They love their exclusitivity, lock-in, etc. We saw them destroy an awesome C64 emulator because you could program in BASIC for it. From glancing over the article, it appears developers will be able to use.NET to produce iPhone apps while not using OSX (!!!) -- I don't think Apple would stand for this. "You must pay $3,000 for a crappy mac to write software for our iPhone, and even then your chances of getting your app on our 30% royalty fee store is highly unlikely!"
Install this, a few chmod's later, and your kids won't be able to do anything but browse the intarweb on websites you want them to. They could easily download chrome on windows, isntall it locally (or get a firefox/chrome version that runs from USB drive and run an unmodified browser). GL @ that if the parent who wants to impart "control" actually knows anything about linux.
"The question is then only whether you had a representative sample."
Herein lies the problem. If the users are pulled "at random" from a list of the top 20% of bandwidth consumers in the country, you can damn well bet there is a bias. If it's pulled "at random" from the entire population, this sample size is clearly too small. If it's pulled "at random" from subscribers to a local ISP, the numbers will be innately inaccurate as an ISP cannot determine what a user is trafficking if that user isn't completely stupid. Etc etc etc. It would be unbelievably difficult to pick a true random sample for this study and have it mean anything in an unbiased manner. You can easily plop a list of 5000 people down on a desk who consumed tons of bandwidth and be sure they're either uploading, downloading, streaming servers, filesharing, etc. Then just pick 1176 people and be reasonably certain a large percentage of them (11%!) will be visibly using P2P networks, though nothing is said to the content of those transfers (!!!!!!). Your statistics mean nothing if the sample chosen isn't completely fair, and I honestly don't think anyone here on slashdot can agree that such a sample can be taken in this setting. This study is innately biased, as the method of "choosing" samples will clearly be the one that most dramatically emphasizes the point that is to be made. After all, that is the point of using statistical sciences to argue a point.
In statistics, the smaller your sample size in relation to the whole population, the less accurate your predictions will be (generally speaking). Your professor was right -- if you poll EVERYONE in the population, you no longer need statistics as you aren't making any guesses, you're just reporting numbers. But if you only poll 0.1% of the population, your estimations are almost certainly going to be horribly inaccurate. If your professor used a contrived example from sample data he produced or gathered somewhere about which he knows certain information, he can most certainly make a very accurate prediction for "see, this is my point" purposes. It does not make a case for real statistics. If he had 10 people in class answer questions, then he was able to make an estimate about the population (your class), then he's got a 20% to 50% sample size (assuming your class is between 20 and 50 students). At that size, an estimate is much more accurate.
I do believe the 'stats' you're taking is some kind of engineering stats or freshman/sopho? Let's just say if you had taken a mathematics stats class where you have to prove things like why the assumptions behind your models must be accurate, why certain data transformations work, etc etc etc, or one where the professor actually gave you a data set he knew NOTHING about and worked with it as you did -- true statistics teaching btw -- so that you can see how you can gain information from a sample and what's valid etc, you wouldn't be 1) posting as anonymous coward [and you did because we all know you have no education in statistics] or 2) making claims as ludicrous as the ones above. You sound like just another conspiracy theorist nutjob. GTFO slashdot please.
Re:Surely Slashdot can get cracker vs hacker right
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This is absurd. The term 'hacker' as it fits into the computing world, was originated by persons who called themselves or others hackers to define skill or drive. It was later BASTARDIZED by the ignorance of people not in the industry to indicate those who could be termed 'hackers' who were essentially black hats or crackers, even outcasts.
So the precedent this sets, and you support, is that just because jargon is misused and abused outside of a field, we should change its definition. Do you understand how silly that is? The term 'hacker' has a meaning that was completely agreed upon by the persons who coined it, therein lies its definition.
Re:Surely Slashdot can get cracker vs hacker right
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How To Hire a Hacker
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TFA is not written by slashdot.
If it had been, we would've had CmdrTaco instantly it him to -1 ignorant.
On that note, the entire article sucks. I don't like this guy, I'm modding him -1 ignorant IRL.
I've tried. I do agree, and some are far worse than others. The language used should be direct and precise.. our english teachers required that from us, why can't we do the same to companies wishing to grab a monopoly on their "invention" ? But even so, even if it's talked up into legalese that's difficult to read, someone who is an expert in computer science and has a lot of industry experience will easily recognize prior art and fundamental design concepts, data structures, and algorithms if he/she looks closely.
Does being "contaminated" matter if the patent in question is invalid?
It's quite simple. You argue "why is it that in OUR country, which is nothing like your country, doing this worked (well didn't impact our tax rates anyway!), but in yours, you think it wont?!"
I don't know how uneducated you are but grab a map or a globe and check out relative sizes. Not good enough? Numbers: USA - 9,161,923 KM^2... Sweden - 449,964 KM^2. That's 20.4 : 1. Population? USA - ~307,269,000... Sweden - ~9,263,872... That's 33.2 : 1. And let's just completely for sake of simplicity IGNORE the climate differences because that has a huge factor.
Now, actual energy consumption numbers? Let's see....
Ok. Sweden's total energy consumption in 1999 was 51094 units. For reference, the USA consumed 2269985 units. 44.4 : 1. The USA produced enough renewable energy to completely power all of Sweden... boy.. a CO2 tax wouldn't be very expensive there now would it? But do you notice something about how much CO2 emitting fuels we use here in the USA because it is TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE to power this entire country on anything else with the grid being powered primarily by private corporations. A CO2 tax here is imposed and is completely unfair because we're one of the highest renewable energy producing countries ON THE PLANET, yet we're still not completely green -- and the country is SO MUCH BIGGER than sweden that a much larger portion of the population must commute, and a huge percentage of those vehicles burn a petroleum product -- producing CO2.
We'd have no problem with a CO2 tax... IF the government would spend equally in that sector and to make *SOME* effort to help the country move toward the government's goals. Cash for clunkers -- bad move, good for banks (the ones the gov. now owns).. and the motor companies (which it also now owns.. lol..). Hundreds of billions of $ in stimulus -- building roads, money disappearing in pork projects, most of it completely invisible to citizens -- bailing out insurance companies, banks, motor vehicle companies, etc etc etc. A TRILLION DOLLAR healthcare bill -- when the existing system would be *FINE* if everyone didn't have to pay so much for energy (taxing it won't help). Where's the "stimulus" towards renewable energies? Towards R&D in vehicle technology that will make very high mileage vehicles CHEAP? Nowhere... but a very willing government to make us pay for producing CO2 when it's our lifeline at this point in history.
We all want to pursue fission, it's less waste producing that burning coal but you've got fanatic green fucktards who lobby against it... we want fusion (lol, that would power THE PLANET).. but no government investment there.. we'd like to all power our homes with solar panels and turbines.. stipends here and there but no real public push or incentive from the government. Nothing. NOTHING. But tax our consumption practices because "change" is desired.
You see, liberals hit a brick wall here with this one. Complete hypocrisy. On the one hand, when the economy is failing, we're gonna pump money into banks and corporations who have shown an inability to run their company successfully (ie, why they're failing). That's FINE, encourage those bad practices which are economically DISASTROUS... but CO2 emissions? Oh, we need... TR.. TR.. TRUH.. TRILLIONS of dollars.. to implement a "green" energy grid -- which nobody has!!... well.. fuck you guys, we'll make you PAY MORE MONEY TO US, the FUCKING government of the USA, because we're the big daddys baby, we're YOUR FUCKING DADDY, give us your money.. because we'll re-invest it in helping you do what is good for this country!! (Lol). Taking money from companies that you want to turn around and invest money in renewable energy is completely counter-productive and counter-intuitive.
not in the software patents intrinsically. We've seen over the years here so many patent troll attacks and blatantly "vague" and "generic" patents that cover things so fundamental as things you'd learn about in your undergraduate computer-science curriculum reading well published books; things we call "fundamentals of computer science."
This brings an interesting point: it's not that you CAN patent software methods that's causing the problem, it's that the person(s) responsible for reviewing patent applications are NOT EXPERTS in computer science or software by any stretch. This allows companies to get away with gaining patents for vague, generic, and even systems which are completely and undeniably prior-art (all demonstrated within the past 1-2 months here on slashdot no less!).
You develop a new file format for storing data in a secure and efficient manner for your new application, so you patent it and the software used to manipulate it if it's so innovative to do something with the data and store it in that special manner that makes your system unique -- sure OK. But to patent searching in-order a tree or iterating an array looking for something in a specific manner is not something that should ever be patentable, these techniques and methods are well documented and completely public domain.
Even so, I completely agree with the author, copyrights are more than enough for software. In the above example, a copyright would've completely protected both the algorithm to create and access such a file format AND the file format itself -- intrinsically, and if another company just so happened to have that stroke of genius you had and stored information in a similar (albeit not identical) way, there would be no "infringement." This actually happens VERY often in the software industry, and it's ridiculous to assume that just because you came up with something that you were necessarily the first or that you will even be unique in your solution in the near future.
The problem is likely that the technology is very simple and as a result -- imprecise.
To "naive" persons like you and I, we may say it's too small or well couldn't you just program in that a vortex seen at this height (100m is quite a bit lower than where most funnel clouds are formed, cumulonimbus clouds are at 2000 ft), but it may be technically very difficult to distinguish in such a way. I've never worked with the data they gather so I can't speak expertly, but I'd imagine if it were a true 3 dimensional scan, you'd be able to easily determine the height and size of an anomaly and discount it or mark it way down on the danger scale, but that could be totally unreasonable.
Any global agenda behind which there is a "political will" is innately corrupt, bullshit, or something that they stand to benefit or gain personally from. Our politicians aren't trying to fix world hunger are they? No? But we care SO MUCH about a prediction that at our current use something which will kill off life on this planet in hundreds of thousands of years?
You can't honestly stand here and believe that the most corrupt people in the world give a shit about the ozone layer or global warming -- before anything "bad" happens as a result of any man-made climate problems (even if they are true -- though largely unproven), they, their children, and children's great great grandchildren will be all dead and gone. All they care about right now is having power and getting wealthy. "Cap and Trade" is not a constructive tax -- it is destructive. We have technologies other than coal and oil to produce energy, but it is far too expensive to implement privately, we NEED a $1 TRILLION bill to kick-start it, but congress isn't willing to toss that one down, but they'll gladly punish us for using the only cheap and available technology that will keep this country running. Why do you think that is? Because they can sit here and tax the US citizens for using oil, and quite dramatically at that, to get lots and lots of money -- but do you honestly think any of that money will come back to us? $2 Trillion in deficit spending already has gone *poof*... the trillions to come trickling out of our GDP from this tax will disappear just as well, and with absolutely no liability to anyone in congress while they kick back and enjoy the gold linings in their pockets.
It's just the next buzz-word in politics: "omgs, it might destroy human life on the earth in a few hundred years in a worst case scenario!!"... As far as self-preservation goes, these politicians ought to be worried more about disrespecting and angering the citizens that give them power, after all, if they continue down this path, it'll be the French Revolution all over again, and I'll bring my guillotine with me.
But you have to admit... token parts of anti-M$ campaigning by fanboys around the world for years have heard the cries of "LOL, your OS gets viruses! You actually have to use an A/V! Ha!". Well let's check the hypocritical quote of the day:
FTA(grammatical errors intact):
"Regardless of whose engine is being used, it's exciting is that Apple may be including anti-virus functionality in its next-gen consumer OS (if you believe the "reports" that Intego claims to have seen)."
It is *EXCITING* that OSX is getting an A/V! EXCITING! WHAT THE FUCK!?
And here I've been told time and time again that's a reason why windows IS BAD... because we NEED an antivirus to protect us.
So there was an amazing post by Anonymous Coward earlier this week that was simply a list of "I hate that... something people hate microsoft/windows/pc's for... but it's ok when Apple does it".. well here's one to add:
I hate when people ridicule Windows for requiring antiviruses to protect end-users who don't ship with enough common sense not to download everything on the internet and run it with administrative priveleges, claiming that only a bad OS would be susceptible to viruses while claiming that OSX is perfect (same goes for linux fanbois), but it's EXCITING when Apple brings an A/V to OSX to address the same issues.
It's not just one thing. The phones running Android by comparison with the iPhone are bad. If you want to write games, enjoy your OpenGL ES 1.0/1.1 which is quite limited in capabilities. The hardware is diverse, to the point where your app may need to be capable of changing how it operates to function to capacity on several different phones (!!!!!!!!! WOW! THAT IS WHAT THE OS IS MEANT TO STOP! BUT IT STILL HAPPENS, EVEN WITH JAVA!!!!). And T-Mobile just... well.. sucks. A triumvirate of fail that makes me wonder why Google developed Android if they weren't willing to put up a good product behind it to set their own "gold standard," or at least be a little more picky with their partners.
Hopefully someone will make an amazing phone and run Android on it. That will definitely help greatly with the success of the OS, but writing games for a platform with variable hardware just makes me want to say "screw it, I'm writing this for an iPhone" since I know the app I test runs GREAT on my iPhone, it'll do the same on yours. No need to test 10+ phones and tweak for each.
At least Apple isn't DISABLING functionality in the phone so that YOU CANNOT USE IT AT ALL without paying an exorbitant fee to the company or using some god awful and massive pile of crapware that you MUST purchase for a HUGE price from the service provider.
They're bad, but Verizon takes the cake. Disabling BT on Razrs so you must pay for an $80 piece of software which is MORE THAN THE COST OF THE PHONE to get your pictures or put stuff on the phone (not as if it's a smart phone or anything at that), was a very bad move. I will never be a verizon customer again.
and incidentally, corruption. Why would Mexico legalize drugs (soft or hard)? With how much money is made at the hands of cartels selling ILLEGAL PRODUCTS, which in itself keeps 90% of the population at a minimum from dealing with these products as anything but a user, you know the government has their hands in the cookie pot. If these drugs are made completely legal, cartels wouldn't be able to capitalize because their product would quickly become inferior and too expensive to boot, the government (not so much the government as top individuals) wouldn't be able to profit as heavily from decentralized production and sales. For this very reason, in any country where corruption exists and top level government officials directly profit from networked crimes like drug trafficking, it will never be completely legal. Instead, "small scale drug possession" will become legal almost everywhere so that pretty much the small scale sellers and buyers are protected (ie, end-users), thus making sure.. MAKING SURE.. that their clients can purchase the products, hence assuring sales. It'll never be made completely legal, it would DESTROY the profitability of the business.
On the other hand, somehow I don't think the government realizes the huge profit that could be made on taxing drugs much like they do tobacco... it's an insane figure but nobody seems to care.
Additionally, between this guy and the others at Verizon who can't do math, it seems like they've lowered their employment standards quite dramatically?
In games with two or more factions of classes which aren't direct mirrors, "balance" has a whole different meaning. While nobody argues that a class designated for DPS should be able to do more damage to monsters than a class designated for healing, and a class designated as a hybrid of the two should neither out-dps the pure DPS class nor out-heal the pure healing class (ahem, WARHAMMER fails at this.. as most of you who play it do know), but when so-called "mirror classes," or classes meant to do the exact same role with very similar skill sets are drastically different with one side's version being dramatically better for some given reasons, real balance issues happen. One faction entirely becomes far better than the other, regardless of skill level, simply because ONE SINGLE CLASS is imbalanced (primarily because everyone rolls this overpowered class). Similarly, one class which underperforms its designated duty either wholly (as intra-faction, it is worthless compared to other classes with the same role) or just isn't nearly as good as the other faction's mirror, it tends to get underplayed, exacerbating the issue.
So we're left with a side with a better class X, while it's mirror on the other side, we'll say X2, there are an abundance of X's but almost no X2s, furthering the imbalance of the game.
Class balance IS important. If you have 3 classes in a faction designated as ranged-dps and one of them is so far above and beyond the other two, why would anyone ever play them? If out of three healers one of them is tank-like and out-heals the other two EVERY TIME, why would you play anything but the over-powered one? So in effect, either balance it and keep a diversity of classes, or cut the class count down to a minimum.
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So far as balancing goes, no company who has internalized the process has ever succeeded. Ever. We have a living example of this with Warhammer Online as we speak. The company takes very little external criticism and suggestion towards balancing requests and what we have now is one of the most imbalanced popular MMORPGs of its time. To appropriately balance, you MUST take those people who spend almost all of their free time at the top levels of gameplay and create panels for them to discuss balancing issues and take their suggestions seriously. Most people don't want to 1-button "LOLWTFPWN" the entire other faction, instead they want a FAIR and BALANCED fight which leads to fun for everyone, and proves skill matters.
Additionally, unused skills should be culled and replaced with useful skills. Overused skills (ie, 1-2 button wonder classes) should be nerfed or made to have less utility. They're abused for a reason-- they're better than everything else and only require clicking 1 button to win. And when "nerfing", or making drastic changes, changes should not be made wholesale across the board and nerfs should not be double, triple, or quad nerfs (such as nerfing AoE damage AND AoE radius, that's a double-nerf). Additionally, changes made to affect end-game level characters (think.. max level.. max gear.. highly highly skilled players).. should only affect skill scalability from gear and towards end-game, it should not nerf similarly low level equivalents of the skills. Think of nerfing the damage output of a skill by 30% because at max level, completely geared out, it does WAY too much damage, but that 30% nerf to a mid-level character with the available gear makes it almost unplayable. These kinds of things are usually unconsidered by companies when balancing. Usually only players who are completely maxed out are considered for balancing, the impact of such changes have MASSIVE impacts to other aspects of the game, and almost always these changes have a negative impact on gameplay. Who wants to play a class that can barely survive at mid-level gameplay because people who have played for 10+ months and have THE VERY BEST GEAR in the game with max levels are doing insane amounts of damage. An exponential scaling curve comes into mind, why a
Sure, there are violent sex offenders who generally stay in prison more often than not, but there those who did something like sleep with their girlfriend of 2 years whose parents pressed charges because she was 17, and 3 months to 18, and that guy who may end up marrying her, is now a "sex offender" for the rest of his life.
Warranted, yes, SOME people use social websites for predation (and too many), but note that I used the term 'people.' It's not just sex offenders, but I would hazard a guess that not even MOST sex offenders using these services use them for predation. Such a ban is incredibly naive and ignorant, and an outright abuse of power.
Let's apply this same logic. We don't label average citizens who have committed some crime (violent even) that landed them in jail the way we do sex offenders. Say we realized too much violent and organized crime was happening as a result of using socializing websites. Now we want to ban anyone who may have a history of violent crimes or pretty much any crimes from using these to stifle the possibility of having them organize future crimes. So how can we target all of these individuals with such anonymity online? Well hell, we can't really, so let's just ban the website in our state. Done.
I'd put my bet on it that most people who are using social networking sites like this to predate victims for sexual harassment or other sex crimes aren't even currently labeled sex offenders. Are there any stats out there for how many new sex offenders have been entered as a result of crimes initiated via contact through a social networking site? I'd imagine this would be quite a large number per year, so now do we need to hire some precogs to detect these criminals BEFORE they do the crime and ban them from using the service?
This is just silly. They get it bad enough getting raped in prison and labeled on everyone's overlaid sex-offender-tracker GPS etc etc, regardless of what sexual offense they committed, they served their time, why should we now add another step to further punish them?
Perhaps this is just another case of where the actions of a few individuals ruin things for everyone?
Slashdot Mirror
They love their exclusitivity, lock-in, etc. We saw them destroy an awesome C64 emulator because you could program in BASIC for it. From glancing over the article, it appears developers will be able to use .NET to produce iPhone apps while not using OSX (!!!) -- I don't think Apple would stand for this. "You must pay $3,000 for a crappy mac to write software for our iPhone, and even then your chances of getting your app on our 30% royalty fee store is highly unlikely!"
Om nom nom.
Good vague post. Even in context it is impossible to know to which "parental controls" checkbox you refer.
On the second point, in fact it's EASIER to set parental restrictions on linux. Case in point, a quick google search brings up a firefox plugin:
Glubble
Install this, a few chmod's later, and your kids won't be able to do anything but browse the intarweb on websites you want them to. They could easily download chrome on windows, isntall it locally (or get a firefox/chrome version that runs from USB drive and run an unmodified browser). GL @ that if the parent who wants to impart "control" actually knows anything about linux.
"The question is then only whether you had a representative sample."
Herein lies the problem. If the users are pulled "at random" from a list of the top 20% of bandwidth consumers in the country, you can damn well bet there is a bias. If it's pulled "at random" from the entire population, this sample size is clearly too small. If it's pulled "at random" from subscribers to a local ISP, the numbers will be innately inaccurate as an ISP cannot determine what a user is trafficking if that user isn't completely stupid. Etc etc etc. It would be unbelievably difficult to pick a true random sample for this study and have it mean anything in an unbiased manner. You can easily plop a list of 5000 people down on a desk who consumed tons of bandwidth and be sure they're either uploading, downloading, streaming servers, filesharing, etc. Then just pick 1176 people and be reasonably certain a large percentage of them (11%!) will be visibly using P2P networks, though nothing is said to the content of those transfers (!!!!!!). Your statistics mean nothing if the sample chosen isn't completely fair, and I honestly don't think anyone here on slashdot can agree that such a sample can be taken in this setting. This study is innately biased, as the method of "choosing" samples will clearly be the one that most dramatically emphasizes the point that is to be made. After all, that is the point of using statistical sciences to argue a point.
In statistics, the smaller your sample size in relation to the whole population, the less accurate your predictions will be (generally speaking). Your professor was right -- if you poll EVERYONE in the population, you no longer need statistics as you aren't making any guesses, you're just reporting numbers. But if you only poll 0.1% of the population, your estimations are almost certainly going to be horribly inaccurate. If your professor used a contrived example from sample data he produced or gathered somewhere about which he knows certain information, he can most certainly make a very accurate prediction for "see, this is my point" purposes. It does not make a case for real statistics. If he had 10 people in class answer questions, then he was able to make an estimate about the population (your class), then he's got a 20% to 50% sample size (assuming your class is between 20 and 50 students). At that size, an estimate is much more accurate.
I do believe the 'stats' you're taking is some kind of engineering stats or freshman/sopho? Let's just say if you had taken a mathematics stats class where you have to prove things like why the assumptions behind your models must be accurate, why certain data transformations work, etc etc etc, or one where the professor actually gave you a data set he knew NOTHING about and worked with it as you did -- true statistics teaching btw -- so that you can see how you can gain information from a sample and what's valid etc, you wouldn't be 1) posting as anonymous coward [and you did because we all know you have no education in statistics] or 2) making claims as ludicrous as the ones above. You sound like just another conspiracy theorist nutjob. GTFO slashdot please.
This is absurd. The term 'hacker' as it fits into the computing world, was originated by persons who called themselves or others hackers to define skill or drive. It was later BASTARDIZED by the ignorance of people not in the industry to indicate those who could be termed 'hackers' who were essentially black hats or crackers, even outcasts.
So the precedent this sets, and you support, is that just because jargon is misused and abused outside of a field, we should change its definition. Do you understand how silly that is? The term 'hacker' has a meaning that was completely agreed upon by the persons who coined it, therein lies its definition.
TFA is not written by slashdot.
If it had been, we would've had CmdrTaco instantly it him to -1 ignorant.
On that note, the entire article sucks. I don't like this guy, I'm modding him -1 ignorant IRL.
I've tried. I do agree, and some are far worse than others. The language used should be direct and precise.. our english teachers required that from us, why can't we do the same to companies wishing to grab a monopoly on their "invention" ? But even so, even if it's talked up into legalese that's difficult to read, someone who is an expert in computer science and has a lot of industry experience will easily recognize prior art and fundamental design concepts, data structures, and algorithms if he/she looks closely.
Does being "contaminated" matter if the patent in question is invalid?
It's quite simple. You argue "why is it that in OUR country, which is nothing like your country, doing this worked (well didn't impact our tax rates anyway!), but in yours, you think it wont?!"
I don't know how uneducated you are but grab a map or a globe and check out relative sizes. Not good enough? Numbers: USA - 9,161,923 KM^2... Sweden - 449,964 KM^2. That's 20.4 : 1. Population? USA - ~307,269,000... Sweden - ~9,263,872... That's 33.2 : 1. And let's just completely for sake of simplicity IGNORE the climate differences because that has a huge factor.
Now, actual energy consumption numbers? Let's see....
USA
Sweden
Ok. Sweden's total energy consumption in 1999 was 51094 units. For reference, the USA consumed 2269985 units. 44.4 : 1. The USA produced enough renewable energy to completely power all of Sweden... boy.. a CO2 tax wouldn't be very expensive there now would it? But do you notice something about how much CO2 emitting fuels we use here in the USA because it is TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE to power this entire country on anything else with the grid being powered primarily by private corporations. A CO2 tax here is imposed and is completely unfair because we're one of the highest renewable energy producing countries ON THE PLANET, yet we're still not completely green -- and the country is SO MUCH BIGGER than sweden that a much larger portion of the population must commute, and a huge percentage of those vehicles burn a petroleum product -- producing CO2.
We'd have no problem with a CO2 tax... IF the government would spend equally in that sector and to make *SOME* effort to help the country move toward the government's goals. Cash for clunkers -- bad move, good for banks (the ones the gov. now owns).. and the motor companies (which it also now owns.. lol..). Hundreds of billions of $ in stimulus -- building roads, money disappearing in pork projects, most of it completely invisible to citizens -- bailing out insurance companies, banks, motor vehicle companies, etc etc etc. A TRILLION DOLLAR healthcare bill -- when the existing system would be *FINE* if everyone didn't have to pay so much for energy (taxing it won't help). Where's the "stimulus" towards renewable energies? Towards R&D in vehicle technology that will make very high mileage vehicles CHEAP? Nowhere... but a very willing government to make us pay for producing CO2 when it's our lifeline at this point in history.
We all want to pursue fission, it's less waste producing that burning coal but you've got fanatic green fucktards who lobby against it... we want fusion (lol, that would power THE PLANET).. but no government investment there.. we'd like to all power our homes with solar panels and turbines.. stipends here and there but no real public push or incentive from the government. Nothing. NOTHING. But tax our consumption practices because "change" is desired.
You see, liberals hit a brick wall here with this one. Complete hypocrisy. On the one hand, when the economy is failing, we're gonna pump money into banks and corporations who have shown an inability to run their company successfully (ie, why they're failing). That's FINE, encourage those bad practices which are economically DISASTROUS... but CO2 emissions? Oh, we need... TR.. TR.. TRUH.. TRILLIONS of dollars.. to implement a "green" energy grid -- which nobody has!!... well.. fuck you guys, we'll make you PAY MORE MONEY TO US, the FUCKING government of the USA, because we're the big daddys baby, we're YOUR FUCKING DADDY, give us your money.. because we'll re-invest it in helping you do what is good for this country!! (Lol). Taking money from companies that you want to turn around and invest money in renewable energy is completely counter-productive and counter-intuitive.
Your argument is inherently flawed. L
Bush and Obama? Same shit, different names.
You sir, are a very, very bad troll.
Is this the "change" you wanted?
not in the software patents intrinsically. We've seen over the years here so many patent troll attacks and blatantly "vague" and "generic" patents that cover things so fundamental as things you'd learn about in your undergraduate computer-science curriculum reading well published books; things we call "fundamentals of computer science."
This brings an interesting point: it's not that you CAN patent software methods that's causing the problem, it's that the person(s) responsible for reviewing patent applications are NOT EXPERTS in computer science or software by any stretch. This allows companies to get away with gaining patents for vague, generic, and even systems which are completely and undeniably prior-art (all demonstrated within the past 1-2 months here on slashdot no less!).
You develop a new file format for storing data in a secure and efficient manner for your new application, so you patent it and the software used to manipulate it if it's so innovative to do something with the data and store it in that special manner that makes your system unique -- sure OK. But to patent searching in-order a tree or iterating an array looking for something in a specific manner is not something that should ever be patentable, these techniques and methods are well documented and completely public domain.
Even so, I completely agree with the author, copyrights are more than enough for software. In the above example, a copyright would've completely protected both the algorithm to create and access such a file format AND the file format itself -- intrinsically, and if another company just so happened to have that stroke of genius you had and stored information in a similar (albeit not identical) way, there would be no "infringement." This actually happens VERY often in the software industry, and it's ridiculous to assume that just because you came up with something that you were necessarily the first or that you will even be unique in your solution in the near future.
The problem is likely that the technology is very simple and as a result -- imprecise.
To "naive" persons like you and I, we may say it's too small or well couldn't you just program in that a vortex seen at this height (100m is quite a bit lower than where most funnel clouds are formed, cumulonimbus clouds are at 2000 ft), but it may be technically very difficult to distinguish in such a way. I've never worked with the data they gather so I can't speak expertly, but I'd imagine if it were a true 3 dimensional scan, you'd be able to easily determine the height and size of an anomaly and discount it or mark it way down on the danger scale, but that could be totally unreasonable.
Any meteorologists around?
cheap free energy vs pretty pictures of wind on weather.com
Gee.. I'm having a tough time deciding guys...
Any global agenda behind which there is a "political will" is innately corrupt, bullshit, or something that they stand to benefit or gain personally from. Our politicians aren't trying to fix world hunger are they? No? But we care SO MUCH about a prediction that at our current use something which will kill off life on this planet in hundreds of thousands of years?
You can't honestly stand here and believe that the most corrupt people in the world give a shit about the ozone layer or global warming -- before anything "bad" happens as a result of any man-made climate problems (even if they are true -- though largely unproven), they, their children, and children's great great grandchildren will be all dead and gone. All they care about right now is having power and getting wealthy. "Cap and Trade" is not a constructive tax -- it is destructive. We have technologies other than coal and oil to produce energy, but it is far too expensive to implement privately, we NEED a $1 TRILLION bill to kick-start it, but congress isn't willing to toss that one down, but they'll gladly punish us for using the only cheap and available technology that will keep this country running. Why do you think that is? Because they can sit here and tax the US citizens for using oil, and quite dramatically at that, to get lots and lots of money -- but do you honestly think any of that money will come back to us? $2 Trillion in deficit spending already has gone *poof*... the trillions to come trickling out of our GDP from this tax will disappear just as well, and with absolutely no liability to anyone in congress while they kick back and enjoy the gold linings in their pockets.
It's just the next buzz-word in politics: "omgs, it might destroy human life on the earth in a few hundred years in a worst case scenario!!"... As far as self-preservation goes, these politicians ought to be worried more about disrespecting and angering the citizens that give them power, after all, if they continue down this path, it'll be the French Revolution all over again, and I'll bring my guillotine with me.
aaahahahhahhahahahhhahahahaha... HA!
But you have to admit... token parts of anti-M$ campaigning by fanboys around the world for years have heard the cries of "LOL, your OS gets viruses! You actually have to use an A/V! Ha!". Well let's check the hypocritical quote of the day:
... but it's ok when Apple does it".. well here's one to add:
FTA(grammatical errors intact):
"Regardless of whose engine is being used, it's exciting is that Apple may be including anti-virus functionality in its next-gen consumer OS (if you believe the "reports" that Intego claims to have seen)."
It is *EXCITING* that OSX is getting an A/V! EXCITING! WHAT THE FUCK!?
And here I've been told time and time again that's a reason why windows IS BAD... because we NEED an antivirus to protect us.
So there was an amazing post by Anonymous Coward earlier this week that was simply a list of "I hate that... something people hate microsoft/windows/pc's for
I hate when people ridicule Windows for requiring antiviruses to protect end-users who don't ship with enough common sense not to download everything on the internet and run it with administrative priveleges, claiming that only a bad OS would be susceptible to viruses while claiming that OSX is perfect (same goes for linux fanbois), but it's EXCITING when Apple brings an A/V to OSX to address the same issues.
I'm done here. Fuck you fanboys. Fuck you.
It's not just one thing. The phones running Android by comparison with the iPhone are bad. If you want to write games, enjoy your OpenGL ES 1.0/1.1 which is quite limited in capabilities. The hardware is diverse, to the point where your app may need to be capable of changing how it operates to function to capacity on several different phones (!!!!!!!!! WOW! THAT IS WHAT THE OS IS MEANT TO STOP! BUT IT STILL HAPPENS, EVEN WITH JAVA!!!!). And T-Mobile just ... well.. sucks. A triumvirate of fail that makes me wonder why Google developed Android if they weren't willing to put up a good product behind it to set their own "gold standard," or at least be a little more picky with their partners.
Hopefully someone will make an amazing phone and run Android on it. That will definitely help greatly with the success of the OS, but writing games for a platform with variable hardware just makes me want to say "screw it, I'm writing this for an iPhone" since I know the app I test runs GREAT on my iPhone, it'll do the same on yours. No need to test 10+ phones and tweak for each.
At least Apple isn't DISABLING functionality in the phone so that YOU CANNOT USE IT AT ALL without paying an exorbitant fee to the company or using some god awful and massive pile of crapware that you MUST purchase for a HUGE price from the service provider.
They're bad, but Verizon takes the cake. Disabling BT on Razrs so you must pay for an $80 piece of software which is MORE THAN THE COST OF THE PHONE to get your pictures or put stuff on the phone (not as if it's a smart phone or anything at that), was a very bad move. I will never be a verizon customer again.
and incidentally, corruption. Why would Mexico legalize drugs (soft or hard)? With how much money is made at the hands of cartels selling ILLEGAL PRODUCTS, which in itself keeps 90% of the population at a minimum from dealing with these products as anything but a user, you know the government has their hands in the cookie pot. If these drugs are made completely legal, cartels wouldn't be able to capitalize because their product would quickly become inferior and too expensive to boot, the government (not so much the government as top individuals) wouldn't be able to profit as heavily from decentralized production and sales. For this very reason, in any country where corruption exists and top level government officials directly profit from networked crimes like drug trafficking, it will never be completely legal. Instead, "small scale drug possession" will become legal almost everywhere so that pretty much the small scale sellers and buyers are protected (ie, end-users), thus making sure .. MAKING SURE.. that their clients can purchase the products, hence assuring sales. It'll never be made completely legal, it would DESTROY the profitability of the business.
On the other hand, somehow I don't think the government realizes the huge profit that could be made on taxing drugs much like they do tobacco... it's an insane figure but nobody seems to care.
Would that make them responsible for skin cancer?!
Looks like Verizon wants to share your personal information, so why shouldn't they share their own? Hypocrisy much?
Additionally, between this guy and the others at Verizon who can't do math, it seems like they've lowered their employment standards quite dramatically?
In games with two or more factions of classes which aren't direct mirrors, "balance" has a whole different meaning. While nobody argues that a class designated for DPS should be able to do more damage to monsters than a class designated for healing, and a class designated as a hybrid of the two should neither out-dps the pure DPS class nor out-heal the pure healing class (ahem, WARHAMMER fails at this.. as most of you who play it do know), but when so-called "mirror classes," or classes meant to do the exact same role with very similar skill sets are drastically different with one side's version being dramatically better for some given reasons, real balance issues happen. One faction entirely becomes far better than the other, regardless of skill level, simply because ONE SINGLE CLASS is imbalanced (primarily because everyone rolls this overpowered class). Similarly, one class which underperforms its designated duty either wholly (as intra-faction, it is worthless compared to other classes with the same role) or just isn't nearly as good as the other faction's mirror, it tends to get underplayed, exacerbating the issue.
So we're left with a side with a better class X, while it's mirror on the other side, we'll say X2, there are an abundance of X's but almost no X2s, furthering the imbalance of the game.
Class balance IS important. If you have 3 classes in a faction designated as ranged-dps and one of them is so far above and beyond the other two, why would anyone ever play them? If out of three healers one of them is tank-like and out-heals the other two EVERY TIME, why would you play anything but the over-powered one? So in effect, either balance it and keep a diversity of classes, or cut the class count down to a minimum.
. So far as balancing goes, no company who has internalized the process has ever succeeded. Ever. We have a living example of this with Warhammer Online as we speak. The company takes very little external criticism and suggestion towards balancing requests and what we have now is one of the most imbalanced popular MMORPGs of its time. To appropriately balance, you MUST take those people who spend almost all of their free time at the top levels of gameplay and create panels for them to discuss balancing issues and take their suggestions seriously. Most people don't want to 1-button "LOLWTFPWN" the entire other faction, instead they want a FAIR and BALANCED fight which leads to fun for everyone, and proves skill matters.
Additionally, unused skills should be culled and replaced with useful skills. Overused skills (ie, 1-2 button wonder classes) should be nerfed or made to have less utility. They're abused for a reason-- they're better than everything else and only require clicking 1 button to win. And when "nerfing", or making drastic changes, changes should not be made wholesale across the board and nerfs should not be double, triple, or quad nerfs (such as nerfing AoE damage AND AoE radius, that's a double-nerf). Additionally, changes made to affect end-game level characters (think.. max level.. max gear.. highly highly skilled players).. should only affect skill scalability from gear and towards end-game, it should not nerf similarly low level equivalents of the skills. Think of nerfing the damage output of a skill by 30% because at max level, completely geared out, it does WAY too much damage, but that 30% nerf to a mid-level character with the available gear makes it almost unplayable. These kinds of things are usually unconsidered by companies when balancing. Usually only players who are completely maxed out are considered for balancing, the impact of such changes have MASSIVE impacts to other aspects of the game, and almost always these changes have a negative impact on gameplay. Who wants to play a class that can barely survive at mid-level gameplay because people who have played for 10+ months and have THE VERY BEST GEAR in the game with max levels are doing insane amounts of damage. An exponential scaling curve comes into mind, why a
What is this?
Sure, there are violent sex offenders who generally stay in prison more often than not, but there those who did something like sleep with their girlfriend of 2 years whose parents pressed charges because she was 17, and 3 months to 18, and that guy who may end up marrying her, is now a "sex offender" for the rest of his life.
Warranted, yes, SOME people use social websites for predation (and too many), but note that I used the term 'people.' It's not just sex offenders, but I would hazard a guess that not even MOST sex offenders using these services use them for predation. Such a ban is incredibly naive and ignorant, and an outright abuse of power.
Let's apply this same logic. We don't label average citizens who have committed some crime (violent even) that landed them in jail the way we do sex offenders. Say we realized too much violent and organized crime was happening as a result of using socializing websites. Now we want to ban anyone who may have a history of violent crimes or pretty much any crimes from using these to stifle the possibility of having them organize future crimes. So how can we target all of these individuals with such anonymity online? Well hell, we can't really, so let's just ban the website in our state. Done.
I'd put my bet on it that most people who are using social networking sites like this to predate victims for sexual harassment or other sex crimes aren't even currently labeled sex offenders. Are there any stats out there for how many new sex offenders have been entered as a result of crimes initiated via contact through a social networking site? I'd imagine this would be quite a large number per year, so now do we need to hire some precogs to detect these criminals BEFORE they do the crime and ban them from using the service?
This is just silly. They get it bad enough getting raped in prison and labeled on everyone's overlaid sex-offender-tracker GPS etc etc, regardless of what sexual offense they committed, they served their time, why should we now add another step to further punish them?
Perhaps this is just another case of where the actions of a few individuals ruin things for everyone?
this is bullshit, eh?