This has to do more with the fact that physical objects wear out and digital objects don't. Publishers have complained that when a library lends a physical book, it can only do so for a limited number of times before it has to buy another copy because the first wore out. When libraries lend digital objects, they never have to buy another again. So publishers want a limit to the number of times that a digital object can be lent before requiring a repurchase. The same goes for CDs/DVDs.
What if God created the universe 6,000 years ago and when he did he put in place evidence that indicates a 4.5 billion year old Earth and a 14 billion year old universe?
Why did he do that? To test our faith!
I work with Industrial Automation Software. I have developed the software and installed it a customer sites. Any customer that depends on the vendor to always install the software is courting disaster. What if your critical enterprise software is custom installed, runs for five years and then due to a hardware failure you need to reinstall from scratch? Will the original person who did the install still be available? Is the software still being supported? All end users should have explicit written instructions for how to install the software. The industrial automation software I use can kill, cause fires, and do all manner of damage if not installed and configured properly. It is just good practice to have explicit detailed installation instructions, that someone with a modicum of knowledge of the system can follow to reinstall from scratch. I've seen plenty of customers who are using software for which they have no idea how it is configured or installed. The original engineers are no longer available. They were laid off in cost savings events. Then I have to come in to figure out what they have so that I can determine how to upgrade them to the latest version while preserving years of data because once the hardware failed you can't get it to use the old software and the old software won't run on newer hardware.
I guess you don't understand International Business 101.
I was not addressing the gray market, I was pointing out why Aussie prices are expected to be higher than US prices.
Most companies require their country divisions to factor in the costs of doing business in that country to the prices they charge in that country. They don't spread their costs over all their customers worldwide. They do it by maket. It costs more to do business in Australia than the US simply because of the size of the market.
Each country charges different import duties (when they apply).
By international treaties, different countries can charge different copyright and patent fees.
All these and others factor into the costs companies must recoup in the price they charge.
There are other factors including warranty costs. Different countries have different minimum warranties a company is required to provide.
Now do the price differentials also have some gouge factor built in when the "expectation" is that prices in a particular country are expected to be higher than in the country of origin? Probably.
There a number of factors that lead to price differentials between countries.
1. Tax differences - Aussie GST is 10%. No US state has a sales tax that high. Aussie prices are quoted with tax included. US prices are not.
2. Labor costs- US retail workers are paid less
3. Size of the market - Costs in the US can be spread over a much larger customer base than in Australia.
4. Shipping costs - Shipping to Australia is more expensive than to a US address, even from Asia!
5. Import duties differences
6. Copyright and patent licensing fees differences
There may be others.
If your game needs to simulate physics and your programming library and tools don't do that, you will need the appropriate equations. Proper physics equations can be complicated and involve calculus. A good example is moving a vehicle around a curve realistically. There you need math to simulate the equilibrium between forward motion in the curve and centrifugal force that want you go straight.
As long as the companies have shared resources: the boat, food, security, IT, etc. - they will be paying some form of taxes even if the boat owners call them fees.
But what if one site only allows lower case letters and another requires a mix of lower and aupper case and special characters? Are you really going to remember that if you visit the sites infrequently?
We have discussed this ad nauseum - still nothing gets done. We have way to many passwords to remember. We have way too many different password policies to follow. What is a valid password on one site is not at another. It takes too much time to look up a password you have "written" down and you need a separate password to get into the list!. That supposes you have the list with you when you need it. Today the internet is mobile and not just used at home or at the office. Additionally, there are sites whose compromise could ruin you financially or ruin your reputation and sites where compromise doesn't matter. So most resort to a few easy to remember passwords, phrases or algorithms and these are probably easy to crack.
It's not clear what could be done. An RSA key fob and biometrics need a reader. You have to remember to have the fob with you. The blind can't read it. All this costs extra.
So many science fiction stories have shown that one can simulate gravity with centrifugal force by rotating a craft/station. Why don't we do this with the international space station?
These pictures should be at least 100MB+ in size! How long will it take to save to SD card, and how big a cache is needed to do multi-fps pictures? Also how long would it take to upload these to a PC?
This is more serious than you think.
on
The End of Forgetting
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What if you were arrested for shoplifiting in a small town where the newspaper publishes the daily arrest record online? Later you are convicted and your sentence includes getting your record expunged once you serve your community service. However, the record in the paper of your arrest is not. The town doesn't have the power to tell the paper to expunge your record. A background check might find that arrest, but not evidence of the outcome. Now you could lose jobs, security clearences all for something that is not supposed to exist. When your record is expunged, you are supposed to be able to answer no to having been arrested, but the internet says otherwise.
Never allow anyone to pull money out of your account. Always push the amount. For fixed amount transactions such as a mortgage or car payment, set up an automatic payment from your bank to the recipient. For variable transactions, manually go online and pay it. Otherwise they have your money before you can realize that a mistake was made. I recently got a $2600 monthly bill from the gas company because the gas meter was broken. If that was being taken out automatically, I would be $2600 poorer and possibly overdrawn.
Your wrong. Those people crying out in terror are poor people who don't have bank accounts or computers, and local churches who get most of their money in the collection plate.
The poor and many small non-profits do not have access to mechanisms where they can accept credit or debit cards. Most churches get their contributions by cash or check (cheque?). You can't put a credit card in the collection plate! Poor people who have no bank account also cannot accept cards or electronic funds transfer
I write this type of software for a living so I know that having a computer on the business network connected to the control computers is a risk, bur that risk can be managed. The problem here is that the software update wiped out the nuclear control system data. This exposes two bad problems. First customers are always asking why they can't update their system while it is still running. We liken that to changing your tire while driving down the road. Secondly the software update did not respect the data in the nuclear control system and synchronized it to new initial data in the update on the other system! Not a good idea. In critical safety systems, you always practice an update before actually doing one.
One of the problems of the current system is that you don't have to actually have a product either in development or in production to be able to enforce a patent. If patent owners were required to have a working product within 2 years of getting the patent granted, much of this would go away. Additionally, patents by themselves would not be tradeable - they would have to have a product to protect. Also, this would get rid of business methods and things like Amazon's one-click since these don't protect products. After all, that's the whole idea behind a patent: a temporary monopoly to get time to recoup the R&D investment before everyone can copy the product.
A significant number of GPS systems that run on phones that compete with Nokia use Navteq maps. Could or would Nokia stop licensing Navteq maps to non-Nokia phones? I find this troubling.
on what features you value the most: Coverage in remote areas, International travel, Charging for incoming calls or not, Text Messaging, Daytime vs. Nightime minutes, Internet charges, Ringtones, Applications, E-mail, etc.
No one service dominates in all features. Some have better US coverage but can't be used in Europe or Asia. Another doesn't charge for incoming calls on some plans.
This also depends on the handset you are using. Not all handsets are avialbale from all services: Is light vs. heavy a factor? Should I be able to carry it in my pocket? Are the buttons easy to see and easy to press? Are there lots of menus to navigate to get to what is important to me? Do I need a phone with a camera, or one without? How about an MP3 player?
I'm a Ski Patroller and we investigate accidents by taking pictures of the scene with little flags to mark distances. If the software works as well as described, this would allow us to just take pictures of the scene and not to have to carry flags and a tape measure. Investigations would be faster and easier.
Once again Microsoft thinks they know best. Without consulting the tribe and instead using a government ministry, they have wandered into a publicity nightmare. I think the tribe is angry because they feel disrespected by not being consulted. On the other hand, the tribe looks silly by not embracing change and acting like a bunch of curmudgeons. Microsoft should have gone to the tribal leaders and told them they would like to provide a version of their software in the tribal language: how would they like to proceeed? Especially since the language is basically unwritten and needs an orthography to which the tribe agrees. Then, if the leaders were firmly against this, they could be the ones looking bad and Microsoft would be off the hook. Microsoft could fix this be extending an olive branch and asking the tribal leaders for input. I they are rebuffed, then cancel the project. Localization is one thing that Microsoft does mostly right.
This is a crock. DSLRs are not for everyone. Sure quality, control, etc. are great. But for many the bulk is a problem. DPASs can be carried in your coat pocket or a purse and in situations where weight and bulk are problems (such as on the ski slope) DSLRs are a pain. Some ski areas don't allow bags or packs on the lift. Also you can't beat a DPAS when you want to catch something fleeting. DSLRs have to be taken out of a bag or a pack and by then the action may be gone, or worse the people whose picture you want to take weren't willing to wait while you fiddle with settings and lenses. Finally, most people don't want to wrestle with lens choices. They just want to take pictures they can use to remember a memorable event. They aren't serious photographers. If you can't set the time on your VCR how are you going to learn all the intricacies of a DSLR.
There are two reasons for this: DVD quality and HDMI. The first has been expounded on at length. The picture quality is not that much greater than regular DVD. But no one seems to be talking about the HDMI problem. You need an HD TV to take advantage of the higher resolution, but few people have them and those that do have only one or no HDMI input. Because the studios are worried about copying they won't allow HD signals to be output over composite video. Only HDMI has the encryption to keep copying from happening. Many early HDTV adopters have no HDMI port and are not going to spend $thousands to buy another TV for marginal picture improvement. Those that do have an HDMI port have only one and that is being used by the cable or satellite box. HDMI switch boxes cost $300+ and have no remote! That's my situation. Only in 2006 have HDTVs with 2 HDMI ports become widely available and those are only the more expensive ones. So these new HD/Blu Ray DVDs are for new TV buyers and those TVs are still too expensive to kickstart the market.
Slashdot Mirror
This has to do more with the fact that physical objects wear out and digital objects don't. Publishers have complained that when a library lends a physical book, it can only do so for a limited number of times before it has to buy another copy because the first wore out. When libraries lend digital objects, they never have to buy another again. So publishers want a limit to the number of times that a digital object can be lent before requiring a repurchase. The same goes for CDs/DVDs.
Already found two point of interest location errors and reported them!
What if God created the universe 6,000 years ago and when he did he put in place evidence that indicates a 4.5 billion year old Earth and a 14 billion year old universe? Why did he do that? To test our faith!
I work with Industrial Automation Software. I have developed the software and installed it a customer sites. Any customer that depends on the vendor to always install the software is courting disaster. What if your critical enterprise software is custom installed, runs for five years and then due to a hardware failure you need to reinstall from scratch? Will the original person who did the install still be available? Is the software still being supported? All end users should have explicit written instructions for how to install the software. The industrial automation software I use can kill, cause fires, and do all manner of damage if not installed and configured properly. It is just good practice to have explicit detailed installation instructions, that someone with a modicum of knowledge of the system can follow to reinstall from scratch. I've seen plenty of customers who are using software for which they have no idea how it is configured or installed. The original engineers are no longer available. They were laid off in cost savings events. Then I have to come in to figure out what they have so that I can determine how to upgrade them to the latest version while preserving years of data because once the hardware failed you can't get it to use the old software and the old software won't run on newer hardware.
I guess you don't understand International Business 101.
I was not addressing the gray market, I was pointing out why Aussie prices are expected to be higher than US prices.
Most companies require their country divisions to factor in the costs of doing business in that country to the prices they charge in that country. They don't spread their costs over all their customers worldwide. They do it by maket. It costs more to do business in Australia than the US simply because of the size of the market.
Each country charges different import duties (when they apply).
By international treaties, different countries can charge different copyright and patent fees.
All these and others factor into the costs companies must recoup in the price they charge.
There are other factors including warranty costs. Different countries have different minimum warranties a company is required to provide.
Now do the price differentials also have some gouge factor built in when the "expectation" is that prices in a particular country are expected to be higher than in the country of origin? Probably.
There a number of factors that lead to price differentials between countries.
1. Tax differences - Aussie GST is 10%. No US state has a sales tax that high. Aussie prices are quoted with tax included. US prices are not.
2. Labor costs- US retail workers are paid less
3. Size of the market - Costs in the US can be spread over a much larger customer base than in Australia.
4. Shipping costs - Shipping to Australia is more expensive than to a US address, even from Asia!
5. Import duties differences
6. Copyright and patent licensing fees differences
There may be others.
If your game needs to simulate physics and your programming library and tools don't do that, you will need the appropriate equations. Proper physics equations can be complicated and involve calculus. A good example is moving a vehicle around a curve realistically. There you need math to simulate the equilibrium between forward motion in the curve and centrifugal force that want you go straight.
As long as the companies have shared resources: the boat, food, security, IT, etc. - they will be paying some form of taxes even if the boat owners call them fees.
But what if one site only allows lower case letters and another requires a mix of lower and aupper case and special characters? Are you really going to remember that if you visit the sites infrequently?
We have discussed this ad nauseum - still nothing gets done. We have way to many passwords to remember. We have way too many different password policies to follow. What is a valid password on one site is not at another. It takes too much time to look up a password you have "written" down and you need a separate password to get into the list!. That supposes you have the list with you when you need it. Today the internet is mobile and not just used at home or at the office. Additionally, there are sites whose compromise could ruin you financially or ruin your reputation and sites where compromise doesn't matter. So most resort to a few easy to remember passwords, phrases or algorithms and these are probably easy to crack.
It's not clear what could be done. An RSA key fob and biometrics need a reader. You have to remember to have the fob with you. The blind can't read it. All this costs extra.
So many science fiction stories have shown that one can simulate gravity with centrifugal force by rotating a craft/station. Why don't we do this with the international space station?
These pictures should be at least 100MB+ in size! How long will it take to save to SD card, and how big a cache is needed to do multi-fps pictures? Also how long would it take to upload these to a PC?
What if you were arrested for shoplifiting in a small town where the newspaper publishes the daily arrest record online? Later you are convicted and your sentence includes getting your record expunged once you serve your community service. However, the record in the paper of your arrest is not. The town doesn't have the power to tell the paper to expunge your record. A background check might find that arrest, but not evidence of the outcome. Now you could lose jobs, security clearences all for something that is not supposed to exist. When your record is expunged, you are supposed to be able to answer no to having been arrested, but the internet says otherwise.
Never allow anyone to pull money out of your account. Always push the amount. For fixed amount transactions such as a mortgage or car payment, set up an automatic payment from your bank to the recipient. For variable transactions, manually go online and pay it. Otherwise they have your money before you can realize that a mistake was made. I recently got a $2600 monthly bill from the gas company because the gas meter was broken. If that was being taken out automatically, I would be $2600 poorer and possibly overdrawn.
Your wrong. Those people crying out in terror are poor people who don't have bank accounts or computers, and local churches who get most of their money in the collection plate.
The poor and many small non-profits do not have access to mechanisms where they can accept credit or debit cards. Most churches get their contributions by cash or check (cheque?). You can't put a credit card in the collection plate! Poor people who have no bank account also cannot accept cards or electronic funds transfer
I write this type of software for a living so I know that having a computer on the business network connected to the control computers is a risk, bur that risk can be managed. The problem here is that the software update wiped out the nuclear control system data. This exposes two bad problems. First customers are always asking why they can't update their system while it is still running. We liken that to changing your tire while driving down the road. Secondly the software update did not respect the data in the nuclear control system and synchronized it to new initial data in the update on the other system! Not a good idea. In critical safety systems, you always practice an update before actually doing one.
One of the problems of the current system is that you don't have to actually have a product either in development or in production to be able to enforce a patent. If patent owners were required to have a working product within 2 years of getting the patent granted, much of this would go away. Additionally, patents by themselves would not be tradeable - they would have to have a product to protect. Also, this would get rid of business methods and things like Amazon's one-click since these don't protect products. After all, that's the whole idea behind a patent: a temporary monopoly to get time to recoup the R&D investment before everyone can copy the product.
A significant number of GPS systems that run on phones that compete with Nokia use Navteq maps. Could or would Nokia stop licensing Navteq maps to non-Nokia phones? I find this troubling.
You forgot MKS toolkit which has most if not all of the standard UNIX utilities along with vi, bash, ksh, sh, awk, sed, etc. What more could you want?
on what features you value the most:
Coverage in remote areas,
International travel,
Charging for incoming calls or not,
Text Messaging,
Daytime vs. Nightime minutes,
Internet charges,
Ringtones,
Applications,
E-mail,
etc.
No one service dominates in all features. Some have better US coverage but can't be used in Europe or Asia. Another doesn't charge for incoming calls on some plans.
This also depends on the handset you are using. Not all handsets are avialbale from all services:
Is light vs. heavy a factor?
Should I be able to carry it in my pocket?
Are the buttons easy to see and easy to press?
Are there lots of menus to navigate to get to what is important to me?
Do I need a phone with a camera, or one without?
How about an MP3 player?
I'm a Ski Patroller and we investigate accidents by taking pictures of the scene with little flags to mark distances. If the software works as well as described, this would allow us to just take pictures of the scene and not to have to carry flags and a tape measure. Investigations would be faster and easier.
Once again Microsoft thinks they know best. Without consulting the tribe and instead using a government ministry, they have wandered into a publicity nightmare. I think the tribe is angry because they feel disrespected by not being consulted. On the other hand, the tribe looks silly by not embracing change and acting like a bunch of curmudgeons. Microsoft should have gone to the tribal leaders and told them they would like to provide a version of their software in the tribal language: how would they like to proceeed? Especially since the language is basically unwritten and needs an orthography to which the tribe agrees. Then, if the leaders were firmly against this, they could be the ones looking bad and Microsoft would be off the hook. Microsoft could fix this be extending an olive branch and asking the tribal leaders for input. I they are rebuffed, then cancel the project. Localization is one thing that Microsoft does mostly right.
This is a crock. DSLRs are not for everyone. Sure quality, control, etc. are great. But for many the bulk is a problem. DPASs can be carried in your coat pocket or a purse and in situations where weight and bulk are problems (such as on the ski slope) DSLRs are a pain. Some ski areas don't allow bags or packs on the lift. Also you can't beat a DPAS when you want to catch something fleeting. DSLRs have to be taken out of a bag or a pack and by then the action may be gone, or worse the people whose picture you want to take weren't willing to wait while you fiddle with settings and lenses. Finally, most people don't want to wrestle with lens choices. They just want to take pictures they can use to remember a memorable event. They aren't serious photographers. If you can't set the time on your VCR how are you going to learn all the intricacies of a DSLR.
There are two reasons for this: DVD quality and HDMI. The first has been expounded on at length. The picture quality is not that much greater than regular DVD. But no one seems to be talking about the HDMI problem. You need an HD TV to take advantage of the higher resolution, but few people have them and those that do have only one or no HDMI input. Because the studios are worried about copying they won't allow HD signals to be output over composite video. Only HDMI has the encryption to keep copying from happening. Many early HDTV adopters have no HDMI port and are not going to spend $thousands to buy another TV for marginal picture improvement. Those that do have an HDMI port have only one and that is being used by the cable or satellite box. HDMI switch boxes cost $300+ and have no remote! That's my situation. Only in 2006 have HDTVs with 2 HDMI ports become widely available and those are only the more expensive ones. So these new HD/Blu Ray DVDs are for new TV buyers and those TVs are still too expensive to kickstart the market.