Having owned two N900s until both died, I agree with you on the most part. After I switched over to a SG3, I would say the newest version of Android is pretty solid. Now granted it is still not a dev machine, but the browser is bang on now, even as it has a desktop view mode. The accuracy of the capacitive screen is still lacking but tolerable.
As much as I hate to say it, the N900 was an experiment. As a consumer product, it failed based on sales miserably. But it brought out interesting results. The die hard fans love it and STILL love it, if you see the supporting community at maemo.org. I would still be using it if the microusb port was still functional and a reflash didn't kill the emmc.
Oh and as a tribute to the physical keyboard, you can see my franken-mod for the SG3.
You're probably speaking to the wrong crowd here if you think people are against progress, increased efficiency and automation on slashdot. But I get what you mean. I wouldn't extend the argument to the extreme and compare using my time to my wage when it's a hobby. But here's where I will segue into my argument.
My perspective on the decline of DIY is more rooted in the decay of informed choice when purchasing products. Given your average slashdotter, if some electronic device breaks out of warranty, chances are good that they'll pry it open to take a peak. With some basic knowledge of wires (and a sliding scale of electronic familiarity), you might be able to diagnose whether it's reparable or not. Maybe. But at least there's a curiosity in whether something is fixable before just tossing the product out. These days, I would argue the average non-slashdotter would probably just pitch it without even considering the debate on whether it's worth the person's time to investigate and fix the product. It's that curiosity and trouble-shooting drive that is being lost. Without asking that question, you lose the ability to make an informed choice before actually determining whether something should be fixed or replaced.
This can be extended to clothing. My girlfriend loves making new clothing from material and (to a lesser extent) repairing clothing that she likes.
So I agree that the DIY knowledge is useful but not profitable. However, it's the initiative to even consider DIY that is being lost and I think the repercussions are far worse for our society in general rather than it being considered a waste of free time.
While you have made some valid points on the evolution of options since the inception of digital distribution, I don’t think you should bite into any virtuous piracy “cause”. At the end of the day it’s come down to real world choices. How much is this service/product worth to me? In the western countries, we’ve become accustomed to just paying the sticker price for products or not buying it at all. In many parts of the world, people bargain for the products they want to buy. Think of how successful ebay, craigslist and other sites are nowadays.
My point related to piracy is that it will always exist in one form or another. The benefit from the public’s standpoint is that now there is leverage from the public to drive down prices (sort of bargaining if you will). The producers will have to carefully ask themselves, “How much will people be willing to pay for this service/product of this quality and convenience?” rather than, “How much can I charge and get away with it?”.
Of course, central assumptions I have are that:
1) People are generally willing to do the right thing.
2) Some people will pirate material whether they like it or not.
So people have touched upon censorship, but in the big picture, is this a future trend? China's current implementation of the Great Firewall and now this? This may have a larger impact than most people think and I'm not big on fear mongering. Reduction of the access and free exchange of information breaks down the fundamental usefulness of the internet and if greater organizations (I say organizations because even if a country doesn't do it, but ISP monopolies worldwide do, the results are similar) continue down this path the internet will devolve into something resembling television: a passive experience with controlled and filtered inputs and outputs.
Last tin-foil hat thought: The reason I'm concerned about this is that I've been confident that these attempts to censor or filter the internet in the past were futile because, like water confronting a rock in its path, the information will flow around the damage. But if things go the way of "1984", the general public just won't know of any better if they are brought up in a filtered environment and what they're missing. I'm straining my memory, but I believe in Orwell's book, they removed terms to describe dissent or hatefulness so that people would be unable to express their dissatisfaction. AOL users thought that their world WAS, in fact, the internet until they changed ISPs.
Alright I'm digressing. If I lived in Australia, I would fight tooth and nail against this. To redirect the "Think of the Children" play, even if they are not subject to illegal or lewd material early on, it's still out there. A more reasonable action would be educating in school safe surfing of the web, how to determine reliable and unreliable sources and proper teaching of ethics in a more subjective and technologically advanced world. My last example is this: Would you rather have teach someone walking down the street why its important not to break into someone's house or line the doors and windows with spikes and barbwire? Think of the children!!!!
While I agree with the premise that leadership stems from delegating responsibility, I respectfully disagree with the premise that the president should not know any science. I'm sure that remark was to emphasize your point so allow me to refine it. A good leader will need to understand summaries and the potential of the concepts given by the head delegates. Don't forget one of the purposes of a hierarchy is to provide a system of checks and balances as actions and decisions are distilled to the top. I'm not advocating that the president should hold a Ph.D., but sufficient knowledge to comprehend the scope of the topics presented to him/her. On the other hand, by sufficient knowledge, I do not mean a 30 second description of Stem Cell research presented by Beaker from the Muppets either.
A proper debate about the impact of various scientific topics could be potentially interesting, but more than likely it will just be a mock fest as you have described. (*sigh*)
I am not a NFL apologist, but did anybody ever think that the NFL might have employed a team of mouth breathing drones to simply scour the internet to find material and sending out take-down notices? I imagine they may not even log any details of the content nor do they cross check to see if a previous notice was already sent. The whole process is merely a scare tactic only. Again, I clearly this is the NFL's fault for not researching the matter thoroughly. The only resolution I see out of this is better screening procedures for content violations by the NFL and possibly (a thin chance) that the DMCA is modified to allow repeat take-down notices. Fair use does not come out ahead unfortunately...
Oddly enough I happened to check the ingredients on the side of a container of Activa yoghurt and in Canada, the particular strain of probiotic bacteria has a DIN (Drug Identification Number) beside it. Due to my strobe light attention span, I didn't check it out on the Drug Product Database, but I figured it should be mentioned here. I'll probably go and follow up on that at lunch. Hey, pretty lights! (*wanders away aimlessly*)
While I do appreciate the SNL reference, I see many posts referring to this man's inability to get women with this theatre as a knee jerk response. Guys, this is Slashdot! News for Nerds! We should be over the whole "high school" mentality where every single action is interpreted as an indicator of sexual prowess. I think it's an awesome achievement regardless of whether it gets him laid or not. Let him have his time in the spotlight for crying out loud.
I like your "Moving Pictures in a Dark Theater" concept and I would like my work to be shown via this medium. It's called "Billy and the Clonasaurus"...
Just remember that rights and privileges come at a cost of constant vigilance. The fact that we're all riled up at the threat of the eradication of fair use is a good start. But that's not enough. We have to do our part as mentioned in previous posts like writing letters to our MPs and spreading awareness to those "less informed". Letters mean more right now than ever due to our fragile minority government which means that the MPs are more sensitive to their constituents' concerns. So in short, do your part fellow Canadians! Your responsibility doesn't start and end at the votes. Help, nay MAKE, your Members of Parliament do their jobs by telling them that this is an urgent concern and it will cost him/her your vote!
While I understand that whole "high score" mentality, I wonder if this will ever become a gaming benchmark of sorts. In TFA it states that companies are making the gamers earn the points in some ways, but that can turn very easily especially if this phenomenon is as catchy as it sounds. I can see EA (EA is just an easy target) dumping tons of achievement points in all their games so that the gamers struggling for top positions will have to play just to earn easy points and that may cause other publishers to do the same. Does anybody else know of the "rules" Microsoft has set out for this? Personally I don't have a 360 so I don't know if this is really a concern. But then again, this is Slashdot and I have to put in my two cents (at work no less).
P.S. I have nothing against EA. My buddy works there and loves it!
FYI, Final Fantasy VII and VIII were ported to the PC back in the hay day, so it was not exclusive to the console. I would provide the links, but you can google it for yourself. Time to get back to work...
I believe this is a brilliant marketing strategy by Microsoft. By offering legitamate services for "rentals", your gaming machine has become a pay-per-view box. Granted that downloading full HD quality content for movies may be time/bandwidth consuming, I can see a potential market for it. I am surprised nobody mentioned this before, but the original xbox was capable of this via xbox media center app (not the MS version) in a sense (i.e. download, transfer, watch or download and stream). While part of me is disappointed that MS did not give credit where credit is due, but I am glad they are making this service available to those with an Xbox Live subscription. Damn you Microsoft, but kudos!
Side note:
This is also a big step in changing the distribution channels of video media at least in regards to television. Yeah, yeah on-demand television, TIVO and itunes video are already available, but I think (at least in the U.S. and Canada) that this may represent a major shift in viewing habits if this service takes off. Imagine this generation of kids learning to watch their TV shows NOT from a certain channel, but from a downloadable list. Now the article did not address the issue of commercials (*shudder*), but in the best case scenario where the content is advertising-free, this service may make some serious competition with cable. That's my 2 cents./side note
It's just understood that any system that can be exploited for profit will be exploited for profit. So what can be done about this? I don't know if a human screening process will be effective or efficient since anybody can start up this sort of fake information site quickly and easily. Clearly people have found ways to trick Page Rank. Now I don't know too much about Page Rank, but how about having another variable involved to reward the age of a site (without it changing hands)? That screen could eliminate upstarts out for a quick buck. For example, some of the opinions and stories posted on Slashdot have been downright garbage (*ducks*), but since it's established for a long time, it carries a pretty good reputation and that's a good verification for authority of content validity right? I know it's not the best example for ORIGINAL content, but you get the idea.
I wouldn't worry about this hurting the sales even though it's been out in Japan for ages. Some companies (I don't know about square-enix) have formed agreements with fansub sites to help promote the official release and either turning a blind eye or allowing the fansubbed version to be downloaded. That is, until the official release is out and then they politely ask the people to stop distributing the non-official version. I think it's a good practice especially one that works with the flow of information on the net. I don't have the reference links on hand, but you can google it yourselves. Anyways, if you're a pirate, you're always going to pirate. If you're a die-hard fan, you're going to buy it even if it sucks. At least this type of good practice will make the consumer feel better about shelling out money for a good product.
Ahh, the days when dual 5 1/4 inch floppies were a luxury. You know where you boot with dos 3.1 in the first drive and run your app on the second? I remember running DisplayWrite or one of the first Word Perfects and the thesaurus/spelling floppy was on an extra disk. You needed to swap it to spell check and swap it back when it was done. Needless to say, that my reluctance to switch disks helped improve my vigilance in spelling. Oh and with the black and green display, the movie "The Matrix" really hit a nostalgic chord in my heart. Good times.
If that's true, then we have nothing to worry about for the time being. Personally I think we (consumer/industry) should start taking more responsibility for all our purchases, especially being in a first world country. Yeah it's fun to upgrade our machines every month, but really we're adding to the piles and piles of computer junk that ends up in landfills. You want a solution to the copper? How about reusing it from old computers and computer accessories? The chinese do it under horrible conditions and contaminate village waters, but what about implementing an efficient factory-style process for recycling and re-introducing metals back into the manufacturing stream? Sure it could be a herculean effort, but come on, we're a first world country and I think it's about time to use our innovative minds in other areas.
Oh and BTW, I'm not some idealistic hippie, I'm just a fan of reusing old machines. Hell, I still have a P90 running linux in the basement as my router.
I understand that most technical writers are just trying to target the masses and trying to keep it simple for them. However, the reason for that is to convey the message accurately. I put emphasis on that since they are the ones reaching the "Normal People" and have their attention and their trust. Of all people that should watch their use of buzzwords or technical jargon, it's them. As a self-proclaimed geek, I can holler out all the misuses of terms in the mainstream media until I'm blue in the face (or more efficiently and painlessly, post them on some website), but I won't reach as many people as they do. So I'm in agreement with the grandparent post on this one. Words do matter and the ones with the responsibility to use them correctly should do so with greater prejudice. I, on the otherhand, will watch from the stands and throw beer cans at them once in a while.
Slashdot Mirror
Having owned two N900s until both died, I agree with you on the most part. After I switched over to a SG3, I would say the newest version of Android is pretty solid. Now granted it is still not a dev machine, but the browser is bang on now, even as it has a desktop view mode. The accuracy of the capacitive screen is still lacking but tolerable.
As much as I hate to say it, the N900 was an experiment. As a consumer product, it failed based on sales miserably. But it brought out interesting results. The die hard fans love it and STILL love it, if you see the supporting community at maemo.org. I would still be using it if the microusb port was still functional and a reflash didn't kill the emmc.
Oh and as a tribute to the physical keyboard, you can see my franken-mod for the SG3.
You're probably speaking to the wrong crowd here if you think people are against progress, increased efficiency and automation on slashdot. But I get what you mean. I wouldn't extend the argument to the extreme and compare using my time to my wage when it's a hobby. But here's where I will segue into my argument. My perspective on the decline of DIY is more rooted in the decay of informed choice when purchasing products. Given your average slashdotter, if some electronic device breaks out of warranty, chances are good that they'll pry it open to take a peak. With some basic knowledge of wires (and a sliding scale of electronic familiarity), you might be able to diagnose whether it's reparable or not. Maybe. But at least there's a curiosity in whether something is fixable before just tossing the product out. These days, I would argue the average non-slashdotter would probably just pitch it without even considering the debate on whether it's worth the person's time to investigate and fix the product. It's that curiosity and trouble-shooting drive that is being lost. Without asking that question, you lose the ability to make an informed choice before actually determining whether something should be fixed or replaced.
This can be extended to clothing. My girlfriend loves making new clothing from material and (to a lesser extent) repairing clothing that she likes.
So I agree that the DIY knowledge is useful but not profitable. However, it's the initiative to even consider DIY that is being lost and I think the repercussions are far worse for our society in general rather than it being considered a waste of free time.
While you have made some valid points on the evolution of options since the inception of digital distribution, I don’t think you should bite into any virtuous piracy “cause”. At the end of the day it’s come down to real world choices. How much is this service/product worth to me? In the western countries, we’ve become accustomed to just paying the sticker price for products or not buying it at all. In many parts of the world, people bargain for the products they want to buy. Think of how successful ebay, craigslist and other sites are nowadays. My point related to piracy is that it will always exist in one form or another. The benefit from the public’s standpoint is that now there is leverage from the public to drive down prices (sort of bargaining if you will). The producers will have to carefully ask themselves, “How much will people be willing to pay for this service/product of this quality and convenience?” rather than, “How much can I charge and get away with it?”. Of course, central assumptions I have are that: 1) People are generally willing to do the right thing. 2) Some people will pirate material whether they like it or not.
So people have touched upon censorship, but in the big picture, is this a future trend? China's current implementation of the Great Firewall and now this? This may have a larger impact than most people think and I'm not big on fear mongering. Reduction of the access and free exchange of information breaks down the fundamental usefulness of the internet and if greater organizations (I say organizations because even if a country doesn't do it, but ISP monopolies worldwide do, the results are similar) continue down this path the internet will devolve into something resembling television: a passive experience with controlled and filtered inputs and outputs.
Last tin-foil hat thought: The reason I'm concerned about this is that I've been confident that these attempts to censor or filter the internet in the past were futile because, like water confronting a rock in its path, the information will flow around the damage. But if things go the way of "1984", the general public just won't know of any better if they are brought up in a filtered environment and what they're missing. I'm straining my memory, but I believe in Orwell's book, they removed terms to describe dissent or hatefulness so that people would be unable to express their dissatisfaction. AOL users thought that their world WAS, in fact, the internet until they changed ISPs.
Alright I'm digressing. If I lived in Australia, I would fight tooth and nail against this. To redirect the "Think of the Children" play, even if they are not subject to illegal or lewd material early on, it's still out there. A more reasonable action would be educating in school safe surfing of the web, how to determine reliable and unreliable sources and proper teaching of ethics in a more subjective and technologically advanced world. My last example is this: Would you rather have teach someone walking down the street why its important not to break into someone's house or line the doors and windows with spikes and barbwire? Think of the children!!!!
/rant over. I'm getting some coffee.
While I agree with the premise that leadership stems from delegating responsibility, I respectfully disagree with the premise that the president should not know any science. I'm sure that remark was to emphasize your point so allow me to refine it. A good leader will need to understand summaries and the potential of the concepts given by the head delegates. Don't forget one of the purposes of a hierarchy is to provide a system of checks and balances as actions and decisions are distilled to the top. I'm not advocating that the president should hold a Ph.D., but sufficient knowledge to comprehend the scope of the topics presented to him/her. On the other hand, by sufficient knowledge, I do not mean a 30 second description of Stem Cell research presented by Beaker from the Muppets either.
A proper debate about the impact of various scientific topics could be potentially interesting, but more than likely it will just be a mock fest as you have described. (*sigh*)
I am not a NFL apologist, but did anybody ever think that the NFL might have employed a team of mouth breathing drones to simply scour the internet to find material and sending out take-down notices? I imagine they may not even log any details of the content nor do they cross check to see if a previous notice was already sent. The whole process is merely a scare tactic only. Again, I clearly this is the NFL's fault for not researching the matter thoroughly. The only resolution I see out of this is better screening procedures for content violations by the NFL and possibly (a thin chance) that the DMCA is modified to allow repeat take-down notices. Fair use does not come out ahead unfortunately...
Oddly enough I happened to check the ingredients on the side of a container of Activa yoghurt and in Canada, the particular strain of probiotic bacteria has a DIN (Drug Identification Number) beside it. Due to my strobe light attention span, I didn't check it out on the Drug Product Database, but I figured it should be mentioned here. I'll probably go and follow up on that at lunch. Hey, pretty lights! (*wanders away aimlessly*)
While I do appreciate the SNL reference, I see many posts referring to this man's inability to get women with this theatre as a knee jerk response. Guys, this is Slashdot! News for Nerds! We should be over the whole "high school" mentality where every single action is interpreted as an indicator of sexual prowess. I think it's an awesome achievement regardless of whether it gets him laid or not. Let him have his time in the spotlight for crying out loud.
I like your "Moving Pictures in a Dark Theater" concept and I would like my work to be shown via this medium. It's called "Billy and the Clonasaurus"...
Principal Skinner
One of the first principles of toxicology is that everything toxic since toxicity depends on dose and duration of exposure. Case in point.
Just remember that rights and privileges come at a cost of constant vigilance. The fact that we're all riled up at the threat of the eradication of fair use is a good start. But that's not enough. We have to do our part as mentioned in previous posts like writing letters to our MPs and spreading awareness to those "less informed". Letters mean more right now than ever due to our fragile minority government which means that the MPs are more sensitive to their constituents' concerns. So in short, do your part fellow Canadians! Your responsibility doesn't start and end at the votes. Help, nay MAKE, your Members of Parliament do their jobs by telling them that this is an urgent concern and it will cost him/her your vote!
While I understand that whole "high score" mentality, I wonder if this will ever become a gaming benchmark of sorts. In TFA it states that companies are making the gamers earn the points in some ways, but that can turn very easily especially if this phenomenon is as catchy as it sounds. I can see EA (EA is just an easy target) dumping tons of achievement points in all their games so that the gamers struggling for top positions will have to play just to earn easy points and that may cause other publishers to do the same. Does anybody else know of the "rules" Microsoft has set out for this? Personally I don't have a 360 so I don't know if this is really a concern. But then again, this is Slashdot and I have to put in my two cents (at work no less).
P.S. I have nothing against EA. My buddy works there and loves it!
FYI, Final Fantasy VII and VIII were ported to the PC back in the hay day, so it was not exclusive to the console. I would provide the links, but you can google it for yourself. Time to get back to work...
I believe this is a brilliant marketing strategy by Microsoft. By offering legitamate services for "rentals", your gaming machine has become a pay-per-view box. Granted that downloading full HD quality content for movies may be time/bandwidth consuming, I can see a potential market for it. I am surprised nobody mentioned this before, but the original xbox was capable of this via xbox media center app (not the MS version) in a sense (i.e. download, transfer, watch or download and stream). While part of me is disappointed that MS did not give credit where credit is due, but I am glad they are making this service available to those with an Xbox Live subscription. Damn you Microsoft, but kudos! Side note: This is also a big step in changing the distribution channels of video media at least in regards to television. Yeah, yeah on-demand television, TIVO and itunes video are already available, but I think (at least in the U.S. and Canada) that this may represent a major shift in viewing habits if this service takes off. Imagine this generation of kids learning to watch their TV shows NOT from a certain channel, but from a downloadable list. Now the article did not address the issue of commercials (*shudder*), but in the best case scenario where the content is advertising-free, this service may make some serious competition with cable. That's my 2 cents. /side note
It's just understood that any system that can be exploited for profit will be exploited for profit. So what can be done about this? I don't know if a human screening process will be effective or efficient since anybody can start up this sort of fake information site quickly and easily. Clearly people have found ways to trick Page Rank. Now I don't know too much about Page Rank, but how about having another variable involved to reward the age of a site (without it changing hands)? That screen could eliminate upstarts out for a quick buck. For example, some of the opinions and stories posted on Slashdot have been downright garbage (*ducks*), but since it's established for a long time, it carries a pretty good reputation and that's a good verification for authority of content validity right? I know it's not the best example for ORIGINAL content, but you get the idea.
I wouldn't worry about this hurting the sales even though it's been out in Japan for ages. Some companies (I don't know about square-enix) have formed agreements with fansub sites to help promote the official release and either turning a blind eye or allowing the fansubbed version to be downloaded. That is, until the official release is out and then they politely ask the people to stop distributing the non-official version. I think it's a good practice especially one that works with the flow of information on the net. I don't have the reference links on hand, but you can google it yourselves. Anyways, if you're a pirate, you're always going to pirate. If you're a die-hard fan, you're going to buy it even if it sucks. At least this type of good practice will make the consumer feel better about shelling out money for a good product.
Ahh, the days when dual 5 1/4 inch floppies were a luxury. You know where you boot with dos 3.1 in the first drive and run your app on the second? I remember running DisplayWrite or one of the first Word Perfects and the thesaurus/spelling floppy was on an extra disk. You needed to swap it to spell check and swap it back when it was done. Needless to say, that my reluctance to switch disks helped improve my vigilance in spelling. Oh and with the black and green display, the movie "The Matrix" really hit a nostalgic chord in my heart. Good times.
If that's true, then we have nothing to worry about for the time being. Personally I think we (consumer/industry) should start taking more responsibility for all our purchases, especially being in a first world country. Yeah it's fun to upgrade our machines every month, but really we're adding to the piles and piles of computer junk that ends up in landfills. You want a solution to the copper? How about reusing it from old computers and computer accessories? The chinese do it under horrible conditions and contaminate village waters, but what about implementing an efficient factory-style process for recycling and re-introducing metals back into the manufacturing stream? Sure it could be a herculean effort, but come on, we're a first world country and I think it's about time to use our innovative minds in other areas. Oh and BTW, I'm not some idealistic hippie, I'm just a fan of reusing old machines. Hell, I still have a P90 running linux in the basement as my router.
I understand that most technical writers are just trying to target the masses and trying to keep it simple for them. However, the reason for that is to convey the message accurately. I put emphasis on that since they are the ones reaching the "Normal People" and have their attention and their trust. Of all people that should watch their use of buzzwords or technical jargon, it's them. As a self-proclaimed geek, I can holler out all the misuses of terms in the mainstream media until I'm blue in the face (or more efficiently and painlessly, post them on some website), but I won't reach as many people as they do. So I'm in agreement with the grandparent post on this one. Words do matter and the ones with the responsibility to use them correctly should do so with greater prejudice. I, on the otherhand, will watch from the stands and throw beer cans at them once in a while.