I'm fairly certain automated web crawling preceded google. There were manual aggregation sites (like Yahoo), but most others (lycos, altavista, loads more) were just crawling and counting links. Google got market share because it's algorithm cut through all the spam sites that worked out how to get to the top of the list (which wouldn't have happened if there was a genuine manual crawl occurring).
But I don't disagree that to compete with google now would require an enormous investment. You could develop a far superior algorithm to google, but the chances of you getting a decent market share without huge investment are pretty small
Well since the WHO don't seem to have found any particularly nasty areas... not that bad? Safety standards are set incredibly low and this generates an intense pressure to give out the lowest possible numbers when reporting radiation. If there was less irrational panic then people might be more honest about the numbers. Think of it this way: It's at least 2.5x as bad as it was declared to be, maybe a whole lot worse (as you seem to think) and yet there are no discernible health effects (except those caused by the ensuing panic).
Yup. For once AC is absolutely right and I have no mod points to waste on him...
The two base values for frame rates in video correspond to a 1/1 and a 1/1.001 version (e.g. 60 and 59.94, 30 and 29.97, 24 and 23.98 etc. etc.). If you look at broadcast equipment you will find two (or maybe three if they add a 27MHz one) crystals - a 74.25 and a 74.17 (74.25/1.001) or some multiple of those numbers.
Wikipedia will explain the reason for the 1/1.001 divide - see NTSC Colour encoding. That 1/1.001 ratio is small enough that most PLLs could be pulled to lock to it so existing 60Hz black and white sets could still receive a colour signal at 59.97Hz. Clever solution leading to ridiculous legacy situation now where we have more broadcast video standards than we know what to do with.
The people abusing our healthcare system are the politicians trying to parcel up and privatize 'profitable' sections of it, the managers who make up so many layers of dead weight in the organisation, and the people who would see it as a business and not a medical institution. Authorising vast expenditures on legal cases to prosecute whistle-blowers rather than investigating the issues raised is the behaviour one expects from a business with face to save, not an organisation where providing the best quality medical care is the top priority. The medical side of the NHS is excellent, and still provides fantastic care. The bureaucratic and political sides of it are a cancer.
So... get BUPA or some other private health care insurance. No-one will stop you. But imagine for a second you didn't have the cash: In the US you're out on your ear (until the infection becomes life threatening I presume and then requires expensive emergency treatment rather than a cheaper preventative treatment - but hey if you run a business that's the kind of work you want right), in the UK you'd have to sit and wait a bit - the horror! It's a good thing we love a good queue. I guess that in your fully private healthcare in the good old USofA there are never queues/waiting/lists etc. for medical treatment?
Also, many people waiting may have been there early for a fixed appointment, waiting for test results, waiting for friends/relatives, waiting for a particular doctor/specialist. I've also been treated within 5 minutes of showing up whilst no-one else seems to have moved, and I didn't have to get my wallet out.
Ok. So he doesn't want to guide it every step of the way, but he is all seeing/all-knowing/all-powerful. He also claims to love everyone unconditionally. Why then create a system where some of his creations are condemned, with no chance of reaching whatever happy place he has promised?
Either your god doesn't love all of us unconditionally, or he isn't as capable as you think, or actually, he doesn't exist. Take the earlier post - killing all the first born sons in Egypt. How do you reconcile that with your walk-away idea: He chose to get involved with his creation, one of many occasions when he does so, and his actions are inexcusable. Love? Forgiveness? No chance, just murder people until they are scared of you. More like the actions of a third world despot than a loving caring god. He could have fixed it without killing many people, he could have hit the reset button and tried again with a couple more things to prevent his beloved creation getting into a bad state, he could of just magicked up a happy island for the Israelites to live on and teleported them there. None of these things happened. What actually happened was organised systemic murder.
So perhaps your god 'moves in mysterious ways'. Perhaps all those first born sons of egypt weren't really human and they were just a sacrificial decoy so he'd have something to destroy to ensure the Israelites release from oppression. Perhaps all the mythical enemies and trials and tribulations faced by 'god's people' throughout history have been like a simulation, the people who have suffered and died the religious equivalent of red-shirts that only existed to get squished so that the situations they found themselves in seemed real, and not some harmless scripted set of false circumstances created by a god. For what purpose though? To test faith? To see if people will believe in him? How incredibly vain. What is the psychology of someone who would create a sentient being just to be worshipped by it, then to put it through all manner of oppression just so he can then magic up something to make him appear to be a saviour in order to be worshipped even more?
So back to the original point. You can't have it both ways. Either he gets involved to help people or he doesn't. If he doesn't then why worship him. What will he do for you? If he does, then why only for some of people? Lot's of people are suffering this very day, some of them even believe in him, why wouldn't he help? If he loves everyone and is all-powerful then surely he should do something. Either incapable, unloving, or just plain doesn't exist. Or something else, you tell me, but remember to cover all sides. A 'god is all powerful so he could do this' argument and a 'god doesn't want to get involved argument' cannot coexist.
Your point 4 is one I think should be emphasised massively. I know quite a few people who work for big-4 accountancy firms and many of them have STEM degrees and they do very well because they are numerically literate, good at problem solving, and willing to work hard. They also find things like the ACA easier because they already know a lot of Maths, and they know how to learn a lot of complex material. IMHO one problem is that many of the females I know who did STEM subjects now work in the financial industry, which suits them very well (also pays a _lot_ better than engineering, and has a lot better career prospects).
In fact given the BS way that scientists, engineers and mathematicians are treated by employers and the low esteem they are held in by society (more because of the worship of vacuous celebrity culture than of people who actually make all the things in the world you appreciate) I think they've made a better choice. The only reason to do one of these things is a passion for it. Otherwise the much more sensible career choice is to go somewhere that will work you just as hard, but pay you twice as much for it.
Sorry AC, but that's just BS. Maybe we just cover it up better. Go find a copy of Private Eye's special on NHS whistleblowers and tell me it doesn't happen in the EU.
And ROHS-compliant lead free solder is more brittle than the older lead containing stuff, so this has become more of a problem. If I remember correctly Apple are paying dividends on their stock because they have more money than they can use. If they have devices that fail due to thermal cycling in two years of use then perhaps they should spend some of it on R&D to solve these problems.
Because not wearing a seatbelt _can_ harm others: like this
Fucking stupid sense of entitlement everyone has about driving - "Why should I have to put any effort in? Why should I have to wear a seatbelt? Why should I have to signal? Why shouldn't I use my cellphone?". Try walking or cycling or public transport for a bit and once you've had enough hopefully realise what a privilege it is to have the option of driving, and that you should treat it with the respect it deserves.
The horn is completely mis-used as a means to intimidate, chastise or register displeasure with another driver. It is meant to be used to attract attention to your vehicle. If you read Motorcycle Roadcraft (the UK Police guide to riding motorcycles safely) the suggestion is to use the horn in situations where another road user may not be aware of your presence: For example if you approach a junction and another car is there, but hasn't looked your way yet, you might sound your horn to make them aware of your vehicle.
As always, the highway code - which so few people seem to have read - has a clear explanation:
112
The horn. Use only while your vehicle is moving and you need to warn other road users of your presence. Never sound your horn aggressively. You MUST NOT use your horn - while stationary on the road - when driving in a built-up area between the hours of 11.30 pm and 7.00 am except when another road user poses a danger.
Well, we're at £1.40ish a litre. I think 75% or so of that is tax. That's $8.30/us gallon. That doesn't even pay for the roads to be kept in good condition (let alone for policing of dangerous driving habits other than speeding).
What's great over here is that we do subsidise quite a lot of public transport, most of which is pretty terrible outside of London. The companies that run a lot of our public transport are equally as, if not more, incompetent at running their networks than their nationalised predecessors were but now they make (enormous in some cases) profit for shareholders!
I read somewhere about a guy who was importing a lot of incandescent bulbs into the EU (where they're pretty much banned). In order to get around the rules they were (are?) sold as 100W heaters.
That's your future of energy. How about the many billions in this world who still use a tiny percentage of the energy you do, even after your proposed savings. Would you deny them the better life that using a fraction of the energy you use would give them? I certainly wouldn't, and therein lies the problem: despite all the savings we energy-gluttonous westerners could make, the rest of the world wants, needs, and has as much right as us to have enough energy to allow them a decent life. To think that we can reduce humanity's desire for energy to less than what it is currently is daft. Nothing short of enormously reducing population would achieve this, and don't you think the first ones to go should be those who consume disproportionately vast amounts of energy?
Ok, so let's drop our energy levels to what, a half? A quarter? A tenth? Now multiply that back up by the number of people in the world who currently use a tiny fraction of the power we do in the West, but make up a huge proportion of the world's population. Unless you are going to argue that the majority of people should be denied the quality of life granted by even a fraction of the energy used by the average westerner you still have a huge problem with massively increasing demand.
If we can develop safe, economical Nuclear power, then why shouldn't we use it? I firmly believe that we already have the technology to do just that, and certainly don't believe that humanity as a whole is going to do anything but demand significantly more power as time goes on.
I don't think Cyberllama has it backwards. It is a 'license' that the consumer purchases from iTunes (so the consumer cannot resell it like they could if it was a physical disk), but it is a 'sale' from the record company to iTunes (hence they pay the artist less because they get a smaller percentage of the takings from a 'license' than they do from a 'sale'.
Also the quantities of material that are mined, transported and processed are orders of magnitude smaller for nuclear. That c-squared constant in the theory of relativity does wonders for energy density if you can make use of it...
There seem to be some lifetime earnings missing from that - running a Nuclear plant is quite cheap, building it is not. So having a plant that can produce, for 90% of it's lifetime, it's full power output vs. having a plant that may produce, for it's lifetime 10-15% of it's output. The lifetime of a solar panel is, iirc, 25 years? A nuclear plant is 40-60 (most seem to be going on to 60). For each kw of nuclear capacity you get 50*90% = 45 kw years of energy. For solar you get 25*15% = 3.75 kw years (assuming 15%, no outages etc.) So as long as installed capacity of nuclear costs less than 12x solar it still works out better.
The other area of copyright we love to discuss on slashdot is music. So look at it like this:
You are a musician
You hear some music.
You like a part of the music, and you take a sample
You use that sample to make some new song.
As it stands you'd have to get a license from the rights-holder before you could distribute your derived song. The GPL is a way of saying 'yes you can use samples or the whole song, but you have to distribute your song under the same terms (so the next musician can make a song based on yours)'.
The only way the GPL is stifling development is if you make the song, and then realise that you: a) don't want to allow other people the same opportunity to derive their songs from yours as you got from the song you heard, b) don't want to spend the time/money/whatever that's required to get a license to the sample from the original author or c) don't want to replace the sample with something you wrote yourself. The impediment applies to people think they should get something for free, but be able to make money from it. It discourages parasitic development, which I don't think is a bad thing.
The amount of system memory required is part of the 'cost' of complying with the GPL restrictions. E.g. cost(write your own code + put extra memory on device) vs. cost(comply with GPL). It doesn't mean that the GPL in any way dictates the amount of system memory available.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the difference between 'the greatest country and the world' and somewhere with similar climate, natural resources etc. is?
I'm fairly certain automated web crawling preceded google. There were manual aggregation sites (like Yahoo), but most others (lycos, altavista, loads more) were just crawling and counting links. Google got market share because it's algorithm cut through all the spam sites that worked out how to get to the top of the list (which wouldn't have happened if there was a genuine manual crawl occurring).
But I don't disagree that to compete with google now would require an enormous investment. You could develop a far superior algorithm to google, but the chances of you getting a decent market share without huge investment are pretty small
You did.
Well since the WHO don't seem to have found any particularly nasty areas ... not that bad? Safety standards are set incredibly low and this generates an intense pressure to give out the lowest possible numbers when reporting radiation. If there was less irrational panic then people might be more honest about the numbers. Think of it this way: It's at least 2.5x as bad as it was declared to be, maybe a whole lot worse (as you seem to think) and yet there are no discernible health effects (except those caused by the ensuing panic).
Yup. For once AC is absolutely right and I have no mod points to waste on him...
The two base values for frame rates in video correspond to a 1/1 and a 1/1.001 version (e.g. 60 and 59.94, 30 and 29.97, 24 and 23.98 etc. etc.). If you look at broadcast equipment you will find two (or maybe three if they add a 27MHz one) crystals - a 74.25 and a 74.17 (74.25/1.001) or some multiple of those numbers.
Wikipedia will explain the reason for the 1/1.001 divide - see NTSC Colour encoding. That 1/1.001 ratio is small enough that most PLLs could be pulled to lock to it so existing 60Hz black and white sets could still receive a colour signal at 59.97Hz. Clever solution leading to ridiculous legacy situation now where we have more broadcast video standards than we know what to do with.
The people abusing our healthcare system are the politicians trying to parcel up and privatize 'profitable' sections of it, the managers who make up so many layers of dead weight in the organisation, and the people who would see it as a business and not a medical institution. Authorising vast expenditures on legal cases to prosecute whistle-blowers rather than investigating the issues raised is the behaviour one expects from a business with face to save, not an organisation where providing the best quality medical care is the top priority. The medical side of the NHS is excellent, and still provides fantastic care. The bureaucratic and political sides of it are a cancer.
So... get BUPA or some other private health care insurance. No-one will stop you. But imagine for a second you didn't have the cash: In the US you're out on your ear (until the infection becomes life threatening I presume and then requires expensive emergency treatment rather than a cheaper preventative treatment - but hey if you run a business that's the kind of work you want right), in the UK you'd have to sit and wait a bit - the horror! It's a good thing we love a good queue. I guess that in your fully private healthcare in the good old USofA there are never queues/waiting/lists etc. for medical treatment?
Also, many people waiting may have been there early for a fixed appointment, waiting for test results, waiting for friends/relatives, waiting for a particular doctor/specialist. I've also been treated within 5 minutes of showing up whilst no-one else seems to have moved, and I didn't have to get my wallet out.
Ok. So he doesn't want to guide it every step of the way, but he is all seeing/all-knowing/all-powerful. He also claims to love everyone unconditionally. Why then create a system where some of his creations are condemned, with no chance of reaching whatever happy place he has promised?
Either your god doesn't love all of us unconditionally, or he isn't as capable as you think, or actually, he doesn't exist. Take the earlier post - killing all the first born sons in Egypt. How do you reconcile that with your walk-away idea: He chose to get involved with his creation, one of many occasions when he does so, and his actions are inexcusable. Love? Forgiveness? No chance, just murder people until they are scared of you. More like the actions of a third world despot than a loving caring god. He could have fixed it without killing many people, he could have hit the reset button and tried again with a couple more things to prevent his beloved creation getting into a bad state, he could of just magicked up a happy island for the Israelites to live on and teleported them there. None of these things happened. What actually happened was organised systemic murder.
So perhaps your god 'moves in mysterious ways'. Perhaps all those first born sons of egypt weren't really human and they were just a sacrificial decoy so he'd have something to destroy to ensure the Israelites release from oppression. Perhaps all the mythical enemies and trials and tribulations faced by 'god's people' throughout history have been like a simulation, the people who have suffered and died the religious equivalent of red-shirts that only existed to get squished so that the situations they found themselves in seemed real, and not some harmless scripted set of false circumstances created by a god. For what purpose though? To test faith? To see if people will believe in him? How incredibly vain. What is the psychology of someone who would create a sentient being just to be worshipped by it, then to put it through all manner of oppression just so he can then magic up something to make him appear to be a saviour in order to be worshipped even more?
So back to the original point. You can't have it both ways. Either he gets involved to help people or he doesn't. If he doesn't then why worship him. What will he do for you? If he does, then why only for some of people? Lot's of people are suffering this very day, some of them even believe in him, why wouldn't he help? If he loves everyone and is all-powerful then surely he should do something. Either incapable, unloving, or just plain doesn't exist. Or something else, you tell me, but remember to cover all sides. A 'god is all powerful so he could do this' argument and a 'god doesn't want to get involved argument' cannot coexist.
Your point 4 is one I think should be emphasised massively. I know quite a few people who work for big-4 accountancy firms and many of them have STEM degrees and they do very well because they are numerically literate, good at problem solving, and willing to work hard. They also find things like the ACA easier because they already know a lot of Maths, and they know how to learn a lot of complex material. IMHO one problem is that many of the females I know who did STEM subjects now work in the financial industry, which suits them very well (also pays a _lot_ better than engineering, and has a lot better career prospects).
In fact given the BS way that scientists, engineers and mathematicians are treated by employers and the low esteem they are held in by society (more because of the worship of vacuous celebrity culture than of people who actually make all the things in the world you appreciate) I think they've made a better choice. The only reason to do one of these things is a passion for it. Otherwise the much more sensible career choice is to go somewhere that will work you just as hard, but pay you twice as much for it.
Boddingtons is a bitter or pale ale. Used to drink tonnes of it when I were a nipper (because it was invariably cheaper than everything else).
Sorry AC, but that's just BS. Maybe we just cover it up better. Go find a copy of Private Eye's special on NHS whistleblowers and tell me it doesn't happen in the EU.
Nuclear material will decay, mercury will not.
And ROHS-compliant lead free solder is more brittle than the older lead containing stuff, so this has become more of a problem. If I remember correctly Apple are paying dividends on their stock because they have more money than they can use. If they have devices that fail due to thermal cycling in two years of use then perhaps they should spend some of it on R&D to solve these problems.
Because not wearing a seatbelt _can_ harm others: like this
Fucking stupid sense of entitlement everyone has about driving - "Why should I have to put any effort in? Why should I have to wear a seatbelt? Why should I have to signal? Why shouldn't I use my cellphone?". Try walking or cycling or public transport for a bit and once you've had enough hopefully realise what a privilege it is to have the option of driving, and that you should treat it with the respect it deserves.
The horn is completely mis-used as a means to intimidate, chastise or register displeasure with another driver. It is meant to be used to attract attention to your vehicle. If you read Motorcycle Roadcraft (the UK Police guide to riding motorcycles safely) the suggestion is to use the horn in situations where another road user may not be aware of your presence: For example if you approach a junction and another car is there, but hasn't looked your way yet, you might sound your horn to make them aware of your vehicle.
As always, the highway code - which so few people seem to have read - has a clear explanation:
112
The horn. Use only while your vehicle is moving and you need to warn other road users of your presence. Never sound your horn aggressively. You MUST NOT use your horn
- while stationary on the road
- when driving in a built-up area between the hours of 11.30 pm and 7.00 am
except when another road user poses a danger.
Well, we're at £1.40ish a litre. I think 75% or so of that is tax. That's $8.30/us gallon. That doesn't even pay for the roads to be kept in good condition (let alone for policing of dangerous driving habits other than speeding).
What's great over here is that we do subsidise quite a lot of public transport, most of which is pretty terrible outside of London. The companies that run a lot of our public transport are equally as, if not more, incompetent at running their networks than their nationalised predecessors were but now they make (enormous in some cases) profit for shareholders!
I read somewhere about a guy who was importing a lot of incandescent bulbs into the EU (where they're pretty much banned). In order to get around the rules they were (are?) sold as 100W heaters.
Alright, let's start with the basics. English is a non-inflected Indo-European language derived from dialects of....
That's your future of energy. How about the many billions in this world who still use a tiny percentage of the energy you do, even after your proposed savings. Would you deny them the better life that using a fraction of the energy you use would give them? I certainly wouldn't, and therein lies the problem: despite all the savings we energy-gluttonous westerners could make, the rest of the world wants, needs, and has as much right as us to have enough energy to allow them a decent life. To think that we can reduce humanity's desire for energy to less than what it is currently is daft. Nothing short of enormously reducing population would achieve this, and don't you think the first ones to go should be those who consume disproportionately vast amounts of energy?
Ok, so let's drop our energy levels to what, a half? A quarter? A tenth? Now multiply that back up by the number of people in the world who currently use a tiny fraction of the power we do in the West, but make up a huge proportion of the world's population. Unless you are going to argue that the majority of people should be denied the quality of life granted by even a fraction of the energy used by the average westerner you still have a huge problem with massively increasing demand.
If we can develop safe, economical Nuclear power, then why shouldn't we use it? I firmly believe that we already have the technology to do just that, and certainly don't believe that humanity as a whole is going to do anything but demand significantly more power as time goes on.
I don't think Cyberllama has it backwards. It is a 'license' that the consumer purchases from iTunes (so the consumer cannot resell it like they could if it was a physical disk), but it is a 'sale' from the record company to iTunes (hence they pay the artist less because they get a smaller percentage of the takings from a 'license' than they do from a 'sale'.
Also the quantities of material that are mined, transported and processed are orders of magnitude smaller for nuclear. That c-squared constant in the theory of relativity does wonders for energy density if you can make use of it...
There seem to be some lifetime earnings missing from that - running a Nuclear plant is quite cheap, building it is not. So having a plant that can produce, for 90% of it's lifetime, it's full power output vs. having a plant that may produce, for it's lifetime 10-15% of it's output. The lifetime of a solar panel is, iirc, 25 years? A nuclear plant is 40-60 (most seem to be going on to 60). For each kw of nuclear capacity you get 50*90% = 45 kw years of energy. For solar you get 25*15% = 3.75 kw years (assuming 15%, no outages etc.) So as long as installed capacity of nuclear costs less than 12x solar it still works out better.
The other area of copyright we love to discuss on slashdot is music. So look at it like this:
You are a musician
You hear some music.
You like a part of the music, and you take a sample
You use that sample to make some new song.
As it stands you'd have to get a license from the rights-holder before you could distribute your derived song. The GPL is a way of saying 'yes you can use samples or the whole song, but you have to distribute your song under the same terms (so the next musician can make a song based on yours)'.
The only way the GPL is stifling development is if you make the song, and then realise that you: a) don't want to allow other people the same opportunity to derive their songs from yours as you got from the song you heard, b) don't want to spend the time/money/whatever that's required to get a license to the sample from the original author or c) don't want to replace the sample with something you wrote yourself. The impediment applies to people think they should get something for free, but be able to make money from it. It discourages parasitic development, which I don't think is a bad thing.
The amount of system memory required is part of the 'cost' of complying with the GPL restrictions. E.g. cost(write your own code + put extra memory on device) vs. cost(comply with GPL). It doesn't mean that the GPL in any way dictates the amount of system memory available.