Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz — despite major safety concerns with the vehicle."
No, residents have not responded by buying thousands of electric cars, because this decision is NEW.
Instead, french people have bought thousands of electric cars, because there is a tax gift of 1500 euros when you replace your old vehicle with a new electric or hybrid one. This tax reduction will disappear on the 1st of January 2011, that's why people rush to buy a new car, especially in Paris.
BTW, using a SUV in Paris is a crazy idea, since it's perceived as a lack of respect for other drivers. Streets in Paris are very small, parking places are very difficult to find for normal vehicles, and impossible for larger ones. Possessing a SUV is like saying: hey, I've got a ton of money, since my car will suck a lot of gas, and I have my own private parking for both my work and my home. Driving in Paris requires a lot of attention and energy, since it's very tiring, and drivers are very nervous, and are not friendly when driving.
In France, I wanted to buy a ZX Spectrum, but they were not yet available. I finally got an Oric 1, which I don't regret. Oric was cheaper than Spectrum (2400 francs at the time, so around 366 euros, C64 was around 1000 euros, TRS80 too and Spectrum was at around 300 euros), and I got an aha on the 6502 assembly language.
Three years later, I joined a game company, and wrote games for the C64 and various other computers (Thomson TO7 6809 based, Amstrad CPC 464 Z80 based, Atari ST 68000 based, etc...) and consoles.
I doubt I would have had a career in computing if I started with a Spectrum, coding in Z80.
Not everybody is interested in developing this skill.
As I said above, our guy types slowly, but he spends a lot of time behind a computer, so he's not interested in developing his typing skill. And even though computers are not a passion for him, his code is very good.
I have to admit that he's the only one I met in my computer's career (>20 years), and after looking at his way of working, I had to revise my opinion, since I was thinking the same way as you before.
I also met several people who were typing with Intellisense, and it was impossible to follow what they were doing, and I'm still not sure that their way of working was efficient.
If you try pair-programming, you'll also realize that you'll type slower, but there will be much more thought in every line you type.
I remember the old days, when I wrote all my code on paper, and I typed it when it was finished, and even though this works for only small parts of code (though I wrote large programs this way), I still believe this is the right way to code: think then type. It's the thinking part that must take most of the time, and the time for typing is irrelevant.
You are wrong. An analogy is to compare a gourmet and a bulimic. Typing fast is similar to eating large quantities of food in the fastest way, instead of appreciating the food you eat.
At my work, we have a super slow typist, and since we code with pair programming, when I worked with him, I wanted to take the keyboard, since he was so slow. However, there are several points that were more important than speed:
1) the IDE (we use Visual Studio and Resharper) slows down the typing, because of the "Intellisense" feature. When you type, the editor tries to guess what you want to type and takes a large amount of CPU to guess, but this guy rarely uses Intellisense.
2) Focus. This coder is our most focused one. He's able to work when there is noise around him, always typing slowly but concentrating on his task, and since he's independent from the IDE popups, he's typing at a constant (but slow) rate.
3) Amount of work. Since he's slow, he spends a lot of time on his computer. Probably 10 to 12 hours every day. He's very dedicated.
4) Thinking while typing. He's thinking a lot for every word that he types. So his code tends to not be ridden with bugs.
5) Writing short portions of code. He's always trying to optimize the amount of lines he'll type. This may appear dumb, but the less lines you type, the less bugs you'll get.
Speed typing is not a criterion about coding's experience, because I know fast typers that write terrible code. On the contrary, fast typers will rely on their ability to write the biggest amount of lines instead of focusing on writing the smallest amount of lines (see point 4 above).
BTW, I'm a very fast typist (using only 2 fingers !), but I'm very slow when I write in english, since it's not my mother tongue. I'm pretty sure I don't leave typos, even though I don't reread my lines.
You have children who are living on their own, and you want to help them by giving them some money.
Suppose that a system which tracks every bill exists, in order to follow the money flows.
Once such a system exists, your children will be forced to pay taxes about this money.
Treating everybody as a criminal is not a solution. BTW, I don't think such a thing will ever pass, since politicians like to use real money, and I doubt they'll put a system to track where their money is spent.
In France, Eric Cantona, the famous international soccer player, called french people to withdraw all their money from the banks on the 7th of december, to make the system collapse.
This seemed a nice idea, but it failed for several reasons: 1) his spouse does some advertising for a bank 2) he didn't withdraw his money on the 7th 3) probably a few people withdrew their money, but the system didn't collapse in France.
The lessons that had been taught here are: 1) when you make a call, be sure to be virtuous 2) stop speaking about breaking the system, do it by your actions ! 3) stop believing that everybody will follow you blindly. As long as there is nothing better than the current system, nobody will ever care.
I'm sure even Larry and Company realize the importance of not angering every single one of your customers....Friends have been telling stories of their Oracle reps coming in and trying to double the price of their service contracts since the takeover.
You don't really know how business works.
First, it's the CEO who decides the policy, so he probably wants a quick ROI -Return On Investment- on Sun's buyout. Sales people just have to follow what is decided by the Big Boss.
Secondly, Oracle doesn't care about losing Sun's clients, since it hopes to make the remaining clients pay for the lost business. Even if they lose 50% of their clients, if they are able to sell the same services twice as much, they'll probably earn more money, since the maintenance costs will be cheaper with less clients (they need less people, etc.).
This strategy could backfire if more than 50% of clients don't accept the conditions. In this case, Oracle will just charge even more for its services.
I do not understand why there is a Slashdot article for every IE9 feature.
Microsoft is very well known for announcing products that were released very late or even never in some cases.
Why do we have to comment on a such a feature, obviously designed to piss off Google ? And who cares about IE9, when the other browsers are better in every way ?
Instead of announcing every future functionality, to let us believe that they work on their browser and care about us, why not simply release an upgraded browser every few months ?
Meanwhile, Google and Apple release products without announcing them 6 months before, and push their updates regularly. Does this show once again that Microsoft is unable to push updates to the user ?
Oh, and I'm pretty sure that IE9 will include IE5/IE6/IE7/IE8 rendering engines à la DirectX, for old sites' compatibility.
Probably, but it's also much harder to search for a document in paper format. Electronic format is definitely the best way to find all references to a given information.
Instead of forcing the use of paper, which is the dumbest possible move, intelligence services should reduce the access to documents to the smallest possible number of people. If sensitive documents are leaked, it means that people who had access to them shouldn't have.
If 3 million of people had access to Wikileaks' documents, this means that they were not so secret !
Frankly, if workers are able to misuse Internet, this means that no filtering proxy has been set up, and the IT didn't do their job (or at least, the upper management didn't ask for a proxy, probably because they 'misuse' Internet too).
It's easy to fix that: just install a proxy, and block whatever site is 'misuse'.
In my opinion, they should only set a proxy for blocking P2P, other download sites and porn.
At my work, we have a proxy, and the most bandwidth-consuming site is Youtube.
BTW, it's not very wise to recommend torrenting, when torrents are so heavily tracked. Why not simply file hosting, Google Blog Search and tools like jdownloader ?
Intelligence sources have been exposed by US government, and most probably a few people have been killed following this 'leak'. Would you condemn Bush, or only Assange, since he's not american ?
1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. (Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be shot using Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)
10. The director must not be credited.
Japanese first copied the western products, then improved them. This process took 10 years, because they had to find a new way to work (see the Agile methodologies, which are pretty inherited from Toyota's one). Also, they never tried to build planes, since it requires a lot more work than trains.
On the other side, Chinese never cared about quality, and always provide the cheapest possible copies, using western technology. It will take a long time before they'll change their mentality, and concentrate on quality instead of quantity. Trying to build planes now is completely crazy, and I fear that they'll provide deadly cheap planes, just to satisfy internal demand. How much people will be killed before they improve their process ?
Single 7.08 Erik Akkersdijk Netherlands Czech Open 2008 Average 8.52 Feliks Zemdegs Australia New Zealand Champs 2010
Getting 12.5 seconds from a single solve is not what I can call a benchmark. However, there is a larger progress' margin for computers than for humans.
Slashdot Mirror
Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz — despite major safety concerns with the vehicle."
No, residents have not responded by buying thousands of electric cars, because this decision is NEW.
Instead, french people have bought thousands of electric cars, because there is a tax gift of 1500 euros when you replace your old vehicle with a new electric or hybrid one.
This tax reduction will disappear on the 1st of January 2011, that's why people rush to buy a new car, especially in Paris.
BTW, using a SUV in Paris is a crazy idea, since it's perceived as a lack of respect for other drivers. Streets in Paris are very small, parking places are very difficult to find for normal vehicles, and impossible for larger ones.
Possessing a SUV is like saying: hey, I've got a ton of money, since my car will suck a lot of gas, and I have my own private parking for both my work and my home.
Driving in Paris requires a lot of attention and energy, since it's very tiring, and drivers are very nervous, and are not friendly when driving.
This is because the bribe was not enough important.
Wait for a few weeks, and Microsoft will boast about Russia having chosen Windows because it's so much better than Linux.
A mitigating factor to Windows' acceptance is Putin's paranoia towards american technology.
In France, I wanted to buy a ZX Spectrum, but they were not yet available.
I finally got an Oric 1, which I don't regret.
Oric was cheaper than Spectrum (2400 francs at the time, so around 366 euros, C64 was around 1000 euros, TRS80 too and Spectrum was at around 300 euros), and I got an aha on the 6502 assembly language.
Three years later, I joined a game company, and wrote games for the C64 and various other computers (Thomson TO7 6809 based, Amstrad CPC 464 Z80 based, Atari ST 68000 based, etc...) and consoles.
I doubt I would have had a career in computing if I started with a Spectrum, coding in Z80.
And there is no mention about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen
who was ranked first at the ELO Fide page at the age of 19 !
Since chess competition between men is much tougher, it's really an amazing achievement (Judit Polgar is 49th: http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men )
As you said, typing fast is a skill we acquire.
Not everybody is interested in developing this skill.
As I said above, our guy types slowly, but he spends a lot of time behind a computer, so he's not interested in developing his typing skill.
And even though computers are not a passion for him, his code is very good.
I have to admit that he's the only one I met in my computer's career (>20 years), and after looking at his way of working, I had to revise my opinion, since I was thinking the same way as you before.
I also met several people who were typing with Intellisense, and it was impossible to follow what they were doing, and I'm still not sure that their way of working was efficient.
If you try pair-programming, you'll also realize that you'll type slower, but there will be much more thought in every line you type.
I remember the old days, when I wrote all my code on paper, and I typed it when it was finished, and even though this works for only small parts of code (though I wrote large programs this way), I still believe this is the right way to code: think then type.
It's the thinking part that must take most of the time, and the time for typing is irrelevant.
You are wrong.
An analogy is to compare a gourmet and a bulimic.
Typing fast is similar to eating large quantities of food in the fastest way, instead of appreciating the food you eat.
At my work, we have a super slow typist, and since we code with pair programming, when I worked with him, I wanted to take the keyboard, since he was so slow.
However, there are several points that were more important than speed:
1) the IDE (we use Visual Studio and Resharper) slows down the typing, because of the "Intellisense" feature. When you type, the editor tries to guess what you want to type and takes a large amount of CPU to guess, but this guy rarely uses Intellisense.
2) Focus. This coder is our most focused one. He's able to work when there is noise around him, always typing slowly but concentrating on his task, and since he's independent from the IDE popups, he's typing at a constant (but slow) rate.
3) Amount of work. Since he's slow, he spends a lot of time on his computer. Probably 10 to 12 hours every day. He's very dedicated.
4) Thinking while typing. He's thinking a lot for every word that he types. So his code tends to not be ridden with bugs.
5) Writing short portions of code. He's always trying to optimize the amount of lines he'll type. This may appear dumb, but the less lines you type, the less bugs you'll get.
Speed typing is not a criterion about coding's experience, because I know fast typers that write terrible code.
On the contrary, fast typers will rely on their ability to write the biggest amount of lines instead of focusing on writing the smallest amount of lines (see point 4 above).
BTW, I'm a very fast typist (using only 2 fingers !), but I'm very slow when I write in english, since it's not my mother tongue.
I'm pretty sure I don't leave typos, even though I don't reread my lines.
The threat to free speech isn't DDoS, it's censorship.
And a greater threat is self-censorship !
Ok, I'll give you an example.
You have children who are living on their own, and you want to help them by giving them some money.
Suppose that a system which tracks every bill exists, in order to follow the money flows.
Once such a system exists, your children will be forced to pay taxes about this money.
Treating everybody as a criminal is not a solution.
BTW, I don't think such a thing will ever pass, since politicians like to use real money, and I doubt they'll put a system to track where their money is spent.
And an iranian nuclear scientist has been killed recently:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11860928
And the article mentions that another one was killed at the beginning of this year.
It's more efficient to kill scientists than to use virus.
This is very similar to Mossad's ways http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad
As usual, Iran blames Israel, and Israel blames Iran for this murder.
In France, Eric Cantona, the famous international soccer player, called french people to withdraw all their money from the banks on the 7th of december, to make the system collapse.
This seemed a nice idea, but it failed for several reasons:
1) his spouse does some advertising for a bank
2) he didn't withdraw his money on the 7th
3) probably a few people withdrew their money, but the system didn't collapse in France.
The lessons that had been taught here are:
1) when you make a call, be sure to be virtuous
2) stop speaking about breaking the system, do it by your actions !
3) stop believing that everybody will follow you blindly. As long as there is nothing better than the current system, nobody will ever care.
I'm sure even Larry and Company realize the importance of not angering every single one of your customers. ...Friends have been telling stories of their Oracle reps coming in and trying to double the price of their service contracts since the takeover.
You don't really know how business works.
First, it's the CEO who decides the policy, so he probably wants a quick ROI -Return On Investment- on Sun's buyout. Sales people just have to follow what is decided by the Big Boss.
Secondly, Oracle doesn't care about losing Sun's clients, since it hopes to make the remaining clients pay for the lost business. Even if they lose 50% of their clients, if they are able to sell the same services twice as much, they'll probably earn more money, since the maintenance costs will be cheaper with less clients (they need less people, etc.).
This strategy could backfire if more than 50% of clients don't accept the conditions.
In this case, Oracle will just charge even more for its services.
I do not understand why there is a Slashdot article for every IE9 feature.
Microsoft is very well known for announcing products that were released very late or even never in some cases.
Why do we have to comment on a such a feature, obviously designed to piss off Google ?
And who cares about IE9, when the other browsers are better in every way ?
Instead of announcing every future functionality, to let us believe that they work on their browser and care about us, why not simply release an upgraded browser every few months ?
Meanwhile, Google and Apple release products without announcing them 6 months before, and push their updates regularly.
Does this show once again that Microsoft is unable to push updates to the user ?
Oh, and I'm pretty sure that IE9 will include IE5/IE6/IE7/IE8 rendering engines à la DirectX, for old sites' compatibility.
Hey, Microsoft, we are in 2010 !
Probably, but it's also much harder to search for a document in paper format.
Electronic format is definitely the best way to find all references to a given information.
Instead of forcing the use of paper, which is the dumbest possible move, intelligence services should reduce the access to documents to the smallest possible number of people.
If sensitive documents are leaked, it means that people who had access to them shouldn't have.
If 3 million of people had access to Wikileaks' documents, this means that they were not so secret !
Frankly, if workers are able to misuse Internet, this means that no filtering proxy has been set up, and the IT didn't do their job (or at least, the upper management didn't ask for a proxy, probably because they 'misuse' Internet too).
It's easy to fix that: just install a proxy, and block whatever site is 'misuse'.
In my opinion, they should only set a proxy for blocking P2P, other download sites and porn.
At my work, we have a proxy, and the most bandwidth-consuming site is Youtube.
You forgot the best one:
btjunkie.org
BTW, it's not very wise to recommend torrenting, when torrents are so heavily tracked.
Why not simply file hosting, Google Blog Search and tools like jdownloader ?
You are very biased and have a lot of free time, since you posted at least 15 messages in this thread.
An easy example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame#.22Plamegate.22
Intelligence sources have been exposed by US government, and most probably a few people have been killed following this 'leak'.
Would you condemn Bush, or only Assange, since he's not american ?
All your bacteria are belong to us.
It's always the same problem of the content and the containing, which one is more important ?
Dogme 95 shared the same ideals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95
Extract:
1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. (Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be shot using Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)
10. The director must not be credited.
Dogme 95 movies probably have long takes.
Japanese first copied the western products, then improved them.
This process took 10 years, because they had to find a new way to work (see the Agile methodologies, which are pretty inherited from Toyota's one).
Also, they never tried to build planes, since it requires a lot more work than trains.
On the other side, Chinese never cared about quality, and always provide the cheapest possible copies, using western technology.
It will take a long time before they'll change their mentality, and concentrate on quality instead of quantity.
Trying to build planes now is completely crazy, and I fear that they'll provide deadly cheap planes, just to satisfy internal demand.
How much people will be killed before they improve their process ?
Once again, a simple typo has not been corrected in the summary.
What are the editors doing ?
Who cares about scientists and teachers ?
Let's train a generation of lawyers !
And the documentation about the new opcode is probably this one:
http://cbid.softnology.biz/html/undocmsrs.html
The best average time for the human solvers is 8.52 seconds (with 5 consecutive cubes), and the best time for a single cube is 7.08 seconds:
http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/regions.php
Single 7.08 Erik Akkersdijk Netherlands Czech Open 2008
Average 8.52 Feliks Zemdegs Australia New Zealand Champs 2010
Getting 12.5 seconds from a single solve is not what I can call a benchmark.
However, there is a larger progress' margin for computers than for humans.
You have a strange taste for friends.
Most cons work because they prey on the victim's own greed or baser emotions.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
I just had a water leak, and have been conned by a plumber (it cost me $100 more), as you'll be if you ever need a plumber.