You're right, fires are easy to come by. Unfortunately. The people that would supposedly benefit from this technology are the same people whose existence is threatened by deforestation and also air pollution from countless cooking fires.
Bottom line this has to be one of the most ecologically unfriendly and economically unsustainable "cheap energy" ideas out there.
Which part of "opt in" is so fucking hard for you to understand? Don't want ads, wasted paper, wasted ink etc? Well, just don't... Yes, you got it! See, that wasn't so hard was it now?
In the extension of that, the system likely has limited application for the computers of Elvis impersonators and people who look eerily similar to Nixon or Porky Pig... A bit more seriously, how will it handle aging, facial disfigurement, botox, weight loss and any other number of everyday cases? My personal feeling is that this is a marketing ploy, no more no less.
I sit at the PC here intending to browse the web for something relevant to my interests and just have no idea what I want to search for, so Ill instead browse the recommended lists on youtube, or randomly browse wikipedia
If another company like GM or BP had made a false claim, you'd be all over them and demanding the government sue them, but because it's your corporate "friend" Apple, you ignore the sin of false advertising
OK, let's keep things in perspective: When did BP or GM ever get anyone laid?
Is that really all bad? Charlatans over the centuries have provided a very valuable commodity: Hope. The people who go on these pilgrimages have basically been told "You're fucked" by the prevailing medical establishment, but refuse to accept it. So by closing down these clinics we're basically saying "Dammit, we told you you're fucked, be still and die!" Should we really enforce a strict separation of health care and religion (in the very broadest sense of the word) especially when we know that there is such a thing as a very powerful placebo effect? If somebody terminally ill wants to spend their money on this or on a big donation to a charity or church or whatever because it gives them hope it's perfectly fine with me.
(Besides, who know what might work: "Mom, Dr Fleming told me to eat mold...":-)
OK fine, but what if Ballmer says: "Hackers, hackers hackers! Hackers, hackers hackers! Hackers, hackers hackers! Hackers, hackers hackers!" That ought to do it, don't you think?
And it's one thing to say "adenosine is released locally by needle pricks". And another to say that there are mysterious "meridians" that run through the body and connects your pinky toe to your heart, and your left butt cheek to your kidney or whatever, and that you can cure all kinds of diseases in those "connected" organs by poking the exactly right spots with needles.
Yep, that's what at the root of accupuncture theory in TCM, not random pin poking. And this experiments doesn't even attempt to explain what's going on there. So while I'm absolutely not saying that TCM is wrong, I am saying that this experiment says very little if anything about traditional accupuncture the way it's been practiced for 4000 years. It's just a feeble attempt at quickly saying "this is NOT BS".
So we still don't know how this works or indeed if it works, we only knows some mice produce adenosine locally under certain conditions. Accupuncture if it works as claimed would have to be much deeper, this hardly penetrates the surface. (Pardon the pun.)
For sure this is not a great leap forward for science or for mankind. It's just a Big Fucking Adventure along the lines of Peking to Paris in 1907 or the round the world race the following year. You do it for the bravado. Period.
Pity we can't just say here are some crazy kids who want to travel the length of a continent in a cobbled up electric car. Instead we have to pretend there's a science and/or engineering feat involved. Sigh.
Couple of lessons they should have learned from racers of a 100+ years ago: 1) get a wind shield and a convertible top. 2) roads will be bad and break your car. 3) fuel will be unavailable at times.
Really? I take it you've never tried starting a business? Things like "brilliant" and "brains" often have very little to do with eventual success. Just take a look around you if you need hard evidence.
Additionally, there are places on the planet (including parts of the US and Western Europe) where opportunities still are limited even for smart people. The Internet and associated scams have opened up possibilities for "geniuses" in such places. So if you ask those geniuses the classic question "If you're so smart how come you're not a millionaire?" they might just answer "Well I'm on my way with this new clever scam of mine."
So in the end novel and clever forms of malfeasance might just be the "proper" action based on a cost benefit analysis. Or they might just be assholes. Or both.
You know, it seems that you could pick any area of study almost at random, and if you keep a good attitude about it all, keep it up, take good notes and above all retain a "beginner's mind" you'll stumble upon something at least semi-interesting sooner or later.
So forget about the nay-sayers, buy yourself a microscope or bunsen burner or tesla coil telescope or tig welder or co2 laser or whatever and have at it. Have fun! And good luck!
The successful "techno-social" languages seem to emerge spontaneously in response to real needs. (Think of things like twitter's @ syntax, the web's emoticons, IRC's one letter words, even 1337-speak etc.) The very fact that this language is the fruit of an "ambitious project" to meet a need merely postulated suggests that it's destined for a life in obscurity. Nobody will bother to learn it.
First, I suspect everyone agrees that rewriting an app rarely makes sense for a small company with limited R&D budget like Spolsky's. (Better spend whatever money there is on comfortable chairs and parties for the summer interns, right?)
But if you have the budget and market share you have some good reasons to rewrite from scratch:
1) You can generate fresh revenue by forcing your users to upgrade due to icompatibility issues.
2) You can ease the burden of backward compatibility by creating a new baseline.
3) You can strengthen your old brand by coming out with a "new coke" that is so crappy that everybody will clamor for the old stuff.
4) There might be (unforeseen) technical or architectural issues that make a rewrite a sensible option.
Nice theory dude, but: The list of really cold places where you also have to fear the cops include Russia, most of China, Tibet, North Korea, many of the former Eastern block countries, many mountainous countries of central Asia, many countries in the Andes and so on.
Also, I'd venture that "being stuck with irritating people" is way down there on the list of reasons why people kill each other, behind more common motives such as financial gains, passion/jealousy, drugs, politics and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, but do you really think the alleged criminals would keep using ICQ in that scenario? IMHO such a move would be completely pointless.
You got it wrong, but only slightly: Gravity pulls. Vacuum sucks. Quick change of inertia is an oxymoron.
There are many good reasons why you might want to give up bacon. But this is not one of them.
Google == Big Juicy Target. Do you see now?
I'll be damned, Dan Quayle! We haven't heard from you in a while!
Yet it's news for nerds. Go figure.
You're right, fires are easy to come by. Unfortunately. The people that would supposedly benefit from this technology are the same people whose existence is threatened by deforestation and also air pollution from countless cooking fires.
Bottom line this has to be one of the most ecologically unfriendly and economically unsustainable "cheap energy" ideas out there.
Which part of "opt in" is so fucking hard for you to understand? Don't want ads, wasted paper, wasted ink etc? Well, just don't... Yes, you got it! See, that wasn't so hard was it now?
In the extension of that, the system likely has limited application for the computers of Elvis impersonators and people who look eerily similar to Nixon or Porky Pig... A bit more seriously, how will it handle aging, facial disfigurement, botox, weight loss and any other number of everyday cases? My personal feeling is that this is a marketing ploy, no more no less.
I sit at the PC here intending to browse the web for something relevant to my interests and just have no idea what I want to search for, so Ill instead browse the recommended lists on youtube, or randomly browse wikipedia
Think that's bad? One word: lolcats
Anything less than ipV8 in a car would be decidedly un-American.
Once the coolness factor wears out after the first week, this will regress into yet another crappy webcam.
"your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels.
Sounds like Apple-speak for "damned thing is blurry"...
If another company like GM or BP had made a false claim, you'd be all over them and demanding the government sue them, but because it's your corporate "friend" Apple, you ignore the sin of false advertising
OK, let's keep things in perspective: When did BP or GM ever get anyone laid?
But no matter what it brings back from Itokawa we can be certain that Godzilla will rise out of the dust of the Australian desert...
Is that really all bad? Charlatans over the centuries have provided a very valuable commodity: Hope. The people who go on these pilgrimages have basically been told "You're fucked" by the prevailing medical establishment, but refuse to accept it. So by closing down these clinics we're basically saying "Dammit, we told you you're fucked, be still and die!" Should we really enforce a strict separation of health care and religion (in the very broadest sense of the word) especially when we know that there is such a thing as a very powerful placebo effect? If somebody terminally ill wants to spend their money on this or on a big donation to a charity or church or whatever because it gives them hope it's perfectly fine with me.
(Besides, who know what might work: "Mom, Dr Fleming told me to eat mold..." :-)
published on a strip of paper that was folded into a wallet, closed with a flap, and tied with a ribbon
Wow! That sounds just like my kindle! Old Betty P. was lightyears ahead of her time!
OK fine, but what if Ballmer says: "Hackers, hackers hackers! Hackers, hackers hackers! Hackers, hackers hackers! Hackers, hackers hackers!" That ought to do it, don't you think?
And it's one thing to say "adenosine is released locally by needle pricks". And another to say that there are mysterious "meridians" that run through the body and connects your pinky toe to your heart, and your left butt cheek to your kidney or whatever, and that you can cure all kinds of diseases in those "connected" organs by poking the exactly right spots with needles.
Yep, that's what at the root of accupuncture theory in TCM, not random pin poking. And this experiments doesn't even attempt to explain what's going on there. So while I'm absolutely not saying that TCM is wrong, I am saying that this experiment says very little if anything about traditional accupuncture the way it's been practiced for 4000 years. It's just a feeble attempt at quickly saying "this is NOT BS".
So we still don't know how this works or indeed if it works, we only knows some mice produce adenosine locally under certain conditions. Accupuncture if it works as claimed would have to be much deeper, this hardly penetrates the surface. (Pardon the pun.)
For sure this is not a great leap forward for science or for mankind. It's just a Big Fucking Adventure along the lines of Peking to Paris in 1907 or the round the world race the following year. You do it for the bravado. Period.
Pity we can't just say here are some crazy kids who want to travel the length of a continent in a cobbled up electric car. Instead we have to pretend there's a science and/or engineering feat involved. Sigh.
Couple of lessons they should have learned from racers of a 100+ years ago: 1) get a wind shield and a convertible top. 2) roads will be bad and break your car. 3) fuel will be unavailable at times.
Really? I take it you've never tried starting a business? Things like "brilliant" and "brains" often have very little to do with eventual success. Just take a look around you if you need hard evidence.
Additionally, there are places on the planet (including parts of the US and Western Europe) where opportunities still are limited even for smart people. The Internet and associated scams have opened up possibilities for "geniuses" in such places. So if you ask those geniuses the classic question "If you're so smart how come you're not a millionaire?" they might just answer "Well I'm on my way with this new clever scam of mine."
So in the end novel and clever forms of malfeasance might just be the "proper" action based on a cost benefit analysis. Or they might just be assholes. Or both.
You know, it seems that you could pick any area of study almost at random, and if you keep a good attitude about it all, keep it up, take good notes and above all retain a "beginner's mind" you'll stumble upon something at least semi-interesting sooner or later.
So forget about the nay-sayers, buy yourself a microscope or bunsen burner or tesla coil telescope or tig welder or co2 laser or whatever and have at it. Have fun! And good luck!
The successful "techno-social" languages seem to emerge spontaneously in response to real needs. (Think of things like twitter's @ syntax, the web's emoticons, IRC's one letter words, even 1337-speak etc.) The very fact that this language is the fruit of an "ambitious project" to meet a need merely postulated suggests that it's destined for a life in obscurity. Nobody will bother to learn it.
First, I suspect everyone agrees that rewriting an app rarely makes sense for a small company with limited R&D budget like Spolsky's. (Better spend whatever money there is on comfortable chairs and parties for the summer interns, right?)
But if you have the budget and market share you have some good reasons to rewrite from scratch:
1) You can generate fresh revenue by forcing your users to upgrade due to icompatibility issues.
2) You can ease the burden of backward compatibility by creating a new baseline.
3) You can strengthen your old brand by coming out with a "new coke" that is so crappy that everybody will clamor for the old stuff.
4) There might be (unforeseen) technical or architectural issues that make a rewrite a sensible option.
Nice theory dude, but: The list of really cold places where you also have to fear the cops include Russia, most of China, Tibet, North Korea, many of the former Eastern block countries, many mountainous countries of central Asia, many countries in the Andes and so on.
Also, I'd venture that "being stuck with irritating people" is way down there on the list of reasons why people kill each other, behind more common motives such as financial gains, passion/jealousy, drugs, politics and so on.