We see something announced every year or so that will be released under some new regurgitation of the Commodore name. Remember those various Commodore or Amiga desktops that were going to run Intel i7 CPUs? We've seen plenty of other similar products as well. They never make it to mass market for various reasons. It might be time to let that name finally go away for real; we don't try to resurrect the Hudson or Packard car manufacturing names and we do just fine without them.
She seems to be pointing out that they exist, but not really taking much of a stance on whether she thinks that is good or not. In other words, she's just being a politician.
Because implementing and supporting an extra option is not free of cost.
True, there is a cost to it.
That translates to a competitive burden, no matter how small.
However there is a real chance that some people might want to use such an option, which would translate to a competitive advantage. Navigating a large city such as NYC without left turns could be advantageous for quite a few drivers, and not just from a pedestrian safety standpoint.
Furthermore, the council is just asking for google to make the option available. Google could tell them no, and continue on with their day.
They would much rather ask a company to put itself at a competitive disadvantage for the Council's benefit.
How would it put a company at a competitive disadvantage when it would be an option? People could still get regular directions, or choose to get directions with fewer left turns...
If you make routes that are not useful - or have non-useful time tables - free, people still won't use them. A lot of driving that is done now is done in part because people are making commutes that are not easily - if at all - accommodated by existing public transportation infrastructure. If it takes two hours to get from A to B by public transport because you have to travel to C first - covering at least twice the total distance along the way and waiting for connecting buses or trains - people won't do it.
The other thing is the availability of parking. If parking in the city is affordable and available, that reduces the appeal of public transportation.
We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything.
Yeah, and it only changed how the government did anything by making things worse.
I didn't say it was a positive change... just that it was the only disaster of the last decade-plus that brought about any change in how the government does business. I approve of almost none of the changes that came about with 9/11 as a justification.
There have, however, been other disasters that have occurred multiple times since 9/11, and the government response has been crickets. I would like to have seen them try something but instead they opted to again do nothing.
misses over 95% of banned items in its screenings.
To give the devil his due, would-be terrorists won't necessarily know as much about TSA vulnerabilities and methods as the TSA agents who are tasked with doing these tests. It is impossible to know how well these tests correlate with reality in terms of TP, FP, FN rates.
9/11 changed nothing. It just gave a big excuse to spend even more hundreds of billions for poor results.
Which changed the way the government does business. They added a huge - and hugely expensive - new bureaucracy while simultaneously embracing fear and opening the national wallet even further to commercial exploitation by the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, it didn't change daily life for the rest of us mere mortals, but it did change how things happen in DC - which was the point of this thread.
We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything. Everything else caused only momentary pauses, and then everything went back to business as usual. This was great if you were on the payout end of government decisions, not so great if you were burying a loved one as a result of shitty government decisions.
Obviously, the Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn't going to change anything either.
I fail to see how anyone could construe offering an additional option, rather than constraining people to that option, is acting like a nanny state. Most especially since it's simply a friendly request, not a law, so it's up to google to decide if the feature offers value to their customers or not.
You must be new here. Slashdot conservatives won't let logic get in their way.
Had you stopped after your first line you'd be moderated "insightful". Instead you'll like be moderated "funny". I expect my second line may have moved my comment out of "troll" and into "funny" as well, though slashdot users with moderator points are not renowned for having a sense of humor about themselves.
It takes money to order and install such signs. Then those requirements impede profit later on, as well. That plan won't fly. Instead they spent a few days' worth of city council time writing a letter to ask someone else to provide an optional work-around.
... because, of course, a city writing a letter asking a company to do something is exactly the same as requiring it - at least in the eyes of certain slashdot political pundits.
I expect this comment will be moderated down "troll" or "flamebait" by the same members of slashdot's conservative majority that will be up-moderating "insightful" the first nanny state comment.
The essence of being a politician (in a representative democracy) is representing the interests of those who voted for you.
That is an interesting starting point, but it is based on the assumption that everyone who voted for you agrees with each other 100% of the time. I often find myself in the voting booth trying to decide which is the less smelly of two bowls of shit. I'm not sure I have ever seen a candidate who I agreed with on every single issue; and amongst my closest friends I don't know that I agree with any of them on 100% of the issues that come up in a typical congressional session.
In other words, I would say it is impossible for a politician to always represent the interests of everyone who voted for them. Furthermore, they are supposed to represent the interests of everyone from their jurisdiction, regardless of who voted for them.
Frank suggests it is inherent to democracy and according to Frank if there's any blame to be doled out in connection with political hypocrisy, it's to be placed on the heads of voters who criticize legislators for it, instead of accepting it as a necessary part of democratic politics.
A lot of other politicians would call it horse-trading. They aren't doing anything that is hypocritical to being a politician, though they may on occasion be making decisions (or casting votes) that are counter to their campaign promises.
When we keep insisting on filters as the "answer" to spam, we end up with more problems like these as a result. The spammers are continuously changing their strategy to get around filters, which causes this to happen. Unless we approach spam as the economic problem that it is, we won't see this get better.
Is anyone living in the cable company's service area who has your wife's first and last name? It is generally easier to be certain of a "yes" than a "no" answer on this, of course, but it is worth checking for if you haven't already. I'm not sold on this being intentional fraud, as it is generally not worth the effort to steal someone's identity just to get free cable for a couple months.
I've never heard of a company being able to do this. If they don't have your wife's SSN or mailing address, how would they bill you (her) for service? I'm not sold on this being intentional identity theft - are you seeing any other signs of this happening? The last time my info was compromised I saw plenty of other activity that indicated it happened. This seems like a strange case of mistaken identity from my vantage point.
Not according to their own public descriptions and charter
Their mission statement is bullshit. They are run by people who are concerned with making money above all else. Look at the crappy decisions they have made in the past with pure profit motives behind them (selling gTLDs to the highest bidders being a prime example) and you'll see where their real interests lie.
ICANN exists to make money. This plan is not helpful for that goal. They are just doing this to get people to pay attention to them again to justify the salaries they pay to their top management. In another few weeks they will announce a "compromise" that will make this all go away and make them look like they are pro-privacy (or in some other way good for the hobbyists who they actually don't give a shit about).
Eh, who cares. Does anybody actually still look at that web site? Honestly I barely knew it was still around.
Funny, that is what people are usually saying about this website. Hell, a while back slashdot's own Rob Malda made CNN's list of 10 people who don't matter.
What I stated was factual; it is a fact that a user does not need to remove their entire hand from typing to use the trackpoint. That is part of the reason why it was designed that way. You can hate the trackpoint as much as you want for whatever reasons you chose, but when you lie about it you just look ridiculous. Why would you move your entire hand to use something that is designed to be manipulated with one finger? You couldn't use your entire hand on it even if you wanted to.
still have to take at least one hand out of the "typing position" to use the Clit;
No. I have to take one finger out of typing position. And being as the QWERTY keyboard only puts a few keys within reach of my index fingers - and not all of the most used ones - it is a far lesser drawback than taking my whole hand away to use the touchpad with decent accuracy.
But go ahead and tell us how awesome your touchpad is. I can't force you to acknowledge reality if you choose otherwise.
I have never had a problem with my trackpoint impeding my productivity. I have frequently found myself cursing that touchpads on other peoples' laptops. The Trackpoint allows me to move my cursor exactly as far as I want, without taking my fingers off the keyboard. No touchpad has ever been able to legitimately make that claim.
Slashdot Mirror
We see something announced every year or so that will be released under some new regurgitation of the Commodore name. Remember those various Commodore or Amiga desktops that were going to run Intel i7 CPUs? We've seen plenty of other similar products as well. They never make it to mass market for various reasons. It might be time to let that name finally go away for real; we don't try to resurrect the Hudson or Packard car manufacturing names and we do just fine without them.
I expect many people would argue it to be worth the investment just to not have to deal with the airlines and the TSA.
She seems to be pointing out that they exist, but not really taking much of a stance on whether she thinks that is good or not. In other words, she's just being a politician.
Because implementing and supporting an extra option is not free of cost.
True, there is a cost to it.
That translates to a competitive burden, no matter how small.
However there is a real chance that some people might want to use such an option, which would translate to a competitive advantage. Navigating a large city such as NYC without left turns could be advantageous for quite a few drivers, and not just from a pedestrian safety standpoint.
Furthermore, the council is just asking for google to make the option available. Google could tell them no, and continue on with their day.
They would much rather ask a company to put itself at a competitive disadvantage for the Council's benefit.
How would it put a company at a competitive disadvantage when it would be an option? People could still get regular directions, or choose to get directions with fewer left turns...
If you make routes that are not useful - or have non-useful time tables - free, people still won't use them. A lot of driving that is done now is done in part because people are making commutes that are not easily - if at all - accommodated by existing public transportation infrastructure. If it takes two hours to get from A to B by public transport because you have to travel to C first - covering at least twice the total distance along the way and waiting for connecting buses or trains - people won't do it.
The other thing is the availability of parking. If parking in the city is affordable and available, that reduces the appeal of public transportation.
We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything.
Yeah, and it only changed how the government did anything by making things worse.
I didn't say it was a positive change ... just that it was the only disaster of the last decade-plus that brought about any change in how the government does business. I approve of almost none of the changes that came about with 9/11 as a justification.
There have, however, been other disasters that have occurred multiple times since 9/11, and the government response has been crickets. I would like to have seen them try something but instead they opted to again do nothing.
misses over 95% of banned items in its screenings.
To give the devil his due, would-be terrorists won't necessarily know as much about TSA vulnerabilities and methods as the TSA agents who are tasked with doing these tests. It is impossible to know how well these tests correlate with reality in terms of TP, FP, FN rates.
9/11 changed nothing. It just gave a big excuse to spend even more hundreds of billions for poor results.
Which changed the way the government does business. They added a huge - and hugely expensive - new bureaucracy while simultaneously embracing fear and opening the national wallet even further to commercial exploitation by the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, it didn't change daily life for the rest of us mere mortals, but it did change how things happen in DC - which was the point of this thread.
We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything. Everything else caused only momentary pauses, and then everything went back to business as usual. This was great if you were on the payout end of government decisions, not so great if you were burying a loved one as a result of shitty government decisions.
Obviously, the Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn't going to change anything either.
I fail to see how anyone could construe offering an additional option, rather than constraining people to that option, is acting like a nanny state. Most especially since it's simply a friendly request, not a law, so it's up to google to decide if the feature offers value to their customers or not.
You must be new here. Slashdot conservatives won't let logic get in their way.
Had you stopped after your first line you'd be moderated "insightful". Instead you'll like be moderated "funny". I expect my second line may have moved my comment out of "troll" and into "funny" as well, though slashdot users with moderator points are not renowned for having a sense of humor about themselves.
they could just put up "no left turn" signs
It takes money to order and install such signs. Then those requirements impede profit later on, as well. That plan won't fly. Instead they spent a few days' worth of city council time writing a letter to ask someone else to provide an optional work-around.
... because, of course, a city writing a letter asking a company to do something is exactly the same as requiring it - at least in the eyes of certain slashdot political pundits.
I expect this comment will be moderated down "troll" or "flamebait" by the same members of slashdot's conservative majority that will be up-moderating "insightful" the first nanny state comment.
The essence of being a politician (in a representative democracy) is representing the interests of those who voted for you.
That is an interesting starting point, but it is based on the assumption that everyone who voted for you agrees with each other 100% of the time. I often find myself in the voting booth trying to decide which is the less smelly of two bowls of shit. I'm not sure I have ever seen a candidate who I agreed with on every single issue; and amongst my closest friends I don't know that I agree with any of them on 100% of the issues that come up in a typical congressional session.
In other words, I would say it is impossible for a politician to always represent the interests of everyone who voted for them. Furthermore, they are supposed to represent the interests of everyone from their jurisdiction, regardless of who voted for them.
Frank suggests it is inherent to democracy and according to Frank if there's any blame to be doled out in connection with political hypocrisy, it's to be placed on the heads of voters who criticize legislators for it, instead of accepting it as a necessary part of democratic politics.
A lot of other politicians would call it horse-trading. They aren't doing anything that is hypocritical to being a politician, though they may on occasion be making decisions (or casting votes) that are counter to their campaign promises.
When we keep insisting on filters as the "answer" to spam, we end up with more problems like these as a result. The spammers are continuously changing their strategy to get around filters, which causes this to happen. Unless we approach spam as the economic problem that it is, we won't see this get better.
Is anyone living in the cable company's service area who has your wife's first and last name? It is generally easier to be certain of a "yes" than a "no" answer on this, of course, but it is worth checking for if you haven't already. I'm not sold on this being intentional fraud, as it is generally not worth the effort to steal someone's identity just to get free cable for a couple months.
I've never heard of a company being able to do this. If they don't have your wife's SSN or mailing address, how would they bill you (her) for service? I'm not sold on this being intentional identity theft - are you seeing any other signs of this happening? The last time my info was compromised I saw plenty of other activity that indicated it happened. This seems like a strange case of mistaken identity from my vantage point.
ICANN exists to make money.
Not according to their own public descriptions and charter
Their mission statement is bullshit. They are run by people who are concerned with making money above all else. Look at the crappy decisions they have made in the past with pure profit motives behind them (selling gTLDs to the highest bidders being a prime example) and you'll see where their real interests lie.
ICANN exists to make money. This plan is not helpful for that goal. They are just doing this to get people to pay attention to them again to justify the salaries they pay to their top management. In another few weeks they will announce a "compromise" that will make this all go away and make them look like they are pro-privacy (or in some other way good for the hobbyists who they actually don't give a shit about).
Eh, who cares. Does anybody actually still look at that web site? Honestly I barely knew it was still around.
Funny, that is what people are usually saying about this website. Hell, a while back slashdot's own Rob Malda made CNN's list of 10 people who don't matter.
Considering the massive screw-ups that have happened here at slashdot, it appears someone did not learn anything from this at all. Party on, guys.
What I stated was factual; it is a fact that a user does not need to remove their entire hand from typing to use the trackpoint. That is part of the reason why it was designed that way. You can hate the trackpoint as much as you want for whatever reasons you chose, but when you lie about it you just look ridiculous. Why would you move your entire hand to use something that is designed to be manipulated with one finger? You couldn't use your entire hand on it even if you wanted to.
still have to take at least one hand out of the "typing position" to use the Clit;
No. I have to take one finger out of typing position. And being as the QWERTY keyboard only puts a few keys within reach of my index fingers - and not all of the most used ones - it is a far lesser drawback than taking my whole hand away to use the touchpad with decent accuracy.
But go ahead and tell us how awesome your touchpad is. I can't force you to acknowledge reality if you choose otherwise.
I have never had a problem with my trackpoint impeding my productivity. I have frequently found myself cursing that touchpads on other peoples' laptops. The Trackpoint allows me to move my cursor exactly as far as I want, without taking my fingers off the keyboard. No touchpad has ever been able to legitimately make that claim.