Someone I know even believes that removing the catalytic converters on modern cars will reduce exhaust particles since they will run more efficient and thus output less particles in the first place. Can anyone confirm or deny this in a credible fashion?
My first thought was that the system was somehow set to only allow a certain maximum change in payrolls. This might mean that they can only reduce the pay by a certain amount each month, or something like that. Such a system would likely be set up that way to prevent exactly what the Governor wants to do, possibly for social security purposes or similar.
The only thing I don't understand is why such a system would be setup in the US. In Europe and especially denmark (where I live) I could understand this, because we care a lot about welfare, but not in the US.
You apparently read neither my post, nor even your own.
I find that remark to be offensive and unnecessary. Furthermore, take a look at this:
I was never happy that nVidia got into the chipset business in the first place. If any company has a talent to specialize and do one thing really really well (in a competitive environment), then that is what they should continue to concetrate on.
and this:
That doesn't mean launching a new product line is bad, or that nVidia was wrong to get into the chipset business. Heck, I'm glad they did.
In my book you just completely and utterly pwned yourself, thank you.
Anyway, I forgot to point out in my previous post that your example of your own companies experience does not necessarily hold for other companies. Just because your company was unable to expand without affecting existing business, does not make this true for all other companies.
And yes, I admit that there may be some short term effects in expanding to a different sector, but depending on how the company manages it, it can have minimal impact on the existing product development. For example, assume Nvidia simply bought an existing chipset company. Certainly, there would still need to be some cross-communication to make it work together well, but the number of people you would have to pull from the GPU development (semi-permanently) would be minimal.
Let me reiterate: Yes there will be some impact, but it will a) possibly be rather small, and b) be only short term. Your original quote up there sounds to me like "Oh no, they are expanding, their GPUs are gonna suck/get worse from now on", which I frankly find completely unwarranted.
Been there, done that, know what I'm talking about. You haven't, and don't.
And you would know that because? Perhaps I am withholding personal experiences because I, unlike you, know that singular examples neither prove nor disprove anything.
Well, I live in denmark, which believe is supposed to be one of those wonderful public transportation countries. I've also tried the system in germany, which is more or less equally bad. Let me tell you: The first thing I did after finishing uni and getting a job was to buy a damn car. Public transportation sucks major ass balls here. Trains and busses are always late, it's expensive, it's crowded, and it's just such a enormous hazzle. With my own car I can go where I want, when I want, and I need not worry about being late or anything.
Theres also a nice german website for "hitchhiking" when you need to go far places. You make an entry where you are planning to go and when, and then people can sign up and pay for being taken with you. (mitfahrgelegenheit.de)
The only thing I regret is buying a stupid used car that breaks down all the time. But otherwise the quality of life with a car is just so much higher, even here in the civilized public transportation part of the world.
I'm sorry, but absolutely nothing in your post proves my point to be wrong. At most you are saying that your own project lost a few people to the other project. And yes, the same is probably true for nvidia. But you admit it was a good idea to do for your company, and you admit development on the "primary" product is still going strong.
A company is not a single person that can only concentrate on exactly one thing. It is just unlikely that nvidias chipset department will have or has had a (noticable) negative impact on GPU development. I will admit that there are indeed possibilities for a company to screw up when they expand into a different market sector, but postulating that this is bound to happen from the very beginning is foolish I think.
Nvidia as a company does not consist of a single person. If Nvidia hires 50 new engineers to start working on chipsets, instead of GPUs, how would that affect their GPU development at all?
Certainly, there will be some level of cooperation between the two departments in order to ensure it works well together, but it doesn't suddenly make the GPU engineers less competent than before.
Assuming that the chipset business is able to cover for it's own cost, the only likely effect would be positive, as Nvidia could more easily ensure that the chipset and the GPU work well together. How you can construe something like this to become negative is simply beyound me.
Companies expand into different market sectors all the time. And developing chipset is after all not too far a cry from developing GPUs.
I agree with the first part of your argument, but not the second. I believe that if these indians want to live separated, let them. If they don't like it, I suppose they can cross the border and become real US citizens, can't they? (I am actually not sure about this, so please correct me if I am wrong).
As it is, I think every Indian should have the choice to live with only "his own kind" or become part of the US.
No one gets government handouts due to the particulars of their parentage.
I am so getting burned for this, but I am afraid you are mistaken. Germany is still paying reparations to a certain group of people because of what happened over 60 years ago.
I do not want to get into an argument about morals or history here, just pointing out that your statement is not correct.
While your post may indicate that Cuil has not improved enough to be really usable just yet, a fact I am not disputing, it somewhat misses the point.
The point with my and the parents post is that the service is improving at all. If it continues to improve it may well become useful and create some competition. I hope it does.
Google is far from perfect as well. Most searches return fine results, but some topics are so completely spammed with bogus websites its impossible to find anything legit (e.g. game walkthroughs for obscure/old games).
When I tried out cuil the first time (first slashdot post) it had lots of problems finding just about anything. But I just tried again today and got pretty much all the results I wanted. Not all of them in the top spot, but the results have improved quite a bit.
If they keep improving Cuil may well become better than google (in terms of relevant results). Right now it's so-so, but that doesn't mean you should completely dismiss it.
I for one am looking forward to seing some real competition and new features. I wish them the best of luck.
If you control your own OpenID provider and have control over the information that is sent, I'm guessing you could also set it up to sent information on various aliases that you have set up, right?
If I understand this right, the only thing the other site can verify is that you are the same identity that logged in last time, but what your personal information really is, they won't know. But this will also mean that certain sites will never accept your own provider, they want something "secure" which they can trust.
This will make it very difficult/useless to run your own provider, won't it? Too bad really.
You are not being very reasonable here. The both of use were just sharing our experiences (or in my case it is "just hearsay"). Nobody was saying that every Indian fits this scheme or that it makes them useless or bad people.
Nor did anyone suggest that it is an (genetic) inherent Indian trait, it could be based on a lot of factors. It appears to me that you are just looking for someone that you can denounce as a racist. Even if you never used that word yourself, your intent was pretty clear.
I think to say that nobody is inherently superior is wrong to say. People do have different skills. But I suppose what you meant to say is that it is wrong to generalize across entire countries/ethnicies/populations. I just would prefer it if people were more precise with their meaning, it would avoid a lot of unnecessary discussion.
Personally I do not have any experience working with Indians. But from what I have been told by several friends who do work with them on a regular basis, it does appear that they are somehow less capable of or trained in thinking for themselves and creativity, requiring exact instructions. Whether this is true on a larger scale however, I cannot say.
I would love to rely on open platforms instead of closed ones. The problem is, they don't exist. Except for the PC and probably some very few mobile/other devices there are no open hardware platforms that I can chose over a closed platform, especially with consoles.
So obviously I'll take the next best closed platform and hack it. I have no choice, because these companies won't give me a choice.
The only way to make companies sell open platforms is to complain loudly and hack the current systems in order to show them that we want open platforms, or at least viable open alternatives. Just not doing anything is not going to achieve anything.
While I agree that in principle I cannot really demand that nintendo support hacked consoles, I believe you are looking at from the wrong perspective. If nintendo wants my business, they had damn better meet my expectations.
The only way to change the status quo, which in this case is a ridiculously restricted console, is to complain loudly. That's how capitalism is supposed to work - not by quietly accepting anything that nintendo is prepared to give you and being grateful if they don't destroy your purchased euqipment.
Customers should not be afraid of the companies, it's the other way around.
There's a certain segment of the population that just likes things to be simple. They don't understand the world, and they don't want to. They rely on the President or Bill O'Reilly, or hell, even Susan Sarandon to tell them what's right. If the leadership tells them something simple like "we gotta get them terrorists" they'll defend that forever. Questioning that would be going down the path of trying to understand something they don't want to.
Everyone does that to SOME degree with some topic. If my mechanic started talking about how bad Chevy transmissions are compared to Ford transmissions, and how Chevy was a rotten company for making bad transmissions, my eyes would glaze over, especially if I heard all the time how great Chevy transmissions are from my friends, family, etc. Obviously I think international politics are more important than transmissions... but my point is there's a certain amount of willful disengagement with the populace.
I think you are completely right. I wonder though, why do we allow such people to vote? Voting is a big responsibility, and voting without having done any research of any kind as to what effects their vote will have should be forbidden.
Of course, setting up a procedure to determine who should be allowed to vote has obvious problems of its own. But simply allowing any redneck to vote without any consideration to the welfare of the nation as well as other nations cannot be the solution, can it?
Admittedly there is not too much diversity in portal, and neither the textures nor the models or perhaps even the soundtrack are (specially notable) pieces of art in themselves. But as TFA points out, just because the individual letters and words in a novel are nothing special, this does not mean the novel cannot be a piece of art overall. Portal is a piece of art because all the elements fit together to create an immensely entertaining, engaging and even moving experience. No game has brought me the same intense feeling of joy and wonder in a long long time.
And for all the people who come with lame lines like "portal is no Faulkner" or otherwise cannot be compared with "good" or "classic" literature, you probably have no idea what art is. Art is not art because it is declared to be so by a panel of "experts". Art is something that has some inherent value, i.e. makes you feel or think in a special way. Art moves you.
I have tried to read Shakespeare, the so often used example of... what? The little bit I tried to read (Merchant of Venice or something to that effect) was very childish and I soon gave up. Perhaps if I had continued it would have improved, or perhaps his other works are better. All of that is completely besides the point however: Most people probably never read any Shakespeare, but they just assume that it must be good because someone else tells them it is so. That is not how art works, art works like this: If the "product" in question doesn't make you feel or think strongly or is just beatifull, either it isn't art, or you are different than most humans.
This is why I'll say Portal is art, and the cake is a lie! I'm being so sincere right now!
Slashdot Mirror
Someone I know even believes that removing the catalytic converters on modern cars will reduce exhaust particles since they will run more efficient and thus output less particles in the first place. Can anyone confirm or deny this in a credible fashion?
My first thought was that the system was somehow set to only allow a certain maximum change in payrolls. This might mean that they can only reduce the pay by a certain amount each month, or something like that. Such a system would likely be set up that way to prevent exactly what the Governor wants to do, possibly for social security purposes or similar.
The only thing I don't understand is why such a system would be setup in the US. In Europe and especially denmark (where I live) I could understand this, because we care a lot about welfare, but not in the US.
Whoops - only just noticed that you are not the OP I wrote my first reply to, sorry. Nevertheless, the remaining points remain true.
I find that remark to be offensive and unnecessary. Furthermore, take a look at this:
and this:
In my book you just completely and utterly pwned yourself, thank you.
Anyway, I forgot to point out in my previous post that your example of your own companies experience does not necessarily hold for other companies. Just because your company was unable to expand without affecting existing business, does not make this true for all other companies.
And yes, I admit that there may be some short term effects in expanding to a different sector, but depending on how the company manages it, it can have minimal impact on the existing product development. For example, assume Nvidia simply bought an existing chipset company. Certainly, there would still need to be some cross-communication to make it work together well, but the number of people you would have to pull from the GPU development (semi-permanently) would be minimal.
Let me reiterate: Yes there will be some impact, but it will a) possibly be rather small, and b) be only short term. Your original quote up there sounds to me like "Oh no, they are expanding, their GPUs are gonna suck/get worse from now on", which I frankly find completely unwarranted.
And you would know that because? Perhaps I am withholding personal experiences because I, unlike you, know that singular examples neither prove nor disprove anything.
Well, I live in denmark, which believe is supposed to be one of those wonderful public transportation countries. I've also tried the system in germany, which is more or less equally bad. Let me tell you: The first thing I did after finishing uni and getting a job was to buy a damn car. Public transportation sucks major ass balls here. Trains and busses are always late, it's expensive, it's crowded, and it's just such a enormous hazzle. With my own car I can go where I want, when I want, and I need not worry about being late or anything.
Theres also a nice german website for "hitchhiking" when you need to go far places. You make an entry where you are planning to go and when, and then people can sign up and pay for being taken with you. (mitfahrgelegenheit.de)
The only thing I regret is buying a stupid used car that breaks down all the time. But otherwise the quality of life with a car is just so much higher, even here in the civilized public transportation part of the world.
Thanks man, I can't stop laughing now because I'm imagining this guy introducing himself to someone:
"Hi, my name is Dr Herman Verizon management are cocks."
*puzzled look on the other guys face*
I'm sorry, but absolutely nothing in your post proves my point to be wrong. At most you are saying that your own project lost a few people to the other project. And yes, the same is probably true for nvidia. But you admit it was a good idea to do for your company, and you admit development on the "primary" product is still going strong.
A company is not a single person that can only concentrate on exactly one thing. It is just unlikely that nvidias chipset department will have or has had a (noticable) negative impact on GPU development. I will admit that there are indeed possibilities for a company to screw up when they expand into a different market sector, but postulating that this is bound to happen from the very beginning is foolish I think.
Nvidia as a company does not consist of a single person. If Nvidia hires 50 new engineers to start working on chipsets, instead of GPUs, how would that affect their GPU development at all?
Certainly, there will be some level of cooperation between the two departments in order to ensure it works well together, but it doesn't suddenly make the GPU engineers less competent than before.
Assuming that the chipset business is able to cover for it's own cost, the only likely effect would be positive, as Nvidia could more easily ensure that the chipset and the GPU work well together. How you can construe something like this to become negative is simply beyound me.
Companies expand into different market sectors all the time. And developing chipset is after all not too far a cry from developing GPUs.
I agree with the first part of your argument, but not the second. I believe that if these indians want to live separated, let them. If they don't like it, I suppose they can cross the border and become real US citizens, can't they? (I am actually not sure about this, so please correct me if I am wrong). As it is, I think every Indian should have the choice to live with only "his own kind" or become part of the US.
I am so getting burned for this, but I am afraid you are mistaken. Germany is still paying reparations to a certain group of people because of what happened over 60 years ago.
I do not want to get into an argument about morals or history here, just pointing out that your statement is not correct.
While your post may indicate that Cuil has not improved enough to be really usable just yet, a fact I am not disputing, it somewhat misses the point.
The point with my and the parents post is that the service is improving at all. If it continues to improve it may well become useful and create some competition. I hope it does.
Google is far from perfect as well. Most searches return fine results, but some topics are so completely spammed with bogus websites its impossible to find anything legit (e.g. game walkthroughs for obscure/old games).
When I tried out cuil the first time (first slashdot post) it had lots of problems finding just about anything. But I just tried again today and got pretty much all the results I wanted. Not all of them in the top spot, but the results have improved quite a bit.
If they keep improving Cuil may well become better than google (in terms of relevant results). Right now it's so-so, but that doesn't mean you should completely dismiss it.
I for one am looking forward to seing some real competition and new features. I wish them the best of luck.
If you control your own OpenID provider and have control over the information that is sent, I'm guessing you could also set it up to sent information on various aliases that you have set up, right? If I understand this right, the only thing the other site can verify is that you are the same identity that logged in last time, but what your personal information really is, they won't know. But this will also mean that certain sites will never accept your own provider, they want something "secure" which they can trust. This will make it very difficult/useless to run your own provider, won't it? Too bad really.
You are not being very reasonable here. The both of use were just sharing our experiences (or in my case it is "just hearsay"). Nobody was saying that every Indian fits this scheme or that it makes them useless or bad people.
Nor did anyone suggest that it is an (genetic) inherent Indian trait, it could be based on a lot of factors. It appears to me that you are just looking for someone that you can denounce as a racist. Even if you never used that word yourself, your intent was pretty clear.
I think to say that nobody is inherently superior is wrong to say. People do have different skills. But I suppose what you meant to say is that it is wrong to generalize across entire countries/ethnicies/populations. I just would prefer it if people were more precise with their meaning, it would avoid a lot of unnecessary discussion.
Personally I do not have any experience working with Indians. But from what I have been told by several friends who do work with them on a regular basis, it does appear that they are somehow less capable of or trained in thinking for themselves and creativity, requiring exact instructions. Whether this is true on a larger scale however, I cannot say.
I would love to rely on open platforms instead of closed ones. The problem is, they don't exist. Except for the PC and probably some very few mobile/other devices there are no open hardware platforms that I can chose over a closed platform, especially with consoles.
So obviously I'll take the next best closed platform and hack it. I have no choice, because these companies won't give me a choice.
The only way to make companies sell open platforms is to complain loudly and hack the current systems in order to show them that we want open platforms, or at least viable open alternatives. Just not doing anything is not going to achieve anything.
While I agree that in principle I cannot really demand that nintendo support hacked consoles, I believe you are looking at from the wrong perspective. If nintendo wants my business, they had damn better meet my expectations.
The only way to change the status quo, which in this case is a ridiculously restricted console, is to complain loudly. That's how capitalism is supposed to work - not by quietly accepting anything that nintendo is prepared to give you and being grateful if they don't destroy your purchased euqipment.
Customers should not be afraid of the companies, it's the other way around.
I think you are completely right. I wonder though, why do we allow such people to vote? Voting is a big responsibility, and voting without having done any research of any kind as to what effects their vote will have should be forbidden. Of course, setting up a procedure to determine who should be allowed to vote has obvious problems of its own. But simply allowing any redneck to vote without any consideration to the welfare of the nation as well as other nations cannot be the solution, can it?
Admittedly there is not too much diversity in portal, and neither the textures nor the models or perhaps even the soundtrack are (specially notable) pieces of art in themselves. But as TFA points out, just because the individual letters and words in a novel are nothing special, this does not mean the novel cannot be a piece of art overall. Portal is a piece of art because all the elements fit together to create an immensely entertaining, engaging and even moving experience. No game has brought me the same intense feeling of joy and wonder in a long long time.
And for all the people who come with lame lines like "portal is no Faulkner" or otherwise cannot be compared with "good" or "classic" literature, you probably have no idea what art is. Art is not art because it is declared to be so by a panel of "experts". Art is something that has some inherent value, i.e. makes you feel or think in a special way. Art moves you.
I have tried to read Shakespeare, the so often used example of... what? The little bit I tried to read (Merchant of Venice or something to that effect) was very childish and I soon gave up. Perhaps if I had continued it would have improved, or perhaps his other works are better. All of that is completely besides the point however: Most people probably never read any Shakespeare, but they just assume that it must be good because someone else tells them it is so. That is not how art works, art works like this: If the "product" in question doesn't make you feel or think strongly or is just beatifull, either it isn't art, or you are different than most humans.
This is why I'll say Portal is art, and the cake is a lie! I'm being so sincere right now!