And the VP is in a much better position to run for President 4-8 years later. Obviously it's not a shoe-in, but it does help. And the causes of the VP on the side that wins usually gain some support. The presidential nominee may pick the VP candidate solely for how many votes they think it will bring in, but after the election it's hard to turn around and say "but i don't actually support any of the things they believe in." And the Republicans in particular are big on pushing the "mandate" thing, at least when they're the ones who win. Everyone in the House and Senate who agrees with the VP about particular issues will emphasize that angle and the President will be unlikely to outright contradict them.
I'm pretty sure Apple would view that as a great outcome and it would only encourage them to initiate more patent lawsuits. Your "solution" doesn't really seem to be in line with your stated beliefs.
I recently saw a somewhat informative article about prepaid plans and a follow-up article by the same author which talks about his experience with having switched to T-Mobile's $30 a month plan.
I'm definitely considering making the switch myself, but i'm currently on T-Mobile's "Value" plan, paying $65 a month for 500 minutes of talk, unlimited text, and "unlimited" data. I'll have to take a closer look at exactly how many minutes of talk i use to see if it's worth switching to the 100 minutes a month plan to save $35 a month upfront.
Don't worry, with today's globalization if you don't come to the patent infringement lawsuits, the patent infringement lawsuits will come to you. After all, the fact that neither Samsung nor Apple is a French company hasn't stopped them from suing each other in France (along with everywhere else.)
Patent trolling took off after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began issuing a flood of questionable âoebusiness methodâ patents related to things like software and, believe it or not, a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In 2006, lawyers used such a patent to threaten Research in Motion with an injunction against the BlackBerry and extract a $612 million payout.
Well that's clearly why the BlackBerry has been having trouble in the market, RIM spent too much of their product development time working on sandwiches, and patent infringing sandwiches at that.
My favorite is "Voyage From Yesteryear." I'm glad i got to meet him once at a convention shortly before he went off the deep end with conspiracy theories in his old age =/
James Alan Gardner has written a number of short stories (two of the "novelette" length ones have been nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula award) and the League of Peoples series. The basic premise, at least at the start, is about the "Explorer Corp", a component of the space navy intended to to travel to newly discovered planets and, well, be professional Redshirts. The books are both very funny and very dark. ("Trapped" could be a contender for the most depressing book question yesterday.)
Apparently some other people have read him (John Scalzi says a number of people asked him if he'd heard of the books when his own "Redshirts" book was published) but i've never actually met anyone who's read the books and wasn't introduced to the author by me. It's rather hard to find new copies of the books at this point, but he's looking into getting them republished as ebooks, and of course there are plenty of used copies around.
And along the lines of people who are appreciated but still not as much as they should be, i'd like to mention Lois McMaster Bujold. She was tied with Heinlein for most Hugos for best novel (up until he passed her again from the grave by winning a Retro Hugo) but doesn't get mentioned anywhere nearly as often he does. Her Vorkosigan series has some space opera and some adventure and some mystery and some romance, all excellently done.
And all else failing, look at the list of people nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards, particularly those for best novel. There's sure to be a ton of people in there that you don't recognize, and it even acts as a guide to what's considered to be some of their best work. (Just double check that it's not the middle book of a series or something before you grab a copy and get started =)
I was going to suggest this one as well if no one else had. The world is depressing _and_ the plot is depressing. And the ending is ambiguous, but quite possibly depressing.
L Ron Hubbard was a popular SF writer before he went nuts. (Or more (or less?) charitably speaking, before he figured he could accumulate wealth and power by inventing a religion.) A lot of writers go a bit weird in their old age (more specifically a lot of people go weird in their old age, but authors are in a pretty good position to publicize their own weirdness) but very few manage to go so far as to taint everything they've done before. Heinlein, James P Hogan, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, they all went a bit off the deep end later, but you can still admit to liking their earlier stuff and recommend that other people check it out without shame. (Well, except maybe for Orson Scott Card. I'll admit to liking his old stuff, but i'd be hesitant to suggest anyone actually support him by paying money for any of his books, even the older ones.)
For L Ron Hubbard though, Scientology has overshadowed everything else he ever did.
...uh, noooo, it's just amusing that Google clearly isn't making that rule out of a belief that doing so is wrong, because that's exactly what they've started doing with their own services. Clearly it's just a pragmatic "we don't want anyone harassing our users and collecting their personal data besides us." They want a monopoly on the practice.
I haven't installed Pandora on my Nexus 7 because of the permissions they want. They have a long detailed explanation of why they say they need to access my contacts list for, but i don't actually want to do any of the things they say the need the info for, and they're already under investigation for sharing personal info with other companies.
I still have the last version of Pandora from before they added Personal Contacts to the permissions installed on my phone, and i'm perfectly happy with how that works. If i could just install the latest version but "break" the permissions i don't like that would be great.
It's not quite 1x, but i do tether the 2g connection from my phone. I have multiple devices with WiFi only (DS, 3DS, Nexus 7) and my 2.5 year old phone only gets 2g. (Okay, technically it can get 3g, but due to a bug introduced about a year ago it randomly reboots if 3g is left on for a long period so i mostly just leave it on 2g all the time.)
Although admittedly i certainly wouldn't _pay_ for the option, but since in my case it's free, why not?
I've got to say that as a kid i thought the animated version of the Hobbit was pretty epic. It had a _dragon_ in it! And a battle with _five_ armies! The animated version of the Return of the King didn't actually seem quite as epic to me, perhaps because it jumped right into the third book so it was hard to get a handle on what was going on. It's too bad no one ever made animated movies of Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers.
*psst* you missed the part where he's not a consumer, he's one of the people that actually gives Google money. They like money. They pay attention to the people who give them money. It's just the rest of us who are SOL.
I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding during the interview.
Koch bros: We're looking for a "skeptic" to head this study.
Muller: I'm definitely a skeptic.
Koch bros: So we can trust you to be "non-partisan" and make a "fair and balanced" review of the evidence?
Muller: Absolutely. I'll examine all the evidence and make sure to come to the right conclusion.
Koch bros: Sounds like we've found our man!
Clearly one of the few times where the inability to actually see the scare quotes (or lack thereof) meant communicating in person was actually less effective than communicating by email would have been.
This is the Oracle that writes poorly implemented and poorly documented installers for their weirdly designed (and poorly documented) database software? Still not interested.
The correct response should be "holy crap, perhaps i shouldn't be publicly transmitting unencrypted information i don't want other people to see!" not complaining about Google collecting it for what seems to be non-nefarious purposes. You really ought to be thanking Google for cluing you in, because i guarantee the people who _are_ collecting it for nefarious purposes aren't going to tell you.
Is there any explanation for this other than pure incompetence on Google's part?
I generally think Google didn't do anything wrong in the first place. People shouldn't be complaining that publicly broadcast unencrypted data is recorded by a third party, and if Google had wanted to fight them on the legality of the issue i would have been behind them. However agreeing to delete the data in some kind of plea bargain and then not actually deleting it is a d*** move. (I'm not quite sure at this point if it's a dick move or just a dumb move, but it's definitely one of them.)
I wasn't aware this was news. The same concerns killed Boeing's plans for a supersonic jet (but not before the basketball team was named after the doomed project.) I thought it was a well known case of the "good enough" being the enemy of the perfect. It's also why there's not a lot of research into hypersonic or suborbital flights except for military purposes. The increase in cost is, er, astronomical, while the reduction in time is comparatively insignificant. The number of people who are willing to pay an order more (or possibly multiple orders more) in order to reduce the time by a single digit number of hours is pretty darn small.
So the blurb starts out by describing this stuff as M-Carbon, then goes on at the end to say they've discovered it's made out of.... M-Carbon!
What exactly was this stuff called _before_ they (theoretically) discovered it's made out of M-Carbon? Did the researchers just go around saying "Hey, you want to do some tests today on that carbon stuff that's as hard as diamonds but is produced at room temperatures under high pressure instead of both high pressure and high temperatures"? Seems like a mouthful.
Slashdot Mirror
And the VP is in a much better position to run for President 4-8 years later. Obviously it's not a shoe-in, but it does help. And the causes of the VP on the side that wins usually gain some support. The presidential nominee may pick the VP candidate solely for how many votes they think it will bring in, but after the election it's hard to turn around and say "but i don't actually support any of the things they believe in." And the Republicans in particular are big on pushing the "mandate" thing, at least when they're the ones who win. Everyone in the House and Senate who agrees with the VP about particular issues will emphasize that angle and the President will be unlikely to outright contradict them.
I'm pretty sure Apple would view that as a great outcome and it would only encourage them to initiate more patent lawsuits. Your "solution" doesn't really seem to be in line with your stated beliefs.
I recently saw a somewhat informative article about prepaid plans and a follow-up article by the same author which talks about his experience with having switched to T-Mobile's $30 a month plan.
I'm definitely considering making the switch myself, but i'm currently on T-Mobile's "Value" plan, paying $65 a month for 500 minutes of talk, unlimited text, and "unlimited" data. I'll have to take a closer look at exactly how many minutes of talk i use to see if it's worth switching to the 100 minutes a month plan to save $35 a month upfront.
"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!"
Don't worry, with today's globalization if you don't come to the patent infringement lawsuits, the patent infringement lawsuits will come to you. After all, the fact that neither Samsung nor Apple is a French company hasn't stopped them from suing each other in France (along with everywhere else.)
Patent trolling took off after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began issuing a flood of questionable âoebusiness methodâ patents related to things like software and, believe it or not, a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In 2006, lawyers used such a patent to threaten Research in Motion with an injunction against the BlackBerry and extract a $612 million payout.
Well that's clearly why the BlackBerry has been having trouble in the market, RIM spent too much of their product development time working on sandwiches, and patent infringing sandwiches at that.
"He's not even a mad scientist. He is merely a very upset engineer." - Miles, via Lois McMaster Bujold in "Komarr"
My favorite is "Voyage From Yesteryear." I'm glad i got to meet him once at a convention shortly before he went off the deep end with conspiracy theories in his old age =/
Damn, if i hadn't spent twenty minutes writing up my post i would have been the first to mention him :)
James Alan Gardner has written a number of short stories (two of the "novelette" length ones have been nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula award) and the League of Peoples series. The basic premise, at least at the start, is about the "Explorer Corp", a component of the space navy intended to to travel to newly discovered planets and, well, be professional Redshirts. The books are both very funny and very dark. ("Trapped" could be a contender for the most depressing book question yesterday.)
:)
Apparently some other people have read him (John Scalzi says a number of people asked him if he'd heard of the books when his own "Redshirts" book was published) but i've never actually met anyone who's read the books and wasn't introduced to the author by me. It's rather hard to find new copies of the books at this point, but he's looking into getting them republished as ebooks, and of course there are plenty of used copies around.
And along the lines of people who are appreciated but still not as much as they should be, i'd like to mention Lois McMaster Bujold. She was tied with Heinlein for most Hugos for best novel (up until he passed her again from the grave by winning a Retro Hugo) but doesn't get mentioned anywhere nearly as often he does. Her Vorkosigan series has some space opera and some adventure and some mystery and some romance, all excellently done.
And just to throw out a list of other lesser-known authors whose stuff i like: Lynn Flewelling, Martha Wells, CS Friedman, Glen Cook, Taylor Anderson, Jack Campbell, Ellen Kushner, Gail Carriger, and Robin Hobb. And finally Seanan McGuire is still relatively unknown, but her "Newsflesh" series (as "Mira Grant") recently got optioned for film, so if you want to get in before she does become well known now might be the time to do it
And all else failing, look at the list of people nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards, particularly those for best novel. There's sure to be a ton of people in there that you don't recognize, and it even acts as a guide to what's considered to be some of their best work. (Just double check that it's not the middle book of a series or something before you grab a copy and get started =)
I was going to suggest this one as well if no one else had. The world is depressing _and_ the plot is depressing. And the ending is ambiguous, but quite possibly depressing.
L Ron Hubbard was a popular SF writer before he went nuts. (Or more (or less?) charitably speaking, before he figured he could accumulate wealth and power by inventing a religion.) A lot of writers go a bit weird in their old age (more specifically a lot of people go weird in their old age, but authors are in a pretty good position to publicize their own weirdness) but very few manage to go so far as to taint everything they've done before. Heinlein, James P Hogan, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, they all went a bit off the deep end later, but you can still admit to liking their earlier stuff and recommend that other people check it out without shame. (Well, except maybe for Orson Scott Card. I'll admit to liking his old stuff, but i'd be hesitant to suggest anyone actually support him by paying money for any of his books, even the older ones.)
For L Ron Hubbard though, Scientology has overshadowed everything else he ever did.
...uh, noooo, it's just amusing that Google clearly isn't making that rule out of a belief that doing so is wrong, because that's exactly what they've started doing with their own services. Clearly it's just a pragmatic "we don't want anyone harassing our users and collecting their personal data besides us." They want a monopoly on the practice.
I haven't installed Pandora on my Nexus 7 because of the permissions they want. They have a long detailed explanation of why they say they need to access my contacts list for, but i don't actually want to do any of the things they say the need the info for, and they're already under investigation for sharing personal info with other companies.
I still have the last version of Pandora from before they added Personal Contacts to the permissions installed on my phone, and i'm perfectly happy with how that works. If i could just install the latest version but "break" the permissions i don't like that would be great.
and they can't request personal information to grant full app function.
Yeah! No muscling in on Google's turf!
That's enough to feed me for ten thousand years !
That's over 9000!!!!
It's not quite 1x, but i do tether the 2g connection from my phone. I have multiple devices with WiFi only (DS, 3DS, Nexus 7) and my 2.5 year old phone only gets 2g. (Okay, technically it can get 3g, but due to a bug introduced about a year ago it randomly reboots if 3g is left on for a long period so i mostly just leave it on 2g all the time.)
Although admittedly i certainly wouldn't _pay_ for the option, but since in my case it's free, why not?
I've got to say that as a kid i thought the animated version of the Hobbit was pretty epic. It had a _dragon_ in it! And a battle with _five_ armies! The animated version of the Return of the King didn't actually seem quite as epic to me, perhaps because it jumped right into the third book so it was hard to get a handle on what was going on. It's too bad no one ever made animated movies of Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers.
*psst* you missed the part where he's not a consumer, he's one of the people that actually gives Google money. They like money. They pay attention to the people who give them money. It's just the rest of us who are SOL.
I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding during the interview.
Koch bros: We're looking for a "skeptic" to head this study.
Muller: I'm definitely a skeptic.
Koch bros: So we can trust you to be "non-partisan" and make a "fair and balanced" review of the evidence?
Muller: Absolutely. I'll examine all the evidence and make sure to come to the right conclusion.
Koch bros: Sounds like we've found our man!
Clearly one of the few times where the inability to actually see the scare quotes (or lack thereof) meant communicating in person was actually less effective than communicating by email would have been.
This is the Oracle that writes poorly implemented and poorly documented installers for their weirdly designed (and poorly documented) database software? Still not interested.
The correct response should be "holy crap, perhaps i shouldn't be publicly transmitting unencrypted information i don't want other people to see!" not complaining about Google collecting it for what seems to be non-nefarious purposes. You really ought to be thanking Google for cluing you in, because i guarantee the people who _are_ collecting it for nefarious purposes aren't going to tell you.
Is there any explanation for this other than pure incompetence on Google's part?
I generally think Google didn't do anything wrong in the first place. People shouldn't be complaining that publicly broadcast unencrypted data is recorded by a third party, and if Google had wanted to fight them on the legality of the issue i would have been behind them. However agreeing to delete the data in some kind of plea bargain and then not actually deleting it is a d*** move. (I'm not quite sure at this point if it's a dick move or just a dumb move, but it's definitely one of them.)
I wasn't aware this was news. The same concerns killed Boeing's plans for a supersonic jet (but not before the basketball team was named after the doomed project.) I thought it was a well known case of the "good enough" being the enemy of the perfect. It's also why there's not a lot of research into hypersonic or suborbital flights except for military purposes. The increase in cost is, er, astronomical, while the reduction in time is comparatively insignificant. The number of people who are willing to pay an order more (or possibly multiple orders more) in order to reduce the time by a single digit number of hours is pretty darn small.
So the blurb starts out by describing this stuff as M-Carbon, then goes on at the end to say they've discovered it's made out of.... M-Carbon!
What exactly was this stuff called _before_ they (theoretically) discovered it's made out of M-Carbon? Did the researchers just go around saying "Hey, you want to do some tests today on that carbon stuff that's as hard as diamonds but is produced at room temperatures under high pressure instead of both high pressure and high temperatures"? Seems like a mouthful.