The same Microsoft who for 20 years has turned out inferior software, who is reviled by a large percentage of the IT community, yet still is the most succesful software company in the world?
--
oh, okay. that explains why every single airplane ever manufactured has been CRASHED THE FIRST TIME OUT BY ONE OF US DUMB
SLOW-REFLEX HUMANS. i'd almost forgotten that Almighty Jehovah put a 55mile/hour speed limit on synaptic activity.
Alright, how about this, genius. Fly the damn plane within 10 feet of several other planes. Why the hell do you think it makes the freaking news when one plane comes within a hundred yards of another? What is so difficult to understand about the fact that when the faster something goes the less time you have to react in controlling it? --
Hmm...let's say some moron creates a situation where you need to accelerate to avoid a collision. If you're already traveling at whatever speed the computer
thinks you should be going, you're phuqued.
That's analogous to those arguments of people who claim they don't want to wear seatbelts because they'd rather be "thrown clear" of the car. In most cases speed reduction would have saved more lives than speed increase. --
Head-on at 55 is the same as hitting a brick wall at 110. Tell me which is better?
Apples and oranges. Compare head-on at 55 to head-on at 110. Anyway we're not just talking about the forces involved, it's a question of biology; your reflexes just can't keep up once you go over a certain speed.
--
hate to tell ya, but drunks are just as deadly regardless of mandatory speed limits... Example--Highway driving--two cars head on at 55mph is not a
happy sight to behold.
Well, not really. The faster you go, the more dangerous it is, especially if you're drunk. 55 mph is bad enough, but it's a lot better than 90. --
my question is: in a situation like this, where pretty much everyone (IMHO) is against something like this--how can they find engineers to design
something like that? Is everyone so immoral that they will sell out the freedom of a country for a decent sum of cash?
Well, first of all, just about every technologically-oriented freedom of restriction around would be impossible without engineers creating it. It's a point that slashdotters seem not to want to bring up when they complain about censorware, audio file watermarking, and DVD encryption.
Secondly, I don't really see what the problem is. These are public roads, I don't see anything wrong with restricting speeds. What people seem to have a problem with is the fact that they can't break a law that they accepted before.
Finally, not every engineer has the same ideology (heresy to suggest they're not all anarcho-capitalists/libertarians on/. I know); maybe someone who lost a family member to a speeding drunk driver might be eager to implement this. --
Once again marketing (Sony, Nintendo) beats good design (Sega). At least they'll still be doing what they do best, making great games. And I guess I'll have to pick up a $99 backup dreamcast in case something happens to mine. --
Re:Things I don't need
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 2
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free? Do you think it can compete with Windows where Linux can't? Do you think it's genuinely better? I don't get it.
DVD support for a UNIX? Real games (granted the Apple doesn't have that many, but usually really popular games on the PC get ported over; it'd be worth it just for Blizzard's stuff)? A windowing system maybe done right, that will let me browse the web without netscape freezing every 5 minutes (linux) or locking up the system (win)? --
. I don't know whether you have noticed, but there are not many viruses that cause a 99% mortality of a human population -- not even Black Plague or Ebola. Not even HIV
I'm not a microbiologist (though I am seriously considering going back to school for it, it's a fascinating field), but I was under the impression that HIV does have a 99% mortality rate, that 1% of the population is immune to it due to a lack of a certain kind of receptor on the cell walls. Anyone know anything concrete about this? --
It would be a total white elephant, consuming ungodly amounts of money for a tiny, tiny percentage of the PC OS market, threaten Apple's hardware sales, confuse consumers
Hey, sounds like NeXTStep...
--
Re:Reminds me of...A BIG mistake by Apple
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 1
People who buy an iMac don't want to upgrade it, they just want it to work. Geeks can't seem to grasp this concept, some people just want a tool that will get the job done. Even if we ignore the fact that you can upgrade things in an iMac (memory, processor, HD), it's irrelevant. I don't bitch about how I can't upgrade my VCR because it's an appliance that does the job. The iMac is the same thing. If upgrading is your concern, the iMac is not for you...
I don't know about that, I consider myself a geek, and my last computer was an imac simply because it was a) cheaper than a G4, b) would run OS X, and c) I've never had a mac, and thought it would be fun to play around on new hardware. As you stated it is upgradeable, and peripheral-wise the USB ports make it pretty flexible. The only real problem I have with it (beyond the instability of MacOS, which OS X should fix) is you can't upgrade the graphics card.
--
But that's my point; look how long it took to be discovered, and this is one of the most widespread pieces of software in computing history. As for the banking industry, crackers shouldn't even be able to reverse engineer it; this is all server-side. And even if they did, it's a hell of a lot harder to figure out a hole like that from reverse engineering a binary than looking at the source code. In my opinion, banking systems should be totally proprietary, by which I mean totally specific to that bank. --
I was going to suggest everyone buy it at Amazon, just to annoy that whole boycott clique, but it turns out thinkgeek actually has it cheaper...oh well, there's always next book review... --
Good points; I want my money handled by very old, incredibly conservative bankers who distrust anything that hasn't been proven through decades of use, not a bunch of tattooed, earinged, open source zealots who think that software magically gets better the more people who look at the source code. That whole BIND thing of late has just reinforced this. --
Is even the base pay so high that even a rookie who doesn't really make it set themselves up for life? Do they all go and buy bars and forever moan
about the injury/coach/whatever that derailed their careers? Is there a charity to look after these unfortunate souls?;)
The NFL has a supposedly generous pension plan; if you played long enough, you could be pulling in over $10,000 a month. Even short-term players make enough to survive on, especially if they have a football-related disability, which increases their monthly check.
--
Let's say some poor business has some form of router failure on their internal network and you are in the area. It just so happens that you are a Cisco guru and
you know how to get them back in order, but you will require $100 to do it. Unfortunately, they can't pay but their business depends on it.
By your logic, the person's need means that you should give away the service.
It's a faulty analogy; one case involves life and death, while the other involves profit. In the first case the needs of a patient is weighed against the costs of providing those needs. The costs to the hospital (a little time and money) aren't worth as much as the patients life.
In the second case it's two commercial enterprises arrayed against each other. The company needs a router fixed in order to stay in business. You need to be paid for your work in order to stay in business. It's a case of your profits versus theirs; you could easily turn the argument around and say since you need a hundred bucks, the company should pay you to fix their routers, even if they're working fine.
--
Of course, you have to doubt the sanity of someone who thinks taking a lock of their hair and chanting to it will make them fall in love or whatever...
That's exactly what I was talking about; I didn't mean to imply that Wiccan wasn't as valid as most other religions. Probably should have said "magic" rather than "witches". --
And I guess you are GOD or just so cool as to be the one to determine what is religious and what is superstitious and judge people based on your belief,
or just impose your belief, whatever it may be, on someone else.
Where exactly do I try imposing my belief on someone else? I believe everyone has a right to say and to think what they want; you have a right to believe in whatever you want. I have a right to believe that you're being superstitious. I'm posting an opinion on a public board, not coming into your house and converting you by gunpoint. --
Oh, and the Challenger Disaster. And a fifty billion dollar trailer park in orbit that doesn't do anything or go anywhere.
If that's where you want to see medical research go, look at NASA with your blinders off.
OK, let's take a look here...
THEY WENT TO THE FREAKING -MOON-!!!!!!!!
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM THEM?
owever, to say that those out there spending billions of dollars making scientific discoveries shouldn't be allowed to recoup some profit (which is what patent
elimination would do) is a drastic position. Company greed to make a buck off discovering things has fueled the explosion of scientific advances that we've
made over the last century.
Granted companies should be able to patent things to recoup money, that's what the patent system was created for. However, you are entering far different territory than steam engines or computer parts when you allow companies or individuals to declare they have sole rights to a sequence of amino acids. I'm not advocating eliminating the patent system as a whole, just the biotech aspect of it, something which didn't exist when the USPO was created. I would replace it with government funding; allow the citizenry, through their tax dollars, to fund biotech research. Yes, that's already done, but nothing says it can't be increased. I wouldn't want to see things such as gene therapy become so expensive that most people can't afford them if they need them. To see where it can head, just look at the pharmaceutical industry; companies "recoup" their research costs simply by charging outrageous prices for their products, which consumers have little choice in paying. They often need these drugs to survive, but the patent means no competition, so the companies can basically price them however they want.
As for the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century, I think just as much (or more) is owed to several factors beyond company greed. One is the snowball effect; certain discoveries beget other discoveries, like quantum physics influencing everything from the evolution of computers to quantum chemistry. Another is the nature of the scientific professions themselves, which connects an individuals prestige, financial, and professional success to their scientific work. --
Nope, just insulting people who believe in magic, and those who think an angel helped them get that parking place at the mall. I have a great deal of respect for religious impulses, as long as it doesn't descend into complete superstition. --
Give 'em a bit of respect, or at least think about what they have to put up with on those days when you want to shoot
someone because of the quality of service you receive.
I never quite understood the complaints people had about the USPS; you put something in the mail, in a few days it's delivered. What more do you want? I guess people assume that because it's the government, it can't be efficient, despite receiving proof that it's a pretty well-run system every day in their mailbox. Of course, a scary amount of people in this country believe angels involve themselves in their daily lives, and witches exist, so I guess logic is in short supply... --
We shouldn't even need a GNU-type license for this; nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material. This is especially the case involving crops that feed a major percentage of the world's population. Some of the biotech patent issues make software patents look sane by comparison; anyone remember how one Texas-based company patented Basmati rice? Apparently several thousand years of cultivation by Indian farmers didn't constitute prior use; this is being challenged by the Indian government, but that the USPO actually accepted this in the first place is a sign of nearly criminal incompetence. --
20 points) Cite evidence that ancient Egyptian society was composed of Africans rather than Caucasians, and explain the impact of this
anthropological theory.
Not sure if this is a great example. Ancient Egyptians lived in Egypt. Egypt is in Africa. Hence, if you were an Egyptian you were an African. It's simple logical deduction, something which computer games might help in...
--
Slashdot Mirror
Word of mouth does work. Ask Microsoft.
The same Microsoft who for 20 years has turned out inferior software, who is reviled by a large percentage of the IT community, yet still is the most succesful software company in the world?
--
oh, okay. that explains why every single airplane ever manufactured has been CRASHED THE FIRST TIME OUT BY ONE OF US DUMB SLOW-REFLEX HUMANS. i'd almost forgotten that Almighty Jehovah put a 55mile/hour speed limit on synaptic activity.
Alright, how about this, genius. Fly the damn plane within 10 feet of several other planes. Why the hell do you think it makes the freaking news when one plane comes within a hundred yards of another? What is so difficult to understand about the fact that when the faster something goes the less time you have to react in controlling it?
--
Hmm...let's say some moron creates a situation where you need to accelerate to avoid a collision. If you're already traveling at whatever speed the computer thinks you should be going, you're phuqued.
That's analogous to those arguments of people who claim they don't want to wear seatbelts because they'd rather be "thrown clear" of the car. In most cases speed reduction would have saved more lives than speed increase.
--
Head-on at 55 is the same as hitting a brick wall at 110. Tell me which is better?
Apples and oranges. Compare head-on at 55 to head-on at 110. Anyway we're not just talking about the forces involved, it's a question of biology; your reflexes just can't keep up once you go over a certain speed.
--
hate to tell ya, but drunks are just as deadly regardless of mandatory speed limits... Example--Highway driving--two cars head on at 55mph is not a happy sight to behold.
Well, not really. The faster you go, the more dangerous it is, especially if you're drunk. 55 mph is bad enough, but it's a lot better than 90.
--
my question is: in a situation like this, where pretty much everyone (IMHO) is against something like this--how can they find engineers to design something like that? Is everyone so immoral that they will sell out the freedom of a country for a decent sum of cash?
/. I know); maybe someone who lost a family member to a speeding drunk driver might be eager to implement this.
Well, first of all, just about every technologically-oriented freedom of restriction around would be impossible without engineers creating it. It's a point that slashdotters seem not to want to bring up when they complain about censorware, audio file watermarking, and DVD encryption.
Secondly, I don't really see what the problem is. These are public roads, I don't see anything wrong with restricting speeds. What people seem to have a problem with is the fact that they can't break a law that they accepted before.
Finally, not every engineer has the same ideology (heresy to suggest they're not all anarcho-capitalists/libertarians on
--
Once again marketing (Sony, Nintendo) beats good design (Sega). At least they'll still be doing what they do best, making great games. And I guess I'll have to pick up a $99 backup dreamcast in case something happens to mine.
--
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free? Do you think it can compete with Windows where Linux can't? Do you think it's genuinely better? I don't get it.
DVD support for a UNIX? Real games (granted the Apple doesn't have that many, but usually really popular games on the PC get ported over; it'd be worth it just for Blizzard's stuff)? A windowing system maybe done right, that will let me browse the web without netscape freezing every 5 minutes (linux) or locking up the system (win)?
--
. I don't know whether you have noticed, but there are not many viruses that cause a 99% mortality of a human population -- not even Black Plague or Ebola. Not even HIV
I'm not a microbiologist (though I am seriously considering going back to school for it, it's a fascinating field), but I was under the impression that HIV does have a 99% mortality rate, that 1% of the population is immune to it due to a lack of a certain kind of receptor on the cell walls. Anyone know anything concrete about this?
--
It would be a total white elephant, consuming ungodly amounts of money for a tiny, tiny percentage of the PC OS market, threaten Apple's hardware sales, confuse consumers
Hey, sounds like NeXTStep...
--
People who buy an iMac don't want to upgrade it, they just want it to work. Geeks can't seem to grasp this concept, some people just want a tool that will get the job done. Even if we ignore the fact that you can upgrade things in an iMac (memory, processor, HD), it's irrelevant. I don't bitch about how I can't upgrade my VCR because it's an appliance that does the job. The iMac is the same thing. If upgrading is your concern, the iMac is not for you...
I don't know about that, I consider myself a geek, and my last computer was an imac simply because it was a) cheaper than a G4, b) would run OS X, and c) I've never had a mac, and thought it would be fun to play around on new hardware. As you stated it is upgradeable, and peripheral-wise the USB ports make it pretty flexible. The only real problem I have with it (beyond the instability of MacOS, which OS X should fix) is you can't upgrade the graphics card.
--
But that's my point; look how long it took to be discovered, and this is one of the most widespread pieces of software in computing history. As for the banking industry, crackers shouldn't even be able to reverse engineer it; this is all server-side. And even if they did, it's a hell of a lot harder to figure out a hole like that from reverse engineering a binary than looking at the source code. In my opinion, banking systems should be totally proprietary, by which I mean totally specific to that bank.
--
I was going to suggest everyone buy it at Amazon, just to annoy that whole boycott clique, but it turns out thinkgeek actually has it cheaper...oh well, there's always next book review...
--
Good points; I want my money handled by very old, incredibly conservative bankers who distrust anything that hasn't been proven through decades of use, not a bunch of tattooed, earinged, open source zealots who think that software magically gets better the more people who look at the source code. That whole BIND thing of late has just reinforced this.
--
Is even the base pay so high that even a rookie who doesn't really make it set themselves up for life? Do they all go and buy bars and forever moan about the injury/coach/whatever that derailed their careers? Is there a charity to look after these unfortunate souls? ;)
The NFL has a supposedly generous pension plan; if you played long enough, you could be pulling in over $10,000 a month. Even short-term players make enough to survive on, especially if they have a football-related disability, which increases their monthly check.
--
Let's say some poor business has some form of router failure on their internal network and you are in the area. It just so happens that you are a Cisco guru and you know how to get them back in order, but you will require $100 to do it. Unfortunately, they can't pay but their business depends on it. By your logic, the person's need means that you should give away the service.
It's a faulty analogy; one case involves life and death, while the other involves profit. In the first case the needs of a patient is weighed against the costs of providing those needs. The costs to the hospital (a little time and money) aren't worth as much as the patients life.
In the second case it's two commercial enterprises arrayed against each other. The company needs a router fixed in order to stay in business. You need to be paid for your work in order to stay in business. It's a case of your profits versus theirs; you could easily turn the argument around and say since you need a hundred bucks, the company should pay you to fix their routers, even if they're working fine.
--
Of course, you have to doubt the sanity of someone who thinks taking a lock of their hair and chanting to it will make them fall in love or whatever...
That's exactly what I was talking about; I didn't mean to imply that Wiccan wasn't as valid as most other religions. Probably should have said "magic" rather than "witches".
--
And I guess you are GOD or just so cool as to be the one to determine what is religious and what is superstitious and judge people based on your belief, or just impose your belief, whatever it may be, on someone else.
Where exactly do I try imposing my belief on someone else? I believe everyone has a right to say and to think what they want; you have a right to believe in whatever you want. I have a right to believe that you're being superstitious. I'm posting an opinion on a public board, not coming into your house and converting you by gunpoint.
--
Oh, and the Challenger Disaster. And a fifty billion dollar trailer park in orbit that doesn't do anything or go anywhere. If that's where you want to see medical research go, look at NASA with your blinders off.
OK, let's take a look here...
THEY WENT TO THE FREAKING -MOON-!!!!!!!!
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM THEM?
--
owever, to say that those out there spending billions of dollars making scientific discoveries shouldn't be allowed to recoup some profit (which is what patent elimination would do) is a drastic position. Company greed to make a buck off discovering things has fueled the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century.
Granted companies should be able to patent things to recoup money, that's what the patent system was created for. However, you are entering far different territory than steam engines or computer parts when you allow companies or individuals to declare they have sole rights to a sequence of amino acids. I'm not advocating eliminating the patent system as a whole, just the biotech aspect of it, something which didn't exist when the USPO was created. I would replace it with government funding; allow the citizenry, through their tax dollars, to fund biotech research. Yes, that's already done, but nothing says it can't be increased. I wouldn't want to see things such as gene therapy become so expensive that most people can't afford them if they need them. To see where it can head, just look at the pharmaceutical industry; companies "recoup" their research costs simply by charging outrageous prices for their products, which consumers have little choice in paying. They often need these drugs to survive, but the patent means no competition, so the companies can basically price them however they want.
As for the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century, I think just as much (or more) is owed to several factors beyond company greed. One is the snowball effect; certain discoveries beget other discoveries, like quantum physics influencing everything from the evolution of computers to quantum chemistry. Another is the nature of the scientific professions themselves, which connects an individuals prestige, financial, and professional success to their scientific work.
--
You know, if I had kids I'd make them play Homeworld, just to develop those spatial thinking skills...
--
Nope, just insulting people who believe in magic, and those who think an angel helped them get that parking place at the mall. I have a great deal of respect for religious impulses, as long as it doesn't descend into complete superstition.
--
Give 'em a bit of respect, or at least think about what they have to put up with on those days when you want to shoot someone because of the quality of service you receive.
I never quite understood the complaints people had about the USPS; you put something in the mail, in a few days it's delivered. What more do you want? I guess people assume that because it's the government, it can't be efficient, despite receiving proof that it's a pretty well-run system every day in their mailbox. Of course, a scary amount of people in this country believe angels involve themselves in their daily lives, and witches exist, so I guess logic is in short supply...
--
We shouldn't even need a GNU-type license for this; nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material. This is especially the case involving crops that feed a major percentage of the world's population. Some of the biotech patent issues make software patents look sane by comparison; anyone remember how one Texas-based company patented Basmati rice? Apparently several thousand years of cultivation by Indian farmers didn't constitute prior use; this is being challenged by the Indian government, but that the USPO actually accepted this in the first place is a sign of nearly criminal incompetence.
--
20 points) Cite evidence that ancient Egyptian society was composed of Africans rather than Caucasians, and explain the impact of this anthropological theory.
Not sure if this is a great example. Ancient Egyptians lived in Egypt. Egypt is in Africa. Hence, if you were an Egyptian you were an African. It's simple logical deduction, something which computer games might help in...
--