Slap in a fee of a couple bucks to register copyrighted content
Word count of average novel = ~100,000
Word count of average haiku = ~12
Average Hollywood budget = $xx,000,000
Average novel budget = ~$15,000 (assuming 6 months equivalent to college-educated wage bracket)
Average haiku budget = ~$5 (including paper tissues and fizzy drinks)
Now, I may not like haikus in English -- they only sound right rythmically in Japanese, which I don't understand -- but some people do. The point here is that it is the little works that would suffer the most by proprtionally paying the most. A scheme favouring big works favours monoculture.
Jet Moto 1 and 2 were made by Singletrac (I think was the company) and were excellent. They were bought out by Sony, who let another team make the 3rd game. It sucked. Why should it be any different for Guitar Hero,
Because Guitar Hero is pretty easy to write. No clever level design, no imaginative end-of-level baddies, just notes. A couple of guys who know a little bit about guitars lay out some notes et voila!
the Unix methidologies are very comfortable to developers because (a) they are relatively regular in setup. (b) They tend to be highly modular, making things easier to work with and build - lots of re-use of things you made or thigns others made.
Sometimes it seems to me that the Unix and Linux methodologies have forked somewhat. Modularity in old-school Unix took an almost completely bottom-approach with small self-contained basic apps that could be tied together at the user interface level or from within scripts or even programs themselves. Linux devs seem to focus on modularity at a source code level, to the exclusion of user interface level. Sure, you can still use switches, pipes and redirection on most modern programs, but generally only to do the most high-level tasks, not the low level primitives. Some people are trying to correct this, but (eg) the Gimp came years before the Gimp Command-Line Tools -- and that's not Unix methodology, it's practically top-down.
Real modularity, based on Unix pipes, could completely decouple the GUI from the code. This would be a Very Good Thing.
Right now, the biggest obstacle to any sort of Unix/Linux on the desktop is the inconsistency in GUIs. Scream KDE or Gnome if you want, but these don't enforce any consistency on apps. In fact, by being compatible with non-KDE/Gnome apps, they invite inconsistency in. Yes! - it means there's a lot of apps available, but! - it scares non-geeks.
If we had our UIs decoupled from our apps, it would take very little time to gather all sorts of old code and put together a consistent GUI from X widget libraries.
Everything would look the same, people wouldn't be scared. And the code may just be more maintainable.
Nope. I'm a Windows support professional, and we've had to bin applications on a number of occassions on upgrading Windows deployments. But never Microsoft software. Coincidence or evil marketing genius.
I'd bet Amazon or some other online bookstore would really love it if all the books and artists pages were linked to them so you can buy the books and/or music.
No! Bad dog! Sit!
Wikipedia is open. Monopoly is closed. Wikipedia cannot unhypocritically give someone a practical monopoly. I personally like my local bookshops and would not want an "open" project to end up "closing" my shops. Same goes for music. Also, wouldn't it create a conflict of interests regarding out-of-copyright works.
All in all, such a scheme would provide a clear commercial advantage to corporations with minimal practical benefit to wikipedia contributors. Not cool.
I personally find AdWords to be very obtrusive. AdWords commonly hijack your searches on the thinnest possible pretence of relevance. Does anyone remember Buy Steve Irwin dead on eBay"?
I'm still concerned by Google's monopoly and its ability to advertise itself above all others. Should Wikipedia be another battalion in Google's world-conquering army?
If we're talking about free content, what about the risk that Amazon et al use adwords to appear at the top of any page on any piece of classic literature, leading readers into buying the book rather than scrolling down to the link to the wikisource or Gutenburg text?
Finally, what about WikiPedia's many languages? These services don't carry ads in most of the minority regional languages, instead defaulting to the dominant majority language for the area (Catalan gives way to Spanish, Gaelic gives way to English, Breton gives way to French etc). Blanket application of a system such as AdWords across the site would break the integrity of the Catalan, Gaelic, Breton etc versions of the content.
All Videotex was created with the tools that enforced the mindsets of what, today, we would usually think of as badly designed web pages. The "features" of these pages:
they weren't resizable
they had very limited resolution graphics
text was most often transmitted as a graphical representation rather than as real text
pages had to be created in a compatible Videotext editor
As compared to the "features" of flash pages:
they aren't resizable
designed for a monitor which by Murphy's Law has a resolution either one size bigger or one size smaller than yours
text transmitted as a graphical representation rather than as real text, or alternatively as text + a font file.
pages have to be created in a compatible Flash editor
browser plugins must be updated every few months to keep pages working
The majority of HTML pages still don't adhere to good design anyway, with many of them using fixed-sized fonts, fixed-width screen sizes, in-line images (including headlines) with no alt....
Microsoft's main blurb gave three options: return, give away or "hold onto for as long as you like". Sell was not an option.
This is really interesting in a legal, pedantic way.
Consumer law should may support the claim that "hold onto for as long as you like" = "you own it". Certainly, no court case that I'm aware of has ever supported the "not for resale" clause attached to practically every video and piece of software on the shop shelf.
But does consumer law apply here? Bloggers have been touting themselves as "citizen journalists" for some time now and here Microsoft have taken the very bold step of taking that claim seriously. With the odd exception (when the marketers foolishly described the laptop as a "gift for you"), the review kit was sent out in accordance with standard journalistic practice. I'm not in the press, but it's pretty common practice to send review kit with the option to give away. In the press, give away generally means a competition prize. What Microsoft wanted was more than just a bunch of reviews -- they wanted a few dozen free computers that everyone on the internet wanted to win. Off the back of this, they wanted Vista to become a prestige item.
Of course, being "citizen" journalists, the bloggers just weren't used to this sort of thing and didn't know what the letter meant, but the professional journalists would have understood it perfectly well.
If these bloggers are the journalists that they claim to be, then they should be able to take the bold step of adhering to journalistic conventions, rather than hiding behind consumer protection laws.
Bloggers can't have it both ways: either they're journalists, free to protect their sources (cf the leaks from Apple), or they're consumers.
Oh, and if they don't adhere to journalistic conventions, neither Microsoft nor any other major company will ever offer them competition prizes again.
As for the issue of cost of producing the first copy, _deal_ with it. The opensource community... has already shown how you do it;
Are you suggesting that Microsoft get programmers to work for free? That's a truly revolutionary business model, but I get this odd feeling that there's a flaw in the plan that I can't quite put my finger on...
release rapid incremental changes where you recuperate investment from your first mover advantage. The days where you locked yourself in your room for ten years and came out with something great are over and gone.
Incremental changes of what? An OS isn't an OS until it can operate. It needs to be complete. Hobbyists only play with early alphas of things like ReactOS because they're free -- no recuperation of investment there.
The robotics labs of companies like Honda do incremental releases, but if you compare the cyberneticists' goal of creating a replica human to Windows Vista, things like RoboRaptor and AIbo don't even boot to the login screen! They have a function as commercially viable toys, but an unfinished version of a new software package rarely does.
I am no fan of Microsoft, and I have no great hopes for Vista, but as someone who spent four years at university studying the intricate details of computing in all its forms, it rankles to be told that my labour is worthless. Or it would if it wasn't for the fact that I get paid more than a farm-hand, fisherman or factory worker, who are the only people whose jobs have any inherent value in your economic model.
Although most classical music is obviously too old to be under copyright, the rights to specific editions of pieces are owned by the publishers.
This is true, but in the UK at least the typographical rights (rights to the specific layout) on any work expire relatively quickly, compared to rights on the work itself. In the UK this is 25 years after publication.
So why did they buy the rights to anything? If they simply bought a set printed in the UK not after 1980, they would have been able to copy the music itself for free. They may not have been able to copy the whole cover design, and any editorial notes would have been off-limits too, but the main thing's the music, and that is completely free.
In classic economics you have the term "natural price", which means the zero-profit price ignoring R&D. For the abstract concept information. ignoring media costs - for example the difference between a blank and recorded CD - the natural cost is zero.
The term "natural price" is entirely misleading. The truly natural cost of anything includes any setup costs, and that includes the cost of invention/innovation.
Just because some calls something "natural" doesn't mean it is.
As you yourself tacitly admit in your last paragraph, classical economics is critically flawed by it's inability to account for invention and creativity.
As for ads? That's utter bullshit, you clearly haven't even tried the service! There are no ads in the videos!
I don't need to try the service -- I read TFA:
The company plans to give users the ability to attach pre-roll or post-roll advertisements to uploaded videos. Videos are currently shared with no advertising, but an opt in, ad-sharing program is under development.
There are no ads in the videos yet. What you have is the system in it's early stages, using free content. What's the future?
Azureus has inked distribution deals with 12 television, film and media companies
You can bet your bottom (US) dollar that these deals include advertising, and that the DRM employed will do its best to stop you skipping them.
The idea of having a realistic environment by having real-world products is all well and good, but under the current system this won't happen. In the case of TV, no station can sign a contract to advertise Coke and to refuse all ads for Pepsi, or to advertise Pepsi while excluding Coke -- it's the law.
However, advertising in games doesn't fall under the same legislation, and I guarantee that companies such as the above will not sign contracts that allow their competitors' products to be advertised in the same games as theirs. Any argument about "realism" is lost when the advertising presents a monopoly.
If video-game advertising is to become mainstream without detriment to the consumer, the advertising market must be regulated. Write to your MP/Senator/tribal warlord today.
I'm not interested. Why? Because on P2P, as other posters have said, I'm the the webserver. But who does the advertising money go to? Not me.
I get a slower weblink, and a slightly higher electricity bill. My broadband ISP charges me for excessive uploading and demands that I sign up to a commercial package -- and I can't argue, as I'm supplying a commercial service. And I still have to sit through five minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of program.
The danger of Website.com recommends-type systems has always been the potential for the formation of subcultural ghettos, where everyone sticks in the "safe zones" of recommended material. To date, it never seems to have materialised, but Internet shopping still isn't mainstream enough for it to really be likely.
Being able to identify a "danger zones" could just give the user the courage to step out of the safe zone into the unknown.
It's analogous to the guide-book industry. Not so long ago, travel guides tended to be a checklist of what to see and what to do; nowadays, they tend to list what you could do, but while they tell you what you shouldn't do, they rarely attempt to tell you what you should.
Can you really expect to get two realistic messages for 99 cents? (2 messages per month, 99c per month.) I wouldn't want unmediated, computer-generated text going on my profile (if I had one), and the time taken to write to custom messages is going to make that less than the minimum wage in most developed countries.
Of course, he could be outsourcing it to a tribe in the middle of a rainforest, but I don't know if they'd write believable comments....
I say we will have HDTV, and we will not pay extra for it, any more than we pay a premium for color or stereo.
No, you will pay more for it because it costs more -- not in terms of capital costs (new equipment etc) but in terms of lost revenue. When colour and stereo were introduced, there was sufficient spare bandwidth for the job. Now, my digital cable suffers dropped frames and pixellation due to the fact that they're ramming so much data down a fixed-capacity pipe. HD takes up much more of that bandwidth, and if carriers are able to supply a quarter of the current number of channels, they'll have to charge 4 times as much.
For the channels, that is a problem. This effectively quarters the profit margin on their advertising: the cost of cuing up and playing adverts must be negligible for a major station, so the cost to the station of an advert is basically the carrier's charge; and each station operator will put out less channels (XYTV1,XYTV2,XYTV3 and XYTV4 would be reduced to XYTV).
Hopefully, this will drive down the cost of programs, and we won't have these stupendously overpaid TV stars to deal with any more. Less channels may also mean less repeats. (Can you please stop showing Friends now?)
Fankly I'm surprised that a linquist would a) find a difference between US and UK usage unusual and,
Now, I did not say that I found the fact that there was a difference curious - I didn't say I found it curious that the US term was not the same as the UK. I just said I found it curious that the US term was so technical.
b) wouldn't bother to do the slightest research on something he finds 'curious'.
Maybe when I've finished my second degree, given up teaching English, stopped working in IT and completed my dictionary I'll have time to research the million-and-one little curiosities of everyday language....
As a linguist, I always found the term cellphone quite curious.
From the start, it seemed unlikely to catch on, as the cell bit was meaningless to anyone but a techy or geek. The UK term seems far more meaningful to the average user: mobile phone.
So why did cellphone catch on? I'm forced to assume that it's because it sounds like something out of a sci-fi flick.
So:
If the average user doesn't associate cellphone with a particular technology, and the change in technology is seamless and transparent (and if it isn't, take-up will be very slow), then to the people that matter -- average Joe and average Jo -- there won't be any need for a new name.
Why do theists continually shift the burden of proof back to athiests?
Because the atheists keep talking about proof -- "science" they say "requires proof." Under a religious philosophy, proof is neither required nor desired. If science requires proof, then atheism as a scientific construct must require proof under a scientific philosophy. It's not the religious philosophers' job to do science -- so pass it back to the scientists!
But yes, I do know that science doesn't require proof. It's just that a lot of atheists who profess to follow a life informed by science don't know what science is, just like a lot of "religious" people (eg creationists, suicide bombers) don't know what religion is. Let's face it: stupidity does not descriminate on grounds of creed, colour or class.
If I were to insist that a teapot orbited the Sun (an analogy used by Dawkins), I would have to *prove* this to other people before they'd believe me.
Anything that is not observable has nothing to do with science and therefore cannot be contradicted by science. Statements like God created the world in 6 days are obviously contradictory.
The above statement is contradictory. We cannot observe the formation/creation of the universe or world -- it is done and dusted, and never to be repeated -- but it has everything to do with science. We can observe persistent phenomena that suggest that the world was formed in a particular manner, but we cannot observe the world being created; analogously, you may observe a fox's tracks in your garden but that is not observing the fox. After the fact, you cannot rule out the possibility that these were faked by a mischeivous neighbour who happens to know more about tracks than you. But it makes more sense that it's the fox, so let's just assume it is. And by analogy, let's assume the world wasn't made in 6 days.
There's some ability to take software for existing high-lowered linux machines, but it certainly won't be as good without developers being able to run it on the actual machine.
A) How much software do they need?
B) Part of the point of the project is to create a new technologically-literate generation. If we write all the software for them, what incentive is there for them to build up their own coding skills?
C) The developed world is acculturated to a particular tradition of code and interface design which is -- at best -- suboptimal. If we write apps for them, they will come from that same tradition and we will acculturate them to our suboptimal model. If instead they develop their own computing tradition, we may see a newer, more efficient computing paradigm emerge from which we will all benefit. (Except perhaps large incumbent software providers -- you know who you are!)
Slashdot Mirror
Slap in a fee of a couple bucks to register copyrighted content
Word count of average novel = ~100,000
Word count of average haiku = ~12
Average Hollywood budget = $xx,000,000
Average novel budget = ~$15,000 (assuming 6 months equivalent to college-educated wage bracket) Average haiku budget = ~$5 (including paper tissues and fizzy drinks)
Now, I may not like haikus in English -- they only sound right rythmically in Japanese, which I don't understand -- but some people do. The point here is that it is the little works that would suffer the most by proprtionally paying the most. A scheme favouring big works favours monoculture.
Jet Moto 1 and 2 were made by Singletrac (I think was the company) and were excellent. They were bought out by Sony, who let another team make the 3rd game. It sucked. Why should it be any different for Guitar Hero,
Because Guitar Hero is pretty easy to write. No clever level design, no imaginative end-of-level baddies, just notes. A couple of guys who know a little bit about guitars lay out some notes et voila!
HAL.
the Unix methidologies are very comfortable to developers because (a) they are relatively regular in setup. (b) They tend to be highly modular, making things easier to work with and build - lots of re-use of things you made or thigns others made.
Sometimes it seems to me that the Unix and Linux methodologies have forked somewhat. Modularity in old-school Unix took an almost completely bottom-approach with small self-contained basic apps that could be tied together at the user interface level or from within scripts or even programs themselves. Linux devs seem to focus on modularity at a source code level, to the exclusion of user interface level. Sure, you can still use switches, pipes and redirection on most modern programs, but generally only to do the most high-level tasks, not the low level primitives. Some people are trying to correct this, but (eg) the Gimp came years before the Gimp Command-Line Tools -- and that's not Unix methodology, it's practically top-down.
Real modularity, based on Unix pipes, could completely decouple the GUI from the code. This would be a Very Good Thing.
Right now, the biggest obstacle to any sort of Unix/Linux on the desktop is the inconsistency in GUIs. Scream KDE or Gnome if you want, but these don't enforce any consistency on apps. In fact, by being compatible with non-KDE/Gnome apps, they invite inconsistency in. Yes! - it means there's a lot of apps available, but! - it scares non-geeks.
If we had our UIs decoupled from our apps, it would take very little time to gather all sorts of old code and put together a consistent GUI from X widget libraries.
Everything would look the same, people wouldn't be scared. And the code may just be more maintainable.
HAL.
Must be a linux monkey writing this..
Nope. I'm a Windows support professional, and we've had to bin applications on a number of occassions on upgrading Windows deployments. But never Microsoft software. Coincidence or evil marketing genius.
And my home PC runs on Windows too.
HAL.
We use x86 CPUs because they're cheap, versatile, and run all of our old software.
And then we install the latest version of Windows which is overpriced, inflexible and won't run any of our old software.
Code compatibility is not an end-user issue, it's a developer issue.
HAL.
As well, the Irish refer to their language as Irish, not gaelic.
Yes, they do.
And us Scots refer to our language as Gaelic.
Mòran taing airson do bheachdan,
HAL.
I'd bet Amazon or some other online bookstore would really love it if all the books and artists pages were linked to them so you can buy the books and/or music.
No! Bad dog! Sit!
Wikipedia is open. Monopoly is closed. Wikipedia cannot unhypocritically give someone a practical monopoly. I personally like my local bookshops and would not want an "open" project to end up "closing" my shops. Same goes for music. Also, wouldn't it create a conflict of interests regarding out-of-copyright works.
All in all, such a scheme would provide a clear commercial advantage to corporations with minimal practical benefit to wikipedia contributors. Not cool.
HAL.
I personally find AdWords to be very obtrusive. AdWords commonly hijack your searches on the thinnest possible pretence of relevance. Does anyone remember Buy Steve Irwin dead on eBay"?
I'm still concerned by Google's monopoly and its ability to advertise itself above all others. Should Wikipedia be another battalion in Google's world-conquering army?
If we're talking about free content, what about the risk that Amazon et al use adwords to appear at the top of any page on any piece of classic literature, leading readers into buying the book rather than scrolling down to the link to the wikisource or Gutenburg text?
Finally, what about WikiPedia's many languages? These services don't carry ads in most of the minority regional languages, instead defaulting to the dominant majority language for the area (Catalan gives way to Spanish, Gaelic gives way to English, Breton gives way to French etc). Blanket application of a system such as AdWords across the site would break the integrity of the Catalan, Gaelic, Breton etc versions of the content.
HAL.
All Videotex was created with the tools that enforced the mindsets of what, today, we would usually think of as badly designed web pages. The "features" of these pages:
As compared to the "features" of flash pages:
The majority of HTML pages still don't adhere to good design anyway, with many of them using fixed-sized fonts, fixed-width screen sizes, in-line images (including headlines) with no alt....
Plus ça change, plus la meme chose....
HAL.
Microsoft's main blurb gave three options: return, give away or "hold onto for as long as you like". Sell was not an option.
This is really interesting in a legal, pedantic way.
Consumer law should may support the claim that "hold onto for as long as you like" = "you own it". Certainly, no court case that I'm aware of has ever supported the "not for resale" clause attached to practically every video and piece of software on the shop shelf.
But does consumer law apply here? Bloggers have been touting themselves as "citizen journalists" for some time now and here Microsoft have taken the very bold step of taking that claim seriously. With the odd exception (when the marketers foolishly described the laptop as a "gift for you"), the review kit was sent out in accordance with standard journalistic practice. I'm not in the press, but it's pretty common practice to send review kit with the option to give away. In the press, give away generally means a competition prize. What Microsoft wanted was more than just a bunch of reviews -- they wanted a few dozen free computers that everyone on the internet wanted to win. Off the back of this, they wanted Vista to become a prestige item.
Of course, being "citizen" journalists, the bloggers just weren't used to this sort of thing and didn't know what the letter meant, but the professional journalists would have understood it perfectly well.
If these bloggers are the journalists that they claim to be, then they should be able to take the bold step of adhering to journalistic conventions, rather than hiding behind consumer protection laws.
Bloggers can't have it both ways: either they're journalists, free to protect their sources (cf the leaks from Apple), or they're consumers.
Oh, and if they don't adhere to journalistic conventions, neither Microsoft nor any other major company will ever offer them competition prizes again.
Citizen journalists score own goal.
HAL.
As for the issue of cost of producing the first copy, _deal_ with it. The opensource community ... has already shown how you do it;
Are you suggesting that Microsoft get programmers to work for free? That's a truly revolutionary business model, but I get this odd feeling that there's a flaw in the plan that I can't quite put my finger on...
release rapid incremental changes where you recuperate investment from your first mover advantage. The days where you locked yourself in your room for ten years and came out with something great are over and gone.
Incremental changes of what? An OS isn't an OS until it can operate. It needs to be complete. Hobbyists only play with early alphas of things like ReactOS because they're free -- no recuperation of investment there.
The robotics labs of companies like Honda do incremental releases, but if you compare the cyberneticists' goal of creating a replica human to Windows Vista, things like RoboRaptor and AIbo don't even boot to the login screen! They have a function as commercially viable toys, but an unfinished version of a new software package rarely does.
I am no fan of Microsoft, and I have no great hopes for Vista, but as someone who spent four years at university studying the intricate details of computing in all its forms, it rankles to be told that my labour is worthless. Or it would if it wasn't for the fact that I get paid more than a farm-hand, fisherman or factory worker, who are the only people whose jobs have any inherent value in your economic model.
HAL.
Although most classical music is obviously too old to be under copyright, the rights to specific editions of pieces are owned by the publishers.
This is true, but in the UK at least the typographical rights (rights to the specific layout) on any work expire relatively quickly, compared to rights on the work itself. In the UK this is 25 years after publication.
So why did they buy the rights to anything? If they simply bought a set printed in the UK not after 1980, they would have been able to copy the music itself for free. They may not have been able to copy the whole cover design, and any editorial notes would have been off-limits too, but the main thing's the music, and that is completely free.
HAL.
In classic economics you have the term "natural price", which means the zero-profit price ignoring R&D. For the abstract concept information. ignoring media costs - for example the difference between a blank and recorded CD - the natural cost is zero.
The term "natural price" is entirely misleading. The truly natural cost of anything includes any setup costs, and that includes the cost of invention/innovation.
Just because some calls something "natural" doesn't mean it is.
As you yourself tacitly admit in your last paragraph, classical economics is critically flawed by it's inability to account for invention and creativity.
HAL.
As for ads? That's utter bullshit, you clearly haven't even tried the service! There are no ads in the videos!
I don't need to try the service -- I read TFA:
There are no ads in the videos yet. What you have is the system in it's early stages, using free content. What's the future?
You can bet your bottom (US) dollar that these deals include advertising, and that the DRM employed will do its best to stop you skipping them.
HAL.
The idea of having a realistic environment by having real-world products is all well and good, but under the current system this won't happen. In the case of TV, no station can sign a contract to advertise Coke and to refuse all ads for Pepsi, or to advertise Pepsi while excluding Coke -- it's the law.
However, advertising in games doesn't fall under the same legislation, and I guarantee that companies such as the above will not sign contracts that allow their competitors' products to be advertised in the same games as theirs. Any argument about "realism" is lost when the advertising presents a monopoly.
If video-game advertising is to become mainstream without detriment to the consumer, the advertising market must be regulated. Write to your MP/Senator/tribal warlord today.
HAL.
I'm not interested. Why? Because on P2P, as other posters have said, I'm the the webserver. But who does the advertising money go to? Not me.
I get a slower weblink, and a slightly higher electricity bill. My broadband ISP charges me for excessive uploading and demands that I sign up to a commercial package -- and I can't argue, as I'm supplying a commercial service. And I still have to sit through five minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of program.
No thanks.
HAL.
The danger of Website.com recommends-type systems has always been the potential for the formation of subcultural ghettos, where everyone sticks in the "safe zones" of recommended material. To date, it never seems to have materialised, but Internet shopping still isn't mainstream enough for it to really be likely.
Being able to identify a "danger zones" could just give the user the courage to step out of the safe zone into the unknown.
It's analogous to the guide-book industry. Not so long ago, travel guides tended to be a checklist of what to see and what to do; nowadays, they tend to list what you could do, but while they tell you what you shouldn't do, they rarely attempt to tell you what you should.
HAL.
Can you really expect to get two realistic messages for 99 cents? (2 messages per month, 99c per month.) I wouldn't want unmediated, computer-generated text going on my profile (if I had one), and the time taken to write to custom messages is going to make that less than the minimum wage in most developed countries.
Of course, he could be outsourcing it to a tribe in the middle of a rainforest, but I don't know if they'd write believable comments....
HAL.
I say we will have HDTV, and we will not pay extra for it, any more than we pay a premium for color or stereo.
No, you will pay more for it because it costs more -- not in terms of capital costs (new equipment etc) but in terms of lost revenue. When colour and stereo were introduced, there was sufficient spare bandwidth for the job. Now, my digital cable suffers dropped frames and pixellation due to the fact that they're ramming so much data down a fixed-capacity pipe. HD takes up much more of that bandwidth, and if carriers are able to supply a quarter of the current number of channels, they'll have to charge 4 times as much.
For the channels, that is a problem. This effectively quarters the profit margin on their advertising: the cost of cuing up and playing adverts must be negligible for a major station, so the cost to the station of an advert is basically the carrier's charge; and each station operator will put out less channels (XYTV1,XYTV2,XYTV3 and XYTV4 would be reduced to XYTV).
Hopefully, this will drive down the cost of programs, and we won't have these stupendously overpaid TV stars to deal with any more. Less channels may also mean less repeats. (Can you please stop showing Friends now?)
HAL
Fankly I'm surprised that a linquist would a) find a difference between US and UK usage unusual and,
Now, I did not say that I found the fact that there was a difference curious - I didn't say I found it curious that the US term was not the same as the UK. I just said I found it curious that the US term was so technical.
b) wouldn't bother to do the slightest research on something he finds 'curious'.
Maybe when I've finished my second degree, given up teaching English, stopped working in IT and completed my dictionary I'll have time to research the million-and-one little curiosities of everyday language....
HAL.
As a linguist, I always found the term cellphone quite curious.
From the start, it seemed unlikely to catch on, as the cell bit was meaningless to anyone but a techy or geek. The UK term seems far more meaningful to the average user: mobile phone.
So why did cellphone catch on? I'm forced to assume that it's because it sounds like something out of a sci-fi flick.
So:
If the average user doesn't associate cellphone with a particular technology, and the change in technology is seamless and transparent (and if it isn't, take-up will be very slow), then to the people that matter -- average Joe and average Jo -- there won't be any need for a new name.
HAL.
But of course the GPL doesn't allow you to say that your code can't be used in Office-like apps.
Never mind, I don't see how the license can apply to anyone who doesn't agree with it.
HAL. (Not following the link!)
Why do theists continually shift the burden of proof back to athiests?
Because the atheists keep talking about proof -- "science" they say "requires proof." Under a religious philosophy, proof is neither required nor desired. If science requires proof, then atheism as a scientific construct must require proof under a scientific philosophy. It's not the religious philosophers' job to do science -- so pass it back to the scientists!
But yes, I do know that science doesn't require proof. It's just that a lot of atheists who profess to follow a life informed by science don't know what science is, just like a lot of "religious" people (eg creationists, suicide bombers) don't know what religion is. Let's face it: stupidity does not descriminate on grounds of creed, colour or class.
If I were to insist that a teapot orbited the Sun (an analogy used by Dawkins), I would have to *prove* this to other people before they'd believe me.
That was Bertrand Russell.
HAL.
Anything that is not observable has nothing to do with science and therefore cannot be contradicted by science. Statements like God created the world in 6 days are obviously contradictory.
The above statement is contradictory. We cannot observe the formation/creation of the universe or world -- it is done and dusted, and never to be repeated -- but it has everything to do with science. We can observe persistent phenomena that suggest that the world was formed in a particular manner, but we cannot observe the world being created; analogously, you may observe a fox's tracks in your garden but that is not observing the fox. After the fact, you cannot rule out the possibility that these were faked by a mischeivous neighbour who happens to know more about tracks than you. But it makes more sense that it's the fox, so let's just assume it is. And by analogy, let's assume the world wasn't made in 6 days.
HAL.
There's some ability to take software for existing high-lowered linux machines, but it certainly won't be as good without developers being able to run it on the actual machine.
A) How much software do they need?
B) Part of the point of the project is to create a new technologically-literate generation. If we write all the software for them, what incentive is there for them to build up their own coding skills?
C) The developed world is acculturated to a particular tradition of code and interface design which is -- at best -- suboptimal. If we write apps for them, they will come from that same tradition and we will acculturate them to our suboptimal model. If instead they develop their own computing tradition, we may see a newer, more efficient computing paradigm emerge from which we will all benefit. (Except perhaps large incumbent software providers -- you know who you are!)
HAL.