Developing what? They've gone from innovating the browser area to desperately playing catch-up to stay relevant, while also spreading themselves across every other platform and turning themselves into an OS.
It's weird -- a decade ago, there were clear choices if you were a geek or even an engineer. These days, pretty much every browser leaves you with at least a thin layer of "ick" everywhere.
I had to zoom in to about 8x and stare for about two minutes before I realized the four logos were not actually exactly the same.
Oh well, I haven't used Firefox in quite awhile. I started my career as an engineer at Netscape. Firefox, by its association, should be something I adore. I did, for a long time. I even stuck around with it long after it started coming home drunk, verbally abusing me, and sending me to bed with a face full of tears and bruises. Eventually, I abandoned ship and haven't been back. It seems many others did, also. It's cute that Firefox is still trudging along like the ever proud little choo-choo chugging over the hill, but . . .
Simply make the panels detachable and offer a length of USB cord so you can use it while it is charging as long as you're within about twelve feet of a window in any room you're in (just slap the detachable panels up on the window during the day).
This is Slashdot. We haven't even been in the sun.
Maybe LED backlighting could get it barely bright enough without sucking down the battery in 3 minutes.
My 2.8ghz 17" Macbook Pro probably consumes around 30 watts for normal usage, so with a 13" screen and lower powered everything, I would imagine this laptop would do fine - especially if they were to replace the hard drive with an SSD. Unless there has been a dramatic improvement in solar panel technology, I believe you should be able to get about 10 watts per square foot of panel, right? This looks like it has around 1.5sqft of solar panel, so while it might not be able to run continuously on solar power, using it in the sun should certainly supplement a fully charged cell such that it could run all day long without another charge?
I believe the primary reason is that piracy is a specific act of commercial for-profit copyright infringement. I don't believe it is illegal to buy a knock-off handbag, but it is illegal to commit the act of "piracy", in manufacturing and distributing that handbag. There would be little point to going after a downloader for the same reason there would be little point in going after someone who photocopied a few chapters from a book.
It is also difficult to compare possession of known-stolen goods to copyright infringement -- especially when that copyright infringement is not on a criminal level and any penalties in a court would be so insignificant as to not be worth the time of the copyright holder and their lawyers. As you mention, you want to go after someone where you can claim a near infinite financial penalty, because they were "distributing". Not go after someone (most likely in a civil suit) for the $10 they should have paid you for the movie they downloaded one time.
Anyway, having said that, I still know of no instance where someone in the US has been found guilty of merely downloading copyrighted material. The only thing I recall is that the RIAA or someone (I think it was the RIAA) very specifically stated a few years ago that they would *only* go after distributors/uploaders.
We see that you're considering buying a box of Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVDs on Amazon.com. We thought you'd like to know that you can watch that for free if you subscribe to our Comcast cable television service! it's on every night at 8:00PM and also available on-demand! Just to be sure you don't accidentally buy something you didn't want, we've gone ahead and disabled the "add to shopping cart" button on this webpage, for you. Thank you for your patronage!
That's exactly the problem. There are so many layers of potential compromise that it really doesn't matter, anymore. Even if everything else in the chain can be trusted to be secure and trustworthy, the government can spike-in anywhere they want from inside a data center to just outside of a provider's (ISP, facebook, etc) network,... and then your own ISP... and if you use VPN, then you still have to hope your VPN provider can be trusted (assuming you can even GET a VPN service anymore, since it has basically been criminalized).
Anyway, people need to just shut the fuck up and stop using the internet for evil things. The internet is for giving money to corporations to give you entertainment content and nothing more, you sick anti-american terrorist fuckwits!
What kind of sick filthy communist are you? If something is no longer in print or has been abandoned -- how dare you try to use it for yourself or other people! If money is not changing hands for a good, service, or information, you might as well be stealing food off the tables of hardworking families! Instead of that free out-of-print book that you are consuming, you could have bought a totally different book and contributed to the capital good of your fellow man!
Sorry, but your own link contradicts your statement.
Please cite for us one (and preferably more) cases where someone was sued and received a judgement against in a court of law for DOWNLOADING a file.
Your own link says:
"Most downloading over the Internet of commercially available copyrighted works, such as music or movies, through file sharing systems is illegal. In a widely followed case, a federal Court of Appeals held that users of Napster were infringing copyright when they shared MP3 files of copyrighted music."
As far as I am aware, every single case that has ever existed has hinged on the act of distribution. That is, uploading the file. People have found themselves in hot water because they downloaded content and left it in an accessible folder that is shared back to the other users, publically, of the download program - like Napster or used bittorrent, where you usually have to also upload content back (though you are of course only ever uploading small snippets and never an actual entire file).
Yes, people go around saying "oh noes, downloading a copyrighted file is infringement and somehow now days an instance of copyright infringement is a criminal offense punishable by a decade in prison or forfeiting your life into indentured servitude!", but the fact is (last I checked and I would be glad to know if this has since changed in the States if someone knows of legitimate examples) it is only uploaders/distributors of said content that are cornered.
I don't know that what a judge finds matters. We have seen that the executive branch and all of the three-letter-agencies do whatever the hell they want. There is nothing that will change that. Not legislation, not public outcry. Not even presidential decree. Nothing. Will you drive them back into secrecy? Yes. And that is where they will continue to do what they want.
I don't understand people who can dismiss any of the doctors. They have all been fantastic, in their own way. No doubt, Tom Baker is the pinnacle, but the great thing about the show is you get something new and before it gets too old, you have something else. The switch to a new portrayal either leaves you sad because you'll miss the last guy or excited, because the last guy wasn't *quite* your cup of tea.
What I'm really curious about is what he's going to wear. The doctors of the modern era have been kind of bland, dress wise. I mean, Eccleston was cool but pretty generic, clothing-wise. Tennant just dressed normal and nice, but with Converse shoes, and Matt Smith dressed like a slightly more nerdy Tennant, with a bow-tie.
Where's the Tom Baker with a giant overcoat and massive scarf and wild hair? Where's the Peter Davison and his orange-lined tan suit with broccoli on the lapel? Where's the Sylvester McCoy with his suit-of-question-marks? Or Colin Baker and his patchwork multi-colored coat with question-marks on his shirt collar and giant colored neck-scarves?
It isn't certain that timelords can change gender. There has been no cannon established suggesting that they can change gender or race, as far as I know. It would also be incredibly difficult to do just right, so that you avoid seeming to pandering or like you're doing it as a ratings stunt, because "now we have to have a black woman and next time an asian man" and so on. I don't disagree that it could be interesting, but I think it is a major risk. Especially when you consider how concerned people are simply going from one white british guy to another white british guy.
Of course, if they could really nail it -- make it something you care about and that feels legitimate and honest -- I would be game.
I probably disliked Smith the most, ahead of time. It only took one or two episodes before I totally bought into his portrayal, though. It didn't hurt that Amy Pond was such a fucking fantastic compliment to him, either. He also balanced the darkness and weight with the giddy excited thrill of a kid just right.
I'm really going to be curious to see if the n ew doctor is going to be pretty much just dark and cold or if he's still going to have that flamboyant streak of fun and love for mankind.
I also hope they don't get *too* far up their own ass with the whole story-arc. I've liked the long arcs they've woven in with the "new" seasons over the last half dozen years, starting with Bad Wolf -- but the show is often at its best when its him and friend escaping Kandyman and such.:)
Exactly what I clicked on the story to say. Of all the people at Goldman Sachs (and facilitating shadiness on the government-end of the symbiosis), this is the guy they go after?
I think people have come to respect that choices for the role of the Doctor are pretty much always excellent and second-guessing and pre-judging is useless. I say this as someone that loved Christopher Eccleston and didn't want to like Tennant. Then absolutely adored Tennant's portrayal and was definitely not going to accept the young goofy looking Matt Smith character... and then find myself sad to see Matt Smith go.
Doctor Who is all about the doctor and his companions. They have to be likeable, interesting, compelling. They're the entire point of the show and they realize this - they always choose pretty damn well, even if all of us watching approach every change with skepticism and distrust.
Personally, I'm really excited about Capaldi, even though I have no idea who he is. He looks like someone I won't mind seeing on screen for dozens of hours and I appreciate that they aren't just constantly skewing young. They didn't need to go older for older's sake, but I am really glad they are making a choice other than "twelve year old girls won't watch if we don't make it a semi-cute barely pubescent actor". Variety is the spice of the Doctor. I think I'm going to enjoy this incarnation. Good on them.
I think Amazon, Overstock, etc have also largely killed auction sites like eBay and my own (with about 100k+ users, since 1997). A few years ago, eBay started to invest heavily into non-auction related projects as they sensed the direction of the wind changing. Shortly after that (2010), I followed suit. My site was still going strong, but I had lost interest in the concept and wanted to open myself up to having time and resources for other projects I cared more about and realized that if eBay (and all the other sites that had action houses, which I have largely forgotten since then) was seeing auctions shrivel, there wasn't much future in it.
Of course, the one place that auctions still thrive are collectibles. Computer hardware, gaming related stuff, action figures, posters. Stuff that there isn't really any other market available for.
I rarely use auction sites, but they are *never* my first thought for *anything*. They are a last-effort choice when Amazon and every other option has fizzled out. Especially now that these sites offer such ridiculously cheap (often free) and fast shipping. It is VERY hard to compete with the shipping options of Amazon, Newegg, Overstock, Zappos and others if you're a small-fry who has to manually process and handle everything and pay regular shipping on items (how Amazon makes profit off their $80/yr for free shipping thing is beyond me).
Oh, for fuck's sake. It's not like the entire government is out to get people. It's only the FBI, CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Police/SWAT, and the Executive office.
I don't think that is the case, because I think there will remain in most people this knowledge that it "is not from a real cow" which will affect the taste. Maybe not objectively (as in, the Pepsi/Coke taste test), but in the same way that someone is certain they can discern the flavor of a $100/bottle wine and a $500/bottle of wine, until you give them a taste test where they can't tell the difference. This is why I think it would be something that current generations would have a hard time accepting, but future generations would simply take as matter of fact.
I like the concept of 100% taste-prep-whatever compatible meat being created without any harm to animals or the environment whatsoever. It's a net-benefit for society. Benefits animals, the land, and probably overall would help take a universal step-forward in our consciousness in a sort of "now we don't harm animals because we can avoid it" kind of way.
I just wonder how hard it will be to make that switch, even if the food pans out to be perfect. I mean, would "this was a real animal" honestly make a difference anymore? Would it be a delicacy? Would it signify class? Or would it be a thing that old people like us demand (real beef), but the next generation just takes for granted that you don't eat living animals, because test-tubes?
Slashdot Mirror
Developing what? They've gone from innovating the browser area to desperately playing catch-up to stay relevant, while also spreading themselves across every other platform and turning themselves into an OS.
It's weird -- a decade ago, there were clear choices if you were a geek or even an engineer. These days, pretty much every browser leaves you with at least a thin layer of "ick" everywhere.
I had to zoom in to about 8x and stare for about two minutes before I realized the four logos were not actually exactly the same.
Oh well, I haven't used Firefox in quite awhile. I started my career as an engineer at Netscape. Firefox, by its association, should be something I adore. I did, for a long time. I even stuck around with it long after it started coming home drunk, verbally abusing me, and sending me to bed with a face full of tears and bruises. Eventually, I abandoned ship and haven't been back. It seems many others did, also. It's cute that Firefox is still trudging along like the ever proud little choo-choo chugging over the hill, but . . .
Oh, so you have also commuted in Santa Clara traffic, too?
Wait. Your *PC*? A laptop or a desktop? My laptop runs around 25-30 watts normal usage, but even at idle my desktop runs about 250 watts...
Simply make the panels detachable and offer a length of USB cord so you can use it while it is charging as long as you're within about twelve feet of a window in any room you're in (just slap the detachable panels up on the window during the day).
Has anyone ever tried using a laptop in the sun?
This is Slashdot. We haven't even been in the sun.
Maybe LED backlighting could get it barely bright enough without sucking down the battery in 3 minutes.
My 2.8ghz 17" Macbook Pro probably consumes around 30 watts for normal usage, so with a 13" screen and lower powered everything, I would imagine this laptop would do fine - especially if they were to replace the hard drive with an SSD. Unless there has been a dramatic improvement in solar panel technology, I believe you should be able to get about 10 watts per square foot of panel, right? This looks like it has around 1.5sqft of solar panel, so while it might not be able to run continuously on solar power, using it in the sun should certainly supplement a fully charged cell such that it could run all day long without another charge?
I believe the primary reason is that piracy is a specific act of commercial for-profit copyright infringement. I don't believe it is illegal to buy a knock-off handbag, but it is illegal to commit the act of "piracy", in manufacturing and distributing that handbag. There would be little point to going after a downloader for the same reason there would be little point in going after someone who photocopied a few chapters from a book.
It is also difficult to compare possession of known-stolen goods to copyright infringement -- especially when that copyright infringement is not on a criminal level and any penalties in a court would be so insignificant as to not be worth the time of the copyright holder and their lawyers. As you mention, you want to go after someone where you can claim a near infinite financial penalty, because they were "distributing". Not go after someone (most likely in a civil suit) for the $10 they should have paid you for the movie they downloaded one time.
Anyway, having said that, I still know of no instance where someone in the US has been found guilty of merely downloading copyrighted material. The only thing I recall is that the RIAA or someone (I think it was the RIAA) very specifically stated a few years ago that they would *only* go after distributors/uploaders.
HI, THERE!
We see that you're considering buying a box of Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVDs on Amazon.com. We thought you'd like to know that you can watch that for free if you subscribe to our Comcast cable television service! it's on every night at 8:00PM and also available on-demand! Just to be sure you don't accidentally buy something you didn't want, we've gone ahead and disabled the "add to shopping cart" button on this webpage, for you. Thank you for your patronage!
That's exactly the problem. There are so many layers of potential compromise that it really doesn't matter, anymore. Even if everything else in the chain can be trusted to be secure and trustworthy, the government can spike-in anywhere they want from inside a data center to just outside of a provider's (ISP, facebook, etc) network,... and then your own ISP... and if you use VPN, then you still have to hope your VPN provider can be trusted (assuming you can even GET a VPN service anymore, since it has basically been criminalized).
Anyway, people need to just shut the fuck up and stop using the internet for evil things. The internet is for giving money to corporations to give you entertainment content and nothing more, you sick anti-american terrorist fuckwits!
What kind of sick filthy communist are you? If something is no longer in print or has been abandoned -- how dare you try to use it for yourself or other people! If money is not changing hands for a good, service, or information, you might as well be stealing food off the tables of hardworking families! Instead of that free out-of-print book that you are consuming, you could have bought a totally different book and contributed to the capital good of your fellow man!
No, silly, they're a giant corporation.
Sorry, but your own link contradicts your statement.
Please cite for us one (and preferably more) cases where someone was sued and received a judgement against in a court of law for DOWNLOADING a file.
Your own link says:
"Most downloading over the Internet of commercially available copyrighted works, such as music or movies, through file sharing systems is illegal. In a widely followed case, a federal Court of Appeals held that users of Napster were infringing copyright when they shared MP3 files of copyrighted music."
As far as I am aware, every single case that has ever existed has hinged on the act of distribution. That is, uploading the file. People have found themselves in hot water because they downloaded content and left it in an accessible folder that is shared back to the other users, publically, of the download program - like Napster or used bittorrent, where you usually have to also upload content back (though you are of course only ever uploading small snippets and never an actual entire file).
Yes, people go around saying "oh noes, downloading a copyrighted file is infringement and somehow now days an instance of copyright infringement is a criminal offense punishable by a decade in prison or forfeiting your life into indentured servitude!", but the fact is (last I checked and I would be glad to know if this has since changed in the States if someone knows of legitimate examples) it is only uploaders/distributors of said content that are cornered.
I suspect less than one percent of people online are old enough to even know who Kibo is. :)
I don't know that what a judge finds matters. We have seen that the executive branch and all of the three-letter-agencies do whatever the hell they want. There is nothing that will change that. Not legislation, not public outcry. Not even presidential decree. Nothing. Will you drive them back into secrecy? Yes. And that is where they will continue to do what they want.
I don't understand people who can dismiss any of the doctors. They have all been fantastic, in their own way. No doubt, Tom Baker is the pinnacle, but the great thing about the show is you get something new and before it gets too old, you have something else. The switch to a new portrayal either leaves you sad because you'll miss the last guy or excited, because the last guy wasn't *quite* your cup of tea.
What I'm really curious about is what he's going to wear. The doctors of the modern era have been kind of bland, dress wise. I mean, Eccleston was cool but pretty generic, clothing-wise. Tennant just dressed normal and nice, but with Converse shoes, and Matt Smith dressed like a slightly more nerdy Tennant, with a bow-tie.
Where's the Tom Baker with a giant overcoat and massive scarf and wild hair? Where's the Peter Davison and his orange-lined tan suit with broccoli on the lapel? Where's the Sylvester McCoy with his suit-of-question-marks? Or Colin Baker and his patchwork multi-colored coat with question-marks on his shirt collar and giant colored neck-scarves?
It isn't certain that timelords can change gender. There has been no cannon established suggesting that they can change gender or race, as far as I know. It would also be incredibly difficult to do just right, so that you avoid seeming to pandering or like you're doing it as a ratings stunt, because "now we have to have a black woman and next time an asian man" and so on. I don't disagree that it could be interesting, but I think it is a major risk. Especially when you consider how concerned people are simply going from one white british guy to another white british guy.
Of course, if they could really nail it -- make it something you care about and that feels legitimate and honest -- I would be game.
I probably disliked Smith the most, ahead of time. It only took one or two episodes before I totally bought into his portrayal, though. It didn't hurt that Amy Pond was such a fucking fantastic compliment to him, either. He also balanced the darkness and weight with the giddy excited thrill of a kid just right.
I'm really going to be curious to see if the n ew doctor is going to be pretty much just dark and cold or if he's still going to have that flamboyant streak of fun and love for mankind.
I also hope they don't get *too* far up their own ass with the whole story-arc. I've liked the long arcs they've woven in with the "new" seasons over the last half dozen years, starting with Bad Wolf -- but the show is often at its best when its him and friend escaping Kandyman and such. :)
Exactly what I clicked on the story to say. Of all the people at Goldman Sachs (and facilitating shadiness on the government-end of the symbiosis), this is the guy they go after?
How about Henry Paulson
I think people have come to respect that choices for the role of the Doctor are pretty much always excellent and second-guessing and pre-judging is useless. I say this as someone that loved Christopher Eccleston and didn't want to like Tennant. Then absolutely adored Tennant's portrayal and was definitely not going to accept the young goofy looking Matt Smith character... and then find myself sad to see Matt Smith go.
Doctor Who is all about the doctor and his companions. They have to be likeable, interesting, compelling. They're the entire point of the show and they realize this - they always choose pretty damn well, even if all of us watching approach every change with skepticism and distrust.
Personally, I'm really excited about Capaldi, even though I have no idea who he is. He looks like someone I won't mind seeing on screen for dozens of hours and I appreciate that they aren't just constantly skewing young. They didn't need to go older for older's sake, but I am really glad they are making a choice other than "twelve year old girls won't watch if we don't make it a semi-cute barely pubescent actor". Variety is the spice of the Doctor. I think I'm going to enjoy this incarnation. Good on them.
I think Amazon, Overstock, etc have also largely killed auction sites like eBay and my own (with about 100k+ users, since 1997). A few years ago, eBay started to invest heavily into non-auction related projects as they sensed the direction of the wind changing. Shortly after that (2010), I followed suit. My site was still going strong, but I had lost interest in the concept and wanted to open myself up to having time and resources for other projects I cared more about and realized that if eBay (and all the other sites that had action houses, which I have largely forgotten since then) was seeing auctions shrivel, there wasn't much future in it.
Of course, the one place that auctions still thrive are collectibles. Computer hardware, gaming related stuff, action figures, posters. Stuff that there isn't really any other market available for.
I rarely use auction sites, but they are *never* my first thought for *anything*. They are a last-effort choice when Amazon and every other option has fizzled out. Especially now that these sites offer such ridiculously cheap (often free) and fast shipping. It is VERY hard to compete with the shipping options of Amazon, Newegg, Overstock, Zappos and others if you're a small-fry who has to manually process and handle everything and pay regular shipping on items (how Amazon makes profit off their $80/yr for free shipping thing is beyond me).
Yep. Never heard of it. *shrug*
Then again, I've only been online for 24 years.
Oh, for fuck's sake. It's not like the entire government is out to get people. It's only the FBI, CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Police/SWAT, and the Executive office.
I don't think that is the case, because I think there will remain in most people this knowledge that it "is not from a real cow" which will affect the taste. Maybe not objectively (as in, the Pepsi/Coke taste test), but in the same way that someone is certain they can discern the flavor of a $100/bottle wine and a $500/bottle of wine, until you give them a taste test where they can't tell the difference. This is why I think it would be something that current generations would have a hard time accepting, but future generations would simply take as matter of fact.
Hey, I asked why it would be acceptable/ethical to do one and not the other. I didn't say I wanted to actually do it.
I like the concept of 100% taste-prep-whatever compatible meat being created without any harm to animals or the environment whatsoever. It's a net-benefit for society. Benefits animals, the land, and probably overall would help take a universal step-forward in our consciousness in a sort of "now we don't harm animals because we can avoid it" kind of way.
I just wonder how hard it will be to make that switch, even if the food pans out to be perfect. I mean, would "this was a real animal" honestly make a difference anymore? Would it be a delicacy? Would it signify class? Or would it be a thing that old people like us demand (real beef), but the next generation just takes for granted that you don't eat living animals, because test-tubes?