I'm sure the free vs pay controversy has been done to death here at/., but I still resent paying for content that was formerly free.
No, you are paying for content that previously advertisers were paying for, largely because the advertisers aren't willing to pay enough to motivate the content creator/provider to let them use the content as a wrapper around their advertising.
Most 20" monitors (including mine) I've seen only support 1600x1200, which is about the same overall resolution as 1080p, but in a different format. Widescreen monitors of that size will probably support 1920x1080p fine, and 1080p content should be noticeably better on even a standard monitor that size than non-HD content.
Yeah, whatever. Most people didn't take pictures by holding cameras out in front of them like the trend is to do with digital cameras, whatever may have been available or theoretically possible.
(Then again, I find it baffling that people compose pictures at arms lengths so much even with preview screens -- its useful sometimes, but mostly it seems easier to take good pictures using the viewfinder on most digital cameras, and it saves battery life.)
Learning C teaches them that if they don't have the patience and brains to be an excellent developer, then they should find a career that will give them long term satisfaction that doesn't involve an entire team of co-workers covering for their mistakes.
So everyone that knows C and stays in the industry is an "excellent developer"? I think not.
The ease of use in PHP and MySQL gets people all euphoric and sloppy.
No, it means that people that are euphoric and sloppy naturally can still use them and get something done, even if its not a bulletproof webapp suitable for the most intense uses.
It also means that people that are more meticulous have more time to spend researching and planning the particular needs of their applications than if they were using something harder to use.
Sure, there are times when other technologies may be the more productive choice. But ease of use is not a misfeature in a database or programming language.
That's exactly it - some competition is actually bad for the consumer. Competition among things like data formats is exactly one of these things, because it ends up making alot of people's current collection of movies/music/whatever obsolete and unplayable, forcing them to buy it all over again.
Progress does that, even if it is just a succession of standards with no real competition. That's just the nature of the beast when you have media that requires something other than a human being's native equipment to read.
Nevertherless, consumers seem to adopt new formats rather than just rejecting progress. It seems to me consumers think this is good for them, not bad.
This is the reason there are so many standards organizations, like the IEEE and ISO. Some things just NEED to be standardized.
And yet, so many of the standards are driven by progress in alternatives that go beyond or compete with the standards. Yes, standards have utility. But so does competition even with proposed or accepted standards.
Personally I'm of the opinion that all this "new DVD format" nonsense is being forced on us exclusively for expanding the use of DRM, and as just another way to get consumers to buy their DVD collection all over again.
Sure, DRM and repurchase are benefits to the content industry that are part of their hopes for the format. But at the same time, there are objective improvements in quality and data capacity that provide real advantages to the consumer. Whether they are worth the cost (in cash and, for commercial content, DRM) or not is something everyone needs to decide for themselves.
So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night?
It should be legal for you to build or own a night-vision scope. (Parallel to owning a receiver that can receive, among other things, the bands that cellular phones transmit in.)
It might be that it should be illegal for you to use it for certain purposes.
After all, her naked body is reflecting electromagnetic radiation into my personal space. Amplifying it into a visible image, digitizing it, and making it available on the Internet seems like a perfectly logical step, doesn't it?
You've moved this conversation from a philosophical debate to one of actual law.
We were discussing actual law before.
I don't disagree with you on how it works in our current legal system. I'm saying I disapprove of how it works.
Your stated disapproval of negligence was based expressly on the assumption that negligence was not about personal responsibility, i.e., it was about how negligence works in the real world. And it was wrong on that point.
You cannot agree with me about "how it works in our current legal system" without agreeing that your original complaint was misplaced.
Negligence is "failure to act with the prudence that a reasonable person would exercise under the same circumstances".
This is actually a mistatement, but common to brief or informal descriptions of negligence. That isn't a definition "negligence" that is a description of failure of the "general duty" which is one, but not the only, legal duty that is applicable in most (but not all) circumstances.
But here's my problem with that: I disagree with what you can typically convince a jury or a judge is "reasonable".
Okay.
There should be nothing that you can be held cripplingly responsible for that is subjective.
Virtually everything in law is "subjective" as that term is used outside of law, particularly those standards that the law labels "objective" (which, actually, most things that use the word "reasonable" count as.)
Heck, the standard of proof for criminal liability ("beyond a reasonable doubt") is pretty obviously subjective, so are you opposed to criminal liability generally?
The way the law is now is the reason a tresspasser can sue a landowner when he injures himself on the trespassee's property and win.
In certain circumstances, this is correct (though, of course, it doesn't reduce eliminate liability that the trespasser has for the trespass itself, which is also actionable in tort; how is the status quo wrong here?
If a few people have their lives ruined and are unable to recover damages financially because we are unable to enumerate every possible way that you can be criminally neglegent in the text of the law, I say so be it. It's a small price to pay for not having your future security be at the whim of a stranger and what a jury things you should have done.
You are entitled to your opinion here, though it has little to do with our point of disagreement.
Just to tie things together in the context of this article, sure my opinion would allow vendors to get away with shipping product that causes damage to their customers, but once they know about the issue, if they continue to sell the product they become guilty of other crimes.
Unless the defect is extreme, I don't see why knowingly shipping a product with a defect (other than one actively concealed or misrepresented) ought to be a crime. It seems exactly the kind of thing that is better handled in tort. I also wonder what crimes you think they would be guilty of?
So, while it would suck to be one of the customers hit by such a software flaw, there would still be justice.
If the prosecutor felt like pursuing it. And even then, a particularly hollow form of "justice" for those injured.
The law demands precision not available from natural language. Laws should be written in symbolic logic, either math-style or philosophy-style.
Neither style is actually all that precise in the key area for the law -- mapping abstract concepts back into concrete terms in the real world.
Symbolic logic is great for dealing with abstract concepts, but that's about it. This is useful in the case of math, and keeps philosophers busy, but it doesn't really solve much in law.
The 'problem,' as I see it, is that the law demands exactingly precise use of language. (I've personally witnessed multi-million dollar litigation over the position of a comma, because it changed the meaning of a sentence.) The legal use of language tends to be unerringly precise -- as precise as, say, C demands you to be.
The problem -- and I say this as a law student and hobbyist programmer -- is that lawpeople are more able to isolate themselves from C, and that C (unlike, say, COBOL) doesn't borrow as heavily from everyday English, so that more people can avoid dealing with C's quirks than can avoid dealing with "Lawspeak", and if you run into a pile of C code, it won't look like a bunch of English that you should be able to understand.
Plus, usage in law is a lot more fuzzy and subjective than that in any programming language, since courts generally are not Turing machines. (Plus, legislators don't tend to have much of a structured design methodology, or even much of a concept of a "system" that is being modified, and there is virtually no analog to "testing", so most law is really bad "code" that implementors -- courts as well as executive agents -- are forced to rationalize on the fly.)
If you can give me a term (or terms) that you've encountered that has a 'different' legal meaning than it does in common conversational English usage, I could speak more intelligently to this point.
There's a lot -- "person" can be a fun one. Of course, lots of terms don't just have a distinct "legal" definition, but they have very specialized and conflicting definitions in the context of particular laws, such that (to mix usages from different fields) PatriotAct::terrorism may not be defined the same way as AntiTerrorismActof1996::terrorism. Of course, this shouldn't be hard for those familiar with programming to understand, though the fact that the resolution of these kind of conflicts is often implicit, and relies on familiarity with a "code base" of law that most people aren't that familiar with, plus there is a lot of misleading information out there which says "In the law, X means Y", when that's only true in a particular context within the law, not in "the law" more generally.
As to why legal terminology doesn't change to reflect common usage -- I'd guess stare decisis; it's not uncommon to cite to legal opinions or treatises that are a hundred years old or more; the words have to have the same (legal, not conversational) meaning today as they did then, or the whole mess gets way, way too confusing.
Plus, like any jargon, its pretty clear -- at least moreso for the concepts involved than "everyday English" would be -- to the people who are deeply involved in it, and for them the context switch is fairly seemless, so there is no real need to change. Meanwhile, well-meaning attempts to force "common use" into legal language end up with results that confuse everyone involved, and usually result in creating more specialized legal jargon terms that are subtly different from the old ones, have to be used along with the old ones, and still don't correspond to common usage.
Yeah, the consumers should upgrade to new technology and take the gamble that it will be around in 2 years or their $3000 bleeding-edge foobob becomes a doorstop.
Most consumers shouldn't, and won't. Of course, $3,000 is a little more expensive than the most expensive Blu-Ray player I've seen announced (most are $1,000 to $1,500), and HD players are generally less expensive.
There's a big difference between consumer choice and a standard.
Yes, there is. Standards are often the opposite of choice. Now, standards have their own benefits, but in the absence of competing options -- which it is sometimes practical to have a Standard+, but sometimes requires being incompatible -- tend to stagnate, rather than advance.
Imagine if we had this problem with cars being incompatible with roads.
Movie players aren't critical public infrastructure that is essential to the basic functioning of the economy, so I don't think the situations are even remotely parallel, even if the analogy worked otherwise (which I don't think it does.)
Now watching movies is a little les simportant and expensive than driving, but who wants to take a jump and risk having to replace hardware in a couple years because you can't get any new movies on BluRay or HD-DVD, whichever one wins out.
I suspect the early adopters -- with or without a single standard -- are most likely to consist largely of people who have plenty of disposal income that have no problem taking the risk; really, its not a lot different of a situation than people face when buying gaming consoles, or that they took with home computers in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s.
Its something that time and time again plenty of people have demonstrated that they are willing to do.
Perhaps we should be wondering if it would be a good idea to create some kind of "next-generation" spreadsheet system that addresses these problems. Whereas programming languages have evolved constantly over the years, spreadsheets remain unchanged.
I don't think that's really true; current releases of, say, excel or OOo's spreadsheet software are as different than, say, VisiCalc or 1-2-3 Release 1A, the first two spreadsheet systems I used as the version of BASIC that used to be bundled with DOS is from Java. Heck, the spreadsheets around now have most of the facilities you need to avoid code duplication -- just most users are either unaware of or intimidated by the programming environment for VBA/StarBasic/etc.
I don't think the problem is that there is something wrong with spreadsheets, its that spreadsheets are frequently used to develop critical applications without the attention to design for reliability, accountability, and maintainability that the use of the application demansd. This isn't unique to spreadsheets, but perhaps particularly a problem with them because users who don't have the background to understand the need for that kind of design have spreadsheet systems around that they are familiar with using for smaller tasks, and are prone to apply the same techniques to more complex and critical uses.
Negligence is about responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions
BZZZZZZT. That's just plain old wrong. If it was true I'd agree with you. Check the dictionary if you don't believe me.
I'd rather check a more authoritative sources on what the law of negligence is about, like, e.g., the huge section of my Torts casebook and and the accompanying hornbook that cover Negligence law, but its not really an area I need to double check.
I mean, I would agree with you if you are right, but you are wrong. Negligence is about your responsibility for fulfilling your legal duties, and your responsibility for the harms caused by your own actions or omissions in violation of those duties.
So is civil negligence: civil negligence requires that an existing legal duty be breached for their to be liability.
This is also just plain false. You don't need to be criminally liable for anything to be found civilly liable.
Your two statements have nothing to do with eachother. A "legal duty" does not imply criminal liability; many things are illegal without being criminal. Civil liability for negligence does, in fact, require that there be a harm inflicted for which the breach of a legal duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff is the proximate cause.
The PS3 will probably have little effect, unless Linux usability is more than you'd expect Sony to care to provide.
OTOH, OLPC potentially could have a huge impact; both directly and because it creates incentives both for adoption of Linux and investing in Linux software development for businesses and public agencies in the countries where it is adopted for educational use.
"Themes" and related eye candy are entertainment for people with nothing else to do.
Wiggling windows may be pretty pure entertainment, but customization of visual themes to what is most natural and comfortable to a particular user is a productivity tool; and XGL -- which I still haven't figured out how to set up right in Kubuntu, it mostly works, but I lose the title bars of my windows -- apparently offloads a lot of the work of handling the desktop to the GPU, so it ought to make system performance marginally better for most tasks.
... and it frustrates me because they are screwing up something we really need.
Sure, sure, higher resolution video entertainment is a pleasant luxury item, but it boggles the mind to see it described as "something we really need".
I mean, solutions to problems of social injustice, environmental degradation, resource exhaustion, those are things we really need. Prettier ways to watch movies in our livingrooms are nice, and something I'll certainly be spending money on when their available and affordable, but hardly a necessity.
Seems like a case of making the product long before any real demand for it actually exists.
Thats often how progress happens. Products are developed where the demand that already exists is a very limited niche, then, once the technology exists, more uses for it are developed, and demand increases.
But then, I don't think that's really the case here; seems to me that polygon-pushing horsepower on GPUs is something that developers have plenty of uses for as much as anyone can make available, and that plenty of hardcore gamers will snap up every bit of that they can afford.
PAL DVDs are 576p.
720p is 25% better. For NTSC, 720p represents a 50% increase in quality.
Number of lines isn't really what I'd normally use to rate % better, I'd use effective overall resolution, by which standard 720p is about 122% better than 576p, and 167% better than 480p.
I mean, your standard is like saying 1600x1200 is twice as good as 800x600.
Grandparent is correct, though, that this means it won't be "fixed" for the retail version.
What grandparent misses is that the reason it won't be "fixed" is because it isn't broken. It's simply that there exists a usually unnecessary function that will almost always be a bad idea for developers to use, and that for the instances they would be tempted to use it, there is a better way, and Sony is doing a thorough job of informing them upfront so they don't overlook the problems that would happen if they chose to use that functionality where it shouldn't be used (which seems to be, pretty much anywhere.)
Its just another misleading Slashdot article summary. Hardly a surprise.
Slashdot Mirror
They just grabbed the nearest buzzword and tossed it in front of "radio". Just lucky it didn't end up being "AJAX radio".
Most 20" monitors (including mine) I've seen only support 1600x1200, which is about the same overall resolution as 1080p, but in a different format. Widescreen monitors of that size will probably support 1920x1080p fine, and 1080p content should be noticeably better on even a standard monitor that size than non-HD content.
Yeah, whatever. Most people didn't take pictures by holding cameras out in front of them like the trend is to do with digital cameras, whatever may have been available or theoretically possible.
(Then again, I find it baffling that people compose pictures at arms lengths so much even with preview screens -- its useful sometimes, but mostly it seems easier to take good pictures using the viewfinder on most digital cameras, and it saves battery life.)
No, it means that people that are euphoric and sloppy naturally can still use them and get something done, even if its not a bulletproof webapp suitable for the most intense uses.
It also means that people that are more meticulous have more time to spend researching and planning the particular needs of their applications than if they were using something harder to use.
Sure, there are times when other technologies may be the more productive choice. But ease of use is not a misfeature in a database or programming language.
Progress does that, even if it is just a succession of standards with no real competition. That's just the nature of the beast when you have media that requires something other than a human being's native equipment to read.
Nevertherless, consumers seem to adopt new formats rather than just rejecting progress. It seems to me consumers think this is good for them, not bad.
And yet, so many of the standards are driven by progress in alternatives that go beyond or compete with the standards. Yes, standards have utility. But so does competition even with proposed or accepted standards.
Sure, DRM and repurchase are benefits to the content industry that are part of their hopes for the format. But at the same time, there are objective improvements in quality and data capacity that provide real advantages to the consumer. Whether they are worth the cost (in cash and, for commercial content, DRM) or not is something everyone needs to decide for themselves.
Most consumers shouldn't, and won't. Of course, $3,000 is a little more expensive than the most expensive Blu-Ray player I've seen announced (most are $1,000 to $1,500), and HD players are generally less expensive.
Yes, there is. Standards are often the opposite of choice. Now, standards have their own benefits, but in the absence of competing options -- which it is sometimes practical to have a Standard+, but sometimes requires being incompatible -- tend to stagnate, rather than advance.
Movie players aren't critical public infrastructure that is essential to the basic functioning of the economy, so I don't think the situations are even remotely parallel, even if the analogy worked otherwise (which I don't think it does.)
I suspect the early adopters -- with or without a single standard -- are most likely to consist largely of people who have plenty of disposal income that have no problem taking the risk; really, its not a lot different of a situation than people face when buying gaming consoles, or that they took with home computers in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s.
Its something that time and time again plenty of people have demonstrated that they are willing to do.
I don't think that's really true; current releases of, say, excel or OOo's spreadsheet software are as different than, say, VisiCalc or 1-2-3 Release 1A, the first two spreadsheet systems I used as the version of BASIC that used to be bundled with DOS is from Java. Heck, the spreadsheets around now have most of the facilities you need to avoid code duplication -- just most users are either unaware of or intimidated by the programming environment for VBA/StarBasic/etc.
I don't think the problem is that there is something wrong with spreadsheets, its that spreadsheets are frequently used to develop critical applications without the attention to design for reliability, accountability, and maintainability that the use of the application demansd. This isn't unique to spreadsheets, but perhaps particularly a problem with them because users who don't have the background to understand the need for that kind of design have spreadsheet systems around that they are familiar with using for smaller tasks, and are prone to apply the same techniques to more complex and critical uses.
The PS3 will probably have little effect, unless Linux usability is more than you'd expect Sony to care to provide. OTOH, OLPC potentially could have a huge impact; both directly and because it creates incentives both for adoption of Linux and investing in Linux software development for businesses and public agencies in the countries where it is adopted for educational use.
Wiggling windows may be pretty pure entertainment, but customization of visual themes to what is most natural and comfortable to a particular user is a productivity tool; and XGL -- which I still haven't figured out how to set up right in Kubuntu, it mostly works, but I lose the title bars of my windows -- apparently offloads a lot of the work of handling the desktop to the GPU, so it ought to make system performance marginally better for most tasks.
Sure, sure, higher resolution video entertainment is a pleasant luxury item, but it boggles the mind to see it described as "something we really need".
I mean, solutions to problems of social injustice, environmental degradation, resource exhaustion, those are things we really need. Prettier ways to watch movies in our livingrooms are nice, and something I'll certainly be spending money on when their available and affordable, but hardly a necessity.
Thats often how progress happens. Products are developed where the demand that already exists is a very limited niche, then, once the technology exists, more uses for it are developed, and demand increases.
But then, I don't think that's really the case here; seems to me that polygon-pushing horsepower on GPUs is something that developers have plenty of uses for as much as anyone can make available, and that plenty of hardcore gamers will snap up every bit of that they can afford.
Grandparent is correct, though, that this means it won't be "fixed" for the retail version.
What grandparent misses is that the reason it won't be "fixed" is because it isn't broken. It's simply that there exists a usually unnecessary function that will almost always be a bad idea for developers to use, and that for the instances they would be tempted to use it, there is a better way, and Sony is doing a thorough job of informing them upfront so they don't overlook the problems that would happen if they chose to use that functionality where it shouldn't be used (which seems to be, pretty much anywhere.)
Its just another misleading Slashdot article summary. Hardly a surprise.