Anything google does, We can do better
on
Gmail in the News
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· Score: 1
Why do people keep hyping the features of google? We can do all of that stuff on our computers for free with little security/privacy concerns.
I use OSX's mail ap to get all my mail from however many accounts, including my yahoo accounts. I can then search message content, from, subject whatever. Forever. On the privacy of my own machine. And since I have about 150gigs of free space at the moment, 1gig from google isn't a selling point.
When not on my own machine, I can use my isp provided webmail aps to view mail. But now that wireless access is so pervasive, many of us just carry our own computers with us wherever we go anyway. Gone are the days of dropping into a library when on the road to use their machines to check email: now we just flip open our laptops at the library and download our own. Webmail is just not necessary anymore. Wireless is killing the need for browser based aps like calendars, mail, and even banking info (just use quicken to download from all your accounts and view it one single ap instead of going to a bunch of webpages to see all your stuff).
I don't know where they come up with the idea that viruses and spam cost the economy money. Think about it for a minute: a virus attacks your computers and you are down all day and therefore don't sell any of the goods you would have sold on an average day. Did you lose money? Maybe. Some of your customers will simply come back tomorrow. Others, you will have lost, but they will go to competitors next door. The economy as a whole loses nothing.
The only way it loses money is if your customer decides to go to an overseas supplier. I suspect the fact that one's system was down for a few hours is not a common cause of the usa losing business to overseas firms.
Well then, you say, how about the money paid to IT geeks to clean up after an attack? Well, that money stays in the us economy as well, and therefore no net loss to the us economy. Loss to your company, maybe, but gain by the employee and the irs and well, it all totals up to exactly what it was prior to the virus/worm/earthquake/tsunami/whatever.
Graham Hancock's book theorized (based on some earlier work by some dude who got Einstein to write the intro at least), that the continents on the earth have slipped around the world and shifted. I mean shifted as a unit, not like in the movement of the plates, but shifted all together like if the peel of an orange moved around the inside. This means that at some point antartica (part of it anyway) was in a more tropical like climate. Evidence for this includes the plant fossils found there as well as ancient maps (supposed to be based upon even further ancient maps no longer in existence) that show the continent drawn exactly like it exists today beneath the ice (as verified with modern seismographic cartography or somesuch).
This theory is that during ice ages, it wasn't so much that the ice spread down towards tropical areas, but that tropical areas moved towards the poles and were naturally covered with ice while there. This would account for now polar regions having fern fossils and such. And account for other regions such as Egypt having more rainfall (and thus damage to the sphinx) than currently.
It's interesting anyway. But Hancock's most recent book Underworld has completely different theories about the ice ages and flooding and sinking of lands and says something about atlantis being at the straights of gibraltor or malta or something. I have it but haven't read it yet (no plane trips recently).
The majority of artists never make money off the selling of their recorded music anyway. They make money on the road.
Most bands realize this and that's why they don't care about people downloading their songs, recording their shoes, etc. The more people that hear their recordings, the more people that will come to their live shows. I wish more artists viewed their albums as simply ways to get people to come out and see them live, where some sort of real human interaction can take place. (don't believe I just said that on slashdot, ha!)
When I got the S46 about a year ago, I could no longer make/receive calls in Santa Cruz, CA and down near Morro Bay. Sometimes I just get no signal, others it looks like I have a strong signal but I just get the recording "cellular one, you can't make a call". No shit, I'm an AT&T customer.
But on the Nokia I had previous to that, I could call from those areas just fine.
Anyway, if you're telling me the S46 is as good as it gets for reception in central California, then hell, I guess I'll keep it and not "upgrade" to the nokia 3200 or the other choices they've given me. What do you think?
But contrary to popular belief, you can get all the normal right-click functions with a one-button apple mouse. You simply push Control as you click. Most slashdotters know this of course, but many windows users don't and have to be taught it when they sit in front of a mac and start complaining.
Of course I personally throw away my apple mice right away and buy the logitech mouse with scroll wheel and two buttons, but it isn't really necessary.
How about the bicycle? Sure, they get lighter and are equipped with fancier doo-dads all the time, but the basic has remained the same for a century. No other human powered vehicle has come along to challenge it (skateboards and scooters sell but nothing like bicycle numbers)
A human on a bicycle is at least 100 times more efficient than a human walking or running. There are more efficient animals than humans, but few if the human is on a bicycle going about 8mph.
I think it's possible that a human on a good longboard skateboard with large, soft wheels may be even more efficient assuming smooth pavement (though he's not seated so maybe not) but a bicycle is obviously able to handle a wider variety of terrain.
Cell phone manufacturers like Motorola spend millions of dollars every year on market research. They ask people exactly what features they want, let them try new features to test usability, test colors, sizes, weight, everything you can think of.
But you have to remember that when introducing a new product, you have to attract someone first. That person, the adventurous early adopter type, is going to have somewhat different tastes than the mainstream. They buy first, then the mainstream, in increasing numbers, wants to be cool too and buys them as well (i.e. the mainstream tastes change to accept the new product out of desire to be cool). What results is a bell shaped curve of product adoption.
Very few things are aimed at the mainstream and are an instant hit. Nearly all go through the phase described above.
So it's possible that right now that "most users" don't want all the added features, but it's been proven time and time again that they will indeed want them soon. If not, trust me, Motorola and the others wouldn't be building them into their phones. They spend millions on market research and they've been around this long precisely because they are good at predicting which things the mainstream will want - not exactly when the product is launched, but soon afterwards when the mainstream sees what all the cool folks have.
-Slim (p.s. fwiw, i only use my cell phone as a phone)
Even if robots are used, factories won't automatically be located to reduce transportation costs: items for Americans will not be made in America. They will still be made in China and elsewhere because those countries don't have the environmental regulations that the U.S. has and therefore the products can be made much more cheaply even if the labor cost (robot operating cost?) is the same.
My 400mhz, 348mb imac dv graphite model runs 10.2.8 just beautifully. I had to update the firmware when going to 2.8 since the monitor will freak (and did) if you don't do that but once installed, all is speedy as hell and so much better than os 9.
i've been back in california for a few years now so i'm not sure. i'll ask some friends. i do know that firewire is the standard for digital video cameras so that would be cool if it was standard connection for all devices.
There are some interesting differences in Japan's music industry that should be considered.
1) cd prices are fixed, at least for a certain time period after the release. when i lived there it was 3000 yen (US$27) for an album and 1000yen (US$9)for a single.
2) they have a much stronger emphasis on singles over albums. mini-cd singles are sold in huge numbers, for 1000 yen.
3) they have CD rental shops much the way many countries have video/dvd rental shops. I think albums rent for like 400 yen and singles 200 yen? Can't remember.
Therefore, this is a country whose music industry is not as concerned with home copying of the music (otherwise they wouldn't rent them), has people convinced a single is worth 1000 yen and so selling them as downloads for 210 yen can be successful even though this is like twice what apple charges, and has a music buying public that is used to buying songs one at a time instead of buying albums.
Some good points. My basic guidelines are that I know I can charge the client I built an ecommerce site to sell diamond jewelry more than i can charge the university group for whom i built an alumni association website. The latter is on a fixed budget while the first is a for profit site that should invest in its site. Profit sharing is also an interesting method and i have done that occasionally (get paid enough to pay the bills though 'cause you never know if you'll ever get any profits).
It's hard to do though, I admit. Maybe easier in graphic design than programming since the product is judged more subjectively for the graphic artist. Who knows. Good luck!
As a graphic designer and uh, web developer, I've stopped being a wage slave. The more experience you get, not only is your end product better, but the faster you work. But even if you are twice as fast as a beginner, you can't double your hourly rates: clients don't think that way. What you can do is come up with a fixed rate based on the value that your work will have to the company. Even if the client still thinks in terms of 100 hours at $40 an hour, you know it will take you 50 hours and therefore you just doubled your take. Other clients may not consider the labor involved at all: they'll approach like a resale. In other words, it cost them $10k for a website that will gross them $50k in sales the first year alone. Put it to them that way and they will see it's a bargain. They won't go back and think, yeah, but why should we pay this guy $10k for 100 hours of work? Sell your expertise, your results, your product, not your time.
In this case, the guy should ask the company about their plans for the product. And then determine a price that is worth it to them.
I can deal with spam. What i'd rather see is a law that requires mail server admins to immediately stop the sending of virus generated mails. They should be required to trash every message that tries to go out with an attachment that we all know is from a current virus (.pif for example) and therefore stop the rest of us from receiving these and some people from getting infected by them and just spreading the damn thing.
That way I wouldn't have to suffer through events like two weeks ago when I received over 5000 emails from the same ip address in a 48 hour period, while my requests to the sending ip's tech contact went ignored.
I know it is against slashdot ettiquette to actually read an article but...I'd like to. It says to read the interview, click "read more" but I don't see such a link. Anyone?
The same river twice type parables are mainstays of Lao Tzu and Taoist thought in general (not buddhism). Therefore, Zeno's paradox has been "solved" for thousands of years. The problem is that scientists never bothered to realize that.
If all they are going to provide are options for seat fabric or radios, then this is not all that attractive of an idea. If, however, they wish to offer many options for the external appearance of the vehicle as well, I think many people would be interested. However, how will the company satisfy crash testing regulations and other safety inspections that are done to *completed* cars prior to DOT approval?
I know not all of you can be as lucky as me and be blessed with both size and skill but hey, stop worrying about how hot your system is and spend your time coming with something useful to do with that system!
So let's say one is running OSX 1.5 that they didn't actually...uh...buy. If this certain someone buys the upgrade, are they going to be able to install it or does one have to be a registered owner of the 1.5?
brilliant. thanks for that one!
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people keep hyping the features of google? We can do all of that stuff on our computers for free with little security/privacy concerns.
I use OSX's mail ap to get all my mail from however many accounts, including my yahoo accounts. I can then search message content, from, subject whatever. Forever. On the privacy of my own machine. And since I have about 150gigs of free space at the moment, 1gig from google isn't a selling point.
When not on my own machine, I can use my isp provided webmail aps to view mail. But now that wireless access is so pervasive, many of us just carry our own computers with us wherever we go anyway. Gone are the days of dropping into a library when on the road to use their machines to check email: now we just flip open our laptops at the library and download our own. Webmail is just not necessary anymore. Wireless is killing the need for browser based aps like calendars, mail, and even banking info (just use quicken to download from all your accounts and view it one single ap instead of going to a bunch of webpages to see all your stuff).
I don't know where they come up with the idea that viruses and spam cost the economy money. Think about it for a minute: a virus attacks your computers and you are down all day and therefore don't sell any of the goods you would have sold on an average day. Did you lose money? Maybe. Some of your customers will simply come back tomorrow. Others, you will have lost, but they will go to competitors next door. The economy as a whole loses nothing.
The only way it loses money is if your customer decides to go to an overseas supplier. I suspect the fact that one's system was down for a few hours is not a common cause of the usa losing business to overseas firms.
Well then, you say, how about the money paid to IT geeks to clean up after an attack? Well, that money stays in the us economy as well, and therefore no net loss to the us economy. Loss to your company, maybe, but gain by the employee and the irs and well, it all totals up to exactly what it was prior to the virus/worm/earthquake/tsunami/whatever.
Graham Hancock's book theorized (based on some earlier work by some dude who got Einstein to write the intro at least), that the continents on the earth have slipped around the world and shifted. I mean shifted as a unit, not like in the movement of the plates, but shifted all together like if the peel of an orange moved around the inside. This means that at some point antartica (part of it anyway) was in a more tropical like climate. Evidence for this includes the plant fossils found there as well as ancient maps (supposed to be based upon even further ancient maps no longer in existence) that show the continent drawn exactly like it exists today beneath the ice (as verified with modern seismographic cartography or somesuch).
This theory is that during ice ages, it wasn't so much that the ice spread down towards tropical areas, but that tropical areas moved towards the poles and were naturally covered with ice while there. This would account for now polar regions having fern fossils and such. And account for other regions such as Egypt having more rainfall (and thus damage to the sphinx) than currently.
It's interesting anyway. But Hancock's most recent book Underworld has completely different theories about the ice ages and flooding and sinking of lands and says something about atlantis being at the straights of gibraltor or malta or something. I have it but haven't read it yet (no plane trips recently).
The majority of artists never make money off the selling of their recorded music anyway. They make money on the road.
Most bands realize this and that's why they don't care about people downloading their songs, recording their shoes, etc. The more people that hear their recordings, the more people that will come to their live shows. I wish more artists viewed their albums as simply ways to get people to come out and see them live, where some sort of real human interaction can take place. (don't believe I just said that on slashdot, ha!)
I have the S46, still got upgrade offer
When I got the S46 about a year ago, I could no longer make/receive calls in Santa Cruz, CA and down near Morro Bay. Sometimes I just get no signal, others it looks like I have a strong signal but I just get the recording "cellular one, you can't make a call". No shit, I'm an AT&T customer.
But on the Nokia I had previous to that, I could call from those areas just fine.
Anyway, if you're telling me the S46 is as good as it gets for reception in central California, then hell, I guess I'll keep it and not "upgrade" to the nokia 3200 or the other choices they've given me. What do you think?
But contrary to popular belief, you can get all the normal right-click functions with a one-button apple mouse. You simply push Control as you click. Most slashdotters know this of course, but many windows users don't and have to be taught it when they sit in front of a mac and start complaining.
Of course I personally throw away my apple mice right away and buy the logitech mouse with scroll wheel and two buttons, but it isn't really necessary.
How about the bicycle? Sure, they get lighter and are equipped with fancier doo-dads all the time, but the basic has remained the same for a century. No other human powered vehicle has come along to challenge it (skateboards and scooters sell but nothing like bicycle numbers)
A human on a bicycle is at least 100 times more efficient than a human walking or running. There are more efficient animals than humans, but few if the human is on a bicycle going about 8mph.
I think it's possible that a human on a good longboard skateboard with large, soft wheels may be even more efficient assuming smooth pavement (though he's not seated so maybe not) but a bicycle is obviously able to handle a wider variety of terrain.
Cell phone manufacturers like Motorola spend millions of dollars every year on market research. They ask people exactly what features they want, let them try new features to test usability, test colors, sizes, weight, everything you can think of.
But you have to remember that when introducing a new product, you have to attract someone first. That person, the adventurous early adopter type, is going to have somewhat different tastes than the mainstream. They buy first, then the mainstream, in increasing numbers, wants to be cool too and buys them as well (i.e. the mainstream tastes change to accept the new product out of desire to be cool). What results is a bell shaped curve of product adoption.
Very few things are aimed at the mainstream and are an instant hit. Nearly all go through the phase described above.
So it's possible that right now that "most users" don't want all the added features, but it's been proven time and time again that they will indeed want them soon. If not, trust me, Motorola and the others wouldn't be building them into their phones. They spend millions on market research and they've been around this long precisely because they are good at predicting which things the mainstream will want - not exactly when the product is launched, but soon afterwards when the mainstream sees what all the cool folks have.
-Slim
(p.s. fwiw, i only use my cell phone as a phone)
Even if robots are used, factories won't automatically be located to reduce transportation costs: items for Americans will not be made in America. They will still be made in China and elsewhere because those countries don't have the environmental regulations that the U.S. has and therefore the products can be made much more cheaply even if the labor cost (robot operating cost?) is the same.
My 400mhz, 348mb imac dv graphite model runs 10.2.8 just beautifully. I had to update the firmware when going to 2.8 since the monitor will freak (and did) if you don't do that but once installed, all is speedy as hell and so much better than os 9.
i've been back in california for a few years now so i'm not sure. i'll ask some friends. i do know that firewire is the standard for digital video cameras so that would be cool if it was standard connection for all devices.
There are some interesting differences in Japan's music industry that should be considered.
1) cd prices are fixed, at least for a certain time period after the release. when i lived there it was 3000 yen (US$27) for an album and 1000yen (US$9)for a single.
2) they have a much stronger emphasis on singles over albums. mini-cd singles are sold in huge numbers, for 1000 yen.
3) they have CD rental shops much the way many countries have video/dvd rental shops. I think albums rent for like 400 yen and singles 200 yen? Can't remember.
Therefore, this is a country whose music industry is not as concerned with home copying of the music (otherwise they wouldn't rent them), has people convinced a single is worth 1000 yen and so selling them as downloads for 210 yen can be successful even though this is like twice what apple charges, and has a music buying public that is used to buying songs one at a time instead of buying albums.
Some good points. My basic guidelines are that I know I can charge the client I built an ecommerce site to sell diamond jewelry more than i can charge the university group for whom i built an alumni association website. The latter is on a fixed budget while the first is a for profit site that should invest in its site. Profit sharing is also an interesting method and i have done that occasionally (get paid enough to pay the bills though 'cause you never know if you'll ever get any profits). It's hard to do though, I admit. Maybe easier in graphic design than programming since the product is judged more subjectively for the graphic artist. Who knows. Good luck!
As a graphic designer and uh, web developer, I've stopped being a wage slave. The more experience you get, not only is your end product better, but the faster you work. But even if you are twice as fast as a beginner, you can't double your hourly rates: clients don't think that way. What you can do is come up with a fixed rate based on the value that your work will have to the company. Even if the client still thinks in terms of 100 hours at $40 an hour, you know it will take you 50 hours and therefore you just doubled your take. Other clients may not consider the labor involved at all: they'll approach like a resale. In other words, it cost them $10k for a website that will gross them $50k in sales the first year alone. Put it to them that way and they will see it's a bargain. They won't go back and think, yeah, but why should we pay this guy $10k for 100 hours of work? Sell your expertise, your results, your product, not your time.
In this case, the guy should ask the company about their plans for the product. And then determine a price that is worth it to them.
Be a commodity, not a laborer.
I can deal with spam. What i'd rather see is a law that requires mail server admins to immediately stop the sending of virus generated mails. They should be required to trash every message that tries to go out with an attachment that we all know is from a current virus (.pif for example) and therefore stop the rest of us from receiving these and some people from getting infected by them and just spreading the damn thing.
That way I wouldn't have to suffer through events like two weeks ago when I received over 5000 emails from the same ip address in a 48 hour period, while my requests to the sending ip's tech contact went ignored.
There are many lies and/or inaccuracies in that story. Here is the straight dope:
legal 959 info
Why not set up their own "library" instead?
a d. html
http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/dlp/downlo
never mind. just a glitch.
I know it is against slashdot ettiquette to actually read an article but...I'd like to. It says to read the interview, click "read more" but I don't see such a link. Anyone?
The same river twice type parables are mainstays of Lao Tzu and Taoist thought in general (not buddhism). Therefore, Zeno's paradox has been "solved" for thousands of years. The problem is that scientists never bothered to realize that.
If all they are going to provide are options for seat fabric or radios, then this is not all that attractive of an idea. If, however, they wish to offer many options for the external appearance of the vehicle as well, I think many people would be interested. However, how will the company satisfy crash testing regulations and other safety inspections that are done to *completed* cars prior to DOT approval?
I know not all of you can be as lucky as me and be blessed with both size and skill but hey, stop worrying about how hot your system is and spend your time coming with something useful to do with that system!
nt=no text
So let's say one is running OSX 1.5 that they didn't actually ...uh...buy. If this certain someone buys the upgrade, are they going to be able to install it or does one have to be a registered owner of the 1.5?
nt=no text