Take what I said about the carriers and apply it to Motorola. Motorola is seemingly betting that, if they do a good enough job branding the phone as a Motorola, your next phone will be one, too.
Microsoft probably got out of PC gaming because it's so competitive and they don't have a monopoly there. Consoles are *much* more profitable, if you can produce a popular one.
Guess we'd better outlaw Flash and any video codecs that aren't built into the hardware, too, huh? And ban everything but assembly languages! Compilers, linkers, interpreters? Those are for pansies! Go green, code on the bare metal!
Well, that's what I mean. pserver is insecure and never pretends to be anything more than it is--a barebones security mechanism that won't thwart anyone with a genuine interest in stealing passwords. All it would do is keep someone from *accidentally* seeing somebody else's password if they were monitoring network traffic. That's about it.
That Microsoft is using basically the same thing to secure a corporate accounting system that holds genuinely sensitive data is both terrifying and laughable.
Yup. The only reason we have software patents at all is because software companies realized how easily their work could be reverse-engineered and duplicated by someone else--then sold for half the price. Just get patents on the key algorithms of your application and threaten anyone who tries to do what your application does. Easy money! And you get to keep your customers locked into your software, too!
That is obviously MPEG-LA's intention, so that no one can implement a video codec that isn't covered by at least one patent. Even infringing one measly video patent would be enough to wipe out a nascent software company if they achieved any degree of popularity. If anything, that kind of minefield is stifling to innovation, which is in direct opposition to why we have patents in the first place.
Carriers don't do this because they don't want their service to be commoditized. Much like Apple doesn't want the iPhone to be commoditized, really.
When you go with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc. you are buying into a brand. While they all offer slightly different services and sometimes have vastly different coverage areas, in the end you are buying more or less the same thing regardless of carrier: phone service and Internet access. The custom branding and applications are designed to lock you into that carrier, so you never forget that you are on AT&T's network, or T-Mobile's network. This makes it harder to switch to another carrier. The more they can lock down the phone, the higher they can make the barrier for switching.
It also makes support easier since, if they can forbid you from modifying the device too much, your average customer won't easily fuck it up and need service.
It's not as though they don't want you to take full advantage of the phone--being able to use all the phone's capabilities is obviously a major selling point to moving the devices--but that's also tempered by the carrier's desire to lock you in as a customer and make it difficult to leave. Charging a premium for risky, flighty customers like yourself probably never occurred to them, honestly, and may not be worth the bureaucratic headache for them to bother.
I'm using a Palm Centro at the moment, but my next phone is almost certainly going to be an Android. The iPhone ecosystem frankly disturbs me and I can't stomach the thought of being closed up inside that kind of walled garden, and then having to pay through the nose for the privilege.
All the above only means that you should do research before making a major purchase. If you go to a car dealership, totally uninformed about what you want and just base everything on your gut instincts, you deserve what you get.
Read the reviews, read Consumer Reports, do a bunch of test drives. For God's sake, if you're going to drop five or six figures on something, make sure it's really what you want and need!
TPB going down isn't even that big a deal anymore, since they shut down the tracker and went full DHT. At this point, you can pretty much get by with something like IsoHunt. All we need for torrents anymore are search engines. Having someone actually run a tracker has become completely unnecessary.
But it does lots of good PR for TPB to keep getting brought down, then popping up a couple hours later. Makes the authorities pursuing them look utterly incompetent.
At some point you just have to assume a level of reasonableness in the legal system. Is a judge *really* going to consider you a pathological thrill-seeker because you've racked up a few speeding tickets, and remand you for an indefinite period of psychiatric treatment?
Such treatment isn't free, either, and everyone involved is fully away of this. Any judge would completely derelict in allowing the psychiatric detention of someone who isn't, in fact, dangerous.
Either those involved--police, lawyers, judges, psychiatrists--can be trusted to do their jobs with some modicum of sense or rationality, or our whole system is screwed anyway.
Slavery was THE issue of the Civil War. Yes, there were many other issues involved, but slavery was central. Given how many of the state constitutions of the CSA specifically mentioned slavery as their motivation for secession, you're on thin ice here.
All this nonsense about the Civil War not being about slavery is just neo-Confederate apologism.
I never claimed it was a good idea, just that that is how I've heard it justified. The people who write up job postings actually *do* put lots of other crap in them for the same reason.
If you ever wonder why a job posting seems to have insane requirements, it's just to discourage casual applicants and drive away people who even *think* they aren't qualified.
It helps to be aware of this and go ahead and apply for the job anyway, even if you don't meet their requirements to the letter. If you think you'll be a good fit based on the actual job responsibilities, that's what you should base your decision on.
For instance, I got my current job despite not having a degree or health care industry experience, both of which were supposedly "required" under the job posting. But I had a varied enough resume with sufficient experience in the right areas for the company to snap me up.
In short: ignore the qualifications section of any job posting and pay attention to the actual job responsibilities and what experience you might have that's relevant. Pay no mind to stupid hiring managers who have bullshit qualification lists. Apply anyway!
Employers don't ask for 4-year degrees because jobs require them, they do it to cut down the number of resumes they get. It's an easy "crap filter." In this economy, we have situations where a company might have 5 openings and they get 5,000 applications. If they can cut that in half by putting a 4-year degree in the requirements, it makes their work a lot easier. It also has very little impact on pay, since the economy is in such bad shape a recent college grad saddled with debt would probably settle for $10 an hour. It's a great bargain for the employer, that's for sure.
PC makers shoulder much of the blame for the decline in PC gaming. A console isn't a moving target--you know exactly what the hardware will be, barring a few variables (hard disk size, online capability, etc.)
Today, we have brand-new computers being sold with everything from low-power Atom CPUs with atrocious integrated video cards up to 64-bit quad-core behemoths with 2GB video cards. Where the hell do you target your game? You could aim for the low end, which is going to make your game look like a piece of junk next to any current console. If it's a simple but addictive game, you could sell millions of copies. Or, you can aim for the high end, put the console graphics to shame, but be well aware that your market is going to be very small--not too many people are going to be able to run your game.
Most games aim for the middle of the road, so they're comparable to what's on a current console, except you have to make sure your system meets all the requirements on the box. And let's face it, Joe Sixpack has no clue how much RAM he has, or even what the difference is between disk space and memory, much less where video memory fits into it. Much less hassle to just buy a console and know the game you're buying will work.
Gaming has gone mainstream, and game development has gone right along with it. Consoles are the lowest common denominator. Gaming is no longer a niche activity, and it would be downright stupid of game developers and publishers to go after the tiny segment of the market that has souped-up PCs when they could target the PS3 or 360 and just half-ass a PC port. They even come out ahead that way. It's just the PC customers who suffer, and nobody cares about them anyway.
I say this as a long-time PC gamer. I wish it weren't so, but that's just how the market is these days, and it's never going to go back to the way it was.
On the other hand, it might be a *good* thing if PC gaming gets taken over by indie developers and small houses aiming at niche markets.
I haven't had a laptop with a Broadcom in it for several years, so I don't know how the support is these days. Sounds like Linux still has a ways to go in that area, though.
That sounds utterly unenforceable and would pretty much bankrupt any company that depends on networked computers for any part of their business. Hell, it would be worse on companies than private users!
Really? Maybe I've just gotten lucky, but I've installed Ubuntu on a few laptops in recent years and the WiFi worked right out of the box. One of them had an Atheros card and the other had an Intel card. Totally plug-and-play with no setup.
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Take what I said about the carriers and apply it to Motorola. Motorola is seemingly betting that, if they do a good enough job branding the phone as a Motorola, your next phone will be one, too.
Microsoft probably got out of PC gaming because it's so competitive and they don't have a monopoly there. Consoles are *much* more profitable, if you can produce a popular one.
Guess we'd better outlaw Flash and any video codecs that aren't built into the hardware, too, huh? And ban everything but assembly languages! Compilers, linkers, interpreters? Those are for pansies! Go green, code on the bare metal!
Well, that's what I mean. pserver is insecure and never pretends to be anything more than it is--a barebones security mechanism that won't thwart anyone with a genuine interest in stealing passwords. All it would do is keep someone from *accidentally* seeing somebody else's password if they were monitoring network traffic. That's about it.
That Microsoft is using basically the same thing to secure a corporate accounting system that holds genuinely sensitive data is both terrifying and laughable.
So, this Microsoft product uses what amounts to the same "encryption" that the CVS pserver protocol uses. Hilarious.
Yup. The only reason we have software patents at all is because software companies realized how easily their work could be reverse-engineered and duplicated by someone else--then sold for half the price. Just get patents on the key algorithms of your application and threaten anyone who tries to do what your application does. Easy money! And you get to keep your customers locked into your software, too!
That is obviously MPEG-LA's intention, so that no one can implement a video codec that isn't covered by at least one patent. Even infringing one measly video patent would be enough to wipe out a nascent software company if they achieved any degree of popularity. If anything, that kind of minefield is stifling to innovation, which is in direct opposition to why we have patents in the first place.
Carriers don't do this because they don't want their service to be commoditized. Much like Apple doesn't want the iPhone to be commoditized, really.
When you go with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc. you are buying into a brand. While they all offer slightly different services and sometimes have vastly different coverage areas, in the end you are buying more or less the same thing regardless of carrier: phone service and Internet access. The custom branding and applications are designed to lock you into that carrier, so you never forget that you are on AT&T's network, or T-Mobile's network. This makes it harder to switch to another carrier. The more they can lock down the phone, the higher they can make the barrier for switching.
It also makes support easier since, if they can forbid you from modifying the device too much, your average customer won't easily fuck it up and need service.
It's not as though they don't want you to take full advantage of the phone--being able to use all the phone's capabilities is obviously a major selling point to moving the devices--but that's also tempered by the carrier's desire to lock you in as a customer and make it difficult to leave. Charging a premium for risky, flighty customers like yourself probably never occurred to them, honestly, and may not be worth the bureaucratic headache for them to bother.
I'm using a Palm Centro at the moment, but my next phone is almost certainly going to be an Android. The iPhone ecosystem frankly disturbs me and I can't stomach the thought of being closed up inside that kind of walled garden, and then having to pay through the nose for the privilege.
All the above only means that you should do research before making a major purchase. If you go to a car dealership, totally uninformed about what you want and just base everything on your gut instincts, you deserve what you get.
Read the reviews, read Consumer Reports, do a bunch of test drives. For God's sake, if you're going to drop five or six figures on something, make sure it's really what you want and need!
who the hell reads "joke of the day" emails?
More people than read Slashdot.
TPB going down isn't even that big a deal anymore, since they shut down the tracker and went full DHT. At this point, you can pretty much get by with something like IsoHunt. All we need for torrents anymore are search engines. Having someone actually run a tracker has become completely unnecessary.
But it does lots of good PR for TPB to keep getting brought down, then popping up a couple hours later. Makes the authorities pursuing them look utterly incompetent.
At some point you just have to assume a level of reasonableness in the legal system. Is a judge *really* going to consider you a pathological thrill-seeker because you've racked up a few speeding tickets, and remand you for an indefinite period of psychiatric treatment?
Such treatment isn't free, either, and everyone involved is fully away of this. Any judge would completely derelict in allowing the psychiatric detention of someone who isn't, in fact, dangerous.
Either those involved--police, lawyers, judges, psychiatrists--can be trusted to do their jobs with some modicum of sense or rationality, or our whole system is screwed anyway.
Sorry, but I just can't let this fly.
Slavery was THE issue of the Civil War. Yes, there were many other issues involved, but slavery was central. Given how many of the state constitutions of the CSA specifically mentioned slavery as their motivation for secession, you're on thin ice here.
All this nonsense about the Civil War not being about slavery is just neo-Confederate apologism.
And this is a power the government has held since well before this case emerged.
Then they sue you for infringing it.
Then they win.
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would ICE be involved in a porn sting?
I never claimed it was a good idea, just that that is how I've heard it justified. The people who write up job postings actually *do* put lots of other crap in them for the same reason.
If you ever wonder why a job posting seems to have insane requirements, it's just to discourage casual applicants and drive away people who even *think* they aren't qualified.
It helps to be aware of this and go ahead and apply for the job anyway, even if you don't meet their requirements to the letter. If you think you'll be a good fit based on the actual job responsibilities, that's what you should base your decision on.
For instance, I got my current job despite not having a degree or health care industry experience, both of which were supposedly "required" under the job posting. But I had a varied enough resume with sufficient experience in the right areas for the company to snap me up.
In short: ignore the qualifications section of any job posting and pay attention to the actual job responsibilities and what experience you might have that's relevant. Pay no mind to stupid hiring managers who have bullshit qualification lists. Apply anyway!
Employers don't ask for 4-year degrees because jobs require them, they do it to cut down the number of resumes they get. It's an easy "crap filter." In this economy, we have situations where a company might have 5 openings and they get 5,000 applications. If they can cut that in half by putting a 4-year degree in the requirements, it makes their work a lot easier. It also has very little impact on pay, since the economy is in such bad shape a recent college grad saddled with debt would probably settle for $10 an hour. It's a great bargain for the employer, that's for sure.
It's hard and adds development time, which is a tough sell when you have a deadline and budget to meet.
PC makers shoulder much of the blame for the decline in PC gaming. A console isn't a moving target--you know exactly what the hardware will be, barring a few variables (hard disk size, online capability, etc.)
Today, we have brand-new computers being sold with everything from low-power Atom CPUs with atrocious integrated video cards up to 64-bit quad-core behemoths with 2GB video cards. Where the hell do you target your game? You could aim for the low end, which is going to make your game look like a piece of junk next to any current console. If it's a simple but addictive game, you could sell millions of copies. Or, you can aim for the high end, put the console graphics to shame, but be well aware that your market is going to be very small--not too many people are going to be able to run your game.
Most games aim for the middle of the road, so they're comparable to what's on a current console, except you have to make sure your system meets all the requirements on the box. And let's face it, Joe Sixpack has no clue how much RAM he has, or even what the difference is between disk space and memory, much less where video memory fits into it. Much less hassle to just buy a console and know the game you're buying will work.
Gaming has gone mainstream, and game development has gone right along with it. Consoles are the lowest common denominator. Gaming is no longer a niche activity, and it would be downright stupid of game developers and publishers to go after the tiny segment of the market that has souped-up PCs when they could target the PS3 or 360 and just half-ass a PC port. They even come out ahead that way. It's just the PC customers who suffer, and nobody cares about them anyway.
I say this as a long-time PC gamer. I wish it weren't so, but that's just how the market is these days, and it's never going to go back to the way it was.
On the other hand, it might be a *good* thing if PC gaming gets taken over by indie developers and small houses aiming at niche markets.
Look at the long list of distros that have died out, most of them for lack of maintenance. Surviving for 10+ years is the exception, not the rule.
Linux would still survive if Debian, Red Hat, and SuSe all perished.
I haven't had a laptop with a Broadcom in it for several years, so I don't know how the support is these days. Sounds like Linux still has a ways to go in that area, though.
That sounds utterly unenforceable and would pretty much bankrupt any company that depends on networked computers for any part of their business. Hell, it would be worse on companies than private users!
Really? Maybe I've just gotten lucky, but I've installed Ubuntu on a few laptops in recent years and the WiFi worked right out of the box. One of them had an Atheros card and the other had an Intel card. Totally plug-and-play with no setup.
Yeah, but all the Mayan hardware was EOLed centuries ago. It's not like anyone needs support for it anymore.