I've never heard of a destroyer being built for anyone other than the Navy; isn't "Destroyer Built for Navy" redundant? Or is there someone else who we are building destroyers for?
How far has/. fallen that the 'editor' didn't think to at least clarify what is being discussed.
Slashdot editors haven't edited anything short of the most egregious of offenses in many years now. They most certainly don't deserve the title, and likely spend more time hunting for new potential employment than they do any "editing".
He is donating 99% of his stock over the course of his lifetime. He is only in his 30s right now, and with his wealth we can safely expect him to live at least into his 80s. That is at least 5 decades of donating his stock (to his new company, no less).
One other thing we can count on is that by the year 2065, his stock will be worth a lot less. Facebook is so absurdly overvalued that even pretending his stocks to be worth $45B today is laughable. Eventually the bottom will fall out, just as it did with MySpace, just as it did with AOL, just as it did with CompuServe. He does have plenty of smart financial types around him to protect him as well as possible but eventually it is going to fall like a stone.
If you don't believe it is going to fall, go ask some shareholders how facebook makes money, and how much money they think it makes. I will bet the overwhelming majority of them don't have a clue, they just know that "everyone" uses it and they assume it must be worth money as a result.
The slashdot "editors" have been phoning it in that way for some time now. The probability of a submitted story being accepted is so maddeningly difficult to forecast as to not even be worth the effort; just submit and forget it. I've had the same exact thing happen to me where I submit a story and a day (or more) later someone else submits it and it makes the front page in less than an hour. Not worth spending extra time dwelling over.
your kvetching about the use of the word paragraph is kind of meaningless here.
Two things.
First, he didn't need to paste that sentence, it had no value at all. Samzenpus could have failed a little less by doing a little... oh, what's the word... starts with "e"... eat? No, edit! Yeah, that thing that editors do! He could have chosen to edit the summary before pasting it. I know that is a foreign concept for slashdot employees, who are too busy looking for future jobs to do the jobs they currently have.
Second, as others have pointed out, if he posted multiple paragraphs the breaks would have been lost by the craptacular code that runs this site. This is a problem that has existed here for over a decade now...
How long did it take you to figure out all the cable connections in the second paragraph above?
There was only one paragraph. Thank you, samzenpus. I was worried that the old failure machine was itself not doing well, due to the collection of surprisingly coherent and minimally-biased articles that have been on the front page lately.
If google just changes their name to facebook then everyone will say it's fine and dandy. The problem here is just that people used to expect google not to do this kind of thing, while facebook started off explicitly designed to do this kind of thing.
By the time he's dead, what will 99% of his stock be worth? I'm guessing very, very, little. Yeah, right now it is still worth a lot, but that is because it is massively overvalued. It will eventually fade from popularity just like MySpace did and AOL did before that. I'd be more impressed if he said he was going to give away $44.5 billion.
doctors and medical researchers do not understand basic statistics
That is a sweeping generalization that would most likely come from someone who themselves does not understand basic statistics. In the case of the former group, many physicians opt to take statistics in undergrad (instead of calculus) and have had at least a full year before starting med school. Med school curriculum is often rather statistics-heavy, as well. There may be some older physicians still running around who had little or no statistics exposure on their way to MD, but they are in the minority.
As for the second, the PhD researchers can't get anywhere without a solid background in statistics. Frankly nobody earns a PhD in the hard sciences without a good grasp on statistics, and this has been the case for decades. Manuscripts that are not statistically rigorous don't get published, and unpublished manuscripts don't become theses.
Our country is too fond of market-based solutions to matters like this. Once (at least) one company finds a way to make a lot of money off of this, the discussion will be over and we will convince ourselves that it is for the better.
Arguably the bigger loss is in the fact that it will force even more scientists away from ethically sound research and into profit-driven work instead because there won't be any other careers.
We've already determined in the US that internet videos cannot incite violence. We then investigated that possibility (at least) an additional 7 times after determining that fact, and kept coming to the same conclusion. We've thrown many millions of dollars into this question, I thought the Israelis were frugal enough with their money to learn from this and avoid making the same mistake.
Putting a "gaming" PC in the living room often is not well received by the family. If you really think you can get away with it, make sure you go out of your way to make it as unobtrusive as possible; muted colors, quiet fans, minimal external cabling, etc. If you can fit it in some kind of cabinet or other structure where you can close the doors to hide it completely, that would be even better yet.
A lot of those important bits are counter to how a lot of people - and companies - like to build "gaming" PCs.
I've never had an amex card, and they mention only how one's replacement is related to one's previous card. I'd be more impressed if they could predict what my first card would be.
I don't see how anyone could possibly think of this as not being something they can legally do. Nobody is forced to use yahoo mail, if they don't like how the site is set up they are free to go use a different free email service instead.
I was never sold on that explanation. The notion that North Korea even could pull it off - let alone would - I find to be absurd. Certainly if they had the ability, someone in that crew would have been aware of the Streisand Effect by now and would have said it was an awful idea. I watched The Interview, which was an awful movie - if the North Koreans wanted it to go away the right thing to do would have been to let it fail on its own. Had Sony not gotten this free PR for it, the movie would have promptly fallen into the same realm as Manos: Hands of Fate and various other un-watchables.
Seriously, touchpads are the worst pointing devices in the history of pointing devices. Every manufacturer claims to have a "better" touchpad, but they all just end up sucking in different ways. I typed my thesis on a 10+ year old IBM keyboard with a trackpoint on it, because I couldn't stand any other option that was on the market (and I paid dearly to acquire it!).
My change would therefore be for more manufacturers to use trackpoint (or trackpoint-style) keyboards. Laptops, desktops, even foldable bluetooth keyboards for tablets. Give us something that works. We've seen other vendors (Dell, HP, Toshiba, and even Sony) use them in past years, it can be done again.
The military will soon need some new toy and all the government's money (and then some) will go to it instead. This will be the pattern for many decades to come.
The notion of a console "that will last" is laughable. The manufacturers make money off the assumption that you will buy one, and replace it in 2-3 years with the new generation of the same. High fault rates might not be engineered in, but longevity most certainly isn't either.
This is probably a state-by-state thing, but I had not seen them before, excluding "limit of X mph when children are present". I for one would really love to see time - or otherwise triggered - based speed limits in other situations as well. A situation that comes to mind in particular is construction zones; they leave the cones up all weekend after leaving at 2pm Friday and there isn't a worker or equipment there again until 8am Monday.
The PETA folks occasionally have valid points, but this is not one of those times. They latched on to some information that is - at best - partially true and now they are trying to destroy someone's career over it. These people are no better than the "Earth Liberation Front" that "released" a bunch of study animals only for them to be quickly run over by cars.
I'm not a fan of their business model, nor do I have an account of any kind on their system. However, I side with them on arguing that they should be able to block any content they want. I don't see them as being any different from a newspaper editorial page, which has the freedom to publish anything it wants. Furthermore having your content rejected from facebook does not in any way prevent you from taking it elsewhere, so your speech is really not being oppressed.
Perl. Perl all the way through, and nothing but Perl. Apparently after they canned the guy who took credit for writing it, they didn't feel it was worth while to put any additional money into the code, ever again (and it seems that attitude has continued through subsequent acquisitions).
Evil is a childish blanket statement that suggests you see no redeeming, humane, or worthwhile aspect to them. It suggests you don't care about anything they do and you see them just as a caricature of a villain. I don't support them, but when you make a point of painting them with such a broad and uncaring stroke you end up helping their cause more than you hurt it, as they will use that in their own propaganda.
Think of it this way - is there a politician in your country (sitting or running) who you would describe as "evil"? Hopefully not, as it would show again that you are not paying enough attention to what they are doing to understand that evil is at best a very childish way to describe them, and at worst it would only end up aiding whatever it is that they do which you dislike so much as to be willing to lower yourself to such a silly level of discourse.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never heard of a destroyer being built for anyone other than the Navy; isn't "Destroyer Built for Navy" redundant? Or is there someone else who we are building destroyers for?
How far has /. fallen that the 'editor' didn't think to at least clarify what is being discussed.
Slashdot editors haven't edited anything short of the most egregious of offenses in many years now. They most certainly don't deserve the title, and likely spend more time hunting for new potential employment than they do any "editing".
He is donating 99% of his stock over the course of his lifetime. He is only in his 30s right now, and with his wealth we can safely expect him to live at least into his 80s. That is at least 5 decades of donating his stock (to his new company, no less).
One other thing we can count on is that by the year 2065, his stock will be worth a lot less. Facebook is so absurdly overvalued that even pretending his stocks to be worth $45B today is laughable. Eventually the bottom will fall out, just as it did with MySpace, just as it did with AOL, just as it did with CompuServe. He does have plenty of smart financial types around him to protect him as well as possible but eventually it is going to fall like a stone.
If you don't believe it is going to fall, go ask some shareholders how facebook makes money, and how much money they think it makes. I will bet the overwhelming majority of them don't have a clue, they just know that "everyone" uses it and they assume it must be worth money as a result.
The slashdot "editors" have been phoning it in that way for some time now. The probability of a submitted story being accepted is so maddeningly difficult to forecast as to not even be worth the effort; just submit and forget it. I've had the same exact thing happen to me where I submit a story and a day (or more) later someone else submits it and it makes the front page in less than an hour. Not worth spending extra time dwelling over.
your kvetching about the use of the word paragraph is kind of meaningless here.
Two things.
... oh, what's the word ... starts with "e" ... eat? No, edit! Yeah, that thing that editors do! He could have chosen to edit the summary before pasting it. I know that is a foreign concept for slashdot employees, who are too busy looking for future jobs to do the jobs they currently have.
First, he didn't need to paste that sentence, it had no value at all. Samzenpus could have failed a little less by doing a little
Second, as others have pointed out, if he posted multiple paragraphs the breaks would have been lost by the craptacular code that runs this site. This is a problem that has existed here for over a decade now...
How long did it take you to figure out all the cable connections in the second paragraph above?
There was only one paragraph. Thank you, samzenpus. I was worried that the old failure machine was itself not doing well, due to the collection of surprisingly coherent and minimally-biased articles that have been on the front page lately.
If google just changes their name to facebook then everyone will say it's fine and dandy. The problem here is just that people used to expect google not to do this kind of thing, while facebook started off explicitly designed to do this kind of thing.
By the time he's dead, what will 99% of his stock be worth? I'm guessing very, very, little. Yeah, right now it is still worth a lot, but that is because it is massively overvalued. It will eventually fade from popularity just like MySpace did and AOL did before that. I'd be more impressed if he said he was going to give away $44.5 billion.
doctors and medical researchers do not understand basic statistics
That is a sweeping generalization that would most likely come from someone who themselves does not understand basic statistics. In the case of the former group, many physicians opt to take statistics in undergrad (instead of calculus) and have had at least a full year before starting med school. Med school curriculum is often rather statistics-heavy, as well. There may be some older physicians still running around who had little or no statistics exposure on their way to MD, but they are in the minority.
As for the second, the PhD researchers can't get anywhere without a solid background in statistics. Frankly nobody earns a PhD in the hard sciences without a good grasp on statistics, and this has been the case for decades. Manuscripts that are not statistically rigorous don't get published, and unpublished manuscripts don't become theses.
Our country is too fond of market-based solutions to matters like this. Once (at least) one company finds a way to make a lot of money off of this, the discussion will be over and we will convince ourselves that it is for the better.
Arguably the bigger loss is in the fact that it will force even more scientists away from ethically sound research and into profit-driven work instead because there won't be any other careers.
How many people saw that and then reacted by looking at the comment history of their favorite slashdot troll(s)?
We've already determined in the US that internet videos cannot incite violence. We then investigated that possibility (at least) an additional 7 times after determining that fact, and kept coming to the same conclusion. We've thrown many millions of dollars into this question, I thought the Israelis were frugal enough with their money to learn from this and avoid making the same mistake.
Putting a "gaming" PC in the living room often is not well received by the family. If you really think you can get away with it, make sure you go out of your way to make it as unobtrusive as possible; muted colors, quiet fans, minimal external cabling, etc. If you can fit it in some kind of cabinet or other structure where you can close the doors to hide it completely, that would be even better yet.
A lot of those important bits are counter to how a lot of people - and companies - like to build "gaming" PCs.
I've never had an amex card, and they mention only how one's replacement is related to one's previous card. I'd be more impressed if they could predict what my first card would be.
Funny, I'd say the exact same thing about the touchpad, as the biggest complaints I had about it in the 90s still apply today.
I don't see how anyone could possibly think of this as not being something they can legally do. Nobody is forced to use yahoo mail, if they don't like how the site is set up they are free to go use a different free email service instead.
I was never sold on that explanation. The notion that North Korea even could pull it off - let alone would - I find to be absurd. Certainly if they had the ability, someone in that crew would have been aware of the Streisand Effect by now and would have said it was an awful idea. I watched The Interview, which was an awful movie - if the North Koreans wanted it to go away the right thing to do would have been to let it fail on its own. Had Sony not gotten this free PR for it, the movie would have promptly fallen into the same realm as Manos: Hands of Fate and various other un-watchables.
Seriously, touchpads are the worst pointing devices in the history of pointing devices. Every manufacturer claims to have a "better" touchpad, but they all just end up sucking in different ways. I typed my thesis on a 10+ year old IBM keyboard with a trackpoint on it, because I couldn't stand any other option that was on the market (and I paid dearly to acquire it!).
My change would therefore be for more manufacturers to use trackpoint (or trackpoint-style) keyboards. Laptops, desktops, even foldable bluetooth keyboards for tablets. Give us something that works. We've seen other vendors (Dell, HP, Toshiba, and even Sony) use them in past years, it can be done again.
The military will soon need some new toy and all the government's money (and then some) will go to it instead. This will be the pattern for many decades to come.
The notion of a console "that will last" is laughable. The manufacturers make money off the assumption that you will buy one, and replace it in 2-3 years with the new generation of the same. High fault rates might not be engineered in, but longevity most certainly isn't either.
This is probably a state-by-state thing, but I had not seen them before, excluding "limit of X mph when children are present". I for one would really love to see time - or otherwise triggered - based speed limits in other situations as well. A situation that comes to mind in particular is construction zones; they leave the cones up all weekend after leaving at 2pm Friday and there isn't a worker or equipment there again until 8am Monday.
The PETA folks occasionally have valid points, but this is not one of those times. They latched on to some information that is - at best - partially true and now they are trying to destroy someone's career over it. These people are no better than the "Earth Liberation Front" that "released" a bunch of study animals only for them to be quickly run over by cars.
I'm not a fan of their business model, nor do I have an account of any kind on their system. However, I side with them on arguing that they should be able to block any content they want. I don't see them as being any different from a newspaper editorial page, which has the freedom to publish anything it wants. Furthermore having your content rejected from facebook does not in any way prevent you from taking it elsewhere, so your speech is really not being oppressed.
Perl. Perl all the way through, and nothing but Perl. Apparently after they canned the guy who took credit for writing it, they didn't feel it was worth while to put any additional money into the code, ever again (and it seems that attitude has continued through subsequent acquisitions).
Evil is a childish blanket statement that suggests you see no redeeming, humane, or worthwhile aspect to them. It suggests you don't care about anything they do and you see them just as a caricature of a villain. I don't support them, but when you make a point of painting them with such a broad and uncaring stroke you end up helping their cause more than you hurt it, as they will use that in their own propaganda.
Think of it this way - is there a politician in your country (sitting or running) who you would describe as "evil"? Hopefully not, as it would show again that you are not paying enough attention to what they are doing to understand that evil is at best a very childish way to describe them, and at worst it would only end up aiding whatever it is that they do which you dislike so much as to be willing to lower yourself to such a silly level of discourse.