-- Am I the only person who thinks that nature is unfair, and thus inherently immoral; moreover, that no higher authority has the right to define fairness, thus existence itself is immoral? Any human's continued existence is a contribution toward nature, thus the only moral path for every human is to commit suicide ASAP.
Yes.
At least the only one still alive. Why aren't you following through on your convictions?
I argued in favor of giving the users more rights, and was criticized by everybody that responded. But I'm sticking to my guns. I think the structure of IT in most corporations is not ideal.
I think what would make much more sense then is to have distributed IT; various departments have key members that are responsible for IT management for their department. The IT department proper would handle big projects (software development, mainframe, networking, other big ticket or impact items), while desktop admin, software installations, user setup, troubleshooting, etc., database admin, should be done by the IT 'poweruser' staff in each department.
Right now, it's a mess, because individual departments know what needs done from a business perspective, but don't have the trained staff or permission to do it, while the IT team has the people and power to do it, but only a vague idea of what really needs done. The structure can tend to make IT vs other departments take on a mutually adversarial relationship, which is bad for the company.
I've done hacky, ugly stuff in MS Access, because it was too difficult to get access to any of my company's SQL server boxes, and it would have turned a two day project into six months to get IT involved. On the other hand IT hates MS Access, for several entirely valid reasons, and so they get even more irritated at users 'not doing it right'. Lo and behold, everybody's unhappy.
You're not going to convince ME there was no link. I was there. Show me all the studies showing red is really green you want and I'll be convinced that the researcher is color blind or dishonest.
You're evidently (and self-admittedly) irrational about the subject. I understand your feelings, but feelings don't determine facts. You can rage, ignore, or refuse to let facts influence you, but they will remain facts.
If Autism is ever to be cured or prevented, by the way, it will be by somebody who respects facts. This vaccine controversy is a huge distraction from what we should be doing.
Remember, if you hold density constant, an increase in radius translates to a power of three increase in volume, because it's expanding through three dimensions. A 50% increase in radius would result in a (1.5 ^ 3) 3.375 increase in mass. So, a five-fold increase in mass isn't that unreasonable; it's only a 48% increase in density. That's a lot, but you don't have to resort to white-dwarf style matter densities.
At 5x mass and 1.5x radius, I believe the surface gravity would only be about 2.2 g's.
This won't work, pretty obviously. But I think Blockbuster will be around for quite a while, because I think physical dvd rentals will be around for quite a while. About half the time I rent a dvd, it's because I need something to watch pretty much immediately. Few people have the bandwidth for downloads to fill that need. Netflix and the Blockbuster mail-delivery programs both work great, but don't fulfill the instant gratification need, either. And neither rents videogames! (What a tremendous lack.)
So, I think they're doomed, but it'll be a decade or two, not a year or two.
It is counterintuitive, but all it takes is to draw out a table of choices and outcomes, or pay attention to the brief explanation, to realize it has to be true. I guess possessing a mathematics degree is no guarantee that you're still capable of learning. Weird that so many educated people can't bother themselves to do that.
Getting off topic, but sometimes I run into people who don't want to learn any more. They want things to be the way they think, because changing the way they think to reflect the way things are is too troublesome. How boring! Those people must be dead inside.
I'm inclined to agree with techdirt's analysis... this is an indication that the big players are taking their eyes off the ball. The more mergers/reshuffling/synergistic-focus-shifting that goes on among these companies, the more opportunity there is for an small, innovative and efficient company to step into the void.
Small is neat, I suppose, but not something I really care about.
My criteria is pretty much (1) As much power as possible under (2) a reasonable price. All other things being equal, I'll probably select a smaller laptop, but I would gladly sacrifice a couple pounds for a larger HD, a DVD-Rom, expandability, or a full assortment of ports.
I know some people do care, but for me thickness has about as much bearing on my choice as the thing's color.
You do know that you can go online and check the status of your converter coupon request, right?
Honestly, I thought it might be possible, but I also thought it would entail forty-five minutes of navigating through clunky.gov websites. Thanks for the direct link.
Update (This is a real-time comment): My coupon application is not found. I apparently need to reapply. I'll keep you all posted.
If this can be pulled, off, it could be world-changing. Imagine being able to download plans and create anything out of varieties of plastic! It would be the key to untold riches, with the only limitation the supply of cheap and plentiful... petroleum products.
Right; we don't really have any data to confirm how common earthlike planets are. I expect they're very common, using the common-sense reasoning thusly: As soon as we gained the technology to detect big planets we found them all over. As soon as we develop the technology to detect small planets, the same thing will probably happen. I'm 99% positive I'm right.
But scientists can't really reason that way; they may hypothesize smaller planets, but can't really make any factual statement about what lies beyond their ability to detect. I guess that the statement would be better phrased as we now have concrete evidence our solar system isn't unique, so the hypothesis that our type of system is relatively common has passed a hurdle of proof.
Honestly, I saw a preview of Postal and it looked far, far better than anything else he's done. Maybe stupid lowbrow humor is his niche; making quality action/adventure films sure isn't.
I was looking seriously at buying a new laptop before the June cutoff, so I wouldn't have to manually install XP over Vista. Now I can wait just a bit longer.
Wouldn't the volume be technically infinite? Or at least undefined? It has a measurable surface area (if you're talking about the event horizon), but the curvature of space would make the radius, hence the volume, infinite.
And just following that through... wouldn't that make the average density of a black hole zero? Mass/volume with infinite volume...
I haven't touched a mac since C programming in college (on old mac classics... off a floppy!) I don't really have strong opinions about them, pro or con. But this:
...which has been themed to look like a combination of every Mac OS from 10.2 to 10.5.
Some of the more obvious ones:
- popup menus look like 10.4's menus, even on 10.5
Does OSX change so much that the look of an application can become outdated on a point release? A 10.3 application looks different than a 10.4 application? That seems a little too innovative...
I think most responses to this story will be very critical of this idea. That's because most corporate slashdot readers work in an IT department.
I don't; and if I had management of my box, I would literally have saved weeks of wasted time last year. I'm still doing some crap manually because I don't have the administrative ability to install a perl interpreter on my machine. Every few weeks somebody from IT tinkers with it for an hour, fails to get it working, I report it as a problem, then wait a few more weeks. For all that IT workers are known to hate bureaucratic red tape, it sure seems like they don't shy from foisting it on other areas of the company.
Most incompetent people won't want to mess with their settings in the first place. Give the employees some rights, but just require accounting of installed software, and publish guidelines that must be followed.
I believe this has already been tested in court (I think against Palm?), and that the 'dithering defense' was duly defeated. So the perceptual definition may be irrelevant to the cast at hand.
Most people dont realize (hell, nobody does) that 6 bit panels (as opposed to 8 bit panels) do not lose the 2 MSB; they lose the 2 LSB.
Don't be arrogant... most people here realize that perfectly fine. That's what color resolution means. You think anybody thought the top two most significant bits were lost?
No; without the EULA, you would be able to use a purchased software product however you saw fit. It's the purchase of the software, not the attached EULA, that gives you rights. EULAs generally only attempt to limit the rights you possess as owner of that copy of the program.
Of course, you are still restricted from freely distributing copies of the work, but that is copyright law, and doesn't impact how you may use the copy that you own.
Slashdot Mirror
-- Am I the only person who thinks that nature is unfair, and thus inherently immoral; moreover, that no higher authority has the right to define fairness, thus existence itself is immoral? Any human's continued existence is a contribution toward nature, thus the only moral path for every human is to commit suicide ASAP. Yes. At least the only one still alive. Why aren't you following through on your convictions?
I argued in favor of giving the users more rights, and was criticized by everybody that responded. But I'm sticking to my guns. I think the structure of IT in most corporations is not ideal.
I think what would make much more sense then is to have distributed IT; various departments have key members that are responsible for IT management for their department. The IT department proper would handle big projects (software development, mainframe, networking, other big ticket or impact items), while desktop admin, software installations, user setup, troubleshooting, etc., database admin, should be done by the IT 'poweruser' staff in each department.
Right now, it's a mess, because individual departments know what needs done from a business perspective, but don't have the trained staff or permission to do it, while the IT team has the people and power to do it, but only a vague idea of what really needs done. The structure can tend to make IT vs other departments take on a mutually adversarial relationship, which is bad for the company.
I've done hacky, ugly stuff in MS Access, because it was too difficult to get access to any of my company's SQL server boxes, and it would have turned a two day project into six months to get IT involved. On the other hand IT hates MS Access, for several entirely valid reasons, and so they get even more irritated at users 'not doing it right'. Lo and behold, everybody's unhappy.
You're not going to convince ME there was no link. I was there. Show me all the studies showing red is really green you want and I'll be convinced that the researcher is color blind or dishonest.
You're evidently (and self-admittedly) irrational about the subject. I understand your feelings, but feelings don't determine facts. You can rage, ignore, or refuse to let facts influence you, but they will remain facts.
If Autism is ever to be cured or prevented, by the way, it will be by somebody who respects facts. This vaccine controversy is a huge distraction from what we should be doing.
Remember, if you hold density constant, an increase in radius translates to a power of three increase in volume, because it's expanding through three dimensions. A 50% increase in radius would result in a (1.5 ^ 3) 3.375 increase in mass. So, a five-fold increase in mass isn't that unreasonable; it's only a 48% increase in density. That's a lot, but you don't have to resort to white-dwarf style matter densities.
At 5x mass and 1.5x radius, I believe the surface gravity would only be about 2.2 g's.
This won't work, pretty obviously. But I think Blockbuster will be around for quite a while, because I think physical dvd rentals will be around for quite a while. About half the time I rent a dvd, it's because I need something to watch pretty much immediately. Few people have the bandwidth for downloads to fill that need. Netflix and the Blockbuster mail-delivery programs both work great, but don't fulfill the instant gratification need, either. And neither rents videogames! (What a tremendous lack.)
So, I think they're doomed, but it'll be a decade or two, not a year or two.
It is counterintuitive, but all it takes is to draw out a table of choices and outcomes, or pay attention to the brief explanation, to realize it has to be true. I guess possessing a mathematics degree is no guarantee that you're still capable of learning. Weird that so many educated people can't bother themselves to do that.
Getting off topic, but sometimes I run into people who don't want to learn any more. They want things to be the way they think, because changing the way they think to reflect the way things are is too troublesome. How boring! Those people must be dead inside.
I'm inclined to agree with techdirt's analysis... this is an indication that the big players are taking their eyes off the ball. The more mergers/reshuffling/synergistic-focus-shifting that goes on among these companies, the more opportunity there is for an small, innovative and efficient company to step into the void.
I like their email service; nearly everybody I know has yahoo mail accounts. But I agree that most of their offerings are completely pointless.
I know some people do care, but for me thickness has about as much bearing on my choice as the thing's color.
And it's bad form, I know, but I'm replying to myself in the hopes of preempting all the dirty jokes making fun of what I said.
Small is neat, I suppose, but not something I really care about.
My criteria is pretty much (1) As much power as possible under (2) a reasonable price. All other things being equal, I'll probably select a smaller laptop, but I would gladly sacrifice a couple pounds for a larger HD, a DVD-Rom, expandability, or a full assortment of ports.
I know some people do care, but for me thickness has about as much bearing on my choice as the thing's color.
You do know that you can go online and check the status of your converter coupon request, right?
.gov websites. Thanks for the direct link.
Honestly, I thought it might be possible, but I also thought it would entail forty-five minutes of navigating through clunky
Update (This is a real-time comment): My coupon application is not found. I apparently need to reapply. I'll keep you all posted.
Seriously, that ticks me off, because that would have saved me eighty dollars. I really do rely on just over-the-air broadcasting.
If this can be pulled, off, it could be world-changing. Imagine being able to download plans and create anything out of varieties of plastic! It would be the key to untold riches, with the only limitation the supply of cheap and plentiful... petroleum products.
Oh, never mind.
Right; we don't really have any data to confirm how common earthlike planets are. I expect they're very common, using the common-sense reasoning thusly: As soon as we gained the technology to detect big planets we found them all over. As soon as we develop the technology to detect small planets, the same thing will probably happen. I'm 99% positive I'm right.
But scientists can't really reason that way; they may hypothesize smaller planets, but can't really make any factual statement about what lies beyond their ability to detect. I guess that the statement would be better phrased as we now have concrete evidence our solar system isn't unique, so the hypothesis that our type of system is relatively common has passed a hurdle of proof.
Honestly, I saw a preview of Postal and it looked far, far better than anything else he's done. Maybe stupid lowbrow humor is his niche; making quality action/adventure films sure isn't.
There's one point this indirectly makes, though... I think this illustrates incompetency rather than fraud. It is was fraud, they would add up.
The UK has security cameras everywhere that anyone can watch through public tv.
Out of curiosity, can you watch them online? I wouldn't mind watching some British hooligans.
I was looking seriously at buying a new laptop before the June cutoff, so I wouldn't have to manually install XP over Vista. Now I can wait just a bit longer.
Wouldn't the volume be technically infinite? Or at least undefined? It has a measurable surface area (if you're talking about the event horizon), but the curvature of space would make the radius, hence the volume, infinite.
And just following that through... wouldn't that make the average density of a black hole zero? Mass/volume with infinite volume...
I haven't touched a mac since C programming in college (on old mac classics... off a floppy!) I don't really have strong opinions about them, pro or con. But this:
...which has been themed to look like a combination of every Mac OS from 10.2 to 10.5.
Some of the more obvious ones:
- popup menus look like 10.4's menus, even on 10.5
Does OSX change so much that the look of an application can become outdated on a point release? A 10.3 application looks different than a 10.4 application? That seems a little too innovative...
I think most responses to this story will be very critical of this idea. That's because most corporate slashdot readers work in an IT department.
I don't; and if I had management of my box, I would literally have saved weeks of wasted time last year. I'm still doing some crap manually because I don't have the administrative ability to install a perl interpreter on my machine. Every few weeks somebody from IT tinkers with it for an hour, fails to get it working, I report it as a problem, then wait a few more weeks. For all that IT workers are known to hate bureaucratic red tape, it sure seems like they don't shy from foisting it on other areas of the company.
Most incompetent people won't want to mess with their settings in the first place. Give the employees some rights, but just require accounting of installed software, and publish guidelines that must be followed.
I believe this has already been tested in court (I think against Palm?), and that the 'dithering defense' was duly defeated. So the perceptual definition may be irrelevant to the cast at hand.
Most people dont realize (hell, nobody does) that 6 bit panels (as opposed to 8 bit panels) do not lose the 2 MSB; they lose the 2 LSB.
Don't be arrogant... most people here realize that perfectly fine. That's what color resolution means. You think anybody thought the top two most significant bits were lost?
The food is lousy and the portions too small!
No; without the EULA, you would be able to use a purchased software product however you saw fit. It's the purchase of the software, not the attached EULA, that gives you rights. EULAs generally only attempt to limit the rights you possess as owner of that copy of the program.
Of course, you are still restricted from freely distributing copies of the work, but that is copyright law, and doesn't impact how you may use the copy that you own.