Besides, the majority of trees that are cut down to make books are grown specifically for that purpose. They're at worst carbon neutral, at best they're providing woodland that otherwise would be given over to agriculture or industry. Admittedly shipping them about is still harmful, but so is shipping a bunch of components from around the globe to build an e-reader.
But the information would still be disparate and arbitrarily assembled. Unless you have some governing body deciding what is and isn't allowed on the internet, your scientific research into the biology of the feline species is still going to get cluttered with people posting LOLcats, and your research into the effects of the sun on skin will still pollute your data with ads for anti-ageing creams. We could have what he's suggesting right now with the technologies we have at our disposal and minimal development effort if he could solve the wider issue of how to prevent cross pollution of data - and if he could do that he'd be the next Google.
Maybe I'm missing something through lack of sound, but it looks like a horrible mess that's not scalable for any relatively complex source material. It's an interesting idea but I'll take new tab + web search over his proposed alternative.
People were saying the same thing even back when the original was released. On a side note, DVD sales are still holding up pretty well. If Nintendo made a call that the added cost of HD won't give them a good enough ROI (or to put it another way, that there are still enough people who just don't care that much about HD and these people intersect largely with the target audience) then certainly they'd drop it. However, it's likely too useful a marketing tool these days, even used to sell phones.
The new slim models are much more quiet (in fact if you install the game to the HDD they're almost errily silent), but the original model was stupidly loud - it's baffling that they'd cut corners that make the device almost painful to use without the volume cranked up full. These aren't toys for kids any more, the average age of gamers is mid thirties and they expect a better build experience.
This is not a bad idea - more and more it's becoming clear that the people making the rules will only do anything in our favour if it's also in their favour. It wouldn't work though, likely the rights-holder (or rights-holder's-paid-attack-dog) would just give explicit permission to get around the sticky situation. Nobody wants to risk losing a pet politician.
Maybe I'm getting old but, while I have very liberal views when it comes to copyright and fair use and the way the law should be, I have no problem with the RIAA going after people driving around with their car stereos blaring, people with annoying ring tones and people who insist on humming in my vicinity. Maybe we just found a useful function for the RIAA!
So what's the distinction with filesharing if what you are loaning to a friend isn't the original article but a copy of said original article (and you are still free to enjoy the original article in the meantime)? It seems to me both are analogous, surely they're either both legal or they're both illegal.
Certainly sounds that way. It's possible that what actually happened is the she downloaded the music legitimately and her friend just burned it to a CD for her, but it's pretty clear from her lack of understanding that this is not the case at all. Just typical politician weasel words to try and explain why it's one rule for them and another for us.
The Queen theoretically has this power but it's a one shot deal at best. If she ever exercised it Parliament would take it away, it's just good to make it look like there's a higher power with a veto over anything too mad.
The issue isn't the bigger number, it's the risk that the tendency to want to justify the bigger number will lead to bloat, and that the smaller timescales will lead to bugs. With a minor revision nobody cares if all you did was tidy up some code to execute a little more efficiently, but with a major release people will want to know what added benefit it brings - that means a drive for additional functionality which needs sufficient time for implementation and testing (and no, that doesn't mean using your audience as guinea pigs). It doesn't matter how well you've coded your site if the browser is introducing its own bugs (see IE6 for evidence of this).
For most sites Firefox traffic is much higher than Chrome traffic. Add to that the fact that Chrome is using Webkit anyway so will benefit from prior testing and development for Safari and it's far less risky to churn out major releases. At the moment Firefox is in a sweet spot where it's stable enough and with a big enough user base that I can justify supporting it to clients. If we get to the point where I'm having to support 3 or 4 versions of it with the later ones potentially breaking stuff that was working previously it's going to be a lot more difficult for me to make that case. Besides, Chrome has always pitched itself as leading the way on the experimental side of things (see Chrome experiments), while Firefox is meant to be the stable, open source alternative to IE. I expect things to occasionally break in Chrome but I'm always surprised when they break in FF.
Considering parking is an important consideration for some people, I don't think it's necessarily funny that other people take connectivity into account. I live on a street where all parking is on street and if you're unlucky and arrive home at a busy time you might end up parking around the corner and walking an extra hundred feet to get home. Some people seem to get infuriated by that even though it inconveniences them to the tune of a few seconds. On the other hand, if I'm working from home I might spend 10+ hours on the laptop/mobile - lack of signal would be a major disruption. I know which is top of my priority list when I next move home. I find it odd that TFA suggests buyers would have no way of knowing about poor phone reception though - surely they can take their phones with them while viewing the house and, y'know, check.
Just the point I was about to make. They didn't decomission Concorde to spite the weary traveller. They did it because, even with ridculously expensive ticket prices, they couldn't pay the bills. The open market spoke - people were more than willing to trade speed for economy.
Not only that, if more people were able to not be somewhere else because technology meant they didn't have to be, it would help solve a lot of congestion issues for those who did still have to travel, making their journey quicker and more efficient. I have to wonder why we don't have more of a push from both business and government to encourage working and meeting remotely - the whole world seems to be in debt, the environment is a hot topic and people are working harder and longer hours with real health impacts, a simple drive for remote working could drastically ease a lot of these issues.
Well, from one perspective it's possible that having an almost guaranteed source of income takes off the usual pressure to rush a game out the door. Looking at it that way, perhaps Steam does delay releases, but if it means a more polished product that's hardly a bad thing (we hear enough complaints about poorly designed/developed/scripted games being rushed to market).
The problem is most gamers wouldn't read the SLA, so it would just give game companies an excuse to set the bar even lower by writing in terms in their favour. That way when the authentication servers are down, instead of having to react to public complaints they'd just put out a press release indicating that they only promised a 60% uptime.
We survived without laws to prevent torture, or murder, for many years too. We still recognise the right to life and the right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. Humanity moves on and as it does, the rules we use as a baseline for what we can expect from life change. If you continue to judge the basic rules of life by the standards of thousands of years ago you risk condemning an entire subclass of society to live in poverty and suffering without the basic tools they need to lift themselves out of it.
What if the denial of one thing allows you to more easily deny someone's rights? What if you set up a firewall to monitor what people can and can't see to allow you to more easily suppress and torture your citizens? What if you are a dictator and cut off communications to prevent a popular uprising and cling to power? If people are going to have rights then it's only reasonable that they have access to the tools that enable those rights.
Exactly. Look at how much aid money to places like Africa is spent not on direct medical/food aid but on educating the people to improve their own circumstances. Just because people with comfortable lifestyles in the west use the internet as a luxury, that doesn't mean it's all the internet is. People in the west dine out in expensive restaurants, but we recognise food as a necessity and not a luxury.
Wait, are you saying all 100+ things on your list are exactly the same priority, or are you not yourself implicitly highlighting the fact that some things can be worse than others yet they can all be considered human rights violations? Right now Libya is trying to prevent communications between the rebels in the conflict there (and as we saw in Egypt, the internet is a vital tool for those communications which can facilitate regime change), people are almost certainly dying as a result, isn't that up there with drug deaths and kidnappings or are you really blind to what's happening in the world around you?
It's not an either/or choice - you do what pretty much every society already does, you provide a middle ground. Someone doesn't want to work? You don't let them starve in the gutter, but likewise you don't pay for a luxurious lifestyle. You give them just enough food and basic shelter to meet their needs and the option of working for a higher standard of living. Life is rarely black and white and this approach seems to kind of work - some slackers are content to live on nothing to avoid work, but for most people providing something better for themselves and their families is reason enough to go earn a wage. There's no reason you can't add basic internet access to the list, it needn't even be that expensive if you offer limited access at a few centralised locations (again an incentive for people to earn enough to pay for their own dedicated access, but a safety net for those who can't do so for whatever reason).
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Besides, the majority of trees that are cut down to make books are grown specifically for that purpose. They're at worst carbon neutral, at best they're providing woodland that otherwise would be given over to agriculture or industry. Admittedly shipping them about is still harmful, but so is shipping a bunch of components from around the globe to build an e-reader.
But the information would still be disparate and arbitrarily assembled. Unless you have some governing body deciding what is and isn't allowed on the internet, your scientific research into the biology of the feline species is still going to get cluttered with people posting LOLcats, and your research into the effects of the sun on skin will still pollute your data with ads for anti-ageing creams. We could have what he's suggesting right now with the technologies we have at our disposal and minimal development effort if he could solve the wider issue of how to prevent cross pollution of data - and if he could do that he'd be the next Google.
Maybe I'm missing something through lack of sound, but it looks like a horrible mess that's not scalable for any relatively complex source material. It's an interesting idea but I'll take new tab + web search over his proposed alternative.
People were saying the same thing even back when the original was released. On a side note, DVD sales are still holding up pretty well. If Nintendo made a call that the added cost of HD won't give them a good enough ROI (or to put it another way, that there are still enough people who just don't care that much about HD and these people intersect largely with the target audience) then certainly they'd drop it. However, it's likely too useful a marketing tool these days, even used to sell phones.
The new slim models are much more quiet (in fact if you install the game to the HDD they're almost errily silent), but the original model was stupidly loud - it's baffling that they'd cut corners that make the device almost painful to use without the volume cranked up full. These aren't toys for kids any more, the average age of gamers is mid thirties and they expect a better build experience.
This is not a bad idea - more and more it's becoming clear that the people making the rules will only do anything in our favour if it's also in their favour. It wouldn't work though, likely the rights-holder (or rights-holder's-paid-attack-dog) would just give explicit permission to get around the sticky situation. Nobody wants to risk losing a pet politician.
Maybe I'm getting old but, while I have very liberal views when it comes to copyright and fair use and the way the law should be, I have no problem with the RIAA going after people driving around with their car stereos blaring, people with annoying ring tones and people who insist on humming in my vicinity. Maybe we just found a useful function for the RIAA!
You have been found guilty of making a copy in your brain, please report to your local RIAA office for your court ordered lobotomy!
Not really too far off making a copy in cache.
Luckily most RIAA output is pretty forgettable, you can probably get away with claiming you just made a .tmp copy and almost instantly deleted it :)
So what's the distinction with filesharing if what you are loaning to a friend isn't the original article but a copy of said original article (and you are still free to enjoy the original article in the meantime)? It seems to me both are analogous, surely they're either both legal or they're both illegal.
Certainly sounds that way. It's possible that what actually happened is the she downloaded the music legitimately and her friend just burned it to a CD for her, but it's pretty clear from her lack of understanding that this is not the case at all. Just typical politician weasel words to try and explain why it's one rule for them and another for us.
MPAA bluffs and unenforceable terms do not make things illegal.
Yet it's enough to get us three strike laws around the world that rely on no more evidence than an accusation from the **AAs...
The Queen theoretically has this power but it's a one shot deal at best. If she ever exercised it Parliament would take it away, it's just good to make it look like there's a higher power with a veto over anything too mad.
The issue isn't the bigger number, it's the risk that the tendency to want to justify the bigger number will lead to bloat, and that the smaller timescales will lead to bugs. With a minor revision nobody cares if all you did was tidy up some code to execute a little more efficiently, but with a major release people will want to know what added benefit it brings - that means a drive for additional functionality which needs sufficient time for implementation and testing (and no, that doesn't mean using your audience as guinea pigs). It doesn't matter how well you've coded your site if the browser is introducing its own bugs (see IE6 for evidence of this).
For most sites Firefox traffic is much higher than Chrome traffic. Add to that the fact that Chrome is using Webkit anyway so will benefit from prior testing and development for Safari and it's far less risky to churn out major releases. At the moment Firefox is in a sweet spot where it's stable enough and with a big enough user base that I can justify supporting it to clients. If we get to the point where I'm having to support 3 or 4 versions of it with the later ones potentially breaking stuff that was working previously it's going to be a lot more difficult for me to make that case. Besides, Chrome has always pitched itself as leading the way on the experimental side of things (see Chrome experiments), while Firefox is meant to be the stable, open source alternative to IE. I expect things to occasionally break in Chrome but I'm always surprised when they break in FF.
Considering parking is an important consideration for some people, I don't think it's necessarily funny that other people take connectivity into account. I live on a street where all parking is on street and if you're unlucky and arrive home at a busy time you might end up parking around the corner and walking an extra hundred feet to get home. Some people seem to get infuriated by that even though it inconveniences them to the tune of a few seconds. On the other hand, if I'm working from home I might spend 10+ hours on the laptop/mobile - lack of signal would be a major disruption. I know which is top of my priority list when I next move home. I find it odd that TFA suggests buyers would have no way of knowing about poor phone reception though - surely they can take their phones with them while viewing the house and, y'know, check.
Just the point I was about to make. They didn't decomission Concorde to spite the weary traveller. They did it because, even with ridculously expensive ticket prices, they couldn't pay the bills. The open market spoke - people were more than willing to trade speed for economy.
Not only that, if more people were able to not be somewhere else because technology meant they didn't have to be, it would help solve a lot of congestion issues for those who did still have to travel, making their journey quicker and more efficient. I have to wonder why we don't have more of a push from both business and government to encourage working and meeting remotely - the whole world seems to be in debt, the environment is a hot topic and people are working harder and longer hours with real health impacts, a simple drive for remote working could drastically ease a lot of these issues.
Well, from one perspective it's possible that having an almost guaranteed source of income takes off the usual pressure to rush a game out the door. Looking at it that way, perhaps Steam does delay releases, but if it means a more polished product that's hardly a bad thing (we hear enough complaints about poorly designed/developed/scripted games being rushed to market).
The problem is most gamers wouldn't read the SLA, so it would just give game companies an excuse to set the bar even lower by writing in terms in their favour. That way when the authentication servers are down, instead of having to react to public complaints they'd just put out a press release indicating that they only promised a 60% uptime.
We survived without laws to prevent torture, or murder, for many years too. We still recognise the right to life and the right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. Humanity moves on and as it does, the rules we use as a baseline for what we can expect from life change. If you continue to judge the basic rules of life by the standards of thousands of years ago you risk condemning an entire subclass of society to live in poverty and suffering without the basic tools they need to lift themselves out of it.
What if the denial of one thing allows you to more easily deny someone's rights? What if you set up a firewall to monitor what people can and can't see to allow you to more easily suppress and torture your citizens? What if you are a dictator and cut off communications to prevent a popular uprising and cling to power? If people are going to have rights then it's only reasonable that they have access to the tools that enable those rights.
Exactly. Look at how much aid money to places like Africa is spent not on direct medical/food aid but on educating the people to improve their own circumstances. Just because people with comfortable lifestyles in the west use the internet as a luxury, that doesn't mean it's all the internet is. People in the west dine out in expensive restaurants, but we recognise food as a necessity and not a luxury.
Wait, are you saying all 100+ things on your list are exactly the same priority, or are you not yourself implicitly highlighting the fact that some things can be worse than others yet they can all be considered human rights violations? Right now Libya is trying to prevent communications between the rebels in the conflict there (and as we saw in Egypt, the internet is a vital tool for those communications which can facilitate regime change), people are almost certainly dying as a result, isn't that up there with drug deaths and kidnappings or are you really blind to what's happening in the world around you?
It's not an either/or choice - you do what pretty much every society already does, you provide a middle ground. Someone doesn't want to work? You don't let them starve in the gutter, but likewise you don't pay for a luxurious lifestyle. You give them just enough food and basic shelter to meet their needs and the option of working for a higher standard of living. Life is rarely black and white and this approach seems to kind of work - some slackers are content to live on nothing to avoid work, but for most people providing something better for themselves and their families is reason enough to go earn a wage. There's no reason you can't add basic internet access to the list, it needn't even be that expensive if you offer limited access at a few centralised locations (again an incentive for people to earn enough to pay for their own dedicated access, but a safety net for those who can't do so for whatever reason).
I don't think TBL needs other people to finance his web access. He invented the bloody thing, I should think he can pay for his own access.