Thank goodness, a little sanity. "They should concentrate on making innovative products at prices people are willing to pay." It's interesting that no one (1) ever has suggestions on what those "innovations" should be; and (2) ever mentions that the only price they are willing to pay is zero.
The recent flap over Hulu charging was a bunch of posts like "LOL. They just don't get it LOL. If Hulu charges I'll just go somewhere else and get it free, LOL." How much do you think Hulu has to pay for their media streaming bandwidth? Media distribution costs are NOT ZERO!
One can usually tell where things are heading when you see the phrase "they just don't get it" in a story summary.
Music and movies are copied freely because they can be, in the privacy of people's homes, not because we believe we have some sort of "right" to content at prices WE choose. (Who granted you that right, anyway?) If food could be "acquired" for free we would all be saying that farmers just don't get it when they charge for creation. If cars could be "acquired" for free we would all say that manufacturers just don't get it. If software could be "acquired" for... Oh wait, scratch that example. Software is stolen all the time.
For every product you introduce that is stealable with close to no risk, people will. Surprise!
If the whiners could spend a tenth of their effort in suggesting new innovative models that would result in consumers turning off their bittorrent servers and pulling out their credit cards I'd believe there was something to "get". All I "get" is that if a product can be stolen for no risk, it will be.
Don't be such a Luddite. Obviously the VT-420 with its multi-session, super-comfortable keyboard, amber displays, and 50-line presentation are what the Son of Ghod intended. DEC died for our sins, after all.
Is it really 1% of the user base consuming a huge portion of the bandwidth? That figure gets tossed around a lot, and I wonder if it's true.
We decry 1% of world citizens controlling 90% of the world's assets (substitute your favorite estimate for the 90%), and 4% of the world's people (USA) consuming a vast amount of the energy of the world.
Do we not care about the disproportionate internet usage because the/. community are the ones doing the consuming? Theoretically, without P2P, would the "experience" for Joe six-pack be better? Or not?
Standard disclaimer, I've used a zillion operating environments, like most/.'ers, with my favorites being VMS and Ubuntu's flavor of GNOME (In MY DAY, we used punch cards, and we had to punch the holes out with a hand-bone of a squirrel we had to catch and skin ourselves. Now get off my lawn!). I also bought a GOGO Sugar machine. My kids hated it, I hated it. The wireless would lose all connectivity after each 24 hours (yes, my DHCP lease was infinite), after taking days of fiddling just to get it to talk to the secure wireless modem. I eventually gave up and got a USB wired ethernet connection. It still would hang randomly, though less often. And the only thing the machine ever did was FireFox. The "documentation" was more missing than real. I chalked all that up to the program being more focused on getting the machines to Peru and Mongolia. But it didn't make the system any less painful to use.
It now sits on the floor in my office, in a dusty heap. If I ever get the motivation I'll put a flavor of real Linux on it, but that's pretty unlikely.
If it had come out with a semi-standard Linux interface I think it would have stood a better chance of success, if only to me. How long did it take to develop the environment and apps when the resources could just as well have been devoted to making a lean and mean distro to fit the hardware? Poor resource planning, it seems.
Not that we necessarily were, according to some...
If this procedure became easy/commonplace, it would greatly facilitate lesbian genertic reproduction of two women, vs. one woman and a sperm donor. Since the stem cell used to create sperm would be XX, all resulting children would be female. Interesting to think of a slight but perceptible shift to a significant female majority world population (or population in developed countries).
Possible consequences: less war; economic trouble for the TV and gaming industries; the slow decline of monster trucks; the world domination of Oprah and The View.
I for one welcome our new female overlords. Mistress. *grovel*
Anything that justifies itself on the basis of "the user's experience" should be viewed appropriately - as a load of BS.
Apple contends that they want us to have a smooth, consistent user "experience".
Isn't that MY DECISION? If I choose to want concurrent apps (which I don't, the device doesn't have enough power to make it useful), who is the vendor to dictate my "experience"?
The reality is that they want their massive cut of the app store revenue, and alternate app stores cut their revenue stream out of the mix. Not to mention the possibility of messing with their carrier contracts. Any pathetic excuse like "experience" is obviously a sham. If they cared about my "experience" they would have delivered cut and paste two revs ago. If they cared about my "experience" iTunes would be trained to watch folders and automatically import music that is added to the folder without intervention. If they cared about my "experience" they would let me download TV shows that I have paid for via iTunes when connected to the internet via WI-FI.
And I say that as a member of my Fortune 100 company's "User Experience Executive Steering Group", which is a thinly disguised attempt to procure resources for pet projects...
Leaving development decisions to core programmers can lead to chaos in development priorities. A hard core coder may spend large amounts of time chasing down just that little bit of latency in the process scheduler; but what the business needs is a rewrite in order to simplify processes.
This is why the OS model has a hard time living in the corporate environment. Many times what needs to be done for the business is tedious programming driven by idiots (== users). No one wants to do that. So a core group of programmers ends up adding a plethora of new features that are elegant in implementation, advanced in design, and useless for users.
The other major factor in corporate America (can't speak for the other 96% of the world) is the vast armies of "business analysts". These people allegedly have communication skills with both users and coders. In reality, however, they are incented to drag out projects in requirements and testing phases in order to make their own functions seem more useful. Many projects I've worked on have burned upwards of 3/4 of the hours billed to business analysts.
The remedy? Coders who can speak Business, are WILLING to speak Business, are willing to let the needs of the users drive their projects, and the ability to code. In that order. These people are far and few between, sadly.
I have one too, a retrofit on my existing house. It eliminated the external (and massively undersized) air conditioning unit, and runs much more quietly than the gas system did. And the gas system was only 6 years old when I replaced it, so it wasn't a dinosaur.
One piece of cool tech I haven't seen mentioned directly is that the heat pump itself creates heat; this is siphoned off by a water-based heat recovery system into a secondary hot water tank. When the primary hot water tank needs input water, it gets the heat-boosted water drawn off of the waste heat recovery system, making the whole thing more efficient.
The utility is pushing the use of geo so hard that they installed a second service into the house, and any electricity flowing through that meter is 1/3 the cost of regular electricity.
New neighborhoods in the area are all being built with geo in it from day one.
Joe Sixpack asks, "Would that temperature keep by brewskis cold, or would it freeze them? Because that's a drag when they explode, and I have to call Joe Plumber to fix the freezer (after I clean off the venison steaks left over from last season), and he's crabby about taxes or some such nonsense. Pass me another cold one."
was the VT-240 by DEC. It came in amber phosphor, which gave me good geek cred in the early 80's while coding in VAX FORTRAN. I could map batch files into user-definable keys, so I could compile, link and execute in one click. Awesome.
The keyboard was a dream. I've never since figured how to adapt it to a PS/2 or USB port to use in the PC world (just the keyboard, not the sweet sweet amber monitor). USD$100 to anyone who can sell me an adaptor, plus parts and shipping. I have a VT-420 (not VT-240) laying around, with it's parent MicroVAX, just in case anyone comes up with one...
It seems you are arguing that as the *consumer* of F/OSS software, a user of nice libraries, you are better off. No one's arguing that. The parent was asking about why it would be good for the *producers* of those libraries. Why develop CUPS, gSOAP, or others, when about the only reward to you is that you can see a download counter increase on FreshMeat?
(1) The Whiz-Kid - just scraped by in college, but reached Level Google in every game during those 4 1/2 years. Builds PC's in (inevitibly his) spare time. Has never touched a mainframe in his life and doesn't really understand it, and therefore, looks down on it. Knows every upcoming Intel processor code name, but can't write code, else they would be in "real" IT. How to handle? Empathy. Tell them they are amazing, and let them add that secured printer driver to your system and reboot.
(2) I'm New Here. Usually female, males will try to BS through it. Will have to check back with someone else on everything. How to handle? Empathy. Show patience. Be tolerant. Followup with an email to their boss thanking them if they didn't royally screw up. They are your friends for life.
(3) Whatever. The private sector civil servant. Doesn't know, doesn't care, just get the job done and move on. How to handle? Empathy. Tell them they are very busy and you appreciate their time. Won't help move them any faster, but there is a 1% lower chance they'll totally bork your system.
Interesting, how empathy is the correct response in every situation. There's a life lesson in there, young Jedi.
On me: I joined a Fortune 25 company as an executive, and have since risen in the executive ranks. I actually am entitled to nearly anything. But I never, ever take that tack. I personally throw out a few questions to see what category they fall into and deal appropriately. Occasionally the newer ones (who haven't heard the rumors) will decide to do what TFA says, dive deep and bury the user (me) in tech talk. It hasn't worked even once. I may have a title, but I write code at home for fun. It's a kind of malicious fun to see them retreat to Executive Support with their wanna-be tech tails between their legs.
One of the most annoying aspects of internet culture is the constant following of this formula:
1) Determine who is the market leader, or at least very large and strong 2) Declare them DEAD. EXTINCT. HISTORY. 3) ??? 4) Profit!
How exactly is ComCast supposed to die? Everyone gets rabid about their service, and goes... where? FIOS is only in a tiny percentage of Verizon's US installed base. If you're not in a major metro area, you may never get it.
Cable has solved the last mile problem. DSL is pretty much everywhere, too, because POTS laid the last mile as well. Alternatives? Municipal wireless? Seems to be dying rapidly. Satellite? Very slow.
OK, that's enough. Back to the blind, knee-jerk, ill-fated shrieking of doom already in progress... ("Microsoft? DEAD. MPAA? EXTINCT. RIAA? DINOSAUR. Proprietary software? HISTORY.")
Disclaimer: I'm a suit. A VP in a Really Huge Company, in Marketing, no less. Get your weasel on!
So, here's the pitch: you already have paid subscribers. I'm one and have been for a long time.
Sell me a Gold subscription. What do I get? HTTPS access? No thanks, my work-mandated copy of IE6 complains on every page refresh with that anyway. No, sell me what I want.
Mod points.
For USD$10 a month, I get 3 mod points a week, guaranteed.
For USD$25 a month, I get 10 mod points a week, guaranteed.
Would that destroy the socialism of/.? Probably not destroy, but possibly influence. But if that small sell-out allowed you to fend off paid content, then so be it.
My question would be, are the number of parallel universes countably infinite (same cardinality as the integers) or uncountably infinite (same cardinality as the real numbers)? If countable, this suggests that the number of quantum potential states in the universe are countable, and would seem to lend credence to the idea of an orderly deterministic universe. If uncountable, then the multiverse is infinitely deep - more satisfying, perhaps, in a religious worldview.
Unless, of course, God(s)(ess)(esses) constructed the universe deterministically, to compute something. I suspect it is to create the question to which 42 is the answer.
The WOT was one of the best series ever, for most of its run. Though I have to admit, I did give up on it a few books back, when I realized it took nearly the whole next book for me to get back up to speed on the myriad subplots, and that the series was progressing more and more slowly each book.
Calls of WOT being "milked" have been rampant. Many of the same criticisms have been leveled at the Sword of Truth series, which also seems to be slowing infinitely, in a sci-fi version of the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise - given the amount of plot distance required to complete the overarching story arc, each book executes no more than half of that distance, requiring an infinite number of books to complete the series.
A moment, please, while we all tug on our braids in silence for a gifted author.
If you follow TFA, and deeper, you find a discussion of the singularity that goes like this:
Man (level 1, or L1) creates better-than-man intelligence, call this L2 That intelligence uses its power to create L3
and so on.
In the case of truly artificial intelligence, i.e., independent processors, I can see the logic, though it may be that L2 is in fact smart enough not to obsolete itself by creating L3.
In the case of augmented human intelligence, I suggest that it's pretty likely that the task that the augmented L2 human turns its greater abilities on would not be creating L3.
Sadly, human history suggests that L2 will focus on manipulating the stock market for personal gain (the augmentation apparatus will leave L2 very vulnerable and L2 will want a tremendous amount of wealth to assure continued existence), or creating weapons, or accumulation of political power, or getting sucked into the vortex of religion, or other projects.
It will be very interesting to see, should we ever create L2, exactly what tasks it takes on. I bet they will not be beneficial to L1 life.
Re:As an 18 year old, I notice the reason people S
on
Kids Say Email is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Good point, and one that's been bugging me.
Disclaimer: I'm old (I started on punch cards in the 70's) and now am an executive at a huge company.
I have a blackberry, and I'm totally addicted. Hundreds a day, both directions. Real email (== Outlook at my company) I really only use for reading big attachments.
I text too, a bit, and despise it. The UI is stunningly bad. I almost couldn't design a worse one. Typing text messages takes forever. On my blackberry, on the other hand, I can type almost as fast as I can on a keyboard (a rate which is respectable but not fantastic).
Here's my question. So, how do kids do it? How can serious texters stand to type on phone keyboards, when every period, exclamation, etc. requires jumping into the Symbols menu? Or so I just have a bad phone? (Samsung Katana)
"But the Windows world isn't like that. It's a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken."
Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long,drawn outpainfulhatecampaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.
Every new distro of Linux I install I try Main Actor. It never works, only crashes on files I've imported via Windows. And I've never gotten it to talk to my camera directly. Vegas for Windows just works, and works well.
Let me pile on:
iTunes. Like 'em or hate 'em, Apple has a good program here. No Linux love.
SAS. Yes, theoretically, there is a Linux version, but I'd have to pay another $5000 to license it a second time for the same hardware. Not the communties' fault, but that doesn't change anything.
Games. 'nuff said. Even in Windows land XP64 doesn't run the latest Oblivion. So it's a very delicate area.
Visual Studio/DLL's. An odd category. I do stock market programming, and connect to the various exchanges in North America via windows DLL's with code I write in Visual Studio.NET. Linux is a non-starter here.
That said, do I use Linux? Yes, and for one reason - apps, or more specifically, an app. GRAMPS, a geneaology program that rocks the socks off of every other Windows program I have tried. I use Thunderbird and Firefox, so those are portable across OS's. When I work on genealology I fire up Fiesty under VMWare, and the rest of the time use XP.
"Figure out how to change the sensory data you want -- the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared -- into something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch or sight"
Gotcha. Here's some ways to change new sensory data into something we're already wired to accept:
Air Pressure: Barometer (Sight)
Air Pressure: iPod (Sound)
Altitude: Altimiter (Sight)
Magnetic Field: Compass (Sight)
Proximity to solid objects: Radar (Sight, Sound)
Detection of radiation: Geiger Counter (Sight, Sound)
Presense of organic molecules: Nose (Smell)
I have more of this intellectual property. I have received USPTO approval for "The creation of new human senses via translation of non-traditional input to brain-compatable information" ans will begin suing pretty much everyone.
Here in Illinois, we take the rights of Deceased Americans (formerly known as dead people) very seriously, including the right to vote. Many issues, such as elections of aldermen, are critically dependent on the outspoken support of Deceased Americans.
The number of Deceased Americans is expected to grow to unimaginable proportions as time goes on, and so protecting their rights is important to do now.
This is not to confused with Reanimated Americans (formerly known as zombies), who tend to be vocal almost exclusively on health care issues (notably, brains).
Slashdot Mirror
Thank goodness, a little sanity. "They should concentrate on making innovative products at prices people are willing to pay." It's interesting that no one (1) ever has suggestions on what those "innovations" should be; and (2) ever mentions that the only price they are willing to pay is zero.
The recent flap over Hulu charging was a bunch of posts like "LOL. They just don't get it LOL. If Hulu charges I'll just go somewhere else and get it free, LOL." How much do you think Hulu has to pay for their media streaming bandwidth? Media distribution costs are NOT ZERO!
One can usually tell where things are heading when you see the phrase "they just don't get it" in a story summary.
Music and movies are copied freely because they can be, in the privacy of people's homes, not because we believe we have some sort of "right" to content at prices WE choose. (Who granted you that right, anyway?) If food could be "acquired" for free we would all be saying that farmers just don't get it when they charge for creation. If cars could be "acquired" for free we would all say that manufacturers just don't get it. If software could be "acquired" for... Oh wait, scratch that example. Software is stolen all the time.
For every product you introduce that is stealable with close to no risk, people will. Surprise!
If the whiners could spend a tenth of their effort in suggesting new innovative models that would result in consumers turning off their bittorrent servers and pulling out their credit cards I'd believe there was something to "get". All I "get" is that if a product can be stolen for no risk, it will be.
Sigh.
Don't be such a Luddite. Obviously the VT-420 with its multi-session, super-comfortable keyboard, amber displays, and 50-line presentation are what the Son of Ghod intended. DEC died for our sins, after all.
Is it really 1% of the user base consuming a huge portion of the bandwidth? That figure gets tossed around a lot, and I wonder if it's true.
We decry 1% of world citizens controlling 90% of the world's assets (substitute your favorite estimate for the 90%), and 4% of the world's people (USA) consuming a vast amount of the energy of the world.
Do we not care about the disproportionate internet usage because the /. community are the ones doing the consuming? Theoretically, without P2P, would the "experience" for Joe six-pack be better? Or not?
Standard disclaimer, I've used a zillion operating environments, like most /.'ers, with my favorites being VMS and Ubuntu's flavor of GNOME (In MY DAY, we used punch cards, and we had to punch the holes out with a hand-bone of a squirrel we had to catch and skin ourselves. Now get off my lawn!). I also bought a GOGO Sugar machine. My kids hated it, I hated it. The wireless would lose all connectivity after each 24 hours (yes, my DHCP lease was infinite), after taking days of fiddling just to get it to talk to the secure wireless modem. I eventually gave up and got a USB wired ethernet connection. It still would hang randomly, though less often. And the only thing the machine ever did was FireFox. The "documentation" was more missing than real. I chalked all that up to the program being more focused on getting the machines to Peru and Mongolia. But it didn't make the system any less painful to use.
It now sits on the floor in my office, in a dusty heap. If I ever get the motivation I'll put a flavor of real Linux on it, but that's pretty unlikely.
If it had come out with a semi-standard Linux interface I think it would have stood a better chance of success, if only to me. How long did it take to develop the environment and apps when the resources could just as well have been devoted to making a lean and mean distro to fit the hardware? Poor resource planning, it seems.
Not that we necessarily were, according to some...
If this procedure became easy/commonplace, it would greatly facilitate lesbian genertic reproduction of two women, vs. one woman and a sperm donor. Since the stem cell used to create sperm would be XX, all resulting children would be female. Interesting to think of a slight but perceptible shift to a significant female majority world population (or population in developed countries).
Possible consequences: less war; economic trouble for the TV and gaming industries; the slow decline of monster trucks; the world domination of Oprah and The View.
I for one welcome our new female overlords. Mistress. *grovel*
Anything that justifies itself on the basis of "the user's experience" should be viewed appropriately - as a load of BS.
Apple contends that they want us to have a smooth, consistent user "experience".
Isn't that MY DECISION? If I choose to want concurrent apps (which I don't, the device doesn't have enough power to make it useful), who is the vendor to dictate my "experience"?
The reality is that they want their massive cut of the app store revenue, and alternate app stores cut their revenue stream out of the mix. Not to mention the possibility of messing with their carrier contracts. Any pathetic excuse like "experience" is obviously a sham. If they cared about my "experience" they would have delivered cut and paste two revs ago. If they cared about my "experience" iTunes would be trained to watch folders and automatically import music that is added to the folder without intervention. If they cared about my "experience" they would let me download TV shows that I have paid for via iTunes when connected to the internet via WI-FI.
And I say that as a member of my Fortune 100 company's "User Experience Executive Steering Group", which is a thinly disguised attempt to procure resources for pet projects...
Leaving development decisions to core programmers can lead to chaos in development priorities. A hard core coder may spend large amounts of time chasing down just that little bit of latency in the process scheduler; but what the business needs is a rewrite in order to simplify processes.
This is why the OS model has a hard time living in the corporate environment. Many times what needs to be done for the business is tedious programming driven by idiots (== users). No one wants to do that. So a core group of programmers ends up adding a plethora of new features that are elegant in implementation, advanced in design, and useless for users.
The other major factor in corporate America (can't speak for the other 96% of the world) is the vast armies of "business analysts". These people allegedly have communication skills with both users and coders. In reality, however, they are incented to drag out projects in requirements and testing phases in order to make their own functions seem more useful. Many projects I've worked on have burned upwards of 3/4 of the hours billed to business analysts.
The remedy? Coders who can speak Business, are WILLING to speak Business, are willing to let the needs of the users drive their projects, and the ability to code. In that order. These people are far and few between, sadly.
I have one too, a retrofit on my existing house. It eliminated the external (and massively undersized) air conditioning unit, and runs much more quietly than the gas system did. And the gas system was only 6 years old when I replaced it, so it wasn't a dinosaur.
One piece of cool tech I haven't seen mentioned directly is that the heat pump itself creates heat; this is siphoned off by a water-based heat recovery system into a secondary hot water tank. When the primary hot water tank needs input water, it gets the heat-boosted water drawn off of the waste heat recovery system, making the whole thing more efficient.
The utility is pushing the use of geo so hard that they installed a second service into the house, and any electricity flowing through that meter is 1/3 the cost of regular electricity.
New neighborhoods in the area are all being built with geo in it from day one.
I hate cell phones, but love tech. That is, I love tech, including cell phones, but hate actually talking to humans...
If I get a dev phone, can I take the sim card out of my current Sprint phone and I'm in business? Do I have to tell Sprint?
See, I SAID it was a stupid question...
achieve faster speeds, longer lengths, smaller sizes, and deeper depths.
That's what she said.
Joe Sixpack asks, "Would that temperature keep by brewskis cold, or would it freeze them? Because that's a drag when they explode, and I have to call Joe Plumber to fix the freezer (after I clean off the venison steaks left over from last season), and he's crabby about taxes or some such nonsense. Pass me another cold one."
was the VT-240 by DEC. It came in amber phosphor, which gave me good geek cred in the early 80's while coding in VAX FORTRAN. I could map batch files into user-definable keys, so I could compile, link and execute in one click. Awesome.
The keyboard was a dream. I've never since figured how to adapt it to a PS/2 or USB port to use in the PC world (just the keyboard, not the sweet sweet amber monitor). USD$100 to anyone who can sell me an adaptor, plus parts and shipping. I have a VT-420 (not VT-240) laying around, with it's parent MicroVAX, just in case anyone comes up with one...
ComCast would be smart enough to know when pr0n is selected on the box, or even anything Baywatch-proof or stronger, and turn the camera off.
Else it would burn the eyeballs off of anyone watching.
Unless, of course, you could tie the subscriber database to the demographics overlay database and be very selective whom you chose to watch...
It seems you are arguing that as the *consumer* of F/OSS software, a user of nice libraries, you are better off. No one's arguing that. The parent was asking about why it would be good for the *producers* of those libraries. Why develop CUPS, gSOAP, or others, when about the only reward to you is that you can see a download counter increase on FreshMeat?
Interesting analysis of end users.
What kind of support techs are there?
(1) The Whiz-Kid - just scraped by in college, but reached Level Google in every game during those 4 1/2 years. Builds PC's in (inevitibly his) spare time. Has never touched a mainframe in his life and doesn't really understand it, and therefore, looks down on it. Knows every upcoming Intel processor code name, but can't write code, else they would be in "real" IT. How to handle? Empathy. Tell them they are amazing, and let them add that secured printer driver to your system and reboot.
(2) I'm New Here. Usually female, males will try to BS through it. Will have to check back with someone else on everything. How to handle? Empathy. Show patience. Be tolerant. Followup with an email to their boss thanking them if they didn't royally screw up. They are your friends for life.
(3) Whatever. The private sector civil servant. Doesn't know, doesn't care, just get the job done and move on. How to handle? Empathy. Tell them they are very busy and you appreciate their time. Won't help move them any faster, but there is a 1% lower chance they'll totally bork your system.
Interesting, how empathy is the correct response in every situation. There's a life lesson in there, young Jedi.
On me: I joined a Fortune 25 company as an executive, and have since risen in the executive ranks. I actually am entitled to nearly anything. But I never, ever take that tack. I personally throw out a few questions to see what category they fall into and deal appropriately. Occasionally the newer ones (who haven't heard the rumors) will decide to do what TFA says, dive deep and bury the user (me) in tech talk. It hasn't worked even once. I may have a title, but I write code at home for fun. It's a kind of malicious fun to see them retreat to Executive Support with their wanna-be tech tails between their legs.
One of the most annoying aspects of internet culture is the constant following of this formula:
1) Determine who is the market leader, or at least very large and strong
2) Declare them DEAD. EXTINCT. HISTORY.
3) ???
4) Profit!
How exactly is ComCast supposed to die? Everyone gets rabid about their service, and goes... where? FIOS is only in a tiny percentage of Verizon's US installed base. If you're not in a major metro area, you may never get it.
Cable has solved the last mile problem. DSL is pretty much everywhere, too, because POTS laid the last mile as well. Alternatives? Municipal wireless? Seems to be dying rapidly. Satellite? Very slow.
OK, that's enough. Back to the blind, knee-jerk, ill-fated shrieking of doom already in progress... ("Microsoft? DEAD. MPAA? EXTINCT. RIAA? DINOSAUR. Proprietary software? HISTORY.")
Disclaimer: I'm a suit. A VP in a Really Huge Company, in Marketing, no less. Get your weasel on!
/.? Probably not destroy, but possibly influence. But if that small sell-out allowed you to fend off paid content, then so be it.
So, here's the pitch: you already have paid subscribers. I'm one and have been for a long time.
Sell me a Gold subscription. What do I get? HTTPS access? No thanks, my work-mandated copy of IE6 complains on every page refresh with that anyway. No, sell me what I want.
Mod points.
For USD$10 a month, I get 3 mod points a week, guaranteed.
For USD$25 a month, I get 10 mod points a week, guaranteed.
Would that destroy the socialism of
Just an idea.
My question would be, are the number of parallel universes countably infinite (same cardinality as the integers) or uncountably infinite (same cardinality as the real numbers)? If countable, this suggests that the number of quantum potential states in the universe are countable, and would seem to lend credence to the idea of an orderly deterministic universe. If uncountable, then the multiverse is infinitely deep - more satisfying, perhaps, in a religious worldview.
Unless, of course, God(s)(ess)(esses) constructed the universe deterministically, to compute something. I suspect it is to create the question to which 42 is the answer.
The WOT was one of the best series ever, for most of its run. Though I have to admit, I did give up on it a few books back, when I realized it took nearly the whole next book for me to get back up to speed on the myriad subplots, and that the series was progressing more and more slowly each book.
Calls of WOT being "milked" have been rampant. Many of the same criticisms have been leveled at the Sword of Truth series, which also seems to be slowing infinitely, in a sci-fi version of the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise - given the amount of plot distance required to complete the overarching story arc, each book executes no more than half of that distance, requiring an infinite number of books to complete the series.
A moment, please, while we all tug on our braids in silence for a gifted author.
If you follow TFA, and deeper, you find a discussion of the singularity that goes like this:
Man (level 1, or L1) creates better-than-man intelligence, call this L2
That intelligence uses its power to create L3
and so on.
In the case of truly artificial intelligence, i.e., independent processors, I can see the logic, though it may be that L2 is in fact smart enough not to obsolete itself by creating L3.
In the case of augmented human intelligence, I suggest that it's pretty likely that the task that the augmented L2 human turns its greater abilities on would not be creating L3.
Sadly, human history suggests that L2 will focus on manipulating the stock market for personal gain (the augmentation apparatus will leave L2 very vulnerable and L2 will want a tremendous amount of wealth to assure continued existence), or creating weapons, or accumulation of political power, or getting sucked into the vortex of religion, or other projects.
It will be very interesting to see, should we ever create L2, exactly what tasks it takes on. I bet they will not be beneficial to L1 life.
Good point, and one that's been bugging me.
Disclaimer: I'm old (I started on punch cards in the 70's) and now am an executive at a huge company.
I have a blackberry, and I'm totally addicted. Hundreds a day, both directions. Real email (== Outlook at my company) I really only use for reading big attachments.
I text too, a bit, and despise it. The UI is stunningly bad. I almost couldn't design a worse one. Typing text messages takes forever. On my blackberry, on the other hand, I can type almost as fast as I can on a keyboard (a rate which is respectable but not fantastic).
Here's my question. So, how do kids do it? How can serious texters stand to type on phone keyboards, when every period, exclamation, etc. requires jumping into the Symbols menu? Or so I just have a bad phone? (Samsung Katana)
Not like the F/OSS world, no sir - we wouldn't begin a long, drawn out painful hate campaign if a F/OSS company makes even the smallest error... No, it's all love in the Community.
Bravo. I agree 100%.
.NET. Linux is a non-starter here.
Every new distro of Linux I install I try Main Actor. It never works, only crashes on files I've imported via Windows. And I've never gotten it to talk to my camera directly. Vegas for Windows just works, and works well.
Let me pile on:
iTunes. Like 'em or hate 'em, Apple has a good program here. No Linux love.
SAS. Yes, theoretically, there is a Linux version, but I'd have to pay another $5000 to license it a second time for the same hardware. Not the communties' fault, but that doesn't change anything.
Games. 'nuff said. Even in Windows land XP64 doesn't run the latest Oblivion. So it's a very delicate area.
Visual Studio/DLL's. An odd category. I do stock market programming, and connect to the various exchanges in North America via windows DLL's with code I write in Visual Studio
That said, do I use Linux? Yes, and for one reason - apps, or more specifically, an app. GRAMPS, a geneaology program that rocks the socks off of every other Windows program I have tried. I use Thunderbird and Firefox, so those are portable across OS's. When I work on genealology I fire up Fiesty under VMWare, and the rest of the time use XP.
Heck, even Taco has bailed out on Linux.
Air Pressure: Barometer (Sight)
Air Pressure: iPod (Sound)
Altitude: Altimiter (Sight)
Magnetic Field: Compass (Sight)
Proximity to solid objects: Radar (Sight, Sound)
Detection of radiation: Geiger Counter (Sight, Sound)
Presense of organic molecules: Nose (Smell)
I have more of this intellectual property. I have received USPTO approval for "The creation of new human senses via translation of non-traditional input to brain-compatable information" ans will begin suing pretty much everyone.
Here in Illinois, we take the rights of Deceased Americans (formerly known as dead people) very seriously, including the right to vote. Many issues, such as elections of aldermen, are critically dependent on the outspoken support of Deceased Americans.
The number of Deceased Americans is expected to grow to unimaginable proportions as time goes on, and so protecting their rights is important to do now.
This is not to confused with Reanimated Americans (formerly known as zombies), who tend to be vocal almost exclusively on health care issues (notably, brains).