Sony adds some good money to each console, hoping to recuperate in games and movies.
That's Sony's own fault for having a sucky business model. It's their own decision to sell PS3s at a loss. They didn't have to do that.
However, if Sony has presented these consoles as being able to run Linux as well as play games, and they take away that ability, then by any decent standard, Sony owes customers who bought their PS3 for that ability a refund. They're changing the advertised abilities of their product after the sale has happened. That's not right, and deserves to be illegal in any jurisdiction.
How wouldn't they? There are already loads of browsers available from the App Store. Now Opera has joined them. There's really nothing strange at all about this. Apple doesn't force people to use WebKit.
Yes they do. All those browsers you see in the app store all use Webkit. Opera is the first that uses a different renderer.
The reason why Apple allows this is apparently that Opera Mini doesn't execute javascript on the iPhone, but executes it on Opera's server instead.
You're missing the point. You can easily switch ISP, you cannot easily switch country.
Man, you've got me seeing a future where people have a nationality contract with a government. And you can't apply for a nationality with a different country until your two year (or longer) contract is up.
"What? A three-strikes law? I'm switching to a different nationality provider!"
1) Google pays them. Google then starts getting invoices from every ISP around, from the little mom-and-pops to the tier-1s demanding a cut of the pie.
2) Google cuts them off so that the above doesn't happen. These ISPs customers start screaming "Why am I paying you for access to the Internet, when you aren't providing it?" and they start switching to other providers that aren't pulling this.
3) Google says: "Okay, we'll charge your users for access to our broadband content, and then give that money to you. By the way, since they're your users and you already have a financial relationship with them, could you help us by handling the financial side of this? You can keep the money. No need to get us involved at all, in fact. Enjoy your extra money."
I think it's the other way around. Car manufacturers want money from popular shops and restaurants because they make so much money from people who go there by car.
Not when the customer is locked into the contract with the ISP for a 12 or 18 month term.
But doesn't that contract specify that the ISP has to provide internet access? If they intentionally start blocking access to parts of the net, shouldn't customers be within their right to consider the contract void? After flooding the helpdesk for a couple of weeks, at least?
This starts to look like a circular dependency. We might as well not charge anybody and thereby save money on accounting.
Exactly. Isn't everybody benefiting from internet already? If they think they're getting a bad deal, why don't they quit the internet business and find something more profitable?
Because they're getting a pretty good deal. They're just overestimating their power.
Technically Google doesn't buy lots of bandwidth nowadays, the way people might imagine. They instead hook directly to many peers and at the backbones.
That kind of network isn't free either. Google pays for its bandwidth by building their own network. They still pay.
Maybe not the content, but they're providing a very expensive service. The huge amount of storage space, the development that goes into the platform and the data centers operating all over the world are what makes youtube so usable.
Same with telcos. The communication lines they provide from my home to internet exchange centers and from there to all over the word, are what makes internet so usable. It's still dumb pipes, though. Like Google, they provide capacity rather than content.
The business models are different, though: telcos are paid by their users, Google is paid by advertisers, so it can be free for users. If telcos start changing their business model, I expect my internet connection to be free.
I think the reasoning of the ISP's is not that Google is causing their pipes to get clogged up, but that Google is succesful with their services because the ISP's are providing their customers with bandwidth. If they didn't provide the bandwidth, Google wouldn't even exist.
If they didn't provide the bandwidth, they wouldn't exist, as their customers would switch to their competitors who did provide that bandwidth.
They're trying to get a free ride off Google's success, when all they really are is "dumb pipes". Google doesn't reduce them to that, it's what they are by nature, and for some reason they desperately wish they were something else.
Wonder how long would it take to develop OpenSource engines of this complexity? Why are there none?
Probably because it takes a long time and a lot of investment to develop an engine like this. And commercial business models for open source games tend to be problematic.
Being able to use it for free during development is definitely an advantage. If you only have to pay when you publish a game, that makes the development of games a lot more accessible.
True, however you're supposed to stop when the light turns yellow unless you can't do so safely. The yellow light is just meant as a margin of error before the traffic starts going in the other direction. You're most certainly not supposed to count on the length of the yellow to clear the intersection before the red light.
So why remove the margin of error by having the yellow light too short?
And unexpected things can still happen while crossing the intersection. I recently spoke to someone who ended up in the following conundrum: at an intersection (that had a red-light camera), he drove through a green light when the car in front of him suddenly braked. The guy I spoke to braked too, and came to a stop just after the line. By the time he could continue, his light had turned red (no idea if he could see that or if he just assumed it). He was standing in a dangerous location, so he couldn't remain where he was. If he crossed the intersection, he'd probably get fined by the red-light camera. With nobody behind him, he decided to reverse until he was standing in front of the traffic light again. Camera takes a picture, he gets a fine, he complains about the fine, arguing that he was driving backwards to get in a safe position after an emergency brake, and the photo should show his white read lights, proving his point. His appeal was denied, so he'd have to go to court to avoid the fine. He decided to pay anyway.
So what do you do in a situation like that? Always wait until the intersection is completely clear before you start to cross? That's going to hold up traffic a bit too much at busy intersections. The stupid thing about the situation is: if he'd stayed at the dangerous location, he wouldn't have been fined. He tries to make the situation safer, and he gets punished for it.
Considering that old franchises like The Lord of the Rings and even Sherlock Holmes are still making money for their rights holders thanks to copyright extensions,
Even gaming, if you aren't massively overclocking a good tower heatsink is good enough to run with little air flow. The main issue is the video card, however one would not hear the video card typically over sound unless the ambient temperature is high.
The Arctic Cooling Accellero S1 is an excellent passive cooler for many graphics cards. A few years ago at least, when I got mine for my ATI HD3850.
For most games, you really don't need the latest power guzzling high-end graphics card. I'm a gamer and I'm quite happy with this setup (although I stay away from high-powered FPS games).
Another issue with any system, not only game systems is the sound of the hard drive. Many hard drives, especially older hard drives become loud over time. It doesn't matter how much you dampen the vibration. The best results depend on getting the right model (some Samsung and WD are popular right now if I'm up to date)
They were when I got my machine, at least. And there's the WD Green Power line that's quieter and uses less power (funny how those two often go together) than most harddrives. For real quiet, you'll need a SSD instead of a HD.
The noisiest part of my machine in the optic drive, and there's just no solution for that, except making it rotate more slowly. Fast moving parts make a lot more noise than slow moving ones.
Adobe has always been more about good editing tools, rather than runtime platforms. If everybody starts dropping flash support, why would they cling desperately to the flash plugin? Having their tools export to HTML5 is a smart move. Keeps them relevant, and they won't have to support their own runtime platform anymore. Instead, they'll have to compete, which is good news for everybody else.
Why not use the effort in creating articles in an entirely new wiki to instead improve or add articles for Wikipedia?
Because your work is likely to be deleted. Not every little tech company meets wikipedia's notability standards.
A few years ago, I added a bunch of pages on CMSs, and especially open source enterprise CMSs, to the Dutch wikipedia. Some of those were immediately deleted because it wasn't interesting enough and few other articles linked to them, although I imagine a lot of people would be interested in that sort of info. A specialised tech wiki would definitely help out there.
Of course it'd be nice if that info was also added to wikipedia, but with the occasional delete frenzy there, it's nice to have the same info available elsewhere.
It'd feel odd to teach a group of old people how to access information about killing themselves.
But that's the point of the freedom of information - anyone should have the right to seek it out and access it.
Whether a controlled and dignified end to you life should be a moral right may be open to discussion, but at least people should be able to inform themselves on the issue, right?
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH these supporters cost them real money.
Sony adds some good money to each console, hoping to recuperate in games and movies.
That's Sony's own fault for having a sucky business model. It's their own decision to sell PS3s at a loss. They didn't have to do that.
However, if Sony has presented these consoles as being able to run Linux as well as play games, and they take away that ability, then by any decent standard, Sony owes customers who bought their PS3 for that ability a refund. They're changing the advertised abilities of their product after the sale has happened. That's not right, and deserves to be illegal in any jurisdiction.
best part about small claims court is that most won't allow lawyers in the room to argue, so you stand a better chance.
This is a great idea! Ban lawyers from court rooms.
How wouldn't they? There are already loads of browsers available from the App Store. Now Opera has joined them. There's really nothing strange at all about this. Apple doesn't force people to use WebKit.
Yes they do. All those browsers you see in the app store all use Webkit. Opera is the first that uses a different renderer.
The reason why Apple allows this is apparently that Opera Mini doesn't execute javascript on the iPhone, but executes it on Opera's server instead.
You're missing the point. You can easily switch ISP, you cannot easily switch country.
Man, you've got me seeing a future where people have a nationality contract with a government. And you can't apply for a nationality with a different country until your two year (or longer) contract is up.
"What? A three-strikes law? I'm switching to a different nationality provider!"
At least in Europe, mobile networks for example have not moved to unlimited flat rate plans.
Don't generalise. I live in Europe and pay my European mobile network provider a flat rate for unlimited data.
1) Google pays them. Google then starts getting invoices from every ISP around, from the little mom-and-pops to the tier-1s demanding a cut of the pie.
2) Google cuts them off so that the above doesn't happen. These ISPs customers start screaming "Why am I paying you for access to the Internet, when you aren't providing it?" and they start switching to other providers that aren't pulling this.
3) Google says: "Okay, we'll charge your users for access to our broadband content, and then give that money to you. By the way, since they're your users and you already have a financial relationship with them, could you help us by handling the financial side of this? You can keep the money. No need to get us involved at all, in fact. Enjoy your extra money."
I think it's the other way around. Car manufacturers want money from popular shops and restaurants because they make so much money from people who go there by car.
La Quadrature du Net might be interested, or they might know an organisation that is.
Not when the customer is locked into the contract with the ISP for a 12 or 18 month term.
But doesn't that contract specify that the ISP has to provide internet access? If they intentionally start blocking access to parts of the net, shouldn't customers be within their right to consider the contract void? After flooding the helpdesk for a couple of weeks, at least?
This starts to look like a circular dependency. We might as well not charge anybody and thereby save money on accounting.
Exactly. Isn't everybody benefiting from internet already? If they think they're getting a bad deal, why don't they quit the internet business and find something more profitable?
Because they're getting a pretty good deal. They're just overestimating their power.
Technically Google doesn't buy lots of bandwidth nowadays, the way people might imagine. They instead hook directly to many peers and at the backbones.
That kind of network isn't free either. Google pays for its bandwidth by building their own network. They still pay.
Maybe not the content, but they're providing a very expensive service. The huge amount of storage space, the development that goes into the platform and the data centers operating all over the world are what makes youtube so usable.
Same with telcos. The communication lines they provide from my home to internet exchange centers and from there to all over the word, are what makes internet so usable. It's still dumb pipes, though. Like Google, they provide capacity rather than content.
The business models are different, though: telcos are paid by their users, Google is paid by advertisers, so it can be free for users. If telcos start changing their business model, I expect my internet connection to be free.
I think the reasoning of the ISP's is not that Google is causing their pipes to get clogged up, but that Google is succesful with their services because the ISP's are providing their customers with bandwidth. If they didn't provide the bandwidth, Google wouldn't even exist.
If they didn't provide the bandwidth, they wouldn't exist, as their customers would switch to their competitors who did provide that bandwidth.
They're trying to get a free ride off Google's success, when all they really are is "dumb pipes". Google doesn't reduce them to that, it's what they are by nature, and for some reason they desperately wish they were something else.
Wonder how long would it take to develop OpenSource engines of this complexity?
Why are there none?
Probably because it takes a long time and a lot of investment to develop an engine like this. And commercial business models for open source games tend to be problematic.
Being able to use it for free during development is definitely an advantage. If you only have to pay when you publish a game, that makes the development of games a lot more accessible.
True, however you're supposed to stop when the light turns yellow unless you can't do so safely. The yellow light is just meant as a margin of error before the traffic starts going in the other direction. You're most certainly not supposed to count on the length of the yellow to clear the intersection before the red light.
So why remove the margin of error by having the yellow light too short?
And unexpected things can still happen while crossing the intersection. I recently spoke to someone who ended up in the following conundrum: at an intersection (that had a red-light camera), he drove through a green light when the car in front of him suddenly braked. The guy I spoke to braked too, and came to a stop just after the line. By the time he could continue, his light had turned red (no idea if he could see that or if he just assumed it). He was standing in a dangerous location, so he couldn't remain where he was. If he crossed the intersection, he'd probably get fined by the red-light camera. With nobody behind him, he decided to reverse until he was standing in front of the traffic light again. Camera takes a picture, he gets a fine, he complains about the fine, arguing that he was driving backwards to get in a safe position after an emergency brake, and the photo should show his white read lights, proving his point. His appeal was denied, so he'd have to go to court to avoid the fine. He decided to pay anyway.
So what do you do in a situation like that? Always wait until the intersection is completely clear before you start to cross? That's going to hold up traffic a bit too much at busy intersections. The stupid thing about the situation is: if he'd stayed at the dangerous location, he wouldn't have been fined. He tries to make the situation safer, and he gets punished for it.
If you're into films, you will probably wonder why his lead actors constantly get ill or die.
Gilliam's curse is relatively recent. Post-Twelve Monkeys, at least. But lately, his lead actors have a tendency to get ill or die.
Considering that old franchises like The Lord of the Rings and even Sherlock Holmes are still making money for their rights holders thanks to copyright extensions,
Sherlock Holmes? Wasn't he pre-Disney?
Even gaming, if you aren't massively overclocking a good tower heatsink is good enough to run with little air flow. The main issue is the video card, however one would not hear the video card typically over sound unless the ambient temperature is high.
The Arctic Cooling Accellero S1 is an excellent passive cooler for many graphics cards. A few years ago at least, when I got mine for my ATI HD3850.
For most games, you really don't need the latest power guzzling high-end graphics card. I'm a gamer and I'm quite happy with this setup (although I stay away from high-powered FPS games).
Another issue with any system, not only game systems is the sound of the hard drive. Many hard drives, especially older hard drives become loud over time. It doesn't matter how much you dampen the vibration. The best results depend on getting the right model (some Samsung and WD are popular right now if I'm up to date)
They were when I got my machine, at least. And there's the WD Green Power line that's quieter and uses less power (funny how those two often go together) than most harddrives. For real quiet, you'll need a SSD instead of a HD.
The noisiest part of my machine in the optic drive, and there's just no solution for that, except making it rotate more slowly. Fast moving parts make a lot more noise than slow moving ones.
Adobe has always been more about good editing tools, rather than runtime platforms. If everybody starts dropping flash support, why would they cling desperately to the flash plugin? Having their tools export to HTML5 is a smart move. Keeps them relevant, and they won't have to support their own runtime platform anymore. Instead, they'll have to compete, which is good news for everybody else.
Why not use the effort in creating articles in an entirely new wiki to instead improve or add articles for Wikipedia?
Because your work is likely to be deleted. Not every little tech company meets wikipedia's notability standards.
A few years ago, I added a bunch of pages on CMSs, and especially open source enterprise CMSs, to the Dutch wikipedia. Some of those were immediately deleted because it wasn't interesting enough and few other articles linked to them, although I imagine a lot of people would be interested in that sort of info. A specialised tech wiki would definitely help out there.
Of course it'd be nice if that info was also added to wikipedia, but with the occasional delete frenzy there, it's nice to have the same info available elsewhere.
I have mod points but no idea how to mod this. It's part insightful, part flamebait.
Yes, Microsoft has tons of excellent programmers. Then again, good FOSS projects also have some really good programmers.
The real difference is: in FOSS projects, the programmers call the shots, instead of the managers. This can be both good and bad.
It'd feel odd to teach a group of old people how to access information about killing themselves.
But that's the point of the freedom of information - anyone should have the right to seek it out and access it.
Whether a controlled and dignified end to you life should be a moral right may be open to discussion, but at least people should be able to inform themselves on the issue, right?
Based off of those numbers from NASA the cost per seat ranges from $7 million to $57 million.
But how easy is it for the shuttle to deploy a satellite and transport people to the ISS on the same mission?
It's a no-brainer when you want to add new modules to the ISS, but otherwise it seems rather wasteful.