If its not being utilized yet, and the first notice came from MS, it is in no way a 0 day.
The vulnerabilities (there are two by the way) were first disclosed by WooYun.org although metasploit did not add modules until after MS's advisory. I don't know f it was exploited before it became public or not.
Hi, i am from Spain. Guns: - I am NOT free when someone near me has a gun because he may kill me so easily, that i must obey him to survey. Its soooo simple...
That has nothing to do with freedom. By the same logic are you not free if people near you might have knives? Pointy pencils? What if they might have trained in the martial arts and lifted weights for the last decade? What if they have hired 5 private, unarmed but dangerous bodyguards? What if the person near you has a purple shirt and you for some reason believe the color purple will kill you? Are all these things removing your freedom? Would you support laws to ban all the aforementioned? Would laws making it illegal to carry a pencil or dress in purple make you more free or less free?
No, you see freedom has nothing to do with whether or not you feel safe or whether or not you have unfounded beliefs that something takes away your rights. It actually has to stop you from being able to do something, not just make you afraid that it might some day.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you should or should not legalize carrying firearms in your country. I'm saying doing so would make individuals more free as it would be one less restriction on what they can do. I doubt, based upon the scientific studies to date, it would significantly increase or decrease violent crime or murder in Spain. That is to say, despite your perception, there is little objective evidence that you're any safer or less safe as a result of your current laws preventing people form carrying guns. On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence that laws decriminalizing personal possession and use of intoxicating substances, free addiction treatment programs, and socialized medicine all result in significant decreases in violent crime and murder. Objectively, you are less likely to be assaulted or murdered in Spain. It's important, however, that when you form you opinions about why this is, you actually look at the scientific studies on the topic rather than just make assumptions based upon what you feel.
. It looks like Spanish people feel that it is better to be free of the fear of huge amounts of guns on their streets than the freedom for the majority of citizens to carry guns on their streets.
See, and this is where you, and perhaps they, lose me. Freedom from fear. People may give up personal freedom (and responsibility) in the hope that they will be safer and less afraid, but I seem to recall a rather famous quote about just that. In truth, there is little scientific support for the theory that strict gun control laws result in greater safety. They might result in less fear, but that's only a function of the public's ignorance.
I've lived in Europe for 40 years and never once have I thought "I'd feel safer walking to the shops if I had a gun on me or knowing that lots of these other people walking around on the streets had guns on them".
And for the most part, when it comes to personal protection, there is little scientific support for the theory that having access to more common firearms makes people safer either. Sadly, for being such a major issue, there's really very few well conducted studies on the issue since no one keeps track of how often firearms are used to deter or prevent crime, and very sporadic records on how often violent crimes occur (hint they are constantly reclassified by politicians that control record keeping and who want to seem effective ala, we have 50% fewer homeless and a huge increase in outdoorsmen in our city). The scientific consensus to date is there is no real correlation between gun control laws and violent crime when normalized for other factors, or perhaps a slight increase in violent crime.
But mostly I just wanted to point out what I see as your misperception. The individual right to carry firearms is a freedom. The right to stop everyone else from carrying them is not a freedom, it's a restriction. No matter how you try to redefine it as a "freedom to not feel fear". You can claim it is a conflict of the freedom to carry firearms and the freedom to continue living, but that is only in perception. One might as well argue free speech is not a freedom, because it conflicts with my fear that word viruses might infect my brain and transform me into a starfish. Rational people have to rely upon actual evidence and there is no evidence to date, that is an actual conflict, only a perceived one in the minds of those who have not actually formed their opinion using a rational methodology. When you wrote that the spanish people "feel" it is better, you were much more precise than perhaps you intended.
Since being taken over by NewsCorp, I'm not sure you could describe any of their articles as anything else. They're just GOP/big business shills now, RIP the news organization that used to make a meaningful contribution to our society.
Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?"
You might as well ask, "Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the privately owned bridges be free from regulation?" or how about "Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the banks remain free from regulation?" or maybe "Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the electric company remain free from regulation?"
In any case the answer is "NO!" Vital resources should be regulated by the government because the government, for all its flaws, is ultimately answerable to the people and private companies have shown again and again they put their profits first and do great harm to society in pursuit of that, whether it be by dumping poison in our nation's rivers, gouging individuals using monopolies, Misusing money put into banks with risky investments, or leveraging resources to influence politics for profit.
A better question isn't if the government should regulate things, but "Why are we still letting private companies and foreign nations" influence our politics through campaign contributions, lobbying, and political adverts when the vast majority of individuals thing it should be illegal?"
But those apps they write for thousands of variations of computers, really, really suck for performance and battery life and often in the UI because it is not tailored to the device.
So your claim is that you can't write a high-performance low-power application for a computer that will run on thousands of hardware variations?
No, my claim is most developers cannot do so in a cost effective manner, especially when using the APIs currently available
I call bullshit. In addition, putting a custom skin on the OS home screen and a couple of the applications doesn't prevent anything UI oriented with a developer's application.
No, but varying levels of support for multitouch and various keyboard input schemes and numbers of hardware buttons certainly do.
Android provides ways of defining the layout for multiple situations regarding screen size, device orientation, resolution, etc. Just like you can do on a desktop
I don't think orientation and resolution are as big of problems excepting that some phones won't meet minimum requirements. That's solvable via resolution independence.
Just like you can do on a desktop, and they don't take extra performance or battery life in order to have these options available
You seem to have a misunderstanding. Performance and battery life mostly have to do with CPU, GPU, support for offloading to the GPU, proper use of idle apps, proper use of push services, etc. The state of all of these things on desktop OS's and apps is simply abysmal right now, and those same developers are moving into the mobile space. For example, Flash, made by a huge prestigious shop like Adobe is just now (14 years after the initial release) starting to use the GPU properly on the Mac. How do you think Android and a less used mobile GPU will fair?
Again, bullshit. Excessive resources doesn't compensate for a sucky application. It might compensate for a poorly written application that performs horribly but that's not a question of fragmentation or compatibility that's a question of being a good developer.
Seriously, do you work in application development? I do. Most applications suck. Most mobile applications suck. Many mobile users are suffering now from crappily written apps that ping servers regularly, sucking down data and battery, instead of using push services properly, and that's just one small case.
Again, dealing with the different hardware configurations does NOT take extra performance or battery life, it's just calling APIs and knowing how to develop.
Then 99% of app developers don't know how to develop. However you want to define it, that's the problem we're facing and blaming the developers doesn't make it any better for users.
You're guaranteed a touch screen and a keyboard.
But not necessarily usable at the same time or with full view of the screen when using the keyboard and not necessarily large enough to push quickly and repeatedly for things like games.
And if an app sucks on a smartphone, it is a problem and most users will just uninstall the app.
Except that isn't happening. Instead users are frustrated because they don't know which app sucks, or even know enough to blame a specific app. When the phone crashes, users blame the phone maker. When battery performance is abysmal, users blame the phone maker. When calls are dropped users blame the phone maker and the carrier.They rarely if ever investigate why the problem is happening and then only if they are geeks. I take it you've never seen a usability test of a mobile app? I have.
All computers, from laptops to desktops to smartphones have limited resources and you want to performance check your application on the device obviously.
You honestly believe that when Windows finally gets around to mimicking the iPad that someone will go and provide a "MS Tablet Only Newspaper"?
If they grab a huge portion of the market and the market is such that portability s not super easy, yes. But that's unlikely to happen. There have, however been Windows specific Web pages and applications for distributing just such content, some little more than.exe's that wrap PDFs.
It's not that it won't make its way to other tablets, its that its specifically being marketted as iPad only.
Yeah, that and hundreds of other applications.
It's the worst piece of business logic I've ever heard of...
You haven't been paying attention.
...someone has decided to try it out on an Apple product, all of which have a bad rap as being overpriced for what you actually get...
That's the reputation according to some people on Slashdot, not according to the general populace.
What Jobs & Co have developed is nothing less than a fucking time machine. The iPad offers to transport us back to the comfort and safety of the mid-twentieth century.
While you doubtless know the "safer more wholesome time" thing is a fiction, what's sad about this sort of thing is twofold:
First, that cutting edge companies aren't taking a stand with an eye to the future. They could be setting themselves up as common carrier type companies that will carry any content that meets technical criteria and thus they don't have to explain why they'll do business with the KKK but not Wikileaks. No one is all that offended by neutral third parties and those that are, usually don't hurt you business.
Second, that there is a real business case in the US for company run censorship on behalf of the consumer. If it didn't make business sense, i.e. if people didn't want content to be censored then we wouldn't see Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and for that matter most major companies censoring the content that is distributed through them. Was there ever an America that truly valued individual freedom and where people thought, "stories about sex with your mother, gross, completely not interesting to me, I hope the store carries it and values individuals' rights to choose for themselves, the same way they do with content I want but most people don't like". I truly value freedom, but most businesses that have studied the issue seem to find consumers in the US are much more interested in imposing a lack of freedom and enforced adherence to the mainstream. Screw you American public!
great - just great - it's 99 bottles again - I wonder what his perspective on this issue might be...? well what a surprise - he seems to be supporting apple on this particular one. what a stunning turn up!!!!!
It's funny. I've been accused of being a fanboy for Apple, Microsoft, Linux, Google, Yahoo, the Republicans the Democrats, the Libertarians, the USA, Europe, Sony, Nintendo, and Sarah Palin. And yet searching my posting history you can find negative comments and criticisms of all of these. It's like the last refuge of mentally stunted to try to resort to an ad hominem by calling posters "fanboys" of something instead of addressing the topic.
please mr bottles just fuck off and leave slashdot to those that are capable of independent
Hey coward! Post with a username and try to learn how to address the actual issues being discussed. Your intellectual impotence is an embarrassment. Maybe you should find a forum where the level of intellect and education is more similar to your own, maybe AOL still has forums?
If developers can write applications for windows and linux that successfully run on hundreds if not thousands of variations of hardware for desktops, laptops, netbooks, etc. Then developers can write applications for Android.
Certainly they can. But those apps they write for thousands of variations of computers, really, really suck for performance and battery life and often in the UI because it is not tailored to the device. What I'm saying is, the fact that those apps suck on computers isn't a big deal in most cases because computers are built with excessive resources to compensate. Phone manufacturers don't really have that option so sucky apps are more a problem for their customers.
This type of variation is new in the mobile space which is the only reason why it keeps getting this much attention...
No, its getting attention because it is a real problem for developers. The UI component is more important because there is just one interface per device and it is not standardized. Users can't just go buy a mouse to plug into their laptop when they want to use your app, well they could but they won't because the whole point of a mobile for most people is that it is small, portable, and self contained. As I mentioned before, if an app sucks on a PC, it is a problem, even if most users don't understand that particular app or plugin is the problem. It just isn't a deal breaking problem that will cause them to buy a different type of computer, because the impact is mitigated by the hardware. On phones, they can't yet get there, so smart phone manufacturers are taking steps to deal with the problem. Google is building profilers that let advanced users figure out which apps are a problem. Apple and MS are requiring specific frameworks and vetting apps for performance. Clearly it is a problem, one that doesn't go away because it is also a minor problem on desktop machines.
...and this is actually where Android shines, because it allows users to choose...
While that is an excellent feature for geeks like us, it's fairly useless to people with a poorer understanding of how a phone works. The average person doesn't even understand that installing or running an app can worsen their battery life. All they know is their phone sucks for some reason and they should buy a different brand next time, one with better battery magic. In that way, for the average person, giving them very poor choices is often worse than not giving them choices.
The logical implication of this is that if Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X had the install base of Windows, they'd be crapware laden as well.
Only if you oversimplify the logic. If any given manufacturer had the install base of windows, they'd probably be crapware laden, but only if they had such a huge market share. It will not increase proportionally to the amount of market share because it is not just a function market share, but a property of motivation and profit. Linux, for example, is unlikely to ever dominate the market with a version supplied by a single manufacturer with the same type of control as Microsoft has, even if Linux had 90% of the desktop OS market.
When you think of it this way, this isn't an argument in favor anything. It assumes that the leader in market share will always have these problems.
No it doesn't. It assumes a monopolist will not have the same motivation as a company that is competing for market share. You can be a Market leader with 20% of the market, ahead of a large number of smaller players. Crappy security, however, will make you lose market share and lose money, so you're directly motivated to make improvements such that it is not a problem for your average user. It's only when you dominate the market that you can leverage lock-in to make it more profitable to ignore the needs of your users. In fact, it is market share, not install base. If, for example, a single supplier has a guaranteed contract for a specific market, there is no competition, and that supplier again has no motivation to fix the users' problems with regard to security.
Basically, you have tons of different devices you need to support, all with different hardware, resolution and features. [...] It's a nightmare.
Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.
As the previous poster mentioned if you'd bother to quote them in their entirety, PC's don't have to worry about severely limited cpu power and battery life. Running Flash on a Mac can be annoying and will drain your laptop's battery and use way more processor cycles than any other plugin. Port the same thing to an iPhone or other Mobile and you have people with mobile devices that are unresponsive, crashy, and don't even last a whole day on a battery. When resources are limited by the size and portability, problems get magnified sometimes to the point where they are game changers.
No one is proposing that we all move to consoles for the laptop/desktop market... but you're conflating that market with the mobile market where there are different needs and limitations.
Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways, reduced hardware costs
[citation needed]
Indeed. From what I've seen it increases hardware cost in that it pushes the cost of developing and testing drivers more to the hardware maker, instead of as a partnership with costs carried by both parties and thus both parties motivated and working on the half they have total access to. Further it increases hardware costs by removing competition in hardware by creating a bottleneck where competing hardware is not even allowed an opportunity and so prices remain high (this has been true for a long time in the processor market, for example). It decreases hardware costs in that device sellers can't use software as a differentiator so they compete more on minimizing price, but that's sort of misleading since it is, by necessity, coupled with an OS monopoly that drastically increases costs for the device overall.
I read you, and think you are on target. Yet, because there seems to be only downsides to the opening of a WallMart, I believe these studies might have some sort of bias.
Actually it lists several studies that show pros of Walmarts, but for the most part, those studies were later debunked, like the one that concluded it did not harm local business, but only studied four types of businesses included weirdly selected ones like antique shops.
So poverty grows? Here's an alternative explanation: perhaps poor people in the vicinity try to move closer to WallMart, and so their lives improve.
I know it seems crazy, but have you considered reading the study you're proposing a hypothesis about? It actually shows almost the opposite. Walmarts result in less people moving. In many counties when people have only crappy work options or no work options they move, somewhat moderating the poverty in the area and in general. With Walmart, people don't move because they have just enough to scrape by working part time for terrible wages and people aren't willing to take a huge risk and move when they have the bare necessities. At the same time, wages in the area become depressed as more and more as Walmart's hiring scheme, to hire lots of part tie workers with minimal benefits and an average income below full time minimum wage as a result, replacing full time minimum wage and up incomes from the businesses closing.
At any rate, my point is that this whole negative scenarion cannot be as simple as it looks like. We should always look for alternative explanations and interpretations.
Certainly we should consider other hypothesis and do more research, but we should first pay attention to what has been done so far so that we come into it from an informed perspective. Also, as a person who understands science, we should form our opinions based upon the current scientific consensus. The most supported theory is most likely true, but new data can always change what is most supported. This contrasts with the illogical decision making process of forming a belief based upon what you want to be true or think is true based upon intuition or think is true based upon your pet, unproven hypothesis... and then trying to find hypothesis or studies that will support your illogical belief.
Speaking as a nerd, you should be fully aware that correlation does not nessecarily mean causation.
As a nerd, I try to be precise especially about phrases that are bandied about by people who never think about the topic. Correlation does not imply any specific causation, but does imply some causation is at work, whether it is factor A causing B, B causing A, C causing A and B, or something more complex. Most of modern science is about noticing correlations and creating hypothesis around potential causations and testing them.
As for correlation and causation in this specific case, some of the many studies I provided (and which you likely did not have the time to read) show very definite causation as they saw something that did happen and used that to predict what would happen when new Walmarts were opened. I suspect you have an opinion and are going to find a way to justify it regardless of objective facts. I hope that is not the case, but it certainly is a common phenomenon. Most people who read a scientific study are more convinced of whatever opinion they previously held, because most people don't apply a rigorous methodology to the forming of opinions, only as a way to try to defend whatever opinion they have.
I think the primary reason is that they don't want any other midlife crisis sufferer to say "it ain't a harley".
Heh, that's about right. I remember talking to a guy at the bar about his Harley. He bought it to "get the chicks" but found out after that chicks didn't care and went after the young guys who mostly owned cheaper bikes. That's why the Corvette thing struck a cord with me. When I see either a Vet or a HD on the road I don't think "badass". I think "elderly" because that's who can afford them. Despite what TV would have you believe, most of the interesting "hip" "cool" folks drive beaters and ride on cheap foriegn bikes. Nine times out of ten when you see either of the aforementioned vehicles, the owner will be bald or have gray hair.
Likewise, look at Harleys. They consistently have extremely poor reliability ratings; especially when compared against the biggest six motorcycle competitors on the world stage. Yet Harleys not only sell very well, but frequently demand a premium price.
Just to be fair, Harley Davidson motorcycles fair poorly in surveys when looking at how often they are in for repairs, but in actual testing they do well (Well since the 90's anyway). They suffer in reliability ratings mainly because of their user base. The median age of a HD owner is 55. Most are first time motorcyle buyers. The median mileage is 550 miles per year... of those who actually use them that year. A significant number never make it out of the garage in a given year.
So what does all that add up to? A decently reliable bike owned by the elderly newbies that don't know how to do any repairs, have the money to pay someone else and leave them sitting for long periods of time. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they have a higher failure rate compared to other bikes, with comparable engineering.
Don't get me wrong. For the price, you can get a much bigger and better bike. So if you're comparing price for reliability it will lose. I just don't think they are actually any less reliable than the average bike on the market. Of course all of this is orthoganal to your point. Yes, people do pay a lot to have that logo on their bike and truck and shirt and jacket and golf clubs and toilet seat and everything else.
Interesting findings from these studies show that most retail purchases at a Walmart (85%) have corresponding losses from local business, within two years there is significant loss of local businesses in general when a Walmart opens, Tax revenues generally do not go up, Retail employee wages and benefits drop as the result of a Walmart opening. Walmarts funnel nearly twice as much of the money running through them out of the local economy (out of the state) as local retail businesses do. One study found that for every job created by a particular Walmart studied, the local community lost 1.4 jobs as local businesses closed. Counties with one or more Walmart have higher poverty rates and poverty rates that increase faster than other counties in the same state and/or area, over a 10 year period.
So you had a bad experience at a Best Buy, but I'm dying to know how coming in for a loss leader item led to an adversarial or confrontational shopping experience...
You misunderstand. I was not referring just to my shopping experience. "Adversarial Customer Relationship" was the industry term for the business method Best Buy pioneered. They wrote papers for business magazines about how smart it was to intentionally drive away "devil" customers and concentrate on acquiring "angel" customers (defined by how easy customers were to upsell, sell absurdly priced cables, sell extended warranties and useless tech services to). While I certainly experienced this business method, we're not talking about a bad experience at one store, this was (implemented in 2004) and I believe still is their corporate policy and they train their staff accordingly, albeit not using quite so blatantly unfriendly terms.They trained staff to categorize customers and flag "unprofitable" ones for mistreatment in an attempt to get rid of them. This included intentionally putting some customers on hold for long periods of time in order to make them angry enough to not come back and culling those customers from coupon mailing lists.
Here's a quote from a newspaper (Wall St. Journal) discussing it:
Best Buy estimates that as many as a fifth of 500 million customer visits each year are undesirable. And the CEO wants to be rid of them.
He goes on to talk about how the customer is not always right and they just don't want some kinds of customers because they use coupons and take advantage of the deals and don't make enough money for them. But, they need to be careful not to let the public image reveal they are a company that mistreats some customers because that might drive away profitable customers.
wow, what's with all the best buy hate around here? Yes, the staff is clueless. Yes the prices are ridiculous on some things. However, they are no worse than most other brick and mortar electronics stores. You want bad? Bad was the late and unlamented Circuit City.
I used to go to Circuit City for purchases I needed right now. They were located right next to a Best Buy, which I learned to avoid in a hurry. The reasons were as follows. Circuit City did not want to inspect my receipt every time I left the store. Circuit City carried more Mac specific products and weren't as absurdly clueless (just moderately clueless). But really the clincher was Best Buy's pioneering of the adversarial customer relationship. The corporation decided people who comparison shop and come in to buy the loss leader items were a problem and should be driven out of the store. They referred to a group of smart customers as "devil customers" and encouraged staff to harass and hound people buying just a loss leader item to buy something else or get useless warranty plans until that person was so annoyed that they left the store. This was Best Buy's business model, to harass and annoy customers who were not clueless enough. Well, it worked, which is why I haven't set foot in one in years. I'm happier that way and so is Best Buy's management. Understandably it generated a lot of anger and even hate as was intended. Does that explain the situation to you?
I saw a similar study and always find it interesting how the brain works. I might note, in some cases, we're trained to do just the opposite. For example, people often go out of their way to find the best price on gasoline, when in truth, comparison shopping on clothing or groceries is almost always going to result in more savings. So it is not only a biological function of how we process the math, but also a cultural function of how we've been trained by society.
See, here's the thing... you live in a city. Walmart primarily targets rural towns and works hard to drive every other business into the ground so that they can have a near monopoly on retail sales in that location. Sure, sometimes competitors come in like Meijers or Kroger, but usually only once a town reaches a certain size, large enough to be profitable for them. In many cases only Walmart's huge volume and cutthroat supplier practices make what they do profitable over long period of time. So in that regard, the system is failing the citizenry in small towns.
I also think if people knew and understood Walmart's practices and how they effect American manufacturing, people would be outraged and demand those practices be banned. Given our current educational and political strife, however, that's not ever going to happen. There is some hope though as many small manufacturers have become savvy enough to realize doing business with Walmart may look like a good idea and will net them large short term profits, but it will also kill them within a decade. Numerous books and articles about how it works have made their way around to most every business school and publication so informed businessmen know how to avoid it. The only issue remaining is that unscrupulous businessmen will take the deal, cash out when profits go up, and walk away before the company dies.
Guess what? This isn't about users and codec battles, or offering firefox anything. Windows has h.264 hardware support out the box, OS X and Linux do not.
I guess I don't understand what you mean by that. Out of the box? On Windows you need to install a plug-in to get Firefox to use h264. The OS, of course supports hardware accelerated h264 and provides an API to third parties to use on Windows 7, but then OS X provides VDADecoder for the same purpose and, of course, uses it in Safari. Ditto for most Linux configurations as I understand, via Purevideo/XBMC.
So I guess my question for you is, "how does Windows support h264 out of the box, more than other OS's?"
What if some of those 1100 communities were to just build the fiber out themselves, instead of looking for Google to do it for them?
Then they'd be tied up in the courts for years as they are sued by telecom companies and eventually the project would be outlawed by new laws that would be passed in the state or locality by the shills the telecom companies paid to have elected. At least that's what has been happening in many such attempts.
So Google talks about rolling out fiber to the home and they get nearly 200,000 responses and 1,100 communities express interest. That pretty well sums up the network infrastructure in the US. It's too slow, too expensive, and falling behind the times. I'm sure we will not be regarded as the most technologically advanced nation within another generation. This generation has failed to invest in critical infrastructure and has let corporate interests divert the money that should be being spent on public works projects, into those corporations own back pockets.
And yet, I can't help but think, "we deserve this". I mean the people are too lazy and stupid to pay attention to what's going on, or bother to vote, or bother to research candidates before they vote. So corporate shills are elected. They hand over taxpayer dollars, but require no return on the taxpayer's investment and pass laws to make sure taxpayers have fewer, more expensive choices when purchasing services.
Maybe one of the few innovative companies with enough prestige will be able to start real reform, but I seriously doubt it. This empire is crumbling and, as usual, the average person is too arrogant (USA #1 whooo!) to even consider how far we've fallen behind already. They don't want to hear it or have to think about the hard decisions that need to be made to turn things around.
Good luck Google, but I almost think you should just test out your new technologies in Japan or Korea or Sweden or somewhere where they are actually implementing fiber to the home, for a more realistic sense of what your future customers will be using.
Slashdot Mirror
If its not being utilized yet, and the first notice came from MS, it is in no way a 0 day.
The vulnerabilities (there are two by the way) were first disclosed by WooYun.org although metasploit did not add modules until after MS's advisory. I don't know f it was exploited before it became public or not.
Hi, i am from Spain. Guns: - I am NOT free when someone near me has a gun because he may kill me so easily, that i must obey him to survey. Its soooo simple...
That has nothing to do with freedom. By the same logic are you not free if people near you might have knives? Pointy pencils? What if they might have trained in the martial arts and lifted weights for the last decade? What if they have hired 5 private, unarmed but dangerous bodyguards? What if the person near you has a purple shirt and you for some reason believe the color purple will kill you? Are all these things removing your freedom? Would you support laws to ban all the aforementioned? Would laws making it illegal to carry a pencil or dress in purple make you more free or less free?
No, you see freedom has nothing to do with whether or not you feel safe or whether or not you have unfounded beliefs that something takes away your rights. It actually has to stop you from being able to do something, not just make you afraid that it might some day.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you should or should not legalize carrying firearms in your country. I'm saying doing so would make individuals more free as it would be one less restriction on what they can do. I doubt, based upon the scientific studies to date, it would significantly increase or decrease violent crime or murder in Spain. That is to say, despite your perception, there is little objective evidence that you're any safer or less safe as a result of your current laws preventing people form carrying guns. On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence that laws decriminalizing personal possession and use of intoxicating substances, free addiction treatment programs, and socialized medicine all result in significant decreases in violent crime and murder. Objectively, you are less likely to be assaulted or murdered in Spain. It's important, however, that when you form you opinions about why this is, you actually look at the scientific studies on the topic rather than just make assumptions based upon what you feel.
Sometimes two different 'freedoms' may clash.
Absolutely.
. It looks like Spanish people feel that it is better to be free of the fear of huge amounts of guns on their streets than the freedom for the majority of citizens to carry guns on their streets.
See, and this is where you, and perhaps they, lose me. Freedom from fear. People may give up personal freedom (and responsibility) in the hope that they will be safer and less afraid, but I seem to recall a rather famous quote about just that. In truth, there is little scientific support for the theory that strict gun control laws result in greater safety. They might result in less fear, but that's only a function of the public's ignorance.
I've lived in Europe for 40 years and never once have I thought "I'd feel safer walking to the shops if I had a gun on me or knowing that lots of these other people walking around on the streets had guns on them".
And for the most part, when it comes to personal protection, there is little scientific support for the theory that having access to more common firearms makes people safer either. Sadly, for being such a major issue, there's really very few well conducted studies on the issue since no one keeps track of how often firearms are used to deter or prevent crime, and very sporadic records on how often violent crimes occur (hint they are constantly reclassified by politicians that control record keeping and who want to seem effective ala, we have 50% fewer homeless and a huge increase in outdoorsmen in our city). The scientific consensus to date is there is no real correlation between gun control laws and violent crime when normalized for other factors, or perhaps a slight increase in violent crime.
But mostly I just wanted to point out what I see as your misperception. The individual right to carry firearms is a freedom. The right to stop everyone else from carrying them is not a freedom, it's a restriction. No matter how you try to redefine it as a "freedom to not feel fear". You can claim it is a conflict of the freedom to carry firearms and the freedom to continue living, but that is only in perception. One might as well argue free speech is not a freedom, because it conflicts with my fear that word viruses might infect my brain and transform me into a starfish. Rational people have to rely upon actual evidence and there is no evidence to date, that is an actual conflict, only a perceived one in the minds of those who have not actually formed their opinion using a rational methodology. When you wrote that the spanish people "feel" it is better, you were much more precise than perhaps you intended.
An opinion piece over at the Wall Street Journal
Since being taken over by NewsCorp, I'm not sure you could describe any of their articles as anything else. They're just GOP/big business shills now, RIP the news organization that used to make a meaningful contribution to our society.
Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?"
You might as well ask, "Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the privately owned bridges be free from regulation?" or how about "Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the banks remain free from regulation?" or maybe "Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the electric company remain free from regulation?"
In any case the answer is "NO!" Vital resources should be regulated by the government because the government, for all its flaws, is ultimately answerable to the people and private companies have shown again and again they put their profits first and do great harm to society in pursuit of that, whether it be by dumping poison in our nation's rivers, gouging individuals using monopolies, Misusing money put into banks with risky investments, or leveraging resources to influence politics for profit.
A better question isn't if the government should regulate things, but "Why are we still letting private companies and foreign nations" influence our politics through campaign contributions, lobbying, and political adverts when the vast majority of individuals thing it should be illegal?"
But those apps they write for thousands of variations of computers, really, really suck for performance and battery life and often in the UI because it is not tailored to the device.
So your claim is that you can't write a high-performance low-power application for a computer that will run on thousands of hardware variations?
No, my claim is most developers cannot do so in a cost effective manner, especially when using the APIs currently available
I call bullshit. In addition, putting a custom skin on the OS home screen and a couple of the applications doesn't prevent anything UI oriented with a developer's application.
No, but varying levels of support for multitouch and various keyboard input schemes and numbers of hardware buttons certainly do.
Android provides ways of defining the layout for multiple situations regarding screen size, device orientation, resolution, etc. Just like you can do on a desktop
I don't think orientation and resolution are as big of problems excepting that some phones won't meet minimum requirements. That's solvable via resolution independence.
Just like you can do on a desktop, and they don't take extra performance or battery life in order to have these options available
You seem to have a misunderstanding. Performance and battery life mostly have to do with CPU, GPU, support for offloading to the GPU, proper use of idle apps, proper use of push services, etc. The state of all of these things on desktop OS's and apps is simply abysmal right now, and those same developers are moving into the mobile space. For example, Flash, made by a huge prestigious shop like Adobe is just now (14 years after the initial release) starting to use the GPU properly on the Mac. How do you think Android and a less used mobile GPU will fair?
Again, bullshit. Excessive resources doesn't compensate for a sucky application. It might compensate for a poorly written application that performs horribly but that's not a question of fragmentation or compatibility that's a question of being a good developer.
Seriously, do you work in application development? I do. Most applications suck. Most mobile applications suck. Many mobile users are suffering now from crappily written apps that ping servers regularly, sucking down data and battery, instead of using push services properly, and that's just one small case.
Again, dealing with the different hardware configurations does NOT take extra performance or battery life, it's just calling APIs and knowing how to develop.
Then 99% of app developers don't know how to develop. However you want to define it, that's the problem we're facing and blaming the developers doesn't make it any better for users.
You're guaranteed a touch screen and a keyboard.
But not necessarily usable at the same time or with full view of the screen when using the keyboard and not necessarily large enough to push quickly and repeatedly for things like games.
And if an app sucks on a smartphone, it is a problem and most users will just uninstall the app.
Except that isn't happening. Instead users are frustrated because they don't know which app sucks, or even know enough to blame a specific app. When the phone crashes, users blame the phone maker. When battery performance is abysmal, users blame the phone maker. When calls are dropped users blame the phone maker and the carrier.They rarely if ever investigate why the problem is happening and then only if they are geeks. I take it you've never seen a usability test of a mobile app? I have.
All computers, from laptops to desktops to smartphones have limited resources and you want to performance check your application on the device obviously.
Performance check an app? You
You honestly believe that when Windows finally gets around to mimicking the iPad that someone will go and provide a "MS Tablet Only Newspaper"?
If they grab a huge portion of the market and the market is such that portability s not super easy, yes. But that's unlikely to happen. There have, however been Windows specific Web pages and applications for distributing just such content, some little more than .exe's that wrap PDFs.
It's not that it won't make its way to other tablets, its that its specifically being marketted as iPad only.
Yeah, that and hundreds of other applications.
It's the worst piece of business logic I've ever heard of...
You haven't been paying attention.
...someone has decided to try it out on an Apple product, all of which have a bad rap as being overpriced for what you actually get...
That's the reputation according to some people on Slashdot, not according to the general populace.
What Jobs & Co have developed is nothing less than a fucking time machine. The iPad offers to transport us back to the comfort and safety of the mid-twentieth century.
While you doubtless know the "safer more wholesome time" thing is a fiction, what's sad about this sort of thing is twofold:
First, that cutting edge companies aren't taking a stand with an eye to the future. They could be setting themselves up as common carrier type companies that will carry any content that meets technical criteria and thus they don't have to explain why they'll do business with the KKK but not Wikileaks. No one is all that offended by neutral third parties and those that are, usually don't hurt you business.
Second, that there is a real business case in the US for company run censorship on behalf of the consumer. If it didn't make business sense, i.e. if people didn't want content to be censored then we wouldn't see Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and for that matter most major companies censoring the content that is distributed through them. Was there ever an America that truly valued individual freedom and where people thought, "stories about sex with your mother, gross, completely not interesting to me, I hope the store carries it and values individuals' rights to choose for themselves, the same way they do with content I want but most people don't like". I truly value freedom, but most businesses that have studied the issue seem to find consumers in the US are much more interested in imposing a lack of freedom and enforced adherence to the mainstream. Screw you American public!
great - just great - it's 99 bottles again - I wonder what his perspective on this issue might be...? well what a surprise - he seems to be supporting apple on this particular one. what a stunning turn up!!!!!
It's funny. I've been accused of being a fanboy for Apple, Microsoft, Linux, Google, Yahoo, the Republicans the Democrats, the Libertarians, the USA, Europe, Sony, Nintendo, and Sarah Palin. And yet searching my posting history you can find negative comments and criticisms of all of these. It's like the last refuge of mentally stunted to try to resort to an ad hominem by calling posters "fanboys" of something instead of addressing the topic.
please mr bottles just fuck off and leave slashdot to those that are capable of independent
Hey coward! Post with a username and try to learn how to address the actual issues being discussed. Your intellectual impotence is an embarrassment. Maybe you should find a forum where the level of intellect and education is more similar to your own, maybe AOL still has forums?
If developers can write applications for windows and linux that successfully run on hundreds if not thousands of variations of hardware for desktops, laptops, netbooks, etc. Then developers can write applications for Android.
Certainly they can. But those apps they write for thousands of variations of computers, really, really suck for performance and battery life and often in the UI because it is not tailored to the device. What I'm saying is, the fact that those apps suck on computers isn't a big deal in most cases because computers are built with excessive resources to compensate. Phone manufacturers don't really have that option so sucky apps are more a problem for their customers.
This type of variation is new in the mobile space which is the only reason why it keeps getting this much attention...
No, its getting attention because it is a real problem for developers. The UI component is more important because there is just one interface per device and it is not standardized. Users can't just go buy a mouse to plug into their laptop when they want to use your app, well they could but they won't because the whole point of a mobile for most people is that it is small, portable, and self contained. As I mentioned before, if an app sucks on a PC, it is a problem, even if most users don't understand that particular app or plugin is the problem. It just isn't a deal breaking problem that will cause them to buy a different type of computer, because the impact is mitigated by the hardware. On phones, they can't yet get there, so smart phone manufacturers are taking steps to deal with the problem. Google is building profilers that let advanced users figure out which apps are a problem. Apple and MS are requiring specific frameworks and vetting apps for performance. Clearly it is a problem, one that doesn't go away because it is also a minor problem on desktop machines.
...and this is actually where Android shines, because it allows users to choose...
While that is an excellent feature for geeks like us, it's fairly useless to people with a poorer understanding of how a phone works. The average person doesn't even understand that installing or running an app can worsen their battery life. All they know is their phone sucks for some reason and they should buy a different brand next time, one with better battery magic. In that way, for the average person, giving them very poor choices is often worse than not giving them choices.
The logical implication of this is that if Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X had the install base of Windows, they'd be crapware laden as well.
Only if you oversimplify the logic. If any given manufacturer had the install base of windows, they'd probably be crapware laden, but only if they had such a huge market share. It will not increase proportionally to the amount of market share because it is not just a function market share, but a property of motivation and profit. Linux, for example, is unlikely to ever dominate the market with a version supplied by a single manufacturer with the same type of control as Microsoft has, even if Linux had 90% of the desktop OS market.
When you think of it this way, this isn't an argument in favor anything. It assumes that the leader in market share will always have these problems.
No it doesn't. It assumes a monopolist will not have the same motivation as a company that is competing for market share. You can be a Market leader with 20% of the market, ahead of a large number of smaller players. Crappy security, however, will make you lose market share and lose money, so you're directly motivated to make improvements such that it is not a problem for your average user. It's only when you dominate the market that you can leverage lock-in to make it more profitable to ignore the needs of your users. In fact, it is market share, not install base. If, for example, a single supplier has a guaranteed contract for a specific market, there is no competition, and that supplier again has no motivation to fix the users' problems with regard to security.
Basically, you have tons of different devices you need to support, all with different hardware, resolution and features. [...] It's a nightmare.
Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.
As the previous poster mentioned if you'd bother to quote them in their entirety, PC's don't have to worry about severely limited cpu power and battery life. Running Flash on a Mac can be annoying and will drain your laptop's battery and use way more processor cycles than any other plugin. Port the same thing to an iPhone or other Mobile and you have people with mobile devices that are unresponsive, crashy, and don't even last a whole day on a battery. When resources are limited by the size and portability, problems get magnified sometimes to the point where they are game changers.
No one is proposing that we all move to consoles for the laptop/desktop market... but you're conflating that market with the mobile market where there are different needs and limitations.
Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways, reduced hardware costs
[citation needed]
Indeed. From what I've seen it increases hardware cost in that it pushes the cost of developing and testing drivers more to the hardware maker, instead of as a partnership with costs carried by both parties and thus both parties motivated and working on the half they have total access to. Further it increases hardware costs by removing competition in hardware by creating a bottleneck where competing hardware is not even allowed an opportunity and so prices remain high (this has been true for a long time in the processor market, for example). It decreases hardware costs in that device sellers can't use software as a differentiator so they compete more on minimizing price, but that's sort of misleading since it is, by necessity, coupled with an OS monopoly that drastically increases costs for the device overall.
I read you, and think you are on target. Yet, because there seems to be only downsides to the opening of a WallMart, I believe these studies might have some sort of bias.
Actually it lists several studies that show pros of Walmarts, but for the most part, those studies were later debunked, like the one that concluded it did not harm local business, but only studied four types of businesses included weirdly selected ones like antique shops.
So poverty grows? Here's an alternative explanation: perhaps poor people in the vicinity try to move closer to WallMart, and so their lives improve.
I know it seems crazy, but have you considered reading the study you're proposing a hypothesis about? It actually shows almost the opposite. Walmarts result in less people moving. In many counties when people have only crappy work options or no work options they move, somewhat moderating the poverty in the area and in general. With Walmart, people don't move because they have just enough to scrape by working part time for terrible wages and people aren't willing to take a huge risk and move when they have the bare necessities. At the same time, wages in the area become depressed as more and more as Walmart's hiring scheme, to hire lots of part tie workers with minimal benefits and an average income below full time minimum wage as a result, replacing full time minimum wage and up incomes from the businesses closing.
At any rate, my point is that this whole negative scenarion cannot be as simple as it looks like. We should always look for alternative explanations and interpretations.
Certainly we should consider other hypothesis and do more research, but we should first pay attention to what has been done so far so that we come into it from an informed perspective. Also, as a person who understands science, we should form our opinions based upon the current scientific consensus. The most supported theory is most likely true, but new data can always change what is most supported. This contrasts with the illogical decision making process of forming a belief based upon what you want to be true or think is true based upon intuition or think is true based upon your pet, unproven hypothesis... and then trying to find hypothesis or studies that will support your illogical belief.
Speaking as a nerd, you should be fully aware that correlation does not nessecarily mean causation.
As a nerd, I try to be precise especially about phrases that are bandied about by people who never think about the topic. Correlation does not imply any specific causation, but does imply some causation is at work, whether it is factor A causing B, B causing A, C causing A and B, or something more complex. Most of modern science is about noticing correlations and creating hypothesis around potential causations and testing them.
As for correlation and causation in this specific case, some of the many studies I provided (and which you likely did not have the time to read) show very definite causation as they saw something that did happen and used that to predict what would happen when new Walmarts were opened. I suspect you have an opinion and are going to find a way to justify it regardless of objective facts. I hope that is not the case, but it certainly is a common phenomenon. Most people who read a scientific study are more convinced of whatever opinion they previously held, because most people don't apply a rigorous methodology to the forming of opinions, only as a way to try to defend whatever opinion they have.
I think the primary reason is that they don't want any other midlife crisis sufferer to say "it ain't a harley".
Heh, that's about right. I remember talking to a guy at the bar about his Harley. He bought it to "get the chicks" but found out after that chicks didn't care and went after the young guys who mostly owned cheaper bikes. That's why the Corvette thing struck a cord with me. When I see either a Vet or a HD on the road I don't think "badass". I think "elderly" because that's who can afford them. Despite what TV would have you believe, most of the interesting "hip" "cool" folks drive beaters and ride on cheap foriegn bikes. Nine times out of ten when you see either of the aforementioned vehicles, the owner will be bald or have gray hair.
Likewise, look at Harleys. They consistently have extremely poor reliability ratings; especially when compared against the biggest six motorcycle competitors on the world stage. Yet Harleys not only sell very well, but frequently demand a premium price.
Just to be fair, Harley Davidson motorcycles fair poorly in surveys when looking at how often they are in for repairs, but in actual testing they do well (Well since the 90's anyway). They suffer in reliability ratings mainly because of their user base. The median age of a HD owner is 55. Most are first time motorcyle buyers. The median mileage is 550 miles per year... of those who actually use them that year. A significant number never make it out of the garage in a given year.
So what does all that add up to? A decently reliable bike owned by the elderly newbies that don't know how to do any repairs, have the money to pay someone else and leave them sitting for long periods of time. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they have a higher failure rate compared to other bikes, with comparable engineering.
Don't get me wrong. For the price, you can get a much bigger and better bike. So if you're comparing price for reliability it will lose. I just don't think they are actually any less reliable than the average bike on the market. Of course all of this is orthoganal to your point. Yes, people do pay a lot to have that logo on their bike and truck and shirt and jacket and golf clubs and toilet seat and everything else.
Anecdotes are great and all, but we're supposed to be nerds. Here are some studies:
http://www.newrules.org/retail/key-studies-walmart-and-bigbox-retail#4
Interesting findings from these studies show that most retail purchases at a Walmart (85%) have corresponding losses from local business, within two years there is significant loss of local businesses in general when a Walmart opens, Tax revenues generally do not go up, Retail employee wages and benefits drop as the result of a Walmart opening. Walmarts funnel nearly twice as much of the money running through them out of the local economy (out of the state) as local retail businesses do. One study found that for every job created by a particular Walmart studied, the local community lost 1.4 jobs as local businesses closed. Counties with one or more Walmart have higher poverty rates and poverty rates that increase faster than other counties in the same state and/or area, over a 10 year period.
So you had a bad experience at a Best Buy, but I'm dying to know how coming in for a loss leader item led to an adversarial or confrontational shopping experience...
You misunderstand. I was not referring just to my shopping experience. "Adversarial Customer Relationship" was the industry term for the business method Best Buy pioneered. They wrote papers for business magazines about how smart it was to intentionally drive away "devil" customers and concentrate on acquiring "angel" customers (defined by how easy customers were to upsell, sell absurdly priced cables, sell extended warranties and useless tech services to). While I certainly experienced this business method, we're not talking about a bad experience at one store, this was (implemented in 2004) and I believe still is their corporate policy and they train their staff accordingly, albeit not using quite so blatantly unfriendly terms.They trained staff to categorize customers and flag "unprofitable" ones for mistreatment in an attempt to get rid of them. This included intentionally putting some customers on hold for long periods of time in order to make them angry enough to not come back and culling those customers from coupon mailing lists.
Here's a quote from a newspaper (Wall St. Journal) discussing it:
Best Buy estimates that as many as a fifth of 500 million customer visits each year are undesirable. And the CEO wants to be rid of them.
He goes on to talk about how the customer is not always right and they just don't want some kinds of customers because they use coupons and take advantage of the deals and don't make enough money for them. But, they need to be careful not to let the public image reveal they are a company that mistreats some customers because that might drive away profitable customers.
wow, what's with all the best buy hate around here? Yes, the staff is clueless. Yes the prices are ridiculous on some things. However, they are no worse than most other brick and mortar electronics stores. You want bad? Bad was the late and unlamented Circuit City.
I used to go to Circuit City for purchases I needed right now. They were located right next to a Best Buy, which I learned to avoid in a hurry. The reasons were as follows. Circuit City did not want to inspect my receipt every time I left the store. Circuit City carried more Mac specific products and weren't as absurdly clueless (just moderately clueless). But really the clincher was Best Buy's pioneering of the adversarial customer relationship. The corporation decided people who comparison shop and come in to buy the loss leader items were a problem and should be driven out of the store. They referred to a group of smart customers as "devil customers" and encouraged staff to harass and hound people buying just a loss leader item to buy something else or get useless warranty plans until that person was so annoyed that they left the store. This was Best Buy's business model, to harass and annoy customers who were not clueless enough. Well, it worked, which is why I haven't set foot in one in years. I'm happier that way and so is Best Buy's management. Understandably it generated a lot of anger and even hate as was intended. Does that explain the situation to you?
I saw a similar study and always find it interesting how the brain works. I might note, in some cases, we're trained to do just the opposite. For example, people often go out of their way to find the best price on gasoline, when in truth, comparison shopping on clothing or groceries is almost always going to result in more savings. So it is not only a biological function of how we process the math, but also a cultural function of how we've been trained by society.
In the city to which I'm currently residing...
See, here's the thing... you live in a city. Walmart primarily targets rural towns and works hard to drive every other business into the ground so that they can have a near monopoly on retail sales in that location. Sure, sometimes competitors come in like Meijers or Kroger, but usually only once a town reaches a certain size, large enough to be profitable for them. In many cases only Walmart's huge volume and cutthroat supplier practices make what they do profitable over long period of time. So in that regard, the system is failing the citizenry in small towns.
I also think if people knew and understood Walmart's practices and how they effect American manufacturing, people would be outraged and demand those practices be banned. Given our current educational and political strife, however, that's not ever going to happen. There is some hope though as many small manufacturers have become savvy enough to realize doing business with Walmart may look like a good idea and will net them large short term profits, but it will also kill them within a decade. Numerous books and articles about how it works have made their way around to most every business school and publication so informed businessmen know how to avoid it. The only issue remaining is that unscrupulous businessmen will take the deal, cash out when profits go up, and walk away before the company dies.
Guess what? This isn't about users and codec battles, or offering firefox anything. Windows has h.264 hardware support out the box, OS X and Linux do not.
I guess I don't understand what you mean by that. Out of the box? On Windows you need to install a plug-in to get Firefox to use h264. The OS, of course supports hardware accelerated h264 and provides an API to third parties to use on Windows 7, but then OS X provides VDADecoder for the same purpose and, of course, uses it in Safari. Ditto for most Linux configurations as I understand, via Purevideo/XBMC.
So I guess my question for you is, "how does Windows support h264 out of the box, more than other OS's?"
What if some of those 1100 communities were to just build the fiber out themselves, instead of looking for Google to do it for them?
Then they'd be tied up in the courts for years as they are sued by telecom companies and eventually the project would be outlawed by new laws that would be passed in the state or locality by the shills the telecom companies paid to have elected. At least that's what has been happening in many such attempts.
So Google talks about rolling out fiber to the home and they get nearly 200,000 responses and 1,100 communities express interest. That pretty well sums up the network infrastructure in the US. It's too slow, too expensive, and falling behind the times. I'm sure we will not be regarded as the most technologically advanced nation within another generation. This generation has failed to invest in critical infrastructure and has let corporate interests divert the money that should be being spent on public works projects, into those corporations own back pockets.
And yet, I can't help but think, "we deserve this". I mean the people are too lazy and stupid to pay attention to what's going on, or bother to vote, or bother to research candidates before they vote. So corporate shills are elected. They hand over taxpayer dollars, but require no return on the taxpayer's investment and pass laws to make sure taxpayers have fewer, more expensive choices when purchasing services.
Maybe one of the few innovative companies with enough prestige will be able to start real reform, but I seriously doubt it. This empire is crumbling and, as usual, the average person is too arrogant (USA #1 whooo!) to even consider how far we've fallen behind already. They don't want to hear it or have to think about the hard decisions that need to be made to turn things around.
Good luck Google, but I almost think you should just test out your new technologies in Japan or Korea or Sweden or somewhere where they are actually implementing fiber to the home, for a more realistic sense of what your future customers will be using.