Re:Q: Why hasn't Mozilla considered a Firefox OS?
on
Where Is Firefox OS?
·
· Score: 2
I'm torn on that one - on the one hand I want to say that an extra layer of abstraction, wasting memory and cycles itself only to interpret code on the fly rather than taking the time to compile and optimise once per platform and be done with it, is a terrible idea. Particularly when it's designed to help move code to diverse, often lower power devices.
On the other hand, most high-end phones now have as much processing capability and memory as a decent desktop did a decade ago, yet many of our day-to-day computing tasks haven't changed drastically in ten years - maybe letting the power make up for the bloat isn't such a bad idea, when it's not so useful for anything else. Sure, there'll always be space for highly optimised code that makes use of every cycle, but (as much as I hate to say this) perhaps we're wrong to demand 'elegant' when 'simple' is good enough for a lot of tasks...
I'd be interested to know how it was handled in other countries, which generally have both internally and internationally compatible systems, lower prices, and better service than can be found from the US carriers. Yes, population density is part of the issue, but the cost to build the number of extra towers per capita in the States isn't enough to account for the extent to which the telcos lie, cheat, and gouge their customers in comparison to (most of) the rest of the world.
"I like to think we are providing a service not just by screening for employers, but in helping to protect job applicants by creating a standard process for online background checks and a service that presents them with reports on negative material." Actual quote from the company's COO. He's either a complete imbecile, or a monster.
I suppose they do a fairly effective job of flagging companies managed by megalomaniacs and/or morons. If they released their entire client list under the heading "Companies you really, really don't want to work for:", I'd probably cut them some slack.
Offline banking is evidently not much better. A few years back, after a data breach, Jeremy Clarkson posted his account number and sort code (equivalent of a US routing number, I believe) in his newspaper column to demonstrate that the leak wasn't as big a deal as it might be - his logic, I believe, was that those two items alone only allow you to uniquely identify the account and deposit money into it, and that there is additional security to withdraw money. The fact that anyone you've ever given a cheque to has these numbers means that they're hardly secret information.
As you will have no doubt guessed by now, it turned out that anyone you've ever given a cheque to does, in fact, have the power to drain your account. I believe he got off with little more than a proof-of-concept charity donation being made with his money, but that doesn't change the fact that banks are apparently pretty stunningly insecure.
If your argument is that we should listen to God, you'll have to make a pretty convincing point about why we should listen to your chosen God over anyone elses'.
What do you do when healthcare insurance will pay for an assisted suicide, but will no longer pay for ongoing therapy and care?
A moot point, in this case, since the debate is happening in England.
What do you do when your friend's father is given the green light to commit suicide, but your mother who has the same illness but is advanced to the point where she is in a painful vegetative state and can no longer choose for herself?
A sad scenario, but one that benefits from a well-considered assisted suicide law in which the mother could have made it clear beforehand that she no longer wants to live if her condition deteriorates in that manner. Even in the case that she was forced to go through a painful, drawn out, natural death - how would forcing the father to go through the same possibly be an improvement?
Explain 'immoral'. If any part of your argument rests on the point 'the Bible said so', explain why the Bible is a more valid source than any other religious text with diametrically opposed views on the matter, and indeed why your religion's morals should be imposed on the nation.
Do you genuinely agree with the argument made in that post? It seems to throw around the word 'evil' a lot at the start, without really explaining why, and then goes on to suggest that if a person is allowed to choose their own time of death, suddenly we'll allow society as a whole to make that decision on their behalf. I fail to see how that point is founded, and I'd be interested to hear the logic if you think otherwise.
Smartphones do generally have a 'proper' GPS chip which is assisted by cell triangulation for quicker results and (sometimes) increased accuracy. You can get GPS boards for less than $20 at retail, so the chips alone in bulk will not be a significant expense. The iPhone apparently uses an Infineon chip, but I couldn't find specific pricing info.
Also, as I mentioned a little further down, the profits on any iPhone must be fairly absurd to begin with, since it's really just an iPod touch with a $50 3G chipset and a couple of minor software tweaks, yet it retails at a $450 premium on the 32GB model (a total of 2.5 times the $299 retail price of the iPod).
It's a great pocket computer with a built-in phone app.
Very true. The bit I can't get my head around is why that phone app (plus maybe $50 worth of 3G hardware) adds $450 to the cost of an otherwise equivalent pocket computer, retailing from Apple for $299.
That doesn't mean that the bundled handsets aren't subsidised, it just means they're totally screwing over the customers who turn up with their own handset. In countries with actual competition in the mobile market you see SIM only deals on a rolling one-month contract for maybe 50% less than equivalent deals with shiny smartphones.
Of course, in your situation, the logical thing to do there is take the 'free' handset with the highest resale value, eBay it, and use that income to somewhat offset the price of the monthly payments.
Par for the course - electronics in the UK have always been overpriced (the 20% VAT included in the UK figures does make up some of the disparity, but not all of it). If anyone cares, the ex-VAT prices are $696 and $835.
What I find much more interesting is that they're charging an extra £100 (or $100, as it happens) for 16GB more of flash. Even a fast microSD card will set you back less than a third of that as a standalone retail product, so the extra profit Apple must be making on the high-capacity models is huge.
I agree that the GP post was unreasonable, and that many countries are of course much worse, but the US does still have legitimate problems which need to be faced. The government is making consistent efforts to increase their powers both to act in secret and without warrant or oversight - we've seen where this leads both on a small scale (violent and corrupt police officers intimidating citizens with cameras) and on a large one (warrantless wiretapping); that's a road I'd really rather not see the US follow any further than it has. Police raids on private residences are also becoming increasingly militarised, a trend which has been shown to drastically increase the "us and them" mentality on both sides, and again is a catalyst for violent abuses of power. Often the justice system shows a marked difference in treatment of the rich and powerful compared to that of the poor. While political speech may not be enough to have your website seized, an accusation of copyright infringement may do it, again without conviction, oversight, or recourse. Wikileaks has revealed that some people in Guantanamo were there for little to no reason - while the white American citizen might not have anything to fear on that side of things, the Pakistani guy in the wrong place at the wrong time might not be so lucky; again, the real problem is the lack of transparency making abuses almost impossible to catch, let alone rectify.
As for the 'where is better and more free?' question, I'd say most of Scandanavia, The Netherlands, and probably Canada and New Zealand too. No, the US isn't too bad, for the majority of citizens who are lucky enough not to have a run-in with the authorities, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't strive to be better.
Those liability limitations are hardly a trivial benefit, though, not to mention that my contact with AMEX customer service has always been pleasant. The one time I ended up getting screwed on a Paypal transaction it was an absurd effort even to get a non-canned response from them, the bank refused to step in to assist (apparently you don't purchase the product via Paypal, you purchase 'e-funds' which are non refundable, and then use them to purchase the item), and I ended up getting maybe half my money back. The amount was not especially significant, but the way it was handled was beyond infuriating.
They also have a terrible record in terms of freezing funds, even if you do your best to withdraw everything immediately, and worse rates than Google or Amazon (last I checked, at least) - the only reason I used them as a seller was that eBay forces you to, and on balance the extra exposure my sales got with eBay listings was worth the unpleasantness of dealing with Paypal. I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole if there's another alternative, however.
I don't entirely mind allowing it if it's truly voluntary, just like any other blocking software. Of course, having a system where the ISP opts in on all of their customers behalves, and publicising it in such a way that even questioning their use of the list is likely to elicit a response of "Why do you care unless you're some kind of pervert?" is certainly stretching the definition of 'voluntary'.
As it stands, are there any ISPs who don't subscribe to the IWF list? How hard would it be for one of us to start our own that doesn't subscribe to some unsupervised qango's blocklist?
On the other hand, it'd be hard to script a better demonstration of why closed ecosystems, particularly those controlled by an easily-pressured gatekeeper, are bad for consumers.
So, shouldn't we be asking serious questions about why Homeland Security and ICE are running a one-sided, misleading corporate propaganda video, created and owned by a private company, without mentioning the rather pertinent information of who made it?
Yes, we should, but I'll be happy to wait until after they've answered the more pressing question about what the hell Homeland Security are doing enforcing copyright claims in the first place.
I'm sure it differs from model to model, but I find that the battery on my nook is good, but not brilliant - certainly much less than the ten to fifteen books you'd expect from 8,500 pages. That said, if you did happen to want to take one camping, any of these should do the job.
Not really - the point was that manufacturing economies can't take over IP economies even if they get hold of the IP, because the true strength is the people who create the IP. It was an argument against the post way back up there that said "If your main assets do not suffer from scarcity, you have a problem because supply, once known, is infinite: and if supply is infinite then the real cost of it is zero.".
I had no intention of implying that all products from India or China are cheap generics, I was simply saying that once the designs are out there, that's where the cheap generics will come from.
Perhaps it was an oversight to ignore Japan and Taiwan. I probably would've been better to refer to 'manufacturing economies' and 'IP economies' rather than talking about 'the West' - I had no intention of slighting Asia as a whole. Maybe it's media bias, I don't know, but I haven't really heard of any new designs coming from the manufacturing bases I mentioned, China an India, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm torn on that one - on the one hand I want to say that an extra layer of abstraction, wasting memory and cycles itself only to interpret code on the fly rather than taking the time to compile and optimise once per platform and be done with it, is a terrible idea. Particularly when it's designed to help move code to diverse, often lower power devices.
On the other hand, most high-end phones now have as much processing capability and memory as a decent desktop did a decade ago, yet many of our day-to-day computing tasks haven't changed drastically in ten years - maybe letting the power make up for the bloat isn't such a bad idea, when it's not so useful for anything else. Sure, there'll always be space for highly optimised code that makes use of every cycle, but (as much as I hate to say this) perhaps we're wrong to demand 'elegant' when 'simple' is good enough for a lot of tasks...
I'd be interested to know how it was handled in other countries, which generally have both internally and internationally compatible systems, lower prices, and better service than can be found from the US carriers. Yes, population density is part of the issue, but the cost to build the number of extra towers per capita in the States isn't enough to account for the extent to which the telcos lie, cheat, and gouge their customers in comparison to (most of) the rest of the world.
There's too much money in the US for it to turn into Somalia - the OP is asking for the society straight out of Snow Crash.
"I like to think we are providing a service not just by screening for employers, but in helping to protect job applicants by creating a standard process for online background checks and a service that presents them with reports on negative material." Actual quote from the company's COO. He's either a complete imbecile, or a monster.
I suppose they do a fairly effective job of flagging companies managed by megalomaniacs and/or morons. If they released their entire client list under the heading "Companies you really, really don't want to work for:", I'd probably cut them some slack.
Offline banking is evidently not much better. A few years back, after a data breach, Jeremy Clarkson posted his account number and sort code (equivalent of a US routing number, I believe) in his newspaper column to demonstrate that the leak wasn't as big a deal as it might be - his logic, I believe, was that those two items alone only allow you to uniquely identify the account and deposit money into it, and that there is additional security to withdraw money. The fact that anyone you've ever given a cheque to has these numbers means that they're hardly secret information.
As you will have no doubt guessed by now, it turned out that anyone you've ever given a cheque to does, in fact, have the power to drain your account. I believe he got off with little more than a proof-of-concept charity donation being made with his money, but that doesn't change the fact that banks are apparently pretty stunningly insecure.
If your argument is that we should listen to God, you'll have to make a pretty convincing point about why we should listen to your chosen God over anyone elses'.
What do you do when healthcare insurance will pay for an assisted suicide, but will no longer pay for ongoing therapy and care?
A moot point, in this case, since the debate is happening in England.
What do you do when your friend's father is given the green light to commit suicide, but your mother who has the same illness but is advanced to the point where she is in a painful vegetative state and can no longer choose for herself?
A sad scenario, but one that benefits from a well-considered assisted suicide law in which the mother could have made it clear beforehand that she no longer wants to live if her condition deteriorates in that manner. Even in the case that she was forced to go through a painful, drawn out, natural death - how would forcing the father to go through the same possibly be an improvement?
Explain 'immoral'. If any part of your argument rests on the point 'the Bible said so', explain why the Bible is a more valid source than any other religious text with diametrically opposed views on the matter, and indeed why your religion's morals should be imposed on the nation.
Do you genuinely agree with the argument made in that post? It seems to throw around the word 'evil' a lot at the start, without really explaining why, and then goes on to suggest that if a person is allowed to choose their own time of death, suddenly we'll allow society as a whole to make that decision on their behalf. I fail to see how that point is founded, and I'd be interested to hear the logic if you think otherwise.
Smartphones do generally have a 'proper' GPS chip which is assisted by cell triangulation for quicker results and (sometimes) increased accuracy. You can get GPS boards for less than $20 at retail, so the chips alone in bulk will not be a significant expense. The iPhone apparently uses an Infineon chip, but I couldn't find specific pricing info.
Also, as I mentioned a little further down, the profits on any iPhone must be fairly absurd to begin with, since it's really just an iPod touch with a $50 3G chipset and a couple of minor software tweaks, yet it retails at a $450 premium on the 32GB model (a total of 2.5 times the $299 retail price of the iPod).
It's a great pocket computer with a built-in phone app.
Very true. The bit I can't get my head around is why that phone app (plus maybe $50 worth of 3G hardware) adds $450 to the cost of an otherwise equivalent pocket computer, retailing from Apple for $299.
That doesn't mean that the bundled handsets aren't subsidised, it just means they're totally screwing over the customers who turn up with their own handset. In countries with actual competition in the mobile market you see SIM only deals on a rolling one-month contract for maybe 50% less than equivalent deals with shiny smartphones.
Of course, in your situation, the logical thing to do there is take the 'free' handset with the highest resale value, eBay it, and use that income to somewhat offset the price of the monthly payments.
Par for the course - electronics in the UK have always been overpriced (the 20% VAT included in the UK figures does make up some of the disparity, but not all of it). If anyone cares, the ex-VAT prices are $696 and $835.
What I find much more interesting is that they're charging an extra £100 (or $100, as it happens) for 16GB more of flash. Even a fast microSD card will set you back less than a third of that as a standalone retail product, so the extra profit Apple must be making on the high-capacity models is huge.
Along that line, I wonder how bitcoin's security compares to that of a traditional bank in the face of an adversary with a quantum computer?
Which is not really any different to the people who got the gold in California, the land in Manhattan, the best .com names, or the IPO stock in Google.
I agree that the GP post was unreasonable, and that many countries are of course much worse, but the US does still have legitimate problems which need to be faced. The government is making consistent efforts to increase their powers both to act in secret and without warrant or oversight - we've seen where this leads both on a small scale (violent and corrupt police officers intimidating citizens with cameras) and on a large one (warrantless wiretapping); that's a road I'd really rather not see the US follow any further than it has. Police raids on private residences are also becoming increasingly militarised, a trend which has been shown to drastically increase the "us and them" mentality on both sides, and again is a catalyst for violent abuses of power. Often the justice system shows a marked difference in treatment of the rich and powerful compared to that of the poor. While political speech may not be enough to have your website seized, an accusation of copyright infringement may do it, again without conviction, oversight, or recourse. Wikileaks has revealed that some people in Guantanamo were there for little to no reason - while the white American citizen might not have anything to fear on that side of things, the Pakistani guy in the wrong place at the wrong time might not be so lucky; again, the real problem is the lack of transparency making abuses almost impossible to catch, let alone rectify.
As for the 'where is better and more free?' question, I'd say most of Scandanavia, The Netherlands, and probably Canada and New Zealand too. No, the US isn't too bad, for the majority of citizens who are lucky enough not to have a run-in with the authorities, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't strive to be better.
Those liability limitations are hardly a trivial benefit, though, not to mention that my contact with AMEX customer service has always been pleasant. The one time I ended up getting screwed on a Paypal transaction it was an absurd effort even to get a non-canned response from them, the bank refused to step in to assist (apparently you don't purchase the product via Paypal, you purchase 'e-funds' which are non refundable, and then use them to purchase the item), and I ended up getting maybe half my money back. The amount was not especially significant, but the way it was handled was beyond infuriating.
They also have a terrible record in terms of freezing funds, even if you do your best to withdraw everything immediately, and worse rates than Google or Amazon (last I checked, at least) - the only reason I used them as a seller was that eBay forces you to, and on balance the extra exposure my sales got with eBay listings was worth the unpleasantness of dealing with Paypal. I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole if there's another alternative, however.
I don't entirely mind allowing it if it's truly voluntary, just like any other blocking software. Of course, having a system where the ISP opts in on all of their customers behalves, and publicising it in such a way that even questioning their use of the list is likely to elicit a response of "Why do you care unless you're some kind of pervert?" is certainly stretching the definition of 'voluntary'.
As it stands, are there any ISPs who don't subscribe to the IWF list? How hard would it be for one of us to start our own that doesn't subscribe to some unsupervised qango's blocklist?
On the other hand, it'd be hard to script a better demonstration of why closed ecosystems, particularly those controlled by an easily-pressured gatekeeper, are bad for consumers.
So, shouldn't we be asking serious questions about why Homeland Security and ICE are running a one-sided, misleading corporate propaganda video, created and owned by a private company, without mentioning the rather pertinent information of who made it?
Yes, we should, but I'll be happy to wait until after they've answered the more pressing question about what the hell Homeland Security are doing enforcing copyright claims in the first place.
I'm sure it differs from model to model, but I find that the battery on my nook is good, but not brilliant - certainly much less than the ten to fifteen books you'd expect from 8,500 pages. That said, if you did happen to want to take one camping, any of these should do the job.
Not really - the point was that manufacturing economies can't take over IP economies even if they get hold of the IP, because the true strength is the people who create the IP. It was an argument against the post way back up there that said "If your main assets do not suffer from scarcity, you have a problem because supply, once known, is infinite: and if supply is infinite then the real cost of it is zero.".
I had no intention of implying that all products from India or China are cheap generics, I was simply saying that once the designs are out there, that's where the cheap generics will come from.
Perhaps it was an oversight to ignore Japan and Taiwan. I probably would've been better to refer to 'manufacturing economies' and 'IP economies' rather than talking about 'the West' - I had no intention of slighting Asia as a whole. Maybe it's media bias, I don't know, but I haven't really heard of any new designs coming from the manufacturing bases I mentioned, China an India, though.