Ah, but both Apple and Nintendo are worried about the same problem: commoditization of hardware. That's why Apple so tightly controls the iOS platform, and why Nintendo doesn't sell their games for anything besides Nintendo hardware. Nintendo and Apple seem like very unlikely bedfellows for that exact reason. They're much more likely to be competing viciously against each other than working together.
I find Linux to be an absolutely wonderful system to run a server on and to develop with. If I ever need to set up a simple server for any purpose, Linux can handle it without problems. You just set it up and leave it alone.
The desktop experience, on the other hand, just isn't there. Drivers are still too finicky. I have to tweak more things than I prefer to get it to work the way I want. Ubuntu wasn't bad until they jumped onto this whole "Unity" concept, which I don't care for at all. I'm pretty accustomed to using a Windows desktop and I don't see Linux offering any particular advantages in terms of desktop productivity. At best, it is equal to Windows to Mac. Once you factor in games and driver compatibility, though, this doesn't hold true.
I like Linux, and I think there is a viable niche for it on the desktop: low-power, very cheap computers, perhaps sold or given away in developing countries. It is flexible enough to run on highly limited hardware. Those are real strengths, but there is just nothing about it that makes it good enough to supplant Windows for most people. It doesn't offer a "killer app."
The Linux world has been working on the desktop for over 10 years now. That's about as long as Mac OS X has been around. It still has an utterly pathetic level of desktop penetration. When is it time to say "enough is enough"?
It is possible that dedicated portable consoles might "go away" in favor of smartphones. I understand the Nintendo 3DS hasn't sold that well, and you could speculate that it's a result either of a lousy/poorly marketed device OR an overall trend away from dedicated portable gaming devices.
Yeah, but Apple basically owns the tablet market right now with the iPad. While they've always had an edge in the smartphone market, they can't realistically kill all their competition there. In the world of tablets, however, they run the show and if they can keep everyone else out, so much the better (for Apple.)
It actually puzzles me why they don't offer a simple set of tiered plans, based on their aggregate usage statistics:
1. Occasional User Plan. Not many minutes, not much data. Cheap plan useful primarily for calls of 1-2 minutes at a time, emergencies, and occasional email checking. This could be in the $10-15 range. 2. Regular User Plan. A good number of minutes, unlimited texting, a modest amount of data. Suitable for more calling, occasional video/music streaming, etc. Not sure what this should cost, but maybe $20-30, or higher if it's got more wiggle room. This plan should be designed to cover the usage of, say, 2/3 of all customers. 3. Power User Plan. More minutes, more data. Obviously, this should cost more. $40-60 range? It should cover at least the bottom 95% of all users, and be designed accordingly. And that brings us to... 4. Unlimited User Plan. Do absolutely anything you want, no restrictions. Charge a fuckload for it, whatever. It can be there for the people who want it and the price will discourage those who don't have a legitimate need for massive amounts of usage.
They have poor customer service precisely so they won't have to deal with with the "walking bags of money." They just want you to fork it over and leave them alone. Customer service departments are understaffed because they're cost centers, and once you're talking to a person their #1 objective is to just get you off the phone as quickly as possible. Companies the size of Verizon don't have the staff to provide strong customer service--they just don't. They don't want to spend money on it, either.
And why should they care about loyalty? They've got you locked into a contract. You can pay the termination fee and go to AT&T and deal with the same shit. I have Sprint, and while their customer service isn't terrible, their billing department is completely inept and wait times on hold are so bad I never call them unless I have absolutely no other choice.
All the telcos are huge and have failed to invest enough to provide good customer service. They could, but it would cut down profits and take money away from other things--or raise your bill, which customers would certainly go apeshit about again.
Basically, telcos have no reason to change the way they do anything. There are only a handful of them in the US and they don't differ much in how shitty they are.
Exactly right. Google's users are the product. Google provides all the services it does in order to attract users, thus show more ads, thus make more money.
Where they have excelled is in finding innovative ways to integrate and provide information, as well as target ads more precisely. The services Google provides are valuable and useful and they could have gone down the road of charging money for all of them. Instead, they are mostly free and with some you can pay (relatively small) fees to get extra features and storage.
Google's got everyone else beat in the ad-supported service world, but only because they provide excellent services--not because they show great ads.
I for one am sick of blue states subsidizing red ones. It's the wealthy, populous, urbanized blue states that by and large support the sparse, poor, rural red ones, in everything from social services to farm subsidies to defense contracts.
It's time for Blue America to take its ball and go home and leave Red America to rot.
Yup. Only $10 billion of the cuts are slated to happen in the next 2 years. The rest have been kicked down the road, which in political terms means they most likely will not happen. Even the "automatic" cuts can be forestalled with additional legislation, and there will be a lot of political horse-trading to make it happen.
Governments can accumulate debt indefinitely, so long as the ratio of debt-to-GDP is kept manageable. There are various reasons this works, but most importantly:
1. Governments have the power to collect taxes. 2. In the long run, the economy is always expanding. 3. Governments don't "die" and then leave a bunch of obligations to be paid by the estate. (Sometimes this actually does happen, but not in stable, developed nations.)
I'm sure it makes people feel better to think their vast oversimplifications are correct because gosh darn it, it's just so simple, but reality doesn't work that way.
By "bomb" I mean "didn't sell enough copies to make back its budget." It was a very expensive game and didn't sell nearly well enough to break even, much less turn a profit. It was a great game, the market for it was just too small. It pretty much destroyed the genre as the industry took from it, "space combat doesn't sell!" Obviously there have been other space combat games since then, but the genre has been substantially quieter since FS2.
Given that all modern OSes abstract hardware access, you're right, this should be totally doable.
For what it's worth, Windows 7 lets you control sound volume on a per-application basis--even muting whole applications, if that be your wish. Doesn't help with tabbed applications like browsers, though, where you might want to let some tabs play by not others. A finer level of granularity would be useful here, built into the browser itself.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
Democrats had little control over the situation until 2008, and since then have been frequently stymied by intransigent Republicans. Let's also not forget that Republicans controlled the executive branch for 20 of the last 30 years. Control of Congress has vacillated back and forth though Republicans essentially had full control of the US government from 2003 through 2006.
Democrats are hardly innocent and they have done plenty of things I don't care for, but let's not pretend they are equally bad. Republicans have systematically sold out the middle class over the last 30 years. They didn't care one whit about budget deficits until Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, and even once they started caring about deficits it was only insofar as they could gut social programs, and tax increases of any kind are completely off the table.
But I'm sure someone will be along to claim both parties are equally bad, rather than acknowledge the reality that one party is terrible and the other isn't quite as terrible. Throw out the whole system? Good luck with that. Stay home and don't vote at all? Well, thanks for doing absolutely nothing.
I don't anticipate I'll ever see a genuine Progressive run for the Oval Office, so I'll take what I can get. Anyone who votes for Republicans at this point is either wealthy and voting their rational self-interest, or a bigoted/deranged lunatic with a memory shorter than a goldfish.
There was a time when I'd soften my language, but what the hell? Republicans make no bones about the hatefulness of their ideology, so fuck 'em.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Sovereign debt is absolutely nothing like private debt, and only a fool would compare the two. Beyond the fact that it is borrowing money (and thus must be repaid) they have virtually nothing in common.
Families have limited assets that they can mortgage and sell to pay off debts. Families have limited incomes and limited options for expanding said income.
Governments do not have these problems. A government can lay taxes and print money. Governments also don't "die." In the long run, a country's "income" (GDP) is always expanding. This means the total debt load is not important, only the ratio of debt to GDP matters. As long as that ratio is kept to a manageable level and your interest rates are low, you can keep on borrowing.
By the way, current interest rates are near zero percent, and if you factor in inflation the real interest rate is negative. It would be stupid not to borrow as much as you can possibly get away with under terms like that. Debt and taxes are not the US' problem. Our real problem is being embroiled in a liquidity trap.
Republicans have fucked this country six ways to Sunday and voters have ordered them to fuck us some more because they don't have a clue about, well, anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but both Apple and Nintendo are worried about the same problem: commoditization of hardware. That's why Apple so tightly controls the iOS platform, and why Nintendo doesn't sell their games for anything besides Nintendo hardware. Nintendo and Apple seem like very unlikely bedfellows for that exact reason. They're much more likely to be competing viciously against each other than working together.
Standby mode?! What is this black magic?!?!?!
Well said.
I find Linux to be an absolutely wonderful system to run a server on and to develop with. If I ever need to set up a simple server for any purpose, Linux can handle it without problems. You just set it up and leave it alone.
The desktop experience, on the other hand, just isn't there. Drivers are still too finicky. I have to tweak more things than I prefer to get it to work the way I want. Ubuntu wasn't bad until they jumped onto this whole "Unity" concept, which I don't care for at all. I'm pretty accustomed to using a Windows desktop and I don't see Linux offering any particular advantages in terms of desktop productivity. At best, it is equal to Windows to Mac. Once you factor in games and driver compatibility, though, this doesn't hold true.
I like Linux, and I think there is a viable niche for it on the desktop: low-power, very cheap computers, perhaps sold or given away in developing countries. It is flexible enough to run on highly limited hardware. Those are real strengths, but there is just nothing about it that makes it good enough to supplant Windows for most people. It doesn't offer a "killer app."
The Linux world has been working on the desktop for over 10 years now. That's about as long as Mac OS X has been around. It still has an utterly pathetic level of desktop penetration. When is it time to say "enough is enough"?
How the fuck did this get "Insightful" unless a bunch of people didn't even bother to read the announcement and see that Google is open sourcing it?
Jesus Christ, Slashdot.
It is possible that dedicated portable consoles might "go away" in favor of smartphones. I understand the Nintendo 3DS hasn't sold that well, and you could speculate that it's a result either of a lousy/poorly marketed device OR an overall trend away from dedicated portable gaming devices.
(Not meant as a Nintendo bash. I like Nintendo. :)
THAT'S THE JOKE. </Wolfcastle>
Yeah, but Apple basically owns the tablet market right now with the iPad. While they've always had an edge in the smartphone market, they can't realistically kill all their competition there. In the world of tablets, however, they run the show and if they can keep everyone else out, so much the better (for Apple.)
It actually puzzles me why they don't offer a simple set of tiered plans, based on their aggregate usage statistics:
1. Occasional User Plan. Not many minutes, not much data. Cheap plan useful primarily for calls of 1-2 minutes at a time, emergencies, and occasional email checking. This could be in the $10-15 range.
2. Regular User Plan. A good number of minutes, unlimited texting, a modest amount of data. Suitable for more calling, occasional video/music streaming, etc. Not sure what this should cost, but maybe $20-30, or higher if it's got more wiggle room. This plan should be designed to cover the usage of, say, 2/3 of all customers.
3. Power User Plan. More minutes, more data. Obviously, this should cost more. $40-60 range? It should cover at least the bottom 95% of all users, and be designed accordingly. And that brings us to...
4. Unlimited User Plan. Do absolutely anything you want, no restrictions. Charge a fuckload for it, whatever. It can be there for the people who want it and the price will discourage those who don't have a legitimate need for massive amounts of usage.
They have poor customer service precisely so they won't have to deal with with the "walking bags of money." They just want you to fork it over and leave them alone. Customer service departments are understaffed because they're cost centers, and once you're talking to a person their #1 objective is to just get you off the phone as quickly as possible. Companies the size of Verizon don't have the staff to provide strong customer service--they just don't. They don't want to spend money on it, either.
And why should they care about loyalty? They've got you locked into a contract. You can pay the termination fee and go to AT&T and deal with the same shit. I have Sprint, and while their customer service isn't terrible, their billing department is completely inept and wait times on hold are so bad I never call them unless I have absolutely no other choice.
All the telcos are huge and have failed to invest enough to provide good customer service. They could, but it would cut down profits and take money away from other things--or raise your bill, which customers would certainly go apeshit about again.
Basically, telcos have no reason to change the way they do anything. There are only a handful of them in the US and they don't differ much in how shitty they are.
I believe Sprint's practice in this area is to simply add the tethering charge to your bill if they find out you're tethering without paying. :)
Exactly right. Google's users are the product. Google provides all the services it does in order to attract users, thus show more ads, thus make more money.
Where they have excelled is in finding innovative ways to integrate and provide information, as well as target ads more precisely. The services Google provides are valuable and useful and they could have gone down the road of charging money for all of them. Instead, they are mostly free and with some you can pay (relatively small) fees to get extra features and storage.
Google's got everyone else beat in the ad-supported service world, but only because they provide excellent services--not because they show great ads.
I'm not sure what you mean, although Polar Express might fit the bill. The human actors in that were mocapped but it was a 100% CGI film.
I for one am sick of blue states subsidizing red ones. It's the wealthy, populous, urbanized blue states that by and large support the sparse, poor, rural red ones, in everything from social services to farm subsidies to defense contracts.
It's time for Blue America to take its ball and go home and leave Red America to rot.
Yup. Only $10 billion of the cuts are slated to happen in the next 2 years. The rest have been kicked down the road, which in political terms means they most likely will not happen. Even the "automatic" cuts can be forestalled with additional legislation, and there will be a lot of political horse-trading to make it happen.
Sorry, but all the above is wrong.
Governments can accumulate debt indefinitely, so long as the ratio of debt-to-GDP is kept manageable. There are various reasons this works, but most importantly:
1. Governments have the power to collect taxes.
2. In the long run, the economy is always expanding.
3. Governments don't "die" and then leave a bunch of obligations to be paid by the estate. (Sometimes this actually does happen, but not in stable, developed nations.)
I'm sure it makes people feel better to think their vast oversimplifications are correct because gosh darn it, it's just so simple, but reality doesn't work that way.
By "bomb" I mean "didn't sell enough copies to make back its budget." It was a very expensive game and didn't sell nearly well enough to break even, much less turn a profit. It was a great game, the market for it was just too small. It pretty much destroyed the genre as the industry took from it, "space combat doesn't sell!" Obviously there have been other space combat games since then, but the genre has been substantially quieter since FS2.
I have, several times. I corrected various little things. Nothing that should've been remotely controversial. No account or anything like that.
Result? Reversion, every time.
Fuck it.
You can blame Freespace 2 for that. It was a huge bomb and basically killed the genre.
Sure she is. She wants that cold, hard cash and will say whatever it takes to keep it comin'.
West Virginia is for brother-cousins and uncle-dads.
Did you expect it to be...
Given that all modern OSes abstract hardware access, you're right, this should be totally doable.
For what it's worth, Windows 7 lets you control sound volume on a per-application basis--even muting whole applications, if that be your wish. Doesn't help with tabbed applications like browsers, though, where you might want to let some tabs play by not others. A finer level of granularity would be useful here, built into the browser itself.
Democrats had little control over the situation until 2008, and since then have been frequently stymied by intransigent Republicans. Let's also not forget that Republicans controlled the executive branch for 20 of the last 30 years. Control of Congress has vacillated back and forth though Republicans essentially had full control of the US government from 2003 through 2006.
Democrats are hardly innocent and they have done plenty of things I don't care for, but let's not pretend they are equally bad. Republicans have systematically sold out the middle class over the last 30 years. They didn't care one whit about budget deficits until Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, and even once they started caring about deficits it was only insofar as they could gut social programs, and tax increases of any kind are completely off the table.
But I'm sure someone will be along to claim both parties are equally bad, rather than acknowledge the reality that one party is terrible and the other isn't quite as terrible. Throw out the whole system? Good luck with that. Stay home and don't vote at all? Well, thanks for doing absolutely nothing.
I don't anticipate I'll ever see a genuine Progressive run for the Oval Office, so I'll take what I can get. Anyone who votes for Republicans at this point is either wealthy and voting their rational self-interest, or a bigoted/deranged lunatic with a memory shorter than a goldfish.
There was a time when I'd soften my language, but what the hell? Republicans make no bones about the hatefulness of their ideology, so fuck 'em.
Sovereign debt is absolutely nothing like private debt, and only a fool would compare the two. Beyond the fact that it is borrowing money (and thus must be repaid) they have virtually nothing in common.
Families have limited assets that they can mortgage and sell to pay off debts. Families have limited incomes and limited options for expanding said income.
Governments do not have these problems. A government can lay taxes and print money. Governments also don't "die." In the long run, a country's "income" (GDP) is always expanding. This means the total debt load is not important, only the ratio of debt to GDP matters. As long as that ratio is kept to a manageable level and your interest rates are low, you can keep on borrowing.
By the way, current interest rates are near zero percent, and if you factor in inflation the real interest rate is negative. It would be stupid not to borrow as much as you can possibly get away with under terms like that. Debt and taxes are not the US' problem. Our real problem is being embroiled in a liquidity trap.
Republicans have fucked this country six ways to Sunday and voters have ordered them to fuck us some more because they don't have a clue about, well, anything.
On the other hand, microwave radiation--which cell phones produce--has never been shown to cause cancer.