If you read TFA you find that it's not even a rumor, it's entirely speculation based on the purchase of Alienware by Dell. It states that the argument for the Alienware phone is "overwhelming" based on the fact that the author thinks that Alienware is cool and is well known outside of us build-it-yourself PC geeks. TFA is accompanied by something labeled "First Pictures of Alienware Android Cell Phone" that is actually a GIF mockup drawn by a staff artist based on what they'd like it to look like.
So now the Slashdot "killer" label is being applied to products that not only don't exist yet, but for which there's no objective evidence that anyone is even thinking about.
Can we retire the "killer" now? It's become parody.
I don't think it's critical that a US President has great scientific
knowledge, but I would like to see some evidence that a successful
candidate understands what science is and why the thought processes
involved are important.
Good science involves the ability on the part of the scientist to
abandon ideas and modifying hypothesis that don't accord with the facts found via
their investigations. It means accepting all facts that
apply, not merely the ones that support the end-result that the
scientist would prefer to reach. And it means an acceptance
that inquiry can lead to important discovery in areas nobody expected,
so you can't necessarily tell up-front whether funded research will
produce results.
For some time in the United States we've confused technology with
science. Each can contribute to the other, but they're not
the same. A good question for those candidates might be to find out if
they know the difference, and why it's important to know. But
in the end, I think it would be more important for a President to
demonstrate a knowledge and dedication to the scientific process of
finding answers rather than to the current fascination for accepting or
rejecting facts based on the result they want to achieve.
While I can see how this may involve the need to change some parts of the theories of how a star works I'm not sure I see how, either here or in the referenced paper in the Astrophysical Journal, this qualifies as a "crisis". In essence they're saying that the results of their current observations indicate that previous theories need to be modified.
How is this is a crisis?
So... if the worker is working a 40 hour work week, then they are
essentially saying that they are spending 1/40th of their time learning
the commonly accepted terminology used on what amounts to being their
primary productivity tool. And I can see the term "wasted"
being used if they were never going to use the words again, but I would
hope that once they've learned the word and its meaning that it will
stick for a little while.
If they were going to be an auto mechanic would they be "wasting" their
time learning the terms "torque wrench" or "floor jack", as well as
what they mean and how to use them?
At one point the article says:
'It's like driving a car - you
don't have to be a mechanical engineer
to drive and most people will learn something about the mechanics of
cars, like what the spark plugs or carburetors do. But with the
computer people have not got to the point where they are willing to
lift up the bonnet and have a go themselves.'
The analogy is faulty. They're not being asked to swap out
the hard disk, install a new video card, or bump up the RAM, just know
the basics of their tool. In a large corporation the computer
is the equivalent of a fleet car or other company asset the employee is
being allowed to use. If the employee wants to "lift up the bonnet and have a go
themselves" they need to buy one with their own dime and
learn. I'm sure most desktop support people have had more
than enough experience with repairing systems from users who decided to
"have a go themselves".
To continue the broken analogy, a driver that doesn't know
the difference between an accelerator pedal and a break pedal probably
shouldn't be driving.
Nearly 75% of people said they
spend more than an hour every week
simply trying to find out what something means in order to finish a
task, according to the survey by recruitment consultants Computer
People.
I've spent huge amounts of time trying to work my way through
labyrinthine HR policies, Employee Manuals, and other detritus of the
corporate world. It comes with the territory when you have
to deal with something new.
Excell - this helps to run
programs on your PC.
I feel much better now. Does
the author mean Microsoft Excel? If this is what the writer
of the
article thinks "Excell"does then much of the tone and content
of
the article itself becomes clearer. And the HR department
shoulldn't be hiring people who are this easily confused.
While I agree that Microsoft demonstrates and has continued to demonstrate some seriously anti-competitive practices, this study simply shows that the results differ for web server types between the two search engines. It doesn't demonstrate anything beyond that.
While extending the comparison to 10,000 incidences from the current 1000 will add a finer grain to the results and help to eliminate the problems of small sample size, the study's author needs to add other search engines to the study to provide some control for the comparisons. If multiple search engines show one result and one shows another then there's evidence for a problem, but right now it merely shows that the distinctly separate systems used by Google and Microsoft produce distinctly different results.
This shouldn't be surprising, or even notable.
No, AT&T networks are AMPS (for analog), TDMA (for 2G Digital), and GSM. AT&T Wireless has *never* run CDMA. NTT DoCoMo would never have invested in AWS if they had. Nor would there have been any interest by Vodafone as their technology would not have translated well.
By the way, one of the biggest reasons that AWS operational costs were so high, reflected in their often poor EBITA, was the fact that they ran these three separate technologies. Field technicians had to know all three to maintain the network, engineers had to find ways to make them all work together, and all phones had to support at least two of the three signaling types. A very difficult mish-mash of technology to support.
You're misreading the original message. It's not sad that this kid was caught.
What was said was:
The sad thing is they'll fail to catch the original Blaster author so they'll
throw the book at this kid for the whole Blaster thing.
The sad and dangerous part is the news media's tendancy to try to find the
culprit as if there was a single individual responsible. If they blame
the entire thing on him, and then have the standard trial by news pundit,
what we'll get is a scapegoat and no progress on solving the problem of poorly
written software and an expanding OS monoculture that makes the vulnerabilities
even more prevalent. Slammer, Blaster, Sobig, and whatever the next one is represent
a serious problem, and if we get another attempt to blame it all on the loner
teenage hacker instead of trying to fix the bigger problems that make
it possible we'll get hit again and probably much harder.
Many of us have spent a lot of time trying to convince our senior management
that we have serious problems with unmanaged systems (i.e. either not sysadmin'd
at all, or administered by someone who doesn't know what they're doing) and
are finally beginning to make some progress. We don't need scapegoating clouding
the issue.
I was approached this morning by a VP in my company who pointed to this news
release and said 'Looks like they caught him, I guess we don't need that
project you wanted for better patch management on the Enterprise network.'
I went about re-educating him (and was reasonably successful), but I know I
was successful because I have his ear and he listens. Not all of my peers at
other companies are as lucky.
At one point in the article they are speaking to the rep from the Software
and Information Industry Association:
Thompson said customers need to have realistic expectations. He urged buyers
to ask themselves two questions before plunking down cash for software: What
is it that I want this software to do? and Am I going to use this
software as it's been marketed?
Make sure that your expectations are appropriate to what a product
is marketing, he said.
My question would be: is how the product is marketed what is covered in the
ads, or what is stated in the EULA? Ads tend to implylots of
bizarrethings,
but what software really does or doesn't do won't be revealed until you read
the EULA. Most of the time the EULA states that the software isn't guaranteed
to do anything, including harming you and your data.
Read the EULA, that's where appropriate expectations about the software
should be set. Not in the marketing.
This isn't going to be used in business meetings, where projection screens
are available anyway.
Of course it will be used in Corporate boardrooms, and probably very quickly
once the technology becomes viable. I can't count the number of complaints I've
heard from my management about the amount of wasted wall space taken
up by fixed projection screens. They get replaced with an manual pull-down or
electric screen that descends from the ceiling, and someone breaks it. Or worse,
they want a white-board in that spot as well, so they don't lose
all that space, and then someone forgets that they have the screen down and
writes on the screen with a white-board marker (just try to get that
out!)
Once the technology reaches a point where the definition is good enough for
presentations and the maintenance costs are less than $10K/year it will be used,
particularly in companies where presenting a corporate image of being on top
of technology is considered important.
You say that as if the Baby Bells aren't already being heavily subsidized
by tax dollars.
Can you provide some substantiation for that claim? I've seen no evidence that
this is the case. There is evidence of tax dollar subsidization of many industries,
such as last year's bailout of the airlines, and I think everyone would be very interested in seeing
a reference discussing this alleged subsidization of the telephone industry.
Post proof or retract. Does anyone ever retract anything they say on/. ?
Ballmer actually said: customers will never really know who stands
behind this product.
The EULA's that I've seen for most commercial software products (including
Microsoft's) clearly state that they're not guaranteed to do anything, and are
not guaranteed to not harm your system or you. It seems quite clear that the
difference in this area between commercial OS/software releases and Open Source
is that, with Open Source you never know who will stand behind the
product, and with commercial software you will know that nobody stands behind
the product.
At least with the former I have a chance that someone, somewhere will stand
behind their product.
A good business model must include a path to profitability for the service provider. The business traveler has shown in the past a willingness to pay for services rendered, and so companies that provide services will concentrate on that customer first. In addition, the business traveler may also generate good will inside the companies they work for if the service provided effectively meets their needs. That traveler may later become the executive responsible for selecting service providers for other things, and may remember their positive experience with that vendor. Thus it can become both a profit center and a marketing tool for future sales of services.
Infrastructure costs are another consideration. The business traveler may go a variety of places when arriving in a new town, but the majority of their time will be at the airport, hotel, car rental agency, and points in between. This means that the requirements of supporting that customer are clearer in terms of the locations the service must be provided, and the places where the equipment must be installed are likely to have internal organizations (Accounts Payble/Receiveable, IT, Operations, Telco, and so forth) that know how to work effectively and efficiently with an external service provider. They may also already have voice or data circuits in place that can be utilized to provide connection to your data backbone. By minimizing the cost and complexity of their initial investment they're going to increase the chances of their long-term success.
Without a way to generate revenue that more than covers expenses a product or service will only generate red ink. We say that we want ubiquitous wireless data services, but are we willing to pay for those services? If not, what else would motivate a business to provide that service? Most of us on this forum have indicated many times that we don't want to pay for metered data services, and some have indicated that they don't want to pay for much of anything. What would make a business decide that we constitute a good potential market?
We shouldn't dismiss outright, but assertions require proof, and extraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof. Without proof a claim must be considered mere speculation.
Minds certainly should remain open, but if the claimant provides no facts to support the claim and instead depends on an appeal to a pre-existing emotion for validation (in this case justified outrage over the results of terrorism) then the claim trivializes itself.
Don't we see similar "appeals to outrage" here on/. whenever a story about the DMCA or Microsoft is posted? Such arguments are no more valid when they are presented by a corporation to a Congressional committee than they are when presented by one of us in this forum. They just have a larger and more influential audience.
Interesting! So, if the "look" of the trash can is what is being patented, how many pixels have to be changed in the design of the "look" of the trash can before the "look" no longer infringes on the patent?
This is not a facetious question. If a designer is going to insure that they do not infringe then they will have to have a metric that allows for adequate measurement of compliance. Otherwise both the patent and the process for measuring compliance are little more than smoke.
There are a wide variety of sites were we can go to get information about price, performance, features, and everything else relating to a new product we want to buy. Rarely do any of these places contain any information about whether purchasing the product will lock the buyer into buying supplies for that product from the OEM only. I think this is mostly because this has hardly ever been an issue in the past. I may have a GM car, but GM can only tell me that my car will run better with original GM replacement parts, not that I have no choice.
It seems to me that this should be a part of any good review of a product. A review of a Lexmark printer on a reputable site on the web will tell me the lifetime of the cartridge, the number of pages printed per minutes, the quality of the print, and many other things, but never touches an issue such as whether supplies are available from third parties.
Perhaps this should be considered to be an important element to any product review in the field of consumer electronics. After the events of the last few years and the effects of the DMCA it certainly is for me.
"How about trying to invest in things that will secure enough revenue to cover the cost and earn additional income over whatever the life of the technology may be?"
I think you nailed the problem right there. What *is* the life of the technology, and can it be integrated into a national system, in tens of thousands of cell sites, quickly enough to actually generate a profit before the technology is outdated and no longer viable?
A technology roll-out like this for wireless data on a national scale would involve tens of millions of dollars and take a minimum of two years. Would anyone want it in two years? Would it ever even be able to pay back the initial investment costs before it became yesterday's technology?
Yep... it says "Here's hopin" following quoted material. The quote in question has the following assertions:
1) There's a story on AICN
2) It's about some of Miyazaki's movies
3) They're going to be released in the US by Disney
4) They're going to be released in sets of 2 disks per movie
5) They're coming in April
6) The original story was on Steve Bissette's message board.
So, the editor said "Here's hopin" as a response to the announcement. Depending on your level of paranoia, personal biases, axes to grind, or mental state, you could conclude what you concluded or what I concluded. Or you could think that he's "hopin" that any of these is other assertions is true. Maybe he has a personal love for the month of April? He likes movies released in 2 disk sets? That it really was on Steve Bissette's message board? That the movies were really by Miyazaki? That they're going to be released by Disney instead of Warner Brothers?
Considering how much the majority of Slashdotters dislike region encoding I doubt that the fact that it's going to be a Region 1 release is what he's "hopin" for. I see no evidence to support the notion that he's actively rooting for region encoding as opposed to the release of some darn good movies. But then again, we all believe what supports our world view.
No, the article's submitter made no mention of whether region locked DVD's are good, bad, or indifferent. The article states that something that was previously available only in Region 2 is rumored to soon be available in Region 1.
How did you draw the conclusion that "article's submitter and the editor clearly appear to believe" region encoding is a good thing? Because they didn't include a rant about how it's bad?
Everyone has two complaints about the software he/she uses:
*Everyone* doesn't have these two complaints. My experience is that many people hold one opinion and discount the other. Those who complain about the lack of security and stability in products decry "creeping featuritis", while those who want more and more features have disdain for the geeks and wonks who have a major stake in the security and stability of the software. Most people don't care about security/stability until the lack of it bites them. Convincing people that these are important issues is like selling Life Insurance... they don't want to bother with it until they find out they need it, and then it's too late.
There are a lot of systems used by hospitals, police, ambulances, and other emergency services that depend on internet connectivity. I spent a lot of time when Code Red first hit hard keeping some of these systems on-line as their interfaces were clogged with all that extraneous nonsense. Even the systems that couldn't be infected by Code Red were bogged down.
It's only a matter of time until there are deaths as a result of a worm/virus/trojan infecting or DOSing critical systems. Can we call the individual that wrote the malware a terrorist then?
Slashdot Mirror
... so does that make me an XCustomer?
If you read TFA you find that it's not even a rumor, it's entirely speculation based on the purchase of Alienware by Dell. It states that the argument for the Alienware phone is "overwhelming" based on the fact that the author thinks that Alienware is cool and is well known outside of us build-it-yourself PC geeks. TFA is accompanied by something labeled "First Pictures of Alienware Android Cell Phone" that is actually a GIF mockup drawn by a staff artist based on what they'd like it to look like. So now the Slashdot "killer" label is being applied to products that not only don't exist yet, but for which there's no objective evidence that anyone is even thinking about. Can we retire the "killer" now? It's become parody.
I don't think it's critical that a US President has great scientific knowledge, but I would like to see some evidence that a successful candidate understands what science is and why the thought processes involved are important.
Good science involves the ability on the part of the scientist to abandon ideas and modifying hypothesis that don't accord with the facts found via their investigations. It means accepting all facts that apply, not merely the ones that support the end-result that the scientist would prefer to reach. And it means an acceptance that inquiry can lead to important discovery in areas nobody expected, so you can't necessarily tell up-front whether funded research will produce results.
For some time in the United States we've confused technology with science. Each can contribute to the other, but they're not the same. A good question for those candidates might be to find out if they know the difference, and why it's important to know. But in the end, I think it would be more important for a President to demonstrate a knowledge and dedication to the scientific process of finding answers rather than to the current fascination for accepting or rejecting facts based on the result they want to achieve.
Actually, while there seems to be differences in opinion, the lowest number I've found quoted is 100,000 and the highest is 10 million:
. shtml
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/JenniferLeong
While I can see how this may involve the need to change some parts of the theories of how a star works I'm not sure I see how, either here or in the referenced paper in the Astrophysical Journal, this qualifies as a "crisis". In essence they're saying that the results of their current observations indicate that previous theories need to be modified. How is this is a crisis?
Follow the link, it's a good article.
So... if the worker is working a 40 hour work week, then they are essentially saying that they are spending 1/40th of their time learning the commonly accepted terminology used on what amounts to being their primary productivity tool. And I can see the term "wasted" being used if they were never going to use the words again, but I would hope that once they've learned the word and its meaning that it will stick for a little while.
If they were going to be an auto mechanic would they be "wasting" their time learning the terms "torque wrench" or "floor jack", as well as what they mean and how to use them?
At one point the article says:
'It's like driving a car - you don't have to be a mechanical engineer to drive and most people will learn something about the mechanics of cars, like what the spark plugs or carburetors do. But with the computer people have not got to the point where they are willing to lift up the bonnet and have a go themselves.'
The analogy is faulty. They're not being asked to swap out the hard disk, install a new video card, or bump up the RAM, just know the basics of their tool. In a large corporation the computer is the equivalent of a fleet car or other company asset the employee is being allowed to use. If the employee wants to "lift up the bonnet and have a go themselves" they need to buy one with their own dime and learn. I'm sure most desktop support people have had more than enough experience with repairing systems from users who decided to "have a go themselves". To continue the broken analogy, a driver that doesn't know the difference between an accelerator pedal and a break pedal probably shouldn't be driving.
Nearly 75% of people said they spend more than an hour every week simply trying to find out what something means in order to finish a task, according to the survey by recruitment consultants Computer People.
I've spent huge amounts of time trying to work my way through labyrinthine HR policies, Employee Manuals, and other detritus of the corporate world. It comes with the territory when you have to deal with something new.
Excell - this helps to run programs on your PC.
I feel much better now. Does the author mean Microsoft Excel? If this is what the writer of the article thinks "Excell"does then much of the tone and content of the article itself becomes clearer. And the HR department shoulldn't be hiring people who are this easily confused.
While I agree that Microsoft demonstrates and has continued to demonstrate some seriously anti-competitive practices, this study simply shows that the results differ for web server types between the two search engines. It doesn't demonstrate anything beyond that. While extending the comparison to 10,000 incidences from the current 1000 will add a finer grain to the results and help to eliminate the problems of small sample size, the study's author needs to add other search engines to the study to provide some control for the comparisons. If multiple search engines show one result and one shows another then there's evidence for a problem, but right now it merely shows that the distinctly separate systems used by Google and Microsoft produce distinctly different results. This shouldn't be surprising, or even notable.
What could be geekier than updating software on a W95 box?
Biting the head off of a live chicken? Or is that redundant?
No, AT&T networks are AMPS (for analog), TDMA (for 2G Digital), and GSM. AT&T Wireless has *never* run CDMA. NTT DoCoMo would never have invested in AWS if they had. Nor would there have been any interest by Vodafone as their technology would not have translated well. By the way, one of the biggest reasons that AWS operational costs were so high, reflected in their often poor EBITA, was the fact that they ran these three separate technologies. Field technicians had to know all three to maintain the network, engineers had to find ways to make them all work together, and all phones had to support at least two of the three signaling types. A very difficult mish-mash of technology to support.
You're misreading the original message. It's not sad that this kid was caught. What was said was:
The sad thing is they'll fail to catch the original Blaster author so they'll throw the book at this kid for the whole Blaster thing.
The sad and dangerous part is the news media's tendancy to try to find the culprit as if there was a single individual responsible. If they blame the entire thing on him, and then have the standard trial by news pundit, what we'll get is a scapegoat and no progress on solving the problem of poorly written software and an expanding OS monoculture that makes the vulnerabilities even more prevalent. Slammer, Blaster, Sobig, and whatever the next one is represent a serious problem, and if we get another attempt to blame it all on the loner teenage hacker instead of trying to fix the bigger problems that make it possible we'll get hit again and probably much harder.
Many of us have spent a lot of time trying to convince our senior management that we have serious problems with unmanaged systems (i.e. either not sysadmin'd at all, or administered by someone who doesn't know what they're doing) and are finally beginning to make some progress. We don't need scapegoating clouding the issue.
I was approached this morning by a VP in my company who pointed to this news release and said 'Looks like they caught him, I guess we don't need that project you wanted for better patch management on the Enterprise network.' I went about re-educating him (and was reasonably successful), but I know I was successful because I have his ear and he listens. Not all of my peers at other companies are as lucky.
At one point in the article they are speaking to the rep from the Software and Information Industry Association:
Thompson said customers need to have realistic expectations. He urged buyers to ask themselves two questions before plunking down cash for software: What is it that I want this software to do? and Am I going to use this software as it's been marketed?
Make sure that your expectations are appropriate to what a product is marketing, he said.
My question would be: is how the product is marketed what is covered in the ads, or what is stated in the EULA? Ads tend to imply lots of bizarre things, but what software really does or doesn't do won't be revealed until you read the EULA. Most of the time the EULA states that the software isn't guaranteed to do anything, including harming you and your data.
Read the EULA, that's where appropriate expectations about the software should be set. Not in the marketing.
This isn't going to be used in business meetings, where projection screens are available anyway.
Of course it will be used in Corporate boardrooms, and probably very quickly once the technology becomes viable. I can't count the number of complaints I've heard from my management about the amount of wasted wall space taken up by fixed projection screens. They get replaced with an manual pull-down or electric screen that descends from the ceiling, and someone breaks it. Or worse, they want a white-board in that spot as well, so they don't lose all that space, and then someone forgets that they have the screen down and writes on the screen with a white-board marker (just try to get that out!)
Once the technology reaches a point where the definition is good enough for presentations and the maintenance costs are less than $10K/year it will be used, particularly in companies where presenting a corporate image of being on top of technology is considered important.
You say that as if the Baby Bells aren't already being heavily subsidized by tax dollars.
Can you provide some substantiation for that claim? I've seen no evidence that this is the case. There is evidence of tax dollar subsidization of many industries, such as last year's bailout of the airlines, and I think everyone would be very interested in seeing a reference discussing this alleged subsidization of the telephone industry.
Post proof or retract. Does anyone ever retract anything they say on /. ?
Ballmer actually said: customers will never really know who stands behind this product.
The EULA's that I've seen for most commercial software products (including Microsoft's) clearly state that they're not guaranteed to do anything, and are not guaranteed to not harm your system or you. It seems quite clear that the difference in this area between commercial OS/software releases and Open Source is that, with Open Source you never know who will stand behind the product, and with commercial software you will know that nobody stands behind the product.
At least with the former I have a chance that someone, somewhere will stand behind their product.
That would make it about 1000. Are you sure that's what you meant?
A good business model must include a path to profitability for the service provider. The business traveler has shown in the past a willingness to pay for services rendered, and so companies that provide services will concentrate on that customer first. In addition, the business traveler may also generate good will inside the companies they work for if the service provided effectively meets their needs. That traveler may later become the executive responsible for selecting service providers for other things, and may remember their positive experience with that vendor. Thus it can become both a profit center and a marketing tool for future sales of services.
Infrastructure costs are another consideration. The business traveler may go a variety of places when arriving in a new town, but the majority of their time will be at the airport, hotel, car rental agency, and points in between. This means that the requirements of supporting that customer are clearer in terms of the locations the service must be provided, and the places where the equipment must be installed are likely to have internal organizations (Accounts Payble/Receiveable, IT, Operations, Telco, and so forth) that know how to work effectively and efficiently with an external service provider. They may also already have voice or data circuits in place that can be utilized to provide connection to your data backbone. By minimizing the cost and complexity of their initial investment they're going to increase the chances of their long-term success.
Without a way to generate revenue that more than covers expenses a product or service will only generate red ink. We say that we want ubiquitous wireless data services, but are we willing to pay for those services? If not, what else would motivate a business to provide that service? Most of us on this forum have indicated many times that we don't want to pay for metered data services, and some have indicated that they don't want to pay for much of anything. What would make a business decide that we constitute a good potential market?
We shouldn't dismiss outright, but assertions require proof, and extraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof. Without proof a claim must be considered mere speculation.
/. whenever a story about the DMCA or Microsoft is posted? Such arguments are no more valid when they are presented by a corporation to a Congressional committee than they are when presented by one of us in this forum. They just have a larger and more influential audience.
Minds certainly should remain open, but if the claimant provides no facts to support the claim and instead depends on an appeal to a pre-existing emotion for validation (in this case justified outrage over the results of terrorism) then the claim trivializes itself.
Don't we see similar "appeals to outrage" here on
Interesting! So, if the "look" of the trash can is what is being patented, how many pixels have to be changed in the design of the "look" of the trash can before the "look" no longer infringes on the patent?
This is not a facetious question. If a designer is going to insure that they do not infringe then they will have to have a metric that allows for adequate measurement of compliance. Otherwise both the patent and the process for measuring compliance are little more than smoke.
There are a wide variety of sites were we can go to get information about price, performance, features, and everything else relating to a new product we want to buy. Rarely do any of these places contain any information about whether purchasing the product will lock the buyer into buying supplies for that product from the OEM only. I think this is mostly because this has hardly ever been an issue in the past. I may have a GM car, but GM can only tell me that my car will run better with original GM replacement parts, not that I have no choice.
It seems to me that this should be a part of any good review of a product. A review of a Lexmark printer on a reputable site on the web will tell me the lifetime of the cartridge, the number of pages printed per minutes, the quality of the print, and many other things, but never touches an issue such as whether supplies are available from third parties.
Perhaps this should be considered to be an important element to any product review in the field of consumer electronics. After the events of the last few years and the effects of the DMCA it certainly is for me.
"How about trying to invest in things that will secure enough revenue to cover the cost and earn additional income over whatever the life of the technology may be?"
I think you nailed the problem right there. What *is* the life of the technology, and can it be integrated into a national system, in tens of thousands of cell sites, quickly enough to actually generate a profit before the technology is outdated and no longer viable?
A technology roll-out like this for wireless data on a national scale would involve tens of millions of dollars and take a minimum of two years. Would anyone want it in two years? Would it ever even be able to pay back the initial investment costs before it became yesterday's technology?
Note the bit in bold? That's CmdrTaco's comment.
Yep... it says "Here's hopin" following quoted material. The quote in question has the following assertions:
1) There's a story on AICN
2) It's about some of Miyazaki's movies
3) They're going to be released in the US by Disney
4) They're going to be released in sets of 2 disks per movie
5) They're coming in April
6) The original story was on Steve Bissette's message board.
So, the editor said "Here's hopin" as a response to the announcement. Depending on your level of paranoia, personal biases, axes to grind, or mental state, you could conclude what you concluded or what I concluded. Or you could think that he's "hopin" that any of these is other assertions is true. Maybe he has a personal love for the month of April? He likes movies released in 2 disk sets? That it really was on Steve Bissette's message board? That the movies were really by Miyazaki? That they're going to be released by Disney instead of Warner Brothers?
Considering how much the majority of Slashdotters dislike region encoding I doubt that the fact that it's going to be a Region 1 release is what he's "hopin" for. I see no evidence to support the notion that he's actively rooting for region encoding as opposed to the release of some darn good movies. But then again, we all believe what supports our world view.
No, the article's submitter made no mention of whether region locked DVD's are good, bad, or indifferent. The article states that something that was previously available only in Region 2 is rumored to soon be available in Region 1. How did you draw the conclusion that "article's submitter and the editor clearly appear to believe" region encoding is a good thing? Because they didn't include a rant about how it's bad?
*Everyone* doesn't have these two complaints. My experience is that many people hold one opinion and discount the other. Those who complain about the lack of security and stability in products decry "creeping featuritis", while those who want more and more features have disdain for the geeks and wonks who have a major stake in the security and stability of the software. Most people don't care about security/stability until the lack of it bites them. Convincing people that these are important issues is like selling Life Insurance... they don't want to bother with it until they find out they need it, and then it's too late.
There are a lot of systems used by hospitals, police, ambulances, and other emergency services that depend on internet connectivity. I spent a lot of time when Code Red first hit hard keeping some of these systems on-line as their interfaces were clogged with all that extraneous nonsense. Even the systems that couldn't be infected by Code Red were bogged down.
It's only a matter of time until there are deaths as a result of a worm/virus/trojan infecting or DOSing critical systems. Can we call the individual that wrote the malware a terrorist then?