I disagree. Watching a video of the device in action is often very useful. In the main video Amazon has on Kindle you see the guy navigating through a book, looking up words in the dictionary and with wikipedia, using the wireless amazon store to buy a book, etc. I think I have a much better idea of how the device will function having seen it in action rather than reading about it. Kindle actually has a slightly odd interface because of the eInk technology...there's a little scroll wheel with a little strip of display that is not part of the main page to select things. Kind of hard to describe, but makes sense when you see it in action. I get the feeling there must be a more elegant way of implementing the interface..
Does it use eInk technology? Can you get 88,000 books (commercial books, excluding gutenberg books) for the Pal T|X? Those are the key features of the Kindle. Also I think the Palm's display is much smaller. Anyway, the Kindle has too many flaws for me to want it right now but I look forward to it coming down in price.
Auctioning to the highest bidder (subject to monopoly/antitrust law) is sort of guaranteeing it is in the public interest. In this case the government thinks the public interest in in using the spectrum for maximum increase of GDP. If it goes to the highest bidder it will be bought by whoever can expect to get the best return from it, which has the maximum benefit to the economy.
I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt you're correct on this. Why would movie studios bother optioning books if all they have to do is avoid using the same exact sentences in the movie? The concept/world is part of the copyright. Specifically, copyright gives the creator the exclusive right to "derivative works." I can't see how a harry potter lexicon could possibly not be considered a derivative work.
Actually, they did the reverse, and it's worked VERY well. The only people buying gold now are typically the newbies who need 10-100 gold to get started. 5000g costs an astronomical amount of money because it takes so long for a low-level player to get.
I never could understand who was buying gold. It's like $17 per 100 gold and 100 gold doesn't buy shit. $850 for an epic mount? No thanks. I guess you could be right, a hundred gold seed money if you decide to start from scratch on a new server could be kind of helpful in getting your first character leveled up.
One of the things Bennett has always failed to understand is that just making something inconvenient will oftentimes prevent people from doing it. Yes, there is a way to get on a high school network after the "must be confirmed by an existing student" change, if you really really want to get on that network. But there are plenty of perverts who will either just give up or go find a way to get off that has a lower opportunity cost.
I imagine it is similar to pagerank...CNN, BBC, etc do well in relevance algorithms because they're widely linked to. Thus, it is a conspiracy to oppress WND, right?? Honestly, some people have an oppression complex. WND's editorial quality is equivalent to your average blog, they get traffic and cross linking in a tier well below the likes of CNN, so they're treated as a boutique site in the news ranking algorithm. I can't imagine any algorithm that could manage to pick WND over other news sites based on an objective, mechanical metric.
The "Google hates America!" claim was absurd as they have a special logo for Independence Day which is suitable flag themed. Some people just refuse to understand that the logo is changed only sometimes, and for a motley assortment of reason from serious (they have logos for memorial/veteran's day in Australia for example) to obscure (World Water Day). It isn't meant to recognize the top 20 most important events in history or something.
At any rate, I think it's safe to say that next year WND will be bitching about Memorial Day and Columbus Day. And if they got logos for those it would be Reagan's Birthday and the day they pardoned Oliver North. You can't win with these whiners. It's a freaking logo, this is the stupidest controversy in history.
On the flip side, I can't imagine how you can possibly get by if it takes 3-9 months to staff a develpoment position. My team at work is taking up a new product initiative and we expect to go from nothing to having an alpha release in 9 months, with 30-50 engineers on this project. If it took 9 months to locate every necessary skill necessary we would be 9 months late to market. Losing just one guy should not be the end of the world unless you're in a highly unusual area or work for a tiny company with no resources that can be reshuffled as business priorities change.
Talented engineers should be able to pick up work that isn't exactly their competency fairly quickly. Sure, initially they may be a little less productive or have to work extra to get the job done but thats how you succeed in a competitive business environment. If you're slow in developing your product your competition will cream you here.
All of this babbling about hard work misses the point...if hard work was what determined value then fruit pickers would make a ton of money. It's not hard work, it's your ability to provide value that matters. As work currently done by americans is offshored we need to respond by providing higher value services. Less simple code jockeying are more software architecture and design, that kind of thing. Keep upgrading your skills, they set you apart much more than simple hard work ever can.
An architect could only win a lawsuit about the color of the walls if they got the owners to sign a contract saying they couldn't change the color of the walls. Don't sign dumb contracts is the lesson I suppose...
Frank Lloyd Wright houses are not very liveable at all, you're correct. In fact he had no regard at all for the desires of the owners of the houses. I don't think that really applies to the iPhone, but there wasn't much other than visual style that makes the iPhone stand out. It has a few new features like visual voice mail and the multi-touch display. But thats just incremental progress in features, not an invention of the caliber that the other items have (which would you consider a more impressive invention...the ability to convert any type of blood into type O, or visual voicemail?) Anyway, I think someone else hit it on the head...it drives traffic.
Here's another reason to ban it for minors...if it was banned for everyone, a black market would fill the gap to supply cigarettes. Black markets come with increases in crime because they are so lucrative (see: war on drugs). Preventing minors from smoking may reduce the number of adults that want to smoke when they are allowed to. Thus the damage to society from health problems related to adult smoking is minimized without creating a gigantic black market in another illegal drug.
Anyway, the guy got his answer in the first round of answers...namely, that he didn't consider all possible reasons to ban smoking for minors.
Is it really a place that people rent real estate to put their equipment?
Basically yes. You'd want to use a datacenter for your servers because they (supposedly) will have engineered backup systems for just about anything that can go wrong. This means generator backup for power and cooling, effective surge protection, redundant high speed internet connections, security, professional monitoring of the equipment and environment, etc.
I don't think there's even been a serious claim that our justice system is about rehabilitation and not punishment. Rehabilitation is kind of a minor sub goal, but not the serious focus.
The school shouldn't be blocking anything. If students don't learn how to intelligently choose their sources then they're missing out on a key part of the act of doing research. I don't see how this benefits students at all. I wonder if it's a high school, I can't believe colleges are censoring any information.
Why do people give a fuck about their slashdot Karma? Its an invisible score that gives you absolutely nothing as a reward. Your original comment is moderated up anyway, why not save the bitching about losing karma until you've actually lost it?
And that is why the business should believe the customer, lacking any specific reason not to. Most customers are honest. A business can either cater to this majority, or put policies in place that prevents a minority from scamming them, but that also turn honest customers away or make them less respectful of your business and more likely to short change you. I wouldn't be surprised if customer-trusting policies even turned away dishonest customers (to places like Best Buy that almost ask to be ripped off).
It wasn't too long ago that there was widespread outrage about stores that force people making returns to provide a driver's license, address, phone number, etc. This is exactly the reason...generally the stores will give their customers the benefit of the doubt no matter what wild-ass story they come up with for a return. But if they do that they're also vulnerable, so they keep detailed records and I'm sure their loss prevention specialists are watching for suspicious return patterns.
I notice I haven't seen many complaints lately about these practices. I guess people have given up since it is a standard practice almost everywhere. Honestly, I would prefer not to provide the information but I also enjoy the no-questions-asked attitude most stores have and I realize that the people that are at fault for the ID nonsense are the criminals and not the stores.
You can almost always return things to the store if there's a problem in the US, in fact if anything our competitive retail industries makes return policies quite generous. In this case, since the item was entirely missing the store is trying to claim that the customer got the hard drive and is just lying about finding tiles instead of a drive.
Its not a totally unreasonable claim to make either...no one can really say who is telling the truth. And I completely believe that a customer might fake it too, having worked at a restaurant people would "find" stuff in their food all the time to try to get a free meal.
Probably it was the result of a return with the item stolen. But it could be either. I'm not sure there's a foolproof system to decide what to do in these situations either short of having every box opened in the store. Maybe expensive items should be weighed to verify the item is intact, like those self checkout machines at the grocery store are able to tell that you're scanning and bagging all the items. You could still fool it, but it would be a lot more difficult.
I've re-shrink wrapped boxes so I could return them before. Back in the 90s most stores wouldn't accept returns at all for software if the shrink wrap was broken. At the same time compatibility was much more sketchy, it wasn't uncommon to buy software and have it just not work at all on your computer even running a mainstream OS, etc. Where did I get the shrink wrapper? Well I knew some guys at another computer store, so I'd take opened items there to reshrink-wrap with their machine if I had bought it elsewhere.
Of course I returned the software along with it in perfect condition, too...anyway, point is that its really easy to do this and the employees of that store are almost certainly responsible because they have everything you'd need to do it in the back office or warehouse.
I think you also buy competitors when they have an established user base or a time to market advantage. Google can compete all they want, but the millions of users of social networks don't want to quit because then their network has to start from square one. The friction involved in switching services makes the barrier to entry into the market formidable.
On the other hand I don't know that Facebook is worth 15 billion. Microsoft reeks of desperation here. As for google, I think they screwed up big time with Orkut. I remember wanting to join that ages ago and couldn't because it was invitation only. Now I have a facebook account and while Orkut is wide open I have no interest in switching because not only are my friend not using it, but I'd have to build my profile and network from scratch.
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I disagree. Watching a video of the device in action is often very useful. In the main video Amazon has on Kindle you see the guy navigating through a book, looking up words in the dictionary and with wikipedia, using the wireless amazon store to buy a book, etc. I think I have a much better idea of how the device will function having seen it in action rather than reading about it. Kindle actually has a slightly odd interface because of the eInk technology...there's a little scroll wheel with a little strip of display that is not part of the main page to select things. Kind of hard to describe, but makes sense when you see it in action. I get the feeling there must be a more elegant way of implementing the interface..
Does it use eInk technology? Can you get 88,000 books (commercial books, excluding gutenberg books) for the Pal T|X? Those are the key features of the Kindle. Also I think the Palm's display is much smaller. Anyway, the Kindle has too many flaws for me to want it right now but I look forward to it coming down in price.
Auctioning to the highest bidder (subject to monopoly/antitrust law) is sort of guaranteeing it is in the public interest. In this case the government thinks the public interest in in using the spectrum for maximum increase of GDP. If it goes to the highest bidder it will be bought by whoever can expect to get the best return from it, which has the maximum benefit to the economy.
Auctioning spectrum is actually a really good idea, it ensures the spectrum is allocated to its highest value use.
I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt you're correct on this. Why would movie studios bother optioning books if all they have to do is avoid using the same exact sentences in the movie? The concept/world is part of the copyright. Specifically, copyright gives the creator the exclusive right to "derivative works." I can't see how a harry potter lexicon could possibly not be considered a derivative work.
I never could understand who was buying gold. It's like $17 per 100 gold and 100 gold doesn't buy shit. $850 for an epic mount? No thanks. I guess you could be right, a hundred gold seed money if you decide to start from scratch on a new server could be kind of helpful in getting your first character leveled up.
One of the things Bennett has always failed to understand is that just making something inconvenient will oftentimes prevent people from doing it. Yes, there is a way to get on a high school network after the "must be confirmed by an existing student" change, if you really really want to get on that network. But there are plenty of perverts who will either just give up or go find a way to get off that has a lower opportunity cost.
I imagine it is similar to pagerank...CNN, BBC, etc do well in relevance algorithms because they're widely linked to. Thus, it is a conspiracy to oppress WND, right?? Honestly, some people have an oppression complex. WND's editorial quality is equivalent to your average blog, they get traffic and cross linking in a tier well below the likes of CNN, so they're treated as a boutique site in the news ranking algorithm. I can't imagine any algorithm that could manage to pick WND over other news sites based on an objective, mechanical metric.
At any rate, I think it's safe to say that next year WND will be bitching about Memorial Day and Columbus Day. And if they got logos for those it would be Reagan's Birthday and the day they pardoned Oliver North. You can't win with these whiners. It's a freaking logo, this is the stupidest controversy in history.
Talented engineers should be able to pick up work that isn't exactly their competency fairly quickly. Sure, initially they may be a little less productive or have to work extra to get the job done but thats how you succeed in a competitive business environment. If you're slow in developing your product your competition will cream you here.
All of this babbling about hard work misses the point...if hard work was what determined value then fruit pickers would make a ton of money. It's not hard work, it's your ability to provide value that matters. As work currently done by americans is offshored we need to respond by providing higher value services. Less simple code jockeying are more software architecture and design, that kind of thing. Keep upgrading your skills, they set you apart much more than simple hard work ever can.
An architect could only win a lawsuit about the color of the walls if they got the owners to sign a contract saying they couldn't change the color of the walls. Don't sign dumb contracts is the lesson I suppose...
Frank Lloyd Wright houses are not very liveable at all, you're correct. In fact he had no regard at all for the desires of the owners of the houses. I don't think that really applies to the iPhone, but there wasn't much other than visual style that makes the iPhone stand out. It has a few new features like visual voice mail and the multi-touch display. But thats just incremental progress in features, not an invention of the caliber that the other items have (which would you consider a more impressive invention...the ability to convert any type of blood into type O, or visual voicemail?) Anyway, I think someone else hit it on the head...it drives traffic.
Anyway, the guy got his answer in the first round of answers...namely, that he didn't consider all possible reasons to ban smoking for minors.
Basically yes. You'd want to use a datacenter for your servers because they (supposedly) will have engineered backup systems for just about anything that can go wrong. This means generator backup for power and cooling, effective surge protection, redundant high speed internet connections, security, professional monitoring of the equipment and environment, etc.
She's already served her life sentence? are you saying that the clock on your sentence continues to run if you're escaped? That seems a bit absurd...
I don't think there's even been a serious claim that our justice system is about rehabilitation and not punishment. Rehabilitation is kind of a minor sub goal, but not the serious focus.
The school shouldn't be blocking anything. If students don't learn how to intelligently choose their sources then they're missing out on a key part of the act of doing research. I don't see how this benefits students at all. I wonder if it's a high school, I can't believe colleges are censoring any information.
Why do people give a fuck about their slashdot Karma? Its an invisible score that gives you absolutely nothing as a reward. Your original comment is moderated up anyway, why not save the bitching about losing karma until you've actually lost it?
Try this: 8===D~~~
It wasn't too long ago that there was widespread outrage about stores that force people making returns to provide a driver's license, address, phone number, etc. This is exactly the reason...generally the stores will give their customers the benefit of the doubt no matter what wild-ass story they come up with for a return. But if they do that they're also vulnerable, so they keep detailed records and I'm sure their loss prevention specialists are watching for suspicious return patterns.
I notice I haven't seen many complaints lately about these practices. I guess people have given up since it is a standard practice almost everywhere. Honestly, I would prefer not to provide the information but I also enjoy the no-questions-asked attitude most stores have and I realize that the people that are at fault for the ID nonsense are the criminals and not the stores.
Its not a totally unreasonable claim to make either...no one can really say who is telling the truth. And I completely believe that a customer might fake it too, having worked at a restaurant people would "find" stuff in their food all the time to try to get a free meal.
Probably it was the result of a return with the item stolen. But it could be either. I'm not sure there's a foolproof system to decide what to do in these situations either short of having every box opened in the store. Maybe expensive items should be weighed to verify the item is intact, like those self checkout machines at the grocery store are able to tell that you're scanning and bagging all the items. You could still fool it, but it would be a lot more difficult.
Of course I returned the software along with it in perfect condition, too...anyway, point is that its really easy to do this and the employees of that store are almost certainly responsible because they have everything you'd need to do it in the back office or warehouse.
My point is that you have to be mental to work on your vacation.
On the other hand I don't know that Facebook is worth 15 billion. Microsoft reeks of desperation here. As for google, I think they screwed up big time with Orkut. I remember wanting to join that ages ago and couldn't because it was invitation only. Now I have a facebook account and while Orkut is wide open I have no interest in switching because not only are my friend not using it, but I'd have to build my profile and network from scratch.