Technically it's not the fall itself that kills you, but the rapid deceleration experienced at the end of it... Of course, once the fall commences you're inevitably screwed unless you had the foresight to save your own ass by packing a parachute.
Clearly you forgot that flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing...
one of the highest GDPs per person in Africa
I don't mean to sound crass, but that ain't saying much. Moreover, it may be the perfect foothold for this new device and an excellent start to enabling a population to better access information and educational resources. If, as you claim, Lybia is one of the best-off countries in Africa -- the worst off continent in many measures, then here's the simple question: If it can't succeed in the best of the worst environments, then can it succeed anywhere?
Moreover, looking at the CIA's world factbook entry about Lybia, it seems there's a bit more to the story than you present:
Substantial revenues from the energy sector coupled with a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows down to the lower orders of society.
Looking a bit further, Lybia has a 30% unemployment rate -- that doesn't sound like a real economic success story to me nor does it argue that the large GDP per capita's value is really spread across the population in any sort of even manner.
No, your analogy fails -- and you admit it by saying "[bricks and mortar stores] presume that 'some' customers are crooks".
It's one thing to institute inventory loss controls, as a retailer, and completely another thing to demanding that some other company subsidize your failing business model while implying that all customers of that other company steal your product and as such should be billed for it. Directly compounding operating expenses is one thing -- yes, we all pay a little more at best buy and CC because other people steal and because they have to pay for security systems, but we also have to pay a little more because energy costs and medical costs have gone up and we'll have to pay more if the minimum wage goes up. Those are all operating costs of the retailer. I get that. What I don't get is how a third party feels they have the right to insist that they get money from a legitimate purchase because they're being stolen from. That's NOT the same thing. The record/media/contant companies have the same option available to them -- raise their prices to recoup losses from theft. What makes them so special that they can demand more money from everyone purchasing someone else's product? They claim it's because that product is used for piracy and I resent that, being the user of a similar (albeit non-MS branded) product.
Should the content industry also demand money from every vehicle sold because some are used to transport pirated content? Should they demand money from every headphone and speaker manufacturer because some headphones and speakers are used to listen to pirated content? Should every paper company be paying the major book publishers $.20 for every ream of paper sold because some of it is used to make photocopies in violation of copyright laws? Should backpacks have a surcharge placed on them because they frequently carry burned copies of pirated CD's or movies? Should major cities like New York or Tokyo have to pay a few cents for every 10 feet of sidewalk because some street vendors sell bootleg copies off of folding tables on those very sidewalks? Of course not.
Most, if not all of the examples above a laughable, but all are directly comparable -- especially the paper surcharge example and when you think about it by making those comparisons, it illustrates exactly what the greedy and desperate media companies are up to. It's nothing short of money grabbing fueled by greed and desperation, rather that content and product innovation. So, again I say, shame on them.
They're trying to charge me (indirectly) for stealing their music (which I don't, never have, and never will) -- so I'd want my money back. Greedy bastards. How dare you treat customers like presumed crooks?
OK Geoff, you have stumbled into the long raging debate in some circles as to why it is referred to as The Agency or The Company. Each group has its preferences and the usage is based upon where you place your allegiances.
Actually, you brought that debate here, trying to correct someone else even though you knew exactly what he meant and your bringing up of "the debate" was rather inane and really quite pointless in the current discussion.
Watch who you call dumb. The face [flickr.com] you put up on your Flicker stream does not look that smart to me.
LAME. If you can't win outright, insult the other person right? Get better at this game. You went to the low-brow tactics way too quickly.
Yes, I'm very surprised -- I really expected that the CIA would be better at finding information than their recent track record indicates, if they were using google;)
Hmmm, odd... I have seen more spam in my spambox but really, no more has made it in to my inbox, and all with Bayesian filtering based SpamSieve, so my anecdotal results don't match with the story... lucky me, I guess =)
(at the moment)
Love - 273 items
Beauty - 119 items
Fun - 100 items
You - 99 items
Hope - 98 items
Faith - 59 items
Now - 58 items
Past - 47 items
Sorrow - 28 items
Anger - 24 items
---
Kinda makes me like humanity a bit more.
OTOH, I've been using discussion2 for a while now and I find it more annoying to mod with discussion2 because of that instant moderation "feature" -- in short, if you accidently click out of the pulldown box, too bad, your moderation is set in stone. Moreover, I like to take a second look at my moderations before I submit them just to be sure I'm modding more or less well... i.e. I'll read more comments to see if something I initially thought was insightful actually seems wrong the more I and other people mull it over and respond (I'm imperfect, I misjudge, yadda yadda).
-tcp
Wasn't the rumor that Apple would buy TiVo?
Well, either way, it's still just as much (or little) of a possibility inasmuch as the iTv doesn't appear to have any inputs (other than the network connections), so it's a different beast than a TiVo so interoperability is not out of the question, one might think.
I just opened my laptop to check my email and do wor...err surf the usual websites before bed and this story is the topmost on/.
Stay out of my head...err bed...yeah, the idea of being in bed with Cowboy Neal really isn't doing all that much for me. Well, a least nothing good.
Hmm -- sounds like the urban equivalent of a forest fire in some ways -- the fire comes through and clears out all the old stuff and clears the way for new growth. It'd be very very cool to see New Orleans come back as a much less corrupt and much more modern city that business flocks to, thereby improving the job situation for all residents and improving the tax base allowing for restoration of the historic parts of the city, etc... of course, that's unlikely to happen as the powers that be seem to have survived the flood.
Indeed. It just seems like a dangerous practice to be able to claim that national security trumps the constitution or seemingly substantive claims that constitutional rights have been violated. Protecting us by depriving us of liberty is not really protection in the secure, unharmed sense... but that horse has been beaten so many times that I'll leave it at that...
Okay, so you've conceded one part of my previous two points -- the PSP isn't that good of a movie platform. (that in itself means I'm not as full of it as you'd seem to like to believe...)
Now, for games... there's nothing all that inventive or novel about the PSP. Sure, there are some very playable games, but that doesn't make it a great gaming platform -- far from it... and here are two examples: First, compare the input options on the DS vs the PSP (for the record, I own neither of the systems) The multi-screen/touch screen plus the conventional d-pad and buttons, plus even a microphone input allows completely new gaming experiences. Next load times -- two or three minutes in some cases. My point isn't to say that the PSP sucks -- it doesn't, but it's not amazing either.. in short, it doesn't prove itself to be an amazing or groundbreaking gaming platform. From a design standpoint, the DS is a much more interesting platform -- though realize that the point isn't that the DS is better than the PSP, but rather that the PSP isn't as good as a gaming platform could be and that was the second part of my previous point... so please, put your fanboy ire away and relax, I'm not like I'm trying to personally insult you or your tastes -- if you have fun, great, keep playing your PSP.
But, okay, I expect you'll still be upset with this response... so, then, I've got one more question... why isn't the PSP being adopted as widely as many initially expected it would be? If I'm wrong and it's not less than ideal at all that it does, please, enlighten us as to why it's not complete blowing its competition away.
Convergence happens where it works, not where it's forced -- More and more consumers are dissatisfied with cellphone/mp3-player/organizer/blender/hairdryer/e tc. combinations because they really don't do those things all that well in many cases and in many cases, they don't do ANYthing well. The PSP is a good example -- people didn't adopt it as a movie and game platform because it wasn't especially good at either. Contrast that with video iPods -- I've certainly seen them used for videos on commuter trains/subways, etc. They've been adopted because they work -- movies/video are just as easy to use as music -- the purpose that the player was originally designed for. Now, that having been said, the video iPod is still short of what it could be and that's evidenced by the number of people who own them and don't use them for video purposes.
Now, another excellent example of a convergence item is a laptop. I use my laptop as a desktop machine and as a portable. I use it in place of a radio or cd player (or iPod) at work and have much of my music collection on it. I use it as a portable DVD player on long business trips, in flight and on layovers. Mix in skype or even IM and I've got my realtime interpersonal communications, when I've got myself an internet connection (which is more and more ubiquitous these days in most hotels and coffee shops, etc.). I no longer subscribe to the local paper because I read it online. I frequently download episodes of shows that I don't get at home to watch when I have the time (for the record, all of my media consumption is legal). I no longer print many journal articles or technical reference documents that I would read as I can read them in.pdf form while I'm on the train, on my laptop.
If that's not an example of a convergence device in the making, I don't know what is...
Now, you can claim it's "just an enhancement..." but you're missing the point if you do -- this is an example of how convergence happens, almost organically, because people use what works and ignore that which doesn't work fairly quickly...
I've (only) downloaded just over 200 songs from them in the last three months or so and I haven't had any issues. I know that their FAQ says that if that happens you're supposed to download the song again (you can do that free of charge) and if that doesn't change things then email them through their contact form and they'll try to fix it. But all I can say is that I haven't had the same issues you have. If I did, I might not be a subscriber.
They do offer a la carte options on top of any of the service plans (they're called "booster packs") -- I completely understand your reluctance to be sucked into a subscription system -- I feel the same way, almost... There's no contract (that's a big one for me) and so far, I'm still using all of my monthly downloads before the month is up.
I really thought that I'd seen a question about being arrested (rather than convicted) at some point on an application. So, if not job applications, where else would this harm an individual? If there really is nowhere/nobody that is legally allowed to ask about arrests, I guess I feel a little better but the fact still remains that the arrest data is stored locally and as such may bias other police personnel who would deal with that individual, etc. etc.
I just think that on most things the police system is self correcting.
I guess I find it somewhat reassuring that someone with firsthand knowledge can say this. I believe in the system we've got but part of that means we need to stay vigilant and speak out as needs be and we definitely need to hold everyone to a high standard (average citizens included)...
When I stated he most likely thought he was in the right, I'm saying that the cop most likely actually thought that what the guy was doing happened to be illegal and for CID to find the charge/a charge to make it stick. What most likely happened is CID looked through their Lexis Nexis criminal code and couldn't find any mention of public citizen's taking police officer's photos being against the law.
I appreciate your expanded explanation for your comment, but I still think it's missing the seriousness of what happened -- when someone doesn't do their job right, there's cause for concern. When their job includes actions that directly restrict one's liberties (arrest even if charges are never filed certainly falls into that category), then there's cause for serious concern. Correct me if I'm wrong, but arrests stay on your record, regardless of what happens after that. Moreover, you'll always have to answer that you have been arrested on job applications etc., doing otherwise could bring serious legal consequences but doing so may well exclude you from opportunity. Pulling back, no matter if one genuinely thinks they're doing their job correctly, if they make a serious error in judgement, they need to be held accountable -- and they would in many professions. I see no reason why the case of a police officer is any different.
Slashdot Mirror
Moreover, looking at the CIA's world factbook entry about Lybia, it seems there's a bit more to the story than you present: Looking a bit further, Lybia has a 30% unemployment rate -- that doesn't sound like a real economic success story to me nor does it argue that the large GDP per capita's value is really spread across the population in any sort of even manner.
No, your analogy fails -- and you admit it by saying "[bricks and mortar stores] presume that 'some' customers are crooks".
It's one thing to institute inventory loss controls, as a retailer, and completely another thing to demanding that some other company subsidize your failing business model while implying that all customers of that other company steal your product and as such should be billed for it. Directly compounding operating expenses is one thing -- yes, we all pay a little more at best buy and CC because other people steal and because they have to pay for security systems, but we also have to pay a little more because energy costs and medical costs have gone up and we'll have to pay more if the minimum wage goes up. Those are all operating costs of the retailer. I get that. What I don't get is how a third party feels they have the right to insist that they get money from a legitimate purchase because they're being stolen from. That's NOT the same thing. The record/media/contant companies have the same option available to them -- raise their prices to recoup losses from theft. What makes them so special that they can demand more money from everyone purchasing someone else's product? They claim it's because that product is used for piracy and I resent that, being the user of a similar (albeit non-MS branded) product.
Should the content industry also demand money from every vehicle sold because some are used to transport pirated content? Should they demand money from every headphone and speaker manufacturer because some headphones and speakers are used to listen to pirated content? Should every paper company be paying the major book publishers $.20 for every ream of paper sold because some of it is used to make photocopies in violation of copyright laws? Should backpacks have a surcharge placed on them because they frequently carry burned copies of pirated CD's or movies? Should major cities like New York or Tokyo have to pay a few cents for every 10 feet of sidewalk because some street vendors sell bootleg copies off of folding tables on those very sidewalks? Of course not.
Most, if not all of the examples above a laughable, but all are directly comparable -- especially the paper surcharge example and when you think about it by making those comparisons, it illustrates exactly what the greedy and desperate media companies are up to. It's nothing short of money grabbing fueled by greed and desperation, rather that content and product innovation. So, again I say, shame on them.
They're trying to charge me (indirectly) for stealing their music (which I don't, never have, and never will) -- so I'd want my money back. Greedy bastards. How dare you treat customers like presumed crooks?
Yes, I'm very surprised -- I really expected that the CIA would be better at finding information than their recent track record indicates, if they were using google ;)
Hmm -- SpamSieve seems to catch that for me...checked: yep, got a bunch of image spam in my spambox at the moment...
Hmmm, odd... I have seen more spam in my spambox but really, no more has made it in to my inbox, and all with Bayesian filtering based SpamSieve, so my anecdotal results don't match with the story... lucky me, I guess =)
Not to mention cheap flights and hotel rooms!
(at the moment) Love - 273 items Beauty - 119 items Fun - 100 items You - 99 items Hope - 98 items Faith - 59 items Now - 58 items Past - 47 items Sorrow - 28 items Anger - 24 items --- Kinda makes me like humanity a bit more.
This thing is going to drop like a rock. I give it 6 mos. to a year, tops.
OTOH, I've been using discussion2 for a while now and I find it more annoying to mod with discussion2 because of that instant moderation "feature" -- in short, if you accidently click out of the pulldown box, too bad, your moderation is set in stone. Moreover, I like to take a second look at my moderations before I submit them just to be sure I'm modding more or less well... i.e. I'll read more comments to see if something I initially thought was insightful actually seems wrong the more I and other people mull it over and respond (I'm imperfect, I misjudge, yadda yadda). -tcp
Aw, c'mon, finding the 1M wasn't that hard: richardcpeterson
Wasn't the rumor that Apple would buy TiVo? Well, either way, it's still just as much (or little) of a possibility inasmuch as the iTv doesn't appear to have any inputs (other than the network connections), so it's a different beast than a TiVo so interoperability is not out of the question, one might think.
I just opened my laptop to check my email and do wor...err surf the usual websites before bed and this story is the topmost on /.
Stay out of my head...err bed...yeah, the idea of being in bed with Cowboy Neal really isn't doing all that much for me. Well, a least nothing good.
Hmm -- sounds like the urban equivalent of a forest fire in some ways -- the fire comes through and clears out all the old stuff and clears the way for new growth. It'd be very very cool to see New Orleans come back as a much less corrupt and much more modern city that business flocks to, thereby improving the job situation for all residents and improving the tax base allowing for restoration of the historic parts of the city, etc... of course, that's unlikely to happen as the powers that be seem to have survived the flood.
Indeed. It just seems like a dangerous practice to be able to claim that national security trumps the constitution or seemingly substantive claims that constitutional rights have been violated. Protecting us by depriving us of liberty is not really protection in the secure, unharmed sense... but that horse has been beaten so many times that I'll leave it at that...
Okay, so you've conceded one part of my previous two points -- the PSP isn't that good of a movie platform. (that in itself means I'm not as full of it as you'd seem to like to believe...)
Now, for games... there's nothing all that inventive or novel about the PSP. Sure, there are some very playable games, but that doesn't make it a great gaming platform -- far from it... and here are two examples: First, compare the input options on the DS vs the PSP (for the record, I own neither of the systems) The multi-screen/touch screen plus the conventional d-pad and buttons, plus even a microphone input allows completely new gaming experiences. Next load times -- two or three minutes in some cases. My point isn't to say that the PSP sucks -- it doesn't, but it's not amazing either.. in short, it doesn't prove itself to be an amazing or groundbreaking gaming platform. From a design standpoint, the DS is a much more interesting platform -- though realize that the point isn't that the DS is better than the PSP, but rather that the PSP isn't as good as a gaming platform could be and that was the second part of my previous point... so please, put your fanboy ire away and relax, I'm not like I'm trying to personally insult you or your tastes -- if you have fun, great, keep playing your PSP.
But, okay, I expect you'll still be upset with this response... so, then, I've got one more question... why isn't the PSP being adopted as widely as many initially expected it would be? If I'm wrong and it's not less than ideal at all that it does, please, enlighten us as to why it's not complete blowing its competition away.
Convergence happens where it works, not where it's forced -- More and more consumers are dissatisfied with cellphone/mp3-player/organizer/blender/hairdryer/e tc. combinations because they really don't do those things all that well in many cases and in many cases, they don't do ANYthing well. The PSP is a good example -- people didn't adopt it as a movie and game platform because it wasn't especially good at either. Contrast that with video iPods -- I've certainly seen them used for videos on commuter trains/subways, etc. They've been adopted because they work -- movies/video are just as easy to use as music -- the purpose that the player was originally designed for. Now, that having been said, the video iPod is still short of what it could be and that's evidenced by the number of people who own them and don't use them for video purposes.
.pdf form while I'm on the train, on my laptop.
Now, another excellent example of a convergence item is a laptop. I use my laptop as a desktop machine and as a portable. I use it in place of a radio or cd player (or iPod) at work and have much of my music collection on it. I use it as a portable DVD player on long business trips, in flight and on layovers. Mix in skype or even IM and I've got my realtime interpersonal communications, when I've got myself an internet connection (which is more and more ubiquitous these days in most hotels and coffee shops, etc.). I no longer subscribe to the local paper because I read it online. I frequently download episodes of shows that I don't get at home to watch when I have the time (for the record, all of my media consumption is legal). I no longer print many journal articles or technical reference documents that I would read as I can read them in
If that's not an example of a convergence device in the making, I don't know what is...
Now, you can claim it's "just an enhancement..." but you're missing the point if you do -- this is an example of how convergence happens, almost organically, because people use what works and ignore that which doesn't work fairly quickly...
I've (only) downloaded just over 200 songs from them in the last three months or so and I haven't had any issues. I know that their FAQ says that if that happens you're supposed to download the song again (you can do that free of charge) and if that doesn't change things then email them through their contact form and they'll try to fix it. But all I can say is that I haven't had the same issues you have. If I did, I might not be a subscriber.
They do offer a la carte options on top of any of the service plans (they're called "booster packs") -- I completely understand your reluctance to be sucked into a subscription system -- I feel the same way, almost... There's no contract (that's a big one for me) and so far, I'm still using all of my monthly downloads before the month is up.
Don't forget emusic.com -- cheap, 100% legal and 100% DRM free-music. [I wish they paid me, but sadly, I pay them for access, just to be clear.]
I really thought that I'd seen a question about being arrested (rather than convicted) at some point on an application. So, if not job applications, where else would this harm an individual? If there really is nowhere/nobody that is legally allowed to ask about arrests, I guess I feel a little better but the fact still remains that the arrest data is stored locally and as such may bias other police personnel who would deal with that individual, etc. etc.
I just think that on most things the police system is self correcting.
I guess I find it somewhat reassuring that someone with firsthand knowledge can say this. I believe in the system we've got but part of that means we need to stay vigilant and speak out as needs be and we definitely need to hold everyone to a high standard (average citizens included)...
When I stated he most likely thought he was in the right, I'm saying that the cop most likely actually thought that what the guy was doing happened to be illegal and for CID to find the charge/a charge to make it stick. What most likely happened is CID looked through their Lexis Nexis criminal code and couldn't find any mention of public citizen's taking police officer's photos being against the law.
I appreciate your expanded explanation for your comment, but I still think it's missing the seriousness of what happened -- when someone doesn't do their job right, there's cause for concern. When their job includes actions that directly restrict one's liberties (arrest even if charges are never filed certainly falls into that category), then there's cause for serious concern. Correct me if I'm wrong, but arrests stay on your record, regardless of what happens after that. Moreover, you'll always have to answer that you have been arrested on job applications etc., doing otherwise could bring serious legal consequences but doing so may well exclude you from opportunity. Pulling back, no matter if one genuinely thinks they're doing their job correctly, if they make a serious error in judgement, they need to be held accountable -- and they would in many professions. I see no reason why the case of a police officer is any different.