Yes, I suppose TPB is a convenient place for children and the morally immature to violate copyright law. Some of us, however, are adults, and have grasped that if something costs money then either you pay for it or you do without.
I'm selling a roughly 80/20 nitrogen-oxygen gas mixture (with traces of other chemicals) for $1,000 per litre. If you don't want to pay for it, you'd better do without, otherwise you're morally immature. Don't even think about just taking it for free from the atmosphere!
Regardless of whether you agree with the GP's opinion, your analogy is obviously flawed. Air exists already and is necessary for life. A given game wouldn't exist without the effort of the developer, and isn't necessary for life.
Some pages get slow even after moderate amounts of traffic, others simply don't want to load. It could be many different problems, but to someone trying to get to the page, it won't load or it is slow.
That jumps out at me as a technical issue, that could- or at least should- be solved by technical means, not a reason for WP to effectively act as a cache.
Again, if the navigation of the site is in Flash (see Homestar Runner for an example
Homestar Runner is flash-based anyway, isn't it? I don't see how that would fit into WP.
Again, that strikes me as a technical problem, one that would be best solved with automated tools and/or data format conversion.
More or less yes. Wikipeida should take the facts from the web, put it in somewhat of an order and present it with no annoyances. Much as how a paper encyclopedia sums up about one hundred books and makes it into a page long article without all the hunting for books and reading through them all. Wikipedia should be like Cliffnotes for the web, taking all the important info and organizing it, no matter how obscure the thing is.
BINGO! So we *are* in agreement after all.
What you want is essentially what I want- distillation and organisation of information in a usable manner, not just a straight dump of existing stuff.
I believe that everything has its place for a Wikipedia article no matter how obscure
As I said to one other guy, would you like an article on my toenail clippings, assuming it were verifiable? If not, why not?
Even if I accepted what you say about plugins, it sounds like what you want is something fundamentally different to what WP is currently trying to do- a tool or method to get round the technical problems of websites.
We can have both, it just seems pretty pointless to make WP into that.
Yes, I would. I would also endorse a 'notability' rating, so that folks like you would be happier and folks like me could ignore it and make up their own minds.
In principle that's not a bad idea- I can see major problems in implementing it when you stop and consider how it would be done (simple votes would turn into a Digg-like popularity contest with masses of fanboys and other partisan types skewing the results in favour of (a) their favourite anal-retentive subjects and/or (b) those whose viewpoints they're happy with).
But the basic principle of somehow being able to rate notability isn't a bad idea. We'd probably need a relability rating as well since with everything writing everything, it'd be much harder to judge.
Meanwhile, if you wanted to ignore it and wade your way through articles on countless "best boyfriend ever!!!!!" articles that'd be your choice:)
Is it server space? I suppose a million pages at 20kb apiece add up. The amount of traffic wouldn't be much of a concern.
I keep hearing this. Do people really believe that so-called deletionists (I'm not, I'm just an anti-include-absolutely-no-matter-how-obscure-ist) are doing this on the grounds of server space?
20,000 bytes x 1 million pages = 20 gigabytes- that's a small fraction of even the cheapest desktop drive. Multiply it by 10, 100 or even 1000 times for multimedia, it's not really an issue.
The main problem is having useless (to me) information swamping the useful stuff- WP's strength is that it distills and makes more useful existing information. Also, there would be problems verifying the reliability and objectivity of such an article- and if you're going to say that it doesn't matter for someone's cat, then why does it have to be on WP anyway?
Ok, that's fine if you have ~3 hours searching through pages that take 15 minutes to load,
Not many unless you're looking at video or using a really slow connection, or something has gone wrong with the page.
others which have enough annoying ads to make you pull your hair out and still others on which your browser freezes because some idiot webmaster decided to make the entire site in Flash.
I use Flashblock, BTW. Actually, this makes sites that use separate Flash objects for every damn button worse, but overall it's very useful- simply click to activate any Flash object you *do* wish to use.
Most of us want one site to get information that doesn't use obscene amounts of JavaScript, Flash and bad design, while not taking forever to load.
So basically your expectations of Wikipedia are act as a de facto dump/transfer of content that's already available on the web, and present it without adverts, flash, etc.? That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's a pretty low ambition and I don't believe it's what WP ever *claimed* to be about nor what it should be about.
Other than Wikipedia there is no site that holds a good amount of information on every topic while remaining free of ads, poor design and Flash.
I wasn't discussing a *single* site anyway. Does it matter if it's on a single site if that site is so badly organised that you have to use Google or a similar search engine to get through it properly? You make it sound like you want to include everything in Wikipedia, regardless of the effect it would have on the organisation and readability, simply to get round some admittedly annoying sites. I'd rather people used browser plugins and the like to get round problems like that.
The problem with that is, what does that gain Wikipedia? Nothing. It loses facts. Granted, they might be badly written, or some might be poorly-researched, but deletion doesn't gain Wikipedia anything.
Here's the nub, and two salient points that people sometimes forget.
1) For those that claim that all information is important and worthwhile even if it's badly written and organised, they seem to forget that (a) we already have such a repository that can- and always will- beat Wikipedia hands down. It's the whole World Wide Web and a search engine!. Oh, and (b) this is where the vast majority of information on Wikipedia comes from anyway! Wikipedia's strength is that it organises information into a usable and readable form.
2) Wikipedia itself has *always* claimed that it's not meant to be an original source of information; therefore, its job is to collate and re-present information in a more useful format- see (1) above. Otherwise, what's the point?
I'm not a rabid deletionist by any means, but the problem with the more extreme "keep everything" viewpoints is that they're essentially trying to redo the whole web. I'll take a readable and useful WP article over one that's "complete" but no more useful than what I could find with Google anyday. It has nothing to do with saving a few pennies of space on a cheapass Seagate HDD.
I tend to be an inclusionist/separatist in my attitude toward wiki projects and content. By this I mean that content ought to be given time to develop, even if it seems crazy and off the wall. By being a separatist, I think the mergist viewpoint is full of logical errors and that most calls to merge two articles together are mainly a variant of deletionists who think that such petty articles about obscure topics need to go...
I find that splitting off articles into what would essentially end up as stubs (*)often removes the context that would make the information more useful, without providing any significant benefit.
My preference is to split potential sub-articles into subsections and if necessary let them grow. Eventually, when and if there's enough information to make a good article and/or the size of the subsection is too in-depth and long for the main article, *then* it can be split off and the subsection summarised with a "main article" link at the top. I've done this to several excessively-long articles myself.
My dislike of excessive splitting is that (I get the impresion that) some people seem to do it because they want to do it for reasons of emphasis (of the sub-topic) or importance or for reasons of ego, rather than whether or no it's the best way to present the information. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
(*) And, more importantly, what will likely never be any more than stubs.
Notable to you no. Notable to someone who lives in the town, yes.
Yes, and someone's pet cat is notable to them, and possibly a few other people as well. Following your logic, it's notable enough to warrant inclusion because it's notable to a few people.
Wikipedia isn't to be judged by how it relates to your own small world.
Which I believe was his point and the antithesis of what you just said above(!)
If the size of Wikipedia reduces it usefulness to you then the problem is that the search engine you are using is broken. Don't fix a broken search engine by slashing and burning the target of the search until it fits within the engine's limitations. Fix the search algorithm instead.
Would you endorse the inclusion of an article on my last set of toenail clippings, assuming it were verifiable? If not, why not?
So in essence they're claiming that it's unlimited then using the small-print to claim it's unlimited via an indirect and vague reference to a "fair use" policy.
Correction: should say "...to claim it's *not* unlimited..."
Before anyone claims that T mobile say no such thing; It says "UNLIMITED* internet access with no run-on rates". Further down there's a link "* Subject to fair use"
So in essence they're claiming that it's unlimited then using the small-print to claim it's unlimited via an indirect and vague reference to a "fair use" policy.
Small-print should be used to clarify things and make clear the boring details, not to allow companies to outright lie and then weasel out of it without even having the "explanation" on the same page.
Anticipating a possible response to this post, anyone (including the telcos) who claims that the "unlimited" means "unlimited connection time" or some similar BS is being disingenuous. The companies *know* and are operating on the assumption that people will take "unlimited" to mean "unlimited downloading", if only because clearly that *is* what people have already shown they believe such claims to mean. IANAL, but I assume that this is how the advertisement would be judged legally and/or by the advertising standards bodies.
(This isn't to say that the offer of 3GB for a regular fee of £15/month is bad value by mobile standards- but the advert *is* intentionally misleading, like it or not).
You can get a similar deal here for around 10/15 pounds a month from most operators. The difference here is you are paying for a single day's usage.
Where exactly is "here"?
Most likely the UK, since they're one of the few countries to have a currency called the "pound" and I know that you can get mobile broadband access here for £10 (1GB cap), £15 (3GB) or £25 (7GB) a month.
Sheesh... stop throwing about stupid accusations about "debating tactics". I might have disagreed with you, but I was at least trying to discuss the topic at hand in good faith, not to win a bloody debate.
"Strawman" implies that I was intentionally misrepresenting what you said- I wasn't. I apologise if you feel this was the case, but it ultimately doesn't change what I had to say- I don't feel that the PC was "remarkable" either for the reasons I already gave above.
I didn't say it was particularly awful machine, I said that it wasn't particularly revolutionary. I'm sure that its 16-bit processor was pretty fast at the time- but since it was an expensive machine sold to corporations, I'd expect that! It was still an off-the-shelf CPU running a 16-bit equivalent of CP/M...
Your points about the other machines were interesting, but somewhat tangential and irrelevant to what we were discussing. (As a former Atari 800XL owner though, I'd say that the 8-bit computers were in the same ballpark as the C64 at least, and in certain respects were more advanced- though the C64 undoubtedly had a better sound chip. Not that the 800's was bad).
Today's PCs are boring compared to the multitude of choices we had back in the 80s. Back then companies were willing to innovate and try new things.
Yes, but the innovative PCs (in the generic sense) back then were those like the Commodore Amiga- not IBM's!
Nowadays only Apple still continues that tradition (example:iPod) where Microsoft does not.
The iPod isn't a PC, although- anticipating your possible response- I accept that as, in effect, a specialised computer, it's worthy of consideration. Nevertheless, Apple didn't even invent the first consumer-oriented MP3 player, they simply improved the design and- importantly- released the iPod just when technology was making a worthwhile MP3 player affordable.
By worthwhile I mean that, circa 1997/98, MP3 players were available, but only had something like 32MB of memory (one album's worth), and slow serial/parallel connections that apparently took the better part of an hour to fill. Their only real benefit over even a cheap cassette Walkman would be random access- but since they could hold so little, you weren't even likely to want to skip any of the few songs that you could take with you.
In other words, Apple released the iPod just when the technology had improved enough to make possible an MP3 player that offered the real benefits that we take for granted today instead of being forced (by low capacity) into being just a poor substitute for a cheap cassette player. But I'm getting away from the point myself here:)
Psst... wanna buy a DVD of The Dark Night*? Only 5 bucks!
We'll know that it's a pirate copy if it's recorded on a DVD-ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
(* sic - don't want to get Slashdot DCMAd by a RIAA webcrawler, do we?)
I'm sure that Slashdot's owners would be quite capable of taking it to court, pointing out the transparently false accusation and furthermore of claiming damages for this.
The fact that the mistake was made by a dumb automated system isn't remotely an excuse, quite the opposite. It's the fault- and should be the problem- of anyone who thinks it's acceptable for them to automate the production of legal documents that can have serious consequences for the recipient, when such an unsupervised system is clearly flawed.
The attitude is basically "fuck you, it might cause you some major grief and hassle to deal with these incorrect automated accusations, but we don't care about that- it's a minor hassle for us at best to deal with them when you get back to us. So much so that it's not even worth us hiring some minimum wage worker to weed out the false positives".
Oh, and by the way, perhaps you meant " Psst... wanna buy a DVD of The Dark Knight*? Only 5 bucks! " If you're so worried that you have to cover up even an obvious joke like that on a large website, then it looks like the chilling effect is doing a great job.
Or maybe you meant " The Dark Knight DVD rip camcorder mp4 pirate ledger bail illegal copy download warez Batman Begins ". I can see why you didn't say that, it would be horrible if the webcrawler came across that:-P
One thing's for sure: We've come a long way from the days when the IBM PC was represented by Charlie Chaplin [..] The original IBM PC was a remarkable invention
WTF? The original IBM PC came out four or so years after the genuinely revolutionary Apple II (arguably the first mainstream, non-hobbyist personal computer), by which time it was clear that the microcomputer was important and here to stay.
It was built almost entirely from off-the-shelf parts, and ran a fairly unremarkable CP/M workalike, if not ripoff- QDOS (soon to be PC-DOS/MS-DOS)- that Bill Gates acquired the rights to. It was an almost guaranteed success because IBM was the safe choice in corporate America and no-one ever got fired for buying their stuff- but that says nothing about the machine itself.
What was revolutionary was that its very genericness allowed people to clone it, and MS's willingness to license the OS to those people created a competitive market that drove prices down, making it more favourable and driving it to become the standard it is today.
But I doubt that was originally by design- certainly not IBM's- and the original PC certainly wasn't the remarkable machine you seem to think it is.
Okay; I see what you're getting at, but I still don't really buy it. The rising "value" of the house was the driving force, and I'm quite sure that people also spent such loans on overpriced cars, holidays, bad-investment interior decoration and lots of other crap too. Yes, tech depreciates rapidly, but I doubt that it was ever more than a proportion of these HEL-driven purchases overall, and I certainly don't think it's anything like the driving force for the current situation.
besides, if banks have a million reposessed houses...how much are they worth if no one will buy them?
Yes of course, but this isn't tied directly to what you were originally saying, which was essentially that born-obsolescent (i.e. anti-investment) tech purchases were the main cause of the problem.
In both cases the problem isn't technology. Video phones were feasible since the 50s or 60s.
I'm sceptical of this claim; I've no doubt that given money and specialised equipment it would have been quite possible to build a usable videophone pair- it could have been based on existing television technology going in both directions. What I'm not buying is that the technology existed to build a *practical* videophone for general use *and* a network capable of supporting it- at least to anything approaching a usable resolution and at an affordable price.
If nothing else, video compression in the sophisticated modern sense didn't exist, and the bandwidth required by even a monochrome full-size 525/625 line image would have been massive. So unless the telephone network was able to be upgraded (and they'd never have got it to full-resolution TV picture bandwidth), they'd have to drastically reduce the resolution and frame-rate (somehow). And the technology would probably still have been prohibitively expensive- certainly too much for the mass market and hence to sell in the kind of numbers that would make it worthwhile.
It might just about have been theoretically possible to build a very poor videophone system during the 1950s/60s *if* the market had been there, but believe me- the technology of the time *would* have been very limiting.
(If anyone with more tech knowledge would like to elaborate on- or even disprove- what I said above, I'd be interested to hear it, but I'll take some convincing that I'm wrong:) )
Here's the real problem. Everything the banks have lent money to people to buy are kinda valueless because they are obsolete. Technology keeps advancing such that there is no such thing as collateral any more and thus all the banks are worthless...
I was under the impression that houses were the main cause of the problem- and with the possible exception of some ludicrously techie piles built by multi-billionaires, they aren't really "tech" items and they certainly don't go obsolete within four or five years.
Even though cars (which I'd guess are probably second in terms of loan-spending) only last a few years, it's generally not because the tech goes obsolete, it's because they wear out and/or fall apart. (I'm sure that my parents first car (built in the late 1970s) would still be going today with some engine adjustments for unleaded petrol, except that its rusting to pieces by 1986 precludes this possibility!)
Granted, I'm sure that people take out more (and less justifiable) loans to spend on tech crap than they should- along with home decorating and expensive holidays- but I doubt it's the driving force behind the current economic mess. In fact, moderately cutting-edge tech is *dirt cheap* compared to what it used to be twenty- and even in some areas ten- years ago. People can fill their new homes with techie crap which will generally still be worth a small fraction of what they paid for the house itself. Yeah, the house will last longer and can be considered an "investment" in the way that electronics technology almost never can. But the value and losses involved when that "investment" goes wrong dwarfs the cost of most peoples' boxes of flashy boys' toys.
I was the designer of Assett Manager 1.0, a powerful tool that allowed our brokers to get values of our contracts....it's not a bad program, but it had a couple of bugs in it that I would like to have fixed.
Unfortunately it appears that some people missed your important email (subject line:"important Tech news..") about positive and negative values being displayed the wrong way round if the application is started between 7 and 9.30AM. I suspect that many also missed your 284-line MSN message reminding them of the "isolated few dozen places" where they had to watch out for decimal points being a digit or two out of place.
Other than that your software was excellent, and it's a real shame we won't be able to give you your bonus of -$2.347 this year.
If they use Wikipedia, I wonder what they'll make of edits like the following:-
"Osama Bin Laden is generally considered to be one of the leading inspirations of global terrorism AND MR SMITH IS HIS BOYFRIEND LOL!!!!! ALSO KIM SMELLS and a leading component of the so-called "axis of evil".
"Sir, it appears that Osama Bin Laden is associated with previously unknown figure called 'Mr. Smith'. Further investigations reveal that Mr.Smith is Michael James Smith, an English teacher at Buttfuck Middle School, Illinois."
"Excellent work... have him arrested as soon as possible, and don't let him get away. He may have valuable information on his homosexual lover Bin Laden, or even be a part of the conspiracy himself. Also, find out who the fuck this mysterious 'Kim' girl is."
"Rumour has it that she's an adversary of the person who contributed this information anonymously via a Buttfuck Education Board IP address, and that she may be one of three girls between ten and thirteen years old."
"I'm beginning to suspect that this information might not be quite as reliable as we'd hoped."
"So you suspect that Kim doesn't smell after all?"
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I suppose TPB is a convenient place for children and the morally immature to violate copyright law. Some of us, however, are adults, and have grasped that if something costs money then either you pay for it or you do without.
I'm selling a roughly 80/20 nitrogen-oxygen gas mixture (with traces of other chemicals) for $1,000 per litre. If you don't want to pay for it, you'd better do without, otherwise you're morally immature. Don't even think about just taking it for free from the atmosphere!
Regardless of whether you agree with the GP's opinion, your analogy is obviously flawed. Air exists already and is necessary for life. A given game wouldn't exist without the effort of the developer, and isn't necessary for life.
Some pages get slow even after moderate amounts of traffic, others simply don't want to load. It could be many different problems, but to someone trying to get to the page, it won't load or it is slow.
That jumps out at me as a technical issue, that could- or at least should- be solved by technical means, not a reason for WP to effectively act as a cache.
Again, if the navigation of the site is in Flash (see Homestar Runner for an example
Homestar Runner is flash-based anyway, isn't it? I don't see how that would fit into WP.
Again, that strikes me as a technical problem, one that would be best solved with automated tools and/or data format conversion.
More or less yes. Wikipeida should take the facts from the web, put it in somewhat of an order and present it with no annoyances. Much as how a paper encyclopedia sums up about one hundred books and makes it into a page long article without all the hunting for books and reading through them all. Wikipedia should be like Cliffnotes for the web, taking all the important info and organizing it, no matter how obscure the thing is.
BINGO! So we *are* in agreement after all.
What you want is essentially what I want- distillation and organisation of information in a usable manner, not just a straight dump of existing stuff.
I believe that everything has its place for a Wikipedia article no matter how obscure
As I said to one other guy, would you like an article on my toenail clippings, assuming it were verifiable? If not, why not?
Even if I accepted what you say about plugins, it sounds like what you want is something fundamentally different to what WP is currently trying to do- a tool or method to get round the technical problems of websites.
We can have both, it just seems pretty pointless to make WP into that.
Yes, I would. I would also endorse a 'notability' rating, so that folks like you would be happier and folks like me could ignore it and make up their own minds.
In principle that's not a bad idea- I can see major problems in implementing it when you stop and consider how it would be done (simple votes would turn into a Digg-like popularity contest with masses of fanboys and other partisan types skewing the results in favour of (a) their favourite anal-retentive subjects and/or (b) those whose viewpoints they're happy with).
:)
But the basic principle of somehow being able to rate notability isn't a bad idea. We'd probably need a relability rating as well since with everything writing everything, it'd be much harder to judge.
Meanwhile, if you wanted to ignore it and wade your way through articles on countless "best boyfriend ever!!!!!" articles that'd be your choice
Is it server space? I suppose a million pages at 20kb apiece add up. The amount of traffic wouldn't be much of a concern.
I keep hearing this. Do people really believe that so-called deletionists (I'm not, I'm just an anti-include-absolutely-no-matter-how-obscure-ist) are doing this on the grounds of server space?
20,000 bytes x 1 million pages = 20 gigabytes- that's a small fraction of even the cheapest desktop drive. Multiply it by 10, 100 or even 1000 times for multimedia, it's not really an issue.
The main problem is having useless (to me) information swamping the useful stuff- WP's strength is that it distills and makes more useful existing information. Also, there would be problems verifying the reliability and objectivity of such an article- and if you're going to say that it doesn't matter for someone's cat, then why does it have to be on WP anyway?
Ok, that's fine if you have ~3 hours searching through pages that take 15 minutes to load,
Not many unless you're looking at video or using a really slow connection, or something has gone wrong with the page.
others which have enough annoying ads to make you pull your hair out and still others on which your browser freezes because some idiot webmaster decided to make the entire site in Flash.
I use Flashblock, BTW. Actually, this makes sites that use separate Flash objects for every damn button worse, but overall it's very useful- simply click to activate any Flash object you *do* wish to use.
Most of us want one site to get information that doesn't use obscene amounts of JavaScript, Flash and bad design, while not taking forever to load.
So basically your expectations of Wikipedia are act as a de facto dump/transfer of content that's already available on the web, and present it without adverts, flash, etc.? That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's a pretty low ambition and I don't believe it's what WP ever *claimed* to be about nor what it should be about.
Other than Wikipedia there is no site that holds a good amount of information on every topic while remaining free of ads, poor design and Flash.
I wasn't discussing a *single* site anyway. Does it matter if it's on a single site if that site is so badly organised that you have to use Google or a similar search engine to get through it properly? You make it sound like you want to include everything in Wikipedia, regardless of the effect it would have on the organisation and readability, simply to get round some admittedly annoying sites. I'd rather people used browser plugins and the like to get round problems like that.
The problem with that is, what does that gain Wikipedia? Nothing. It loses facts. Granted, they might be badly written, or some might be poorly-researched, but deletion doesn't gain Wikipedia anything.
Here's the nub, and two salient points that people sometimes forget.
1) For those that claim that all information is important and worthwhile even if it's badly written and organised, they seem to forget that (a) we already have such a repository that can- and always will- beat Wikipedia hands down. It's the whole World Wide Web and a search engine!. Oh, and (b) this is where the vast majority of information on Wikipedia comes from anyway! Wikipedia's strength is that it organises information into a usable and readable form.
2) Wikipedia itself has *always* claimed that it's not meant to be an original source of information; therefore, its job is to collate and re-present information in a more useful format- see (1) above. Otherwise, what's the point?
I'm not a rabid deletionist by any means, but the problem with the more extreme "keep everything" viewpoints is that they're essentially trying to redo the whole web. I'll take a readable and useful WP article over one that's "complete" but no more useful than what I could find with Google anyday. It has nothing to do with saving a few pennies of space on a cheapass Seagate HDD.
I tend to be an inclusionist/separatist in my attitude toward wiki projects and content. By this I mean that content ought to be given time to develop, even if it seems crazy and off the wall. By being a separatist, I think the mergist viewpoint is full of logical errors and that most calls to merge two articles together are mainly a variant of deletionists who think that such petty articles about obscure topics need to go...
I find that splitting off articles into what would essentially end up as stubs (*)often removes the context that would make the information more useful, without providing any significant benefit.
My preference is to split potential sub-articles into subsections and if necessary let them grow. Eventually, when and if there's enough information to make a good article and/or the size of the subsection is too in-depth and long for the main article, *then* it can be split off and the subsection summarised with a "main article" link at the top. I've done this to several excessively-long articles myself.
My dislike of excessive splitting is that (I get the impresion that) some people seem to do it because they want to do it for reasons of emphasis (of the sub-topic) or importance or for reasons of ego, rather than whether or no it's the best way to present the information. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
(*) And, more importantly, what will likely never be any more than stubs.
Notable to you no. Notable to someone who lives in the town, yes.
Yes, and someone's pet cat is notable to them, and possibly a few other people as well. Following your logic, it's notable enough to warrant inclusion because it's notable to a few people.
Wikipedia isn't to be judged by how it relates to your own small world.
Which I believe was his point and the antithesis of what you just said above(!)
If the size of Wikipedia reduces it usefulness to you then the problem is that the search engine you are using is broken. Don't fix a broken search engine by slashing and burning the target of the search until it fits within the engine's limitations. Fix the search algorithm instead.
Would you endorse the inclusion of an article on my last set of toenail clippings, assuming it were verifiable? If not, why not?
So in essence they're claiming that it's unlimited then using the small-print to claim it's unlimited via an indirect and vague reference to a "fair use" policy.
Correction: should say "...to claim it's *not* unlimited..."
Before anyone claims that T mobile say no such thing; It says "UNLIMITED* internet access with no run-on rates". Further down there's a link "* Subject to fair use"
So in essence they're claiming that it's unlimited then using the small-print to claim it's unlimited via an indirect and vague reference to a "fair use" policy.
Small-print should be used to clarify things and make clear the boring details, not to allow companies to outright lie and then weasel out of it without even having the "explanation" on the same page.
Anticipating a possible response to this post, anyone (including the telcos) who claims that the "unlimited" means "unlimited connection time" or some similar BS is being disingenuous. The companies *know* and are operating on the assumption that people will take "unlimited" to mean "unlimited downloading", if only because clearly that *is* what people have already shown they believe such claims to mean. IANAL, but I assume that this is how the advertisement would be judged legally and/or by the advertising standards bodies.
(This isn't to say that the offer of 3GB for a regular fee of £15/month is bad value by mobile standards- but the advert *is* intentionally misleading, like it or not).
You can get a similar deal here for around 10/15 pounds a month from most operators. The difference here is you are paying for a single day's usage.
Where exactly is "here"?
Most likely the UK, since they're one of the few countries to have a currency called the "pound" and I know that you can get mobile broadband access here for £10 (1GB cap), £15 (3GB) or £25 (7GB) a month.
I've been using my Nokia phone with a data "bono"
A "Bono"? Does this mean that U2 are getting into the telecommunications business?
;)
Actually, I shouldn't be surprised- The EDGE has already done a great job in prolonging the life of GSM networks
Sheesh... stop throwing about stupid accusations about "debating tactics". I might have disagreed with you, but I was at least trying to discuss the topic at hand in good faith, not to win a bloody debate.
"Strawman" implies that I was intentionally misrepresenting what you said- I wasn't. I apologise if you feel this was the case, but it ultimately doesn't change what I had to say- I don't feel that the PC was "remarkable" either for the reasons I already gave above.
Your points about the other machines were interesting, but somewhat tangential and irrelevant to what we were discussing. (As a former Atari 800XL owner though, I'd say that the 8-bit computers were in the same ballpark as the C64 at least, and in certain respects were more advanced- though the C64 undoubtedly had a better sound chip. Not that the 800's was bad).
Today's PCs are boring compared to the multitude of choices we had back in the 80s. Back then companies were willing to innovate and try new things.
Yes, but the innovative PCs (in the generic sense) back then were those like the Commodore Amiga- not IBM's!
Nowadays only Apple still continues that tradition (example:iPod) where Microsoft does not.
The iPod isn't a PC, although- anticipating your possible response- I accept that as, in effect, a specialised computer, it's worthy of consideration. Nevertheless, Apple didn't even invent the first consumer-oriented MP3 player, they simply improved the design and- importantly- released the iPod just when technology was making a worthwhile MP3 player affordable.
:)
By worthwhile I mean that, circa 1997/98, MP3 players were available, but only had something like 32MB of memory (one album's worth), and slow serial/parallel connections that apparently took the better part of an hour to fill. Their only real benefit over even a cheap cassette Walkman would be random access- but since they could hold so little, you weren't even likely to want to skip any of the few songs that you could take with you.
In other words, Apple released the iPod just when the technology had improved enough to make possible an MP3 player that offered the real benefits that we take for granted today instead of being forced (by low capacity) into being just a poor substitute for a cheap cassette player. But I'm getting away from the point myself here
Why waste my precious bandwidth on Metallica?
Because it lets other people download their crappy music (the means) and thus annoys Lars Ulrich (the end).
Napster bad- Pirate Bay worse!
Psst... wanna buy a DVD of The Dark Night*? Only 5 bucks!
We'll know that it's a pirate copy if it's recorded on a DVD-ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
(* sic - don't want to get Slashdot DCMAd by a RIAA webcrawler, do we?)
I'm sure that Slashdot's owners would be quite capable of taking it to court, pointing out the transparently false accusation and furthermore of claiming damages for this.
:-P
The fact that the mistake was made by a dumb automated system isn't remotely an excuse, quite the opposite. It's the fault- and should be the problem- of anyone who thinks it's acceptable for them to automate the production of legal documents that can have serious consequences for the recipient, when such an unsupervised system is clearly flawed.
The attitude is basically "fuck you, it might cause you some major grief and hassle to deal with these incorrect automated accusations, but we don't care about that- it's a minor hassle for us at best to deal with them when you get back to us. So much so that it's not even worth us hiring some minimum wage worker to weed out the false positives".
Oh, and by the way, perhaps you meant " Psst... wanna buy a DVD of The Dark Knight*? Only 5 bucks! " If you're so worried that you have to cover up even an obvious joke like that on a large website, then it looks like the chilling effect is doing a great job.
Or maybe you meant " The Dark Knight DVD rip camcorder mp4 pirate ledger bail illegal copy download warez Batman Begins ". I can see why you didn't say that, it would be horrible if the webcrawler came across that
One thing's for sure: We've come a long way from the days when the IBM PC was represented by Charlie Chaplin [..] The original IBM PC was a remarkable invention
WTF? The original IBM PC came out four or so years after the genuinely revolutionary Apple II (arguably the first mainstream, non-hobbyist personal computer), by which time it was clear that the microcomputer was important and here to stay.
It was built almost entirely from off-the-shelf parts, and ran a fairly unremarkable CP/M workalike, if not ripoff- QDOS (soon to be PC-DOS/MS-DOS)- that Bill Gates acquired the rights to. It was an almost guaranteed success because IBM was the safe choice in corporate America and no-one ever got fired for buying their stuff- but that says nothing about the machine itself.
What was revolutionary was that its very genericness allowed people to clone it, and MS's willingness to license the OS to those people created a competitive market that drove prices down, making it more favourable and driving it to become the standard it is today.
But I doubt that was originally by design- certainly not IBM's- and the original PC certainly wasn't the remarkable machine you seem to think it is.
Think : Home Equity Loans...
Okay; I see what you're getting at, but I still don't really buy it. The rising "value" of the house was the driving force, and I'm quite sure that people also spent such loans on overpriced cars, holidays, bad-investment interior decoration and lots of other crap too. Yes, tech depreciates rapidly, but I doubt that it was ever more than a proportion of these HEL-driven purchases overall, and I certainly don't think it's anything like the driving force for the current situation.
besides, if banks have a million reposessed houses...how much are they worth if no one will buy them?
Yes of course, but this isn't tied directly to what you were originally saying, which was essentially that born-obsolescent (i.e. anti-investment) tech purchases were the main cause of the problem.
In both cases the problem isn't technology. Video phones were feasible since the 50s or 60s.
I'm sceptical of this claim; I've no doubt that given money and specialised equipment it would have been quite possible to build a usable videophone pair- it could have been based on existing television technology going in both directions. What I'm not buying is that the technology existed to build a *practical* videophone for general use *and* a network capable of supporting it- at least to anything approaching a usable resolution and at an affordable price.
:) )
If nothing else, video compression in the sophisticated modern sense didn't exist, and the bandwidth required by even a monochrome full-size 525/625 line image would have been massive. So unless the telephone network was able to be upgraded (and they'd never have got it to full-resolution TV picture bandwidth), they'd have to drastically reduce the resolution and frame-rate (somehow). And the technology would probably still have been prohibitively expensive- certainly too much for the mass market and hence to sell in the kind of numbers that would make it worthwhile.
It might just about have been theoretically possible to build a very poor videophone system during the 1950s/60s *if* the market had been there, but believe me- the technology of the time *would* have been very limiting.
(If anyone with more tech knowledge would like to elaborate on- or even disprove- what I said above, I'd be interested to hear it, but I'll take some convincing that I'm wrong
Why don't they just make the glasses so big that you put them over the monitor isntead? That way people don't need to wear them to get the 3D effect?
If you put the glasses on the monitor, both eyes would see the same thing at the same time.
Yes, but the monitor could watch *you* in 3D! 'Course, this only works in Soviet Russia...
Here's the real problem. Everything the banks have lent money to people to buy are kinda valueless because they are obsolete. Technology keeps advancing such that there is no such thing as collateral any more and thus all the banks are worthless...
I was under the impression that houses were the main cause of the problem- and with the possible exception of some ludicrously techie piles built by multi-billionaires, they aren't really "tech" items and they certainly don't go obsolete within four or five years.
Even though cars (which I'd guess are probably second in terms of loan-spending) only last a few years, it's generally not because the tech goes obsolete, it's because they wear out and/or fall apart. (I'm sure that my parents first car (built in the late 1970s) would still be going today with some engine adjustments for unleaded petrol, except that its rusting to pieces by 1986 precludes this possibility!)
Granted, I'm sure that people take out more (and less justifiable) loans to spend on tech crap than they should- along with home decorating and expensive holidays- but I doubt it's the driving force behind the current economic mess. In fact, moderately cutting-edge tech is *dirt cheap* compared to what it used to be twenty- and even in some areas ten- years ago. People can fill their new homes with techie crap which will generally still be worth a small fraction of what they paid for the house itself. Yeah, the house will last longer and can be considered an "investment" in the way that electronics technology almost never can. But the value and losses involved when that "investment" goes wrong dwarfs the cost of most peoples' boxes of flashy boys' toys.
I was the designer of Assett Manager 1.0, a powerful tool that allowed our brokers to get values of our contracts....it's not a bad program, but it had a couple of bugs in it that I would like to have fixed.
Unfortunately it appears that some people missed your important email (subject line:"important Tech news..") about positive and negative values being displayed the wrong way round if the application is started between 7 and 9.30AM. I suspect that many also missed your 284-line MSN message reminding them of the "isolated few dozen places" where they had to watch out for decimal points being a digit or two out of place.
Other than that your software was excellent, and it's a real shame we won't be able to give you your bonus of -$2.347 this year.
"Osama Bin Laden is generally considered to be one of the leading inspirations of global terrorism AND MR SMITH IS HIS BOYFRIEND LOL!!!!! ALSO KIM SMELLS and a leading component of the so-called "axis of evil".
"Sir, it appears that Osama Bin Laden is associated with previously unknown figure called 'Mr. Smith'. Further investigations reveal that Mr.Smith is Michael James Smith, an English teacher at Buttfuck Middle School, Illinois."
"Excellent work... have him arrested as soon as possible, and don't let him get away. He may have valuable information on his homosexual lover Bin Laden, or even be a part of the conspiracy himself. Also, find out who the fuck this mysterious 'Kim' girl is."
"Rumour has it that she's an adversary of the person who contributed this information anonymously via a Buttfuck Education Board IP address, and that she may be one of three girls between ten and thirteen years old."
"I'm beginning to suspect that this information might not be quite as reliable as we'd hoped."
"So you suspect that Kim doesn't smell after all?"
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true ?
Are you implying that Google are planning to locate their fleet in the South Pacific?!
I'm a single childless guy...
This is Slashdot. Mod parent Redundant.
He said he was childless, you insensitive clod!