The airline industry is the most unsafe industry that is supposedly heavily regulated. Let me make clear what I mean by this. You always have daredevil industries like riggers who think working at 100 meters in the sky with no safety line is just the way you do things. But the airline industry is supposed to be different since a daredevil pilot/airline is not just risking his own life but hundreds of passengers.
And yet the industry has endless problems with aircraft being build against known safety procedure. You would think that by now aircraft building would be known.
Take a simple thing like pressure and doors. If you got a pressurized cannister and you want to make sure a door doesn't come off, then you put it so that it opens to the inside, so the inside pressure keept the door in place. Boeing thought they knew better, and lots of people died. Was this fixed? No.
Aircraft got large fuel chambers which by nature are often empty. This causes fuel vapor to build up and that can go boom. Not a good in thing when you got the fuel in the wings and under the passengers. Easy fix? Pump in some gas that displaces the oxygen. Not even all that expensive and done for the longest time on military aircraft. Hundreds died and will continue to die because the airline industry refuses to introduce a simple proven safety measure.
How about inside the aircraft, would you allow gallons of highly explosive liqued in any form of transport? No? Then how about duty-free alcohol? Allowing carrying on cargo is already risky enough but in a fire, this stuff is lethal.
Or how about the seats? Why not a simple three point harnass? And why no protection for the most essential parts of your body in a crash, your legs. Lots of people survive crashes and then die because their legs are broken and they cannot move. Or how about just making the seats a little bit more attached to the floor so they don't break loose so easily?
None of this would cost much, but the penny pinching industry just goes "oh well, accidents are an act of god, noting we can do about it".
Like installing run off areas that stop the aircraft if it doesn't stop on the runway. The costs for this are truly pitifull, you are talking about a gravel zone. On the costs of running an airport this is insignificant and has already proven succesfull. But even filling in a canyon at the end of the runway is to "costly". Regardless of lost lives.
If there is one industry that requires grey bureaucrats taking absolutly no chances whatsoever then it is this one, because to Branson, you life has no value.
Sure, just as food tasters are a good way to detect things wrong with the food. Sucks to be the taster though.
"Is he still moving?"
"No."
"Mmmm, I guess this week old fish salad is bad then. Send in the next taster for the running cheese!"
"Don't you mean runny cheese".
"No."
The testing was done by airforces, you know the ones with ejection seats and two engines per passenger? And they considered it unsafe. I take their word for it. If Finland grounds its fighter defence, then I don't go up. I do not know better.
What thought process does it take to follow a sat nav when it instructs you to go off road down a rocky path?
Answer: a.
To clarify for the the people that follow satnav blindly: As in "a thought process".
Don't ask what kind of IQ it takes to do something stupid when the answer is "an IQ". You would be amazed how many times people just don't think. Like stepping into an elevator when the doors open and there is no elevator. It happens. How? Because people often just don't think. At least not "hmmm that is odd, elevator is all dark and empty and no floor and no ceiling in sight and the walls have runners on them and I can see the lift cables".
We all do it, but deny it so we can laugh at people who go "Hmmm, satnav tells me to drive on this cliff edge, oh well, should be alright, just hope I am not hit by any of the mountain goats that keep falling off".
I know that as a UK resident you might believe you are part of the US but you are not... yet.
Anyway, there is a reason US citizens consume more then anyone else on this planet. It is a culture defined by entitlement. I can have the largest car, so I must have it and then I must use it.
I can have an airco, therefor everything must be airco'ed and it must run all the time.
An American really can't even deal with the notion that there might be something wrong with this attitude. Watch Mythbusters and their constant search for fuel efficiency in a 3 ton pickup with 1 person in it and no cargo. How about driving a smaller car? Oh, they do entire segments on how they get smashed between two trucks driving at top speed. No test of course if the results would be any different with a SUV (Answer: no, SUV's only share the fuel efficiency with tanks, not safety).
And the solution is terribly simple, pay more for your elec so that more power facilities can be built. But that is not an option either because all the profits go to shareholder, not into investments for the future.
It is an amusing system, you got Americans claiming they are the most advanced country, when large parts of the country regularly brown-out. California has had it for years, and no riots yet. When your electricity network is as reliable as one in Africa, maybe it is time to take a long hard look at the way you are running thing.
Don't worry, some American with mod points will remove this post to avoid to many Americans having to be upset by the truth.
Ubuntu has chosen for a fixed release, it is a tactic, one of many to deal with the reality of running a Linux distro.
Others do a rolling release, this means they can release a new version of any package when it is ready but means you are near constantly updating and if you don't, you risk missing out on a change that turns out to be essential (going form 6-8 might miss an essential config from 7).
Ubuntu however now faces a near impossible choice of which version to go for. If they wait other packages will have new versions and their release will become older and older.
And lets face it, this method works for MS. If MS had done what you suggested, Vista would not have been released until all drivers for it had been fixed.
If you don't want to risk Ubuntu, use something like arch linux instead. Or gentoo:p
The test group should not have been playing on the internet, they should have been vegitating in front of reality-tv. Those brain training games are not about stimulating an active mind but a stagnant one. It is for people who do nothing else that requires any thinking at all. Like slashdot editors...
It is the same as taking the stairs, that is not going to make an olympic gymnast any fitter, but for a cubible dweller, it can make a difference when it is the only excersise in the day.
Almost any gamer will not need these games, they are already playing. Brain games are for people who don't do anything else with their brain.
Tomorrow: Nintendogs not good for people with a real dog.
There was a slashdot ad a while back for Chrome on the Mac, that I only saw on my Mac. That makes sense... except that I have Chrome installed and Opera is just my preffered browser because it is the best (Tabbed browsing baked in, mouse gestures that are integrated and keeping all tabs open between reboots, always without fail (take that firefox)).
But I also installed privoxy the moment I got one of those "you have won" banners that have gotten even more annoying since the last time I browsed without an adblocker.
It is far easier for me to block all ads with a single install, then to unblock an ad.
Same as it is MUCH easier for me to listen to my own MP3's then listen to the radio and its constant ad blocks and self-promotion. What is that about anyway? Listen to US, person who is already listening to us. Overselling much?
And it is also easier for me to simply download a tv-show rather then deal with the constant ad blocks and ever more annoying ads displayed over the actual program itself.
Advertisers have never learned restraint. If it was up to them a tv program would basically just be an ad interrupted by ads overlayed with ads. And you would pay for each ad.
The shock of going from an adblocked PC to a regular one after a year is huge. It is just getting worse and worse.
So, I block everything. End of story. Let the fools pay for the hosting, I am no fool.
And if that means some mega sites die. Well that is progress for you. Maybe the net just can't be run on ads going out of control. Maybe site masters need to organize and agree a standard for ads. Google only for instance. The only ads I don't block because I can't be arsed since they never annoyed me.
Oh and PRIVOXY, blocks EVERYTHING. That is PRIV[CARRIER LOST]
About software... about free software, of course free software, when you buy, of course, software, for instance the Microsoft pack (this is not free software): Word, Excel, Powerpoint, there are of course firewalls, I just said that, there is security software. But on free software there are also firewalls, which by the way, of course. For instance, we in the ministry, we have a piece of free software, called Open Office and there is indeed security software that prevents the Ministry of Culture to have access, obviously, and the free software editors release firewalls, and even release free [gratis] firewalls. So that argument has no grounds. That is what I wanted to say.
What a lousy translation. You make him sound like a complete ninny and tosser. Surely that can't be right. The french people couldn't have elected somebody so clearly incompetent?
The PSP was infamous for having bad pixel problems. More so then any other device including the cheaper DS. So naturally Sony dug in and claimed that bad pixels were normal and it wouldn't repair or replace.
Dutch consumer watchdog program Kassa took up the story and voila, Holland become the only country were Sony replaced the PSP with ANY dead pixel or subpixel.
It is amazing how much consumer rights are being eroded by big companies who hope that the enough consumers just won't push the issue far enough for them to be forced to regonize the law.
OF course Sony has NO such problem prosecuting the consumer if they happen to violate the law (copyright infringement).
It seems that to big companies the law is a buffet. You take what you need and ignore the rest. And we are letting them get away with it.
And no, it ain't just Sony fanboys either. Apple lovers and MS apologists are just as bad.
When I was a child our house was heated by oil, a tank car came by every now and then and fueled up a tank in the back.
That no longer happened. The guy who drove the tanker, has lost THAT job.
Coal was used earlier, and a lot of people made their money mining the coal in Holland and shipping it to homeowners. The mines have closed. The miners are gone.
In Amsterdam and many an old city you can still see evidence of horse stables in the center of the city. Evidence that once horses were the only method to power transport and the industry that made it happen.
Gas lighters once went around, turning on each street light individually, a job typically given as a charitable cause for people who could not earn their money in another way.
Countless jobs are gone as companies claimed that putting them in other countries was best for society, for the world, for the future.
And now, it is the time of the artist to loose their job, to see their means of earning a living turned upside down.
Does that matter? Is it worth halting progress to keep some people earning money the same way they are used to?
We could have stopped the car from ever going faster and thereby saved the horse industry. But at what cost to our society?
But art is different. Why? Great art has been created LONG before copyright was added (the current copyright is a recent invention and was fought tooth and nail by the record industry) and that art will remain.
Will people stop performing Opera because the composer is no longer being paid... oh wait, the composer died centuries ago.
Then perhaps people will stop making new art... except unpaid art is produced all the time. Go to flickr.com for just a tiny sample. Nobody there expects to be paid, yet they are producing art.
Yes, some artists will perhaps die of starvation. Just as lost of coal miners lost their job and countless stable boys before them.
THOUGH LUCK. The MPAA/RIAA/Brein/Bumastemra all love to claim that our society will collapse when no more "play for cash only" bands will exist. No more spice-girls, no more backstreet boys. The end of civilization as we know it. I could just cry.
But does it matter? I am not going to argue that pirates buy more CD's because I am trying to make a far bigger point. If indeed the end of copyright means NO more music is produced. Will that matter? Or is it just another development of our society? Imagine a world without movies. Ain't that hard, movie tech is not all that old. One thing often miss about Star Trek is that it is a fictional world without money (ToS and TNG at least) but ALSO without art. Think about it, there are no paid for artists and content in the series itself. We watch on TV a TV-less world. They make their own content, for their own consumption and art is "merely" something that each does for the fun of it, not for profit.
The RIAA and the likes hate such a future. They want us to believe that the artist who works for profit, a Michael Jackson or Madonna IS the ONLY part of our modern civilization that is worth anything. Everything else is secondary to them. The Spice girls are the 20th century, and everything else just plays second role to it. If content is not paid for, it does not exist, it is not worth it and if it is content it must be paid for.
This goes to such extremes that copyright mafia's collect royalties for music for that isn't even subject to royalties. If I produce a piece of music and put it in the public domain and it is played on the radio (in Holland at least) then Bumastemra collects a fee for it. A fee I, the person who created the music can't collect, nor can anyone. They have a legal right to collect money for something they don't own and which they never have to pay out to anyone. It would be like giving Shell the right to collect a fee from anyone on the road, no matter if they drive a car or not.
And the Internet, personal liberties, common sense, artisic license, law, they all got to bend or be broken s
They like men with babies because it means they don't have to do it anymore. Apparently child-birth is a bit inconvenient or something. I don't know. Women eh, always bitching about trivial things.
But I think the solution is simple. Give every drug addict who uses meth a t-shirt where he can write what he wants, taser or a bullet through the neck.
Tasers ain't supposed to be nice, they are supposed to give the police an other option then to shoot bullets.
And no, I don't think the police needs to be gentle and nice with a meth addict. Can't handle a the taser, don't do the drugs.
And no, I don't shout to people to get of my lawn. I bury them in it.
It is amazing really. You got somalians fleeing their country because they want to escape the lawnessless, then they complain in Holland when the police dares to show up unannounced for an arrest forcing them to jump of buildings... Times like that it remains very hard to remain openminded. Really, if you want me to care about people being tasered to quickly, don't bring out the example of meth addicts. I am likely not to give a damn.
You don't see nature organisation using lizards for their motto do you? You use Panda's and cuddly baby seals. Not snakes and cockroaches.
We learned more about ancient Egypt from their twitter then from all the official records designed to be survive the ages. Sure sure, very interesting to read the "unbiased" record of a pharaoh in his own tomb, but it is from the "trash" notes that were recovered that we learned about how the country itself worked. Including such little details as that the pyramids were not made by slaves.
The official records of the US will be Fox news. Better pray that future researchers have access to some other source, or they will come back in time and nukes us all, causality be damned.
Turbine wants to get cash from its customers. And its primary customers ARE the players.
You are not a google customer just because you use their search or gmail. The advertisers are their customers. YOU are their product. They don't sell search, they sell eyeballs.
Facebook is the same. The people who use facebook are not the people with accounts but the advertisers who try to reach them. Facebook gets its money from advertisers.
And don't like it?
Then don't use it.
It ain't all that hard. If I don't want slashdot to post my comments for everyone to read, then I shouldn't post here. But I am not making Slashdot money. They make money because I and others read this site, post on this site, make it have millions of eyeballs and then the Slashdot editors sell these eyeballs to advertisers. Like MS who advertise their products to me, when I loathe them with everything I got. That tells you everything you need to know about targetted advertising. Why not advertise McD on a PETA site.
Orga seems to want free services for free. Go outside, see the sun? That is free. You pay for everything else.
It would be a very intresting move
on
Is OS/2 Coming Back?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Since MS has won the desktop OS battle, IBM has been behaving as a small company, but they are not. Sure the company that IS big IT must have more aspirations then just being a service provider?
And of course they are a lot more, but once they were the face of IT to ordinary people. You bought an IBM or at least an IBM compatible.
And now?
So if this story has some truth in it, it could mark an attempt by IBM to get back out there and fight in a crowded market place and not just charge 1000 dollars per hour for its personnel.
Doubt this is the case but I have always had the thought that if anyone can break the current stalemates it is IBM. It could force both hardware and software makers to worry about competition again.
Not that I think it is likely, IBM does quite well as it is. But it would be more intresting if it is true.
You payed 200, for 5 months. At 15 per month P2P, it would have cost you 150 for TWO subscriptions. Since the game is old, you could pick it up for a tenner or less.
So, F2P, is more expensive.
Geez, who would have figured. Nickles and Dimes. They add up.
Remember in Hollywood a movie that earns millions in ticket sales, nonetheless fails to make a profit when the author has to be payed.
In Hollywood a shared movie does damages to the tune of roughly the world economy * infinity.
And in Hollywood a 500gb HD costs the price of a 2tb drive to anyone else.
This ain't even the typical scam of naming the recommended retail price as a the value of a gift, since Seagate doesn't even recommend this price itself.
Ah, hollywood and scamming. Remember, if you buy a movie, you are supporting these guys. Safe the free world, be a pirate!
Apple charges a premium because it can. It is not like they are the only supplier in town. It is trivial to buy another brands laptop. If there are 3 brands of cola in the supermarket and one ask $1.000.000 dollars, then it still ain't overpriced, because the other cans can be bought just as easily.
Something can only be considered overprice if there is no easy alternative.
And Mac's tend to be a decent price when they launch when their hardware tends to push the edge. It is when they are 1-2 year old that Apple really starts cleaning up when they have the same hardware with the same prices but component prices have dropped.
This is vengeance AND making sure Abobe AND MS can't pull any of the same shit ever again. Abobe was very slow with Flash for Apple (and linux and bsd etc) and MS pulled development for IE and Office several times.
And that is highly risky. Apple never again wants to have to depend on a third party vendor who can decide how its products are perceived.
Suck it up Adobe, this is payment for your slowass releases for other platforms then MS. Should have done better, now people hate your guts. Well those who don't have Bill Gates dick in their mouth.
It is simple. Flash crap is everywhere wether you want it or not. But it is trivial to get a non-iPhone phone.
So I am with Apple 100% on this. Flash has to die and die horribly.
They really got themselves to blame. Apple is just paying them back for the years Adobe did not support Flash on Apple OS/Hardware.
If Apple can kill Flash, it killed a dependency on a 3rd party provided who determines what you can and cannot do.
Quick test: If I launch a 128 bit CPU that is completely different from x86 or ARM, then will Adobe support it? No of course not. But Apple might want to do something like that one day, and it then doesn't want to have to beg Adobe to please release flash for their new product.
Apple already has enough problems with MS products not running on its OS, it doesn't want an endless number of 3rd party providers that can screw a product launch.
Doubt it? What killed Vista? Lack of 3rd party support with drivers. Why does MS still have to support 32 and 16 bit? 3rd party software vendors.
Right now, Apple can do whatever it wants with its platforms and screw any slow ass 3rd party provider.
And of course, they don't have to worry about the endless security holes in Flash or its piss poor coding standards that can bring a desktop PC to its knees, let alone a mobile phone.
Slashdot Mirror
The airline industry is the most unsafe industry that is supposedly heavily regulated. Let me make clear what I mean by this. You always have daredevil industries like riggers who think working at 100 meters in the sky with no safety line is just the way you do things. But the airline industry is supposed to be different since a daredevil pilot/airline is not just risking his own life but hundreds of passengers.
And yet the industry has endless problems with aircraft being build against known safety procedure. You would think that by now aircraft building would be known.
Take a simple thing like pressure and doors. If you got a pressurized cannister and you want to make sure a door doesn't come off, then you put it so that it opens to the inside, so the inside pressure keept the door in place. Boeing thought they knew better, and lots of people died. Was this fixed? No.
Aircraft got large fuel chambers which by nature are often empty. This causes fuel vapor to build up and that can go boom. Not a good in thing when you got the fuel in the wings and under the passengers. Easy fix? Pump in some gas that displaces the oxygen. Not even all that expensive and done for the longest time on military aircraft. Hundreds died and will continue to die because the airline industry refuses to introduce a simple proven safety measure.
How about inside the aircraft, would you allow gallons of highly explosive liqued in any form of transport? No? Then how about duty-free alcohol? Allowing carrying on cargo is already risky enough but in a fire, this stuff is lethal.
Or how about the seats? Why not a simple three point harnass? And why no protection for the most essential parts of your body in a crash, your legs. Lots of people survive crashes and then die because their legs are broken and they cannot move. Or how about just making the seats a little bit more attached to the floor so they don't break loose so easily?
None of this would cost much, but the penny pinching industry just goes "oh well, accidents are an act of god, noting we can do about it".
Like installing run off areas that stop the aircraft if it doesn't stop on the runway. The costs for this are truly pitifull, you are talking about a gravel zone. On the costs of running an airport this is insignificant and has already proven succesfull. But even filling in a canyon at the end of the runway is to "costly". Regardless of lost lives.
If there is one industry that requires grey bureaucrats taking absolutly no chances whatsoever then it is this one, because to Branson, you life has no value.
Sure, just as food tasters are a good way to detect things wrong with the food. Sucks to be the taster though.
"Is he still moving?"
"No."
"Mmmm, I guess this week old fish salad is bad then. Send in the next taster for the running cheese!"
"Don't you mean runny cheese".
"No."
The testing was done by airforces, you know the ones with ejection seats and two engines per passenger? And they considered it unsafe. I take their word for it. If Finland grounds its fighter defence, then I don't go up. I do not know better.
What thought process does it take to follow a sat nav when it instructs you to go off road down a rocky path?
Answer: a.
To clarify for the the people that follow satnav blindly: As in "a thought process".
Don't ask what kind of IQ it takes to do something stupid when the answer is "an IQ". You would be amazed how many times people just don't think. Like stepping into an elevator when the doors open and there is no elevator. It happens. How? Because people often just don't think. At least not "hmmm that is odd, elevator is all dark and empty and no floor and no ceiling in sight and the walls have runners on them and I can see the lift cables".
We all do it, but deny it so we can laugh at people who go "Hmmm, satnav tells me to drive on this cliff edge, oh well, should be alright, just hope I am not hit by any of the mountain goats that keep falling off".
What I wonder is how long Facebook thinks they'll get away with this until everyone is fed up and leaves?
Easy, when will you get fed up and leave? Apparently not yet.
Don't ask how long the public is going to put up with something, if you are putting up with it.
Or to paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for me, but I said nothing for I was to busy consuming.
Then they might come for some other people after that but I was long gone by then.
God paraphrasing in a different tense is difficult.
I know that as a UK resident you might believe you are part of the US but you are not... yet.
Anyway, there is a reason US citizens consume more then anyone else on this planet. It is a culture defined by entitlement. I can have the largest car, so I must have it and then I must use it.
I can have an airco, therefor everything must be airco'ed and it must run all the time.
An American really can't even deal with the notion that there might be something wrong with this attitude. Watch Mythbusters and their constant search for fuel efficiency in a 3 ton pickup with 1 person in it and no cargo. How about driving a smaller car? Oh, they do entire segments on how they get smashed between two trucks driving at top speed. No test of course if the results would be any different with a SUV (Answer: no, SUV's only share the fuel efficiency with tanks, not safety).
And the solution is terribly simple, pay more for your elec so that more power facilities can be built. But that is not an option either because all the profits go to shareholder, not into investments for the future.
It is an amusing system, you got Americans claiming they are the most advanced country, when large parts of the country regularly brown-out. California has had it for years, and no riots yet. When your electricity network is as reliable as one in Africa, maybe it is time to take a long hard look at the way you are running thing.
Don't worry, some American with mod points will remove this post to avoid to many Americans having to be upset by the truth.
Trust me, I am dutch.
Otherwise you are right.
Ubuntu has chosen for a fixed release, it is a tactic, one of many to deal with the reality of running a Linux distro.
Others do a rolling release, this means they can release a new version of any package when it is ready but means you are near constantly updating and if you don't, you risk missing out on a change that turns out to be essential (going form 6-8 might miss an essential config from 7).
Ubuntu however now faces a near impossible choice of which version to go for. If they wait other packages will have new versions and their release will become older and older.
And lets face it, this method works for MS. If MS had done what you suggested, Vista would not have been released until all drivers for it had been fixed.
If you don't want to risk Ubuntu, use something like arch linux instead. Or gentoo :p
The test group should not have been playing on the internet, they should have been vegitating in front of reality-tv. Those brain training games are not about stimulating an active mind but a stagnant one. It is for people who do nothing else that requires any thinking at all. Like slashdot editors...
It is the same as taking the stairs, that is not going to make an olympic gymnast any fitter, but for a cubible dweller, it can make a difference when it is the only excersise in the day.
Almost any gamer will not need these games, they are already playing. Brain games are for people who don't do anything else with their brain.
Tomorrow: Nintendogs not good for people with a real dog.
There was a slashdot ad a while back for Chrome on the Mac, that I only saw on my Mac. That makes sense... except that I have Chrome installed and Opera is just my preffered browser because it is the best (Tabbed browsing baked in, mouse gestures that are integrated and keeping all tabs open between reboots, always without fail (take that firefox)).
But I also installed privoxy the moment I got one of those "you have won" banners that have gotten even more annoying since the last time I browsed without an adblocker.
It is far easier for me to block all ads with a single install, then to unblock an ad.
Same as it is MUCH easier for me to listen to my own MP3's then listen to the radio and its constant ad blocks and self-promotion. What is that about anyway? Listen to US, person who is already listening to us. Overselling much?
And it is also easier for me to simply download a tv-show rather then deal with the constant ad blocks and ever more annoying ads displayed over the actual program itself.
Advertisers have never learned restraint. If it was up to them a tv program would basically just be an ad interrupted by ads overlayed with ads. And you would pay for each ad.
The shock of going from an adblocked PC to a regular one after a year is huge. It is just getting worse and worse.
So, I block everything. End of story. Let the fools pay for the hosting, I am no fool.
And if that means some mega sites die. Well that is progress for you. Maybe the net just can't be run on ads going out of control. Maybe site masters need to organize and agree a standard for ads. Google only for instance. The only ads I don't block because I can't be arsed since they never annoyed me.
Oh and PRIVOXY, blocks EVERYTHING. That is PRIV[CARRIER LOST]
It claims EULA's are legally binding contracts. They are not. End of story. A EULA isn't worth the paper it ain't written on.
What a lousy translation. You make him sound like a complete ninny and tosser. Surely that can't be right. The french people couldn't have elected somebody so clearly incompetent?
He pulled the strings and the /. nutters danced as he wished. The article is one giant flame bait and troll and most posts so far fall for it 100%.
Remember, journalism (well, what passes for it nowadays) is about eyeballs. And he collects a lot of them.
The PSP was infamous for having bad pixel problems. More so then any other device including the cheaper DS. So naturally Sony dug in and claimed that bad pixels were normal and it wouldn't repair or replace.
Dutch consumer watchdog program Kassa took up the story and voila, Holland become the only country were Sony replaced the PSP with ANY dead pixel or subpixel.
It is amazing how much consumer rights are being eroded by big companies who hope that the enough consumers just won't push the issue far enough for them to be forced to regonize the law.
OF course Sony has NO such problem prosecuting the consumer if they happen to violate the law (copyright infringement).
It seems that to big companies the law is a buffet. You take what you need and ignore the rest. And we are letting them get away with it.
And no, it ain't just Sony fanboys either. Apple lovers and MS apologists are just as bad.
We the consumer need to grow some balls.
When I was a child our house was heated by oil, a tank car came by every now and then and fueled up a tank in the back.
That no longer happened. The guy who drove the tanker, has lost THAT job.
Coal was used earlier, and a lot of people made their money mining the coal in Holland and shipping it to homeowners. The mines have closed. The miners are gone.
In Amsterdam and many an old city you can still see evidence of horse stables in the center of the city. Evidence that once horses were the only method to power transport and the industry that made it happen.
Gas lighters once went around, turning on each street light individually, a job typically given as a charitable cause for people who could not earn their money in another way.
Countless jobs are gone as companies claimed that putting them in other countries was best for society, for the world, for the future.
And now, it is the time of the artist to loose their job, to see their means of earning a living turned upside down.
Does that matter? Is it worth halting progress to keep some people earning money the same way they are used to?
We could have stopped the car from ever going faster and thereby saved the horse industry. But at what cost to our society?
But art is different. Why? Great art has been created LONG before copyright was added (the current copyright is a recent invention and was fought tooth and nail by the record industry) and that art will remain.
Will people stop performing Opera because the composer is no longer being paid... oh wait, the composer died centuries ago.
Then perhaps people will stop making new art... except unpaid art is produced all the time. Go to flickr.com for just a tiny sample. Nobody there expects to be paid, yet they are producing art.
Yes, some artists will perhaps die of starvation. Just as lost of coal miners lost their job and countless stable boys before them.
THOUGH LUCK. The MPAA/RIAA/Brein/Bumastemra all love to claim that our society will collapse when no more "play for cash only" bands will exist. No more spice-girls, no more backstreet boys. The end of civilization as we know it. I could just cry.
But does it matter? I am not going to argue that pirates buy more CD's because I am trying to make a far bigger point. If indeed the end of copyright means NO more music is produced. Will that matter? Or is it just another development of our society? Imagine a world without movies. Ain't that hard, movie tech is not all that old. One thing often miss about Star Trek is that it is a fictional world without money (ToS and TNG at least) but ALSO without art. Think about it, there are no paid for artists and content in the series itself. We watch on TV a TV-less world. They make their own content, for their own consumption and art is "merely" something that each does for the fun of it, not for profit.
The RIAA and the likes hate such a future. They want us to believe that the artist who works for profit, a Michael Jackson or Madonna IS the ONLY part of our modern civilization that is worth anything. Everything else is secondary to them. The Spice girls are the 20th century, and everything else just plays second role to it. If content is not paid for, it does not exist, it is not worth it and if it is content it must be paid for.
This goes to such extremes that copyright mafia's collect royalties for music for that isn't even subject to royalties. If I produce a piece of music and put it in the public domain and it is played on the radio (in Holland at least) then Bumastemra collects a fee for it. A fee I, the person who created the music can't collect, nor can anyone. They have a legal right to collect money for something they don't own and which they never have to pay out to anyone. It would be like giving Shell the right to collect a fee from anyone on the road, no matter if they drive a car or not.
And the Internet, personal liberties, common sense, artisic license, law, they all got to bend or be broken s
They like men with babies because it means they don't have to do it anymore. Apparently child-birth is a bit inconvenient or something. I don't know. Women eh, always bitching about trivial things.
But I think the solution is simple. Give every drug addict who uses meth a t-shirt where he can write what he wants, taser or a bullet through the neck.
Tasers ain't supposed to be nice, they are supposed to give the police an other option then to shoot bullets.
And no, I don't think the police needs to be gentle and nice with a meth addict. Can't handle a the taser, don't do the drugs.
And no, I don't shout to people to get of my lawn. I bury them in it.
It is amazing really. You got somalians fleeing their country because they want to escape the lawnessless, then they complain in Holland when the police dares to show up unannounced for an arrest forcing them to jump of buildings... Times like that it remains very hard to remain openminded. Really, if you want me to care about people being tasered to quickly, don't bring out the example of meth addicts. I am likely not to give a damn.
You don't see nature organisation using lizards for their motto do you? You use Panda's and cuddly baby seals. Not snakes and cockroaches.
We learned more about ancient Egypt from their twitter then from all the official records designed to be survive the ages. Sure sure, very interesting to read the "unbiased" record of a pharaoh in his own tomb, but it is from the "trash" notes that were recovered that we learned about how the country itself worked. Including such little details as that the pyramids were not made by slaves.
The official records of the US will be Fox news. Better pray that future researchers have access to some other source, or they will come back in time and nukes us all, causality be damned.
Turbine wants to get cash from its customers. And its primary customers ARE the players.
You are not a google customer just because you use their search or gmail. The advertisers are their customers. YOU are their product. They don't sell search, they sell eyeballs.
Facebook is the same. The people who use facebook are not the people with accounts but the advertisers who try to reach them. Facebook gets its money from advertisers.
And don't like it?
Then don't use it.
It ain't all that hard. If I don't want slashdot to post my comments for everyone to read, then I shouldn't post here. But I am not making Slashdot money. They make money because I and others read this site, post on this site, make it have millions of eyeballs and then the Slashdot editors sell these eyeballs to advertisers. Like MS who advertise their products to me, when I loathe them with everything I got. That tells you everything you need to know about targetted advertising. Why not advertise McD on a PETA site.
Orga seems to want free services for free. Go outside, see the sun? That is free. You pay for everything else.
Since MS has won the desktop OS battle, IBM has been behaving as a small company, but they are not. Sure the company that IS big IT must have more aspirations then just being a service provider?
And of course they are a lot more, but once they were the face of IT to ordinary people. You bought an IBM or at least an IBM compatible.
And now?
So if this story has some truth in it, it could mark an attempt by IBM to get back out there and fight in a crowded market place and not just charge 1000 dollars per hour for its personnel.
Doubt this is the case but I have always had the thought that if anyone can break the current stalemates it is IBM. It could force both hardware and software makers to worry about competition again.
Not that I think it is likely, IBM does quite well as it is. But it would be more intresting if it is true.
You payed 200, for 5 months. At 15 per month P2P, it would have cost you 150 for TWO subscriptions. Since the game is old, you could pick it up for a tenner or less.
So, F2P, is more expensive.
Geez, who would have figured. Nickles and Dimes. They add up.
Parachute? Kite? Weather Balloon? Lightning? Auroa... auraoa... pretty lights in the sky?
Remember in Hollywood a movie that earns millions in ticket sales, nonetheless fails to make a profit when the author has to be payed.
In Hollywood a shared movie does damages to the tune of roughly the world economy * infinity.
And in Hollywood a 500gb HD costs the price of a 2tb drive to anyone else.
This ain't even the typical scam of naming the recommended retail price as a the value of a gift, since Seagate doesn't even recommend this price itself.
Ah, hollywood and scamming. Remember, if you buy a movie, you are supporting these guys. Safe the free world, be a pirate!
And no.
Apple charges a premium because it can. It is not like they are the only supplier in town. It is trivial to buy another brands laptop. If there are 3 brands of cola in the supermarket and one ask $1.000.000 dollars, then it still ain't overpriced, because the other cans can be bought just as easily.
Something can only be considered overprice if there is no easy alternative.
And Mac's tend to be a decent price when they launch when their hardware tends to push the edge. It is when they are 1-2 year old that Apple really starts cleaning up when they have the same hardware with the same prices but component prices have dropped.
But hey, if you want a cheaper deal, go shop.
This is vengeance AND making sure Abobe AND MS can't pull any of the same shit ever again. Abobe was very slow with Flash for Apple (and linux and bsd etc) and MS pulled development for IE and Office several times.
And that is highly risky. Apple never again wants to have to depend on a third party vendor who can decide how its products are perceived.
Suck it up Adobe, this is payment for your slowass releases for other platforms then MS. Should have done better, now people hate your guts. Well those who don't have Bill Gates dick in their mouth.
It is simple. Flash crap is everywhere wether you want it or not. But it is trivial to get a non-iPhone phone.
So I am with Apple 100% on this. Flash has to die and die horribly.
They really got themselves to blame. Apple is just paying them back for the years Adobe did not support Flash on Apple OS/Hardware.
If Apple can kill Flash, it killed a dependency on a 3rd party provided who determines what you can and cannot do.
Quick test: If I launch a 128 bit CPU that is completely different from x86 or ARM, then will Adobe support it? No of course not. But Apple might want to do something like that one day, and it then doesn't want to have to beg Adobe to please release flash for their new product.
Apple already has enough problems with MS products not running on its OS, it doesn't want an endless number of 3rd party providers that can screw a product launch.
Doubt it? What killed Vista? Lack of 3rd party support with drivers. Why does MS still have to support 32 and 16 bit? 3rd party software vendors.
Right now, Apple can do whatever it wants with its platforms and screw any slow ass 3rd party provider.
And of course, they don't have to worry about the endless security holes in Flash or its piss poor coding standards that can bring a desktop PC to its knees, let alone a mobile phone.
Flash die!