This is why I like the concept of having a USB port. I don't have to do a single thing and all my existing solutions still work (external HD, etc...)
If you require an external HD then you are using your tablet wrong regardless of the make or model. Get yourself a laptop and save yourself some grief. As for the HID stuff, most tablets have bluetooth and you don't have to fight the cables when trying to prop up your tablet in the field.
I see Fox News as more "Republican Campaign Headquarters" and MSNBC as more "Democratic Campaign Headquarters". The idea behind MSNBC (now NBC news) is to differentiate itself by being the polar opposite of Fox News.
I steer clear of both websites and instead look at AP, NPR, and BBC with a mix of dumbed down news from CNN and USA Today. Also if a big news story emerges, I check the byline and google for local news coverage from that area. This way I get up to date news without the editorial spin of national coverage.
Some would say that Microsoft got away with their practices for a very long time just because they gave a boost to the economy. However like all things, Microsoft's influence began to diminish as soon as the computing ecosphere changed and it became apparent that the political fallout from prosecuting Microsoft would be offset by the number of potentially new campaign donors produced by the internet based economy.
Google was one of those new donors and the letter from Rep. Polis is a reflection of this new reality.
Two wrongs doesn't make a right. Just because you believe another company may be doing the same nefarious things doesn't mean Google should be left off the hook. I'm not saying Google is guilty of anything, but the investigations should start somewhere and Google may as well be first.
"That's okay. When I hear the horn, I assume you see me merging into your lane. Lucky for me if you rear-end me, I'll look better than you to the insurance companies" - The inconsiderate driver
ABS allows you to brake hard but maintain some steering control...
Maintaining steering control is a beneficial side effect of ABS. ABS frees the driver from "pumping the brakes" which was necessary to keep the wheels from locking up.
But I have read that professional race drivers (i.e. not you or I) can do sometimes better without ABS on both straight-line and braking in turns.
That's because they are not coming to a complete stop and let's face it at their speeds and drafting off of the car in front of them ABS won't change the outcome. Have you actually seen a NASCAR race? When one car crashes the other cars pretty much get involved and you'll end up with a lot of cars marked "DNF" on the scoreboard.
Just to be pedantic - in most situations, ABS will NOT decrease your stopping distance, in fact, by definition not locking your tires reduces friction and actually increases stopping distances. What ABS does do, is enable you to stear around objects, etc while slowing down - which you cannot do if your tires are locked.
WRONG.
Static friction is much greater than kinetic friction. If your tires are still rolling and the brakes are decelerating your car then you are using static friction. If your brakes "lock up" and your tires are sliding then kinetic friction is being used and your stopping distance will be significantly increased. ABS allowed drivers to "panic brake" without having to remember to "pump the brakes" to keep the wheels from locking up. ABS is a significant safety feature.
Power steering is actually a safety hazard - if you engine fails you will quickly lose the ability to safely steer the vehicle - especially if you are applying the brakes.
WRONG.
While it's true that engine failure results in the loss of power steering, your ability to steer the vehicle is no less than a vehicle that never had power steering installed. The safety advantage of power steering occurs at low speeds where turning the steering wheel takes more force than required at highway speeds.
I do and I find justifications for your tailgating laughable. The reason behind the accidents is due to the fact that you aren't the only person who justifies their poor driving habits with the driving habits of others.
If I don't "tailgate" while commuting to/from work on the Interstate someone will simply change lanes in front of me and magically I'll be tailgating again.
Are you the guy that speeds up when you see a motorist signal a lane change?
The highway is a shared resource. Leave a large enough gap to not only safely stop but to also allow others to merge into the lane. You can let off of the gas long enough to return to the safe driving distance.
Do you see people rioiting and murdering people because of Piss Christ or South Park Jesus? Nope.
I remember "Piss Christ" when the controversy broke out. Your example lost some of its luster since it is old, but back in the day it was a rallying cry for christian fundamentalists to become more involved with protesting against the Public Endowment for the Arts and the big evil secular government. The movie "Last Temptation of Christ" had a similar amount of protests which resulted in its being banned in several countries (Chile, Philippines, and Singapore) as well as several theaters in the Southern US not showing it or having a limited showing due to the controversy created by the mainstream news of the time.
Even with funding, the DoJ would be pretty useless. I'll just trot out the current Republican talking points about Fast and Furious since they'll illustrate a good reason why the Republicans wouldn't be inclined to fund the Department of Justice.
You could but then again I could just trot out the bananas can't be considered oranges.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the reason politicians love to underfund enforcement is to offset the showboat regulations that they pass in order to be re-elected. This way they said they passed laws that are designed to protect us from harm, while at the same time the chances of that law actually being used is low enough not to piss off the people who actually fund the politicians campaigns.
Pointing to incompetence or the occasional misstep brought on by the underfunding of enforcement as an example of why we should fund government law enforcement is part of their plan. You don't actually think they would point out the overwhelming majority of things that the government does right? That would discredit the fairytale that they are trying to sell you.
This is why the republicans in particular have been doing a shitty job. If the government is seen as doing the right thing then they wouldn't have a platform to run on. The number one reason that a republican filibusters every single bill of significance is to prevent the democrat president from looking good. Never mind that shitty legislation was passed with overwhelming support when there was a republican president. During the Bush years the attitude of the republicans was that it was okay to borrow money in order to keep taxes low because the interest being paid was offset by the nation's GDP. The day after a democrat is president, those same republicans immediately are concerned that we are borrowing too much money and selling our children to China. The amount of hyperbole that is spewed is ridiculous.
I just find it laughable that someone would vote for a candidate that is more concerned with what would make his party look good than what is good for the nation. One key sign that this is taking place is the more they try to hurt the country to prop themselves up, the more they wrap themselves in the American flag and claim to be patriotic.
Beware of the politician that campaigns on the platform that government sucks and reelect him and he'll keep it that way.
What you discussed is outside the realm of a typical small business owner. You gave some fine examples, but they are within the IT or computing field. Small businesses that traditionally use a computer to track their business may not be interested in log mining/collection.
Again as I explained to the other commenter, I do think cloud services have their place. What I disagree with is the assumption that TCO is significantly cheaper with cloud services. I haven't found this to always be the case, and the TCO argument is usually FUD or empty promises used to make a sale.
Before we go further, I'd like to point out that I don't have a vested interested for or against Google books. Regardless of any possible benefits to the book author, I do think that Google pushed the envelope on what should be appropriate fair use. My impression of the situation is that Google abused its resources to accomplish something that it thought would make it money regardless of the wishes of the owners of the copyrighted material.
(For others who may be reading this comment: If the idea of someone having ownership of their works offend you then take your argument elsewhere. I have no interest in arguing the merits of copyright. I rather stick with the idea of enforcing the rules as they now exist. I'm sorry but going off topic to make a straw man argument is not furthering this conversation).
1) To the best of my knowledge, the results that Google intended to display consisted of a few lines from any particular book. They had to have an entire copy scanned in because the lines that matched one search would of course be different from the lines that match another. But the users wouldn't see the whole thing in one go. Also, fair use can encompass the entirety of a work. Whether a use is fair will depend on the circumstances involved; there are no bright line rules in fair use.
Here is the gray area. Did Google purchase every book that it scanned? If so then I have no problem with them scanning there own copy into a database and then later on offer a very small snippet to the public as fair use. However if they didn't then technically they made an illegal copy of someone else's work.
2) It's irrelevant that web pages are already on the Internet. Scanning in books and providing an opt out is just the same as indexing the web and providing an opt out.
If they are the same thing then by your reasoning Google is in the wrong. Since most of the books I purchase has a copyright notice which states that all the author's rights are reserved and states how duplication is prohibited, it seems to me that Google ignored the author's attempt to "opt out" at the source and made the digital scans anyway.
3) Perhaps we should respect the rights of copyright holders, but those rights have limits beyond which no respect is owed. The authors are going too far in this case.
What you're really saying is not that TCO isn't an issue, but that cloud technology isn't mature enough to provide alternatives for these people. And I agree, there are a lot of PC applications that still don't have good cloud alternatives.But that doesn't eliminate the TCO issue, it just means that these people can't do anything about it. If these people could switch to the cloud, not doing so would be pretty expensive.
No what I've said is that I don't buy the line that TCO is so horribly expensive that my best option is always to use the cloud. I do see good uses for "the cloud" which I consider a stupid marketing term. Lets call it what it is - centralized computing. Of course 40 years later we can take advantage of broadband internet to eliminate the need for a dedicated phone line or a leased connection from the phone company. But still we are talking about a very old methodology that has gotten easier to implement using web based technology (versus the old serial terminals).
Anyway let's take my landscaper friend for instance. Even though he likes using software which he is very familiar with to keep up with his accounting, he is seriously thinking about using a service that allows him to invoice and accept credit cards while at the client's house. In exchange of having to learn how to use a new service and incorporating it into his daily business routine, He gains another method of accepting payment and he *may* not have to stay up so late entering the day's work. TCO doesn't even enter the equation. Instead, it turns into a question of wether or not the service offers something beneficial that couldn't be easily using obtained traditional methods.
TCO is a term sales people like to spout off when they want to sell a service. Yes it is a valid accounting term and it is important to manage it, but salespeople take advantage of people's misunderstanding of the term to make a commission. That strategy has been used on everything from leasing vehicles to outsourcing IT. I think it's better to focus on the best fit for the small business owner than it is to spread FUD about some hypotheticals that just happens to ignore Moore's law and the deflationary affect it has on current hardware.
Then you're a techie who thinks nothing of managing his own IT stack. Imagine you're a small business owner with basic IT skills and without the resources to hire a proper IT wonk. Or you're an IT manager supporting thousands of users who suddenly discovers he has to upgrade every single system in order to continue supporting the app on which everybody depends.
Actually I have friends who own and operate small businesses. Their professions include court reporting, lawyer, restauranteur, Lloyd's surveyor, independent insurance agent, landscaper, painter, general contractor, dentist and marine transportation firm. Some are small less than 10 employee operations, but others are in the 50+ employee size. They have no problems with the equipment they have and the software packages that they have purchased. You do realize that there is a cottage industry that create vertical market software for these professions? They've been generally satisfied with their service and they like the fact that they control where and how their private information is handled.
Most of those businesses would still need pretty much the same amount of computer equipment and the only thing the "cloud" promises them is always working and up-to-date applications with no need to backup. This pretty much taken care of by the maintenance contracts that they have with their software provider anyway. I always stick to the current version of the software until it has been end-of-lifed. No sense worrying about file incompatibilities or having to update the workstations prematurely just for a few fancy and unrequested features. The backups are easily handled by the owner or one of their employees. I recommended that they keep a set of backups off-site at home or better still a safe deposit box at a bank.
This isn't rocket science, and we don't need to employ computer scientists to do the mundane stuff just because a computer is involved.
The problem with the "keep your data and apps where you can see them" approach is that the TCO is horrendous.
I'm not convinced that the TCO is "horrendous" and I think that line is used too much to try to sucker people into using a subscription/cloud base service.
Is this a trick question? How is "fair use" not applicable?
Depends on how much of the book is being digitally published without the express consent of the copyright holder. A portion of the cover art, the table of contents, and very small number of sample paragraphs seem like a reasonable amount for "fair use". Entire chapters or a large portion of most chapters of a book seems like an unreasonable amount for "fair use".
This is absolutely no different from the "scanning" and "putting up" that google does of every other part of the internet.
Actually the websites that are being scanned are freely available on the internet and Google only provides enough of the website to give the user information on wether or not to visit that website. Also the website can attempt to opt-out preemptively by placing a file in their URL space that informs the web crawler of the author not wanting any of the pages scanned.
Why should the fact that it started out in a grossly inefficient medium be any distinction whatsoever?
You are correct. The copyright holder should have his rights respected regardless of the medium being used.
The copyright holder should have the ability to "opt-in" and not have to "opt-out". Why should corporations assume they can do anything they want until told otherwise?
Perhaps it's stupid to entrust that burden to a corporation, and it should be the job of a public or non-profit institution, but this knowledge must be preserved.
If only the Library of Congress in the US, national library of China, library of Russian academy of science, National library and Archives Canada, and the German National Library existed.
Your warning is not sufficient. Side effects may include vomiting, diarrhea, night terrors, thoughts of suicide, loss of blood pressure, and liver damage.
T-Mobile has been increasingly locking down its phones and services over the last few years, culminating in the "You can only use this myTouch data plan with myTouch devices and cannot use a non-myTouch data plan with a myTouch phone" stupidity a couple of years ago that, thankfully, they backed out of a little.
I'm not doubting you, but I had no such experience from T-Mobile. They always unlocked my MyTouch phone 3 weeks after purchase. Waiting 3 weeks allowed me to simply return the phone if I didn't like it. T-Mobile even went out of their way to make sure my MyTouch 3G and later MyTouch 4G was unlocked in time for me to use Vodafone while I was in Australia.
I'm also able to use my grandfathered data plan with my MyTouch phone. However, I did have to leave my really cheap 2G data plan for a more expensive 3G data plan (still cheaper than today's plan) back when 3G first came available. I'm still on that 3G plan and have access to both 3G and 4G features of my phone.
Slashdot Mirror
If you require an external HD then you are using your tablet wrong regardless of the make or model. Get yourself a laptop and save yourself some grief. As for the HID stuff, most tablets have bluetooth and you don't have to fight the cables when trying to prop up your tablet in the field.
I see Fox News as more "Republican Campaign Headquarters" and MSNBC as more "Democratic Campaign Headquarters". The idea behind MSNBC (now NBC news) is to differentiate itself by being the polar opposite of Fox News.
I steer clear of both websites and instead look at AP, NPR, and BBC with a mix of dumbed down news from CNN and USA Today. Also if a big news story emerges, I check the byline and google for local news coverage from that area. This way I get up to date news without the editorial spin of national coverage.
Creator of an OS kernel thinks a competitor's OS kernel is inferior. More news at 11...
Some would say that Microsoft got away with their practices for a very long time just because they gave a boost to the economy. However like all things, Microsoft's influence began to diminish as soon as the computing ecosphere changed and it became apparent that the political fallout from prosecuting Microsoft would be offset by the number of potentially new campaign donors produced by the internet based economy.
Google was one of those new donors and the letter from Rep. Polis is a reflection of this new reality.
Two wrongs doesn't make a right. Just because you believe another company may be doing the same nefarious things doesn't mean Google should be left off the hook. I'm not saying Google is guilty of anything, but the investigations should start somewhere and Google may as well be first.
"That's okay. When I hear the horn, I assume you see me merging into your lane. Lucky for me if you rear-end me, I'll look better than you to the insurance companies" - The inconsiderate driver
Look out for that guy.
No.
Maintaining steering control is a beneficial side effect of ABS. ABS frees the driver from "pumping the brakes" which was necessary to keep the wheels from locking up.
That's because they are not coming to a complete stop and let's face it at their speeds and drafting off of the car in front of them ABS won't change the outcome. Have you actually seen a NASCAR race? When one car crashes the other cars pretty much get involved and you'll end up with a lot of cars marked "DNF" on the scoreboard.
WRONG.
Static friction is much greater than kinetic friction. If your tires are still rolling and the brakes are decelerating your car then you are using static friction. If your brakes "lock up" and your tires are sliding then kinetic friction is being used and your stopping distance will be significantly increased. ABS allowed drivers to "panic brake" without having to remember to "pump the brakes" to keep the wheels from locking up. ABS is a significant safety feature.
WRONG.
While it's true that engine failure results in the loss of power steering, your ability to steer the vehicle is no less than a vehicle that never had power steering installed. The safety advantage of power steering occurs at low speeds where turning the steering wheel takes more force than required at highway speeds.
I do and I find justifications for your tailgating laughable. The reason behind the accidents is due to the fact that you aren't the only person who justifies their poor driving habits with the driving habits of others.
Are you the guy that speeds up when you see a motorist signal a lane change?
The highway is a shared resource. Leave a large enough gap to not only safely stop but to also allow others to merge into the lane. You can let off of the gas long enough to return to the safe driving distance.
I remember "Piss Christ" when the controversy broke out. Your example lost some of its luster since it is old, but back in the day it was a rallying cry for christian fundamentalists to become more involved with protesting against the Public Endowment for the Arts and the big evil secular government. The movie "Last Temptation of Christ" had a similar amount of protests which resulted in its being banned in several countries (Chile, Philippines, and Singapore) as well as several theaters in the Southern US not showing it or having a limited showing due to the controversy created by the mainstream news of the time.
I think "commemorates is a better choice of word.
BTW that was sarcasm.
Wait.. There's a webpage in Europe worth visiting?
You could but then again I could just trot out the bananas can't be considered oranges.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the reason politicians love to underfund enforcement is to offset the showboat regulations that they pass in order to be re-elected. This way they said they passed laws that are designed to protect us from harm, while at the same time the chances of that law actually being used is low enough not to piss off the people who actually fund the politicians campaigns.
Pointing to incompetence or the occasional misstep brought on by the underfunding of enforcement as an example of why we should fund government law enforcement is part of their plan. You don't actually think they would point out the overwhelming majority of things that the government does right? That would discredit the fairytale that they are trying to sell you.
This is why the republicans in particular have been doing a shitty job. If the government is seen as doing the right thing then they wouldn't have a platform to run on. The number one reason that a republican filibusters every single bill of significance is to prevent the democrat president from looking good. Never mind that shitty legislation was passed with overwhelming support when there was a republican president. During the Bush years the attitude of the republicans was that it was okay to borrow money in order to keep taxes low because the interest being paid was offset by the nation's GDP. The day after a democrat is president, those same republicans immediately are concerned that we are borrowing too much money and selling our children to China. The amount of hyperbole that is spewed is ridiculous.
I just find it laughable that someone would vote for a candidate that is more concerned with what would make his party look good than what is good for the nation. One key sign that this is taking place is the more they try to hurt the country to prop themselves up, the more they wrap themselves in the American flag and claim to be patriotic.
Beware of the politician that campaigns on the platform that government sucks and reelect him and he'll keep it that way.
What you discussed is outside the realm of a typical small business owner. You gave some fine examples, but they are within the IT or computing field. Small businesses that traditionally use a computer to track their business may not be interested in log mining/collection.
Again as I explained to the other commenter, I do think cloud services have their place. What I disagree with is the assumption that TCO is significantly cheaper with cloud services. I haven't found this to always be the case, and the TCO argument is usually FUD or empty promises used to make a sale.
Before we go further, I'd like to point out that I don't have a vested interested for or against Google books. Regardless of any possible benefits to the book author, I do think that Google pushed the envelope on what should be appropriate fair use. My impression of the situation is that Google abused its resources to accomplish something that it thought would make it money regardless of the wishes of the owners of the copyrighted material.
(For others who may be reading this comment: If the idea of someone having ownership of their works offend you then take your argument elsewhere. I have no interest in arguing the merits of copyright. I rather stick with the idea of enforcing the rules as they now exist. I'm sorry but going off topic to make a straw man argument is not furthering this conversation).
Here is the gray area. Did Google purchase every book that it scanned? If so then I have no problem with them scanning there own copy into a database and then later on offer a very small snippet to the public as fair use. However if they didn't then technically they made an illegal copy of someone else's work.
If they are the same thing then by your reasoning Google is in the wrong. Since most of the books I purchase has a copyright notice which states that all the author's rights are reserved and states how duplication is prohibited, it seems to me that Google ignored the author's attempt to "opt out" at the source and made the digital scans anyway.
Please give an example.
No what I've said is that I don't buy the line that TCO is so horribly expensive that my best option is always to use the cloud. I do see good uses for "the cloud" which I consider a stupid marketing term. Lets call it what it is - centralized computing. Of course 40 years later we can take advantage of broadband internet to eliminate the need for a dedicated phone line or a leased connection from the phone company. But still we are talking about a very old methodology that has gotten easier to implement using web based technology (versus the old serial terminals).
Anyway let's take my landscaper friend for instance. Even though he likes using software which he is very familiar with to keep up with his accounting, he is seriously thinking about using a service that allows him to invoice and accept credit cards while at the client's house. In exchange of having to learn how to use a new service and incorporating it into his daily business routine, He gains another method of accepting payment and he *may* not have to stay up so late entering the day's work. TCO doesn't even enter the equation. Instead, it turns into a question of wether or not the service offers something beneficial that couldn't be easily using obtained traditional methods.
TCO is a term sales people like to spout off when they want to sell a service. Yes it is a valid accounting term and it is important to manage it, but salespeople take advantage of people's misunderstanding of the term to make a commission. That strategy has been used on everything from leasing vehicles to outsourcing IT. I think it's better to focus on the best fit for the small business owner than it is to spread FUD about some hypotheticals that just happens to ignore Moore's law and the deflationary affect it has on current hardware.
Actually I have friends who own and operate small businesses. Their professions include court reporting, lawyer, restauranteur, Lloyd's surveyor, independent insurance agent, landscaper, painter, general contractor, dentist and marine transportation firm. Some are small less than 10 employee operations, but others are in the 50+ employee size. They have no problems with the equipment they have and the software packages that they have purchased. You do realize that there is a cottage industry that create vertical market software for these professions? They've been generally satisfied with their service and they like the fact that they control where and how their private information is handled.
Most of those businesses would still need pretty much the same amount of computer equipment and the only thing the "cloud" promises them is always working and up-to-date applications with no need to backup. This pretty much taken care of by the maintenance contracts that they have with their software provider anyway. I always stick to the current version of the software until it has been end-of-lifed. No sense worrying about file incompatibilities or having to update the workstations prematurely just for a few fancy and unrequested features. The backups are easily handled by the owner or one of their employees. I recommended that they keep a set of backups off-site at home or better still a safe deposit box at a bank.
This isn't rocket science, and we don't need to employ computer scientists to do the mundane stuff just because a computer is involved.
I'm not convinced that the TCO is "horrendous" and I think that line is used too much to try to sucker people into using a subscription/cloud base service.
Depends on how much of the book is being digitally published without the express consent of the copyright holder. A portion of the cover art, the table of contents, and very small number of sample paragraphs seem like a reasonable amount for "fair use". Entire chapters or a large portion of most chapters of a book seems like an unreasonable amount for "fair use".
Actually the websites that are being scanned are freely available on the internet and Google only provides enough of the website to give the user information on wether or not to visit that website. Also the website can attempt to opt-out preemptively by placing a file in their URL space that informs the web crawler of the author not wanting any of the pages scanned.
You are correct. The copyright holder should have his rights respected regardless of the medium being used.
The copyright holder should have the ability to "opt-in" and not have to "opt-out". Why should corporations assume they can do anything they want until told otherwise?
If only the Library of Congress in the US, national library of China, library of Russian academy of science, National library and Archives Canada, and the German National Library existed.
Your warning is not sufficient. Side effects may include vomiting, diarrhea, night terrors, thoughts of suicide, loss of blood pressure, and liver damage.
I'm not doubting you, but I had no such experience from T-Mobile. They always unlocked my MyTouch phone 3 weeks after purchase. Waiting 3 weeks allowed me to simply return the phone if I didn't like it. T-Mobile even went out of their way to make sure my MyTouch 3G and later MyTouch 4G was unlocked in time for me to use Vodafone while I was in Australia.
I'm also able to use my grandfathered data plan with my MyTouch phone. However, I did have to leave my really cheap 2G data plan for a more expensive 3G data plan (still cheaper than today's plan) back when 3G first came available. I'm still on that 3G plan and have access to both 3G and 4G features of my phone.