Lets hope this really happens, let hope that ISP's in Japan really are this stupid and the Japanese citizens do the only thing that is logical. Cancel their service since it is no longer of any use to them so that ISP after ISP goes tits up.
At least in holland a lot of ISP's are happy to advertise with 'download music fast' without having any music service whatsoever. Copyright infringement is one major reason to get one of the more expensive subscriptions, if everyone just went with the cheapest most minimal subscription, you know the one that is plenty for email, the web, gaming etc etc, then ISP's will really feel it in their revenue.
On the longer term, lets hope the japanese ISP's learn very quickly that they opened the flood gates. If they can monitor this, expect everyone to come out. Just block winny? Don't count on it, every P2P program will be on it, and why just P2P, why not home run MMORPG servers, why not material that the goverment doesn't want you to host. Why not check every email for illegal material? Congrats, the ISP's in japan just become the enforcer for everyone with a gripe about the internet. There is reason the old telecoms never ever wished to do that with telephone services and they claim they have to keep a line open unless they get an outside complaint even if it is bloody obvious a phone line is only used for criminal activity. You do NOT want to become the police of your customers.
Lets hope that this turns sour for the Japanese ISP's very quickly, because if this doesn't go totally wrong for the ISP's in question, we will get it elsewhere.
even the article itself admits it, this is the only plant in the world, except for the one in russia. Ah modern reporting, gotta love it.
So it is NOT the only one in the world even the article writers know this and yet that is the headline.
I would not be suprised to have lots of poster point out countless other facilities that can produce similar stuff after all or that some facilities could if they wanted too with little adjustment.
Until you actually read the article and see that your cheap foreign labour is in Japan? Japan hasn't been cheap in decades.
Oh and where are those Intel chips actually produced?
Read up on Henry Ford and exactly why he allowed his factory workers special loans to buy the cars they produced. If a rabid capatalist understood, why don't you?
First off, there is no such thing as an iPod, what you got is everything from the iPod shuffle to the latest iPod touch and what a LOT of people forget is that it is the lower end models that sell best.
This makes the iPods of which Apple sells most very simple single purpose devices. Play music.
Now ask yourselve just how many people actually use iTunes to BUY music and not justas a way to put music they already have on it on to the iPod as nothing more then a extremely bloated uploader.
By definition almost the iPhone is NOT just a phone. If you JUST wanted a phone, you can get far cheaper devices.
The idea is that mobile phones will become the PC's of the future, well ask yourselve this. If this is true, which one is the IBM PC and which one the Apple?
Cast aside the hatred of MS for a moment and remember WHY it was WinTel didn't just win the race but left overbody else standing. No, the reason isn't that Bill Gates produced a superior product, the reason was that he simply didn't do everything he could to ruin his own project. MS didn't win because they made the right decisions, they won because everyone else made far worse decisions. Atari, IBM and yes Apple, they ALL screwed up.
Now look at the iPhone again, for that matter, look at Apple itself, has it really learned from past mistakes? Remember, there was a time when APPLE led the field, but lost it. Is the iPhone not about to make the same mistakes as before, too much control when all people want is to use the device as they want?
Didn't we just have a story about Atari in which multiple posters pointed out how Atari never had proper documentation on how to develop for its systems so people just went to the IBM instead and went to work with the PC? Hell, that I can use PC as a synonym for an x86 bases cpu running MS software says it all really.
Apple may have sold a lot of devices, but they also sold a lot of Apples in the beginning, and then the PC happened and expanded the market to extents few could have imagined.
The iPod is a simple music player that for an awfull lot of people works PURELY as an MP3 player. Is the iPhone a simple mobile phone with a few added apps OR is it an attempt at the fabled mobile computing we heard so much about?
I personally haven't bought a single phone in recent years that did NOT allow me to install any java app that I wanted on it. (Europe is different regarding telcom control then the US), why should I NOT allow my carrier to decide what I run on my mobile computing phone, but give Apple total control?
In my eyes Android will have to launch on a sexy phone to get the same headlines, but if it truly introdudes an open PC like platform on which I can run what I want, how I want, then it is the clear winner for every user who runs non-apple or non-ms software on their computer.
It all depends on wether people buy their phones as single use gadgets or buy into the mobile computing hype.
Nobody EATS IT! The whole things has become a matter of pride, they japanese can't shift the meat without subsidies. It just ain't popular. Now beef. Good beef? That will cost you a fortune.
The reason whale meat was on the diet (when it hasn't been for ages in the rest of the world) was because post-WW2 japan had a food shortage and whale meat was easily available. For all kinds of reasons Japan just ain't a beef country. But that doesn't mean the meat was popular. Before commercial whaling was banned the consumption was already plumetting.
Japanese politics are EXTREMELY controlled by special intrest groups. Far more so then even the US. Would New York keep valuable land for growing grain just a few miles outside the city center? Hell no. Drive out of tokyo were land-prices are insane and you will land right smack in the rice paddies, rice that is so expensive to grow in Japan it makes no economical sense.
The entire whaling debate is just a product of old elite japanese wanting to say NO to the world. No normal japanese person wants to eat it. It is like those people who claim they hunt seals for historic reasons while wearing synthetic clothing and dining on pizza.
There have been plenty of investigations where a simple video feed of the cockpit would have made it a lot easier to determine what is going on.
The instrument readings only tell you WHAT the input was, NOT what the pilot was doing. Rememeber, there was something WRONG. What is the instruments were showing the pilot was pushing forward on the stick, but the video shows he was pulling back? Clear sign were the problem was, but your blackbox would never show it.
Voice is often hard to understand especially if the pilot for whatever reason doesn't have his headset on.
Video would really help, but might be too big to record. But investigators would LOVE to be able to SEE what is going on in the cockpit. If the video is hi-res enough it might even confirm that what the blackbox is recording and what the instruments are SAYING is actually the same.
Which in my case screwed it up since with my old ISP it used to be correct, but not with my new one. Apparently I live in some small village, not the city.
And yes, it makes a difference, these ads are HORRIBEL and anyone with a brain will know that they are ALL scams, how come there are only attractive women near you?
But the naming of your home town makes it seems more legit. It is afterall how confidence tricksters work, by finding stuff out that you somehow let them know but using it in the right way to make you believe they really know you.
When it comes to IT their are THREE parties involved. Those who build it (IT), those who govern it (Management) and those who use it (Employees).
These three groups often have no idea what the other is actually doing.
Have you ever seen one of those programs where the boss of a big company is put to work on the factory floor? They used to be pretty common, was there ever a SINGLE boss, who wasn't shown to be totally clueless about how the actual work was being done?
You think IT is any better? How many people with the best training in IT skills ever bother to go down to the factory floor and SEE the REAL workflow before they implement a system?
You got management trying to make decisions on how to improve a workprocess they don't understand, you got IT trying to implement something that has no basis in reality and employees forced to choose between actually getting the work done and following procedure.
It doesn't suprise me at all that this article doesn't mention the workforce. Management article talking about proper management but ignoring the people who got to do the actuall work, yeah, never seen that before.
Get your hands dirty before you even bother trying to think of implementing IT, FIND out what is REALLY needed. IT can do wonderfull things to be sure, but it needs to fit with what is really going on in your company, not what some manager thinks should be going on.
Make sure your management decisions can be executed, first observe what REALLY goes on, plan your changes, then TRY THEM YOURSELVE, with FULL pressure. If you can't do it, your employees can't do it and what counts isbeing able to do it on the busiest day of the year.
The most perfect example, testing an application with just 3 records in the database for performance. My job was to convert the old data, if I pushed more then ten records in, performance crumbled. Took me MONTHS to confince them that the problem was in the application, not my conversion (for every insert MILLIONS of reads were being done thanks to the most idiotic database design in history (no keys), compounded by some really really bad code). But they TESTED IT and it worked fine. Yah, 3 records and those not even fully fleshed out.
I could rant on for hours about bone-headed mistakes of all kinds, but basically FORCE management to get a clue and the only way to do that is BACK TO THE WORKFLOOR!
99% of IT projects that end up unused or not meeting requirements can simply be explained because they were designed without knowing what the real situation is.
I think you and the parent are talking about different things. eBooks SHOULD be digital books, text documents. You are talking about AUDIO books, books being read by someone. Note how he talks about low-light, while you talk about driving.
Granted, the original article gets pretty confused about it as well.
It is in the summary, we need to look at the issue with NO AGENDA.
Be honest, how many of us does that rule out?
If have undergo military training in the past, and looking back, I know that through carefull management of my emotions I was being trained to be a killer. I really didn't notice it at the time, but training like that is designed to make you feel part of a group and you want to protect and fight for that team and kill those who are not in the same colors.
So I KNOW you can be manipulated.
Are claims that violent games decensitize you to violence then really that odd?
I noticed something, the same people who scream that goverments are training killers are the same who say that violent games have no influence on people. The two don't add up.
Any normal person can be influenced by media. A simple experiment, play the theme from love story and the theme from jaws over the same scene, wanna bet you look at each clip with a different heart rate?
But it doesn't really matter if the influence is there or not, first we got to accept that scaremongering politicans and selfish players are NEITHER suited to give an unbiased opinion on this subject. What next, we ask smokers about the danger of smoking or the tobacco industry? No, we ask doctors who are supposed to start each study with an open mind.
It is sad to see so clearly that this hasn't happened when it comes to games BUT this by no means proof that games are harmless. We really need independent study in this area AND then IF games are shown to have an influence, ask ourselves wether the influence is worth basic freedoms. For instance, we know drinking is bad for you, but we still allow it.
I heard about people who don't RTFA and there are even some who don't RTFS but you have created a new low, not RYOFC Read Your Own Fucking Comment.
Make it illegal to harass, discriminate, terminate, or disqualify for hire someone due to what comes up in Google searches if the things found are NOT illegal or in violation to workplace rules.
Exactly what kind of protection does this give me? You allow the workplace to set the rules by which they can harass me, discriminate against me, terminate me or disqualify me.
So all that is needed is for them to add some overly broad clause to their workplace rules and they can do what they want?
Now you know why lawyers earn such big bucks, because writing laws is HARD. I have no doubt you meant alright but the way you wrote that first sentence basically gives people even less protection then they have now. You gave companies to do anything they want to people as long as they take the time to put it in their rule book.
I think the intresting bit is at the end of the story, 50 police officers were to be hired, but budget reasons (cuts?) led to a delay of a full month before they could start training. Meanwhile a program to get cops on the beat and civilians to do the paper work was also delayed, again seemingly because of budget reasons.
Note that it is purely MY speculation that the budget reasons were cuts, but it is hard to imagine how for instance an increase in budget would cause a delay.
There is actually a rather neat trick that you can pull with this. I announce a new plan to hire 50 cops. Nice headline, people feel good about it. Delays are caused and the program is scaled back. Sometime later I announce that 40 cops have been hired. Nice headline, people feel good about it, 90 new cops on the beat... AHA! You spotted it eh?
If I am really good I also silenty get rid of 60 cops and score another headline NOT with the firing but with the budget savings I have been managing. Ain't I good, can you guess how the next election will go?
The problem is simple, you need to follow the news in depth and keep on a story and anything that might relate to it. For instance the increased budget for the DHS from which this camera system is payed, where does that money come from? Could it even be that the reason the budget office did not have the money for civilian office workers and the new cops was because the money went to the DHS instead?
But people hate in depth reporting, note how many people here scream bloody murder when a new development in SCO is reported or shout DUPE when an article is really an update. For many people news is what is happening now, but for a crafty politician that leads to an easy way to pull the wool over everyone's eye.
Define tangible. Take the recent case of that women who pretended to be a boy to a young a girl who ended up commiting suicide. Is that tangible harm?
It was discussed end people really didn't come to any single conclusion, so was the woman safe because of free speech yes or no? Either way, you are going to have to deal a lot of shit. Yes, then you obviously can say anything even if it causes death, no and you put an end to anyone ever pretending to be someone they are not.
I think you should see the constitution as the bible, a intresting write up, some bits are worth keeping in mind, but ultimately it was written by people who lived in a different age who even back then hardly were part of the 'real' world. it is a nice idea to come up with simple rules, but that stuff really belongs on Oprah, real life is to simple to capture in a simple set of rules other then perhaps "don't panic".
Talk tough behind a computer screen but when it comes to the real world/.ers are weenies.
Normal people and this includes the homeless and drug dealers don't want a hassle.
The simple fact is that it is terribly easy to setup a neighbourhood watch and get rid of trouble, it just moves to the next area were people don't want a hassle and are unwilling to keep their area safe.
Where ever someone is creating trouble there is someone else who isn't doing anything about it.
Ask yourselve what you would do, as a drugs dealer you rely on you being to dangerous to confront and to much hassle to call the police to go undisturbed, this robot breaks the rules. It doesn't have to be afraid and so it puts the dilemma in the drug dealers shoes, create a scene he wants even less then a normal citizen or just move on.
I think it is an intresting idea, but most of slashdot will probably freak because of the camera and big brother idea's. It ain't a solution and sooner or later it will lead to trouble, but it is an intresting idea nonetheless. Would a CTV setup in a local area that can be seen by anyone in that area be an acceptable way to get a neighbourhood watch going? Or is you neighbour watching what you are doing the same as the state?
You should have put the sign on the voting booth. Would solve all your troubles. Offcourse it is the end of democracy, but hey, that is a small price to pay right.
Oh, and the fact that you put the sign in the wrong place, doesn't that mean it applies to you?
Oh wait, no MS has several, off the top of my head, the OS, directX, media player. Office offcourse as well, but that is a seperate product. Does IE still come with one? Silverlight?
In fact most windows software comes with a EULA all written differently.
So you claim that people have no problem understanding all these different EULA's but would be confused by the far simpler opensources licences of which only about a dozen are in actuall use?
Bad troll, no cookie for you! This is 2008, we expect more nowadays. Go on, mention soundcard drivers, why don't you.
A ban on porn? So no webbrowser, no image viewer, no movie player, no music player, no phone. Because the internet is made for porn, 99% of images is of the jpg sisters, movies were invented to view naked people getting it on, it is bit rare but some people like a sexy voice tell them a tale, and offcourse there are the common sex chat boxes and the like.
How many of you used an old fashioned calculater in school to write 80085 on its screen? Exactly what is he proposing to ban here? Erotic games? Well that is a small market, so small that one of the first Nintendo DS games (fully official) had you tickling a girl. A NINTENDO GAME!
It makes sense in a Walmart kind of way, if you got a big store you might not want to have an adult section for fear of scaring people off. It makes sense, so how many supermarkets are there that don't stock playboy?
A few weeks ago we had the story that ISP's should get into the content business again from Sun's McNeal. Portals. Do you know why they failed? Because ISP's too were deadly afraid to be linked to porn and so banned it from their portals. But the internet IS porn and so people quickly had to learn to do without their ISP's portals, found the real web and never looked back.
I wonder, are the movies on iTunes censored? Will those who hope iTunes will take over content delivery one day find that tons of movies with content that doesn't meet Steve Jobs approval will no longer be available?
Offcourse when it comes to Apple most slashdotters have blinders on, but still, how is this different from an ISP who puts a filter on its network to shield its customers from unwanted content wether they want to be "protected" or not?
I am sure some rabid apple fan will explain it all away if I am not modded down for questioning the mighty Jobs but still, I can do with a laugh.
Luckily google is here! Gee, what a choice and fully open platform vs a closed one. That is going to be a though one. Android to the rescue, it may be less secure, it may soon be targetted by tons of malicious software and my spreadsheet will talk dirty to me, but I take that any day over the small minded closed and controlled enviroment of Apples offering.
Offcourse as I said in the opening, the iPhone will still be filled to the rim with smut, because it is impossible not to. But remember, when Larry Flint was under attack everyone who valued free speech came to his defence because if you value free speech you will defend smut. Now is the time to check where you really stand, if you think it is okay for Apple to have such thight control over what goes on to hardware it no longer owns, then you think it is okay for ISP's to filter you, for MS to decide what software you can install, for game developers to decide what you can and cannot mod.
Are you really prepared for a future where some coorperate overlord tells you what you can do on your own hardware?
So please tell me, where is x-box core going to store it? Oh and the Wii is the console that is selling like hotcakes, it already got problems storing enough games from its back catalog. It don't even have enough storage to store a DVD, not even enough to store a decent rip of a DVD.
Instant delivery? I want your con because there is no way in hell even my pretty decent cable can deliver 40-50 gb in the time it takes to watch it. In fact I am willing to bet you that I can pop down to the local rental shop and get back before I can download a rip. If I am very lucky with bittorrent it still takes about 10 minutes to download a CD sized rip, the rental shop is a 3-4 minutes walk.
Tech indeed moves fast, that is the problem, when all this internet content started we were happy with video the size of a postage stamp and blocks all over the place. Now we want video in HD. everytime speed or size increases so do the demands on the system.
Look at youtube, VHS quality, would you watch a movie on it on your HD set?
It matters, because it relates to why you might be unable to find any people for it. It might be a really obscure one that requires deep knowledge. Any programmer worth his salt should be able to switch between PHP/ASP/Perl/Ruby and the likes with relative ease. Did you look for a programmer worth his salt or did you search for someone with 10 years experience with Vista? The more obscure and closed the platform, the less likely you are to find someone with specific knowledge and them more you will just have to hire someone who can train himself on the job.
The easiest way to determining if your platform has support is to look through personal ads, is nobody else hiring people with those skills, then you got to wonder why. Browse for tutorials, see the forums for that platform for activity.
The way to avoid this in the future is to remain low-tech. Don't tie yourself to deeply into solutions crafted onto solutions. For instance use PHP, not bloody frameworks build on that. If you then use a software suit, build on a framework, build on a language, build on a platform, well you are going to have problems finding someone with those exact skills.
Oh and replace PHP with whatever language you prefer.
I see this all the time, some company buys a solution, does some half assed training, do half of the updates that are available and then a couple of years later when the site is hopelessly out of date wonders why they can't find anyone who responds for their personal ads.
If there was a human on mars right now the rovers would have had their solar collectors wiped clean and that broken wheel either repaired or removed.
What people obsessed with robotics forget is how limited a robot is compared to a human. Robots are fine when everything runs as expected, but when things fail, humans can adapt.
We are getting to obsessed with safety, I wonder were the real men are, the men who stormed normandy in a hail of machine gun fire, who build wooden rafts and colonized the world.
There are people who got what it takes, the same people that pushed the limits in other areas can do this. We as a society just need to give them the space to do it and stop forcing our own fears onto them. If there is someone willing to go and he/she isn't obviously unfit, then let them. I don't got what it takes, it isn't the no return part, it is the closed space I am sorry to say.
The mission doesn't have to be a pure suicide run after all, sending enough supplies for one man to live years on mars is only a matter of cost. Just send a long string of simple supply runs so that enough will land close by and in tact to survive.
It is a better deal then we many a person has faced in the past.
It just ain't the way we do things in a civilized country. Three strikes and your out that way? My god man I couldhave you on the chair in an hour. Just observe you in traffic I am sure you commit more then three violations on a single trip, it is almost impossible not too.
The legal system ain't perfect, a sure sign of it is that there are so many different systems.
The difference between for instance the dutch system and the US is that the dutch system doesn't have consecutive sentences. For instance in a rather horrid case a man abducted and raped a young girl then ran her over with his van and left her to die. Sadly under the dutch system he ONLY has to serve ONE sentence, the highest one. In the US he would have to serve sentences for each part of the crime.
Both systems have their reasons, the US one obviously to make sure really nasty criminals get what they deserve, the dutch to prevent people whose crime just happens to have a long list of offences don't serve a dis propotionate amount of time. Say that both countries give the same jail sentence. Rape gets you 3 years. Now say that stealing gets you one, resisting arrest gets you one, dealing in stolen goods gets you one, not carrying ID gets you another. In the US a person who steals a pair of pants, sells them, hits a police officer when arrested and doesn't have his ID on him would serve 4 years, while a rapist only serves 3.
Offcourse the dutch system has the earlier mentioned real case where a person who kills someone over a drug deal gets the same sentence as a child rapist.
To be fair, the dutch system has REAL life sentences, you don't get out until you die or are pardoned by the crown (these sentences are rare) and we also got something that got Amnesty Internation knickers in a twist. TBS. It is given to the criminally insane and means you serve your sentence and then have to under go treatment until cured, a sentence without limit. In the US this would be very much against the law, you have to be given finite sentences, this is part of the UN human rights it is one if the reasons hollandis on the list of human rights abusers.
Neither system is however perfect, you partially claim that a person should serve a sentence for each crime he commited not the package as a whole. By your logic if I expose myself to someone in their own home I should get a lesser sentence then if I did it on the street and I would fry if I did it on public tv. Does this take into account that a person being flashed in their own home would be far more frightened then someone seeing my willy on TV?
The US three strikes and your are out system sees pot smokers serve life while child rapists are out in a couple of years. Yes it was introduced for a good reason, to stop career criminals who just kept re-offending. In the netherlands revolving door criminals are a big problem, young people who know and accept that they will get tiny sentences and just keep offending again and again because the individual sentences are too light.
Oh and by your logic, if I steal the live savings of two people I would walk, but if I steal a penny from a hundred I would fry?
Simply put, his crime ain't all that serious, so what if a lot of people lost some money, the overall impact of his crime isn't that serious. Courts wisely regonize that part of the decision on how to punish someone is how much impact it has on society. It is for this reason that you had that story how geman prosecutors would no longer spend time on amateur copyright infringement because its impact on society was not worth it.
You do realize that your suggestion would make the RIAA very happy, all they need to claim is that you made available to the entire world and you would get the chair.
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Lets hope this really happens, let hope that ISP's in Japan really are this stupid and the Japanese citizens do the only thing that is logical. Cancel their service since it is no longer of any use to them so that ISP after ISP goes tits up.
At least in holland a lot of ISP's are happy to advertise with 'download music fast' without having any music service whatsoever. Copyright infringement is one major reason to get one of the more expensive subscriptions, if everyone just went with the cheapest most minimal subscription, you know the one that is plenty for email, the web, gaming etc etc, then ISP's will really feel it in their revenue.
On the longer term, lets hope the japanese ISP's learn very quickly that they opened the flood gates. If they can monitor this, expect everyone to come out. Just block winny? Don't count on it, every P2P program will be on it, and why just P2P, why not home run MMORPG servers, why not material that the goverment doesn't want you to host. Why not check every email for illegal material? Congrats, the ISP's in japan just become the enforcer for everyone with a gripe about the internet. There is reason the old telecoms never ever wished to do that with telephone services and they claim they have to keep a line open unless they get an outside complaint even if it is bloody obvious a phone line is only used for criminal activity. You do NOT want to become the police of your customers.
Lets hope that this turns sour for the Japanese ISP's very quickly, because if this doesn't go totally wrong for the ISP's in question, we will get it elsewhere.
even the article itself admits it, this is the only plant in the world, except for the one in russia. Ah modern reporting, gotta love it.
So it is NOT the only one in the world even the article writers know this and yet that is the headline.
I would not be suprised to have lots of poster point out countless other facilities that can produce similar stuff after all or that some facilities could if they wanted too with little adjustment.
Scaremongering, the author is doing it right.
Until you actually read the article and see that your cheap foreign labour is in Japan? Japan hasn't been cheap in decades.
Oh and where are those Intel chips actually produced?
Read up on Henry Ford and exactly why he allowed his factory workers special loans to buy the cars they produced. If a rabid capatalist understood, why don't you?
So each holiday season we will have people tying their cowboyneals to a tree in the forsest thinking the critter can take care of itself.
It is already bad enough the slashdot staff does this before every outing, do you really want our forests overrun by feral CowboyNeals?
Now, cloning Natalie Portman, and some way to easily heat up grits, THAT is tech talk!
First off, there is no such thing as an iPod, what you got is everything from the iPod shuffle to the latest iPod touch and what a LOT of people forget is that it is the lower end models that sell best.
This makes the iPods of which Apple sells most very simple single purpose devices. Play music.
Now ask yourselve just how many people actually use iTunes to BUY music and not justas a way to put music they already have on it on to the iPod as nothing more then a extremely bloated uploader.
By definition almost the iPhone is NOT just a phone. If you JUST wanted a phone, you can get far cheaper devices.
The idea is that mobile phones will become the PC's of the future, well ask yourselve this. If this is true, which one is the IBM PC and which one the Apple?
Cast aside the hatred of MS for a moment and remember WHY it was WinTel didn't just win the race but left overbody else standing. No, the reason isn't that Bill Gates produced a superior product, the reason was that he simply didn't do everything he could to ruin his own project. MS didn't win because they made the right decisions, they won because everyone else made far worse decisions. Atari, IBM and yes Apple, they ALL screwed up.
Now look at the iPhone again, for that matter, look at Apple itself, has it really learned from past mistakes? Remember, there was a time when APPLE led the field, but lost it. Is the iPhone not about to make the same mistakes as before, too much control when all people want is to use the device as they want?
Didn't we just have a story about Atari in which multiple posters pointed out how Atari never had proper documentation on how to develop for its systems so people just went to the IBM instead and went to work with the PC? Hell, that I can use PC as a synonym for an x86 bases cpu running MS software says it all really.
Apple may have sold a lot of devices, but they also sold a lot of Apples in the beginning, and then the PC happened and expanded the market to extents few could have imagined.
The iPod is a simple music player that for an awfull lot of people works PURELY as an MP3 player. Is the iPhone a simple mobile phone with a few added apps OR is it an attempt at the fabled mobile computing we heard so much about?
I personally haven't bought a single phone in recent years that did NOT allow me to install any java app that I wanted on it. (Europe is different regarding telcom control then the US), why should I NOT allow my carrier to decide what I run on my mobile computing phone, but give Apple total control?
In my eyes Android will have to launch on a sexy phone to get the same headlines, but if it truly introdudes an open PC like platform on which I can run what I want, how I want, then it is the clear winner for every user who runs non-apple or non-ms software on their computer.
It all depends on wether people buy their phones as single use gadgets or buy into the mobile computing hype.
Nobody EATS IT! The whole things has become a matter of pride, they japanese can't shift the meat without subsidies. It just ain't popular. Now beef. Good beef? That will cost you a fortune.
The reason whale meat was on the diet (when it hasn't been for ages in the rest of the world) was because post-WW2 japan had a food shortage and whale meat was easily available. For all kinds of reasons Japan just ain't a beef country. But that doesn't mean the meat was popular. Before commercial whaling was banned the consumption was already plumetting.
Japanese politics are EXTREMELY controlled by special intrest groups. Far more so then even the US. Would New York keep valuable land for growing grain just a few miles outside the city center? Hell no. Drive out of tokyo were land-prices are insane and you will land right smack in the rice paddies, rice that is so expensive to grow in Japan it makes no economical sense.
The entire whaling debate is just a product of old elite japanese wanting to say NO to the world. No normal japanese person wants to eat it. It is like those people who claim they hunt seals for historic reasons while wearing synthetic clothing and dining on pizza.
Doctors for instance have them. Think next time will you?
There have been plenty of investigations where a simple video feed of the cockpit would have made it a lot easier to determine what is going on.
The instrument readings only tell you WHAT the input was, NOT what the pilot was doing. Rememeber, there was something WRONG. What is the instruments were showing the pilot was pushing forward on the stick, but the video shows he was pulling back? Clear sign were the problem was, but your blackbox would never show it.
Voice is often hard to understand especially if the pilot for whatever reason doesn't have his headset on.
Video would really help, but might be too big to record. But investigators would LOVE to be able to SEE what is going on in the cockpit. If the video is hi-res enough it might even confirm that what the blackbox is recording and what the instruments are SAYING is actually the same.
And yes, it makes a difference, these ads are HORRIBEL and anyone with a brain will know that they are ALL scams, how come there are only attractive women near you?
But the naming of your home town makes it seems more legit. It is afterall how confidence tricksters work, by finding stuff out that you somehow let them know but using it in the right way to make you believe they really know you.
Me bitter? Nah. I still think they got one don't I? Marks me as a romantic fool that.
When it comes to IT their are THREE parties involved. Those who build it (IT), those who govern it (Management) and those who use it (Employees).
These three groups often have no idea what the other is actually doing.
Have you ever seen one of those programs where the boss of a big company is put to work on the factory floor? They used to be pretty common, was there ever a SINGLE boss, who wasn't shown to be totally clueless about how the actual work was being done?
You think IT is any better? How many people with the best training in IT skills ever bother to go down to the factory floor and SEE the REAL workflow before they implement a system?
You got management trying to make decisions on how to improve a workprocess they don't understand, you got IT trying to implement something that has no basis in reality and employees forced to choose between actually getting the work done and following procedure.
It doesn't suprise me at all that this article doesn't mention the workforce. Management article talking about proper management but ignoring the people who got to do the actuall work, yeah, never seen that before.
Get your hands dirty before you even bother trying to think of implementing IT, FIND out what is REALLY needed. IT can do wonderfull things to be sure, but it needs to fit with what is really going on in your company, not what some manager thinks should be going on.
Make sure your management decisions can be executed, first observe what REALLY goes on, plan your changes, then TRY THEM YOURSELVE, with FULL pressure. If you can't do it, your employees can't do it and what counts isbeing able to do it on the busiest day of the year.
The most perfect example, testing an application with just 3 records in the database for performance. My job was to convert the old data, if I pushed more then ten records in, performance crumbled. Took me MONTHS to confince them that the problem was in the application, not my conversion (for every insert MILLIONS of reads were being done thanks to the most idiotic database design in history (no keys), compounded by some really really bad code). But they TESTED IT and it worked fine. Yah, 3 records and those not even fully fleshed out.
I could rant on for hours about bone-headed mistakes of all kinds, but basically FORCE management to get a clue and the only way to do that is BACK TO THE WORKFLOOR!
99% of IT projects that end up unused or not meeting requirements can simply be explained because they were designed without knowing what the real situation is.
I think you and the parent are talking about different things. eBooks SHOULD be digital books, text documents. You are talking about AUDIO books, books being read by someone. Note how he talks about low-light, while you talk about driving.
Granted, the original article gets pretty confused about it as well.
You allow early retirement, don't replace those who leave and don't expand as the city the police works in expands. Simple stuff.
It is in the summary, we need to look at the issue with NO AGENDA.
Be honest, how many of us does that rule out?
If have undergo military training in the past, and looking back, I know that through carefull management of my emotions I was being trained to be a killer. I really didn't notice it at the time, but training like that is designed to make you feel part of a group and you want to protect and fight for that team and kill those who are not in the same colors.
So I KNOW you can be manipulated.
Are claims that violent games decensitize you to violence then really that odd?
I noticed something, the same people who scream that goverments are training killers are the same who say that violent games have no influence on people. The two don't add up.
Any normal person can be influenced by media. A simple experiment, play the theme from love story and the theme from jaws over the same scene, wanna bet you look at each clip with a different heart rate?
But it doesn't really matter if the influence is there or not, first we got to accept that scaremongering politicans and selfish players are NEITHER suited to give an unbiased opinion on this subject. What next, we ask smokers about the danger of smoking or the tobacco industry? No, we ask doctors who are supposed to start each study with an open mind.
It is sad to see so clearly that this hasn't happened when it comes to games BUT this by no means proof that games are harmless. We really need independent study in this area AND then IF games are shown to have an influence, ask ourselves wether the influence is worth basic freedoms. For instance, we know drinking is bad for you, but we still allow it.
I heard about people who don't RTFA and there are even some who don't RTFS but you have created a new low, not RYOFC Read Your Own Fucking Comment.
Make it illegal to harass, discriminate, terminate, or disqualify for hire someone due to what comes up in Google searches if the things found are NOT illegal or in violation to workplace rules .
Exactly what kind of protection does this give me? You allow the workplace to set the rules by which they can harass me, discriminate against me, terminate me or disqualify me.
So all that is needed is for them to add some overly broad clause to their workplace rules and they can do what they want?
Now you know why lawyers earn such big bucks, because writing laws is HARD. I have no doubt you meant alright but the way you wrote that first sentence basically gives people even less protection then they have now. You gave companies to do anything they want to people as long as they take the time to put it in their rule book.
I think the intresting bit is at the end of the story, 50 police officers were to be hired, but budget reasons (cuts?) led to a delay of a full month before they could start training. Meanwhile a program to get cops on the beat and civilians to do the paper work was also delayed, again seemingly because of budget reasons.
Note that it is purely MY speculation that the budget reasons were cuts, but it is hard to imagine how for instance an increase in budget would cause a delay.
There is actually a rather neat trick that you can pull with this. I announce a new plan to hire 50 cops. Nice headline, people feel good about it. Delays are caused and the program is scaled back. Sometime later I announce that 40 cops have been hired. Nice headline, people feel good about it, 90 new cops on the beat... AHA! You spotted it eh?
If I am really good I also silenty get rid of 60 cops and score another headline NOT with the firing but with the budget savings I have been managing. Ain't I good, can you guess how the next election will go?
The problem is simple, you need to follow the news in depth and keep on a story and anything that might relate to it. For instance the increased budget for the DHS from which this camera system is payed, where does that money come from? Could it even be that the reason the budget office did not have the money for civilian office workers and the new cops was because the money went to the DHS instead?
But people hate in depth reporting, note how many people here scream bloody murder when a new development in SCO is reported or shout DUPE when an article is really an update. For many people news is what is happening now, but for a crafty politician that leads to an easy way to pull the wool over everyone's eye.
Define tangible. Take the recent case of that women who pretended to be a boy to a young a girl who ended up commiting suicide. Is that tangible harm?
It was discussed end people really didn't come to any single conclusion, so was the woman safe because of free speech yes or no? Either way, you are going to have to deal a lot of shit. Yes, then you obviously can say anything even if it causes death, no and you put an end to anyone ever pretending to be someone they are not.
I think you should see the constitution as the bible, a intresting write up, some bits are worth keeping in mind, but ultimately it was written by people who lived in a different age who even back then hardly were part of the 'real' world. it is a nice idea to come up with simple rules, but that stuff really belongs on Oprah, real life is to simple to capture in a simple set of rules other then perhaps "don't panic".
Talk tough behind a computer screen but when it comes to the real world /.ers are weenies.
Normal people and this includes the homeless and drug dealers don't want a hassle.
The simple fact is that it is terribly easy to setup a neighbourhood watch and get rid of trouble, it just moves to the next area were people don't want a hassle and are unwilling to keep their area safe.
Where ever someone is creating trouble there is someone else who isn't doing anything about it.
Ask yourselve what you would do, as a drugs dealer you rely on you being to dangerous to confront and to much hassle to call the police to go undisturbed, this robot breaks the rules. It doesn't have to be afraid and so it puts the dilemma in the drug dealers shoes, create a scene he wants even less then a normal citizen or just move on.
I think it is an intresting idea, but most of slashdot will probably freak because of the camera and big brother idea's. It ain't a solution and sooner or later it will lead to trouble, but it is an intresting idea nonetheless. Would a CTV setup in a local area that can be seen by anyone in that area be an acceptable way to get a neighbourhood watch going? Or is you neighbour watching what you are doing the same as the state?
You should have put the sign on the voting booth. Would solve all your troubles. Offcourse it is the end of democracy, but hey, that is a small price to pay right.
Oh, and the fact that you put the sign in the wrong place, doesn't that mean it applies to you?
Oh wait, no MS has several, off the top of my head, the OS, directX, media player. Office offcourse as well, but that is a seperate product. Does IE still come with one? Silverlight?
In fact most windows software comes with a EULA all written differently.
So you claim that people have no problem understanding all these different EULA's but would be confused by the far simpler opensources licences of which only about a dozen are in actuall use?
Bad troll, no cookie for you! This is 2008, we expect more nowadays. Go on, mention soundcard drivers, why don't you.
A ban on porn? So no webbrowser, no image viewer, no movie player, no music player, no phone. Because the internet is made for porn, 99% of images is of the jpg sisters, movies were invented to view naked people getting it on, it is bit rare but some people like a sexy voice tell them a tale, and offcourse there are the common sex chat boxes and the like.
How many of you used an old fashioned calculater in school to write 80085 on its screen? Exactly what is he proposing to ban here? Erotic games? Well that is a small market, so small that one of the first Nintendo DS games (fully official) had you tickling a girl. A NINTENDO GAME!
It makes sense in a Walmart kind of way, if you got a big store you might not want to have an adult section for fear of scaring people off. It makes sense, so how many supermarkets are there that don't stock playboy?
A few weeks ago we had the story that ISP's should get into the content business again from Sun's McNeal. Portals. Do you know why they failed? Because ISP's too were deadly afraid to be linked to porn and so banned it from their portals. But the internet IS porn and so people quickly had to learn to do without their ISP's portals, found the real web and never looked back.
I wonder, are the movies on iTunes censored? Will those who hope iTunes will take over content delivery one day find that tons of movies with content that doesn't meet Steve Jobs approval will no longer be available?
Offcourse when it comes to Apple most slashdotters have blinders on, but still, how is this different from an ISP who puts a filter on its network to shield its customers from unwanted content wether they want to be "protected" or not?
I am sure some rabid apple fan will explain it all away if I am not modded down for questioning the mighty Jobs but still, I can do with a laugh.
Luckily google is here! Gee, what a choice and fully open platform vs a closed one. That is going to be a though one. Android to the rescue, it may be less secure, it may soon be targetted by tons of malicious software and my spreadsheet will talk dirty to me, but I take that any day over the small minded closed and controlled enviroment of Apples offering.
Offcourse as I said in the opening, the iPhone will still be filled to the rim with smut, because it is impossible not to. But remember, when Larry Flint was under attack everyone who valued free speech came to his defence because if you value free speech you will defend smut. Now is the time to check where you really stand, if you think it is okay for Apple to have such thight control over what goes on to hardware it no longer owns, then you think it is okay for ISP's to filter you, for MS to decide what software you can install, for game developers to decide what you can and cannot mod.
Are you really prepared for a future where some coorperate overlord tells you what you can do on your own hardware?
Instant delivery? I want your con because there is no way in hell even my pretty decent cable can deliver 40-50 gb in the time it takes to watch it. In fact I am willing to bet you that I can pop down to the local rental shop and get back before I can download a rip. If I am very lucky with bittorrent it still takes about 10 minutes to download a CD sized rip, the rental shop is a 3-4 minutes walk.
Tech indeed moves fast, that is the problem, when all this internet content started we were happy with video the size of a postage stamp and blocks all over the place. Now we want video in HD. everytime speed or size increases so do the demands on the system.
Look at youtube, VHS quality, would you watch a movie on it on your HD set?
It matters, because it relates to why you might be unable to find any people for it. It might be a really obscure one that requires deep knowledge. Any programmer worth his salt should be able to switch between PHP/ASP/Perl/Ruby and the likes with relative ease. Did you look for a programmer worth his salt or did you search for someone with 10 years experience with Vista? The more obscure and closed the platform, the less likely you are to find someone with specific knowledge and them more you will just have to hire someone who can train himself on the job.
The easiest way to determining if your platform has support is to look through personal ads, is nobody else hiring people with those skills, then you got to wonder why. Browse for tutorials, see the forums for that platform for activity.
The way to avoid this in the future is to remain low-tech. Don't tie yourself to deeply into solutions crafted onto solutions. For instance use PHP, not bloody frameworks build on that. If you then use a software suit, build on a framework, build on a language, build on a platform, well you are going to have problems finding someone with those exact skills.
Oh and replace PHP with whatever language you prefer.
I see this all the time, some company buys a solution, does some half assed training, do half of the updates that are available and then a couple of years later when the site is hopelessly out of date wonders why they can't find anyone who responds for their personal ads.
If there was a human on mars right now the rovers would have had their solar collectors wiped clean and that broken wheel either repaired or removed.
What people obsessed with robotics forget is how limited a robot is compared to a human. Robots are fine when everything runs as expected, but when things fail, humans can adapt.
We are getting to obsessed with safety, I wonder were the real men are, the men who stormed normandy in a hail of machine gun fire, who build wooden rafts and colonized the world.
There are people who got what it takes, the same people that pushed the limits in other areas can do this. We as a society just need to give them the space to do it and stop forcing our own fears onto them. If there is someone willing to go and he/she isn't obviously unfit, then let them. I don't got what it takes, it isn't the no return part, it is the closed space I am sorry to say.
The mission doesn't have to be a pure suicide run after all, sending enough supplies for one man to live years on mars is only a matter of cost. Just send a long string of simple supply runs so that enough will land close by and in tact to survive.
It is a better deal then we many a person has faced in the past.
It just ain't the way we do things in a civilized country. Three strikes and your out that way? My god man I couldhave you on the chair in an hour. Just observe you in traffic I am sure you commit more then three violations on a single trip, it is almost impossible not too.
The legal system ain't perfect, a sure sign of it is that there are so many different systems.
The difference between for instance the dutch system and the US is that the dutch system doesn't have consecutive sentences. For instance in a rather horrid case a man abducted and raped a young girl then ran her over with his van and left her to die. Sadly under the dutch system he ONLY has to serve ONE sentence, the highest one. In the US he would have to serve sentences for each part of the crime.
Both systems have their reasons, the US one obviously to make sure really nasty criminals get what they deserve, the dutch to prevent people whose crime just happens to have a long list of offences don't serve a dis propotionate amount of time. Say that both countries give the same jail sentence. Rape gets you 3 years. Now say that stealing gets you one, resisting arrest gets you one, dealing in stolen goods gets you one, not carrying ID gets you another. In the US a person who steals a pair of pants, sells them, hits a police officer when arrested and doesn't have his ID on him would serve 4 years, while a rapist only serves 3.
Offcourse the dutch system has the earlier mentioned real case where a person who kills someone over a drug deal gets the same sentence as a child rapist.
To be fair, the dutch system has REAL life sentences, you don't get out until you die or are pardoned by the crown (these sentences are rare) and we also got something that got Amnesty Internation knickers in a twist. TBS. It is given to the criminally insane and means you serve your sentence and then have to under go treatment until cured, a sentence without limit. In the US this would be very much against the law, you have to be given finite sentences, this is part of the UN human rights it is one if the reasons hollandis on the list of human rights abusers.
Neither system is however perfect, you partially claim that a person should serve a sentence for each crime he commited not the package as a whole. By your logic if I expose myself to someone in their own home I should get a lesser sentence then if I did it on the street and I would fry if I did it on public tv. Does this take into account that a person being flashed in their own home would be far more frightened then someone seeing my willy on TV?
The US three strikes and your are out system sees pot smokers serve life while child rapists are out in a couple of years. Yes it was introduced for a good reason, to stop career criminals who just kept re-offending. In the netherlands revolving door criminals are a big problem, young people who know and accept that they will get tiny sentences and just keep offending again and again because the individual sentences are too light.
Oh and by your logic, if I steal the live savings of two people I would walk, but if I steal a penny from a hundred I would fry?
Simply put, his crime ain't all that serious, so what if a lot of people lost some money, the overall impact of his crime isn't that serious. Courts wisely regonize that part of the decision on how to punish someone is how much impact it has on society. It is for this reason that you had that story how geman prosecutors would no longer spend time on amateur copyright infringement because its impact on society was not worth it.
You do realize that your suggestion would make the RIAA very happy, all they need to claim is that you made available to the entire world and you would get the chair.