... I launched my first hosting company I didn't want to deal with "bad" customers, people who don't pay, send spam, attract DMCA notices, etc. I wanted to offer a professional service for professional webmasters, so I made it invitation-only. You could host with us only if we knew you or you had good references from people we know. As it turned out, NO potential customer EVER turned down an invitation to host their site with us; the exclusivity turned out to be a great marketing bit. It wasn't false exclusivity, BTW, since we weren't spending 80% of our time dealing with BS from a few PITA customers, we were able to provide excellent service.
Thank you for the advice!
I don't want my own web startup to turn into the 'next' Mega-Upload or whatever, but to be a service that caters to a specific market. This is the way to do it. I can cater to my specific 'type' of clientele, and not worry about leechers who would pay, but then inundate me with DMCA take-downs.
They're offering up to $650. My not-very-old Retina Macbook Pro is only worth $475, and I do not a $899 Surface Pro to be trading "up".
$899 is the starting price. If you want one with specs of a comparable mac, you will be spending more. LOTS more. Do a comparable of one of these to a Mac, with the same specs, and you will find that the 'equivalent-spec'd' Microsoft product if far more expensive than an identically spec'd Mac.
These things are almost detail-for-detail copies of the MacBook, iMac, and iPad lines. Only, they look a bit clunkier.
And the best part of all is that they are manufactured by Lenovo. You know, IBM's former laptop brand, sold to a Chinese conglomerate. . . and Lenovo products are notorious for coming with spyware and malware pre-installed.
OK, here is the best part, actually. You must send in your charger along with the functioning Mac laptop. Those things cost $65 to $85 all by themselves! Add in that that $650 is only a discount coupon to the purchase of Microsoft's clone of the MacBook Pro you are ditching. And of course, you only get the full $650 discount on a really recent Mac laptop. An older one. . . Well, you would get more on ebay for it than this 'trade-in value' that Microsoft is offering.
Last, there are many restrictions. The display must have no dead pixels. None. No scratches. Must boot up. No property ID tags. The list of restrictions goes on and on.
This is just PR, and a bad deal for someone looking to sell/trade an extra laptop they have sitting around. (I have 6.) You will get more cash money by selling your old laptop on ebay than by taking up Microsoft on this "deal" – and all the back-doors you'd expect from Lenovo and Microsoft.
In sum, the offer is insulting. If I trade in my fully-loaded Mac to get a Microsoft (Lenovo) clone of that Mac that has the same specs of what I am trading in (1 TB, 16 GB RAM, etc.), then the price is at least $3300! That is more than I paid for my Mac with similar specs. . . a couple of years ago! Why does this myth of Macs being expensive persist? Sure, you can buy a cheap computer, or a cheap car. Neither is the same as a well-designed and reliably manufactured laptop or car. You can buy a Camry or a BMW. You can buy a Dell or a Mac. I digress. . .
In any case, a Mac can dual-boot to run OS X, Windows, or Linux. Just partition your drive and go. I run Windows, when required, from a sleek Micro-SD card that does not stick out. I use Fusion, enabling use of Windows and OS X simultaneously, thanks to my two dual cores. And it's sand-boxed, so no Windows sploits can breach my main system (OS X).
It works seamlessly. I switch between Windows and OS X in a programming class that I teach: I use the environment that a given student is using on their laptop. The API is running on both OS's, as well as Firefox on both, and some others on the OS X side. It is so dead-easy to switch between them on the fly, during lab-sessions of a class.
No one will take this "offer" from Microsoft. You would get less than you gave away. And be stuck in Windows-only. Ick.
This article describes precisely my reason for not pursuing a tenure-track position. Choosing tenure-track – aside from the known committee obligations, teaching, and so on – almost always results in most of your ideas being still-born.
That is, you get a startup package, and eventually manage to build up a several million $$$ capability for a single, specialized purpose. Soon enough, you have tenure. Soon enough, you solve the Grand Challenge in your subject area. You can write funding proposals on just about anything and win, as long as those are very closely related to what you have already done, and also use the expensive system that you've built up.
But hey, you are smart, and often converse with professors in other Departments or Disciplines. You see new 'cross-cutting' opportunities to go after other Grand Challenges, only they are not in your main field of renown. Pity. If you are young, you try a couple of times to enter those new scientific arenas because you have valuable ideas in those areas. Your proposals are rejected, and you are eaten by a grue. Three years later, someone in that field you wanted to enter publishes results of a clone of your proposed concept, insight, experiment, or work. You were shut out, and learn that you have wasted your time.
With experience, you learn that your tenured position is regarded by the Regents of the University as, "We boast a world-renowned expert in topic *********." And then you are stuck. You've probably got a mortgage and family by then, too. You not only lack the time to do what a research-concentrated professor should really do, but are actively discouraged from it by the system.
So you spend the rest of your career proposing incremental advances in an area that by-then bores you. There is no advantage nor profit in expanding your skill-set to other areas where you would have otherwise done great science.
Please tell me they atleast still have the PrtScn/SysRq and Pause/Break buttons!
And NumLock! The loss of that worthless key, along with Scroll Lock and Pause Break will. . . Wait, what the hell were those keys ever used for? I was on DOS for a decade and never needed them.
If you spend serious hours and days and weeks and months and years programming or doing IT admin, your hands will get damaged with the repeated stretches and twists needed to do Ctrl+whatever.
I'll bet you don't play guitar, saxophone, or piano.
Use your goddamned left pinky, curled comfortably back, to hold the Ctrl key. It has absolutely no effect on your wrist position, or on the mobility and targeting of your other fingers.
Not to be a downer but the number of people killed by famine, drought, sea level rise, etc will probably be more effective at curbing CO2 output than any policy measures.
Wish I had mod points for you!!!
Once half of the human population dies, AGW will at the least pause its effects on humanity (the ones left alive). But, all is for naught, which we'll see when the jet stream and other "permanently reliable ocean and weather currents" cease to be as organized as they are. We'll all be dead by then, though.
I suffer from EM sensitivity. Particularly in the range of 1 to 13 micrometers (called infra-red; it makes my skin feel hot).
I am also sensitive to microwave EM radiation. I am preparing a home test to prove this – cutting a hole in the front of my microwave oven to defeat its interlock, and just stick my hand in for a good 60 seconds. I anticipate that the resulting burn (or cooking smell) will be proof enough of my sensitivity.
I even suffer EM sensitivity to the so-called 'visible light range'. When a large magnifying glass is used to focus "light" onto my skin, it burns.
I have been told that I am also sensitive to EM radiation in the ultraviolet range, and in the x-ray range, of wavelengths, but don't really feel immediate effects. From those, it's mostly monthly dosimeter reports. . .
if the iPhone reboots, the key code must be entered as touchID does not work. Passwords are still protected by the 4th amendment in the US, right?
Beautiful! The perfect reaction to hearing of any such dragnet-style announcement should be to power-down you iPhone.
Alternatively, download your local ACLU's App. "CA Justice", for example, will record everything. If anyone attempts to operate the phone, it will automatically upload the collected A/V to an ACLU server, and provide you with a reference # in case you need to find it later. As in, "Officer, I do not give you permission to operate my phone. If you do, it will automatically upload our entire conversation to an ACLU server...", which is out of my or your control, and cannot be erased. Then, the first chance that you get, you either power it down, or if they confiscate it, use iCloud's "I lost my iPhone" to nuke it remotely.
that fell out of favor, replaced by gore and instant satisfaction from killing people, collecting loot, etc.
True.
But there was, way back then, always Hack (or net-Hack, or any of the hundreds of variants). Pre-scripted or Random dungeons, loot, skill points, and all of that other stuff that kids these days can only handle if it's wrapped in a graphical environment with PHENOMENAL water ripples and shadows.
They are still the same game genre. WoW just made it graphically impressive but tedious to play through.
* I can't count how many times I killed Werdna. Made speed-runs as a challenge.
Trump said that in the context of explaining how solid his support was with his followers - and he ALSO said in another speech that the same was true for Hillary.
Does ANYBODY doubt that both are true and that the firm Hillary-types will stay with her no matter what and the hard Donald-types will stick with him no matter what?
The guy was simply making honest statements about the state of our current politics and the successes for both Donald and Hillary in establishing very dedicated support with sizeable portions of their bases.
Bold is my emphasis.
Your reply is, quite sadly, true.
Note that I did not offer support for one candidate or the other, but simply stated a relevant fact. I hadn't heard that he made the same statement about Hillary—do you have a source? If you do, I will cry because the statements are indeed pretty much true.
Evernote is advising those users who are missing attachments to use Evernote's note history feature in Evernote Premium to try to recover the missing data.
Huh?
You want these people to buy a more expensive edition of your software – as the solution for your main product failing?
How do Trump supporters arrive at the "might stand up to wall street" conclusion for a clear member of the oligarch class whose tax plan clearly favors the affluent as opposed to Clinton who has at least furnished one that seems to favor the middle class?
Please, tell me, how on earth to arrive do you arrive at the conclusion that some one like him will favor the middle class over the affluent? There's certainly nothing in the few actual policy proposals he's floated that suggests that.
Yep. The oligarch is going to save the proles.
Yup. Yes. Yes-sirree. He's a populist all right. . . just like Adolph was.
On the flip side, Apple really appreciates that they decided to torch their sales (literally) right as the iPhone 7 was coming out. Glad Samsung decided to join team Apple.:)
30-year Apple fan-boi here. . .
I will never purchase a smartphone (or iPod) that lacks an analog audio output port.
It's worked fine for 118 years. Don't fix what's not broken!!!
I have not seen a single thing about refunds. REFUNDS.
It's either trade-in your. . . OOPS, not allowed to do that now.
Or it's. . . what? sit on your $100's device, wondering if they will ever issue refunds, and be without a smartphone? Or let it be a brick, and drop $100's more on a competing smartphone?
This "all sales and replacements stop" is really putting the pinch on the consumers. Many save up for months before buying a new smartphone. It is a really dick move by Samsung to their actual customers – purchasers of their products. Their Board of directors would have no profits to maximize if no consumers bought their products.
Only costs me $5/month for the static IP from my ISP to run, plus any time it takes when there are issues, which have been vanishingly rare, and the recycled hardware that it runs on from upgrading my main rig. Well worth it to me.
$5/month for a static IP? Surely you must be joking. The going rate is in the hundreds of dollars per month.
Or maybe you're on dial-up or DSL, rather than fiber.
Most adults have responsibilities for things like a family, a mortgage, and a full-time job. Hence, their brains adapt to each adult's chosen setting and responsibility-load. Teenagers don't.
The article mentions nothing of controlling for external factors such as this.
Adults who are free of burdensome monthly worries are the best creatives. And the best scientists. And so on.
Last, the study simply showed a correlation when they compared apples to oranges. Correlation =/= Causation.
No. That is not at all why patents exist. The reason patents exist is right there in the law. To promote open disclosure of how an invention works.
Yes. And if your Patent "Fails to Teach" – that is, if no expert in the art (field) can duplicate your invention using your description – your patent can be ruled invalid.
Slashdot Mirror
... I launched my first hosting company I didn't want to deal with "bad" customers, people who don't pay, send spam, attract DMCA notices, etc. I wanted to offer a professional service for professional webmasters, so I made it invitation-only. You could host with us only if we knew you or you had good references from people we know. As it turned out, NO potential customer EVER turned down an invitation to host their site with us; the exclusivity turned out to be a great marketing bit. It wasn't false exclusivity, BTW, since we weren't spending 80% of our time dealing with BS from a few PITA customers, we were able to provide excellent service.
Thank you for the advice!
I don't want my own web startup to turn into the 'next' Mega-Upload or whatever, but to be a service that caters to a specific market. This is the way to do it. I can cater to my specific 'type' of clientele, and not worry about leechers who would pay, but then inundate me with DMCA take-downs.
Great advice!
They're offering up to $650. My not-very-old Retina Macbook Pro is only worth $475, and I do not a $899 Surface Pro to be trading "up".
$899 is the starting price. If you want one with specs of a comparable mac, you will be spending more. LOTS more. Do a comparable of one of these to a Mac, with the same specs, and you will find that the 'equivalent-spec'd' Microsoft product if far more expensive than an identically spec'd Mac.
These things are almost detail-for-detail copies of the MacBook, iMac, and iPad lines. Only, they look a bit clunkier.
And the best part of all is that they are manufactured by Lenovo. You know, IBM's former laptop brand, sold to a Chinese conglomerate. . . and Lenovo products are notorious for coming with spyware and malware pre-installed.
OK, here is the best part, actually. You must send in your charger along with the functioning Mac laptop. Those things cost $65 to $85 all by themselves! Add in that that $650 is only a discount coupon to the purchase of Microsoft's clone of the MacBook Pro you are ditching. And of course, you only get the full $650 discount on a really recent Mac laptop. An older one. . . Well, you would get more on ebay for it than this 'trade-in value' that Microsoft is offering.
Last, there are many restrictions. The display must have no dead pixels. None. No scratches. Must boot up. No property ID tags. The list of restrictions goes on and on.
This is just PR, and a bad deal for someone looking to sell/trade an extra laptop they have sitting around. (I have 6.) You will get more cash money by selling your old laptop on ebay than by taking up Microsoft on this "deal" – and all the back-doors you'd expect from Lenovo and Microsoft.
In sum, the offer is insulting. If I trade in my fully-loaded Mac to get a Microsoft (Lenovo) clone of that Mac that has the same specs of what I am trading in (1 TB, 16 GB RAM, etc.), then the price is at least $3300! That is more than I paid for my Mac with similar specs. . . a couple of years ago! Why does this myth of Macs being expensive persist? Sure, you can buy a cheap computer, or a cheap car. Neither is the same as a well-designed and reliably manufactured laptop or car. You can buy a Camry or a BMW. You can buy a Dell or a Mac. I digress. . .
In any case, a Mac can dual-boot to run OS X, Windows, or Linux. Just partition your drive and go. I run Windows, when required, from a sleek Micro-SD card that does not stick out. I use Fusion, enabling use of Windows and OS X simultaneously, thanks to my two dual cores. And it's sand-boxed, so no Windows sploits can breach my main system (OS X).
It works seamlessly. I switch between Windows and OS X in a programming class that I teach: I use the environment that a given student is using on their laptop. The API is running on both OS's, as well as Firefox on both, and some others on the OS X side. It is so dead-easy to switch between them on the fly, during lab-sessions of a class.
No one will take this "offer" from Microsoft. You would get less than you gave away. And be stuck in Windows-only. Ick.
This article describes precisely my reason for not pursuing a tenure-track position. Choosing tenure-track – aside from the known committee obligations, teaching, and so on – almost always results in most of your ideas being still-born.
That is, you get a startup package, and eventually manage to build up a several million $$$ capability for a single, specialized purpose. Soon enough, you have tenure. Soon enough, you solve the Grand Challenge in your subject area. You can write funding proposals on just about anything and win, as long as those are very closely related to what you have already done, and also use the expensive system that you've built up.
But hey, you are smart, and often converse with professors in other Departments or Disciplines. You see new 'cross-cutting' opportunities to go after other Grand Challenges, only they are not in your main field of renown. Pity. If you are young, you try a couple of times to enter those new scientific arenas because you have valuable ideas in those areas. Your proposals are rejected, and you are eaten by a grue. Three years later, someone in that field you wanted to enter publishes results of a clone of your proposed concept, insight, experiment, or work. You were shut out, and learn that you have wasted your time.
With experience, you learn that your tenured position is regarded by the Regents of the University as, "We boast a world-renowned expert in topic *********." And then you are stuck. You've probably got a mortgage and family by then, too. You not only lack the time to do what a research-concentrated professor should really do, but are actively discouraged from it by the system.
So you spend the rest of your career proposing incremental advances in an area that by-then bores you. There is no advantage nor profit in expanding your skill-set to other areas where you would have otherwise done great science.
Please tell me they atleast still have the PrtScn/SysRq and Pause/Break buttons!
And NumLock! The loss of that worthless key, along with Scroll Lock and Pause Break will. . . Wait, what the hell were those keys ever used for? I was on DOS for a decade and never needed them.
Ctrl+Anything is not ergonomic.
If you spend serious hours and days and weeks and months and years programming or doing IT admin, your hands will get damaged with the repeated stretches and twists needed to do Ctrl+whatever.
I'll bet you don't play guitar, saxophone, or piano.
Use your goddamned left pinky, curled comfortably back, to hold the Ctrl key. It has absolutely no effect on your wrist position, or on the mobility and targeting of your other fingers.
Been able to right click for decades.... Why do you guys that have zero experience with a MAC keep trying to bring that fake piece of info Up?
Yes! Decades.
Before trackpads, it was simply Ctrl-click.
With trackpads, it is simply a two-finger click. Or Ctrl-click. Or two-button mouse.
Duh.
MacBook Pros do indeed have those four critical keys that developers need. They just quit labeling on the keyboards a couple of gens ago.
fn-left arrow = Home
fn-right arrow = End
fn-up-arrow = PgUp
fn-down-arrow = PgDn
Now the escape key. . . I need it. Do I need to start pressing Cmd-. or Ctrl-z again? At least tell me.
I don't see the point in posting anything climate-related on slashdot. It's all one big denialist echo chamber.
Global warming is a fact.
Go measure the temperature every day for 13,000 years. Plot your data.
Report back after you have completed your assignment.
Not to be a downer but the number of people killed by famine, drought, sea level rise, etc will probably be more effective at curbing CO2 output than any policy measures.
Wish I had mod points for you!!!
Once half of the human population dies, AGW will at the least pause its effects on humanity (the ones left alive). But, all is for naught, which we'll see when the jet stream and other "permanently reliable ocean and weather currents" cease to be as organized as they are. We'll all be dead by then, though.
Stick a fork in us already. We are done.
All we can do now is mitigation/slowing. And disaster response. Lots more disaster response.
I also expect that people who are EM-sensitive, entering a room with one of these devices could feel like walking into a giant microwave oven..
I imagine you mean people who are hypochondriacs since "EM-sensitivity" is a psychiatric illness, not a physical one.
I suffer from EM sensitivity. Particularly in the range of 1 to 13 micrometers (called infra-red; it makes my skin feel hot).
I am also sensitive to microwave EM radiation. I am preparing a home test to prove this – cutting a hole in the front of my microwave oven to defeat its interlock, and just stick my hand in for a good 60 seconds. I anticipate that the resulting burn (or cooking smell) will be proof enough of my sensitivity.
I even suffer EM sensitivity to the so-called 'visible light range'. When a large magnifying glass is used to focus "light" onto my skin, it burns.
I have been told that I am also sensitive to EM radiation in the ultraviolet range, and in the x-ray range, of wavelengths, but don't really feel immediate effects. From those, it's mostly monthly dosimeter reports. . .
if the iPhone reboots, the key code must be entered as touchID does not work. Passwords are still protected by the 4th amendment in the US, right?
Beautiful! The perfect reaction to hearing of any such dragnet-style announcement should be to power-down you iPhone.
Alternatively, download your local ACLU's App. "CA Justice", for example, will record everything. If anyone attempts to operate the phone, it will automatically upload the collected A/V to an ACLU server, and provide you with a reference # in case you need to find it later. As in, "Officer, I do not give you permission to operate my phone. If you do, it will automatically upload our entire conversation to an ACLU server...", which is out of my or your control, and cannot be erased. Then, the first chance that you get, you either power it down, or if they confiscate it, use iCloud's "I lost my iPhone" to nuke it remotely.
Or just keep some sandpaper handy at all times...
that fell out of favor, replaced by gore and instant satisfaction from killing people, collecting loot, etc.
True.
But there was, way back then, always Hack (or net-Hack, or any of the hundreds of variants). Pre-scripted or Random dungeons, loot, skill points, and all of that other stuff that kids these days can only handle if it's wrapped in a graphical environment with PHENOMENAL water ripples and shadows.
They are still the same game genre. WoW just made it graphically impressive but tedious to play through.
* I can't count how many times I killed Werdna. Made speed-runs as a challenge.
I would try these out, but I was long ago eaten by a grue.
Trump said that in the context of explaining how solid his support was with his followers - and he ALSO said in another speech that the same was true for Hillary.
Does ANYBODY doubt that both are true and that the firm Hillary-types will stay with her no matter what and the hard Donald-types will stick with him no matter what?
The guy was simply making honest statements about the state of our current politics and the successes for both Donald and Hillary in establishing very dedicated support with sizeable portions of their bases.
Bold is my emphasis.
Your reply is, quite sadly, true.
Note that I did not offer support for one candidate or the other, but simply stated a relevant fact. I hadn't heard that he made the same statement about Hillary—do you have a source? If you do, I will cry because the statements are indeed pretty much true.
Actual quote from Trump: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and not lose a single voter."
[REF: I'm too lazy, but it was on video & audio, and circulated about six months ago.]
FTA (summary): Clinton came under fire for months for not releasing full details of her paid speeches...
Well, duh. People paid to hear the speeches – and their content. Why would she later release the content to all "for FREE"?
Any regular speaker, especially a paid one, recycles content from one private speech to the next.
Evernote is advising those users who are missing attachments to use Evernote's note history feature in Evernote Premium to try to recover the missing data.
Huh?
You want these people to buy a more expensive edition of your software – as the solution for your main product failing?
Tone-deaf.
How do Trump supporters arrive at the "might stand up to wall street" conclusion for a clear member of the oligarch class whose tax plan clearly favors the affluent as opposed to Clinton who has at least furnished one that seems to favor the middle class?
Please, tell me, how on earth to arrive do you arrive at the conclusion that some one like him will favor the middle class over the affluent? There's certainly nothing in the few actual policy proposals he's floated that suggests that.
Yep. The oligarch is going to save the proles.
Yup. Yes. Yes-sirree. He's a populist all right. . . just like Adolph was.
On the flip side, Apple really appreciates that they decided to torch their sales (literally) right as the iPhone 7 was coming out. Glad Samsung decided to join team Apple. :)
30-year Apple fan-boi here. . .
I will never purchase a smartphone (or iPod) that lacks an analog audio output port.
It's worked fine for 118 years. Don't fix what's not broken!!!
I have not seen a single thing about refunds. REFUNDS.
It's either trade-in your. . . OOPS, not allowed to do that now.
Or it's. . . what? sit on your $100's device, wondering if they will ever issue refunds, and be without a smartphone? Or let it be a brick, and drop $100's more on a competing smartphone?
This "all sales and replacements stop" is really putting the pinch on the consumers. Many save up for months before buying a new smartphone. It is a really dick move by Samsung to their actual customers – purchasers of their products. Their Board of directors would have no profits to maximize if no consumers bought their products.
Only costs me $5/month for the static IP from my ISP to run, plus any time it takes when there are issues, which have been vanishingly rare, and the recycled hardware that it runs on from upgrading my main rig. Well worth it to me.
$5/month for a static IP? Surely you must be joking. The going rate is in the hundreds of dollars per month.
Or maybe you're on dial-up or DSL, rather than fiber.
Most adults have responsibilities for things like a family, a mortgage, and a full-time job. Hence, their brains adapt to each adult's chosen setting and responsibility-load. Teenagers don't.
The article mentions nothing of controlling for external factors such as this.
Adults who are free of burdensome monthly worries are the best creatives. And the best scientists. And so on.
Last, the study simply showed a correlation when they compared apples to oranges. Correlation =/= Causation.
...exactly the the reason patents exist
No. That is not at all why patents exist. The reason patents exist is right there in the law. To promote open disclosure of how an invention works.
Yes. And if your Patent "Fails to Teach" – that is, if no expert in the art (field) can duplicate your invention using your description – your patent can be ruled invalid.