No big demands, just a "stop lying about our product" and "say sorry"
The lawyers for Tesla most likely don't watch Top Gear. If they did, they would know about the episode where Clarkson drove a Prius and ranted about how epically slow it was - something along the lines of "it would be useless as a milk delivery vehicle because all your milk would be bad before you reached the first house". Oddly enough, Toyota did not sue over that one.
That said, Tesla is a US company, and Top Gear Is produced by BBC in the UK. So I'm not sure there is much hope for this lawsuit to accomplish anything anyways.
Top Gear is entertainment. You don't generally watch Top Gear for information, as the vast majority of cars that get time on there are well beyond what >99% of drivers can ever reasonably expect to purchase in their lifetime. Rather, you watch Top Gear because it is entertaining. You can see them driving cars you will likely never get to drive, often in ways that you would never get to drive them.
That said, Tesla recently entered some kind of agreement with Toyota, IIRC. Being as Toyota is known to be a company with no personality - or at the very least a company who makes cars with no personality - it is no surprise that now Tesla has no sense of humor or entertainment.
Thankfully Tesla doesn't have much to loose on the matter, since there is almost no overlap between Top Gear viewers and potential Tesla customers. For that matter, there is also almost no overlap between slashdot readers and potential Tesla customers, either.
Billy Beer I'm not familiar with. If it was Camo Malt Beverage, though, I would run for the hills. That shit is so vile it would strip the paint right off of Chuck Norris's car and then drop kick him into the 19th level of hell. Really the can it is sold in is a wiser consumption choice, and that is after it has been emptied, reused as a urinal, drained, puked on, abandoned outside a 7/11 for a week, and then crushed in the hands of a homeless man who was looking to turn it in for scrap.
The next comment after that usually goes along the lines of "those lazy communist hippie bastards want to brainwash our kids into teh socialism". Anyone who has worked in academia in the past couple decades knows that people who do research spend most of their time in pursuit of funding for their research. They would happily share the results but they simply don't have the time to do so, as they spend around 16 hours a day working on grant proposals, 6 hours working on papers, 4 hours filling out paper work, and 2 hours managing their research facilities and employees.
Academics don't skip out on editing wikipedia because of ego. Academics skip out on editing wikipedia because they don't have time to do so. Most academics who are involved in research spend so much time writing grant applications and doing other critical job-maintaining functions that they simply don't have time to fight with wikipedia editors to try to improve a page - even if it is a page that directly relates to their own work.
If wikipedia wants more academic work, they need to do it themselves. They should spend more time looking for primary sources, and whenever possible obtaining them and citing them properly. In this case, the NIH actually helps wikipedia's cause as a new rule for NIH funding states that NIH funded research must be published in publicly-accessible, no-fee journals (or copies of the same article must be made available freely through NIH pubmedcentral).
So in other words, wikipedia really isn't in the right to be accusing academics of having "ego" issues. Wikipedia is asking for academics to work for less than nothing, as they would be diverting time away from their own working hours (which is often close to around the clock as it is) to do something that does not help them keep their research moving.
Diet Pepsi? Nah, not a chance; Mathis would annihilate the Diet Pepsi. Now, if it were Crystal Pepsi, it might be a fair fight. And if it were Crystal Pepsi poured onto a bowl of Mr T Cereal, that would be an infinite win of awesome that would send poor Mr Mathis right to the funny farm.
so this is essentially a big game of whack a mole until we do something about the economic forces behind spam
There, fixed that for 'ya. No amount of patching and filtering will make spam go away - ever. Spam will continue to be sent out as long as spammers can make money by sending out spam. The only way we can ever end spam for good is to either make it too expensive to send (which would not be palatable for most users) or take serious steps to interfere with the money train that keeps the spammers paid.
Everything else is reactionary, futile, or just a feel-good step (or a combination thereof).
Sure the spam volume dropped, but anyone who thinks this is anything but temporary is either crazy or an idiot. Naturally as soon as one botnet goes down another one ramps up to take its place; this is exactly what the prime motivating factor behind spam - money - will do to the situation.
The term "petrol cars", as I understand it, generally excludes Diesel-engine vehicles. Being as in many places in the EU Diesel-powered vehicles make up half or more of the vehicles on the road - including vehicles owned by individuals - this isn't that huge of a shift.
Now, if they were to instead ban cars with internal combustion engines, that would be a huge shift.
The last time we thought we could get by on just satellite and/or surveillance images, we invaded the wrong fucking country based on nothing short of conjecture and outright lies. Why would we want to make the same mistake twice?
Granted, there is a third possible outcome of the situation - the optimistic view, really. It is possible that if a significant number of AA sites were knocked out by cruise missiles and whatever else we want to throw at Libya, the uprising might be able to overthrow Gaddafi without a fully-enforced no-fly zone. That is what many people want to have happen, but if they really want to take out all the AA, they need boots on the ground. Military top brass agree with that, and insulting me does not change that fact no matter how much you may wish it to do such a thing.
I didn't know there was any. Oddly enough the Itanium has a pretty active Linux community - check out gelato.org. Frankly it has been such a niche market anyways that I didn't think anyone still bothered releasing any new software for it other than dedicated open source guys who were recompiling everything they could get source code for (since that is what you use 90% of your actual time for on an Itanium anyways - compiling software).
Quite simply, I'd be surprised if anyone who used Oracle on an Itanium actually cared about new releases.
Have you used AT&T? Your dropped call rate is about to increase, not decrease.
There is a big difference in what causes dropped calls between the two networks. AT&T drops calls because they deployed their network like total idiots and didn't bother to build up in places where people live; so you pass through a highly populated area and you drop your call because the network can't handle the traffic.
Tmobile on the other hand just simply didn't cover some areas at all where people live. You pass through those areas and your call gets dropped because there is no network there. Sadly enough they claim that some of those areas have "2" or "3" bars coverage...
Has anyone else been having a lot of trouble viewing anything from xkcd lately? In the past few weeks, comics have taken 5-10 minutes (seriously) to load, if they load at all. Some comics haven't loaded at all - I've even tried m.xkcd.com instead - given 5-10 minutes to load.
Being as T-Mobile's reception sucks massively in many parts of the country, this can only be an improvement in call duration and quality for existing T-Mobile customers. I am a T-Mobile customer currently and look forward to perhaps finally dropping less than half of my calls in an average week. Maybe if I'm really, really, lucky, I'll even get decent reception at my house (where they have claimed 3 bars for years).
Besides, T-Mobile has generally been a niche player in the US market in comparison to the number of customers on any other network.
If Apple rejects this app, they'll be attacked for infringing on free speech
Apple is not the only avenue one could use for spreading homophobia. The same group could not expect to be able to run an ad for their "services" in OUT magazine; and for that matter it may even be rejected by publications who are overall neutral on the matter. If Apple doesn't allow the app to be sold, it doesn't stop the message or suppress their right to spread it.
That said, if Apple wants to be seen as open to a variety of viewpoints then it is likely in their best interest to sell it. But there is no reason why they have to allow it. They are, in the end, a publisher. If you write a pro-KKK letter to your local newspaper they are not required to publish it if they prefer not to.
Intelligent design is not a theory. Theories have testable components, and ID has none. You cannot test or disprove ID any more than you can test or disprove any other theological standpoint.
That said, it should be a situation that will work itself out. Literature (to pick on just one non-scientific subject) faculty can believe whatever kind of non-scientific principles they want, it shouldn't change their ability to be good professors of literature. On the other hand if you are a scientist you would have a hard time getting funding to do ID research, which would eventually lead to you being dropped from the faculty. That is how most research universities manage their faculty; if you don't have funding, you don't have a lab or a paycheck.
You really give yourself a lot of moral credit when you wait all the way to the second word of your reply before you insult the person you are replying to. I really don't know how I could possibly counter your clear moral superiority there. I guess instead of slinging petty insults I will just have to discuss facts instead and see how you handle that.
But regardless of your feelings about me - which you have made quite clear - the fact of the matter is that enforcing a no-fly zone is nearly impossible without boots on the ground. You can bomb all you want but in the end you have to go through and find the AA sites and verify that they are down. Then you have to see that the aircraft are indeed grounded through your favorite means.
Besides, we don't follow UN resolutions anyways. We sold the UN a massive pile of lies about Iraq under Bush II and then broke several of our key promises afterwards. Why the hell would you expect our government under Bush III to do any different?
... we'll just bomb 'em into the stone age. Actually, by the time we're done we'll need to bomb them forward into the stone age, likely. Because after all, if you want to institute a no-fly zone, you need to start by taking out the AA equipment so you can patrol the no-fly zone under your own terms.
Of course, then we'll likely end up following the same trajectory that we started ourselves on with the first Iraq war under Bush I. Which of course led eventually to a new endless war started under Bush II and continued further under Bush III. But then again we all love the military-industrial complex and we will stop at nothing to aid it. Sure, we could balance our budget, have the greatest schools and health care in the world, but really, war is just so much more fun.
Now that we have placed the email address geohot@gmail.com on the front page of slashdot, all 12 people who still read this site - and many, many, many, more bots that automatically scan it - have seen it. That poor email address is about to be so inundated with spam that its rightful owner will never be able to read anything on it again.
I just got some email about fancy new fully-reclining bed-seats on flights from NYC to Germany. I don't actually have plans to take that flight but I was curious what those seats cost and I balked at the idea of paying $3600 for round-trip airfare. I would have instead gone steerage class on the same flight for $600 round-trip.
in this age of instant comm could not have more been saved by instant messaging system?
I'm pretty sure the effectiveness of an instant communication system is directly proportional to the number of users of said system. Sure, text messages can be fast and cheap but exactly zero people who don't have cell phones will receive them. Even getting people to respond to tornado sirens is not a trivial matter...
What's dangerous is that the data mining companies also provide data to the government
In some cases, these firms are actually getting data from the government. I don't exist on facebook, twitter, myspace, linkedin, or any other social networking site. Yet at least one of these companies has a fair bit of information on me that they are showing off to the public; my full name, my approximate age, my physical address, my marital status, the number of people in my house, etc. I've also never had a land line in my house, so there was no way to get any of that from a phone book either.
Now if you are really finding that these companies have significant information on you that isn't available through the government, that would be a different matter.
Slashdot Mirror
No big demands, just a "stop lying about our product" and "say sorry"
The lawyers for Tesla most likely don't watch Top Gear. If they did, they would know about the episode where Clarkson drove a Prius and ranted about how epically slow it was - something along the lines of "it would be useless as a milk delivery vehicle because all your milk would be bad before you reached the first house". Oddly enough, Toyota did not sue over that one.
That said, Tesla is a US company, and Top Gear Is produced by BBC in the UK. So I'm not sure there is much hope for this lawsuit to accomplish anything anyways.
Top Gear is entertainment. You don't generally watch Top Gear for information, as the vast majority of cars that get time on there are well beyond what >99% of drivers can ever reasonably expect to purchase in their lifetime. Rather, you watch Top Gear because it is entertaining. You can see them driving cars you will likely never get to drive, often in ways that you would never get to drive them.
That said, Tesla recently entered some kind of agreement with Toyota, IIRC. Being as Toyota is known to be a company with no personality - or at the very least a company who makes cars with no personality - it is no surprise that now Tesla has no sense of humor or entertainment.
Thankfully Tesla doesn't have much to loose on the matter, since there is almost no overlap between Top Gear viewers and potential Tesla customers. For that matter, there is also almost no overlap between slashdot readers and potential Tesla customers, either.
Billy Beer I'm not familiar with. If it was Camo Malt Beverage, though, I would run for the hills. That shit is so vile it would strip the paint right off of Chuck Norris's car and then drop kick him into the 19th level of hell. Really the can it is sold in is a wiser consumption choice, and that is after it has been emptied, reused as a urinal, drained, puked on, abandoned outside a 7/11 for a week, and then crushed in the hands of a homeless man who was looking to turn it in for scrap.
The main problem seems to be the academic ego
The next comment after that usually goes along the lines of "those lazy communist hippie bastards want to brainwash our kids into teh socialism". Anyone who has worked in academia in the past couple decades knows that people who do research spend most of their time in pursuit of funding for their research. They would happily share the results but they simply don't have the time to do so, as they spend around 16 hours a day working on grant proposals, 6 hours working on papers, 4 hours filling out paper work, and 2 hours managing their research facilities and employees.
Academics don't skip out on editing wikipedia because of ego. Academics skip out on editing wikipedia because they don't have time to do so. Most academics who are involved in research spend so much time writing grant applications and doing other critical job-maintaining functions that they simply don't have time to fight with wikipedia editors to try to improve a page - even if it is a page that directly relates to their own work.
If wikipedia wants more academic work, they need to do it themselves. They should spend more time looking for primary sources, and whenever possible obtaining them and citing them properly. In this case, the NIH actually helps wikipedia's cause as a new rule for NIH funding states that NIH funded research must be published in publicly-accessible, no-fee journals (or copies of the same article must be made available freely through NIH pubmedcentral).
So in other words, wikipedia really isn't in the right to be accusing academics of having "ego" issues. Wikipedia is asking for academics to work for less than nothing, as they would be diverting time away from their own working hours (which is often close to around the clock as it is) to do something that does not help them keep their research moving.
Diet Pepsi? Nah, not a chance; Mathis would annihilate the Diet Pepsi. Now, if it were Crystal Pepsi, it might be a fair fight. And if it were Crystal Pepsi poured onto a bowl of Mr T Cereal, that would be an infinite win of awesome that would send poor Mr Mathis right to the funny farm.
Word Perfect vs iPhone ... it's like Mohammed Ali vs anti-lock brakes, or Johnny Matthis vs Diet Pepsi...
so this is essentially a big game of whack a mole until we do something about the economic forces behind spam
There, fixed that for 'ya. No amount of patching and filtering will make spam go away - ever. Spam will continue to be sent out as long as spammers can make money by sending out spam. The only way we can ever end spam for good is to either make it too expensive to send (which would not be palatable for most users) or take serious steps to interfere with the money train that keeps the spammers paid.
Everything else is reactionary, futile, or just a feel-good step (or a combination thereof).
Sure the spam volume dropped, but anyone who thinks this is anything but temporary is either crazy or an idiot. Naturally as soon as one botnet goes down another one ramps up to take its place; this is exactly what the prime motivating factor behind spam - money - will do to the situation.
The term "petrol cars", as I understand it, generally excludes Diesel-engine vehicles. Being as in many places in the EU Diesel-powered vehicles make up half or more of the vehicles on the road - including vehicles owned by individuals - this isn't that huge of a shift.
Now, if they were to instead ban cars with internal combustion engines, that would be a huge shift.
... ummm
...
facebook profiles per capita?
Yeah! That'll show 'em! Hell yeah! USA! USA! USA!
The last time we thought we could get by on just satellite and/or surveillance images, we invaded the wrong fucking country based on nothing short of conjecture and outright lies. Why would we want to make the same mistake twice?
Granted, there is a third possible outcome of the situation - the optimistic view, really. It is possible that if a significant number of AA sites were knocked out by cruise missiles and whatever else we want to throw at Libya, the uprising might be able to overthrow Gaddafi without a fully-enforced no-fly zone. That is what many people want to have happen, but if they really want to take out all the AA, they need boots on the ground. Military top brass agree with that, and insulting me does not change that fact no matter how much you may wish it to do such a thing.
I didn't know there was any. Oddly enough the Itanium has a pretty active Linux community - check out gelato.org. Frankly it has been such a niche market anyways that I didn't think anyone still bothered releasing any new software for it other than dedicated open source guys who were recompiling everything they could get source code for (since that is what you use 90% of your actual time for on an Itanium anyways - compiling software).
Quite simply, I'd be surprised if anyone who used Oracle on an Itanium actually cared about new releases.
You can't seem to understand the difference between "this isn't all bad" and an actual endorsement of an action. I can understand why you post AC.
Have you used AT&T? Your dropped call rate is about to increase, not decrease.
There is a big difference in what causes dropped calls between the two networks. AT&T drops calls because they deployed their network like total idiots and didn't bother to build up in places where people live; so you pass through a highly populated area and you drop your call because the network can't handle the traffic.
Tmobile on the other hand just simply didn't cover some areas at all where people live. You pass through those areas and your call gets dropped because there is no network there. Sadly enough they claim that some of those areas have "2" or "3" bars coverage...
Has anyone else been having a lot of trouble viewing anything from xkcd lately? In the past few weeks, comics have taken 5-10 minutes (seriously) to load, if they load at all. Some comics haven't loaded at all - I've even tried m.xkcd.com instead - given 5-10 minutes to load.
Being as T-Mobile's reception sucks massively in many parts of the country, this can only be an improvement in call duration and quality for existing T-Mobile customers. I am a T-Mobile customer currently and look forward to perhaps finally dropping less than half of my calls in an average week. Maybe if I'm really, really, lucky, I'll even get decent reception at my house (where they have claimed 3 bars for years).
Besides, T-Mobile has generally been a niche player in the US market in comparison to the number of customers on any other network.
If Apple rejects this app, they'll be attacked for infringing on free speech
Apple is not the only avenue one could use for spreading homophobia. The same group could not expect to be able to run an ad for their "services" in OUT magazine; and for that matter it may even be rejected by publications who are overall neutral on the matter. If Apple doesn't allow the app to be sold, it doesn't stop the message or suppress their right to spread it.
That said, if Apple wants to be seen as open to a variety of viewpoints then it is likely in their best interest to sell it. But there is no reason why they have to allow it. They are, in the end, a publisher. If you write a pro-KKK letter to your local newspaper they are not required to publish it if they prefer not to.
Intelligent design is not a theory. Theories have testable components, and ID has none. You cannot test or disprove ID any more than you can test or disprove any other theological standpoint.
That said, it should be a situation that will work itself out. Literature (to pick on just one non-scientific subject) faculty can believe whatever kind of non-scientific principles they want, it shouldn't change their ability to be good professors of literature. On the other hand if you are a scientist you would have a hard time getting funding to do ID research, which would eventually lead to you being dropped from the faculty. That is how most research universities manage their faculty; if you don't have funding, you don't have a lab or a paycheck.
Hey idiot
You really give yourself a lot of moral credit when you wait all the way to the second word of your reply before you insult the person you are replying to. I really don't know how I could possibly counter your clear moral superiority there. I guess instead of slinging petty insults I will just have to discuss facts instead and see how you handle that.
But regardless of your feelings about me - which you have made quite clear - the fact of the matter is that enforcing a no-fly zone is nearly impossible without boots on the ground. You can bomb all you want but in the end you have to go through and find the AA sites and verify that they are down. Then you have to see that the aircraft are indeed grounded through your favorite means.
Besides, we don't follow UN resolutions anyways. We sold the UN a massive pile of lies about Iraq under Bush II and then broke several of our key promises afterwards. Why the hell would you expect our government under Bush III to do any different?
... we'll just bomb 'em into the stone age. Actually, by the time we're done we'll need to bomb them forward into the stone age, likely. Because after all, if you want to institute a no-fly zone, you need to start by taking out the AA equipment so you can patrol the no-fly zone under your own terms.
Of course, then we'll likely end up following the same trajectory that we started ourselves on with the first Iraq war under Bush I. Which of course led eventually to a new endless war started under Bush II and continued further under Bush III. But then again we all love the military-industrial complex and we will stop at nothing to aid it. Sure, we could balance our budget, have the greatest schools and health care in the world, but really, war is just so much more fun.
Now that we have placed the email address geohot@gmail.com on the front page of slashdot, all 12 people who still read this site - and many, many, many, more bots that automatically scan it - have seen it. That poor email address is about to be so inundated with spam that its rightful owner will never be able to read anything on it again.
I just got some email about fancy new fully-reclining bed-seats on flights from NYC to Germany. I don't actually have plans to take that flight but I was curious what those seats cost and I balked at the idea of paying $3600 for round-trip airfare. I would have instead gone steerage class on the same flight for $600 round-trip.
in this age of instant comm could not have more been saved by instant messaging system?
I'm pretty sure the effectiveness of an instant communication system is directly proportional to the number of users of said system. Sure, text messages can be fast and cheap but exactly zero people who don't have cell phones will receive them. Even getting people to respond to tornado sirens is not a trivial matter...
What's dangerous is that the data mining companies also provide data to the government
In some cases, these firms are actually getting data from the government. I don't exist on facebook, twitter, myspace, linkedin, or any other social networking site. Yet at least one of these companies has a fair bit of information on me that they are showing off to the public; my full name, my approximate age, my physical address, my marital status, the number of people in my house, etc. I've also never had a land line in my house, so there was no way to get any of that from a phone book either.
Now if you are really finding that these companies have significant information on you that isn't available through the government, that would be a different matter.