It's been a few years since I've really used Digg but how does burying something prevent other people from voting on it? My impression was that once something is submitted it goes on the upcoming page where all the stories are presented chronologically and buries only affect whether it gets on the front page or not. Do things get removed from the upcoming page after a certain number of down-votes?
I haven't used it for a while either, but I'm pretty sure that "bury" kills stories off completely. From their FAQ (http://about.digg.com/how):
Bury. If you find stories with bad links, off-topic content,
or duplicate entries, click “Bury.” That’s how we get the
spam out of the system and let the good stuff rise to the top.
Other than that, they're pretty sketchy on what exactly it does.
No, that's the exact opposite of my point. By patenting something, you stick in it the database of "public knowledge" so that it could be discovered 50 years later if need be. That means it wouldn't be necessary for Corning to sit on it for 50 years. Sitting on things for 50 years and making the current status of the filer irrelevant (dead, disincorporated, whatever) is one of the purposes of the patent system.
The "limited monopoly" is part of a social contract and understanding the whole contract is important.
However, if they successfully commercialize sans patents - it'll be a good case against patents being needed to monetize. Finding markets, production advantages and expertise is still a bigger part of the equation than King George fencing off your market.
The Moth is a great podcast but there website makes it difficult to find old shows. Subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to look through their archives.
Why is the author so hung up on "Dinner For Schmucks"? It didn't seem like he's seen it yet and so far its RottenTomatoes score is a bad but not horrible 56% while Grown Ups is just at 10%. Unless he's seen it I don't think it's fair to call it the likely worst film of the year.
Is it just because no one is allowed to remake French movies?
As I understand it, his point isn't that these movies are bad, but that they're all thoroughly mediocre. I reckon he'd rather have a good movie and three bad movies than four mediocre movies.
Another example would be Richard Feynman who was apparently a great teacher. He turned down an opportunity to work at the IAS because it didn't include teaching. He also won a Nobel Prize so he wasn't too bad as a researcher either.
Clearly the success of the app store shows that there's a desire to extend the functionality of the phone. Apple just doesn't believe that there's a reasonable need to do it beyond a certain point or to do it without their permission.
However, no one is clamoring to write apps for a microwave. A microwave really just has one function and as long as it does that one thing then it doesn't really matter how the software works.
What if I want to change what the buttons do? On my microwave, you have to type in the power setting before the time, what if I always want to default to 100% power unless I hit a specific button first? What if I want to hook a smoke detector up to the microwave so it will automatically shut off if its burning something?
I don't think that most canceled shows have many unproduced scripts (The Critic is one exception). Even if the writers know where the story was going
a) getting an explanation that's just a few paragraphs isn't as satisfying as actually seeing the conclusion.
b) some writers may not want to let people know what they had in store (Joss Whedon with Firefly for instance) and the ones that are willing to reveal what was planned are already doing that for their canceled shows.
" The only reason AT&T is still in business is because of Apple. "
That's a little over the top. Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are all still in business without the iPhone and AT&T was a very large carrier before they had the iPhone. AT&T would probably be doing worse than they are now without the iPhone but I seriously doubt they'd be going out of business. I'd go so far as to say that AT&T's reputation would be somewhat better without the iPhone since it seems like most of their network problems were caused because of the demands that the iPhone created.
