In the general population, depressing as it is, you are probably correct. Purchasers of trendy, high-end electronics, however, tend to skew towards the younger, richer, urban dwelling segment - even from a straightforward business perspective, this could quite easily go badly for Apple.
It was wrong to censor the Mark Fiore app, it is wrong to deny porn apps, but since that's the path Apple have chosen to take, I'd also expect them to censor an app which implies someone's sexuality is a thing which can or should be 'cured'.
Apple should be supporting free speech, and if that were the case I would say that while I find the opinions of the app developer extremely unpleasant, I support their right to speak. But Apple aren't supporting free speech in general - if the conservative groups get censorship of content they find offensive, then the gay right groups damn well deserve the same treatment. By far the preferable option is to defend that which I despise just as strongly as that which I support, but the horse already bolted there.
I would normally agree with you quite vehemently, but Apple has already taken it upon themselves to act as 'moral guide' by denying pornographic apps. In doing so, they are no longer defending all freedom of expression, and thus can't legitimately claim to be taking a stand for free speech in allowing this.
And yet pizza.com sold a couple of years ago for $2.6million. I know the economy was in better shape then, but it was still a 'legitimate' sale, not some crazy bubble start up in 1998.
I don't understand it either, if I'm honest, but we all know that what something is worth is whatever someone will pay for it, and apparently generic domains really are worth a bit.
As the TLDs expand, the value of a ".com", even a sexy three letter one with some history decreases.
I agree with you on the IP addresses, but how much of your browsing is really done on sites with extensions other than.com or your local ccTLD? There are some occasional exceptions, of course - I'm aware we're posting on a.org, for instance, and bit.ly springs to mind - but when was the last time you saw a legitimate site on a.biz or.info name? Even if the alternate domains do eventually gain a bit more acceptance, decent sounding.com names will have the cachet that comes with exclusivity; more so, if anything, once they really start becoming scarce.
That said, it's still only a million. Sure, I'd be happy with that much cash for something as simple as a domain name, but to a decent size company it's nothing.
Presumably Apple is happy that, being the people who wrote the entire OS in the first place, they can implement this behaviour securely in Safari. They don't have the same faith in giving that ability to any random app developer, who could end up creating a difficult to spot vulnerability via the API either by malice or ignorance.
You're still limited to 'x' GB of data transfer, it's just that you can use it on whatever device you like. AT&T limit you to 'x' GB on your phone, and only allow you to tether if you pay extra.
I once ended up with the fun job of dismantling a customer's laptop to extract one of those from the slot-load drive. Admittedly the idea was good, but I think they were doomed to be a flash in the pan technology - they only had reason to exist for the short period in which CD-Rs were cheap enough to hand out for nothing, but bandwidth was still too limited for people to download the content for themselves.
You don't have a clue about the Tea Party if you read about it on any media outlet.
On the one hand, yes, there are some policies put forward by Tea Party candidates that are a breath of fresh air compared to the overwhelming homogeneity seen in the two main parties. On the other hand, there is some blinding stupidity seen not only in the supporters but in some of the candidates too, which rightly tarnishes confidence in the movement as a whole. Some of the ideas that that side of the group are putting forward are downright terrifying, as far as I'm concerned. There's also more than a little hypocrisy in terms of calls for small government coming alongside legislation to enforce a conservative Christian social policy.
Why? It's not like there's a lack of food worldwide, there's just a vast amount of corruption in the supply chain preventing it from reaching some places where it's needed.
admittedly, there is a sort of cultural decay (in the US at least) where hard work appears to be optional and thus awful; real money is perceived to come out of ruthlessness coupled with a mystical (i mean that in the worst possible way) "cleverness". now, if real success hinges on this mystical component anyway, why work?
I'd say that perception is quite reasonable based on the observable evidence, with the caveat that the 'mystical' component is pure dumb luck. Not to say that intelligence and hard work have nothing to do with success, by any means, but they generally just move you about within the "half decent income" bracket, while some insidious moron who happens to get a reality show makes more in a year than you will in a decade, for a fraction for a fraction of the effort. You wonder why working hard seems to be a poor prospect? Because there are far greater rewards to be had for not working hard. Basically, this.
It could be argued that not being surrounded by under-supervised near-sociopaths until such an age as to not be a near-sociopath yourself isn't a bad thing.
Possibly, but you're going to have to deal with them eventually - maybe it's better to get a head start? Admittedly the argument that "You should start doing [unpleasant thing] early, because you'll have to do it sooner or later" has never appealed to me - it seems better to minimise the total lifetime exposure to unpleasant people/activities, but my anecdotal experience suggest that those who weren't immersed in the social aspects of school during their formative years do have trouble picking it up later.
I honestly don't know; I was thoroughly miserable at school, and it certainly didn't do much for my academic achievement that couldn't be replaced by a few decent textbooks, so maybe I'm rationalising in the hope that it wasn't all for absolutely nothing.
The original graphical artillery games were early 80s, apparently, but I think it's a stretch to call them the basis for Angry Birds. Yes, they both use ballistic trajectories, but the gameplay is quite different; if Angry Birds were based solely on Scorched Earth, then I'd say all credit to them - it's been changed enough to be called innovative. That said, it probably wasn't entirely original, since Crush the Castle is near-identical and came out first.
It's just the way things go. Some guy happens to get caught in a perfect storm of marketing, word-of-mouth, and general new technology buzz, and suddenly there's a new multi-millionaire on the block. Doesn't matter whether they were the best, or the first, they were just the luckiest.
I do think it might turn up the pressure on the old business model a bit (which is probably a good thing, IMO). You'll always be able to justify spending $50 for the amount of entertainment that something like Fallout gives, but when decent games start popping up for very little cash, you think twice about dropping that much on some slightly updated sports game. Back when there was no such thing as a $1 game, even the crappy ones seemed better value at full price. The biggest potential risk, I think, is the market swinging too far the other way and making big-budget epics untenable, in the same way that cheap reality TV is detracting from more expensive but higher quality shows.
The government makes the law, both civil and criminal. Civil law often favours the wealthy, powerful party, and it is arguably the case that the reason for this skew is the influence of rich and powerful lobbyists steering the government towards protecting their interests at the expense of the less wealthy majority of the population.
On a somewhat related note, the British government is apparently issuing "super injunctions". We don't know why, of course, because the hearings are sealed and (usually) even the existence of the injunction can't be reported on - the only reason this one became public is because one of the few decent MPs used their parliamentary privilege to question it on the record. It's not even conceivably a matter of national security (their go-to excuse), since it's preventing the papers from reporting on the affairs of one of the key figures in the UK's banking collapse.
When this is how the governments are behaving, I honestly wonder whether there's a viable choice other than Wikileaks-style [vigilantism/civil disobedience]?
Obviously it's absolutely their right to accept or decline offers of help as they wish, but I don't see what saving face has to do with it. I'm not even saying that they were necessarily wrong to decline help (I actually haven't seen too much in the news about that aspect), but your assertion that sticking to tradition simply because "that's the way it's always been done" is anything other than a textbook example of stubbornness (and perhaps even stupidity) seems flawed, and retaining a metaphysical concept of "honour" at the potential expense of people's lives and the nation's recovery is far from what I'd call a "good reason" for refusing help.
Now, it might well be the case that there are good reasons for them to decline help, and if so then that's fair enough, but when culture and tradition have demonstrably negative effects on the general good of the population, they should without question be abandoned. Tradition alone is never a good reason to do something - if the tradition does have a sound logical basis then do things for that logical reason, not for the sake of the tradition itself; I'm not just talking about Japan here, either (although my potentially uninformed understanding is that tradition is generally considered more important there than in the West) - there are plenty of ideas that should have long since been consigned to history all over the world.
And, of course, the errors only ever overestimate the actual dose. There's no chance whatsoever of a machine being checked off as 'within normal limits' when it's producing plane-loads of glow in the dark passengers.
Tried to achieve, certainly, but with questionable success - I can't speak for the games market but I know that DVD region restrictions are trivial to bypass, and are outright ignored even by some big name DVD players. At least some of the people running the businesses realise, just as we do, that the technological restrictions will always be bypassed, that's why they're pushing for legal protection above and beyond the (already onerous, IMO) current copyright restrictions, either by making it illegal to bypass the technological measures (DMCA) or by giving them direct control of the import/export market.
I'm expecting to see selective enforcement - those running the show won't piss off too many members of the public because it risks backlash (and they're not on such firm 'scare tactic' footing as the TSA are, so they have more to fear from public disapproval), but they'll pull out the clause any time arbitrageurs look to take advantage of an absurd regional price difference in copyrighted goods. End result, of course, is that while the employers take advantage of cheap global labour, any disparity in goods prices can't be taken advantage of by the consumer because the identical, but lower priced foreign goods can't be imported without the permission of the copyright holder. Even without this law, we're seeing exactly that behaviour in Omega v. Costco.
Slashdot Mirror
In the general population, depressing as it is, you are probably correct. Purchasers of trendy, high-end electronics, however, tend to skew towards the younger, richer, urban dwelling segment - even from a straightforward business perspective, this could quite easily go badly for Apple.
It was wrong to censor the Mark Fiore app, it is wrong to deny porn apps, but since that's the path Apple have chosen to take, I'd also expect them to censor an app which implies someone's sexuality is a thing which can or should be 'cured'.
Apple should be supporting free speech, and if that were the case I would say that while I find the opinions of the app developer extremely unpleasant, I support their right to speak. But Apple aren't supporting free speech in general - if the conservative groups get censorship of content they find offensive, then the gay right groups damn well deserve the same treatment. By far the preferable option is to defend that which I despise just as strongly as that which I support, but the horse already bolted there.
I would normally agree with you quite vehemently, but Apple has already taken it upon themselves to act as 'moral guide' by denying pornographic apps. In doing so, they are no longer defending all freedom of expression, and thus can't legitimately claim to be taking a stand for free speech in allowing this.
It can be used as a verb or a noun, with one of the accepted definitions of the latter being a synonym for alternative.
And yet pizza.com sold a couple of years ago for $2.6million. I know the economy was in better shape then, but it was still a 'legitimate' sale, not some crazy bubble start up in 1998.
I don't understand it either, if I'm honest, but we all know that what something is worth is whatever someone will pay for it, and apparently generic domains really are worth a bit.
As the TLDs expand, the value of a ".com", even a sexy three letter one with some history decreases.
I agree with you on the IP addresses, but how much of your browsing is really done on sites with extensions other than .com or your local ccTLD? There are some occasional exceptions, of course - I'm aware we're posting on a .org, for instance, and bit.ly springs to mind - but when was the last time you saw a legitimate site on a .biz or .info name? Even if the alternate domains do eventually gain a bit more acceptance, decent sounding .com names will have the cachet that comes with exclusivity; more so, if anything, once they really start becoming scarce.
That said, it's still only a million. Sure, I'd be happy with that much cash for something as simple as a domain name, but to a decent size company it's nothing.
Presumably Apple is happy that, being the people who wrote the entire OS in the first place, they can implement this behaviour securely in Safari. They don't have the same faith in giving that ability to any random app developer, who could end up creating a difficult to spot vulnerability via the API either by malice or ignorance.
However, if you are currently on the $30/month "unlimited" plan, it's only $15/month more to change to the 4 gigabytes/month + tethering plan.
Only $15/month extra for a significant reduction in data transfer? How can I lose?!
You're still limited to 'x' GB of data transfer, it's just that you can use it on whatever device you like. AT&T limit you to 'x' GB on your phone, and only allow you to tether if you pay extra.
I once ended up with the fun job of dismantling a customer's laptop to extract one of those from the slot-load drive. Admittedly the idea was good, but I think they were doomed to be a flash in the pan technology - they only had reason to exist for the short period in which CD-Rs were cheap enough to hand out for nothing, but bandwidth was still too limited for people to download the content for themselves.
You don't have a clue about the Tea Party if you read about it on any media outlet.
On the one hand, yes, there are some policies put forward by Tea Party candidates that are a breath of fresh air compared to the overwhelming homogeneity seen in the two main parties. On the other hand, there is some blinding stupidity seen not only in the supporters but in some of the candidates too, which rightly tarnishes confidence in the movement as a whole. Some of the ideas that that side of the group are putting forward are downright terrifying, as far as I'm concerned. There's also more than a little hypocrisy in terms of calls for small government coming alongside legislation to enforce a conservative Christian social policy.
Why? It's not like there's a lack of food worldwide, there's just a vast amount of corruption in the supply chain preventing it from reaching some places where it's needed.
admittedly, there is a sort of cultural decay (in the US at least) where hard work appears to be optional and thus awful; real money is perceived to come out of ruthlessness coupled with a mystical (i mean that in the worst possible way) "cleverness". now, if real success hinges on this mystical component anyway, why work?
I'd say that perception is quite reasonable based on the observable evidence, with the caveat that the 'mystical' component is pure dumb luck. Not to say that intelligence and hard work have nothing to do with success, by any means, but they generally just move you about within the "half decent income" bracket, while some insidious moron who happens to get a reality show makes more in a year than you will in a decade, for a fraction for a fraction of the effort. You wonder why working hard seems to be a poor prospect? Because there are far greater rewards to be had for not working hard. Basically, this.
It could be argued that not being surrounded by under-supervised near-sociopaths until such an age as to not be a near-sociopath yourself isn't a bad thing.
Possibly, but you're going to have to deal with them eventually - maybe it's better to get a head start? Admittedly the argument that "You should start doing [unpleasant thing] early, because you'll have to do it sooner or later" has never appealed to me - it seems better to minimise the total lifetime exposure to unpleasant people/activities, but my anecdotal experience suggest that those who weren't immersed in the social aspects of school during their formative years do have trouble picking it up later.
I honestly don't know; I was thoroughly miserable at school, and it certainly didn't do much for my academic achievement that couldn't be replaced by a few decent textbooks, so maybe I'm rationalising in the hope that it wasn't all for absolutely nothing.
The original graphical artillery games were early 80s, apparently, but I think it's a stretch to call them the basis for Angry Birds. Yes, they both use ballistic trajectories, but the gameplay is quite different; if Angry Birds were based solely on Scorched Earth, then I'd say all credit to them - it's been changed enough to be called innovative. That said, it probably wasn't entirely original, since Crush the Castle is near-identical and came out first.
It's just the way things go. Some guy happens to get caught in a perfect storm of marketing, word-of-mouth, and general new technology buzz, and suddenly there's a new multi-millionaire on the block. Doesn't matter whether they were the best, or the first, they were just the luckiest.
I do think it might turn up the pressure on the old business model a bit (which is probably a good thing, IMO). You'll always be able to justify spending $50 for the amount of entertainment that something like Fallout gives, but when decent games start popping up for very little cash, you think twice about dropping that much on some slightly updated sports game. Back when there was no such thing as a $1 game, even the crappy ones seemed better value at full price. The biggest potential risk, I think, is the market swinging too far the other way and making big-budget epics untenable, in the same way that cheap reality TV is detracting from more expensive but higher quality shows.
What was your point there, exactly? It seems to support what the OP said, not refute it.
The government makes the law, both civil and criminal. Civil law often favours the wealthy, powerful party, and it is arguably the case that the reason for this skew is the influence of rich and powerful lobbyists steering the government towards protecting their interests at the expense of the less wealthy majority of the population.
On a somewhat related note, the British government is apparently issuing "super injunctions". We don't know why, of course, because the hearings are sealed and (usually) even the existence of the injunction can't be reported on - the only reason this one became public is because one of the few decent MPs used their parliamentary privilege to question it on the record. It's not even conceivably a matter of national security (their go-to excuse), since it's preventing the papers from reporting on the affairs of one of the key figures in the UK's banking collapse.
When this is how the governments are behaving, I honestly wonder whether there's a viable choice other than Wikileaks-style [vigilantism/civil disobedience]?
Obviously it's absolutely their right to accept or decline offers of help as they wish, but I don't see what saving face has to do with it. I'm not even saying that they were necessarily wrong to decline help (I actually haven't seen too much in the news about that aspect), but your assertion that sticking to tradition simply because "that's the way it's always been done" is anything other than a textbook example of stubbornness (and perhaps even stupidity) seems flawed, and retaining a metaphysical concept of "honour" at the potential expense of people's lives and the nation's recovery is far from what I'd call a "good reason" for refusing help.
Now, it might well be the case that there are good reasons for them to decline help, and if so then that's fair enough, but when culture and tradition have demonstrably negative effects on the general good of the population, they should without question be abandoned. Tradition alone is never a good reason to do something - if the tradition does have a sound logical basis then do things for that logical reason, not for the sake of the tradition itself; I'm not just talking about Japan here, either (although my potentially uninformed understanding is that tradition is generally considered more important there than in the West) - there are plenty of ideas that should have long since been consigned to history all over the world.
How many services am I going to have to boycott before they get a damned clue?
Unfortunately, unless you're particularly rich and/or politically influential, you're going to end up living in a cave and they still won't notice.
And, of course, the errors only ever overestimate the actual dose. There's no chance whatsoever of a machine being checked off as 'within normal limits' when it's producing plane-loads of glow in the dark passengers.
Tried to achieve, certainly, but with questionable success - I can't speak for the games market but I know that DVD region restrictions are trivial to bypass, and are outright ignored even by some big name DVD players. At least some of the people running the businesses realise, just as we do, that the technological restrictions will always be bypassed, that's why they're pushing for legal protection above and beyond the (already onerous, IMO) current copyright restrictions, either by making it illegal to bypass the technological measures (DMCA) or by giving them direct control of the import/export market.
I'm expecting to see selective enforcement - those running the show won't piss off too many members of the public because it risks backlash (and they're not on such firm 'scare tactic' footing as the TSA are, so they have more to fear from public disapproval), but they'll pull out the clause any time arbitrageurs look to take advantage of an absurd regional price difference in copyrighted goods. End result, of course, is that while the employers take advantage of cheap global labour, any disparity in goods prices can't be taken advantage of by the consumer because the identical, but lower priced foreign goods can't be imported without the permission of the copyright holder. Even without this law, we're seeing exactly that behaviour in Omega v. Costco.
I think the point was that 1kW just about goes through the razor, 1MW goes through the razor and puts a decent dent in the wall behind.