What would actually happen is that producing a show would become riskier so we would either see fewer, higher quality shows produced, or fewer, safer and more lowest-common-denominator ones.
Maybe. But every other entertainment media in the world - music, books, movies, computer games - uses that model, and if civilization's collapsed because of it, I haven't noticed.
I disagree! Two that I can think of are complete lack of bandwidth (1080 digital TV streams run at 1GB per half hour) and simplicity
And optical fibre rans at, what, 1GB a second? Substitute current antenna and repeater infrastructure with geographically-local caches that hold a whole year's worth of video, and you'll never even hit the backbone. I know we don't have ubiquitous domestic fibre connections yet, but it's scarcely a technological bottleneck.
there is no on-demand broadcast or streaming standard, it's fragmented between various physical devices and online service.
Sure there is. h.264 over bittorrent is pretty ubiquitous. Oh, you mean all those commercial providers haven't got their butts into gear, and are still trying to lock people in to proprietary DRMed solutions? Not a compelling technological reason in my book.
that require a PC
I don't know about you, but my country has just about got finished forcing everyone to add a digital decoder box to plonk on top of their TV. Not to mention, most TVs sold today have pretty decent processing capabilities of their own.
I'm not saying it's pleasant (or even necessarily that control groups are needed, or ethical). I was just countering the "doctors standing by watching people dying a painful death" that the GGP was blathering on about.
Ok, let's switch goalpoasts. We'll now consider the cost of Doctor Who, instead of BBC's overall offerings and costs.
Doctor Who is watched by, conservatively, 7 million Britons (more for premiers, finales and specials). It's also redistributed to 50 other countries. The US viewership peaked at around 1 million, and Australia was achieving about the same viewership in 2005, so let's be again conservative and say that those 50 other countries add about half of Britains viewership, bringing the worldwide total to around 10 million viewers. At that rate, it costs $0.30 an episode per viewer, or about $4 a season. Your $400 is off by 2 orders of magnitude. Even if we double that, and give the BBC a nice, chunky profit, you're off by a factor of 50. Note that my estimates are conservative; I wouldn't be surprised if the worldwide viewership for Doctor Who was closer to 15 - 20 million.
That's also because they force a whole three channel's worth of programming down your throat, when all I want is a couple of shows. Say I want to watch two hours of television per week; that's 1/36 of the programming the BBC offers ( 3 channels x 24 hours), so that's ~$7/year. Yeah, I could live with that. Maybe they shouldn't go with an antiquated model where they need to fill up every hour of every day with unique content, most of which is rubbish and unwatched, and just let people watch what they want, when they want. There is no longer any compelling technological reason for time-slot television.
I've bought a lot of my own OOP childhood favourites (in preparation for kids, partly) from places like thebookdepository.co.uk. They index second-hand bookstores from all over Britain and Europe, the books are cheap and they have free worldwide shipping. For OOP books, you really can't go past it.
Roughly in order of age suitability, from young to old: * Enid Blyton - Magic Faraway Tree, Wishing Chair * Fred Hoyle - Frozen Planet of Azuron, Energy Pirates, The Planet of Death, The Giants of Universal Park * C.S. Lewis - Narnia * Lloyd Alexander - Prydain Chronicles * Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson - Fighting Fantasy * Dianne Duane - Young Wizards * Fay Sampsan - Pangur Ban * Nathan Elliot - Star Pirates * John Christopher - Tripods Trilogy (and prequel) * Various - Doctor Who Novelizations * David Eddings - Belgariad * Raymond E. Feist - Magician (sequels not so much)
They're not doing a shit job - they're doing it too well. The wintel ecosystem provides a competitive environment, and the vendors are driving the margins down to razor-thinness - you know, the free market doing its job. Microsoft have just seen how Apple have been able to charge a premium by bundling hardware and software, and creating a locked-in system - they want on to that money-train.
Of course, what they're ignoring is that Apple has long been positioned as the premium product (rightly or wrongly, but that's where they're priced), while Microsoft has always been commodity. I doubt MS are going to cut off the other vendors; rather, they're essentially producing "reference hardware", as per Google/Nexus.
Then again, Microsoft being Microsoft, I wonder if they'll be able to resist stacking the deck in their favour when they control both hardware and software. They could well drive companies like HP and Dell together to agree on a standard Linux distro, and start shipping with that. I sort of doubt it'd go that far, but it'll be fun to watch.
Yes, that'll serve the cause of democracy. Shoot the people who are revealing to the populace all the immoral things you're doing. While it quite possibly would serve the careers of a number of politicians, I think your suggestion is more treasonous to the people of your nation than the leaker.
Yeah, which enables apps to do things like load up and modify files they didn't create, just as they can on a general-purpose computer. It's part of that trade-off I mentioned. Android apps are compelled to tell you exactly what they want permissions to do; you can make your own decision as to whether you trust an app with those permissions. iOS apps don't provide you with that information, but are all governed by the default permissions enforced by Apple.
I agree it might be nice to have two separate permissions: "access sandbox storage" and "access global storage", or some such, but I imagine the demand for that sort of feature is fairly low.
What qualitative differences are there between general purpose computers, and mobile general purpose computers, that should makes mobile computing immune to malicious software?
It's a trade-off. Either you are allowed to install anything on your device, and are willing to wear the consequences, or you're not, and can choose from an accepted white-list of products that a trusted third party has validated clean. I can understand why some consumers choose to be limited (especially business consumers), but saying that one choice is better than another is just stupid.
And actually, when it comes to technical measures, Android's security is better, and more finely grained than iOS. iOS security model revolves around the idea that bad apps won't be running, because Apple will have stopped them being installed in the first place.
Why would the government tell airports to do it themselves, and then not put any requirements on it?
Because that's what "privatizing" it would be. Taking all the responsibility away from the public sector, and putting it into the private. What they're talking about isn't "privatizing" - it's outsourcing.
You and others here may think it's worthless, but most Americans probably don't, and all it takes is one nutcase on a plane with a knife or whatever and suddenly everyone's going to be jumping up and down screaming for heads to roll and wanting the TSA back.
Well, it looks like they're getting the government they deserve. Pity about the rest of you. Tyranny of the majority in action. Glad I'm not American.
Most American ISPs. The only Australian ISP I'm aware of who has this in their AUP is Telstra, and nobody who knows how to configure a setup like that would be using Telstra anyway. That's one of the advantages of a metered system - because the ISP gets paid more the more data you use, they have absolutely no motivation to try and limit your ability to move data. Whereas the US ISPs seem to spend more of their time figuring out how to block data-heavy protocols than actually trying to provide a service.
The thing is, the TSA is a) pointless, and b) goverment-funded. If the government "privatized" it, simply by not funding it, and telling the airports they could do private security arrangements themselves, I imagine the vast majority of airports would simply drop it. Keeping it accomplishes nothing in terms of added safety, adds a huge cost, pisses off their customers, and probably increases the chances of a terrorist attack in their airport, as it's safer to make the attack while everyone's queuing up for security theatre, rather than once they're in the plane.
Additionally, even if the airports did keep it up, their security forces would basically have the same privileges as other private security forces, like mall security and what-not. They'd no longer have their ability to grope passengers defended by the federal government, any more than campus security would if they decided to feel up a teenage girl they'd detained for no reason.
I quite liked Atlas Shrugged too, and it's one of those books that I think everyone should read once in their life (though I do recommend skipping the radio speech - that was the one part of the book I found unremittingly dull). I don't really think Ayn Rand's solution stands up, but her critique of communism is pretty spot-on - which, after all, is what she had experience with. What I wanted to see was how Galt's Gulch was working after a generation, and what happened to the money all the first generation had earned after they died off. She pretty much rigged the game by making all her heroes noble and good, and all the communists greedy and selfish. It didn't really address how her "ideal society" would handle it if a greedy, selfish person was born into wealth and took advantage of the system.
I'm surprised that you didn't hear of them when they routed around the court ruling banning Samsung from importing Galaxy Tabs. Kogan started importing them themselves, from non-Samsung exporters, thus not triggering the legal restriction, and was selling them in Australia when no other retailer was.
Slashdot Mirror
What would actually happen is that producing a show would become riskier so we would either see fewer, higher quality shows produced, or fewer, safer and more lowest-common-denominator ones.
Maybe. But every other entertainment media in the world - music, books, movies, computer games - uses that model, and if civilization's collapsed because of it, I haven't noticed.
I disagree! Two that I can think of are complete lack of bandwidth (1080 digital TV streams run at 1GB per half hour) and simplicity
And optical fibre rans at, what, 1GB a second? Substitute current antenna and repeater infrastructure with geographically-local caches that hold a whole year's worth of video, and you'll never even hit the backbone. I know we don't have ubiquitous domestic fibre connections yet, but it's scarcely a technological bottleneck.
there is no on-demand broadcast or streaming standard, it's fragmented between various physical devices and online service.
Sure there is. h.264 over bittorrent is pretty ubiquitous. Oh, you mean all those commercial providers haven't got their butts into gear, and are still trying to lock people in to proprietary DRMed solutions? Not a compelling technological reason in my book.
that require a PC
I don't know about you, but my country has just about got finished forcing everyone to add a digital decoder box to plonk on top of their TV. Not to mention, most TVs sold today have pretty decent processing capabilities of their own.
I'm not saying it's pleasant (or even necessarily that control groups are needed, or ethical). I was just countering the "doctors standing by watching people dying a painful death" that the GGP was blathering on about.
Ok, let's switch goalpoasts. We'll now consider the cost of Doctor Who, instead of BBC's overall offerings and costs.
Doctor Who is watched by, conservatively, 7 million Britons (more for premiers, finales and specials). It's also redistributed to 50 other countries. The US viewership peaked at around 1 million, and Australia was achieving about the same viewership in 2005, so let's be again conservative and say that those 50 other countries add about half of Britains viewership, bringing the worldwide total to around 10 million viewers. At that rate, it costs $0.30 an episode per viewer, or about $4 a season. Your $400 is off by 2 orders of magnitude. Even if we double that, and give the BBC a nice, chunky profit, you're off by a factor of 50. Note that my estimates are conservative; I wouldn't be surprised if the worldwide viewership for Doctor Who was closer to 15 - 20 million.
Full. Stops. Are. Not. An. Argument. You. Failed. The. Intelligence. Test.
Basal cell cancinoma is not life-threatening. The rest of your post is irrelevant.
That's also because they force a whole three channel's worth of programming down your throat, when all I want is a couple of shows. Say I want to watch two hours of television per week; that's 1/36 of the programming the BBC offers ( 3 channels x 24 hours), so that's ~$7/year. Yeah, I could live with that. Maybe they shouldn't go with an antiquated model where they need to fill up every hour of every day with unique content, most of which is rubbish and unwatched, and just let people watch what they want, when they want. There is no longer any compelling technological reason for time-slot television.
I've bought a lot of my own OOP childhood favourites (in preparation for kids, partly) from places like thebookdepository.co.uk. They index second-hand bookstores from all over Britain and Europe, the books are cheap and they have free worldwide shipping. For OOP books, you really can't go past it.
Roughly in order of age suitability, from young to old:
* Enid Blyton - Magic Faraway Tree, Wishing Chair
* Fred Hoyle - Frozen Planet of Azuron, Energy Pirates, The Planet of Death, The Giants of Universal Park
* C.S. Lewis - Narnia
* Lloyd Alexander - Prydain Chronicles
* Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson - Fighting Fantasy
* Dianne Duane - Young Wizards
* Fay Sampsan - Pangur Ban
* Nathan Elliot - Star Pirates
* John Christopher - Tripods Trilogy (and prequel)
* Various - Doctor Who Novelizations
* David Eddings - Belgariad
* Raymond E. Feist - Magician (sequels not so much)
They're not doing a shit job - they're doing it too well. The wintel ecosystem provides a competitive environment, and the vendors are driving the margins down to razor-thinness - you know, the free market doing its job. Microsoft have just seen how Apple have been able to charge a premium by bundling hardware and software, and creating a locked-in system - they want on to that money-train.
Of course, what they're ignoring is that Apple has long been positioned as the premium product (rightly or wrongly, but that's where they're priced), while Microsoft has always been commodity. I doubt MS are going to cut off the other vendors; rather, they're essentially producing "reference hardware", as per Google/Nexus.
Then again, Microsoft being Microsoft, I wonder if they'll be able to resist stacking the deck in their favour when they control both hardware and software. They could well drive companies like HP and Dell together to agree on a standard Linux distro, and start shipping with that. I sort of doubt it'd go that far, but it'll be fun to watch.
Or, alternatively, don't engage in dirty tricks. Then nobody's going to embarrass you with them.
Enjoy your long slow descent into despotism.
They may not be designed or sold that way, but they have that capacity, if it wasn't locked away from the end-user.
Yes, that'll serve the cause of democracy. Shoot the people who are revealing to the populace all the immoral things you're doing. While it quite possibly would serve the careers of a number of politicians, I think your suggestion is more treasonous to the people of your nation than the leaker.
Yeah, which enables apps to do things like load up and modify files they didn't create, just as they can on a general-purpose computer. It's part of that trade-off I mentioned. Android apps are compelled to tell you exactly what they want permissions to do; you can make your own decision as to whether you trust an app with those permissions. iOS apps don't provide you with that information, but are all governed by the default permissions enforced by Apple.
I agree it might be nice to have two separate permissions: "access sandbox storage" and "access global storage", or some such, but I imagine the demand for that sort of feature is fairly low.
What qualitative differences are there between general purpose computers, and mobile general purpose computers, that should makes mobile computing immune to malicious software?
It's a trade-off. Either you are allowed to install anything on your device, and are willing to wear the consequences, or you're not, and can choose from an accepted white-list of products that a trusted third party has validated clean. I can understand why some consumers choose to be limited (especially business consumers), but saying that one choice is better than another is just stupid.
And actually, when it comes to technical measures, Android's security is better, and more finely grained than iOS. iOS security model revolves around the idea that bad apps won't be running, because Apple will have stopped them being installed in the first place.
Behold! A perfect example of a straw man argument, in all it's pristine glory.
And then instead of answering the charges, he fled the country.
By "fled the country" you mean "asked prosecutors if it was ok if he leave then continued on his way", right?
Name another major chip vendor who hasn't figured out that getting into the Linux kernel is a required checkoff for market success.
So, what you're saying is, NVidia isn't a market success? Strange, it appears the market disagrees with you.
Why would the government tell airports to do it themselves, and then not put any requirements on it?
Because that's what "privatizing" it would be. Taking all the responsibility away from the public sector, and putting it into the private. What they're talking about isn't "privatizing" - it's outsourcing.
You and others here may think it's worthless, but most Americans probably don't, and all it takes is one nutcase on a plane with a knife or whatever and suddenly everyone's going to be jumping up and down screaming for heads to roll and wanting the TSA back.
Well, it looks like they're getting the government they deserve. Pity about the rest of you. Tyranny of the majority in action. Glad I'm not American.
Most American ISPs. The only Australian ISP I'm aware of who has this in their AUP is Telstra, and nobody who knows how to configure a setup like that would be using Telstra anyway. That's one of the advantages of a metered system - because the ISP gets paid more the more data you use, they have absolutely no motivation to try and limit your ability to move data. Whereas the US ISPs seem to spend more of their time figuring out how to block data-heavy protocols than actually trying to provide a service.
The thing is, the TSA is a) pointless, and b) goverment-funded. If the government "privatized" it, simply by not funding it, and telling the airports they could do private security arrangements themselves, I imagine the vast majority of airports would simply drop it. Keeping it accomplishes nothing in terms of added safety, adds a huge cost, pisses off their customers, and probably increases the chances of a terrorist attack in their airport, as it's safer to make the attack while everyone's queuing up for security theatre, rather than once they're in the plane.
Additionally, even if the airports did keep it up, their security forces would basically have the same privileges as other private security forces, like mall security and what-not. They'd no longer have their ability to grope passengers defended by the federal government, any more than campus security would if they decided to feel up a teenage girl they'd detained for no reason.
Yes, because the Liberal plan was all about relying on mobile infrastructure, and not rolling out entirely new, hi-speed wireless data...
I think the current recession proves that it is the capitalism at the stock exchange that has caused other people's money to run out.
And I think that quote proves that people no longer know what capitalism means, and see it as a synonym for "making money".
Don't forget, 10 year olds are embryos.
I quite liked Atlas Shrugged too, and it's one of those books that I think everyone should read once in their life (though I do recommend skipping the radio speech - that was the one part of the book I found unremittingly dull). I don't really think Ayn Rand's solution stands up, but her critique of communism is pretty spot-on - which, after all, is what she had experience with. What I wanted to see was how Galt's Gulch was working after a generation, and what happened to the money all the first generation had earned after they died off. She pretty much rigged the game by making all her heroes noble and good, and all the communists greedy and selfish. It didn't really address how her "ideal society" would handle it if a greedy, selfish person was born into wealth and took advantage of the system.
I'm surprised that you didn't hear of them when they routed around the court ruling banning Samsung from importing Galaxy Tabs. Kogan started importing them themselves, from non-Samsung exporters, thus not triggering the legal restriction, and was selling them in Australia when no other retailer was.