Certainly. For example I have paid once, at work, and I will probably download from my own home and from my parents' home. Since they ask us to save bandwith I'll probably download each game from one location and save them to an external HD, but it isn't hard to imagine that many people are not going to do that. Clicking and downloading again is much easier.
Why weren't you doing anything over the last decade while the government was intentionally building up a deficit?
What? "Not doing anything?" They were doing their jobs. The scientists' job is to do science, the government's job is to take care of spending and deficit.
Some government spendings, in my particular country (Spain), that should be cut before science:
- Subsidies for the local film industry - Subsidies for coal mining (which, apart from polluting, is not even profitable, they just keep it so miners can keep their job - it would probably be better to pay them a salary for life for doing nothing and close the mines once and for all) - The 30K (!) official cars that different government officials, mayors, etc. have - SGAE (i.e., the local version of the RIAA) and the so-called Ministry of Culture which seems to spend half of its time protecting copyright while impeding access to culture - Ministry of Equality (which creates blatantly unfair "affirmative action" laws) - Unnecessary spending due to having too many intermediate government layers (central government - autonomous community (~"state") governments - provinces - mayorships: at least one layer - arguably, two - are unnecessary, and this is a huge money sink) - The military, of course - The Catholic church (yes, that's right, our government gives money to the church) - Subsidies to promote local languages
And I could keep listing. There are lots of things that can be "picked" for financial cuts before the ones you say. Cutting science spending while leaving these is an insult to intelligence.
In Germany, they have decided to make budget cuts in almost everything but science. In Spain it's the opposite, science is suffering the steepest cuts. But then, of course, Germany is the country that is already soaring out of the crisis with a two-point-something GDP growth, and Spain is the country with 20% unemployment that hasn't seen light at the end of the tunnel yet.
In Spain it's legal to share music and movies since we pay a levy for it that goes to a society of authors (which in theory should distribute it among authors, although in practice it is a corrupt and monopolistic entity, but that's another story). But sharing software is illegal. They could do something similar in Brazil.
The really important box is on every user's profile page, in the top right corner. This is where each user gets to recommend ten songs that exemplify their own musical tastes. Click one of those, a pop-up comes up allowing you to sample the tunes on that album, go to that album's page, buy it, review it, etc. In that space, artists like Voltaire, Abney Park, and Lemon Demon can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Roger Waters and Madonna, and could even win.
Spotify does that. It's even on the top right corner, too.
So in order to view the PDF, I have to wait for a Flash or similar webapp to load, then view it in a tiny frame inside the browser, and then if I want to download it, "Log in with Facebook" or "Create an Account"?
Come on. Scribd sucks, it has always sucked, and it shouldn't ever be used to post serious links that get to the front page of Slashdot.
Now I'll read this, although sadly I don't have the knowledge to understand half of it... if the P != NP problem has really been solved that would be a real breakthrough!:)
Fortunately, there are. Virtually all modern text adventures (or interactive fiction, as people like to call them now) can be played by blind people that use screen readers, like most programs that output text to a terminal or text area.
I'm afraid Firefox hasn't been the feature leader at all. Tabbed browsing? Opera had it before. Mouse gestures? Opera had it before. Quick dial? Opera had it before. Customisable search bars? Opera had them before. Ad blocking? Opera had it before (although, admittedly, worse than Firefox's). Stored sessions? Opera had them before (and it does restore from crashes without any problem in my case). I could keep enumerating, I'd say 90% of the browser features that Firefox implements are copied from Opera.
OK, I think Firefox had private browsing before Opera, making it the browser of choice for pr0n (i.e. 99% of the internet usage); but now Opera has catched up on that and offers private and non-private tabs mixed in the same window:)
BTW, on my machine Opera behaves much better than Firefox with 20+ tabs open (I have 57 right now), it's still snappy and Firefox would be crawling and taking up loads of RAM. But of course YMMV.
I don't know where you live, but it's even more ridiculous if you are in a country where most women are brown-eyed brunettes with relatively dark skin and most people speak crappy English, and they show you four or five blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned pretty girls with their nicks in English. Oh, and all of them from a 1000-people town near you.
Come on, they go too far, they would earn more money by trying to deceive people a bit more subtly!
In many parts of Europe, IM is alive and well. Here in Spain, everyone under 30 uses (sadly) WLM. Other countries use ICQ or Yahoo! Messenger (for some reason, each country seems to have their system of choice). Social networks are the medium of choice to connect with 200+ people, but to talk to a closer group of people that they care more about (or want to flirt with) people typically use IM.
And to tell the truth, I don't understand why IM is dying as it is in the US and UK. Twitter and SMS are much slower than IM if you want to have an actual conversation with someone (i.e., one where you can send 10-20 messages in a minute). And facebook chat is just a crippled implementation of IM (horrible interface, need to use a browser, lack of decent features like chat history, etc.).
I have never really been a big fan of IM, I prefer IRC (by the way, get off my lawn) but I don't see why anyone would want to replace IM with Twitter, Facebook or SMS. Maybe I'm missing something. I know people is doing just that on some countries (not most of the world, at the moment) but darned if I know why.
In US$, those prices would be $610, $738, $859 and $738, $859, $993. In pounds, £413, £499, £585, £499, £585, £676.
My guess, it won't sell much in Spain, with the crisis, and with the mean salary being something in the vicinity of 1,100 euros per month (although I'm sure some fanboys will be willing to starve to get it:P).
I agree. I just don't see that site's point. It comes up sometimes when I'm searching for some quick fact, it takes ages to load and when it does, it shows me a PDF where I can't perform basic functions like select text and copy, and other functions are extremely slow. So why don't they give me a damn link to the PDFs and that's it? It would be way more useful.
Google can show different search results in different locations, probably due to its distributed nature and not all servers containing the same version of the data.
If I click the GP's link, I also get Citigroup as the first hit.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this until now, but... paperwork.
Most of the paper I use is because they force me to hand in printed invoices, requests, certificates, copies of certificates, reports, etc. etc. etc.
Perhaps in other countries like the US it's not so bad, but in my country, all the main paperwork has to be done offline and with physical paper. And there's a LOT of it.
There is copyright in Spain. When you buy a CD, DVD, iPod, HDD, DSL line, etc. you have to pay a tax to the SGAE as a "compensatory tax" for copying music.
I'm Spanish and, although of course what you say is true, I have never made the mental association of Mono the platform to cuteness. I have never even thought that that could be the reason behind the name, it always makes me think about a monkey.
It might be just because I don't like Mono so my mind automatically ignores the positive meaning, though.
True satisfaction seems to require difficult physical effort.
Interesting, but I'd say the really important part is the "effort" part, not necessarily physical. Or else, how do you explain the satisfaction that some people get from solving difficult math problems, coding, etc.? I'm not an expert in anthropology, but from what I see in life it seems that "rewarded effort" (physical or not) correlates quite highly with happiness.
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly. For example I have paid once, at work, and I will probably download from my own home and from my parents' home. Since they ask us to save bandwith I'll probably download each game from one location and save them to an external HD, but it isn't hard to imagine that many people are not going to do that. Clicking and downloading again is much easier.
I just can't help it.
Without cheating, I wouldn't get the first post.
Why weren't you doing anything over the last decade while the government was intentionally building up a deficit?
What? "Not doing anything?" They were doing their jobs. The scientists' job is to do science, the government's job is to take care of spending and deficit.
Some government spendings, in my particular country (Spain), that should be cut before science:
- Subsidies for the local film industry
- Subsidies for coal mining (which, apart from polluting, is not even profitable, they just keep it so miners can keep their job - it would probably be better to pay them a salary for life for doing nothing and close the mines once and for all)
- The 30K (!) official cars that different government officials, mayors, etc. have
- SGAE (i.e., the local version of the RIAA) and the so-called Ministry of Culture which seems to spend half of its time protecting copyright while impeding access to culture
- Ministry of Equality (which creates blatantly unfair "affirmative action" laws)
- Unnecessary spending due to having too many intermediate government layers (central government - autonomous community (~"state") governments - provinces - mayorships: at least one layer - arguably, two - are unnecessary, and this is a huge money sink)
- The military, of course
- The Catholic church (yes, that's right, our government gives money to the church)
- Subsidies to promote local languages
And I could keep listing. There are lots of things that can be "picked" for financial cuts before the ones you say. Cutting science spending while leaving these is an insult to intelligence.
In Germany, they have decided to make budget cuts in almost everything but science. In Spain it's the opposite, science is suffering the steepest cuts. But then, of course, Germany is the country that is already soaring out of the crisis with a two-point-something GDP growth, and Spain is the country with 20% unemployment that hasn't seen light at the end of the tunnel yet.
In Spain it's legal to share music and movies since we pay a levy for it that goes to a society of authors (which in theory should distribute it among authors, although in practice it is a corrupt and monopolistic entity, but that's another story). But sharing software is illegal. They could do something similar in Brazil.
The really important box is on every user's profile page, in the top right corner. This is where each user gets to recommend ten songs that exemplify their own musical tastes. Click one of those, a pop-up comes up allowing you to sample the tunes on that album, go to that album's page, buy it, review it, etc. In that space, artists like Voltaire, Abney Park, and Lemon Demon can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Roger Waters and Madonna, and could even win.
Spotify does that. It's even on the top right corner, too.
So in order to view the PDF, I have to wait for a Flash or similar webapp to load, then view it in a tiny frame inside the browser, and then if I want to download it, "Log in with Facebook" or "Create an Account"?
Come on. Scribd sucks, it has always sucked, and it shouldn't ever be used to post serious links that get to the front page of Slashdot.
Now I'll read this, although sadly I don't have the knowledge to understand half of it... if the P != NP problem has really been solved that would be a real breakthrough! :)
Fortunately, there are. Virtually all modern text adventures (or interactive fiction, as people like to call them now) can be played by blind people that use screen readers, like most programs that output text to a terminal or text area.
I use it. Ubuntu and Fedora focus too much on gnome and have crappy KDE support. I prefer KDE and OpenSUSE is the best distro for KDE hands down.
Plus, things like YaST really allow me to be able to focus on my own work rather than on configuring the system.
I'm afraid Firefox hasn't been the feature leader at all. Tabbed browsing? Opera had it before. Mouse gestures? Opera had it before. Quick dial? Opera had it before. Customisable search bars? Opera had them before. Ad blocking? Opera had it before (although, admittedly, worse than Firefox's). Stored sessions? Opera had them before (and it does restore from crashes without any problem in my case). I could keep enumerating, I'd say 90% of the browser features that Firefox implements are copied from Opera.
OK, I think Firefox had private browsing before Opera, making it the browser of choice for pr0n (i.e. 99% of the internet usage); but now Opera has catched up on that and offers private and non-private tabs mixed in the same window :)
BTW, on my machine Opera behaves much better than Firefox with 20+ tabs open (I have 57 right now), it's still snappy and Firefox would be crawling and taking up loads of RAM. But of course YMMV.
I don't know where you live, but it's even more ridiculous if you are in a country where most women are brown-eyed brunettes with relatively dark skin and most people speak crappy English, and they show you four or five blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned pretty girls with their nicks in English. Oh, and all of them from a 1000-people town near you.
Come on, they go too far, they would earn more money by trying to deceive people a bit more subtly!
In many parts of Europe, IM is alive and well. Here in Spain, everyone under 30 uses (sadly) WLM. Other countries use ICQ or Yahoo! Messenger (for some reason, each country seems to have their system of choice). Social networks are the medium of choice to connect with 200+ people, but to talk to a closer group of people that they care more about (or want to flirt with) people typically use IM.
And to tell the truth, I don't understand why IM is dying as it is in the US and UK. Twitter and SMS are much slower than IM if you want to have an actual conversation with someone (i.e., one where you can send 10-20 messages in a minute). And facebook chat is just a crippled implementation of IM (horrible interface, need to use a browser, lack of decent features like chat history, etc.).
I have never really been a big fan of IM, I prefer IRC (by the way, get off my lawn) but I don't see why anyone would want to replace IM with Twitter, Facebook or SMS. Maybe I'm missing something. I know people is doing just that on some countries (not most of the world, at the moment) but darned if I know why.
"The vast* majority* of the most commonly* used* words - family* members*, farm animals*, body parts* - are Germanic*."
The starred words there come from Latin (there may be more, I only marked those I am sure about).
Just for your information, in Spain the prices (according to http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/05/07/navegante/1273236060.html) are 479, 579 and 679 euros (wifi) and 579, 679 and 779 euros (3G). All prices include VAT (I think it's 16% for this kind of thing).
In US$, those prices would be $610, $738, $859 and $738, $859, $993.
In pounds, £413, £499, £585, £499, £585, £676.
My guess, it won't sell much in Spain, with the crisis, and with the mean salary being something in the vicinity of 1,100 euros per month (although I'm sure some fanboys will be willing to starve to get it :P).
I agree. I just don't see that site's point. It comes up sometimes when I'm searching for some quick fact, it takes ages to load and when it does, it shows me a PDF where I can't perform basic functions like select text and copy, and other functions are extremely slow. So why don't they give me a damn link to the PDFs and that's it? It would be way more useful.
Slashdot might be one too, although I suspect the results could be somewhat biased towards CNPL (Cowboy Neal Programming Language).
Google can show different search results in different locations, probably due to its distributed nature and not all servers containing the same version of the data.
If I click the GP's link, I also get Citigroup as the first hit.
Yeah, we know, those where you input repeatedly until you get an output, right? You needn't have specified.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this until now, but... paperwork.
Most of the paper I use is because they force me to hand in printed invoices, requests, certificates, copies of certificates, reports, etc. etc. etc.
Perhaps in other countries like the US it's not so bad, but in my country, all the main paperwork has to be done offline and with physical paper. And there's a LOT of it.
There is copyright in Spain. When you buy a CD, DVD, iPod, HDD, DSL line, etc. you have to pay a tax to the SGAE as a "compensatory tax" for copying music.
I'm Spanish and, although of course what you say is true, I have never made the mental association of Mono the platform to cuteness. I have never even thought that that could be the reason behind the name, it always makes me think about a monkey.
It might be just because I don't like Mono so my mind automatically ignores the positive meaning, though.
In Soviet Russia... memes overuse YOU!
True satisfaction seems to require difficult physical effort.
Interesting, but I'd say the really important part is the "effort" part, not necessarily physical. Or else, how do you explain the satisfaction that some people get from solving difficult math problems, coding, etc.? I'm not an expert in anthropology, but from what I see in life it seems that "rewarded effort" (physical or not) correlates quite highly with happiness.
Ballmer's avatar might be fat, but he would still pwn the server with his Grand Mastery in Thrown Chairs.