That's not true. It certainly doesn't cost the studios anywhere near as much as they say it does but it does cost them millions in lost revenue from movie tickets or DVD/Blu-ray/download sales.
I'm not defending what they are doing (or their outdated business model) but this piracy does cost them money.
So, logically, we should start some massive earthquakes to induce the rise of more land up in order to counteract the rising sea levels caused by anthropologic global warming.;)
And a decade does not climate make. For climate we really need to talk about 100s and 1000s of years.
Yes, local weather != global climate, which means that someone shoveling 9 feet of snow in D.C. no more has anything to do with global warming than no snow in Vancouver or Alaska. As one of the posters said above, that's a problem both sides of the GW debate make (attributing weather to climate).
I use it because of the Add-ons. I've found replacements for most of my add-ons (most of them are stand-alone programs) but there are a few I still use. Also, I have a bunch of saved logins and passwords in Firefox that I haven't completely transferred to Safari. I'm transitioning away form Firefox but haven't made the leap yet (the newest update to Firefox has been considerably more stable though).
Actually I don't love Firefox. I use it as my main browser at home but I prefer Safari or Chrome. Firefox crashes frequently - at least a couple times a week - but I've never had problems with Safari or Chrome.
Another game left off the list was AutoDuel. Maybe it didn't set any new trends in computer gaming but it was one of the best games back in it's day. I have an emulated copy on my computer that I play every once in a while. I keep hoping someone makes a good redo of the game.
Thanks for the Moria and Angband plugs. I still play Angband - it is actively developed. It is by far one of the most complex/long games there is. It is also super hard.
Maybe the Democrats were "never as obstructive to President Bush" because they generally agreed with what he did when he did it. No Child Left Behind? That is a liberal (Democrat) education reform. It had support on both sides but it was pretty much written by Ted Kennedy. The war in Afghanistan? Both sides agreed that it was the right thing to do at the time. The war in Iraq? Same thing. I could go on. Besides, Pres. Bush seemed to get a lot done even though he had a slimmer Republican majority backing him than Pres. Obama has with Democrats. Democrats basically have a super majority and they still aren't getting anything done. Is it the Republicans blocking them? Partially, but if you believe polls, a majority of Americans disagree with all the big bills Congress and Pres. Obama are trying to pass.
Pres. Obama talks about trying to build bipartisan cooperation on bills yet he barely makes the faintest of overtures to the other side of the aisle. When Republicans protest what he's trying to do, all Pres. Obama does is say, "Remember Pres. Bush!" Pres. Obama is being held hostage by a past he and the other Democrats in Washington created for themselves. Instead of going forward in a true spirit of bipartisanship, Democrats are being just as partisan as Republicans ever were.
If they cannot accomplish what they want to accomplish with the majority of seats that they have, then the Democrats are simply ineffective. Pres. Obama needs to quickly learn like Pres. Clinton and Pres. Bush did that if he wants to stay in the White House and have a shot at helping effect meaningful change, he needs to stop calling for bipartisanship while at the same time ignoring the Republicans.
So yes, I do agree with you - bipartisanship is not an effective way of making change in America but that is begging the question that we need change. Do we need change because that was/is Obama's campaign slogan or do we need change simply for change's sake or do we need change because America needs fixing? The problem is that yes, Pres. Obama touts bipartisanship but he does not follow it. Democrats are ineffective right now because they are trying to force unpopular issues through Congress using shady tactics (just because some of these tactics were used in the past does not make them right and it does not justify their use now). Pres. Obama isn't just "up against" the Republicans, he's up against factions of Democrats (for being not liberal enough or too liberal), Independents (for having fiscal policy that makes Pres. Bush look like the stingiest, thriftiest guy you'll ever meet), and a majority of Americans. I'm not saying that a President should necessarily pander to polls but for someone who is as focused on polls as Pres. Obama seems to be, he sure does a good job at ignoring them.
I know you are trolling but one of Pres. Obama's big campaign points was that he was going to "change" Washington. He was going to run this wide open and "transparent" government. So far he has been anything but transparent. It's disappointing, I had some hopes about Pres. Obama (and I did not vote for him).
Of course it will cost us money. Any time the "government" says they can do something at zero net cost, you know they are either lying or unreasonably optimistic. That is one of the rules of government spending - it always costs more than stated. A $750 billion stimulus will not cost $750 billion, it will cost $1 trillion. A $3 million bridge will cost $4 million. A 'brief' war will cost 5X what you think it will.
You may or may not like big businesses but businesses are usually very good at reducing costs, governments are not (the reason that isn't true with ISPs or cable companies is because they don't have any competition - most people live where there is a de facto ISP monopoly). I don't know why so many people - Republicans and Democrats and Independents - want the government to do more and spend more for us.
I have no problem reading books on my iPod Touch out in broad daylight. I might have to tip it a bit but I can still read it in the daylight. I'll take the nice bright color screen over that of an ebook any day (e-ink is nice but I still prefer the color LCD screen).
Or, to play the Devil's advocate, it is "Keynesian" economics that stimulates the economy. [Note, I'm not a fan of most subsidies, especially not in an established market like coal power; I was simply arguing the point that so many in the government now try to make].
Thanks for posting that. It looks really good. I still think the iPad is ideal for me but that looks like a great contender, although it is heavy (comparatively) - 3 lbs vs the iPad's 1.5 and the Kindle's 1 1/8 lbs.
Re:Guess I'm one of the critics to ignore
on
BioShock 2 Released
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· Score: 1
I tried BioShock once. I made it about 10 minutes before I quit. I thought the game was pretty awful, but that is just my opinion.
I unfortunately missed reading anything about what came out at CES due to my schedule at the time so I cannot really comment on the other tablets. I'm sure many of them are great and maybe even better than the iPad. The main bonus with the iPad is exactly what you noted - the app store.
I know many do not like the 'locked-down' nature of the app store and the other limitations of the iPhone/iPad OS but the App store is established and very functional. There is a lot of junk on it but there are also many great and useful apps too (I'm just thinking about what I have on my iPod Touch). Many of the iPhone apps would be even more useful if the screen was larger, which it is on the iPad.
The overall UI of the iPad is also likely more polished than anything that was announced at CES. I'm not saying the other tablets have bad UIs (although some probably do) or that the iPad's UI is perfect, but it will be polished and useful (because the iPhone OS already is).
The integration with the App Store (and book store) is extremely important. That is how the iPod became dominant. Other players didn't have UIs that were quite as good (many were really good, they just weren't quite as good) as the iPod's but more importantly, they did not have the tight integration with a music store that had good prices. I know many people complained about the $.99 price for songs but the ease of use of the store was big and $.99 isn't very much money (until you buy lots of songs!).
The other slates that were announced were probably really cool and useful. However, I already have some investment in Apple's App Store because I have an iPod Touch. I use iTunes for my music (although I usually purchase from Amazon's store) and have a MacBook. I admit, I am a fan of Apple's products (most of them anyway) but much of that is because I've used other computers and OSes and MP3 players but prefer Apple's. Much of that is due to OS X, actually. I spend a lot of time in the CLI and having a bash shell with the nice but powerful UI of OS X seals the deal. I've tried many flavors of Linux but in some ways they are too flexible for me. Many times they do not 'just work' either, while OS X for the most part does (I know the reasons for that but that's a different discussion).
One last comment. We recently got some new iMacs in our neuroimaging lab. Some of the undergrads in the lab had never used a Mac before (at least not since elementary school). Just yesterday two of them sat down at the computers, used them for a minute or two and were completely sold on them. They enjoyed using the computers instead of just used them. That's what keeps me tied to things Apple - I enjoy using OS X and my iPod. I can't say the same thing for Windows (any of the releases) or even many distros of Linux (there are many things about Linux I enjoy but I never get the same sense of enjoyment as I receive from using OS X).
Am I affected by Steve Jobs' halo? Of course I am. Am I biased towards Apple? Yes, but that bias comes from experience. I'll consider some of the other tablet devices but they would have to have some very compelling features for me to purchase one instead of an iPad.
That's a great feature BUT the Kindle is only for reading books and things like that. That feature is handy if you run out of books to read and you want another one right away (or if you are browsing through a book store and want to purchase some of the books you see - however, many bookstores now are offering free WiFi so you could do the same thing with the iPad or even just make a note of the books and buy them later).
I could see purchasing the smaller Kindle but there is very little reason to buy the larger Kindle now (unless you want things to read while you are away from an electrical outlet and you need the week long battery life of the Kindle).
I don't see what the iPad has to do with OS X. The iPhone OS is built for a completely different purpose than OS X is. iPads are meant to do a relatively few things (read books, consume media, browse web, play games, etc.) very well and intuitively. OS X does a lot of things very well and is incredibly powerful. In our neuroimaging lab we used to run Linux as our main processing OS (we still use it a lot) but we are transitioning over to OS X because we can do everything we need to do that Linux can do plus much more.
As someone in academia, the iPad would be perfect for much of what I do. I can take notes on it (including notes when I do therapy or psychological assessments), check my email, write papers and reports, read articles and books, listen to music, run all sorts of other apps (including terminal ones with ssh support), transfer and display brain images, and more. With the right adapter I could use the iPad to run Keynote presentations from.
I do some of these things on my iPod Touch - I use it all the time for my work - but the screen size limits some of what I can do. Could a netbook meet my needs? To some degree but the tablet form factor of the iPad is key for me. I could purchase a different tablet computer but again, their form factors are larger than the iPad. Plus, they usually cost more.
Besides, the iPad is competing with the Kindle to some degree and a Kindle with a 9.7" screen is only $10 cheaper than the iPad. I know the smaller Kindle is slightly more than 1/2 the price of the iPad but it does far less than 1/2 of what the iPad does (but the Kindle is very good at what it is designed to do, so I hear).
I'll probably purchase an iPad - maybe not this 1st rev. but possibly when it is updated in a year or two. I think Apple is going to sell a lot of them.
I respectfully disagree. I think that the more "religious" we are the more scientific progress we will have. I'm not talking about middle age religions that were often quite oppressive and distrusting of science (although, religious persecution of scientific progress and scientists has been exaggerated - they were only oppressive in some countries and of some scientists in specific fields); we have much different religions now than we had then.
India is making huge strides in science and they are highly religious. Many European countries are more religious than the U.S. (at least officially) and they have great scientific progress.
Many of the great scientists throughout the ages were religious and those who were not religious still believed in God.
I'm not arguing that religions should run the country but any slack in scientific progress is not caused by the "religious right", it is caused by our education system (the problems with the education system are largely due to liberal policies and ideologies, not religious; take No Child Left Behind as only the most recent example - that is a "leftist" and liberal policy. Just because Pres. Bush supported it as did many Republicans does not mean it isn't liberal - Ted Kennedy wrote it and its ideas are the epitome of modern liberalism).
I've found in my 9 years of college so far (undergrad + graduate) that distrust of science has far less to do with religiosity than it does with amount of education.
We are rich in the USA so we do not 'need' motorcycles that get crazy mileage. Developing nations have to develop 'cheap' products in order to survive and advance in the modern era. If the difference between living and dying (implying that you have a job) is being able to afford gas for a commute or whatever your job requires, a vehicle that gets good mileage is the only thing you can afford (assuming you can afford the upfront cost).
Poverty leads to different innovation than riches do. While this little motorcycle is great, I'll take the Internet, NASA, etc. over it any day. Our motorcycles and cars will be more fuel efficient when the costs of not being efficient are too high.
Slashdot Mirror
Piracy costs nothing
That's not true. It certainly doesn't cost the studios anywhere near as much as they say it does but it does cost them millions in lost revenue from movie tickets or DVD/Blu-ray/download sales.
I'm not defending what they are doing (or their outdated business model) but this piracy does cost them money.
So, logically, we should start some massive earthquakes to induce the rise of more land up in order to counteract the rising sea levels caused by anthropologic global warming. ;)
And a decade does not climate make. For climate we really need to talk about 100s and 1000s of years.
Yes, local weather != global climate, which means that someone shoveling 9 feet of snow in D.C. no more has anything to do with global warming than no snow in Vancouver or Alaska. As one of the posters said above, that's a problem both sides of the GW debate make (attributing weather to climate).
I use it because of the Add-ons. I've found replacements for most of my add-ons (most of them are stand-alone programs) but there are a few I still use. Also, I have a bunch of saved logins and passwords in Firefox that I haven't completely transferred to Safari. I'm transitioning away form Firefox but haven't made the leap yet (the newest update to Firefox has been considerably more stable though).
I accidentally left off "at work". That's what I get for not really thinking through what I write.
Actually I don't love Firefox. I use it as my main browser at home but I prefer Safari or Chrome. Firefox crashes frequently - at least a couple times a week - but I've never had problems with Safari or Chrome.
Another game left off the list was AutoDuel. Maybe it didn't set any new trends in computer gaming but it was one of the best games back in it's day. I have an emulated copy on my computer that I play every once in a while. I keep hoping someone makes a good redo of the game.
Thanks for the Moria and Angband plugs. I still play Angband - it is actively developed. It is by far one of the most complex/long games there is. It is also super hard.
Maybe the Democrats were "never as obstructive to President Bush" because they generally agreed with what he did when he did it. No Child Left Behind? That is a liberal (Democrat) education reform. It had support on both sides but it was pretty much written by Ted Kennedy. The war in Afghanistan? Both sides agreed that it was the right thing to do at the time. The war in Iraq? Same thing. I could go on. Besides, Pres. Bush seemed to get a lot done even though he had a slimmer Republican majority backing him than Pres. Obama has with Democrats. Democrats basically have a super majority and they still aren't getting anything done. Is it the Republicans blocking them? Partially, but if you believe polls, a majority of Americans disagree with all the big bills Congress and Pres. Obama are trying to pass.
Pres. Obama talks about trying to build bipartisan cooperation on bills yet he barely makes the faintest of overtures to the other side of the aisle. When Republicans protest what he's trying to do, all Pres. Obama does is say, "Remember Pres. Bush!" Pres. Obama is being held hostage by a past he and the other Democrats in Washington created for themselves. Instead of going forward in a true spirit of bipartisanship, Democrats are being just as partisan as Republicans ever were.
If they cannot accomplish what they want to accomplish with the majority of seats that they have, then the Democrats are simply ineffective. Pres. Obama needs to quickly learn like Pres. Clinton and Pres. Bush did that if he wants to stay in the White House and have a shot at helping effect meaningful change, he needs to stop calling for bipartisanship while at the same time ignoring the Republicans.
So yes, I do agree with you - bipartisanship is not an effective way of making change in America but that is begging the question that we need change. Do we need change because that was/is Obama's campaign slogan or do we need change simply for change's sake or do we need change because America needs fixing? The problem is that yes, Pres. Obama touts bipartisanship but he does not follow it. Democrats are ineffective right now because they are trying to force unpopular issues through Congress using shady tactics (just because some of these tactics were used in the past does not make them right and it does not justify their use now). Pres. Obama isn't just "up against" the Republicans, he's up against factions of Democrats (for being not liberal enough or too liberal), Independents (for having fiscal policy that makes Pres. Bush look like the stingiest, thriftiest guy you'll ever meet), and a majority of Americans. I'm not saying that a President should necessarily pander to polls but for someone who is as focused on polls as Pres. Obama seems to be, he sure does a good job at ignoring them.
I know you are trolling but one of Pres. Obama's big campaign points was that he was going to "change" Washington. He was going to run this wide open and "transparent" government. So far he has been anything but transparent. It's disappointing, I had some hopes about Pres. Obama (and I did not vote for him).
Of course it will cost us money. Any time the "government" says they can do something at zero net cost, you know they are either lying or unreasonably optimistic. That is one of the rules of government spending - it always costs more than stated. A $750 billion stimulus will not cost $750 billion, it will cost $1 trillion. A $3 million bridge will cost $4 million. A 'brief' war will cost 5X what you think it will.
You may or may not like big businesses but businesses are usually very good at reducing costs, governments are not (the reason that isn't true with ISPs or cable companies is because they don't have any competition - most people live where there is a de facto ISP monopoly). I don't know why so many people - Republicans and Democrats and Independents - want the government to do more and spend more for us.
I have no problem reading books on my iPod Touch out in broad daylight. I might have to tip it a bit but I can still read it in the daylight. I'll take the nice bright color screen over that of an ebook any day (e-ink is nice but I still prefer the color LCD screen).
My results were almost exactly what yours were. It's a bit too variable to be entirely trustworthy.
Or, to play the Devil's advocate, it is "Keynesian" economics that stimulates the economy. [Note, I'm not a fan of most subsidies, especially not in an established market like coal power; I was simply arguing the point that so many in the government now try to make].
Thanks for posting that. It looks really good. I still think the iPad is ideal for me but that looks like a great contender, although it is heavy (comparatively) - 3 lbs vs the iPad's 1.5 and the Kindle's 1 1/8 lbs.
I tried BioShock once. I made it about 10 minutes before I quit. I thought the game was pretty awful, but that is just my opinion.
I unfortunately missed reading anything about what came out at CES due to my schedule at the time so I cannot really comment on the other tablets. I'm sure many of them are great and maybe even better than the iPad. The main bonus with the iPad is exactly what you noted - the app store.
I know many do not like the 'locked-down' nature of the app store and the other limitations of the iPhone/iPad OS but the App store is established and very functional. There is a lot of junk on it but there are also many great and useful apps too (I'm just thinking about what I have on my iPod Touch). Many of the iPhone apps would be even more useful if the screen was larger, which it is on the iPad.
The overall UI of the iPad is also likely more polished than anything that was announced at CES. I'm not saying the other tablets have bad UIs (although some probably do) or that the iPad's UI is perfect, but it will be polished and useful (because the iPhone OS already is).
The integration with the App Store (and book store) is extremely important. That is how the iPod became dominant. Other players didn't have UIs that were quite as good (many were really good, they just weren't quite as good) as the iPod's but more importantly, they did not have the tight integration with a music store that had good prices. I know many people complained about the $.99 price for songs but the ease of use of the store was big and $.99 isn't very much money (until you buy lots of songs!).
The other slates that were announced were probably really cool and useful. However, I already have some investment in Apple's App Store because I have an iPod Touch. I use iTunes for my music (although I usually purchase from Amazon's store) and have a MacBook. I admit, I am a fan of Apple's products (most of them anyway) but much of that is because I've used other computers and OSes and MP3 players but prefer Apple's. Much of that is due to OS X, actually. I spend a lot of time in the CLI and having a bash shell with the nice but powerful UI of OS X seals the deal. I've tried many flavors of Linux but in some ways they are too flexible for me. Many times they do not 'just work' either, while OS X for the most part does (I know the reasons for that but that's a different discussion).
One last comment. We recently got some new iMacs in our neuroimaging lab. Some of the undergrads in the lab had never used a Mac before (at least not since elementary school). Just yesterday two of them sat down at the computers, used them for a minute or two and were completely sold on them. They enjoyed using the computers instead of just used them. That's what keeps me tied to things Apple - I enjoy using OS X and my iPod. I can't say the same thing for Windows (any of the releases) or even many distros of Linux (there are many things about Linux I enjoy but I never get the same sense of enjoyment as I receive from using OS X).
Am I affected by Steve Jobs' halo? Of course I am. Am I biased towards Apple? Yes, but that bias comes from experience. I'll consider some of the other tablet devices but they would have to have some very compelling features for me to purchase one instead of an iPad.
That's a great feature BUT the Kindle is only for reading books and things like that. That feature is handy if you run out of books to read and you want another one right away (or if you are browsing through a book store and want to purchase some of the books you see - however, many bookstores now are offering free WiFi so you could do the same thing with the iPad or even just make a note of the books and buy them later).
I could see purchasing the smaller Kindle but there is very little reason to buy the larger Kindle now (unless you want things to read while you are away from an electrical outlet and you need the week long battery life of the Kindle).
I don't see what the iPad has to do with OS X. The iPhone OS is built for a completely different purpose than OS X is. iPads are meant to do a relatively few things (read books, consume media, browse web, play games, etc.) very well and intuitively. OS X does a lot of things very well and is incredibly powerful. In our neuroimaging lab we used to run Linux as our main processing OS (we still use it a lot) but we are transitioning over to OS X because we can do everything we need to do that Linux can do plus much more.
As someone in academia, the iPad would be perfect for much of what I do. I can take notes on it (including notes when I do therapy or psychological assessments), check my email, write papers and reports, read articles and books, listen to music, run all sorts of other apps (including terminal ones with ssh support), transfer and display brain images, and more. With the right adapter I could use the iPad to run Keynote presentations from.
I do some of these things on my iPod Touch - I use it all the time for my work - but the screen size limits some of what I can do. Could a netbook meet my needs? To some degree but the tablet form factor of the iPad is key for me. I could purchase a different tablet computer but again, their form factors are larger than the iPad. Plus, they usually cost more.
Besides, the iPad is competing with the Kindle to some degree and a Kindle with a 9.7" screen is only $10 cheaper than the iPad. I know the smaller Kindle is slightly more than 1/2 the price of the iPad but it does far less than 1/2 of what the iPad does (but the Kindle is very good at what it is designed to do, so I hear).
I'll probably purchase an iPad - maybe not this 1st rev. but possibly when it is updated in a year or two. I think Apple is going to sell a lot of them.
That is one of the funniest things I've ever read on Slashdot. Thanks for the wit.
That's why you come to us psychologists. ;) No drug-prescribing here.
I respectfully disagree. I think that the more "religious" we are the more scientific progress we will have. I'm not talking about middle age religions that were often quite oppressive and distrusting of science (although, religious persecution of scientific progress and scientists has been exaggerated - they were only oppressive in some countries and of some scientists in specific fields); we have much different religions now than we had then.
India is making huge strides in science and they are highly religious. Many European countries are more religious than the U.S. (at least officially) and they have great scientific progress.
Many of the great scientists throughout the ages were religious and those who were not religious still believed in God.
I'm not arguing that religions should run the country but any slack in scientific progress is not caused by the "religious right", it is caused by our education system (the problems with the education system are largely due to liberal policies and ideologies, not religious; take No Child Left Behind as only the most recent example - that is a "leftist" and liberal policy. Just because Pres. Bush supported it as did many Republicans does not mean it isn't liberal - Ted Kennedy wrote it and its ideas are the epitome of modern liberalism).
I've found in my 9 years of college so far (undergrad + graduate) that distrust of science has far less to do with religiosity than it does with amount of education.
If waste is a concern then reprocess the waste and use it again. Nuclear waste is only a problem because politics made it a problem.
The people opposed to nuclear power are not generally the ones you stereotyped as not believers in evolution, global warming, birth control/STDs.
The people opposed to nuclear power generally ARE those who believe in evolution, global warming, and birth control.
We are rich in the USA so we do not 'need' motorcycles that get crazy mileage. Developing nations have to develop 'cheap' products in order to survive and advance in the modern era. If the difference between living and dying (implying that you have a job) is being able to afford gas for a commute or whatever your job requires, a vehicle that gets good mileage is the only thing you can afford (assuming you can afford the upfront cost).
Poverty leads to different innovation than riches do. While this little motorcycle is great, I'll take the Internet, NASA, etc. over it any day. Our motorcycles and cars will be more fuel efficient when the costs of not being efficient are too high.