Maybe if you got your head out of the clouds and realised that 185 CHF (~180USD) is what the vast majority of people on this planet would regard as a pretty reasonable WEEKLY wage, you wouldn't think that advice like "well its only $1000 to replace, so just throw it away" adds anything to this conversation. For a significant percentage of the Slashdot demographic maybe we could call it daily, but doesn't really change the issue.
I wonder if you have ever considered what happens to the thrown away item, which is likely to be 98% functional, even though its an antique 3 year old piece of hardware. You might consider that there are billions of people out there (not only in some third world dustbowl) for whom this would be a treasured item and who might be interested to find an easier (and more economical) way to regain that 2%. Believe it or not, some of us are even interested in salvaging that last 5% from really broken boxes, before we add them to the to the massive stinking junk-pile of this disposable culture.
"But hey, maybe i'm just to negative about this. Maybe you can enlighten me how you can sort out these issues."
For you I would suggest taking a year of your life to sort out these issues and go somewhere. Go wander the earth for a bit. Go see undeveloped, developing and developed countries. Meet normal people. Rich ones, poor ones and ones doing ok. Do some work that you aren't trained in. Escape your bubble. When you get back home I can pretty much guarantee that the only negativity you will feel is toward your old attitude and those that still share it. You will suddenly have a great appreciation for the immense privilege you live in and be in awe of the planet around you. And maybe even helping out a less knowledgeable friend won't be just an annoyance anymore.
Japan uses Yahoo. Massively. In fact it wasn't that long ago that I would get blank stares from people when mentioning google, and having to substitute yahoo instead... more recently people at least know what you are talking about, even if they aren't using it. Part of the reason for this is that they achieved huge brand recognition (if not much profit) when their subsidiary company Yahoo!Broadband did a pretty massive campaign to gain subscribers, giving away routers outside train stations, offering free three month connections and so on. (They are also tied into Softbank, one of the larger mobile phone companies here.)
E-bay is another pretty unheard of site, while Yahoo! auctions alone would probably keep the company afloat on its own over here. They are heavily used as a portal site and the usual first stop for people wanting to buy plane tickets or check the weather. For many people I think Yahoo is actually thought of as "the internet" and don't seem likely to go anywhere soon...
No, its not about them undercutting other productivity suites, its about them undercutting other retailers who are also selling MS Office...
Maybe a car analogy. I am a car manufacturer and you are a dealer. I sell you cars for a fantastic $1000 a pop, if you agree to buy 100 units. After we've shaken hands and exchanged cash, I go to the guy next door to you and arrange it so that they can sell their 100 hundred units at a floor-price of $500. Guess you are going to have a little bit of trouble moving your 100 "super-cheap" specials, yes?
Not pointless. In fact I think this about the coolest thing I've seen in ages, and think the concepts will be much emulated. Go watch the video.
And yes, I am also quite baffled that Adobe is involved in this, as its an entirely different market for them. Hehehehe and I do have doubts as to how well Flash plays with Zoetrope.
What might have made a nice further comment would have been to code an extension that would show e.g. "available on Amazon for $2.00" on the pirate bay site, and see what kind of traffic would go in the other direction....or maybe the comment was that more insightful media corporations would have thought this up for themselves a while back.
A little aghast as to the fact that you got an insightful mod for this.
This scares me a little. I mean, we should sue the gun makers because guns kill people. We should sue the ore miners because they produce the steel that is used in the guns.
Yes, I agree 100%
But
If the French have such a problem with P2P why don't they just block it at the ISP level? Why go after the FOSS developers who just write a program? Because you can't possibly blame the citizens who breach copyright.
How do you get to equate "French Record Companies" with "the French"? For the next story about RIAA shenanigans, are we all supposed to come troll about "the Americans" being nuts.
This is coming from a country that were happy to set off nukes in the pacific because they didn't what to bow to international pressure. Pricks.
Yes? Nuclear tests bring me no joy either, but do we get get to rant about Hiroshima on RIAA threads??? wtf? or considering your barb about international pressure, are you trying to tell us that almost 100000 civilian deaths are somehow connected to the RIAA, or even most of "the Americans"???
I think I use it almost all the time recently - in recent firefox versions I just type what I want in the address bar and it seems to get me where I want, or for more complex things I end up with a more usual search page. For example entering "slashdot wiki" in the address bar takes me to the wikipedia entry about slashdot
but "110 million slashdot" gives me a normal, as if using the search bar result with this discussion as top link.
Best feature ever.
Cringely talked about those four conditions and the why of it back in July too. In short his take on it was that Google isn't really intending to win this, or it wouldn't have needed to have those conditions guaranteed.
The conditions they did have accepted are:
# Open applications: consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;
# Open devices: consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer; (from google blog)
Are you thinking of this?... was as easy as googling an edited version of your post.
Re:Emphasis on the light, please.
on
Vertical Farming
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Oops yeah, noticed that, commented after RTFA, but only RTFW too late...
damn BBC censorship...
Re:Emphasis on the light, please.
on
Vertical Farming
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Exactly - was horrified that their little artists impressions used a ROUND building. These things need to be long and thin and orientated on an east-west axis... further improvements could also be made by staggering the floors to get some extra light into the lower levels (a slight triangular cross section) and also using sloped/terraced floor slabs...
Also I don't understand the exclusive-use mentality. The core (low light or north-facing depending on your hemisphere) areas could be turned over to other uses, and the whole thing could be seen as a balcony farm arrangement instead. Instead of staring out at the rest of the concrete jungle, I would be pretty happy to have a bunch of green things outside my window. This also makes it easier to pay for the building when you get to sell some office/living/retail space to go along with it.
These people don't seem to have thought very creatively about what they are up to. It seems more an idea of how to arrange a traditional horizontal farm within limited city space. They haven't really explored the vertical context at all, either in arrangement or delivery systems etc, and also very tied to fixed ideas of what exactly a farm is....
I think urban farming is really an important thing that we should be thinking about reviving, but if you gonna think out of the box, don't just look out....
Needs to run "Modern" software? You obviously never experienced the simple joy of telling your turtle to drive up 40 steps and turn left and haul itself another 40... beats the poo out of watching TV
Crippled? I really don't think so somehow: Nine bazillion/.ers including myself want one of these, and the fact is we would probably even pay triple (or more) price to get our mits on one, thereby happily sponsoring a few poor starving children a freebee bears testament.... My super-duper 3G 3D Java/Brew-running 2.4Mbps penis-extension phone for which I paid a bunch more is the truly crippled (vendor locked) bollox that we are actually up against.
Maybe you are right about the publicity stunt, but if it gets this thing out into the world where we want it (and incidentally inspires a few third-world hackers along the way), I for one am all for it.
The world needs this thing and the world needs it to be open and available to all. Yes! give it to our deprived kids. Yes! Explore ideas other than aero/beryl/whatever. and even Yes! Get the idea on the front page of every single media outlet you possibly can, even if if someone else is takign credit for it!
The revolution will not be televised... but it might be hand-cranked.
I get the feeling that you are going to be the first of a long line of people missing the point, so I thought I'd jump in here... As I understand it, the tower doesn't rotate in order to get more sunlight; it rotates because rotating a building is a cool thing to do. Constantly changing views and all that...
The solar power part is a way to do this without condeming the tennants to a lifetime of mad energy bills.
Nope, these are not THOSE barcodes. In Japan they generaly contain url's for the companies website or something similar. Yesterday I used one in fact - I had a parcel delivered while I was out and they left a non-delivery slip with a QR code on it... simply scan it in to connet to the courier's site and set up a suitable delivery time. I also have one on my business card, so people can import my address card to their phones.
Incidentally the reason that this technology has taken so long to reach the rest of the world is that your camera lenses are of such terrible quality... the idea has been around for ages and was originally used in industry for tracking parts inventory, where higher quality scanners are available.
I have recently started looking into a job change here in Japan, and considering the ridiculous amont people often work here was quite surprised to see a place offering 112 vacation days a year. Began getting suspicious though when that specific number kept coming up, until I realised that there are 52 weeks per year, of which two days are weekends. "Bank" holidays give you another 8... and they still mention additionally that "some" overtime is to be expected...
You mean like the Sharp 904SH? Doubt you'll see anything like this if you don't live in Japan though... for a while at least. Also features face recognition technology for security and a 3.2 megapixel camera with 2x optical zoom. Patience...
Quite an interesting and unexpected turn of events...
Vodafone has been going steadily downhill since their foray in to the market here. Their entry point was by buying out J-Phone and rebranding it as Vodafone K.K.. J-Phone was originally a division of JR, the national rail company. An interesting side effect of their original ownership was that in the early days of cell-access their networks first expanded along the railway networks giving them quite effective penetration even though their coverage was in fact quite spotty. J-Phone never quite reached the market-size of DoCoMo (the cellular division of NTT - the national telco), but was effectively their main competition with a reputation for innovation, which had cornered the younger "cooler" demographic. They were one of the first here to provide Java enabled phones and as the original originators of the camera-phone they have made their mark worldwide. In fact one of the last phones they brought to market before the buyout was the first phone to crack the 1 megapixel mark.
No wonder Vodaphone wanted a piece.
Some vodaphone insiders here have speculated that the main reason for the company's gradual descent has been the resistance of "old-Japan" upper management to outside pressures, almost more on principle than on particular merit, although some of those outside ideas have seemed to lack local market knowledge, amongst other things. Vodafone stagnated at a crucial point unfortunately - they were technologically ahead of the pack - their stall allowed competitors to take up the slack and old behemoth Docomo to pull ahead as many customers returned to DoCoMo for the newest gimmicks while vodaphone coasted...
Its not hard to still spot J-phone branded phones around which speaks volumes about the strength of the original company in this "new and shiny" crazed market. I actually think this is a good thing - if Vodafone was only as commited as a three year ownership and doesn't have the kahoonas to turn things around, its only their loss. Hopefully this is the begining of a return to their former glory and I'll finally be able to rid myself of this stupid AU phone...
Slashdot Mirror
Just in case my sarcasm detector is malfunctioning, and seeing as its the second comment I've seen along these lines, here you go.
Maybe if you got your head out of the clouds and realised that 185 CHF (~180USD) is what the vast majority of people on this planet would regard as a pretty reasonable WEEKLY wage, you wouldn't think that advice like "well its only $1000 to replace, so just throw it away" adds anything to this conversation. For a significant percentage of the Slashdot demographic maybe we could call it daily, but doesn't really change the issue. I wonder if you have ever considered what happens to the thrown away item, which is likely to be 98% functional, even though its an antique 3 year old piece of hardware. You might consider that there are billions of people out there (not only in some third world dustbowl) for whom this would be a treasured item and who might be interested to find an easier (and more economical) way to regain that 2%. Believe it or not, some of us are even interested in salvaging that last 5% from really broken boxes, before we add them to the to the massive stinking junk-pile of this disposable culture.
"But hey, maybe i'm just to negative about this. Maybe you can enlighten me how you can sort out these issues."
For you I would suggest taking a year of your life to sort out these issues and go somewhere. Go wander the earth for a bit. Go see undeveloped, developing and developed countries. Meet normal people. Rich ones, poor ones and ones doing ok. Do some work that you aren't trained in. Escape your bubble. When you get back home I can pretty much guarantee that the only negativity you will feel is toward your old attitude and those that still share it. You will suddenly have a great appreciation for the immense privilege you live in and be in awe of the planet around you. And maybe even helping out a less knowledgeable friend won't be just an annoyance anymore.
Japan uses Yahoo. Massively. In fact it wasn't that long ago that I would get blank stares from people when mentioning google, and having to substitute yahoo instead... more recently people at least know what you are talking about, even if they aren't using it. Part of the reason for this is that they achieved huge brand recognition (if not much profit) when their subsidiary company Yahoo!Broadband did a pretty massive campaign to gain subscribers, giving away routers outside train stations, offering free three month connections and so on. (They are also tied into Softbank, one of the larger mobile phone companies here.)
E-bay is another pretty unheard of site, while Yahoo! auctions alone would probably keep the company afloat on its own over here. They are heavily used as a portal site and the usual first stop for people wanting to buy plane tickets or check the weather. For many people I think Yahoo is actually thought of as "the internet" and don't seem likely to go anywhere soon...
No, its not about them undercutting other productivity suites, its about them undercutting other retailers who are also selling MS Office... Maybe a car analogy. I am a car manufacturer and you are a dealer. I sell you cars for a fantastic $1000 a pop, if you agree to buy 100 units. After we've shaken hands and exchanged cash, I go to the guy next door to you and arrange it so that they can sell their 100 hundred units at a floor-price of $500. Guess you are going to have a little bit of trouble moving your 100 "super-cheap" specials, yes?
I enjoy throwing a party, but hire a maid to clean up before it.
Not coming to one of your parties mate, I prefer the kind that needs cleaning after!
yeah, strangely just before this I was reading that the year-old HP mini 2133 is the only HP laptop in the UK which uses Linux ...at least you'll be able to get one that looks like a handbag though...
Not pointless. In fact I think this about the coolest thing I've seen in ages, and think the concepts will be much emulated. Go watch the video. And yes, I am also quite baffled that Adobe is involved in this, as its an entirely different market for them. Hehehehe and I do have doubts as to how well Flash plays with Zoetrope.
What might have made a nice further comment would have been to code an extension that would show e.g. "available on Amazon for $2.00" on the pirate bay site, and see what kind of traffic would go in the other direction. ...or maybe the comment was that more insightful media corporations would have thought this up for themselves a while back.
A little aghast as to the fact that you got an insightful mod for this.
This scares me a little. I mean, we should sue the gun makers because guns kill people. We should sue the ore miners because they produce the steel that is used in the guns.
Yes, I agree 100%
But
If the French have such a problem with P2P why don't they just block it at the ISP level? Why go after the FOSS developers who just write a program? Because you can't possibly blame the citizens who breach copyright.
How do you get to equate "French Record Companies" with "the French"? For the next story about RIAA shenanigans, are we all supposed to come troll about "the Americans" being nuts.
This is coming from a country that were happy to set off nukes in the pacific because they didn't what to bow to international pressure. Pricks.
Yes? Nuclear tests bring me no joy either, but do we get get to rant about Hiroshima on RIAA threads??? wtf? or considering your barb about international pressure, are you trying to tell us that almost 100000 civilian deaths are somehow connected to the RIAA, or even most of "the Americans"???
>>radar-reflective stealth paint....all are useful.
I think you will have better luck with radar-absorbent stealth paint unless you are some kind of damn hippie subversive.
eSATA!
I think I use it almost all the time recently - in recent firefox versions I just type what I want in the address bar and it seems to get me where I want, or for more complex things I end up with a more usual search page. For example entering "slashdot wiki" in the address bar takes me to the wikipedia entry about slashdot but "110 million slashdot" gives me a normal, as if using the search bar result with this discussion as top link. Best feature ever.
Cringely talked about those four conditions and the why of it back in July too. In short his take on it was that Google isn't really intending to win this, or it wouldn't have needed to have those conditions guaranteed. The conditions they did have accepted are:
# Open applications: consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;
# Open devices: consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;
(from google blog)
Are you thinking of this? ... was as easy as googling an edited version of your post.
Oops yeah, noticed that, commented after RTFA, but only RTFW too late... damn BBC censorship...
Exactly - was horrified that their little artists impressions used a ROUND building. These things need to be long and thin and orientated on an east-west axis... further improvements could also be made by staggering the floors to get some extra light into the lower levels (a slight triangular cross section) and also using sloped/terraced floor slabs...
Also I don't understand the exclusive-use mentality. The core (low light or north-facing depending on your hemisphere) areas could be turned over to other uses, and the whole thing could be seen as a balcony farm arrangement instead. Instead of staring out at the rest of the concrete jungle, I would be pretty happy to have a bunch of green things outside my window. This also makes it easier to pay for the building when you get to sell some office/living/retail space to go along with it.
These people don't seem to have thought very creatively about what they are up to. It seems more an idea of how to arrange a traditional horizontal farm within limited city space. They haven't really explored the vertical context at all, either in arrangement or delivery systems etc, and also very tied to fixed ideas of what exactly a farm is....
I think urban farming is really an important thing that we should be thinking about reviving, but if you gonna think out of the box, don't just look out....
No, no, no! Lynx has browser ascetic. You are thinking of aesthetic
think of the child^H^H nese!
Crayons and sandpits aside this thing can do some far more serious things but only idiots think so.
Crippled? I really don't think so somehow: Nine bazillion /.ers including myself want one of these, and the fact is we would probably even pay triple (or more) price to get our mits on one, thereby happily sponsoring a few poor starving children a freebee bears testament.... My super-duper 3G 3D Java/Brew-running 2.4Mbps penis-extension phone for which I paid a bunch more is the truly crippled (vendor locked) bollox that we are actually up against.
Maybe you are right about the publicity stunt, but if it gets this thing out into the world where we want it (and incidentally inspires a few third-world hackers along the way), I for one am all for it.
The world needs this thing and the world needs it to be open and available to all. Yes! give it to our deprived kids. Yes! Explore ideas other than aero/beryl/whatever. and even Yes! Get the idea on the front page of every single media outlet you possibly can, even if if someone else is takign credit for it!
The revolution will not be televised... but it might be hand-cranked.
I get the feeling that you are going to be the first of a long line of people missing the point, so I thought I'd jump in here... As I understand it, the tower doesn't rotate in order to get more sunlight; it rotates because rotating a building is a cool thing to do. Constantly changing views and all that...
The solar power part is a way to do this without condeming the tennants to a lifetime of mad energy bills.
Had you been to a Dj Shadow, Coldcut or even Hexstatic concert in the last two or three years, you would have seen that this can and is done live...
Nope, these are not THOSE barcodes. In Japan they generaly contain url's for the companies website or something similar. Yesterday I used one in fact - I had a parcel delivered while I was out and they left a non-delivery slip with a QR code on it... simply scan it in to connet to the courier's site and set up a suitable delivery time. I also have one on my business card, so people can import my address card to their phones.
Incidentally the reason that this technology has taken so long to reach the rest of the world is that your camera lenses are of such terrible quality... the idea has been around for ages and was originally used in industry for tracking parts inventory, where higher quality scanners are available.
I have recently started looking into a job change here in Japan, and considering the ridiculous amont people often work here was quite surprised to see a place offering 112 vacation days a year. Began getting suspicious though when that specific number kept coming up, until I realised that there are 52 weeks per year, of which two days are weekends. "Bank" holidays give you another 8... and they still mention additionally that "some" overtime is to be expected...
You mean like the Sharp 904SH? Doubt you'll see anything like this if you don't live in Japan though... for a while at least. Also features face recognition technology for security and a 3.2 megapixel camera with 2x optical zoom. Patience...
Quite an interesting and unexpected turn of events...
Vodafone has been going steadily downhill since their foray in to the market here. Their entry point was by buying out J-Phone and rebranding it as Vodafone K.K.. J-Phone was originally a division of JR, the national rail company. An interesting side effect of their original ownership was that in the early days of cell-access their networks first expanded along the railway networks giving them quite effective penetration even though their coverage was in fact quite spotty. J-Phone never quite reached the market-size of DoCoMo (the cellular division of NTT - the national telco), but was effectively their main competition with a reputation for innovation, which had cornered the younger "cooler" demographic. They were one of the first here to provide Java enabled phones and as the original originators of the camera-phone they have made their mark worldwide. In fact one of the last phones they brought to market before the buyout was the first phone to crack the 1 megapixel mark.
No wonder Vodaphone wanted a piece.
Some vodaphone insiders here have speculated that the main reason for the company's gradual descent has been the resistance of "old-Japan" upper management to outside pressures, almost more on principle than on particular merit, although some of those outside ideas have seemed to lack local market knowledge, amongst other things. Vodafone stagnated at a crucial point unfortunately - they were technologically ahead of the pack - their stall allowed competitors to take up the slack and old behemoth Docomo to pull ahead as many customers returned to DoCoMo for the newest gimmicks while vodaphone coasted...
Its not hard to still spot J-phone branded phones around which speaks volumes about the strength of the original company in this "new and shiny" crazed market. I actually think this is a good thing - if Vodafone was only as commited as a three year ownership and doesn't have the kahoonas to turn things around, its only their loss. Hopefully this is the begining of a return to their former glory and I'll finally be able to rid myself of this stupid AU phone...