The web has made a tremendous difference in what I can accomplish. I'm old enough to remember the days when I anxiously awaited new issues of electronics magazines because they presented a steady stream of projects that introduced me to new components and ways of doing things. These days, I often turn to forums, manufacturer's websites and other people's project pages for new ideas, advice and assistance. Over the course of the past 15 years, I've become adept at leveraging a vast pool of knowledge to dramatically improve the stuff I create.
The flip-side is that the 'net can be a huge timewaster if all you do is surf gossip sites, post on twitterface or play games. However, my suspicion is that the people who use the web to kill time would have found other ways to fritter time away in the pre-wired days (and, to be honest, what seems like wasted time to one person could be life-changing to another).
OK, so propose a better solution. I can see one vital change that is requires: Currently, the DMCA provides a mechanism by which stolen content can be removed quickly. However, as in this case, companies can abuse the DMCA to sideline competing products. So, somehow, the "victim" needs to be able to take equally efficient recourse if it turns out that no infringement took place.
Google has to respond promptly to a DMCA complaint or risk potential legal action. Once the company receives an infringement notice, the safest thing for them to do is to pull the content and ask the potential infringer to clarify their ownership of said content. It's a frustrating waste of time, because you have to make a coherent argument that copyright and trademarks have not been infringed. However, once you have filed your response, the tables turn and Google has to act on your submission -- if Tetris LLC can't demonstrate clearly *how* your game infringes, then the onus is on Google to resume sales. Of course, all of this could take weeks or months and will impact your income (and mental health) while it plays out.
That said, the DMCA seems to be a very effective tool to remove genuinely infringing content - I've used it twice to get illegal copies of my work removed from sites, and the process took less than 12 hours in both cases.
Yup, I stand corrected. That's what I get for trying to squeeze in my Slashdot fix before work. Now I'm off to calculate some orbital trajectories. This might not end well...
Someone can't do math. The numbers are actually really close. Let's look at the base 16GB model. It's £429 in the UK, which equals about $630 according to xe.com. Take off the 17.5% VAT, and we get £353.93. That equals $520 US. What's the problem again???
Engadget was extremely clever in this situation. They let Gizmodo break the story and take the legal risk, then immediately republished all of Gizmodo's photos on their own site with the Giz watermarks intact, as did dozens of other blogs. S
Yup. It's like being a long distance truck driver, except without the steering wheel and rest stop hookers. Not to mention that mechanical failures are harder to tend with when you can't just pull over to the side of the road.
I use a $40 Philips DVD player that has a USB port on the front. It works with flash keys and external hard drives. I simply drop the shows I want to watch onto a USB key and watch - takes only seconds to set up. The factory on-screen UI is fairly limited, but there's a brilliant hacked version that supports long file names. Similar USB-equipped DVD and Blu-Ray players are made by Samsung and are equally inexpensive. My player will be outdated in a year, and I'll just replace it with an updated equivalent. Makes far more sense than fiddling around with a nettop, PVR software, and dozens of almost-ok atom-tweaked linux variants.
The levy is ridiculously outdated, to the point of being inconsequential. The rate is 24 cents per blank cassette tape (longer than 40 min), and 29 cents per blank MiniDisc, CD-R or CD-RW. They might as well tax phonograph cylinders and 8-track tapes - it would have about the same impact.
You're forgetting that the distributor takes a huge percentage of the sale price. Amazon's current price structure only gives 35% of the sale price to the publisher. A $4.99 increase will only net the publisher an extra $1.75. That's set to change this summer, when Amazon's new pricing structure sees roughly 70% going to the publisher -- if they're willing to sell for less than $9.99. Of course, the MacMillan spat and the arrival of the iPad just tossed a spanner into the works, so things could change quickly.
I guess I didn't make myself clear - I already have email and a good browser on my netbook. There's no good reason for me to replace it with a tablet PC.
I don't need a tablet PC unless it offers access to a compelling suite of applications. As it stands, this thing is basically an extremely underpowered netbook with a discrete keyboard and pointing device. Even with a touchscreen, it can't compete with a bottom end netbook for generic computing tasks (for example, typing just isn't efficient - I can't manage 45 wpm on a touchscreen). Apple gets this. The iPhone/touch is successful because of its integration with the app store, which offers *device-specific* apps. If apple releases a giant iPod Touch/eReader in the next couple of months, it will succeed only if there's a strong suite of apps written specifically for it. Other manufacturers will be left scrambling, because Chromium OS, Ubuntu NBE and Windows 7 just don't translate well to the tablet environment - you're left using a desktop OS on something that very definitely isn't a desktop. So Freescale's initiative will fail, as will dozens of goofy "tablets" that are little more than touchscreen-equipped PCs with user-hostile ergonomics.
The last thing I want in the dash of my 10 year old car is a 10 year old computer system with a glitchy, faded display and prehistoric software and networking. Given the quality of today's cars, it's easy to make one last 10-15 years reliably. Technology changes so quickly that one of the things I look for when buying is as little tech as possible - no built in GPS, no talking alarms, no roof-mount DVD system and definitely no PC. It makes far more sense to buy an aftermarket GPS for $150 than it does to buy essentially the same thing preinstalled for $650. The same goes for $2,500 headrest-mounted DVD players.
The Blackberry business model predates the arrival of the current generation of smartphones. RIM charges telcos a monthly fee for each subscriber using the various Blackberry services (messenger, mail and data). Licensing the server technology to cell providers would cost RIM a fortune in monthly license fees, because no doubt the wireless providers would negotiate huge discounts. I also suspect that the blackberry.net infrastructure is a tangled mess that would challenging to support when run by countless telcos around the globe - it was never supposed to get this popular.
63.3% of US households had cable/dsl Internet Access in 2007. The others get along fine because they're disinterested in technology, are poor or simply don't read well. I occasionally run into people who don't have an email address or computer at home. They're often the most interesting people to talk to because they rarely work in a IT-related field and aren't bombarded by the same Internet crazes and memes as the rest of us. These guys are the master carpenters, mechanical wizards and people who prefer to spend time outdoors exploring the world.
It doesn't matter if Roy Ozzie had something to do with the idea in Lotus Notes. All that matters is that there was prior art, developed by another company.
Mmm. The 20 minute lag between clicking a link and viewing a web page would be annoying.;) The solution, albeit imperfect, would be to create a shipboard intranet that's regularly updated from Earth when bandwidth permits. Ten years ago, the Mars Global Surveyor had a minimum downlink speed of 21.33 kbps, with 2 kbps engineering data downlink. NASA's new LRO will be mapping the moon with telemetry downlink speeds of up to 3000 kbps in direct modulated mode (albeit at much shorter range).
I bought my current phone (a Blackberry) unlocked from an online discount retailer. It cost me under $200 and I have the freedom to upgrade or my change service provider whenever the urge hits. Of course, this strategy doesn't work so well when you're chasing the latest handset because it'll cost you an arm and a leg. Personally, it's all about the freedom to change my mind. I'm hoping that Android really catches on in the next year or so - if it does, I might jump to that platform. Either way, I have the freedom to do it without having to pay onerous penalties.
The last few Federal elections in the USA have revealed significant voting machine flaws (both mechanical and electronic) anyway. Actually, I'm bewildered that the gov't doesn't hire professional designers to clearly lay out printed and electronic ballots. The ones I've seen look like they were designed by the sort of person who self-publishes a conspiracy theory newsletter.
"Because they were on manual backup control they could not exert enough force on the controls to recover before Vne or the flutter speed of something was attained."
Umm. In this case, "manual" control means fly by wire, so there was no need for extreme control pressure. The appropriate way to recover from a dive does not involve yanking on the controls like a gorilla. You reduce power to idle if above maneuvering speed and apply a smooth pull. Of course, this assumes you're not overbanked, in which case you need to push the yolk toward neutral if the controls are loaded (pulling G's) and then roll the aircraft level and pull smoothly. This can be a serious bitch if you're spatially disoriented (potentially inverted or in a spiral dive, to name a couple of scenarios) with no horizon for reference and the artificial horizon rolling all over the place. Control is somewhat counter-intuitive when you're flying inverted and you can never rely on what your inner ear is telling you about correct orientation (I vividly remember an instructor driving that point home by putting me "under the hood" and banking the aircraft all over the place, then asking me to tell him when we were flying straight and level. I didn't have a clue). To make things worse, if you're not belted in snugly you're going to end up hitting the overhead panel with your face rather than flying the aircraft when things get really rough.
Last time I checked, OS 10.5 Leopard costs $129.95 in the Apple Store, so software's not the reason for the difference. Part of it can be explained away because of higher material costs - brilliant industrial design and sleek cases don't come cheap. The rest, unfortunately, is simply a brand premium. However, Ballmer seems to be attempting to misdirect our attention. The real battle will be at the low end, where millions of ARM-based netbooks and mobile internet devices are going to ship with Linux under the hood. It's the perfect environment for Linux to thrive - the segment is extremely price sensitive and no one expects their smartphone or pocket computer to run Windows apps.
I quite like Safari - not sure why you think I don't. However, I have a universal dislike of the various toolbars and crapware that is bundled into installers, and I expected Apple to be above all that.
I was surprised to discover both Safari and iTunes on my wife's machine recently, thanks to an Apple update that defaulted to installing both apps when she was prompted to get the new version of QuickTime. I suspect many hundreds of thousands of other unsophisticated users were similarly duped.
*Everybody who gets satellite radio, if they enjoy it, never listens to AM/FM again in their car.*
Rubbish. Much as it's nice to have homogenized talk shows and music broadcasts across the continent, I still listen to terrestrial broadcasts for rush hour traffic updates, weather and local news and commentary.
Slashdot Mirror
The web has made a tremendous difference in what I can accomplish. I'm old enough to remember the days when I anxiously awaited new issues of electronics magazines because they presented a steady stream of projects that introduced me to new components and ways of doing things. These days, I often turn to forums, manufacturer's websites and other people's project pages for new ideas, advice and assistance. Over the course of the past 15 years, I've become adept at leveraging a vast pool of knowledge to dramatically improve the stuff I create.
The flip-side is that the 'net can be a huge timewaster if all you do is surf gossip sites, post on twitterface or play games. However, my suspicion is that the people who use the web to kill time would have found other ways to fritter time away in the pre-wired days (and, to be honest, what seems like wasted time to one person could be life-changing to another).
OK, so propose a better solution. I can see one vital change that is requires: Currently, the DMCA provides a mechanism by which stolen content can be removed quickly. However, as in this case, companies can abuse the DMCA to sideline competing products. So, somehow, the "victim" needs to be able to take equally efficient recourse if it turns out that no infringement took place.
Google has to respond promptly to a DMCA complaint or risk potential legal action. Once the company receives an infringement notice, the safest thing for them to do is to pull the content and ask the potential infringer to clarify their ownership of said content. It's a frustrating waste of time, because you have to make a coherent argument that copyright and trademarks have not been infringed. However, once you have filed your response, the tables turn and Google has to act on your submission -- if Tetris LLC can't demonstrate clearly *how* your game infringes, then the onus is on Google to resume sales. Of course, all of this could take weeks or months and will impact your income (and mental health) while it plays out.
That said, the DMCA seems to be a very effective tool to remove genuinely infringing content - I've used it twice to get illegal copies of my work removed from sites, and the process took less than 12 hours in both cases.
Yup, I stand corrected. That's what I get for trying to squeeze in my Slashdot fix before work. Now I'm off to calculate some orbital trajectories. This might not end well...
Someone can't do math. The numbers are actually really close. Let's look at the base 16GB model. It's £429 in the UK, which equals about $630 according to xe.com. Take off the 17.5% VAT, and we get £353.93. That equals $520 US. What's the problem again???
Engadget was extremely clever in this situation. They let Gizmodo break the story and take the legal risk, then immediately republished all of Gizmodo's photos on their own site with the Giz watermarks intact, as did dozens of other blogs. S
Yup. It's like being a long distance truck driver, except without the steering wheel and rest stop hookers. Not to mention that mechanical failures are harder to tend with when you can't just pull over to the side of the road.
I use a $40 Philips DVD player that has a USB port on the front. It works with flash keys and external hard drives. I simply drop the shows I want to watch onto a USB key and watch - takes only seconds to set up. The factory on-screen UI is fairly limited, but there's a brilliant hacked version that supports long file names. Similar USB-equipped DVD and Blu-Ray players are made by Samsung and are equally inexpensive. My player will be outdated in a year, and I'll just replace it with an updated equivalent. Makes far more sense than fiddling around with a nettop, PVR software, and dozens of almost-ok atom-tweaked linux variants.
The levy is ridiculously outdated, to the point of being inconsequential. The rate is 24 cents per blank cassette tape (longer than 40 min), and 29 cents per blank MiniDisc, CD-R or CD-RW. They might as well tax phonograph cylinders and 8-track tapes - it would have about the same impact.
You're forgetting that the distributor takes a huge percentage of the sale price. Amazon's current price structure only gives 35% of the sale price to the publisher. A $4.99 increase will only net the publisher an extra $1.75. That's set to change this summer, when Amazon's new pricing structure sees roughly 70% going to the publisher -- if they're willing to sell for less than $9.99. Of course, the MacMillan spat and the arrival of the iPad just tossed a spanner into the works, so things could change quickly.
I guess I didn't make myself clear - I already have email and a good browser on my netbook. There's no good reason for me to replace it with a tablet PC.
I don't need a tablet PC unless it offers access to a compelling suite of applications. As it stands, this thing is basically an extremely underpowered netbook with a discrete keyboard and pointing device. Even with a touchscreen, it can't compete with a bottom end netbook for generic computing tasks (for example, typing just isn't efficient - I can't manage 45 wpm on a touchscreen). Apple gets this. The iPhone/touch is successful because of its integration with the app store, which offers *device-specific* apps. If apple releases a giant iPod Touch/eReader in the next couple of months, it will succeed only if there's a strong suite of apps written specifically for it. Other manufacturers will be left scrambling, because Chromium OS, Ubuntu NBE and Windows 7 just don't translate well to the tablet environment - you're left using a desktop OS on something that very definitely isn't a desktop. So Freescale's initiative will fail, as will dozens of goofy "tablets" that are little more than touchscreen-equipped PCs with user-hostile ergonomics.
The last thing I want in the dash of my 10 year old car is a 10 year old computer system with a glitchy, faded display and prehistoric software and networking. Given the quality of today's cars, it's easy to make one last 10-15 years reliably. Technology changes so quickly that one of the things I look for when buying is as little tech as possible - no built in GPS, no talking alarms, no roof-mount DVD system and definitely no PC. It makes far more sense to buy an aftermarket GPS for $150 than it does to buy essentially the same thing preinstalled for $650. The same goes for $2,500 headrest-mounted DVD players.
They're not really hidden cameras if the output is streamed to the web, now are they?
The Blackberry business model predates the arrival of the current generation of smartphones. RIM charges telcos a monthly fee for each subscriber using the various Blackberry services (messenger, mail and data). Licensing the server technology to cell providers would cost RIM a fortune in monthly license fees, because no doubt the wireless providers would negotiate huge discounts. I also suspect that the blackberry.net infrastructure is a tangled mess that would challenging to support when run by countless telcos around the globe - it was never supposed to get this popular.
63.3% of US households had cable/dsl Internet Access in 2007. The others get along fine because they're disinterested in technology, are poor or simply don't read well. I occasionally run into people who don't have an email address or computer at home. They're often the most interesting people to talk to because they rarely work in a IT-related field and aren't bombarded by the same Internet crazes and memes as the rest of us. These guys are the master carpenters, mechanical wizards and people who prefer to spend time outdoors exploring the world.
It doesn't matter if Roy Ozzie had something to do with the idea in Lotus Notes. All that matters is that there was prior art, developed by another company.
Mmm. The 20 minute lag between clicking a link and viewing a web page would be annoying. ;) The solution, albeit imperfect, would be to create a shipboard intranet that's regularly updated from Earth when bandwidth permits. Ten years ago, the Mars Global Surveyor had a minimum downlink speed of 21.33 kbps, with 2 kbps engineering data downlink. NASA's new LRO will be mapping the moon with telemetry downlink speeds of up to 3000 kbps in direct modulated mode (albeit at much shorter range).
I bought my current phone (a Blackberry) unlocked from an online discount retailer. It cost me under $200 and I have the freedom to upgrade or my change service provider whenever the urge hits. Of course, this strategy doesn't work so well when you're chasing the latest handset because it'll cost you an arm and a leg. Personally, it's all about the freedom to change my mind. I'm hoping that Android really catches on in the next year or so - if it does, I might jump to that platform. Either way, I have the freedom to do it without having to pay onerous penalties.
The last few Federal elections in the USA have revealed significant voting machine flaws (both mechanical and electronic) anyway. Actually, I'm bewildered that the gov't doesn't hire professional designers to clearly lay out printed and electronic ballots. The ones I've seen look like they were designed by the sort of person who self-publishes a conspiracy theory newsletter.
"Because they were on manual backup control they could not exert enough force on the controls to recover before Vne or the flutter speed of something was attained." Umm. In this case, "manual" control means fly by wire, so there was no need for extreme control pressure. The appropriate way to recover from a dive does not involve yanking on the controls like a gorilla. You reduce power to idle if above maneuvering speed and apply a smooth pull. Of course, this assumes you're not overbanked, in which case you need to push the yolk toward neutral if the controls are loaded (pulling G's) and then roll the aircraft level and pull smoothly. This can be a serious bitch if you're spatially disoriented (potentially inverted or in a spiral dive, to name a couple of scenarios) with no horizon for reference and the artificial horizon rolling all over the place. Control is somewhat counter-intuitive when you're flying inverted and you can never rely on what your inner ear is telling you about correct orientation (I vividly remember an instructor driving that point home by putting me "under the hood" and banking the aircraft all over the place, then asking me to tell him when we were flying straight and level. I didn't have a clue). To make things worse, if you're not belted in snugly you're going to end up hitting the overhead panel with your face rather than flying the aircraft when things get really rough.
Last time I checked, OS 10.5 Leopard costs $129.95 in the Apple Store, so software's not the reason for the difference. Part of it can be explained away because of higher material costs - brilliant industrial design and sleek cases don't come cheap. The rest, unfortunately, is simply a brand premium. However, Ballmer seems to be attempting to misdirect our attention. The real battle will be at the low end, where millions of ARM-based netbooks and mobile internet devices are going to ship with Linux under the hood. It's the perfect environment for Linux to thrive - the segment is extremely price sensitive and no one expects their smartphone or pocket computer to run Windows apps.
I quite like Safari - not sure why you think I don't. However, I have a universal dislike of the various toolbars and crapware that is bundled into installers, and I expected Apple to be above all that.
I was surprised to discover both Safari and iTunes on my wife's machine recently, thanks to an Apple update that defaulted to installing both apps when she was prompted to get the new version of QuickTime. I suspect many hundreds of thousands of other unsophisticated users were similarly duped.
*Everybody who gets satellite radio, if they enjoy it, never listens to AM/FM again in their car.* Rubbish. Much as it's nice to have homogenized talk shows and music broadcasts across the continent, I still listen to terrestrial broadcasts for rush hour traffic updates, weather and local news and commentary.