But not because of internet becoming pay only. I think small donations, for projects like Wikipedia, or sites you like, may spur it. I just hope paypal doesn't ride this as I hate paypal with a passion. Micropayments would have to be a structure where only a few percent get taken away, not the current credit card structure of $0.35 per transaction plus 1-2% which translated to 35% or more for $1.00 purchases.
I would like micropayments for things like flash games or others - not to provide make the flash games that are given away for free suddenly pay-for, but to spurn development of BETTER games. A lot of flash games now are either free or expensive ($10) for what I consider it's niche and probably could make many more sales at a lower price (bell curve). Kind of like iTunes $0.99 pricing.
Micropayments would be nice for e-books and other things to suck authors in with a viable scheme while epaper starts to take off.
FTA: "a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash."
Yes, but financed by commercials, it will be more of a profit sharing venture.
Who cares about multitouch in a computer?? Sweeping 4 fingers to show the desktop feels weird. Scrolling can be done in Windows and Linux by sweeping your fingers on the right and bottom borders of touchpad.
I used multitouch since my iGesture Pad from Fingerworks. Wanted to get their keyboard, but the business was sold to Apple by then and all production stopped. There are a lot of ways to do things, some people like the keyboard (shortcuts), some like the mouse, I like multitouch (shrugs).
Come on! They don't even have camera card readers.They even removed Firewire on the MacBook! And you can't fix that because there is no ExpressCard slot.
I can see why firewire is a problem for some. But not really for me, I don't do camera work. I would probably like Firewire for an external harddrive if I ever need one though - like if I had a smaller SSD drive and wanted a big drive to save unimportant stuff on.
I prefer no Camera Card slots because the formats gets so antiquated so fast. That's actually my gripe. I had several photoprinters where I wish the card readers were modular and could be updated - the printers themselves were perfectly good dye-subs but they haved to be given away because they only read the older formats or older versions of formats. I have a $20 card reader from Walmart, that plugs into USB when I need it, it's good enough and small (and cheaply replaceable).
You are talking to someone who would likes the Mac Book Air for lack of DVD drive. If it had multitouch, might have gone with that because external DVD (or Blu-ray in time) is preferably to dragging that deadweight drive I only use 3x a year.
Unibody??! The main body is still made of various parts, not just one.
Now they are noticeably stiffer than in the past and that plastic gasket on the edge is gone. Also that crappy latch is gone for magnetic latch (IIRC, other notebooks had that before).
Come on let's be honest, reading between lines you said that Macs are fashion items, which is true. So, the two real reasons why people get Macs is because of their design (they are not the best built computers, but they are pretty) and their terrific OS.
There is an old saying that art is sometimes what one leaves out as much as what is put on. I sometimes feel that fellow geeks want checklists of goodies and everything plus the kitchen sink in their computers, I know that I'll only use a fraction of the wishlist (most people do) and Apple supplies me with that. As I said before, I could have conceivably gone with the MSI or EEEpc models, but the keyboards are too small on most of them to use full time and perhaps not powerful for fast compilation times (maybe?), that I would have to add a cheap desktop anyway that I don't want. I would probably have junked the notebook within 2 years. The last Apple I kept for 5 until the pressure to move to intel became too much (now).
Really, I drive a small Honda and consider it a pretty car. I have a small, economical (heating/AC) house and am happy with that. I have a tracfone (no iPhone and $70+ plans here). I'm usually no frills in everything. But if I have to work on something hours a day, I want something I like. We are talking about several hundred dollars difference max. Divide that by several years and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
No and yes. To type this message right now, no. I learned Dvorak several years back and completely forgot Qwerty in my muscle memory. Sometimes mac defaults on qwerty for passwords (only because I have both on) and sometimes I switch it back to Qwerty for my girlfriend and have to use it in between.
There's more than that. What I don't get on other notebooks is:
1. True multi-touch trackpad (not just scrolling). You can go on ebay and try for a fingerworks trackpad when they are available at ebay but they go for big money and are for desktops (but nice software, too bad company was bought by apple).
2. Economizing ports. I like a lack of ports, it always irks me when I see something as antiquated as a serial port on my notebook. Don't ask me why, but it's rather like seeing a floppy drive on a notebook.
3. Stylish elegance. THe unibody construction is really nice. It may be silly, but even the upper end notebooks from competitors seem like hunks of ugly black plastic, and if not, they still get a lot of little things wrong. The little things like their crappy bezels/logos on the back or just the obvious overpacking of ports to fill out a bureacratic checklist. It's like they try to a certain extent, and then promptly give up once they have to invest in something that costs more money than usual.
Yes, Apple owns me completely, I guess I'm their whore in this direction. But since a notebook is a tool I work with all day (has replace my desktop as well), I might as well get something I like, even if it costs a bit more.
I honestly don't get the debate. Either buy it or don't. But this issue/whining comes so frequently, I have to wonder if its from people who want to get one but can't afford it, can't talk their boss/SO into it, or just too cheap. I never hear people obsess over Alienware's prices as much. Even the new Macbook, lacking firewire, may be called the new 13 inch Mac Book Pro for all intents and purposes and considering some of the upgrade, the rise in price was probably warranted (more RAM in both offerings by default is called for though).
Instead, it seems like they are constantly trying to make others feel bad for their purchase. Lighten up, it's just a notebook. I would got with an MSI Wind|EEEpc + cheap desktop if I couldn't afford the Mac right now. Not a big deal.
If the Federal Government wasn't so overbearing and allowed for States right and the minimalist interpretation of it's own duties, that is what we could have had:
50 states competing with each other for citizens and businesses
Some states could try to be a libertarian utopia, others a socialist with universal healthcare, and others in the middle. Instead, we are left with a largely one-size-fits-all approach which is also abhorrent to most open-source approach.
This is quite misleading. According to the linked article, the program will only log traffic information, not message content. This may not be good, but it is a far cry from stripping away "all vestiges of communication privacy", and it means that it is not comparable to Carnivore, which actually would log message content.
It's not comparable to Carnivore? It's the first step toward it, you dope!
Neither candidate's economic plan makes sense. Sooner or later this country will fall, because of entitlement spending and the baby boomers retiring. Obama is out there promising all sorts of things he ultimately CAN'T and WON'T deliver on. Have fun. Don't believe me.
OTOH, if you need a blessed authority figure to tell you these things, try David Walker, he was the Comptroller General from 1998-2008, appointed by Clinton to that post, previously appointed by Reagan and Bush 41 to others. He was head of the GAO (General Accountability Office) and basically the top accountant of the land: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
The fact that either candidate backed the bailouts and ARE PROMISING you MORE benefits are both irresponsible. Bush should have asked us to cut back after 9/11 on our consumerism, but encouraged the opposite. The issues you mention such as abortion are wedge issues, should be handled by the states per the 10th amendment, and are probably actually meaningless to most people's lives unlike the Constitution and the overall economic conditions.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That's how I feel about people voting in republicrats and democans and expecting CHANGE in Washington.
How does time stretch work? (Yes I googled it, all I get is a bunch of how-to about installing myth-tv.)
BTW,/., logging in the new way sucks, change it back to the old way that has been changed for a while now without reason? Used to be able to log-in WHILE making a comment. Now, follow the log-in link, log-in, take you to the front page rather than the comment you were going to reply to. Why make it more of a hassle and less convenient than it used to be?
I never stated the premise that the "US doesn't have a manufacturing base". I said, according to overwhelming trade deficits, it's as if we consume all we produce and then some.
"The first adds because someone has to go in and repair all that both in materials and labor."
You're allocating capital to something that doesn't necessarily built the economy up. This is the classic fallacy shoemaker's tale of a broken window, where it rests on the assumption that a boy breaking a window is good, because the shoemaker has to spend money repairing it employing the glasscutter -- when in fact he may have been saving for a new hammer - putting the black smith out of business.
I would love a Prius now with gas prices, but wouldn't buy it without that benefit because of looks.
The even better Honda Insight (in terms of fuel economy), which went for big bucks when gas hit $4 on ebay (almost as much as new), was last produced several years ago and Honda quit it because of sales.
Yes, but the GDP is bullshit. It makes societal harms into positives (Hurrican Gabby hits and causes $5 BILLION damage, that ADDS to the GDP). Another common scenario is a foreign car bought in the US at a dealership, because the transaction is in the US, it, again, adds to the GDP. Peter Schiff and many others put forth arguments much better than mine, go google it. It is a feel-good measure put out by the government in the same fashion the offical inflation figure is (which hardly accounts for real inflation).
The point is, you need to stack the deficit against some other number that isn't complete nonsense. Perhaps trade deficits. Japan has a huge national debt (3x ours in terms of GDP), but it can keep going purely because it makes so much stuff and good trade balances. OTOH, our industry has been exported, we hardly make anything to export anymore.
Economics should not be hard, at least the basics. Consider the country as a huge household. You have debts and you produces things. It should make sense that an economy, to stay healthy has to overproduce and underconsume. A farmer cannot expect to thrive if he eats all his harvest of wheat in his own household PLUS has borrow to consume other people's harvests. A farmer is best off when he underconsumes (only part of the crop is internally consumed and the rest exported).
Japan is like a high swinging professional living way beyond his means but because he brings home the big bucks from clients, can keep paying the increasingly large minimal balances on his credit card - though that will come to an end. America, OTOH, is more like a blue collar worker - can't afford a smaller debt to begin because he doesn't have a high paying job.
Please don't compare the GDP, after Truman we still had a huge manufacturing base left over from WW2 and were exporting to the world. We don't have that anymore. A farmer's household cannot stand for long if he consumes his entire crop for himself and that of his neighbors on credit. That's what we, as a nation, have been doing and it won't work forever.
Asking what a user will use it for is shortsighted. DVDs have not been enough for me for several years (I backup using HDDs, cheaper considering my time). Even 100GB disc isn't all that exciting - perhaps HVDs will come out with 320-1TB data, but I suspect flash will be there sooner anyway.
Yes, there is porn for some but that's hardly the only use. For me, I tend to scan in a lot of books that were never printed in quantity. Depending on the book, if it's just for information or if there are important pictures - they can take up a lot of room very quickly.
With the invention of epaper, books are going on the list to music (mp3), movies (not just porn), and images as stuff people look to a PC to store. Movies will become a factor again as HD rolls out -- they take up a ton of space. Not too mention images from an high megapixel camera take up a lot of space. In the next 20 years, I also expect more and more devices that will feed data into computers automatically, feeding the need for more space.
I'm not of the crowd that wonders what we'll do with the space, I'm actually disappoint that it seems we stagnated in HDDs with capacity. We went from 10GB to 500GB in such a short time. I don't think the push to 10TB will be so easy. I could use it.
Go there and do it, or invest in a company that will if you really believe that is the case.
I believe it's amazing what the company is promising, and if it's on no public's dime until they give actual service, I don't see that you have cause to complain.
I didn't expect them to okay users to resort to the analog-hole, something that many companies and legislators have been trying to stop for years. Will other DRM services be this forgiving when they shut down their servers?
Forgiving? Let me get this straight - they sell you a product that relies on their server up to 6 months ago, and then decide they don't feel like supporting said service, they make you go in circles making sure it always works. Burning to a CD? That's why people went to iPods and away from walkmans/whatever...
If Walmart wanted to make this right, they'd have tracked all the downloads a person made and then offered a DRM-free version of that song to them for free download. Instead of wasting people's time to cut their own costs. At least give the same amount on credit that a person bought.
Jeez. If they put "purchase" anywhere on that store, as it stands now, they should be sued for issuing what are in essence limited time rentals when people thought they were buying.
Slashdot Mirror
But not because of internet becoming pay only. I think small donations, for projects like Wikipedia, or sites you like, may spur it. I just hope paypal doesn't ride this as I hate paypal with a passion. Micropayments would have to be a structure where only a few percent get taken away, not the current credit card structure of $0.35 per transaction plus 1-2% which translated to 35% or more for $1.00 purchases.
I would like micropayments for things like flash games or others - not to provide make the flash games that are given away for free suddenly pay-for, but to spurn development of BETTER games. A lot of flash games now are either free or expensive ($10) for what I consider it's niche and probably could make many more sales at a lower price (bell curve). Kind of like iTunes $0.99 pricing.
Micropayments would be nice for e-books and other things to suck authors in with a viable scheme while epaper starts to take off.
FTA:
"a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash."
Yes, but financed by commercials, it will be more of a profit sharing venture.
I used multitouch since my iGesture Pad from Fingerworks. Wanted to get their keyboard, but the business was sold to Apple by then and all production stopped. There are a lot of ways to do things, some people like the keyboard (shortcuts), some like the mouse, I like multitouch (shrugs).
I can see why firewire is a problem for some. But not really for me, I don't do camera work. I would probably like Firewire for an external harddrive if I ever need one though - like if I had a smaller SSD drive and wanted a big drive to save unimportant stuff on.
I prefer no Camera Card slots because the formats gets so antiquated so fast. That's actually my gripe. I had several photoprinters where I wish the card readers were modular and could be updated - the printers themselves were perfectly good dye-subs but they haved to be given away because they only read the older formats or older versions of formats. I have a $20 card reader from Walmart, that plugs into USB when I need it, it's good enough and small (and cheaply replaceable).
You are talking to someone who would likes the Mac Book Air for lack of DVD drive. If it had multitouch, might have gone with that because external DVD (or Blu-ray in time) is preferably to dragging that deadweight drive I only use 3x a year.
Now they are noticeably stiffer than in the past and that plastic gasket on the edge is gone. Also that crappy latch is gone for magnetic latch (IIRC, other notebooks had that before).
There is an old saying that art is sometimes what one leaves out as much as what is put on. I sometimes feel that fellow geeks want checklists of goodies and everything plus the kitchen sink in their computers, I know that I'll only use a fraction of the wishlist (most people do) and Apple supplies me with that. As I said before, I could have conceivably gone with the MSI or EEEpc models, but the keyboards are too small on most of them to use full time and perhaps not powerful for fast compilation times (maybe?), that I would have to add a cheap desktop anyway that I don't want. I would probably have junked the notebook within 2 years. The last Apple I kept for 5 until the pressure to move to intel became too much (now).
Really, I drive a small Honda and consider it a pretty car. I have a small, economical (heating/AC) house and am happy with that. I have a tracfone (no iPhone and $70+ plans here). I'm usually no frills in everything. But if I have to work on something hours a day, I want something I like. We are talking about several hundred dollars difference max. Divide that by several years and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
No and yes. To type this message right now, no. I learned Dvorak several years back and completely forgot Qwerty in my muscle memory. Sometimes mac defaults on qwerty for passwords (only because I have both on) and sometimes I switch it back to Qwerty for my girlfriend and have to use it in between.
To add:
4. Backlit keyboard. Really nice in dim rooms.
If there are other differentiations, I either don't know about them or not that important to me.
There's more than that. What I don't get on other notebooks is:
1. True multi-touch trackpad (not just scrolling). You can go on ebay and try for a fingerworks trackpad when they are available at ebay but they go for big money and are for desktops (but nice software, too bad company was bought by apple).
2. Economizing ports. I like a lack of ports, it always irks me when I see something as antiquated as a serial port on my notebook. Don't ask me why, but it's rather like seeing a floppy drive on a notebook.
3. Stylish elegance. THe unibody construction is really nice. It may be silly, but even the upper end notebooks from competitors seem like hunks of ugly black plastic, and if not, they still get a lot of little things wrong. The little things like their crappy bezels/logos on the back or just the obvious overpacking of ports to fill out a bureacratic checklist. It's like they try to a certain extent, and then promptly give up once they have to invest in something that costs more money than usual.
Yes, Apple owns me completely, I guess I'm their whore in this direction. But since a notebook is a tool I work with all day (has replace my desktop as well), I might as well get something I like, even if it costs a bit more.
I honestly don't get the debate. Either buy it or don't. But this issue/whining comes so frequently, I have to wonder if its from people who want to get one but can't afford it, can't talk their boss/SO into it, or just too cheap. I never hear people obsess over Alienware's prices as much. Even the new Macbook, lacking firewire, may be called the new 13 inch Mac Book Pro for all intents and purposes and considering some of the upgrade, the rise in price was probably warranted (more RAM in both offerings by default is called for though).
Instead, it seems like they are constantly trying to make others feel bad for their purchase. Lighten up, it's just a notebook. I would got with an MSI Wind|EEEpc + cheap desktop if I couldn't afford the Mac right now. Not a big deal.
If the Federal Government wasn't so overbearing and allowed for States right and the minimalist interpretation of it's own duties, that is what we could have had:
50 states competing with each other for citizens and businesses
Some states could try to be a libertarian utopia, others a socialist with universal healthcare, and others in the middle. Instead, we are left with a largely one-size-fits-all approach which is also abhorrent to most open-source approach.
It's not comparable to Carnivore? It's the first step toward it, you dope!
Neither candidate's economic plan makes sense. Sooner or later this country will fall, because of entitlement spending and the baby boomers retiring. Obama is out there promising all sorts of things he ultimately CAN'T and WON'T deliver on. Have fun. Don't believe me.
Read Peter Schiff's book (written 2006, published 2007) "Crash Proof : How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse":
http://www.amazon.com/Crash-Proof-Economic-Collapse-Sonberg/dp/0470043601
OTOH, if you need a blessed authority figure to tell you these things, try David Walker, he was the Comptroller General from 1998-2008, appointed by Clinton to that post, previously appointed by Reagan and Bush 41 to others. He was head of the GAO (General Accountability Office) and basically the top accountant of the land:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
He made these videos as Comptroller General:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIgrxpp97OQ (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXr_Ga_n0pY (Part 2)
Interviewed on 60 minutes:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7461407498377956300
Interviewed by Glenn Beck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-16u9x3tfE
The fact that either candidate backed the bailouts and ARE PROMISING you MORE benefits are both irresponsible. Bush should have asked us to cut back after 9/11 on our consumerism, but encouraged the opposite. The issues you mention such as abortion are wedge issues, should be handled by the states per the 10th amendment, and are probably actually meaningless to most people's lives unlike the Constitution and the overall economic conditions.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That's how I feel about people voting in republicrats and democans and expecting CHANGE in Washington.
How does time stretch work? (Yes I googled it, all I get is a bunch of how-to about installing myth-tv.)
BTW, /., logging in the new way sucks, change it back to the old way that has been changed for a while now without reason? Used to be able to log-in WHILE making a comment. Now, follow the log-in link, log-in, take you to the front page rather than the comment you were going to reply to. Why make it more of a hassle and less convenient than it used to be?
And you think *I* have roadrage problems?
I never stated the premise that the "US doesn't have a manufacturing base". I said, according to overwhelming trade deficits, it's as if we consume all we produce and then some.
"The first adds because someone has to go in and repair all that both in materials and labor."
You're allocating capital to something that doesn't necessarily built the economy up. This is the classic fallacy shoemaker's tale of a broken window, where it rests on the assumption that a boy breaking a window is good, because the shoemaker has to spend money repairing it employing the glasscutter -- when in fact he may have been saving for a new hammer - putting the black smith out of business.
Meant to post one comment down, in reply to "In Germany"
So? At least people there know to get into the right lane when not passing.
A lot of highways here, two slowpokes often "race" neck and neck with each other for minutes on end to the detriment of everyone behind them.
Sorry, numerous court cases have that traveling hence driving is a right, not a priviledge.
Which means the states cannot take that right away from you without due process. Priviledges can.
Ceteris Paribus.
I would love a Prius now with gas prices, but wouldn't buy it without that benefit because of looks.
The even better Honda Insight (in terms of fuel economy), which went for big bucks when gas hit $4 on ebay (almost as much as new), was last produced several years ago and Honda quit it because of sales.
Yes, but the GDP is bullshit. It makes societal harms into positives (Hurrican Gabby hits and causes $5 BILLION damage, that ADDS to the GDP). Another common scenario is a foreign car bought in the US at a dealership, because the transaction is in the US, it, again, adds to the GDP. Peter Schiff and many others put forth arguments much better than mine, go google it. It is a feel-good measure put out by the government in the same fashion the offical inflation figure is (which hardly accounts for real inflation).
The point is, you need to stack the deficit against some other number that isn't complete nonsense. Perhaps trade deficits. Japan has a huge national debt (3x ours in terms of GDP), but it can keep going purely because it makes so much stuff and good trade balances. OTOH, our industry has been exported, we hardly make anything to export anymore.
Economics should not be hard, at least the basics. Consider the country as a huge household. You have debts and you produces things. It should make sense that an economy, to stay healthy has to overproduce and underconsume. A farmer cannot expect to thrive if he eats all his harvest of wheat in his own household PLUS has borrow to consume other people's harvests. A farmer is best off when he underconsumes (only part of the crop is internally consumed and the rest exported).
Japan is like a high swinging professional living way beyond his means but because he brings home the big bucks from clients, can keep paying the increasingly large minimal balances on his credit card - though that will come to an end. America, OTOH, is more like a blue collar worker - can't afford a smaller debt to begin because he doesn't have a high paying job.
Please don't compare the GDP, after Truman we still had a huge manufacturing base left over from WW2 and were exporting to the world. We don't have that anymore. A farmer's household cannot stand for long if he consumes his entire crop for himself and that of his neighbors on credit. That's what we, as a nation, have been doing and it won't work forever.
deady, not "day", I mean.
What you refer to as conservativism used to be refered to Liberalism and these days Classical Liberalism. So, in a way, you can say Liberalism is day.
Of course, I'm talking of the liberalism of the enlightenment, not of the Wilsonian Foreign Policy, FDR domestic policy days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
But will it simply turn into a gambling chip against the RIAA to get a marginally better deal?
Asking what a user will use it for is shortsighted. DVDs have not been enough for me for several years (I backup using HDDs, cheaper considering my time). Even 100GB disc isn't all that exciting - perhaps HVDs will come out with 320-1TB data, but I suspect flash will be there sooner anyway.
Yes, there is porn for some but that's hardly the only use. For me, I tend to scan in a lot of books that were never printed in quantity. Depending on the book, if it's just for information or if there are important pictures - they can take up a lot of room very quickly.
With the invention of epaper, books are going on the list to music (mp3), movies (not just porn), and images as stuff people look to a PC to store. Movies will become a factor again as HD rolls out -- they take up a ton of space. Not too mention images from an high megapixel camera take up a lot of space. In the next 20 years, I also expect more and more devices that will feed data into computers automatically, feeding the need for more space.
I'm not of the crowd that wonders what we'll do with the space, I'm actually disappoint that it seems we stagnated in HDDs with capacity. We went from 10GB to 500GB in such a short time. I don't think the push to 10TB will be so easy. I could use it.
Should have, would have, could have.
Go there and do it, or invest in a company that will if you really believe that is the case.
I believe it's amazing what the company is promising, and if it's on no public's dime until they give actual service, I don't see that you have cause to complain.
but only if it's to tag known criminals.
That means the politicians have to get one first.
Forgiving? Let me get this straight - they sell you a product that relies on their server up to 6 months ago, and then decide they don't feel like supporting said service, they make you go in circles making sure it always works. Burning to a CD? That's why people went to iPods and away from walkmans/whatever...
If Walmart wanted to make this right, they'd have tracked all the downloads a person made and then offered a DRM-free version of that song to them for free download. Instead of wasting people's time to cut their own costs. At least give the same amount on credit that a person bought.
Jeez. If they put "purchase" anywhere on that store, as it stands now, they should be sued for issuing what are in essence limited time rentals when people thought they were buying.
Yes, um, I classify slashdot as continual education for my vocation. Sometimes even R&D :)
Wanna bet?