I do not pay these 3% myself, so I do not care too much about it. Also, all these transaction give me back 1% of the transaction. Finally, it allows me to have an automatic log of everything I buy which simplify my (rough) personal acconting. Why should not I use a credit card? There is no downside for me.
If the shops cared about that fee, why do not they offer me a disconut for cash payment? (maybe that's illegal?)
I never understood that idea that giving a tax break to high salary people will stimulate the economy.
Usually the reasonning is that since they will have more money, they will consume more and that will help the economy. If you give a tax break to low income people for the same amount of tax dollars, they will use that money as well. They are not going to set it on fire, they will use it in a grocery store.
I somewhat disaggree that all software patents are bogus. I strongly dislike them, but I can conceive that a very well designed software that combine tools/features/technique to make a system significantly more reliable/fast/cheap could be patented. If there can be half a dozen patents on a tupperware box why not on a software? I am sure many car engine designs are patented, what makes software architectures different?
I find it ridiculous that improvement on car opener or tupperware can be patented, but assuming they can be, I think software is not much different.
I would rather see a significant decrease in the patent duration than a simple cancellation of all software patent. It seems more fair.
(Of course, the inner me would rather there is no patent at all whatsoever. But I do not think it is realistic)
"But how easy is it, under operating systems that come on home PCs sold in retail stores"
I do not use inferior operating systems:) Actually, that would be even easier to implement in windows than in linux becasue you have finer grain ACLs available. It is just a matter of interfacing.
Well, the main problem with his approach is that it is way too strong. Congress will never vote something like that. It would nullify in practice most patent. I do not think they will vote such a thing.
I typically run untrusted applications on my machine under a different user account (firefox is one of them) which can not access anything in from my "real" user account. It is easy to set up!
I know I will be criticized for that, but if you want one, you can write one! It is not hard to make a widget for android. Of course, there might already be an OSS app to do that. Look in the list of fdroid.
After so many terrible "ask slashdot", this one really scares me. There is so much nerdness in that post. I mean arguing about which pen is th ebest to use AND go through the trouble of asking on slashdot. This is really overkill. What scares me is that I thought "mmm, good question".
I went through the patent. I will not claim there is anything of value in there. But they actually describe a full architecture of a system with asynchronous event, bandwidth limitations, dynamic refresh rates, multi device displays. They actually did something, they are not trolling. This is one of the most reasonnable patent I read in a long time.
People manage to find GPGPU useful, they will find how to use 48 cores as well. I have been using prototype of Intel MIC (now Xeon Phi) for a year or so and it is quite promising for stuff GPUs do not do easily (unstructured pointer chasing parallel algorithm. Typically graphs).
It is called Xeon Phi (previously Intel MIC) and it is coming soon. I have been playing with prototypes for a year. On the server it will definitively happen. On the desktop, it depends on the price, but I do not see why not...
SSDs typically have read write sustained bandwidth around 500MB/s. You would need about 4 HDD to catch up with that speed. Moreover RAID is not going to do much about latency which is one of the most important point with SSDs. The power consumption of SSDs is much lower than that of a single HDD. The only good thing about HDDs is their price per GB.
Well, I am not sure about your comment. I think you are trying to put all tablet users in a single bin. But there is more than one bin.
Here, I see people walking around with their ipad under their shoulder. And frequently I hear thing like "sorry, I can not do FOOBAR on my ipad, I'll do that from my office." They use the ipad to take quick notes in a meeting, query a website punctually. But if they need to do something a little bit more serious (editing a wiki for a few paragraph for instance), they can not do it. If surface give them a more complete experience for little cost (in dollars, in weight,...) then some users will be interested.
Not your mom browsing youtube at home. But some people will. In particular, I am interested in the Surface (and probably will wipe it for debian) because the ipad or nook do not quite cut it.
The raspberry pi is a good hacking learning device. But I am afraid it won't last for long. It will probably die fast. It has only be out for a few month and there are already reports of failure linked to power fluctuations.
3000 sq feet for a house is not that much. I live in an appartment of 900sq feet with wife and one kid and a 3 times bigger house would not appear huge, maybe just large. I could easily double or triple the kitchen, a twice or three time bigger living rooms would be good. I rely on external washer and dryer but having a room for that would be very helpful. The bathroom is small, having a bigger one or just a toilet would be helpful.
If you have a house, you might want a garage area to park a car or keep gardening tools.
I only cook as a hobbyist, and clearly kitchens tend to be poorly designed. One typically does not need any "toys" in there. At most leave an area where you could put a tablet in a position confortable enough to read while cooking, everything else is pretty much useless.
A common problem I see in kitchens is that there is no good way to evacuate the steam/smoke/fog that comes out of the cooking. Put a damn window in the kitchen or a really good ventilation system!
If you put high cabinets, think that when opened you'll bang your head if it opens like a door. Something that slides in is probably better.
I want to emphasize again the sink, pick the largest thing you will clean (most likely a soup pot, or an over grill) and make sure it fits in the sink.
I often run into the problem that there is no large surface I can safely cook on. When preparing a pie dough (for instance), you will need space to lay it on and spread it (not sure what is the proper english word for that). If your kitchen does not have an appropriate space making that dough will become a pain.
Often in cooking, having a small FOO, means having a useless FOO (useless you also have a large version). My freezer is small and it makes it almost useless for cooking purposes. I can not easily fit a large bowl in there to keep mousse or cream really cold.
I am bad in physics so I might say something stupid. But does it actually make a difference? I feel like the temperature of the hot components are WAY over 20C. So whatever energy they output is what you need to compensate for. In the steady state you need to cool as much as they heat. Isn't that constant whatever the temperature the datacenter is run at?
(disclaimer: I am working in the us on a J1 visa.)
There might be a vicious cycle with visas. But I am really under the impression that most visa are issues because one could not find a local ( == US) worker to fill the position in. As far as I can tell, it is because the education system in the US sucks so much that so visa are issued.
Now I can see your point : if there were less H1B, there would be more incentive to fix the mess. But exactly how many "opportunities" would the US miss if it was not hiring so many H1Bs?
Only you can answer the question of whether it is worth it or not. The right question is "through the curriculum, what is in there that I am interested in and that I could not or would not learn otherwise?" I went through a classical curriculum in France: License/Master/Doctorate.
When I came into Licence, I wanted to do software engineering. I was not interested in anything else than "learning more C++". Actually I did not know anything about anything else. But I have been forced to take some maths classes, processor architecture, stochastic systems. I could not care more about them when I took them. But they happend to be the key stone of what I am doing now. They made me understand how to think as a computer scientist.
There are also classes that I was glad I took because learning it by yourself is tough: algorithms, complexity, operation research, cryptography. I might have try to learn them by myself, but having an actual teacher made things MUCH easier.
If you are only going through it to get a degree on your wall and something to write in your resume. It is not gonna work/be worth it. It does not have to appear useful or interesting for it to be. If nothing seems unknown to you, maybe you should not stay there.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not pay these 3% myself, so I do not care too much about it. Also, all these transaction give me back 1% of the transaction. Finally, it allows me to have an automatic log of everything I buy which simplify my (rough) personal acconting.
Why should not I use a credit card? There is no downside for me.
If the shops cared about that fee, why do not they offer me a disconut for cash payment? (maybe that's illegal?)
I never understood that idea that giving a tax break to high salary people will stimulate the economy.
Usually the reasonning is that since they will have more money, they will consume more and that will help the economy. If you give a tax break to low income people for the same amount of tax dollars, they will use that money as well. They are not going to set it on fire, they will use it in a grocery store.
Am I understanding something wrong?
I somewhat disaggree that all software patents are bogus. I strongly dislike them, but I can conceive that a very well designed software that combine tools/features/technique to make a system significantly more reliable/fast/cheap could be patented. If there can be half a dozen patents on a tupperware box why not on a software? I am sure many car engine designs are patented, what makes software architectures different?
I find it ridiculous that improvement on car opener or tupperware can be patented, but assuming they can be, I think software is not much different.
I would rather see a significant decrease in the patent duration than a simple cancellation of all software patent. It seems more fair.
(Of course, the inner me would rather there is no patent at all whatsoever. But I do not think it is realistic)
"But how easy is it, under operating systems that come on home PCs sold in retail stores"
I do not use inferior operating systems :)
Actually, that would be even easier to implement in windows than in linux becasue you have finer grain ACLs available. It is just a matter of interfacing.
Well, the main problem with his approach is that it is way too strong. Congress will never vote something like that. It would nullify in practice most patent. I do not think they will vote such a thing.
I typically run untrusted applications on my machine under a different user account (firefox is one of them) which can not access anything in from my "real" user account. It is easy to set up!
I know I will be criticized for that, but if you want one, you can write one! It is not hard to make a widget for android. Of course, there might already be an OSS app to do that. Look in the list of fdroid.
After so many terrible "ask slashdot", this one really scares me. There is so much nerdness in that post. I mean arguing about which pen is th ebest to use AND go through the trouble of asking on slashdot. This is really overkill. What scares me is that I thought "mmm, good question".
I went through the patent. I will not claim there is anything of value in there. But they actually describe a full architecture of a system with asynchronous event, bandwidth limitations, dynamic refresh rates, multi device displays. They actually did something, they are not trolling. This is one of the most reasonnable patent I read in a long time.
People manage to find GPGPU useful, they will find how to use 48 cores as well. I have been using prototype of Intel MIC (now Xeon Phi) for a year or so and it is quite promising for stuff GPUs do not do easily (unstructured pointer chasing parallel algorithm. Typically graphs).
It is called Xeon Phi (previously Intel MIC) and it is coming soon. I have been playing with prototypes for a year. On the server it will definitively happen. On the desktop, it depends on the price, but I do not see why not...
SSDs typically have read write sustained bandwidth around 500MB/s. You would need about 4 HDD to catch up with that speed. Moreover RAID is not going to do much about latency which is one of the most important point with SSDs. The power consumption of SSDs is much lower than that of a single HDD. The only good thing about HDDs is their price per GB.
Well, I am not sure about your comment. I think you are trying to put all tablet users in a single bin. But there is more than one bin.
Here, I see people walking around with their ipad under their shoulder. And frequently I hear thing like "sorry, I can not do FOOBAR on my ipad, I'll do that from my office." They use the ipad to take quick notes in a meeting, query a website punctually. But if they need to do something a little bit more serious (editing a wiki for a few paragraph for instance), they can not do it. If surface give them a more complete experience for little cost (in dollars, in weight, ...) then some users will be interested.
Not your mom browsing youtube at home. But some people will. In particular, I am interested in the Surface (and probably will wipe it for debian) because the ipad or nook do not quite cut it.
here's nothing inherently "good" about Windows for games other than the monopoly that Microsoft rides on.
Well, driver support and a single sound API are significant advantages for windows...
The raspberry pi is a good hacking learning device. But I am afraid it won't last for long. It will probably die fast. It has only be out for a few month and there are already reports of failure linked to power fluctuations.
3000 sq feet for a house is not that much. I live in an appartment of 900sq feet with wife and one kid and a 3 times bigger house would not appear huge, maybe just large. I could easily double or triple the kitchen, a twice or three time bigger living rooms would be good. I rely on external washer and dryer but having a room for that would be very helpful. The bathroom is small, having a bigger one or just a toilet would be helpful.
If you have a house, you might want a garage area to park a car or keep gardening tools.
If you have 2 or 3 kids, that grows as well.
I totally aggree with that.
I only cook as a hobbyist, and clearly kitchens tend to be poorly designed. One typically does not need any "toys" in there. At most leave an area where you could put a tablet in a position confortable enough to read while cooking, everything else is pretty much useless.
A common problem I see in kitchens is that there is no good way to evacuate the steam/smoke/fog that comes out of the cooking. Put a damn window in the kitchen or a really good ventilation system!
If you put high cabinets, think that when opened you'll bang your head if it opens like a door. Something that slides in is probably better.
I want to emphasize again the sink, pick the largest thing you will clean (most likely a soup pot, or an over grill) and make sure it fits in the sink.
I often run into the problem that there is no large surface I can safely cook on. When preparing a pie dough (for instance), you will need space to lay it on and spread it (not sure what is the proper english word for that). If your kitchen does not have an appropriate space making that dough will become a pain.
Often in cooking, having a small FOO, means having a useless FOO (useless you also have a large version). My freezer is small and it makes it almost useless for cooking purposes. I can not easily fit a large bowl in there to keep mousse or cream really cold.
some slashdotters need to learn how to count! :)
Nobody will ever think of doing "telnet nuclearbomb.gov 1337". That would be too simple!
I am bad in physics so I might say something stupid. But does it actually make a difference? I feel like the temperature of the hot components are WAY over 20C. So whatever energy they output is what you need to compensate for. In the steady state you need to cool as much as they heat. Isn't that constant whatever the temperature the datacenter is run at?
(disclaimer: I am working in the us on a J1 visa.)
There might be a vicious cycle with visas. But I am really under the impression that most visa are issues because one could not find a local ( == US) worker to fill the position in. As far as I can tell, it is because the education system in the US sucks so much that so visa are issued.
Now I can see your point : if there were less H1B, there would be more incentive to fix the mess. But exactly how many "opportunities" would the US miss if it was not hiring so many H1Bs?
You realize the chromebook is made by samsung? The only difference is that they installed chromeOS and not debian.
maybe, but lying on tax forms is typically a very bad idea!
Only you can answer the question of whether it is worth it or not. The right question is "through the curriculum, what is in there that I am interested in and that I could not or would not learn otherwise?" I went through a classical curriculum in France: License/Master/Doctorate.
When I came into Licence, I wanted to do software engineering. I was not interested in anything else than "learning more C++". Actually I did not know anything about anything else. But I have been forced to take some maths classes, processor architecture, stochastic systems. I could not care more about them when I took them. But they happend to be the key stone of what I am doing now. They made me understand how to think as a computer scientist.
There are also classes that I was glad I took because learning it by yourself is tough: algorithms, complexity, operation research, cryptography. I might have try to learn them by myself, but having an actual teacher made things MUCH easier.
If you are only going through it to get a degree on your wall and something to write in your resume. It is not gonna work/be worth it. It does not have to appear useful or interesting for it to be. If nothing seems unknown to you, maybe you should not stay there.
I saw a demo where two people where playing full screen on a tv by calibrating 3d glasses properly. That was convenient for an FPS deathmatch.