Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think you're making this out to be more sinister than it is. I will totally agree that the problem was that the show was setup as one single enormous arc, but that there wasn't a single, consistent plan for that arc. But there was no sinister plan to not fully flesh out that story. There's just an acknowledgement that a TV show has to have flexibility to allow for fickle audiences to be pulled along with more of what they seem to have liked, to allow for fickle TV executives that might cancel the show at any point, and to allow for fickle actors that might leave or reduce their availability by taking another job at any point (because let's be honest, the more successful your story is the more offers they're getting and the more at risk they face of typecast by staying). All that flexibility made it possible to make the TV show, but it also made having a single completely concrete story arc impossible.
While I totally agree that the end result was unsatisfactory, any novel would be unsatisfactory if the author was writing the entire time knowing that he may run out of pages or his characters might suddenly be unavailable at any time. While they certainly could have done better, they also could have done a lot worse. Honestly I think they were just too ambitious, it seems like the most successful shows have always had several smaller story arcs that span a month or a season at most.
So if it's not even close to true, instead of standing on the mountain going "THIS ISN'T TRUE! YOU ALL ARE IDIOTS!" whu don't you provide some concrete information about WHY it's not true?
According to the article (and the Facebook blog post that it refers to) the links aren't public unless/until you opt-in. The issue that the EFF has is that the only opt-out is to remove them as interests:
Update: A few people have contacted us by email and through Facebook to ask for clarification about this post. They're confused by the language in Facebook's announcement, which describes the new changes as "opt-in".
The issue with Facebook's latest change is not that they force you to link your interests without permission, but rather that they remove an option to express yourself on the profile without links.
I can't confirm or deny this myself because my Facebook profile is devoid of information, but the summary here implies that your interests are moved over to the new system automatically and without notification. Neither the EFF article nor the Facebook blog announcing this feature says that though, in fact they say just the opposite
Do you really *think* they're THAT concerned with your security, given the situation?
Yes! Because if just anyone can connect to Facebook and grab all your data, then there is no reason for them to pay Facebook for a copy of all your data
Wouldn't they lose more ARM money than they would gain in Apple money if they just stopped selling the chips to anyone? It's not like ARM is the only one making chips in the whole world. Even if we assume that they are "the best chips ever made anywhere", they're still paying $8B to only set their competitors back a bit not kill them. And assuming that ARM has some contracts in place right now that they couldn't scuttle immediately, their competitors have all the remaining time on those contracts to migrate
Do you use any of the number of applications that offer to synch your mobile phone tasks/calendar/whatever with Google Docs? I've seen a lot of those springing up and can't believe that people would be so free with their Google password
You can multitask without multi-core, but the value of multi-core is much less if you can't multitask. The built-in apps don't seem terribly processor intensive when they're backgrounded, so I'm not sure they really need their own core dedicated to them.
Most of the applications that are particularly onerous about passwords are internal to a company and therefore see an audience of only dozens or hundreds of people. The argument is not going to fly as far when you're not able to multiply it by 200 million users.
What would happen if Apple released cool new hardware capabilities but Adobe refused to expose them through Flash?
Then people would stop buying games written with the Flash toolkit, and developers would move away from the Flash toolkit in order to keep selling apps.
Adobe can't just set the agenda arbitrarily, there has to be some catering to their developers. If they really were able to move developers like pawns than they could have just said "we're not going to help you make apps on the iPhone with Flash" and killed the platform
Re:Can't Help But Wonder...
on
iPad Review
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· Score: 1
There are still a lot of people that visit Pogo or similar sites to play free Flash-based games, or who play them directly on Facebook. A lot of sports scoreboards are Flash too, but there are quite often free iPhone app equivalents offered by the same company (whereas a lot of the equivalents of free Flash games are only available in the app store as non-free apps).
Re:Some might have forgotten...
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 1
I'm not a fan of the iPad, but it must be pointed out that many people could be waiting for the 3G version. Right now you can only judge on the sales of one version of the iPad, when every prospective buyer knows that another version is due out in a month. The iPhone was introduced in two sizes (4GB and 8GB) and saw the smaller ones rotting on shelves, so judging its success based on just one of the versions would have been of limited value.
A 12" macbook with a touch screen seems like it'd be a much more well-rounded product. Get the laptop's weight down with a flash drive to replace the hard drive, and by making the CD/DVD drive external (but dockable in a somewhat secure manner, so when it's hooked on you have one object to find a support for rather than two). So many limitations of the iPad would be a thing of the past.
Everyone that bought an iPhone understood that a phone would ultimately have a very limited feature-set device given its form factor (and the ramifications that has on battery size, processor size, memory size), so it was easy to justify not being able to do the things that a netbook can do. But when you build something the size of the iPad, people are naturally wondering why it has all those same limitations.
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 1
the future of computing cannot possible involve paying a 30% software premium to one vendor so that they can hire workers to weed out apps that compete with their own
The article, the summary, and the links to the article in the summary are all a bit confusing. There are two different 3D modeling processes being demonstrated in the article. One uses a camera and a turntable to model objects, and the other uses one camera and an RGB lighting system. The second is what they propose to use for visualizing people:
When it comes to capturing the raw shape of the human body and face in real-time the multiview stereo system is no good - humans move and expressions are, by nature, mobile. However, pictured above is another 3D modelling technology developed at Toshiba's labs that has been designed to capture the human body and face moving in real-time - yet is still faithful to every individual lump and bump.
and the first seems to be what they're proposing to use for driverless cars (though they give no details about how a setup that uses a turntable would be transferrable to that situation):
Another use could be putting video cameras into cars and using the system as a driver aid - by reconstructing road scenes as the car travels along to help with driver safety and parking, and ultimately enable driverless cars.
but then they also make a statement about using a camera inside the car to look at the driver for signs of sleep, something that I assume the second method would be better for (but they don't even talk about that setup until the next page)
An in-car computer vision system could detect when a driver hasn't seen a car stopped in front of it, or when they are in danger of falling asleep, according to Cipolla. "It can look at you when you're driving and see if you're blinking and falling asleep, so warn you. It can actually look outside the lanes and see your driving is very erratic, you seem to be crossing over frequently and correcting sharply - a very strong sign you're about to fall asleep," he says.
here's what the article said that the grandparent post referred to:
Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.
I think there's some value in being the source of 10% of the traffic that the ISP's customers want, and that value is higher the higher the percentage you are. If google weren't also controlling youtube, they might not be getting enough traffic that the ISPs would bargain with them on peering rates as an equal partner. An ISP could be more free to say "our customers could just move to Yahoo or MSN if they couldn't get to Google on our network, so you have to pay us X to peer with you" where it might be more difficult for them to say that "our customers can get to another search engine AND another video website"
I think this is what Google meant when they posted "We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad."
if you are running windows and feel the need to install an anti-virus program than you are implictly acknowledging that their code is rife with bugs that viruses can exploit, so why would you install more MS code to fix the issue?
which is exactly why the rise of shortened urls is scary. I realize that the twits on twitter have to use them because of message length issues, but that doesn't mean they should be used elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're making this out to be more sinister than it is. I will totally agree that the problem was that the show was setup as one single enormous arc, but that there wasn't a single, consistent plan for that arc. But there was no sinister plan to not fully flesh out that story. There's just an acknowledgement that a TV show has to have flexibility to allow for fickle audiences to be pulled along with more of what they seem to have liked, to allow for fickle TV executives that might cancel the show at any point, and to allow for fickle actors that might leave or reduce their availability by taking another job at any point (because let's be honest, the more successful your story is the more offers they're getting and the more at risk they face of typecast by staying). All that flexibility made it possible to make the TV show, but it also made having a single completely concrete story arc impossible.
While I totally agree that the end result was unsatisfactory, any novel would be unsatisfactory if the author was writing the entire time knowing that he may run out of pages or his characters might suddenly be unavailable at any time. While they certainly could have done better, they also could have done a lot worse. Honestly I think they were just too ambitious, it seems like the most successful shows have always had several smaller story arcs that span a month or a season at most.
someone needs to tell that to Netflix who's rolling out a new backend powered by Amazon's AWS
So if it's not even close to true, instead of standing on the mountain going "THIS ISN'T TRUE! YOU ALL ARE IDIOTS!" whu don't you provide some concrete information about WHY it's not true?
According to the article (and the Facebook blog post that it refers to) the links aren't public unless/until you opt-in. The issue that the EFF has is that the only opt-out is to remove them as interests:
Update: A few people have contacted us by email and through Facebook to ask for clarification about this post. They're confused by the language in Facebook's announcement, which describes the new changes as "opt-in".
The issue with Facebook's latest change is not that they force you to link your interests without permission, but rather that they remove an option to express yourself on the profile without links.
I can't confirm or deny this myself because my Facebook profile is devoid of information, but the summary here implies that your interests are moved over to the new system automatically and without notification. Neither the EFF article nor the Facebook blog announcing this feature says that though, in fact they say just the opposite
Do you really *think* they're THAT concerned with your security, given the situation?
Yes! Because if just anyone can connect to Facebook and grab all your data, then there is no reason for them to pay Facebook for a copy of all your data
Wouldn't they lose more ARM money than they would gain in Apple money if they just stopped selling the chips to anyone? It's not like ARM is the only one making chips in the whole world. Even if we assume that they are "the best chips ever made anywhere", they're still paying $8B to only set their competitors back a bit not kill them. And assuming that ARM has some contracts in place right now that they couldn't scuttle immediately, their competitors have all the remaining time on those contracts to migrate
It would also be a world where jokes about the amount of pornography available on the Internet would not exist...
*shivers* what a bleak and barren dystopia that would be
Do you use any of the number of applications that offer to synch your mobile phone tasks/calendar/whatever with Google Docs? I've seen a lot of those springing up and can't believe that people would be so free with their Google password
Why does everyone think this has anything to do with technical issues?
They need a reason to believe that Apple has their best interests in mind. It's pure fantasy
You can multitask without multi-core, but the value of multi-core is much less if you can't multitask. The built-in apps don't seem terribly processor intensive when they're backgrounded, so I'm not sure they really need their own core dedicated to them.
all their laptops advertise 10 hours battery time, you don't even have to leave the Apple ecosystem to get a full blown laptop with similar life
I usually draw out my password in MS Paint, convert it to ASCII art, and then type in that art as a password...
on a side note, has anyone here ever Googled "ascii art" and seen that they change the Google logo on that page to ASCII art?
Please cite some incidents traceable to the writing down of passwords.
The infamous "changing of the grades" hacking incident of WarGames back in 1983
Most of the applications that are particularly onerous about passwords are internal to a company and therefore see an audience of only dozens or hundreds of people. The argument is not going to fly as far when you're not able to multiply it by 200 million users.
Because they'll win. Don't kid yourself, Satan has all the dead lawyers as roommates.
fixed that for you
I'll give you the tape from my Turing machine when you take it from my cold, dead hands!
What would happen if Apple released cool new hardware capabilities but Adobe refused to expose them through Flash?
Then people would stop buying games written with the Flash toolkit, and developers would move away from the Flash toolkit in order to keep selling apps.
Adobe can't just set the agenda arbitrarily, there has to be some catering to their developers. If they really were able to move developers like pawns than they could have just said "we're not going to help you make apps on the iPhone with Flash" and killed the platform
There are still a lot of people that visit Pogo or similar sites to play free Flash-based games, or who play them directly on Facebook. A lot of sports scoreboards are Flash too, but there are quite often free iPhone app equivalents offered by the same company (whereas a lot of the equivalents of free Flash games are only available in the app store as non-free apps).
I'm not a fan of the iPad, but it must be pointed out that many people could be waiting for the 3G version. Right now you can only judge on the sales of one version of the iPad, when every prospective buyer knows that another version is due out in a month. The iPhone was introduced in two sizes (4GB and 8GB) and saw the smaller ones rotting on shelves, so judging its success based on just one of the versions would have been of limited value.
A 12" macbook with a touch screen seems like it'd be a much more well-rounded product. Get the laptop's weight down with a flash drive to replace the hard drive, and by making the CD/DVD drive external (but dockable in a somewhat secure manner, so when it's hooked on you have one object to find a support for rather than two). So many limitations of the iPad would be a thing of the past.
Everyone that bought an iPhone understood that a phone would ultimately have a very limited feature-set device given its form factor (and the ramifications that has on battery size, processor size, memory size), so it was easy to justify not being able to do the things that a netbook can do. But when you build something the size of the iPad, people are naturally wondering why it has all those same limitations.
the future of computing cannot possible involve paying a 30% software premium to one vendor so that they can hire workers to weed out apps that compete with their own
When it comes to capturing the raw shape of the human body and face in real-time the multiview stereo system is no good - humans move and expressions are, by nature, mobile. However, pictured above is another 3D modelling technology developed at Toshiba's labs that has been designed to capture the human body and face moving in real-time - yet is still faithful to every individual lump and bump.
and the first seems to be what they're proposing to use for driverless cars (though they give no details about how a setup that uses a turntable would be transferrable to that situation):
Another use could be putting video cameras into cars and using the system as a driver aid - by reconstructing road scenes as the car travels along to help with driver safety and parking, and ultimately enable driverless cars.
but then they also make a statement about using a camera inside the car to look at the driver for signs of sleep, something that I assume the second method would be better for (but they don't even talk about that setup until the next page)
An in-car computer vision system could detect when a driver hasn't seen a car stopped in front of it, or when they are in danger of falling asleep, according to Cipolla. "It can look at you when you're driving and see if you're blinking and falling asleep, so warn you. It can actually look outside the lanes and see your driving is very erratic, you seem to be crossing over frequently and correcting sharply - a very strong sign you're about to fall asleep," he says.
Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.
I think there's some value in being the source of 10% of the traffic that the ISP's customers want, and that value is higher the higher the percentage you are. If google weren't also controlling youtube, they might not be getting enough traffic that the ISPs would bargain with them on peering rates as an equal partner. An ISP could be more free to say "our customers could just move to Yahoo or MSN if they couldn't get to Google on our network, so you have to pay us X to peer with you" where it might be more difficult for them to say that "our customers can get to another search engine AND another video website"
I think this is what Google meant when they posted "We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad."
if you are running windows and feel the need to install an anti-virus program than you are implictly acknowledging that their code is rife with bugs that viruses can exploit, so why would you install more MS code to fix the issue?
Clicking random links == Sharing needles
which is exactly why the rise of shortened urls is scary. I realize that the twits on twitter have to use them because of message length issues, but that doesn't mean they should be used elsewhere.