In fact, this is one more reason for good authors to avoid traditional publishers. I can think of quite a few authors who would have a thing or two to say about algorithms like these being used to modify their work.
Just like in the music industry, big publishers are simply not necessary anymore. Editors most certainly are, but publishers?
If we are talking about American engines with their usual anemic power/weight ratio's, then probably yes. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is driving hundreds of thousands of kilometers with 1.3 l engines that deliver 100 KW or so.
Also, what's with the crazy units of measurements. 4 tablespoons per mile more - is that supposed to sound like "not a lot"? In real units of measurements, that would be around 40 ml/km or 4 l/100 km more which is an absolutely huge amount - in fact, on just that difference you can drive another small or hybrid car.
Because "pinning" things to the taskbar in Win7 is an atrocity: when an application is not running it looks like an icon, when it's running it's much bigger (normal taskbar entry). So applications don't stay in the same place, depending on other applications that may or may not be started. Plus it just looks terrible, having a taskbar with running applications and then there seem to be icons stuck in the middle. Saw it once, went like "is that a bug? Wait, it is actually designed to behave like that?" and put it firmly in "Do. Not. Want." territory. So re-adding the taskbar is one of the first things to do, right up with disabling grouping on the taskbar and resetting Alt-Tab to behave sensibly and without all the massively distracting animations.
The win7 start menu is a huge improvement over XP however. So I guess it's obvious it had to be taken out for Windows 8.
I would go one further and admit to installing LibreOffice *alongside* a full MS Office installation at work. The ribbon interface in recent Office version just drives me completely nuts, and the versions of Office that do not have it yet are getting so outdated that they have serious problems opening files from the newer versions (even with the converters installed). Whereas LibreOffice generally doesn't. The formatting may be slightly off, but at least I can get to the content.
The company I work for has a full MS subscription so it's not about saving money. It's just that in recent version Microsoft made the interface so atrocious to use, while continuing to ignore long-standing, over a decade old formatting/style and image movement bugs that you run into with even the most trivial of documents (say, a few page design doc with some screenshots), and which type of problem I remember noticing since Office 97, that even LibreOffice is starting to look attractive by comparison. And yes, I fully agree that is saying something.
Yes, I seriously tried using the ribbons for a while, I just *cannot* bear it. Too bad they had to force this on all Office users, since it's holding me back from using quite a lot of nice new features (major improvements in Powerpoint, say) in recent versions.
Where I live, short changing doesn't happen either way very often (or I just don't notice), but the times it does, I have actually seen it in both directions.
The funniest time was when we paid for some drinks, the owner thought/gave change as if we gave him a 50 when we actually paid with a 20. Got more money back than we paid in the first place. The place was OK so we did the nice thing and actually told him;)
Speaking of Amazon though, this is why I will never buy DRM-encumbered anything. I have a Kindle and love it. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader how I obtain ebooks for it. I would gladly pay for them, if they did not come with DRM and where actually *cheaper* than the paperback editions. As it is, my bookshelf contains the paper edition, and I obtain the ebook for portable use by other means. A shame, really.
Over 45% is correct, likely it's even higher if you include VAT.
Where I live, current price is EUR 1.90/liter ($9.40 using the current exchange rate), of which 32% production costs, 9% in various margins (supplier, transport, gas station, etc.), the rest is taxes. So yep, the remaining 59% are specific taxes for fuel and "normal" VAT.
I think Macs tend to make a rather poor budgeting choice.
Typing this message on my more than 4-year old $1000 (cheapest model) MacBook with 440 full battery cycles and still decent (2-3h) battery live, I disagree.
I would like to see how that sub-$500 laptop is doing after 4 years...my bet is you'd probably need to retrieve it from a landfill first.
Non-ironically, yes indeed. Get the cheapest macbook (without extended warranty), and be done with it.
I did this 4 years ago, so it's one of the plastic models, and still no problems whatsoever. I use it several hours daily, am using it to type this message. Even the battery is still good after 450 full cycles (the warranty is 80% capacity after 300 cycles). Not as good as new, but still lasts 2.5-3 hours during normal browsing/typing. The biggest problem is the backlight is getting less bright (this is normal but still annoying), which is starting to get noticeable in bright daylight (outside). It has not had any problem ever, hardware or software, and since I always just close the lid it has a 90 day uptime (most of which spent in sleep mode of course, but still). Hmm, I should probably install updates...
Performance is absolutely no problem for everyday use (not gaming), and we're talking an "ancient" Core 2 Duo model.
Basically it's hard not to come across as a fanboy after having used Dell and HP for years, but well..that's what it is.
Disturbing is very much the word you're looking for, indeed.
Some more choice quotes:
"Being a high energy oxidizer, dioxygen difluoride reacted vigorously with organic compounds, even at temperatures close to its melting point. It reacted instantaneously with solid ethyl alcohol, producing a blue flame and an explosion. When a drop of liquid 02F2 was added to liquid methane, cooled at 90K., a white flame was produced instantaneously, which turned green upon further burning. When 0.2 (mL) of liquid 02F2 was added to 0.5 (mL) of liquid CH4 at 90K., a violent explosion occurred."
And he's just getting warmed up, if that's the right phrase to use for something that detonates things at -180C (that's -300 Fahrenheit, if you only have a kitchen thermometer). The great majority of Streng's reactions have surely never been run again. The paper goes on to react FOOF with everything else you wouldn't react it with: ammonia ("vigorous", this at 100K), water ice (explosion, natch), chlorine ("violent explosion", so he added it more slowly the second time) [..]
Or how about this one:
But today's compound makes no noise and leaves no wreckage. It merely stinks. But it does so relentlessly and unbearably. It makes innocent downwind pedestrians stagger, clutch their stomachs, and flee in terror. It reeks to a degree that makes people suspect evil supernatural forces. It is thioacetone.
No one's quite sure what the actual odorant is [..] And no one seems to have much desire to find out, either. There are sound historical reasons for this reluctance. The canonical example (Chemische Berichte 1889, 2593) is the early work in the German city of Freiburg in 1889 (see page 4 of this textbook), which quotes the first-hand report. This reaction produced"an offensive smell which spread rapidly over a great area of the town causing fainting, vomiting and a panic evacuation."
[..] They were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds."
My favorite source for actually scary chemicals is Things I won't work with, a chemists weblog detailing all sorts of stuff that, well, he won't work with. Random quote:
The experimental section of the paper enjoins the reader to wear a face shield, leather suit, and ear plugs, to work behind all sorts of blast shields, and to use Teflon and stainless steel apparatus so as to minimize shrapnel. Hmm. Ranking my equipment in terms of its shrapneliferousness is not something that's ever occurred to me, I have to say. It's safe to assume that any procedure which involves considering which parts of the apparatus I'd prefer to have flying past me will not get much business in my lab, no matter how dashing I might look in a leather suit.
You're an exception. Many people just don't keep that thing organized. Even if you do, navigating it is cumbersome. Programs crap it up anyway, so in XP I basically launched applications in 2 ways:
1. Quickstart bar, for pretty much anything I use at least once a week - I think many people did/do this. 2. Win+R, which strictly speaking does not even show the menu - this shortcut I'm sure is only commonly used by geeks.
So I barely used the XP start menu (and to the extend that I did, had it set to classic Win95 style).
So, the very first thing I had to do in Win7 is figure out how to get the quickstart bar back (it's possible, but a bit annoying) and I actually really like the "Win-button type a few characters of the program name " style of starting applications. Everything else in there except for the shutdown button, I absolutely never touch.
I do exactly the same on Macs btw, use QuickSilver or Spotlight (whatever you prefer), Alt/Cmd-space, type some chars in the application name, go. Often used programs are in the dock. The way I start applications on both OS's is pretty much identical, then.
"Amazon will likely succeed only in alienating customer with PlayBooks who have already purchased lots of streaming video content."
Is this just an elaborate way to say "nobody will care", or is this thing more popular than I imagine? I have never even seen a PlayBook, never mind buying streaming video content for it.
Probably, and indeed that is (a basic form of) programming. And yet I believe most people could not do even that if their live depended on it. If someone bothered to do the research, I think they'd find that the majority of people who even have a remote idea of how to use a computer (know how to read mail and how to click links on "the internet") are not actually able to create an Excel spreadsheet with a column A that lists some items, a column B that lists prices for said items, and then stick a SUM(B1:Bxx) in there somewhere, say. At least, not without prior extensive instructions on how to do exactly that one trivial task, of course.
Its amazing how far a single article of FUD goes these days - Microsoft is not "going soft" on.Net, they just weren't willing to discuss it during a talk about something else entirely, while in Windows 8,.Net is still there and stronger than ever.
"Stronger than ever" how?
Rather, it's amazing that.NET made it this far, while Microsoft itself (apart from its development division) hasn't used it for basically anything (that was released, anyway), also clearly won't in the future, and it's clear that the Windows group upper management hates it.
Remember that this very stock exchange moving to a purely Microsoft/.NET based solution was widely touted in Microsoft's so-called 'Get the "Facts"' campaign. Microsoft was involved (with Accenture) in the implementation of the project, not just in selling some Windows licenses. So this screwup should really be a PR disaster for them. If Microsoft themselves cannot even get a.NET project to work in places where their Linux-using competitors have no trouble at all (Chi-X is also Linux-based), then that sure looks like a platform in trouble to me.
Remember that the entire thing crashed down for an entire trading day, something that you can imagine didn't go over well, and together with the high latencies and other numerous problems, was the reason they dumped it for Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, this is one more reason for good authors to avoid traditional publishers. I can think of quite a few authors who would have a thing or two to say about algorithms like these being used to modify their work.
Just like in the music industry, big publishers are simply not necessary anymore. Editors most certainly are, but publishers?
If we are talking about American engines with their usual anemic power/weight ratio's, then probably yes. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is driving hundreds of thousands of kilometers with 1.3 l engines that deliver 100 KW or so.
Also, what's with the crazy units of measurements. 4 tablespoons per mile more - is that supposed to sound like "not a lot"? In real units of measurements, that would be around 40 ml/km or 4 l/100 km more which is an absolutely huge amount - in fact, on just that difference you can drive another small or hybrid car.
This is why the rest of the world uses this standardized system for units of measurements.
So, I was similarly surprised that in 2013 it is apparently still possible to build *and* sell new cars that consume 10 l/100km.
Randomly change anything and it will probably be an improvement, is how bad it is.
Despite that, I played the game for over 5 years. That's how good the meta-game is, if you're in the right alliance at least ;)
Because "pinning" things to the taskbar in Win7 is an atrocity: when an application is not running it looks like an icon, when it's running it's much bigger (normal taskbar entry). So applications don't stay in the same place, depending on other applications that may or may not be started. Plus it just looks terrible, having a taskbar with running applications and then there seem to be icons stuck in the middle. Saw it once, went like "is that a bug? Wait, it is actually designed to behave like that?" and put it firmly in "Do. Not. Want." territory. So re-adding the taskbar is one of the first things to do, right up with disabling grouping on the taskbar and resetting Alt-Tab to behave sensibly and without all the massively distracting animations.
The win7 start menu is a huge improvement over XP however. So I guess it's obvious it had to be taken out for Windows 8.
I would go one further and admit to installing LibreOffice *alongside* a full MS Office installation at work. The ribbon interface in recent Office version just drives me completely nuts, and the versions of Office that do not have it yet are getting so outdated that they have serious problems opening files from the newer versions (even with the converters installed). Whereas LibreOffice generally doesn't. The formatting may be slightly off, but at least I can get to the content.
The company I work for has a full MS subscription so it's not about saving money. It's just that in recent version Microsoft made the interface so atrocious to use, while continuing to ignore long-standing, over a decade old formatting/style and image movement bugs that you run into with even the most trivial of documents (say, a few page design doc with some screenshots), and which type of problem I remember noticing since Office 97, that even LibreOffice is starting to look attractive by comparison. And yes, I fully agree that is saying something.
Yes, I seriously tried using the ribbons for a while, I just *cannot* bear it. Too bad they had to force this on all Office users, since it's holding me back from using quite a lot of nice new features (major improvements in Powerpoint, say) in recent versions.
Heh. I'm sure this recent incident didn't help either.
Where I live, short changing doesn't happen either way very often (or I just don't notice), but the times it does, I have actually seen it in both directions.
The funniest time was when we paid for some drinks, the owner thought/gave change as if we gave him a 50 when we actually paid with a 20. Got more money back than we paid in the first place. The place was OK so we did the nice thing and actually told him ;)
Speaking of Amazon though, this is why I will never buy DRM-encumbered anything. I have a Kindle and love it. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader how I obtain ebooks for it. I would gladly pay for them, if they did not come with DRM and where actually *cheaper* than the paperback editions. As it is, my bookshelf contains the paper edition, and I obtain the ebook for portable use by other means. A shame, really.
Of course they're not that dense.
This is all about getting the government to help you put your hand in the next guy's pocket.
Over 45% is correct, likely it's even higher if you include VAT.
Where I live, current price is EUR 1.90/liter ($9.40 using the current exchange rate), of which 32% production costs, 9% in various margins (supplier, transport, gas station, etc.), the rest is taxes. So yep, the remaining 59% are specific taxes for fuel and "normal" VAT.
Next up: vegetarians against using 0xdeadbeef to detect memory corruption? Well, Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!
More importantly, I don't get why anyone would advertise that 350M is being spent to create 20 "permanent" positions. That's 17.5M per fulltime job!
I'm sure they'll listen to Reason.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Typing this message on my more than 4-year old $1000 (cheapest model) MacBook with 440 full battery cycles and still decent (2-3h) battery live, I disagree.
I would like to see how that sub-$500 laptop is doing after 4 years...my bet is you'd probably need to retrieve it from a landfill first.
Non-ironically, yes indeed. Get the cheapest macbook (without extended warranty), and be done with it.
I did this 4 years ago, so it's one of the plastic models, and still no problems whatsoever. I use it several hours daily, am using it to type this message. Even the battery is still good after 450 full cycles (the warranty is 80% capacity after 300 cycles). Not as good as new, but still lasts 2.5-3 hours during normal browsing/typing. The biggest problem is the backlight is getting less bright (this is normal but still annoying), which is starting to get noticeable in bright daylight (outside). It has not had any problem ever, hardware or software, and since I always just close the lid it has a 90 day uptime (most of which spent in sleep mode of course, but still). Hmm, I should probably install updates...
Performance is absolutely no problem for everyday use (not gaming), and we're talking an "ancient" Core 2 Duo model.
Basically it's hard not to come across as a fanboy after having used Dell and HP for years, but well..that's what it is.
Disturbing is very much the word you're looking for, indeed.
Some more choice quotes:
Or how about this one:
My favorite source for actually scary chemicals is Things I won't work with, a chemists weblog detailing all sorts of stuff that, well, he won't work with. Random quote:
So obviously you have something to hide. Doubleplusungood.
You're an exception. Many people just don't keep that thing organized. Even if you do, navigating it is cumbersome. Programs crap it up anyway, so in XP I basically launched applications in 2 ways:
1. Quickstart bar, for pretty much anything I use at least once a week - I think many people did/do this.
2. Win+R, which strictly speaking does not even show the menu - this shortcut I'm sure is only commonly used by geeks.
So I barely used the XP start menu (and to the extend that I did, had it set to classic Win95 style).
So, the very first thing I had to do in Win7 is figure out how to get the quickstart bar back (it's possible, but a bit annoying) and I actually really like the "Win-button type a few characters of the program name " style of starting applications. Everything else in there except for the shutdown button, I absolutely never touch.
I do exactly the same on Macs btw, use QuickSilver or Spotlight (whatever you prefer), Alt/Cmd-space, type some chars in the application name, go. Often used programs are in the dock. The way I start applications on both OS's is pretty much identical, then.
with 4G LTE, the new iPad will provide up to 73 Mbps download speeds
So that means you can go through your "generous" and expensive 1 GB dataplan in 112 seconds or slightly under 2 minutes then.
Or less than 30 seconds with cheaper plans that allow maybe 250 MB/month.
Recent datalimits feel like it's still 1995 or something. Only without a cable attached.
"Amazon will likely succeed only in alienating customer with PlayBooks who have already purchased lots of streaming video content."
Is this just an elaborate way to say "nobody will care", or is this thing more popular than I imagine? I have never even seen a PlayBook, never mind buying streaming video content for it.
Probably, and indeed that is (a basic form of) programming. And yet I believe most people could not do even that if their live depended on it. If someone bothered to do the research, I think they'd find that the majority of people who even have a remote idea of how to use a computer (know how to read mail and how to click links on "the internet") are not actually able to create an Excel spreadsheet with a column A that lists some items, a column B that lists prices for said items, and then stick a SUM(B1:Bxx) in there somewhere, say. At least, not without prior extensive instructions on how to do exactly that one trivial task, of course.
"Stronger than ever" how?
Rather, it's amazing that .NET made it this far, while Microsoft itself (apart from its development division) hasn't used it for basically anything (that was released, anyway), also clearly won't in the future, and it's clear that the Windows group upper management hates it.
That's not FUD, that's just facing facts.
Yeah, hybrids easily get 50-60 mpg at similar speeds though. So do small diesels (those can do even better, in fact).
You do realize these are exactly the circumstances where a hybrid drivetrain actually helps a lot, even compared to small diesel engines?
Remember that this very stock exchange moving to a purely Microsoft/.NET based solution was widely touted in Microsoft's so-called 'Get the "Facts"' campaign. Microsoft was involved (with Accenture) in the implementation of the project, not just in selling some Windows licenses. So this screwup should really be a PR disaster for them. If Microsoft themselves cannot even get a .NET project to work in places where their Linux-using competitors have no trouble at all (Chi-X is also Linux-based), then that sure looks like a platform in trouble to me.
Remember that the entire thing crashed down for an entire trading day, something that you can imagine didn't go over well, and together with the high latencies and other numerous problems, was the reason they dumped it for Linux.