Many SF fans are middle-class suburbanites for whom urban violence is a romantic, exciting alternative to the banality of getting beaten up by the football team. Wed that to the ridiculous cyberpunk conceit that computers (or long overcoats) could make you menacing in some street-cred way, and presto - the cliche machine is in full swing.
So, the overcompensating, fedora-wearing dork in the tree-lined suburb is the big market for gritty tales of futurist urban cyber-grit.
Who says I don't? But the fact is that the model of intellectual property that is being used to control expression is being enforced at the behest of the major culture industry behemoths, not at the behest of smaller ones. There's a reason why the copyright extension act is called the Mickey Mouse act.
I'm not a blanket corporation basher. But your eagerness to defend the most powerful institutions in the country suggests, perhaps, an instinctive loyalty to authority figures.
If your speech had any possibility of being effective, it could well result in your "not being here."
The fact that you tnake the ability to rant and rave and use foul language as the token of freedom is sad.
And remember, if I have a dream with Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Captain Kirk in it, I can't turn it into a movie. As soon as expression bumps into the corporate agenda of ownership of cultural properties, freedom of speech gets tossed out the window.
You're right. I'm all for any reasonable and vicious mockery of the failures of the US educational (lack of a) system, but the violations detailed in the (uncharacteristically poorly written) Guardian article are really of a different sort. I mean, my Spanish is fluent, and I had no idea that hembra means bitch in Nicaragua.
Also, one of the major errors - the inclusion of a chant of verses from the Koran in Kakuto Chojin - was made by Japanese developers.
The article illustrates the value, more than anything, of hiring consultants for each and every country into which you intend to market a product.
You are correct, and if you follow many of the Iraq bloggers, you will see a trajectory that recurs frequently - many who originally supported the US have come to hate the US occupation, because of the arrogance and heavy-handedness of the occupying forces. Too many innocent people had their doors bashed in, their families terrorized as American forces searched for insurgents - over 80% of the detainees in Al Ghraib were thought to be innocent of any wrongdoing.
No, the point is that an investor will look at a relative loss of market share as a problem. It means that the company is losing ground, even if it remains as profitable. It means that, all else being equal, they could have invested their money elsewhere for a greater return.
I'm not saying that Apple is in trouble. I'm saying that market share matters.
One man's feature creep is another man's deal maker.
I am going back to Word from Open Office because of "feature creep" - specifically, EndNote's support of Cite-While-You-Write only on Word (OK, so I'm really migrating to Endnote+Word). I'm afraid that while this feature is meaningless to many, it's useful beyond words to me, and any given feature that's meaningless to me may be the godsend for someone else.
Don't use the manufacturer's drivers. Get drivers from places like OmegaDrivers and install those instead (after updating your chipset's BIOS.) That will keep you current and up to date.
I have a 1.5 year old Inspiron 8200 that I'm still quite happy with. In another year, I may upgrade to another Dell. I game almost everywhere except home - I particularly like playing on wireless networks in the library and cafes - and I've had no problems. Desktop systems just take up way too much real estate, and where I live, space is more expensive than computing power.
Re:Yet another reason to get the *cheap* phones
on
Ready, Aim, HACK!
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· Score: 1
Um, do you know about Bluetooth hands-free headsets? I use mine all the time - which mines my BlueTooth is always on (though it doesn't authorize automaticallyl, of course - do you know how BlueTooth pairing works?)
You're not talking about a simple security precaution, you're talking about removing the functionality of the device. It's like telling someone who has been mugged, "well, you shouldn't use cash, anyway!" It's a stupid remark.
Of course, from a privacy perspective, a good parabolic mike would pick up on any conversation you're having, anyway. It's the damage to the unit that's a problem.
My 8200 used to do that, almost - up to 3.5 hours. Since then, it's lost the ability to hibernate or suspend, and gets about 90 minutes. I'm looking to replace the battery at some point and do a clean reinstall of XP, but I haven't had the time to do either lately, and nowadays I only need to log in where I can find a power socket.
I got an N-Gage QD. It's a Symbian Series 60 phone for $100, and a good one. It has Bluetooth.
Bluetooth and analogous technologies are at the center of what it means to be a "point of convergence." I don't actually talk on my cell phone directly - I use a Jabra bluetooth headset. The cellphone is the canonical site for my contact and calendar data - various PC's synch to it, but it's the one I always have with me. It can hold about 256 megs of data on each MMC card, so I keep mp3's on it.
I can see a phone-centered Bluetooth cloud of interconnected small, light objects: an mp3 player that pulls data through the phone instead of storing locally, a camera that does likewise, etc. Wireless keyboards, mice, and monitors could as easily pair to the smartphone - why bother with a laptop then, especially if the phone (a processor plus a connectivity device, essentially) can pipe data from storage anywhere?
You're betting on the HD as the centerpiece. I put my money on NIC+CPU. Why keep your data on your body? Access to data is what we need.
The question isn't whether or not it's foolish to install after-market gear. The question is whether Ford should be able to sue people for designing and manufacturing after-market gear.
What more do we need? How about freedom? Real might just be big enough to fight a battle that we need to win - against the use of IP law to keep us from looking under the hood.
If it were Microsoft or anyone else, there wouldn't even be this discussion. But Apple attracts a defensive fan-base for whom Cupertino can do no evil, and so we have this thread.
That's the problem with using a beta as a focus group. Are the sort of hard-core dedicated gamers that are going to scratch and claw their way into the beta going to be the same as the bulk of the market they are trying to reach? I really don't think so. So, they end up being goaded into making a game that competes with all the other time-sink MMORPGs, instead of something that could actually appeal to a different demographic. This sort of thing is exactly what a marketing department is supposed to look out for.
(Translation: So if I reply to your post in Dutch, you don't mind?)
I don't mind if people follow up on my posts in Dutch or Tagalog or Catalan or whatever. I won't understand them, but I don't understand half the English posts, either. Frankly, I seldom understand my own. This one included.
What I think you're trying to say is that most people would prefer to have everything done for them and minimize the thinking required in all aspects of their lives, so they can dedicate more time to remembering that episode of Survivor.
Or (in my case) learning Japanese, or studying neurology, or trekking through the Andes.
Given a choice between any of those things and spending a day trying to figure out how to get CUPS to work with a printer, I'll take the Japanese, thanks. My life has become busy enough that my time really is worth more to me than my money.
They aren't forcing you to do business with them, they are dictating how you do business with them if you do. You don't *have* to use Microsoft. You could buy from Apple, or a Linux vendor. Perhaps there are valid reasons why they don't want to support any more seats of Windows 2000 (I suspect that it has to do with their support costs, rather than with getting more money from you) and I would, in your situation, also feel frustrated and annoyed. But that's hardly the same thing that we we talking about.
The reason for an all-girl camp is that boys often grandstand, and monopolize time and resources, and girls sometimes feel drowned out - they participate substantially more if they don't have to compete with boys. (Once they've ramped up, so to speak, then co-ed environments are effective.)
Um, often monopolies are the result of an open market. SCO isn't forcing people to use them, SCO is trying to force people to pay them for (groundless) IP claims. Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to use them, either.
The RIAA and the MPAA aren't trying to force anyone to listen to their music or watch their films, either. They're trying to enforce a physical-property model on an effortlessly duplicable product, but that's hardly evidence of anything resembling a monopoly.
Erm, perhaps you missed the part where he talks about the gaming market dwindling. Nintendo isn't concerned about reaching more of the existing market (which is probably saturated - people who play games are probably already buying or renting all the games they can handle - time, rather than money, is the scarce resource.) They are worried about selling games to people who don't play games yet, not to people who are already enthusiastic game players. Pikmin and Animal Crossing are a lot closer to the mark than either Half-Life or Final Fantasy are.
When I was kid, I hurt myself plenty when playing, winding up in a hospital a couple times due to falls and such. In the long run, though, being active has kept me from becoming pear-shaped. I still occassionally get hurt - I broke my arm snowboarding a couple years ago - but I think, in the long run, I'm better off for it.
What would be sad would be if he didn't hurt himself acting like Spider-Man because he only sat around watching Spider-Man. Or if his play were limited to the videogame. I think that becoming a blob ensconced in front of a TV screen is a lot dumber than getting hurt while play-acting.
Slashdot Mirror
Many SF fans are middle-class suburbanites for whom urban violence is a romantic, exciting alternative to the banality of getting beaten up by the football team. Wed that to the ridiculous cyberpunk conceit that computers (or long overcoats) could make you menacing in some street-cred way, and presto - the cliche machine is in full swing.
So, the overcompensating, fedora-wearing dork in the tree-lined suburb is the big market for gritty tales of futurist urban cyber-grit.
And, sadly, this logic is also the logic of prison. It's the correct line of action to take, and that's very sad.
Who says I don't? But the fact is that the model of intellectual property that is being used to control expression is being enforced at the behest of the major culture industry behemoths, not at the behest of smaller ones. There's a reason why the copyright extension act is called the Mickey Mouse act.
I'm not a blanket corporation basher. But your eagerness to defend the most powerful institutions in the country suggests, perhaps, an instinctive loyalty to authority figures.
If your speech had any possibility of being effective, it could well result in your "not being here."
The fact that you tnake the ability to rant and rave and use foul language as the token of freedom is sad.
And remember, if I have a dream with Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Captain Kirk in it, I can't turn it into a movie. As soon as expression bumps into the corporate agenda of ownership of cultural properties, freedom of speech gets tossed out the window.
You are like the criminal defendent who kills his parents, and then asks the judge for a lenient sentence in consideration of his status as an orphan.
You're right. I'm all for any reasonable and vicious mockery of the failures of the US educational (lack of a) system, but the violations detailed in the (uncharacteristically poorly written) Guardian article are really of a different sort. I mean, my Spanish is fluent, and I had no idea that hembra means bitch in Nicaragua.
Also, one of the major errors - the inclusion of a chant of verses from the Koran in Kakuto Chojin - was made by Japanese developers.
The article illustrates the value, more than anything, of hiring consultants for each and every country into which you intend to market a product.
When Apple does this, the Apple fans cheer. When Microsoft does it, the peanut gallery rises in anger.
I'm sorry, but when it comes to Apple, it's hypocrisy central in Geekland.
You are correct, and if you follow many of the Iraq bloggers, you will see a trajectory that recurs frequently - many who originally supported the US have come to hate the US occupation, because of the arrogance and heavy-handedness of the occupying forces. Too many innocent people had their doors bashed in, their families terrorized as American forces searched for insurgents - over 80% of the detainees in Al Ghraib were thought to be innocent of any wrongdoing.
No, the point is that an investor will look at a relative loss of market share as a problem. It means that the company is losing ground, even if it remains as profitable. It means that, all else being equal, they could have invested their money elsewhere for a greater return.
I'm not saying that Apple is in trouble. I'm saying that market share matters.
One man's feature creep is another man's deal maker.
I am going back to Word from Open Office because of "feature creep" - specifically, EndNote's support of Cite-While-You-Write only on Word (OK, so I'm really migrating to Endnote+Word). I'm afraid that while this feature is meaningless to many, it's useful beyond words to me, and any given feature that's meaningless to me may be the godsend for someone else.
Microsoft has a history of suing medium-sized and larger corporations. Apple has sued people who made free themes that resembled Aqua too much.
From a litigation perspective, Apple has long been more petty and vicious.
Tell that to an investor.
Don't use the manufacturer's drivers. Get drivers from places like OmegaDrivers and install those instead (after updating your chipset's BIOS.) That will keep you current and up to date.
I have a 1.5 year old Inspiron 8200 that I'm still quite happy with. In another year, I may upgrade to another Dell. I game almost everywhere except home - I particularly like playing on wireless networks in the library and cafes - and I've had no problems. Desktop systems just take up way too much real estate, and where I live, space is more expensive than computing power.
Um, do you know about Bluetooth hands-free headsets? I use mine all the time - which mines my BlueTooth is always on (though it doesn't authorize automaticallyl, of course - do you know how BlueTooth pairing works?)
You're not talking about a simple security precaution, you're talking about removing the functionality of the device. It's like telling someone who has been mugged, "well, you shouldn't use cash, anyway!" It's a stupid remark.
Of course, from a privacy perspective, a good parabolic mike would pick up on any conversation you're having, anyway. It's the damage to the unit that's a problem.
My 8200 used to do that, almost - up to 3.5 hours. Since then, it's lost the ability to hibernate or suspend, and gets about 90 minutes. I'm looking to replace the battery at some point and do a clean reinstall of XP, but I haven't had the time to do either lately, and nowadays I only need to log in where I can find a power socket.
I got an N-Gage QD. It's a Symbian Series 60 phone for $100, and a good one. It has Bluetooth.
Bluetooth and analogous technologies are at the center of what it means to be a "point of convergence." I don't actually talk on my cell phone directly - I use a Jabra bluetooth headset. The cellphone is the canonical site for my contact and calendar data - various PC's synch to it, but it's the one I always have with me. It can hold about 256 megs of data on each MMC card, so I keep mp3's on it.
I can see a phone-centered Bluetooth cloud of interconnected small, light objects: an mp3 player that pulls data through the phone instead of storing locally, a camera that does likewise, etc. Wireless keyboards, mice, and monitors could as easily pair to the smartphone - why bother with a laptop then, especially if the phone (a processor plus a connectivity device, essentially) can pipe data from storage anywhere?
You're betting on the HD as the centerpiece. I put my money on NIC+CPU. Why keep your data on your body? Access to data is what we need.
The question isn't whether or not it's foolish to install after-market gear. The question is whether Ford should be able to sue people for designing and manufacturing after-market gear.
What more do we need? How about freedom? Real might just be big enough to fight a battle that we need to win - against the use of IP law to keep us from looking under the hood.
If it were Microsoft or anyone else, there wouldn't even be this discussion. But Apple attracts a defensive fan-base for whom Cupertino can do no evil, and so we have this thread.
That's the problem with using a beta as a focus group. Are the sort of hard-core dedicated gamers that are going to scratch and claw their way into the beta going to be the same as the bulk of the market they are trying to reach? I really don't think so. So, they end up being goaded into making a game that competes with all the other time-sink MMORPGs, instead of something that could actually appeal to a different demographic. This sort of thing is exactly what a marketing department is supposed to look out for.
(Translation: So if I reply to your post in Dutch, you don't mind?)
I don't mind if people follow up on my posts in Dutch or Tagalog or Catalan or whatever. I won't understand them, but I don't understand half the English posts, either. Frankly, I seldom understand my own. This one included.
Or (in my case) learning Japanese, or studying neurology, or trekking through the Andes.
Given a choice between any of those things and spending a day trying to figure out how to get CUPS to work with a printer, I'll take the Japanese, thanks. My life has become busy enough that my time really is worth more to me than my money.
They aren't forcing you to do business with them, they are dictating how you do business with them if you do. You don't *have* to use Microsoft. You could buy from Apple, or a Linux vendor. Perhaps there are valid reasons why they don't want to support any more seats of Windows 2000 (I suspect that it has to do with their support costs, rather than with getting more money from you) and I would, in your situation, also feel frustrated and annoyed. But that's hardly the same thing that we we talking about.
The reason for an all-girl camp is that boys often grandstand, and monopolize time and resources, and girls sometimes feel drowned out - they participate substantially more if they don't have to compete with boys. (Once they've ramped up, so to speak, then co-ed environments are effective.)
Um, often monopolies are the result of an open market. SCO isn't forcing people to use them, SCO is trying to force people to pay them for (groundless) IP claims. Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to use them, either.
The RIAA and the MPAA aren't trying to force anyone to listen to their music or watch their films, either. They're trying to enforce a physical-property model on an effortlessly duplicable product, but that's hardly evidence of anything resembling a monopoly.
Erm, perhaps you missed the part where he talks about the gaming market dwindling. Nintendo isn't concerned about reaching more of the existing market (which is probably saturated - people who play games are probably already buying or renting all the games they can handle - time, rather than money, is the scarce resource.) They are worried about selling games to people who don't play games yet, not to people who are already enthusiastic game players. Pikmin and Animal Crossing are a lot closer to the mark than either Half-Life or Final Fantasy are.
So, they aren't talking about us.
When I was kid, I hurt myself plenty when playing, winding up in a hospital a couple times due to falls and such. In the long run, though, being active has kept me from becoming pear-shaped. I still occassionally get hurt - I broke my arm snowboarding a couple years ago - but I think, in the long run, I'm better off for it.
What would be sad would be if he didn't hurt himself acting like Spider-Man because he only sat around watching Spider-Man. Or if his play were limited to the videogame. I think that becoming a blob ensconced in front of a TV screen is a lot dumber than getting hurt while play-acting.