Anyone else notice that Google Toolbar is for IE only, and PC IE to boot.
It's not that on the Mac, IE isn't being supported any more, or on the PC they refuse to support alternative browsers... it's that most other browsers support several sets of these functions already!
Every other browser blocks popups. Most browsers support a google search built into the app, most support an autofill function, and a few support spell checking in forms (I know for sure Safari does). The only thing none of the browsers support is the google map searching. All the other functions are relatively minor, though the option that allows you to view the page rank would be important to hard core web designers who optimize sites to be high on the search engine results.
Google toolbar is great for those few people who don't understand or comprehend alternative browsers, but this is becoming less and less news for slashdotters because most of us are switching, especially for our personal use, and geeks don't mind typing in maps.google.com or will design their own tool if it's that much of an inconvenience.
This is what I'm worried about. Qwest is setting a dangerous precident. First, how do you vote with dollars when there aren't that many alternatives in high speed ISP service. Second, if they call start blocking the service and tying in their own phone plans, what's to stop them?
The VOIP cry of censorship is just an attempt to get legislative backing for a business model.
Hogwash.
If Qwest told you that you could not use a Mac or linux in order to use their service, and that you had to use a Windows PC, would you sit there and take it? If Qwest said you could not use your own email but are required to use AOL would you sit there and take it?
If Qwest said "I'm sorry you cannot use Vonage/Skype/etc on our network, but you can use our service which costs you $40 a month!"
This is anti-competitive and should be illegal! This is the oil company also controlling the railroad company and the railroad company preventing competing oil companies from shipping, thus driving the oil company out of business. It's no different.
It's like a TV that can only pick up one network that it's tied to. I don't want to be stuck watching ABC and nothing else, I want to pick and chose my channels.
Blocking traffic based on a competing company should be illegal, plain and simple. An ISP provides a means of transporting data to you. When they become large and start using their market power to leverage other services while preventing competition by other services... well by jove I believe somewhere in the anti-trust acts there is already something that makes that illegal... though IANAL.
1) TV exists due to commercials. The idea is for networks to broadcast free programs, but then to get you to watch the advertisements. They only care that you watch the ads. Everything that doesn't affect you watching ads is not a problem, but things that do are a big problem (like VCR recording and timeshifting).
2) TV networks are experts at fudging the numbers. Big companies like numbers. Networks like numbers. If you can prove that you can get big numbers for a show, you can charge big money for your ad spots. Best Buy won't pay for an ad spot on CSI? Don't worry, Circuit city would love to steal Best Buy's time. Someone will pay the premiums if you can prove in some way they are worth it. Even with declining viewership networks are still charging big bucks for ad slots.
3) If TV networks could find a way to keep you captive on your computer, in order to watch an add, they would do it. You wouldn't be allowed to fast forward or even rewind, except maybe to certain predefined positions in a show.
ESPN is experimenting with a type of set up exactly like this. ESPN offers video news clips on the side bar of their main page. The format appears to be proprietary on the surface, you have to use their in-browser player, and you can't fast forward or rewind. You can select the clip you want, but many of the clips are prefaced by an add that you must watch to see the clip. The quality isn't great, but the idea could be easily improved on and scaled up.
The networks would then have to find a way to prove that this type of advertising will work, and that they can charge a premium for the commercials that preface or are inserted into a "show." Otherwise, they won't even think about offering downloads. I have 100% control over all MPEGs, MOVs and AVIs on my machine, so I'd never see an ad. That's unacceptable in today's network TV philosophy.
And finally there's the money aspect. A $1 a download for a show that has 26 episodes a year and gets 10,000 downloads is nothing compared to one 30 minute prime time ad slot. I'll bet you that if you had all 26 million viewers of CSI download every episode this season, the amount of money at $1 a download would potentially only be about 10% of the amounts companies pay for ads for the entire season, for just ads run during CSI.
Raising the price is not feasible... it's too easy to watch TV for free these days that a higher price point would kill it the chance at downloading it.
As mentioned in some posts already, they are simply trying to save money, and not just backing away from Firewire entirely. Most iPod users now are Windows users who don't have firewire.
My guess is they are trying to standardize on USB to cut costs.
USB 2.0 is good enough for simple file transfer for 3-8 MB music files and pictures. Syncing an iPod doesn't copy over all 40 GBs of music files at the same time from one device to the other. Firewire is better for high end device connectivity and that big ass multimedia some Mac users are famous for.
There is a problem though... they are leaving their older mac customers a little cold. Many older macs only have USB 1.0 but have firewire. Macs were unfortunately slow to adopt USB 2.0 compared to windows. Intel was trying to compete with the firewire speeds by getting USB up to a comparable transfer rate. Now in order to buy the same thing a 2 year old windows user can use, they have to buy an extra cable at extra expense.
It could be argued that the company that sells computers considered to be "second class" to the computing world is making second class users out of their Mac/iPod loyalists. Irony doesn't begin to describe it.
Not something really one can argue with. It is personal taste after all. I do like the show because I like the darkness and grittiness of it. The plot revolves around a disasterous attack that's nearly wiped out a people. To me that should be dark and gritty. The original felt way to happy, but considering it was late 1970s TV I'm willing to forgive that given the time frame. However, if they remade it just like that, it would have no place amongst today's TV shows.
The bottom line is that sci-fi can't make money like other shows can. That's why they are relgated to channels like sci-fi who are dedicated to sci-fi only... the definition of their channel is the only reason why they take the risk.
First of all, just because they are highly downloaded doesn't mean you are making money. networks make money off of commercials that you have to view. Everything computer geeks try to do often guarentees they don't make money in the current TV model. I'm not saying it's "wrong" or "illegal" to download or record BSG, but when you do that you render the nielson ratings useless because you aren't watching them the normal way. Since all the networks seem to care about is the nielson ratings, these shows die because you aren't being counted as a watcher of the show.
Again NO, I'm not saying go out and watch the commercials to keep BSG alive. Put your flamethrower away. I'm just saying...
Second, sci-fi costs more than reality TV shows, sit-coms, and police/courtroom dramas. There are no special effects, no special sets, and often no need for imagination. Every show is either been done before or is "ripped from the headlines" as Law and Order does waaaay too often now. This cuts into costs. You could do a cheezy show on friday which only gets you half the income (before cost) of enterprise, but if you only have to pay one tenth of the production cost of enterprise to get it on the air, your instantly making more profit.
The greatest thing about this new series is how subtle the entire show is. The most subtle thing about this is that the only big difference between the old and the new Starbuck is anatomical.
*Spoiler warning to plot points ahead*
If you notice, the original Starbuck was brash, vulgar (well at least for 1979 TV standards), and even hedonistic. The original Starbuck was a ladies man, but this new one had this fling with Apollo's brother before the war which was passionate and even a bit unwise. They are making it a bit more of a plot point than a character trait but there are ties. Starbuck in both series doesn't give a rats ass about the chain of command except when it really counts. Both are excellent pilots, and both take wild and crazy chances.
I also noticed in the pilot episode, when starbuck is saving apollo in that really crazy manner, Apollo asks her "Are you sure this is going to work?" She replies something along the lines of "Ummm I dunno! I hope!" I don't remember the words but I remember her face. It reminded me so much of same kind of face the original Starbuck would make when ever he had a crazy idea that someone asked him about, it was uncanny.
Okay and I did lie, there is one other important difference. The original series, despite trying to be serious, was still camp. It was network TV after all. This new series is grittier and darker and is less about the quest than it is the individual relationships and the personal journies everyone is taking in trying to survive. It's easy to lose site of the similarities between characters when the over all theme of the show is radically different.
The article is limiting it's scope to PDAs... Personal Digital Assistance. The iPod is a handheld digital device, but then again so is your CD player or DVD player. I don't have a universally accepted definition of a PDA but examples are the Palm devices and Pocket Windows devices which work as portable digital organizers but also run multiple other programs in the way you'd expect a very small computer to run.
Read them both! Don't just read Web Pro news, but read the article the author at Web Pro News linked to. These are not the same thing! Damn, first slashdot doesn't RTFA, now it's a disease spreading to other sites!
Look, Window's Smart Tags were not for internet explorer, they were for the entire operating system. Yes they extended to Word and other applications as well. It was a feature described to be in windows XP. And considering MS considers I.E. part of the operating system, and MS has a monopoly on the OS...
Smart Tags are a cool idea, but what really is evil about MS's version is the potential forced tie ins. Would this functionality have directed the user to specific MSN sites or sites people chose to partner on the functionality? Could you right click on a word and select MSN search in order to make it easier for someone? Yes, but by using this OS muscle to create a new OS which basically forces you to search MSN in this manner and makes it less convenience to search, say, Google, then you are using your monopoly power unfairly and it's, yes, Evil(tm).
You don't have to install Google toolbar, and you can configure it to go to other sites other than googles. Google quite possibly has a websearching monopoly, but then don't have a toolbar monopoly nor do they force you to install it on your machine.
I'm not a google apologist nor do I think Google will always be a Good (tm) company. However, I hate how Slashdotters continue to fail to see the relevance of Monopolistic power in the "Evil" equation.
That said, I hope this feature can be completely diactivated. I wouldn't even mind if this controversy did force them to remove it. NBC did this a long time ago with their NBCi initiative back at the start of the WW explosion. It sucked, and frankly, I don't find it all that convenient, even for beginning users. However that's just my opinion.
On Vonage's site, for best voice quality Vonage recommends 90 kbps. That's upstream traffic.
so depending on how many people you want to be able to talk at a time, you should multiply that by the number of people and come up with your upstream traffic requirement.
I'd also recommend you pad that number by 50 to 100% because other programs that try to upload at the same time don't often play nice with Vonage. The bandwidth is supposed to be dedicated while you are talking but other applications try to steal it regularly. It's also useful when you want to surf and talk at the same time to have more bandwidth than you absolutely need.
There are latency issues other people have posted on, you should look for more information on that as well, as I can only speak on the bandwidth situation.
I, for one, welcome the chance to have an MP3 player on my phone. Why? Because I don't want to carry 4 portable devices. 1 phone, 1 camera, 1 MP3 player, and one palm pilot. That's effectively what I want and it's what the Treo 600 and 650 give me. Well actually no, I don't really want the camera, but I can't get a high end phone these days without it so I'll deal for now.
Frankly, I'm going to spend the money on the phone, and I like having a portable entertainment and workstation on my hip at all times, which is what it is. I can take care of simple work tasks just from that phone, and i can entertain myself very easily while waiting or traveling. The Mp3 player doesn't store that many songs and i need a memory card, but hell I don't carry with me that many Mp3s! I'm never going to fill up a 10,000 song player... or even a 1,000 song one.
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean other people don't. So far the only thing I don't like about those phones are the cameras. Everything else does in fact work great.
Didn't someone say years ago IE won the browser war? Now they say IE needs to improve to win the war? And why the hell must we call this a war and why are americans so damn obsessed with calling things wars? (disclaimer: I am a US american).
This is business not war. Microsoft has the top "selling" (for lack of a better word) product that everyone just uses. However, someone else is making inroads in this capitalistic society and is giving them competition. Hopefully Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Opera and the like will give enough competition to break the monopoly and then all the browsers will improve with good healthy competition.
This type of thing is brought up way too much in the forums, and I'm surprised people continue to mod this stuff up. It's a fallacy and people need to learn that.
Such an argument has merit on it's face, but when you say this you are making a assumptive judgement on the part of the donors. Who's to say that the donors didn't already donate to tsunami relief? And who's to say what they already donated wasn't enough? And who's to say exactly how much per each person per amount of income is "the right amount" to donate?
The fact is you can't. Therefore the argument falls down because you can't apply it to each case uniformly. If you can prove that each and every single person in this campaign is a single white male earning $100,000+ a year and gave absolutely nothing top charity, then you can say it is a misappropriation.
I know I'm nitpicking but under the same argument, all money spent to produce Battlestar Galactica is also a misappropriation because it's for luxury and therefore should go to tsunami relief. Half of slashdot thinks trek should die but watch slashdot mobilize if Galactica suddenly dies an early death. How's that for a double standard?
IANASS (...Security Specialist) but to me, logic seems to state that having an open source system has an advantage in that the code is there for everyone to see, and that you can add your own code.
Take physical security as a metaphor. You want to secure your physical plant, so you hire a security specialist. You hire his services and he peruses your building. He suggests locks here, cameras there, and a whole plan on making your business less prone to break-ins and the like.
However, what's so great about this? Two things. One, everything is transparent. It's not like joe security officer is selling you a security package and not telling you where he's going to put that $50,000 you just paid for. He has to give you a full plan (the code!) that you approve of. Plus, the plan is customized for you. It's your plan, not someone elses. It's based on your requirements and your specifications. If a security company comes to you and says they'll put a camera in every room and be done with it, is that really enough for you?
Tie that back to open source. The code for open source security solutions are that plan you need. You can provide input on it and change it as much as you want to match your individual needs. And the code will be more unique than a commercial security program, which is the same from site to site.
I can't say that open source is necessarily for everyone. Maybe a camera in every room is all you need. Maybe you just need a security guard out front. The advantages I see here are businesses where security is an important part of business, and where companies don't want control of their own data in the hands of anyone but themselves.
Mark Pilgrim once blogged about him being a recovering alcoholic. He never blogged about work or the people he worked with. However, the people he worked for at the time found out about the blog, as he was not anonymous and did not take great pains to hide it. Well the company did a really sleazy (and in hindsight stupid) action of asking him to take this information down. They thought customer's knowing this would make the company look bad. Mark refused and was eventually fired. I was definitely on his side for this one. Something's wrong with society if you are embarrassed about alcoholism and this is not the way to handle it, IMHO. It's stupid because Mark is now working for IBM in their corporate blogging division. That former company gave up a prime employee and Mark's making far more money now.
However, a few weeks later a fellow blogger of Mark's was then fired for making comments about a coworker in her blog. Mark took up her side, but as I talked to Mark, and reviewed the comments, it was little more than bitching about someone who was simply a pain in the ass. Okay fine, you work with someone who's a pain in the ass, but would you tell that to that person's face? This is what you are doing. She refused her companies demands to remove the information and she was sacked. Frankly this was just stupid. If you have a problem with someone, you take up with your boss. If you can't fix it, bitching about it in your blog is not going to help. Might make you feel better, but it will make you feel worse when the company has to discipline you.
And I myself was subject to some policy, but this was a common sense situation early in the days of blogging. I blogged at lunch occasionally and I was proud of my site. My boss found out as I had emailed them from home once. So she checked it out and she saw one or two time stamps in the middle of the day. She asked me and I told her this was because I did it at lunch. She asked me if I could minimize the appearance of this (she didn't even ask me to stop!) I simply changed the timestamp on my posts to later in the day after work.
It's ironic, because, some of my topics deal with very confrontational stances on American society and politics. Hell let me be blunt, I flame 90% of americans in most posts. But she never once mentioned anything about content, because I never talk about the company or our customers in any way.
Sometimes, your principles are more important than your job, sometimes your principles are way skewed, and sometimes you just get lucky and work for understanding people. You have to understand what can get you in trouble and what can't, and balance that with what you absolutely have to speak out about.
If you must insult everyone, make sure you have a steady source of income from a private business that doesn't care what you say.
In other words, you are saying it's very hard to install spyware on a Linux or Mac and therefore no one actually codes spyware for the Mac because they neither get enough people to be worth while nor is it as easy as say on a windows box and therefore no effective spyware programs exist.
I would much rather you have said "yes you are naive, here are a list of Spyware apps for Linux and Mac." Instead you basically said "Yes it's possible to get spyware on your Mac or Linux box if someone bothered to code it and someone went around their ass to get to their elbow." What kind of logic is that? There is no rock hard evidence that either platform has any kind of penetration into spyware common on the PC.
PS, I just googled spyware for mac and found discussions on spyware, adds for PC spyware, and a mac company I'd never heard before with a broken website that promise a list of mac spyware "coming soon" and a forum that hasn't been updated by anyone in the company for over 6 months.
If your usual channels aren't working your CEO (if this isn't you) needs to get on the phone with this outsourced company's CEO. He will politely explain the importance of this, and they will work on an "action plan" to make the appropriate things happen and make sure you are properly updated each day on the progress.
If this bears no fruit, or the plan isn't being followed, or no one calls you, the CEO needs to get on the phone and threaten legal action for failure to deliver on a promised contract.
All the while your company needs to do a cost/benefit analysis of legal action on this company, and do it quickly. Line up all the documentation and make sure everything is well recorded. Consult a lawyer on what needs to be done to make sure a case is solid.
Because if threatening legal action doesn't move them, the only step left is the logical one, make the threat real.
I have MAME, and my kid loves playing the retro games with me, especially side scrollers. Granted, he wouldn't pay a quarter for most of them, but the fact is he still considers them fun. Damn the economics, they wouldn't make money these days, but look at the free games you can get on pogo.com and cartoonnetwork.com. These are simple games and they entertain. You have to put up with an add to play a game like this nowadays. For the cutting edge you pay $50.
Also, do you know those atari joystick retro games where you just plug in the joystick to the TV and play games from 20 years ago? Well my son got a kick out of them. I showed him Adventure and Yars Revenge (oh how I pine for Yars Revenge!).
I went back to the toy store after Christmas to pick one up, and every toy store I found had them sold out. They may be retro, but these games are simpler and cheaper than Halo 2, WoW, Doom 3, and Half-life.
Only two dozen posts in and I see half of them appear to suggest blocking email from China. This is a good individual solution on an ISP by ISP basis but not a good universal solution. Businesses have to deal with other businesses in China, and well there are plenty of families who legitimately want to email from China to the US and back.
Any solution that involves blocking everything from China won't work for everyone, and every solution that tries to selectively opt in or selectively block from China is a greater expense to set up.
Considering most of the spam originating from China is poured into the US, and the money's paid to the ISPs are money flowing from out of the US economy and into China's, I hardly think they will care any time soon.
I'm censored from talking about breasts, so breast cancer and cooking chicken can no longer be talked about on TV?
Public radio is censored for talking about homosexuality?
People can't talk about sex education on TV?
Your last two points about censoring Pres. Bush and politicians are valid, but sex is where it starts. And where do you draw the line between pornography, art, and science? Once you try drawing a line, the people start trying to redefine the line in their favor in order to control you.
People try to control your behavior with language. They want control of you. If censorship starts there with sex, it will progress to politics and current events. To coin a cliche, its doubleplusungood.
So are you a man? So prostate cancer might be your personal favorite. But what about breast cancer? Not so important to you?
And women statistically make less money as a whole than men in the same position.
I'm also not advocating spending "a fortune" on research. I'm also not advocating that politicians decide what gets funded. That's the purpose of the national endowments. Scientists currently decide how much money is given to which projects. Politicians only control the amount of money.
And we don't have to pay higher taxes. How about taking away from the military? Or out of farm subsidies that benefit corporate farms? Also, we were doing just fine before the tax cut a few years ago. Why do we need to keep it?
You should be giving up some of your paycheck because science is also about social welfare and improvements in society. Funding on research leads to things like the internet. Would you have picked funding on computer networking in the 60s if it didn't sound so glitzy?
Picking and chosing isn't an option. Most people won't pick at all, especially all those people who make over $500,000 a year.
Also, are you qualified to know ALL sciences and what sciences are more useful to more people? You might want to fund viagra but some people want to do more research in Leukemia.
Which part of I think did you not understand? The I part, meaning I alone, or the think part, where I use some knowledge to form a possible conclusion within my brain?
I admit I don't have solid facts, but there have been articles here on slashdot and in other forums saying the amount of pure research in the US has been shrinking. I would look for the sources but I can't right now. Sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone else notice that Google Toolbar is for IE only, and PC IE to boot.
It's not that on the Mac, IE isn't being supported any more, or on the PC they refuse to support alternative browsers... it's that most other browsers support several sets of these functions already!
Every other browser blocks popups. Most browsers support a google search built into the app, most support an autofill function, and a few support spell checking in forms (I know for sure Safari does). The only thing none of the browsers support is the google map searching. All the other functions are relatively minor, though the option that allows you to view the page rank would be important to hard core web designers who optimize sites to be high on the search engine results.
Google toolbar is great for those few people who don't understand or comprehend alternative browsers, but this is becoming less and less news for slashdotters because most of us are switching, especially for our personal use, and geeks don't mind typing in maps.google.com or will design their own tool if it's that much of an inconvenience.
And of course, when possible, vote with dollars.
This is what I'm worried about. Qwest is setting a dangerous precident. First, how do you vote with dollars when there aren't that many alternatives in high speed ISP service. Second, if they call start blocking the service and tying in their own phone plans, what's to stop them?
The VOIP cry of censorship is just an attempt to get legislative backing for a business model.
Hogwash.
If Qwest told you that you could not use a Mac or linux in order to use their service, and that you had to use a Windows PC, would you sit there and take it? If Qwest said you could not use your own email but are required to use AOL would you sit there and take it?
If Qwest said "I'm sorry you cannot use Vonage/Skype/etc on our network, but you can use our service which costs you $40 a month!"
This is anti-competitive and should be illegal! This is the oil company also controlling the railroad company and the railroad company preventing competing oil companies from shipping, thus driving the oil company out of business. It's no different.
It's like a TV that can only pick up one network that it's tied to. I don't want to be stuck watching ABC and nothing else, I want to pick and chose my channels.
Blocking traffic based on a competing company should be illegal, plain and simple. An ISP provides a means of transporting data to you. When they become large and start using their market power to leverage other services while preventing competition by other services... well by jove I believe somewhere in the anti-trust acts there is already something that makes that illegal... though IANAL.
Some TV truths:
1) TV exists due to commercials. The idea is for networks to broadcast free programs, but then to get you to watch the advertisements. They only care that you watch the ads. Everything that doesn't affect you watching ads is not a problem, but things that do are a big problem (like VCR recording and timeshifting).
2) TV networks are experts at fudging the numbers. Big companies like numbers. Networks like numbers. If you can prove that you can get big numbers for a show, you can charge big money for your ad spots. Best Buy won't pay for an ad spot on CSI? Don't worry, Circuit city would love to steal Best Buy's time. Someone will pay the premiums if you can prove in some way they are worth it. Even with declining viewership networks are still charging big bucks for ad slots.
3) If TV networks could find a way to keep you captive on your computer, in order to watch an add, they would do it. You wouldn't be allowed to fast forward or even rewind, except maybe to certain predefined positions in a show.
ESPN is experimenting with a type of set up exactly like this. ESPN offers video news clips on the side bar of their main page. The format appears to be proprietary on the surface, you have to use their in-browser player, and you can't fast forward or rewind. You can select the clip you want, but many of the clips are prefaced by an add that you must watch to see the clip. The quality isn't great, but the idea could be easily improved on and scaled up.
The networks would then have to find a way to prove that this type of advertising will work, and that they can charge a premium for the commercials that preface or are inserted into a "show." Otherwise, they won't even think about offering downloads. I have 100% control over all MPEGs, MOVs and AVIs on my machine, so I'd never see an ad. That's unacceptable in today's network TV philosophy.
And finally there's the money aspect. A $1 a download for a show that has 26 episodes a year and gets 10,000 downloads is nothing compared to one 30 minute prime time ad slot. I'll bet you that if you had all 26 million viewers of CSI download every episode this season, the amount of money at $1 a download would potentially only be about 10% of the amounts companies pay for ads for the entire season, for just ads run during CSI.
Raising the price is not feasible... it's too easy to watch TV for free these days that a higher price point would kill it the chance at downloading it.
I'm an innocent girl and I lose my head when the date goes past 8PM.
Ha! Caught you in your little scam! We all know girls don't come to slashdot, especialyl single ones!
As mentioned in some posts already, they are simply trying to save money, and not just backing away from Firewire entirely. Most iPod users now are Windows users who don't have firewire.
My guess is they are trying to standardize on USB to cut costs.
USB 2.0 is good enough for simple file transfer for 3-8 MB music files and pictures. Syncing an iPod doesn't copy over all 40 GBs of music files at the same time from one device to the other. Firewire is better for high end device connectivity and that big ass multimedia some Mac users are famous for.
There is a problem though... they are leaving their older mac customers a little cold. Many older macs only have USB 1.0 but have firewire. Macs were unfortunately slow to adopt USB 2.0 compared to windows. Intel was trying to compete with the firewire speeds by getting USB up to a comparable transfer rate. Now in order to buy the same thing a 2 year old windows user can use, they have to buy an extra cable at extra expense.
It could be argued that the company that sells computers considered to be "second class" to the computing world is making second class users out of their Mac/iPod loyalists. Irony doesn't begin to describe it.
Not something really one can argue with. It is personal taste after all. I do like the show because I like the darkness and grittiness of it. The plot revolves around a disasterous attack that's nearly wiped out a people. To me that should be dark and gritty. The original felt way to happy, but considering it was late 1970s TV I'm willing to forgive that given the time frame. However, if they remade it just like that, it would have no place amongst today's TV shows.
The bottom line is that sci-fi can't make money like other shows can. That's why they are relgated to channels like sci-fi who are dedicated to sci-fi only... the definition of their channel is the only reason why they take the risk.
First of all, just because they are highly downloaded doesn't mean you are making money. networks make money off of commercials that you have to view. Everything computer geeks try to do often guarentees they don't make money in the current TV model. I'm not saying it's "wrong" or "illegal" to download or record BSG, but when you do that you render the nielson ratings useless because you aren't watching them the normal way. Since all the networks seem to care about is the nielson ratings, these shows die because you aren't being counted as a watcher of the show.
Again NO, I'm not saying go out and watch the commercials to keep BSG alive. Put your flamethrower away. I'm just saying...
Second, sci-fi costs more than reality TV shows, sit-coms, and police/courtroom dramas. There are no special effects, no special sets, and often no need for imagination. Every show is either been done before or is "ripped from the headlines" as Law and Order does waaaay too often now. This cuts into costs. You could do a cheezy show on friday which only gets you half the income (before cost) of enterprise, but if you only have to pay one tenth of the production cost of enterprise to get it on the air, your instantly making more profit.
The greatest thing about this new series is how subtle the entire show is. The most subtle thing about this is that the only big difference between the old and the new Starbuck is anatomical.
*Spoiler warning to plot points ahead*
If you notice, the original Starbuck was brash, vulgar (well at least for 1979 TV standards), and even hedonistic. The original Starbuck was a ladies man, but this new one had this fling with Apollo's brother before the war which was passionate and even a bit unwise. They are making it a bit more of a plot point than a character trait but there are ties. Starbuck in both series doesn't give a rats ass about the chain of command except when it really counts. Both are excellent pilots, and both take wild and crazy chances.
I also noticed in the pilot episode, when starbuck is saving apollo in that really crazy manner, Apollo asks her "Are you sure this is going to work?" She replies something along the lines of "Ummm I dunno! I hope!" I don't remember the words but I remember her face. It reminded me so much of same kind of face the original Starbuck would make when ever he had a crazy idea that someone asked him about, it was uncanny.
Okay and I did lie, there is one other important difference. The original series, despite trying to be serious, was still camp. It was network TV after all. This new series is grittier and darker and is less about the quest than it is the individual relationships and the personal journies everyone is taking in trying to survive. It's easy to lose site of the similarities between characters when the over all theme of the show is radically different.
The article is limiting it's scope to PDAs... Personal Digital Assistance. The iPod is a handheld digital device, but then again so is your CD player or DVD player. I don't have a universally accepted definition of a PDA but examples are the Palm devices and Pocket Windows devices which work as portable digital organizers but also run multiple other programs in the way you'd expect a very small computer to run.
Read them both! Don't just read Web Pro news, but read the article the author at Web Pro News linked to. These are not the same thing! Damn, first slashdot doesn't RTFA, now it's a disease spreading to other sites!
Look, Window's Smart Tags were not for internet explorer, they were for the entire operating system. Yes they extended to Word and other applications as well. It was a feature described to be in windows XP. And considering MS considers I.E. part of the operating system, and MS has a monopoly on the OS...
Smart Tags are a cool idea, but what really is evil about MS's version is the potential forced tie ins. Would this functionality have directed the user to specific MSN sites or sites people chose to partner on the functionality? Could you right click on a word and select MSN search in order to make it easier for someone? Yes, but by using this OS muscle to create a new OS which basically forces you to search MSN in this manner and makes it less convenience to search, say, Google, then you are using your monopoly power unfairly and it's, yes, Evil(tm).
You don't have to install Google toolbar, and you can configure it to go to other sites other than googles. Google quite possibly has a websearching monopoly, but then don't have a toolbar monopoly nor do they force you to install it on your machine.
I'm not a google apologist nor do I think Google will always be a Good (tm) company. However, I hate how Slashdotters continue to fail to see the relevance of Monopolistic power in the "Evil" equation.
That said, I hope this feature can be completely diactivated. I wouldn't even mind if this controversy did force them to remove it. NBC did this a long time ago with their NBCi initiative back at the start of the WW explosion. It sucked, and frankly, I don't find it all that convenient, even for beginning users. However that's just my opinion.
On Vonage's site, for best voice quality Vonage recommends 90 kbps. That's upstream traffic.
so depending on how many people you want to be able to talk at a time, you should multiply that by the number of people and come up with your upstream traffic requirement.
I'd also recommend you pad that number by 50 to 100% because other programs that try to upload at the same time don't often play nice with Vonage. The bandwidth is supposed to be dedicated while you are talking but other applications try to steal it regularly. It's also useful when you want to surf and talk at the same time to have more bandwidth than you absolutely need.
There are latency issues other people have posted on, you should look for more information on that as well, as I can only speak on the bandwidth situation.
I, for one, welcome the chance to have an MP3 player on my phone. Why? Because I don't want to carry 4 portable devices. 1 phone, 1 camera, 1 MP3 player, and one palm pilot. That's effectively what I want and it's what the Treo 600 and 650 give me. Well actually no, I don't really want the camera, but I can't get a high end phone these days without it so I'll deal for now.
Frankly, I'm going to spend the money on the phone, and I like having a portable entertainment and workstation on my hip at all times, which is what it is. I can take care of simple work tasks just from that phone, and i can entertain myself very easily while waiting or traveling. The Mp3 player doesn't store that many songs and i need a memory card, but hell I don't carry with me that many Mp3s! I'm never going to fill up a 10,000 song player... or even a 1,000 song one.
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean other people don't. So far the only thing I don't like about those phones are the cameras. Everything else does in fact work great.
Didn't someone say years ago IE won the browser war? Now they say IE needs to improve to win the war? And why the hell must we call this a war and why are americans so damn obsessed with calling things wars? (disclaimer: I am a US american).
This is business not war. Microsoft has the top "selling" (for lack of a better word) product that everyone just uses. However, someone else is making inroads in this capitalistic society and is giving them competition. Hopefully Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Opera and the like will give enough competition to break the monopoly and then all the browsers will improve with good healthy competition.
This type of thing is brought up way too much in the forums, and I'm surprised people continue to mod this stuff up. It's a fallacy and people need to learn that.
Such an argument has merit on it's face, but when you say this you are making a assumptive judgement on the part of the donors. Who's to say that the donors didn't already donate to tsunami relief? And who's to say what they already donated wasn't enough? And who's to say exactly how much per each person per amount of income is "the right amount" to donate?
The fact is you can't. Therefore the argument falls down because you can't apply it to each case uniformly. If you can prove that each and every single person in this campaign is a single white male earning $100,000+ a year and gave absolutely nothing top charity, then you can say it is a misappropriation.
I know I'm nitpicking but under the same argument, all money spent to produce Battlestar Galactica is also a misappropriation because it's for luxury and therefore should go to tsunami relief. Half of slashdot thinks trek should die but watch slashdot mobilize if Galactica suddenly dies an early death. How's that for a double standard?
IANASS (...Security Specialist) but to me, logic seems to state that having an open source system has an advantage in that the code is there for everyone to see, and that you can add your own code.
Take physical security as a metaphor. You want to secure your physical plant, so you hire a security specialist. You hire his services and he peruses your building. He suggests locks here, cameras there, and a whole plan on making your business less prone to break-ins and the like.
However, what's so great about this? Two things. One, everything is transparent. It's not like joe security officer is selling you a security package and not telling you where he's going to put that $50,000 you just paid for. He has to give you a full plan (the code!) that you approve of. Plus, the plan is customized for you. It's your plan, not someone elses. It's based on your requirements and your specifications. If a security company comes to you and says they'll put a camera in every room and be done with it, is that really enough for you?
Tie that back to open source. The code for open source security solutions are that plan you need. You can provide input on it and change it as much as you want to match your individual needs. And the code will be more unique than a commercial security program, which is the same from site to site.
I can't say that open source is necessarily for everyone. Maybe a camera in every room is all you need. Maybe you just need a security guard out front. The advantages I see here are businesses where security is an important part of business, and where companies don't want control of their own data in the hands of anyone but themselves.
Mark Pilgrim once blogged about him being a recovering alcoholic. He never blogged about work or the people he worked with. However, the people he worked for at the time found out about the blog, as he was not anonymous and did not take great pains to hide it. Well the company did a really sleazy (and in hindsight stupid) action of asking him to take this information down. They thought customer's knowing this would make the company look bad. Mark refused and was eventually fired. I was definitely on his side for this one. Something's wrong with society if you are embarrassed about alcoholism and this is not the way to handle it, IMHO. It's stupid because Mark is now working for IBM in their corporate blogging division. That former company gave up a prime employee and Mark's making far more money now.
However, a few weeks later a fellow blogger of Mark's was then fired for making comments about a coworker in her blog. Mark took up her side, but as I talked to Mark, and reviewed the comments, it was little more than bitching about someone who was simply a pain in the ass. Okay fine, you work with someone who's a pain in the ass, but would you tell that to that person's face? This is what you are doing. She refused her companies demands to remove the information and she was sacked. Frankly this was just stupid. If you have a problem with someone, you take up with your boss. If you can't fix it, bitching about it in your blog is not going to help. Might make you feel better, but it will make you feel worse when the company has to discipline you.
And I myself was subject to some policy, but this was a common sense situation early in the days of blogging. I blogged at lunch occasionally and I was proud of my site. My boss found out as I had emailed them from home once. So she checked it out and she saw one or two time stamps in the middle of the day. She asked me and I told her this was because I did it at lunch. She asked me if I could minimize the appearance of this (she didn't even ask me to stop!) I simply changed the timestamp on my posts to later in the day after work.
It's ironic, because, some of my topics deal with very confrontational stances on American society and politics. Hell let me be blunt, I flame 90% of americans in most posts. But she never once mentioned anything about content, because I never talk about the company or our customers in any way.
Sometimes, your principles are more important than your job, sometimes your principles are way skewed, and sometimes you just get lucky and work for understanding people. You have to understand what can get you in trouble and what can't, and balance that with what you absolutely have to speak out about.
If you must insult everyone, make sure you have a steady source of income from a private business that doesn't care what you say.
In other words, you are saying it's very hard to install spyware on a Linux or Mac and therefore no one actually codes spyware for the Mac because they neither get enough people to be worth while nor is it as easy as say on a windows box and therefore no effective spyware programs exist.
I would much rather you have said "yes you are naive, here are a list of Spyware apps for Linux and Mac." Instead you basically said "Yes it's possible to get spyware on your Mac or Linux box if someone bothered to code it and someone went around their ass to get to their elbow." What kind of logic is that? There is no rock hard evidence that either platform has any kind of penetration into spyware common on the PC.
PS, I just googled spyware for mac and found discussions on spyware, adds for PC spyware, and a mac company I'd never heard before with a broken website that promise a list of mac spyware "coming soon" and a forum that hasn't been updated by anyone in the company for over 6 months.
If your usual channels aren't working your CEO (if this isn't you) needs to get on the phone with this outsourced company's CEO. He will politely explain the importance of this, and they will work on an "action plan" to make the appropriate things happen and make sure you are properly updated each day on the progress.
If this bears no fruit, or the plan isn't being followed, or no one calls you, the CEO needs to get on the phone and threaten legal action for failure to deliver on a promised contract.
All the while your company needs to do a cost/benefit analysis of legal action on this company, and do it quickly. Line up all the documentation and make sure everything is well recorded. Consult a lawyer on what needs to be done to make sure a case is solid.
Because if threatening legal action doesn't move them, the only step left is the logical one, make the threat real.
What? Not one mention of how nice it would be to have a beowulf cluster of those in orbit? You people are slipping...
I have MAME, and my kid loves playing the retro games with me, especially side scrollers. Granted, he wouldn't pay a quarter for most of them, but the fact is he still considers them fun. Damn the economics, they wouldn't make money these days, but look at the free games you can get on pogo.com and cartoonnetwork.com. These are simple games and they entertain. You have to put up with an add to play a game like this nowadays. For the cutting edge you pay $50.
Also, do you know those atari joystick retro games where you just plug in the joystick to the TV and play games from 20 years ago? Well my son got a kick out of them. I showed him Adventure and Yars Revenge (oh how I pine for Yars Revenge!).
I went back to the toy store after Christmas to pick one up, and every toy store I found had them sold out. They may be retro, but these games are simpler and cheaper than Halo 2, WoW, Doom 3, and Half-life.
Only two dozen posts in and I see half of them appear to suggest blocking email from China. This is a good individual solution on an ISP by ISP basis but not a good universal solution. Businesses have to deal with other businesses in China, and well there are plenty of families who legitimately want to email from China to the US and back.
Any solution that involves blocking everything from China won't work for everyone, and every solution that tries to selectively opt in or selectively block from China is a greater expense to set up.
Considering most of the spam originating from China is poured into the US, and the money's paid to the ISPs are money flowing from out of the US economy and into China's, I hardly think they will care any time soon.
I'm censored from talking about breasts, so breast cancer and cooking chicken can no longer be talked about on TV?
Public radio is censored for talking about homosexuality?
People can't talk about sex education on TV?
Your last two points about censoring Pres. Bush and politicians are valid, but sex is where it starts. And where do you draw the line between pornography, art, and science? Once you try drawing a line, the people start trying to redefine the line in their favor in order to control you.
People try to control your behavior with language. They want control of you. If censorship starts there with sex, it will progress to politics and current events. To coin a cliche, its doubleplusungood.
So are you a man? So prostate cancer might be your personal favorite. But what about breast cancer? Not so important to you?
And women statistically make less money as a whole than men in the same position.
I'm also not advocating spending "a fortune" on research. I'm also not advocating that politicians decide what gets funded. That's the purpose of the national endowments. Scientists currently decide how much money is given to which projects. Politicians only control the amount of money.
And we don't have to pay higher taxes. How about taking away from the military? Or out of farm subsidies that benefit corporate farms? Also, we were doing just fine before the tax cut a few years ago. Why do we need to keep it?
You should be giving up some of your paycheck because science is also about social welfare and improvements in society. Funding on research leads to things like the internet. Would you have picked funding on computer networking in the 60s if it didn't sound so glitzy?
Picking and chosing isn't an option. Most people won't pick at all, especially all those people who make over $500,000 a year.
Also, are you qualified to know ALL sciences and what sciences are more useful to more people? You might want to fund viagra but some people want to do more research in Leukemia.
Which part of I think did you not understand? The I part, meaning I alone, or the think part, where I use some knowledge to form a possible conclusion within my brain?
I admit I don't have solid facts, but there have been articles here on slashdot and in other forums saying the amount of pure research in the US has been shrinking. I would look for the sources but I can't right now. Sorry.