Not useless at all, just have it solve the same problem 5 or 15 times and go with the answer that it gives most often.
That's TOTALLY moronic. That's like saying "get 5 or 15 people to guess your birthday and go with the answer that it gives most often."
That would actually be quite impressive, I don't know of a computer that can guess a random value, such as a birthday, with 79% accuracy. And everything else in your post, though I've heard most of it before, just makes me feel sad for the condition of the USA.
A download sale(to somebody who then resold a large number of copies) for ~6USD.
More surprisingly, no mention of people pirating the download. That would be some sort of irony.
Though, I have to say, restrictions on private copies is a whole lot of bull. iTunes gives you five computers, and if you forget to de-authorize a computer before reformatting (can't because of a crash) then you quickly hit that limit on your own personal computers and get stuck with the once a year de-authorize all computers. And now with HDCP you get even more hoops when trying to store media onto a format that the creators don't approve of (your hard drive).
My best bet would be facilitating in copyright infringement (though I have zero knowledge of japanese law of any form). The fact that he didn't make the software really doesn't seem relevant. There's nothing inherently illegal about creating that software as long as it doesn't get out. I could tinker around making all sorts of software (well, if I knew how to code) that when used would be illegal just to see if I was capable of making the code without any repercussions.
In a probably flawed analogy, simply because you didn't cook the coke doesn't mean you won't get arrested for selling it.
not a valid survey, nor can you extrapolate from 1000 postcards to 40,000,000 people.
Actually, you very well may be able to extrapolate at 1:40,000. Now, a postcard survey probably doesn't provide the best method of getting solid, unbiased results, but if a survey is run correctly you can extrapolate up.
Failing fast? Keep in mind that this isn't affecting readers yet, just growth
It does effect readers. It makes Wikipedia less useful for anything that might have a political aspect, which means that I think about using Wiki much less generally than I might.
Wikipedia is nice for looking up pop culture and getting general ideas on certain topics but it is no way a place I look to for definitive answers on anything, especially politics. Wikipedia is a nice toy, and maybe it can grow to become a nice tool, but at the current moment there is no indication of that.
And what happens when the bullying is unintended. Say I'm posting on/. and call someone an jackass for some comment they made. The majority of people on this site are old enough to be able to handle being called a jackass every so often. But what if by chance it's a little child? Am I at fault because I made the assumption that the person I was commenting on was an adult when they were actually a child? I don't want to be dealing with the police for some off the cuff comment on a site that is not necessarily intended for children.
And before anyone starts posting about how they aren't an adult but they visit/. Let me put it this way, you're joining the adults and you have to be able to deal with it. If you can't then go back to facebook.
Up to a point. if you maintained a 2000 Ford Taurus to be at the exact condition it was when you bought it new it'd be worth far more than the price you paid for it a long time down the road, simply due to historical value.
And I would contend that XP is not at the point where it has historical value. Much like a 2000 ford taurus is not a vintage car and would not be that valuable. If it was a 1960s mustang in mint condition that's something else, but XP is not that.
Flawed analogy. And a very different issue. Your vehicle physically wears out, even just sitting there. Rubber gets brittle, hoses and belts crack, rust appears on all exposed metal parts. Normal use wears bearings, shafts, gears, cylinders, valves. Thus its value declines physically. Software is not like that at all. In fact, ASUS just sticks a sticker on and loads the software from a master. It's not like they take back your windows license and resell it as a "pre-owned" license. Rather they give you your $6 and then turn around and put a nice new version on a new computer and charge the full $45.
I'm sorry, but software does lose value over time. The value of Photoshop 2.0 is not equal to the value of photoshop CS3. Photoshop 2.0 isn't even worth it's original MSRP because more advanced packages have been developed. Going back to car analogies, if I maintain a 2000 Ford taurus to be at the exact condition it was when I bought it new it still won't be worth the price I paid for it back in 2000. Newer technology makes older technology less valuable.
Now the question is, do you trust your local cashier to be able to do that as speedily and accurately as a computer. There's no reason not to speed up the process. If people don't take the time to maintain their mathematical ability that's their own fault.
And yeah, you can use it as a watch, but any fashionable man knows that a watch is how a guy shows off. It's the only acceptable piece of jewelry for the well dressed man.
Camera phones won't be as good as point and shoot phones until they start implementing multi stage lenses like every other camera does. But doing that increases complexity, increases failure points from dropping and hurts battery life.
Not to mention the fact that a watch battery lasts years, unlike the 1 week max the phone battery lasts.
A lot of people have made this point. All I want to know is, why do you have a cell phone if its battery only lasts a week. Sure, in a survival situation having the wristwatch allows you to tell time for a longer period of time but then again, do you really need to tell time in a survival situation. If you have the phone you have the phone, doesn't matter what the charging time is (unless you find yourself with a dead cell phone very often, then you should work on your planning).
4. Does your cell phone fit conveniently on your wrist like a watch? Or would you have to duct-tape it?
No, but it fits nicely in my pocket. Maybe I don't find having something on my wrist convenient.
5. Is your cell phone as light as a watch?
Have you ever held a quality wristwatch. Those bad boys weigh a ton. My phone probably weighs half as much as my friends watch.
7. My watch doesn't have "dead zones" where it stops telling time. Does your cell phone have dead zones where you can't make calls?
I don't know if I've ever owned a cell phone that couldn't keep it's own time. They use cell towers to update when I get out of airplane flights but they still keep track of time without a connection.
8. I don't have to worry about my watch interrupting an important meeting with an embarrassing ring-tone.
Nor do I with my phone. It's called silent mode. I know of plenty of people who's watches have tripped their alarms in the middle of meetings. It's all about the user not the tool.
12. It's legal to look at my watch while driving.
Why look at your watch when you're dash has a clock.
free perks, and a $400 raise in tuition is nothing. We could care less. $400 covers all the free bus fare I've done for the year easy, and the new RFID ID cards. $400 could cover all of the free events I've gotten into.
You realize those perks were already covered in your tuition. If the city decides the university has to pay more for those services than so be it, but it's not as free as you think. The university pays a chunk of money to the city for students to use those services (and if they don't, damn they had some good negotiators when going to the city for that service).
Parent didn't say anything about all smells indicating danger. Some smells are indication that your steak is ready to eat, others indicate that your Chlorine container is open and you'd better do something about it before you suffocate.
OSHA might allow that but it doesn't allow it for all jobs. If I work a job in an office building at a computer all day OSHA won't allow asbestos or chemical vapors in the work place. If I work at a chemical labs department then the rules will be different because the hazard is a direct aspect of the job, it can't be avoided (though there are rules regarding safety guidelines).
Sonic has, is and always will be a mans (or womans) game. Despite the fact that it's nearly 20 years old it's still one of the most fun games I've ever played.
Don't forget 24 with it's magical triangulation, databases of everybody and all those other useful technological advances (that most of the audience believes are 100% real).
My misgivings about Heroes aside (come on, either going in the past affects the future or it doesn't, you can't have it both ways), the last episode with Peter becoming exhausted from healing people feeds into your idea of energy consumed. As far as everything else, the show has thrown out physics from the very beginning, but if it's ruining your enjoyment of the show just assume that Sylar has the ability to make that recoil energy occur in the deep far off regions of space on tiny dust particles.
Just last week we read a story about a guy who was fired *on mere suspicion* of downloading child porn (and later proved to be innocent). That's just not right.
I don't have any of the facts behind this story but if the employee was fired for suspicion of child pornography without any evidence then it is not right and he can sue his company for wrongful dismissal (albeit if he can afford a good enough lawyer). That's akin to being fired for sexual harassment because someone accused you of it even though you hadn't done anything.
I wouldn't focus too much on the number involved -- the principle is that everyone has their price.
And that magic price is Google. As others have stated, Google dominates the market in a way that there is no amount of money that anyone can afford to give up to convince people to blacklist themselves from Google. If Microsoft offered their entire net worth they might be able to get some of the lower companies in the top 1000. But I don't see anyone near the top taking any amount of money to ditch google.
Slashdot Mirror
That's TOTALLY moronic. That's like saying "get 5 or 15 people to guess your birthday and go with the answer that it gives most often."
That would actually be quite impressive, I don't know of a computer that can guess a random value, such as a birthday, with 79% accuracy. And everything else in your post, though I've heard most of it before, just makes me feel sad for the condition of the USA.
A download sale(to somebody who then resold a large number of copies) for ~6USD.
More surprisingly, no mention of people pirating the download. That would be some sort of irony.
Though, I have to say, restrictions on private copies is a whole lot of bull. iTunes gives you five computers, and if you forget to de-authorize a computer before reformatting (can't because of a crash) then you quickly hit that limit on your own personal computers and get stuck with the once a year de-authorize all computers. And now with HDCP you get even more hoops when trying to store media onto a format that the creators don't approve of (your hard drive).
My best bet would be facilitating in copyright infringement (though I have zero knowledge of japanese law of any form). The fact that he didn't make the software really doesn't seem relevant. There's nothing inherently illegal about creating that software as long as it doesn't get out. I could tinker around making all sorts of software (well, if I knew how to code) that when used would be illegal just to see if I was capable of making the code without any repercussions.
In a probably flawed analogy, simply because you didn't cook the coke doesn't mean you won't get arrested for selling it.
not a valid survey, nor can you extrapolate from 1000 postcards to 40,000,000 people.
Actually, you very well may be able to extrapolate at 1:40,000. Now, a postcard survey probably doesn't provide the best method of getting solid, unbiased results, but if a survey is run correctly you can extrapolate up.
Failing fast? Keep in mind that this isn't affecting readers yet, just growth
It does effect readers. It makes Wikipedia less useful for anything that might have a political aspect, which means that I think about using Wiki much less generally than I might.
Wikipedia is nice for looking up pop culture and getting general ideas on certain topics but it is no way a place I look to for definitive answers on anything, especially politics. Wikipedia is a nice toy, and maybe it can grow to become a nice tool, but at the current moment there is no indication of that.
And what happens when the bullying is unintended. Say I'm posting on /. and call someone an jackass for some comment they made. The majority of people on this site are old enough to be able to handle being called a jackass every so often. But what if by chance it's a little child? Am I at fault because I made the assumption that the person I was commenting on was an adult when they were actually a child? I don't want to be dealing with the police for some off the cuff comment on a site that is not necessarily intended for children.
And before anyone starts posting about how they aren't an adult but they visit /. Let me put it this way, you're joining the adults and you have to be able to deal with it. If you can't then go back to facebook.
What would be the motivator for such a malicious act?
What, you haven't heard? The internet is full of assholes.
Up to a point. if you maintained a 2000 Ford Taurus to be at the exact condition it was when you bought it new it'd be worth far more than the price you paid for it a long time down the road, simply due to historical value.
And I would contend that XP is not at the point where it has historical value. Much like a 2000 ford taurus is not a vintage car and would not be that valuable. If it was a 1960s mustang in mint condition that's something else, but XP is not that.
Flawed analogy. And a very different issue. Your vehicle physically wears out, even just sitting there. Rubber gets brittle, hoses and belts crack, rust appears on all exposed metal parts. Normal use wears bearings, shafts, gears, cylinders, valves. Thus its value declines physically. Software is not like that at all. In fact, ASUS just sticks a sticker on and loads the software from a master. It's not like they take back your windows license and resell it as a "pre-owned" license. Rather they give you your $6 and then turn around and put a nice new version on a new computer and charge the full $45.
I'm sorry, but software does lose value over time. The value of Photoshop 2.0 is not equal to the value of photoshop CS3. Photoshop 2.0 isn't even worth it's original MSRP because more advanced packages have been developed. Going back to car analogies, if I maintain a 2000 Ford taurus to be at the exact condition it was when I bought it new it still won't be worth the price I paid for it back in 2000. Newer technology makes older technology less valuable.
$2.85
Now the question is, do you trust your local cashier to be able to do that as speedily and accurately as a computer. There's no reason not to speed up the process. If people don't take the time to maintain their mathematical ability that's their own fault.
And yeah, you can use it as a watch, but any fashionable man knows that a watch is how a guy shows off. It's the only acceptable piece of jewelry for the well dressed man.
What happened to class rings? Or wedding rings?
Camera phones won't be as good as point and shoot phones until they start implementing multi stage lenses like every other camera does. But doing that increases complexity, increases failure points from dropping and hurts battery life.
Not to mention the fact that a watch battery lasts years, unlike the 1 week max the phone battery lasts.
A lot of people have made this point. All I want to know is, why do you have a cell phone if its battery only lasts a week. Sure, in a survival situation having the wristwatch allows you to tell time for a longer period of time but then again, do you really need to tell time in a survival situation. If you have the phone you have the phone, doesn't matter what the charging time is (unless you find yourself with a dead cell phone very often, then you should work on your planning).
Notice how Saskatchewan is not in the continental US.
4. Does your cell phone fit conveniently on your wrist like a watch? Or would you have to duct-tape it?
No, but it fits nicely in my pocket. Maybe I don't find having something on my wrist convenient.
5. Is your cell phone as light as a watch?
Have you ever held a quality wristwatch. Those bad boys weigh a ton. My phone probably weighs half as much as my friends watch.
7. My watch doesn't have "dead zones" where it stops telling time. Does your cell phone have dead zones where you can't make calls?
I don't know if I've ever owned a cell phone that couldn't keep it's own time. They use cell towers to update when I get out of airplane flights but they still keep track of time without a connection.
8. I don't have to worry about my watch interrupting an important meeting with an embarrassing ring-tone.
Nor do I with my phone. It's called silent mode. I know of plenty of people who's watches have tripped their alarms in the middle of meetings. It's all about the user not the tool.
12. It's legal to look at my watch while driving.
Why look at your watch when you're dash has a clock.
free perks, and a $400 raise in tuition is nothing. We could care less. $400 covers all the free bus fare I've done for the year easy, and the new RFID ID cards. $400 could cover all of the free events I've gotten into.
You realize those perks were already covered in your tuition. If the city decides the university has to pay more for those services than so be it, but it's not as free as you think. The university pays a chunk of money to the city for students to use those services (and if they don't, damn they had some good negotiators when going to the city for that service).
Parent didn't say anything about all smells indicating danger. Some smells are indication that your steak is ready to eat, others indicate that your Chlorine container is open and you'd better do something about it before you suffocate.
OSHA might allow that but it doesn't allow it for all jobs. If I work a job in an office building at a computer all day OSHA won't allow asbestos or chemical vapors in the work place. If I work at a chemical labs department then the rules will be different because the hazard is a direct aspect of the job, it can't be avoided (though there are rules regarding safety guidelines).
"toys for children" (Sonic, Mario)
Sonic has, is and always will be a mans (or womans) game. Despite the fact that it's nearly 20 years old it's still one of the most fun games I've ever played.
try Al Gore Warming department.
Don't forget 24 with it's magical triangulation, databases of everybody and all those other useful technological advances (that most of the audience believes are 100% real).
I predict that in a week from now, there will be a Slashdot article predicting the death of PC gaming. :-)
And we'll all be around to mod that bad boy Dupe.
My misgivings about Heroes aside (come on, either going in the past affects the future or it doesn't, you can't have it both ways), the last episode with Peter becoming exhausted from healing people feeds into your idea of energy consumed. As far as everything else, the show has thrown out physics from the very beginning, but if it's ruining your enjoyment of the show just assume that Sylar has the ability to make that recoil energy occur in the deep far off regions of space on tiny dust particles.
Just last week we read a story about a guy who was fired *on mere suspicion* of downloading child porn (and later proved to be innocent). That's just not right.
I don't have any of the facts behind this story but if the employee was fired for suspicion of child pornography without any evidence then it is not right and he can sue his company for wrongful dismissal (albeit if he can afford a good enough lawyer). That's akin to being fired for sexual harassment because someone accused you of it even though you hadn't done anything.
I wouldn't focus too much on the number involved -- the principle is that everyone has their price.
And that magic price is Google. As others have stated, Google dominates the market in a way that there is no amount of money that anyone can afford to give up to convince people to blacklist themselves from Google. If Microsoft offered their entire net worth they might be able to get some of the lower companies in the top 1000. But I don't see anyone near the top taking any amount of money to ditch google.