They were basically complaining about billions of dollars in mandatory business. I don't buy into the conspiracy theories that the 2004 election was fixed, but I do think it was odd for a company to be campaigning against their own short-term profits.
Diebold's primary interest is not making a profit. Their primary interest is in influencing policy. This should be fairly alarming to anyone paying sufficient attention.
Number 1 would probably be the reaction, but the most common occurrence would probably be that he can relax for that week or whatever that he's out of contact, confident that if there WERE a problem, he would know about it. A vacation isn't much of a vacation if you have a nagging question in the back of your mind about whether everything you're responsible for is going okay. So just having the potential to be notified can make you more comfortable when you're not notified.
I"d be worried that this will be used as a way to identify subjects for federal Patriot act "National Security Letter" searches--the kind that the victim is prohibited by law to revealing to anyone, even a lawyer!
I'd like to see someone try to press charges against someone for seeking a lawyer. That would go over really well in the judicial system.
Balance of power exists for a reason, and that reason is that abuse is inevitable and regular.
That kind of money isn't chump change, so he must think it's a good risk.
When you have the kind of money he does, the correct phrase is "good enough risk." It probably just means that he thinks the probability of it going up, times the amount it would go up, makes it a worthwhile investment in comparison to the probability of the investment vaporizing.
And he's probably right. If I had a spare $100 million sitting around, I might do the same.
You don't get a choice in the U.S. All the major carriers charge for incoming SMS. And all the little carriers get bought up by all the major carriers, so they dictate to us what the terms of service will be, and all we get to do is choose whether or not we want cell phones.
I'm sure somewhere there's a chapter of economic theory explaining how the natural forces of capitalism are supposed to make that not happen...
Re:The only problem with this contest....
on
Hack IIS6 Contest
·
· Score: 1
Well, if the lines are too long, I suspect most people consider that a strong disincentive to return the next time. As an aggregate, it will affect the bottom line more negatively if people stop coming back due to long lines, in comparison to the carts being abandoned.
ID is not science for one simple reason: it is not falsifiable. That is, it does not provide any criterion under which we can say "ID is false."
I'm very much a proponent of evolution, since it's obviously very well supported. But to play Devil's Advocate a little bit here: To mark this as a distinction between ID and evolution, you need to clarify how evolution itself is falsifiable.
Sure, evolution makes certain predictions, and those predictions are testable, but what observed result would the scientific community accept as falsification of evolution? Evolution presents an explanation mechanism, but if the precise mechanism of formulation or transition between species is not understood, then evolution postulates that there's simply an as-yet undiscovered missing link. Now the saving grace for evolution is that these missing links keep getting discovered, justifying this prediction of evolution. But again I emphasize, by what means can an observed result falsify evolution?
(This isn't just rhetorical, I'd appreciate if anyone could put forward an answer. It would be helpful in future discussions of this topic.)
Remember that every faulty design that comes apart at 30,000 feet killing everyone on board was designed by an engineer.
Only because commercial flights always have a copilot. That's like having a spare plane flying beside you in case the first one fails.
Re:The performance of compiled code
on
A Review of GCC 4.0
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think that companies should re-evaluate their "need" for an extra 5% performance.
If you're talking about a program written by one person to be run by one person, or written by five people to be run by five people, or a program that will be run a limited number of times or while people are getting coffee, then absolutely you are correct.
But if you're talking about a small group of programmers making an interactive program (including simulations which people wait for the answer to before starting another run) to be run by millions of people, or to be run iteratively millions of times or over an enormous dataset of comparably size, then 5% is absolutely worth it. If you spend 10 manhours tweaking out 5%, and you've gained only a mere 100 milliseconds, then as a whole you've made out quite well after the collective time saved by those millions of people, or by the millions of runs, are accumulated. And often 5% can result in much more time savings than that.
If you really, positively need an extra 5% performance, you might as well just buy a computer that's 5% faster.
If you can afford all the computers that are 5% faster, then do both! Then you get 10%, and double the benefit. If the first 5% makes a significant difference for a certain application, then the second one probably will as well.
This is quite true, but it's probably indicative of some serious underlying problems with the priorities of society. The advancement of the species is limited if we base the bulk of our funding on our fears.
Windows 98 hasn't been updated now in about 5 years. Most people I know don't use Windows anymore because 98 is SO old. If Microsoft wants to make more money, they need to make a damn release, or die. It's really THAT simple.
</paraphrase>
(Or maybe you could try running testing? It works fine, you know.)
I don't understand why you would feel retarded for hoping that people would be decent.
In reality, many people are more obedient than decent. And if they feel sufficiently detached from the responsibility, the majority of people will choose obedience over decency. See the Milgram Experiment
If this spreads, not only will it make sharing difficult, it will make tracking legitimate (haha) piracy more difficult to detect.
Heheh, brilliant.:) That means that if this is a legitimate technology, then someone could try to create copies of, say, the bible, that hash to the same as the latest Britney mp3. I'd love to watch that court case.:)
"there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities,"
It's called the bus, and it can go just about anywhere the car can go.
And in addition to my last comment to this, for more analysis of the problems with what you just proposed, perhaps you could read this post, and scale the comparison to a rural setting, where the mass transit problems increase, and car congestion decreases.
Don't be obtuse. You put the power stations where the requirement for heat and electricity is. i.e. locally.
When this is reasonable, yes.
Who mentioned coal? Coal's just one of the fuels used excruciatingly inefficiently, even nuclear power is only 40% efficient. Hell, coal can even be turned into gas if necessary and the gas can be pumped directly to homes to fire central heating.
40% of the planet's electricty generation comes from coal, and coal happens to be one thing the U.S. has a lot of as a resource. It's an unfortunate reality until better technologies are implemented (such as nuclear) or developed (such as fusion).
And it's also an unfortunate political reality that the public won't accept a nuclear power plant near downtown Manhattan, even if current models are known to be completely safe.
Saying it can't be done is *stupid*. The reason you aren't doing it is that you do literally have money to burn.
If you simplify the situation by ignoring all the problems, then yes, it's very easy to conclude that.
"there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities,"
It's called the bus, and it can go just about anywhere the car can go.
Great thinking. We'll just get everyone to drive around in buses.
Below a certain population density, it becomes much less effective to rely on buses for transportation. You come up with a proposal that can carpet 1000 square miles of rural population density with a bus system which can take people in a timely manner from any one point to any other point at efficient cost and resource expenditure, and I will be impressed.
Iron isn't the only ferro-magnetic thing...perhaps something could be created with magnetic properties superior for the purpose of transformers
A supermagnetor?:)
Re:In the UK
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
CHP and DH systems have already been in use in northern european countries (Denmark, Finland etc) for decades, they are nothing new. I guess the UK and USA literally have money to burn.
It's a geographical problem. How are you going to ship heat 200 to 2000 kilometers without electricity? Big pipes? At what point does the resource expenditure of constructing this enormous lossy infrastructure pay off for a country like the U.S. that only heats 4-5 months a year, sometimes less, depending on location? Would you suggest the U.S. put a bunch of coal-burning plants in downtown Manhattan for fuel efficiency?
The U.S. and Europe are significantly different in population distribution. No, Americans don't all have cars because they're lazy, they drive because it's a burden to walk 30 miles to work, and because there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities, which is the active employment area for a typical family. Americans don't ship their goods with trucks because they're too stupid to use trains, it's because most of America is not next to a train track, and the expense of switching from truck to train back to truck eliminates the benefits of using trains for most of the country.
Yeah, using CHP is great, but what works in one region does not always work in another.
Slashdot Mirror
They were basically complaining about billions of dollars in mandatory business. I don't buy into the conspiracy theories that the 2004 election was fixed, but I do think it was odd for a company to be campaigning against their own short-term profits.
Diebold's primary interest is not making a profit. Their primary interest is in influencing policy. This should be fairly alarming to anyone paying sufficient attention.
Oh the irony, a spammer asking slashdot for help, and getting it before someone spots the obvious.
*tries to recover quickly.*
Hey, original poster, if you're out hiking in a stormy region and looking for a great satellite pager, you can't beat the reception on this model.
Number 1 would probably be the reaction, but the most common occurrence would probably be that he can relax for that week or whatever that he's out of contact, confident that if there WERE a problem, he would know about it. A vacation isn't much of a vacation if you have a nagging question in the back of your mind about whether everything you're responsible for is going okay. So just having the potential to be notified can make you more comfortable when you're not notified.
I"d be worried that this will be used as a way to identify subjects for federal Patriot act "National Security Letter" searches--the kind that the victim is prohibited by law to revealing to anyone, even a lawyer!
I'd like to see someone try to press charges against someone for seeking a lawyer. That would go over really well in the judicial system.
Balance of power exists for a reason, and that reason is that abuse is inevitable and regular.
Heheh. This reminds me of seppuku with a frisbie.
the general film audience likes character development?
i thought they just liked explosions and sex.
Rick Berman? Is that you? Tell us more of this great wisdom about how to pummel a science fiction franchise into the ground.
That kind of money isn't chump change, so he must think it's a good risk.
When you have the kind of money he does, the correct phrase is "good enough risk." It probably just means that he thinks the probability of it going up, times the amount it would go up, makes it a worthwhile investment in comparison to the probability of the investment vaporizing.
And he's probably right. If I had a spare $100 million sitting around, I might do the same.
You don't get a choice in the U.S. All the major carriers charge for incoming SMS. And all the little carriers get bought up by all the major carriers, so they dictate to us what the terms of service will be, and all we get to do is choose whether or not we want cell phones.
I'm sure somewhere there's a chapter of economic theory explaining how the natural forces of capitalism are supposed to make that not happen...
Is that the winners get X-Boxes....
*cough*
Contest open to anyone at least 18 years old as of date of entry.
:)
There goes 3/4 of the most qualified contestants.
Does faking your age count as social engineering?
Ah, right. An anachronistic species would be a definite red flag. Good point.
Well, if the lines are too long, I suspect most people consider that a strong disincentive to return the next time. As an aggregate, it will affect the bottom line more negatively if people stop coming back due to long lines, in comparison to the carts being abandoned.
ID is not science for one simple reason: it is not falsifiable. That is, it does not provide any criterion under which we can say "ID is false."
I'm very much a proponent of evolution, since it's obviously very well supported. But to play Devil's Advocate a little bit here: To mark this as a distinction between ID and evolution, you need to clarify how evolution itself is falsifiable.
Sure, evolution makes certain predictions, and those predictions are testable, but what observed result would the scientific community accept as falsification of evolution? Evolution presents an explanation mechanism, but if the precise mechanism of formulation or transition between species is not understood, then evolution postulates that there's simply an as-yet undiscovered missing link. Now the saving grace for evolution is that these missing links keep getting discovered, justifying this prediction of evolution. But again I emphasize, by what means can an observed result falsify evolution?
(This isn't just rhetorical, I'd appreciate if anyone could put forward an answer. It would be helpful in future discussions of this topic.)
Remember that every faulty design that comes apart at 30,000 feet killing everyone on board was designed by an engineer.
Only because commercial flights always have a copilot. That's like having a spare plane flying beside you in case the first one fails.
I think that companies should re-evaluate their "need" for an extra 5% performance.
If you're talking about a program written by one person to be run by one person, or written by five people to be run by five people, or a program that will be run a limited number of times or while people are getting coffee, then absolutely you are correct.
But if you're talking about a small group of programmers making an interactive program (including simulations which people wait for the answer to before starting another run) to be run by millions of people, or to be run iteratively millions of times or over an enormous dataset of comparably size, then 5% is absolutely worth it. If you spend 10 manhours tweaking out 5%, and you've gained only a mere 100 milliseconds, then as a whole you've made out quite well after the collective time saved by those millions of people, or by the millions of runs, are accumulated. And often 5% can result in much more time savings than that.
If you really, positively need an extra 5% performance, you might as well just buy a computer that's 5% faster.
If you can afford all the computers that are 5% faster, then do both! Then you get 10%, and double the benefit. If the first 5% makes a significant difference for a certain application, then the second one probably will as well.
This is quite true, but it's probably indicative of some serious underlying problems with the priorities of society. The advancement of the species is limited if we base the bulk of our funding on our fears.
Windows 98 hasn't been updated now in about 5 years. Most people I know don't use Windows anymore because 98 is SO old. If Microsoft wants to make more money, they need to make a damn release, or die. It's really THAT simple.
</paraphrase>
(Or maybe you could try running testing? It works fine, you know.)
I don't understand why you would feel retarded for hoping that people would be decent.
In reality, many people are more obedient than decent. And if they feel sufficiently detached from the responsibility, the majority of people will choose obedience over decency. See the Milgram Experiment
If this spreads, not only will it make sharing difficult, it will make tracking legitimate (haha) piracy more difficult to detect.
:) That means that if this is a legitimate technology, then someone could try to create copies of, say, the bible, that hash to the same as the latest Britney mp3. I'd love to watch that court case. :)
Heheh, brilliant.
"there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities,"
It's called the bus, and it can go just about anywhere the car can go.
And in addition to my last comment to this, for more analysis of the problems with what you just proposed, perhaps you could read this post, and scale the comparison to a rural setting, where the mass transit problems increase, and car congestion decreases.
Don't be obtuse. You put the power stations where the requirement for heat and electricity is. i.e. locally.
When this is reasonable, yes.
Who mentioned coal? Coal's just one of the fuels used excruciatingly inefficiently, even nuclear power is only 40% efficient. Hell, coal can even be turned into gas if necessary and the gas can be pumped directly to homes to fire central heating.
40% of the planet's electricty generation comes from coal, and coal happens to be one thing the U.S. has a lot of as a resource. It's an unfortunate reality until better technologies are implemented (such as nuclear) or developed (such as fusion).
And it's also an unfortunate political reality that the public won't accept a nuclear power plant near downtown Manhattan, even if current models are known to be completely safe.
Saying it can't be done is *stupid*. The reason you aren't doing it is that you do literally have money to burn.
If you simplify the situation by ignoring all the problems, then yes, it's very easy to conclude that.
"there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities,"
It's called the bus, and it can go just about anywhere the car can go.
Great thinking. We'll just get everyone to drive around in buses.
Below a certain population density, it becomes much less effective to rely on buses for transportation. You come up with a proposal that can carpet 1000 square miles of rural population density with a bus system which can take people in a timely manner from any one point to any other point at efficient cost and resource expenditure, and I will be impressed.
a misbehaving app that consumes 100% CPU does not make the machine unusable, because the UI can run on the other
Unless it forks...
Iron isn't the only ferro-magnetic thing...perhaps something could be created with magnetic properties superior for the purpose of transformers
:)
A supermagnetor?
CHP and DH systems have already been in use in northern european countries (Denmark, Finland etc) for decades, they are nothing new. I guess the UK and USA literally have money to burn.
It's a geographical problem. How are you going to ship heat 200 to 2000 kilometers without electricity? Big pipes? At what point does the resource expenditure of constructing this enormous lossy infrastructure pay off for a country like the U.S. that only heats 4-5 months a year, sometimes less, depending on location? Would you suggest the U.S. put a bunch of coal-burning plants in downtown Manhattan for fuel efficiency?
The U.S. and Europe are significantly different in population distribution. No, Americans don't all have cars because they're lazy, they drive because it's a burden to walk 30 miles to work, and because there is no public transportation infrastructure that can route people across 1000 square miles or so in low to moderate population densities, which is the active employment area for a typical family. Americans don't ship their goods with trucks because they're too stupid to use trains, it's because most of America is not next to a train track, and the expense of switching from truck to train back to truck eliminates the benefits of using trains for most of the country.
Yeah, using CHP is great, but what works in one region does not always work in another.
What this statement means is some people have trouble comfortably making their required movements with their thumbs.
It seems to me that the thumb never really evolved for precision movements. Now the pointer finger, maybe. But thumb, no, and pinky, even less so.