I just wanted to point out, that the 5 billion songs Apple sold via iTunes is not all that impressive. Apple has also sold 160 million iPods. That's less than 32 songs per iPod.
at 99 cents a track it's like $10,000 to fill a 40gb ipod, 32 songs per ipod sounds pretty generous actually.
Bush is not likely to sign it, and that is in part because the Justice Department has serious reservations about the criminal investigations resources this issue would divert to what is, essentially, a private litigation issue. He also feels that their creation of a position in the White House without his consent is a violation of the separation of powers principles in the Constitution.
wow, if that is true it will be the first sensible thing that tard has done in a long time.
Do you count service level agreements as a guarentee?
hell no.
all SLA's guarantee is a response in a fixed time frame... as in "we will respond in X hours, guaranteed." no vendor will certify when a fix will be made, only when the response will be given to the inquiry. you can't guarantee a fix, nor can you guarantee that the "bug" isn't by design.
all software, including open source software, comes with no guarantees of anything, including merchantability and suitability for a particular purpose.
all software is "use at your own risk" including the enterprise stuff that is "guaranteed" to work 99.99999999% of the time. software is the only industry in the world where you make a tool for a given purpose and don't have to certify that the tool works for the purpose it was designed for.
it's called peer review. anyone can audit it, and anyone can fix it. that's good news for voters, and bad news for people who depend on rigged elections (or the specter thereof).
anyone can find bugs, anyone can fix bugs. the more people involved the harder it is to pull anything shady because someone somewhere will find out. full access to source code means the problem can be easily made public.
an open system is transparent, and transparency isn't very supportive of underhandedness. if you are in the business of rigging elections, it's best to keep the number of vendors small and the whole process shrouded in mystery.
that is why open source e voting will never fly. too much money has been invested in a system that can be easily gamed and plausibly denied.
the trouble with any system that is not 100% effective is false positives.
if such a system is 80% effective, that means it's 20% ineffective and that 20% of the people scanned will be harassed for no reason. that's why there are search and seizure laws and why warrants are supposed to be difficult to get, so you only go after 100% positives.
I choose to use one of four different internet providers (cable, dial-up, satellite, DSL).
if you live in the US, chances are there is only one DSL provider in your town and only one cable provider. chances are the DSL provider will only let you have DSL if you pay for telephone service as well. same for cable and satellite. dialup is an inferior product, and requires phone service as well (though this is a technological requirement rather than a business decision).
I can choose AMD (or Apple - ugh, or Cyrix once upon a time) over Intel.
apple switched to intel processors a few years ago. unless you are buying a g5 or earlier from ebay, buying from apple is buying from intel.
My point is, we are not mindless drones, subliminally forced into repeat purchases, rabid product loyalty (unless, again, Apple - ugh), and excess spending on corporate giant's products.
most consumers are mindless drones that don't know anything about the products they use other than what the commercials tell them. corporations spend lots in the media making sure this is the case.
there is a concerted effort made by many companies to build a monopoly or oligopoly in a given market (see phone and cable companies, intel, microsoft) and use that position to keep others out of their markets.
money is wasted myopically protecting these monopolies rather than allowing these markets to grow.
if your personal life is a problem for an employer, find a new employer.
i can tell you that if who i am is a problem for my current or potential employer, then i am not going to be happy there and need to be looking elsewhere.
not every company is run by pointy haired bosses and orwellian hr managers.
And if YOU'RE doing the hardwork of developing complimentary markets, your competitors don't need to bother to. They can just ride for free.
who cares? a bigger market means more for you, period. which is better, owning 50% of a million dollar a year industry, or owning 25% of a billion dollar a year industry?
better yet, why not work with your competitors to share costs?
example: all the money that microsoft and apple (or AMD and intel) waste on the attack campaigns they wage against each other, why not put those resources into helping reduce education costs?
after all, every kids needs a computer (and a copy of office) when he/she goes off to college, why not fix it so more kids are going off to college than ever before?
the fear that someone might benefit for free from something you do to help yourself is symptomatic of the small minded thinking that is holding the US back.
are you really suggesting that you shouldn't do something to help yourself because it might benefit a competitor too? based on that logic, then your competitors shouldn't help themselves out of fear that they might help you too.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Always talking free let's put it to the test
No author should work for free unless it's their choice, there is no such thing as being better for the masses when the performer is starving to death.
obscurity is way more dangerous for writers and performers than piracy. the more a work gets played/seen/enjoyed, the more potential buyers it will reach. that is the why doctorow gives away digital versions of his work.
think about it this way: if you had a choice between some people paying and no one paying, which one would you choose?
you have to be careful that in your rush to get some people to pay you don't wind up alienating the ones that are already paying.
My software has over 7000 hours invested into it's development, how could I ever justify that amount of labor for free?
and if you had open sourced the code for it, other people could help you develop, test, and improve your product in far fewer hours. you would have the potential to get tons of product development help (bugs logged, patches submitted), and market research for free.
then you charge for consulting services and support (scarce goods) and you have a great promotional tool: you wrote the software. that automatically makes you the best choice as a consultant, letting you charge more than your competitors.
Since science is becoming illegal, video games might be the only way we can train our children.
"He's also the guy who wants to pull every video game off every shop in the country, because he feels that the video games diminishing intelligence of our youth. Come on, Dick... It's only education we got."
it's not called gaming, but it's the same thing: you have a controller and are taking action that affects what's on the screen. sometimes the screen is computer generated, sometimes the screen is an endoscope inside a live patient.
the medical term for graphics is imaging, but the same rule holds true for games and medicine: better graphics make for better accuracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_imaging
a lot of the training that surgeons do is not on cadavers or live patients, but with simulators and trainers. the same is true of commercial and military pilots, bomb disposal units, and deep sea exploration.
learning to fly a cessna or doing CPR on a dummy is not the same as flying a 747, or and f15, and is nothing like doing a liver resection. these are high stakes activities that require world class skills and one of the best tools for acquiring those skills are simulators which are essentially super sophisticated video games.
but that's just what's available today. the fields of telemedicine, telesurgery, and unmanned aerial vehicles are only going to expand and require hand eye coordination that exceeds that of a professional athlete.
how are you going to find out who has that talent, by killing patients and crashing aircraft? no, you are going to train and evaluate on simulators to find out who has what it takes to do the real thing.
Kill the poor, then we won't have to deal with them.
the middle class needs to be careful of that kind of thinking.
the rich feed on the poor (cigarettes, gasoline, credit, alchohol, gambling, legal fees, overdraft fees, collections) if the poor go away then the rich will start preying on you.
you need the poor, they are easy for the real predators to eat which takes the attention away from you.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just kill them? No prisons to build, no guardians to hire, no money wasted.
you can't kill them, that would be cruel. the current system of keeping them alive but ruining their lives is much more profitable.
On the post: Apple Threatened To Close iTunes If Royalties Were Raised?
Re:
at 99 cents a track it's like $10,000 to fill a 40gb ipod, 32 songs per ipod sounds pretty generous actually.
On the post: House Follows Senate In Giving The President A Copyright Czar
Re: not quite
wow, if that is true it will be the first sensible thing that tard has done in a long time.
On the post: California Interested In Open Source E-Voting Solutions
Re: Re: Re: Open security?
hell no.
all SLA's guarantee is a response in a fixed time frame... as in "we will respond in X hours, guaranteed." no vendor will certify when a fix will be made, only when the response will be given to the inquiry. you can't guarantee a fix, nor can you guarantee that the "bug" isn't by design.
all software, including open source software, comes with no guarantees of anything, including merchantability and suitability for a particular purpose.
all software is "use at your own risk" including the enterprise stuff that is "guaranteed" to work 99.99999999% of the time. software is the only industry in the world where you make a tool for a given purpose and don't have to certify that the tool works for the purpose it was designed for.
On the post: California Interested In Open Source E-Voting Solutions
Re: Open....to hackers?
anyone can find bugs, anyone can fix bugs. the more people involved the harder it is to pull anything shady because someone somewhere will find out. full access to source code means the problem can be easily made public.
an open system is transparent, and transparency isn't very supportive of underhandedness. if you are in the business of rigging elections, it's best to keep the number of vendors small and the whole process shrouded in mystery.
that is why open source e voting will never fly. too much money has been invested in a system that can be easily gamed and plausibly denied.
On the post: Homeland Security Gets Closer To Minority Report-Style Crime Predictor
myth of the false positive
if such a system is 80% effective, that means it's 20% ineffective and that 20% of the people scanned will be harassed for no reason. that's why there are search and seizure laws and why warrants are supposed to be difficult to get, so you only go after 100% positives.
On the post: Homeland Security Gets Closer To Minority Report-Style Crime Predictor
myth of the false positive
On the post: Time For A Moron In A Hurry To Explain The Difference Between Microprocessors And A Trip To China
Re: Intel
if you live in the US, chances are there is only one DSL provider in your town and only one cable provider. chances are the DSL provider will only let you have DSL if you pay for telephone service as well. same for cable and satellite. dialup is an inferior product, and requires phone service as well (though this is a technological requirement rather than a business decision).
I can choose AMD (or Apple - ugh, or Cyrix once upon a time) over Intel.
apple switched to intel processors a few years ago. unless you are buying a g5 or earlier from ebay, buying from apple is buying from intel.
My point is, we are not mindless drones, subliminally forced into repeat purchases, rabid product loyalty (unless, again, Apple - ugh), and excess spending on corporate giant's products.
most consumers are mindless drones that don't know anything about the products they use other than what the commercials tell them. corporations spend lots in the media making sure this is the case.
there is a concerted effort made by many companies to build a monopoly or oligopoly in a given market (see phone and cable companies, intel, microsoft) and use that position to keep others out of their markets.
money is wasted myopically protecting these monopolies rather than allowing these markets to grow.
On the post: Rejected From College Because Of Your Facebook Profile?
it's simple, really
i can tell you that if who i am is a problem for my current or potential employer, then i am not going to be happy there and need to be looking elsewhere.
not every company is run by pointy haired bosses and orwellian hr managers.
On the post: SanDisk Makes Music Even Less Convenient
i play music off SD card on my phone
the setup was expensive, but it's really convenient.
i bought a blank card and loaded the music myself, so it's drm free.
On the post: Applying A 'Chrome' Strategy To Your Own Business
Re: Non-exclusive benefits...
who cares? a bigger market means more for you, period. which is better, owning 50% of a million dollar a year industry, or owning 25% of a billion dollar a year industry?
better yet, why not work with your competitors to share costs?
example: all the money that microsoft and apple (or AMD and intel) waste on the attack campaigns they wage against each other, why not put those resources into helping reduce education costs?
after all, every kids needs a computer (and a copy of office) when he/she goes off to college, why not fix it so more kids are going off to college than ever before?
the fear that someone might benefit for free from something you do to help yourself is symptomatic of the small minded thinking that is holding the US back.
are you really suggesting that you shouldn't do something to help yourself because it might benefit a competitor too? based on that logic, then your competitors shouldn't help themselves out of fear that they might help you too.
On the post: You Don't Need To Make Money From Every Person Who Enjoys Your Product
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Always talking free let's put it to the test
obscurity is way more dangerous for writers and performers than piracy. the more a work gets played/seen/enjoyed, the more potential buyers it will reach. that is the why doctorow gives away digital versions of his work.
think about it this way: if you had a choice between some people paying and no one paying, which one would you choose?
you have to be careful that in your rush to get some people to pay you don't wind up alienating the ones that are already paying.
On the post: You Don't Need To Make Money From Every Person Who Enjoys Your Product
Re: Re: Help subsidize
and if you had open sourced the code for it, other people could help you develop, test, and improve your product in far fewer hours. you would have the potential to get tons of product development help (bugs logged, patches submitted), and market research for free.
then you charge for consulting services and support (scarce goods) and you have a great promotional tool: you wrote the software. that automatically makes you the best choice as a consultant, letting you charge more than your competitors.
On the post: You Don't Need To Make Money From Every Person Who Enjoys Your Product
i love doctorow's writing
a bunch of his essays are available in a new book called "content" which is available for free here:
http://craphound.com/content
On the post: Turns Out Virtual Worlds Teach Players The Scientific Method
Re: Science is Evil
"He's also the guy who wants to pull every video game off every shop in the country, because he feels that the video games diminishing intelligence of our youth. Come on, Dick... It's only education we got."
On the post: Turns Out Virtual Worlds Teach Players The Scientific Method
Re: Nonsense
the medical term for "force feedback" is haptic response. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic
the same is true for either medicine or video games: better feedback makes for better decisions.
the medical term for a game is a simulator and simulators have a number of training functions, not least of which is training for minimally invasive surgery with the aid of an endoscope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_invasive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endoscope
it's not called gaming, but it's the same thing: you have a controller and are taking action that affects what's on the screen. sometimes the screen is computer generated, sometimes the screen is an endoscope inside a live patient.
the medical term for graphics is imaging, but the same rule holds true for games and medicine: better graphics make for better accuracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_imaging
a lot of the training that surgeons do is not on cadavers or live patients, but with simulators and trainers. the same is true of commercial and military pilots, bomb disposal units, and deep sea exploration.
learning to fly a cessna or doing CPR on a dummy is not the same as flying a 747, or and f15, and is nothing like doing a liver resection. these are high stakes activities that require world class skills and one of the best tools for acquiring those skills are simulators which are essentially super sophisticated video games.
but that's just what's available today. the fields of telemedicine, telesurgery, and unmanned aerial vehicles are only going to expand and require hand eye coordination that exceeds that of a professional athlete.
how are you going to find out who has that talent, by killing patients and crashing aircraft? no, you are going to train and evaluate on simulators to find out who has what it takes to do the real thing.
On the post: The Last Thing A Musician Wants These Days Is To Appear Anti-Fan
Re: Really?
recording to tape is just changing formats for convenience. ripping a cd to mp3 is destroying america.
changing formats is ok. destroying america is not.
On the post: Prisons Upset That Prisoners Don't Get Discounts On Digital TV Converters
Re:
the middle class needs to be careful of that kind of thinking.
the rich feed on the poor (cigarettes, gasoline, credit, alchohol, gambling, legal fees, overdraft fees, collections) if the poor go away then the rich will start preying on you.
you need the poor, they are easy for the real predators to eat which takes the attention away from you.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just kill them? No prisons to build, no guardians to hire, no money wasted.
you can't kill them, that would be cruel. the current system of keeping them alive but ruining their lives is much more profitable.
On the post: Why Does Facebook Block Any Mention Of BugMeNot?
mailinator FTW
On the post: Prisons Upset That Prisoners Don't Get Discounts On Digital TV Converters
the prisons can afford it
they are just looking for a handout, just like every other govt subsidized profit center.
On the post: The Fine Line Between A Venture Capitalist And A Con Man?
there is a line?
Next >>