Outifts like that pee me off, both the "we'll make you a CMS (that you don't reall need) for $30,000" and the we'll charge you to correct even a spelling mistake.
Back when I was doing websites for a living - or more accurately, for just enough money to buy beer and pizza, but not pay the rent - I'd always include some basic "CMS". Usually it was just the ability for them to manage their own News page, where each article could optionally have an image. Sometimes there could be a pinned Headline article and occasionally one or two of the other pages were hardcoded to pull from the "News" database too (often NewsID=1,2 etc). And that was at no extra cost. And if they emailed me a photo to replace one of the static ones in place I'd do it there and then, would take about ten seconds off my busy beer and pizza schedule so I wouldn't charge them.
Obviously I'm never going to be super rich, but that's OK, I don't want to assfuck everyone around me either.
Are you *really* going to say no when a you can get $0000's (yes that's 4 zeros) from a big company by developing a web app/site for them because they require it to work in IE6/7? There are lots of reason's why this might be the case, not just slow/lazy/non-existent IT department. Some dept's have to audit and justify all software upgrades to some kind of higher tier of management, even "free" ones, some have backwards compatibility issues with their existing internal applications, or require an ActiveX/COM plugin.
If you don't want to take the job because it seems like too much effort or hard work, then fine, someone else will, and they'll take the money too. But don't get all preachy round here because of your supposed purity, some of us have bills to pay and mouths to feed and a job is a job and if you do the job well and it comes out Shiney on their crappy old IE6 Pentium 2's then they're also likely to recommend you to the next firm. Queue up those digits.
Dont worry, the lawyers have a new plan and this one is SURE to get the RIAA a decent return: Suing iPod owners who only listen to one earphone and let a friend pirate the music through the other without paying a dime! The people who use headphone splitters so that two listeners can get full stereo are going to pay octupal damages too!
Actually, Brazil has been plenty socking it to the (Gov't of the) USA lately, as part of one of the BRIC bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China) of large economy's that don't give a crap what the USA has to say about a lot of issues. Take for example Brazil hosting negotiations and setting up a deal between Turkey and Iran regarding uranium enrichment. USA was not pleased and made a lot of waa waa noises at the UN but as far as those three are concerned the USA can stuff off and get off their lawn, thank you.
The USA is still the most powerful nation on earth, but they're at a tipping point and it's not just the BRIC countries that are coming to realize that they can do whatever the hell they like and the USA can just shut up
>Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it.
This is bullshit (though it may be bullshit from people upon high who have no idea what they're talking about). They simplified a lot of UK law a couple of years ago with the "Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008" and "Business Protection Misleading Regulations 2008". Essentially they made consumer protection laws deliberately vague in the form of making it illegal to "Trade Unfairly".
Phoning someone, conning them into installing malware, then only removing it after receiving payment sounds pretty Unfair to me.
Actually, I think your comment, and Prince (to a extent) is correct. To many us slashdotters the internet is that place filled with numbers that we used to connect to from our bedrooms over (in my really lucky bleeding edge case) a 28kbps modem late at night. That internet is now difficult to find, and is being somehwat replicated by Tor and freenet, instead we have the iNet, with an iPhone interface where the internet is transparent and can be ignored by the general population. You click the icon on your phone, shit happens, but there are no freaky deaky numbers or command lines involved, It Just Works and your pizza arrives in less than 30 minutes.
Apologies for directing this at you but why is cutting from , then pasting to the exact same location considered a "raise fat alarm" error in file managers? Windows does it too. In my humble opinion it should just do it (or silently do nothing). So the user did something they didnt actually intend to do, big deal. To me this is one of those software engineers over engineering something and finding a problem where there actually isnt one. Alerts, warnings and popups that serve no purpose but to confuse, scare or downright annoy the user who wants the computer to just fucking do it.
Surely any device that can understand MRSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_RSS) can do the job? Consider an MRSS feed a "Channel" that can contain Video, Audio and Image items as well as links to other channels. From (http://www.reelseo.com/mrss-rss-mrss-video-syndication/):
RSS and MRSS have changed the way video distribution works. The specification can be used by anyone. The process is very simple. Just add the MRSS extensions to your RSS feed and you can deliver video content to your audience without forcing them to check on the website every now and then. What is more, you can add advertisements (both banner and discrete text) in the feeds. With advertisements in place, the content generator can earn some money and this incentive allows him to improve the quality of video content.
I just hope that DRM'ed licenced feeds are only allowed on Canvas and that user mashed up cc-licenced WebM/Ogg-Vorbis Channels are also able to be easily added to the "EPG" by the click of a web link.
Oh, and MRSS has been around since 2004, why has this taken so long and why does the BBC seem to think this will cost hundreds of millions of GBP to re-invent?
I agree, I think that there should be a way to federalize patent licencing - so all patent licensing was centrally administered and all terms were identical. The way it would work is: you patent something and then anyone who wants to use that tech pays the fee to the patent office. If you think someone is using your patent without paying the fee you bring it to the patent office's attention and they investigate, and if so the perpetrator simply pays backdated fees (plus perhaps the costs of the investigation). Once all the fees are in for, say, a year. The patent office take their cut (to pay for all the admin) and then write you a cheque for the remainder. Basically ensuring all patent terms are RAND.
Very succinct description of the state as I understand it too. Note that Nokia are simply suing for backdated licensing fees for their patents whilst Apple are suing to prevent their competitors using multitouch at all, reinforces the point that apple want it to themselves.
OK, so Android and iPhone are battling it out with their swish special effects laden smart phones but i have a question, do they need an always on net connection to be any use? Some of us have internet at home and work and a wifi enabled phone for some of the times in between and can manage a bus/train ride without having to check myface and dont see the need to fork over a monthly fee just to use our phone. I'm not trying to sound like a grumpy old man, i happily tweet via sms but if i dont want to use the net connection for anything in particular then i turn it off. actually i turn it on, check email, weather, news, twitter, turn it off. I'm happy for the connect/disconnect to be transparent but i dont want it sat there constantly updating a weather applet and checking everyone's facebook status while i'm asleep.
I wholeheartedly agree. As a matter of fact i'd actually go further and strip out a bunch of convenience features too. Like indicators that are supposed to turn themselves off. Except they seldom do it at the right time, if at all leading to peole not indicating when they should be or indicating when they shouldnt, respectively. I've been seriously considering taking apart the steering column in my car to work out how to do it for myself at least.
Modern drivers are lazy, electric windows i can understand but if a driver is too dumb to be able to flick a switch to turn a flashing orange light off by themselves it does not bode well for their ability to drive at all.
I agree with your points but would like to add my own. I like to be able to play games with a storyline/plot but there are often weeks (even months) between times that i play. So take the classic SCUMM games, if you dont remember a particular clue in a particular conversation you're SOL because characters dont usually repeat their clues after they've told you once (got stuck on this on Monkey Island 1 - because i forgot the guy in the prison cell had mentioned a cake his aunt had baked or something.)
My other big issue is games that get too hard and/or have locked areas you can't get to without remembering and mastering insane complex moves. Basically skateboarding/snowboarding/fighting/golfing/other sporty games. Maybe i'd just like to casually play on all the courses and get some basic points / achievments but i cant because i have to "unlock" half the game that i paid for to be able to play it. Couldnt they leave the courses/areas open but make the acievements require high levels of skill in them all (e.g. collect all the gold stars that are in really high up spots).
Yeah it probably does, but i was rambling about an open standard so that the video/image/audio formats are standard and the XML Channel/Feed format is standard so every mobile phone, desktop, telly and pocket watch with an internet connection could parse it very easily
Ever since the RSS vs ATOM war peaked (and fizzled) i've been waiting for a re-gopherisation of the internet, where files, videos, music, audio and pictures are all linked and indexxed by interconnected RSS feeds that dont include all the crud you have to wade through in web pages to get anywhere. Something akin to MRSS with png thumbnails and optional links to "buy the dvd box set now" where you could create your own Channels (feeds full of links to shows directly, or other feeds) and then browsable from your telly directly, i think i'm rambling
I've never owned any Apple (TM) hardware until 6 days ago when my dad gave me an old, pink iMac for my daughters to share. And whilst installing and configuring OS X I discovered that the close, minimise and do-something-else buttons are on the left of each window's title bar. But despite being over 30 and therefore unable to learn anything new i got used to it after about half an hour so, in all seriousness, what's your damage?
Everyone* on the planet has breasts and nipples. The two types of trouser monster are distributed half and half*. Everyone* who's undergone puberty has sex, usually for fun. One day everyone's naked pictures and sex stories will be on the internet and no one will care anymore, it might put a bunch of celebrity papparazi out of business because no one's career will be ruined because of naked videos or pictures because it wont be a big deal. Eventually.
About 6 years ago we had an Asteroids machine at my brother's arcade/amusement trading/repair business. The board was knackered and rather than take the time to rebuild it we sold it to someone who would, and the day before he was due to collect it I was moving it from out back towards the front of the workshop when i somehow slipped or tripped, dropped the barrow and essentially caught the entire thing on the back of my head. I then found myself in a somewhat Atlas-like pose but with the Asteroids cab atop myself instead of the Earth, although if you've ever handled one you'd find they weigh about the same as a planet. We always put the machines first, usually simple things like placing your hand between them and sharp parts of buildings you are manouvering them through so that you'll crush your hand rather than scratch the machine... This time I elected to crush my entire body to save the ancient beast, pulled about twelve muscles in the process of breaking its fall and returning it to vertical, I knew my body would heal but the machine would not.
Mine was mashing up the way that Visual Studio and SQL Management Studio work so that instead of viewing a whole source file in one go you'd have individual functions (etc) in individual windows. If you unmaximised the code window/tab in my mockup i'm not THAT far off:
Sigh, it's another kind of super injunction and of course there's a catch all, meaning it can be used not just against copyright infringment but "any issues of national security" or "any other matters which appear to the Court to be relevant". So Mr. Billy Footballer could seek an injunction to block a website because it has a photo of him snorting coke on it, probably.
From TFL:
97B Preventing access to specified online locations for the prevention of online copyright infringement (1) The High Court (in Scotland, the Court of Session) shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, requiring it to prevent access to online locations specified in the order of the Court for the prevention of online copyright infringement. (2) In determining whether to grant an injunction under subsection (1), the Court shall have regard to the following matters— (a) whether a substantial proportion of the content accessible at or via each specified online location infringes copyright, (b) the extent to which the operator of each specified online location has taken reasonable steps to prevent copyright infringement content being accessed at or via that online location or taken reasonable steps to remove copyright infringing content from that online location (or both), (c) whether the service provider has itself taken reasonable steps to prevent access to the specified online location, (d) any issues of national security raised by the Secretary of State. (e) the extent to which the copyright owner has made reasonable efforts to facilitate legal access to content, (f) the importance of preserving human rights, including freedom of expression, and the right to property, and (g) any other matters which appear to the Court to be relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Outifts like that pee me off, both the "we'll make you a CMS (that you don't reall need) for $30,000" and the we'll charge you to correct even a spelling mistake.
Back when I was doing websites for a living - or more accurately, for just enough money to buy beer and pizza, but not pay the rent - I'd always include some basic "CMS". Usually it was just the ability for them to manage their own News page, where each article could optionally have an image. Sometimes there could be a pinned Headline article and occasionally one or two of the other pages were hardcoded to pull from the "News" database too (often NewsID=1,2 etc). And that was at no extra cost. And if they emailed me a photo to replace one of the static ones in place I'd do it there and then, would take about ten seconds off my busy beer and pizza schedule so I wouldn't charge them.
Obviously I'm never going to be super rich, but that's OK, I don't want to assfuck everyone around me either.
Well, English is _technically_ my second language after Yorkshireman. Happy to be pulled up on it though, keep up the good work!
For those of us who operate in the real world.
Are you *really* going to say no when a you can get $0000's (yes that's 4 zeros) from a big company by developing a web app/site for them because they require it to work in IE6/7? There are lots of reason's why this might be the case, not just slow/lazy/non-existent IT department. Some dept's have to audit and justify all software upgrades to some kind of higher tier of management, even "free" ones, some have backwards compatibility issues with their existing internal applications, or require an ActiveX/COM plugin.
If you don't want to take the job because it seems like too much effort or hard work, then fine, someone else will, and they'll take the money too. But don't get all preachy round here because of your supposed purity, some of us have bills to pay and mouths to feed and a job is a job and if you do the job well and it comes out Shiney on their crappy old IE6 Pentium 2's then they're also likely to recommend you to the next firm. Queue up those digits.
Dont worry, the lawyers have a new plan and this one is SURE to get the RIAA a decent return: Suing iPod owners who only listen to one earphone and let a friend pirate the music through the other without paying a dime! The people who use headphone splitters so that two listeners can get full stereo are going to pay octupal damages too!
Actually, Brazil has been plenty socking it to the (Gov't of the) USA lately, as part of one of the BRIC bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China) of large economy's that don't give a crap what the USA has to say about a lot of issues. Take for example Brazil hosting negotiations and setting up a deal between Turkey and Iran regarding uranium enrichment. USA was not pleased and made a lot of waa waa noises at the UN but as far as those three are concerned the USA can stuff off and get off their lawn, thank you.
The USA is still the most powerful nation on earth, but they're at a tipping point and it's not just the BRIC countries that are coming to realize that they can do whatever the hell they like and the USA can just shut up
>Meanwhile, an assortment of British regulators have said there is nothing they can do to stop it.
This is bullshit (though it may be bullshit from people upon high who have no idea what they're talking about). They simplified a lot of UK law a couple of years ago with the "Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008" and "Business Protection Misleading Regulations 2008". Essentially they made consumer protection laws deliberately vague in the form of making it illegal to "Trade Unfairly".
Phoning someone, conning them into installing malware, then only removing it after receiving payment sounds pretty Unfair to me.
Actually, I think your comment, and Prince (to a extent) is correct. To many us slashdotters the internet is that place filled with numbers that we used to connect to from our bedrooms over (in my really lucky bleeding edge case) a 28kbps modem late at night. That internet is now difficult to find, and is being somehwat replicated by Tor and freenet, instead we have the iNet, with an iPhone interface where the internet is transparent and can be ignored by the general population. You click the icon on your phone, shit happens, but there are no freaky deaky numbers or command lines involved, It Just Works and your pizza arrives in less than 30 minutes.
Apologies for directing this at you but why is cutting from , then pasting to the exact same location considered a "raise fat alarm" error in file managers? Windows does it too. In my humble opinion it should just do it (or silently do nothing). So the user did something they didnt actually intend to do, big deal. To me this is one of those software engineers over engineering something and finding a problem where there actually isnt one. Alerts, warnings and popups that serve no purpose but to confuse, scare or downright annoy the user who wants the computer to just fucking do it.
Idiot me, should have been:
I just hope that not only DRM'ed licenced feeds are allowed on Canvas
Surely any device that can understand MRSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_RSS) can do the job? Consider an MRSS feed a "Channel" that can contain Video, Audio and Image items as well as links to other channels. From (http://www.reelseo.com/mrss-rss-mrss-video-syndication/):
I just hope that DRM'ed licenced feeds are only allowed on Canvas and that user mashed up cc-licenced WebM/Ogg-Vorbis Channels are also able to be easily added to the "EPG" by the click of a web link.
Oh, and MRSS has been around since 2004, why has this taken so long and why does the BBC seem to think this will cost hundreds of millions of GBP to re-invent?
I stand corrected, thank you
I agree, I think that there should be a way to federalize patent licencing - so all patent licensing was centrally administered and all terms were identical. The way it would work is: you patent something and then anyone who wants to use that tech pays the fee to the patent office. If you think someone is using your patent without paying the fee you bring it to the patent office's attention and they investigate, and if so the perpetrator simply pays backdated fees (plus perhaps the costs of the investigation). Once all the fees are in for, say, a year. The patent office take their cut (to pay for all the admin) and then write you a cheque for the remainder. Basically ensuring all patent terms are RAND.
Very succinct description of the state as I understand it too. Note that Nokia are simply suing for backdated licensing fees for their patents whilst Apple are suing to prevent their competitors using multitouch at all, reinforces the point that apple want it to themselves.
OK, so Android and iPhone are battling it out with their swish special effects laden smart phones but i have a question, do they need an always on net connection to be any use? Some of us have internet at home and work and a wifi enabled phone for some of the times in between and can manage a bus/train ride without having to check myface and dont see the need to fork over a monthly fee just to use our phone. I'm not trying to sound like a grumpy old man, i happily tweet via sms but if i dont want to use the net connection for anything in particular then i turn it off. actually i turn it on, check email, weather, news, twitter, turn it off. I'm happy for the connect/disconnect to be transparent but i dont want it sat there constantly updating a weather applet and checking everyone's facebook status while i'm asleep.
I wholeheartedly agree. As a matter of fact i'd actually go further and strip out a bunch of convenience features too. Like indicators that are supposed to turn themselves off. Except they seldom do it at the right time, if at all leading to peole not indicating when they should be or indicating when they shouldnt, respectively. I've been seriously considering taking apart the steering column in my car to work out how to do it for myself at least.
Modern drivers are lazy, electric windows i can understand but if a driver is too dumb to be able to flick a switch to turn a flashing orange light off by themselves it does not bode well for their ability to drive at all.
I agree with your points but would like to add my own. I like to be able to play games with a storyline/plot but there are often weeks (even months) between times that i play. So take the classic SCUMM games, if you dont remember a particular clue in a particular conversation you're SOL because characters dont usually repeat their clues after they've told you once (got stuck on this on Monkey Island 1 - because i forgot the guy in the prison cell had mentioned a cake his aunt had baked or something.)
My other big issue is games that get too hard and/or have locked areas you can't get to without remembering and mastering insane complex moves. Basically skateboarding/snowboarding/fighting/golfing/other sporty games. Maybe i'd just like to casually play on all the courses and get some basic points / achievments but i cant because i have to "unlock" half the game that i paid for to be able to play it. Couldnt they leave the courses/areas open but make the acievements require high levels of skill in them all (e.g. collect all the gold stars that are in really high up spots).
Yeah it probably does, but i was rambling about an open standard so that the video/image/audio formats are standard and the XML Channel/Feed format is standard so every mobile phone, desktop, telly and pocket watch with an internet connection could parse it very easily
Ever since the RSS vs ATOM war peaked (and fizzled) i've been waiting for a re-gopherisation of the internet, where files, videos, music, audio and pictures are all linked and indexxed by interconnected RSS feeds that dont include all the crud you have to wade through in web pages to get anywhere. Something akin to MRSS with png thumbnails and optional links to "buy the dvd box set now" where you could create your own Channels (feeds full of links to shows directly, or other feeds) and then browsable from your telly directly, i think i'm rambling
I've never owned any Apple (TM) hardware until 6 days ago when my dad gave me an old, pink iMac for my daughters to share. And whilst installing and configuring OS X I discovered that the close, minimise and do-something-else buttons are on the left of each window's title bar. But despite being over 30 and therefore unable to learn anything new i got used to it after about half an hour so, in all seriousness, what's your damage?
Everyone* on the planet has breasts and nipples. The two types of trouser monster are distributed half and half*. Everyone* who's undergone puberty has sex, usually for fun. One day everyone's naked pictures and sex stories will be on the internet and no one will care anymore, it might put a bunch of celebrity papparazi out of business because no one's career will be ruined because of naked videos or pictures because it wont be a big deal. Eventually.
* Approximate values.
Does this mean that Mallrats is illegal in AUS?
About 6 years ago we had an Asteroids machine at my brother's arcade/amusement trading/repair business. The board was knackered and rather than take the time to rebuild it we sold it to someone who would, and the day before he was due to collect it I was moving it from out back towards the front of the workshop when i somehow slipped or tripped, dropped the barrow and essentially caught the entire thing on the back of my head. I then found myself in a somewhat Atlas-like pose but with the Asteroids cab atop myself instead of the Earth, although if you've ever handled one you'd find they weigh about the same as a planet. We always put the machines first, usually simple things like placing your hand between them and sharp parts of buildings you are manouvering them through so that you'll crush your hand rather than scratch the machine... This time I elected to crush my entire body to save the ancient beast, pulled about twelve muscles in the process of breaking its fall and returning it to vertical, I knew my body would heal but the machine would not.
It's like the internet. It's slower but unfiltered.
Mine was mashing up the way that Visual Studio and SQL Management Studio work so that instead of viewing a whole source file in one go you'd have individual functions (etc) in individual windows. If you unmaximised the code window/tab in my mockup i'm not THAT far off:
http://cyclomedia.co.uk/blog/media/VisualStudioIDEConcept.png
Sigh, it's another kind of super injunction and of course there's a catch all, meaning it can be used not just against copyright infringment but "any issues of national security" or "any other matters which appear to the Court to be relevant". So Mr. Billy Footballer could seek an injunction to block a website because it has a photo of him snorting coke on it, probably.
From TFL:
97B Preventing access to specified online locations for the prevention of online copyright infringement
(1) The High Court (in Scotland, the Court of Session) shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, requiring it to prevent access to online locations specified in the order of the Court for the prevention of online copyright infringement.
(2) In determining whether to grant an injunction under subsection (1), the Court shall have regard to the following matters—
(a) whether a substantial proportion of the content accessible at or via each specified online location infringes copyright,
(b) the extent to which the operator of each specified online location has taken reasonable steps to prevent copyright infringement content being accessed at or via that online location or taken reasonable steps to remove copyright infringing content from that online location (or both),
(c) whether the service provider has itself taken reasonable steps to prevent access to the specified online location,
(d) any issues of national security raised by the Secretary of State.
(e) the extent to which the copyright owner has made reasonable efforts to facilitate legal access to content,
(f) the importance of preserving human rights, including freedom of expression, and the right to property, and
(g) any other matters which appear to the Court to be relevant.