Which is why in the US with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press one had to find a professional journalist and convince him/her and the editor and publisher that breaking a secret story was worth the potential penalties.
Which is why in the US even with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press all you had to do to control the flow of information was to raise the potential penalties so high no journalist would ever dare break a story you don't like.
Re:The iPhone and finally walk and chew gum!
on
iOS 4 Releases Today
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, poor Microsoft went bankrupt trying to cater to more than one market at a time. And Nokia! a pity about their fate, poor upstarts, but they had it coming with such lack of focus on their phones' design, I've heard they even allowed a CLI on some of them, can you imagine?
People in general don't care *why* your product can't do the things they want them to do, only that they *can't*. Which is why the world still revolves around companies-which-are-most-decidedly-not-Apple.
Re:The iPhone and finally walk and chew gum!
on
iOS 4 Releases Today
·
· Score: 1
Has the lack of multi-tasking annoyed many iPhone users?
Well, did the lack of web browsing annoy many non-smartphone users before the iPhone? no, not really. But it's one of those things you never knew you needed 'til you get it.
I give it about two months before all the iPhone users are flaunting how great and wonderful it is, and decrying any phone that doesn't have it as "obsolete" and "unacceptable in today's market".
I work in the audio field and this reminds me why the democratization of cheap AV gear has not led to better sounding records. No amount of cheap fidelity can replace decades of experience making things sound better.
True, but it *has* led to the average indie record sounding better than the professional stuff, mostly because the professional stuff is enginereed to be a pile of crap by design.
And all that's missing is a couple reality and vampire shows and TV will have reached a similar point as well. Broadcast, at least, already did.
Your state would be the functional equivalent of an anarchy, and would degenerate into one in short order. Most importantly is the fact that killing another being isn't 'ruling over' them, and that you didn't define the manner in which differences could be 'resolved' nor a particular protocol for doing so. Not that it'd be practical to do so, considering pretty much everything we eat constitutes some form of life-form but still.
What are they doing that converts something that would be a 10K ASCII file into a 500K PDF monstrosity?
A terrible job.
With LaTeX, I've got a 12K text file here that along with two images (16K and 24K respectively) turn into a beautiful 72K PDF. Another, text-only, from a 32K file to a gorgeous 48K PDF. The only case where it has a noticeable overhead is in a math-heavy document I've got which is 4K in plain text and 28K as PDF, but considering two-thirds of the document are mathematical equations I don't think it's that bad, and would probably be less if the document was longer.
Sure, not all programs will be as efficient as LaTeX, particularly dummy-friendly WYSIWYG ones, but still. If your software turns a 10K plaintext into a 500K PDF, drop it and for the love of God get something better. Or learn LaTeX. Though I guess you already do since you advocate using LaTeX source-code as replacement (a terrible idea by itself), which raises the question of why the hell are you using such an horribly inefficient program for your PDFs when you have a much better tool available already.
Politically motivated or not, religion was a useful tool to justify them. Without that tool, they would have had to fall back on reason, which means they might have found it a lot harder to justify their position.
Like most wars during the last century, right?
Religion isn't the only excuse to go to war over, it just happened to be the most convenient one at the time. This last century it seems to have been "freedom", as in "let us free our opressed brethren in $LAND_WITH_RESOURCES_WE_NEED from the evils of (communism/capitalism)!". Hell, it's still going strong, just look at the codename they used for the ongoing bombing and pillaging of Iraq by US forces.
One, Americans aren't the only ones willing to export their values, and they will have a difficult time arguing that others shouldn't.
Sure you can, as long as you admit the simple fact that the US shouldn't export *their* values either.
Two, we can lay to rest the notion that the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it: nations have enough power, and those in power have enough incentive, to use the other code base to control the Internet - the code of law.
Muhammad jokes haven't stopped, and in fact I'd say have increased since the Islam world tried to censor them so yeah, I'd say that it *is* routing around it. Nations can do whatever they can with their own laws of course, but ultimately the fact that other nations are free to do whatever they can with theirs (see also: Iceland) and that no law is ever implemented perfectly ensures that, in general, the Internet will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
It should also be noted that, while the letter of the treaties in question make them applicable to both sides, the US has universally disregarded their side of the bargain even in the face of powers such as England and far more reasonable charges than "he allowed our God to be offended!" so there's a snowball's chance in hell of them caving in to Pakistan, *ever*.
It's one of the few instances where the US government's arrogance comes out in benefit of their own citizens.
Now you would say, but users can create applications outside of Steam. That is true - but the same is true of the iPhone, via two paths.
The first is of course Jailbreaking, millions of people do this and Cydia will sell you anything you want to buy. It's not as huge a market but it is plenty viable, and it's most viable for the users that care the most about a truly open system - developers.
The second path is web apps. Given the abilities of HTML 5, and the hooks into most (if not all) of the device sensors like location, orientation, and touches - you can produce most of the applications people would want to use these days in a web app. That path is also totally open as Apple cannot block (and does not try to block) whatever you visit via the web.
Yeah. And my TV can do the dishes, as long as I build customized hardware for it, then rewrite the TV's firmware to allow it to control my dish-washing extension, and then add the dish-washing functions to my remote.
There's possible and then there's practical, and neither Jailbreaking nor Web Apps are the latter, sorry. The former because few users have the technical how-to to even attempt it, the latter because you simply *can't* make a Web App as polished as a native one, nor can you charge for it in the same manner.
If people across the world truly value an absolutely open market, than Android will flourish.
If people across the world value a more carefully curated ecosystem, then the Apple App Store will flourish.
Let the experiment proceed.
We already did, with the x86 architecture and the myriad propietary ones during the '80s, then Windows and Mac in the '90s. The experiment's outcome is already predetermined, and the staggering growth that Android has had is proof enough of that fact. All the complaining is merely to try and get Apple not to bother us so much as they die, and maybe, hopefully shut the evangelists for a minute or so.
People need to figure out that there are only two viable sources of energy: burning carbon-based fuels, or nuclear.
Not really, no. There's just burning carbon-based fuels, for any situation you could possibly think of where wind and power aren't viable I can think of a couple where nuclear is a non-starter.
What people need to figure out is that there can't (and doesn't have to) be an "one size fits all" solution to the energy problem, and that investing in only one in detriment of all others will invariably lead to somebody, somewhere, getting royally screwed.
You're right that nuclear fission is the best option right now to supply the most people for the least investment, but this attitude of you and the GP that wind and solar are merely useless "fantasy dreamed up by hippies" needs to go. They do have their place, at least if you want to supply *everybody* instead of merely "most".
As I understand it, the interesting part is that the resulting oil is clean enough to be sold and used, which means there's a bigger economic incentive (or less of an economic cost) to clean up the spill.
Let's face it, corporations don't work as hard for a "do it or else" as they do with a "free oil for the taking!".
Because the rules to sell your product in all other industries are far more consistent, and even if Walmart and Best Buy refuse to stock your product you can always sell it yourself. Apple controls the *ONLY* way to reach your customer base (no, buying a dev account for every hundred customers isn't a possibility) and their rules change pretty much every day.
You make the comparison to adult-rated games and its an apt one, but how large is that market compared to the whole of videogames? that's the future of the App Store unless Apple grows up and provides a set of clear and consistent rules that developers (and, most importantly, managers) can work with and rely on. And stop trying to use their customers as ammunition against Google, for God's sake.
Which is why they should've included Python, Ruby and Lua interpreters *with* the system so that app developers can use them without needing to redistribute them with every copy of their apps. You know, like OSX does on desktops?
And before you complain about 'size' and 'bloat' I'll remind you the Lua runtime is 130k on my Debian system, and while typical Python and Ruby installs weigh far more, you can strip a lot of libraries from them and get something that's much smaller while still being useful to the average developer.
Well, I've maintained the impression that Slashdot's guidelines when it comes to ads is "we'll take anyone's money, after all its not like our users will actually *see* their ads".
Even if you don't subscribe or have enough karma to remove the ads, you've still got AdBlock you know.
And everyone was free to create apps using Microsoft's public APIs instead of the hidden interfaces, yet Microsoft was still screwed for Office.
Having a public API has already been shown not to be enough to counter the availability of a 'special' set only for particular members. Using said interfaces to gain a tangible benefit over those not using them has also been shown to be illegal for a monopoly. About the only thing in question yet is whether Apple's App Store constitutes a monopoly or not from a legal standpoint, but that's not as clear-cut as the Apple apologists claim either.
Looks like you can still use an INDEPENDENT advertising company.
Yeah, INDEPENDANT as in "subsists only from pushing targeted ads to the largest amount of people". Precisely the kind of companies that present the *largest* threat to user privacy, yet Apple gives them free reign while restricting companies like Google and Microsoft.
Tell me again, how the *HELL* does that make any sense from a privacy standpoint?
Much like how Windows 95's success relative to MacOS proved most customers prefer a green background rather than a blue one?
If you want to argue that many consumers are scared by endless lists of technical data they don't understand then I'd agree with you, but your argument to support your assertion just sucks.
Apple just wants a bit of your old-fashioned money. Google wants your digital soul, and all of it.
Which is why they'd never do such a thing as launching their own ad service while blocking everybody else's to avoid having to share your 'digital soul' with them.
Would he have the stones to take personal responsibility when the insurgents find US and Iraqi Government collaborators through that data and start murdering them and their families?
Would Bush and Obama have the stones to take personal responsability for all the people that have lost their lives as direct result of this invasion?
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why in the US with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press one had to find a professional journalist and convince him/her and the editor and publisher that breaking a secret story was worth the potential penalties.
Which is why in the US even with the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press all you had to do to control the flow of information was to raise the potential penalties so high no journalist would ever dare break a story you don't like.
Yeah, poor Microsoft went bankrupt trying to cater to more than one market at a time. And Nokia! a pity about their fate, poor upstarts, but they had it coming with such lack of focus on their phones' design, I've heard they even allowed a CLI on some of them, can you imagine?
People in general don't care *why* your product can't do the things they want them to do, only that they *can't*. Which is why the world still revolves around companies-which-are-most-decidedly-not-Apple.
Has the lack of multi-tasking annoyed many iPhone users?
Well, did the lack of web browsing annoy many non-smartphone users before the iPhone? no, not really. But it's one of those things you never knew you needed 'til you get it.
I give it about two months before all the iPhone users are flaunting how great and wonderful it is, and decrying any phone that doesn't have it as "obsolete" and "unacceptable in today's market".
I work in the audio field and this reminds me why the democratization of cheap AV gear has not led to better sounding records. No amount of cheap fidelity can replace decades of experience making things sound better.
True, but it *has* led to the average indie record sounding better than the professional stuff, mostly because the professional stuff is enginereed to be a pile of crap by design.
And all that's missing is a couple reality and vampire shows and TV will have reached a similar point as well. Broadcast, at least, already did.
Your state would be the functional equivalent of an anarchy, and would degenerate into one in short order. Most importantly is the fact that killing another being isn't 'ruling over' them, and that you didn't define the manner in which differences could be 'resolved' nor a particular protocol for doing so. Not that it'd be practical to do so, considering pretty much everything we eat constitutes some form of life-form but still.
What are they doing that converts something that would be a 10K ASCII file into a 500K PDF monstrosity?
A terrible job.
With LaTeX, I've got a 12K text file here that along with two images (16K and 24K respectively) turn into a beautiful 72K PDF. Another, text-only, from a 32K file to a gorgeous 48K PDF. The only case where it has a noticeable overhead is in a math-heavy document I've got which is 4K in plain text and 28K as PDF, but considering two-thirds of the document are mathematical equations I don't think it's that bad, and would probably be less if the document was longer.
Sure, not all programs will be as efficient as LaTeX, particularly dummy-friendly WYSIWYG ones, but still. If your software turns a 10K plaintext into a 500K PDF, drop it and for the love of God get something better. Or learn LaTeX. Though I guess you already do since you advocate using LaTeX source-code as replacement (a terrible idea by itself), which raises the question of why the hell are you using such an horribly inefficient program for your PDFs when you have a much better tool available already.
Politically motivated or not, religion was a useful tool to justify them. Without that tool, they would have had to fall back on reason, which means they might have found it a lot harder to justify their position.
Like most wars during the last century, right?
Religion isn't the only excuse to go to war over, it just happened to be the most convenient one at the time. This last century it seems to have been "freedom", as in "let us free our opressed brethren in $LAND_WITH_RESOURCES_WE_NEED from the evils of (communism/capitalism)!". Hell, it's still going strong, just look at the codename they used for the ongoing bombing and pillaging of Iraq by US forces.
One, Americans aren't the only ones willing to export their values, and they will have a difficult time arguing that others shouldn't.
Sure you can, as long as you admit the simple fact that the US shouldn't export *their* values either.
Two, we can lay to rest the notion that the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it: nations have enough power, and those in power have enough incentive, to use the other code base to control the Internet - the code of law.
Muhammad jokes haven't stopped, and in fact I'd say have increased since the Islam world tried to censor them so yeah, I'd say that it *is* routing around it. Nations can do whatever they can with their own laws of course, but ultimately the fact that other nations are free to do whatever they can with theirs (see also: Iceland) and that no law is ever implemented perfectly ensures that, in general, the Internet will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
It should also be noted that, while the letter of the treaties in question make them applicable to both sides, the US has universally disregarded their side of the bargain even in the face of powers such as England and far more reasonable charges than "he allowed our God to be offended!" so there's a snowball's chance in hell of them caving in to Pakistan, *ever*.
It's one of the few instances where the US government's arrogance comes out in benefit of their own citizens.
You're not a programmer, are you?
Oh, don't worry, I can tell.
Now you would say, but users can create applications outside of Steam. That is true - but the same is true of the iPhone, via two paths.
The first is of course Jailbreaking, millions of people do this and Cydia will sell you anything you want to buy. It's not as huge a market but it is plenty viable, and it's most viable for the users that care the most about a truly open system - developers.
The second path is web apps. Given the abilities of HTML 5, and the hooks into most (if not all) of the device sensors like location, orientation, and touches - you can produce most of the applications people would want to use these days in a web app. That path is also totally open as Apple cannot block (and does not try to block) whatever you visit via the web.
Yeah. And my TV can do the dishes, as long as I build customized hardware for it, then rewrite the TV's firmware to allow it to control my dish-washing extension, and then add the dish-washing functions to my remote.
There's possible and then there's practical, and neither Jailbreaking nor Web Apps are the latter, sorry. The former because few users have the technical how-to to even attempt it, the latter because you simply *can't* make a Web App as polished as a native one, nor can you charge for it in the same manner.
If people across the world truly value an absolutely open market, than Android will flourish.
If people across the world value a more carefully curated ecosystem, then the Apple App Store will flourish.
Let the experiment proceed.
We already did, with the x86 architecture and the myriad propietary ones during the '80s, then Windows and Mac in the '90s. The experiment's outcome is already predetermined, and the staggering growth that Android has had is proof enough of that fact. All the complaining is merely to try and get Apple not to bother us so much as they die, and maybe, hopefully shut the evangelists for a minute or so.
People need to figure out that there are only two viable sources of energy: burning carbon-based fuels, or nuclear.
Not really, no. There's just burning carbon-based fuels, for any situation you could possibly think of where wind and power aren't viable I can think of a couple where nuclear is a non-starter.
What people need to figure out is that there can't (and doesn't have to) be an "one size fits all" solution to the energy problem, and that investing in only one in detriment of all others will invariably lead to somebody, somewhere, getting royally screwed.
You're right that nuclear fission is the best option right now to supply the most people for the least investment, but this attitude of you and the GP that wind and solar are merely useless "fantasy dreamed up by hippies" needs to go. They do have their place, at least if you want to supply *everybody* instead of merely "most".
As I understand it, the interesting part is that the resulting oil is clean enough to be sold and used, which means there's a bigger economic incentive (or less of an economic cost) to clean up the spill.
Let's face it, corporations don't work as hard for a "do it or else" as they do with a "free oil for the taking!".
Because the rules to sell your product in all other industries are far more consistent, and even if Walmart and Best Buy refuse to stock your product you can always sell it yourself. Apple controls the *ONLY* way to reach your customer base (no, buying a dev account for every hundred customers isn't a possibility) and their rules change pretty much every day.
You make the comparison to adult-rated games and its an apt one, but how large is that market compared to the whole of videogames? that's the future of the App Store unless Apple grows up and provides a set of clear and consistent rules that developers (and, most importantly, managers) can work with and rely on. And stop trying to use their customers as ammunition against Google, for God's sake.
Which is why they should've included Python, Ruby and Lua interpreters *with* the system so that app developers can use them without needing to redistribute them with every copy of their apps. You know, like OSX does on desktops?
And before you complain about 'size' and 'bloat' I'll remind you the Lua runtime is 130k on my Debian system, and while typical Python and Ruby installs weigh far more, you can strip a lot of libraries from them and get something that's much smaller while still being useful to the average developer.
Well, I've maintained the impression that Slashdot's guidelines when it comes to ads is "we'll take anyone's money, after all its not like our users will actually *see* their ads".
Even if you don't subscribe or have enough karma to remove the ads, you've still got AdBlock you know.
If that's the rationale then Lenovos running Linux would be a far better (and cheaper) choice.
And everyone was free to create apps using Microsoft's public APIs instead of the hidden interfaces, yet Microsoft was still screwed for Office.
Having a public API has already been shown not to be enough to counter the availability of a 'special' set only for particular members. Using said interfaces to gain a tangible benefit over those not using them has also been shown to be illegal for a monopoly. About the only thing in question yet is whether Apple's App Store constitutes a monopoly or not from a legal standpoint, but that's not as clear-cut as the Apple apologists claim either.
Looks like you can still use an INDEPENDENT advertising company.
Yeah, INDEPENDANT as in "subsists only from pushing targeted ads to the largest amount of people". Precisely the kind of companies that present the *largest* threat to user privacy, yet Apple gives them free reign while restricting companies like Google and Microsoft.
Tell me again, how the *HELL* does that make any sense from a privacy standpoint?
And that's why it's called a "screen". What difference is there between a "retina screen" and a regular screen to warrant the marketing buzzword?
Much like how Windows 95's success relative to MacOS proved most customers prefer a green background rather than a blue one?
If you want to argue that many consumers are scared by endless lists of technical data they don't understand then I'd agree with you, but your argument to support your assertion just sucks.
Apple just wants a bit of your old-fashioned money. Google wants your digital soul, and all of it.
Which is why they'd never do such a thing as launching their own ad service while blocking everybody else's to avoid having to share your 'digital soul' with them.
Ohh, wait.
About the same I know that care about user-defined stylesheets and scripts.
Would he have the stones to take personal responsibility when the insurgents find US and Iraqi Government collaborators through that data and start murdering them and their families?
Would Bush and Obama have the stones to take personal responsability for all the people that have lost their lives as direct result of this invasion?
Would you, who voted them in?
If you demand perfection from troops, as in they never make a mistake, never harm an innocent, never cause collateral damage, well you are an idiot.
If you demand perfection from engineers you're an idiot too, but when one makes a mistake that kills somebody, he *still* goes to jail.
I'll let you deduce the reasons why for yourself.