How much do you suppose it costs to fight with people who go over the caps on their "unlimited" plans? Or to get sued for false advertising because of those unlimited plans? Or to monitor each and every packet to make sure nobody is torrenting or tethering?
Billing by usage for a modern information service should be a matter of turning on an option in some software you already bought, and hooking that up to your automatic report generator. A little bit of setup cost, and almost not cost from there on.
Per meg billing is great. It just hast to be at a reasonable rate. Half a cent per meg is reasonable, at the moment. You pay for what you get.
Metering a connection doesn't cost anything at all. You're probably right about the rest of it, but that doesn't change with unmetered billing anyway. And unmetered services encourage companies to oversubscribe their systems and hope nobody actually uses what they've been sold.
"If dark matter can interact gravitationally wouldn't this mysterious crap just accumulate in the gravity wells of massive objects like stars or even the earth the same way planets collect rocks and dust around them?"
Other way around. Normal matter (the minority) tends to clump in areas where there's lots of dark matter. Dark matter itself clumps, as you predict it would, but not to the extent that normal matter does. Normal matter clumps partly due to gravity, but to make nice tight clumps like stars you need friction to slow everything down and make it stick together. Dark matter wouldn't do that.
Since the OP mentioned battery blankets and block heaters, I very much doubt he's from Toronto. He's likely one of us real Canadians who roll our eyes when someone says how cold Canada is and someone from Toronto says "no, Toronto isn't that cold!";)
"Now we have everything from business to business transactions" so sad. Businesses might have to pick up a phone.
"stock trading" Aw, the high frequency traders will have to take a day off!
"government bonds to consumer purchases" Government bonds are pretty slow turnover. A one day holiday would be no big deal. If you've just gotta have your bonds, there's always the phone. Or actually going to a bank! As for consumer purchases, a day off from that wouldn't hurt anyone either. And there's always getting off your butt and going to the store.
"have hospitals depending on the internet to get their plasma on time" No we don't.
"We have a billion people using social networks for hours." OMG!
"We have farmers using the internet to check the weather" What did farmers do before the Internet? I suppose TV, radio, newspapers and looking out the window have all been sadly neglected and are now unusable because of the Internet. Oh, no, wait. They haven't.
"militaries using the internet to transmit vital intelligence" You'd better hope not. If so, they probably deserve to be defeated. Even if they did use the Internet, hopefully someone would be smart enough to type in the actual IP addresses instead of using DNS.
"kids using the internet to call home and say they'll be late" Right... there are a LOT of kids who call home using the Internet and have absolutely no other way of contacting their parents. Not that parents aren't used to their kids not calling anyway.
I have. If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, you still can't access the network settings to actually scan for SSIDs. You can get the CURRENT one, but that's it. That might identify the device's position. Maybe. Wifi location services generally require several SSIDs for a location.
It's a lot less of an issue than sending GPS coordinates back to the server.
All right, Apple may or may not give back their 30%. Maybe not if they're pissed at you for fooling them, breaking your agreement, screwing their customers and refusing to fix it.
Am I not full of it now? Is your pedantry satisfied?
"The practical resolution from a V700 is about 2500dpi. Which, with 6x7 format color images (56x70mm) is about 120mb. If I save half the frames on a roll (that would be typical), I'll end up with half a gigabyte of data. No "going to 11" here."
Yeah, but what are you DOING with all that data? There is no display in the world that will show it, and it's even insane for any realistic printing. The only reason for resolution like that is archival.
I agree, Google's image format doesn't seem to have a purpose. But it's sure not because it lacks support for lossy 16-bit image compression.
The big guys mostly play with the little guys' money. There are a few people who are genuinely rich enough to be big players in the market themselves, but the big investment firms just invest money that's been entrusted to them by others.
Your view of the stock market is extremely skewed, probably by editorials written by pundits discussing the way it is USED by a lot of big companies. Most individuals investing in the stock market invest money in companies or industries they believe in, mid to long term.
The problems are being caused by professional investment firms that play the market like a game. I'm not suggesting they be banned, but that it might be a good idea to ban some of their more problematic practices. That seems like a MUCH better idea than kicking out all the good investors and letting the ones that cause all the problems go to town.
Good summary. I think the author of the article is really focusing on Twitter et. al. getting too much press as some kind of revolutionary new phenomenon for social change (they're not - they're communication tools). You may very well be right though - even as communication tools they may actually encourage apathy.
Seems to me the solution then would be to exclude the big guys (or at least their dangerous methods) from the market. Not the little ones, who don't do any harm.
It enables things like that IF Apple weren't looking over their shoulder. Provided the app got past the approval process in the first place, someone would undoubtedly complain to Apple. Apple would then yank the app from the store and offer everyone refunds. Oh, and as a developer when you give a refund YOU give a refund. Apple doesn't give back their 30%.
I'm a lot less worried about DoubleClick having a cookie on my computer than I am about a piece of software that grabs my phone number, physical location, my contact information, my contacts' information, the contents of my drive....
Unless Apple is helpfully giving out your name and address to go along with the UDID (which I very much doubt), it's just a way to see how many people are using your app.
The problem is that some people seem to think the embryos that give you embryonic stem cells are little babies when they're actually blobs of cells sitting in petrie dishes at fertility clinics that are going to be thrown in the incinerator anyway.
I think his real point is that Glenn Beck won't do it either. "Media," old or new, isn't sufficient. If you want a revolution you've got to hit the pavement and convince people face to face. You can use the media to gather a halo of weak supporters around your cause, but they're mostly for show.
Sure, you can use it as a communication tool. But that's it. The author's thesis seems to be that in order to have the commitment and discipline to actually have an effect, you have to have strong social ties. The kind that come from meeting and getting to know the people you're working with face to face.
Social media connections, on the other hand, are too weak to support anything like that. Would you risk your life because someone on Twitter told you to? Or someone on Slashdot?
"He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
I think that's exactly what he's saying. Showing up one day and maybe making a handwritten sign are the kinds of things you get with Twitter/Facebook/etc. If that. Even better is the Facebook group protest.
The kinds of things that actually have a chance to change something take more commitment and are unlikely to be organized through social media. Strikes are a good example. It seems much like a protest, but it takes a lot more commitment, keeps going, and it's organized. Actual shooting revolutions are the ultimate - you have to be willing to die.
Have you ever seen an AAC encoded file on the web? Safari probably supports them, but I doubt any other browser does (they all support mp3). My last little music finding expedition found AAC from Apple, mp3 from everyone else, and mp3 or FLAC from The Pirate Bay.
Apple's championing of AAC didn't have any effect whatsoever on web standards and the only real use of it seems to be in iTunes, which is end to end Apple and completely transparent to the end user.
If you've ever sold to a retailer you'll find that you can try to set any price you want, then the retailer will tell you how much they're willing to pay and you either take it or leave it.
You can ask Amazon to sell your app for any price you like. Amazon will then tell you what price they're willing to sell it for, and you can take it or leave it.
Slashdot Mirror
How much do you suppose it costs to fight with people who go over the caps on their "unlimited" plans? Or to get sued for false advertising because of those unlimited plans? Or to monitor each and every packet to make sure nobody is torrenting or tethering?
Billing by usage for a modern information service should be a matter of turning on an option in some software you already bought, and hooking that up to your automatic report generator. A little bit of setup cost, and almost not cost from there on.
Acceptance by whom?
The pretty pictures are for PR, or gross visualization. Are you arguing that scientists should try to make their work more unpalatable to the public?
Per meg billing is great. It just hast to be at a reasonable rate. Half a cent per meg is reasonable, at the moment. You pay for what you get.
Metering a connection doesn't cost anything at all. You're probably right about the rest of it, but that doesn't change with unmetered billing anyway. And unmetered services encourage companies to oversubscribe their systems and hope nobody actually uses what they've been sold.
"If dark matter can interact gravitationally wouldn't this mysterious crap just accumulate in the gravity wells of massive objects like stars or even the earth the same way planets collect rocks and dust around them?"
Other way around. Normal matter (the minority) tends to clump in areas where there's lots of dark matter. Dark matter itself clumps, as you predict it would, but not to the extent that normal matter does. Normal matter clumps partly due to gravity, but to make nice tight clumps like stars you need friction to slow everything down and make it stick together. Dark matter wouldn't do that.
So what you're saying is that science grants should be decided by people who know something about science? That's a great idea.
Since the OP mentioned battery blankets and block heaters, I very much doubt he's from Toronto. He's likely one of us real Canadians who roll our eyes when someone says how cold Canada is and someone from Toronto says "no, Toronto isn't that cold!" ;)
"Now we have everything from business to business transactions" so sad. Businesses might have to pick up a phone.
"stock trading" Aw, the high frequency traders will have to take a day off!
"government bonds to consumer purchases" Government bonds are pretty slow turnover. A one day holiday would be no big deal. If you've just gotta have your bonds, there's always the phone. Or actually going to a bank! As for consumer purchases, a day off from that wouldn't hurt anyone either. And there's always getting off your butt and going to the store.
"have hospitals depending on the internet to get their plasma on time" No we don't.
"We have a billion people using social networks for hours." OMG!
"We have farmers using the internet to check the weather" What did farmers do before the Internet? I suppose TV, radio, newspapers and looking out the window have all been sadly neglected and are now unusable because of the Internet. Oh, no, wait. They haven't.
"militaries using the internet to transmit vital intelligence" You'd better hope not. If so, they probably deserve to be defeated. Even if they did use the Internet, hopefully someone would be smart enough to type in the actual IP addresses instead of using DNS.
"kids using the internet to call home and say they'll be late" Right... there are a LOT of kids who call home using the Internet and have absolutely no other way of contacting their parents. Not that parents aren't used to their kids not calling anyway.
You're pretty young, aren't you?
I have. If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, you still can't access the network settings to actually scan for SSIDs. You can get the CURRENT one, but that's it. That might identify the device's position. Maybe. Wifi location services generally require several SSIDs for a location.
It's a lot less of an issue than sending GPS coordinates back to the server.
Have you ever purposely screwed over your customers and Apple and refused to be reasonable about it, as suggested by the OP?
I'm an iPhone developer too, and Apple does reserve the right to make you pay the whole refund amount.
I doubt we're supposed to post excerpts from the actual contract, but the relevant one is reproduced here:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/apples-iphone-app-refund-policies-could-bankrupt-developers/
You can check it in your own distribution contract in iTunes Connect.
All right, Apple may or may not give back their 30%. Maybe not if they're pissed at you for fooling them, breaking your agreement, screwing their customers and refusing to fix it.
Am I not full of it now? Is your pedantry satisfied?
"The practical resolution from a V700 is about 2500dpi. Which, with 6x7 format color images (56x70mm) is about 120mb. If I save half the frames on a roll (that would be typical), I'll end up with half a gigabyte of data. No "going to 11" here."
Yeah, but what are you DOING with all that data? There is no display in the world that will show it, and it's even insane for any realistic printing. The only reason for resolution like that is archival.
I agree, Google's image format doesn't seem to have a purpose. But it's sure not because it lacks support for lossy 16-bit image compression.
The big guys mostly play with the little guys' money. There are a few people who are genuinely rich enough to be big players in the market themselves, but the big investment firms just invest money that's been entrusted to them by others.
Your view of the stock market is extremely skewed, probably by editorials written by pundits discussing the way it is USED by a lot of big companies. Most individuals investing in the stock market invest money in companies or industries they believe in, mid to long term.
The problems are being caused by professional investment firms that play the market like a game. I'm not suggesting they be banned, but that it might be a good idea to ban some of their more problematic practices. That seems like a MUCH better idea than kicking out all the good investors and letting the ones that cause all the problems go to town.
Good summary. I think the author of the article is really focusing on Twitter et. al. getting too much press as some kind of revolutionary new phenomenon for social change (they're not - they're communication tools). You may very well be right though - even as communication tools they may actually encourage apathy.
Seems to me the solution then would be to exclude the big guys (or at least their dangerous methods) from the market. Not the little ones, who don't do any harm.
It enables things like that IF Apple weren't looking over their shoulder. Provided the app got past the approval process in the first place, someone would undoubtedly complain to Apple. Apple would then yank the app from the store and offer everyone refunds. Oh, and as a developer when you give a refund YOU give a refund. Apple doesn't give back their 30%.
So no, nobody's going to do anything that stupid.
Too bad it didn't take a little longer to fix. By the time anyone who deserved to make money on it heard, it was too late.
Yeah, because all the bad stuff that's happened over the last little while is due to the little guys screwing up....
I'm a lot less worried about DoubleClick having a cookie on my computer than I am about a piece of software that grabs my phone number, physical location, my contact information, my contacts' information, the contents of my drive....
And phone number.
Unless Apple is helpfully giving out your name and address to go along with the UDID (which I very much doubt), it's just a way to see how many people are using your app.
The problem is that some people seem to think the embryos that give you embryonic stem cells are little babies when they're actually blobs of cells sitting in petrie dishes at fertility clinics that are going to be thrown in the incinerator anyway.
I think his real point is that Glenn Beck won't do it either. "Media," old or new, isn't sufficient. If you want a revolution you've got to hit the pavement and convince people face to face. You can use the media to gather a halo of weak supporters around your cause, but they're mostly for show.
Sure, you can use it as a communication tool. But that's it. The author's thesis seems to be that in order to have the commitment and discipline to actually have an effect, you have to have strong social ties. The kind that come from meeting and getting to know the people you're working with face to face.
Social media connections, on the other hand, are too weak to support anything like that. Would you risk your life because someone on Twitter told you to? Or someone on Slashdot?
"He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
I sincerely hope he's right.
I think that's exactly what he's saying. Showing up one day and maybe making a handwritten sign are the kinds of things you get with Twitter/Facebook/etc. If that. Even better is the Facebook group protest.
The kinds of things that actually have a chance to change something take more commitment and are unlikely to be organized through social media. Strikes are a good example. It seems much like a protest, but it takes a lot more commitment, keeps going, and it's organized. Actual shooting revolutions are the ultimate - you have to be willing to die.
Have you ever seen an AAC encoded file on the web? Safari probably supports them, but I doubt any other browser does (they all support mp3). My last little music finding expedition found AAC from Apple, mp3 from everyone else, and mp3 or FLAC from The Pirate Bay.
Apple's championing of AAC didn't have any effect whatsoever on web standards and the only real use of it seems to be in iTunes, which is end to end Apple and completely transparent to the end user.
If you've ever sold to a retailer you'll find that you can try to set any price you want, then the retailer will tell you how much they're willing to pay and you either take it or leave it.
You can ask Amazon to sell your app for any price you like. Amazon will then tell you what price they're willing to sell it for, and you can take it or leave it.