>I was watching a football game this sunday and saw an ad for a car that was done up like a drug ad - guy who is normally clostraphobic in small cars finds the new car roomy enough - at the end he goes into a field of wildflowers with a puppy and the model name of the car is shown with the MPG shown in small print much like drugs show the dosage. It was whitty, creative, and not obnoxious at all. I actually backed it up with Tivo and showed it to my wife who also got a kick out of it.
...but didn't do a very good job making you remember what car it was.:P (It's Nissan.)
I've always hated this stupid claim. If your net worth was $200k (probably about right for most/.ers who own a condo, say...) and you were told to pay $2,000 and $60 per month, that wouldn't bother you?
I was asking a rhetorical question. "Slightly better", "not enough", "justify" obviously carry different meanings for different people and software companies. I personally don't like grandparents implication that just because piracy doesn't always mean lost sales, it somehow makes software company/article's POV and claims void.
>Google's page defaults to Google's services, and that's fine. Why? Because Google (as of November 2005 - I can't find any more recent statistics) has 46.3% of the search engine market.
Your post was great until here. Google's page defaulting to Google's services is fine even if Google has 99% of the search engine share. This is because Google won't have control over where users go to search on the internet no matter how much share Google has. Users are choosing to go to Google and competitors are free to enter the market. No one complains that a BMW only uses BMW technologies, parts and logos, right?
Google would be in trouble if they started leveraging their considerable share in search to gain "unfair" advantage in, say, online marketing. If Google said to an advertiser "If you want to advertise on Google, you cannot advertise on Yahoo or MSN.", then they'd get into a trouble comparable to the one MSFT did for OS.
There's nothing wrong with copying, of course. However, one aspect of open source that's often mentioned is innovation. I'd like to see OO.o evolve beyond simply being an Office clone. Given the magnitude of the people involved, I'd like to see something innovative that's ahead of Office.
Don't play down to cloning Office so that people would adopt it. Get ahead of the game, set the direction of the development with innovative features so that people will start saying "Hey, OO.o has these awesome features Office doesn't. And it's free. Wow, why would I bother with Office now?"
>tha analogy would be a better one if you took a photo of his rootbeer.
No, that still doesn't work because a photo of the root beer does not have comparable value to someone wanting a drink.
No clever analogies work in these cases since we can't clone physical objects. In the same vain, the use of words like "steal", "pirate", etc. should be regarded differently because these are not physical objects.
Infringement is the technically correct description, but I think a lot of argument about "stealing" and "pirating" being incorrect description is just semantics - infringement sounds rather "soft" compared to stealing.
**AA would argue that they are just as damaging as theft, so they use that word instead of the technically correct one. If "infringement" carried the same tone of damage as "theft", at least to the degree agreable to **AAs, then they would be using "infringement." Their aim is not to be technically correct, but spread their idea of the damage involved in a way understandable by the public.
Obviously, I'm being a flamebait. However, at least in the UI aspect, I haven't seen anything new in OO.o and it is the most significant change in this version of Office.
If it's well received - my experience is that it definitely improves feature discoverability - will OO.o copy the UI or invent something new?
>WTF? If I've got anyone in IT putting 1,000,000 rows in a spreadsheet, I'm seriously considering demoting them. If you're going to have a million rows, get a database.
You are aware the previous limit in Excel was 65k rows. There's a lot of area between 65k and 1M which is handled better by a spreadsheet rather than a database.
MS expanding the limit (granted 10 years overdue) and offering the flexibility is a good thing no matter how you may want to spin it otherwise.
>I don't know why, but a good old non-widescreen still has much more appeal to me than a widescreen of the same size.
One factor could be that if pixel pitch is the same, non-widescreen has more pixels than a widescreen of the same "size."
A 12" "screen" (measured diagonally, as usual) would be approximately 9.6" x 7.2" (= 69 sq. in.) in 4:3 ratio whie it would be 10.5" x 5.9" (= 62 sq. in.) in 16:9. It's about 10% "smaller" even though it's labeled as the same "size."
Be aware of this fact when you buy wide screen TVs. 27" widescreen TV is a *lot* smaller than 27" traditional TV. If you put bands on the sides to watch regular TV on a 27" widescreen TV without distortion, you will actually be looking at an image as big as it would be on a 20" "regular" TV...
It used to be that you pay $5 to go see a movie and only "ads" you saw were in the form of movie trailers and messages to visit the concession stand.
These days, you pay $12 to sit through 30 minutes of real "commercials" of everything from soda to local car dealerships.
I stopped going to movies since I couldn't stand paying money to watch ads which had nothing to do with the movie experience. I can sit at home and watch same ads on my TV for "free."
It seems I am still the minority since people still go to theaters. They are probably just as annoyed about the ads as me, but they really want to see the movie so they "tolerate" them.
FYI, the "conference" the prank paper was accepted for is arguably a real "conference," it's certainly not a reputable one. The "conference" ("World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics") is famous for spamming everyone in just about every semi-related subject to submit and has famousely low bar for acceptance. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMSCI
That's a pretty dismissive viewpoint you got there. Given a concept of jet engine (not a powered vehicle, like an airplane, mind you), I think it's pretty remarkable to "predict" airline travel.
Given a concept of silicon wafer based switch, would you have "predicted" the age of PCs and internet?
No, that would be the wrong way to summarize it since it implies DRM still has something to do with the battery life. The correct conclusion is that protected online music is typically sold with a higher bitrate which tends to reduce the battery life.
There's no mention/plan on how to refill the thing. Also, it weighs a lot - more than 3 lbs, which could almost double some laptops' overall weight. It may be "production-ready" in the sense it can be manufactured and used, but I don't think it's "production-ready" in the real worls sense at all.
They aren't "made" of gold, but they certainly contain gold... "Gold medals" in Olympics are actually silver medals that are gold plated. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_medal)
Misplaced logic. If films lack quality (as you said), then why are you bothering to download it to begin with? I don't like movies because for the price, they don't entertain me much. So I don't go to movie theaters, rent or purchase dvds. I don't download, watch, satisfy some of my "wants" and "curiosity" and THEN claim it's worthless.
If it's worthless, give it up! Don't keep on dipping in for free and then try to claim they lack quality.
I'm sorry, but if every politician's entry would be "factual" and simply lists "Signed X into law on X/XX" type of information then what's the point of an encyclopedia?
Such information is already publically available from a.gov site somewhere and Wikipedia will simply turn into a fact aggregator instead of an encyclopedia. I didn't go to a.gov list and instead, visited Wikipedia because I didn't want a list of facts - rather I wanted to know what was in that law, who was affected, etc. - a digest version of what happened so that in limited time, I can learn better about the context of the fact, not just the fact.
This discussion is happening because it's difficult to strike a balance between providing "neutral" and "biased" context.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always hated this stupid claim. If your net worth was $200k (probably about right for most /.ers who own a condo, say...) and you were told to pay $2,000 and $60 per month, that wouldn't bother you?
I was asking a rhetorical question. "Slightly better", "not enough", "justify" obviously carry different meanings for different people and software companies. I personally don't like grandparents implication that just because piracy doesn't always mean lost sales, it somehow makes software company/article's POV and claims void.
So why don't you?
I've been hearing the same thing for the past 20 years. Haven't we hit the rock bottom in the scientific ability yet?
Your post was great until here. Google's page defaulting to Google's services is fine even if Google has 99% of the search engine share. This is because Google won't have control over where users go to search on the internet no matter how much share Google has. Users are choosing to go to Google and competitors are free to enter the market. No one complains that a BMW only uses BMW technologies, parts and logos, right?
Google would be in trouble if they started leveraging their considerable share in search to gain "unfair" advantage in, say, online marketing. If Google said to an advertiser "If you want to advertise on Google, you cannot advertise on Yahoo or MSN.", then they'd get into a trouble comparable to the one MSFT did for OS.
Don't play down to cloning Office so that people would adopt it. Get ahead of the game, set the direction of the development with innovative features so that people will start saying "Hey, OO.o has these awesome features Office doesn't. And it's free. Wow, why would I bother with Office now?"
No, that still doesn't work because a photo of the root beer does not have comparable value to someone wanting a drink.
No clever analogies work in these cases since we can't clone physical objects. In the same vain, the use of words like "steal", "pirate", etc. should be regarded differently because these are not physical objects.
Infringement is the technically correct description, but I think a lot of argument about "stealing" and "pirating" being incorrect description is just semantics - infringement sounds rather "soft" compared to stealing.
**AA would argue that they are just as damaging as theft, so they use that word instead of the technically correct one. If "infringement" carried the same tone of damage as "theft", at least to the degree agreable to **AAs, then they would be using "infringement." Their aim is not to be technically correct, but spread their idea of the damage involved in a way understandable by the public.
If it's well received - my experience is that it definitely improves feature discoverability - will OO.o copy the UI or invent something new?
I assume OO.o won't be "copying" any of them, correct?
You are aware the previous limit in Excel was 65k rows. There's a lot of area between 65k and 1M which is handled better by a spreadsheet rather than a database.
MS expanding the limit (granted 10 years overdue) and offering the flexibility is a good thing no matter how you may want to spin it otherwise.
One factor could be that if pixel pitch is the same, non-widescreen has more pixels than a widescreen of the same "size."
A 12" "screen" (measured diagonally, as usual) would be approximately 9.6" x 7.2" (= 69 sq. in.) in 4:3 ratio whie it would be 10.5" x 5.9" (= 62 sq. in.) in 16:9. It's about 10% "smaller" even though it's labeled as the same "size."
Be aware of this fact when you buy wide screen TVs. 27" widescreen TV is a *lot* smaller than 27" traditional TV. If you put bands on the sides to watch regular TV on a 27" widescreen TV without distortion, you will actually be looking at an image as big as it would be on a 20" "regular" TV...
These days, you pay $12 to sit through 30 minutes of real "commercials" of everything from soda to local car dealerships.
I stopped going to movies since I couldn't stand paying money to watch ads which had nothing to do with the movie experience. I can sit at home and watch same ads on my TV for "free."
It seems I am still the minority since people still go to theaters. They are probably just as annoyed about the ads as me, but they really want to see the movie so they "tolerate" them.
That's precisely what "default" means.
FYI, the "conference" the prank paper was accepted for is arguably a real "conference," it's certainly not a reputable one. The "conference" ("World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics") is famous for spamming everyone in just about every semi-related subject to submit and has famousely low bar for acceptance. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMSCI
Given a concept of silicon wafer based switch, would you have "predicted" the age of PCs and internet?
No, that would be the wrong way to summarize it since it implies DRM still has something to do with the battery life. The correct conclusion is that protected online music is typically sold with a higher bitrate which tends to reduce the battery life.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 3/03/0134241
There's no mention/plan on how to refill the thing. Also, it weighs a lot - more than 3 lbs, which could almost double some laptops' overall weight. It may be "production-ready" in the sense it can be manufactured and used, but I don't think it's "production-ready" in the real worls sense at all.
They aren't "made" of gold, but they certainly contain gold... "Gold medals" in Olympics are actually silver medals that are gold plated. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_medal)
If it's worthless, give it up! Don't keep on dipping in for free and then try to claim they lack quality.
To me, it's simple. I want to see the best athletes/teams. Motivation is a different matter...
perhaps i've been reading /. too long when "compatibility" spelled correctly multiple times in one reply looks a bit odd... :D
Such information is already publically available from a .gov site somewhere and Wikipedia will simply turn into a fact aggregator instead of an encyclopedia. I didn't go to a .gov list and instead, visited Wikipedia because I didn't want a list of facts - rather I wanted to know what was in that law, who was affected, etc. - a digest version of what happened so that in limited time, I can learn better about the context of the fact, not just the fact.
This discussion is happening because it's difficult to strike a balance between providing "neutral" and "biased" context.
I don't see this. What am I missing?