I agree with everything you said about Silverlight...
However, ultimately I believe that Silverlight will fail for the same reasons Flash failed. Flash has not failed at all. Instead, it has gone the way of Java and found a niche that it wasn't originally intended for. Java was intended for applet's on the web, and it wound-up as a server language. Flash was a neat way to make web-sites, but it now is used for applets, games, and streaming video.
Having gone to the Game Developer's Conference last week, I see that the demand for Flash and ActionScript developers has jumped 100% over the past year. Flash is becoming the scripting language of choice for custom UIs. I'm not talking about Adobe's web-browser-based.SWF player called "Flash" - I'm referring to the open-standard language and file format used in.SWF, for which there are many hardware-accelerated 3rd-party players. For example, ScaleForm makes a Flash player that is used for the UI in Command and Conquer.
That isn't the case in the Maryland. Here, the cable companies last mile offerings are fiber-optical, while the telecom companies are using POTS. In my state, DSL is typically limited to 1MBps while Comcast is offering 12MBps service. Even with comcast crippling their upload speeds to 1/10th of the download speeds, they are still faster than DSL.
I don't have any links, but I can tell you my experiences.
Behind my house, there is a nice spot for the local kids to sit and drink. That problem was eliminated by a flood light with a sensor positioned on the second floor. That area already had a street light illuminating it. IMHO, the sensor makes the difference because it gives the impression that you were "caught" and that someone could be watching you, as opposed to a constant light source covering the whole area.
The Chi Phi fraternity house at Ohio Wesleyan University used to have beautifully flood lights every few feet. They illuminated the building and the sign on the front lawn. The house was a constant target for theft and vandalism until they changed the lights to point at the grounds, not at the house. You need to be able to see the trespasser, not the other way around.
"File Sharing" is not illegal. Copyright infringement is illegal. Even the articles that the headline links to get it right by calling them "illegal downloads." This may seem piddly, but those of us who have ready 1984 understand that it is possible to manipulate semantics to change the connotation of a word. If we keep interchanging "file sharing" with "copyright infringement" then the next thing you know people will be trying to make FTP illegal. I don't want to have to explain to our congresspeople what the difference is, so stop blurring the meanings.
My telemarketing calls went from 1-3/day before I registered on the list, to about 0.05 - 0.1 per day now. I might get a survey call every few weeks. Just my two cents.
This is why operating systems should be operating systems, not catch-all tools. A typical PC these days comes with 2-3 media players, several CD/DVD burning packages, and a couple of video conversion tools. We don't need Microsoft throwing-in yet another tool into the mix: one which probably can't be disabled and interferes with the 3rd-party products.
Apple does it right. OS X is a basic operating system with no frills. iLife is a for-sale add-on with common features like a photo album, video processing, etc. It's not required, it can be uninstalled, and it stands alone as a valuable product and people buy it. Microsoft should make a good operating system, and if they want to sell extras and add-ons that work then they should compete in the market to do so. But built-in crappy versions of products to kill the market for 3rd-party software doesn't help.
Infrastructure won't solve that problem either since it takes several hours to charge them. We will need something else, like Ultracapacitors. So for now, you'll need to rent a car or use some other transportation for road trips.
It doesn't matter if the restaurant pays or not. That's not the point. The point is that the customer does not have equal access. It skews the market. Now iTunes has a competitive advantage over Amazon. Maybe it was a really nice thing that the ISP thought they were doing - but the economic and social implications are dangerous. These ISPs must be completely neutral to the content they deliver.
Another example: If a newspaper refused to print articles that were critical of a particular organization, then that would be bad. And it would not matter if the organization paid them to bury those articles or not - the effect is still the same.
You are not forced to pay more to access certain data - The original post says they charge you if you exceed your monthly limit with Amazon downloads, but not if you exceed it with iTunes downloads.
So, for example: I have a 5GB monthly limit. I download 4.5GB of stuff from something that is metered. Then I download 1GB of music from Amazon, and I am charged for the.5GB I went over. But if I downloaded 1GB of music from iTunes then I am not charged. Replace Amazon/iTunes with Blockbuster/Netflix or WOW/Steam or whatever.
We should make the patent office liable for damages done and court costs for the bogus patents they issue. They only started rubber-stamping business methods and software patents when they were required to generate revenue. So stop the revenue stream.
It's basic HTTP caching If that's the case, then I'm okay with it. The grandparnent made it sound like the ISP had manually selected things they thought were worthy of caching or billing differently. A rule that said "any content accessed outside the country is subject to a cap" sounds fair.
Simply exempting certain content from the cap restrictions doesn't change in any way the way you can access other data. Sure it does. It means I pay more to get stuff from Amazon's music service than from iTunes.
It's like saying that a cash discount doesn't make using the credit card more expensive.
To put it another way - would you have a problem with the ISP mirroring, for example, Steam content (which my ISP in fact does). Yes, I would. I would have a problem with an ISP mirroring Steam content but not mirroring WOW content or other content. It is a telecomm monopoly giving a competitive advantage to a specific company. If they offered an HTTP proxy that allowed anyone to have their content mirrored, then that would be fine. But this isn't just about local mirroring -- they are actually billing the customers differently. That's anti-competitive.
The problem with the Target/Red Lobster analogy is that my local ISP is a monopoly. This is why the common carrier laws were originally made. It was to prevent a telecomm company from providing favoritism since telecomm is a monopoly and an infrastructure. Similar examples would be if your local electric utility signed a deal to exempt electricity costs for Philips brand light bulbs.
Yeah, it does add incentive to use iTunes over Amazon, but you're not inhibited from using Amazon...I can understand how this might be seen as the same thing Yeah, it really is the same thing. Suppose I controlled the local road maintenance. It would be unfair if I made placed road blocks in front of Red Lobster restaurants. It would be equally unfair for me to place road blocks in front of all restaurants except Red Lobster. Either way I am selectively impeding or assisting 3rd-parties who I should be neutral to.
Now, there are ways that this could be done within the spirit of fairness. For example, if the ISP offered a caching HTTP proxy that cached large, commonly downloaded files. A caching proxy picks files based on how frequently they are accessed, so it is fair to all. Or the ISP could offer an FTP site where any 3rd-parties could place updates and patches.
It will make it really easy for another broadband technology to take hold and utterly destroy them. Like what? Cable and telephone companies are government-granted monopolies, so no matter how bad of a service they offer, it won't create competition. The only possibilities are wireless and satellite. Satellite latency is too high to be feasible, and wireless is too hard to provide decent coverage. Until the government opens the wires to everyone instead of granting monoplies, nothing can change.
An ISP has partnered with various content providers to offer specialized service: Network Neutrality nightmare #1 is here! To everybody who said all this network neutrality stuff was theoretical and we should wait until it happens - here's your example. Now, do we have to wait until this happens in the U.S. before we get some neutrality legislation?
I know that the parent poster was using this example to be a good thing, but it isn't. It is now cheaper for him to buy stuff from iTunes instead of Amazon. It's cheaper to play games from the companies they've partnered with. I'm sure that non-commercial games with large downloads aren't getting these special benefits. Nor small Linux distros. This sounds like a great way for an ISP to slip non-neutral policies into place: 1. Create some sort of cap that applies to everyone. 2. Make exceptions to the cap. Now, instead of it looking like they are penalizing Amazon's music download service, they can say they are doing something helpful to the iTunes users. Same thing, different spin.
They are reeaallly stooping low to make this require Silverlight. Nobody else wants to use this product, so just pay people to use it. Brilliant! - Donating money to non-profits and earmarking the money to transform their Flash web sites into Silverlight
(I went to a BaltoMSDN presentation on Silverlight, done by the guys who did the conversion) - Making webcomics that use Silverlight - Displaying a nag screen on MS download sites recommending that people use the new Silverlight download manager
No one came imagine the hilarity of my laugh once someone writes a tool to convert the comic into Flash.:)
Because Slashdot is mostly armchair pseudo-scientists who apply sarcasm and pessimism to make themselves seem intelligent. It's no different from the sports fan who criticizes the coaches and players based on their own experience playing high-school football.
I want a candidate who says "Gee, I'm not a doctor, and I'm not qualified to handle matters regarding the safety of potentially addictive medicines. Nor do I know the number of people who this impacts. I'll leave that decision to the Surgeon General's office."
This issue is silly. There are far more addictive and dangerous drugs that are prescribed and self-administered. Making medical marijuana is not even a relevant issue at the national level. When we are not involved in a 10-year-long unwinnable war, and our economy is no longer dependent on a foreign fuel source where the plug could be pulled any minute, and we don't have scientists telling us that we are going to die in 50 years from global climate change... THEN let's worry about who is toking-up and how much.
The reason this is happening is because IE6 already actually uses the doctype tags. Depending on the doctype, it renders in quirks mode or in standards compliance mode, just like Firefox. The problem is that the standards compliance mode isn't even close to standards compliant. So now we have quirks mode, IE6 standards compliance mode, and IE7 standards compliance mode. Microsoft dug this hole and now the only way to fix it without breaking pages is to add yet another mechanism.
Microsoft kept redefining the meaning of "standard" so that they were right and everyone else was wrong. Now that they are actually starting to follow the standard, they are scrambling trying to make sure that it doesn't look like they were ever wrong.
What is wrong with using an optical scanning device to assist the hand-count? So long as a statistically relevant percentage of random ballots are hand-counted to confirm it, I have no problem with those optical systems. Heck -- I don't think most Slashdotters would mind a computerized system so long as it was done properly. The real issue is that none of the closed-source systems proposed today are even close.
Slashdot Mirror
Having gone to the Game Developer's Conference last week, I see that the demand for Flash and ActionScript developers has jumped 100% over the past year. Flash is becoming the scripting language of choice for custom UIs. I'm not talking about Adobe's web-browser-based
That isn't the case in the Maryland. Here, the cable companies last mile offerings are fiber-optical, while the telecom companies are using POTS. In my state, DSL is typically limited to 1MBps while Comcast is offering 12MBps service. Even with comcast crippling their upload speeds to 1/10th of the download speeds, they are still faster than DSL.
I don't have any links, but I can tell you my experiences.
Behind my house, there is a nice spot for the local kids to sit and drink. That problem was eliminated by a flood light with a sensor positioned on the second floor. That area already had a street light illuminating it. IMHO, the sensor makes the difference because it gives the impression that you were "caught" and that someone could be watching you, as opposed to a constant light source covering the whole area.
The Chi Phi fraternity house at Ohio Wesleyan University used to have beautifully flood lights every few feet. They illuminated the building and the sign on the front lawn. The house was a constant target for theft and vandalism until they changed the lights to point at the grounds, not at the house. You need to be able to see the trespasser, not the other way around.
Not out on PS2/PS3 either - might be more of a business issue than a technical issue
"File Sharing" is not illegal. Copyright infringement is illegal. Even the articles that the headline links to get it right by calling them "illegal downloads." This may seem piddly, but those of us who have ready 1984 understand that it is possible to manipulate semantics to change the connotation of a word. If we keep interchanging "file sharing" with "copyright infringement" then the next thing you know people will be trying to make FTP illegal. I don't want to have to explain to our congresspeople what the difference is, so stop blurring the meanings.
My telemarketing calls went from 1-3/day before I registered on the list, to about 0.05 - 0.1 per day now. I might get a survey call every few weeks.
Just my two cents.
This is why operating systems should be operating systems, not catch-all tools. A typical PC these days comes with 2-3 media players, several CD/DVD burning packages, and a couple of video conversion tools. We don't need Microsoft throwing-in yet another tool into the mix: one which probably can't be disabled and interferes with the 3rd-party products.
Apple does it right. OS X is a basic operating system with no frills. iLife is a for-sale add-on with common features like a photo album, video processing, etc. It's not required, it can be uninstalled, and it stands alone as a valuable product and people buy it. Microsoft should make a good operating system, and if they want to sell extras and add-ons that work then they should compete in the market to do so. But built-in crappy versions of products to kill the market for 3rd-party software doesn't help.
Infrastructure won't solve that problem either since it takes several hours to charge them. We will need something else, like Ultracapacitors. So for now, you'll need to rent a car or use some other transportation for road trips.
It doesn't matter if the restaurant pays or not. That's not the point. The point is that the customer does not have equal access. It skews the market. Now iTunes has a competitive advantage over Amazon. Maybe it was a really nice thing that the ISP thought they were doing - but the economic and social implications are dangerous. These ISPs must be completely neutral to the content they deliver.
Another example: If a newspaper refused to print articles that were critical of a particular organization, then that would be bad. And it would not matter if the organization paid them to bury those articles or not - the effect is still the same.
So, for example: I have a 5GB monthly limit. I download 4.5GB of stuff from something that is metered. Then I download 1GB of music from Amazon, and I am charged for the
We should make the patent office liable for damages done and court costs for the bogus patents they issue. They only started rubber-stamping business methods and software patents when they were required to generate revenue. So stop the revenue stream.
It's like saying that a cash discount doesn't make using the credit card more expensive. To put it another way - would you have a problem with the ISP mirroring, for example, Steam content (which my ISP in fact does). Yes, I would. I would have a problem with an ISP mirroring Steam content but not mirroring WOW content or other content. It is a telecomm monopoly giving a competitive advantage to a specific company. If they offered an HTTP proxy that allowed anyone to have their content mirrored, then that would be fine. But this isn't just about local mirroring -- they are actually billing the customers differently. That's anti-competitive.
Now, there are ways that this could be done within the spirit of fairness. For example, if the ISP offered a caching HTTP proxy that cached large, commonly downloaded files. A caching proxy picks files based on how frequently they are accessed, so it is fair to all. Or the ISP could offer an FTP site where any 3rd-parties could place updates and patches.
WOW.
An ISP has partnered with various content providers to offer specialized service: Network Neutrality nightmare #1 is here! To everybody who said all this network neutrality stuff was theoretical and we should wait until it happens - here's your example. Now, do we have to wait until this happens in the U.S. before we get some neutrality legislation?
I know that the parent poster was using this example to be a good thing, but it isn't. It is now cheaper for him to buy stuff from iTunes instead of Amazon. It's cheaper to play games from the companies they've partnered with. I'm sure that non-commercial games with large downloads aren't getting these special benefits. Nor small Linux distros. This sounds like a great way for an ISP to slip non-neutral policies into place: 1. Create some sort of cap that applies to everyone. 2. Make exceptions to the cap. Now, instead of it looking like they are penalizing Amazon's music download service, they can say they are doing something helpful to the iTunes users. Same thing, different spin.
They are reeaallly stooping low to make this require Silverlight. Nobody else wants to use this product, so just pay people to use it. Brilliant!
:)
- Donating money to non-profits and earmarking the money to transform their Flash web sites into Silverlight
(I went to a BaltoMSDN presentation on Silverlight, done by the guys who did the conversion)
- Making webcomics that use Silverlight
- Displaying a nag screen on MS download sites recommending that people use the new Silverlight download manager
No one came imagine the hilarity of my laugh once someone writes a tool to convert the comic into Flash.
It would be tougher with mechanics and mindstorms sets where you have gears and pulleys and pneumatics and swivelly things
Is there anything legit on The Pirate Bay? Yeah, I know they don't choose the content to go on it, but I'm just curious.
Because Slashdot is mostly armchair pseudo-scientists who apply sarcasm and pessimism to make themselves seem intelligent. It's no different from the sports fan who criticizes the coaches and players based on their own experience playing high-school football.
I want a candidate who says "Gee, I'm not a doctor, and I'm not qualified to handle matters regarding the safety of potentially addictive medicines. Nor do I know the number of people who this impacts. I'll leave that decision to the Surgeon General's office."
This issue is silly. There are far more addictive and dangerous drugs that are prescribed and self-administered. Making medical marijuana is not even a relevant issue at the national level. When we are not involved in a 10-year-long unwinnable war, and our economy is no longer dependent on a foreign fuel source where the plug could be pulled any minute, and we don't have scientists telling us that we are going to die in 50 years from global climate change... THEN let's worry about who is toking-up and how much.
The reason this is happening is because IE6 already actually uses the doctype tags. Depending on the doctype, it renders in quirks mode or in standards compliance mode, just like Firefox. The problem is that the standards compliance mode isn't even close to standards compliant. So now we have quirks mode, IE6 standards compliance mode, and IE7 standards compliance mode. Microsoft dug this hole and now the only way to fix it without breaking pages is to add yet another mechanism.
Microsoft kept redefining the meaning of "standard" so that they were right and everyone else was wrong. Now that they are actually starting to follow the standard, they are scrambling trying to make sure that it doesn't look like they were ever wrong.
What is wrong with using an optical scanning device to assist the hand-count? So long as a statistically relevant percentage of random ballots are hand-counted to confirm it, I have no problem with those optical systems. Heck -- I don't think most Slashdotters would mind a computerized system so long as it was done properly. The real issue is that none of the closed-source systems proposed today are even close.
Their ATM's got a virus some years ago since they are running Windows Mobile.
I work on an AJAX application, and Microsoft Visual Studio's debugger doesn't work with IE7. Most of our dev team still uses IE6 for this reason.