The linked article does say illegal sales have gone down, and gets into some reasons why they haven't gone away completely:
Business has fallen since the law passed, but enough people think they can score a bargain, or simply donâ(TM)t trust the shiny new stores, to keep things moving.
These are temporary problems, and they don't translate well to other industries. For example, high quality, low tax medical marijuana resold on the black market can easily undercut legal recreational sales. But a black-market brothel can't undercut the legitimate ones as easily, or offer the same level of service -- lower prices tend to mean lower quality, and operating in the open gives the legal ones extra advantages (marketing, health inspection, integration with other businesses).
A study on anonymous hiring practices in France showed that anonymization resulted in fewer minority candidates getting hired. Their explanation is essentially that the companies who care enough about diversity to participate in this sort of study are already subtly biased in favor of minority candidates, and anonymization put a stop to it. Considering the amount of focus big tech companies are putting on diversity, there's a fair chance the same thing is happening here too.
Most of the Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with the web site. The site didn't have to implement those "2.8 million words of Obamacare regulations" as code: it only had to match patients up with insurance plans, which means interacting with dozens (hundreds?) of government and industry databases.
Some states, like California, managed to implement their sites without any of the problems of the federal exchange. The federal exchange mainly suffered from (1) being rushed, and (2) having to deal with a larger number of external systems than any single state exchange.
Except, you know, when it comes to issues like health care, reproductive rights, or Social Security.
Anyone who says there's no difference between the two parties is either (1) totally uninformed, (2) obsessed with fringe issues and apathetic about everything that the rest of us care about, or (3) trying to convince you to stay out of the election so their vote will count more.
I thought that the inclusion of (usually optional) parental control settings was part of parenting, deciding whether your kids are ready for whatever's behind the lock.
Covering up the parts of the world that make you uncomfortable is not parenting. Your kids will be exposed to that stuff whether you like it or not, so your job as a parent is to give them the knowledge and skills they need to understand it in context.
Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency
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Bitcoin Price Crashes
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· Score: 1
the history and current events are showing that the economy is benefiting in tandem with currency increasing in value, not losing.
Economic benefits in tandem with deflationary currency? Cite, please. I think quite a few Japanese people (not to mention the world's economists!) would be surprised to hear that.
Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency
on
Bitcoin Price Crashes
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· Score: 2
Again, I would not (while in sane mind) loan money in currency that is losing value, it is a losing proposition.
Funny, because banks make money hand over fist by doing exactly that.
Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency
on
Bitcoin Price Crashes
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· Score: 1
> Inflation also encourages lending and investing. - no it does not. Not in people who understand economics and accounting for real. Inflation discourages any desire to deal in that currency. Why would I want to move my wealth into a depreciating currency?
That's the point! Inflation discourages keeping your wealth in the form of cash, and encourages converting it to something else: lending it to a bank, buying stocks, real estate, or consumer goods, etc. Economic growth depends on people being willing to exchange their cash.
The Xoom fails in epic fashion on price - it has similar hardware specs as my $300 G Tablet for twice the price. I would never buy it because I'd feel like a huge sucker.
Maybe, but the Xoom is still comparable to the iPad in specs and price, so how do you explain the fact that people buy those?
And that's still hilarious, coming from someone who thinks it takes "years of training" to learn to operate a desktop OS because his wife can't figure it out.
Re:.NET - where deployment is just a word
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Mono Comes To Android
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· Score: 3, Funny
I can write a.NET program on native windows and when I launch the EXE on a machine with no.NET it will simply fail with an error number. It doesn't ask you if you want to put.NET on or even explain to you that you need it to run the program, it just fails.
So... the same thing that happens whenever you launch any other program with its required libraries missing? Try copying a native VC++ program to a system that doesn't have the VC++ runtime installed. It won't spoon-feed you information about what the VC++ runtime is, why you need it, where to get it, and how to install it; it'll just give you a cryptic error.
If you want to do deployment properly, you need an installer. With Visual Studio it's dead simple to make a setup program that'll check for prerequisites like.NET and install them automatically.
2 year olds can learn how to use Windows, too. Hell, 2 year olds learned how to use the TRS-80 back when that was relevant. Kids will figure out how to use anything you set in front of them.
I was quite a bit older than that when I started using Windows, but it still didn't take "years of training" to get used to it. It didn't even take weeks.
In any case, "is this easy enough for a 2 year old to use?" is a pretty dumb question to ask when choosing tools for an adult. By that logic, your wife would also have to wear Velcro shoes and drink from a sippy cup.
It may not deprive the source from selling another copy, but not paying for your copy is stealing.
For the sake of argument, let's accept that definition and see where it leads us.
Well, why is stealing a bad thing in the first place? Is it because you get something for free? Surely not, because we all get things for free all the time. I can turn on the radio and listen to free music, then change stations when a commercial comes on. I can look at public murals that were funded by taxpayers who died before I was born. I can enjoy the benefits of those and countless other things without giving a dime to the people who created them.
I get upset when something is stolen from me, but is that because the thief has gotten something for free? No. If someone could "steal" a copy of my car, leaving the original car unharmed in my driveway, that wouldn't bother me at all. In fact, if the technology to do that existed, I believe it'd be a great leap forward for mankind.
We can also compare stealing to vandalism. If someone destroys my car, he doesn't gain anything for free, he only deprives me of the use of that property. Is destroying my car therefore not as bad as stealing it? It sure doesn't feel that way. In fact, stealing it seems marginally better, since it preserves overall utility (and there's a chance I'll get the car back).
So, I have to conclude that what makes stealing wrong is that the rightful owner is deprived of the stolen property. The benefit gained by the thief is only relevant to the extent that it comes at the owner's expense.
Now, what have we done by declaring that getting a free copy of something is "stealing"? We've created two categories of stealing: the old-fashioned kind where the owner is deprived of the stolen property, and the shiny new kind where he isn't. The first kind is wrong, since it maintains the quality that made stealing wrong in the first place. The second kind, however, is not - it's a benign, almost metaphorical type of "stealing", kind of like stealing second base. All we've accomplished with this new definition is to devalue the word.
Any Windows laptop will be as easy to use and as fast. Many netbooks have a battery life of 8-10 hours, such as the Eee 1000HE, which you can get for under $300 - half the price of the 32 GB iPad 2 that has one-fifth as much storage.
Nothing was really designed to be operated by your pudgy fingers, it just screamed impractical every time he had to effectively do single finger typing with his stylus.
Of course, typing on the iPad is no less impractical. iOS's UI shines in non-typing interactions, but the virtual keyboard is even less usable in the tablet form factor than on a phone. A touchscreen is inherently crap for typing unless you have a specialized mode of interaction like Swype.
If tablets make sense at all, then at least Apple is doing tablets right.
Or they're doing marketing right, which has always been the core strength of the modern Apple.
The reason why Tablets failed before was that they simply didn't make sense. The OS was terrible (Windows lolwat?), the hardware was big and bulky, the battery life was scary, and the touch screens weren't responsive. Contrast everything I just said with a iPad 2011.
They still don't make sense. The battery life and touch screen have been improved, the OS is arguable, but the hardware is no less bulky. A tablet really isn't any more portable than a laptop. If you want to bring it anywhere, you need to carry it in the same sort of bag you'd use for a laptop.
More importantly, tablets still don't fill a role other than "electronic toy". Unless you're using it to simulate a board game or a clipboard, literally everything a tablet does can be done instead with a smartphone and/or a laptop, equally well or better, for the same price or less.
The reason tablets failed before was that they weren't being marketed by Apple. But even Apple can't keep this going indefinitely.
Ultimately however I think touch screen devices of some form-factor will survive.
Absolutely... and that form factor will be "fits into a pocket". Unless there's a serious change in pants design, those devices won't be tablets.
With that out of the way, streaming isn't the point of Last.fm. It's all about the scrobbling.
The way I see it, the only value of scrobbling is to get better personalized streams. I don't see the point of uploading all that data just so you can review it later on a web page.
Last.fm knows about my music tastes and provides just plain better recommendations than any other service I've tried.
Agreed, but a list of recommendations isn't very useful on its own. I've been using Last.fm for years specifically because it uses my music tastes to introduce me to new music by playing it. If I just want a web page that says "since you like Band X, you should try Band Y", I can post on a forum and get answers from actual humans.
I thought Last.fm was basically only used by people to track your musical trends and patterns. I really didnt think anyone listened to those stations they have.
And I thought the opposite. Why would you give Last.fm all that information about your listening habits if they weren't going to give you recommendations in return?
After I saw this announcement, I turned off scrobbling. If they're done giving me free streams, I'm done giving them free data.
I hate commercials and advertising but I refuse to pay! Waaaaaaa!
You say that as if they actually tried advertising and their users complained. But they didn't, they went straight from "free" to "subscription required".
The problem might be that they can't figure out how to put ads in their mobile apps. If their programmers are really that talentless, that could also explain why there are so many complaints about the Android app being unstable.
Hey, question for you. Would you want me to draw the same conclusion based on Desktop OS market share?
Yes, please do! I've got no problem with the conclusion that most desktop users prefer what they get from Windows (compatibility with familiar software and nearly all new hardware, a decent UI, paid support from a well-known company and free support from all their geek friends) rather than what they'd get from Linux (open source, security, lots of rough edges) or OS X (ultra-smooth UI, conspicuous consumption).
I'm not sure if you meant it, but the inference you're making is that people are stupid and can't choose right, and that you're smarter than they are.
Well, that's the inference you're making from my comment, but honestly I have no idea how you got that out of what I wrote. Perhaps you meant to direct this paragraph to the GP instead?
The GP posed a choice between an Android-style arrangement (install whatever you want, at your own peril) and an iPhone-style arrangement (less flexibility = less ability to screw it up), with the implication that the latter is preferable, and I pointed to market share as evidence that most people seem to prefer the former. I think those people are smart and are choosing right.
Slashdot Mirror
The linked article does say illegal sales have gone down, and gets into some reasons why they haven't gone away completely:
These are temporary problems, and they don't translate well to other industries. For example, high quality, low tax medical marijuana resold on the black market can easily undercut legal recreational sales. But a black-market brothel can't undercut the legitimate ones as easily, or offer the same level of service -- lower prices tend to mean lower quality, and operating in the open gives the legal ones extra advantages (marketing, health inspection, integration with other businesses).
A study on anonymous hiring practices in France showed that anonymization resulted in fewer minority candidates getting hired. Their explanation is essentially that the companies who care enough about diversity to participate in this sort of study are already subtly biased in favor of minority candidates, and anonymization put a stop to it. Considering the amount of focus big tech companies are putting on diversity, there's a fair chance the same thing is happening here too.
Most of the Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with the web site. The site didn't have to implement those "2.8 million words of Obamacare regulations" as code: it only had to match patients up with insurance plans, which means interacting with dozens (hundreds?) of government and industry databases.
Some states, like California, managed to implement their sites without any of the problems of the federal exchange. The federal exchange mainly suffered from (1) being rushed, and (2) having to deal with a larger number of external systems than any single state exchange.
There is NO DIFFERENCE between the "two" parties.
Except, you know, when it comes to issues like health care, reproductive rights, or Social Security.
Anyone who says there's no difference between the two parties is either (1) totally uninformed, (2) obsessed with fringe issues and apathetic about everything that the rest of us care about, or (3) trying to convince you to stay out of the election so their vote will count more.
I thought that the inclusion of (usually optional) parental control settings was part of parenting, deciding whether your kids are ready for whatever's behind the lock.
Covering up the parts of the world that make you uncomfortable is not parenting. Your kids will be exposed to that stuff whether you like it or not, so your job as a parent is to give them the knowledge and skills they need to understand it in context.
the history and current events are showing that the economy is benefiting in tandem with currency increasing in value, not losing.
Economic benefits in tandem with deflationary currency? Cite, please. I think quite a few Japanese people (not to mention the world's economists!) would be surprised to hear that.
Again, I would not (while in sane mind) loan money in currency that is losing value, it is a losing proposition.
Funny, because banks make money hand over fist by doing exactly that.
> Inflation also encourages lending and investing.
- no it does not. Not in people who understand economics and accounting for real. Inflation discourages any desire to deal in that currency. Why would I want to move my wealth into a depreciating currency?
That's the point! Inflation discourages keeping your wealth in the form of cash, and encourages converting it to something else: lending it to a bank, buying stocks, real estate, or consumer goods, etc. Economic growth depends on people being willing to exchange their cash.
septic = septic tank = yank = americans.
Obvious for whom?
obvious for whom = temple of doom = Indiana Jones
The Xoom fails in epic fashion on price - it has similar hardware specs as my $300 G Tablet for twice the price. I would never buy it because I'd feel like a huge sucker.
Maybe, but the Xoom is still comparable to the iPad in specs and price, so how do you explain the fact that people buy those?
You're still a fucking moron.
And that's still hilarious, coming from someone who thinks it takes "years of training" to learn to operate a desktop OS because his wife can't figure it out.
Microsoft-controlled API
You misspelled "ECMA-standardized API". HTH!
I can write a .NET program on native windows and when I launch the EXE on a machine with no .NET it will simply fail with an error number. It doesn't ask you if you want to put .NET on or even explain to you that you need it to run the program, it just fails.
So... the same thing that happens whenever you launch any other program with its required libraries missing? Try copying a native VC++ program to a system that doesn't have the VC++ runtime installed. It won't spoon-feed you information about what the VC++ runtime is, why you need it, where to get it, and how to install it; it'll just give you a cryptic error.
If you want to do deployment properly, you need an installer. With Visual Studio it's dead simple to make a setup program that'll check for prerequisites like .NET and install them automatically.
2 year olds can learn how to use Windows, too. Hell, 2 year olds learned how to use the TRS-80 back when that was relevant. Kids will figure out how to use anything you set in front of them.
I was quite a bit older than that when I started using Windows, but it still didn't take "years of training" to get used to it. It didn't even take weeks.
In any case, "is this easy enough for a 2 year old to use?" is a pretty dumb question to ask when choosing tools for an adult. By that logic, your wife would also have to wear Velcro shoes and drink from a sippy cup.
It may not deprive the source from selling another copy, but not paying for your copy is stealing.
For the sake of argument, let's accept that definition and see where it leads us.
Well, why is stealing a bad thing in the first place? Is it because you get something for free? Surely not, because we all get things for free all the time. I can turn on the radio and listen to free music, then change stations when a commercial comes on. I can look at public murals that were funded by taxpayers who died before I was born. I can enjoy the benefits of those and countless other things without giving a dime to the people who created them.
I get upset when something is stolen from me, but is that because the thief has gotten something for free? No. If someone could "steal" a copy of my car, leaving the original car unharmed in my driveway, that wouldn't bother me at all. In fact, if the technology to do that existed, I believe it'd be a great leap forward for mankind.
We can also compare stealing to vandalism. If someone destroys my car, he doesn't gain anything for free, he only deprives me of the use of that property. Is destroying my car therefore not as bad as stealing it? It sure doesn't feel that way. In fact, stealing it seems marginally better, since it preserves overall utility (and there's a chance I'll get the car back).
So, I have to conclude that what makes stealing wrong is that the rightful owner is deprived of the stolen property. The benefit gained by the thief is only relevant to the extent that it comes at the owner's expense.
Now, what have we done by declaring that getting a free copy of something is "stealing"? We've created two categories of stealing: the old-fashioned kind where the owner is deprived of the stolen property, and the shiny new kind where he isn't. The first kind is wrong, since it maintains the quality that made stealing wrong in the first place. The second kind, however, is not - it's a benign, almost metaphorical type of "stealing", kind of like stealing second base. All we've accomplished with this new definition is to devalue the word.
Nope, just a guy who has actually used both Windows and the iPad.
It's amusing to be called a moron by someone who apparently can't manage to operate Windows, though. Thanks for brightening my day!
Any Windows laptop will be as easy to use and as fast. Many netbooks have a battery life of 8-10 hours, such as the Eee 1000HE, which you can get for under $300 - half the price of the 32 GB iPad 2 that has one-fifth as much storage.
Glad to help!
Nothing was really designed to be operated by your pudgy fingers, it just screamed impractical every time he had to effectively do single finger typing with his stylus.
Of course, typing on the iPad is no less impractical. iOS's UI shines in non-typing interactions, but the virtual keyboard is even less usable in the tablet form factor than on a phone. A touchscreen is inherently crap for typing unless you have a specialized mode of interaction like Swype.
If tablets make sense at all, then at least Apple is doing tablets right.
Or they're doing marketing right, which has always been the core strength of the modern Apple.
How does she justify doing all that on a tablet instead of on a laptop that costs half as much?
The reason why Tablets failed before was that they simply didn't make sense. The OS was terrible (Windows lolwat?), the hardware was big and bulky, the battery life was scary, and the touch screens weren't responsive. Contrast everything I just said with a iPad 2011.
They still don't make sense. The battery life and touch screen have been improved, the OS is arguable, but the hardware is no less bulky. A tablet really isn't any more portable than a laptop. If you want to bring it anywhere, you need to carry it in the same sort of bag you'd use for a laptop.
More importantly, tablets still don't fill a role other than "electronic toy". Unless you're using it to simulate a board game or a clipboard, literally everything a tablet does can be done instead with a smartphone and/or a laptop, equally well or better, for the same price or less.
The reason tablets failed before was that they weren't being marketed by Apple. But even Apple can't keep this going indefinitely.
Ultimately however I think touch screen devices of some form-factor will survive.
Absolutely... and that form factor will be "fits into a pocket". Unless there's a serious change in pants design, those devices won't be tablets.
With that out of the way, streaming isn't the point of Last.fm. It's all about the scrobbling.
The way I see it, the only value of scrobbling is to get better personalized streams. I don't see the point of uploading all that data just so you can review it later on a web page.
Last.fm knows about my music tastes and provides just plain better recommendations than any other service I've tried.
Agreed, but a list of recommendations isn't very useful on its own. I've been using Last.fm for years specifically because it uses my music tastes to introduce me to new music by playing it. If I just want a web page that says "since you like Band X, you should try Band Y", I can post on a forum and get answers from actual humans.
I thought Last.fm was basically only used by people to track your musical trends and patterns. I really didnt think anyone listened to those stations they have.
And I thought the opposite. Why would you give Last.fm all that information about your listening habits if they weren't going to give you recommendations in return?
After I saw this announcement, I turned off scrobbling. If they're done giving me free streams, I'm done giving them free data.
I hate commercials and advertising but I refuse to pay! Waaaaaaa!
You say that as if they actually tried advertising and their users complained. But they didn't, they went straight from "free" to "subscription required".
The problem might be that they can't figure out how to put ads in their mobile apps. If their programmers are really that talentless, that could also explain why there are so many complaints about the Android app being unstable.
Indeed. Those buttons seem to have disappeared from the whole site.
Hey, question for you. Would you want me to draw the same conclusion based on Desktop OS market share?
Yes, please do! I've got no problem with the conclusion that most desktop users prefer what they get from Windows (compatibility with familiar software and nearly all new hardware, a decent UI, paid support from a well-known company and free support from all their geek friends) rather than what they'd get from Linux (open source, security, lots of rough edges) or OS X (ultra-smooth UI, conspicuous consumption).
I'm not sure if you meant it, but the inference you're making is that people are stupid and can't choose right, and that you're smarter than they are.
Well, that's the inference you're making from my comment, but honestly I have no idea how you got that out of what I wrote. Perhaps you meant to direct this paragraph to the GP instead?
The GP posed a choice between an Android-style arrangement (install whatever you want, at your own peril) and an iPhone-style arrangement (less flexibility = less ability to screw it up), with the implication that the latter is preferable, and I pointed to market share as evidence that most people seem to prefer the former. I think those people are smart and are choosing right.