I cannot help but wonder whether top level management at MS got a bad batch of LSD and its done something to their brains.
They're going to force you to call them, they'll probably have all their call centers outsourced to countries where english isn't the main language. Half the time you won't understand the question and if you do manage to decifer the accent, they won't understand yours.
The only reason left to use windows is gaming. And even that is becoming less and less of a reason...
While I think many of the worlds top armies are definitly trying to move towards that; the possible drawbacks are rather worse than many may assume.
Right now, a leader (lets call him bush for the duration of this example), has to be careful when waging war otherwise he will piss off his country thus ruining his and his parties reelection prospects. With the right application of patriotism a leader can get away with waging war, but its still by no means easy to keep up support when parents children are being killed on a distant battle field.
If the army became completely remote then this political backlash would be greatly reduced since the only loss for that country would be machinery and money.
War could increasingly become the first option rather than the last as the costs become more and more tolerable. This would result in a unbalancing of power that the world has never seen before. With one or two countries completely unafraid to send in the army while most of the smaller countries face a prospect of having to support huge human armies to counter the possibility of hi tech invasions.
Drawbacks would be...
* High civilian/armed forces casualties in lesser countries. * Even more terroism as all smaller countries realise their armies can no longer protect them. * The rapid destruction of many economies as countries try to keep up.
As harsh as it may sound, it is good that todays superpowers still have people in their armies. The deaths of those people are what keep politicians in check. Without those deaths, without the political drawbacks they bring, future goverments may make our current goverments of the world look like nobel peace prize winners.
Whats nice about this is that its apparently quite easy to retrofit an existing LCD manufacturing facility to produce these. IIRC the others did not have this advantage.
If it is as easy as they claim, then the cost to get these things into mass production will be quite a bit smaller.
I really wish they'd mentioned that the author intended to rip off well known titles as part of a series of short stories.
But I guess leaving important details out allows the/. crowd to bitch about copyright, IP and court cases without paying any attention to the real reason the story was done.
"This is patently ridiculous, since most inventions in history were made when this was not the case"
I would think its safe to say that most of the world inventions have happened in the last 100 years (maybe 200), and patents have been around since long before that. Advancements in technology have grown exponentially in recent times.
Also, just because there wern't patents doesn't mean we as humans didn't institute protections against the loss of knowledge to others. Glass making for instance had many draconian measures to make sure that the secrets did not get out. Similar measures were used with metal working and other major advances of the time. So, inventions in the past were made with the understanding that they would be protected, and as times have changed and inventions get easier to copy (with reverse engineering etc) the need for patents upheld by law became more necessary.
"Have you seen a study where it is demonstrated conclusively innovation would suffer without a patent system?"
Obviously such a study would be impossible or at least always open to interpretation since patents have been around in law for over 500 years. And comparing companies of today to monarchies and guilds of the dark ages would be useless.
This is not to say that the current patent systems doesn't need an upgrade... Your statement that they currently do not protect the lone inventer is true for many (though some individual inventers profit greatly from their patents). The current patent system is also obviously unfit to be applied to software. This doesn't mean that patents must be abandoned completly, it means the patent system must be overhauled, there is no need to throw out the good along with the bad.
But to remove the patent system entirely? Many patents in the world outside of software are held by companies that spent millions developing them. You think a paypal donate link is going to benifit them when once their piece of hardware (or whatever) is out in the world and some 3rd world company reverse engineers it and takes all their profits?
Remove the ability to protect your research and the guy who can sell the product for the least amount of money gets the money. A company spends huge amounts in R&D cannot compete with a company that only steals ideas since the company that steals ideas has far less costs.
"Any problem that is mechanical in nature still takes an understanding of how a car works"
Thats training...
Anyone who works in a field requires training, even if they just train themselves.
Reparing an engine is akin to debugging and fixing code. It does require intelligence, it also requires training.
The person who creates a new car engine from scratch, does the designs, or takes the designs and makes them work. Those are the people who are several levels up in ability, and they do require something more than just training.
Any given car has a factory manual saying exactly how it work. Now I'm sure many mechanics don't need to have the manual to figure out whats broken and whats not, but training can make a mechanic who is able to fix your car, just like training can make a computer programmer who is able to debug existing code.
The coders/mathematicians/engineers/etc that create things (be they complex programs or cars) are the ones who require vastly higher intelligence and no amount of training will allow some people to perform well in those jobs.
That is probably due to the SEO people not yet knowing all the little details on how to tweak their web pages to abuse the msn search as well. Thats the problem with google nowadays. The top sites on any given page are usually the ones who know how to set up their site for google.
The more popular MSN search becomes, the more time people will put into abusing it, the less useful it will be.:(
What they need to do is make deals with all the other major providors to provide one unified interface to them all. Imagine that you load up your creative supplied iTunes equivalent, only its built in shop is really a conglomeration of all the iTunes opponents.
If you could do that, you'd get good prices, a huge selection of music, and all supplied with one program that connects perfectly to your music player.
Of course politics and other such crap will make such a thing improbable at best.:(
I somehow doubt the people putting these stickers on the books would want their children to learn something as evil as critical thinking...
Though I agree, critical thinking/scepticism as a class on its own would be one of the most important subjects a student could take. Taught properly and it would benifit that student in almost every aspect for the rest of their life.
My god those must be powerful drugs you're taking.
They are offering "free site licenses". And even if they just called it free, we english speakers have been using the term free, for things you don't have to pay for, for quite some time now.
And then the soul giving... Well you're a fucking nutcase! If willing paying for something that someone has created is selling your soul, then we all did it a long time ago. They are not forcing anyone to buy it, they are not bundling it with some essential part of a computer system, anyone who pays for it (or doesn't if they are a student) can use firefox any other free(dom) browser if they want to.
I just can't help but feel that constantly bringing up the day after tomorrow every time an iceberg is mentioned doesn't help make people take this seriously. The movie was after all, a movie made for entertainment. It was over the top, excessive, and oh so very hollywood.
Yup and after the collision we'll all freeze to death in a matter of seconds...
Why the hell mention that stupid movie. Come on, while there is evidence that global warming is indeed melting icecaps and sometimes thus causing areas to cool down rather than warm up, an iceberg crashing into a glacier is hardly a sign that some hollywood blockbuster is about to become true.
I hadn't even looked at Opera because of the slashdot crowd screaming about the "Oh So Annoying" ads. Then, due to the fact that I wanted to test my web site with opera, I downloaded the free version. You have a choice to display this ultra thin text ad at the top of the browser that really does not seem to get in the way of anything other than maybe a few buttons that could be there.
The browser itself is really nice, and the tiny advert does VERY LITTLE to detract from this. Why oh why is this such a huge issue?
While I'm sure its quite possible that this has been thought of by a room full of pointy hairs, isn't it the current Slate staff who are what all those 4.8 million visitors read? Okay, maybe there are a bunch of non creative staff who could be replaced, but its the people who write the columns that keep the people coming back. Change them, and you change the style, and soon they'll lose almost all those gains.
Thankfully it seems that there are no plans for large scale retrenchments.
That depends. The larger the company, the more issues you can have when upgrading anything, purely from a communications point of view.
The longer it takes to upgrade, and the longer that your systems are not running the same software, the more chance of problems. These problems are of course solved by hiring more support and doing more indepth planning, all of which costs money.
Thats not to say that larger companies can't have better savings, but I seriously doubt its as simples as "More people = more savings".
Just a simple thought came to mind moments after I hit submit.
It always bothers me that I essentially have to go through the extra step of transfering any pictures I take on my phone, to my PC.
Imagine if in 2015, I can take high resolution photos (and even video) from a hand held device (we really should stop calling them phones;) ) that is saved directly to my PC at home. The phone can have a small (by tomorrows standards at least) amount of local storage, but the vast majority of storage used would be on the terabytes or petabytes of storage we'll have at home then.
I am sure that by then they will be aiming for cell phones to all be video phones. While you may not see the need, I'm sure by then some people will be wondering how we ever survived using phones without seeing the persons face.
As phones become less phones and more personal organisers and communicator (complete with a host of other extras), the more people are going to need that bandwidth.
Even if no single application on these devices needs that much bandwidth, the combination of them all may. That, and if you provide the bandwidth, someone will find a way to use it all.
You forget that if you are anti mac, or should I say, anti ipod/itunes, then you are EVIL!!!!
This whole thread is going to be filled with posts saying "this guy is cyber squatting and should be punished" and the fact that the registration for this site preceded macs trademarking of itunes will more than likely be ignored. Hmm I think we need a Fanboy moderation option...
That said, I bet he has seen a HUGE increase in traffic since the itunes started. And this case may cause even more traffic, so I'm guessing the owner is happy for now.
Sounds like the UK and the dole. I know they arn't as easy going now, but I knew an english family about 10 years back, who lived here in South Africa while recieving the dole from the UK goverment. What with the low cost of living, and the strength of the pound, they lived quite well, and never worked.
Unfortunately, it turns out that isn't a good thing. In England, the people on the dole more often than not spend it at the local pub rather than studying and improving themselves. As it turns out, in a system like that, the people who would use it to better themselves are the people you find working anyway. The rest just destroy their lives with alchohol and mcdonalds.;)
So yea, a MAJOR cultural change, one where the vast majority of the lower classes change their outlook on life. I just don't see 90% of the population rotting in front of the TV/bar as a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot help but wonder whether top level management at MS got a bad batch of LSD and its done something to their brains.
They're going to force you to call them, they'll probably have all their call centers outsourced to countries where english isn't the main language. Half the time you won't understand the question and if you do manage to decifer the accent, they won't understand yours.
The only reason left to use windows is gaming. And even that is becoming less and less of a reason...
While I think many of the worlds top armies are definitly trying to move towards that; the possible drawbacks are rather worse than many may assume.
Right now, a leader (lets call him bush for the duration of this example), has to be careful when waging war otherwise he will piss off his country thus ruining his and his parties reelection prospects. With the right application of patriotism a leader can get away with waging war, but its still by no means easy to keep up support when parents children are being killed on a distant battle field.
If the army became completely remote then this political backlash would be greatly reduced since the only loss for that country would be machinery and money.
War could increasingly become the first option rather than the last as the costs become more and more tolerable. This would result in a unbalancing of power that the world has never seen before. With one or two countries completely unafraid to send in the army while most of the smaller countries face a prospect of having to support huge human armies to counter the possibility of hi tech invasions.
Drawbacks would be...
* High civilian/armed forces casualties in lesser countries.
* Even more terroism as all smaller countries realise their armies can no longer protect them.
* The rapid destruction of many economies as countries try to keep up.
As harsh as it may sound, it is good that todays superpowers still have people in their armies. The deaths of those people are what keep politicians in check. Without those deaths, without the political drawbacks they bring, future goverments may make our current goverments of the world look like nobel peace prize winners.
Whats nice about this is that its apparently quite easy to retrofit an existing LCD manufacturing facility to produce these. IIRC the others did not have this advantage.
If it is as easy as they claim, then the cost to get these things into mass production will be quite a bit smaller.
I really wish they'd mentioned that the author intended to rip off well known titles as part of a series of short stories.
/. crowd to bitch about copyright, IP and court cases without paying any attention to the real reason the story was done.
But I guess leaving important details out allows the
"This is patently ridiculous, since most inventions in history were made when this was not the case"
I would think its safe to say that most of the world inventions have happened in the last 100 years (maybe 200), and patents have been around since long before that. Advancements in technology have grown exponentially in recent times.
Also, just because there wern't patents doesn't mean we as humans didn't institute protections against the loss of knowledge to others. Glass making for instance had many draconian measures to make sure that the secrets did not get out. Similar measures were used with metal working and other major advances of the time. So, inventions in the past were made with the understanding that they would be protected, and as times have changed and inventions get easier to copy (with reverse engineering etc) the need for patents upheld by law became more necessary.
"Have you seen a study where it is demonstrated conclusively innovation would suffer without a patent system?"
Obviously such a study would be impossible or at least always open to interpretation since patents have been around in law for over 500 years. And comparing companies of today to monarchies and guilds of the dark ages would be useless.
This is not to say that the current patent systems doesn't need an upgrade... Your statement that they currently do not protect the lone inventer is true for many (though some individual inventers profit greatly from their patents). The current patent system is also obviously unfit to be applied to software. This doesn't mean that patents must be abandoned completly, it means the patent system must be overhauled, there is no need to throw out the good along with the bad.
Well fine, get rid of patents for software...
But to remove the patent system entirely? Many patents in the world outside of software are held by companies that spent millions developing them. You think a paypal donate link is going to benifit them when once their piece of hardware (or whatever) is out in the world and some 3rd world company reverse engineers it and takes all their profits?
Remove the ability to protect your research and the guy who can sell the product for the least amount of money gets the money. A company spends huge amounts in R&D cannot compete with a company that only steals ideas since the company that steals ideas has far less costs.
"Any problem that is mechanical in nature still takes an understanding of how a car works"
Thats training...
Anyone who works in a field requires training, even if they just train themselves.
Reparing an engine is akin to debugging and fixing code. It does require intelligence, it also requires training. The person who creates a new car engine from scratch, does the designs, or takes the designs and makes them work. Those are the people who are several levels up in ability, and they do require something more than just training.
Any given car has a factory manual saying exactly how it work. Now I'm sure many mechanics don't need to have the manual to figure out whats broken and whats not, but training can make a mechanic who is able to fix your car, just like training can make a computer programmer who is able to debug existing code.
The coders/mathematicians/engineers/etc that create things (be they complex programs or cars) are the ones who require vastly higher intelligence and no amount of training will allow some people to perform well in those jobs.
That is probably due to the SEO people not yet knowing all the little details on how to tweak their web pages to abuse the msn search as well. Thats the problem with google nowadays. The top sites on any given page are usually the ones who know how to set up their site for google.
:(
The more popular MSN search becomes, the more time people will put into abusing it, the less useful it will be.
What they need to do is make deals with all the other major providors to provide one unified interface to them all. Imagine that you load up your creative supplied iTunes equivalent, only its built in shop is really a conglomeration of all the iTunes opponents.
:(
If you could do that, you'd get good prices, a huge selection of music, and all supplied with one program that connects perfectly to your music player.
Of course politics and other such crap will make such a thing improbable at best.
I somehow doubt the people putting these stickers on the books would want their children to learn something as evil as critical thinking...
Though I agree, critical thinking/scepticism as a class on its own would be one of the most important subjects a student could take. Taught properly and it would benifit that student in almost every aspect for the rest of their life.
My god those must be powerful drugs you're taking.
They are offering "free site licenses". And even if they just called it free, we english speakers have been using the term free, for things you don't have to pay for, for quite some time now.
And then the soul giving... Well you're a fucking nutcase! If willing paying for something that someone has created is selling your soul, then we all did it a long time ago. They are not forcing anyone to buy it, they are not bundling it with some essential part of a computer system, anyone who pays for it (or doesn't if they are a student) can use firefox any other free(dom) browser if they want to.
I'm not denying it. Read what I said!
I just can't help but feel that constantly bringing up the day after tomorrow every time an iceberg is mentioned doesn't help make people take this seriously. The movie was after all, a movie made for entertainment. It was over the top, excessive, and oh so very hollywood.
Yup and after the collision we'll all freeze to death in a matter of seconds...
Why the hell mention that stupid movie. Come on, while there is evidence that global warming is indeed melting icecaps and sometimes thus causing areas to cool down rather than warm up, an iceberg crashing into a glacier is hardly a sign that some hollywood blockbuster is about to become true.
I hadn't even looked at Opera because of the slashdot crowd screaming about the "Oh So Annoying" ads. Then, due to the fact that I wanted to test my web site with opera, I downloaded the free version. You have a choice to display this ultra thin text ad at the top of the browser that really does not seem to get in the way of anything other than maybe a few buttons that could be there.
The browser itself is really nice, and the tiny advert does VERY LITTLE to detract from this. Why oh why is this such a huge issue?
While I'm sure its quite possible that this has been thought of by a room full of pointy hairs, isn't it the current Slate staff who are what all those 4.8 million visitors read? Okay, maybe there are a bunch of non creative staff who could be replaced, but its the people who write the columns that keep the people coming back. Change them, and you change the style, and soon they'll lose almost all those gains.
Thankfully it seems that there are no plans for large scale retrenchments.
That depends. The larger the company, the more issues you can have when upgrading anything, purely from a communications point of view.
The longer it takes to upgrade, and the longer that your systems are not running the same software, the more chance of problems. These problems are of course solved by hiring more support and doing more indepth planning, all of which costs money.
Thats not to say that larger companies can't have better savings, but I seriously doubt its as simples as "More people = more savings".
LOL, I thought I was the only one.
Just a simple thought came to mind moments after I hit submit.
;) ) that is saved directly to my PC at home. The phone can have a small (by tomorrows standards at least) amount of local storage, but the vast majority of storage used would be on the terabytes or petabytes of storage we'll have at home then.
It always bothers me that I essentially have to go through the extra step of transfering any pictures I take on my phone, to my PC.
Imagine if in 2015, I can take high resolution photos (and even video) from a hand held device (we really should stop calling them phones
I am sure that by then they will be aiming for cell phones to all be video phones. While you may not see the need, I'm sure by then some people will be wondering how we ever survived using phones without seeing the persons face.
As phones become less phones and more personal organisers and communicator (complete with a host of other extras), the more people are going to need that bandwidth.
Even if no single application on these devices needs that much bandwidth, the combination of them all may. That, and if you provide the bandwidth, someone will find a way to use it all.
You forget that if you are anti mac, or should I say, anti ipod/itunes, then you are EVIL!!!!
This whole thread is going to be filled with posts saying "this guy is cyber squatting and should be punished" and the fact that the registration for this site preceded macs trademarking of itunes will more than likely be ignored. Hmm I think we need a Fanboy moderation option...
That said, I bet he has seen a HUGE increase in traffic since the itunes started. And this case may cause even more traffic, so I'm guessing the owner is happy for now.
Two days ago I believe. Here
Its all this guys fault...
Sounds like the UK and the dole. I know they arn't as easy going now, but I knew an english family about 10 years back, who lived here in South Africa while recieving the dole from the UK goverment. What with the low cost of living, and the strength of the pound, they lived quite well, and never worked.
;)
Unfortunately, it turns out that isn't a good thing. In England, the people on the dole more often than not spend it at the local pub rather than studying and improving themselves. As it turns out, in a system like that, the people who would use it to better themselves are the people you find working anyway. The rest just destroy their lives with alchohol and mcdonalds.
So yea, a MAJOR cultural change, one where the vast majority of the lower classes change their outlook on life. I just don't see 90% of the population rotting in front of the TV/bar as a good thing.
OMW.
I thought this was a joke. Googling for it however returns far to many positives.
I suppose it makes sense since the standard SI prefixes (kilo-,mega-,giga-,tera-) are all powers of 10 (3,6,9,12 respectively) rather than 2.
But, kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi. Sounds like teletubbies came up with it.
It hurts the US economy less...