Wrong. It DID cost Apple money. They would have spent considerable amounts, possibly even more than Samsung, in investigating the claims, buying "presents" for the various judges, etc. If the cases had have gone ahead without Apple having done any preparation, they almost certainly would have lost. Apple are becoming more comfortable in the courtroom than in the market place - they definitely would have come prepared and anything that involves lots of top quality lawyers costs lots.
And this comment is modded Insightful! Just shows that/. people are pretty tech-based and don't have much sophistication in other areas...
The lunacy of the idea of perpetual growth on a finite planet is beginning to become evident with environmental degradation now starting to show the cracks in the system. Completely virtual fiat currencies are the most unjust and undemocratic instruments known to man - together with deregulation of the financial markets they lead to massive transfers of capital to those who create no actual wealth.
And aside from that, there is a major practical flaw in your argument, as shown typically by the tech industry. Screens are a perfect example - I have a 25" LCD screen plugged into my laptop. 15 years ago it would have cost many thousands of dollars. 3 years ago I paid a couple of hundred and today it would probably only cost a hundred or so. HORRIBLE DEFLATION!!!!!!!!!!!!! Run for the hills my friends, we're all doomed!!!!!!!
Isn't, in reality, deflation in the price of a particular good or service a true reflection of "progress" or "advancement"? As we become more efficient at doing a particular thing and as competition increases, isn't it in fact the only natural and logical result?
I believe that the problem is not with having a fixed money supply but rather foolish economists (and most of us for believing without reserve) who can't imagine other, more efficient ways of doing things. After all, what is the "purpose" of the monetary system? Perpetual growth? Nope, it's to facilitate the (hopefully maximally) efficient distribution of scarce resources in a particular economy/society...
Are you sure about that?
There are a great number of areas where your assertion "if the projections show it won't make more money, they won't do it" is false. Though somewhat flawed, the example of the legalisation of cannabis is a great example. The arguments put forward by the fanatics and Christian fundamentalists have long been soundly refuted by both economics and science (no, I don't think the former is a subset of the latter but that's another story). Two US states have finally bitten the bullet but with the pressures from the fundamentalists and the distortions that are brought in with it being so restricted (think Amsterdam), it wouldn't surprise me if these states have considerable difficulties.
Fact 1. The active ingredients in cannabis are far less addictive and far less dangerous than either alcohol or nicotine. A very major study has just been completed in Europe (maybe just in France, can't remember) that suggested that people under the age of 22 should completely abstain or risk suffering brain development problems. I heard an interview with one of the authors, the interviewer asked "So that means young people should stick to alcohol and if they must smoke then they should wait?", "Absolutely not! Alcohol is far worse than cannabis for brain development. Sustained, daily cannabis abuse in the teenage years can lead to cognitive impairment. However, even occasional binge drinking can have a much worse effect as alcohol actually destroys important brain cells whereas cannabis just impairs optimal development". The physical addiction factor of cannabis is actually very low (it's very difficult to become physically addicted, though admittedly the physical part is almost never the major one), and something like 95% (sorry, no ref for that) of government sponsored medical studies, from EVERYWHERE throughout the world, has recommended some level of tolerance/non-prosecution. Prohibition is the main root cause of even health-related issues and impedes proper treatment in many cases where the drug is actually being abused (as opposed to relatively harmless occasional use).
Fact 2. Many police departments around the world have been recommending for decades that cannabis be decriminalised. The "gateway drug" fallacy is completely based on association. If you force cannabis into the underworld, then you force users into the underworld. Just like in every Walmart and showroom around the world, the salespeople do cross-selling and up-selling. In some places cannabis prohibition enforcement is a substantial cost for police forces and almost all would much rather spend that money fighting actual crime. Legalisation means quality control and (slightly) more control over the use by the younger age groups.
Fact 3. The tax revenues that could be generated (as shown by the Californian study that prompted the referendum) by legalising and then taxing are huge.
So what do we have? A situation where basically all evidence: economic, scientific (health), and even your friendly local Bob say that cannabis prohibition is hugely expensive and is actually counter-productive - i.e., the prohibition of cannabis is far worse for individuals and even society as a whole and yet it is still the status quo in the vast majority of regions and states throughout the world.
Take home point:
Superstitions and punishment disorders can trump science, economics and logic - DRM is just such another case of people trying to cling to a fundamentally broken way of doing things, just like you see in many other areas of our lives...
Don't worry, such gifts are remembered for many generations - the Buckwhupistanis will likely return the gifts at some point... That's just the cost of being so generous.
Ah... WTF has "the current financial climate" got to do with Palm, RIM and Nokia going belly up (or heading that way fast)? There has been MASSIVE growth in phone volumes, and MASSIVE profits generated by those companies that have been able to put the right phones to market at the right times. While most companies have been unable to produce compelling phones, and the three you mention have not helped themselves with poor strategy AND poor execution (we'll see shortly whether Nokia die or rise like the phoenix...), the problems are mainly with vision and execution. The current financial climate is certainly not responsible for their crap performance!
I'd bet if you look closely, in spite of the "current financial climate", smartphone purchase volumes have actually INCREASED, even in Spain. Maybe not Greece, but that is another story altogether!
Eh... maybe the people who hang around/.? And if it didn't take serious configuration and grief and only really work when launched from the command line, then what kind of stupid, boring and mundane kind of interface would that be?!?
And yes, this may be being posted from an Ubuntu but have you ever tried getting something like a fingerprint reader or automatic graphics card switching to work, even on Ubuntu?
Grow a pair!
8-}
Wow, I guess the 30 minutes or so a day I spend on/. isn't enough. To be far, I rarely read ALL the comments but this dude gets mega-hammered every time he writes anything. Basically everything he writes gets modded down to -1.
I think he definitely deserves some serious credit for having a comment branch off and talk about him though, whether he be a genuine Troll (TM) or not!
It's probably not a very mature way of looking at things but it's also exactly the way I see them. There is a fundamental difference between companies that attempt to stop others moving forward and those whose strategy is simply to continuously innovate faster and further than the rest. That doesn't mean secrecy isn't sometimes warranted. That doesn't mean that you should let others profit from your brand/image or pass themselves off as somehow representing you.
There are limits though. While I like Samsung products (and owned both a Galaxy S and Galaxy Nexus), they deserved a massive fine for blatant copying. There was no need to do it, they were told not to by Google, and they did it anyway. The early Galaxy phones got them a good foothold in the massive smartphone market - a foothold they would possibly have had a harder time getting without the blatant copying. We'll never know. I believe software patents are fundamentally contrary to fast and efficient innovation in the tech sector - I am all for using the courts when you do a fairly crass ripoff...
Bullshit. I installed JB (CM10) on my Galaxy S a couple of nights ago. A Galaxy S I bought a fraction over 2 yrs ago. It runs FAR, FAR better than the absolute SHIT Samsung put on it to begin with. Even with all the subsequent Samsung updates nothing really good came of it. Seriously, something way retarded is going on here. I "upgraded" to an Xperia S (knowing I would have a few months of 2.3 before getting ICS, though ICS was already out...). After getting the Xperia S I upgraded my Galaxy S to ICS (various customs) and was almost tempted to move back to it while ICS arrived on the Xperia. Though my Xperia S now has (stock) ICS on it, I am seriously (really, not just exaggeration here!) considering putting my main SIM back into my Galaxy S. Even with the odd lag due to the single processor, most of the time it just works nicer. And the Galaxy has a dodgy GPS chip!
The manufacturers should stay completely out of the software game. They ALL (except maybe Apple here!) suck at it. The official versions have almost without exception been worse than the customs I've installed on my various Androids (ADP1 and beyond).
I remember reading a while ago (a couple of years?) a suggestion that they should all just concentrate on hardware and drivers - the base should be nothing more than a sort of hypervisor and the rest gets chosen/installed by the user. This idea was excellent back when I read it, and is even more excellent now.
Hahaha. I guess you never tried actually running stuff on PAE Windows. What a monstrosity! The tens (hundreds?) of hours we wasted (including several MS-certifieds) trying to get Microsoft SERVER applications (2003 IIS/ASP.net 2.0+) to work stably under load with PAE enabled. No, 32-bit did NOT work fine. 64 bit versions (even compiled as x86) of the same code did work fine, and performed perfectly adequately. When we finally moved all the apps over to 64-bit (OS, and up to asp.net 3.0/3.5), I stopped complaining about MS with every second breath and started doing some work...
I see this crap on Ubuntu servers *other* people install but I don't seem to have had most of this stuff auto-install. Then again, I always make a massive deal about unchecking everything on install - whether it be on Ubuntu or CentOS. I seem to get clean installs for both...
Not really. Kiwis are not corrupt, just naïve and often a bit stupid. It's too small and too far away to maintain a critical mass of intellect. The people that stay (I didn't) are easily impressed by megacorps like Microsoft and IBM and these "experts" are usually believed. These guys work for MIcrosoft! That's what a computer is, right? They must be soooo brainy, we'd better do what they say! I may be painting it a bit darker than it really is - they aren't nearly as stupid as most anglo-saxons but that's not very difficult either...
Though subject to some cuts of late, they also have many radio stations, in various languages. They also have an excellent (mainly news) website. It's not all 100% ad-free but I think you'd struggle to find anything with the breadth of scope and quality anywhere else on the planet.
In the US. Here in France we now have competition. You know, that thing you are supposed to have in a free market? Before the three incumbents happily fixed prices and had to pay massive fines - not enough to get them to stop though. Now a fourth player (Free) has entered and true to their history, they have completely turned the market on its head. Overnight you got 20€/month contracts (unlimited national calling and to landlines in 40 countries, 3GB data with no usage restrictions - yes that means torrents! NO minimum period, 16€ if you get it with quad-play) with no phone supplied. Want a nice phone but can't afford to shell out 400-700€ in one go right now? Fine, get a 20€/month contract, put down 100-150€, and pay the rest per month over 12, 24 or 36 months (not everyone offers all options but most offer a few). It's completely honest - if you want to change provider that's fine, you just need to finish paying your interest-free loan in a lump sum. The other operators now offer similar deals - they had to.
Say what you like about consumerist capitalism - if you want cheap, high quality communications then you need a truly free market and it will happen!
It moderately pisses me off, as I use it as my main RSS/News feeder for both my home and work profiles but whatever. I am also an unashamed Google fanboy/apologist so try to keep it Google as much as possible (yes, I'm that bad!)... I really can't see it taking up huge resources on their side though so this definitely goes on the "annoyed they didn't keep it" pile.
Linguistics grad here too, and he didn't invent or re-invent anything. He did ruin several generations of thought on language and communication, and his theories have been directly responsible for the wasting of tens, if not hundreds of millions of wasted dollars/euros/pounds/pesos/etc. on thinking and theorising about such preposterous notions as a "LAD". Think of all the trees wasted on his books! The carbon footprint of this guy! FINALLY people are beginning to realise that his theories, if true, mean that it would be relatively easy to mimic in computers. Nothing of the sort has been shown to be true and people are starting to say enough time and money has been thrown away and it's time to start doing some actual science. This dude went beyond what most intelligent people could stomach if faced with the truth of the matter "No, all these obvious examples that clearly invalidate my hypothesis are not a problem for my very scientific theory. In fact, it's fine to have rules that are more suggestions-that-work-some-of-the-time as fundamental rules of nature". WTF!?!
I finally started seeing through the rubbish that everyone was spouting after reading some of the work of David R Olson and, of course, the great hole-finder Roy Harris (if you dislike Chomsky's linguistics in the slighest you will have great fun reading this guy tear him a new one!). After reading Olson's "The history of writing" I came to the conclusion (certainly others have come to the same) that the key problem with Chomsky is that he is unable to understand that his theories describe nothing more than the decidedly "unnatural" behaviours and reactions of people who have been taught to read. And not only taught to read but taught to read a language written with an alphabet. He has described nothing more than the way (almost always Western) literate people react to linguistic stimuli when brought up in a profoundly writing-based society. The problem is that even children's and illiterates' views on language are heavily coloured by the omnipresent written word in modern literate cultures. I put this to Olson in person when he was over in my neck of the woods (NZ) and while he wasn't completely convinced, he wasn't unconvinced either:-). I can point to some very interesting literature if anyone's interested.
What the generativists have done is turn the greco-roman grammatical tradition into a pseudo-science.
And yes after 4 years of linguistics I gave up in disgust and started another degree in IT!
And the cool thing about this is that Arabic has a completely different way of writing numerals and they indeed call this system "Indian" (though they, like the Chinese who also have their own system, very often use the 123 system)! Or the French press which the French know as an Italian coffee maker (cafetière) and the Italians call English (details might be wrong on this one, idea is not).
This is very similar to what was happening in France with mobile network charges. You LITERALLY had a spokesman from one of the three "historical operators" (incumbents, those who actually own physical networks as opposed to virtual operators) say when challenged by a journalist on the margins they were getting - "it's not how much it costs us to provide the service but what the consumer is prepared to pay". Needless to say, the three have been fined many hundreds of millions of euros for price collusion over the years. The result? They paid the fines - it was still far more profitable to pay the fines and continue to charge extortive prices.
Then earlier this year the famous "fourth operator" arrived (mobile.free.fr). Overnight they revolutionised the market. People routinely have had their bills halved, or at least have a significant reduction in cost and significant increase in services provided/included (like free tethering, 3x data, unlimited voice, etc. thrown in,). The business model is different - you buy your phone outright (though they do offer rent-to-own which makes the difference pretty small) and there are no minimum contract lengths. There is basically no customer service but the difference here in France between "full customer service" and "no customer service" is pretty small anyway (don't get me started!). All the others have followed suit. The comment made by the CEO of the 4th operator "even at these prices we are still making a very healthy margin".
The ONLY thing that matters is proper competition. Whether that happens naturally by a company being prepared to make only reasonable profits (as opposed to ridiculous) or by the government making sure it happens is probably pretty irrelevant. Software is a hard one though - most people are zombies and just use what is fashionable (Windows anyone?)...
Sounds a lot like the Jérôme Kerviel fiasco... "Oh no, we had no idea what the person was doing. He may well have talked about it at length during meetings - our jobs are very complicated and we couldn't possible know what all 4 of the people we manage are doing. That would entail us taking an interest in our jobs when there are clearly far more important things to do like playing golf!".
Linguistics, and socio-linguistics in particular, is one of those fields where "researchers" almost NEVER do true science. I studied it for 4 years and ended up so disgusted that I switched to computing. You can do almost anything with statistics and when one of the basic premises of the discipline is that "exceptions are a normal and expected situation", it's party time. So you can invent a "scientific generalisation", which you will codify with formulae and everything, and then when presented with obvious and repeated examples disproving the "scientific theory" being proposed, you simply say "the exception that confirms the rule". I LITERALLY had a full university professor bust that one out in my presence... It is anti-science. "Linguists" are charlatans. The only truly great linguist is Roy Harris - former chair of Linguistics at Oxford. He was the first chair, and know what he wanted to do at the end of his tenure? Abolish it!
Really you people! US government "enforcement" agencies have never cared a hoot about borders, rights or the law. They have, like a small group of other countries (supported by the US), never respected territorial integrity or international law. The CIA and other organisations have committed extra-judicial arrests, even executions, for decades. Sometimes we find out about it, sometimes we don't. No one inside the US cares - when you get terrorist attacks no one in the US ever mentions this sort of behaviour as a contributing factor. Let's get real - NOBODY hates freedom - it's just that when you insist people behave one way and then do whatever you want, people get fed up very quickly... LulzSec members would all be in Guantanamo (or the bottom of a lake) in a week if there was any real desire for it. They aren't actually causing any real trouble for the moment, so why do anything?
I remember reading something like this as well. I even mentioned it to my Chinese mate once on the phone and he replied "What? Don't be stupid, high speed train is so cheap here it costs almost nothing". He even claimed that often it was cheaper than the intercity buses (or "coaches" if you prefer). Now it's been several years since I've been to China, and my friend (like many) can have a tendency to exaggerate... but I think that the reality is not so bleak for highspeed rail in China. It's very expensive to build and run but apart from that is an absolute godsend. I live here in France, and they have only really made highspeed rail viable by making car/bus travel almost the same price. Massive taxes on fuel and obscenely high road tolls make the far quicker trains attractive. Trains are far less of a hassle in terms of security (less, not none...), generally less stressful, and for anything less than about 700kms are simply quicker than air travel. Sometimes that gets extended to more depending on how easy your airport is to get to. I live in Bordeaux, and even with less than half of the ride to Paris on high-speed rails (so max speed on those bits around 160km/h if memory serves) it only takes 3-3.5hrs (for ~550kms). They are about to start construction on upgrading the rails to high-speed rails all the way, and when that happens I can assure you air travel will drop to pretty much zero. Most people never fly to Paris from Bordeaux - when it takes only 2hrs from the centre of Bordeaux to the centre of Paris, the extra hassle of flying makes it simply non-sensical.
What is my point? High-speed rail TODAY suffers many, mainly financial, hurdles in China. Who cares? It is a fabulous investment for the future - it's far, far less carbon intensive and can move large numbers of people safely and quickly. In 15-20 yrs when China's population has enough money to make expensive tickets less of a problem - when they start making road users pay the full cost to the environment and economy of road travel (some say they aren't even there yet in France...), then everything will make sense. Just like US government invested massive money in roads a few generations ago, so the Chinese government is investing now, or will be if rail companies go broke! In the long run we will look back and say "they did the right thing, it looked expensive but look at the advantages now". You'll see...
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong. It DID cost Apple money. They would have spent considerable amounts, possibly even more than Samsung, in investigating the claims, buying "presents" for the various judges, etc. If the cases had have gone ahead without Apple having done any preparation, they almost certainly would have lost. Apple are becoming more comfortable in the courtroom than in the market place - they definitely would have come prepared and anything that involves lots of top quality lawyers costs lots.
And this comment is modded Insightful! Just shows that /. people are pretty tech-based and don't have much sophistication in other areas...
The lunacy of the idea of perpetual growth on a finite planet is beginning to become evident with environmental degradation now starting to show the cracks in the system. Completely virtual fiat currencies are the most unjust and undemocratic instruments known to man - together with deregulation of the financial markets they lead to massive transfers of capital to those who create no actual wealth.
And aside from that, there is a major practical flaw in your argument, as shown typically by the tech industry. Screens are a perfect example - I have a 25" LCD screen plugged into my laptop. 15 years ago it would have cost many thousands of dollars. 3 years ago I paid a couple of hundred and today it would probably only cost a hundred or so. HORRIBLE DEFLATION!!!!!!!!!!!!! Run for the hills my friends, we're all doomed!!!!!!!
Isn't, in reality, deflation in the price of a particular good or service a true reflection of "progress" or "advancement"? As we become more efficient at doing a particular thing and as competition increases, isn't it in fact the only natural and logical result?
I believe that the problem is not with having a fixed money supply but rather foolish economists (and most of us for believing without reserve) who can't imagine other, more efficient ways of doing things. After all, what is the "purpose" of the monetary system? Perpetual growth? Nope, it's to facilitate the (hopefully maximally) efficient distribution of scarce resources in a particular economy/society...
Are you sure about that?
There are a great number of areas where your assertion "if the projections show it won't make more money, they won't do it" is false. Though somewhat flawed, the example of the legalisation of cannabis is a great example. The arguments put forward by the fanatics and Christian fundamentalists have long been soundly refuted by both economics and science (no, I don't think the former is a subset of the latter but that's another story). Two US states have finally bitten the bullet but with the pressures from the fundamentalists and the distortions that are brought in with it being so restricted (think Amsterdam), it wouldn't surprise me if these states have considerable difficulties.
Fact 1. The active ingredients in cannabis are far less addictive and far less dangerous than either alcohol or nicotine. A very major study has just been completed in Europe (maybe just in France, can't remember) that suggested that people under the age of 22 should completely abstain or risk suffering brain development problems. I heard an interview with one of the authors, the interviewer asked "So that means young people should stick to alcohol and if they must smoke then they should wait?", "Absolutely not! Alcohol is far worse than cannabis for brain development. Sustained, daily cannabis abuse in the teenage years can lead to cognitive impairment. However, even occasional binge drinking can have a much worse effect as alcohol actually destroys important brain cells whereas cannabis just impairs optimal development". The physical addiction factor of cannabis is actually very low (it's very difficult to become physically addicted, though admittedly the physical part is almost never the major one), and something like 95% (sorry, no ref for that) of government sponsored medical studies, from EVERYWHERE throughout the world, has recommended some level of tolerance/non-prosecution. Prohibition is the main root cause of even health-related issues and impedes proper treatment in many cases where the drug is actually being abused (as opposed to relatively harmless occasional use).
Fact 2. Many police departments around the world have been recommending for decades that cannabis be decriminalised. The "gateway drug" fallacy is completely based on association. If you force cannabis into the underworld, then you force users into the underworld. Just like in every Walmart and showroom around the world, the salespeople do cross-selling and up-selling. In some places cannabis prohibition enforcement is a substantial cost for police forces and almost all would much rather spend that money fighting actual crime. Legalisation means quality control and (slightly) more control over the use by the younger age groups.
Fact 3. The tax revenues that could be generated (as shown by the Californian study that prompted the referendum) by legalising and then taxing are huge.
So what do we have? A situation where basically all evidence: economic, scientific (health), and even your friendly local Bob say that cannabis prohibition is hugely expensive and is actually counter-productive - i.e., the prohibition of cannabis is far worse for individuals and even society as a whole and yet it is still the status quo in the vast majority of regions and states throughout the world.
Take home point:
Superstitions and punishment disorders can trump science, economics and logic - DRM is just such another case of people trying to cling to a fundamentally broken way of doing things, just like you see in many other areas of our lives...
Don't worry, such gifts are remembered for many generations - the Buckwhupistanis will likely return the gifts at some point... That's just the cost of being so generous.
Ah... WTF has "the current financial climate" got to do with Palm, RIM and Nokia going belly up (or heading that way fast)? There has been MASSIVE growth in phone volumes, and MASSIVE profits generated by those companies that have been able to put the right phones to market at the right times. While most companies have been unable to produce compelling phones, and the three you mention have not helped themselves with poor strategy AND poor execution (we'll see shortly whether Nokia die or rise like the phoenix...), the problems are mainly with vision and execution. The current financial climate is certainly not responsible for their crap performance! I'd bet if you look closely, in spite of the "current financial climate", smartphone purchase volumes have actually INCREASED, even in Spain. Maybe not Greece, but that is another story altogether!
Eh... maybe the people who hang around /.? And if it didn't take serious configuration and grief and only really work when launched from the command line, then what kind of stupid, boring and mundane kind of interface would that be?!?
And yes, this may be being posted from an Ubuntu but have you ever tried getting something like a fingerprint reader or automatic graphics card switching to work, even on Ubuntu?
Grow a pair!
8-}
Wow, I guess the 30 minutes or so a day I spend on /. isn't enough. To be far, I rarely read ALL the comments but this dude gets mega-hammered every time he writes anything. Basically everything he writes gets modded down to -1.
I think he definitely deserves some serious credit for having a comment branch off and talk about him though, whether he be a genuine Troll (TM) or not!
It's probably not a very mature way of looking at things but it's also exactly the way I see them. There is a fundamental difference between companies that attempt to stop others moving forward and those whose strategy is simply to continuously innovate faster and further than the rest. That doesn't mean secrecy isn't sometimes warranted. That doesn't mean that you should let others profit from your brand/image or pass themselves off as somehow representing you. There are limits though. While I like Samsung products (and owned both a Galaxy S and Galaxy Nexus), they deserved a massive fine for blatant copying. There was no need to do it, they were told not to by Google, and they did it anyway. The early Galaxy phones got them a good foothold in the massive smartphone market - a foothold they would possibly have had a harder time getting without the blatant copying. We'll never know. I believe software patents are fundamentally contrary to fast and efficient innovation in the tech sector - I am all for using the courts when you do a fairly crass ripoff...
Bullshit. I installed JB (CM10) on my Galaxy S a couple of nights ago. A Galaxy S I bought a fraction over 2 yrs ago. It runs FAR, FAR better than the absolute SHIT Samsung put on it to begin with. Even with all the subsequent Samsung updates nothing really good came of it. Seriously, something way retarded is going on here. I "upgraded" to an Xperia S (knowing I would have a few months of 2.3 before getting ICS, though ICS was already out...). After getting the Xperia S I upgraded my Galaxy S to ICS (various customs) and was almost tempted to move back to it while ICS arrived on the Xperia. Though my Xperia S now has (stock) ICS on it, I am seriously (really, not just exaggeration here!) considering putting my main SIM back into my Galaxy S. Even with the odd lag due to the single processor, most of the time it just works nicer. And the Galaxy has a dodgy GPS chip! The manufacturers should stay completely out of the software game. They ALL (except maybe Apple here!) suck at it. The official versions have almost without exception been worse than the customs I've installed on my various Androids (ADP1 and beyond). I remember reading a while ago (a couple of years?) a suggestion that they should all just concentrate on hardware and drivers - the base should be nothing more than a sort of hypervisor and the rest gets chosen/installed by the user. This idea was excellent back when I read it, and is even more excellent now.
Hahaha. I guess you never tried actually running stuff on PAE Windows. What a monstrosity! The tens (hundreds?) of hours we wasted (including several MS-certifieds) trying to get Microsoft SERVER applications (2003 IIS/ASP.net 2.0+) to work stably under load with PAE enabled. No, 32-bit did NOT work fine. 64 bit versions (even compiled as x86) of the same code did work fine, and performed perfectly adequately. When we finally moved all the apps over to 64-bit (OS, and up to asp.net 3.0/3.5), I stopped complaining about MS with every second breath and started doing some work...
I see this crap on Ubuntu servers *other* people install but I don't seem to have had most of this stuff auto-install. Then again, I always make a massive deal about unchecking everything on install - whether it be on Ubuntu or CentOS. I seem to get clean installs for both...
Not really. Kiwis are not corrupt, just naïve and often a bit stupid. It's too small and too far away to maintain a critical mass of intellect. The people that stay (I didn't) are easily impressed by megacorps like Microsoft and IBM and these "experts" are usually believed. These guys work for MIcrosoft! That's what a computer is, right? They must be soooo brainy, we'd better do what they say! I may be painting it a bit darker than it really is - they aren't nearly as stupid as most anglo-saxons but that's not very difficult either...
Though subject to some cuts of late, they also have many radio stations, in various languages. They also have an excellent (mainly news) website. It's not all 100% ad-free but I think you'd struggle to find anything with the breadth of scope and quality anywhere else on the planet.
In the US. Here in France we now have competition. You know, that thing you are supposed to have in a free market? Before the three incumbents happily fixed prices and had to pay massive fines - not enough to get them to stop though. Now a fourth player (Free) has entered and true to their history, they have completely turned the market on its head. Overnight you got 20€/month contracts (unlimited national calling and to landlines in 40 countries, 3GB data with no usage restrictions - yes that means torrents! NO minimum period, 16€ if you get it with quad-play) with no phone supplied. Want a nice phone but can't afford to shell out 400-700€ in one go right now? Fine, get a 20€/month contract, put down 100-150€, and pay the rest per month over 12, 24 or 36 months (not everyone offers all options but most offer a few). It's completely honest - if you want to change provider that's fine, you just need to finish paying your interest-free loan in a lump sum. The other operators now offer similar deals - they had to. Say what you like about consumerist capitalism - if you want cheap, high quality communications then you need a truly free market and it will happen!
Yep, I vaguely remember the series but thank god I don't remember the jingle!
It moderately pisses me off, as I use it as my main RSS/News feeder for both my home and work profiles but whatever. I am also an unashamed Google fanboy/apologist so try to keep it Google as much as possible (yes, I'm that bad!)... I really can't see it taking up huge resources on their side though so this definitely goes on the "annoyed they didn't keep it" pile.
And I was also awarded the VUW Linguistics prize.
First class honours from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Linguistics grad here too, and he didn't invent or re-invent anything. He did ruin several generations of thought on language and communication, and his theories have been directly responsible for the wasting of tens, if not hundreds of millions of wasted dollars/euros/pounds/pesos/etc. on thinking and theorising about such preposterous notions as a "LAD". Think of all the trees wasted on his books! The carbon footprint of this guy! FINALLY people are beginning to realise that his theories, if true, mean that it would be relatively easy to mimic in computers. Nothing of the sort has been shown to be true and people are starting to say enough time and money has been thrown away and it's time to start doing some actual science. This dude went beyond what most intelligent people could stomach if faced with the truth of the matter "No, all these obvious examples that clearly invalidate my hypothesis are not a problem for my very scientific theory. In fact, it's fine to have rules that are more suggestions-that-work-some-of-the-time as fundamental rules of nature". WTF!?! I finally started seeing through the rubbish that everyone was spouting after reading some of the work of David R Olson and, of course, the great hole-finder Roy Harris (if you dislike Chomsky's linguistics in the slighest you will have great fun reading this guy tear him a new one!). After reading Olson's "The history of writing" I came to the conclusion (certainly others have come to the same) that the key problem with Chomsky is that he is unable to understand that his theories describe nothing more than the decidedly "unnatural" behaviours and reactions of people who have been taught to read. And not only taught to read but taught to read a language written with an alphabet. He has described nothing more than the way (almost always Western) literate people react to linguistic stimuli when brought up in a profoundly writing-based society. The problem is that even children's and illiterates' views on language are heavily coloured by the omnipresent written word in modern literate cultures. I put this to Olson in person when he was over in my neck of the woods (NZ) and while he wasn't completely convinced, he wasn't unconvinced either :-). I can point to some very interesting literature if anyone's interested.
What the generativists have done is turn the greco-roman grammatical tradition into a pseudo-science.
And yes after 4 years of linguistics I gave up in disgust and started another degree in IT!
And the cool thing about this is that Arabic has a completely different way of writing numerals and they indeed call this system "Indian" (though they, like the Chinese who also have their own system, very often use the 123 system)! Or the French press which the French know as an Italian coffee maker (cafetière) and the Italians call English (details might be wrong on this one, idea is not).
This is very similar to what was happening in France with mobile network charges. You LITERALLY had a spokesman from one of the three "historical operators" (incumbents, those who actually own physical networks as opposed to virtual operators) say when challenged by a journalist on the margins they were getting - "it's not how much it costs us to provide the service but what the consumer is prepared to pay". Needless to say, the three have been fined many hundreds of millions of euros for price collusion over the years. The result? They paid the fines - it was still far more profitable to pay the fines and continue to charge extortive prices. Then earlier this year the famous "fourth operator" arrived (mobile.free.fr). Overnight they revolutionised the market. People routinely have had their bills halved, or at least have a significant reduction in cost and significant increase in services provided/included (like free tethering, 3x data, unlimited voice, etc. thrown in,). The business model is different - you buy your phone outright (though they do offer rent-to-own which makes the difference pretty small) and there are no minimum contract lengths. There is basically no customer service but the difference here in France between "full customer service" and "no customer service" is pretty small anyway (don't get me started!). All the others have followed suit. The comment made by the CEO of the 4th operator "even at these prices we are still making a very healthy margin". The ONLY thing that matters is proper competition. Whether that happens naturally by a company being prepared to make only reasonable profits (as opposed to ridiculous) or by the government making sure it happens is probably pretty irrelevant. Software is a hard one though - most people are zombies and just use what is fashionable (Windows anyone?)...
Sounds a lot like the Jérôme Kerviel fiasco... "Oh no, we had no idea what the person was doing. He may well have talked about it at length during meetings - our jobs are very complicated and we couldn't possible know what all 4 of the people we manage are doing. That would entail us taking an interest in our jobs when there are clearly far more important things to do like playing golf!".
Linguistics, and socio-linguistics in particular, is one of those fields where "researchers" almost NEVER do true science. I studied it for 4 years and ended up so disgusted that I switched to computing. You can do almost anything with statistics and when one of the basic premises of the discipline is that "exceptions are a normal and expected situation", it's party time. So you can invent a "scientific generalisation", which you will codify with formulae and everything, and then when presented with obvious and repeated examples disproving the "scientific theory" being proposed, you simply say "the exception that confirms the rule". I LITERALLY had a full university professor bust that one out in my presence... It is anti-science. "Linguists" are charlatans. The only truly great linguist is Roy Harris - former chair of Linguistics at Oxford. He was the first chair, and know what he wanted to do at the end of his tenure? Abolish it!
Really you people! US government "enforcement" agencies have never cared a hoot about borders, rights or the law. They have, like a small group of other countries (supported by the US), never respected territorial integrity or international law. The CIA and other organisations have committed extra-judicial arrests, even executions, for decades. Sometimes we find out about it, sometimes we don't. No one inside the US cares - when you get terrorist attacks no one in the US ever mentions this sort of behaviour as a contributing factor. Let's get real - NOBODY hates freedom - it's just that when you insist people behave one way and then do whatever you want, people get fed up very quickly... LulzSec members would all be in Guantanamo (or the bottom of a lake) in a week if there was any real desire for it. They aren't actually causing any real trouble for the moment, so why do anything?
I remember reading something like this as well. I even mentioned it to my Chinese mate once on the phone and he replied "What? Don't be stupid, high speed train is so cheap here it costs almost nothing". He even claimed that often it was cheaper than the intercity buses (or "coaches" if you prefer). Now it's been several years since I've been to China, and my friend (like many) can have a tendency to exaggerate... but I think that the reality is not so bleak for highspeed rail in China. It's very expensive to build and run but apart from that is an absolute godsend. I live here in France, and they have only really made highspeed rail viable by making car/bus travel almost the same price. Massive taxes on fuel and obscenely high road tolls make the far quicker trains attractive. Trains are far less of a hassle in terms of security (less, not none...), generally less stressful, and for anything less than about 700kms are simply quicker than air travel. Sometimes that gets extended to more depending on how easy your airport is to get to. I live in Bordeaux, and even with less than half of the ride to Paris on high-speed rails (so max speed on those bits around 160km/h if memory serves) it only takes 3-3.5hrs (for ~550kms). They are about to start construction on upgrading the rails to high-speed rails all the way, and when that happens I can assure you air travel will drop to pretty much zero. Most people never fly to Paris from Bordeaux - when it takes only 2hrs from the centre of Bordeaux to the centre of Paris, the extra hassle of flying makes it simply non-sensical. What is my point? High-speed rail TODAY suffers many, mainly financial, hurdles in China. Who cares? It is a fabulous investment for the future - it's far, far less carbon intensive and can move large numbers of people safely and quickly. In 15-20 yrs when China's population has enough money to make expensive tickets less of a problem - when they start making road users pay the full cost to the environment and economy of road travel (some say they aren't even there yet in France...), then everything will make sense. Just like US government invested massive money in roads a few generations ago, so the Chinese government is investing now, or will be if rail companies go broke! In the long run we will look back and say "they did the right thing, it looked expensive but look at the advantages now". You'll see...