The 120 Hz set is easy to find, if not quite yet entry level. The Blu-Ray disk had a very successful Black Friday.
When the ugrade bug bites, it bites hard. When my sister's family made the move up to big screen HD their PS3 video game purchases doubled and re-doubled.
The basic cable box was replaced by the HD digital recorder. Blu-Ray and Netflix and WiFi home networking were woven into the mix not long after.
If your doctor recommended a pacemaker which used open-source code that the vendor had scrutinized, tweaked, hardened, debugged, etc. so well that this pacemaker was considered the best one on the market, would you reject it because it was open source?
The design and manufacture of the pacemaker has to meet rigorous legal requirements.
It's a very expensive proposition.
If you are in this business, I don't know why you would want to trade a quarter century of experience in house for code that gives you nothing you don't already have.
Hell no, that can't be right.
The purpose of the government is to uphold every citizen's inalienable rights; and it must be as small as it can be while remaining capable of fulfilling that purpose. No more, no less
There are no restrictions on amendments to the American Constitution. No greater formal barrier to repealing the 1st Amendment than the 18th, Prohibition.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This is surely not - on its face - an argument for small, limited, government.
"Inalienable Rights" are abstractions drawn from a theory of natural law. It makes for the best in revolutionary rhetoric.
But, on deeper reflection, Americans have always preferred to "get it in writing."
IP/exists/ by virtue of artificial scarcity. Supply and demand. When supply is infinite...
Original production consumes time and money and talent in prodigious amounts. Original production is rare.
The production cost of a Pixar feature is about $200 million.
It can take ten years for story and tech to evolve to a point where commitment to production is feasible. Four years more to theatrical release.
Four hundred people will earn production credits. In the top tier there will be perhaps forty whose entire professional career will be defined by five to ten films.
Last I checked Yahoo was THE #1 Web Mail provider in the USA, and many Asian countries Yahoo Mail is also #1 or a close #2.
The geek's notions of "relevance" are not always to be trusted:
Yahoo and Facebook have struck a deal that will allow people to log into Yahoo's vast stable of sites using their Facebook credentials. Already there is an overlap between the two sites' audiences. 52 per cent of Yahoo visitors are also visiting Facebook, while 84 per cent of Facebook users also visit Yahoo sites. Yahoo still maintains one of the most popular collections of sites on the web. These include the photo sharing site Flickr, the careers site HotJobs and its self-branded sports and finance pages.Yahoo strikes deal with Facebook's Connect service
But the endgame of Internet marketing is converting browsers to buyers. Next Jump says that for every 11 people who see one of its ads, one person makes a purchase. In Web commerce generally, 1,000 to 1 is deemed a good performance. Until recently, the Next Jump e-commerce engine was entirely unbranded, working unseen underneath corporate intranets or retailer's rewards Web sites. "We were all white label," Mr. Kim said. "Nobody knew who we were." But that is starting to change. The Yahoo Deals shopping area now has a Personal Offers site, whose logo says "Powered by Next Jump" -- co-branding similar to the Intel Inside campaign of the big chip maker.The Data That Turns Browsing to Buying
I think Microsoft is being aggressive in it's strategy. Warnings, even many warnings and second chances, third chances, etc should be utilized before doing something irreversible like this
The only thing irreversible is that the modded box goes off-line and stays off-line. It cannot be used as a licensed Microsoft "media extender."
Your warranty is voided.
psychologically speaking they are angering a great many customers
Microsoft couldn't care less.
The cheaters are given the boot - to a loud round of applause.
The more attractive and desirable the online experience, the less valuable the pirated game. Windows and Office are headed in the same direction.
What would happen should Wikipedia hand over false information? Surely the courts wouldn't know any better. Can Wikipedia claim it's doesn't keep IP info?
You can't take back the lie.
You never know what will be exposed in a civil and criminal investigation.
What will come out at trial.
It makes no sense to open the door to deeper and more dangerous inquiries into your own conduct.
If you are going to post something you KNOW you shouldn't post, use a proxy from a country like China or Russia. Then China gets the blame, and you stay hidden. Com'on. This isn't that hard?
Can someone tell me why the geek thinks China won't rat him out in a heartbeat? It makes perfect political and ideological sense.
But that doesn't exclude the possibility that the Wikipedia or its managers may have a significant legal presence and exposure elsewhere.
The Wikipedia database is stored on a server in the State of Florida in the United States of America, and is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and federal law.
Protip: Find the software you want, then turn to your package manager. If you have to compile stuff by hand and don't want to, you are not running a suitible distro.
This assumes that you know everything you need and want - and everything you will ever need or want - before you commit to a particular distribution.
I pointed out a handful of people that.. we should hire,' said Horowitz. 'The engineer stopped me and said: "These people are important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"
The last time I read dialog this moralistic and improbable was in a Watchtower tract from the Seventh Day Adventists.
I just go to Ubuntu's software repositories, and I can download thousands and thousands of pieces of software that have been tested just for my operating system.
Tested - or simply packaged for distribution?
What is your guarantee that all these thousands or tens of thousands of programs have been tested in depth?
no attention seeking software that wants to embed a brand in my brain
Let me introduce you to the GIMP.
More to the point - to Firefox and Open Office.
There are many open source projects which "sell" visibility and market share - along with tee shirts and coffee nugs - because they need a lot of money and a full time staff to keep going.
They were his machines to configure, as a technology supervisor. It's not like he hacked into the machines in the dark of night to set things up on the sly.
It was not his job to make the district's network his personal hobby-horse.
In other circumstances, this would be called theft of services - and based on the district's losses - quite plausibly escalated to a felony charge.
Look, kids, it's a 1-million-dollar civics lesson. "Screw up in county-level government, and we'll sic the cops on you"
To speak the truth of it:
"Buy an ego-boost with the money we gave you to spend on our kids and we will hang you from the highest tree."
That is the civics lesson - and the geek should expect nothing less.
Instead of suing and getting angry at the world, this guy should just have the serenity to accept the things that he can't change and move on with his life.
But there can be change - and the law and the lawsuit often makes it happen.
Closed captioning and subtitles have become so much a part of home video that their absence - in a Netflix stream, for example - comes as a surprise.
According to these numbers there are three times more Linux users than iPhone users. The iPhone is generally considered a huge success. Why is Linux percieved so differently?
The iPhone has a distinctive corporate identity. The product is instantly recognizable even if you don't own one. No single Linux distribution has a strong - stable - hold on a deeply fragmented market.
The iPhone is a solid commercial success. Its future isn't dependent on the charity of some South American billionaire.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you ever consider taking what you did and using it as a reason they SHOULD hire you?
Have you ever considered slitting your own throat?
There is a difference between owning up to having done something stupid and dangerous and trying to give it a positive spin.
The first can be taken as a sign of maturity. The second that you haven't really learned anything at all.
I'm sure the people who can afford a fullHD tv@120Hz and a new player to see shrek 3D will rush to buy it. All 20 of them.
TigerDirect will gladly sell you a brand-new 46" Sony BRAVIA LCD and Sony Blu-Ray player for $1300. 1080p. 120 Hz Refresh.
Both set and player have Ethernet connectivity and together will deliver pretty much every widget and streaming media service you could name.
Sony KDL46W5150 BRAVIA W Series 46" LCD HDTV and Sony Blu-Ray Disc Player Bundle(FREE SHIPPING)
The 120 Hz set is easy to find, if not quite yet entry level. The Blu-Ray disk had a very successful Black Friday.
When the ugrade bug bites, it bites hard.
When my sister's family made the move up to big screen HD their PS3 video game purchases doubled and re-doubled.
The basic cable box was replaced by the HD digital recorder. Blu-Ray and Netflix and WiFi home networking were woven into the mix not long after.
In the case of cars, I fail to see why it would create any more of a liability issue than the DIY kit cars currently available.
What is a "kit car?"
Ford was selling the engine, drive train and chassis of the Model T to custom body builders no later than 1910.
But the dairy's new milk truck was still a "T" at heart.
How easy is it to insure the "kit car?"
Particularly when you are looking at the fundamentals: a natural gas or electric conversion, for example.
If your doctor recommended a pacemaker which used open-source code that the vendor had scrutinized, tweaked, hardened, debugged, etc. so well that this pacemaker was considered the best one on the market, would you reject it because it was open source?
The design and manufacture of the pacemaker has to meet rigorous legal requirements.
It's a very expensive proposition.
If you are in this business, I don't know why you would want to trade a quarter century of experience in house for code that gives you nothing you don't already have.
Wrong, anyone can not fix it. Any one MAY fix it.
Only the tech savvy programmer types that care enough to fix can fix it.
But who do you trust?
The programmer has the option of releasing a more adept and more malicious version of the program into the wild.
Hell no, that can't be right.
The purpose of the government is to uphold every citizen's inalienable rights; and it must be as small as it can be while remaining capable of fulfilling that purpose. No more, no less
There are no restrictions on amendments to the American Constitution. No greater formal barrier to repealing the 1st Amendment than the 18th, Prohibition.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This is surely not - on its face - an argument for small, limited, government.
"Inalienable Rights" are abstractions drawn from a theory of natural law. It makes for the best in revolutionary rhetoric.
But, on deeper reflection, Americans have always preferred to "get it in writing."
That's basically the same thing I said about the Nintendo Wii.
Nintendo has brand-name recognition.
The first choice in casual, social, family-oriented gaming.
The console was attractively priced and had an innovative new controller.
Wii Fit was a brilliant way of attracting the ever-elusive female customer to the console gaming market.
IP /exists/ by virtue of artificial scarcity. Supply and demand. When supply is infinite...
Original production consumes time and money and talent in prodigious amounts. Original production is rare.
The production cost of a Pixar feature is about $200 million.
It can take ten years for story and tech to evolve to a point where commitment to production is feasible. Four years more to theatrical release.
Four hundred people will earn production credits. In the top tier there will be perhaps forty whose entire professional career will be defined by five to ten films.
With such changes Google makes it will only help you get better search results
Better results -
or results custom-tailored to fit your beliefs and prejudices? That is - after all - the quick and dirty way to get the add clicks.
Think about how the Borg icon and stained glass window shapes every story posted here about Slashdot.
Is that really what you want from a search engine?
It makes a useful precedent if you want to shape results for other reasons. To appease the government of China, for example.
Last I checked Yahoo was THE #1 Web Mail provider in the USA, and many Asian countries Yahoo Mail is also #1 or a close #2.
The geek's notions of "relevance" are not always to be trusted:
Yahoo and Facebook have struck a deal that will allow people to log into Yahoo's vast stable of sites using their Facebook credentials. Already there is an overlap between the two sites' audiences.
52 per cent of Yahoo visitors are also visiting Facebook, while 84 per cent of Facebook users also visit Yahoo sites.
Yahoo still maintains one of the most popular collections of sites on the web. These include the photo sharing site Flickr, the careers site HotJobs and its self-branded sports and finance pages.Yahoo strikes deal with Facebook's Connect service
But the endgame of Internet marketing is converting browsers to buyers. Next Jump says that for every 11 people who see one of its ads, one person makes a purchase. In Web commerce generally, 1,000 to 1 is deemed a good performance. Until recently, the Next Jump e-commerce engine was entirely unbranded, working unseen underneath corporate intranets or retailer's rewards Web sites. "We were all white label," Mr. Kim said. "Nobody knew who we were."
But that is starting to change. The Yahoo Deals shopping area now has a Personal Offers site, whose logo says "Powered by Next Jump" -- co-branding similar to the Intel Inside campaign of the big chip maker. The Data That Turns Browsing to Buying
they are "Temporarily out of stock".
They can't be selling all that badly then...
That depends on how many phones they had in stock before running out of stock.
I think Microsoft is being aggressive in it's strategy. Warnings, even many warnings and second chances, third chances, etc should be utilized before doing something irreversible like this
The only thing irreversible is that the modded box goes off-line and stays off-line. It cannot be used as a licensed Microsoft "media extender."
Your warranty is voided.
psychologically speaking they are angering a great many customers
Microsoft couldn't care less.
The cheaters are given the boot - to a loud round of applause.
The more attractive and desirable the online experience, the less valuable the pirated game. Windows and Office are headed in the same direction.
What would happen should Wikipedia hand over false information? Surely the courts wouldn't know any better. Can Wikipedia claim it's doesn't keep IP info?
You can't take back the lie.
You never know what will be exposed in a civil and criminal investigation.
What will come out at trial.
It makes no sense to open the door to deeper and more dangerous inquiries into your own conduct.
If you are going to post something you KNOW you shouldn't post, use a proxy from a country like China or Russia. Then China gets the blame, and you stay hidden. Com'on. This isn't that hard?
Can someone tell me why the geek thinks China won't rat him out in a heartbeat? It makes perfect political and ideological sense.
The servers are in Florida.
But that doesn't exclude the possibility that the Wikipedia or its managers may have a significant legal presence and exposure elsewhere.
The Wikipedia database is stored on a server in the State of Florida in the United States of America, and is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and federal law.
Jurisdiction and legality of content
That's why you don't just go to Walmart and pick up a Linux PC (oops...nevermind.). It's a hard lesson to learn
Your link is out of date.
Walmart shed its Linux inventory quite some time back.
Protip: Find the software you want, then turn to your package manager. If you have to compile stuff by hand and don't want to, you are not running a suitible distro.
This assumes that you know everything you need and want - and everything you will ever need or want - before you commit to a particular distribution.
Obscurity is job security.
I pointed out a handful of people that.. we should hire,' said Horowitz. 'The engineer stopped me and said: "These people are important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"
The last time I read dialog this moralistic and improbable was in a Watchtower tract from the Seventh Day Adventists.
I just go to Ubuntu's software repositories, and I can download thousands and thousands of pieces of software that have been tested just for my operating system.
Tested - or simply packaged for distribution?
What is your guarantee that all these thousands or tens of thousands of programs have been tested in depth?
no attention seeking software that wants to embed a brand in my brain
Let me introduce you to the GIMP.
More to the point - to Firefox and Open Office.
There are many open source projects which "sell" visibility and market share - along with tee shirts and coffee nugs - because they need a lot of money and a full time staff to keep going.
Only a school district or the government could have taken 10 years to find a CPU hog running on 5,000 computers.
He's the IT guy.
The fox in the hen house.
-and don't try to sell me on the idea this sort of thing never happens in small business. Because I ain't buying.
They were his machines to configure, as a technology supervisor. It's not like he hacked into the machines in the dark of night to set things up on the sly.
It was not his job to make the district's network his personal hobby-horse.
In other circumstances, this would be called theft of services - and based on the district's losses - quite plausibly escalated to a felony charge.
Look, kids, it's a 1-million-dollar civics lesson. "Screw up in county-level government, and we'll sic the cops on you"
To speak the truth of it:
"Buy an ego-boost with the money we gave you to spend on our kids and we will hang you from the highest tree."
That is the civics lesson - and the geek should expect nothing less.
Instead of suing and getting angry at the world, this guy should just have the serenity to accept the things that he can't change and move on with his life.
But there can be change - and the law and the lawsuit often makes it happen.
Closed captioning and subtitles have become so much a part of home video that their absence - in a Netflix stream, for example - comes as a surprise.
According to these numbers there are three times more Linux users than iPhone users. The iPhone is generally considered a huge success. Why is Linux percieved so differently?
The iPhone has a distinctive corporate identity. The product is instantly recognizable even if you don't own one. No single Linux distribution has a strong - stable - hold on a deeply fragmented market.
The iPhone is a solid commercial success. Its future isn't dependent on the charity of some South American billionaire.
Classic authoritarian mistake of thinking, if I just kill off some dudes pet project, then he will do exactly what I want.
What you want is to see him dead and buried.
But it may be enough to get his pet projects removed from the default Ubuntu distro.
Say good-bye to the GIMP.
Say hello to light-weight photo editing apps with an attractive and serviceable UI. Something along the lines of Paint.NET.
Shed the GIMP's excess baggage along the way.