I'll third the trackball love. I invested in a Kensington Expert Mouse about a year ago and my wrist issues have all but disappeared. I also find I can make more precise movements by rolling a ball with the tip of my finger than I ever could pushing a mouse around.
Trackballs probably aren't for everyone, but I wouldn't knock them--there is definitely a market for them and they are very good at what they do.
I still can't wrap my head around how anyone in a democratic country could consider a nationwide Internet filter a good use of taxpayer money and resources. I can understand authoritarian regimes like the PRC doing it--obviously, money is not nearly as important to them as control (but the money sure helps.) Implementing it somewhere like Australia is just such a gargantuan waste of time and money as to be utterly baffling to me. The Internet, in and of itself, is just not dangerous. It's also far too large for any country--or even all countries together--to police it proactively and censor things.
Anyone who is *that* worried about what's on the Internet should perhaps "opt-out" of live in the developed world and go live in the Outback or something.
And if Bob's laptop is any more useful than a brick to whoever steals it, that company has a shitty IT policy and may even have broken the law by allowing unsecured personal information on a laptop floating outside their premises. Sue, sue, sue!
Yup. The good programmers also get sick of shouldering the load--fixing the crappy code written by their incompetent coworkers.
I've known too many good developers who got penalized because they spent all their time cleaning up other people's messes, missing their own deadlines, because they cared about having a quality product. At review time, they'd get chastised, get no raises or bonuses, and eventually they'd split. I can't say I blame them, either.
Having seen this sort of thing firsthand, bad programmers get away with being bad programmers because they have managers who are non-technical and whose bullshit detectors are defective or non-functional.
"It broke because [insert justification that absolves shitty programmer]."
Part of it is just a corporate culture thing. Some companies encourage honesty and owning up to your mistakes so you can learn from them. Other companies have you living in fear of making even the tiniest mistake, so you'll find any excuse you can to make a given problem someone else's fault. Guess which type of company ends up inadvertently protecting the lousy programmers.
Sony in particular isn't interested in dumping a lot of money into R&D for another console anytime soon. The PS3 only became profitable recently and they still have a lot of costs to cover from its development. I'm not sure what kind of shape Microsoft is in as far as developing a new console, but since neither Sony or Nintendo seem to be in the midst of building the next generation, why should MS? They've always been more followers than leaders in this market segment.
Aside from the DVD capacity issues plaguing the 360, the current-generation consoles still have a lot of life in them. I'm not convinced developers have taken full advantage of the PS3's capabilities yet.
Nintendo will probably come out with an HD Wii in the next year or two, and we'll have these little motion-control applications for the 360 and PS3, but I don't see any of the Big Three pushing the home console market into the next generation before at least 2012--more likely 2015.
At what point do Apple's actions run afoul of antitrust laws? They are certainly allowed to lock down their platform to some degree, but they aren't allowed to do just anything they want.
Would it be legal for Sony TVs to automatically go dark whenever they detect a Samsung commercial playing?
A very good point. Publications with substantially unique content--scientific journals and the like--can get away with having a paywall because you really won't find the same thing anywhere else. When you're just reporting news and offering commentary, the market is already saturated with innumerable *free* sources. Unless Murdoch is going to have some very unique, in-depth content that you can't find anywhere else, I can't imagine anyone with half a brain would be willing to pay for it.
10% is incredibly optimistic. I don't have any studies handy, but I could've sworn typical paywall participation rates were something on the order of 1-2%. Very tiny. Good luck with that, Rupert!
Unless that was in their original contract--that MPEG-LA could change the terms of the agreement at any time and demand retroactive payments as a result--I don't see how it could possibly be legal.
And if MPEG-LA licenses contain clauses that leave the door open for sudden, retroactive royalty assessment, then H.264 cannot die a quick enough death, and take MPEG-LA with it.
Your mileage may vary, but I've used a lot of CMS software, and I've Drupal to be the best balance of power and ease-of-use. It's ridiculous how extensible it is, yet I don't find maintaining it daunting or confusing. It all makes a reasonable amount of sense.
It's unfair to call it "charging for documentation." Views is quite well-documented. I figured out how to use it with no documentation whatsoever--it's pretty intuitive all on its own.
I see nothing wrong with writing a popular open source program, then trying to make a little money writing books on how to use it effectively. There's nothing stopping others from writing up tutorials and giving those away for free. And, since the code is available, the author can't possibly keep any secret tricks to himself, to exploit only in the pages of a for-profit book.
This might be a fair criticism for proprietary software, but it doesn't hold much water when it comes to open source, and especially not Drupal modules, which tend to be intuitive if not always well-documented.
You are thinking of this from the engineering perspective rather than the marketing perspective.
Companies are rarely guided by what the engineering or R&D departments want. They are driven almost entirely by sales, and sales is generally influenced by marketing.
Sales and marketing don't care about "power users." They want to know: what's popular? What's marketable? Where are the trends going?
Android is a popular brand right now. It's gaining pretty wide acceptance in the smartphone market. That's why Motorola is on board--not because they want to attract power users, but because they can throw a $500 phone out there and people will snap it up.
I just about guarantee you all the assorted, branded bloat loaded onto your Milestone was spawned from the brain of someone in sales or marketing, not anyone in R&D or engineering. This is for no other reason than the vast majority of users are *stupid*, and the sales and marketing people know this. Joe Moron is who they need to appeal to, because that's where the sales are. Do you really think millions of Android phones are being bought by power users? Power users like you and I are really a small niche of the market. The vast majority of people are buying the phones because they've heard Android phones are cool and they want something that can read email, surf the web, chat, play music and movies, and provide some silly games. That's it.
Installing custom ROMs, tweaking the OS out of its factory settings, doing upgrades on your own--the typical phone owner is *never* going to do this, and that's why the phones aren't touted on those capabilities, and why the power users and hackers aren't typically accommodated.
I think you misunderstood me. Gaming has, by and large, moved to consoles. Microsoft has largely exited the PC gaming market--period. They axed the Flight Simulator team, and I can't recall a PC game produced by Microsoft within the last few years. They've concentrated their efforts on the XBox family.
And no kidding, they don't make money on the consoles. They still collect money for every game sold, plus the XBox Live subscription fees, plus download sales. It's a far more profitable model than developing and publishing PC games.
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This is true, and many people overlook this, saying that an open relationship is no different from cheating.
What hurts about cheating isn't the sex so much as the dishonesty.
I'll third the trackball love. I invested in a Kensington Expert Mouse about a year ago and my wrist issues have all but disappeared. I also find I can make more precise movements by rolling a ball with the tip of my finger than I ever could pushing a mouse around.
Trackballs probably aren't for everyone, but I wouldn't knock them--there is definitely a market for them and they are very good at what they do.
I still can't wrap my head around how anyone in a democratic country could consider a nationwide Internet filter a good use of taxpayer money and resources. I can understand authoritarian regimes like the PRC doing it--obviously, money is not nearly as important to them as control (but the money sure helps.) Implementing it somewhere like Australia is just such a gargantuan waste of time and money as to be utterly baffling to me. The Internet, in and of itself, is just not dangerous. It's also far too large for any country--or even all countries together--to police it proactively and censor things.
Anyone who is *that* worried about what's on the Internet should perhaps "opt-out" of live in the developed world and go live in the Outback or something.
Well, yes, that's what I meant. :)
And if Bob's laptop is any more useful than a brick to whoever steals it, that company has a shitty IT policy and may even have broken the law by allowing unsecured personal information on a laptop floating outside their premises. Sue, sue, sue!
Yup. The good programmers also get sick of shouldering the load--fixing the crappy code written by their incompetent coworkers.
I've known too many good developers who got penalized because they spent all their time cleaning up other people's messes, missing their own deadlines, because they cared about having a quality product. At review time, they'd get chastised, get no raises or bonuses, and eventually they'd split. I can't say I blame them, either.
Having seen this sort of thing firsthand, bad programmers get away with being bad programmers because they have managers who are non-technical and whose bullshit detectors are defective or non-functional.
"It broke because [insert justification that absolves shitty programmer]."
Part of it is just a corporate culture thing. Some companies encourage honesty and owning up to your mistakes so you can learn from them. Other companies have you living in fear of making even the tiniest mistake, so you'll find any excuse you can to make a given problem someone else's fault. Guess which type of company ends up inadvertently protecting the lousy programmers.
Sony in particular isn't interested in dumping a lot of money into R&D for another console anytime soon. The PS3 only became profitable recently and they still have a lot of costs to cover from its development. I'm not sure what kind of shape Microsoft is in as far as developing a new console, but since neither Sony or Nintendo seem to be in the midst of building the next generation, why should MS? They've always been more followers than leaders in this market segment.
Aside from the DVD capacity issues plaguing the 360, the current-generation consoles still have a lot of life in them. I'm not convinced developers have taken full advantage of the PS3's capabilities yet.
Nintendo will probably come out with an HD Wii in the next year or two, and we'll have these little motion-control applications for the 360 and PS3, but I don't see any of the Big Three pushing the home console market into the next generation before at least 2012--more likely 2015.
At what point do Apple's actions run afoul of antitrust laws? They are certainly allowed to lock down their platform to some degree, but they aren't allowed to do just anything they want.
Would it be legal for Sony TVs to automatically go dark whenever they detect a Samsung commercial playing?
I'm an American living in the US, I vote Democrat (usually), and I drive a Chevy. So there.
FreeRepublic is free, though. :)
Do those people have any money, though? :)
A very good point. Publications with substantially unique content--scientific journals and the like--can get away with having a paywall because you really won't find the same thing anywhere else. When you're just reporting news and offering commentary, the market is already saturated with innumerable *free* sources. Unless Murdoch is going to have some very unique, in-depth content that you can't find anywhere else, I can't imagine anyone with half a brain would be willing to pay for it.
10% is incredibly optimistic. I don't have any studies handy, but I could've sworn typical paywall participation rates were something on the order of 1-2%. Very tiny. Good luck with that, Rupert!
You must be a perl coder. You can take your scalars and go!!
$ is probably the most violent symbol of all.
Yeah, I would think so, too. But contracts between corporations never have to be the least bit sane, apparently.
Unless that was in their original contract--that MPEG-LA could change the terms of the agreement at any time and demand retroactive payments as a result--I don't see how it could possibly be legal.
And if MPEG-LA licenses contain clauses that leave the door open for sudden, retroactive royalty assessment, then H.264 cannot die a quick enough death, and take MPEG-LA with it.
Your mileage may vary, but I've used a lot of CMS software, and I've Drupal to be the best balance of power and ease-of-use. It's ridiculous how extensible it is, yet I don't find maintaining it daunting or confusing. It all makes a reasonable amount of sense.
They still have to go to court to get it invalidated, though.
It's unfair to call it "charging for documentation." Views is quite well-documented. I figured out how to use it with no documentation whatsoever--it's pretty intuitive all on its own.
I see nothing wrong with writing a popular open source program, then trying to make a little money writing books on how to use it effectively. There's nothing stopping others from writing up tutorials and giving those away for free. And, since the code is available, the author can't possibly keep any secret tricks to himself, to exploit only in the pages of a for-profit book.
This might be a fair criticism for proprietary software, but it doesn't hold much water when it comes to open source, and especially not Drupal modules, which tend to be intuitive if not always well-documented.
Oh, my kingdom for some mod points. Well-played.
So, what you're saying is: hooray! This is great news! :-p
You are thinking of this from the engineering perspective rather than the marketing perspective.
Companies are rarely guided by what the engineering or R&D departments want. They are driven almost entirely by sales, and sales is generally influenced by marketing.
Sales and marketing don't care about "power users." They want to know: what's popular? What's marketable? Where are the trends going?
Android is a popular brand right now. It's gaining pretty wide acceptance in the smartphone market. That's why Motorola is on board--not because they want to attract power users, but because they can throw a $500 phone out there and people will snap it up.
I just about guarantee you all the assorted, branded bloat loaded onto your Milestone was spawned from the brain of someone in sales or marketing, not anyone in R&D or engineering. This is for no other reason than the vast majority of users are *stupid*, and the sales and marketing people know this. Joe Moron is who they need to appeal to, because that's where the sales are. Do you really think millions of Android phones are being bought by power users? Power users like you and I are really a small niche of the market. The vast majority of people are buying the phones because they've heard Android phones are cool and they want something that can read email, surf the web, chat, play music and movies, and provide some silly games. That's it.
Installing custom ROMs, tweaking the OS out of its factory settings, doing upgrades on your own--the typical phone owner is *never* going to do this, and that's why the phones aren't touted on those capabilities, and why the power users and hackers aren't typically accommodated.
I think you misunderstood me. Gaming has, by and large, moved to consoles. Microsoft has largely exited the PC gaming market--period. They axed the Flight Simulator team, and I can't recall a PC game produced by Microsoft within the last few years. They've concentrated their efforts on the XBox family.
And no kidding, they don't make money on the consoles. They still collect money for every game sold, plus the XBox Live subscription fees, plus download sales. It's a far more profitable model than developing and publishing PC games.