The Borders brick and mortar bookstore chain is dead, 10000s of people lost their jobs, and I am out of a favourite place to explore books. All this occurred because customers flock to Amazon like buzzards to a carcass so they can buy merchandise without having to pay tax (outside of WA).
Level the playing field. Make Amazon enforce a sales tax just like every other company. Yes, I know buyers are supposed to pay an Internet use tax, but the reality does not match the theory.
And there is nothing wrong with paying taxes. It buys civilization. I pay $40K in taxes out of my salary each year. Do your fair share.
Am I a hipster? I'm in my 30s making a 6-figure salary. I probably pay more in taxes than you make in salary. I would love to have a camera like this, as it reminds me of the 1970s when I was a young lad. That camera will complement my DSLR with $10K worth of lenses. Again: am I a hipster, or are you just an idiot? Probably the latter.
The UK is basically an amusement park for American tourists to visit. "Look, mommy, more funny teeth!" If you have a CS degree there, why don't you move to a real country?
As J. Gruber of Daring Fireball points out, Google doesn't do open source as we would expect. An internal Google memo on Android development clearly states their policy:
Do not develop in the open. Instead, make source code available after innovation is complete
Lead device concept: Give early access to the software to partners who build and distribute devices to our specification (ie [sic], Motorola and Verizon). They get a non-contractual time to market advantage and in return they align to our standard.
This is not how open source is supposed to work. Open source doesn't mean "closed until we decide to make it open". Open source doesn't mean "closed until we and our partners can profit."
When I was an undergraduate engineering student, I learned relativity from my university's physics department as part of a lower-division series of classes. A typical series looks like this:
Physics 1: classifical physics (newtonian laws)
Physics 2: thermodynamics, fluids, optics
Physics 3: electromagnetics
Physics 4: general relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic physics
Now, as for the math classes, you would usually take many previous math classes (or concurrently) as part of the physics prerequisites. These classes would include three in calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, and vector analysis. I believe this is fairly typical for U.S. college engineering programs.
The Acer CEO is a dimwit who's talking smack because there's nothing else he can do to stem the tide of abject failure coming out of his factories. He is basically berating the customers for buying "hot" tablets, particularly the iPad, instead of buying the tried-and-true plastic Wintel units that Acer vomits up. His company bet big on low-margin netbooks and lost, and now he's betting on Intel "ultrabooks".
HP just bailed out of the entire PC business (echoing IBM's decision in 2004), and among the reasons was that the tablet effect is real.
The Acer CEO's effort is better focused on coming up with better products, not whining.
I really don't see what the problem is. Algorithms are all around controlling everything we do. Like any technology, it is how they are used by humans that determine if their use is good or bad.
Look at the list of the greatest algorithms in history, as selected by SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Math) in 2000. Our lives would be completely different and worse without them.
Monte Carlo method
Linear programming solutions via the Simplex method
Krylov subspace iteration methods
Decomposition approach to matrix computations
Compiler optimization for FORTRAN
QR algorithm for computing eigenvalues
Quicksort
FFT
Integer relation detection
Fast multipole
Since this paper was written in 2000, I would guess that the Google founders' PageRank should be included in there as well.
I definitely would not want to fly with any airline that uses Android tablets.
If the airline uses Android tablets, that means the airline is not doing well financially, which means they're probably cutting back on safety and comfort as well.
Android's excessive fragmentation and malware means that the Android tablets may be crippled, causing the pilots to crash the plane.
Uh, no. Apple is the ONLY U.S. consumer computer company to make a significant profit. The Windows PC business is dominated by high-volume, low-margin commodity products. That is exactly why IBM and now HP bailed out.
This move by HP reminds me exactly of IBM's move to sell of their consumer computing line to Lenovo back in 2005. At the time the CEO made the prescient observation that the consumer hardware business is a low-margin, low-profit business, and indeed for IBM, they've made much more money operating as a software and services outfit (aside from their mainframe line and supercomputing hardware).
So this leaves Apple and Dell as the only large computer-hardware companies in the USA.
Wrong, asshole. That 80% percentage of "whites" includes hispanics. If you read more closely, and I'm pretty sure you can't, you will see that "As of 2006, California has the largest minority population in the United States, though whites make up 57% of the state population. Non-Hispanic whites decreased from about 92% of the state's population in 1960 to 43% in 2006."
There is only two handheld devices that educated, affluent people should care about, and those are the iPhone and the iPad. To get information on those, visit Macrumors.com.
On the other hand, if you are one of the following, you can get an Android, Windows Phone, or Symbian devices:
uneducated
not affluent
unwashed
wearing a ponytail
under 21
writing a manifesto about being fed up being among the dregs of society
The important folks that will be making the choice are the developers. Engineering time and money resources are finite, even for the biggest companies. When it comes time to choose between developing a game for a mobile phone vs. a game for a console, there will come a time -- not too far from now -- when the choice will be the phone.
We live in a post-9/11 world. We have to forfeit some of our rights in order to fight the terrorists. If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear. Think of the children.
Android users are basically unemployed pony-tailed degenerates who've made a series of bad decisions in their lives, thus ending up with an Android phone. Undoubtedly these users would end up stealing Android software through "jailbreaking" methods, so the developers in this story would have ended up with $0 anyways.
Step 1. Buy an iPhone instead of a fragmented Android phone.
Step 2. Profit, because time is money*, and you don't have to deal with extreme Android fragmentation.
* This assumes that you have a job and aren't a ponytailed neckbeard freak living in a basement.
Maybe you missed the part where I wrote that I have a Ph.D.? Intelligent people use Apple gear. If you don't have an iPad, then that says more about you and where you stand in society than anything else.
As a CS PhD myself, I also feel the need to keep up with the general sciences. My favourite sources of science news are two magazines: MIT Technology Review and the technology section of The Economist. Both are extremely well-written and distill recent cutting-edge science down into laymen's terms. Both have great websites and great iPad applications. The Economist additionally has a Technology Quarterly issue once every 3 months (duh) that should definitely not be missed.
For Computer Science-related technology articles from research labs and academia that's written for laymen, IEEE Computer Society's Computer magazine and the ACM's Communications of the ACM are great.
If you want something a bit more dumbified, then Wired magazine is very good. I've been subscribing for over 10 years and just recently switched over to an iPad subscription.
Who honestly cares what other countries do? The only country that matters is the USA. Look at Nokia: they finally got their heads out of their asses and found that out, but it's already too late.
Slashdot Mirror
The Borders brick and mortar bookstore chain is dead, 10000s of people lost their jobs, and I am out of a favourite place to explore books. All this occurred because customers flock to Amazon like buzzards to a carcass so they can buy merchandise without having to pay tax (outside of WA).
Level the playing field. Make Amazon enforce a sales tax just like every other company. Yes, I know buyers are supposed to pay an Internet use tax, but the reality does not match the theory.
And there is nothing wrong with paying taxes. It buys civilization. I pay $40K in taxes out of my salary each year. Do your fair share.
Am I a hipster? I'm in my 30s making a 6-figure salary. I probably pay more in taxes than you make in salary. I would love to have a camera like this, as it reminds me of the 1970s when I was a young lad. That camera will complement my DSLR with $10K worth of lenses. Again: am I a hipster, or are you just an idiot? Probably the latter.
The UK is basically an amusement park for American tourists to visit. "Look, mommy, more funny teeth!" If you have a CS degree there, why don't you move to a real country?
As J. Gruber of Daring Fireball points out, Google doesn't do open source as we would expect. An internal Google memo on Android development clearly states their policy:
This is not how open source is supposed to work. Open source doesn't mean "closed until we decide to make it open". Open source doesn't mean "closed until we and our partners can profit."
When I was an undergraduate engineering student, I learned relativity from my university's physics department as part of a lower-division series of classes. A typical series looks like this:
Now, as for the math classes, you would usually take many previous math classes (or concurrently) as part of the physics prerequisites. These classes would include three in calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, and vector analysis. I believe this is fairly typical for U.S. college engineering programs.
In its most recent quarter, Acer lost $234 million. Acer has no competitive tablet offering among the dozens of competing Android tablets. And of course the iPad is selling like mad with an expectation of 22 million units sold during the upcoming holiday quarter.
The Acer CEO is a dimwit who's talking smack because there's nothing else he can do to stem the tide of abject failure coming out of his factories. He is basically berating the customers for buying "hot" tablets, particularly the iPad, instead of buying the tried-and-true plastic Wintel units that Acer vomits up. His company bet big on low-margin netbooks and lost, and now he's betting on Intel "ultrabooks".
HP just bailed out of the entire PC business (echoing IBM's decision in 2004), and among the reasons was that the tablet effect is real.
The Acer CEO's effort is better focused on coming up with better products, not whining.
I really don't see what the problem is. Algorithms are all around controlling everything we do. Like any technology, it is how they are used by humans that determine if their use is good or bad.
Look at the list of the greatest algorithms in history, as selected by SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Math) in 2000. Our lives would be completely different and worse without them.
Since this paper was written in 2000, I would guess that the Google founders' PageRank should be included in there as well.
I definitely would not want to fly with any airline that uses Android tablets.
Say NO to mediocrity. Say NO to Android.
Good job, Google.
It's clear why consumers continue to flock to real companies like Microsoft.
Say NO to inferior products. Say NO to Google.
Uh, no. Apple is the ONLY U.S. consumer computer company to make a significant profit. The Windows PC business is dominated by high-volume, low-margin commodity products. That is exactly why IBM and now HP bailed out.
Why would you want to load an even worse OS than WebOS?
This move by HP reminds me exactly of IBM's move to sell of their consumer computing line to Lenovo back in 2005. At the time the CEO made the prescient observation that the consumer hardware business is a low-margin, low-profit business, and indeed for IBM, they've made much more money operating as a software and services outfit (aside from their mainframe line and supercomputing hardware).
So this leaves Apple and Dell as the only large computer-hardware companies in the USA.
Wrong, asshole. That 80% percentage of "whites" includes hispanics. If you read more closely, and I'm pretty sure you can't, you will see that "As of 2006, California has the largest minority population in the United States, though whites make up 57% of the state population. Non-Hispanic whites decreased from about 92% of the state's population in 1960 to 43% in 2006."
Good catch. I started off writing "There is only one..." but then too quickly decided to change it to "There are only two..." without fixing the verb.
There is only two handheld devices that educated, affluent people should care about, and those are the iPhone and the iPad. To get information on those, visit Macrumors.com.
On the other hand, if you are one of the following, you can get an Android, Windows Phone, or Symbian devices:
800 yuan or £76
Can one of you foreigners please convert that into real currency?
The important folks that will be making the choice are the developers. Engineering time and money resources are finite, even for the biggest companies. When it comes time to choose between developing a game for a mobile phone vs. a game for a console, there will come a time -- not too far from now -- when the choice will be the phone.
Being a fan of Apple is like being a fan of pure winning.
We live in a post-9/11 world. We have to forfeit some of our rights in order to fight the terrorists. If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear. Think of the children.
Vote Palin 2012.
Android users are basically unemployed pony-tailed degenerates who've made a series of bad decisions in their lives, thus ending up with an Android phone. Undoubtedly these users would end up stealing Android software through "jailbreaking" methods, so the developers in this story would have ended up with $0 anyways.
Step 1. Buy an iPhone instead of a fragmented Android phone.
Step 2. Profit, because time is money*, and you don't have to deal with extreme Android fragmentation.
* This assumes that you have a job and aren't a ponytailed neckbeard freak living in a basement.
Maybe you missed the part where I wrote that I have a Ph.D.? Intelligent people use Apple gear. If you don't have an iPad, then that says more about you and where you stand in society than anything else.
As a CS PhD myself, I also feel the need to keep up with the general sciences. My favourite sources of science news are two magazines: MIT Technology Review and the technology section of The Economist. Both are extremely well-written and distill recent cutting-edge science down into laymen's terms. Both have great websites and great iPad applications. The Economist additionally has a Technology Quarterly issue once every 3 months (duh) that should definitely not be missed.
For Computer Science-related technology articles from research labs and academia that's written for laymen, IEEE Computer Society's Computer magazine and the ACM's Communications of the ACM are great.
If you want something a bit more dumbified, then Wired magazine is very good. I've been subscribing for over 10 years and just recently switched over to an iPad subscription.
You seriously need to keep more up-to-date with technology news even if it takes away from your daily anime porn site viewing.
Who honestly cares what other countries do? The only country that matters is the USA. Look at Nokia: they finally got their heads out of their asses and found that out, but it's already too late.