"Rather than have these ridiculous, confiscatory rates for so-called "unlimited" service (which will still be capped under some other excuse)... why don't the ISP's just provide metered service?"
Because the ones most screwed up would be the grand moms of the word. They would be charged a hundred times more per kilobyte than the pirates. The scale wouldn't be linear. It would be something like:
1GB cap -> 10$ 10 GB cap -> 20$ 50 GB cap -> 40$ 100 GB cap ->60$ 500 GB cap ->100$
At that point the grand mum would realize that she is paying 10$ per GB while the guy next door is paying 0.2$ per GB. At that point two things would happen. First, she would realize that she is not getting a good deal, and second, she would arrive at a nice arrangement with the guy next door where for 5 bucks she gets to connect to his access point.
The lesson to learn from this is that a byte is a byte and if you try to make the pricing steps too high, it won't work.
"Some of Google's rivals are clearly interested in the settlement's fate. Microsoft is helping to finance the research on the settlement at the New York Law School institute. James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at the institute, said its work was not influenced by Microsoft. Microsoft confirmed this but declined to comment further."
Microsoft used to grow by buying or copying what others do, but it doesn't work with Google. It didn't work trying to copy its search functionality, or its maps functionality (M$ has a negligible share of both markets) so what they do is trying to destroy google's business. They don't even try to compete anymore.
Freedom is to being able to NOT BUY INTO THEIR SHIT. Accept their rules since it's in fact codified, but refuse to participate in transactions with them unless you're offered a FAIR DEAL and things YOU ACTUALLY WANT.
Well, that depends of your definition of fair deal.
It is like in the wild west movies, where one person is the owner of everything that exists in a village and you need water to drink but he charges you an arm an a leg for it. You can choose not to buy water from him, but it is not very practical. Is it a fair deal? I don't think so.
The same thing goes with the music industry. They have until not very long kept an iron grip on distribution. They achieved this using morally questionable practices and the only thing that changed that situation is file sharing. Now, they want to legislate their way into going back to the previous situation where "fair deal" is defined by them. And this legislation they are buying has some side effects, like having to spy on regular citizens traffic.
What is funny is that if you remove the personal hygiene references, what this guy is doing is what your regular salespeople and middle management will try to achieve. They will try to get some valuable piece of information that is necessary for the company to run (business contacts, working procedures, whatever) and lock it away so only them control it. At that point they are irreplaceable for the company and they sit down and enjoy an easy job.
Genius developers like that should be employed as designers, not coders.
You seem to work in a big, bureaucratic company, but in my experience, almost every coder I have come across has many design calls to make, at different levels of detail from the ones a typical designer or software architect would.
So yes, being a good developer makes a big difference and yes, a good developer can be 5 times as productive as a bad developer, so a genius developer can help the company by being a genius developer and not a designer, especially when by designer probably you mean business analyst.
This is the most important thing to consider. Please mod parent up.
Most of the progress made in the web during the last years has to do with increasing interactivity by using JavaScript. M$ has been left behind on this area so they try to spin IE8 "speed" by testing it with non JavaScript web sites. Pathetic.
Also, I bet that html on the most visited websites has been hand optimized for IE since it is the most used browser. So no wonder they render fast on it.
Well, I don't know about EU, but USA can perform a "liberation war" on them, under some excuse like "terrorism and kiddie porn". Once they have flattened the country, they can set up a regime that will give their multinationals all rights on oil, gas and fishing. This will be as a compensation on the expenses incurred by the rebuilding effort and paying for deployment of the liberator's army.
Then, after all is done and nicely set up, they can replace the president and blame everything on the previous one, without returning the people of the "liberated" country the rights to their own natural resources.
...Every time AI researches find a working algorithm for something that the human mind does, the ability coded on that algorithm stops being thought of as "Intelligence" and becomes "just a calculation that any computer can do".
So I guess pattern recognition in images is not AI anymore, right?
Maybe the reason they are so sloppy is that they knew from the beginning that they couldn't wing so they let the case be lost and then go back and buy the laws they need on the basis that "current laws won't stop pirates from thieving our property, as the pirate bay case showed".
You seem to forget Microsoft attitude towards software patents and Linux. Microsoft is allowing a (mostly unfunctional) implementation of Silverlight in order to get the perception of it being cross platform, but at some point, and by murphy's law it will be the worst time for your deployment, they will pull the patents card from their sleve.
Lets face it, after 30 years I have started to realise that no amount of suggestion is ever going to result in girls actually giving any of the sexual favors they seem to promise when they ask you to fix their laptop.
It seems to me that while they are a bit slow with technology you, on the other hand, are a bit slow at making the (lack of) connection between "fixing laptop" and "getting laid" when social interaction is the issue.
Yes, the journals have a great business model (for them) right now:
- Publish expensive journal that libraries have little choice about subscribing to. - Receive free content from scientists. - Force scientists to transfer copyright. - Get other scientists to to the hard work of reviewing the articles for free. - Add 'page charges' for the privilege of publication. - Add extra charges for colour figures (though most articles are downloaded, coloured electrons are more expensive). - Charge the authors again for reprints. - Whine about 'unfair competition' from Open Access. - Pay off our democratic representatives. - Profit!
This is one of the few ocasions where a complete and working business plan shows at Slashdot, without the ??? step.
Make it a percentage of the cost savings as a lump bonus and you'll not only get more suggestions, you'll get onces that actually have some thought and implementation plans put into them.
I agree. If you give ideas of yours to your company and your work is not actually producing ideas, you should get a "royalty". The company should make sure that a proper mechanism exists to assign the idea a monetary value. Get accounting to produce numbers for it and give the person that came up with the idea a percentage of the money gained/saved during that time.
Ideally, a worker could retire if his idea is so good as to make loads of money for the company. At the end of the day that is an executive/consultant job. And this kind of people get showered in millions even when they fail miserably like in the current crisis.
the best option is a web of trust plus p2p application. This p2p would be used only to distribute tracker locations and or edonkey links, not the actual content. This way you would need no centralized web servers. Webservers are too easy a target for the MAFIAA.
With this an something like the kad protocol we would have truly distributed content distribution. Not only the files, but the urls for the files.
It is not only that in practical terms it doesn't work. There is something else here. If you look at the press release for the Moonlight 1.0 release, they tell you about a number of things Microsoft had to do to allow this to happen. For example, releasing their codecs for linux, providing patent indemnification, releasing some microsoft code as open source.
This tells you that Microsoft has complete control over Moonlight in terms of allowing it to progress or not. I am sure that for Moonlight 2.0 there will be another bunch of things that Microsoft will need to do (or not) if they decide to make it happen.
So what do we have? a free implementation of a non industry standard solution that can't exist without the approval from Microsoft.
Moonlight is just meant for the MS marketing drones to be able to tick the box when users ask about multiplatform.
If Adobe is finally taking Linux seriously, it's because they are afraid of Microsoft. Best outcome we can have is Adobe and MS each taking a 50% share of this market. We'll reap the benefits, regardless of OS of choice.
If Adobe is finally taking Linux seriously, it's because they are afraid of Microsoft. Best outcome we can have is Adobe and MS each taking a 50% share of this market.
Supporting Silverlight is not necessary for that. In fact it can be the quite the opposite. If Adobe sees having a Linux plugin as a competitive advantage, they'll give it a lot of love. But if Silverlight is (badly) supported in Linux, it gives them the wrong message. Basically it is just another tick on the box, and they don't need to make it work properly, just pretend that it does, exactly like Microsoft is doing.
I don't say it is not happening. You can see the stats at Wikipedia but I don't think it is happening fast enough.
I just hope that those that are jumping to Linux are power users so we get better bug reports and more programmers interested in helping. That would bring critical mass. But I am not sure I want Joe sixpack to use Linux just now. Maybe in a year.
After all, it's not as if all this monopoly stuff has anything to do with what customers want.
That's exactly the point. What I propose would allow the users to actually choose Windows if they want it. So where is the problem? I see. You propose to keep the current system where the users can't choose what OS will go with their machine so you can do all the thinking for our "little luser brothers".
Is to stop bundling of software with hardware. When you buy a computer, you would get two tickets, one for the computer hardware, and one for the operating system plus applications. And you would have by law the option to buy one without the other. This would have many advantages.
- You would know exactly how much you pay for windows, so you would be able to make a judgement about utility vs price.
- it would be your call whether to purchase windows or something else when you buy a computer. Right now, that's not the case, most of the time you will not have the option not to buy windows.
- It would make much more difficult for Microsoft to link pricing with exclusive contracts, as the operating system would be chosen by the buyer and not the computer maker.
I think that would work, and considering the different remedies that have been looked at in order to solve the abuse of monopoly position by Microsoft, I think it is not too harsh compared to breaking up the company or forcing some competing software into Microsoft installation disks.
Once Microsoft stops abusing its monopoly, I have nothing against them bundling whatever browser they fancy on their OS.
they are people. yes, a board of directors, executives CAN feel positive emotions, and CAN move out of goodwill, or a sense of honor, or any other similar emotion.
Are you joking? the day a board of directors would do anything for a reason other than to maximize profits, they would be sued straight away.
Slashdot Mirror
"Rather than have these ridiculous, confiscatory rates for so-called "unlimited" service (which will still be capped under some other excuse)... why don't the ISP's just provide metered service?"
Because the ones most screwed up would be the grand moms of the word. They would be charged a hundred times more per kilobyte than the pirates. The scale wouldn't be linear. It would be something like:
1GB cap -> 10$
10 GB cap -> 20$
50 GB cap -> 40$
100 GB cap ->60$
500 GB cap ->100$
At that point the grand mum would realize that she is paying 10$ per GB while the guy next door is paying 0.2$ per GB. At that point two things would happen. First, she would realize that she is not getting a good deal, and second, she would arrive at a nice arrangement with the guy next door where for 5 bucks she gets to connect to his access point.
The lesson to learn from this is that a byte is a byte and if you try to make the pricing steps too high, it won't work.
"Some of Google's rivals are clearly interested in the settlement's fate. Microsoft is helping to finance the research on the settlement at the New York Law School institute. James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at the institute, said its work was not influenced by Microsoft. Microsoft confirmed this but declined to comment further."
Microsoft used to grow by buying or copying what others do, but it doesn't work with Google. It didn't work trying to copy its search functionality, or its maps functionality (M$ has a negligible share of both markets) so what they do is trying to destroy google's business. They don't even try to compete anymore.
Freedom is to being able to NOT BUY INTO THEIR SHIT. Accept their rules since it's in fact codified, but refuse to participate in transactions with them unless you're offered a FAIR DEAL and things YOU ACTUALLY WANT.
Well, that depends of your definition of fair deal.
It is like in the wild west movies, where one person is the owner of everything that exists in a village and you need water to drink but he charges you an arm an a leg for it. You can choose not to buy water from him, but it is not very practical. Is it a fair deal? I don't think so.
The same thing goes with the music industry. They have until not very long kept an iron grip on distribution. They achieved this using morally questionable practices and the only thing that changed that situation is file sharing. Now, they want to legislate their way into going back to the previous situation where "fair deal" is defined by them. And this legislation they are buying has some side effects, like having to spy on regular citizens traffic.
this is what I get from http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/3/24/460:
"The server is taking too long to respond; please wait a minute or 2 and try again."
Considering that there is only one comment on this slashdot thread, that means that most people will comment without actually reading TFA.
Like me... :-)
"What documentation?"
What is funny is that if you remove the personal hygiene references, what this guy is doing is what your regular salespeople and middle management will try to achieve. They will try to get some valuable piece of information that is necessary for the company to run (business contacts, working procedures, whatever) and lock it away so only them control it. At that point they are irreplaceable for the company and they sit down and enjoy an easy job.
Genius developers like that should be employed as designers, not coders.
You seem to work in a big, bureaucratic company, but in my experience, almost every coder I have come across has many design calls to make, at different levels of detail from the ones a typical designer or software architect would.
So yes, being a good developer makes a big difference and yes, a good developer can be 5 times as productive as a bad developer, so a genius developer can help the company by being a genius developer and not a designer, especially when by designer probably you mean business analyst.
Well, this could very well be said about Steve Jobs and many other "rock star" executives.
Should they be fired immediately?
This is the most important thing to consider. Please mod parent up.
Most of the progress made in the web during the last years has to do with increasing interactivity by using JavaScript. M$ has been left behind on this area so they try to spin IE8 "speed" by testing it with non JavaScript web sites. Pathetic.
Also, I bet that html on the most visited websites has been hand optimized for IE since it is the most used browser. So no wonder they render fast on it.
Well, I don't know about EU, but USA can perform a "liberation war" on them, under some excuse like "terrorism and kiddie porn". Once they have flattened the country, they can set up a regime that will give their multinationals all rights on oil, gas and fishing. This will be as a compensation on the expenses incurred by the rebuilding effort and paying for deployment of the liberator's army.
Then, after all is done and nicely set up, they can replace the president and blame everything on the previous one, without returning the people of the "liberated" country the rights to their own natural resources.
It worked with Iraq.
...Every time AI researches find a working algorithm for something that the human mind does, the ability coded on that algorithm stops being thought of as "Intelligence" and becomes "just a calculation that any computer can do".
So I guess pattern recognition in images is not AI anymore, right?
Maybe the reason they are so sloppy is that they knew from the beginning that they couldn't wing so they let the case be lost and then go back and buy the laws they need on the basis that "current laws won't stop pirates from thieving our property, as the pirate bay case showed".
You seem to forget Microsoft attitude towards software patents and Linux. Microsoft is allowing a (mostly unfunctional) implementation of Silverlight in order to get the perception of it being cross platform, but at some point, and by murphy's law it will be the worst time for your deployment, they will pull the patents card from their sleve.
I think what he is really scared off is that TTS will become so good that one day will replace writers.
He wants to stop it now!
Lets face it, after 30 years I have started to realise that no amount of suggestion is ever going to result in girls actually giving any of the sexual favors they seem to promise when they ask you to fix their laptop.
It seems to me that while they are a bit slow with technology you, on the other hand, are a bit slow at making the (lack of) connection between "fixing laptop" and "getting laid" when social interaction is the issue.
Yes, the journals have a great business model (for them) right now:
- Publish expensive journal that libraries have little choice about subscribing to.
- Receive free content from scientists.
- Force scientists to transfer copyright.
- Get other scientists to to the hard work of reviewing the articles for free.
- Add 'page charges' for the privilege of publication.
- Add extra charges for colour figures (though most articles are downloaded, coloured electrons are more expensive).
- Charge the authors again for reprints.
- Whine about 'unfair competition' from Open Access.
- Pay off our democratic representatives.
- Profit!
This is one of the few ocasions where a complete and working business plan shows at Slashdot, without the ??? step.
Congratulations!
Make it a percentage of the cost savings as a lump bonus and you'll not only get more suggestions, you'll get onces that actually have some thought and implementation plans put into them.
I agree. If you give ideas of yours to your company and your work is not actually producing ideas, you should get a "royalty". The company should make sure that a proper mechanism exists to assign the idea a monetary value. Get accounting to produce numbers for it and give the person that came up with the idea a percentage of the money gained/saved during that time.
Ideally, a worker could retire if his idea is so good as to make loads of money for the company. At the end of the day that is an executive/consultant job. And this kind of people get showered in millions even when they fail miserably like in the current crisis.
the best option is a web of trust plus p2p application. This p2p would be used only to distribute tracker locations and or edonkey links, not the actual content. This way you would need no centralized web servers. Webservers are too easy a target for the MAFIAA.
With this an something like the kad protocol we would have truly distributed content distribution. Not only the files, but the urls for the files.
It is not only that in practical terms it doesn't work. There is something else here. If you look at the press release for the Moonlight 1.0 release, they tell you about a number of things Microsoft had to do to allow this to happen. For example, releasing their codecs for linux, providing patent indemnification, releasing some microsoft code as open source.
This tells you that Microsoft has complete control over Moonlight in terms of allowing it to progress or not. I am sure that for Moonlight 2.0 there will be another bunch of things that Microsoft will need to do (or not) if they decide to make it happen.
So what do we have? a free implementation of a non industry standard solution that can't exist without the approval from Microsoft.
Moonlight is just meant for the MS marketing drones to be able to tick the box when users ask about multiplatform.
If Adobe is finally taking Linux seriously, it's because they are afraid of Microsoft. Best outcome we can have is Adobe and MS each taking a 50% share of this market. We'll reap the benefits, regardless of OS of choice.
If Adobe is finally taking Linux seriously, it's because they are afraid of Microsoft. Best outcome we can have is Adobe and MS each taking a 50% share of this market.
Supporting Silverlight is not necessary for that. In fact it can be the quite the opposite. If Adobe sees having a Linux plugin as a competitive advantage, they'll give it a lot of love. But if Silverlight is (badly) supported in Linux, it gives them the wrong message. Basically it is just another tick on the box, and they don't need to make it work properly, just pretend that it does, exactly like Microsoft is doing.
I don't say it is not happening. You can see the stats at Wikipedia but I don't think it is happening fast enough.
I just hope that those that are jumping to Linux are power users so we get better bug reports and more programmers interested in helping. That would bring critical mass. But I am not sure I want Joe sixpack to use Linux just now. Maybe in a year.
A 15 cm silicon wafer: 15x15=225cm2
If they fit 150000 LEDs you get 225/150000=0.0015 cm2 per led.
Aren't they too small to be used for home lights?
After all, it's not as if all this monopoly stuff has anything to do with what customers want.
That's exactly the point. What I propose would allow the users to actually choose Windows if they want it. So where is the problem? I see. You propose to keep the current system where the users can't choose what OS will go with their machine so you can do all the thinking for our "little luser brothers".
Is to stop bundling of software with hardware. When you buy a computer, you would get two tickets, one for the computer hardware, and one for the operating system plus applications. And you would have by law the option to buy one without the other. This would have many advantages.
- You would know exactly how much you pay for windows, so you would be able to make a judgement about utility vs price.
- it would be your call whether to purchase windows or something else when you buy a computer. Right now, that's not the case, most of the time you will not have the option not to buy windows.
- It would make much more difficult for Microsoft to link pricing with exclusive contracts, as the operating system would be chosen by the buyer and not the computer maker.
I think that would work, and considering the different remedies that have been looked at in order to solve the abuse of monopoly position by Microsoft, I think it is not too harsh compared to breaking up the company or forcing some competing software into Microsoft installation disks.
Once Microsoft stops abusing its monopoly, I have nothing against them bundling whatever browser they fancy on their OS.
The day you feel that a bank is acting against your best interests, you go and withdraw all of your money. Your relationship with them is finished.
Now go to google and tell them that you want all information related to you in their database to be deleted, as of today.
they are people. yes, a board of directors, executives CAN feel positive emotions, and CAN move out of goodwill, or a sense of honor, or any other similar emotion.
Are you joking? the day a board of directors would do anything for a reason other than to maximize profits, they would be sued straight away.