Fair point, but perhaps people who equate clothes with professionalism (not accusing you, and it is true that we all make judgements on appearance to some degree, but anyway...) have been deemed as people who they do not feel the need to impress. If I owned a business I would certainly be inclined to think that way - maybe that's a reason that I wouldn't succeed in owning a business, but it appears that Google makes as much money as they could ever need; if they don't become too greedy they can afford to interact with the world on their own terms rather than those decided by a particular portion of society.
In essence, I see the jeans and a T-shirt as a positive representation of the company, it represents a company in which essentially arbitrary rules are examined for their usefulness and if neccessary discarded.
That's an interesting point about the patents. Makes sense in the face of something I was thinking didn't add up too: AMD already makes a low-power, low-cost chip that seems pretty well suited to this job, yet they aren't using it.
The Australians have used a key metric to judge their leaders in the past, and I refuse to support any politicians who haven't held world records for beer drinking, thank you very much.
There must be some well informed people in the police force who disagree with these kinds of laws. Why not go after a few senators with Patriot Act based accusations, DMCA violations, online gambling (see yesterday's story) and whatever other stupid laws that some of them must be breaking. I'm sure that there must be a few public figures who are breaking these laws (hell, the rest of us probably are too); if even five or ten of the politicians who bring in laws like this were arrested under them, I think the point might be taken.
As others have said, DSL uses much wider frequency ranges than voice so a few hundred metres makes a difference. The other thing about calling to Japan is that the signal does not run over that single copper line all the way, in fact it probably runs the same distance of copper as your DSL signal (i.e. a couple of km to the local exchange where the DSLAM is and where the analog phone signals get converted to digital and sent overseas). This means that your voice and DSL signals always have the same distance to degrade over, no matter where you call to, and the DSL signals are (as others have said) more sensetive to this distance.
Google pays for terrabytes of data transfer from their servers, $random_blog pays for a few gigs from theirs; the upstream data transfer is covered. The users all pay their ISPs for access to these servers; the downstream transfer is covered. It seems to me that Verzion's customers (as in your example) are already paying for access to Google's data via Verzion's network and that Google are already paying to transfer that data from their network to Verzion's. Who is compensated by this extra charge that is not currently (other than the ISPs being paid twice in your model)?
As the other two posters have said, it would be difficult for them to add anything dubious to human-readable code without them being noticed. What I do think, though, is that if Google releases the compiler it puts them in a much better position for reading information from the compiled code; they know (roughly) how the compiler is going to output most common operations and where within those the important information that the code is presenting to the user will lie. From this they can train googlebot to read GWT generated JS pages better than any other bots can read them, putting Google at a competetive advantage when it comes to searching AJAX pages.
Fair point, and it's definitely a matter of personal taste, but have you looked at the Nokia 8910? I have one myself (I use a smartphone during the day but I need something simple and stylish for when I don't need the features) and it's absolutely excellent. It's a very visible monochrome screen (avoid the 8910i, that 'i' means it has an early model colour screen which is unresponsive and not especially visible) and it does calls, SMS and that's near enough it - no camera, no MMS, no additional software, and a battery that lasts forever (another disadvantage of the 'i' model, that old school colour display drains a disproportionate amount of power).
The only 'extra' features are bluetooth and GPRS, both of which can be switched off to save power, and I can't say I've ever turned them back on, but remote synch and the ability to use it as a laptop modem could come in handy I guess. The autoslide and titanium casing certainly turn heads when you use it, but it's a little more subtle than the "look at me" razr that everyone else seems to use.
I'd just like to add a note of agreement here. I've said more or less the same on a few phone related topics now, but I'll reiterate: basic phones don't get the news coverage that the latest new feature-phone does, but they still exist. You don't hear about the latest model because more often than not there isn't one - basic has been perfected (Nokia 1100 IMO, but plenty of others out there) and it's already cheap. There's nothing more for the media to say about basic, so let them tell us about the latest (perhaps pointless) innovations in the new round of phones.
Using 'discipline' in the way you appear to mean (such as taking away priviledges if they don't work hard) is the behavioural equivalent of rote learning scientific formulae. Working hard "so you're not punished" is no reason to work at all, and (taking a note from your sig) I wouldn't be shocked in the least to hear that unschooling would be seen as a holiday by those who are used to doing things because they are forced.
I'm not saying that a parent has to be a buddy, but if a parent can't convince their child to do something by presenting a superior argument as to why they should do that thing, maybe their position on the issue needs to be reconsidered. At the end of the day I'd say the far better parent is the one who says "You don't have to go to lessons, but I'd reccomend you get some knowledge or you'll be bored all your life." is infinitely better than the one who says "Go to lessons or I'll take away your phone/car/right to have fun.". The child is not a clone and the parent is not infallible; if they can't make the child see their point of view, why shouln't the child be allowed to do things their way, they might screw up and learn a lesson or they might just have been right all along.
Other than the 'regulation is bad' angle and the swiss bank accounts that you mention, there is also the chance that they would just try extorting the content providers anyway. If they could get the likes of Google and Yahoo paying protection money so they don't appear slow compared to MSN (for example) you still get the tier problem without it being to do with conflicts of interests.
As another poster said, it wouldn't be comparable because you can't use a photo of rootbeer for the same purpose as rootbeer (that purpose being some kind of industrial cleaner, I assume, but I digress...). What may be comparable is taking a photo of a piece of artwork or a poster and then hanging the photo on your wall - you get near enough the same product (arguments over original art aside) and use it for the same purpose without paying and without depriving anyone.
Licensing issues aside, PNG supports alpha transparency and is better for that reason alone.
I guess ZIP is probably good enough, but I was under the impression that others got better compression, which can never be bad.
Comparing WAV and MP3 is apples and oranges, but how about WAV and FLAC - half the space for the same data is excellent in my book.
AAC may be evil, but it's just a wrapper for MP4 audio, which does achieve better compression in my experience.
All in all these new formats really are beneficial; what we should be asking is how this one is beneficial to Microsoft? They wouldn't (and neither would any business) waste their money on it for the good of mankind, and if it's truly open then they can't gain any control. They wouldn't do it for PR because they don't really need it and most users don't understand the details of graphical compression enough to appreciate it anyway. They can't do it in order to drop JPEG, it's just used in too many places. I'd be intrigued to know why they are doing this.
They might have a problem with me going into non-public areas of the shop, but I don't see that it would be illegal to take all the napkins, ketchup and straws that are on the counter for me to take. As I've said, they'd be well within their rights to eject me from the shop, but not to arrest me. I don't want to sound like I'm arguing that it's the right thing to do either, it's not, but I just want to make the point that I can't see it as illegal.
Where do you get the idea I feel entitled? I actually said just above that it's "Abuse of the service definitely, and probably ruled out by any EULA that you have to pass before getting on the network", just as you say. The point I was arguing is that it would be Theft of Service, which I don't see as being possible with a free (beer) service. You might take more than you're meant to and get cut off, but it's still not theft.
How is this in any way theft, or even illegal? Abuse of the service definitely, and probably ruled out by any EULA that you have to pass before getting on the network, but you can't steal something that's free. It's not like you'd be getting the paid service for free either - what you do get may be as good or better than the paid service, but it isn't the same so they haven't "stolen" that. It'd be like taking 20 free AOL CDs from the bucket rather than the one they intend you to take; I can't see how it can be illegal.
So pay with cash and put a pay as you go SIM card in it. They'll more than likely be able to tell that you are using one of these phones by looking at the packets it's sending and from there they can find out the details of the SIM card and the phone's IMEI (serial) number, but if the SIM and the handset are then just linked to 'Random cash purchase' when they start digging there's not much they can do.
I said it about the PS3 and I'll say it again, why is it 150euro or US$130? Currency converter says that's US$190, almost exactly a 50% price increase. You can't even blame taxes, they vary from country to country but the price is fixed within the region. Why do they do this to us?
Thing is, it's fairly easy to make a standard checklist to see if a URL is valid or not (they're systematic, after all). For all intents and purposes a standard guide for users could look something like this:
What is the expected domain name of the site you want? (e.g. www.yahoo.com)
Look for the first slash other than those in the "http://", what precedes it and is it as expected? (e.g..com)
Having established that the TLD is correct, what precedes that and is it as expected? (e.g. yahoo)
Whatever now comes prior to the name (www., mail., foobar.) is still part of the doman you established. (e.g. yahoo.com)
I'm sure there is some circumstance you can think of that will not be covered, but that's a quick and dirty wording of the split-second mental process you or I would go through and it shouldn't take too long for an intelligent non-techie to pick up.
Interesting analogy, but there is one thing you fail to account for: phishing sites do not have legitimate URLs. That is all you need to remember, and all that needs to be taught to users - it'd be like your alternators all having a manufacturer name printed on them, except that it was misspelled or otherwise obfuscated on the fakes; there's no point checking how good or bad the fake is, just check if the name is legit or not, takes 10 seconds maximum. It can even be broken down into some kind of simple-ish rule for users to explain what the true domain name is and where in the address it appears.
Not so much a reply to you here, but a reply to the sibling posters who say that you just shouldn't commit a felony; fair enough, it's not a division like race, gender or whatever but what is linked to a felony is an arrest, and it's expected that innocent people sometimes get arrested (and put on trial) and then are cleared of any wrongdoing. What happens, then, when they just take the DNA on arrest for 'administrative reasons'? It worked in the UK, who's to say it won't work in the US?
The bit that I don't know whether to laugh or cry about is the insane amount that us Europeans get ripped off by; according to Wikipedia the US price for the 60GB model is $599 (~£325/473), the EU price is 599 (~£410/$755). Seriously, WTF? It's not even tax related, since Europe is by no means consistent from country to country on sales/import taxes.
It's the same way that Scaled Composites spent ~$25million in order to win $10million back with the original X Prize. The prize itself is a nice way to ensure some immediate payback of the development, with a definite figure given as well as a reason for a company to think "hey, we could produce [product], why didn't we ever try building one before?".
After the first payoff it's then up to the company to make money just like any other business, as Scaled Composites did by signing with Virgin Galactic. It's not a way to replace NASA's R&D, it's just a way to nudge the private sector in the right direction.
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Fair point, but perhaps people who equate clothes with professionalism (not accusing you, and it is true that we all make judgements on appearance to some degree, but anyway...) have been deemed as people who they do not feel the need to impress. If I owned a business I would certainly be inclined to think that way - maybe that's a reason that I wouldn't succeed in owning a business, but it appears that Google makes as much money as they could ever need; if they don't become too greedy they can afford to interact with the world on their own terms rather than those decided by a particular portion of society.
In essence, I see the jeans and a T-shirt as a positive representation of the company, it represents a company in which essentially arbitrary rules are examined for their usefulness and if neccessary discarded.
It's already settled actually, as are nuke, lightning, alien and monkey, among others.
That's an interesting point about the patents. Makes sense in the face of something I was thinking didn't add up too: AMD already makes a low-power, low-cost chip that seems pretty well suited to this job, yet they aren't using it.
The Australians have used a key metric to judge their leaders in the past, and I refuse to support any politicians who haven't held world records for beer drinking, thank you very much.
There must be some well informed people in the police force who disagree with these kinds of laws. Why not go after a few senators with Patriot Act based accusations, DMCA violations, online gambling (see yesterday's story) and whatever other stupid laws that some of them must be breaking. I'm sure that there must be a few public figures who are breaking these laws (hell, the rest of us probably are too); if even five or ten of the politicians who bring in laws like this were arrested under them, I think the point might be taken.
As others have said, DSL uses much wider frequency ranges than voice so a few hundred metres makes a difference. The other thing about calling to Japan is that the signal does not run over that single copper line all the way, in fact it probably runs the same distance of copper as your DSL signal (i.e. a couple of km to the local exchange where the DSLAM is and where the analog phone signals get converted to digital and sent overseas). This means that your voice and DSL signals always have the same distance to degrade over, no matter where you call to, and the DSL signals are (as others have said) more sensetive to this distance.
Google pays for terrabytes of data transfer from their servers, $random_blog pays for a few gigs from theirs; the upstream data transfer is covered. The users all pay their ISPs for access to these servers; the downstream transfer is covered. It seems to me that Verzion's customers (as in your example) are already paying for access to Google's data via Verzion's network and that Google are already paying to transfer that data from their network to Verzion's. Who is compensated by this extra charge that is not currently (other than the ISPs being paid twice in your model)?
As the other two posters have said, it would be difficult for them to add anything dubious to human-readable code without them being noticed. What I do think, though, is that if Google releases the compiler it puts them in a much better position for reading information from the compiled code; they know (roughly) how the compiler is going to output most common operations and where within those the important information that the code is presenting to the user will lie. From this they can train googlebot to read GWT generated JS pages better than any other bots can read them, putting Google at a competetive advantage when it comes to searching AJAX pages.
Fair point, and it's definitely a matter of personal taste, but have you looked at the Nokia 8910? I have one myself (I use a smartphone during the day but I need something simple and stylish for when I don't need the features) and it's absolutely excellent. It's a very visible monochrome screen (avoid the 8910i, that 'i' means it has an early model colour screen which is unresponsive and not especially visible) and it does calls, SMS and that's near enough it - no camera, no MMS, no additional software, and a battery that lasts forever (another disadvantage of the 'i' model, that old school colour display drains a disproportionate amount of power).
The only 'extra' features are bluetooth and GPRS, both of which can be switched off to save power, and I can't say I've ever turned them back on, but remote synch and the ability to use it as a laptop modem could come in handy I guess. The autoslide and titanium casing certainly turn heads when you use it, but it's a little more subtle than the "look at me" razr that everyone else seems to use.
I'd just like to add a note of agreement here. I've said more or less the same on a few phone related topics now, but I'll reiterate: basic phones don't get the news coverage that the latest new feature-phone does, but they still exist. You don't hear about the latest model because more often than not there isn't one - basic has been perfected (Nokia 1100 IMO, but plenty of others out there) and it's already cheap. There's nothing more for the media to say about basic, so let them tell us about the latest (perhaps pointless) innovations in the new round of phones.
Using 'discipline' in the way you appear to mean (such as taking away priviledges if they don't work hard) is the behavioural equivalent of rote learning scientific formulae. Working hard "so you're not punished" is no reason to work at all, and (taking a note from your sig) I wouldn't be shocked in the least to hear that unschooling would be seen as a holiday by those who are used to doing things because they are forced.
I'm not saying that a parent has to be a buddy, but if a parent can't convince their child to do something by presenting a superior argument as to why they should do that thing, maybe their position on the issue needs to be reconsidered. At the end of the day I'd say the far better parent is the one who says "You don't have to go to lessons, but I'd reccomend you get some knowledge or you'll be bored all your life." is infinitely better than the one who says "Go to lessons or I'll take away your phone/car/right to have fun.". The child is not a clone and the parent is not infallible; if they can't make the child see their point of view, why shouln't the child be allowed to do things their way, they might screw up and learn a lesson or they might just have been right all along.
Other than the 'regulation is bad' angle and the swiss bank accounts that you mention, there is also the chance that they would just try extorting the content providers anyway. If they could get the likes of Google and Yahoo paying protection money so they don't appear slow compared to MSN (for example) you still get the tier problem without it being to do with conflicts of interests.
As another poster said, it wouldn't be comparable because you can't use a photo of rootbeer for the same purpose as rootbeer (that purpose being some kind of industrial cleaner, I assume, but I digress...). What may be comparable is taking a photo of a piece of artwork or a poster and then hanging the photo on your wall - you get near enough the same product (arguments over original art aside) and use it for the same purpose without paying and without depriving anyone.
Licensing issues aside, PNG supports alpha transparency and is better for that reason alone.
I guess ZIP is probably good enough, but I was under the impression that others got better compression, which can never be bad.
Comparing WAV and MP3 is apples and oranges, but how about WAV and FLAC - half the space for the same data is excellent in my book.
AAC may be evil, but it's just a wrapper for MP4 audio, which does achieve better compression in my experience.
All in all these new formats really are beneficial; what we should be asking is how this one is beneficial to Microsoft? They wouldn't (and neither would any business) waste their money on it for the good of mankind, and if it's truly open then they can't gain any control. They wouldn't do it for PR because they don't really need it and most users don't understand the details of graphical compression enough to appreciate it anyway. They can't do it in order to drop JPEG, it's just used in too many places. I'd be intrigued to know why they are doing this.
They might have a problem with me going into non-public areas of the shop, but I don't see that it would be illegal to take all the napkins, ketchup and straws that are on the counter for me to take. As I've said, they'd be well within their rights to eject me from the shop, but not to arrest me. I don't want to sound like I'm arguing that it's the right thing to do either, it's not, but I just want to make the point that I can't see it as illegal.
Where do you get the idea I feel entitled? I actually said just above that it's "Abuse of the service definitely, and probably ruled out by any EULA that you have to pass before getting on the network", just as you say. The point I was arguing is that it would be Theft of Service, which I don't see as being possible with a free (beer) service. You might take more than you're meant to and get cut off, but it's still not theft.
How is this in any way theft, or even illegal? Abuse of the service definitely, and probably ruled out by any EULA that you have to pass before getting on the network, but you can't steal something that's free. It's not like you'd be getting the paid service for free either - what you do get may be as good or better than the paid service, but it isn't the same so they haven't "stolen" that. It'd be like taking 20 free AOL CDs from the bucket rather than the one they intend you to take; I can't see how it can be illegal.
So pay with cash and put a pay as you go SIM card in it. They'll more than likely be able to tell that you are using one of these phones by looking at the packets it's sending and from there they can find out the details of the SIM card and the phone's IMEI (serial) number, but if the SIM and the handset are then just linked to 'Random cash purchase' when they start digging there's not much they can do.
I said it about the PS3 and I'll say it again, why is it 150euro or US$130? Currency converter says that's US$190, almost exactly a 50% price increase. You can't even blame taxes, they vary from country to country but the price is fixed within the region. Why do they do this to us?
- What is the expected domain name of the site you want? (e.g. www.yahoo.com)
- Look for the first slash other than those in the "http://", what precedes it and is it as expected? (e.g.
.com)
- Having established that the TLD is correct, what precedes that and is it as expected? (e.g. yahoo)
- Whatever now comes prior to the name (www., mail., foobar.) is still part of the doman you established. (e.g. yahoo.com)
I'm sure there is some circumstance you can think of that will not be covered, but that's a quick and dirty wording of the split-second mental process you or I would go through and it shouldn't take too long for an intelligent non-techie to pick up.Interesting analogy, but there is one thing you fail to account for: phishing sites do not have legitimate URLs. That is all you need to remember, and all that needs to be taught to users - it'd be like your alternators all having a manufacturer name printed on them, except that it was misspelled or otherwise obfuscated on the fakes; there's no point checking how good or bad the fake is, just check if the name is legit or not, takes 10 seconds maximum. It can even be broken down into some kind of simple-ish rule for users to explain what the true domain name is and where in the address it appears.
Not so much a reply to you here, but a reply to the sibling posters who say that you just shouldn't commit a felony; fair enough, it's not a division like race, gender or whatever but what is linked to a felony is an arrest, and it's expected that innocent people sometimes get arrested (and put on trial) and then are cleared of any wrongdoing. What happens, then, when they just take the DNA on arrest for 'administrative reasons'? It worked in the UK, who's to say it won't work in the US?
Sorry to reply to myself but in case it wasn't obvious the 473 and 599 are euro prices, the euro sign seems to have been stripped out.
The bit that I don't know whether to laugh or cry about is the insane amount that us Europeans get ripped off by; according to Wikipedia the US price for the 60GB model is $599 (~£325/473), the EU price is 599 (~£410/$755). Seriously, WTF? It's not even tax related, since Europe is by no means consistent from country to country on sales/import taxes.
It's the same way that Scaled Composites spent ~$25million in order to win $10million back with the original X Prize. The prize itself is a nice way to ensure some immediate payback of the development, with a definite figure given as well as a reason for a company to think "hey, we could produce [product], why didn't we ever try building one before?".
After the first payoff it's then up to the company to make money just like any other business, as Scaled Composites did by signing with Virgin Galactic. It's not a way to replace NASA's R&D, it's just a way to nudge the private sector in the right direction.