What people are actually paying for when selling virtual information like photographs and novels are the intellectual property rights pertaining to the work. It is unclear what intellectual property rights a third party developer retains. In many cases the developer of the virtual world will retain the intellectual property right (depending on the licensing agreements in force in the game) and the third party developer is merely selling a "presence" in the game. Without the creative rights associated with it, I'd argue the virtual land would indeed be of little value.
And as to your analogies, in most cases people do pay tens of millions of dollars for paintings for the original, physical copy. Reproductions, even masterfully done ones, are only ever worth a fraction of the piece.
Full and open disclosure: how many bitcoins do you currently own?
Also, as this is a fiat currency, trust is fundamental. Therefore, what kind of ethical standards do you have in place to prevent conflicts of interest in having the developers / promoters of this currency being potentially some of the largest holders of the currency and potentially the most likely to profit in it?
Wait, so the top executives from technology companies around the world gather to discuss important policy items they'd like to see discussed by the G8 regarding the internet - a noteworthy story by itself - and instead of discussing the content of the story we're complaining about the format they released it in???
The problem is that this type of proposal is simply data-dredging which can lead to the prosecutor's fallacy. If the DNA test is applied to enough people, even with low error rates you're guaranteed to ensnare innocents through false positives. With a large enough number of tests, the probability of a false positive arising becomes so high that the tests become statistically meaningless and legally irrelevant. Which is why these types of tests are usually restricted to suspects which already have other evidence pointing them to the crime, instead of applying a large data-dredging net throughout the prison population.
I don't think people get it. Even when the original Tron came out, nobody really believed that there was actually a world inside a computer. I was 10 at the time and even at that age it was obvious the concept was pure fantasy. What it did inspire in me at the time was the possibility of the computer as a creative medium, expressed not only in the cgi animation but in the analogy of the programmer as a creator of a world. I credit the movie with inspiring me to pursue a career in computer science, by showing that it could be a creative field that could inspire, at a time when the only other facet being shown of computers were of a deeply logical and unfeeling world. For me the most important legacy of Tron was the metaphor of the programmer as a creator and an artist.
There already is a telemetry system in place to provide data for maintenance called ACARS. The problem is that long segments of airplane flight are over the ocean, where the only link is through satellite, which is expensive and limited in bandwith. ACARS tries to solve this by providing the data in short bursts, which is sufficient for maintenance but not enough for a flight data recorder.
The suggestion for a "glass box" has been around for a while, the problem is a lack of technological maturity to provide the required bandwith, while maintaining an affordable cost.
This isn't a problem of changing mindset, this is a problem of dollars and cents. Changing from imperial to metric requires not just changing all your drawings and specifications to the metric system - a huge endeavour by itself. It also requires retooling all your manufacturing base. You'll have to get all your suppliers onboard as well. And all of this will have to be done simultaneously, as your product won't assemble properly if half of its screws are metric and the other half imperial.
None of this is trivial, and assuming that americans resist using imperial units because of a mindset attitude trivializes the problem. Hell, I'm canadian, where we've supposedly been using the metric system for the last 25 years and my company still uses imperial units because the cost of conversion would be prohibitive.
I've had it for 25 years now, used it through high school to university to work and it still sits on my desk at work, its solar cells going strong, helping me at work from time to time.
This works because we're talking about dedicated engineering software which is sold almost exclusively to businesses at enormously inflated prices. We pay more than US$100,000 per year for a single license of some of our design software. Getting unemployed engineers, who would never be able to legally afford those licenses in any cases, into using their products is a win-win situation. When the market picks up and they're rehired, they may well find themselves in a purchasing decision for the very same software for their firm. Plus, given the steep learning curve for many engineering software, people are less likely to easily switch over to competing software.
It's a brilliant strategy, and companies already do this all the time with trial versions of their products. But for most consumer software, it would be undercuting their own market.
Rear ends today are typically vertically flat! Who are these designers that aren't familiar with the teardrop shape?
Perhaps you aren't familiar with the work of aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm? Back in the 1930s he demonstrated that the most efficient aerodynamic shape for a car is not a teardrop shape, but one that cuts off abruptly at the rear. It provides the same aerodynamic benefits of the teardrop shape, but without the drag and weight penalties of the trailing rear end. This is known as a , and is widely used in cars today.
Most Blu-Ray players for sale don't play recordable Blu-Ray discs. Of course, you could still play those discs in your computer, but I suppose that wasn't really the point. You're better off buying new discs.
In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election.
Could it be because machine counted precincts tend to be in more affluent counties that can afford the machines in the first place? In other hands, the difference in voting between Clinton and Obama is more likely due to a difference in demographics of the voters they are attracting - the precincts that more well-off Clinton supporters live in are more likely to have machine voting.
Isn't Google Trends geolocation inherently innacurate? As I understand, it is using your IP address to determine your location, but this only gives you the location of your ISP router, and the two can be different by hundreds of miles. Since ISP routers tend to be located in urban areas, they tend to get a disproportionate amount of traffic. There was an interesting article about the problems with Google Trends, pointing out how for example the suburbs of Milton Keynes in England are constantly highly ranked in Google Trends, because BT has a large routing center in the area.
The trends are interesting, but I'd be careful about how they are used.
The statistical data flat out contradicts your conclusion, despite your anecdotal evidence. Take a look at the NTSB accident reports at www.ntsb.gov. Human error is attributable as the cause of accident in close to 80% of cases (see http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARC0401.pdf and http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARG0401.pdf for an annual summary of accident data for 2000 as an example). Aircraft related causes were a factor in less than one third of cases. One can always find anecdotal evidence supporting your point of view, but skim across a listing of recent accident reports and one quickly finds that human error is the overwhelming majority cause in most accidents. Automating the cockpit and reducing the human element therefore is the best way to reduce the number of accidents in the sky.
I tend to think not. When I did my undergraduate degree a mandatory course for all freshmen was a short 2 hour course on finding material at the library, and it helped me immensely. It seems simple enough, but most people I talk to don't know how to carry out basic research on the web. With Google's increasing role as a starting point for research online, I think a simple course on searching with it is equally important. Even obscure words can turn up millions of hits on Google, so knowing how to properly limit your search is extremely important. Unfortunately too many people's idea of searching on the web is to type in a single keyword on google and see what comes up.
There are ways to enforce this overstepping the "small problem" of foreign jurisdiction, depending on how draconian US lawmakers decide to pursue this. They could, for example, prohibit american credit card companies from accepting transactions from overseas porn sites not on a.xxx domain. They could also prohibit ISPs from carrying any porn site that wasn't on a.xxx domain. Or they could target any assets from foreign porn companies in the US in something akin to the Helms-Burton act.
Flexibility would be key for me. All electronics would need to be easily accessible for easy upgrading. And I include all of the wiring in this. The problem with most integrated home designs incorporating substantial electronics that I've seen is that upgrading the electronics becomes extremely costly. And over the 20+ years one might own that house, what might seem as cutting edge during the purchase will not only be outdated but completely obsolete. So like a typical geek I'd like to continuously upgrade the electronics, and I don't want to have to tear down a dry wall to have to access the wiring.
This is extremely useful if it works well. There isn't always available someone who can speak the other language, especially in rural areas. And even when a translator is available, it is often a layperson or a relative who does not have knowledge of medical terminology to adequately translate the patient's symptoms to the doctor. A patient suffering from a STD may well withhold embarassing information about his symptoms if forced to translate through a relative.
Has it come time that perhaps the usage of the word "unlimited" should be regulated? It's not only Netflix that uses the word deceptively. My DSL provider claims "unlimited" download/uploads, image-hosting services advertise unlimited image-hosting, my cell provider advertises unlimited minutes for their premium plan. All of these of course don't really mean unlimited, but rather "a limit large enough that most people won't reach it". Try and use your high-speed connection 24/7 as a server and you'll soon find that it really is limited after all.
Is it me, or has usage of the word "unlimited" in the tech field become much like the use of the words "light" and "fat-free" in the food industry, which became abused to the point of meaningless until they were regulated. As it stands now, a consumer might expect that unlimit really means "within a reasonable limit" but what that limit is is vague for the layperson without slogging through the fine print.
The limited supply of copper is already becoming a problem long before we have any supply problems, as the price for copper increases. theft of copper has become a big problem in the developing world, especially as policing the thousands of kilometers of kilometers of copper wire and copper piping is an impossible task. As the price for copper increases, the problem will only get worse.
I found it interesting that some celebrities appear to have their wish list available as well. Hard to know how much of it is real, since certainly the bigger names would go under a pseudonym, and ordinary joes may just be using the name as an alias, but looking at Steve Job's wish list it appears to list his correct address and birthday, so there may be something to him having a taste for Duke Elington after all.
Actually, it's mroe like you get a discount for selling them information.
Ah, no. If they can afford to sell it with the rebate and still make a profit, the product is definitely worth less than the price minus the rebate. Therefore my wish to keep my privacy and refuse to join their mailing list would cost me an extra premium - the price of the rebate - over and above their profit margin.
The problem with this idea is that someone people will eventually realize that the $100 laptop is actually worth $200 and resell it upon receiving it. And in a poor country even such a basic laptop will always find a black market willing to resell it.
What about rebates as a way to get around privacy laws by making you fork over all your personal data in exchange for the rebate? For me, this one of the things I disliked the most about rebates - I shouldn't have to pay an extra premium on my purchases because I refuse to give out my contact information the company.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a bit more complicated than that.
What people are actually paying for when selling virtual information like photographs and novels are the intellectual property rights pertaining to the work. It is unclear what intellectual property rights a third party developer retains. In many cases the developer of the virtual world will retain the intellectual property right (depending on the licensing agreements in force in the game) and the third party developer is merely selling a "presence" in the game. Without the creative rights associated with it, I'd argue the virtual land would indeed be of little value.
And as to your analogies, in most cases people do pay tens of millions of dollars for paintings for the original, physical copy. Reproductions, even masterfully done ones, are only ever worth a fraction of the piece.
Full and open disclosure: how many bitcoins do you currently own?
Also, as this is a fiat currency, trust is fundamental. Therefore, what kind of ethical standards do you have in place to prevent conflicts of interest in having the developers / promoters of this currency being potentially some of the largest holders of the currency and potentially the most likely to profit in it?
Wait, so the top executives from technology companies around the world gather to discuss important policy items they'd like to see discussed by the G8 regarding the internet - a noteworthy story by itself - and instead of discussing the content of the story we're complaining about the format they released it in???
The problem is that this type of proposal is simply data-dredging which can lead to the prosecutor's fallacy. If the DNA test is applied to enough people, even with low error rates you're guaranteed to ensnare innocents through false positives. With a large enough number of tests, the probability of a false positive arising becomes so high that the tests become statistically meaningless and legally irrelevant. Which is why these types of tests are usually restricted to suspects which already have other evidence pointing them to the crime, instead of applying a large data-dredging net throughout the prison population.
I don't think people get it. Even when the original Tron came out, nobody really believed that there was actually a world inside a computer. I was 10 at the time and even at that age it was obvious the concept was pure fantasy. What it did inspire in me at the time was the possibility of the computer as a creative medium, expressed not only in the cgi animation but in the analogy of the programmer as a creator of a world. I credit the movie with inspiring me to pursue a career in computer science, by showing that it could be a creative field that could inspire, at a time when the only other facet being shown of computers were of a deeply logical and unfeeling world. For me the most important legacy of Tron was the metaphor of the programmer as a creator and an artist.
There already is a telemetry system in place to provide data for maintenance called ACARS. The problem is that long segments of airplane flight are over the ocean, where the only link is through satellite, which is expensive and limited in bandwith. ACARS tries to solve this by providing the data in short bursts, which is sufficient for maintenance but not enough for a flight data recorder.
The suggestion for a "glass box" has been around for a while, the problem is a lack of technological maturity to provide the required bandwith, while maintaining an affordable cost.
This isn't a problem of changing mindset, this is a problem of dollars and cents. Changing from imperial to metric requires not just changing all your drawings and specifications to the metric system - a huge endeavour by itself. It also requires retooling all your manufacturing base. You'll have to get all your suppliers onboard as well. And all of this will have to be done simultaneously, as your product won't assemble properly if half of its screws are metric and the other half imperial.
None of this is trivial, and assuming that americans resist using imperial units because of a mindset attitude trivializes the problem. Hell, I'm canadian, where we've supposedly been using the metric system for the last 25 years and my company still uses imperial units because the cost of conversion would be prohibitive.
I've had it for 25 years now, used it through high school to university to work and it still sits on my desk at work, its solar cells going strong, helping me at work from time to time.
This works because we're talking about dedicated engineering software which is sold almost exclusively to businesses at enormously inflated prices. We pay more than US$100,000 per year for a single license of some of our design software. Getting unemployed engineers, who would never be able to legally afford those licenses in any cases, into using their products is a win-win situation. When the market picks up and they're rehired, they may well find themselves in a purchasing decision for the very same software for their firm. Plus, given the steep learning curve for many engineering software, people are less likely to easily switch over to competing software.
It's a brilliant strategy, and companies already do this all the time with trial versions of their products. But for most consumer software, it would be undercuting their own market.
Have they perhaps considered that it's the hallucinations that somehow drive the craving for coffee, and not the other way around?
Most Blu-Ray players for sale don't play recordable Blu-Ray discs. Of course, you could still play those discs in your computer, but I suppose that wasn't really the point. You're better off buying new discs.
Isn't Google Trends geolocation inherently innacurate? As I understand, it is using your IP address to determine your location, but this only gives you the location of your ISP router, and the two can be different by hundreds of miles. Since ISP routers tend to be located in urban areas, they tend to get a disproportionate amount of traffic. There was an interesting article about the problems with Google Trends, pointing out how for example the suburbs of Milton Keynes in England are constantly highly ranked in Google Trends, because BT has a large routing center in the area.
The trends are interesting, but I'd be careful about how they are used.
The statistical data flat out contradicts your conclusion, despite your anecdotal evidence. Take a look at the NTSB accident reports at www.ntsb.gov. Human error is attributable as the cause of accident in close to 80% of cases (see http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARC0401.pdf and http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARG0401.pdf for an annual summary of accident data for 2000 as an example). Aircraft related causes were a factor in less than one third of cases. One can always find anecdotal evidence supporting your point of view, but skim across a listing of recent accident reports and one quickly finds that human error is the overwhelming majority cause in most accidents. Automating the cockpit and reducing the human element therefore is the best way to reduce the number of accidents in the sky.
There are ways to enforce this overstepping the "small problem" of foreign jurisdiction, depending on how draconian US lawmakers decide to pursue this. They could, for example, prohibit american credit card companies from accepting transactions from overseas porn sites not on a .xxx domain. They could also prohibit ISPs from carrying any porn site that wasn't on a .xxx domain. Or they could target any assets from foreign porn companies in the US in something akin to the Helms-Burton act.
Flexibility would be key for me. All electronics would need to be easily accessible for easy upgrading. And I include all of the wiring in this. The problem with most integrated home designs incorporating substantial electronics that I've seen is that upgrading the electronics becomes extremely costly. And over the 20+ years one might own that house, what might seem as cutting edge during the purchase will not only be outdated but completely obsolete. So like a typical geek I'd like to continuously upgrade the electronics, and I don't want to have to tear down a dry wall to have to access the wiring.
This is extremely useful if it works well. There isn't always available someone who can speak the other language, especially in rural areas. And even when a translator is available, it is often a layperson or a relative who does not have knowledge of medical terminology to adequately translate the patient's symptoms to the doctor. A patient suffering from a STD may well withhold embarassing information about his symptoms if forced to translate through a relative.
Has it come time that perhaps the usage of the word "unlimited" should be regulated? It's not only Netflix that uses the word deceptively. My DSL provider claims "unlimited" download/uploads, image-hosting services advertise unlimited image-hosting, my cell provider advertises unlimited minutes for their premium plan. All of these of course don't really mean unlimited, but rather "a limit large enough that most people won't reach it". Try and use your high-speed connection 24/7 as a server and you'll soon find that it really is limited after all.
Is it me, or has usage of the word "unlimited" in the tech field become much like the use of the words "light" and "fat-free" in the food industry, which became abused to the point of meaningless until they were regulated. As it stands now, a consumer might expect that unlimit really means "within a reasonable limit" but what that limit is is vague for the layperson without slogging through the fine print.
The limited supply of copper is already becoming a problem long before we have any supply problems, as the price for copper increases. theft of copper has become a big problem in the developing world, especially as policing the thousands of kilometers of kilometers of copper wire and copper piping is an impossible task. As the price for copper increases, the problem will only get worse.
I found it interesting that some celebrities appear to have their wish list available as well. Hard to know how much of it is real, since certainly the bigger names would go under a pseudonym, and ordinary joes may just be using the name as an alias, but looking at Steve Job's wish list it appears to list his correct address and birthday, so there may be something to him having a taste for Duke Elington after all.
The problem with this idea is that someone people will eventually realize that the $100 laptop is actually worth $200 and resell it upon receiving it. And in a poor country even such a basic laptop will always find a black market willing to resell it.
What about rebates as a way to get around privacy laws by making you fork over all your personal data in exchange for the rebate? For me, this one of the things I disliked the most about rebates - I shouldn't have to pay an extra premium on my purchases because I refuse to give out my contact information the company.