Your post confirms this quote from the article:
The Eee PC is theoretically fast enough to run Windows XP, which is great news for those of us without beards.
Best way is to build in a Bluetooth interface with encryption, then swallow the memory module. (small grappling hooks will secure it to the lining of your small intestine). That way if the bad guys want your private information, they'll have to (quite literally) go through you to get it. Are you sure that's a good idea? Given that a Malaysian gang recently chopped a guy's finger off to steal his biometrically secured car, I don't think I'd like any security measure that would require said bad guys to extract my access key from my ass...
I believe you're talking about arbitrage. Specifically (from the link):
Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices in different markets to converge. As a result of arbitrage, the currency exchange rates, the price of commodities, and the price of securities in different markets tend to converge to the same prices, in all markets, in each category. The speed at which prices converge is a measure of market efficiency. Arbitrage tends to reduce price discrimination by encouraging people to buy an item where the price is low and resell it where the price is high, as long as the buyers are not prohibited from reselling and the transaction costs of buying, holding and reselling are small relative to the difference in prices in the different markets.
If I go on holiday to Thailand I SHOULD be able to pick up goods locally and take them home. Careful there! If you go on holiday to Thailand you want to be very careful what, uh, 'goods' you pick up.:P
The only things sold as a "loss" are "loss leaders". Just a thought - here you're talking about the manufacturing cost, not the total cost of production. Development cost is amortized over a product's life cycle, hence a particular price point could constitute 'at a loss' or 'at a profit' depending on the volume of sales. This effect occurs with all products, but is especially noticeable with software because the per-unit manufacturing cost is trivial compared to the amortized per-unit development cost.
Actually, RenderMan most accurately refers to a scene description standard, the RenderMan Interface Specification. The renderer commonly referred to as 'RenderMan' is PRMan (Photorealistic RenderMan), Pixar's implementation of their own spec. Another well known implementation was Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) by Larry Gritz, although that disappeared amid legal fisticuffs and company acquisitions.
This is more a blow (in the long term) to the idea that science yields objective truth, IMO. No it's not. It's just some guy retracting a statement he made when he learns that it was based on incorrect information. Science doesn't yield objective truth, it yields an increasingly accurate approximation to objective truth.
By your logic, they should either sell it at $10 everywhere and lose massive amounts of money (i.e, they get screwed), or not sell it in markets where they have to mark it down to make it affordable (customers in those markets get screwed). The second one. They don't have lower prices in ghettos and caravan parks, do they? All they're doing is trying to take advantage of outdated economic boundaries to make profit. Economic Darwinism will eventually remove companies that do this if it pisses their customers off enough.:)
One question I don't have an answer for is, how can scientists reliably speculate the state of this earth millions or billions of years ago with the evidence we have now, in this day and age? I can't see how that is feasibly possible, without basing it around assumptions or belief. They make a few basic assumptions ("the rate of carbon-14 decay is constant", "the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere is constant over the time-span considered") which are supported by our current knowledge of the world around us. They then state that, if these are correct and there are no other mechanisms at work, then fossils found can have their age determined by comparing the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12.
The thing that people with religious mindsets seem to find difficult to understand is that the body of scientific knowledge is and always will be a work in progress. If new data are discovered that contradict our current model, then the model is wrong and is discarded or amended to account for the new data.
What it all boils down to is that no reasoning is possible without first choosing your fundamental axioms. The fundamental axiom of science is "the universe is self-consistent". Everything else follows from that. The fundamental axiom of religion is "you must believe without proof".
So, faith in chance is better than faith in tradition and personal experience. Interesting perspective. I hope it brings joy and peace to your life. It brings me more joy and peace to believe that it's worth at least trying to understand the world, than to believe that the world was created by an intelligent entity with the deliberate intent of deceiving me. The world has small pockets of goodness, but as a whole it's a horrible, horrible place. In the immortal words of Calvin, "either it's mean or it's arbitrary." I prefer arbitrary.
Hell, I'd take it if it could detect whether my eyes are open or closed... I have an incredible ability to blink just as the picture's taken, even when it's in broad daylight and there's no flash.
It's time for us to rebuild Saturn, the one that should be a Chocolate Saturn. Did... did you just troll while also alluding to 2010: The Year We Make Contact? How strange!
I pick by technical feat. Dude, you pick a remote controlled car. Sure it's in an interesting place but when it comes down to it, it's a place that requires lots of money, not modern (post-90s) technology.
I'm sorry, but when my phone is half the thickness of my old one, has about three times the screen resolution, plays games, music and movies, makes voice and video calls, can connect to the internet, lasts for a week on a single charge, and has a better built in camera than most commercial standalone digital cameras 5 or 6 years ago, THAT is impressive.
Isn't anyone else simply amazed that this was proven by an undergrad? I'm amazed that the credit went to an undergrad, certainly. In my experience a fair bit of work, both research and implementation, is done by undergrads.
Surely you meant "if it were grammatically correct"?;)
(The question mark should traditionally have been placed inside the quotes, however the modern usage is to place it outside the quotes in order to minimise ambiguity.)
Slashdot Mirror
That's a "docking port" on the computer. Yee-up.
Oh really? Man, I should do my research more thoroughly... >.*goes away and reads up on carbon dating* :)
Thanks again.
Whoops! Thanks for catching that! :) Carbon dating allows us to date organic matter. Fossils are no longer organic matter.
Actually, RenderMan most accurately refers to a scene description standard, the RenderMan Interface Specification. The renderer commonly referred to as 'RenderMan' is PRMan (Photorealistic RenderMan), Pixar's implementation of their own spec. Another well known implementation was Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) by Larry Gritz, although that disappeared amid legal fisticuffs and company acquisitions.
The thing that people with religious mindsets seem to find difficult to understand is that the body of scientific knowledge is and always will be a work in progress. If new data are discovered that contradict our current model, then the model is wrong and is discarded or amended to account for the new data.
What it all boils down to is that no reasoning is possible without first choosing your fundamental axioms. The fundamental axiom of science is "the universe is self-consistent". Everything else follows from that. The fundamental axiom of religion is "you must believe without proof".
Sounds like Lego Starwars where you build a boom box and it makes the guards dance instead of fighting. :)
You're software is off. Please adjust it to recognize the following faces:
:-) civilian
@:-) terrorist
Facial profiling. Hurrah!
Hell, I'd take it if it could detect whether my eyes are open or closed... I have an incredible ability to blink just as the picture's taken, even when it's in broad daylight and there's no flash.
Isn't it more like... face crime?
Wild, not wide. 280,000 : 1, that's quite an aspect ratio. :)
I'm sorry, but when my phone is half the thickness of my old one, has about three times the screen resolution, plays games, music and movies, makes voice and video calls, can connect to the internet, lasts for a week on a single charge, and has a better built in camera than most commercial standalone digital cameras 5 or 6 years ago, THAT is impressive.
Surely you meant "if it were grammatically correct"? ;)
(The question mark should traditionally have been placed inside the quotes, however the modern usage is to place it outside the quotes in order to minimise ambiguity.)
Given the context I think it's plain that African billions are more appropriate than European billions.
:P
Oh god I'm going to hell.
Do you really think that'll help? I don't.
It's so hopeless!