Yeah, that's very much in line with what I'm pointing out.
I don't have a problem with a private contractor being used to actually build and maintain the road. I would be very uneasy allowing the private company to then "own" vital sections of road and charging whatever tolls they like. It would be so much worse if they could block some vehicles, charge different tolls for different vehicles, and set different speed limits for different vehicles, without even needing to provide a reason or rationale.
So imagine that I own a company called "Road America Inc." and we own the roads going in and out of your town. Imagine I'm allowed to say, "Tolls for Ford cars are $1, and Ford cars can go 70 MPH. Tolls for Dodge are $20, and Dodge cars have a speed limit of 35 MPH." You see, I'm not owned by Ford, but I've made a deal with Ford where I get a payoff to promote their brand.
I do, however, own some of the grocery stores in your town, and I'm charging very high tolls on any vehicles that carry groceries. Somehow, all of my grocery stores have cheaper goods. Maybe it's because I use the tolls on groceries to fund those grocery stores. I've outright blocked any incoming shipments of electronics, so my electronics stores are doing very well.
Now does that seem fair?
The current mess is mostly due to local government (municipalities) imposed monopolies
No, the current mess is mostly due to the fact that we've been treating the Internet like a private entertainment service rather than public telecommunication infrastructure. You're never going to get real "free market" competition out of infrastructure. By its nature, public infrastructure needs to be treated as... well, public infrastructure.
I don't think that's a concern for this discussion. They're not making it any easier or more allowed for ISPs to mess with illegal content. The ISPs are already allowed to block illegal content, and will always be allowed to do that. The news here is that they aren't allowed to block or throttle anything else.
So yes, I would be concerned if they were talking about increasing the ability of ISPs to monitor and restrict questionable content, or if they were talking about expanding the definition of "unlawful content" to include other things. However, that doesn't seem to be relevant here. They're basically saying, "You're not allowed to throttle or block anything anymore. The only exception is if it's child pornography or something equally illegal, in which case, yes, we'll still let you block that."
I think he means the credibility of scientists.
Every Radio Shack I've been to in sdrawcab Nebraska and Iowa has had Arduino stuff in stock in the the last few years. You should go check it out.
You're missing a few things:
First, spending this borrowed money might employ a few people in town, but it also means less money is available to employ other people in the town (demand is reduced for some jobs while increased for others).
Second, the article shows that operating costs are over $11 million per year and that revenues aren't enough to cover those costs.
That puts revenues at nearly $170/month/subscriber and still money must be taken from the general fund to help pay for the system.
The $28 million was the original estimate. The cost at the moment is about $38 million.
There are about 5,400 subscribers of the broadband service giving a debt of about $6,300 per subscriber.
Why would people bother to pirate music anymore? You can use Spotify for free, and get it ad-free and even with downloads allowed for a few dollars a month. There's no point.
Some might argue that this is a serious problem-- that the music industry is in a shambles and it's not clear this is all sustainable. Others might argue that this is evidence of where the problem was all along-- that piracy is the result of high prices and poor service, and when people are provided a cheap and convenient product, they're often willing to pay for it in some way. Either way, I don't see much of a reason to pirate music anymore unless it's somehow unavailable through legal channels.
What pray tell is a "native" application supposed to look like?
... like the other applications on that platform. It's really not a hard concept. Go look at other professional applications that were built specifically for each platform. Your product should look like *that* on each particular platform.
Ideally, on Gnome, it should look like it was written to run on Gnome. On KDE, like it was designed for KDE. On OSX, like it was made by Apple to run on OSX, and yes, on Windows, it should ideally feel like it was made by Microsoft for that particular version of Windows. Obviously that's an ideal that won't be met perfectly on all platforms. There will be compromises. But I don't think the concept is hard to understand.
My perception is that Google is fairly open, more so than the others, not locking down the Nexus devices. But on the other hand, their Android partners are really locking things down, and the most generous view of Google is that they're simply powerless to stop it. Often enough, it seems like there are people within Google who favor openness, but the company as a whole is happy to let users' freedoms be restricted so long as it pushes them farther into the Google ecosystem.
That's my perception, not that Microsoft or Apple, or even Blackberry are any better. Google is the most freedom-loving of the bunch, but still not exactly the rebel freedom-fighting bunch that their fans would sometimes like to paint them as.
That's my perception, anyway, as an outsider who follows things relatively well.
You are business? Do you mean like, Lord Business? Or are you the embodiment of business?
Look, you may be business, but I'm IT, and when you decide to install LibreOffice on everyone's computers, I'm the one who has to support those people in figuring out how to use it. I can tell you right now, looking non-native is going to kill it on a lot of businesses.
And I happened to be working on an OSX machine last night, but I'm working on a Windows 8 computer this morning, because I'm not so much a "MacOS user" as I am "smart enough to use whichever computer you put in front of me." I've been fixing Windows professionally since the Windows 3.11 days. So run along and be business, and let the computer nerds talk shop.
I think this is right. They're making more investments in getting their apps on iOS and Android. I think this investment is an indication that they're interested in having their own Android distribution (or one that they can at least partner with) which will allow them control while maintaining application compatibility.
And if so, I'd say that's a smart move. It's probably not a full plan yet, but more of a hedge while they try to push mobile application development by decreasing the barriers between development for Windows desktop, Windows Tablet, and Windows Phone. One way or another, they need a mobile platform with apps.
Function reject.
