I think market forces are more at work. In Europe, gas is really damn expensive, over 1.40 Euro per liter ($1.80 US/L or about $7/gallon). Therefore, people are very aware of fuel efficiency. Features like this helps sell cars, because it can save consumers a lot of money, even though it might add a couple hundred euros to the price of the car. In the US, gas is still cheap so people (talking about the average joe, not slashdotters) don't really care about fuel economy. Adding a feature like this won't sell much more cars, so it's probably better to spend the effort on advertising or something else. In my opinion, the EPA shouldn't mandate these things as it's very high effort and not the most effective. If gas tax was increased, I think you would see people start conserving fuel very quickly. Remember how fast people stopped buying SUVs when gas prices spike a few years ago?
The real problem is monopolies. If there was real competition between service providers, regulation wouldn't be needed. But since the FCC allowed all the mergers to happen, the opportunity for the monopolies to fuck over the people now exists. For some reason Canada loves to allow monopolies. This is why Canada has a low rate of mobile phone usage, it's just too expensive.
Illegal Wiretapping by the Gov?
on
Recording the Police
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· Score: 5, Insightful
So the government can illegally wiretap its citizens with no punishment. But a citizen can be arbitrarily thrown in jail for recording a cop? This sounds like a story that would come out of the former East Germany. Not the United States of America.
Although I don't agree with their decision, I understand it. With lawsuits in America, there's too much risk to host anything controversial. Why risk getting sued and having to spend a gazillion dollars on lawyers? And who knows if the US government will label Wikileaks as a terrorist organization, and all of a sudden Amazon, Visa, and Mastercard are accused of "supporting terrorism". No one wants to go through that grief. The real damage that Anonymous' attack on these website have done, is to raise awareness about this problem. If we really want the companies to stand up for what's right, we have to tell them what's right with our wallets.
First of all, I'm baffled that the guy never realized that some people may put up a fake review. Second of all, the review quality is great, if you know how to interpret them. I usually focus on longer reviews. I also usually look across the spectrum of the star ratings. For example, a lot of products have many 4-5 star reviews with a few 3 stars or under. I usually look at the lower star reviews to see what problems people had with the product (if people report the same problem, then it's more likely to be true). This is usually where I find the most valuable information to make a purchasing decision.
Since the effort is already put in, you might as well repost the game, but under a different name, and with different graphics. Maybe make pac-man green, change the ghosts to monsters, change the pills to stars, etc. No point fighting a legal battle. The only winners are lawyers in that case.
Isn't tracking done via cookies and those permanent flash cookies (LSO)? That's easily stopped with Better Privacy + No Script + Cookie Monster Firefox Plugins. No on can stop IP based tracking and whatever tracking each website does with its customers.
Because he's a brainwashed republican, and he just regurgitates what Rush Limbaugh says. People need to think for themselves. In the meantime, the wealth has been unfairly distributed. Not from the rich to the poor, but from everyone to the rich. For example, the big bank bailout with tax payer's money and cheap loans from the Fed (which is a tax on all Americans in the form of inflation) while the super rich still get paid huge bonuses. I don't understand how Americans aren't violently revolting.
Last time I checked, an MP3 didn't pay any dividends. And when was the last time you were able to sell your MP3 to another buyer? You're comparison of MP3s to stocks is "Absolutely fucking wrong!".
FM operates at around 100MHz, which has a wavelength of 3m. That means you need a fairly large antenna to capture FM signals, ie - an antenna much larger than your phone. This usually means that you have to attach an external antenna. Since you need an external antenna anyway, I think it would be a better idea to just have an optional external FM unit that plugs into the phone's USB port. So no extra cost of adding an FM chip, and the people who want FM can get it.
It's funny how the radio industry shot itself in the foot. They lobbied to get rid of ownership limits on radio stations. Now Clear Channel becomes a near monopoly, which then unsurprisingly results in homogeneous radio, and as a result, boring. If they were prevented from being a near monopoly, the radio industry would have remained healthy. Satellite Radio would have never taken off if FM radio was good.
I also use Cookie Monster for managing cookies. The only problem with NoScript is that it causes a lot of problems for people who aren't techies, like the date-picker not working, some submits not working, etc, since they don't know when to add a site to the white list. So I tend to install only AdBlock and BetterPrivacy for the non-techies.
But the Japanese websites are exactly the same complexity as English websites. If you can't read Japanese, the website will look cluttered because those symbols are meaningless images. The parent points out a great example. Switch between Japanese and English on the JAL website. When you go to English, all of a sudden, the website doesn't seem so cluttered anymore. Also, is there really a stereotype of simple Japanese designs? I never heard of it.
Slashdot Mirror
So you want to regulate creativity?
I think market forces are more at work. In Europe, gas is really damn expensive, over 1.40 Euro per liter ($1.80 US/L or about $7/gallon). Therefore, people are very aware of fuel efficiency. Features like this helps sell cars, because it can save consumers a lot of money, even though it might add a couple hundred euros to the price of the car. In the US, gas is still cheap so people (talking about the average joe, not slashdotters) don't really care about fuel economy. Adding a feature like this won't sell much more cars, so it's probably better to spend the effort on advertising or something else. In my opinion, the EPA shouldn't mandate these things as it's very high effort and not the most effective. If gas tax was increased, I think you would see people start conserving fuel very quickly. Remember how fast people stopped buying SUVs when gas prices spike a few years ago?
Although I agree that deceptive linking sucks, creating a law for it will basically be unenforceable.
The real problem is monopolies. If there was real competition between service providers, regulation wouldn't be needed. But since the FCC allowed all the mergers to happen, the opportunity for the monopolies to fuck over the people now exists. For some reason Canada loves to allow monopolies. This is why Canada has a low rate of mobile phone usage, it's just too expensive.
So the government can illegally wiretap its citizens with no punishment. But a citizen can be arbitrarily thrown in jail for recording a cop? This sounds like a story that would come out of the former East Germany. Not the United States of America.
Although I don't agree with their decision, I understand it. With lawsuits in America, there's too much risk to host anything controversial. Why risk getting sued and having to spend a gazillion dollars on lawyers? And who knows if the US government will label Wikileaks as a terrorist organization, and all of a sudden Amazon, Visa, and Mastercard are accused of "supporting terrorism". No one wants to go through that grief. The real damage that Anonymous' attack on these website have done, is to raise awareness about this problem. If we really want the companies to stand up for what's right, we have to tell them what's right with our wallets.
First of all, I'm baffled that the guy never realized that some people may put up a fake review. Second of all, the review quality is great, if you know how to interpret them. I usually focus on longer reviews. I also usually look across the spectrum of the star ratings. For example, a lot of products have many 4-5 star reviews with a few 3 stars or under. I usually look at the lower star reviews to see what problems people had with the product (if people report the same problem, then it's more likely to be true). This is usually where I find the most valuable information to make a purchasing decision.
Since the effort is already put in, you might as well repost the game, but under a different name, and with different graphics. Maybe make pac-man green, change the ghosts to monsters, change the pills to stars, etc. No point fighting a legal battle. The only winners are lawyers in that case.
This sounds like a great premise for a South Park episode. Can this really be true?
If he didn't feel that way, he wouldn't have said it in the first place. He clearly is just doing damage control and saying the "right thing".
Isn't tracking done via cookies and those permanent flash cookies (LSO)? That's easily stopped with Better Privacy + No Script + Cookie Monster Firefox Plugins. No on can stop IP based tracking and whatever tracking each website does with its customers.
Because he's a brainwashed republican, and he just regurgitates what Rush Limbaugh says. People need to think for themselves. In the meantime, the wealth has been unfairly distributed. Not from the rich to the poor, but from everyone to the rich. For example, the big bank bailout with tax payer's money and cheap loans from the Fed (which is a tax on all Americans in the form of inflation) while the super rich still get paid huge bonuses. I don't understand how Americans aren't violently revolting.
These so called morons are also selfish, and will eventually look for better value from their limited amount money.
Bodily hygiene news is just not so important here...
Microwave Oven! How would I make Kraft Dinner without it...
Stop giving the RIAA more ideas! Soon we might have to pay the death sentence per song!
No wonder my bank account keeps going down, gotta stop deleting MP3s!
Last time I checked, an MP3 didn't pay any dividends. And when was the last time you were able to sell your MP3 to another buyer? You're comparison of MP3s to stocks is "Absolutely fucking wrong!".
So $1M is a fair punishment for sharing 24 songs? From a societal and economic point of view, is it worth bankrupting a citizen for sharing 24 songs?
Sweet! I'm going to go download 100K albums, and I'll be a millionaire! Muahahahahaha!
FM operates at around 100MHz, which has a wavelength of 3m. That means you need a fairly large antenna to capture FM signals, ie - an antenna much larger than your phone. This usually means that you have to attach an external antenna. Since you need an external antenna anyway, I think it would be a better idea to just have an optional external FM unit that plugs into the phone's USB port. So no extra cost of adding an FM chip, and the people who want FM can get it.
It's funny how the radio industry shot itself in the foot. They lobbied to get rid of ownership limits on radio stations. Now Clear Channel becomes a near monopoly, which then unsurprisingly results in homogeneous radio, and as a result, boring. If they were prevented from being a near monopoly, the radio industry would have remained healthy. Satellite Radio would have never taken off if FM radio was good.
TFA says an electron-positron pair is created. I wonder if that means we're closer to a star trek like replicator.
I also use Cookie Monster for managing cookies. The only problem with NoScript is that it causes a lot of problems for people who aren't techies, like the date-picker not working, some submits not working, etc, since they don't know when to add a site to the white list. So I tend to install only AdBlock and BetterPrivacy for the non-techies.
But the Japanese websites are exactly the same complexity as English websites. If you can't read Japanese, the website will look cluttered because those symbols are meaningless images. The parent points out a great example. Switch between Japanese and English on the JAL website. When you go to English, all of a sudden, the website doesn't seem so cluttered anymore. Also, is there really a stereotype of simple Japanese designs? I never heard of it.