Is it me or does anyone else find it hard to believe that all of the so called voting irregularities suddenly started in 2000?
I dunno. But it is the first time anyone has felt it necessary to call in the U.N. to monitor a U.S. national election.
Another concern is that the media is playing along with this game. Every report I've seen in mainstream media is reporting "few problems" in Florida voting. Why should there be any kind of outcry when every newspaper tells people that these are minor, insignificant issues? And not what they actually are -- indicative of a pattern of shoddy development and testing that leaves the election open to massive fraud?
This is very complex and fragile technology that they want stores to implement, generally the very same stores that won't bother to give their equipment a little maintainance, such as replacing a caster, straightening out bent tubes or squirting a bit of oil in the bearings. Grocery stores are often riding on very thin profit margins of about one percent last I read. And you want to add a wireless computer with LCD panel and barcode scanner, ready for customers to abuse?
That's kind of true. Safeway recently posted about 3% operating profit and just under 2% net profit, but that's not unique to grocery retailing. And these aren't rinky-dink operations -- Safeway did $8 billion in the last quarter. (To translate into familiar Slashdot players, that's a company that's 4 times the size of Apple, 170 times the size of Red Hat and SCO, well, never mind.)
So let's not pretend that the shopping cart is the most complex piece of technology that today's grocery stores maintain. My grocery has pretty sophisticated registers, real-time coupon generation on my receipt based on my purchases, self-checkout systems -- and, for the shopping carts, a wireless perimeter that locks the wheels when someone tries to the the cart beyond the parking area.
I'm not saying that this new system is a brilliant idea -- I'm not particularly interested in emailing my shopping list anywhere, and I know where my favorites items are in the store. This is going to be much more a new way to push promotions and coupons to the shopper. But let's not act like running this system is way beyond the capabilities of giant Fortune 500 companies -- Winn Dixie (ranked #162), Publix (#117), Albertson's (#38), and Kroger (#19). Kroger's bigger Microsoft and McDonald's combined, ferchrissakes.
Oh, and let's not forget that more groceries are now sold by a certain techsavvy Fortune #1 company from Bentonville, Arkansas than anyone else.
Re:support for open standards such as WMA...
on
Virgin's New iPod Rival
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
OK, but is the iTunes market share not driven by the ownership of an iPod? That's what I'm questioning.
It's probably not as clearly a factor as some would assume. The addition of iTunes for Windows boosted iPod sales, so a strong argument exists that the iTunes Music Store drives iPod market share more than the iPod drives iTMS market share. (I, personally, started using iTunes because I liked the interface, decided to buy a couple songs off the iTMS because it was integrated with iTunes, and only later decided to buy an iPod because it worked well with iTunes.)
But like I said, a market share number alone doesn't answer WHY. It's entirely possible that a growing number of non-iTMS-compatible devices will shift the market share breakdown. However, if most people buy digital audio players to rip and carry their own music, the music store is almost irrelevant. Most music is still sold on CD, and in that respect iTunes is compatible with almost every player out there.
"yes, you can use the online stores that have 2% of the market, 3% of the market, and 7% of the market"
But does the end user care, as long as the music they want is available for purchase?
Um, yes? That's what market share shows -- what consumers care about. It's the end result of the sum of end users' choices. (It does not, of course, address WHY users made those choices -- product quality, slick marketing, lack of options, etc.)
I think users may also care that this thing is ugly as sin. It looks like the cheap COBY brand audio equipment they sell in airport newsstands.
It's also amusing to see a >700k user ID playing the oldbie role:-)
C'mon, Slashdot is a young man's game. I think it's amusing to see Slashdot user IDs considered an indicator of Internet oldtimers. I have underwear that's older than '97. (Nonetheless, happy 7th birthday, Slashdot.)
Remember those days when web was a nice place and everybody you knew had a cutesy little homepage and you would leave cute little message in their guest books and such with your name and email and such. DAMN I WANT THAT BACK.
Remember those days when the Internet didn't have all that web crap, and everybody you knew had a cutesy little gopher that went out and did searches for them? And you could read all the posts for the day in the entire alt.*, misc.* and rec.* hierarchies in 15 minutes?
Sheesh, kids these days.
tom ...and then some bastard would come along and send me a 200K file by email and tie up my modem for 10 or 15 minutes. Ah, those were the days.
Who in the fuck is going to spend $10,000 on music in three fucking years?!?!
Wasn't there an article somewhere about someone who had spent over $20,000 at the iTunes Music Store? I'll admit it seems mad. My iPod is stuffed with songs from a CD collection I've compiled over the course of almost 20 years; I've got maybe 20 songs I've actually bought from iTMS. But I guess you never know what some people will do.
High-Capacity MD recorders in the near future, with MDs that hold 1 GB.... Why would you limit yourself to the size of a hard disk when you can carry around a few tiny discs...
I think you misspelled forty. At least, that's how many "tiny" discs I'd need to replace my iPod. (Forget that the hard disk IS the player, where you'd be carrying the tiny discs AND the player with MD.)
Even with the iPod mini, there's a distinct advantage (imo) to having it all in one place, where I can shuffle through my all favorites using iTunes smart playlists. I'm just not interested in breaking my music into 1 GB chunks to accomodate the limitations of MD.
BTW, you got a price on those 1 GB blank minidiscs yet? I think that'll make this deal a little less attractive, also. It's great if this solution works for you, but it doesn't make sense to me.
And you're right -- I really miss the sound of LPs. Especially brand-new ones. You just can't beat virgin vinyl.
If what you said was true (and it is not) then companies like Ford could just stop making cars and start playing hedge funds on the stock market.
What rubbish. Ford makes cars because that's what Ford can make money doing. There are countless examples of companies whose real business is not what many people assume -- common examples are GM (loan peddler) and McDonald's (landlord).
I'll agree that many businesses find that progressive, socially-aware policies make sense, but don't think it's for any reason other than the bottom line.
The headline on the site reads "First self-propelled vacuum now in stores." I've had my Roomba for about a year, and it had already been around for awhile.
I'm always put off by products where the first promo description I read is totally untrue.
On slashdot, this IS considered informative, since 95% of the people don't RTFA. Of course, this percentage increases to nearly 100% when looking at just the population of slashdot editors.
But it seems that for once, USA was a bit slow to catch on with the whole BT thing.
The U.S. will get there, especially with Bluetooth showing up in some newToyotas to link your phone to built-in handsfree systems when you get into the car.
Re:Faulty Premise...SPOILERS
on
Digital Fortress
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Stop reading now if you don't want to know about the plot. I hadn't planned on posting spoilers (although it would be a favor to anyone planning to read this), I'm going to explain since the parent has been modded down.
Yes, the book is based on a pivotal plot point that is ludicrous. The plot revolves around a new encryption scheme that will render the NSA's super-secret weapon (a brute force crack machine that will decrypt anything within minutes) useless. The source code to this new encryption algorithm has been posted to the Internet and downloaded by crypto types worldwide. The catch -- it's encrypted with itself. The book is about the race for the key that can decrypt the algorithm so the source is accessible and can be used to create truly unbreakable encryption.
Well, the cryptography head comes up with a plan (repeatedly called "brilliant" in the book) to get the key first, modify the source to include a back-door so the NSA can read everything while the public thinks the code is unbreakable, re-encrypt the modified source and replace the version that's been posted to the web. Then they leak the key and the whole world starts using "Digital Fortress".
Does Brown really think that you can replace a file on the web that's been downloaded by thousands and that all the downloaded copies will be updated as well? He seems to -- he only explores the possibility that Tankado might have reviewed the code and found the changes, and quickly dismisses it. He doesn't even consider that most of the people would decrypt the version they already have, let alone consider that someone might compare the source between the version currently available and the one downloaded before the key was released.
The modifications to the source would be posted to Slashdot within 5 minutes of the key being released. But Brown believes no one would ever catch on, and this master plan drives the entire novel. It's utter drivel.
This book was so terrible I wanted my time back after it was all over. It's just horrible.
The characters are painfully two-dimensional and Brown's descriptions are usually limited to cliched beautiful but intelligent women and intelligent but rugged men.
The plot's worse. There are holes you could drive a truck through, and that's only when you don't see what's coming 150 pages before it happens. By the time you reach the end, where a computer virus is slowly removing layers of "firewalls" like they're Star Trek shields, you're ready to hurl.
This is honestly one of the worst books ever. Go pick up Cryptonomicon instead.
She might not have the cashflow, but if what an earlier poster said about the Racketeering Act covering legal fees is true, that mightn't matter.
It's true IF she wins. I think that's a pretty big if.
People often hear about the huge successful class action suits; what they don't hear about are the suits where the judge whacks the class representatives with the plaintiff's costs. These two or three poor schmoes are saddled with thousands of dollars in court costs. She's in the same boat -- if she loses, the RIAA could recover their costs in a countersuit.
I think the point is made by Enderle's comment "I have a Ferrari watch too." He's an idiot, buying products targeted at idiots. I think Ferrari is particularly guilty of this -- making a bunch of branded junk aimed at the folks who wish they could actually *drive* one, but who never will.
I enjoy other forms of art including photography and sketching.... I enjoy riding my Triumph Trophy 1200 motorcycle, and training my dog to do agility. But even when I'm doing all of those things, my mind is still racing with hundreds of ideas for the project d'jeur.
I'm a motorcycle safety instructor, and we definitely advise against riding your bike while engaging in any kind of dog training. Throw in taking pictures and sketching while thinking in mangled french and you're definitely angling for a crash.
tp
The question I have is this: Is there any change from the book that actually bothers people?
The thing that got me the most was how all the Elvish "crossing over the sea" stuff was handled. It seemed out of context and the changes didn't make much sense.
Also, Boromir and Faramir were a mess -- Boromir starts out pretty noble in the book, where he's always kind of a dick in the movie. There's very little character arc for him in the movie; in the book, you see the corruptive power of the ring when Boromir loses it.
Faramir in the movie just acts a lot like Boromir.
And Remember if he had made the book exactly into a movie it would have been 100 hours...
Actually, weren't all the omissions just made to give Liv Tyler more screen time? Drop Arwen and we'd have at least an hour to show things that actually add value.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno. But it is the first time anyone has felt it necessary to call in the U.N. to monitor a U.S. national election.
Another concern is that the media is playing along with this game. Every report I've seen in mainstream media is reporting "few problems" in Florida voting. Why should there be any kind of outcry when every newspaper tells people that these are minor, insignificant issues? And not what they actually are -- indicative of a pattern of shoddy development and testing that leaves the election open to massive fraud?
That's kind of true. Safeway recently posted about 3% operating profit and just under 2% net profit, but that's not unique to grocery retailing. And these aren't rinky-dink operations -- Safeway did $8 billion in the last quarter. (To translate into familiar Slashdot players, that's a company that's 4 times the size of Apple, 170 times the size of Red Hat and SCO, well, never mind.)
So let's not pretend that the shopping cart is the most complex piece of technology that today's grocery stores maintain. My grocery has pretty sophisticated registers, real-time coupon generation on my receipt based on my purchases, self-checkout systems -- and, for the shopping carts, a wireless perimeter that locks the wheels when someone tries to the the cart beyond the parking area.
I'm not saying that this new system is a brilliant idea -- I'm not particularly interested in emailing my shopping list anywhere, and I know where my favorites items are in the store. This is going to be much more a new way to push promotions and coupons to the shopper. But let's not act like running this system is way beyond the capabilities of giant Fortune 500 companies -- Winn Dixie (ranked #162), Publix (#117), Albertson's (#38), and Kroger (#19). Kroger's bigger Microsoft and McDonald's combined, ferchrissakes.
Oh, and let's not forget that more groceries are now sold by a certain tech savvy Fortune #1 company from Bentonville, Arkansas than anyone else.
It's probably not as clearly a factor as some would assume. The addition of iTunes for Windows boosted iPod sales, so a strong argument exists that the iTunes Music Store drives iPod market share more than the iPod drives iTMS market share. (I, personally, started using iTunes because I liked the interface, decided to buy a couple songs off the iTMS because it was integrated with iTunes, and only later decided to buy an iPod because it worked well with iTunes.)
But like I said, a market share number alone doesn't answer WHY. It's entirely possible that a growing number of non-iTMS-compatible devices will shift the market share breakdown. However, if most people buy digital audio players to rip and carry their own music, the music store is almost irrelevant. Most music is still sold on CD, and in that respect iTunes is compatible with almost every player out there.
tom
But does the end user care, as long as the music they want is available for purchase?
Um, yes? That's what market share shows -- what consumers care about. It's the end result of the sum of end users' choices. (It does not, of course, address WHY users made those choices -- product quality, slick marketing, lack of options, etc.)
I think users may also care that this thing is ugly as sin. It looks like the cheap COBY brand audio equipment they sell in airport newsstands.
Best,
tom
Maybe it's just me, but isn't the fact that we've found pretty much nothing in the way of WMD in Iraq strong evidence that inspections did work?
C'mon, Slashdot is a young man's game. I think it's amusing to see Slashdot user IDs considered an indicator of Internet oldtimers. I have underwear that's older than '97. (Nonetheless, happy 7th birthday, Slashdot.)
Best, tp
Remember those days when the Internet didn't have all that web crap, and everybody you knew had a cutesy little gopher that went out and did searches for them? And you could read all the posts for the day in the entire alt.*, misc.* and rec.* hierarchies in 15 minutes?
Sheesh, kids these days.
tom
...and then some bastard would come along and send me a 200K file by email and tie up my modem for 10 or 15 minutes. Ah, those were the days.
Wasn't there an article somewhere about someone who had spent over $20,000 at the iTunes Music Store? I'll admit it seems mad. My iPod is stuffed with songs from a CD collection I've compiled over the course of almost 20 years; I've got maybe 20 songs I've actually bought from iTMS. But I guess you never know what some people will do.
I think you misspelled forty. At least, that's how many "tiny" discs I'd need to replace my iPod. (Forget that the hard disk IS the player, where you'd be carrying the tiny discs AND the player with MD.)
Even with the iPod mini, there's a distinct advantage (imo) to having it all in one place, where I can shuffle through my all favorites using iTunes smart playlists. I'm just not interested in breaking my music into 1 GB chunks to accomodate the limitations of MD.
BTW, you got a price on those 1 GB blank minidiscs yet? I think that'll make this deal a little less attractive, also. It's great if this solution works for you, but it doesn't make sense to me.
And you're right -- I really miss the sound of LPs. Especially brand-new ones. You just can't beat virgin vinyl.
What rubbish. Ford makes cars because that's what Ford can make money doing. There are countless examples of companies whose real business is not what many people assume -- common examples are GM (loan peddler) and McDonald's (landlord).
I'll agree that many businesses find that progressive, socially-aware policies make sense, but don't think it's for any reason other than the bottom line.
The headline on the site reads "First self-propelled vacuum now in stores." I've had my Roomba for about a year, and it had already been around for awhile.
I'm always put off by products where the first promo description I read is totally untrue.
tp
...who, of course, did not RTFA...
The U.S. will get there, especially with Bluetooth showing up in some new Toyotas to link your phone to built-in handsfree systems when you get into the car.
Yes, the book is based on a pivotal plot point that is ludicrous. The plot revolves around a new encryption scheme that will render the NSA's super-secret weapon (a brute force crack machine that will decrypt anything within minutes) useless. The source code to this new encryption algorithm has been posted to the Internet and downloaded by crypto types worldwide. The catch -- it's encrypted with itself. The book is about the race for the key that can decrypt the algorithm so the source is accessible and can be used to create truly unbreakable encryption.
Well, the cryptography head comes up with a plan (repeatedly called "brilliant" in the book) to get the key first, modify the source to include a back-door so the NSA can read everything while the public thinks the code is unbreakable, re-encrypt the modified source and replace the version that's been posted to the web. Then they leak the key and the whole world starts using "Digital Fortress".
Does Brown really think that you can replace a file on the web that's been downloaded by thousands and that all the downloaded copies will be updated as well? He seems to -- he only explores the possibility that Tankado might have reviewed the code and found the changes, and quickly dismisses it. He doesn't even consider that most of the people would decrypt the version they already have, let alone consider that someone might compare the source between the version currently available and the one downloaded before the key was released.
The modifications to the source would be posted to Slashdot within 5 minutes of the key being released. But Brown believes no one would ever catch on, and this master plan drives the entire novel. It's utter drivel.
I read it and yes, the entire book is based on a flawed premise.
You must be mistaken. Brown even offers thanks to two ex-NSA cryptographers who helped him via anonymous remailers. So this book MUST be accurate.
Based on the results, I suspect Brown's anonymous benefactors were actually a couple of 9-year-olds who thought it would be funny to fuck with him.
The characters are painfully two-dimensional and Brown's descriptions are usually limited to cliched beautiful but intelligent women and intelligent but rugged men.
The plot's worse. There are holes you could drive a truck through, and that's only when you don't see what's coming 150 pages before it happens. By the time you reach the end, where a computer virus is slowly removing layers of "firewalls" like they're Star Trek shields, you're ready to hurl.
This is honestly one of the worst books ever. Go pick up Cryptonomicon instead.
It's true IF she wins. I think that's a pretty big if.
People often hear about the huge successful class action suits; what they don't hear about are the suits where the judge whacks the class representatives with the plaintiff's costs. These two or three poor schmoes are saddled with thousands of dollars in court costs. She's in the same boat -- if she loses, the RIAA could recover their costs in a countersuit.
I think the point is made by Enderle's comment "I have a Ferrari watch too." He's an idiot, buying products targeted at idiots. I think Ferrari is particularly guilty of this -- making a bunch of branded junk aimed at the folks who wish they could actually *drive* one, but who never will.
I'm a motorcycle safety instructor, and we definitely advise against riding your bike while engaging in any kind of dog training. Throw in taking pictures and sketching while thinking in mangled french and you're definitely angling for a crash. tp
Oh, come on -- abundance? I haven't seen a Pinto on the road in years.
That's pretty much par for the course, isn't it?
Maybe they want IBM to show them some plans *first*.
Given the amount of commerce that probably goes through the SCO site, I'll guess that it's exactly the same amount they'd lose on a Monday.
The thing that got me the most was how all the Elvish "crossing over the sea" stuff was handled. It seemed out of context and the changes didn't make much sense.
Also, Boromir and Faramir were a mess -- Boromir starts out pretty noble in the book, where he's always kind of a dick in the movie. There's very little character arc for him in the movie; in the book, you see the corruptive power of the ring when Boromir loses it.
Faramir in the movie just acts a lot like Boromir.
Actually, weren't all the omissions just made to give Liv Tyler more screen time? Drop Arwen and we'd have at least an hour to show things that actually add value.