An interesting outcome of this line of thinking is that at some point all human needs could be met by robot production: but all the production will go to the roboticists and businessmen who rolled them out, and not to anybody else.
I agree. I think they're different in fairly noticeable ways. RT has some failings more like low-quality US/UK news sources: report a lot of bullshit innuendo, or based on poor sources, like the Daily Mail or Fox News do. AJ is a bit different, more of a quality news outlet that suddenly goes conspicuously silent on certain issues. To me, that's a kind of bias that's easier to deal with.
I don't think techies object to using technology for socialization. That's something techies themselves have been doing for decades! Even years ago before so many "normal" people were on the internet, social technologies like IRC, Usenet, and mailing lists were extremely popular.
If you were likewise confused by this blurb about clicking on friends' names in the browser, what WebRTC actually is at a technological level, at least, is basically a collection of real-time P2P streaming-media stuff that is currently usually implemented via browser plugins or 3rd-party software. W3C is trying to standardize and expose it via more normal javascript APIs.
The basic functionality will include things like: users opening video or audio streams with each other (which includes NAT-punching, negotiating codecs, etc.) to support Skype-style video chat in the browser; streaming logic to deal with sending/buffering/etc. for P2P streams; support for data connections directly between users, to allow browser-based multiplayer gaming to bypass a central server; and some kind of management of local multimedia resources that I don't fully understand.
I agree getting media from different sources is good, but I think grouping Russia Today and Al-Jazeera together isn't entirely fair to the latter. Russia Today is imo not the most reliable news source. I haven't done a systematic study or anything, but I've noticed a lot of stuff that is not that well sourced, over-extrapolated, etc. Al-Jazeera is in a different category: they generally are quite good. Some bias here and there, sure, but not at all sloppy. And their biggest bias is on a very narrow and easy to correct for subject: anything to do with Qatar or direct Qatari interests is treated differently. But fortunately I don't go to them primarily for news on Qatar.:) On other subjects, even the Middle East (outside Qatar), they are not even that biased, certainly nowhere near as much as what their strangely negative reputation in the U.S. would lead you to believe. I wonder to what extent they get a bad rap just because it's got an Arabic name, so sounds to many Americans like it'd be heavily biased in directions they don't like.
It's still true in many government jobs. I know some people doing government IT work, and they get paid a lot less than they could make in the private sector. They do it for a mixture of the benefits, and because they're big-data advocates who have sort of an ideological commitment to getting more government data online, so enjoy their jobs. Professors at state universities also have lower average pay than at private universities.
Once you've willingly handed over your papers to a third party, though, it's now up to that third party, not you, what to do with them. If Facebook wants to blab to the FBI without a warrant, they're the property owners. They have 4th-amendment rights in searches of their servers, but you don't, because you don't own the servers.
Media distribution is a bit different from search engines, because it requires licensing deals for the content to distribute, which are often exclusive. It'd be one thing if Netflix and Company B both distributed all the major films, and you got to choose which platform you preferred based on criteria such as privacy, quality of the software, price, customer service, etc. But in practice the media business is all based around exclusive licensing deals, so for any given movie, you will be able to get it from Netflix, or from Company B, but will not have a choice of both. And what's likely is over the medium term one of those two will come out on top, as they collect all the good deals and drive the other one out of business.
There are possible ways to deal with it, mostly by laws against exclusivity deals or "tying", but in a market that allows tying you end up with those kinds of lack of perfect competition.
In this case, the "however" is functioning to distinguish the positive assessment of the book from the negative assessment of the blurb about it. Another way of phrasing the same thing would be to say "on the other hand", but that's slightly more wordy.
Consumer Reports did a test in the mid-2000s and found about 5000 hours per bulb on average. How long that is depends on how many hours a day you keep the TV on...
One of the key advantages of something like Kickstarter is that so many of the "sales" are up front: you don't have to worry about the game being a total flop and selling nothing, because you've already "sold" $2m+ worth of the game before starting! I would've expected major studios to try to get in on some of that pre-order action by mobilizing fan enthusiasm: stuff like, if we get X preorders by $date, we'll make a sequel to $game. Or is it that actual preorders of un-made games have more legal trouble than Kickstarter's sort of weird not-really-a-preorder-but-sorta-is variety?
Well, it's a bit absurd for them to hope to take advantage of an existing platform while not respecting its appeal. The "Humble Bundle" brand traded on three things: 1) supporting indie game developers; 2) being DRM-free; and 3) being cross-platform Win/Mac/Linux. Afaict, this THQ bundle goes 0/3.
Where have I missed all the pirates clamoring for major publishers to find a prominent "indie" brand name to masquerade as, and attempt to sell their DRM wares via that channel?
The factor you're looking for is "capitalism". Ever since CmtrTaco retired, Slashdot decisions aren't made based on human intelligence, but on maximizing pageviews.
Strangely, despite typically being advanced by the U.S. right (since it gives credit to Reagan's defense policies), it's not a position you'd think free-market advocates would actually take, because it implies that the USSR's economy would've worked fine, if only we hadn't forced it into collapse by making them overspend on defense. Do the people making that argument really believe that's the case? They don't think the USSR's economy was riddled with insurmountable problems even absent the defense spending?
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting outcome of this line of thinking is that at some point all human needs could be met by robot production: but all the production will go to the roboticists and businessmen who rolled them out, and not to anybody else.
Were you searching for "stoning porn uncovered leg" on YouTube or something?
I agree. I think they're different in fairly noticeable ways. RT has some failings more like low-quality US/UK news sources: report a lot of bullshit innuendo, or based on poor sources, like the Daily Mail or Fox News do. AJ is a bit different, more of a quality news outlet that suddenly goes conspicuously silent on certain issues. To me, that's a kind of bias that's easier to deal with.
I don't think techies object to using technology for socialization. That's something techies themselves have been doing for decades! Even years ago before so many "normal" people were on the internet, social technologies like IRC, Usenet, and mailing lists were extremely popular.
If you were likewise confused by this blurb about clicking on friends' names in the browser, what WebRTC actually is at a technological level, at least, is basically a collection of real-time P2P streaming-media stuff that is currently usually implemented via browser plugins or 3rd-party software. W3C is trying to standardize and expose it via more normal javascript APIs.
The basic functionality will include things like: users opening video or audio streams with each other (which includes NAT-punching, negotiating codecs, etc.) to support Skype-style video chat in the browser; streaming logic to deal with sending/buffering/etc. for P2P streams; support for data connections directly between users, to allow browser-based multiplayer gaming to bypass a central server; and some kind of management of local multimedia resources that I don't fully understand.
The draft standard is here.
I agree getting media from different sources is good, but I think grouping Russia Today and Al-Jazeera together isn't entirely fair to the latter. Russia Today is imo not the most reliable news source. I haven't done a systematic study or anything, but I've noticed a lot of stuff that is not that well sourced, over-extrapolated, etc. Al-Jazeera is in a different category: they generally are quite good. Some bias here and there, sure, but not at all sloppy. And their biggest bias is on a very narrow and easy to correct for subject: anything to do with Qatar or direct Qatari interests is treated differently. But fortunately I don't go to them primarily for news on Qatar. :) On other subjects, even the Middle East (outside Qatar), they are not even that biased, certainly nowhere near as much as what their strangely negative reputation in the U.S. would lead you to believe. I wonder to what extent they get a bad rap just because it's got an Arabic name, so sounds to many Americans like it'd be heavily biased in directions they don't like.
It's still true in many government jobs. I know some people doing government IT work, and they get paid a lot less than they could make in the private sector. They do it for a mixture of the benefits, and because they're big-data advocates who have sort of an ideological commitment to getting more government data online, so enjoy their jobs. Professors at state universities also have lower average pay than at private universities.
Yeah, that I agree with. But those are statutory protections passed by a legislature; the 4th amendment doesn't compel HIPAA.
Every time the word "Genode" appears in their documentation, misread it as "Genocide".
Once you've willingly handed over your papers to a third party, though, it's now up to that third party, not you, what to do with them. If Facebook wants to blab to the FBI without a warrant, they're the property owners. They have 4th-amendment rights in searches of their servers, but you don't, because you don't own the servers.
Media distribution is a bit different from search engines, because it requires licensing deals for the content to distribute, which are often exclusive. It'd be one thing if Netflix and Company B both distributed all the major films, and you got to choose which platform you preferred based on criteria such as privacy, quality of the software, price, customer service, etc. But in practice the media business is all based around exclusive licensing deals, so for any given movie, you will be able to get it from Netflix, or from Company B, but will not have a choice of both. And what's likely is over the medium term one of those two will come out on top, as they collect all the good deals and drive the other one out of business.
There are possible ways to deal with it, mostly by laws against exclusivity deals or "tying", but in a market that allows tying you end up with those kinds of lack of perfect competition.
In this case, the "however" is functioning to distinguish the positive assessment of the book from the negative assessment of the blurb about it. Another way of phrasing the same thing would be to say "on the other hand", but that's slightly more wordy.
Consumer Reports did a test in the mid-2000s and found about 5000 hours per bulb on average. How long that is depends on how many hours a day you keep the TV on...
I think it means "consumer electronics", but I agree it's an odd place for an acronym.
I've been looking for a more sophisticated follow-up to SimTower for a while now. I'd buy Otis Elevator Tycoon.
Also, it can't string together a single grammatically correct sentence. Complete failure on both technical and English levels!
The book is, however, quite interesting (just go straight to the open-access PDF and skip the mediocre Slate article).
One of the key advantages of something like Kickstarter is that so many of the "sales" are up front: you don't have to worry about the game being a total flop and selling nothing, because you've already "sold" $2m+ worth of the game before starting! I would've expected major studios to try to get in on some of that pre-order action by mobilizing fan enthusiasm: stuff like, if we get X preorders by $date, we'll make a sequel to $game. Or is it that actual preorders of un-made games have more legal trouble than Kickstarter's sort of weird not-really-a-preorder-but-sorta-is variety?
Well, it's a bit absurd for them to hope to take advantage of an existing platform while not respecting its appeal. The "Humble Bundle" brand traded on three things: 1) supporting indie game developers; 2) being DRM-free; and 3) being cross-platform Win/Mac/Linux. Afaict, this THQ bundle goes 0/3.
It's just that THQ games are shit, and dressing up a turd in a suit doesn't make it any better.
Where have I missed all the pirates clamoring for major publishers to find a prominent "indie" brand name to masquerade as, and attempt to sell their DRM wares via that channel?
The factor you're looking for is "capitalism". Ever since CmtrTaco retired, Slashdot decisions aren't made based on human intelligence, but on maximizing pageviews.
This is truly a surprising development!
The eponymous fight?
If developers' technological preferences really set the agenda for the whole computer industry, a lot of things would look different.
Strangely, despite typically being advanced by the U.S. right (since it gives credit to Reagan's defense policies), it's not a position you'd think free-market advocates would actually take, because it implies that the USSR's economy would've worked fine, if only we hadn't forced it into collapse by making them overspend on defense. Do the people making that argument really believe that's the case? They don't think the USSR's economy was riddled with insurmountable problems even absent the defense spending?