I'm choosing to read it as the emerge room team spending a lot more money on a potential donor, than they would on someone who isn't. In the case of someone with a major head injury, tissue typing is pragmatic: there's a huge demand for organs, and the chances of a match succeeding are much higher when they're still fresh. You can bet that they're also networking with transport teams, and even just preparing for a potential trip from donor to recipient is expensive. All of that is wasted in the event of a successful resuscitation.
Meanwhile, if you don't have a card, costs are limited to the effort of bringing you back. In the event of the worst happening, they can keep you on life support and ask your next of kin about harvesting. Sucks for the people on waiting lists, but it's not like they aren't already cooling their heels.
'Own'. That's an interesting choice of punctuation on TFA's part. It's like 'breathe'. Porous materials 'breathe', but that's only a semblance of breathing-- they don't respire. You might 'own' virtual goods, but that's only a semblance of actual ownership-- you've been granted a license to use those goods, not true ownership. Even TFA realizes that, else its writer wouldn't have bothered with scare quotes.
The savings in electricity, rack space rental, physical maintenance and backup processes will more than cover any losses incurred by angering players of a game that hasn't updated in five years.
You missed a step. First they need to come up with some incentive, let's call it a Judas goat, to sign on and let their programs sift through our pictures. This is a little more complicated than web bugs and tracking cookies, since it requires more effort on our part than logging into Facebook or searching through Google.
You wish. As soon as the second batch goes out, there's going to be a flurry of articles about some guy who daisy-chained a hundred of them together for mining.
Christ on a crutch, folks. Paypal has been doing this literally for fucking years. At this point, you either have to have no contact with people who make and sell porn, erotica, or anything that could be mistaken for either, or have been living under a rock not to have heard of this happening. This is one of the reasons why your favourite porn sites only take credit cards and use processors that you've probably never heard of before.
But for that matter, the other processors often aren't much better. I know of one that requires sites to have absolutely no references to celebrities in them whatsoever-- not just the prose (or whatever they're selling), but right down to posts on any forums they're running, and probably even the advertisements too.
American mainstream news generally doesn't give a shit about international events unless it involves celebrities, celebrities dying, normal people dying en masse, or distant places that the government claims to be warring with or policing. Canadian politics simply aren't worth column inches, unless it directly affects the States or the media's ability to follow a story.
This is also the government who prorogued parliament in order to head off a legal inquiry into some of their other shenanigans-- which, had it gone through, could very well have been a scandal of historic proportions.
They also made significant changes to the election system and advertised it poorly, several years ago. You Americans in the audience might be familiar with this sort of tactic: requiring forms of identification that younger and poorer voters were less likely to have, in the name of combating electoral fraud. I worked the polls that year and it was a real goddamn treat explaining to people from all walks of life that they couldn't vote because they didn't bring the right ID. Some came back later. Some didn't. The whole thing was an awful bottleneck.
First, like any other piece of literature, you need a narrative that's going to keep the reader's attention. A fancy interface only goes so far if the underlying message is boring.
Second, you need an interface that's going to complement the story. If you litter your text with hypertext links and call it a day, you're doing favors to nobody.
Third, both writing and coding something worthwhile take effort, and doing both at the same time, with the intent of making them work well together, takes even more effort than doing either separately. Frankly, it's just not worth it much of the time.
There are narratives that work well in a hypertext medium, though. Two that come to mind are Hobo Lobo of Hamelin, a fable that's being written slowly but surely, and Bear 71, a 20 minute 'interactive documentary'.
Slash and burn astroturf? That's a new one on me. I mean, people aren't stupid: if they figure out that someone they respected is shilling to them, they're likely to disengage-- and messily. Rebuilding that credibility won't be fast or easy, and if they're checking prospects 'engagement' rates then they're probably keeping tabs on employees' rates over time, too...
Given that this will inevitably be hooked into G+, which will never, ever be rid of its requirements for real names and summary deletions for refusal, 'safe' is the last word I would use to describe this in the context of anyone with a desire or need for privacy.
Libraries typically have a limited number of copies as well. That's theoretically much less of a problem with e-books, even with DRM, if the library can have a non-limited number of e-copies in circulation at once.
The local city-wide library uses (or used-- I haven't buggered with it in a couple of years) some obnoxious Adobe program that basically loans out a license to a title for a limited period, and marks that license as 'checked out' on their back end until you check it back in or the loan expires. The documents are encrypted, of course, and can't be easily read without the license key.
For a moment I was worried this would be the old chestnut about Santa bursting into flames a second after he takes off, because of air resistance and the speeds necessary to deliver toys to every child on the planet. This, at least, I can fill a stocking to.
Given that broadband penetration is nowhere near 100% in north america, let alone globally, they'd need to co-locate server farms across the planet to prevent latency from being a killer in places like Europe or Australia, and broadband providers are doing their damnedest to enforce or implement usage caps, I'm going to have to say 'yes, this machine is going to be far too early for streaming games on the scale of traditional console installs.'
No, I really doubt that Apple is trying to wreck the patent system. Take a look at the lawsuits they've filed of late, specifically the immediate effect they've tried to have: broad suppression of competing products in whole markets-- Samsung's Galaxy tablet in Australia, for example. So far the bans have eventually been overturned, but that's still a win for Apple: a market that wants a particular technology isn't going to complain very much about selection; someone who is dead set on (say) a Galaxy is going to import one or wait for the courts to come to their senses, and they wouldn't have been a potential customer anyway.
These temporary monopolies give Apple a huge head-start on their competitors: the typical consumer isn't going to buy multiple tablets or smartphones, and if they are then they'll be more inclined to purchase ones that they know will be interoperable. When the time comes to replace equipment, they'll be more likely to go with a brand that they're familiar with. Even if this sparks patent reform (which it almost certainly won't), Apple solidifies its grasp on lucrative markets.
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Meanwhile, if you don't have a card, costs are limited to the effort of bringing you back. In the event of the worst happening, they can keep you on life support and ask your next of kin about harvesting. Sucks for the people on waiting lists, but it's not like they aren't already cooling their heels.
I like the cut of your jib. You know, we've got room for people like you down at Minitrue...
Kick Benedict Arnold in the... eggs.
'Own'. That's an interesting choice of punctuation on TFA's part. It's like 'breathe'. Porous materials 'breathe', but that's only a semblance of breathing-- they don't respire. You might 'own' virtual goods, but that's only a semblance of actual ownership-- you've been granted a license to use those goods, not true ownership. Even TFA realizes that, else its writer wouldn't have bothered with scare quotes.
The savings in electricity, rack space rental, physical maintenance and backup processes will more than cover any losses incurred by angering players of a game that hasn't updated in five years.
You missed a step. First they need to come up with some incentive, let's call it a Judas goat, to sign on and let their programs sift through our pictures. This is a little more complicated than web bugs and tracking cookies, since it requires more effort on our part than logging into Facebook or searching through Google.
You wish. As soon as the second batch goes out, there's going to be a flurry of articles about some guy who daisy-chained a hundred of them together for mining.
Funding? I hate to break it to you, but the States has been in arrears to the United Nations for decades.
But for that matter, the other processors often aren't much better. I know of one that requires sites to have absolutely no references to celebrities in them whatsoever-- not just the prose (or whatever they're selling), but right down to posts on any forums they're running, and probably even the advertisements too.
American mainstream news generally doesn't give a shit about international events unless it involves celebrities, celebrities dying, normal people dying en masse, or distant places that the government claims to be warring with or policing. Canadian politics simply aren't worth column inches, unless it directly affects the States or the media's ability to follow a story.
They also made significant changes to the election system and advertised it poorly, several years ago. You Americans in the audience might be familiar with this sort of tactic: requiring forms of identification that younger and poorer voters were less likely to have, in the name of combating electoral fraud. I worked the polls that year and it was a real goddamn treat explaining to people from all walks of life that they couldn't vote because they didn't bring the right ID. Some came back later. Some didn't. The whole thing was an awful bottleneck.
First, like any other piece of literature, you need a narrative that's going to keep the reader's attention. A fancy interface only goes so far if the underlying message is boring.
Second, you need an interface that's going to complement the story. If you litter your text with hypertext links and call it a day, you're doing favors to nobody.
Third, both writing and coding something worthwhile take effort, and doing both at the same time, with the intent of making them work well together, takes even more effort than doing either separately. Frankly, it's just not worth it much of the time.
There are narratives that work well in a hypertext medium, though. Two that come to mind are Hobo Lobo of Hamelin, a fable that's being written slowly but surely, and Bear 71, a 20 minute 'interactive documentary'.
Filled with green peaness and country goodness, yeah.
Slash and burn astroturf? That's a new one on me. I mean, people aren't stupid: if they figure out that someone they respected is shilling to them, they're likely to disengage-- and messily. Rebuilding that credibility won't be fast or easy, and if they're checking prospects 'engagement' rates then they're probably keeping tabs on employees' rates over time, too...
Dude, there are nerds who are still convinced that the Amiga could make a comeback. Irrational fixations transcend population boundaries.
Given that this will inevitably be hooked into G+, which will never, ever be rid of its requirements for real names and summary deletions for refusal, 'safe' is the last word I would use to describe this in the context of anyone with a desire or need for privacy.
"Overspecialization? Meet Planned Obsolescence. I'm sure you two will get along famously."
People who say 'Foo_City, I am in you!' will be charged with sexual harassment of a municipality.
Yes, but would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself?
Wow. Starbucks is really taking the piss now.
4D? Oh Jesus, and people thought the networks and studios shrieked about timeshifting before...
The local city-wide library uses (or used-- I haven't buggered with it in a couple of years) some obnoxious Adobe program that basically loans out a license to a title for a limited period, and marks that license as 'checked out' on their back end until you check it back in or the loan expires. The documents are encrypted, of course, and can't be easily read without the license key.
For a moment I was worried this would be the old chestnut about Santa bursting into flames a second after he takes off, because of air resistance and the speeds necessary to deliver toys to every child on the planet. This, at least, I can fill a stocking to.
Given that broadband penetration is nowhere near 100% in north america, let alone globally, they'd need to co-locate server farms across the planet to prevent latency from being a killer in places like Europe or Australia, and broadband providers are doing their damnedest to enforce or implement usage caps, I'm going to have to say 'yes, this machine is going to be far too early for streaming games on the scale of traditional console installs.'
These temporary monopolies give Apple a huge head-start on their competitors: the typical consumer isn't going to buy multiple tablets or smartphones, and if they are then they'll be more inclined to purchase ones that they know will be interoperable. When the time comes to replace equipment, they'll be more likely to go with a brand that they're familiar with. Even if this sparks patent reform (which it almost certainly won't), Apple solidifies its grasp on lucrative markets.