Sigh. You clearly don't understand the point I was trying to make.
You think that by having the dollar backed by gold it somehow makes the dollar bill worth something. It doesn't, regardless of the history of gold. All it means is that you can change dollar bills for a certain weight in gold. I can already change dollar bills for a certain weight in gold, though. Gold, like the dollar, is only as valuable as common belief makes it.
Could the gold standard do what the gp thinks it can do? Maybe, but not likely. The dollar is the closest thing we've ever had to a global economic monetary standard, but inflation still hasn't disappeared. The dollar doesn't have a limited supply, though (you can't print up more gold ingots), true believers will say, that's why we still have inflation. BS. Inflation will always exist. Someone will always be willing to pay more for something I own than I paid for it.
There are a lot of negatives to a gold standard, too. Monetary policy becomes very difficult. Credit becomes almost non-existant. Other countries don't follow the standard and benefit from having the dollar tacked down.
Going back to the gold standard is like giving up cars because horses are safer. Both may solve some problems, but we'd lose a lot for a questionable result.
Well, if it's anything like what they did with the NW-HD3 MP3 player I have, it's probably part truth, part "but...".
Yes, you can play MP3's on the NW-HD3 without having to convert them to ATRAC3-Plus, but the only way to get the files onto the device is using Sony's Windows only software.
That last paragraph isn't strictly true. Some people have played around mounting the device and modifying the database manually. Also, there appears to be some other software that works with the device, but it's also Windows only.
Google's logs can't prove what they want to prove. They can show that innocent seeming searches can return adult content, but they cannot show that filters don't block that content by using those logs.
If they are trying to prove it, hook up a computer in front of the SCOTUS and show them. Then show them with filters in place. If the filters aren't doing the job, then the SCOTUS might reopen the case.
You mean like Gentoo? Available on x86, sparc, amd64, ppc, ppc64, alpha, hppa (also known as RISC), and mips. You can buy their CDs from multiple vendors.
I've got one and I don't feel it needs a cell phone at all. If I need network connectivity and there isn't a WiFi hot spot where I'm at, I use my bluetooth cell phone.
Add a cell to the Nokia, you're making it more expensive and giving it a shorter battery life. In addition, they'd have to make changes to meet FCC requirements and user needs.
The only way I'd want a cell phone link is if the form-factor stays exactly the same, and the only way you use it for calls is via a bluetooth earpiece and the battery life isn't impacted at all.
I don't care how close it is to compliant, it's not. Rather than pointing that out as a negative, the review made it sound like a positive. That's showing the reviewer's bias.
I think your point 3 under future proofing (ANSI compliance) points out how slanted the review was.
On the spec page for MS SQL Server Express they said it had "Basic" ANSI support. Sounds kind of crappy, huh?
For MySQL, which doesn't even have basic support they wrote, "Extended subset of SQL-99, plus SQL-99 and SQL:2003 features." Sounds a lot better, doesn't it? It's not. It's a mis-mash or standard and non-standard bits versus Microsoft's basic support of the standard.
It's a sad state of affairs when Microsoft is more standards compliant than the "Editor's Choice".
Where's the OpenDocument debacle? Sounds like a state is having issues defining what document format they want to use, but it's not an OpenDocument debacle.
I'm all for using plain text a lot more, but using LaTeX as the only other format is foolish. Don't get me wrong, I love TeX, but it should, like Postscript/PDF be used for page layout, not for authoring content that is meant to be shared between individuals or applications.
We should use semantic markup to describe what the pieces of a document mean, not how they should look on the page, and then convert to TeX, Postscript, PCL, XSL FO, HTML, whatever, to create your output.
OpenDocument is the closest thing I've seen to a generic document model that can be used for common office documents (faxes, letters, proposals, etc.), and since it's XML, I can use XSLT to transform to or from it, something that you can't do with a page markup definition languages like Postscript or TeX.
[An aside: yes, yes, yes, I know you can create HTML, RTF, etc. from TeX and Postscript, and that's been a great help to me in the past, but the output is really not very usable except for layout, and you can't round trip the document, so you haven't really gained anything from the transformation. If you're trying to move from one layout-centric document type to another, whether it's between Word and LaTeX or whatever, it's often smarter to convert plain text and then mark them back up in your new format rather than use a converter. The result is always much better and it usually takes less time.]
I wish I could go the public transportation route, but thanks to the pitiful bus system in greater San Diego, I'd have to take 3 busses for approximately 2hours each way to get to work (to cover 20 miles) and with a slim margin for connections if any of the busses were late.
I hear this from people all the time. Part of it's your own fault. Live closer to where you work or where good tranist exists.
Even if you lose money buying or on salary, you'll make it up with time saved and money saved from not driving. It costs 56 cents a mile to drive. Average commute time was 26 minutes in 2000.
Add it up. Living far from your job costs a lot of money, contributes to pollution, and contributes to poor quality of life (ever been grouchy due to your commute?).
I'm not picking on you. This is an issue all over America. Many people have a dream of living in some idyllic place, but at the same time want the jobs available in the city. Make compromises. Live in that smaller place in the city. Work at that lower paying job in the suburbs. Your life will get better, I promise.
Assuming a 7 year ownership (beyond that it gets much more complex due to the car breaking down etc) we get a yearly cost of about (Purchase cost)/7 + yearly insurance cost + (Miles Driven/year)*(Cost of a gallon of gas)/(MPG). For many people if they actually did the math it works out that even with gas being $2.50/gallon it's cheaper not to buy a hybrid car!
Unless the insurance on a hybrid is much higher than on a non-hybrid, your math is way off.
Honda Civic Hybrid: 49 mpg city, 51 mpg highway, MSRP, $21,850
Honda Civic: 30 mpg city, 40 highway, MSRP, $17,310 (you can get it cheaper, but that's comparably equipped)
Cost difference: $4,540
Take off the federal tax benefit of $2k, and the cost difference is $2,540
Let's round the MPG difference to 10 mpg on average and assume the average cost of a gallon of gas over the lifetime of the cars is $2.50 (probably too low, but let's leave it there because that's what you suggested).
2540 / 2.50 = 1,016 gallons of gas before breaking even.
If you exclusively drove on the highway, that's 40k miles to break even.
If you split your driving evenly between city and highway (35 mpg), that's 35k miles to break even.
If it's mostly city driving, it's 30k miles to break even.
So, back of the napkin math says a Civic Hybrid will break even in 2 to 3 years.
Add to it car pool benefits (in California, at least), and the value question becomes even clearer. Take the car pool lane over the Bay Bridge every workday? Save $3 a trip, or $750 a year, not to mention a heck of a lot of time.
Now here's the real clincher - the reason people should drive a more fuel effecient car isn't because they'll save money, it's because they are doing the right thing. Drive less, and if you must drive, use a more fuel effecient vehicle. It haa a bigger positive impact than recycling beer cans.
Back to your question - why should companies give incentives to employees that are more fuel effecient? Again, it's the right thing to do. As a side effect they'll also benefit from it. More exercise (from biking, walking, etc.) = a healthier workforce. Indirect and direct benefits for promoting more car pooling or using alternative means of transportation. Oracle saves a huge wad of money every year by encouraging their employees to take public transit so they don't have to build more parking. California give tax benefits to corporations that have alternative transportation programs.
It all depends on how you slice it. Is it number of units sold? Probably SQL*Server. Is it revenue? Probably Oracle. Is it number of companies using the database? Probably IBM.
Yes, Oracle wants you to use their database product for all of your data. Nothing wrong with that, that's their business.
Regarding usefulness for small projects - 5 years ago I would have agreed with you. Now, though, Oracle is very easy to setup and maintain even for small installs, and yes, I think MySQL had something to do with that.
The traps they have, though, in my experience, aren't really related to standards so much as to areas where no real standards exist. For example, there is a standard SQL, but nearly everyone recognizes that it needs to be extended to do real work. Oracle extended it in their own way, and yes, you can get trapped if you take advantage of it.
I agree, though, that a more realistic comparison is SQL*Server and PostgreSQL. Both could be used for high-end database solutions, but you'd have to defend your decision to use them instead of using Oracle or DB2.
A five year old kid already knows the grammar of his or her native language. Grammar instruction just confuses them.
Teaching kids how to write more effectively is a good thing. Filling their heads with useless, and often incorrect, grammar "rules" is just a waste of time.
I don't agree with your premise. Spelling, while important, is not vitally important in exchanging information. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of grammar.
Your examples are good ones at showing how wrong your premise is. If someone writes, "I can't believe their taking it's toy away" you know what they mean. They mean, "I can't believe they're taking its toy away". You might have to work a little harder to understand the first sentence, but you can understand it.
This is because English, and most, perhaps all, other human languages, has an abundance of redundant information, so you can usually tell from context the meaning of a word even if it's misspelled, and you can usually tell the meaning of a sentence even if it is grammatically incorrect.
The redundancy of human languages actually makes it harder to write a good grammar tool. Since you can say the same thing so many different ways (more than Perl even!), it's really hard to determine whether a string of words is grammatical or not.
French adjectives don't always come after the noun, just usually. It's not a rule. Instead, your belief that it is a rule shows again why writing a grammar tool is so hard. Most things we think of as grammar rules are not.
Language is a living thing. Grammar changes much faster than our rules for what correct grammar is do. Get used to it because television, the internet, and SMS, are just making grammar change faster.
I write for a living. I love a well crafted sentence, but I don't care if anyone uses correct grammar because I don't believe there is only one correct grammar. The important thing is making your meaning clear. Appropriate grammar for your audience can help with that, but it only needs to be good enough to communicate the message. My post has a lot of incorrect grammar in it, but if you don't understand it, it's not due to the grammar, it's because I didn't write it well.
BTW, interesting use of the word nazi. You've turned it into a verb.
...so many spelling/grammar nazis on slashdot. If we don't
[nazi], in a matter of just a few years...
Oh, and being a grammar or spelling nazi isn't something to be proud of, it just makes you sound like a fuddy-duddy. Next you'll be yelling at the neighbor kids to stay off your lawn.
Actually Ellison encourages his top people to come up with ideas and create their own companies around them. He understands that doing something new with a small company can be much easier than doing something with a large company.
Now, though, he's using the power of his big company to bring the results of those excursions back into the fold.
Good thing or bad thing? I don't know. It doesn't seem to me that PeopleSoft or Seibel were very strong companies or have/had good products, but I say that as a Salesforce.com addict.
It's not just statistical. From the article (empahsis mine),
ADIOS relies on a statistical method for pattern extraction and
on structured generalization -- two processes that have been implicated in language acquisition.
And while their paper is not being published in a linguistic journal, it is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, Vol. 102, No. 33), which is a well respected cross-discipline journal.
Although I, along with you, am skeptical of this, it sounds like it could be a very interesting article. Don't poo-poo it until you read it.
Actually I think this might be very appealing to research groups at universities.
As part of your grant proposal you include a flat cost for computer time rather than costing out hardware purchases. Not only that, but you can also start your project as soon as the money is approved, you don't have to go through all the hoops to buy, ship, house, and administer the hardware.
PHEV are lower emission vehicles than ULEV, depending on the driving style and the source electricity. In California, a typical PHEV would emit 66% less greenhouse gas than a "standard" gasoline powered car. ULEV is 50%
I agree with what your bosses. I don't want you to tell me how long you work, I want you to tell me how much you got done.
Also, don't complain about how long you're working unless I've asked you to work extra hours.
If I ask you to do something and you say, "I can do that, but it's going to take some extra hours unless you don't want me to do this other thing" that helps me plan. I may at that time say, "Okay, I'll get someone else to do it", or I may say, "Can you work some extra hours?", or I may say, "If you can do that, I'll get you some comp time later", or I may even say, "If you'll put in that time, I'll make it worth your while". But if you don't tell me, I can't do any of that stuff.
Look, I don't want anyone that works for me to get burnt out. I want them at the top of their game. If a person is working 60+ hours a week every week, they aren't at the top of their game. If you think you are, you're fooling yourself. Take a couple of short weeks and compare the quality (not quantity) of your work.
Back on topic - I think this ruling sucks, and I think it violates the right to free assembly. When I'm on the clock, my boss expects me to do my job, and I can understand why they wouldn't want me to be flirting with that new cutie in Sales, but when I'm off the clock, I'm my own person.
As a salaried employee my hours are not a set 9-5, so they are set by mutual agreement. If my boss wants that to include all the time I might be out drinking a beer or other non-work related activities, he'd better pay me a lot more than he is currently.
This is a great question, and I have a related one - How can I tell if my box is a zombie?
I don't think any of my computers are, but I'd like to be sure. Since this company can tell which PCs are zombies, why don't they offer a service where I can enter an IP address to see if it's been identified as a zombie?
I agree, this device is really, really close to what I want.
The screen resolution makes it much nicer, for me, than the LifeDrive, but having to buy mini-sd cards for storage is a negative that you don't have with the LifeDrive.
When you say Outlook sync, I assume you mean calendar and task syncing, right? I'm sure, if it doesn't come with that out of the box, someone will create an application that does it. It's probably one of the most common use cases currently for such a device.
Two negatives about this device for me. Battery life, and no keyboard. Thank goodness it has bluetooth so you can get a bluetooth keyboard. However, without a built in keyboard, it will become, for most users, nearly a read-only device.
Slashdot Mirror
You think that by having the dollar backed by gold it somehow makes the dollar bill worth something. It doesn't, regardless of the history of gold. All it means is that you can change dollar bills for a certain weight in gold. I can already change dollar bills for a certain weight in gold, though. Gold, like the dollar, is only as valuable as common belief makes it.
Could the gold standard do what the gp thinks it can do? Maybe, but not likely. The dollar is the closest thing we've ever had to a global economic monetary standard, but inflation still hasn't disappeared. The dollar doesn't have a limited supply, though (you can't print up more gold ingots), true believers will say, that's why we still have inflation. BS. Inflation will always exist. Someone will always be willing to pay more for something I own than I paid for it.
There are a lot of negatives to a gold standard, too. Monetary policy becomes very difficult. Credit becomes almost non-existant. Other countries don't follow the standard and benefit from having the dollar tacked down.
Going back to the gold standard is like giving up cars because horses are safer. Both may solve some problems, but we'd lose a lot for a questionable result.
Gold has no more intrinsic value than a dollar bill has. Take away that, and the rest of the argument falls apart.
Yes, you can play MP3's on the NW-HD3 without having to convert them to ATRAC3-Plus, but the only way to get the files onto the device is using Sony's Windows only software.
That last paragraph isn't strictly true. Some people have played around mounting the device and modifying the database manually. Also, there appears to be some other software that works with the device, but it's also Windows only.
If they are trying to prove it, hook up a computer in front of the SCOTUS and show them. Then show them with filters in place. If the filters aren't doing the job, then the SCOTUS might reopen the case.
Oh, and it's easy to install with or without X.
Add a cell to the Nokia, you're making it more expensive and giving it a shorter battery life. In addition, they'd have to make changes to meet FCC requirements and user needs.
The only way I'd want a cell phone link is if the form-factor stays exactly the same, and the only way you use it for calls is via a bluetooth earpiece and the battery life isn't impacted at all.
I don't care how close it is to compliant, it's not. Rather than pointing that out as a negative, the review made it sound like a positive. That's showing the reviewer's bias.
I think your point 3 under future proofing (ANSI compliance) points out how slanted the review was.
On the spec page for MS SQL Server Express they said it had "Basic" ANSI support. Sounds kind of crappy, huh?
For MySQL, which doesn't even have basic support they wrote, "Extended subset of SQL-99, plus SQL-99 and SQL:2003 features." Sounds a lot better, doesn't it? It's not. It's a mis-mash or standard and non-standard bits versus Microsoft's basic support of the standard.
It's a sad state of affairs when Microsoft is more standards compliant than the "Editor's Choice".
The three hour battery life is only if you are using WiFi constantly. Most users report 10+ hours of usage before needing to recharge.
I'm all for using plain text a lot more, but using LaTeX as the only other format is foolish. Don't get me wrong, I love TeX, but it should, like Postscript/PDF be used for page layout, not for authoring content that is meant to be shared between individuals or applications.
We should use semantic markup to describe what the pieces of a document mean, not how they should look on the page, and then convert to TeX, Postscript, PCL, XSL FO, HTML, whatever, to create your output.
OpenDocument is the closest thing I've seen to a generic document model that can be used for common office documents (faxes, letters, proposals, etc.), and since it's XML, I can use XSLT to transform to or from it, something that you can't do with a page markup definition languages like Postscript or TeX.
[An aside: yes, yes, yes, I know you can create HTML, RTF, etc. from TeX and Postscript, and that's been a great help to me in the past, but the output is really not very usable except for layout, and you can't round trip the document, so you haven't really gained anything from the transformation. If you're trying to move from one layout-centric document type to another, whether it's between Word and LaTeX or whatever, it's often smarter to convert plain text and then mark them back up in your new format rather than use a converter. The result is always much better and it usually takes less time.]
Even if you lose money buying or on salary, you'll make it up with time saved and money saved from not driving. It costs 56 cents a mile to drive. Average commute time was 26 minutes in 2000.
Add it up. Living far from your job costs a lot of money, contributes to pollution, and contributes to poor quality of life (ever been grouchy due to your commute?).
I'm not picking on you. This is an issue all over America. Many people have a dream of living in some idyllic place, but at the same time want the jobs available in the city. Make compromises. Live in that smaller place in the city. Work at that lower paying job in the suburbs. Your life will get better, I promise.
Honda Civic Hybrid: 49 mpg city, 51 mpg highway, MSRP, $21,850
Honda Civic: 30 mpg city, 40 highway, MSRP, $17,310 (you can get it cheaper, but that's comparably equipped)
Cost difference: $4,540
Take off the federal tax benefit of $2k, and the cost difference is $2,540
Let's round the MPG difference to 10 mpg on average and assume the average cost of a gallon of gas over the lifetime of the cars is $2.50 (probably too low, but let's leave it there because that's what you suggested).
2540 / 2.50 = 1,016 gallons of gas before breaking even.
If you exclusively drove on the highway, that's 40k miles to break even.
If you split your driving evenly between city and highway (35 mpg), that's 35k miles to break even.
If it's mostly city driving, it's 30k miles to break even.
AAA says that a person, on average, puts on 75k miles in 5 years.
So, back of the napkin math says a Civic Hybrid will break even in 2 to 3 years.
Add to it car pool benefits (in California, at least), and the value question becomes even clearer. Take the car pool lane over the Bay Bridge every workday? Save $3 a trip, or $750 a year, not to mention a heck of a lot of time.
Now here's the real clincher - the reason people should drive a more fuel effecient car isn't because they'll save money, it's because they are doing the right thing. Drive less, and if you must drive, use a more fuel effecient vehicle. It haa a bigger positive impact than recycling beer cans.
Back to your question - why should companies give incentives to employees that are more fuel effecient? Again, it's the right thing to do. As a side effect they'll also benefit from it. More exercise (from biking, walking, etc.) = a healthier workforce. Indirect and direct benefits for promoting more car pooling or using alternative means of transportation. Oracle saves a huge wad of money every year by encouraging their employees to take public transit so they don't have to build more parking. California give tax benefits to corporations that have alternative transportation programs.
Did you try it, or your just flaming?
Is there anyway to be sure? Nope.
Yes, Oracle wants you to use their database product for all of your data. Nothing wrong with that, that's their business.
Regarding usefulness for small projects - 5 years ago I would have agreed with you. Now, though, Oracle is very easy to setup and maintain even for small installs, and yes, I think MySQL had something to do with that.
The traps they have, though, in my experience, aren't really related to standards so much as to areas where no real standards exist. For example, there is a standard SQL, but nearly everyone recognizes that it needs to be extended to do real work. Oracle extended it in their own way, and yes, you can get trapped if you take advantage of it.
I agree, though, that a more realistic comparison is SQL*Server and PostgreSQL. Both could be used for high-end database solutions, but you'd have to defend your decision to use them instead of using Oracle or DB2.
Teaching kids how to write more effectively is a good thing. Filling their heads with useless, and often incorrect, grammar "rules" is just a waste of time.
I don't agree with your premise. Spelling, while important, is not vitally important in exchanging information. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of grammar.
Your examples are good ones at showing how wrong your premise is. If someone writes, "I can't believe their taking it's toy away" you know what they mean. They mean, "I can't believe they're taking its toy away". You might have to work a little harder to understand the first sentence, but you can understand it.
This is because English, and most, perhaps all, other human languages, has an abundance of redundant information, so you can usually tell from context the meaning of a word even if it's misspelled, and you can usually tell the meaning of a sentence even if it is grammatically incorrect.
The redundancy of human languages actually makes it harder to write a good grammar tool. Since you can say the same thing so many different ways (more than Perl even!), it's really hard to determine whether a string of words is grammatical or not.
French adjectives don't always come after the noun, just usually. It's not a rule. Instead, your belief that it is a rule shows again why writing a grammar tool is so hard. Most things we think of as grammar rules are not.
Language is a living thing. Grammar changes much faster than our rules for what correct grammar is do. Get used to it because television, the internet, and SMS, are just making grammar change faster.
I write for a living. I love a well crafted sentence, but I don't care if anyone uses correct grammar because I don't believe there is only one correct grammar. The important thing is making your meaning clear. Appropriate grammar for your audience can help with that, but it only needs to be good enough to communicate the message. My post has a lot of incorrect grammar in it, but if you don't understand it, it's not due to the grammar, it's because I didn't write it well.
BTW, interesting use of the word nazi. You've turned it into a verb.
Oh, and being a grammar or spelling nazi isn't something to be proud of, it just makes you sound like a fuddy-duddy. Next you'll be yelling at the neighbor kids to stay off your lawn.Now, though, he's using the power of his big company to bring the results of those excursions back into the fold.
Good thing or bad thing? I don't know. It doesn't seem to me that PeopleSoft or Seibel were very strong companies or have/had good products, but I say that as a Salesforce.com addict.
Although I, along with you, am skeptical of this, it sounds like it could be a very interesting article. Don't poo-poo it until you read it.
Actually I think this might be very appealing to research groups at universities.
As part of your grant proposal you include a flat cost for computer time rather than costing out hardware purchases. Not only that, but you can also start your project as soon as the money is approved, you don't have to go through all the hoops to buy, ship, house, and administer the hardware.
See How Much Cleaner than a Gasoline Car is a PHEV Charged from the Dirty (Coal) Grid?
In addition, the ULEV rating does not take into account all the costs associated with getting the gasoline into the ULEV car.
I agree with what your bosses. I don't want you to tell me how long you work, I want you to tell me how much you got done.
Also, don't complain about how long you're working unless I've asked you to work extra hours.
If I ask you to do something and you say, "I can do that, but it's going to take some extra hours unless you don't want me to do this other thing" that helps me plan. I may at that time say, "Okay, I'll get someone else to do it", or I may say, "Can you work some extra hours?", or I may say, "If you can do that, I'll get you some comp time later", or I may even say, "If you'll put in that time, I'll make it worth your while". But if you don't tell me, I can't do any of that stuff.
Look, I don't want anyone that works for me to get burnt out. I want them at the top of their game. If a person is working 60+ hours a week every week, they aren't at the top of their game. If you think you are, you're fooling yourself. Take a couple of short weeks and compare the quality (not quantity) of your work.
Back on topic - I think this ruling sucks, and I think it violates the right to free assembly. When I'm on the clock, my boss expects me to do my job, and I can understand why they wouldn't want me to be flirting with that new cutie in Sales, but when I'm off the clock, I'm my own person.
As a salaried employee my hours are not a set 9-5, so they are set by mutual agreement. If my boss wants that to include all the time I might be out drinking a beer or other non-work related activities, he'd better pay me a lot more than he is currently.
If your code is beautiful, but nobody can figure out how to use it (because you haven't documented it well), it's only going to be beautiful to you.
In other words, spending time making something understood is part of making something work. It doesn't work unless people can use it.
I don't think any of my computers are, but I'd like to be sure. Since this company can tell which PCs are zombies, why don't they offer a service where I can enter an IP address to see if it's been identified as a zombie?
The screen resolution makes it much nicer, for me, than the LifeDrive, but having to buy mini-sd cards for storage is a negative that you don't have with the LifeDrive.
When you say Outlook sync, I assume you mean calendar and task syncing, right? I'm sure, if it doesn't come with that out of the box, someone will create an application that does it. It's probably one of the most common use cases currently for such a device.
Two negatives about this device for me. Battery life, and no keyboard. Thank goodness it has bluetooth so you can get a bluetooth keyboard. However, without a built in keyboard, it will become, for most users, nearly a read-only device.