Of all things, why should a *web browser* be a memory pig?
Because people want it to be. People want the browser to not only remember the browser history of 10 tabs 20-deep, but to cache it in RAM as well, so that the Forward and Back buttons feel responsive and the hard drive is not thrashing all the time. Since each of these pages has all the bloat of JavaScript, CSS or even Flash, it adds up. (And of course you can reconfigure Firefox to a small footprint if you want...)
Actually, it is the "least prestigious" form of the "most prestigious" decoration.
There are several classes of the Cross of Merit and from the picture it looks like he was awarded the "Medal of Merit", i.e. the lowest one.
It is the lowest class - but the lower classes are way more prestigious, since the highest classes are only awarded to politicians and their personal friends (rather than people of merit)...
I was about to say much the same thing - what they hell are the Brits plugging in that they need so much current?
Hot water kettles for a nice cup of tea. 3000 watt, so it boils before the end of your tea break. (Yes, American 1kW or 1.5kW kettles are insufficient.)
You might think that, but actually there are simply no heavy-duty vibrators available for 240V outlets - if you want to use a Hitachi Magic Wand in Europe, you need to get the US version with a transformer! (I don't want to imply anything about the needs of American women here, but...)
Also, MMP allows unelected wankers (called "List MPs") to get places in parliament regardless of their support.
Well, at least in Germany, those 'unelected wankers' are boldly listed on the ballot (hence "list MPs"), so you can't really say you didn't vote for them. And you will have the same sort of problem in FPTP - the party brown-nosers and wankers just get put into so-called 'safe seats' by the party instead: In the US, no Democrat will ever win in Tennessee's 1st district; in the UK, even the most corrupt candidates are elected in West Ham as long as they are nominated by the Labour party.
Look at our current government. The major party is being led around by the nose by a party with less than 10% support
Presumably the minor party is politically compatible with two 'big' parties and can play the two off against each other? I still think that having the minority opinions represented is a better idea than having them disenfranchised (so that one of the parties with 30%-35% of potential votes can impose their will on everyone else on _all_ the issues).
Every other method sucks more (except maybe Single Transferable Vote). MMP is a tremendous joke (it results in "coalitions" of parties that no-one wanted to win)
Huh? It results in a coalition of parties that 50%+ of voters voted for - just like FPTP. It has the huge advantage over FTPT that there's a chance of it not devolving into a Kang-and-Kodos "your candidate is even more corrupt than mine" scenario (since 3rd party candidates have a chance).
1. Leave a valuable possession on the ground
2. Promptly forget about it
3. And then drive over it with their car
Clue #1: They might get used by the military (where I've frequently seen things like this happen)
Clue #2: They might get used by the military (where 1. and 3. might not be the same person)
Yes obviously cracking passwords scales linearly, we've known that for a long time. Oh, you could get 100 machines brute forcing instead of one, but what good is that? Either the password is crap and you crack is easily, or it's helluva complex and scaling it up 100x won't do a damn thing. In this case it looks like they just picked some random range and said "Hey, this is unfeasible on a single machine and doable on a cloud, let's do that" but they haven't produced any credible evidence it is in this range. Not unless semi-complex password possibility matches their corporate password policy or whatever.
It is significant because the lone hacker in his basement or the IT department of your unethical competitor might not have a spare server farm with 200 CPUs lying around. They show just how effortless it has become to do brute-force if you have a couple of minutes to set it up and a few spare bucks for the computing power... (And I bet that very few corporations have a password policy that mandates anything exceeding 8-char alphanumeric - which can be cracked for 45 bucks, as they show...)
Well, from the viewpoint of world markets: if the Chinese entrepreneur can do the job better and cheaper, why should I (as a hypothetical third party) buy gizmos from the EU/US? Just because Americans are per se more worthy of a job than a Chinese person with the same skills?
Cool. So, the west should enact a near total trade barriers against Chinese products and then hook our money against the RMB/Yuan so that our goods do not cost say 7 yuans there, but only costs 1 yuan? In addition, we shouls subsidize our energy and then dump the products on the Chinese and even the regular world markets?
Is that really what you are suggesting as being fair or well thought out?
Yes, if you had 300 million people that you wanted to drag out of squalor, it might make good policy. Of course, apart from being infeasible (you know, with Americans already having way higher wages) it would be highly unpopular amongst the American population. As the second part of my GP comment alludes, it is "fair" in the sense that the Chinese sacrifice a huge amount of current consumption and wealth in order to secure future jobs and technology.
(That the energy cost and externalities are not accounted for is just as much a fault of the US as of China - the US is the most vehement opponent of carbon taxes and carbon limiting treaties internationally.)
Well, from the viewpoint of world markets: if the Chinese entrepreneur can do the job better and cheaper, why should I (as a hypothetical third party) buy gizmos from the EU/US? Just because Americans are per se more worthy of a job than a Chinese person with the same skills?
From the viewpoint of the EU/US: The Chinese pay a rather high price for "sucking our jeerbs" with a cheap currency. In order to keep their currency low, they hold trillions in treasury bills, (1) foregoing better returns in other assets, (2) risking their investment in case of USD inflation or USD devaluation, (3) keeping their people worse-off, as imports are more expensive than they would be otherwise, so they have to use crappy Chinese gizmos and eat crappy Chinese food even if they don't want to.
Actually plants WOULD care: it would completely RUIN the pollination process. Having simply said that, I expect you can reason the rest out? This is yet another example of someone not thinking a process completely through, rather only as far as required to preserve their desired perception/worldview. Don't do that, it doesn't really help the problem-solving much.
Do you have empirical evidence to back up your rather BOLD statement and your ad-hominem? It seems that farmers have been leasing out their land to wind farm operators for quite a while, and I can't find any sources stating that they have experienced detrimental effects on crops.
Tying the RMB/Yuan to the Euro at a rate that is far far lower than it should be would NOT help EU. It would destroy them. All their manufacturing would slowly move to China because the goods would be far cheaper.
If EU exports are uncompetitive due to a strong Euro exchange rate, and EU domestic production is also uncompetitive against imports even at a strong Euro exchange rate, then Chinese companies have out-competed European companies in a fair manner, have they not?
(And more importantly, would out-compete the European companies on world markets even (and especially if) Europe chose a policy of mercantilistic retribution or isolationism.)
So these days we have a choice for every 36,000 acres: either build 150,000 structures to house 300,000+ mouths to feed, or build 240 turbines to power 150,000 structures housing 300,000+ hungry mouths somewhere else? Can we have an option (c) none of the above? I'd kinda like to just leave those 36,000 acres the hell alone.
What about option (d):240 turbines plus 35,000 acres of farmland that are necessary to feed the people anyway? It's not like having a turbine on the edge of a 150-acre field would preclude it from being used for other purposes... (And it's not like you'd have the right to demand for someone else to leave their farmland "the hell alone" if they want to use it for turbines.)
Right now, China is targetting America by tying their Yuan to the dollar. BUT, once they feel that we are down enough, then they will go after EU by tying to the Euro.
Newsflash: The Euro is already strengthening extremely against the Renminbi (and the Dollar); tying the RMB to the Euro would be actually beneficial for them: It would stop clobbering European exporters with ever more punitive exchange rates in the middle of a recession...
With approximately 1 ton of rare earth magnets in each turbine, and China having dominance in the rare earth supply chain, and threatening to cut off all exports of rare earth oxides (hmmm, build your factory in China and China will let you have access to the REO), with no EPA or greenies to stymie the mining industry, I'm failing to see where this field is level.
Rare earth magnets are not the only way to build efficient turbines. This summary of this article (PDF, p.26) does a good job of showing why your statement is probably false.
Some of the best drivers I know are the ones who can't obey speed limits, make illegal turns, and ultimately are deemed as "bad" drivers. However these same folks maintain superior control of their vehicles and never get into accidents unless they are caused by another driver's lack of control.
If you cannot maintain your speed at the posted limit, and have no respect for when a U-Turn is allowed or appropriate, than you are not maintaining "superior control" of your vehicle. You're just trying to justify your asshattery. (Yes, we all got that you're talking about youself.)
No, you're confounding skills with ethics here. A hacker can both be skilled and be a blackhat; by the same token, a driver can be skilled and be an asshat. (Of course there is not necessarily always a positive correlation - cf. script-kiddies)
Woo woo! Here comes the clue train!
Copyright infringement is still a civil offence in the United Kingdom! ECHR covers criminal offences.
Once again, people, illegal doesn't mean criminal!
But wouldn't they have to make it a criminal offense in order to push this measure through?
Otherwise, what means would the rightsholder have to force a third party to the infringement (the ISP) to forgo business and profits by blocking the user?
All that would accomplish is immunity for politicians and their staff from this law.
Unlikely. The UK doesn't go in for granting politicians legal immunity, even when this would be of great benefit for the party in power. I don't know if there are any formal rules in this area though.
Of course, if anyone does decide to use the three-strikes approach, could they please use it against some media types too? Might as well get some benefit out of a bad law...
They don't have formal legal immunity, but if anything like this would happen, the police chiefs and the attorney general would likely determine that it is not 'in the public interest' to prosecute or punish politicians or other powerful people. (Just like it happens when an MP or minister falsifies expenses or commits other kinds of fraud.)
My wife works in pharmaceutical research. She's my source of information on how many drug trials are performed in the US versus other countries.
It doesn't matter where the companies are headquartered, it matters where they do their research and manufacturing. And the lion's share of that is done in the US.
Can't argue against anecdote:-)
Still, I'd be interested in whether the number of US trials is disproportionately higher when adjusted by GDP and population (should be around 5-6x higher than UK or Germany due to that alone), and whether those trials are actually phase 0-2 or just phase 3-4 (jumping through hoops to get FDA US approval rather than research).
There's a reason why the majority of drug research is done in the US: we don't force drug companies to give away their products for free. Oh, and incidentally, one of the reasons drugs cost so much here is because other countries do put price controls in place, so we end up carrying the burden for those slackers.
The reason why you pay thrice as much as "those slackers" is you screwed up health-insurance supervision: Big Pharma bribes doctors to prescribe brand-name medication at hugely inflated prices, and neither the patient cares (since he's not paying for it) nor the insurance industry (since they can just jack up their rates).
No they're not treated as books. Do you regularly make pronouncements on things you obviously know nothing about ? And the previous poster was talking shit too. VAT is currently 15% across most of Europe. And Amazon have decided to use AT&Ts global roaming network to provide the data link to Kindles. Why use a US based company with extortionate rates and peering costs when there are cheaper options already in place in the EU ? Total fail.
And obviously you are regularly making pronouncements on things you know nothing about, too. Since I know for a fact the VAT is quite a bit higher than 15% in 99.7% of the EU (everywhere except for Cyprus and Luxembourg), I tend to disbelieve your rather confident statement about the tax treatment of e-books as well.
I'm sorry if something is adopted by 88% of the people then it should not be allowed to be removed by a smaller subset of people. If older prestige European countries are able to railroad the EU this way then what is the point for other less-prestigious members to stay?
If you think about your statement, you'll realize that its two parts are contradictory.
This was a new provision that was rejected - because each country in the EU has a veto against new laws (roughly speaking). Note that this sort of arrangement was put in place explicitly so that the big countries can't "railroad" the small ones into restrictions they do not wish to adopt... (I.e. if a small country wants to adopt a 3-strikes law, it is now not hindered by EU law; if it doesn't want to adopt one, it doesn't have to.)
The watershed for storytelling in video games was probably Metal Gear Solid in 1998. After Hideo Kojima blew everyone away with his storytelling, developers started offering ever more elaborate and "cinematic" storylines in their games which ate up ever larger portions of the budget.
I hate to sound like a pompous PC gamer, but that revolutionary Kojima "watershed" was a minor effort in storytelling compared to Wing Commander III for the PC, released in 1994, four years earlier... Remember, a game released on four CDs, with movie-length cutscences played by Mark-effin'-Hamill... (And in some respects, Dragon's Lair from 1983 or so is the spiritual predecessor to this sort of games...)
Slashdot Mirror
Of all things, why should a *web browser* be a memory pig?
Because people want it to be. People want the browser to not only remember the browser history of 10 tabs 20-deep, but to cache it in RAM as well, so that the Forward and Back buttons feel responsive and the hard drive is not thrashing all the time. Since each of these pages has all the bloat of JavaScript, CSS or even Flash, it adds up. (And of course you can reconfigure Firefox to a small footprint if you want...)
Actually, it is the "least prestigious" form of the "most prestigious" decoration. There are several classes of the Cross of Merit and from the picture it looks like he was awarded the "Medal of Merit", i.e. the lowest one.
It is the lowest class - but the lower classes are way more prestigious, since the highest classes are only awarded to politicians and their personal friends (rather than people of merit)...
I was about to say much the same thing - what they hell are the Brits plugging in that they need so much current?
Hot water kettles for a nice cup of tea. 3000 watt, so it boils before the end of your tea break. (Yes, American 1kW or 1.5kW kettles are insufficient.)
Have you seen many English women?
They are plugging in _heavy_ duty vibrators.
You might think that, but actually there are simply no heavy-duty vibrators available for 240V outlets - if you want to use a Hitachi Magic Wand in Europe, you need to get the US version with a transformer! (I don't want to imply anything about the needs of American women here, but...)
Min-Kyu Choi's Folding UK style plug. All the goodness of the UK plug, none of the bulky crap. http://www.minkyu.co.uk/Site/Product/Entries/2009/4/20_Folding_Plug_System.html
Amazing! Can you buy them anywhere, or is it just a drool-over-it prototype?
Also, MMP allows unelected wankers (called "List MPs") to get places in parliament regardless of their support.
Well, at least in Germany, those 'unelected wankers' are boldly listed on the ballot (hence "list MPs"), so you can't really say you didn't vote for them. And you will have the same sort of problem in FPTP - the party brown-nosers and wankers just get put into so-called 'safe seats' by the party instead: In the US, no Democrat will ever win in Tennessee's 1st district; in the UK, even the most corrupt candidates are elected in West Ham as long as they are nominated by the Labour party.
Look at our current government. The major party is being led around by the nose by a party with less than 10% support
Presumably the minor party is politically compatible with two 'big' parties and can play the two off against each other? I still think that having the minority opinions represented is a better idea than having them disenfranchised (so that one of the parties with 30%-35% of potential votes can impose their will on everyone else on _all_ the issues).
Every other method sucks more (except maybe Single Transferable Vote). MMP is a tremendous joke (it results in "coalitions" of parties that no-one wanted to win)
Huh? It results in a coalition of parties that 50%+ of voters voted for - just like FPTP. It has the huge advantage over FTPT that there's a chance of it not devolving into a Kang-and-Kodos "your candidate is even more corrupt than mine" scenario (since 3rd party candidates have a chance).
I'm at a loss to understand why anyone would
1. Leave a valuable possession on the ground
2. Promptly forget about it
3. And then drive over it with their car
Clue #1: They might get used by the military (where I've frequently seen things like this happen)
Clue #2: They might get used by the military (where 1. and 3. might not be the same person)
Yes obviously cracking passwords scales linearly, we've known that for a long time. Oh, you could get 100 machines brute forcing instead of one, but what good is that? Either the password is crap and you crack is easily, or it's helluva complex and scaling it up 100x won't do a damn thing. In this case it looks like they just picked some random range and said "Hey, this is unfeasible on a single machine and doable on a cloud, let's do that" but they haven't produced any credible evidence it is in this range. Not unless semi-complex password possibility matches their corporate password policy or whatever.
It is significant because the lone hacker in his basement or the IT department of your unethical competitor might not have a spare server farm with 200 CPUs lying around. They show just how effortless it has become to do brute-force if you have a couple of minutes to set it up and a few spare bucks for the computing power... (And I bet that very few corporations have a password policy that mandates anything exceeding 8-char alphanumeric - which can be cracked for 45 bucks, as they show...)
Well, from the viewpoint of world markets: if the Chinese entrepreneur can do the job better and cheaper, why should I (as a hypothetical third party) buy gizmos from the EU/US? Just because Americans are per se more worthy of a job than a Chinese person with the same skills? Cool. So, the west should enact a near total trade barriers against Chinese products and then hook our money against the RMB/Yuan so that our goods do not cost say 7 yuans there, but only costs 1 yuan? In addition, we shouls subsidize our energy and then dump the products on the Chinese and even the regular world markets? Is that really what you are suggesting as being fair or well thought out?
Yes, if you had 300 million people that you wanted to drag out of squalor, it might make good policy. Of course, apart from being infeasible (you know, with Americans already having way higher wages) it would be highly unpopular amongst the American population. As the second part of my GP comment alludes, it is "fair" in the sense that the Chinese sacrifice a huge amount of current consumption and wealth in order to secure future jobs and technology.
(That the energy cost and externalities are not accounted for is just as much a fault of the US as of China - the US is the most vehement opponent of carbon taxes and carbon limiting treaties internationally.)
In what way is that fair?
Well, from the viewpoint of world markets: if the Chinese entrepreneur can do the job better and cheaper, why should I (as a hypothetical third party) buy gizmos from the EU/US? Just because Americans are per se more worthy of a job than a Chinese person with the same skills?
From the viewpoint of the EU/US: The Chinese pay a rather high price for "sucking our jeerbs" with a cheap currency. In order to keep their currency low, they hold trillions in treasury bills, (1) foregoing better returns in other assets, (2) risking their investment in case of USD inflation or USD devaluation, (3) keeping their people worse-off, as imports are more expensive than they would be otherwise, so they have to use crappy Chinese gizmos and eat crappy Chinese food even if they don't want to.
Actually plants WOULD care: it would completely RUIN the pollination process. Having simply said that, I expect you can reason the rest out? This is yet another example of someone not thinking a process completely through, rather only as far as required to preserve their desired perception/worldview. Don't do that, it doesn't really help the problem-solving much.
Do you have empirical evidence to back up your rather BOLD statement and your ad-hominem? It seems that farmers have been leasing out their land to wind farm operators for quite a while, and I can't find any sources stating that they have experienced detrimental effects on crops.
Tying the RMB/Yuan to the Euro at a rate that is far far lower than it should be would NOT help EU. It would destroy them. All their manufacturing would slowly move to China because the goods would be far cheaper.
If EU exports are uncompetitive due to a strong Euro exchange rate, and EU domestic production is also uncompetitive against imports even at a strong Euro exchange rate, then Chinese companies have out-competed European companies in a fair manner, have they not?
(And more importantly, would out-compete the European companies on world markets even (and especially if) Europe chose a policy of mercantilistic retribution or isolationism.)
So these days we have a choice for every 36,000 acres: either build 150,000 structures to house 300,000+ mouths to feed, or build 240 turbines to power 150,000 structures housing 300,000+ hungry mouths somewhere else? Can we have an option (c) none of the above? I'd kinda like to just leave those 36,000 acres the hell alone.
What about option (d):240 turbines plus 35,000 acres of farmland that are necessary to feed the people anyway? It's not like having a turbine on the edge of a 150-acre field would preclude it from being used for other purposes... (And it's not like you'd have the right to demand for someone else to leave their farmland "the hell alone" if they want to use it for turbines.)
Right now, China is targetting America by tying their Yuan to the dollar. BUT, once they feel that we are down enough, then they will go after EU by tying to the Euro.
Newsflash: The Euro is already strengthening extremely against the Renminbi (and the Dollar); tying the RMB to the Euro would be actually beneficial for them: It would stop clobbering European exporters with ever more punitive exchange rates in the middle of a recession...
With approximately 1 ton of rare earth magnets in each turbine, and China having dominance in the rare earth supply chain, and threatening to cut off all exports of rare earth oxides (hmmm, build your factory in China and China will let you have access to the REO), with no EPA or greenies to stymie the mining industry, I'm failing to see where this field is level.
Rare earth magnets are not the only way to build efficient turbines. This summary of this article (PDF, p.26) does a good job of showing why your statement is probably false.
Some of the best drivers I know are the ones who can't obey speed limits, make illegal turns, and ultimately are deemed as "bad" drivers. However these same folks maintain superior control of their vehicles and never get into accidents unless they are caused by another driver's lack of control.
If you cannot maintain your speed at the posted limit, and have no respect for when a U-Turn is allowed or appropriate, than you are not maintaining "superior control" of your vehicle. You're just trying to justify your asshattery. (Yes, we all got that you're talking about youself.)
No, you're confounding skills with ethics here. A hacker can both be skilled and be a blackhat; by the same token, a driver can be skilled and be an asshat. (Of course there is not necessarily always a positive correlation - cf. script-kiddies)
Woo woo! Here comes the clue train! Copyright infringement is still a civil offence in the United Kingdom! ECHR covers criminal offences. Once again, people, illegal doesn't mean criminal!
But wouldn't they have to make it a criminal offense in order to push this measure through? Otherwise, what means would the rightsholder have to force a third party to the infringement (the ISP) to forgo business and profits by blocking the user?
All that would accomplish is immunity for politicians and their staff from this law.
Unlikely. The UK doesn't go in for granting politicians legal immunity, even when this would be of great benefit for the party in power. I don't know if there are any formal rules in this area though.
Of course, if anyone does decide to use the three-strikes approach, could they please use it against some media types too? Might as well get some benefit out of a bad law...
They don't have formal legal immunity, but if anything like this would happen, the police chiefs and the attorney general would likely determine that it is not 'in the public interest' to prosecute or punish politicians or other powerful people. (Just like it happens when an MP or minister falsifies expenses or commits other kinds of fraud.)
My wife works in pharmaceutical research. She's my source of information on how many drug trials are performed in the US versus other countries.
It doesn't matter where the companies are headquartered, it matters where they do their research and manufacturing. And the lion's share of that is done in the US.
Can't argue against anecdote :-)
Still, I'd be interested in whether the number of US trials is disproportionately higher when adjusted by GDP and population (should be around 5-6x higher than UK or Germany due to that alone), and whether those trials are actually phase 0-2 or just phase 3-4 (jumping through hoops to get FDA US approval rather than research).
Drugs cost so much here because people have developed an entitlement mentality imported from Canada and Europe.
So if the "entitlement mentality" is the same as in Canada and Europe, why aren't the drug prices cheap as well?
I.e.: Your argument contradicts itself: it tries to explain a difference by trying to point to a similarity.
There's a reason why the majority of drug research is done in the US: we don't force drug companies to give away their products for free. Oh, and incidentally, one of the reasons drugs cost so much here is because other countries do put price controls in place, so we end up carrying the burden for those slackers.
Oh really? Please provide citations for this Fox News talking point. I'm quite sure that 6 of the 10 largest global pharma companies are European.
The reason why you pay thrice as much as "those slackers" is you screwed up health-insurance supervision: Big Pharma bribes doctors to prescribe brand-name medication at hugely inflated prices, and neither the patient cares (since he's not paying for it) nor the insurance industry (since they can just jack up their rates).
No they're not treated as books. Do you regularly make pronouncements on things you obviously know nothing about ? And the previous poster was talking shit too. VAT is currently 15% across most of Europe. And Amazon have decided to use AT&Ts global roaming network to provide the data link to Kindles. Why use a US based company with extortionate rates and peering costs when there are cheaper options already in place in the EU ? Total fail.
And obviously you are regularly making pronouncements on things you know nothing about, too. Since I know for a fact the VAT is quite a bit higher than 15% in 99.7% of the EU (everywhere except for Cyprus and Luxembourg), I tend to disbelieve your rather confident statement about the tax treatment of e-books as well.
I'm sorry if something is adopted by 88% of the people then it should not be allowed to be removed by a smaller subset of people. If older prestige European countries are able to railroad the EU this way then what is the point for other less-prestigious members to stay?
If you think about your statement, you'll realize that its two parts are contradictory.
This was a new provision that was rejected - because each country in the EU has a veto against new laws (roughly speaking). Note that this sort of arrangement was put in place explicitly so that the big countries can't "railroad" the small ones into restrictions they do not wish to adopt... (I.e. if a small country wants to adopt a 3-strikes law, it is now not hindered by EU law; if it doesn't want to adopt one, it doesn't have to.)
The watershed for storytelling in video games was probably Metal Gear Solid in 1998. After Hideo Kojima blew everyone away with his storytelling, developers started offering ever more elaborate and "cinematic" storylines in their games which ate up ever larger portions of the budget.
I hate to sound like a pompous PC gamer, but that revolutionary Kojima "watershed" was a minor effort in storytelling compared to Wing Commander III for the PC, released in 1994, four years earlier... Remember, a game released on four CDs, with movie-length cutscences played by Mark-effin'-Hamill... (And in some respects, Dragon's Lair from 1983 or so is the spiritual predecessor to this sort of games...)