrations. That might seem like a pointless distinction, but it really isn't. It means the state cannot just take away anything because they feel like it, but they can do so if they have good reason to do so, if they show that a ban is the only way and is actually effective, and that the reasons for that ban outweigh your desire to have something. Good grounds not to let you have a nuke. Less so for firearms or drones.
Over here, semi-auto civilian versions of military weapons are often called "assault rifles" as well. As long as they look scary enough (that criterium actually appeared in a few EU memos)
I'll bite. I have a drone for the same reason as I own an assault rifle: for fun (the rifle is strictly for the range). And that most definitely is a good enough reason. Citizens shouldn't have to justify why they need or even just want drones (or guns); the onus is on the state to come up with reasons why we shouldn't have them. Now if the state wants to regulate these things because of problems, that's fine. Require a license. Require registration. Whatever. But a ban should be the last option, and should require both extremely strong reasons for a ban and proof that a ban is effective and the only effective measure. If you want to take these things from the thousands of responsible operators because of a single irresponsible asshat, then lets start banning knifes and cars too.
This, absolutely. It's not about millennials being too dumb to know about TV stations, and it's not just millennials either; I suspect this holds true for most cord-cutters out there. When those people watch series, it's either VOD on Netflix, or it's episodes they've pulled off TPB, some streaming site, or from Usenet via Sickbeard. Who wants to have to watch a show at a specific time of day, and be forced to watch a whole buch of crap commercials besides?
I wonder about the different results for Amazon though, and I'd like to know what the results are for HBO original programming. The thing is, Netflix shows are very prominently branded at the start of the show. HBO does the same (does Amazon?). In contrast, most network content might show some vague little clip at the end of the show to indicate the producing channel; which people who downloaded the show might not even see.
It may make sense to hang on to your day job. But first of all, this guy wan't successful because he stayed at his job. If your startup isn't of the variety that you can slowly grow while revenue starts trickling in (like his); if it's more like the usual startup that requires a lot of hard work and attention up front, and a lot of time spent greasing palms to bring in some capital, then the statement "quit your day job is garbage advice" is garbage advice. To be honest I've seen more startup fail because of the founders not being able to "cross the chasm", often caused by lack of focus and resources, than because of the founders personal funds running dry.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
I'd like it to be a choice when running a search. When I'm looking for generic info, I'd like to be able to filter out paywalled info. For more esoteric stuff or scientific articles I might want to include paid sources, and have them ranked equal amongst free sources, based on relevance only.
I have a 12" driver on my sub. Why would I downgrade to a wimpy 4" driver ???
Most people (especially those with spouses) go for practical and small rather than trouser-flapping loud. Why do you think Bose is so popular? Because people didn't want huge high-end super fidelity floor standers, but small "milk carton" speakers that manage to deliver decent (good enough) sound quality. If the Siri part of this speaker actually delivers, it might actually sell. Not holding my breath though, if Homekit thus far is any indication of how well Apple understand integration in the home.
For the rest, I was seriously hoping for a much needed refresh of the Mini line.
Ridiculous, isn't it? The Mini is a great little machine and pretty affordable too. I do my iOS development on one, but it's starting to show its age...
It goes back further than that even. I remember some games that prompted you to enter "word x on page y" of the manual, which was printed on red paper to foil the photocopiers of those days. It was always nice if one could find a pirated copy somewhere so you wouldn't have to enter a word from the manual every time you started the game.
Just another example of that old inconvenient truth: DRM harms paying customers while doing very little to prevent piracy.
It's not about Google's dominance in any of these areas; the EU doesn't care per se if Google is the most popular search engine or mobile OS. It's about Google using their dominance in one area to gain an advantage in another that the Commission takes issue with.
A friend of mine used to run a fairly popular web shop. He told me that the difference between being the top ranked result on Google and being down to 3rd of 4th made an immediate and sizable impact on his revenue. That's all well and good if you only have regular competitors... but what if you are selling what Alphabet is also selling, and they put their own shop at the top and bump you down to page 2? Sure, you were free to start your own business, take out some more ads, and anyone is free to switch to Bing, but if you compete with Google and they bump you off the search results, you can be sure your sales are going to take a massive hit as no one is going to find you.
In other words: the more dominant your service is in the market, the more neutral the Commission expects you to be. Especially in places like search engines and ad rotation where the customer expects neutrality.
Nope. In Europe at least, you have to stick to a few additional rules if you enjoy (near) market dominance. For instance, you may not use that monopoly to create an unfair advantage selling or promoting other products or services you're offering. Microsoft got done for using their monopoly on the desktop to push Internet Explorer, which was deemed a product separate from the OS. I'm not sure what Google is being accused of here, but it sounds like they are using their search engine and/or AdSense to promote their own stuff at the expense of their competitors.
Simple: it exists because people will pay. This is the same in every country, whether it's extreme registration fees, fuel taxes, or road taxes. In many European countries these revenues exceed the cost of road networks and is used to fund other governent programmes. If you raise income taxes or VAT, people will scream bloody murder. However if you increase taxes on cars a little, many people might even agree, especially since they are still under the impression that cars are a major contributor to pollution (which is false: in my densely populated country for instance, cars account for just 10% of CO2 and 15% NOx emissions, and their contribution to particulates has fallen steadily and is still fallen). It's greenwashed extortion.
The fear is that, because of robots and AI, there will not be enough jobs to go around to give most people a living wage, on which a tax can be levied so we can support those without jobs as well. The current market model doesn't distribute income equally but it does a decent enough job of it, and it provides an incredible amount of freedom. But once most people will be jobless, that model will fail in a big way. What does an economy with a 95% unemployment rate look like? The government will have to find additional sources of revenue to pay for a universal basic income scheme. Make no mistake, this is nothing short of a switch from capitalism to communism... hopefully of the long-lived and prosperous Star Trek variety.
Whether robots and AI will really force such a change in the near future is the real question.
I don't get news from a single source, not from a single type of outlet. TV and newspapers provide one part, but I also read a number of opinion sites of various political colors, some of which might be called "shock blogs". And I do read the comments on those; often there's links to information not found on mainstream media. You have to filter and vet those to some degree, but they often give a far more detailed background insight than you'd get from traditional news outlets.
It sure sounds a lot like what we were trying to do back then. From concept to skeleton gui and code, so that the business can participate in the design and get exactly what they think they want, without having some annoying nay-saying UI/UX guy in the middle. I suppose that is how we ended up with monstrosities like SAP.
That sounds a lot like what we call "public insubordination" around here, nothing terrible. Don't get me wrong, I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs around this particular pipeline, but in case of local protests against infrastructural projects I almost invariably find myself opposed to the protestors after weighing the pros and cons. Not a fan of tree-huggers... especially "professional" ones. But it sure sounds like whatever TigerSwan got up to is a real concern for any liberty-minded citizen, even if what they did turns out to be technically legal, and even if they happen to be on the right side of this issue.
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Indeed. And Lego kits, with the exception of the tub-o'-bricks, have always been like that: you got a box with pieces and instructions for building one or two models with it. After that, you're on your own.
What is a bit different nowadays is how kids play with it. When we got a new Lego box, we'd build the model from plans once, then the bricks would disappear into a huge drawer with the rest of the Lego, to be used for building whatever took our fancy. And we learned to build a lot just by trying: spin locks, differential gears, the obligatory repeating crossbow... And every kid on our block was like that. However kids today treat Lego more like Revell kits: you build it once, then display it. Though I have no idea if that's a generational thing and if all kids arel like that, or if it's just the kids I happen to know.
Maybe what GP means is that at some point Lego introduced far too many special blocks, like A "Death Star, top left blast shield panel" brick that is pretty much only good for exactly that purpose, precluding re-use for some other design. But they have realised that mistake a good while ago, and vastly reduced the number of special bricks. And the Technic line is better than it ever was. My wife gave me a big kit for my birthday (yeah I'm spoiled...) and I was amazed at the cleverness of the design compared to the Technic kits of 30 years ago.
Maybe it's the other way around: the least competent employees have most to gain from their union, so they are the most active in making sure unions enforce FIFO rules and the like.
Some people thrive in that kind of environment. Working under pressure on something that really matters to the company, and with fluid roles and a lack of procedures, you have a lot of freedom as well as an opportunity to make a meaningful and unique contribution to the product as well as to the way the company will do things in the future. I know I perform better in such an environment than in the corporate one, with entrenched interests, highly compartmentalised roles, stifling procedures and generally terrible middle management. Sure, there's downsides to each environment as well as advantages. Personally I found a nice middle ground by working on innovation in larger organisations.
The reason you can't have a nuke isn't (and shouldn't be) because you cannot provide a valid reason for having one, it's because there actually are compelling reasons not to let you have one, and because those concerns cannot be mitigated by softer measures such as regulations or registrations. That might seem like a pointless distinction, but it really isn't. It means the state cannot just take away anything because they feel like it, but they can do so if they have good reason to do so, if they show that a ban is the only way and is actually effective, and that the reasons for that ban outweigh your desire to have something. Good grounds not to let you have a nuke. Less so for firearms or drones.
that stays in the corner for the entire show.
They do that for every show, not just their own original content, so that's hardly a distinguishing feature.
Over here, semi-auto civilian versions of military weapons are often called "assault rifles" as well. As long as they look scary enough (that criterium actually appeared in a few EU memos)
I'll bite. I have a drone for the same reason as I own an assault rifle: for fun (the rifle is strictly for the range). And that most definitely is a good enough reason. Citizens shouldn't have to justify why they need or even just want drones (or guns); the onus is on the state to come up with reasons why we shouldn't have them. Now if the state wants to regulate these things because of problems, that's fine. Require a license. Require registration. Whatever. But a ban should be the last option, and should require both extremely strong reasons for a ban and proof that a ban is effective and the only effective measure. If you want to take these things from the thousands of responsible operators because of a single irresponsible asshat, then lets start banning knifes and cars too.
This, absolutely. It's not about millennials being too dumb to know about TV stations, and it's not just millennials either; I suspect this holds true for most cord-cutters out there. When those people watch series, it's either VOD on Netflix, or it's episodes they've pulled off TPB, some streaming site, or from Usenet via Sickbeard. Who wants to have to watch a show at a specific time of day, and be forced to watch a whole buch of crap commercials besides?
I wonder about the different results for Amazon though, and I'd like to know what the results are for HBO original programming. The thing is, Netflix shows are very prominently branded at the start of the show. HBO does the same (does Amazon?). In contrast, most network content might show some vague little clip at the end of the show to indicate the producing channel; which people who downloaded the show might not even see.
It may make sense to hang on to your day job. But first of all, this guy wan't successful because he stayed at his job. If your startup isn't of the variety that you can slowly grow while revenue starts trickling in (like his); if it's more like the usual startup that requires a lot of hard work and attention up front, and a lot of time spent greasing palms to bring in some capital, then the statement "quit your day job is garbage advice" is garbage advice. To be honest I've seen more startup fail because of the founders not being able to "cross the chasm", often caused by lack of focus and resources, than because of the founders personal funds running dry.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken.
Is that a pint of weak-ass British ale, or a pint of "wife-beater"?
I'd like it to be a choice when running a search. When I'm looking for generic info, I'd like to be able to filter out paywalled info. For more esoteric stuff or scientific articles I might want to include paid sources, and have them ranked equal amongst free sources, based on relevance only.
I have a 12" driver on my sub. Why would I downgrade to a wimpy 4" driver ???
Most people (especially those with spouses) go for practical and small rather than trouser-flapping loud. Why do you think Bose is so popular? Because people didn't want huge high-end super fidelity floor standers, but small "milk carton" speakers that manage to deliver decent (good enough) sound quality. If the Siri part of this speaker actually delivers, it might actually sell. Not holding my breath though, if Homekit thus far is any indication of how well Apple understand integration in the home.
For the rest, I was seriously hoping for a much needed refresh of the Mini line.
Ridiculous, isn't it? The Mini is a great little machine and pretty affordable too. I do my iOS development on one, but it's starting to show its age...
It goes back further than that even. I remember some games that prompted you to enter "word x on page y" of the manual, which was printed on red paper to foil the photocopiers of those days. It was always nice if one could find a pirated copy somewhere so you wouldn't have to enter a word from the manual every time you started the game.
Just another example of that old inconvenient truth: DRM harms paying customers while doing very little to prevent piracy.
Still? What is the copyright limit these days; universe heat death + 50 years or something?
It's not about Google's dominance in any of these areas; the EU doesn't care per se if Google is the most popular search engine or mobile OS. It's about Google using their dominance in one area to gain an advantage in another that the Commission takes issue with.
A friend of mine used to run a fairly popular web shop. He told me that the difference between being the top ranked result on Google and being down to 3rd of 4th made an immediate and sizable impact on his revenue. That's all well and good if you only have regular competitors... but what if you are selling what Alphabet is also selling, and they put their own shop at the top and bump you down to page 2? Sure, you were free to start your own business, take out some more ads, and anyone is free to switch to Bing, but if you compete with Google and they bump you off the search results, you can be sure your sales are going to take a massive hit as no one is going to find you.
In other words: the more dominant your service is in the market, the more neutral the Commission expects you to be. Especially in places like search engines and ad rotation where the customer expects neutrality.
Nope. In Europe at least, you have to stick to a few additional rules if you enjoy (near) market dominance. For instance, you may not use that monopoly to create an unfair advantage selling or promoting other products or services you're offering. Microsoft got done for using their monopoly on the desktop to push Internet Explorer, which was deemed a product separate from the OS. I'm not sure what Google is being accused of here, but it sounds like they are using their search engine and/or AdSense to promote their own stuff at the expense of their competitors.
Simple: it exists because people will pay. This is the same in every country, whether it's extreme registration fees, fuel taxes, or road taxes. In many European countries these revenues exceed the cost of road networks and is used to fund other governent programmes. If you raise income taxes or VAT, people will scream bloody murder. However if you increase taxes on cars a little, many people might even agree, especially since they are still under the impression that cars are a major contributor to pollution (which is false: in my densely populated country for instance, cars account for just 10% of CO2 and 15% NOx emissions, and their contribution to particulates has fallen steadily and is still fallen). It's greenwashed extortion.
The fear is that, because of robots and AI, there will not be enough jobs to go around to give most people a living wage, on which a tax can be levied so we can support those without jobs as well. The current market model doesn't distribute income equally but it does a decent enough job of it, and it provides an incredible amount of freedom. But once most people will be jobless, that model will fail in a big way. What does an economy with a 95% unemployment rate look like? The government will have to find additional sources of revenue to pay for a universal basic income scheme. Make no mistake, this is nothing short of a switch from capitalism to communism... hopefully of the long-lived and prosperous Star Trek variety.
Whether robots and AI will really force such a change in the near future is the real question.
I don't get news from a single source, not from a single type of outlet. TV and newspapers provide one part, but I also read a number of opinion sites of various political colors, some of which might be called "shock blogs". And I do read the comments on those; often there's links to information not found on mainstream media. You have to filter and vet those to some degree, but they often give a far more detailed background insight than you'd get from traditional news outlets.
Exactly. Can I firewall this sucker, block it from phoning home, and will it still function? No? Then there's no expectation of privacy.
How about Oracle? 18 cores... I bet Larry had an orgasm when he heard about this.
It sure sounds a lot like what we were trying to do back then. From concept to skeleton gui and code, so that the business can participate in the design and get exactly what they think they want, without having some annoying nay-saying UI/UX guy in the middle. I suppose that is how we ended up with monstrosities like SAP.
That sounds a lot like what we call "public insubordination" around here, nothing terrible. Don't get me wrong, I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs around this particular pipeline, but in case of local protests against infrastructural projects I almost invariably find myself opposed to the protestors after weighing the pros and cons. Not a fan of tree-huggers... especially "professional" ones. But it sure sounds like whatever TigerSwan got up to is a real concern for any liberty-minded citizen, even if what they did turns out to be technically legal, and even if they happen to be on the right side of this issue.