Call me primitive, but I have almost no 1920x1080 video sources. I still use SD TV feeds, I don't own a Bluray (or HD-DVD) player and although Youtube will supply 1920x1080 video, at a range of two feet I just don't need to run it at full screen anyway.
Computer games I run at 1920x1080, and I'd love that resolution on smaller devices, but for video? On a 10" screen? Well, thank you I guess, for offering to fund the technology advances the rest of us will eventually benefit from.
To be fair, it wasn't remotely an even contest. Anne Widdecombe vs Stephen Fry is rarely going to be anything other than a crushing victory to the unfeasibly intelligent man with dry humour and a delightful line in self-deprecation.
Anne's far from stupid and is a good public speaker but has never really seemed to me to have the charisma for that sort of event - let alone when pushing a religious agenda at a British secular event.
Take heart. The UK started with a petition site, attached to the office of the Prime Minister, and its early days were also full of petitions ranging from the crackpot to the populistic with a few good ones thrown into the mix.
The responses were invariably 'no' unless the petition could be answered in a way that made existing Government policy seem to address it.
That site was taken down, and replaced by a new petition site. That has a mandate that if enough people sign a petition (with 100k being the 'magic' number) then the issue will be debated in Parliament.
That's already led to two outcomes - publication of secret Government files regarding a 1989 sporting tragedy, so a massive success for the members of the public involved (and the petition system) - a vote in the House of Commons on an issue of massive public interest in which the major parties mandated a 'no' vote, against public wishes
That second one has only just happened. There will be a backlash. It may not be immediate, but it will be felt - there were far too many people annoyed by the party politics to let it lie.
So an initially ignored system has led to parliamentary debates, and is already forcing politicians to be more accountable to the electorate. That may not be a good thing, but it is democratic.
It feels as though the US petition site is starting on that same journey.
Depends which country you're from. In the UK every child aged 5 and above knows about the plot, because we hold a celebration every year - huge bonfires, massive firework displays and toffee apples.
Without wishing to contradict any specific part of your insightful analysis, have you seen the fucking murder rate in Mexico?
There are an awful lot of people being killed on a daily basis by the cartels, and a scary number of them don't die gently.
Even if torture doesn't work, the fear of torture does. The heavily brutalised corpse of an anonymous member is worth a lot even if none of the actual information gained is accurate. If the info includes 2-3 names of other members, they need to find themselves a new home/identity/country/life pretty sharpish.
Hell, with energy prices at their current levels keeping yourself warmer with the thermostat set a little lower would be fantastic for those of us living in colder climes.
I ate less, did no extra exercise and lost 25kg in 4 months. I lost another 3kg in the next 4 months and gained 4kg in the 18 months after that.
While gaining the 4kg I was averaging 10 meals a week and exercising a lot more (I started going out dancing 3 times a week). Losing weight is indeed easy; keeping it off is fucking hard for some of us.
I'm not sure losing weight by eating 7 meals a week qualifies as 'healthy' either, but some of us aren't blessed with a fast metabolism.
Forgive me for appreciating organisations that value their customers and don't seek every possible opportunity to boost profits at their expense.
Maybe I buy my hardware from companies that give me good value and yet manage to make sufficient profits anyway. Both parties benefit, and everyone is happy. Funny how that works.
I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the part of my post where I compared Android to iOS.
I also don't recall suggesting the iPhone cost more than an equivalent alternate device. I merely suggested that Apple could significantly reduce their prices to give their customers better value.
Please help me understand why better value for customers is a bad thing?
The thing is, I don't want my hardware supplier to be making more profit than their competitors. I want my hardware supplier to drop their prices and give me the product at a better price.
Apple leverage exclusivity deals, monopoly positions and intellectual property bullshit (rounded fucking rectangles my arse) to achieve their profits, and I don't find that admirable at all.
Oddly I'd rather not have a "-1 inaccurate" mod option. I'd rather people replied explaining why it's wrong.
If one person expresses a viewpoint, others will share it. Only by publicly educating all of them will they avoid expressing it in the future.
I've learned a lot on Slashdot through discussions and arguments with people that think I'm wrong. Sometimes they're the one that's wrong but sometimes it is me. Had I been downmodded and not had those discussions, I wouldn't have learned.
And you should listen to me because I have a four-digit UID, damnit! And get off my lawn!
Obligatory "I was browsing anonymously for months before I signed up" response..;)
I deal with that by finding a posting on a subject I have minimal interest in, catching it early and modding the early contributors. That way I can give an initial boost to both sides of the argument, the insightful and funny comments, and maybe a couple of points to hide an obvious troll.
That tends to take 8-12 mod points, so it's rare I use all 15, but by having that many available I can mod everything in a discussion that I feel needs modding, and I don't feel any pressure to use the remainder.
It takes a few minutes every couple of weeks, and I'd rather spend that time than lose the quality of discussions that the moderation system encourages.
But a music player that held 1,000 songs at high quality and didn't skip when you jogged with it was an innovation. Nobody had put that together like that before. For the next five years, they kept improving the function and form factor of the iPod by orders of magnitude in the face of almost no competition
That's grotesque historical revisionism and completely unfounded. There were non-skipping disk based music players before the iPod and there have almost always been comparable or better competitors (only the iPod Touch had initially no real competitors, due to its app store support).
Usability was good, battery life on iPods was worse than the competition,iTunes integration made a big difference to a lot of people but ultimately, Apples success has been a marketing one not a product one.
Making something that made anything else on the market look 10 years behind isn't "stifling" competition - it's embarrassing the competitors right out of the market.
That'll be the iPad then. Everything else Apple's produced since the Newton has been an alternative to other market offerings, not a clear differentiated product. Even the iPhone on release was feature inferior to competitors.
Stifling the competition may however have been a side effect of the marketing rather than its primary intent.
Hmm, you just made me ponder. My nokia launches its camera app when I slide open the lens cap. Took me 4-5 seconds to go from 'phone on desk' to 'new photo captured' - although that included time for the flash to go through its red-eye reduction.
Compared to the time it takes me to get the phone out of my pocket and out of its case, that's tolerable. Compared to the time it'd take me to use a proper camera (if I had one on me) it's much much faster.
There's a limit to how many reaction shots I need anyway:)
Forgive the short reply, but have you seen Apple's gross and net margins? They reflect premium pricing and monopolised market exploitation, both of which I class as 'damn overpriced'.
erm. Why? Why pander to an obtrusive requirement just to use a service that you'd have been happy to pay for had they not been such cunts?
How about, find an alternative to spotify that doesn't place arcane and intrusive requirements onto you in the first place. Or just listen to all your music on Youtube, which hasn't let me down yet..
I wrote a system that did this for the BBC back in '98. Web based, searched their entire film archive and TV archive, drawing in data from two very distinct data stores (entirely different back-end technologies); I don't think it covered radio too but would've been easily extendable.
18 weeks would lose many people their job, their home, possibly their spouse.. It maybe wouldn't be the end of someone's life but I know it would completely disengage me from society.
Cannibalism has health implications but hey - once I'm dead feel free to tuck in. I'll be dead, and it wont matter to me. I don't want to be killed so someone can eat me, and I certainly don't want to be eaten alive, but once I'm dead anyway..
Slashdot Mirror
the fucking leeches in the "executive" suite do nothing but vote to give themselves raises 5 times a year
Well why do you vote for them to run the union then?
Call me primitive, but I have almost no 1920x1080 video sources. I still use SD TV feeds, I don't own a Bluray (or HD-DVD) player and although Youtube will supply 1920x1080 video, at a range of two feet I just don't need to run it at full screen anyway.
Computer games I run at 1920x1080, and I'd love that resolution on smaller devices, but for video? On a 10" screen? Well, thank you I guess, for offering to fund the technology advances the rest of us will eventually benefit from.
Hmm. Number of times in the last 20 years that I've needed 12h of notebook support without being able to access a power supply: 2
I'm not knocking the convenience of not needing to charge the battery quite so often, but it's hardly the crippling disability you're suggesting.
16 years is an adult. If you don't believe it, try prosecuting me when I fuck my neighbour's 16 year old daughter.
(comically, taking a photo of her while doing so would indeedbe illegal, but taking her virginity isn't).
To be fair, it wasn't remotely an even contest. Anne Widdecombe vs Stephen Fry is rarely going to be anything other than a crushing victory to the unfeasibly intelligent man with dry humour and a delightful line in self-deprecation.
Anne's far from stupid and is a good public speaker but has never really seemed to me to have the charisma for that sort of event - let alone when pushing a religious agenda at a British secular event.
Take heart. The UK started with a petition site, attached to the office of the Prime Minister, and its early days were also full of petitions ranging from the crackpot to the populistic with a few good ones thrown into the mix.
The responses were invariably 'no' unless the petition could be answered in a way that made existing Government policy seem to address it.
That site was taken down, and replaced by a new petition site. That has a mandate that if enough people sign a petition (with 100k being the 'magic' number) then the issue will be debated in Parliament.
That's already led to two outcomes
- publication of secret Government files regarding a 1989 sporting tragedy, so a massive success for the members of the public involved (and the petition system)
- a vote in the House of Commons on an issue of massive public interest in which the major parties mandated a 'no' vote, against public wishes
That second one has only just happened. There will be a backlash. It may not be immediate, but it will be felt - there were far too many people annoyed by the party politics to let it lie.
So an initially ignored system has led to parliamentary debates, and is already forcing politicians to be more accountable to the electorate. That may not be a good thing, but it is democratic.
It feels as though the US petition site is starting on that same journey.
Shame, you missed the best of the bunch: Battlefield: Vietnam.
It still had the pre-modern combat constraints that left knife-fights a viable option, but gave us helicopters, patrol boats and jungle warfare.
Still one of my favourite ever games.
Depends which country you're from. In the UK every child aged 5 and above knows about the plot, because we hold a celebration every year - huge bonfires, massive firework displays and toffee apples.
Without wishing to contradict any specific part of your insightful analysis, have you seen the fucking murder rate in Mexico?
There are an awful lot of people being killed on a daily basis by the cartels, and a scary number of them don't die gently.
Even if torture doesn't work, the fear of torture does. The heavily brutalised corpse of an anonymous member is worth a lot even if none of the actual information gained is accurate. If the info includes 2-3 names of other members, they need to find themselves a new home/identity/country/life pretty sharpish.
I know, but it's against the law to withhold the tax on fuel.
Hell, with energy prices at their current levels keeping yourself warmer with the thermostat set a little lower would be fantastic for those of us living in colder climes.
I ate less, did no extra exercise and lost 25kg in 4 months. I lost another 3kg in the next 4 months and gained 4kg in the 18 months after that.
While gaining the 4kg I was averaging 10 meals a week and exercising a lot more (I started going out dancing 3 times a week). Losing weight is indeed easy; keeping it off is fucking hard for some of us.
I'm not sure losing weight by eating 7 meals a week qualifies as 'healthy' either, but some of us aren't blessed with a fast metabolism.
Forgive me for appreciating organisations that value their customers and don't seek every possible opportunity to boost profits at their expense.
Maybe I buy my hardware from companies that give me good value and yet manage to make sufficient profits anyway. Both parties benefit, and everyone is happy. Funny how that works.
I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the part of my post where I compared Android to iOS.
I also don't recall suggesting the iPhone cost more than an equivalent alternate device. I merely suggested that Apple could significantly reduce their prices to give their customers better value.
Please help me understand why better value for customers is a bad thing?
The thing is, I don't want my hardware supplier to be making more profit than their competitors. I want my hardware supplier to drop their prices and give me the product at a better price.
Apple leverage exclusivity deals, monopoly positions and intellectual property bullshit (rounded fucking rectangles my arse) to achieve their profits, and I don't find that admirable at all.
Oddly I'd rather not have a "-1 inaccurate" mod option. I'd rather people replied explaining why it's wrong.
If one person expresses a viewpoint, others will share it. Only by publicly educating all of them will they avoid expressing it in the future.
I've learned a lot on Slashdot through discussions and arguments with people that think I'm wrong. Sometimes they're the one that's wrong but sometimes it is me. Had I been downmodded and not had those discussions, I wouldn't have learned.
And you should listen to me because I have a four-digit UID, damnit! And get off my lawn!
Obligatory "I was browsing anonymously for months before I signed up" response.. ;)
I deal with that by finding a posting on a subject I have minimal interest in, catching it early and modding the early contributors. That way I can give an initial boost to both sides of the argument, the insightful and funny comments, and maybe a couple of points to hide an obvious troll.
That tends to take 8-12 mod points, so it's rare I use all 15, but by having that many available I can mod everything in a discussion that I feel needs modding, and I don't feel any pressure to use the remainder.
It takes a few minutes every couple of weeks, and I'd rather spend that time than lose the quality of discussions that the moderation system encourages.
But a music player that held 1,000 songs at high quality and didn't skip when you jogged with it was an innovation. Nobody had put that together like that before. For the next five years, they kept improving the function and form factor of the iPod by orders of magnitude in the face of almost no competition
That's grotesque historical revisionism and completely unfounded. There were non-skipping disk based music players before the iPod and there have almost always been comparable or better competitors (only the iPod Touch had initially no real competitors, due to its app store support).
Usability was good, battery life on iPods was worse than the competition,iTunes integration made a big difference to a lot of people but ultimately, Apples success has been a marketing one not a product one.
Making something that made anything else on the market look 10 years behind isn't "stifling" competition - it's embarrassing the competitors right out of the market.
That'll be the iPad then. Everything else Apple's produced since the Newton has been an alternative to other market offerings, not a clear differentiated product. Even the iPhone on release was feature inferior to competitors.
Stifling the competition may however have been a side effect of the marketing rather than its primary intent.
Hmm, you just made me ponder. My nokia launches its camera app when I slide open the lens cap. Took me 4-5 seconds to go from 'phone on desk' to 'new photo captured' - although that included time for the flash to go through its red-eye reduction.
Compared to the time it takes me to get the phone out of my pocket and out of its case, that's tolerable. Compared to the time it'd take me to use a proper camera (if I had one on me) it's much much faster.
There's a limit to how many reaction shots I need anyway :)
Forgive the short reply, but have you seen Apple's gross and net margins? They reflect premium pricing and monopolised market exploitation, both of which I class as 'damn overpriced'.
erm. Why? Why pander to an obtrusive requirement just to use a service that you'd have been happy to pay for had they not been such cunts?
How about, find an alternative to spotify that doesn't place arcane and intrusive requirements onto you in the first place. Or just listen to all your music on Youtube, which hasn't let me down yet..
I wrote a system that did this for the BBC back in '98. Web based, searched their entire film archive and TV archive, drawing in data from two very distinct data stores (entirely different back-end technologies); I don't think it covered radio too but would've been easily extendable.
Oh well, fucking software patents.
You may use your thumbs, but not everybody does.
I type on my phone with my thumbs but I enter phone numbers with my index finger.
Your lack of empathy appears to be at least equal to my own.
18 weeks would lose many people their job, their home, possibly their spouse.. It maybe wouldn't be the end of someone's life but I know it would completely disengage me from society.
Cannibalism has health implications but hey - once I'm dead feel free to tuck in. I'll be dead, and it wont matter to me. I don't want to be killed so someone can eat me, and I certainly don't want to be eaten alive, but once I'm dead anyway..