Can anyone tell me what effect the stupid US software patents system would have on overseas developers where there is no software patent law?
If an MMO developer like Blizzard were based in Europe could they basically tell them to fo, or would they still be able to bring a case and prevent them accepting paying customers from the US?
Clearly this kind of suit severely impacts innovation- what indie would dare try and develop and online game if they're at risk of being sued or forced to settle such that they can't afford either? I'm intrigued to know if the impact flows beyond the US and impacts overseas developers too or if they can simply say "Sorry, your patent doesn't apply in my country, get lost"?
Any clarification on how the US software patents system affects us outside the US would be much appreciated.
Science is certainly popular amongst enquiring minds, hence why we have countless regular scientific publications, and various TV documentaries.
Of course, that doesn't mean Science is popular with everyone, or even the masses, but then, people might argue Hannah Montana is popular- not with me she's not, and in fact, I'd imagine not with any of the 200 people in my office. Why? Because it's a kid thing.
So we've got this situation, where Science is popular with people who have at least a brief interest in it, but I'm not sure what TFA is asking? How do we make science popular with people who aren't interested in it? How do we stoke that initial interest?
I don't think the right question is being asked- what we need to ask is how can we restore public trust in science? That's the fundamental issue here - and as stated further up, the problem is that people don't trust science because you have everything from creationism, to herbal remedies to misleading names such as Scientology trying to rid the science bandwagon to give them an air of credibility where none exists. To me a good start in solving the problem would be for products like herbal remedies to have a legal requirement under the advertising code to have a warning along the lines of "This product has not been scientifically proven to have any actual effect", just like cigarette packets in the UK have a warning stating smoking them may lead to lung cancer. To me, a product trying to pass itself off as having some scientific merit where it doesn't demonstrably so is false advertising.
Of course there are other things that can be done, better education in school, or via TV documentaries and such as to how to tell whether something is scientifically valid.
But if we're just going to ask how we can make every single person interested in science then the answer is simple- we can't, there are billions of people who simply have no interest in it, just as many scientists have no interest in spirituality.
I know, but I don't see what your point is exactly? The government does not have to respond at the 500 mark, they do sometimes, sometimes a little later as in this case, or sometimes when the position ends.
If they do not respond they may face public criticism from the opposition for not responding causing them further political harm.
The government still has time to respond to that specific petition, and again, if they don't they will face the consequences so it's pointless having any concern over the response of that petition right now.
Besides, personally I'd rather he didn't resign anyway - he'll get replaced with a weasel like Mandelson or Milliband, both of which are more evil and more dangerous. Brown staying in power is our country's best hope of thankfully saying goodbye to Labour for a long long time next election.
Churchill was busy being Prime Minister at the time.
That should say a lot about Churchill's real character- if anyone could've protected Turing he could, and he chose not to.
Churchill made some great speeches during the war, but remember as soon as the war was over his government was kicked out, yes they got back in next term but only because his government was better than the, at the time, found to be even worse Labour government.
This view of Churchill as a great Briton is questionable, he talked a good talk during the war, even in the case of Turing referring to him as a great person. But his actions exist in sharp contrast to his words. Even politicians back then said one thing and did another.
In the UK there is an official government petition site where you can sign petitions based on your name and UK address.
When the petition reaches 500 signatures, it is passed to the government for a response.
So in fact they did act because of the petition, because had the petition not existed and reached a decent number of signatures (it hit over 30,000) this would not have happened.
It's not one of those pointless petitions from those petition farm sites you're probably thinking of because it has a direct link to government and commands a direct response from government.
Indeed, and whilst many may think you only have reason to be thankful if you're gay because justice has been done, that's not the case.
My reasons to be thankful to Turing are because he was one of the founders of the field I work in and love so much, one of the most important contributors along with the likes of Godel to what I find one of the most fascinating and enjoyable fields of math, and because, most importantly, his work allowed my grandfather to cross the channel back to England safely for his wedding to my grandmother and if it were not for this, I might never have even come to be.
As odd as it sounds being not born until nearly 30 years after his death, I almost certainly owe my existence and livelihood to Turing and of course, there's always an argument that if Turing hadn't done it someone else would have, but the point is, someone else didn't, Turing did so he is the man I have to thank. To me, it was unacceptable that a man to which I and many owe so much be treated like this and often ignored in recounts of great moments and people of British history.
"Apple as far as product quality hasn't done much to waver most people trust."
You mean apart from the fire hazard magsafe adapters, the easily scratched iPod nanos, the discolouring and poorly hinged MacBooks, the exploding iPhones, defectice 17" PowerBook displays?
Apple makes a lot of nice products, but any suggestion that Apple products are of a high product quality is an outright myth. It's been noted before that Apple uses sweatshops in Asia to produce it's products, and uses highly pollutant materials because they're the cheapest option. If product quality was a priority for Apple they would not use cheap materials, and would not use cheap poorly trained sweatshop labour.
If you want a cool product then Apple is the place to go, if you want a quality product, then it's absolutely not - see here for a good, but incomplete list of common quality issues across some of their products: http://appledefects.com/
...half the world is behind a NAT setup now, and the other half has Windows firewall enabled. Windows update exists now so people will be able to patch quickly and easily when a patch arrives.
Realistically this isn't going to effect many people like the old exploit did.
Still, it's quite comical, maybe this is Microsoft's take on the saying "The old ones are the best". So much for their secure development practices, there's really no excuse for them not picking this one up before release.
Probably, but you have to remember those well versed in the biology of certain species will know enough to know whether it's safe to deal with.
I have spent a lot of time studying succulent plants, and whilst members of the Cactaceae family are non-toxic, some members of the Euphorbia family have evolved in a convergent manner such that they have the same features of cacti however have a toxic sap, which can burn the skin. If I encountered a new species of plant that was succulent and spined I know enough to be able to tell you whether you can or can't safely handle or drink it's sap.
There's also the behavioural aspect in insects and animals such that they can be handled if you know how to handle them, and what the tell tale signs are to avoid them and avoid handling them.
So between understanding the biological traits of a species that define it's capabilities, and understanding the stances and movements of a species, you can judge pretty well how safe a new, previously undescribed species is to handle, and in fact, you can know a lot more about it than you might realise at first.
What version of Firefox are you using and on what OS? I've not seen Firefox crash in years, but it's certainly become quite sluggish compared to Chrome. Each time Windows update has forced Firefox shut overnight it's always kept my tabs waiting when it came back.
I build web apps for a living and hence use multiple browsers regularly. The only instability I've seen in browsers across a variety of systems is Safari for Windows (which is a horifically bad piece of software) or as a result of plugins in other browsers. Of course this does mean browsers should be doing more to protect themselves from bad plugins, but raw browsers themselves, or at least with only the most trustworthy and solid plugins (i.e. AdBlock in Firefox) have always been solid as a rock for me.
Are you aware of instability in browsers being a common issue? I wasn't under the impression instability had been an issue with browsers (or in fact a lot of mainstream software) for years- even Windows hasn't crashed for me in a long long time!
Still, I agree with you on security, that's always been an issue in browsers and still is, so more work certainly needs to be done there. I'm not sure what you mean regarding availability in browsers, I've never found my browser unavailable. Whilst Chrome has always seemed fast enough for me, IE and Firefox are horribly slow browsers in comparison and I really notice it when tuning page loading speeds. Having large numbers of tabs open makes the poor performance of IE and Firefox ever more obvious too.
You're not concerned about the speed of your browser because historically your browser is something that's run too slow for anything interesting to be done with it. If browsers were faster (as they are becoming) they could do things that would suddenly make you care about how fast your browser is. Rendering full blown 3D using just Javasript is one example, and we've seen some demonstrations of this being feasible with some of the newer browsers in recent times.
I followed the same line of thought as you previously until I realised the problem with the browser speed debate isn't how fast browsers do the things they do now, but how slow they do the things we want them to be able to do in the future.
Yes, both manufacturers want to ensure simplicity in their interfaces. The last thing Microsoft wants to have people to deal with is that when you select one player you get the usual XBox live guide options come up and when you select another it simply has to say sorry, this person is using a different console.
One of the whole points of Live, and one of the things Microsoft did well with the XBox was the consistency of it, it offers you a consistent experience throughout, if you start branching out to other consoles you lose that. Sony no doubt feel the same, although their interface wasn't consistent throughout startup to gaming, they've made massive strides in that direction such that it is much more so nowadays so also clearly see the benefits of maintaining that.
It's probably worth pointing out that there are games where XBox players can indeed play with PC players, simply because of Live for Windows which does allow Microsoft to maintain that consistent interface across platforms.
There are also outright differences on a code level, the PS3 can't hook into XBox's lives voice setup for example and vice versa so there'd be no communication between players of different platforms. Similarly, for games that use Microsoft's matchmaking and so forth again, the PS3 wouldn't be able to make use of it because I doubt Microsoft are about to publish or even license their proprietary protocol specs to a competitor. Again, the same goes for Sony to Microsoft.
Of course, there's the business side of things too, if your console has 20,000 people playing online at any one time and the other guys only has a 100 making it a pain to find a game then you don't want to give them the advantage of having access to your playerbase in the hope those will switch to your platform if it has more players.
"Wrong. WGA does not "inspect" the users hard drive, it checks the Windows license"
Actually, you're wrong, it sends much more than just the Windows license, it sends hard drive serial number, computer make and model, language settings, OS version, Office version amongst other things.
It also sends them regularly. If it was just a case of checking your key was valid was a lot less people would probably have a problem with it, but the fact Microsoft are basically using it as a hardware audit and audit of users locations and so forth on a regular basis then yes it crosses the line into being unacceptable.
I'm quite pro-Microsoft, hell, I paid for a legitimate version of Vista Ultimate, and Office 2007. I like a lot of their products, I don't think they're as bad a company as many like to make out, certainly they're no less ethical than companies like Apple. Things like WGA though, are simply not acceptable, it is just not acceptable that my resources, that my network security should be compromised because Microsoft wants to avoid a bunch of pirated copies of Windows that people just pirate and crack, or use MSDN or VLK keys or similar for anyway. WGA establishes an outbound connection that is out of my control, it sends data outside of my control and to me that is a big deal.
I've refused the license agreement on my new Eee PC, will be collecting my Windows tax refund and installing Linux. This is not what I want to do because IMO Linux offers and inferior experience, when it breaks it breaks royally and in recent times it even seems to break more than Windows does. The programs for it are not as good, MS Office is simply that much better than Open Office, Visual Studio is simply that much better than Eclipse etc. but what am I to do? I'm certainly not going to pretend WGA is acceptable and lie to myself and suggest it isn't that bad and doesn't really cause much of a problem, because it does. I want full control of all data that enters and leaves my system, Windows can not offer me that whilst it makes use of WGA.
The answers to your questions should be pretty easy to gather from my previous post which gives me the impression you don't want to accept that there is a good reason for one country to lead. But, in the case you really can't gather from my post why it would give the US a competitive advantage I'll explain it a bit more thoroughly anyway.
In removing the dependence on fossil fuel sources, you remove dependence on imports, this inherently makes you more competitive to start with. This also means you need less military expenditure to secure and/or protect fossil fuel assets abroad (let's face it, that's what Iraq was about after all) which again leads to cost savings. Once you have those technologies in place, you also are creating an export market for those technologies, one which can thrive, and if done well you may not only be exporting the technology, but maybe exporting energy itself across your north and south borders and possibly beyond.
The reason companies haven't got on board for the financial savings is because it is not something a single company can reap the benefits of, it is something that must be done on a state level so that the benefits of an improved economy can be passed on in the form of lower taxes for businesses, but also simply because businesses are afraid to take risks in completely new markets. If a government of said state can produce confidence that there is a market for the product (what's the point in investing in green tech research if your government is going to carry on down the fossil fuel route for example?), and that it will be supported then businesses will be much more happy to proceed down that path.
Ultimately, on the other end of the scale those states who do continue the fossil fuel route will have to start paying more and more as those resources become less available (and ultimately import energy from countries with renewable sources anyway), they will have to invest more in the military requirements of securing such resources and their economy will see no benefits from the green technologies market.
Does that make the benefits of a green economy a bit more clear?
Because there are other benefits to reducing CO2 such as not having to rely on security of decreasing fossil fuel resources.
If a big country like the US can make the shift to renewable, green power and simultaneously cut unnecessary wasteful power usage it will have a competitive advantage in the world. Other nations like China will then have to follow or face getting left in the dust again. The green technology market in itself has the potential to be massive too, and nations like China will want their cut.
The problem is, to push for these advantages requires short term pain - it requires effort, it requires research and as such no major players are willing to really kick start the process at all, but again, rest assured when one does, the others will see what they're missing or find themselves fighting over scraps of fossil fuels and end up weaker nations as a result.
Europe seems to be ahead right now in leading on this, although it's still really a half assed effort, so long term the leader of the green technology market is still anyone's game.
Britain as a sovereign nation did have a choice on the Lisbon treaty. The problem is that it was the government that made the decision for the country when it should've been the people. It was not signed against the will of the country, but the will of the people. This is a flaw with the government, not with Britain losing it's sovereignity to Europe to be able to make decisions like this in the first place. A new government could still choose to pull us out if they really felt it would be worth it also.
That doesn't mean I agree with it though, you're assuming that I'm misunderstanding the system and complaining about that - I'm not, I'm complaining that I don't like the way the system works, I do not like the way one leader can arbitrarily be replaced only a short way through the term with one no one wants. I understand this is part of our system but I believe it is a flaw in our system and I believe it is undemocratic. Yes, he is legitimate in the eyes of the system, but he is not, in my opinion, legitimate in the eyes of the people of whom the vast majority do not want him in power at all as can be seen by the massive losses Labour has made in local elections since Brown's rise to power.
The fact is a change of leader creates a complete change of dynamic to a party. Under Blair Labour was holding it's own vs. Cameron, but under Brown it's a complete dead loss, Labour now has no chance at all of winning the next election, and in fact, they've even dropped below the Lib Dems in the polls a few times in the last year. If a party can change so drastically with a leadership change, then a leadership change should result in an election. I know this isn't how the system does work but it's how the system should work. If it did we wouldn't be in the horrific mess our country is in in terms of civil liberties right now.
Not really, because the nation in question - Britain, has signed up to have that as part of the deal.
If Britain hadn't signed up to this and Europe was still enforcing this you'd have a point, but as it's Britain's choice to only allow laws to be legitimate if reported to Europe then it's still a sovereign nation.
It can get out of this agreement any time it wants but there's not really any reason to as it's not a big deal. Besides, nowadays Europe does a better job of running Britain than the current Labour government does. Certainly the European court of human rights and the EU itself have done more to protect my human rights and civil liberties as a citizen than my own government which has repeatedly tried to violate them.
Even if Europe was in control of Britain then and did actively choose not to ratify laws like this it could only be a good thing until unelected Brown and his unelected cronies like Mandelson get kicked out next year.
Basically, a guy wanted to find out what the differences are between those who multi-task a lot and those who don't, or feel they are unable to multi-task well.
He set up an arbitrary experiment that supposedly tests your ability to multi-task and those who multi-task a lot did not do very well at his experiment, hence his conclusion was that multi-taskers are bad at multi-tasking.
The problem I see with his experiment, and more importantly, his conclusion, is that he assumes the various tests he did actually are all that are required to judge someone's ability to multi-task - effectively he wasn't testing multi-tasking in his experiments, only performing phsycological tests that he assume are the traits that are required to be an effective multi-tasker.
An experiment cited in the BBC article is one where there is a screen with 2 red rectangles and a number of blue rectangles which is displayed briefly and then the screen is displayed again and the subject has to say whether or not a red rectangle has been rotated. The link to multi-tasking in this particular experiment is weak, I can only guess the assumption is that to multi-task better you need to be able to track multiple objects on screen in detail but that seems to be merely speculation on behalf of the researcher.
Doing research on this sort of thing is fair enough, but the fact they seem to have come to the outright conclusion that multi-taskers suck at multi-tasking seems quite a leap from what their research actually shows - that there's simply a statistical link between someone's ability to multi-task and how badly/how well someone can do in those specific experiments which in themselves may or may not tell us anything about someone's ability to multi-task.
I would've thought a better experiment would, you know, involve multi-tasking? An experiment with say a simplified user interface where there are multilple blocks (Windows) where a basic task has to be performed in each but each has a differing time limit as to how quickly it must be completed. Simple, effective, and a good test of multi-tasking ability.
But then, that might not have given them the results they wanted that would get them headlines that the world's media would blindly follow.
I'm intrigued to know what his real metric will be, he suggests hundreds of thousands of players using Linux, but I sure as hell hope he doesn't mean concurrently else he's effectively just set up the Linux community to fail.
The problem is, even the largest online FPS communities in the world which are Halo 3, Call of Duty 4/5 and such only just crack the 200,000 mark at absolute peak and Quake Live simply is not going to achieve the player base of these games - and that's across all platforms.
I hope his hundreds of thousands was just a figure of speech else he's effectively setting up the Linux gaming community for a challenge he must know full well they can't possibly reach - again, it's hard enough for Windows and the XBox360 with their 10s of millions of users each to even achieve hundreds of thousands.
I guess they've never heard of a little country in Europe called Great Britain.
Yes, a country where net neutrality has been broken for nearly 3 - 5 years now. Not only that, but in the UK the government has declared no interest in net neutrality and has given ISPs the green light to do what they want.
Originally OFCOM, the telecommunications watchdog in the UK stated that it would be unacceptable if ISPs took it to the level of slowing down certain companies sites over others, but even that stance seems to have changed now as they appear to be considering allowing ISPs to hold the BBC to ransom forcing them to pay for the bandwidth they already pay their ISP for and their users already pay the threatening ISP for.
Britain is not unique in this respect in Europe either, it happens in many other countries here, I can only guess the submitter lives under a rock in his home country and now this has happened has woken up and started to take notice crying blue murder to the world. Unfortunately, the rest of us have been trying to fight the destruction of even the slightest hope for net neutrality in Europe for a few years now.
Isn't it great when people only cry out when something suddenly effects them? This is why things like this happen in the first place, because no one gives a shit about potential issues. If people across Europe had made a loud point about breaking of net neutrality earlier on it could've been stopped and wouldn't be creeping from country to country as it is now.
For what it's worth, I had the opposite experience. Similar scenario but not identical in that I bought something on eBay but it never arrived, even though seller claimed they'd sent it. Waited a while said it still hadn't arrived, contacted Paypal to file a dispute, seller still claimed they'd sent it and if I wanted my money back I needed to return it, but Paypal found in my favour regardless and refunded me the full amount.
Yeah, that's a big deal to me, especially as I only paid £229.99 for my Xbox 360 back in August 2006. I want a PS3 because I'm dying to play Killzone more than anything, but I just can't justify paying more for a console of the same generation now, than I did 3 years ago. This late in the generation consoles needs to be sub-£200 IMO.
To be fair on Sony, that's what the price point is in North America - £180, which is the same as the Wii at £179.99 whilst the 360 for the premium model is £149.99. £180 is a reasonable price point, but £250 simply is not. I don't know what Sony's playing at really, but they've certainly lost a sale here for the time being. I wont get my wallet out for one until it's under £200, particularly as it is in the US.
Yeah yeah I know there's the argument about higher taxes in Europe, but seriously, we don't get taxed £70 on a £180 product - that's like a 38% markup, whilst VAT is only 15% right now. There's really no justification for that, and it's not like a £250 cost for a console of this generations is justifiable this late in the game, especially when we're still in a recession.
On one hand I kinda feel, finally Sony get it by doing a price decrease in the US to a reasonable level. On the other, I feel they still just don't get it based on the UK price. I'm assuming the rest of Europe will face a similar price to the UK.
Perhaps it's just because NA has been Sony's weakest market this generation and they feel they need to discount further there?
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Can anyone tell me what effect the stupid US software patents system would have on overseas developers where there is no software patent law?
If an MMO developer like Blizzard were based in Europe could they basically tell them to fo, or would they still be able to bring a case and prevent them accepting paying customers from the US?
Clearly this kind of suit severely impacts innovation- what indie would dare try and develop and online game if they're at risk of being sued or forced to settle such that they can't afford either? I'm intrigued to know if the impact flows beyond the US and impacts overseas developers too or if they can simply say "Sorry, your patent doesn't apply in my country, get lost"?
Any clarification on how the US software patents system affects us outside the US would be much appreciated.
I'd argue it depends on what you mean by popular.
Science is certainly popular amongst enquiring minds, hence why we have countless regular scientific publications, and various TV documentaries.
Of course, that doesn't mean Science is popular with everyone, or even the masses, but then, people might argue Hannah Montana is popular- not with me she's not, and in fact, I'd imagine not with any of the 200 people in my office. Why? Because it's a kid thing.
So we've got this situation, where Science is popular with people who have at least a brief interest in it, but I'm not sure what TFA is asking? How do we make science popular with people who aren't interested in it? How do we stoke that initial interest?
I don't think the right question is being asked- what we need to ask is how can we restore public trust in science? That's the fundamental issue here - and as stated further up, the problem is that people don't trust science because you have everything from creationism, to herbal remedies to misleading names such as Scientology trying to rid the science bandwagon to give them an air of credibility where none exists. To me a good start in solving the problem would be for products like herbal remedies to have a legal requirement under the advertising code to have a warning along the lines of "This product has not been scientifically proven to have any actual effect", just like cigarette packets in the UK have a warning stating smoking them may lead to lung cancer. To me, a product trying to pass itself off as having some scientific merit where it doesn't demonstrably so is false advertising.
Of course there are other things that can be done, better education in school, or via TV documentaries and such as to how to tell whether something is scientifically valid.
But if we're just going to ask how we can make every single person interested in science then the answer is simple- we can't, there are billions of people who simply have no interest in it, just as many scientists have no interest in spirituality.
I know, but I don't see what your point is exactly? The government does not have to respond at the 500 mark, they do sometimes, sometimes a little later as in this case, or sometimes when the position ends.
If they do not respond they may face public criticism from the opposition for not responding causing them further political harm.
The government still has time to respond to that specific petition, and again, if they don't they will face the consequences so it's pointless having any concern over the response of that petition right now.
Besides, personally I'd rather he didn't resign anyway - he'll get replaced with a weasel like Mandelson or Milliband, both of which are more evil and more dangerous. Brown staying in power is our country's best hope of thankfully saying goodbye to Labour for a long long time next election.
Churchill was busy being Prime Minister at the time.
That should say a lot about Churchill's real character- if anyone could've protected Turing he could, and he chose not to.
Churchill made some great speeches during the war, but remember as soon as the war was over his government was kicked out, yes they got back in next term but only because his government was better than the, at the time, found to be even worse Labour government.
This view of Churchill as a great Briton is questionable, he talked a good talk during the war, even in the case of Turing referring to him as a great person. But his actions exist in sharp contrast to his words. Even politicians back then said one thing and did another.
In the UK there is an official government petition site where you can sign petitions based on your name and UK address.
When the petition reaches 500 signatures, it is passed to the government for a response.
So in fact they did act because of the petition, because had the petition not existed and reached a decent number of signatures (it hit over 30,000) this would not have happened.
It's not one of those pointless petitions from those petition farm sites you're probably thinking of because it has a direct link to government and commands a direct response from government.
Indeed, and whilst many may think you only have reason to be thankful if you're gay because justice has been done, that's not the case.
My reasons to be thankful to Turing are because he was one of the founders of the field I work in and love so much, one of the most important contributors along with the likes of Godel to what I find one of the most fascinating and enjoyable fields of math, and because, most importantly, his work allowed my grandfather to cross the channel back to England safely for his wedding to my grandmother and if it were not for this, I might never have even come to be.
As odd as it sounds being not born until nearly 30 years after his death, I almost certainly owe my existence and livelihood to Turing and of course, there's always an argument that if Turing hadn't done it someone else would have, but the point is, someone else didn't, Turing did so he is the man I have to thank. To me, it was unacceptable that a man to which I and many owe so much be treated like this and often ignored in recounts of great moments and people of British history.
So I also genuinely appreciate it.
"Apple as far as product quality hasn't done much to waver most people trust."
You mean apart from the fire hazard magsafe adapters, the easily scratched iPod nanos, the discolouring and poorly hinged MacBooks, the exploding iPhones, defectice 17" PowerBook displays?
Apple makes a lot of nice products, but any suggestion that Apple products are of a high product quality is an outright myth. It's been noted before that Apple uses sweatshops in Asia to produce it's products, and uses highly pollutant materials because they're the cheapest option. If product quality was a priority for Apple they would not use cheap materials, and would not use cheap poorly trained sweatshop labour.
If you want a cool product then Apple is the place to go, if you want a quality product, then it's absolutely not - see here for a good, but incomplete list of common quality issues across some of their products: http://appledefects.com/
...half the world is behind a NAT setup now, and the other half has Windows firewall enabled. Windows update exists now so people will be able to patch quickly and easily when a patch arrives.
Realistically this isn't going to effect many people like the old exploit did.
Still, it's quite comical, maybe this is Microsoft's take on the saying "The old ones are the best". So much for their secure development practices, there's really no excuse for them not picking this one up before release.
Probably, but you have to remember those well versed in the biology of certain species will know enough to know whether it's safe to deal with.
I have spent a lot of time studying succulent plants, and whilst members of the Cactaceae family are non-toxic, some members of the Euphorbia family have evolved in a convergent manner such that they have the same features of cacti however have a toxic sap, which can burn the skin. If I encountered a new species of plant that was succulent and spined I know enough to be able to tell you whether you can or can't safely handle or drink it's sap.
There's also the behavioural aspect in insects and animals such that they can be handled if you know how to handle them, and what the tell tale signs are to avoid them and avoid handling them.
So between understanding the biological traits of a species that define it's capabilities, and understanding the stances and movements of a species, you can judge pretty well how safe a new, previously undescribed species is to handle, and in fact, you can know a lot more about it than you might realise at first.
What version of Firefox are you using and on what OS? I've not seen Firefox crash in years, but it's certainly become quite sluggish compared to Chrome. Each time Windows update has forced Firefox shut overnight it's always kept my tabs waiting when it came back.
I build web apps for a living and hence use multiple browsers regularly. The only instability I've seen in browsers across a variety of systems is Safari for Windows (which is a horifically bad piece of software) or as a result of plugins in other browsers. Of course this does mean browsers should be doing more to protect themselves from bad plugins, but raw browsers themselves, or at least with only the most trustworthy and solid plugins (i.e. AdBlock in Firefox) have always been solid as a rock for me.
Are you aware of instability in browsers being a common issue? I wasn't under the impression instability had been an issue with browsers (or in fact a lot of mainstream software) for years- even Windows hasn't crashed for me in a long long time!
Still, I agree with you on security, that's always been an issue in browsers and still is, so more work certainly needs to be done there. I'm not sure what you mean regarding availability in browsers, I've never found my browser unavailable. Whilst Chrome has always seemed fast enough for me, IE and Firefox are horribly slow browsers in comparison and I really notice it when tuning page loading speeds. Having large numbers of tabs open makes the poor performance of IE and Firefox ever more obvious too.
You're not concerned about the speed of your browser because historically your browser is something that's run too slow for anything interesting to be done with it. If browsers were faster (as they are becoming) they could do things that would suddenly make you care about how fast your browser is. Rendering full blown 3D using just Javasript is one example, and we've seen some demonstrations of this being feasible with some of the newer browsers in recent times.
I followed the same line of thought as you previously until I realised the problem with the browser speed debate isn't how fast browsers do the things they do now, but how slow they do the things we want them to be able to do in the future.
Yes, both manufacturers want to ensure simplicity in their interfaces. The last thing Microsoft wants to have people to deal with is that when you select one player you get the usual XBox live guide options come up and when you select another it simply has to say sorry, this person is using a different console.
One of the whole points of Live, and one of the things Microsoft did well with the XBox was the consistency of it, it offers you a consistent experience throughout, if you start branching out to other consoles you lose that. Sony no doubt feel the same, although their interface wasn't consistent throughout startup to gaming, they've made massive strides in that direction such that it is much more so nowadays so also clearly see the benefits of maintaining that.
It's probably worth pointing out that there are games where XBox players can indeed play with PC players, simply because of Live for Windows which does allow Microsoft to maintain that consistent interface across platforms.
There are also outright differences on a code level, the PS3 can't hook into XBox's lives voice setup for example and vice versa so there'd be no communication between players of different platforms. Similarly, for games that use Microsoft's matchmaking and so forth again, the PS3 wouldn't be able to make use of it because I doubt Microsoft are about to publish or even license their proprietary protocol specs to a competitor. Again, the same goes for Sony to Microsoft.
Of course, there's the business side of things too, if your console has 20,000 people playing online at any one time and the other guys only has a 100 making it a pain to find a game then you don't want to give them the advantage of having access to your playerbase in the hope those will switch to your platform if it has more players.
"Wrong. WGA does not "inspect" the users hard drive, it checks the Windows license"
Actually, you're wrong, it sends much more than just the Windows license, it sends hard drive serial number, computer make and model, language settings, OS version, Office version amongst other things.
It also sends them regularly. If it was just a case of checking your key was valid was a lot less people would probably have a problem with it, but the fact Microsoft are basically using it as a hardware audit and audit of users locations and so forth on a regular basis then yes it crosses the line into being unacceptable.
I'm quite pro-Microsoft, hell, I paid for a legitimate version of Vista Ultimate, and Office 2007. I like a lot of their products, I don't think they're as bad a company as many like to make out, certainly they're no less ethical than companies like Apple. Things like WGA though, are simply not acceptable, it is just not acceptable that my resources, that my network security should be compromised because Microsoft wants to avoid a bunch of pirated copies of Windows that people just pirate and crack, or use MSDN or VLK keys or similar for anyway. WGA establishes an outbound connection that is out of my control, it sends data outside of my control and to me that is a big deal.
I've refused the license agreement on my new Eee PC, will be collecting my Windows tax refund and installing Linux. This is not what I want to do because IMO Linux offers and inferior experience, when it breaks it breaks royally and in recent times it even seems to break more than Windows does. The programs for it are not as good, MS Office is simply that much better than Open Office, Visual Studio is simply that much better than Eclipse etc. but what am I to do? I'm certainly not going to pretend WGA is acceptable and lie to myself and suggest it isn't that bad and doesn't really cause much of a problem, because it does. I want full control of all data that enters and leaves my system, Windows can not offer me that whilst it makes use of WGA.
The answers to your questions should be pretty easy to gather from my previous post which gives me the impression you don't want to accept that there is a good reason for one country to lead. But, in the case you really can't gather from my post why it would give the US a competitive advantage I'll explain it a bit more thoroughly anyway.
In removing the dependence on fossil fuel sources, you remove dependence on imports, this inherently makes you more competitive to start with. This also means you need less military expenditure to secure and/or protect fossil fuel assets abroad (let's face it, that's what Iraq was about after all) which again leads to cost savings. Once you have those technologies in place, you also are creating an export market for those technologies, one which can thrive, and if done well you may not only be exporting the technology, but maybe exporting energy itself across your north and south borders and possibly beyond.
The reason companies haven't got on board for the financial savings is because it is not something a single company can reap the benefits of, it is something that must be done on a state level so that the benefits of an improved economy can be passed on in the form of lower taxes for businesses, but also simply because businesses are afraid to take risks in completely new markets. If a government of said state can produce confidence that there is a market for the product (what's the point in investing in green tech research if your government is going to carry on down the fossil fuel route for example?), and that it will be supported then businesses will be much more happy to proceed down that path.
Ultimately, on the other end of the scale those states who do continue the fossil fuel route will have to start paying more and more as those resources become less available (and ultimately import energy from countries with renewable sources anyway), they will have to invest more in the military requirements of securing such resources and their economy will see no benefits from the green technologies market.
Does that make the benefits of a green economy a bit more clear?
Because there are other benefits to reducing CO2 such as not having to rely on security of decreasing fossil fuel resources.
If a big country like the US can make the shift to renewable, green power and simultaneously cut unnecessary wasteful power usage it will have a competitive advantage in the world. Other nations like China will then have to follow or face getting left in the dust again. The green technology market in itself has the potential to be massive too, and nations like China will want their cut.
The problem is, to push for these advantages requires short term pain - it requires effort, it requires research and as such no major players are willing to really kick start the process at all, but again, rest assured when one does, the others will see what they're missing or find themselves fighting over scraps of fossil fuels and end up weaker nations as a result.
Europe seems to be ahead right now in leading on this, although it's still really a half assed effort, so long term the leader of the green technology market is still anyone's game.
Britain as a sovereign nation did have a choice on the Lisbon treaty. The problem is that it was the government that made the decision for the country when it should've been the people. It was not signed against the will of the country, but the will of the people. This is a flaw with the government, not with Britain losing it's sovereignity to Europe to be able to make decisions like this in the first place. A new government could still choose to pull us out if they really felt it would be worth it also.
I understand exactly how it works.
That doesn't mean I agree with it though, you're assuming that I'm misunderstanding the system and complaining about that - I'm not, I'm complaining that I don't like the way the system works, I do not like the way one leader can arbitrarily be replaced only a short way through the term with one no one wants. I understand this is part of our system but I believe it is a flaw in our system and I believe it is undemocratic. Yes, he is legitimate in the eyes of the system, but he is not, in my opinion, legitimate in the eyes of the people of whom the vast majority do not want him in power at all as can be seen by the massive losses Labour has made in local elections since Brown's rise to power.
The fact is a change of leader creates a complete change of dynamic to a party. Under Blair Labour was holding it's own vs. Cameron, but under Brown it's a complete dead loss, Labour now has no chance at all of winning the next election, and in fact, they've even dropped below the Lib Dems in the polls a few times in the last year. If a party can change so drastically with a leadership change, then a leadership change should result in an election. I know this isn't how the system does work but it's how the system should work. If it did we wouldn't be in the horrific mess our country is in in terms of civil liberties right now.
Not really, because the nation in question - Britain, has signed up to have that as part of the deal.
If Britain hadn't signed up to this and Europe was still enforcing this you'd have a point, but as it's Britain's choice to only allow laws to be legitimate if reported to Europe then it's still a sovereign nation.
It can get out of this agreement any time it wants but there's not really any reason to as it's not a big deal. Besides, nowadays Europe does a better job of running Britain than the current Labour government does. Certainly the European court of human rights and the EU itself have done more to protect my human rights and civil liberties as a citizen than my own government which has repeatedly tried to violate them.
Even if Europe was in control of Britain then and did actively choose not to ratify laws like this it could only be a good thing until unelected Brown and his unelected cronies like Mandelson get kicked out next year.
Basically, a guy wanted to find out what the differences are between those who multi-task a lot and those who don't, or feel they are unable to multi-task well.
He set up an arbitrary experiment that supposedly tests your ability to multi-task and those who multi-task a lot did not do very well at his experiment, hence his conclusion was that multi-taskers are bad at multi-tasking.
The problem I see with his experiment, and more importantly, his conclusion, is that he assumes the various tests he did actually are all that are required to judge someone's ability to multi-task - effectively he wasn't testing multi-tasking in his experiments, only performing phsycological tests that he assume are the traits that are required to be an effective multi-tasker.
An experiment cited in the BBC article is one where there is a screen with 2 red rectangles and a number of blue rectangles which is displayed briefly and then the screen is displayed again and the subject has to say whether or not a red rectangle has been rotated. The link to multi-tasking in this particular experiment is weak, I can only guess the assumption is that to multi-task better you need to be able to track multiple objects on screen in detail but that seems to be merely speculation on behalf of the researcher.
Doing research on this sort of thing is fair enough, but the fact they seem to have come to the outright conclusion that multi-taskers suck at multi-tasking seems quite a leap from what their research actually shows - that there's simply a statistical link between someone's ability to multi-task and how badly/how well someone can do in those specific experiments which in themselves may or may not tell us anything about someone's ability to multi-task.
I would've thought a better experiment would, you know, involve multi-tasking? An experiment with say a simplified user interface where there are multilple blocks (Windows) where a basic task has to be performed in each but each has a differing time limit as to how quickly it must be completed. Simple, effective, and a good test of multi-tasking ability.
But then, that might not have given them the results they wanted that would get them headlines that the world's media would blindly follow.
I'm intrigued to know what his real metric will be, he suggests hundreds of thousands of players using Linux, but I sure as hell hope he doesn't mean concurrently else he's effectively just set up the Linux community to fail.
The problem is, even the largest online FPS communities in the world which are Halo 3, Call of Duty 4/5 and such only just crack the 200,000 mark at absolute peak and Quake Live simply is not going to achieve the player base of these games - and that's across all platforms.
I hope his hundreds of thousands was just a figure of speech else he's effectively setting up the Linux gaming community for a challenge he must know full well they can't possibly reach - again, it's hard enough for Windows and the XBox360 with their 10s of millions of users each to even achieve hundreds of thousands.
I guess they've never heard of a little country in Europe called Great Britain.
Yes, a country where net neutrality has been broken for nearly 3 - 5 years now. Not only that, but in the UK the government has declared no interest in net neutrality and has given ISPs the green light to do what they want.
Originally OFCOM, the telecommunications watchdog in the UK stated that it would be unacceptable if ISPs took it to the level of slowing down certain companies sites over others, but even that stance seems to have changed now as they appear to be considering allowing ISPs to hold the BBC to ransom forcing them to pay for the bandwidth they already pay their ISP for and their users already pay the threatening ISP for.
Britain is not unique in this respect in Europe either, it happens in many other countries here, I can only guess the submitter lives under a rock in his home country and now this has happened has woken up and started to take notice crying blue murder to the world. Unfortunately, the rest of us have been trying to fight the destruction of even the slightest hope for net neutrality in Europe for a few years now.
Isn't it great when people only cry out when something suddenly effects them? This is why things like this happen in the first place, because no one gives a shit about potential issues. If people across Europe had made a loud point about breaking of net neutrality earlier on it could've been stopped and wouldn't be creeping from country to country as it is now.
For what it's worth, I had the opposite experience. Similar scenario but not identical in that I bought something on eBay but it never arrived, even though seller claimed they'd sent it. Waited a while said it still hadn't arrived, contacted Paypal to file a dispute, seller still claimed they'd sent it and if I wanted my money back I needed to return it, but Paypal found in my favour regardless and refunded me the full amount.
btjunkie.org works fine for the most part.
Or ideally, even better, as the other guy said, that thing no one talks about.
There are import duties into to the US too as they're manufactured in Asia.
Yeah, that's a big deal to me, especially as I only paid £229.99 for my Xbox 360 back in August 2006. I want a PS3 because I'm dying to play Killzone more than anything, but I just can't justify paying more for a console of the same generation now, than I did 3 years ago. This late in the generation consoles needs to be sub-£200 IMO.
To be fair on Sony, that's what the price point is in North America - £180, which is the same as the Wii at £179.99 whilst the 360 for the premium model is £149.99. £180 is a reasonable price point, but £250 simply is not. I don't know what Sony's playing at really, but they've certainly lost a sale here for the time being. I wont get my wallet out for one until it's under £200, particularly as it is in the US.
Yeah yeah I know there's the argument about higher taxes in Europe, but seriously, we don't get taxed £70 on a £180 product - that's like a 38% markup, whilst VAT is only 15% right now. There's really no justification for that, and it's not like a £250 cost for a console of this generations is justifiable this late in the game, especially when we're still in a recession.
On one hand I kinda feel, finally Sony get it by doing a price decrease in the US to a reasonable level. On the other, I feel they still just don't get it based on the UK price. I'm assuming the rest of Europe will face a similar price to the UK.
Perhaps it's just because NA has been Sony's weakest market this generation and they feel they need to discount further there?