doesn't give him the right to withdraw a valuable communications channel to his constituents
I think you're confused. He is not required to provide an email address, neither he nor his constituents have any rights or obligations in this respect. Any ideas about "rights" is a non-issue. Many MP's choose to use emails, there may be ample merits of doing so, but it is their choice.
Yeah I made the same mistake too, as I suspect does the author of the summary and indeed the Green Car Reports article.
I was in the middle of taking the piss out of TFA forgetting the currency conversion (says $1.17, average price is £1.17) when I realised they were probably talking about Canadian dollars, since it's the British Columbia Automobile Association. Then I was writing an anecdote about my error and jokingly suggesting I'd left another deliberate error in there when it occurred to me people using $ to refer to something else just might do the same thing with "gallons".
£1.17 at £1:$1.64= CAD$1.91 per litre.
$1.91 * 4.5 litres to the gallon= CAD$8.60. (so it seems they're even further out)
Seriously people. Metric system. But oh look, there's variations in that too. For fuck sake, I have enough of this shit revising for my tax exam.
I know this sounds very arrogant, but I would love to see trials change so you're actually judged by your peers instead of members of the public, so for example doctors by doctors, network admin by other network admin, and such. That way you can get a bunch of people who know how far this person has stepped out of line.
Firstly, a trial by jury IS being judged by your peers. Under the law, all members of society are equal, we are all peers. This is utterly fundamental to law and democracy, and in my humble opinion, being a decent person.
Yes, there is good argument for people in a position of particularly privileged trust and expertise to be judged by a panel of other experts. This is why it is standard practice, indeed a fundamental part of being a member of a learned profession. The same principle applies as above: a member of a profession is a member of a society of professionals, thus if they break professional rules they are judged by a panel of their peers in that society. Doctors, lawyers, accountants are struck off/disbarred (and can be fined) by other doctors/lawyers/accountants. In the UK at least, professional bodies actually have by-laws, their own laws for their members, which are generally practices within the profession but the regular law courts will assist in enforcing if necessary.
A change of ruling party is always great, but immediately starts going downhill at an ever accelerating pace. I'd say all the promise is in the first year, when they're scrapping the crap from the previous government, installing projects they were thinking about for years while out of office and breathing new life into the stagnant, mismanaged shit hole that is the public sector.
After this however they are out of good ideas and just making any shit up, the whole thing has become just a job, unions/middle management aren't afraid of them any more and the focus is on keeping bad news out of the papers.
As for the whole privacy issue: I would suggest that someone start a website ala Wikileaks, where they publish everything known about every corporation, and make that publically accessible. If I want to know the BP CEO's home address, how much he makes, his social security number, yadda yadda, then perhaps there will be more concern over privacy.
As BP is a UK company, that website exists: The Registrar of Companies. I didn't see a US equivalent form a very brief googling however numerous organisations appear attempting to offer similar information.
From 1 October 2009 directors can provide a service address instead of their home, but the old documents are still there so you're only out of they moved. Also, at risk persons such as directors of animal testing facilities can apply to have their address withdrawn.
Remuneration for individual directors is not always broken down in the statutory accounts but often is in the other guff thrown into the Annual Report, commonly found in the investor section of most public companies' websites. Alternately, buy one share and you are entitled to demand to inspect the statutory books (held either at HQ or "SAIL" address) and attend the AGM, where you'll get details and be entitled to vote on the directors' remuneration. In practice voting is often done by a show of hands unless someone requests a proper count or it is close, so sometimes you're one share counts the same as the guy with 1m sitting beside you.
It is extraordinarily unusual for any company in the UK, other than your employer, to hold our equivalent of the social security number so that's not a reasonable request.
On a fundamental level, I disagree that making information about CEOs public will help in any way. Director's information is already easily available, and thus they have no incentive towards privacy. If their information was private, then they would be more inclined to keep it that way.
Forgive the Kotaku previewer, will you? Life, sleep, work got in the way, despite the best efforts of the people at Firaxis who made this pleasure trap of a game. Thankfully, nine hours allowed for plenty of time to learn about the game.
A good Civ game gets in the way of life, sleep and work, not the other way around. A good session of Civ finishes with the guilty realisation that the sun isn't setting, it's rising.
And 9 hours is plenty of time to scratch the surface of a good Civ game, unless you spent it reading the manual (being the rare game where the manual is good reference, well written, and the size of a decent novel). Even a hardcore Civ player should be reading the pages where they explain what's new to the series.
Well you know what they say, the grade C lawyers work for the government while the grade A lawyers work for everyone else.
They are a little short-sighted. A lot of the highest fliers are aiming for public office: DA, judge, politician - some to stay there and some for the credentials when they go back to commerce.
Same for tax advisors. If you want to be a big shot, do a stint working for a tax office. You get to learn not just how the government agency works, but everybody they're investigating too.
The alternative is an archaic system of elder care called "families". I understand it was practiced in some parts of the world back in the 20th century.
Immediately from this we can see the task of looking after an old person is not the same. Very, very unfortunately, this is not even close to being the problem.
Compounding the life expectancy is the birth rates over the period. For example, in Britain already the number of pensioners exceed the number of children. By 2060 there will be 2 adults of working age for every 1 pensioner. Adults of working age of course includes 16+ year olds, university students and so on, and people in the vital early years of building careers.
The demographics are frightening. Yet it doesn't end there. There's a massive pensions crisis looming, people are buying homes later and are more debt-ridden - few people have any real capital anymore.
The demographic time bomb has been well understood, almost from the moment it began ticking. It very likely will have far more severe consequences (at least here in the West) than The Environment, but it's just being swept under the carpet. Let's be clear, the need for pensioners to remain autonomous and allow families to remain working is utterly critical.
I really should know better than to read a thread on any topic that involves the phrase "survey says"*, but this is ridiculous for a site orientated towards maths and science in general. Surveys are an atrocious method of data collection even when conducted with extreme care by that most rare creature, the independent researcher.
There are faulty engineering and management decisions every step of the way when producing __________
Fill in the blank with pretty much anything on this scale. Or most things on any scale. The difference is how they are controlled. The mechanisms, physical, on paper, whatever, that are in place to minimise and control risk.
IANAL, but my understanding is control is also the central consideration when it comes to legal issues. In the UK the first corporate manslaughter prosecution was in connection with the Lyme Bay canoeing tragedy, which has some good write-ups for an understanding of the topic (at least in the UK, but reasoning is largely universal logic).
A lot of posts are looking at this with huge preconceptions.
Dell literally just said choose Ubuntu unless you plan on using Windows. It positions Ubuntu as the default choice just with a major caveat.
Or a not-so-major caveat. I trialled W7 on a machine I built with spare parts and offered my two flatmates they could use it instead of the incredibly slow XP machine they were sharing. Then the trial ran out but they really didn't want to go back to the old machine. So the conversation went like this:
me: "well... We could try Ubuntu"
them: "what's that?"
me: "free software that will make the computer work, but it's not Windows"
them: "we don't need a Windows, I don't think we ever use it"
me: "Windows is the program that runs from the start, that makes everything work"
them: "doesn't everything work with Ubuntu then?"
me: "well, yes, apart from iTunes and maybe if you plug in your phones or whatever, they'll just work like a USB memory stick, but Facebook and everything will be exactly the same"
them: "well why don't we use that then?"
That's as close to word-for-word as my memory allows. And they find Ubuntu works perfectly for them except for iTunes and when they rotate a photo it doesn't stay rotated (Windows automatically saves it when you do). The Dell page is actually spot-on. Use Ubuntu unless you need to use Windows, or programs that require Windows. It's a major plug.
The only thing that's missing is they put Windows on the left. People tend to assume things on the top and left are more important. Try shopping the page to swap the Windows and Ubuntu positions around and see if the page doesn't suddenly seem like one big plug for Ubuntu. But, you know, one of them has to go on the left and we'd only be moaning about how Dell didn't say using Windows makes you a bad parent, baby Jesus cry, or whatever.
The "safer" a weapon is, the less the restrictions and controls over it's use, and the more often it is used.
As we have seen with tasers, people begin to see them as a tool which achieves their objective with minimal repercussions. There follows a normalisation process resulting in usage becoming considered appropriate even in situations where other forms of violence would be considered unacceptable. Like when trying to stop a student making a scene as he is leaving the premises as requested. Tasers were touted as a less violent option to bullets, instead they seem to be used as a more violent option to wrestling (and, if you go by Youtube, talking).
Even if the technology is 100% safe and cannot result in permanent injury, it is still the exercise of pain and violence in controlling civilians and must be very tightly controlled. Instead there seems to be very little interest in the misapplication of violence by officials if nobody dies.
Seriously, making people feel like they are on fire in order to "disperse crowds"?
Yeah I've got >250 hours sunk into TF2, and it's nearly the exception that proves the rule, so to speak. But, I didn't refer to it due as personally I think TF2 just about always makes for a bad example - it's just freakishly exceptional.
It came out in a ridiculously good deal (Orange Box), standalone version seemed to be very cheap on Steam quite quickly and Valve have given away a crazy amount of free content. I can only assume Valve either see the game as valuable to the Steam platform (so making a "loss" on it, or less profit than they could, is worthwhile as indirectly making even more money through other Steam sales), or perhaps their devs just love it and do stuff in their free time.
I just don't think it is reasonable to use it as a standard that other devs should try to attain. My point was devs could do similar but charge for the extra content, it's not really fair to back that up by pointing to the success of TF2 where there was no charge.
They're already doing this, in the wrong way that they can only be expected to implement it: selling half-finished buggy crap at full price then charging for patches + content that they took out from the original game and calling it "DLC". I'm not against DLC in principle, it has excellent potential IMHO, but rather how it is often being implemented in practice.
Also, I'm not going to buy half a singleplayer game unless I can get the second half as soon as I've completed the first. Just like I don't watch half a movie or read half a book. I get "into" a game and play it a lot, then drop it and maybe have a run around a year or two later. The games that I'll pick up for long sessions with long breaks are few and far between (only one I can think of is Civ).
Multiplayer games however, this could work. I find:
- MP games often come out with too much content for people to get properly into, resulting in a long lead time of people being inexperienced with the levels.
- related to above, many people tend to pick a few favourites and just ignore other maps, even if they're still quite good. These maps may offer more value if introduced when they are adding freshness as the old favourites are getting a bit tired.
- the high initial price puts people off because MP games are "high risk" - good balance is hard to achieve.
- related to above, enjoyment of a MP game isn't only related to the quality of the game itself, but the quantity (and quality) of other players.
Most of the MP games I've got really into have stagnated from lack of fresh content as the game gets "old". Often these games go on for years longer thanks to some good modding, though fan made maps rarely fare so well.
Does anyone know of any creative works that were provably a financial failure due to piracy?
Who cares, unless you're in a "creative" industry? I don't give a damn whether they make money or not, I mean good luck and everything but it's none of my business. As a consumer I only have an interest in the projects that never got commissioned due to the potential backers having been put off by piracy. That's more relevant and relatively easily measurable - you might have to get through the industry BS, but to "provably" answer the original question you need a time machine.
Come to think of it, if a project was never made then you can consider that a financial failure. Somebody spent at least some time and probably at least some money submitting it to there's your loss right there.
And if you didn't have that 10% that is eventually needed, you'd be totally screwed. Do we really need to play the 20/20 hindsight game every time somebody thinks of something like this?
I know/. summaries are traditionally highly unreliable and jumping to obvious conclusions after picking up on a couple of key words is often a safer bet, but this time we have a good one. It goes straight (perhaps too straight) to the point that some data is in use that needs to be on expensive servers, and there is data that is not in use and can be stored on much slower and cheaper systems. There is no suggestion at all in TFA that the other 90% should be deleted or not collected in the first place - a debate worth having at individual companies perhaps, but that's another story.
There's nothing new in TFA except that the unused data is as high as 90%, and that there's a few gizmo's on the way to facilitate, so the cost savings may be much more significant now than previously perceived.
Films are usually produced via a special vehicle, a company created specifically for the purpose of that movie.
The studio parent company still owns the producer-subsidiary, so they have lots of options. For example pay over a massive interest rate on the financing provided, a "management fee" to move the profits. That's just the expense side, it's even easier to simply licence the product to the parent company at their chosen rate, so all the profit margin is shifted to the studio. This approach will also reduce payments due to people paying a % of gross.
Beautifully, you can still get the tax hit at the producer company by declaring the transactions at arms-length (market) value rather than what was actually paid over, and yes the tax is deducted from net profit. So the tax man gets something approaching the real figures (well, no doubt there is other tax-avoidance) but that's not what the contracts are based on. Or rather, that's not what people seem to keep basing their contracts on even though they really should know better. Seriously, Peter Jackson either doesn't bother with lawyers and accountants or they're ludicrously incompetent not to see this coming. I'm not saying he deserves to get ripped off or anything, but there is a reason it's called due diligence.
Never sign up to a % of net profits unless you control the company. Directorship plus majority voting power is what you want - particularly check any variations to voting rights in respect of issuing more shares, varying voting rights and appointing/removing directors.
Sure, if the contract is very well worded to ensure fiddles are excluded from the calculation it can work, but then you're just giving yourself the hassle of making sure. To be fair the courts can "see through" the transactions and base awards using fair value, but you're at the mercy of obtaining proof and court agreeing to essentially reinterpret contract. Courts are big fans of the freedom to contract.
On this kind of scale, if you really must go with profit-share contracts, at a minimum you should be ensuring contracts give complete right of access to an auditor of your appointment. This guy you employ from the beginning, not after the fact, ideally teamed up with other profit-participants to share costs.
But just go for % of gross takings based on fair-value or "to ultimate consumers" instead. It will still take some working-out but is much easier to do and prove than using net profit. This of course means the project is much riskier for the studio since you get paid regardless of whether a real profit is made. It would be much fairer for everyone if pay was calculated as a share of fair profits. But studios have proven they can't be trusted and aint karma a bitch.
Anyone seen any mention of the "Collateral Damage" video on the BBC news ?
They ran a 2 minute segment of video highlights and interview with Assange which is still available via the website. I saw it covered on peak programming such as the 10 o'clock news and Breakfast. On the website they also provided the full video and promoted discussion on it. There are some follow-up articles on there too.
So... Why isn't the formula for calculating the bars standardised again?
Personally I'm wondering why part of it (on many phones) seems to involve dropping a couple of bars whenever I press the "call" button, without moving the phone. Presumably doing so invokes the "slightly less BS" mode. The other thing I'm wondering is why the more expensive the phone, the crappier the signal. I picked up a spare PAYG phone for about the same as what lunch cost me that day and it makes a very clear call everywhere. My old Ericsson K800i, not bad but not nearly as good. HTC Desire does better than the bars imply but still easily the worst of the 3.
It was noted in the original paper that the wisdom of crowds applies when comprised of aggregate decisions of individuals making decisions as individuals. On most websites this is not what you get.
Drew goes so far as to imply (by my reading) that crowds act more stupidly than individuals. These crowd failures are identified and discussed even on the Wiki page, most notably relevant to Fark.com and Americans Speaking Out:
Where choices are visible and made in sequence, an "information cascade"[2] can form in which only the first few decision makers gain anything by contemplating the choices available: once past decisions have become sufficiently informative, it pays for later decision makers to simply copy those around them. This can lead to fragile social outcomes.
Emotional factors, such as a feeling of belonging, can lead to peer pressure, herd instinct, and in extreme cases collective hysteria.
Due to the nature of the websites various factors come into play which ruin contra to requirements for "the wisdom of crowds". Not forgetting that if it's on the internet, it's probably not being taken seriously and therefore is hardly a gauge of anything.
(I'm not wanting to be seen as endorsing the "wisdom of crowds", I'll take the wisdom of a few experts instead thank you very much, but the argument presented here is extremely flawed).
It's the most useless article ever. Absolutely nothing in it other than what barely amounts to a rumour without any details, juicy or otherwise.
News at 11: "industry lobbies government... some guy had a conversation with a government minister encouraging him to do pretty much what he eventually did, here's absolutely no details on the story because we have no evidence and we might be called out on it". They're even asking people not to speculate in the comments.
Personally, as a gamer and UK taxpayer, the UK games industry can go jump if they want my money from any route other than by me deciding their product is worth my purchase. They're all moaning about how unfair it is that they don't get a special subsidy and instead have to be treated like everyone else. And industry moans about the gamers' entitlement culture?
I can't even remember UK having any "cultural" influence on gaming since... Before my time I guess, everything I can think of has a distinctly American slant, even the Bullfrog stuff. Even the "American" stuff is really just generic plus American accents in the voice overs.
Just to clarify, since the description isn't exactly clear, basically they're doing for IP TV what they did for free-to-air digital television with Freeview.
That is, bundling it together for convenient free access on a cheap box to go under the TV.
Like Freeview, this is not "a BBC project", but a coalition between all the major broadcasters in the UK plus a few others on the technology/infrastructure side. Again like Freeview, a company (apparently "YouTV" is most likely) will be set up to manage it and each broadcaster will have a share and board representation. BBC will probably take lead, because they initiated it and because the other broadcasters trust it more than they trust each other.
They have stated that it will be an "open standard", but no, not "open" in the sense of what/. would call open with respect to internet standards. They mean open in that any manufacturer can make the hardware and relatively light editorial controls over standards of the TV on it (no, don't expect channel 4chan to be on there). That probably doesn't matter much though since this is a TV box-set thing: consider it more a relatively open consumer product rather than a relatively closed internet standard.
Personally I think it's about time. Just like they did with Freeview (and iPlayer, and well, quite a lot of TV/radio throughout history), the BBC have sat back, given capitalism the first opportunity, saw the lacklustre efforts going nowhere then stepped in to get the job done. It's really quite absurd that a non-commercial entity is consistently the one pushing media technology forward in the UK with any enthusiasm, and even more ridiculous that they are the one that comes across as consumer-focused. Don't get me wrong, I still think they do things around the time I would expect a non-profit "me too" organisation would, what is strange is that capitalism isn't already there. Nearly all the traditional media companies seem to just crap their pants at the sound of the word "internet".
Not sure exactly where this leaves the cable and satellite operators though, what with this + Freeview HD all that infrastructure is starting to look redundant.
There's some apparently independent wiki-type site with lots of info here.
Transparency is generally a good thing when it comes to government. So the more websites the better.
I think you mean the more information the better. That is not the same as more websites.
Consider this government website, for example, which is devoted to benefit fraud and proclaims it costs £12.6m, while a rather more useful website from another government department contains a report that gives the rather more plausable figure as £2.7b (I suspect still a big understatement, but seeing as these guys give something that can be called "information" it also says what they weren't counting).
Many of the government sites are things that seemed a nice idea at the time but are functionally at best useless.
It looks like their purpose avoids that being an issue. The design is for rural areas where towers will be relatively under-utilised anyway. Depending on how it works out, it's plausable all this does is increase utilisation of capital infrastructure with minimal incremental cost - meaning the networks could actually do this quite cheaply if they can control the locations, because the revenue is getting on for 100% gross profit.
Where tower capacity becomes an issue, it's also more practical to increase the number of towers in response. I assume that in rural areas the bottleneck to increasing available bandwidth is insufficient demand for more towers (economic), while in cities the bottleneck is saturation of the spectrum (physical/technological). The device increases economic demand for towers in rural areas, so it's win-win.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're confused. He is not required to provide an email address, neither he nor his constituents have any rights or obligations in this respect. Any ideas about "rights" is a non-issue. Many MP's choose to use emails, there may be ample merits of doing so, but it is their choice.
Yeah I made the same mistake too, as I suspect does the author of the summary and indeed the Green Car Reports article.
I was in the middle of taking the piss out of TFA forgetting the currency conversion (says $1.17, average price is £1.17) when I realised they were probably talking about Canadian dollars, since it's the British Columbia Automobile Association. Then I was writing an anecdote about my error and jokingly suggesting I'd left another deliberate error in there when it occurred to me people using $ to refer to something else just might do the same thing with "gallons".
£1.17 at £1:$1.64= CAD$1.91 per litre.
$1.91 * 4.5 litres to the gallon= CAD$8.60. (so it seems they're even further out)
Seriously people. Metric system. But oh look, there's variations in that too. For fuck sake, I have enough of this shit revising for my tax exam.
Firstly, a trial by jury IS being judged by your peers. Under the law, all members of society are equal, we are all peers. This is utterly fundamental to law and democracy, and in my humble opinion, being a decent person.
Yes, there is good argument for people in a position of particularly privileged trust and expertise to be judged by a panel of other experts. This is why it is standard practice, indeed a fundamental part of being a member of a learned profession. The same principle applies as above: a member of a profession is a member of a society of professionals, thus if they break professional rules they are judged by a panel of their peers in that society. Doctors, lawyers, accountants are struck off/disbarred (and can be fined) by other doctors/lawyers/accountants. In the UK at least, professional bodies actually have by-laws, their own laws for their members, which are generally practices within the profession but the regular law courts will assist in enforcing if necessary.
A change of ruling party is always great, but immediately starts going downhill at an ever accelerating pace. I'd say all the promise is in the first year, when they're scrapping the crap from the previous government, installing projects they were thinking about for years while out of office and breathing new life into the stagnant, mismanaged shit hole that is the public sector.
After this however they are out of good ideas and just making any shit up, the whole thing has become just a job, unions/middle management aren't afraid of them any more and the focus is on keeping bad news out of the papers.
As BP is a UK company, that website exists: The Registrar of Companies. I didn't see a US equivalent form a very brief googling however numerous organisations appear attempting to offer similar information.
From 1 October 2009 directors can provide a service address instead of their home, but the old documents are still there so you're only out of they moved. Also, at risk persons such as directors of animal testing facilities can apply to have their address withdrawn.
Remuneration for individual directors is not always broken down in the statutory accounts but often is in the other guff thrown into the Annual Report, commonly found in the investor section of most public companies' websites. Alternately, buy one share and you are entitled to demand to inspect the statutory books (held either at HQ or "SAIL" address) and attend the AGM, where you'll get details and be entitled to vote on the directors' remuneration. In practice voting is often done by a show of hands unless someone requests a proper count or it is close, so sometimes you're one share counts the same as the guy with 1m sitting beside you.
It is extraordinarily unusual for any company in the UK, other than your employer, to hold our equivalent of the social security number so that's not a reasonable request.
On a fundamental level, I disagree that making information about CEOs public will help in any way. Director's information is already easily available, and thus they have no incentive towards privacy. If their information was private, then they would be more inclined to keep it that way.
A good Civ game gets in the way of life, sleep and work, not the other way around. A good session of Civ finishes with the guilty realisation that the sun isn't setting, it's rising.
And 9 hours is plenty of time to scratch the surface of a good Civ game, unless you spent it reading the manual (being the rare game where the manual is good reference, well written, and the size of a decent novel). Even a hardcore Civ player should be reading the pages where they explain what's new to the series.
They are a little short-sighted. A lot of the highest fliers are aiming for public office: DA, judge, politician - some to stay there and some for the credentials when they go back to commerce.
Same for tax advisors. If you want to be a big shot, do a stint working for a tax office. You get to learn not just how the government agency works, but everybody they're investigating too.
US Life Expectancy [PDF]:
Born 1900: 49
Born 2000: 77
Immediately from this we can see the task of looking after an old person is not the same. Very, very unfortunately, this is not even close to being the problem.
Compounding the life expectancy is the birth rates over the period. For example, in Britain already the number of pensioners exceed the number of children. By 2060 there will be 2 adults of working age for every 1 pensioner. Adults of working age of course includes 16+ year olds, university students and so on, and people in the vital early years of building careers.
The demographics are frightening. Yet it doesn't end there. There's a massive pensions crisis looming, people are buying homes later and are more debt-ridden - few people have any real capital anymore.
The demographic time bomb has been well understood, almost from the moment it began ticking. It very likely will have far more severe consequences (at least here in the West) than The Environment, but it's just being swept under the carpet. Let's be clear, the need for pensioners to remain autonomous and allow families to remain working is utterly critical.
Why on earth would you go to the theatre for any other reason than the fact that it is not automated? It's the entire raison d'être of theatre.
I really should know better than to read a thread on any topic that involves the phrase "survey says"*, but this is ridiculous for a site orientated towards maths and science in general. Surveys are an atrocious method of data collection even when conducted with extreme care by that most rare creature, the independent researcher.
* Or "Apple".
Fill in the blank with pretty much anything on this scale. Or most things on any scale. The difference is how they are controlled. The mechanisms, physical, on paper, whatever, that are in place to minimise and control risk.
IANAL, but my understanding is control is also the central consideration when it comes to legal issues. In the UK the first corporate manslaughter prosecution was in connection with the Lyme Bay canoeing tragedy, which has some good write-ups for an understanding of the topic (at least in the UK, but reasoning is largely universal logic).
A lot of posts are looking at this with huge preconceptions.
Dell literally just said choose Ubuntu unless you plan on using Windows. It positions Ubuntu as the default choice just with a major caveat.
Or a not-so-major caveat. I trialled W7 on a machine I built with spare parts and offered my two flatmates they could use it instead of the incredibly slow XP machine they were sharing. Then the trial ran out but they really didn't want to go back to the old machine. So the conversation went like this:
me: "well... We could try Ubuntu"
them: "what's that?"
me: "free software that will make the computer work, but it's not Windows"
them: "we don't need a Windows, I don't think we ever use it"
me: "Windows is the program that runs from the start, that makes everything work"
them: "doesn't everything work with Ubuntu then?"
me: "well, yes, apart from iTunes and maybe if you plug in your phones or whatever, they'll just work like a USB memory stick, but Facebook and everything will be exactly the same"
them: "well why don't we use that then?"
That's as close to word-for-word as my memory allows. And they find Ubuntu works perfectly for them except for iTunes and when they rotate a photo it doesn't stay rotated (Windows automatically saves it when you do). The Dell page is actually spot-on. Use Ubuntu unless you need to use Windows, or programs that require Windows. It's a major plug.
The only thing that's missing is they put Windows on the left. People tend to assume things on the top and left are more important. Try shopping the page to swap the Windows and Ubuntu positions around and see if the page doesn't suddenly seem like one big plug for Ubuntu. But, you know, one of them has to go on the left and we'd only be moaning about how Dell didn't say using Windows makes you a bad parent, baby Jesus cry, or whatever.
The "safer" a weapon is, the less the restrictions and controls over it's use, and the more often it is used.
As we have seen with tasers, people begin to see them as a tool which achieves their objective with minimal repercussions. There follows a normalisation process resulting in usage becoming considered appropriate even in situations where other forms of violence would be considered unacceptable. Like when trying to stop a student making a scene as he is leaving the premises as requested. Tasers were touted as a less violent option to bullets, instead they seem to be used as a more violent option to wrestling (and, if you go by Youtube, talking).
Even if the technology is 100% safe and cannot result in permanent injury, it is still the exercise of pain and violence in controlling civilians and must be very tightly controlled. Instead there seems to be very little interest in the misapplication of violence by officials if nobody dies.
Seriously, making people feel like they are on fire in order to "disperse crowds"?
Yeah I've got >250 hours sunk into TF2, and it's nearly the exception that proves the rule, so to speak. But, I didn't refer to it due as personally I think TF2 just about always makes for a bad example - it's just freakishly exceptional.
It came out in a ridiculously good deal (Orange Box), standalone version seemed to be very cheap on Steam quite quickly and Valve have given away a crazy amount of free content. I can only assume Valve either see the game as valuable to the Steam platform (so making a "loss" on it, or less profit than they could, is worthwhile as indirectly making even more money through other Steam sales), or perhaps their devs just love it and do stuff in their free time.
I just don't think it is reasonable to use it as a standard that other devs should try to attain. My point was devs could do similar but charge for the extra content, it's not really fair to back that up by pointing to the success of TF2 where there was no charge.
They're already doing this, in the wrong way that they can only be expected to implement it: selling half-finished buggy crap at full price then charging for patches + content that they took out from the original game and calling it "DLC". I'm not against DLC in principle, it has excellent potential IMHO, but rather how it is often being implemented in practice.
Also, I'm not going to buy half a singleplayer game unless I can get the second half as soon as I've completed the first. Just like I don't watch half a movie or read half a book. I get "into" a game and play it a lot, then drop it and maybe have a run around a year or two later. The games that I'll pick up for long sessions with long breaks are few and far between (only one I can think of is Civ).
Multiplayer games however, this could work. I find:
- MP games often come out with too much content for people to get properly into, resulting in a long lead time of people being inexperienced with the levels.
- related to above, many people tend to pick a few favourites and just ignore other maps, even if they're still quite good. These maps may offer more value if introduced when they are adding freshness as the old favourites are getting a bit tired.
- the high initial price puts people off because MP games are "high risk" - good balance is hard to achieve.
- related to above, enjoyment of a MP game isn't only related to the quality of the game itself, but the quantity (and quality) of other players.
Most of the MP games I've got really into have stagnated from lack of fresh content as the game gets "old". Often these games go on for years longer thanks to some good modding, though fan made maps rarely fare so well.
Who cares, unless you're in a "creative" industry? I don't give a damn whether they make money or not, I mean good luck and everything but it's none of my business. As a consumer I only have an interest in the projects that never got commissioned due to the potential backers having been put off by piracy. That's more relevant and relatively easily measurable - you might have to get through the industry BS, but to "provably" answer the original question you need a time machine.
Come to think of it, if a project was never made then you can consider that a financial failure. Somebody spent at least some time and probably at least some money submitting it to there's your loss right there.
I know /. summaries are traditionally highly unreliable and jumping to obvious conclusions after picking up on a couple of key words is often a safer bet, but this time we have a good one. It goes straight (perhaps too straight) to the point that some data is in use that needs to be on expensive servers, and there is data that is not in use and can be stored on much slower and cheaper systems. There is no suggestion at all in TFA that the other 90% should be deleted or not collected in the first place - a debate worth having at individual companies perhaps, but that's another story.
There's nothing new in TFA except that the unused data is as high as 90%, and that there's a few gizmo's on the way to facilitate, so the cost savings may be much more significant now than previously perceived.
Films are usually produced via a special vehicle, a company created specifically for the purpose of that movie.
The studio parent company still owns the producer-subsidiary, so they have lots of options. For example pay over a massive interest rate on the financing provided, a "management fee" to move the profits. That's just the expense side, it's even easier to simply licence the product to the parent company at their chosen rate, so all the profit margin is shifted to the studio. This approach will also reduce payments due to people paying a % of gross.
Beautifully, you can still get the tax hit at the producer company by declaring the transactions at arms-length (market) value rather than what was actually paid over, and yes the tax is deducted from net profit. So the tax man gets something approaching the real figures (well, no doubt there is other tax-avoidance) but that's not what the contracts are based on. Or rather, that's not what people seem to keep basing their contracts on even though they really should know better. Seriously, Peter Jackson either doesn't bother with lawyers and accountants or they're ludicrously incompetent not to see this coming. I'm not saying he deserves to get ripped off or anything, but there is a reason it's called due diligence.
Never sign up to a % of net profits unless you control the company. Directorship plus majority voting power is what you want - particularly check any variations to voting rights in respect of issuing more shares, varying voting rights and appointing/removing directors.
Sure, if the contract is very well worded to ensure fiddles are excluded from the calculation it can work, but then you're just giving yourself the hassle of making sure. To be fair the courts can "see through" the transactions and base awards using fair value, but you're at the mercy of obtaining proof and court agreeing to essentially reinterpret contract. Courts are big fans of the freedom to contract.
On this kind of scale, if you really must go with profit-share contracts, at a minimum you should be ensuring contracts give complete right of access to an auditor of your appointment. This guy you employ from the beginning, not after the fact, ideally teamed up with other profit-participants to share costs.
But just go for % of gross takings based on fair-value or "to ultimate consumers" instead. It will still take some working-out but is much easier to do and prove than using net profit. This of course means the project is much riskier for the studio since you get paid regardless of whether a real profit is made. It would be much fairer for everyone if pay was calculated as a share of fair profits. But studios have proven they can't be trusted and aint karma a bitch.
They ran a 2 minute segment of video highlights and interview with Assange which is still available via the website. I saw it covered on peak programming such as the 10 o'clock news and Breakfast. On the website they also provided the full video and promoted discussion on it. There are some follow-up articles on there too.
So... Why isn't the formula for calculating the bars standardised again?
Personally I'm wondering why part of it (on many phones) seems to involve dropping a couple of bars whenever I press the "call" button, without moving the phone. Presumably doing so invokes the "slightly less BS" mode. The other thing I'm wondering is why the more expensive the phone, the crappier the signal. I picked up a spare PAYG phone for about the same as what lunch cost me that day and it makes a very clear call everywhere. My old Ericsson K800i, not bad but not nearly as good. HTC Desire does better than the bars imply but still easily the worst of the 3.
It was noted in the original paper that the wisdom of crowds applies when comprised of aggregate decisions of individuals making decisions as individuals. On most websites this is not what you get.
Drew goes so far as to imply (by my reading) that crowds act more stupidly than individuals. These crowd failures are identified and discussed even on the Wiki page, most notably relevant to Fark.com and Americans Speaking Out:
Due to the nature of the websites various factors come into play which ruin contra to requirements for "the wisdom of crowds". Not forgetting that if it's on the internet, it's probably not being taken seriously and therefore is hardly a gauge of anything.
(I'm not wanting to be seen as endorsing the "wisdom of crowds", I'll take the wisdom of a few experts instead thank you very much, but the argument presented here is extremely flawed).
It's the most useless article ever. Absolutely nothing in it other than what barely amounts to a rumour without any details, juicy or otherwise.
News at 11: "industry lobbies government... some guy had a conversation with a government minister encouraging him to do pretty much what he eventually did, here's absolutely no details on the story because we have no evidence and we might be called out on it". They're even asking people not to speculate in the comments.
Personally, as a gamer and UK taxpayer, the UK games industry can go jump if they want my money from any route other than by me deciding their product is worth my purchase. They're all moaning about how unfair it is that they don't get a special subsidy and instead have to be treated like everyone else. And industry moans about the gamers' entitlement culture?
I can't even remember UK having any "cultural" influence on gaming since... Before my time I guess, everything I can think of has a distinctly American slant, even the Bullfrog stuff. Even the "American" stuff is really just generic plus American accents in the voice overs.
Just to clarify, since the description isn't exactly clear, basically they're doing for IP TV what they did for free-to-air digital television with Freeview.
That is, bundling it together for convenient free access on a cheap box to go under the TV.
Like Freeview, this is not "a BBC project", but a coalition between all the major broadcasters in the UK plus a few others on the technology/infrastructure side. Again like Freeview, a company (apparently "YouTV" is most likely) will be set up to manage it and each broadcaster will have a share and board representation. BBC will probably take lead, because they initiated it and because the other broadcasters trust it more than they trust each other.
They have stated that it will be an "open standard", but no, not "open" in the sense of what /. would call open with respect to internet standards. They mean open in that any manufacturer can make the hardware and relatively light editorial controls over standards of the TV on it (no, don't expect channel 4chan to be on there). That probably doesn't matter much though since this is a TV box-set thing: consider it more a relatively open consumer product rather than a relatively closed internet standard.
Personally I think it's about time. Just like they did with Freeview (and iPlayer, and well, quite a lot of TV/radio throughout history), the BBC have sat back, given capitalism the first opportunity, saw the lacklustre efforts going nowhere then stepped in to get the job done. It's really quite absurd that a non-commercial entity is consistently the one pushing media technology forward in the UK with any enthusiasm, and even more ridiculous that they are the one that comes across as consumer-focused. Don't get me wrong, I still think they do things around the time I would expect a non-profit "me too" organisation would, what is strange is that capitalism isn't already there. Nearly all the traditional media companies seem to just crap their pants at the sound of the word "internet".
Not sure exactly where this leaves the cable and satellite operators though, what with this + Freeview HD all that infrastructure is starting to look redundant.
There's some apparently independent wiki-type site with lots of info here.
I think you mean the more information the better. That is not the same as more websites.
Consider this government website, for example, which is devoted to benefit fraud and proclaims it costs £12.6m, while a rather more useful website from another government department contains a report that gives the rather more plausable figure as £2.7b (I suspect still a big understatement, but seeing as these guys give something that can be called "information" it also says what they weren't counting).
Many of the government sites are things that seemed a nice idea at the time but are functionally at best useless.
It looks like their purpose avoids that being an issue. The design is for rural areas where towers will be relatively under-utilised anyway. Depending on how it works out, it's plausable all this does is increase utilisation of capital infrastructure with minimal incremental cost - meaning the networks could actually do this quite cheaply if they can control the locations, because the revenue is getting on for 100% gross profit.
Where tower capacity becomes an issue, it's also more practical to increase the number of towers in response. I assume that in rural areas the bottleneck to increasing available bandwidth is insufficient demand for more towers (economic), while in cities the bottleneck is saturation of the spectrum (physical/technological). The device increases economic demand for towers in rural areas, so it's win-win.