Local retailers (and apparently Walmart, too) were the leading forces in pushing such legislature through in many states. They obviously (and rightfully) fear that Amazon could completely destroy them. This legislation, they thought, would force Amazon to compete with them on an even playing field.
Except the playing field was never even to begin with. Even if you force them to abide by the x% sales tax rule, they still completely dominate you in terms of convenience, selection, sheer operations efficiency and economies of scale. Only Walmart could really hold a candle to them.
This is going to blow up in the brick-and-mortar retailers' faces and they'll have nobody to blame but themselves for their downfall.
All I can picture is one of the only good parts of Star Wars Episode 3: the opening battle where star destroyers and CIS ships are broadsiding each other with lasers.
"...As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record..."
A 2.7? Christ, when I was looking for internships as an undergrad (even now as an MSEE student), you need at minimum a 3.0 for the company to give you the time of day, let alone actually bother to interview or hire you.
...and it's the idiot social scientists who came up with this harebrained theory. It's not that they're wrong about under-representation, it's that there's actually a very good reason for it.
Think about the main audience for current video games. Predominantly young and male, right? Maybe, just maybe, these video game designers realized that these young male fans will want video game characters that they can identify with. Hence why so many protagonists are male! And guess what, a lot of these young male fans enjoy curvalicious women to ogle while they mash buttons, hence why the female characters tend to be so top-heavy and hourglass-shaped. I'm also pretty sure that your average 14 year old gamer doesn't really care about the depth of the big-boobed lady's character so much as he cares about boobs.
The game industry cares way more about people buying their games than equal representation. As soon as it becomes profitable to have a minority version of Mario, Link or Marcus Fenix, I promise you that there will be one.
And seconding the other post about Japanese games being very Asian-centric. Even some of the ones that get exported here are obviously so
I distinctly remember RFID passports not all that different from these (at least in principle of being "hack-proof" and "secure") getting broken maybe a year or two ago. The exact date escapes me at the moment. I'm fairly certain it was something being done in the EU. Feel free to correct me on any of this.
That aside, just what did you expect? There is no white knight or magic pill to the problem of airport or travel security. That includes magical passports that somehow make it completely impossible for people to forge identity or fool the system.
Even though this laptop was not actually stolen, that does not excuse the gross lapse of judgement by the people responsible. Two levels of passwords is fine, but unencrypted data still leaves potential victims vulnerable.
This still raises the question of why sensitive data was on something as portable as a laptop. Oh and nevermind the fact that they managed to lose it in their own office completely kills any confidence I had in them.
Think about your typical laptop or cellular phone user. Something tells me that, to them, SNR would be some random number that means absolutely nothing. You need to keep things SIMPLE, that's why Apple is so successful (okay, besides the ad campaigns). The point is, your typical Wi-Fi or mobile user won't really care how many decibels of signal over noise you have. Hell, I would bet most of them don't know what a decibel is, let alone what signal to noise power even means. You just give them the bar system, which simplifies everything down to a graphical interpretation.
Slashdot Mirror
Pew pew pew!
She's not saying that it's treasonous not to cooperate, but rather lamenting the fact that they're being forced to comply.
Local retailers (and apparently Walmart, too) were the leading forces in pushing such legislature through in many states. They obviously (and rightfully) fear that Amazon could completely destroy them. This legislation, they thought, would force Amazon to compete with them on an even playing field. Except the playing field was never even to begin with. Even if you force them to abide by the x% sales tax rule, they still completely dominate you in terms of convenience, selection, sheer operations efficiency and economies of scale. Only Walmart could really hold a candle to them. This is going to blow up in the brick-and-mortar retailers' faces and they'll have nobody to blame but themselves for their downfall.
Back in graduate school, my roommate and I would dumpster dive and repair broken ones. More often than not, it's a pretty simple fix.
All I can picture is one of the only good parts of Star Wars Episode 3: the opening battle where star destroyers and CIS ships are broadsiding each other with lasers.
...or does this sound like somebody's been reading too many with Dr Doom in them?
I propose fat farms! Not like the camp, I mean real ones. You can make a fortune in Alabama and Mississippi selling fat for $100/oz or whatnot.
...free Mars!
Those bees have what plants crave.
The important question is: can these taxis make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs?
Check fraud? Yep, there's an app for that. Need to know how to plead for a lesser sentence? There's an app for that too. Only on the iPhone 3GS.
Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!
"...As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record..."
A 2.7? Christ, when I was looking for internships as an undergrad (even now as an MSEE student), you need at minimum a 3.0 for the company to give you the time of day, let alone actually bother to interview or hire you.
...and it's the idiot social scientists who came up with this harebrained theory. It's not that they're wrong about under-representation, it's that there's actually a very good reason for it.
Think about the main audience for current video games. Predominantly young and male, right? Maybe, just maybe, these video game designers realized that these young male fans will want video game characters that they can identify with. Hence why so many protagonists are male! And guess what, a lot of these young male fans enjoy curvalicious women to ogle while they mash buttons, hence why the female characters tend to be so top-heavy and hourglass-shaped. I'm also pretty sure that your average 14 year old gamer doesn't really care about the depth of the big-boobed lady's character so much as he cares about boobs.
The game industry cares way more about people buying their games than equal representation. As soon as it becomes profitable to have a minority version of Mario, Link or Marcus Fenix, I promise you that there will be one.
And seconding the other post about Japanese games being very Asian-centric. Even some of the ones that get exported here are obviously so
It's cocaine in can, baby! Shazam!
I was under the impression Argon dating was also used for time scales greater than 50k years, which is about as far back as Carbon-13 dating works.
Sorry, I meant to say Carbon-14.
I was under the impression Argon dating was also used for time scales greater than 50k years, which is about as far back as Carbon-13 dating works.
It's called micrometer.
Also known as a micron.
Olympic Ceremony - $40 Million
It was actually $300 million.
We must not let these people tie our Tubes!
Only if I get paid at least 1337 dollars a week.
I distinctly remember RFID passports not all that different from these (at least in principle of being "hack-proof" and "secure") getting broken maybe a year or two ago. The exact date escapes me at the moment. I'm fairly certain it was something being done in the EU. Feel free to correct me on any of this. That aside, just what did you expect? There is no white knight or magic pill to the problem of airport or travel security. That includes magical passports that somehow make it completely impossible for people to forge identity or fool the system.
Even though this laptop was not actually stolen, that does not excuse the gross lapse of judgement by the people responsible. Two levels of passwords is fine, but unencrypted data still leaves potential victims vulnerable. This still raises the question of why sensitive data was on something as portable as a laptop. Oh and nevermind the fact that they managed to lose it in their own office completely kills any confidence I had in them.
Now that the Chinese censors can catch wind of this, can't they just take preventative countermeasures against this thing?
Think about your typical laptop or cellular phone user. Something tells me that, to them, SNR would be some random number that means absolutely nothing. You need to keep things SIMPLE, that's why Apple is so successful (okay, besides the ad campaigns). The point is, your typical Wi-Fi or mobile user won't really care how many decibels of signal over noise you have. Hell, I would bet most of them don't know what a decibel is, let alone what signal to noise power even means. You just give them the bar system, which simplifies everything down to a graphical interpretation.