Smartphones, Tablets and EBay had very little to do with the demise of SkyMall. Long before those things ever existed people weren't buying SkyMall's useless, overpriced crap. It's amazing they held on for this long. They must have a parent company with lots of money to waste.
That most people don't give a damn about security "because it is hard"?
Actually, security is not hard. But, security done properly requires you to commit substantial resources -- people, time, money. And that cuts into profits, so most most companies are not interested.
But why now? Even back in the 1980s they were selling random overpriced crap, and there were rarely any customers in the stores. They were openly hostile to the few that ventured in, demanding name, address, and phone number for the privilege of buying a battery. Why is it only now, three decades later, that they are finally going under?
In the 80s they at least sold stuff that people wanted. VCRs, computers and computer components, stereo systems and components (speakers, receivers, turntables, etc). And there weren't a lot of other companies selling those products (at least where I live).
But nobody buys those things any more. As the demand for those products disappeared Radio Shack removed them from their stores, leaving them with nothing to sell. And the few things they do have that someone might want can be bought elsewhere, probably cheaper and with less hassle.
But this is a weak analogy at best. I now pay for a bunch of sports channels and kids TV that I don't care about. Your example of internet access; if I'm not going to use it on the plane I don't have to pay for it. Same thing for the light snack or entertainment. I don't have to pay for it. Or I can bring my own candy bar. But with cable, if I want Channels X & Y, I have no choice but to get the package that offers Channels M through Z whether I want them or not. The idea that now you have to pay for a lot of things individually on airlines that you used to get for "free" assumes that I cared about any of those "free" things in the first place.
The problem is, getting rid of the things that you don't want and only getting the things you want, doesn't necessarily lead to lower prices.
People want unbundling of cable channels because they have done the following math:
200 channels for $100 a month = 50 cents per channel.
Therefore, if I pick only the 50 channels I might ever possibly care about, my bill will be 50 x 0.50 = $25, a substantial savings.
But there's nothing forcing the cable company to charge the same price for every channel. If you have odd tastes and most of the 50 channels you like are very unpopular, you might actually get your 50 channels for around $25.. But there's nothing stopping the cable company from charging much higher prices for the channels they know are the most popular, so, you could end up choosing your 50 channels and still end up paying about the same amount of money that you pay now for 200 channels.
Is one liable when a bunch of semi-autonomous code goes off and does something bad?
The entire premise here is flawed. The code didn't just accidentally do something bad.
That would be like me randomly shooting a gun and if a bullet happens to kill someone I say "I didn't do it deliberately so it's OK".
It's an interesting idea, but getting *TO* Mars isn't the real problem. The biggest problem, that nobody is talking about (because they have no idea how to solve it), is *LANDING* on Mars.
http://www.universetoday.com/7...
The real problem is the combination of Mars’ atmosphere and the size of spacecraft needed for human missions. While the Apollo lunar lander weighed approximately 10 metric tons, a human mission to Mars will require three to six times that mass, given the restraints of staying on the planet for a year. Landing a payload that heavy on Mars is currently impossible, using our existing capabilities. "It’s this ugly, grey zone. There’s too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on the moon, using propulsive technology, and there’s too little atmosphere to land like we do on Earth. Until we come up with a whole new system, landing humans on Mars will be an ugly and scary proposition."
Worldwide Pants is the production company owned by David Letterman. Looks like he won't be getting a cut of the new Colbert Show. But that's OK. Worldwide Pants owns Everybody Loves Raymond, which is still in syndication and has made a few gazillion dollars.. When Letterman retires next year I'm pretty sure he won't have to get a job as a Wal-Mart greeter to make ends meet.
Content owners want you to watch on cable TV, not YouTube.
Why? They still get paid regardless.
Viacom and the other "content owners" collect billions of dollars a year from all the cable/satellite companies, just for the right to carry their programming. If I never watch a single minute of TV, Viacom and all the others still get paid.
Viacom has Google running scared.
People keep posting video content of "banned" content on a regular basis.
Google keeps taking down content that should be allowed.
It's harder for me to listen to users justify their "need" for several hundred gigabytes or even terabytes of storage for their personal archives.
Call somebody a pat rat hoarder in real life and they'll likely become horribly offended. Accuse them of the same thing in virtual space, and they wear it like a badge of honor.
I wonder if the average consumer realizes that when they die, no one will give a shit about going through terabytes of crap.
Hoarding physical objects takes up increasing amounts of physical space. Instead of a basement filled with a hundred boxes, I have 8 TB of archived data that takes up about the same amount of physical space as a single hard cover book.
And I couldn't care less what anyone else thinks of my terabytes of stuff. it's for me, not them. And when I die I'm sure they'll just throw it out and free up those few precious square inches of 'wasted' space.
I was a subscriber back in the day. Sad to see it going, but it's not too surprising, given modern trends.
Ah yes. the modern trend of selling out.
From TFA:
"Our parent company, United Business Media (UBM), has decided to sunset Dr. Dobb's."
Like so many others, the founders were happy to collect a big pay day and walk away, leaving it in the hands of some other company who only cares about maximizing profits at the expense of all else. And when the profits can't be maximized to their liking they are happy to shut it down. Oh well, Dr. Dobbs lasted a lot longer than most, so I guess there's that.
Google needs to play this card more often.
Yes, I'm glad to see someone is finally growing a pair and standing up to this nonsense.
Funny how, just like in Germany, the newspaper publishers scream that Google is killing them, but when Google leaves they complain that Google's leaving is killing them.
ARIN requires operators accept something called the Relying Party Agreement.
But the provider community . . . is choosing not to implement it
So ARIN apparently has no ability to enforce the 'requirement', making the 'requirement' meaningless.
"At the heart of the case is that Apple's use of DRM harmed customers by raising the price of the iPod"
A couple of years ago I received an iPod Classic as a gift. At the time, the price was $259, which I consider to be ridiculous. Does this meant they were even more expensive previously?
No one wants this but you so please give up.
Seriously, what don't you get... Unity was released in 2010. Here's a graph showing distro use:
http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-co...
See how your distro use tanked in 2010? And Mint Spiked? Your users have spoken... listen!
According to that chart, Ubuntu has been steadily declining since 2005 and didn't "tank" in 2010 any worse than it did in any other year.
"Engineering without management is art." -- Jeff Johnson
