They don't look all that different than the high voltage power lines that already criss-cross our country. Those don't cause people to whine about how ugly they are; why should these?
I don't really see what's ugly about them either; it's strikes me as a beautiful piece of engineering.
I am NOT all for a multi-billion dollar company paying effectively 2.4% while I continue to pay nearly 30% of my income... when you have the higher executives of Google being paid millions. Reduce the salaries of those PHBs down to something reasonable...
I'm all for taxation, but I don't think corporate income taxes make much sense when you think about them. In the long run, all the money a corporation makes ends up with individuals through salaries, dividends, etc. That's the whole point of a coproation, to make a profit for investors and employees. Corporations don't just hold on to the money; that wouldn't make any sense.
If those PHBs make bank, they'll be paying more than the 30% you pay, so the corporations' profits will effectively be taxed at that rate too. Corporate income taxes really just add another layer of bureaucracy -- you're taxing the same money at two levels (corporate and individual) instead of just one (individual). Now, individual income taxes are far from perfect (as Warren Buffett points out, he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary because the capital gains tax rate is so low), but that's just a reason to fix individual income taxes.
Fear of eventually dying and fear of dying young are quite different things, but both get named "fear of death". I read TFA, and it's not clear what fear they're talking about.
IMHO, it's silly to fear the former but good to have some fear of the latter.
I think the GP is using targeting in the sense that Assange might be attacking one organization but holding fire on others. For example, if he has information that both a US bank and a Swiss bank are up to no good, but he only release the information on the US bank, then he's targeting one instead of the other. That could very much invalidate his neutrality.
I don't know if Assange is doing this, but it'd be bad if he were (unless it's only because he lacks the resources to target more than one organization at a time).
If it's going to be economically viable to extract, then it needs to have a high concentration somewhere. If an element is uniformly distributed in the earth's crust, then unless it's _very_ abundant, it's not going to be economically viable to extract (at.25ppm, Indium doesn't fit that bill).
So, while it may be more abundant than silver, it isn't often found in as high concentrations, so some people believe that we'll soon run out of economically viable sources -- one estimate puts that amount at 6,000 tons.
I've had occasion to need a text mode browser, and I think I used lynx, but I saw that there are a number of them. I recall looking for a good comparison of the different options, but I couldn't find one. What are they, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
Google Chrome OS, which is basically an OS built around a web browser. Instead of downloaded apps, it will run web apps, although we expect there to be some offline caching capabilities which should let you do things like read eBooks or watch videos even when an internet connection isn’t handy.
I agree with the author that this is a bad idea:
Don’t forget, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, it didn’t have native apps either. He insisted that the development platform for the iPhone was the web, and the phone was designed primarily to run web apps. Today, there are over 250,000 native apps available in the App Store because, let’s face it, web apps just aren’t always going to do the job.
I don't know how much info is in the wild about Chrome OS, so maybe it'll have some wiz bang features that will rule, but I doubt it. Having two operating systems where one will certainly do just doesn't sound like a good idea -- especially when one is out, the other isn't, and the unreleased one is built around a questionable concept.
They do not prevent they just reduce the amount required...
Agreed, but I see the amount of planning decreasing disproportionately -- some planning is still required but often none is done. That why it "seem to prevent planning".
I disagree. Stupid people will always do stupid things with or without technology...it is just that technology affords them the chance to find new, innovative ways to be stupid.
Truth be told, I'm less concerned about stupid people than the otherwise smart people I see doing stupid things. GPSs aren't the only example. Before we had cell phones, if you wanted to meet up with friends somewhere in the city, you named a place and a time, and if someone wasn't there, nothing could be done. So smart people found ways to make it happen. Nowadays, cell phones allow you to wing-it, which often means a drawn out process of rounding everyone up. Because winging-it has a lower up front cost, a lot of people prefer it -- even otherwise smart ones. I just ends up in a mess half the time.
The _perceived_ change in up front costs is what makes these types of technology different.
I never wrote that maps are better than GPS -- I wrote that they _required_ some amount of planning, and that planning is good. If you use GPS and you plan ahead (and carry a map as a backup) then you're probably better off than someone who just uses maps and plans ahead. Likewise, someone with a map who plans ahead is quite possibly better off than someone who has GPS and doesn't plan ahead (which is easy to do, because GPS doesn't require planning ahead).
Also, how exactly does a map lock you in to one route? I'm not talking preprinted direction from google; I'm talking about real maps. If you think a map locks you in to one route, then you don't know how to read one.
A lot of these devices seem to prevent planning in general, even for little things. If you had to look up an address and stare at a map ahead of time to know where you were going, then you'd think of other things in the process. Now you can just hop in your car, type what you want in to your phone (e.g. bike shop), and follow its directions. Maybe you'll end up where you want, but people who do that often seem to be unprepared. And I've seen people doing that get lost in the process -- those directions aren't perfect, and if you don't have some general idea of where you're going, its still easy to make wrong turns. (Dedicated GPS devices are better, but not perfect, and I've heard that their sales are down due to smartphones).
Of course, it's not like in the old days everyone planned ahead and knew where they were and where they were going at all times. My family was big on planning routes, always having maps, and knowing how to read them. This is clearly not the case for many people I have met. I still think technology isn't helping.
This comparison is particularly useful because it tracks students over time so that the effect of a teacher can be separated from other preexisting conditions (like poverty). This graphic from the LA times really says it all. The image shows how on teacher greatly improves the standing of students in his class, while the other does the exact opposite. This ranking has merit.
A little patience, please... Getting Webkit in is a big first step; the rest will come, in time, and quickly, I'm sure. I would expect to see a fully functional Konq+Webkit by this year's end.
A WebKit kpart is not new; there's been one for some time -- I made a package of it in October '09 because the one in the kubuntu repositories was out of date, so it must have been around for some time before that. Many things didn't work back then. For example it didn't integrate with KDE's password saving system. It looks like that's related to the fourth bullet on the list xiando posted -- so that _still_ may not be fixed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see that they're making progress. However, this has been a long time in coming, and I wouldn't be surprised if these problems last past years end. I got tired of waiting and moved to Chrome some time ago.
Is work continuing on KHTML, and -- if so -- why? I mean, KHTML surely has some stuff going for it (it was the basis for WebKit), but it seems like there's a really clear winner.
I'm not a historian of science, but my understanding is that it was purely mathematical -- invented before the relevant quantum mechanics was known. As my undergrad QM text (Griffiths, p 356) says, "Einstein was forced to 'invent' stimulated emission in order to reproduce Plank's formula." I believe he justified it with a fairly abstract thermodynamics argument (he didn't identify a mechanism, he just showed it had to be true or else thermodynamics would be violated). Sorry that I can't cite sources -- I don't have them handy.
It may be _a_ basic input output system, but it is not the BIOS, which -- if I understand correctly -- was originally how all input/output was done through PCs. Nowadays, your computer only uses the BIOS for input/output during startup, and then switches to something more advanced for your actual interface. In short, it's a holdover from the early days of PCs, is now only used for this niche role, and has required backwards compatibility all the way back to the original PC. I don't think that's wasted a huge amount of resources or anything, but I've always thought of it as old cruft ready to be replaced.
It serves no purpose but to try and get more money out of my wallet.
I don't know about you, but I only buy something if its probable value to me is greater than its price. If they're getting more money out of my wallet, that probably means I'm getting more value. There's nothing wrong with that.
What's so evil about targeted advertising? It's win-win if you make rational decisions. Yeah, it sucks for someone who buys anything that's shiny, but what else is new?
Re:TFA gets it completely wrong on the 'Kindle'
on
Thomas Edison's Kindle
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
He wasn't talking about having a small device that could 'download' content remotely.
Where did the author say that he was? I think the author's comparison to the kindle is just because they can store a lot of words in a little space. Whether that is a valid comparison is another issue.
You're welcome. However, I'm not sure if terahertz radiation really counts as RF -- it kind of lives in a gap between microwave and optical frequencies (thats one of the reasons its hard to work with -- neither the techniques/approximations we use for RF or optical work in the gap). At any rate, terahertz radiation doesn't come out of radio towers, so that shouldn't stop you from living on one. What Hatta said about non-ionizing radiation is generally true -- this is the only exception I know of, and it's not even known if this is really an exception. Moreover, you're unlikely to encounter terahertz radiation because it's still hard to work with (although that's slowly changing). In short, this isn't a reason to break out the tinfoil hat.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't look all that different than the high voltage power lines that already criss-cross our country. Those don't cause people to whine about how ugly they are; why should these?
I don't really see what's ugly about them either; it's strikes me as a beautiful piece of engineering.
Bosses are employees too, and (as the parent points out) they certainly seek to enrich themselves.
Having regular employees make a profit is also necessary for a company; if it didn't happen, no one would work there.
I am NOT all for a multi-billion dollar company paying effectively 2.4% while I continue to pay nearly 30% of my income... when you have the higher executives of Google being paid millions. Reduce the salaries of those PHBs down to something reasonable...
I'm all for taxation, but I don't think corporate income taxes make much sense when you think about them. In the long run, all the money a corporation makes ends up with individuals through salaries, dividends, etc. That's the whole point of a coproation, to make a profit for investors and employees. Corporations don't just hold on to the money; that wouldn't make any sense.
If those PHBs make bank, they'll be paying more than the 30% you pay, so the corporations' profits will effectively be taxed at that rate too. Corporate income taxes really just add another layer of bureaucracy -- you're taxing the same money at two levels (corporate and individual) instead of just one (individual). Now, individual income taxes are far from perfect (as Warren Buffett points out, he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary because the capital gains tax rate is so low), but that's just a reason to fix individual income taxes.
Why is it silly to fear the former?
Because it's inevitable.
I'm all for trying to delay it, but since it will happen, I don't see why I should waste my limited time fearing it when I have better things to do.
Fear of eventually dying and fear of dying young are quite different things, but both get named "fear of death". I read TFA, and it's not clear what fear they're talking about.
IMHO, it's silly to fear the former but good to have some fear of the latter.
I think the GP is using targeting in the sense that Assange might be attacking one organization but holding fire on others. For example, if he has information that both a US bank and a Swiss bank are up to no good, but he only release the information on the US bank, then he's targeting one instead of the other. That could very much invalidate his neutrality.
I don't know if Assange is doing this, but it'd be bad if he were (unless it's only because he lacks the resources to target more than one organization at a time).
If you traveled yesterday by air, what was your impression?
I flew out of Milwaukee, WI, got through security in only a few minutes, and the TSA people were very nice.
I guess that makes me a sheep for bending to the will of the government that's hellbent on making me in to a slave. Or something.
If it's going to be economically viable to extract, then it needs to have a high concentration somewhere. If an element is uniformly distributed in the earth's crust, then unless it's _very_ abundant, it's not going to be economically viable to extract (at .25ppm, Indium doesn't fit that bill).
So, while it may be more abundant than silver, it isn't often found in as high concentrations, so some people believe that we'll soon run out of economically viable sources -- one estimate puts that amount at 6,000 tons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium#Occurrence_and_consumption
For better or worse, if you are a natural born citizen then that requirement doesn't exist.
The progressives are bringing up initiatives in several states to where a person can legally vote even if they are here legally.
*Citation Needed*
I've had occasion to need a text mode browser, and I think I used lynx, but I saw that there are a number of them. I recall looking for a good comparison of the different options, but I couldn't find one. What are they, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
As TFA explains:
Google Chrome OS, which is basically an OS built around a web browser. Instead of downloaded apps, it will run web apps, although we expect there to be some offline caching capabilities which should let you do things like read eBooks or watch videos even when an internet connection isn’t handy.
I agree with the author that this is a bad idea:
Don’t forget, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, it didn’t have native apps either. He insisted that the development platform for the iPhone was the web, and the phone was designed primarily to run web apps. Today, there are over 250,000 native apps available in the App Store because, let’s face it, web apps just aren’t always going to do the job.
I don't know how much info is in the wild about Chrome OS, so maybe it'll have some wiz bang features that will rule, but I doubt it. Having two operating systems where one will certainly do just doesn't sound like a good idea -- especially when one is out, the other isn't, and the unreleased one is built around a questionable concept.
They do not prevent they just reduce the amount required...
Agreed, but I see the amount of planning decreasing disproportionately -- some planning is still required but often none is done. That why it "seem to prevent planning".
I disagree. Stupid people will always do stupid things with or without technology...it is just that technology affords them the chance to find new, innovative ways to be stupid.
Truth be told, I'm less concerned about stupid people than the otherwise smart people I see doing stupid things. GPSs aren't the only example. Before we had cell phones, if you wanted to meet up with friends somewhere in the city, you named a place and a time, and if someone wasn't there, nothing could be done. So smart people found ways to make it happen. Nowadays, cell phones allow you to wing-it, which often means a drawn out process of rounding everyone up. Because winging-it has a lower up front cost, a lot of people prefer it -- even otherwise smart ones. I just ends up in a mess half the time.
The _perceived_ change in up front costs is what makes these types of technology different.
I never wrote that maps are better than GPS -- I wrote that they _required_ some amount of planning, and that planning is good. If you use GPS and you plan ahead (and carry a map as a backup) then you're probably better off than someone who just uses maps and plans ahead. Likewise, someone with a map who plans ahead is quite possibly better off than someone who has GPS and doesn't plan ahead (which is easy to do, because GPS doesn't require planning ahead).
Also, how exactly does a map lock you in to one route? I'm not talking preprinted direction from google; I'm talking about real maps. If you think a map locks you in to one route, then you don't know how to read one.
A lot of these devices seem to prevent planning in general, even for little things. If you had to look up an address and stare at a map ahead of time to know where you were going, then you'd think of other things in the process. Now you can just hop in your car, type what you want in to your phone (e.g. bike shop), and follow its directions. Maybe you'll end up where you want, but people who do that often seem to be unprepared. And I've seen people doing that get lost in the process -- those directions aren't perfect, and if you don't have some general idea of where you're going, its still easy to make wrong turns. (Dedicated GPS devices are better, but not perfect, and I've heard that their sales are down due to smartphones).
Of course, it's not like in the old days everyone planned ahead and knew where they were and where they were going at all times. My family was big on planning routes, always having maps, and knowing how to read them. This is clearly not the case for many people I have met. I still think technology isn't helping.
This comparison is particularly useful because it tracks students over time so that the effect of a teacher can be separated from other preexisting conditions (like poverty). This graphic from the LA times really says it all. The image shows how on teacher greatly improves the standing of students in his class, while the other does the exact opposite. This ranking has merit.
A little patience, please... Getting Webkit in is a big first step; the rest will come, in time, and quickly, I'm sure. I would expect to see a fully functional Konq+Webkit by this year's end.
A WebKit kpart is not new; there's been one for some time -- I made a package of it in October '09 because the one in the kubuntu repositories was out of date, so it must have been around for some time before that. Many things didn't work back then. For example it didn't integrate with KDE's password saving system. It looks like that's related to the fourth bullet on the list xiando posted -- so that _still_ may not be fixed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see that they're making progress. However, this has been a long time in coming, and I wouldn't be surprised if these problems last past years end. I got tired of waiting and moved to Chrome some time ago.
The speed changes in webkit are being backported to KHTML.
Is that the actual plan? At one time, I thought the plan was an "unforking".
As to why, its always good to have choices and an alternate source in case someone pulls a Larry Ellison on you.
Oracle is wielding patents. If Apple decided to do that, then it wont make any difference if these are two projects or one.
Is work continuing on KHTML, and -- if so -- why? I mean, KHTML surely has some stuff going for it (it was the basis for WebKit), but it seems like there's a really clear winner.
I'm not a historian of science, but my understanding is that it was purely mathematical -- invented before the relevant quantum mechanics was known. As my undergrad QM text (Griffiths, p 356) says, "Einstein was forced to 'invent' stimulated emission in order to reproduce Plank's formula." I believe he justified it with a fairly abstract thermodynamics argument (he didn't identify a mechanism, he just showed it had to be true or else thermodynamics would be violated). Sorry that I can't cite sources -- I don't have them handy.
It may be _a_ basic input output system, but it is not the BIOS, which -- if I understand correctly -- was originally how all input/output was done through PCs. Nowadays, your computer only uses the BIOS for input/output during startup, and then switches to something more advanced for your actual interface. In short, it's a holdover from the early days of PCs, is now only used for this niche role, and has required backwards compatibility all the way back to the original PC. I don't think that's wasted a huge amount of resources or anything, but I've always thought of it as old cruft ready to be replaced.
It serves no purpose but to try and get more money out of my wallet.
I don't know about you, but I only buy something if its probable value to me is greater than its price. If they're getting more money out of my wallet, that probably means I'm getting more value. There's nothing wrong with that.
What's so evil about targeted advertising? It's win-win if you make rational decisions. Yeah, it sucks for someone who buys anything that's shiny, but what else is new?
He wasn't talking about having a small device that could 'download' content remotely.
Where did the author say that he was? I think the author's comparison to the kindle is just because they can store a lot of words in a little space. Whether that is a valid comparison is another issue.
1999 and more recently.
You're welcome. However, I'm not sure if terahertz radiation really counts as RF -- it kind of lives in a gap between microwave and optical frequencies (thats one of the reasons its hard to work with -- neither the techniques/approximations we use for RF or optical work in the gap). At any rate, terahertz radiation doesn't come out of radio towers, so that shouldn't stop you from living on one. What Hatta said about non-ionizing radiation is generally true -- this is the only exception I know of, and it's not even known if this is really an exception. Moreover, you're unlikely to encounter terahertz radiation because it's still hard to work with (although that's slowly changing). In short, this isn't a reason to break out the tinfoil hat.